Its Raining

really raining here! water is running down the road and windows and it smells like water. i suppose this isn't big news for most places, but according to NOAA, reno only gets on average 2 days in july with precipitation above 0.01 inches! and only 51 days out of the year usually hit that mark or go above, so water coming out of the sky is news =).

Pet Peeve

a pet peeve of mine is the natural eating / drug movement. you know, the people that think if they eat organically grown all natural foods they will be superior to those who choose a small amount of pesticide rather than eat a lot of bugs. there's many things i can say about this... there are good things and bad things. but i think in general the bad is not proclaimed loudly enough because i know i hear some pretty wild claims about thier good things.

in that vein i was happy to see that a study of echinacea shows it has no affect on getting a cold or getting over it. what caught my eye even more is the quote at the bottom of the story from Dr. Wallace Sampson, an emeritus clinical professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

[T]hey [herbal remedies] are drugs and toxins and most plant species out there have a more likely chance of harming one than helping one.

Thing you go back for

it was a hot sunday morning as i pushed through the atmospheric gases at 60 mph when i lost my hat through the doorless passenger side of my jeep. it only took a second to lift from my head and fly out as the giant semi-truck passed me. the loss saddened me, but i wasn't about to skid to a halt for its loss. it is an old black baseball cap with the emblem of the colorado rockies on the front and black electrical tape holding the "adjustable" strap on the back together. probably beyond its time; but i missed it. somehow i didn't want to admit that this now little worn hat was important to me so i drove on.

later that day we drove the same stretch of highway in the beater datsun truck. i knew exactly where i lost my hat and recognized its limp form from a further distance than i thought possible. keith was so gracious to stop for my hat. out i popped from the truck and retrieved the hat; it hadn't been run over and i dusted a bit of something off the bill and it was good to go. one of the best parts of the day was me on that elevated concrete retrieving a bit of black cloth and cardboard.

Lame Immigration Agents

immigration agents posed as OSHA training agents and arrested illegal immigrants. we shouldn't do that. read the article from occupationalhazards.com here. as it points out, the immigrants bear the brunt of work place accidents and if we make them afraid to show up for safety training, then we are just hurting them more. unethical in my book.

Eeek & squeak

on my commute to and from work i go through an area known as the spaghetti bowl. it is a joke to name such a place, really it shows just how small this big city is. traffic here is not that great, but comparatively there is nothing terrible about reno/sparks traffic. but people like to complain and they like to name so we have the spaghetti bowl. it is the only large scale intersection in town; it is where I-80 and Hwy 395 meet on the north side of town. it is usually a bit slow through there and there are frequent accidents---mostly minor but people still like to stop to look---and there is construction going on---for the last four years. today there was an exceptionally minor accident at the off ramp of 395 to get onto 80 so people had to slow down to look at the minor crunch on the driver's side tail lights of a white car and traffic crawled behind them. while i was inching along on the clutch i noticed a mouse. in the second of four lanes of traffic. there it was snuffling along the concrete like it was going to find something to eat. perhaps once its long forgotten ancestor had roamed a sparse sage brush field there, but now it was fat on the litter of passing cars. i wonder if it ever made it back to the berm.

Sunset

click on my picture to view it big! sunset in newport, rhode island taken from goat island.

Flag of ....

while i was at the organic electronics workshop in rhode island someone from the netherlands was there and asked why did the us use the dutch flag (netherlands=dutch for those who get confused like me) as an open flag.

Netherlands


OPEN

my only thought was because it has red white and blue, which americans think is so american, and it is very visible....
what would you do/think if you went to a foreign country and saw OPEN printed on the US flag?

some quick traveling thoughts

i'm in newport, rhode island for an organic chemistry workshop. so far pretty good. here's a few random things.
• why does someone in boston need a hummer? there is limited parking and what on earth are you going to do with that massive thing in a city? get a moped.
• a hostel can be a nice place to stay. the lady that runs the one here was nice and picked me up from the bus stop and gave a full walking tour of the town.
• it is nice to meet someone before you actually get to a big meeting. while on the bus from boston to here i met a guy from the netherlands who was going to the same conference. he also was cheap like me and was staying at the hostel ($25-$30 / night) instead of the hotel where the conference is at ($199 / night). so now i don't feel so lame at the meeting because i know at least one person that is nice and doesn't mind talking to me.
• don't try to cram everything you have ever done in research into one 40 min presentation. just have one main topic!

One step forward, One step backward

the sda church is holding a general conference session in st. louis right now. there are many things going on there... like voting in a 28th belief (voted in already but controversy over the wording so that may change).

two stories show me, dramatically, that there are different beliefs in the church that conflict with each other. dealing with conflicting ideas i think will tear the church apart eventually. people believe very strongly about some things and compromise is not an option, which can be a good thing and a bad thing.
• a black woman named Ella Simmons was elected to the position of vice-president of the world church. ('bout stinkin' time in my opinion, an old white guy (no offense to jan paulsen, president) doesn't represent the majority of the world sda church to my understanding...but it is hard to find demographics for the world church)
• the delegates voted to make the office of president of the world church open only to an ordained minister. women cannot be ordained and thus cannot hold the office of the presidency.

personally, i think the church should ordain women. but if i were a delegate i wouldn't make it a make or break issue. God will see that justice is done, not me. i don't think it is something that should break up the church, but it may end up doing that some day.