Hello Mr. Frog...

I would like to give you a kiss--Don't worry, I would never bite.

Another princess! This happened last time too.

This is not well known

Just a note that the present is on the left of the chart and the right is 500 million years ago.

This makes sense if you think about it: All the coal in the world was Carbon Dioxide in the air before it became coal. Plants took the CO2 and made themselves out of it. In the right settings the old dead plants accumulated and formed coal. This is part of why there is less CO2 in the air than before. Lately it has been rising in part due to us mining the stuff and burning it.

Getting back to the above chart: It can be seen that for most of the last 500 million years, CO2 existed at higher concentrations in the atmosphere than it does now. In this period the Earth has experienced glaciations (ice ages).

This Week's Runs

Bedford Neighborhood 4.1 31:07:00 7:35:22 15-Jun-09

short dog run 2.5 24:00:00 9:36:00 16-Jun-09

Landing Strip 020 11.8 1:30:36 0:07:41 17-Jun-09 PR

out and back on middlesex tpk 4 30:13:00 7:33:15 18-Jun-09 Ran with Ross.

Affy loop 5.2 40:12:00 7:43:51 19-Jun-09

Merrimack River Trail 10--roughly Untimed with stops 20-Jun-09 Ran with Ross.

Happy Father's Day!

Who's side are we on is the wrong question

I constantly hear and read pundits, usually liberal ones, advise that Obama is correct to not say much about the situation in Iran. Their theory is that since the United States is seen as an enemy, we would harm the reputation of whichever side we support.

I think this completely misses the point: We should not be choosing sides. We should be forcefully defending the principles we hold dear:

1. The right to peacefully assemble. There is no excuse for beating, shooting or arresting peaceful protesters.

2. Elections should free, open and fair. This means that anyone can run, not just those vetted by the mullahs. The process is open when the process can be witnessed by observers who are not part of the ruling regime. The process is fair when the person who gets the most votes wins.

Who's side are we on? We are on the side of the Iranian people. We are on the side of them getting their god-given right to choose, in a fair, free and open process, who will govern them.

I wish our President would say this too. It might carry some weight.

Update: Kudos to the President! One small gripe though--he should say it on tape and not just put it out of the press office. But still good--this is progress in the right direction.

Statement from the President on Iran

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

Last Week's Runs

Bedford Neighborhood 4.1 31:07:00 7:35:22 15-Jun-09

short dog run 2.5 24:00:00 9:36:00 16-Jun-09

Landing Strip 020 11.8 1:30:36 0:07:41 17-Jun-09 PR

out and back on middlesex tpk 4 30:13:00 7:33:15 18-Jun-09 Ran with Ross.

Affy loop 5.2 40:12:00 7:43:51 19-Jun-09

Merrimack River Trail 10--roughly Untimed with stops 20-Jun-09 Ran with Ross.

How did we get this word?

I always thought that Honcho came to use in the United States via Mexico. It just sounds Spanish or at least South Western.

Today I had a reason to look it up even though I have known and used the word for years. I was just testing to see how high the real definition would come up on Bing or Google.

Once I looked it up I was surprised to find that it doesn't come from Spanish at all! It is from Japanese.

Japanese: hanchō squad leader, from han squad + chō head, chief

班長

You (can) learn something every day!

Marathon picture where you can actually see me.

I had earlier posted a couple of pictures from the Boston Marathon where you had to take it on faith that I was even in the picture.

Towards the end, there was finally someone who knew me (out of several hundred thousand spectators) and his friend took a picture...

The friend is in the bottom right side of this photo.

Getting a little trim done makes a lot of sawdust

I made my own trim because the space between these windows is small--regular sized trim would fill all the space between two windows.

The starting stock: New Zealand Pine.

Two Puppies

Jemma had to go for pictures in her dance recital costume. She is a Dalmation.

Fuel test data--June edition

As you can see from the quote below, late April I filled-up the tank. Last Friday the 6th of June I filled it again on the way home from work. I could have made it home and since I don't use that car on weekends, I could have filled it Monday on the wat to work. Still, as predicted in the last post; I did not need to get gas in May at all.

Earlier in the year I decided it would be interesting to see just how often I fuel-up my car. Today, the 27th of April I put gas in. So I made it almost 6 weeks! I probably won't have to buy gas at all in May.

This week's running

5 towns 18.93 2:54:49 0:09:14 7-Jun-09

nutting lake 3.54 29:18:00 8:16:37 8-Jun-09

Bedford Neighborhood 4.1 30:50:00 7:31:13 9-Jun-09 PR

home 4 miler 4.28 36:00:00 8:24:40 10-Jun-09

Faun Lake 5.5 39:34:00 7:11:38 11-Jun-09 PR--ran with Ross A.

