Terminal betrayal velocity

A friend posted a story from the internet that goes:

A couple decided to commit suicide. They'd had some rough times and chose to jump from a building. When they got to the top, they counted to 3 and the woman jumps. The man watches her fall for about 8 seconds when a parachute opens. Who betrayed whom?

Her comment? "Must be a tall building!"

Of course I took it upon myself to figure out just how tall that building is. This is more interesting than a basic equations of motion problem because the use of a parachute necessitates allowing for variable forces, both during the initial freefall and then during the slowing down process after the chute opens. To frame up the initial fall, we can write, generally:

[1] d/dt D(t) = v(t)
[2] d/dt v(t) = a(t)
[3] a(t) = F(t)/m

These are our base, non-specific equations. The force diagram on the woman has 2 components: mg down (which we'll define as the positive direction), and kv up, where k is some constant aerodynamic coefficient; air resistance can be crudely modeled as proportional to velocity. We have additional data as well. We know that a person in freefall will reach a terminal velocity, Tv, and that value is generally stated as being about 50m/s. I'll use this value for the calculations, but if you feel they aren't right, you're welcome to use alternate values in the final equations. So, at the point of terminal velocity we know that kTv = mg, and thus k = mg/Tv.

[3.1] a(t) = (mg-kv(t))/m
[3.2] a(t) = (mg-mgv(t)/Tv)/m
[3.3] a(t) = g - gv(t)/Tv

We can do a quick sanity check here: as v(t) -> Tv, acceleration indeed goes to zero as expected. The next step involves solving the differential equations [2] and [1]. While this could be a fun exercise in math process, I'll defer to Wolfram Alpha diff eq solver. Known boundary conditions (notably that velocity and distance are both zero at time=0) will be used to solve for constants that appear as a result of integration steps.

[2.1] d/dt v(t) = g - gv(t)/Tv
[2.solved] v(t) = c1 exp(-gt/Tv) + Tv
[2.boundary] v(0) = 0 = c1 + Tv, thus c1 = -Tv
[2.final] v(t) = Tv - Tv exp(-gt/Tv)

[1.1] d/dt D(t) = Tv - Tv exp(-gt/Tv)
[1.solved] D(t) = c2 + Tv t + Tv Tv exp(-gt/Tv) / g
[1.boundary] D(0) = 0 = c2 + Tv Tv / g, thus c2 = -Tv Tv / g
[1.final] D(t) = Tv Tv exp(-gt/Tv) / g + Tv t - Tv Tv /g

Solving for distance fallen and speed after 8 seconds yields her status as:
D(8) = 196 meters down
v(8) = 40 m/s

We're now at the stage where her parachute is opening. Based on a combination of movie scenes and the shortest base jump I could find, it appears it takes about 2 seconds for the chute to open. During this time I'll assume it has negligible braking force, and I'll simplify and assume the woman would continue to fall at v(8) = 40 m/s and thus finish this stage at 276 meters down and still going 40 m/s. Clearly I've simplified here, but due to the short duration of the stage, the effects are not terribly material on the final calculations. Others suggest the time could be as low as 1.2 seconds (derived by dividing the claimed 200 feet distance to open by terminal velocity of 50 m/s). That would put a lower-bound on her fall at 244 meters.

The final stage is to figure out how long it takes for the chute drag to slow her down to a speed she'll survive. We can reuse equations [1.solved] and [2.solved] with new boundary conditions. Tv in this case is the descent speed with the chute open, which I'll call about 5 m/s.

[2.boundary.stage3] v(0) = 40 = c1 exp(-gt/Tv) + Tv = c1 + Tv, thus c1 = 35
[2.final.stage3] v(t) = 35 exp(-gt/Tv) + Tv
[1.boundary.stage3] D(0) = 0 ** = c2 + Tv t - 35 Tv exp(-gt/Tv) / g = c2 - 35 Tv / g, thus c2 = 35 Tv / g
** - I'm re-referencing her position here as zero, this can be trivially added/shifted to the previous stages.
[1.final.stage3] D(t) = 35 Tv / g - 35 Tv exp(-gt/Tv) / g + Tv t

The last thing to figure out is how long it takes her to slow down to a speed she can still land reasonably safely. I'm not sure what the number is, but let's say 2 Tv = 10 m/s. That's the equivalent of jumping from about 15 feet. It'd hurt, but she'd survive. Using [2.final.stage3] and solving for t:

[2.final.stage3.survival1] v(t) = 2 Tv = 35 exp(-gt/Tv) + Tv
[2.final.stage3.survival1.1] Tv = 35 exp(-gt/Tv)
[2.final.stage3.survival1.2] Tv ln (Tv / 35) / -g = t
[2.final.stage3.survival1.3] t ~= 1 second

As an alternative, suppose we want to get to 1.2 Tv for a practically terminal velocity landing
[2.final.stage3.survival2] v(t) = 1.2 Tv = 35 exp(-gt/Tv) + Tv
[2.final.stage3.survival1.1] Tv = 175 exp(-gt/Tv)
[2.final.stage3.survival1.2] Tv ln (Tv / 175) / -g = t
[2.final.stage3.survival1.3] t ~= 1.8 seconds

Plugging in our two values will give us a reasonable upper and lower bound for how much distance she needs after the chute opens.
[1.final.stage3.survival1] D(1) = 20.3 m
[1.final.stage3.survival2] D(1.8) = 26.3 m

The final stage is quite rapid, and slowing down considerably more only costs an extra 6 meters. Let's assume for comfort, she'd want to get to the slower speed. Adding up the 3 stages yields 196 in freefall, 48 to 80 while the chute is opening, and another 26 to slow down. To be on the safe-ish side, let's take the max of each stage and say the building needs to be at least 196 + 80 + 26 = 302 meters (991 feet) tall. In essence, this could be done off, with rounding, any building over 1000 feet (or nominally 100 stories) tall.

There are only a few buildings in America that this story could plausibly have happened on. There are only 17 that are formally tall enough, and a few of those are coming within feet of the exact minimum height. However, a number of those don't qualify because they don't have a platform that's high enough. For example, it's doubtful that anyone could jump outwards enough from high enough on the Empire State Building or Bank of America Tower to avoid significantly outcropping lower layers. The New York Times and Chrysler buildings definitely fall into this category, and judging from other photos, the Bank of America Plaza and US Bank Tower are similarly problematic. The bottom end of the tall-enough buildings all seem to be box-shaped enough that they would support our scenario. All in all, this could happen in maybe 10 or 11 specific places, but would have to be in New York, Chicago or Houston.

What's fun to note is that even from full terminal velocity, the distance needed to open a chute and slow down to safe landing speed is under 150 meters. Scaling this up to the tallest building in the world, Using [1.final] and D(t) = 680 allows for 18 seconds of free-fall! Intense!
 

Up or down? A toilet story

"Why can't the guys put the seat down?" says every cliché woman, ever.
"What's the big deal?" is the standard response. And I agree. But let's be more scientific about it, shall we?

Assumptions: a healthy adult pees about 6-8 times per day (counted as 7 from here on) and poops once. Women perform all activities sitting, requiring the seat to be down. Men always stand to pee and sit to poo. All subsequent results can be adjusted if these assumptions are invalid in your household. For base calculations I'll assume that there are an equal number of men and women in a household. This should generally hold true for couples and families, for generalities' sake. Single people have no one complaining to them, so they are uninteresting for this scenario. We'll also call out adjustments for families with more men than women and vice versa. The math is really household-per-toilet, for example if only mom and dad use the master bath (and they only use the master bath), that toilet's usage is by 1 man and 1 woman regardless of the rest of the family composition.

As a practicality:
Flipping a toilet seat up or down is no one's idea of a good time. Naturally we'd like to do this as few times as possible. The seat will have to be flipped if the previous use required the opposite state. In an evenly mixed household, this means that 7 of 16 (P(up)) times the seat will be up and 9 of 16 (P(down)) times the seat will be down. Assuming the events are totally random (which seems reasonable enough), we don't need to flip the seat P(up)*P(up) + P(down)*P(down) = 130/256 ~= 51% of the time if it's just left in the previous user's required state. This means that ~49% of the time we need to flip it.

Simply leaving the seat alone gets the right next state 51% of the time. Always putting the seat down will get the right answer P(down) = 56% of the time. Not a huge win, really. In terms of number of seat flips, it means we average 0.49 flips per use. Always putting the seat down incurs 1 flip in P(up) and 0 flips in P(down) immediately after. Then there's another 1 flip in P(up) and 0 flips in P(down) for the next user, which comes out to P(up) + P(up) =  0.88 flips per use. This is much higher, nearly doubling the number of expected flips. Always putting the seat down is a worse strategy.

