"Cross of Iron": The Rise and Fall of the German War Machine: 1918-1945 Mosier, JohnLots of solid primary source research, though he still throws in the occasional fast and loose speculation without evidentiary support. I like it. In a nutshell, the Nazis just couldn't get it together. Their faith in racism, the great man, and individual craftsmanship (at the expense of mass industrialization) inevitably led to failure. After reading many other histories, I always wondered why no one called Germany out for its obvious inability to keep up with the Allies' production. Mosier does this and more in solid detail.
"Children of Men"Truth in fiction? With articles about decreased sperm count in men living in industrialized countries, hormone-laden food affecting our kids' development, and now inadvertent cocktails of every drug ever administered forming from human bodily waste that filters into our water supply... One figures that whatever eventually happens in reality will defy and exceed even the extreme speculation in movies like this one.
Really, really good movie. Nihilistic as hell (until the 'morrow at the end), but very accurate depictions of human reactions under stress.Even the security guard’s giving me crap about it.
Whatever.
And I won’t be making New Year’s in Austin this year. :/ It’s been an anchor, a tradition since Dawn and Mel started throwing New Year’s parties in … 2001 or thereabouts. Happy New Year’s, Gumbies. I’ll probably see at least some of you in the intervening year between New Years’.
So I have a little dish of raisins sitting in some dark rum. Not sure what I’ll do with them, since I’m not a baker type. Maybe I’ll wedge them up my nose, get completely arseholed, and make omelettes at 3 a.m. completely naked.
In actual news, I did up a leg of lamb roast in 20 mins inc. prep time. Due to the constraints imposed by my mother’s control of the kitchen, I was forced to shoehorn the roast in between rounds of oven-roasted rock cornish hens. So, when a certain amount of energy input is required, limited by time, what do we do?
We violate every meat-grilling cook’s rule about sealing the juices in!
I diced the roast into large cubes. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle kosher salt, cracked pepper, basil, and fresh orange zest. Knead with chopped garlic bits. 4 mins, turn, and 4 mins again under the broiler.
I can’t help but feel a little smug when my mother always goes nuts on me about, “How come you bought groceries!” “How are we going to fit all this in?” “I don’t have enough time / space in this kitchen to fit you in!” when most weekdays, it’s, “How come you never go grocery shopping with me?” “Why won’t you help more?”
And every time I’ve comandeered a corner of the kitchen, it’s worked out OK ranging from “passable” to “aw, you didn’t make enough for 3rds?”
(Previous efforts aren’t many, but include most of my signature mid-brow entrees — salmon in white wine, poached pears, chicken marsala, caprese, and the current incarnation of that crazy pasta thing that started in 2001 with Doug and me and some oregano and olive oil. I apologize to anyone who’s had to endure these dishes in their beta-testing phase, and offer to make them now that I know which side of the skillet holds in the green beans.)
And three of my sisters went for more, two of them going for 3rds.
To be fair, my mother and sisters made a lot of good food too — the orange zest was left over from a really good rum cake thing Linh Dan made and served with ice cream and caramel-drizzled pecans.
But this ain’t their blog, so nyah.
Thu invited over a friend of hers, Rouslan (sp?), for dinner. His brother was supposed to come too, but was working that evening. She kind of demanded that my parents let her bring him, on the pretext that she wanted to have a holiday family dinner for all her friends w/o family in town. I thought it was either A) rather presumptuous of her to impose that on my parents, and / or B) a flimsy pretext to introduce a guy she likes.
Whatever the case, he turned out to be pretty nice. Reserved, Russian, pretty old-fashioned. Passed the bar exam with her. Used to be on the national Belarus wrestling team. He brought a dish of cabbage stuffed with ground beef (served with sour cream) and another of vegetable-stuffed eggplant wraps. Both were pretty good, the cabbage more so.
Finally, what post of mine of late would be complete if I didn’t mention a workout? My wrists and shoulders are pretty sore from a boxing / kung fu workout. Basic stuff, but intense: jab, jab-jab; cross; uppercut; pass, deflect, hook, knee strike; moving footwork; foot sweep. Music? The Cars and Pulp, with a little Ofra Haza.
