Half-Baked

Like most great ideas...

2011-01-06T21:40:00.001-05:00

...someone has already thought of it and has gone much further than I ever would with it.

How about the idea of borrowing or renting things from everyday people like you or me? A more entrepreneurial mind than mine could come up with a website that would allow people to rent their things to others - http://www.borrowme.com/

Staged Window

2010-12-19T21:57:00.002-05:00

Staged

Window

Gefilte Fish

2010-12-13T21:39:00.003-05:00

tup.per.wa.re

Gwerpin

2010-12-11T21:37:00.003-05:00

ten minute self portrait with MS Paint 101

ten minutes? probably more like 30.

or maybe 45

It's kind of mihaly.csikszentmihalyi.lian

to lose track of time

Stereotype A

2010-12-10T22:34:00.003-05:00

Meet Jim.

Jim is a real man.

Notice his big arms, bushy beard, and steely gaze.

Jim has high blood pressure.

Tehran Sprawl

2010-12-07T21:27:00.001-05:00

Join the Green Conservative Party Today!

Where Conservative ideology blends with Conservationist ideology

We believe that the best way to protect the environment is through the all-natural boom and bust cycle of a Free Market Economy® !

Study lead author Pierre Friedlingstein and his colleagues said that there was a direct correlation between the recent financial market collapse and the 1.3 percent decrease in global emissions from 2008 to 2009.

® Free Market Economy is a registered trademark of the Green Conservative Party. The words Free Market, however are in no way meant to imply a market left to the so-called invisible hand. We believe, instead, that the economy can be aggressively stimulated in various key industries such as Green Technology and Consumer Credit that will inevitably result in market collapses and decreases in global carbon emissions.

Not fit to print

2010-12-04T22:00:00.001-05:00

Pith and Dribble

2010-12-03T21:30:00.001-05:00

here's a game i like to play

i take the pea sized bundle of conviction
(the burning glow of certainty)
and i subject it to articulate debaters
and watch the gluey gullible glow
stick to one position
then another
twack twack twack
until it turns into a cold marble
of balanced, rational uncertainty

i mount my soap box chair
hands ready at the keyboad
preparing to pontificate
on some topic current and noble
but my ideas are skeletal
and need to be fleshed out
so i look up this and read about that
and the pithy sound bites fall apart
leaving muddy mumblings about
how complicated the issue is

Monochromatic Markers

2010-12-02T21:33:00.002-05:00

the gaia-invisible-hand hypothesis

bad food in, bad feeling out

Good for Them!

2010-12-02T20:50:00.003-05:00

again, i feel the drop

hearing these he.she.its spit

from stage to mic to itunes

to ipod to my head

i hear the spit

and i sink

i drop

i turn away

and bare fluorescent lights flick on

drowning out the mood-light in my head

the harsh light reveals harsh reality

that these kids are not me

that they may like to hear the spit

and the bombastic transparencies

hurled out like something brave

and audacious

as they stand before their like-minded siblings

and permute like-minded sententiousness

good for them!

for them!

not for me.

i must be getting old

because i really have heard it before

even the same structure

the same contrived hipster voices

the funky soulful whatever

contrived.

just young people mating

sending out their whale songs

good for them!

that's cool

they're cool

i'm not.

Fwd: postin up

2010-12-02T20:11:00.001-05:00

listening to pri about the 60s
something came to me, some connection
can't remember right now
mbti, change of beat movement
ah! radicalism, activism
versus hip society!
different groups of people
the activist start
then the sensualist follow
where do i fall?
outside of both bubbles, i imagine
neither group would have me
or i wouldn't have them
too dead for activism
too square for hipsterism
instead, i sit by the reflecting pool
full of philo-sophomoric narcissism

piss and shit

gas in my bowels

lead in my veins

cloudy overcast day

cloudy overcast mind

aspiration for life

does not exist

in articulated form

vaguely stupid images

of neanderthal strongman

with artistic bend

pumping out paintings

a steady stream of poems

simpleton, simple man

compulsive sketcher, painter

Auf dich!

2010-12-02T07:02:00.001-05:00

i dont care about art

(thats a lie)

what i really care about is cool

about the feeling of cool

of something enviable

like damn, i wish id done that first

(i still could

and maybe people wouldnt notice!)

(naw, thats cheap,

a lie that would feel like shit)

so i am checking people out

and making judgments

like, look at him!

thats kind of cool

sort of a dark, manly hulk look

got his own ideas

aint afraid of living his way

(although hes going to die

for being so fat!)

black shirt. thats cool

and look at her!

but shes trying too hard

wasnt she a model?

and now she is shadowing him

i know him, hes a dork

(he was all about being cool)

she (literally) has to stoop to his level

(i see her in my minds eye stooping)

and there again

another case of cool

(im all about cool)

(it just happens to look like art sometimes

artsy or independent, thinking)

but this guy, hes goofy

i mean, hes fun, not dark

but doing his own things

happily popping out tricks

and grunging down his own path

making it look cute and casual

but check it out!

hes got product

hes got resume

thats something cooler than

despondent, moping, apathy

das ist cool, man

wirklich cool!

Auf dich!

First Search Result in Flickr

2010-11-30T22:08:00.001-05:00

In an attempt to find something interesting, I searched Flickr for "art" and found Ben Heine. I am most impressed with how prolific he is - lots of art. Lots of variations on certain themes.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/

npd

2010-11-30T07:40:00.001-05:00

This just in:

It is no longer "Narcissistic Personality Disorder", it is "personality disorder with narcissistic and manipulative traits"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/views/30mind.html

Food and Livin

2010-11-26T21:21:00.003-05:00

Rambling about caloric restriction... there is a lot of recent research out there that makes the caloric restriction diet questionable.

Eat less or Don't change a thing or Eat Less Protein?

there are two major influences on IGF-1 levels: calorie intake and protein intake.

... recent findings suggest lowering protein also might be important to longevity

I suspect that those great endurance athletes with phenomenal VO2 maximums have a price to pay. All that mitochondrial activity leads to increased oxidative stress and accelerated aging or age related illnesses.

The Sirt3 enzyme ...acts on mitochondria, structures inside cells that produce energy and that are the sources of highly reactive forms of oxygen known as free radicals, which damage cells and promote the effects of aging.

Another speculation: Weightlifters and bodybuilders beware - all that ramped up protein synthesis could be killing you. As a gym rat who defaulted into bodybuilding just to have some sense of progress, I have been sensitive to the idea that all this increased metabolism and cellular activity is essentially burning my gene candles at both ends. We only have a limited number of cell divisions before the telomeres run out unless telomerase is increased - which it is through "exercise". The question is whether cardio training is superior to resistance training in upregulating telomerase activity. Also, does increased protein consumption negate the benefits?

IGF-1 is a key hormone for weightlifters, but it has a complex set of pros and cons regarding cancers and aging.

Speed of Expansion of the Universe

2010-11-26T20:59:00.003-05:00

Apparently the universe is expanding (at least) almost as fast as the speed of light.

velocity = distance / time

= 13.1 billion light-years / 13.75 billion years = 0.953 times the speed of light

Given:

a) The estimated age of the universe is 13.75 ± 0.17 billion years,^[1] the time since the Big Bang.

b) ...new observations have spotted the most distant galaxy ever seen. The galaxy’s light comes from about 13.1 billion light-years away

But, apparently, this is grossly over simplified (ie, Half-Baked):

Is the universe expanding faster than the speed of light?

Snobflation

2010-11-26T20:45:00.003-05:00

Snobbery induced inflation...

Why buy something cheap and convenient when everyone else can too? Better to buy something that shows your buying power! You should always buy the best you can afford because - what would people think?!

Nano cars may be super cheap, but that's like buying obviously cheap clothes, jewelry, watches, etc - people will think you have neither style nor money!

On the grand scale, however, does this attitude actually drive up prices in general? I am sure it has an effect on conspicuous goods, but probably less so on goods that are not revealed as some sort of fiscal fitness indicator. So cars, clothes, jewelry, organic foods, and houses might be subject to competitive snobflation (I'm better than the common rift-raft - I'm with the got-it-together crowd), but behind-the-scenes water, phone, and electric bills might not be driven up by the inflation of keeping up with the Smiths

Faith Healing, Organics, and Libertarianism

2010-11-23T22:26:00.003-05:00

Trust me, what is natural is what is best.

All the modern problems are the result of meddling where we shouldn't.

Take it from the bibly, God will take care of you and meet your needs!

Natural food is healthy!

Economic intervention is evil!

No more medicine!

No more increased crop yields!

No more government!

Let the invisible hand of Gaia cure all of our ills!

The good Lord, organic food (and medicine!), and the economy are all self-regulating systems that will take care of themselves if we let them.

Power of the dark side

2010-04-22T13:14:00.001-04:00

From today's Globe and Mail Social Studies:

"In a new study, Harvard University researchers suggest moral actions may increase our capacity for willpower and physical endurance," Rick Nauert reports for Psych Central News. "Study participants who did good deeds – or even just imagined themselves helping others – were better able to perform a subsequent task of physical endurance. However, the research also shows a similar or even greater boost in physical strength following dastardly deeds. Researcher Kurt Gray, a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard, explains these effects as a self-fulfilling prophecy in morality. 'People perceive those who do good and evil to have more efficacy, more willpower and less sensitivity to discomfort,' Gray says. 'By perceiving themselves as good or evil, people embody these perceptions, actually becoming more capable of physical endurance.' "

Thought du jour

"There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope they are organized along the lines of the Mafia."

– Kurt Vonnegut

Gravity

2010-04-08T14:34:00.002-04:00

The bug and I were racing to fall the fastest from a park bench.

I think she won.

Energy inefficiency

2010-04-07T13:22:00.001-04:00

Snippets of dry verbiage that leave an interesting aftertaste...

Topic: Energy efficiency and consumption (taken directly from Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

...attempts to reduce energy consumption by increasing energy efficiency would simply raise demand for energy in the economy as a whole.
...that improvements in energy efficiency work to increase, rather than decrease, energy consumption – the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate

First, increased energy efficiency makes the use of energy relatively cheaper, thus encouraging increased use (the rebound effect).

Second, increased energy efficiency leads to increased economic growth, which pulls up energy use for the whole economy.

