Adidas Solar Boost ST: March 13 2020 Pair

So many of my shoe purchases start out with sore feet. In this case it was a sore left bunion, and maybe it is caused by my too-small pair of Brook Ricochets or maybe my worn out Brooks Levitate 2s.

In any case, I went to my local shoe store, and checkout the Brooks Levitate 3's, but they are built as a slip-on shoe without shoe tongue, and so the laces cannot be used to adjust the tightness of the upper. I had a pair of shoes like once (PureBoost ZG), and while they was comfortable for standing in, they could NOT be held tightly enough on my foot. My toes either hit the front of the toe box, or the knit fabric puckered when I tightened down on the largely decorative shoe laces. Eventually I took the laces off, and used them as slippers around the house. They are still comfortable to stand in.

I read some reviews, and decided to try Adidas Solar Boost ST. I selected them because they seem to address the problems that I had with my last Boost shoes, which is too little structure, and generally floppiness to them. Of course, the Boost sole is springy and does a great job of protecting my foot. They also last a long time.

Solar Boost has somewhat less Boost expanded polyurethane and two structural features. It has a thermoplastic olefin bead between the midsole and the upper for support, and it has a dumbbell shaped nylon insert that keeps the shoe from twisting. The higher-end Boost shoes always had nylon inserts, and this version has an even larger one.

It has a knitted upper that is stretched comfortable. While the styling isn't the flashiest, this color isn't so bad.

In size 11, the SolarBoost weighs 338 g, which is 27g or 7% less than the Brook's Levitate 2s they replaced. They are about the same as my old Brooks Ghost 9's (335g). More numb

2020 Solar Boost          338 g
Brooks Levitate 2         365 g
Brooks Ghost 9             335 g
2018 Pure Boost            335 g
2015 Boost SuperNova  335 g
2012 Energy Boost        300 g


In the view below you can see how the white polyolefin elastomer near the heel provides some support and protection, but does not extend around the back of the heel.

In the following photo, one can see the nylon support that prevents twisting. This shoe sole has the Continental Tire logo. Continental has a cooperative agreement with Adidas since 2007. My 2017 Pure Boost shoes has a similar looking black rubber outersole, but no Continental logo. My Boost SuperNova has a different style outersole.

In the photo below, one can see the triangle of the nylon stabilizer extending around on the inside heel. Maybe this is for some sort of added support, or maybe it is a styling feature.

The photo below shows the weaving in the upper. It really looks like a sock in this image.

========================

August 2018 Update

I now have 500 miles on these shoes, and they are still doing well. They are my favorite pair of shoes now. I like them so much that I bought another pair. In the summertime, my shoes get wet from sweaty and I like to give them a day to dry out. 

Here is a link to my latest pair of Adidas SolarBoost shoes. 

The Culture of Smiling

House, Hanges, Javidan and Gupta did a study of smiling, what they call affect, in different countries, and they use it study attitude toward individualism and the tie it to economics.

The highly individualistic Americans are in the middle -- smiling slightly more than most.

Christmas Magick

Christmas Magick

Tis the day before guests come,
and all though the house,
No one is happy especially my spouse. 

I with my Kindle, my eyes under a cap,
had just settled down for a well-deserved nap.

Here she comes, here she comes, my mellow to douse
Get up, get up, something has gone wrong with the house.

The switch in the bathroom broke all of a sudden.
If you don’t fix it, folks can’t get their "work" done.

Off to the horses and off to the sleigh,
Off to Home Depot and RIGHT AWAY,

Wait! No! It’s the only day all year,
When you can’t go to stores to buy switches or gear,

Away to the basement I flew like a flash,
To see what treasures, I’d find in the trash.

Off to the basement! Down on the stairs!
Hoping and praying a spare switch is there. 

In boxes of junk, in places where things from old projects had massed,
I sifted and sorted the gear from the past.

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
when I met with this obstacle, I looked to the sky.

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But variable resistance light switch, which caused me to cheer.

To the top of the steps, to the bath by the wall,
Wire it in, wire it in, wire it in all

I was so happy that now it was fixed; I knew in that moment must be St Nick,
Yes, yes that's right, my bath light was fixed by Christmas Magick!

