Oh boy!

Alison is scheduled to be home in the next hour. The house is cleanish. Here's a quote from the book I'm reading.

In earlier days Socrates owned enough to do military service as a hoplite, a rank requiring the member to provide his own armor and weapons. In his last days he had little more than a wife and three children. To a friend he estimated that if he found a good purchaser, he thought he could get for all of his property, including his house, about five minae.
“You are living a life,” he once was told, “that would drive even a slave to desert his master. Your meat and your drink are the poorest. The cloak you wear is not only a poor thing but is never changed, summer or winter. And you never wear shoes or tunic.”
“But you must try to see,” explained Socrates, “my belief is that to have no wants is divine.”
He said he felt wealthy when he walked through the marketplace and took count of all of the things he saw there that he knew he could live without.
His attitude toward property is more easily admired than shared.
About the wife of Socrates, Xanthippe, you will find it reported, unreliably (in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers and Xenophon’s Memories of Socraties), that she was ill humored and would search him out in the marketplace where he idled with friends, to pull the robe from his back and harangue him in public because there was nothing at home, not even him. A modest freeborn Athenian woman never set foot outside the house if she could avoid doing so, and it was a signal of the extremity of the want of the wife of Socrates that she did not own a slave to go to the marketplace and do this for her.

Weekend fun

This weekend I am in the Valles Caldera. Right now I'm in the town of Jemez Springs, but I'm spending my nights in the Valles. SB and BT and many others will be up tomorrow night working on a service project, so I'll get to have fun too.
Any day in the Valles is a good day.

No-kill shelters: worse for animals?

I think that this news makes it official: everything sucks. MSNBC had an article today that talked about the possibility of no-kill shetlers actually being worse for the animals in them than would be the normal (or "kill shetlers" as I like to call them, starting right now) shelters. Go here to read the article.
The basic problem is that no-kill shelters do not euthanize any of their animals; however, if they continue taking animals they quickly fill up. In some cases they just keep adding more animals until they are overfull, overcrowded, and the animals are living in unhealthy conditions. Can you believe that there are 6-8 million dogs and cats sent to shelters in the US every year? That's ridiculous. If only people would pay attention, they would come to the conclusion that there is a solution whereby we don't have to continue killing defenseless animals:
Get your pets spayed and neutered; if you do not do this, you should not be allowed to have a pet.
Don't buy dogs out of puppy mills; that dog you have could have been a stray that you spared from death.
Better yet, don't buy dogs from breeders at all; would you love your dog less if you didn't know its background?

As the supposedly dominant species on earth it would be nice if we could make an effort to be better stewards of everything.

The...end? (XV, XVI, XVII)

Or is it the beginning? Alison has had three (!) articles published in the past three days, two of them on Saturday.
The first (XV) is about soot levels in Greenland ice cores from back in the Industrial Revolution. The heightened soot, a product of industrial work in the northeastern US, likely had a warming impact that has long been assumed to be part of a natural warming cycle. Soot warms us up by lowering cloud and surface albedo, causing more absorption of solar energy and less reflectance.
The second article (XVI) is about a small town in northeastern San Diego County that is having severe water shortage issues. If only people nationwide paid more attention to news stories like this they could think "why the hell are we devoting 90% of the water use in a desert to agriculture and golf courses?" Then maybe there would be some water-related reform. Ah, pipe dreams. I love the quote toward the end about the ultraconservative Californians.
The third (XVII) is about how short courses in CPR are just as effective as are long courses. I don't know whether I've ever taken a standalone CPR course, but I've been trained several times in the course of getting safety certifications back in the old consulting days. I guess we always had kind of a shortish course in that case; all I have trouble with is the number of compressions and number of breaths. But I think I remember hearing that the number isn't as important as the correct technique.
This may be Alison's last spurt of articles; she's currently in DC getting debriefed or something on the program, hanging out with her fellowship buddies for the last time (at least for awhile), and doing other things as well! I'm super glad she got the opportunity to do this for the summer, although I've been super unglad that she was gone.

