LassenSurf

Inspired Bicycles

2010-12-13T08:53:00.000-08:00

A friend at school shared these with me. Enjoy!

The Unseen Sea

2010-09-22T00:40:00.000-07:00

This video captures best one of my two favorite things about living here. (The second is big and painted "International Orange" and I can see it from my window, as long as the stuff in the video below doesn't get in the way)

And this really, really, is worth waiting and watching in HD.

The Unseen Sea from Simon Christen on Vimeo.

This one's also from the same guy and pretty cool too.

Steaming City from Simon Christen on Vimeo.

Lust for Power

2010-09-18T22:56:00.001-07:00

Men, as a gender, generally have an obsession with anything that gives us a disproportionate amount of power to the effort we put in. I wiggle my foot a bit and the car goes 0-60 in a few seconds. Woosh. I retract my finger just a bit and BOOM! A gun/bigger gun/or explosive device is launching 50 lb vegetables into the air for everyone's enjoyment. Summary: I invest a few sugar molecules to contract a few muscle cells and I get gobs of power suddenly released at my disposal.

Like that

Leif is currently fascinated with planes, trains, and cars, but especially trains. If he hears the slightest background roar of an airliner overhead he stops whatever he's doing, points up and says something like "Erpane!" He watches Thomas the Train constantly (it drives me crazy, the endless yammering of the narrator and his voices is some of the most obnoxious droning I've ever heard). And he shouts "Caw!" anytime he sees a toy with wheels. At least he doesn't know about guns yet.

Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?

The sad thing is that we don't use this disproportionate effort-to-power ration to much productive use. We blow stuff up just purely to see it blow up. We drive fast, just because we can and it's exhilerating. We threaten, lie, steal, cheat, bully, cajole, and belittle, because it increases our perception of the "power" we've gained by it. It gives us something for nothing... or for very little.

Even subtle things: I have music playing a lot and spend lots of time on the computer. It gives me a very large return of entertainment and education for very little effort.

Chicks for free (I can get this on MP3Panda.com for a dollar. Eat that iTunes!)

Sugar and high calorie foods are the same. Kids don't eat Cookie Crisp for breakfast because its part of a complete breakfast. They eat it because it tastes good because the tongue, brain, and body know that it's a disproportionate amount of calories to effort and in a body that was made to deal with scarcity, it will ALWAYS want extra calories when it can easily get them. And extra calories come in two flavors: carbs and oils. Sugars and fat. Especially fructose and saturated fat. Throw some free amino acids and salt in there to trick you into thinking you're eating lots of protein and minerals and you're done for (read: glutamate, MSG, hydrolyzed soy/yeast protein/isolate/whatev) Just a little bit of chewing to buy a lot more time surviving the hostile wilderness of....today's supermarket-fast food-hostess laden society. Disproportionate food to effort.

Men aren't the only ones like this either. Women, generally (of course generally, no one get your feelings hurt now, ok?) shop and shop and shop. Discounts and hyped-up sales to feel like you're taking advantage of the seller. Or talk and talk and talk to gain an edge over social rivals. Novels to stimulate the mind without having to contribute back. Whining, flirting, manipulating to achieve sympathy or gifts.

Now we're just negotiating a price...

Whether or not we exercise our power over others, we like to have the power, just in case we need to. Just in case. I could argue it's for security. Or emergency. If that were the case, noone would ever know our abilities except in emergencies or when called upon. But we're not that kind of a society, so mostly it's to intimidate others so they won't even THINK about trying to take advantage of us or seek power over us. Sometimes it works positively in inspiring others to competition and improvement.

Don't think so? Prove it

Oddly, even giving up all power and strength is a form of power exertion. For some religiously devoted it is a sign of heavenly strength to give everything up and prove our personal righteousness to the world. Like meekness is spiritual wealth we flaunt. We think to ourselves that because we're poor or suffering we are focusing on what's REALLY important, not like those rich people who obviously are not.

Or we convince ourselves that because we gave it up we could have the power at any time but we chose to get rid of it. I'm powerful enough to be submissive. This isn't true. Giving up such ability, strength, wealth, or power only removes our power, thus taking away our choice to be submissive. It's just as foolish to think that giving up our agency gives us more freedom. It's reminiscent of the Orwellian idea: slavery is freedom.

I'm not sure why students are for this sort of thing, but I do recognize this isn't a shirt. It's a rectangle.

The trick is to remain "submissive" (humble, penitent, open-minded, soft-hearted, etc) while hanging onto every bit of strength we have. Christ wasn't giving up a single shred of power to those who crucified him. He had that power at every second they nailed him to the cross. It could have ended at any moment by his desire. He's kinda a unique case. If I were in his place, I would actually be losing all power and freedom and that might not be a wise use of the abilities God gave me.

So, what do we do? What level of strength do we display or flaunt? I have no clue. That's for you to decide, and I'm only gonna complain or get in your way if it's bothering me.

or if you take up 5 parking spots

Inarticulate

2010-09-18T00:24:00.000-07:00

Tonight, a worker from Family Builders came to our apartment for a few hours just to meet and visit with us. She asked us a few questions about ourselves and adopting a child through them. I let Emily do most of the talking. Whenever I tried to answer questions I didn't have much to say. I have a habit of being to the point and it often doesn't leave a ton of room for discussion (I blame my Danish heritage entirely). I'll tell my stellar question-answer in a minute, but for now I feel like pontificating, so allow me a few moments.

if you've read many of my posts, be prepared. If you're like most of my readers, keep going, I know you just skim over everything else i write

With most people, conversation dies if I do much talking. Most of the time the other person or people just nod in agreement and give mmm-hmms and say, "yeah, that's right/so true/I never thought of that." It's pretty boring. When I teach Sunday School, I hate talking. I like axing questions and having other people do all of it and steering it by appropriate questions. When I feel like interjecting my thoughts into the lesson, the class stares at me with the look like I just killed an interesting debate and the show is now over, leaving me floundering over something to get them talking again.

I think if I ever wrote a book, it would take me a few decades to write. It'd start out concise enough to fit onto a few pages and I'd have to BS and fill out the rest just to make it interesting.

this would be most of my story

If you know me, personally, you'll know I enjoy a good discussion. Either the mutual working together to solve a problem through conversation, the sharing of new ideas and information that enlightens the participants and/or listeners, the fair and open-minded sharing of opposing ideas to reach a middle ground, or to present an accurate picture of everything that is in play in a sticky situation. I will love you if you disagree with me on the condition that you can back up your disagreement. If I disagree with you, it means I really like you. I never debate with strangers. You could be telling me the earth is flat, but if I don't care about you, I'll keep my mouth shut. If I'm trying to get you to like me, I'll ask questions that make you back up your position and prove your point or make a joke out of the tense situation. If I really like you, I'll share my thoughts as nicely as possible, but bring out the big guns if the situation desperately needs it.

it's sort of complicated, really

I'm not one to get emotional during a debate, but it happens. It's natural. Some have a lower threshold for emotional control than others, that's fine, but I will encourage you to slow down and discuss the topic rationally. I appreciate passion and emotion. It means there's something the brain has worked out that's important to our identity/survival/safety/self-interest even if we can't consciously articulate it. I like helping people figure that out and pull that jumbled massive cloud of firing neurons into an organized, step-wise sentence coming out of the mouth. That's essentially what an emotion is: a brain-wide response to a stimulus of some kind. A smell of a rose can trigger a bajillion memories in the cortex, sending off huge waves of visual, tactile, verbal, auditory sensations linked by other neurons and portions of the brain to huge chunks of life that have promoted our well-being (or injury and hinderment to some) and create an emotional response that result in our hearts fluttering, our skin flushing, and pull grandiose words out of the language center of our brain.

this is what happens when i'm on my bike and a driver doesn't use their blinker to cut me off suddenly

If you asked me why I like my favorite smell, I might just say, "It smells good." But there would be so much going on that formed that opinion. As Emily and I read these adoption books, they strongly emphasize the power of associations and warn of possible negative associations abused and hurt children may have with even simple things. The smell of cookie dough might trigger memories of anger and pain if associated with something traumatic that happened while freshly-baked cookies were in the house and once the reaction is discovered, it would be wise to act appropriately in the future to help resolve or avoid (if necessary) the situation.

cookie dough seems innocent, but it has a dark side no one wants to talk about

I find that these adoption books really contain amazing advice for dealing with everyone, not just hurt-children, and push me into being a better parent to my biological children. I also see a lot of it in the people I talk with at school, my patients, classmates, etc.

yes, i am judging you, don't be surprised. and don't deny you're doing it, too

It's impossible to fight emotion with emotion. Even well-articulated truth gets lost in the angry sea of anothers temper or sadness. Progress is made (ie, people are brought closer together) when both sides act rationally to some degree, and made closer the more rational they become. When emotions can be focused and organized, then the engine of our life can be useful, not just exploding vapors of combustible fuel. If our emotions are the engine, the steering wheel is our rationality. Both are required to move forward in consciously-decided directions.

'nuff said

So, as we get ready for the in-depth and very personal questions that'll be put to us by this worker over the next few homestudy appointments I'll have to prepare myself to answer well and not emotionally. The other day, I responded to someone's comment about a topic by talking about some triggered memory that probably seemed random to them at the time and cause them to think about me "What is WITH this guy?"

Tonight, when she asked us why we want to adopt a foster child, I said, "Because I think it's a great thing to do for someone." A few cricket chirps later, I tried to fill out that answer with some reason that didn't come out coherently, abandoned it, and restated, "It just seems like it's something great we can do for someone else," and deflected the question over to Emily with a panicked look on my face.

After thinking about it some more, I still can't come up with a better reason or answer, but it's not very exciting, is it?

the teacher finished 15 minutes ago. the girl at bottom right just has nothing else to do

Sorry if you came by earlier and the interwebs warned you my opining might be bad for your computer. Not sure what that was about, but I borrowed a picture off of Google Images and it got all jumpity on me.

More quotes

2010-09-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

I just spent way too long writing a comment that probably doesn't make sense to the author of an "activist atheist" blog I stumbled upon while looking up C.S. Lewis quotes.

Here's some favorite quotes from "Mere Christianity":

“We must, therefore, not be surprised if we find among Christians some people who are still nasty. There is even, when you come to think it over, a reason why nasty people might be expected to turn to Christ in greater numbers than nice ones. That was what people objected to about Christ during His life on earth: He seemed to attract ‘such awful people’. That is what people still object to and always will.”

"What can you ever really know of other people’s souls - of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles?"

“Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us.”

“Each time you fall He will pick you up again. And He knows perfectly well that your own efforts are never going to bring you anywhere near perfection.”

“The natural life in each of us is something self-centred, something that wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole universe. And especially it wants to be left to itself: to keep well away from anything better or stronger or higher than it, anything that might make it feel small. It is afraid of the light and air of the spiritual world, just as people who have been brought up to be dirty are afraid of a bath. And in a sense it is quite right. It knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all of its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that.”

“He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others - not because He has favorites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favorites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one.”

“But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.”

“If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.” (Does this mean that if I think I am conceited, then I'm not?? LOL)

“Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go.”

“If people do not believe in permanent marriage, it is perhaps better that they should live together unmarried than that they should make vows they do not mean to keep. It is true that by living together without marriage they will be guilty (in Christian eyes) of fornication. But one fault is not mended by adding another: unchastity is not improved by adding perjury.”

“If anyone thinks that Christians regard unchastity as the supreme vice, he is quite wrong. The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins. All the worst pleasures are purely spiritual: the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, of bossing and patronizing and spoiling sport, and back-biting, the pleasures of power, of hatred. For there are two things inside me, competing with the human self which I must try to become. They are the Animal self, and the Diabolical self. The Diabolical self is the worse of the two. That is why a cold, self righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute. But, of course, it is better to be neither.”

“In the passage where the New Testament says that every one must work, it gives as a reason ’in order that he may have something to give to those in need.’”

“An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons - marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.”

“That is why the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or- if they think there is not- at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.”

“Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk. Perhaps we are inclined to disagree with Him. But there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.”

Flexibility

2010-08-29T23:23:00.000-07:00

I'm reading "Parenting the Hurt Child: Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow" by Gregory Keck.

The chapter I'm reading gives various thoughts and strategies for coping with control issues and letting the hurt child give up some control so they can become more attached to their parents.

I like this exerpt:

"If you can't make the child change his behavior, make his behavior what you want. Sound confusing? It's not. If your child is having a temper tantrum, telling him to stop is pointless. Instead, say something like, 'Oh, a tantrum. I think I'll get some iced tea and make myself comfortable while I watch.' Or, if you're feeling particularly brave, say something like, 'You can do better than that, can't you? I'll bet you can scream loud.'

"If the tantrum continues, it seems like compliance. The child now has two choices--to stop or to keep going and do what you want.

"One family, inspired by the Olympics, had cards printed with the numbers 1 to 5 on them. When their child's tantrum started, everyone in the family held up a card to judge it. The rest of the family had fun, and the power of the tantrum was decreased."

This example sounds like something obnoxious I would have done to my siblings when I was a kid, but I can see a lot of wisdom in using it with children who have trouble trusting and attaching to adults.

It's a great book with lots of insight. After this, I'll have to read "Parenting with Love and Logic" as recommended by so many (including siblings, Emily, this book I'm reading now, and the Foster/Adoption agency we're working with). Too bad they don't have a Kindle edition for me to read on my iPod or laptop (or Emily's Kindle!)

Cartoon Time!

2010-08-27T19:03:00.000-07:00

Just watching cartoons online. Today's is from Avatar: The Last Airbender is known is "The Great Divide" (The embedded video may not show up in Google Reader, go to this posting itself to watch the episode, it's a good one)

Vezi mai multe video din Animatie

And yes, that title right there ^ is foreign because it's from some other country, because this is probably some sort of copyright infringement being out on the internet.

Thank Heavens for little girls

2010-08-19T22:24:00.000-07:00

I would like some input from all y'all.

Grace has a tendency towards something. Always has, and a good example of it happened recently. The other day she was playing with Leif and they got in a scuffle over a toy. She grabs the toy away from Leif and then pushes him down and he begins to cry. I saw this happen and intervened. "Grace, don't grab away toys like that, and we don't push, ever."

So, what does Grace do? She cries. Not just cries, she screams and wails for 10 minutes. Long after Leif had stopped crying, she's still bawling her eyes out. And she's angry at us. She's still lurching after the toy we took away and kicking and screaming at us like its our fault she's in trouble.

The truly sad part of the story is that Grace's outburst consumed so much of our energy, that neither of us were able to see to Leif and comfort him and make sure he was okay. Though Grace was getting into trouble, she succeeded in maintaining our attention on her and away from him and away from the wrong deed that was done. Her strategy worked and in the end, she won.

Once she did this to Emily at the mall, and while Emily is taking Grace out to the car Grace screams out and shouts "STOP HITTING ME!" although Emily was simply carrying Grace as calmly as possible. With people around, Emily's only option was to put Grace down, step back, and show the world she's not in need of Child Protective Services. Grace's outburst won here as well. Despite being the one in the wrong, her tantrums and drama overpower all else. Timeouts and lectures were plentiful once home, but it was a shallow victory to the whole ordeal and not after tainting Emily's appearance to those around her (only marginally was it a good thing everyone around her was a stranger, we hope). Even the apologies she says later are hollow, having only occurred with prompting.

Now, Grace is a wonderful and usually sweet, thoughtful, little girl, but she's incredibly smart and adept, and right now not able to recognize how devious and dastardly she is behaving in emotional moments like that. Any suggestions?

Introspective and Supremely Satisfied

2010-08-03T01:22:00.001-07:00

That's how I feel right now. I'm not entirely sure why. I just got back from a show down in the Mission district. It's one of the busier grittier parts of SF. It's not just gritty, its nitty-gritty. An old roommate was playing a show with his band. We were roommates for just one semester a long time ago, but man, I had a great time in that apartment. I've kept in touch with him just a bit and he lets me know how he's doing from time to time.

A few years ago, he formed a band and they got an album out. Just a few months ago they got their second out. Cool. It's a great band. Indie-tronica is a great way to describe their style. A few months ago he emails me to tell me they're going on tour and would like a place to crash in SF and could they sleep on our floors/couches/etc. That ended up being last night. 5 of them. They were all really nice and fun to talk with. Tonight, at their show I got to catch up with Kael and his wife, Heather, a bit more and their friend John. All, really impressive people. Kael works for his brother's company writing music for TV commercials and other stuff (if you have an AppleTV and you listen to the startup music, that's his, or the power-on sound of several Palm phones). His band actually gets a lot of fans because of one car commercial he did.

People on the internet go looking for it, find out he wrote it and has this band that he writes the songs for. I overheard some fans tonight coming to them and telling them they found the band through that commercial. Awesome. He is allowed to make it available but not to sell it. (John says it's kinda frustrating that Kael writes all this great music, but they can't use it in their band :-)

Heather just finished her first year at UCLA's medical school. Their friend John, is a new English Professor at Yale. Crazy. Buncha smart people. All on breaks from jobs/school to do this tour with their band. With them is Kurt and Sebastian.

I feel all weird tonight, like I had an amazing time, but not excited amazing, just uber satisfied amazing. Maybe I liked the attention, or because of the novelty of being out late at a rock show (a small one, but cooler for it), or that I felt cool being in some small club in the Mission listening to a bunch of cool bands and having an inside connection with one of them. Maybe it's just a bit of hero worship and admiration. Maybe I feel just a little bit cooler because I'm hanging out with REALLY cool people. One fan was getting autographs of everyone in the band on the CD he bought tonight and he tries to hand it to me to get me to sign it. "Oh, wait, YOU haven't signed it yet!" Funny, a bit awkward, but funny.

As I drove home, all I could think about was how great a time I had and how lucky I am to have what I have and know what I know. Holy crap lucky. Blessed, fortunate, whatver. I couldn't stop thinking about Emily and Grace and Leif.

I was also reminded of how slow I am, socially. Trying to say what I meant and be entertainingly conversant. Like the awkward statements I make, or comments that don't add to the conversation and probably drag it into the many awkward silences that abound around me. I did make some friends tonight but I lack the resources and strategies to maintain them and feel bad about it.

What was fun was helping them load their equipment into the van while another band was still playing and the show was still going. I was going in and out of this small club and while others were showing ID's or whatever to get past the doorman, we make eye-contact, give each other the little nod and I just walk past. Yeah, that's how important I was tonight. (So stupid, I know, why does this stuff go through my head??)

In our small conversations we nabbed when we could, I'm not sure how much they learned about me. I'm guessing our little family looked like the perfect, quaint little nuclear family. Emily even made them all waffles and banana bread muffins (which they all commented to me tonight how great they were) after I left for dental school on my bicycle. Grace was the ultimate little girl and in love with all of them and cried and screamed when she had to say good-bye. Leif was just his charmingly cute and shy self. They don't get to see our depth, what makes me look at my life and feel like it is fantastically awesome. And I'm okay with that. I'm judgmental of other people who seem shallow or superficial (whatever they are doing good or bad) and I realize I don't think less of them, so why should I care if others see me the same way and probably don't think less of me?

I got to see them at an exciting moment in their lives, and it was fun to be a part of it. I highly recommend checking them out. They are Faded Paper Figures. The other really awesome band I saw tonight is We Landed on the Moon. "Boats" is a great song.

Grace and I like watching FPF's music video but I think the robot weirds her out:-)

I'm probably condemning myself by my words

2010-07-23T23:18:00.000-07:00

I was in a mood for scribing some prose of a fashion, and while I pondered on the subject, I became awakened to a quote by the honorable theologian, C.S. Lewis. A simple query of a handful of key words from this pontification led me to the source of such profundity. A book, entitled "The Weight of Glory," was the fountain of wisdom embodied by the magnificent statement and led me to find a numeration of similarly astounding manifestos. I will proceed to recant a collection of personal delights from this rare clutch of spiritual gold.

Whew, that takes some brain power to write like that. In case you didn't catch it, I realized one of my favorite quotes ends up coming from a book by C.S. Lewis I wasn't familiar with. Now that I am, I'm going to snag a copy of it and read it and while I'm at it, I'll share some gems that I found on various websites devoted to the book. (Now I've got to find a copy and read it, I must have included half the book here already. Lol)

"He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only."

"The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation."

"When humans should have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch."

"It may be possible for each of us to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden, of my neighbour's glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you may talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet if at all only in a nightmare."

"All day long we are in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities it is with awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal, Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit -- immortal horrors or ever lasting splendours. "

" Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat, the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden. "

"I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering. I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace. I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can."

"And that is enough to raise your thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex forever will also drown her pride… Perfect humility dispenses with modesty."

"At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in."

The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last."

"If we consider the unblushing promises of reward … promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased."

"I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows.
That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. I believe the authority of parent over child, husband over wife, learned over simple to have been as much a part of the original plan as the authority of man over beast. I believe that if we had not fallen, …patriarchal monarchy would be the sole lawful government. But since we have learned sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that “all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. The authority of father and husband has been rightly abolished on the legal plane, not because this authority is in itself bad (on the contrary, it is, I hold, divine in origin), but because fathers and husbands are bad. Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that learned priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us. Even the authority of man over beast has had to be interfered with because it is constantly abused."

Childhood memories

2010-07-13T00:03:00.000-07:00

I can't come up with a very good way of writing about this. You really just have to watch.

Basically, some writers for Rocko's Modern Life (one of my favs) tried for years and finally got Disney to pick up a show they created and call it Phineas and Ferb. Here's links to some excellent samples of both shows, separated by about 15 years.

RML (~1995)

Hey, Nice Melons. High Five? and Part 2 "Chewy Chicken is People! Chewy Chicken is People!"

"Look, a blizzard!" and "Feel the strength of my two-ply!"

P&F (~2009)

"I wouldn't want to be getting one of those rejuvenating sea salt scrubs right now. The stinging would be unbearable!"

"What are the two most popular things on this planet? Country music and western music!"

--Funny enough, the creators are the uncredited voices of Dr. Doofenshmirtz and Major Monogram. Ol' doofy pretty much makes the show.

If this post looks ugly, it's because it's really late/early and I don't care enough right now.

Adventure! It's a wonderful thing!

2010-05-18T19:21:00.000-07:00

After Emily dropped me off at school this morning, she took off heading south to spend a couple days with her family for her brother's college graduation. Since it was raining this morning and since she dropped me off, I didn't bring my bike. So, I figured I'll have me a little adventure. I'll bring some extra clothes to school and leave my bag and computer at school and RUN home! Oh man, what an awesome idea! If my knee acts up (which it does, still) I can walk or catch the bus. It'll be great. Now, I'm feeling lazy. And a little hungry. And I need some new cheapie headphones. So, here's my plan, leave school in the next 20 minutes, stop by Best Buy on Geary, go the extra mile (literally) and hit up Gordo's Tacqueria for an awesome $5 burrito and jog or limp the last mile home and make it by 9:30, just in time to read for a bit and go to bed.

So its not REALLY adventurous, but it's a little intimidating because my knee is pretty unpredictable. I did figure out a few weeks ago that I'm (either due to genetics, an accident, or simple habit) slightly pigeon-toed in my left foot. When I keep it straight/slightly outward like my right foot I can keep the knee in control, but that's easier said than done since it feels like I'm running crooked. I haven't pushed it more than a few miles since then, either.

Since it is getting dark and it will be busy city streets, I'll forgo the barefeet tonight and put a little rubber between me and the pavement, at least until I get into the Presidio.

Lookamee!

