dtbrookes

Hybrid bicycles

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:17:05 GMT

I just discovered there is a sector of the bicycle commuting world who hate/despise hybrid bicycles. Their argument goes something like: "If you're riding a hybrid, why don't you just use a racing bicycle? You're basically taking a racing bicycle and slowing it down by putting straight handlebars on it." Well idiots, the reason to put straight handlebars on the bicycle is because when you're commuting on a racing bicycle (which is something I actually do) you NEVER EVER ride on the drops. Why? Because a) you're looking straight at the ground, and b) it takes too long to move your hand from the drop to the brake. When I ride my racing bicycle, I spend all the time on the hoods - for both reasons a) and b). So the drops are completely useless, which is why we replace the racing bars with straight handlebars. Jeez. Get a life.

Duh

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:08:04 GMT

Turns out, the majority of people who are walking away from their mortgages are the rich, not the middle class. Well duh. That's why they're rich. They're clever enough to NOT listen to some asshole on TV telling them that they should never ruin their credit score. What a load of shit. Why are people so stupid as to keep paying money when their house is worth less than their mortgage??? ARG!!!

Bicycle mirrors

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 04:16:22 GMT

I'm trying to work through the pros and cons of using a rear-view mirror on a bicycle. Just some random thoughts, bear with me.

Why do cars have rear view mirrors and side mirrors? To change lanes, for reversing, anything else? But, a good driver should always turn and check their blind spot anyway. So there's always a head turn involved irrespective, when changing lanes.

On a bicycle we don't have a reverse gear and we almost never change lanes.

A bicycle requires a different pattern of attention as compared to a car. You need to look forward more because that's where the accidents happen. Only 8% of car-bicycle accidents happen from the dreaded "strike from behind."

I've tried a handlebar mounted mirror, I hated it. There was too much vibration from the road and so the image was unreliable. I found myself having to look around anyway to make sure that there weren't two identical cars stacked on top of each other behind me.

Maybe helmet-mounted mirrors are better?

My gut reaction to rear view mirrors on the bicycle is that they're being used for something other than navigating traffic, they're being used as a placebo for the cyclist's fear of the dreaded strike from behind.

I don't believe that a mirror is going to save you from that dreaded event. I wonder if anybody has done a controlled study of bicycle commuters who do and don't use a rear view mirror. I'm willing to bet there will be no statistically significant difference in strike from behind accidents between the two groups.

The other day, I passed a cyclist who had a helmet mounted rear view mirror. He was weaving in and out of the gaps between the parked cars in a most dangerous manner, trying to keep to the right as far as possible. I can't see how his mirror was going to keep him safe. The simple act of repeatedly entering and exiting the traffic flow must surely place one in more danger than simply placing oneself in the middle of the lane and cycling steadily down it.

I'm trying to be fair to the mirror side of the argument. I don't buy this bullshit from the anti-mirror crowd that "oh, I know I guy who lost his eye because he got shards of glass from his mirror into eye when he crashed." I'm trying to see any point for having a rear view mirror on a bike and I just can't justify it. I think at best it can't do any harm, but I suspect it may give people some false sense of security which is probably not a good thing, but probably doesn't do much harm either. I half wonder though if a cyclist spends too much time looking in the mirror, they may be missing the more important stuff happening in front of them? Again, somebody needs to do a proper study on that. I'm just speculating.

Panarchy

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:32:51 GMT

Note to self, I've just discovered "Panarchy" theory. There is an article about ithere. I haven't read the article in full and this may all be a load of hooey, but it looks interesting. Unfortunately the rush of selling our house and looking for another in Miami is consuming all of my time and attention, so I don't have time to pay attention to the article or the concept. However, when things quieten down, I want to go back and read about this.

A vegetable gardner's blog

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:20:29 GMT

The guy who wrote that Kansas City Star article on Michelle Obama's potential squirrel problem has a vegetable gardening blog with his wife here. Definitely a couple of folks after my own heart. The first article that pops up on the pages is a serious rebuttal of the Topsy Turvy planter, a device I have long been skeptical of myself. I think I'll be visiting there a lot.

