Kim's Game

I didn't realize that the jewel game from Kipling's Kim had been dubbed Kim's Game and popularized in real life:

Kim, a teenager being trained in secret as a spy, spends a month in Simla, India at the home of Mr. Lurgan, who ostensibly runs a jewel shop but in truth is engaged in espionage for the British against the Russians. Lurgan brings out a copper tray and tosses a handful of jewels onto it; his boy servant explains to Kim:

Look on them as long as thou wilt, stranger. Count and, if need be, handle. One look is enough for me. When thou hast counted and handled and art sure that thou canst remember them all, I cover them with this paper, and thou must tell over the tally to Lurgan Sahib. I will write mine.

They contest the game many times, sometimes with jewels, sometimes with odd objects, and sometimes with photographs of people. It is considered a vital part of training in observation; Lurgan says:

[Do] it many times over till it is done perfectly — for it is worth doing.

In his book Scouting Games, Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of scouting, names the exercise Kim's Game and describes it as follows:

The Scoutmaster should collect on a tray a number of articles — knives, spoons, pencil, pen, stones, book and so on — not more than about fifteen for the first few games, and cover the whole over with a cloth. He then makes the others sit round, where they can see the tray, and uncovers it for one minute. Then each of them must make a list on a piece of paper of all the articles he can remember… The one who remembers most wins the game.

Preferring a Pound of Cure

Voters prefer a pound of cure to an ounce of prevention, Bryan Caplan notes, citing Andrew Healy's recent paper:

Using comprehensive data on natural disasters, government spending, and election returns, I show that voters reward disaster relief spending but not disaster prevention spending. This aspect of voter behavior creates a large distortion in the incentives that governments face, since the data show that prevention spending substantially reduces future damage.
[...]
Given mean annual prevention spending of $195 million and mean disaster damage of $16.5 billion, the regression estimates that a $1 increase in prevention spending resulted in a $8.30 decrease in disaster damage, and this estimate captures only benefits that occur in the five years from 2000-2004.

Africa is giving nothing to anyone -- apart from AIDS

Irish write Kevin Myers speaks the unspeakable, and says that Africa is giving nothing to anyone — apart from AIDS:

No. It will not do. Even as we see African states refusing to take action to restore something resembling civilisation in Zimbabwe, the begging bowl for Ethiopia is being passed around to us, yet again. It is nearly 25 years since Ethiopia's (and Bob Geldof's) famous Feed The World campaign, and in that time Ethiopia's population has grown from 33.5 million to 78 million today.

So why on earth should I do anything to encourage further catastrophic demographic growth in that country?
[...]
Sorry. My conscience has toured this territory on foot and financially. Unlike most of you, I have been to Ethiopia; like most of you, I have stumped up the loot to charities to stop starvation there. The wide-eyed boy-child we saved, 20 years or so ago, is now a priapic, Kalashnikov-bearing hearty, siring children whenever the whim takes him.
[...]
Within 20 years of the [Irish] Famine, the Irish population was down by 30 [percent]. Over the equivalent period, thanks to western food, the Mercedes 10-wheel truck and the Lockheed Hercules, Ethiopia's has more than doubled.

Alas, that wretched country is not alone in its madness. Somewhere, over the rainbow, lies Somalia, another fine land of violent, Kalashnikov-toting, khat-chewing, girl-circumcising, permanently tumescent layabouts.

Indeed, we now have almost an entire continent of sexually hyperactive indigents, with tens of millions of people who only survive because of help from the outside world.
[...]
How much morality is there in saving an Ethiopian child from starvation today, for it to survive to a life of brutal circumcision, poverty, hunger, violence and sexual abuse, resulting in another half-dozen such wide-eyed children, with comparably jolly little lives ahead of them? Of course, it might make you feel better, which is a prime reason for so much charity. But that is not good enough.

For self-serving generosity has been one of the curses of Africa. It has sustained political systems which would otherwise have collapsed.

It prolonged the Eritrean-Ethiopian war by nearly a decade. It is inspiring Bill Gates' programme to rid the continent of malaria, when, in the almost complete absence of personal self-discipline, that disease is one of the most efficacious forms of population-control now operating.

If his programme is successful, tens of millions of children who would otherwise have died in infancy will survive to adulthood, he boasts. Oh good: then what?

(Hat tip to Dennis Mangan.)

The Depressive Realism Economy

Arnold Kling calls it The Depressive Realism Economy:

There are psychologists who argue that healthy people tend to have an inflated view of their abilities and how they are regarded by peers. In contrast, these psychologists contend, there is a tendency for depressed people to accurately assess where they stand. This hypothesis is called “depressive realism.” It explains our current economic gloom.
[...]
It now appears that we were living in a dream world a few years ago, with oil prices unsustainably low and house price inflation unsustainably high. Reality is less pleasant.

In theory, a student who suffers a blow to his or her self-esteem can continue to work hard and learn. In practice, educators worry that this will not happen.

Similarly, the asset revaluations that represent blows to our economic self-esteem could be shrugged off by workers and businesses. We still have all of the capital equipment and know-how for the U.S. economy to continue growing.

However, a significant reallocation of resources is required. For example, we need fewer construction workers. During the boom, the housing stock grew faster than the rate of family formation. It will take several years for this excess housing inventory, which some economists estimate may be as much 3 million units above its normal level, to be occupied.

Educational credentials that seemed useful four years ago may not be as valuable during the current transition phase.

Kling sees the problem through the unorthodox lens of macro without aggregate demand:

Orthodox Keynesian macroeconomics says that the cure for economic pessimism is for government to create an illusion. Congress can cut taxes or the Federal Reserve can print money in order to make people feel more prosperous.

What government cannot do, however, is figure out how to reallocate workers to new industries in a way that reflects long-term reality. Government does not know whether the journalism graduate should wait patiently for a relevant job or whether he needs to find a different career path.

