The Freakwenter

Overlappinglish Parthree

2012-01-31T07:17:00.001-08:00

A continuation from an old idea to improve the information density of the English language by overlapping words:

In the locker room the other day some guys were getting rather excessive with the deodorant and perfume and perhaps other body chemicals. I was perfumigated.

Ron Paul

2011-08-12T12:16:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdGsPioLLvQ

Sweet reminder of home

2011-06-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Camels before slaughter

2011-06-29T00:49:00.000-07:00

At least it's not after slaughter. Someone told me these were destined to be meat.

a Sir-vice industry

2011-06-27T21:11:00.000-07:00

More than half of Qatar's population consists of men from the third worlds who come on 1 to 3 year contracts, earning money to send back to families in the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan, and others.

Typical uniforms are of yellow or blue, like the window washers above. Vast armies of men constantly mop and scrub the same areas of buildings over and over, as if their efforts cost little. When you pass them in the hall they step aside deferentially. Most do not know much English, and if you try to speak with them you will most likely get called "sir."

At night, the security guards (also foreign) accompany cleaners to each office, opening office doors and standing watch as cleaners past through with feather dusters and gather up any mugs or glasses to return to the kitchen. The next morning, the middle-aged "tea boy" arrives at 6 a.m. to fire up the coffee and wash the used cups.

He smiles brightly as he carries coffee and cookies to each office, but very soon he runs out of things to do, as there are only a handful of people who actually want his tea or cookies. He returns to his kitchen and tries to stay awake for the rest of the day. It will be a long three years until he sees his family. But if his contract is renewed, it could be hard to justify the cost of a return trip. I wonder, does he feel he has landed a great opportunity? I strongly doubt anyone forced him to come here, with the possible exception of his family, to whom $3000 per year might seem like a lot. Still, it is tempting to think in terms of modern-day slavery.

The plant boy stops by my office about once every two weeks to trim and water my plant. Every parking lot is staffed by a watchman who is responsible to move the gate up to let traffic through. Once I tried walking out the main entrance to my building to go get groceries. The gateman moved the gate up to let me walk though even though there was plenty of space to walk between the gates.

The World Conference for Science Journalists

2011-06-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

I heard a commotion outside my office. A man was warming up on his guitar-thing.

Retirement

2011-06-27T01:28:00.000-07:00

My work is finished. I will watch some TV and take in a few sights. Then I will pass away ... to the U.S.A.

Pots

2011-06-25T22:23:00.000-07:00

I captured a rare tourist posing in front of a window full of pots. I asked him where he was from and he said ``the little Afghanistan of the US."

In one shop I found a pot about 4.5 feet in diameter and 28 inches deep. I think it's for boiling camels.

Villaggio mall

2011-06-24T05:37:00.000-07:00

The fast (and furious) food of Iran

2011-06-23T06:24:00.000-07:00

Americans whine and cry about 1000-calorie McDonald's meals causing slow deaths for a nutritionally disengaged customer base that cares only about money and yummy. But McDonalds is nothing. Behold a 25 riyal ($6.90 USD) Iranian fast food meal deal:

The furious part was when I bit into an oddly-lonely green bean only to discover it was rather spicy. I was eating so fast that it was halfway swallowed by the time I noticed, so I had to finish swallowing it. I sweated and got the hiccups so bad I could hardly get down my yogurt drink (included in the meal) in time to prevent the spices from doing permanent damage. In the US you can probably sue a restaurant for including a spicy green bean in a meal without a printed warning.

Qatar has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world; about 1 in 1o Qataris are diabetic.

A battle ends

2011-06-23T05:50:00.000-07:00

Every teacher has two main groups of enemies at work.

The first group of enemies is the administration. If you don't do a good job, they might fire you. If you just give all the students A's, they get mad at you. If you give all the students F's, they give you an F too. It's a very fine line you must walk to avoid getting eaten by the administration.

The second group of enemies is the students. If you try to make them learn too much, they will give you bad evaluations. If you don't make them come to class and they end up failing, they give you bad evaluations. If they work hard and still don't understand what's going on, they will do their best to replace you. The students may call you "sir" or "professor" or "sir professor sir," but their rhetoric is pure passive aggression.

Today was the last day of direct hand-to-hand combat. Only the final exam remains, for which my only role is to stand as a sentry. I am happier now.

Wheelbarrows

2011-06-12T19:29:00.000-07:00

As seen at Al Souq Waqif. Old men push these around throughout the market. Only old men.

Iraqi food

2011-06-12T10:06:00.000-07:00

I asked the waiter what was the most ``uniquely Iraqi" thing on the menu, and he suggested a few things.

I give high ratings for the uniqueness factor on this happiness-sized dish of flatbread half-soaked in tomato-onion sauce and topped with beef ribs.

Another guy got this this huge bread roll that was stuffed with stuff. My dish was better; moister. The moisterness is important.

Wacky Chicken

2011-06-10T05:31:00.000-07:00

A curious by-product of civilization.

Mosque

2011-06-10T05:27:00.000-07:00

110

2011-06-05T04:29:00.000-07:00

Thursday the temperature is supposed to reach 110 degrees fire and height with a wind-cook factor of medium-rare.

Gaining weight again ... Yummy!

2011-06-04T22:32:00.001-07:00

Scrutinize me

2011-06-04T22:18:00.000-07:00

As my students suffer away on their midterm exam, I scrutinize me. How I have I become this modern day slave-master? What is this strange arrangement in which students pay a school to hire me to harass them day in and day out, threatening them with failure, prosecuting them for "cheating," and prompting them to lift mental weights that they have no desire to lift?

Bird grows

2011-06-03T02:58:00.000-07:00

This continues from a previous post. The bird is a teenager now. First real feathers grew.

The wings took shape.

The bird migrated to a corner with less poop.

The bird flaps its wings for joy when it sees me!

The bird has at least two caretakers.

The real estate market

2011-05-31T11:04:00.000-07:00

To own land in Qatar you have to be a citizen. If you're not a citizen, you can own up to 49% of any given parcel and the rest must belong to a Qatari. There is one exception: You can buy "reclaimed" land, manmade land in the ocean. Such land is scarce, and quite expensive.

People who buy this land also buy nice boats. Speaking of boats, here's a shout out to what some believe to be an acceptable youtube video. Anyway, back on topic, the fake island sports a torch in the middle of a nondescript and senseless wall of concrete, as if it were not already hot and bright enough around here.

2011: An Amphitheater Odyssey

2011-05-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

A stone stadium with no evident lighting or amplification system. Bored guards guard for guarding's sake.

There is enough space on the back half of the stage for hundreds of backup dancers.

A computer chip is tossed to the setting sun, and when it falls next mankind will be something different.

Prime real estate

2011-05-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

These are apartment buildings, so said the tour guide:

In Qatar they have trouble affording architects that know how to draw straight lines.

Al Souq Waqif

2011-05-26T22:53:00.000-07:00

Translated literally, the standing market. They have hundreds of miniature shops. Some sell candy:

Some sell pets:

Some sell camel dishes on the rooftop to customers smoking hukas on hot rooftops overlooking the market. Find the huka pipes in this photo hanging in the top right:

The customers get to watch soccer and sappy MTV.

Carpet mecca carpet

2011-05-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

While on the topic of carpet meccas, we must discuss the Mecca carpet. The sewn-in compass helps you to improve your aim. A prayer that is not precisely calibrated is liable to be wasted, passing by the holy city with no more effect than a neutrino through a banana.

A carpet culture

2011-05-26T04:52:00.000-07:00

In the desert, it never rains on the outdoor carpets.

Family values

2011-05-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

The jet skier is only a boy, maybe 14. He does figure eights, sending ocean spray all the way to where I stand.

There's an Amish-like emphasis on family around here. Certain large public parks are reserved for families only. Not even couples are allowed in these parks.

City of dreams

2011-05-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

There are rumors.

We think we know where the money is coming from, but we don't know where the people will come from.

A little trip to the mall

2011-05-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

Here is my survival kit for venturing out for even a 10-minute walk:

Something like Walmart, and a good source of groceries, is nestled deep within the mall.

You can buy most any kind of junk you like at the mall. Notably absent is the REI equivalent. People here don't even try to pretend like they like nature.

If I had to take care of a doll, this would be the one.

Ice.

Office space

2011-05-19T23:10:00.001-07:00

The window blind is a soft translucent roll that appears at the touch of a button. I like my chair:

There is this in case anyone wants to relax by my door:

My bathtub

2011-05-19T23:04:00.000-07:00

The water in this pool does not sting my eyes much or make me stink much. I like to swim there at night.

Drag racer crane tractor

2011-05-17T00:09:00.000-07:00

Worknook

2011-05-15T22:28:00.001-07:00

Good stuff on the financial crisis

2011-05-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

After watching Inside Job and listening (on tape) to The Big Short, I highly recommend both as good fodder for igniting your confused interest in the financial world.

