So, 228.5lbs was about where I left off and I never did much better than that, maybe 226. Around thanksgiving I took a cruise and that kicked off the slow return of the weight until, by around July of this year, i was back up at 258lbs. I half-heartedly started again about then, but did not really start until last Sunday. Weigh in that morning was 258.5lbs.
I am still a fan of what I learned last year. I realize it takes discipline and when other things intervened (I started a new job last November) the will shifted. I am now comfortable in my new job and ready to start again.
This time, I am adding exercise to the mix. Before, I walked a bit but not enough to really make a big difference. This time I am actually using that health club membership I bought last winter. For the first time :-/ Yay! Every day, after work, I am hitting the pool and swimming. As of today I am up to swimming 1100 meters. That ought to be good for about 600 calories. Also my new job is not longer a work from home situation so my basic expenditure of calories is higher than before. I figure, with the swimming and still walking, that I am burning close to 3400 calories a day. I am consuming about 1500 calories a day. That ought to produce a weight loss of a pound every 2 days or so.
So, what are the results, you might ask. As of this morning I weighed 249.5lbs. 9 pounds, 5 days! I know that 4 or 5 of that was water weight, but still. At present I am still dropping about 1lb per day but I expect that to slack off. I also plan to reduce my deficit to maybe 1200 calories a day from 1900 which will produce a much healthier 1lb per 3 days weight loss rate. Yet again we'll see how long I can keep this up. My sincere hope is that one day all of this sort of thing becomes habit.
One nice thing about doing this, this time around is that I don't have to fret over how many calories are in a thing. I learned enough, before, that I can estimate well enough. +/- 20% is what I figure my accuracy is. Plus I know what foods to eat to help me stay with it.
I do know one thing. This will last until Thanksgiving, the date of my next cruise. See, I have a wager with my Brother-In-Law on who can lose more weight by the cruise and I am not going to lose that bet.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Saturday, October 13, 2007
October 13 - Weighty Matters
228.5 Baybee! The diet continues to work as promised. Though for the last week I have been on something like a plateau at 230-232, this morning I was 228.5. That is an average loss of something like .35lbs per pay since I started this thing. A little better than I hoped for.
Friday, September 21, 2007
September 21 - Diet Update
So referring to it as a diet is still a misnomer, but I don't have a better way to refer to it. Anyway, here is how things stand. For the last month, Aug. 21 to today, I've lost 11.5 pounds and 22.5 pounds since the start of weight loss. My goal is to lose 1 pound every four days, but I am exceeding that, losing almost 1/3 lb per day. I chalk this up to underestimating how many calories I am burning. I assume that I make as many overestimation as underestimation errors in terms of calories consumed.
As of this morning I am happily at 236 lbs. Weight loss, to this point, is pretty linear on the graph, which is what science says one should expect if you maintain a roughly constant calorie deficit ever y day. Funny thing, you eat less, you lose weight. I am prepared for that to not continue. I kind of expect to hit a plateau. I haven't yet and maybe I won't. That would be nice.
To help manage calorie consumption, I have switched to packaged meals from Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice for maybe a third of my meals. They make calorie counting a cinch. I still am eating home made things and am starting to feel more comfortable with calorie estimation. I would definitely not say this has become easier (or harder) but it has never been particularly hard, either. The hardest part is determining how to deal with hunger pangs. Because I get real ones, not just snaking urges, though I get those too. Mostly I just have a 50-100cal snack and reduce my dinner meal or take a longer walk, later.
Oh yeah, to keep my metabolism up, I have taken up nightly walks of about 2 miles. I call that about 150cal though it could be more.
It has been crucial to weigh myself every day and carefully monitor my calorie intake. Other than that, I have eaten anything I like. For instance, last Sunday, I made roast beef tenderloin with home-made gnocchi and broccoli and had a couple of toasted marshmallows for desert. I called that 950 calories and did not feel deprived by my portion size (and it tasted good, too.) I woke up late that day so I had two breakfast tacos with eggs and cheese for brunch for about 600 calories. On that day I had a calculated 800 calorie deficit.
That's all for now. I plan to celebrate when I see 229.5 or less on the scale. I haven't been there in quite a few years. That should only be a couple of weeks off. A bit of that previously mentioned gluttony may be in order :-)
As of this morning I am happily at 236 lbs. Weight loss, to this point, is pretty linear on the graph, which is what science says one should expect if you maintain a roughly constant calorie deficit ever y day. Funny thing, you eat less, you lose weight. I am prepared for that to not continue. I kind of expect to hit a plateau. I haven't yet and maybe I won't. That would be nice.
To help manage calorie consumption, I have switched to packaged meals from Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice for maybe a third of my meals. They make calorie counting a cinch. I still am eating home made things and am starting to feel more comfortable with calorie estimation. I would definitely not say this has become easier (or harder) but it has never been particularly hard, either. The hardest part is determining how to deal with hunger pangs. Because I get real ones, not just snaking urges, though I get those too. Mostly I just have a 50-100cal snack and reduce my dinner meal or take a longer walk, later.
Oh yeah, to keep my metabolism up, I have taken up nightly walks of about 2 miles. I call that about 150cal though it could be more.
It has been crucial to weigh myself every day and carefully monitor my calorie intake. Other than that, I have eaten anything I like. For instance, last Sunday, I made roast beef tenderloin with home-made gnocchi and broccoli and had a couple of toasted marshmallows for desert. I called that 950 calories and did not feel deprived by my portion size (and it tasted good, too.) I woke up late that day so I had two breakfast tacos with eggs and cheese for brunch for about 600 calories. On that day I had a calculated 800 calorie deficit.
That's all for now. I plan to celebrate when I see 229.5 or less on the scale. I haven't been there in quite a few years. That should only be a couple of weeks off. A bit of that previously mentioned gluttony may be in order :-)
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
September 19 - Support the Troops
Is withdrawing from Iraq supporting the troops?
A liberal friend snipes that the troops do not wish to get shot so a withdrawal plan is supporting the troops.
Did anyone ask the troops? I turns out that yes, they have been asked and they (sweeping generalizations, here, but by "they" I mean "most of those asked") see their mission as still good and unfinished. I don't think it is supporting the troops to do something that denies what they want. Not that what the troops want necessarily comes into it. In fact, I doubt a commander takes into account what his troops want beyond giving due consideration to morale when making a decision. But to say that doing what they don't want is supporting them seems wrong to me. Unless...
Unless you think you know better than them. Kind of like they are children. But that is the liberal way. Always thinking that you know what is good for everyone. The hubris always astounds me but particularly here. I mean, these are the people in-situ where the material affect of American presence can be directly observed and, based on what they observe, the mission is still valid, not yet finished and progressing.
Do they really not want to get shot? That statement is very loaded. Of course no one WANTS to get shot. However, do people who say such things really think that soldiers do not expect to be put in harm's way? If so, they are so wrong. I'd prescribe taking some time to read Audie Murphy's autobiography some time, To Hell and Back, and then marvel at the possibility, despite the constant bombardment of shrill liberal dogma, that this country still has men and women brave enough to risk their lives to protect it and it's ideals and to even try to bring those ideals to others. It astounds me every time I think about it. I almost cry in pride when I run into a man or woman in uniform, these days. I am struck speechless every time.
Children? Uneducated? Every soldier that I have personal knowledge of in Iraq has a college degree. Many of the troops over there are reserves who, prior to being called up were making a living just like you and I. I am sure they are far and away more mature and responsible than I am. To suggest that one knows what is best for such people is, well, the adjectives and adverbs I have left are insufficient.
To suggest that supporting the troops involves removing them from harm's way is rather like supporting police by telling them not to break up domestic disputes or the coast guard not to rescue people in stormy weather. You have to assume that the vast majority of the troops understand that they may be put in danger when they choose to join the military. It is no more "supporting the troops" by bringing them home than it is supporting firefighters by telling them they don't have to go into a burning building.
A liberal friend snipes that the troops do not wish to get shot so a withdrawal plan is supporting the troops.
Did anyone ask the troops? I turns out that yes, they have been asked and they (sweeping generalizations, here, but by "they" I mean "most of those asked") see their mission as still good and unfinished. I don't think it is supporting the troops to do something that denies what they want. Not that what the troops want necessarily comes into it. In fact, I doubt a commander takes into account what his troops want beyond giving due consideration to morale when making a decision. But to say that doing what they don't want is supporting them seems wrong to me. Unless...
Unless you think you know better than them. Kind of like they are children. But that is the liberal way. Always thinking that you know what is good for everyone. The hubris always astounds me but particularly here. I mean, these are the people in-situ where the material affect of American presence can be directly observed and, based on what they observe, the mission is still valid, not yet finished and progressing.
Do they really not want to get shot? That statement is very loaded. Of course no one WANTS to get shot. However, do people who say such things really think that soldiers do not expect to be put in harm's way? If so, they are so wrong. I'd prescribe taking some time to read Audie Murphy's autobiography some time, To Hell and Back, and then marvel at the possibility, despite the constant bombardment of shrill liberal dogma, that this country still has men and women brave enough to risk their lives to protect it and it's ideals and to even try to bring those ideals to others. It astounds me every time I think about it. I almost cry in pride when I run into a man or woman in uniform, these days. I am struck speechless every time.
Children? Uneducated? Every soldier that I have personal knowledge of in Iraq has a college degree. Many of the troops over there are reserves who, prior to being called up were making a living just like you and I. I am sure they are far and away more mature and responsible than I am. To suggest that one knows what is best for such people is, well, the adjectives and adverbs I have left are insufficient.
To suggest that supporting the troops involves removing them from harm's way is rather like supporting police by telling them not to break up domestic disputes or the coast guard not to rescue people in stormy weather. You have to assume that the vast majority of the troops understand that they may be put in danger when they choose to join the military. It is no more "supporting the troops" by bringing them home than it is supporting firefighters by telling them they don't have to go into a burning building.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
August 28 - Lifestyle update
No pithy subject matter at this time, just a few quick notes on the new eating habits.
1) While traveling, it is darn near impossible to judge how much you are eating. At home, I can carefully calculate every calorie I consume, but on the road this is impossible. My goal is to get to the point where I intuit the right amount to eat. Right now, the window between hunger and too much to further weight loss is too narrow to hit without good references. So my one week business trip made an indeterminate impact on my weight loss.
2) Nevertheless, I am exceeding my targeted weight loss of .25lb per day. Based on a weighted moving average of my weight since I began, I have averaged .29lb loss per day. Based on my actual weight when I woke up this morning I have lost .48lb per day since beginning this new practice. For the record, Aug 6 - 255, Aug 28 - 244.
3) According to that information, I have been operating at a real calorie deficit of somewhere between 975 and 1675 calories per day, probably closer to the 975 level due to accounting for water weight loss. Since I am targeting about an 850 calorie deficit a day and am definitely underestimating my activity level, that seems about right.
4) I need some way to weigh myself consistently and accurately while on the road. Without a correlated weight measurement, most of these numbers become difficult to pin down.
5) I continue to be shocked at how foods differ in calorie content. Who would have figured that a Schlotzsky's sandwich and bag of chips had more calories than a big mac with fries? Who would have figured I could eat three pieces of pizza for dinner and still lose weight?
6) Counting calories is sometimes a pain and sometimes not. Every time something new comes along it is a hassle, but the things I eat every day are no problem anymore.
7) I've had just a few hard to handle days. I relate these to types and quantities of foods eaten. When cutting back on calories, it is important to choose things that will stick with you (higher protein, complex carbs) and also to eat enough. 200 calories will only ever make me want more. Satisfaction begins at around 300 calories. Fullness shows up at around 600 calories and over full tends to become evident at about 800 calories. These amounts vary with the composition of what I am eating. It is much easier to over-eat fatty foods due to their high calorie density and low water content. Vegetables, on the other hand, are almost exactly the reverse. Low calorie density in complex carbs combined with high water content lead to earlier fullness.
That's about it for now. I'll post more every couple of weeks.
1) While traveling, it is darn near impossible to judge how much you are eating. At home, I can carefully calculate every calorie I consume, but on the road this is impossible. My goal is to get to the point where I intuit the right amount to eat. Right now, the window between hunger and too much to further weight loss is too narrow to hit without good references. So my one week business trip made an indeterminate impact on my weight loss.
2) Nevertheless, I am exceeding my targeted weight loss of .25lb per day. Based on a weighted moving average of my weight since I began, I have averaged .29lb loss per day. Based on my actual weight when I woke up this morning I have lost .48lb per day since beginning this new practice. For the record, Aug 6 - 255, Aug 28 - 244.
3) According to that information, I have been operating at a real calorie deficit of somewhere between 975 and 1675 calories per day, probably closer to the 975 level due to accounting for water weight loss. Since I am targeting about an 850 calorie deficit a day and am definitely underestimating my activity level, that seems about right.
4) I need some way to weigh myself consistently and accurately while on the road. Without a correlated weight measurement, most of these numbers become difficult to pin down.
5) I continue to be shocked at how foods differ in calorie content. Who would have figured that a Schlotzsky's sandwich and bag of chips had more calories than a big mac with fries? Who would have figured I could eat three pieces of pizza for dinner and still lose weight?
6) Counting calories is sometimes a pain and sometimes not. Every time something new comes along it is a hassle, but the things I eat every day are no problem anymore.
7) I've had just a few hard to handle days. I relate these to types and quantities of foods eaten. When cutting back on calories, it is important to choose things that will stick with you (higher protein, complex carbs) and also to eat enough. 200 calories will only ever make me want more. Satisfaction begins at around 300 calories. Fullness shows up at around 600 calories and over full tends to become evident at about 800 calories. These amounts vary with the composition of what I am eating. It is much easier to over-eat fatty foods due to their high calorie density and low water content. Vegetables, on the other hand, are almost exactly the reverse. Low calorie density in complex carbs combined with high water content lead to earlier fullness.
That's about it for now. I'll post more every couple of weeks.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
August 12 - Chicken or Egg
I am a car guy. Not so much the bench racing grease under the fingernails type, but I truly love to drive. Given the choice between driving to a city 4 hours away by car versus flying, I'll drive every time. I like cars that make driving more enjoyable. Cars that make you feel more "connected" whatever that means. So, I like to drive cars that some folks think are pretentious. Except I liked to drive (and ride in) them since before they symbolized pretention so I don't think that applies to me, really.
I get it from my Dad. He like cars too. I first remember riding in a Jaguar XJ6 and 12. Later BMWs and Porsches and Mercedes. My first car was a BMW 318i in 1984. I really feel I need to point out, again, that this was before BMWs symbolized yuppies and pretention. Before the joke, "What is the difference between BMW owners and porcupines" was invented. "With porcupines, the pricks are on the outside" is the answer, BTW. I should point out that we come from Canada, though my Dad is naturalized American, now. That is important for the next bit.
Canada is a well described as a middle class country. Not too many truly poor due to a strong welfare system. Not too many truly rich due to an equally heavy tax burden. I travel to Canada fairly frequently now as my primary client is there. Over dinner one night a Canadian and I got into a discussion about how Americans "love their cars". The clear opinion on the other side of the table was that Americans are all wrapped up in how their cars make them look. Just as clearly was a certain pride that Canadians don't seem to have such cares. Except...
I'm Canadian. They insisted that my love of cars (driving performance, really) was a byproduct of living in the U.S. for the last 20 years. Except...
My Dad was Canadian, too, and I picked up the car and driving love long before we moved to the U.S.
Tonight, I sit in a hotel room in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I just got back from dinner. I noticed a few more BMW M3's in that last few hours than I would have at home, but for the most part the car population was just a bit more conservative. Not terribly. Mostly I did not see any of the larger luxury cars.
Anyway, back to the discussion, and the title of the post. I find myself asking the question, do Canadians a) really not into cars? or b) not into cars because their means don't permit that luxury. In other words, are Canadians middle class by choice or by force? If the latter, do them just profess to be happy with their lot and look down at those who accomplish, and acquire, more? Very broad generalizations here. My client, here, just bought a brand new Infiniti G35. He loves it, but wrestles with the idea that it makes people think he is pretentious. What a shame that he can't just enjoy it.
When I heard him tell me that, I realized that Canadians are perhaps just as car conscious as Americans. Perhaps just as image conscious, that is, with a slightly different set of values. The question remains, is the system, here, a product of the values or are the values a product of the system? As with most such questions, a bit of both, probably.
P.S. I need to note that on both sides of the border, I know many folks who couldn't give whit about cars other than their ability to get from point a to point b. That's probably a more healthy, if not enjoyable point of view. Kind of like preferring a bowl of oatmeal to eggs, bacon and toast with butter.
P.P.S. I also acknowledge that these are sweeping generalizations that need to be given context on a person by person basis.
I get it from my Dad. He like cars too. I first remember riding in a Jaguar XJ6 and 12. Later BMWs and Porsches and Mercedes. My first car was a BMW 318i in 1984. I really feel I need to point out, again, that this was before BMWs symbolized yuppies and pretention. Before the joke, "What is the difference between BMW owners and porcupines" was invented. "With porcupines, the pricks are on the outside" is the answer, BTW. I should point out that we come from Canada, though my Dad is naturalized American, now. That is important for the next bit.
Canada is a well described as a middle class country. Not too many truly poor due to a strong welfare system. Not too many truly rich due to an equally heavy tax burden. I travel to Canada fairly frequently now as my primary client is there. Over dinner one night a Canadian and I got into a discussion about how Americans "love their cars". The clear opinion on the other side of the table was that Americans are all wrapped up in how their cars make them look. Just as clearly was a certain pride that Canadians don't seem to have such cares. Except...