2010-05-14T23:47:00.000-07:00

Look, look! I'm famous, this made it onto the school's front web page! This is awesome, it's like being in the High School yearbook in pictures that make it look like you were social or cool! I'm available for autographs if anyone would like. They WILL be worth something someday!

See? See? That blurry figure on the left is most definitely me. Here's the story:

http://dental.pacific.edu/News_and_Events/News_Archive/Dental_School_Participates_in_Bike_to_Work_Day_2010.html

Incidentally: I ride my bike almost every day, so this was like, "Hey, free stuff for doing what I normally do!" Amongst the free stuff was a thermos, a tote-bag, a mini First Aid kit, a tire repair kit, a pack reflector that also lights up (which the kids have commandeered as their new cool toy) and a bunch of pamphlets and newsletters about cycling around San Francisco, 90% of which was geared toward the people in the trendy parts of the city that ride up and down Market St. and use "The Wiggle" to get around. (Presidio residents have our own wiggle for getting through Laurel Heights to the Arguello Gate, so nyah!)

Quotations

2010-05-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

From Benjamin Franklin that I thought were fun to read.

I believe I have omitted mentioning that, in my first voyage from Boston, being becalm'd off Block Island, our people set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food, and on this occasion consider'd, with my master Tryon, the taking every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them had, or ever could do us any injury that might justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great lover of fish, and, when this came hot out of the frying-pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanced some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you." So I din'd upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, "Without vanity I may say," &c., but some vain thing immediately followed. Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity among the other comforts of life.

I've lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth — That God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that except the Lord build the House they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this, — and I also believe that without his concurring Aid, we shall succeed in this political Building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our Projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a Reproach and Bye word down to future Ages.

The art of concluding from experience and observation consists in evaluating probabilities, in estimating if they are high or numerous enough to constitute proof. This type of calculation is more complicated and more difficult than one might think. It demands a great sagacity generally above the power of common people. The success of charlatans, sorcerors, and alchemists — and all those who abuse public credulity — is founded on errors in this type of calculation.

Tidbits

2010-04-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

Glorious days! I can run again! Let me tell you my story, at least of the past week.

Did a couple of little trail runs barefoot and in the vibrams, single-track trails through bushes, stairs, and some very mild rock climbing around the Presidio and above Baker Beach, stuff to keep me changing direction a lot, hoping that my form would have to correct itself when more was demanded of it in short bursts and if I gave it the freedom to be corrected. After 2-3 of these, I noticed that I'd started landing on my left foot different than seemed intuitive (even after watching those videos I posted a few weeks ago) landing on the inside of my foot as much as possible right behind the big toe. It's more accentuated in the vibrams but barefoot, it still feels like the outside of the foot is touching ground first with the ball behind the big toe taking almost all of the weight. My heel either doesn't touch the ground at all (most of the time) or just barely with every step. The arch feels like it's being stretched out and the bones feel bruised at first, but it goes away after a couple runs. I still get small blisters, but I don't mind them much.

I noticed this just happen on it's own to my left foot, so I've made my right foot match. It feels awkward and my calves are the muscles most sore when I'm running now, but they also recover quickly and don't usually hurt while running (trotting, really), only when walking after a run.

When I figured out my knee wasn't hurting, I ran 4 miles, just cuz. It felt great. A few days later, my wife pushed me into 9 miles. Then 3.5 while pushing a stroller with 2 kids. Then we did 5.5 yesterday while pushing the stroller. Not fast, averaging 10-11 minutes a mile. We're both just happy we can run at all (considering that an 8 minute run just 13 days ago had me limping for several hours). It's becoming our new hobby of choice, and we get to do it together as long as the kids are ok inside the stroller.

A word of caution for hopeful trail runners: If you see a plant that looks like this, and you brush up against it, it will start to itch like crazy one week after the encounter and last for 2 more weeks. Yes, this is my second occurrence of poison oak since being here and I know the exact moment I got each. Not out of ignorance, just accident, there's tons of it here.

Here's my running log since hearing about barefoot-style running and getting hopeful.

Date Length Notes

1/27/2010 0.6 BF, blood blisters, rainy, poor form, first run

2/4/2010 0.6 vibrams in rain

2/6/2010 1

2/13/2010 1

2/14/2010 0.5 w/ Em, stroller

2/15/2010 2 BF, bruised feet bottom

2/15/2010 0.25 BF, KNEE PAIN, minor blisters

2/20/2010 2.5 BF, no pain, blisters

2/24/2010 5 BF, knee pain near end, blisters (not painful)

2/25/2010 0.5 walked 1 mile, strained peroneous brevis tendon

3/6/2010 1.25 BF on sand, Baker Beach, knee hurt after 1 mile

3/25/2010 1 DR, used vibrams, knee hurt after .5 miles, limped back

3/26/2010 1 trail ran w/ Vibrams in Monte Cristi, no pain

3/28/2010 2 trail ran, walked, climbed around BB, BF & VFFs

3/30/2010 3 VFFs, hiked, climbed, ran around BB, use inside of left foot=no pain

4/1/2010 4 jogged, VFF's around BB and Lincoln, no pain if landed behind big toe

4/2/2010 1 slip-on Vans, no knee pain, soreness on walking

4/3/2010 9 pain only when forget technique !!!!! some walking and a pit-stop

4/6/2010 3.6 jogging stroller with kids, no pain if technique good, barefoot last 1/4mi

4/8/2010 5.5 vibrams and BF at end, no pain, just sore calves, recovered by next a.m.

Just a little of this and that

2010-03-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

It feels great to be home. So great, that I left my empty apartment within 30 minutes and took off hiking and trail running around Baker Beach for a few hours: ignoring "Stay off the cliff" signs, watching spring water form little deltas on the beach, dodging waves on the backside of Fort Point, and spending a while sitting on top of one of the batteries perched into the hillside talking to Emily, who's in Philadelphia with her brothers for a few more days. All this, barefoot or in the Vibrams. I gotta say, it felt amazing to go barefoot on the trails. Like the best foot massage ever every step. I can now handle most of the trails around the Presidio barefoot for a little while at least, but put on the Vibrams for rock-hopping and climbing. I still can't run more than a mile or so, though, before my knee forces me into a limp, but I can last a bit longer on trails than on straight pavement or even sand.

I'm gonna guess that what's more interesting than my barefoot habits is how the last week went, so I'll change subjects.

It was crazy cool (pics in the link). We got to help a lot of people and make a lot of friends with the best kind of people also volunteering their time. As part of the Orphanage Outreach Health Corps we didn't spend much time interacting with the kids at the orphanage, but spent 4 days helping people in the small communities scattered throughout the giant banana plantation to the south.

View UOP Dental Mission to the DR 2010 in a larger map

It was interesting seeing the differences in people from one community to the next, like each had it's own distinct personality. Our 3rd and 4th days saw a large number of Creole-only-speaking Haitians. We did some fillings and cleanings, but it was mostly pulling out what was left of bombed-out teeth or the remains of roots still infected and sitting in the bone. 4 other dentists and some of their staff were there as well and we all took turns working with them throughout the week.

Our dorms were wood frames with metal roofs and chain link fence and tarps/boards for partial siding. Inside were rough metal bunk beds with mosquito nets. Despite the open air, I didn't sleep under even a sheet for half of the week, and for the other half, a sheet was plenty. Showers were cold and limited to wetting and rinsing (turn water off to soap up). The hired local staff were great and the food was delicious and plenteous (lots of rice, beans, and fresh papayas and pineapples).

Orphanage Outreach is a fantastic organization. Very well organized and very efficient. They have been able to expand a small one-roomed orphanage (managed by a local minister) into a large two-story building with a wall around the property and lots of care for the orphans. They also recently purchased an old hotel in town and it is used as an English Institute for any children in the community. O.O. has also expanded to another orphanage in the town of Jaibon, not too far away. Everything is done by volunteers and donations exclusively. The leaders sign up to volunteer for 1-2 years at a time. Our group leader, Bryson, was terrific.

Our last day was spent seeing sights in Monte Cristi including a gift shop, supermarket, clocktower, museum, ice cream/motobike parlor (weird combo, I know), and the English Institute before spending the afternoon at a beautiful beach just north of the city.

Our own group also forked out a bit of our own money (only $80/person) to go a day early and spend a night in a resort at Puerto Plata. It was an interesting experience going from a sterile, isolated, resort-complex to the poorest of poor. Even most of their clothes are from donations. Our flight back to New York was delayed 3 hours, so we missed our connection to San Francisco. Delta put us up in the Double Tree near the airport for the night and booked most of us for First Class this morning. First class was really nice, but almost a bit silly, like placing table cloths over the tray table for the gourmet style meals they provided. So, this week we got to see luxury and poverty. I gotta be honest, the luxury was nice, but working hard and getting a few good times at the end was way better.

Everyone worked hard in the hot weather and it was an intense week. It was great to be working so hard for someone else's benefit, who would otherwise have no help dentally or medically. Most came to us with pain and just wanted the cause of the pain out.

I'll have pictures on Facebook soon. It was being finicky on me tonight. (Update: If you missed the link above, they're here).

Off to uncharted lands!

2010-03-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

I sent out letters to everyone and their goldfish asking for help to go on a dental mission during spring break. I got a great response and want to thank those of you reading this who could help out. But for those of you who didn't get the letter, or I don't like enough to send one (seriously, you'd have to be on my hate-for-all-eternity list to not get one... or it got lost in the mail or something, no worries), here's the haps:

Groups of students get together and plan dental mission trips during school breaks. They're not school sponsored, but most are through an external charity organization of some kind. Some of the trips are vacations with a couple days of service, others are intense week-long slave labor clinics (the group that went to Jamaica worked 10 hours/day for 6 days or something, but did get to stay in a Sandals resort at night with all-included restaurants and stuff), so when I saw the itinerary for this trip to the Dominican Republic, I got excited. Arrive Saturday, work Monday through Thursday, spend Friday doing "cultural" things like visiting a nearby national park or large market, and fly home Saturday. And it's a third cheaper than the more popular vacation-y trips. It's through Orphanage Outreach, who arranges for volunteers of all kinds to come and help out. It's in the small town of Monte Cristi on the northwest coast of the DR and we'll be spending a lot of time in the open-air clinic helping the workers/families living on the banana/sugarcane plantations. There will be about 18 in our group and some other dentists from other places coming next week. Since it fills up our break, most in the group wanted to get there a day early and just hang out/relax, so we're leaving today, immediately after our last final. (Like, get out of the final and run to the school's housing 10 blocks away to leave at 12:15).

I'm excited about going, but I don't travel much and am more nervous about the traveling than anything. I've left the continent once, to Hawaii, and only left the country to Canada and just inside Mexico, so this is a bigger jump for me. We will be in New York for about 8 hours, in the middle of the night, and we have no plans to fill that time (sleeping in JFK airport does not get good reviews) so I've got a bunch of audiobooks and movies on my ipod to kill time in between naps. I've got lots of bugspray and sunscreen, as well as my own pair of Vibram Five Fingers (for the adventures and fun stuff), and my very first official pair of scrubs (pants at least, they give us shirts to wear while there). I just realized I don't have a hat or sunglasses. Dang it.

I've got the camera and will try to take LOTS of pictures. As for the rest of the family, they're in Utah at Emily's parents. Today, Grace is going skiing for the first time.

True Believer or Fake Imposter?

2010-03-10T13:46:00.000-08:00

This guy from Vermont spent 5 years immersing himself into extreme Muslim society in Yemen and Saudi Arabia in order to get to know the culture better. Hopefully, close exposure would remove so many of the fears Westerners have in radical Muslims. Turns out, it didn't. Close exposure only made him more worried. If I were this guy, I'd hire full-time body guards for the rest of my life.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/worldview/100308/al-qaeda-yemen-islam-convert

Knock me out like a ton of bricks

2010-03-03T16:49:00.000-08:00

In our pharmacology class we've been learning the basics of general anesthesias. To start off this section we watched this episode of NOVA made in the 1970's on the history of anesthesia. Pretty crazy. What impressed me most were the lives lost or ruined by and during the development of anesthetics. Not just patients, but the doctors and scientists who experimented mostly on themselves, often becoming addicted to the substances or worse. And since addiction was not understood really at all yet, they often faced severe consequences for their research. A classmate found the video online and shared it with the class. I thought it was fascinating and some of you might like it too. It's about an hour long, but the first 11 minutes give a nice backdrop to the story. It was the two dentists portrayed here in the beginning that separately discover the first two general anesthesias. Their stories are pretty interesting as well.

There is no charge for awesomeness

2010-02-26T22:38:00.001-08:00

I shall direct your attention to my sister in-law who was an exciting story to share with you all.

http://talesofanordinaryhousewife.blogspot.com/2010/02/resistance.html

Now, I shall get back to my exciting Friday evening of scrounging for Futurama episodes online. Good night.

If anyone sees this tonight, feel free to give me a call, I'll probably be up late. Life is delightfully boring when Emily and the kids are out of town (helping my sister with her newborn and stuff). Serio, delightfully boring. That's the perfect description.

Update: Please, stop calling me, I can't keep up with the ringing phone! (No, I'm not adding this just to make me look popular and compensate for my loneliness)

2nd Update: Ima just gonna keep updating this through the evening. Here's a great site, if you're confused at all by the other episodes, start at the beginning:

http://www.piggymoo.com/futurama/?episode=01x01

My mind was just blown

2010-02-25T01:38:00.001-08:00

I'm up late working on a research paper assigned to our class. My topic is on Low level laser therapy and wound healing. It's actually pretty fascinating. I've had to sort through gobs of research on the topic and I'm trying to gather a big picture. It's all broken down into specifics of laser type, wavelengths, energies and stuff as well as it's effects on various tissues and wounds (or lack thereof). When it comes to powerful radiation it's the more destructive, ionizing, free-radical creating bands like UV and X-ray that take top spots. Even Infrared gets a lot of credit for the perception of heat we get from it. Visible light has some nifty effects, but outside of vision it doesn't get much credit for molecular effects. As I am finding out, visible light does some pretty crazy stuff, like regulating which genes get turned on and regulating all sorts of biochemical stuffs, the vast most of it apparently beneficial and supportive of life. The most common frequencies I'm coming across in these studies are in the range of 632nm or 830nm, which happen to be the frequencies made by convenient Helium Neon lasers and the like.

This may seem way out there and Doc Brown-ish (Jumping Gigawatts!), but I got curious, what color is 632nm? It's orange-red. That's peculiar. Why would that have such crazy benefits to us and our tissues? Oh wait, what wavelength is strongest from the sun? Right about the color put out by Hydrogen at 650nm but it puts out the most of its energy in that general range of orange. Woa!

We're floating around this universe that's flooded with all sorts of radiations. X-Rays are generally destructive in appreciable amounts. UV rays send electrons flying about. Infrared rays tend to speed up the movement of whole molecules, speeding up molecular reactions. Too much infrared (too hot) and biological systems as we know them quit working or work so fast that it can't be properly controlled or used. So there's our Sun. A nice medium-sized star that puts out the majority of it's radiation within the visible spectrum. A nice middle range for life to flourish. And under this unique spectrum flourish it does! And our systems are SOOOO adapted to it that our primary source of information comes from the visible spectrum, our systems are put together in such a way that the peak of this visible light we get is beneficial to us-- even dependent on it--, and our planet is put together so perfectly to filter out most of the destructive other radiation.

This may still not make much sense, but the gist of it to me is that this universe was created for life to thrive. Life is not some niche that has squeezed its tiny foothold into the universe, but the sole purpose of this universe is to support life by properly supporting the atomic properties conducive to life. Of course it can be argued the other way, but my own personal experiences and research, backed up by theindependent experiences, studies and research of millions of others show that there is a God and that he loves us and that his greatest work is to bestow life into this universe.

Now back to my paper. I want to get this thing done tonight even if I have to stay up all night. I don't have much demanding my energies tomorrow so I'll be ok and it'll be really nice to have it out of the way and still have a day to refine it before Friday morning. Wish me luck.

Update (5 min after original posting): The burning of organic material (wood, wax, oil, etc) tends to burn at 1000 to 1100 degrees Celsius which also happens to give off mostly deep orange light!

I just felt like running

2010-02-07T14:09:00.000-08:00

I came across this article and later this one a few weeks ago and showed it to Emily along with this blog, and suddenly we're hooked on the idea. She instantly bought the bible of barefoot running and read it in a couple of days. If I took the time to run more, I'd do it, but as of now I've only done 3 1-mile loops around our neighborhood barefoot, but we did find some returned Vibram Five Fingers at REI and I've jogged just a little bit in them and wear them around. For some reason now, I run barefoot to and from the dumpster when I take out the garbage. I gotsa say, I like it and will let you know if my knee starts hurting. My best recommendation: like they say, start slow, don't run on your toes, and don't start on wet, freshly-rained pavement (learned all those in one shot).

The rationality of emotion

2010-02-05T23:14:00.000-08:00

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I was laying in bed pondering about the role of Logic and Reason in our lives. I don't do this often, but sometimes when I get thinking, it really goes off.

I was musing about the tremendous importance of these things and are they the most important objects to allow to govern our lives? What about emotion? What about the delight in chaos and disorder? I think logic, rationality, and reason still trump them all and I will try to expound but will probably trip myself up along the way.

This was sparked by a documentary we watched this evening on an aspect of alternative medicine. It was a terribly unscientific and unprofessionally done film. Not that it didn't try to promote a valuable treatment that showed promise, but it constantly cried out against "the establishment" keeping this treatment down. I had to admit, if I were "the establishment" and could so readily find flaws in their statistics, their logical reasoning, I'd dismiss it too. Not out of greed, but out of lack of concrete reason. Emily and I discussed the science and decided to check out what Pubmed had on this treatment. Quickly we found some statistics that did promote this treatment as beneficial to cancer patients vs. no treatment. Not a perfect treatment by any means, some of the survival rates for severely metastisized cancers were 39% 5-year survival using the prescribed method vs. 6% 5-year survival for no treatment. Sounds great. But what are the 5-year survival rates of the same cancers using conventional medicine? We didn't bother to look it up, it was late. But such an important set of stats as this would change everything, yet the movie hadn't used it at all. It spoke anecdotally to only survivors. They could find lots of them who'd used this method, but somehow couldn't similarly interview those who'd died. Nor did they compare numbers against conventional (i.e. "the establishment's") treatments. To me, it doesn't really matter at this point, because the treatment involved such modalities as eating a plant-based diet (they actually advertised veganism, but that discussion I'll save for another time) and everything I've ever learned agrees with this, so it's a moot point in my life, but the evening was a stimulating exercise of logic and reasoning.

Back to this idea of emotion. How does it play into the progress and improvement of life? Or better yet, how does it improve our existence? Sadly, I think it safe to say that the incredible majority of problems in this world arise because of abused, uncontrolled, or unchecked emotions. Yet it is checked emotions, properly controlled by reason and logic, that provide almost all production and improvement on this planet. What is emotion? I define it to be the set of physical and mental reactions which our immeasurably complex environment and our collected set of memories and intelligence exert on us. Sounds robotic, dry, and lifeless, but let me give an example: there is a windy stretch of road near our home. Close to the side of the road is a steep and high cliff dropping to the beach and ocean below. The road itself is fairly steep and the sharp corners can be hazardous at high speeds. The scenery is reminiscent of romantic views of Mediterranean vistas. The ruggedness of the terrain is unusual for any city of comparable size. I get an amazing rush of pleasure riding my bicycle as fast as I can down this street. Enough of a rush that if I have the time, the energy, and the weather on my side, I'll ride an extra 100 feet uphill and a mile out of the way to barrel down on my way home from school. I have occasionally passed cars doing this. This creates even more of a rush.

This ride produces strong and temporary emotions. Thinking about it, that emotion is created partly by the amazing scenery, the stimlulation of wind on my face, the forces pulling on me as I speed around the corners, and a great deal because of the slight loss of predictability of my outcome. I let go a little bit of the control I have over my life. It is scary. When I don't die or get hurt (which has been every time, knock on wood), I feel terrific. That additional bit of chance I throw into my life sparks emotion.

The possibility of disorder or lack of control is what creates emotions. When an outcome goes against our predictions we become sad or angry. When it unexpectedly goes right, we become ecstatic. When we enter into a relationship with another person our emotions become tied to their actions as we give up control of some portion of our life to them. This creates very strong emotions.

As we learn about our emotions, we become more rational and logical, and in maintaining control over them we are able to produce, to create.

So, thinking eternally, how does God experience emotion? He knows everything, can do everything, and in perfection would never knowingly endanger his position or give up any of his control to anyone else? How does our eternal Father have any room for emotion? If he wanted the rush of a risky activity, he would give up attributes and qualities that make him God such as perfect logic, rationality, and reason. If he didn't know the outcome of everything, he wouldn't be God. His emotions are intimately and eternally tied to us, his children. He has achieved perfection and glory. The risk and chance he takes are the risks and chances we take on ourselves. We are disordered and chaotic. We are learning and growing. We choose our eternal futures. Some of us will choose to model him, will receive ability and power, and thus achieve glory, adding it to his and giving him a source of pleasure and joy in achieving the desired outcome. Others of us will not and squander their positions, properties, and abilities, and fail to retain our own control over ourselves. The desired outcome is not achieved and sadness for us is felt in him.

This seems like a perfect spot to be in. Relinquishing no control he didn't previously have (the exercise of our will) and completely avoiding endangerment to himself (he loses nothing of his own since our free will was never his to begin with) he is able to experience all realms of emotion in his control over this amazing universe. Managing the complexity of innumerable planets of billions of his children, trillions of life forms, and uncountable interactions of matter and energy all while having the capacity to monitor and care for each one should provide a ready source of physical and mental stimulation along with all accompanying emotions to keep someone like our Heavenly Father working and doing for an eternity. To cease acting would create a loss of these emotions and so in selflessly working to produce to give us power and control, he is rewarded by us. Enough desirable emotion that he would continue to do it.

This makes him an integral part of the universe. Always maintaining the ability to cease, but in never doing so he becomes everlasting and eternal. Not even matter and packets of energy can tout these qualities and yet he is infinitely more complex than the universe and life in their entireties.

Thinking this way provided some relief to a troubled spot in my mind: What would you do with all of that time and ability after a couple of eternities have passed? I admit, I don't feel satisfied with the written explanation I've given, but it worked out better in my head an hour ago when my emotions were running stronger and before I had to sift out the rational parts that fit into simple text.

Check these guns out, I think they're broken

2010-01-25T14:15:00.000-08:00

So, I'm just gonna type for a while and see if it helps my forearms out or until the number of typos I make drives me crazy. For some reason, they've been killing me for the past weekend. No exercise, no strain, no trauma, just killer sore muscles and no grip strength. I can't even squeeze shampoo out of the bottle. I tried to open the plastic flip-up lid of sanitex wipes down in the clinic this morning and it took both hands. Typing is awkwardly dumb. What's really weird is that I feel slightly out of breath when I do try to use it. I can use my arms just fine, but fingers and grip are deadzorz. Not even numb or tingly, just weak and sore-muscle-y. I tried looking up possible causes on the internets and all i could find are serious things like cancer and auto-immune diseases that affect, like, 1 in 5 bajillion people or something. I told one of the oral surgeons about it and he tells me, "If you hear hooves, you think of horses not zebras." True that, Dr. Sachs, true that. I probably just slept on it funny. Both arms....is that like hearing stripes coming at me?

Update: My arms are now feeling fine, but it took about 6 days to go back to full normal-ness. Best theory: must've done something in my sleep (dreaming) and stressed 'em out like crazy.

