なぜベストを尽くさないのか？

Must.Read. Nothing further to say.

So go figure, like a week after my moaning, I found exactly the bike I wanted on craigslist for a very reasonable price. I did the math on the components on the bike if I bought it new and it totaled to almost 4 grand. Took it out for a ride a couple of times this week. Will take some getting used to. It's not as smooth shifting as my old gary fisher I find, but that bike had the top of the line derailluer in the back and slightly better shifters. It's also a bit more heavy and it doesn't climb as well, but not really bad, I can do the same ride on the same gears as before, just have to work a bit harder. Kinda feels a bit slower overall than my older bike, but I don't think it actually is. Mostly it's the pedals and getting used to the riding style of a full suspension. But man going down, the bike begs you to leaaaaaan into turns like it's a motorcycle. The other thing I always find I ride faster and have more fun with other people and I haven't had anyone to ride with. Anyway.

I read this story and I can't stop laughing. It's just awesome how coddling the UK welfare state has gotten where prison is better for criminals than the outside.

Finished Michael Crichton's Next. Like I said earlier, it's worth reading if you're sort of interested in genetic engineering (and stem cells) as it applies to animal research, it's worth reading. The science is really well researched, and he makes plausible scientific jumps. However, the plot is dismal and really the book is more of a vehicle for him to make his views on the subject known. It is a bit heavy handed, but not unfair, and it's extremely funny and reads well. He makes it known exactly how he feels with an essay at the end, which is very interesting and thought provoking.

Also finished Crichton's Prey. Reminded me a lot of a revised modern version of The Andromeda Strain in a lot of ways. Not great, not bad, better than say Congo, or Disclosure, or Rising Sun. It's about manmade nano-machines that evolve the ability to function as swarms, without giving away too much.

Started (and almost finished) Crichton's State of Fear. Wow. This book rocks. Easily amongst his best. Extremely well researched, about a controversial topic, and well referenced, too. If you step back, the plot is unbelievable, but it's managed to draw me in so that I don't even notice that. A lot of the book is written to an audience which believes in Global Warming (the main character for instance starts as of The Faith). Yea, the characters who doubt it and are the side of "science," seem omniscient in their knowledge, and the proponents unscrupulous, dishonest, stupid, and/or criminal. But I honestly can't see how anyone can believe the hogwash of manmade global warming after reading this book.

Finally, Jamba Juice was giving out mango yogurt parfaits at the train station this morning. It was pretty good. Tastes like Jamba Juice with granola, heh. Oh the calories. Can't wait to bike them off :D

Nothing really to say, just to add to the previous post, read this column by George Will. Man when he's good, he's good.

Well I guess my prediction about the Shark's going down in 5 was wrong, but I could still be right about them going out in 6.

Further frustration: why is it so damn hard to find a decent used bike? I feel like I've been looking forever T_T.

By know I'm sure everyone has heard of Obama's ridiculous comments made in front of San Francisco elites. On his stop through the bay area, he was rubbing elbows with the richest of the rich on Billionaire's Row in pac-heights. In case you've been living under a rock, he said:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Yet again, this is an attitude I can't stand. Putting aside for the moment the sheer arrogance of his disdain for pursuing God and Guns (Amendments 1 and 2 of our country's most important document), it's the mindset that somehow government has failed people that infuriates me. To me, it's a sign of a successful government when the people represented by the government become accustomed to NOT RELY on it for their livelihood, or for finding meaning in their lives. It also infuriates me because I know a lot of liberals don't see anything fundamentally wrong with what Obama said. In fact they wish and hope the government does intervene and become the purveyor of all things.

I have to admit, I probably lead a charmed life compared to someone in a struggling small town, but just because the government hasn't guaranteed security for my future, doesn't mean I'm angry and turn to hunting, or god, or hating immigrants, or protectionism. I think people hunt or become gun enthusiasts for the same reason I mountain bike. It's an enjoyable outdoor activity that requires skill, patience, and practice. People turn to God to find meaning in their lives, to find their purpose, to belong to a community, just to name a few things. Hell it's probably hard-wired into us as a survival mechanism. Religion gives people hope; this interferes with Obama's audacity of hype as the sole proprietor of Hope. God giving people hope and a sense of purpose and belonging = bad. Obama/Obama Administration giving these things = good. Inherent in his comments are that he can somehow automagically heal and hope and replace God himself, if only he is elected. I guess that makes sense, as liberalism seeks to replace God with government.