Life Metaphor

A Life Metaphor, is a meaningful metaphor for your life. It come up on the Slate CultureFest on Oct 13, 2015. Susan Krause Whitbourne wrote about them more intellectually in Psychology Today.  She liked metaphors like caterpillars & butterflies, or winding roads. 

I have a metaphor that I have carried with me from adolescence, and I thought of it when I was ten. It has evolved though. It is about defending myself, with originally, an anti-aircraft gun. I thought of it when a neighbor parent was at my house, and accusing my brother of some misdeed. The anti-aircraft equipment was impossibly complicated and always breaking.

As I grew older, I favored jet fighters over anti-aircraft guns, perhaps after I had gotten a car. Similarly the plane was impossibly complicated and always breaking; Just like my old cars. I also felt insecure in my early adulthood, like I was one auto wreck from homelessness.

When I got a job at a large company in a fancy research center, I imagined super-modern fighters, and while impossibly complicated like my conception of the adult world, they didn't break as much.

Later, I worked at an industrial site, and they were stripped-down and rusting. Competent, but with missing rivets, parts that I didn't understand, and always need repair.

Time marched on I got a bigger house, and I found it too dangerous to be flying around, I decided to shoot baddies down like Ronald Reagan with ground-based lasers. This isn't so crazy because my thesis work involved focusing and tuning big lasers. This fit my more sedentary life, and my unwillingness to get hurt. The lasers always needed fiddling with.

When I became a manager, I became way too busy, and I want to tear down the machines and build something that doesn't need fixing. Gleaming new machines with good software that I can fix and forget. Just turn it on, and the computer does it. I don't have time to fiddle with it. On the other hand, they kept needing upgrades just like my Mac.

Today, we are empty nesters, and I am looking for connection. I am interested in a network.  "It takes a village" to be okay. The neighbors and I each have 2-3 drones that work together, and our autonomous network of thousands provides safety for all.

So there is my life metaphor.

White House's Reply to the Death Star Petition is Great Writing

Remember that internet petition that the Government build a Death Star? Read the surprisingly humorous and clever reply.

OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE TOSecure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.

This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For

By Paul Shawcross

The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
• Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

However, look carefully (here's how) and you'll notice something already floating in the sky -- that's no Moon, it's a Space Station! Yes, we already have a giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth that's helping us learn how humans can live and thrive in space for long durations. The Space Station has six astronauts -- American, Russian, and Canadian -- living in it right now, conducting research, learning how to live and work in space over long periods of time, routinely welcoming visiting spacecraft and repairing onboard garbage mashers, etc. We've also got two robot science labs -- one wielding a laser -- roving around Mars, looking at whether life ever existed on the Red Planet.

Keep in mind, space is no longer just government-only. Private American companies, through NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (C3PO), are ferrying cargo -- and soon, crew -- to space for NASA, and are pursuing human missions to the Moon this decade.

Even though the United States doesn't have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, we've got two spacecraft leaving the Solar System and we're building a probe that will fly to the exterior layers of the Sun. We are discovering hundreds of new planets in other star systems and building a much more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that will see back to the early days of the universe.

We don't have a Death Star, but we do have floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke's arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers.

We are living in the future! Enjoy it. Or better yet, help build it by pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field. The President has held the first-ever White Housescience fairs and Astronomy Night on the South Lawn because he knows these domains are critical to our country's future, and to ensuring the United States continues leading the world in doing big things.

If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the Death Star's power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

Paul Shawcross is Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget

Tell us what you think about this response and We the People.

My Journey to Geoengineering

Chapter One - The Weekly Reader  -- I learned about climate change like many people did: in grade school. I was in grade school a long time ago, and I read in the Weekly Reader that there were two effects on the climate greenhouse gases and reflection from particulates in smog.  In those days scientists were not sure which effect was stronger, and whether the earth would warm or cool.

As I grew up evidence built that the greenhouse gas effect was stronger, and that the earth was warming. It was also easier to stop particulate pollution than carbon dioxide pollution.

