Base writing

So concludes 2010 for Just Enough Craig. I've decided to take a break from blogging for the entirety of January to refill my imagination and spirit and will resume in February. In the meantime, I leave you with my memory of a dream from two nights ago.

In it, I was running along a street and passed a parked sedan with Texas license plates. Nearby were a man and a woman, and to them I hailed with with a “Yea, Texas!” They then asked me if I was from Texas, and I responded that I was. I then found myself, via that blurry transition that happens only in dreams, no longer running but stopped and in conversation with the two.

“Where in Texas are you from?” they asked.

“Houston,” I said.

“Oh, we're from Katy. Is that anywhere near Houston?”

“Uh, yeah. It's probably going to be annexed by Houston any year now,” I said sarcastically.

“Oh. Well, we're not really from Katy. But we had you going, huh?”

Indeed they did. Strange how the mind cons itself even in its own dreamworlds.

2010, in review

While last year marked an unusually high frequency of falling off my bicycle—what with getting hit by a car twice, crashing within a race once, endo-ing into the transition area in a triathlon once, and falling off at least two or three more times with no one around to notice—this year I managed to avoid crashes altogether. However, the year wasn't without accidents; one can still have a bike accident while remaining fully mounted.

The first accident came on a Saturday long ride during spring when a lone dog herded me to a stop and then, in a flash, came up beside me and bit my leg. No provocation, just a darn sneaky attack. The bite required me making a stop at the med clinic and left me with a indelible dog-teeth tattoo on my left leg just above the ankle. Supposedly in another year I'll know for sure that I don't have rabies. If, during that time, I begin foaming at the mouth, don't come too close.

The details surrounding the second accident are a little hazy in my mind, possibly owing to the aforementioned dog attack. Not long after that dog attack, maybe even the following weekend, while riding with Laura on the Cave Creek bike path, I suffered a golf ball attack. On the portion of the path that runs parallel to the golf course, I just happened to ride my bike into the path of an errantly struck golf ball. Admittedly, this attack was no big deal because the ball took a few hops on the ground before striking me, so the blow was hardly painful. But what are the odds? I suppose the answer to that question depends on the golfer.

What I remember being interesting about the golf ball attack was how time really did seem to slow down as it happened, just like in the movies. I first heard the solid thud of the ball hitting the ground, followed by my eyes locking in on the ball and my mind realizing that the ball was headed right exactly in my direction. Little league baseball fielding skills did not take over as I flinched futilely, failing to evade the ball as it took one final “bad hop” and entered onto a trajectory that had it go right between my flailing hands and hit me square in the chest. I think I saved that golfer a stroke plus distance, and I didn't even get a “thank you.”

This year most of my riding was recreational rather than utilitarian, but I did get to see some interesting urban “wildlife”: a four-foot snake crossing the road (so close I may have even ridden over it!) on the way home from work late one night; a seven-inch-long turtle ambling in the grass along the canal path; and a dead, bloated fish lying on the dirt mere feet from the canal water. That fish was probably about thirty inches long, and I have the photo to prove it! The smell was awful, especially considering it took the SRP guys three or four days to get around to disposing of it.

I also got to see a drowned car in the canal. Someone presumably pushed a car into the shallow water, and predictably the top of the car didn't submerge before the tires parked themselves on the bottom. What remained was the top twelve inches or so of a sedan, unmoving amid the nearby ducks and fellow-drowned shopping carts (and other debris) along the canal floor. I saw the car on my way to work in the morning. By the time I arrived, police and towing crew were already there on the scene.

In non-biking news, this year I had two resolutions, and I succeeded with both of them.

1. Watch no more than two movies in the movie theater.

2. Blog each Monday and Thursday.

The movie-limit resolution I came up with in order to cut down on passive entertainment expenses (both in time and money) as well as simply cutting back on my Hollywood addiction. The regular-blogging resolution I came up about a month into the year, thus making it something of a post ex facto resolution. No bother. It was a worthy goal, and with the exception of messing up the auto-post scheduler when I was in Houston for the Thanksgiving holiday and thus being late one Monday, I succeeded in my goal. Hurray to me.

Looking forward to the future, as far as blogging goes, I aim to respond to each and every reader comment on Just Enough Craig in 2011. I won't guarantee any timeliness of the response, and I won't guarantee the quality of the response's content, but I will respond.

That's the JEC wrap-up for 2011. All in all, it was another good year.

Base sleeping

Though the alarm clock that guarantees I'm up and awake in time for my Tuesday and Thursday morning ride—which I shirked this morning in favor of staying dry instead—springs to life just as precisely on-time and blares just as loud during the dark and cold winter months, I consider myself something of a seasonal sleeper. That is, I aim to adjust my sleeping pattern over the course of the year to coincide, somewhat, with the lengthening and shortening of the days.

In endurance training there's the concept of base training. Its basic idea is simple: train easy and allow the body time to recover while remaining plenty active. Elite athletes, the ones who train inconceivably hard for much of the year, sometimes do base training and only base training for months at a time during the off season; their bodies need that much rest after the demands of the racing season are done. I look at sleeping in a similar manner; let's call it base sleeping.

The basic idea of base sleeping is simple: during summer, when the days are long, it's generally okay to push the body through times of little sleep; during winter, when the days are short, it's best then to recover, to go to sleep a little earlier at night and awake a little later in the morning.

My primary premise for base sleeping is thatle it's easier to fall asleep when light input to the retinas is kept to a minimum—i.e., when it's dark. It follows then, without modern light-emitting technology to which homo sapiens is not yet fully adapted, winter is the time for more sleeping and summer is the timer for less. My own personal preference, excluding the Tuesday and Thursday alarm clock and the other need-to-wake-up-by-this-time mornings, is to avoid the alarm clock altogether and consequently to settle into the pattern of waking up around the time of the day's first light. At night, my preference, excluding the too-frequent last-minute cranking out of a JEC blog post or some other such illumination-needed activity, is to keep the lights dim and naturally fall asleep not long after the sun is done for the day—within reason. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy camping. Not only do I get to enjoy my preference nearly spot on, but even the type of people who, upon reading this essay and insist that, no, they don't feel much natural tie to the daylight rhythms of the seasons, more often than not find themselves retiring to the sack not long after the sunset. There's a unique peacefulness of a camp settling down for quiet sleep in accord with sun and earth, and it gives me joy to be a part of it. However, my preference does not match up well with modern convention. Laura, I'll admit, is far from sold on my philosophy of sleep.

Convention, at least among most of the working-stiff middle class, tells us that we should be waking up about the same time year-round, weekends and other days-off being the exception. Convention tells us that regardless whether first daylight arrives before 5AM or after 7AM, we should show up to work at about the same time. Afternoon and evening scheduling, from indoor get-togethers to what's playing on television, suggests that regardless whether it's first dark outside at 6PM or 8PM, our evening and nightly routines should be about the same year-round. In my opinion, this is absurd. It's also not how our ancestors lived until only very recently, as in the last few centuries.

Though it's gaining traction as of late, the history of sleep is not something we hear much about, which is strange given how so many people in modern, industrialized societies have trouble doing it. Pre-industrial sleep patterns are actually rather different from modern norms. Absent those light-emitting devices, from the ubiquitous light bulb to my laptop's LCD monitor that's inundating my retinas with photons right now as I type this, most people feel a strong desire for sleep soon after the day's light fades away, regardless whether the day is a long summer day or a short winter one. Similarly, most people, absent alarm clocks and those light-emitting devices, feel little need to awake much if any before the next day's first light. But during the winter the dark of night may last well over half the twenty-four-hour day. How did pre-industrialized people sleep so long?

The answer is that often they didn't. Adults often awoke sometime around the middle of night, say around midnight, and stayed awake for up to a few hours before returning to the mat to slumber away the remaining hours of the night. During that wakeful period at night, people were alert and active, getting done many of the things for which they had not enough time to do during the daylight hours. Such a sleeping pattern is called biphasic sleep.

The history of sleep is an interesting one. Still, the fact remains that we are an industrialized people, and we enjoy our light-emitting devices, and it then follows that perhaps we should have a different pattern of sleep. However, I reject the notion that our light-emitting devices have completely smoothed over all the natural, year-long fluctuations in sleeping rhythms and that we should seek a one-day-fits-all pattern to the whole year. I find base sleeping to be a good compromise.

Turning the corner

Several years ago, while visiting my friend Kaleem in Houston, I was afforded my first (and, to this day, only) opportunity to step inside a mosque. Our purpose for our visit was that Kaleem wanted to participate in the mosque's evening prayer, and I would get a chance to see his place of worship.

While Kaleem and his fellow mosque-goers prayed, I, the infidel, remained in the mosque's entry hall, examining the various bulletins and postings on the walls and otherwise biding my time. The bulletins were all pretty typical “church” sorts of stuff, with various community notices and the like, until I saw a chart of sunrise and sunset times for the whole year. My interest piqued.

Muslim prayer times are scheduled according to the sun's position, with one of the daily salah prayers taking place at sunrise and another taking place at sunset. Thus, it's handy for a Muslim to have available a chart of sunrise and sunset times so that he can plan his day more easily. I found the chart handy because I noticed a peculiar detail I had never before realized about our earth: the earliest sunset of the year occurs (in the Northern Hemisphere) weeks before the winter solstice, and the latest sunrise occurs weeks after the solstice. I.e., sunrises and sunsets are not symmetrical over the moment of the solstice. Why is this?

Tomorrow, in Phoenix, as in most timezones in the Northern Hemisphere, is this year's winter solstice. You can get into the winter mood and stump many of your friends at the same time by asking when the earliest sunset and latest sunrise occurs in the year. Some will probably not believe you initially when you factually and correctly answer that the earliest sunset occurred in the first week of December and many will probably not believe you when you state that the latest sunrise of the year occurred over eleven months ago (i.e., during the first week of January), but there you have it. But why?

