Kin Ha Senote Jump

http://dpecchia.tumblr.com/post/155213288609/jump-into-cenote

The kids in the back of our rental car on the way to the cenote were asking what it is called. My wife spelled: it is K, I, N, splash, H, A. Splash, space whatever--definite splash place!

Vacation Week Time Use

I took this week off since my employer does not allow any carryover of PTO. In the unlikely event I suddenly become CEO, day 1, 8:00 AM, employees will be allowed to carry some amount of paid time off. I think one year's worth is reasonable. I know the accountants want to zero out every year, but screw them--99% of the company are not CPAs! I do not believe the HR BS that carryover encourages the use of PTO. I would take a lot more early Winter and Spring time off, but I haven't accumulated much by then and don't want to be in the hole.

Anyway to the point of this post: What have I been doing with my time?

Monday, it snowed and so I spent a fair amount of exertion shoveling the driveway. I had to go to the store since I make falafel for our dept party and needed fresh parsley. Later I went for a run, which was slow due to fatigue from shoveling and the presence of snow on the ground. I took Jemma to the orthodontist to have a look at her broken retainer. Later, time was taken up with attending Dahlia's induction into what she calls "the cult" of NHS. We are so proud, her first cult!

Home just in time to watch the Patriots play Monday Night Football! I only watched to the half because it was 23-3 and looked like a Pats blowout. Turns out the Ravens made a big, but ultimately failing comeback in the 2nd half. Too bad I missed it!

Tuesday, I made the Falafel and had to deal with our food processor dying--we have a smaller, older unit that could do the job in several batches. Also, made a large batch of pizelles, because I bring these to the party as well. I only had time to make a couple dozen before having to wrap the Yankee swap gift and go to the party.

The party ended and I had just enough time to get Jemma from School and take her to get a new retainer at the orthodontist. Then power lifting, followed by dinner.

Wednesday, I cooked up the rest of the pizille cookies and did some shopping for Christmas things to send. It was a fiasco. I was looking for candy to send to people and must have left my hat somewhere and I could not find it. Called today and I think they have it in the lost and found. Next, I went to the grocery for some rustic bread, which they had, but also I wanted some great and inexpensive bacon they had. They had the bacon but now it was normal price, so no point in stocking up. Also I wanted pomegranates--which they normally have, but did not have on this day. They had something called "pepino melon" which smelled intriguing, but they were half the size of a mango and priced at $5 each, so no. I got home in just enough time to go for my run--the day was warm enough for no shoes, or so I thought. I had to run a course I hadn't done in a while and there were some patches of ice to cross. All in all, it was a good run, 8.8 miles at a 7:44 pace. It was too late for lunch since the concert was soon. Later, the Winter concert, featuring Jemma on violin. (It should be up on the Chelmsford Telemedia youtube channel soon).

Thursday, I got the packages sent and did an easy clean and jerk workout. Made my 150 lbs easily but elected to stop there and not spoil it.

Movies Within a Sitcom

A repeating motif on Seinfeld was that the characters went out to the movies a lot. Sometimes they were real, such as Shindler's List or The English Patient. Often times, they were fake movies with titles which sounded real-ish.

Now that there is an internet, you may have realized that nothing you think of has not already been thought of by someone else. And obsessed about and posted onto the internet. So, yes. There is a genre of movie posters for fake movies from Seinfeld.

First: The Rochelle, Rochelle ones:



Other ones which even I, a Seinfeld fan, barely remember...

Dog Whistles and Mind-Reading

Everybody is a Carnak now.

Trump is an antisemite, racist, homophobe, sexist etc.

How do you know this? Let's set-aside that nobody (okay, no Human) can divine the content of another's soul. But still, how about some evidence?

It is all "dog whistles". So, his heart is judged by how well his enemies can interpret his words to suit their thesis?

