Portland’s Intel is releasing a new low cost laptop for students: Classmate PC

There’s an interesting article in the Portland Oregonian today about Intel releasing a new low cost laptop for students called the “Classmate PC“. This laptop is scheduled to be sold in April of 2008 and will sell for a retail price of $300 to $500; much lower than the still high price of many laptops.

They are competing with the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organization which sells a simlar laptop. These computers are designed for the millions of third world students currently becoming part of the global net for the first time.

A Portland based company, called CTL corp., is selling the Classmates in the US under the name “2go PC” which sells for $400 to $500 depending on the software installed on it.

The spill proof keyboards and Linux or Windows XP operating systems were field tested right here in Portland including Buckman Elementary School.

Classmates are not only for students but are also targeted at adults who want a portable, spill proof, low cost laptop that does not have all the bells and whistles of a regular laptop. They are marketing them as somewhere between a Blackberry-type smart phone and a full scale laptop for users of the wireless world. They have a 9 inch screen so you can see more than with you iPhone but still weigh 3 pounds and are a bit more cumbersome to tote around, but they have a handle which makes that carrying easier to do. This cross between a smartphone and laptop is being called a “netbook”.

Personally I think it is a great idea. I really want a portable, low cost device that I can use on Portland’s currently free wifi service but so far they are either too small or too big. This netbook may be just what I need to go mobile citywide.

Playing Basketball in the Street in Portland, Oregon: 9 reasons it’s a bad idea anywhere

Maybe it is because I am a mother of a school aged child and a wife of an Oregon injury attorney, but it really bothers me when I see kids playing basketball in the street, especially in our urban neighborhood that has plenty of nearby parks. While I love to see children doing wholesome activities, there is a time and place for everything. Here are the 9 reasons having a basketball hoop facing the street in front of your house is a bad idea:

1. Illegal structure: If the hoop is installed in the ground, that actually is illegal by Portland City code. The parking strip belongs to the city so you have no right to put permanent or semi-permanent structures (including real estate signs) in the parking strips. Even if it is not in the ground, it is against city code to leave it more than 2 hours concurrently on the sidewalk.

2. Liability for other children: A hoop may be considered a child trap and you may be liable for any injury that a child sustains while using your hoop.

3. Pedestrian Car Injuries: A person, especially a child, has about 100% chance of dying if hit by a car at 35 MPH. When I was trying to get the city to put in traffic bumps at my old house in Rose City Park near Providence Hospital, they recorded a great number of cars travelling that fast and up to 50 MPH. The city official told me that was “normal” for Portland neighborhoods, although they eventually did put in the bumps.

4. Misdemeanors: If you let your kids play in the street, that actually is illegal and is considered jay walking. I have heard of someone getting a ticket for playing football on NE Glisan St, but for the most part you probably won’t get caught. However do you really want to teach your children it is ok to do something illegal as long as they don’t get caught?

5. At Fault = No Money: While a child or his health and lack of pain cannot really be replaced with money, if your child does get hit by a car it will be the fault of the child and you will not get money for his/her death, dismemberment or injury.

6. Disturbance of the peace: Playing basketball makes enough noise to penetrate the walls of your neighbor’s house, so technically, in Portland Oregon at least, it is a disturbance of the peace by city code. While most neighbors won’t call the cops on you, they will probably be annoyed with you especially if they are trying to take a nap or get a baby or toddler to take one.

7. Street Objects are against city code: If you put a cone in the street to warn cars that your kids are playing ball, that is illegal too, in Portland. It is illegal to put pretty much anything in the street other than a parked, working car or street legal motorcycle facing the proper direction and less than a foot from the curb.

8. They lower your property value. Why? For one thing they are UGLY! Except when brand new, basketball hoops are usually poorly maintained by most people and either the paint or the net or both are in some state of degradation at any given time. Secondly, they give the neighborhood a feeling that it is not safe for children. This will give a potential buyer in your neighborhood a bad feeling and cause a lower bid on neighboring houses and that will eventually effect you when it comes time to retire or move.

