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.

Boomers

• “The boomers and far left have not yet accepted that they are the farthest thing from the counter-cultural free-thinkers they believe they are. They are and have been ‘the establishment’ for quite a while. When you own all media, when you are rich enough to own most of the coastline, when you control the narrative and you own all three parts of the government, you’re as ‘establishment’ as it gets.” — Condi Rice appointee kept Twitter going…
• “There are times when I am utterly embarrassed by the sheer fatuousness of my demographic cohort…” — From the Jumbo Shrimp Lab

Yippy little dogs

They’re more useful than you think.

Proving the value of Taco Bell, three chihuahuas corner a mountain lion.

News from Iran

“The BBC’s Jon Leyne, in Tehran, says he understands plain-clothed militias have been authorised to use live ammunition for the first time.” — Iran protesters defy rally ban

CNN’s coverage has been lacking (says the New York Times…) Better are Michael J. Totten’s posts (updated link, 16 June)

Affirmative action for lies

Political correctness must die. It’s striking how resistant PC is to humor, lumbering along unaffected by years of derision. I first heard “politically correct” around 1980:

Some Guy: “But isn’t true that blah blah blah?”

Attractive Marxist Girl: “While true, that’s not politically correct.”

When people started mocking it in the late eighties I thought it would die soon – people would be embarrassed to say things so lame, ridiculous, and patently false. Yet PCU came out in 1994, George Bush pronounced Islam a religion of peace after 9/11, Barack Obama was elected president, and PC still lumbers along like some kind of aged Hollywood zombie.

Lots of people lie. Salesmen, lawyers, and politicians build their careers on their skill in mendacity. But they hope their lies will be believed. Why tell a lie that everyone knows is a lie?

Coincidence?

Christians protest ‘Dante’s Inferno’ while giant luminous squids over-fly Paris! President Obama to save or create 600,000 jobs!

“A New Citizenship”

Michael Sandel speaks on on market triumphalism. His criticisms are solid, especially the marketization of things not traditionally bought and sold. But he says “should” and “ought-to” and “better”, a lot. That’s fine, but I’d like to know what basis he’s using. I’ll have to tune to his next 2009 Reith Lecture.