Photographic evidence

Well, it had to happen eventually - today, I did something I never thought I would do...I danced in a church. One of the girls in the Houston Repertoire Ballet asked me if I would partner her in a dance she was doing at her church. I said I would be honored and for the last week, we have been frantically choreographing and rehearsing in preparation for today. I have to say, it went really well!

So, here it is - photographic evidence that I was in fact in a church! From what I understand, this means I can do whatever the hell I want for a good two or three weeks and I'm guaranteed not to be smited.

(Click on the picture to see a video clip of a part of the dance!)

Vegas Baby!

Yesterday, my friend Sarah took pictures of myself and a dancer in my company named Maurielle. Sarah is an amateur photographer and the studio hired her to take the pictures for their brochure. She did an amazing job! Here are a few samples:

I love dancing with Maurielle - have you ever seen anyone so beautiful in your life?

On another note, I am off to Vegas for a quadruple batchelor party - if I make it through this weekend without having spent the night in jail, I will consider it a success!

VEGAS BABY!!!

I took your cone

Just counting down the hours until I get fired...

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Dear NASA security,

Last Thursday (7/14/05), I parked in an unmarked, un-reserved spot in building nine, completely within the confines of the JSC parking code. Upon returning to my car in the afternoon, I found a ticket under my windshield and a bright orange cone placed behind my car. The ticket read that I was parked in a "motorcycle-only spot" and I can only assume the cone was intended to block my exit. Fortunately for me, the cone was light enough to move and I was able to exit the spot. Upon doing so, I got out of the car and inspected the area, looking for the "motorcycle-only parking" sign which I surely had overlooked. I looked at the surface of parking spot...no indication there. I looked at the curb...no indication there. I looked at the wall of the nearby building...no indication there. Finally, I concluded that one of three things must have happened:

1) The paint which was used to write "motorcycle-only parking" had melted and evaporated in the Houston heat.
2) The sign is in fact posted inside building 110 underneath some cabinets and a box of expired badges and I was just supposed to know about this using my unadvertised power of telepathy.
3) This is not in-fact a motorcycle only spot - but officer Krupke wanted some excuse to ticket my sexy fuel efficient hooptie and that was the best he could come up with.

Given that the third possibility seems to be the most likely, please consider this e-mail my official request for the dismissal of this ticket.

After inspecting the spot and finding no sign of any sort to support the officer's claim, I get into my car and began to drive away. It was at the point that I noticed the cone which had been used to block my escape. It was frayed, discolored and had a tear which had been repaired using duct tape. In short, it looked sad and uncared for. In a society which too often neglects the needs of inanimate objects, I couldn't help but feel sorry for this poor cone which had been left to swelter in the Houston heat, waiting for the next passing security guard to pick it up and return it to its brethren which I dare say are equally un-loved...so I decided to take it.

That's right - I took your cone. I took it and we have been having a ball together. It turns out he has lived here his entire life and never seen the sights this beautiful country has to offer. Since his rescue, we have been to Mount Rushmore:

...we have been to the Grand Canyon:

...and we have been to the Golden Gate Bridge:

Look at old Conie - chillin' on the walkway like the playa that he is - have you ever seen him so happy?

Anyway, back to business. If you ever want to see your precious cone again, that ticket had better disappear - and fast. Once I have verified its dismissal, I'll contact you to arrange a meeting so we can discuss a few changes I am going to need to see before I agree to release the cone back into your "care." If all goes well, a few days from now, my record will be clean and your cone will be back with his brothers and sisters where he belongs. I'll be honest with you - I'm going to miss the little guy!

You guys are awesome!

Dear friends,

I am so excited to say this to you:

STOP DONATING MONEY!!!

Thanks to your incredible generosity, I reached my fundraising goal of $1500 this morning! I was able to raise $1540 from 23 donations. I spoke with my team lead this morning and she said they just calculated their official requirement for the trip at $1550, so I'll go ahead and donate the last $10 and we'll call it day! I wanted to send a very heartfelt thank you to you all - it is so wonderful to know that the world is still full of people who care about the plight of those they will never know.