Answering this question takes the asker on a wonderful trip of examining how our world hurls through space. As most people know, most of the length of a day is determined by the axial tilt of the planet away or towards the sun. During summer, one's hemisphere tilts towards the sun, and the days are long. During winter, the hemisphere tilts away from the sun, and the days are short. So far, so good. But why don't sunrises and sunsets match up precisely with day lengths?

The answer is that there are additional factors. Mainly, there's one additional factor that matters at the scales we care about, and that's the distance from the earth to the sun. Causing no end of confusion and frustration to the ancients, the earth does not orbit the sun in a perfect circle but instead follows an elliptical orbit whereby the earth happens to be nearest to the sun during the Northern Hemisphere's winter and farthest from the sun during the Northern Hemisphere's summer. (The earth is nearest and farthest from the sun at its perihelion and aphelion, respectively, with the perihelion occurring in the first week in January and the aphelion occurring in the first week in July—so close to the solstices.)

What matters for timekeeping here on earth is that the earth moves through space fastest (relative to the sun) at its perihelion and slowest at its aphelion, just as a comet zips quickly around the sun at its perigee and dawdles in the cold of space at its apogee, just as a baseball thrown high in the air moves fastest when it is nearest to the ground and slowest at the top of its arc. But while comets have highly elliptical orbits and change speeds drastically, the earth's orbit is much less eccentric, with the result that the difference between the fastest and slowest of the earth's orbital velocities is only about 3%. But what does this have to do with timekeeping?

There's another great question, related to all this, with which to stump your friends: how many times does the earth rotate in a given year? The obvious answer is 365 rotations with 366 on leap year—i.e., the number of days in a year. However, the correct answer is 366 rotations with 367 on leap year; one rotation is “lost” during the earth's revolution around the sun. You can act this out to see for yourself by finding some object, such as a chair or tree, with cleared space all around it to play the part of the sun and you, walking fully around the object, to play the part of the earth. Only, walk such that you always face one direction, say north. After completing one revolution around the sun, you will have rotated exactly zero times, though you will have simulated one day/night cycle because part of the time you will have faced the sun and part of the time you will have faced away from the sun. Thus, the number of rotations a planet undergoes is always one greater or fewer by one than the number of noons or midnights that that planet experiences; in the earth's case, it happens to be one greater.

What this has to do with timekeeping and sunrises and sunsets is that while the earth takes a fixed amount of time to complete one full rotation, it takes a variable amount of time to complete what we observe as a day—except that nowadays we define a day to be 24 hours long. The length of a solar day, the amount of time between the sun being at its highest point in the sky from one day to the next day, varies by up to a few minutes throughout the year, depending on one's latitude. During the Northern Hemisphere's winter solstice, the solar day is a little longer. Thus, both the sunrise and sunset are each offset a little later, as measured by a 24-hour clock, than they would be otherwise, if the earth orbited along a perfect circle. Thus it is that the sunrises and sunsets don't match up precisely with the day lengths.

The practical effect of this is that while tomorrow marks the year's winter solstice (for the Northern Hemisphere) and the shortest day of the year, we have about another two weeks to go before arriving at what I think of as the more significant of the astronomical events—what I call “turning the corner”, the day of the latest sunrise. Only after that day, occurring in the first week of January each year here in Phoenix, do my morning bicycle rides begin lighting up a little brighter each day.

Salvage

Ever since my touring bicycle was stolen, I've been riding my old fixed-gear Schwinn Tempo for utility rides, such as getting to and from work and the grocery store—though one is, of course, free to question the utility of going to work. And riding the Schwinn has reminded me how, with a little effort and know-how, old road bikes remain great rides and how fixed-gear bicycles are fun rides and, most importantly of all, that one needn't spend a lot of money to get around town in comfort and ease and to participate in the city's great network of bike routes.

It's not just that one needn't spend a lot on transportation; having my bike stolen taught me that one shouldn't spend a lot on transportation—or at least not its utilitarian forms. Locking up a bicycle in a seedy public location is semi-stupid when that bicycle costs on the order of $1000. Chop a zero off that figure, and one can afford to have one bicycle stolen per month and still manage to spend less on transportation than motorists do and even the motorists who buy cheap and drive their cars into the ground.

Awhile ago, I wrote about how the fuel costs of bicycling and motoring are not that greatly different. Kilocalorie for kilocalorie, gasoline remains some of the cheapest food on the planet and far cheaper than anything humans can digest. Bicycling pulls slightly ahead of motoring with regard to fuel costs because with bicycling the transportation machine itself weighs literally a ton or more less, and far less energy is needed to move a bicycle than an automobile, mile for mile.

However, fuel costs are but a fraction of one's transportation costs and especially so for motoring. There are also depreciation, maintenance, and insurance costs. At the time I rid myself of my car, I figured car ownership cost me about $2k/yr, all things considered. As it happens, I spend much more than this on bicycling, but that has to do with racing and training and all my non-utilitarian bicycling pursuits. Actual utility pursuits of bicycling needn't be greater than a couple hundred dollars for depreciation and maintenance and, frankly, I figure most people would gladly pay $2k/yr to be able to eat 3,000-5,000 kcal daily and be my size. This is to say that measuring fuel costs in money alone doesn't do bicycling justice.

Also, my estimation of $2k/yr for car ownership is rather cheap compared to most people's car-ownership costs. Most car owners pay at least $2k/yr for depreciation alone: e.g., a $20k car owned for 10 years. Figuring that a lot of middle-class people pay more for their cars, own them for less time, drive them more miles and consume more gas than I did, and have more serious mechanical problems than I ever did, one begins to see how much of a racket transportation can be. A lot of folks' paychecks are largely redirected right back to paying for the machine that they use to go to work each morning.

Though I've been car-free for a little over two years and car-light if you consider that Laura owns a car (and takes the bus to work most mornings!), I was suckered into my own transportation racket by riding my too-nice touring bicycle around town for utility trips. Transportation is about (1) getting to where you're going and (2) having fun doing so. I don't speak for others when I say that, for me, any right-sized, well maintained road bike makes accomplishing #2 automatic. That leaves #1 and my recently relearned lesson that a cheap bike can work just as well as an expensive bike. I think the key word for accomplishing #1 is salvage. I ended up riding too much bike around town because I garnered expectations as to what my bicycle should be. I became particular about my method for accomplishing #1. Now, I'm riding my Schwinn not because it's the bike I want to be riding but because it's the bike that was easily and cheaply available at the time my other bicycle was stolen. If my Schwinn is stolen from me, too, then I'll replace it with whatever happens to be easily and cheaply available at that time. Salvage.

Except the saddle. There's nothing quite like the comfort of riding around town with butt atop a well made leather saddle. I question my judgment when I lock my Schwinn to a bike rack and leave my saddle exposed to theft. Perhaps instead I should be locking my saddle to the bike rack and exposing my bicycle to theft?

Thoughts after a half marathon

Staring out the car window at the Sonoran landscape blurring by, some things were brought into sharper focus.

I'm fortunate that Laura and I both enjoy our camping + racing routine. Money alone would be a good enough reason to combine the two activities; races are unduly expensive. The half marathon in which we participated this previous weekend cost about $80 each. Triathlons, with their need for additional support and their longer, multi-discipline courses encompassing water and land both, tend to cost more. Only some local, “pure” cycling races are cheap, and by “pure” I mean races where your team is suppose to provide you your support and the whole event is relegated to middle-of-nowhere places where it hardly matters whether the roads are closed to public traffic during the race. (They're not.) As it is, most other races cost a pretty penny, and so it's good when one must travel to compete to save on hotel expenses by rooming in what nature affords each and every one of us.

But, of course, money isn't the only reason for camping on race weekends. Camping provides another benefit over hotel-ing, and that's adversity. Even on weekends like this last one, when we stay in a park with designated campgrounds (and for a fee), your bed is not made for you. The air is neither temperature- nor moisture-controlled, though more often than not Arizona weather is conducive for being in the outdoors. Instead, simple, routine acts like finding a spot for the tent, erecting it, and breaking it down in the morning are activities that foster a sense of teamwork. Cuddling together for warmth in the cool, desert night air hints at some of nature's basic reasons for keeping such a close distance to another. In the everything-is-predictable environment of the hotel, it's easy to nitpick against he or she with whom you're sharing your space because negativity is a luxury afforded only to those whose goings are easy. And though camping is sometimes easy, it requires hands and head both to be put to work and makes for a more positive atmosphere.

So, as I was staring out that car window on the way back to Phoenix, I couldn't help but entertain a contrary thought: how important is the racing part of the camping + racing formula? Now, before the world is painted in black and white and all things are subjected to a sophomoric duality, let me make clear that despite whatever criticism I'm about to unleash on them, races are positive events that help direct a great many people from otherwise pursuing self-damaging activities. Probably at this point nearly everyone knows someone who turned their life around by discovering running or triathlon or some other competitive racing. So racing has definite positive points.

Rather, what I question is what I've written about previously: balance. Where is the healthy point somewhere between unhealthy disinterest and unhealthy obsession? As I looked out that car window, I wondered about what I'm missing while I whittle away weekends pursuing long rides and base miles and edging ever closer to being a competitive age grouper. I live in one of the most amazing places on the planet, mere hours away from what is for practical purposes an endless supply of unique, fantastic places to explore and experience, and it seems likelier than not that I'm not taking advantage.

