Congratulations!

At 11 this morning a friend of mine officially became a homeowner for the first time. Congrats, kudos, Bravo Zulu, etc, etc. Also woo hoo!

He took the day off of work to start prepping the new place for the move in. Since it takes a while to get a house up to livability I suggested using a 1980's montage song to speed up the process. There are so many great ones to choose from.

I was going to go with John Cafferty's “Hearts on Fire” but I didn't want him to get the idea that he should beat up his new house out of vengeance. He doesn't need to “Push It To the Limit” as he rises to power in the local Home Owner's Association. And he probably isn't going to need to build-the-laser/study-for-exams, ski the K-12, win the regatta, or stand up to the Cobra-Kai.

No... the only song that will do at all when you need to clean/restore a house is Bone Symphony's “One Foot in Front of the Other”.

Nice. The perfect thing to help calm you down after agreeing to owe someone sufficient money to have you whacked, like, 50 times... easily. It is also somehow creepy to sign a piece of paper with the actual year 2039 on it. I mean, 2039, for crying out loud! Two-zero-three-nine. Think about it!

For some perspective, here are some things that are scheduled to happen over the next three decades. All references from Wikipedia. Me so lazy :).

• 2010 – International Space Station completed.
• 2011 – Tesla Model S electric sedan comes out
• 2012 – Mayan calendar runs out – world ends (*sigh* Again.)
• 2015 – New Horizons spacecraft reaches Pluto
• 2016 – ITER fusion reactor begins testing
• 2017 – China lands people on the moon/JFK documents are unsealed
• 2019 – Blade Runner dystopia takes place
• 2020 – the Aral Sea is completely gone
• 2021 – attack of the Brood X cicadas / Moore's Law limit reached
• 2022 – Soylent Green false Utopia takes place (Yum!)
• 2025 – Voyagers I and II shut down forever (aww...)
• 2026 – USA's 250th birthday
• 2029 – A T-800 and a T-1000 get sent back in time to protect/kill John Connor
• 2030 – JAXA begins lunar base construction
• 2032 – John Connor assassinated (I guess the T-1000 could have just hung out a while)
• 2033 – ESA lands humans on Mars
• 2035 – Artificial intelligence predicted to be created.
• 2038 – 32-bit clocks overflow (maybe this will shut down the AI...)
• 2039 – House finally paid off.
  

Congrats again, buddy!

C'mon... Are We All Doomed Or Not? (Update)

For those of you following the H1N1 pandemic news, here is some more information for you regarding the "crisis" (also see previous H1N1 post if you are interested).

My (admittedly very basic) analysis shows that the number of daily worldwide deaths due to swine flu has plateaued at 50 or so. As a matter of fact, the 7-day moving average may actually be trending downward, but that is not real clear yet. A huge majority (90%) of the world's population lives north of the equator and this might just be the calm before the flu-season storm. Who knows?

The US has 4.6% of the world population, but accounts for 14.7% of the reported H1N1 deaths. This is most likely due to better identification and reporting than due to population densities. Assuming things stay steady, this seems to imply about 2,700 Americans can expect to die from this each year for the next 3 years (the expected duration of the pandemic). This is about 20 times less than administration’s mid-range estimate, and will bump up the overall death rate in the US by 0.1%. The overall death rate from flu alone will increase by 4.8%.

Run-of-the-mill flu and pneumonia kills about 60,000 Americans every year.

As a comparison to the 2,700 estimate, 4,000 die per year in the USA in house fires and 600 die per year in lightning strikes. So my day-to-day concern is somewhere between those two things. Mind you, I am not a statistician or a medical doctor. I only can look at the information presented by official, unbiased sources and try and figure out how to interpret the numbers in a way that is meaningful to me.

Of course, if millions of people call in sick to work all at the same time our already wounded economy might be temporarily affected a tiny bit. But this might be offset by the huge amount of money being pumped into the works for vaccines, cold and flu remedies, face masks, advertising, etc, etc.

Maybe there is something to worry about, but maybe not. Any thoughts?

Site Update

Some site news:

The Poll has been updated. You can find it in the sidebar on the right.

I am currently 450 pages into the The Codebreakers. Absolutely fantastic so far! If you are a fan of history and have a little math in your background you will love this book.

Going back to the gym this past week has been great. My Wii tells me I am still a disgusting fatbody but also mentions that am headed in the right direction at a good pace. My current BMI has been posted in the sidebar on the right.