[Read on at your own peril.] (more…)
While that title could apply to the seasonably idiotic driving I observed today to and from Intergalactic AH, that’s not the main theme here.
[Though on a tangential note, I’m pretty proud of sticking to my 70-or-under rule, for reasons of more efficient highway driving. Guess I don’t need the radar detector anymore. It may take me 3+ hrs instead of 2.5 to get to Austin this year, but I’ll get there. :P I won’t consider 55 mph, though, b/c anyone going that slow is a menace to traffic, given usual local driving conditions. Didn’t stop some git from blockading me for two exits at 40 mph the other night, though. Sheesh.]
Worked on basic jumps and warm-ups for vaults today, plus some wall run-ups. Quadrapeding, etc. We did this one variation where you crabwalk with your feet on a low wall or railing and hands on the ground. My upper body has a lot of room for improvement. Abs too. :P
But I’m slowly improving the run-ups. I’m not running smack into the wall anymore — I actually push off and up most of the time. I still tend to push back off the wall instead of a sprinter-style push up the wall. slicknic gets some serious altitude, by comparison. We were going for touches on bricks on a wall, and he consistently got about 15 inches higher. Aardvark and I poked around the same height.
I think I yoinked something muscular in my groin during my jumps, though. Not badly. Just enough that I’ll be sore and hobbling tomorrow. :)
Usually, it takes me about 4-5 jumps to warm up and relax the posterior chain, so that I lessen the sapping effect of its eccentric contraction on my jumps. Going up stairs, I start off at 3-4 steps, and can get 5 by the time I’m loosened up. Kind of like the Kipping pull-up is for pull-ups, jumping that high (or about 7 feet in broad precision jumps) really stretches the body out into a hang position — briefly, before hitting the apex, after which one has to contract into the landing position (knees tucked up, feet forward). It’s a pretty full-body sort of workout.
Hrm.. According to Top End Sports, I am below average, at 7 ft. Well, except that I usually jump onto a low bench about 18″ off the ground. Not sure how that works out to level ground, but I doubt I’d get even another full foot out of it. 8′4″ is considered excellent; with skill level increments every 4″ below that.
Sitting here, doing work, I heard some cool instrumentals with a fairly complicated chord progression. Then this seductive voice whispered, “Share your dreams with someone you love.”
Quick check revealed that Beautiful Voices (episode 006) was playing. Usually frustrating, b/c these mixes can go on for an hour or so. But I said, “Google don’t fails me now!” Found the mix track listing for once. This one has 16 songs in it, and the one I wanted was Jason Tyrello, “Share Your Dreams” (Dreamzone Mix). I would have sworn it was Blank & Jones, but they’re playing now — 3 songs later in the mix.
Check out the “server virtualization” and “fight standby” items on wecandothis.com.
This is a year old now, but I stumbled across it on another search on costing: Total costs of the war in Iraq may be between $1 to $2 trillion. We want smaller government programs, but I don’t think we’ll get it long-term from the current government or its supporters. I was going to link http://www.cbpp.org/1-4-05socsec.htm as supporting evidence, but a Google check indicates that they have a spotty track record (an $13m annual budget being nonindicative of reputability). The link seems to read sensibly and knowledgeably, but I’m a n00b at this kind of numbers-juggling. I include it here unlinked FYI, but you’re forewarned.
For perspective, note that the presidential hopefuls are all bagging on Hillary Clinton’s health care plan with a proposed cost of $110 billion (per year?). Considering costs of the war incurred to date (something like $500 billion), her plan is on par with Bush’s annual war spending, and I suspect that more people would benefit from her health plan than from the war.
Note that I’m not blaming Republicans or Democrats. Chuck Hagel is against the war, for sensible reasons of monetary and human cost. Note that I’m linking a fun but fair assessment of him; the reader can check more official sources for a complete picture of the guy.
Zooming in from that orbital view, here’s something interesting regarding quality of soldiers and their costs. Not to mention the increased danger that comes with working alongside incompetent people.
Other random weblinks of interest:
Combat lasers + battlefield robots = Terminators! Global Security’s director, John Pike, makes a provocative comment at the bottom on just the robot aspect — “This opens up great vistas, some quite pleasant, others quite nightmarish. On the one hand, this could make our flesh-and-blood soldiers so hard to get to that traditional war — a match of relatively evenly matched peers — could become a thing of the past,” he said. “But this might also rob us of our humanity. We could be the ones that wind up looking like Terminators, in the world’s eyes.”
