The Disestablishmentarian Press

Economic Engineering

2008-12-10T22:17:00.003-05:00

By now, everyone should have heard that we're officially in a recession. I expect our incoming President and his team of financial advisors to act aggressively to remedy the situation, but it will likely take some time to turn this mammoth boat of an economy around. Meanwhile, it's our job to take any steps possible to ensure our individual success. The strategy I will present is a good idea even in strong economic times, but as the economy worsens, it becomes increasingly important and beneficial.

The strategy is all about weaving financial safety nets. It is by no means a new concept, and it goes by many names. Investors call it hedging. Engineers call it redundancy. Your high school math teacher called it checking your work. Microsoft calls it safe mode. Subaru calls it limp home mode. Computer network experts call it a backup. Anyone who has ever written a long paper on a computer calls it the save button. It's exactly the same as any other ass-covering situation. We do it in almost every aspect of our modern lives, but many people neglect to take similar measures with their finances.

The first measure is simply saving money. A little fiscal discipline goes a long way. Open a savings account or money market (preferably a money market), and make a habit of putting a set amount out of every paycheck into this account. If you're prone to slacking on this sort of thing, some banks can help by setting up automatic transactions. This can be a retirement fund if you never run into trouble, but if you do, it's your backup funding. Aside from the obvious benefit of saving money in case of trouble, removing money from what you allow yourself to spend trains you to keep your cost of living down. This means that the money that you do save will last longer, should you need to use it. With this measure, some redundancy can only help. For instance, I put a set amount into a money market every two weeks, but I also roll and save my coins. In addition to that, whenever I save a substantial amount in my checking account and don't have to spend a lot of money in the foreseeable future, I invest it in the stock market. This way, I keep a system of three backup funding safety nets, and even at the age of 21 and having just finished an emergency car purchase, I should still be able to survive on this money alone for at least a couple of months.

Keep debt to a minimum, but build credit. While a little debt is essential to building good credit, a lot of it can easily put you in a tight spot. I'm not sure how most people look at debt or if some simply choose to ignore it altogether, but it should be viewed as negative cash on hand. A $1,000 credit limit on a new card is not the same as having an extra $1000. It is simply the ability to ecru that amount of debt. If you keep your debt in check, it will help your credit score by improving your debt to income ratio, as well as reducing your personal stress.

Avoid living beyond your means. No-interest financing is a clever marketing tool, and it can make buying the things you want instead of the things you need a very tempting proposal. There may be no interest on that $5,000 plasma TV for a year, but if you don't have the cash on hand to buy it outright, stick with the old TV. Nothing compounds the stress of reduced job security like crippling debt. Any reasonable person will be much happier with a little cash on hand than with a fancy new toy and excessive debt.

A bit about necessary debt. Few people are able to afford a house without a mortgage. A house is different in some ways from other forms of debt. The interest rates are generally lower, and you have a very solid piece of collateral to keep it low. There are some precautions here as well. When you finance your house, be sure that you have a strong credit score. The better your credit, the lower your interest rate. Make a habit of paying your bill as soon as you get it so you don't lose it or forget about it or end up paying late. The last thing you want is for your interest rate to skyrocket on a home loan. Pay more than the minimum, too. Don't go crazy and spend more on your mortgage than you can afford, but paying it down just a little bit faster than the standard rate can pay off big in the long run. It may be hard to see the benefits of this now, but every dollar you spend above the minimum monthly payment goes toward paying down principal, which means it's essentially the same as putting the extra cash in a money market at a rate equal to your interest rate for the remainder of the loan period. The immediate benefit may be nonexistent, but you'll thank yourself in twenty years when you're debt free instead of having to make payments for another ten.

If you already have a house, consider renting out the spare bedroom. It may seem strange to some people, but taking on a boarder can bring in some much needed cash in a pinch. Under solid conditions, the extra income can make a big dent in the mortgage. In bad times, it can mean the difference between getting by and losing your home. Approach this avenue with caution, however. It's possible to run into some unsavory characters in the domicile rental market.

Get a second job. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, and it doesn't have to make as much money as your primary job, but in tough times, it becomes increasingly necessary to have something to fall back on. The benefits of this are best demonstrated with some simple statistics. Let's say, for demonstration's sake, that you stand a 10% chance of getting fired from your current job within the next year. That's 90% annual job security, which is worse than what most people have, but it's not unheard-of. Now, let's say you take a weekend job performing some relatively menial task. The odds of losing that job may be higher because the lower-level jobs tend to have high turnover rates, but even if you only stand an 80% chance of keeping that job for the next year, having both jobs puts the probability of you being unemployed next year at
0.1 x 0.2 = 0.02 = 2%
The chances of you maintaining employment just jumped from 90% to 98%. When things are going well, the second job can fund a nice vacation, or an increase in savings, or some maniacal science projects. In order for it to be a true safety net, though, you have to be able to cut off whatever it funds immediately and use it for primary income, should it become necessary. The secondary job has to be ready to become primary if the need hits. Even if it only works to slow your losses, it's significantly better than nothing.