This morning, on the way to Socorro, I finished reading my last Madeleine L'Engle book, Many Waters. This one was somewhat enjoyable, although again I've been vaguely disappointed in this series this time around. Not as good as I had remembered. I talked to SB a little bit about it this weekend on a service project up to Red River (which is a scary scary place, and is literally populated almost entirely by transplanted Texans), and he said that he remembers having read the first three books as a child and really wanting to enjoy the books, but not really being able to. Oh well, the next book is going to be Picture This by one of my favoritest ever authors, Joseph Heller. This book is about the Rembrandt painting Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer; as the painting is created, Aristotle becomes cognizant of his surroundings. As his ear is painted, he can hear, etc. It sounds interesting and I hope I enjoy it as much as I've enjoyed most of his other work so far (which is to say, a lot).

I'm at a tipping point now. I don't know which way I'm going to go but it will have implications on the entire rest of my life. I'm scared of making a decision, and not in my usual way of being scared to make decisions. There's going to either be a continuation or an ending and a new beginning.

Article XIIII + Your Food

OK, Alison had an article out yesterday afternoon or evening about the endangered Black-Footed Ferret, the only ferret native to North America. Go here to read the article. These guys were one of the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act, and this article deals with one of their last populations. This group was put out into the wild in an effort to reintroduce them to the area, but they decreased in population to 5 in 1997, after which they were given up on. Now there's 220 of the prolific little buggers. What a success! Unfortunately it suggests that species do better when we're not paying attention to them (this is not true).
Also, I am currently listening to Talk of the Nation, and they are having a discussion about the farm bill, and what it does to what we eat, including subsidizing the least healthy calories available; this is why junk food is so cheap, and why poor people tend to be overweight. Way to go gummint! Go here to check it out; you should be able to listen to the discussion soon.

Article XIII + book

Another new article out today! This one is about how polluted the beaches of southern California are; it discusses the results of the annual beach report. Go here to read the article. Only three days of work left for her. Guess I'd better get on my horse with cleaning the house! Hooray!
Also, I finished A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Only one more book until it's back to some Heller!

Edit (8/9): This article is now also in the travel section. Go here.

Article XII

Alison has yet another article out today! This one is about increased risk of birth defects among obese mothers. How cheery! Go here to read the article. Alison needs to get together a list of her best articles to send out with job applications. I say all of them are awesome, but she wants to be more selective than that; which ones do y'all think are her best?
Also, I just heard on NPR that the government charges organic farmers more for "farm insurance" because they don't use pesticides. Way to go, gummint! Of course, this one is not necessarily the fault of this administration; organic's been around since before 2001, right?

Article XI

Look at this! Alison has another article out today. She's had some other articles bumped that are finished, so there should be more soon. Go here to read the article. It is about scientists' findings regarding the cause of the skin disorder Rosacea. Hooray science! Hooray wife!

Best movie EVER?

OK, maybe not. But still the Simpsons Movie was pretty good. And there were many things that would not be shown on broadcast, which was nice. Went with SB and BT. I tried to bike downtown to not use any gas, but I couldn't locate my bike lights! I am very disappointed and will have to work on that. See below for the Simpsons me. I couldn't find one with the hat forward, but I thought maybe the backward hat was more appropriate than no hat at all!

Important research!

OK, I was just listening to Whad'ya Know on NPR as I try to every week. They did a segment on a very important new study released by some researchers at the University of Texas on the reasons why people have sex. The list reaches 237 (!) different reasons, from "I was attracted to the person" (most popular) to "I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease (e.g., herpes, AIDS)" (least popular). Take the survey! How fun!

Article X

Alison had yet another article released today! This one is on oil dispersants (used to clean up oil spills on water) being more harmful to coral reefs than is the oil itself. Interesting stuff! Go here to read it.