Adapting to the reality of higher energy costs and an excess housing stock requires myriad complex adjustments, some of which may be obvious but many of which are subtle. Chances are, it will take several years to complete the transition. Meanwhile, there is little, if anything, that policymakers can do to hasten that process.

Rampage on the Rampage

Apparently Quinton "Rampage" Jackson went on a second-rate rampage outside the cage, in his "lifted" Ford F-250 truck, emblazoned with his photo:

Rampage was on the 55 Freeway in the O.C., hit two cars and got off the freeway. The chase was on.

Rampage then began driving on the center divider. But it gets worse. According to the police report, Jackson then drove on the sidewalk, "causing pedestrians to flee for their lives." He started driving the wrong way on a crowded street, colliding with yet another car in an intersection. As he continued on, running several red lights, his tire disintegrated and he began driving on the rim.

Rampage eventually got to the exclusive Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach, where he again drove on the sidewalk, "causing pedestrians to flee in terror."

Eventually, his car came to a stop and he was taken into custody at gunpoint. Cops took him to the Orange County Jail, but they determined he was "medically unfit" to be booked. Cops won't say if he was high.

Rampage is currently in an O.C. hospital.

Quinton, Quinton, Quinton...

Wii Sports Resort

Nintendo's Wii Sports sequel — Wii Sports Resort — goes tropical with three new games: Sword Play, Power Cruising, and Disc Dog.

I have been waiting for a Wii sword-fighting game for a long time — and it looks like there's a reason:

The newly announced Wii MotionPlus — a new accessory that plugs into the base of the Wiimote to provide better tracking of arm movement — will come packed with the game.

Ah, sweet, sweet, faux-light saber action...

Testing of electric truck for Los Angeles port sparks enthusiasm

Testing of electric truck for Los Angeles port sparks enthusiasm:

Although electric truck tests are still underway, the port has already ordered 20 more of the vehicles at a cost of $208,000 each.
[...]
The electric truck, which takes about three hours to charge, has a range of about 30 miles while pulling a 60,000-pound cargo container, and about 60 miles empty. Although that distance may not sound useful, much of freight hauling within the port complex is from terminals to nearby train yards.

It costs about 20 cents a mile to operate, or about four to nine times less than a diesel truck, depending on fluctuating fuel costs and operating conditions.

You can watch a short puff piece on the truck too.

Despite the fact that Los Angeles Harbor Commission President S. David Freeman says, "With diesel fuel selling for nearly $5 a gallon, this is the cheapest truck on the road," that's not clear at all.

How does the $208,000 price tag compare to the price of an equivalent diesel truck? How long does the battery last, and how much does it cost to replace? Why don't those numbers ever make their way into an article about cost savings?

Anyway, I do believe that an electric truck makes perfect sense for moving cargo containers short distances across port facilities, and I know I'd rather work around electric trucks than diesels.

(Hat tip to FuturePundit.)

The Water Shortage Myth

David Zetland debunks The Water Shortage Myth:

As it stands, Los Angeles households pay $2.80 for the first 885 gallons they use per day. That's enough water to fill 18 bathtubs. The next 18 tubs cost $3.40, which is only 20% more. Most L.A. households don't even see this price increase, since the average household of three uses just 350 gallons — about seven bathtubs — each day. For that water, the household pays only $35 a month. If they use twice the amount, the bill merely doubles.

I propose a system where every person gets the first 75 gallons, or 1.5 bathtubs, per day for free but pays $5.60 for each 75 gallons after that. Under my system, the monthly bill for the average household of three would come to $95.

My system is designed to reduce demand rather than cover costs. Revenue paid by guzzlers would cover the costs of those who use only a small amount of water. Any leftover profits could be refunded to consumers or used to enhance the quality or quantity of the water supply.

Incidentally, his system wouldn't reduce demand — it would reduce the quantity demanded. His system actually reduces supply — the amount provided at a given price — but that doesn't sound good to non-economists.

Ulcer bacteria may protect from asthma

Ulcer bacteria may protect from asthma:

"Among teens and children ages 3 to 19 years, carriers of H. pylori were 25 percent less likely to have asthma."

Children aged 3 to 13 were 59 percent less likely to have asthma if they also had H. pylori, they reported in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The researchers used data on more than 7,000 U.S. children from the National Health and Nutrition Survey conducted from 1999 to 2000 by the National Center for Health Statistics.

The study showed that 5.4 percent of children born in the 1990s tested positive for H. pylori.

"If you look at the people born in 1919, 60 percent are positive. That's a huge change," Blaser said in a telephone interview. "I have referred to this as global warming of the stomach."

During the same time, asthma rates have soared. Among the children aged 3 to 19 in the study, 23 percent had asthma, Blaser said.
[...]
"Maybe the same antibiotics that made H. pylori go away make something else go away." Or perhaps the bacteria somehow protects against asthma directly, perhaps by changing the body's immune response.

Expectant moms who eat nuts boost child asthma risk

Expectant moms who eat nuts boost child asthma risk:

Pregnant women who eat nuts or nut products like peanut butter daily raise the risk their children will develop asthma by 50 percent, Dutch researchers said on Tuesday.

The study also showed that moderate amounts did not seem to have an effect, meaning it is too soon to say whether pregnant women should give up nuts because they contain many important nutrients and healthy fats a developing fetus needs, they said.

Kindle 2.0 Coming Around October 2008

Kindle 2.0 Coming Around October 2008:

An insider let slip that two new Amazon Kindle models will hit stores this holiday season, with the first coming as early as October.

The first is an updated version with the same sized screen, a smaller form factor, and an improved interface. The source told us that Amazon has “skipped three or four generations,” comparing the old Kindle to the 1st gen iPod and the new version to something like the sexy iPod Mini.

