dispatches from TJICistan

I’ve mentioned that I’ve been doing Tabata protocol bodyweight squats every morning since 1 January:

( ( a combo to the heavy bag, a squat ) x 10 ; 10 seconds rest ) x 8

Today I was walking the pups around the Res, enjoying the spring air, and realizing that there was something missing in my life.

The bodyweight squats were leaving me so un-syat-isfied.

I was missing iron in my gym diet.

So today I did some real squats.

• 5 bodyweight ones to warm up
• then 5 with 120# on the bar
• then 5 with 120# on the bar a second time
• then 5 with 170#
• then a top set of 220#

The 220# didn’t seem very heavy … and yet I didn’t finish the set of 5.

Which was sort of pathetic – I’d been hoping to finish the 220# set and do at least a few reps with 270#.

There was no good reason not to finish the 220# set. My legs felt strong, my mind was in the game, etc. Maybe I’m just not in mental practice.

Anyway, it felt good to put a little bit of weight on my traps for the first time in forever, and I think that I might continue to play with real squats once a week or so, and keep the Tabata calisthenics for the other four days of the week. I’d like to get a full set of 220# pretty quickly, and work up over time to a full set of 270# (I’ve done it before, and it wasn’t killer). A top set of 320#, though, is something that I might take a year or more to get to.

http://roissy.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/d…

Zeets phoned in from the bowels of DC.

“They passed this law that puts a five cent fee on each bag you use at a store. The city’s already made something like $150K off it.”

“Leftie fascists.”

“So I’m standing in line at Giant and don’t have a reusable bag with pictures of basil on it because I’m not a fag. The herb in front of me doesn’t have a reusable bag either. When the cashier asks if he needs a bag he hangs his head down in shame and sheepishly says yes. He couldn’t make eye contact with anyone.”

“So this is the new SWPL status signal, the reusable bag?”

“I hate them all. Anyhow, there’s a line of fifteen yuppies behind me. The cashier asks if I need a bag. With my head held high I proudly say ‘Yes, I want a bag. And double bag the milk.’”

“I like the use of the word ‘want’ instead of ‘need’. Very sly.”

“Thank you. I made sure to scan the line when I said it. I wanted those herbs to cower in fear.”

“Did you grunt a little for emphasis?”

“There was a genital display as well. When you walk down the streets here all the shamed-faced hipsters with plastic bags try to hide them in their coats or behind their backs so people don’t notice. This country needs a good, cleansing total war.”

As your Samoan etiquette consultant, I approve of this message.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/instapund…

WANT TO GET RICH? WORK FOR THE FEDS. “As of 2008, the average federal salary was $119,982, compared with $59,909 for the average private sector employee.

I agree with the conclusion, but the argument compares apples and oranges, the same way that feminists point at the average male salary (more likely to have a real college degree in something like physics, chemistry, engineering, etc.) and the average female salary (more likely to have taken 5-10 years off during peak earning years to raise children, etc.).

A higher percentage of federal employees are likely, say, lawyers, than the percentage of all privately employed individuals in the US.

That said …

In other words, the average federal bureaucrat makes twice as much as the average working taxpayer. Add the value of benefits like health care and pensions, and the gap grows even bigger.

Indeed.

We need to lay off about 3/4 of federal workers immediately.

Or, because the the Obama administration has already stood up for ex-post-facto punitive 99% ‘clawback’ taxes on banker pay, there’s no reason we can’t just slap a 50% additional tax on all income (both salary and pension) from all federal, state, and city sources.

That’d help balance the budget!

http://southbend7.blogspot.com/2010/04/p…

Rick Webb: “The telephone was an aberration in human development. It was a 70 year or so period where for some reason humans decided it was socially acceptable to ring a loud bell in someone else’s life and they were expected to come running, like dogs. This was the equivalent of thinking it was okay to walk into someone’s living room and start shouting.”

Oh sweet Jesus yes. I couldn’t agree more.