All of these ideas will help you maintain some financial security in a rough economy, and none of them will hurt in a smooth economy. I think you'll find that some fiscal discipline and planning will make your life much less stressful and more pleasant. I apply as many of these strategies to my own life as possible, being a student and part-time worker who pays rent to live in a friend's house, and I know first-hand that they work. While it may be true that money in itself can't buy you happiness (though studies have actually shown this not to be the case), a little thoughtful financial planning can do much to that end.

Losing Weight: The Poor Diet

2008-07-07T17:29:00.002-04:00

I'm pretty broke right now. I've got a car to pay off, and I have rent to pay monthly, which I've never had to do before. That's a minimum of $500 out of my pocket each month, but since I'm trying to advance my car payments before school starts, it comes out to whatever I can spare, as long as it's more than the minimum. This has led to several changes in my habits that have caused me to both save money and lose weight. I think I will keep it up even when I'm out of debt, just because I'm a cheapskate and prefer to save as much money as I can.

The biggest change I've made is in groceries. I used to eat a frozen pizza almost every night, as well as ordering half-priced meals when I work. I would also go out to eat frequently because of girls and friends and such. I still eat at work sometimes because it's not a bad deal, but I rarely patronize restaurants anymore, and I've cut the frozen pizzas out of my daily life. I'm buying the stuff that's a pain in the ass to cook because it's cheap, and I don't pig out on it because I'm too lazy to cook unless I'm really hungry. Life's too short to be spent cooking and eating.

As mentioned in the previous post, I'm also taking every possible measure to reduce my fuel consumption. This means hypermiling, carpooling, and will soon include biking to any destination within 5 miles (that means school). Of these, carpooling is the only option that doesn't provide exercise on top of the fuel savings. Hypermiling can be fairly exhausting, though you get used to it, and steering at low speeds with the power steering off may not seem like much of a workout, but it's definitely more of one than regular driving.

Because my mindset is that I'm in dire need of cash, I've been more eager to work as much as possible at my job. When I'm exhausted and normally wouldn't want another table, I actively offer to take them instead. I've been taking as many shifts as I can without getting overtime. This wouldn't do much for my health if I had an office job, but my job consists primarily of running around like an idiot, which is the best kind of exercise there is.

To top it all off, I've decided to actively work out at home. This will save money over going to the gym (ripoff), and there's no real excuse not to do it frequently. I can actually see the form of most of my muscles and a few veins now, which hasn't happened since I first got a car. I don't have a scale because, again, I'm broke. But I can feel a difference.

I feel sexy, but I'm also poor. I'm happy, but I'm also worried. I might be the most emotionally conflicted person I know right now.

Hypermiling. Do it.

2008-06-22T14:18:00.004-04:00

When I was learning to drive, my parents taught me to reset my trip odometer every time I fill my tank, because most gas gauges aren't very accurate and gas mileage can be an indicator when something is going wrong with a vehicle. As a result, I know what mileage I'm getting every time I fill my tank. I normally get between 26 and 30, but I have recently begun an experiment to see if I can drastically improve on those numbers. The results so far have been to my liking.

Over the last two tanks, I averaged about 33 MPG. The image above shows 39.2 MPG, but that was probably due to a faulty filler that shut off early. That's in a '99 Subaru Outback, a car that is rated at 18 city, 25 highway by the newly adjusted ratings. I used just a couple of techniques in different situations in order to optimize my mileage to this point. I went the speed limit, and I tried to turn the engine off whenever I could without compromising safety. I drove with the air conditioner off, and I rolled the windows up on the highway, using the vent fan but not the compressor to cool myself on hot days. I also inflated my tires to a safe but hard 41 psi, several pounds above Subaru's specification, but still well within the reasonable range for the tires (max cold pressure 44 psi). They actually seem a bit quieter at this pressure, so having them overinflated actually improves my comfort when driving.

The biggest thing I've done to improve my mileage beyond what I normally do is turning off the engine. I've always kept my tire pressures near the top of the range and been mindful of when I was using air conditioning. As previously stated, I've tried to turn the engine off whenever I can safely do so. That means practically all red lights, including the time spent coasting up to them, as well as anytime I'm on a downhill slope steep enough to maintain a comfortable speed. Since my car is wired to turn the headlights off when the ignition is turned to 'accessory', I avoid turning it off at any time that headlights are necessary (night, rain, fog). Even so, I try to gently engine brake whenever I'm approaching a stop.

