January 15, 2005 - Saturday

"Brings tears to your eyes," one reader wrote as he forwarded the following:

Scientists celebrating the success of the mission to Titan were said to have wept as data from the spacecraft came pouring into ground station computers.

On the same day, many must be weeping at the words of the leader of the free world:

"Sometimes, words have consequences you don't intend them to mean," Bush said Thursday.

Just add it to the collected Bushisms, I guess.

The Center for Investigative Reporting's project, Courting Influence, has compiled the financial disclosures and Senate questionnaires completed by federal judicial nominees during the first Bush term. They include Hawaii attorney Rick Clifton, named to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, who was placed in the categories "No Judicial Experience", "Bush/GOP Campaign", and "Energy Ties". The public typically doesn't see these documents because of the convoluted process for obtaining access or copies, so they make for interesting browsing.

I tried to call the city's Planning and Permitting Department yesterday to find out whether an inspection is required on completion of our remodeling project, which is now completed for all practical purposes. My first call, to the department's main number, got a recorded message of the "no one is here to take your call" variety, followed by about eight of the "if you want X, press 1" type, none of which seemed to relate to my question.

I called back a second time to hear the options again, and chose one that at least said "residential" somewhere in the description. I was quickly transferred to...another "nobody's home" recording with an invitation to leave my own message if I was calling about a particular type of issue unrelated to my question. I left a message anyway.

Will I get a call back? Who knows. But the experience reminds me of how far back we've pared city services in recent years.

Our cat saga continues. About 10:45 yesterday morning, the wandering cat went after the food and triggered the trap under the house. After a very brief few moments of confusion, he calmed down. I draped a couple of towels over the cage, which is supposed to contribute to further calming, and after a while moved cat and trap downstairs into the newly completed bathroom.

With the image of the nice folks from the non-kill shelter, Joey's Feline Friends, in my mind, I developed a plan.

Head to the vet, although this required waiting for Meda to return from UH with the car. Test the cat for the scariest of feline viruses. If positive, goodbye. If negative, proceed to neutering, then either integrate if possible or place if at all possible. If socialization proves impossible, goodbye. There were enough potential good endings in this scenario to reduce my guilt at the built-in possibility that he might finally end up at the Humane Society anyway. The plan does involve spending some money, but it's well spent if we can luck out and find a good solution.

Long story short. When Meda got home we turned around and headed back to Kaneohe, and by 6 p.m. were sitting in the waiting room at VCA Animal Hospital. This cat turned out to be a good patient, allowing himself to be poked and prodded with a minimum of fuss while hiding under a couple of towels. He seemed to enjoy being touched and stroked, so is not totally feral. He also tested negative for the scariest of feline viruses, although he's got other maladies (worms, an infected wound, etc). He reminds me of Kolo, a gray tabby with a stunted tail and the first country cat that we rescued after arriving in Kaaawa. Can you see where this is heading?

We'll try to bring him home today if I can find a suitable cage of some kind. In about a week he will be ready for neutering. One step at a time.

January 14, 2005 - Friday

With another email sitting in yesterday's "In Box" soliciting ideas for the 40th reunion of the University High School class of 1965, the debate over the future of Social Security is starting to attract my personal as well as political attention. Paul Krugman's column in the New York Times today adds a comparative perspective by looking at the British experience with privatization.

I admit to being a bit preoccupied with the stressful scene here among the Kaaawa cats on Haahaa Street. The intruder is still here. He's a male gray tiger-striped cat, probably nearing a year old. Unfixed. Origin unknown. He looks a bit like Silverman, although without the blue eyes. And a bit like Lindsey, my favorite, who disappeared a couple of years ago. He's looking for food & shelter. I can't hold that against him.

There have been several skirmishes, perhaps fights, that left three of our cats with injuries. Relatively minor, but worrisome nonetheless and requiring some medical intervention.

The "shoo cat" routines didn't work. The visitor can sense that this is a cat friendly property and returns. I hate to turn to the Humane Society solution. A couple of our best cats were originally strays like this one, but we're really at about our population limit. And, in any case, the Humane Society doesn't expect a cat trap to be available for at least another week.

Yesterday I checked with our vets at VCA in Kaneohe, and was referred to one of the no-kill shelters. No room in the inn, but they offered to assist with trap-neuter-release. The catch is that they release the cat in the same place that it's trapped. The positive potential is that without those streaming hormones, aggressive behavior will drop and perhaps we can all work out an accommodation. The down side, of course, is that he's back under our house.

So right now we've got all of our "regulars" inside. That's all eight of them, including Silverman. Most have been in overnight, except for Leo, who I let out for an hour or so earlier in the morning. The visitor is outside, yowling around the perimeter with an occasional foray up onto each of the decks in turn. The trap is under the house, baited with a spoonful of Friskies Liver & Chicken from a fresh can, along with a handful of Whiskas latest crunchies.

Silverman, mostly an outside cat, is pacing the house and signalling his urgent desire to escape.

But we wait. Not sure for what. I hope for an option not yet apparent.

January 13, 2005 - Thursday

Editor and Publisher has a sharp column on one of the tricks of newspaper circulation wars, the use of the "other paid" category to boost circulation numbers. The column also takes the New York Times to task for giving it's own circulation practices a "pass".

