Barefoot Half Marathon

This is no kind of record for me, I've done this distance barefoot several times this year, although all have been since early fall.

I had originally wanted to run with shoes because I have a goal of doing at least one long run (15 miles or more) before the end of the year and my feet can't take much beyond 13. The problem lately is that if I run with shoes I am too tired to go further than that, so 13 seems to be the limit for now.

It was a nice day, sunny and low 40's and there are only so many days left before we are hit with the kind of cold and snow that will keep even my shoes on. So I will make barefoot runs while I can.

It was just cold enough, or really just warm enough depending on how you look at it, so that in sunny parts it was perfectly comfortable. In shady areas I felt a chill and my feet were cold. One might think that my feet would be numb all the time when running in 40 degree weather. Not so! Even at about 30 degrees, the feet are numb for a little while but then thaw out in a mile or two. A lot depends on if the ground is wet. In any case, numb feet are fine comfort-wise but I worry about damaging myself and not noticing until too late. A small sharp stone or peice of glass can stick to the bottom of your foot and slowly drill its way in with every footfall.

I started the run at about noon and yet the sun was low in the sky. The trees along the bikepath were casting shadows at right angles to the path and even though the pavement is asphault, the lit areas were almost white in the sun so there was a large contrast between the shadows and lit areas. As I ran down the path, I imagined that I was traveling along an endless barcode. The tree trunks cast shadows of various thicknesses and the spacing was random yet homogeneous in that there were few areas of total blackness or of light. I amused myself thinking about what messages could be encoded by the alternating bands of light and dark. We assume that the bands on packages mean something, even if we don't know what it is. We similarly asssume that the natural barcode means nothing, though at the very least it tells us a lot about the population density and age distribution of the trees in the wood.

Things took a poor turn soon into the run. I had been looking forward to getting out of the woods and onto roads since there would be more sunshine out in the open. Indeed there was, but also broken glass. My vision has gotten worse over the years, in the sense that I can't focus up-close anymore, but I can see small pebbles and glass peices well enough to avoid stepping on them. A sharp pain at around mile 3 told me that my senses failed. I stopped for a bit and found a shard of amber glass, not much bigger than a largish grain of sand embedded in the ball of one foot. I easily dug it out with a fingernail and was dismayed to see a bright drop of blood welling out of the wound. Great! Only ten miles to go! By about the half-way mark, sharp pains in both feet indicated further wounds, though there was no more glass to pick-out.

Not every step rewarded me with sharp pain, it was more like a couple of steps per minute of running. Maybe it was from when a small grain of grit got into the wound. In all, not a bad run. I made just under 8:00 per mile.

Pickles

They are not expensive and I don't think we use them on anything other than burgers, but we always seem to be running out of sliced pickles.

Monday, I did a Costco run and saw that I could get a gallon jar of whole dill pickles for $3.49! After a bit of indecision, it will take up a lot of space, I decided to get it.

It took only two pickles to fill the Mt. Olive jar most of the way--a 3rd would not have fit. The economics of it would seem to be sound: The big Vlasic jar would only need to have about 4 pickes to hit break-even. Based on the label, there should be around 18 in the jar: The label says that a serving is 1/4 of a pickle and there are 70 servings. Another way of calculation is that both jars say that a serving is one ounce and there are 10 servings in the pre-sliced jar.

The main benefit is that I can re-fill the sliced jar whenever it is low and so am saved from the Hobbson's choice of either keeping a spare jar of sliced pickes or having a burger with no pickles. Also, if I want pickle spears I can make them--I would never buy a jar of pickle spears since we almost never use them.

The Reason There Should Not Be an Agreement

Yuval Levin summs it up perfectly here.

The Democrats want to raise revenue and the Republicans want to reform entitlements. Those goals would seem to be easily reconciled — just do some of each, or even lots of each. But it only seems that way because we don’t often think about why the parties want these things. Simply (and surely somewhat too simply) put, the Democrats want more money so that the entitlement system doesn’t have to be reformed, while the Republicans want to reform the entitlement system so that the government doesn’t have to take more of the country’s money or take up even more of the economy. That means that doing some of each, let alone lots of each, doesn’t give both parties what they want, it gives both parties what they are desperately trying to avoid.

