So I went to Ash Wednesday service and I must admit, I was a little uncomfortable at the thought of getting on public transportation with the ash sign of the cross on my forehead since I was taking the bus to church. Talk about feeling marked as a Christian. I think I was starting to believe the media hype and myth about San Francisco being an unfriendly place to Christians and other religious people, and didn't want to be the only one walking around marked as a Christian. From the things I've read and the way I've heard people talk, you'd think San Francisco was full of agnostics and aetheists.

But of course as is always the case with media hype, it's all a huge exagerration or some would put it more unkindly, one huge lie.

The first bus I got on was about 25% full of people with ash crosses on their forehead, some of whom I recognized from the service I'd been to. When I boarded the Muni train, there were other people on the train with ash crosses on their forehead. And when I was coming out of the store in my own neighborhood, I saw people walking about and in restaurants with ash crosses on their foreheads.

So contrary to popular beliefs about the city of Saint Francis by the Bay, Christianity is alive and well, at least on this Ash Wednesday in 2004.

I'm going to relive my junior high years. I'm watching "The Passion of Christ" tomorrow. It will be like me going to Stations of the Cross every Friday before easter. I wonder if I'll feel 13 again while watching the movie.

Oh my willies! It's hailing in San Francisco!!! What gives?

I found this course at the UC Berkeley Extension site. That job I interviewed for wants a person who can forecast how and why healthcare consumers make decisions about where to seek medical treatment.

The Economics of Health: Current Issues and Dilemmas

Choices about health care are often considered unique and separate from other choices we make in life. From an economic perspective, all choices depend on the availability of scarce resources, on alternative uses of these resources, and on differing human wants. This course emphasizes current issues and dilemmas facing health policy makers, and explores how and in what manner effective health choices can be made by individuals, institutions, and society.

I just figured something out. That company I interviewed with this morning doesn't really want someone who can data model. They want someone who can build a logical decision making tool that weights all these different pieces of information. And the pieces of information won't necessarily be all the same either or easily quantifiable.

How do you weight something abstract like quality of care as opposed to the numbers of procedures performed per 1,000 members? Which one is more important in eyes of a healthcare consumer?

What they really want and need is a biostatistician, and I'm definitely not that. They told me they don't want a biostatistician, but that's what the job really sounds like. Or maybe they need to say they want someone with a masters in Public Health.