Training produces a material effect not much different than does any other material pursuit. Just as it can be difficult to part with a physical object once obtained (so named the endowment effect, such as how a dog is likely to fight harder for a bone once tasted than an equal bone as yet untasted), hard exercise yields as its fruit one of life's most satisfying physical objects: a fit body, the one physical object that you take with you everywhere you go. For those of us who do indeed observe immediate and gratifying changes in our bodies owing to exercise, it can be extremely hard to let go of. And it shouldn't be let go of, not all the way. Pleasure is one tool with which we are equipped to pursue a good life. But pleasure can mislead, as any number of substance-abuse problems demonstrate aptly.

But just like any other unnecessary physical object, it's all too easy to overestimate the benefit of and underestimate the maintenance cost of a racing-fit body. What I tell myself is that racing is not an anytime pursuit. As one ages, one eventually reaches one's peak potential and begins a terminal decline. Arguably, our peaks, as measured in potential and not in actual fact, occurs sometime in our mid-twenties, and I'm thus well past mine. However, what I know is that while I continue to train hard now, I continue to progress and improve (probably owing to having sat out much of my early twenties). After spending the previous couple of years dedicating a goodly portion of my life to training, progression and improvement is slowing down and a lot. Eventually, they will flatten completely and reverse, a trend that will be made obvious by universal access to race results on the Web. Hopefully, at the least, by such time I will have found an appropriate balance.

HOP

4:05AM. Alarm. Wake up. By now I know the routine well: food, water, clothes, and toilet. In the cool December mornings the “clothes” part takes more time: base layer, outer layer, balaclava, two pairs of gloves, booties. I prepared the bike the night before, and it's ready with tires pumped and lights and Garmin charged. In just under 30 minutes, I'm out the door, and though chilled by the cool morning air rushing past me, I'm in my own separate peace with headlights filling the void in front and taillight beaconing behind me.

I ride past the sleeping mall and turn onto the canal path, which will take me to my old area of town. About a thousand heartbeats along the way I warm up, and my legs enter into a steady rhythm. My mind enters into a happy, semi-unconscious state where miles are eaten up and time passes mostly unfelt. Awhile later, I turn off the path and cut through an exclusive neighborhood. Staffed guard shacks block my preferred route, and I'm forced to climb up around the long way and then descend down. Going uphill is hot and well lit; descending is a cold plunge into darkness, with my bike continuously outrunning its own headlights.

I continue snaking through neighborhoods until I reach Camelback Mountain. My destination is on the other side of the Mountain—which way to go? A check of the time tells me that I have extra time this morning, so I turn right and head the long way around. Because I have lots of extra time, I choose the route that involves a short though steep switchback. Then I shoot down a straightaway like a missile and easy-pedal the remaining mile to my destination. Some fifteen-plus miles through a Phoenix with mostly everyone still asleep in bed, I'm ready to begin my ride.

The Hour of Power bicycle ride soldiers on through these cold and dark months every Tuesday and Thursday at 5:30AM, like a stolid refusal to acknowledge the seasons. However, the ride is small, with usually no more than half a dozen riders on any one morning, and sometimes the group is just oneself. This morning the group starts out as two and picks up four more or so along the way. It's a good turnout for December, but even so there's no hiding within the group this morning, and it proves to be a tough workout.

Our route is the same as it is during the summer, the Paradise Valley loop. At the end we turn around and do some of it again in reverse, also just like in summer. I have no idea how long this ride has been going on; even guys who have been doing it for a decade have no idea how the whole thing started. It's a short route suitable for a weekday morning, no farther than the route I took to arrive at the ride. And I'm reminded it's a weekday morning just as I part ways with the others to head back home alone. At this time the first gray hints of the new day are emerging in the east, and like clockwork the cars have begun spilling onto the roads. Gone is the separate peace of the city still asleep.

Spare thoughts

Lately at work I find myself enjoying the too-rare rare opportunity of just coding. With nothing and nobody in my way, I have a straightforward release goal that's feasible and interesting. The feasibility part I figured out last week by making sure that everything that needs to be done can be done. Now what's left is the part I find most interesting: organizing my thoughts into something clear and concise and creating something elegant. This is what draws many software developers to our jobs: the joy of getting paid to solve fun problems. For me and my current, two-week project, it feels like seeing a finish line off in the distance and having the fresh legs to sprint ahead for a strong finish.

Hopefully this weekend's “real life” activities will go similarly well. Laura and I will be running in the Tucson Half Marathon, so we'll be doing our camp + race out-of-town routine. For Laura, this is her “comeback” half after dealing with a prolonged set of various over-training injuries most of the year. For me, this will be my second half and the first for which I'm at least semi-prepared. Unlike for my previous half marathon, for which I ran no farther than five or six miles on any training run and no more than about thirty miles in all, this time I've trained somewhat respectably, with a long run each weekend. On Thanksgiving Morning I ran a flat ten-mile race with tired legs and managed a 6:48/mile pace. This puts me at a faster clip than my minimum goal to break 1:30 for the half but not by much. The race course is downhill almost the whole way, and a better pre-race prep should help. On the other hand, I haven't found any information on which starting wave I'll be in, so I'm worried I won't be up at the front with runners my own speed and might have to work through the mid-pace masses. We'll see…

With all the “pure” running training I've been doing lately, I've become interested in trying out a lighter shoe, like the Vibram Five Fingers. Apparently, a lifetime (or partial lifetime) of walking and running in shoes that support and cushion our feet cause our feet—surprise!—to weaken. I was talking about this with my dad while home this Thanksgiving break (later, after the race), and he mentioned how he recently discovered that his arches have flattened out after six decades of use while his frequently barefooted brother-in-law a decade his senior still has well arched feet. On the other hand, still-in-his-twenties Coworker Shafik has recently caused himself knee problems by running in Five Fingers because his foot was absorbing shock in a suboptimal way and the minimalist shoe wasn't compensating, thus leading to an overstressed knee.

So what to do? Wear over-supporting shoes and lose my arches slowly or force my feet to toughen up and possibly cause damage faster? This raises an interesting point that arises in a multitude of scenarios: there's hardly a technology out there that doesn't involve a trade-off. No free lunch. (And if you don't perceive a trade-off, then it's likely that you're not looking hard enough.) If nothing else, the use-it-or-lose-it factor too often creates a serious downside to technologies that otherwise would make our lives go better in all cases.

Now that I'm a little older, I try to keep the perspective that the goal is to get the most out of the body by whatever means possible. Just as some people say that it's best to die just after having spent one's last dollar, I think the ideal is to die just before the body breaks down and begins having serious problems from a lifetime of overuse. Or, to put this a different way, if supposing you were to live forever, then wearing over-supporting shoes would be a bad idea; doing so makes one dependent on an infinite supply of a specific set of shoe technologies. Rather, the optimal solution would be to wear as little foot support as possible, bear the short-term pains of the transition, and develop and maintain tough feet indefinitely. However, you won't live forever, and so in some ways it makes sense to manage the slow decline of flattening arches and avoid catastrophic damage.

I don't have a solution to this problem, though I suspect the most practical solution is a balance between support and toughening up. It's worth keeping in mind, though, wherever this trade-off presents itself, that the distinction between helping and hurting is not always so clearly cut.

Mind

The universe, at least on the scales at which we observe it, is continually running down to ever less-ordered states—i.e., entropy is increasing. However, this running down is not distributed evenly; some parts of the universe run down faster than other parts, like how a large star burns itself up quicker than a small star. Some parts are even running up, such as the creation of a star from the accretion of enormous quantities of diffuse hydrogen atoms. On the whole, there's nothing unusual about the uneven distributions of entropy. It's much like how even within the mightiest of rivers you'll find eddies whereby water flows upstream and how even during an economic recession some people become wealthier. So it is with our universe, at least on the scales at which we observe it. On average the universe is becoming more disordered but some isolated pockets are becoming more ordered and more complex.

Earth's biosphere is an example of such an isolated pocket of increasing order. Observing it a few billion years in action, we see a wide range of complexity within it, from the relatively low-ordered state of inorganic matter such as rocks and streams to the high-ordered states of living things.

Part of life's upward climb in complexity, rare though non-unusual that upward climb is, has entailed the ongoing creation of ever more adaptive capacities in organisms. Ever since the first primitive organisms ran into conflict over limited resources, living things here on Earth have been locked in an arms race for adapting ever fitter forms and functions. Eventually, after eons of such change, some organisms crossed a threshold whereby they had evolved a central nervous system, which allows some adaptations to the environment to be made in real-time. Not that these first central nervous systems contained sentience. At first, even a primitive central nervous system provided a huge survival advantage over organisms that did not possess one, but arms races being what they are, soon the central nervous system itself became subject to the upward climb in complexity, and the result was ever bigger, ever more powerful brains.

Life's main adversary is life itself, and eventually some organisms came to benefit by possessing a brain capable of predicting the outcomes of brains of other organisms. Such predictive power enables one organism to anticipate another organism's actions and respond accordingly, like when a predator figures out the likeliest flight pattern for its chosen prey and cuts off that escape before flight even begins. This predictive power is the epitome of on-the-fly adaptiveness.

The way a brain predicts the outcomes of another brain is by “simulating” that other brain. The simulating brain generalizes and models the other brain and then “runs” the model to figure out what that other brain is likely to do. The simulating brain does not and cannot contain an actual copy of the other brain; it has no notion of the other brain's low-level neural activities. Rather, the simulating brain works through the high-level process of approximating the end result of all that low-level activity in the other brain.

There's great power in improved prediction of other organisms' brains, and the ideal such predicting brain is one that can universally model any other brain, not just some specific brains, like with a predator whose brain models only a few prey organisms' brains. Rather, such a “universal modeler” brain is able to peer in on any other brain and anticipate any type of outcome, even purely hypothetical ones. The human brain is the closest manifestation of a universal modeler.

