What was to be graphed

'Therm' is kind of a fun sounding word.  It puts you in mind of the nickname of a friendly trucker you might meet in a diner, or a cartoon thermometer that helps teach kids about energy conservation.  And that's what the gas companies want you to think.  So instead of reporting the gas you've used in units of  cubic feet, they report it to you in Therms (1 Therm = 100 cubic feet of gas). 

Back in August I had 6 Therms visit me.  A Therm visit costs around $1 (it's been .95 to $1.25 on various bills since August) including the Therm, its delivery cost, and the taxes associated with him.  September brought 32 Therms and October  55, so even though I now have more than one Therm a day visiting me, I still haven't noticed them.  Then November comes along and my house doesn't feel any more crowded, but I learn that I was visited by 123 Therms.

Up to this point I had not even noticed that there was a gas section on my energy bill, so I call the good people at the energy company to make sure this variation is explained by what seemed like a negligible change in the temperature out of doors or if the Therms were pulling a fast one on me.

I had a delightful conversation with a representative who showed me how I could see DATA of my daily use of electricity and gas online.  And they already put it into GRAPHS!  
 
I LOVE DATA AND GRAPHS!  An extra hundred or so a month is totally worth it for more data especially data that I can manipulate myself.  So I've been making radical changes to the thermostat before I go to bed and then waiting, barely able to keep still like a kid on Christmas eve, for the data changes to show up online.

I'm okay with additional visits from Therm, but I would prefer it if he could start recording his visits hourly.  Hourly data is the best.     

What was to be incendiary

When I discover that my neighbor is cooking meth in his garage, my first concern is not for the poor addicts whose habit he is facilitating, or even for the young people who might be ensnared by those crystals.  Rather, my first concern is that when his garage explodes I'm going to lose the better part of my living room.  Or when rival cooks cruise by to fill his house with holes, my windows are not too far away.  So I am a bit confused that China does not take greater efforts to curb North Korea's nuclear program and missile testing.

Michael Elleman is a Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and explains that North Korea currently has 3 missiles with a range of over 6,000km (a kilometer is a goofy way of saying about 2/3 of a mile) that could reach the US: the Taepodong-2, Unha-2, and Unha-3 (which was used a few days ago to launch their first satellite into space).  However, the part of the US they can reach is Alaska.  Now, I'm not saying Alaska is not an important and beloved part of our country.  It is very important for the storage of strategic oil and moose reserves, but in that respect it is more like a back shed than the main living area of the house.  So I am not too concerned.   

It seems to me though, that China should be.  Not because of a Looney Toons type mistake where the missile gets aimed in the opposite direction or a missile meant to go one way catches a bad wind and fades back towards China (though I don't rule these out), but because if missiles start flying out of Korea, then the targets of those places are going to return the favor, and before you know it the once peaceful neighborhood with the usual tangible but non-violent tensions has turned into the worst parts of Baltimore or Detroit. 

In some ways I get why China doesn't intervene more aggressively.  They are not particularly loved throughout the world or in their region, and it helps to have the crazy friend to back you up if things get dicey.  But there is a crazy friend ratio to think about, and it is the ratio of crazy to muscle.  If your friend is incredibly powerful, then it is okay for them to be super crazy, because he will get into fights he can finish (this is known as The Hulk range of the spectrum).  However, if he is weaker than everyone else in the room, but crazy enough to pick fights with them, he is a liability (this is known as the Scrappy Doo range). 

North Korea has shown some advancement in their muscle with the rocket successfully launching the satellite.  But they have shown a disproportionate increase in crazy by doing it in violation of the United Nations sanctions barring the activities involving ballistic missiles.   

What was to be easier

I have been enjoying my new habit of shutting down Outlook and signing out of Messenger while I eat lunch and turn my mind to writing.  I find that after the soup is gone and the writing is saved, that I return to the work at hand with less tension and a healthier perspective. 

I was looking forward to today as I had been mulling around some ideas of a humorous take on the recent North Korean rocket launch, but as the day progressed and I watched the news feeds populate with the events of the shooting in Connecticut, my sense of humor became increasingly inaccessible and my mind took a more solemn and sadder frame. 

