The Portland City Council has sealed the fate of Beavers baseball at PGE Park, and what's done is done. They're gone.
There's talk of moving the Beavers to Beaverton. (The Beaverton Beavers?) I don't know whether I'd continue to support the team if they leave the city, but I'd like to have the choice.
So, I've been trying to figure out the odds that the Beaverton deal will happen.

If the Beavers are going to move to Beaverton, I think a deal will have to be in place by next spring, and here's why. If no deal is in place by spring, ticket sales for the Beavers next year, their last in PGE Park, will plummet. That might happen even if a Beaverton deal gets done, but knowing that the Beavers will still be in the region in 2011 is the only way to stop sales next year from plummeting.
Also, they'll want current season ticket holders to also buy seats in the new park, and they could hold out the carrot of getting the best seats in the new park to current season ticket holders. None of that can happen if plans for a new park run past the spring.

So my guess is that it'll be decided by then. We'll see.

The whole Cambridge police vs. Professor Gates dustup is being treated entirely as a race question by some commentators, but I think a bigger reason it has gotten so much attention is that it plays into a fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals.

The officer arrested the professor simply for yelling at him. He says so in his report. No crime is alleged in the report. Yet, the officer and other supporters continue to claim that he did nothing wrong. There's no question that this is legally incorrect.
What the officer, along with his supporters, is trying to defend is the concept that police should have unquestioned power to arrest anyone, anywhere, anytime, simply because they are the police. The question of whether the subject committed a crime shouldn't enter into it.

The outlook wasn't brilliant, with Portland baseball's fate at stake.
The score stood four to one, with but one vote more to take.
And then when Adams voted aye, and Leonard did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

But Saltzman then preceded Fritz, as did also Fish,
And the city watched without a voice - they both defied our wish.
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For it turned out not to matter when Amanda Fritz came to bat.

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;
But it was all to no avail, though the winning case was flawed.
They saw Fritz stand for the people, defying all the strain,
But they knew that Beavers baseball wouldn't come their way again.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Portland - the City Council has struck out.

The meanings of words are in constant flux.  I assume this is a common idea in linguistics, but I first encountered it in Edwin Newman's popular books on language from some years ago.

(Tip #1:  Referring to Edwin Newman makes you sound old.)

 A few years ago, a CBS news executive, describing how baffled he was by the changes in popular attitudes toward news, said "Send me a telegram so I can get it."  I think telegrams were still available at that time, but if you're questioning why you don't understand current tastes, the fact that you use the word "telegram" should be your first clue.

Of course, these things come and go.  I'm trying to figure out why we still refer to "dialing" a phone, when phones haven't had dials for years. (Same goes for TVs - "Don't touch that dial!")  Maybe it's phone calls themselves that are becoming archaic; everybody "texts" these days, don't they? Or maybe they tweet or squirt, I'm not sure.

We all know that using the word "record", as in the old vinyl discs, is a sign of your age (although I understand they're making a comeback).  However, have you considered the word "album", which many of us use in its place?  It's been a long time since I bought an entire collection of songs by one artist marketed as an album, since I've been buying music on iTunes for some years now.  I don't even play music that way anymore - it's all shuffled.  That usage of "album" may also be on its way out.

 And what about "column", as in "Have you read Frank Rich's latest column?"  Who besides old codgers reads newspapers anymore?  Yes, web pages have columns, but we don't talk about them that way.  Even referring to news stories that way may reveal your age, such as saying that something's been "in the papers".  I do think that paper itself is going to be with us for a while, so we're probably safe with other uses of the word.

For how much longer will we be using "film"?  It won't be long before movies aren't shot on film at all, and photo film is already a dinosaur.  Kodak stopped making film a few years ago, and Polaroid recently  stopped making theirs.

(Tip #2: Referring to Polaroid makes you sound old.  Doubly so if you mention Land.)

I'm not sure I know how to talk to young people anymore.  Maybe I should just shut up.

Before I moved to Portland and sold my car, I used to drive everywhere, just like most people do. Being the sort of person I am, I developed a bunch of pet peeves about driving. I don't remember many of them now, but one that leaps to mind is the Jersey Clump.
When I lived on the East Coast, it would always bother me when I was on a highway, and another car would catch up to me at a faster speed, and then pull in front of me and slow down. This happened a lot. Even worse, when I pulled around that car so that I could continue at the speed I was going, that car would speed up again.
It was as if the driver's goal was to stay as close to my car as possible. My Driver's Ed training taught me to keep as much distance between myself and other cars as possible, so this was incredibly frustrating.
Sometimes, a bunch of cars would get together and keep doing this to each other. The effect of their behavior was to draw other, innocent drivers into their group, because they would speed up and surround any car that tried to go faster than the group. I noticed that when this happened, most of the cars had New Jersey license plates; I began calling this phenomenon a Jersey Clump.

Now that I don't own a car, I've lost all my old pet peeves. Being the sort of person I am, I started casting about for new ones.
One that developed quickly has to do with the building I work in. I work on the 29th floor. The bank of elevators I use to get to work stops on floors 18-30. The 30th floor is a restaurant, and no one goes there early in the morning, so I effectively work on the top floor that our elevator bank serves.
When I arrive in the morning, no one else is ever waiting for the elevator. Invariably, three or four people (who mostly were standing around the lobby) enter the elevator foyer after I do, and of course, they all get off on lower floors. This is very suspicious. If there were always going to be three or four people on the elevator with me, the law of averages would dictate that some of them would enter the elevator foyer before me, and some after. But this never happens. They always enter after I do. A more paranoid person would conclude that this couldn't possibly happen by chance, and someone must be engineering this situation on purpose. Thankfully, I'm not that paranoid. However, I can't think of another explanation. I'm still trying to find one.

A less sinister pet peeve came about when I began walking to most places around Portland. It's a wonderful city to walk around, and a lot of people do it. The sidewalks are all built so that the curb at the intersection is curved - the corner isn't sharp. So, one edge of the sidewalk always juts out into the intersection more than the other.
No matter whether it's the left side or the right that juts out farther into the intersection, pedestrians congregate toward that side. The funny thing is that people will often walk to the inside edge of the crosswalk even if they have to walk back to the outside part to continue where they were going once they cross the street. It's hard to convey this without a picture, but what you end up with is people walking a few feet out of their way on both sides of the street because they think they're getting farther into the intersection before crossing, even though it costs them steps in the long run.
If they thought about what they were doing, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't do it. This makes it perfect fodder for one of my pet peeves.

The frustrating thing is that I have to work a lot harder to find pet peeves, since I don't drive anymore, and the ones I'm developing are much lamer than when I was driving.
Maybe the tradeoff is worth it. I've never encountered an Oregon Clump.