Puzzle News: No guesses so far, which is just fine since we still need a 501c charity for the Puzzle for Charity. Remember, the prize will remain at "Braggin' Rights" until a reader suggests a good 501c charity that will receive the Charity Pool money. At that point I will start bumping up the Prize Pool on a non-periodic basis based on donations and money I get from building and selling stuff on craigslist.

Speaking of building stuff, I troubleshot the table saw to the circuitry associated with the switch assembly. It will cost more money, time, and effort to fix it than the table saw is worth. This means the Current Project in the sidebar may be on hold for a long while. Bummer.

Pat. No. 2259691 : Automatic Grownup Sickener

I owe my brother a dollar.

You see, I bet him that the carnies at the local County Fair would have noticeably fewer teeth, on average, than the Niagara County Fair in New York. That wasn't the case at all, although it was a close-run thing. Oh, the arcade boardwalk attendants were creepy enough in their own way, I guess, but not nearly to the level I had hoped. And the ride operators seemed polite yet professionally aloof, not "obviously crazy" or "strung out on meth". Pretty disappointing if you ask me - the carny folk in my day were much more colorful.

After taking Ethan to ride the pony and see the clown and tour the 4H tents my wife convinced me to go on a ride called "The Sizzler".

According to Wikipedia, it goes by various names like Scrambler and Twist. What Wikipedia does not mention, however, is that if the time since you were last on one can be measured in decades (like me), you need to stay the hell away from it at all costs.

I won't bother describing the ride to you since you either 1) looked up the Wikipedia reference 2) already know what I am talking about or 3) don't care what I am talking about and went on to see if there are any hints yet regarding the Puzzle for Charity (sidebar on the right).

[For those who are interested Patent Number 2259691 is actually named "Merry-Go-Round". My only guess is that in 1941 they had a vastly different definition of the word "merry" than I understand it now. For the technically inclined, read the third paragraph of the patent for a good chuckle.]

My wife and I sit down and the carny comes over and recommends we switch places, which was cool of him because during a lot of this ride you are pulling over 2 gees and the person on the outside seat really takes the brunt of the forces. We switch and the ride starts up.

Lots of fun. For about 30 seconds.

At that point my wife starts laughing hysterically and treating everyone around us to a non-stop, heavily Doppler-shifted stream of swear words. I became nauseous and lost the ability to focus my eyes on objects outside the ride so I just focused instead on wishing I was dead.

Sometime between 1 minute and 6 hours later the ride gently glided to a halt. As I was nursing my ribs and trying to keep down my breakfast and small instestines my wife hops off and immediately demands money for a candy apple. I guess I should just be happy she didn't jump around and giggle "Again! Again!"

Hey, don't look at me like that. I distinctly remember enjoying this ride in the past, but I am not looking forward to the day that Ethan is tall enough to go on. Hopefully my brother can parlay the dollar I owe him into enough cash by then (stock market, lottery, whatever) so he can hire me a stunt double.

Wii Guilt

Lately (the past two months, say) I have been eating whatever I want in enormous quantities while sitting at a desk all day. Now, for some mysterious reason, my pants are a little tight.

I'm not sure why I am putting on weight, but it's probably genetic. Either that, or it is society's fault for making everything so darn delicious. Wait.. wait... if the lawmakers would get off their backsides and implement a mandatory 5-day waiting period for a can of Pringles I wouldn't be in this mess. That's who's to blame! The gub'ment!

Banning trans-fats is a good first step, but it doesn't go nearly far enough in protecting us from ourselves. Congress should mandate that waiters and waitresses describe appetizers in such colorful and artery-clogging terms that you actually experience chest pains half-way though their speech. If you proceed to place an order for unhealthy things anyway then the servers should at that time look you up and down in disgust and say “Are you sure?” If you still place your order they are allowed to hurl direct insults for the entire time you are there: “Are you enjoying devouring your grease-laden cheese blobs, there, fatty? Good. Should I hook you the defibrillator now or do you just want a feather and a bucket to puke into before your probable six or seven desserts, you disgusting, disgusting person?”

The servers might comment that this would result in a drop-off of tips but they should know that helping a fellow human being has rewards far beyond the measure of mere money. If the cash turns out to be important after all, maybe some Stimulus Money could be used to subsidize the restaurant industry to make up for the slight decrease in pay and huge increase in civil cases... call it Cash for Chunkers.

Speaking of which, I heard that Obama's Health Care Plan has free, quarterly, and (for some bio-diesel related reason), compulsory liposuction sessions so I am really looking forward to that. After voluntarily treating myself like a veal calf for so long I barely have the energy required to wake myself up after falling asleep mid-way through my fourth lunch-time Big Mac. Something had to be done and I am glad that someone in charge stood up to take care of me because, let's face it, I am in absolutely no condition to be standing up under my own power.