I'm Canadian. They insisted that my love of cars (driving performance, really) was a byproduct of living in the U.S. for the last 20 years. Except...
My Dad was Canadian, too, and I picked up the car and driving love long before we moved to the U.S.
Tonight, I sit in a hotel room in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I just got back from dinner. I noticed a few more BMW M3's in that last few hours than I would have at home, but for the most part the car population was just a bit more conservative. Not terribly. Mostly I did not see any of the larger luxury cars.
Anyway, back to the discussion, and the title of the post. I find myself asking the question, do Canadians a) really not into cars? or b) not into cars because their means don't permit that luxury. In other words, are Canadians middle class by choice or by force? If the latter, do them just profess to be happy with their lot and look down at those who accomplish, and acquire, more? Very broad generalizations here. My client, here, just bought a brand new Infiniti G35. He loves it, but wrestles with the idea that it makes people think he is pretentious. What a shame that he can't just enjoy it.
When I heard him tell me that, I realized that Canadians are perhaps just as car conscious as Americans. Perhaps just as image conscious, that is, with a slightly different set of values. The question remains, is the system, here, a product of the values or are the values a product of the system? As with most such questions, a bit of both, probably.
P.S. I need to note that on both sides of the border, I know many folks who couldn't give whit about cars other than their ability to get from point a to point b. That's probably a more healthy, if not enjoyable point of view. Kind of like preferring a bowl of oatmeal to eggs, bacon and toast with butter.
P.P.S. I also acknowledge that these are sweeping generalizations that need to be given context on a person by person basis.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
August 9 - Gluttony
This is a brief follow up to yesterday's post. Some things I left unsaid.
I love to eat. Many of my friends know they can count on me to know where to eat. As I mentioned, I get to treat others to meals from time to time in my line of work and you can bet that customers don't ask you to take them to Mickey D's. Eating wise, there is nothing I like so much as to sit down to a 20oz Ribeye with a side of Bearnaise sauce, a baked potato drenched in butter and a pile of sauteed vegetables, preceeded by an appetizer of shrimp cocktail and a wedge salad with blue cheese crumbles and dressing, bacon, tomatoes and croutons all accompanied with a nice red wine and followed by a creme brulee and a glass of port. Yep, if you have the opportunity to have me take you to dinner, you should definitely take me up on it :-)
That one meal almost assuredly exceeds the total calories I am consuming in a day, right now. Oh well. It will happen again, for a treat, that I earn with calorie deficits elsewhere, but not right now.
I just did not want to leave anyone with the impression that I don't realize that it is all my bad habits that have me where I am.
I also don't really want anyone to think that I think this is a diet, per se. Calorie control is what I am going to try to do for the rest of my life and it is something that I am going to try to make easy to do.
That said, I still love to eat, so I know that in order to occasionally eat the gluttonous meals I so truly love, I am going to have to figure out how to make room for them in my calorie budget. I expect a combination of exercise with a little cutting back on other meals will suffice.
Since yesterday, I lost another 1.5#. This will slow radically, shortly. I calculate that is a little more than 4# water loss. It would not surprise me if I woke up tomorrow with no additional loss. On the "how it feels" front, it is after noon and I have not had lunch yet and I am only feeling the slightest of hunger. This has been much easier, from a discomfort perspective than I expected. The hardest part has been overcoming the snacking urge which has far more to do with things other than hunger and is habitual so it just happens without much conscious thought. So far so good. No straying.
I love to eat. Many of my friends know they can count on me to know where to eat. As I mentioned, I get to treat others to meals from time to time in my line of work and you can bet that customers don't ask you to take them to Mickey D's. Eating wise, there is nothing I like so much as to sit down to a 20oz Ribeye with a side of Bearnaise sauce, a baked potato drenched in butter and a pile of sauteed vegetables, preceeded by an appetizer of shrimp cocktail and a wedge salad with blue cheese crumbles and dressing, bacon, tomatoes and croutons all accompanied with a nice red wine and followed by a creme brulee and a glass of port. Yep, if you have the opportunity to have me take you to dinner, you should definitely take me up on it :-)
That one meal almost assuredly exceeds the total calories I am consuming in a day, right now. Oh well. It will happen again, for a treat, that I earn with calorie deficits elsewhere, but not right now.
I just did not want to leave anyone with the impression that I don't realize that it is all my bad habits that have me where I am.
I also don't really want anyone to think that I think this is a diet, per se. Calorie control is what I am going to try to do for the rest of my life and it is something that I am going to try to make easy to do.
That said, I still love to eat, so I know that in order to occasionally eat the gluttonous meals I so truly love, I am going to have to figure out how to make room for them in my calorie budget. I expect a combination of exercise with a little cutting back on other meals will suffice.
Since yesterday, I lost another 1.5#. This will slow radically, shortly. I calculate that is a little more than 4# water loss. It would not surprise me if I woke up tomorrow with no additional loss. On the "how it feels" front, it is after noon and I have not had lunch yet and I am only feeling the slightest of hunger. This has been much easier, from a discomfort perspective than I expected. The hardest part has been overcoming the snacking urge which has far more to do with things other than hunger and is habitual so it just happens without much conscious thought. So far so good. No straying.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
August 8 - Die with a "T"
I've struggled with weight my entire life. As a kid I was never much for sports and always had "baby-fat". It turns out there is no such thing. All real baby fat is gone by six months or so. I was at my fittest at about age 24 when I worked on a loading dock loading and unloading trucks whilst finishing college. I think I maybe was 195# at the time, the lowest I had seen since before high school graduation. I subsequently took up a sedentary profession and weight just slowly increased over time.
My first breakthrough moment regarding weight occurred when I was about 27 and saw that I was up to about 245#. It was time to do something and I did. I began relatively vigorous exercise (for me who had never done so). I took a brisk walk every morning through a vertical relief of over 100 feet for about half an hour and followed that with a half hour of lifting weights. In addition to that, I tried my first real diet. I tried the low-fat approach and successfully got my fat consumption down to about 6 grams per day. You have no idea how hard that is to do until you try it. Just looking at a potato chip gives you 6 grams of fat.
Results were good. I got down to about 215 and something like 17% body fat which is fairly healthy. My blood pressure dropped. My cholesterol was OK. And I was able to maintain it for close to a year. But then life interfered and I began to gain again. I rose to about 225#-230# and maintained that weight until I was about 30. Then began another slow rise to about 245# again as my life became even more sedentary and I began to get jobs that came with expense accounts. There is nothing like really good, free food :-)
Soon thereafter, I decided to diet again. This time I went the other way around. I traveled a lot and so ate out a lot which is a bane of a low fat diet. I decided that a variant of the Atkin's diet would work for me. And it did, very well. I dropped weight in no time and kept it off for a quite while. It was very easy to stay on at first. I probably got back down to around 215#. However, such a diet is not very compatible with the people you live with and ultimately I went on and off this diet several times. The weight came back. In the last year or so (I am closing on 40) my weight has been pretty stable at about 257#.
And now it is time to do something. I have noticed a few things that have changed about me of the past few years I do not like. One is that my job has become so incredibly sedentary that I am lucky if I walk as much as a 1/4 mile in a day. I work out of the house. It has only one story. I get almost no incidental exercise anymore. The result is that, at my weight, I am in worse shape than I might have been 10 years ago. My tummy has a big crease at the waistline. I do not want that to turn into a flap.
Aside from my weight reaching a level that has made me seriously question my eating habits, I have also begun to suffer from health issues associate with weight gain. 8 years or so ago I threw out my back and have suffered from back pain. That is relieved by weight loss. My feet have begun to suffer from Plantar's Fascitis on an occasional basis due to over stressing them with weight. Most shocking, quite recently, I developed a joint inflammation of my big toe known as Gout. Gout! I'll leave it to you to learn what that is if you want. It happened as a result of my weight and trying the high protein approach again recently.
So other things I have noticed in general:
1) my weight rises to match my eating habits and then stabilizes. This is to say that it takes a certain amount of calories to maintain a given weight.
2) unbalanced diets, whatever else may be said about them, are difficult for me to maintain over the long term.
3) I no longer have any idea of how much I should be eating. That is, if I ever did have any idea.
Assuming I am not special, I have come to the conclusion that I eat too much (shocking, no?) So I am going to eat less.
...
What? You want more? It's pretty much that simple. Unbalanced diets take advantage of some physiological tricks to achieve a little extra delta in weight loss, but ultimately they succeed because you really are eating fewer calories. Trust me, on a diet where you aren't consuming more than 10g of fat per day, it is really hard to stuff enough calories into yourself. Protein diets make the body really work for its calories and also act as an efficient diuretic producing prodigious water loss at first. But, as your body adapts to eating and converting all that protein, you will find yourself having to regulate quantity. This time, I am going to do it the old fashioned way. I am going to eat less. Further, I am never going to eat more. At least, that is the plan.
Here are the details. The body is a machine that turns food into energy and waste. Energy gets used or stored. If you eat less energy than you use, you will lose weight. If you eat more than you use, you gain weight. Simple. My plan is to eat less than I use until I reach a weight I am comfortable with and then eat as much as I use for the remainder of my life. Again that is the plan. I have only just entered battle so the plan still seems good. We'll see.
As I mentioned above, I have no idea how much food I should be eating. I need to figure that out. To begin with, I looked up my Basal Metabolic Rate. This is the rate at which I burn calories just lying in bed all day. Lucky me, I get a budget of approximately 2300 calories to play with. Next, I am going very carefully determine exactly how much I am consuming in calories. This has not been too hard yet. A bowl of cereal in the morning is about 300 calories. A couple of basic sandwiches at lunch is about 600 calories. A good dinner is about 600 calories. I am keeping a log of everything I eat and my weight. I am going to track the rate at which I lose weight versus the calories and determine from this much more precisely what my metabolic rate is. I am also going to track any exercise I do. Today that is limited to 100 -200 calories from a brisk walk.
A pound is about 3500 calories. I'd like to lose weight at a rate of about a pound every 4 days. This means I will need to have a deficit of around 875 calories per day. So, if I get 100 calories of exercise and have a BMR of 2300, I can eat about 1525 calories a day. Today is day three and I have not had a problem with this. They say the first 72 hours are the hardest to get used to and this was as easy or easier than the Atkin's diet. I had a few hunger pangs yesterday, but today was good. For the record, I found 1500 calories to be quite a bit more than I expected.
For example, today I ate a bowl of cereal for 290 calories. A bowl is one cup of raisin bran with one cup of vanilla soy milk. That worked until lunch. For lunch I had two sandwiches on normal-sized multi-grain bread. I stuck to the recommended serving sizes for the lunch-meat. Had one slice of cheese, each. Had 1tbsp of light mayo on each and lots of field greens. That was 620 calories and left me full. Dinner was a zucchini casserole made with zucchini, ground beef, tomato sauce and cheese. I ate about 1/4 of it. I had determined that the total calories in the casserole were about 1400 so that was another 350 calories plus 120 calories for two slices of whole wheat bread and another 60 calories for a cup of sugar free pudding for dessert. Again, I felt fully satisfied. I took a longer walk today for 150 extra calories burned so I had enough budget for an extra snack. So I had a nectarine that I figured to be something less than 100 calories. That's 1540 calories against 2450 burned leaving an energy deficit of 910 calories for today and I do not feel hungry.
What I am learning right now, in detail, is what 1500 calories looks like over the course of a day. I intend to eat a lot of different foods to get good idea of how much is enough. I'll track calories at least until I hit whatever I decide is going to be my steady state weight plus a few months to stabilize at that weight.
The trick to maintenance will be stepping on the scale daily and logging the weight. if I see my weight trending upwards then I will know that I have to cut back a little.
None of this is a new idea. But there is a book that presents a new way of thinking about it. It is called "The Hacker's Diet". You can find it at http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/.
Something I have seen is that I have lost quite a bit more weight than is suggested by two days of an 850 calorie deficit. I have gone from about 258# a the start of the high protein diet two weeks ago with a week off after the gout to 255# at the start of this diet to 251.5# today at the start of the 3rd day. What I am concluding is that a reduced calorie diet is also diuretic and the reason is simple. Food carries salt which causes you to store water. Less food = less salt = less water stored. I have no illusions of further rapid weight loss, but any diet that starts with a downward kick is a nice bit of positive reinforcement.
I am concerned with recidivism. I know I can do this for a few weeks. It has not been hard so far. I think I can do it for a few months. I am fairly sure I will be able to lose as much as 50# this way (205# sounds good, but I won't know until I get there.) What I don't know, but sincerely hope, is that I will be able to do this for the rest of my life. If it takes continued exercise of discipline as it does now, I don't hold out much hope. What I look forward to is the possibility that I am about to learn some new habits and that this way of living just becomes natural. Good luck to me :-)
My first breakthrough moment regarding weight occurred when I was about 27 and saw that I was up to about 245#. It was time to do something and I did. I began relatively vigorous exercise (for me who had never done so). I took a brisk walk every morning through a vertical relief of over 100 feet for about half an hour and followed that with a half hour of lifting weights. In addition to that, I tried my first real diet. I tried the low-fat approach and successfully got my fat consumption down to about 6 grams per day. You have no idea how hard that is to do until you try it. Just looking at a potato chip gives you 6 grams of fat.
Results were good. I got down to about 215 and something like 17% body fat which is fairly healthy. My blood pressure dropped. My cholesterol was OK. And I was able to maintain it for close to a year. But then life interfered and I began to gain again. I rose to about 225#-230# and maintained that weight until I was about 30. Then began another slow rise to about 245# again as my life became even more sedentary and I began to get jobs that came with expense accounts. There is nothing like really good, free food :-)
Soon thereafter, I decided to diet again. This time I went the other way around. I traveled a lot and so ate out a lot which is a bane of a low fat diet. I decided that a variant of the Atkin's diet would work for me. And it did, very well. I dropped weight in no time and kept it off for a quite while. It was very easy to stay on at first. I probably got back down to around 215#. However, such a diet is not very compatible with the people you live with and ultimately I went on and off this diet several times. The weight came back. In the last year or so (I am closing on 40) my weight has been pretty stable at about 257#.
And now it is time to do something. I have noticed a few things that have changed about me of the past few years I do not like. One is that my job has become so incredibly sedentary that I am lucky if I walk as much as a 1/4 mile in a day. I work out of the house. It has only one story. I get almost no incidental exercise anymore. The result is that, at my weight, I am in worse shape than I might have been 10 years ago. My tummy has a big crease at the waistline. I do not want that to turn into a flap.
Aside from my weight reaching a level that has made me seriously question my eating habits, I have also begun to suffer from health issues associate with weight gain. 8 years or so ago I threw out my back and have suffered from back pain. That is relieved by weight loss. My feet have begun to suffer from Plantar's Fascitis on an occasional basis due to over stressing them with weight. Most shocking, quite recently, I developed a joint inflammation of my big toe known as Gout. Gout! I'll leave it to you to learn what that is if you want. It happened as a result of my weight and trying the high protein approach again recently.
So other things I have noticed in general:
1) my weight rises to match my eating habits and then stabilizes. This is to say that it takes a certain amount of calories to maintain a given weight.
2) unbalanced diets, whatever else may be said about them, are difficult for me to maintain over the long term.
3) I no longer have any idea of how much I should be eating. That is, if I ever did have any idea.
Assuming I am not special, I have come to the conclusion that I eat too much (shocking, no?) So I am going to eat less.
...
What? You want more? It's pretty much that simple. Unbalanced diets take advantage of some physiological tricks to achieve a little extra delta in weight loss, but ultimately they succeed because you really are eating fewer calories. Trust me, on a diet where you aren't consuming more than 10g of fat per day, it is really hard to stuff enough calories into yourself. Protein diets make the body really work for its calories and also act as an efficient diuretic producing prodigious water loss at first. But, as your body adapts to eating and converting all that protein, you will find yourself having to regulate quantity. This time, I am going to do it the old fashioned way. I am going to eat less. Further, I am never going to eat more. At least, that is the plan.
Here are the details. The body is a machine that turns food into energy and waste. Energy gets used or stored. If you eat less energy than you use, you will lose weight. If you eat more than you use, you gain weight. Simple. My plan is to eat less than I use until I reach a weight I am comfortable with and then eat as much as I use for the remainder of my life. Again that is the plan. I have only just entered battle so the plan still seems good. We'll see.
As I mentioned above, I have no idea how much food I should be eating. I need to figure that out. To begin with, I looked up my Basal Metabolic Rate. This is the rate at which I burn calories just lying in bed all day. Lucky me, I get a budget of approximately 2300 calories to play with. Next, I am going very carefully determine exactly how much I am consuming in calories. This has not been too hard yet. A bowl of cereal in the morning is about 300 calories. A couple of basic sandwiches at lunch is about 600 calories. A good dinner is about 600 calories. I am keeping a log of everything I eat and my weight. I am going to track the rate at which I lose weight versus the calories and determine from this much more precisely what my metabolic rate is. I am also going to track any exercise I do. Today that is limited to 100 -200 calories from a brisk walk.
A pound is about 3500 calories. I'd like to lose weight at a rate of about a pound every 4 days. This means I will need to have a deficit of around 875 calories per day. So, if I get 100 calories of exercise and have a BMR of 2300, I can eat about 1525 calories a day. Today is day three and I have not had a problem with this. They say the first 72 hours are the hardest to get used to and this was as easy or easier than the Atkin's diet. I had a few hunger pangs yesterday, but today was good. For the record, I found 1500 calories to be quite a bit more than I expected.
