SavageDem

"I don't belong to an organized political party – I'm a Democrat." – Will Rogers

Category: General

  • Thinking Is Hard

    I’m beginning to doubt this evolution stuff. Take away the facial hair – although that’s now back in style – loincloths, and woolly mammoths, change hunting/gathering to shopping/eating out, and we haven’t changed much in 40,000 years. Oh sure, we’ve got bigger brains and (some people) walk more upright and we’ve got iPads and space rockets and $5 frappés; but most people still can’t – or won’t – think.

    After all, it’s much simpler to watch “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” than to try and understand health care legislation. To play “Angry Birds Star Wars” than comprehend the inanity of the “debt ceiling.” To rail about how you’re being taxed to death than to actually read and find out that your taxes are at a historic low and have only gone down in the last four years.

    Thinking is hard. People are lazy. And that’s why we have Fox News. It’s “news” for people that don’t want to think. There’s really no other explanation for it. Many people are content being spoon-fed a simple black and white message tailored to their ideological prejudices. It doesn’t matter that five minutes of using the Google machine could provide countless factual rebuttals to the propaganda being perpetuated by the proponents of perfidy; that’s too much work. Better to believe the convenient lies than activate some dusty neurons.

    I apologize for my ranting. I grow more and more frustrated with the apathy of our population. And this is exacerbated when I see bourbon-besotted bozos like John Boehner lying with impunity to the American public and putting party before the economic future of our country. As has always been the case, knowledge is power. And those who put their personal interests over those of the country seek to manipulate the populace through withholding knowledge. Or willfully distorting it. The only way to fight back is to not be satisfied with what the talking head on the TV machine tells you. You must arm yourself with data, put aside preconceived notions, and use the enlarged cerebrum that – theoretically – separates us from our ancient forebears. Be a seeker of truth. Think! Even when it’s difficult.

  • Mmmmmm….beer

    In these days of the explosion of craft beers, it becomes more and more important to determine what truly IS a beer. This is what the Australian government defines as beer (from the recently amended Excise Tariff Act 1921):

    Beer means a brewed beverage that:

    (a) is the product of the yeast fermentation of an aqueous extract, being predominantly an aqueous extract of cereals:

    (i) whether the cereals are malted or unmalted; and

    (ii) whether or not the aqueous extract contains other sources of carbohydrates; and

    (b) contains:

    (i) hops, or extracts of hops, such that the beverage has international bitterness units of not less than 4.0; or

    (ii) other bitters such that the beverage has a bitterness comparable to that of a beverage mentioned in subparagraph (i); and

    (c) contains not more than 4.0% by weight of sugars; and

    (d) has not had added to it, at any time, artificial sweetener; and

    (e) may have had added to it, at any time, other substances, including flavours, but only if, in the case of substances that contain alcohol (other than spirit distilled from beer), the alcohol did not add more than 0.5% to the total volume of the final beverage; and

    (f) may have had added to it, at any time, spirit distilled from beer, but only if that spirit did not add more than 0.5% to the total volume of the final beverage; and

    (g) contains more than 1.15% by volume of alcohol.

  • I’ll Take Personal Dignity for $400, Alex.

    The blockbuster news yesterday of the resignation of Best Buy’s CEO Brian Dunn – and subsequent fall-out indicating that there are “personal misconduct” issues that led to it – made me wonder: would you rather be a relatively anonymous middle-class person or a publicly-disgraced rich person?

    What is the price of personal dignity? Would you trade the security of never having to work again for the loss of respect of your family, friends, co-workers, and general public? Granted, the public’s memory is short, but still…

    I’m pretty sure I’d keep (what’s left of) my personal dignity and wallow in the (rapidly vanishing) middle class.

  • I wondered how much I was “lifting” when doing push-ups. A web search reveals that most empirical tests show men lift about 70-77% of body weight. The physics formula for a Second Class Lever says:

    F * FA = R * RA

    F = Force (weight I’m pushing)
    FA = Force Arm (distance from axis (toes) to hands)
    R = Resistance (my body weight)
    RA = Resistance Arm (distance from axis to my body’s center of mass)

    The Google says center of mass for men usually is typically in the range of 55-60% of height. So, hypothetically speaking, for a six-foot man weighing 210 pounds, with hands during push-up placed about 41/2‘ from toes, and center of mass at 55% of height (40″)…

    F * 54″ = 210lb * 40″
    F = 155.5 lbs

    Which equates to about 74% of my body weight pushed during a push-up. Which falls right in with most empirical estimates!