On a different note, we were talking in the commencement line about costs of living and business. One guy next to me said that Indonesian labor costs his company $1500 / mo, but you fly a few hours to Bangladesh, and it’s $60 / mo.
It reminds me of how real estate in Hanoi (capital city of Vietnam) is on par with New York City and Tokyo, despite GDP per capita of … <searching CIA World Factbook>
!!!
‘Scuse me whilst I go peel my eyebrows off the ceiling…
<minutes later>
OK, so Vietnam’s GDP / capita in 2002 when I went was $325 (2000 data). But as of 2006, it was $3100!
Still makes Hanoi’s real estate flippin’ expensive, but .. wow. Well, there you go. Go, little SE Asian Tigers.
And on another unrelated note, Nicole told me yesterday how she went out on a Habitat for Humanity thing, and how that gave her a new appreciation for my metalworking. They were putting nails in pressure-treated wood, and a lot of the hammering had to be done parallel to the ground rather than down into the ground. The old hands could drive the big, 6″ nails in with 5-6 hammer strokes, but she took something like 20 strokes per. Plus the usual initial wiffs and bent nails. But she figured it out fairly quickly, and the veterans were praising the accuracy of her work by the end of the day. The lesson: hammerwork is hard work!
<shrugs>
Eh, a little, maybe. But I said I figure she’s more able than I at calculating fluid dynamics and thrust output from rocket engines, so we’re more than square. She’s more marketable, after all. :) (pun intended)
Little things are today’s topic.
Ever since last Tuesday’s rockin’ presentation, I’ve been running an orgiastic back-to-back schedule of preferred physical activities to celebrate.
In rapier drills with Andrew, I (re)discovered how to better integrate mass and movement into the cavatione. For the reader’s easy reference, this is per Guy Windsor’s description of rotating the sword about its center of balance rather than at the crossguard or the wrist. I’d figured that part out back in ‘04 or ‘05, and hadn’t done much exploration of it in the time since — mostly just maintenance exercise. So last week, I realized how much easier it is to accomplish with a relaxed wrist.
Serious “No duh!” moment.
unggoy gave the group a pointer about vaults: spot your next landing with your eyes. In a saut des bras, spot where the feet will contact the wall, and upon hitting the wall, spot where the hands will catch the lip of the wall. In a kong, spot where the hands will land, then as you pop up off them, spot where your feet will come down.
For me, specifically, I need to be bolder or crazier on approaching walls: plant one foot ~2.5 feet from the wall and push off/up harder — actually launch instead of merely stepping up — then plant the other foot on the wall and push up again, like a sprinter taking off, but vertically. Right now, I’m just kinda running into the wall; no vertical component. Improving this will greatly facilitate my pop vaults and tic-tacs.
Went running (gasp!) with R again. I have a much sturdier brace for my left ankle now. That, running on the unexpectedly soft turf / grass, using an extra T-shirt as a balaclava under my hoodie sweatshirt, plus taking pains to minimize the impact of my stride, have all helped me to run about 1.7 mi while keeping my asthma and ankle strain in check. The first .8 mi or so is virtually no problem whatsoever. I can’t run 22 miles, like one of my friends just did yesterday, but she does marathons and I don’t. I may try taping the ankle/foot for further support around the foot-to-ankle area; the brace is awesome, but leaves a little to be desired below the ankle bone.
Overall, I’m really pleased with my baby steps, considering this is the first time in my *life* I have ever gone running as a form of exercise.
I can barely lower myself into my office chair right now using my arms, b/c my triceps are up in arms like an Afghani uprising. I have to alternate stretching each of my hamstrings out as I sit here. Life is pretty good. :)
And right when I got home, I got an e-mail from leondrian, a HEMA fencer from Gothenberg (GHFS school). We’ve corresponded for a couple months now. It goes slowly, but it’s cool to hear what a totally different group is doing on the nuts-and-bolts level — in techniques, exercise regimens, equipment, etc. And getting an e-mail every week or two or so is kinda neat.The modern version of having a penpal.