The never-ending squirrel squabble

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:42:33 GMT

This is my third year of trying to grow vegetables in the company of the pesky squirrels. I never has this problem in Durban, South Africa. There, our problem there was monkeys, but squirrels are an even more persistent menace of the temperate climates. Well, if you've done battle with the squirrels like I have: watched them eat tomatoes covered in chili pepper spray, chomp straight through chicken wire, this article will probably make you cry with laughter. It certainly touched a nerve with me.

Transition

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:58:00 GMT

Just finished a good article published here.

People are wondering what to do about the low energy future. Somebody says put up a clothes line. But this is some sort of stupid home owners association community, so they won't allow it. Then somebody else says "So we won’t call it a clothesline, we’ll call it a solar dryer." I like that.

Educational Note

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:28:54 GMT

Finished watching "An Unreasonable Man." Note to self, don't forget this amazing line: Ralph Nader's father talking to Ralph: "So what did you learn at school today? Did you learn how to believe or did you learn how to think?" What a perfect question! How many can honestly answer the latter rather than the former? Not many I think. I was lucky. I had one math teacher in grades 9 and 10 where I could say "I learned how to think," but that's it, apart from my history teacher, maybe.

Tax Breaks for commuter cyclists

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:15:20 GMT

Here I am, bitching about no tax breaks for commuter cyclists and lo and behold, I run into this article. Jung called it synchronicity, but I say "ask, and the universe shall provide."

Earth day challenge response

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:44:02 GMT

Two of my bicycles. The ciocc (pronounced "choach," rhyming with "coach") was for racing, when I used to race, the bianchi is a hybrid cross bike for commuting.

When the weather is decent, I ride to and from work every day, need I say more?

I do have to rant a little at this point, but don't want to offend any Prius drivers, nudge, wink. So it's great that drivers of hybrid cars get a tax break. People should be encouraged to save energy. However, how is it possibly fair that a driver of a hybrid car gets a tax break and I don't get anything for riding my bicycle? I feel like I should be protesting on the mall in Washington DC.

Unintended consequences.

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:06:12 GMT

How's this for a bizarre chain of events?: Yuhfen asked our neighbor to remove her jungle of mulberry trees from her back yard. Surprisingly she dutifully did so! We're doubly overjoyed, because it has removed one of the rabbits' primary hiding spots. So double bonus, more sunlight into the yard and fewer rabbits. Then today, we were standing in the middle of our vegetable garden, watering the plants and doing stuff when we were overrun by a swarm of hungry fleas, eating us alive. Now it may be a bit of a stretch, but my guess is that removing the trees, which removed the rabbits, left the fleas with no food source and they've been migrating outwards, looking for animals to feed on.

Educating Esmé

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:46:26 GMT

I'm reading this book entitled "Educating Esme" by Esme Codell. To cut a long story short, she's describing her experience of teaching fifth grade in a south-side Chicago public school. And in the particular episode in question she's trying to teach the kids conflict resolution skills.

So the kids have learned this structure to raise and resolve conflicts. They have to start it with "I didn't like it when...." followed by "it made me feel..." followed by some more stuff I don't remember. In the story, the one boy (let's call him Johnny) stands up and, after some help, manages to say, "I didn't like it when Billy kissed me." The teacher, Esme, then says, "and how did that make you feel Johnny?" Johnny replies "it made me feel gay." I'm not sure why I find this so funny, but anyway, I don't know how I would have been able to keep a straight face if I was the teacher in that situation.

retirement investment ad.

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:55:51 GMT

Gotta get this one out of my system. I noticed this ad on TV the other day. It might have been for AIG, I don't remember. It was about investing money for retirement, and the punchline was something like, "We'll make sure you never out-live your money."

I'm imagining the follow-up line. Something like "Oh, your money ran out, our professional assassins have been dispatched to your house to kill you... We'll make sure you NEVER out-live your money."

