Andy Serkis’s Animal Farm

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Andy Serkis made his name performing the role of Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, but he has since worked as Jackson’s second-unit director on The Hobbit and formed his own performance-capture studio, The Imaginarium, which plans on making a new version of Animal Farm:

I think we found a rather fresh way of looking at it,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It is definitely using performance capture, but we are using an amalgamation of filming styles to create the environmments.

“We are in proof-of-concept stage at the moment, designing characters and experimenting on our stage with the designs,” he continues. “It is quite a wide canvas as to how much and how far we can take performance capture with quadrupeds and how much we will be using facial [capture]. We are not discounting the use of keyframe animation or puppeteering parts of animals. We are in an experimental phase; it’s terribly exciting.”

On the storytelling, Serkis says: “We’re keeping it fable-istic and [aimed at] a family audience. We are not going to handle the politics in a heavy-handed fashion. It is going to be emotionally centered in a way that I don’t think has been seen before. The point of view that we take will be slightly different to how it is normally portrayed and the characters, We are examining this in a new light.”

A family-friendly version of Animal Farm?

Bill Slavicsek and the Star Wars RPG

Sunday, October 21st, 2012

After graduating college and spending a year working on a local newspaper, Bill Slavicsek found a job editing at West End Games, where he went on to develop the Star Wars roleplaying game, which was oddly influential:

I was a self-proclaimed (at the time) expert on the Star Wars universe. I saw the original film when it debuted, and actually went back to the theater thirty-eight times that summer to see the movie again and again. I like to say that 1977 was a formative year for me. That was the year that Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, and The Sword of Shannara ignited my imagination. Who knew at the time that those imagination igniters would turn into an amazing career? So, when fact-checking and lore questions began to come up around the office, I usually knew the answer or knew where to look to find it. Remember, this was before the Internet, when research had to be done by scouring back issues of Star Log, flipping pages of novels, and forwarding and rewinding the VCR until the tape snapped. But my knowledge paid off, and soon I was assigned as the co-designer of The Star Wars Sourcebook. That tome full of back story and world material earned me my first Origins Award for game design and set the stage for the expanded Star Wars universe that would begin to emerge a few years later.

There were a lot of firsts in those early Star Wars RPG products. They were the first RPG products to incorporate color printing. They were the first products to add to the Star Wars mythos since the original trilogy had wrapped up three years earlier. And they were the first Star Wars products to give names and back stories to the various aliens that inhabited the background of the films. Suddenly Hammer Head was an Ithorian, Bib Fortuna was a Twi’lek, and Greedo was a Rodian. The universe was more real. Later, novelists and comic book writers and action figure makers and creators of the animated series would use the names I had come up with. But at the time, all I was trying to do was add context and believability to the universe we all loved so much.

Banana Reefers

Saturday, October 20th, 2012

Transporting food through a cold chain isn’t new:

While global commodity chains are fairly modern expansions in the transportation industry, the refrigerated movement of temperature sensitive goods is a practice that dates back to 1797 when British fishermen used natural ice to preserve their fish stock piles while at sea. This process was also seen in the late 1800s for the movement of food from rural areas to urban consumption markets, namely dairy products. Cold storage was also a key component of food trade between colonial powers and their colonies. For example, in the late 1870s and early 1880s, France was starting to receive large shipments of frozen meat and mutton carcasses from South America, while Great Britain imported frozen beef from Australia and pork and other meat from New Zealand. This process was incited by a shortage of meat production in Europe and substantial surpluses in developing countries. By 1910, 600,000 tons of frozen meat was being brought into Great Britain alone. The first reefer ship for the banana trade was introduced in 1903 by the United Food Company. This enabled the banana to move from an exotic fruit that had a small market because it arrived in markets too ripe, to one of the world’s most consumed fruit. Its impacts on the reefer industry were those monumental.