NPR's ombudsman commented a couple of days ago on the difficulty of reporting on events in the Middle East, where almost all reporting is blasted as biased by one side or the other in the conflict. Is simply not reporting the answer? It's actually sounding more and more like the scene here at home, where political differences and unrealistic expectations pose problems on a smaller scale for many reporters and news organizations.

Attention, golfers! A friend who is due here from Las Vegas in several weeks for a professional meeting also wants to play a couple of rounds of golf while here, but he's confused by the number of courses available.

I've looked up some golf courses there and am a bit overwhelmed with how many there are! I was wondering if you had some knowledge of good courses with reasonable rates?

Any advice for him would be appreciated.

Time to catch up on our pack of Kaaawa morning dogs, the dogs that we routinely run into on our early walks into dawn. Pua, shown here, has been missing in action due to her person's busy schedule. Axel is awaiting a round of surgery. The dogs' world has its own news, and a bunch of good photos. So just click on Ms. Pua's photo to see get the latest update.

January 12, 2005 - Wednesday

An Associated Press story by Alisa Tang should be in line for some kind of "silver lining" award for putting a positive spin on the tsunami destruction. Simply put, Tang wrote in a story picked up by newspapers around the U.S., the tsunami has swept away the rampant over development of certain beach resort areas, leaving sandy beaches and a wonderful development opportunity, a chance to redevelop those beach resorts from the ground up.

And there's a Hawaii link to her story, which leads with a vignette of Maui resident Greg Ferrando jogging along the ocean on Patong Beach, Thailand, scene of terrible death and devastation.

"This whole area was littered with commercialism," said the 43-year-old from Maui, Hawaii. "There were hundreds of beach chairs out here. I prefer the sand."

I don't know Greg, but his "I prefer the sand" comment amidst the chaos of international relief efforts certainly takes a place on my short list of memorable quotes.

What I wonder is whether this was simply an enterprise story by Tang or the product of a bit of spin by the Thai tourist industry?

January 11, 2005 - Tuesday

Our vintage thermometer reports the temperature in our living room this morning is 60 degrees. To us that qualifies as extreme cold. Is there a windchill and does it count? We'll find out in a while when we leave for our walk.

It looks like part of today's required reading will be the CBS report and its associated exhibits, available via links on the network's web site. I'm interested in seeing exactly what have been defined as the key errors, and whether the substance of the broader story of W's sorry National Guard service remains intact. I suspect that the flap over these documents has really been a diversion from the underlying "real" story.

Here's a new resource, OpenTheGovernment.org, the product of a new national coalition effort to tackle the problem of increasing government secrecy.

Oh, no! I've been relying on Eudora to retrieve and process my email since it first appeared, probably more than 15 years ago. I use it because I'm accustomed to its look, it has an effective spam filter, and it can quickly search a very large archive of old mail to locate specific communications. But Qualcomm, the corporation that owns Eudora, has now appeared on a list of the top ten war profiteers for 2004 compiled by the Center for Corporate Policy. One Mac has already written to the Hawaii Macintosh & Apple Users' Society to announce that he will not be renewing his Eudora subscription to protest of Qualcomm's apparent business policies. Ethical issues do seem to pop up in unexpected places.

We're in relatively uncharted cat territory. I thought the "visiting" cat that appeared on New Years Day seemed relatively benign and potentially able to find a place in our pecking order, but we've not got three injured cats on antibiotics (Harriet, Leo, and Silverman) to challenge that initial assessment. So now I'm having to switch into hard hearted mode and actively encourage the visitor to move on. Perhaps he can find an under-catted household. If that doesn't work, I'll have to consider the trap and remove option. I've only done that once and hated it, and would prefer almost any other option. But sometimes reality and wishes refuse to coincide.

January 10, 2005 - Monday

We've heard a second-hand report that the funnel shape of a waterspout was spotted moving offshore just up the coast towards Kahuku during Saturday night's storm.

Reuters reports that the New York Times is considering a subscription fee for its online edition. Newspaper industry consultant John Morton, who was regularly quoted during the Star-Bulletin's battle for survival, told Reuters that allowing free public access is "quickly falling out of favor" within the industry.

A reader offered this assessment of news that the Advertiser is dropping its afternoon edition:

I think Burl's assessment may be too sunny. Another very viable reason could be for them to clear out press time so that they can have more capacity to destroy RFD's commercial printing business, which is, in fact, the only real moneymaker in the SB/Midweek constellation. Free up the presses, sell commercial jobs at a deep discount, and watch the guys at Luluku scramble.

I don't know enough about the total press capacity at the new plant to be sure that my theory is plausible but such a tactic is hardly out of the question. They recently stole one of the military newspapers away from RFD and should other big commercial jobs follow, well, then its hard to see how it would ever attain serious profitability.

The SB cannot be making money in its current state. No way, no how. It’s doing better, sure. Perhaps with MidWeek combined they will do better. But ultimately they will need to hang onto any commercial deals they have because the more biz Gannet gets in Kapolei the harder it is for Black to make money and the harder it will be to justify the kind of big investments in presses and technology that is in the not-so-distant future. Further, if commodity prices continue to rise and paper costs go up for any extended period, Gannett is at a distinct advantage with the new flexibility they have with that press.

A sobering assessment for those of us who continue to support the idea of a two newspaper city.

January 9, 2005 - Sunday