Books Lying Open
¤ What Liberal Media?, Eric Alterman
¤ The Scientists (A History of Science Told Through the Lives of its Greatest Inventors), John Gribbin

Soul-Devouring Worry:
¤ Insufficient hours in the day.

Question of the Day:
¤ Must you be like that?

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your be held responsible for your body's weaknesses.

¤ I was going to recommend this somewhat tediously 20 question grammatical quiz, even though it's chock full of extremely awkwardly-worded examples that serve only to test your grammatical book larnin' with sentences that would be best corrected by being rewritten. Unfortunately, the script sucks, and when you finish you don't get to see how many you got right, which ones you got wrong, or the correct answers, which just made me want the two minutes of my life back. I was deemed "good" at grammar, but whether that means I got 12 or 14 or 16 right, or if it grades on a curve and I actually got about 7, while most people get 2; is unknown.

¤ Besides our planting, the other springtime activity around here has been carpet cleaning. It's less fun and less photogenic, but our carpets were getting pretty filthy, largely due to the hair build up. Malaya's got nearly waist length black hair, Dusty sheds a lot of black hair, and Jinx has silver fur that's longer than most of the hair on my head. While much of Dusty's shedding is gathered up in hot, wet ropes that he delivers unto the living room carpet with loud horking noises at times between 3 and 5am, he's got plenty left to drop off strand by strand. I've long suggested that we save up all of his ex-hair, mix it with Jinx's and make a new cat, but Malaya isn't a big fan of that idea.

Besides the hair/fur, we walk through our apartment on a regular basis, often have the windows open so dust gets in, and all of that just builds up over time. And no, running a vacuum doesn't do much to get rid of it.

So, some weeks ago Malaya decided we should get a carpet shampoo vacuum thing. You can rent professional ones, or buy less professional ones for a lot cheaper. She wanted to buy, since her mom's carpets need cleaning as well, and therefore mom would go in on half the purchase price. A pretty good deal for mom really, since it means lifetime free carpet cleaning, and since there's no way on earth Malaya's mom could operate the unit on her own, she gets free labor as well.

And it is labor, as I've been surprised to find out, while pushing the plastic plow that the Dirt Devil Platinum Force cleaner is ($150 at Fry's.)  If you click the link to see the picture, your attention will be claimed by the oversized ground portion of the unit. But check out the upright portion; it's mostly a big plastic tank of water, that is sucked out and sprayed on the floor as you clean. It's not heavy when it's upright, since the weight is on the wheels. But when you're actually pushing and pulling the thing back and forth, your arm gets rapidly fatigued, especially when you add in the trigger on the hand grip, which you have to keep gripped to dispense soap, or run the brushes when you're passing over it to rinse/dry the carpet afterwards.

And don't believe any of the bullshit you see in commercials; you'll be making multiple passes to get the carpet wet and extract any actual stains.

The first time we used it last week, we just did the small kitchen area here, and Malaya got tired of my whining and arm/hand shaking and tried it herself. She lasted about three strokes before handing it back and remarking, "Who needs the gym with that thing?"

I learned from the first time though, and when we did the living room and hallway Sunday night, I kept my arm at a more constant angle, and pushed with my chest, or propped my elbow against my thigh and pushed with my hips, while pulling with my whole body. It was still somewhat tiring, and I was sweating in my t-shirt and shorts by the end of the 20 minute session, but my arm felt fine. My hand was hella cramped though, and I'll have to work on a technique to avoid that next time. We'll be doing the entry hall, and the hallway into the bedroom and around the bed next time, but we've got to time it when we're going to be out all day, or not leaving the house/entering the bedroom.  It's not like you'll ruin the carpet if you walk on it while it's wet, but your footprints can dry in and look very squashed, so it's best to leave it alone to dry for at least 6 or 8 hours. Ideally with some fans blowing over it the whole time. Making a few extra passes with brushes and rinse cycle doesn't hurt either, since that sucks up most of the soap and water and leaves the carpet drier than it was from the shampooing portion, at least.

Despite the fact that I didn't even bother to vacuum in my last apartment (other than over the spot of major dry spills) for about three years, I appreciate the cleaner carpets we now have here. It's not like you can see a black line of demarcation between where we ran it and where we have yet to run it, but the floor looks brighter, even though we've got the standard light brown carpet that's found in about 97% of all apartments/condos in the US.  All four I've lived in have had it, at least, as does my dad's big house, where the carpet is easily the least-attractive feature.