Go ahead and Google: "Trump anti semitic dog whistle" for examples. They are perfect examples of seeing all kinds of meaning in random noise. Eg. Complete avoidence of them is what is technically called, "An impossibly high standard", which is another way of saying no standard at all.

Also, a one-way standard: Did Obama ever get criticized in an anti semitic context in the main stream media for having Al Sharpton over to the White House several dozens of times?

Kidding! Of course not.

Anyway, what is the point of a dog whistle if the dog can't hear it? These claims rely on such subtlety, do you really think some troglodyte from the back woods will hear it? The troglodyte may have access to the internet and find out that many of Trump's business associates are Jewish, his son in law too and that the PM of Israel likes Trump. If the kid is motivated by hatred for all things Jewish, I don't think Trump is going to get him fired-up.

But if it can only be heard by enemies, is it still a dog whistle? No. I think the term you are looking for is imaginary whistle.

Compassion

The temptation to gloat is strong: How many years has it been rubbed in our faces when our guy lost?

Let's not.

To those disappointed, sorry, we know how you feel. Lots of us felt that way a few months ago when Trump won the Republican nomination and 4 years before that too. We know how you feel because we've been there too.

I voted for Johnson, so I expected to be disappointed no matter what. Hillary would have caused more pain than Trump, but not by much.

So, to those in pain. Try not to lash-out. Somebody had to lose, lots of good (yes, even people you don't agree with are good) people were bound to feel despondent on Wed. It happens to be you, it could have been them. Those feelings are valid, no matter which side is on the losing side.

We are all fellow Americans. We fight hard over real issues, but let's not forget that at the end of the day, we are partners in this nation.

Election Predictions

Liberals will find it the height of wit to post a picture of The Donald with the caption, "You're Fired!"

OR

Conservatives will post a picture of Obama with the caption: Dear Democrats, we understand how you feel right now. We felt exactly the same way 4 and 8 years ago."

The Running App That Could

I noticed yesterday that my web running ap RunningAHEAD has lasted at least 5 years now: I hit the following benchmarks: Total: 7,500.0 mi 996:16:42. (41 days, 12 hours, 16 minutes, 42 seconds)

I think this is the 2nd or 3rd app I have used and they all worked well, but one gets the feeling that it is sombody's hobby and eventually they let it go to seed. This one used to be accessable from Facebook and would create Tweets too. Now it just works, for which I am gratefull. It even has a mapping fuction and one can download the whole dbase and resurect it in Excel.

You can run through the calculations yourself, but the average pace is just under 8:00/mile, for the whole 7,500 miles of running. If I ran 24/7 it would take roughly 17 days to cross the USA, 3,100 miles (5,000 km). The whole 7,500 would take 41 and 1/2 days, which is really not a lot when one considers that this was over 1,825 days. About 1/44th of a day per day or 33 minutes per day.

I found the previous log, which doesn't work but still has all my old workouts and there is almost 5,000 km in that log. It covered a couple of years.

Burning Seed-Corn

Or just more effective training?

I will just back-up a bit to explain: I have in the past few years had a standard of 30 miles per week at an 8:00 min/mile pace or better. The thing is that I have been feeling run-down. Recently, I took a week off from work and tried running on alternate days. The off-days for running were on-days for weights. I do a power-lift routine and then two days later Clean and Jerk only. On that week, my runs were fast and pleasant. It was the first week since last spring in which I made my 4: 30 miles, sub-8, one barefoot run and one run over 10 miles.

So now what I am trying is to run Mon at work, Wed when I am off, and then Sat. It will not, at least not at first, add up to 30 miles though. For now it feels good. The question I have is whether or not this is making me a better runner.

Hypothesis 1: I am doing less running and will lose fitness.
Hypothesis 2: My training is less, but is of higher quality and so fitness will improve.

Time will tell.

SABO

getting lucky

At dining!

Last weekend, my wife and I spent a night in Manchester. We had driven by the queen city many times but never really explored the place.

We were on foot and looking for a place to dine. We found the Hanover Street Chop House, which looked good, but there was a 45 minute to 1 hour wait.