    Thanks for the physics refresher from Exercise Prescription!

  • Jihad Against Designers of Spare-Tire Storage Mechanisms!

    It’s a good thing I’m a pacifist. Or mostly. If not, I might be crafting a horrible death for the Dodge engineers responsible for designing the spare-tire storage mechanism for my van.

    I left work a week ago with about an hour to spare before the evening’s next activity. As I backed my van from the stall at my company’s parking garage, something felt amiss; it didn’t turn correctly. I drove about a hundred feet with the sinking realization that I had a flat tire. About 10°F, dark (dimly lit garage), an ice/dirt/salt mixture encrusted on the pavement, and wearing my dress clothes. Oh, and my spousal unit had moved the ever-present blanket out of the van into her car.

    Now, I have no anxiety about changing a tire. My anxiety is purely related to the difficulty in removing the spare tire from its storage location! You see, I’ve had this happen before; in fact, just about six months ago. So I knew what was coming. The spare tire is stowed underneath the chassis, and is winched up against the bottom of the van by means of a cable mechanism with a metal ‘T’ at the bottom. The idea is simple: open trunk of van, pop off plastic cover, use jack handle to turn ratchet counter-clockwise to lower cable, and spare tire is lowered to ground. BUT IT DOESN’T WORK!

    It’s pretty obvious that the underside of a vehicle is going to get dirty. Really dirty. Like mud-encrusted, oil-splattered, rusty, salt-caked, nasty-dirty. And that doesn’t work so well with metal parts. The upshot of this is that the $*&!{`%)# mechanism to lower the tire doesn’t. Oh, sure, the cable comes down nicely. But the tire remains wedged against the bottom of the van.

    I shook it. Hammered on it. Raised and lowered the cable multiple times. Drove forward and backward a few feet before slamming brakes to shake the thing. Jumped up and down on rear bumper. Cursed a blue streak that must have terrified all the lucky bastards leaving work without flat tires. Jammed the jack handle in and wrenched the sumbitch ’til the blood roared in my ears. Grabbed the tire and jerked it like a Leopard seal on a penguin. Pounded the hell out of the mechanism with the jack handle. Lather, rinse, repeat.

    After 45 minutes of unrelenting effort – all of this whilst precariously perching on two gloves to try and avoid completely ruining my clothes – I made one final all-out assault. I completely unspooled the cable until a long length was lying on the ground. I then grabbed the end and proceeded to yank the bejesus out of it, fore and aft, back and forth, left and right, up and down, until – voila! – the spare dropped to the ground. From then on, it only took 15 minutes (a few of which were wasted by undoing and then redoing lug nuts after not being sure whether or not wheel cover went over spare) to loosen lug nuts, jack ‘er up, remove flat – which had a nail hilted squarely in the center – put on spare, thread lug nuts, lower jack, tighten lug nuts, stow flat and tools, and hit the road. Only to get home just in time to change clothes and head out to my son’s hockey game.

    So, a warning: if you are, are responsible for, know, or even used to live next to the engineer that designed the spare tire storage for the 2001 Dodge Grand Caravan, look out: I cannot be held responsible for my actions. I’m sure a court will see it my way.

  • Arrested Development

    Lately I’ve been giggling every time I use my vehicle. As my spouse has the furthest to travel – and thus has dibs on the most fuel efficient ride – “my” vehicle has become the standard suburban minivan. This, in and of itself, has not lead to my fits of self-induced hilarity. On the contrary, most often it produces worries that I am becoming Chevy Chase in Vacation, and induces pre-mid-life crisis thoughts of sports cars and the BMW 535i… But no! I shall not covet my neighbor’s ass-et.

