Author: Muttrox

Yesterday, or the day before, DeKalb county put a complete ban on all outdoor watering. I found this interesting, because I have just finished reading Jared Diamond’s latest book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
Don’t recognize that name? He’s the author of Guns, Germs and Steel. One of the threads running through Collapse is enivromentalism, and how human psychology interacts with environmental issues. Humans generally are not very good at understanding or reacting to long term or low risk threats, which is where environmental concerns usually occur. Humans also (quite naturally) are extremely selfish, and won’t sacrifice much for other groups of humans.

Throughout the world, freshwater supplies are dwindling. In my area of the world, three states spend much of their time bickering and suing each other for access to the same limited supply of water. I am one of the consumers of that water (the Chatahoochee basin). The water’s dissapearing fast, so conservation measures are being enacted. This year is particularly bad, because a faulty chip somewhere let a billion odd gallons go out without anyone noticing, and the government wouldn’t believe the residents who told them the water level looked low.

A total ban is unusual around here. Most counties go to alternate water days (odd-numbered houses one day, even-‘s the next), or certain hours of the day, or other halfway measures. I wonder how effective partial measures are. If I water my lawn 3 days a week, what do I care which days it is? I have a timer on my sprinkler, so the hours of the day doesn’t bother me. Does it significantly decrease consumption?

What incentives are there to rat on neighbors? I find this fascinating. The day after the ban started, our next door neighbor was watering her plants same as always. I dramatically cut back the sprinkler schedule (to about 8% of what it was), but didn’t completely turn it off. Never for a moment did I think that either of us would tattle. But if usage had been more overt I might have. Two motives conflict: (1) You shouldn’t ever start a fight with your neighbor unless unavoidable, and (2) Hey, that’s just unfair! I’d love to see a study on how those motives play out in the real world.

I’ve recently begun to notice a certain kind of professional worker and their communication style. These are folks who do not seem to have had the best education, have succeeded in getting a professional level job. They have a certain image of what a professional looks and sounds like that they aspire to. I admire these folks, they are clearly more “self-made” than I am, and they are pretty good for the most part — I can tell they’re faking the style, but that’s OK, the style is for the most part, quite professional. It’s very good. But there are little characteristic tics. One of those is the word “actually” (and “actual”). The word actually is actually used when it’s not actually needed. Often. Here are two examples I hear today:

“…log into the actual system”
“..it actually tells you the amount”

Here’s a suggestion. Pay attention to when you use the words “actual” and “actually”. Try the sentence without them. If it means the same thing, use the short version. In the end, you’ll come off much better.

Another word to think about is “just”. When someone is arguing a point with you, and they use that word in a sentence, see how it reads without the word “just”. “Just” is a judgement that something is unimportant, and explicity examining that judgement can reveal biases.

“It’s just the abortion nuts who are worked up about this” Well, why shouldn’t they be mad about this, don’t their opinions count?
“It’s not an efficient use of credit card charges for just $1 or $2,” $1 or $2 can be a lot of money.
“There are just six men on the military’s death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and no one has been executed since 1961.” Is six men not a lot? What’s the right amount?

Here’s a sentence I say to people fairly often: “Say that again, without the word ‘just'” Suddenly obvious points don’t seem so obvious.

Yesterday, the legendary Warren Buffet announced he was giving most of his fortune away to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Doubling it from $30B-ish to $60B-ish. Yes, that B is for Billion.

I’m a big fan of this for several reasons.
1) Bill Gates is saving the world. Seriously. Whatever your feeling about Microsoft the company, it’s undeniable that the Foundation has done more good in the world than, well, than just about anything I can think of.
2) I’ve always been annoyed at celebrities and philanthropists starting their own charities all the time. We really don’t need the Fatboy Slim Illiteracy Foundation, there’s a hundred foundations out there already. I’m impressed that Buffett has so little ego, he realized his money would do more good combined with a pre-existing organization.
3) God bless these guys. Seriously.
4) They have the assets of a small country. They’re somewhere around #56, the size of Bangladesh. That’s just amazing. It’s also a dose of perspective to realize just how wealthy the USA really is. Almost three times as big as the next biggest economy (Japan). Take our two of our wealthiest citizens and their assets are larger than Vietnam, Costa Rica, Iceland and many others.
5) There’s an odd consequence of this trend (if it is a trend). Modern “Conservatives” are fond of the idea that public support for it’s poorer citizens isn’t needed, because private giving will make up the difference. And lo and behold, here are Gates and Buffet doing so much to help out. But the natural result of this trend is the very rich who have a heart will give away significant portions of their money. Who does that leave at the top of the heap? The jerks. The conservative viewpoint would naturally lead to a world where the worst people had the most. Interesting.