OR

We could sit at the bar--which also had a wait list, please check with the bartender.

Which we did.

And...we got a spot within about 30 seconds of being added to the list.

Plus...it was a corner spot, so we could converse easily.

And...it was close enough to the live piano player to hear the music, but not so close as to drown-out our talking.

Oh my God! The prices! Glad we didn't have the whole family with us!

Spared at the last moment: There was a bar-menu with smaller portions, which is all we really wanted and had much more reasonable pricing.

We shared a beet salad with goat cheese, nuts and dried cranberries. Vaishali had a fancy meatloaf with garlic mashed potatos and shoestring onions. I had some steamed hard shell clams and a petite fillet (rare) with fried oysters.

The food was great and we had just enough of it to be satisfied.

The evening could not have worked out better!

Patriotic

Brave Sir Knight, tell us of your crusade!

I voted for Hillary Clinton.

Surely there were great hardships on your journey to the polling place, tell us of them!

The polling place is at our local elementary school.

Prithee, Sir, were there fierce dragons guarding this place?

No. There was a bit of a line though.

In fairness: Both sides seem to have abundant Sir Knights!

Old & Very Wrong Predictions

But still very informative...

I was prompted by a Gary Johnson post in Facebook: Hillary and Trump could both come up short of 270 Electoral votes and throw the election to the House of Representatives. (Where Johnson could presumably be chosen)

I went looking to see what the law said on this topic. I should have just gone to the document itself, but willfully clicked on a link to an article from The Atlantic that seemed promising. Little did I expect that it would be from October 1980! (Yay for The Atlantic for getting those archive issues on-line!)

If Anderson wins only the thirty-nine electoral votes of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut -- three states in which Ronald Reagan's polls have shown Anderson leading -- Jimmy Carter could end up with 230 votes from the urban Northeast and part of the South, forty short of the 270 needed for a majority, and Reagan could take the rest -- including the West and Midwest -- for a total of 268 electoral votes, two votes short of the presidency.

In case you think Laurence H. Tribe and Thomas M. Rollins were just spinning a fancy...It sounds to me like they really thought this could happen.

That the odds of a House election seem high in 1980 is not just a function of Anderson's strong showing in the polls; those odds will remain high and grow higher as the political gaps left by our major parties continue to widen.

What was interesting, even though I have a faint recollection of seeing this before, is that the House does not choose the President by simple majority. It chooses by a majority of state delegations. So the California delegation gets one vote, the New Hampshire delegation one, etc. I am pleased to note that Republicans have a majority in 33 states, Democrats in 14 and it is evenly split in the remaining 3.

The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the
President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole
Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than
one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of
Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately
chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person
have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List
the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President.
But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by
States, the Representation from each State having one Vote;
A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or
Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of
all the States shall be necessary to a Choice.

A final note: The election of 1980 had the final results of: Reagan 489 electoral votes, Carter 49 and Anderson zero.

I Do A Little Math

And realize that someone came up with the mysterious number, by doing a little math too.

From the 1960s onward, his romances often overshadowed his professional life. There were great loves (Joan Collins, Natalie Wood, Julie Christie, Diane Keaton) and many, many shorter trysts, from Cher to Madonna. He insists there is wild hyperbole in his reputation as a manslut and disputes the mathematics of the 12,775 women one of his biographers, Peter Biskind, has claimed for him. "Think about it, sleeping with 12,775 people," he says, not without a certain amount of glee. "That would mean not just that there were multiple people a day, but that there was no repetition."

From an AARP piece on Warren Beatty


12,775/365 = 35 Exactly 35! Someone probably figured that 35 is the number of years between when Beatty became "a man" at 18 and when he became a husband at 54. One different woman every. single. day. Yeah, not likely, but very likly that is where the number came from.

They Say It So Sincerely, It Must Be True

Until the smallest and easiest bit of logic or reason is applied.