The second new model, which is shaped like an 8 1/2 x 11-inch piece of paper, is considerably bigger than the current model and should be available next year.

Both models should come in multiple colors and may be aimed at younger readers.

Wii Music

I've been wondering how long it would be until someone came out with a free-form version of Guitar Hero or Rock Band, where you could play your own music. Now it looks like Nintendo's leading the way, with its upcoming Wii Music:

Nintendo this morning announced a new addition to the Wii family: Wii Music. Instead of your musical creativity being confined by the limitation of the number of plastic instruments that can fit in your living room, Wii Music uses the Wii Remote, Nunchuck and Balance Board to let the user play more than 60 different instruments.

But don't get confused: Wii Music isn't trying to compete with Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Instead, the game's more like an open jam session where players improvise as they go—there are no notes to follow, no one to boo you off stage, no Star Power to reward you for a 100-note streak. It's a non-judgmental way to rock out through your TV.

We heard a drum and sax solo, and then a few Nintendo executives demonstrated full-band play onstage by gracing us with a calypso rendition of the Mario theme song. But we're still unsure how much skill is actually required to "play" each instrument. In fact, Nintendo’s press release says "the music always sounds great," so we're pretty sure anyone can pick up the controllers and put on an impressive show.

The drums were the most interesting instrument demonstrated. The remote and numchuck are used like drum sticks, so you need to move your arms around like you're air drumming to get your sound. The Wii Balance Board is used like the drum pedals on any drum kit. It manages to seem very realistic without requiring a physical set the way Rock Band does. And the game gives you lessons, so theoretically you should learn how to play an actual drum set in a few weeks.

Wii Music also lets you record multi-track videos, so you can be your own one-man band. Or you can be like indy band The Postal Service and send tracks back and forth with friends through WiiConnect24. Bottom line: Even though it might not be as demanding as the other music-making games out there, Wii Music looks like a lot of fun. It will be in stories in time for the holidays—let's just hope that Nintendo ships enough copies to satisfy all the Wii Fanatics out there.

The Doping Dilemma

Michael Shermer examines The Doping Dilemma, specifically in cycling, and describes the immense advantage from using recombinant erythropoietin (r-EPO) to stimulate the production of red blood cells:

One of the subtle benefits of r-EPO in a brutal three-week race like the Tour de France is not just boosting HCT levels but keeping them high. Jonathan Vaughters, a former teammate of Armstrong’s, crunched the numbers for me this way: “The big advantage of blood doping is the ability to keep a 44 percent HCT over three weeks.” A “clean” racer who started with a 44 percent HCT, Vaughters noted, would expect to end up at 40 percent after three weeks of racing because of natural blood dilution and the breakdown of red blood cells. “Just stabilizing [your HCT level] at 44 percent is a 10 percent advantage.”

Scientific studies on the effects of performance-enhancing drugs are few in number and are usually conducted on nonathletes or recreational ones, but they are consistent with Vaughters’s assessment. (For obvious reasons, elite athletes who dope are disinclined to disclose their data.) The consensus among the sports physiologists I interviewed is that r-EPO improves performance by at least 5 to 10 percent. When it is mixed in with a brew of other drugs, another 5 to 10 percent boost can be squeezed out of the human engine. In events decided by differences of less than 1 percent, this advantage is colossal.

Science Has Become the New Frontier for Title Nine

This is terrifying. Science Has Become the New Frontier for Title Nine:

Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual discrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. But now, under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies have quietly picked a new target: science.

The National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Energy have set up programs to look for sexual discrimination at universities receiving federal grants. Investigators have been taking inventories of lab space and interviewing faculty members and students in physics and engineering departments at schools like Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, M.I.T. and the University of Maryland.

So far, these Title IX compliance reviews haven’t had much visible impact on campuses beyond inspiring a few complaints from faculty members. (The journal Science quoted Amber Miller, a physicist at Columbia, as calling her interview “a complete waste of time.”) But some critics fear that the process could lead to a quota system that could seriously hurt scientific research and do more harm than good for women.

A surprising dose of sanity from the Times:

Despite supposed obstacles like “unconscious bias” and a shortage of role models and mentors, women now constitute about half of medical students, 60 percent of biology majors and 70 percent of psychology Ph.D.’s. They earn the majority of doctorates in both the life sciences and the social sciences. They remain a minority in the physical sciences and engineering. Even though their annual share of doctorates in physics has tripled in recent decades, it’s less than 20 percent. Only 10 percent of physics faculty members are women, a ratio that helped prompt an investigation in 2005 by the American Institute of Physics into the possibility of bias.

But the institute found that women with physics degrees go on to doctorates, teaching jobs and tenure at the same rate that men do. The gender gap is a result of earlier decisions. While girls make up nearly half of high school physics students, they’re less likely than boys to take Advanced Placement courses or go on to a college degree in physics.

These numbers don’t surprise two psychologists at Vanderbilt University, David Lubinski and Camilla Persson Benbow, who have been tracking more than 5,000 mathematically gifted students for 35 years.

They found that starting at age 12, the girls tended to be better rounded than the boys: they had relatively strong verbal skills in addition to math, and they showed more interest in “organic” subjects involving people and other living things. Despite their mathematical prowess, they were less likely than boys to go into physics or engineering.

But whether they grew up to be biologists or sociologists or lawyers, when they were surveyed in their 30s, these women were as content with their careers as their male counterparts. They also made as much money per hour of work. Dr. Lubinski and Dr. Benbow concluded that adolescents’ interests and balance of abilities — not their sex — were the best predictors of whether they would choose an “inorganic” career like physics.