Related, at ceramics class:

TJIC’s phone in pocket of jacket in hallway: < ring >

TJIC, hands covered in clay: < ignore >

crazy 17 year old girl: Is that your phone?

TJIC: I think so.

crazy 17 year old girl: You’re not rushing to get it because your hands are muddy?

TJIC: Mmm hmm.

crazy 17 year old girl: You’re not upset that you’re missing the call?

TJIC: They’ll leave a message, or they won’t. I’ll call back, or I won’t.

crazy 17 year old girl: Wow – you’re so zen and relaxed.

TJIC: Yeah, that’s what my employees and friends always say about me.

I think that the reason that most people like zombie movies and “there’s a killer { outside | inside } the house!!!” movies is the delicious role reversal – man, the apex of the food chain, is now suddenly the hunted. Oh noz!

I appreciate zombie movies because of the “what ifs ?” they propose: what if you were trapped in a mall surrounded by zombies, and had only the contents of 200 stores, the Sears tools department, several backup generators, and the food in the mall food court? …and, of course, a friend two blocks away in a well fortified gun store?

Well, first, I’d build a ballista on the roof of the mall to throw a weighted cord over to the roof of his building, then we could set up a pulley system to bring him food, and he’d send us back a dozen or so AR-15s and a hundred or so 30 round magazines… (and let the record show that even if I couldn’t remember how to build a ballista, I’d go down to Barnes & Noble and get one of the dozen books they have that have information on the topic).

If it took 30 seconds, on average, to acquire a target and squeeze off a shot, and there was a 90% head-shot rate against zombies when using a sandbox, that’s 900 dead zombies per person per 8 hour shift (where each person uses up a full case of 1,000 rounds of Norinco yellow box .223).

If a mall parking lot is 10 acres, and there’s a density of one zombie per 10 square feet, then we’re looking at 43k zombies…

It’s pretty much simple math … and improvised flame throwers.

So, I like zombie movies because I’m prompted to think fun engineering thoughts like these.

I don’t get the whole “there’s a killer { outside | inside } the house!!!” genre though.

I imagine / hope / think It’d pretty much roll like this:

• sound of smashing glass, hand reaches through broken window, fumbles with doorknob.
• I yell “what the !@#$%! ?!?!?”, go to bedroom, put the Sig holster into my waistband, grab the Benelli M-1, chamber a round
• I go to the front door
• if the perp is still reaching through the broken window, I shoot two 12-gauge slugs through the door (and then later, when the Massachusetts DA tries to try me for murder because I hadn’t successfully identified the target, I hire Massad Ayoob as an expert witness).
• if the perp is inside the house and grabs the shotgun, I let go with my right hand, draw the Sig and shoot him at 0-yards distance, just like I was taught in the DARE class (and then later, when the Massachusetts DA tries to try me for murder because I hadn’t successfully identified the target, I hire Massad Ayoob as an expert witness)

Similarly:

http://xkcd.com/734/

Also, it’s great that there’s a scientific paper on the fluid mechanics of human crowd motion, but don’t we also need a paper on the fluid mechanics of non-human crowd motion ?!?

http://www.slate.com/id/2252463/

By Daniel Gross

Fortunately … The Bush administration set into motion the phasing out of incandescent lightbulbs—which is pushing more people to use … fluorescents

…

The second objection [ to top-down nanny-state, saves-less-money-than-it-costs "green" regulation ] is that standards reduce choice. What if people really want incandescent bulbs or only like to drive Hummers? Why should the government tell them they can’t buy dumb products that are expensive to use? I’m sympathetic to the argument but am also generally in the camp that excessive choice contributes as much to economic inefficiency and consumer sadness as an absence of choice does. (Have you checked how many different varieties of Pringles and Oreos there are?

