The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Blog

  • What Michael Steel Won’t Let Me Post

    OK, that’s melodramatic.  All that’s occurred so far is that their mediocre site has choked several times since I’ve tried to post a comment in response to a blog post there.  The post blames President Obama for the jobs lost in the past 11 months and worries what it would mean if he does a “hard pivot” towards jobs creation in January.

    Now, it might just be that the GOP site is poorly designed (other evidence suggests this) or that they’re just slow.  And it might be that they don’t like hearing feedback from people who haven’t drunk their Kool-Aid.  In any event, after my third attempt to post, I decided to cut-and-paste my comment and post it here.  Ah, the joys of the vanity electronic press!

    I totally agree.  After all, it’s simply irrelevant that the economy inherited by the President was bleeding jobs at a rate unseen in 70 years, after his predecessor managed to follow a decade of strong growth with a decade of retrenchment, turning surpluses into deficits while squeezing the middle class and giving away trillions to the uber-rich.  And it doesn’t really matter that many private forecasters believe that the economy would be in far more dire straits absent the stimulus (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/11/charts_and_graphs_that_will_fi_2.html), including shedding perhaps an additional 2% of jobs if the money -hadn’t- beeen spent.

    What really counts is ideological purity, not pesky things like facts or reality.  After all, if you stay pegged to reality, you might -never- get the chance to turn a national tragedy into carte blanche to launch your own war of choice against a nation completely unaffiliated with the attackers, while ignoring the fact that 15 out of 19 of them came from the Middle Eastern country that you and your daddy were so close to.  And what would even -be- the point of being in power if you can’t shred two hundred years of judicial philosophy to pursue your own mean ends?

  • Me-tooing a clever description

    One of the unsung heros of the health care debate is the Congressional Budget Office, an agency that few really understand and fewer appreciate.  Ezra Klein has a tidbit on them, including a description so pithy I can’t help but steal it:

    If the role of the Federal Reserve is to take away the punchbowl just as the party is getting started, the role of the Congressional Budget Office is to walk around the party telling everyone exactly how drunk they’re getting and reminding them that there will be consequences for their actions tomorrow.

    I join with Mr. Klein in wishing all the hardworking government types a happy holiday.

  • Week 51 in the Program

    Well, I’m closing in on one year in the HMR program and, looking back, I feel pretty satisfied.  I hit my nominal target (weight loss of 150 lbs) a couple of weeks back and have managed to keep going a bit, so it wasn’t a fluke.  My blood pressure today was 110 over 80, which is much better than when I started (when it was something like 180 over 130).

    The next step is the transition into maintenance but I’m holding off on that until after the holidays.  It’s going to be hard enough without adding in all the irregularity of the next six weeks.

    Since August I’ve been tracking my weight twice a day, when I get up and just before I got to sleep.  The first thing that struck me is how irregular this is.  Although the morning weight has been mostly consistent, the nightly weight has bounced around.  The second thing is, it’s been a good review of linear regression.  I can use the daily tracking to predict the weight I get at HMR, to a pretty good extent.  This means I can keep track and, after a day when I might tick upward, be sure to even out.

    Weight 2009_1124

    projection 2009_1124

  • Security v. Security Theater

    Not surprisingly, Bruce Schneier has an excellent piece talking about the psychological dimensions of terrorism and what a strong, stable industrial democracy can do in the face of amorphous threats… without sacrificing its principles, its freedoms, or its citizens.

    If you live in an advanced country, you should probably read this — before the next attack and the urge for primal reactions.

  • Week 48 in the Program

    Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve written an update, for absolutely no good reason. Things continue to go really well and I’m very happy with my progress. I weigh at 225.6 lbs. now, which is not only 147.4 lbs below my start weight — it’s lower than I’ve been since, most likely, high school! My blood pressure today was 108 over 70, which is fantastic and really in the end justifies the work.
    Because we’re closing in on when I should switch to the maintenance part of the program, they remeasured my body stats.

    2008 Nov 20 2009 Nov 3
    Weight 373.0 225.6
    Chest 57 44
    Waist 61 45
    Hips 59 45
    Biceps 13 11
    Thigh 24 19.5

    And some pretty graphs to go along with it:
    Overall weightDaily Projection

  • Some PSAs on the Health Care Debate

    And, who’s looking out for the Insurance Companies?

  • Health Care Debate Quote of the Day

    Ezra Klein writes what is fast becoming my favorite go-to blog regarding the health care debate (and politics at large), and he had a truly fantastic quote about the recent Michael Steele discovery of Medicare:

    “Still, what we’re seeing here is the GOP swearing that they will protect, defend and preserve a single-payer health-care system. And this comes after months spent fighting a “government takeover” of health care. If you could hook that kind of cognitive dissonance up to a turbine, we wouldn’t need cap-and-trade.” {bold added}

    If you haven’t read Klein’s blog, give it a whirl — it’s pretty insightful with just the right dash of snark.

  • Knowing is Half the Battle

    I was cruising TechDirt and saw a neat post on “Is The Federal Government The Most Interesting Tech Startup For 2009?”  The idea is that the recent data.gov initiative has led to an outpouring of with-it and effective apps allowing anyone to get a handle on the vast trove of information compiled by the federal government.  If you haven’t checked out data.gov, give it a whirl — it’s pretty astounding.  After a week of hearing about ludicrous claims of “death panels” and “keeping government’s hands off my (government-run) Medicare”, it was nice to be reminded that good people working hard can produce tremendous work — that government can serve a positive purpose and isn’t intrinsically evil, corrupt, or incompetent.

    Some of the nifty apps I saw (via the techdirt link) were

    This isn’t quite the level of Star Trek (“Computer, rearrange known data into a new theory of physics”) but it’s a step in the right direction.  🙂  And if the survival of democracy requires the active participation of an educated and engaged citizenry, then cataloging what is actually known can help secure the health of our republic.  For all the noise and thunder of the 24-hour news cycle, this is where the action really is.

  • Week 34 in the Program

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    259.8 | ? | -113.2

    OK, I should have posted this nearly a week ago.  But it’s been a whirlwind and I just couldn’t get to it.  Surprisingly still on track, despite my trip to California.  I had thought I’d gain some, since my exercise was irregular and my attention to the plan spotty at best.  But in fact I continued a weight loss, albeit a small one.  We’ll see if the weeklong roadtrip to DE and MD had any different effect…
    Weight 2009_0804

  • Week 32 in the Program

    Weight this week | Change since last week | Total change
    260.8 | -4.0 | -112.2

    I’m maintaining my 2 lb/wk rate, more or less, though it’s been a little erratic — for example, almost no loss last week, four pounds this one. That’s odd. The next month will be a challenge because I’ll be doing a lot of traveling and I won’t actually get to class more than once or twice. I’m relatively confident I can keep on the straight-and-narrow but we’ll see.
    Weight 2009_0723