    No, what has been amusing me is the accoutrement theThe Family Truckster family truckster acquired a week ago, and which I have been too lazy/pre-occupied to remove. A long weekend family trip – for State Tournament hockey, if you must know – necessitated me equipping the van with our Yakima Space-Boosterâ„¢ cargo “pod.” Since returning over a week ago, I’ve been tooling about town with my topper still attached. And every time I walk out to get in it, I can’t help but think I’ve suddenly become Michael Bluth.


    Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) of Arrested Development
    Bluth, as you’re no doubt aware, is the only semi-functional member of the extended Bluth Family in the outstanding show Arrested Development. When his father is finally arrested for his illegal dealings in the house-of-cards Bluth Company, one of the only assets remaining to the company – now headed (in bankruptcy) by son Michael – is the stair truck formerly used to service the corporate jet. As it is the only vehicle he has, Michael uses it for all his travel around L.A.


    While my extended family is not quite as messed up as the Bluths, I still guffaw every time I go to run an errand.

    The Bluth Company stair truck
    The Bluth Company stair truck
    The SavageDem Family Truckster
    The SavageDem Family Truckster


  • 100 Pushups

    These Internets are really a cool thing for seekers-of-all-knowledge like myself. One can totally see how a person could lock herself in a climate-controlled room with a feeding tube, IV-drip, catheter, and T1 connection for her laptop, and never emerge again. Sort of a Matrix redux as you get “the feed” pumped into your brain for whatever floats your boat.

    My latest attempt at getting back on the fitness bandwagon began in typical Internet-segue fashion with the quest for a solution to a nagging software problem. After finding the answer on a blog – thank you, Trevin Chow! – I naturally had to surf the site a bit to see what was there (since Trevin had some similar interests to mine, e.g. photography and technology). He had an interesting note in there about hundredpushups.com and the Hundred Pushups training program. This piqued my interest.

    Essentially, Steve Speirs – the owner of the domain – has put together a six-week program to enable virtually anyone to perform 100 consecutive pushups. And no, it’s not a scam, there’s no catch, you don’t have to pay anything, yada, yada, yada. It’s something he did himself, and decided to formalize it to make it available to others. He’s got a great, clear, easy-to-follow web site with stupid-proof instructions, and you can even log your progress online and hold yourself accountable (thanks for putting the pressure on, Orlo…) by utlizing Andreas Viklund’s very nice Pushups Logger site.

    So check it out. I’m on Week 1, Day 2. Oh, you want to know what my baseline was? 14. I could maybe have squeaked out 15, but my arms were already shaking. I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m gonna see if I can get mi esposa to participate as well.

    P.S. Here’s something else cool that I found during this foray: pocketmod. A new turn on the old tech of paper-folding. Turn an 81/2” by 11″ piece of paper into a small book that contains anything you want: day-planner, to-do list, or hundred pushups log!

  • A Big To-Do about Avian Flu!

    Could this be the cure?  A new “quickie” vaccine that:

    • Only takes a month to produce
    • Doesn’t require live virus to create
    • Has a 100% protection rate!

    Too good to be true? Let’s hope not.

  • Brew gogs

    You know the old adage about how they, “get better looking at closing time.”?  Turns out there’s a scientific reason for so-called “beer goggles”!  Alcohol apparently tends to affect your nucleus accumbens (oooh, now there’s a dirty word!), and causes you to find your sexual prey more attractive than if you were sober!  They did a study at the University of Glasgow (“If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!”) that showed alcohol caused a 25% increase in how attractive people rated faces!

  • A Call to Action

    Some pithy words by georgia10 at dailykos.  A sampling:

    Democrats can either surrender this government to a party which seeks to destroy it, or we can take Lincoln’s advice and play our available cards.  To those who say filibusters–judicial, patriot act, etc–are too politically costly, I say that failure to filibuster is conceding that this nation isn’t worth fighting for. Instead of worrying that we will be labeled “obstructionist,” I say we filibuster Alito, filibuster the Patriot Act, filibuster time and time again until this crazy government comes to a screeching halt.  Enough is enough. The list of scandals is overshadowed only by the list of names of the 2,190 whose deaths have yet to be honored by this administration.