Slowing down has played an important role in improving my recent mileage as well. There's no need to speed. I always give myself plenty of time when I drive, so there's no hurry. On highways, I go exactly the speed limit or a little under. It is supposed to be an upper limit, after all. I rarely use route 288, the local 65-zone, so it's easy to keep my speed under 60 at all times. Practically all cars with four-cylinder engines like mine are most efficient at 40-55 MPH. This is due to a number of factors, especially wind resistance and engine speed. As a rule of thumb, if you're turning 2500 RPM in top gear, you're probably getting about the best gas mileage you can get.

Literature on hypermiling websites talks frequently about the 'pulse-and-glide' technique. This has proven the most effective way to drive for gas mileage, but frankly, I don't have the balls to do it with any traffic around. I'm not trying to piss off other motorists, just trying to save some money and some fossil fuel. We'll see how this works out over the next several months as I test different brands and types of gas, as well as hopefully get a ScanGauge in order to more accurately track my mileage. For now, though, I'm just excited about my little improvement in mileage.

Road Rage

2008-05-14T02:03:00.002-04:00

Today was my first full day driving my new car (pictures and discussion forthcoming). I worked, then I hung out with my girlfriend until it was time to go bowling. I could talk more about my day, but that's not the point of this post. I was taking Kelly home at about 1:30 AM, and someone decided that tailgating was the ideal course of action. This is the story of that event. It might be a little dry, but I think there are valuable lessons to be learned.

There's construction on Route 288 at night in the summer, pretty much always. I'm not really sure what they're doing. They seem to be replacing whole sections of road. At any rate, one lane is usually blocked off in one direction for a couple of miles at night. The speed limit on the highway is 65, but it was a construction zone and I was starting to get tired, so I was going 60, slowing down for the parts where they're cutting pavement and spraying aqueous concrete on the road. There was no vehicle behind me when I entered the construction zone, then suddenly there was. I don't know what exit it came from, but it must have been flying. Blue Saturn sedan. Stupid. I wasn't up for games, so I kept my slow pace through the parts where there was actually construction, then accelerated to see if I could get a little cushion behind me. Once I got up to 80, I was finally starting to pull away. I didn't look at my top speed, but I probably topped 90 before I coasted back down to the speed limit. By the time I got to the next section of construction, the Saturn had caught up with me. He didn't high-beam me, but he was definitely riding my ass.

Construction ended, and I resumed a normal 70-MPH speed with cruise control set to maintain it. The fool rode behind me for a minute, then decided to find the most annoying places possible to drive around me. I was in no mood for this. I didn't really want to get another gun pointed at me on 288, and I wasn't exactly excited about the prospect of wrecking my new car. This is all on top of my more permanent notion that road rage is fucking retarded in the first place. He sat in my blind spot, so I accelerated. He pulled up and matched my speed again, so I hit the brakes. There were no other cars around, so there seemed to be no other danger than this fool. Once he started matching my speed at 50 in a 65, I decided to hit the flashers and stop the car. I pulled over for a minute and basically forced him to move along. Once the taillights disappeared over the next hill, I decided my distance was sufficient and started driving again. I noticed he got off at the same exit I did, and I saw him turning at a light. I don't know if he noticed me again, nor do I care. He didn't follow me, and I saw him turn when the light changed, so that's all I cared about at that point.

My point in telling this story is to explain how we should all drive in such a situation. I can think of at least two other occasions when I was confronted with a similar issue. There is always a choice to avoid road rage, even when another driver is being an irrational dick and trying to fuck you up. Even if you're the best driver in the world, there will sometimes be someone who hates you just for using the same road he's on. You're (I assume) the one who has the level head and wants to avoid trouble, so you have to be the smart one. It's not difficult, since people who have road rage almost by definition are temporarily stupid.

I guess the key to dealing with road rage is really the key to driving well in general, which is to stay calm and not do stupid things. It's easy to freak out in these situations. I thought Kelly was going to hyperventilate tonight. There's no time for freaking out or doubting yourself. You know what to do. Just get away from the dangerous driver as quickly and as safely as you can, preferably within the limits of the law.

It's important to know these things. Road rage is one of the scariest phenomena of the human psyche. Coincidentally, the road has very little to do with it. Give these people a dangerous weapon in a crowded room, and I have no doubt most of them would issue the same sorts of threats to strangers. Driving is just something that nearly everyone does, often in the wrong state of mind, and that wrong state of mind combined with the high level of responsibility involved in driving is what makes a handful of drivers so dangerous.

For further reading on this topic, I direct you to something I wrote a while back on the topic which was apparently pretty good. I don't mean to brag, but it got good peer reviews and was featured on the site. It's not very long, and yes, I am Frank Lobsterman on that site. Check it out.

Patriotism

2008-04-27T22:42:00.003-04:00

Here it is, as promised. We have a nasty habit of taking words with clear meanings and making less of them. In doing so, we not only make our language more difficult to understand, but we also make the ideas that these words represent more ambiguous. There are countless examples of this occurrence, but I will use the one that I feel has been bastardized the most in the last six years and some change. The word, predictably enough, is the title of this post.