Point Reyes National Seashore

2010-01-18T20:37:00.000-08:00

MLK Weekend 2010

On Saturday, Emily tells me it's up to me to decide where to go. I had some ideas but they seemed far. So we start driving north and get off the 101 in San Rafael at Sir Francis Drake Blvd, going west. This takes you scenically through San Anselmo where we stopped for Boba Tea, then through Fairfax, Samuel P Taylor State Park, and finally into Point Reyes National Seashore. It's a fairly majestic place. Feels really out there. Lots of little Bed N' Breakfasts, a few small neighborhoods, lots of restaurants and tourist centered businesses. We kept driving out to the lighthouse. Since leaving our house, we drove through redwood forests, mountainous roads, marshlands, along deep inlets, and through rolling hill grasslands that resembled windswept coastal Ireland in the overcast and gusty weather with bright green grasses, rocky outcroppings, and rough forbidding oceans and sea cliffs. And there's the 10-mile long exposed beach to one side of the point and estuary-filled Drake's Bay to the other side. If it were ever clear enough there is a straight 32-mile line of sight to our apartment, it sticks out so far.

It was worth the trek. It was breezy and overcast, but the lighthouse really is cool. There's a good climb of stairs to get down to the rocky perch where the lighthouse sits, and there's a rich history to the place that's eerie and admirable at the same time. The house clocks 2,000 hours of fog a year (the most of anywhere on the west coast by official records) and hasn't had a year without gale force winds since recording started. The stories of the old lighthouse keepers in the 1800's are amazing. It took 140lbs of coal an hour to keep the steam engines going to power the fog horns, and one year there was a 9-day solid stretch of fog. That's about 15 tons of coal. I don't even know how they got that much coal way out there.

The weather went downhill just as we were walking out. Fog, wind, and rain all rolled in just before we got to our car. We headed back through the rolling hills of the numerous historic cattle ranches still in operation and signs pointing to turn-offs for oyster farms, Elk ranches/preserves, and trails of all kinds.

BBQ oysters are the culture out there and it was tempting to try some, but at 14 bucks for half a dozen in the restaurants we decided to wait for later. We explored a few of the very small towns around Tomales Bay and headed out another way towards Petaluma and Novato before going home.

Today, we ran a few errands, including stopping by Fort Point to see the waves of the Heavy Surf Warning hitting the coast. 8-10 foot waves (out at the beach they're ~20ft or so right now) wrapping under the Golden Gate Bridge while torrential downpours flooded the streets and some sidewalks. We sat the car in the splash zone for a couple of big ones (scaring the garbage out of Leif, who was happily sucking his sippy-cup when the first one nailed the car) having a great time. We stopped by a grocery store and bought a couple of non-fresh atlantic oysters and drove out to a VERY windy Muir Beach and ate them raw at a picnic table. They were OK, but had the aftertaste of a stale tide-pool (it was all for comparison's sake, a scientific experiment of quality, if you will). Further up to Stinson Beach, Bolinas Lagoon, and back to Inverness for another try at the marginal Busy Bee Bakery. Then before we left, we had to try locally fresh barbecued oysters at a restaurant, unable to contain the curiosity. THEY WERE AMAZING!! Perhaps it was the unique mango-bourbon flavored sauce they used, but those oysters were fantastic. We understood why those-who-know (check out the pictures) drive all the way out here to buy several dozens of these bad boys right from the farm with their friends and buddies with their grills and cocktail sauces. We have to come back and do the same.

All-in-all: Highly recommend Point Reyes National Seashore. Too much to explore in one weekend, and all of what we saw was great.

Important Note!!: If you or the little ones get car-sick, it would be wise to keep lots of fresh, cool, air going through the car as well as lots of snacks and drinks in the car. We also took a few breaks from driving the windy roads to get out and run around a bit. During one of these, Grace and I snuck under a barbed-wire fence, climbed a small hill, and chased a family of black-tailed deer.

O Do Not Forsake Me

2010-01-09T14:17:00.001-08:00

This talk on longevity comes from a TED session. The talk is actually pretty identical to an article in National Geographic from a few years ago, but it's easy to listen to this guy for 20 minutes. Another great example of longevity in a community is near the beginning of Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, about Rosetan immigrants to rural Pennsylvania.

It's not me, its you

2009-12-27T22:23:00.001-08:00

Or, more accurately, it's them.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1398423.html

They Still Don't Love Us

BY FRIDA GHITIS

FJGHITIS@GMAIL.COM

If you thought America would quickly regain the world's love, admiration and -- most important -- it's willingness to follow the U.S. lead once Barack Obama came to power, the news is disappointing. A useful guide to what has transpired comes from Venezuela's president and his most peculiar sulfurometer. Hugo Chávez, it seems, can smell the Devil, especially when the Prince of Darkness takes up residence in the body of an American president.

Watching Chávez's devil-spotting shows that efforts to turn America's foes into friends will, in many cases, prove utterly useless. There is an important lesson there for everyone, including the resident of the White House.

Chávez's first supernatural sighting came at the United Nations in 2006, when the Venezuelan leader took the podium after President Bush gave a speech and announced in the solemn chamber that he could smell sulfur still hanging in the air from Bush's presence.

The air cleared up nicely after the 2008 elections. ``It doesn't smell of sulfur. It's gone,'' declared Chávez last September, scanning the grand hall of the U.N. General Assembly. ``It smells of something else,'' he added approvingly. ``It smells of hope.'' The Chávez nasal gauge confirmed expectations that America's standing in the world was changing.

But hold the celebration. All is not well. On Dec. 18, Chávez revealed the new air-quality measurements during a speech in Copenhagen's U.N. Climate Change Conference. The Venezuelan's turn at the microphone came only moments after Obama, so the airborne particles tickled his sensitive nose. ``It smells likes sulfur here,'' he said, blaming the problem, shockingly, on Obama. The ``Nobel War Prize'' winner he called him.

In summary: Devil, Hope and now Devil again. America still personifies what is wrong with the world.

How is this possible? Wasn't Obama supposed to make the world love America again? Wasn't Bush the source of all of Washington's woes?

The opinion of one man, especially the president of Venezuela, is not terribly important, but it helps illustrate the folly of believing that ``tone'' determines international behavior. Clearly, Chávez's problem is not one man. It never was. Chávez's anti-Americanism was not the result of his dislike for Bush. Some will say what matters is not the man but his policies. But even that does not tell the whole story.

Some countries and politicians have goals and interests that conflict sharply with the United States. Regardless of how the man in the Oval Office speaks, regardless of how charming he is. And some nations and leaders will define themselves by their anti-Americanism.

Still, the conciliatory tone from President Obama does serve a useful purpose. When Bush was president, it was easy to believe that people like Chávez or regimes such as Iran's acted the way they did because America spoke in tones they found offensive or overly confrontational. Now we know there was more.

Iran's defiance of international demands on its nuclear program are not the product of poor table manners from the Bush administration. Iran behaves as it does because its regime has certain objectives, and its accelerated nuclear enrichment is key to achieving goals such as regional supremacy.

During the Bush years, many believed Iran's intransigence was the direct result of Bush's threatening stance. Since Obama came to power, he has tried unsuccessfully to stop Iran from lying to the U.N.'s nuclear authorities and deceiving the world's diplomats. Iran has dismissed all efforts despite Washington's new conciliatory tone and its efforts to find a diplomatic solution.

It has become more difficult to blame America for the problem. And yet, some will continue to see the devil's shadow and blame the US no matter how much America's president scrubs his foreign policy.

In the case of Iran, America's once-reluctant allies may have learned that the problem was not Washington's tone but Iranian objectives. That may or may not persuade Russia and China to support Western nations' efforts to pressure Iran through economic sanctions. But the truly important product of the new revelations will be found not overseas but inside the White House.

If Obama thought a change of tone would make the world see things America's way, his first year in power has brought a powerful lesson: Sometimes countries disagree simply because their goals are mutually exclusive.

Foosball's the Devils Game

2009-12-24T01:19:00.001-08:00

Just a link. Short article. Interesting read.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/jeff_pearlman/12/18/pear/index.html

Dave Pearhas a message for you.

"Don't let your kids play football," he says. "Never."

It is an odd thing, hearing these sort of words from a man like David Louis Pear, University of Washington standout, Pro Bowl defensive lineman for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Super Bowl champion with the Oakland Raiders. His five-year NFL career was one thousands of high school and college athletes would envy -- charging out of a darkened stadium tunnel, 70,000 fans screaming for you, loving you, praising you, idolizing you.

"You wanna know the truth?" says Pear.

The question lingers -- the 56-year-old ex-athlete preparing to unload one more skull-splitting hit.

"I wish I never played football. I wish that more than anything. Every single day, I want to take back those years of my life ..."

The words are not subtle. They spit from Pear's mouth, with a blistering contempt normally reserved for drunk drivers. We are speaking via phone. I am in New York, sipping a hot chocolate, leaning back in a chair. My two young children are asleep. A Pretenders song, "2000 Miles," plays in the background. No worries, no complexities. Pear is sitting at his home in Seattle. His neck hurts. His hips hurt. His knees hurt. His feet hurt. When he wakes up in the morning, pain shoots through his body. When he goes to sleep at night, pain shoots through his body. What does Pear do to stay active?

"My life is simple," he says. "It's hard to get out of bed, but eventually I do. I try and do a little walking on the treadmill. I take naps. I go to physical therapy once per week. I read my Bible."

He is, in basic terms, a train wreck -- a football-inflicted train wreck. Pear walks with a cane and, often, simply doesn't walk at all. He suffers from vertigo and memory loss. Over the past 18 years, he has undergone eight surgeries, beginning with a Posterior Cervical Laminectomy on his neck in 1981, and including disc removal and rod fusion in his back (1987), arthroplasty in his left hip (2008) and, earlier this year, four screws removed from his lower back. Though he chalks up his physical ailments to snap after snap of punishment, he pinpoints the biggest problems back to 1979 and '80, his final two NFL seasons. While playing for Oakland, Pear suffered a herniated disc in his neck that never improved. Despite the unbearable agony, he says the Raiders urged him to keep playing.

Be a man! Be tough!"Those last two years in Oakland were very, very difficult times," he says. "I was in pain 24 hours per day, and my employers failed to acknowledge my injury. Sure, I won a Super Bowl ring. But was it worth giving up my health for a piece of jewelry? No way. Those diamonds have lost their luster."

Throughout North America, many of Pear's retired football brethren hear his words and scream,Amen!Conrad Dobler, the legendary Cardinals offensive lineman, is about to go through his 32nd knee surgery.Wally Chambers, the Chicago Bears' three-time Pro Bowl defensive end, spends much of his time in a wheelchair.Earl Campbell, the powder blue bowling ball, struggles to walk and underwent surgery to remove three large bone spurs. The list is both heartbreaking and never-ending -- one NFL player after another after another, debilitated either mentally, physically, or both. I'm currently working on a book that has led me to interview more than 150 former players. I'd say 60 percent experience blistering pain from a sport they last played two decades ago.

"And the NFL," Pear says, "doesn't care."

Hence, he is fighting back. Two years ago, Pear started a blog, davepear.com, with the intent of supporting hobbled NFL veterans and calling out the league's laughable disability policy. Pear says he first applied for disability benefits in 1983, and was denied. He applied again in 1995, under a new provision that stated players would be compensated should they properly prove their injuries were permanently debilitating. A league-appointed physician examined Pear and filed a report stating that a man who once bench pressed 500 pounds could no longer sit, stand or bend for prolonged time periods.

To Pear's shock and dismay, benefits were again denied.

Finally, in 2009, Pear's request was accepted, and he now receives a whopping $40,000 annually. "Am I financially stable?" he asks with a laugh. "Let's put it this way. By the time I was 27 I had two children and medical bills that would reach $500,000. I can't work, my wife,Heidi, has had to hold two and sometimes three different jobs at the same time. And why? Because the NFL hasn't allowed me and my family to receiver proper benefits."

Pear pauses. He worries that he sounds like a typical whiner -- some ex-jock who didn't appreciate making it big. "This isn't even about me," he says. "It really isn't. There are guys so much worse off than me, it's criminal. We dreamed our whole lives to play professional football, and our dreams came true. And then they turn into nightmares."

Pear is blunt, like a rusty dental knife. He consideredGene Upshaw, the former NFL Players Association executive director, to be a criminal. "He wasKen Lay," he says of the deceased Enron CEO. "Same thing -- took all the veterans he supposedly represented for a ride." He holds out hope that Upshaw's replacement,DeMaurice Smith, might make things right. "I'm keeping an open mind," he says. "I hope Mr. Smith looks at the retired players and sees the wreckage.

"We need help," he says.

A long, painful sigh.

"We need help."

Jeff Pearlman can be reached at anngold22@gmail.com.

Read more:http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/jeff_pearlman/12/18/pear/index.html#ixzz0ab2GgyFY
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Diplomacy in Action

2009-12-12T22:37:00.000-08:00

Worth posting.

Who thinks of this? Pure Genius.

Food Inc.

2009-12-06T14:57:00.000-08:00

Emily rented this from Netflix and it's been sitting in our apartment for a couple weeks (since she's been out of town). I've been really hesitant to watch it figuring that it would be exaggerated shock value. Not that it wouldn't be for a good reason or good cause, but when info gets tainted with semi-truth or one sidedness, it becomes harder to watch or support even if noble-intended.

I was surprised by the film.

The scenes of the industrialized farming weren't what surprised me. What really made an impression were the stories of corporate bullying and manipulation and seeing how deep corporate influence and control goes.

The interviews with the Joel guy from Polyface Farms were all terrific. That guy is pretty cool. It wasn't all gloomy by any means. It was pretty inspiring. In the special features theres an ABC news spot with Joel and the founder of Chipotle Restaurants.

I was impressed. I'm a fan.

Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm?

2009-11-29T21:35:00.000-08:00

Parable of the Pie

2009-11-23T00:26:00.001-08:00

My good friend from school gave this to me, his sister wrote it down as it happened to her. I really enjoyed it and thought you all might as well:

Maybe all moms have something they make especially well. For my mom, it is her apple pie. She doesn’t make it often and we all look forward to Thanksgiving because mom’s apple pie is as sure to be made on that day as the Turkey. On this particular Thanksgiving I was ten-years-old. The noon meal was a success and by evening there was just enough left-over apple pie for three pieces. Seeing this, my father took the pie to the table and called his children in to sit down. My father cut the pie into three disproportionate pieces; a piece that was an exact third of what remained, a much larger piece, and a remaining smaller piece. He put each piece on a plate and passed it out, giving me the smallest piece. My father acknowledged the pie was divided up unfairly and went on to explain, although close in age, we would grow up and have different lives, with different strengths, incomes, health, and challenges. He wanted us to be prepared for when that time came.

He turned to my eleven-year-old sister, Natalie, who had the largest piece of pie, and said, “You have a much bigger piece than either of your sisters. Don’t you want to share your pie with them?” I would like to tell you Natalie did share her pie, but she did not. Instead, she gave my father an incredulous look, smiled, and ate her pie in front of us. Do not judge my sister. She was eleven after all and probably not the best choice to give the largest piece of pie to (if hoping for a different outcome). My father then turned to my twelve-year-old sister, Marlain, who had an exact third of the remaining pie, and asked if she would like to share with her youngest sister who had less. I would like to tell you Marlain shared her pie, but she did not. She complained it was unfair to ask her to share, when it was Natalie who had the largest piece. And so, Marlain ate her pie. Again, do not judge my sister. Although she was older, she was only twelve, and in her mind, justified. I thought, “It is so unfair! Why do I always get the smallest piece of everything?” My father then turned to me – suspecting I felt jilted – and he was right. He chided me saying, “Why are you upset? You have pie. You should be happy.” He then went on to say it was probably healthier to have a smaller piece and I should be happy for my sisters because they had received more than me.

I was ten. My father’s intended lesson did not go well. No one shared. No one appeared to listen and I’m sure my father believed he had failed in his attempt to teach us. For me, it was an experience I looked back on repeatedly, and my perspective gradually shifted as I contemplated that day. For some time, I remembered it as a day of unfairness and wondered if my father even loved me, or at least, if he loved me less than my sisters who he had given a larger portion. Eventually, and long overdue, I came to a point of acceptance and reconciliation, and was able to acknowledge my father was well-intended, my sisters were young, and I forgave them.

As more time passed and I matured, what my father had predicted came true. My sisters and I did have different lives, levels of education, income, talents, and challenges. I found myself able to feel happy for others when they had more than me and compassion for them in their challenges when they had less. I was even able to roll my eyes and agree that a smaller piece of pie was ultimately healthier. There was another, more substantial benefit in having the smallest piece. Would the day have held the same significance and would I have spent as much time thinking about it if I had not received the smallest portion? Probably not. In this way, I learned to be grateful for my adversity and the impact it had on my life.

Like the pieces of pie, there are areas in life where I am disproportionately blessed, sometimes giving me a “largest” piece of pie. I would like to tell you that at these times, I always share, but it would not be true. There are times I am tempted to want more. A larger portion places me at a crossroads with an opportunity to either keep my abundance within myself or use it to help others.

There are also areas in life where I fall in the middle. Areas where some people have more and others have less. I would also like to tell you at these times I always share, but again, it would not be true. There are multiple excuses, like it is someone else’s responsibility, or someone else has a “larger piece”, or it would be a hardship – not necessarily true, but serves its purpose as an excuse. I have realized that these times also present opportunities where I am given a choice between my own self-interest and the interests of others.

There are areas of life where I believe I have the smallest portion of pie – areas where I feel I have less to offer than most. In fact, there are even areas and times where I believe I have no pie – areas where I feel entirely incompetent and unable – where I am called upon by life to build-up my own capacity, or “make my own pie”, so I have something to offer.

I learned all the lessons my father intended, albeit many years later. However, I continued to think about this day and came to realize there was an additional lesson for me to learn. At age ten and even beyond, I was so consumed with my comparatively small piece of pie, and the unfairness in how it was divided, it was decades before I realized at my same table was my father who had no pie. He had given all of it to us and had taken none for himself. What I could have done and should have done, was to share my pie with him. But because my focus was on myself and what I lacked compared to those around me, I failed to see there was someone who lacked even more right in front of me.

In reflection of this day, my understanding has grown to the point that as I think of this memory now, I think of it as “The Parable of the Pie”. It helps shape the gratitude I feel for all things in my life, so my message to you is this… It is Thanksgiving. Let’s you and I be grateful for all we have, so we are better able to recognize the needs of those around us, and share all of our pieces of pie.

Wishing You and Yours a Wonderful Thanksgiving,

Valerie Burgess

Self-Expression and Depenedence on Others

2009-10-31T23:09:00.001-07:00

Allow this post to be more personal than usual.

Emily went to bed a few minutes ago and I had just finished tweaking and printing out the ward program for her for church tomorrow. As I sat on the couch thinking about her and me and our relationship I had a revelation of sorts. Not really a revelation of anything new, but a picture of what already was made more clear to me. One of our differences is also a great strength to both of us. Emily has a stronger dependence on close friends and relatives immediately around her: Her parents, best friends, me, our kids. When she has a problem she depends on others around us for the help or the answer. Last night, her new sewing machine she just bought went funny and she couldn't get it working before bedtime. This afternoon she went to the sewing store and the saleswoman spent a good deal of time with her explaining everything Emily could soak up and more and helped her out a lot. When Emily is having emotional troubles she comes to me or her parents for help.

I'm a little different. Instead of immediately going to people for help, I go to books, guides, internet, etc for the information I want (unless the person who can help is literally in my presence AND I trust them enough to show the limits of my abilities). I had begun to think that Emily was more dependent on others and that I was somehow more independent. The silly truth is that I am just as dependent on others as anyone else could be. I depend on authors, teachers, and scholars for writing books, websites, and articles on what I want to know. For emotional trouble I've always felt I had to rely entirely on the Lord. There were a lot of lonely times as a teenager (and even into adulthood) when I had no friends but the spirit after a prayerful plea to warm my aching heart. Even as I grow, I have to depend entirely on God to ease my burdens. I know this is what we're supposed to do, but there's a strong independent side to me that wants to figure everything out on my own even though I'm not very good at it. Because of this, often the only person left to help me through my (often self-imposed) isolation is my Father in Heaven. One upside to this is that I feel I've gotten to know him very well.

As I encounter problems with my environment and with myself and my weaknesses, I've usually tried to take care of it myself first, with my own abilities and talents. I was taught about personal responsibility and self-reliance and for a long time felt that this applied to spiritual issues as well. The truth: It doesn't. I can get to a certain point, but I cannot get past it and the more I try to get past it on my own, the more often I fall back down.

What I've realized is that even most of my own ability to choose right is a gift from God. The choice is still mine, but that is literally all there is to my credit. Yes, I do the task, the action, or the work, but the ability and even motivation to take action on the choice is entirely up to him. Any righteousness others might see in me is purely a gift from God that he has bestowed on me due to choices I made. All wickedness and faults that others see in me are purely my own fault and only a tip of the iceberg because of God's tenderness in hiding most of my flaws and mistakes from others for some reason that is known only to him. My wicked choices are often even hid from myself until I am ready to tackle the choice head on, consciously. He is leading me through life exactly as he knows I should so that I can end up where he knows I want to go. I'm the one who has to learn for myself what I want and I will learn it by seeing the choices I make when they are brought to light.

One choice I made involved self-expression. Art. At one point between high school and adulthood I was faced with a solid choice presented to me. Obtain a gift for self-expression that would fit my imagination or pursue a course that was more certain to fulfill God's commandments. I knew at that moment that for me, in my place, the choice was one way or the other and I knew the likely consequences of each. Even though I ached to find some way to express everything I felt, I knew the eternal benefits of the latter and chose that. A few days after this decision I felt a certain reassurance that the choice I made would fulfil my desire for self-expression in a way I never could imagine. That by fulfilling these commandments I would be able to use every capacity, feeling, and emotion I had in a creative way that would express itself to me and to others. I see this expression forming now. A symphony and opus in its infancy.

This choice and the following reassurance were not the effects of an emotional, distraught, or fatigued mind. They were as clear as a Fall day on the coast with no clouds or haze, when mountain tops more than 50 miles away are plainly visible. The same reassurance that told me as a young missionary I would certainly see the town of Bella Coola and perform missionary work in the town of Terrace, both of which occured before returning home--an opportunity afforded to very few missionaries and an opportunity that was only decided on days before it occured. When these reassurances were physically fulfilled, fire burned inside me as I was reminded of what I'd been told by the Spirit 8 months previously in a dark damp apartment in Vancouver.

In this same way I am reminded now of what I was told 8 years ago about how I would be able to express myself beyond my imagination through the same certain aspect of my life promised so long ago. This makes me happy.

Ahem

2009-10-18T22:03:00.000-07:00

Just got this one from a friend. If you haven't been to visit us yet, here's some peer pressure to move you along. An open vote by a travel magazine/website has placed San Francisco as the best city in the US to visit for the ....wait for it..... 17th year in a row. We're totally cool with visitors, so if you wanna stop by even for just a weekend, we'd be happy to see you and show you around. Even if you don't like us, at least use us for a free place to stay and come look around on your own or something. We're not going to be here THAT much longer. We've already had lots of visitors, ask them if they liked it. Bring the kiddos too.

P.S. If you stumbled on this from the webs and don't know us and we don't know you, sorry, this offer's good for non-strangers only.

Fog, fog, fog, fog, fog, fog, fog, fog, fog,

2009-10-16T23:14:00.000-07:00

I need to come up with more words to my favorite song (see the title above), which is about my favorite characteristic of this city.

