Natural cycles

Once young, now old; once shiny, now dull; once strong, now weak.... I keep thinking more and more about how nothing is constant. In fact, the only thing that stays constant is the fact that only one thing stays constant. Our sun will one day burn out, expand to consume our solar system (btw, at that point it wont be called a solar system), and then collapse on itself to create a super dense near-black hole.

The reason I started thinking about this recently was because I saw an HP(Hewlett Packard) building recently and started to think about the day when the two founders started this new innovative company that pushed technology into our daily lives. Now it is an old slow company that is about as innovative as a rock.

But there is another side of things, our sun which will eventually expand and collapse will eventually compress itself into a brand new sun one day. Even humans; we are born, we live life, and one day we eventually die. Is that sad, well not really since your body eventually gets recycled into the world and becomes parts of plants, animals, and other people.

Culture and media sees this same cycle where a concept is at first new, then old, then obsolete, and then a bunch of dumb kids in 2056 will start wearing nylon shirts and disco dancing to gangsta rap.

Rafting

Yesterday I went on a group offsite to the south fork of the American River for a white water rafting trip. I have to say it was totally AWESOME!!! Hopefully I can get some pics up soon.

The trip was set up by this group called Friends of the River(FOR) http://www.friendsoftheriver.org/ who offer guided runs through class 3 rapids in order to educate people about California's rivers. They are trying to save CA rivers from new dams, dumping, and other developments that harm our river system Even though I love the wilderness and fishing, I honestly haven't given much thought to the impact that we have on the rivers. As our population grows, we have to increase our consumption of resources like water, lumber, farm land, and kit-kat bars. . Their efforts range from environmental education to political advocacy and it is worth taking 10 minutes to check out their website and see if there are any ways that you can contribute to their cause.

Viva Las Vegas

I was in Las Vegas this last weekend with my buddy Joe and some of his friends. It was a fun time, we had drinks by the pool, gambled, had all-you-can-eat Brazilian food, and went to the Pimp N Ho Ball. It was sweet! I came up with a little saying after my trip "Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas until its old enough to buy a plane ticket and come looking for you".