At the microeconomic level (looking at an individual market), even with the rebound effect, improvements in energy efficiency usually result in reduced energy consumption.[4] That is, the rebound effect is usually less than 100%. However, at the macroeconomic level, more efficient (and hence comparatively cheaper) energy use leads to faster economic growth, that in turn increases energy use throughout the economy. Taking into account both the microeconomic and the macroeconomic effects, technological progress that improves energy efficiency will tend to increase overall energy use.

~~ I can almost hear the evil laughter.

First ride of the year - March 28, 2010

2010-03-29T09:43:00.001-04:00

Kanata Lakes

First ride of the year - March 28, 2010

First ride on xam

~2.5 hours

Need to increase rear shock pressure to over 200 psi

Thurs Feb 18 Workout

2010-02-19T07:00:00.001-05:00

Purchased a 2008 19" Jamis XAM 1.0 today. An all-mountain tank of a bike. Should be fun.

Thursday's workout was legs

5 minutes on the elliptical (great for getting rid of any low-key mood you might be in - just show up, warm up, and you're in the groove)

Squats

10 reps 135 warmup

10 reps 225

6 reps 315

8 reps 315

15 reps 135 (post strength wo pump set - elevates GH, lactic acid, etc for greater strength improvements (International Journal of Sport and Health Science Vol.2, 111-118, 2004))

Straight leg deadlifts

10 reps 135

10 reps 225

Lying leg curls (machine)

5 reps 60 (warmup)

10 reps 205

8 reps 205

8 reps 180

Leg extensions (machine)

3 reps 80 (test warmup)

10 reps 305

8 reps 305

Weighted crunches (machine)

10 r 180

(the idea is to cycle through lower weight incremented up to the machine max of 205 - so that you get progressive load, despite the fact that the machine is limited)

Workout for Feb 17, 2010

2010-02-18T09:44:00.002-05:00

This is fairly typical of my upper body workouts lately. A little too long - begging to be split into chest/tri and back/bi. But this would push me into a 6 day/week workout:

Sun - legs
Mon - chest/tri
Tue - back/bi
Wed- legs
Thur - chest/tri
Fri or Sat - back/bi

5 minutes on elliptical
10 r bb underhand row 135
6 r " 205
6 r " 175
10 r inclined bb bench 135
10 r " 175
10 r " 175
8 r " 175
3 x 10 cable row 90
10 r db shoulder press 65
6 r " 65
8 r " 55
3 x 6 r close-grip pull-up 45
2 x 10 r dip 45
2 x 10 db rear lateral raise 40
6 r db lateral raise 30
2 x 10 r " 20
3 x 10 r db shoulder shrugs 95
3 x 10 r lat pull down 80
5 min elliptical
Total time ~ 70 minutes

r = repetitions
bb = bar bell
db = dumbbell

Mardi Gras

2010-02-16T19:37:00.002-05:00

My posts have gone from economics and biology to pure babble about working out. I fear for my brain cell.

Nonetheless, how exciting is it to hear that I am a whopping 230 lbs? Appropriate for Fat Tuesday, eh?

My workout today consisted of:

5 minutes on the elliptical

1 set (10 reps) of squat at 135

1 set (10 reps) at 225

6 reps at 295

8 reps at 295

15 reps at 135

3 sets (10 reps) of lying hamstring curls at 175

1 set (6 reps) single leg incline press with 4 x 45 plates

2 sets (10 reps) with 8 x 45 plates

10 leg extensions at 220

8 at 305

experimented with single dumbbell deadlifts - goofy exercise

5 minutes on the elliptical

Total time ~ 45 minutes

Exciting

Volumizing

2010-02-16T13:05:00.001-05:00

The secret: Volume + occasional HIT = Volumization

I enjoy working out - it is physically satisfying, but it is not fun - I do not laugh or even socialize.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: It's as satisfying to me as, uh, coming is, you know? As, ah, having sex with a woman and coming. And so can you believe how much I am in heaven? I am like, uh, getting the feeling of coming in a gym, I'm getting the feeling of coming at home, I'm getting the feeling of coming backstage when I pump up, when I pose in front of 5,000 people, I get the same feeling, so I am coming day and night. I mean, it's terrific. Right? So you know, I am in heaven.

CNS Fatigue

2010-02-10T14:52:00.001-05:00

Stealing from the www.exrx.net forum... as a reminder to myself -

1. Olympic lifts, ballistic exercises, speed lifts with 45-55% of maximum, plyometrics, and jumps and bounds

STOP When the speed of movement decreases.

2. Deadlifts (and variations), goodmornings (and variations), squats (and variations), lunges and step-ups, free-weight pressing (overhead, incline, flat, decline, and dips), and free-weight/cable pulling (vertical and horizontal)

STOP: One to two reps short of failure.

[ I go to failure on all sets and feel like dead toad on hot asphalt]

3. Machine pressing and pulling, chest isolation work, quadriceps isolation work, hamstrings isolation work, lower back isolation work, and abdominal work

Go to failure on at least one set per exercise; you can go to failure on all sets.

4. Biceps isolation work, triceps isolation work, traps isolation work, calves isolation work, and forearms isolation work Very low Go to failure on all sets.

You can go past the point of failure (drop sets, rest/pause, etc.) on one to two sets per exercise.

Complexities

2010-01-14T15:08:00.001-05:00

I think this is a beautiful illustration of the complexity of biological processes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_thaliana_metabolic_network.png

"Metabolic network showing the links between enzymes and metabolites that interact with the Arabidopsis TCA cycle KEGG classification M00009. Enzymes and metabolites are the nodes (red), interactions are the lines. In total, 43 enzymes and 40 metabolites are shown. Created on Cytoscape using data from VirtualPlant 0.9."

Pump sets

2010-01-13T16:48:00.001-05:00

Following the logic of Kaatsu training, I suspect that one or two light sets (50% 1RM) following a high intensity set (75-90% 1RM) would have good hypertrophic effects.

True to my non-scientific roots, I looked for evidence to support my hunch (as opposed to evidence to refute it):

http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ijshs/2/0/2_111/_article

...results indicated that performing a single set of exercise at low intensity added after a strength-type regimen caused a significant increase in GH concentration.

I experimented with this yesterday - a warm-up set, 60 second rest, working set (80% 1RM), 30 second rest, "pump set" (50% 1RM), 30 second rest, "pump set" (50% 1RM)

While the study indicated that a 50% 1RM set after a strength-set worked better than standard strength-type workouts, I am not sure if it works better than hypertrophy-type workouts (multiple sets at > 70% 1RM)

The increase in serum growth hormones seems to taper off quickly from about 5 ng/ml for 20% to 7 for 30% to 7.5 for 50%. I suspect that 60% 1RM would result in something like 7.6 ng/ml.

Japanese Kaatsu Training

2010-01-12T16:10:00.002-05:00

Japanese Kaatsu training ?!

http://drsquat.com/content/kaatsu-training

It seems to work because it restricts blood flow similar to anaerobic intensities.

quotes from http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/100/5/1443

... one issue on which applied exercise physiologists and molecular biologists have agreed: to obtain substantial hypertrophy from a resistance training program, the target muscles must be subjected to substantially increased load. Therefore, the American College of Sports Medicine recommended that, during resistance training, the load should exceed 70% of the one repetition maximum to achieve maximum hypertrophy

...resistance training with shorter rest periods between sets results in greater hypertrophy than the same training program with long rest periods (but the same total mechanical work)

There is no doubt that resistance training with restricted flowwould amplify high-energy phosphate depletion and lactic acidproduction compared with training at the same load with normalflow. In fact, insofar as there is a good correlation betweenhigh-energy phosphate depletion and acid production vs. loadduring resistance exercises (20), the recommendation that hypertrophyrequires a load >70% of one repetition maximum might justas well be recast as a recommendation that the training mustresult in substantial anaerobic metabolism.

from http://drsquat.com/content/kaatsu-training

When the muscle is under tension, blood flow is cut off. Thus, Chris Thibaudeau recommends performing a resistance movement of "never allowing the muscles to relax during the set (always flexing as hard as possible during every inch of every rep) with 50-60% of the maximum performed to failure, led to oxygen levels of 23-24%."
Source: Stimulate More Muscle Growth [http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1641547]

The constant tension on the muscle shutting down blood floow. Once the sete is complete, a blood surges to the muscle.

Another method that will "occlude" blood flow to the muscle is an isometric action. The constant tension of the muscle occludes blood flow. David Barr's "Anabolic Pump Training" goes into this. [http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1555945]

Barr also recommends the iscoemtric action be follow with low high reps with a light load.

"Once all heavy work on a muscle is completed, lighter sets are performed with higher reps. Because the muscle is already stressed by the first part of the workout, it's primed to receive the extra nutritive blood flow that the high reps will induce. "

Undulating Periodization

2010-01-12T14:51:00.001-05:00

Based on various articles I've read on http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez, I'm thinking about switching to a program that varies more frequently. Instead of keeping at a specified intensity for one week, I will change intensity for each workout. More variation seems to work better.

Sample Protocol for Daily Undulating Periodizatoin (DUP)

M: 3-5 RM loads (90% 1RM); W: 8-10 RM loads (75% 1RM); F: 12-15 RM loads (65% 1RM)

In studies using similar males subjects and training programs, Rhea et al . (2002) reported

improvements about 28. 78% in undulating group and 14.37% in linear group, while Baker et

al. (1994) obtained 16.4% in undulating group and 11. 6% in linear group.

It also seems like I need to switch to a multiple set program (3 sets per exercise) for hypertrophy, but this would take too much time for a full body workout. What should I do?

One solution it to focus on aerobic power for my legs (2 sets) and hypertrophy for my upper body (3 sets, 30-second rest). I want my legs to perform well for cycling and xc-skiing while I want my upper body to get bigger. Therefore I will use a much higher rep range for my legs for two sets per workout and multiple sets in a DUP fashion for my upper body.

Legs:

A high repetition group (High Rep, n = 7) performing 20-28 RM for two sets with 1 min rest

The High Rep group appeared better adapted for submaximal, prolonged contractions, with significant increases after training in aerobic power and time to exhaustion.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12436270?log$=activity

Upper:

For loading, it is recommended that loads corresponding to 1-12 RM be used in periodized fashion with emphasis on the 6-12 RM zone using 1- to 2-min rest periods between sets at a moderate velocity. Higher volume, multiple-set programs are recommended for maximizing hypertrophy.

