Busy day

--After getting the kids on their way to school, it was 'get stuff done time'.

1. Winterize the house: Lower the storm windows, remove the air conditioner units and vacuum all the junk out of the windows while at it. The junk consists mostly of dead moths and cob webs.

2. Went for an 11.8 mile run. I flew: For the first time since mid-Summer's Yankee Homecoming race, I was able to do more than 10 miles in less than 8:00/mile. And that was a race, while this was just a work out. In keeping with the aviation theme, the course is named after a landing strip and my pace was 7:47.

3. I had a quick mango/banana shake and then off to help-out with the Bay State Marathon. My running club, the Greater Lowell Road Runners put on the race and so all the members are expected to help-out. I handed-out race packets to a pretty steady stream of runners for four hours.

As an aside: Just the other day, I had been looking at mortality data for smokers and one of the reports had an interesting way of presenting the data. It seems that the chances of getting a large number of diseases is higher in smokers and it is higher to the extent that it is equal to the rates seen in non-smokers who are 5-10 years older than the smokers. I saw the opposite effect, at least in the appearance of runners. As part of the process of handing out race packets, we would look runners up from a list. The list also gave their age. They mostly looked 5-10 years younger than what their age actually was listed as. It's like running is the opposite of smoking. I've noticed this before.

Zipped home to work on dinner with my wife. We made rice, steak, mushrooms, green beans and a dessert of freshly fried apple cider doughnuts.

Emergency Planning

Between yesterday night and this morning I discovered something which might be useful someday.

I don't know if everyone does this, but we do not pour grease down the drain. It can clog your drains and makes a particularly nasty clog when it happens. So, you save a large glass jar and dump your grease in there. Once it is full, put the (saved) lid back on and toss it in the trash. Okay, this is all common knowledge, right?

Last night we were watching a cooking show about a place in Chicago, famous for its 72 day-old aged steaks. In one part of the show, guests were served a sea-scallop appetizer and the head waiter came out with a votive candle and dripped molten wax onto the dish! He quickly explained that the "candle" was actually bacon grease and so this was a seasoning for the scallop. Most of the "candle" looked to be quite solid and I suspect that it was actually rendered beef fat, which in my experience is more solid at room temperature than bacon grease. Also, earlier in the same show, they had talked about rendering the beef trimmings and using this, as they called it "beef love", to season their steaks.

I forgot all about that show by this morning--until I went to dump the morning's bacon grease into the jar. I had to try it. I mean, anybody who had just seen that show would try it, right? Yes. Of course they would and I would too. And did.

I put a small length of cotton string into the grease and lit-er-up. This resulted in a clear, non-smoky and (possibly) odorless flame. I only say possibly because there was already bacon smell in the air, plus just the open jar smells a little bit.

So if you have a power outage and no candles, or the outage outlasts your supply of candles; you have another way of making light.

"I have done a terrific job".

Let us see who all agrees in November.

A Validation of Common Sense

Light drinking during pregnancy: still no increased risk for socioemotional difficulties or cognitive deficits at 5 years of age?

Conclusions At age 5 years cohort members born to mothers who drank up to 1–2 drinks per week or per occasion during pregnancy were not at increased risk of clinically relevant behavioural difficulties or cognitive deficits compared with children of mothers in the not-in-pregnancy group.

J Epidemiol Community Health doi:10.1136/jech.2009.103002

Dahlia

No Flash

Flash

Lt. William C. West Jr. ALS Memorial 5 K

21 7/53 M-OPEN DAVID PECCHIA M 213 21:56 6:58

The results, here have the race called, Lt. William C. West Jr. ALS Memorial 5.15 Miler

I can see where their mistake comes from: The race is listed as a 5K, which is 3.1 Miles, but the actual course is 3.15 Miles. The race was kind of a small affair (155 finishers), no racing chips and they didn't break-down runners by the usual decade/groups. I am in the open division--18-49, so I had no prayer of winning. I may have been the top male in the 40's, but there is no way of knowing since the results don't give the runner's ages.

