Evolutionary Difficulties

I understand that the amorphophallus titanum in Switzerland is about to bloom. That is the gigantic flower that looks like a penis and smells like death, for the unaware.

But here's what gets me: I understand that the flower, over time, has evolved to smell like death to attract flesh flies and carrion beetles which pollinate it. It's large spathe is a deep red color to resemble meat. And during blooming it keeps its temperature up to around mammalian body temp to further make it seem "meaty."

How, exactly, did the plant obtain this information on carrion? It's not like the plant has eyes to see the color of dead meat, nor a nose to smell it, nor the sense of touch to observe the temperature of fresh carrion. Yet over time the plant has obtained three superficial qualities that mimic flesh. And that is the awesome power of evolution, in a nutshell. A creature can evolve to fill a niche with no clear explanation of how it determined the niche existed beforehand.


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TAE's DIY Arduino Sous Vide Cooker - Part VI: Ambrosia

Just on a whim, earlier this week I bought a couple 8 oz. "ball tip" steaks at the meat market. I'm not familiar with the cut, but I had a feeling it was the cheapest crap on the cow because it was only $5/lb. I figured, if my Sous Vide cooker could save this cut of meat...imagine of what else it is capable. I took the steaks home and dussied them up with some Durkee 'Kansas City Style' (of course) dry rub. Then I vacuum sealed them in ziploc, following the method outlined in an earlier post.
FYI: use freezer bags, not storage or sandwich bags, if you use my quick and dirty method of vacuum sealing your meat; the freezer bags are soft enough to allow you to suck out the air while not being so soft they suck up into the pump tube.
I ran the steaks for 4 hours at 131, as recommended for an average steak. After they were done I seared them really quickly in some hot bacon grease.Let me just skip to the results.

That was probably the finest cut of meat I've ever prepared for myself. The meat was full of flavor, both from the dry rub but also still tasting awesomely beefy. It was so tender that I really didn't even need to chew it...it just sort of "got out of the way of my teeth" for lack of a better description. The caramelized outside of the meat tasted amazing, the inside was a bright pink. It was, quite honestly, exactly like a $36 steak I'd eaten down on the Plaza a couple months ago at a really high end restaurant. Only, this time it was a $2 steak.

The bottom line is: there is no meat that a sous vide cannot save. Next up, I'm going to do a $1.89 pork chop. But first, here's some eye candy:

This is the "meat cage" I got at Wal-mart for $1.97. I presume the real use for it is to hold kitchen utensils...but it also makes a really hand meat cage. The pepsi bottle is there for size reference.

Here is the vacuum pump I'm using to suck the air out of my freezer bags. 60% of the time, it works every time.

This is the meat before it went into the cooker. You can see how little marbling there is. And ligamentous fat, blech.

Here's the meat in the meat cage. This was before I sucked the air out of the bags, fyi.

Here's the meat fresh out of the cooker. You can easily see the Durkee rub all over it.

And here's a cutaway. Nom!

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Your Phone vs. Occam's Razor

I'm sure that Apple wants to destroy civilization. At least that is how most people see it.

Oh no, the iPhone is tracking your location (and lo and behold Android phones too) all the time! They could have sent The Man to pick you up in a black van at any moment! They're in "cahoots" with Big Brother!

I bet they're going to use this info to target you for more evil, more personalized ads and you'll be forced to buy things locally which might accidentally stimulate the local economy and help out your neighbors! NOOOOOOoooooooooooooo!!!!!1!

Back in the world of Occam, it turns out that if I click Google's "clock" app I can simply tap the bottom half of the screen and it gives me local weather information...in seconds...which requires it to know your location to give you relevant weather info...and it turns out that it only stores the last 50 "location tracking points" and then dumps earlier, irrelevant data. But no, my "needing location for weather forecasting" theory is a lot less plausible than your "watching your every move, giggling evilly in a shadowy room somewhere" theory.


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Because it's "4/20" - A quick word on drug legalization

Last week Conor Friedersdorf asked this question:

Let's look at some numbers. 2,977 people were murdered on September 11, 2001. How many folks died from the Mexican Drug War in 2010?

More than 12,000.

That suggests another question. Would you rather legalize most drugs... or see the equivalent carnage of four 9/11s happen every year from fighting the black market? That isn't a hypothetical. It's a real choice.

So I emailed him, and asked him my own question:

Something like 35,000 people a year die in America from vehicular collisions. So I have a question for you: would you rather ban cars or see the equivalent carnage of nearly twelve 9/11s happen every year from vehicle collisions?

Obviously these are not the same, but the point is that if "absolutely minimizing deaths no matter what the details are" is your goal then cars are way deadlier than the War on Drugs.
But here's the real point I want to make. Friedersdorf seems to imply that 12,000 less people would die per year if we ended the War on Drugs. But how many deaths would occur from the sudden legality of those drugs? Can we really say that exposing 300 million+ Americans to a lot of legalized drugs wouldn't result in a surge in overdoes fatalities?
You might say "we just want to legalize marijuana," which is laudable, but not what we are discussing here. Drug lords from Colombia aren't building submarines to smuggle marijuana into the United States. The War on Drugs is about cocaine, heroine, methamphetamine, painkillers, and a whole host of drugs more addictive and more deadly than just weed. And besides, Friedersdorf starts his thought experiment with the idea that we would "legalize most drugs."

Maybe marijuana illegality is something I should reconsider. But Friedersdorf really needs to define what he means by "most drugs." I have a feeling his "most drugs" would quickly become a list of just a few, in which case...if any drugs remained illegal then by extension the War on Drugs would continue and so would the border deaths, and we've come all the way back around to square one.


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Quote for the Day

"Scientifically speaking, it’s only a matter of time before the drones become self-aware and kill us all." - Spencer Ackerman


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Deep Thought

At my level, trying to dip my feet in American politics only gets me scalded. Every single time.


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TAE's DIY Arduino Sous Vide Cooker - Part V: The Software

Here's a graph of my temperature curve and stability at 130 degrees over about 4 hours. If you look closely you can see that upon reaching 130, it actually only needed to kick on the heat for 30 seconds about once an hour. The average temperature over the whole 4 hour run was 130.7 degrees. That's pretty damn cool, if you ask me. Click on it for a larger version.

Alright, without further ado, in the spirit of open source, here's my code. No PID control on this one, that's my Steve Jobs code, so I won't be sharing it. But as the graph above shows, this version works pretty well. Also, it includes a pretty handy serial out so you can data log the temperature as you go.

Control the temperature of a Sous-Vide Cooker. Set the temperature and minimum cook time in this program.
 
 The circuit:
 * Digital Pin 13 controls the relay for the heating element.
 * Digial Pin 12 is the heating element status indicator LED.
 * Digital Pin 11 controls the relay for the circulating fan.
 * Digital Pin 10 is the circulating fan indicator LED.
 * Analog Input Pin A0 is the first LM34 temperature sensor.
 * Analog Input Pin A1 is the second LM34 temperature sensor.
 
 
 * Note: This is an extremely simple temperature controller. For PID temperature control, look elsewhere. Perhaps v2.0.
 