The most common temperature standards for modern “reefers” are:

  • “banana” (13 °C)
  • “chill” (2 °C)
  • “frozen” (-18 °C)
  • “deep frozen” (-29 °C)

How Pinterest Is Killing Feminism

Friday, October 19th, 2012

Amy Odell explains how Pinterest is killing feminism:

One in five women over the age of 18 who regularly use the internet is on Pinterest, which had an estimated 23 million users users as of July. It also has an overwhelmingly female audience; around 60 percent of visitors to the site are women. And the site is only growing: between July 2011 and July 2012, 22 million users joined. Since Pinterest stopped requiring an invite to become a member in August, that number is only increasing. But the site’s popularity highlights an uncomfortable reality: Pinterest’s user-generated content, which overwhelmingly emphasizes recipes, home decor, and fitness and fashion tips, feels like a reminder that women still seek out the retrograde, materialistic content that women’s magazines have been hawking for decades — and that the internet was supposed to help overcome.

Pinterest — which drives more traffic to marthastewart.com and marthastewartweddings.com than Facebook and Twitter combined — has become impossible to ignore, even as critics deride it as “the Mormon housewife’s image bookmarking service of choice.” But it’s much more than a collection of pretty pictures. In fact, the site seems like one big user-curated women’s magazine — from the pre-internet era. Sites like Jezebel were created as an antidote to women’s print magazines, which are rife with diet, fitness and dressing tips. The internet has for many years now been thought of as a place where women can find smarter, meatier reads just for them.

Instead, there’s Pinterest: heavy on recipes (diet and otherwise), inspirational quotes, exercise tips, and aspirational clothes and homes.

(Hat tip to Kalim Kassam.)

The Cuban Missile Crisis, as Viewed From a Soviet Launch Facility

Thursday, October 18th, 2012

David Foster is reading Soviet rocket developer Boris Chertok’s memoir, Rockets and People, which describes the Cuban Missile Crisis, as viewed from a Soviet launch facility:

Chertok’s career encompassed both military and space-exploration projects, and in late October 1962 he was focused on preparations for launching a Mars probe. On the morning of Oct 27, he was awakened by “a strange uneasiness.” After a quick breakfast, he headed for the missile assembly building, known as the MIK.

At the gatehouse, there was usually a lone soldier on duty who would give my pass a cursory glance. Now suddenly I saw a group of soldiers wielding sub-machine guns, and they thoroughly scrutinized my pass. Finally they admitted me to the facility grounds and there, to my surprise, I again saw sub-machine-gun-wielding soldiers who had climbed up the fire escape to the roof of the MIK. Other groups of soldiers in full combat gear, even wearing gas masks, were running about the periphery of the secure area. When I stopped in at the MIK, I immediately saw that the “duty” R-7A combat missile, which had always been covered and standing up against the wall, which we had always ignored, was uncovered.

Chertok was greeted by his friend Colonel Kirillov, who was in charge of this launch facility. Kirollov did not greet Chertok with his usual genial smile, but with a “somber, melancholy expression.”

Without releasing my hand that I’d extended for our handshake, he quietly said: “Boris Yevseyevich, I have something of urgent importance I must tell you”…

We went into his office on the second floor. Here, visibly upset, Kirillov told me: “Last night I was summoned to headquarters to see the chief of the [Tyura-Tam] firing range. The chiefs of the directorates and commanders of the troop units were gathered there.

We were told that the firing range must be brought into a state of battle readiness immediately. Due to the events in Cuba, air attacks, bombardment, and even U.S. airborne assaults are possible. All Air Defense Troops assets have already been put into combat readiness. Flights of our transport airplanes are forbidden. All facilities and launch sites have been put under heightened security. Highway transport is drastically restricted.

But most important — I received the order to open an envelope that has been stored in a special safe and to act in accordance with its contents. According to the order, I must immediately prepare the duty combat missile at the engineering facility and mate the warhead located in a special depot, roll the missile out to the launch site, position it, test it, fuel it, aim it, and wait for a special launch command.

All of this has already been executed at Site No. 31. I have also given all the necessary commands here at Site No. 2. Therefore, the crews have been removed from the Mars shot and shifted over to preparation of the combat missile. The nosecone and warhead will be delivered here in 2 hours.