Okay, Okay... Fine. I'm going back to the gym starting tomorrow, but hear me out.

Actually I have a pretty decent reason for not going to the gym for so long. It's not a great excuse, but at least it's plausible. I needed to work late a lot over the last several months to cover some projects at the office. This pushed the time that I would have eventually gotten home after my workout to about 8 or 8:30 or so, which is near bath-time/bed-time for my one-year-old. I see little enough of my son as it is so that was not going to happen. He comes first.

Those of you that know me know that the above paragraph is 100% true while being only about 10% convincing. Friends and family should be muttering: First, even if you don't have time to go to the gym at night how do you justify your abrupt change in diet from mostly low-carb to almost entirely drive-thru? Second, couldn't you just get up a little earlier and go to the gym in the morning, or at least walk around the neighborhood? Third, you can tell when you have had enough pizza way, way before the shooting pains you get from distending your stomach force you to stop. Fourth, don't you own a Wii Fit?

Ah, yes, the Wii Fit. Bought in a moment of misguided ambition to augment my gym workouts and help me spend more time with the wife doing something competitive and healthy without having to worry about the baby. Unfortunately, even if you were the type to want to ignore your child completely, you cannot do anything remotely non-toddler-related other than sit very, very still while he is playing and hope he doesn't notice you blatantly not paying attention to him. If he does, he is coming over to see just what the hell could be more important that watching him put together and take apart the same two Duplo blocks 1,200 times in a row.

Jumping around on the Wii board is completely out of the question with him underfoot – he would never in a million years be content with merely watching when daddy is “dancing” or doing other crazy stuff. And we can't use it while he is napping because of the noise it would make.

Yes, this is, again, 100% true without being 100% straightforward. There are plenty of activities on the Wii Fit that aren't hazards to curious toddlers. There are even more that are nice and quiet, like the yoga and leg lifts. So what, really, is the real reason, really, for not using it, really?

It's that smug little Wii Fit icon. It's so damn cute that I initially found myself anthropomorphizing it and actually wanting to please it. I felt just crummy when I didn't. As a matter of fact I felt guilty as hell whenever I didn't meet its (admittedly perfectly reasonable) goals that I avoided using the Wii Fit for long stretches of time. That only made things worse because whenever the unit was fired up (like if I wanted to play Mario Carts or something) I could see a slow passive-aggressive scroll across the Wii Fit channel icon that said “Last Workout: over one week ago”.

So now I don't turn the Wii on at all now if I can help it. I just know that as soon as I log into Wii Fit it will ask me where I have been and ask me to weigh myself and inform me in that adorable little voice it has that I am overweight. And then I will feel sad and probably cry and eat Doritos. Man, I feel like I am in the lamest made-for-TV movie about abusive relationships ever.

But my son and wife deserve a father and husband that at least tries to look like he isn't constructed entirely out of Chicken McNuggets, so I am going to suck it up and get back in the game. Tonight I am getting on the damn board, checking my BMI, and posting it weekly in the sidebar of this blog. As time goes on I might put up little graphs to show how well or poorly I am doing. We'll see.

Like I said, I am going back to the gym as well. It's is something I really enjoy doing so hopefully nothing will get in the way of that. And who knows, maybe if I work hard enough the little Wii Fit icon will finally stop calling me fatso and love me again. Like in the old days...

Pallet End Table (Part III)

(Continued from Part II)

"Hey, weren't there two pallets at the beginning of this story?" you might be asking yourself in a bored and impatient voice.

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"Yes," I say, stunned that you are still paying attention. There are two of them, but the boards on the pallet I dismantled turned out to be at least one-quarter inch thicker than the untouched one. It is not feasible to use the slats from both of them for a single tabletop, so the project turns from a coffee table into an end table. That's cool. Maybe I'll use the other one for picture frames or something. Besides, I'm ready to move on to the next step.

The next step is to cut the boards to size. I have posted before about my 10" Craftsman table saw being the perfect combination of "indispensable" and "terrifyingly shoddily made" and that makes using it a chore to undertaken with an attitude of resigned acceptance. The "prostate exam" of woodworking tools, if you will.

I set up the sawblade to the correct height, placed the wood on the table and flipped the switch. Click. Nothing. Click click click. Still nothing. I then unplugged the saw and backed off because in my head I very clearly heard Yosemite Sam yelling at Bugs Bunny "No, ya dagburn idgit, like this!" as he demonstrates the correct way to get the rigged piano to explode.