The Big Short is about 8 hours to listen to and it kept my attention all rapt up during much of my trip. Like most any great documentary, the official topic of the book is not much more that a pretext for a running subtext of insight into psychology. Throughout, the authors tantalizingly characterize the investor heros as quirky and more hardworking than brilliant, as if I could follow in their footsteps if I really wanted to. Most poignantly, a market man comes to terms with his Aspergers after watching his son get diagnosed. And here is one of my favorite character descriptions:

He was short, with a wall street belly; not the bleacher-bums boiler, but the discrete necessary pouch of a squirrel just before winter.

From the 14th floor: Part 2

2011-05-15T08:14:00.001-07:00

The two main bathrooms each include some sort of wash basin next to the toilet. I assume it's for washing clothes. That will be fun.

The shower next to the bathtub is doubly overkill considering that the swimming pool out back will easily meet all of my bathing needs.

I guess they have to find something to spend all those natural gas dollars on.

Hot gray

2011-05-15T03:10:00.000-07:00

The ocean blends into the sky. The heat is thick and hazy.

Of all the buildings I can see, nothing was here before 1982, said my Sri-Lankan taxi driver this morning. It seems like a third of the skyscrapers are still under construction.

From the 14th floor: Part 0

2011-05-14T07:37:00.000-07:00

The school rep and I looked around my apartment when he delivered me there.

I think I'll fit.

True to rumor, the fridge had enough food in it for at least a couple days, if you're me, or at least a week for a normal person.

I was perplexed at the small size of the bedroom compared to the main living area, but quickly decided that small bedrooms must be just one more aspect of Arab culture I had not heard about.

After returning from a quick excursion to the mall with the school rep, I explored the premises a bit more and found two more bedrooms that neither of us had noticed. One has two twin beds set up like a hotel room. For myself I claimed the the master bedroom with the king bed with clean sheets.

In it's original unadulterated state the master bed had a towel and washcloth on top. It's the only towel and washcloth I've found after extensive searching, suggesting that I'm currently the only person assigned to this flat. I'm not sure what to do with this side room:

So in summary, this place has 2 decks, 3 full bathrooms (a special bathroom feature coming soon!), and 3 bedrooms plus spacious living areas. It's about twice the size of my house back home. I have to walk so far to get anywhere, like from the couch to the refrigerator.

I am not alone

2011-05-14T07:29:00.000-07:00

This bird hiding in the corner gave me a startle when I first stepped out onto deck #2.

I suppose she thinks she's incubating that egg, although it's hard to imagine that this is necessary during the 100 degree heat.

Should I set up a video camera for real-time footage of the majestic pigeon and young?

From the 14th floor: Part I

2011-05-14T00:35:00.000-07:00

First class

2011-05-11T17:41:00.000-07:00

I start my day scooping up water from the mysterious hilltop-burp stream running behind my house to water my young plants and contemplating how best to attack the groundhog I saw run into the bushes. I end my day sitting in the first class lounge in Dulles airport chatting over wi-fi as I await the beef ribs from a menu with no prices and snack on bits of cantaloupe from the self-serve fruit bar, occasionally glancing up to sip from a tall narrow glass of ice water and taking in the view of jets taxiing on the side of the glass wall. Ah, here are my ribs now, a dainty portion with no bone, unfamiliar to one used to a large plate of groundhog.

Qatar etiquette

2011-05-11T06:23:00.000-07:00

This seems like a good cultural training. Darn, I have to stop turning down offers of food, give up my habit of comparing people to dogs, and be forgiving of people who don't seem to follow a schedule.

An irregular diet

2011-05-01T03:50:00.000-07:00

I'm already on day 3 of my eat-every-other-day super fad diet plan. Advantages of this diet include wasting less time preparing food and washing dishes on the day off, and getting to eat as much as you like on the day on. The day off was easier than I expected, with noticeable hunger setting in not until after 3pm. I functioned normally right up until bed time, when it was not so easy to go to sleep.

Teaching 1 oh one

2011-04-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

I come from a family of teachers. Everyone teaches or has taught for a substantial period. Those who do not teach professionally are homeschoolers. I gathered a bit of advice for possible application in my upcoming teaching assignment.

Course planning:

Clearly and deliberately state your objectives for each class.
For each concept, plan out exercises students will do to master that concept.
Prior to teaching a concept, decide how you will evaluate students on their understanding of that concept.

Classroom fundamentals:

Do a brief review at the beginning of each class.
Make the students work during class -- don't just talk to them. Force them to daydream on-topic, using the Fancy Tricks below.
Expect unanticipated issues and thoughts to occur at any time.

The teacher-student relationship:

Especially with compulsory education, there’s no use lamenting which students are in the class ...
... if your students are spoiled rich kids who don’t really care about the course work, just do your best to bring out their best. You are the professional in the room, so be adaptive, flexible, innovative, and don’t expect the students to be.
Let them know who you are--a tidbit to open each week (or even each day). On Mondays I show a "photo from my weekend." But don't be their friend. And don't friend them.
Learn about your students, and give them chances to teach you.

Fancy tricks:

Give prizes. The more outlandish, the better.
Make name cards and use them to call on people. Shuffle them daily so no one knows when they'll be called on. Turn to the next card BEFORE asking a question, but don't say the student's name until after asking the question. Students hate this; it's great for teachers.

Folder names: Dimensions of my life

2011-04-14T05:43:00.000-07:00

On my computer I have all my files stuck in folders and sub-folders. I've designed this hierarchy of folders in a way that I hope will let me locate the files I need quickly and logically, but I'm never quite satisfied with it.

What is the most sensible way to slice my life? Suppose I have separate folders for House, Personal, Work, and School. I could make another folder for Finance, in which I put everything related to finance, such as tax records, house expense records, investments, insurance expenses ... or I could could include a Finance subfolder within each of the House, Personal, Work, and School, since they each have a financial aspect.

There are endless overlaps and opportunities for confusion in splitting my life into folders. There are lots of topics in my life: Taxes, Health, Wealth, Friends, Family, Travel, Consulting, Classes, Life eras (pre-College, College, post-College, Gradschool1, Gradschool2), Introspection, Jobsearch/Resume, Investments, Insurance, Car, House, Deck, Applications, Forms, Photos, Music, Research, Garden, Renting ...

Here are a few ways to slice life into four things at the highest level of a folder hierarchy:

School, Work, Social, Business
Career, Home, Activities, Art
Personal, Social, Career, Government
Health, Wealth, Mind, Paperwork

It is so hard. Life does not want to be sliced. I expect this issue is only going to grow. As digital media improves our desktops will increasingly become part of our minds, a sort of mirror and companion piece of our identities.

Pittsburgh Parking Tickets and Credit Reports

2011-04-11T15:59:00.000-07:00

WTAE, a local Pittsburgh news agency, reported (er, um, quoted a city official saying) about a year ago that delinquent Pittsburgh parking tickets are not reported to credit bureaus:

They also don't go after your credit rating. No matter how many of these (parking tickets) you get, they won't have an effect on these (credit cards). Parking officials do not notify the three major credit bureaus about unpaid tickets.

David Onorato: "No, we didn't take it that far."

Jim Parsons: "So it doesn't impact a person's credit rating?"

David Onorato: "No."

Jim Parsons: "Why not? Why not do that?"

David Onorato: "That was a decision made back in 2005 that hasn't been changed yet."

In a humble spirit of public service I am here to set the record straight. I didn't pay my parking ticket, and now it's on my credit report, posted there by a collection agency by the epithet "Professional Accounts MGM." That's a private company, so it seems that Pittsburgh sold the collection rights on my ticket.

Onorato is the director of Pittsburgh Parking Enforcement; he clearly would have known this could happen. It seems unlikely, but possible, that Pittsburgh sells the collection rights with the stipulation that the collectors not do credit reporting on these accounts. But even if this is true, can I expect Pittsburgh to crack down on the collection agency in my defense? Humph.

Atlas part II: the personal

2011-03-20T09:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finished reading Atlas Shrugged, all 1160+ pages. The book had a curious effect on me. It seemed that whenever I read it, or thought much about it, I felt more invigorated, more determined, more interested in life. I'm not getting my hopes up; new drugs lose their effect with time.

Rand presents a worldview with the notion that the prosperity of a society derives from the selfishness and will-to-live of its members. This is grand-scale political talk, but the worldview also has intimately interpersonal and psychological facets.

So much comes down to the elasticity of language that it will never be absolutely clear if Rand is offering anything fundamentally different than what most people already believe. What his selfishness exactly? For that matter, what is self? If self is a genetic code, than isn't there some kind of overlap between a parent and child, such that a mother sacrificing for her baby is actually another kind of selfishness? And it's not just genetics; to the extent that ego is built on friendships and career, dedicating our lives to these things is again not sacrifice but selfishness.

Additionally, Rand's version of selfishness severely qualified. As the central dogma goes,

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. [emphasis added]

At least half of selfishness consists of actively taking from others; Rand absolutely rejects this part.

So, semantics aside but not forgotten, I find the Rand creed to be useful. I am a man of near-constant sorrow. I've seen sorrow all of my days. Of course the sorrow has many sources, including chemistry, but I think one that I've overlooked is the sorrow that consists of needless wishing that other people would live for the sake of me.