1. I had a guy who insisted that softball hitters were much more skilled than baseball hitters. There was lots of theory about how there is less time to react and the ball has more curve etc. You can even google it: This guy wasn't the only clown to make the claim. But it all wilts under one question: If softball hitters are more skilled and they are mostly women, how come there isn't a single woman in the MLB? The pay is huge for players that can hit and there is no rule prohibiting women from playing.

2. This is an old one from my youth and so you may not be able to find anyone claming it now: Back then, people would often claim that guns will not work in space. The people who made the claim often felt that it was deep somehow: Futuristic Man will have no need for such primitive and backward things etc. I never understood the basis for even thinking they wouldn't work: The fuel and oxidiser are contained within the cartridge--chemical reactions don't need gravity.

Okay, (backing away slowly)...But why would I want to find Hillary likable?

To find Hillary Clinton likable, we must learn to view women complexly

The article is TL;DR but begins with a howler that does not encourage further reading:

Clinton is on one hand the most qualified human being to ever run for president of the United States,...

Without getting into the weeds of whether or not it is possible to like Hillary, let's just for the sake of argument say that it is possible and consider instead why one would want to go to the tremendous work of getting to like Herself.

1. If you are inclined to do this, doesn't this seem as if you are just looking for reasons to justify the vote you have already decided to cast?

2. If you currently dislike Hillary, what possible reason would you have to want to change your mind?

Advice for Caroline Siede, if you think Trump:

In fact, Donald Trump is the only candidate who is more disliked than Clinton. And he’s not only overtly racist, sexist, and Islamophobic, but also unfit and unprepared for office.

Why not follow your own advice and figure out how you have been conditioned by your life experience to hate a guy like Trump and overcome this bias--isn't this what you are asking of your readers? Or is she really focusing on case # 1?

Maybe we can just accept that the sum of our experiences give us each the ability to make judgments? Anyway the premise is weak enough: Find any interview with Dolly Parton and unless you are very unusual, you will agree that she is unrelentingly likable and is also a woman. So, societal conditioning notwithstanding, it is possible to be a woman and likable.

The article somehow reminds me of these lyrics:

Any world that I'm welcome to
Is better than the one I come from

While I'm On The Topic of Sunglasses...

I have quite a few pair. This is because, for whatever reason, it is now near impossible to find ones with glass lenses. This is a, Problem For Me™. I don't care how durable the makers claim their plastic lenses are, they are not, not in my hands. Within moments they are unusable nicked, faded, abraded and shot. I keep them around though. Driving on bright days or a day at the beach requires something, even if it is shabby.

Well, I bought a really good pair of Ray-Bans and a quick phone web search at the time of purchase led us to believe they are glass. It is really hard to tell until or unless they scratch, so until they do there is some doubt about the construction. The other day, I grabbed the good ones and soon noticed all kinds of problems with the lenses. I was full of recriminations at having paid so dearly for what ended up being useless trash. What I didn't notice for a while was that these were a crappy older pair. The kicker is that I've done this more than once! The frames are a lot alike but I know that both pair exist. Why isn't my first assumption that I grabbed the wrong pair, rather than that my fancy new ones are damage-prone plastic lensed sunglasses?

Hillary (Strangelove) Clinton

Madame President became Dr. Strangelove so gradually that hardly anyone noticed until too late...

A Tents Situation

A flood of texts hit me this morning about the kid's camping trip. Which tent should they take--they both look the same. They are both in green bags, but one is a pup-tent for two (actually big enough for the two campers) and the other is 9' X 7' and could hold 6 people.

Later: The truck won't start and somehow it is at the bottom of the driveway. I don't quite know how this is possible. It is an automatic, how did they roll it down the driveway in drive? Did they think it could be compression started? The girl drives a stick shift and I have shown her how to compression start the car but I don't think she has ever done it--anyway, it doesn't work with an auto.

