Silly weather!

I was just catching up on some paperwork at my desk when I began to notice the smell of moisture in the air. Gotta frickin' love those fresh air intakes. Great for the connection to the outside world, bad for trying to keep cultures mold free. So I pulled up the latest radar:

Apparently, this isn't the last of the rain.

Very strange weather. Our falls are normally dry and cool (at night anyway). Apparently, this rain is coming from California:

What's interesting (to me at least) is that the same storm pattern can (in theory) be causing rain in San Diego and Tucson at the same time. So I guess this is Mother Nature's way of telling me that we aren't really that far away from one another. Gosh don't I sound like a pathetic love puppy?

UPDATE Wasn't sure if that was a jet plane from the base, or thunder. But it looks like the worst is yet to come.

Snake oil salesman

I picked up on this story from a blog. It's pretty scary. A company based in Illinois is selling a kit for $275 that can determine your baby's sex with a few drops of mom's blood.

They claim 99.9% accuracy and double the money back if incorrect.

Yeah right. I'd like someone to explain to me how the mother's blood can determine the child's sex. The only thing I'm aware of that the mother's blood can do is form antibodies in a case of Rh factor (she's Rh negative, father is Rh positive, child is Rh positive).

Perhaps there's hormone levels in the mom's blood that are different if you're carying a boy or girl. But I think that'd take more than a couple drops to determine.

The developer of this test won't release information until he gets a patent. But I couldn't find any relevant publications in his name.

If you must know the sex of your baby, try ultrasound first. The new 4D images are much better at figuring out what's in between the legs (if your baby will allow for such a scan). If you TRULY need to know, go with an amino. Or just be like my best friend - "either one is fine with us; I don't want to know". (Nothing wrong with that.)

BTW: Here's an article about the controversial Baby Gender Mentor test you can read here.

It's not easy....

Apparently for me, I have to end it with "being green":


You are Kermit the Frog.
What Muppet are you?

Bias (on both sides)

I try and keep an open mind about things. While it is true that idealologically I support Democrats, I try and look at overall politics as a scientist (understand all aspects).

That's why I read both liberal and conservative blogs. I also read a lot of military blogs to try and get a feel for the mindset of troops stationed overseas. I suppose one of these days, I'll post a list of the blogs I read the most. However, I was reading a liberal based blog. The entry focused on casualities of the Bush Administration and listed all the various people that resigned or were fired. If you believe the facts of the post, these were people that spoke against Bush.

So it got me thinking. I wasn't following politics as closely during the Clinton administration (pain can be all consuming). So I did a search for "Clinton cabinet resigned". While a good number of these people decided (for whatever reason) to not stay for his second term, I did find a surprising number of names:

Secretary of Energy Federico Pena
Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy
HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros
Energy Secretary Hazel O'Neil
Secretary of State Warren Christopher
Defense Secretary William Perry
Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor
Defense Secretary Les Aspin
CIA Director R. James Woosley

The point is that the Clinton Administration had its fair share of casualities. People tend to focus on this administration because it appears many people see our President as a polarizing figure (you either really like him or really hate him). And if I thought that an impeachment process against Bush for abuse of power for going into Iraq would help, I'd do it right now.

But you can't get all your information from just one source on the internet. Try and think about what someone with an opposing view might say. Then see how much credit there is to their claim.