In one of the last books, Travis had learned tai chi. John D. MacDonald has him briefly wax eloquent about the virtues of tai chi and how it will let him stay in shape into his old age, unlike the boxing and such that had been his fitness (and fighting) styles up to that point, which were a young man’s game.

I skipped Drive, I’m a happy Dropbox user. Dropbox keeps “my” data secure.

I don’t really buy into the “free versus paid” debate. Free products, paid products, doesn’t matter as long as they work. When I signed up for the service, Google Reader was free AND no better alternative existed. I also switched from Delicious to Pinboard. I paid a small, one-time fee and didn’t regret it.

Hope we can all own our data. (http://tantek.com/2011/010/b1/owning-your-data)

If I’m just providing services to friends and family, running something out of my house would be worth considering.

One service I forgot to mention is a backup service. For that you’d definitely want to be located somewhere else than the same building with your computer. I currently just use Apple’s Time Machine. It’s very convenient and works great, but my disk is sitting about two inches from my desktop machine—much too vulnerable to a common disaster.

Another alternative is a Linksys WRT54G series wifi router:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_WRT54G_series
They are a router, and they have a USB port and you can install your own Linux, so they can also function as a light-duty server. That way you only need space and power for one device instead of two.

Or, you can compromise and rent a virtual server, e.g.
http://www.linode.com/
$20/month; possibly cheaper and less hassle on an amortized basis. That way you control all the software, but not the hardware.

It’s worth it to me to skim a dozen posts that aren’t very interesting, in order to find one that’s got new info about a topic I’m really interested in.

Of course, this risks living in an ever-amplifying echo chamber, but if I notice that, then I simply add more diverse friends.

Of course, competition for time is at least as fierce as competition for brain power, so I’m not sure how much difference it makes in practice.

I’m actually pretty sure I’m right this time, but frankly, I hope Congress gets its act together and we don’t find out.

When I posted this, my brother responded to my tweet to point out that we both ought to have smoking jackets, but he did so in Esperanto. (Fun fact: The Esperanto word for smoking jacket is smokingo.)

Doubly so, if you’re reading while you walk.

It probably starts off high (if you include posts titled “The One Trick” or “The One Rule” for something). Then dips a bit at 2, then goes back up for 3–5 or so. Then I expect it declines and remains at a low level, with spikes at 10 and then again at 99–101.

But I’m just guessing.

—
* 7 ways to avoid running out of money in retirement: 1. die young. 2. don’t retire. 3. inherit oodles of money from relatives. 4. Learn the art of dumpster diving so as to live on 43 cents per day. 5. Murder somebody you don’t like so you get free accomodations in the state pen. 6. use your spare time in a lucrative hobby, like writing a bestseller; what are you waiting for? 7. have a working spouse. Easy. (I didn’t say that they would be 7 good ways.)

It’s almost tempting to start a clothing company that makes women’s clothing with actual pockets, just to see what the smartphone makers would offer.

You can’t buy light cream in central Illinois.

No added sugars, though. That’d be weird.

Thanks for the link to some car-free urban areas. I had previously considered roadless wilderness, but had concluded that (tempting as it is) it’s not an overall win. There’s the inconvenience, the additional risks, the additional time and distance to emergency care if you do get injured, etc. (It might be occasionally inconvenient to stick to a commitment to not do business with violent criminals, but I don’t think it would ever rise to the level of inconvenience in living where your daily activities don’t bring you within reach of motor traffic.)

Elsewhere, a friend of mine suggested that step one is never riding in a vehicle driven by a drunk or distracted driver. That’s the sort of advice that both helps and is simply solid good sense. It’s just not nearly enough.

But, I have a devils’-advocate response to this prompt:

> There is no similar set of things you can do to similarly reduce your risk of being killed or injured by a motor vehicle.