When world knowledge distorts perception

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:41:29 GMT

So, I'm riding to work and there are two cyclists in front of me, stopped at the traffic light. As the light goes green, the one guy basically checks out with acceleration one only associates with an elite level cyclist. So I jump on his rear wheel and chase him. Why not? He seems pretty strong, but there's this little voice in the back of my head saying "does not compute, does not compute."

We get to the stop sign. He goes left, I go left. Again, he's accelerating at elite pace, but the weird part is, he's not pedaling like an elite. He's in the wrong gear and his bicycle is too clunky. My brain rationalizes again. Maybe he's uber-elite (like Tour de France level) but he's just tootling around town on his clunky bike for the fun of it. But the voice is still there going "does not compute, does not compute," because he's in the wrong gear. Even Lance Armstrong can't accelerate that fast in the wrong gear. No way man.

So we've picked up something around 20 - 25 mi/hr. (My computer battery died a few months ago, so I can't be more precise than this) and I decide I have to check this guy out better, so I pass him. Well, I've never seen an electric bicycle before, but this guy was riding an electric bicycle. Hence the title. If I'd see an electric bicycle before, everything would have made sense from the start, but because of my lack of knowledge, I experienced this weird distorted experience of riding at the sort of pace I might have with a training partner on a hardish ride, but with some random guy on bicycle that looked way too clunky and pedaling in the wrong gear... Just strange.

Judge for yourself

Sun, 11 May 2008 17:09:08 GMT

Walter Lewin is being upheld as some sort of shining model of "The Great Physics Lecturer." There is an article in the New York Times about him here. There is another article in Die Zeit here.

Rather than commenting on this, judge for yourself. Watch this online video of Walter Lewin on youtube here. Watch when he messes up Ohm's law. I'm not worried about the fact he messes up. Everyone messes up when they're thinking on their feet. But notice, NOT A SINGLE STUDENT in the class raises their hand to question what he wrote.

A miracle?

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:37:09 GMT

Judge for yourself:

In roughly October 2006, I removed a sick lilac bush that was next to the grape vine and transplanted it to another spot along our property border. The root of the bush had almost completely rotted away. I chopped off the rotted piece and stuck what was left into the ground. The bush promptly shed all its leaves and looked pretty much like it had died.

I thought, well, let's see if it comes back in Spring 2007. Well, it didn't, not a single leaf appeared on the bush. All through 2007 it sat there, apparently dead. I didn't remove it, not because I still had any hope for it, but simply because I had more pressing gardening issues to attend to.

It is now Spring 2008 and yesterday I was walking up and down the lilac row, inspecting the bushes, when I found both leaves and flowers on the formerly deceased lilac bush. I most certainly don't believe in miracles, but I cannot explain how that is possible.

Anthropogenic climate change.

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:00:36 GMT

I recently wrote this reply to someone on "theoildrum.com" who was skeptical about anthropogenically driven climate change. Reading over it again, I think it rather captures how I want to reply to people who don't understand science and mistake the proper workings of science for confusion or lack of correctness. Here is the comment in its entirety. The original poster asked if anyone could straighten him/her out.

Try straightening yourself out. If you believe that science can provide some decent version of "the truth," then learn to distinguish between science and something else that is not science. Scientists are skeptics within the rules of the epistemic game we call "science." What this means practically is that if a scientist makes an experimental claim (glaciers are shrinking) or puts forward a hypothesis (warming is CURRENTLY being caused by human-produced CO2 forcing), other scientists try to prove him/her wrong by a) pointing out flaws in the study (e.g. crappy control group), b) replication (can I replicate your findings), or c) conducting a testing experiment to disprove a hypothesis.