Bigger is Better

2010-01-11T16:42:00.001-05:00

Simple Rules of Thumb for Hypertrophy

1. Progressively increase your mechanical load
For example follow an 11-week cycle such as this: week 1 - use 70% of your 1 rep max load; week 2 - 75%; 3- 80%; 4- 65%; 5-85%; 6-75%; 7-80%; 8-85%; 9-70%; 10- 90%; take a break

2. Full body workouts 3 times a week

3. One warm-up set followed by one working set for each exercise

4. Use compound exercises

5. Keep total workout time under 1 hour per session

6. Maintain a slow, 4-second pace for the eccentric contractions

7. Eat a balanced, nutritious diet

***** But, see the American College of Sports Medicine Recommendations and Position Stand

They say:

4-5 days per week for advanced training.

Hypertrophy training

1-12 RM in periodized fashion
- emphasis on the 6-12 RM zone
1- to 2-min rest periods between sets
moderate contraction velocity
higher volume, multiple-set programs

Examples of Complex Carbs

2010-01-11T16:04:00.001-05:00

It is important for your immune system to have enough carbs, but too much blood glucose elevates your insulin levels and leads to fat or diabetes.

So, what are good sources of complex carbohydrates?

Looking at GI (Glycemic Index) tables, the line between sources of carbohydrates and sources of protein or fat are blurred...

If I were to pick one Low GI food to increase in my diet in order to increase my total carb intake, I think it would be parboiled or long-grain rice, but macaroni, whole wheat spaghetti and fettuccine are easy, workable choices too.

CHO

2010-01-11T13:13:00.000-05:00

On the basis of the current scientific literature, it may be advisable for athletes who are performing high-volume resistance training to ingest carbohydrate supplements before, during, and immediately after resistance training. J Strength Cond Res. 2003 Feb;17(1):187-96.

exercise-induced immunosuppression

2010-01-11T10:57:00.002-05:00

A very interesting article: http://www.nature.com/icb/journal/v78/n5/full/icb200076a.html

Prolonged exercise and heavy training are associated with depressed immune cell function.

Consuming carbohydrate during prolonged strenuous exercise attenuates rises in stress hormones and appears to limit the degree of exercise-induced immune depression. (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16572599)

An athlete exercising in a carbohydrate-depleted state experiences larger increases in circulating stress hormones and a greater perturbation of several immune function indices. Conversely, consuming carbohydrate during exercise attenuates rises in stress hormones such as cortisol and appears to limit the degree of exercise-induced immunosuppression, at least for non-fatiguing bouts of exercise.

(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11897880)

Command and Control Security

2010-01-08T16:47:00.001-05:00

Down with command and control economies!

Down with command and control security!

Long live free enterprise security!

Poor economic conditions is to terrorism as poor use of antibiotics is to bacteria.

Is vitamin D used more with resistance training

2010-01-08T15:44:00.001-05:00

It seems like intense exercise uses more vitamin D, as well as everything else, since

A) Chemically, the various forms of vitamin D are secosteroids; i.e., steroids in which one of the bonds in the steroid rings is broken.^[11]

11^ ^a ^b ^c About Vitamin D Including Sections: History, Nutrition, Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Diseases. University of California Riverside

B) It is important for maintenance of calcium and phosphorus levels in the blood

C) Calcium is critical for muscle contraction

BUT, I can't seem to find anything to support this idea... or to contradict it, for that matter.

Fasting and insulin sensitivity

2010-01-08T13:38:00.002-05:00

One way of thinking about muscle growth is that you are trying to make your muscles fat. Fat cells store energy - as do muscle cells; however energy from fat cells is for the slow burn while energy from muscle cells is for the quick burn.

In order to get fat muscle cells, you exercise to deplete their reserves anaerobically, then you replenish them. Part of the way in which muscles replenish is to become insulin sensitive and pump glycogen into the muscle cell fluid. Insulin sensitivity can be increased by exercise induced gylcogen depletion.

I was curious - Would fasting before an exhaustive workout increase the supercompensation of glycogen in muscle tissue? What would be the effects on insuline levels, insuline sensitivity, glycogen transport into muslce tissue.

Apparently, it is a bad idea to fast before exercise. Although fasting and exercise both increase insulin sensitivity (versus insulin resistance, or diabetic), fasting will just make you fat.

The data indicate that intermittent fasting and physical training may increase insulin action via different mechanisms because muscle energy stores did not change with the present fasting intervention. (J Appl Physiol 99: 2128-2136, 2005. )

In other words, fasting before exercise and then replenishing does not cause muscle cells to supercompensate (ie get bigger), but it does cause fat cells to supercompensate...

Less than 20 percent

2010-01-05T13:42:00.001-05:00

I can't seem to find the source to this quote from http://www.exrx.net/WeightTraining/Toning.html

"Evidence suggests that less than 20 percent of men, and very few women, can develop large muscles, even if they wanted to, regardless of what program they follow."

But, I've found 20 or so instances of plagiarism on other sites...

a book, a cd

2010-01-03T15:41:00.001-05:00

http://www.exrx.net/Store/HL/FitProMusculoskeletalAnat.html

Fitness Professional's Guide to Musculoskeletal Anatomy and Human Movement

Mantis cannibalism by Dr Beetle

2009-12-22T20:47:00.000-05:00

Mantis cannibalism by Dr Beetle: "Refreshingly, a study by Liske and Davis in 1987 threw the first human light on the importance of the natural environment to behavior in mantises. The Chinese mantis Tenodera aridifolia sinensis was among those wrongly accused of sexual cannibalism during mating in several previous studies. However Liske and Davis, although still stuck in the laboratory, made some concessions to the mantis. They fed the mantises regularly, turned the bright observer lights down, and left the room to replace a fidgeting human observer with a stationary video camera. Surprise surprise, no cannibalism occurred! In fact, a whole courtship behavior by the male and female mantises, new to science, was observed!"

Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy by Volume Training

2009-12-16T20:47:00.001-05:00

Not to brag, but my training over the last two years has led me to completely agree with this article. One set per exercise worked for three months - increased my muscular weight 20 lbs. But regardless of changing exercises, or increasing weight (intensity) through periodization cycles, I have maintained essentially the same weight for almost two years. The small results I see come from low--er weight, multiple set phases of my workout routines.

From the article:

There are two types of muscular hypertrophy. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is when the volume of sarcoplasmic fluid in the muscle cell increases – this makes the muscles bigger, but does not increase their strength. Myofibrillar hypertrophy is when the myofobrils increase to improve muscular strength. This only leads to a small increase in muscle size. Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is the aim of bodybuilders, whereas myofibrillar hypertrophy is the aim of athletes and power lifters.

Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy which involved the increase in sarcoplasms, means that the muscles store more glycosomes, which are granules of stored glycogen. So for bodybuilders, increased glycogen production is important, and for this more carbs are required.

Research has also shown that increase repetitions (volume training) leads to sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, i.e. bigger muscles.

Maybe the real answer is a combination of high volume (warm up sets) and one work set where you lift until failure.

--> This will be my new routine for a while - multiple "warm-up" sets followed by a progressive loading set (60% 1RM 1st week, 65% 1RM 2nd week, 70% 1RM 3rd week, 75% 1RM 4th week... to 90% 1RM

Ghosts

2009-12-16T19:51:00.001-05:00

Listening to The Moth podcast (Joan Juliet Buck: The Ghost of the Rue Jacob), I remembered the This American Life episode about how carbon monoxide poisoning causes hallucinations very similar to being haunted. Old homes with gas lights that frequently did not burn efficiently and caused CO poisoning -->

Symptoms such as delirium and hallucinations have led people suffering poisoning to think they have seen ghosts or to believe their house is haunted. (Wikipedia)

http://www.ghostvillage.com/resources/2004/resources_10312004.shtml

I respectfully disagree, Mr. Miller

2009-12-15T11:00:00.001-05:00

Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, believes Darwinian evolution in humans is actually speeding up. He highlighted sexual selection through mate choice as one key driver.
"You still have powerful mate choice shaping mental traits particularly … traits that are needed to succeed economically and in raising kids," Miller said.

I disagree.

Aside from some direct questions such as:
How many people never marry and never have children? (Not many)
How many uneducated, poor, mean, stupid, ugly people have children? (More than highly educated, career people)

The fact remains - we have pretty much all of the conditions required for no evolution - Human Evolution Is Dead

Irish

2009-12-15T09:58:00.001-05:00

Who would have guessed that there are more "Irish" than French in Ottawa?

But, really, we all know that those "Irish" and "Scottish" are claiming their ethnicity from immigrants 3 or 4 generations back.

They speak English, have roots here, were born in Canada, and are Canadian citizens.

Mothaím ionad ignorant toisc nach raibh a fhios agam go raibh Gaeilge ina teanga sin difriúil ón Béarla.

Conversational Media

2009-12-14T14:26:00.001-05:00

Is the progression toward short media-bites bad?

I say no, it is more like regular conversations

- well over a billion views a day on YouTube

- The average number of tweets per day is 1.9 Million

Does this mean we will have a more scattered, less probing attention span?

Miller

2009-12-14T13:36:00.002-05:00

This is hilarious!

I was trolling for Geoffrey Miller articles and -->

Pill bad for Lapdancers' fortunes

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/news/news/1156/

Qu-qu-Twitter

2009-12-14T13:16:00.001-05:00

I'm thinking of quiting the blog and twittering my thoughts away instead since:

0) Nora, you are only one who reads this,

1) my entries are short, like a tweet, usually

2) twittering is trendier than blogging

Sucre à la crème au sirop d'érable

2009-12-14T11:27:00.001-05:00

Sugar, cream, glucose, brown sugar, butter, maple syrup, natural maple syrup flavor, potassium sorbate

140 calories pour 2 morceaux

30 g sucres

Diabetes, diabetes, diabetes

Benford's Law

2009-12-09T12:22:00.000-05:00

I was listening to the WNYC Radiolab "Numbers" episode and they discussed Benford's law. Amazing!

Check it out on Wikipedia:

Benford's law, also called the first-digit law, states that in lists of numbers from many (but not all) real-life sources of data, the leading digit is distributed in a specific, non-uniform way. According to this law, the first digit is 1 almost one third of the time, and larger digits occur as the leading digit with lower and lower frequency, to the point where 9 as a first digit occurs less than one time in twenty. This distribution of first digits arises logically whenever a set of values is distributed logarithmically. Measurements of real world values are often distributed logarithmically (or equivalently, the logarithm of the measurements is distributed uniformly).

Chrz!