The numbers do change as family composition deviates from half-and-half. Suppose a family with 2 men and 1 woman. P(up) changes to 14/24 and P(down) becomes 10/24. Reworking the equations above for leave-as-is yields a don't flip, still, just barely over 51% of the time. The number grows slowly as men outnumber women. 3-to-1 is at 55% and even 4-1 is only at 58%. Conversely, it means that even in a household with a vast male majority, the percent chance that the woman will need to flip the seat stays safely in the 40s. However, the average number of flips climbs to 1.17 for 2-to-1, 1.31 for 3-to-1 and 1.4 for 4-to-1.

Supposing a family has 2 women and 1 man, P(up) falls to 7/24 and P(down) becomes 17/24. Now leaving the seat as-is will work out 59% of the time. The odds climb to 66% for 3-to-1 and 71% for 4-to-1. In other words, a female-heavy household will tend to work out in women's preference favor anyways. Employing the leave-as-is strategy means the average flips falls to 0.41, 0.34 and 0.29, respectively. Always putting the seat down averages 0.58, 0.44 and 0.35 flips, respectively. As women outnumber men more and more, the two strategies converge. However, it is important to note that leave-as-is will never be worse**, and is therefore the statistically correct strategy.

As a courtesy:
If we consider this altruistically, we should look at how often the next person finds the seat in the right state (which is really P(down)). We've done the math above. P(down) is greater than 50% for even households or those with more women. More men cause it to fall below 50%, though a family of 7 could hit a 50/50.
2 men, 1 woman: 43%
3 men, 2 women: 48%
4 men, 3 women: 50%
The takeaway from this is that family composition might dictate that the women leave the toilet seat up! In cases with more men than women, this would generally be the outcome. However, keep in mind that the misses are going to significantly unfairly affect either the men or the women, externalizing a greater cost onto that subset of the family. Is that really being considerate?

In case someone doesn't check and falls in:
I'm just going to laugh.

Conclusion:
Choosing leave-as-is vs always-down strategies is dictated by the philosophy behind the action. If trying to minimize the number of seat flips, leave-as-is is entirely superior. If being considerate to the next person regardless of cost, the choice is dictated by family composition. Families with more men than women should actually opt for an always-up strategy, while others should opt for always-down. The choice is yours. Now you know what you're fighting for!




** Appendix:
[1] Average flips always leaving the seat down = 2 * P(up)
[2] Average flips always leaving the seat as-is = 1 - (P(up)*P(up) + P(down)*P(down)).
Since P(up) + P(down) = 1 always, we can substitute P(down) = 1-P(up) into [2]:
[3] Average flips always leaving the seat as-is = 1 - (P(up)*P(up) + (1-P(up))*(1-P(up)))
[3.expanded] = 1 - (P(up)*P(up) + 1 - 2*P(up) + P(up)*P(up))
[3.collected] = 1 - (1 + 2*P(up) + P(up)*P(up))
[3.simplified] = 2*P(up) + P(up)*P(up).

Since P(up) >= 0, [1] <= [2]. If there are any men in the house, [1] < [2] since P(up) > 0

Don't we want the bottom to be fired?

I was reading this article discussing the nuances of the illegal batted ball in the Seahawks-Lions game. When talking about referee performance, it calls out that a section of the refs will be graded as tier three. Two consecutive years in tier three makes a ref a candidate to be fired.

Companies routinely get flak for cycling out their poorest performers. However, wouldn't you, as a consumer of a product, want that company to strive for stronger and stronger employees? We accept (even demand!) this in sports. Poor players need to go. Bad refs need to go. Bad coaches need to go. Why? Because we feel the resulting product is diminished.

If I'm going to buy a car from GM or ride a plane made by Boeing or use software made by Microsoft, shouldn't I want them to use the best people they can find to make those things? Shouldn't I accept (even demand!) that they do so?

The counterargument is usually of the form "what if everyone is an all-star?" or at least "what if everyone is really good?". I counter that there's rarely an absolute definition of good. Being able to, say, assemble 10 cars in a day is objective, but meaningless. Can anyone do that? Can more people than I would ever hire do 20 cars in a day? Hiring guidelines such as these come about by observing relative skill levels. If we hire better and better people, maybe we don't need to make more cars but we can put more effort into other related aspects of assembly. Overall, better workers should create a better product.

Going back to the NFL example, these players, coaches and refs are amongst the absolutely very best in the world, but we still say they suck, they should be fired, etc. Why do we suddenly believe that these same rules don't or shouldn't apply in "real life"?
 

If my parents had guns

My parents were born in 1944 and 1952, in Hungary. For those not familiar, Hungary was emerging, destroyed, out of WW2 and was pretty much immediately taken under Soviet control. The population was progressively subdued and thrust into a communist system. Frustrations peaked in 1956 when a brief revolution was attempted. Predictably, the overpowering might of the Soviet occupying forces crushed it in short order. People who were protesting peacefully were shot. Anyone attributed with leadership roles was executed. One can argue that the revolution was short and relatively few people died only because the population did not have guns. The spirit to fight was there. The weaponry did not.

So what if my parents (or really, my grandparents) and their friends had guns? Lots and lots of guns? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be here right now. In case it's not clear, because they wouldn't have lived through 1956. While Freddie Mercury wondered out loud if he'd have preferred not to have been born at all, I prefer existing.

The point here is that supporting guns because the 2nd amendment says so seems an outdated stance. First, we made that rule for ourselves and it can be changed. It's not a commandment to Moses. Second, it was written to allow states to defend themselves from a tyrannical government. At the time of writing, the weapons playing field was relatively level. The army came with guns and some cannons. The population defended itself with similar guns (though probably no cannons). Today the population has guns whereas the army has grenades, bombs, tanks, cannons, airplanes, night-vision,  body armor, ... Defending ourselves from an organized, modern army is just not a thing that will happen.  

The not-so-ideal candidate

I spent the last few days at UofA, recruiting. Overall it was great, as usual. However, there is a segment of candidates that can get really annoying.

Critical listening:
We have a thing called a program manager. Most people think it's the same as a project manager, or some kind of manager at least. I go out of my way to explain that it is neither of those things. Following it up with "well, I think I'm a good candidate and I have a lot of experience so I'm ready for a management role" will not endear you to me.

Or just not listening:
Many people come prepared with their sales pitch about how great they are. We like to ask questions and have a conversation. It's really hard to do that when unverifiable information is streamed non-stop at my face.

Hygiene:
Onions are delicious. So are other foods. Please clean them out of your mouth before you go talk to a bunch of people in tight quarters.

Compliments:
"You work for Microsoft? You should work for a modeling company" is ... awkward.

Clinginess:
Our process is simple: you talk to us and apply. Coming back day after day just to remind us who you are is, at best, going to do nothing for you.

Connecting:
Use your face-to-face time to make a connection and make me remember you. Don't come back to ask me for a business card because you couldn't find me on LinkedIn. First, I'm not on there. Second, I either already think well of you or I probably don't want to be inundated by the inevitable future followups.

Demands:
Has anyone else gotten back to you about that resume you dropped off yesterday? Yeah, neither have we. Please hold. Even worse is being confronted about "will I be hearing back from you?" or "am I the right fit?" Expect something non-committal.

Just plain out there:
Coming up to our booth and collecting swag while avoiding eye contact and reciting a manifesto about our oppressive ways and your eternal loyalty to Linux is ... I'm not even sure what to call that.

 

The police death epidemic

The general media has certainly left us with a narrative that police are at horribly increased risk; that it's much more dangerous to be a cop now than ever before.

In the vein of "things usually are getting better", I've compiled the number of police deaths over time, as well as adjusted for population. The charts show what I expected: Not only are police deaths steadily decreasing on an absolute scale, they're at their lowest rates ever when scaled for population. I've charted numbers over trailing 5 year windows to smooth out the some inevitable amount of year-to-year volatility.

Looking at the trends shows two eras of particularly bad casualty rates: prohibition (1920 to 1933) and the rise of cocaine/crack (late 70s and early 80s). Both of these eras came with, essentially, wars on the streets. And, of course, the 50s and 60s were just swell! The current rate is roughly 2/3 of the more recent peak.

Of course, comparing absolute numbers over the course of history does not account for the rising population. If things were the same, we'd expect the rate to scale with population. The second trendline shows office deaths per year, per 100million population (again over a trailing 5-year window). This chart shows a similar trend, but even more so. Prohibition and crack still jump out, but now prohibition looks twice as bad. And, the current rate is the lowest, ever, with rates falling to around 1/3 of the more recent spike.

While being a cop clearly has serious risks, there's never been a safer time to be one.  

The SUV phenomenon

A lot of people buy SUVs. They explain that they need it for the size, or the all-wheel drive, or the safety, or ...
Problem is, a lot of the rationalizations don't really bear out. I'll leave this highly anecdotal since the point is not to pick on or do a deep dive into SUVs. The point is that people feel the need to rationalize their choices. Probably they want to be able to justify their purchase to others.

