(California readers: I occasionally post stuff about outdoors-type stuff going on in Pennsylvania where I grew up.) I just read about the French Creek wildfire, with air drops and everything. What business does PA have with having this kind of fire? Where do you think you are, SoCal?
In all seriousness, big wildfires are scary, and I'm glad that there were firefighters ready to go on this, and that no one was hurt. French Creek and the Iron Horse Trail are the greatest Berks County resources no one uses, and it will be interesting to see how the regrowth in mid-Atlantic woodland differs from SoCal mountains.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
The Chemistry of Runners High
Most interesting, there's an anandamide spike - to simplify, a pleasure chemical that is the endogenous compound for the receptor that THC stimulates. Chocolate has anandamide in it, which has been advanced as one reason for people's strange behavior around it. Include me on that list.
I originally found this at io9, which questions the evolutionary value of runner's high (or if it's just noise in an overtaxed system); one possible explanation is obvious in io9's link to a great Youtube video of an African persistence hunter. One of the reasons I started writing this blog was to puncture the Just-So stories of paleo enthusiasts who often claim that running is "unnatural" and bad for you. Yet here we have our species' remaining hunter-gatherers doing exactly that! (Apaches are reported to have done the same thing.)
I originally found this at io9, which questions the evolutionary value of runner's high (or if it's just noise in an overtaxed system); one possible explanation is obvious in io9's link to a great Youtube video of an African persistence hunter. One of the reasons I started writing this blog was to puncture the Just-So stories of paleo enthusiasts who often claim that running is "unnatural" and bad for you. Yet here we have our species' remaining hunter-gatherers doing exactly that! (Apaches are reported to have done the same thing.)
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Dualists Make Worse Choices About Exercise
I'm not talking about this kind of duelist, I'm talking about this kind of dualist, i.e. the philosophical kind, not the gun kind. (Although the gun kind can certain have negative health implications as well.) Article here.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Best Pacing for 400 and 800m Races
Modeled by physcists: "Here a toy model is used to understand a puzzling phenomenon from the sport of track and field. Races are almost always won, and records set, in 400 m and 800 m running events by people who run the first half of the race faster than the second half, which is not true of shorter races, nor of longer."
What's the Farthest You've Been From a Road?
Not with an engine getting you there. (So off-roading, airplanes 7 miles up, cruise ships don't count. Muscle power. Fine, you can use horses. But YOU know what I mean.)
As mentioned previously, this is an interesting question, and unless you're a traily/naturey runner or hiker or outdoorsperson, chances are you haven't been very far at all from a road. Now look at this map below (the one on the right - from Wired.) The color codes are for how much land is more than a half mile from a road.
When I did my little run around the Bay, I found it sobering that there are places you can drive to (on a highway) but for safety reasons, really can't get to on foot.
As mentioned previously, this is an interesting question, and unless you're a traily/naturey runner or hiker or outdoorsperson, chances are you haven't been very far at all from a road. Now look at this map below (the one on the right - from Wired.) The color codes are for how much land is more than a half mile from a road.
When I did my little run around the Bay, I found it sobering that there are places you can drive to (on a highway) but for safety reasons, really can't get to on foot.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Wildcat Peak in Tilden
View to the northeast from Wildcat Peak. By Harold Davis. To the west you're exactly across from the Golden Gate, but I'm sure you've already seen that damn thing before, and any direction you look in is fantastic.
Not a long one but a nice fast one straight up Wildcat Peak in North Tilden. At the visitor center you will find redwoods grown from seeds that went to the moon and back, and a little animal farm with cute baby sheep (tiny) and a rooster that I had to pick up and put back in his pen with his buddies because the dummy had escaped and clearly didn't know what to do with his freedom, and there was no one there but me. My good deed for the day! Behind the pens were two deer and a big old flock of turkeys who were hanging out eating and were, frankly, insultingly unafraid of me.
You know how if you run a lot of trails you end up making up your own name for features? At the top of Wildcat you will find what I term the Circular Ruins (and if you're a Borges fan and you've read that, I'm the real one. I think. No fire or dreaming was involved at least. If you haven't read it you're wondering how much ayahuasca I'm on. Answer: not nearly enough.)
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Redwood Cloning Attempt #1
ABSTRACT: I tried to clone a redwood from a branch instead of a root and it didn't work. Also, I'm a big dummy.
INTRODUCTION: Redwoods are cool, so I wanted to grow one in a cup, and I know you can because you can buy them like that.
METHOD: I found a redwood branch on a trail in Ventana Wilderness (Los Padres NF near Big Sur). I took it home. After two weeks of letting it lay on the floor I put it in the bottom half of a 1 L plastic soda bottle with soil, gave it some water and a *little* light, and put a plastic bag around it (with plenty of holes) to seal in the moisture. I watered it once a week, despite a certain person (let's just call her "A.R.") who is a nasty person and wanted this to fail from the beginning.
RESULTS: Dead tree branch sticking out of soil in the bottom half of a 1 L plastic soda bottle. Well aren't you happy A.R. Now go steal pennies out of wishing wells too.
DISCUSSION: The hell with it. I'm just going to buy one at Muir Woods or somewhere else.
REFERENCES: Your mom (personal correspondence).
INTRODUCTION: Redwoods are cool, so I wanted to grow one in a cup, and I know you can because you can buy them like that.
METHOD: I found a redwood branch on a trail in Ventana Wilderness (Los Padres NF near Big Sur). I took it home. After two weeks of letting it lay on the floor I put it in the bottom half of a 1 L plastic soda bottle with soil, gave it some water and a *little* light, and put a plastic bag around it (with plenty of holes) to seal in the moisture. I watered it once a week, despite a certain person (let's just call her "A.R.") who is a nasty person and wanted this to fail from the beginning.
RESULTS: Dead tree branch sticking out of soil in the bottom half of a 1 L plastic soda bottle. Well aren't you happy A.R. Now go steal pennies out of wishing wells too.
DISCUSSION: The hell with it. I'm just going to buy one at Muir Woods or somewhere else.
REFERENCES: Your mom (personal correspondence).
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Tattooed by Lightning
This is a Lichtenberg figure: the characteristic tissue trace of a lightning strike. Via geardiary.com.
If lightning strikes you, you probably won't get off as easy as this guy (a few nasty blisters? I mean come on.) More on lightning safety here. For those of us in California, lightning isn't generally too much of a concern, unless you're in the Sierras - which can get struck by lightning any month of the year. Electric fields strengthen on high points, so keep this in mind when hiking up anything pointy! (The very Doctor Seuss-looking Mt. Thielsen below, in the central Cascades, is covered with glassy tracks in the stone where lightning has struck it.)
If lightning strikes you, you probably won't get off as easy as this guy (a few nasty blisters? I mean come on.) More on lightning safety here. For those of us in California, lightning isn't generally too much of a concern, unless you're in the Sierras - which can get struck by lightning any month of the year. Electric fields strengthen on high points, so keep this in mind when hiking up anything pointy! (The very Doctor Seuss-looking Mt. Thielsen below, in the central Cascades, is covered with glassy tracks in the stone where lightning has struck it.)
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Chocolate Associated with Lower BMI
This is not one of my usual "ha ha, I'm in medical school and have a crappy diet and generally abuse myself" posts. This is a link to a real paper that just came out in the Archives of Internal Medicine: Association Between More Frequent Chocolate Consumption and Lower Body Mass Index, by Beatrice Golomb et al.
Above: Stay away. Toxic sludge.
To be clear, the above is a serious, peer-reviewed paper, Dr. Golomb is a real professor and these are real results. The following is not, but it's very funny: Goading crocodiles every day 'makes you thinner'. Says one crocodile-goader: "'Either I'd had a bad day at work or had been dumped by some bastard and my immediate response would be to put on my PJs, grab a stick and poke a crocodile in the face.'"
Above: Stay away. Toxic sludge.
To be clear, the above is a serious, peer-reviewed paper, Dr. Golomb is a real professor and these are real results. The following is not, but it's very funny: Goading crocodiles every day 'makes you thinner'. Says one crocodile-goader: "'Either I'd had a bad day at work or had been dumped by some bastard and my immediate response would be to put on my PJs, grab a stick and poke a crocodile in the face.'"
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Claremont Canyon, Strawberry Canyon Fire Trail
It seemed today that the North Pacific wanted me not to run. Which of course meant that I went two miles further. At the top of the ridge the rain actually hurt; maybe it was hailing up there in the wind and the fog and the mud, who knows. Despite nature's best attempts, I felt great! Read the paper tomorrow for my obituary (cause of death, pneumonia).
And now a word from Sam Eagle.
And now a word from Sam Eagle.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Mud-Skiing in Briones; and, a Revelation
San Diego friends, savor this post. Because I'm going to put it in print:
I miss San Diego.
After two years of whining down there, suddenly I realize the Bay Area is not the answer to all life's problems. And the clouds, and the crap coming out of them up here, have been looking amazingly Seattle-like - even when there are breaks in the clouds, the thin bands of blue sky between them look somehow at once pale and deep blue and far away and cold. And it has been cold. And I've been sick. Yesterday I went to Briones, which is a great park that yesterday featured many coyotes and an owl and young brazen calves, but on most of those fantastic green hills running was just absolutely out of the question. I was feeling so irritated that when I spotted one coyote watching me un-shyly from just off the trail, I decided to take the opportunity to stop and pee at it. For his or her part, the coyote seemed unfazed by my display of bellicose micturition. (And yes, I did feel better after that, thank you very much.)
The Marin Hash Saturday, set by one Dr. K. up at College of Marin, was not as stupid-muddy because it was in forest instead of open scrub oak country. But it was cold and raining. Still no fun when you're sick.
Where's the sun? Where's the dry sage and cactus and 70 degrees! San Diego, take me back!
Of course I'll deny all this later, or just start pining away for the other side of the pasture once I'm down there, so you'll have to get to it through the wayback machine and remind me.
Pic from enlightphoto.com. Okay, Briones is damn pretty, but that still didn't stop it from sucking really bad yesterday.
I miss San Diego.
After two years of whining down there, suddenly I realize the Bay Area is not the answer to all life's problems. And the clouds, and the crap coming out of them up here, have been looking amazingly Seattle-like - even when there are breaks in the clouds, the thin bands of blue sky between them look somehow at once pale and deep blue and far away and cold. And it has been cold. And I've been sick. Yesterday I went to Briones, which is a great park that yesterday featured many coyotes and an owl and young brazen calves, but on most of those fantastic green hills running was just absolutely out of the question. I was feeling so irritated that when I spotted one coyote watching me un-shyly from just off the trail, I decided to take the opportunity to stop and pee at it. For his or her part, the coyote seemed unfazed by my display of bellicose micturition. (And yes, I did feel better after that, thank you very much.)
The Marin Hash Saturday, set by one Dr. K. up at College of Marin, was not as stupid-muddy because it was in forest instead of open scrub oak country. But it was cold and raining. Still no fun when you're sick.
Where's the sun? Where's the dry sage and cactus and 70 degrees! San Diego, take me back!
Of course I'll deny all this later, or just start pining away for the other side of the pasture once I'm down there, so you'll have to get to it through the wayback machine and remind me.
