What's wrong with this picture?

Golden thinks, like some biblical parable of water into wine, that putting a bike sign on a road magically makes it a good road for cycling. So consider a few things that have not changed with this sign.

• There is two way-traffic and parking on both sides of the street. As you can see even cars find the road too narrow. It just barely possible for two small cars to pass one another.
• The speed limit is too high. One block away, on the same road, where there is NO parking the speed is only 15. Here on the dangerous stretch, it's 25. 180 degrees out of phase with reality--as usual.
• cyclists need around 3 feet from parked cars to keep from being doored. Imagine a car trying to pass a bike with an on-coming car. It happens all the time and it's not a pretty sight.
• this is one of the most pediastrian-crowded places on campus between classes. This leads to major sensory overload for drivers.
• cars turning onto this street routinely blow through stop signs because the sight is so restricted.
• the upshot is that I tell all my cyclists friends to avoid this road and take the much safe route via Maple.

The former police chief at Mines told me this road was a disaster but he couldn't get the City of Golden to do anything about it. Whoever is responsible for this sign should have his/her sign-making keys taken away. The sign is not only stupid, it is liable to give cyclists a false sense of security. Or, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. Addendum: saw an RTD call and ride mini-bus today on Illinois. The road is too narrow for two-way traffic with one of these. When a car comes the other direction, it's a standoff.

How should ethical vegans think about insects

Many vegans, perhaps most, eschew honey and silk on the grounds of cruelty to the bees and silkworms. On the other hand, some non-vegans are suggesting that insects such as grasshoppers could be a significant food source in the future (link via @JaymiHeimbuch) [Of course, to vegans it goes without saying that becoming a vegan would be the most dramatic step toward "food security". But we must be prepared to confront arguments rationally and scientifically without resorting to vague, ambiguous claims.]

long road back

If all goes according to plan, next month I'll start racing again after a year of post-getting-crunched-by-SUV time. The broken bones and resulting surgery healed quickly. The back/spine alignment injuries have taken much longer; intensive physical therapy, electro-stim, bergs of ice (floating in, strapped to). For reasons of scheduling it looks like hill climbs, followed by TT's will be the order of business.

Federalist #63 and the House debt ceiling debate

"... so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind?"  http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa63.htm

Save the Leyden Road

If you only ride in Jeffco, you may have no idea how much better the roads are in Boulder county.  We have redneck death traps like Golden Gate Canyon and Coal Creek Canyon.  Boulder has Left Hand, Sunshine, Sugarloaf, Flagstaff.  QED.  East of the mountains North of Boulder there are roads like Nelson, Hygiene, Nebo, St. Vrain (all east-west), and all the connecting north-south roads.  Fantastic scenary and modest traffic.  What do we have in Northern Jefferson County?  the Leyden Road.  That's pretty much it.  The creeping Kudzu of  Arvada is bent on covering every blade of grass with concrete and filling every open vista with office parks and Taco Bells.  Evidently Arvada has not been sated by the Candelas eco-cide.   The signs shown are new.  They were recently planted on the Leyden road and suggest that Arvada has turned its rapacious attention to this last lovely vista.  if you blow this up, you'll see the details of the "planning" commission meeting.  Here is a link to the full-sized picture

on the joys of icebaths

I first head about ice baths from Tim Ferriss' book.   For a vegan, his diet is completely insane and not worth discussing.  But he has some interesting training/recovery tips, the ice bath being one of them.  Since then I've noticed lots of reputable physios recommending ice baths or other cryotherapy (even LN2).  So, earlier in the summer when I ramped up my steep climbing and noticed that I was having a hard time recovering from super-intense workouts (15-25% climbs at altitude, near threshold, rinse repeat, puke) I decided to give it a shot.

It's no surprise that Norway's mass murderer was white

Having spent much time this past year reading the books of the great Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson, not to mention Eva Gabrielsson's fine memoir of her 32 years with Larsson, it was hardly a shock to hear that the perpetrator of Norway's killing spree was a home-grown terrorist.  The Neo-Nazi's and right-wing xenophobes are sufficiently powerful and violent that Gabrielsson and Larson lived in constant fear for many years before his untimely death.  And did we not just read last week that Germany has been forced to obliterate all remains of Rudolf Hess and his grave, since the site had become a perverse locus of pilgrimage for neo-nazis?  On our last trip to Germany I was surprised by the popularity of New Balance sneakers, only to be shocked by the widespread symiotics of their trademark letter "N".