Doesn’t hurt at all that he’s a very positive and constructive kind of guy. Said that my WMA explanation style (via e-mail, anyway) is very clear, direct, and easy to understand. I think it’d be the coolest thing ever to one day get the chance to fence him.
These are likely not the first words that occur to many readers when choosing adjectives for Dakao. As much as I’d like to think I’m good at such things, I have to concur that verbosity is a problem for me (witness this and any other entry).
Still, my ego’s a little bigger now, and that’s a nice thing before bedtime.
Didn’t want to say anything until I’d proven to myself I could do it. So given what my car is (’96 Chevy Blazer), I’m not exactly high up on the green list. I try to switch off with my parents’ old ‘94 Toyota Previa as much as I can (4-cyl, gets 23 mpg vs. my 19 mpg). My latest microvictory has been to retrain my driving style. Being impatient and high-strung, I tend to carry it over into my driving. Only when I’m agitated, though. My car redlines at 5500 rpm, matches 18-wheelers at 1500 rpm, and seems to be most efficient between 1700-2100 rpm. It’s really easy to go to 2500 rpm, though.
So in an effort to moderate my excesses, all throughout this past finals period, I managed to keep it to 2100 rpm or under, except for a couple times one day when I was looking to beat some lights and make it to a meeting on time. I used to play the coasting game all the time when I first started driving, and I’ve started it up again.
Late at night, I can often coast for an entire block or two and time several of the lights on Richmond or Westpark. They have a couple intersections (notably Briarpark) that are completely retarded and out of sync, but everything else lets me get through at +/- 10 mph of the speed limit. Voss isn’t so kind — there’s a light where I have to either aggressively reach 45 mph (10 mph over), or more sedately hit 50 mph. And on the downside, I have to go about 22 mph to time it on the green light (which causes a different kind of driving hazard given other Houston drivers).
But who cares about all that shite? Those who know probably want to hear about commencement. Back when I finished undergrad, I promised myself I’d work for several years, figure out what I wanted to do, then get an MBA. My uncles and some other people all warned me that it’s easy to get distracted in those working years with a significant other, a house, marriage, kids, and etc. I told them and my parents at the time that I do what I say I’ll do. The universal response I got was, “Yeah, sure. (We’ll believe it when we see it.)”
Well, sometimes we experience project setbacks, the timetable gets pushed back, etc. I started getting a clue only this past year and a half, but I’m done now. Took 3.5 yrs and some time off, but it got done — and done right. I learned things during the course of things that changed what I had initially planned. But market research and sustainable / green business practices are both things that I want to remain involved with and learn more about, going forward in life.
The next big step, of course, is to spend 5-7 years building that career track.
[speaking of things I will do, I still have plans to run a playing of the prize, but where / when / how remain TBD.]
Graduation itself was fairly painless — barely an hour from start to finish. Knew a few people, but I’ve never really stuck with anyone other than Brockmeier and Jen, and they graduated a couple years ago.
Welcome Wilson, Sr., the chairman of the board of regents, was pretty fun. He was a much older man — related a story about how he stayed in some Army housing dorms on the site of the current business school, back in ‘47, and it was a good place, except for the latrines being a block away. He acknowledged we’d all be successful, but emphasized that we need to regularly take stock of what’s important, and always remember to pay attention to our families.
The keynote speaker was from Spectra Energy. He was all over the map, hitting business ethics, building the community, constantly improving, helping make the world a better place through socially responsible capitalism, etc. Basically, a capitalist spin on the Wiccan notion of “do what ye will, an’ it harm none.” Which, when you think about it, is a *very* challenging rule to live by. Me, I like that wording better than the Golden Rule — “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” — though the two are definitely related.
Anyway, it’s done, and I think I’m even going to get away with Dean’s List by the skin of my teeth. I had a couple rough weeks in one of my classes, but one of my profs seemed to be hinting tonight that one of the other guys and I (who thought that we two would be feeling the B or C stick on our hides) had done a fine job. He usually shoots pretty straight, so I don’t think it was just to spare our feelings on this particular night.