From my office today it seems easier to see the future than the present.  It seems easy to predict the upcoming legislation on tighter gun controls and school security.  It seems easy to see how funds will be moved to providing greater security in our public schools almost certainly to some extent at the cost of education.  It seems easy to foresee an increased outflow of students to home, private, or charter schooling; again, at the cost of public education. It seems easy to foresee the candlelight vigils and charities and benefits set up with the focus of mitigating the pain and fallout of this tragedy.

These things seem easy to predict and where my mind seems to be drawn, because I can't imagine the terror in those classrooms or the trauma the children who were near are experiencing.  I can't fathom the panic of the families who have children at that school or the sorrow of one who knows they have lost such a beloved life.  

What was to be revisited

A few weeks ago I presented my theory that the rise in obesity is the true cause for the falling crime rate in this country, as those who cannot get out of bed or off the rascal are less likely to go snatching purses or smashing in heads.

But I provided no data to support this argument and this omission has bee gnawing at me.  So I became concerned that if this omission continued to gnaw at me it would itself become obese, and I resolve now to correct it.

Borrowing obesity data from my friends at the CDC and crime data from the FBI, I have learned that I was...

Incorrect.  It's hard to say, but it feels good to get it out there. Here's what else I learned:

Murder and Obesity

If you live in the state of Mississippi, not only are you criminally liable for a waste of consonants ('Misisipi' would be more economical) you are more likely to be obese than in any other state.  You are also more likely to be murdered 3rd only to 1st place District of Columbia (17.5 murders in 100K), and 2nd place Louisiana (11.2 murders in 100K).  And D.C. is one of the fittest in the data set with the 4th lowest prevalence of obesity.

Taking a wider view through regression analysis, I see that the opposite of my earlier theory is true. In fact, as the prevalence of obesity increases in a state so does the murder rate.  For every four % points of obesity prevalence, another person in a group of 100K loses their life (p-value = .048). 

My alternative hypothesis then, is that we chubby fellows are easier to kill.  Or, when fit young gangsters draw down in the streets, larger human obstacles are unfortunate collateral damage. 

Burglary and Obesity

This part was interesting.  Besides murder, no other offense could be predicted based on obesity with any statistical significance except for burglary whose p-value was 0.000.  So, there is no visible relationship between obesity and rape, robbery, aggravated assault, property crime, larceny-theft, or motor vehicle theft.  But for some reason fat states are burgled states. For every % point of the population that is flagged as obese, 39.6 locations per 100K are burgled.   

I dug into whether this was related to the Hamburgler mafia, but so far no leads.
Another possibility is that we chubsters are always going out to eat and while we are ordering the number 4 super-sized, our indented couches and drawers of rings that have long since ceased to fit on our fingers are being spirited away to pawn shops with wide doors.

Future Analysis
I went ahead and admitted to being wrong, but that is only because I want to go to lunch.  I am too hungry to finish the analysis,  the next step would be to see how changes in obesity by state over time are related to changes in crime rate over time.  But instead, I'm going to go see how the levels of my hunger change over the courses of a meal. 

What was to be Springtime

I was part of a group of young professionals being spoken to by an older gentlemen who said we were in the springtime of our lives.  This sounded wrong to me and the times and the seasons back me up. 

In the United states our life expectancy from birth is roughly 78.37 years, assuming our seasons are evenly distributed and spring is the beginning, the springtime of our lives ended before our 20th birthday. 

However, I will give the speaker that he wasn't speaking to a random sample of Americans, but rather a more educated subset with higher income potential and likelihood to be married, so the average life expectancy of this group could be pegged closer to 89.73.

Even then, I doubt there was anyone in that group younger than twenty-two and a half, so he was actually speaking to a group in the summer of their lives.  In the future I believe it will be this second view of the seasons that I will be referencing as the breakout makes intuitive sense to me.   

At 22.43 you have likely identified the final mapping of or completed your undergraduate education.  You can see your care-free days behind you.  At 44.87 the likelihood of becoming pregnant is below 5%, at this point you can raise only what you plant or transplant.  You have your autumn years to finish storing away nuts until winter begins at 67.3 which lands nicely by our standard age of retirement.