…

In the Soviet Union they didn’t have destructive wasteful competition – which is why they zeroed in on the perfect single formula for Oreos right away, with out wasteful “choices”. The bureaucrats of Soviet Union, like those in Cuba, always managed to develop exactly the right solution the first time, and stock it in large quantities for the populace.

This is why the Right Thing in the US is to have government officials decide which single type of light light bulb is right for everyone.

Like to read books? The One Correct Governmantally Approved Light Bulb has just the right flicker-free feature that makes it right for you!

Like to paint with oil paints? The One Correct Governmantally Approved Light Bulb is gives perfect color matching and is right for you!

Like to build doll house miniatures? The One Correct Governmantally Approved Light Bulb never causes any eye strain and is right for you!

Like to save money? The One Correct Governmantally Approved Light Bulb is the cheapest on the market and is right for you!

Yes, you may suffer under the delusion that different people have different utility functions, and therefore choose different products in the marketplace (energy saving fluorescents vs. true color halogens vs mid temperature incandescents ; Cool Ranch Pringles vs Spicy Nacho Pringles vs Original Pringles), but Daniel Gross and our government overlords understand that catering to different people as if they’re different people is just as destructive as having no choice. After all, doesn’t the presence of Cool Ranch Pringles cause just as much “consumer sadness” to you, who didn’t know that Cool Ranch Pringles exist, and who never buy them, as the total inability to buy beef at the super market unless you have a Central Party ration card?

But there’s more to be done

Oh, clearly!

Barnes and Noble wastefully carries tens of thousands of books that I have no interest in reading.

Amazon is even worse – it has literally millions of products that I don’t want.

And don’t get me started on McMaster-Carr. Yesterday I went there and ordered left handed tap for a 1/4″ x 28 TPI thread, and a keyless Jacobs chuck that screwed onto a 1/2″ x 20 TPI thread.

Go to the McMaster-Carr page and you’ll see that they carry 3,266 different taps.

3,265 of these are useless to me.

“Spiral flute taps” ?

What the hell!?

These are apparently “the best choice for tapping blind-holes … in copper”.

I have never needed to tap a blind hole in copper, and I bet Daniel Gross hasn’t either.

So, I suggest that Daniel contact McMaster Carr and tell them to stop offering that item.

Offering an item that I don’t need and see no need for is creating just as much “economic inefficiency and consumer sadness” as if the left handed 1/4″ x 28 TPI tap wasn’t being offered.

Well, OK, maybe that’s not true. Without the $5 left handed 1/4″ x 28 TPI tap, I’d have to throw away a $150 cordless drill, so I guess that my tap brings me $145 in value, and the lack of that tap would conversely cause $145 of pain … and maybe the fact that other people can also buy taps for blind holes in copper doesn’t quite cause me $145 worth of “consumer sadness”. But it certainly does cause me, say, $130 worth of “consumer sadness”, which is pretty close, so let’s get the Nanny State regulators on the line and get McMaster Carr shut down, or at the very least get them to drop their selection from the “over 480,000 products” that they brag about to something more reasonable … perhaps, say “nearly 500 products”.

That’s the way it worked in the Soviet Union, and everyone was happy and content there, because they never suffered from the “economic inefficiency and consumer sadness” brought about by choice.

Walked into the Arlington Center Starbucks 15 min ago.

There were so many 40-year-old-moms-and-kids-in-strollers there that you had to cut through the musk of estrogen with a machette to get to the counter.

Even the guys hanging out with their laptops were all low-testosterone p@@!#ies.

It was just me and the Carhartt Lesbians sticking up for traditional notions of masculinity!

Just finished “Rudiments V” last night. At the end I leaned on Carl hard to actually instantiate his idea for Rudiments VI.

The timing was perfect – he had four people in the room, all pre-selected to be interested in the next class in the series.

The class was wrapping up, and everyone was enthusiastic.

…and yet, I had to lean hard, and repeatedly in order to make him make it into a real class with real scheduled dates.