 
 Created 19 Sept 2010
 By Alex Waller
 
 http://abstractedengineer.blogspot.com/2010/09/arduino-projects-1-sous-vide-cooking.html
 
 */

const int HeatingRelay =  13;    // 5V input to AC relay controlling heating element
const int HeatingLED = 12;      // LED indicating AC relay is closed
const int CircFan = 11;        // 5V input to AC relay controlling circulating fan
const int CircFanLED = 10;      // LED indicating AC relay is closed
int sensor1Pin = 0;      // Set pin for LM34 Sensor 1
int val1 = 0;            // Value 1 from LM34 Sensor 1
int sensor2Pin = 1;      // Set pin for LM34 Sensor 2
int val2 = 0;            // Value 2 from LM34 Sensor 2
double val3 = 0;         // This is the average value of val 1 and val 2

float Temp = 130;          // THIS IS WHERE YOU PICK YOUR SET TEMPERATURE
int Time = 24;            //THIS IS THE NUMBER OF HOURS YOU WANT TO RUN AT SET TEMP
float DigitalTemp = Temp;      //This is the initial value that will be replaced by the calc later
int RunTime = 0;
int OnTime = Time * 60;

void setup()   {               
  // initialize the digital pins as an output:
  pinMode(HeatingRelay, OUTPUT); 
  pinMode(HeatingLED, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(CircFan, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(CircFanLED, OUTPUT);
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop()                    
{
    
  while (RunTime < OnTime)
  {
    val1 = analogRead(sensor1Pin);
    val2 = analogRead(sensor2Pin);
    val3 = (val1 + val2) / 2 *.48828125;
  if (val3 < DigitalTemp)
    {
      digitalWrite(HeatingRelay, HIGH);
      digitalWrite(HeatingLED, HIGH);
      digitalWrite(CircFan, HIGH);
      digitalWrite(CircFanLED, HIGH);
      Serial.print(DigitalTemp, DEC);
      Serial.print("\t");
      Serial.println(val3, DEC);
     
      delay(60000);
     
    }
   
  else if ( val3 >= DigitalTemp)
    {
      digitalWrite(HeatingRelay, LOW);
      digitalWrite(HeatingLED, LOW);
      digitalWrite(CircFan, LOW);
      digitalWrite(CircFanLED, LOW);
      Serial.print(DigitalTemp, DEC);
      Serial.print("\t");
      Serial.println(val3, DEC);
     
      delay(30000);
     
    }
  }
 
  RunTime++;
 
}

Good luck to you!

Recipes and images of cooked food to come.


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TAE's DIY Arduino Sous Vide Cooker - Part IV: Images

So at long last, I have the sous vide cooker cleaned up to a point where I am willing to show it to the public. The first several runs, the wiring looked like a bird's nest so I wasn't exactly proud of it. Plus, I kept switching the relays so I figured I shouldn't photograph it until I get a finalized hardware setup. Here it is. As before, all these images can be clicked on for a much larger, clearer shot.

This first image shows the cooker.

 Yes, that is an empty wine glass. Yes, I was celebrating. I'd just hit 130 F and the system was stable. In this image it is pretty easy to see the external access to the submersible heating element. As I mentioned in previous entries, I switched to a flat flange mounting element because it was much easier to get a watertight seal. The hole for the wiring is 1.25" diameter. My fraternity brothers will recognize the "AJ" on the cooler as the cooler I have had since 2001. Still finding it useful, obviously!
Here you can see the AC/DC relay.

The double white wires run to the heating element, the stereo cable runs to and from the Crydom relay, and the black and white pair are the wall plug. I use terminal blocks whenever I can, because they are so easy to connect to.

This next image shows the main electronics assembly.

The red and black twisted pair is the digital input line from the Crydom relay. The two sets of braided trios are the wire lines from the two LM34 temperature sensors I made. Each goes to a three-prong surface mount connector. You can see the two green wires running from those to the Arduino's A0 and A1 analogi inputs. Also, the 1.5V AA battery is used to power the submersible fan, and the black smudge in front of it is the Reed DC/DC relay that controls that. So far, the AA battery has lasted through all my testing etc. so I am not worried I need a larger battery. The four wires coming from the Arduino's digital line are:
D13: heating element relay (yellow)
D12: heating element indicator LED (blue)
D11: submersible fan relay (dark green)
D10: submersible fan indicator LED (light green)
The LEDs are currently programmed to turn on if the heating element and submersible fan run. You can see them on in this disappointingly blurry image.

I think I'll do another set of images when I cook a big fat roast, and I'll include a few more of the cooker then. Here's a shot inside the cooker. You can see the heating element and submersible fan (running) in this shot.

And here are the two LM34 relays. In a previous post I described how these are made.

That crap that is on the heatshrink is extra silicone caulk from when I installed it. I promise.

Here's a close up of the heating element connection. It was actually pretty easy, but I do use a GFI socket in case of an epic fail.

That image also shows the comparative thermometer I installed. The thing doesn't work. It kept giving me readings about 10 degrees colder than the LM34's were giving me, so I got a "second opinion" in the form of my daughter's digital thermometer. I ran the cooker up to 98 degrees, and while the comparative thermometer showed a brisk 88, the digital thermometer was less than half a degree off the LM34's. Soooo I'm going to believe them for now. I might bring home a thermocouple just to do some further verification later.

That's all for now. You can read the previous posts on the cooker here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Update

Also, if you make it to the update article where I switched to the Sharp S108T01 AC/DC relay, you must realize I am back to using a Crydom. The Sharp couldn't handle the 12.5 amps I was running across the heating element and started threatening to burn out. So I got a Crydom HD4825 which is rated for 480VAC and 25A of current. Works perfectly, every time, and never even warms up at my measly 120VAC, 12.5 A.

 Next up: the software!
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On Birtherism, Ctd

In case you didn't believe me, here's Mickey Kaus today, being deliriously racist:

"Cost doesn’t go into why Obama managed to get to the top of politics without being all that good at it. The answer is distressingly obvious: Obama’s the biggest affirmative action baby in history."

 And....done.

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Curbing College Costs by Ending University Athletics

You may have thought I was joking, earlier, when I suggested that Universities could reduce college costs by cutting their athletic programs...but I wasn't. The reasons for this are that Freddie's Five Ways to Cut College Costs are all perfect examples of athletic department waste or strategies to cut school costs via ending athletics.
So here are TAE's Corollary to Freddie's Five Ways to Cut College Costs:

1. The bureaucracies of athletic departments are absurd. For example, the athletic department of Ohio State lists 458 people. This includes: an athletic director, four people with the title "senior associate athletic director," 12 associate athletic directors, an associate vice president, a "senior associate legal counsel for athletics" and a nine-person NCAA compliance office. The Ohio State's football program is equally absurd: 13 football coaches, a director of football operations, three associate directors of football operations, a director of football performance, and three trainers who are full-time football only. You might say "but that's okay, Ohio State is a huge football powerhouse and besides its athletic program is self-sustaining." Which if you said that you'd be wrong. Certainly, they are one of only 14 schools in the country that reported net positive revenue for the 2009-2010 school year. But they also rely more than a little on the boosters ($27 million over that period). If the athletic department were shuttered, many of these boosters might not donate to Ohio State (see below). But some would, and the school scholarship fund would benefit. Also, USAToday data show that the "$30 million in net revenue" at Ohio State is more likely a net deficit of about $100,000.
Ohio State is but one example. The football program of my own alma mater, has 13 coaches and the 20-person staff includes someone with the title of "Defensive Quality Control Graduate Assistant." The Mizzou Athletic Department includes: an Athletic Director, two Executive Associate Athletic Directors, and three Senior Associate Athletic Directors. Best yet: Mizzou's "Equipment Room" requires six full time employees, including two directors. Did you know the average NCAA division I "assistant football coach" makes over $250,000? Meanwhile, of the 160+ programs in the NCAA div I, only 14 are solvent.
A purist might argue that a school "needs an athletic department in order to field a competitive football/basketball/whatever team." Tell that to Vanderbilt, who has sent a basketball team to the NCAA tournament four of the last five years...and has no athletic department.