This wish has taken many forms:

I wish that an employer would pay me more or promote me faster.
I wish that more friends would devote more time and energy to inviting me to stuff, feeding me, and learning about me.
I wish that a romantic friend would show more interest in who I am and what I want.

All these are natural wishes, but according to the Rand creed, asking (or in the broadest sense, even wanting) for them is generally not productive. There is an undercurrent in society that corrupts us even as we sleep, an undercurrent that whispers that it is good and right and possible for us to be wanted and loved just "for who we are," independent of what we have to offer the world.

An empowering part of the Rand creed frees me to stop wasting my time looking for love where I have not earned it and from those to whom I have nothing to offer.

A hearty shrug for Atlas

2011-03-09T05:48:00.000-08:00

I was born a sell-all-that-you-own-and-give-to-the-poor Jesus-freak communist. I believed that humanity deep down was bound together by a spiritual ether which would allow us all to achieve our highest potential collectively as soon as enough people woke up and brought their honey to Jesus, the queen bee of the spiritual hive. The way to get from here to this utopia was to lead by example, practicing generosity and service and putting the needs of others ahead of my own. This was no idle ideology. I gave a substantial portion of my earnings to charity and watched in admiration as family members dedicated years of their lives to service that represented real sacrifice. With tremendous enthusiasm I was headed down this same set of tracks.

Maybe it was money or income potential that derailed/liberated me. (It is a curious coincidence that many people seem to move away from socialist thought in lockstep with their savings accounts. This correlation (if it is even real -- a statistician can't think without data), raises some questions, and I am not trying to avoid them.) The wrecking balls that smashed my worldview were many.

The Practical:

In college I read The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity. This [admittedly anecdotal] account is a crushing account of the futility of a wide variety of large-scale charitable efforts.

A much more scholarly work, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, by William Easterly, a pre-eminent scholar of economic development, was partially offset by the more optimistic work of Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. Together, these works did not eliminate the possibility of improving human welfare through generosity, but they made it look damn complicated.

The Experiential:

I volunteered. One semester I interned at the Mennonite Central Committee Washington Office, a group that lobbies for liberal Mennonite concerns in Washington. I very briefly experimented with after-school tutoring volunteer-ship and soup kitchen work. In every case I was struck by a lack of organization, lack of focus, and general inefficiency in these efforts. It made me sick. (Or was I too sick to see the good in it?)

Entering my first graduate program (an emotionally battering and lonely two years) I made sacrifices cut my spending enough so that I was saving a substantial portion of my meager graduate stipend. I took the cheapest apartment I could find, which resulted in going for a few weeks without hot water due to a malfunctioning landlord. I would have taken a cheaper place if I could have found one. This wrecking ball was older than the Bible: What fun is it trying to bail out people who are not even willing to ride along in a boat as lowly as mine in order to get ahead?

The Philosophical:

Without replacing the Spiritual Hive as an answer to why we are here, evolution gets as close as anything to the heart of it by answering why we are the way we are. The natural selection mechanism continually directs and defines humanity as agents of genetic propagation as unitized by individuals and families. Generosity (with corresponding notions of love) is supported within the natural selection framework, but only as tools for reproduction rather than ends in themselves. So are we slaves to our genetic inheritance? Can't humans "transcend" biology through mind and spirit? Let's hope so, but to the extent that we transcend at the expense of reproduction, these proclivities become more rare over generations of human reproduction, if I may be so mathematical about it.

Men (here, an abbreviation for humans) are not created equal. What is the measure of a man? There are many measures. From biology, the measure of a man is how many kids he has. From Wall Street, it's the size of his portfolio. From psychology, it's his love of life. From Facebook, it's how many friends he has. From academia, it's how many publications he produces. Combining all measures in any interesting way, some men are just smaller than others. Distributing wealth to men who are small on the scale of materialism might (at least temporarily) increase their materialistic size, but how does this affect all his other measures? It's just a gut feeling: I think redistribution for it's own sake is poison to the human psyche, both to the giver and the recipient. But do not confuse redistribution with investment. Self-interest fully supports generosity matched by accountability in the context of networks of human friendship untainted by pity.

This discussion is motivated by my reading of Atlas Shrugged, which I find valuable despite some shortcomings. Reading this book completes my transformation from communist to capitalist. Prior to reading this book I saw my movement away from communism as a [not necessarily bad] loss of morality, a loss of values. But Ayn Rand gives a language of morality to support individualism. It is evil to cripple one's own zeal for life for the sake of others. It is good to live in full affirmation of one's own progress. The Rand creed is simple. To understand its value, I can only recommend the book:

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

This outlook has interesting applications in personal relationships and love, which I hope to discuss in a future post.

For health and strength ...

2011-03-07T07:28:00.000-08:00

My conversion experience was not dramatic. There were no visions or claps of thunder. What's more, the conversion was not much of a conversion. I've always been at least moderately health-conscious. But I some point I decided it would be cool, at least a brief time in my life, to have the six-pack of an underwear model.

Not eating was the hardest part. We'll see if I can keep it off:
Update: [Brutal honesty is a balm that brings me calm because a world wrapped in delicate pretense is sure to have sharp edges when it shatters.] As one brutally honest friend has pointed out, my weight appears to be trending upwards near the end. Maybe so, but this is just to clarify my goals: The green line is my target weight, and the red dashed-line is a unofficial boundary that I'll try not to go below. As long as I return below my target weight at least a couple days in a row every couple of weeks, I define this as success.

Not eating is good for you for lots of reasons. But one reason, which you don't hear the health profession squawking about very often, is that not eating is the one thing that science strongly suggests may extend your lifespan substantially, like an extra 15 years. The president of the Calorie Restriction Society gives charming discussion of not eating here.

As much as I'd like to live forever, I'm not going to let myself go below 175lbs. I don't want people to think I look sick, and I'm not sure that it would make me a happier person. As claimed by one researcher,

"Usually when you work with mice you can pet them ... But any mouse on a restricted diet would try to jump out of the cage and bite you."

The other part of becoming Hercules is gaining some muscle. To that end I began a push up regimen.
The plot shows that I haven't been doing many push ups lately. That's because my shoulder was starting to hurt. Maybe doing nearly 12,000 push ups in 70 days can lead to tendinitis. Even worse, despite all those push ups I did not manage to even break my own record for most consecutive push ups.

Introduction to Qatar

2011-03-05T13:25:00.000-08:00

This will be my first time flying in about 7 years.

Qatar is a monarchy between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The oil rush expanded the population from about 22,000 nomads in 1900 to over a million residents at present. About 80% of these residents are foreign workers with temporary residence status. This partially explains why Qatar has the world's highest male/female ratio: 2.87. A related fact is that Qatar is -- or at least is perceived this way -- a repressive environment for women. The legal system is officially modeled on Islamic law. Eating in public during Ramadan is prohibited.

Summer temperatures in Doha, the capital, average 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Map source: incomprehensible but here it is.

Update: I added the map source after I noticed a surge in international traffic to this blog, as if the map were drawing in image searches for Qatar.

Sheep and Goats

2011-03-05T13:18:00.000-08:00

Life was decent before you showed up. It was nice of you to visit. I was hungry and you fed me. I was lonely and you gave me touch. But after you left it was harder than normal not to notice my imprisonment. The guards stood closer, the walls stood thicker, and the prison food seemed tainted. There was one less friend remaining on the outside whose ability to help me plot an escape remained a hopeful mystery.

Landlocked by locked land

2011-02-28T11:22:00.000-08:00

My estate in Pittsburgh is partly surrounded (errr ... bordered by) land which stands as a pristine testament to poor governance, a pertinent topic now that I'm reading Atlas Shrugged.

Five consecutive overgrown lots stand all tax-delinquent and unused. I would buy them except that they are locked up by back taxes at a level far above the value of the land. One could blame the owners for letting things go to pot, but I would prefer to blame the city government for over-assessing the taxable value of this land, which I'm sure contributes to it's unsellablility with or without back taxes.

In recent years the city started some programs that help it to correct its foolishness. In some cases buyers can obtain abandoned land through treasurer's sales with forgiveness on the back-taxes. This is a smart move for the city, as it moves land back into the hands of those who will pay property tax to it, and it is profitable for buyers.

But this is just the start of it. The city shot herself in the foot (never mind anti-gun laws) when she sold $64 million in tax liens on properties all across the city. The buyer of a tax lien has specials powers backed by the court: a lien holder demands to be paid the full balance of the back taxes prior to the transfer of any of the deeds it holds under lien.

Once the city has sold a lien to a private corporation, it has no power to return the land to the [tax-unburdened] free market without buying back the lien from the private holder at up to the full back-taxes price, which grows in the interim due to interest and penalties.

The issue appears to be heating up, with at least two recent news articles (national news and local news) devoted to the topic. Both articles quote Aggie Brose, the venerable 35-year community activist of Garfield, Pittsburgh.

Photo

2011-02-28T08:26:00.001-08:00

http://reddup.tumblr.com/post/3552939242/the-strange-sights-of-pittsburgh

Most expensive meal of my life

2011-02-26T18:11:00.000-08:00

They gave me two wine glasses so that I could have both red wine and white wine at the same time without mixing them. I took advantage of this.