Indeed, the adult human brain is not merely the closest manifestation to the ideal; it has surpassed a critical threshold in universality in that it can model even itself. An adult human brain can predict its own futures outcomes. This self-reflexivity is not unlike a camera taking a photograph of itself or a dictionary containing an entry for “dictionary”.

The human brain is not only capable of modeling itself, it does so much of the time. This is consciousness, the turned-on-most-of-the-time inward peering of a brain contemplating itself. But just as a camera cannot photograph itself without some trickery (e.g., a mirror or a preexisting photograph taken using another camera) and limitations (i.e., loss of fidelity), the self-modeled brain is grainy and distorted; the abstraction leaks. There is no end to the psychological havoc that this causes to the simulating mind (and to the simulated mind! (and to the simulated mind's simulated mind! (and to the simulated mind's simulated mind's simulated mind! (...!)))). The mind cannot even “see” the simulation process itself, for the simulation process is the mind. Even as I write these words, my own mind is only thinking about the simulation process and without any innate understanding of the process. The result is that the mind is continually stumped by the questions: “What am I?” and “Where am I?” We cannot answer these questions other than to say that the mind is a low-fidelity, feeding back onto itself, a kind of grainy infinity, like a hall-of-mirrors effect caused by looking at two mirrors aimed at each other. The mind is not separate from, not without, and not within the brain; it is the whole of the brain and the whole of being. Consciousness is not a core lurking somewhere within (and certainly not without!); it is everything tangled up in itself. Though there is no end to how special and rare the conscious mind is, there's nothing unusual about it.

Indeed, it is exactly that there is nothing unusual about the mind that makes it so special.

A musing: measuring value

In the previous post, I asked how much of what humans consume is produced through non-human means. That question hits upon one of my core criticisms of modern economics, which is that though economics is the discipline that is suppose to be able to compare apples to oranges, it is, in my opinion, exceedingly bad at doing just that. However, to the discipline's credit, comparing apples and oranges may turn out to be a fundamentally hard problem.

The recessionary events of the last few years have hopefully stirred up people's imaginations and led them to asking, “What's going on?” What finer question can one ask! For those of us who disfavor resorting to simple, ready-made answers to such involved and difficult questions, we soon run into a core problem in economics: by what unit do we measure value? An apple's value can easily be compared to an orange's if apple and orange both can be converted to some common medium of exchange. In the case of real-world apples and oranges and most anything else, that medium of exchange is currency, and in my country, the dollar.

However, most of what accounts for wealth these days is not in the form of apples or oranges or anything else tangible and intrinsically valuable. It's in the form of strictly monetary assets such as bank account balances, shares of stock, mortgages, futures, options, and so on, all of which are reducible to someone somewhere promising to pay something to someone sometime else—IOUs. Or, on the flip side, someone somewhere staking a claim on some future production. One problem this poses for us is: if most of what constitutes wealth nowadays is money, then how accurate is it to use money itself as measurement of value? It's easy to know the length of things when you have a ruler, but if everything in the room is a ruler, and every ruler has a different-sized inch, then it's nigh hopeless to know the length of anything. That's irony. It's also what passes for modern-day mainstream economics. We know the price of so much but struggle with knowing value and thus with questions such as, “How we doing compared to X years ago?”

There's a Native American proverb that says, “Only when the last tree has been cut down; only when the last river has been poisoned; only when the last fish has been caught; only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.” As stupidly simple as this is, it's worth repeating that money has no intrinsic value, and so the value of measuring the value of something like an apple or orange in dollars is done so with the expectation that dollars are stable and universally transferable. Currency itself is otherwise meaningless as a metric. History shows this assumption holds true most of the time and fails spectacularly during the remainder. So it is that I expect an economist to relate the value of things in dollars or any other currency most of the time but not to rely upon the conversion exclusively. But that is not what I observe in fact. Stats such as GDP and trade deficit/surplus are attempts to squeeze value into currency alone, and such monetary metrics appear to hold a monopoly over the minds of mainstream economists. The problem with the strategy is that a significant portion of the production being measured is itself money.

I think the reason for this shortcoming is that we haven't yet figured out a suitable alternate metric. My own guess is that there doesn't exist a simple scalar unit any better than currency; any superior alternative won't mask as much of the complexity of the measurement as currency does. The situation reminds me of truing a bicycle wheel. For those of you who haven't ever attempted to true a wheel, know that it's a hard task that's more art than science. A bicycle rim is made into a circle (or something closely approximating a circle) by adjusting the tension of the spokes. Each tightening or loosening of any one spoke affects the tension of the many spokes near it so that fixing a wobble in one part of the rim may create another wobble or two elsewhere. There's no simple way to analyze a wobbly rim and say, “Aha! That's the one spoke that needs to be adjusted and by yea much.” The practical way to true a wheel is to start at the biggest wobble by adjusting its nearest spokes and then work outward spoke by spoke, possibly many times, to minimize the effects of the spreading waves of newly introduced wobbles. Eventually, if you're doing more good than harm, the wheel is made true enough.

So I suspect that something similar is going on with economics. Any measure of value is hopelessly tied to something else of value, and I suspect that any superior metric won't hide the resulting non-linearity. But what would such a metric look like?

A question: production

I messed up the scheduling for auto-posting what should have been last Thursday's post. Here it is with the usual apologies for lateness. Have a happy Saturday After Thanksgiving.

Today I'd like to pose a question. It's one that's too tough to answer, but it's fun to think about how one would even go about trying to answer it. That said, here's the question.

How much of what all of humanity consumes is not produced by humans?

Some of what we consume is produced because of human-driven processes, and some of what we consume is not. For example, only humans are capable of assembling the laptop I'm using to compose this blog entry, and thus laptop assembly is produced by humans. However, the sweet potato I'm planning on eating for supper tonight was created due to many non-human inputs, such as sunshine and photosynthesis, and if I didn't buy my food through the grocery store and the industrial agriculture machine but instead grew the potato myself then the percentage of non-human inputs could have been larger. For example, the potato could have been grown without chemical fertilizers or irrigation but instead only have used naturally existing soil nutrients and rainfall. Well, probably not rainfall. Not here in Phoenix.

Indeed, little is entirely human- or non-human-made. The most “natural” of resources must often be transported to their place of consumption, and transportation involves some bit of human input, whether it's trucked (a complex activity) or tossed into a river to float downstream (a simple activity). Contrary, the most “unnatural” of resources, such as my laptop, contain countless raw inputs that cannot be synthesized through human means alone. In the case of my laptop, even the humans assembling it require countless non-human-made inputs, especially if they're eating organic sweet potatoes on their lunch breaks. An input of an input is still an input.

The proposed question is hard exactly because it seeks to quantify a supply chain that, in theory, regresses backwards in time to a seeming infinity of breadth. Each supply-chain input to my laptop has its own production process involving many more inputs, each with its own production process with even more inputs and so on. If you go back far enough, everything we touch, including ourselves, is nothing but exploded stardust. But the question isn't intended for reduction to absurdity. Rather, it's intended to ask: how much of what we're consuming can we give ourselves credit for producing? Do humans account for the production of even half of what we consume?

These questions have to do with a problem with modern mainstream economic thought: that which cannot be monetized cannot be accounted for and therefore isn't accounted for. My laptop cost me about 1,000 sweet potatoes (I know, I overpaid for that video and memory upgrade), a comparison that I can make because both laptop and sweet potato alike can be converted to a common medium, the dollar. But how much is the air I'm breathing worth, measured in dollars? Right now, it's worth nothing because there's no shortage of it (and no control over it). But if there were a shortage then it would become priceless. Either way, air is something that cannot easily be priced, and yet air is obviously critically important and oxygen specifically—volatile and short-lived free oxygen—is available only because of the biosphere's photosynthetic processes going on right now. No laptop is going to be assembled without those photosynthetic processes. How does one account for that in the ledger? Think about the matter a little more and you'll undoubtedly be able to come up with many more natural, “priceless” supply-chain inputs like sunshine and rainfall for the production of nearly anything, but being priceless, the inputs aren't accounted for and cannot be accounted for. But of course, not being accounted for doesn't make an input any less critical.

Inexpressible in C

Recently at work I encountered something I'd never previously seen in the C language: an inexpressible pattern.

(To note: I'm using the term “pattern” here to denote a design at an abstract, conceptual level, like where someone may say, “Just code the state machine in a switch block within a while loop.” In such a case, implementing a state machine where each state comprises its own unique case block within the switch constitutes a pattern.)

What I ran into at work was a pattern—something I wanted to implement—but couldn't because the language won't allow it. I don't remember this ever happening in C. Sure, there are countless patterns that are ridiculously awkward when expressed in C—for example, object hierarchies—but this pattern I wanted to implement cannot be expressed at all, as far as I can figure out.

What pattern is this? Succinctly, it's the pattern of “a function that returns a pointer to its own type.” This may sound simple enough, but it can't be done—not directly, not exactly, at least—in C. A little code may illustrate best what I'm writing about.

typedef void * (foo_t)(void);

foo_t *bar(void);

Above is a function, bar, that almost returns a pointer to its own type. What it returns is a pointer to a function that returns a pointer to any type, which presumably could be the address of bar. Of course, if I were tolerant of void pointers being tossed about, I could have made things much simpler, like so:

void *bar(void);

Here, bar could return its own address or the address of any other function with the same type or any address at all. But what I wanted to express was a function type, foo_t, that returns a specifically typed pointer to its own type. And that can't be done (as far as I can figure out) because one must replace the void * in the typedef declaration with a infinite regression of cascading types. Function types, in C, cannot return themselves.