The start was the usual jostling and passing of slow runners and within a couple of hundred yards I saw that only maybe 5 runners were ahead of me. Then, a large group of boys passed me all together. I think they must have been a local High School CC team. I eventually caught and passed two of the adults but never was able to keep up with the CC team. Oddly, the only competition I had was with the woman who came in first among the ladies. She was 10 yards ahead of me for the first mile and then at about one and a half miles, I passed her. She re-passed me while climbing the one big hill and then I re-passed her on the down-slope. I picked-off one last runner on the flats over Nutting Lake and then made a move on the guy ahead of him. I was gaining on him but as we approached the finish he out-kicked me. He was built like a sprinter, so I didn't go all-out. He would have beat me either way and so why give him a hard time? I would have gone all-out if needed to protect my place against the people I had already passed though.

Added: My wife ran too (actually, she is the one who proposed this race) and she did well too.

Also, the winner was from our running club and was the only other runner, besides me, wearing our uniform. I saw a few familiar faces, but they were in mufti.

Here he is.

Banner Day

Two problems that had been festering have been fixed today:

The oven wasn't working and we had a guy out who fixed it by changing the igniter.

I chopped-down a dead pine tree in the front yard. Again, it was handy to have a large 4-wheel drive truck handy. The tree did not want to fall in the right direction and got hung-up on a maple tree. It was a good thing in a way since without the maple, the pine would have fallen right onto our power and phone lines.

I tied the bottom of the tree to the truck via chains, rope and tow cable and essentially pulled the carpet out from under the tree--The top of the tree is where the stump is and the trunk-end is now down by the road.

It all started-out so poorly too. I had a new chain for the saw, but it ended-up being too long (the package was stapled-shut, so maybe it is really a 22" chain) and it looks to be a pain to shorten it. Then, once I had got the old chain back on, the pull-cord broke. I was starting to get the feeling that Fate, did not want me meddling with trees, today.

Dahlia

I will see you later today!

"Facts" and Logic

In Internet as well as in regular debate, the process runs on facts and reason. The logical flaws get most of the attention, but for this post I would like to categorize the types of facts which are used to bolster an argument. First some definitions though:

--True, will have its commonplace meaning. The statement is in accord with how things actually are. For instance, car tires in the USA are normally black and made mostly of rubber.

--False, will mean things which are not true. For instance, the planet Mars is almost exactly the same size as the Earth. This is false because Mars has only around 1/10th the mass of the Earth and is around 1/2 the diameter.

Relevant/Not Relevant

Again, the common meaning is used here but is a subject all its own. Usually the level of irrelevance is not immediately apparent to all, though upon reflection it is nonetheless total in most actual cases.

So, here are the categories finally!

True AND Relevant--The side that comes up with the most of these should win.

False AND Relevant--This happens all the time, but with internet fact-checking it is a rather foolish thing to try. It kind of works when the facts are in dispute, but an argument is considerably weakened by controversial claims.

True BUT Not Relevant--These claims usually have some superficial relationship to the thing being argued, but when looked at closely, really proves nothing.

False And Not Relevant--Why bother wasting your time with people like this?

Wednesday Chores

Throw together some spaghetti sauce.

Go to the liquor store and stock-up on wine. Why stock-up? Here in Massachusetts, they do not sell wine, or beer for that matter, in grocery stores. Since I have to make a special trip to a special store, I want to have to do this as little as possible. Also, you get a big discount when you purchase large volumes.

I Guess I'm Going to be running For Another Year

Having just purchased 5 new pair of running shoes and all.

Having just purchased 5 new pair of running shoes and all.

Join With Me In Bravely Pointing-Out The Obvious

Not one, but two smart and sensible friends had the following Facebook posting yesterday:

like Being Muslim does NOT mean you are a terrorist. . . like if you agree.

Perhaps I am over-analyzing this, but I see a subtext here. What is the point of the FB entry unless they think there's a lot of Americans out there who think that every Muslim is a terrorist. Liking such a statement is not just agreeing with it, but also lending support to what I think is a pernicious assumption: That substantial numbers of their own fellow countrymen are benighted and in need of correction.