If you ain't catholic, you ain't nuthin.

So this is now a fairly old story, but I kept forgetting to post about it. The Popah declared that Jesus only formed one church and that was the Catholic one. Funny, I don't remember anything about Catholicism in the bible...
Here's a quote:

It restates key sections of a 2000 document the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, "Dominus Iesus," which set off a firestorm of criticism among Protestant and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation."

Here's this blog's very first bible quote! (Romans 10:13):

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved

Funny, nothing about the Catholic church there. As the wife says, the Catholic church is trying awfully hard to decrease their membership right now.

Weekend update

OK. Here's what went down this past weekend.

Friday: KG took me to the airport and dropped me off to get on my flight. It was very nice not to have to take a bus, but of course was very expensive. To cover it I am going to sell my bass. The flight took an hour, a huge improvement over the like 10 hours it took by bus; however, I was sitting next to a definite spreader, who decided that the armrest was not a real dividing line between the seats, and put his knee on my side. He also used the armrest. Even though I was there first.
I got to L.A. and got myself on the Flyaway bus to Union Station to meet the wife. Every indication on the internet is that this bus costs $3. Alison said that all advertisements indicate that it is $3. So I had $3 in my pocket. When I finally got there, I discovered that it is actually $4. But then if you don't have luggage in the stowage area, apparently you don't get hassled to pay. So for me, it was free.
Having no idea where I was, I had to then discover where Alison was waiting, but it turned into a big debacle because it turns out that Union Station consists of a main station and an east station. Alison was at the main station; I was at the east. Neither of us had any idea. It took a great deal of walking around and consternation before we found each other in a tunnel somewhere. All was forgiven.
We walked to Little Tokyo for an excellent dinner. If I worked near this place like Alison does, I think I would be poor. Poor and fat. After dinner we met up with Alison's friend J at the jazz bar for some drinks. I tried some not-so-local beer (brewed in Paso Robles in central California - somewhere I have actually been!) from the Firestone Walker Brewery, having both the Double Barrel Ale and the Pale Ale. I was fairly ambivalent toward them, especially at 6 bucks a bottle. We also played some darts (real metal-tipped) and some weird short-table shufflepuck that actually had the real shuffleboard triangle design at the ends. After the bar we went to J's house and slept in somebody's bed.

Saturday: We got up in the morning and drove J to her car, then went to Altadena to go on a hike, one that Alison had been to already (to Echo Mountain and Inspiration Point). The hike was 10 miles long, going from Altadena to Echo Mountain to Inspiration Point via the Castle Canyon trail, then back along a different trail. The hike was in the Angeles National Forest. It was very pretty, and for most of the way up we could actually see all the way to downtown, several miles away!
After that we were all hot and sweaty and gross, so we went to the In-n-Out for lunch. This was a drive-through only place, and cars were backed up onto the main road, even though it was past 1:30. What a crazy place. Alison accidentally ordered a veggie burger instead of a grilled cheese, so it was just a burger bun with some vegetables and weird sauce on it. My burger was good though, and for once I actually loved the fries; I think they salted them a lot more than usual.
With full bellies we drove back to Alison's house to shower, then did some searching for a hotel. We located the Glen Capri Motel in Burbank, which was like $65 a night, about the best we could do for a 2-star hotel. We booked online over Orbitz, then immediately headed down to the motel to check in (having nothing really better to do). When we got there, and rang the bell, the dude at the desk was a total ass to us and said that we didn't have a reservation. So we left and I spent the next like 30 minutes on the phone with Orbitz, having the customer service guy recite to me every detail of my reservation for some reason before finally letting me tell him that the hotel did not have our reservation. He called them and sorted it out, and we headed back to check in. Once again, pretty much an ass to us. We got up to our room, and it was not a non-smoking room, which was really annoying. The room itself was pretty OK though, and we didn't want to deal with the desk jerk again, so I just turned on the vent full blast to try to get some fresh air in.
We headed out to Citywalk at Universal Studios to check it out and have dinner. We ate at Panda Inn, which was tasty and had very competent servers. Alison was upset to find out that it turns out that Panda Inn is basically the fancy-schmancy offshoot of Panda Express. Following dinner we walked around for awhile, and did some shopping at Sparky's, a big candy store. Bought some sugary sweets and a rockin' Grumpy Bear alarm clock. It was some good times. After this we went back to the hotel and went to bed.