I think people complain about the fog, because they feel like they're supposed to or something. Seriously, this stuff is the best! I tried to find statistics about the foggiest city in the US and ended with somewhere in Virginia winning at 116 days vs. San Francisco's average 106 or whatever. Nonsense! If Baker Beach or the passage into the bay (the Golden Gate) were a city, it would CRUSHHH (with a monstrous Skeletor sounding CRUSSSSHHHH) Charlestown's or whatever-lame-names-city, VA's record.

Take for example, the last day of class last quarter, end of September. Sunny day. I can deal with it, but big deal. I ride the nearly straight line home, not a hint of cloud in the sky anywhere. As I come up to the last few blocks of Lake before I turn up the hill into the Presidio at 15th, I note the vapor coming over into the street several blocks ahead. Ahah! I turn up the hill, past the under-construction former hospital which is half enshrouded with visibly hanging curtains of mist. Halfway up the hill, at the dirt-road back entrance to the Baker Beach housing I plunge into the cloud and enjoy a cool gray bath riding down the hill, invigorated and excited to be home.

Another example, Wednesday of this week, I'm waiting for Emily to pick me up at school (it was raining that morning so she gave me a ride). The sun is glaringly bright and at the level of sight where it's just constantly in your eyes. OBNOXIOUS! We get a couple hot chocolates at Bittersweet on Fillmore just below the school and head home. I ask her to drive my bike-route home. Again, on Lake heading west along the bottom edge of the Presidio is a low-lying cloud just above the tops of the 3-story homes. We both heave a sigh of relief and start filling our lungs with cool fresh mist as we escape from the sun in the fresh cool grayness. So nice.

Right now the fog horns on the GG Bridge are playing their song and there's no other noise to speak of.

If there were still Native Americans around here, I'd guess they'd have, like, 150 different words for the various fogs that hit this city. Fogs with clear underneath, low-lying fogs very localized, the stream of fog that goes through the Golden Gate, the massive Tsunami-type fog that takes over the entire city, the Niagara Falls type fog that literally pours down the east side of the Marin Headlands next to the gate, and the windy fog that blows across the street 10 feet in front of you at 20-30 mph or just over your arm's reach as it charges up the hill. I tell Emily, I could live here in this neighborhood forever, half of it just to enjoy the fog and views of the Gate. The only downside is that while it's perfectly cool temperatures of mid 60's and overcast at our place, it's 80 degrees everywhere else. It's like going in and out of a cave (which is really why I like it so much, who needs shelter from this?)

Enough boring talking, here's more pictures and a video for you to look at. I stole all these from elsewhere on the internet.

Looking south. Our apartment is just to the right of the second tower.

This is one of the massive Tsunami fogs engulfing the city from the ocean. The bridge is just in the center right. There is a city somewhere under that blanket.

This is the weird one. The bridge/gate is just out of the picture to the lower left (the source of the band of clouds). The Marin Headlands and the Presidio act like a funnel squeezing fog through the narrow Golden Gate.

Pretty fog, great for pictures and posters. At the water surface, I guarantee the visibility on the right side of the picture is not more than 100 feet, yet the top of the fog is below the deck of the bridge (just 200 feet off the water)

I spent all of 5 minutes making this highly technical map for the geographically challenged. For perspective, my bike ride from Baker Beach to school is exactly 3 miles, 1-2 blocks off of California St. Note that the fog is thicker at Baker Beach, because it really is. That map is more accurate than NASA's best satellites. If you can't read the text, left to right the white labels read: Marin Headlands, Baker Beach, Golden Gate, School, Downtown (stupid MSPaint, stupid Blogger...)

The video's not terribly exciting, it's actually boring, but it's short and shows how localized the fog is around the bridge and the Presdio (if you didn't see the Presdio in the video, there's a good reason!). At about 35 seconds you can see downtown crystal-clear while the west side of the city is swamped in with delicious pea-soup. A delightful place to be!

Drugs

2009-10-13T12:28:00.000-07:00

Sounds like withdrawal symptoms. A very telling article.

This is just cool

2009-09-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

(title unknown part 2)

2009-09-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

Yeah, there was no title last time, I was just being lazy.

Here's one more video.

We'd heard about this idea that was going to be tried out, but I'll confess I didn't know they had started using it already. "Access to care" is something we hear about a lot and this quarter we started our Pediatric Dentistry class. Nationally 80% of tooth problems occur within 20% of the population. Here in California, 40% of kids will have at least one cavity by the time they're 5, and 50% will have a cavity by the time they're 6. Not a statistic any dentist at the school is proud of. The goal is to prevent this from happening and try to help the (usually) underserved/undereducated/lower socioeconomic families take care of their teeth before problems happen. If teeth need to be pulled early because of severe decay, that causes problems in the permanent teeth growing in, which leads to more decay, which leads to those people losing their teeth at an earlier than average age. The goal is to help people keep their teeth their whole life.

Near the end of last year, a professor gave a great lecture on Animal dentitions. He had a collection of various animal skulls and went through a lecture of various animals and animal types and the teeth they have and what they're used for. One point he emphasized was that if animals don't have teeth, they die. And even most who die (aside from being eaten) with their teeth, die due to a tooth infection/abscess. Especially herbivores. He had the skull of a gorilla who died from a tooth abscess and passed it around. There were actually multiple abscesses, but only one was really big and made a hole deep into the center of the skull and got into the large veins there and blood stream. Crazy.

Fortunately we can pull teeth out or fill them or crown them, or replace them, sort of, but that's not so fun. Nothing is as good as real tooth.

Moral of the non-story: Take care of your teeth, and help your kids take care of their teeth. Recommendations from the Pediatric dental association: Have an exam on your kids just after their first teeth come in, and have a "dental home" for them by the time they're a year old. Easier said than done, I know. Grace has seen a dentist once in her life about 6 months ago and she's almost 4, but Em or I brush her teeth every night as part of her bedtime ritual.

Part of a table that I'll be tested on tomorrow for the "Pedo" Final is about flouride for kids. Ideal is about 1 part per million in drinking water for a mostly topical effect to help keep teeth from dissolving/decaying. Since our water is fluoridated to that level, we don't need to use a fluoride toothpaste for Grace while she's this young, especially since she gets good care of her teeth. Kids that don't get fluoride in their water and help taking care of their teeth, fluoride supplements are recommended up to .25mg day for under 3 years old, up to .5mg/day for up to 6, and up to 1mg/day up to 16.

Look at that, I must be ready for the final (except that I had to look those numbers up just now...)

2009-09-21T22:38:00.000-07:00

A couple of videos for your enjoyment. (Edit: Seems like the first one didn't show in Google Reader. The video can be watched Right Here but I've switched it to the youtube version)

My favorite part is the "pirates" line.

Make sure you catch the last few seconds of that second one.

Extra Edit: Found this one on facebook. Check out

Camarillo, California Slideshow Tribute from Memory Makerz on Vimeo.

There's an extra special little picture thrown in at 4:48 that many of you will appreciate. I'm not sure who sponsored this to be made, but I've got a strong suspicion its the family that appears near the beginning. There's also a Facebook page for Camarillo with some good pictures and stuff.

Tidbits

2009-09-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

Randomness:

Exposure to cold is a really good way to increase thyroid activity and metabolism for up to 48 hours.

There are 2 types of fat cells in all mammals: White and Brown. White is typical energy storage and makes up the vast majority of human fat. Brown fat is reserved purely for heat-production and is what hibernating mammals live off. Humans can be induced to make and use more of it by exposure to cold, but it seems to be limited to about 500 calories or so, which translates to much less than a pound of body fat. The molecular mechanism for the difference is REALLY REALLY cool, but I'll save it for another time.

Growth hormone release is triggered by: sleep, starvation, low blood-sugar, and stress, among other things. Apparently your body gets prepped to use and store whatever nutrition/energy/mass it can get its hands on when your caloric intake isn't high enough to maintain your body weight and complains to you whenever that's the case.

We just noticed that as well as Grace speaks, she can't/won't say the "th" sound. We started practicing during her bedtime stories at night. She thinks it's funny. It's apparently also normal to pick it up between 4-7 years old. She loves her preschool lesson book that Em and her work on together and keeps asking Emily when she gets to go to school. She's also very conscious of when other kids are sad and tries to be their friend.

Leif is starting to army-crawl around the floor. He also knows what balls are for. A few days ago at a toy store, he kept reaching for a bin of bouncy balls. I handed him one totally expecting it to go straight to his mouth since EVERYTHING else does, but instead he throws it and laughs his head off when it bounces. Over and over again he does this. He also moves his hands (not his arms, just his hands) like crazy whenever he's excited, like an orchestra conductor. His hair still has an orange tint to it, and we love noting the similarities and differences between him and what Grace was like at that age. He definitely loves food much more.

The "humoral defense" or antibody response of our immune systems is absolutely crazily fantastic. The cell-mediated and innate-immune defense is pretty cool too, but the whole idea of antibodies is way-out-there awesomeness.

Speaking of antibodies, one reason why a vaccine against bacteria that cause dental cavities (streptococcus mutans) isn't used is because antibodies against the strep bacteria attach to heart muscle proteins and cause problems there. Weird.

I found this interview of Darren Aronofsky talking about the interplay of science and spirituality he portrays in one of my favorite movies, "The Fountain". Anyone familiar with the story of the Garden of Eden might pick out the reference in the first picture (from the movie) of the "cherubim and a flaming sword" guarding the way of the tree of life. I really enjoyed the interview and thought it is the glimpse into his thoughts and aspects of the movie which make the movie really great, which every other review or synopsis of the movie totally misses.

As residents of the Presidio we got invited to be among the first previewers to the brand new "Walt Disney Family Museum" over at the Main Post here in the Presidio (for Free!). It's a museum of Walt Disney's life. It was incredible, and we didn't even get to read half of the stuff throughout the museum due to having Grace and Leif with us. We spent over two hours in the gallery, mostly just looking at the pictures and watching video clips. Really amazing. The end of the gallery concludes with descriptions of his final days and death and collected tributes to the man. Made both of us want to cry. The museum opens to the public October 1st and will have a small cafe, store, and movie theater (which will show classic Disney films). Grace is begging us to go to Disneyland now.

I have poison oak on my hand. Probably from my shoe from picking blackberries. There's a nice stripe of bumpy itchy rash (also known as contact dermatitis, or type-iv/delayed hypersensitivity reaction, for those of you so inclined. No antibodies involved in this one).

I started playing Farmville on Facebook at the request of a classmate and somehow got hooked. Now I spend at least 10-15 minutes each evening managing this dumb farm.

Em and I went to the California Dental Association convention downtown with the kids last week and walked around the exhibit floors. The name tag they gave me had my name and the title of "Dentist" on it, not "Student". Some classmates there were excited thinking that they'd get treated with more respect. It was funny getting addressed with "How are you doing today, Doctor?", "Doctor, would you like to participate in our special offer today?" "Where is your practice located, Doctor?" Weird. It was REALLY nice being able to tell them I was a student and not interested in buying anything right now, but just there to get ideas. Instantly made the pushy sales-people back off while the really nice ones weren't phased and still pleasant to talk to and eager to demonstrate their products without a commitment to sell. I told Emily, next time we go, we'll switch badges so she can be the dentist and I can be the "guest" and see what happens. We also surprisingly ran into a really good family friend and neighbor of my parents who was working at the Oral-B/Crest exhibit, Kevin Malan. It was fun seeing him.

Wow

2009-09-18T00:36:00.001-07:00

At school, healthcare reform comes up a lot lately, and Emily has taken up listening to talk radio in the car instead of the same 10 songs played over and over by every radio station. This has sparked a fair bit of political thinking in my brain. Today, 5 of us sat around a table at lunch and discussed various possibilities, advantages, and disadvantages of various ideas being discussed in the government committees and why or why not they should be adopted. It was a pretty good discussion, I enjoyed it much. Last night, Emily and I tried to figure out what was more important, education or health, since the government provides a certain level of education to anyone of any income that ranks highly among all countries and noone thinks twice about it. We don't know the answer and I brought it up at lunch today without getting a satisfying answer from anyone either.

On digg this evening, a link to a video clip of Bill O'Reilly supporting the public option had this very well written post as the first published comment responding to the video. Very much worth thinking about and strongly considering. No, this doesn't mean I'm a communist or socialist or even left-leaning. It's a satirical comment that drives a VERY strong point about the success of our government in dealing with various institutions. I'll stop talking and just let you read for yourself.

"I am a conservative.
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level
determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its
valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right."

The final comments concluding our discussion at lunch today involved the unique structure of our government that prohibits any one party, entity, or person from obtaining a control of power; how political movement and debate occurs slowly and independent of short-term passions; that this is all by design by the founding fathers and adjusted by direct and indirect influence of majorities of people in this rather large country seeking to get along and stay unified; and that the whole thing works pretty good.

If it comforts anyone, I am not afraid of what the future holds for this country. Actually, I am pretty hopeful on the whole.

Plotical

2009-09-07T22:39:00.000-07:00

I'm risking writing this later in the evening. My senses may not be complete and my judgement may be impaired. Plus, I should be studying (like always).

I've heard/read that the planned optional speech from President Obama to school children across the country planned for tomorrow is causing a stir. I hope anybody who is paranoid of a speech from the President of the United States to kids actually takes the time to read the speech, which is HERE for anyone to read beforehand. As a kid I would have been pretty excited to hear a speech from the President of the United States, especially if he took the time to speak directly to kids. I probably wouldn't have remembered what he was saying even as he spoke it (listening is not a strength of mine), but I would have enjoyed the experience anyways.

It is an excellent speech and most kids who listen to it will probably zone out in the first 30 seconds, because it is pretty innocuous and contains nothing new or revolutionary or even political.

I highly encourage anyone to look at facts and entire pictures from primary sources (information directly from a witness of the event) and not through second, third, or fourth party sources who tend to filter what they present to viewers and listeners as it suits their purposes. With so much information so readily available through the internet, it is becoming EXTREMELY easy to verify whether information is legitimate and I personally am becoming mistrustful of any second or third party provider of news without checking from multiple sources.

A good rule of thumb: If it makes you angry, afraid, or excited, it's probably not an entire picture of the situation and worth double- or triple-checking elsewhere. Real life and real politics are pretty boring 99% of the time. The other 1% involves the start of wars, major natural disasters, and emotional outbursts of public figures (which we look at and shake our heads in shame over, oblivious to our own outbursts and flaws simply because they are not broadcast onto a TV screen or news site, which we would likely mistrust as prejudiced, biased, or *direction*-leaning if it made us look bad anyways).

I actually enjoy most of President Obama's special-event speeches. Whoever writes them does an excellent job and I find very little to disagree with them since most are based on good broad principles which can inspire the vast majority of us to live up to and not usually on specific policies. I wish I was getting a break in class lectures to enjoy an excitingly unusual speech from the President of the United States of America (whatever his name or party is). I also enjoy his pictorial and metaphorical style, even though it's misconstrued and misunderstood by many.

I know many of you might get perturbed by the political views of this cartoon, but I find it timely and funny anyways.

Ramshackle

2009-08-30T20:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning I participated in one of the most amazing instances of a family moving ever. This family with 3 kids lived down in the Marina district, 3 blocks from the Palace of Fine Arts, on the 3 story (4 flights up due to the lobby), with a small twisty staircase and no elevator. They had a good amount of stuff in their decently sized apartment. Two things made this move so amazing: (1) Everything that could be packed was packed, and (2) 18 guys were there to help move, almost entirely from the ward (included 4 missionaries). After several teams-o-four muscled the large furniture down the stairs, an assembly line formed and for 20 minutes we shuffled boxes and items down to the lobby and carport. In 20 minutes we had the apartment completely empty with no one stepping more than a couple steps. Then some guys slowly trickled away munching on the last of the donuts and waters as father and father-in-law played tetris in the moving van making sure it all fit. Amazingly it all fit, every last bit, just barely. So within 2 hours (only 40 minutes of actual lifting and hard labor) the moving truck, the largest they were able to rent, was full to the brim. Amazing.

Among the topics of conversation that came up were the fact that our son Leif, will now be the only Leif in the congregation and will no longer have to compete for rarity of his moniker. Also, that I looked like a certain celebrity. Before I reveal who that celebrity is, I'll share the history of which celebrities I've been compared to throughout my life. It doesn't happen often so it should be short.

First, I gotten this one a couple of times from very different people:

This kid in junior high used to tell me I had an "evil" smile, regularly. It would make me laugh. A sinisterly evil laugh. One of the people who told me I looked like the Grinch also wrote about me that I was "a sweet missionary with a gleam of mischief in his eye."

Then I got this one from multiple people as well:

That's the best-looking picture of Kevin Bacon I could find (not bad, I must say, for Kevin Bacon). For 4 months, this Chinese woman in Vancouver with an obnoxiously high pitched, heavily accented voice called me nothing but "Eldah Bacon!!!" "Hahaha, you so funny Elder Bacon!"

Somewhere in the mix one person told me I look like Toby Maguire and one other person told me I look like Matt Damon.

When I'd mention these one-time comparisons to others, no one was able to see the resemblance, and thus I was relegated to losing the only comparisons that I would have taken as compliments.

Then yesterday, the guy moving, Jared, says he and another church member decided that I resembled the grown-up version of this kid:

They were pretty adamant about the comparison, too. Good thing we all have senses of humor......

Picturezilla!

2009-08-23T23:14:00.001-07:00

Here's some select pictures from this summer. And yes, I do put some thought into the titles and descriptions so don't go lazy on me not checking out the actual photostream ;-) Or you can do the full-screen slideshow with the "Show Info" option to get the title and captions.

In case you didn't notice, its not very summery here in San Francisco. It's more like wintery. I'm a fan in case you haven't heard me tout the wonders of the weather here. Only on rare occasion would I like to sit out on the sand in the sun, but then I think of the skin cancer that's rampant in my family and I smarten up with that thought and go surfing in a full wetsuit in 50 degree oceans like a normal person.

P.S. If anyone knows which HTML to mess with to kick this slideshow over to the center of the page, I'd be much obliged, I'm far too lazy and tired right now to dink around with it.

Part of the Food Chain

2009-08-20T21:44:00.000-07:00

I know I don't post enough pictures on here for my family to enjoy, but when I get on here it's too spur of the moment and the camera's not around, plus I'm not in any of the pictures and most of them are boring stuff like scenery or me taking 50 pictures with different settings trying to figure out how to take awesomely stellar pictures like I wish I could take. Despite the 14MP boastings of the camera, there's still a fair bit of camera noise in the pictures.

To keep myself occupied, I'm putting off studying. There's a test Monday on General Pathology. Instead, I'm on here writing about my surfing adventures lately. The scoop goes like so:

I learned to surf at the end of high school on slow mushy point break waves in Ventura using nice big long boards. Those are nice. Very chill with lots of fun potential from actually riding a wave. Here in San Francisco, the surf scene is pretty different. The only true point break within a half hour drive is actually directly under the Golden Gate Bridge and being that it's back inside the inlet, it only breaks when the swell comes from the west and BIG. Ocean Beach fills up the entire west side of the city and it's what most SF surfers call their home break. And it's rough calling it your home break. All summer long it's windy, cold, foggy, no ground swell with 5 ft wind chop, and it's a shifty beach break that's super inconsistent and unpredictable. I stopped checking the Surfline forecast because there's little difference between "Fair" and "Poor." Maybe to SFers, a fair day is a day they can actually paddle out to the lineup. That's my criteria for a Fair day.

Since Emily's out of town, I've gone surfing more in the last week than I did the whole first year of school. Free time is characteristic of UOP's first part of the second year. Free time means school from 8-5 most days without having to worry about much homework or tests afterwards.

My surfing is improving. I finally know what a shortboard feels like under my feet, and it's pretty impressive. It goes from barely floating to zoom rocket sled that responds to every little tilt and lean. Yesterday and today's evenings I went out to Ocean Beach and stood up for a second or so a few times and for a couple seconds once each. It's slow going, I know, but I can see improvement every day.

Aside from the thrill of actually riding a wave, the equally coolest part of surfing is being on/in the water. It's pretty spiritual at times, either from enjoying the calm between sets or praying for my life in the stormy rough seas. Either way, most prayers get answered and even being out is an answer to many prayers. Humbling, also, is the fact that the ocean really is a great big wilderness that scares the noodles out half the people on this planet.

I got weirded out yesterday. Pelicans were diving for fish when I paddled out and that's always fun to see, but it hints that there's a lot of food in the water. When one pelican dives not 20 feet away from me, that's pretty unique. Then it just sits there staring at me. Staring. So I splashed it, grumbled at it, and ignored it. Then I see a sea-lion between me and the shore. A little more weird. Then I see a fin in the water. Split second of panic until I realize it's a dolphin fin. About 5-6 of em just about 50 feet in front of me. Cool, means no sharks. 'Scept they were just passing through.

So I ride the conveyor belt current to the cove at the end of the beach trying my luck at the waves, get out, walk back to my start point and get in again. More pelicans, all around. LOTS! Then a wave's coming at me and out of the face jumps a small sea lion, full out of the water about 20-30 feet away. This is the final draw and since evening was coming, no dophins in a while, and starting to get cold, I call it a session.

Tonight I go out with a friend and same thing happens. Pelicans, sea lions, dolphins make their hello-goodbye, take the current north, and get out. Not nearly so weird the second time. Except my friend says he keeps hitting the jellies so common to Ocean Beach as he's paddling. I can't feel them cuz my gloves but he says he keeps bumpin them. No dangerous, no stings, but still weird.

The only source of comfort about hanging out in the middle of the food web just off-shore is the simple fact that shark attacks are Extremely rare along the whole 3 miles of ocean beach. Marin to the north, Monterey to the south, and San Francisco's Farillon Islands make the Red Triangle of Great White attacks in North America, but most of the sightings happen at the points of the triangle and Ocean Beach rarely sees the action. Good news for surfing. When Emily gets back she's going to have one ripped husband. Ka-Ching!

We've reached Critical Mass

2009-08-12T21:13:00.001-07:00

So, I was gonna come home and tell you all about the cool sinus-lift and implant placement I watched this morning, or about going swimming at one of the city pools until my legs cramped up and then watching classmates play "sloshball" in the field right next to the pool (kickball where all players must play with an open can of beer in one hand) as part of the opening social to the kickball league they joined, or the most incredibly amazing sunset I stopped to watch on the way home (seriously, it was the most amazing sunset I've ever seen). But all that seems trite compared to what I just witnessed taking place on the internets.

Digg.com is a website where people vote on various internet things: Videos, news, pictures, stories, etc. Stuff that's getting lots of diggs moves up to the top of the list and ends up on the front page of Digg.com. It's got all sorts of weirdness and is probably one of the nerdiest, geekiest, funniest, meanest, mobocracies ever invented. It gets pretty crazy and might just well be a solid representation of who's actually out here on the internet the most and what they're doing.

One of the best things about it is that people can comment on the stories and even the comments can get diggs, up or down. There's a strong set of unspoken social rules that fall into place on sites like this and although I understand them enough to get what's going on, I usually keep my comments to myself cuz, I'm just not that funny and can't really contribute to the conversation well enough, but it sure is a blast to watch.

Tonight, someone put up a picture of a car that has the license plate "9 Diggs" on it and who ever posted it encouraged the crowd that this guy should get more than just 9 diggs (to get on the front page often requires several hundred to a few thousand). Good comments at the top of the comment list often hit 2-300 diggs. If it's a REALLY good pun on the story or something super appropriate, I've seen over a thousand diggs on the comment.