Chertok, who at this point was apparently viewing the Cuban affair as a flash in the pan that would be resolved short of war, was concerned that moving the Mars rocket would cause them to miss their October 29 launch date, and suggested that the swap of the rockets be delayed for a few hours. Kirillov told him that this was impossible, and that he should go to the “Marshal’s cottage,” where some of his associates wanted to see him. Chertok’s response:

Yes, sir! You’re in charge! But, Anatoliy Semyonovich! Just between you and me — do you have the courage to give the ‘Launch!’ command, knowing full well that this means not just the death of hundreds of thousands from that specific thermonuclear warhead, but perhaps the beginning of the end for everyone? You commanded a battery at the front, and when you shouted ‘Fire!’ that was quite another matter.

Kirillov:

There’s no need to torment me. I am a soldier now; I carry out an order just as I did at the front. A missile officer just like me, not a Kirillov, but some Jones or other, is standing at a periscope and waiting for the order to give the ‘Launch!’ command against Moscow or our firing range. Therefore, I advise you to hurry over to the cottage.

Felix Baumgartner didn’t skydive from space

Wednesday, October 17th, 2012

Felix Baumgartner didn’t skydive from space — just really high up:

Is “whom” history?

Wednesday, October 17th, 2012

This anecdote raises the question, is “whom” history?

My 4 year old corrected my wife today. My wife used “whom” in a sentence (properly, mind you) and my daughter said “mama, sometimes you say a weird word, ‘whom’, when what you should be saying is ‘who’. ‘Whom’ is not a real word.”

The four-year-old is right, in a way:

What has my friend’s four-year-old learned? There’s a pronoun who. It’s a question word that can start sentences like “Who is that?” Adults also use it all the time in questions like “Who’d you invite over?” and “Who are you talking about?” It also can kick off a relative clause: “She’s the colleague who sits next to me,” and “She’s the colleague who I’ve started to become friends with.” In other words, the girl has heard revered, trusted adults (parents, teachers) using who as a subject, a direct object and an object of a preposition. Rule: who is used in all these roles.

And then comes this occasional weird variant. Every once in a while, mummy or daddy, for no obvious reason, uses whom in the exact same place they usually use whoGrown-ups are silly. They don’t let me cut my own hair, they insist on eating disgusting green plants, and they occasionally misspeak. Mommy, it’s who, not whom.

The thing is, the girl’s rule is right: who is used in all these roles. Geoffrey Pullum makes a distinction between Normal and Formal language, and most English-speakers today, when in Normal mode, steer clear of whom. We leave out the relative pronoun (That’s the friend I’m inviting to dinner) or just use who. Children are rarely exposed to Formal, and have little concept of register. Whom is just weird for them. A search of the Spoken category of the Corpus of Contemporary American English finds that is about eight times more common than me—but who is 57 times more common than whom. It appears just 53 times out of every million words.  That number would be even lower in the language used around a four-year-old. No wonder she might process it as a mere glitch in Mommy’s English.

My friend asked “language change in action?” Yes, probably, but his daughter is reflecting, not driving the change here. (Kids do drive all kinds of other changes, especially when they become teenagers and play with language self-consciously.) Here, she’s just seeing that hardly anyone uses whom. Our societies increasingly prize spontaneity, authenticity and “just talking” over polish and elaborate formality. In other words, Normal.

Since whom is becoming less common, many people can’t use it properly even when they are aiming for Formal. (A common mistake is using it in a subject role, for example: That’s the candidate whom I hope will win the election. Here, the mistake is in thinking that I hope turns who into an object. But the clause is really who will win the election, with I hope just an interpolation.) The unease over whom just makes people avoid it more.

I think whom has a long life left in it, though, for non-grammatical reasons. Educated people prize language, and the mastery of Formal. Their status at the top of the social heap is an incentive to treat the proper use of whom as a sign of intelligence, not just the Formal register. They do most of the edited and published writing we consume. And so whom will live in print for a good long time, even as many of those same people ignore it when they’re chatting at the proverbial water cooler.