A similar conclusion comes from a new study of the large gender gap in the computer industry by Joshua Rosenbloom and Ronald Ash of the University of Kansas. By administering vocational psychological tests, the researchers found that information technology workers especially enjoyed manipulating objects and machines, whereas workers in other occupations preferred dealing with people.

Once the researchers controlled for that personality variable, the gender gap shrank to statistical insignificance: women who preferred tinkering with inanimate objects were about as likely to go into computer careers as were men with similar personalities. There just happened to be fewer women than men with those preferences.

Economics of a POW Camp

R. A. Radford, writing in Economica in 1945, explains the economics of a POW camp, including the cigarette currency, which arose spontaneously:

Although cigarettes as currency exhibited certain peculiarities, they performed all the functions of a metallic currency as a unit of account, as a measure of value and as a store of value, and shared most of its characteristics. They were homogeneous, reasonably durable, and of convenient size for the smallest or, in packets, for the largest transactions. Incidentally, they could be clipped or sweated by rolling them between the fingers so that tobacco fell out.

Cigarettes were also subject to the working of Gresham's Law. Certain brands were more popular than others as smokes, but for currency purposes a cigarette was a cigarette. Consequently buyers used the poorer qualities and the Shop rarely saw the more popular brands: cigarettes such as Churchman's No. 1 were rarely used for trading. At one time cigarettes hand-rolled from pipe tobacco began to circulate. Pipe tobacco was issued in lieu of cigarettes by the Red Cross at a rate of 25 cigarettes to the ounce and this rate was standard in exchanges, but an ounce would produce 30 home-made cigarettes. Naturally, people with machine-made cigarettes broke them down and rerolled the tobacco, and the real cigarette virtually disappeared from the market. Hand-rolled cigarettes were not homogeneous and prices could no longer be quoted in them with safety: each cigarette was examined before it was accepted and thin ones were rejected, or extra demanded as a make-weight. For a time we suffered all the inconveniences of a debased currency.

Machine-made cigarettes were always universally acceptable, both for what they would buy and for themselves. It was this intrinsic value which gave rise to their principal disadvantage as currency, a disadvantage which exists, but to a far smaller extent in the case of metallic currency; – that is, a strong demand for non-monetary purposes. Consequently our economy was repeatedly subject to deflation and to periods of monetary stringency. While the Red Cross issue of 50 or 25 cigarettes per man per week came in regularly, and while there were fair stocks held, the cigarette currency suited its purpose admirably. But when the issue was interrupted, stocks soon ran out, prices fell, trading declined in volume and became increasingly a matter of barter. This deflationary tendency was periodically offset by the sudden injection of new currency. Private cigarette parcels arrived in a trickle throughout the year, but the big numbers came in quarterly when the Red Cross received its allocation of transport. Several hundred thousand cigarettes might arrive in the space of a fortnight. Prices soared, and then began to fall, slowly at first but with increasing rapidity as stocks ran out, until the next big delivery. Most of our economic troubles could be attributed to this fundamental instability.

Pro Boxer's Punch Carries Heavy Weight

Unsurprisingly a pro boxer's punch carries a heavy weight — just how heavy is pretty surprising though:

Researchers at the University of Manchester in England were curious about just how much force a top boxer can generate with a punch. So they enlisted local boxer Ricky Hatton, an undefeated 28 year old light welterweight and welterweight world champ. And they had him hit a 30 kilogram punching bag with sensors attached.

The results should make any spectators who figure they could last a while in the ring with a pro think again. Because Ricky Hatton, who’s nickname is The Hitman, generated a force of about 400 kilograms. An average person with no boxing training can generate only about one tenth that much force with a punch.

Slow motion video found that Hatton could typically generate punch speeds of 25 miles per hour, with one blow reaching 32 mph. The best punch speed that one of the researchers could achieve was about 15 miles per hour.

I guess there's the question of whether a researcher is in fact average in punching power, or much, much weaker. Anyway, a factor of 10 is a big factor.

By the way, welterweight is between light and medium — just 152 lbs — so Hatton is not a big guy.

And, of course, 400 kilograms is not a measure of force — but we know what they mean.

Hunger Can Make You Happy

Hunger can make you happy — or at least motivated:

When our bodies notice we need more calories, levels of a hormone called ghrelin increase. Ghrelin is known to spur hunger, but new research suggests this may be a side effect of its primary job as a stress-buster.

Researchers manipulated ghrelin levels in mice through a variety of methods, including prolonged calorie restriction, ghrelin injection and a genetic modification rendering the mice numb to ghrelin’s effect.

Mice who had limited ghrelin activity seemed depressed. If pushed into deep water they made no effort to swim. When introduced to a maze, they clung to the entryway. And when placed with other mice, they tended to keep to themselves. (These behaviors were reversed when the mice were given a low-dose antidepressant commonly prescribed to humans.)

In contrast, mice with high levels of ghrelin swam energetically in deep water, looking for escape. They eagerly explored new environments. And they were much more social.

The 100,000 most trustworthy and responsible adults in the country

Mencius Moldbug has been promoting the idea that a government is just a corporation, if a poorly run one, and that we really should declare our current state bankrupt, put it into receivorship, and transfer control to the 100,000 most trustworthy and responsible adults in the country:

By what process will we select these individuals? Who shall recruit the recruiters? It is difficult and expensive to find just one individual with these executive qualifications. Moreover, in a sovereign context, the filtering process itself will serve as a political football — many progressives might decide, for example, that only progressives can be trusted. It is impossible to end a fight by starting a new fight.

This insane recruiting process cannot occur either under [the current government] or under [the new sovereign corporation government]. It cannot occur under [the current government], because it will be subject to [current government] politics and will carry those politics, which are uniformly poisonous, forward into [the sovereign corporation]. At this point the reset is not a reset. But it cannot occur under [the sovereign corporation], because the trustees are needed to select the Receiver. And there can be no intervening period of anarchy.