2. The number of services provided by athletic departments must be reduced. Part of the reason athletic departments have such tough fiscal issues is that the majority of their sports are massively negative in the revenue; the scholarships and equipment outlay is way higher than booster donations and ticket sales can balance. Did you ever buy a ticket to see collegiate women's golf? Of the NCAA report cited above, not a single school reported a single women's athletic program that was net positive in revenue. Why are these programs still in existence? The age-old argument is that the ability to obtain an athletic scholarship allows under-privileged youth to go to college in exchange for their physical abilities. This is ridiculous. Why does a school need to trade athletic efforts for scholastic compensation? Why not simply give these kids scholarships (they are under-privileged, right?) and then do away with the time-constraints put on them by their mandated athletic requirements? Take a poor (but bright) girl from the inner city. Send them to school on a scholarship. Will they do better in that school with more time spent playing softball or more time spent studying calculus?
By suggesting we end University athletics, I must emphasize that I do not mean we should end the scholarships that go with it (or just women's athletics). On the contrary, we should provide scholarships to kids. Just, not as a trade for their time on a field or a driving range or in a pool.

 3. Stop the madcap physical expansion. As I type this, the University of Arizona is working on a $378 million expansion to their athletic facilities. UCLA is working on a $185 million renovation to their stadium. Auburn is building an $85 million basketball arena. Who pays for these mega-sports-complexes? You do, that's who. Want to sober up? Do a Google search for "university stadium renovation" and see how many schools from different states you can find in the first two pages of results (and only counting renovations in the last 3 years). By my count just now, 15. Many of these projects, like Michigan's $226 million renovation completed in 2010, are solely to cater to rich boosters. The Michigan renovation provided 3,200 "club level seats" and 83 luxury boxes, while yielding little or no benefit to students, faculty, or athletes.
The rule of thumb for university athletic stadium expansion is the "taxpayers pay half" rule. Now, I am all in favor of paying taxes towards things from which I derive no immediate benefit, for example Social Security, local primary and secondary schools, salaries of many government employes, etc. But in this case, taxpayers are being gouged to not to give benefits to others, they are being gouged to feed the egos of University Boards and athletic department oligarchies who are in an arms race to acquire for themselves power and wealth and nothing else. Michigan's stadium, pre-renovation, already held over 100,000 seats. After renovation, it still holds over 100,000 seats. The only real change is the ability to provide "luxury" space to separate the ultra-rich (who can afford the absurd costs of these climate-controlled boxes) from "the little people" who must sit out in the cold. Society gains, by and large, from taxes. They are used to provide services and utilities and take care of the needy. But in the case of this stadium-space-race, taxes are really just a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

4. Penalize schools with low graduation rates. While the NCAA shows commercials during football games stating "there are over 16,000 NCAA student athletes", many football and basketball players are quietly calculating how soon they can drop out of college and become professional athletes.

Drop the act, NCAA. Most of us know full well that our entire culture revolves around "who's going pro" and when. If the NCAA has a commitment to student-athletes, then they need to be consistent across all sports. Of the 16,000+ student athletes in the NCAA, how many will truly become professionals? I assure you it is less than 1% per year. If the NCAA started penalizing schools that had low graduation rates by reducing funding or disqualifying those schools from the post-season, there would be a massive backlash. It will never happen. Schools like Kentucky go year after year intentionally recruiting "student-athletes" on scholarships knowing that those young men have no intention of graduating. This is a travesty - every one of those faux-students still attends classes occasionally, uses up administrative time, and wastes college resources.
By eliminating University athletics, you force wannabe-pros to find other routes there. Perhaps they could play on club teams at schools, on their own coin or on the coin of an agent who invested in promising high school athletes. Meanwhile, schools could provide scholarships completely for academic prowess, and wouldn't have the boat anchor of student-athletes with no interest in the "student" part. Nor would they have the troubling issue of student-athletes who travel for away games...and often miss up to a week of school in the process.

5. Recognize that not everyone is equipped to graduate from college. Freddie is right on, here. But never more so was this the case than the young men who have (by no fault of their own) an IQ around 85 but are able to dunk a basketball from the free-throw line. At my alma mater, these boys were assigned to the "General Agriculture" degree program, from which a black kid from east St. Louis would derive no present or future benefit. But the degree was really, really easy, so that's where they went. Students were paid part-time by the athletic department to do nothing but tutor these men, and during testing (I witnessed this myself on multiple occasions) the professor turned a blind eye on the student-athlete as he looked over the shoulder of someone who had been strategically placed in the row in front of him and was conveniently leaning out of the way so his/her paper was very visible.
Now I do not mean to specifically eviscerate my own school. Some of the members of the basketball squad were not goons. One was a biochemistry major who went into medicine after graduating with a 3.8. But all too often, people who were simply not mentally equipped to obtain a degree nor capable of using that degree effectively in the post-graduation world were jammed into college classes anyway so that the University athletic program could leech dunks and touchdowns and home runs out of them. Then, after four years they were promptly forgotten. It is as if colleges say "here, we'll give you this worthless diploma for a pointless degree in exchange for the majority of your time the next four years. Also, we'll make huge amounts of money off tickets people buy to come see you play a game, but we won't pay you anything. We'll give you a scholarship that you could not have possibly ever earned through your own mental faculties, and thereby one less enterprising, bright kid somewhere else will be denied a scholarship."
If we ended University athletics...yes, possibly not as many kids from East St. Louis would get college degrees. But in the meantime, the University would free up financial and physical resources to use on scholarships for kids who were better equipped to commercialize on their degree after graduation, and the University, the student, and the tax-paying bottom line would all benefit.

One last thought: many people will attempt to undermine this line of thinking by suggesting that a University's "brand" is established through the accolades and/or misadventures of the University's major sports teams. By depriving schools of this branding capability though ending the athletic departments, I would rob schools of one of their most effective methods of recruiting.
I suppose this could be true. But let me ask the counter question: if a school recruits students mostly through the selling of the students' access to football games...is the school really doing itself and the students any favors? If someone said "I only go to Michigan to watch the football games" I would not ask them why they chose Michigan, but rather I'd ask them why bother going to college at all? Anyone on Earth can buy a ticket to a Michigan game.
By robbing schools of this loony policy of recruiting students via athletic prowess, the schools would be forced to rely on "academic strength," "quality of professors," and God forbid "low tuition" as key traits that would lure students to the school. I don't know that this is a bad thing.

An interesting thought experiment would be if a school's athletic department shuttered, then sent the names of the entire booster list to the school's general fund. The general fund subsequently called each of these donors and asked if they would match their donation from last year, except this year it would go to the actual University and not the University Athletic Department. How many donors would balk? I think the sad truth is that at least 50% would.