Update: Tapped brings up an interesting angle. As much money as this is, it’s not a lot compared to what the actual governments of the developed nations could do. Instead of Gates/Buffett picking up the slack, what if some of that money was devoted to influencing our government to appropriate some funds in the same ways? Could be exponentially more effective. That would be a special interest I could get behind.

Come to think of it, isn’t the route George Soros took, funding MoveOn.org and many other liberal democratic organizations?

Database error fixed. For future reference, fix corrupted comments table (error 145) logging into MySQL and clicking on the “Repair” button fixed everything. Now that’s a user interface — a button called “Repair”. So basic, so effective. It also fixed the bug where the links to comments weren’t displaying on the post page.

I think I’ve also learned that this theme stinks, and I’ll switch to something else soon that is more readable. The default was pretty good.

So besides the usual excuses and some life events most of you know about, the database that supports this blog is corrupted or something. I’m not sure how to fix it, and Mrs. Muttrox is always on the computer doing work anyhow, so goodness only knows when I’ll get around to fixing this.

Simply substitute in one of these thoughts for your Muttrox update:
(a) Bush is a corrupt dictator
(b) Hey, why do they build those things like that… it’s so dumb!

Office Space had it right. Cars in the next lane really do go faster.

This is one example of selection bias. Selection bias is when the probability of something being chosen in a random sample is related to whatever you’re measuring. Let’s say you’re measuring the average wealth in the USA. But instead of using the census, you just ask a bunch of people at a yacht club. Your sample will obviously be biased, because someone at the yacht club is more likely to be rich. Or say you conduct a survey to see how phone numbers an average person has. You do this by selecting seven random digits and calling them. This is also biased. Those with more phone numbers are more likely to be picked for the survey.

More germane to the article I linked to, when you run or bike outdoors, you really are hitting the hard parts more than the easy. Let’s say you bike a circular course in and around the city that eventually takes you home. Obviously your net elevation change was zero. You went just as far down as up (after all, you ended up at the same point). So how can I say more of it is uphill? Because when the course is downhill, you go fast. When it’s uphill, you go slow. So at any given time, you’re more likely to be going uphill than downhill. You spend more of your time struggling up than coasting down.

There’s probably a life lesson there somewhere. Take your pick!

1) Everyone must persevere against what life offers, the struggle is what makes the race worth running.
2) Everyone’s life stinks just as bad as yours.
3) No one said that life isn’t fair.
4) Exercise is for chumps.

Update: Or another example, a CNN poll showing that 79% of those watching Bush’s speech approved of it. Gee, you think there might be a connection there of some kind?

I’m not a big golf fan, but two of my favorite jokes take place on the golf course. Without further ado…

A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers.

The engineer fumed, “What’s with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!”
The doctor chimed in, “I don’t know, but I’ve never seen such ineptitude! Let’s have a word with the greens keeper. Hi George! Say, what’s with that group ahead of us? They’re rather slow, aren’t they?”

The greens keeper replied, “Oh, yes, that’s a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime.”

The group was silent for a moment.

The pastor said, “That’s so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight.”
The doctor said, “Good idea. And I’m going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there’s anything he can do for them.”

The engineer said, “Why can’t these guys play at night?”

Three men tee off on a tricky hole, the green is on an island surrounded by water.

The first man steps up and swings, and the ball dives right for the water. He sighs, and spreads his arms. The water miraculously parts, he steps out and chips the ball up on to the green.

“Nice shot Mo!” the second man says. Then he takes his turn. His ball goes into a shallow part of the water. He sighs, steps out on to the water, casually walks to where the ball lies, chips under the water and gets the ball up on the green.

“Nice shot J.C.!” the first man replies.

The last man steps up for his turn. His ball lands right in the lake. He sighs. Nothing happens.

Then, a fish jumps out of the water with the golf ball in it’s mouth. As the fish jumps around, a hawk flies out of nowhere and seizes the fish in it’s talons. It heads skyward, but as it does a golden eagle flies out to attack it. As the hawk turns to fight the eagle, it drops the fish. The fish drops on to the green. The impact knocks the golf ball out of it’s mouth, and the ball rolls into the cup, for a freak hole-in-one.

Jesus says, “Nice shot Dad… now why don’t you quit screwing around and play golf, huh?”

Most of my readers know that I do a little guitar work here and there. I recently upgraded my recording ability. From nothing to a 8-track digital recorder. I hope to do a lot of neat stuff with it in the next few months. I’d better, because I need to justify my full-scale invasion of the guest room.

Here’s my first experiments for your listening pleasure.