Pic from enlightphoto.com. Okay, Briones is damn pretty, but that still didn't stop it from sucking really bad yesterday.
Is Silence Going Extinct?
Via The Browser: a documentarian went "to a remote region of Denali national park in Alaska and recorded the sounds. The result? In five years of continuous recording, there were only 36 days free from the sound of an internal combustion engine."
I used to ask non-runner/hiker/traily types what the furthest they've ever been from a road is, and the answer is usually when they were on a plane or sometimes cruise ship. But furthest from a motor is probably a better question.
Some river with a lot of n's and t's and k's and l's in it (thanks phonemically-constrained Athabaskans!) in Denali National Park, August 1999.
I used to ask non-runner/hiker/traily types what the furthest they've ever been from a road is, and the answer is usually when they were on a plane or sometimes cruise ship. But furthest from a motor is probably a better question.
Some river with a lot of n's and t's and k's and l's in it (thanks phonemically-constrained Athabaskans!) in Denali National Park, August 1999.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Have Online Petitions Ever Helped Anything?
A post at Frogloop gives examples of online petitions that actually made a difference - take this with a grain of salt because it was written by the founder of a petition site - but the facts are verifiable. For us traily types, the relevant case: "Obama Administration Protects Roadless Forests. In just two weeks, more than 8,000 Care2 members sent letters to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, urging him to take action to stop a Bush-era plan to open up old-growth forests in Oregon to clearcutting. The Obama administration listened and agreed!"
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Rain and Fog: NorCal in March
It doesn't rain all winter, and then right after I come back up from San Diego to the Bay, the normal winter weather returns. The weather is a d*ck. This hasn't stopped me from the usual ridge trail in Tilden (whatever that thing is called) and Tenessee Valley and Muir Beach, and Annadel State Park today. (Annadel State Park, which is still on the closure list.) Muir Beach was particularly fun. Every trail was a river and the little creek that flows out into the ocean was a full-on torrent.
Tilden in the fog. World, please come back when I get back to the trailhead. From schaufensterbabe.blogspot.com.
I should add that both my right upper IT band and now my right ankle are bothering me. But hey. When you have a sudden increase in mileage that leads to injury, you know what the treatment is? More mileage!
This training regimen is known as the reverse taper. The Oakland Marathon is this coming weekend, and once again, I'm doing the training regimen of champions.
Tilden in the fog. World, please come back when I get back to the trailhead. From schaufensterbabe.blogspot.com.
I should add that both my right upper IT band and now my right ankle are bothering me. But hey. When you have a sudden increase in mileage that leads to injury, you know what the treatment is? More mileage!
This training regimen is known as the reverse taper. The Oakland Marathon is this coming weekend, and once again, I'm doing the training regimen of champions.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
How Wise is the Crowd In Basketball Predictions?
Bottom line: a crowd with mostly non-fans did better than two out of three major sports prediction sites, and didn't lose by much to the third. For more, read on.
Pundit Tracker, an awesome blog which holds "experts" accountable to their predictions after the results come in instead of letting them slink off to hide, rounds up March Madness picks so far.
Thanks to everyone who participated, including the folks I met over at McGee's in Alameda. By the way, some of your friends over there are a little too intense. One guy was about to run me out of the place. (I think he had trouble understanding that I wasn't trying to get people to bet on anything.) After taking out wise-guy outlier data, I had 38 responses - not as many as I would've liked, but it might still be interesting. I post this stuff on the internet for people to discuss so if you like it, hate it, think I'm full of it, please comment below!
Now that the game is played, here's how the crowd as a whole did. And there are some interesting differences between groups of people in the survey, not all what I predicted they would be.
1. Score Prediction.
1.1 All Respondents (Minus Outliers) Against Experts
Numbers for the crowd are given in the format mean/median. TE is Total Error (sum of absolute values of point prediction errors for each team.)
Of course with N=1 the crowd's performance could be a fluke and we should do it for multiple games - but I leave this to the statisticians and psychologists of the world who have time and funding to do this. Note, I put CBS Sports 4th because they had the same total error but one of the individual scores was more egregiously off.
Outliers: I took out two sets of score outliers for each, probably from the same wisguy since they came in sequentially, who gave predictions of 500 and 1 for Cal, and 219 and 1 for USF. This left a scoring range 40-116 for Cal, and 30-114 for USF. (At first I thought the 30 was an outlier but left it in because a score that low actually has precedent in recent tournament history - Mississippi Valley State lost 70-29 to UCLA in the first round of the 2008 tournament. Yikes.)
1.2 Score performance by level of basketball fandom:
Note that the more serious a fan you are, the lower and more accurately you guessed. Expertise made a difference. And when I started looking up predictions to compare to, I noticed there was a lot of talk about both teams' defensive play, especially USF.
1.3 Score performance by method of prediction
It looks like if you had some knowledge, or asked someone personally who did, you did better. It seems our two researchers were looking at the wrong numbers. Most of the guessers were not fans of basketball (17 of 22); of the rest, 5 were casual fans and 1 was serious. Of those that used their own knowledge, 6 of 12 were serious fans, 4 of 12 were casual, and 2 of 12 were not.
1.4 Score performance relative to caring about these particular teams
Again we see that the less important the game is to you, the higher your score estimate (as in 1.2 above, where the more serious of a fan you are, the lower the score you predict.) This is possibly because of lack of knowledge of USF's defense.
I asked this because I wanted to see how fans of the teams stacked up against those who had no interest. My prediction was that they would do worse, but obviously they did not. (I entered an office pool in 2008 and won, based entirely on averaging points scored and allowed by each team during the regular season, and won! Ironically that year Kansas State took it, and that's what I predicted, by the method I used for this little experiment to predict 72-62 Cal. Back in 2008 at the start of the tournament an otherwise loyal Kansas State fan told me I was nuts - the whole point is that I had no emotional attachment to any team, and I was just looking at numbers. While I was collecting my money I asked someone to explain what a 3-point shot was because I didn't know. The system didn't work as well when I tried again in 2009.)
As I was sorting data I most regretted not asking whether people were Cal OR USF fans, because such a bias could run in opposite directions depending on who your teams are, and it could cancel out. However, it's probably a safe assumption that more of the 9 people who cared about these teams cared about Cal than USF, considering I work about 5 miles from Cal's basketball court, and some of the people I initially sent this to actually work at the university. So most influence that we see here is probably the result of Cal fans.
As would be expected, everyone who said they cared about these teams were casual or serious fans.
2. The Future of March Madness
The Atlantic just posted an article about the growing pile of dollars involved in the NCAA tournament. This blog is no stranger to posts about the distorting effect of money on college sports,
but there's nothing special about college athletics: in 1997, a Kenyan runner accepted money to run under the banner of Oman. Why? Because they paid him, quite above board, that's why! Because there's prestige that comes from associating with a winning sports figure or team, and as long as that's the case, these things are going to happen. At the time this was considered shocking (I wish I could find a link), and though I've read no coverage of similar events in the international marathon world since then, I would be surprised if it hadn't happened more. And to be honest, is it any different than any other athletic endorsement? "Eat Wheaties and Qatar is great." And in the end, none of us has a legitimate complaint against a committed professional's making a move that will benefit them and their family.
What will be interesting is if all this money flowing into March Madness ends up making the championship process more drawn out and opaque - because what's being maximized is profit, not fair and exciting athletic competition. Fans would like to believe those two mostly overlap, but that's not how it works. Just ask anyone who watches college football. Previous posts about that particular conflict of interest here.
Of course the people making money in college athletics aren't evil athletic robber barons. The statistic that has been thrown around for Penn State football for years is that the first home team paid for the entire athletic program, and the rest was profit for the school at large. But these windfalls still have to be considered against the attention that college-branded entertainers divert from the true mission of their colleges. The heroes at these institutions are the researchers pushing knowledge forward. Find me a fan at one of these games who can name a single prominent scientist or scholar there. I bet you can, but it's in the single digits. That's another prediction that's probably more worthwhile to follow up.
Pundit Tracker, an awesome blog which holds "experts" accountable to their predictions after the results come in instead of letting them slink off to hide, rounds up March Madness picks so far.
Thanks to everyone who participated, including the folks I met over at McGee's in Alameda. By the way, some of your friends over there are a little too intense. One guy was about to run me out of the place. (I think he had trouble understanding that I wasn't trying to get people to bet on anything.) After taking out wise-guy outlier data, I had 38 responses - not as many as I would've liked, but it might still be interesting. I post this stuff on the internet for people to discuss so if you like it, hate it, think I'm full of it, please comment below!
Now that the game is played, here's how the crowd as a whole did. And there are some interesting differences between groups of people in the survey, not all what I predicted they would be.
1. Score Prediction.
1.1 All Respondents (Minus Outliers) Against Experts
Numbers for the crowd are given in the format mean/median. TE is Total Error (sum of absolute values of point prediction errors for each team.)
| Rank | Source | Cal | USF | TE |
| N/A | Actual | 54 | 65 | - |
| 1. | sports-ratings.com | 56 | 55 | 12 |
| 2. | Crowd (38) | 69/69 | 67/63 | 16/16 |
| 3. | collegehoops.net | 50 | 44 | 25 |
| 4. | CBS Sports | 72 | 58 | 25 |
Of course with N=1 the crowd's performance could be a fluke and we should do it for multiple games - but I leave this to the statisticians and psychologists of the world who have time and funding to do this. Note, I put CBS Sports 4th because they had the same total error but one of the individual scores was more egregiously off.
Outliers: I took out two sets of score outliers for each, probably from the same wisguy since they came in sequentially, who gave predictions of 500 and 1 for Cal, and 219 and 1 for USF. This left a scoring range 40-116 for Cal, and 30-114 for USF. (At first I thought the 30 was an outlier but left it in because a score that low actually has precedent in recent tournament history - Mississippi Valley State lost 70-29 to UCLA in the first round of the 2008 tournament. Yikes.)
1.2 Score performance by level of basketball fandom:
| Category | Cal | USF | TE |
| Actual score | 54 | 65 | - |
| Serious fan (7) | 53/54 | 54/50 | 12/15 |
| Casual fan (11) | 64/66 | 61/62 | 14/15 |
| Not a fan (20) | 78/77 | 74/69 | 33/27 |
Note that the more serious a fan you are, the lower and more accurately you guessed. Expertise made a difference. And when I started looking up predictions to compare to, I noticed there was a lot of talk about both teams' defensive play, especially USF.
1.3 Score performance by method of prediction
| Category | Cal | USF | TE |
| Actual | 54 | 65 | - |
| Own knowledge (12) | 54/52 | 58/54 | 7/11 |
| Ask friends (1) | (70) | (64) | (17) |
| Guessed (23) | 75/75 | 70/68 | 26/24 |
| Researched (2) | 93/93 | 88/88 | 62/62 |
It looks like if you had some knowledge, or asked someone personally who did, you did better. It seems our two researchers were looking at the wrong numbers. Most of the guessers were not fans of basketball (17 of 22); of the rest, 5 were casual fans and 1 was serious. Of those that used their own knowledge, 6 of 12 were serious fans, 4 of 12 were casual, and 2 of 12 were not.