Speaking of which, my parents and sisters got their shot at pictures, then we left. I skipped out on the reception in favor of working out at Rice. I had been pretty morose going into commencement, but a couple hours of light working out cleared things up. Didn’t want to push too hard, b/c I’ll be meeting the PK crew at Tranquility Park tomorrow after I do an observation for Kaplan.
Otherwise, late dinner from the fridge, a little reading, and the usual evening at home. Just the way it should be. :)
On Saturday afternoon, we gradually collected at Rice’s front sally port. Directions (mine) were apparently a little difficult, but everyone interested managed to get there. Ultimately, we had 9 people participating. The cool / warm afternoon was gorgeously clear, with that special teatime lighting — golden on green grass, clear air, long and sharply slanting rays of sunlight.
We stretched for a good 20 minutes or so, using a mixture of methods from running, kung fu, theater, and yoga. From an early point, we established a comfortable peer dynamic, with knowledgeable people chiming in and easily trading in and out of the practice leader role.
Then we went into shoulder rolls, both forward and backward. The quad is a great place to do it — with large, open grassy spaces. We went back and forth along one of the four main stretches. I think we easily averaged 80-100 rolls. unggoy was a huge help here — he made reference to Dr. Masaaki Hatsumi, describing the roll position as a comfortably bouncing ball. Personally, I started to learn how to bring my knees in to my chest. This allowed me to more safely land on my feet and flow up / forward into a run (you don’t want to land with your rear leg flat in a typical martial art fashion, b/c from 6+ feet up, the extra shock of the landing can potentially break / injure the ankle if you fail to land on at least the edge of the foot).
I also found that throwing oneself into a nonstop series of rolls either forward or backward results in entertainingly incapacitating doses of dizziness after about 5-8 repetitions.
unggoy took the lead a lot, from this point on, but Aardvark also contributed a lot. I just occasionally prodded people to keep them in constant motion, which didn’t take much effort. People were really good about pausing only to catch their breath, drink water, or wait their turn to vault whatever the current obstacle(s) were.
And that’s something I really appreciate about the Texas parkour community I’ve encountered. Like Johnny Depp says, “Are you a Mexi-*can*, or a Mexi-*can’t*?”
unggoy was recuperating from a sprained ankle, while Aardvark was still nursing an incompletely recovered sprained wrist. In both cases, they carefully and intelligently worked with and around their injuries as much as they could. I joked that Aardvark was going to end up like a male crab, with an overdeveloped right arm from all the one-sided vaults.
They didn’t allow one marginally injured part to sideline them completely. Sort of a zero-tolerance attitude toward excuses. It’s so easy to say, “Oh, my left wrist is killing me. I guess I’ll stay home and read a book.” But as Blane suggests, there is always a way to practice some aspect of PK (or any other activity) — even something as simple as walking can exercise mental and physical aspects of planning out efficiency and responsiveness. So I’m sure unggoy and Aardvark would have found a way to safely practice, even if they’d had two broken limbs.
But at the same time, they were both very careful to only do as much as they felt they could handle. Traceurs understand better than most people that pain is the body’s way of saying, “Stop that, you dumb sonofabitch.” But at the same time, pushing to the limit (and not beyond) is good, because exercise for hale or healing body parts is really just putting near-maximum-tolerance levels of stress on them. Doing so expands those limits over time. Exceeding those limits *will* irrevocably damage your body and diminish the capacity for stress in the long run. Intelligent athletes understand that, and it seems that these traceurs have an uncommonly good grasp of the concept, for having only been at it for 3-15 months.
The contradiction is so simple yet fascinating:
The more you work out, the more fit and able yet damaged you become. For a while, throughout most of an adult lifetime, the upside outraces the downside. But eventually, the body’s natural and exercise-induced rate of decline accelerates past the ability to increase at first, then past even that of merely maintaining fitness. And sometimes (not always!) working an injured part in exactly the same way that caused injury, albeit in a controlled and metered fashion, is exactly what’s needed to preserve and promote flexibility and strength — first recovering, then protecting against further injury.
unggoy then showed us how to do basic monkey and speed vaults on a low bench. After a while, we moved to the Will Rice quad, where we got to use the benches, low walls, and picnic table for higher or longer jumps / vaults. Along the way to WRC, we threw in some simple hops, inverted press-ups, and whatever else seemed to fit the objects found along the way.
unggoy and Chester had a couple goes at diving kong vaults (or saut de chat) over the length of the picnic table. Really impressive. The terminology is a bit awkward, since monkeys and kongs are both types of saut de chat vaults, but in English usage, the saut de chat has become confused / conflated with the saut de bras.