So there you have it, now you know the season you are in and can correct any speakers who attempt to employ inappropriate seasonal imagery. 

What was to be broken up

In gross GDP, China will almost definitely surpass the United States as the nation with the largest economy in the next five years, bu the combined output of the European Union will still surpass either of these.  So to an outside observer it is puzzling to see Britain distance itself further and further from the continent that absorbs half of its exports (James Bond and Downton Abbey are among the last remaining British exports to the United States).  But Britain is behaving like many great ladies in a relationship where She always thought She was out of the other's league. 

Continental Europe is not as financially fit as He once was and there seems to be no end to His problems, and the classic move is to focus on the delta from the good times and ignore that on the whole She is still better off with Him than without. 

In Her mind that is still reeling from recent sleights where she has had to pick up the check for a few meals when his card was declined, and embarrassed that they won't be able to buy the new car they had been looking at, she imagines a future where He understands why She is leaving Him, and they will still be friends with most of the same benefits at her convenience.  After all, who could resist her?  But She underestimates the bitterness of a scorned lover. 

She thinks that their mutual friends, the car makers and financial services companies with headquarters in her backyard will definitely side with her in the breakup, but gradually they will drift away especially as He recovers.  And once He does (and He definitely will) and is back in great shape and She is feeling the sting of making it on Her own, He will take her back.  But this is far from assured.  

 If She is going to leave it had better be because She wants autonomy at almost any cost and is willing to pay the steepest of financial and political prices for it.

What was to be ridden

When I was a young lad of early elementary school years, I had a bmx bike that I rode almost every day after school.  I raced down the roads and onto dirt paths with hills just steep enough for me to feel exhilarated by the drop, but not so high so as to be frightening, as I have always been conservative in my thrill seeking.  The bike afforded me freedom: freedom to visit my friends without needing a ride from Mom; freedom to be alone with my thoughts, imagination, and the wind.    

So I could never understand when my Mom would want us to go on family bike rides down some trail or another.  It baffled me.  Bikes were for getting away from family.  If you wanted to be close to your family you could all just stay home and watch a movie.  But I was either too young to understand that this was my true frustration or I couldn’t communicate it, so instead I would just act sullen or impassive. 

My few friends were different though, being with those friends was more like being alone than being with other people because ideas never required a justification or explanation, all suggestions from either party were immediately identified as a good idea that may as well have been thought up by yourself.  My friendships in those days were virtually frictionless.  We didn’t compete for the same resources like you did with your siblings, so friends became allies and siblings the competition.

Parental attention is a typical resource to vie for, and it is difficult for a child to understand that mommy loves them very much, but she is exhausted, and just wants 15 minutes to herself to take a nap.  If mom wants to be alone why doesn’t she go for a bike ride?  And wanting to take a nap makes absolutely zero sense. 

 So what is a child to do when mom goes to her room and he is left with those miniature feelings of abandonment and rejection?  Either you self-sedate with TV and video games, take it out on a sister or brother feeling the same as you; or, you strap on the helmet of a warrior, mount your steed, and pedal harder and harder until you can hear the song of the wind and the rhythm of your tires and chains.  

So, I get nervous and sad when I drive through a neighborhood and see no children on bikes.   

What was to be flirting with disaster

I am not an inattentive student of the lessons taught by our modern cinema.  I know that when the dead walk again the only way to stop them is by destroying the brain.  I know that ultimate culprit of even a random-seeming tragedy is either a high ranking government official or a large company's CEO.  And I know that when a beautiful women flirts with you, she is going to steal something from you, lead you to an assassin, or kill you herself. 

And so, when I was on the elevator today relating to my friend my views on office productivity in an amusing manner and the pretty young woman in the corner of the elevator began to laugh my instant response should have been suspicion.  But I failed to remember my training and, encouraged by her response, continued my monologue with an increased vigor which was rewarded by an increase of laughter from the lady. 

Fortunately for me, we reached her floor before I could take some foolish action like getting her name or department to track her down later.  Who knows what shallow grave or penniless pit of poverty I would be in now if that had not been the case. 

