Medical Center for the Rockies

ANNOUNCEMENTS
President Ron announced last week that the Board and Committee Chairs will meet at 11:00 on October 12 with the District Governor, George McIlvaine before his official visit to the club.

He also announced that the Board approved the list of projects submitted by the Community Service Committee:

• 9 Health Fair
• Senior Cake Day - second Wednesday of each quarter
• Habitat for Humanity
• HABIC (Human Animal Bond in Colorado)

If club members wish to have additional projects, these should be presented to the Board on forms available from Dorothy Simmons. These applications should be in at least a week before each regularly scheduled Board meeting which is the last Wednesday of each month.

GUESTS
In addition to our speaker and his assistant Alex Stuessie, we were honored to have an Assistant District Governor, from California, John Brunk. Doug DeMercurio was also a visiting Rotarian.

PROGRAM
George Hayes, President and CEO of the Medical Center for the Rockies and Rotarian from Loveland was our speaker. Hayes gave us an update on the $240 million medical center facility that is nearing completion just south of the dog track. This facility which will have 136 bed capacity when opened in February contains 570,000 square feet and will have a staff of 630 (FTE). About half of the FTE's are being transferred from Poudre Valley Hospital, the rest will be hired. The facility is expected to have an economic impact on the area in the range of $187 million the first year, The facility is designed to expand to 170 beds with the space currently being built; however, it is also designed so that each wing could be extended.

All room's are private rooms with sofa beds for family to sleep in the rooms if needed. It uses natural light in many areas with an atrium and rooftop courtyard. There are kitchens on each patient floor for families to use. It has separate elevators and corridors for patients and staff so that they will not encounter visitors when moving patients. It is designed as an energy efficient building with 1-2 % of the total cost going to environmental factors that are expected to pay for themselves within five years. 80-90% of the building products came from within 100 miles of the project. For more information or to look at job openings with the facility, go to http://www.pvhs.org/.

QUIZ ANSWER
The queen owns all of the swans in England.

NEXT QUESTION
What are six-feet long, always female when grown to adulthood, and eat lobsters whole? No mother-in-law answers, please.

HEADS UP
The club will need program chairs for January through June. If you are interested, see Ralph Moore.

Intelligent Design Debate

GUESTS
Guests last week included Steve Bullard of the Ft. Collins Breakfast Clun and Susan Kilpatrick of the Greeley Downtown Club. Greg Couse was inducted into the club as our newest member.

PROGRAM
Pat McKee, Philosophy Professor from CSU was here to talk to us about the pros and cons of intelligent design. McKee is a member of the Ft. Collins Downtown Club and a 43-year veteran as a professor at CSU.

McKee talked about the difference between teleological argument (1) and scientific theories. He gave the example that if you think a salmon swims upstream to spawn, that is teleological thinking. He then gave the allegory of a bag of pennies being burst into the room and the apparent infinite number of ways that they could arrange themselves when they came to rest. He went on to talk about Darwin's two basic principals of random mutation and environmental selection. That was followed by an esoteric discussion of the Big Bang Theory and how it could relate to the bag full of pennies.

(1) Teleology (Greek telos, "end"; logos, "discourse"), in philosophy, the science or doctrine that attempts to explain the universe in terms of ends or final causes. Teleology is based on the proposition that the universe has design and purpose. In Aristotelian philosophy, the explanation of, or justification for, a phenomenon or process is to be found not only in the immediate purpose or cause, but also in the "final cause" the reason for which the phenomenon exists or was created. In Christian theology, teleology represents a basic argument for the existence of God, in that the order and efficiency of the natural world seem not to be accidental. If the world design is intelligent, an ultimate Designer must exist.

Teleologists oppose mechanistic interpretations of the universe that rely solely on organic development or natural causation. The powerful impact of Charles Darwin's theories of evolution, which hold that species develop by natural selection, has greatly reduced the influence of traditional teleological arguments. Nonetheless, such arguments were still advanced by many during the upsurge of creationist sentiment in the early 1980s.

QUIZ ANSWER
Bulletproof vests, fire escapes, and windshield wipers were all invented by women.

NEXT QUESTION
Who owns all of the swans in England?