9. It may be considered child abuse. If you have a young child playing in the street unsupervised and you have one of the following living in your neighborhood:

Physician, including interns and residents.
Dentist.
School employee.
Licensed practical nurse or registered nurse.
Employee of the Department of Human Resources, State Commission on Children and Families, Child Care Division of the Employment Department, the Oregon Youth Authority, a county health department, a community mental health and developmental disabilities program, a county juvenile department, a licensed child-caring agency, or an alcohol and drug treatment program.
Peace officer.
Psychologist.
Clergy.
Licensed clinical social worker
Optometrist.
Chiropractor.
Certified provider of day care or foster care, or an employee thereof.
Attorney.
Naturopathic physician.
Licensed professional counselor.
Licensed marriage and family therapist.
Firefighter or emergency medical technician.
A court appointed special advocate, as defined in ORS 419A.004.
A child care provider registered or certified under ORS 657A.030 and 657A.250 to 657A.450

Then they may have a duty to report you for child neglect if indeed playing in the street is child abuse, which I am not sure of at this point. I contacted the state and they did not say “no it is not child abuse” and a friend of mine who is a child development expert thought it just might be. Child abuse decisions go on a case by case basis so this is a murky area unlike misdemeanor state law and city code law.

So…if you have a hoop facing the street, I hope after reading this you will turn it to face the sidewalk wehn playing and then put it away in your garage when you are done, put it in your driveway or give/sell it to someone who can give it a proper home.

Where is the Spruce Goose Now? Review of Evergreen Aviation Museum

After seeing the movie The Aviator, I have been meaning to visit it at the Evergreen Aviation and Spacve Museum to see the giant plane in person. Last weekend I visited my Mom, who runs a new Salem Oregon Luxury Bed and Breakfast, and had an opportunity to finally visit.

The Museum is out in the country, about a 30 minute drive from I-5 Salem exit. We took the backroads from Portland which was a nice scenic drive past many wineries that we have been to in the past. The museum itself is located across from a small airfield and in the midst of farmland and a vineyard. The striking architecture of the building is made even better by the pastoral setting it lives in.

The museum is brand new and new additions are under construction. As you approach in your car, you get a magnificent view of the airplane through the windows of the modern craftsman style building. A separate building houses an IMAX theatre.

The admission was pretty high, but worth it especially if you love planes and helicopters or WWII. The highlights for me were:

sitting in old airplane seats scattered around the museum and confirming that airplane seats had gotten much smaller over the years, not just that I had gotten much bigger

seeing some replicas of the first airplanes and the lunar module

climbing up and into the cargo area of the Spruce Goose (tours of the cockpit are extra)

seeing some interesting flying inventions

Seeing Snoopy’s Sopwith Camel

Seeing a rocket in parts outside the building and an opened rocket capsule inside the building

There was a lot of information about planes and WWII which I am not really interested in, but many people are. They had movies to watch as well as a kids area for toddlers. The snack and wine tasting area was very nice.

Overall, I highly recommend a trip to this museum if you are touring the Oregon Wine Country.

Why do skinny or small boned women look rich?

Warning: This article may offend some people as it deals with social class in America. I feel that class is a taboo subject in America but avoiding discussing it is as bad as avoiding talking about sex; it leads to unhealthy behaviors and ideas. While there still is a lot of social mobility in America, the majority of people born into the top 5% of income families stay there when they grow up. This article is about that majority.
I read that fashion designers are designing fancy clothes for small boned women since upper middle class men have been marrying small boned lower class (middle class, lower middle class, lower class or destitute) women in droves recently in the USA. From my observations, I think this statement has a lot of merit.
The combination of small bones and small muscles makes a person look very slender and it seems to me that a lot of people in the USA can no longer distinguish fat from bone and muscle since we are so fat phobic.
I told a friend of mine that I had read that upper middle class born men are marrying lower class born small-boned women in droves and she said “That is because thin women look rich and small boned women look thinner than they are”. My next question is “Why do thin women look rich?”

Here are some answers I have found or thought of over the years:
• Some people claim it is the never too rich or too thin edict that has permanently welded the two concepts into today’s American minds.

• Other people claim that the rich get thin to distinguish themselves; they use their body as a take-along status symbol.
• Others claim that only the rich can afford the foods, time and gym that make them thin.
• Some say the rich need to stay thin to stay young looking and keep their sales/managerial jobs.
• Other’s claim the stress of being poor makes people fat
• Others claim that only upper middle class neurotic people have eating disorders.
• Some think that thinness is an expression of the ability to defer gratification. Deferred gratification makes you think and makes you rich.
• Some believe that dieting is a form of guilt relieving past time for the rich. Like self whipping of old, the rich diet to make themselves feel more aggrieved and less guilty.
• Some feel that the rich do not let their children have enough calories when they are growing up so they grow up thin and maybe even small boned.
• Some think that the rich followed the “no fat in diet”policy too strictly and ended up with a bunch of stretched out, small headed children due to fat malnutrition.
• Some claim that upper middle class women were forced to give up their fat (Fat = power) to get into the work world with men
• Some think fat is caused by compulsive overeating derived from a neurosis developed during a bad childhood. The explanation would be that rich people have better childhoods and less neurosis.
• Maybe the rich have just dealt with obesity and the fear of it longer than the poor and have found ways to incorporate weight loss into their culture. The explanation is that poor people exercised more through work and had less food so therefore could not get fat even if they wanted to.
• Maybe it is because the center of clothing fashion is in France. French women have small bones, so French designers make dresses that fit them. Rich women who wanted to buy the original, expensive designer dresses could only do so if they were small boned or diet thin.