Will and unggoy also scrambled up onto the WRC rooftops and down again, for the heck of it.
All in all, I think I must have performed at least 50 jumps and vaults of various kinds all afternoon. My glutes and a whole bunch of other muscles that I can’t quite identify (mostly inside and underside thigh) are still really sore this morning.
In the end, five of us finished up at Sid Richardson’s ramp for people with handicaps (I think that’s the current term en vogue). It has 2.5 switchbacks and awesome metal rails plus wooden rails on both sides. Several of us crabwalked in prone and supine positions up and down the rails.
unggoy and Chester tried a couple of different approaches to flow. We were all pretty beat by then. As twilight fell, we ended practice and walked over to the RMC (student center) to hit the restrooms and water fountains.
Patrick and unggoy talked a little bit about applications of parkour in evading pursuit and its role in a martial art / self-defense context. Since parkour is still new to me and initially had no martial connotations as I discovered it, it feels peculiar to talk about our harmless leaps and vaults in such a way. But it’s really no stranger than talking about using many martial art techniques in vanishingly unlikely circumstances. I doubt I will ever have the chance to use White Ape Offers Fruit in either its purported function as a headlock or my hypothesized root function as a neck break. And I’d like to keep it that way.
We all had a blast, and we plan to meet again this coming Saturday at Tranquility Park downtown (opposite the Hobby Performing Arts Center). Sugarland and Spring are potentially in the pipeline.
If you want to end on a good note, preserve the positive vibe, stop here. If you want to know my latest frame of mind (which is both good and grim), well, you’ve been warned.
Not sure where else to put this latest iteration of my recent soapbox on my personal unfitness:
So I was recently told at a dinner that a friend of mine looked a lot better ever since he “filled out” — that he used to be too skinny. Me, I estimate that he’s probably 15 lbs heavier than me (mostly not muscle), and I know I’m 60th percentile BMI. I’ve gotten similar comments as well. Such a comment coming from someone considerably heavier than either my friend or me could be construed as an attempt to paint over a personal insecurity.
What I cynically suspect such people are really saying is, “He looks good b/c he’s skinnier than me, but I feel better now that he’s not as lean as he used to be.” That sliding scale rationalization is very insidious — by those lights, an unfit 250-lb man could be favorably regarded from an unfit 325-lb man’s POV. It’s true, but it’s utterly relative and fails to acknowledge that both people would probably be healthier, happier, and marginally richer if they were 200 lbs. Bear in mind the incident I relate above was at a non-SCA gathering — I am not SCA-bashing. But Tristan and I do get it a fair bit at SCA practices as well. He’s made it clear that he’s not as lean as he’d like to be. Ditto for me.
I know this sounds brutal. I am not in any way criticizing other people’s weight b/c we are all behaviorally and genetically wired differently. I *am* criticizing the ways in which I suspect we, as an overweight society, are hiding our heads in the sand with such comments. What I *am* saying is that I’m overweight. Some other people are more so. Whether or not they are, my friends are still my friends. It’s good to be happy with who you are, but that does not preclude wanting to significantly improve yourself. And as I often try to emphasize (and somehow it gets lost in all my hectoring), I only expect to drive myself hard. (Though I am not an example of the ideal case. In many meaningful ways, I *am* happy with who I am, and I want to truly and positively change. But I am also fundamentally unhappy in a couple ways, and I tend to project that deep dissatisfaction in superficial ways — like desiring dynamic patterns in my life.)
Since fencing in various WMA styles (and kung fu, and sorta PK) can really use partners, I have been frustrated and have frustrated other people with my agitation for more constant physical activity. So to lessen the social tension and disjunction, I’m finding like-minded people who don’t find my attitude grating and in fact agree and welcome it — specifically for those activities.
Most SCA events and people are not geared for what I want. When I’m in SCA full fig, *I* am not geared for what I want. After all, who wants to put some hardcore wear and tear on an attractive and historically accurate wardrobe? Not me.