Learn to distinguish between someone who is pedaling either a) outright lies that contradict established scientific findings (generally few, if any citations, citations never link to peer-reviewed journals) b) flakey science (generally characterized by logical fallacies, missing control groups (e.g., 98% of prisoners are bread users, therefore bread is bad), over-generalizations or under-generalization), or c) the real stuff. Real science is (ideally, yes I know, ideally) a self-correcting system because scientists try to "shoot down" other scientists claims and results. That's why data gets corrected over time (temperature records for example), papers with mistakes get retracted from journals as other scientists try to replicate their studies etc... Generally, the screw-ups and cheats are weeded out. What is left is what we (as scientists) believe is the best version of the truth.

Likewise please try not to fall in to the trap of judging the truth of a scientific idea by its proponents. If large corporations have suddenly jumped on the "global warming" band-wagon and I hate big, nasty, evil, money-grubbing, capitalist corporations that doesn't mean the scientific theory is wrong. Anybody can use science for their own twisted ends. Doesn't negate the science.

Finally, if you don't think that science provides a decent version of the truth and you prefer to center your epistemological beliefs around faith or some other set of epistemic rules, then please, go ahead. But try to recognize anthropogenic global climate change for what it is: a scientific theory. It is currently the best scientific explanation for what is happening to the global climate.

Bureaucracy as a weakly interacting system

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:11:43 GMT

Today is the third time I went to the admin. office for a program advance on the grant I'm working on. It is also the first time I went to the right people in the right order with the correct forms etc etc etc... The whole process took less than five minutes. On the previous two occasions, I either started with the wrong person, or screwed up a form. On each occasion, the process turned into a lengthy ordeal on the order of 1 hour.

And you know what, I think I have a theory of bureaucracy as a weakly interacting system. Physicists reading this will understand what I'm talking about. When you do something wrong, not only does the bureaucrat become flustered/combative or angry depending on their temperament, but they simply don't know where to send you. This is what I mean by the weakly interacting part. They literally don't interact with other members in the system. They don't have any mental model of what is going on whatsoever. As long as bureaucrat X sees stamps Y and Z and signatures A and B on the form, everything is fine. They smile and hand over the next form. Hmm bureaucracy as a unstable weakly interacting complex dynamical system? Totally makes sense now.

Dream Job

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 22:03:23 GMT

When people ask me, "what is your dream job?" I really didn't have a good answer until now. I've always wanted to be a classical conductor, or an astronaut or something equally weird. But how can one become a conductor? It is almost impossible to gain the sort of status that I'd need since my goal would be to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic playing Brahms' First Symphony. Not because I want the status or fame, but just for the sheer sonic experience of standing in front of 100 musicians who are able to play perfectly together without thinking about it. What are the chances I'd ever have of doing that? Like my house-mate once said in one of his rare moments of profound wisdom:

"Given statistical ensemble of ten to the twenty three Einsteins, only one of them will discover relativity."

Ditto for the astronaut job.

But over the last month, I've figured out what my dream job would be. Something I could do, that I have the ability to do extremely well, and would make me blissfully happy day in and day out...I would be...a professional music picker.

I'm not even sure if this job exists, but if not, I'd create it. Say you're a director and you've finished a rough edit of your movie, you don't have enough money to pay a composer, you call up...the professional music picker. Need a theme song to put the icing on your (potential) hit TV show? I'm the guy. For example, the guy who thought of using Massive Attack's "Teardrop" as the theme music of "House" was just brilliant (IMO). Of all the people I've ever encountered, I don't know of anyone other than perhaps Peter Schickele of WNYC's "Schickele's Mix", who knows a greater variety of music or gets more pleasure out of listening to new music than I do. The best part of the job? All I'd have to do is sit all day listening to music I've never heard before. Noice!

Update: Just put 2 and 2 together. Peter Schickele is of course the wag who created PDQ Bach. Doh!

