Portland Bike Beat and other random thoughts

A friend from AZ just brought the newest bicyclist's joy in Portland to my attention: they're putting big green areas on the pavement at some intersections so that bikes have a place where they are supposed to wait at intersections. Here's the link: http://bikeportland.org/2008/03/17/portlands-first-bike-box-is-now-complete/
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Interesting Times: The Long Emergency is Beginning

In LA so many people have lost their homes that they are setting up tent cities and living in mobile homes. They have nowhere to go. This is just the beginning. Imagine the large populations of America's cities without food, jobs, homes or hope, but with diseases and guns. Here it comes. And as my classmate Conan pointed out, it's the BBC reporting on it: you won't find mention of this in the US media. They're trying to keep it mum.

Medically Trained Naturopathic Docs Need a Distinct Title

I have been thinking this for some time. It started when I realized that "naturopath" means "nature disease" and that is a crappy name for the profession that I would like to espouse. So what are we going to call ourselves? We being the people who attend CNME accredited schools, belong to the AANP, are getting extensive medical training. Behind the cut, Ken Winston Cain's articulate arguments as to why we need to embrace two classes of naturopathic doctors, the "traditional" naturopaths and the medically trained ones. Any attempt to claim the title "naturopath" just for ourselves results in a backlash from a great number of people who have been using that title longer than us and don't have in depth medical training. So by trying to take away the title of a less-trained group, we are taking on the cloud of quackery that surrounds their practices, and invoking their outright and justifiable rebellion. So we must stop it. Cain suggests adding words such as "integrative" or "medical" to our title. Integrative Medical Doctor sounds better to me, just drop the word "naturopath" entirely. What do you think? Time is of the essence. We need to ensure that all future licensure bills have recognition of the existing natural medicine practitioners without trying to steal their name or pretend that they don't exist. We need a name.
( the article )