The more I know about Obama, the more I can't stand him. He's either being vapid with "yes we can" and "we are the ones we have been waiting for" (what the f*** does that mean anyway?) or he's trashing average Americans. He's an empty suit slime ball and I hope my friends who have been hoodwinked by him will wake up to it.

Hockey Talk:

Last week I had predicted the Sharks would go down in 6 to the Flames as soon as we knew who we were playing in the first round. Yesterday I told Dave and Kelly that I changed my mind, and think we'll go down in 5 a little after the game started, and low and behold, we got whooped last night. I also said if we some how manage to squeak out a series victory against Calgary, we're going to the Stanely Cup finals. And I further took the pledge I'd buy an authentic Jonathan Cheechoo jersey if we do. Not only is Cheechoo one of my favorite players, he also happens to share my same exact birth date. On nhl.com, the authentic jersey without Cheechoo's numbering and name is $250, the premier replica is $150. Ouch. Which of course means that if we do go to the Cup finals, Cheechoo will be traded the very next season. And I'll have essentially wasted anywhere from $150-350 dollars. Dave tried to get me to commit to a one-ups-man-ship, that if we win the cup, I have to buy an Alexei Semenov jersey, who we universally revile as the worst defenseman on the Sharks. I'm not going to be Dave-pressured into accepting that bad deal.

Predictions for conference finals and beyond:
Detroit v Dallas in the west, Detroit wins. In the east: unfortunately, it seems like the Pens will have to play the Caps in the 2nd round, or that would have been an awesome series, so I'll have to go with Pittsburgh vs New Jersey, Pittsburgh wins the conference, wins the cup. Although as Kelly says, Ovechkin is a stud. Who knows. I don't pay attention to the east, so I can't even make an educated guess. That's why the playoffs are fun anyway.

Finally just to prove Dave wrong that I'm always negative, while simultaneously jinxing us, if Nabby goes on fire in the next 2 or 3 games, we win the cup.

Other stuff:
I started reading Michael Crichton's Next. It's been a loong time since I've read any pop fiction, probably since I read all those Dan Brown books a couple of years ago. Crichton was my only other multi-book dabble into the genre, way back in high school. I liked the first Jurassic Park, Sphere, and a couple of his other books, but I sort of grew out of it. Anyway I've been told his last couple of books, while not received all that well publicly, were actually quite good. After 100 pages of Next, I can say that while the plot and characters are maddening to keep track of, he's done an excellent job at tackling and presenting the topics and issues related with modern genetics experimentation. He has succeeded (so far) in making it simultaneously scientifically believable and easy to understand for the lay-person. Among other things, he's done a particularly good job of presenting the issues with who owns your tissues and genes, and what the deal with stem cells are; Chapter 7 in particular, which is presented as a short article, should be a must read by anyone fascinated by the stem cell debate. So far, it seems like he thought out the science and researched that part of it well, but I don't know if the same can be said about the plot. I'll continue to comment as I read the book.


I've been looking for a new mountain bike. I can't afford a new one it seems, or at least a new one of the model I want, the Santa Cruz Blur XC. I mean other than the new price of $2400 (at least) + tax price, the frame is made in taiwan now. As is apparently every new bike these days under 3 grand. Jeez. But I did a parking lot ride of it the other day, and it was enough to tell me I'm in love with this bike. It's fantastic. The models prior to 2007 where made in the USA. But I've had 0 success finding a used one, or any decent used bike on craigslist for that matter of fact. All the ones listed are either 1. over priced or 2. not my size. I jokingly said to Carl and Phill that I should go to China and get my legs broken to add 3 inches to my height, so I can ride an extra-large (as well as gaining the added benefit of attracting women ;) ).