Case 1: Barack Obama. We've all seen the media scratching around for something to throw at the Illinois Senator and presidential candidate. Maybe it's just the fact that they can't find anything substantial that has caused them to go after his lack of a lapel pin displaying the American flag. Who the hell wears one of those on a day-to-day basis? I would consider it tacky to wear one on any day other than a distinctly American holiday. This is an issue that doesn't need my defense. Barack has done a wonderful job downplaying the issue. Wearing a lapel pin has nothing to do with one's patriotism. While an anarchist or soviet loyalist probably wouldn't wear one (except as part of a disguise), it's reasonable to believe that most people of a reasonably indifferent opinion on the matter would wear a flag pin some days and not others. In fact, the only presidential candidate (still in or dropped out) of whom I was able to find a picture with the flag pin was Giuliani. Apparently, that was his whole campaign.

Case 2: Flag merchandise. Right after September 11th, sales of American flag merchandise skyrocketed. By merchandise, I mean decals and magnets for cars, t-shirts, actual flags of all sizes, and miscellaneous other objects, as long as they somehow proudly displayed the Stars and Stripes. I recall hearing something about there actually being a shortage of flag merchandise following this. Since then, the patriotic merchandise market has managed to continue its boom with 'support our troops' ribbon magnets, and 'never forget' propaganda. What does this have to do with patriotism? Not much, really. It has plenty to do with consumerism, which is a uniquely American value, I suppose, but it has very little to do with love of one's country.

This all really boils down to something pretty simple. Patriotism is not external. I could go the rest of my life without buying, wearing, or even seeing a flag, and it wouldn't make me any less patriotic. There are ways of expressing it, just as there are ways of expressing any emotion, but ultimately, patriotism is internal. Express it as you would express any other type of love, by doing what's best for the country. Work hard, support American companies, and do your part to make the country look good. We used to have a pretty good handle on it. I'm not really feeling it anymore. Let's bring patriotism back.

American Casualties

2008-04-24T23:18:00.002-04:00

I have issues with all of the candidates running for the Presidency of the United States right now. Some more than others, of course, but it suffices to say that my intention here is not to attack John McCain. His view, which I will examine, is one I often hear echoed by news anchors on every station. I can't say that I blame him individually so much as I do the political system of which he is a major part. So, McCain is perhaps to blame, but no more than likely thousands of other public figures and millions of other Americans are for going with the flow instead of questioning the way we talk about these things. I set this post up in vague terms intentionally, though the title gives away the topic at hand, in an attempt to avoid prejudice, both in my writing and in the reader.

When we talk about the war in Iraq, we tend to talk about the death toll in terms of American casualties. The information is readily available. Currently, the official casualty count of American soldiers in Iraq is 4,050. Information on other casualties, such as those of Iraqi civilians, is available, but it's never the headline, and it's not what most people are interested in, though it is a much higher number. John McCain recently expressed his view that an increase in troop levels should ultimately decrease the number of American casualties. As much as I disagree with that statement as one of fact, I disagree more with the view that it perpetuates, that American lives are somehow the only ones that count.

Why do so many Americans only care about the deaths of our own troops? The best explanation is a form of egocentrism. It's a natural, but morally unjustifiable, way of looking at the world. Unless it's called to our attention, most people gladly hold an egocentric belief with little or no feeling of guilt. It is, however, tantamount to racism, sexism, and any other form of prejudice one might use to favor those similar to himself while pushing away those who are different.

I like to think there might be other reasons, but what else could there be? We started the war, and they're the ones who signed up to potentially get shot or blown up, so doesn't that mean that we should care more about all of the other deaths that result from the conflict? Maybe it's because they're people we're more likely to be emotionally attached to, either through friendly or familial relationships, but that reasoning doesn't get us far from egocentrism at all.

Americans have a reputation for being selfish, but I hesitate to take this issue that far. We're generally a little inconsiderate, certainly, but I have to insist that we are not willfully ignorant of other people's problems. I don't know that we're willingly ignoring other deaths, either. Most Americans read and watch what they're fed, and what they're fed is what news companies latch onto. A story always sells better if it's about America, so that's precisely what we get on the front page of every paper in the country. I guess we find it more patriotic, and that makes us feel good about ourselves for buying into it. Patriotism is another thing that's been bastardized, but that's a topic for another post.

The simple solution to this admittedly strange problem is to start with yourself. Simply start caring a little more about civilian deaths, and try to be at least somewhat informed on the issue. IBC probably keeps the best count of Iraqi deaths in this conflict. I'm not proposing a solution to the war we're in. Frankly, I don't know what the best strategy is, but at least we can talk about the issue properly, in terms of human casualties rather than American casualties. In order to solve a problem, we must first understand the problem at hand.