(I did, he did, all four of us signed up, and he locked down $1k or so of revenue, just like [ snap! ] that)

I used to be that way, a long time ago, where I would do any amount of work in order to avoid nailing stuff down.

I can’t quite remember why I acted that way, but I did … and it caused no end of trouble for me.

I much prefer being the person that I’ve reshaped myself into.

Anyway, a chain I made:

and a small ball peen hammer head:

The photography on the chain is decent – I finally added some tracing paper to my light tent to act as a diffuser.

The photography on the hammer head is crap – I couldn’t get the camera to focus well on such a small object, in either regular or macro mode. Not sure what was going on there, but I had about three seconds of battery life, so I didn’t linger.

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/camb…

State officials are moving forward with an effort to sell the Edward J. Sullivan Courthouse in Cambridge…

Kevin Flanigan, a deputy director with the state Division of Capital Asset Management, said the 22-story building on Thorndike street “has a lot of issues” …

Speaking as someone not entirely unfamiliar with the Small Claims Court system (and who, thus, has been in that building a dozen or two dozen times), I agree.

“I’d like to see the building imploded,” [ Cambridge City Councilor Tim ] Toomey said. “That’s what I would love to see.”

Just say the word, Tim, just say the word…

http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com…

RX: “Our textbook had a picture of three skulls, labeled ‘chimpanzee’, ‘Neanderthal’, and, I quote, ‘modern Frenchman’.”

Me: “Did they show a human skull for comparison?”

Har!

http://southbend7.blogspot.com/2010/04/o…

The rant in this “billbored” in particular is so specious.

The spectacle of advertising creates images of false beauty so suave and so impossible to attain that you will hurt inside and never even know where the hurt comes from, and in all pictures now the famous people have already begun to look lost and lonely

As if I don’t go to the art museum and hurt inside from the unattainable beauty of both the works on its walls and the beautiful things represented in them.

To take SB7′s point to its logical conclusion: someone should go out to this “art installation” with some black paint, some white paint, and a stencil, and edit the word “advertising” in the upper right hand corner to read “art museums”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/world/…

Now that the foreign doctors have left, many people on Avenue Poupelard feel they are on their own.

It’s good that they feel that way, because they are on their own.

Just like all of us.

They have a bed … and a chair. Yet their yard remains a jumble of rusty wrecks

Choosing to live with rusty wrecks in the yard has little to do with the presence of absence of foreign doctors.

I recall reading about the presence (or absence) or rusty [ train ] wrecks in Africa, in an article in the NYT or Foreign Policy the other day … ah, here it is, in the Atlantic.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch…

… All along the way, wreckage was strewn beside the tracks – railway cars hauled from where they’d derailed or broken down, and left to decay like great, dead beasts.

As we looked out at these rusting carcasses, my cabinmates began talking about the railroad, and what it said about their societies. “This is a good train,” said Isaac, with a trace of bitterness, “but like any piece of equipment, it needs maintenance.” …

“As soon as we have problems, we ask someone else to take care of them for us,” Isaac continued. “We ask the Europeans. We ask the Americans. We ask the Chinese. We will run this train into the ground, and then we will tell the Chinese we need another one. This is not development.” I thought of the wreckage by the tracks. In China, there is no such thing as metallic waste. Armies of migrant workers scour the countryside with hammers and chisels, collecting and selling every scrap to the insatiable smelters that feed the country’s industries. Here, by contrast, was a land without industry.

Roll that last sentence over a few times:

Here, by contrast, was a land without industry.

I’ll now say something that will probably get me called a racist by pretty much everyone under the sun:

• many traits are influenced by genes
• many traits are influenced by culture
• genes are heritable
• culture is heritable
• people of African descent in Africa don’t tend to build or maintain their infrastructure
• people of African descent in Haiti don’t tend to build or maintain their infrastructure
• people of African descent in the US don’t tend to build or maintain their infrastructure

Whether we’re looking at Africans-in-Africa who destroy trains with neglect, and then ignore the cheap-and-easy source of scrap metal, or whether we’re looking at Haitians who have after 200 years of freedom have created for themselves the lowest standard of living in the Western hemisphere and are continuously looking for handouts from the international community, or whether we’re looking at African Americans with 7x the violent crime rate of their neighbors, lower average hours worked per week, 2.5x the national poverty rate, and about 0% of the average household net worth due to lack of savings, there is clearly a problem that is correlated with race.