Bread was there for the taking, and the little butter packets seemed to have been chilled.

The waiters kept my water glass nonempty, which is kind of unusual.

The appetizers included a 7-inch mushroom steak thing, mussels, oysters, and something I could not identify and nobody seemed to know what it was.

My main dish was a few tails of lobster in a white sauce on a huge plate. Fancy rice and veggies were available as sides served family style. There was much rice and veggies left over and I got a doggie box. Then I got another doggie box because other people in the group didn't want their leftovers either.

The waiters brought us each a complementary shot of nail polish or something, it was that alcoholic. It was tasty though.

Before dessert I kept nibbling on bread and sipping on a decaf Irish coffee (booze again). When my rum cake showed up I was barely still breathing, not from the alcohol but rather from a lack of space in my chest due to excessive consumption. I was forced to eat my cake slowly, like one bite every few minutes, to give things time to settle.

Puns classified

2011-02-18T08:14:00.000-08:00

I have another contribution to make to linguistics. Puns come in two forms: strong and weak.

A weak pun is a confusion between two very different usages of the same word (or a part of a word that is the same word root). Here is an example:

The best way to communicate with a fish is to drop them a line.

The word "line" in both sense derives from the same historical usage; a line is a connector, be it a string, telephone wire, or an arc of lead on paper.

A strong pun is a confusion between two words of entirely different etymology. Here is an example:

When the detectives on the police force observed suspects dining in the city's best restaurant, it was their favorite steak out.

As far as I know, stake has nothing to do with steak besides pronunciation. This makes the pun strong. Strong puns are not necessarily more funny, and in fact they tend to be more convoluted. Based on a quick survey over the list of puns provided here, weak puns are far more common than strong puns, and probably easier to create. Here is my attempt at at strong pun.

I wished that I had not put money down on the boat after the sail fell through.

Violence in the slums

2011-02-14T10:57:00.000-08:00

I awake at 5:35 a.m., restless. At 5:45 I give up on sleep and slip downstairs and put on some coffee. Through the deck door I muse at the sleeping city. Still there is no hint of sunrise. Suddenly I remember that I forgot to put out the trash. The truck could come any minute. Nevermind, I don't have that much trash, it can wait. I sit down with my coffee.

A bang from the front of the house is so loud that I expect to find a car wreck on my porch. Before I have time to reconsider, a computerized voice comes through a loudspeaker: "This is the Pittsburgh Police. We have a search warrant for [house# streetname]. Surrender the building!"

My first thought is there must be some mistake -- not to mention, how do I go about surrendering my house -- until I notice that the house# referenced by the loudspeaker doesn't quite match mine; it's off by 2. So actually they are after the house three feet to my left. I stand contemplating my wall as a few more bangs erupt from the other side , watching as a spectator at a soccer game to see if any bullets might venture into my kitchen.

In a moment the computerized voice, playing on repeat, is shut off. I venture to my front window. A big black windowless truck-van (all doors open, the ninjas fully deployed), a black SUV, and lots of cop cars fill the street. Cops in SWAT gear with assault rifles mill about.

I return to my breakfast, hoping that they go by the time I'm done because I aspire to leave on my bike for work without getting shot. Indeed. They are gone with the first rays of light.

Book

2011-02-01T20:20:00.001-08:00

A prominent author releases her first novel.

Peacefull Decoy Muslims

2011-02-01T06:45:00.001-08:00

I applaud the Onion today.

Aggie Brose

2011-01-11T07:05:00.000-08:00

This article does well at capturing the personality of Aggie Brose, a 35-year community organizer for my neighborhood. Considering this article is 10 years old, Aggie must be about 75, but she still has more spunk than most Millennials. I will ask her sometime to explain the circumstances of her knocking on the Federal Reserve chief's front door in 1997 (see article).

Chinese parenting

2011-01-10T13:26:00.000-08:00

Is this woman emotionally retarded or exceptionally brilliant? It reminds me of my childhood, in small ways. Of course we never had firestorms about bad grades because I never got less than an A before leaving home.

Crash

2011-01-09T20:02:00.000-08:00

My friend drives very carefully. We were chatting about something and he suddenly made a big fuss about something up ahead. He claims that he hit the horn for a good second as he brought the car to a stop about 60 feet before reaching the 4-way intersection with 4 stop signs, but I don't even remember.

What I saw was a full-size white pickup truck moving in from the right, I'll guess 33 mph, just as a large black 4-door truck or SUV was picking up speed towards us through the four-way intersection. Neither truck seemed to slow down, and the fraction of a second before the obviously imminent collision seemed to last much longer than it possible could have. The white truck struck the black truck just ahead of the black truck's driver, pushing the black truck sideways maybe 10 feet and totaling it.

The forward momentum of the black truck yanked the front of the white truck towards us, spinning it counter-clockwise 120 degrees, pointing approximately towards us. As it rotated I could see the driver flop down into the front passenger area. In an eerie 4 seconds after the main cacophony of smashing mettle and shattering headlights, the white truck, evidently without a cognizant driver, lazily bounced off the wreckage and meandered over to us, coming to rest just a couple feet ahead of our bumper. About the time it stopped, I remarked "maybe we should back up a little."

I called 911 somewhat reluctantly considering that there were many witnesses and I figured the lines would be jammed, but the attendant said I was the only caller. As I called, all four doors of the four-door truck opened and about that many people climbed out, much to my surprise, and went into the conveniently-located gas station to clean up or buy snacks or make sense of their lives, I guess. The driver of the white truck also climbed out. I happily informed the 911 dispatcher that it looked like everyone was out OK but I emphasized that both vehicles were totaled as if I needed to prove that it really was an important accident I was calling about. And for good measure I noted that one of the guys appeared to have a well-bloodied head. Then we left.

Yay Lord

2011-01-02T15:24:00.000-08:00

I walked about 2 minutes down the hill this morning to scope out a church in my neighborhood. Why would someone do such a thing? I have this hunch that knowing my neighbors could be prophetable.

I was the only other white person in the church. The service lasted about 2 hours. I had to pee. A Dr. O was called up front to announce that the church hoped to raise 100k by October, praise God, please give as much as you can, Amen? The "pastor and first lady" sat at the front in white, flanked by well-suited men, including one in purple. A Ms. Someone announced that it was God that brought each of us there that day, Amen, and it was here he sent us -- not to the other churches, not to a Baptist church, not to a Methodist church, not to a church of Jesus Christ of the Latter days Saints, Thank God for That! The first lady gave a brief rundown of the most prominent donors towards the 100k goal, noting that so-and-so had pledged 1k, "and they are handing in the check today" at which point someone scrambled to the front to drop off a check. The first lady went on to humbly note that she and the pastor were contributing 10k, and Dr O, well, "Dr O, do you mind if I tell them what you pledged?", and he's like, "I don't care" and she said 5k. The preacher started out soft and ended up shouting and the congregation whooped along with him. A lot of nice people, but it seems that most of them are not my neighbors, driving in from at least a couple miles.

Dusk

2010-12-30T14:32:00.000-08:00

End the Fed?

2010-12-30T09:30:00.000-08:00

Despite being a long-time libertarian I normally think of a Ron Paul as a wacko, mainly because of his vocal resistance to the existence of the Federal Reserve. In all of my economics classes, the Federal Reserve was referred to in the highest regard, like some kind of holy Tabernacle, monitoring and guarding the nation's monetary lifeblood. My two year of experience inside the Fed was consistent with that notion in that the organization had high morale and a strong culture of honest inquiry and good-faith management. Today, however, I woke up realizing that Paul might actually be on to something.

My initial support of the Fed was nothing profound. The textbook argument is that the Fed was created to end banking panics, prompted by the Panic of 1907. After a few rough years, including the Great Depression, the Fed finally figured out how to do its thing and acted as a fantastic stabilizer right up to the present. The Fed is Fantastic!

But not so fast. Since when is the Fed the best solution for banking panics? Consider how banking panics used to start. A bank opens for business. A bunch of people put money in the bank. For illustration just suppose they all put their money in checking accounts, or "demand deposits" that they can come collect anytime. Then the bank starts using some of that money to make loans and charges interest, and gives some of that interest back to the people with checking accounts. Everyone is happy. Then there comes a time when a lot of people try to take their money out of the bank all at once. Since much of the money is out on loan, the bank can't give everyone their money back. People flip out. The bank goes out of business. People lose their money. Nobody is happy (except maybe for a few lucky people who had taken out a loan and now don't need to pay it back??).

A small group of weird extremist libertarian types argues that the best solution to banking panics is not the Fed but rather the outlawing of fractional reserve banking (fracking?). They call fractional reserve banking wrong, immoral, and fraudulent. This use of morality language threw me off at first, because it sounded sensationalist and made me suspicious that they were just railing instead of providing a good alternative. On closer examination, I think they could have a useful policy proposal.