It is not really in either side's interest to compromise: The left would like to only raise taxes on "the rich" but don't really care if everyone gets hit--especially if they can blame the Republicans for it. The Republicans would rather have the taxes hit everybody since otherwise, there would be no leverage to get the economically harmfull rates on the high incomes brought back down.

The place where the Republicans have real leverage is on the debt limit. If they don't raise it then 31% of all federal spending will have to be cut. This is roughly the amount of spending on the discretionary side of the budget. If no agreement is made, then entitlements will have to be cut.

Getting "Played"

There is a lot of hate aimed at our presidents these days.

To some extent it has always been this way but it seems as if this phenomina has gotten much worse with the last three presidents.

Here is my theory as to why this is the case: It is different for the different sides:

The left hated George W. Bush because he was endlessly vilified in the press. It is only natural when everybody says how awful you are that you get to be disliked. For the right, the hatred of Clinton and Obama is for another reason and it is also less intense IMO. The hate comes from a feeling of injustice: Clinton (to what now seems like a relatively small degree) and Obama (massively) have gotten a total pass when they have failed.

A key to not being manipulated by all of this is to remember: It is not Bush's fault that the press demonized him, and it is not Clinton nor Obama's fault that the press lionizes them.

AK-47

I believe I have pointed out how I like to collect instances where things seem alike when viewed from one standpoint and seem opposite when viewed from another. The below quote from Instapundit is similar in a way: It can be taken in either of two ways, but they both point to the same conclusion.

HARDLY A SURPRISE: AK-47 Sales Soar, Crime Rates Fall? I mean, would you mug a guy with an AK-47?

"Would you mug a guy with an AK-47?" This could mean, if you were a mugger and a potential victim was carrying an AK-47, you probably would not mug him. It could also mean, if you were the kind of mugger who wanted to carry a weapon, it would almost certainly not be a rifle of any kind. After all, concealability would seem to be a logical concern.

Either of the meanings reinforce the correct conclusion that AK-47 type weapons are not suitable tools for the criminal class, at least not when it comes to mugging.

Let me see if I have this right?

The idea of Veteren's Day is to honor people who served in our military. This is all well and good--even as it may appear to be self-serving, I am all for it.

But why is it a Federal holiday? The largest group of people who get the day off are public employees. They range from generally to overwhelmingly left of center. It is also well-known that the ranks of the military have long been right of center.

So we honor veterens by giving a day off to mostly people who never served.

End Of The Line?

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

Why is it that single women and minorities are the most loyal Democratic voters? They know which party will offer them the most goodies (at someone else's expense).

I hope that we as a nation are not doomed, demographics do point in that direction though: The underclass is growing and the productive classes are not.

Added: I was discussing these issues with my 15 year old daughter and she pointed out (correctly) that it is rational for people to vote in their own interest. We fairly explain the votes of the dependent class, but why to elites vote to the left so often? They make a lot of money and would be hit hard by higher taxes, it is certainly not in their interest to vote the way they do. Maybe it is a mirror image of What's the Matter with Kansas?

Mary Matalin of The Corner Has It Exactly Right

A political narcissistic sociopath leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform. Instead of using his high office to articulate a vision for our future, Obama used it as a vehicle for character assassination, replete with unrelenting and destructive distortion, derision, and division.

Read it all here.


Added: That he got away with it says something about what we have become as a people. That something is more depressing than the prospect of putting up with this clown for another four years.

Two Elections: Each A Defense "Of The One Big Thing"

It is too early yet to know if Obama has managed to be re-elected, but I see a real parallel between George W. Bush's re-election in 2004 and this race:

Both men were highly polarizing. To my view, the left (including the press) hated Bush and never saw his win as legitimate and therefore felt free to attack him with little regard for the good of the country. In Obama's case, he is polarizing because he has nothing but contempt for about half the country and we have noticed. Not to get too sidetracked, but each re-election only really mattered due to what it would prevent:

For Bush, it would prevent the left from pulling a Vietnam in Iraq and abandoning the cause after most of the effort was behind us.