Corn

2008-04-22T00:31:00.002-04:00

As most people know by now, the ethanol fuel mandate by the Bush administration has been a complete failure. The price of a gallon of gas is through the roof for a number of reasons, and it seems uncertain whether ethanol is part of the problem or not, but the stuff wouldn't save me any money if it were free. In addition to the cost of fuel, the cost of food has skyrocketed, no doubt largely because so many fields are being used to produce corn for ethanol. This post will detail these irritations. I know a lot of this might bore some people, but it's useful knowledge, so pay bear with me.

Since I became the sole driver of my car, I've kept close track of my gas mileage, with the exception of maybe one or two tanks. I'm a little anal about it. I don't settle for a rough estimate. I like to see my mileage in comparison with the last tank, down to the 100th's place, so I always use a calculator to figure it out. This allows me to see, for instance, if mid-grade or premium gas actually saves me money by making my vehicle more efficient (it does), as well as test certain driving styles and vehicle modifications. It used to be that, assuming I wasn't racing anyone or pulling Jeeps out of ditches, my Outback always got 30-31 miles per gallon on regular gas. Sometimes I could squeeze a little more out of mid-grade or premium, but it never made much of a difference. It never seems to matter, even today, whether I'm driving in the city, on the highway, or something in-between. Apparently, the slower speeds and lower wind resistance of the city balance out the stop-go traffic pattern. But here's the thing. Since the addition of 10% ethanol to all gasoline, my mileage on regular gas has decreased to 25 MPG. On mid-grade, I get 27. I have not tested premium lately, so I can't comment on its effects yet.

This seems fairly counterintuitive. We've changed 10% of our fuel makeup, and my mileage has decreased by roughly 15%. How is this possible? Even if ethanol ran straight through the combustion cycle without participating, it should only decrease power and mileage by 10%, normal logic dictates. So, my engine must not like it. It must be causing an O₂ sensor send a signal to the computer, telling it to enrich the mix, thereby increasing fuel consumption and pollution from unburned fuel. It actually makes a great deal of sense. Ethanol is a cleaner fuel than gasoline. Cleaner exhaust hitting the front O₂ sensor tells the computer that the mix is lean, and it sends more fuel to the rescue. So, essentially, the problem is that modern computer-controlled engines that are not designed to run ethanol do not run well on ethanol. When I put it like that, suddenly it makes a lot more sense. Coincidentally, this shows that old, mechanically-controlled vehicles should handle ethanol well, since they don't have oxygen sensors.

Why doesn't the government consult me on these things? Seriously, I saw this coming. Before the switch, I tried an experiment. I had heard something about propanol being a better fuel than gas in a gasoline engine, so I poured a quart of propanol (similar combustion properties to ethanol) into my tank and observed the results. It may not seem like enough to matter, but like I said, I take meticulous notes on my mileage, and I was able to calculate that my engine did not use the propanol. So, as a tinkerer, I knew already in 2004 what it would take the country a few years to figure out.

Browsing some news articles, there's some horrendously inaccurate information and, should I say, propaganda, out there. According to DomesticFuel.com, gas at $3.25 with a 10% ethanol blend would otherwise be $3.70. How is this possible? By my calculations, even if ethanol were free, it would only account for a 36 cent difference. There is, of course, the role that supply and demand plays, but that must be an inaccurate calculation as well, given the above calculation that most vehicles are actually using more gas now.

Now we move to the obvious issue of food cost. Millions of acres of American farmland have been switched to corn from other crops due to generous government subsidies rewarding this act. Corn used for ethanol production drives up the cost of corn for uses in food, including feed for livestock as well as high fructose corn syrup, which is a major ingredient in virtually every manufactured food item we consume. There are, of course, other factors governing the cost of food. There is high international demand for American food exports (including corn), and the decreased value of the US dollar has certainly played a role, but ethanol production seems to be the biggest problem that builds on itself as far as food cost goes. We use gasoline and diesel to fuel the equipment that harvests the corn, which we then ferment and distill to make ethanol, actually using more energy to produce that fuel than can be gotten out of it. The ethanol is then pumped into farm equipment again as 10% of its fuel, likely decreasing the efficiency of the equipment, and further increasing the cost of farming corn. Then, the use of corn for ethanol both increases demand for corn and reduces the supply of other crops, driving up the price of everything.

Remember those subsidies I was talking about? Yeah, they're getting us there, too. Subsidies like this one always mean that the taxpayers are getting screwed out of money that could otherwise be used to cut taxes, reduce the national debt, or fund something useful like schools or birth control for the poor or the development of power from nuclear fusion. On top of the $3.49 you're paying for a gallon of gas, we're all paying considerably more because of these subsidies.

There is one light spot I've found in this debacle, though. As mentioned before, high fructose corn syrup is in practically every food item we consume. It's not good for us. Our bodies don't metabolize it well, and it's likely a major contributor to our obesity issue. If corn keeps getting more expensive, it may become cost-effective again for food companies to use sucrose (common sugar) in their recipes. So, at least when we're all out of money and have no choice but to bike to work, we'll be healthy enough to do it. Sadly, I'm not even convinced that this will happen. The reason we've got corn syrup in everything we eat is the same reason we've got ethanol from corn in our gas. The corn industry has a powerful lobby in the US government, and it's going to be hard to free ourselves from its stranglehold.