Greg Robin

Pinker no like Gladwell

2009-12-07T14:00:00.001-05:00

I like Steven Pinker's writing. He is brilliant and conveys his ideas very effectively. I have not liked Gladwell's writings. I reeks of what I think of as a journalistic style (I have mislabeled this) - as if he tries to expand each sentence into 500 words. I was glad to read that Pinker disapproves of Gladwell in substance and style:

The common thread in Gladwell's writing is a kind of populism, which seeks to undermine the ideals of talent, intelligence and analytical prowess in favor of luck, opportunity, experience and intuition. For an apolitical writer like Gladwell, this has the advantage of appealing both to the Horatio Alger right and to the egalitarian left. Unfortunately he wildly overstates his empirical case. It is simply not true that a quarter back's rank in the draft is uncorrelated with his success in the pros, that cognitive skills don't predict a teacher's effectiveness, that intelligence scores are poorly related to job performance or (the major claim in "Outliers") that above a minimum I.Q. of 120, higher intelligence does not bring greater intellectual achievements.
The reasoning in "Outliers," which consists of cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry and false dichotomies, had me gnawing on my Kindle. Fortunately for "What the Dog Saw," the essay format is a better showcase for Gladwell's talents, because the constraints of length and editors yield a higher ratio of fact to fancy. Readers have much to learn from Gladwell the journalist and essayist. But when it comes to Gladwell the social scientist, they should watch out for those igon values.

Why are people racist?

2009-12-04T16:28:00.001-05:00

People are animals.
Animals have behavioral tendencies.
Some of these tendencies, in certain situations, help keep the animal alive and more likely to pass on the innate behavioral wiring.
Wariness of strangers is one of these tendencies.

One example is to avoid touching feces. Another example is to be wary of strangers.
Why be wary of strangers?
Because they are not bound or restrained by the rules and social pressures of your community.
Tourists are notoriously disrespectful. As are armies on the march.
People who look different from you are typically not from your community.

On the bright side, if there is someone who looks or behaves differently but is long-known within a community, then most people (even small town conservatives) tend to accept them as a person.

So, my short answer to why people are racist is because they have not gotten to know very many of "those strange looking people." Strange and unfamiliar is High-Risk, Low-Benefit.

I bring this up because I have the good fortune of working with a couple of racist hicks.

ClimateGate

2009-12-04T15:52:00.002-05:00

My father, an avowed right-wing muck racker, (I think he thoroughly enjoys being contrary and conservative) sent me several links regarding Climategate last week. I dug into it and found a bunch of polarized crap; so I passed it off as just another case of right wing ranting. This, however, appeared today in the NYTimes Freakonomics column. I've included a short except here:

Many blogs covering the topic are just as bombastic. The most prominent blogs in the arena, however, tend to be less so. That said, emotions still run high — particularly in the comments sections. If you feel like wading into the conversation, you might wish to sample Dot Earth, Watts Up With That, andRealClimate, which presents "climate science from climate scientists." The discussions at RealClimate are intense, for at least two reasons: they are more about the science itself than the conversations at other blogs; and several of its contributors are the very scientists whose e-mails were among the C.R.U. leak, including Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State and one of the scientists responsible for the now-famous"hockey stick" graph, which has been widely used as evidence of a dangerous global-warming trend.

I find it interesting that many people have completely uninformed opinions. In this case, many people believe there is no such thing as global warming and others who believe it is perfectly reasonable to pass draconian command and control laws to

reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In some circles, if you say that you believe in global warming, it is almost as flaky as saying that you believe in god. You have to quickly qualify your statement to make it seem more reasonable and thought-out that simple blind conformity.

But, back to my original topic, I'll just say that I am surprised ClimateGate made it to the popular media... And with a big splash too - currently 114 length comments on Dubner's blog!

StatCounter

2009-12-03T19:30:00.002-05:00

I am smiling right now. This is very cool.

I installed StatCounter on my blog and found the one person in the world, aside from my wife, who has at least glanced at writing: somebody in

Country	Korea, Republic Of
Region	Pusan-jikhalsi
City	Busa

They were looking for "political return on investment" and happened across my blog!

Celebrity appeal

2009-12-03T15:17:00.001-05:00

Why do people care about celebrity gossip?

If I turn off my sense of superiority and cynicism, it is fun to hear the gos in bite-size format.

It is about the same as hearing gossip about someone I know personally. For example, someone I know sent out a text message saying he couldn't ride that morning because he had too much drink and blow. This is classic what-the-f**k gossip. "Blow"?

Am I low-class or innately stupid and unrefined if I look at traffic accidents as I pass by? Or if my interest is peaked by people behaving badly or bizarrely?

Have you heard of George Clooney? Probably.

Have you heard of Chris Smith? Probably not - so my gossip about him probably not too interesting to you.

Cheers,

Greg Robin

How to think about genes

2009-11-30T17:01:00.002-05:00

As a kid, I had the feeling that genes were somehow different from chemicals because they were so essential for life. Biochemistry classes diminished this feeling somewhat, and reading The Selfish Gene diminished it even further.

It is easy to think of chemical reactions occurring at a rate partially determined by the concentration of substrate molecules, but integrating this concept into genetic expression is more difficult. Genes are chemicals. They react like chemicals because they are chemicals. Adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine are relatively stable molecules that link together weak hydrogen bonds which are broken up and reformed fairly easily - just like many other molecular chains.

The key lesson of The Selfish Gene is that genes do not any influence over their fate other than the amino acid they code for. Whatever happens after the amino acid is created is completely out of the control of the gene. The gene does not know or care what larger context it belongs to – it simply exists if it's amino acid byproduct somehow or another allows it to continue to exist.

A gene is completely and utterly stupid, has no sentience, thought, feelings, or concerns. Despite the title of Dawkins' book, a gene is not selfish and it certainly does not care about the creature it happens to exist in, the species the creature belongs to, or Mother Earth.

If you think about genes as lifeless chemical fragments, then you will be much, much closer to understanding the true nature of genes than most people.

How to think about protein

2009-11-29T20:51:00.001-05:00

What is the best protein? What is the cheapest source of protein? If you need to consume 200 grams of protein per day, how can you do this without eating all day long?

In addition to price and taste, sources of protein vary with respect to their Protein Digestibility-Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDAAS), which a measure of overall protein digestibility in foods. In short, whey protein supplements and eggs are very efficient, economical sources of protein. Your cost per digestible gram of protein is lowest with these sources.

An excellent article which explains all of this in clear English can be found here.

http://www.answerfitness.com/331/highest-protein-content-food/

How to think about global warming

2009-11-27T21:25:00.001-05:00

Good people know that we need to do something to prevent global warming, right?

Some people care enough to dig up numbers and try to make informed judgments.

Question: What percent of global warming is due to human activities?

Answer: We are responsible for about 0.28% of greenhouse gases.

This is one of the clearest and most articulate discussion of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions I have stumbled across.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

How to Think about Economics

2009-11-27T16:40:00.001-05:00

I have a degree in economics but haven't practiced the profession a day in my life. Am I qualified to say how one should think about economics? Probably not, but I just finished Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. It was originally written in 1946, but, as someone once said, history has a tendency to repeat itself. The lesson applies as much, or more, today than it did then. Especially in regards to the "economic stimulus package".

The Lesson: The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Question: Is the Economic Stimulus Package a good thing? Will it reduce unemployment?

Answer: No. It will have several negative results which will adversely affect the work poor the most severely. But don't just take my word for it, read what Hazlitt has to say.

Friends!

2009-11-25T13:05:00.001-05:00

When I see someone with 300+ friends, I feel a little dimmed and unpopular.

Damn good thing my salary is not listed.

There are many automatically suggested friends, but I don't want to befriend them for various reasons.

Mostly because I don't really like them, or was never really friends with them.

It feels cheap and whorish to ask to be friends with people I hardly talked to when I had a chance (high school acquaintances, mostly).

Lots of people are not very active, of those who are, many struggle to have anything interesting to say.

It is mostly very banal.

The more friends you have, however, the more likely you are to have one or two interesting posts per day.

The more the merrier.

Bigger is Better.

With regards to popularity, what key words are most searched for in the bloggersphere?

I don't know about blogs, but Google lists these

http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

American Thanksgiving seems to be on everyone's minds... and I hadn't heard about Tiger Woods cheating on his wife. Wasn't she a Swedish bikini model?

Quite interesting - a perfect pop culture snapshot

1. adam lambert ama video youtube

2. walmart black friday deals

3. thanksgiving quotes inspirational

4. turkey brine recipes

5. turkey cooking times

6. cornbread dressing recipes

7. michelle obama pictures

8. state dinner photos

9. best buy black friday 2009 flyer

10. home depot black friday ad 2009

11. navy seals court martial

12. thanksgiving jokes

13. wilmington ohio

14. how long to cook a turkey per pound

15. cell phone blocker

16. nfl week 12 expert picks

17. adam sandler turkey song

18. thanksgiving wishes

19. thanksgiving trivia

20. tiger woods affair

21. toyota recall

22. butterball turkey questions

23. toyota recall gas pedal

24. happy thanksgiving

25. cara quici

26. megan allen

27. offensive michelle obama image <-- Just talking about this kind of crap last night with Nora

28. dalia dippolito

29. googlegooglegooglegoogle

30. black friday at wal mart

31. ben maisani

32. michelle obama monkey pics

33. adam lambert early show

34. sweet potato recipes

35. kmart thanksgiving day sale

36. googlegooglegooglegooglegooglegooglegooglegooglegooglegoogle <-- what is this all about?

37. how to thaw a turkey fast

38. tiger woods cheating on wife

39. happy thanksgiving clip art

40. thanksgiving greetings

(How to make friends on Facebook)

Health warning - Swine Flu

2009-11-24T15:58:00.002-05:00

Jokes, complements of my Padre.

If you received an e-mail from the Department of Health telling you not
to eat canned pork because of Swine Flu, you may ignore it.

It's just Spam!