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On Birtherism

I have some cousins. Their parents (my aunt and uncle, obviously) were both opthalmologists in the Air Force..."flight surgeons" if you will. At various points in my life, they've lived in the Philippines, Texas, Boston, Arlington VA, DC, and Germany (I am probably missing one). They have taking regular trips as a family to at least 5 other countries that I am aware of.
Yet, no one I can think of would ever accuse them of being foreign nationals. All three of them look about as anglo-saxon as can be; two are blondes, one a redhead, and all three are tall, pretty girls with blue eyes. They all went to Ivy League schools, did pretty well if I do say so myself (no bias intended, haha) and I think one worked for the CIA for a while. I'm serious.

Anyway the point is that no one has ever doubted their American citizenship, not even when the eldest sister married a British native. Their international travels as youth are just as varied, if not more than, Barack Obama's.

The reason birtherism remains in this country is because of racism. Barack Obama is at least half-black and it is really easy for racists to imply he "isn't from here" because in Lottery Ticket America the power is still almost entirely controlled by old, racist, white men. So "real" American citizens are white too. And when a 230-year-long white Presidential sentence ends with a black exclamation point, there's bound to be someone who doesn't like it. Now, they can't possibly just come out and say that its anathema to the establishment that a black boy from Chicago got elected. That'd be racist! No, its much better to just quietly encourage "the crazies" to undermine Obama's Presidency with this "birther" straw man. "All we want is to see the birth certificate." "Okay, here it is." "No wait, we meant the long form version, of course."

Everyone knows this but won't publicly acknowledge it. It's like now that Obama is President, America wants to be in this magical "post-racism" era...even though the racism is still right there in our faces every day.
So you have this situation, now, where Arizona might deem Barack Obama not white enough not native enough to be on their ballot. The question I have is: who cares? I see no good reason why Obama won't be reelected by a large majority; the GOP field is ridiculous at this point, and unless a better GOP candidate emerges...Obama doesn't need Arizona's electoral votes (which he almost certainly wouldn't get anyway) to be reelected by the rest of the (slightly less openly racist) US of A.


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The Future Loses

The Right clearly is defending the rich, or business, or corporate America, or all of the above, with its budget proposals that include ludicrous tax cuts and even-more-ludicrous cuts to public welfare systems. The Left, on the other hand, is defending the poor and the middle class by proposing tax hikes to the rich. Both sides are defending the Defense budget, indomitable and untouchable. And yet where are the defenders of the environment? Where are the defenders of science research?
Between Obama's budget, Simpson-Bowles, and The Ryan Plan all include slash, slash, SLASH! across R&D funding agencies and none seem particularly rosy on the environment. Obama, when the occasion calls for it, offers election-season pandering about oil-alternatives, but doesn't really say anything dangerously aggressive or committal. And the GOP basically doesn't care about the environment.
But everyone is super interested in saving America. They worry about America's deficit crisis, her education bubble, her housing crisis, her health care crisis...on and on and around and around we go, discussing every person's plan to make the future better for America.

It's like everyone is discussing what changes to the interior of an airplane will most benefit passenger comfort on future flights, but ignoring the fact that there is an entire wing missing from the plane.

Look, you can plan for a better future all you want, and I personally laud your efforts. But if you cannot include serious investment in domestic research spending, and serious investment in environmental protection...then America's future people won't really need to worry about the deficit in 2050, they'll need to worry about other things.


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A Better Way To Cut College Costs

End University athletics.


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Curbing College Costs

I'm pretty much on the same page as Freddie in regards to his ideas for curbing college costs, except for one thing. Freddie writes:

Penalize taking longer than four years; incentivize taking less. Student debt figures are inflated by the fact that so many students take more than four years to finish college. Since there clearly isn't much in the way of social expectations pushing students to finish in the traditional four years, it may be time for schools who have to start to enact penalties for students taking longer than four years.

It took me five years to graduate from college, I won't deny it. Between a bad semester, a major change...and the fact that I had to work a full-time job to afford to stay in college I simply had to be there five years. Was I just one of those people, as Freddie suggests, who just wasn't meant to have a college degree? Should I have enlisted in the military instead of going to college? What, exactly, would have been the solution, in this "penalize your fifth year" world?

Freddie's idea that a fifth year should be penalized relies on the assumption of perfection; that everyone who goes to college knows (at entry) exactly what they want to do when they get there, and that no extenuating circumstances will occur. Halfway through my second year, I realized that biochemistry was the very essence of what I didn't want to do the rest of my life, and smartly changed majors. About 2/3rds of my credits transferred to my bioengineering degree program. The others were lost. My last four semesters, I took 18, 17, 18, and 18 hours to get finished. Should those 36 hours my fifth year been penalized? Made more expensive? Or just denied to me? That would have been so much worse.

One might argue "But Alex, you're a bright kid, you definitely prospered." That is true but it is precisely because "really, really smart, borderline ADD kids who aren't very mature when they get to college" like I was exist that we must not penalize that students take different paths in life, and we must not try to corral everyone through a single mold. The general consensus outside the United States is that primary and secondary education works better the more individualized the curriculum is; students simply learn differently and at different rates. Why wouldn't this be true in college too?

I am not trying to defend the partiers. A fair share of the fifth-year seniors at my school were there because taking light semester loads allowed them more party time. The people I am trying to defend are the people who know that they need an education in order to fulfill the American dream and prosper. The ones who are smart enough to know that manual labor is a dying art in this country and if you want job security and health insurance you better have a college degree. Those kids, like me, head off to college without a clue what exactly they will do with that degree. Usually they figure it out, later rather than sooner. I think Freddie would agree with me, sadly, that the time when good jobs are abundant for people with high school diplomas is effectively over. Freddie champions self-determinism. Why penalize it?


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TAE's DIY Arduino Sous Vide Cooker - An Update

I have come to the conclusion that the Crydom D1D12 relay is unsuitable (I believe it is actually rated for 100VDC, not AC), burnt out, or both. Upon connection to AC wall power, it immediately tries to power the heating element. Upon putting 5 volts to the DC side of the relay, it pulls so much amperage through the element that the water actually visibly swirls from the convection, and the lights in my garage dim. I have wisely disconnected it. I believe I will be replacing it with a Sharp S108T01, which is rated at 120 VAC, 8 Amps.
When I run it, I see no visible signs that it is overloading the circuit. Tomorrow I'll borrow a multimeter from work to find out just how much power is going through the circuit.


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In which I have to disagree with Jonah Lehrer, yet again...

Lehrer suggests that high Wonderlic scores are slightly negatively correlated to quarterback performance:

Consider a recent study by economists David Berri and Rob Simmons. While they found that Wonderlic scores play a large role in determining when QBs are selected in the draft -- the only equally important variables are height and the 40-yard dash -- the metric proved all but useless in predicting performance. The only correlation the researchers could find suggested that higher Wonderlic scores actually led to slightly worse QB performance, at least during rookie years. In other words, intelligence (or, rather, measured intelligence), which has long been viewed as a prerequisite for playing QB, would seem to be a disadvantage for some guys.