I find this interesting for two reasons. The first is that this is exactly the sort of self-referential hole that shows up seemingly everywhere when you're dealing with complex systems. Douglas Hofstadter would be amused. The second reason is that I wonder why I'd never previously tried to implement this pattern. What's unique about my current project that led me to wanting this pattern for the first time?

The most obvious answer is that this is my first real small-system embedded project. The device has no operating system, so my main function really is all there is in the device's little software universe—excluding startup code, of course. What I wanted to use the function-returning-its-own-type pattern for was for implementing different modes that the device can switch into. For example, among other modes, the device has a normal operating mode and a diagnostic mode, and so each mode naturally calls for its own sort of “main” function, like so:

void main_diagnostic_mode(void);
void main_normal_mode(void);

Each modes' main function would then be called from the actual main function whenever appropriate to do so.

However, each mode can end and cause another mode to begin. For example, a user command in normal mode may cause the diagnostic mode to begin. In all cases, which mode should begin next is determined by the logic of the current mode. This suggests the following prototypes:

mode_main_fn_t *main_diagnostic_mode(void);
mode_main_fn_t *main_normal_mode(void);

Here, mode_main_fn_t * is a pointer type that can address main_diagnostic_mode, main_normal_mode, or any of the other modes' main functions. Thus, each mode's main function runs for some indefinite duration and, upon returning, elegantly notifies the main function which mode to run next.

int main(void) {
    mode_main_fn_t *mode = main_normal_mode; /* initial mode */
    while (1) {
        mode = mode();
    }
} 

But, as I described above, this pattern cannot be expressed in the C language unless one defines mode_main_fn_t to be void, which is like cheating. So are typecasts cheating, too.

There are, of course, many solutions to implement for this problem in general. The pattern that I wanted to implement is only one possible solution. That I went about solving the problem a different way doesn't make inexpressibility in C any less interesting.

Givers and takers

Do you perceive yourself to be someone who gives more to society than you receive from it, or do you perceive yourself to take more from society than you give to it?

This is an interesting question to ask, both of yourself and of other people. Try it, both on yourself and on others around you. You'll likely find that two people similar in circumstances and demographics can and often come up with passionately conflicting answers. And of course things become even more interesting when you ask the age-old follow-up question, “Why?”

People disagree on specific issues all the time, from the all-affecting what should we be doing about taxes? to the day-to-day how much respect and courtesy am I obliged to give the grocery store cashier? However, I propose that many of our opinions on the specific issues are heavily influenced, if not outright dictated, by whether we perceive ourselves as net-givers or net-takers (or the occasional Even Steven). When two people disagree on this self-perception, what easily can happen is that they end up talking past each other on the specific issues. Each hears what the other says, but it's as if each is speaking a foreign language. I think this pretty much sums up a large part of public political discourse in the United States: a lot of talking; even a lot of listening; and exasperation with how, well, other people can think so wrongly.

There's nothing much complicated about this. Generally speaking, self-perceived net-givers see themselves as be owed by society. After all, if you're giving more than you're taking, that usually means you're entitled to something in return. Contrary to this, self-perceived net-takers generally see themselves as owing something to society. Within this simple difference in perspective can lie the differences between two complex mazes of logic rationalizing whether taxes are too high or too low as well as whether it's okay to be a little rude to the grocery store clerk who overcharged you for those apples. Either you're owed or you owe, and from this much of one's moral world view follows.

For the record, my own gut feeling is that I'm a net-taker. I base this on the idea that my level of affluence, though semi-modest by American standards, puts me within the top one-tenth of the world's population and that, simply, I consume more than my equal share of the world's resources. (World per capita purchasing power parity GDP is around the US poverty line.) Others may counter my assessment by pointing out that I account for more than my equal share of production. I can then (1) state skepticism that the free market is a fair and just metric for value or (2) claim unfair inheritance, the idea that if my productivity is higher than the world's average than that is due mainly to having been granted a superior education and other childhood services. Some possible counters to this are (1) childhood privilege is irrelevant, (2) giving and taking are not zero-sum, and (3) the American way of life is morally superior to other ways of life. And on and on it can go, each side exposing core assumptions, which is exactly the beauty of the question. It explores the very way we perceive not just ourselves but the world.

So what do you think? Do you perceive yourself as someone who gives more to society than you receive from it, or do you perceive yourself as taking more from society than you give to it?

Go: first impressions

Starting about a week ago, I've taken it upon myself to learn a new programming language: Go. This marks the first time in about six years that I've attempted to learn another language. Now that I'm about one week into the process, I've decided to describe here some of my first impressions.

Go is intended to be something of a C replacement. This I find interesting because I am, above all else, a C programmer. I am one of those guys who codes in C not just when I'm paid to do so but when, on those rare occasions, I do something “for myself” and want to make something that lasts, something that survives endless maintenance. It's not that C is the best language for this; rather, it's just that it's the best language for me, the one I think in most readily. Thus, all of my first impressions of Go are cast from the point of view of a C guy. Pardon the pun.

My method for learning Go has, so far, entailed reading through the documentation on the official website while working on making a simulator for the Acquire board game. Acquire, for those who don't know (and you should be ashamed!), is kinda like Monopoly in that it involves real estate trading and the goal of making money. My goal with the simulator is eventually to experiment with writing AIs for the game. I figure this is a good project in that it's non-trivial but affords itself to a highly irregular schedule when it comes to personal coding time. It also serves as a vehicle for learning Go.

One of Go's “guiding principles”, according to the FAQ, is to cut down on bookkeeping—those mundane, repetitive tasks in each language that end up being done for every non-trivial program. Here's the excerpt from the FAQ.

Programming today involves too much bookkeeping, repetition, and clerical work. As Dick Gabriel says, “Old programs read like quiet conversations between a well-spoken research worker and a well-studied mechanical colleague, not as a debate with a compiler. Who'd have guessed sophistication bought such noise?” The sophistication is worthwhile—no one wants to go back to the old languages—but can it be more quietly achieved?

In C, for example, any sufficiently sophisticated program ends up requiring a lot of work in: managing header files, memory management (even when no clever tricks are being employed and everything is by rote), and defining data structures. There's no way around this; it's an emergent property of the language.

My first impression of Go is that it does indeed live up to its guiding principle by reducing bookkeeping while maintaining flexibility and expressiveness. However, this is a pretty abstract and subjective point. Here are some more succinct, concrete impressions.

• A lot of Go's syntax is backwards. Or at least it seems backwards after being firmly ingrained with C's arbitrary way of doing it.

  C	Go
  int i; int *p, *q; int a[10]; char const *s = "Hello, world."; char const *t = "Goodbye.";	var i int var p, q *int var a [10]int var s string = "Hello, world." t := "Goodbye."
  typedef struct { int a; float b; char *c; } T;	type T struct { a int b float c string }
  int foo(int a) { return a + 1; }	func foo(a int) int { return a + 1 }

  The above table illustrates the “backwards-ness” of Go. Of course, the order of the lexemes in, say, a declaration shouldn't affect a programmer's ability to organize his thoughts and solve problems, but after spending more than half my life in the C family of languages, such a change took some extra time for me to get use to. Like, an hour or two.

• Go programs do indeed compile quickly, as advertised. Also, the compiler's error messages are meaningful and obvious.

• Go doesn't have a while loop. The only looping constructs are for and goto (and the latter should never be used for looping, IMO). I'm not a fan of this because for years now I've used while to designate a “loop which does not have a set number of iterations known before the loop begins its first iteration.” Yes, I realize that while and for are basically the same thing in C, but in that language it's nice to choose the loop construct to connote further information to future maintainers.

• Like many other modern languages, Go uses packages to modularize code. One trick I've never seen until Go is how the language determines whether a symbol is public or private based on the capitalization of the first letter of the symbol. So, for example, foo is private to its package, and Foo is public. This, along with the “opening braces go on the same line as the if and for”, makes it obvious that Go is trying to enforce a particular coding style. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I see the pros and cons.

• Go's slices make a lot of sense and seem especially practical. Part of the extra bookkeeping in C is how most arrays require some sort of length and/or capacity meta-variable(s) kept in sync with the array. Go's slices are basically like array pointers that keep track of length and capacity automatically without adding the overhead that other higher-level languages typically add to array/sequence types, like smart insertion and dynamic reallocation. I'm interested in Go as a C replacement, not as a yet-another-great-prototyping-language, like Python.

• I'm looking forward to using Go's panic and recover. The error-handling scheme provided by these two keywords appears to be just the right amount of structure to retain the simplicity and efficiency of a goto drain in C without all the arbitrariness and bloat of full exception handling.

All in all, after spending ten or so hours working with Go, I generally find my initial negative reactions, like with the “backwards-ness” of the syntax or the semi-forced coding style, to diminish while my appreciation of Go's power and elegance increase. My overall initial impression of the language is that it holds a lot of promise for doing what C does, better.

New World Keyboard

Awhile back, about seven or eight years ago, I made the switch from qwerty to Dvorak. Somewhere and somehow, through details long since forgotten, I learned about the promises of faster, more accurate typing and decided, “This is for me.” I even bought a special keyboard—this being the days of desktops, before laptops became ubiquitous, when one could switch keyboards with ease—that had both layouts' key assignment printed on each key and a hardware switch for toggling the layout in use. So began my adventures as a Dvorak typist.

A few months later, I was firmly again a full-time qwerty typist. Though I managed to learn how to type streams of text in Dvorak just fine in this short time—about as fast and accurate as I typed in qwerty—I encountered an unexpected problem in the switch. Typing did seem easier with the new, more ergonomic layout, but I discovered that I, probably like most computer users, use the keyboard for much more than merely typing text. More on this later, though, for the story continues.