I’ve danced around this idea before, but I hadn’t fully formed the thought or explicitly said it, so: I am very sorry that I’ve ever upset or annoyed others with my attitudes. I’ve only occasionally been called on it, but I can tell I sometimes (often?) offend people. Maybe it’s my overdeveloped sense of guilt, but I hope the relevant (and sometimes overweight) parts of the world accept my apology, and that we can more merrily continue upon our course henceforth. :D We can only hope I’ll become pleasant company in social circles once again.
Saturday night, I went to Chris’s house to celebrate his 30th birthday. Chris and Lisa and their get-togethers are always pretty fun. Kind of comforting, never threateningly social. I enjoy hanging out with him a lot. Still, I was surprised by how much fun I unexpectedly had this time.
Chris gave me the dime tour of his house, since I’d missed the housewarming two years back. The dining room is fantabulous — the whole house looked a little like pages out of Southern Living. Lisa and her friends and family had been busy for two days prepping food. It was mostly Italian-themed, with some great chicken alfredo and awesome homemade meatballs. I was a little disappointed Chris hadn’t made one of his trademark cheesecakes with the chocolate-dipped mint leaves (you refrigerate them, then peel off the leaf to leave an imprinted mint chocolate leaf), but that’s not a complaint at all.
It was pointed out that Chris has been working at the Rice cashier’s office since he was a freshman (part-time, at the time). Now, he’s VP or something of the department. Finish school, maybe think about an MBA. I’m not clear on the details, but it’s a grand thing to know he’s doing well.
I talked to one of his coworkers, Patricia. Talked about old SF / fantasy, like Orson Scott Card, Niven, Poul Anderson, etc. I tipped her off to The King of Ys — doing my part to pass on Anderson’s increasingly-forgotten legacy. I know someday he’ll be regarded like Sturgeon: a significant contributor to the field, but little-known by current audiences.
Following some usual small-talk topics, she said she’d pray for me to find someone special. Not the conversational trade-off Anderson would have chosen — the remembrance of his work for a supplication to a being in Whom he may or may not have believed.
On which note, I felt a little like Bobby from Company. I won’t be disingenous — I know I’m well into the stage where even complete strangers will feel obliged to ask, “Oh, such a nice young man! Are you seeing anyone? Oh, why not?”
I just wish they’d leave it at, “No. It just hasn’t worked out that way.” Either that, or that I could comfortably lie about it: “Oh, sure. She’s in Bangladesh right now, building housing for impoverished families.”And since Chris and some of the others knew where things stood a few months ago, they asked the inevitable, awkward follow-ups. No, it was wonderful, but it didn’t work out. Thank you for asking. Sigh.
O to suffer anguish writ small that night
Is a draught of bitter dregs to tipple.
Multiplied a hundredfold, by my lights
I would yet partake again, an’ able.
(It’s too early for trochaic pentameter – I couldn’t figure out how to tie “partake” back to the root cause of the bitter drink, which is what I wanted. As it stands, the verse inaccurately describes my willingness to go back to Chris’s party — true though that may be.)
I found it reaffirming that Patricia and her husband had long ago reconciled their own preferences for routine versus change. She blocks out a time slot, around which she can plan. He takes the lead on planning the activity — usually trying out new things. If he were an intelligent fencer, he would propose and discuss choices with her first. And since she enjoys them, he probably does. An’ were I an intelligent fencer, so would I do as well.
Where there are two wills as one, there can be a compromise.
The remainder of the evening resumed its merry pace. We had karaoke, with a near-lethal dose of country tunes. Going through the list in a desperate holding action against the tides of lost pickup trucks, dogs, and women, I only found Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” and Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York”. I picked the safer one and plunged into the breach. Not a Grammy-winning performance, but fun.
Some of Lisa’s friends had brought their kids, and the two kids were looking pretty bored midway through the night. We were all out on the back patio, so I took them over to the grass and we did cartwheels etc. I learned how to do a round-off, and they learned shoulder rolls.
We *can* make a difference!