One possibility is to move to one of the car-free places in the world, and do your best to stay inside it. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car-free_places )

That’s unrealistic for most people (and a bit trite), but you can approximate that extreme by minimizing your contact with cars. I think if you lived in a place like Manhattan or San Francisco, and walked and used transit, and only crossed the street on signal at major intersections, the odds of being involved in an accident would be extremely small. And anyone can minimize their time on the road, no matter where they are, by doing business by Internet, phone, or mail, and by chaining trips. All of the tactics for frugal driving aimed at reducing mileage, are also effective at reducing the risk of being in an accident.

Also, in “Effective Cycling,” John Forester has an argument for why vehicular cycling is safer than it appears based on the raw statistics, which is similar to your analysis of gun safety. He argues that the overwhelming majority of car-on-bike accidents involve either unsupervised children or adult cyclists making egregious moving violations — running red lights or traveling on the wrong side of the road. So, you can make cycling very safe for yourself, if not everyone, by following traffic rules and supervising children.

And you’re bang on about Michael Pollan. He’s got more smart stuff to say about food than most of the paleo folks I’ve read. (And that’s really a bonus, because he also has so much smart stuff to say about agriculture.)

I tend to go with the Michael Pollan ‘diet’ – eat food, not too much, mostly plants. (Well, I eat a lot of meat, too. But probably mostly plants.) I also apply a sort of inverse version to my exercise: run miles, a lot of them, mostly slowly. I run some very fast hard intervals (actually, mostly hill sprints and hill work as my ‘hard’) but mostly I just run at an enjoyable pace.

The model I like to point to is Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Their early efforts to change the laws on drunk driving were largely failures. But they managed to change the terms of the debate. Before MADD, drunk drivers were treated as an appropriate source of humor—I can remember movies and cartoons depicting some drunk being poured into his car and weaving his way down the road, and you were supposed to think it was funny. When you see those scenes now, you don’t laugh.

But I see very little of that from the anti-gun crowd. They seem to think that you can change the laws first—and that’s never going to work. They push an incrementalist approach that tries to nibble away at gun rights around the edges, which is slightly less futile, but no more effective. (The “assault weapons” ban never banned anything but cosmetic details of gun design, and then expired.) They also argue about whether this or that weapon has any legitimate purpose, which is also never going to work, if their goal is (as it needs to be) to change the terms of the debate.

What might work is to deal substantively with the notion that a very large fraction of the US population thinks that being an armed people is a good idea, and that each one of us has a constitutional right to be armed, so as to be a member of the armed populous. But the anti-gun folks seem to find that notion so incomprehensible that they just can’t deal with it seriously.

(Ditto, of course, with cars, pedestrians and bicycles. I’ve been very glad to see the ads that oppose “distracted driving” by quoting the banal text messages that people were reading just before they killed someone. That needs to come first, before we’re going to get laws against using cell phones while driving.)

It seems to me that this sort of defeatist argument (asserting that it’s impossible to change US attitudes towards guns) is just as applicable to argue that it’s impossible to change US attitudes towards cars. Indeed it seems like MORE US citizens view cars as an inalienable inevitable right than consider guns that way!

It’s the disdaining that seemed odd to me. Saying, “I don’t like high-volume cardio, so I do just barely enough” makes perfect sense. Poking fun at the people doing high-volume cardio seems weird.

On the other hand, if mentally writing your blog post about how foolish those guys pounding out miles on the treadmill at the fitness center helps you get it together to do one more set, I suppose that’s harmless.

One year we grew a different kind of sunflower that produces one huge flower head with vast numbers of seeds. I suspect it would be better for biofuel production than these. But these are awfully nice for brightening up the place.

I’m hoping, though, that music (or podcasts) will make it possible to run on the treadmill, once it gets too cold to run outdoors.

I’ve never been successful at continuing to run after the weather gets cold. Maybe, with the right audio accompaniment, I’ll be able to put in the time on the treadmill this winter.

1) It’s efficient: I love me efficiency. If I can get the benefits for less time/work, that’s awesome.

2) It’s fun: I’ve always dreaded running–because of the drudgery you mentioned–but having met so many folks who genuinely enjoyed running, I figured there must be some truth in what they’re saying. It’s interesting that you mention it too.