Several years after my failed switch, Coworker Shafik took advantage of a rather ridiculously large quantity of downtime at work to learn touch typing. He was impressed with my own typing skills, which, though not great, are above average, and began asking me questions about how I learned typing. Often verbose when talking about my favorite subject—myself—I ended up relating, among other topics, my failed switch to Dvorak, at which Coworker Shafik suggested, “You should relearn Dvorak.” I had that same ridiculous quantity of downtime as he and decided to give it another shoot.

That was two or three years ago, and I continue to use Dvorak for most typing I do. I'm faster and more accurate with it than qwerty, though only by a little bit on both counts. Being an effective Dvorak typist puts one in the strange situation whereby one is handicapped by the default software keyboard settings on most computers and thus encounters a world made harder than need be. Overall, now that I've made a successful switch to Dvorak, I consider the Switch to be a nearly religious experience. It certainly opened my eyes to more than just typing. I'm not really sure what the best way is to go about describing the mysteries of Dvorak, so I'm going to try something new and describe it FAQ-style. I hope you find this interesting.

Q: Why Dvorak?

A: Many people are aware by now that the “traditional” qwerty keyboard was designed not for ease of use but to slow down typists and thus solve a specific hardware issue of a subset of typewriters a century ago: sticking arms. Dvorak, on the other hand, is designed to be the fastest, most efficient keyboard layout possible (for English typists), and irregardless whether it actually is the fastest, it certainly employs many of the design principles used in any keyboard layout designed for speed and comfort.

Q: What are some of these design principles that make Dvorak so great?

A: Well, it wasn't really my intention to turn this discussion into a technical one about the merits of Dvorak. Such points are already described on the Web and can be found with a quick Google search. However, I'll provide a brief summary of some of the principles. For example, because Dvorak puts all the vowels on one side of the keyboard and most English words are spelled by alternating between consonants and vowels, many words are typed on Dvorak using a rhythm of alternating use of the left hand and right hand for each key press. Try, right now, tapping your index fingers of each hand in alternating succession: left, right, left, right, left, right, etc. Try to tap as quickly as you can. Now try alternating two fingers of the same hand. You'll discover it's easier to alternate fingers of a different hand than of the same hand. Thus, the ideal keyboard layout should seek to maximize left-hand, right-hand alternation. Another example is sweeping, which is the idea that it's faster and easier to press keys from pinkie to index finger than it is from index finger to pinkie. On a qwerty keyboard, it's easier to type “asdf” than it is to type “fdsa”. Thus, the ideal keyboard layout should seek to maximize out-to-in sweeping. With the Dvorak layout, many common letter patterns are swept out-to-in, such as “th” and “sn”.

Q: But you say you're only a little faster on Dvorak than qwerty, so Dvorak can't be that great, can it?

A: Now we're getting to the interesting questions! Objectively, the fastest typists in the world don't bother with qwerty; Dvorak is much superior once one advances to the point where the bottleneck for speed and accuracy is the physical movement of the fingers. The problem is, and the reason why I don't recommend learning Dvorak to others, is that few people advance to this level. I haven't, and I can type probably around 60 wpm or so.

Q: So what is the bottleneck for speed and accuracy for most people?

A: The bottleneck is the mental aspect of fast typing. Typing is a physical activity, not much different than any type of endurance racing. A reliable method to advance to a mediocre level is to put in a lot of time practicing/training at a comfortable speed but no significant effort specifically for increasing speed. To advance one's skills beyond this mediocrity, one must train specifically for speed, much as one trains to run faster: i.e, intervals and other intensity workouts. This is a lot of work and is simply not worth pursuing unless you really want to type 100 wpm or faster.

Q: But still, you say you're a little faster with the Dvorak layout than qwerty, so it seems like there's some benefit for people making the switch, even if the physical layout of the keys isn't the bottleneck for most people. What's the problem? Is the learning curve too steep?

A: Believe it not, no. I suspect anyone can become a superior Dvorak typist after spending an hour a day for 6-8 weeks. This is a rather small commitment considering that doing so endows one with a lifelong skill.

Q: So then what's the problem?

A: Actually, to be clear, there's another benefit of using Dvorak as well, which is that the layout is more comfortable and one's fingers stay more relaxed using it because they generally go through more natural movements than with qwerty. However, on the whole, I don't recommend learning Dvorak.

Q: Why not?

A: This question really strikes into the heart of the Dvorak mindset. Look, if all one did with a computer keyboard was input streams of English text, then Dvorak would be the way to go, no question. However, much keyboard use is not this use case. I'll give you an example. Which keyboard shortcuts do you commonly use?

Q: Shortcuts? You mean like Ctrl+S for saving a file?

A: Exactly.

Q: Well, that—Ctrl+S—is definitely one of the common ones I use. So is Ctrl+O, open, for that matter.

A: How about copy (Ctrl+C), cut (Ctrl+X), and paste (Ctrl+V)? You probably use those three all the time, right?

Q: Good point. I do indeed use those three all the time.

A: And many more, surely?

Q; Yes— By the way, how is it that I'm doing the answering and you're asking the questions?

A: Ha ha, you got me there. Well, this answer required some asker participation. Okay, so as you're typing an email, you do a lot of Ctrl+C- and Ctrl+X- and Ctrl+V-pressing for manipulating the text you're entering. For example, if you decide to swap the order of a couple of sentences, you don't delete one and retype it in the other position. You cut and paste, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V.

Q: Sure, what does this have to do with Dvorak?

A: Well, though the Ctrl key stays in the same place in the Dvorak layout—all the special keys do—the ‘C’, ‘X’, and ‘V’ keys are all swapped. You press what on a qwerty keyboard are ‘I’, ‘B’, and ‘>’.

Q: So? Though I find it strange that ‘V’ is in the ‘>’ spot, presumably you already memorized the different key positions when you spent that one hour a day, 6-8 weeks learning Dvorak. So when you want to press Ctrl+V and the ‘V’ is now in the ‘>’ spot, you will automatically make the mental adjustment and press the correct key combination.

A: No! That's the strange thing. You can learn how to type streaming text using Dvorak and become quite proficient at it, but you must relearn all the key combinations separately!

Q: No way! Really?

A: Yes, really.

Q: You're telling me that I can spend two months learning Dvorak and become faster on it than I ever was on qwerty and yet, at the first need to save a file in my favorite word processor, I'll fumble at the key combination for Ctrl+S and instead end up pressing whatever key happens to be in the ‘S’ spot on the qwerty keyboard?

A: Yes. In this case, that key combination is Ctrl+O, so you end up doing the opposite of saving: opening.

Q: That's a little hard to believe.

A: Yes, it is. I suppose one must try it for oneself to see.

Q: Which you don't recommend…?

A: Correct.

Q: Still, this seems like a pretty minor inconvenience. So you must relearn a few commonly used key combinations. How hard is that?

A: Admittedly, this is not a total deal breaker, though try to keep in mind that each application you use has many of its own key combinations, and the total number of combinations adds up to a lot. Also, some of us elect not to use your favorite word processor and instead spend most of our text-editing time in our own favorite text editor, which happens to stem from a keyboard-only esoteric little program from the 1970s whereby the user relies upon hundreds of commonly used key combinations, many of which are much more complicated than a simple control-key-plus-some-letter combination.

Q: Such as?

A: Such as: :%s/%20/ /g.

Q: What the heck is all that junk?

A: That would, in my favorite editor, search-and-replace all instances of “%20” with a space character.

Q: …?

A: Or q: to access the command history, including that search-and-replace command; k to move the cursor up a line; f0ref r. to change “%20” to “%2e” and the space character with a period; and enter to rerun the newly modified search-and-replace command.

Q: Allow to ensure readers, for they cannot in fact see my eyes, that my eyes are indeed rolled back into my head and I'm about to lose consciousness…

A: I'm just trying to make a point. It's easy to relearn the 26 letters of the alphabet as well as dozen or so punctuation keys, but it's much harder to relearn all these special key combinations.

Q: But most people don't use your little esoteric program and know only a few key combinations. It seems like they wouldn't be as handicapped from learning Dvorak as you were, and since it worked for you then it should work for them.

A: There's more to it than just the key combinations.

Q: Such as?

A: Such as the problem of retaining qwerty skills.

Q: Are you suggesting that knowing how to type on qwerty is not like riding a bicycle? (Though you did compare typing to “any type of endurance racing”.)

A: Well, you got me there. Yes, indeed, if you spend all your time typing in Dvorak, then you will become painfully slow and mistake-prone in qwerty. One must regularly type at least a little on both layouts to maintain proficiency.

Q: So learning a new keyboard layout isn't really a “lifelong skill”, then? What is learned can be lost?

A: Okay, you got me again. However, I am indeed not recommending Dvorak, despite its good qualities. If all the world used Dvorak by default, then we would be better off and in possession of happier fingers. However, we don't, and there's no escaping that you can't fully switch to Dvorak, not really. You must maintain qwerty proficiency to get around in the real world, and this requires some extra effort. That effort, I think, will not be found to be worthwhile by most persons' standards.

Q: Fair enough. So why do you find the extra effort worthwhile?

A: To tell you the truth, I'm not sure. I do happen to spend a lot of time inputting streams of text, like when I type out blog posts and long emails to friends and family. The little extra speed, accuracy, and comfort that I get from Dvorak is worth it.

Q: How much is “little”?

A: Probably a few extra wpm, a few fewer mistakes per minute, and fairly considerable less pain in the fingers and wrists.

Q: “Less pain” sounds good.

A: Yes, that's not to be underrated. Typing on a Dvorak keyboard is nearly stress-free, for the fingers are making natural movements.

Q: Perhaps Dvorak is worth recommending to someone who just doesn't do well on a qwerty keyboard and maybe even has a lot of wrist and hand pain and has little to lose by attempting a switch?