Chapter Two LeChatlelier  -- I thought that the earth's climate was in a stable equilibrium -- like a chemical equilibrium. I am a chemist, and it was natural to see the world that way. In chemistry there is a concept called Le Chatelier's principle which holds that a chemical system will alter itself to re-establish equilibrium. Last year, I heard a climate change denier make such an argument . (Here is a more sophisticated version.)  At the time I thought the same, I thought more CO2 in the air, would mean faster growing forests and more algae in the sea. The biosphere would moderate the increase. As Time passed scientists tested one source of CO2 absorption after another, and nothing is fast enough. There are still people fertilizing the sea to increase CO2 absorption, but the best data shows the algae are eaten by other animals before they sink to the bottom of sea and leave the biosphere. Let's remember ocean fertilization though, because it is a Geoengineering Idea.

Chapter Three  Instability -- As global warming plays out we see faster temperature increases than expected from the carbon dioxide green house gas alone. Rather than returning to equilibrium, it seems there are auto-accelerated factors. Here are two:  1. Less ice means less reflection of sunlight back into space. 2. Warmer ocean means release of dissolved gases making green house gases worse: specifically methane which is ordinarily trapped in cold water at the bottom of the ocean.

The news item that kicked off this essay is about methane hydrates at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, which may melt. If these large methane deposits melt, it will increase the amount of green house gas, cause more warming, more ocean warming, and more melting. We will see an acceleration of global warming.

Chapter Four  -- Change.  In business, we talk often about the inevitability of change, and how we need to embrace it. The alternative to change is ----- Well there is no alternative, unless you count death.  Change is thrust upon us, and while we can wish for boring times, we get the times we get.

Chapter Four -- Geoengineering. Geoengineering is doing an engineering project on a global scale to change the climate, and I am becoming an advocate. With accelerating climate change there will be climate change to a huge extent with large sea level increases and unpredicable consequences. It is unlikely that the Earth would become Kevin Costner's Waterworld, but that would be unacceptable. In Waterworld, people lived in floating colonies because all the continents had been submerged by melting ice.

There are many geoengineering concepts to cool the Earth, and one is to create a cloud of dust in space to reflect the sunlight, and in effect, dim the sun.

Many environmentalists hate this idea preferring to return carbon dioxide emissions to stone age levels, but it is too late for that.

Chapter Five --  Dr. Strangelove.  There is one simple sad geoengineering solution, a thermonuclear war would toss up enough dust to cool the Earth, and perhaps stop greenhouse gas production as well.  National Geographic and NASA have done simulations that show it.  I'd rather not see millions of people die in a war, but sadly a trigger happy North Korea or Pakistan is the most plausible solution to global warming.

My Vegetable Garden for '12

This year's garden got a very early start because I could work the soil back in MARCH -- global warming came though with lots of great Spring weather.

Big changes this year are: 

++ Bye-bye Strawberries. After three terrible seasons, I have torn them all out. They kept sending runners so they grew into a mat of tiny strawberries -- each one too small to make fruit. I also tore out the blueberries which have been doing NOTHING.

++ Hello EIGHT tomatoes. Last year, I nearly had CROP FAILURE when the late blight stuck. I put in twice as many this year. I am also growing a few in different ways like, some in Wall-O-Waters and some without. Some staked and some running. And five different varieties. No heirlooms either -- only blight resistant hybrids.   

++ Catnip continues to takeover more real estate. Jenny likes it though. 

++ Asparagus - despite the asparagus jinx, I have big health asparagus ferns this year. [The asparagus jinx is that I always get transferred before I get a chance to eat the asparagus. In the last house I delayed planting it because I did not want to move. Later I got cocky thinking it was just a superstition, and I planted some, and then --- I got transferred. So the healthy crop this year is making a prediction. . .]

++ Marigolds - This year I have marigolds in the old strawberry patch. They are in a bed rather than a border. Sofia French Marigolds in front and  American Marigolds in back. 

++ Miracle Grow -- This year I am a commercial for Miracle Grow. After last year generic products, I am back to name brand fertilizer. I know it is all the same, but Miracle Grow is a good product at a good price. 

Varieties

Burpee's Big Boy. Vigorous and fairly self-supporting so far.

Early Girl Improved. This is the vigorous one;
The less vigorous one produced a fruit on 8-June:
Early!

Acorn squash grown from a sweet variety
we bought at the store. 

A Snack Attack Tomato. Looks good. I'll let you know how it tastes.