For example, today I ate a bowl of cereal for 290 calories. A bowl is one cup of raisin bran with one cup of vanilla soy milk. That worked until lunch. For lunch I had two sandwiches on normal-sized multi-grain bread. I stuck to the recommended serving sizes for the lunch-meat. Had one slice of cheese, each. Had 1tbsp of light mayo on each and lots of field greens. That was 620 calories and left me full. Dinner was a zucchini casserole made with zucchini, ground beef, tomato sauce and cheese. I ate about 1/4 of it. I had determined that the total calories in the casserole were about 1400 so that was another 350 calories plus 120 calories for two slices of whole wheat bread and another 60 calories for a cup of sugar free pudding for dessert. Again, I felt fully satisfied. I took a longer walk today for 150 extra calories burned so I had enough budget for an extra snack. So I had a nectarine that I figured to be something less than 100 calories. That's 1540 calories against 2450 burned leaving an energy deficit of 910 calories for today and I do not feel hungry.
What I am learning right now, in detail, is what 1500 calories looks like over the course of a day. I intend to eat a lot of different foods to get good idea of how much is enough. I'll track calories at least until I hit whatever I decide is going to be my steady state weight plus a few months to stabilize at that weight.
The trick to maintenance will be stepping on the scale daily and logging the weight. if I see my weight trending upwards then I will know that I have to cut back a little.
None of this is a new idea. But there is a book that presents a new way of thinking about it. It is called "The Hacker's Diet". You can find it at http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/.
Something I have seen is that I have lost quite a bit more weight than is suggested by two days of an 850 calorie deficit. I have gone from about 258# a the start of the high protein diet two weeks ago with a week off after the gout to 255# at the start of this diet to 251.5# today at the start of the 3rd day. What I am concluding is that a reduced calorie diet is also diuretic and the reason is simple. Food carries salt which causes you to store water. Less food = less salt = less water stored. I have no illusions of further rapid weight loss, but any diet that starts with a downward kick is a nice bit of positive reinforcement.
I am concerned with recidivism. I know I can do this for a few weeks. It has not been hard so far. I think I can do it for a few months. I am fairly sure I will be able to lose as much as 50# this way (205# sounds good, but I won't know until I get there.) What I don't know, but sincerely hope, is that I will be able to do this for the rest of my life. If it takes continued exercise of discipline as it does now, I don't hold out much hope. What I look forward to is the possibility that I am about to learn some new habits and that this way of living just becomes natural. Good luck to me :-)
Monday, July 23, 2007
July 23 - Email is Dead
Writing a letter is a habit. Though I have no evidence, it seems to me that in ages past, literate people wrote letters drastically more often than today. That habit has evidently been lost. I have not written a letter since I was forced (like just about every kid of my generation) to write a Thank You note to my grandparents. By my generation, the habit was lost. Looking at my parents, I'd say the habit is lost with them, too. Perhaps they write a family update at Christmas, but not much beyond that. Other communication mediums are far more convenient. Most probably it was the telephone that destroyed casual letter writing.
While I never write letters, I do write emails frequently. Several times per day. Email is possibly the most valuable communications medium I have. I practically earn my living with it. Today, on Slashdot, there is a headline that says, "Kids Say Email is Dead." Blink. You may have missed it. Nearly every kid with a cell phone is straining their thumbs frantically keying messages (nearly meaningless to me) and sending via text-messaging, 21st century paging on cell phones. Many of these kids send thousands of messages per month.
I maybe send ten text messages per month. But I see that growing. I don't see email declining any time soon, but text-messaging has value. For instance, when I am in a meeting, to place a call to get a quick bit of information would be the height of unhidable rudeness. I can pretty un-obtrusively ask for via text-messaging, though. Another for instance: I may want to carry on a conversation with someone, but not give it my full attention. Text messaging makes this very possible because conversation over this medium are extremely forgiving of long pauses. Conversely, this is very useful to get at least some of the attention of an otherwise unavailable, very busy person. Further, I can simultaneously carry on separate conversations with several different people.
While texting, for me, is still limited in scope, I use something very similar in preference to email quite a bit. This is instant messaging. Personally, I use Skype as I also use their VoIP services and the integration is nice. Instant messaging is a simple application that gives you nearly instant communication with anyone you know that also uses the application. All of the attributes mentioned above for texting apply here with the added bonus that you get to use a real keyboard and proper grammar if you choose. The communication is far more rich, in my opinion.
Oddly enough, this is something I have been doing for 25 years or so. Way back then, I was a quite active user of bulletin board systems and "gweeped" (what we called instant messaging) quite often. Then the internet entered my life and that went away for 10 years or so. What we have today is not so different. The main thing I see that is interesting about this is that they appear to have evolved independently.
Anyway, email probably is dying as a primary communication medium. Young professionals use texting amongst themselves to a degree I probably never will. I know one thing, email will live with me for a while longer because my thumbs simply do not have eloquence.
While I never write letters, I do write emails frequently. Several times per day. Email is possibly the most valuable communications medium I have. I practically earn my living with it. Today, on Slashdot, there is a headline that says, "Kids Say Email is Dead." Blink. You may have missed it. Nearly every kid with a cell phone is straining their thumbs frantically keying messages (nearly meaningless to me) and sending via text-messaging, 21st century paging on cell phones. Many of these kids send thousands of messages per month.
I maybe send ten text messages per month. But I see that growing. I don't see email declining any time soon, but text-messaging has value. For instance, when I am in a meeting, to place a call to get a quick bit of information would be the height of unhidable rudeness. I can pretty un-obtrusively ask for via text-messaging, though. Another for instance: I may want to carry on a conversation with someone, but not give it my full attention. Text messaging makes this very possible because conversation over this medium are extremely forgiving of long pauses. Conversely, this is very useful to get at least some of the attention of an otherwise unavailable, very busy person. Further, I can simultaneously carry on separate conversations with several different people.
While texting, for me, is still limited in scope, I use something very similar in preference to email quite a bit. This is instant messaging. Personally, I use Skype as I also use their VoIP services and the integration is nice. Instant messaging is a simple application that gives you nearly instant communication with anyone you know that also uses the application. All of the attributes mentioned above for texting apply here with the added bonus that you get to use a real keyboard and proper grammar if you choose. The communication is far more rich, in my opinion.
Oddly enough, this is something I have been doing for 25 years or so. Way back then, I was a quite active user of bulletin board systems and "gweeped" (what we called instant messaging) quite often. Then the internet entered my life and that went away for 10 years or so. What we have today is not so different. The main thing I see that is interesting about this is that they appear to have evolved independently.
Anyway, email probably is dying as a primary communication medium. Young professionals use texting amongst themselves to a degree I probably never will. I know one thing, email will live with me for a while longer because my thumbs simply do not have eloquence.
Friday, June 29, 2007
June 30 - It's not a Hat Trick
In a victory for the right, two bills suffered serious setbacks this week. Most prominently, the immigration bill failed to pass a vote to vote. That it failed is more a victory for the citizens of the U.S. than just for the right. It appeared that this issue was a class struggle, business versus individual fight more than a left versus right fight. Grassroots momentum really took it's toll on our legislators. The Blogosphere wielded a big stick on this one, it seems. The phones we ringing off the hook in the offices of the Senate.
A second bill, that to impose the fairness doctrine on radio stations, was voted on and defeated in the house by a large margin. This bill was a clear victory for the right and definitely was a conservative versus liberal issue. Liberal talk radio has had trouble finding an audience. Conservative talk radio, on the other hand, enjoys great commercial success. This irks the left and, now that they have the house and senate, they proposed this bill as a way to knock the legs off Rush's chair.
A third, less well known bill to eliminate the secret ballot in Union organizing votes gained support. Today when a shop is considering voting to unionize or not, each employee has the privilege of casting a secret ballot. Originally unions fought for this exact condition so as to prevent violent coercion by employers. A prime example of irony, unions today are fighting to have the ballot made public, with a union organizer right there when the employee makes his or her decision. No chance for coercion there, right? Well, this week, in the Senate, the Employee Free Choice Act (what a crock) received a slim 51-48 margin of support keeping it alive for a while longer (it takes 60 votes to end debate and proceed to an up or down vote.)
So no hat trick this week. Hopefully more rational heads will prevail and the Employee Free Choice act will go down next time around.
A second bill, that to impose the fairness doctrine on radio stations, was voted on and defeated in the house by a large margin. This bill was a clear victory for the right and definitely was a conservative versus liberal issue. Liberal talk radio has had trouble finding an audience. Conservative talk radio, on the other hand, enjoys great commercial success. This irks the left and, now that they have the house and senate, they proposed this bill as a way to knock the legs off Rush's chair.
A third, less well known bill to eliminate the secret ballot in Union organizing votes gained support. Today when a shop is considering voting to unionize or not, each employee has the privilege of casting a secret ballot. Originally unions fought for this exact condition so as to prevent violent coercion by employers. A prime example of irony, unions today are fighting to have the ballot made public, with a union organizer right there when the employee makes his or her decision. No chance for coercion there, right? Well, this week, in the Senate, the Employee Free Choice Act (what a crock) received a slim 51-48 margin of support keeping it alive for a while longer (it takes 60 votes to end debate and proceed to an up or down vote.)
So no hat trick this week. Hopefully more rational heads will prevail and the Employee Free Choice act will go down next time around.
Monday, June 18, 2007
June 18 - Palestine is Our Fault?
MJ Rosenberg over at the Huffington Post believes that the U.S. is to blame for the recent collapse in Palestine's governance. Given the source, this is to be expected, but he makes a couple of statements that really hurt someone who believes in U.S. generosity.
To sum up the piece, Rosenberg say that the U.S. did not give any "carrots" to the Palestinians to encourage them to be civil. Setting aside, for a moment, that one should not have to give someone money to not kill people, he is still flat wrong.
A very little fact finding shows that the U.S. is the largest donor country in foreign aid to Palestine, donating approximately $100 million per year. This has been the case for well over ten years and continues. That the money was not provided in liquid currency directly to Hamas (I don't wonder why) makes it no less a carrot.
Why would Mr. Rosenberg make such a statement?
Having raised the topic, this begs another question. Why is it, with some very wealthy Arabic countries nearby, that the largest donor is the distant, heathen U.S.? It seems to me that The King of Saudi Arabia would simply have to forgo a new yacht this year, or Kuwait and Dubai could simply build a few fewer islands in "The World Islands" to exceed the U.S.'s donations. I wonder why this is? And, given this, the U.S. is nevertheless vilified by the very people they are so generous to.
From that, Mr. Rosenberg concludes that the U.S. is not giving enough. What kind of a person concludes that?
Over time, I've come to learn that that betting on the statement, "The U.S. is the single largest provider of foreign aid to (insert country here)," is pretty safe. The U.S. is the single most generous country in the history of, well, history.
To sum up the piece, Rosenberg say that the U.S. did not give any "carrots" to the Palestinians to encourage them to be civil. Setting aside, for a moment, that one should not have to give someone money to not kill people, he is still flat wrong.
A very little fact finding shows that the U.S. is the largest donor country in foreign aid to Palestine, donating approximately $100 million per year. This has been the case for well over ten years and continues. That the money was not provided in liquid currency directly to Hamas (I don't wonder why) makes it no less a carrot.
Why would Mr. Rosenberg make such a statement?
Having raised the topic, this begs another question. Why is it, with some very wealthy Arabic countries nearby, that the largest donor is the distant, heathen U.S.? It seems to me that The King of Saudi Arabia would simply have to forgo a new yacht this year, or Kuwait and Dubai could simply build a few fewer islands in "The World Islands" to exceed the U.S.'s donations. I wonder why this is? And, given this, the U.S. is nevertheless vilified by the very people they are so generous to.
From that, Mr. Rosenberg concludes that the U.S. is not giving enough. What kind of a person concludes that?
Over time, I've come to learn that that betting on the statement, "The U.S. is the single largest provider of foreign aid to (insert country here)," is pretty safe. The U.S. is the single most generous country in the history of, well, history.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
June 12 - Not France, Not Even Texas, Hilton. And Joel Spolsky, too.
You know, getting released from jail only to be tossed right back in has got to hurt even more :-)
Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software is a fellow from whom I have learned a lot. He has generally good opinions about design (form and function relationships in systems) and, I think, excellent opinions on how to run a software shop, it being what he does at his NY, NY company, Fog Creek Software. He is a former Microsoft employee and has a lot to say about MS, both good and bad.
As good as his opinions generally are, he gets it wrong on design from time to time, most notably in his assessment of Apple's IPOD. His basic premise is that the IPOD is a thing so beautiful that people can't help buy it. That you can not change the battery in the device is cast as a good thing because it resulted in a nearly seamless un-flawed finish. No crevices to catch dirt and lint, you see. That it has a little speaker with no other purpose except to make the selector wheel make a clicky noise is art. Hokum. I agree, the IPOD is nice piece of design. I agree it has sold well. I disagree that there is a major causal relationship between these two things.
In fact, the very design of the case may be the iPod's greatest flaw. Sure the thing looks beautiful out of the box, but use it for a while and that pretty high gloss finish soon shows scratches that are that much more noticeable for being in an otherwise pristine, unflawed surface. Changing the battery is a $60 touch and requires returning the unit to Apple. Apple has lost financially on both counts having to satisfy it's customers. And these flaws have gotten around, they are well documented on the web. Nope design of the unit itself is not the big selling factor.
It is the existence of iTunes that really makes the iPod what it is. The integration between the iTunes software and the iPod devices that makes using it so very easy. Yep, sorry, it is not form, but function that sells the iPod. No other player/music combo comes close. I didn't even choose to use an iPod, preferring the greater capacity and capability of an iRiver unit instead, and I use iTunes. Oh and, of course, the iTunes Music Store. Downloading music has never been easier. And since the iPod is the only music device that can play back Apples music encryption format, well, duh, can you say "lock-in"? More function over form.
The iPod did gain fashion value early on, but when everyone owns one it is no longer special. It is no longer pure design. It was smart business and functionality that won the day.
On the other hand, that does not really explain the iPod Nano. A small device that only plays random songs. Sounds like a radio to me, and an expensive one at that. Admittedly it plays random songs from a library I selected, but I can usually find a radio station I like. That one, I just don't get.
Anyway, on the topic of the iPod, Joel is absolutely convinced that appealing design is the reason for it's success as are a lot of other people, all of whom I think have drunk some apple flavored Kool-Aide. He usually is not so unconsidered.
Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software is a fellow from whom I have learned a lot. He has generally good opinions about design (form and function relationships in systems) and, I think, excellent opinions on how to run a software shop, it being what he does at his NY, NY company, Fog Creek Software. He is a former Microsoft employee and has a lot to say about MS, both good and bad.
As good as his opinions generally are, he gets it wrong on design from time to time, most notably in his assessment of Apple's IPOD. His basic premise is that the IPOD is a thing so beautiful that people can't help buy it. That you can not change the battery in the device is cast as a good thing because it resulted in a nearly seamless un-flawed finish. No crevices to catch dirt and lint, you see. That it has a little speaker with no other purpose except to make the selector wheel make a clicky noise is art. Hokum. I agree, the IPOD is nice piece of design. I agree it has sold well. I disagree that there is a major causal relationship between these two things.
In fact, the very design of the case may be the iPod's greatest flaw. Sure the thing looks beautiful out of the box, but use it for a while and that pretty high gloss finish soon shows scratches that are that much more noticeable for being in an otherwise pristine, unflawed surface. Changing the battery is a $60 touch and requires returning the unit to Apple. Apple has lost financially on both counts having to satisfy it's customers. And these flaws have gotten around, they are well documented on the web. Nope design of the unit itself is not the big selling factor.
It is the existence of iTunes that really makes the iPod what it is. The integration between the iTunes software and the iPod devices that makes using it so very easy. Yep, sorry, it is not form, but function that sells the iPod. No other player/music combo comes close. I didn't even choose to use an iPod, preferring the greater capacity and capability of an iRiver unit instead, and I use iTunes. Oh and, of course, the iTunes Music Store. Downloading music has never been easier. And since the iPod is the only music device that can play back Apples music encryption format, well, duh, can you say "lock-in"? More function over form.
The iPod did gain fashion value early on, but when everyone owns one it is no longer special. It is no longer pure design. It was smart business and functionality that won the day.
On the other hand, that does not really explain the iPod Nano. A small device that only plays random songs. Sounds like a radio to me, and an expensive one at that. Admittedly it plays random songs from a library I selected, but I can usually find a radio station I like. That one, I just don't get.
Anyway, on the topic of the iPod, Joel is absolutely convinced that appealing design is the reason for it's success as are a lot of other people, all of whom I think have drunk some apple flavored Kool-Aide. He usually is not so unconsidered.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
June 3 - Hiatus and Statistics
Well, that was a nice hiatus. I expect that posts will be fewer and farther between, now, as other aspects of life have intruded on free time.
Earlier in the series, you may have read some debate on the merits of popular gun ownership. Joey Blades indicated that he did not want to use statistics because they can be used to say anything. I don't entirely agree with him, but I can appreciate his position much more when I read things like this from the Austin American Statesman:
The complaint was triggered, in part, by a series of American-Statesman articles in 2004 revealing that from 1998 to 2003, police were twice as likely to use force against blacks as against whites and 25 percent more likely to use force against Hispanics than against whites.
Those statistics stood there, alone, with no further explanation. One could reasonably infer from those statistics that Austin police are a bunch of racist sadists. But there is no context to make this judgment. If police were twice as likely to interact with Blacks and 25% more likely to interact with Hispanics than Caucasians, then the response to this sentence should be a big, "ho hum" and an investigation as to why police interact with those demographies more is in order. No wonder Joey hates the use of statistics for rational argument.