1.4 Score performance relative to caring about these particular teams
| Category | Cal | USF | TE |
| Actual | 54 | 65 | - |
| Care | 52/48 | 54/51 | 13/20 |
| Don't Care | 75/74 | 71/66 | 27/21 |
Again we see that the less important the game is to you, the higher your score estimate (as in 1.2 above, where the more serious of a fan you are, the lower the score you predict.) This is possibly because of lack of knowledge of USF's defense.
I asked this because I wanted to see how fans of the teams stacked up against those who had no interest. My prediction was that they would do worse, but obviously they did not. (I entered an office pool in 2008 and won, based entirely on averaging points scored and allowed by each team during the regular season, and won! Ironically that year Kansas State took it, and that's what I predicted, by the method I used for this little experiment to predict 72-62 Cal. Back in 2008 at the start of the tournament an otherwise loyal Kansas State fan told me I was nuts - the whole point is that I had no emotional attachment to any team, and I was just looking at numbers. While I was collecting my money I asked someone to explain what a 3-point shot was because I didn't know. The system didn't work as well when I tried again in 2009.)
As I was sorting data I most regretted not asking whether people were Cal OR USF fans, because such a bias could run in opposite directions depending on who your teams are, and it could cancel out. However, it's probably a safe assumption that more of the 9 people who cared about these teams cared about Cal than USF, considering I work about 5 miles from Cal's basketball court, and some of the people I initially sent this to actually work at the university. So most influence that we see here is probably the result of Cal fans.
As would be expected, everyone who said they cared about these teams were casual or serious fans.
2. The Future of March Madness
The Atlantic just posted an article about the growing pile of dollars involved in the NCAA tournament. This blog is no stranger to posts about the distorting effect of money on college sports,
but there's nothing special about college athletics: in 1997, a Kenyan runner accepted money to run under the banner of Oman. Why? Because they paid him, quite above board, that's why! Because there's prestige that comes from associating with a winning sports figure or team, and as long as that's the case, these things are going to happen. At the time this was considered shocking (I wish I could find a link), and though I've read no coverage of similar events in the international marathon world since then, I would be surprised if it hadn't happened more. And to be honest, is it any different than any other athletic endorsement? "Eat Wheaties and Qatar is great." And in the end, none of us has a legitimate complaint against a committed professional's making a move that will benefit them and their family.
What will be interesting is if all this money flowing into March Madness ends up making the championship process more drawn out and opaque - because what's being maximized is profit, not fair and exciting athletic competition. Fans would like to believe those two mostly overlap, but that's not how it works. Just ask anyone who watches college football. Previous posts about that particular conflict of interest here.
Of course the people making money in college athletics aren't evil athletic robber barons. The statistic that has been thrown around for Penn State football for years is that the first home team paid for the entire athletic program, and the rest was profit for the school at large. But these windfalls still have to be considered against the attention that college-branded entertainers divert from the true mission of their colleges. The heroes at these institutions are the researchers pushing knowledge forward. Find me a fan at one of these games who can name a single prominent scientist or scholar there. I bet you can, but it's in the single digits. That's another prediction that's probably more worthwhile to follow up.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Help Us Predict the USF-Cal Game
***SURVEY CLOSED*** - I'm working on the results and will post them shortly.
Check out this little experiment. I want to see if the wisdom of crowds can accurately predict sports scores as well as experts. Note: you don't have to be a basketball fan to help. The USF-Cal basketball game is coming up this Wednesday 14 March, and people are adding their own predictions. Before the game I'll close the survey, say the average, and then analyze the effect of the respondents' backgrounds. E.g., were fans of these specific teams vs general basketball fans more or less accurate? How about people who said they were serious fans vs not fans?
5-question Surveymonkey here, or just get there via the pop-up - and please forward. Thanks, this should be interesting.
Check out this little experiment. I want to see if the wisdom of crowds can accurately predict sports scores as well as experts. Note: you don't have to be a basketball fan to help. The USF-Cal basketball game is coming up this Wednesday 14 March, and people are adding their own predictions. Before the game I'll close the survey, say the average, and then analyze the effect of the respondents' backgrounds. E.g., were fans of these specific teams vs general basketball fans more or less accurate? How about people who said they were serious fans vs not fans?
5-question Surveymonkey here, or just get there via the pop-up - and please forward. Thanks, this should be interesting.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Oakland Sports Teams Shake Down Broke City
First, in case you think this screed is against sports in general, check out this cool article, which did a statistical analysis of where on the court players score from. This is for all shots taken in the NBA from the 2006 through the 2011 seaons.
This post is a screed against taxpayers getting fleeced to support private sports teams. "Oakland lawmakers approved $3.5 million toward efforts to redevelop the Coliseum complex along with adjacent land west off Interstate 880. The A's, Raiders and Warriors are all being courted away from the complex they have called home for more than four decades. The A's have for years sought to move to San Jose, the Warriors are considering a proposed arena in San Francisco, and the Raiders are potential tenants in stadiums proposed in both Santa Clara and Los Angeles." Story here.
Why is this happening? Sports team redevelopment does not create jobs, period, and we might want to look at what's happened in other cities. The bottom line for these teams is that it's a losing battle, they've been threatening to leave for years, and they're going to leave, and they're just trying to get some cash out of Oakland before they do. This is a stupid decision. The City Council has a lot of nerve spending $3,500,000 of our money when, as Councilwoman Nancy Nadel says, "I hope everybody realizes that we have no money...As much as you might love the teams when you have no money, it's a very different game."
This post is a screed against taxpayers getting fleeced to support private sports teams. "Oakland lawmakers approved $3.5 million toward efforts to redevelop the Coliseum complex along with adjacent land west off Interstate 880. The A's, Raiders and Warriors are all being courted away from the complex they have called home for more than four decades. The A's have for years sought to move to San Jose, the Warriors are considering a proposed arena in San Francisco, and the Raiders are potential tenants in stadiums proposed in both Santa Clara and Los Angeles." Story here.
Why is this happening? Sports team redevelopment does not create jobs, period, and we might want to look at what's happened in other cities. The bottom line for these teams is that it's a losing battle, they've been threatening to leave for years, and they're going to leave, and they're just trying to get some cash out of Oakland before they do. This is a stupid decision. The City Council has a lot of nerve spending $3,500,000 of our money when, as Councilwoman Nancy Nadel says, "I hope everybody realizes that we have no money...As much as you might love the teams when you have no money, it's a very different game."
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Outdoors Round-up
1) Observant rock climbers on a rocky island off Australia found a species that was thought to be extinct. Now bred in captivity, they're about to be released back into their native environment to re-populate it. Without those climbers, they would've remained confined to that one rock and probably died out. (There were only *30* of them.) More here. No, it's not cute, but it makes a point. A trail ultra also saved a part of a national forest in Wyoming from development. You can make this stuff count!
2) For hashers: research on the effect of drinking alcohol on exercise. Limited results suggest that it improves women's performance and decreases men's, but these are to be taken with a big grain of salt so far (and some peanuts too). Note that personal experience with drinking and running shows that muscle soreness is not the result of lactic acid build-up; it's the result of micro-trauma to muscle tissue. If it were lactic acid, alcohol would make you (i.e., me) much sorer, and it does not. Further (frustrating) personal experience is that this hooey is still being taught in American medical schools.
3) Went for a four-hour (no idea about mileage) on Mt. Tam and around Phoenix Lake, Lagunitas, Bon Tempe and Alpine. When I lived up here before I didn't spend nearly enough time running on the Marin reservoir district trails and I'm fixing that now. I wish I could bottle the smell of mixed oak and redwood forest, there's nothing like it. Didn't see much wildlife, although on one board there wa a report of a bald eagle - which I was sure I saw before, but other visitors were quick to tell me it was an osprey. (I've seen both before and know what they look like, thank you. Now I feel vindicated.)
Gertrude Ord Trail, from bahiker.com.
4) Latest random cool-looking part of my own country that I never heard of before, also latest evidence I spend too much time on Google Maps: the wooded Tug Hill plateau in upstate New York, west of the Adirondacks and famous for their heavy snowstorms. There are fewer Panoramino photos in there than some other pretty untouched places. Did we ever really colonize that part of the state? Reminds me of how white settlers didn't find the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania until well after the revolution ended.
View Larger Map
2) For hashers: research on the effect of drinking alcohol on exercise. Limited results suggest that it improves women's performance and decreases men's, but these are to be taken with a big grain of salt so far (and some peanuts too). Note that personal experience with drinking and running shows that muscle soreness is not the result of lactic acid build-up; it's the result of micro-trauma to muscle tissue. If it were lactic acid, alcohol would make you (i.e., me) much sorer, and it does not. Further (frustrating) personal experience is that this hooey is still being taught in American medical schools.
3) Went for a four-hour (no idea about mileage) on Mt. Tam and around Phoenix Lake, Lagunitas, Bon Tempe and Alpine. When I lived up here before I didn't spend nearly enough time running on the Marin reservoir district trails and I'm fixing that now. I wish I could bottle the smell of mixed oak and redwood forest, there's nothing like it. Didn't see much wildlife, although on one board there wa a report of a bald eagle - which I was sure I saw before, but other visitors were quick to tell me it was an osprey. (I've seen both before and know what they look like, thank you. Now I feel vindicated.)
Gertrude Ord Trail, from bahiker.com.
4) Latest random cool-looking part of my own country that I never heard of before, also latest evidence I spend too much time on Google Maps: the wooded Tug Hill plateau in upstate New York, west of the Adirondacks and famous for their heavy snowstorms. There are fewer Panoramino photos in there than some other pretty untouched places. Did we ever really colonize that part of the state? Reminds me of how white settlers didn't find the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania until well after the revolution ended.
View Larger Map
Thursday, March 1, 2012
NorCal Round-up
1) Registered for the Oakland Running Festival? Several races on 25 March, check it out here.
2) I finally went and saw my albino redwood, in Henry Cowell State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The albinism is of course the result of a low or near-zero cholorplast count, which means the trees only survive by getting nutrients from the root systems of their non-albino clone brethren. They still can't grow very tall. Interestingly, unlike the "solid" albino below, the one I saw at Henry Cowell had albino branches, or even some branches that weren't all albino, and even some twigs where not all the needles on the same twig were albino! This being the case, I was trying to be a tree pathologist and diagnose the process going on in the plant to produce this non-continuous pattern. It seems more likely that all parts of the plant had chloroplasts as they were growing, but that early in the growth of the branches they die for some reason. Cytoskeleton problem maybe?
From Arleen Olson Photography.
3) Ventana Wilderness, where the southernmost redwoods are, remains outstanding. I decided to play a game and see if there were flowers of every color of the rainbow on the exposed parts of the trail, and "won" in the first mile (plus some nice big white-purple daturas and some pink I don't even know, but the shore was purty.) In this dry winter, it's drawn crowds like I've never seen, particarly on Pine Ridge Trail on the way to Sykes Hot Springs. This is partly owing to morons like me who go around shouting how awesome Ventana is. But once you go there you really can't help it.
One of those exposed sections of Pine Ridge. From xasauantoday.