Their alternative to the Fed is outlawing fractional reserve banking. What does that mean? In my little description of banking panics above, fractional reserve banking is the part where the bank makes loans using the money from customers' checking accounts. If all demand deposits are fully backed in the banks vaults, with nothing lent out, there is no possibility for a run on the bank. The system is perfectly stable. Starting from this perspective, the idea that the bank would lend out your demand deposits does start to sound a bit fraudulent. Maybe we accept fractional reserve banking because it has been around ever since the start of banking. Outlawing it is a rather novel concept for policymakers.

The obvious big problem is then how can I get a loan for a house (or whatever) if the bank can't lend me the money of its depositors? Well, you could still get a loan from a bank, but things would just work a little differently on the depositors' end of things. Since the bank would be earning no interest income on demand deposits, depositors would likely have to pay a tiny fee for the service of the bank storing their money on the record books or in the vault. The pool of money from which loans are made would come from depositors who buy CDs or bonds or similar instruments that involve actually giving up their money until the borrowers pay it back. In this new system, the bank, instead of being thought as a source of loans, becomes more like a middle-man for loans, helping to match up borrowers with lenders and taking a commission on the interest and/or perhaps selling some insurance on the credit risks.

Benefits of replacing the Fed with this pared-down banking system include

extreme stability in the banking sector that is ...
... achieved with only as much governance as is required to prosecute "fraudulent" lending, which I'm guess would cost a lot less than our multi-billion dollar Federal Reserve banking operation,
the end of inflation.

Costs of replacing the Fed include

enormous transition costs,
possible losses associated with the arguments in favor of fractional reserve banking found on wikipedia. These arguments are a bit vague, especially in that the purported benefits are not quantified.

I'd love to hear from a real expert on this topic. Is Ron Paul not wacko after all?

Christmas pruning

2010-12-25T09:05:00.001-08:00

My oppressive neighborhood

2010-12-09T05:34:00.000-08:00

On my walk to work today I was feeling oppressed. I was thinking about how to handle my victimization by whatever neighborhood bandits had yet again left great gobs of long silver-gray doll-hair stuffed up the tailpipe of my car. That's not the reason I was walking, but I figured sooner or later they might get good enough at packing hair up my car's a-hole that it could become inoperably constipated.

I pondered that the cops probably wouldn't help. You would have to set a video camera to catch the weasel, and that's costly. I figured that in the worst case, I can't have a car anymore, and maybe I can live with that. I lamented that I haven't gotten to know my neighbors. I could confront them about their villainous children, but that might not go over well if they already see me as the weird nut who could use a little cracking from their kids. To make much progress with the neighbors I would have to buy a wii and invite them over for fellowship over snacks, Nintendo, and heroine injections. The task ahead of me was daunting.

As usual, Google came to the rescue. A search for "tail pipe hair" took me directly to a discussion from Click and Clack, the Car-talk brothers, explaining that honda mufflers are known to sprout gray hair in their old age.

Wikileaks: a fountain of hope or a stream of pee?

2010-12-08T18:13:00.000-08:00

I have been pondering the meaning of the Lweaks (silent W). Is the Wikileaks program of lweaking just about anything good or bad for me? If I ever get around to voting in a national election, will I support politicians who want to kill Lweaks, or will I continue to support people like Ron Paul, who say that Assuange's lweaking all over the place is just good journalism?

A Richard N. Haass (Newsweek, Dec. 13, 2010) states

[Lweaked info] comes at a steep cost ... foreign officials will be less inclined to provide candid assessments to their U.S. counterparts, thereby depriving U.S. officials of valuable insights. American diplomats will be less willing to put on paper their candid assessements, thereby depriving policymakers in Washington of the local information they need most. ... [Lweaking] will make U.S. government officials even more wary of sharing information [internally] ... It was precisely this reticence to share intelligence across departmental lines that helped make the U.S. vulnerable on 9/11.

I am rather baffled by the issues at stake. Here are a few observations to stew upon:

Stability promotes economic growth. Lweaks may prompt instability, and in worst case scenario may trigger nuclear holocaust between rouge states and the rouge West.
If lweaking triggers societal upheaval, the new arrangements/governments that arise from the chaos could be more stable than what we have now. If the chaos from invading Iraq was the natural result of "stirring up a hornets nest" (we have to deal with the hornets sooner or latter), lweaking could be a way of speeding up progress, and speeding up the pain the begets that gain.
Lweaking is democratic in some sense. In the purest ideal of democracy, the whole world has access to all information on every relevant issue and may provide input to decisions.
While causing instability now, if it becomes an accepted or expected element of society, organizations may have less overall capacity for holding secrets.
A lack of secrecy will have difficult-to-predict effects.
Limiting secrecy may help to prevent corruption.
Limiting secrecy may make it hard for organizations to function. Suppose you have to pay more to find quality business or political leaders because humans don't like having their every move scrutinized and critized?
Supposing that governments now are pretty good in the big picture -- as compared to what society humans are capable of sustaining -- lweaking could raise the cost of government by provoking huge spending on information control systems.

In summary, I have no freaking idea what to make of it all, although my default position as a libertarian is that I don't want anyone messing with Lweaks unless they have a firm argument for doing so.

Back in college I once did a bit of lweaking myself. A faculty member handed me the minutes from a meeting in which the university president presented the university radio-station committee with the information that a university donor would withhold massive annual contributions if the university did not immediately discontinue a controversial news program. Given that this was a deeply Christian university that was supposedly acting out the will of God rather than bowing down to donors, it was potentially embarrassing to the president that he had even brought up the donor issue. Eager to be a good journalist, I published the relevant section of the minutes verbatim in the school newspaper. The faculty member got a firm reprimand from the administration, but I got off without so much as a rape charge.

There is an odd twist. The controversial news program was Democracy Now, headed by Amy Goodman, who I interviewed for the school paper when she diverted her book tour to come speak in my college town during the uproar over the possibility that donors would get her program taken off the local radio. Goodman is now featured prominently on the Wikileaks site.

Shredded trees

2010-12-01T18:59:00.000-08:00

I was about to pay several hundred dollars to have a big load of mulch delivered to the funny farm. I was about to buy a truck so that I could go get my own mulch. I was biking to work this morning and heard a roar of tree chippers from a side street. I almost didn't stop. What are the chances they would have the time to drive one of those behemoths a mile away to drop a load of chips on a puny yard I thought. There were four of them, each truck with a cherry-picker and a couple guys with saws. Everyone was sawing at once on this densely populated city street, like the screen set for a Pittsburgh wood-chipping massacre. I stopped at the first guy wearing a hard hat and said "do you sell your wood chips?" He said throw my bike in the back of his pickup and we got in. He yelled to one of his guys to hurry get the tow trucks over, we got to move all them parked cars before we do the next street. I showed him to my place. All the way he chatted on his phone with a guy he kept referring to as brutha. He promised me some chips and gave me his business card in case I ever want more. I will want more most def.

A creek springs up in Garfield

2010-11-28T09:33:00.000-08:00

My neighbor had some old 55-gallon drums of used motor oil. In high school I did this science experiment where I put motor oil in soil and observed that corn in the oil soil grew much faster than corn in regular soil. This was not a big discovery, considering that fertilizers have long been petroleum based. Anyhow, I remembered this scientific result and spread the oil all over my clay bank:

Just kidding. That oil is actually silt, which I harvested from the alley after redirecting my new stream because a stream is good enough for me -- I don't also need a pond.

The source of the water is mysterious. I contacted the Pittsburgh water authority about a week ago, and they had guys working on it Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and maybe more, so I suppose that by now they are getting fed up. They dug a big hole trying to chase the water to its source.

Ideally they will give up and I'll have a nice creek to irrigate with. I made dam on the alley to keep the water away from my off-street parking.

The silt harvest was bountiful. I got only about half of it, after nearly 3 hours trucking it up the hill with a 5-gallon bucket.

Sun Lamp

2010-11-28T09:13:00.000-08:00

Truckonomics

2010-11-19T11:12:00.000-08:00

I am considering the pros and cons of buying a 4x4 medium-compact 8ft-bed pickup truck.

Pros as measured by counts of yearly use:

Hauling soil and mulch to my funny farm: 10
Being Mr. Helpful whenever a friend is moving or just needs to borrow a truck: 8
Projecting a manly handyman image at certain social events: 4
Hauling big things home from stores times per year: 2
Enabling crazy off-road camping adventures: 1.5
Being Mr. Helpful at some family gatherings, if Mr. Handsome happens not to be around: 1
Traveling roads too icy for bike or car: 1
Unknown interesting projects I'd get myself into that require a truck: 1

Adding up the uses, it looks like I'd get about 25-30 uses out of it per year. But what are the costs?

$3000-5000 upfront (used)
$500-800 annual maintenance
$250 additional annual insurance (Geico quote)
$500-1000 gas assuming 5000 miles per year (high)
hassle (registration, inspections, etc) valued at $200/year

Assuming the truck lasts 5 years, the average annual cost is around $2650, or about $90 per use. By contrast, renting a U-haul pickup for 24hrs with no extras (but including insurance) cost me about $140+ hassle a few months ago. I guess it just depends how bad I need a truck.

Blueprint for Restaurant II

2010-11-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

My first blueprint for a restaurant never quite took off, though it might just need a bit more time to ferment. But I can't wait for the food services industry to finish stewing on that one because I have a fresh idea in my cooker.