I think the opposite is true. Sure, in a country of some 300 Million people, there are bound to be plenty of wackos like the one who thinks McDonald's responsible for more murders than terrorists are. For my part, I think our country has treated Muslims in an exemplary fashion. If anything, we have been mau-maued into being too trusting. How else to explain the situation of Major Hassan? It was only after he murdered 13 and wounded many more of his fellow soldiers that anybody noticed his obvious radicalism.

Pictures of Pictures

We visited NYC in days long before the invention of digital cameras, so these are digital pictures of the photographic prints we made.

This shot is a reflection across the atrium. The camera is on the railing just in front of my belly--used a timer of course.

The small white lights are Christmas decorations and you can see them in the previous picture as well.

NYC skyline from a distance.

What is that spiky thing at the top of the picture?

Last Week's Movies

We brought two Netflix movies with us to our NH trip: Avatar and Fantastic Mr. Fox. At first I thought they were total opposites of each other, but on further reflection, I'm not so sure that is true. As usual, "Blake" has great reviews of Avatar and Fantastic Mr. Fox. As for this post, it will just be random musings and criticism.

Avatar:

"Unobtainium", Really Mr Cameron? Did you call it that just so that if it was a bomb, you could claim the whole concept was parody? Two problems: One, why is this stuff so valuable? It cannot be essential for interstellar flight since Humans got to Pandorum without it. Two, all the stable elements are already accounted for.

Can any evolutionary biologist even imagine a scenario where plants and animals would have that braid thing which allows the humanoids to control them? I mean, it is great for the Na'vi, but what do the other plants and animals get out of it? One can imagine this being done via genetic engineering, but the Na'vi are stone-aged people.

Speaking of stone-aged, there is some point in the movie where the hero claims that "we don't have anything they want". Nonsense on stilts: How about cooking pots and pans, knives, hatchets, swords and a myriad of other useful things you can make out of metal? Much more likely is the scenario where the natives fight over a discarded Coke bottle as in The Gods Must Be Crazy.

Rather than starting a war with the natives, here are a couple of ways the Humans would really have operated, you know, if they were actual Humans and not two dimensional black-hats: The Humans would set-up a trade alliance with one group of Na'vi and exchange metal things, trinkets and exotic food like Mars bars in payment for driving away the Na'vi which are living over the mine. Or the Humans could have just tunneled under the tree from miles away, etc.

I could go on till the end of time finding whoppers like the above, but one final one before turning to the next movie. What mechanism allows the remote control of the Avatars? Physically, they are complete and there is no radio receiver on-board. We know this because (spoiler alert for those who still haven't seen the thing in the year since it came out...) at the end when the hero's mind is moved to his avatar, they didn't yank-out any hardware or make any physical changes to the avatar. So, why doesn't it operate autonomously in the first place? The mind is a construct of a working brain after all...

On to Fantastic Mr. Fox

Yeah! I liked it a whole lot more than Avatar. First a caveat; Fantastic Mr. Fox is first and foremost a Wes Anderson film. I like his style of films and so, no big surprise, I like this too. Mr. Fox is much like the character played by Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums. George Clooney plays Mr. Fox as a younger, hipper lovable rogue, but it is essentially the same part. The similarities to other Anderson films are abundant--my wife and I both exclaimed how the tunneling sequences in Mr. Fox were a lot like the cutaway of the ship in The Life Aquatic...I think "Blake" more ably delves into the Wes Anderson style, so I won't go beyond this.

So, what about all that "opposite" stuff from the start of this bit? Well, there is the obvious: In Avatar there is huge expense spent making the thing look wonderful and yet the story is moronic and the characters totally predictable. In Mr. Fox, the production values are low; you hardly ever forget that you are looking at stop-action animation. Yet the characters are human, at least in spirit, full of personality, humor and idiosyncrasy. Plus, it is an interesting and believable story.

So far, so good.

So far the trip to the White Mountains is going well:

--We were, just barely able to get all of our stuff into the Saab and so didn't have to take the Yukon. Yea! The Saab is more fun to drive!