I like having all my fingers. They each have their own little jobs: one for hitchin', one for pickin', one for flippin', one for gettin' hitched, and one for losin' if you dare to betray the Yakuza.

I don't know why the saw isn't working but I do know the outlet is live and the tool circuit breaker has not tripped. I'll figure it out, but for now I'll just take a little break since troubleshooting the thing will require me to dismantle some of it and I just don't feel like it right now. Hey, maybe the motor's burnt out and I can finally take the Amazing Lawsuit Machine to the dump.

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Maybe I'll do that anyway if I can convince Mrs. Snowurchin to free up some funding... But for now the project is on hold.

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(To be continued...)

Pallet End Table (Part II)

(Continued from Part I)

The first order of business was to attempt to detach the top and bottom boards from the center studs. Like I said, the boards were cracked and hundreds of nails that held the pieces firmly together. A short experiment with a pry bar showed that I was not going to recover the pieces intact if I tried to force them apart.

I sacrificed a little board length by removing the ends of the slats with a jigsaw but it did get rid of the problem of dealing with about two-thirds of the nails. The top and bottom boards were then only connected to the middle runner. Although there were a lot of them the nails eventually broke under repeated gentle twisting of the wood.

One pallet was now disassembled but most of the boards still obviously had chunks of nail in them that would have to be removed. I don't sweat the obvious ones... It's the hidden power-tool-destroying ones that concern me.

A while back a friend of mine bought me a Wizard III metal detecting wand for my shop. I don't know what he paid for it but this thing is very very sensitive and is worth its weight in golden planer blades. It can be a little tricky to set but once you get a method down it finds the little metal "surprises" buried deep in the wood really well.

My method for using this tool is to:

1. Get a nail
2. Lay it on a known metal-free surface
3. Tune the sensitivity of the metal detector to find it even when waving it very fast over the area
4. Slowly scan both sides of the board
5. And, then, (this is critical, now) try to find the test nail again. Call me paranoid, but the last thing you want is to bump the sensitivity knob or have the battery die while scanning a bunch of boards and not know it until your planer blades suddenly and noisily try to leap up through the tool housing.

After I found and removed the last of the nails I glued and clamped several of the boards that had cracked due to my manhandling of them. The glue dried for 24 hours and set up real nice.

Smoothing the wood was done with a 12" DeWalt "portable" planer. "Portable" is in quotes here because it is heavy as hell. I mean, technically, anything is portable if you have the lift capacity. But I'm nit-picking here. It is the highest quality tool I have in my arsenal, it has great documentation, and has so far worked flawlessly. I just wish it didn't terrify my one-year-old when I use it.

For some reason he gets visibly upset if he hears it running way out in the garage. Maybe it gives off some upper frequency harmonics that adults can't hear or something but whatever it is he is clearly bothered by it. We tried to alay his fear of it once by letting him watch daddy use it so he would see there was nothing to worry about. So it was me in the garage, he and the wife way out in the driveway where it wouldn't be too loud.

He wigged out as soon as I fed the first piece in. I mean, he completely lost it. Tears and blubbery lip and the whole nine yards. So now we have taken his mild fear of an unknown noise out in the garage and transformed it into a bright yellow nightmare.

Super. Great parenting. Well done.

Needless to say, the rest of the planing needed to be done in the short windows of opportunity while he and mommy went to the store or after I got home from work but before he got home from daycare or similar. It's pretty even now - at least the warpage has been removed. The rest of the smoothing can probably be done with a sander.
(To be continued...)

Site Update

Hey! New Poll! New "Look at That"!

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Both in the sidebar on the right.

Pallet End Table (Part I)

Those of you who know me know that I like to work with reclaimed wood. I find it very satisfying to save a discarded table or bookcase or what have you and make something usable out of it. Not only are the woodcraft projects much cheaper than if I went to Lowe's for the raw materials, the end products have a lot of character that would be difficult to achieve using store-bought lumber. Also, I like the challenge of working with the defects in the recovered wood. It forces me to be creative when I am working with it instead of just following a plan out of a book.

Sometimes the projects are quick and easy - some sanding, some wood glue, some stain, some sealant, and some paint turned a lopsided and water-stained coffee table into an awesome stand for my printer and scanner.

Sometimes the projects take a lot of time and effort, like with a dining room table I built. It weighed about 300 pounds and the recovered top (a former floor of a welding shop) had circular inlays made of 75-year-old barnwood. I sold that one on craigslist.

Most of the stuff I do falls in the middle like the palette wood endtable I am making now.

