http://www.2blowhards.com/ en-us 2010-03-18T19:12:04-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/i_want_to_exper.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Front time to time I see a quoted phrase exactly like or very similar to the one in the headline of this post. And I suppose I might have heard it spoken a few times. I have no doubt that many people have a strong desire to do many things in life, and the phrase is often used in conjunction with a risky sport such a skydiving or rock climbing. Yet the word "everything" is implicitly conditional in almost every case, a bit of bravado for emphasis, if you will. Almost surely the people uttering the phrase do not want to experience any of the following: An arm amputation Prison gang-rape Brain cancer I could continue, but it would be an extremely long list if I did. Later, Donald... Miscellaneous Donald 2010-03-18T19:12:04-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/incapacity_for.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- My mother was charmed by clever names. If a restaurant had such a moniker, she's be tempted to dine there. Were it a shop, she'd drop in. She'd come up with unusual names for new pets -- but my sister and I would generally rebel and the cat would end up being called Kitty. The naming gene clearly skipped a generation in my family. Lord knows I lack it. Perhaps it's because I'm pretty word-conscious and can't get whimsical if the name is to be for something important. Or maybe not. It's just the way I am. One side-effect is that I appreciate it when I come across a clever name. That appreciation doesn't get anywhere near the take-action reaction my mother had: I can like the cleverness yet intensely dislike the named item. Interesting names keep popping up all the time, so I'll just mention two that appeared on my radar over the last month or so. One is the entertainer who calls herself Lady Gaga. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't go for her complete schtick, but that name is genius. And the blog name that charmed me was Bad Rachel. I don't know why it struck me. Maybe I'd never seen "bad" and Rachel" juxtaposed before. Me? I'm perfectly willing to be called "hey you!" Later, Donald... Miscellaneous Donald 2010-03-17T12:52:29-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/dead_stars_that.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Take a stroll through a Barnes & Noble, Borders or other large bookstores and you're likely to spy photo books devoted to Marilyn Monroe. Potentially, she could be alive today, having been born in 1926. She'd turn 84 in June. Sadly, she died in 1962 at age 36. You're also likely to notice similar books about Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn lived longer (1929-1993, dying at age 63), but her film career effectively ended in 1967 when she was 38. Other noted movie actresses with cut-short careers include Jean Harlow (1911-37), Carole Lombard (1908 -42) and Natalie Wood (1938-81). Of these, Wood might still be alive, age 72 . Screen beauties who don't die young age along with the rest of us. If they are able to continue their careers, the usual move is to "character" roles, for instance playing the part of a mother to one of the fresh, young stars. In some -- most? -- cases, a successful later career will dominate the public's mind: consider Angela Lansbury (born 1925). Then there are actresses with long careers who still tend to evoke dominant images of their younger selves. (Well, to me, anyhow.) Examples include Elizabeth Taylor (born 1932), Lauren Bacall (born 1924) and Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003). Back to Marilyn Monroe. What would her career trajectory have been had she lived at least up till now? Would she still be regarded as the Platonic ideal of the Blonde Bombshell? Or would she be of the ilk of Brigitte Bardot (born 1934 and enjoying life and controversy in Saint-Tropez)? I'm inclined to think she'd be Bardot-like with a lot of messy events happening between 1962 and today. Later, Donald... Movies, Television and Video Donald 2010-03-15T12:34:57-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/decisive_battle.html Miscellaneous Donald 2010-03-13T12:21:11-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/five_years.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- I let the anniversary slip because I was slaving away at computer programming, but five years ago March 2nd this appeared on this site. Six months later, glory struck and I became Third Banana hereabouts. Doesn't seem that it's been that long. Perhaps I was having fun. Later, Donald... The Web, Blogs, and New Media Donald 2010-03-12T11:03:22-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/public_service.