I hate to be so bitter. Maybe I need to cool down. If anyone needs me, I'll be planting a garden and distilling the ethanol out of my gas.

Procrastination

2008-04-16T18:53:00.001-04:00

I'll post something later.

HAAAAAAAAAAAAY... Fever

2008-04-13T02:55:00.002-04:00

Growing up, I had the worst pollen allergy of anyone I've ever met. It's amazing how many effective allergy medications have come out within the last decade or so. Over the years, I've tried different treatments, from antihistamines to decongestants to taking it like a man.

This year, I'm going to try to take a more scientific approach to dealing with my body's reactions to plant sperm. I have Claritin and Allegra samples as a backup, but I don't like to depend on drugs for my well-being. Most of them either make me drowsy when I shouldn't sleep or keep me awake when I should sleep. Even if there were some perfect allergy drug that didn't change my sleep cycle, though, I still would want to avoid it, if for no other reason than the possibility of a zombie apocalypse, or the slightly more likely possibility of having no health insurance in a few years.

So I've searched the Web. I've found sources that say foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids help to prevent allergies. That means cold-water fish, eggs, grain-fed meats and dairy products, and some other things I won't eat. I'm up for some salmon from time to time and eating more often at Chipotle, so I'll see how that works out.

Then there's ascorbic acid, or vitamin C. This study shows that a daily dose of 200-500mg is highly effective in most cases. That's a lot to get from natural sources. Oranges, known for their high vitamin C content, typically contain 50mg vitamin C per 100g. So, in order to get 500mg per day, I would have to eat a kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) of oranges or drink the equivalent in orange juice. I want to see if I can get my hands on some guavas, which are twice as vitamin C dense as oranges. If I experience sufficient relief at the 200mg end of the range, I should be fine with one or two guavas per day. We figured out at work that we can order them by the case, so I'm going to try and do that. It's worth mentioning that red peppers, another favorite food of mine, have 190mg/100g, but I typically consume them roasted, and that tends to cause a significant loss of vitamin C. The same is true for broccoli (90mg/100g).

I can't find any information on the subject, but I always feel like, when I get a good, strong workout, my allergies go away. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe it's because my body has to put so much into the task at hand, it doesn't have enough resources left over to produce histamine. Whatever the case, I'm going to try to hit the trails with my bike a lot more.

I apologize if any of you found this boring. My intent is usually to entertain, but sometimes information is more important. Roughly 20% of Americans suffer from hay fever, and I know at least that percentage of my friends and acquaintances do. Many of you may choose the path of medicine, but there's always the danger that it will make you want to kill yourself. Generally, I think that knowing how your body works and making it do what you want through careful manipulation is better than pharmaceuticals. At the very least, I want everyone to know that these options are available.

Happy camping.

I Swear, I Have the Dumbest Friends...

2008-04-10T21:01:00.004-04:00

Not all of them, of course. Most of my friends are actually pretty smart. Facebook is a wonderful utility for keeping in touch with friends, acquaintances, and people I don't really remember at all, but sometimes I think it tells me too much. For instance, I would prefer to ignore the fact that some of the people with whom I associate are evangelical Bible-thumpers. I would also like to think that my friends are too smart to believe that, by boycotting a certain gas station, they can lower the price of gas overall. Some of those same friends also apparently have a problem with free speech, and have joined groups expressing that sentiment. People will join groups for any reason, too. One of my friends joined a group objecting to a Chipotle opening next door to a Qdoba.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13165865387

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2366821614

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19355827832

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4050757156

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11125418796

I guess I shouldn't expect so much. I mean, I already had a pretty good sense that these people weren't the sharpest knives in the rainbow (don't think about it - your head will explode). It's just sad that people believe and care about this crap. I'm not going to spend more time on this. It's funny when you're in a good mood, but if you let it piss you off, it's annoying.

Perry Marshall: Proving God or Proving his Ignorance?

2008-04-07T21:55:00.003-04:00

Perry Marshall is a computer science expert who knows a few things about evolution, though there are some fundamental errors of his understanding of the process. His argument, which I intend to refute, can be found here.

Marshall's argument is essentially a modified watchmaker argument. He claims that, while things that perform a function which simply follow patterns, such as tornadoes and planetary orbits, do not require a designer, information does require a designer. Is he saying, as a Christian, that God didn't create tornadoes and the universe as a whole, but only created life within said universe?