Malaya's solution is to cover as much of it as possible with various Ikea throw rugs, and they definitely help. Since vacuuming, we've added a large 9x6 foot blue rug from Home Depot, for the ridiculous price of $15. It's not much different in consistency from Astroturf, but it looks pretty okay, and it gives the living room a better sense of coherent space. The sort of thing that's ideally done with furniture, a step up or down, a wall corner, or other such things that we don't have the space or finances for in this apartment. Hence the $15 carpet.

¤ A friend ICQed me this amusing eBay auction. It's a Ghostbuster's Suit, including the ghost zapping backpack, and it's going for over $2000 right now, with 5 days to go in the auction. Why in the hell would someone pay two large for a plastic backpack and a gray jumpsuit?  It's the backpack. It does everything short of actually firing laser beams at ghosts, basically. Check out the guy's build diary, with all of the parts and construction techniques he put into it. There's even a movie, showing the pack in action, and I must admit that it's pretty cool.

It's got a motherboard and ribbon cable on it, and everything works, all the lights come on just like they did in the movie, he's got a sound card with the exact sounds from the film, etc. It's quite the project, the sort of thing the Cockeyed guy would create if he had the patience for quality over quantity science projects. If Ghostbuster's guy had been smart he would have made about ten of the packs at once, but perhaps this being a one of a kind, nearly-working item ups the price considerably. 

¤ More good news about mad cow disease. The USDA continues to do as little as possible to test for the deadly (to the cows, and people who eat them) Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in cows. It's not just laziness or entropy, they are consciously going out of their way to avoid testing cows that are likely to have mad cow disease.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not test any cows for mad cow disease in the past seven months at the same Texas facility where federal testing policies for the deadly disorder were violated last month, United Press International has learned.

The USDA also failed to test a single cow in 2002 at another Texas slaughterhouse that processes high-risk, downer cows, according to agency testing records obtained by UPI under the Freedom of Information Act. Downer cows are unable to stand or walk, which can be an indication of mad cow disease, as well as other disorders.

...at nearby San Angelo Packing, a facility that does process downers, the USDA conducted no tests in 2002 and 45 mad cow tests in the first 10 months of FY 2003, according to the agency's mad cow testing records. San Angelo is the 22nd largest slaughterhouse in the country, processing some 142,000 cattle per year, according to Cattle Buyers Weekly magazine.

Given how hard the USDA and the beef industry work to not find mad cow in the US beef supply, it's actually pretty amazing that they happened upon that one infected cow in Washington, several months ago. They clearly learned a lesson from that incident; it's really, really bad for business to find mad cow in US cows. So they tried to cover up that find, and they're doing all they can to not find it again, while still testing some miniscule percentage of the US beef. Testing cows that are old and might actually have the disease would be bad, so they skip plants like the ones listed in this article, and stick to testing young, healthy cows that are extremely unlikely to have developed the disease yet.

As the article notes, US beef imports were banned in over 50 countries when the mad cow was found in Washington, and lots of those countries still haven't returned to importing US beef. You might find this painfully cynical, but here's my take on things. The USDA and the beef industry know that mad cow disease is rampant in the US beef supply. They also know that changing the production techniques to make the food safe would cut deeply into the profit margin, and would require industry-wide changes, in raising, slaughtering, and everything else.

Since Americans don't care about getting mad cow disease (witness the strong beef sales even during the press coverage of the mad cow in Washington, and the disinterest in continuing stories about the woeful state of meat safety in the US), and the beef industry mostly sells their product inside the US, they've simply decided to carry on as is, and make as much money as they can now. It's not worth the expense to make the changes that would ensure that US beef is free from CJD; they don't give a shit about meat safety in the US, and the export market isn't big enough to offset the costs.

Eventually it'll all blow up in their faces when something happens to cause much more testing, and dozens and dozens of infected mad cows are found in the US. At that time I imagine they'll try to wriggle out by saying they just followed procedure, and they feel awful, and since the US beef industry is essential to the nation's economy, they just need a couple of billion tax dollars to retrofit all of the slaughtering facilities, test and weed out the infected cattle, etc. All the stuff that industry would have to pay for now, if they owned up to the problem.

I've said it before, but I still maintain that in 20 years we'll have class action lawsuits from people with holes in their brains (or their surviving relatives) that will make the whole tobacco lawsuits look like a lemonade stand robbery. Assuming the beef and cattle industry hasn't managed to buy special class action lawsuit protection from congress by then, the way gun manufacturers recently did.

Two guys started off on a 24 hour run on twin treadmills, to see how far they could go in that time. The previous world record was 153.6 miles, which is equivalent to almost 6 marathons. How did they do in comparison? Check the link and see. The site includes dramatic photos of... two pasty white guys on treadmills.