But there is a hack which can work around this obstacle. You might think it's a cute hack, or you might think it's an ugly hack. It probably depends on your taste. I think it's pretty cute.

The hack is a precise heuristic test to select trustees. The result of the test is one bit for every citizen of [the country]: he or she either is or is not a trustee. The test is precise because its result is not a matter of debate — it can be verified trivially. And it is heuristic because it should produce a good result on average, with only occasional horrifying exceptions.

My favorite [precise heuristic test] defines the trustees as the set of all active, certified, nonstudent pilots who accept the responsibility of trusteeship, as of the termination date of [the current government]. The set does not expand — you cannot become a trustee by taking flying lessons, and any rejection or resignation of the responsibility is irreversible. In other words, to paraphrase Lenin: all power to the pilots. (There are about 500,000 of them.)

Let's look at the advantages of this [precise heuristic test]. I am not myself a pilot — I am neither wealthy enough, nor responsible enough. But everyone I've ever met who was a pilot, whether private, military or commercial, has struck me as not only responsible, but also independent-minded, often even adventurous. This is a particularly rare combination. To be precise, it is an aristocratic combination, and the word aristocracy is after all just Greek for good government. Pilots are a fraternity of intelligent, practical, and careful people who are already trusted on a regular basis with the lives of others. What's not to like?

Dark Knight Shift

In Dark Knight Shift, JR Minkel of Scientific American interviews E. Paul Zehr on why Batman could exist — but not for long:

How would Batman get enough rest?
The difficulty for Batman is he's going to be trying to sleep during the day. He's going to be really tired, actually, unless he can shift himself over to just being up at night. If he were just a nocturnal guy, he would actually be a lot healthier and have a lot better sleep than if he were doing what he does now, which is getting some light here and there. That's going to mess up his sleep patterns and duration of sleep.

Wouldn't fighting Gotham's thugs every night take its toll?
The biggest unreal part of the way Batman's portrayed is the nature of his injuries. Most of the time, in the comics and in the movies, even when he wins, he usually winds up taking a pretty good beating. There's a real failure to show the cumulative effect of that. The next day he's shown out there doing the same thing again. He'd likely be quite tired and injured.

Is there any indication in the comics of how long Batman's career lasts?
The comics are really vague on this, of course. In Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, he deliberately shows an aging Batman coming back after he's retired, and he highlights him being tired and weaker. Somewhere around age 50 to 55, he should probably retire. His performance is going down. He's always facing younger adversaries. That is well at the end of when he's going to be able to defend himself and be able to not have to deal that lethal force. This was actually shown in an animated series called Batman Beyond.

Oh right. It's the future; Batman is old and he trains a kid to replace him.
You're familiar with that one? What we learn is that Batman, when he was older but before he retired, actually picked up a gun against a thug because he had to. His skills had let him down so that he wasn't able to defend himself without harming another person. So that's when he decided to retire.

How would all those beat-downs have affected his longevity?
Keeping in mind that being Batman means never losing: If you look at consecutive events where professional fighters have to defend their titles—Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Ultimate Fighters—the longest period you're going to find is about two to three years. That dovetails nicely with the average career for NFL running backs. It's about three years. (That's the statistic I got from the NFL Players Association Web site.) The point is, it's not very long. It's really hard to become Batman in the first place, and it's hard to maintain it when you get there.

I believe Dr. Zehr has overlooked a key aspect of being the Batman — he doesn't fight fair. Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot, and the Dark Knight plays on their fears, while choosing the time and place of his attack.

I can't say I agree with Zehr's training advice either:

What's a realistic training regimen?
I didn't give a training manual in my book, but he'd want to do specialized weight training to build up an ability to work at a really high rate for maybe 30 seconds to a minute (the maximum time period associated with his fights). One of the early comics shows him holding an enormous weight over his head. That's not the right kind of adaptation toward punching and kicking. He's got to make sure he's doing all the skill training at the same time so that he's actually using the (physical) adaptations he's slowly gaining. In conventional martial arts, when people take weapons training, you're doing a kind of power-strength training.

What effects would all that training have on Bruce Wayne's body?
I looked up what DC Comics and some other books said (about Batman's physique). I settled on the estimate that Bruce Wayne started off at about six-foot-two and 185 pounds. I gave him a body fat of 20 percent (slightly below average) and a body mass index of 26. Let's say after 10 or 15 years, after he's become the Batman, he's weighing about 210 pounds and has a body fat of 10 percent. He's probably gained 40 pounds of muscle. His bones will actually be more dense, kind of the opposite of osteoporosis.

Are we talking freakishly dense bones?
The percentage change is actually quite small—maybe 10 percent. In judo, where people do a lot of grappling and throwing, you're going to have more density in the long bones of the trunk. In karate and other martial arts where they're doing a lot of kicking, there's going to be a lot higher density in the legs. Muay Thai (kickboxing) is a great example. They're always doing these low shin kicks. They try to condition the body by kicking progressively harder objects and for longer.

Lifting an enormous weight overhead — i.e. doing a clean & jerk — is excellent training for building up the muscles, bones, tendons, and ligaments of the legs and core, which are used extensively in judo — and in jumping from rooftop to rooftop. But Zehr is a Chito-Ryu karate-do practitioner who, I suppose, rarely jumps from rooftop to rooftop.

What Batman needs is a cross-fit routine with an emphasis on judo/jiu-jitsu, kickboxing, and parkour.

Also, I'd hardly say that Bruce Wayne was 185 lbs. at 20 percent body-fat before training. First, he started training as a teen — his parents were killed while he was a child — and, second, even a mildly active young man can be, say, 8 percent body-fat without really trying.

Nobody Lives Past Thirty

Al Fin shares an amusing cartoon. I hope I don't ruin the joke by pointing out that the average age of paleolithic humans might have been quite low, but some early humans lived to be quite old.