Kids will go on reaching secondary school being taught, for the first time, how to use who‘s strange cousin. They will also be learning a meta-linguistic lesson: sometimes you don’t use the language that comes most naturally to you. And finally, when they have kids, they’ll start explaining the whole strange story to them in turn.

Helmet-Cam Footage of Taking Fire

Tuesday, October 16th, 2012

US soldiers were “doing overwatch” on a village in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, when they started taking machine-gun fire.

Most of the unit got pinned down — that is, they already had cover — but the soldier on point was stuck out in the open, heading downhill.

He didn’t start his helmet camera until a few minutes into the fight:

He took four hits, but nothing penetrated his body armor — or his helmet. He did lose his eye-pro though, and a round punctured the tube of his grenade launcher.

I can’t say I have any great advice for a soldier caught on a rocky slope, taking machine-gun fire, but a few things do stand out: (1) I doubt his semi-aimed return fire did much to suppress the enemy, and (2) while the body armor obviously helped, it’s hard to move in the mountains carrying that much weight.

(Hat tip à mon père.)

How Inter-service Rivalries Doomed the Galactic Empire

Monday, October 15th, 2012

Ben Adams explains how inter-service rivalries doomed the galactic empire of Star Wars:

In fact, our very first glimpse of the Imperial High Command is an argument between the Army and the Navy about the strategic vulnerability of the Death Star. The stakes are high: For the Navy, the Death Star represents the ultimate in bureaucratic power-grabs, a guarantee of perpetual dominance on top of the Imperial pecking order. For the Army, the Death Star represents the potential death of their service as a viable political force.

[...]

Nowhere is inter-service rivalry more apparent than in the lead up to the Invasion of Hoth in Empire Strikes Back. After coming out of light speed, an Army General reports to Vader that the Navy fleet has come out of light speed — a clear attempt to cut Admiral Ozzel off at the knees. Vader’s view of the situation is completely colored by the Army’s spin on the situation. Instead of allowing the Navy to give a report (and a possible justification for the strategy), the Admiral gets killed, the Army gets the glory, and CAPT Piett moves up a slot after learning a valuable lesson about the utility of throwing his Army colleagues under the bus.

[...]

The decision making process in the Empire is “efficient” in the sense that decisions can be made quickly, but utterly inefficient in the sense that it relies solely on the Emperor and his cronies to make perfect decisions 100% of the time. Because of the high stakes, the only objective of an Imperial Admiral or General is remaining in the Emperor’s good graces — and the lack of independent oversight means that their own mistakes will be covered up and rival services will be undercut whenever possible.

[...]

The Death Star is the apotheosis of the Imperial Navy’s drive for dominance of the Imperial Military, and the Imperial Navy’s single-mindedness about their “Technological Terror” is evident throughout the series. With it, they guarantee that an Admiral will always be at the helm of the “ultimate power” in the universe. Despite the Army’s (accurate) objections that the station is vulnerable, the Navy convinces the Emperor to build not one but TWO different battle stations that can be destroyed by a small fighter shooting a single shot.

The Navy’s fixation is almost pathological — when Leia gives up the supposed location of the Rebels on Dantooine, the logical next step would be to go to Dantooine and blow up the Rebels. If Leia is lying, they can always come back to Alderaan and threaten to blow it up again. To Tarkin and the pro-Death Star faction, however, demonstrating the “full power of this station” is the most important objective of all. Dantooine is “too remote to make an effective demonstration,” so they blow up Alderaan and lose whatever leverage they might have over Leia.

Even a fully operational and non-vulnerable-to-proton-torpedo Death Star is not a sustainable plan for long-term governance. “Fear of this battle station” will not keep the systems in line — as Leia points out, “The harder you squeeze, the more systems will slip through your fingers.”

[...]

