Some Photos

Shots from 2 Sept 2016.

Abstract Still Lives

As you can see above, I have a wine blog, and I often look for labels that I like. These are usually abstracted still life with a theme that reflect my mood when I bottle it. Since I have a few days off, I am thinking about painting some still lives. Here are some inspirational examples from the web.

From Mark Webster at www.dailypainters.com

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/abstract-still-life-painting-robert-joyner.html

http://mladshoi.deviantart.com/art/Abstract-still-life-174280419

http://www.chess-museum.com/modern-and-modernist---special-show.html

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/abstract-wine-decantur-sherri-of-palm-springs.html

http://picterest.info/v2fpbwdq-wine-glass-drawing-abstract

More on my Pinterest page

New Shoe Revue: Adidas Pureboost ZG

My new running shoes are an improved Adidas Boost design. See my previous post of my previous pair. These are Pureboost ZG, obviously in the black & gray. It's got a knit upper which is stretch and breathable. I think it is comfortable especially in the bunion area where some shoes are too tight.

Black and gray make for dull photos in the blog, but for better shoes after these shoes have lived their life as running shoes and have been retired to casual shoes. There are some pretty nice fluorescent yellow Pureboost ZG's at Dicks. After I bought them, I notice Adidas has a sales that undercut Dick's -- but too late for me.

The Pureboost ZG is very comfortable as I expected from my previous pairs.

Wow! Adidas dropped the three stripes!!

If you look carefully, there are three strips by the toe. 

The bottom is not a typical design. Not sure about traction
wet slip resistance. 

299 grams; same as my pair in 2014, lighter than last year's. 

These shoes have a thicker outsole 3-4 mm than either previous pair. Hard to tell what it is made from. 

There is some soil on the shoe. I have run in them twice. As before, it has the illusion of good traction because of the high energy return. 

 It is 299 grams -- nearly the same weight at my first pair of Boost in 2014, and about 10% less than my Supernova's in 2015.












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August 2016 Update.
Un-happily I have retired these shoes from running, after one month and perhaps 50 miles.

The problem, which I did not realize earlier, is that these are actually slip-on shoes upon which laces were also added. What does that mean? There is an elastic band across the middle of the shoe -- its gray and you can see it in the photos. Underneath the laces there is no loose tongue which sits underneath the laces. Instead if one tightens the laces, the shoe fabric underneath has to pucker.

As the shoe broke in, it go looser, and my foot slipped forward. Since the shoe is not oversized, by toe touches the front of the toebox. I tried to tighten the laces to keep my foot back, but you can't without puckering the fabric in an uncomfortable way.

Bottom line is this shoe looks like a lace-up, but it is really a slip-on. When the shoe breaks in, it quickly becomes too loose the run in.

Too bad for me.

October Update:

I cut the elastic between the laces, and drilled two new holes for the laces, higher up closer to my ankle. This helps, and now I can run with the shoes.

I find the arch support a little too squishy and I wear an elastic band around my mid-foot to support it.

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.

Existential quotes

JOHN GARDNER, GRENDEL:

It’s good at first to be out in the night, naked to the cold mechanics of the starts. Space hurls outward, falconswift, mounting like an irreversible injustice, a final disease.

I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly – as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe, blink by blink.

…this one frail, foolish flicker-flash in the long dull fall of eternity

I too am learning, ordeal by ordeal, my indignity. It’s all I have, my only weapon for smashing through these stiff coffin-walls of the world. So I dance in the moonlight, make foul jokes, or labor to shake the foundations of night with my heaped-up howls of rage. Something is bound to come of all this. I cannot believe such monstrous energy of grief can lead to nothing! 

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We are all children of the same dark night, inhabited by the same demons, haunted by the same specters… 

It is not a question of finding an answer to the night of truth but of sitting up with one another through the night, of dividing the abyss in half in a companionship that is its own meaning.

 –John Caputo

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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.

Post-Financial Economy

Can a country have so much capital that it can build all the factories and infrastructure that it wants, and still have extra capital? In such a situation, demand would be served, and still there would be un-invested dollars sloshing around and interest rates would stay low.

In twenty-teens economy, the scarcity is of demand. If there were demand, then capital would chase it.

Right now, the real interest rate is 0.14% on ten year debt -- the ten year T-bill is at 2.04% and the core rate of inflation is 1.9% and 2.04-1.90 = 0.14%. This means a bond paying an inflation adjusted $1 per year, would be worth $714, which is crazy. Historically, should be closer to $20 or $25.

What about all the poor people would love to have a new iPhone, a bigger TV, a new X-Box, and a vacation in Maui? Isn't there unlimited demand?

There does not seem to be. The people with money are sated, and the people without money are without money. Transfer mechanisms between the Haves and the Have-Nots are too small to create demand.

Running Shoe Update

 Here are my Adidas Supernova shoes with the Boost expanded thermoplastic urethane ETPU soles. These soles have great resilience or energy return so they are fun to run in. They weight 334 g per shoe which is 35 g or 10% more than my first generation Adidas Boost Shoes

I had worn these for about six weeks and you can see the discoloration of the ETPU from the sunlight.

The toebox on the new shoe is larger, and the shoe is more comfortable than my older Boost shoe.

I had a chance to visit Brooks in Portland and get a tour. I saw the treadmill lab where they test out the new shoes.

While I was there I got a discount a new pair of Ghost 8's. These are a similar design to the Ghost 6 & 7.

Notice that they went back to the black outsole. I wonder if that is for performance or for style.

This pair of Ghosts is the least homely pair. My Brook's shoes have been great to wear, but they are not so stylish.

These shoes are 345g. 10 g heavier per shoe than the Boost. 24 g heavier than the Ghost 7 and about the same as the Ghost 6.

Inspirational Ideas

I was at a talk, and the keynote speaker made a few points. Here are my thoughts on them.

Life is suffering,  but people are made to struggle

There are two fears: the fear of exposure and the fear of conflict

The fear of exposure is perfectionism, and courage is required to overcome it.

The fear of conflict comes from imbalance in two important values:  compassion and connection.

Compassion is kindness to others, and authentic connection is finding common cause with others.

We need to have strong enough connection to embrace conflict, and sufficient compassion to be in conflict with grace.