None of this is necessary. Just say you got an SUV because you wanted to feel cool. Or you like how it looks. Whatever. Be honest about your motivations. Be honest with yourself and others.

This concept is highly visible in the world of guns. I saw a great quote the other day, something like:

Birth control? Ban it.
Abortions? Ban it.
Gay marriage? Ban it.
Guns? Well, see, people will still get guns so ...

And to all the escalationists who justify more guns in order to stop the bad guys, here's the epitome of a good guy with a gun. And now he's dead. And he never had a chance.

Gun nuts: please just admit that you like your toys because they make you feel cool. At least that's something we can't argue with.

Does Norway scale?

Many people point to places like Norway as an example society. A society built on socialism that works. Why can't we just follow their model? Bernie Sanders and lots of others want to know!

First things first: does Norway work? While it's hard to say definitively, we can use various metrics to support the claim:

1. Norway is 2nd in the world in nominal GDP per capita behind only Luxembourg.

   a. And maintains the 6th position in purchasing power parity GDP per capita behind only Luxembourg, Singapore and a handful of OPEC countries.

2. Norway is, by a wide margin, tops in Human Development Index (an aggregate of life expectancy, education and income).

   a. and is tops by an even wider margin in inequality-adjusted HDI (same link).

3. Norway has among the lowest rates of poverty, at 4.3% (compared to 14.5% in the USA), in the world.

4. Norway has historically among the lowest murder rates, at 0.6 per 100,000 (compared to 4.7 in the USA)

5. It is one of the few countries in the world with a 100% literacy rate.

6. It ranks 2nd in Press Freedom Index.

7. Top-ranked universal health care. For everyone.

I'm sure there are many other pieces of data I could look at, but I've yet to find one that paints Norway as a bad place to live (unless you're a fan of warm weather ... but then you probably have plenty of money and time to take trips to Greece).

So the question is: can we adopt their model? I think the answer is "not really" or at least "not yet".

To answer the question, I think we have to look at why Norway works. I believe that the socialist model works because the entire population buys into the notion that everyone should have a good quality of life, and that they all win together. First and foremost, they are able to put money behind this belief. Their extremely high GDP per capita means they have a lot of funds, per capita, to spread around (via taxes or whatever mechanism). While much of their wealth comes from oil, they have also been good stewards of their fortunes. They have invested heavily in renewable energy, and they even have the world's largest pension fund to provide for their aging citizens! In short, a pragmatic, level-headed government has made the most of their assets.

On a technical level, Norway has large land area to support renewable energy (primarily hydro, with available space for wind). A higher density population may have a hard time achieving enough energy through just these means, and a poorer population may not be able to afford the infrastructure.

Furthermore, I think the population buys into the socialist approach because they are comfortable with the idea that everyone else in the country should be taken care of. This comes, I think, because of a very homogeneous society. 86% of the population (only 5 million total) is ethnic Norwegian. 80% of the population identifies as Lutheran. In other words, it's easy to love thy neighbor when thy neighbor is just like you.

Contrasting this with America, I think the bases upon which this socialist goodwill is built are not present. The population is too large (both in count and in distance from each other - really, what do I know about someone in Virginia or Florida or somewhere else far away) and too diverse. Many are weary of our immigrants from countries and backgrounds we don't understand. Many question their motives. Many fear their lifestyles. All this has to change before our society can band together and agree that we all can, and should, win. We have the money, sure, but we don't have the will.

 

This gun has cost me everything. Everything but my precious gun.

It certainly feels like a non-trivial segment of the population is so obsessed with their guns that they'll make any apology for the rampant issues we see as a result of them.

Too many gun deaths? People need more guns to protect themselves.
Let's just get rid of them? The "bad guys" will get guns and go on hunting sprees.
And so on it goes.

While the above can be true in some instances, over an entire population they will not bear out. There is clear proof of this from every other developed country where guns are heavily regulated. And, I think it's pretty likely that guns lead to several other problems.

There are some additional costs that no one really talks about (at least that I've heard of):

Police brutality:
Say what you will about bad cops, mean cops, power-hungry cops, I refuse to believe that shooting civilians is on their agenda. Sure, there will be a _few_ sociopaths in there, but I believe the seemingly steady stream of unarmed civilians killed by cops is a reaction tied to the cops' fear that the civilian might harm them. The very real possibility that a civilian has a gun on them can only increase this fear, and I think must increase it by a significant factor.

Financial cost:
This data is a little hard to parse, but using Washington as the example, it takes about $50-70k to try a murder case , and almost $500,000 to try a death-penalty murder case. Add to that the cost of street police, medical examiner, detective, and so on, and we have to be adding a few $10k to it. Most cases don't seek the death penalty, so let's actually ignore that case for the moment. If we use a range of $50k to $100k as the cost of investigating and trying a murder, multiply that by about 3/4 of the roughly 10k yearly murders that would be eliminated by removing guns, we get a range of $375-750M. Rounding to a number in the middle, let's call this $500M. These 7000 people (allowing for some multiple homicides in the 7500 deaths) will then spend 20+ years in prison** at a cost of about $30k per year, adding another roughly $4B to the yearly tab. Some states are less, some are more, but overall I think we're within a factor of 2. So, the real cost of these murders is between $3B and $10B per year. That's real money we can spend on so many other things.

** - it's fair to point out that someone who commits murder may end up in prison for other reasons as well, but we're just estimating here.

Opportunity cost:
In addition to the 7500 people who will no longer be killed each year, we can take the $3-10B savings and deploy it in any of the following ways (and many others):

1. Cover the treatment of breast cancer for ~50,000 women per year.
2. Support ~200,000 homeless people in staying off the street.
3. Weekly personal training and monthly nutritionist support for ~1,000,000 people (or even families, most providers will do group sessions at marginally higher cost)
1. Which may take a significant chunk out of the yearly $200B we spend on obesity-related illness ...
4. Give every teacher in America a $1000-$3000 raise.
5. Build out fiber internet to every home over the next 2 decades.
6. Lift ~500,000 people out of poverty.
7. Go finish that wall between US and Mexico this decade, then pick other options afterwards
8. Add a few hundred miles of electric rail to urban populations each year to displace gas-powered options.
1. In a place like Seattle, 200 miles of well-placed rail could eliminate tremendous amounts of car use. My very rough guess is well in excess of a million driven miles per day.
9. Make a condom available every time someone might want to use one.

The above list is aligned with many of the most common American concerns.




Resources are finite, and we have to choose how we spend our money. Our guns are costing us some of these, and they don't need to.

 

The first decade

I once saw a video (Ted talk, maybe?) about the power of doubling. In the example, the speaker emphasized what it means for something to double repeatedly. He spoke about our oil usage. It doubles roughly every decade, and due to its exponential growth, it means that every decade we use more oil than we'd used in all of history before that.

But, I'm not here to talk about oil. This same concept can be applied to retirement savings. Assume you stash away the same amount of money every year (this is not an entirely valid assumption for a number of reasons and we'll come back to it) and earn a 7% return each year. These assumptions are generally reasonable. The 7% is particularly noteworthy because it's just about the rate needed to double in a decade. This got me thinking: are the assets contributed to a retirement in the first decade going to trump those contributed in the following 3? If so, this is a profound realization.

To double-check, I threw together some Excel tables to test the above and see where the cutoff is (in years). Here's the table, assuming constant contributions of $10,000 per year and constant returns over a 40-year period:

Rate (%)	Final Total	Cutoff
5	1.28M	12
6	1.65M	11
7	2.15M	10
8	2.81M	9
9	3.69M	8
10	4.88M	7

In other words, the first decade is as important as the last 3. If your returns are higher, the effect is exaggerated, but even at a relatively modest 5 percent return the first 12 years net out to the same as the last 18. Of course the effect is reduced if the savings is over less than 40 years, and increased if it's longer.

Now lets revisit the assumptions ...

I used the assumption that the contribution would be the same each year. This is technically and practically unlikely in many cases. Technically, because roughly 2 of every 3 years the contribution limit rises $500. In practice this makes little difference (running the same calculations with this adjustment moves the cutoff from 10 to 11 years at 7%, for example).

The in-practice assumption is the hard one. Most people's earnings increase over time, and with that, so does their ability to save for retirement. Many (due to salary) are forced to choose between "life now" vs "life later" (for example, someone making 30k will not be able to stash $18k in a retirement account). The above illustrates the great power of compounding growth, which should give people more incentive to consider the "life later" bucket.

For anyone who can afford to, it's just as important to save max for the first decade as it is to save max for the next 3. If you can, do it.