I'm open to looking at other models and other bikes, but there really doesn't seem to be a bike with all my desired features at my price point. Maybe I'm unreasonable for wanting a full-suspension made in the usa frame, mid-high range Shimano parts, and a Fox suspension with disc brakes for $1500. I came up with that number after figuring the frame is 600, the fork 400, the other components 500, but I guess I should be doubling most of those numbers or something. Maybe one of you out there knows some people who work at apple or google who want to dump their Santa Cruz (or similar full suspension bike) cheaply, so they can buy a new one? Sigh. Didn't think so.

Finally, I leave you with the sad future of our kids, too unaware or may be even too stupid to bother to educate themselves about a mass murderer, before glory-worshiping him. I took it this morning getting on the train:




Man. I was going to blur the person's visage, but look at that expression. He could be an emo singer, or at the very least, a great liberal arts major in Peace and Conflict studies.

UPDATE:

What would a post be without my random political rants. FYI, I cannot stand Barack Obama. He's such a phony and a tool. The emptiest of empty suits. An absolutely useless man. I understand people supporting Hillary Clinton. But I have a hard time understanding people who support Barack. His policies do not differ one damn bit from Hillary. I remain absolutely convinced most people back him either out of hatred for Hillary or because of cheap identity politics, something which I've been able to confirm anecdotally. I could write ten pages on why Barack sucks, but then I'd lose my Absolute Moral Authority as a person of color and then be called an Uncle Tom or worse. It doesn't matter, I don't think I can convince anyone who supports him not to, so it's pointless to waste too many more words on it.

But I have to say that I absolutely cannot stand his wife. She says stuff like this:

"The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."

I cannot control my anger of this kind of idiotic reasoning. Who the f* do you think you are to tell me who gets what and who deserves what size of pie. The rest of us are out there busting our asses making MORE BIGGER PIES. THIS IS NOT ZIMBABWE. WHY DOES ANYONE HAVE TO GET LESS PIE. THIS IS AMERICA, WE ARE THE LAND OF LARDY FAT ENDLESS APPLE PIES. WHEN WE RUN OUT OF PIE WE BAKE MORE PIE. $0.99 MCDONALD'S APPLE PIES. 6 TRILLION SERVED. SO.HANDS.OFF.MY.SLICE.OF.F*ING.PIE.

Ok, got the all caps out of my system.

I thought I'd do kind of an eclectic stream of conscious type post today, so it might be a bit meandering and hard to follow.

Actually there's not a lot to catch up on. I've been waking up at 6 since before the time change, I started running/biking/hiking again a couple of weeks ago when the rain stopped. I'm almost officially back in shape. I clocked 23.7 minutes (per the ipod) for 2.99 miles (per yahoo maps) today, so I guess I'm back to running 3 8s outdoors. Although last year on the treadmill I think I could do 3 7:20s? I'd really like to be able to run at least a single sub 6 mile like in high school. Or maybe more than 3 miles. Nah.

Driving home from work, a dog ran into the street like 3 houses from mine and I almost killed it. I managed to slam on the brakes, horn, and luckily not get rear-ended by some asian mom in a mini-van or fine german automobile or hybrid (the only cars allowed to be driven in my neighborhood). The dog took off running faster than I've ever seen a dog move. I swear it was peeing as it ran. Later, after I finished my run and was doing pull-ups at the park, I saw a Chinese mom pushing her two kids on the swings. With her Gucci purse. In the tandbark. WTF. Why, asian moms, why? I don't know what's sadder, the fact that I could identify it was Gucci, or that she was in a park playing with her kids sporting it loud and proud.

I also went on a facebook photo binge today and uploaded a bunch of old photos I had in iPhoto. Got most everything except my most recent trip to India, which I've probably shared with anyone who cares, and my two trips to Japan. I mostly left those out b/c FB has a 60 picture limit per album, and I have way more pics than that per trip. My biggest complaint about the FB picture albums are that they store the pictures too freaking tiny. Anyway if I tagged you in a photo and you want it removed, send me an email or call me or whatever. I made most of the ones with people who are anti-social, private to friends only. Bought a new camera as well. Canon 850IS. I kinda like my old Canon S410 that I gave to my aunt in India better, even if it only had half the mega pixels and none of the fancy optics.

Sometime last month I also spent way too much money on importing the new Garnet Crow CD, Locks. I love them, but it's not for everyone. Anyway, I consider the lead-off track so awesome, it was almost worth the $28 bucks just for that song. Of course the album art is nice and the no piracy, support the artists you like aspect always appeals to me as well.　　I'll post some translations later as I get them done.