4) Instead of trying to grow redwoods from seed, I brought back a branch (one that had already been broken off a tree and was laying on the trail) to see if I can clone one that way.
5) Over 50% done putting together clickable maps for Nobody Hikes in LA. Driving through Whittier or Irvine and want to know where to find a trail? This is for you! Note: as I write this post, all the hikes are not yet included on here since I'm not finished, although by the time you read this post they may be.
View Master Map - Nobody Hikes in LA in a larger map
2) I finally went and saw my albino redwood, in Henry Cowell State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The albinism is of course the result of a low or near-zero cholorplast count, which means the trees only survive by getting nutrients from the root systems of their non-albino clone brethren. They still can't grow very tall. Interestingly, unlike the "solid" albino below, the one I saw at Henry Cowell had albino branches, or even some branches that weren't all albino, and even some twigs where not all the needles on the same twig were albino! This being the case, I was trying to be a tree pathologist and diagnose the process going on in the plant to produce this non-continuous pattern. It seems more likely that all parts of the plant had chloroplasts as they were growing, but that early in the growth of the branches they die for some reason. Cytoskeleton problem maybe?
From Arleen Olson Photography.
3) Ventana Wilderness, where the southernmost redwoods are, remains outstanding. I decided to play a game and see if there were flowers of every color of the rainbow on the exposed parts of the trail, and "won" in the first mile (plus some nice big white-purple daturas and some pink I don't even know, but the shore was purty.) In this dry winter, it's drawn crowds like I've never seen, particarly on Pine Ridge Trail on the way to Sykes Hot Springs. This is partly owing to morons like me who go around shouting how awesome Ventana is. But once you go there you really can't help it.
One of those exposed sections of Pine Ridge. From xasauantoday.
4) Instead of trying to grow redwoods from seed, I brought back a branch (one that had already been broken off a tree and was laying on the trail) to see if I can clone one that way.
5) Over 50% done putting together clickable maps for Nobody Hikes in LA. Driving through Whittier or Irvine and want to know where to find a trail? This is for you! Note: as I write this post, all the hikes are not yet included on here since I'm not finished, although by the time you read this post they may be.
View Master Map - Nobody Hikes in LA in a larger map
Daniel Richards and the Mountain Lion: Is What He Did Wrong?
California Fish and Game Commission President Daniel Richards is under fire, and may be forced to resign, because he (successfully) hunted a mountain lion in Idaho, where it's legal. (For the record, it was a wild mountain lion, and he did eat it afterward.)
This kind of politics is really troubling, not least because it divides an already sundered outdoor community - on one hand you have hunters and fisherman, on the other hand you have the hikers and climbers and trailrunners, and they view each other as different species. But both are interested in conserving wilderness and preserving open space, and when the Sierra Club and hunters' groups come together on an issue, no politician can withstand them. This pseudo-scandal reminds you of a company demanding someone give a surprise blood test during their off-work hours, and then firing them when it comes back positive for alcohol. ("Yes, it was Saturday night, I wasn't in the office!") Oddly, one of Richards's detractors in the CA legislature, Ted Lieu, asked something similar: "Imagine if the (national) drug czar went to a jurisdiction where marijuana was legal and then posted an Internet picture showing him smoking marijuana." Oddly, because this is possibly the best argument in favor of Richards! Yes, of course that hypothetical drug czar's political opponents would use his wild-times-in-Amsterdam photo against him. But was his action wrong? If that drug czar's job is enforcing the laws of his jurisdiction, in his jurisdiction (and not on the whole rest of the world!) then he obviously didn't do anything wrong legally, and unless the issue bears some moral context that differs from place to place, he didn't do anything immoral either. Are mountain lions endangered? Not even in California, and especially not in Idaho - "Least Concern" on IUCN's index.
While Ted Lieu is dragging the details of people's personal lives into their public service, let's mention a NorCal favorite, to show how the argument falls apart. I like Gavin Newsom. I think he was a great mayor of San Francisco, and I would definitely consider voting for him for governor eventually. Also, Gavin Newsom had an affair with his campaign manager's wife while he was at the head of a city government solemnizing same-sex marriages. I wholeheartedly support legalizing gay marriage and I'm proud of what Newsom did. I don't see his personal mis-step having anything to do with what he was trying accomplish. Tellingly, even Newsom's most vicious opponents in this fight never saw fit to drag this tidbit into the debate. And that act is more obviously immoral in a context-free way than the game hunt that Richards went on.
People have every right to be morally outraged, but our outrage doesn't give us a right to interpret the law however we want to, on either side of any issue. SF Chron article here.
This kind of politics is really troubling, not least because it divides an already sundered outdoor community - on one hand you have hunters and fisherman, on the other hand you have the hikers and climbers and trailrunners, and they view each other as different species. But both are interested in conserving wilderness and preserving open space, and when the Sierra Club and hunters' groups come together on an issue, no politician can withstand them. This pseudo-scandal reminds you of a company demanding someone give a surprise blood test during their off-work hours, and then firing them when it comes back positive for alcohol. ("Yes, it was Saturday night, I wasn't in the office!") Oddly, one of Richards's detractors in the CA legislature, Ted Lieu, asked something similar: "Imagine if the (national) drug czar went to a jurisdiction where marijuana was legal and then posted an Internet picture showing him smoking marijuana." Oddly, because this is possibly the best argument in favor of Richards! Yes, of course that hypothetical drug czar's political opponents would use his wild-times-in-Amsterdam photo against him. But was his action wrong? If that drug czar's job is enforcing the laws of his jurisdiction, in his jurisdiction (and not on the whole rest of the world!) then he obviously didn't do anything wrong legally, and unless the issue bears some moral context that differs from place to place, he didn't do anything immoral either. Are mountain lions endangered? Not even in California, and especially not in Idaho - "Least Concern" on IUCN's index.
While Ted Lieu is dragging the details of people's personal lives into their public service, let's mention a NorCal favorite, to show how the argument falls apart. I like Gavin Newsom. I think he was a great mayor of San Francisco, and I would definitely consider voting for him for governor eventually. Also, Gavin Newsom had an affair with his campaign manager's wife while he was at the head of a city government solemnizing same-sex marriages. I wholeheartedly support legalizing gay marriage and I'm proud of what Newsom did. I don't see his personal mis-step having anything to do with what he was trying accomplish. Tellingly, even Newsom's most vicious opponents in this fight never saw fit to drag this tidbit into the debate. And that act is more obviously immoral in a context-free way than the game hunt that Richards went on.
People have every right to be morally outraged, but our outrage doesn't give us a right to interpret the law however we want to, on either side of any issue. SF Chron article here.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
California Trailrunnery and Outdoorsy News Roundup
I'm very fortunate to have home-bases for the moment in both San Francisco and San Diego, so dear reader, you'll be seeing links from up and down the coast of the whole great state of California.
French broom, a severe invasive from the Mediterranean. I hope they eat it all. The stuff is like California's own kudzu. If you see it in a park, call it in. If you see it in your yard, pull it out.
1) With the warm dry winter, French broom is already in full bloom along Route 13 in the East Bay area - but completely absent from Redwood Preserve, as far as I can tell, due to a concerted effort by volunteers over the past few years. Good job! A few years it looked like it had completely taken over.
2) Oil platforms off Venture and Santa Barbara Coast to be re-opened, if this already-passed House bill becomes law.
3) A great resource for San Diego trail runners: Scott Capistrant's systematic trail running reviews.
From Scott's Los Penasquitos post. It looks hot. You can smell the dust and sage in this picture.
4) There are albino redwoods in several places around the state, like the one e Mark at Tales from the Trails found below. Of course it's not true albinism in the sense of vertebrates, but rather a lack of chloroplasts, which in turn means they can't photosynthesize; but since redwoods often share root systems, they can get away with it (not surprising in retrospect that redwoods do this but still cool. Clonally reproducing organisms like redwoods often share resources since it's identical genes cooperating with themselves.) I'm going to be heading down to Henry Cowell State Park tomorrow to check some out and go for a nice Santa Cruz Mountains run.
From Mark's Tales from the Trails
5) If you're in the East Bay and want a fun Wednesday night trail running group, the WEENIES is a good one. (Wednesday Evenings East Neighborhoods International Exercise Society.) Last week we were up on the deer and fire trails in Tilden and above Strawberry Canyon, and in the dark we startled a deer that almost bulldozed us as it was running.
6) For hashers: thinly concealed heresy on the San Francisco Hash House Harriers website! And needless to say, right before I moved up here I just started really enjoying the North County Hash in San Diego (they did an Elfin Forest run a while back that was fantastic) but the East Bay ruffians are a good time too.
7) Finally - I'm going to post something I'm doing on the awesome site nobodyhikesinla. Hopefully it will make it even more helpful for people who like SoCal trails!
The Bay Ridge Trail in EBMUD land south of Tilden Park, Oakland. David Sanger Photography.
French broom, a severe invasive from the Mediterranean. I hope they eat it all. The stuff is like California's own kudzu. If you see it in a park, call it in. If you see it in your yard, pull it out.
1) With the warm dry winter, French broom is already in full bloom along Route 13 in the East Bay area - but completely absent from Redwood Preserve, as far as I can tell, due to a concerted effort by volunteers over the past few years. Good job! A few years it looked like it had completely taken over.
2) Oil platforms off Venture and Santa Barbara Coast to be re-opened, if this already-passed House bill becomes law.
3) A great resource for San Diego trail runners: Scott Capistrant's systematic trail running reviews.
From Scott's Los Penasquitos post. It looks hot. You can smell the dust and sage in this picture.
4) There are albino redwoods in several places around the state, like the one e Mark at Tales from the Trails found below. Of course it's not true albinism in the sense of vertebrates, but rather a lack of chloroplasts, which in turn means they can't photosynthesize; but since redwoods often share root systems, they can get away with it (not surprising in retrospect that redwoods do this but still cool. Clonally reproducing organisms like redwoods often share resources since it's identical genes cooperating with themselves.) I'm going to be heading down to Henry Cowell State Park tomorrow to check some out and go for a nice Santa Cruz Mountains run.
From Mark's Tales from the Trails
5) If you're in the East Bay and want a fun Wednesday night trail running group, the WEENIES is a good one. (Wednesday Evenings East Neighborhoods International Exercise Society.) Last week we were up on the deer and fire trails in Tilden and above Strawberry Canyon, and in the dark we startled a deer that almost bulldozed us as it was running.
6) For hashers: thinly concealed heresy on the San Francisco Hash House Harriers website! And needless to say, right before I moved up here I just started really enjoying the North County Hash in San Diego (they did an Elfin Forest run a while back that was fantastic) but the East Bay ruffians are a good time too.
7) Finally - I'm going to post something I'm doing on the awesome site nobodyhikesinla. Hopefully it will make it even more helpful for people who like SoCal trails!
The Bay Ridge Trail in EBMUD land south of Tilden Park, Oakland. David Sanger Photography.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
The Seattle Sonics Moved; What Happened Then?
If you're interested in sports meta-issues, here's another question: does it really matter, ratings-wise, which teams are in the World Series or Super Bowl?