Kezmonk Gwrant email exchange

2009-11-24T15:54:00.001-05:00

Kezmonk :

Bittersweet Destiny - like I said, is 85% of what I would write myself. I was going to go chapter by chapter (assuming that would mean something to you) but, mostly the parts that are written poorly are those that lacked data (baby brain development)...and i am still thinking about his strong argument that sex (in plants, animals) was driven or kicked off by pathogen pressure.

two things I have always been dragging around with me

female promiscuity and marriage; since humans are 85% polygamous and some bit thereafter monogamous .... I always get the feeling that the female is still treated as "passively" having sex, but usually sex ONLY within monogamous relationships. the book makes a good attempt....but still...

okay
my assumptions are for some form of life before agriculture, say ~200,000 years to then, when Homo sapiens is on the scene.

idea: females take advantage of their security in knowing which offspring is theirs and want TWO things - a strong healthy male (sexual selection causing size dimorphism) AND a provider/caretaker to share the work load (selection for mother aspects in males). There is no reason at all to presume that females need these two to be one in the same. The strategy is still K (few mates) ... I don't also see why a female, even though she is limited to the number of offspring, would only invest in one sperm donor. The male, needs a strategy to ensure that at least some of the offspring that he has, are actually his. This is more telling that simply sperm is cheap and because of that, males want to mate with everyone. This gives are reason for the high sex drive in males. Kind of like fish. More sperm, more chance, and you need to take those chances. The female always knows.

One the flip side, if he (if he is the caretaker version) has to raise a child that is not his own, some of his own children will be born anyway. This is where marriage comes in. It is a compromise on both sides - the males' attempt to control cuckolding and the females chance at trapping a caretaker.

Humans have large penises (in view of primates, from what I learned in my anthropology course), large sperm count; indicative of the polygamous life style - but more importantly, the penis does not evolve like that without direct selection pressure in the vagina, in combating sperm with sperm in the same female at the same time.
(you can find anything, but: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18424731.500-sleeping-around-boosts-evolution.html ; http://www.news-medical.net/news/2004/11/08/6147.aspx ; i do have access to the paper, i downloaded it - humans are in the middle.. maybe the numbers are correct, maybe not - but on average)

*
Can twins have two different fathers? One in 12 fraternal twin sets have two different fathers worldwide, while in the US the rate is 1 in 400 twinsets.
data: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7871943
One 1992 study estimates that the frequency of heteropaternal superfecundation among dizygotic twins whose parents were involved in paternity suits was approximately 2.4%; see the references section, below, for more details.

expand that with the rare probability of that happening: The number of living human twins in the world has been estimated to be approximately 125 million in 2006[1] (roughly 1.9% of the world population), with just 10 million monozygotic twins (roughly 0.2% of the world population and 8% of all twins). The twin birth rate in the United States in 2004, 2005 and 2006 was slightly above 32 twin live births per 1,000 live births[2].

Gwrant:

Amazing, eh? That so many women would have multiple partners slop inside of them at the same time... Obviously I'm on the other end of the spectrum.
I have a hard time imagining how people could regularly achieve that these days. I am utterly dull, apparently.

In a tribal setting 200k years ago, I imagine (letting my non-researched fantasies run amok) the relationships would be looser for two reasons.
One, because teenagers tend to fall in and out of love fairly quickly and the average age of the Ancients was very young. Women (girls) would be as fickle and sentimental as teenagers today. If they survived to adulthood (18+), then they might settle down and behave more "monogamously".
Could you imagine a evolutionary process based on the mentalities of horny teenagers?
Two, in a group of 50 people, 25 are of the same sex and only 10 or so would make suitable partners, a young person does not have a whole lot to choose from. It would be like being born and raised in a small classroom of teenagers. A bunch of f-ing losers except maybe one or two decent catches...

With regards to being a provider- gift giving (care-taking) is highest in the honeymoon period (first few months). Romancing with words, gifts, heroic deeds, etc... After a year or so, the infatuation plummets.

I think boy/men would take care of children or provide for them primarily as a way of looking good for the girls/women. I feel within myself and urge to show-off how fun, kind, and physically fit (throwing kids up in the air) I am with kids when women are around...

Boys/Men are not really trapped (except in the modern legal sense) and I believe harems where much more overtly common (versus the covert commonality the data reveal today).

For a good read, check out Helen Fisher's Anatomy of Love.
It has been a long while since I've read Bittersweet Destiny. I can't remember the arguments specifically.

Diesel House

2009-11-19T16:39:00.001-05:00

Our house is like a big idling diesel truck with a 128 gallon gas tank.

The gas gauge is currently hovering over empty.

I had a little setback

2009-11-18T16:32:00.000-05:00

We moved across town and managed to injure myself while moving, so I couldn't go to the gym for a week.
When I finally did walk into the new gym, two guys at the squat rack were talking about how many cc's they're taking an how many days "on" they run. WTF? What kind of gym is this that guys are openly discussing steroids?
This is the GoodLife on Walkley and Conroy (Ottawa, Ontario).

Aside from the shady clients, my only other complaint is the lack of a weight belt with a chain. I've put in two requests for one to be made available.

Penske

2009-11-18T13:22:00.003-05:00

Penske agreed to refund the fuel charge they billed me, but I'm still irritated. I refilled the tank on the truck I rented until the diesel pump repeatedly clicked off, yet I still got billed for 23 liters of fuel! I only drove the truck 74 km. That would mean the truck only goes 3.2 km per liter.

I should have only used about $14.41 for the trip.

Warning: Bad Roofer

2009-10-28T08:29:00.005-04:00

Let it be known that T&T Roofing in Ottawa, Ontario - Trevor Chesebro - is exceedingly bad.

He and his crew did not show up on time, banged up the siding, did not provide a proper receipt, did not clean up, and, most importantly, put leaks in our roof!

The step flashing slid down, leaving gaps, and they did not bother to slide it back up - so, of course, it channeled the rain water right into our house.

These guys also did not seal/caulk the nails they used for the flashing. We had unsealed nail holes straight through the roof.

They are completely unprofessional. Avoid them. Warn others against them.

How to squat

2009-10-26T13:19:00.000-04:00

I recently learned about keeping my shoulder blades together for bench presses, but I did not know I needed to do this for squats too.

http://doubleyourgains.com/how-to-squat

Deconditioning

2009-10-05T09:18:00.000-04:00

Current schedule:
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday (upper), Sunday (ride)
Last week, 75% (of 1RM):

Squat 225
Dead Lift 185
Shrug 225
Bench 205
Pull up 250
Dip 250

205 is 100% of my 10RM for bench, and 35 extra is about all I can pullup for 10 reps.
I could do a few more for everything else - squat, dead, shrug, dip.
http://www.exrx.net/WeightTraining/Periodization.html

Need to do my deconditioning/rest week. It is not the right time of the cycle, but I haven't taken a break in months and I feel it...

Change

2009-08-02T13:31:00.000-04:00

With regards to weight lifting and building muscle, just about anything works, but nothing works for ever.
It is a challenge to keep changing this up. Multiple sets, progressive loading, super-sets, slow down, heavy weights, high reps, etc, etc...

I've been asked to do another Hot August Nights race... $150 for a weekend of pain and misery. Should I do it?

Holland Code

2009-08-02T13:22:00.003-04:00

[snip, snip]

Here are my results from a Holland Codes quiz...

Organic CropScience

2009-07-31T08:51:00.003-04:00

"[A] study, by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It reviewed 50 years of research into the health and nutritional benefits of organic foods. The study concluded that while there were small differences in nutritional benefits of organic produce, they weren't enough to be of any public health relevance. Overall, there were no differences in most nutrients found in organically or conventionally grown crops, including vitamin C, calcium and iron." - http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/05/07/f-food-organic.html

But what about pesticides, eh?
As it turns out, most organic foods have pesticide residues when tested and many have more pesticide residues than the maximum residue levels (MRLs), which "are generally-acceptable limits of pesticide deposits."

3.99% of conventionally grown foods and 1.24% of organic foods exceed the (MRLs).
..."from spray drift and other situations where there are interfaces among organic and conventional environments".

"Our experience shows that cases with residues above set MRLs had their origin not in organic agriculture but from unintended or intended mislabelling or persistant compounds in the soils."
- http://www.euractiv.com/en/cap/eu-report-reveals-pesticides-organic-food/article-183986

How about the environment?
"organic farming yields only 75 to 90 percent of the crop of conventional systems, meaning that more land must be planted in order to have an equal return."
- http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/04/13/cl.organics/index.html

But it's just a small price to pay, isn't it?
"A recent study by ERS examined price premiums for organic broccoli, carrots, and mesclun (lettuce) mix. During 2000-04, the highest premiums (near 100 percent over conventional) were observed for broccoli and carrots..."

Lettuce looks good though.

This cynical reality check brought to you by Bayer CropScience, BASF, Syngenta and Monsanto.

Monkey's Uncle

2009-07-21T15:26:00.000-04:00

While it is fun to hop on the conspiracy theory bandwagon every now and then, I really can’t take it seriously. I like to research ideas before I honestly subscribe to them, so I looked into the faked lunar landing and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.

It is almost too incredible that we landed on the moon 40 years ago. It is history which occurred before I was born yet seems more advanced than our current technology. The key, I think, are the effects of gravity and atmosphere on landing and taking off. The moon has 1/6 the gravitation pull as Earth and no atmosphere, so the challenges of ascent and descent are much simpler. I am not a rocket scientist, so it’s all black magic to me.

The collapse of the World Trade Centers looks too controlled and neat for non-engineered processes. It looks like a controlled, engineered demolition. But, of course, I am not a demolition expert or a real structural engineer, so I don’t really know. As an ignorant outsider, I just have to take the word of the structural engineering community and the peer reviewed reports they have published, such as http://www.civil.northwestern.edu/people/bazant/PDFs/Papers/466.pdf

So, for conspiracy theories, the problem is lack of information. I honestly don’t have enough information to either believe or disbelieve almost anything. We could have landed on the moon; it could have been an elaborate hoax. The Trade Center towers could have collapsed from heat softened buckling; they could have been demolished to make an excuse for renewed investment in the military.

Does God exist? I don’t know; I’m just a monkey’s uncle and you can’t teach a monkey calculus.