Battery-operated flight

A quick followup on solar-powered flight. A comment came up that "battery-operated flight was a possibility because the charge density of battery tech will get there".


I think it's going to take discovering some Star Trek energy crystal flux magic. A current, say, 787 uses about 4 terrajoules of energy on its flight. The rumored next iteration of the Tesla Model S stores 90kW.hr (~= 300 megajoules) in a ~1000lb battery (see: http://my.teslamotors.com/.../forum/forums/model-s-battery-0), which is pretty consistent with this claim that a typical Li-ion battery can store 150W.hr per 1kg.To store the required energy would take around 15000 batteries, weighing 15 million lbs. The corresponding kerosene weighs under 30,000 lbs. That means the same energy requires 500 times more weight in storage. This is the gap that must be closed to a large degree.

 

The Engineer's trap

I'm smart, see? If I just sit down and think really hard, I'll derive the right answer.

This works, sometimes. For some people better than others. But, not always for anyone. In engineering (and many other disciplines), we can't predict the future. Sure, we can have very high confidence that a particular thing will work, functionally. However, we can't inherently predict human reaction. Will people like this interface? Will people enjoy this car design? Will people like having the cup holders in the doors? And so on.

There are an amazing number of smart people being held back by wasting time arguing over the unpredictable. At the core of this must be the desire to be right, to say "I called it!". But, getting things right is more likely through trial and iteration and being able to recognize failed attempts quickly (this is at the heart of the agile fail-fast engineering methodology).

Use your smarts. Apply them in areas where they are more reliable. Instead of foreseeing the future, spend your time thinking about how you know that you're right, or at least on the right track.

2030: A mini ice age climate reprieve

Articles have been going around touting a possible "mini ice age" coming in 2030. The premise is that scientists have predicted a significant drop in "sun activity" (which I think means the number of spots, which are essentially tides of fire), leading to a condition known as the Maunder Minimum, which will therefore lead to significant drops of temperature on Earth, as evidenced by the rare freezing of the Thames river in the late 1600s which coincided with the last Maunder Minimum.

It doesn't help that news outlets are titling their articles with hyperbolae like "the sun will 'go to sleep' in 2030" or "the sun will become inactive" and so on. Climate skeptics have already rallied around this, pointing out things like "the Sun is also part of the climate" and "no wonder they renamed it from warming to change", and so on. Are they right? As usual, they are not.

For one, the freezing of the Thames river was a local condition. While it's true that didn't happen often and didn't happen again after, the flow of the river was altered (sped up) by the replacement of structures in the water about a century later. In other words, we removed the conditions under which the river could freeze. Summers were not any cooler (which we'd expect if the sun is emitting significantly less energy), nor were overall temperatures affected elsewhere in the world. Furthermore, the Maunder Minimum purportedly at fault started 50 years before the Thames froze. So, either it was unrelated, or it took 50 years for the effects to catch up. Either way, we're not gonna see an ice age in 2030 as a result of this.

Suppose for a second that global temperatures will drop significantly as a result of reduced sun activity. What then? if we continue to blanket the Earth in greenhouse gases, we'll roast that much more when the sun becomes "active" again. If we truly believe temperatures will drop, it's even more incentive to get our clean air acts together and use that as a boost towards mitigating climate change damage.

Whose baby is it?

Scenario:

Girl "G" has a brother "Br" who is married to a pregnant girl "PG". G's boyfriend "BF" hypothesizes that G's baby "Ba" was not produced by communion with Br, but rather with an unknown 3rd party, "P". To prove Ba's origin, BF would like to compare Ba's DNA with G's. What can we deduce?

 

Assumptions  **:

1. PG is not related to G, meaning they are no nearer than 6th cousins and can therefore be expected to share less DNA than, say, 4th cousins (chosen because there's a range of sharing published). Thus, PG and G have at most 0.5% common DNA

2. Br is related to G as full sibling and is therefore expected to share 50% DNA. The exact amount may vary significantly, but he should certainly be no further in sharing than a 1st cousin, whose low end of sharing is 7%.

** - reference: 23andme.com's table. Also pasted at the end of the entry.

 

So, what's in the baby?

If the baby is a product of Br and PG, we'd expect to see half each of 50% and less than 0.5%, which should yield something around 25% (also called out in the niece/nephew section). A lower bound can be established by using the 1st cousin range, from that we should see half each of 7% and 0.5%, for a total of ~4% shared DNA. Using the 1st cousin as a crosscheck (because they also have half a family tree that is totally unrelated) we should see no lower than 7% aggregate. The latter is the more correct number, really, because it's already tested for realistic distributions of gene passing.

 

If the baby is a product of P and PG, we'd expect to see half each of less than 0.5% each, for a total of less than 0.5% DNA sharing.

Interpreting the results:

If the sharing is:

1. Greater than 7%, it is highly probable that Br is the father. I think in practice this number would be quite a bit higher (we'd expect it to be around 25%, typically). The edge-case is if P is significantly related to Br, such as Br's parent, uncle, or even grandparent.

2. Less than 0.5%, it is highly probably that Br is not the father.

3. Between 0.5% and 7%, we have a curious case on our hands. Either P or PG are more related to Br than expected. Choice of options depends highly on state of residence.

 

 

 

 

 

Solar-powered flight

I just found out about the Solar Impulse project. It's a solar-powered plane, essentially the Tesla's brethren for the sky. Pretty cool stuff! The goal of the project is to demonstrate the viability of solar.

The last leg of the flight traveled from Japan to Hawaii, a distance of about 5000 miles. No stops, no fuel. Just sun. The plane has batteries to store energy for night flights. This is quite practical because the Japan-Hawaii leg took 5 days. Non-stop.

I think there are two major sets of reactions to this:
1. Holy shit, the future is here, and yeah it's slow now but tech gets better!!!
2. 5 days? Fuck that. Is Honey Boo Boo back on?

There's not much sense in talking to set 2 because they won't care about any of this until it's a real product they can buy. Group 1, however, is interesting to me because we can actually quantify what the concrete technical challenges are and assess the viability of overcoming them.

For viability purposes, let's say that a solar-powered craft would need to reach the same customer scenario as a current fuel-powered plane. That is, a cruising speed in the 530-580mph range and the ability to carry hundreds of passengers. How much energy does that take? I'll use the Boeing 787 as my example since it's the most modern fuel-efficient passenger plane. Looking at the 787-9 specifications, we see that it can transport 408 passengers a distance of 9550 miles using 33384 gallons of fuel at a speed of 567mph. We also should know how much energy is stored in a gallon of fuel. Using the two listed options for "jet fuel", I've opted to just call it 120kBTU per gallon.

Time of travel = 9550 miles / 567 mph = 16.8 hours = ~6E4 seconds.
Energy used = 33384 gallons * 120kBTU per gallon * 1055 J per BTU = ~4.2E12 J
Power = 4.2E12 J / 6E4 s = 7E7 J/s = 70 MW.

How much surface area is needed to collect 70MW? In a sunny place like Tucson, AZ, peak solar energy (mid-day) reaches 1000-1100 watts per square meter. A more realistic average over the Earth, over 24 hours, is 164 watts. We can adjust this for daytime averages by doubling it since the night portion contributes practically zero to this aggregate. So, let's say a typical daytime produces 325 watts, with shorter term highs around 1000W. This gives us a factor of 3 bounding, which should be adequate for this study. It's also important to point out that, per the same source, only 8% of solar energy is reflected back to space by the atmosphere, meaning that going higher up doesn't appreciably increase the available solar power.

Based on the range of incoming solar rates and the power requirements, it would take about 70,000 - 200,000 square meters of cells, operating at perfect efficiency. To put this in perspective, a football field is just shy of 5000 square meters. In other words, even on a bright bright day, it would take wings the size of 7 football fields. And for the average day we're looking at about 20 fields each. This seems intractable, even with "improving tech". The biggest improvement is probably the efficiency of the solar cells, and we've already allowed for that.

The other way to slice this is to look at the per-pound requirements and see how much we win by reducing airplane weight.

Power per pound = 70MW / 557k lbs ~= 125 W per pound.

In other words, I could, in an ideal world, attach a newborn to a square meter cell and send them flying around Arizona. Scaling this up to a typical adult requires some assumptions about their size and luggage and stuff, but let's call it 200 pounds. I'm being optimistic about human sizes by the time this hypothetical solar future arrives. The incremental solar area to carry a human is therefore 25-70 square meters. That's about the size of a one-bedroom apartment. The real lesson here is that we can potentially gain a lot by reducing airplane weight. First, we no longer need to carry 25000 lbs of fuel. However, we do need to carry batteries. Let's say, for the sake of the optimistic argument, that we can make the batteries arbitrarily small. We may also be able to make the wings lighter since they no longer need to support all that fuel. Not sure what kinds of savings that gets us. I'm also not sure if we can significantly reduce the weight of the fuselage. So, not much savings there on a 500,000 pound plane.