But you have to wonder: if NFL teams desire smart quarterbacks...wouldn't there be a natural negative correlation? Really bad NFL teams have the next-year-advantage of getting an early draft position...which makes it more likely they can draft a quarterback who is considered desirable due to his Wonderlic score (as well as other factors, obviously). So you end up with Ryan Fitzpatrck scoring a ridiculous 48 on the Wonderlic, but playing for the consistently deplorable, poorly coached Buffalo Bills. Alex Smith scored a 40 but has been mediocre for the Niners. The timeless question must be asked: "but how would (insert player name here) do if he were playing for (insert team name here)?"

The answer, of course, is that quarterback performance is not so simple that it can be determined by a quarterback alone; he needs a good center and offensive line. He needs a good set of receivers to consistently have good hands and to get open quickly. He needs a smart offensive coordinator to play to his strengths. And perhaps most important of all, he needs to be lucky.

I am not saying Lehrer's pet quality, grit, isn't important for quarterback performance. But as long as there has been grass on a football field people have been searching for a way to predictively quantify a prospect's future ability, and the fact of the matter is...there are 22 people on the football field when the ball is snapped...and you can't expect one guy to determine the outcome of a game because he threw a bunch of balls through an old tire every weekend.

Here's what I'd like those economists he cites to study next: quarterback performance vs. number of times sacked. I humbly submit that there is a strong correlation there...and a quarterback getting sacked has less to do with his own physical/mental abilities (Vince Young = outlier) than it does the strength and quality of his Offensive Lineman.

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The Giving Tree/Charlie Bucket's Grandpa

I've always found the movie Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory nearly unwatchable. I realize it is a cult classic and yes, Gene Wilder is brilliant and amazing. The score and set are genius. But then there's Charlie's Grandpa.
The old man is apparently bed-ridden at the beginning of the tale. But, as most people know, once Charlie discovers the "Golden Ticket" and wants to take his grandpa (not his hardworking mother, of course) to the Wonka Factory, Grandpa miraculously climbs out of bed and in the space of about 1 minute, is singing and dancing quite vigorously with Charlie. Grandpa suddenly is so limber that he throws on his coat and out the door with Charlie he goes.
What a friggin' leech! Perfectly capable of sustaining himself on his own, or better yet, of contributing work/money to Charlie's family, he had laid about and mooched off his (I presume he is Charlie's mom's dad otherwise she would have killed him instantly when he revealed he could walk and dance) daughter and son-in-law.
Fast forward to the tour. The helpful Grandpa convinces Charlie to lag behind the factory tour and sneak into the Bubble Room to sample (after Wonka forbids explicitly forbids it) Fizzy Lifting Soda. This not only causes Charlie to almost be killed violently by the room exhaust fan but also "violates the contract" and were it not for Charlie's beneficent return of the Everlasting Gobstopper, would have cost Charlie the right to untold wealth. So, Grandpa is an intolerable leech, a gleeful rule-breaker, and endangers his only grandchild. And yet the movie does nothing to address these things.

One would think, with my cynical evisceration of Grandpa Bucket, that I would agree with Andrew's reader who eviscerates "the boy" from Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree:

I couldn't disagree more with Chaplain Mike; The Giving Tree is a horrid, horrid piece of work. It stars a little brat who takes and takes from this poor tree for the entire length of the book. The tree gives and gives and gives until it has literally nothing left; It becomes a pathetic, dying stump. It has nothing left for either itself or anyone else who comes by. And the book presents this as a good thing!

Yes, and no. Certainly, "the boy" never gives anything back to the tree, not even love really. That's too bad. But the tree never suggests it needs the love of the boy.
I dislike the reader's suggestion that at the end of the story the tree is reduced to a "pathetic, dying stump." Surely this reader fears their own aging! When they get old, do they think they will be reduced to a 'pathetic, dying stump' in the eyes of their children?

What I want to know is if people would feel the same way about "the boy" if there were a sequel book? Silverstein's book focuses on the Tree; every page features the Tree. Imagine a book written with the boy in every page...

The boy comes and plays with the tree every day, eats apples, and plays in branches for fun. Later he falls in love. The woman he loves is beautiful, fun, and interesting. He loves her so dearly that he cuts the branches from his favorite old tree to build a home for her. Shortly after their marriage she gets pregnant. She dies in childbirth, holding his hand. Her and the baby both die. Something in him dies with her. He returns to the tree, angry at the world. He thinks if he just gets away from here, if he can just go find somewhere...an escape...he can heal the wound in him that tears him apart. The tree gives him its trunk and he sails away. He crosses the whole of the world, seeking a better, happier life. He fights in a war, then two, and watches his friends fall around him. After the wars he lives for a time in New York, and becomes wealthy. At the end of his days, he returns to his old home, ready to face his demons. He visits the graveyard for the first time...sees the gravestones of his wife and child, and falls to his knees and weeps for the life he could have had - the life they should have had with him.
His life was bitter, and tragic, filled with loss. Later, he slowly walks across a field, and comes across the stump of The Tree. He sits down heavily, tired with the weight of the world. He remembers his happy youth spent playing in this tree. Now the tree too is reduced to nothing, and has lost everything. Life is a tragedy, he laments. Then he slowly heads home.

I think people fill in the blanks in Silverstein's story with angry details about The Boy. He was selfish as a youth...so that must have continued into adulthood. He took and took from the tree as a boy and young man...so he must have been a greedy taker the rest of his days.
And we universally empathize with the selfless tree. But at the first page of the story, the tree is a massive, fully grown behemoth. Imagine with me, a prequel.

A tiny seedling is born in a field one spring morning. A hundred of its brothers and sisters sprout along with it. The little seedling is ambitious though, and has the tactical advantage of falling far enough from the mother tree that it can get good sunlight. The little seedling grows aggressively - angrily - and quickly begins to overshadow some of its siblings. Starved of light, they disappear. Seasons pass, and the little tree grows. It shrewdly invests most of its energy in its upper branches, and abandons lower ones. This helps it develop a canopy over its peers, and chokes them out. 
Its roots begin a war of attrition with the other young apple trees. Because if its location in the field, it is able to send a taproot to a nearby creek, gaining precious water resources. A dry season comes, and wipes out many of its competitors.
Withing a few years, it has become so large it has eliminated all its competitors and now threatens its mother tree. Without regret...without feeling...it attacks, circumventing the root system of the mother tree and choking it out. A late frost comes, and the mother tree is finished. It slowly dies and falls away.
Suddenly faced with total victory, the tree finds itself completely alone. Conquest is great, the tree admits. But as a few years go by, the tree begins to feel lonely. Soon it realizes that it was the competition with its siblings that it loved. The intimate presence of other trees around it were what made each day interesting. Now it has nothing but an empty field to keep it company. Nothing but its own thoughts. 
As the seasons go by, the tree laments its own stupid ambition. Why had it been so important to be the dominant tree? What was the point of winning if by winning it lost everyone it cared about? The tree begged God, Nature, or a freak storm to come by and take it out. It produced apples, hoping to have children...but its growth had wrecked the nearby soil so effectively that new seedlings could not grow. Barren, alone, and infinite, the tree despaired.
Until one day a boy came hopping across the field, and began to play in its branches. Desperate for this company, the tree promised itself that it would do whatever the boy wanted, as long as it could make this little boy happy...it would be happy.