Now would be a good time for me to take a small break from the near self-congratulatory tone of this post and inject some honesty in reporting.

I am a self-taught hobbyist, nothing more. While I have a large quantity of tools I do not have a lot of high quality tools nor do I have the ability to use them to their fullest extent (or even use them properly in some cases).

I guess the most positive honest thing I could say if I were forced to list "carpenter" on a resume is that I have not yet been seriously injured while woodworking. I nearly died hiking a few years back and once embedded a rusty nail deep into my ankle while mowing the lawn, but so far my workshop shenanigans have gone largely unpunished. Perhaps the smell of sawdust generated when a board is cut a just a little too long, carefully measured, and then cut way too short is pleasing to the hobby gods.

Maybe they are busy watching me on a celestial (and possibly terminal) version of "America's Funniest Home Videos" and they are waiting for me to "get to the good part" where I "lose all the fingers on my left hand". Who knows?

You have been warned. This is not an advice column. It sure as hell is not a safety manual.

Ok. Back to the project description.

A while ago I saw two weather-beaten pallets sitting in the trash of a local business. They were very old and have clearly been used a lot. They had hundreds of rusty and bent nails securing their cracked and faded slats together.

In other words: Score (Editor's Note: I originally had the word 'Jackpot' here, but I will not use that word nor eat anything from Pizza Hut while those idiotic Jim Brewer commercials are still playing). I could definitely build something out of these or, at least, clutter up the garage trying.

(To be continued... updated pics will be posted in the sidebar as the project progresses.)

Site Update

Puzzle 04: Corkboard has been posted! Check the sidebar. Or the post below. Either one. Go with your heart.

Those of you that followed the old site know that this is the same exact puzzle from way back then. It remains unsolved, obviously. To get some insight into how I think, it might help you to check out the old puzzles listed in the sidebar. Then again, it may not...

The current prize is "Braggin' Rights". Now, before you complain that you can't buy a cup of coffee with "braggin' rights" you may want to consider that a lot of worthy pursuits don't necessarily have a financial side to them. I mean, I have been beating my brains out on a certain puzzle at puzzlemonster.com for more hours than I am proud to admit, and that's entirely for the challenge.

Ok, ok... and the t-shirt.

But if you absolutely, positively must have something tangible to shoot for then you can wait until the prize is something more than effectively zero dollars. How does the prize pool get bigger? Donations to the site (see the FAQ section in the sidebar) and money from stuff I build and sell (or just sell) on craigslist. Sometimes I will add some cash to speed things along if the puzzle has been up for a while. It doesn't cost you anything to solve the puzzle.

What I need help with, though, is deciding on a 501c charity that will receive the Charity Pool once it gets above zero. I may or may not take your suggestions, but I prefer smaller, less well-known ones. Since the Prize Pool and the Charity Pool have historically been pretty small ($60 or so) BTW, I will always give at least $50 to charity once the puzzle has been solved. Leave a comment or drop me a line if you have any ideas.

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Good Luck!

Puzzle 04: Corkboard

Instructions:

• Decode the message in the Corkboard above.
• Please remember to visit the Puzzle Rules and Contact Info and FAQ section of this site before submitting an answer.
• Good Luck!

Additional Info and Rules

• Contest for Puzzle 04 has resumed. Same Puzzle 04 as the Puzzle 04 from the RustyRedRock site.
• Like the quilt from Puzzle 03, this is one is an actual physical object. In this case it is a cork board made of 126 wine corks (recovered from the collections of friends and family), 75-year-old barnwood (recovered from a dilapidated corn-crib in central Virginia), and oak plyboard (recovered from Lowe’s). It measures 14″ across by 17″ long.
• I may decide to include this as part of the Prize Pool if I can build another one to replace it. The wife has become rather attached to it, you see, and it is currently hanging in the living room.

Hints:

• Hint #1 (Posted 2146 021210): The tacks are there for a reason.
• Hint #2 (Posted 2136 062410): The words and designs on the corks don't mean anything
• Hint #3 (Posted 2130 081610): The first letter is “W”.

[Editor's Note 091513: Looking for more hints for this puzzle?  Check the sidebar on the right and check out the unsolved puzzles.  You will find what you are looking for there.]

Site Update

New Poll! It's on the right!

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Still doing site maintenance. Puzzle for Charity should be up by Monday morning. Keep checking back.

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Update: 09/11/09 22:47

Completed putting all the old puzzles and contact information up. You can see the new stuff in the sidebar. The "new" puzzle will be posted this weekend.

I'm Workin' on It.