I did go on a translation binge earlier in March. Almost finished an entire volume of Adachi Mitsuru's Short Program (volume 3, 300 damn pages, to be precise). Kinda hit or miss, I think I prefer his longer stories, some of the one shot shorts were very depressing. But Idol A was a nice 3 chapter story that's very much like his other stuff.

Speaking of manga, I'm all caught up on Nodame Cantabile. The last chapter published (122) was so damn frustrating. It was like 2/3s pictures and no text. And the next chapter isn't till MAY. MAY! Arg. At least One Piece is picking up pace. Although this current arc is just silly.

To cap it off, TV has started again, and I'm slowly being sucked back in. Arg. I liked having the free time of not having TV shows to watch every week. Well time-shifting helps, but still. I have a huge backlog even with the strike that I meant to watch, well, during the strike. So much to watch, so little time, yet at the same time, when I'm bored, watching TV doesn't appeal to me. Go Figure. Holy Crap it's past 1. Time to sleep.

Sorry for the delay. I agonized about how to respond to Toland without basically making a personal attack by calling him a hypocrite willing to sacrifice principle over expediency. And that's not fair, and I don't think believe that's the case. Still I think this came out that way, and I don't mean it to be, so I apologize if it reads as such.

THe analogy about leaks is a practical one about balancing economics and dealing with problems based on severity. I guess I don't think severity matters, and I'll try to explain why.

One of Toland's proposed solutions is to just avoid the problem. Which is why I feel the leaky facet analogy fails: If you didn't cause a facet everyone uses to leak, you can avoid fixing it. But what if you believe you did cause it, even if it were a small leak? Sure you can pretend to work around it , but what if you keep using that facet just a little bit because you just can't give it up. What if there are 6 billion other such users, such that the tiny leak becomes the Niagara Falls? Do you want everyone but you to stop using the facet, even though you helped break it? What if there is only one facet? Who will be the first one to kick the facet habit?

Anyway, we know we can't do anything about it, not seriously.

With the UN IPCC reports basically saying no matter what we do, we can't actually retard gw by any measure worth a damn, why bother trying right now, when we can be practical about it and deal with it later? The point of people like algore is that there won't be a later and you should be active, if only out of principle... Which is where my tongue-in-check give-up-meat challenge came from.

If it were about practicality, we wouldn't be haranguing about offsetting CO2 emissions, driving hybrids, or CFLs, or carbon taxes. These things will do nothing other than assuage your conscience for being part of the problem.

To me, this makes believing in global warming a linked philosophical choice question: do you believe it is it necessarily bad, and that man is responsible? These are "yes" or "no" questions, not "maybe, but." If you answered affirmative to either, then your only recourse is to do everything you can in your personal sphere of influence to stop it. Because by principle, humanity, which you are a part of, is doing something bad and unless you are completely untrue to yourself or rotten to the core, you want to right that wrong.

I guess that what I have a hard time grasping, is that some people see shades of gray in what is to me a black and white question of principle, not practicality. And when I believe something out of principle, short of someone putting a gun to my head, I will try not to break that principle. Now, I know I'm not perfect, but I do my best to stick to my guns as it were. They are my principles however and I won't try to enforce them on other people, except by making fun of them and calling them GW Collaborators or communists or whatever other pigeonhole I want to satirically file them in..

To summarize:

The issue of politicized global warming is that if you buy the algore level of hype, it's not that the facet is leaking, it's that all the pipes are burst, the foundation is soaked and we're living on borrowed time before the house collapses. BUT WAIT, we can't fix it, but we'll knee cap ourselves trying. My challenge about giving up eating meat is more a challenge of principle over making a difference. Essentially I'm asking for a commitment like this:

"Even though I know it makes no difference, the principle of fighting global warming is important enough to me that I will stick to my principles to fight it, even if that makes me radically change my lifestyle."

Except very few people who profess to the "progressive" ideals will make such a pledge. They'd rather just tax everyone with carbon taxes or paying someone else to pollute less. It is hypocrisy at the highest level, and that, more than anything other than the shoddy science, infuriates me about people who shill for global warming.