Boeing's Blimp-Copter

Behold Boeing's Blimp-Copter:

Boeing has teamed with a Canadian company to enter the blimp market with a combined airship-helicopter. Working with SkyHook International, Boeing says its JHL-40 could take some 80,000 pounds of cargo over 200 miles. "Boeing said the blimp would be environmentally friendly because it would eliminate the need to build roads or rail lines to remote locations, where transportation can be costly, inadequate and unreliable," Reuters reports. "The JHL-40, or Jess Heavy Lifter, is named after Pete Jess, president and chief operating officer of SkyHook International, the Calgary, Alberta-based company that secured the patent for the blimp, which combines elements of a helicopter and a traditional airship."

Writing at Aviation Week's ARES blog, Graham Warwick notes that Boeing is not the first company to push a heli-airship combo. "Piasecki flew the PA-97 Helistat in 1986," he notes. "This combined a 343 ft-long Navy aerostat with four Sikorsky H-34 helicopters. Boeing says the PA-97 was brought down by ground resonance, something it can avoid using the latest computational tools."

I almost expect to see Nick Fury aboard this helicopter airship — once it gets a carrier flight deck added on top.

Democoup

When it comes to reactionary restoration, Mencius Moldbug notes, the only alternative to a military coup is a political coup — or to be catchy a democoup:

In a democoup, the government is overthrown by organizing a critical mass of political opposition to which it surrenders, ideally just as the result of overwhelming peer pressure. Certainly the most salient example is the fall of the Soviet Union, including its puppet states and the wonderfully if inaccurately named Velvet Revolution. (Again, a reaction is not a revolution.) Other examples include the Southern Redemption, the Meiji Restoration, and of course the English Restoration.

In each of these events, a broad political coalition deployed more or less nonviolent, if seldom perfectly legal, tactics to replace a failed administration with a new regime which was dedicated to the restoration of responsible and effective government. Note that all of these are real historical events, which actually happened in the real world. I did not just make them up and edit them into Wikipedia. Yes, dear open-minded progressive, change can happen.

If there is one fact to remember about a restoration via democoup, it's that this program has nothing to do with the traditional 11th-grade civics-class notion of democratic participation. Obviously, we are not trying to replace one or two officials whose role is primarily symbolic. We are trying to replace not the current occupants of the temporary and largely-ceremonial "political" offices of [the government], but [the government] itself — lock, stock and barrel. Indeed, we are using democratic tactics to abolish democracy itself. (There is nothing at all ironic in this. Is it ironic when an absolute monarch decrees a democratic constitution?)

Again, this restoration has nothing to do with the traditional 11th-grade civics-class notion of democratic participation:

Our modern democratic elections are an extremely poor substitute for actual regime change. As we've seen, democracy is to government as gray, slimy cancer is to pink and healthy living tissue. It is a degenerate neoplastic form. The only reason America has lasted as long as she has, and even still has more than a few years left, is that this malignancy is at present encysted in a thick husk of sclerotic scar tissue - our permanent civil service. Democracy implies politics, and "political" is a dirty word to the civil-service state. As well it should be. Its job is to resist democracy, and it does it very well.

Therefore, any attempt to defeat the sclerotic Cathedral state by a restoration of representative democracy in the classic sense of the word, in which public policy is actually formulated by elected officials (such as the Leader, Mencius), is a bayonet charge at the Maginot Line. The Mencist Party could go all the way and elect President Mencius, and it would still be shredded into gobbets of meat by presighted bureaucratic machine guns. In short: a total waste of time. Much better to bend over and pretend to enjoy it.

When we think of a democoup instead of a democratic party, all of these problems disappear. (They are replaced by other problems, but we'll deal with those in their turn.)

Why magnesium is like vitamin D and how it cures depression

Dennis Mangan explains why magnesium is like vitamin D and how it cures depression:

In a paper I recently came across, Rapid recovery from major depression using magnesium treatment (pdf), the author writes about several case studies in which magnesium supplements brought about a complete cure from depression, as well as better mental performance in some cases. It seems that magnesium deficiency is widespread; according to this paper, nearly 90% of the American population ingests less than the (already minimal) RDA. Add to that the fact that numerous conditions can cause a significant depletion of body magnesium, conditions such as the drinking of alcohol and catecholamine elevation caused by stress, and you've got the makings of a massively widespread deficiency.

Back to depression. The paper's author found that magnesium supplementation cures major depression in as few as 7 days. There are good reasons why this should be so. Michael Maes, a "highly cited" scientist and physician, has found that pro-inflammatory cytokines may be at the root of depression, which is, in other words, a physical illness. Magnesium deficiency results in a major increase in inflammatory cytokines. For much, much more, try this Google Scholar page on magnesium and inflammation.

So why is magnesium like vitamin D? Mainly because no one thinks about it. When industrialization got going and most people started spending a great deal of their lives indoors, not a lot of thought was given to the absence of direct sunlight on the skin and what it would do to human health; as it turns out, the health consequences are serious. Likewise, it seems that in the past most people obtained dietary magnesium from hard water, which hardly anyone drinks anymore. (By the way, numerous studies have shown a substantial reduction in heart disease rates in places where hard water is drunk; see, e.g., this one from Taiwan, which found a 40% risk reduction from the water with the highest magnesium levels.) While magnesium is plentiful in certain foods, it's not necessarily well absorbed - and in any case most people don't get enough from food to begin with.

Magnesium deficiency is implicated, in addition to depression and heart disease, in migraine, cancer, and a horde of other bad things. Dr. Michael Eades wrote that if he could only take one supplement, it would be magnesium.