I am posting the Puzzle for Charity rules today.
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Over the next few week or so I will be transferring a bunch of stuff from the old site (RustyRedRock), concluding with the official posting of the puzzle. Look in the sidebar for changes.
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That doesn't mean I won't be posting other stuff, you know.
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Hmmm... is space-filler hyphenated? :)

Make TV Better

I don't watch reality shows. I don't have time for much in the way of sports. I don't "stay tuned" if the news tells me that an interesting piece of information may or may not be coming my way right after the break. Come to think of it, that's pretty much the best way to get me to turn the channel of turn off the TV entirely.

Most of the stuff out there really bores me. You want to get my attention? You want my eyeballs on your ads? Here's some ideas to win me back.

1) Put a caption at the bottom of the screen that lets the viewers of Animal Planet and similar shows know if the creature being filmed is "delicious" or "not delicious". Also, provide recipes and serving suggestions. What wine goes best with red panda, for instance? Viewers might want to know.

2) On the cooking-based reality shows don't give the contestants their own kitchens. Make them share. In addition, force contestants to use ingredients you might find in an everyday kitchen. No fugu. No blood oranges. No fancy-pants spices like saffron or butterfly extract. I would be very interested to see the judges sample a main course consisting Slim Jims and Fruity Pebbles.

3) Figure skating judges, golf announcers, and football commentators should be forced to back up every negative remark they have. Make them get out there and show us all how they can stick the triple lutz or evade the sack.

4) Neither NASCAR nor spelling bees are sports, so stop putting them on ESPN. Unless of course they swap the participants and make the rich homeschooled kids drive the cars and force the professional drivers to line up to spell xenophage... In that case sign me up for tickets for either event.

NASCAR is not a sport. Thought it was worth mentioning again.

Got any other ideas to make TV better? Leave a comment.

Site Update

I hope everyone enjoyed their Labor Day Weekend.

New poll! New picture! Both on the right.

I also added a PayPal "Donate" button. Why? I figured out a way to post the old Puzzle for Charity Puzzles and Rules from the RustyRedRock site, so expect a new puzzle "real soon" (instead of just "soon").

Noah's Sportscar

Ethan's awesome aunt came by this weekend to babysit. She bought him the Little People's Noah's Ark set (plus the extra animals), and he loves it.

However, the flood story would have to be brutally edited if my son's interactions with the set in any way reflect the recorded events. Here are a few example observations that may or may not conform to biblical canon:

1. Noah drives a little yellow convertible that he rarely leaves or even sits in correctly. The bible is silent on whether or not he actually owned a car, but it takes up a lot of space so that may explain what happened to the unicorns and velociraptors - no room.
2. When Noah is not tooling around in his sportscar, he spends a lot of that time face down at the bottom of an elevator shaft in a Little People's parking structure (perhaps in meditation). At that time many of the animals take turns being unceremoniously crammed into the driver's seat of his car. They don't fit, of course, which pleases or displeases God who giggles and exclaims "Noooo!" after trying each animal and tossing them aside. This may be the origin of the Cinderella glass slipper story.
3. The ark consists of one enormous interior cabin into which the animals are loaded without concern for species or orientation (upside-down zebras stacked on top of the lions is fine, for instance). They often board the vessel with some degree of violence and impatience through the main gangway, although it is not unheard of for them to be forced through the windows. If the roof is open then God may help the animals embark by slam-dunking them from a height of about 150 feet into the ship, or at least near it (God is a busy guy, and is not interested in micromanaging the situation if they don't make it).
4. There are "two" of "every" "animal" on the ark. Also on board are a firefighter, a farmer, a garbage truck, a giant tomato, and some moist Cheese Doodles. Often Noah is nowhere to be found. It's cool, though, because God has decided to rename all His creatures "moo" anyway so it doesn't really matter who makes it or not.
5. It pleases God to test the structural integrity of the ark by lifting it and shaking it until it is completely empty. It takes about two minutes to do this and the animals (and garbage trucks, etc.) are scattered for miles around. The complicated "gathering of the animals" and boarding process starts all over. Or sometimes it doesn't. God is easily distracted, you see.
6. It seriously displeases God if anyone helps Him in the "gathering the animals" for some reason. Nicely lined-up creatures are forcefully ejected from the queue in front of the ark and scattered across the landscape. Ironically, the same fate awaits those animals that do happen to make it on board before the rains hit (see 5 above).
7. Once the skies open and the floodwaters begins to rise, it becomes instantly obvious that Noah had no idea what he was doing (or failed to follow instructions) because the ark does not float. Perhaps this is the reason gopher wood was specified for its construction instead of 8th-inch-thick injection-molded plastic. Well, to say it doesn't float is not really true. If it is packed to the rafters with animals and the lid is jammed on then it sinks until the upward buoyant force of the unfortunate creatures below the waterline matches the weight of those above. This also might explain what happened to the unicorns and velociraptors (and Noah's sweet ride).