--There was heavy traffic most of the way but still, people in the fast lane were (mostly) going pretty fast, so we made excellent time.

--The weather has been great.

--Our condo dinner plans have gone well so far: Spaghetti & meatballs with garlic bread and salad for the first night's dinner. Breakfast of bacon, boiled eggs, pastry & toast. The next lunch was mostly leftovers plus PB&J. Tonight, steak, baked potatoes, green beans and fresh baked toll-house cookies.

--My wife really has this dinner planning down to a science.

--The kids fight and feud as per normal, but I think they are having a good time.

Above, the kids play in the Saco River. The water was cold, though not frightfully so and incredibly clear.

White Town - Your Woman

White Town - Your Woman
Uploaded by EMI_Music. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

I like the video but what first attracted me to this song is how they used a reedy version of the Star Wars Emperor's Theme by John Williams--cheeky! Well, if they did it on purpose. It is not exactly an obscure series of movies.

Old comment which acts as a review, kind of...

I had posted this as a comment last year on The Bit Maelstrom review of Inglourious Basterds.

Someone at work had just seen the movie and I knew I had written something about it somewhere. I thought it was on the above mentioned blog, but searches there were in vain (I probably misspelled Inglourious Basterds). I searched on Althouse, where "Blake" the author of The Bit Maelstrom sometimes comments and found a few posts about the movie in question. Naturally, being an inveterate and excellent movie reviewer, he had a comment there with a link to his review. I made the following observations in his comments section:

My wife and I saw this last weekend.

Yes, the lack of distinction between regular German soldiers and NAZIs really bothered me and I am glad someone else noticed this too. My wife thought that since most people don't make any distinction, it would have complicated the story. My view is that if there is a distinction to be made, the filmmaker should make it. They had the time to talk about nitrocellulosic film stock, but maybe they had time to do that because it is a subject that interests our filmmaker.

A couple of other things too: 1) The Zoller character was, I thought, presented in a positive light early on. But then right at the end he is kind of a jerk. Wife reminded me that he did have the girl essentially arrested in order to join him at lunch with Goebles and that was kind of jerky... 2) There were two independent plots against the theater and neither of them interfered with the other. There could have been some very nice tension if--in each case--something unexpected happened that left doubt as to the plot's success. After the denouement, all the plotters would come to the conclusion that their plot worked since they don't know about the other one. This could lead to all kinds of post-event intrigue. There was a better movie in there somewhere.

Yea! I helped the team again.

Men's 40+

9.  GREATER LOWELL ROAD RUNNERS 
40:39   43:09   44:06   45:06   45:47 (47:40) (49:52) = 3:38:47
John Dowling, Fil Faria, Ken Goodin, Glenn Stewart, David Pecchia, Tom Amiro, Michael Brodeur

Scenes from the race

The girl handing out water probably ran in the 3K which was just before our 10K race.

The Race start: We began on this bridge, ran a couple of miles through neighborhoods, back over the bridge, another 4-mile loop and then finished by crossing the bridge one more time.

These nice ladies got us fired-up before the big, steep, mile-long climb; which was just ahead.

The elite ladies start: #334 won the race and the smiling runner # 73 is 45 years old and won for her age division.

Added: Some pictures of the race posted by Locallyrun.com...

The hill

Done!

A couple of hundred feet till the finish.

Bridge of Flowers 10K

233 28/67 M4549 45:47 7:22 David Pecchia 47 M 554 Chelmsford MA GLRR

This is a long ways from my best 10K time, but this was a very difficult course (all hills) so maybe I should not feel so bad.

This was a New England 10K championship race and so I have to compare it with other grand prix races. The only other 10K in this series that I ran was back in 2007:

326 659 DAVID PECCHIA 44 M 84/197 M4049 CHELMSFORD MA 44:41 7:12

This was a hilly course too, but not nearly so bad. The key metric would be how well I did against men in my age group: 28/67=.4179 84/197=.4264 So, I did do slightly better in this race than in the one from 2007.