Even though it's just on a treadmill in a temperature-controlled building in NYC, I'm impressed. Hell, the blog says that they each ran over a full marathon to start off with, in around 3:30, without breaking a sweat. I thought I was doing good needing to run (well, jog) about two 2 miles before I'm in a nice lather, temperature and degree of uphill depending. And here these guys are doing 26+ miles without sweating up or even breathing too hard. And they're running all of their miles far, far faster than I do any of my miles.

As the above should demonstrate, running can be a humbling experience. This is best discovered when some old guy with a beer belly chugs past you, uphill, and keeps on going off into the distance, while you're walking off a side cramp with your hands on your head and sweat running down your back. I'm not speaking entirely autobiographically, but not far from it; I'm constantly surprised how many people I see running, apparently pretty well, who look to be badly out of shape. Malaya and I always wonder about it when someone runs by us (going the other way, usually) and they look to be 50 or 80 pounds overweight. How can they run that hard, and stay that fat? Did they just start?  Did they used to weigh 400 pounds and they're in good cardio shape, but just haven't lost the last of the weight yet? Do they exercise regularly, but eat like pigs and not get thin?  It's a mystery.

As for my running, it's been a struggle lately. I'm still learning, since I had never gone jogging in my life until late last year.  Oh, I'd run plenty, I played youth soccer from about age 5-14, until I got sick of practice and always being the best (raw talent and speed, at least) kid on crappy teams. I tried to get back into it in high school, in 11th grade, and I was still pretty capable, but after a week of scrimmaging my knees were so dead that I was literally unable to walk a mile home without stopping to rest and almost cry two or three times. So I quit playing and took it easy for a couple of weeks, not even skateboarding any, and was pretty much okay after that.  I'd get occasional sore knees, ankles, feet, etc, while I worked at the stadium, and that kept me from ever doing any running type activities otherwise; I had to save my legs for the job that paid the bills.

Once I was into my 20s and no longer skateboarding or biking around for transportation/fun, I needed some sort of exercise, and rollerbladed for a while, and then took to riding a dirt bike. It's only been since I moved up to live with Malaya that I've gone to jogging, and it was going pretty well until I sprained my knee in early April. I had to rest for about three weeks, and since then I've been trying to get out twice a week, but haven't had the stamina I did before the injury, and I've had a lot more pain.

My shins have been aching every time, my low back and right hip keep tightening up and sending bolts of pain down my leg, etc. Tuesday (yesterday) I went out after taking 4 days off, and it was a wreck. Malaya dropped me off about 5 miles from home after we ran an errand, and I planned to run back, mostly over dirt trails. All went well for about the first half mile, but at that point my back started to hurt. It came and went, and then got progressively worse, to the point that I was not only not running, I was having trouble walking. Every step was sharp pain in my back and right hip, and I had to stop and bend over a dozen times, trying to loosen up the muscles.

I couldn't, at least not directly, but after walking a mile or so I loosened up a bit, and was able to jog some, mostly uphill where the footsteps weren't so jarring. The last 3-4 miles were much the same, with other things taking turns hurting. My shins began to ache as I jogged downhill for a bit, then my back as I walked, then my left knee after I came down hard one step, etc. About the only thing that didn't bother me was my wind or any side cramps, since I was never able to keep going for long enough at one time to get winded. And since the only reason I'm out there running is to get into better shape and lose some weight, it's pretty pointless if I'm so hurting that I can't.

So I guess I'll be looking for some other exercise now. At least for a while, while I heal up to be able to take high impact running again. Biking is the easiest alternative, but the reason I've not done much of it since I moved up here is that it takes too long. There aren't any real good dirt trails with hills in the immediate area, so I'd have to drive somewhere and then ride there. We see tons of bikers in the area, but it's all on the street, and I hate that sort of riding. It takes forever to get the sort of sweating workout I get in 45 minutes jogging, and I really don't trust drivers not to hit me while I'm riding on the shoulder of the road. Which I'd be doing a lot of since few of the roads here have adequate sidewalks. Hell, I was getting Steven King flashes today, just running on the side of the road for about the last half mile of my run, and I was at least 6 feet over, on a wide gravel shoulder.

Another option is rollerblading. Even though it doesn't seem like anyone does that anymore, and far fewer people do it up here than did down in San Diego anyway, I still have my old skates, and as I recall it was a lot of exercise. I don't trust the streets on skates any more than I do on foot or bike, but Lafayette Reservoir is a 3 mile route with lots of hills, and I'd jog it more often if it weren't hard pavement. They only allow skates or bikes on Tues and Thurs afternoons and Sunday mornings, but three days a week is about 1.5 more than I spend jogging now.

There's really no telling if the blades I haven't been on in like 4 years are still viable, or if I even remember how, but I guess there's one easy way to find out.