For Obama, it is to prevent the overturn of "Obamacare".

There are a lot of differences too. The war was initially very popular and the Republicans made it a central point of the campain. Obamacare has never been all that popular. I don't think it has ever gone up to 50% and has fallen from its peak--though it is more popular now than the gulf war ended up being. Though, I suspect that if the president is in for another term, by the end of it Obamacare will be about as popular as the war ended up being. In any case, defence of the healthcare law has barely been mentioned and has not been a central theme.

Really, there hasn't been a central theme at all, just small snipey gripey things like threats of abortion being totally banned, big bird and tax breaks for millionares. Basically just a bunch of substanceless BS.

Do We Value Sincerity?

I had this little Twitter dialog over the weekend and it needs some expansion, but I don't want to harass Dawkins or be confined to 140 letter thoughts.

Richard Dawkins:
Romney believes a religion which is not only barking mad and utterly unscientific. It is also deeply racist. Mr Deity: http://bit.ly/Qu74Pv

David Pecchia:
@RichardDawkins Obama also claims to be a Christian. Are we assuming that this is somehow different, or that he is being insincere?

Richard Dawkins:
@dpecchia I hope he's being insincere. I'd hate to think he really believes it. But even Christianity is not in the same league as Mormonism

He is saying a couple of things here:

1. Mormonism is especially weird.

2. Obama is probably faking his religious belief, which is apparently a good thing.

I'll take the first point first: It is a little odd in the first place for atheists to debate which belief system is the most bizarre. Isn't belief in something for which, in the mind of a good atheist, there is no evidence at all, really the main gripe? Another way of looking at members of the LDS is more operational: Do they engage in behavior that is unconventional? I have spent time around Mormons and to my experience; they are anodyne to a fault. A final note: Romney grew up in a Mormon household. It is very common for people to stick-with the faith they grew-up with. Obama took-up his Christianity as an adult. I usually regard people who find religion as an adult as being more sincere in their belief--unless they do it under duress, like if they have to convert in order to marry. It seems that Obama's conversion may have been in the service of his "community organizing" and so may not be a typical conversion story.

As an aside: I sometimes make fun of my wife's Hindu background, to which she retorts, "But you don't even believe in God"! My (former Catholic) answer, "Yes, but the God I don't believe in is the one true God"!

As for the second point: I will start off by agreeing with Dawkins. I think Obama is really agnostic or atheist and is only pretending to be Christian. Where we depart is in how it makes us feel about Obama and Romney.

Neither of us know what is in the heart of either of these men: Romny could be secretly an atheist and Obama really a devout Christian. Somehow, people as different as Dawkins and me both think (on this point at least) that Romney is being honest and Obama is being deceitful. Now, as a point of first principles, one should favor an honest man over a liar. Maybe even Dawkins would agree, but I think that to Dawkins, it is better to be a liar than a believer in God. But doesn't the lie go to the heart of what a politician in a representative democracy stands for? Why would an atheist even want to lead a nation which is highly religious and which would never elect an admitted atheist? If you so utterly disrespect the belief of a people, why would you want to waste your time serving as their leader?

Added: Another part of the conversation via WSJ Best of the Web Today...

Richard Dawkins
@TheRiler @jamestaranto I don't like it, but a president who lies out of political necessity is a lesser evil than a stupid president

Wow! So Dawkins is calling anyone who believes in God, stupid? Amazing! Thoughtful people on both sides understand that this is not something which can be proven, right?

Identical or Opposite

Probably dating back to when I was majoring in philosophy, I've been facinated by things which can seem similar when looked at in one way and opposite when approached from another angle:

A good recent one is insurance coverage for ED medicines and for contraception.