This is one of the greatest failings of the news services. They do not inform. When I find some time, I'll try to find out if Austin police are, indeed, a bunch of racist sadists.
Earlier in the series, you may have read some debate on the merits of popular gun ownership. Joey Blades indicated that he did not want to use statistics because they can be used to say anything. I don't entirely agree with him, but I can appreciate his position much more when I read things like this from the Austin American Statesman:
The complaint was triggered, in part, by a series of American-Statesman articles in 2004 revealing that from 1998 to 2003, police were twice as likely to use force against blacks as against whites and 25 percent more likely to use force against Hispanics than against whites.
Those statistics stood there, alone, with no further explanation. One could reasonably infer from those statistics that Austin police are a bunch of racist sadists. But there is no context to make this judgment. If police were twice as likely to interact with Blacks and 25% more likely to interact with Hispanics than Caucasians, then the response to this sentence should be a big, "ho hum" and an investigation as to why police interact with those demographies more is in order. No wonder Joey hates the use of statistics for rational argument.
This is one of the greatest failings of the news services. They do not inform. When I find some time, I'll try to find out if Austin police are, indeed, a bunch of racist sadists.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
May 17 - And Then A Step To The Right
France, the only country in the world to have a martial art specializing in running away (it seems like a joke, but it's true), last week turned it's political direction around for the first time 40 years when it's people elected Nicolas Sarkozy their president. Further cementing the move to the right, Sarkozy, just yesterday, named François Fillon prime minister.
Sarkozy is about as right wing as one gets in France and Fillon is about the same, but both of them would nevertheless look somewhat liberal if included in the set of Democratic U.S. presidential hopefuls.
That said, Sarkozy ran on two philosophies. One was that France is a long time friend and ally of the U.S. and should start acting like it. Not that they would dive into Iraq or anything, but that they should not be openly antagonistic. I think it not inconsequential that this comes on the heals of Frances internal unrest last summer. The second is that the people need to work in order for the country to be successful. Sarkozy has been an open critic of the enforced limited work-week.
Sarkozy, as the person responsible for French foreign policy, is bringing a very new approach. Since the ascendancy of Charles De Gaulle, France has haughtily stood alone as what it believed to be the premier political entity, taking the position that other countries could follow France. Sarkozy believes that France should operate more cooperatively with it's neighbors and allies and that cooperation should extend beyond continental Europe. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
After Sarkozy's election it was perhaps even more interesting to see who would become PM. The French PM is responsible for domestic issues. It will be Fillon that sets the agenda for repairing France's ailing economy and re-energizing its workforce.
He and Sarkozy were blunt and open with their platform when campaigning. They won against a far left Socialist who was equally open. Over 80% of the eligible populace came out to vote and it went soundly for Sarkozy. That is perhaps one of the most heartening things to hear. When the people of a democratic nation for once, not vote themselves bread and circuses, you have to feel some pride.
Sarkozy is about as right wing as one gets in France and Fillon is about the same, but both of them would nevertheless look somewhat liberal if included in the set of Democratic U.S. presidential hopefuls.
That said, Sarkozy ran on two philosophies. One was that France is a long time friend and ally of the U.S. and should start acting like it. Not that they would dive into Iraq or anything, but that they should not be openly antagonistic. I think it not inconsequential that this comes on the heals of Frances internal unrest last summer. The second is that the people need to work in order for the country to be successful. Sarkozy has been an open critic of the enforced limited work-week.
Sarkozy, as the person responsible for French foreign policy, is bringing a very new approach. Since the ascendancy of Charles De Gaulle, France has haughtily stood alone as what it believed to be the premier political entity, taking the position that other countries could follow France. Sarkozy believes that France should operate more cooperatively with it's neighbors and allies and that cooperation should extend beyond continental Europe. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
After Sarkozy's election it was perhaps even more interesting to see who would become PM. The French PM is responsible for domestic issues. It will be Fillon that sets the agenda for repairing France's ailing economy and re-energizing its workforce.
He and Sarkozy were blunt and open with their platform when campaigning. They won against a far left Socialist who was equally open. Over 80% of the eligible populace came out to vote and it went soundly for Sarkozy. That is perhaps one of the most heartening things to hear. When the people of a democratic nation for once, not vote themselves bread and circuses, you have to feel some pride.
Monday, May 7, 2007
May 7 - Schadenfreude
I rarely engage in schadenfreude, that grotesque sport where one laughs when the fortunate fall. However, some of the fortunate just basically deserve our pleasure at their pain. Especially those who think they get to live under different rules than us "little people". So it is with Paris Hilton.
I think a little time in jail will do her good, don't you?
I think a little time in jail will do her good, don't you?
Sunday, May 6, 2007
May 6 - Other People are Not Like Us.
The people who live in the U.S. and similar countries have been brainwashed to some extent. Conditioned, at any rate. The whole concept of "all men are created equal" that permeates our culture has lead us to believe that, except for the pretty differences of our various cultures, all humans are fundamentally the same. That the only difference between a Mulsim and a Christian are the Burka, the language and the place of worship, or things to that effect. This just is not so. The differences are not merely trappings.
In North America and most of Western Europe we have come to think that urbane civilization is just about within reach. We value life very highly and believe that is a characteristic of most people. We often project the idea that this applies to the world as a whole and that if we only treat others in a civilized way, they will reciprocate. We still seem to believe this. We learned nothing from the nationalistic collapse of Yugoslavia. We flatly refuse to acknowledge that Hamas and Hezbollah might actually have less than noble intent even in the face of ample evidence. When Muslim extremists chop off another head, it is not unusual for some people to justify this by pointing out Christian behavior during the inquisition as if actions 500 years ago in any way are indicative of western behavior today.
But these are old arguments. Today we have some new ones for how cultures differ in fundamentally different ways that speak directly to the value of human life. Not too many weeks ago we we worried about our pet food. It appears that some melamine made it's way in to gluten that was for use in manufacturing the foods. I imagine that most of use saw this as an issue of contamination... an accident or an anomaly like the Tylenol scare of a few decades ago. It is actually an indicator of that which I write. A fundamental difference how two cultures value life.
That gluten came from China. This is a country that maybe doesn't have the best controls on manufacturing quality. It turns out that it is not all than uncommon for melamine to be used as a filler in animal feeds there. Yep, you read that right. Melamine is a less expensive "substitute" for gluten. When you figure that out, and then figure out that we use gluten sourced from China for people food too, you quickly realize that there were a lot of panicked executives a few weeks ago. I can just imagine the conversations in the Lay's boardroom.
It seems that no contaminated gluten made into our food, just fido's. Hot on the heals of that catastrophe, though, comes new that the Chinese has another "substitute" used in food products, this time that has made it into people food, tragically. diethylene glycol, it turns out, is sufficiently similar to glycerin and sufficiently less expensive, to make it an attractive substitute. Diethylene glycol is similar to the stuff you put in your car's radiator and is a poison.
At least 100 children in Panama have fallen victim to this poison, recently, from consuming medicine prepared with what was supposed to be food grade glycerin shipped from China. Accidents can happen in this country. People do, in fact, make actuarial decisions about the value of life in this country. People do not make decisions that directly lead to guaranteed loss of life in this country, especially of children. That is a fundamental cultural difference and one that does not change overnight.
We live in an uncivilized world where life has vastly less value than we place on it. To think otherwise will certainly lead to calamity.
In North America and most of Western Europe we have come to think that urbane civilization is just about within reach. We value life very highly and believe that is a characteristic of most people. We often project the idea that this applies to the world as a whole and that if we only treat others in a civilized way, they will reciprocate. We still seem to believe this. We learned nothing from the nationalistic collapse of Yugoslavia. We flatly refuse to acknowledge that Hamas and Hezbollah might actually have less than noble intent even in the face of ample evidence. When Muslim extremists chop off another head, it is not unusual for some people to justify this by pointing out Christian behavior during the inquisition as if actions 500 years ago in any way are indicative of western behavior today.
But these are old arguments. Today we have some new ones for how cultures differ in fundamentally different ways that speak directly to the value of human life. Not too many weeks ago we we worried about our pet food. It appears that some melamine made it's way in to gluten that was for use in manufacturing the foods. I imagine that most of use saw this as an issue of contamination... an accident or an anomaly like the Tylenol scare of a few decades ago. It is actually an indicator of that which I write. A fundamental difference how two cultures value life.
That gluten came from China. This is a country that maybe doesn't have the best controls on manufacturing quality. It turns out that it is not all than uncommon for melamine to be used as a filler in animal feeds there. Yep, you read that right. Melamine is a less expensive "substitute" for gluten. When you figure that out, and then figure out that we use gluten sourced from China for people food too, you quickly realize that there were a lot of panicked executives a few weeks ago. I can just imagine the conversations in the Lay's boardroom.
It seems that no contaminated gluten made into our food, just fido's. Hot on the heals of that catastrophe, though, comes new that the Chinese has another "substitute" used in food products, this time that has made it into people food, tragically. diethylene glycol, it turns out, is sufficiently similar to glycerin and sufficiently less expensive, to make it an attractive substitute. Diethylene glycol is similar to the stuff you put in your car's radiator and is a poison.
At least 100 children in Panama have fallen victim to this poison, recently, from consuming medicine prepared with what was supposed to be food grade glycerin shipped from China. Accidents can happen in this country. People do, in fact, make actuarial decisions about the value of life in this country. People do not make decisions that directly lead to guaranteed loss of life in this country, especially of children. That is a fundamental cultural difference and one that does not change overnight.
We live in an uncivilized world where life has vastly less value than we place on it. To think otherwise will certainly lead to calamity.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
May 3 - Codswollop
Beauty is both subjective and not. There are things that I think are beautiful and other things that I don't. Also, there are things I objectively know to be beautiful even though I don't personally appreciate them, such as most opera and much classical music. Not every guy is attracted to Nicole Kidman, but I think most people can agree that she has classical beauty, for instance. Likewise, I think most folks would agree that Roseanne Barr does not have classical beauty, though she may have other redeeming features (what they are, I can not identify, to date.) In some cases a person is not necessarily qualified to judge beauty. For instance, I would generally accept my good friend joeyblades's opinion on what constitutes beautiful electric guitar riffs over my own. That's all to frame what I think of when people use the word beauty.
So, when I hear from someone who recently took a corporate diversity class, that we should think of all people as beautiful, I just want to go puke. I have written before that I am sick of people hijacking words and this is another case. All people are certainly not beautiful. Some people are particularly ugly. We can not all be excellent in all characteristics. Some of us are not excellent in any characteristics. By declaring that all people are beautiful, the instructor simply destroys the fundamental meaning of the word. The instructor would have better served the audience to say that we should look for beauty in all people. Some inevitably will be found lacking.
I challenge anyone who disagrees to show me the "beauty" in a man like Jeffrey Dahmer.
So, when I hear from someone who recently took a corporate diversity class, that we should think of all people as beautiful, I just want to go puke. I have written before that I am sick of people hijacking words and this is another case. All people are certainly not beautiful. Some people are particularly ugly. We can not all be excellent in all characteristics. Some of us are not excellent in any characteristics. By declaring that all people are beautiful, the instructor simply destroys the fundamental meaning of the word. The instructor would have better served the audience to say that we should look for beauty in all people. Some inevitably will be found lacking.
I challenge anyone who disagrees to show me the "beauty" in a man like Jeffrey Dahmer.
Monday, April 30, 2007
April 30 - The Second Time in History
No one died. Hardly anyone was hurt. That's the good news. In Oakland today a freeway collapsed. If you have ever driven across the Oakland Bay Bridge, you know that the maze of freeways coming into Oakland is large and complicated and carries a huge amount of traffic. A collapse of a freeway, there, is going to cause serious problems for months to come. More than a quarter million people will be affected daily.
How it happened was quite simple. A tanker truck carrying a load of gasoline crashed into an abutment. Normally this would not have led to catastrophe, but the fuel ignited. The heat of the fire melted the girders and rivets that composed the bridge, causing it's collapse.
As mentioned previously, a number of people think that the WTC Tower collapses on 9/11 were the result of an inside job. Not too long ago, Rosie O'Donnell said, on "The View", that 9/11 was the first time in history that fire had melted steel implying that only explosives could have brought the buildings down. Today's accident must come as something of a shock to her, marking the second time in history that fire has melted steel... to the extent that she understands history, anyway.
Maybe Roseanne Barr has better knowledge of history.
How it happened was quite simple. A tanker truck carrying a load of gasoline crashed into an abutment. Normally this would not have led to catastrophe, but the fuel ignited. The heat of the fire melted the girders and rivets that composed the bridge, causing it's collapse.
As mentioned previously, a number of people think that the WTC Tower collapses on 9/11 were the result of an inside job. Not too long ago, Rosie O'Donnell said, on "The View", that 9/11 was the first time in history that fire had melted steel implying that only explosives could have brought the buildings down. Today's accident must come as something of a shock to her, marking the second time in history that fire has melted steel... to the extent that she understands history, anyway.
Maybe Roseanne Barr has better knowledge of history.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
April 27 - The Cold War Revisited
Having grown up and lived through the last 20 or so years of the cold war, I remember all too well the tension and fear caused by saber rattling.
That is why news like this causes some long buried unsettling feelings to resurface.
Terrorism is quite bad enough, thank you very much. I hope our children don't also have to grow up with another cold war as we did.
That is why news like this causes some long buried unsettling feelings to resurface.
Terrorism is quite bad enough, thank you very much. I hope our children don't also have to grow up with another cold war as we did.
Monday, April 23, 2007
April 24 - People Make Emotional Decisions for Rational Reasons
Uh, well, that was a nice break.
“People make emotional decisions for rational reasons.” I don’t know who first said it, but I first heard it from a guy named Jim Zackrone. Jim is a sales guy in the high stakes world of semiconductor capital equipment, stuff that sells for the bargain price of 500,000 and goes up from there. He was fond of that quote. What it meant was that, basically, people make up their minds about what they want and then they find the facts to fit their decision. This is a process called rationalization and it applies to a great many things people do, not just purchasing decisions.
Fifteen years or so ago, I decided to start riding a motorcycle. This was for two reasons. The first was financial. An old bike was all I could afford to get around on. The second was because I truly enjoyed riding motorcycles. Not long after I made this decision, I started hearing from various people about the perils of riding. From anecdotes of emergency room doctors calling them “donor-cycles” to loved ones assuring me that they knew I would ride responsibly, “but what about the other crazy drivers out there?” To all these people, a motorcycle was an assured death trap.
I rode anyway.
I rationalized, myself, about this. My thoughts were mostly about my being in control and I thought that was a fairly good argument, to me. I was responsible. I did wear a helmet. But, I did think about it. What did I really know. I knew one thing. Motorcycles were not actually so dangerous that they had been banned. On the basis of this, I could pretty much conclude that they were not actually assured death traps.
So who was rationalizing, I wondered. Me or the folks concerned for me? I began looking into it. It turns out the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration compiles very good statistics on all sorts of accidents of all sorts of vehicles. They track the contributing factors to the accidents such as alcohol consumption, seatbelt use, etc. From this it is possible to determine two things. How dangerous are cars and how dangerous are motorcycles. I’ll sum it up, though you can read something called the Hurt report if you’d like more detail. Motorcycles are 4 times more dangerous than cars. 4 times more likely to result in serious injury or death. That might seem like a lot until you understand how surpassingly unlikely it is that you will suffer serious injury or death in a car. It might seem like a lot until you compare it to all the things you do every day that are far more dangerous than 4 times the likelihood of dying in a fiery wreck.
Things like, oh, say, going for a swim, taking a shower, riding a bike. That’s right, bicycles are incredibly more dangerous than motorcycles. Start looking at the various things that cause death. Next time you tsk. about a motorcycle rider, think about putting down that burger and eat some celery. You are going to die a miserable death of heart disease before he dies riding.
What I learned from this process is that us people are terrible at assessing risk. We make decisions based on a few anecdotes. The horror of the anecdotes set our minds, and any more information that comes our way, we slot it in to fit our view. Alternatively, we rationalize on the basis of desire or necessity and diminish the horror of whatever anecdote or information comes our way. Whatever. To make a good decision, you need raw information. I don’t ride much anymore, but it isn’t because of fear, but simply a lack of time. It turns out a motorcycle is an extremely selfish mode of transportation. Since I became a dad, I can not really justify taking off for an afternoon ride much, anymore.
I did learn a few other things about motorcycles that really make one wonder. For all the talk that motorcyclists talk about the other ignorant drivers, motorcyclists cause more than 60% of the accidents they are in. The reasons are many, but most experts are convinced that it has to do with the connection between the eyes and the motion of the body. When we move around we tend to go where our eyes are looking. Try turning your head while walking or running and see if you don’t tend to go in the direction you look. Because cycles (bi and motor) are so sensitive to body motions, they actually amplify this tendency. Combine this with the human tendency to fixate on something that is a threat, like an on-coming car, and you can quickly see how this could lead to disaster.
Every motorcyclist should be taught this. Without knowing this you may never recognize it when it happens in time to correct.
Aside from that, motorcycle danger is enhanced far more by external influences, especially intoxication. when you read the NHTSA data and you start adding alcohol into the mix and the danger shoots up to, if I recall correctly, something over 20 times more dangerous. Don’t drink and ride.
From here I’ll next explore “anything for the children”, but in reference to last week. What, exactly, do you suppose the risk from firearms is in this country? Anecdotes and individual experience, I'm afraid, are just not the sorts of things you can base decisions on. They are not enough for you to know the comparative risk to see if they are even worth addressing compared to the things that cause the most danger.
