Schierer Space

No this is not a reminisce about the days when we thought cold fusion had been achieved… but a comment on the Gillette razor of the same name. I would normally link to Gillette’s website here, but it is so annoying ^[1] that I can’t bring myself to subject you to it.

Anyhow, I received one of these orange, blue and chrome marvels in the mail some many, many months ago as a promotion. Give a guy a razor and he’ll have to buy blades, right!? Wrong. I’m decidedly unimpressed. Here’s why:

First, some context.

1. I regularly use a Gillette Sensor Excel which has a solid metal handle, rubber grippies and a pivoting double-bladed head with a strip of white soapy stuff. I’ve pretty much been using this kind of razor since I started shaving somewhat regularly in college 15 years ago.^[2]
2. I haven’t used shaving cream, gel, lubricant, etc. regularly for probably 10 years. I shave in the shower, and I’m not the hairiest guy in town, so it’s generally not an issue. If I miss shaving for a few days (like a week), I usually wish I had some gel, but most days it’s no big deal.

When I ran out of blades a month or so ago, K suggested I use the FUSION. So I popped the 5 bladed neon monster out of the box and hung it in the shower.

The next day it took me about 3.7 hours to shave. Ok, I exaggerate, only 37 minutes. There are two major problems with this razor:

1. Relative to the Sensor Excel, the blade head is roughly the size of Montana.
2. Relative to the state of Montana, the blade head is roughly the size of Montana.

So I find that I have to press the razor into my face with about 4x the force I used to to get the blades to actually cut anything. It sort-of makes sense, with 5 blades instead of 2, the force per linear distance of blade is reduced by 2.5 times. In addition, the surface area of the surrounding blade head has increased, so the amount of force which actually causes the blades to reach your facial hair is reduced further. On the plus side, this did seem to cause significantly less irritation per pass, since the likelihood of the blades cutting anything, let alone your face, was similarly reduced.
Now we come to the problem which has plagued razors since their inception: human bodies (and especially faces) are very poorly approximated by the planar head of a razor. As such, the side of the razor tends to bump into objects that don’t wish to be shaved off like your lips, nose and ears. So the effective useful area of the Fusion razor was about 4 square inches on each of my cheeks and my neck. It was like trying to get a stretch Hummer down Lombard Street. Good thing they put that little trimmer blade on the back (yes! a sixth blade!) so I could shave the rest of my face.

I didn’t give up though and dutifully used the Fusion for a month or so, even after K had kindly replenished the supply of my standard shaving apparatus. Although I got considerably better at maneuvering the Nimitz class razor around my face, it still seemed to take considerably more passes to get the job done. A week ago, I finally switched back.

I nearly removed my face on the first stroke (high pressure on small surface area=BAD), but quickly recovered to my previous abilities.

Sorry Gillette. No deal.

1. There is an especially high-pitched chirp every time you mouse over a menu item that is overwhelming my audio “bear detector”. [↩]
2. Actually, I used an electric shaver most of the time while I was in college, but in grad school I could no longer afford to replace the little foil screen that wore out every six months and switched to blades. [↩]

One of the big news items in the last few days has been modifications to the failed bailout government bailout bill. One item that just floors me that has had quite a bit of discussion in the last few days is increasing the FDIC insurance limit on accounts from $100k to $250k.

Sounds great at the surface, right? Protect folks savings. Very important. Except, who with any real financial sense, has over $100k in savings sitting in an ordinary account at ONE bank? The current FDIC insurance protects retirement accounts (IRAs, not investments) up to $250k already per person, per bank. So if you have $100k in First Bank of Podunk and $100k in Last Bank of Podunk and $250k in your IRA at Podunk Bank, you’re fully insured by the fed already. So unless you have OVER $100lk in a single bank in ordinary bank accounts, this has NO impact on you.

This combined with the fact that the average savings rate in the US has been negative for years and declining prior to that for decades. I’m pretty convinced that only really really REALLY wealthy people have this kind of cash just sitting around liquid in CDs.

I’d like some more time to research this, but this is my gut reaction. How about reducing credit card rates so people can actually pay them off? That might affect most Americans.

Another couple of supposed “facts” from our company fitness center. Good thing they call them “factoids” because it’s hard to imagine where they come up with this stuff.