Acting Squirrelly

Cringely believes that SAP is acting squirrelly — which gives him an excuse to examine squirrel behavior in a bit too much depth:

You are driving down a street in your car and up ahead there is a squirrel at the side of the road eating a nut. You aren't on an intercept course, there is no way you are going to hit that squirrel. So what does the squirrel do? At the very last possible moment, rather than watching you drive by, THE SQUIRREL DARTS STRAIGHT FOR YOUR CAR, passing inches in front of or behind the front tires.

Why does he do that?

Obviously I'm a guy with too much time on my hands because I've given this quite a bit of thought.

From a purely metabolic perspective, whatever its motivation the physical advantage clearly lies with the squirrel. Sure, my car is bigger and faster, but the squirrel is smaller and quicker, with a heart that beats up to 700 times per minute. To the squirrel I seem to be driving by in slow motion, and whether he goes in front of the tires or behind or in front of one and behind another is strictly a matter of style: once the squirrel has my vector, Victor, he's in command.

But judging by the number of squirrels squished on the road, there must be some risk to this game, so why does he do it?

The answer has nothing to do with cars because squirrel psychology predates both cars and men. For the squirrel, in fact, there may be no difference between my car and an ice age saber-toothed tiger.

The squirrel doesn't trust me. Sure, it looks like I'm not even chasing him, but he's a tasty squirrel and I'm a saber-toothed tiger. By waiting until the last possible moment then running TOWARD me, the squirrel is rushing the net, moving the confrontation effectively forward in time in such a way that the squirrel is pushing his tactical advantage.

As a predator, I'm simply not supposed to expect this squirrel to be running toward me, rather than away. He's using the element of surprise to confuse me. And it works, because I've never hit a squirrel with my car.

So, what does this have to do with ERP giant SAP?

SAP and companies like it do something similar by making powerful software that is quite deliberately difficult to use. They could make it easier. Heck, the capability to make it easier is shipped right with the software, though never pointed out to the customer.
[...]
Unlike standardized financial statements, the most powerful ERP screens and reports will vary dramatically from company to company, so the ability to customize SAP is vital to obtaining the maximum possible benefit from the software.

That's why there are so many SAP consultants. And that's why SAP, itself, makes 40 percent of its revenue from providing consulting services -- revenue that would be significantly less if the software was easier to customize and easier to use.

If SAP software was easier to customize and use, SAP the company might get a few more customers but would have significantly less revenue. Or that's the fear.

There is a product called GuiXT that is an interface builder shipped for free with every copy of SAP R/3. Pronounced "gooey-x-t," this client-server application sits on top of R/3 and can be used with almost no programming to customize and integrate R/3 screens as well as add certain overlay functions that aren't readily available in R/3, itself. The point with GuiXT is to not mess with the underlying R/3 code, which means an SAP installation can be less customized on the back end, installed cheaper, and be up and running quicker.

So when you, as an SAP customer, call up your SAP consultant to ask for customization, that consultant will often show you the next day a GuiXT implementation that does exactly what you asked for but is presented as a mock-up. Once you've signed-off on the look and feel then the SAP consultants can dig into R/3 itself and spend a few weeks implementing what you asked for. OR they could simply run the GuiXT app that took them an hour to build.

Are you starting to see the picture?
[...]
The squirrel dives for your front tires because by ice age rules that's the thing to do, though at an obvious cost today in squished squirrels. Similarly, SAP deliberately hides the power of GuiXT thinking it could hurt consulting revenue when, in fact, it could INCREASE sales revenue by broadening the market and making R/3 less scary for companies to install and run.

Both the squirrel and SAP do what they do because it appears to work, though a safer and easier course was there all along.

The Island in the Wind

Elizabeth Kolbert calls the Danish island of Samsø the island in the wind because of its switch to renewable energy in 1997, after the Danish Ministry of Environment and Energy decided it had potential:

They formed energy coöperatives and organized seminars on wind power. They removed their furnaces and replaced them with heat pumps. By 2001, fossil-fuel use on Samsø had been cut in half. By 2003, instead of importing electricity, the island was exporting it, and by 2005 it was producing from renewable sources more energy than it was using.

Some details:

All told, Samsø has eleven large land-based turbines. (It has about a dozen additional micro-turbines.) This is a lot of turbines for a relatively small number of people, and the ratio is critical to Samsø’s success, as is the fact that the wind off the Kattegat blows pretty much continuously; flags on Samsø, I noticed, do not wave — they stick straight out, as in children’s drawings. Hermansen told us that the land-based turbines are a hundred and fifty feet tall, with rotors that are eighty feet long. Together, they produce some twenty-six million kilowatt-hours a year, which is just about enough to meet all the island’s demands for electricity. (This is true in an arithmetic sense; as a practical matter, Samsø’s production of electricity and its needs fluctuate, so that sometimes it is feeding power into the grid and sometimes it is drawing power from it.) The offshore turbines, meanwhile, are even taller — a hundred and ninety-five feet high, with rotors that extend a hundred and twenty feet. A single offshore turbine generates roughly eight million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, which, at Danish rates of energy use, is enough to satisfy the needs of some two thousand homes. The offshore turbines — there are ten of them — were erected to compensate for Samsø’s continuing use of fossil fuels in its cars, trucks, and ferries. Their combined output, of around eighty million kilowatt-hours a year, provides the energy equivalent of all the gasoline and diesel oil consumed on the island, and then some; in aggregate, Samsø generates about ten per cent more power than it consumes.

Of course, this all treats the transition as free, which, of course, it isn't:

Each land-based turbine cost the equivalent of eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Each offshore turbine cost around three million dollars. Some of Samsø’s turbines were erected by a single investor, like Tranberg; others were purchased collectively. At least four hundred and fifty island residents own shares in the onshore turbines, and a roughly equal number own shares in those offshore. Shareholders, who also include many non-residents, receive annual dividend checks based on the prevailing price of electricity and how much their turbine has generated.