Humour

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:41:18 GMT

I'm wryly amused by this paragraph from Rachel Cusk:

Every morning I cycle with my daughters to school: it is a good 10-minute ride, uphill most of the way. We used to go on the pavement, but people protested so now we go on the road. Every single day, some woman with her child strapped into the front seat of her car shakes her head at us. Today, a woman in a Range Rover pulled up at a junction where we had stopped, and rolled down her window. "You're making me very nervous," she said to me loudly. I looked at her, at the child sitting beside her. Did she not care that my daughters could hear what she said? Did they not exist for her, panting and proud of their cycling, stridently moral about pollution? Could she not see that it was she, in her car, that represented the very danger she congratulated herself for pointing out? She was so certain that she was protecting her child better than I was protecting mine. I will never defeat that certainty. All I can do is endeavour not to be crushed by it. I smiled politely, and we rode on.

The full article may be found here.

I wish I had her moral fortitude. When the analogous encounter happens to me (which it often does). I yell "go fuck yourself" if the window is down and use my middle finger if the window is up.

Emily

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:26:58 GMT

Emily passed away peacefully last night. We buried her under the walnut tree this morning. The night before last, I dreamed she was better again and digging for peanuts in her jar.

When we did great things

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:01:48 GMT

I was looking back over the physics 194 course I taught. On the second hour exam I put one of the hardest CSEM questions on to the exam (CSEM stands for "Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism"). It was question 29 for the curious. Anyway, in the original CSEM paper which gave the CSEM exam after either an algebra-based or calculus-based physics course to several thousand physics students, both algebra and calc. groups scored 20% correct (i.e., they were bang on random guessing since there were five multiple choice options). In my class, 42% got the correct answer and 48% picked one of the two partially correct answers. Note that in the CSEM data, the surveyed students were randomly guessing across the board on all five answers - AFTER their physics course. In summary, the students in 194 kicked ass.

It seems so difficult now to convince anyone to let me teach a course like that again. It was Spring 2006, but it seems so long ago that we did such great things.

No Knead Bread

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:09:21 GMT

No Knead Bread

I found this recipe on the internet. Two links are provided below.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/1437

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/08mini.html

Two links to the video of the same thing may be found here:

http://video.on.nytimes.com/index.jsp?fr_story=35eac03d90314ffed6a0c0ae143ab87b1474fb89

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13Ah9ES2yTU

The principle

You don’t need to knead bread. The same chemical reaction between yeast and flour that makes great bread by protracted kneading, can be stimulated by making the dough wetter than usual and leaving it for a long time at room temperature. This way you can allow the same chemical reaction to take place on its own without any additional human intervention.

The implementation

In a bowl, mix together 3 cups of flour, 1½ cups water, 1 tsp salt, ¼ tsp yeast. Mix together with a spoon until you have a nice lump of soggy dough in your bowl. I always mix half bread flour, half wheat flour - this combo works just fine too. Cover and leave at room temperature for 12 - 24 hours. 18 hours seems to be the “sweet” spot.

Come back 18 hours later. Prepare a fairly heavily floured working surface. Extract the (gooey) dough onto the floured surface. (Note the long spider-web-like strands as you pull the dough out. Those are the sign that the chemical reaction has really worked.) Sort of fold and pat the dough into a squarish blob. Then wrap it up in a kitchen towel and let a second rising take place for 1 - 2 hours. In order to stop the dough sticking too much to the towel, I liberally cover the dough and towel with wheat bran. This makes it taste even better. After that, bake!

The baking trick

The following points apply to baking almost any loaf of bread, not just this recipe. One of the biggest problems for making bread without the professional oven is heat distribution and humidity control. The guy on the internet cracks this dual problem with one idea: A preheated cast-iron Dutch oven with a lid. (I use a circular CorningWare casserole dish with lid, glass and porcelain have a high heat capacity as well.)

For this recipe: Preheat oven and dish to 450 F. (In the video, the guy says 500 - 515 F, but I found that the crust was a little too burned for my tastes.) Plop your dough straight from the towel into the (blazing hot) dish, cover with lid, and bake for 30 min. Uncover and bake for another 20 min. (I turn the oven down to 400 F for stage 2, I don’t like dark crusts.)

Enjoy.