And one additional comment:

Will always talks about audio books as the reason he gets any exercise or does household chores. Apparently, a good audio book will get you outside and walking/exercising for hours on end; though I really only need it to get me going for about 30-60 minutes a day. He says he actually looks forward to exercise time because that’s when he can listen to the next chapter in the audio book he’s currently working through.

Do you listen to anything on your runs?

I was initially interested in running for exercise for two reasons. First, because it’s very efficient—you can get all the aerobic exercise you need for a day in just 20 minutes or so. Second, because I wanted the capability—I figured sometimes it’s handy to be able to run, and the only way to develop and maintain that capability is to run.

What I didn’t know was that running would be fun.

Except—and this is key—running isn’t fun at the start. Running only starts to be fun when you get pretty good at it. Until you can run for 30 or 40 minutes—a level of fitness that might take weeks or months to achieve, if you’re in poor condition to start with—running is no fun at all.

When I first started running, I couldn’t run a quarter of a mile. I spent weeks during which I’d run as far as I could—for 5, 6, 7, minutes—and then just walk until I’d gone a mile or so. Gradually, the fraction of the route that I’d run grew and I didn’t have to walk as much.

Then, about the time I could run for 12 minutes, I discovered that I’d turned a corner. Once I could run for 12 minutes, I could run 20 minutes. Until then, my heart and lungs couldn’t quite keep up—I’d build up an oxygen deficit each minute, until I had to slow down. But at some point—and for me it was when I could run 12 minutes—my cardiovascular capacity provided what I needed to run. It quit being the limiting factor. After that, the limiting factor was my legs instead. I didn’t get out of breath, but my legs got tired and sore.

Until then, running was mostly just drudgery. The only reason I was able to stick with it, was that it only took a few minutes, after which I figured I’d gotten all the exercise that I needed to get.

After that, and especially starting just a few weeks later, as my legs got stronger, I suddenly started to really enjoy the runs. I started being able to get some variety—some days I’d run further than usual, other days I’d run faster than usual. I started being able to run other places—after work, in the neighborhood of the office, or on a trail at a park.

That’s when I started loving running—when I got in good enough shape that it didn’t require that I make a maximum effort every time I went out for a run.

Oh, and I think the endocannabinoids played a part as well.

There are three color versions among this kind of sunflower—one that’s all yellow, and two others where the central parts of the petals are either yellowish-orange or reddish-orange. Last year (when we also had volunteers) we didn’t have any of the reddish blossoms, so I didn’t expect any this year. But we’ve got some anyway. Either sunflower genetics are more complex than I imagined, or we had some seeds in the ground from a previous year.

Actually, the grey hair seems to predominate in exactly the places where my hair is not thinning. It’s almost as if it were a conspiracy….

Noticing that prompted me to track down this page in my old on-line journal, where I’d recorded some timed runs from 2003 and 2004:

http://www.philipbrewer.net/Journal/2004/2004-08-17.php

I’d completely forgotten that there’d been a while there when I could run a mile in 8:34.

Congratulations on running being fun. That is a good thing! And the more you run ‘easy’, the faster ‘easy’ will become.

Cheers!

Personally, I like comments here—it’s the place where I’ll find them again, if I revisit a post. In particular, if I link to a post, because I’m discussing something related, it’s great to see the previous discussion. Then it can inform the new post I’m writing.

Having said that, I’m sure that a lot of people who follow me on one or more of the social media sites don’t follow my blog, and even among those who do, most of them don’t check back here to see if there have been comments. But a prompt comment on Facebook will often be seen by many people who wouldn’t have come here (and perhaps by a few who had already come here, but wouldn’t have been checking back).

I guess my best hope is that shifting more of the discussion here will prompt other people to come back and look at the comments, so that eventually it will be clear that this is the place for comments and discussion. But until that happens, feel free to comment anywhere. I’ll see the comment wherever you put it.