I'll send you one more update before I leave on August 11th, then get ready for a long e-mail full of details and pictures when I get back to show you what your generosity accomplished and how happy it made one lucky Ugandan family. Thank you again - this means the world to me.

Sea of red?

Today, I received this forwarded e-mail message from a friend:

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You will soon see a lot of people wearing Red on Fridays. Here's why.....

The Americans, who support our troops, are the silent majority. We are not "organized" to reflect who we are, or to reflect what our opinions are. Many Americans, like yourself, and all their friends, simply, to recognize that Americans support our troops. Our idea of showing our solidarity and support for our troops is -starting Friday, and continuing on each and every Friday, until this is over, that every red -blooded American who supports our young men and women, WEAR SOMETHING RED. Word of mouth, press, TV -- let's see if we can make the United States, on any given Friday, a sea of red much like a home football game at a University.

If every one of our memberships share this with other acquaintances, fellow workers, friends, and neighbors, I guarantee ! that it will not be long before the USA will be covered in RED - and make our troops know there are many people thinking of their well-being. You will feel better all day Friday when you wear Red!

Let's get the word out and lead by example; wear RED on Fridays. I sent this out to everyone on my email list; hopefully, you will too. Please forward this to everyone you know!!

Wear Red on Fridays ....

SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, WE LIVE IN THE LAND OF THE FREE, BECAUSE OF THE BRAVE. FOR US, THEIR BLOOD RUNS RED!! GOD BLESS AMERICA
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"let's see if we can make the United States, on any given Friday, a sea of red"

Iraqi civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq:
Between 21,490 and 24,897 as of May 31, 2005
(source: http://www.iraqibodycount.net)

It sounds like a sea of red would make the U.S. look more like Iraq.

Why NASA?

NASA’s future has never been more at risk as a growing number of people weigh the cost and risks of a manned space program against the benefits. This comes as no surprise – NASA has had to defend its existence since the moment Apollo 11 returned Neil Armstrong and his crew safely to Earth. It’s mission, however, remains as critical as ever – something most Americans don’t fully appreciate.

As a rule, NASA does not market technologies it invents – it is forbidden by law for a federal agency to yield a profit. Instead, these technologies are passed on to the community at large to be marketed by any company wishing to do so. The end result is that Boeing builds a faster jet, but its passengers never credit the NASA wind tunnels which made the design possible.
Rather than pointing out these connections, the scientific community has responded to NASA’s critics by showcasing “spin-offs” – technologies created for the space program which now find use in our daily lives. The trouble with this approach is that most of these direct technology transfers yield products most people will never see, much less use.

The benefits of a space program come not only from NASA’s original technologies but from the technologies it motivates with its unique objectives. NASA didn’t invent the personal computer, but in 1961 when President Kennedy launched our space program, a computer was the size of a house. It was NASA who contracted companies to fit a computer into a automobile-sized spacecraft, leading to the invention of the micro-processor, and the rest is history. NASA didn’t invent the satellite, but the same technologies which enable humans to fly into space enable satellites to be launched into orbit. Can you imagine modern life without cell-phones, televisions, the internet or dozens of other technologies requiring satellite links, to say nothing of the thousands of lives saved each year by weather satellites. The list of such technologies is endless, but the point is simple. Necessity is the mother of invention, and it is enterprises like NASA which supply the motivation for the technological wonders which shape the modern world.

To those of us in the scientific community, the importance of a manned space program is implicit – exploration is an innate expression of our curiosity. To do something just to prove you can is perhaps the most natural of human instincts, and historically, this motivation has opened the door to scientific revolutions. That NASA’s budget totals less than one percent of our nation’s total budget seems a bargain to scientists. To those requiring more tangible reasons to justify NASA’s existence, it turns out they are all around you.

Linus Pauling

Winter is upon us, and with it comes one of life’s great annoyances, the common cold. This year, the US population will suffer from over one billion colds – almost four per person! You may be tempted to increase your intake of vitamin C – after all, everyone knows that vitamin C helps increase immunity to the common cold, right? Wrong. As it turns out, it’s amazing what a Nobel Prize and a book can do to convince the general public of a complete farce.