A: That sounds like a pretty good idea. Also, I guess I might also make a qualified recommendation for the exceptionally curious.

Q: Does this have to do with calling the Switch a “nearly religious experience”?

A: You're exactly right. If you're proficient on qwerty and try to learn Dvorak, it's like starting all over with learning how to type. Only this time you have expectations on what the end result should be, what it's like to type well. So learning Dvorak provides a person with an opportunity to watch how their own brain adapts to a new environment, one where all the keys—except for ‘A’ and ‘M’—are switched around. It's like watching yourself from the outside.

Q: That sounds a little out there and not like my cup of tea. I suppose I understand why you don't recommend Dvorak in most cases.

A: Yes. I guess it's fair to say that I've fallen harder than most for the Dvorak Myth, which is the idea that floats around on the Internet that a mediocre qwerty typist will be transformed into an exceptional Dvorak typist, all because the keys are switched around a little bit. That's not so. Maybe I'm just following my own comfortable path of contrariness and of doing things a little differently than the others around me. Maybe I continue to be entranced by how using Dvorak in a qwerty world continues to allow me to introspect and use firsthand experience to speculate as to how our minds interface with the rest of our bodies and the world around us. Maybe Dvorak is little more than an outlet for being weird.

Q: Maybe we've explored this topic enough, and it's time to end it.

A: Yes, maybe so. Thanks for the questions.

Q: You're welcome. Thanks for the answers. Hey, aren't FAQs suppose to end with an answer and not a question?

Reason and evidence

Jack: Sbhe fpber naq frira lrnef ntb—oh, hello Edward!

Edward: Hello, Jack. What was that that you were saying?

Jack: What? Sbhe fpber naq frira lrnef ntb—I'm studying for my midterm tomorrow.

Edward: What a strange-sounding language! What is it?

Jack: ROT-13. I'm taking the class to satisfy my foreign language credit.

Edward: Oh, I see.

Jack: … bhe sbersnguref …

Edward: Well, I guess I should leave you be so that you can continue with your studying…

Jack: Okay, bye—wait, Edward!

Edward: Yes?

Jack: I've been meaning to tell you something.

Edward: In ROT-13? I'm sorry but I'm not at all fluent—

Jack: —No, no. It has nothing to do with ROT-13.

Edward: Avoiding one's study topic? I guess that's the point of cramming. What is it that you have to say?

Jack: What I have to say is that I think I've made important progress in figuring out how I should be living my life. As you've told me once or twice already, my previous ideas haven't always been so well thought out. But this time I sure I'm on the right path.

Edward: That's great to hear. What path are you on these days?

Jack: The path of reason and evidence. See, this is truly a path, a means, rather than an end in and of itself like those previous ideas of mine. Rather than jumping straight to a conclusion and being shown that the conclusion doesn't pass muster—once or twice—this time it's totally different. In my ROT-13 class—

Edward: I thought you said this had nothing to do with ROT-13.

Jack: A-ha! You got me there! But this is secondary to the main point.

Edward: Yes, yes, I was just joking. Please continue.

Jack: Sure. So, in my ROT-13 class, I met an interesting fellow who's majoring in a science of some sort, and he's taught me that what's important isn't the conclusion one reaches but the method one uses to reach conclusions.

Edward: And that method is reason and evidence?

Jack: Exactly! With reason and evidence, it's impossible to go wrong! Or at least it's really hard to go wrong. All I have to do is start with some premises based on evidence and then crank those premises through my machine of logical reasoning to conclude true statements. It's a beautiful system, and it doesn't even matter so much what the statements actually mean; as long as the premises match what is observed—evidence—then the conclusions—reason—are validated.

Edward: What if a premise turns out to be based on faulty evidence?

Jack: That's the best part! A premise can be chucked at any time and replaced with a new premise or set of premises or even nothing at all. The new resulting set of premises is re-cranked through the machine of logical reasoning to conclude new, possibly different true statements. Because the methodology is preserved, we simply take the new conclusions as the new truth and live our lives according to them.

Edward: I see. Isn't it a little bit awkward to have one's way of life disproved and changed because some new evidence turns up?

Jack: Sure, this may not be as convenient as doggedly staying the course, but such is the price one pays for living one's life according to principles that match what one actually observes in the world.

Edward: I see.

Jack: Great, you're already formulating your own premises!

Edward: Yes, um… So what have you concluded about living the good life? What true statements have you come up with so far?

Jack: Well, to answer your first question: not much. To answer your second question: not many. Remember it's the methodology that's most important. As for concluding specific statements, er, I'm still a little stuck in the premises stage. You see—

Edward: —I do—

Jack: —I haven't quite figured out the freewill issue using only evidence. But I'm sure once I figure that out all will fall neatly into place.

Edward: Hmm…

Jack: You don't think so?

Edward: Well, no—I mean, yes, er, maybe. It's just that I was thinking of a different question.

Jack: Another question? Sure, go ahead and ask. Since I haven't concluded anything yet, surely there's no way you're going to trap me this time!

Edward: Trap? Me, trap you? I only ask innocent questions!

Jack: The most dastardly traps of all are innocent questions.

Edward: Well, I suppose.

Jack: Go ahead and set your trap. Ask away!

Edward: Okay. I was thinking about this reason and evidence thing, and I was wondering: what would it be like to use reason and evidence alone?

Jack: It's like just as I told you. Why don't you try it? That didn't seem like a very difficult question…

Edward: That wasn't my real question, sorry. I was just setting up my real question.

Jack: Which is…?

Edward: I'm getting to it. Okay, so I was wondering: what would it be like to use reason and evidence alone? You're saying that you use reason and evidence alone and not reason and evidence and some other technique, too, right?

Jack: Right. Using anything more than reason and evidence would be unenlightened, indeed!

Edward: Indeed. So, if I were using reason and evidence alone—and nothing else—then it seems to me, being as how I'm using reason and evidence alone to justify my actions, that I should be able to use reason and evidence alone to justify using reason and evidence alone. And I was wondering: how would I use reason and evidence alone to justify using reason and evidence alone?

Jack: Um, well, I suppose… You could… Um…

[An awkward silence passes.]

Jack: Qnzzvg, Edward!

Things I Believe Are True But Cannot Prove

• There is no afterlife. When we die, that's it, we're done. Annihilated. This is the single hardest limitation for an individual to accept.

• The idea that we forgive and accept not for others' benefit but for our own is an immensely practical one that enables us to live our lives better.

• The socioeconomic makeup of the world is not really much different now than it has been for the last 5,000 years: about one-tenth of the world's population is privileged to consume more than their equal share of the planet's resources. The only real difference in modern times is that most of the world's privileged persons are isolated within a handful of nations rather than spread out all over the globe.

• Most of the price of most goods and services is derived from the embodied energy in that good or service. Put another way, if some good or service, A, costs X and some other good or service, B, costs 2X, then B requires about twice as much energy to produce as does A. If you want to decrease the total amount of energy you consume, the simplest way to do this is to reduce your cost of living.

• P != NP.

• Discriminate use of “goto” in C is safer than the indiscriminate use of “break” and “continue” and often even the discriminate use of them.

• The Internet doesn't pay for itself once you factor in the cost of its externalities, such as pollution and the consumption of non-renewable resources.

• People don't choose to disagree, argue, bicker, and fight; these are compulsive actions. What we choose is how well we conduct ourselves when we do disagree, argue, bicker, and fight.

• People are, in general, lonelier now than before the advent of cell phones and computers and other prosthetic ears and mouths.

• That “commoners” are increasingly opinionated about party-line politics isn't good for anyone. This isn't because people are wrong in their opinions but because there is a wide range of good and noble pursuits in all of life, and party-line politics shouldn't be one of them for but a few people.

• The biggest conspiracy is that no one is in control. The world is 1,001 special interests each holding the tiger by its tail. This is the scariest conspiracy of all because it means that the future is subject to no one and nothing save chaos.

• The quality of American middle-class life has been on the decline since before I was born, but our increasing material wealth has distracted us from this trend. This is a big reason why recessions have the potential to hurt so much: when the distraction goes away, even just temporarily, it reveals the increasing poverty of our lives.

Balance, pt. 2

This previous weekend, Laura and I each hauled a load of stuff to donate to the newly opened Goodwill store within walking distance from our apartment complex. My load entailed a suitcase, which I haven't used in a few years, filled with plasticwear and bicycle jerseys I don't use anymore. Laura's load entailed a large grocery bag full of junk soon to become someone else's treasure.

Getting rid of stuff is not hard for me. Not usually. I don't like clutter, and I realized soon after college after I made that trade that so many of us make by giving away my time in exchange for money, that in our throwaway, replace-anything civilization, it's better to error on the side of discarding something than on the side of keeping. I think a lot of people miss learning this lesson because it's easy to overestimate the cost of obtaining and underestimate the cost of maintaining.

But getting rid of a suitcase full of junk was the easy thing I gave up last weekend. I gave up something else that, even though I've come to expect giving it up each autumn, is never easy to part with: bicycle fitness. This is a personal lesson in balance.

Despite not having any bicycle or triathlon race event planned for at least a few months, I've continued training hard these last few months and am in a great bicycling form right now. Recently, I clobbered my PR by a minute for ascending South Mountain; this sort of gain is suppose to be unobtainable for a non-beginner, and it marks a real high point. Laura calls this sort of talk “bragging”, but I think it's more accurate to call it a “factual statement of awesomeness”. Admittedly, though, “awesomeness” is indeed an exaggeration; I occasionally ride with guys who are awesome, and even they are far below the level necessary to become a no-name pro. In cycling, as with most sports, there's a tremendous gap between above average and elite.

