Tucson Meet Yourself

This was an awesome cultural event with basically everyone's culture celebrated from around the world. Favorite shows were the bollywood dancers and the Caribbean carnival! So cool!
Also everyone sold food here. The food from the Philippines wasn't bad, but for the price I paid for it, I wanted a bit more...but it was a carnival/fair event so I shouldn't really complain.
All in all a great experience from the blues' band to being pushed into saying something for a Mexican tv show. It was a fun unifying experience that really allows Tucson to show its small town roots. I hope to go again next year!

Biosphere 2! The million dollar question...

Just got back from visiting the world famous (in certain circles), Biosphere 2.
First of all, they were selling some pretty interesting stuff, like rum flavored maggot worms and these scorpion worms. I asked around about this to my friends and peeps and apparently people actually eat these! Yes, these are real suckers that you can get for a couple bucks... Yum! I took a picture instead.

To start off, this place is purely awesome! The engineering of this place alone is a marvel.

Desert Biome

What you see above ground is only part. I've looked at controlled environment systems before and this one is pretty cool. It was originally designed to be sealed completely off from biosphere 1 (planet earth). They don't keep it sealed anymore, but our hip tour guide mentioned that this building leaked less air than a space shuttle, which is less than 10% or something like that. I thought that the coolest part was the rainforest, but they didn't have this part open to the public that much.
Even though its not a sealed environment, meaning all the conditions are contained and controlled, there are still a lot of experiments going on. In the rainforest there was an ongoing study by some world reknown rainforest scientist. In the African Savannah, there was an experiment going on testing root growth of native arizona plant species, some water bug migration pattern, and then there was a huge area dedicated to water erosion that hadn't been set up as of yet. It was called the LEO project or something like that. The site also had several greenhouses and other little experiments going on around on the outside of the biosphere.

They used to have a live reef with coral and forty varieties of fish which would have been amazing to see, but this broken pond of sea water was overgrown with algae and we saw a fish swimming around every now and then... (I say broken because the wave maker wasn't working when I went) It earned the lame vote. Coolest part was that our tour guide told us that the biosphereians who lived in the dome for almost two years would go swimming and jump off of the cliff into the deep end. Next time, baby...


We learned that it was recently acquired by the University of Arizona and is ranked among the top donations ever. Hopefully they do something good with that ”ocean”. I think the structure of biosphere 2 alone is worth several hundred million or so. Our tour guide may have tossed out a billion, I can't remember at this point.

All in all, a phenomenal structure to see, amazing engineering feat and controlled environment project. A modern forerunner to possible future space living conditions, although the biosphereians who lived there for a year and a half came out starving. I would rank it among the great things of the world, almost like Babylons Hanging Gardens, only this building is out in the middle of nowhere.

My Poor Burned Hand

Fire.
Since the days of the caveman, I'm sure man has been using and harnessing fire and its awesome power. Monday was not that day for me.
I am taking a class in which I had to sterilize my equipment and my hands through alcohol. So I do as directed, I spray my hands with the 70% ethanol and dip my razor blade in the 95% ethanol, then using tweezers, proceed to take my blade over to the bunson burner.
As my blade catches fire I remove it from the flame to allow it to burn. I'm watching my flame when I notice that my hand catches fire. I drop my sterilized blade and start waving my hand thinking that maybe the alcohol will just burn off.
It doesn't. And my hand starts to get HOT! I start waving my hand in the air really fast thinking that would put it out. That doesn't work and its getting hotter. I start slapping my pants thinking maybe I can change something by doing this, my pants catch on fire and my hand is getting hotter still. I start slapping my lit hand with my other hand thinking that this would do the trick and because my hand is hot. Well my left hand catches on fire and I've got fireballs for fists.

Notice where my hair is burnt off
and the bag of peas I was
nom noming on

Finally, the alcohol burns up and I've got a couple burn marks and blisters are starting to form on my hands and knuckles. My professor says get up your done. She directs me to the sink, gets me an ice pad and the next thing I know, I've grabbed my backpack and I'm on my way to the University ER. Closed.
Luckily there's a private place close to campus. My hand is still burning with pain at this point and I can't rotate the ice pack fast enough from the top side to the bottom side to feel comfortable. I go up to the lady, she takes my insurance and I start filling out paperwork with my left hand. She informs me that there's an hour and a half wait. What? I quickly ask for my insurance back and hand her back my unfilled papers. She tries some half-hearted attempt to get me to stay there, but I know I can do better and fix this on my own so I head home.
With my left hand I get out my laptop and look up ways to treat burns. Best recommendation is to run cool water over it for 20 minutes. I just stick it in a bucket of water with a bag of peas in it. I guess I'm hungry so I open the peas and start eating those. Yum. Comfort Food.

A week later, you can see the blisters

After like an hour I realize that this is no quick fix so I head over to Walgreens. Halfway searching through Walgreens my icepack has warmed up to no longer be effective. After another couple minutes of looking for some kind of burn ointment I can't think any longer because of the pain and I go for the instant ice packs. Finally some relief.

I make my purchases, put on the goldbond stuff and it provides the relief I'm seeking. Ahhh... finally a sigh of this doesn't sting so bad that I'm about to chop my hand off.

The next day no pain, just blisters which eventually recede and become brown. All in all a learning experience and some notoriety was gained among my classmates. I don't know if it was worth it. Hopefully I gain the feeling back in my pinky where the burns were the worst. Just a couple second degree burns I decided. Cool. Now I can add those to the long list of fun injuries I've had over the years. So much fun...