• Maybe the smaller your body is the bigger your head looks. Large cerebrums are associated with increased intelligence which is associated with being rich.
• Maybe women with higher testosterone levels, who tend to have lower body fat as a result, make more money because they are more aggressive or look like men
• Some think thinness is associated with infertility and richness is associated with having less children as in “The rich get richer and the poor get children”. Or that more educated, wealthier men are more aware of the population problem and choose women who look like they won’t have too many.
• Conversely, some think thinness is associated with health and fertility, and richer men have first choice in women and choose women who will hold up well and produce healthy offspring. A healthy thyroid can aid in fertility and in keeping weight down.
• Maybe vegetarianism is associated with wealth since the more educated are aware of the impending overpopulation problem and seek vegetarianism as a partial solution. Vegetarians tend to have smaller muscles since they often don’t get as much protein as meat eaters and they look thinner.
• Maybe thinness and money are associated via super models and with the large sums that top models often make. Some claim models are thin since the clothes hang better on them. Others claim that the gay fashion designers choose them because they look more like men.
• Maybe having children makes women fatter and 1 in 4 college educated women do not have children. This trend makes women who are rich into being overall thinner, although the difference in percent between rich and poor in terms of “fatness” is not that great from what I have read. BMI reflecting fat percent is in error in a whopping 8% of the population; any measure of “fatness’ is probably has an 8% error, if you assume body fat percent is more indicative of health than BMI. But who knows…maybe having big bones and/or muscles DOES make you die earlier; maybe now that even has become a self fulfilling prophecy due to discrimination of big boned people and the behavior changes that are associated with it…maybe the constant dieting to try and look like you have small bones kills you earlier…big boned people get worse jobs and are ostracized from reassuring peers…and are all these studies controlled for socioeconomic factors??? Poor people die younger than richer…unless you argue that the fatness makes them die younger..another cause-effect problem.

Maybe it is just because upper middle class men chose small boned women for the last 20 to 100 years and now it is associated with being rich. Why did they choose small boned women?
• Maybe it is that small boned people fit better in air planes and are associated with Jet Setting or prestigious traveling sales jobs; a current status symbol.
• Maybe it is that the small boned women just make the men feel more macho and upper middle class men, no longer constrained to marry within their class by society, get first pick of all the women and choose the lanky ones. Testosterone makes men have bigger bones so they feel like they are more manly when next to women from hotter climates, which also has led to the evolution of smaller bones in animals of all types.
• Maybe they just choose them, since like a diamond; the tall small boned women are rarer and therefore more special.
• Maybe it is because there is a genetic attraction to women from distant lands since most upper middle class born men are large boned Northern German/Anglo Saxon types. Out breeding makes for healthier offspring. Or maybe they sense that the need to be at anything other than 70 degrees fahrenheit is unnecessary so big, stocky cold-climate descended men are breeding with hot climate, small boned women to produce “warm blooded” children who are most comfortable in our climate controlled country.