Tonight was the strangest anomaly I've ever seen. The picture has gotten over 4,500 diggs, but somehow, every comment got dugg up to 9. exactly. Someone started a trend, and everyone else hopped onto it. There's over 800 comments (typical is 50-100) and for a little bit, the first 60 had exactly 9 diggs and all the replies had 9 diggs, and all the replies to the replies had 9 diggs. Except for one guy who randomly said something and someone replied that he should get -9 diggs, then all of a sudden he had a lot more than -9, then someone suggested he should get -999 and everyone started working towards that and when I saw it he had -1016 and I'm sure there were a hundred people out there digging him up and down to get to -999.

The amazing thing to all this isn't the 9 diggs, but the fact that this mob, with no leadership, no organization, full of geeky anarchists and social deviants, managed to pull off this stunt without any real initiative, push, or direction. It just HAPPENED. And it wasn't perfect, some joker starts trying to throw the whole thing off by putting in his own diggs and then everyone tries to restore it and it has to settle back into "proper" form of uniform 9's. But a form took shape and the majority of the universe stuck with it, apparently randomly. The only loyalty to anything, or force that would accomplish this is a loosely held enjoyment of a good joke.

This is the kind of "spontaneous combustion" stuff that scientists scoff at due to the natural laws of disorder, chaos, and entropy. Now if it turns out there's some mastermind behind the scenes secretly guiding all this, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised, but without any hint at such, we have to assume that this just HAPPENED. I think its fantastically amazing and laughed for 5 minutes straight just seeing how long the joke went on, and on, and on, and on. I've been refreshing the page for 20 minutes just watching this play out and still laugh that it happened.

I guess if you want to laugh too, but don't really find this that funny, I'll just say: You had to be there.

The 9's had made it all the way to the end when I finally got there and threw my 2-bits in except for the last about, 9, or so (actually it was 11) and those were probably just too new to get up there yet. It's like an internets party or something. (I seriously need more of a life, like playing sloshball or something).

The Anti-blood-doper

2009-08-11T18:03:00.000-07:00

I like a good challenge and while I may not appear very competitive, certain things get me going. School is a good challenge. Taking care of my family is a good challenge. Getting gold medals on G. Wars for the Wii is a challenge. And anytime some other person on a bike passes me on my way to or from school, THAT'S a straight up challenge and it is always good fun passing them or respectfully calling off my pursuit (which, in the rare time it happens, goes unknown to the challenger). There's one guy on a mountain bike with rear saddle bags covered in a yellow plastic poncho that is FAST. I've only seen him once, but he blew by me at an intersection and try as I might, the gap just got bigger. He's passed my friend and classmate, Lance, a couple times, to his frustration. There's some other guy I've seen ahead of me that I could never catch up to, but our paths are only the same for a few blocks.

Fixie riders aren't even a challenge, although they'd like to be. They try, but nope. Today I took it slow on the way home because I donated a double-count of blood. Normally you donate a pint, but most places also have a machine that filters out the blood cells and puts your plasma with some saline solution back in you. You lose no volume of blood, but you've lost 2 pints worth (not 2 pints) of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. I did that at school today, so I rode a slower pace home with Lance. Within a block, some chump on a fixie (with no helmet, like he's so cool and metro on his fixie that a helmet would cramp his style) passes by pedaling fast. I watch him tackle the first block up the hill on Sacramento St. and forget about it. We chug along, and up the second block, there he is WALKING his bike. Lolzorz. If only he knew that I don't change gears up that hill either, that would have made him feel really dumb! (If you can't tell, I'm trying to be funny......sort of LOL).

Having not lost any blood volume, I'm not worried about passing out or fainting, but I figured there's less oxygen getting to the muscles, so I'll get tired more easily. Woof. By the top of the neighborhood, my heart was burning and I was struggling for air and I didn't even go that fast. It was pretty cool actually. Lance pointed out it's like the opposite of blood-doping, where athletes illegally inject red blood cells into their veins to temporarily get more oxygen-carrying power. It also makes your blood thicker and your heart work harder to pump it all. Guys that do that are sissies. Real men take the RBC's OUT and do the same work, just purely for the challenge!

Here's some bike related pictures. I broke the big chainring on my bike a few weeks ago, the same way I broke the last one, but instead of bending, it snapped almost clean off. At the same intersection, too. Eerie, or I'm just CRAZY STRONG!!!!! They're not all bike related, but I like em anyways.

Nostalgia Tuesday

2009-08-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

For a month I haven't been able to decide what to put on here, until today. After studying some general pathology I got inspired to look up a song I used to have in my old mp3 collection (which got lost when my old laptop died the first time). Here's you go for your enjoyments.

Movies

2009-06-30T23:16:00.000-07:00

I was gonna put some sort of cool-sounding clever title, but I realized that'd be really cheesy and stereotypical for a blog, so I ditched the idea.

Em and I talked a while back about getting basic cable for our apartment. We only were paying for internet and DVD collection, and Emily and Grace were getting bored with the selection during the daytime (or Emily was getting bored of Grace's collection). We settled on a Netflix Account with two DVDs at a time plus all their online movies. It's been pretty good. Works well for all of us. With Hulu still hanging on with free watching, we're pretty set. And Netflix exposes us to all sorts of movies we've forgotten about or would never consider watching. Plus they have tons of Nick Jr and PBS kids shows on there for Grace to watch.

Here's my quick reviews of some of what we've watched lately:

Empire of the Sun- Christian Bale's first movie and he's a semi-pubescent teenager playing an English brat living in English neighborhoods in WWII China and getting separated from his parents and living in internment camps, etc. Cool, historical fiction but ends kinda weird and abrupt.

The Jane Austen Book Club-fun romantic movie. I'd probably get more out of it if I knew Northanger Abbey and the other one book they focus on but can't think of the title right now. Emily and I are in agreement that Grigg makes us both think of me, at least in personality. It's weird, but I dig it. Doesn't happen often where you see someone on screen that reminds you of yourself.

Step Up 2: The Streets-mostly cool with some cool dancing, mostly B-Boy crew type stuff, and contrived unbelievable ending. A large number of the cooler dance moves were Michael Jackson type moves, and it works well (the guy could move, more people should copy him). The main character reminds me a great deal of my youngest sister.

Speed Racer-this movie's just friggin' cool. Light-hearted, purposefully fun, bright eye-catching and appealing cinemotography and effects, with an amazing amount of extremely well-thought-out detail thrown into the more subtle aspects that make it awesome to watch. Like the side panels of the race course that turn into animations when the view points sideways, or the amazingly mind-blowing maneuvers Speed pulls off in the car that obviously required some genius choreography just to think of. It's like watching a full-on kung fu fight, but wait, they're in cars!

Beyond the Gates of Splendor-documentary about 5 American Christian missionaries living in the Amazon who get killed by a remote violent tribe in the 1950's and how their wives and kids end up teaching the tribe about the Bible, living with the tribe, and becoming family to this clan that had killed their husbands and fathers. Pretty cool. The documentary takes some work to follow the style of storytelling and for some reason it's listed as being 90 minutes long but was really only 40.

Peter and the Wolf-modern day, stop-motion, version of the story with the very familiar score and music. Won an oscar for best animated film. Only 30 minutes. Excellent, highly recommended. Not as kid friendly as the old Disney cartoon version. Grace and I watched both together and she very much liked the cartoon better.

Empire Records-I guiltily admit this was a really fun movie to watch. Deals with lots of teenage-high school-coming of age-figuring life out-having a good time stuff centered on the employees of a record store the day before it is going to be sold to a large chain franchise. It very much deserves its PG-13 rating, but is typical of what I remember about high school (or what I remember everyone else going through during high school).

Forever Strong-about Highland, UT Highland High School multi-championship rugby team. Em and I really liked it. Definitely worth a watch. A troubled rugby-player from Flagstaff gets sent to a juvenile detention center in Salt Lake, and gets a chance to practice with the Highland rugby team. He learns the "secrets" to their success and changes his own life to match his teammates before getting sent back home and having to take what he learned with him to permanently change his life for the better.

And to reward the patient few who read this far, here's a couple of pics for your trouble. One is of me learning to give local anesthesia on a classmate, the other I found on the web and thought it was a major WIN.

Slackin off

2009-06-23T14:56:00.001-07:00

I've been on break from school since the 11th and loving it. For the first time in a long time, we don't have to travel anywhere or are required to do anything, so we're enjoying our time not planning anything and playing it all by ear. Emily wants to throw a birthday party for me down at my parent's but we can't even work up the motivation to commit to that. We've been spending lots of time as a family and I'm enjoying some exercise outside of my daily to-school bike rides.

The 4 of us just got back from Baker Beach, Grace and I are watching Sleeping Beauty, I'm starting studying for the NBDE (dental student board exams) that I'll probably take early December, I've gone for a few bike rides and short swims down at the aquatic park, and this morning I braved it up to try surfing Ocean Beach again. After 40 minutes of paddling my arms off, I still hadn't made it to line up. Almost did once, just coming up on the last green glassy shoulder-high breakers after spending 30 minutes in the water, when a nice big one builds right in front of me and a surfer I didn't even know was in the water (didn't have my glasses on) zooms right down its face in front of me (Show Off) and the wave breaks pushing me back into the foamy water. I tried a little longer before giving up. Still the weather and the water was nice and that's the closest I've been to truly surfing Ocean Beach the few times I've tried. Maybe with some more strength and swimming I can get my arms up to the task when there's actual waves (there's way too much mush most the time). Surfline's "Bicep Burn" rating for surf spots defines a 10 as 15' Ocean Beach

Here's what else Surfline has to say about Ocean Beach:

It's a nice drive from Fort Point to Ocean Beach: along Baker Beach (no surf), past the ritzy Seacliff neighborhood (Robin Williams lives in here somewhere) through the Presidio, along a nice golf course with a million-dollar view of the Golden Gate and the Marin Headlands, left at the Palace of the Legion of Honor and out into the civilized world. Down Geary Street to Cliff House, the civilized world ends and the natural world begins, dramatically. Turn a corner and -- pow! -- there's the Pacific Ocean in all its glory.

That turn at Ocean Beach is always dramatic because, to steal a phrase from Forrest Gump, Ocean Beach is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. Ocean Beach is the most emotional stretch of beach in all of California, and perhaps the world, because it's located dead center in the middle of California, and it's open to every burble and bellow from the north and the south. The winds are dynamic, but the real factor is the tide. All that water moving in and out of the Golden Gate sweeps up and down Ocean Beach with enough force to dislocate swell and shift sandbars from hour to hour. Ocean Beach has many, many moods, from the manic ecstasy of clear, blue offshore fall days to the gloom and doom of stormy winter, windy spring and gray summer. There is no stretch of ocean in California that changes as much from hour to hour, day to day and season to season as Ocean Beach.

When Ocean Beach is on, you will see three miles of shifting, meaty, dark-green offshore peaks, from head-high to triple-overhead, cannonading the surf zone from south, west and north. A perfect day at Ocean Beach can be a mind-boggling sight, a mile after mile of perfect surf, with scattered humans doing their best to paddle through the impact zone, make it out the back and catch one of the buggers.

On a lot of days at Ocean Beach, just getting out can be a major accomplishment. Depending on swell and tide and sandbar, on many days there is a 200-yard "zone of death" in between the beach and the lineup. It can be as hard to get off the beach and out to sea for a surfer as it was for a marine to get from sea to shore on the beaches of Normandy. It takes knowledge, skill, strength and courage, but the deciding factor on a lot of days is still dumb luck.

Make it outside, and there are rewards, but your troubles aren't necessarily over. A good day at Ocean Beach is as good as any beachbreak in the world, but the good peaks here have a maddening quality of always being 50 yards away from where you're sitting. Even good surfers who surf the place all the time will get skunked, catching maybe one or two waves an hour, while paddling back and forth, trying to hunt down the big, shifting beasts.

Ocean Beach is bordered by Kelly's Cove on the north end and Sloat Street on the south end. In between are three miles of beachbreaks, which become emptier and lonelier from north to south. There is lots parking from Kelly's Cove down to VFW's in front of Golden Gate Park. At Lincoln Avenue, the parking lot ends, the dunes begin and the streets become alphabetical, beginning at Irving and running all the way to Wawona. You have to park along La Playa or Great Highway the Lesser to walk across Great Highway the Greater to get to the beach. Remember to look both ways as you cross Great Highway because traffic goes by fast. -- Ben Marcus

When my brother and his family came to visit last fall we saw one of those amazing days. It was perfect, forever. There is one spot along the 3 miles that seems to be consistently better than the rest and now that we've figured it out, that's gonna be my new spot to keep trying. Last time I tried at Kelly's Cove and would drift 2 city blocks in 10 minutes. In the 40 minutes of pounding and floundering today, I didn't drift an inch. Weird.

Finds

2009-06-12T23:04:00.000-07:00

This article about Clint Eastwood is fantastic

Wonder of Wonders

2009-06-07T22:38:00.000-07:00

Yes! I am safe to practice dentistry (under the close supervision of a faculty member in a clinic of the school....)

The first year at UoP is wrapping up for me. A few finals to go this week and then summer break. When school starts again, we start working on real people in the clinic a couple times a week.

We had a final practical exam two weeks ago and I did pretty good. It was removing an old amalgam filling from a tooth, building it up with a resin and preparing the tooth for a crown, making a temporary crown with acrylic, and taking a final impression (which would be sent to a lab) in 3 hours (The clinic sessions at school last 3 hours, so if we can do this, we're for sure good to go next year....right? Or it's a good indicator at least). The week before the exam we had to give the instructors a tooth (#3, upper right first molar) with a Class II Amalgam filling (fills the crevice in the top of the tooth and goes down the side next to the neighbor tooth) to use for the exam. This kind of thing gave me a lot of trouble a few months ago, but I churned it out in 30 minutes and it was great, better than anything I did for the actual class. The exam went very well except for the final impression, which in real life would be not that big a deal, just try again. But for the exam we only had one chance. Oh well. Overall, I'll probably snag me a B in the class.

Last Wednesday we did our case presentations. Much like the Clinical Excellence day I wrote about recently, this was just a way to have us "present" the work we've done through the quarter to the faculty, as fancy or simply as we like. Some people went all out with crazy displays and decorations. It almost felt like an elementary school fair with cheesy poster boards and cut out pictures and everything, except that besides just snacks and food to butter up the instructors, there was booze as well.

I made up some stuff about two fictional patients and kept it fairly simple. Made some jokes that the vast majority of people didn't get, but that just reminded me even more of elementary school or junior high.

Here's the presentation (if Slideshare works)

Eve & Steve

There were no points awarded for creativity, just on the basic requirements, so some people went all out, while others kept it real simple.

Included below are some other pictures we've been taking. I'm tinkering with picture resizings and stuff, so to fit the 14.7 MP jpegs onto flickr, I shrunk em down by 50% (still 2200xsomething big) but in doing so, lost some of the clarity of the picture (for still such a large photo) and they're a bit pixel-ly. The file sizes dropped from 2-3 megs apiece to 150-200k apiece. I'll have to keep tinkering unless anyone as a quick answer why I lost soo much while still trying to keep the resolution high (I didn't think I changed the dpi or something, but maybe that was it).

While I wait for the upload of pictures onto flickr, here's the funny story of the weekend:

I took Leif and Grace for a walk down to the beach. Thought I'd get a picture of Grace in front of the Baker Beach sign at the entrance to the parking lot. She goes over by the sign and pulls up her dress to her face like she was being shy. I tell her to put it down, but she starts squirming and I ask if she needs to go potty (she was only wearing underwear) and she says yes and half crouches and starts peeing through her underwear right there in front of the sign as a few cars pass by. I'm running up trying to hide her, laughing and yelling at the same time. Then she waddles with me down to the port-a-potty where take them off and wrap em up in toilet paper until we get home. Lol.

Or check out the set easier here

Some pictures

2009-05-31T20:11:00.001-07:00

I'm just gonna take a minute and promote the Canon Powershot G10. It's pretty cool. We bought it to replace our family camera and for me to use in the clinic for pictures of patients. Although after buying it we found a place online that sells it for quite a bit less. Figures.

Here's some shots I took dinking around with it. I haven't even opened the manual yet, it's pretty easy to figure out.

Ignore the dirty window glare and the power wires on this 15 second exposure of the bridge last night.

Action shot of Grace running around.

I like how well the contrast works and how sharp the pictures turn out.

Playing with the video mode. Now we can take home movies!!

Just a quit thanks to Emily's parents for letting us use one of their old cameras for the past couple years (since our first one went through the washing machine). It's done alright, but time for an upgrade.

Lonely non-poetry late at night

2009-05-20T23:56:00.000-07:00

too tired to think straight,

i'm likely to say something i don't mean

or do i, but i'm no longer inhibited from saying it?

trying to study the brain

and all that's on my mind is you.

listening to A.I.H. and it's all me

all me thinking of you

frustrated with not getting you

my mind looks for escape

frustrated with escapes

it dwells on you contentedly

your memories are the best drug

after your presence in the room

i'd run away from this

hot box of you

but it's dark outside

and my feet need a break

and my head needs filling

my head needs sleep

if i could, i'd dream of you

dream of your smile

your dancing

your enthusiasm

but my dreams don't listen

to what my frontal cortex says

they do their own thing

making sense of this world

that doesn't have you in it

right now

billions of nerves

and i'd say half

are focused on you

a quarter on the music

and a few on these lame words

and the rest lost in neurotransmitter noise

10 minutes until

self-imposed deadlines

take effect.

if I can fight the

inebriation of studies

i'll pray to dream of you

while memories of brain facts

sink into place

The wonder of dentistry

2009-05-20T16:33:00.001-07:00

So, you might hear a lot from me, since my wife is out of town and I have a big test this week (which means I'll spend too much time procastinating the studying), so I'll hop on here and talk to you all.

I just left the Clinical Excellence Day downstairs in the school's clinic. Anyone that has research to present can, and anyone who wants to present a set of dental work they're proud of, they can. So there's lots of seniors showing off big complicated cases, many of the patients were there to show off their new mouths. Pretty amazing. There's one guy who does amazing work. He had two patients there and both were awe-inspiring (at least for me as a dental student). I got to pick his brain a bit. "How do you get to do such large cases? What's it take to get the patient to accept the plans?" I realize now that I should have known the answer to those and was showing my immaturity in asking them. He says simply, "I presented to the patients what I thought would be best for them and why. When they see how important it is and what it can do for them, they find the money to do it somehow. That's it."

In watching him present to the faculty and judges, I realized, this guy seriously knows what he's talking about. All the little details they've mentioned, even if briefly, in our classes, he rattles off. Considerations of vertical dimensional overlap, centric occlusion, height of tooth contours for grinding and more. The patients didn't end up with the shiniest or most perfect looking smiles (although still very impressive), but when they smiled and showed off their teeth, you could tell that they were high quality and looked like they could chomp rocks for years to come and still keep the new stuff in their mouths (don't think you can eat rocks, I'm just exaggerating to get a point across). I asked him how much time he spent planning for his patients, he says, "Too much for a student." Lol. He's a hard worker and does high quality work, whatever it is. He even helped win a few of BYU's Men's Volleyball championship titles before dental school.

A couple students also presented the findings of many studies they came across regarding the toxicity of composite resin fillings. Like any synthetic composites/plastics, it is made by polymerization (making small pieces into long chains) by a chemical process. In doing so, not all the little pieces get used, and "free-radical" electrons get distributed to the surrounding area. There's been a fair bit of very recent research (this year) showing the damage the unused pieces (bis-GMA monomers, which get turned into BPA's, or bis-phenol A) cause to oral tissues. The limitation to the studies is they're all done "in-vitro" or in labs on dishes and containers. There's been almost no research done on the effect in an actual person. They can't compare it to amalgam toxicity yet either, but to living cells in a lab setting, the bis-GMA monomers are deadly when used in large amounts (larger than what you'd get from having a filling done, but worth studying and researching still).

Recommendations were to rinse with an alcohol mouth-rinse (like Listerine) or apply N-Acetyl Cysteine-- which has better antioxidant properties than vitamin C or A-- after having a filling placed. Still, this needs to be studied in real people before it holds tremendous weight, but they're off to a good start. It also should make anyone pause before going for white fillings just for looks or to avoid the mercury in the silver fillings.

It was an excellent event the school puts on every year. Now, they've set up some food for the participants, so I'ma gonna go sneak some, it smells good.

holy craptastic!

2009-05-19T21:23:00.000-07:00

Those are the real words that came out of my mouth as I watched this for the third time. Watch the original, it's worth it for the bigger size.

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Fructose and sugars

2009-05-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

Here's an update: We saved up and bought nice running shoes from a running store. I've gone twice now. Yesterday, I took surf stuff and running stuff and drove down to the parking lot at the south end of Ocean Beach and watched the sloppy surf for 10 minutes before deciding that a run would be better. Ran two miles on the paved pathway and ran/walked (mostly walked) back on the sand past the thousands of broken sand dollars and dead-crab pieces 2 miles back. Pleased with myself, I reported this to Emily this morning and asked her if she'd been running this morning. She tells me yes, and where she went. I mapped it out to 5.5 miles. Haha. I tell her she HAS to do a 5k this weekend during a family reunion. She doesn't like it when I tell her she HAS to do something. She says, no she doesn't :-) (I gotta figure out how to manipulate this to my advantage: "You HAVE TO stop giving me back rubs!!")

The other day, my mother-in-law asks me what's the deal with High Fructose Corn Syrup. Some friends of theirs just visited the mid-west where they saw posters and signs and billboards everywhere touting the greatness of HFCS (in response to the negative attention it's been getting) sponsored by the corn growers associations.

I only knew of speculation and personal preference so I decided to look it up. Starting with wikipedia, I checked a couple of the sources and ended up spending some time at the Journal of Nutrition's site which had lots of articles on HFCS.

Here's the lowdown (probably too much low-down, but consider yourselves educated), there's lots of sugars in the world and we can use lots of them for energy. The most abundant is glucose. Stick a bunch of glucoses together into various chains and you get different things: plant and animal starches (which we can digest), wood/fiber (which only bacteria can digest), and lots more. Starches are blobs of stored energy consisting of chains of glucose, the human body holds enough for about a day, or an hour of hard exercising. Once it runs out, it uses other energy sources, likes fats and protein (there's always a mix of all of them being used and made, but it's primarily like this). Glucose is very highly regulated by the body.

Fructose is another abundant simple sugar. Before glucose can be used, it must be converted by enzymes into fructose. Fructose is found naturally in lots of places. It's very sweet tasting (much sweeter than pure glucose), probably because it is such an immediately usable energy source that the body is designed to take any fructose it can get (being a body developed in times when food was scarcer and harder to come by). Glucose is easily missed by the liver and takes a couple circulations through the body to get all picked up, whereas fructose all gets picked up on the first pass, generally (I'm sure it can be overloaded at some point).

What people have found in studying fructose vs. glucose is when there is lots of fructose in the diet, there are higher amounts of fats and cholesterol (which does lots of things in relation to the processing and storage of fat) in the blood. This gives cause to believe that high fructose diets have a strong relationship to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. (The authors of one of the studies said that the fructose levels from fruits and vegetables is not high enough to do this in a normal diet)

This would make sense: "Lots of immediate usable energy, but can't use it right now? Store it!! Save what you can!! You never know when the famine will hit!"

That's what the body does.