That's the kind of lesson I try to keep in mind to put things into the proper perspective, because counter to the realization that I'm only one totem higher midway up the pole than I usually am, there's a visceral joy that stems from doing well in a sport, and that joy can be blinding. These days that joy is getting in the way of some goals I've established for myself this winter, including another fitness goal of running more as well as some non-fitness ones, such as completing some simple construction projects.

The strength of bicycling is also its weakness: a tremendous amount of time can be devoted to it. My before-work rides on Tuesday and Thursday mornings are a tad over 2½ hours each. My “long” ride on Saturday morning is almost double that. This sort of schedule will force nearly anyone into good form. That's the good thing. It's also the bad thing because once you're in good form, it's hard to give it up, even when there's no longer any reason to maintain it because, to reiterate that aforementioned tosser-outer maxim, it's easy to overestimate the cost of obtaining and underestimate the cost of maintaining. This applies to fitness just as much as it applies to household junk being hauled off for donation.

If you are an elite cyclist, then you are exempt. Winter is the time that you put in base miles, which basically means long, low-effort rides that aim to prepare the mind and body for another season of hard training the next year. Though I'm not elite, I did exactly this sort of training last winter, and my firsthand observation is that it works. It sets you up to become strong. There's no substitute for a long ride and how it conditions the body to dig deep into its reserves. But there's also no substitute for having a real life. Even here in the Valley of the Sun, where there is no true winter, the days shorten and to one acclimated to the extreme summer heat, it gets cold enough. I especially feel the lure of winter's late sunrises, when, minus the artificial lighting in our homes and streets and everywhere else, all of nature seems to be suggesting to each of us to go to bed a little earlier, wake up a little later, and to put in “base miles” in our real life by focusing on our indoor pursuits and the people we're close to. There's no way around that this means, for me, giving up to some degree on a hard-earned level of fitness, but I remind myself that just because something is hard-earned does not mean it's worth hanging onto. I think this is part of what's entailed in striving for balance.

Two falsehoods in the bicycling world

There's a lot of junk wisdom in the bicycling world, especially in the shops where money is exchanged for high-markup products. What I'd like to discuss today has to do with two falsehoods that have been successfully sold to the cycling world's collective conscious. I realize that this is specific information irrelevant to most person's lives, but on the other hand, this is what we've come to expect from Just Enough Craig, is it not?

Falsehood 1: Clipless pedals allow you to pull up on the pedal to generate more power.

First of all, let's all agree that “clipless pedal” is the worst name you could give to a pedal that you clip onto. For those who don't know, there are three basic pedal types: stomp, clip, and clipless. Stomp pedals are the ones you had on your childhood dirt bike; the foot rests on the pedal, and nothing holds the foot in place. Clip pedals are stomp pedals with an attached strap or cage that encloses the toe-end of the foot. Clipless pedals are the ones that require a cleated shoe and are the cause of countless cyclists tipping over after coming to a stop at red lights and stop signs.

Tipping over aside, there are many great reasons to ride with clipless pedals: they give the rider better control over the bike; they're easier to “dial in” to the right position relative to the foot; they're more comfortable. But what clipless don't offer is more power—at least not sustainable power. The salesman at the bike shop will often make a claim to a cycling newbie about how clipless pedals allow the rider to “pull up” during the pedal's upstroke using one's hamstrings, thus allowing the rider to generate more power. Sometimes the salesman will quantify the effect, such by saying “20% more power” or “one-third more power”.

This is utter nonsense. If you don't believe me, find a clip or clipless bicycle and try riding around only pulling up on the pedal during the upstroke. What you will soon discover is that it's immensely difficult to generate but an insignificant amount of power despite a generous amount of exertion. Simply put, the human body is poorly suited for generating much power with a leg-lifting movement like the one needed to pull up on a bicycle pedal. Contrast pulling up with pushing down on the pedal, where an easy effort will achieve a respectable speed. Pulling up is clearly a no-go for power generation.

As it turns out, after a few minutes of regular riding (about the time when you've stopped consciously thinking about your pedal stroke's form), you may realize that contrary to pulling up even a little bit during the upstroke, your rising foot is actually pushing down on the pedal, thus negating some of the work being done by the other leg. This is normal. But it is indeed a waste of effort, for though the body is poorly suited for generating power in a leg-raising movement, it's efficient at lifting the leg when the leg is not under load. The optimum pedal stroke doesn't involve pulling up on the pedal during the upstroke, but it does involve lightly lifting the rising leg such that the foot neither pulls nor pushes the pedal. You can do this with any of the three pedal types.

Falsehood 2: Carbon frames are more comfortable.

Ask any bike shop salesman, and you'll soon learn that aluminum is the least comfortable frame material and steel and carbon are the most comfortable. The idea behind this is that steel and carbon better absorb the small shocks of the road—i.e., jitter—than does aluminum, and so they make for more comfortable bikes.

While there may be some truth to this, whatever jitter-absorbing difference there exists between frame materials is insignificant and shouldn't factor into one's decision-making process when choosing a bicycle. People who buy carbon because of its silky smoothness are buying a bicycle made out of placebo.

A little thought about the matter reveals what you need to know. Between the pothole and the rider, there are many parts on the bike absorbing the jarring shock. From the ground up there are: tires, rims, fork and frame (and seat stay), and saddle. Most of the shock is absorbed through the tires and saddle—the “cushioned” parts. The “non-cushioned” parts, including that expensive carbon frame, absorb a small if not negligible fraction of the shock. Thus, the frame material cannot have much effect on the jitter-related comfort of the bicycle as compared to, say, replacing the tires or choosing a better saddle. This may be worth keeping in mind if you'd like to avoid buying a placebo-frame bicycle.

Balance

Last year while I was in the restroom before the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot 5 km race, I overheard two guys talking. They knew each other but hadn't seen each other in a while, and the topic soon turned to their expectations for the race. The lesser fit guy said that he hadn't been running much and didn't expect to do well. The other guy, who looked every bit like a good runner, replied, “That just means you've found balance.”

I think I know exactly where that second guy was coming from in his response. Somehow, in these four-plus years I've lived in Phoenix, my social network has transformed itself into a rather lopsided and biased sample of fit people. Other than my coworkers, most people I know and see on a regular basis are into running, bicycling, and/or triathlons, and they're fit. Many aren't your doing-a-race-to-finish types; they're marathoners and ultra-distance racers and humblingly strong cyclists. It's an integral part of their lives.

Just as fish probably have little understanding of the water they spend the entirety of their lives within, it's easiest to lose sight of the importance of an activity exactly when you're most surrounded by it. For me, I get a double-helping between my Ironman triathlete friends and some rather good cyclists who I ride with. In both cases, the people involved are not just doing these activities; rather, these activities have a way of owning their participants. You can't be either one of these types of people unless you are committed to it. Commitment is the necessary path to success, but it is the antagonist of balance.

Once a person decides to get off that couch and start moving, any worthwhile discussion of fitness will inevitably broach the subject of balance. How much is enough? When you're firmly inside the world of the fit, there's always someone else faster and fitter than you. But many are only a little faster and fitter, and their level of performance is reachable. By trading hours spent training for seconds gained on race day, you can beat them. But how much is enough?

One of the more common mistakes made in understanding fitness is the assumption that more is never enough. There's a dualism that separates lifestyle choices into good and bad, and the pursuit of fitness is put squarely in the good category. Thus, it follows, spending a lot of time and a lot of money pursuing fitness is a worthy way to spend one's life. Often we hear others state goals of putting in more training time or perhaps upgrading their bicycle or equipment, but infrequently do we hear goals like: “I want to cut down on my training during the weekends. I want to spend less money on fitness stuff.”

I won't argue against the point that there are many good ways to live a life. Regarding fitness, going for broke is not automatically a bad thing. However, I will make a few points.

• Fitness is indeed underrated, even in our vain, image-crazy mass society. Most of us younger people are underrating the real possibility for preventable chronic, decades-long health problems brought about by sedentary lifestyles, and we're overestimating the ability of a quickly-becoming-dysfunctional health care system to fix our future problems.

• There's no substitute for physical activity. No amount of healthy, organic eating and traditional or non-traditional medicine will make up for our genetic need to be out and doing something, even if that's just walking several miles a day.

• There's also no substitute for oral hygiene. Gums that are chronically infected can lead to heart disease and other systemic health problems seemingly unrelated to the mouth, yet for all the talk that fit people make about having healthy, strong hearts, there's a strange lack of emphasis on the basics, like flossing.

The point about flossing may seem a bit strange, and yet it serves as a springboard for the overall point I'm trying to make. I've claimed previously that the optimum amount of exercise per week is ten hours. That's about one hour per day most days of the week and one long session of several hours once per week. Incidentally, this can be carried out by walking or biking to work and doing one “traditional” exercise session on the weekend, like going for a long hike or medium-distance bike ride. When you integrate physical activity into your real life, ten hours accumulate in a hurry. But I digress; this is not intended as an anti-car post.

The marginal return on exercise past ten hours seems so marginal that I suspect that, on average, no amount of additional exercise past those ten hours makes up for not flossing regularly. Put another way, exercising more than ten hours per week better deliver something of value to one's life other than perceived healthiness. Real-world people have jobs and families and social involvements and real commitments. There's nothing wrong with spending more than ten hours per week exercising—it's just an estimate I came up based on personal observation and is not based on anything scientific—but to do so with the expectation that doing so is automatically good and worthwhile is dangerous. Maybe our jobs and most probably our families and friendships and other non-fitness commitments and goals will benefit us more after devoting more time to them than will a new 5 km PR time will benefit us. This doesn't make pursuing that 5 km PR time a bad thing. Rather, it shifts the focus away from “more” and towards “balance”.