Happy Veterans Day, veterans! Thanks for your service. And a very unhappy Veterans Day to the many public officials and public employees who have easy pretext to dodge my calls today (unless those public officials and employees are veterans themselves). I know you’re there.
A vast gun collection, months of troubling reports, flouted judicial orders, etc. The events leading up to yesterday’s tragic murder-suicide—where a 47-year-old Portland man shot his ex-wife to death and led his daughters away from her Southwest Portland home before killing himself—are well-worn. The victim, 46-year-old Nicolette Naomi Elias worked at Portland State University, and had been pleading for months for stepped up protections from her estranged husband.
LEGALIZED. Oregon laws prohibiting marijuana use won’t change for months, but the drug’s as good as legal in Portland. After the passage of Measure 91 a week ago, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office announced yesterday it’s going to stop prosecuting pot-related crimes and violations that the public has said should be on the level.
So smoke up (in your home or another private place), if that’s your thing. But also know: Regular pot users have smaller brains than non-users according to a recent study. Scientists can’t prove a causal relationship right now, though, so there’s probably nothing to worry about.
You thought Oregon was just twiddling its thumbs in the fight against Ebola? Hardly. An Oregon State University researcher was a lead part of a team that concocted one of our most promising treatments for the virus. And look! The US is now Ebola free. Coincidence?
It’s been a week since election day, and I’m already struggling to remind myself Republican lawmakers aren’t hubristic Bond villains, shouting their evil plans to the wide world. It’s not going well. The future Senate majority leader hails from a coal state, so will do anything in his considerable power to keep coal plants chugging out greenhouse gases. He was elected for this very purpose. And the probable new chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee? He’s an avowed climate change skeptic, bent on fighting the Obama administration’s recent efforts to curb emissions.
For the next two years, at least, the White House is one of the last bulwarks against all this terribleness. But right now President Obama is busy negotiating reduced trade barriers with China.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, always keeps a fresh chivalry shawl on hand. Footage of him wielding it, deftly and hypnotically, about the Chinese first lady has caused enough chagrin that it’s been scrubbed thoroughly from the internet there.
A Florida woman’s heart stopped for 45 minutes during a routine cesarian section. The doctors had brought her family in to pay their respects when it suddenly started again. She has no lasting damage, and no one knows why. You gotta think it has something to do with Florida, though, right? Florida’s just toying with us at all times.
In India, shady and terrible sterilization efforts are the norm. Few have been quite so shady and terrible, recently, as a “health camp” where poor women are paid about $10 to undergo a procedure. One doctor at the camp performed more than 80 procedures in six hours, recently, and many of the patients are suddenly showing symptoms of toxic shock. Eight have died.
A Cowlitz County man facing a domestic assault charge got sort-of-good news yesterday, when a trial resulted in a hung jury. He promptly went out to his truck and shot himself in the head.
Gee, I’d sure like to divorce Oklahoma oil magnate Harold Hamm.
Frigid and windy.