The Old Grey Mare

I was washing my hands at the sink at work today and looked up to see a piece of white string in my hair. When I went to pull it out I was shocked to discover this "string" was firmly rooted to my head! My first official grey hair!

Now, I don't want to imply that the hair is premature - it's not (most of my friends my age and my wife all are grey to one extent or another). And I don't want to suggest I am unhappy about it - I am actually pretty stoked about going grey.

A quick aside. You might be wondering why I choose to spell it "grey". Two reasons. First, that was the way it was spelled in my box of Crayolas when I was little, so it is happy-making for me to spell it that way as an adult. Second, I am a careless typist and rely on spellcheck way too much. A dropped letter and the sentence "I am actually pretty stoked about going gray" turns a paragraph about hair into an extremely interesting but totally inaccurate non-sequitur that my friends and family would never let me hear the end of.

Anyway, I know what some of you are thinking: "(insert fake world-weary sigh here) Yep. Kids'll do that to ya. Hyuk hyuk hyuk".

I seriously doubt that.

My mother used to say that her greying was caused by me and my brother and sister. Every time we did something to make her mad, she would get a grey hair. Let's consider that claim. There are 100,000 hairs on a human head. Let's say it takes 15 years to go totally grey after the first interloper appears. That means that we, as a team, seriously upset her 18 times a day every day for a decade and a half!

Jeez, I didn't think we were that bad. I mean, we (and all kids I guess) would have been intentionally horrible devil children if we knew we wielded the power to magically grey our folks merely by misbehaving. The resulting chaos-filled world would be filled with children's mocking laughter and populated with parents that look like very angry Steve Martins. In addition, all the moms would constantly be in traction because of the "step on a crack" rule but that's another story.

Mom also used to say that if she pulled one out, then nine more grey hairs would show up in its place. Not really sure why that would be or how to interpret that. If she meant that 9 grey hairs would sprout up to replace the uprooted one then all balding people would have to do is pluck out gray hairs in order to have a full, thick mane, wouldn't they? Of course, they would have to dye it... And if they got too carried away their skull would get so crowded with follicles that they could look like a freaky Lego person or a Ken doll or something - a solid helmet of hair.

Maybe she meant that, when you pull one, nine existing hairs immediately turn grey (out of sympathy for their lost brethren, I suppose). If you have Olympic level stick-to-it-iveness and it takes you 10 seconds to find and remove a gray hair, you would be completely gray after only 4 excruciating 8-hour shifts. Plus you would be 11% bald. And probably in a psychiatric hospital.

No, the old wives tales don't seem to hold water. I think Father Time has more to do with it than Baby Ethan. Although he does need to... Hold on a sec... Ethan! Ethan! Sit! Sit down! No, put that down! No, I mean it, potpourri bad! Damn it, come here! Yes, I know that's a tomato, you told me 40 times just a few minutes ago. No, no cookies right now. Hey, did you poop? What do you mean, "no"? Where are you going now? Come back here!

C'mon... Are We All Doomed Or Not?

On April 23rd of this year, the first death attributed to the H1N1 virus was confirmed after flu-like symptoms began showing up in the population of Veracruz, Mexico, who happen to live near the Smithfield Foods pig farm there. Testing later showed that the herd was clean, but the so-called swine-flu virus continued to spread through the local human population. Containment was not an option once the virus went international.

For several months the media went absolutely bonkers about this pandemic and you could not turn on the TV without seeing reports of sickness and death throughout the world from this "new" killer disease.

High profile cases reported on the quarantining foreign travellers in China and group of tourists from India after they were sickened while on a field trip to a NASA in the US.

Articles describing predicted vaccine shortfalls, rationing, and National Guard “distribution assistance” began to appear in the mainstream media. WHO declared the H1N1 outbreak a Level 6 pandemic, and then stopped counting infections and instructed hospitals it was no longer necessary to test for H1N1 because of the cost and time involved in doing so. The ECDC stopped publishing infections and began reporting only on deaths starting August 11th.

The Obama administration recently published a report that 30,000 to 90,000 people could die from this illness in the US alone by the time it ran its course. As of today, 2,992 people have died worldwide, and there is a bill in the Massachusetts legislature that could allow swine-flu related warrantless detainments of private citizens.