State influence on research programs

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:47:14 GMT

A little background first: I do research on human subjects. This means that I have to pass one or more ethics exams. In addition, any research I conduct has to be approved by an organization that every university is required to have, the "institutional review board" or IRB. Two of the major requirements of IRB approval are that 1) the benefits of an experiment to society far outweigh the risks to the subjects, and 2) if you deceive subjects during an experiment, they have to be properly debriefed afterwards. Point #1 obviously has some limits. We're not allowed to knowingly kill, maim, or injure subjects (or withhold a treatment) no matter how beneficial the research will be to society.

Recently I had to take a new ethics exam, administered between a consortium of higher institutions, online, at this website. There is a lot of stuff you have to read and then you have to answer some questions. And then there's more stuff to read and more questions and so on and so forth. Now, the interesting part is that there is one section that presents historical case studies of human subject research that was conducted unethically, and this is where the creepyness started. And the more I think about it, the more creepy it gets.

Back when I was doing my PhD at a different institution, I had to take a similar ethics exam with a similar section of case studies. In this section were examples of really unethical behavior in which treatments were deliberately withheld, resulting in multiple deaths that were preventable. Other cases involved studies where the intervention was knowingly administered even when the experimenters knew there was a high risk of death or disablement. You know, really scary stuff where the people running the experiment really didn't give a continental s... about the people they were experimenting on.

In this new exam I was taking, the CITI exam started out with the legendary Tuskeegee study that killed many people through deliberately withholding treatment. You know, really disgusting scary stuff on the part of the experimenters. Then, to my surprise this case was followed by the Milgram "Obedience to Authority" experiment. I really encourage you to read about it here. This work is truly revolutionary in psychology and I would suggest Milgram's study makes a significant contribution towards explaining how horrific state-organized genocides (such as the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany) came about. However, this study is a little discomforting because it clearly shows that all humans have the capacity to engage in the type of slaughter that happened in Germany. I.E., the big message is that the Germans were NOT uniquely evil, we all have the capacity to kill, as long as we have an authority figure standing over our shoulder saying it is okay. The CITI exam commented (and I'm paraphrasing here) "subjects suffered severe psychological trauma and were not properly debriefed." In truth, debriefing was not done properly, but the percentage of subjects suffering psychological trauma was rather small. I wish to point out in conclusion that such a study should be able to get IRB approval today, provided proper debriefing was done and free psychological counseling was provided afterwards for participants. Yet would it, now that it appears in the CITI exam as a case study prototype?

You think the story ends there? No! It gets better. The next study was the equally legendary Stanford prison study conducted by Zimbardo. You can read about it here. I really encourage those interested to follow the slide show, which gives a blow by blow account of the original experiment from beginning to its early termination. Again, remember, the people who make the CITI exam are placing this in the readings as a prototype of "unethical" research that should NEVER happen today with the IRB administering such things. Again, the side effect of this experiment was psychological trauma which was poorly dealt with (again, with the IRB guidelines in place, I don't see why this simply couldn't have been done better). The benefit to society of this experiment is remarkable since it highlights the horrific psychological effects of the American prison system on its inmates, to the point that it implies that American prisons may very likely be turning criminals into even worse criminals through the psychological abuse/torture they are subjected to. Again, note how threatening this study must appear to the powers that be...

I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all, but how the heck did those two case studies make it in to a reading section which purports to present prototypes of unethical human subjects research that should be avoided at all costs? As I said at the start, it creeped me out back then. Two week later, I still feel like I'm back in South Africa and a smirking police officer/government official is reminding me that good white people don't support "terrorist" organizations like the UDF and the ANC (both working for the liberation of black people in the country).

Nuclear power

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:34:11 GMT

I have the solution! Every person who thinks that nuclear power is the answer to our energy problems should have to take the following deal. If you want to electricity from nuclear power, you have to agree to have a drum of depleted uranium stored in your back yard. If you opt out of the deal, you may not get much electricity, but no nuclear waste. Sounds fair to me.