This is my Sweet 100. Very vigorous. I have had
two cherry tomatoes so far. Both were from flowers that set inside.

Other crops are basil, peas, eggplant, peppers (pimento), and leeks. The peas are strong, and falling all over each other. 

See my older garden post from 2009, and the 2010 tomato posting.

Fancy Feast Addiction

Cat's like Nestle's Fancy Feast cat food  that customers say their cats are addicted to it, and won't eat anything else. They call it "Kitty Crack," although I think that catnip is a better fit since it looks like a narcotic. 

I can confirm that. At our house we switched our cats back from other foods, when one cat got sick. They had been eating exotic cat food that we bought frozen. Now they are back on Fancy Feast and they won't touch anything else. 

I have to believe that Nestle chemists are working hard "cat-testing" to get formulas that cats want to eat. I suppose that is what gourmet cat food means -- if it means anything at all.

Most people think that Fancy Feast is healthy, although people can't agree on cat diets anymore than people diets. 

Nestle's bought Purina in 2001 and merged it with their existing Friskies line. They offer SEVENTEEN different cat food brands in the United States, and that is after the government made them divest Meow Mix because of anti-trust. Fancy Feast is one of their high end brands, but probably not the most expensive those seem to be Purina One, Pro Plan, and Purina Veterinary Diets. 

There are five kids of Fancy Feast, regular, appetizers, Elegant Melodies, Gourmet Cat Food (a dry food), and Gourmet Kitten Food (a canned food.) Most Fancy Feast is canned, and the ingredients are on-line along with nutritional analysis. Like most canned food they are mostly water (78-82%) and 9-12% protein. Gravy-containing foods have 3% more water and 2% less protein. 

Volcanos are Best

Here is an interesting study about different energy sources and how economical they are. It is a hard to read graph, because there are different ways to implement each technology. Each "mode" is given a darker stripe. 

The cheapest energy by far is geothermal. So if you live near a volcano, you need to drill for steam. It is even a reason to move next door to volcano -- although periodic lava flows and explosive eruptions are a problem. 

As we all know hydropower from dams is cheap power too.  Surprisingly a related water-power technology, ocean tides are not cost-effective. It seems the tidal energy systems need to be big, heavy and expensive. 

Burning wood or farm debris for heat is cheap too; this is wood gasification and then running a regular internal combustion engine on that. 

Using the sun to produce hot water for your house, also makes sense. Using it to make electricity is pretty expensive. Solar power is best used to make heat not electricity. 

All this comes from the UN Climate Change group called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Americans and Money

 We all spend too much time trying to make money compared to what we would rather be doing.

Often I say that if people did not have to eat, then there would be many more poets and artists. Similarly I tell my kids to be practical about their job prospects.

Every year Parade Magazine runs an issue on What People Make, which is one of their most popular. I came across some census and polling data on income, and I thought I'd share it.

Data from the Census Dept 2010

The first graph shows two things, first  income for men  has been flat since 1974.  This is all in 2009 dollars -- meaning the effect of inflation has been erased.

This means all the GDP growth has not been going to individual guys. Of course there are more people now that before, but each individual is making the same amount.

Second women still make less than men. This is improving, but not that fast. 77% is surprisingly low.

I am not going to engage the sexual politics of income disparity between men and women. Way too complicated for today.

The above figure shows the average income in the USA in 2009 dollars. The average income is about $50,000. Middle class according to the census bureau goes from half that to 1.5 times that, or 25,000 to 75,000.

From Pew Research 2008

 One of the keys to the American Psyche is the American Dream, which is that anybody who works hard can become successful, for example become President.

This figure shows people assessment of how well their standard of living compares to their parent's.  See my previous post on this topic.

Upper income and middle income groups believe in the American dream. The lower income group is divided on whether the kids will have it better than their parents.

The housing price crash has certainly helped young people buy a house, and also degraded many older folks standard of living.

On the other hand, the rising cost of education is putting a higher and higher hurdle in front of high achievers from disadvantaged backgrounds.  Education is an important part of equality of opportunity.

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Dreaming of Gardening Despite the Snows of January.

The Best Part about Winter is Dreaming About Spring.


I have looked back at old garden posts, and they need some information about how different garden plants turned out.

