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I post something

Whoa

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-health29-2008sep29,0,5521051.story Whoah, no wonder health insurance is so expensive "California already requires insurers to offer 44 benefits, more than most other states."

This Blew My Mind

What the heck is Creativity

Last night, I was lying in my bed and thinking about the principles that I feel my parents taught me to value. They are mostly pretty simple ideas: Honesty, Charity, Tolerance, Humor, Political Awareness, etc. But one principle made me think. That was the principle of CREATIVITY. What is creativity? Several years ago, my family and I got lost while hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mtns. I was carrying a rain poncho and my dad was able to fashion a makeshift shelter using the poncho and several pine bows which he cut from a tree. We rode out the night and all made it back to camp safely. Certainly that was creative. My dad was willing to think outside the box -- and, because we were in a Federal Wilderness Area, outside the law -- to protect his family. But simply "thinking outside the box" is not good enough, at least I don't think so. If thinking outside the box were enough, then we would have to call the 9/11 hijackers "creative," as their use of airplanes was certainly thinking outside the box (though one could argue that their use of violence was certainly NOT thinking outside the box.) A several months ago, my dad sent me to Home Depot to buy some rope. When I described how I intended to use the rope to a salesmen, he persuaded me to buy some nylon tie-downs. These tie-downs were much cheaper on a per foot basis than the rope and actually did what my dad and I wanted it to do BETTER than the rope would have done. Was I being creative by my willingness to try the tie-downs instead of the rope? it certainly wasn't my idea, and the salesman who helped me probably knew all along that they were better than the rope. So, what the heck is creativity? It is obviously important. I would argue that the world runs on creativity, but I am not sure exactly what it is? So here is what I am going to do. I am sending this email to almost everyone in my address book, some people I haven't heard from in YEARS. I'll keep everyone's email confidential, but I want some replies. PLEASE don't reply to me. I am going to post this letter on my blog, http://thesloop.blogspot.com/, it will be my first post up there in over a year. I invite, I encourage, I beg you to go up there and post a comment. Start a discussion, let's see where we end up.

Andrew Sullivan on Goldwater and the Religious Wrong

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/10/goldwater_vs_ch.html

Ahh, the wonders of Academic Freedom

I can't tell you how proud I am to be a republican

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/10/religion_as_pol.html

Hat Tip, Andrew Sullivan

Oh for PETE's Sake!!!

Get a Life, Sen. Brownback

Limp away, Mr Bush

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/10/no_prank.html

Funny You Tube

Running Shoes.......

don't have appointments
or concerns about traffic jams

don't care about colors
or coordination

don't care about the
weather, or how you feel

They aren't registered
to vote

they don't have
brains,

don't keep diaries
don't have email,
or PDAs and calenders

BUT,

they know if you've
run in them recently,

they know if you
have cared enough to get
you butt out of the door

away from all the other things YOU
have decided is important


and how do they know this?...............................................
..............................
..............................
...............................
.....................they have a sole

Printer Available

Is anyone interested in obtaining a cheap or free Epson printer?  It is not the fastest but it is quite fast.  It has belonged to my grandmother and received light use over the years.  I am not sure what the specs are but I beleive it is an inkjet and color.  If you are interested, drop me a line and I will pass along your contact info

Funny You Tube

I spent last night in a police car

For Several years now, I have been very interested in a career in Law Enforcement.  I have taken a criminal justice class, tried out for the Bay Area Rapid Transit District Police Department, and spent countless hours online looking at various police department websites comparing hiring requirements, the number of specialized units each department has, etc.  I have also taken a semester long class in Criminal Justice at Merritt College in Oakland. 

Last night, however, I got an opportunity to ride along for four hours with the Humboldt State University Police Department. 

The officer I rode with was Rodney Dickerson.  In an effort to be respectful, I started calling him "Officer Dickerson" but he told me, "Call me Rodney."  After filling out some paperwork, basically promising not to sue the department or the university if I got shot, I joined Rodney in the back of the station, where he and a Sergeant were going over some law books, trying to figure out under what circumstances they could and could not arrest someone for possessing alcohol.  This was actually quite interesting as the discussion covered some hypothetical situations and got somewhat philosophical.  I looked around the room to see what I could see.  Each officer has a desk and it was easy to see whose was whose.  Rodney, a football player, had a huge picture of a football game over his desk, while another officer had some hunting stuff over his desk.  I've talked with this other officer and I knew exactly whose desk it belonged to.

After a few minutes of conversation, Rodney told me "Let's Roll."  We walked out of the station and into the patrol car.  Over the next four hours, we would go all over the HSU campus as well as the city of Arcata and I think I got a pretty good handle on what it is like to be a police officer on campus.  We did a traffic stop, an arrest (who had to be taken first to the hospital and than to the Humboldt County Jail in Eureka,  and an assist of a young girl who got off the Greyhound at the wrong stop.  Several things amazed me:

• The amount of activity in a small four hour period (I was in the car from 11pm-~3am)
• The level of cooperation between UPD and the City of Arcata Police.  In fact, they share a radio system.
• the amount of communication that goes on between an officer and a dispatcher.  It is quite high.  Rodney was talking all the time with the dispatcher, alternating between his cell phone, his in car radio, and his belt mounted radio

My favorite part of the evening was standing on the Arcata Plaza (where all the bars are) with Rodney, two officers from the Arcata Police Department, and three or four officers from the Humboldt County Sheriff.  The officers chatted it up about shifts and other officers and that kind of thing, but it was clear they were there to be a visual deterrent (something to note for my nonverbal communications class.)  One of the Sheriffs Deputies had gone through academy with Rodney and there was some sharing of memories. 