In 2008 the Seattle SuperSonics professional basketball team moved to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder. The reason, more or less, was the stadium: newer stadiums have more ways to part fans with money (i.e., space for selling expensive food and beer, plus branded merchandise), which is why professional sports organizations' demands to the cities they're in usually revolve around getting new stadiums. To do this they often demand (and get) tax money; a pretty ballsy demand from a private organization. The way the teams get their way with government is their unstated threat that, if they leave, there will be backlash from fans against the mayor and other government officials for the loss of jobs from the area where the team played, as well as the emotional impact of losing the franchise.
That's the fear the team ownerships play off anyway. So when the Supersonics left Seattle, what happened?
There's a whole documentary about this, Sonicsgate: Requiem for a Team, embedded below. First, there was a referendum passed that essentially disallowed any taxpayer supported stadium* with 70% voter approval. That wide of a margin is amazing in itself; and in fact around the country any time these kinds of discussions have happened in the open, taxpayer opinion has been similarly negative. And this makes sense, because it's been proven, by economists, in impartial peer-reviewed journals, that sports stadiums do not help their local economies. Of course, they do help the franchise owners, but it's not taxpayers' job or desire to line the owners' pockets. Literature fans will recognize writer Sherman Alexie in the documentary but his and others' argument that capitalism always ends up redistributing taxpayer dollars to the wealthy is transparently irrelevant ("but everybody else does it!"); most taxpayers don't mind as much if that wealthy person is going to be creating jobs, and again: professional sports arenas do not create jobs.
So when cities do cave in to professional sports groups and give them our tax money, why? Are they just delusional about the job-creation prospects? Or is there backroom corruption? That's possible of course, but what's certain is that voters react irrationally when things happen to their favorite teams and players (remember LeBron James leaving Cleveland? Holy sheesh). In this case, Mayor Greg Nickels was defeated seeking a third term, and this was at least partly blamed on the Sonics' leaving. You can imagine the NBA distributing a copy of the story of Nickels' unsuccessful run directly to the mayors' offices of every NBA-hosting city in the U.S. The Supersonics weren't even that popular as sports franchises go.
So what's the point of all this? Lots of us, sports fans and otherwise, recognize that it's not the taxpayers' jobs to keep the Chargers or Niners or whoever in our town. When a local team tries to shake us down for a new stadium - and it's when, and not if - that's when the taxpayers (and the mayor as our representative) have to send a clear signal not to let the door hit them in the ass on the way out. We have to remember that the sports teams are private organizations that are playing hardball with our cities trying to make money, and when they leave, it's to make more money, and they don't care that they're going to ruin childhoods. And most importantly, we have to remember, when the next election rolls around, that the mayor stood up for our interest. Otherwise we can't complain when the mayor spends our tax money on facilities for private businesses that only enrich the owners, and not the rest of us.
*To be clear, what the referendum said was that any taxpayer investment had to produce positive returns, which is basically the same as disallowing it, and is certainly how the average voter thought about it.
In 2008 the Seattle SuperSonics professional basketball team moved to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder. The reason, more or less, was the stadium: newer stadiums have more ways to part fans with money (i.e., space for selling expensive food and beer, plus branded merchandise), which is why professional sports organizations' demands to the cities they're in usually revolve around getting new stadiums. To do this they often demand (and get) tax money; a pretty ballsy demand from a private organization. The way the teams get their way with government is their unstated threat that, if they leave, there will be backlash from fans against the mayor and other government officials for the loss of jobs from the area where the team played, as well as the emotional impact of losing the franchise.
That's the fear the team ownerships play off anyway. So when the Supersonics left Seattle, what happened?
There's a whole documentary about this, Sonicsgate: Requiem for a Team, embedded below. First, there was a referendum passed that essentially disallowed any taxpayer supported stadium* with 70% voter approval. That wide of a margin is amazing in itself; and in fact around the country any time these kinds of discussions have happened in the open, taxpayer opinion has been similarly negative. And this makes sense, because it's been proven, by economists, in impartial peer-reviewed journals, that sports stadiums do not help their local economies. Of course, they do help the franchise owners, but it's not taxpayers' job or desire to line the owners' pockets. Literature fans will recognize writer Sherman Alexie in the documentary but his and others' argument that capitalism always ends up redistributing taxpayer dollars to the wealthy is transparently irrelevant ("but everybody else does it!"); most taxpayers don't mind as much if that wealthy person is going to be creating jobs, and again: professional sports arenas do not create jobs.
So when cities do cave in to professional sports groups and give them our tax money, why? Are they just delusional about the job-creation prospects? Or is there backroom corruption? That's possible of course, but what's certain is that voters react irrationally when things happen to their favorite teams and players (remember LeBron James leaving Cleveland? Holy sheesh). In this case, Mayor Greg Nickels was defeated seeking a third term, and this was at least partly blamed on the Sonics' leaving. You can imagine the NBA distributing a copy of the story of Nickels' unsuccessful run directly to the mayors' offices of every NBA-hosting city in the U.S. The Supersonics weren't even that popular as sports franchises go.
So what's the point of all this? Lots of us, sports fans and otherwise, recognize that it's not the taxpayers' jobs to keep the Chargers or Niners or whoever in our town. When a local team tries to shake us down for a new stadium - and it's when, and not if - that's when the taxpayers (and the mayor as our representative) have to send a clear signal not to let the door hit them in the ass on the way out. We have to remember that the sports teams are private organizations that are playing hardball with our cities trying to make money, and when they leave, it's to make more money, and they don't care that they're going to ruin childhoods. And most importantly, we have to remember, when the next election rolls around, that the mayor stood up for our interest. Otherwise we can't complain when the mayor spends our tax money on facilities for private businesses that only enrich the owners, and not the rest of us.
*To be clear, what the referendum said was that any taxpayer investment had to produce positive returns, which is basically the same as disallowing it, and is certainly how the average voter thought about it.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Three Sisters is Cool
From world-of-waterfalls.com.
The falls are still going even after this dry winter (although picture above is not current), and after tomorrow they'll be stronger. If you haven't yet done this hike, I recommend that you don't want to do it when it's rained recently because of slippery rock and dirt. Here's a Cro-Magnon we saw coming down the final little run the non-rope way. Didn't know there was a remnant population in the canyon.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Sh*t Barefoot Runners Say
In fairness, Born to Run is about a lot more than barefoot running. But as a takedown of athletic and exercise cults in general this is pretty funny.
H/T Boingboing.
H/T Boingboing.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Awesome Ice Skating...On the John Muir Trail
You can hear the thought process..."No snow in the Sierras, so what else can we do...wait, it's cold and we can get to the high lakes...hmmmm...." Talk about making lemonade - some genuine California ice skating. And the BEST PART: no soundtrack. When people watch nature videos, we want to hear, you know, water gurgling, wind, the scraping of ice and rocks...not annoying Euro-pop. This video is pretty much perfect. Thanks to the folks who made it and thanks to Mark at Marks Tales from the Trails for posting it on his awesome blog.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Safety Alert: Runner Assaulted in Mission Bay Park
The Union-Tribune has other details - happened 6:30pm, Saturday 28 January.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
San Francisco - the Ridge to Bridge
The Ridge Trail is putting on the 16th annual Ridge to Bridge on Saturday April 28 2012, raising money to help complete the trail - and as I learned on my little journey around the Bay, it's not complete yet. It's a day of trail running or hiking or whatever you want to do out there. Learn more here.
From bahiker.com.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Mongolia Must Be Awesome For Running
How bad is it that I see this video from Boing Boing about a ger-raising (filmed in real time and accelerated), and I'm drooling at the running that the countryside behind them promises. Not unlike a green Montana or Wyoming. The Kenyan highlands can give the same reaction.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
L.A.'s Griffith Park Is Neat-o
I have to admit I always thought of LA city parks as probably kind of gross and trashy and pretty small anyway. Wrong-o buster. Today I ran around a bunch of trails in Griffith Park, which is where the Hollywood sign is. The problem with the smaller or less isolated LA parks and canyons for us Diegueños is that they're not really worth a special trip, but if you're on your way somewhere, your stuff (often including your computer) is vulnerable in your car, and if you've been broken into before you understand why I'm nervous about that. So if I go to LA, it's for the Natl Forests up there, and I end up looking at places like Griffith Park and hoping I'll eventually get to explore them. And today I did.
Some nice green areas on the east side and some fun little climbs in there too to get up to Mt. Hollywood. Start on the east side by the merry-go-round to find these; Nobody Hikes in LA has the info, although hell if I was going to try to follow all the instructions in that post. (Signage in the park is pretty much absent.) The snow on the San Gabriels was pretty clear once you started getting up on the hill.
Critter sightings: some birds whose calls I didn't recognize, and a woodpecker that was damn determined to mmake progress on a telephone pole. I saw a very young horse getting trained to be comfortable walking along the ridges, plus there was a drum circle down in the east side parking lot and best of all, two brazen coyotes wandering around. (Picture below, sorry about the fuzziness, but then again it's an iPhone.)
Also, a big thank you for dlockeretz at Nobody Hikes in LA for that awesome website. I've been using it before but what I really like are the categories (region, or distance, or quality). Awesome. Much appreciated!
Monday, January 23, 2012
THE DOUBLE WOODSON
Finally, been wanting to double this for a long time, and got there early enough in the afternoon (gate closes at 5:15, and it's dark then anyway). And turns out there was a race there the day before. Who knew? People not as out of it as me I guess.
One strange thing: beginning around 2:15pm, several people heard very low frequency booming sounds. They tended to come in clusters of two or three, separated by several minutes. It didn't sound like thunder; much more even attack and decay. It could have been mining explosions, weapons testing or training on nearby base, a sonic boom, or even an earthquake - I've heard earthquakes before but they didn't sound like this. A Google search on both the web and news for Mt. Woodson, Ramona, and Poway plus boom, thunder, and rumble didn't yield anything.
I've been up to the top several times before on single up-and-downs but refuse to go on Potato Chip Rock myself for religious reasons. Specifically, the the anti-potato-chip religion.
[Added later: apparently there was some kind of marathon in Carlsbad yesterday too. I truly have my finger on the pulse of the San Diego running scene.]
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Safety Tool: Crimemapping.com
This is a lot more useful, and user-friendly, than the ARJIS system. Here it is centered on San Diego, but with this one site you can look at crime in many cities around the country.
Friday, January 13, 2012
BCS Officials: We Love the Taliban
...at least the Onion says so. This very subtle, totally nuanced piece, "Unpopular BCS Crowns Alabama National Champions, Endorses Rick Santorum, Spits On World War II Veteran, Pushes Elderly Woman Down Flight Of Stairs, Wishes Osama Bin Laden Were Still Alive" is made of win and is in line with previous articles. If you're a fellow BCS-hater, you may like previous entries in the "series".
Monday, January 9, 2012
Happy New Year!
Point Reyes
Happy New Year to all! To those of you I got to see, it was great. To those of you I haven't seen enough of in the last few months, congratulations on getting away from me, but it won't last. You've been warned.