Most people have never heard of Linus Pauling, but they unknowingly practice his most famous contribution to the scientific community. Dr. Linus Pauling is one of the most brilliant and influential chemists ever to live. Over his seventy-year career in the sciences, he researched subjects as important and widespread as chemical bonding, molecular disease and explosives. In addition to his impressive work in the field of science, he spent extensive time working with social issues, primarily to demonstrate the dangers of atmospheric nuclear tests. In 1954, he won the Nobel prize in chemistry for his work on the nature chemical bonds and the structure of molecules and crystals. Eight years later, he won the Nobel peace prize for, among other things, his work on a nuclear test ban treaty, thus making him the only person ever to be awarded two un-shared Nobel prizes. He discovered the alpha helix, paving the way for Watson and Crick to propose the structure of DNA five years later. No doubt about it, he was a living genius.

In the mid 1960's, Dr. Pauling became fascinated with the biochemistry of nutrition. He began combing through existing data taken for other purposes, to research what affect vitamin C had on the body. Although he never performed a single experiment to test his theory, using what he called 'physiological and evolutionary reasoning', he became convinced that vitamin C in large quantities would serve to prevent, or at least shorten the length of the common cold. In 1970, he published his 'findings' in a book titled "Vitamin C and the Common Cold" which quickly became a best seller. The public took the notion and ran with it - after all, if a Nobel-prize winning chemist says it's true, it had to be.

Since the release of his book, countless professional clinical trials have been performed to test Dr. Pauling's claim. Not one of them has ever proven him to be correct. A summary of 27 of the more large-scale trials by Dr. A. S. Truswell of the University of Sydney, Australia showed no evidence that vitamin C has any effect on the common cold, but did show vitamin C in quantities as large as Dr. Pauling advocated to have many negative side-effects, including chronic diarrhea and the risk of kidney stones. Nevertheless, the whole world believes it - then again, for all but the last five hundred years or so, most of the world thought the Earth was flat. So much for public opinion.

So the next time you start to feel a scratchy throat, remember the story of Linus Pauling before running out to buy blocks of Vitamin C. If you feel like it, you can even tell your friends, although I never did bother. Maybe I’ll try again once I have a Nobel prize.

An idea whose time has come

The issue of gay rights has become a central topic in today's political scene, and it is as divisive as it is important. To those of us in support of gay rights, the great mystery is how the opposition perceives this issue as fundamentally different from human rights issues of the past. Looking back at history, every such issue seems to go through three distinct phases - what is at first ridiculed is then wildly opposed before being finally accepted as self-evident. In recent memory, we have watched women and blacks endure this fight, and now it is the turn of our gay citizens. The only thing of which we as a society can be certain is that like all others forced to live under oppression, the gay community will see the day when they are embraced by society - but today's fight against their equality will surely be America's shame of tomorrow.

Progress in the field of human-rights is driven by the cultures in which they are contested and as such, occurs as slowly as does cultural change. And as with any time in history, it is dogmatized opinion which stands in the way of progress. As a society, we look back at our parents who practiced segregation and at our grandparents who fought against women's rights with disbelief and wonder what could cause someone to think that way. Yet as we cast our shame on generations past, we commit the same atrocities without thinking twice. In fact, without even thinking once, for any study of our laws would quickly see how opposition to gay rights stands in the face of two hundred years of progress.

Surely, the greatest mistake would be to assume that this issue is any different from issues of the past. Take note that in the same way people of today use the bible to justify the oppression of gays, so too did their predecessors use the bible to justify segregation, arguments against women's rights and slavery.

The unfortunate reality is that while common sense will eventually triumph, it rarely wins over the minds of the dogmatized - as Jonathan Swift so eloquently stated, "you cannot reason a man out of a position he didn't reason himself into." Time will pass, we will persist, and the children of today will see the error of their parents' ways, just as their parents saw the errors of generations past. Progress can be delayed, but it can never be stopped. Remember - there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.