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- The United States might be in Recession, but the government sector is doing comparatively well. (When our Dear Leader mentions "jobs saved," I give you one guess as to where to find them.) Our neighbors up north in Trudeaupia (thanks for that moniker, Mark Steyn!) have been more "advanced" than us for several decades. As a possible glimpse into our future, I offer the following report from Zdeno, Our Man in Ottawa. * * * * * Although I was born and raised in Ottawa, many of the friends I made in grad school were not. Pretty much all of them, having studied Economics, wound up working in various capacities for the public sector in our nation’s capital. This has given me the unique experience of observing their reaction to finding out exactly what our government does with the mountains of cash it extracts from the productive regions. Their reaction can be summarized thusly: If everyone knew what actually happened in this city, no one would ever vote against the Conservatives, ever again. Having grown up all over Canada, my friends – inundated with newspaper reports of public service employees furious at their poor working conditions, sparse pensions, low salaries, etc. - had developed an idea of the public sector that was completely at odds with what they saw when they arrived. Each one, regardless of their previous political orientation, agreed that the vast majority of the works of the public service were superfluous or counterproductive, and that public servants as a community are a bunch of overpaid brats, spoiled on good salaries, great benefits, near-perfect job security and a hilariously lax workload. I would estimate – from my own experience and the anecdotes of friends, family and colleagues – that the average Canadian Federal Government employee does about 10-20 hours of actual “work” in a given week. Days are short, lunches are long and coffee breaks frequent. Leaving work at 5pm usually means you’ll miss the worst of rush hour. One friend of mine, formerly a waitress in a downtown bar, served a group of senior public servants who would gather almost daily at 3pm. She once asked them if they started work early in the morning. They laughed. She had taken the job as a waitress because she had completed all of the work assigned to her for her summer co-op work term in two weeks, allowing her to finish coursework for her online classes during the day. Compared to other public servants, Economists seem to be unduly put upon in terms of workload. Most of my grad school friends are assigned somewhere around 20-40 hours of tasks per week of. One of them even puts in unpaid overtime occasionally. The work we do however, is largely worthless. We write analyses no one ever reads, collect data that no one ever uses, offer input on decisions that never get made. Much of our time is spent “forecasting,” which basically means making a... Politics, Economics, Education Donald 2010-03-11T12:39:49-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/california_impr.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- We're finally getting settled in at the Palm Springs area where Nancy will watch Indian Wells tennis and entertain friends and relatives like mad. California's drought was broken (at least temporarily) over the winter. Late October, the Shasta Lake reservoir was as low as I've ever seen it. At Lakehead, near the north end of it, there was this huge V of bare, reddish earth, much of which is normally covered by water. At the bottom was a small, narrow V within which trickled the Sacramento River. At the end of January, rains and snows lifted the lake so that the main V was perhaps half filled, though an asphalt-paved boat launch ramp ended perhaps six feet above lake level. Last week, water covered the bottom of the ramp and lake level was higher than I've seen in several years. But it wasn't yet completely full (something I've seldom seen in recent times). The weather remains chilly by California standards and we got caught in heavy rain showers Sunday while walking around the fancy housing area in Upland (just across the San Bernardino County line from Los Angeles County). And it has been cool and quite windy here the last day or two. The recession has taken hold along Palm Desert's El Paseo street, home to restaurants, fancy clothing stores and art galleries. The galleries seem to be hardest hit. Several stores without signs are empty, but I don't know what they might have once housed. However, there were two or three closed galleries that still had signage. Plus, another was in the process of a closing sale. The restaurants seem to be surviving best. Cheaper indulgence, no doubt. Later, Donald... Miscellaneous Donald 2010-03-10T10:25:00-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/more_gym_philos.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Not long ago, Zdeno philosophized about gyms and life (link here). Comments ensued. So he sent the following: * * * * * Today’s post is a constructive follow-up to my earlier tirade against regular gym attendance. My intent was not to advocate against exercise in general or resistance training specifically - I am a fan of both. What I’m against are soul-sucking contemporary fitness centres, and the pious obsession some people have with spending 15 hours a week inside them. I consider our obsession with protracted aerobic workouts to be about as wrong-headed as our completely false views on nutrition (more below). In addition to being of negligible benefit to our health, I think hours spent on the treadmill are a waste of our precious, finite