Crayons

2009-07-16T15:44:00.005-04:00

Type Junky

2009-07-14T21:14:00.002-04:00

What is the appeal of personality tests and descriptions? I am guilty of being addicted to trying to find the perfect description of me. Is this vanity, narcissism, insecurity, a need for structure...? It feels so good to find a description that works. "Wow, this is dead on. That is so me. Its amazing how accurate this is!" I crave these moments of clarity like a drug addict. The MBTI is my drug - despite the fact that it is obsolete, inaccurate, useless, no longer in favor, etc. The fundamental premise of bimodal, one-extreme-or-the-other, type distribution is empirically incorrect. People are normally distributed over the dimensions. Most people (68%) are normal for extroversion, thinking-feeling, sensory-intuition, and perceiving-judging. Less than one sixth of the population are greater than one standard deviation from the average for any one of these dimensions, and less than (1/6)^4 are any pure type, eg ESTJ - 1/6 unusually E times 1/6 unusually S times 1/6 unusually T times 1/6 unusually J or 1/1296. So, can't find your type? This is probably why.
Despite this knowledge and irritation, I still find myself craving a description. What is wrong with me? I have taken Five Factor Model tests and self reported myself to be high on extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and stability. Translated into MBTI, that would make me a ENFJ - which utterly fails to describe me accurately (I'm much closer to an INTP).
I think I want a benevolent dictation of how to live my life - what career to choose, what hobbies, what style of dress, etc - to optimize my satisfaction and contentment. I am a machine in need of a tune up - just give me the right repair manual and I'll be humming as good as new.
Greg Robin, to be happy, be physically and socially active and think well of yourself. The end.

Plan

2009-07-09T10:10:00.003-04:00

Architects rely too much on plan views and aerial perspectives. Not too many people fly over buildings or gardens.
It irritates me to look through Francis Ching's book on architecture form, space and order and see examples of interesting plan views. Plan views are good for traffic flow and basic functionality, but it almost completely irrelevant for beauty.
It also irritates me that we are designing a unique roof structure (for a government building in Toledo, Ohio) that will be completely invisible to any of the occupants.

3 of 4

2009-07-08T14:48:00.000-04:00

"The percentage of the children born in London who died before the age of five decreased from 74.5% in 1730-1749 to 31.8% in 1810-1829."
^ Mabel C. Buer, Health, Wealth and Population in the Early Days of the Industrial Revolution, London: George Routledge & Sons, 1926, page 30 ISBN 0-415-38218-1

Wow. 3 out of 4 kids died before the age of five. How could you live without a completely irrational sense of hope and optimism?

Worldometers

2009-07-08T08:29:00.004-04:00

I asked some people at work if they knew what the world population was and I was surprised how completely uninterested and far-off they were... then, a couple of weeks later, my boss asked me if I knew who painted a picture he showed me - I had no clue. Nora knew immediately that it was Emily Carr, but she couldn't care less about the world population.
For those who are interested in world metrics, check this out: http://www.worldometers.info/

Waste of money or economic stimulus?

2009-07-07T12:13:00.001-04:00

Rambling and disorganized... thinking.

I am not really talking about the stimulus package here - I am more curious about the benefits of spending exorbitant amounts on architecture, new medical procedures, luxury goods, etc. While my initial reaction to people spending insane amounts on basically useless things is negative and exasperated, I think it might actually be a good thing or a neutral thing. Money spent is money earned by someone else. The faster money is spent, or the more it is spent in a given period of time, the more it is used, right? A dollar spent 10 times in a year is more useful than a dollar spent once.

Foolish spending, however, does not promote efficient industries.
Inefficiency leads to costing more for the same thing - which is basically inflation, no?
If you invest in a foolish project, you are not going to get your money back plus interest, you are going to lose money.

So all spending is not equal.

Architecture is not necessarily foolish - it can promote business, tourism, etc. But I am suspicion when government money is spent on extravagant airports that are going to be used regardless.

24 Hour Mountain Biking

2009-06-16T14:11:00.000-04:00

24 hours? More like 5 hours with 4 hour breaks in between... or maybe, if I'm lucky, 4 hours with 5 hour breaks in between.

The Summer Solstice 24-hr race in Albion Hills, Ontario is this weekend. Once again I'll be riding with a Clydesdale team. Unlike last year, I do not plan to push it too hard - I will be doing more leisurely 1 hr plus lap times. We probably will not win 1st this year, but if there are only 3 teams registered, like last year, we will probably podium!

With an 80% chance of rain for Saturday, we are probably going to be having a wet and wild time. Oh, how I love getting pumped up for a ride when I'm tired, wet, and muddy!

After that, I will be focusing on weight training. Hopefully, if I pay attention and actually do scheduled workouts, I will break the 220 lbs plateau I've been at for the past 6 months. It is appealingly mindless to just do sets of 10 with the standard exercises.

Nunavut

2009-06-16T11:21:00.002-04:00

How sad it would be to live in Nunavut.
The total population is about 30,000 people.
The number of criminal offenses in 2006 and 2007 was 9,607 and 9,308.
Of those who are not living off the land, 28 percent are unemployed.

Spent

2009-06-03T15:01:00.001-04:00

Spin-off ideas from Geoffrey Miller’s new book…

This book is based in evolutionary psychology, or evolutionary sexual selection psychology. Socializing is beneficial for our survival as human animals, but better for the high status individuals than for the low status ones. So we vie to be high status and have high status offspring – males and females alike, similarly, but differently… Through their real and perceived effects, general traits are amplified over generations through differential mating and survival success. Beauty, health, and fertility are clear and easy to accept examples – it is easy to imagine handsome, healthy, vigorous pre-historic men having more kids than ugly, sickly, infertile men. It is also easy to imagine healthier, more fertile women having more kids. It is only slightly more difficult to image prehistoric men and women who were nicer, more conscientious, more intelligent, more social, and more risk taking had more kids.

In tight, social, tribal communities like the societies humans evolved in, it is easy to be accurately evaluated by everyone in your community. It is not necessary to advertise your qualities in any other way except the way you interact and live your life, and possibly through ornamentation and possessions. The qualities themselves result in more alliances, more friends, and more lovers. Emphasizing and advertising these traits through ornamentation results in more friends and lovers, unless, of course, everyone else is advertising just as much as you… Then you up the ante and result in an arms race – where everyone is striving to seem better than average, or where those that seem better win more friends and lovers. And all of this is done more or less unconsciously through our likings, preferences, urges, wants, and needs and is monitored through our self-esteem, or sense of social worth.

How do you increase your sense of social worth (self-esteem) in a world with virtually no face-to-face interaction with the 10,000 people we see or pass by every day? Through ornamentation and possessions? Can I sell you on the idea that this thing (whatever it may be) will make you stand-out of the crowd as distinctively intelligent, fun, risk taking, or conscientious? Yes, I can. Will you feel better and have a higher self esteem? Yes, probably, but only for a little while because your social status will not really be raised among those who know you – at least not for very long. Those who do not know you do not interact with you enough to affirm your status sense, so you lose confidence in the boost. Unless, of course, the product actually changes the way in which you interact with the people you know, it has no effect on your social worth.

"Of Modern Poetry," Wallace Stevens

2009-06-02T15:39:00.001-04:00

The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one. The actor is
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise.
It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

Happy Narcissist

2009-05-25T13:57:00.001-04:00

...they tend to be "more extraverted and less socially anxious," he says. "There's no good evidence that deep down, narcissists hate themselves."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/297/5586/1474d

NY Times

2009-05-21T13:16:00.000-04:00

Message in What We Buy, but Nobody’s Listening
By JOHN TIERNEY

Why does a diploma from Harvard cost $100,000 more than a similar piece of paper from City College? Why might a BMW cost $25,000 more than a Subaru WRX with equally fast acceleration? Why do “sophisticated” consumers demand 16-gigabyte iPhones and “fair trade” coffee from Starbucks?

If you ask market researchers or advertising executives, you might hear about the difference between “rational” and “emotional” buying decisions, or about products falling into categories like “hedonic” or “utilitarian” or “positional.” But Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico, says that even the slickest minds on Madison Avenue are still in the prescientific dark ages.

Instead of running focus groups and spinning theories, he says, marketers could learn more by administering scientifically calibrated tests of intelligence and personality traits. If marketers (or their customers) understood biologists’ new calculations about animals’ “costly signaling,” Dr. Miller says, they’d see that Harvard diplomas and iPhones send the same kind of signal as the ornate tail of a peacock.

Sometimes the message is as simple as “I’ve got resources to burn,” the classic conspicuous waste demonstrated by the energy expended to lift a peacock’s tail or the fuel guzzled by a Hummer. But brand-name products aren’t just about flaunting transient wealth. The audience for our signals — prospective mates, friends, rivals — care more about the permanent traits measured in tests of intelligence and personality, as Dr. Miller explains in his new book, “Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior.”

Suppose, during a date, you casually say, “The sugar maples in Harvard Yard were so beautiful every fall term.” Here’s what you’re signaling, as translated by Dr. Miller:

“My S.A.T. scores were sufficiently high (roughly 720 out of 800) that I could get admitted, so my I.Q. is above 135, and I had sufficient conscientiousness, emotional stability and intellectual openness to pass my classes. Plus, I can recognize a tree.”

Or suppose a young man, after listening to the specifications of the newest iPhone or hearing about a BMW’s “Servotronic variable-ratio power steering,” says to himself, “Those features sound awesome.” Here’s Dr. Miller’s translation:

“Those features can be talked about in ways that will display my general intelligence to potential mates and friends, who will bow down before my godlike technopowers, which rival those of Iron Man himself.”

Most of us will insist there are other reasons for going to Harvard or buying a BMW or an iPhone — and there are, of course. The education and the products can yield many kinds of rewards. But Dr. Miller says that much of the pleasure we derive from products stems from the unconscious instinct that they will either enhance or signal our fitness by demonstrating intelligence or some of the Big Five personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, stability and extraversion.

In a series of experiments, Dr. Miller and other researchers found that people were more likely to expend money and effort on products and activities if they were first primed with photographs of the opposite sex or stories about dating.

After this priming, men were more willing to splurge on designer sunglasses, expensive watches and European vacations. Women became more willing to do volunteer work and perform other acts of conspicuous charity — a signal of high conscientiousness and agreeableness, like demonstrating your concern for third world farmers by spending extra for Starbucks’s “fair trade” coffee.

These signals can be finely nuanced, as Dr. Miller parses them in his book. The “conspicuous precision” of a BMW or a Lexus helps signal the intelligence of all the owners, but the BMW’s “conspicuous reputation” also marks its owner as more extraverted and less agreeable (i.e., more aggressive). Owners of Toyotas and Hondas are signaling high conscientiousness by driving reliable and economical cars.

But once you’ve spent the money, once you’ve got the personality-appropriate appliance or watch or handbag, how much good are these signals actually doing you? Not much, Dr. Miller says. The fundamental consumerist delusion, as he calls it, is that purchases affect the way we’re treated.