• Maybe they marry them because the upper middle class bought into the BMI concept hook line and sinker more than other classes. Before the concept of body fat percent was invented, larger boned upper middle class young women starved themselves almost unanimously to fit into the charts (maybe not much has changed since the fat percent concept seems to be catching on VERY slowly and many fat monitors are worthless without dunk tank calibration, , in my opinion). The BMI charts used to be less forgiving when I was younger I seem to remember. In my all upper middle class high school, 3 girls have been murdered by other girls over the last 25 years and I wonder how much of that is not due to trying to fit into those damn charts. Maybe when marriage time came around, the men, faced with a choice of a bitchy-always-dieting upper middle class born woman and a fit-in-the-BMI charts smaller boned, non-dieting, lower class born woman that mom would not approve of, chose the latter.
• Maybe it is because upper middle class men are educated and see a future with global warmth and are trying to mix their genes with hot climate adapted women. Small bones and muscles release heat more easily. Global warming due to fossil fuels was invented as a concept in 1896. • Maybe bone size is not genetic and corresponds to a personality that is somehow easier, more status prone or more likable than larger boned women (I like to keep an open mind) or is genetic but is genetically linked to such a personality.
• Maybe small bones is just another inexplicable fashion change; like the shortening and lengthening and then shortening again of the pants in women’s fashion. The fashion in America as late as Victorian times was fatness. There were books written on “How to get plump”. America is currently unique in it’s obsession with fat avoidance. England is following in close second, from what I gather.
• Maybe small bones are associated with not working in the field farming which is an outdated status symbol.
• Maybe the nobles of the past were smaller boned due to being related to the Spanish and small bones is an outdated status symbol
• Some think thinness is associated with youth and rich men tend to choose women who have small bones and will look younger longer.
• Maybe there are more upper middle class born men then women and the upper middle class born women snatch up all of the larger boned upper middle class born men (who make the women feel small and feminine) and only the smaller boned upper middle class men are left over. They marry lower class born women with small bones who are insecure about their new status and are more visible in their quest to be deemed rich.

The bone truth:
Wrist bone size can be used to roughly determine fat percent in combination with height, weight and sex. The Coast Guard has a chart that they use to determine if people meet their body fat percent (BF) guidelines. The coast gaurd allows a 40# difference in weight for a 5′ 10″ woman like myself depending on bone size 5.25 inches around the wrist to 7.75” and over. I had trouble finding any good info on bone weight but they roughly weigh 15% of body mass or 15 – 40 # from 100 # - 300 # (this seems to be an incredibly rough estimate and detailed studies in bones seem to be now just getting underway due to osteoperosis issues), so there must be some adjustment for bigger bones = bigger muscles as well. My daughter goes to a mostly upper middle class parent school. I am afraid of her getting an eating disorder, so I have kept her out of an all upper middle class parent school in hopes that she will avoid it. I just read that 70% or so of teenagers are on a diet, so maybe she will get one anyways like I did (What IS the difference between a diet and an eating disorder??…I never really know where that line needs to be drawn).
I noticed that most of the women at my daughter’s school do have very small bones; it is so bad, that I really hate to go to the school and pick her up since I feel like a super genetic freak. Portland is high in large boned tall, large muscled, Scandinavian/Northern German descended people, so most of the time I feel normal out in public here. The men in my neighborhood must have been doing some serious selective out breeding :-). I am half descended from a potentially inbred, German, noble family, so I am all for healthy out breeding. In fact I married a smaller boned lower class born man so who am I to cast stones?; For me though almost everyone is smaller boned. I feel I have been discriminated against my whole life for being a large boned woman and am being so more and more every year. Luckily I had a daughter with smaller bones than me. I think small boned men are discriminated against currently as well, so any man choosing a lower class born (possibly uneducated) small boned wife in hopes of having small boned, slender-looking, fashionable daughters may want to consider the possibility of having small boned sons. They may also want to consider whether their genes/value system that make themselves successful will be passed along, if it is assumed that in America class is based on merit, which I know is arguable.
I went to the Dancer exhibit at the Portland Oregon Art Museum and came up with yet another theory for the small boned fashion.
The exhibit educational resources explained that in France, arguably still the center of power in the time of Degas, a rich man could afford to have a ballerina as a mistress. This was the case when many of our Portland houses were built in the early 1900s. Maybe that status symbol, like having a dog (for hunting on your estate) or a big car (to carry your servants/gaurds in your coach) or a big house (to house all of your servants and guests), has lost it’s original reason for being and is just a residual unattached-to-current-reality status symbol. Maybe the upper middle class born men are skipping marrying the upper middle class wife and just marrying the ballerina mistress! The lower class born woman probably also wants to stay home and take care of him and his kids to boot while the upper middle class college educated woman wants to have a career. He can still flirt with those upper middle class born women at work, and come home to his ballerina-esque house wife/housekeeper at night. Throw that one on the pot.
I am sure there is more than one reason and that we will never know or agree on the real one.
Whatever the reason, I hope that the discrimination against large boned women subsides a bit in the near future. Remember that we may have to go back to farming in cold weather and need those big bones and muscles again!

Who to blame for the housing crunch

I just found an intesting subsection of reddit for Oregon.

With it I found a great article about the housing crunch. I went to Real Estate school so saw this all coming but it is like watching a car crash in slow motion.

Here is my comment on the article.