time in this life. Below are the conclusions I've reached in my own independent study of health and fitness. I've included the sources that led me to my current way of thinking, and I would recommend doing some clicking if you're interested in the topic. Nutrition: Gary Taubes is required reading for anyone who has ever eaten food, or plans to at some point in the future. Panu is also a great source. Given perfect willpower, the diet recommended http://www.paleonu.com/get-started/">here is probably pretty close to optimal for most humans. In terms of what I actually do eat, at some point I would like to graduate to near-perfect observance of some form of paleo diet, but as of right now I follow something akin to Tim Ferris’s recommendation – basically, a strict paleo diet with a day off and some low-gylcemic index grains. I'm not sure I buy Tim's hypothesis that gorging occasionally prevents undesirable metabolic adjustments - did hunter gatherers have candy bar "cheat" days? - but I do know that expecting myself to never eat a non-paleo dinner or drink beer is unrealistic, and not worth the marginal added health benefits. Exercise: My favourite source for exercise-related information is http://www.marksdailyapple.com/">Mark’s Daily Apple . Mark Sisson is a Paleo guy, and his ideas on health and fitness are rooted in a combination of evolutionary biology and his own trial and error. Sisson, and paleo-fitness types generally, recommend short, infrequent, and intense anaerobic workouts making use of core muscles - squats, bench presses and deadlifts for traditional weightlifters - paired with occasional long periods of low-to-medium impact aerobic activity. It's certainly possible to accomplish the above exercise profile at a gym. Throw some weights around and spend an hour on the treadmill at a brisk walk. Rinse and repeat four times a week. But why? The world is full of things to do that have at least the same health benefits, and are way more fun. Pick-up sports are great, for example. Anyone who's in decent shape can easily find a sports league that caters to their ability level. Soccer, dodgeball, basketball, touch football, volleyball, floor hockey - I've had a blast playing each in recreational leagues with... Evo Bio, Health, Science Donald 2010-03-09T00:33:15-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/dreaded_words_f.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- It happened to me back when I was in the marriage market. And perhaps it happened to you. Some of the most dreaded words I had spoken to me (alas, I heard the phrase more than once) were: Let's just be friends. Later, Donald... Women, Men, Eroticism and Sex Donald 2010-03-06T10:35:54-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/a_false_percept.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Pssst. Keep quiet about this. [Whispers:] Little children don't know much. They haven't got much of a mental framework to place things properly. Take me, for example. When I was three or four years old, I knew what airplanes were because I could see lots of them flying around (we lived only a couple of miles from Seattle's Sand Point Naval Air Station). But I hadn't been close to one. Then there were pictures of airplanes in magazines we had in the house. Some might have been photos or illustrations with people that incidently provided scale. Others didn't. So in some cases, little me assumed that the pictured airplane was huge. An airplane that lent itself to scale misperception was Boeing's Stratoliner, or Model 307 (Wikipedia entry here). It was indeed a large airliner for its day, being based on B-17 bomber wings and having four engines. It also was the first major airliner with a pressurized cabin, allowing it to fly at higher altitudes than competing craft. This feature is important from the perception angle, as well shall see. That said, here are some pictures and commentary: Here's a TWA publicity photo showing a lineup of their Stratoliners. The men standing in front of the planes provide a sense of scale, and indeed the 307s are pretty big. This in-flight photo from Life illustrates the scale problem for people unfamiliar with airplanes, as I was as a tyke. For instance, the size of the engine nacelles would provide a scale reference for someone who know about how large radial, air-cooled motors were. But what I related to were all those windows in the cockpit area. I figured there was one window per person. Therefore, the front end of the plane must have had a big room with lots of people in it. In fact, the Stratoliner had lots of small windows because of pressurization; the plane's structure could be made sounder if windows were small and more support elements were present. Pilots needed a fairly good field of vision, so many windows were placed in the cockpit. Here are two TWA advertisements from the early 40s featuring the Stratoliner. Again, there are all those windows up front to confuse the likes of young me. Later, Donald... Miscellaneous Donald 2010-03-05T10:46:43-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/colorblind_or_c.