Ten Commandments

At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish. -Sandra Day O'Connor

I heard the above quote on an NPR piece on the way to work. I wanted to think on it further when I got a chance so I looked up the document from which it came and also found the following quote. (source: I don't cite supreme court stuff at all so here's how I got there. www.supremecourtus.gov , opinions, latest slip opinions, McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky., pages 41-44 of the pdf is the O'Connor, J. concurring section I read.)

It is true that the Framers lived at a time when our national religious diversity was neither as robust nor as well recognized as it is now. They may not have foreseen the variety of religions for which this Nation would eventually provide a home. They surelycould not have predicted new religions, some of them born in this country. But they did know that line-drawing between religions is an enterprise that, once begun, has no logical stopping point. They worried that “the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects.” -Sandra Day O'Connor

I believe in Mosaic Law and God. I also believe that the founders of this nation used such beliefs as the motivation to our nation's founding documents. However, I think that this nation has grown beyond being a Christian nation and our government should reflect that. That isn't to say that I think we should go back and strip out any hint of religion from everything governmental. Rather think of Newtonian physics and quantum physics. Newtonian physics works well for a lot of things, but a more thourough understanding comes from the application of quantum physics. We haven't gotten rid of Newtonian physics and we haven't burned all the old physics books or stopped mentioning it in textbooks. But we have made note of why we still keep it around and don't use it when it isn't applicable. Today, this country has the opportunity to allow, and protect, religous freedom. Not just my religion and not just my general category of religion. All religion, or lack there-of. Honor the past but don't offend the present or hinder the future.

Grilling, Microwaving, Meats, and Veggies

for those readers who grill meat, this article from ACS may be of interest. some basic things i found interesting.
1. carcinogens form at high temperatures from amino acids (basic builders of protein)
2. microwaving meat before cooking it on the grill helps reduce the formation of a particular carcinogen class called HCA (heterocyclic amines) [i've heard enough rumors about how "bad" microwaving is for foods and how it destroys vitamins and what-not so this a nice thing to hear.]
3. marinating meat protects it from some of the formations of carcinogens
4. don't poke it and let the juice run out of the meat
5. a good endorsement of plant matter making up most of the meal instead of meat is at the end of the article

CAS Numbers

chemicals. there's lots of them. you are made up of them, you eat them, you can't get away from them. take a guess now how many we have identified.
now check out CAS to see what their current count is.

as each chemical is published in a journal, patent, conference proceeding, it is assigned a number by the chemical abstracting service (CAS). they also do things like write an abstract for the article or whatever it is and extract some of the information into the database for searching. the number though is quite ingenious. it isn't a simple thing where they started at 1 and went up from there. first off, having a number is important because it is an easy way to id a molecule without the confusion of the IUPAC naming scheme. though the scheme is good it still requires some work to always get the same name. but the number also has a check sum built in so that errors in numbers are reduced. so this number is the one that you want to use when doing stuff like looking up government regulations, msds, and whatever. doesn't vary even when one of the many common chemical names is used rather than the IUPAC.

just in case you thought we were getting close to knowing a lot of things, they add about 4,000 new entries every day, yup day.

as a side note, there is currently a spat between ACS (american chemical society, who owns CAS) and NIH (national institute of health) because an NIH project has started to overlap with the CAS registry and ACS argues that the government shouldn't compete with the private sector. you can see ACS argument here. i think they are right to some degree. certainly if NIH makes this free information that used to be private sector there would be good argument for duplicating windows and making it free... after all it is just information.

gleitkommaüberlauf

gotta love postcard ware from germany.

Oil (the motor variety not cooking)

on friday we had to get two limbs out of our tree before they finished blowing out, which would result in something in our neighbors yard taking a hit. keith wanted to be manly, justifiably, and use a chain saw to cut the one limb that was clinging by a third of its former attachment. so he did things like put gas in and oil and what not and finally got it started. unfortunately the saw was quite used and didn't live up to its expectations of actually running longer than 3 seconds. so i went to pick it up somewhere in this process and got used oil on my jeans. not super dirty jeans, not even mostly dirty jeans, nope on one of my jeans that i call generally nice looking. serves me right, i should've changed when keith did... oh well. i washed them right away with some misc stain remover and it did a pretty good job. there is still a spot but it isn't horrible.

today i got my weekly, but not always on the same day, american chemical society newsletter. there was a brief blurb on this article about transforming polyethylene into a motor oil. this would be way cool in my opinion. hopefully then someone would also figure out that instead of dumping used oil into big containers at auto shops and what not, home recyclers could submit used oil in a polyethylene bottle for recycling and it may just work out all the way around. but probably not.

patience is a virtue

keith is ever so patient with me... sometimes.
one of the times that i can count on keith to be patient is when we go motorcycle riding. i suck at it but i have a good time and i think i am slowly getting better.
tuesday evening we went on a ride that we have meaning to get back to for about a year (or has it been more?). last time i went on it we were barely a quarter of a mile on the dirt and i fell and busted my clutch lever. we didn't have a spare for my bike so we used one for keith's bike making it work through the wonders of a zip tie. after that we got a spare clutch and lever saving guards on my bike (which i so love).
anyways, we went back to this trail and made it quite a ways. after looking at the map, i think we made it to what they call hunter lake, it is more like a wide point where hunter creek starts. but pretty cool none-the-less. the great thing is that i made it up and down without dropping my bike (or having keith ride it). i was a little slow in a couple areas... okay most areas, but i made it. it isn't a super easy ride, check out the mountain bike review. we didn't make it all the way to the big meadows further on, which i think is actually a shallow lake when there is a lot of water, like this year. it was getting late and there was snow, but we'll be back.

Ground + Flag = Burn?

snopes.com is a wonderful place to find information that you need and didn't know you need. which is why i have the rss feed on my homepage. the writing and information are top notch and this morning i found a new page. it starts with:

"One of the signs of creeping old fogeyism is finding out how many of the irrefutable truths we learned as youths turned out to be false." what a great sentence! i love it. finish reading the at http://www.snopes.com/holidays/flagday/burnflag.asp.

Nice People

it is nice to meet nice people. i'm probably not one of them most of the time, which tells me i should try harder to be one.

i just got done with a training meeting on using the chemtracker program to do chemical inventory. it could have been horrible and boring, but the guy was nice and did a good job, so it was reasonably enjoyable. he answered my questions which were probably kinda annoying because the whole thing was geared toward people who don't use a computer much and so i had more in-depth questions. he went through the whole thing even though i was the only person that showed up (the other person scheduled to come didn't show). at the end we talked a bit about misc stuff related to the storing of chemicals and he talked some about his experience in industry. he printed out a very helpful thing on how to categorize our chemicals. further, he said when i get around to looking for a job to let him know and he'd help anyway he could. which was super nice. we'd only met today after all. a good way to start a weekend, too bad i still have a half hour or so of work left.

well ain't that a dandy

i read the comic "close to home" most mornings. sometimes okay sometimes downright lame and occasionally pretty good. check out June 10th at ucomics.

is it bad or not?

a while ago i recall hearing that the high temperature cooking of fried foods that are carbohydrates made a carcinogen (as if we didn't already know that fried foods were bad). but now it looks like it may not be that bad. well at least there is some doubt cast on the potential trouble maker, acrylamide. so continue eating those french fries and deep fat fried whatevers, the taste is worth the fat =).