Then: Where are the jumper cables? I hid put them in an access hatch in the back of the truck--where the jack and lug wrench go. This took five minutes to be found but they made a good comeback by jump starting the car with modest levels of angst.

Finally: What grade of fuel does the Saab take? They switched from the truck to the wagon to be safe from further dead battery situations. Premium. "Is that the same as Super"? "Just put in the grade with the highest octane number and you will be fine".

The End (for now)

A Tale Of Two Poles

The North polar region and South Polar regions are not just literally polar opposites; they are opposites in another couple of fundamental ways. The arctic ocean is a body of water surrounded by land--Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland. The South is covered by a continent with a sea around it--the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.

It is well known by followers of "climate hysteria science" that while the arctic sea ice is declining, the antarctic sea ice has been setting records in the opposite direction.

Here is an experiment to try: Google "why is the arctic..." it will autocomplete to "why is the arctic sea ice melting" You will get a bunch of hits that all agree with the first thing that pops up:

"Increased water temperatures and air temperatures due to human-caused global warming are the dominant reasons for the record melting of the Arctic sea ice."

Let us try this for the Antarctic..."why is antarctic sea ice growing". You will get a bunch of articles that essentially say what the first hit say:

"Antarctic sea ice has been growing over the last few decades but it certainly is not due to cooling"

If it were still the 1970's, one might expect the opposite result: Back when global cooling was the problem, the Antarctic sea ice would have been because duh! Global cooling and fancy explanations would have been foisted on the strange decline in the Arctic sea ice.

Similarly: Look for "difference between models and temperature measurements" and you will find two kinds of articles--ones that spin theories of various levels of complexity to justify the discrepancy between the climate models and actual temperature measurements. They almost never show the kind of graphic below: This is found mostly in skeptical articles:

A picture is worth a thousand words and who wants to write an extra thousand when you could just not include the troublesome image?

Girls In The World

Wednesday was a banner day for the Pecchia girls:

S. The oldest, presented her Summer research work in a poster session at UML. It was solid work and presented very professionally.

D. The 'forgotten' middle girl, began her clinical practice as part of her CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) course.

J. Obviously the youngest, assisted teaching masters classes with the head of her dance studio.

They are all out there, making a mark on the world.

Situational History

Wait! Didn't Obama ridicule Mitt four years ago for saying that Russia is our number one adversary?

Yes, but times change and now the Russkies are really dangerous...

Is this because president Romney has been treating the Russian Federation like it is our enemy and so they have been pushed into a corner? You know, an honest to to goodness self-fulfilling prophecy?

You know as well as I that president Obama has been in the oval these last four years.

So are you saying Romney was right, or are you saying Obama is responsible for the deterioration in US-Russian relations?

Wait! What? Shut up! The real issue is that Russia and Trump are colluding to reveal top secret information.

Do you mean the 30,000 emails Hillary deleted because they are not work related? If they are not work related, how could they have anything top secret on them? Are you saying Hillary was less than honest about the emails she deleted?

Wait! What? Shut up! Look! A squirrel!

Little Things On My Morning Run

Well, "run" is being generous at the speed I am making these days, but let's set that aside for a moment and look at interesting little things.

1. I dropped Jemma off at captain's practice by 6:05. Lots of girls there, so we were not too late.

2. 20 minutes later, I was back home, changed into running clothes and on my run. Soon after I started, I noticed something rabbit-sized dash across the road. It didn't bounce though, it ran like a bird, which is what it was. It was a baby turkey and it was joining about 7 of its siblings in a front yard with one adult turkey. As I ran by, slightly concerned that the adult would attack me, the one closest to the road skittered over to its mom for protection.

3. About a mile in, a woman jogger about my age turned onto the road from a side street. I said "good morning" as I passed her.

4. I saw three young women going the opposite direction at about mile 4 of my run. I said "hi" and noticed that I know one of them, she is a friend of Dahlia.

5. Having finished my 6 miles and showered. Jemma texted that she was ready to be picked up. On the way to picking her up, I noticed the woman from #3, heading in the opposite direction as the last time I'd seen her.