For the sake of the absolutely optimistic argument, suppose we can make the weight of the airplane zero. To transport 400 typical adults and bags, we'd need around 10-30,000 square meters of wing. That's 1-3 football fields each. And remember, they have to be perfectly efficient. And weigh nothing. And the passengers are sitting inside an ideal, weightless bubble.

Overall, the idea of solar for mass air travel seems far-fetched, simply because the energy density of solar is not high enough.






 

Hypocrisy, right?

The law gives me the right to deny the right given to them by law.

In the wake of the marriage equality ruling, a number of cases are popping up where Christians are insisting they can continue denying this right. For example, the Attorney General of Texas is stating that licenses can be denied if the state worker disagrees with gay marriage. First off, this is bullshit. You are an employee of the state and you shall give access to state benefits/rights equally. Second, the freedom you claim to be exercising is coming from the exact same set of laws. Therefore, your stance is not more justified. Third, the religious freedom you are using the justify your dissent has no place in official business, because that same law said so.

That is all. There's nothing more to say here.

Focus on the edge-case

I find at work that people often get really worried about the super uncommon scenarios and how we'll address those. While it's fine to think about those things, they should not supplant addressing the common scenarios. Let's apply this same approach to a topic at the top of mind for many: gun violence.

For the purposes of this discussion, I'll look just at gun deaths (somewhat arbitrary: easier to get stats, and let's assume it's a reasonable proxy for injuries as well). In a given year, roughly 30-35,000 people are killed by a gun in the USA. This breaks down in some perhaps unexpected ways:

More than 20,000 are suicides.
Around 9-11,000 of those are murders.
There are about 500 accidental deaths.
And of the murders, between 100 and 200 are the result of mass shooting.

While it's understandable that mass shootings get all the press (especially when the gun debate is so prominent in popular culture and mass shootings will generate media clicks), they make up the absolute edge-case of the gun scenarios. However, it seems to be used as the basis for the "good guys with guns" and "more guns" narrative. We should first solve the bigger buckets before we worry about the mass shootings. While no one wants to be a statistic, at a population level we must focus on statistics to drive broader policy.

The biggest bucket, by a factor of two, is suicides. It's also a hard one to address. Guns account for right about half of all suicides. Would removing guns actually eliminate those suicides, or would people just find other ways? The two next most common methods are suffocation (~25%) and poisoning (~15%). I don't know the mentality of someone who is considering taking their life, but I suspect that a meaningful subset of suicide by gun are people making rash decisions in desperate situations. In other words, I'd expect that eliminating guns would cut down on this number, but certainly would not eliminate all the suicides that are currently committed using guns. Anecdotally, we should not expect to see a major difference by simply eliminating guns since other comparable countries (ex: European) with heavily restricted guns have similar suicide rates per population. However, even a moderate drop of, say, 1-2 per 100,000 (out of ~13 now) would eliminate 3-6000 deaths. I use this number as an example because a number of "similar" countries are about that much lower. It appears that mental health support and cultural changes would be the best candidates here, though again, I'm not an expert other than to say access to guns is likely not the biggest way to address this.

The next largest bucket, of course, is murders. I've speculated at the effect of the presence of lots of guns (that it leads to lots of murders), and absolutely believe that removing them from the equation will have a profound downward effect in murder rate. The short of it is that, using Australia and UK as controls, removing guns from the population does not lead to murders being replaced with other implements, it simply leads to those murders not happening. Since roughly 3 out of every 4 murders in the USA are committed with a firearm, that's roughly 3 out of 4 murders that could be eliminated.

Eliminating guns from the general population would also lead to a sharp decline (realistically not complete, but pretty close) in accidental gun deaths. Pretty simple.

And last, come the mass shootings. We're now down to a cause of death whose frequency is within a factor of two of lightning strike deaths. We're having a national policy debate centered around a scenario that's, as far as people conceive, an absolute rarity. This does not make sense. The argument tends to go something like "The bad people will get guns. They know to go to places where guns aren't allowed. Easy targets. Let's take away those targets by adding more guns!". Again, let's add guns EVERYWHERE because lightning strikes.

I would also suggest that eliminating general access to guns would serve to reduce the number of guns in clearly unstable people's hands, simply because not all of them will be capable of navigating a black market for a weapon (they're usually mentally off, remember). But sure, some (maybe most) will still get a weapon. In a world where a citizen can't openly own a gun, they also can't effectively train with that gun. Their proficiency in killing people can only go down for when they do snap and attack a school. Making guns illegal gives law enforcement more time to catch up to illegal weapons because simply owning one is now illegal. It could be discovered in some other way before it's put to bad use, and removed from the system. While guns are so broadly legal, the only place where law enforcement can interject is in the last stage when the mass shooter starts actually shooting. In other words, it is currently totally legal to perform all the preparations for a mass shooting. In my opinion, there's absolutely no way more damage could be done by mass shooters if guns were broadly illegal. I'd even suggest that the simple act of holding the gun and firing it at the range could fuel the mass shooting fantasy for someone who'd be prone to actually going through with it. If we remove some of those factors, a shooter may never even develop the clear desire to go on a shooting rampage.

In other words, the main scenarios clearly point to reducing guns. And as icing, even the edge-case justifies no other choice than reducing access to guns.



 

Guns are bad, mmkay?

After Sandy Hook I started reading up on gun and murder stats and one very interesting thing jumped out at me while looking at 3 countries that I'd otherwise consider culturally similar. The murder rate in the USA is far higher than in the UK or Australia. The latter two have heavily regulated (minimal) gun ownership, have significantly fewer murders, and the number of murders with guns is almost exactly the difference. In other words, remove the guns, remove the murders. Furthermore, Australia was once very loose with guns (similar to the USA) and then moved to heavy regulation.

Let's start with the intentional homicide rate by country per 100,000 population:
United States: 4.7
Australia: 1.1
United Kingdom: 1.0

Now, let's look at the intentional homicide rate by gun in each country:
United States: 3.6
Australia: 0.1
United Kingdom: 0.04

If we combine these and make a little table, we get:

Country	Overall murder rate	Gun murder rate	Non-gun murder rate
United States	4.7	3.6	1.1
Australia	1.1	0.1	1.0
United Kingdom	1.0	0.04	1.0

The difference disappears, like magic!

A quick search on the effect of Australia's tightening and gun buyback in 1996-7 seem debated (though even basic facts are "debated" on the internet), but per official records, the percent of murders committed by guns is dropping at a decent rate. Granted, it had started dropping well before 1996 (from a peak around 1980). Probably need to do more careful analysis here, but the bottom line is that introducing gun legislation did not lead to a collapse of society or out-of-control murders against the unprotected populace.

Some number of reasons to go to The Palouse

The Palouse, eh? What is that?

You know when you first installed Windows XP and your background had these nice green hills? That's the Palouse. It's a place where crappy photographers ("tourists", really) fail to capture their experiences and good ones find amazing pictures.

So yeah, lots of great pics to be had. Be ready to sleep weird schedules as you become like a predator, chasing your shots at sunrise and sunset. And since you'll want to do this in the summer, that's like 5am and 9pm. You can stay in places like Colfax, population 2800. There's a Zip's, a Subway, a Papa Joe's ... Eddy's Chinese Kitchen, and Westside Pizza operates out of someone's living room. You might think this list goes on, but no, that's it. Evidently the flood of photographers and weddings in June, July and August completely fill and sustain a Best Western.

Being just an hour south of Spokane, I'll be coming back again. No doubt. If I'm bringing anyone with me, I'll just set them loose tracking wildlife. So far on this trip we've seen:

• A crow being divebombed by a smaller bird
• Two small birds escorting an owl
• Deer, everywhere
• Hawks galore
• Wild turkeys
• Marmot
• Magpie
• Quail
• Coyote
• And Rowan says he saw a fox!

We've even heard rumor of the local karaoke bar.

 

So, what's good here?

While discussing running into "Grandmother Lovers" on TLC, a friend noted that Bridalplasty was the worst show they had ever seen. IMDB corroborates this: it's rated 2.9 out of 10. But, where does that stack up?