How about “Blame the breeders”, “Blame the immigrants” or “blame the American Dream”. Housing is getting more expensive since the coasts of the USA are probably now more dense then Europe. There’s just no where left to put everyone so we are bidding up the houses so high since we have an expectation that everyone should be able to afford a house and a family by age 30. The fact is that there are not enough resources and technology available to do that and it will only get worse as gas becomes more scarce.

Personally, they all are to blame. I am an owner of a sub-prime mortgage so am not one to cast stones. I got one in order to fund a business expansion and just am hoping that business pays off so I can continue to pay it.

One thing for sure, houses are now 2x what they used to be. It seems like inflation is coming soon and will get worse as life becomes more expensive as gas becomes more scarce.

Another comment I would add to the blog:
Blame the liberals: a larger percent of people own houses then ever before. People who would have been renters in the past are now owners…they will soon be renters again. While the idea of “a home for everyone, even the poor” is great in theory, in reality there are a lot of people who are just too immature and unable to plan for the future to have that much responsibility.

Obesity epidemic fight is riddled with holes in logic

Every time I see an article about the “obesity epidemic” and that the government needs to do something about it, it scares me more and more. Portland schools recently sent out notices that they were going to fight obesity with diet and fitness education and Portland has often been cited as one of the “fattest” states.

This article in forbes prompted me to write this post.

It has the usual holes in logic that I see in most of these articles:

1. Myth: high BMI means you are fat: many people, Portlanders especially, are just stocky and have high bone and muscle densities. So these people would be labeled “fat”. So using “high bmi” = “fat” is wrong and sloppy arguing.

2. Myth:You get fat from lack of exercise and eating junk food….I got fat and heavy and ate no junk food and very little white flour and sugar (all organic vegetables, fruits, dairy and meat) and walked everywhere so I find that argument very hard to believe. I know a number of people who eat way worse then me and are neither fat (high fat percent) or heavy (high BMI). It may be true that eating bad makes you unhealthy, but why pass it through the fat argument?

3. There is no mention of the potential role of stress in fatness…while some adults, such as myself, have a bit of control over how much stress they have in their lives, many do not, and for the most part children certainly do not. So if children are getting fat because they have a lot of stress in their lives, that is pure “blame the victim” mentality in my opinion. Granted, exercise may reduce your stress and children may have some control over howmuch exercise they get, but some experts believe that if you are really stressed already, adding exercise just makes you MORE stressed. It would be better to have counseling with the parents and see if they can reduce stress in the children’s lives rather than starving them and making them move and stressing them out even more.

4. Myth: Dieting will make you healthier….several studies have shown that just dieting will not make you healthier. There are more cases of dieting damaging health then helping it, from what I understand. Some studies have shown that gaining weight through muscle can make you healthier.

5. Lack: These articles rarely mention the genetics of fat. While I hate to go there because of the potential for further fat bigotry, there are at least 2 genes that have been identified in humans that commonly make you fat. Until they prove that these genes make you less healthy there stands the possibility that only people who are not genetically fat are unhealthy when they get fat.

6. Myth: being skinny makes you healthy ….BMI studeis show that “slightly overweight is the best. Underweight is bad. “Just right” is worse then slightly high and really high is just as bad as underweight. I have also read a book “The obesity myth” which discussed studies that obesity is only bad for you when you can no longer walk.

So, if the goal of cities is really to improve health and not to just point fingers at a weak population, then they need to address and study the real causes of health problems and not further incourage a fat stereotype that helps no one. Scapegoats come in all sizes and shapes.

Let’s not buy into the propaganda of the HMOs that it is our fault that we are unhealty and therefore we will not be able to get health treatment later on. The HMOs need to be assertive and explain that they can no longer afford to give full health coverage to all people and only the rich will get it from now on….end of story.

Kaiser recently posted ads in Portland showing a child that says “I will not be part of generation XXL”. If they were honest they would put “I will not get full health coverage when I grow up since we have invented too many tests that are too expensive to give to everyone”.

I do encourage people to take responsibility for their own health, but people are too quick to jump to conclusions about how to do that and often make themselves less healthy in an attempt to make themselves more healthy.

Here is a great article on Obesity Myths

Piano Lessons Search For Portland Oregon

I noticed a lot of people were searching for Piano Lessons in Portland today. I good place to find Piano Teachers is on Craigslist. There is a good list of local craigslists on my Oregon Boating accident lawyer site at this PDX area Craigslist index.

Craigslist Portland is a great place to meet people to teach you how to play music and then later to find people to play with. My husband found a great mandolin teacher that way and now is setting up a blue grass band using Portland Craigs List.