6. When I picked up Jemma, I told her about seeing A. Jemma said, "Yeah, I know, she told me she saw you".

Why Bother?

Why do heavy weight boxers have to weigh-in? They can weigh as much as they want since there is no upper limit.

They do, you know.

Boxing is a sport but it is also show business. There is an informational content too: If a boxer is heavier, then he is probably slower, but also harder to hurt.

For The First Time Ever, Not Voting Republican for President

Full disclosures:

1. I live in Massachusetts and if Trump has a chance here, he will win in a landslide anyway.

2. For all his problems, I would much rather have Trump be president than Hillary Clinton.

I only bothered to vote for president so that the Republican candidate would lose by one less vote than if I stayed home. Trump does not deserve this validation and lucky me, it doesn't matter here. I truly do feel for my friends in NH though. I really do. Sucks to be you right now. But we are all in a boat full of people who are gleefully shooting holes in the hull...so, kind of sucks to be an American right now.

I will still vote: I am sure there are important things down-ballot, who is running under the Libertarian ticket this year? Frankly, it doesn't matter, they have my vote.

My Two Cents Kept

I was checking out at the grocery store today and could not help but notice the unusual assortment of items held by the guy behind me in line. He had 4 large bottles of ketchup and 6 heads of fresh fennel.

I really wanted to ask but held off and instead, Kung Fu like, thought of another grocery store in another time.

I was in college buying groceries with my room mate and considering cucumbers. I thought they were an essential salad vegetable but he was skeptical. A woman nearby offered that they were diuretics. I knew even then the meaning of the term but kind of felt like messing with her and rejoined to my partner, "See, I told you they are good for you"!

My wonder about the odd items was satisfied soon anyway. In driving out of the shopping center, I saw the guy crossing the parking lot to Burton's Grill.

Cruz - Fiorina

New $20? I hope so.

Replace a slave holding founder of the Democratic party with a gun-toting Republican!

Stories Like This Depend On Reader's Short Memories

Here is another in a long line of "Bush is to blame for ISIS" stories:

Where did ISIS come from? The story starts here.

The "logic" seems to be that ISIS got its start because Bush did not allow former ruling party officials any role in the new Iraq:

Hashim and other analysts estimate that up to 60 percent of top leadership roles in ISIS are held by ex-Baathists.

But here is the problem with the story line: ISIS was formed in 1999, when GWB was governor of Texas.

Second, ISIS was insignificant until sometime in 2013. Look for yourself: Do a Google search with a time range ending at the start of 2013. You will find nothing related to the terrorist group. So if Bush is to blame for ISIS, how come they never did anything noticeable until 4 years after he left office?

The obvious truth is that yes, ISIS existed for a long time before they gained power (14 years). They only took off after Obama abandoned Iraq. Even Obama claimed in 2011 that:

"Iraq's not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we're leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self reliant Iraq with a representative government that was elected by its people. We're building a new partnership between our nations and we are ending a war not with a final battle but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement,"

So, let me get this straight: Five years after Obama declares success in Iraq, it is Bush's fault everything is falling apart now?

What Was She Trying To Tell Me?

Some signals are pretty straightforward: Turn signals, when people can be bothered to use them are a good example. You can be pretty certain that the car ahead of you will turn right or pull over if their right turn signal comes on. If it is on all the time, then all bets are off; it is more of a documentation that they did in fact signal on their last right turn.

Flashing the high beams can be done for a lot of reasons, so it is context dependent. It might be a signal that there is some danger ahead, or you left your high beams on dummy! A brief flash can convey a friendly nudge, sustained or repeated flashing or sustained high beam is a Hey Buddy Get Your Head Out of the Cloud! Most of the time the high beam is a way of saying, "I am welcoming you in ahead of me". Say you are in stop and go traffic and someone wants in or wants to turn left across traffic. Unless someone lets them in, they will be stuck all day. So if you are in the right position to help, flash your lights and let them through.