Name: Food Cave

Product: Unprocessed foods. The only processing allowed is washing, chopping, boiling, drying, and roasting.

Theme 1: Escape from modern industrialization. Interior decoration includes cave paintings.

Theme 2: Standard look-at-me-I'm-so-green! features such as big windows, power supplied by windmill on the roof etc.

Location: Any educated middle-upper crust neighborhood.

Food list: Every veggie that can be eaten raw, all kinds of nuts, raw grains, whole milk of cow and goat, small steaks seasoned only with salt, boiled beans, hard boiled eggs still in the shell, mushrooms, a variety of greens, all kinds of fruit, and fresh hot roasted yams and potatoes and squash of every kind.

Layout: V-shape. Food is on the left. Cashiers are in the center. Crude tables are on the right. In the food section, which is about as large as the seating section, a cook is behind the food in full view chopping and boiling and roasting and answering questions about the food because it is mostly unlabeled. The food is divided into three categories: $7/lb for specialty items (berries, nuts, meats), $4/lb for mid-range things like fresh washed radishes, and $2/lb for cheap things that sell in large chunks, like unchopped carrots and roasted potatoes.

Freakwenter high risk fund: quarterly report

2010-11-16T14:19:00.000-08:00

Six months ago I started a project to evaluate the worth of emotional-technical analysis on the stock market. Emotional-technical analysis is a phrase coined (ka-ching!) by me as far as I know, but what it refers to is nothing new. It refers to consciously allowing emotions to get in the way of "smart" investment choices. While some number crunching is allowed, it is mostly based on developing an intuition about where markets will go based on a broad array of clues, drawing from the news, simple economic theories, savvy friends, and (most importantly) gut feelings.

I think there could be something to be said for allowing emotion/intuition to guide investment choices. The big market swings of the last few years left open opportunities for arbitrage so large as to make a mockery of the efficient markets hypothesis. My brief-but-growing experience as a statistician tells me that mathematical market models are useful, but they can not account for much of the variability in prices, because variability stems from such a wide array of sources: the overall direction of the economy, the environment, political stability, technological innovation across different sectors of the economy, changing demographics and values, mob behavior, and on and on. Of course, agreeing that the mathematical models are incomplete is not the same as saying that emotional-technical analysis can fill the gaps, but it at least opens up the possibility.

Many practitioners of emotional-technical analysis are also into voodoo, superstition, or are otherwise mentally unstable. I am not. I am not out to prove that this analysis works, and in fact I believe the number of people who could make a lot of stock-market profit this way must be very small. Early indications suggest that I won't get rich off of it.

Product Review: JOE the Multi Tool

2010-11-12T14:59:00.000-08:00

My new Cathys Concepts Multi Tool with Flashlight is quite a toy. It is a pliers:

And a knife and poker thingy and screw driver (for miniature Phillips screws) and a bread knife (or a cracker knife, at this scale). The blades are much like butter knives, safe for children at a younger age than other more fearsome blades.

It's too big to swallow, but not much bigger than that:

Oh yeah, and by the way I named it JOE. You can bestow upon your multi tool a three-letter name when you order it. I like Joe.

Joe is a bright one. He has this tiny little battery that produces a surprisingly bright beam for his size.

Graffiti II

2010-11-08T14:29:00.000-08:00

The wall of my favorite bathroom stall was cleaned off over the summer, but it is coming back to life:

I sat here broken hearted,
tried to poop but only farted.
Then one day I took a chance,
tried to fart and pooped my pants.

Infomercial Teaser Post

2010-11-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

CSN Stores will give me a $45 gift certificate and I'll buy something and then review it here soon. I'm drooling with anticipation. Maybe I'll get a knife for my kitchen or a telescope for the deck. They wanted me to say something about the amazingly divine and stylish bar tables and stools that they offer, and I would love to buy these of course, if only my house wasn't already the model of perfection!

Returning to high school

2010-10-30T16:31:00.001-07:00

Fire

2010-10-29T19:41:00.000-07:00

Biking home, the valley was full of smoke. There were no sirens. There was the steady grumble of large machinery. This is what I found:

And closer up, some kind of paving device that likes flames. Would they be trying to re-melt the surface of the old pavement? The machines roared through the valley for at least two days, from about 8am until 11pm.

The University of Pittsburgh had homecoming this weekend. The fireworks display was fit for a rich alumnus, with dueling displays (on the right, fire is shooting off the Cathedral of Learning):

Squatter opportunity

2010-10-26T08:36:00.001-07:00

A vacant house very close to mine has a back yard that looks like attractive farm land. I decided to track down the owner to see if they mind me planting food there.

On the county website I can look up the name and mailing address of the owner for any property in the county. I wrote a little letter to the listed owner asking permission to plant. A few days later I got this voice mail, which proceeded roughly as follows:

Well I was just calling to let you know, it was very nice of you to think that I own the property ... but I now longer own that property honey ... if it were my property it would be OK with me if you plant there but I left 6 or 7 years ago and I no longer own that property ... but anyway, you have a blessed day and take care hon.

So I emailed the county records office to report their error and they replied:

There is no deed recorded from [Listed Owner] to a new owner. She may have sold the property, but that owner never recorded a deed. We cannot change our records until a deed is recorded. [Listed Owner] should look into getting her buyer to record the deed or we will not be able to change our records.

Hmmf, I thought, that's odd. In further conversation with the county office I learned that property taxes (unpaid for the last few years on this house) go with properties, not property owners, so [Listed Owner] won't likely get into trouble as far as taxes go. But they also seemed to think that [Listed Owner] may have actually sold the land, possibly informally, and the deed just never got recorded.

So I called her back. Her message was, in so many words, 'I never sold that property and it's not mine anymore.' So I don't see much reason not to start farming.

The theft of a paranoid mind

2010-10-22T15:25:00.001-07:00

I ordered a mattress! Not just any old mattress, but a $380 Sarah Peyton 10-Inch Full Memory Foam Firm Support Mattress with 2 Contour Pillows from amazon. By the way, this is not a product review, because I don't have the mattress yet, but the mattress has fine reviews.

While I was buying things under free super-saver shipping, I threw in The Cartoon Guide to Genetics.

On Tuesday arriving home from work I checked my mail and found a little note from USPS saying they "missed" me and that they couldn't leave me my package. Woe was me! I wanted my mattress! I went online and filled out a little form to give them permission to leave me my mattress on the porch in my absence.

Wednesday I got home and still no sign of a mattress. But there was another package: The Cartoon Guide to Genetics, delivered by USPS. That's funny, I thought, I wonder how they decide how big a package has to be before they leave the note that says you have to be in person to sign for it. Because they sure didn't leave me a note making me sign for this package.

Wednesday night I called USPS and complained that they didn't honor my request to leave the mattress in my absence. The lady on the phone was helpful and re-entered the order for me, and also mentioned I could go to the post office to pick it up.

Thursday morning I drove to the post office and stood in line reading the Cartoon Guide to Genetics until I had my turn at the desk. Where's my mattress, I asked in so many words. The lady went back in the warehouse and returned after a few minutes. "The driver said they left it at your door," she said. Did you ask us to leave it while you were gone? Yes, I said, ashamed. I guess that's the way it goes I said, and she said I'm sorry.

I moped for a while and contemplated re-ordering the same mattress. I couldn't quite make myself do it. If I live in such a bad neighborhood, I reasoned, maybe it just doesn't make sense to have such a nice mattress. It sticks out to much. Of course people will steal it. I should just get an old bed-bug mattress off of Craigslist.

Friday night I went for the mail and I found this UPS note on my door, something about a mattress. I was massively confused. How did my mattress get transferred from USPS to UPS? After it was stolen? I looked up the tracking number from the little note on the UPS website, and sure enough, the package weighed 53lbs, which matched the description on amazon. It wasn't until I actually went back to my original order and pondered over a possible relationship between my mattress and The Cartoon Guide to Genetics that I just began to understand what had happened.

There is more evolving to be done.

Obama and Taxes

2010-10-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the NYT for pointing out that Obama has generally lowered taxes during his reign, and that this deed is largely unacknowledged by Tea Party ilk.

But the deeper issue is that Obama is increasing federal spending. Low taxes coming from Obama now means higher taxes later, or even economic instability arising from the national debt.

Reasonable people can disagree about how large the federal government should be, but let's not pretend that the dislike of Obama coming from supporters of small government is born of confusion.

Update: Just to back up the rhetoric with some facts, here is a chart of federal spending. Note that all of the Obama spending (starting January 2009) is estimated. Let me know if you find a more up-to-date chart. Thanks to http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ for the chart. I have not tried to independently verify its accuracy.

Peter Thiel

2010-10-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

Slate writes a profile of Peter Thiel that is infused with the words "appalling," "ugly," and "nasty." So maybe the guy isn't perfect, but I'm impressed with him despite the name-calling. I hope he gets around to cloning himself.

My Time

2010-10-11T16:48:00.000-07:00

Click to see the bigger picture.

Actually, even blogging might be a better use of my time.