Now, what exactly is High Fructose Corn Syrup? Plain ol' regular Corn syrup comes from (can you guess it?) CORN!! It's nearly all glucose. Using enzymes and chemicals (on the scale we make it, I'm sure it qualifies for the title of "Industrial Processes" as scary as that sounds) they can convert corn syrup to 90% fructose, which is then used to mix with pure corn syrup to varying strengths of fructose concentrations. In most foods you buy, its in a 55% glucose to 45% fructose combo of free sugars, ready for bodily use.

Compare that to cane, beet, and other plants that give us normal table sugar, aka "sucrose". Sucrose is a two-sugar combo with one glucose, one fructose stuck together. When broken down to simple sugar form, it's pretty close to HFCS chemically. But, importantly, the body can regulate how much sucrose it will absorb and how much of it it will break down. There's quite a bit more control over the body's use of sucrose. It also tastes quite a bit different, and there's some evidence that the brain can distinguish caloric intake and satisfaction based off of the type of sugar ingested. (I would think with all the other things the body can do, distinguishing the fine details of important energy consumption would be easy). Granted, lots of sucrose isn't much better, but it is at least significant.

I thought it was funny that the wikipedia article described "opposing studies" done that show HFCS has the same effects as sucrose and shouldn't be treated any differently or receive negative press. The study cited in the article, and elsewhere by the corn associations, is not a study, but a "review" done by "White Research Associates" or something like that, written by one man with the last name White basically stating the chemical sameness between HFCS and sucrose. Sure, it's true, but at least slightly misleading and to me it seems purely a marketing ploy to help out the corn association dispel the hate for HFCS.

As an extra note on the topic of sugars: lactose is the sugar in milk. It's a glucose and a galactose sugar stuck together. Not the body's first choice for energy and cells are not normally in a state to use it, but lactose in the cells actually binds onto DNA and changes what the cell is going to make. So when there's enough lactose the DNA gets scanned and churns out the enzymes to use galactose and lactose. Way cool, huh? This makes for easy study of genes: stick the gene you want to study onto the lactose-using gene, stuff it into a bacteria, and feed it only lactose. When the lactose-using gene gets read and enzymes made, the extra genes stuck to it also get read and their proteins/enzymes get made too. Then analyze the proteins and figure out what the gene does. People and ethnicities who historically didn't have dairy in their diets tend to be lactose-intolerant, meaning the gene for using lactose as energy is faulty (this gives the bacteria in your gut lots of sugar and they cause lots of gases and digestive troubles)

Also, malt, like in barley malt, or malted drinks, comes from maltose (or did maltose get named for the malting process??) is two glucoses stuck together and is basically plant starch with some of the breaking down done for you.

Brainy

2009-04-29T19:31:00.001-07:00

The internet is wonderful, Emily ordered me a year's subscription to The Surfer's Journal as a present. We got introduced to it by a friend. Semi-book, semi magazine, it's an amazing thing with lots of great pictures and stories. We got the first issue a little later and it looked like this.Not only is it an amazingly awesome picture, but Emily and I agree her unique suit is super cute. Looking closely at the folds, you can tell it's a wetsuit of some kind, but the logo is unfamiliar. The picture is of Australian surfer Belinda Baggs. Searching the internet, we checked any wetsuit company we could find to see who makes it. We tried looking up info on Belinda to see who she was sponsored by or anything that would hint at this wetsuit. Nothing. Then, yesterday morning, I tried one more time and found an obscure website that had some personal bio-type info on her. On it it's mentioned that she likes Rash Wetsuits from Japan. Yup, they make it. When Emily asked how I even found it, I tried to show her the bio-site that I found using the same search terms I used before. Not there. Go figure. They seem like nice wetsuits from what I can figure using iGoogle's handy little Translation gadget to poorly translate (by copy and paste) the Japanese to English (just now in googling for the translator page, I miss-typed and searched for "igoogle translort" and still got it as the first result, awesome). Turns out, there's even a single California dealer of these wetsuits located not far from my hometown in Oxnard, CA via Laina Imports.

So, from a picture and a name, in 3 hours we figured out the makers of an obscure wetsuit company (obscure to us in North America, at least) based out of Japan and a local dealer to purchase them from (not that we can afford it, they're nice, but out of our range. The colors are all customizable on order. Emily wants a pink wetsuit now).

Another set of gems on the internet are recorded TED talks. TED is a conference held in Monterey, CA every year where a variety of experts come and present on a large variety of topics and technologies all loosely based on the theme of improving mankind. A gathering of nerds of the glorified kind.

This one I thought was fascinating, especially after performing less-than-stellar on a hand-skills practical exam to prepare a plastic upper-right 1st molar for a 3/4 gold crown this morning. It gives some comfort regarding my slowly budding handskills, and the take-home message at the very end is worth watching. He speaks of the brain's plasticity and ability to re-wire itself, mostly focusing on handicapped children and elderly. It's about 23 minutes long.

To be honest, I don't actually watch many of these. I hang out on Digg and when the description of one catches my interest, I'll check it out. Digg is full of nerds (or endlessly-curious and fascinated-with-technology sociopaths) and I find lots of good stuff on there to keep me interested in learning about whatever.

Dentistry II

2009-04-24T12:20:00.000-07:00

So I left off explaining that fluoride fit quite nicely into the crystals of teeth and stuff. This is true. This turns "calcium hydroxyapatatite" into "calcium fluoroapatite" and happens almost entirely on the surface of teeth, providing a protective coat on the outside. Problem is that the fluoride version tends to look brown, while the hydroxy version looks the nice white/translucent of normal teeth. The plus side is that teeth are quite a bit more resilient to dissolving by acids.

Almost 100 years ago, people discovered that communities that had fluoride naturally in the water supply had fewer cavities and tooth decay and that communities that had higher amounts of it had almost no tooth decay and kids with brown teeth. It's since been discovered that people who grew up with fluoride but move to an area without it, will get more cavities in the new area, and that those who grew up without it but move to it, will have less cavities in the new area. It is a temporary effect that's mostly environmental.

This is the reason that dentists promote fluoride: (Not for the brown teeth) It's good for stronger teeth in small amounts. After that, the benefits are pretty minimal, and they're not shy about that in class. In at least three different courses they've taught us the advantages and disadvantages of fluoride. Fluoride tends to bind to and soak up free calcium in your blood (which is valuable for enzyme activity and crucial to proper nerve conduction) making it unusable by the body. It can also interfere in cellular processes to some degree if taken into cells. This makes fluoride a weak anti-microbial as well, but it's a small effect.

Fortunately, as a water soluble ion/mineral, it is easily filtered by kidneys and urinated out. Since the kidneys can filter an entire person's blood supply several times a day, fluoride is quickly passed into urine in the small amounts we encounter it in nature and daily living.

This amount is small. In most communities, fluoride is added to water to be 1 part per million (ppm), that's one miligram per liter of water. Studies have shown that between .7 ppm and 1.2 ppm, the maximum benefit can be had per risk. Above this, there is very little extra advantage and increasing risk of undesirable effects. The effect is a topical one. For a while, it was taught that fluoridated water worked by getting fluoride into a person's system and becoming incorporated into growing and developing teeth, but this has been refuted a lot recently and most researchers agree the effect works on the surface more than anything. Small concentrations in water and higher concentrations on topical pastes and things provide the needed fluoride.

Fluoride is considered poisonous above a few grams. The least amount of fluoride known to kill someone was 4 grams eaten by a little kid within an hour. Generally, 5-10 grams is fatal. It is dangerous. But very few people have access to that much fluoride. The FDA allows water at around 1 ppm, and readily available toothpastes at 1000 ppm, which aren't supposed to be swallowed. That comes to about .15% in almost every toothpaste since that is the cap set by the FDA. Some fudge numbers due to rounding and marketing tactics, but it's all the same. A small child should be okay if they happen to eat a whole tube of toothpaste, that's why it's available over-the-counter. Prescription toothpastes can have up to 5000 ppm and would have a good chance of making a child sick were they to eat the whole tube, but they'd probably survive the encounter.

University of the Pacific's Dental School promotes some mouth rinses with calciums, fluorides, and other things to make teeth strong as well as varnishes smeared onto teeth following a polishing. These can have up to 22,500 ppm. The high concentrations are compensated by the very small amounts needed and the monitoring of the use within the clinic. A very very small amount of varnish goes a very long way and is released/dissolved slowly over several hours. Fluoride Foams are looked down on in the clinic here since children tend to swallow them, most of it is wasted not being on the surface of the teeth, and they're pretty messy. Also, they teach us that until children learn to spit out toothpaste, don't bother using a fluoridated toothpaste. They'll lose those teeth anyway and don't need to be swallowing something that's not going to help them in the long run.

Recommendations of the school based off of research and study go loosely as follows: if a person has healthy teeth, great. If they live in a fluoridated community, that's okay/good. If teeth are only okay, fluoridated water is recommended. Bad teeth, fluoridated water and fluoride treatments strongly encouraged. They encourage fluoridated toothpase for anyone (just don't eat it).

There are various forms of fluoride. Most common in toothpaste and mouthrinses is sodium fluoride, NaF. It's a salt that dissolves in water, is pretty tasteless, and inert (this is not to be confused with sodium fluoroacetate, which is a natural plant poison that's been mass produced and used in Australia as a pest poison). Sodium fluoride is most commonly and most abundantly produced as a by-product of making fertilizer. Some people see this fact as proving that fluoride is bad. Being a by-product of another process doesn't make anything bad by itself, as long as the product is purified and used appropriately. Biologically it doesn't matter how it was made.

Other forms of fluoride are Stannous fluoride, SnF2. Stannous is tin. Tin fluoride, literally. A few toothpastes use it and try to market off the fact that there are two fluorides in it (literally, the Colgate saleswoman presented it as "Polyfluorite Technology"). The concentration of fluoride ion in the toothpaste is still the same, 1000 ppm. The tin can help with tooth sensitivity for some people, although it causes surface stains and leaves a metallic aftertaste.

There are also acid-fluorides for very specific cases to be used very carefully. The idea is to partially dissolve the hydroxy groups by the fluoridated toothpaste so that fluoride can step right into the empty spots. Not used very often.

For water supplies, some communities use hexafluorosilicic acid (H2SiF6, it's an acid because in water, one or both of the H's drop off, leaving fluoride ions and Silicon ions), others use sodium fluoride.

An argument that deserves thought is that fluoridating water is forced medication of the public by the government. In at least 4 states who have had the issue go to the supreme court, the courts have ruled that, at least legally, this is not true and that mineral content of water does not constitute a medication. Also, since most communities vote whether to fluoridate water or not, leave it to the community to decide. It is of biggest advantage to the 20% of people in of lower socio-economic status, who tend to have poorer diets, hygeine, and less access to dentistry, and who have 80% of tooth decay in this country.

A few people bring up the relationship of fluorine (a deadly gas) to fluoride. Fluoride is the ionic form of the element Fluorine. Fluoride occurs naturally, Fluorine does not (it is too reactive and too quickly becomes Fluoride by taking an electron from whatever it can). Thus said, fluoride is not the same as fluorine and the notable similarities end with the first 5 letters of the name. Someone once skeptically told me, "Yeah, I've heard that argument before...." I kinda wanted to recommend he take a basic chemistry class, but I bit my tongue. I'm much meaner in my head than I am in person.

Lastly, there was a theory that floated around about fluoridated water being a communist plot to subvert the US government, and that it was used by Nazi's to force the countries they conquered into submission. Someone told me once that a study was done in China once that showed fluoridated water led to lower IQ's in children, but there was no source, and I've never heard this one anywhere else. Nothing valid has come of any of these ideas/theories.

So, that's fluoride as I know it. Consider yourselves edumacated.

Break Time

2009-04-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

Finished a crazy boot-camp of learning to do root canals!! (Bah bah buuuuummmM!!!!! *dramatic music*). Lucky me, I finished the assignments a little early and found this while taking a break.

Also crazy cool is this guy who raised a grizzly bear from newborn to fully-grown (it was even his best man at his wedding, sort of)

Dentistry

2009-04-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

Fluoride's come up a lot recently. I'll try to give a good picture of it, but it might take two parts (since I don't have many readers with long attention spans ;-)

This first part will give the background about tooth decay and set the stage for the use of fluoride.

The crystals in bones, enamel, and dentin (all the hard tissues of the body) are a form of calcium hydroxyapatite. It's a complicated crystal of calcium, phosphates (PO4), and hydroxide (OH) groups. Intermixed is a meshwork of proteins that promote the collection of these minerals and allow soaking and diffusion of substances throughout the tooth structure to a small extent.

Most minerals can dissolve in water to some extent and each mineral has a different amount they will dissolve to and this depends on acidity and temperature of the fluid. An acid is a substance that can easily let go of a proton, or, a hydrogen that has lost its electron (H+) or it can be a fluid with lots of extra H+'s in it, as specificed by pH (1 is most acidic, 7 neutral, and 14 most basic/alkaline). Each person has taste buds for acids, it's known as sour/tart.

Hard water deposits are an easy example. When in the hot-water pipes, the minerals remain dissolved, but upon cooling, they "precipitate" out and form deposits/stones/crystals on the insides of some pipes, tiles, showerheads, etc. Limestone that has been eroded by acid rain is an example of acid dissolving. The crystals that make enamel are similar. When acids get to them, they will dissolve a bit. Over time, this erodes tooth structure and decays the tooth.

Dental Caries is the disease of tooth decay. It is influenced by diet, personal behavior, and bacterial species that live in the mouth. Some people have more virulent and dangerous species of bacteria in their mouth than others and these can spread from person to person, or the bad species can dominate the other less-bad species if given the chance. All the bacteria in the mouth take simple sugars (glucose, fructose, sucrose, etc), and use them to create meshes of plaque that stick to teeth where they hang out in permanent residence and hide from oxygen and do their thing. This involves eating sugar and spitting out the remains as various acids: lactic acid (the same that cultures milk into yogurt, made by lactobacillus bacteria), acetic acid (aka vinegar), propionic acid, and formic acid. Lactic is made by the most damaging species: streptococcus mutans and the lactobacillus groups and when lactic acid is the dominant acid found in the mouth, it's a sign that S. Mutans and LB's have taken over.

The longer these bacteria remain, the more damage they do, since they just hang out sharing in the food you eat and spitting out the remains to dissolve your teeth more and more. To combat this, the minerals in saliva will settle into teeth and remineralize them, buying time, but not combating the source of the problem. Brushing helps, eating less sugar helps, and killing off the bacteria in your mouth with antibacterial mouthrinses helps, but if you've got the really bad guys in your mouth, teeth are still the losers in the end. There are stronger mouthrinses available, and are sometimes necessary to gain an advantage and get ahead of the infection. They're not for the squeamish and contain either sodium hypochlorite (aka bleach/"pool chlorine") or chlorhexidine (which does funny things to taste buds and can cause removable surface stains on teeth). They are flavored and sweetened with xylitol, but it still takes some bravery to use them. They apparently work pretty well. Having a mouth full of bad-uns, myself, my wife and I plan on trying them out in the near future to take care of chronic teeth problems I've got. I plan on recording the use and results for faculty to use in an ongoing study.

Side note: Xylitol is similar to sugar in taste and structure, but different enough that bacteria usually don't have the ability to use it for food. Thus, they eat it and it plugs up their enzyme machinery. In people, xylitol sweetens food while providing about 2/3 the amount of calories (we have enzymes that can use it, bacteria don't). It's found naturally in many plants and fruits to small extents.

When a person eats, the pH of their mouth drops from a safe 6-7 range down into the acidic low 5's and 4's. Calcium hydroxy apatite begins to dissolve below 5.5. It takes some time for saliva to clean out the mouth and restore the pH back to safety. The whole time, tooth structure is being slowly lost. Once restored to normal, the minerals in saliva precipitate/deposite onto the dissolved areas and make it normal again too (provided too much isn't lost and that saliva can reach the eroded areas).

Important to remember is that any acid will dissolve teeth whether it's sports drinks, sodas, and lemonade (with pH's down in the 2-3 range) or stomach acid (also with pH down in the 2 range) from bulimia or acid reflux. Bacterial acids are especially dangerous, because they are always in the mouth and maintain permanent residence on the tooth surface.

That's where fluoride steps in. Fluoride ions fit nicely into calcium hydroxyapatite crystals by replacing the hydroxy (OH) groups. The flouride doesn't leave as easily and postpones dissolving until the pH drops below 4.5. This makes teeth significantly more resistant to acidic dissolvement, erosion, and decay, but the dilemma is, how much do we need, and how do we get it?

to be continued.....

Catchup

2009-03-31T12:16:00.000-07:00

Didn't realize that you all have been starved of my entertainment for so long. Here's the rundown on life and maybe I'll throw something funny in here at the end.

Made it home to San Framanisisco from Camarillo (385 miles) on a single tank of gas. We took one potty break in between Paso Robles and King City after looking for a gas station for 20 minutes, we couldn't take it and pulled off out among a bunch of farms and a million butterflies (that have decorated our car with lovely yellow smatterings acroos the hood). The needle was past empty but the gas light didn't turn on until we pulled into our parking spot. Sweetness.

The more I learn about dentistry, the less I want to specialize after dental school. This adds a complication to moving home. After looking around I found out that a healthy proportion of dentists is 1 to 2000 people. Camarillo's is about 1 to 1250, while Ventura, Oxnard, Thousand

Oaks are all 1:2000 or better. Go figure. Dentists must know a good place to live when they see one. Santa Barbara is a little worse than Camarillo, and most of the island of Oahu is about the same.

I feel a strong urge to rewatch one of my favorite movies: The Fountain. It's slow, very artistic, and confusing to watch, but the more I watch it, the more beautiful it becomes. Most of the visual effects were made with microphotography and not CGI, the parallelism between the 3 intertwining timelines/stories of the movie is a lot of fun to pick out. Like how the Conquistador walking through the dark courtroom surrounded by sporadic candles is very much the same as the zen-spaceman flying through space surrounded by the passing stars. Sometimes the parallels are obvious, sometimes really subtle but intentionally there. I think it's safe to assume that the tree/plant in all three stories is the same but with different effects (the fabled fountain of youth, a substance that cures cancer, or the lifesource for the zen-spaceman) with the tiny hairs of the tree responding to touch the same way that the woman's skin/hair/goosebumps responds to her husband's touch. And that the Mayan Xibalba theme of death and rebirth/eternal life runs through all three stories. The ending is a bit confusing but reminds me of the ending of Big Fish when the son tries to tell a story about his dad and it's not as good but it works because the son finally got the idea. It's a lot of fun to watch to pick out all these things. (For ratings sake of the curious, its PG-13 for a few intense scenes: Spanish Inquisitors torturing victims, a passionate make-out scene, and a scary little bit near the end that would spoil a bit of the movie if I told you but it involves some good screaming, also the Mayan scenes are violently graphic to a PG-13 level). I might just have to purchase the movie so I can watch it anytime I want.

The movie preview for "Where the Wild Things Are" makes me excited. It looks like a cool movie, it's directed by Spike Jonze, and the trailer features one of the coolest Arcade Fire songs (which is one of the coolest songs ever). Obviously there are others out there besides myself that have excellent taste. In fact every time I mention how cool the trailer is, the cooler it gets.

My new son Leif (yes, that's pronounced Layf, the correct pronunciation) is growing fast. He's a hefty kid, but not rolly-polly, just big. He grunts constantly (we had a 10 minute conversation last night involving only types of grunts), attacks his food with viscious furosity, and is always moving his hands until he's asleep. His Y chromosome manifests itself well.

For something funny, check out this picture someone found during the presidential race, remember Rick-rolling? Yes, you just got rick-rolled.

I'll eat wasabe on my dude!

2009-03-12T11:48:00.001-07:00

Excellently done subtitles. (It's a joke, and a really funny one too.)

Woot I'm coming, Mutton goes YAY!

(please don't buy the bald seal)

Public speaking

2009-03-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

I was asked to give a talk on Missionary Work in church for this past Sunday and I gave this one. A couple people asked for copies of it so I thought I'd put it up here in case anyone else likes/liked it. (I'm pretty flattered that anyone asked for a copy, let alone a couple people). It only took me about an hour to write and then a little tweaking and I read it pretty close to how I wrote it. I would call it inspiration if it did some good for those who heard it.

Missionary work
(Christian Lassen, 3/8/09)

When asked by the “scriptural masters” of the time, the scribes and lead Pharisees, which of all the commandments was greatest, Christ reiterated what had been told to Moses and the Israelites and recorded in Deuteronomy 6:5, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with All thine heart.” He then took advantage of the moment (and the challenge) to compound on top of that by adding the second greatest commandment (also given to Moses and the Israelites hundreds of years before) from Leviticus 19:18, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Later when asked who could fall under the definition of “neighbor” the Lord gave a story of a man fallen victim to robbers, ignored by a priest and a Levite (those who should have cared for the man) but instead saved by an enemy, a Samaritan. The Lord asks, “who was neighbor unto him that fell among thieves?” and is answered “He that shewed mercy on him.” To whom the Lord responds “Go and do thou likewise.”

Our spiritual and emotional neighbors are all around us. We must make friends. We must show kindness and mercy to the people presented to us. We must show love to them. When we love others we improve their situation.

We must be social with our neighbors. The Lord gave us a strong ability to communicate in one fashion or another, and unless we communicate what we have learned we are being selfish, we are hoarding knowledge to ourselves the way a miser hoards money to himself. Those of us in this room have learned something to spark our interest for more, or we wouldn’t have the patience to come and listen. What is it we have learned? Why on earth do we spend so much time in this building each week listening to talks on these topics over and over? The answer is that we have been given some amount of light. For whatever reason, the Lord has been merciful to us (often by means of some neighbor of our own) to teach us a better and happier way to live. A manner of life that can perpetuate itself throughout generations, not through indulgence but through charity. I will be bold now and say after giving it much thought, that the gospel and manner of living taught within the walls of our church buildings and in our scriptures will allow mankind to live and perpetuate itself as a species better than any other philosophy or ideology on this earth. And the actions and faith we practice will perpetuate our lives throughout eternity and allow us to bestow this gift to others throughout the eternities. What is truly remarkable is that there is no way mankind could have come up with this set of beliefs on its own. It is a gift that has been given to us, these few of us in this large city have a light, a candle, that even if not acknowledged openly by the world is still overtly appreciated by the society we live in.

How can our light shine for others if no one ever sees us? We must stand out-- as holders of this light-- not in loud, obnoxious, or attention-grabbing flashes of color and noise, but in the same way that tones of music are carried to our ear despite the instrument. The way that ocean swells can pronounce themselves to the observer despite the random ripples and movements around them. The same way that bubbles always rise back to the surface when waves and splashing keep pushing the air downward.

People are observant. Even if they’re not always vigilant, they will notice peculiarities even if they themselves are not aware of it. The amazing thing about the human mind and our ability to “be intelligent” is our ability to recognize patterns and trends and apply them forward to new situations. Our friends will notice our peculiarities and once alerted to the status of our membership in this church they will begin to credit the church with everything unusual about us. (It’s not always fair, or to the church’s credit, but that’s their attempt to understand this observed trend they see in us). This can be a wonderful tool for everyone’s advantage. As we better ourselves, we will stand out further, influencing society around us to improve themselves further and perpetuating a cycle, but it does take brave leaders: Courageous members of the human race to do it despite what is going on around them.

We are the salt of the earth, and just as it takes comparatively little salt to flavor and preserve a meal, it only requires a few good people doing what’s right to make a tremendous difference. Often it does not even take much courage.