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that we need to support courageous journalists like Larsson and Gabrielsson who risk their lives to expose the truth of these hate groups.  We could start by refusing to call these terrorists Christians.  Hate, violence and intolerance are not what the New Testament teaches.  We should also support organized efforts such as those by the Southern Poverty Law Center, who, among many other good works maintain a nation-wide list of hate crimes and groups.  But perhaps most importantly we should remember that we are all immigrants (unless your family has lived forever in the African rift valley).  I suspect the only countries without racial tension are those that are racially homogeneous.

If you want to find out about particular group, such as the  California Coalition for Immigration Reform or the American Family Association, look them up here. It's really appalling how many of these groups exist in the US and the extent of their vile emanations.

no good deed goes unpunished

I was riding north from Golden through Arvada to do tempo around the Koppenberg circuit.    On Quaker a Land Rover going the opposite direction stopped abruptly and shouted some question.  It was too windy to hear, so I decide to do the nice thing and pull around to see if I could help.  Since he was stopped in the middle of the road, I decided to make a U and pull up on his passenger side for safety.    As I'm crossing his stern (about 1-2 car lengths back) he suddently puts it in reverse and hits the gas.

the 'problem' of global altruism

Biological explanations of altruism will naturally start with a parent's sacrifice for its offspring. This is not difficult to understand by utilitarian arguments and is readily extended to family, friends, even members of the local group (a tribe, for instance). Beyond this, it gets  difficult to imagine any kind of biological advantage for altruistic behavior. Richard Dawkins stretches this to the point of a sacrifice for someone you may see again. OK, difficult but not impossible.

But now consider what I would call 'global' altruism. This is altruism of the very highest order--A Raul Wallenberg, for instance. Wallenberg put himself at great and immediate personal risk for tens of thousands of people he had no connection with; nor was he likely to benefit from his connection to these people in any way. I've never seen an even mildly convincing evolutionary explanation for this sort of behavior. It's quite possible that global altruism exists in other species, but I am unaware of any examples.   Does this bahavior separate humans from other animals?  I don't know.   For me, the existence of  global altruism remains one of the perplexing puzzles of evolution.

A reality check on health-care costs

Journalists tend to be a bit credulous when it comes to large numbers.  Thus we are told repeatedly that the House or Senate health-care bills will cost (fill in an astronomical number here), as if such a statement actually conveyed information.  I saw a graphic on TV news recently that said the cost would be $32,849 per family--I don't remember the actual number, which is beside the point; it's the implied 1 part in 30,000 accuracy that you should be scratching your head at. 

more on the titanium single speed cross rig

Warning:  likely only of interest to cyclocross geeks and weight weenies.
Here are the details of the build.  The frame was made in Russia from a cad file that Scott Mares of Sibex Sports came up with from my geometry.  With Sibex I was able to get a custom frame at less then the cost of a typical stock titanium frame.  The goal was pure cyclocross and single-speed from the beginning.  So, for example, horizontal fork ends were used and there is no extraneous cable routing hardware.  The crankset and BB are Campy Record.  I used road cranks with a 42 chainring on the outer position to get the proper chainline for the 135 mm spaced rear fork.  Record headset, with Deda Newton stem and handlebars.

Climate fallacy #1

Small changes in inputs lead to small changes in ouputs.  

This assumes the Earth is a linear system.  But it's not.  There are many climate-related feedback mechanisms which, once excited, can lead to unstable, out-of-control changes.  For example, ice-albedo feedback.  A small rise in termperature is not just a small rise in temperature.  It can result in reducing the reflectivity of the Earth's surface (the albedo ) by melting ice.  This in term increases the absorption of sunlight, which leads to more ice-melt and off we go.  It works in the other direction too.  Decreasing temperature causes the albedo to increase as ice forms.  This can lead to uncontrolled cooling. 