First: “The tongue is the strongest muscle.”
This seems to be the subject of great debate amongst purveyors of psuedo-science throughout the internet. I have to agree with those who declare simply that it is hard to imagine any objective criteria that would lead to the tongue being identified as the strongest. Wikipedia has a rather nice (if un-cited) list of potential strongest muscles using various criteria. Some say it is the strongest by size, but it’s not clear how one would measure this… ever try lifting a weight with your tongue? This useless answer on “wiki-answers” posits that your tongue will win a ‘finger war’ with your pinky… which of course must prove it is stronger than ANY other muscle. Oh… and for what it’s worth, my pinky wins.

Second: “Every 5mph over 60 is like paying an extra 10 cents per gallon for gas.”
This at least SEEMS plausible, but it certainly seems to be WAY to general. I would expect this to be a strong function of the efficiency of the car, the gearing, the aerodynamic properties, the base inefficiency of the vehicle (non aerodynamic losses) not to mention… THE PRICE OF GAS.
At www.fueleconomy.gov (yes there is one), the result is slightly different:

Observe the Speed Limit
While each vehicle reaches its optimal fuel economy at a different speed (or range of speeds), gas mileage usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 60 mph.
You can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.26 per gallon for gas.
Observing the speed limit is also safer.

Well that settles it for me!
What, you want some other opinions?

• EarthFirst.Com quotes: “Each 5 mph you drive over 60 is like paying an extra $0.30 per gallon for gas.”
• The Department of Energy quotes: “Each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.15 per gallon for gas.”
• US New & World Report quotes the EPA as saying: “According to the EPA, each 5 mph over 60 that you drive decreases fuel efficiency by up to seven percent.”
• NPR quotes the EPA as saying: “Assume that for every 5 mph you drive over 60 mph, you might as well be paying an additional $0.20 per gallon for gas.”

That definitely settles it! We need to do some math.
Q: What change in efficiency is required to cost an extra 10 cents per gallon of gas?
A: Here we go… (more…)

This article has been making some rounds on the ‘net due to a Slashdot posting.
The noise is along the lines of “Scientists prove carbon dating has errors therefore all carbon dating is fallacious!!” Let’s be clear: The inconsistencies identified by the source paper indicate errors on time-scales of 10 MILLION (that’s a thousand thousand) years.

I won’t attempt to pull a one-liner out of context from the paper to prove my point, instead I’ll emphasize a few words from the paper’s abstract.

The carbon isotopic (δ13C) composition of bulk carbonate sediments deposited off the margins of four carbonate platforms/ramp systems (Bahamas, Maldives, Queensland Plateau, and Great Australian Bight) show synchronous changes over the past 0 to 10 million years. However, these variations are different from the established global pattern in the δ13C measured in the open oceans over the same time period. For example, from 10 Ma to the present, the δ13C of open oceanic carbonate has decreased, whereas platform margin sediments analyzed here show an increase. It is suggested that the δ13C patterns in the marginal platform deposits are produced through admixing of aragonite-rich sediments, which have relatively positive δ13C values, with pelagic materials, which have lower δ13C values. As the more isotopically positive shallow-water carbonate sediments are only produced when the platforms are flooded, there is a connection between changes in global sea level and the δ13C of sediments in marginal settings. These data indicate that globally synchronous changes in δ13C can take place that are completely unrelated to variations in the global carbon cycle. Fluctuations in the δ13C of carbonate sediments measured during previous geological periods may also be subject to similar processes, and global synchroniety of δ13C can no longer necessarily be considered an indicator that such changes are related to, or caused by, variations in the burial of organic carbon. Inferences regarding the interpretation of changes in the cycling of organic carbon derived from δ13C records should be reconsidered in light of the findings presented here.

So yes, dates based on carbon dating may be wrong, but the only way this error can be identified is by looking at patterns that took 10 MILLION YEARS to occur.

Well not really, but it is mostly their fault. They built the stupid store on a busy intersection and have the annoying entrance JUST before a major intersection that causes no end to accident near misses.

Yes, I’m talking about the Home Depot in Dewitt, NY, which sits at the intersection of Bridge Street and Widewaters Parkway. You can see the Home Depot parking lot in the bottom of the Google satellite map below, with Widewaters Parkway running East-West (left-right). The Bridge Street intersection is to the left.

View Larger Map

Where the problem comes in is the lane marking on Widewaters Parkway in the middle of the image (you can zoom in if you want). You’ll see that westbound traffic as it approaches the Home Depot entrance has two lanes to choose from. An unmarked lane on the right, and a left turn only lane on the left. Immediately upon clearing the Home Depot entrance, the drive must now choose from the two right turn lanes or the one left turn lane. So if you’re planning to go south on Bridge Street you’re forced to choose between the lesser of two evils… A) get in the left turn lane BEFORE the Home Depot entrance and blow through the left turn into the Bridge Street left turn lane OR B) switch lanes from the unmarked lane into the left turn lane for Bridge Street while crossing the Home Depot access intersection. I choose B.