YetAnotherJohn finally weighed in on the last post considering the hazards of gun ownership...
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
April 17 - Virginia Tech
I doubt anyone is unaware of what happened at Virginia Tech yesterday. A young man, a student, took firearms and killed over 32 other students and professors. At the end, he walked into one of the schools buildings, chained the doors shut and began killing people. Not one of his victims, or potential victims, was armed, of course, the school being a gun-free zone. His victims had no chance.
How would things gave gone differently if the school permitted students with concealed carry permits to carry on campus? We'll never know. How would things have been differently if even one of the students or professors in the building was armed? How could it have gone differently. At least there would have been a chance to reduce the loss of life.
Neal Boortz asked this question on his radio show, today: If you could, would you have armed at least one of the students or professors? Let's suppose, he asks, you could sneak a gun through an A/C grate to a student in the building. Would you? Now ask yourself why you would not want to permit qualified law abiding people to possess firearms on that campus.
Concealed carry holders statistically a) are not involved in accidental shootings (any mis-use of their firearms) and b) are not involved in illegal use of their firearms. As these people do not present a threat at other times, why would you not want them to be on-hand and capable of acting under these rare but tragic circumstances?
By ensuring that the college is a gun free zone, sadly, a ready pool of defenseless victims stands by at all times for events just like this one.
How would things gave gone differently if the school permitted students with concealed carry permits to carry on campus? We'll never know. How would things have been differently if even one of the students or professors in the building was armed? How could it have gone differently. At least there would have been a chance to reduce the loss of life.
Neal Boortz asked this question on his radio show, today: If you could, would you have armed at least one of the students or professors? Let's suppose, he asks, you could sneak a gun through an A/C grate to a student in the building. Would you? Now ask yourself why you would not want to permit qualified law abiding people to possess firearms on that campus.
Concealed carry holders statistically a) are not involved in accidental shootings (any mis-use of their firearms) and b) are not involved in illegal use of their firearms. As these people do not present a threat at other times, why would you not want them to be on-hand and capable of acting under these rare but tragic circumstances?
By ensuring that the college is a gun free zone, sadly, a ready pool of defenseless victims stands by at all times for events just like this one.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
April 16 - Trouble in Paradise
Happy Income Tax day.
It seems that there is unrest in Russia. Current Russian politics gets little press in this country since it stopped being the evil menace, the U.S.S.R. However, there has been a growing autocratic trend with former KGB agent Putin at the helm. As an example of this, Putin has initiated a change to their governmental structure whereby their equivalent to American state governors are appointed by the President, subject to approval or disapproval of the state residents. The somewhat violent suppression of this peaceful demonstration is another example.
As the wall fell, while we were cautious, we were relatively quick to embrace Russia as a new global partner in democracy. As time has passed, we've seen their democracy troubled by war, insurgency and crime. Putin has a very high (approximately 80%) approval rating. The populace of Russia became dis-enchanted with the idea of democracy as violence and crime and corrupt decadence rocked their world. Putin represents a return to the old ways which, from a short term perspective, are seen as better. We may yet again square off against the communist menace.
In other news, the paternity of Daniellynn has been determined. The father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter is Larry Birkhead. I hope you can rest easy, now that that is settled.
It seems that there is unrest in Russia. Current Russian politics gets little press in this country since it stopped being the evil menace, the U.S.S.R. However, there has been a growing autocratic trend with former KGB agent Putin at the helm. As an example of this, Putin has initiated a change to their governmental structure whereby their equivalent to American state governors are appointed by the President, subject to approval or disapproval of the state residents. The somewhat violent suppression of this peaceful demonstration is another example.
As the wall fell, while we were cautious, we were relatively quick to embrace Russia as a new global partner in democracy. As time has passed, we've seen their democracy troubled by war, insurgency and crime. Putin has a very high (approximately 80%) approval rating. The populace of Russia became dis-enchanted with the idea of democracy as violence and crime and corrupt decadence rocked their world. Putin represents a return to the old ways which, from a short term perspective, are seen as better. We may yet again square off against the communist menace.
In other news, the paternity of Daniellynn has been determined. The father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter is Larry Birkhead. I hope you can rest easy, now that that is settled.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
April 14 - CO2 in Review
CO2 causes global warming. This is not a hypothesis, this is pretty much fact. Therefore, anthropogenic (a big word for man-made) CO2 causes global warming. This is not subject to much debate. What is subject to a lot of debate is how significant are the contributions of CO2 and, more specifically, anthropogenic CO2. Here is some science to help you decide...
The reason CO2 is a cause of global warming is that it is opaque to certain wavelengths of light. When radiation at those wavelengths hit a molecule of CO2, it is absorbed, causing the molecule to retain the energy... heat. Now, for a moment, imagine a bottle filled with CO2. If you pass that light through the bottle, some will hit the CO2 and some wont. That which hits the CO2 causes an increase in heat energy within the bottle. Now put twice as much CO2 in the bottle. Now when you pass the light through the bottle, twice as much radiation hits CO2, causing a proportional increase in heat energy. If you keep adding CO2 to the bottle, eventually nearly 100% of the light that is passed into the bottle hits CO2 molecules and fails to reach the other side. The CO2 has become effectively opaque to light at those wavelengths. Now, if you add more CO2 to the bottle, there is practically no further warming effect because nearly all of the light is already being absorbed.
Global average levels of CO2, prior to the industrial revolution are reported to be around 290 parts per million (PPM). Today, they are 380PPM. At 290PPM, the amount of heat added to the atmosphere is around 33 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, at those levels, the atmosphere is already a little better than 90% opaque to the wavelengths of light it absorbs. If you do the math, there, you will realize that warming due to complete saturation of CO2 could only produce a warming effect of about 3.3 degrees (actually a little less.) To see even 1.6 degrees of warming, CO2 levels would have to double from the pre industrial revolution levels to 580PPM. That doesn't seem so far away. but it still implies a delta of 2X what we have seen, thus far.
What we did not discuss is where that CO2 came from. It is kind of implied by the "pre industrial revolution" statement that the CO2 increase came from mankind burning fuels, but that is not actually proven. When talking about green-house effects, scientists talk about drivers and non-drivers. A non-driver is an effect. Basically the premise for non-drivers is that when climate changes, a change results in the quantity of the green house gas and the reverse is not necessarily so. A driver means that climate is affected by increases in the greenhouse gas.
The meaning isn't exactly clear until you are exposed to the idea that the CO2 in the air is not there because we put it there, exactly. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere could be called, in the language of control systems, an error signal. It is a byproduct of the production and consumption rate of many systems on the planet. The two dominant systems are dissolution and biological carbon fixation.
When water is exposed to a soluble gas, such as CO2, it absorbs it. It does so in proportion to it's pressure or, when it is a partial constituent of the gas mixture, what is called it's partial pressure. When the partial pressure goes up, the gas is absorbed into the water to correct the imbalance. If the gas in the water leaves it without re-entering the gaseous solution for whatever reason (it does for several), then the water will take up more, again, to correct the imbalance.
biological carbon fixation might be the only method of removing CO2 from the atmosphere that most of us have knowledge of. This idea is fairly simple, when a plant grows, it consumes CO2, seperates the carbon from the Oxygen, uses the carbon to build itself and releases the oxygen. So we are left with the idea that we need to plant a bunch of trees. What is far less well undertood is that we don't necessarily need to plant these trees. This is another feedback system that will tend to keep atmospheric CO2 in balance. When CO2 levels rise, plants are encouraged to grow and fix more carbon, thereby reducing atmospheric CO2 levels.
There are many systems that contribute to the CO2 balance, but the upshot is that CO2 enters and leaves the atmosphere at roughly equal rates. As the rates rise, the atmospheric concentration will change to reflect the state of the systems. So, this is not like the chlorofluorocarbon debate of years past where we were supposed to be directly injecting the gas into the atmosphere. CO2 enters and leaves the atmosphere at a prodigious rate. It does not stick around long.
This is too short a forum and I do not have the expertise to discuss all of the many systems affecting the CO2 balance. It is the existence of these systems that determine the forcing versus non-forcing categorization. However, which CO2 is, is far from clear. Some of the systems will release CO2 if atmospheric temperatures increase. This suggests that CO2 could be non-forcing. However, many climate scientists think that CO2 is forcing. This is not fact, but is still a matter under investigation.
These systems are somewhat understood, but the extent to which they are understood leave a lot of room for error. When you compound the inaccuracies associated with every model of every system, you wind up with a lot of unpredictability. Too, much, as of this day, to make the sort of predictions about the source and the future of CO2 levels that many are making today.
Why does any of that matter if, after all that, only a 3 degree or so rise in temperature could result in the worst case. It potentially matters because of other systems in play that regulate climate. Unfortunately the nature of these systems are far less related to very hard science like physics and therefore much more poorly understood and modelable. These systems predict a change in temperature based on changing temperature. The problem is that, in most cases, we can not know whether the change is positive and reinforcing or negative diminishing. To give a couple of examples we need to briefly visit where the radiation that causes the CO2 warming comes from.
Oh, you thought it was the sun? Well, that is sort of correct. Almost all energy at the earth's surface has the sun as it's original source, but usually we describe it as where it comes from directly. For instance, oil is storing energy originally provided by the sun but we do not typically call it solar energy, no? Right. Well, the source of the warming for CO2 is the surface of the earth, itself. Solar radiation rains down on the earth's surface, predominantly in the higher wavelengths of visible and ultra-violet light. This light, in turn, heats the earth's surface. The earth, thus heated, re-radiates that energy at lower, infra-red wavelengths which is then absorbed by the CO2. In other words, precious little of the energy stored in atmospheric CO2 is received from the sun.
"albedo" is a word that roughly means how reflective an object is. A high albedo means an object reflects a lot of incoming radiation. A low albedo means the object absorbs a lot of incoming radiation. Dark things have low albedos and light things have high albedos. When something with a low albedo is illuminated it tends to get warm. When something with a high albedo is illuminated it tends to reflect the illumination.
Remember that system from above where higher CO2 might stimulate plant growth which would thereby reduce CO2? Plants tend to have a lower albedo than their surroundings and therefore radiate more heat energy, producing an increase in atmospheric temperature. This is more true if rising temperatures cause plants to grow in previously arctic regions. So which is the greater effect? decreasing surface albedo or the greater carbon fixation capability of more plant life. Don't trust anyone who tells you they know, because this is very new science.
Another system that might contribute more heat to the atmosphere is the changing albedo of the planet due to melting polar ice. As more ground and ocean (with low albedos) spend more time uncovered by ice (with a very high albedo), they absorb more solar radiation and re-radiate it as heat. The question here, is, is the small change directly due to anthropogenic CO2 generation sufficient to cause the polar ice to melt. Again this is very unclear to climate scientists. Some say yes, others disagree.
But all of these systems are trumped by the water cycle. The most prevalent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapor. It is responsible for something like than 90 percent of atmospheric green-house effect (this is determined by how much heat it stores and it's prevalence in the atmosphere.) The problem is that water vapor also increases planetary albedo (due to cloud formation) and, increasing temperatures tend to produce more water vapor. Scientists presently have a lot of error in their models regarding precisely how water vapor affects atmospheric temperature, but it does seem to have a regulatory effect. This error leaves a lot of room for skepticism regarding conclusions based on climate models.
So the "takeaway" point, here, is that a little very well understood science about CO2 physics drives a lot of less well understood science about CO2 regulatory mechanisms which in turn drive very poorly understood science about biological and geological systems from which we try to infer information about past present and future planetary climate. The large amount of uncertainty in all of this should leave one with a healthy does of skepticism about what we are told today about climate change.
The reason CO2 is a cause of global warming is that it is opaque to certain wavelengths of light. When radiation at those wavelengths hit a molecule of CO2, it is absorbed, causing the molecule to retain the energy... heat. Now, for a moment, imagine a bottle filled with CO2. If you pass that light through the bottle, some will hit the CO2 and some wont. That which hits the CO2 causes an increase in heat energy within the bottle. Now put twice as much CO2 in the bottle. Now when you pass the light through the bottle, twice as much radiation hits CO2, causing a proportional increase in heat energy. If you keep adding CO2 to the bottle, eventually nearly 100% of the light that is passed into the bottle hits CO2 molecules and fails to reach the other side. The CO2 has become effectively opaque to light at those wavelengths. Now, if you add more CO2 to the bottle, there is practically no further warming effect because nearly all of the light is already being absorbed.
Global average levels of CO2, prior to the industrial revolution are reported to be around 290 parts per million (PPM). Today, they are 380PPM. At 290PPM, the amount of heat added to the atmosphere is around 33 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, at those levels, the atmosphere is already a little better than 90% opaque to the wavelengths of light it absorbs. If you do the math, there, you will realize that warming due to complete saturation of CO2 could only produce a warming effect of about 3.3 degrees (actually a little less.) To see even 1.6 degrees of warming, CO2 levels would have to double from the pre industrial revolution levels to 580PPM. That doesn't seem so far away. but it still implies a delta of 2X what we have seen, thus far.
What we did not discuss is where that CO2 came from. It is kind of implied by the "pre industrial revolution" statement that the CO2 increase came from mankind burning fuels, but that is not actually proven. When talking about green-house effects, scientists talk about drivers and non-drivers. A non-driver is an effect. Basically the premise for non-drivers is that when climate changes, a change results in the quantity of the green house gas and the reverse is not necessarily so. A driver means that climate is affected by increases in the greenhouse gas.
The meaning isn't exactly clear until you are exposed to the idea that the CO2 in the air is not there because we put it there, exactly. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere could be called, in the language of control systems, an error signal. It is a byproduct of the production and consumption rate of many systems on the planet. The two dominant systems are dissolution and biological carbon fixation.
When water is exposed to a soluble gas, such as CO2, it absorbs it. It does so in proportion to it's pressure or, when it is a partial constituent of the gas mixture, what is called it's partial pressure. When the partial pressure goes up, the gas is absorbed into the water to correct the imbalance. If the gas in the water leaves it without re-entering the gaseous solution for whatever reason (it does for several), then the water will take up more, again, to correct the imbalance.
biological carbon fixation might be the only method of removing CO2 from the atmosphere that most of us have knowledge of. This idea is fairly simple, when a plant grows, it consumes CO2, seperates the carbon from the Oxygen, uses the carbon to build itself and releases the oxygen. So we are left with the idea that we need to plant a bunch of trees. What is far less well undertood is that we don't necessarily need to plant these trees. This is another feedback system that will tend to keep atmospheric CO2 in balance. When CO2 levels rise, plants are encouraged to grow and fix more carbon, thereby reducing atmospheric CO2 levels.
There are many systems that contribute to the CO2 balance, but the upshot is that CO2 enters and leaves the atmosphere at roughly equal rates. As the rates rise, the atmospheric concentration will change to reflect the state of the systems. So, this is not like the chlorofluorocarbon debate of years past where we were supposed to be directly injecting the gas into the atmosphere. CO2 enters and leaves the atmosphere at a prodigious rate. It does not stick around long.
This is too short a forum and I do not have the expertise to discuss all of the many systems affecting the CO2 balance. It is the existence of these systems that determine the forcing versus non-forcing categorization. However, which CO2 is, is far from clear. Some of the systems will release CO2 if atmospheric temperatures increase. This suggests that CO2 could be non-forcing. However, many climate scientists think that CO2 is forcing. This is not fact, but is still a matter under investigation.
These systems are somewhat understood, but the extent to which they are understood leave a lot of room for error. When you compound the inaccuracies associated with every model of every system, you wind up with a lot of unpredictability. Too, much, as of this day, to make the sort of predictions about the source and the future of CO2 levels that many are making today.
Why does any of that matter if, after all that, only a 3 degree or so rise in temperature could result in the worst case. It potentially matters because of other systems in play that regulate climate. Unfortunately the nature of these systems are far less related to very hard science like physics and therefore much more poorly understood and modelable. These systems predict a change in temperature based on changing temperature. The problem is that, in most cases, we can not know whether the change is positive and reinforcing or negative diminishing. To give a couple of examples we need to briefly visit where the radiation that causes the CO2 warming comes from.
Oh, you thought it was the sun? Well, that is sort of correct. Almost all energy at the earth's surface has the sun as it's original source, but usually we describe it as where it comes from directly. For instance, oil is storing energy originally provided by the sun but we do not typically call it solar energy, no? Right. Well, the source of the warming for CO2 is the surface of the earth, itself. Solar radiation rains down on the earth's surface, predominantly in the higher wavelengths of visible and ultra-violet light. This light, in turn, heats the earth's surface. The earth, thus heated, re-radiates that energy at lower, infra-red wavelengths which is then absorbed by the CO2. In other words, precious little of the energy stored in atmospheric CO2 is received from the sun.
"albedo" is a word that roughly means how reflective an object is. A high albedo means an object reflects a lot of incoming radiation. A low albedo means the object absorbs a lot of incoming radiation. Dark things have low albedos and light things have high albedos. When something with a low albedo is illuminated it tends to get warm. When something with a high albedo is illuminated it tends to reflect the illumination.
Remember that system from above where higher CO2 might stimulate plant growth which would thereby reduce CO2? Plants tend to have a lower albedo than their surroundings and therefore radiate more heat energy, producing an increase in atmospheric temperature. This is more true if rising temperatures cause plants to grow in previously arctic regions. So which is the greater effect? decreasing surface albedo or the greater carbon fixation capability of more plant life. Don't trust anyone who tells you they know, because this is very new science.