Climate Scoreboard

N simple, inexpensive things to reduce our carbon footprint

These recommendations were written in the context my local campus community but I'm sure they apply, mutatis mutandis, more generally. Send me your ideas, I'll be happy to include them.

Expensive remedies such as PV and wind are great, but it is much easier to conserve energy than to produce it. For some reasons we Americans tend to seek solutions that are expensive and sexy but require no individual effort or commitment. Oh, and by the way, we have no money so let's do nothing. Some people will think these suggestions are too hard. But hard is curing cancer. Hard is stopping domestic violence. Using a broom instead of a leaf-blower? Requiring campus vendors to provide healthy food? Trivial rewards for people who walk or ride their bikes instead of driving? It's slightly embarrassing that we even have to discuss these things. Embarrassing or not, here goes:

all tubulars all the time

This is my fixed-gear commuter bike (a Surly Cross-Check frame/Reynolds Ouzo pro fork) And when I say commuter I mean everything from riding to the office, to shopping, going to Boulder for meetings or throwing it on a plane for a trip to the East Coast. I've done everything from the Black Hills around Mt. Rushmore, to muddy Vermont single track on this bike. One of the best investments I ever made.

The one thing I want to point out is the Mavic Reflex tubular rims. Tubulars for commuting? I hear you scoff. Yes, in this particular case, Veloflex Roubaix, which are wide, durable and incredibly comfortable. I can't remember the last time I flatted on these. I.e., more than a year ago with daily commuting on normal roads.

the flatbed scanner as a cheap digital microscope

Just got a new HP Photosmart all-in-one (scanner/printer/copier) etc. Kudos to HP for producing the powerful open-source tools that let Linux users get the most out of their hardware (HPLIP). For years I have used flatbed scanners for all sorts of microscopy and measurement applications in my lab; applications that have lots of folks scratching their heads when they see the results that a few hundred bucks of hardware can produce if you let it.

Consider this. At 4800 dpi (what xsane lets me do with the new scanner), that works out to 189 dots per mm. Or a pixel size of 1/189 mm, which is 5 microns! To measure something small, just scan it and count the number of pixels. The 'n' pictured is from from e pluribus unum on a US dime. The image is 159 pixels across, so at 4800 dpi, that is .84 mm wide. Not bad for something you can pick up at the corner big-box for a lot less than $200.

the three laws of inference

If I hadn't believed it, I wouldn't have seen it --- Anon

The problem of making inferences in the presence of uncertainty is ubiquitous both in science and in society. Just look at the controversy over the trends in Earth temperature and how such data influence public policy. What most people don't realize is how uncertainty permeates even the simplest measurements (which are almost never direct) and hence the whole chain of measurements that goes into even the simplest problem. Here are some simple ideas to keep in mind when interpreting claims in the news

the problem is not too little energy

Jared Diamond, January 2, 2008 New York Times: "Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts. Ask yourself whether Americans’ wasteful use of gasoline contributes positively to any of those measures."

Diamond also does a great job explaining why the problem is not too little energy but too much consumption. He points out that if the developing world were brought up to the standards of consumption and waste of the developed world, it would be as if the Earth's population were 72 billion people!

7.5 kg custom single-speed cyclocross

When you remove all the mud, this bike weighs 7.5 kg. Some nontraditional features. Single speed. Campy Record crankset (42 chainring), hs, bb, brake levers, etc. Custom Zipp 32h tubular rear wheel with a DT 240 s hub. Training rear wheel is a Mavic Reflex tubular with a Phil Wood ss hub. I worked with Scott Mares of Sibex Sports to design the geometry. He sends the Cad file to Russia where the thing is CNC'd from titanium and presto you have a frameset. It was fun putting together. TRP says not to use road levers with their brakes, but it works fine. The Zipps are really stiff and light. Excel got the custom drilled 303 cyclocross rim from Zipp and built the wheel. The front wheel is a standard road 303. One thing I discovered the hard way: don't use a 3/32 road chain for single speed cross. They break. So I use thick 3/32 cogs like the Surly or a White Industries freewheel. These are much stouter than road cogs and they work with a 1/8 track chain. This chain works fine with the Record chainring.




There is so much clearance, it has been suggested that I could run it with 29er MTB wheels. May try that over the summer.