Picking up useful scrap metal isn’t rocket science. People of any race can do it. I know of a few white Europeans who do it for business. A good elementary school friend’s Jewish father ran a scrap metal business. I’ve had Oriental guys out hustling in the predawn hours pulling metallic waste out of my garbage cans.

…but this minor behavior, which – I assert – serves as a metonym for much bigger more important behaviors – is fairly lacking in the black world.

I have no solution to the problem (if it’s genetic, we don’t yet have targeted viruses that can fix an entire race; if it’s cultural, we don’t have any ideas on how to change a culture), but as long as politically correct folks persist in ignoring the obvious issue and instead pretending that there are a thousand unrelated events, there is certainly not going to be a solution.

And yet, a solution is (urgently) called for.

Colonizing the solar system is going to take a lot of hands, and it will go a lot fast if we have an extra billion people helping out.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/volokh/ma…

Louisiana Bill Would Outlaw Insulting an Under-17-Year-Old By E-Mail

There goes another one of my hobbies.

http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com…

Six years after the state Supreme Court dismissed his $433 million lawsuit against the gun industry, Mayor Daley today called for a change of venue — to the World Court normally reserved for disputes between nations and crimes against humanity.

Dick Daley is a venal, corrupt, lying sonofabitch, from a long line of venal, corrupt, lying sonsabitches. What he knows about ethics could be written on the head of a pin, in Sharpie. And this lowdown moral cripple, this wart on the body politic, smarting from one courtroom loss and pissing his britches over the possibility of another stinging defeat, this time in the highest court of the land, wants to run crying to the World Court, a body with all the majesty and legal authority of a mail-order divinity degree from Draw Tippy Turtle U., with his tale of woe.

Get bent, Dick. Go get good and bent.

Molon frickin’ Labe, you scrofulous little toad.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/0…

“You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth. Son, we live in a country with an investment gap. And that gap needs to be filled by men with money. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Middle Class Consumer? Goldman Sachs has a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Lehman and you curse derivatives. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know: that Lehman’s death, while tragic, probably saved the financial system. And that Goldman’s existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves pension funds. You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want us to fill that investment gap. You need us to fill that gap. “We use words like credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligation, and securitization? We use these words as the backbone of a life spent investing in something. You use ‘em as a punchline. We have neither the time nor the inclination to explain ourselves to a commoner who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very credit we provide, and then questions the manner in which we provide it! We’d rather you just said thank you and paid your taxes on time. Otherwise, we suggest you get an account and start trading. Either way, we don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to!”

(previously)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/busine…

Economic theory holds that in competitive labor markets, workers are paid the market value of what they produce. In actual markets, pay does rise with productivity, but not by much. The most productive carpenter in a framing crew, for example, might produce twice as much as his least productive colleague, but is rarely paid even 30 percent more.

To see the pattern at first hand, consider groups of co-workers who perform similar tasks in your own company. In one case, suppose that your two most productive co-workers leave the job; in the other, suppose that the three least productive leave. Which group’s departure causes a greater loss of value? Most people would answer that losing the top two hurts more.

If so, economic theory holds that their combined salaries should be higher than the combined salaries of the bottom three. Yet the typical pattern is the reverse: any three workers in a group performing similar tasks earn substantially more than any other two.

In short, the startling fact is that private businesses typically transfer large amounts of income from the most productive to the least productive workers. Because labor contracts are voluntary under United States law, it would be bizarre to object that these transfers violate anyone’s rights.