I have gained newfound respect for Rodney and the UPD.  I hope to go on another ride along, perhaps at a different time with a different officer at a different time to get a different view of the way things work.  And someday, maybe I will be taking other folks on Ride Alongs.

Loud Celtic Bad Boys

Life had changed somewhat for me in the past several months.  It used to be that I could count on an weekend of fun and games with three of my friends here at Humboldt State.  But alas, two of the above friends have fallen in love and a third seems to be a little unhappy about the whole situation and so I think that our little group has disintegrated, all though I am trying to maintain ties with everyone.  Tonight, I was prepared to spend the night alone when I found something really cool.  I was heading back to my room with a couple of bottles of Soda when I noticed a group of people with instruments out on the lawn, in front of my dorm.  There were two bagpipers, two fiddlers, a concertina player, and dude with a ukulele.  Of course, I ran for my accordion and we spent a couple of hours out on the lawn there playing Celtic music.  We gathered a pretty good sized crowd for a little while.  The pipers played in B flat and E flat, which are also good for the accordion.

Unfortunately, there was a bit of a decibel imbalance.  The accordion is louder than the fiddles and, of course, the bagpipes blew EVERYONE out of the water.  But we still made some great music.  One of the pipers also plays the recorder.  He and I played together a little bit, but eventually we all fell apart, and I came up here to chill out.

I hope to hook up with these guys again because I love this music and I love playing my accordion.  Unfortunately, I think my accordion may need a trip to the shop soon to get tuned. 

A New York Moment

So I went into the Cafeteria today -- it is finally open and I am not living off of canned food like a dog anymore -- on the menu, there is a "gyro," a piece of beef with some vegetables wrapped in a pita pocket.  Being a New Yorker, I ask for a "Heeerrro," (roll that "r," baby!)  and one of the workers in the cafeteria said "Finally, someone pronounced it right!"

Bad roomates and good Poli Sci classes

Wow! IS summer already over.  Well, for me it almost is, although considering I worked and went to school all summer it hasn't been much in the way of vacation.  Still it's been a good summer and a lot of fun, so I have no regrets.

Most of you are darned sick and tired about me going on ad infinitum about my desire to be a firefighter so I won't harp about it too much, other than to say that once again, it didn't happen.  I got awfully close, but it wasn't in the cards.  So I decided to go to summer school instead.  Two of my friends had also decided to go to summer school and so I decided to move into their suite with them. 

It was, for the most part, a pretty cool arrangement, except that for a month I had the the most obnoxious roommate.  The suite, though like an apartment, is still university property and housing and dining can can add and remove people as they see fit.  They placed a 47 year old man in with my friends and I (All in out early 20s) and that's only the beginning of it.  Fortunately, "the creature" as my friends and I called him, moved out about halfway through the summer. 

I had to move to my new dorm room last night and have spent a good part of today settling in.  This room is smaller than the one that I had last year and smaller than the one I had over the summer, so I am going to have to be a little more conscientious about being neat (wipe the grin off your face, mom.)  I may also have to jettison some stuff to make room me.  I sent a letter to housing asking that my bed be "lofted" this morning,  Hopefully that will give me a few square feet of storage space.

Over the summer I took two classes, an "American Institutions" (PSCI 110) class and "Anthropology of Religion." (ANTH 302)

The PSCI 110 was one of the coolest classes I have taken in 5 years of college.  Most of my teachers come at politics from a liberal slant.  There's nothing wrong with that, I agree with them many times.  Despite what some people would like to say, there's nothing wrong with being liberal.  There's nothing wrong with being conservative either.  Its nice to mix in a little diversity.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much political diversity on this campus.  Around here, you're either a commy-pinko-let's-roll-over-and-take-it-from-the-terrorists liberal or you are stupid.  (Although there are a few people who are frighteningly conservative, According to one person, God doesn't know who I am because I believe men and apes might be related -- she has obviously never watched C-SPAN.)  The great thing about the instructor of this PSCI class was that he was IMPOSSIBLE to pin down.  Sometimes he would appear to be VERY liberal and other times he seemed VERY conservative.  I asked him what he was at the beginning of the class and he said that if I could figure out what he was he was not doing his job.  He would launch on very funny, sarcastic attack both ends of the political spectrum.  He'd bring a Bible to class and show us how Martin Luther's attack on the Catholic Church was the basis for democracy (if everyone can talk directly to God, then we are all equal and all deserve to be heard by the government.)  He also showed us how Clark Kerr's Master Plan, upon which California's three tiered higher education system, California Community Colleges, the California State University system, and the University of California system, was designed to maintain a certain class structure.   He would explain how the "system" was screwing us, and then show us how we could make that same system work for us.  In the end, his message seemed to be, "The system will screw you, but only if you let it."  All in all, PSCI 110 was a very cool class, and while there were some interesting things in my Anthropology class, I would have preferred another 5 weeks of PSCI 110 than the anthropology.

My PSCI instructor also looked pretty cool too, with a knit cap pulled down over a unruly mop of curly salt and pepper hair, he had a wild look to him, but was nontheless brilliant. 

In other news, I have job now. I will be working about nine hours a week in the in campus “Window's Cafe,” were I will be washing dishes. FUN!!  So, I am looking forward to the start of school, meeting my roommate (who had better be a good guy, no more “creature,”) and maybe, hopefully, possibly GRADUATING in the spring with a BA in Communications.

Stay out of trouble,

j