Not only is the Empire’s strategic thinking wrong, but as Bruce Schneier might say, they are doing the wrong things badly. The Death Star is so vulnerable that the Rebels discover a devastating vulnerability with literally only hours of analysis. It’s almost certain that any number of Imperial planners and Navy personnel recognized the weakness of the exhaust port but said nothing — “nobody likes a whistle blower, and besides, even a computer can’t hit a target THAT small.”

In the Empire, everything is handled from the top down—the military submits their plans, the Emperor approves it. If the Navy has a plan for a Death Star, they bring the plan to the Emperor, he approves the funds and construction starts. While this seems may seem efficient, centralized management has serious consequences for the Empire. Because of the incentive structure in place in the Empire, the focus will always be on reporting success and pleasing your bosses — without any independent oversight, there’s little hope of fielding a quality product.

Shoddy workmanship is evident throughout the Star Wars saga. The Death Star is an OSHA nightmare, lacking safety rails in high-energy weapons systems and emergency shut-off switches in man-sized trash compacters. Door locks can be opened with blaster fire, and the Super Star Destroyer is so lacking in redundancy that a single errant fighter can bring the whole ship crashing down.

It’s not surprising that Storm Troopers never hit anything — their blasters are made by whichever contractor has the most political clout with the Imperial Command. If that contractor turns out a lot of defective blasters, the General who selected him certainly isn’t going to be the one to report the news to the Emperor and it’s not like the Storm Troopers are going to complain to Darth Vader or ask 60 Parsecs to do an independent investigation.

[...]

The debilitating effect of the Imperial Military intra-service rivalries reaches all the way down to the ground level. When a contingent of Storm Troopers is dispatched to recover the stolen Death Star plans, an Army unit is sent to rescue a project that represents the Navy’s best efforts to make the Army obsolete. Vader’s presence means that the Army is required to make a perfunctory effort at recovery of the plans, but the Army is not particularly motivated to come to the rescue of the Navy’s pet project. Their effort is half-hearted to say the least. Presented with a house-by-house search for the plans, the squad leader adapts the somewhat questionable policy of “If the door is locked, move on to the next one.”

When Obi Wan’s uses the Jedi mind trick on the “weak minded” it would be more accurate to say that the Storm Troopers will to do this particular thing is weak. The Army troops in question are in blinding heat, chasing all over the desert, cleaning up the mess that some Navy desk jockey made. If they DO find the plans, it will mean mountains of paperwork, the death of the Army’s political clout and precisely zero chance of getting off duty and enjoying the cantina. Finding the droids you are looking for is hard. Screw that — it’s the Navy’s problem, let them handle it.

Additionally, the Imperial Military is consistently unable to coordinate operations between large groups of units. In Empire Strikes Back, two Star Destroyers chasing Han Solo nearly collide with one another in their zeal to make a “catch” — instead of coordinating their efforts to catch the escaping ship (and risk letting the other Captain get credit for the kill), they act like kids at a soccer game, rushing towards the ball for their own personal ends.

There’s much more.

Polack

Sunday, October 14th, 2012

The Polish word for Polish person is Polak, which became Polack when Anglicized — until we all hopped on the euphemism treadmill:

The noun Polack, in the contemporary English language, is a derogatory reference to a person of Polish descent. It is an Anglicisation of the Polish language word Polak, which means a Polish male person (feminine being Polka) with a neutral connotation. However, the English loanword “Polack” (note, the spelling difference which does not appear in Polish) is considered an ethnic slur in the US and the UK, and therefore is inherently insulting in nearly all modern usages.

The “correct” modern term is Pole — for now.

Are We Really Getting Smarter?

Saturday, October 13th, 2012

American IQ scores have risen steadily over the past century, James R. Flynn has found, but are we really getting smarter?

Modern people do so well on these tests because we are new and peculiar. We are the first of our species to live in a world dominated by categories, hypotheticals, nonverbal symbols and visual images that paint alternative realities. We have evolved to deal with a world that would have been alien to previous generations.

