Recently in Hawaii Category

"It is the place where I feel if things get too hectic, I can come back and get centered, and it will always be in my heart, and I hope if we are successful, I would come to Hawaii. Certainly it would be my preference over Crawford, Texas." And No. 10: Sen. Obama crushes Hillary Clinton in the home state of his youth, 76%-24%.

If you're a reader hailing from Wisconsin or Hawaii today, please consider voting for Barack Obama.

In TNR, Allegra Goodman makes a case for the importance of Barack Obama's Hawaiian youth. "To envision a world where racial identity is more fluid, where men and women are more mobile, and where segregation is a thing of the past is not to envision a post-racial world. Obama knows this, as anyone who has lived in Hawaii must."

As you may have noticed, I've added a few pics from my recent weeks in Hawaii over at Flickr. Enjoy.

"While it is the infrequent shark attacks that make the headlines, drowning claims far more lives in Hawaii, where coastlines of sand, coral reef and lava rock create shorebreaks and currents that cause many swimmers to encounter peril entirely unexpected." Hawaii tries to lessen its drowning rate, highest in the nation. Memo to myself: Avoid Sandy Beach.

Aloha y'all...In keeping with recent Murphy tradition, I've joined the family for a late-summer jaunt to Hawaii. Unclear how this will affect the updates around here the next few weeks -- on one hand, fun activities like snorkeling and pleasure-reading (note the cue at left is finally moving again) have been eating into my usual blog-hours (and the 1998-ish dial-up here doesn't lend itself to much time spent on the Internet anyway.) But, then again, I'm already on the verge of sunburn, so I'll have to find some way to wile away those safety hours indoors. At any rate, I'd expect the intermittent summer posting schedule to remain the norm around here for now, so, as always, mahalo for dropping by.

"'Everybody in the conservation community was surprised. This was not expected,' said Dr. Dennis Heinemann, senior scientist for the Ocean Conservancy." Don't look now, but Dubya may actually have done something laudable for once: namely, he has declared the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument, "securing strong and immediate ecological protections from the federal government" for the region. "'It's the single largest act of ocean conservation in history,' said Conrad Lautenbacher, NOAA administrator. 'It's a large milestone.'"