The grand edifice of brand-name consumerism rests on the narcissistic fantasy that everyone else cares about what we buy. (It’s no accident that narcissistic teenagers are the most brand-obsessed consumers.) But who else even notices? Can you remember what your partner or your best friend was wearing the day before yesterday? Or what kind of watch your boss has?

A Harvard diploma might help get you a date or a job interview, but what you say during the date or conversation will make the difference. An elegantly thin Skagen watch might send a signal to a stranger at a cocktail party or in an airport lounge, but even if it were noticed, anyone who talked to you for just a few minutes would get a much better gauge of your intelligence and personality.

To get over your consuming obsessions, Dr. Miller suggests exercises like comparing the relative costs and pleasures of the stuff you’ve bought. (You can try the exercise at nytimes.com/tierneylab.) It may seem odd that we need these exercises — why would natural selection leave us with such unproductive fetishes? — but Dr. Miller says it’s not surprising.

“Evolution is good at getting us to avoid death, desperation and celibacy, but it’s not that good at getting us to feel happy,” he says, calling our desire to impress strangers a quirky evolutionary byproduct of a smaller social world.

“We evolved as social primates who hardly ever encountered strangers in prehistory,” Dr. Miller says. “So we instinctively treat all strangers as if they’re potential mates or friends or enemies. But your happiness and survival today don’t depend on your relationships with strangers. It doesn’t matter whether you get a nanosecond of deference from a shopkeeper or a stranger in an airport.”

Sea Oh Two

2009-04-24T11:58:00.002-04:00

Our current CO2 levels are 388.79 ppmv.
The highest it has been in 400,000 years is about 300 ppmv.
Is climate change happening? Yes
Are humans partially responsible? Yes
Can we do anything about it? Probably not
Is there a profitable opportunity in coming cataclysm? Surely there is!

Figure 2.22: Variations of temperature, methane, and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations derived from air trapped within ice cores from Antarctica (adapted from Sowers and Bender, 1995; Blunier et al., 1997; Fischer et al., 1999; Petit et al., 1999).25 years.
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/095.htm

polymerase

2009-04-21T14:40:00.000-04:00

I know everyone has probably heard this already, but I think it is amazing to reflect on every once in a while…
There are approximately 100 trillion cells in the human body, each with 3 billion DNA base pairs. Right now, every one of these cells is buzzing with chemical activity with billions of electrons popping from molecule to molecule… causing molecules to grab and clutch and push and shove each other around at millions of reactions per second. Amazingly all of this mayhem and resulting gook keeps going – it somehow keeps resetting itself.
This is amazing even without caffeine.

EDM

2009-02-25T10:50:00.003-05:00

In the next ten years, I predict that all cars will be equipped with electronic driving monitors (EDM) that will provide feedback on your driving style and efficiency as well as provide insurers information on how safe you drive. Initially the driving monitors will be optional and insurers will offer discounts to people providing driving data.

So thereafter, tax payers will be convinced that valuable money and police person-power is saved by not needing to enforce traffic laws like speeding, stopping at stop signs, etc. if EDMs are required.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/index.php?p=1499
http://ezinearticles.com/?Ensure-That-Your-Teen-is-Driving-Safely&id=921264
http://casr.adelaide.edu.au/T95/paper/s24p3.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/15/vehicle_movement_database/

Cost of Living Index

2009-02-24T08:53:00.001-05:00

The cost of living is a funny thing - two people may make the same amount of money in two different places, but the cost of living can make the real value of their incomes very different. Take, for instance, the cost of living in Ottawa, Canada versus Austin, Texas. Based off of data I pulled from the web, the cost of living in Ottawa (75.6) is 64% more than in Austin (46.2).

As an arbitrary example, if you made $50,000 in Austin, you would need to make $81,818 in Ottawa to have the same standard of living. ($108,000 in New York City (100)) Or, put another way, if you made $50k in Ottawa, you would have the same standard of living as someone making $30,555 in Austin.

Career Advice

2009-02-18T14:19:00.002-05:00

If you are a young 'un in Central Texas and you want to have a high paying job, you could do worse than to visit
http://socrates.cdr.state.tx.us//iSocrates/occprofiles/profile_select.asp

You can sort all the careers in Central Texas by expected growth, salary, etc.
Here, for example, is a list of careers that have over 100 new openings per year and make over $80,000 per year.

Cluster Flock

2009-02-09T16:09:00.001-05:00

We are all individuals, but wouldn't it be funny if someone could predict what you are going to do tonight - what you are going to eat, read, watch - and know what you value most in life?

e.g.:
Andy pulls into his row house in his Honda Civic. His wife he helps his wife prepare dinner and take care of their 4-year-old while listening to a classical music radio station. She goes to the gym while Andy puts their daughter to bed and reads a developmental economics book, "The Bottom Billion". Tomorrow will be his turn to go to the gym.

I've been thinking about consumer profiling (clustering) with the ever increasing availability of consumer data... specifically, the "analysis of consumer lifestyles to create a detailed customer profile... [these results] are combined with geographic (place of work or residence) and demographic (age, education, occupation, etc.) characteristics to develop a more 'lifelike' portrait of the targeted consumer segment."

You can (if you fall in to one of the top groups) check out your own profile by (US) zip code at http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=0&SubID=&pageName=Home

A great many products are moving towards this predictive profiling: Google (Sponsored Links), iTunes' Genius, Amazon, other online booksellers, and TiVo Suggestions ("Users can rate programs from three "thumbs up" to three "thumbs down." TiVo user ratings are combined to create a recommendation, based on what TiVo users with similar viewing habits watch.")

I believe we will soon be seeing much more sophisticated "suggestions" software that pulls from larger data sources and has an almost "Ah, ha!" marketing appeal. A new era of direct marketing is on its way that will have us pegged so accurately that we will be uncertain of our own opinions ("Is the calculator wrong? Maybe Excel didn't add up those numbers right...").

Politics are very closely linked with marketing. While micro-attention to the polls has been around for several election cycles, I believe a much more detailed voter profile is coalesing which will allow for much more effective hooks. Modern and future election campaigns know what people care about, what media they use, and what they had for breakfast...

Political return on investment

2009-02-06T14:26:00.000-05:00

Here are some of my views on the economic stimulus package. There are three main parts to this issue: the core issues, inflation, and politics.

The aim of the short term stimulus is to get people to spend more. Consumption is down dramatically, i.e. the market for things that are produced is down. The question is, how do we best get people to spend money? Should the government spend money on contracts which get companies to hire more people and make CEOs richer? Or should the government give everyone a couple of thousand dollars? Which method would cause inflation to increase faster?

Is consumer spending really the core of the problem? Why are people spending less? Do they have less money, less credit, less confidence about the future? Contrast today with the Monetary Policy Report submitted to the Congress on February 11, 2004, "Uncertainty in financial markets had declined, and rising consumer confidence and a wave of mortgage refinancing appeared to be supporting consumer spending." If consumer spending is the problem, then the deeper problems are uncertainty in financial markets and the crash in the value of equities and real estate. These are the issues that need to be addressed

Returning back to the question of inflation, is there inflationary slack in a depressed economy? Normally giving everyone money would simply drive up the price of everything, but if supply exceeds demand, retailers would be happy to get rid of their excess inventory without raising prices much. But after they spend their money, would consumers continue to spend? Would the core problems continue to persist?

What about the politics of government spending? The current bill is widely acknowledged to be loaded with special interest spending. In fact, the political return on investment for this crisis opportunity is far too much to be passed up. Never before in history has a political party had the opportunity to spend so much money to promote its interests. Would it be possible to forego this opportunity - the nation is crying for leadership, something must be done, and the precedent for spending is already established.

In short, my view is that the government spending option is mostly political and will be much less effective than a tax rebate along with serious financial market reform.

Road Kill

2009-02-03T13:02:00.001-05:00

Some people say population control is the key to saving the world. US policy makers are putting into effect laws which will kill off nearly 2000 Americans a year. One of these could be you or me, but hey, what can you do? The key to the key is to disguise the murders in something morally upstanding.

Save the world by increasing fuel economy! The "unfortunate" result will be a 4.4% increase in miles driven and/or number of people killed. Since roughly 42,000 Americans die a year in traffic accidents, a 4.4% increase equals nearly 2000 additional deaths.

I think this plan has merit!

- or -

maybe we could use tolling...

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/the-rebound-effect-of-higher-mpg/

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/why-youll-love-paying-for-roads-that-used-to-be-free-a-guest-post/

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/why-youll-love-paying-for-roads-that-used-to-be-free-part-two/

Probabilities

2009-02-02T15:13:00.001-05:00

"What are the chances, eh?" asked the cop. "... that I'd pull you over twice in one week?"
Considering the fact that as I waited 10 minutes for him to run up the ticket, I watched well over 100 cars go through the stop sign without stopping, and that I had not gotten a ticket in many years - I'd say the probability is pretty low.

At a party this weekend, someone brought up mbti (personality type) and I reacted with determination to piss all over it. I explained a central fallacy with the idea that traits are normally distributed, so the probability of being a particular "true" type are vanishingly slim. I've written about this before, but I feel like makeing a correction and adding a little explanation. (And what is the probability that someone will actually read both entries?)

In a normal distribution, 68% of the values will be within one standard deviation of the mean. In regards to personality type, 68% of people are normal for a trait and only (100% - 68% =) 32% are "outside of the norm". For two traits, only (32% x 32% =) 10% of people are "outside of the norm" for both traits. For three traits, only 3%; and for four traits, only 1%.
So, only 1% of the population is actually a "true type", (e.g. intp, esfj).

Traits Probability
0 68%
1 32%
2 10%
3 3%
4 1%

Greconomics

2009-01-28T14:24:00.000-05:00

I was thinking about the best ways the government can stimulate the economy and came upon a little puzzle for which I have a grand little insight.

The puzzle appeared as I was looking into the debate between tax cuts and government spending, which really boils down to a debate between tax multipliers and fiscal policy multipliers. "The multipliers measure bang for the buck--the amount of short-run GDP expansion one gets from a dollar of spending hikes or tax cuts.
The idea is for the government to either increase government spending (the government increases its purchases of goods and services) or to decrease taxes (the government gives consumers and firms a tax break in order to induce an increase in their spending on goods and services)." - http://homepage.smc.edu/szekely_claudia/OnlineE2/LecturesF05/lectureFiscalPolicy.htm

Going deeper, the effect of a tax cut boils down to the "marginal propensity to consume" (mpc), or how much of a windfall people will actually spend. For example, if you get an extra $1000, will you spend all $1000 or spend $800 and save $200? If you spend all of the money, then your mpc = 1; if you spend $800, then your mpc = 0.8. So, if the government gives you a tax cut, how much of that extra money are you going to spend (to boost the economy)? According to the logic of those who oppose the tax cut, the fact that the mpc is less than 1 means that a trillion dollar tax cut will generate less than a trillion dollars of economic stimulus.