The problem, of course, is trying to have a cohesive conversation afterward. I have responded to your blog posts in the past on Facebook, on G+, and on the comment field on this site. Where do you prefer comments to happen? There should be a way to somehow coalesce all these methods into a single entity. I would love to see tighter integration of blogs and social media – for instance, a way to “integrate” WordPress blog posts into G+ – where I can hit “See entire blog post…” and have it shown inline on G+, and comments posted and shown here will be the comments generated on the post on G+. But I suppose that’s a pipe dream, for now.

Toward the end of my career, my last manager seemed to be trying to ease me into management. He had me “lead” a couple of tiny, short-term projects.

On one of them, I was really busy with something else, so I just told the other guys, “Here’s what we’re trying to do,” and let them go do it without me, while I worked on the thing I needed to get done. And in a few hours, they came back with the work entirely completed. I was able to go back to my manager and say, “Hey, those guys you asked to help me did the whole job for me! Here’s what they came up with.”

It was the first time I began to understand why someone might want to be a manager. But mostly, I’m sure being a manager would suck: Your entire success depends on other people doing work that you couldn’t do yourself. Ugh.

I am amused by your recollections about working in software development. I have some thoughts on your efforts to be honest, to be productive, and in floundering at times in that environment.

First, most managers aren’t really very good at managing because they have no training in leadership, which is what management really needs to be. As Adm. Grace Murray Hopper said, “You don’t manage people. You lead them,” and that is what I learned both while earning an MS in Technical Management and in serving as the adult alumni adviser (and mentor, guide, role model, leader, teacher, friend, and older and wiser Brother) to my fraternity.

Second, most managers in software development traditionally have had no insight into the process of software development because software development was chaotic, anarchic, dependent upon heroes. That is, they didn’t know what you and other software developers were doing, so they had no way of knowing what they were supposed to do. That is partly the fault of upper management for failing to provide guidelines of how one manages and leads software developers in the process of software development. If there is no repeatable, defined, managed, and optimized process, then there is nothing to judge effort against. Vague concepts such as “milestones” and “deliverables” outside of a well-define process are meaningless. Moreover, without productivity statistics and estimates based upon those statistics, all estimates are SWAGs (Stupid, Wild Ass Guesses), so it isn’t surprising that neither you nor your managers could tell how much time and effort would be involved. Fortunately, this chaotic and undefined approach to developing software is being replaced by genuine software engineering, that is, of the application of true engineering science and discipline to the craft of programming, much like that taught at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, where I was taught how to be a software engineer.

And finally, most managers are idiots, not all, surely, but most are. Certainly most that I worked under have been idiots, primadonnas, strutting and mindless RickPerrys, stunningly neurotic, and occasionally borderline psychotic.

The problem in the US is that the government has been co-opted by a subset of the monied interests. Under the guise of “protecting the financial system,” it’s making sure that the losers get bailed out. That would be problematic, even if the money to do so came from the winners. But it isn’t. The money is coming from everyone.

The whole “privatized profits but socialized losses” system is the main way in which the US is falling short of offering the rule of law.

Wealth is usually about trade. Free markets, private property, and the rule of law all help mainly by encouraging trade. In ancient times, the west coast of India had thriving trade with the middle east (except during wars).

Of course, trade can also be pernicious, as for example the British East India Company’s “trade” with India.

As a general rule, I make sure all the characters character names in my stories have unique first characters. It’s not an absolute rule—if there’s some cultural significance or story purpose behind it, I might go with similar names—but I hate it when I’m confused for 200 hundred pages before I figure out that Claire and Clare and two different people, so I try not to do that to readers.

Wearing such a purposely visible garment, who would think that the person might be trying to NOT be noticed?

Yes, what you actually pay for makes a big difference. Access to something that you actually use is a big boost to your standard of living. Access to something that theoretically appealing, but that you don’t actually use (like the comedy clubs in my example), isn’t much of a win. Something that’s expensive, but that you don’t need to buy, doesn’t really count.

Thanks for the Esperanto link!

Coincidentally, I thought of you the other day when I saw this article on invented languages at The Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/21525371

I suspect this type of thing is generational, too. I, a late Boomer, was taught by Greatest Generation parents that a gentleman never hit a woman. The only violence I was exposed to as a child was cartoon violence. Domestic violence was obviously around, but it simply wasn’t discussed or portrayed.

