Hating drywall

Doc wonders if my hatred of drywall is abstract or metaphysical. I hate drywall because it’s miserable contrary stuff. The drywall how-to books feature a man and wife. He’s smiling as he holds a panel up against the ceiling with a T-brace made of a couple of two-by-fours. She’s smiling as she nails it up. That picture is a vicious lie. Here’s the truth.

First, it’s taken all morning to get one whole four-by-eight panel upstairs. A pair of panels taped together was too heavy, and now the corners are crushed. Having taken apart a pair outside, the single panel broke as they tried to bend it through the entry-way. Having taken the door off it’s hinges, one panel just clears.

The next check is the dining room. The table and chairs have to go. The chairs go outside, the leaf goes in the closet. The table has to be lifted, turned ninety degrees vertical, and walked through the doorway. Wait, the legs are hung up. Huh. Well, put the leaf back in. Okay. Wait, the drywall’s in the way. Can’t put it there; that’s where the table has to go. They’ll have to take the panel back outside. Go around through the front door.

They try again, the dining table now on it’s side in the living room. The next check is the bottom of the stairwell. Either the banister comes out, or they cut the drywall into two-foot squares. Get the saw; they’ll put up a temporary banister after they’re done. (Twenty years later the temporary banister will still be there. After ten years they’ll give up and paint it white.)

So, rather than bring up and hang the sheets one at a time, they’ll have to haul up the whole stack. Finally, lift one up to the ceiling. Okay, hold this end and prop the brace under… Um, they need a bigger brace. He nails together another one.

“Maybe if we grind it to a paste and trowel it on…”

Eventually the truth comes out: They’ll have to hire Superman and his two brothers, or build some kind of wooden scaffolding under each sheet, levering it up with shims and jacks. Fortunately, before he actually re-invents one, he hears someone at McDonald’s say “drywall jack.” So they rent one of these from the hardware store. It’s heavy and awkward as they wrestle it up, then back down the stairs. The stack of drywall was in the way – the stack they had to bring in all at once instead of one sheet at a time.

Another eighteen trips up and down stairs positions the jack and drywall. After he runs back out to the hardware store to rent a drywall screw-gun, the jack works great – on the first two panels. Then the ceiling gets too high, because of the slope, but they set the jack up on cinder blocks. For the last two, the way the ceiling angles back makes it impossible to get the jack underneath. Going through the attic lets him nail up temporary metal clips to hold one side. Lift and slide it, up and in; brace the other end with the pair of T-braces (Remember those? Later they’ll make these into the “temporary” banister; waste not, want not.) Push in shims under both ends to hold it up tight… Wait. The corner isn’t square. Take it all down, cut it to fit, put it back up. They’ll cover that side with molding. Back to the attic to remove the temporary clips.

There’s the ceiling done; now the walls. In an old house, nothing is level, square, or straight. Even if the new construction was perfect, the carpenter still had to attach it to the existing house. They have to cut and fit every piece of drywall on all four sides. Hanging drywall in the new bedroom wasn’t a weekend project; it was a second job. But at least they got to do it together, right Dear?

Then there’s the taping and mudding.

And that’s how it works. Now we learn contractors borrowed more than they could afford to build houses nobody wants, and the bank secured the loan with houses built of material that was smelly and radioactive. It’s really no surprise. That’s just what drywall would be if it possibly could.

What’s the alternative? An “expensive wood interior?” That would be nice, I guess, but if it were just me I’d staple Visqueen to the studs and be done.

Two short observations

• So You Want to Buy an American Car? Well, buying American is complicated. Here’s my proposed rule: Any sufficiently complex product is made everywhere.
• Changing the summit of math education? It’s a good idea. Instead of trying to teach everyone calculus, let’s try to teach everyone statistics. The traditional math sequence has come to be more about filtering than teaching. It’s a good system for identifying and training engineers, not so good at producing educated citizens.

Paranoia is justified, again

Assembling bits of public and private information, social security numbers can be guessed. A habit of reticence and the occasional ruse de guerre will help preserve your privacy.

More coffee

Coffee “may reverse Alzheimer’s”? Then maybe apple pie prevents heart disease, and ice cream reduces the incidence of strokes. It’d be nice, but it seems like the kind of thing someone would have noticed before now. Anyway, more study is needed, and that’s fine with me.

If it turns out to be true (or if it doesn’t) maybe President Obama will send us some stimulus coupons. It wouldn’t bust the budget – the Treasury would just print up the coupons, and the coffee shops would honor them. It wouldn’t cost the coffee shops anything – they would just pass on the cost to their customers. And it wouldn’t cost the customers, because they’ll just pass on the incremental cost by charging more for their labor. It’s free; it reduces medical costs; it makes everybody richer; and at least a cup of coffee would actually be stimulative.

Drywall

Hate it…

But truly, I’ve hated drywall for years, even American drywall made from organic gypsum and the finest virgin paper. Mostly I just wanted to type “Radioactive Chinese Drywall“.