USELESS INFORMATION
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) was born November 30, 1835, the year that Haley's Comet passed over the earth. He vowed he would not die until he saw the famous comet for himself; he died the day after it passed over earth in 1910.

Hitler's private train was named "Amerika".

Crisis in Colorado Education

GUESTS
Our one guest last week other than the speaker was Scott Schmitz, a software developer from Virginia who recently moved here to start a new business.

PROGRAM
The program for the week was presented by Dick Dunn. Dunn was an architect in Nebraska for many years and then moved to Colorado. He taught construction Management at CSU for some time, is a 27-year Rotarian and started the Rural Education Assistance Program.

Dunn's subject was the Crisis in Colorado Education. The Colorado Commission on Higher Education has set requirements starting in 2008 for all state-supported four year colleges. These requirements establish the minimum curriculum an incoming student must have and include three years of math, four years of English, two years of science (with lab), and one year of foreign language. These requirements get even tougher in 2010 when the requirements increase to four years of math and two years of foreign language. Dunn feels that the effect of these severe changes will mean that in a few years, only 5% of the graduating high school seniors will be able to go to college in Colorado. He fears that many students will seek out of state educations which sets up a tightening spiral of lower enrollment, less revenue, and decline of state colleges. He is especially concerned about poorer rural schools who cannot afford the teachers and facilities to meet the new requirements. The Northern Colorado Business Report recently had an article about the economic impact of these requirements.

He said there are few choices left for students who do not have the minimum requirements: One or two years of community college and then perhaps three years of education in a four-year school. Dunn says that many community colleges cannot hire new staff and gear up to meet the demand because of the uncertainty of the issue. He feels there has to be a practical approach to allow students and the state legislature to adjust. He says we must fond a compromise to not force Colorado students out of state. There were some interesting questions and comments from the audience. Tim Fleming had a particularly interesting point about the possible effect of eliminating some of the four-year colleges, or turning them into private institutions.

QUIZ ANSWER
President Eisenhower was in Denver visiting his mother-in-law when the heart attack hit. He had been playing golf when the first symptoms struck.

NEXT QUESTION
What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, and windshield wipers all have in common?

USELESS INFORMATION
Diseases spread by fleas have killed more people than those killed in all wars combined.

"The Garagenous Zone"

GUESTS
Guests included Doug Couse, Brandon Pietsch, and Ron's old friend Wayne Johnson.

ANNOUNCEMENTS
Susan Gust announced that the final tally is not in yet, but the club apparently cleared $3200-3400 on the beer sales over the Labor Day Weekend.

PROGRAM
A fascinating program was presented by long-time Ft. Collins Rotarian Bill West. Bill has written a book on and gives presentations entitled "The Garagenous Zone". If you weren't there, don't misinterpret the name. It is all about how most of us use our garages for everything but cars. Bill claims that a garage tends to be a dumpster attached to your house, and that garages are designed to fail.

He sites, for example, that many of the workbenches that most of us have are not ergonomically designed. They are designed for standard counter height, which means that the average person has to bend slightly to work on anything and this puts an unnecessary strain on the back. He recommends that workbench tops be 40 to 42 inches off the floor. Bill refers to the garage as the modern day drive-in closet.

He went on to tell us about famous garages such as the one that Hewlett and Packard started in. So did Steve Jobs when he created Apple Computers. Other famous garages housed such startups as Disney, Ping Gold Clubs, and others.

West told of garage evolution starting with detached garages in the 1910 to 1930's. Attached One car garages came into vogue in the era between 1935 and 1965. Automatic garage door openers became popular fro 1954 to 1979. Two car garages were the thing from 1968 through 1991, and now most houses built have three car garages. In 2004, over $2 billion was spent on garage remodeling. He said there are now companies making garage doors that do not look like doors, but appear to be a part of the house and have such faux features as a bank of French doors, and other features--there are even some that have faux brick and rock that can match the exterior of the home.

QUIZ ANSWER
The hottest tourist area in California is now the Napa Valley and wine region.

NEXT QUESTION
On September 23, 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a near fatal heart attack that played havoc with the stock market for several days. Where was he when the attack struck him, and for extra credit, what was he doing? Editor's note: The only president I ever met, and no, I didn't cause the heart attack.