In 2009, I posted on the Profusion Zinnia in the front yard, and they did not work out. They came up and grew, but the fairly shady spot with its weak soil was a disappointment. The plants never were tall enough and showy enough.

I posted on the "well-reviewed" yellow pear tomatoes too in 2009.  The plant grew vigorously, but the yellow pear tomatoes tasted like like wheat-paste. Not very good at all.

The Black Cherry tomatoes were a big success. The tomatoes were so good that I wish they would have been more productive.

Last Year's Garden Plants - 2010


Eggplant - standard variety - very product, but took up more space than expected

Leaf lettuce (Burpee Muslin Mix)/Spinach/Arugula (Burpee) - turned out well, I planted them between the tomatoes, and the shade extended the season. The rabbits never found them, or if they did they left them alone. The Arugula was great.

Zucchini (Ambassador) - Very strong and productive, and lasted all season. Large plant that needed more space.

Cucumbers - big success. I just bought them at the store, and it worked pretty well.

Peas - (Burpee Snow Wind and Burpee Mr. Big) Not a good year for these. I only harvested a few peas. the cucumbers grew through the rabbit fence that I had around them, and I never was able to take the fence down.

Catnip - God! The catnip grew and grew. Even with Jenny harvesting continuously, and the cats flopping down on the plants, they still invaded the eggplant and the peas.

Tomatoes - one of each -  Burpee Big Boy; Pinetree Seeds Black Cherry, Burpee Black Truffle, Sungold, Sweet 100;  The most disappointing part was the failure of the large tomatoes. My tomatoes typically get mold during July, but usually they keep growing faster than the mold can kill them.  The plants had a good start, and the red cherry tomatoes produced pretty well. The Black Cherry, Black Truffle and Big Boy were very disappointing. In 2011, I intend to start a second crop of tomatoes in June -- in addition to the main crop started that I put in the garden in April using Wall-o-waters.

Pineapple Tomatillo (Pinetree Seeds) - I only planted one of these, and it was just OK. I have had more productive plants in other years.  These taste great though.

Strawberries - This was year four for most of the strawberries, and I was really disappointed. I attributed the bad harvest in 2009 to over crowding, and thinned aggressively. The plants did not seem to take off in the Spring like they should have. I thinned them out again this year, and if I don't get some fruit, I am going to take these out, and put in flowers.

Petunias (White and Red Madness) - One of my favorite varieties, but increasingly hard to find. The white ones were more vigorous than the red ones, and some parts of the planting were out of balance.

Brussel sprouts - turned out pretty well, and tasted like Brussel Sprouts.  Ended up with more brussel sprouts than I wanted.

Butternut squash - good year for butternuts. Still have some.

Pimento - I like pimento. It has a thick skin, and never gets hot. The peppers are small enough that half don't go to waste.  One thing I have learned is that all my peppers are 100 times hotter than the store bought analog.

French Marigolds - I planted two trays of French Marigolds as a border around the garden, and that worked pretty well.

Basil - I only plant basil for the fragrance in the garden. I seldom use it in the kitchen - perhaps once a season. I don't really like pesto, but it does smell nice outside.



2011 Garden Plants

Eggplant (Lavender Touch) -

Arugula and leaf lettuce -

Cucumber (Muncher) -

Zucchini (Eight Ball, Pinetree Seeds)-

Tomatoes - eight plants - five started in April; three in June - (Sun Gold, Sun Sugar, Black Krim, Early Girl (Improved) and Celebrity) Early Girl and Celebrity are returning to the line-up after several years on the bench. Early Girl is the most popular tomato in the US, so there must be something good about it. I am also after a medium sized tomato. Celebrity has a lot of disease resistance. I have never been too impressed with it in the past, but the Celebrity tomatos look nice and taste pretty good. Black Krim may be a mistake -- it is a Black Russian Beefsteak Heirloom, so there is a 90% chance that next year's posting will talk about how I got only 1 or 2 decent tomatoes from this plant, but I can hope it will be a treasure of flavorful exotic fruit. I hope to plant the Sun Gold and Sun Sugar today.

Pimento  - Got these on eBay from Dragonfly183.