There. I’ve cherry-picked the last several months of swine flu news to make it sound like we are all doomed. Are we?

Based on curve-fitting (I started compiling data about two weeks into the crisis) of periodically published data from the WHO and ECDC, the one millionth serious infection should have taken place sometime during the middle of this month. Hey, I know this uses a lot of assumptions that make my effort only slightly better than a wild guess. For example, if you plot morbidity rate, you see that it starts high and gradually drops to below 0.5% (the fatality rate of “run-of-the-mill” flu and pneumonia), levels out somewhere around 0.4%, and climbs back up to near 1% (at this point the ECDC stopped publishing infection counts). Does this mean that the virus a) is less lethal than regular flu and only looks worse because of underreporting or b) the virus has mutated into a deadlier form (like the 1918 influenza pandemic) .

I choose to think it is just cases being underreported. I mean, I have had the flu a few times and I have never bothered a doctor about it. I can only think of a couple of people that have, as a matter of fact. In addition, when you think about all the people that will catch this and not report it because of lack of insurance, can’t afford to take time off from work, or the fact they live someplace where there simply are no hospitals, it seems like the morbidity rate I calculate is at least an order of magnitude too high.

But if you do take the 0.4% number and assume that 3.5 billion people - half the globe - eventually become infected over the next few years (spreading at a rate akin to the 1918 outbreak) then that means that, over the next couple of years, 14 million worldwide will die from this disease - 61,000 in the USA. It is a remarkable coincidence that my “back of the envelope” 61,000 number falls smack in the middle of the Obama administration’s range as put out in their badly worded press release.

But comparing the number of people killed during the 1918 pandemic to the population of the world at that time, and doing the same thing with the current global population for even my probably-way-too-high-estimate, it seems that the current outbreak is at least an order of magnitude less worrisome than the one from nearly a century ago.

So why the panic? Why the incessant “1918” comparisons on the news? If this is so much less serious than regular flu, why the rush for inoculations? Why is Elmo helping children in the Fight Against H1N1? If the situation is so out of control, why don’t the infection and death graphs follow a severe and worrying exponential curve, rather than the tamer path actually seen? Why does WolframAlpha show a mortality rate of near 1% when a recent article stated that "800,000 have been infected in NYC alone", but with only 54 deaths, this makes the real rate a hundred times lower, doesn't it? Why do many reliable sources (look them up) say that this will be no worse than any other flu season? If that is the case, why is this so darn newsworthy?

With all of the data out there pointing in different directions I really don’t know. I have a couple of theories, though neither fit the observed facts. One is an equal mix of “unlikely” and “crazy”. The other is just “full-on tinfoil-hat crazy”. I am not going to post them, though, because I am interested in what you think and I don’t want to tilt the discussion in any direction.

So tell me what you think, because I am at a loss. Should we worry? Is everything OK? What data am I missing? What’s the real deal here?

What are the Odds?

Trivia time! Here are some odds (as an American):

You will die in a house fire: 650 to 1. Source: WolframAlpha
You will die on the job as a U.S. fisherman over 4 years: 223 to 1. Source: Forbes' Most Dangerous Job List
You will die on the job as U.S. president over 4 years: 7.3 to 1. Source: Wikipedia

You speak Cherokee: 13,500 to 1 Source: WolframAlpha
You speak fluent Klingon: 25,300,000 to 1 Source: Wikipedia

You were arrested (in 2005): 21 to 1. Source: FBI (some people have multiple arrests, granted)
You are a police officer: 282 to 1. Source: USDOJ

You competed in the 2008 Summer Olympics: 510,000 to 1. Source: USOC
You were hit by lightning last year: 700,000 to 1. Source: NOAA
You are a chess Grandmaster: 4,432,000 to 1. Source: Wikipedia

You are a doctor: 1,186 to 1 Source: WolframAlpha
You are a lawyer: 242 to 1 Source: WolframAlpha
You are an Indian Chief: 541,000 to 1 Source: DOI

You are a butcher: 1,045 to 1: Source: WolframAlpha
You are a baker: 949 to 1: Source: WolframAlpha
You are a candlestick maker: 5,600 to 1.

This last one takes a little explaining, since finding even a ballpark number of people who put down “candlestick maker” as an occupation on official forms was not possible. What is out there, though, is a neat little estimation of job openings in 2008 for people who work in the candle making industry as molders or painters or what have you in the state of New Hampshire. Assuming candlestick makers are uniformly distributed by population per state, this seems to give somewhere around 56,000 people that do this for a living in the USA.

That seems really high to me, so if anyone has a better estimation, post a comment...