Product Review: Cutting Board

2010-10-07T19:23:00.000-07:00

Wow, I really got my money's worth this time. This free cutting board, courtesy of CSN stores for my reviewing services, is big enough to hold a doozie of a turkey (think Thanksgiving folks, it's not far away).

The board is crafted to finer standards than I could have aspired to myself, with great attention to functionality without sacrificing anything in terms of style. Thickness is just enough to project the image of time-tested strength without being bulky. The groove running around the edge is just deep enough to keep stray turkey dribbles from ruining the Thanksgiving tablecloth without being so deep that you would have to use a brush on a pole to clean them out. The Chicago Cutlery logo on the front is always there to remind you that you're working with high quality equipment, lest you become so accustomed to convenience and beauty that you would forget.

As if a groove on the front were not enough, this highly sophisticated cutting board also has not one but two (one on each end) grooves on the back that leave space for your fingers so you don't have to break a fingernail trying to pry the board off a counter-top.

The designer of this cutting board was intelligent, it cannot be denied. I'll warrant he probably must have been an Amish man, so wholesomely cut are the straight wood slates that are pasted together to form the broad expanse of cutting surface, an expanse so broad that I could cut all the veggies in my house to smithereens without one fleck wandering over the edge and onto the floor, where it would attract rats and mice, no doubt, so let's be grateful that this will not happen because our dear cutting board is big enough!

I like it.

A shopping competition

2010-09-29T12:52:00.001-07:00

So I have my free $45 from CSN stores and I'm not sure what to get. Whoever can find me the best deal and sends the link to freakwenter@gmail.com will get to spend my coupon on themselves next time [if] I get this promo offer thing. This competition will end Sept. 30 at 8 p.m.

Infomercial Teaser Post

2010-09-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

CSN Stores will give me a $45 gift certificate and I'll buy something and then review it here soon. Maybe I'll get a knife for my kitchen or a telescope for the deck. They wanted me to say something about this sweet $376 end table, but I don't think my house needs that right now.

Ron Paul

2010-09-09T04:47:00.000-07:00

At his best.
Paul's analysis of conflict is so straightforward and intuitive that I am surprised that my peace loving friends don't support him more. Maybe his approach is too bold for most people. Sure, it might work, but we prefer incremental change.

At his worst.
Even at his worst, it is not immediately obvious that he's wrong. The Federal reserve is an institution that few people understand. I think Paul's proposal is worth discussion if for no other reason than to educate people about the role of the Fed and to get people thinking about how we can improve the monetary system. Given the clear sub-optimality of every other major facet of our government, what are the chances that the monetary policy section does not have room for improvement?

Motivation

2010-08-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

The Onion seems to agree with me about irrelevance in education.

In my education manifesto I forgot to mention a third key element of the program. Recall my recommendation: students who are unenthusiastic about education might benefit more from physical labor (of the sort one might get to do for a living without additional academic learning) for as long as they are disinterested in study. The part that I forgot to mention is that students should also be encouraged and allowed to serve as tutors for less advanced students for some part of school time. With good organization, the teachers-per-student required for equivalent progress would fall if students teach each other, lowering the costs for public education.

Decked out

2010-08-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

Last night I was dreaming intently when a man yelling through the predawn mist of the Pittsburgh slums transported me into reality, where I languished briefly before returning to my dream.

I woke up for real soon after 6am and decided to get an early start at the office fueled by coffee, but by 2pm I had lost all motivation except for one thing: BUILD THE DECK. The inspector said he'd look at the progress and call me if there were problems. He had not called, and I don't think he ever will. This is Pittsburgh, people.

So I set to work. The first challenge was to install the posts with a temporary support structure. I wanted the support to be simple so that each post could be repeatedly put for measurements and taken down for sawing just by loosening or tightening a single screw. This turned out to be surprisingly easy, thanks to the convenience of the patio railing, which I did not hesitate to exploit:

I used the water level again to mark the posts at the same height that I wanted them to match up with the house. The tube I got is so narrow that surface tension prevents air bubbles from escaping, potentially messing up the balance, so I freakwently held the two ends together to check that the level was level:

I used my new hand saw to cut the posts. I like my hand saw. Cutting once through the 6x6 post, and then ripping it about 10 inches, and then cutting 3 inches into the side took just 18 minutes.

This wore me out pretty good and I took a break to see what I could find to eat in the garden. This, I believe, must be a bonsai watermelon:

I put the posts back in position and nailed them down on the metal brackets separating them from the concrete. Then I pulled out the first of two 16-foot long 2x12 beam boards and threw it up into position. OK, I didn't exactly throw it, I stood on the patio railing and just pushed it into place. To make sure it didn't fall before I got it screwed in place, I had a 2x4 blocking the other side to form a cradle.

Then I screwed everything and added some stability by putting up a couple of joists.

To my delight the joists were pretty much level. I was proud.

My friends will be sick of hearing me talk about my deck.

Freakwenter Hedge Fund: quarterly report

2010-08-24T06:37:00.000-07:00

It has been a rather dismal couple of weeks on the stock market, so I decided it's time to take stock of my investing performance.

About 3 months ago I put some funds into a trading account. As of today, the value of that account, after subtracting all the trading fees and future trading fees required to withdraw the money, is up by only about 0.3%, or 1.2% annualized. All but one of the stocks I hold has fallen below the price at which I purchased.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 index, a common benchmark for investment performance, is down by about 2% over the same period. In this regard, it looks like I'm beating the system by about 2%. On the other hand, I would be beating the system just as well with the money in CDs, minus the risk. More time will tell.

When losing weight matters

2010-08-24T06:09:00.000-07:00

It may take months before a passage is drilled to trapped Chilean miners, but some may have to wait even longer than that to come out:

To rescue the trapped miners, workers will try to dig a wider 27-inch shaft directly to the men. The men would be raised up one at a time. Two of the miners, however, are obese and it's not clear how they will fit. Rescuers hope the men will lose weight in the mine to fit through the hole.

Hey everyone, I'm frugal (but I didn't just say that!)

2010-08-24T04:39:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the New York Times for this sweet picture and commentary on perceptions of frugality in modern romance. Evidently it's OK to be frugal but, especially for men, best not to say so.

The Word

2010-08-23T06:04:00.000-07:00

The opening words of John 1 (Bible):
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God."

The CMU student handbook: The Word.

Education

2010-08-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

This old favorite Pink Floyd act always gets me riled up. I would be the last to say we don't need no education, but the first to say we could use some major changes.

I think that the failures of modern education to educate and the propensity of modern education to aggravate children are deeply related. If everyone just does what I say then students will be happier and smarter. Before I make my proposals, I should list what I see as the biggest problems in education today.

The Problems:

Many students don't want to learn in the current system.
Many students learn far below their potential.
Students frequently disrupt each other, making it harder for those who otherwise thrive in the current system.
Students are regularly put into courses for which they do not have adequate preparation, and occasionally the reverse, leading to inefficient learning.
Students prematurely placed in advanced courses learn to think of themselves as dumb, constantly demoralized by bad grades. The smartest ones, on the other hand, get bored.
Students are useless. They consume great resources, on the order of $10k per year on education alone, and produce nothing besides, in some cases, slight assistance to parents at home.
Students are grouped by age, over a 12-year span, and this highly artificial arrangement distorts their perception of "normal" socialization.

My proposals:

Eliminate the grouping of students by grade and age. Let students choose the subjects that they want to pursue, in consultation with an adviser.
Eliminate grades as we know them. Increase the number of "proficiency" exams available, each of which is offered from time to time, depending on the needed frequency. Such exams would range from a timed 1-minute test of times-tables memorization to a practical chemistry skills exam up to AP calculus exams, etc.
Eliminate diplomas. Already, diplomas are so unequal as to be practically meaningless. Instead of diplomas, let students keep a record of the proficiency exams that they have passed.
Replace classroom "learning" and "testing" with classroom "doing" and "consultation." Students work on projects relating to the theme of the class and present their work to the class or discuss it with the teacher.
Teacher roles: First, answer questions from students, direct them to resources, and make suggestions for study topics. Occasional deliver a brief lecture on a particular difficult concept. Meet with students occasionally to see how they are doing. Remove disruptive or apathetic students.
Make school just 7 or 8 hours per day with a long lunch break and NO HOMEWORK. Even most graduate students can't really focus for more than 10 hours in a day.
Face the problem of student motivation head on.

The last proposal is the most important and the most difficult. In proposal 5, I said teachers should remove apathetic students. In the current system, there would be precious few student remaining after all the apathetic ones left. Where would they go? What would they do? I think that there are a lot of horrible options to consider, but many of these horrible options are better than allowing unwilling students to waste their lives sitting and waiting for school to let out.

First, students who are sick of learning should be given some counseling and possible referral to solutions for distracting emotional or social problems. All who persistently choose not to study, or who choose to study just a fraction of the day, should be put to work learning hands-on job skills, starting with sweeping the school halls, working on the school farm, or washing dishes, in the school cafeteria, and even taking part-time work for local businesses, with all earnings set aside in a coming-of-age account, to be claimed upon a student reaching legal independence from their parents.