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Via National Review's Corner, here is an article discussing racial shadings expressed back in the 1970s by Brazilians along with some Latin American race statistics. It also presents 16 racial-mixing categories used by Spanish colonial administrators in Mexico. Here in the United States, the 2010 census, which gets under way soon, has only ten questions for us to answer (detailed information is now gathered from a large, rolling sample). Some deal with the number of persons in a household, usual place of residence and ownership of the housing unit. On the personal level, besides one's sex and birthday, the Census Bureau wants you to characterize your racial and ethnic status and takes two of those ten to do this. Martin Luther King should be pleased at our progress towards a "colorblind" society where one's race matters not at all. Later, Donald... Miscellaneous Donald 2010-03-04T11:39:01-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/laguna_beach_ob.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- The term "artists colony" always leads my mind to visualizing country or perhaps small-town scenes. I suppose there are urban equivalents; the world holds many things, after all. But if there were a group of artists working or even living in, say, a loft building, they might be called something different, something that might include the word "collective" or perhaps "commune." (Yes, I know that there are some buildings that house studios for established professional artists such as Everett Raymond Kinstler's in the Gramercy Park area, but I'm sure the term "artists colony" is seldom used to describe such a setting.) It's hard to shake that rural image because most such colonies really were rural. Perhaps the two best known West Coast artistic communities are Carmel-by-the-Sea on the central California coast just south of Monterey Bay and Laguna Beach, between Los Angeles and San Diego. Both colonies became established in the early part of the 20th century when there were few full-time residents and raw nature could be seen and depicted. Today, both communities are artsy, but purely natural scenes are harder to come by. Here are some views of Laguna Beach by artists and cameras to illustrate this. Laguna Shores - Guy Rose Laguna Rocks, Low Tide - Guy Rose Laguna Coast - Guy Rose Rose was based in the San Francisco Bay area, but would travel to Laguna Beach from time to time for coastal scenes that are a little different from what can be found in Monterey or Carmel. Laguna Beach - Clarence Hinkle - 1929 From the Laguna Beach Museum of Art collection. I'm not sure why Hinkle used this color scheme; perhaps he wanted to cast off the powerful influence of coastal California coloring that strongly affected nearly every other landscape painter in the area. Big mistake, think I (assuming the photo reproduced the coloring well and that the original painting hadn't faded). Old Coast Road - William Wendt - c.1916 Wendt is one of the best-known California Impressionists. To him, painting nature was a spiritual matter, so California coloring was a matter of celebration on his canvasses. Laguna Coast - photo Laguna Coast postcard - 1920s From almost no residents in 1900, the 1920s yielded a real, though still isolated, town. I took this photo in January from the hill where the art museum stands. Plenty of housing nowadays. Just around the point, in the direction of Los Angeles, are some scenes without human habitation. Another view, but from the opposite direction. Later, Donald... Art, Architecture, the Econ of Art Donald 2010-03-03T11:41:42-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/03/blogging_note_13.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- I'm about to take a break from my 11-hour commute/grind to earn those extra 30 pieces of silver and hightail it south so that my wife can get a two-week experience of professional tennis in Indian Wells, California. Allowing for travel, we'll be away from home nearly three weeks. As always, my loyal MacBook will be handy for blogging. So posting will be fairly regular aside from travel days. (We hop in the car Friday and will be on-site Monday; the return will be during the last full week of this month.) Later, Donald... Miscellaneous Donald 2010-03-02T11:45:52-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/02/1934_painting_s.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- There's a painting exhibition titled "1934: A New Deal for Artists" starting to wend its way across the U.S. after a Washington, D.C. opening. (The Smithsonian's kickoff web info is here.) It comes to Bellingham, Washington later this year, so I might go see it if I think about it and can fit it into my schedule of indolence and sloth. One reason why I'm iffy about going is that I've seen the show's book in stores and didn't notice enough interesting items to warrant buying it for reference, let alone enjoyment. So why bother to see the real thing? For reasons I'll probably get around to posting about, I find the period 1920-1945 fascinating: the movies, the fashions, the politics, the architecture, the cars and planes and trains, the commercial art, the sculpture, the interior decoration -- but not the painting. As I see it, that period marked