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The state of Oregon still has over 11% unemployment; not the highest rate any more. But that doesn’t really mean the state economy is looking up. (more…)

You hear it mentioned in almost any episode of 24, but an excellent resource for up to date information on the Swine Flu outbreak is available at the Center for Disease Control. Check the guidance for professionals section for specific articles – scroll down to the bottom. Most of these articles do not require any knowledge of medicine to understand.

Check this Google Maps project for tracking outbreaks and suspected outbreaks in your region.

There have been a few suggestions on the local news that some information would become available next week about this outbreak in the state of Oregon – sorry Oregon, that’s just too long to wait! If by chance this strain has gotten into any school, its also likely to already have been brought home to the family. Step one is to send home anyone with flu-like symptoms and keep them home the full 7 days after the symptoms pass.

According to morning reports by The Oregonian, Portland Mayor Sam Adams has announced he will not resign. How is it possible to ask the public for forgiveness for repeated, layered lying, then not to demonstrate remorse by resigning? Adams now shows himself a sad representative of baby boomer, Clinton era politics that hopefully will disappear in the new political climate. If he will not resign, then lets recall Sam Adams. (more…)

There are so many accusations flying around regarding the new, first openly gay mayor of Portland, Sam Adams. Any politician even allegedly accused of sleeping with someone who may have been underage is going to recall the stain left behind by one time Portland mayor and state governor Neil Goldschmidt. Oregon political leaders that once traded on having a relationship with Goldschmidt couldn’t move fast enough to distance themselves.

Mayor Sam Adams should resign as recommended by The Oregonian rather than submit to a recall because he lied in order to win the election that made him mayor of Portland. A recall is inappropriate as recalls function to question a seated politician who otherwise earned their position but subsequently failed to serve. Mayor Sam Adams lied in order to win an election. It isn’t the very short time in office for which he should be judged.

Sam, if you go for a recall – this will continue to haunt you for the rest of your life. By resigning, you can regain some of your political and personal integrity by starting again and letting the voters decide again, should you wish to run for office some time in the future.

An interesting northwest start up called Toonlet makes a fun set of online tools to rapidly create web comics. It gives you a lot of templates to start with, so that you can create mostly human (and alien) characters for your comics, add moods and the like. These types of characters aren’t the Batman/Superman type – more along the lines of what you see in the newspaper. You can also auto-generate character and then customize them.

The interface for building characters and comic strips is a very clever, easy to use set of tools that uses Flash – Flash without the pain of having to use Flash the product (vs Flash the player). It lets you resize, flip and make other transformations to your characters.

Toonlet is a lot of fun, and it has tools for sharing your creations with others – on your own website, through feeds and the like.

A shocking article appeared in The Sunday Oregonian summarizing how the State of Oregon has suppressed information concerning landslide predictions made by state geologists in order to appease local governments – over concerns of land development – that the negative reports could impact property values.

The Oregonian reported that Gail Achterman, chairwoman of the Oregon Transportation Commission – who also heads the taskforce on landslide risk stated:

The hard policy decisions have simply not been made…It’s easier to do nothing and wait for FEMA to bail you out.

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