To compare, I looked at a the most popular reality shows and a few more that I've watched and found patterns:

Good Eats - 9.1
Most Extreme Elimination Challenge - 8.8
Survivorman - 8.4
Deadliest Catch - 8.2
Amazing Race - 7.6
Top Chef - 7.6
Chopped - 7.5
Pawn Stars - 7.4
Project Runway - 7.3
Property Brothers - 7.3
House Hunters - 7.1
Hell's Kitchen - 7.0
Duck Dynasty - 6.6
The Voice - 6.6
My 600 Pound Life - 6.2
America's Next Top Model - 5.5
The Biggest Loser - 5.5
Million Dollar Listing - 5.3
Say Yes to the Dress - 5.2
Dancing with the Stars - 4.7
Dance Moms - 4.6
Finding Bigfoot - 4.3
American Idol - 4.1
The Real Housewives of {whatever} - [3.6 - 4.3]
19 Kids and Counting - 3.8
Toddlers & Tiaras - 3.2
Bridalplasty - 2.9
The Bachelor - 2.8
Here Comes Honey Boo Boo - 2.7
Keeping Up with the Kardashians - 2.5
** - Grandmother Lovers is not yet rated

There seems to be a strong correlation with the content of the show and its ratings. For example, educational and legitimate-ish competition shows rank near the top. Shows where we just watch people make choices score in the middle, and shows about dysfunctional families pretty uniformly score low. Production value and major network status seems to have little to do with ratings.

So are shows featuring competitions fundamentally better? This can't possibly be the case.
Do audiences prefer to get excited about competition more than getting frustrated at what some brainless housewife does? Is an opportunity to learn inherently associated with higher quality? This last point gives me hope, and it seems that ratings do indeed correlate with the primary emotion they invoke:

Success and education are positives and frustration is a negative. The bulk of the shows in the middle kinda invoke none of the above. In this sense, we can say that all these shows at the tail end are worse than nothing. We're worse off for having seen them. And the Kardashians are the worst of all. Kudos.
 

But ... who's the customer?

On a recent trip down the Oregon-Washington coast, we stopped in Montesano, WA for gas. Its population is just shy of 4,000, so it's definitely in tiny-town category. While using the restroom at their Chevron station, I noted that I could buy condoms from the vending machine. I chuckled at the time because the two options were:
1. Rough Rider (with nubs, for extra pleasure!)
2. Various flavored condoms (which I imagine you'd only use for blowjobs).
My estimation was that these were applicable exactly for the hooker scenario: even short-term flings rarely involve condoms for oral, and, well, you might want a little extra stimulation with a well-worn lady of the night. And nothing says hooker like a small-town gas station, I think?

Anecdotes about condom particulars aside, what would non-prostitute condom purchasing look like? Why would someone go into a gas station bathroom to make the purchase when they could just buy one of the regular options that are probably available on the shelf? If the person is a regular condom user, they probably buy in larger bulk from the grocery store, Costco, or Amazon (where prices are much lower, say, 25c a pop instead of the 75c required by the vending machine). Ordering online even mitigates the potential embarrassment of buying them (which is funny, it should come with a high five cuz you're gonna get some, and in a safer manner!). Even if you didn't plan on needing one and had to get one on short notice, I don't think the gas station restroom is the place you'd think to go? And I think most people aren't that embarrassed by buying them and wouldn't need the privacy of the bathroom to make their purchase. Unless ... it were for use with someone they just met outside at the pump, while the attendant was watching.

So, yes, I think the vending machines in the bathroom are exactly intended for the hooker scenario.

Maybe this was obvious all along.

Fun fact: while researching bulk pricing on costco.com, I discovered condoms qualify for use with flexible spending accounts!
 

Authentic shmauthentic

I love Chipotle!!!

"But it's not reaaaaal Mexican food!" someone might point out.

So? Sure, they label themselves as a Mexican Grill, but that's really just intended to give cues to the approximate content therein, as imagined by locals. I don't go correct everyone who doesn't really know what Hungarian food is. To them it means a thing, consistently, and that has value too.

To point this out, I feel, is more about the ego/hipster-ness of the antagonist: see, but I'm so traveled and in touch that I know the difference and know to appreciate the difference.

Who cares. It's delicious. As Shakespeare said, pulled pork and tortillas by any other name would still taste just as good.

Wide open spaces

A friend recently asked me about my take on open space work environments. He was prompted by this article. Here is my response:

Overall I agree. I'll end up restating a number of the points the author makes.

 

I'll start by saying that this is not Google's fault on any level though. The open office push, I think, gained steam because successful startups (primarily in tech?) were using it. I don't think it was so much an ideological thing, but rather a money thing: open offices are cheap because walls cost money. Also, as you hire more people, walls make your space less flexible and it's harder to scale it bit by bit (and/or revising those walls costs more money).

 

But, all out-of-touch managers saw was "these hip new companies all use open spaces! and that's what new hires expect! we have to adapt!" (I literally heard this from management at my work). Microsoft has mandated-ish that buildings be converted to open spaces because "that's the future!". So, I've bounced in and out of them as our group has moved from space to space. Mostly the open spaces are implemented as relatively large (20-50, roughly) grids of desks in a room, with some meeting rooms attached. The premise is that as the people you work directly with change, you just pick up and relocate to be around them. Then as you work, you automatically collaborate more, and collaboration is good! Our current space has offices, but we're encouraged to work in "team rooms" which are basically meeting rooms set up for 3-6 people working together on a project. I'll talk about my experiences in these later.

 

There's an inflexion point. I actually just talked to someone from Google a few weeks ago about this. Their model (at least at his office in Seattle) is different, they had rooms for 4-5 people. He said that was actually pretty nice. Then they grew and now there are 10 people in a room. He said the qualitative experience has totally changed: it's packed, too noisy, too many conversations: it's over-collaboration. More accurately it's not collaboration anymore, it's just noise.

 

Another anecdote: when open spaces first came up, another team took a straw poll. 23 of 25 of their developers said they did not want to be in an open space. 2 didn't vote because they were on vacation. What I've found is that developers tend to like it a lot less. Designers, PMs, marketers like it a lot more. The key difference is that developers spend much more time in deep, analytical thought, whereas the others spend a lot more time just trying things out, getting micro-feedback, etc. Our PMs, as a whole, seem to like open space.

 

My experience is similar. Our first foray into open space was about 4 years ago. 8-10 of us moved to an experimental space for two weeks. It was a lot of fun, but, there were certain tasks I could not get done because I couldn't go more than 10-15 minutes without an interruption. The bar for asking for help goes way down: people will just ask things they can look up easily, questions devolve into conversations, and context switches/interruptions end up making up the whole day. We then tried a second time a year later in a similar-sized space and my experience was the same again. And it's been the same in our team rooms. When I actually have to get real work done, I want to retreat into my private office and make it harder for people to talk to me.

 

There's a notion that social contracts develop, and that these rampant interruptions will normalize, but! This is often accompanied by people trying to cocoon themselves into noise-canceling headphones, or just agreeing that "we don't talk right now". In other words, virtual office boundaries get set up and even though we can all see each other, we've now canceled out the claimed benefit of the open space. The claim that the open space increases collaboration has never held water for me, as I've always told my managers: "having offices has never stopped me from being able to ask the right people the right questions".  

 

Another fun anecdote I heard is from an interior designer. They said "the hallmark of a well-designed space is that people just function naturally in it". In the open space, people actively have to take on tasks to make the space functional (headphones, social contracts, ... ). I actually kinda like this best as a simple reminder that it doesn't actually _work_, rather, we can _get it to work_.  

 

I really think this last paragraph is my favorite way to sum it up and really gets to the root of the issue: when you have to fight your environment, it's not an ideal environment.

An odd correlation?

I don't have proof, just anecdotes, and perhaps confirmation bias...

Do conservatives more often flaunt their middle name? While reading through forum comments, I feel like conservative opinions are more often attached to names like William James Hobart or Mary Jean Louise-Kay.

If true ... why is this?

Is it a tie to formality?
Is it pride in individuality?
 

Is medicine our species' cancer?

Medicine is used to fix cancer, stupid, what ARE you talking about?

Bear with me here for a second.

Assuming you believe the theory of evolution, we've arrived at each new iteration (species) by selectively breeding for traits that help us pass those traits on to the next generation. There's a key here: the traits really only need to benefit our ability to make more offspring. After the new generation is born and independent, there's questionable benefit to the parents staying alive. In practice, all the selective breedings are really accidental combinations of two people's genetic goo. The selector is the external environment (in much the same way that a dog breed is hostile to the un-cute puppies).

Medicine has improved by leaps and bounds over time. Not that long ago, being born diabetic would have been an early death sentence with a very low odds of that person having kids. Assuming diabetes has a genetic link, those exhibiting the issue would have been pruned from the gene pool  by, effectively, our species' immune system. Go back just 500 years and people with bad eyesight would likely have met the same fate.

At the species level, we self-correct failures. Testing against the real world validates which people will lead to stronger branches of descendants. Medicine counters all this. We are now able to manage poor eyesight, diabetes, mental retardation, many cancers, etc. Socially we've accepted that it's unfair to let people who lost the gene pool lottery die. This is a statement of fact, which leads to the inevitable conclusion that these people will reproduce, adding more and more defects to the species gene pool.