A century ago, people mostly used their minds to manipulate the concrete world for advantage. They wore what I call “utilitarian spectacles.” Our minds now tend toward logical analysis of abstract symbols — what I call “scientific spectacles.” Today we tend to classify things rather than to be obsessed with their differences. We take the hypothetical seriously and easily discern symbolic relationships.

The mind-set of the past can be seen in interviews between the great psychologist Alexander Luria and residents of rural Russia during the 1920s — people who, like ourselves in 1910, had little formal education.

Luria: What do a fish and crow have in common?

Reply: A fish it lives in water, a crow flies.

Luria: Could you use one word for them both?

Reply: If you called them “animals” that wouldn’t be right. A fish isn’t an animal, and a crow isn’t either. A person can eat a fish but not a crow.

The prescientific person is fixated on differences between things that give them different uses. My father was born in 1885. If you asked him what dogs and rabbits had in common, he would have said, “You use dogs to hunt rabbits.” Today a schoolboy would say, “They are both mammals.” The latter is the right answer on an IQ test. Today we find it quite natural to classify the world as a prerequisite to understanding it.

Here is another example.

Luria: There are no camels in Germany; the city of B is in Germany; are there camels there or not?

Reply: I don’t know, I have never seen German villages. If B is a large city, there should be camels there.

Luria: But what if there aren’t any in all of Germany?

Reply: If B is a village, there is probably no room for camels.

The prescientific Russian wasn’t about to treat something as important as the existence of camels hypothetically.

Special Operations: Pill Popping Professionals

Friday, October 12th, 2012

The quiet professionals of our special forces are also pill-popping professionals:

A recent book by a U.S. Navy SEAL commando mentioned the use of sleeping pills (Ambien) by SEALS while getting ready for operations. That often involves first flying long distances in cargo aircraft, then keeping odd hours in crude accommodations as final preparations are made. All this is quite stressful, making it difficult to fall asleep, even when exhausted. Getting some sleep is essential, so the SEALS are encouraged to take stuff like Ambien if they need it. Many journalists found this shocking. Some even found it disturbing. But taking sleeping pills and stimulants is an ancient tradition. The alternative is getting killed in combat.

The big problem is maintaining alertness in a stressful environment. Once in combat American troops are issued stimulant pills and gum to help them stay alert. Five years ago the U.S. Army began issuing “Stay Alert” caffeine gum to combat troops. This was yet another in a long line of drugs troops have been given to keep them alert after long hours in a combat zone. This fatigue problem has existed for a long time and has become particularly acute in the last century or so, as battles became endurance contests, with forces engaged for days on end.

The air force has a similar problem. In the last few decades, as long range bombers and refueling in the air became common, pilots have had to face alertness problems during very long (30 hours or more) missions. In sixty years of using “go pills” (amphetamines), the air force has never had an instance where the stimulant caused a crash or accident. In contrast, over a hundred crashes have been caused by pilot fatigue.

For over a century one of the more popular fatigue solutions has been amphetamines (“speed”). However, this drug can impair judgment, making the user more aggressive. Ambien has similar side effects. In the last decade kinder and gentler alertness medications have become available. The most effective of these has been Modafinil (sold as Provigil). This stuff is described as “a mood-brightening and memory-enhancing psychostimulant which enhances wakefulness and vigilance.” Tests showed that user performance was degraded 15-30 percent, versus 60-100 percent for those who took nothing at all after 24 hours of being awake.

While the Modafinil did a pretty good job, the dextroamphetamine was still a bit better. So amphetamines remained competitive. A new stimulant, touted as superior to dextroamphetamine and Modafinil, CX717, was tested by the Department of Defense and found not appreciably superior to existing stimulants. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy continues to use coffee, and lots of it, to keep sailors on their toes during long hours of continuous duty. But for infantry and pilots, a hot mug of coffee is often not an option.

Taking pills may not be healthy, but neither is being drowsy in combat.