Another system that might contribute more heat to the atmosphere is the changing albedo of the planet due to melting polar ice. As more ground and ocean (with low albedos) spend more time uncovered by ice (with a very high albedo), they absorb more solar radiation and re-radiate it as heat. The question here, is, is the small change directly due to anthropogenic CO2 generation sufficient to cause the polar ice to melt. Again this is very unclear to climate scientists. Some say yes, others disagree.
But all of these systems are trumped by the water cycle. The most prevalent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapor. It is responsible for something like than 90 percent of atmospheric green-house effect (this is determined by how much heat it stores and it's prevalence in the atmosphere.) The problem is that water vapor also increases planetary albedo (due to cloud formation) and, increasing temperatures tend to produce more water vapor. Scientists presently have a lot of error in their models regarding precisely how water vapor affects atmospheric temperature, but it does seem to have a regulatory effect. This error leaves a lot of room for skepticism regarding conclusions based on climate models.
So the "takeaway" point, here, is that a little very well understood science about CO2 physics drives a lot of less well understood science about CO2 regulatory mechanisms which in turn drive very poorly understood science about biological and geological systems from which we try to infer information about past present and future planetary climate. The large amount of uncertainty in all of this should leave one with a healthy does of skepticism about what we are told today about climate change.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
April 12.1 A Gift Revisited
In a brief follow-up to April 4.1, John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., also seems to think that Iran won a political victory. This Article by Mr. Bolton was originally published on the Financial Times website, but that requires registration.
He goes so far as to say that the weak response by the U.K. makes the acquisition of nukes by Iran more likely and will contribute to greater violence in Iraq.
He goes so far as to say that the weak response by the U.K. makes the acquisition of nukes by Iran more likely and will contribute to greater violence in Iraq.
April 12 - Sacrifice
Rolando Ocampo seems to love his Wife and Daughter intensely. He must love God intensely too. Rolando is a devout Catholic in the Philippines. When his wife was giving birth to his daughter, complications arose. While praying to beg for a safe delivery for both, Rolando made a promise to have himself crucified on Good Friday. Both his daughter and wife came through safely and he makes good on his promise every year. Story and video, here.
I am not sure if this is crazy (using the term loosely) or not. If you assume it is, was the crazy part making the oath, following through on it or both? All I know is that at the end of the video, I was very much impressed by Rolando's dedication and moved by his sense of honor and the level of sacrifice he was willing to endure for his family.
I am not sure if this is crazy (using the term loosely) or not. If you assume it is, was the crazy part making the oath, following through on it or both? All I know is that at the end of the video, I was very much impressed by Rolando's dedication and moved by his sense of honor and the level of sacrifice he was willing to endure for his family.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
April 11 - Avoiding Anti-Trust
I need to begin this post by saying that I technically love AMD microprocessors. I also like AMD as a company and all of the individuals who I have met who work there. At my last CPU upgrade, I built an AMD Athlon64 system and have never been happier with my PC. With all that said, I still need to be clear that I intend absolutely none of the following to be hurtful.
AMD recently announced some fiscal bad news. According to the press release, AMD is facing greater than anticipated competitive pressure and that has led them to lower performance expectations. I doubt this will last too long. In fact, the faster they lose market share, the more quickly they will be back in the black. Huh?
AMD sets the market's pace. No, really. Intel does not. It makes no sense for Intel to determine what the market will be. And, Intel depends on the existence of AMD more than any other company in the world. By set the market's pace, what I mean is determine what the specifications (performance and features) of the current crop of microprocessors will be.
This does not mean that AMD has, is or will always be measurably better than Intel, it just means that Intel is willing to let them be if it servers their interest.
So how can a short, sharp period of financial pain help AMD return to profitability? Why does Intel care if AMD exists? Why would Intel, a company 15 times larger than AMD permit AMD to set the pace for development? The answers to these questions are rooted in Intel's greatest fear, Anti-trust Laws. Intel very carefully maintains it's near-monopoly position and it's ability to use anti-competitive monopolistic tactics so long as AMD exists.
So, here is what (I'm guessing) Intel does. They decide what constitutes an acceptable portion of the market for AMD to have. As long as AMD has less than that share, Intel appears to rest on it's laurels (in reality they are developing many technologies for later use). They milk their existing line for as long as they can, extracting the most profit they can because they don't need to to maintain their market share. When AMD achieves a share of the market greater than Intel can stomach, Intel brings it's huge capitalization to bear on the problem of setting it to right by rapidly developing and releasing just enough new technology to acieve technical superiority over AMD. This, in turn, drives the market to buy more Intel chips and before too long everything is right again in Intel's eyes.
If Intel got too good, AMD would die. If Intel rested too long, AMD would have a chance at achieving sufficient market share to not survive at Intel's pleasure. I think this almost happened recently as Hell froze over not too long ago when Dell started buying AMD processors.
So, how can AMD minimize their pain when Intel fights back? It seems to me that if they start fighting right away, they will have large expenditures with a slowly decreasing market share because Intel will not let up until things are in what they perceive to be balance. On the other hand, if they can manage a very quick downturn, then they conserve their capital and perhaps come to market with dramatic new technology that finally pushes their financial fortunes fast enough to become an equal competitor to Intel.
Because that is what will have to happen for this situation to change. AMD will have to develop microprocessor technology so good and with a sufficient roadmap that they can carry their fortune all the way to 40-50% market share and a much larger market cap. They very nearly achieved this with the introduction of their 64 bit processors. It cost Intel greatly to reverse their 64 bit plans and follow AMD's lead and they were slow to do it because they had to work through many issues associated with, effectively, abandoning it's huge investment in Itanium.
AMD will know it has been successful when Intel tries to destroy them. Until then, Intel will be the company that cares the most about AMD's survival, aside from AMD itself.
AMD recently announced some fiscal bad news. According to the press release, AMD is facing greater than anticipated competitive pressure and that has led them to lower performance expectations. I doubt this will last too long. In fact, the faster they lose market share, the more quickly they will be back in the black. Huh?
AMD sets the market's pace. No, really. Intel does not. It makes no sense for Intel to determine what the market will be. And, Intel depends on the existence of AMD more than any other company in the world. By set the market's pace, what I mean is determine what the specifications (performance and features) of the current crop of microprocessors will be.
This does not mean that AMD has, is or will always be measurably better than Intel, it just means that Intel is willing to let them be if it servers their interest.
So how can a short, sharp period of financial pain help AMD return to profitability? Why does Intel care if AMD exists? Why would Intel, a company 15 times larger than AMD permit AMD to set the pace for development? The answers to these questions are rooted in Intel's greatest fear, Anti-trust Laws. Intel very carefully maintains it's near-monopoly position and it's ability to use anti-competitive monopolistic tactics so long as AMD exists.
So, here is what (I'm guessing) Intel does. They decide what constitutes an acceptable portion of the market for AMD to have. As long as AMD has less than that share, Intel appears to rest on it's laurels (in reality they are developing many technologies for later use). They milk their existing line for as long as they can, extracting the most profit they can because they don't need to to maintain their market share. When AMD achieves a share of the market greater than Intel can stomach, Intel brings it's huge capitalization to bear on the problem of setting it to right by rapidly developing and releasing just enough new technology to acieve technical superiority over AMD. This, in turn, drives the market to buy more Intel chips and before too long everything is right again in Intel's eyes.
If Intel got too good, AMD would die. If Intel rested too long, AMD would have a chance at achieving sufficient market share to not survive at Intel's pleasure. I think this almost happened recently as Hell froze over not too long ago when Dell started buying AMD processors.
So, how can AMD minimize their pain when Intel fights back? It seems to me that if they start fighting right away, they will have large expenditures with a slowly decreasing market share because Intel will not let up until things are in what they perceive to be balance. On the other hand, if they can manage a very quick downturn, then they conserve their capital and perhaps come to market with dramatic new technology that finally pushes their financial fortunes fast enough to become an equal competitor to Intel.
Because that is what will have to happen for this situation to change. AMD will have to develop microprocessor technology so good and with a sufficient roadmap that they can carry their fortune all the way to 40-50% market share and a much larger market cap. They very nearly achieved this with the introduction of their 64 bit processors. It cost Intel greatly to reverse their 64 bit plans and follow AMD's lead and they were slow to do it because they had to work through many issues associated with, effectively, abandoning it's huge investment in Itanium.
AMD will know it has been successful when Intel tries to destroy them. Until then, Intel will be the company that cares the most about AMD's survival, aside from AMD itself.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
April 10 - Peer Review Works, I Think
When I started this blog, it was on the premise that there would be enough material appearing on the front page of Wikipedia on a daily basis to fuel the prosaic muse. what actually happened was that I found interesting (to me) material all over the place. I do still check out Wikipedia every day, though, and often use it for fact-checking.
One of the things I've noticed is that Wikipedia is a target for vandals. This is most evident when viewing the article of the day. Chances are good, when viewing that page, that it will be littered with obscene graffiti and often have material destroyed or seriously altered. Such is what can happen when anyone can edit the articles.
What is particularly heartening is that other folks monitor and reverse the damage pretty much as fast as it occurs. Try it some time. Go to Wikipedia, navigate to the article of the day and press refresh and watch the page change on a minute by minute basis. It is good to see that there are at least as many folks out there who are willing to put as much volunteer effort into the public good as there are people seeking to diminish it.
It is good to be mindful that Wikipedia can contain bias because of this public editing. Encyclopaedia Brittanica can contain bias, too, and there you have no opportunity to identify or correct it. At least with Wikipedia, you have a good possibility of most positions being represented in a given article. In fact, what one often finds in Wikipedia is that sections which are likely to contain opinion or bias are so labeled.
I have been pleased and impressed with Wikipedia's accuracy, general lack of bias, shear breadth of information and demonstrable resistance to malice.
One of the things I've noticed is that Wikipedia is a target for vandals. This is most evident when viewing the article of the day. Chances are good, when viewing that page, that it will be littered with obscene graffiti and often have material destroyed or seriously altered. Such is what can happen when anyone can edit the articles.
What is particularly heartening is that other folks monitor and reverse the damage pretty much as fast as it occurs. Try it some time. Go to Wikipedia, navigate to the article of the day and press refresh and watch the page change on a minute by minute basis. It is good to see that there are at least as many folks out there who are willing to put as much volunteer effort into the public good as there are people seeking to diminish it.
It is good to be mindful that Wikipedia can contain bias because of this public editing. Encyclopaedia Brittanica can contain bias, too, and there you have no opportunity to identify or correct it. At least with Wikipedia, you have a good possibility of most positions being represented in a given article. In fact, what one often finds in Wikipedia is that sections which are likely to contain opinion or bias are so labeled.
I have been pleased and impressed with Wikipedia's accuracy, general lack of bias, shear breadth of information and demonstrable resistance to malice.
Monday, April 9, 2007
April 9 - Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky seems to be an incredibly intelligent guy. One wonders, then, why his politics seems to be so terribly radical. I would tend to think that, as one gains wisdom and experience, one would tend towards some moderation. Noam, in some contrast, seems to be just a little to the left of Lenin. Well, maybe not that far, but he certainly is for suppressing his own country in favor of others.
His work on linguistics has been so complete that he has successfully developed a framework that usefully describes all languages, human and computer. By usefully, I mean the concepts have been used to make computer language development better. The breadth of work evident in this is such that it shows him to have a unique intellect. And yet he has meaningful contributions in psychology, too.
I suspect he has fallen into the trap that many people do. That trap is thinking that developing some authority in one area makes you qualified to render opinions in another.
The problem with Noam is that his opinions are so strong that, unless you tend to agree with his politics, you form a very bad opinion of him and you therefore might overlook his really useful work. Imagine if Einstein lobbied against capitalism and American foreign policy. Oh, wait...
His work on linguistics has been so complete that he has successfully developed a framework that usefully describes all languages, human and computer. By usefully, I mean the concepts have been used to make computer language development better. The breadth of work evident in this is such that it shows him to have a unique intellect. And yet he has meaningful contributions in psychology, too.
I suspect he has fallen into the trap that many people do. That trap is thinking that developing some authority in one area makes you qualified to render opinions in another.
The problem with Noam is that his opinions are so strong that, unless you tend to agree with his politics, you form a very bad opinion of him and you therefore might overlook his really useful work. Imagine if Einstein lobbied against capitalism and American foreign policy. Oh, wait...
Sunday, April 8, 2007
April 8 - Happy Easter
Hi all, I'm taking a break to enjoy my family over easter. I'll be back again with something obnoxious or trite, tomorrow.
Happy Easter
Happy Easter
Thursday, April 5, 2007
April 6 - The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? - Leslie Bennetts
This is not a book review. I've not read this book, but I just heard about it and it seems interesting.
This is a non-fiction book that looks at the trend of women leaving the working world to raise children. It suggests to women that is a mistake primarily because of the question, what if things go wrong? The three main things that can go wrong are: 1) your husband dies, 2) you divorce your husband, 3) your husband loses his job. The book apparently suggests that it just does not make sense for a woman to lose her marketability and that, given the risks, it is actually not good for her kids.
In answer to what if, I propose: 1) have a good life insurance policy 2) don't leave your husband and 3) marry well :-) Actually, for 3), I've heard there are some old fashioned approaches to money management that will cover that possibility but I understand that it is no longer in vogue to have "savings", whatever they are.
It is really interesting how changes wrought by feminism have led to unexpected consequences. First (well, not actually first) women fought for the right to work so they could if they wanted. Then society changed so economics made it so two income families were desirable or even necessary so women lost some choice in the matter, they had to work. Then some fought for the ability to not work to be able to enjoy being mothers. Now this Author is suggesting that working is a requirement for any semblance of security.
Along with all the empowerment and equality issues all I can say is, what a mess. I am glad I am not a woman. Men have it much simpler though not necessarily easier. We don't have any choices here. Our role is fairly well defined by society. We work and support our families to the best of our abilities. Today, our wives might work too if we don't bring in enough and that is now alright. Anything less is generally looked down upon. It always has been and likely will be for a long time.
On the purely practical side, though, I would hate terribly to feel so dependent and, were I a woman, would appreciate the authors stated position completely. I am curious to see if the book has a political or practical agenda. Stay tuned...
This is a non-fiction book that looks at the trend of women leaving the working world to raise children. It suggests to women that is a mistake primarily because of the question, what if things go wrong? The three main things that can go wrong are: 1) your husband dies, 2) you divorce your husband, 3) your husband loses his job. The book apparently suggests that it just does not make sense for a woman to lose her marketability and that, given the risks, it is actually not good for her kids.
In answer to what if, I propose: 1) have a good life insurance policy 2) don't leave your husband and 3) marry well :-) Actually, for 3), I've heard there are some old fashioned approaches to money management that will cover that possibility but I understand that it is no longer in vogue to have "savings", whatever they are.
It is really interesting how changes wrought by feminism have led to unexpected consequences. First (well, not actually first) women fought for the right to work so they could if they wanted. Then society changed so economics made it so two income families were desirable or even necessary so women lost some choice in the matter, they had to work. Then some fought for the ability to not work to be able to enjoy being mothers. Now this Author is suggesting that working is a requirement for any semblance of security.
Along with all the empowerment and equality issues all I can say is, what a mess. I am glad I am not a woman. Men have it much simpler though not necessarily easier. We don't have any choices here. Our role is fairly well defined by society. We work and support our families to the best of our abilities. Today, our wives might work too if we don't bring in enough and that is now alright. Anything less is generally looked down upon. It always has been and likely will be for a long time.
On the purely practical side, though, I would hate terribly to feel so dependent and, were I a woman, would appreciate the authors stated position completely. I am curious to see if the book has a political or practical agenda. Stay tuned...
April 5 - Pelosi Frustrated
It seems that Nancy Pelosi is a frustrated president wanna-be. First she leads the house to try to take back executive powers and act as Commander in Chief in determining how the war on terror should proceed and now she is grabbing the executive responsibility of setting foreign policy. It's a good thing she is completely incompetent in this respect. On her first trip outside of the country she managed to lie to a foreign dignitary on the unrequested behalf of another foreign dignitary. Fortunately, the worst that will come of this is she will be treated like the king's in-bred, idiot offspring, indulged and ignored.
Republicans would do well to remember that this is what you get when you don't go to the polls.
Hillary must be snickering.
Republicans would do well to remember that this is what you get when you don't go to the polls.
Hillary must be snickering.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
April 4.1 - A Gift
President Ahmedinejad, today, announced that he will release the 15 British soldiers Iran abducted from Iraqi waters. He said he will pardon them.
This seems like good news, but it is very mixed. Certainly the goal of getting the soldiers back is being met. If that were the sole goal, however, Britain would have capitulated to admission of being in Iranian waters long ago.
The problem with this resolution is that the claim of British forces being in Iranian waters remain and acceptance of the pardons implies guilt. Even if no other concessions were extracted for the sailors' release, this is a net PR win for Iran.
This seems like good news, but it is very mixed. Certainly the goal of getting the soldiers back is being met. If that were the sole goal, however, Britain would have capitulated to admission of being in Iranian waters long ago.
The problem with this resolution is that the claim of British forces being in Iranian waters remain and acceptance of the pardons implies guilt. Even if no other concessions were extracted for the sailors' release, this is a net PR win for Iran.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
April 4 - My Favorite Link
My all time favorite spot on the internet is this: NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. The picture for today was just so astonishing that I thought I'd share. It is a picture of what is probably the largest active volcano in the solar system.
