Oliver and I went to the Union vs. Providence hockey game tonight. Oliver got to sit on the Zamboni. That made his day. Also Union won 4-2. Of course I didn't have a camera for this event.

We saw a tug in the river today. I guess he can navigate without bouys. The name was Benjamin Elliot.

Here are some photos of Elliot from this week. Oliver just realized that Elliot is a pull start.

Oliver and I decided to check out the Metro-North on Friday. We went to the Brewster station. This is where they switch from diesel to electric to go south.

Happy Thanksgiving!

mariantic website ahs lots of ALMS and LMS news and rumors. Dyson with two used Mazdas? Toyota LMP. Worth a look.

Bill Auberlen and Joey Hand. WOO HOO!!

Please read George Will's column from 11/20/08 titled "Why Extend Big Three's Warranty". I think He has a good grasp of what is going on.
In my own opinion if GM were to go bankrupt somebody would buy up the assets at auction and continue producing the brand with new labor contracts. Kirk Kerkorion was interested in GM three years ago. He has the capital to buy (in bankrupcy) GM I believe. Chrysler is dead, done, over. Ford can survive, but are they trying? GM needs to kill off GMC, Pontiac, and Buick right now, Hummer yesterday. Saturn, Chevy and Cadillac is all they need. I wonder how much money was wasted developing the new Camaro and Challenger. Both cars were dead before they were even shipped. This just my opinion. Phil? Chris?

Framing day #3

The removed the bouy's from the canal today. Oliver and I went to Niska Isle Rd. to watch.

Framing day #1

Cameron's 7th birthday party. Alexa S., Alexa L., Ava, Megan, Jonathan, Oliver and Cameron. There was a Pinata, Bingo, Hot Potatoe and more.

Under the review of Noah and Christopher, Cyndy drew names out of the historic Northland Toy Club hat for the family Christmas drawing.


Christopher gives to Philip
Philip gives to Christine
Christine gives to Joel
Joel gives to Kate
Kate gives to Cyndy
Cyndy gives to Chris
Noah gives to Paul
Paul gives to Noah

Any complaints can be sent to the hat.

Happy birthday, Cameron!

Happy birthday Rachel!

Saturday we went to Marion's annual wine dinner with Pat and Bob. It's different every year and this year she basically repeated Paul and Cyndy's wedding menu, with the addition of a lasagna course. We even started with the pink champagne. Attendance was down a little, but still a good sized group.

Joel or Paul?

Oliver and I went out to dinner at Mike's hot dogs and then to the Union-Harvard hockey game saturday night. The game was really good Union won 3-1. Oliver decided that hot dog and hot pretzel rhyme because they both start with hot. I'll tell him some day.

Oliver said " Look I'm wearing box pants!"

colonie shop 11-7-08

Rachel finished the sewing on the sashiko wall hanging:

That's a big chinook salmon:

California Department of Fish and Game image, via the Redding Record Searchlight.

Happy birthday to Tracy!

Since May, we've had about 2" of rain. About 0.2" of it was in October and 1.75" so far in November. Rachel says that the best thing about winter is the hot toddies.

Elliot looks like he enjoys being dressed as a pumpkin more than being in one.

Halloween was a success. The kids have polished off most of the candy.

Chris

Happy birthday to Great-grandmother Steates!

We also had an after halloween party with a pinata. There was also a tribute to halloween costumes of the past

Here are some mandatory halloween photos. Oliver was Oliver Gavin, Cameron was a witch, Elliot was a pumpkin.

Oliver won a reading poster contest at school. He is very proud. It is something Mrs. Disque does fro the library. His poster will be hung outside the library until next year.

In the interest of encouraging at least a perusal of current scientific literature and support for one of the few open-access scientific journals, here are a few articles in the current issue of PLoS that may be of interest. Typically, scientific journals are owned by private publishing companies that charge exorbitant rates for subscriptions, making them inaccessible to anybody but academics. There is a small movement in support of open-access, that would make the latest scientific literature available to the public, without the filtering and dumbing-down that occurs as the MSM lamely tries to report on science.

To browse the table of contents of PLoS, go here.

There is an opinion piece on the impacts of the U.S. Bayh-Dole Act encouraging patenting of discoveries arising from publicly funded research (not science, but public policy regarding science).

There are two articles on salmon conservation. The first is a synopsis questioning the overall benefit of the dam removal paradigm and the second specifically looks at the impacts of dam removal on smolt survival.