A fun trip to San Francisco and back involved the usual silliness at such visits of running in Redwood Preserve in Oakland (i.e. French Trail), Muir Woods, the Marin Headlands, Purisima Creek Redwoods and Point Reyes - including, at the latter, more oysters than can really be healthy. I've also never seen that many elk hanging out at the McClure Beach area. I also got out to Mt. Diablo where I rediscovered the Eagle Peak route from Mitchell Canyon that I'd "lost" years ago - always good to recover a memorable route that you couldn't place on a map anymore. (But if that's happening to you it's a sign you've been out on too many trails.) On the way up I took this little detour through Angeles NF to see if there were any trails worth exploring on Angeles Crest Highway/Angeles Forest Highway/Big Tujunga Canyon Road. (Route below - I'm biased against desert-like terrain, so for me the answer is no, although if I'm missing anything feel free to comment.)
View Larger Map
Names will be disguised or left incomplete to protect the guilty: thanks to Greg and Will for letting me crash with them (again!) and to Greg and Rene for inviting us to a fun little New Years party in San Francisco. No thanks to professor MG for letting me stay in his squalid hovel in Santa Barbara. However this last visit reminded me again of the many trails in the Santa Ynez right there above Santa Barbara; Cold Spring Trail and Montecito Peak is one of them.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
News Flash: Central Coast is Still Awesome
Happy holidays! In case you needed reminding, a weekend in SLO is never wasted at any time of year. And I guess this is where I tell you I'm quitting blogging since I successfully auditioned for Jackass. On the way up there from San Diego, for the heck of it first we stopped at Wee Man's Chronic Tacos in Redondo, and lo and behold the man himself was there:
(No word on what my first stunt will be.) Then right north of Santa Barbara on 101, at the U.S. 1 exit, we stopped in the little lot east of the highway and meandered the half-mile or so up to the hot spring. It's a nice little stop if you're taking 101 to San Francisco. (Many mini-hikes was the theme of the trip.)
After that we checked out La Purisima Mission outside Lompoc (pictures below not mine) and then visited the southern end of the Pismo San Dunes at Oso Flaco before getting to SLO.
Seeing frost on the grass Sunday morning, we headed up to Missions San Miguel and San Antonio, before taking the beautiful and precipitous Nacimiento-Fergusson Road up and over the spine of the Santa Lucias. Here's your loyal blogger on Mill Creek trail, low on the ocean-facing slope of the Santa Lucias in the southernmost part of Ventana Wilderness.
Picture above mine (duh). Picture below not.
The southern part of Ventana is where the very southernmost stand of redwoods is, which continue to recover from the fire a couple years ago. (We never found the campsite, the trail just petered out, as the folks who made this trail report said.) Finishing the hike ahead of schedule at least gave us extra time to see a typical spectacular sunset along Route 1.
We wanted some tacos by the time we got back down to Morro Bay, and tried to go to Taco Temple, which was closed for some reason. Apparently it was Christmas Day. This theme was continued in downtown SLO. Then again, one of the benefits of being in your late 30s is you no longer panic if it's a Saturday night and the dearth of entertainment options forces you to actually relax with people you like!
The next morning we screwed around on the dunes too long so we had to skip going to Big Falls (next time!) - although Chiquito Falls in Trabuco (Cleveland NF) was dry just a couple weeks ago, and we've had no rain since then, so maybe we didn't miss anything. Seeing as a certain anthropologist was too cool to be home when we were visiting, we headed first to the Coronado Butterly Preserve, where monarchs spend the winter (image not mine):
After that we went up and over the mountains behind Santa Barbara to the Santa Ynez river canyon. NOTE: Gibraltar Road is CLOSED, apparently always the case at this time of year. I like driving over those concrete things to go through the river so I was a little disappointed, not to mention that the Red Rock area is pretty cool. But still, the Oso campgrounds aren't bad either.
We finished off with a visit to Painted Cave before continuing south for some good Chinese food in Irvine. My only regret: I still haven't figured out a way to bottle the smell of Central Coast oak forest.
(No word on what my first stunt will be.) Then right north of Santa Barbara on 101, at the U.S. 1 exit, we stopped in the little lot east of the highway and meandered the half-mile or so up to the hot spring. It's a nice little stop if you're taking 101 to San Francisco. (Many mini-hikes was the theme of the trip.)
After that we checked out La Purisima Mission outside Lompoc (pictures below not mine) and then visited the southern end of the Pismo San Dunes at Oso Flaco before getting to SLO.
Seeing frost on the grass Sunday morning, we headed up to Missions San Miguel and San Antonio, before taking the beautiful and precipitous Nacimiento-Fergusson Road up and over the spine of the Santa Lucias. Here's your loyal blogger on Mill Creek trail, low on the ocean-facing slope of the Santa Lucias in the southernmost part of Ventana Wilderness.
Picture above mine (duh). Picture below not.
The southern part of Ventana is where the very southernmost stand of redwoods is, which continue to recover from the fire a couple years ago. (We never found the campsite, the trail just petered out, as the folks who made this trail report said.) Finishing the hike ahead of schedule at least gave us extra time to see a typical spectacular sunset along Route 1.
We wanted some tacos by the time we got back down to Morro Bay, and tried to go to Taco Temple, which was closed for some reason. Apparently it was Christmas Day. This theme was continued in downtown SLO. Then again, one of the benefits of being in your late 30s is you no longer panic if it's a Saturday night and the dearth of entertainment options forces you to actually relax with people you like!
The next morning we screwed around on the dunes too long so we had to skip going to Big Falls (next time!) - although Chiquito Falls in Trabuco (Cleveland NF) was dry just a couple weeks ago, and we've had no rain since then, so maybe we didn't miss anything. Seeing as a certain anthropologist was too cool to be home when we were visiting, we headed first to the Coronado Butterly Preserve, where monarchs spend the winter (image not mine):
After that we went up and over the mountains behind Santa Barbara to the Santa Ynez river canyon. NOTE: Gibraltar Road is CLOSED, apparently always the case at this time of year. I like driving over those concrete things to go through the river so I was a little disappointed, not to mention that the Red Rock area is pretty cool. But still, the Oso campgrounds aren't bad either.
We finished off with a visit to Painted Cave before continuing south for some good Chinese food in Irvine. My only regret: I still haven't figured out a way to bottle the smell of Central Coast oak forest.
Film of San Francisco in 1955
Via Boing Boing, Check out this color film of a 1955 San Francisco (thank you filmmaker Tullio Pellegrini.) It's long, so here are the highlights of that differences from 1955 to 2011 that jumped out at me:
- 0:30, Pedestrian overpasses on 101 are missing
- 0:50, first exit (to right) off Bay Bridge to Fremont street doesn't continue turning right (it was rebuilt after Loma Prieta in 89)
- 2:30, I wish traffic on Van Ness were still that light
- Past 7:00, the Cliff House has more structures, but the real money
shot is the sky tram and waterfalls over the now-gone baths and amusement park
- 8:00, you can see a pier at the northern end of Ocean Beach
- 12:10, it looks like the dunes were lower than today.
- 15:45 has a view from Twin Peaks so you can see the relative lack of high rises
- ~18:45, just funny to me, an ad for a sukiyaki restaurant on the side of a cable car
- 0:30, Pedestrian overpasses on 101 are missing
- 0:50, first exit (to right) off Bay Bridge to Fremont street doesn't continue turning right (it was rebuilt after Loma Prieta in 89)
- 2:30, I wish traffic on Van Ness were still that light
- Past 7:00, the Cliff House has more structures, but the real money
shot is the sky tram and waterfalls over the now-gone baths and amusement park
- 8:00, you can see a pier at the northern end of Ocean Beach
- 12:10, it looks like the dunes were lower than today.
- 15:45 has a view from Twin Peaks so you can see the relative lack of high rises
- ~18:45, just funny to me, an ad for a sukiyaki restaurant on the side of a cable car
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Bears in San Diego County
There are some. What do you know! No I didn't see any, but i was just doing some research to see if there are any in the Ventana or Santa Lucia Wilderness, and according to DFG there are.
They're mostly in the mountains, but hey, this could still happen. From the Nine Commandments.
You SoCal outdoorspeople might be chuckling to yourself that I'm surprised by this, but what can I say. When I first looked at this map I thought the CA Department of Fish and Game's map, which I thought was being overenthusiastic - for example, they have all of Marin County as bear territory, and to my knowledge there was has been one unconfirmed bear sighting in Point Reyes in recent history.
But here are sightings, tree-ings and cooler break-ins (including Julian and Ramona) through 2000.
From CA DFG.
They're mostly in the mountains, but hey, this could still happen. From the Nine Commandments.
You SoCal outdoorspeople might be chuckling to yourself that I'm surprised by this, but what can I say. When I first looked at this map I thought the CA Department of Fish and Game's map, which I thought was being overenthusiastic - for example, they have all of Marin County as bear territory, and to my knowledge there was has been one unconfirmed bear sighting in Point Reyes in recent history.
But here are sightings, tree-ings and cooler break-ins (including Julian and Ramona) through 2000.
From CA DFG.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
The BCS Bowls: Interesting Take By Two Economists
At Grantland there's a great article than answers why a system so unfair and unpopular as the BCS rankings persists, written by Kevin Grier and Tyler Cowen (you may recognize that last name from columns in the New York Times). Why economists? Because the answer is money, that's why. To be clear, this isn't a screed against college football - it's a screed against people who think the current system has been picking the best teams. Chances are your own team has been screwed by this, which led me to do this analysis of pre- vs. post-season rankings.
One heading in the Grantland article is "Bowls often take money over merit when making match-ups". It links to an August piece by political and athletic oddsmaker Nate Silver, who shows that part of the reason for such an opaque system is that vested economic interests want their bowls to host teams whose fans buy tickets and T-shirts, even if those teams suck. There are plenty of objective figures to consider. BCS stupidity exposed here; BCS hijinx here.
[Added later: I spent way too much time making scatterplots out of BCS data compared against the annual undergrad college rankings from U.S. News during the 2006-2010 period. Guess what? There is zero relationship, either with the rankings, the academic scoring system, or the trends over time; that is to say, football doesn't help or hurt the academic rankings, but still, it seems kind of strange that an athletic team gets to use the brand of an academic institution that they seem to have zero influence on.]
Of course the Onion is not to be left out of the fun either:; this is just fantastic.
One heading in the Grantland article is "Bowls often take money over merit when making match-ups". It links to an August piece by political and athletic oddsmaker Nate Silver, who shows that part of the reason for such an opaque system is that vested economic interests want their bowls to host teams whose fans buy tickets and T-shirts, even if those teams suck. There are plenty of objective figures to consider. BCS stupidity exposed here; BCS hijinx here.
[Added later: I spent way too much time making scatterplots out of BCS data compared against the annual undergrad college rankings from U.S. News during the 2006-2010 period. Guess what? There is zero relationship, either with the rankings, the academic scoring system, or the trends over time; that is to say, football doesn't help or hurt the academic rankings, but still, it seems kind of strange that an athletic team gets to use the brand of an academic institution that they seem to have zero influence on.]