So, the case at hand: I was traveling down a main suburban road at the speed limit of 30. The road is lightly traveled even on weekday mornings. A car approached from the opposite direction and stopped, I don't think she had her turn signal on but I have seen that car in the driveway of the house I was passing, so I figured she wanted to go there. She flashed her high beams as I approached. What is she trying to tell me? I think I know, but it is so crazy that I have a hard time believing it. First of all: The person doing the flashing is the one making an offer, that is the rule. The person trying to make a left or get on the road doesn't flash his high beams--we all know what he wants. The person giving up his right of way is the one doing the flashing, as a way of signaling his intentions and generosity.

Did this lady really signal me to stop so that she could make a left turn on this pretty-much empty road? Yes, I think that was her intent. She must come home from every drive disappointed with the Human Race for not all getting the hell out of her majesty's way.

Thought Provoking, Though Possibly Not In The Way You Think It Would Be

Added: (And placed at the top) The use of land area is, I believe, a deliberate mis-framinging of the issue. Land, by its nature is limited--there is only so much of it and other than small exceptions, they are not making more of it. Wealth is primarily created and there is no limit to how much can exist.

The rich got that way by keeping some portion of the wealth they created.

Take a high paid actor like Tom Cruise, he makes a ton of money for making a movie. Lots of other people work on the movie too and make a nice living at it. Finally, people willingly plunk-down their money to see the film. They think that the entertainment value they get is worth the price they pay for it, otherwise they would not willingly trade money to a theater to see the movie. Who in this scenario is getting robbed? No one. Everybody participates of their own free will and benefits from their participation.

------------------------------------
Now back to the original blog post...

I came across this picture on Facebook, with the poster opining: "Great graphic, and powerful message".

I can guess what the "intended" message is, but my reaction to the graphic is in two parts:

Duh! Everyone knows that wealth is highly concentrated.

And

So what?

The wealthy did not get that way by robbing me or anyone else. They either earned a lot or spent far less than they earned or some combination of these two. Neither of these things are the sort of behavior that one should rationally discourage.

Other Thoughts:

Why limit redistribution to the USA?

The intended take-home may be that all the wealth in our country should be evenly distributed. Lets say you could do that without the total going drastically down. One would have to assume that people would work just as hard, take as many risks and save as prudently--even though there would be no reward whatsoever from doing that. Even if we assume that, why are we limiting ourselves to the USA? Why not world-wide redistribution of wealth? The USA has around 5% of the world's population and (depending on how you account for the wealth) 1/4 to 1/3 of the wealth. To equalize things out, 4/5ths of the wealth we have, would have to be given away.

There is a large temporal distribution of wealth. And would you wish it otherwise?

In the normal economic life cycle of a Human: You spend about 20 years growing up and getting educated. Unless you have inherited wealth, your net worth in this time is essentially zero. Then you work for the next 40 years or so and accumulate wealth in the form of savings, home equity, 401k and become vested in retirements or Social Security. Then you retire and either somewhat or completely deplete these savings. Would we really want children, who are taken care of by parents, to have the same level of wealth as people at the end of their working lives? That would be nuts!

Places dedicated to the idea of wealth redistribution tend to be unfree and poor.

Look at Taiwan and Hong Cong V. the PRC--The PRC has quadrupled its output in the last 15 years due to market based reform and is still only 1/10th as wealthy as Taiwan, which has been market-based all along.

North Korea v. South Korea: Impoverished slave state/ free and affluent society

East Germany v. West Germany: Same as above except reunited now.

The above two are especially apt since both have the same people, language, culture, geography and starting points: Devastation at the end of a war. It is obvious which system produces a high standard of living and freedom, and which one does neither.

Nice Exercise Article in the NYT

But not enough detail to take any kind of action unless you do a little research.

So here it is in shorter and more useful form:

First, the NYT article:

Take home message: Exercise is good for you and you are probably not able to do enough to harm yourself unless you are an elite athlete.