These stories, of course, do not exist. Silverstein never wrote "The Giving Tree 2" or "Before The Giving Tree" because the little tale is meant to stand alone. We aren't supposed to judge "The Boy" or assume his actions outside of the narrative of the story. We are supposed to focus on the Giving Tree's happiness derived from its selflessness. That is all.


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TAE's DIY Arduino Sous Vide Cooker - Part III: The Schematic

Alright, there's not really an easy way for me to do this because my skills at drawing schematics are incredibly terrible, so in this case I am just going to hand draw it on a piece of paper and then scan that into here as a pdf or jpeg. Forgive my inability to schematize.

You can see previous entries leading up to this one here and here.


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Vanity

My sitemeter has just informed me that I am now up to a daily average of 45 unique visitors. To the 45 of you, thanks.


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Emo Moment of the Day

Now the years are rolling by me, they are rocking evenly
And I am older than I once was, and younger than I'll be
That's not unusual. No it isn't strange;
After changes upon changes we are more or less the same.
After changes, we are more or less the same.


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Matt Yglesias

Matt Yglesias describes the most irritating thing about himself in one sentence:

I got the worst grade of my whole college career in Theda Skocpol’s class on American social policy, and that’s never stopped me from writing about American social policy.

That's his advice for college students? Keep doing what you're terrible at and eventually you'll get paid to keep doing it as a profession?


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Gas Tax, Ctd

Here's the biggest problem with gas taxes: it causes the government to incentivize driving in order to increase gas tax revenue. The point of a gas tax would be to reduce net miles driven by taxpayers. Yet that would cause a decrease in net gas tax revenue, which would be caustic to government coffers. Therefore, the government would have a fiscal interest in tax payers continuing to drive.

With a gas tax in place, a city would be very smart to scatter its tourist attractions willy nilly around the perimeter of the city, and then not connect them via mass transit. This would force tourists to drive to these attractions and subsequently buy gas. Citizens of the city would be unaffected for the most part, because the tourist traps are not the same as their places of work.


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Holy Cow What A Pinhead: Gas Tax Edition

Logan Penza:

A gas tax increase doesn’t kidney punch consumers as much as in previous years.  When gas was $1.75 a gallon, a gas tax increase looked pretty nasty, as it would proportionally add a great deal to the cost of transportation.  But now that fuel-efficient cars are far more common and gas prices are already higher, even a large increase in the gas tax would not proportionally raise transportation costs all that much.

So if the government put a $0.50 tax on top of every gallon...somehow that's different to my checkbook when gas is $1.75 than when gas is $3.75? I drive an average of 37 miles every working day, round trip. I get 17 miles per gallon in my pickup on average. I drive to work 260 days a year. That's a $565 dollar increase in my gas cost...no matter what the price of gas is pre-tax.

Then we get this gem:

And to the extent that it might impact the working poor who must rely on older and less fuel efficient cars to get to work (especially given the continuing lack of reliable and safe public transport in many cities), the effect could be mitigated by a needs-based voucher system entitling them to discounts and operated through the food stamps program.

Wow, way to simplify the tax code. What I really like about this plan is its insistence on passing taxes while also immediately including a way to get out of paying those taxes. This plan seems especially brilliant, considering later on the GOP could cut funding to the "gas stamps program" in the name of lower deficits and it wouldn't hurt their rich friends at all.

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The Fallacy of Oil Prices Spurring Mass Transit

Many liberals, especially Matt Yglesias, have this hard-core, no-holds-barred belief that raising the price of gas, either by natural economic forces or by artificial ones like increased gas taxes, will cause people to agglomerate in the cities and/or use mass transit more.
Ideas like this are almost always forwarded by people living in cities with at least some semblance of existing mass transit. And worse yet, they do not produce any sort of solution for:
1. Short-term personal economic shock due to rapidly rising gas prices
2. Methods to quickly produce and deploy mass transit in places where it is absent
3. What to do with the houses in the suburbs vacated by urban-moving city residents
4. What to do with the economies in the suburbs once they are vacated by residents

I suppose I am thinking shorter term than Matt. In his mind, he imagines a gradual densification of the city combined with a gradual collapse of the suburbs inward. He imagines trains, subways, and bus routes being established over a period of years. He imagines gas taxes being gradually rising as an increasingly strong nudge for suburban types to urbanize themselves. He imagines the rising price of gas to naturally point people towards fuel efficient vehicles at first, then increasingly towards mass transit.

I, on the other hand, have a pretty tight budget. Back when Mrs. TAE and I were setting our budget last October, we assumed a gas price of $2.50/gallon, which at the time was 30 cents higher than the actual price. Based on that, my 37.6 mile (round trip) commute would consume about 2.2 gallons of gas a day in my pickup, for an annual cost of $1,133. However, gas prices currently sit at $3.75/gallon over the same period, which means I'm out an additional $566 just for commuting.  Times two if you add in the wife. A thousand bucks extra is an appreciable percentage of my budget, and I am pretty-well off when it comes to salary.  Meanwhile, no new train, subway, or bus initiatives have been proposed here. In fact, a major metropolitan area has not started a light rail/subway initiative since the early 90's, when LA put in their current LA County Metro system. The last one before that was Miami in 1984. The gas prices, since 1993, have gone up 500%. Why aren't there light rail and subway initiatives all over the country? The counterargument would be that 1993 gas prices were abnormally low, and not only did that artifical lowness cause the spread of suburban sprawl, but also only now are gas prices reaching "normals" where they actually make people suffer.
If that is true, wouldn't we see increases in mass transit initiatives during previous oil price spikes? Like in the early seventies? In the United States there were a total of two cities that got subways, DC (1976) and Atlanta (1979). San Fransisco's BART system opened in 1972, and was under way a decade before the oil embargo.
So I go back up to my Yglesias daydream. Phase 1: oil prices go up. Phase 2: people switch to fuel efficient cars. Phase 3: people switch to mass transit. I think the 70's was a time when phase 1 and phase 2 clearly happened (my dad sold his 71 GTX with a 426 Hemi for a Pinto or something equally horrible), but phase 3 didn't. Why? The answer is that the rising price of gas was completely mitigated by the transition to fuel efficient vehicles. Phase 3 was unnecessary, in most places. And I think it happens again, and again.

But here's the real reason mass transit drags on in the quagmire of potential projects that don't get funding: mass transit is universally hated. It's not always the same reason. In fact it almost never is. But by and large people strongly dislike mass transit when they could as easily drive. Here's a list of reasons:
1. In many cases, it saves you no time over driving yourself.
2. You have no control over the actions or smells of the people around you.
3. You are claustrophobic.
4. You can immediately start driving to work, but often must wait a few minutes for the next train. Don't underestimate the psychological effect of this.
5. See here.
6. There typically aren't homeless people in your backseat acting weird.
7. You are much more likely to be a victim of a terrorist attack on a subway train than in your own car.
8. You need to run errands during your lunch break or after work that don't fall directly on the subway line.

The list goes on and on. I, for one, visit a city with subways so rarely that riding it still feels like Adventures in Babysitting.