This is a bit of a puzzle to me because money put into the banks is spent by the banks, is it not? Most of it is, anyway - they are required to keep a certain percentage of their holdings in reserve, but the required reserve ratio in the US is only 10%. So, even if the mpc was 0 (100% of the windfall tax cut was saved), the banks would spend 90% of it, so the real mpc = 0.9. In other words, the minimum mpc is determined by the required reserve ratio. (This is my grand little insight.)

You can read about the rest of the debate in other, better written, blogs and op-ed pieces, if you're interested. I just wanted to get to the required reserve insight.

Two other points, though:
1) If you get a windfall, you are probably more likely to spend it on stupid things, including black-market items like drugs. This might further depress the mpc derived from empirical data.
2) Spending effects lobbyists and special interest groups much more powerfully and directly than general tax cuts. So the political return on investment is much better for spending than for tax-cuts. This moves the debate into the patronage realm – third world (3rd grade) politics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage

EMFs and DNA

2009-01-27T16:31:00.002-05:00

I decided to look into the health effects of mobile phones and exposure to low-levels of electromagnetic radiation.

Initially, I thought the topic was pretty simple and straight forward: there should be no health effect.
- Radio wave frequency radiation is non-ionizing and non-dangerous, especially at low power densities.
- Human beings emit higher frequency radiation (infra-red) than cell phones, and radiation does not become dangerous until it gets to very high frequencies with wavelengths similar to molecular bond distances.
- Natural sources (like the sun) bathe us in more radiation than most artificial sources.

But, we've been wrong about health effects before, and, to be honest, I would not want to live under high-power transmission lines.

I was only a little surprised, therefore, to find so much research (millions and millions of dollars, decades of time) focused on the health effects of radio-wave frequency, low-energy radiation.

The World Health Organization has a summary of the health effects research.
http://www.who.int/peh-emf/about/WhatisEMF/en/index4.html

An amateur radio website (tech geeks) gives a very good summary of the research.
http://www.sss-mag.com/rfsafety_bkg.html

An excerpt from this gives a glimpse as to why the topic is not so simple:
There has also been considerable laboratory research about the biological effects of EMR in recent years. For example, it has been shown that even fairly low levels of EMR can alter the human body's circadian rhythms, affect the manner in which cancer-fighting T lymphocytes function in the immune system, and alter the nature of the electrical and chemical signals communicated through the cell membrane and between cells, among other things.

A possible explanation for this effect is discussed here http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2004/112-6/ss.html#emfs

One thing about life that seems to be empirically solid is that we all die.

Movies

2009-01-26T09:05:00.005-05:00

Amazon and (for Canadians) Chapters-Indigo have a "others also bought" feature, which is great for recommendations. I figure you could probably make your search for your unique style and identity much more efficient by uploading lists of all the movies, books, and products (clothes, etc) you've liked onto Amazon and then follow the recommendations. In fact, you could probably find the perfect zip code to move into and have a filter notify you of all the bills and political issues you would probably care about. Eventually, you could save time in voting by having the computer vote for you, based on how you have voted in the past and how other people with similar reading, movie watching, buying patterns have voted.
If you have a budget, a system could automatically make purchases for you and have them show up in your mail - better, more interesting books, movies, and clothes you could possibly find on your own.
What an exciting, brave new world we are entering!

To start it off, Nora and I wrote up a list of movies we've seen and liked (with the help of Amazon)("***" means we haven't seen the movie, but it looks interesting)

Punch drunk love
You and me and everyone we know
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
American History X
American Beauty
Memento
The Usual Suspects
me myself and irene
Night at the Roxbury
Cache
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
My sone the fanatic
the truman show
bhaji on the beach
inch allah dimache
lars and the real girl
little miss sunshine
Persepolis
Paradise Now
Fire
Sam and I
Mississippi Masala
Monsoon Wedding ***
Bend It Like Beckham
Whale Rider
Nurse Betty
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
c.r.a.z.y.
Ali Zaoua*********
Viva La'ldjerie**************
Caramel********
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly *******
The Visitor****
Adaptation
Magnolia
American Psycho*******
A Clockwork Orange *******
Run Lola Run
Cinderella Man****
The Namesake**************
A beautiful mind
Amadeaus
A room with a view
My immortal beloved
my beautiful launderette
My Left Foot (Special Edition)
In the Name of the Father
Men in Black
Torch Song Trilogy***********
bon cop bad cop
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day*******
Le Grande Voyage********
Raja*****
la sex des etoiles*****
Rachida****
Cinema Paradiso
Chocolate
Delecatesin
Strawberry & Chocolate
Il Postino
Amores Perros
Y tu mama tambien
Gandhi
Day without a mexican
Bread and Roses
The Wooden Camera
Al Otro Lado*********
Sarafina *****
Cry Freedom *********
21 Up South Africa Mandela's Children *********
Cry, The Beloved Country****
Yesterday*******
Do the Right Thing
Jungle Fever
Summer of Sam
Donnie Brasco
Trainspotting
Blow
Clerks
21 Grams
Stranger Than Fiction
Fight Club
Return of the Barbarians
Decline of the American Empire
Jesus of Montreal
The Lives of Others *********
Tsotsi*******
Kolya
The Mission
Roxanne
Shakespear in Love
Mrs. Brown
Black Robe

Endearingly Dismal

2009-01-20T15:34:00.002-05:00

Continuing with my dismal theme, one problem with negative growth is that people lose jobs and lose the freedom of changing jobs or of moving. Shrinking economies are not just painful to those unlucky millions who become unemployed, it is actually dangerous. Rebellion and civil unrest are extremely likely in periods of continued decline, especially for countries without well developed democratic structures of checks and balances of power.

Just to add more vinegar to the mix, I believe pro-immigration is anti-green as well. Economic growth is comprised of efficiency gains and new people seeking jobs. With more people entering the work force, more resources are consumed and more damage is done.

Most self-respecting democrats and liberals tend to care about the environment and poverty, but does anyone have a solution for solving both issues? I am looking and thinking about this issue, but I cannot find a viable solution.

Energy – solar, wind and bio all require substantial inputs of resources (and continual input, if growth is to continue)
Pollution – point sources are reducible, but are not the major contributors
Materials – clothes, solar panels, computers, zero-emission vehicles, houses, etc do not lend themselves to compatibility between growth and sustainability
Economic sectors dependant on resource consumption – if we reduce mining, oil, and gas, then the economy will need to expand in other sectors

If we had a communist dictator take over the world and made everyone equally poor, equally well educated, and with equal opportunities for non-economic self-expression, then the problem would be solved. But this is like saying that all a doctor has to do is get rid of the cancer cells to cure a patient, or resource scarcity could be solved by moving a few protons and neutrons around.

Poverty

2009-01-16T14:46:00.002-05:00

As I bounce around through thoughts on a sustainable economy, poverty, negative economic growth, etc, I become convinced of two things. One, it is a heavy, complex subject with no simple answers. Two, negative economic growth may not only be the wrong thing to do (due to the effect it has on the worlds' poor), it may already be happening. The apparent growth in the developed world may primarily be a redistribution of resources in a slightly less than zero sum game.

From http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 - 2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades [1960 - 1980]. For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980). Among the findings:

Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the board for all groups or countries.
Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was also considerably slower during the period of globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the period of globalization.Source 29

image source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opinion/15kristof.html?em

Dollars and Sense

2009-01-16T13:58:00.000-05:00

This winter has not been good for skate skiing for me. Although the snow came early, colds, travel, and sub -15C temperatures have kept me off the misery sticks more often than not.

Gym time has also fallen into a Tuesday/Thursday/+1 pattern. I was eating like a cow before the New Year, but now I'm less interested. The fact is, it costs a lot to put on muscle mass. 200 grams per day of lean meat and supplements adds up quickly in dollars and cents. At 10% utilization of protein ingested, each pound of lean muscle cost about $114.

1 pound = 454.5 grams
required ingested protein for 1 pound = 4545 g
Cost of supplements = $55/2200 g = $0.025/g
4545g x $0.025/g = $113.63

Borrowing someone else's data on the cost of various protein sources, I find that $114 is the average cost per pound of muscle from beans, milk, dry milk, eggs, chicken, tuna, bars, quinoa, soy milk, and salmon.

Gaining 10 pounds of muscle mass is going to cost an additional $1140 in food.

Blad and bladder

2009-01-15T14:59:00.000-05:00

Starting with the assumption that a mature, diverse economy works efficiently with around 2% annual growth, a shift to a green economy would increase the volatility of the overall economy and require a higher overall rate of growth.

A true green shift would be toward reduced consumption, which is equivalent to an economic contraction. To compensate, sectors of the economy that are not affected by the green shift would need to grow at a faster than 2% rate to keep the overall rate around 2%. This would increase the volatility of the overall economy.

But when the growth is not diversified and there is more market volatility, the business cycles have more effect and a 2% overall growth rate may not be sufficient for efficient markets. A higher growth rate may be required.

In other words, not only would the growth rate need to increase, but the efficiency with which resources are consumed would also decrease.

A similar (other side of the coin) idea is explained here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uneconomic_growth):

"...innovation- or knowledge-driven growth still may not entirely resolve the problem of scale, or increasing resource consumption (see Jevons paradox).[9][10] For example, given that expenditure on necessities and taxes remain the same, (i) the availability of energy-saving lightbulbs may mean lower electricity usage and fees for a household but this frees up more discretionary, disposable income for additional consumption elsewhere (an example of the "rebound effect")[11][12] and (ii) technology (or globalisation) that leads to the availability of cheaper goods for consumers also frees up discretionary income for increased consumptive spending."

"In economics, the Jevons Paradox (sometimes called the Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource. It is historically called the Jevons Paradox as it ran counter to popular intuition. However, the situation is well understood in modern economics. In addition to reducing the amount needed for a given output, improved efficiency lowers the relative cost of using a resource – which increases demand. Overall resource use increases or decreases depending on which effect predominates."