Those who do not learn the lessons of the cinema are doomed to repeat it, thus it was with our good General Petraeus.  He could have chosen virtually any biographer in the world to write his official biography.  But this man who was instrumental in turning the tide in the Iraq war and defining counterinsurgency as it is practiced in the military today forgot the first lesson they teach you in the International Relations PhD program at Princeton and echoed by Magneto, "...never trust a beautiful woman.  Especially one who's interested in you."

What was to be argued

I think I was 12 or 13 before I ever heard my father complain to someone other than us or about anything other than how we children didn't do our chores or obey our mother well enough the first time.  Which is not to say that he complained about those things often, I just never heard him complain at all except in those instances.  I also can't remember him ever getting in an argument with anyone outside of our family. 

So it is not that I never gained experience being combative or argumentative if the need arose, indeed, within the family we could stage a row that would make the British Parliament seem as serene as sleeping monks.  But I never observed my parents fight or argue with people outside the family, so my mind seemed to understand this as a thing that simply didn't occur. 

Thus, when I started to meet argumentative people in my later years of high school and early years in college, I wasn't really sure how to deal with them.  My first thoughts were along the lines that I should take them aside and explain to them that I was not a member of their family so they were just embarrassing themselves by trying to start an argument with me.  The absurdity of these people, being rude to somebody besides your siblings who are required by all known laws to love you.  What made them think they would ever get away with it?

Of course I had seen people on TV and in movies arguing with others not of their kin, but I had also seen aliens and magic and elves in those mediums, and the former seemed just as contrived as the latter.  And even today when I am approached at work either in person or through email or phone, by someone with an impatient or combative attitude, my first response is one of marked disbelief and confusion.  I maintain this noticeably confused and unhelpful state and invariably they realize they need to readjust their tact or gain nothing from the interchange. 

This was a long walk around the park to get to my main point, that I have a great deal of trouble dealing with contractors who have come to work on my home and property.  I have had only one experience with a contractor who did everything as he said he would and there were no mistakes on his part or dissatisfaction on mine.  The rest have all made some mistake or another and when confronted about it they have adopted my own strategy against me of acting confused and martyred, until I give it all up.  So, with this particular subset of the population I have taken a new approach: shock and awe.  With these creatures I now come down on them with the fury of gods' own thunder and this seems to be the best way to drive results. 

I came across this method on accident when I was at work one day and received a call from a contractor who began to speak about a problem he had encountered while working on a job he and I had not previously discussed, but he had started anyway with the thinking that we had, and I had approved.  The price of this was $5K, and I my usually calm voice began to betray my frustration, when he continued to calmly claim that this is something I had approved and he already had his crew doing the job and could not stop I reached my breaking point and unleashed upon him the most abrasive string of words I had every audibly formed in my entire life.

All was quiet on both ends of the line for several moments until he said sheepishly, "I'll call my manager."  I beat him to it, and this time opened with my rage and the matter was quickly settled on the terms I outlined. 

I am not at all proud of this methodology (though I now understand why so many come to me using this from the outset) and have never resorted to that most nasty kind of phrasing I used on that first day, but for some reason in these relationships it seems to be the way to get things done.

 I understand if you don't agree with me on my thoughts and actions as described above, and I'm happy to discuss the subject with you, but I don't understand why you are taking that tone with me on the outset.       

  

What was to be law a-biting

Over the last two decades there has been a dramatic decrease in violent crime in the United States.  It has fallen by around 38% since 1992.  Our crime rates have increased during every recession in our history for which we have those statistics, until this recent one, when they continued to fall.  A variety of theories have been posited. 

One notes that cars have become more difficult to steal, citing that instances of grand theft auto have decreased dramatically over the years and historically car theft has been the first major crime of career criminals.  With cars being harder to steal fewer individuals get wrapped up into lives of crime.

A study from a few years ago noted that rates of play and time spent per week with video games had risen dramatically during the recession among the demographic that historically accounted for the rise in crime.  They hypothesized that the video games kept the would-be-hooligans in doors and away from other people's bodies and property.

Many politicians and police officials cite the adoption of Compstat meetings, where "Every seven weeks bureau commanders are grilled by a senior panel, often including the police chief himself, on the whys and wherefores of crime in their jurisdictions. They are expected to have an on-the-spot grasp of the statistics: if there has been a spike in burglaries from vehicles, the captain’s interrogators will want to know what is being done about it. There is no hiding from the numbers: data-laden documents are distributed before the meeting, and overhead map projections pinpoint the sites of individual incidents in pitiless detail."