Nevertheless, I want to make a suggestion for a possible way to spur cities into getting mass transit. Rather than messing with the gas prices via tax...why not just reduce the number of lanes on highways? Here in Kansas City, one of the majory arterial interstates is I-35. On my commute, it is anywhere from 6 to 12 lanes across if you count both directions. They are constantly trying to squeeze wider and wider to accommodate more lanes. I have a counter suggestion. When traffic gets sufficiently packed on the highway that they need to expand the road...they should reduce it by a lane. The outrage would be fantastic.
However the difference here is that people wouldn't be out another several hundred dollars; gas prices are unaffected by commute times. Instead they'd be galvanized to either increase working hour flexibility (which is a net gain for a cities' economy) or they would be galvanized into moving away from those highways...which would be impossible because the city streets are just as bad...and so they'd have no choice but to move inward to minimize the amount of time they spent in that awful, awful bottleneck.

Why does no one consider what I am proposing? The best part is, by wiping out lanes of traffic, you'd free up space to lay down a train track for a metro rail system.


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TAE's DIY Steampunk Goggles

Long ago, I promised that my next DIY project I'd put on here would be steampunk goggles...aka the thing you are morally required to make first for a steampunk costume. However, that was 6 odd months ago and because I'm embarassed it took so long, I thought I'd give you all a DOUBLE SHOCK and post TWO pairs of steampunk goggles...
...well, actually 1.5 pairs of steampunk goggles. But stay with me, the second pair is going to be epic.

(By the way, you can click on any of the images below for much larger versions. Enjoy!)

The first pair (Mark I) I made were "quickies" because I have so little time for my magnum opus goggles that I was afraid I wouldn't have them done before Maker Faire KC (where I plan to unveil to the public my DIY arduino sous vide cooker). Which may very well still happen. The first pair is basically a modified version of welding goggles, part number 5444T6 available for a piddly $7.62 at McMaster-Carr. These arrived and are actually really comfortable and cool as hell looking, though a bit too post-industrial to just wear. So I've got this brass Krylon which i just doused 'em in and gave em a real nice color and I like them. The fronts of the goggles unscrew and you can remove the clear protective lens and the shaded welding lens to make painting easier. However, the threads will bind if you get too much paint on them, so just put some scotch tape or better yet, silicon tape over the threads that you can peel off after you do a few coats of paint.

Back when I was in high school, I had the hide of a deer I shot cleaned up at a tannery and then bleached. I decided to use that for the strap, replacing the black stretchy strap that was provided with the goggles.

Once I'd cut the strap to length and size I airbrushed it to a more "standard" leather color, but the strap still retains that sweet leather texture.

That was really it for those goggles. They look pretty snazzy. Nothing spectacular, but they'll do in a pinch.

On to the Mark II goggles. At work I have Solidworks and an Objet 3D printer basically at my disposal, which I decided to take total advantage of. The first step was to model and then print the goggle mains. I happened to have a couple 50 mm iris diaphragms lying around that we'd used for a project but then discarded, so I decided to integrate them, having seen amazing steampunk goggles somewhere that used a similar set up.

However that goggle set used machined titanium which seemed like it would be uncomfortably heavy to me, compared to printed plastic. I read somewhere that the guy claimed they took him ages to make, and he ended up selling them for a couple thousand. I can print a new pair of my goggles in about 25 minutes, and then once I have the leatherwork decided, I can imagine making two pairs a night, if I wanted.
So I designed and printed my 3D resin/plastic frames.

They are that semi-opaque color because we use a "di-clear" material at work that is really cheap. In the image above you can see the slot for the diaphragm slider. The various vertical risers around the diameter are artifacts caused by the 3D printer and just are different transparency levels due to support material going up to the screw holes, not actually physical features.
In order to mount the diaphragms, I needed keeper rings.

These attach to the frames via brass (obviously) #0-80 screws.

The assembly requires six of these screws; you can sort of see the holes for the screws (I had to do #0-80 taps...super tedious) in the image if you click on it to blow it up.
Before I assembled this stuff, I got that trusty brass Krylon out and gave everything a few coats. It took a while because the paint didn't bond to the Di-Clear material real well and dried unusually slowly. But once dry the paint was pretty well bonded. Here's the frames before I put the diaphragms in.

And here's the assembly. I used a couple of clear protective lenses from a pair of safety goggles to cover and protect the leaves in the diaphragms.

Here's a look at the diaphram mounted and open.

And here's the diaphragm closed.

And here's just another image of the two frames with diaphragms mounted.

You can see the screw holes that aren't filled. These are for the leather. Each frame will get a ring of leather around the end for wearer comfort. Also clearly visible is the rings in the frames to mount the leather nosepiece and the rings for the strap. The reason I said it was only half finished is because I have yet to do the leather work. Hopefully by Maker Faire in June I can get around to it.

In any case, that's it for now. I'll update with more pictures when the Mark II goggles are done. In case the questions start coming to me, and I suspect they will:
1. Yes, I can provide you with the solidworks files for my goggles.
2. Yes, I can print the Di-Clear models and ship them to you (for a fee). If there is enough interest in this I might just get aluminum blocks made at Protomold and just injection mold them for people.
3. The part # for the brass #0-80 screws is McMaster-Carr part #92482A264, you'll need two packs per pair of goggles.
4. No, I won't sell you a completed pair. DIY, dummy.
5. Get your own buckskin. Or leather. Or something cooler. Unicorn hide would be nice. I'll trade you a pair of printed frames for some unicorn hide.


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The Ethics of (not) Voting, Ctd

Ilya Somin suggests individual voting is like individual reduction of air pollution:

There is only an infinitesmal chance that any one vote will be decisive. So individual voters have strong incentives to remain ignorant. But not every form of rational behavior is morally defensible. Sometimes, rational individual behavior leads to terrible collective outcomes. Consider the case of air pollution, where individuals might rationally choose not to limit their emission of dangerous pollutants because any one person’s behavior has only a tiny effect on overall air quality in the area.

Though she later states that she does not believe citizens have a "duty" to vote, her analogy suggests by implication that "not voting " is the same as "polluting" or rather an individual not voting is a net negative on society.
However let me put forth my own analogy for not voting by rewording hers: There is only an infinitesimal chance that any one vote will be decisive. So individual voters have strong incentives to remain ignorant. But not every form of rational behavior is morally defensible. Sometimes, rational individual behavior leads to terrible collective outcomes. Consider the case of the Powerball or Mega Millions lottery, where individuals might rationally choose not to buy tickets because any one's lottery ticket has only the tiniest chance of being a jackpot winner.
 But you see in my case, the argument is the flip. She thinks you should vote, just like you should limit personal air pollution. I think you shouldn't play the lottery because it is a "tax on the poor" ergo you shouldn't vote for one or the other bad candidate. The lottery is legitimized by the hordes of losers (I mean that in the nicest way) that play again and again, despite losing every single time. Similarly, the American voting system is legitimized by the hordes of people who line up to vote. And yet, no one tells you that you must play the lottery. If anything, the opposite is suggested...that playing the lottery might be fun, but almost certainly is an epic waste of your disposable income (and an especially bad retirement plan). But when my vote for President will be one of millions, and will have basically no effect on the election (especially when my vote is decoupled through the electoral college process), and I don't feel that either of the candidates are especially appealing...all my vote does is legitimize the process. It does not affect the outcome. And like the lottery ticket, it almost certainly does not benefit me.