I need more policy details:

Thanks to a policy put in place by Denmark’s government in the late nineteen-nineties, utilities are required to offer ten-year fixed-rate contracts for wind power that they can sell to customers elsewhere. Under the terms of these contracts, a turbine should — barring mishap — repay a shareholder’s initial investment in about eight years.

If the investment pays for itself in eight years, that's a surprisingly good return on investment. To what extent are the Danish tax-payers subsidizing it?

The signature performance of the modern revolution

The signature performance of the modern revolution, Mencius Moldbug notes, is the irregular military parade:

Ie: cars or pickup trucks full of well-armed youths in their colorful native attire, driving up and down your street while (a) honking, (b) waving hand-lettered banners, (c) chanting catchy slogans, and (d) discharging their firearms in a vaguely vertical direction. Occasionally one of the vehicles will pull up in front of a house and discharge its occupants, who enter the building and emerge with an infidel, racist, Jew, spy, polluter, Nazi or other criminal. The offender is either restrained for transportation to an educational facility, or enlightened on the spot as an act of radical social justice. Yes, we can!

He plants his tongue even further in cheek when describing its reactionary counterpart:

Whereas in the ideal restoration, the transfer of power from old to new regime is as predictable and seamless as any electoral transition. With all rites, procedures and rituals correct down to the fringe on the Grand Lama's robe, the Armani suits on his Uzi-toting bodyguards, and the scrimshaw on the yak-butter skull-candle he lights and blows out three times while chanting "Obama! Obama! Llama Alpaca Obama!", the Heavenly Grand Council releases itself from the harsh bonds of existence, identifies its successor, asks all employees to remove their personal belongings from their offices, and instructs senior eunuchs to report for temporary detention.

How to sell your software for $20,000

Bill — he only reveals his first name — has "gone from a one-man micro ISV selling shareware for a few hundred bucks a month on the side, to building up into a 5-employee, $2 million software company."

When he started his company, he saw a choice:

It really comes down to, would you rather make a new widget with 99% chance of making nothing and 1% chance of making $10 million; or a 50% chance of making $1 million for the same amount of time and effort (for a remake of some boring business-to-business product but done better)? The former is what everybody seems to do, but the latter is what I did making my very niche vertical market software. It took me over a decade to build, but the money keeps coming in and last year my sales were just under $2 million of which $800K was profit. Not bad for under 200K lines of code!

Once he had a little success, he quickly became cynical:

For some reason I got inundated with all kinds of companies wanting to be "strategic partners" or form a "strategic alliance." No, they never want to buy anything, in fact they all would in effect be suppliers to me. But they still want to fly out and meet with me, and get my brochures and specs, and see demos, and have telecons, and talk about "joint marketing opportunities," and sign this NDA and that exclusive teaming agreement, and oh yea, could I help pay for some ad or some trade show booth with them, or help them put together a proposal for some bid. Huh? Yet for some reason at first I couldn't say "no" if it was just talking with them or trading information. I was a nice guy. I wasn't about to spend anything or sign anything, but when they'd say "we'll be out there the 22nd, how's 3pm sound?" what was I supposed to say? So there I was giving demos all the time and sitting on telecons about nothing and writing up this and that.

Soon all the overhead phone calls and emails and visits and demos with these wanna-be "strategic partners" I realized were a complete waste. None of them would bring me any new business — they all just wanted a piece of my action.

He also became cynical about his friends who said they wanted to work with him on his new project:

So when it came down to it, no, my coworker couldn't quit and work with me for free for a year for a big chunk of the company if we hit it off, because he didn't want to spend his savings and 401K until we had income. Too risky for him and that was totally understandable.

What wasn't so understandable and was disappointing to me, was over the next several years as I took all the risk, finished the product, hit the road selling it, fretted over meeting delivery schedules, took out loans to pay for the equipment and hoped the customer would pay on time, after all that he finally wanted to join. [...] He seemed disappointed and finally said he expected he'd get a share of the company "since I'm one of the first employees." I asked how much were you thinking? He replied "I don't know, 30, 40 percent maybe."

Wow.

Anyway, Bill goes on to explain how to sell your software for $20,000:

1. Find software out there that sells for $20,000 a copy
2. Pick the products that are supporting a handful of million-dollar companies.
3. Build the product but only with the core features
4. Get your name out in the industry
5. Present yourself as consultingware — it won't matter that it's you against big companies

Manhattanhenge

Media-savvy astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about Manhattanhenge:

What will future civilizations think of Manhattan Island when they dig it up and find a carefully laid out network of streets and avenues? Surely the grid would be presumed to have astronomical significance, just as we have found for the pre-historic circle of large vertical rocks known as Stonehenge, in the Salisbury Plain of England. For Stonehenge, the special day is the summer solstice, when the Sun rose in perfect alignment with several of the stones, signaling the change of season.

For Manhattan, a place where evening matters more than morning, that special day comes on Thursday, May 29h this year, one of only two occasions when the Sun sets in exact alignment with the Manhattan grid, fully illuminating every single cross-street for the last fifteen minutes of daylight. The other day is Saturday, July 12th. These two days give you a photogenic view with half the Sun above and half the Sun below the horizon — on the grid. The day after May 29th (Friday, May 30th), and the day before July 12 (Friday, July 11) will also give you Manhattanhenge moments, but instead you will see the entire ball of the Sun on the horizon — on the grid. My personal preference is the half-Sun.

As you may know, had Manhattan's grid been perfectly aligned with the geographic north-south line, then the days of Manhattanhenge would be the spring and autumn equinoxes, the only two days on the calendar when the Sun rises due-east and sets due-west. But Manhattan's street grid is rotated 30 degrees east from geographic north, shifting the days of alignment elsewhere into the calendar.