I'm not advocating eugenics here, just drawing conclusions from the state of the world as I see it. But, what's the outcome? Medicine should, in effect, keep pace with increasing rates of disease. After all, it was that effectiveness that leads to previously unfit people surviving. However, it feels like a fragile end-game. Will we reach a state where each individual has to many flaws that they require constant attention to survive? And then the next flaw causes it all to come crashing down?

In short, medicine allows our unproductive divisions to survive, and possibly take over the whole system.

A week without sugar*

* - Actually, with limited added sugar. I'll explain.

Marisa and I watched the documentary Fed Up. The premise is: something's wrong! We have more and more people going to the gym than ever, but we're fatter than ever! Wtf?

In the end it was an interesting take on the role of sugar in the American diet. The general argument is that we concluded that fat was bad, so processed foods became low-fat. However, removing fat removes taste, so the processors just dialed up the sugar content to compensate (and our agricultural policies lead to unbounded cheap sugar being available). Unfortunately, sugar is a serious toxin to your body over the longterm and a) is immediately processed by your liver into body fat and b) causes metabolic disease (like diabetes). Added sugar is particularly bad because it gets absorbed so fast, all hits the liver, causes massive insulin release that leads to blood sugar swings, etc. Sugar in fruits, however, is not bad because all the other fiber and so on keep it from being digested super fast.

I've been hearing elsewhere that the particular "sugar" in the above is actually fructose. But, the two most common sugar sources either immediately break down into part fructose (sucrose = fructose+glucose) or have even more excess fructose (high fructose corn syrup). However, the documentary asserts that all sugar is equally bad. For the purposes of this discussion, let's go with that.

The documentary also introduces a few key pieces of circumstancial evidence, most notably a WHO study and recommendation to lower total calories from sugar to 10% of daily intake being squashed by a threat to revoke US funding. From our side, the recommendation evidently is to eat at least 20 or 25% of our calories from sugar. Our canonical balanced breakfast is cereal, orange juice and all sorts of other sweetened stuff. I'm always a touch leery about what really happens in these situations, sometimes documentaries like to oversimplify or understate certain aspects of things. Certainly in this case, the information is out there, so it's not like the report's content completely disappeared. The fact remains that the recommendation exists, and our nutrition labels say nothing about added sugars. In addition to the total sugar number, they recommend no more than 6 teaspoons (24g) added sugar per day for women, and 9 (36g) for men.

Fed Up meanders into some tangents about other unhealthy eating (high fat, high calorie) that seem nothing to do with sugar, but it's easy to pile on when discussing an obesity epidemic. So let's just ignore that.

The documentary ends with a challenge to meet their added sugar recommendations. We've decided, why not? The recommendation isn't something drastic, doesn't seem like it can hurt. The first step was to look through our fridge and see what foods were safe and what were not. Sugar as a total is broken out in the carbs section of nutrition labels, but there's no distinction for added vs not. Even if there were, it's dicey, depending on how that would be defined technically (I've heard that some products add grape juice because it's not "added sugar" but is pretty much as sweet). We both had an unexpected culprit: yogurt for Marisa and protein bars for me.

Marisa's favorite Yoplait fruit-flavored 6oz yogurts have 26g sugar. 12g is the baseline amount that should be in that much yogurt from the sugar content in milk. The other 14g are sweeteners and one yogurt uses over half her daily budget. My Clif Builder bars contain 21g each. It's not clear from the label where those come from, but rice syrup is a top ingredient so I'm going to go with that and assume it's the bad stuff. And of course I enjoy regular Pepsi. At 40g per can, it's not an option. Otherwise we're largely good.

There are some tips throughout: any amount of fruits are fine, if you mostly cook your food at home you're probably fine. We're semi good about this; I'd estimate about 50% of our meals are home-cooked. We used to be a lot better about taking our food for lunch, but have fallen out of that habit.

So how has it been going?
Day 1: I felt like serious crap. I had breakfast like normal, but by 11am I was getting symptoms of hypoglycemia: mostly lack of concentration and feeling slightly like blacking out. Lunch helped a lot, but I was feeling it again by 3pm. I went scouring for a snack and ended up with some Clif Mojo bars. 9g sugar each, assume it's all added. Ate one of those, felt better. Overall the day was a success.

Day 2: Similar to day 1. I used the Mojo bar again in the afternoon.

Day 3: I felt ... great. All the weird symptoms were gone.

Day 4 and 5: Still all great. Day 5 was probably the worst cheating since I had a half a Pepsi with lunch. I didn't have anything else with added sugar all day though, so the ~20g is still well under my recommended limits.

Aside from the above, I've noticed I feel better hydrated. My muscles feel firmer. And that nagging little fat pad on my lower abdomen (I'm in overall great shape, but this is something that's never gone away) seems to be shrinking. So far so good! We're headed to festive events so I'll have to avoid all the cupcakes and stuff, but I can manage. I think the week has proven what I already knew: drinking less soda is definitely good. It may have proven more: that drinking (basically) none might be even better.

Think for yourself.... right?

Thinking for ourselves is the great hallmark of independence. No one will the wool over our eyes and whatnot! Everyone should strive to think for themselves all over the place.

Or not?

Unfortunately, many people come to very bad conclusions when left to their own devices. In fact, everyone has stuff they just don't know very much about, lack the background to deduce, and therefore have no reliable way of coming up with reasonable conclusions for.

Ironically, an important aspect of thinking for yourself is being aware of when your own conclusions aren't likely to be correct and in those cases, thinking for yourself that you should not think for yourself, but instead reference the consensus conclusion.

So you know, think for yourself, except when you're unlikely to get it right.

How do you know when you're unlikely to get it right? Looking at the general population, I think we're fucked here.

An Alpine Mystery

GermanWings 9525 went down in the Alps yesterday. The initial reports stated that it was in perfect mechanical condition, took off with no issues, reached cruising altitude and soon after started a shallow descent which ended when it hit the side of the mountain. There was no communication from the plane to the ground, though radar had clearly followed and determined the above path. The flight recorders were found soon, and analysis has started.

The New York Times is reporting that, per one investigator, one of the two pilots was outside the cockpit and unable to get back in. This instantly screams foul play or engineering failure, and the speculation seems pointed at suicide missions or sudden cabin pressure loss, etc.

My initial reaction is that this is a tragic, but innocent case. One of the pilots stepped out of the cabin to use the bathroom. In the meantime, the other had a heart attack or other sudden medical emergency that left him incapacitated. The cockpit door is locked, the other pilot can't get back in, the end.

We'll see how this all plays out, but this is an interesting point of failure. If there's only one crew member in the locked cabin, what DOES happen if they are incapacitated? Is there any override to get into the cockpit? The pilots can't have physical keys because then hijackers could nab one when s/he came out of the cockpit. Maybe there could be a secret code? But that could be tortured out of the abducted pilot. Or maybe a code that only opens the door if the person inside the cockpit doesn't enter a lockdown code? I wonder if a possible solution would create more security risks or points of failure for cockpit access?

So who's really the dumb one?

On a recent trip to bing.com, this article popped up. So I read it. Pretty cut and dry: two twenty-something girls go to Rome, try to carve their initials into the Colosseum, get busted. Not really that exciting.

What is interesting is the torrent of outrage in the comments. And I don't just mean vanilla outrage like "idiots, how could they!". The comments went way further. By my approximate assessments, here are the major categories:

Throw them in jail!
In this category were variants including jail times up to 2 years, fines up to $10k in addition to restitution costs, months of community service cleaning Rome, and banishment from Italy. While mostly excessive, at least these are in the realm of feasibility. However, a non-trivial number of commenters piled it on with options like:

• send them to Singapore for a caning
• send them to a Turkish prison
• permanently revoke their passports

I really wonder how these guys think the world works?

These kids these days!
A giant portion of comments bemoaned the state of America's youth. Additional variants branched into "California", "libtard", "sense of entitlement", etc commentary. However, the article itself calls out that per 6 million visitors over the course of the last year, only 5 similar incidents occurred (1 each were by American, Canadian, Brazilian, Russian and Australian). So not only is this exclusively an American problem, it's pretty easy to argue that it's not a problem at all. If only about 1 in a million people does something that, in the end, amounts to just poor judgment (in the sense that it's not, for example, blatantly hurting another person), we're doing pretty well.

No respect!
This is similar to the kids these days set, really, but I'm focusing it more on the idea that kids are raised badly by their parents.

Permanent black mark!
These include, in no particular order: revoking passports, marking passports as "defacers of other cultures", marking all social media with "I'm a defacer" and so on.


What is particularly fun ("sad") for me to see is how all the self-proclaimed wise/enlightened elders a) advocate for grossly disproportionate or downright non-sensical punishments, b) complain about the sad state of affairs that leads to the absolutely vast majority of visitors doing no wrong, and c) then cast the stone at, ultimately, their peers. And of course, I suspect if any of these people were assigned such a permanent black mark they'd be outraged at the violation of their personal liberties.