I posit my own theory: we have all seen the coverage on the rise in obesity cited as a growing epidemic and a grievous challenge to our current state and costs of health care.  But what if our collective growing guts are actually making us safer? 

If our potential criminals are overweight how far do we really think they are going to be able to run once they've committed their crimes?  How long can you lay low in that abandoned factory if you just have to get to Taco Bell every night?  How are you going to follow that wealthy looking couple into the alley if you can't even fit in the alley?

I'm just saying, when I see a group of teenagers whose guts are  sagging rather than their jeans, I feel safer.  When I'm walking down the street at night and I hear fat footsteps behind me, I feel the warm sense of security that comes with knowing that whether he's the attacker or the attacker is behind him, when the time comes, I'm the one who is getting away. 

What was to be absolute

I want to say something inside of us rebels against an absolute statement, but I don't speak for us.  Just for me.  So I will say, something inside of me rebels against absolute statements.
"There can be no freedom without education."
"There can be no triumph without loss"
"There can be no light without darkness"
"There can be no peace without war"
"There can be no peace without justice"
"There can be no courage without fear"
"There can be no progress without struggle"
"There can be no etc. without etc..."

These statements are usually followed by the speaker or writer proceeding to make some point, but I can rarely pay attention to what that point is because I have been distracted by my mind which is freaking out because it is simultaneously trying to decide if we are being manipulated and positing scenarios where the statement may not hold up. 

They sound good, they make sense, but I am uncomfortable with absolute statements.  The universe seems so big to me, and time so infinite.  Humans and other life so varied and our experiences so distinct, it just seems impossible for you to have found the two things with a relationship that never vary across all possible parameters.  And you see that in most of those examples I gave, when you say those things you are really just working on defining the first word based on the second. 

So I like qualifying statements before my bold assertions.  They make me feel more comfortable.  They narrow the field in which I have to test the assertion from all space and all time to some more manageable scope. 

I panic when asked, "What is your favorite color?" How can you possibly answer that question without more information?  My favorite color of shirts is different than my favorite color of jeans.  even more narrowly, my favorite color of cotton button-up shirts is different than my favorite color of polo shirts.  And there are also conditional dependencies: my favorite color of cotton button-up shirts is different depending on whether I am wearing black slacks or blue jeans.

'How many brothers and sisters do you have?'

'Well, you will have to be a lot more specific about what you mean by brothers and sisters as there are somewhere over 6 billion people on this earth and I subscribe to the notion that we can see ourselves as a single family, and I also see that family as including our progenitors as well as future generations.  Nor do I limit the possibility that the basis of our shared intelligence is limited to this pinpoint of the universe or even to this single universe and that I may share an organizer of my current physical makeup with those intelligences in their current form.  So in the broadest sense, given my current grasp of calculations, I would have to say that I have an infinite number of brothers and sisters. 

...

I also have a dog" 

She hasn't returned my last text. 

What was to be inevitable

Why the European Union for the Nobel Peace Prize?  A puzzle in two pieces:

Piece the first
Until a few years ago, when the Indiana Jones series was a trilogy, my least favorite of the three installments was The Temple of Doom.  My least favorite scene was when the priest reached into a mans chest and pulled out the man's heart.  The chest closes up and the unattached heart continues to beat and the man continues to live; for a few more moments anyway, before he disappears into a fiery chasm.  At first I did not enjoy it because it terrified me, but to deflect that terror I eventually convinced myself that I was merely frustrated by how unrealistic it all was.

It wasn't until my  college after spending a great deal of time in the company of a young lady named *****, that I learned that in fact a man's beating heart could be torn from his chest and set on fire in front of him while he watched.  What's more, throwing that man into a fiery chasm would be a mercy compared to making him stumble through his life and Econ finals while simultaneously dead inside but painfully aware of his burning heart lost out somewhere in the nether (though actually being dead inside makes you a superior economist).