My most memorable experiences in relating my knowledge of the gospel to others have usually been in low-pressure social situations where others knew of my task as a missionary or knew of my membership in this “odd” church and felt the need to discuss their beliefs or ask about my own. One man who was strongly opposed to his step-daughter’s membership in this church approached me at her birthday party and said he could never belong to an organized religion because he felt that being out in nature was such a valuable thing for him to get in touch with his spiritual self. I was able to agree and told him that I had many, many experiences out in the forest or on mountains or oceans that were incredibly spiritual and that our church buildings and meetings allow us to organize ourselves more efficiently as groups to help each other. He then stated that the idea of heaven was odd to him and that he saw us more as returning to a tremendous cosmic energy that we originally came from. I thought that exciting and let him know that I too felt like that but I saw it more as an eternal family that I left and hope to return to. He was impressed and would have liked to talk with me further but we didn’t have the opportunity.

I lost touch with him very shortly afterwards but kept in moderate contact with his step-daughter for the past 6 years. A few months ago she told me that he’d been a baptized member of the church for about a year and recently attended the temple. I know that I played a very small part in the Lord’s mercy to give him the knowledge he desired, but I was happy to hear that he found it all the same.

If it helps, remember to emphasize that our beliefs truly are personal. They are our own beliefs regardless of the source. We are taught them by others, but we internalize them and make them our own. It is okay to say “I believe” and not have to use the phrase “we believe” in every instance. It is even very good to differentiate and discriminate between personal beliefs and church beliefs on certain occasions.

We must also take into account the reason that someone may be asking about a particular belief, especially if it is something unrelated to the basic principles and ordinances of the church. Not long ago I was asked if “Mormons believe they will all get their own planet.” I assumed that he had been told this by someone else trying to encourage him into distancing himself from our organization that teaches such ridiculous doctrines. I explained to him that it is what some Mormons believe heaven might be like and referred to the scripture that says “Everything the Father hath will be given to us” which he was familiar with. I told him that this is the accepted doctrine of the church and some of us apply that to mean we will be able to create planets-- as God has-- and that we have an enjoyable time fantasizing about the green skies and orange oceans that our planets might someday have. He seemed quite satisfied with that explanation and pointed out to me that the Bible described heaven as mansions (John 14:12) and cities of gold (Revelations) which was easy for me to agree with.

Remember to be sensitive to the values of the person asking the question. Some may want simple principle-based answers, some may want more practical real-life answers. Those who are academically minded will want an academically verbose answer and those who are more emotionally minded will want an emotionally based answer, and switching the two will often put-off the asker. The Lord himself preaches in the language of the receiver and we must make an effort to do the same. There are multiple ways to speak any language due to societal and economic status as well as background and fundamental values of life. Those we share the gospel with will and should expect to hear the gospel in their own understanding. My mom is very emotional and describes the gospel with feelings and emotional words. I think I tend to be more intellectually inclined and try to describe everything in a step-wise logical fashion.

Truthfully, everyone will have to accept both to fully embrace the gospel because it does arouse our faculties emotionally and intellectually. The emotions are the engine and the intellect is the steering wheel. Many describe their spiritual experiences as instances when their heart and their head are perfectly aligned with each other. But to start, everyone approaches spirituality first with one a little more than the other.

Try not to be awkward. Often when we are asked about our beliefs it’s like when you’re dating or interested in someone and they ask you for something normal and mundane but you get so excited that they’re talking to you that you fall-apart and get excited and don’t think straight. Expect that people will ask about your beliefs, and you must realize that they will proceed when they’re ready. We must prepare ourselves to be ready when the opportunity arises and sometimes leave it at that, trusting the Lord to watch after our neighbor when they are beyond our reach. I’ve seen situations where direct invitations have worked (“You should seriously consider joining this church”) but only after a great deal of preparation on the part of the listener. We should always do our best to present the gospel to our ability and hope that the spirit carries it to the receiver. The Lord taught Joseph Smith that “the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness” and then says those powers are maintained not by coercion but by “persuasion, by long suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned, by kindness and pure knowledge.” (D&C 121). Persuasion is first and quickly followed by long-suffering, implying that those we teach may require time and experience before they may be ready to accept what they’ve heard.

In the end, what convinces anyone of the truthfulness of the gospel are their own spiritual experiences and the knowledge the spirit teaches or confirms during those experiences. I have been convinced of the perfect wonderfulness of the teachings taught by our amazing organization because the spirit has made that knowledge more real than anything my senses have ever taught me. Among the gems of knowledge the Lord has gracefully bestowed is a knowledge that he lives and loves us; that Jesus Christ is the messiah and our savior and has atoned for our sins; that the Book of Mormon is absolutely and undoubtedly true; and that I hold the priesthood of God as given to me through His organization of this church and its leaders.

Often, we forget what the spirit has taught us, or we cover it up with the mud and dirt and clutter of daily life in this troublesome world. Our leaders have challenged us to contact, visit, and meet the fellow members of our congregation, our ward, our family, in the hopes of reminding them what they once learned. We have a chance to show mercy on them, to love our neighbors. I hope we all participate in whatever manner is available to us.

Some free-writing

2009-03-05T20:19:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while I feel a stir inside and feel like writing down what I feel, sometimes I try to make it poetic, sometimes I just try to make it visual without reusing any adjectives and call it cool. This was just now and since I've been looking for something to throw on here thought it would work. I hate using correct grammar-punctuation-typocorrection in times like this so you'll just have to deal with it. This was triggered while listening to "Oh Comely" by Neutral Milk Hotel, followed by N.U.F.A.M., The Format, James Taylor and then Jason Mraz; it was on shuffle, but it was the Neutral Milk Hotel that sparked it. Lest you think I should be on meds, you might be right, but you'd just be wrong, sorry. It also reflects some recent (temporary) changes in home-life (I'm a loner for the next 2 weeks) and a documentary I just finished watching on Youtube (along with every related youtube video on the subject). Pretty fun to write, actually.

my own world

plugged into the headphones and my musical library of nonsense to everyone else I sit next to the dark outside listening ot the wailing of a lonesome heartsick crooner on nothing but a guitar. My music makes no sense to anyone around me. I hide my favorite songs from everyone around me. I listen to them alone, afraid of what others would think and knowing what others would think and avoiding their condemnation or non understanding is better than finding a friend of song-liking to do nothing but sit in a room on a chillin evening listening to the incredible tear-creating greatness of an emotional epic of 3 minutes and 58 seconds and knowing the other person was struck like i was and thinks the same as me about the melody and is unafraid of the monster inside the lyrics or the fuzz of the intellionally left static. Though i pine and grow sappy over the subject i mush through the moment and move on with the high quality of my excellent life. The next songs come on and it would not be so foreign to outsiders and brings me back to a more inhabited realm of listening pleasure inspiring a change in vocabulary of my free-writing and mood. weird. realizing that this latest song is unappreciated by the dwellers of my circle delves my state into the dark vortexing abyss of a dark sea on a black night. i glory in the visualization adn the words that flow from my fingertips relishing my self-proclaimed genius. a popular song comes on and my endless black-greeen swirl of soul-crushing weighted loneliness wipes away like a few drops of mist carried on the wind and i feel awkard out in the open almost ashamed of being seen in such a trendy open plaine surrounded by so much open sky, but enjoying the fresh weather and sunshine. still alone in the music but not feeling the weight of the present track distracts my train into the nearly empty cafeteria around me and the chill of the drafty window and the near-still blood flow resultant of sitting at a computer for the last 3 hours. I should study some more.

Photographs

2009-02-18T23:53:00.001-08:00

Look me up on flickr by Lassensurf, or go right to this link to see new pictures (from Christmas to now) including the exclusive photo-op with brand new teen idol Leif Lassen!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9127799@N08/sets/72157614055508757/

Happy Birthday!

2009-02-18T06:11:00.000-08:00

Leif Christian Lassen (tentative but fairly certain on the name) was born yesterday February 17th at 7:47 pm weighing 8lbs 8 oz, stretching out at 20.5 inches, and a somewhat longish head still measuring 35cm (14-15 inches). He's already a voracious eater and really cute. Mom is doing great. I'll be calling around later today to tell the story in more detail to friends and family.

Not much today

2009-02-14T14:25:00.000-08:00

After a terrible morning of practicing on plastic teeth I took a lunch break and watched a bunch of trailers on Apple's website, got curious to read about Che Guevara, and a few other things on Wikipedia. Now I'm writing here while listening to a really cool group, Ratatat. (Don't watch the videos unless your brave to the weird, but the music's chillin)

For those curious, no baby yet. Emily has hit 41 weeks today so no worries or anything, she says she'll get induced probably by Thursday just to avoid hitting 42 weeks (since the risk of complications increases after 42 weeks. Two days ago she had it out with her OB who tried to bully and coerce Emily into getting induced IMMEDIATELY ("You can still deliver the way you want, I just want you to have a little pitocin and an epidural" ???????????? Seriously???????). The woman had absolutely no reasoning capabilities, just a robot programmed to get babies out after 40 weeks hit (if the patient managed to wait that long) by any means necessary. The hospital even recently changed their inducing policy because doctors are too aggressive requesting inducements.

Thats our dish for the week. Ciao....

Faith and Logic in Science and Religion

2009-02-07T13:52:00.000-08:00

I enjoy practicing logic and logical reasoning. Maybe that's why I enjoy math and science (even though it took me several tries to get algebra down pat). If a=b and b=c then we can deduce that a=c. Nowhere in that set of equations does it say that a=d or any other letter equals any other letter. To think that because the first three letters of the alphabet in this situation are equal then there are others that are equal would be a false assumption on my part. There might be others, but I'd have no proof or evidence of this.

I took statistics from an energetic professor and he would scream enthusiastically at our class to not extrapolate beyond the data. If there is a trend, there is no reason to assume that trend will continue. And then he'd give examples of markets or bacterial cultures that looked like they'd take off exponentially higher, but then given the data, they actually fall in half and move in a linear fashion. Seems like an obvious principle but we ignore it, all the time.

The other subject that would work him up is the idea that "correlation does not imply causation." This means that just because as one thing increases the same rate as another does not mean one causes the other or that they are even connected at all. We all do this too. If you did a study of fires of all kinds across the country you'd find that the fires that cost the most in damages are the ones where the most firemen show up to fight it. Thus, you might assume, logically, that it is the firemen that cause all the excess damage!! That would be silly to think this.

A group called the Pastafarians started up a website and a movement around the time that Intelligent Design was circulating the news. This group of people were probably "scientifically minded" trying to take shots at foolish religious peoples. They created a religion that worshipped the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) who was invisible and touched people with his noodly appendages and his most devout followers were pirates. They used a graph that showed a correlation between the increase in global warming with the decrease of pirates, thus global warming was caused by the killing off of FSM's chosen people. A point was made, good laughs were had, and I'm sure some people felt smart for participating in such an intelligent joke against those less-intelligent than themselves.

They themselves make the false assumption that because they've learned a few things about the universe they assume they know what's not there or how things didn't happen. Truth be told, evolution occurs and is occuring through various breeding and natural processes. Truth be told, ALL the evidence points at an earth that has circled the Sun about 4.6 billion times and has progressed through various stages of environment and dominating forms of life. Truth be told, no one was there to watch this happening. All our evidence points at it, but no one was there to see it actually happen. We have to assume many things (and checking our answers through multiple checks, this is probably how at least most of it happened) but to assume everything fits into our proposed timeline would be just as unscientific as believing global warming is really caused by a lack of pirates.

This universe is a great big place and reality is not everything it is cracked up to be. Our senses are all easily fooled. Our perception is limited, and our sense of matter and energy are incomplete. If I were an ant in the middle of the most remote sand dune of the sahara and had never seen trace or sign of humanity I might think when I got to the top of the dune that because I could see so much, I could see all. Two hundred years ago, humanity had barely scratched the surface of the field of electronics. 250 years ago, electricity was unheard of, yet the reality of this cosmic force had played obvious parts in human development and life on this planet for billions of years and our awereness of it has changed humanity forever. Just because we can see so much more than we could see before does not mean we can see all.

The flaw of assuming happens in religion, too. But before I get into that, I must say that religion and science are the same principles applied to different fields of learning. In science, not everyone can see the data, or the results of the study, but we trust in the journal publishing it that those close to it are correct and they relay the message to the rest of us. We take it on their word that the discovered law of physics is good in that situation. Others take courage and replicate the experiment (just to check) and if they come up with the same results then it's more weight to the claim. If they come up with different results, it doesn't necessarily mean anything but that the subject needs further study.

In religion, we meet people who have had some sort of spiritual experience and we take their word for it (or don't). Some of us are in a position to replicate their experiment by living life or acting the way they did and trying to obtain a similar or the same result as them. If our own experiment confirms it, we put more credence to the notion. If we are not able to obtain the desired results, it doesn't prove anything except that it needs to be studied further (perhaps our methodology is off). There are some spiritual experiences that we will never be able to replicate because those experiences were "given" to that person by someone else, and since we are not in charge of the giving of these experiences we must wait and if nothing else, test the validity of their purported experience through indirect methods and see if "the fruit is good."

Some assume that because they received an experience confirming the reality of Christ, that their entire view of Christ is the correct one, when all they really found out is that Christ is their savior, and learned nothing more. If others obtain an experience confirming their nothingness in this universe and yet their supreme importance to the fabric of space, they have learned that and nothing more. True, learning one fact can allow certain logical assumptions when due. If we learn that a=b and later learn that b=c, then it is safe for us to assume that a must also equal c.

One beautiful thing I've learned from experience is that those who have spiritual experiences will cling to the truths obtained from it for as long as their memory of it holds or as long as their percieved value of the truth is worth holding onto (unfortunately many will toss aside profound truths to achieve shallower and more immediate accomplishments). But to those who've had spiritual experiences and refresh their memory of it regularly, there is nothing else in their perception that can shake them of the reality of the experience. Eyes can be tricked, touch can be fooled, hearing can be uncertain, but the validity of that experience is rock solid in their mind and unquestionable in it's reality, regardless of their education--whether it be a PhD in nuclear physics or a GED. In other words, there is something more real to the spirit than anything else our minds can handle.

It takes a great deal of energy and time to invest in spiritual things and most people don't percieve it as worth pursuing, or some have become pleased and complacent with what they've learned and settle for meager amounts of knowledge and assume that what they haven't learned must be wrong (often, they misuse this knowledge by wrongly applying it or they forget pieces of it through neglect). Others use the reality of spirit to obtain their selfish desires by taking advantage of others with lies and half-truths. These are the reasons for the tremendous spiritual turmoil throughout society. Others, to the benefit of society, are always pursuing further light and knowledge and the world is made better for it.

My suggestion to anyone who happens to read this far is to pursue knowledge and never attack anyone else's pursuit of the same. We all live in the same space in various circumstances and individual brains built on a collective tapestry of personal experience. The best thing would be to politely correct any flaws in logical reasoning that we are not aware of and leave it up to us to deal with it.

If anyone is curious as to what I've learned, I've learned that the human body is more amazing than I will ever understand in this life even if granted the chance to study it full-time for the next eighty years, the universe is bigger and more complicated than it will ever be in man's power alone to understand, that there is a God in a place called Heaven who has a son we call Jesus Christ (who can also be referred to as God) and a side-kick called the Holy Ghost (who is so God-like that it is perfectly respectful to think of him as God, too). They care about us and want us to be happy whether we live in concentration camps or the Pacific Palisades and give us the freedom to achieve it in either setting. They have spoken to mankind at various places and to various peoples and collective experiences of God dealing with people have been written and are continually being written. The spiritual experiences that I have had that are more real than anything else, have taught me that the Book of Mormon is true, the Bible (as we have it) is excellent, and that God has given certain groups of people his authority to act in his name and this is known as the Holy Priesthood After the Order of the Son of God-- more commonly called the Melchizedek Priesthood-- and that I am fortunate enough to hold it and be a part of its organization in the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. This is the limit of my sure knowledge. It is not very much, but it's specific and I appreciate it.

This amount of knowledge opens a wealth of doors to explore and a tremendous amount of potential happiness. If you want to obtain the same knowledge, I would be happy to help. If you have knowledge you would like to share, I'd enjoy hearing it.

Fun Stuffs on the Internets

2009-01-31T13:41:00.001-08:00

Favorite new Reading Material:

Stuff White People Like

Cool Pictures:

http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2009/01/30/photo-manipulations-by-tebe_interesno/

Toxic elements!!

2009-01-24T12:44:00.000-08:00

Going to dental school I get to learn lots of neat things. Controversial things. Things that will get you in trouble with the Feds. Stuff like why mercury is used in silver fillings! Why bleach is used in root canal procedures! And *gasp* why flouride is put into drinking water!!!!!!!! It might not get you in trouble with the Feds, but it might get some vegans upset.

No one says these substances aren't dangerous, just useful for their task without enough danger to keep from using them. In biochemistry we discussed the various aspects of Mercury yesterday and since I should be studying for a test for Monday morning, I'll review it here and call it studying.

Basics review: Every element known to man has a neutral state where it has equal numbers of protons as electrons. Hydrogen has 1:1, Lithium has 3:3, Oxygen has 8:8, carbon has 6:6, etc. But there are various types of electron orbits and the proportion to electrons in their orbits to the protons causes some funny things. Many elements do not like to be neutral and you would be extremely hard-pressed to find them neutral in nature. Sodium (and related metals) metal HATES being a neutral guy and will react explosively with anything to toss off an electron (usually it's onto water, since that's such an abundant substance that's so lax with it's electrons) and gain a positive charge. Chlorine is the opposite, it HATES being neutral but would rather steal someone else's electron, to get a negative charge (since it's normally a gas, this makes it dangerous to living things that can inhale it so easily where it wreaks havoc on all the electron-transferring reactions that make life possible). While these guys like being non-neutral, they still have to submit to electromagnetism and will stick together positives with negatives, thus, table salt: Sodium chloride (the -ide notes it's non-elemental state, just a formality). An atom with a charge (non-neutral) is called an ion, and larger atoms (especially metals) tend to have multiple stable ion forms.

Mercury is the same way. You can find it in nature as neutral liquid shiny metal form (not common), usually in a rock with other minerals of various charges or dissolved in water with a +1 or +2 charge, or it can be solidly attached to organic molecules like methane and ethane (methyl mercury and ethyl mercury). In toxicity, elemental mercury is the least toxic (like in thermometers and silver fillings), the organic being the most toxic (as found in tuna).

The World Health Organization and OSHA set safety standards on mercury in general and don't differentiate between the types (since none are safe in large amounts). WHO says the max allowable should be below 42 micrograms per day and that the normal is about 25-30. In our Operative Dentistry class they told us that OSHA limits it to 16.7 micrograms/day and that we get between 10-20 micrograms per day. The difference, I think, is due to the differences between our country and other countries without standardized safety protocols etc.

Both professors agreed that a dozen or so fillings provides the person with about 2-3 micrograms per day of elemental mercury vapor. Not negligible, but on the smallish side. A few small fillings will give you about .3-.7 micrograms per day. Other mercury ingestion is through fish/seafood, water and other sources.

A common way to measure mercury intake is by measuring food and water and such, but not as reliable. Another way is to measure what comes out in urine and feces. Elemental mercury is absorbed by the lungs (not so easily through skin, but does happen), organic mercury absorbed in your intestines. Some elemental mercury can be converted by your body (as a by product) into Mercury +1 or +2, especially in your nerves.

To put in perspective how bad mercury is for a person, here's the table given in Biochemistry:

500-1000 micrograms/day=Kidney failure, swollen gums, nervous system problems

100-500 = Irritability, depression, memory loss, early kidney problems

25-100 = subtle changes in tests, but no obvious symptoms, some decreased brain-wave function and verbal skills

0-25 = no known health effects.

(purportedly, dental personnel excrete 12-15 micrograms/day).

The most dangerous exposure of people to mercury is to those in industrial careers/locations when huge amounts are disposed of (Illegally) into water sources or other places. This is rare nowadays (probably more common in the late 1800's and early 1900's, or not long ago this happened once in Japan, they got caught because of abnormal amounts of birth defects in children in the vicinity.

Oddly, there exists bacteria that can convert organic mercury into elemental mercury. Scientists have cut and pasted the genes for that enzyme into cottonwood plants for testing and then grown them in exposure to organic mercury and the transgenic test plants are much healthier. Weird. There's bacteria for everything somewhere in the world except bacteria that can live off of synthetic oil-products like plastics, the world might fall apart should one get evolve and get out. As far as we know nature/life hasn't figured out how to pull organic energy from plastic.

So, there you have it. More than you wanted to know about mercury and it's dangers. If you've wondered how dental fillings go from moldable to hard, the silver, zinc, and copper are super powdery and when mixed with the liquid mercury take about 10 minutes to crystallize into the amalgam filling in your tooth (and is even changeable up to about a day). It goes from buttery-creamy consistency to hard metal during the working time.

If a dentist ever tells you that amalgam/silver fillings are dangerous for you, remind him he's in danger of losing his license, because that's just not true. If they say that you should have your silver fillings removed for health reasons, that's especially bad and he's just digging for business, especially since you'll be exposed to more mercury while he/she drills them out than you would be just leaving them there.

On the reverse, the substances used in composites/resin/white fillings used nowadays aren't entirely safe either, so hedge your bets. Amalgam is the superior filling material, but definitely not as nice to look at.

One last tidbit: Mad Hatter's disease (like the mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland) was caused because hatter's would rub liquid mercury into the felt while making hats. Also, rub-a-dub-dub three men in a tub supposedly refers to the practice of having guys with syphilis sit in tubs of mercury to treat the STD (at least that what the teachers say...). Apparently it worked decently.

Dropping off the face of the earth, and back again

2009-01-18T20:32:00.001-08:00

If you wanted to know what's been goings on witha me as of late, you'd need my cell phone number, cuz I've been a little bogged down with business, family, and good times.

Spent Christmas with the in-laws building snowcaves, fires in snowcaves, and shoveling snow for about 9 days. Built some good muscle and must say, was impressive to behold in the mirror for a while. Drove our 1986 Camry, Elvira, down the I-15, probably for the last time. We're trying to sell her and have had a few nibbles but no takers. It still drives like a tank (a 4-cylinder tank), but is still a bit trashed from being stolen last summer.

We bought a 1995 Honda Accord Wagon to replace her. Has 80k miles on it and a few nickel-and-dime cosmetic issues. Snatched it up for $3400. Named it Oscar (as in, the Grouch, cuz Emily was a little grouchy with it at first). I'll post some pictures of it later. It's our little ghetto mobile. I dig it.

School has started again, and is busy. And we're back at my parents for 2 1/2 days over the long weekend. We can make it from San Francisco down here on almost, almost a single tank of gas. Pretty sweet.

Got my bike fixed at the Sports Basement in the Presidio. Took it in under directions from TruVativ to take care of the warranty and have the part shipped to a bike shop. They all said at the S.B. that it would be more hassle than it's worth and I'd probably still end up not getting it replaced under warranty. So the guy dug around and found an old (but unused) chainring laying around he'd sell for 20 bucks (an EXCELLENT deal). So while I was paying for it up front, the guy took my bike and put it on at no charge. Yet another testament why Sports Basement is teh coolest. All the bike guys said they'd never seen anything like that before. Makes me feel special.

Also, got a new Ipod Touch for Christmas and it's really cool. Just like the IPhone but no phone and no camera. 16 gigs, wifi, all that. Really nice to have, especially in the lab classes to just zone out to music while prepping a PFM crown prep on a #4 or practicing a #31 MOD amalgam prep for next week's practical exam. The games and apps are good fun, too.