Of course the Onion is not to be left out of the fun either:; this is just fantastic.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Mini-Profile of Jenn Shelton from Born to Run
If you read Christopher McDougall's Born to Run about the Tarahumara, you'll remember Jenn Shelton as the party girl. That's an image she's trying to shake. I read elsewhere that she complained that McDougall's book romanticizes the lifestyle of the Tarahumara, which is in large part dictated by poverty. That doesn't sound like a party-girl thing to say. Profile here, which struck me because even top-notch ultra-runners are afraid of mountain lions.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Chia Experiment
Southwest Indians are supposed to have eaten chia seeds on long runs when they started to get tired, and in Born to Run Christopher McDougall discusses the chia smoothies used by the Tarahumara of Chihuahua for the same reason. Yes, chia, the seeds for the stuff that grows on chia pets.
It pays to be skeptical of these claims (and the great blog Science of Running can help you with that). People always want a magic fix for things like this, and unfortunately most of it is nonsense being peddled by a profit motive - though there's nothing wrong with profit, unless you're B.S.-ing people about your product. And I wanted to try it out, so I decided to do a small and admittedly poorly-controlled study: I carried chia seeds with me, and started eating them an hour into my run. I did this five times, in flat to slightly-hilly runs, at temperatures ranging from 55 to 65 F. I could feel no difference in fatigue versus previous runs under the same conditions, and my times on the same routes were the same.
If you want more, then read this paper in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, which reported that chia seeds showed no statistical advantage over any other form of carb loading.
It pays to be skeptical of these claims (and the great blog Science of Running can help you with that). People always want a magic fix for things like this, and unfortunately most of it is nonsense being peddled by a profit motive - though there's nothing wrong with profit, unless you're B.S.-ing people about your product. And I wanted to try it out, so I decided to do a small and admittedly poorly-controlled study: I carried chia seeds with me, and started eating them an hour into my run. I did this five times, in flat to slightly-hilly runs, at temperatures ranging from 55 to 65 F. I could feel no difference in fatigue versus previous runs under the same conditions, and my times on the same routes were the same.
If you want more, then read this paper in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, which reported that chia seeds showed no statistical advantage over any other form of carb loading.
Snow at Mt. Laguna
The cold weather in SoCal recently has been fantastic for running; also for scenery. I took these purty pitchers at Mt. Laguna, about an hour east of San Diego yesterday:
And here's a charming acquaintance of mine who came to visit from NorCal for some surfing, sun and warm weather in San Diego. He's clearly thrilled.
And here's a charming acquaintance of mine who came to visit from NorCal for some surfing, sun and warm weather in San Diego. He's clearly thrilled.
A Win-Win-Win Scenario: Do Away With the BCS Rankings
An article by Richard Thaler. Mathematic evidence of the sheer stupidity of BCS rankings here.
Monday, December 5, 2011
How Many Miles per Gallon Do You Get Running?
UCSD physics professor Tom Murphy does something I was always curious about and calculates the MPG conversions for walking and biking. The conversion is based on the energy density of gasoline burned in cars vs. food energy burned in muscle. "Long-haul" walking comes in at 40 MPG eating regular food; running will be less efficient than that. A Prius is more efficient in energy terms than a runner.
Note that of course this doesn't measure climate impact or dollars per unit energy. Murphy also points out that those kcal you're eating could either be trucked in from all over the place (burning more gas) or be grown closer to home.
Note that of course this doesn't measure climate impact or dollars per unit energy. Murphy also points out that those kcal you're eating could either be trucked in from all over the place (burning more gas) or be grown closer to home.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Houston Scrambling to Get More Undefeated Before BCS Picks Title Game
From The Onion, which always has great BCS-mocking humor, as linked in this article.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Conservatives For the Environment
"There is a small subculture on the Right, known as 'free market environmentalism,' that offers an alternate path toward environmental protection consistent with conservative principles, including respect for property rights, a strong preference for markets, and our congenital suspicion of government and regulation. The conservative movement would be well served to take those ideas more seriously."
- From Steven Hayward's call to modernize conservatism in Breakthrough Journal.
- From Steven Hayward's call to modernize conservatism in Breakthrough Journal.
Running in Pennsylvania is Awesome
Autumn woods from my mom's back porch:
The warm Thanksgiving weather made PA's woods and fields and rolling hills even more fun to run in than usual, and even though the leaves are down there's a lot of green undergrowth to make it feel alive. The November air smelled fantastic. The one drawback to PA is its old geology and broken up granite and shale that give it the Appalachian Trail hiker's nickname of Rockylvania. Neversink's trails are a lot of fun and totally under-utilized, but a bit rocky. Fortunately the western shore of Blue Marsh, my new favorite place to run in Berks, is almost all soil rather than rock.
So is there any kind of a "Berks County Triple Crown"? I.e., you've completed the Thun Trail plus Blue Marsh circumnavigation plus Neversink? It's a neat interlocking trail system and seems ripe for something like this. There are cool races around those parts already like the Mt. Penn Mud-Run, how about an ultra for all those trails?
I had a side trip to Western PA but unfortunately didn't have any time to run - was going to do the Thousand Steps near Mt. Union but that will have to wait until my next trip to State College. I also had never heard of the 70-mile Laurel Highlands Trail until I drove under the pedestrian overpass across the turnpike. Coolly enough, there's already an ultra. Here's a video of the trail, one end of which is at Ohiopyle falls and rapids, which is in turn close to Wright's Falling Water:
The warm Thanksgiving weather made PA's woods and fields and rolling hills even more fun to run in than usual, and even though the leaves are down there's a lot of green undergrowth to make it feel alive. The November air smelled fantastic. The one drawback to PA is its old geology and broken up granite and shale that give it the Appalachian Trail hiker's nickname of Rockylvania. Neversink's trails are a lot of fun and totally under-utilized, but a bit rocky. Fortunately the western shore of Blue Marsh, my new favorite place to run in Berks, is almost all soil rather than rock.
So is there any kind of a "Berks County Triple Crown"? I.e., you've completed the Thun Trail plus Blue Marsh circumnavigation plus Neversink? It's a neat interlocking trail system and seems ripe for something like this. There are cool races around those parts already like the Mt. Penn Mud-Run, how about an ultra for all those trails?
I had a side trip to Western PA but unfortunately didn't have any time to run - was going to do the Thousand Steps near Mt. Union but that will have to wait until my next trip to State College. I also had never heard of the 70-mile Laurel Highlands Trail until I drove under the pedestrian overpass across the turnpike. Coolly enough, there's already an ultra. Here's a video of the trail, one end of which is at Ohiopyle falls and rapids, which is in turn close to Wright's Falling Water:
Sports Stadiums Don't Help Local Economies
Sports are great, but private enterprise is better, so don't stick taxpayers with the bill for stadiums. And here's why: "Few fields of empirical economic research offer virtual unanimity of findings. Yet, independent work on the economic impact of stadiums and arenas has uniformly found that there is no statistically significant positive correlation between sports facility construction and economic development." A paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives covers the topic, further expanded upon in a current, concrete instantiation by Maggie Koerth-Baker at Boing Boing.
These big structures are typically built where the land is cheap, in out-of-the-way locations, ex-industrial zones or bad neighborhoods, and I don't think too many people stop to shop and eat after a game in those kinds of places.
These big structures are typically built where the land is cheap, in out-of-the-way locations, ex-industrial zones or bad neighborhoods, and I don't think too many people stop to shop and eat after a game in those kinds of places.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
The Worst Things About the Sandusky Scandal
...at Penn State, besides (obviously) the fact that so many kids were hurt, and people didn't go straight to law enforcement over it, are as follows:
1. That the sincerity of the fans is being called into question. Yes, we're sad that our beloved team and institution is involved in this. Yes, we still like them, and no we're not personally responsible. (Those who were responsible will receive justice, too late for some unfortunately. That's how we do it in the civilized world, not by blaming all members of the same tribe for something they didn't do.) Yes, we're wearing blue on Saturday, a team color and the color of sexual abuse survivors. This is so terrible and phony? What's the morally superior action then? Should we pretend nothing happened? Should we all sit at home weeping in dark rooms or beating ourselves bloody in shame? No, we shouldn't, because here's a fantastic opportunity to get the message out that sexual abuse remains a horrible problem. If hundreds of thousands of Penn Staters do not wear blue this weekend, we've wasted that opportunity.
2. That some idiot students didn't realize the one thing they could do to further besmirch the school was to riot. Thanks guys.
3. That sports journos who always had an axe to grind with Paterno, and/or just see a chance to write a controversial article to get their name out there, are villifying the entire history of the man and the program. Really: as a consumer of sports media, I ask you to read these articles closely. If concern for protecting children is what this is all about (and it should be), then you'll notice that surprisingly, many of these articles are surprisingly devoid of all but the most perfunctory expressions of empathy.
4. That a team and figure not incorrectly associated with fairness and decency will forever have this association. Programs not nearly as clean as PSU will roll their eyes when they see how Paterno ended up and say, "See? All those years of throwing people off the team for getting caught with drugs or having bad grades amounted to nothing. Let's go take steroids and beat prostitutes." Paterno made a huge mistake, but I fail to see how that makes every act throughout his career evil, and I especially fail to see how villifying him will help serve justice or protect kids in the future.
Humans are often bad at moral thinking, and this scandal has exposed that - and unfortunately not just in decision-makers at Penn State, but in the public's reactions to it, and misplaced demand for shame in people who did nothing wrong and are trying to make the best of a bad situation. Penn Staters, our ashamed silence right now does not help anyone. There's nothing moral in sitting idly by and indulging the media's moral chest-thumpers who seem to think that the ruination of these kids' lives can be undone by impugning the motives of Penn Staters who had nothing to do with the tragedy. To put a point on it: imagine that after 9/11, a citizen of Jordan (where several of the hijackers came from) went on a U.S. speaking tour to argue for tolerance and non-violence, to show the world that the vast majority of Jordanians and Muslims are not homocidal maniacs. Would he have been insincere and immoral? What would have been the more moral act, for him to stay home and hang his head in shame just because he happened to share his religion and country of birth with a few evil men, or go out into the world and try to make things better and keep the same thing from happening again? I keep reading articles about how shameful it is that PSU's players are still focused on beating Nebraska. So what should they do? Forfeit the game? Lose intentionally? Would that take away these kids' suffering? And why just the football team, how about Penn State employees, like the facilities people who prepare the field every week, or the stadium janitorial staff, should they all shirk their duties or mope around with heads down while they do it? Would that help?
Once kids are safe and justice is underway, then there's nothing immoral about Penn State fans increasing awareness of the problem that caused this. Once kids are safe and justice is underway, there's nothing immoral about Penn Staters being concerned with the school's reputation. What's most moral now is making sure justice is served, and doing whatever we can to keep this from ever happening again. Part of that is increasing awareness of the problem, which the blue-out will do. Browbeating the team, the fans, and alums will not accomplish this, it will only distract.
1. That the sincerity of the fans is being called into question. Yes, we're sad that our beloved team and institution is involved in this. Yes, we still like them, and no we're not personally responsible. (Those who were responsible will receive justice, too late for some unfortunately. That's how we do it in the civilized world, not by blaming all members of the same tribe for something they didn't do.) Yes, we're wearing blue on Saturday, a team color and the color of sexual abuse survivors. This is so terrible and phony? What's the morally superior action then? Should we pretend nothing happened? Should we all sit at home weeping in dark rooms or beating ourselves bloody in shame? No, we shouldn't, because here's a fantastic opportunity to get the message out that sexual abuse remains a horrible problem. If hundreds of thousands of Penn Staters do not wear blue this weekend, we've wasted that opportunity.