Groovy Movie
Man Overboard

How would a Patriot Act, by Glen Greenwald. Glen writes one of the best blogs out there, Unclaimed Territory. Since I discovered him about a month ago, it is my one true read every day. No one has done more to lay out the case against the Bush administrations radical seizure of power and disregard of law. Always clear, always factual, always based on evidence, his blog demonstrates that strong beliefs do not supercede clear reasoning and analysis. This book has not even been published yet , and is currently #1 on Amazon’s Top Seller list. I will be ordering my copy soon, and might even get a couple extra for some lloyal readers. This is the kind of book that is worthy of your attention, financial support, and media attention that a best-seller gets.

I don’t buy into all the conspiracy stuff, but you don’t have to believe all of it to realize something is very wrong.
20 voting machine facts

…and if you haven’t noticed, something is wrong the comment counter. Ever since my WordPress “upgrade”, comments are correctly saved and posted, but the links to them always show “no comments”. Don’t you believe it!

1) The recent criticisms by a parade of former generals of Rumsfeld and Bush’s Iraq strategy leave Bush in a bind. The GOP has spent the last 5 years telling eveyone who criticizes their policies that they are traitors, and don’t support the troops. Any opponents are painted as not only wrong, but anti-patriotic, anti-military, and harmful to national security and the soldiers in the field. A gutsy attack considering the past (lack of) military history of Bush Cheney etc., and their opponents in the last two elections.

Ah, but the generals! What do you do!? When they criticize, you can’t accuse them of not supporting the troops. You can’t claim they are anti-america. It leaves the GOP in a bind, because there is no response that doesn’t instanly set off the BS meter of everyone in the country.

The Bush Administration is caught in a logical trap. Enemies of the regime are automatically traitors. They do not support the troops. Therefore, the generals are traitors. But the troops logically support the troops! And the generals are the troops! Does not compute! Does not compute!

P.S. I wanted to put a good exploding robot picture here, but couldn’t find one.

2) I heard EJ Dionne speak on NPR the other day, and he brought up the same point as he did in his recent column.

As one outside adviser to the administration said, the danger of a Democratic takeover of at least one house of Congress looms large and would carry huge penalties for Bush. The administration fears “investigations of everything” by congressional committees, this adviser said, and the “possibility of a forced withdrawal from Iraq” through legislative action.

Josh Marshall has some good commentary on this, but I think doesn’t hammer home the central point. Has there ever been an election cycle where the overriding goal of a party is coverup? It’s simply incredible, that their whole election strategy could be driven by the need to make sure no one finds out what they’ve been doing. And is that quote a tacit admission that there is enough rotten stuff going on that it will be easy to launch “investigations of everything”? It’s interesting that the source didn’t pick out one or two areas that might get investigated, but said everything.

3) Talk of impeachment is now acceptable, and covered by the mainstream media (MSM). In three states (Illinois, Maine, California), legislators have taken the legal steps to begin impeachment. (If 3/4 of the states approve motions, then that begins the process.) I suppose the fact that even Fox has Bush’s popularity at 33% have given a bit of spine to some legislators. None of these motions have been passed, and none are likely to. In fact, the ones I saw were clearly written to score political points, not to lay out the legal case for impeachment. Nonetheless, it is telling that this is now becoming part of the center of politics.
Late Update: Vermont joins the list.

Today, I finally went wireless. Yes, this is being written on a laptop, located well over four feet from the antenna. Whoa Nellie, that’s some cutting edge stuff! I got the router at Circuit City. I told the salesman what I needed, and he showed me two boxes. Once was the standard unit ($50), one was some kind of supercharged one ($119).

Him: How many square feet is your house?
Me: What?
Him: How big is it, how many feet?
Me: Um, a few thousand.
Him: OK, you need this one then [the deluxe one]
Me: Ahrm [while I puzzle this out in my head]. Ahrumm… [I ponder some math, while pretending to examine the features, which is ridiculous since I obviously don’t know anything about routers.] So, what’s the range on this one [pointing to the standard one]
Him: It covers a smaller area.
Me: Yeah, so what’s the radius?
Him: Well, it’s not shaped like that, it’s broadcasting like this [he draws a big circle in the air]
Me: I know what circles are. So, what’s the radius of the broadcast?
Him: About 1500 feet across, so it’s not enough for your house, you need the other one, it’s 3,000.
Me: [On solid ground now] I don’t think I do, I’ll take this one [the basic]

For those who aren’t following along, the salesman had done two tricky things. One is silly, the square footage of a house doesn’t really tell you how big the square feet it actually covers is. You need to know how many floors it has. The other is the real doozy, mixing up linear and square feet.

Consider a circle with diameter of 1,500 ft (The salesman also mixed up diameter and radius). That’s almost a quarter mile across. It’s safe to say my house is not that big. If you do the math (Area=pi*radius-squared), it covers 1.75 million square feet. I think it’s safe to say anyone who shows up at Circuit City to buy a wireless router does not have a house that big. I doubt the CEO of Circuit City has a house that big. Bunch of crooks.