Every day the folks who run that site select a new picture that shows off astrological, geological and meteorological science. They keep an archive easily accessible on the page of every picture they have published over the last ten years or so.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Every day the folks who run that site select a new picture that shows off astrological, geological and meteorological science. They keep an archive easily accessible on the page of every picture they have published over the last ten years or so.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
April 3 - Hot Air
Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA could regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases coming from new cars and trucks.
Erm. This could put a crimp in our automotive lifestyle. I don't know about the other gases, but CO2 is practically impossible to scrub out of exhaust meaning that this is pretty much another avenue to impose mileage requirements on cars.
This is really quite amazing, because Carbon Dioxide is not actually a pollutant, as such. We breath vast amounts of it in and out every day. In fact, it is the fourth most common gas composing our atmosphere after Nitrogen, Oxygen and Argon. It is not poisonous.
Interesting is that the court begins it's opinion citing current thinking on global warming, a matter of still substantial debate. Man made CO2 caused global warming is absolutely not settled science. One wonders, if the opinions shift and, for instance, solar flux turns out to be the real cause of temperature variation does that automatically invalidate the courts ruling? Of course not.
Erm. This could put a crimp in our automotive lifestyle. I don't know about the other gases, but CO2 is practically impossible to scrub out of exhaust meaning that this is pretty much another avenue to impose mileage requirements on cars.
This is really quite amazing, because Carbon Dioxide is not actually a pollutant, as such. We breath vast amounts of it in and out every day. In fact, it is the fourth most common gas composing our atmosphere after Nitrogen, Oxygen and Argon. It is not poisonous.
Interesting is that the court begins it's opinion citing current thinking on global warming, a matter of still substantial debate. Man made CO2 caused global warming is absolutely not settled science. One wonders, if the opinions shift and, for instance, solar flux turns out to be the real cause of temperature variation does that automatically invalidate the courts ruling? Of course not.
Monday, April 2, 2007
April 2 - MIHOP, LIHOP, Conspiracy Theory Goes Mainstream
I could not post this yesterday because of the confusion April Fool's day would have caused. If you are not familiar with the Liberal blogosphere, what I write next is just too crazy to believe. Unfortunately belief in these ideas is prevalent.
MIHOP and LIHOP stand for "Made It Happen On Purpose" and "Let It Happen On Purpose". These two initialisms are usually prepended by "Bush" or some derogatory name for the President and they always refer to the attack on and subsequent collapse of the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11. I don't remember the exact numbers, but something north of 70% of the readers of The Daily Kos and The Democratic Underground believe that this administration either planned and executed the attack or were completely aware of the plan and let it occur as a pretext to wage war.
Further, many of these nutjobs believe that the towers were not brought down by the planes, but rather by explosives planted in advance, also by the administration, or so the claim goes. You have not heard about this because it was mostly kept out of the mainstream press and off the networks because even they seemed to know that was to product of insanity.
Until now.
Apparently the extremely valuable addition to "The View", Rosie O'Donnell, has seen fit to share her belief in these very ideas. Popular Mechanics Has seen fit to respond to her claims. Rosie has a undeservedly large following who will be swayed by her opinion. I certainly hope that ABC shares what the experts think on this matter in order to balance her influence. In fact, I rather think they should be required to.
MIHOP and LIHOP stand for "Made It Happen On Purpose" and "Let It Happen On Purpose". These two initialisms are usually prepended by "Bush" or some derogatory name for the President and they always refer to the attack on and subsequent collapse of the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11. I don't remember the exact numbers, but something north of 70% of the readers of The Daily Kos and The Democratic Underground believe that this administration either planned and executed the attack or were completely aware of the plan and let it occur as a pretext to wage war.
Further, many of these nutjobs believe that the towers were not brought down by the planes, but rather by explosives planted in advance, also by the administration, or so the claim goes. You have not heard about this because it was mostly kept out of the mainstream press and off the networks because even they seemed to know that was to product of insanity.
Until now.
Apparently the extremely valuable addition to "The View", Rosie O'Donnell, has seen fit to share her belief in these very ideas. Popular Mechanics Has seen fit to respond to her claims. Rosie has a undeservedly large following who will be swayed by her opinion. I certainly hope that ABC shares what the experts think on this matter in order to balance her influence. In fact, I rather think they should be required to.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
April 1 - Bridge to Terabithia
Another kids movie, this one also reminded me of old Disney movies like, "Escape to Witch Mountain." In this movie, a pre-adolescent boy meets a like-aged girl who has just moved in next door. They both don't fit at school and develop a friendship. She has two writers for parents and evidently therefrom, a vivid imagination. Sufficiently vivid that, in the movie, it becomes real, though the movie does not expect you to believe that what you are seeing is real.
Both my 5 year old and 7 year old liked the movie. It has some sad moments that might take some explaining, but, as with Mimsy, no blood or gore, no sex and no foul language that I remember with the possible exception of what might have occurred in some school scenes. The boy comes from the poorest of poor families which is a plot point and so that might take some explaining, as well in this age of abundance.
The movie was not what I expected. The fantasy world was clearly the product of the kid's imagination and not especially well explored. I expected more time in that world walking into the movie. The special effects were not garish or over-done and suited the movie. I have not read the book. I tend to like good children's novels (A Wrinkle in Time, Watership Down, The Hobbit, etc.) The movie makes me think I might like this one.
I'm not sorry I took the kids, nor am I sorry I saw this in the Theater. I still would like to see the movie that I thought I was going to see, though.
Both my 5 year old and 7 year old liked the movie. It has some sad moments that might take some explaining, but, as with Mimsy, no blood or gore, no sex and no foul language that I remember with the possible exception of what might have occurred in some school scenes. The boy comes from the poorest of poor families which is a plot point and so that might take some explaining, as well in this age of abundance.
The movie was not what I expected. The fantasy world was clearly the product of the kid's imagination and not especially well explored. I expected more time in that world walking into the movie. The special effects were not garish or over-done and suited the movie. I have not read the book. I tend to like good children's novels (A Wrinkle in Time, Watership Down, The Hobbit, etc.) The movie makes me think I might like this one.
I'm not sorry I took the kids, nor am I sorry I saw this in the Theater. I still would like to see the movie that I thought I was going to see, though.
March 31 - The Last Mimzy
I took the kids to see The Last Mimzy, today. My 5 year old was restless and my 7 year old was attentive. There are no monsters, no blood or gore, no sex and no foul language that I remember in the movie.
The movie was somewhat reminiscent of various Disney movies of my youth. The story was somewhat new but not too involved. There was an eco-social political message behind the plot, but it was not too terribly overt.
The story goes that mankind at some time and place in the future has poisoned itself to the point where it is about to become extinct, the exact nature of the poison is not revealed. The only way to fix this is to send things to the past to collect what is necessary. Several times they've tried and several times they've failed. This movie is the story about the last attempt to collect what they need by sending the last mimzy to the past.
The story tells the tale of a brother and sister who find the last mimzy and start discovering it's powers and ultimately learn they have to do something with it.
There are no complex twists or turns in the story. Aside from the kids, the characters are not particularly well developed. The special effects were quite nice and fitting for the story at hand.
The movie takes it's name from Lewis Carroll's Poem, Jabberwockey, that begins:
Twas brillig and the slithy toves,
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe,
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
The little girl finds a stuffed bunny inside the Mimzy. She names the bunny Mimzy (or the bunny tells her its name is Mimzy.) Aside from the title, the sole link to Lewis Carrol's "Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There" in which the poem is found, is the picture of Alice holding a stuffed rabbit that looks the one the girl in this movie finds.
The movie was worthwhile for taking the kids. I recommend waiting for rental otherwise and then only if you enjoy sci-fi/fantasy.
Oh yeah, Intel has some crass commercialism show up in an all-too-impossible to miss cameo intrinsic to the story, ugh.
The movie was somewhat reminiscent of various Disney movies of my youth. The story was somewhat new but not too involved. There was an eco-social political message behind the plot, but it was not too terribly overt.
The story goes that mankind at some time and place in the future has poisoned itself to the point where it is about to become extinct, the exact nature of the poison is not revealed. The only way to fix this is to send things to the past to collect what is necessary. Several times they've tried and several times they've failed. This movie is the story about the last attempt to collect what they need by sending the last mimzy to the past.
The story tells the tale of a brother and sister who find the last mimzy and start discovering it's powers and ultimately learn they have to do something with it.
There are no complex twists or turns in the story. Aside from the kids, the characters are not particularly well developed. The special effects were quite nice and fitting for the story at hand.
The movie takes it's name from Lewis Carroll's Poem, Jabberwockey, that begins:
Twas brillig and the slithy toves,
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe,
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
The little girl finds a stuffed bunny inside the Mimzy. She names the bunny Mimzy (or the bunny tells her its name is Mimzy.) Aside from the title, the sole link to Lewis Carrol's "Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There" in which the poem is found, is the picture of Alice holding a stuffed rabbit that looks the one the girl in this movie finds.
The movie was worthwhile for taking the kids. I recommend waiting for rental otherwise and then only if you enjoy sci-fi/fantasy.
Oh yeah, Intel has some crass commercialism show up in an all-too-impossible to miss cameo intrinsic to the story, ugh.
Friday, March 30, 2007
March 30 - Commons sense
Here's a thought. What if the Brother's Grimm had a copyright to their works? Where would Disney be then? It's not my thought, but one posed by Lawrence Lessig.
Anyway, our rights are not simply being trodden on in the civil liberty realm, they are also being drastically eroded in the intellectual property realm. There is this really neat correlation between copyright law and Mickey Mouse. It seems, every time Mickey Mouse is going to go out of copyright, Congress passes an extension to the duration of copyrights to keep that from happening.
There are two points, here. One is that, at present, no living person can expect to be able to freely make derivative works from any copyrighted material they enjoy today. The second is that this extension is made retroactive to copyrights already granted. The first part is a problem, the second smacks of downright theft.
See, in order for any copyrighted work to have merit, it must, in turn, be derivative. If, in fact someone made art that had no cultural reference whatsoever that we recognize, it would, in turn, likely have no acknowledged artistic merit and no commercial value. In order to have value, art must be recognizable. It must draw on the experience of the user. This is, in itself, derivative. In order to reward the industriousness of the artist, the work is protected from certain types of derivation and almost all types of re-distribution for a period. In the past, though, people could expect that, eventually, art would enter the public domain and repay the commons (thats us) for drawing on the familiar.
Not any longer.
It is terribly hypocritical that exactly the thing that Disney relied upon to make his companies fortune, plagiarizing past works, his company now unreasonably denies to the commons. Not just denies, takes away. People alive today lived with the expectation that they could make derivate works from Disney's material. These people have been stolen from.
In fact, they have stolen from us all. As stated above, all artistic works are derivative to a point. By extending copyright, the law is basically creating an environment in which art will largely stagnate because freely derivative works are not allowed. Today, intellectual property law largely protects large corporations, not inventors and artists. It does not encourage creation as originally intended, but now tends to stifle it.
It is time that intellectual property law was re-examined to again ensure that it is doing the greatest good for this great society. It is time to recognize the rights of the commons.
Anyway, our rights are not simply being trodden on in the civil liberty realm, they are also being drastically eroded in the intellectual property realm. There is this really neat correlation between copyright law and Mickey Mouse. It seems, every time Mickey Mouse is going to go out of copyright, Congress passes an extension to the duration of copyrights to keep that from happening.
There are two points, here. One is that, at present, no living person can expect to be able to freely make derivative works from any copyrighted material they enjoy today. The second is that this extension is made retroactive to copyrights already granted. The first part is a problem, the second smacks of downright theft.
See, in order for any copyrighted work to have merit, it must, in turn, be derivative. If, in fact someone made art that had no cultural reference whatsoever that we recognize, it would, in turn, likely have no acknowledged artistic merit and no commercial value. In order to have value, art must be recognizable. It must draw on the experience of the user. This is, in itself, derivative. In order to reward the industriousness of the artist, the work is protected from certain types of derivation and almost all types of re-distribution for a period. In the past, though, people could expect that, eventually, art would enter the public domain and repay the commons (thats us) for drawing on the familiar.
Not any longer.
It is terribly hypocritical that exactly the thing that Disney relied upon to make his companies fortune, plagiarizing past works, his company now unreasonably denies to the commons. Not just denies, takes away. People alive today lived with the expectation that they could make derivate works from Disney's material. These people have been stolen from.
In fact, they have stolen from us all. As stated above, all artistic works are derivative to a point. By extending copyright, the law is basically creating an environment in which art will largely stagnate because freely derivative works are not allowed. Today, intellectual property law largely protects large corporations, not inventors and artists. It does not encourage creation as originally intended, but now tends to stifle it.
It is time that intellectual property law was re-examined to again ensure that it is doing the greatest good for this great society. It is time to recognize the rights of the commons.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
March 29 - John Doe
A few days ago, I wrote about eroding civil liberties in order to increase security. As I wrote, then, that scares me. However, what really irritates me is when I have to pay for something of little or no value. For instance, advocates of global warming propose joining the Kyoto treaty, an act that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars and will have almost no effect on CO2 levels. Similarly, after 9/11 we had a large number of changes to the process of air travel... with little or no value.
What was the cost? Inconvenience, for one. Inconvenience is largely a petty cost, a few minutes here, a few dollars there. Actually, it was more like a few hundred dollars here, a few hours there, as security lines blossomed, the security forces were nationalized and air travel prices increased. Regardless, spread that out over the millions of passengers and in short order, you are talking about real money. Ask anyone in the semiconductor industry what is the value of removing a penny from the manufacturing cost of a single chip. When you multiple that penny by millions of chips, well, you get the picture.
And what were we getting for our money? Nail clippers confiscated by obviously un-reasoning personnel. Our loved ones could no longer accompany us into the waiting area or meet us at the gate, sharing time precious to those of us who travel. Random searches applied to wheelchair bound grannies and children as much as Muslims in robes. Not that they were really random. In the first year after 9/11, I was searched 7 out of 8 flights. The only thing I can attribute that to is that I wear a full face beard. Later on, the rules were upgraded to make it so we couldn't carry on trivial amounts of liquids. Amounts too small to be of any practical purpose in taking control of a plane. There were so many ridiculous acts by self-important officials blindly following poorly though out rules that I could not begin to list them all in a reasonable amount of time. None of this made me feel safer. In fact, the demonstration of ignorance made me feel less safe.
These are not just the irritated grumblings of a frequent flyer, either. In my travels I had the opportunity to sit next to many different people. On one international flight, in particular, I had the opportunity to sit next to a security and ethics agent from the FBI on his way to teach a foreign police force. We had quite a long conversation in which we discussed these very issues. He shared that it was well understood in the bureau that these measures were primarily to instill a "feeling" of security in the population and that they had little to no real effect.
This is not to say that my feelings of security in air travel lessened after 9/11. They increased, but in no way due to the costly and misdirected efforts of the TSA. They increased due to my understanding of the events that unfolded on Flight 93. I knew that, from that day forward, Americans would never sit by and allow hijackers to take a plane. Many incidents since then have confirmed that opinion for me.
Yesterday, Michelle Malkin penned a manifesto that captures the primary reason why I feel more safe since 9/11. I share the link to it here. Enjoy.
What was the cost? Inconvenience, for one. Inconvenience is largely a petty cost, a few minutes here, a few dollars there. Actually, it was more like a few hundred dollars here, a few hours there, as security lines blossomed, the security forces were nationalized and air travel prices increased. Regardless, spread that out over the millions of passengers and in short order, you are talking about real money. Ask anyone in the semiconductor industry what is the value of removing a penny from the manufacturing cost of a single chip. When you multiple that penny by millions of chips, well, you get the picture.
And what were we getting for our money? Nail clippers confiscated by obviously un-reasoning personnel. Our loved ones could no longer accompany us into the waiting area or meet us at the gate, sharing time precious to those of us who travel. Random searches applied to wheelchair bound grannies and children as much as Muslims in robes. Not that they were really random. In the first year after 9/11, I was searched 7 out of 8 flights. The only thing I can attribute that to is that I wear a full face beard. Later on, the rules were upgraded to make it so we couldn't carry on trivial amounts of liquids. Amounts too small to be of any practical purpose in taking control of a plane. There were so many ridiculous acts by self-important officials blindly following poorly though out rules that I could not begin to list them all in a reasonable amount of time. None of this made me feel safer. In fact, the demonstration of ignorance made me feel less safe.
These are not just the irritated grumblings of a frequent flyer, either. In my travels I had the opportunity to sit next to many different people. On one international flight, in particular, I had the opportunity to sit next to a security and ethics agent from the FBI on his way to teach a foreign police force. We had quite a long conversation in which we discussed these very issues. He shared that it was well understood in the bureau that these measures were primarily to instill a "feeling" of security in the population and that they had little to no real effect.
This is not to say that my feelings of security in air travel lessened after 9/11. They increased, but in no way due to the costly and misdirected efforts of the TSA. They increased due to my understanding of the events that unfolded on Flight 93. I knew that, from that day forward, Americans would never sit by and allow hijackers to take a plane. Many incidents since then have confirmed that opinion for me.
Yesterday, Michelle Malkin penned a manifesto that captures the primary reason why I feel more safe since 9/11. I share the link to it here. Enjoy.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
March 28 - The Other White Meat
When did it become common to put unrelated items into a bill? I could sort of understand this if, as a matter of expedience a lot of administrative items that everyone agreed upon got stuffed into a bill so it could be all be voted on at once. On the other hand, I wonder when it became ethical to tie, say, subsidies for peanut farmers to funding a war effort?