This behavior is understandable in that most people believe the world is getting worse.
Lucky for us, that's just not true.

Minor differences: Beijing

It's pretty common to see people take a nap on their desk after work, and since there are no closed-door offices, they're just RIGHT THERE. No big deal, just different.

There's a lot more manual labor, it seems. For example, our meeting rooms are stocked with sharpened pencils. The pencils are sharpened by the custodial staff, using the old-school pencil sharpeners that you crank by hand. In the USA we'd probably just buy machine-sharpened pencils or something. Actually I think we mostly just use pens?

Traffic has the same rules, but red lights seem to be suggestions only. Pedestrians don't have unquestioned right-of-way, so cars will cut people off in crosswalks. However, it works because everyone expects it, and everyone pays attention. However, don't text while walking [across the street].

I asked a coworker what he felt were the differences between Chinese and Japanese food. "Japanese food is all undercooked, served cold and has no oil. So ... really it's all just rice".

While walking around the vibrant bar district, I get solicited. Except now I have no idea what I'm being offered. Hope it was only hookers and blow, not something I actually wanted.

The same downtown district has security staff like we'd expect to see in an upscale area in the USA as well. Except here, the staff are all busy watching the girl dancing in the plain-glass window of what I think is technically a club? She was on a stage, with a pole, with stripper moves, but her small amount of clothing stayed on.

I love when contractors call around noon. Not too early, I'm usually free. Except when I'm 16 hours ahead and finally getting a decent sleep through the night.

Who needs gloves?  A lot of people ride motorcycles. To keep their hands warm, they put a jacket around the front of the motorcycle, pulling the sleeves over the handles. Then they put their hands into sleeves to operate the bike. As a bonus, the jacket acts as a windbreaker for their legs. Also, they still wear gloves.

Walking around, I see all the same stuff I'm used to: bicycles, gyms with weights, etc. Just in most cases, the construction quality is lower. But all the stuff works. I wonder how much more we spend on a basic item just because we want it newer, shinier, nicer, etc.

Musings via Beijing

I'm currently on a 1-week work trip to Beijing. I'm just wrapping up my first 24 hours here.

The flight itself is uneventful. It's an approximately 12 hour direct from Seattle, roughly following the Pacific coastline through Alaska, then passing into Russia and flying the last 6 hours over Siberia and China. Funny thing is, the Delta flight tracker on our entertainment systems stopped working right around the time we hit Russian airspace. Coincidence, or something more? Who knows.

As we were landing, we were told that anyone experiencing flu-like symptoms, vomiting, fever, etc, or anyone who has recently been to West Africa needs to notify the flight staff and fill out a card. They must then present that card to the quarantine officer, who may decide to detain them. I wonder how many people comply ...

Beijing is physically giant. It's made of a giant core and an even more giant suburb. After all, 20 million people have to fit somewhere. Unlike Mexico City, it has a fair number of tall buildings and probably higher density.

Beijing is externally famous for two things: scary driving and smog. After getting through customs and immigration, I bought some yuan and hailed a cab. One of my colleagues had warned me not to take up any free-lancing cabbies on their offers, so I instead stood in the longest cab line I've ever been. Vegas can compete. However, no one really tries to cut in line in Vegas, then argues with a cop who tells him to get to the back of the line. Also unlike Vegas, I found communication with my cabbie impossible. The same colleague had also told me to just show them written text of where I want to go, but that wasn't working. The cabbie just looked confused and angsty. I was about to ask if I should get out of the car (which made him even more anxious, probably because he'd have to circle around for a new fare) when one of the line attendants came to our aid. I kept pointing at my hotel name; turns out they needed a phone number to call. Once that happened, all was well. And unlike Mexico City, the drivers were relatively normal. Aggressive, but normal.

We got to the hotel without incident. I checked in and went up to my room and admired the view. I look down the 3rd ring road as it passes between some large, lit-up buildings. Smog shmog. Good night.

My view was considerably different in the morning. I woke to a PM2.5 rating of 198, which is nearly ten times the levels in Seattle, 4 times New York and double LA (though to be fair, these values change a lot daily, so these factors may vary). I could barely see skyscrapers a half a mile away. There was also a  slight sensation in my throat for a good part of the day. A local coworker later exclaimed "Oh, it's a pretty clear day today!"

I took the subway to work. I can't tell a Chinese character from another one to save my life (or find my direction). I prepped by cross-checking subway maps I'd printed out. 13 stops. The one with the name made of 3 characters, immediately after the one with 4. The rest before those are 5. These are my path markers. In reality the subway had been overhauled for the 2008 Olympics so not only were the names also present in Pinying (like how we type, for example "SuZhouJie" or "LiangMaQiao"), but there was even good English on everything. Despite the warnings, it wasn't horribly crowded. Standing room only, for sure, but no sliding in each others' sweat while a 4'10" woman squeezes between everyone, selling stuff for 5 pesos. Just like in Mexico, I (or my immediate party) was the only non-local in the transit system.

I was well aware that a lot of people might not speak English. I was not, however, prepared for how isolating it is to not even be able to attach a sound to a written character. It's how I imagine telling a 4 year old to read a map and find their way would play out.

The internet is another funny. It seems like they mostly dislike Google (and Youtube), Twitter, and Facebook. My hotel has CNN and BBC news (so western propaganda or whatever seems not to be an issue in that sense) and both their sites load (however, most CNN stories don't load). Microsoft services all work, but only in china-specific form. The only way I can check my gmail account from the hotel is to VPN to my corp network, remote into a machine physically sitting in Redmond, and run my browser there. Same with Facebook. However, both at least kinda worked at the airport. Maybe the Great Firewall has a few holes in it?

My hotel is very nice. The nightly rates are not outrageous (~150). However, the dinner options at the hotel are crazy. There's  restaurant that serves the most expensive steak I think I've ever seen. $130 for a ribeye and $105 for a sirloin. They do have attached marbling ratings and probably the life story short movie of the cow, but ... wow.

Other tidbits: a lot of people smoke, but it seems predominantly to be the men. Women wear very little makeup or jewelry (at least on the #10 subway line) and very few high heels. And, I got a nosebleed after dinner.


 

Fun fact

Did you know the USA is the only country with data available that does not mandate time off for employees?

This is one example of social policy or benefit that could contribute to a country's "socialist" state. By this metric, the USA is far, far, far far far away.

Maybe they shouldn't have sold their rights, eh?

There's a petition on change.org to stop Hershey's from bringing a lawsuit against Cadbury UK. Hershey's is claiming trademark infringement ... but why do they think they can do that, and shame on the big American company for only caring about money!

Obstacle number 1 is that Hershey's acquired the rights to the Cadbury brand in the USA in 1988. While the Wikipedia entry isn't specific and I don't feel like looking it up, presumably it's an exclusive agreement. Thus, it's Hershey's brand in the USA and they have to file suit against threats to protect their trademark (note: if a company does not aggressively challenge trademark infringement, courts can later rule it's not really a trademark. Therefore, companies aggressively defend trademarks).

Obstacle number 2 is that Cadbury UK is owned by Mondelez International, which is owned by Kraft: an even bigger American company (market cap of 39B compared to 24B) who profits 2.4B a year compared to 830M a year. In other words, Hershey is the little guy in all of this!

It really sucks when your favorite product is no longer available (can I sue Honda to bring back certain cars?), but this is just how the free market works. Cadbury traded their USA rights for money. The deal is done.

I miss when journalism was (mostly) objective

Journalism has gone down the crapper, plain and simple. Not that it's the deepest topic, but Deflategate has tons of simple examples. News outlets are littered with pseudo-articles mixing facts and rumor and editorials jumping to judgment based on things the authors just assume. They're really more like tabloid fodder, for example I just saw this article this morning. Nice stock photo. It's entirely unrelated to the facts at hand, but it's going to stick in some people's minds and they'll be left with an image of obviously flat footballs. Without laces.

I want there to be an accreditation agency that certifies the general quality of a news source, looking for things like clearly separating fact from opinion, and making sure that facts are checked. Large infractions would damage the reputation a lot. For example when Fox perpetuated the claim that there were Muslim-controlled "no-go zones" all over Paris, going so far as to show a map, or when a TV station reported that the Asiana 214 flight's crew were named Sum Ting Wong, Bing Dang Ow, Wi Tu Lo and Ho Lee Fuk, in both cases based on a single tip that could be easily researched, they should be put on immediate probation.

Anyone not earning accreditation can't call themselves news. They are media, like "Fox Media Outlet" and "Cable Current-Events-Based Media Network" ("CCEBMN" doesn't sound as crisp as "CNN", does it?).