But in general jokes about domestic violence aren’t really funny because the subject matter isn’t really funny. It’s kind of like trying to make jokes about Nazis, Hogan’s Heroes and Mel Brooks & Carl Reiner notwithstanding. They were funny.

It’s much funnier to make jokes about incompetent managers. Now, THAT’S FUNNY! Oh, and crooked or idiotic politicians. Eric Cantor, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell alone can amuse the entire nation and provide sincere belly-laughs EVERY DAMNED DAY!!!!

Whether you’re selling is not so important as whether you’re submitting work to commercial markets. (We don’t want people who are just writing for therapy or just writing for the group members; we want people who are writing for publication.) Also, it needs to be short fiction, because it’s so hard to critique a novel in progress.

The other groups that I know of are listed near the end of the incognitos page. (If you find others, let me know and I’ll link to them as well.)

Reading bits of your blog and Wise Bread articles it seems to me that we are remarkably similar. I have a degree in Economics from UIUC and work at a software company in the U of I Research Park. I used to commonly say “working’s for suckers,” though (in the present economy I perhaps have more tact), and have been trying to save aggressively with the hope of getting out of the working business so I can write full-time.

I’m all too well aware that the number one thing that any established author will say about eking a living out writing (mostly speculative fiction, in my case) is that one must start by writing. I was lucky enough to get a personal comment from the author James D. MacDonald on Making Light a few months ago which he ended by saying “Keep going. Revise along the way if you must, but don’t forget to create original material every day.” I know enough about myself to know that I am good with deadlines, so if I had a meeting at which I had to present some progress on a regular basis, I would have progress.

One way to do this is to go to Clarion, of course. But this summer I am saving to pay for my wedding, and next summer I am getting married, and neither thing involves having the money to go to Clarion. So again, writers groups… I don’t think I’m Incognito material, since I haven’t ever gotten any fiction published (I have had some other teeny publications). Do you happen to know which of the local fiction groups might be the best fit for a speculative fiction beginner? Ideally, I would find one that would meet every week with each member presenting work for review every week, but I know that’s shooting the moon.

Mostly though, I just wanted to say “Hello,” and “I’m glad you’re in my town writing seriously,” and “Go, you, making me think about being a rentier.”

Thanks for the kind words on the scarf! It was fun to make, fun to wear, and is warm. (So, it’s just about time to put it away for the season.)

Also, stylin’ scarf. Nice job

Hope to see you soon!

Good one.

Richard Brewer

I loved the bit about your home made jumper. I’ve always been interested in crafts. I understand that it will cost as much to make a jumper as it will to buy one, but the bought jumper will never be as good as the hand made item produced with quality yarns. I once knitted myself an arran jumper using wool. I had it for about ten years, then my ex borrowed it. I haven’t seen it since!

I can buy cakes, preserves, bread, clothes etc., but I know that if I make them myself I’ll have quality items that far outshine the mass produced goods. Give me quality any day.

We’re open to new people, as long as they’re serious writers of short works of speculative fiction. (See the Incognito Writing Group page for details.)

If the nearly 3-hour drive doesn’t sound too daunting, send me some email and I’ll run your name past the other members of the group and get back to you with dates and times. (My email address is on my contact page.)

Philip, how often does your critique group meet? I noticed on your blog that it’s located in the ‘Champaign-Urbana area,’ which according to Google Maps is only a 2 hr 45 minute drive from my town. I applied to Clarion 2011, which is how I’d love to spend my summer, but if that doesn’t come to fruition I’d love to come give your guys’ writers group a try at least once in June, or thereabouts.

Any thoughts on that? Do you guys enjoy new blood?

Kaj certe oni povas re-rakontas iun ajn rakonton. Fakte, mia frato kaj mi faras tion. Vidu la aliajn “legendojn.”

(Cetere, vi eble povus same revizii la kristanan mitologion – ĝis pasko…)