ASPARAGUS - The story is that in every house I have lived in, I always get transferred before the asparagus is large enough to eat. I have been hesitating planting it since I am not ready to move. I am ordering asparagus roots this year. I am going to take space devoted to strawberries, and convert it to asparagus.

Zinnea (Queen Sophia) -

Petunia (Prime Time) -  I gave up on looking for more of my favorite, the Madness Petunia. I don't want to try Waves; it seems everyone is planting them.

The backyard is waiting for Spring too.

Budgeting Season Comes After Christmas Season.

My 2010 expenses.  The top 20% of categories have 67% of expenses.

Near New Year I always review my budget. This might be because we spent too much on Christmas gifts.

This year I downloaded 850 transactions from Mint into Excel, and sorted through them.  It is good practice using pivot tables.

I spend too much on cable TV and eating out. Although it feels like my DW's indulgences in organic foods are expensive -- grocery spending is not going up.

The mortgage is the biggest expense, then groceries and other household stuff, house repairs, and so on. Taxes would be the biggest of all, but I ignore them. The budget buster this year was the new furniture we bought.

My budget is a legacy of my grad student years when we tracked everything, so we could afford food and toys for the kids both. This system was pretty detailed.

When I came out of grad school, the budget helped us figure out how big a car payment we could afford, and later I used it to help find money for college expenses. These systems got looser and looser.

I used to use Borland Quattro, which was a spreadsheet program. Later I switched to Excel -- then off to Quicken, then Quicken Online and now Mint.  Recall that Quicken bought Mint in 2009, and promised millions of users an automated conversion path to Mint. Quicken never delivered on that, instead they just told me and thousands of others to reapply. It was easy to switch though. Took an hour or less.

Budgets are so easy with Mint.com -- at least at the level of detail that I am comfortable with. I know some people track down to the last nickel, and I don't do that. My budgets are trying to get the big stuff, and try to make the little stuff average out correctly over time.

Mint.com can't be as secure as PC or Mac based software, but it sure is easier to use. Far far better than Quicken for Mac's offering.

On the other hand, these programs create canned budgets don't answer the questions I want answered, and I can organize it myself in Excel better. That is why I download everything, and replot it myself. I can also compare this year with the last few years, and that is really useful.  For example that is how I know that groceries cost less than last year despite the organic yogurt in the 'frig.

After I look at expenses, I want to look at savings -- so digging into the 401k is next.

Cheese Nips, Neuroscience, and Free Will

On Tuesday I threw out a box of Cheese Nips because I believed I would eat to many of them. Having them in the house, being tempted by them, I knew I would eat them -- even though I did not want to. Was I out of control? Was I eating involuntarily? Is there no free will? 

What is will and what is a mind anyway?

Although some metaphysical types disagree, I am convinces that my mind is in my brain, and the chemical reactions in the brain interact with the body to produce thought, muscle control, and volitional action.

This appealing Wikipedia article takes up the topic. This research field is pretty old, about 25 years. It started with electrodes on different brain areas, rather than newer MRI based techniques.

Basically, researchers watched electrical polarizations in the brain in areas associated with motor control, and then were able to predict what subjects would do up to ten seconds before they acted.

And then they raised big-picture questions about the nature of volition and free-will.

In some of the early work, volunteers were asked to record when they felt the impulse to move, and that was compared with the polarization in the brain.

This work seems misinterpreted today because it is not clear how the volunteers reported the timing of their intent to move. This was tenths of a second after the electrical polarization of the brain, and pretty hard to make a big deal about. In other words, the self-reporting muddled the results.

Newer work with better instruments seem to show that thinking about an action can cause the brain to fire neurons as if it is acting. This muddles the interpretation of the 1980's era study. Secondly there seem to be multiple decision making centers in the brain that interact. Motor movement is initiated in the front of the brain (where the higher level thought is), and moves to the back.

In regard to free-will, some behaviors are involuntary like yawning, coughing, and more significantly Tourette's Syndrome tics. Most people can control these things within limits. Of course people with schizophrenia don't believe they are in control of their bodies.

If a drummer is trying to play a fast rhythm, the hands are controlled in a different way. Sometimes I wonder at how quickly my hands can type out a word that I am not quite sure that I can spell right.