From one viewpoint, they are the same because they facilitate sexual activity. On the other hand, ED drugs treat a lack of proper function, while contraception prevents normal function.

Bare Trees -- pre Nicks FleetwoodMac

Added: The songs just before and after Bare Trees are also really great.

Sunny Side of Heaven By Danny Kirwan is without lyrics and has an ethereal sound.

Sentimental Lady By Bob Welch is a catchy tune that got a lot of airplay when I was a kid--though it was probably not this, early Fleetwood Mac version.

Amazon Heat Map

There are a lot of ways (many of them self-serving) of looking at this graphic. I think the most direct is with the following assumptions:

1. It is mostly conservatives buying conservative books and mostly liberals buying liberal books. People look for ammunition and reinforcment of what they already believe.

2. Even though about twice as many people describe themselves as conservative than as liberal, the fact of the matter is that Democrats and Republicans each get very close to 50% of the total vote.

3. Why then are conservative books selling so much better than liberal ones? I think it is in the very different distribution of each of the side's 50%: The conservative side ranges from working class people through wealthy people, with most in the middle. The liberal side has lots in the middle too, but they dominate the opposite ends of the spectrum. The underclasses are almost monolithically liberal and the same is true of elites, such as college professors.

4. The underclasses barely buy books at all, let alone ones that are hard to read and lack much entertainment value. So it isn't as if the country is swinging right, it is just that a big chunk of the left are not in the book-buying demographic.

Touching Photo (especially if you give it a careful look)

(AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)


The obvious bit is the guy who is pointing at Romney with a "I can't believe I'm posing with the Republican candidate for president" look. It is a refreshing glimpse at humanity, which is full of honest emotions.

The other part is the two women on the other side of Romney. They are holding hands! They are probably nervous and are close enough to seek this kind of comfort. Maybe they are sisters, or more likely--they have bonded through their shared experiences at work.

Polar Opposites

There has recently been some hysteria alarm over the state of the polar ice cap.

Here is a typical story on the phenomena from the NYT:

And here is a graph of satellite data:

The couple of things I think about when I see this data are:

There seems to be a clear trend of decline in Arctic Sea Ice, though the normal seasonal variation is an order of magnitude greater. The trend looks like maybe between 5 and 10 percent decline over a 35 year time-span, while the normal seasonal variation is around 50%!

The other thing is that while it seems to recover every winter season, there may be some value in the Arctic Ocean being navigable for some portion of the year.

Meanwhile, the obvious thing--at least to me, to look at is what is going on in the Antarctic region. If global warming is causing a decline in the Arctic Sea ice, it stands to reason that the Antarctic Sea ice should be similarly declining.

Except it isn't: It is in record high territory.

While the current anomaly is small as a percentage of the whole, note that it is past two standard deviations from the mean.

Besides being on the opposite sides of the Earth, the poles are reversed in their local environment too: In the Arctic, there is an ocean surrounded by land masses. In the Antarctic, there is a continent surrounded by oceans. If you read the articles, you will see that both the melting in the Arctic and the growing ice in the Antarctic can be accounted for by global warming. Somehow though, I suspect that if the Arctic Sea ice was growing and the Antarctic Sea ice was shrinking, there would still be a global warming rationale to account for it.

No Man Is An Island, Yada Yada...

Below, we see President Obama sort of channeling Elizabeth Warren. It is clearly resonating with his audience and with the left, but why does it irritate the hell out of conservatives?

First the video, then some teasing-out of what we hate about it.



From the start it seems as if he is pointing out the blindingly obvious: Without roads, police, laws, common currency etc. it would be impossible to found and operate a modern business enterprise. True enough but why not go further? Without civilization: Things like language, cuisine, tradition and institutions such as family and marriage; then you wouldn't be able to survive in nature let alone form a government, or enjoy any of the goods that come from it. We could go even further. What about nature and the universe? We did not create these things.