As for having my family back with me. My days as a bachelor are over yet again, and life is good, but intense. The new little guy is coming first week of February and we're still trying to decide on a name. It was Leif for a while, but we're leaning back toward Finn. We only left Finn because some friends have a 2-year-old with the same name, but we're deciding we probably shouldn't care or let that phase us. We're also researching to obtain a PhD in double strollers. It's a fight between the Chariot Cougar vs. the Bob Revolution.

That's the last month in a nutshell.

When it rains...water falls from the sky

2008-12-11T17:01:00.000-08:00

I did this while starting from a stop on my bike yesterday. Amazingly the chain stayed on the ring for three whole revolutions to get me across the large intersection at Lake and Park Presidio. Simple as that, just muscle-starting on the large chainring and the second-smallest-of-9 gears on the back, and rrriinnnnkkkk I feel metal bending, look down and see this mess. Stopped on the sidewalk, thought for a moment, and switched to the small ring and been riding on that since (now I have to pedal faster to keep my usual speed, sigggghhh). I did bend the ring back a bit with a wrench so that the teeth are not sticking straight out (I feared for the skin of my leg) and ride with my pant leg tucked into my sock for skin-insurance instead of rolling it up.

Can't find any good reason why this happened on a 6-month old professionally-installed crank set. One thread from 2006 wrote of a local bike shop that said it could happen from hard pedaling and 6 other people spoke up and said it was pure BS. Every other instance of a bent chainring is from accidents or hitting something. Since I've not been in an accident or hit anything, I can only assume it was the half-a-link's width deviation (spread over half of the ring) that's been there for 4 months (don't know how that happened either) and finally gave way under the daily stress my monstrous quadriceps subject it to.

I'm trying to speak to someone at the company about a warranty, but they're 2 hours ahead of me in Illinois and I'm in school most of the day and haven't connected yet (I wonder how we will connect with classes ending, finals coming, and me leaving town in a week).

Creepiness

2008-12-07T20:51:00.000-08:00

This is the old abandoned hospital I ride by everyday on the way to and from school. It's just over the hill from our apartment and is at the top of 15th Avenue just inside the Presidio grounds, almost all by itself, surrounded by trees and undeveloped land. At nighttime, especially when it's foggy, it's crazy creepy. During the summer, there were always hired security guys sitting in their cars at the main entrances. I had to try a few times, but got one of them to tell me about the place. It's haunted and they're there to keep the ghosts inside. Not really. They've been there since it was decided that the place would be remodeled (the non-original wings torn down) and made into condos and a bunch of stores on the bottom. A few weeks ago, crews started cleaning out the tremendous amounts of garbage inside and 3 days ago knocked off the corner of the west wing. Too bad, the place looks majestic with those huge wings on the front.

As for the grass, it showed up a few weeks ago on its own all over the area. Apparently, among all the alternative lifestyles known to San Francisco, among them is the idea of having Winter in the Summer and Spring in the Fall. I'm curious to see if the rest of the year will follow such Southern Hemispherical pursuits.

Also, mad props to the ninja taggers who got the "Good As" (already demolished) and "Dead!!" murals on the top floors of the wings without anything to stand on. The skull is also a sweet touch and I think it should be left there.

Random Acts of LOL

2008-12-07T18:54:00.001-08:00

How did he get there??

A doomed relationship from the beginning (that's the Cloverfield monster if you haven't seen the movie)

Where in the world is......?

Awesome shot.

Hey Batman!--

Back to the Hormones

2008-11-23T16:10:00.000-08:00

Since the Proposition 8 issue is dying down just enough to enjoy a peaceful Sunday but the topic is still a large part of daily conversation among friends and peers, I thought I'd try writing my thoughts down since I've got lots of them, but they rarely stay coherent long enough to get it onto paper.

Here's a video a member of our congregation took last week during the anti prop 8 rally against our Mormon chapel in San Francisco. It's a bit long and there's not much that happens, just a lot of shouting. Oddly enough, the messages on their signs are a lot of the messages we hear from the pulpit and teachers every week in church (but without the yelling). If only they knew and would just attend the meeting taking place a few feet away from them. The description of the video on Youtube's website is an excellent defense of our church's stance on the issue.

It peaked at about 100 people or so in between the second and third hours of our meetings while we switched from Priesthood/Relief Society into Sacrament meeting, and while the Bay Ward congregation members were leaving their meetings. By the time our last meeting was over, there were 20-30 people still out there.

I'm no psychological expert, or even a biologics expert, but in looking at my own life and my own experiences I feel I can relate to these people to a small degree, at the least.

In a physiology class I took during undergraduate studies, a quote was read to us by a prominent historical biologist (I can't remember who), that the most powerful forces in nature are the need to eat and the need to reproduce. Makes sense since that is the inherent function of every living creature on the planet: aquire nutrients enough to pass on your genetic code to a next generation.

The need to reproduce is an ever-present part of our brain function from the time we hit puberty until we die or until our reproductive organs quit working (even then, I'm not so sure we lose the desire). Men are ever ready to pass on their genes, and women are periodically ready to do so. This manifests itself in either gender's amount of time fixated on sex. Women tend to desire it the most while they are ovulating. Men tend to have to deal with it constantly. These are tendencies, not true to everybody, I know.

This is a complex issue. Every nerve in your brain receives inhibitory and excitatory/activating responses from other neurons, whether the next nerve fires depends on which signals dominate, the inhibitory or the excitatory. These gas pedals and brakes are huge complex issues involving a few billion neurons each, and noone understands them but they are the integral part of our every-second thought process. A guest instructor a few weeks ago explained it to me that there is this constant "static" always buzzing around the brain. I asked him if -with his expert knowledge of neuroscience- he believed we have the ability to choose for ourselves our own thoughts or whether our thoughts are enormously complex artifacts of our environment and past experiences. He told me that no one knows. There is just too much "noise" in brain function to determine that.

I like to think that I choose for myself what I am doing at every moment, or, that I have the ability to choose what I am doing at every moment, including the next step my thoughts will take. Most of the time, we don't consciously choose what we are doing. We act on habits, genetically inherited predispositions, or hormone levels. But when I decide I'm going to type the letter "K" for no reason than to type it, I am choosing to type the letter "K."

But, an enormous part of our conscious thought is influenced by our environment and by our hormones. We create "ruts" in our brain just like ruts in a dirt road, literally. The nerves that are used most will continuously use themselves more often and will call for reinforcing neurons to solidify that pattern of thought. This is a physical process that has been seen. Continuously fixating on a train of thought causes that rut to get bigger and bigger and harder to get out of or change. It also becomes more powerful in its ability to garner resources from the other departments of the mind to achieve its end.

This sets the stage for those individuals overly consumed with sexuality. An already tremendously ingrained part of our biological makeup does not need help by perpetuating thoughts on the topic, but that is what is out there constantly. When we see it in every billboard, tv show, magazine, activity, game, book, or web site, we further entrench our minds into a fixation on sexuality. Add onto this the reward of endorphins and dopamine hormones in our brains that make us feel great when sexually gratified or even just sexually enticed and there is a potential for huge disaster if improperly handled.

Pavlov was a scientist made famous for his experiments on dogs. He would ring a bell and give the dog food. If he did this long enough, the dog's brain would associate bells with food and begin salivating just at the sound of the bell. If a sound can activate the physical processes of digestion, how much more can feelings of sexual gratification be activated when engaged in behaviors using reproductive organs? Especially if those behaviors have so few immediate consequences that inhibitory signals in the brain are a mere whisper compared to the activating signals.

Now consider the number of ways that our society has created to achieve sexual gratification without actually participating in biological reproduction and it becomes a black hole of brain power and thoughts. No reason to stop the thoughts and every reason to promote them. Unfortunately our brains are not very capable of creating strong inhibitory signals if the consequences are not immediate. They take huge efforts to overcome.

I believe strongly that certain sexual fetishes (and there are many more than just homosexuality) can be present at early ages due to genetic predispositions or early exposures to certain behaviors, but they are weak impulses until acted on, encouraged, and sought out. If the environment imposes those impulses onto such a mind, the disposition flares up like a can of gasoline and a lit match. If we as a society encourage the pursuit of sexual gratification merely for gratification's sake, we risk exposing the innocent members of our society to it before their minds are capable of handling the overwhelming complexities of it in a rational manner and they become enslaved to their thoughts before they are strong enough to escape the temptations.

Pornography is an enormous problem because it exploits those already ever-present predispositions in every human mind and creates Pavlovian associations with non-sexual behaviors. Instead of bells, we become activated by clothing, everyday items, and members of the same gender. It sucks victims in by turning the world around the viewer into one sexually enticing festival of innuendos, suggestions, and intimations. This is overwhelming, not just to young minds, but to adult and mature minds.

In the flotsam and wreckage of this tsunami, the self-esteems of spouses are demolished. The self-esteem of the participant is destroyed. Marriages and families fall apart. Those without families further lose their ability to build healthy relationships that are not based on sexuality. All thoughts in their mind can become preoccupied and tainted with obtaining gratification. In their spare moments they seek out ways to satisfy this desire, similar to a substance addict. They resort to the gathering places of those afflicted with their same situation, almost like lepers: congregating with each other for company and shunned by many of their neighbors and society. Unfortunately, these crowds are not often the remorseful kind and seek out ways to afflict others since misery does love company and there is the feeling of safety in numbers. As they do, they gain strength and encouragement and convince themselves that perhaps they are not afflicted, but proudly chose this way of life.

Choose it they did. But not through any great effort on their part. Their choice warrants no merit, nor deserves any reward of perseverence. They allowed themselves to succomb to the most base desires of biology and then allowed their entire world to become polluted with this desire and in the process lose some ability for rational thought. It seems the two emotions that are the easiest to become ensared in are hatred (either of self or others) and hormonal addiction (substance abuse is an addiction of hormones as well). Often, the two emotions go together (an example is the video above). I'm sure there is an underlying biological factor connecting the two together, but that's for another time.

It is a sad story, and one that has always existed and will always exist while we live on this earth. The only way to end the story happily or to end it with any hope, is to never hate anybody, but hate the act only. If we know a better way, we should promote it. If we know someone who puts up a defensive wall, we should attempt to show them their way around it. Perhaps they always wanted a way over the wall, but never had the means. If given the means they will get over it when they want to. Often it seems when others defend their actions with a rationalization, it is a roadblock they themselves ran into at some point and never got over themselves (not that they didn't try).

Alienation of the person is a terrible thing. However, alienation of the act can only be brought on internally by overcrowding of better things and by long, arduous retraining of those nerve pathways that have so innately paved themselves through the highway system of the brain. They must teach the brain itself to break apart those associations and physical connections that have been made. Just like a leak in a bucket, trying to stop the leak while full of water is extremely difficult, and though it may hold for a time, it will always be a weakness that could open up if not consistently reinforced.

For many, it will be a lifelong, painful, and embarassing battle full of minor victories and overwhelming defeats. But the strength of self gained by continually fighting the internal fight will overflow into all aspects of life and improve the quality of each individual world using the skills gained from the fight itself. It excercises the brain and body in a way very few things can, and the defeats mean nothing in the long run despite how overwhelming they are at present. The intellectual insights and enhanced brain function gained can be worth it.

46 seconds of Lulz

2008-11-22T19:01:00.001-08:00

Daft Punk is Playing at My House

2008-11-19T23:01:00.000-08:00

That's actually a title to an LCD Soundsystem song that I happen to enjoy. As a kid I ended up with a copy of the soundtrack to "The Saint" and on it is a Daft Punk song. Listened to it a lot. With my Columbia House membership I had at the time, I bought the album it came from. Wasn't so into the House music scene at the time (or ever, really) but thoroughly liked a few of the songs, much to the dismay of my family members. Last year a friend introduced me to LCD Soundsystem and their song which shares the title of this post.

When my brother left on his mission, his friend ended up with a bunch of his DVDs. When she left, I ended up with them. One is a Spike Jonze collection of his weird music videos, two of them being the very Daft Punk songs I used to listen to a lot. (here's another great one)

So, pushed into it by the planets (with so many flashbacks in the past year, I had to obey the fates) I looked up Daft Punk. They're still happening and quirky and kinda weird/sorta cool. For one of their albums from earlier this decade they created an animated movie in the late-70's/early-80's vintage style animation with the album as the sole soundtrack. No dialogue, just electronic/techno/house music. It's pretty awesome but does take a couple sittings to get through it (don't try it all at once). Known as Interstella 5555.

Synopsis: On another planet, a rock group is abducted by some bad guy, taken to earth, disguised as humans and placed under mind control and become the Earth's greatest musical group. A distress call goes out to intergalactic hero, Shep, who follows them to earth in his shiny silver guitar-shaped-spaceship and crashes (he also apparently had a thing with the female bass player). He rescues them and the story develops. Not gonna spoil this one. But here's a sample video introducing the audience to Shep who reminds me of my cousin Ben, but with blue skin.

Tonight I spent an hour and a half tinkering with the brakes on my bike (they weren't working hardly at all and the ride to school this morning was kinda hairy...) and had Daft Punk playing the whole time. Good times.

This brings me to another gem of popular internet creativity: Daft Bodies and Daft Hands. Set to "Harder Better Faster Stronger" words are written on fingers or body parts and displayed with the repetitive music resulting in cool patterns/movements/dance moves. (Daft Bodies may be considered PG-13 for the immodest display of skin, but the dance is really cool, especially starting at 1:30 in the video).

Tony vs. Paul

2008-11-18T14:05:00.000-08:00

There's a bunch of stop-motion videos on Youtube done similar to this, but this is BY FAR the best and most perfectly done.

Buttersafe

2008-11-17T19:35:00.000-08:00

A classmate/friend does a webcomic called Buttersafe with a friend of his.

He's starting to get Dugg once in a while (which I think is exciting) and is always embarassed when I tell him I read the newest one.

Here's SOME my favorites.

If I had a hammer

2008-11-08T14:11:00.000-08:00

Part of my brain is always occupied with the idea of tinkering. If I had a shop and the toys and tools and materials, I think I'd tinker a lot. But I get bored with things that don't work quickly, so that would make me a terrible inventor.

I fantasize about having a house someday that is entirely self-sustaining using simple and readily present technologies. I have it all figured out in my head, just don't have the wherewithal to do it (or a house). Covering the roof with solar panels, collecting every bit of rainwater (I figured once that it would take .8 acres of land receiving 10-12 inches of average rainfall to sustain a family of five using average amounts of water; certainly a conserving-minded family could do better than that), keep or collect certain refuse and garbage that can be used to make fuels to power cars and other large machinery, efficient hydroponics to grow plants and food in small spaces, etc.

One of my favorite sites that will occasionally suck me in is Instructables.com. They've got anything and everything, from how to make your own Weighted Companion Cube from the Portal game, or an Iron Man chest arc generator. Find instructions for mischief or construction. One guy made instructions on building your own rainwater-yard sprinkler system that automatically turns on or off the collection of rainwater depending on rainfall.

Not just on this site, but elsewhere there are lots of instructions for building your own hydrogen gas generators for cars. A pair of guys in Tennessee offer classes in building one. They put one in a Nissan Altima's trunk and boost the horsepower and fuel efficiency using PVC piping, stainless steel plates, water, and lye with various other hardware store parts. And no hydrogen is stored in the car, it only makes it as needed when the car is on. Cars can increase fuel efficiency from 25-50% using the battery's current and lye-water. (Lye can be made at home using soaked wood ashes). Pretty ingenious. Not effective for running a car entirely off of it, but effective in boosting power and efficiency.

Lye (sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide) can also be used to make your own soap and biodiesel from oils and fats in a saponification reaction (maybe I'll write about it next). Add aluminum to lye-water and huge amounts of hydrogen gas will be given off with it's own potential (but dangerous) uses. I can imagine people collecting ashes and scrap metal from industrial sites just for the purpose of making it cheap and dirty.

Maybe someday, when the apocolypse has come and gone, I'll have my house nestled back in a canyon somewhere, fully sustainable, and I'll house my own collection of servers and wireless broadcasters (all powered by solar or wind generators) and reinstate a semi-internet for those out there with their own connections and we'll rebuild the internet piece by piece. Ha Ha (*Victorious laugh*)

For now, the closest I can get to inventing/building/tinkering is playing Fantastic Contraption during Biochemistry. 2 of us introduced it to our class and got about 20 people hooked on it for a week. It's a blast. The machines can get as complex as you like, but for the quickest, simplest run through, check out this guy's speed run.

Hello, my name is Lassensurf and I am a Geek

2008-11-07T19:49:00.000-08:00

Found this one on Digg, took it, and scored in the 41-49 point range. True, I haven't done many of the things on the list, but feel fully confident I could. There are about 8 that are out of my reach.

http://gizmodo.com/5078829/the-50-skills-every-geek-should-have

I laughed. The description of the score level doesn't suit me well, but I did turn my PSP into a full-out retro gaming machine. It was way better for playing Super Nintendo on than actually buying games for.

I actually thought for a while that it would be fun to turn this school computer into a Hackintosh, but it would probably void the warranty.

Here's some another internet meme that's from a few years ago. Known as the "Dramatic Prairie Dog.

Orson Scott Card goes Politickal

2008-11-03T12:24:00.001-08:00

I got this article from a good friend, and I have to admit that I really enjoyed it, even if I'm not sure what to make of his strong language. It's long, but makes for excellent reading. At the end he does speak VERY plainly against one of the presidential candidates. Take it for what you will, but it's still great reading that sparks much thought. I recommend you read it in its entirety.

Upholding the Constitution by Orson Scott Card

I'm curious about others' thoughts on it. Is his reasoning flawed? Solid? Too strong? I've got too much else to think about at this moment to dwell on it, but give me a few days and I'll reread it a few more times and add my thoughts to the comments.

Things, but very slowly

2008-11-02T19:59:00.001-08:00

Brainiac seems like it'd be a great show. Too bad they don't play it here in the states. Too bad I don't have TV to watch it even if they did. Here's just some stuff in slow motion. My favorites are the balloon to the face and the slaps, punches, karate chops.

Adventures in San Francisco

2008-10-26T21:20:00.001-07:00

Spent most of yesterday studying at school and practicing on some teeth. Left in the evening and since I didn't have time for a long bike ride, I tackled a few of the more notable hills in this end of town. I went up and down the steep and crooked part of Lombard at the top of Russian Hill and then climbed up to Coit Tower at the top of Telegraph Hill. While on the way home I could see behind me some familiar masts sticking above the pier buildings. Hmmmm.

The fog rolled in last night and the fog horns started at it around 8 or so. As I sat on the couch studying until midnight I could hear the surf, LOUDLY. Laying in bed, it sounded terrifying and I started kicking myself for not having ridden over to the ocean to see it on my bike ride. There was more of it today, but it wasn't so impressive at Ocean Beach, 8-10 feet maybe but nobody was out in it to watch or compare the size to and it was far out and foggy and really windy. Not fun. Rode downtown (out of the fog and into the sun) and down Market Street to the Ferry Building and searched for those masts. The Maltese Falcon is berthed right near the east end of Fisherman's Wharf for the time being. Pretty cool.

On the way home, checked out Fort Point and there was some excellent surf and surfing going on. Watched it for a long time, talked to a couple people. Got really cold standing there. This is only the 2nd or 3rd time it's fired up like this since I got here in July and the first time I've seen it. It was hard to leave. The wind on the way home along Crissy Field was brutal and along Lincoln Blvd, the fog was blowing so fast and thick you could see it billow in front of the oncoming traffic along the pavement. I took lots of pictures and put the best ones up on Flickr. Here's a sample I took from above Fort Mason.

Posters: Neither motivational nor demotivational. Discuss

2008-10-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

There's various web pages out there that allow users to create Motivational Posters or Demotivational Posters. Insert picture, add title and caption and you've got a neat looking poster.

Instead of making them de-/motivational, most seem to use it as an easy way to make a cool picture with a neat title font, caption, and black border. Here's some favorites.

Attack on the Lassen's!

2008-10-12T17:13:00.001-07:00

Shoot, everyone who knows my family knows we don't really go out of our way for attention, but we seem to get it anyways. A few days ago, Political Watch Central Coast, posts an article after they discovered that someone in the Lassen family (apparently Dave Lassen, whoever he is, head of the Lassen's "corporation," which doesn't exist) donated a sizable sum of money to the Proposition 8 campaign. It wasn't me and I don't know who did it and I'm not even sure if the amount is correct although commenters seemed to confirm the accuracy. Commenters also began to comment on boycotting the stores and perhaps picketing them. That would be a sight to see indeed. Especially the smaller ones. I'd probably come down just to watch such a silly act. Fortunately someone in our family has a few friends and they stuck up for us and told us about the development. This started a large discussion, of which I involved myself heavily.

Over the course of the past two days of this debate, the writer also discovered the active involvement of the Mormon church in this matter and wrote another article exposing such diabolical scheming and hatemongering. So I involved myself in this debate as well.

I must say, I kinda enjoyed it. The two posts can be found here:
Lassen's Article
Mormon Church Involvement Article

In some ways I'm glad that the blog isn't read more, and other ways I'm sad because no one will read such excellent arguments made in favor of Proposition 8. But sadly, I get more comments on this blog than Political Watch does (with the exception of the two controversial posts) on theirs, and that's not a lot. So, I'm going to do a favor and recommend the few of you who read my ramblings head on over and at least drive the traffic to their site up more than normal for the next couple days. That way they can feel better about themselves.

P.S. I wasn't posting under Lassensurf because I was having gimpy problems registering with Wordpress. How embarassing....

Ur Doin it Wrong

2008-10-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

Collected a few of these the other night from various places.

LassenSurf

Inspired Bicycles

The Unseen Sea

Lust for Power

Inarticulate

More quotes

Flexibility

Cartoon Time!

Thank Heavens for little girls

Introspective and Supremely Satisfied

I'm probably condemning myself by my words

Childhood memories

Adventure! It's a wonderful thing!

Lookamee!

Quotations

Tidbits

Just a little of this and that

Off to uncharted lands!

True Believer or Fake Imposter?

Knock me out like a ton of bricks

There is no charge for awesomeness

My mind was just blown

I just felt like running

The rationality of emotion

Check these guns out, I think they're broken

Point Reyes National Seashore

O Do Not Forsake Me

It's not me, its you

BY FRIDA GHITIS

FJGHITIS@GMAIL.COM

Foosball's the Devils Game

Diplomacy in Action

Food Inc.

Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm?

Parable of the Pie

Self-Expression and Depenedence on Others

*Ahem*

Fog, fog, fog, fog, fog, fog, fog, fog, fog,

Drugs

This is just cool

(title unknown part 2)

Tidbits

Wow

Plotical

Ramshackle

Picturezilla!

Part of the Food Chain

We've reached Critical Mass

The Anti-blood-doper

Nostalgia Tuesday

Movies

Slackin off

Finds

Wonder of Wonders

Some pictures

Lonely non-poetry late at night

The wonder of dentistry

holy craptastic!

Fructose and sugars

Brainy

Dentistry II

Break Time

Dentistry

Catchup

I'll eat wasabe on my dude!

Public speaking

Some free-writing

Photographs

Happy Birthday!

Not much today

Faith and Logic in Science and Religion

Fun Stuffs on the Internets

Toxic elements!!

Dropping off the face of the earth, and back again

When it rains...water falls from the sky

Creepiness

Random Acts of LOL

Back to the Hormones

46 seconds of Lulz

Daft Punk is Playing at My House

Ahem