People with "alien arm syndrome" are a special case. Strange as it seems, MRI work on people with "alien arm syndrome" seems to show an atypical pattern of brain activation prior to movement. In this case, people don't feel like they are controlling the arm, although their brain really is controlling it. The portion of the brain responsible for the arm is not interacting well with the rest of the brain.

There are limits to the control we have over our bodies, and some decision-making is "sub-conscious." In "normal" people, large strategic activities are under our control, but the details are fuzzy, and how the brain works is less deterministic than it seems.

My brain uses some kind of committee process to decide when to eat Cheese Nips. Sometimes, when my more diet conscious-brain parts leave the room, the rest of my mental committee votes to eat Cheese Nips, or used to.

Detroit Downriver Housing Prices UP 22%, Who Knew?

In 2010 I hear black humor frets about how much money we have lost on our houses.

Happily and surprisingly, 2010 May house prices Downriver have gone up by 22.4% in the last twelve months, from $60,777 to $74,426.

Obviously housing downriver continues to be affordable. It might not actually be the prices that are going up, it could be that larger houses are selling better than small ones.

If you graph it out, it is not quite so optimistic. The Michigan Realtors measure of sale price jumps around a great deal. On the other hand, 2010 as been over 2009 for 4 of the past 5 months. This means it is not getting worse.

DecaBrom, the Fire Retardant in TV's Finally Banned. Environment Wins. Firefighters Lose.

DecaBrom is a fire retardant used in electronics housings. There has been a battle between environmentalists who want to ban it for safety and fire marshals who want to prevent house fires.

Burning TV set in a test:

DecaBrom has been under environmental pressure for years since it doesn't degrade and similar materials are toxic. Decabrom is decabromo diphenyl ether, and as the deca prefix should lead you to believe, it has ten bromines. The analogs with six or eight bromines cost less, but they are toxic to the liver and thyroid. They were banned years ago. The biggest crime of decabrom is its analogy to these materials. Those materials are retained in the body for years. Its second crime is being the brominated analog of PCB's or polychlorinated biphenyls. PCB's really are toxic.  (Regulators can't tell difference between halogens. ) Research shows that decabrom largely passes thought the body unaltered. Of course you can't incinerate it because it is a fire retardant.

Decabrom was banned in Germany in the 80's. Some conjectured that it degrades into the more toxic, nonabromide or octabromide.

No one would care about this if the fire retardant did not save lives. There are 325 TV fires per million TVs in Europe where decabrom is banned, and there are only 5 fires per million in the USA. Secondly, few old TV's end up soaking in the river, where it might get into the biosphere. Most are landfilled, and some are recycled.

Nonetheless, the US producers of decabrom, Chemtura and Albemarle have agreed to stop making it. There are alternative fire retardants, but one needs to use a lot more. I am sure the decline in sales of CRT TV's maybe a factor since LCD TV's are safer.

Happiness and Artificial Intelligence: Sci-Fi Part 2

In my first post on happiness and artificial intelligence, I tried to be fact-based and talked about artificial intelligence programing. In this post, I want to about artificial intelligence in "literature," (which sounds so much more substantive than in "Science Fiction".)

I became interested in this topic because I am reading the 1992 book  Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams, where hero Ford Prefect hotwires a security robot so that it is always happy. The happy robot is so content that it stops chasing him and cheerfully cooperates.  This got me thinking that even if people could build a self-aware robot, why would it want to do anything?

The epitome of bored science fiction AI is Marvin the Robot from Hitchhickers Guide to the Galaxy. He is so smart that everything that happens bores him, and he has lived so long that he has seen it all before. [At left is Marvin from the 2005 movie.]

 Ray Kerzwell considers that societies advanced enough to venture to earth might not be motivated to do so.

"this thinking might explain why we haven't found extraterrestrial life yet: intelligences on the cusp of achieving interstellar travel might be prone to thinking that with the galaxies boiling away in just 10^19 years, it might be better just to stay home and watch TV".

He introduces a future dystopia called  "A "societal fixed point" [that] might be defined as a state that self-reinforces, remaining in the status quo--which could in principle be peaceful and self-sustaining, but could also be extremely boring--say, involving lots of people plugged into the Internet watching videos forever."


Kerzwell's society has reached a high state of material prosperity, citizens don't really need to do anything productive.