Partysaurus Rex

Thursday, October 11th, 2012

Let’s get this party started up in here:

Life with the Vandals

Thursday, October 11th, 2012

Victor Davis Hanson describes life with the Vandals some more:

Out here in the San Joaquin Valley, civilization has zoomed into reverse, a process that I witness regularly on my farm in Selma, near Fresno. Last summer, for example, intruders ripped the copper conduits out of two of my agriculture pumps. Later, thieves looted the shed. I know no farmer in a five-mile radius who has escaped such thefts; for many residents of central California, confronting gang members casing their farms for scrap metal is a weekly occurrence. I chased out two last August. One neighbor painted his pump with the Oakland Raiders’ gray and black, hoping to win exemption from thieving gangs. No luck. My mailbox looks armored because it is: after starting to lose my mail once or twice each month, I picked a model advertised to resist an AK-47 barrage.

I bicycle twice a week on a 20-mile route through the countryside, where I see trash — everything from refrigerators to dead kittens — dumped along the sides of less traveled roads. The culprits are careless; their names, on utility-bill stubs and junk mail, are easy to spot. This summer, I also saw a portable canteen unplug its drainage outlet and speed off down the road, with a stream of cooking waste leaking out onto the pavement. After all, it is far cheaper to park a canteen along a country road, put up an awning over a few plastic chairs and tables, and set up an unregulated, tax-free roadside eatery than to battle the array of state regulations required to establish an in-town restaurant. Six such movable canteens line the road a mile from my farm. For that matter, I can buy a new, tax-free lawnmower, mattress, or shovel at the ad hoc emporia at dozens of rural crossroads. Who knows where their inventory comes from?

Few residence-zoning laws are enforced in the rural interior of highly regulated California. My neighbors often plop down broken Winnebagos — three or four per acre — and add a few Porta-Potties and propane grills, thereby creating a hacienda of renters. You can earn the ire of a building inspector in Menlo Park if your new fence is an inch too high, but out here in the outback, no one cares if you crowd 40 adults onto your premises.

To be in a car accident in rural central California, as I have been three times, is often to have the assailant driver flee the scene, or to learn later that he lacked license, registration, and insurance. About once every three years, I find a car — again, lacking registration and insurance — that has veered off the road into my vineyard, destroying thousands of dollars’ worth of vines, and been abandoned.

Law enforcement seems not so much overburdened as brilliantly entrepreneurial. Patrol cars flood the highways as never before, looking for the tiniest revenue-raising infraction; the police realize that going after the man who throws a freezer into the local pond is costly and futile, while citing the cell-phone-using but otherwise responsible driver is profitable. In 2009, the most recent year for which traffic statistics have been released, the highway patrol issued 200,000 more violations than in 2006.

As I write, my local community is confronting a peculiar epidemic. Bronze dedicatory plaques are being stolen from our ancestral institutions — churches, halls, clubs, parks — many of which my grandparents and great-grandparents helped establish. No records exist for most of the ancient dedicatory names, so all prior benefaction has been erased from our collective memory — and all for the recycled meltdown that supplies only a day or two’s drugs for the thieves. For central California’s parasitic criminal class, melting down what the departed bequeathed us is a growth industry. It reminds me of the fifteenth-century Turkish occupation of Greece, when scavengers pried the lead seals off the building clamps of classical temples, destroying in decades what nature had not damaged in centuries.

Fat and Health

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

Fat is associated with health problems, but it may not be the cause of those problems. Fat may be a defense mechanism against unhealthy eating:

If merely the amount of excess fat is the direct cause of metabolic dysregulation then removing that fat through surgery should obviously result in metabolic improvement. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In fact, an excellent prior study has shown that liposuction does not make obese individuals healthy.

[...]

Obese individuals with metabolic problems who are prescribed a class of drugs called thiazolidinediones or TZDs for short, actually grow more fat cells, get fatter, but also get healthier.

Currently, the emerging theory of why obesity is associated with metabolic disease risk suggests that it is not the excess amount of fat that results in problems – but rather, it is the inability of the fat tissue (specifically subcutaneous) to expand enough via the development of numerous, healthy adipocytes or fat cells to store all the excess calories being ingested (more details on that here).