The choice between study and physical labor should have no explicit punitive element. Students are not told what to do, between labor and study, and their decisions are respected. The only completely unacceptable behavior is doing nothing. Such students would be sent to some kind of rehab, set loose, or some kind place of extreme boredom like jail if they're a risk.

Deck Ledger Board

2010-08-21T19:53:00.000-07:00

Nearly 16 feet long and quite heavy, the ledger board is now attached to the house. Being just one man, I had to scheme to raise the board into place and nail it in alone. That explains the vertical 2x4's which served as legs to hold the board up for me. The barely-visible length of tube swooping from one end to the other is a water level. The mess of plastic is keeping the house dry now that I've stuffed the top edge of it up underneath the lowest piece of siding.

The part not shown in this picture is the bottom back edge of the board, which I beveled at about 45 degrees so that it would fit over the top edge of the concrete wall. I had no skill saw, so I used my hand saw to cut notches and then chopped off all the unwanted wood using my lawn mower, i.e., my machete.

Wildlife in the Pittsburgh Slums IV

2010-08-19T19:52:00.001-07:00

This little guy has been grazing on my watermelon greens. I hope the two melons ripen before he kills the plant. I nearly knocked him out of play in a brief confrontation in the middle of the lawn in which my shovel-fighting technique proved a bit too clumsy for his superior reflexes. Here he perches on the chain link fence, trying to decide whether to dash into his hole in the neighbor's lawn or to drop down on my side for another taste of watermelon:

A lot of people think groundhogs are cute. I do not. They don't even taste that good. And their fur is thin and a bit stinky, if you've ever tried to smell it. The underside of a goundhog in summertime reminds me of my poor balding head.

Raccoons, now they are cute! I could [efficiently] bludgeon a thousand groundhogs to death without batting a single eyelash, but to so much as look sternly at one of these velvety panda puppets would make me feel as though I were pissing on the Christmas puppy, or driving a brand new sports car over a cliff, what have you. Besides, they help to clean up my neighbors garbage, which sits out on their back deck about 15 feet from my bedroom window:

These are the four little ones, the mom failed to make it into the family photo, and I'm assuming that the father is out of the picture these days. And I don't know what is the story behind the little doll-girl that appears to lie unconscious under the edge the trash can lid.

Liberal Media Bias: Obama a Christian?

2010-08-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

Update: This post contains a lot of garbage, so read it primarily for entertainment.

I applaud the attempts of the mainstream media to set the record straight regarding Obama's religion. HOWEVER, in stating that Obama is a Christian, I think the media is overstepping its knowledge to reveal a liberal bias. More importantly, I think they are missing the point.

First, let it be established that the mainstream press takes it as fact that Obama is a Christian. The following quotes come from the first three recognizable news sources (excluding Fox) that showed up in Google News for this story (bold is mine):

ABC: "The percentage of those asserting that the president is a Christian -- which he is -- has gone down ... "
Washington Post: "The number of people who now correctly identify Obama as a Christian has dropped to 34 percent ... "
BBC: "Among Republicans, that number was 34%. Just a third of those quizzed correctly identified Mr Obama as Christian."

Second, let it be established that whether Obama is actually a Christian is far from an easy question. Jesus taught his followers to sell all their possessions and take up a life of simple living and nonviolence. By this standard, no recent president, with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter, even began to come close to being a Christian.

Granted, a minority of people who claim to be Christian do much better than the presidents, so let me take a step back and suppose that being Christian is more of a cultural affiliation. In that case it proves very interesting to consider the precise brand of Christianity that Obama affiliated with just prior to the presidency: His pastor was Jeremiah Wright, who is widely perceived as anti-American and anti-Semitic.

"Christian" can mean many things, and yet to many of those calling Obama un-Christian, "Christian president" means "George W. Bush." By this standard it is no wonder that some say that Obama is not a Christian, and by their definition of Christianity, they are absolutely correct, contrary to the claims of the liberal media. As one close relative with a capacity for nuance put it, "I think that Obama is more Muslim than he is Christian."

I don't care whether Obama is Christian. I believe in the separation of church and state, and frankly it's fine with me if Obama or any other president calls himself the Devil as long as he performs well in office. His actions define his presidency.

I have to hand it to Fox News for not screwing it up this time [update: the Fox article is less remarkable than I realized]. Nowhere [update: this sentence is actually false/irrelevant] in their article do they pretend to know anything about Obama's soul, and they even quote a guy who says it like it is:

"It's a troubling thing," Wilcox said. "I think it would be good for all of us to stop invading the president's spiritual privacy. We don't know what anyone's true faith is. It doesn't tell us about what their true core values are."

Big day in the garden

2010-08-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

Laying to rest the Ground Zero temple

2010-08-17T11:51:00.000-07:00

Flurries of discussion on the proposed Islamic Temple near ground zero are sweeping through families, radio, and cyberspace, prompting me to lay the issue to rest with a series of brilliant remarks.

First, as a proponent of freedom and protector of property rights, I hope that the mosque builders are given the same freedoms to use their private land as they choose as much as any other landowner in that neighborhood is given. This is my political position, and I'm guessing that America's future will be stronger if Obama and Bloomberg stick to their guns on this point.

Next, consider the following points:

By many reports, a majority of Americans are in favor of prohibiting the planned mosque.
Most of those Americans opposed to the mosque would view the mosque as some kind of monument to terrorism.
Building the mosque will make those who oppose it even more angry and prejudiced towards Muslims. America learns at its own pace.
Building the mosque may quell some of the hate that much of the Middle East feels towards America, but this effect is insignificant compared to the hate generated by ongoing American military operations in the Middle East.
Americans who already understand that not all Muslims are terrorists will not be made more convinced of this fact by the presence of a Muslim temple.

These points, and especially point 3, lead me to think that is disingenuous at best for the Muslim leaders to using the Temple to win greater acceptance by society.

Another way to look at the situation is to imagine that a muslim mosque is a gay marriage. The marriage, however dignified it may be, stokes anger among its opponents. Does this mean that the gays who want to marry could hasten the coming of a broad societal acceptance of gay marriage by waiting to do gay marriage?

For both marriages and mosques, I think that the answer depends on the extent to which the act (conducting a marriage, building a mosque) is at heart a symbolic act versus a sustained way of being. If a gay couple can achieve most of the benefits of marriage with an informal commitment understood among a circle of friends rather than a bold public proclamation, they may well be doing more good for their cause. If Manhatten Muslims can find a way to worship together without building a highly visible monument to their religion in hostile territory, they might come out stronger in the end.

Oil Re-cap

2010-08-12T10:13:00.001-07:00

Now that the well is capped and most the oil appears to have evaporated, news of the BP spill likewise is evaporating, or at least being being diluted by a steady stream of new news.

While the BP spill assuredly created some problems, perhaps justifying penalties against BP in the billions of dollars, the media has done a poor job of explaining exactly how profoundly inconsequential the spill was in the larger environmental picture. According to a Washington Post article, the oil spilled was enough to contaminate the water of the Gulf by about one part oil to 880 million parts water, or about one part per billion. To put this in perspective, the EPA considers water with less than 15 parts lead per billion parts water to be reasonably safe to drink. And unlike lead, oil does not hang around forever. Microbes break the oil down and plants drink it. Many fertilizers are petroleum-based (the same kinds of fertilizers that are used to make car bombs).

America's favorite news source yesterday did an excellent job of reframing the oil spill issue on solid ground.

Squatsburgh

2010-08-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

The other day I noticed this cool post on Craigslist. I've been considering becoming a slumlord for some time, and here is an opportunity to grab a live-able 4-bedroom house for a mere 23.5k. Total rent at just $250 a month plus utilities on such a house would cover all taxes and maintenance. It seems kind of like an opportunity for profit.

I decided to sleuth. The county website appears to show the house was acquired by its current owner for a mere $1, and the previous sale was in 1997 for 5k. The county website also shows about $600 in back taxes, and this is probably just a fraction of the back taxes owed. None of this is all that surprising. Deals like this are fairly typical in the Garfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh.

What I find more interesting is the man behind the house. Sketch Master Flexx, an artist, is profiled at least twice in Pittsburgh city papers, in 2004 and in 2006, due to his experience squatting in an abandoned house on the North side, on which he installed enough solar panels to run his stereo.

The weirdest thing the sale of the house to Mr. Sketch Master was on July 30, 2010. How could he have replaced the plumbing, installed new insulation, new drywall, and numerous other repairs as claimed in such short time? If his past is any indication, probably he was squatting there for some time before the purchase. I should learn more tonight.

Update: I estimate the house needs about 5k to 20k of work and then it would be charming. This investment would be entirely worthwhile in a better neighborhood, but here I'm not so sure ...

The Growth of the Soil

2010-08-10T11:39:00.001-07:00

I recently finished reading The Growth of the Soil, a Nobel prize-winning epic novel written in 1917 by an odd man. The novel is remarkable for its lack of a plot. It starts out as the story of a single man moving into the wilderness to settle. It ends up the story of an entire settlement community complete with neighborhood rivalries, family squabbles, and realistically complex romances. Almost everything in between is a chronological account of the growth of the soil -- the growth of a community. I found it oddly satisfying.