Picture of the Day - Paso Park X-mas

In celebration of completing my big History 303 paper I treated myself to a glass of pinot noir at Hotel Cheval downtown Paso Robles nary five blocks from my house. I walked through the downtown park and this is something I observed along the way.
Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

Downtown LA Ablaze This Hour

The Twitter-verse is aflood this hour of the middle-of-the-night wee-hour-of-the-morning with images from around downtown. They show a monster fire destroying a massive six-story Da Vinci Apartments complex under construction at 909 West Temple Street. It appears to have collapsed onto the 110 or 101 Freeway as this is near their intersection with Temple Street and Figueroa Streets in Downtown Los Angeles. The fire is threatening adjacent exposures according to the LAFD which is declaring this a major emergency fire with multiple alarms and over 200 firefighters on scene. 

Photo by Jon Passantino (all rights reserved).

Photo by Eric Politzer (all rights reserved).

Photo by CRNKN (all rights reserved).

Photo by Luke Woods (all rights reserved).

Photo by Victor (all rights reserved).

Photo by Nick Sugai (all rights reserved).

Pre-collapse photo by Jon Passantino (all rights reserved).

Photo from another freeway by KTLA-TV Los Angeles (all rights reserved).

Post-collapse photo by KNBC-TV Los Angeles (all rights reserved).

A Kim-aissance Dawning?

This morning I awoke stressed and overwhelmed by this mental-emotional bugaboo of a History 303 research paper due online tomorrow by no later than 5 p.m. PST. Add to that my ongoing spiritual battles and Kim-battles with myself and I found myself not a happy camper. I considered not going to church and just getting to work on the paper. Instead, I exercised my personal agency and Free Will and elected to go. I did this despite my overwhelming feeling of having too much to do in too little time and an instinct to just get to work.

Sitting in church I experienced a strange epiphany-like encounter with God. I don't vividly recall all details of it but I can assure it was NOT merely some charismatic/Pentecostal emotive eruption. I was minding Pastor Steve's excellent sermon but was drifting in and out of deep meditation. At one point there was the following projected onto the big Power Point screen above and behind the pastor: I Peter 5:7. As many of you know that goes "Give all your worries to Him for He cares for you." I recalled and realized on a much deeper level than before that God is sovereign and in control. I let go of my academic worries. I also realized that some things I have been struggling with personally I need to just let go of and give to Him... which I chose at that moment to do and have since done.

It seems that seemingly minor act of faith and obedience (attending church) opened up a portal to somewhere and through it an abundance of grace poured through. I feel refreshed, transformed, reborn, and ready to move forward. I had feared of late that I was stuck in my life. Usually in such situations if you have to ask yourself the question then the answer is already YES. Now, NO, I am no longer stuck. I feel like I'm on the verge of a personal breakthrough on multiple fronts headed into Finals Week at Cal Poly and Christmas vacation to follow. God is good!

Today I Learned - Rafe Fines

I'm such a dweeb: today I learned Ralph Fiennes is actually pronounced "Rafe Fines". I also learned he is partly descended from fellow Norman invaders.

No Ebola ~ No Ebola

About a month ago Englishman David England gave the human race the the gem of a map below (topmost). He did so in response to the mass hysteria this year in regards to the 2014 West African ebola outbreak hoping to place it in perspective by means of employing quintessentially English dry wit. This local epidemic in reality was/is a tempest in a teapot compared to more mundane but deadly killers like pneumonia, malaria, and HIV/AIDS.

In response to that and perhaps the concerns of some thin-skinned Africans that the map unintentionally stigmitizes the afflicted parts of Africa a second map was created in a similar vein of sarcasm by Nikem Kalu (bottommost).

Note: ebola has since spread to Mali, Nigeria, and Senegal but to a lesser extent (thus far). 

Courtesy of Anthony England (all rights reserved).

Courtesy of Nikem Kalu (all rights reserved).

If It's Good Enough For Rwanda It's Good Enough For Me

Ever since San Luis Obispo County's plastic bag ban for retail stores over 10,000 square feet went into effect back in the fall of 2012, I have observed a boycott of the bag ban by not purchasing paper or fabric bags nor bringing my own bags.

I realized all along I was cutting off my nose to spite my face but I was irked by yet another regulation being passed down upon us by Big Nanny Government, this time on the local level. The justification/fig leaf for the regulation on "single-use" plastic bags was it would clean up the environment and prevent such bags from adversely effecting marine life. I found a dearth of empirical evidence to support this was a problem, especially in relation to all the myriad other things that get littered and adversely effect marine life. Also, litter is overall composed of many more things than merely plastic bags. Are we going to ban all those items, too? I also did not like the fact a panel, the San Luis Obispo County Integrated Waste Management Authority (WTF that is), decided on it and not a public vote for something that effects all of us each and every day.

Yes, my reaction was excessive but to me it was a sort of final straw. My inconvenience has been surprisingly minimal which shows me I don't really need bags of any type all that much. Now California has passed a similar statewide ban on "single-use" plastic bags. Coupled with that I learned yesterday in my global geography class that the African nation of Rwanda has banned plastic bags nationwide.

Not only did I overreact to the initial ticky-tack regulation but despite it probably being less environment-saving than advertised it's still not such a terrible idea from a public policy standpoint. How so? By forcing people to have to purchase bags they will be less inclined to discard them into the environment in light of the fact they paid for them. I do HATE litter!

What Post-Apocalypse Looks Like

My friend Blake introduced me to this fascinating short film showing views from both drone and person of Chernobyl, Ukraine, from this year, 28 years after the nuclear disaster there. It brings to mind both the short-lived television series Life After People and the Planet of the Apes movie franchises both old and new as well as themes of zombie apocalypses and other types of world's ends. The musical accompaniment is also rather strikingly effective in an unexpected sort of way. I find it fascinating how quickly the vegetation has taken over the city.
Note: I live exactly 31 miles from Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.