Some days The Eye wonders whether the members of The Bulletin's editorial board bother to read their own paper. Today is one of those days.
The Metolius: Bulletin Goes Into Full Snark Mode
Posted inCulture
A Dogged Pursuit: In search of Chile’s “Hero Dog”
The video, to put it mildly, is incredible, and when belatedly posted on YouTube in December of 2008 it became an overnight sensation. In it a dog in Santiago, Chile, is hit by a car on the freeway at rush hour and another dog comes to its rescue, weaving between speeding cars, looking left and right with uncanny awareness, and dragging - with its paws - its fallen friend to safety. Road workers arrive shortly and the injured dog, unfortunately, dies, while "Hero Dog" as he or she quickly becomes known, disappears into the city, and has yet to be found. The video is a grainy black and white from a surveillance camera, and a link is listed below. The link between Santiago, "The Hero Dog" and Bend, however, is happily more clear, and can be found in the handsome visage of Vanessa Schulz.
Posted inNews
4 Peaks Fest on Tour
The Blender raved a bit about music festivals earlier this week, but we didn't touch on the state of our own outdoor music and camping fest: the 4 Peaks Music Festival. Word just came through today that 4 Peaks is planning a mini Oregon tour with two of the festival's stalwarts, Poor Man's Whiskey and Blue Turtle Seduction.
Posted inNews
Merenda Is Dead — Long Live 900 Wall
Jody Denton's showplace downtown restaurant, Merenda, has folded, but it's being reborn as "900 Wall." Can it survive in its new incarnation?
Posted inNews
Willy Week Scores Again as The Big O Fumbles
Newsweek magazine has a piece this week lauding Nigel Jaquiss, the investigative reporter for Willamette Week who broke the sex scandal story about Portland Mayor Sam Adams - and also raking The Oregonian over the coals for dropping the ball on this and other tough stories.
Posted inNews
Tweak Bird was here….and it was dark
A few members of the Blender crew were out at the Summit Stage and Saloon last night to catch Tweak Bird and Kandi Coated. Alas, it was dark and not optimal video taping conditions, but you can get a taste of the sound purveyed by Tweak Bird – a quirkily heavy duo consisting of two brothers based in Los Angeles.
Posted inOpinion
A Walk in the Park
This week's letter of the week comes from Thomas Ware who contemplates the fate of a recently felled tree. We're not sure if this falls into the philosophy or poetry category, but we liked it. Thanks for the letter Thomas. You can pick up your winner's spoils, a freshly ground bag of Strictly Organic coffee, at our office, 704 NW Georgia.
We live in a unique place, and we who live here are a unique bunch of people; hell, even our homeless, so prevalent in today's news, are well-groomed avid bicyclists. Ain't no mall walkers around here, and not because we don't have "malls." We used to, now they're parking lots, because nobody walked in them anyway (which is why they're now parking lots!).
Posted inOpinion
American Mythology
The letdown after Christmas is a natural time to think about some questionable American customs and thought processes, and perhaps to see the fallacies therein. The following comparison list might be helpful in sorting things out.
Myth: Santa Claus lives at the North Pole and has flying reindeer. Reality: Santa is a fantasy so he owns no flying reindeer.
Myth: Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Reality: Christmas is a most stressful season and often a very disappointing time of year.
Posted inOpinion
Do The Math
I thank Ken Czepelka (Jan. 29 issue) for responding to my Jan. 22 letter, "The Solution." I don't personally argue with Ken on what he presented, but it's in conflict with Robert Bryce's 2008 book, "Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence." Bryce deals extensively with the "solar" issue. In Chapter 16, "Solar, the 1 percent solution," he provides an analysis by Raymond James and Associates that solar power in residential applications costs $0.37 per Kilowatt-hour, nearly four times conventional sources! Simmons and Company International estimated that even a growth rate of 25 percent a year of solar power capacity would only provide about 1 percent of global electricity demand by year 2020 at a cost of $0.22-$0.84 per Kilowatt-hour. By 2030, the Energy Information Administration estimates that solar power will provide about five billion Kilowatt-hours of electricity to American consumers per year, a mere fraction (0.0015) of the 3,351 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity the agency expects from coal. It's true that the Sun is an unlimited source of power, but cloud cover is also unlimited and is a "killer drawback" according to Bryce, along with a lack of "high-density electrical storage." "Solar power can never be relied upon to provide large quantities of base load power."