But they do raise an interesting question: If the most productive workers in a group are paid less than the value of what they produce, why don’t rival employers just lure them all away?

One answer is that these employees may care, often subconsciously, about things besides pay. The most productive workers in a group, for example, often appear to value their status, perhaps because they enjoy greater self-esteem and respect than the least productive workers. To bid successfully for the high achievers, a rival employer might not only have to increase their pay, but also place them in a group where they continue to enjoy a high ranking.

In a free market, however, no one can be in the top half of any group unless others agree to be in the bottom half. And if people prefer not to occupy low-ranking positions, filling these positions would require extra compensation. The rival’s offer, then, would resemble the original pay pattern.

The upshot is that top-ranked workers may well stay put. The high ranking they enjoy is more than enough to offset their sacrifice in pay. Similarly, their less productive co-workers may find it onerous to be at the bottom of the ladder, but they are compensated for that fact by their premium wages.

Not without problems, but fascinating none-the-less.

http://boston.craigslist.org/bmw/mcy/171…

I bought this Go Kart … for my grandson and removed the 125cc Yamaha Motor and related ancillary parts and sold them on eBay!

I then picked up a small Briggs and Straton engine for it, machined the crank end to thread it for a new racing clutch (included).

I then stripped the entire cart, had it bead blasted and then “Powder-Coated”!

I kept the HD-Axle and bought a new sprocket hub and sprocket (included) and also purchased and installed 2-new rear axle bearings!

I also purchased a master cylinder rebuild kit…

OH….WHY AM I SELLING IT?

ALWAYS….ALWAYS CHECK WITH DAUGHTER IN LAW TO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THEIR PERMISSION FOR FOR YOUR GRANDSON TO RACE A GO KART BEFORE YOU GO OFF HALF-COCKED AND THINK THAT JUST BECAUSE GRANDPA SAID SO…IT’S GOING TO FLY!

(via)

http://whiskeyinateacup.com/?p=702

The baby sometimes falls asleep with his eyes open, which is creepy because babies spend a lot of time in REM sleep, so his eyeballs will be rolling and darting around while the rest of him is lying there peacefully… thus completing the illusion that he is not an infant but a tiny, insane hobo we found in an alley somewhere and brought home.

That’s pretty much my take on all infants…

He has added a new vocalization to his repertoire. When he feels like making noise but isn’t upset enough to cry, he’ll just yell. He did this while sleeping last night… he was lying there silently and all of a sudden shouted “Aaay!” at full volume

Question – was the “Aaay” ululated, in sort of a Mexican battle cry? Because that’s how DF and I convey to each other (and everyone with in earshot) that, yes, we are actually on the road towards Porter Square and a burrito is in our near future.

Maybe the kid is just sick of milk and is hungry for a bit chili verde?

http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/2…

Our dwindling supply of phosphorus for fertilizer threatens to disrupt food security across the planet during the coming century, an article argues. “This is the gravest natural resource shortage you’ve never heard of.”

Yeah, yeah, FP was writing about this a week ago.

Color me unconvinced.

Julian Simon made a convincing argument (and won a handy chunk of cash off of The Club of Rome’s Paul Ehrlich ) that natural resources just keep getting cheaper over time, because in an inverse of the proposed Malthus’ law, exponential human creativity out races linear approaches to preexisting natural constraints.

I have no doubt that (a) the price mechanism of the market and (B) either distillation of phosphorus from seawater, or nanotech alternate approaches to fertilizing, or genetic engineering of plants to thrive on less phosphorus, will render this an utter non-issue.

Interesting:

http://newstilt.com/notthatkindofdoctor/…

…

Many of those people who wrongly assumed I was gay would probably be surprised to learn that I campaigned for Alan Turing despite having my own discomfort with homosexuality. I don’t have clear thoughts about whether gay marriage or civil partnerships are better; I’m conflicted about whether gay couples should be allowed to adopt.

…