Never believe you can’t improve the world. Take the stairs. Buy local produce. Don’t drink bottled water (it’s got higher fecal matter content than tap, anyway). In the words of Yul Brynner (The King and I), “Et cetera, et cetera!”
Until 2005, I believed like many others that I couldn’t make a difference. Now, when I hear others say that, I don’t know how to prove what I’ve learned — that what I do does impact my world. Well, here’s proof that my call made some tiny difference:
“Just moments ago the House passed its version of the Energy Bill (H.R. 6) by a vote of 235 - 181. The bill includes an increase in the fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks — the first since 1975 — and a renewable electricity standard that would require utilities to produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Also, the House took out a provision added in the Senate that would have put the financial risk of building new nuclear power plants on taxpayers. All in all it’s a pretty good bill and a definite step in the right direction.”
I haven’t personally seen any news items yet to confirm it, but yee-ha!
That’s, what, 54% — a pretty decent margin.
Some info about what HR 6 does for / inflicts on us:
Yes, it does raise costs of business for manufacturers, but if they don’t change / improve their business processes and products, they’ll become increasingly marginalized — the Studebakers and DeSotos of the 21st century. Japan already outproduces us in the auto industry. All the noise about profit margins is just a child screaming b/c he doesn’t want to take his medicine. (Well, there’s more to it than that, but we’re not going down that rant — er, road.)
And the main site I go to:
I use a couple others to cross-check my facts, but I find them all through Google.
The very facts that we have stores like Whole Foods, and that companies like Toyota, BP, and even Wal-Mart are making strategic decisions the way they are — these all demonstrate the differences we can make. It’s a crazy powerful feeling to be even a tiny part of such a huge progressive movement.
To celebrate, I think I’m going to go call my reps in Congress and the Senate again about Internet radio royalties.
On a sidenote:
I remembered another tidbit from Karl’s dinner party. Xander mentioned that there’s an enormous plastic trash heap in the Pacific. Something to do with prevailing currents and gyres.
[Update: Nooo! Curse you, U.S. Senate!]
So some other topics we visited at Karl’s party…
Xander also described exactly and more fully what I’ve vaguely believed these past few years about a U.S. economic recession. What is good for the whole can be painful for the individual, and vice versa. It’s always easier and more pleasant to have a discussion in which all parties are fundamentally in accordance, but I don’t think we’re just reading tea leaves here:
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2007/02/index.htm
“…although the real effective U.S. dollar is still estimated to be above its medium-term fundamental value, valuation gains cannot be relied on to stabilize the liability stock going forward.” (p. 75)
And then we hit on why fat people increase our exposure risk vis-à-vis oil consumption and cost, cars, etc. I’ll let these links do the talking:
http://www.news.uiuc.edu/NEWS/06/1024auto.html
“The key finding is that nearly 1 billion gallons of fuel are consumed each year because of the average weight gain of people living in the United States since 1960 – nearly three times the total amount of fuel consumed by all passenger vehicles each day based on current driving habits,” McLay and Jacobson wrote.
We thought it was The Economist that broke research on fat people, but it turns out it’s The Engineering Economist. Close enough for me to find it.
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10249454&top_story=1http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/337534_carsonline01.html
…And the total cost of obesity is a lot more than $2.8 bn, when you factor in health care costs, etc.
http://www.super-solutions.com/RisingHealthCareCost_WorkplaceStress.asp#Obesity
http://www.rti.org/newsroom/news.cfm?nav=442&objectid=C13A6B12-1732-4D0D-ACA2C1E3F09E04A9
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.w4.480/DC1
Some quick math says that fat people are costing each of us $622 — averaged across *all* working Americans. 62% of Americans are obese — you can do the math from there. Less overweight people will incur lower costs, and etc.
My current PK / ba gua kick started when I discovered to my mild horror that I am 195 lbs these days. That’s a BMI of 29, which is overweight. I knew I was, slightly, despite what anyone tried to say. I see the truth of it whenever I get in the shower. :P
No need to flog the dead horse further. The important thing is: What are we willing to do about it? I cast no stones here. But I am working (not just hoping) to raise my long-term avg weekly workout hours to 10 (leaving 4-6 for shop work) and raise the intensity level of that workout time as well.
I won’t suggest how anyone else can do it, though. We each need to find our own ways.
