(Burn Fresno) – This is a conundrum I feel like many Fresnans often face. The weather is nice, the sun is shining, and yet still coming up with an idea of what to do seems impossible. (Note: This problem seems to decrease over time as your free time decreases – and then arises once again once you’re trying to find activities for your children.)

So here are some ideas:

1. Take a bike ride! – Fresno/Clovis has become a great area for cycling, especially with the Eaton trail along the river and the trail into Clovis. Google Maps now has a feature which allows you to search for directions using bicycle routes, I suggest you check it out if you’re unfamiliar with the paths of the area. Woodward Park is always a good place to start.
2. Drive to Yosemite – We live only an hour away from one of the most beautiful natural resources our planet has to offer. With plentiful hiking, fishing, waterfalls abound, and nothing but the smell of sweet mountain air – it can make for an amazing getaway for only a short drive. Lodging is also available in the Yosemite valley so you can stay overnight to take the load off of driving so much in one day. And of course there’s always the good old fashioned tent, which leads me to…
3. Camping! – There are literally thousands of great campsites within 45 minutes of Fresno in the mountains around Shaver Lake and up by Dinky Creek. Many of the campgrounds offer bathroom facilities, showers, and general stores. The campground at Bass Lake is one of the more popular – with boating going on all day.
4. Concerts – A lot of cool acts come to Fresno in the summer, especially downtown. Check out some of the listings for local venues in the Tower District or at the Crest Theater downtown.
5. Nightlife – Fresno is putting a lot of energy into developing a good nightlife scene both on the North side of town and Downtown. The Penthouse at Chukchansi Park is now open until 4am on weekends (as are a few other downtown venues). The Tower District has a lot of great places to drink or just hang out at night, Livingstones, Vinnis, anything on Olive Ave. There’s also Twist and Roe in North Fresno, as well as Thai Palms which is directly across the parking lot (at Palm and Nees). The Standard at Friant and Fort Washington has also been putting on some great local entertainment lately.

So next time you ask yourself “What is there to do in Fresno?” remember – there are things to do, and many of them.

(Burn Fresno) 5/18/2010 - Youropenbook.org is a new site where users can search for any word that appears in a persons Facebook status message and get a list of results paired with pictures. The site was made as a (very direct) way of challenging people to make their profiles private, due to the recent privacy concerns with Facebook and the large amount of people quitting.

Here’s a few examples – this is stuff your employer or family (or anyone really) could easily find:

Be wary – the Internet never forgets.

If you’re curious as to how it works, it’s due to a recent change Facebook made in the way they manage statuses (this came along with the other privacy-revoking measures). The source code for the project can be viewed here http://github.com/rictic/FacebookSearch

Special thanks to one of the two authors for the source code link: Awes of internet forum Something Awful.

(Burn Fresno) – IbikeFresno.org, a coalition of organizations devoted to improving the life of Central Valley residents, has announced that on May 19th, 2010 they will hold a “Corporate Bike to Work Day”. They invite any and all persons in the Fresno County area to bicycle to work on May 19th, instead of using their usual method of transportation.

People can then login to www.ibikefresno.org and register their miles – the organization has a goal of 2 million miles biked between all Fresno County residents in the month of May. They’ve already reached over 24,000(44,000 now as of May 14th) miles and things have just begun to pickup in the past few days, so it’s a great time to register.

If you commute a distance (I do myself), consider driving to a closer location where you can safely park for the day and then biking to work from that point. If you can take public transportation (not the easiest thing to do in Fresno) to do it, then do so by all means.

I hope to see you all out there on Wednesday, May 19th, promoting a healthier lifestyle for the residents of Fresno County.

Don’t forget your helmet!

(Burn Fresno) – With terrorism on the minds of many Americans since the attack on the World Trade Center (There had been somewhat of a lull in terrorism within the US since the Unabomber and the Atlanta Olympics bombing) and solidified by the constant mention of terror and terrorism in the media, there has been a rise in movies and television shows about terrorism in recent years in order to cash in on the current events of the time.

The people most easily influenced by these forms of media are young people, and many young people in America have a bad taste in their mouth when it comes to government and “the man”, especially since many grew up during a time when America was prospering the most and have now lived through the housing market crash and the economy receding in general.

Older people, on the other hand, tend to be more apathetic to the fact that almost every facet of our government is corrupt or abused in some way. This has been going on for a long time, as these “older people” were the young people of the 60′s.

Since those times (and somewhat before) young people have been using drugs to “stick it to the man”, whether “the man” be their parents, the government, police officers, their teacher, or their employer. It’s common among especially males in their more rebellious teenage years.

While this is still very prevalent today (and very much on the rise with the current state of prescription medications in America, as well as marijuana legalization being a major topic these days), the “bad guys” of television, movie, and video game entertainment have experienced a paradigm shift from South American drug dealers and the occasional Russian Terrorist to becoming Middle Eastern Terrorists a large percentage of the time.

Hence, terrorism is glorified as the side of the battle that isn’t our own government, which is appealing to many of these young kids who pick up their queues from the media in many cases. And  I believe this may have been the case in the recent Times Square attempted bombing by Faisal Shahzad.

This is someone who spent years of his life becoming a naturalized US Citizen, building a family, and earning multiple degrees (which included an MBA). He lost his house in the financial crisis and was ashamed of it (confirmed by the fact that he told his neighbors they were moving to Kansas), and after having put so much time, effort, and faith into becoming a citizen most likely felt betrayed by the government and the major financial institutions that caused our current economic state.

He then most likely pondered how he could get back at the country that he felt betrayed by and hastily constructed a plan to car bomb Times Square and flee the country. His choice here could have been driven by a number of factors, but the two most likely are that terrorism is the first thing he thought of because of the constant media exposure it gets and his cultural heritage and being from Pakistan, where such an attack is much more commonplace.

Then there’s the fact that the bomb was constructed in such a way that it looked as if someone had watched too many movies while attempting to build it. Non explosive fertilizer and alarm clocks? Where have I seen such craziness before? Oh yeah, on television, in movies, and in video games.

The glorification of terrorism needs to stop, or we’re going to end up with many more similar cases.

Terrorism is the worst path someone in a distressful situation could possibly go down (selling drugs and things like suicide don’t even compare), so we need to work on getting this option out of peoples’ minds. And when I say “we”, I mean the media (both left and right wing).