The doubly-absurd part of this process is the implication by American culture that somehow I must feel good about voting, or worse - bad about not voting. Yet, consider the case for many moderates in America. Both parties continue to put forth polarized candidates, and especially the GOP is putting forth a bevy of hard-right (or even Tea Party) candidates. Maybe the left isn't as bad...because they're really not leftists anymore...but nevertheless, you end up with two candidates (and only two) that appear at opposite ends of the spectrum. Though filled with a feeling that "none of these croney-loving blowhards represent my rational, compromise-adept view" moderates are told by everyone that they have a "duty" to vote.
That was where I was this past November. Faced with left and right candidates who were, by my opinion, pandering, party-following ignoramuses, I did not vote. And boy, did I catch flak for it! But voting would have been, in my mind, like throwing a couple bucks at a Powerball ticket: statistically infinitesimal chance that I'd end up a winner. "Vote for a third-party candidate then," you say? Buy a Powerball ticket and throw it in the garbage?
No, the only way I could derive any personal benefit AT ALL from the election was to not waste my time driving to the polls. Too often, the implication is that non-voting is a byproduct of ignorance. But I think the real problem is that as people become well-informed of candidates, they realize that they are voting in a lose-lose election.


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The Ryan Plan

Look, what Freddie said. Exactly what Freddie said.

But a couple of weeks ago I suggested that we all need to start looking for the good in each other. I wrote: "People are idiots. People are hypocrites. People are greedy and self-serving and stuck in their ways. People are spiteful. People are egomaniacal or narcissistic or both. But if we all start focusing on the good in each other: people can sacrifice, people can work hard, people can respect each other, people can laugh and cry and hug each other...if we start seeing those things, it becomes easier for us to work with them, and they with us. In short, it becomes easier to work together and stop mucking up the future."

I stand by that. And so, I rarely do this, but I have to agree with Megan McCardle when she says:

That means that any real budget deal is going to have to, somehow, bridge the gap between Republicans and Democrats.  The Ryan plan is fine as a starting point for talks.  It is not fine if the GOP refuses to accept that it cannot also be the ending point.

My personal opinion is that the Ryan plan is awful. It's the same old conservative cronyism that made me excited about my Obama vote in 2008. I can't turn my back on the poor "for the sake of the country." We're all in this together, and as I suggested by analogy, those who reap the largest harvest due to American Freedom should sow the most seeds next spring.
But nevertheless, in my engineering group we operate under the credo "the more bad ideas the better" because from those bad ideas we can dialogue and eventually find a good one. So while I will not possibly ever think that Paul Ryan's budget proposal is anywhere near "reality" I will say that I am glad ideas are being profferred, and I am doubly glad those ideas have spawned copious dialogue. Now, whether that dialogue leads to compromise...that's the tough question.


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Modern Non-fiction

The problem with the entirety of modern non-fiction is that people learn something interesting and think "I should write a book" when really their knowledge is more of a "10-page essay." But they write the book anyway.


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The Internet on Your Brain

As though the first person to ever suggest it as an idea, Michael Morost writes a long intro to his book about a future when humans and the internet are connected in massively parallel, the same way the left and right sides of the brain are connected by the corpus callosum:

A human-machine integration is far beyond current technology, of course. But technology advances by integrating. That is, when one system improves, it spurs improvement in other systems so they can keep up. When those systems improve, they in turn spur the first system to improve. The systems become increasingly dependent on each other. Their futures become mutually bound.

Take, for example, desktop computers and the software that runs them. Better computers let software engineers write bigger programs. Bigger programs create a demand for better computers. The computer manufacturers are happy to oblige, and the cycle starts all over again. A push is matched by a pull, which evokes a new push. That push-pull dynamic has rammed innovation into overdrive.

A push-pull dynamic is hobbled, though, when one system can’t improve as fast as the other. The Internet is improving very fast. The human body improves very slowly. Our hands evolved to grip spears and plows, and so can type only so many emails in a day. Our senses evolved to monitor a largely unchanging savannah for friends and predators, and so can pay attention to only a handful of events at a time. To be sure, some human attributes like IQ appear to have risen in the twentieth century, but the rate of increase is much slower than technology’s. There is no Moore’s Law for human beings.

This mismatch between humans and the Internet imposes inherent limits on how much either can improve. This is unfortunate, because they are a natural match for a push-pull dynamic driving each other upward. Their strengths are complementary. The Internet is fast, while humans are slow; capacious, while humans are forgetful. Conversely, humans are self-aware while the Internet isn’t, and humans can interact with the physical world while the Internet can’t. But they also have aligned strengths: they are both intensely networked, intensely communicative entities.

One way to overcome the separateness of humans and the Internet is to increase the speed and density of their information exchange. Nature has already solved an engineering challenge like this, in fact, in your own head. Your brain has two hemispheres, each of which controls the opposite side of your body. Your left hemisphere controls your right hand and the right side of your face, for instance. In a normal brain the two halves work together smoothly and efficiently because they are connected via the corpus callosum, a bundle of 200 to 250 million nerve fibers. Their separateness is overcome by what scientists call “massively parallel connectedness.”

But if a surgeon severs the corpus callosum, as has sometimes been done in last-ditch attempts to control epilepsy, it soon becomes clear that the two hemispheres have very different desires and intentions. One hand buttons a shirt while the other simultaneously unbuttons it. One hand pulls down one’s trousers, while the other pulls them back up. In his book The Bisected Brain Michael Gazzaniga wrote that splitting the hemispheres “produces two separate, but equal, cognitive systems each with its own abilities to learn, emote, think, and act.” In an intact brain the corpus callosum lets the hemispheres exchange so much data so quickly that functionally they behave as a unified brain. The rapidity and density of the connection effectively erases their differences.

Morost goes on to suggest the future:

As I said, the lack of a fast and efficient interface sets inherent limits on how much humans can do with the Internet. If human minds could work directly with the Internet, two grand unifications would happen at once. First, humans would become more closely connected with each other. As I will explain later in the book, we would have entirely new ways to sense each other’s presence, moods, and needs. A person with a suitably wired brain could be aware of other people as if they were part of her own body, the same way she knows where her own fingers are. Second, humanity and its tool, the Internet, would become a single organism with entirely new powers. Not just a mere hybrid, but a new species in its own right.

Well, that might be a bit poetic for me. Readers can read my version of this concept here. I want to touch on a brief problem with the future. Imagine he and I are right, and not far in the future it become possible, either by surgery or by less invasive means, for a computer and a human being to directly connect via the nervous system. The floodgates are opened.
One cannot seriously believe that such a technology is affordable to most people. Think of it like this: the internet viewed through a PC or mobile device is a Kia Rio, and a direct neural uplink to the internet would be the Maserati. You create this world where the classes become even more lucidly divided. Either you peck away at a keyboard, you poor, huddled masses...or you browse right from your brain like the celebrities do.
This is how all technology goes, right? The first movers are the "haves" and then innovation and mass production creates cheaper and cheaper markets until even the homeless have smartphones. I'd be fine with that, except I agree with Morost's thesis above: integration of the internet and the brain will accelerate the evolution of both. Which sucks for poor people because how do you catch up with something that is accelerating away from you?
The simplest answer is that you don't. You just try to move as fast as you can, sacrifice so your kids can live like the "haves" and hope they never fall behind. Isn't that the American way? Try to live a decent life so your kids can live a life better than you did?


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