You are probably are familiar with "Problem of Evil." Why does a good God allow suffering in the world? One of the answers is that pain serves a purpose, for example painful swelling helps a wound cure or a painful burn helps children to avoid touching the stove again.  Similarly sadness, anxiety, paranoia, need and desire, like hunger and lust get people up off the couch and doing things.

This shows up in The Matrix where Agent Smith says:

Agent Smith: Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.

Many people have observed that happiness is temporary, with stories like  "I thought the new red sports car/new boat/new house/new wife would make me happy but after a few weeks/months, I got bored and wanted something more."

Neolithic Housing and Wattle & Daub Fireplaces

This all started with Thursday's (Oct 22) Survivor where those poor people spent five days huddled in the rain in wet clothes, mostly shivering.

Of course, Fall has come to Michigan and the leaves are filling up my yard which is wet with rain. Perhaps that is why I could not stop thinking about the sorry shelters that these people were in.

 I thought they should build a fireplace with a little chimney. I did not know how to do that, but  the BBC  had a whole posting on how to build a wattle and daub fireplace.

The network of sticks is the wattle, and the mud is the daub. More advanced daubers put straw or hair in their mud. Even better was a little plaster or cement.

If these are outdoors, they usually did not have chimney's, but one could put in a chimney and put it closer to the house.


Wattle and daub has an long history extending back to Neolithic times.  This is a Native American wattle and daub home.


It is interesting to think about how primitive people live, but I know that it is a whole lot more comfortable in 21st Century America. I suppose I'll pick up that theme at Thanksgiving.

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The Arctic Ice Update. September is the Beginning of the 2010 Ice Pack

As everyone knows, the arctic ice melts in the summer, and freezes in the winter. In September, the melting stops, and the freezing slowly becomes more important. It is a good time to see what happened.

2009 was a frustrating year for climate-change activists, the sea ice is greater than 2007 or 2008, but the ice pack is well below the 30 year trend.

While green house gas emissions and green house gas content has never been higher, the climate is not monotonically getting warmer. While the sea ice is not the lowest on record, it is the third lowest according to Nature.

David Easterling of NOAA at Berkeley says that the noisiness of the climate data makes interpretation difficult for the impatient. He says it is easy for skeptics to find periods of warming.

This reminds me of how investment advisors claimed the bonds pay higher than stocks, back last February. That was because the market was at record lows. Now you don't hear that as much.

There has been a lot of noise on this issue as passionate environmentalists get shrill to advance their cause. The truth is that predictions about ice-free polar caps in the short run, don't help.

We visited Greenfield Village, the outdoor historical museum in Dearborn Michigan today.

I was surprised how enjoyable the day at Greenfield Village was. We went there on Labor Day and visited an eclectic collection of historical homes, late 19th Century workshops and a vintage farm. This is a large site and there is a lot to see. We spent four hours and saw about half of the Greenfield Village proper, and did not venture to the Henry Ford Museum itself.

It is hard to say what the best part was. Places like the boarding house where Thomas Edison's Menlo Park staffers lived actually had a lot of depth to them. 

There was a 1880's physician's office, and I was surprised to see the backroom where he made his elixirs in bulk - three fifteen gallon tanks, and many smaller barrels. Also a collection of molars. 

Jenny, because of her wool business, liked the water-powered carding mill, and of course the Marino sheep.

Not everything was outstanding, for example they had Edison's Florida Workshop, but all the equipment was behind glass, and hard to see. Somewhat better was replica of one of Edison's DC electric power plants, with authentic machinery inside. 

Oh, if you go, try the Hard Apple Cider. 

Leading Indicators Up!!

It made me happy to see such unabashedly positive economic news for a change.

This is an average of twelve economic measures that historically predict what the economy is going to do. The individual metrics are some positive, some negative.

Plus, check out the flash animation of the figure at USAToday.com. You need to see how the little bars fan into position, and then bounce to their correct value. It is -- well -- flashy.

Why does this matter? Lots of reasons, including that I own a house in metro Detroit.

This is from the private economic consultatnts IHS Global Insight, who presumably was paid by USA Today for the forecast. The more widely accepted leading indicator is from the non-profit Conference Board. Their Aug 20 indexes are at right.