Wasn't this one of the things that Democrats were up in arms about? What was all that talk about earmarks? Just in case you didn't know, the current Senate emergency war funding bill, AKA cut and run by March '08 bill, also has something like 19 billion with a B dollars. How convenient that the Democrats have not yet ratified the earmark transparency provisions prior to this bill.
I wonder how many votes Nancy Pelosi had to buy with the $19 billion of pork that is also in the House bill. It's something less than 218. However, at $19 billion, even if she had to buy every one, that is still about $87 million dollars per vote. Wow. Just, wow.
More justification to provide the president with the line item veto.
Wasn't this one of the things that Democrats were up in arms about? What was all that talk about earmarks? Just in case you didn't know, the current Senate emergency war funding bill, AKA cut and run by March '08 bill, also has something like 19 billion with a B dollars. How convenient that the Democrats have not yet ratified the earmark transparency provisions prior to this bill.
I wonder how many votes Nancy Pelosi had to buy with the $19 billion of pork that is also in the House bill. It's something less than 218. However, at $19 billion, even if she had to buy every one, that is still about $87 million dollars per vote. Wow. Just, wow.
More justification to provide the president with the line item veto.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
March 27 - All for the low, low price... not anymore.
The Supreme Court is currently considering a case that would permit manufacturers to set a minimum price that retailers may charge for an item. This is previously settled case law for nearly a hundred years.
This leaves me befuddled as to what is the capitalist approach. On the one hand, a retailer and a manufacturer may have a contract that they have freely entered into and that may include such prices floors. On the other there is an issue of natural rights of ownership that says the retailer ought to be able to do whatever they see fit with their property to do business. From the consumer point of view price floors seem anticompetitive.
The rub comes in when the product fails to sell at the floor price. Is the retailer required to store the product forever? They can't throw or give it away because that would constitute selling it for a lower price. No more Filene's Basement type sales.
If the SCOTUS overturns this one, there are going to be some people caught in some very painful contracts in the coming years.
This leaves me befuddled as to what is the capitalist approach. On the one hand, a retailer and a manufacturer may have a contract that they have freely entered into and that may include such prices floors. On the other there is an issue of natural rights of ownership that says the retailer ought to be able to do whatever they see fit with their property to do business. From the consumer point of view price floors seem anticompetitive.
The rub comes in when the product fails to sell at the floor price. Is the retailer required to store the product forever? They can't throw or give it away because that would constitute selling it for a lower price. No more Filene's Basement type sales.
If the SCOTUS overturns this one, there are going to be some people caught in some very painful contracts in the coming years.
Monday, March 26, 2007
March 26 - Voter fraud?
A friend wrote to point out apparent big meanies in the GOP saying they are trying to prevent voter fraud when they secretly are trying to keep minorities away from the polls and asks where my outrage is. He sends links: link1 link2
Lets try this. I'm not a great fan of the 24th amendment to the constitution so I don't much care. I truly believe that a person can be expected to fulfill a minimum responsibility in order to vote. Obtaining a state issued ID doesn't seem all that tough to me. I'd be happy with requiring that a person be contributing to the public wealth as opposed to taking from it as well. This would tend to reduce the "bread and circuses" problem. I guess I wouldn't require that a person pay taxes so long as they are not on the dole. If you want to "live off the grid" you still get to vote. If you expect me to pay for your life, then you don't.
This is an ethical position that has nothing to do with race. However, I do recognize that this does tend to affect certain races more than others as the current demographics of this country stands. You may know, I believe that the debt that resulted in the current demographic has long since been paid (and perhaps squandered) and that, moving forward, this country should treat all men as equals, holding them all to the same standards, rather than explicitly practicing racial prejudice.
Lets try this. I'm not a great fan of the 24th amendment to the constitution so I don't much care. I truly believe that a person can be expected to fulfill a minimum responsibility in order to vote. Obtaining a state issued ID doesn't seem all that tough to me. I'd be happy with requiring that a person be contributing to the public wealth as opposed to taking from it as well. This would tend to reduce the "bread and circuses" problem. I guess I wouldn't require that a person pay taxes so long as they are not on the dole. If you want to "live off the grid" you still get to vote. If you expect me to pay for your life, then you don't.
This is an ethical position that has nothing to do with race. However, I do recognize that this does tend to affect certain races more than others as the current demographics of this country stands. You may know, I believe that the debt that resulted in the current demographic has long since been paid (and perhaps squandered) and that, moving forward, this country should treat all men as equals, holding them all to the same standards, rather than explicitly practicing racial prejudice.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
March 25 - Birthday Parties
When I was a kid, I went to maybe as many as two or three birthday parties a year. When I had a birthday, it was an event for a few friends and family. At school, on birthdays, we'd celebrate in class with cupcakes and juice if it was grade school.
When did this change? My kids are invited to a party for every birthday for every child in their class. What a pain! This is no pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey affair at the kids home, either. Parents rent out a party spot like Pump-it-Up or Raddi-Jazz or some such and let the kids go nuts with cake and pizza and inflatable bounce castle things for several hours.
It seems like every other week one of our Saturdays gets decimated by this new fashion. And now, we are obligated by the other families and by the expectations of our kids to supply a similar party. Or, we could explain to our kids why they, alone amongst all their peers, are not going to these parties and are not having such parties. Yeah, right, Grinch of the year, right here. Not.
When did this change? My kids are invited to a party for every birthday for every child in their class. What a pain! This is no pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey affair at the kids home, either. Parents rent out a party spot like Pump-it-Up or Raddi-Jazz or some such and let the kids go nuts with cake and pizza and inflatable bounce castle things for several hours.
It seems like every other week one of our Saturdays gets decimated by this new fashion. And now, we are obligated by the other families and by the expectations of our kids to supply a similar party. Or, we could explain to our kids why they, alone amongst all their peers, are not going to these parties and are not having such parties. Yeah, right, Grinch of the year, right here. Not.
Friday, March 23, 2007
March 23 (& 24) - Quote(s) of the Day(s)
Sorry about the delay. This post took a lot of thought and I am still not sure it consistently, unambiguously or completely expresses my thoughts. It is about things that have been concerning me for nearly six years, now.
232 years ago, Patrick Henry gave a speech that, I sincerely hope, most Americans remember. In speaking about the impending revolution, trying to encourage Virginia to join, he famously (again I hope) said "give me liberty, or give me death."
Another notable of the era, Benjamin Franklin wrote a very related quotation, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
When I've evoked these ideals in discussion against many of the legislative, executive and judicial events that have occurred since 9/11, with people who I know to be conservative, small government, personal responsibility types defend the events as necessary. These same have even used the same sorts of arguments that I've listened to liberal types use in favor of gun control for the last 20 years. The most common are that the founders never could have conceived the environment we live in today, history has never seen a condition like we face, today, but there are others.
By now, most of these folks, if they are reading, would be screaming "what events?" And when I would reply something like "The Patriot Act" or the suspension of Habeas Corpus, they'd mostly disrespect that answer as the usual un-reasoned argument of the left. But I am not a left-wing thinker. The Patriot Act has many disturbing qualities. For instance, its language is constructed as to make the new powers it contains for the purposes of preventing terrorist acts broadly applicable on the basis of premise without documentation. In fact, it is darn near impossible to see if the Patriot Act is being mis-applied because it is rife with gag orders that prevent knowing what is done under it, even after the fact.
The Patriot Act II is even more far-reaching. If it becomes law, it has in it the means to strip away the right of citizenship from naturalized and natural born citizens. The quick answer is that this would only happen to terrorists. Actually, the law is broader than that, it could happen to those suspected of aiding terrorists, even unknowingly. Give money to your favorite charity which then funds something you know nothing about and you could be in violation of the law as written. Never mind that that is a violation of the 14th amendment to the constitution. Where are the arguments for constitutional amendments in this debate? I hear them all the time in the Gay Marriage argument.
Jose Padilla seems to be a bad person, no doubt. Few people would disagree that a serious injustice is done to him by detaining him. However, when he is detained without charge or bail, when he is denied his rights as a citizen of the U.S. to representation, when these things happen within the borders of the country on an un-clear legal premise, then the greater injustice is done to us, the inhabitants of the country. One has to ask if there is any event that justifies the suspension of habeas corpus. Evidently there is, but, constitutionally, that right is reserved to the Congress, not the President.
Here's another quote, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely,"
- Lord Acton.
I am not especially concerned with the actions of the present administration, nor the actions of the next, Republican or Democrat. Nor do I think this administration is acting much differently than others in this regard. Shoot, the last administration fought a whole war without congressional approval. How's that for a power grab? Historically, nearly every congress has tried to extend the power of the federal government and nearly every president has tried to transfer power from the legislature to the executive. It is the responsibility of the citizenry to check this.
I am very concerned with is greater amounts of power being put into the hands of the government in general and the tendency that will have to make it more corrupt. I see no evidence that the people this country elects to office are becoming any less self-absorbed. No particular congress or president will make a concerted effort to develop absolute corrupt power, but we will creep closer and closer to that condition. A death of a thousand cuts, so to speak, nearly completely un-coordinated unless you are a conspiracy theory nut. If you doubt this, just look at the way the federal government in the last century abused the interstate-commerce clause of the constitution to vastly extend its power.
Here is one example of one of these cuts that we can already see growing organically. I am quite concerned with what it means in the long term that our governments have put up surveillance cameras at nearly every major intersection in every major metro area. What, you didn't notice?
At the time they were erected, they were described as being for traffic monitoring and that is probably so, not even a cut unless you take the long view which I am about to describe. Once the cameras are in place the natural tendency is to wonder what else they can be used for. Quite recently, technology has been released that enables cameras such as these to record every license plate that passes by and compares it to a database of stolen cars, suspect's cars, Amber alerts, etc. This has already been deployed for use in police car cameras. If it hasn't already, it will be in the cameras you see above every stop light before long. Now they are being used for surveillance, but not of you, right?
How long after that before the computers behind these cameras are used to analyze patterns of motion to look for suspicious behavior? What will constitute suspicious? What if completely reasonable patterns of movement looks suspicious to the hard coded filter used to rank and rate the data? How hard will it be to clear yourself of a mistaken charge. Legal defense costs money and time, after all. Here's a short story by David Brin about two such imaginary cities. Which one do you think we will live in ten years from now?
More steps are taken with examining communication that we probably should be able to consider private. Phones, long ago, were considered an extension of your living room and so extensive legal procedures were required to tap them. I believe the internet shares the same characteristic and should be treated the same way. This has not been the case. Recently, the federal government tried to get major search engines to turn over search data in order to research legislation. Some companies rolled over on this one, but Google fought it and ultimately won. The reason is, though the search data is anonymous, it was still tagged to unidentified users and Google thought that this provides way too much information about a person even if anonymous.
You might think that since it is anonymized there is no issue, but in between the subpoena and winning the suit, another search firm lent it's similar anonymized data to a research group at a university. That group did some minimal analysis and was easily able to match true identities with anonymized users, contacting some of them. At the very least, this should make you wary of using search engines. At the most, you should be able to see how much information can be learned about you from your searches. How much of that might be mis-interpreted. Suppose a parent did research on cannabis to figure out how to make or keep their child drug free and it was flagged? The parent was just trying to protect their child and be a good parent. In so doing they may have gotten their self in a defensive legal situation or even ratted out their child who they were trying to help.
These sorts of capabilities are all in our present and near future and, in general, we will accept them as necessary "in this day" for security. This isn't idle conspiracy theory. This requires no conspiracy to happen. It simply requires a natural progression. A lot of small steps until, one day, we realize that the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution no longer mean anything at all. It is possible that, someday, your lifestyle choices will be considered illegal. Perhaps someday I will find myself in that group for writing this article. Fortunately, not today.
If you think it won't happen (to you), here is another quote, poem, actually:
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
- Martin Niemoeller
You may be familiar with it and you may think it doesn't apply. I truly hope you are correct.
232 years ago, Patrick Henry gave a speech that, I sincerely hope, most Americans remember. In speaking about the impending revolution, trying to encourage Virginia to join, he famously (again I hope) said "give me liberty, or give me death."
Another notable of the era, Benjamin Franklin wrote a very related quotation, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
When I've evoked these ideals in discussion against many of the legislative, executive and judicial events that have occurred since 9/11, with people who I know to be conservative, small government, personal responsibility types defend the events as necessary. These same have even used the same sorts of arguments that I've listened to liberal types use in favor of gun control for the last 20 years. The most common are that the founders never could have conceived the environment we live in today, history has never seen a condition like we face, today, but there are others.
By now, most of these folks, if they are reading, would be screaming "what events?" And when I would reply something like "The Patriot Act" or the suspension of Habeas Corpus, they'd mostly disrespect that answer as the usual un-reasoned argument of the left. But I am not a left-wing thinker. The Patriot Act has many disturbing qualities. For instance, its language is constructed as to make the new powers it contains for the purposes of preventing terrorist acts broadly applicable on the basis of premise without documentation. In fact, it is darn near impossible to see if the Patriot Act is being mis-applied because it is rife with gag orders that prevent knowing what is done under it, even after the fact.
The Patriot Act II is even more far-reaching. If it becomes law, it has in it the means to strip away the right of citizenship from naturalized and natural born citizens. The quick answer is that this would only happen to terrorists. Actually, the law is broader than that, it could happen to those suspected of aiding terrorists, even unknowingly. Give money to your favorite charity which then funds something you know nothing about and you could be in violation of the law as written. Never mind that that is a violation of the 14th amendment to the constitution. Where are the arguments for constitutional amendments in this debate? I hear them all the time in the Gay Marriage argument.
Jose Padilla seems to be a bad person, no doubt. Few people would disagree that a serious injustice is done to him by detaining him. However, when he is detained without charge or bail, when he is denied his rights as a citizen of the U.S. to representation, when these things happen within the borders of the country on an un-clear legal premise, then the greater injustice is done to us, the inhabitants of the country. One has to ask if there is any event that justifies the suspension of habeas corpus. Evidently there is, but, constitutionally, that right is reserved to the Congress, not the President.
Here's another quote, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely,"
- Lord Acton.
I am not especially concerned with the actions of the present administration, nor the actions of the next, Republican or Democrat. Nor do I think this administration is acting much differently than others in this regard. Shoot, the last administration fought a whole war without congressional approval. How's that for a power grab? Historically, nearly every congress has tried to extend the power of the federal government and nearly every president has tried to transfer power from the legislature to the executive. It is the responsibility of the citizenry to check this.
I am very concerned with is greater amounts of power being put into the hands of the government in general and the tendency that will have to make it more corrupt. I see no evidence that the people this country elects to office are becoming any less self-absorbed. No particular congress or president will make a concerted effort to develop absolute corrupt power, but we will creep closer and closer to that condition. A death of a thousand cuts, so to speak, nearly completely un-coordinated unless you are a conspiracy theory nut. If you doubt this, just look at the way the federal government in the last century abused the interstate-commerce clause of the constitution to vastly extend its power.
Here is one example of one of these cuts that we can already see growing organically. I am quite concerned with what it means in the long term that our governments have put up surveillance cameras at nearly every major intersection in every major metro area. What, you didn't notice?
At the time they were erected, they were described as being for traffic monitoring and that is probably so, not even a cut unless you take the long view which I am about to describe. Once the cameras are in place the natural tendency is to wonder what else they can be used for. Quite recently, technology has been released that enables cameras such as these to record every license plate that passes by and compares it to a database of stolen cars, suspect's cars, Amber alerts, etc. This has already been deployed for use in police car cameras. If it hasn't already, it will be in the cameras you see above every stop light before long. Now they are being used for surveillance, but not of you, right?
How long after that before the computers behind these cameras are used to analyze patterns of motion to look for suspicious behavior? What will constitute suspicious? What if completely reasonable patterns of movement looks suspicious to the hard coded filter used to rank and rate the data? How hard will it be to clear yourself of a mistaken charge. Legal defense costs money and time, after all. Here's a short story by David Brin about two such imaginary cities. Which one do you think we will live in ten years from now?
More steps are taken with examining communication that we probably should be able to consider private. Phones, long ago, were considered an extension of your living room and so extensive legal procedures were required to tap them. I believe the internet shares the same characteristic and should be treated the same way. This has not been the case. Recently, the federal government tried to get major search engines to turn over search data in order to research legislation. Some companies rolled over on this one, but Google fought it and ultimately won. The reason is, though the search data is anonymous, it was still tagged to unidentified users and Google thought that this provides way too much information about a person even if anonymous.
You might think that since it is anonymized there is no issue, but in between the subpoena and winning the suit, another search firm lent it's similar anonymized data to a research group at a university. That group did some minimal analysis and was easily able to match true identities with anonymized users, contacting some of them. At the very least, this should make you wary of using search engines. At the most, you should be able to see how much information can be learned about you from your searches. How much of that might be mis-interpreted. Suppose a parent did research on cannabis to figure out how to make or keep their child drug free and it was flagged? The parent was just trying to protect their child and be a good parent. In so doing they may have gotten their self in a defensive legal situation or even ratted out their child who they were trying to help.
These sorts of capabilities are all in our present and near future and, in general, we will accept them as necessary "in this day" for security. This isn't idle conspiracy theory. This requires no conspiracy to happen. It simply requires a natural progression. A lot of small steps until, one day, we realize that the 9th and 10th amendments to the Constitution no longer mean anything at all. It is possible that, someday, your lifestyle choices will be considered illegal. Perhaps someday I will find myself in that group for writing this article. Fortunately, not today.
If you think it won't happen (to you), here is another quote, poem, actually:
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
- Martin Niemoeller
You may be familiar with it and you may think it doesn't apply. I truly hope you are correct.
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