Sunday: Today we slept in and took it easy. There was a restaurant right next to the motel that looked pretty nice (Cafe Patrick, I believe), so we decided to try it out for brunch. I had the "Carnivore Sandwich" which was a roast beef, along with fresh fruit. The sandwich was okay, but I absolutely loved, loved, the fresh fruit. I want to live somewhere that has fruit. It was awesome.
After brunch we decided to head down to Malibu just for some grins, to drive through the mountains there. The mountains were pretty, although they were regularly marred by mega-mansions that are probably second or third houses for people. We got through the mountains and drove down highway 1 for awhile until we located a beach access spot that wasn't crazy busy and got down to the beach! We walked for a little while until Alison accidentally stepped on a bee and got stung on the bottom of her foot. It was very sad. We hobbled back toward where we had come down to the beach, then sat down for awhile so she could recover.
When we eventually got back up to the car, we drove toward Anaheim to see the Angels-Tigers game. Getting there a little early, we stopped at a Del Taco near the stadium for dinner (to avoid spending the money at the game). This was my first Del Taco experience, and while I appreciated the idea of getting a burrito and fries at the same meal, I was pretty ambivalent about it. Alison likes it so I will be happy to go again some time for her benefit. :) We headed over to the stadium and parked (at $8 it was $7 less than we were charged to park near Dodger Stadium a couple weeks ago), then limped the like half mile to the stadium. Our tickets were the very very topmost row in the stadium, but it still had a good view of the action. The stadium was pretty full, and there were a lot of Tigers fans there, which was pretty exciting. We were also in the shade for most of the game, which was nice (interestingly, we started in the shade, then were in the sun for awhile, then we were back in the shade due to the vagaries of the construction).
My excitement about finally seeing a Tigers game was pretty quickly dashed as they gave up 4 runs in the first, 2 in the 2nd, and 6 in the 3rd to build a 12-0 hole. When we left it was like 12-3 or 12-4. I don't like to leave baseball games early, but I had to get on a bus again. The final score was 13-4 as the Tigers got swept by the Angels. So sad. After watching some Family Guy in the Greyhound station I boarded the bus by 10pm, and got into like the 4th row with a seat to myself once again. The trip from Los Angeles to Phoenix is SO much nicer than the trip in the other direction.

Monday: I slept so poorly on the trip back again, but had breakfast with MD and KG, then went back to my sister's apartment and had a 3-hour nap. Then I headed out to east mesa to have lunch with KG (highly disappointing; the pizza place had changed hands since the last time we ate there) then got the hell out of town. I drove the 60 all the way out to Socorro; if you've never taken this drive you should. It's so much nicer than taking the interstates. Back in Albuquerque around 11pm and exhausted.

That's it, that was my weekend. Since my last book update I have finished two books: The Federal Landscape by Gerald D. Nash and A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle. The first was an interesting book about how the federal government affected the western U.S., both through the ownership of federal lands and the buildup of the military-industrial complex to support the Pacific fleet. Interesting stuff.
The second was the book after A Wrinkle in Time. I read these books many many years ago on my own, and enjoyed them back then. I enjoyed this book much less this time for some reason. I guess that's what comes with getting old. Two more of these books, then I get to start The Origin of Species which I'm sure will be highly stimulating.
I've also decided that (for no real reason whatsoever) I am going to keep track of my media experiences for the next year: all the listings under my "Latest" from beer to movies. Should be completely uninteresting!