Now… put yourself in the shoes (or driver seat) of the frustrated contractor who’s just spent a fortune on 3 1/2″ dry wall screws and wants to get into one of the right hand turn lanes to get to their job site. They see me coming along in the far right lane and figure I’m planning on turning right… right? So they mash the accelerator on their big white panel van and careen out into the intersection (following the somewhat prominent tire tracks on the Google map).
“OH $#!T! That little rice burner [me!] is changing lanes! What is that A$$hole thinking?” So they quickly shorten their curve into the left turn lane.
Seeing the careening white van I apply liberal brake pressure and manage to slide in behind him. Now I find that the van is stopped in the left turn lane waiting for ME to go around him in one of the right lanes. I honk.
Now the van pulls into the center right turn lane and rolls down the window.
“This ought to be fun” I think, and roll down my window.
Cookie recipes successfully exchanged, we each drive on our somewhat grumpy way.

Way to go anonymous traffic engineer! Two more happy customers!

I’m sort-of anal when it comes to having standards compliant markup. So it annoys me to find out that YouTube’s default code for embedding videos is not compliant. Thanks to Bernie Zimmermann (and the commentors) for figuring out how to do this better.

You’ll need to change this*:

<object width="425" height="344">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/b3nodga6qmU&hl=en&fs=1"></param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/b3nodga6qmU&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed>
</object>


To this:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/b3nodga6qmU&hl=en&fs=1">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/b3nodga6qmU&hl=en&fs=1" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
</object>


Or copy the second block of code and paste the URL of the video of interest into the “data” and “value” fields. Also verify that the height and width are correct.

After our trip to Canada over the weekend to see Niagara Falls and other sights (pictures to follow in a later posting), we had the joy of experiencing the new and improved US border.

It took us about 2 hours to wait in line with the other cars for about 60 seconds with the border agent. What are we doing with all of the delay if the search is so cursory? I can only assume that somebody is getting the nth degree. The question, of course, is: Is it the right somebody?

Anyway, this sign says it all:

With NBC providing thousands of hours of Olympic coverage with broadcast, cable and online viewing available there is an overwhelming amount of viewing available. Now I hate watching the 45 second highlight clips intermixed with 45 minute human interest stories that make the prime-time Olympic magazine show. I want to sit down and watch some event to see what it is, or how it works and become an armchair judge (or in the case of Laser sailing… maybe learn something).

So I’m VERY disappointed in the NBC broadcast listings on their website. At first glance it seems like a lot of thought went into organizing the event and broadcast information, but extracting useful information from the NBC broadcast megaplex is nearly impossible.
(more…)

The title is not a British conservative commenting on the recent Nobel prize winner. It’s the literal interpretation. Therefore I must apologize for the juxtaposition of this blog entry with the previous one, but I won’t provide pictures so you have the opportunity to click away now if you are the squeamish type.

So our cats are becoming increasingly competent in catching mice and various other creatures of similar size. Unfortunately, they hadn’t quite learned what to do with said captives, so they usually deliver them to us still fully operational. I am forced to re-catch and dispatch the rodent myself with the cats looking on with only the slightest curiosity.

Not today… (more…)

I discovered today that we’ve somehow gotten off by a month on our Nathan albums in the Gallery. We, of course, managed this months ago (in like the 4th month). Of course, we should be in Nate’s 12th month now… not the 11th (as was previously in place). Age is a zero-based numbering scheme but the cardinal numbers associated with age are one-based. You’re immediately in your first year, which ends by turning one year old. So all of this geekiness aside, I fixed all of the albums and the links in the blog going back all the way to last summer. Unfortunately, this is a complete manual process.

The thumbnails displayed in the blog are interestingly enough permalinks, so the images are still visible after I change they’re albums. The links to the image pages in the gallery are not… they are ‘meaningful links’ like “Nathan/5th+Month/”. Unfortunately, this means that they break when the album hierarchy changes. Bleh.

I’ll probably look into changing this because this doesn’t really scale well into the future. I foresee all of Nate’s first year albums being organized into a new album when we break into his second year in a few weeks. This will require me to manually edit all of the links again. Bleh^2. I think I better figure out something better by then.