Bedford Neighborhood 4.1 32:07:00 7:50:00 12-Jun-09

Sometimes satire writes itself

Well not exactly all by itself, but pretty close:

Hot New Trend: Carefree Hipsters Go For Funemployment, Starve-cation

Jobless jitters? Not for these young folks, who are embracing idleness and finding fulfillment in local Del Taco dumpsters.

Iowahawk delivers another of his instant classics.

You read this and think, "Oh come on, Iowa. You're just making stuff up"! Or is he?

Here is a related post on how (in some areas) lots of gen-xers have never been quite what we would call, "self supporting". His source is the New York Times

A full day begins with a 30 K

We were having people over for brunch and so if I was to go, it would have to be early. I would normally dither a bit to work myself up for a run of around 3-hours, but no time: Got out of the house before 6:30. It was the usual long run, which I haven't done since a few weeks before Boston. It was neither fun nor fast.

I was welcomed home by the smell of bacon being cooked and fresh fruit being cut-up.

This, along with mango, blueberries and honeydew melon made up the fruit-plate. We also had waffles with apples and walnuts baked-in and fresh strawberry sauce.

After the guests left we went to go see, Up.

It was great!

When we got home we made ice cream sundaes. Nice.

National Review Strikes Again

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,”

The latest cover is an obvious take on Sonya Sotomayor's above statement. Naturally, the clueless are in high dudgeon. The comments over on a confirm Sotomayor forum run around 10:1 against, but this one made me laugh out loud:

"How DARE some one depict their opponent as a peaceful, smiling, centered, Master of Enlightenment with the hand posture of a Teacher rising above a Lotus of the Open Mind to the Universal! How DARE they"!

This one must take the prize for the most obtuse:

"Exactly! TNR is doing a really good job of alienating everyone but the radical right...thanks, guys! Keep up the good work"!

Uh, the "offending" cover is from National Review, not The New Republic. You can tell because it says National Review, you know--right on the cover you are commenting on...

This week's runs

My Chelmsford half marathon 13.12 1:51:17 8:29 31-May-09

Bedford Neighborhood 4.1 31:35 7:42 1-Jun-09

short dog run 2.5 24:00 9:36 2-Jun-09

Landing Strip 020 11.8 96:00 8:08 3-Jun-09

Bedford Neighborhood 4.1 31:28 7:40 4-Jun-09

Faun Lake 5.5 42:18 7:41 5-Jun-09

You Go! Indian-American Girl!

Indians, especially Indian women are few-and-far-between in athletics. In my last two races there were a couple of trailblazers.

Landing Strip 020

I used roads to get from home to the start of the bike path. After running the bikepath (seen as railroad tracks on the above map), I use other roads to get back to the start of the path again. Run the bike path a second time and then go back home via roads. It is sort of like when an airplane is doing practice approach and landings: Except, all on the ground with no aircraft.

11.8 miles and it was roughly 96 minutes. This makes about 8:08/mile. I had my ironman set to time, since I needed to be home at a certain time and I was cutting it close. Coming up our road, I saw that our elementary school girls were walking home from the bus stop, so I raced them the rest of the way home and Jemma beat me. Anyway, that is how I got distracted and didn't make sure I had stopped the timer when I got home.

Will Obama be able to pound a square peg into a round hole?

Or rather, a burly blue-collar factory worker into a pencil-necked green shirt?

Okay, enough of being oblique. Foreign auto makers are good at making small, efficient cars because their home markets demanded this. There were lots of factors: They had (and have) much higher fuel prices, smaller roads, less parking and were in general, not as rich as Americans.

Here in the U.S. with our vast distances, wealth and cheap fuel, our auto companies were very good at making big powerful vehicles.

CAFE and unions

Our powerful unions have been able to extract very nice salary and benefits from U.S automakers, but the only way to support that is for the companies to have profitable product lines. Government regulations force automakers to meet an average fuel economy for their fleet. As a result, they make big profitable cars and little cars that loose money.

This little car gets good mileage and currently sells for $700 under the invoice price.

Now the government essentially owns GM and wants to run it in a way that makes Democratic interest groups happy: Environmentalists want high fuel efficiency. Unions want cushy jobs--the more the better. You can't have both.

In a rational world, we would notice that there are plenty of economical cars available, so those who want them are able to get them.

This Camaro goes for $4,500 over invoice ($3,500 over list) and has 426 hp.

There is no need to meddle in the decisions of companies; they will make whatever consumers demand.

If the government wants less fuel used, they can cause its price to rise through taxes (I don't think this is a good idea, but that is a subject for another post).

Update: Telling my wife about CAFE standards, she asked if it was a nice place to get coffee and tasty pastries. Me: No. It is a place to bankrupt major American industrial companies.

Sunday Run

I ran this same course May 13th and did it 4 minutes faster than today's 1:51:17 I just ran out of steam around the half-way point and sort of trudged the remainder. It was a bit warm, so that could have had some effect too.