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French Presidential Election Update

France has a unique 2-stage Presidential electoral process. All candidates from all political parties participate in the first stage, with the top two vote-getters advancing to the second stage. In 2002, this system resulted in a second-stage meeting between the popular, centrist candidate (Jacque Chirac) and the far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, with the the large Socialist Party unrepresented. This year a similar possibility exists. Although the two main candidates […]

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Son Volt in Petaluma

One of my favorite bands, Son Volt, is playing a show at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma on March 31. The main creative force behind Son Volt is Jay Farrar, formerly a member of the influential “alt-country” band Uncle Tupelo, whose other main creative force, Jeff Tweedy, later formed the band Wilco. Jay Farrar’s solo albums are more acoustic (they are categorized as “Americana”, although I’m not exactly sure what […]

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Put a Fork in the Hawkeyes

This has been a tough, tough year for Hawkeye fans. The football team, after starting out gangbusters, went 2-6 their last 8 games, then lost to Texas in the Alamo Bowl. The basketball team never really got on track, losing non-conference games at home to Northern Iowa and getting blown out on the road at Drake (bonus points for any native Californian who can tell me where Drake is located). […]

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Raw Weather

We’ve had this week some of the nastiest, rawest weather I can remember in Sonoma County — four days of consecutively colder wet, windy, blustery, raw days. Yesterday while driving to work in a wind-whipped downpour (big drops that seemed to have semi-solid cores), the temperature gauge in my car said 34 degrees. Now I know Midwesterners and Easterners may laugh at that, but having lived both places, I can […]

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Graph in NY Times re. Newspaper Readership

The Sunday NY Times editorial pages had a large number of graphs, showing the changes in the American publics’ attitudes and habits over the last 25 years or so. Most the the graphs were mildly interesting, but one was striking: The number of Americans who say they read a newspaper daily has declined over that time from about 70% to about 40%. As someone who reads not one but two […]

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France Presidential Election Update

Following an effective appearance on national television last week, the Socialist Party candidate, Segolene Royal, has pulled even in the polls with the center-right (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, or UMP) candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, according to this article in Le Figaro. Sarkozy had previously held a solid 8% to 10% lead before the appearance. Royal came across on TV as more likable than Sarkozy according to this article, although Sarkozy […]

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Next Stop, Long Beach (aka, My Struggle with History Day)

My kids’ school is big into History Day. History Day is a national competition in which students are given a theme and have to do projects related to that theme. The projects can be things like a paper, a poster, a web site, or a presentation. In our kids’ school, even numbered grades beginning in Grade 4 have to do a history day project. Since our boys are in 6th […]

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More on the Prius and “Dust-to-Dust” Energy Costs

Reflecting on my earlier post here, I decided to do some quick research on criticisms of the report that claimed that the “all in” or “dust to dust” energy cost of a Hummer was less than a Prius. Here’s some of what I found: 1. An interview with the President of the company that conducted the report said that the report assumed that trucks and SUVs would have much longer […]

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Organic Food Bad for the Environment?

An article today in the Independent quotes a report for the British Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, which suggests that raising food organically may have, in some instances, more adverse impacts on the environment than traditional methods. One example given was the production of organic milk: [T]he researchers singled out milk as a particular example of the environmental challenges presented by organic farming. Organic milk requires 80 per […]

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