a breathing space, dead zone, time for regrouping between the first surge of modernist painting (1900-1914 give or take five or so years) and the 1946-1960 triumph of the New York school of Abstract Expressionism. Avant-garde painters were groping for something new to follow Dada. This proved to be pretty much the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement in Germany and Surrealism from France. Basically, the innovative surge was over and new directions were hard to come by. In America, there were artists who wanted to be avant-garde, but modernism arrived late on our shores (the famous 1912 New York Armory Show is generally considered the catalyst) and they had to spend time internalizing what the Europeans were up to before reaching that same stymied stage. Some American painters simply ignored modernism. The remainder, perhaps in an effort to be in fashion commercially, tried to incorporate bits of modernism. The overall result on both sides of the Atlantic was unsatisfactory painting where any whiff of modernism was attempted. There were some exceptions -- Georgia O'Keeffe and Tamara de Lempicka come to mind -- but I find the era pretty dreary. And so to the exhibit. Here are some examples of what was on display. Gallery Golden Gate Bridge by Ray Strong Essentially realistic, with the merest touch of simplification. Basically hard-edged with little in the way of atmospheric perspective. Perhaps influenced by photography, industrial sites became a popular genre in the Thirties. Valley Farms by Ross Dickinson Grant Wood painted such scenes more famously. What we have here is a scene from the perspective of an airplane. In no way could an early-30s artist plein-air this: it's essentially a design featuring simplified solids. I find this 30s genre harmless and amusing. Employment of Negroes in Agriculture by Earle Richardson Not on the fields shown above, but elsewhere, we find workers -- the proletariat being another subject popular among artists of a certain persuasion. Again, simplified, solid forms, but this time for people. The background with those almost geometrical trees is of a piece with the painting... Art, Architecture, the Econ of Art Donald 2010-02-28T14:56:17-05:00 http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2010/02/analogies_from.html Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- Yesterday was pretty much a free one for me. No 11-hour slog for my part-time gig in state government thanks to my annual physical checkup. So there I was later in the morning at the Iraqis' barber shop waiting my turn for my monthly buzz-cut. The television set was tuned to President Obama's "health care summit" wherein he and congressional representatives from both parties were to do a lot of talking with the goal of something or other happening. Just before my turn in the chair, Sen. Paul Harkin of Iowa let loose with two of the most inept analogies I've ever heard. Normally I can excuse a politician a not-really-good analogy once in a while. But Harkin used two and both were bad. The quotes are taken from the Washington Post web site here. First, Harkin attempted to illustrate that the only way to "reform" this nation's health care system is via comprehensive change. That's why you can't do this incremental approach. Every time I hear about -- you know, we're sinking. We're drowning, in this country, on health care. An incremental approach is like a swimmer who's 50 feet offshore drowning, and you throw him a 10-foot rope. And you say, well, it didn't reach him, but we'll get it back and we'll throw him a 20-foot rope next time. Then we'll throw him a 30- foot and a 40 -- by that time, the swimmer's drowned. That might make a little sense to those who truly believe that there is a health care crisis of disastrous proportions and that an immediate, huge lurch toward (eventual) socialized medicine is the only possible cure. Stupid me, I happen to think that there isn't a real crisis, that matters can be improved by making small adjustments and then evaluating results of those adjustments. For those who think our health care system works pretty well, the drowning swimmer analogy makes no sense. Harkin then went on to say: Lastly, I would like to put this in a different kind of a contextual framework. We don't allow segregation in our country on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, et cetera. Twenty years ago this year, we also said we're not going to allow segregation on the basis of disability, and we passed the Americans with Disabilities Act. And yet we still allow segregation in America today on the basis of your health. Why should we? Why should we allow that to happen? It's time to stop segregating people on the basis of their health. That's why insurance reform is so vital, because the health insurance industry in this country is based on a flaw. And the flaw is the ratings are based on segregating people because of their health. And what bus do people with pre-existing health concerns have to sit in the rear of? Are they forced to use separate drinking fountains? Is their right to vote denied? Yes, a person's state of... Politics, Economics, Education Donald 2010-02-26T11:40:22-05:00