We cannot repay civilization for creating things like language--civilization is largely the product of people who are long gone. As for the natural world, some of us do what we can in the form of religious worship--we cannot pay back what we have, but we can at least show gratitude. Government is very different though.

Roads, bridges, public schools, police and military protection are not gifts from government to the people. No. this is backwards. We the people institute governments for the purpose of providing these goods. We institute and fund these operations for these exact purposes!

An analogy:

I sometimes build furniture for our personal use at home. In order to do this, I have purchased tools, lumber and miscellaneous supplies such as sandpaper, glue and varnish. When I am done, I feel no inclination to send some extra money to Black & Decker because the saw worked, or to send money to Borden because the adhesive managed to stick two boards together. I bought these things and they worked, end of story. But what if I was especially successful and made masterpieces which sold for vast sums of money? Should I then go back and pay extra money to the lumberyard? No. Anybody can buy tools, wood and supplies--they will sell to amateurs like me the same as they sell to masters who are capable of producing great art.

Similarly, the roads, police, public education are available to all of us. Some of us make better use of these things and are successful as a result. So what is the President's point in all of this? He seems to be minimizing the effects of individual effort and focusing on those things which are done by the larger society. The problem is that we are each an individual: Infrastructure is here, all that we can do as individuals is to make use of it or not and that is to be encouraged--not disparaged.

Added: Lots of great visual humor is appearing: More Here

Stay unemployed, my friends.

Misc. Bleatish thoughts since I haven't posted in a while...

--Last weekend I took Jemma to a swim meet with Surenna and afterwards we all wanted to go to McDonalds for lunch. Things seemed to start auspiciously but went downhill from there. We walked in and there were no customers at the counter, so we began to order. Just then, an old lady came rushing up to the counter, like she needed catsup or forgot her change. She then proceeded to make an order! The old bat had just cut in front of us!

Later the kids were wondering why old people are so rude. I told them that the lady was a jerk, but probably was always so. I speculated that when she was young, she excused herself any blame for cutting because she was a kid and nobody expects fine manners from them. Later as a working adult or parent, she rationalized that she was too busy to wait. Now she figures that as an old person, people should make allowances for her.

Once we got up to order, the cashier indicated that they had no burgers! Jemma complained about us leaving, since she was having nuggets anyway. But really, should Surenna and I have just stared at Jemma while she ate? We went to another nearby McDonalds and we all had what we wanted. It was easy to get around since we happened to be within a couple of miles of where I work and so I know all the roads around there.

--I watched the gentlemen's Wimbledon today and the ladies’ yesterday. There was a lot of great tennis, though the men's match was more interesting. In the women's, the play was dominated by Serena Williams' serve. Winning with a powerful serve is perfectly legitimate but not at all interesting to watch. The set which Radwanska won was by far the best one. On the men's side, Andy Murray was not favored to win since Roger Federer is just simply the better player right now. Nonetheless, he took the first set and really gave Federer a tough match.

As an aside, the girls had definite and diverse opinions about the men. Jemma thought Federer was the most handsome and the other two really liked Andy Murray. They are both good-looking men; I think Murray has a kind of roughish charm, while Federer looks more debonair. Jemma didn't like Andy Murray's prominent Adams apple and loved Roger's flowing hair.

She's Like A Rainbow

Sea Food Dinners

My wife is not a fan of mussels, so I threw in some hot Italian sausage. I had some too: Pork goes really well with mollusks.

Summer puts me in the mood for seafood. I love the flavor, it seems to go with the warmer weather. The attractiveness of the dishes is just a bonus.

Why Not Just Raise The Age to 65?

It seems the boy hasn't changed his mind, or gained any maturity since the age of 4.

BROOKLINE - When Eric Dumas was 4, he asked his father if a man standing nearby was going to die. Taken aback, his father, Rob, inquired why his son would ask such a question. His son’s response: “That person is smoking.’’

His dad didn't answer this way, but I would have. "Well son, everybody, including that man, will die someday." And, "People will often times do things that you think are against their own interests. But this is a free country and they have a right to be self-destructive."