2. That some idiot students didn't realize the one thing they could do to further besmirch the school was to riot. Thanks guys.
3. That sports journos who always had an axe to grind with Paterno, and/or just see a chance to write a controversial article to get their name out there, are villifying the entire history of the man and the program. Really: as a consumer of sports media, I ask you to read these articles closely. If concern for protecting children is what this is all about (and it should be), then you'll notice that surprisingly, many of these articles are surprisingly devoid of all but the most perfunctory expressions of empathy.
4. That a team and figure not incorrectly associated with fairness and decency will forever have this association. Programs not nearly as clean as PSU will roll their eyes when they see how Paterno ended up and say, "See? All those years of throwing people off the team for getting caught with drugs or having bad grades amounted to nothing. Let's go take steroids and beat prostitutes." Paterno made a huge mistake, but I fail to see how that makes every act throughout his career evil, and I especially fail to see how villifying him will help serve justice or protect kids in the future.
Humans are often bad at moral thinking, and this scandal has exposed that - and unfortunately not just in decision-makers at Penn State, but in the public's reactions to it, and misplaced demand for shame in people who did nothing wrong and are trying to make the best of a bad situation. Penn Staters, our ashamed silence right now does not help anyone. There's nothing moral in sitting idly by and indulging the media's moral chest-thumpers who seem to think that the ruination of these kids' lives can be undone by impugning the motives of Penn Staters who had nothing to do with the tragedy. To put a point on it: imagine that after 9/11, a citizen of Jordan (where several of the hijackers came from) went on a U.S. speaking tour to argue for tolerance and non-violence, to show the world that the vast majority of Jordanians and Muslims are not homocidal maniacs. Would he have been insincere and immoral? What would have been the more moral act, for him to stay home and hang his head in shame just because he happened to share his religion and country of birth with a few evil men, or go out into the world and try to make things better and keep the same thing from happening again? I keep reading articles about how shameful it is that PSU's players are still focused on beating Nebraska. So what should they do? Forfeit the game? Lose intentionally? Would that take away these kids' suffering? And why just the football team, how about Penn State employees, like the facilities people who prepare the field every week, or the stadium janitorial staff, should they all shirk their duties or mope around with heads down while they do it? Would that help?
Once kids are safe and justice is underway, then there's nothing immoral about Penn State fans increasing awareness of the problem that caused this. Once kids are safe and justice is underway, there's nothing immoral about Penn Staters being concerned with the school's reputation. What's most moral now is making sure justice is served, and doing whatever we can to keep this from ever happening again. Part of that is increasing awareness of the problem, which the blue-out will do. Browbeating the team, the fans, and alums will not accomplish this, it will only distract.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Joe Paterno
I went to Penn State. So did my dad. He was a Penn State football maniac. Despite his best attempts to reproduce this part of himself with frequent family trips to Penn State during the autumns of my adolescence, I have to admit that aside from the fun of tailgating and hanging out with friends, I never cared that much about football (or any team sport); although, tellingly, the one ranking system that I pay attention to is college football. That said, Penn State football was quite literally the closest thing I had to a religion growing up. At age five I began reporting to adults that when I grew up I wanted to be a Penn State football player. My room was blue and white. We had blue and white cars. My dad was the president of the county alumni association and I eventually arranged his funeral to be held in a Penn State conference room. So even though I haven't watched a single game since I graduated (other than ones where I was sitting in Beaver Stadium drinking beer with college buddies), it still hurts when I hear on the news that they lost, and it hurts when they lose a bowl game. And this scandal has really hurt.
I once joked that I felt silly when Metallica's bass player quit in 2001 just before the inauguration of George W. Bush, because my worldview was more shaken by a line-up change in a metal band than by the changing of the guard in the most powerful office on the planet. At the time I said the only thing that could shake the natural order more - the thing that would revert the whole universe to a primitive chaotic state - would be a Penn State football team without Joe Paterno coaching. And that was assuming that he would exit gracefully with adoring fans thronging him. It's not going to happen that way now.
This is sad for many reasons. It's sad first and foremost because of what happened to the kids involved. It's sad if people acted to protect the institution more than the kids, as also seems to be the case; and the justice system will find these things out. But what's also sad is that, regardless of any mistakes he made in this affair, Paterno is a one-of-a-kind who (to understate it) worked very hard to keep values in college football. Bad grades and behavior could and would get you thrown off the team. Really. And he no doubt lost games because of it, and he no doubt lost recruits who went elsewhere where they knew they could get away with bad behavior - but he was willing to make that trade. Where else in college athletics has that been the rule for a half century? Of course, whatever anyone did, none of that makes it okay.
Joe turned down opportunities to go pro to stay at Penn State. Huge amounts of his money have gone to the library and, mostly, to other non-athletic institutions. His house, just off campus, is well-known by students and, while nice, is certainly not huge or attention-drawing. And just two weeks ago he officially became the winningest coach in college football history. I had thought he would retire anyway, but now he'll leave under this cloud. I hope it doesn't pollute his whole legacy because he was an example for all of athletics, and I hope any mistakes were sins of omission. But ultimately football is a game, and real life - the lives of these kids - is more important. And justice will tell us what happened, and that's what I'm waiting for.
I once joked that I felt silly when Metallica's bass player quit in 2001 just before the inauguration of George W. Bush, because my worldview was more shaken by a line-up change in a metal band than by the changing of the guard in the most powerful office on the planet. At the time I said the only thing that could shake the natural order more - the thing that would revert the whole universe to a primitive chaotic state - would be a Penn State football team without Joe Paterno coaching. And that was assuming that he would exit gracefully with adoring fans thronging him. It's not going to happen that way now.
This is sad for many reasons. It's sad first and foremost because of what happened to the kids involved. It's sad if people acted to protect the institution more than the kids, as also seems to be the case; and the justice system will find these things out. But what's also sad is that, regardless of any mistakes he made in this affair, Paterno is a one-of-a-kind who (to understate it) worked very hard to keep values in college football. Bad grades and behavior could and would get you thrown off the team. Really. And he no doubt lost games because of it, and he no doubt lost recruits who went elsewhere where they knew they could get away with bad behavior - but he was willing to make that trade. Where else in college athletics has that been the rule for a half century? Of course, whatever anyone did, none of that makes it okay.
Joe turned down opportunities to go pro to stay at Penn State. Huge amounts of his money have gone to the library and, mostly, to other non-athletic institutions. His house, just off campus, is well-known by students and, while nice, is certainly not huge or attention-drawing. And just two weeks ago he officially became the winningest coach in college football history. I had thought he would retire anyway, but now he'll leave under this cloud. I hope it doesn't pollute his whole legacy because he was an example for all of athletics, and I hope any mistakes were sins of omission. But ultimately football is a game, and real life - the lives of these kids - is more important. And justice will tell us what happened, and that's what I'm waiting for.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Finally! I Can Go Long!
Since a) I'm done with boards and a lab project and b) the weather is BEAUTIFUL (i.e. cold and rainy) I have gone for long runs for the first time in I don't know how long. And I don't even feel guilty for taking three hours out of my day without carrying an iPod to listen to lectures. Amazing. Simply amazing. Aerobic exercise really does have mood stabilizing properties!
The San Diego Blackout and the Sunrise Power Link
There's a great article at Voice of San Diego about the blackout we just had, and how the answer is not to depend more on foreign energy, but good ol' locally generated renewable stuff. It's really not a trade-off between cheap electricity (which is good!) and conservation (which is also good!), although that's the story we usually hear. In fact in this case it seems to have been a no-brainer, with all the bad stuff (loss of wilderness, fire danger, no improvement to power grid, increased dependence on foreign energy) all on one side.
...The problem began at a substation in Arizona, and a series of triggering events caused failures all the way to San Onofre nuclear plant on the coast. At the cost of an estimated $100 million in damages, and major inconvenience to millions of people, the San Diego region received a crash course about the fragility of depending on a grid that runs mostly on distant sources of energy.
But it didn't have to turn out this way. Four years ago a San Diego engineer, Bill Powers, published a groundbreaking report, San Diego Smart Energy 2020. The report was all about how to use off-the-shelf technologies in order to build and generate power locally to enhance the existing grid, and provide protection against these sorts of events. The report isn't a pie-in-the-sky vision of the future. It uses affordable technologies that are available and ready to deploy. It's a practical guide that includes a 20 percent reduction in energy usage through existing efficiency measures and 2,000 megawatts of local solar projects. To back up the solar, which doesn't generate at night, Powers' report proposes 700 new megawatts of small co-generation facilities, similar to what is already in use at Qualcomm, UCSD, SDSU, and Children's Hospital, which are highly efficient users of natural gas.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Bike Trails Improve Property Values
It turns out people are willing to pay a premium to live near bike trails (nine thousand smackaroos to be within a thousand feet). That is to say, if someone builds a bike trail near your house while you're living in it, when you sell, you get more money. Trails and open space = increased property values.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Mountain Lion and Housecat Not Best Buddies
Needless to say, while San Diego is having the most awesome weather evar - that is, cold and foggy and marine layery, I can't run much because my big test is next week. Yeah. You read that right. I said that. San Diego's sun and warm weather suck. San Francisco is better. What are you gonna do about it?
Now that I'm finished perfunctorily insulting San Diego, enjoy this amazing set of photos of a housecat being visited by his cousin the mountain lion (through a sliding glass window. Not gory.)
Now that I'm finished perfunctorily insulting San Diego, enjoy this amazing set of photos of a housecat being visited by his cousin the mountain lion (through a sliding glass window. Not gory.)
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Coyotes in Rose Canyon
It's not a surprise to many people that there are coyotes there, but what's interesting is they seem to be there, or at least be noisy, at the same times of year. This is the third mid-October in a row that I've noticed there were a lot - a lot - at night in Rose, as revealed by their responses to a passing siren. I have yet to hear them at any other time. Maybe the bunnies are extra juicy in UTC in October.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Broad Daylight Robberies in UTC - Near Rose Canyon Along La Jolla Colony Drive
It's worth mentioning that there were two robberies reported on Saturday, in broad daylight at two and three in the afternoon, next to Rose Canyon near I-5. This is at the southwestern corner of what most would call the UTC area of San Diego. They were reported as being on Rosenda and Porte La Paz, so it may be that the robberies happened on those streets, or just near them, along the path next to La Jolla Colony Drive next to Rose Canyon. Either way it's worth knowing if you use that path or Rose Canyon.
You can sign up for SDPD's automatic emails here, and find out every crime reported within a mile of your front door, on a daily basis.
You can sign up for SDPD's automatic emails here, and find out every crime reported within a mile of your front door, on a daily basis.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Continuing Decline of SoCal Fisheries
If you like to eat or catch fish from the California coast, read this. If you've ever read Mancur Olson's Tragedy of the Commons paper, also read it.
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