Despite his argument being invalid, it seems reasonable on the surface. It just seems reasonable that a sentence describing a thing would have something writing that sentence. There's something different about genetic code, though. It only has four letters, and out of the 64 possible combinations of three, every one of them forms a meaningful codon. In other words, here we have a language in which there are no non-words, and there are different spellings for each word, to the point where there are only 20 words in the language. Suddenly it seems more feasible to create a sentence with some meaning out of random letters. Change one letter, the word might be the same, or it might be different, but it's still going to be a word, and there's a 1 in 20 chance that it will be the best word for that place in that sentence.

Marshall argues that noise is not information and therefore could not produce anything useful, but his argument is a case of equivocation which the average person likely would not catch. When biologists refer to information, they refer to it in the sense of information theory. In this sense, noise is exactly what information is. DNA is information that has become useful for the production of a specific organism through a process of natural selection. In our sentence analogy, if natural selection produced the line, "A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fish-stick," in one organism, and in the other organism produced the proper line, "A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool," the latter would be far more likely to survive the selection pressures of English literature and live on to modern times, though the former would perhaps survive in the form of mild humor until the mutation to the proper line occurred by chance.

Marshall seems to be arguing that natural selection does not exist, which is ridiculous at best. Even a fairly devout fundamentalist Christian can see that natural selection occurs because it's so obvious. He mentions repeatedly that noise cannot be the source of meaningful information, completely ignoring the concept of natural selection, and whenever natural selection comes up, he says that it must be the work of a designer, having given an argument for that assumption that is inductive at best, and invalid at worst. In either case, this is not the stuff of proof, but rather, a way of making assumptions until a better concept comes about.

This guy also makes mention of an experiment done with fruit flies, whereby they were given a strong dose of radiation to accelerate mutation, and all of the changes were detrimental to the insects. Of course they were. Natural selection, above all else, takes time to work. When radiation levels are so high that we can expect hundreds of mutations per generation in every offspring, of course it's not going to work. Evolution works one step at a time, allowing the most viable organisms to survive and reproduce, while the less fit struggle more and reproduce less until certain genes are wiped out of the population as a whole.

For an hour and some change of talking, there's not really that much left to say. Marshall argues that all languages have certain characteristics without looking at why they have those characteristics. He takes advantage of the abstractness of information to confuse the audience through equivocation. He equivocates about the meaning of 'junk' DNA, a term of which even most biologists aren't too fond. He claims that the fossil record matches the Bible better than it does naturalistic evolution, a drastic and controversial claim which he fails to support. I found it funny that he reversed stalagmites and stalactites at the beginning of his speech, not really proof that he didn't know what he was talking about, but it turned out to be a good indicator.

From My Cold, Dead Hands

2008-04-06T14:17:00.003-04:00

Actor and political activist Charlton Heston died yesterday. I knew little about him other than that he had been in some movies and was the president of the National Rifle Association. Doing a little research, I've found that he was also a prominent figure in the civil rights movement. It seems he's always fought for freedom, and to that we owe him honor and gratitude.

The only Michael Moore film I've ever watched was Bowling for Columbine. I refuse to watch any more of his films because of how ignorant and immature he was in that film. In it, he interviewed Charlton Heston at Heston's house, asking a few questions about why we've got such a high firearm murder rate. Heston didn't have a whole lot to say on the matter. At the end of the interview, though, Moore began to chastise Mr. Heston for holding gun rallies (scheduled well in advance) after tragic shootings. Here's the clip.

What the clip doesn't show is Mr. Heston walking away with Moore still yelling things. I loved the way Heston just stayed calm and walked away when he realized Moore was going to be a jackass instead of having a conversation.

So maybe Charlton Heston didn't always have the best answer for everything. I think I would have handled the interview a little differently, offering some possible answers. I don't think Moore gave him any opportunity to prepare answers to his questions or do some research, so that was probably part of the reason there wasn't much substance to the interview. Even if every interview were like that, though, Heston still held the right views for the right reasons, and he fought valiantly for those purposes. Perhaps his speeches generally inspired the wrong kind of people, but when it comes to elections, it only matters that they vote.

Charlton Heston, you will be missed.

Acceptance? That's It?

2008-04-04T00:47:00.002-04:00

I was on campus the other day, waiting to meet up with my girlfriend before class, when I was approached by a trio of Christian students who invited me to one of their events. I kindly accepted their flier and thanked them. After all, I'm pretty used to people handing out propaganda these days. They stayed and chatted with me, though, and that's when things got awkward. They asked where I was from, what I was reading, and what my major was. You know, general bullshit questions people ask when they want to talk to you about something specific but want to seem casual about it. Of course, with them having already asserted that they're Christians, I knew what was coming. They wanted to talk to me about Jesus.

Then the question came. To be honest, they had me outnumbered, without a lot of time to have a real discussion, and they kind of caught me by surprise. The question was awkwardly phrased: "What's your religious background?"

The question seemed to require a one-word answer, though I would have loved to express considerably more than that. My response, of course, was "atheist." The response of the group member whose turn it was to talk is what puzzles me, and it's the real topic of this writing. "That's cool. I've got lots of friends who hold that view." With that, my phone rang, and they saw themselves off.