Hot or iced mocha beverages

Presumably these contain coffee

Usually I order “small coffee black.” The other day at the bookstore I had a mocha, with whipped cream on top, and a little stick of dark chocolate. When I have a coupon, the sky’s the limit. McDonald’s coffee isn’t my favorite, but it’s okay, and I’ll often stop there if I’m traveling. I haven’t tried any of their McCafe offerings, but in an article about McDonald’s coffee supplier this caught my attention: “An espresso marketing push beginning July 13 features free hot or iced mocha beverages each Monday for a month.” I’ll stop in since it’s free, but the bookstore is (usually) quiet, with comfy chairs.

Reading, science, math, politics

• Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2009 Results are out.
• Scientists see no dietary benefit to replacing corn syrup with sugar, but I still think it’s creepy how it’s in everything. At least I know what sugar is. Besides, it would just be wrong spread lardand high-fructose corn syrup on your sody crackers.
• Like he says, Wolfram|Alpha is creeping into my workday. Lately I’ve used it at about once every day. It does more than you might think.
• Epic fail, then onward to health care and climate change!

Maps

“Most great stories of adventure, from The Hobbit to Seven Pillars of Wisdom, come furnished with a map. That’s because every story of adventure is in part the story of a landscape, of the interrelationship between human beings (or Hobbits, as the case may be) and topography. Every adventure story is conceivable only with reference to the particular set of geographical features that in each case sets the course, literally, of the tale. But I think there is another, deeper reason for the reliable presence of maps in the pages, or on the endpapers, of an adventure story, whether that story is imaginatively or factually true. … People read stories of adventure – and write them – because they have themselves been adventurers. Childhood is, or has been, or ought to be, the great original adventure, a tale of privation, courage, constant vigilance, danger, and sometimes calamity.” — Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood, by Michael Chabon

Six Minutes a Week?

Don’t take health advice from random guys on the internet.

From Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?, with [editorial comment]:

A few years ago, researchers [somewhere] put rats through a series of swim tests with surprising results. [Turns out wind sprints are brutal. Who knew?] The potency of interval training is nothing new. [Ah. Apparently everyone knew.] Many athletes have been straining through interval sessions once or twice a week along with their regular workout for years. [Indeed. Hang on to that grant writer.] Could it be that most of us are spending more time than we need to trying to get fit? [Yes and no. A man who likes to run will come up with a fitness program that requires 30 miles a week. Another who likes to lift weights will be in the gym 90 minutes a day. A third, who doesn't really like to exercise, probably won't.]

“There was a time when the scientific literature suggested that the only way to achieve endurance was through endurance-type activities,” such as long runs or bike rides or, perhaps, six-hour swims, [says some guy. Hey, New York Times, it's html! Instead of distracting me with an in-line biography, use a link.] But ongoing research [...somewhere. Again, a link, or maybe a footnote] is turning that idea on its head. [Why did those old studies give a misleading answer? Do these new studies have the same problem?]

In other words, six minutes or so a week of hard exercise (plus the time spent warming up, cooling down, [vomiting,] and resting between the bouts of intense work) had proven to be as good as multiple hours of working out for achieving fitness. The short, intense workouts aided in weight loss, too. [Maybe it's the vomiting.]

There’s a catch, though. Those six minutes, if they’re to be effective, must hurt. [Really. We aren't kidding. Bob thought he was going to die.]

Could a single, two- to three-minute bout of intense exercise confer the same endurance and health benefits as those six minutes of multiple intervals? [Maybe. Squat down, grip the bar, and we'll find out.]

“I’m 41, with two young children,” [Then you should be getting plenty of exercise.] “I don’t have time to go out and exercise for hours.” [Everyone's busy (well, 90% of us) Everyone gets 24 hours a day. Time spent exercising is time not spent doing something else. Suck it up.]

Seriously, you have to be in good health, start slow, learn proper technique, and build a base before you go sprinting up hill, or doing heavy deadlifts. Sudden hard interval training is like going out to shovel snow. You’ll be lucky if you just hurt your back. Andrew Heffernan, who (unlike me) really knows something about fitness, discusses this with less snark and more thought in Health News: Interval Training, Plus The Benefits of Fat

The morals that they worship

The present Muslim theocracy in Iran is as barbaric and repressive as the previous Shah’s government. Most of the middle east is governed by fanatical, thuggish kleptocracies. (There are notable exceptions, not that I expect CNN to take note…) Won’t the next government of Iran be like the present government, and like most middle-eastern governments?

In 1979 liberal westerners looked at the Ayatollah’s revolution, and said things that soon became ridiculous, in a grim and un-funny way. Once the Shah was gone things would be fine. The mullahs weren’t going to run things. “Islamic government” was just code for “good government.” There would an end to corruption; democracy would flourish; everyone would enjoy equal rights, and the workers would control the means of production. “Rather than looking at Iran and describing the ugliness they saw, prominent intellectuals instead looked in the mirror, reported the beauty they saw there, and called it Iran. Their blindness offers a cautionary lesson for today.” — The Fire Last Time: Those looking hopefully to the Iran uprising should remember the harsh lessons of 1979.