The minimum recommended level of effort is 7.5 metabolic equivalent hours (We will come back to what this is and how to measure it.)

You gain a benefit from more than the minimum and the peak is somewhere between 3-5 times the minimum.

But don't worry! You can do up to 10 times the minimum without harm.

The journal article where the NYT gets all its facts--which it spreads-out over a lot of verbiage:

Okay, so what is this Metabolic Equivalent Hours (MEH). Simple: An hour of sitting around is 1.0 MEH. There are charts all over the internet of Metabolic Equivalent Time for different activities and effort levels, here is one. If you run at 8 minutes per mile, the MET is 11.8. So for an hour at this pace, this is 11.8 MEH.

Wikipedia on Metabolic Equivalent:

This makes sense, or at least agrees with calorie calculators--which you can find all over the internet. At my age/weight/sex/height and setting of sedentary, I need 1,800 calories per day to maintain my weight. This comes to 75 calories/hour. Other calculators show me burning 867 calories in an hour of 8:00 minute per mile running. 75 into 867 is about 11.6, which is not far from the 11.8 that I got out of a chart. The math works! Or is at least consistent.

Finally, how many times the minimum effort do I do? I run 30 miles/week at 8:00 minutes per mile which takes an even 4 hours. (11.80)(4)/7.5 = 6.3. I am a little above where the benefit ends, but well below where harm begins.

All Three Doing The Same Thing--Thinking Very Different Thoughts.

On the way home from the movies on Monday, I had to drive very slow--below the speed limit even!

The reason was that the car ahead of me was a police car and ahead of him was a driver who had obviously spotted the police car. So we three cruised two miles down the quiet street that leads home.

I had a mad thought of just blowing-past the cars ahead of me. The road used to have double yellow lines for the whole length, but some residents complained that it made the road seem like a highway and caused people to drive faster. I thought that theory was BS and liked how the lines aided driving by adding to visibility. Nonetheless, one night soon after the lines were painted; a heavy machine came through and ground the lines off.

"Wouldn't it be funny to just pass them both?", I vocalized to the passengers. "Yeah!" "But I would get a ticket for speeding--they can't get me for a no-passing zone since the lines are gone..." "Just pass really slowly". I admitted to myself the comical possibilities, but we were only going about two miles under the limit.

Those were my thoughts and of selected passengers.

I am sure the driver ahead of the cop's thoughts were worry--blossoming into paranoia when the cop followed him into the small dead-end side street.

I don't know what the cop was thinking, presumably he had a reason to follow our neighbor. He must have thought it was odd that the car behind him also turned onto the small side lane.

The Manchurian Celebutard?

The more Lena Dunham talks, the more she raises the question: Is her entire career and persona an ingenious undercover scheme dreamed up by a GOP operative specifically to discredit Millennials, feminists, and progressives? Is she the Manchurian Girl?

I think it is more likely that she is merely a knee-jerk leftist who has never had an out-of-the-box thought in her life. But Kyle Smith's thesis is possible.

Lena Dunham: The Manchurian Girl

Discipline and Organization

Tuesday we went to the middle school's string ensemble performance. In the middle of JS Bach's Sleepers Awake, I was struck by the micro and macro displays of discipline on display. Each of the players had to: Learn how to play a violin, cello etc; learn their part of the song. As a group, they had to learn how to play it with 70 other kids. Finally, they had to all show up, on the same night, in the same place, prepared.

Here is the song, not by them, but just so you don't have to Google it if you want to know how it sounds.



Contrasting with the virtues ably demonstrated by the performers, the audience: Texting, coming and going in the middle of numbers, rattling their candy wrappers (in an auditorium clearly marked with no eating or drinking signs). The boy in front of us was nestled between both of his parents and was a non-stop motion machine. Did they make any effort to bestill his distracting antics? Yes, if feeding him a Hershey's bar counts.