Now, these kids were nice, and I could tell they meant well. This isn't an attack on them by any means, but rather an expression of my befuddlement at that response. It reminds me of someone who desperately wants to make himself seem less racist by saying, "No, I'm not racist. I've got lots of black friends," as if having black friends is what keeps someone from being racist. I just found it shocking to get that kind of response in such a secular place as a state university. Have we really made this little progress? Do Christians still have to feel like they're giving me the gift of freedom to believe what seems the most reasonable to me?

Since I'm on the subject, a similar thing happened in a recent conversation with the less religious of my grandmothers. We had a discussion about how people believe crazy shit, and we came to the logical point in the conversation for me to say, "See, that's why I don't believe in God." Grandma said, "and you have every right to believe that."

I guess I should be thankful, and I am. I know plenty of atheists who would have a hard time expressing their beliefs (or lack thereof) to their families, knowing what the responses would be. I'm glad my family is pretty laid-back and secular. It's just strange how, even in my own family, any mention of atheism shifts a conversation from what is good and correct to what is permissible.

I think it's a subconscious (and probably in some cases conscious) effort to maintain the upper hand in some sense. By maintaining the position that they are allowing and accepting other beliefs, Christians are able to make it appear that their religion is somehow correct and superior to others. I'm absolutely sure that it's natural to feel and act this way and there's a biological/evolutionary component to it, but it's the core of egocentrism, which I reject outright, and for good, valid reasons

It's my assumption that these are some of the reasons why many atheists think that religious moderates are more dangerous than the extremists. That's a pretty radical assumption for me to make, but I see where the idea comes from. At least the extremists are up-front about how they feel. The moderates sometimes feel the same way but do a good job of hiding it. This has the potential to keep a dangerous ideology alive in people who are not normally dangerous. I guess it's a matter of whether you'd rather be talked-about behind your back or ridiculed directly.

Maybe I'm making a big deal out of nothing, and I'm not really trying to make a big deal out of this. It's just something I find interesting. From what I've observed and what I've read lately, it seems like the general US population used to form a near-perfect bell curve of religiousness, atheists at one end and religious extremists at the other. Now, it seems like that curve is flattening out and rising at the ends. This is the sort of trend that, if it continues, typically leads to a revolution in thought. I don't really believe the supposed prophecies of things like the Mayan calendar, but it seems like this is the kind of 'end of an era' the calendar might predict in 2012. The prediction itself is silly, but it predicts a revolution of some sort, and it's time we had one.

New Blog. Let's Start This Off Right.

2008-04-03T00:16:00.000-04:00

I've built and run a few websites in my day, but they've all been for whatever band I was in at the time. I've always wanted to write about whatever bullshit I want, and hopefully make a little ad revenue on the side, but laziness and indecision have kept me from it until this point. I may still build a real site for this stuff eventually, but this will do for now. This blog is about whatever the hell I want. It will probably be highly political and anti-religious, but I reserve the right to write about other stupid things, too.

The name Disestablishmentarian Press was only the thousandth title that I tried. I suppose it pays to get in early on these kinds of things. I like the name, though. It fits a lot of what I talk about. Anyone who spent his early years talking about the superlatives of life knows that 'antidisestablishmentarianism' is the longest word in the English language, and of course, 'disestablishmentarian' is a core part of that word. While that is probably the only reason I know the word in the first place, it happens to match my views. A disestablishmentarian is one who favors the separation of church and state. From the noun definition, the adjective definition is obvious.

This is the view that lies most at the core of my political beliefs. As atheist as I am, it should come as no surprise. I believe in the separation of church and state so much, in fact, that I don't think church parking lots and public roads should touch. Clearly I jest. My beliefs on the matter fall just short of that, though. Churches shouldn't get a tax break. They shouldn't hold the reign they currently have over politics and politicians. In general, religious groups hold too much power. An introduction is no place for me to elaborate on these points, though. I will reserve them for future posts.

All that's really left for me to mention in this maiden voyage into the blogosphere, whatever the hell that is, is my personality and writing style. Sometimes I'm an asshole, but behind that nougat crunch lies a creamy caramel center. I generally think I'm right, and that's because I try pretty hard to make sure that my beliefs are at least rational and well-thought-out. I welcome criticism, as I think we all should. I think I'm usually right, but I am prone to the occasional error. As you can probably tell, I try to keep things light. That's not to say all of my writing will be riddled with humor, but I do find humor in the strangest places, and I think that it is often the best way to prove a point. Especially when the opponent is perhaps very emotionally involved in a subject, a little neutral humor often brings people back to a state where they can function cognitively. Generally speaking, I'm not out to piss people off, but I often find it necessary, and I don't have too much of a problem with it.

That's all I have to say for tonight. Enjoy the . . . how do you say . . . show!