So I began to better understand this concept of an organism or organization being able to exist and operate as usual, while being effectively gutted of its inner impetus or fuel so doomed to eventually collapse and die though the death stroke was delivered long before the fall.  And while I don't believe I understand enough to identify whether we have reached 'peak oil', 'national debt point of impossible payback' or the 'global warming point of no return' I entertain the possibility that in any of these cases we may have already incurred dire and unavoidable consequences to be visited on us in the future. 

Piece the Second
Though nominated several times during his lifetime, Gandhi never won a Nobel Peace Prize.  If the prize could be awarded posthumously, he almost certainly would have been awarded one by now, but, like most beauty pageants, you cannot be nominated after your death. 

All Together Now
I suspect that the five Vikings who make up the Norwegian Nobel Committee actually see the current  EU as a scuttled boat that is only above the water for a matter of time, but will eventually be filled with and sunk by the water that once buoyed it up.  So in standard Viking fashion they are endeavoring to fill it with grave goods (items and treasures to ease and join the departed in the afterlife).  If they wait too much longer there will be no union to award, so it had to be this year or never.  Long story short: short the Euro, man the longboats. 



 

What was to be observed?

After the first Obama-Romney (in alphabetical order so as not to indicate this writer's preference) debate last week I commented that "I enjoyed this debate format, but as usual, i think it suffers from too short a time frame and too structured. As this had a PBS theme, I think I would have liked to see them in Bert and Ernie's beds, just talking about domestic policy between themselves until they fall asleep."

The principle purpose of this comment was to generate 'likes' on facebook so that I could feel clever and validated by people I don't talk to anymore.  But I also have this voyeuristic desire to see how people speak and behave when they feel they are neither being observed nor evaluated.  I love peering around a corner to see my niece playing with her dolls, providing both viewpoints of a conversation between the cuddly squid and the dump truck as each party makes their argument for a place on top of the dog. 

I know when I walk in the room I will be given a big smile and both the cuddly squid and the dump truck will begin to enthusiastically strike the dog because my niece enjoys the reaction of the dog yelping and me scrambling over to her to impart a rapid lesson on humane animal treatment.  However, if I stay in my furtive vantage point I get to learn that she has a growing grasp of the term 'important' and that she feels when two individuals debate they must begin each sentence with the template, "No (name here) that's not what I said..."

So I know that tonight when I watched the vice-presidential debate I was watching two men striking the dog to elicit a reaction from me.  And what I really want to see is how these guys talk about solving the nations problems when the nation is not around.  

Honestly, I think that if you were to leave the two of them at the table long enough you would hit a sweet spot of honesty sometime before the delirium that would come from exhaustion (though that would be helpful to observe in the presidential debate given the hours they must keep at times). 

What you may expect to read here

Throughout my life, I have seldom been the most vocal individual in a group as I have always felt that you should have something worth saying before you said it.  You should have something enlightening, entertaining, or enthralling to merit the time and attention you are asking to be paid to you when you make a comment.  So my reputation is frequently one of being quiet and shy but smart and funny whereas I think of my self as simply courteous. 

That said, over the years the concept has sunk in that people do not require that the conversation or media they consume have any particular merit other than it comes from a source they have previously categorized as likable.  I have observed a young lady listening to the most insipid drivel that has ever oozed from a conscious being moved as if she was watching McKellen's Lear carry Cordelia.  I have seen serious men nod in grave agreement as a nubile flirt shared thoughts on politics that would have made Stalin and Hoover bond over the shared trauma of being exposed to such ignorant idealism. 

Evidence that I am not that smart, merely courteous, is that it took me years to understand why I did not forge the same relationships as quickly as others did.  I have been incredilby lucky to have very strong friendships with a few exceptional people, but unfortunatley the combination of my bafflement with the world and my small cadre of confidants led to some elitism hardly commensurate with my accomplishments in life.  However, this elitsm developed later in life with the primary defense mechanism of my youth being humor, specifically a self-effacing brand of humor which I hope tempers the more outragious aspects of my arrogance.

So, that background provided and those confessions made, what I expect to see in the future posts of this blog are some of the topics and themes of the day refracted through my own lenses of humor, arrogrance, economics, and poetry which I hope makes for some entertaining and informative though likely strained and at times agonizing reading.