Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

This morning Instapundit had a link to this post from a New York Times blog which in turn dealt with an article from its sister publication, the Boston Globe (link here).

In essence, "studies by researchers at Princeton, Yale, Columbia and elsewhere finding little empirical support for the idea that diversity training programs change attitudes or behavior".

Which brings to mind my own brush with diversity training courtesy of the state of Washington sometime around 1996.

Training teams vary, but the one I was stuck with was comprised of a man who deserted his wife and kids to fulfill himself with a boyfriend and a woman who was part Black and part Filipina along with a couple of other parts I forget. The guy tried to present himself as being a swell, normal fellow who was different from most of us in just one tiny respect. The woman came off as being totally confused regarding how to identify herself racially and culturally -- even though all this diversity was really something wonderful.

That was a long time ago and I forget everything else about the morning's "training" other than that a few attendees were honest enough to roll their eyes after we left.

I'm pretty sure many of you have diversity training stories to tell.

Later,

Donald

at March 20, 2010 | perma-link | (2) comments

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

at March 18, 2010 | perma-link | (5) comments

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

at March 17, 2010 | perma-link | (4) comments

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

at March 15, 2010 | perma-link | (5) comments

Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

There are those who hold that all wars are futile. That's an easy thing to say in peaceful times, years after the actual events. I think those who reject all wars are wrong. It is true that many wars do seem pointless, especially if nothing much changes once the fighting stops. But other wars matter, sometimes profoundly. Many of those wars feature battles upon which the future of the war and nations depend.

Around 1850 Sir Edward Creasy was busy writing his well-known book The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. The link includes information on later writers who either expanded his list or created their own. Clearly, this is an interesting topic for history buffs.

Modern readers will be struck by the fact that Creasy's list is Western-centric. But that was understandable in terms of 1850 when not much was known about Asian wars let alone wars in sub-Sahara Africa and pre-Columbian America.

Here is Creasy's list:

• Marathon 490 BC
  
• Syracuse 413 BC
  
• Gaugamela 331 BC
  
• Metaurus 207 BC
  
• Teutoburg Forest 9 AD
  
• Chalons 451 AD
  
• Tours 732 AD
  
• Hastings 1066 AD
  
• Orléans 1429 AD
  
• Spanish Armada 1588 AD
  
• Blenheim 1704 AD
  
• Poltava 1709 AD
  
• Saratoga 1777 AD
  
• Valmy 1792 AD
  
• Waterloo 1815 AD

More information about those battles can be found on the Wikipedia link above.

Joining the fun, I offer my own version based on a century and a half more history.

My list: strike Metaurus, Orléans, Blenheim and Poltava, then add ...

• Salamis (might combine with Marathon) 480 BC
  
• Fall of Constantinople 1453 AD
  
• Lepanto (1571) and/or Siege of Vienna (1529) and/or Battle of Vienna (1683) AD
  
• Vicksburg campaign 1863 AD
  
• Marne 1914 AD
  
• Battle of Britain 1940 AD

I added Salamis because it was the crisis point of the Persian assault on Greece. Had the Greek fleet been defeated, Athens and perhaps the rest of European Greece would have become Persian satrapies.

Constantinople was the last barrier to Islam in southeastern Europe and its fall led to the Ottoman Empire which, in turn, was checked at various times by Lepanto and the Vienna campaigns.

Grant's Vicksburg campaign opened the Mississippi for the Union and isolated the western Confederate states. It opened the way to the important campaigns in Tennessee and northern Georgia that sealed the doom of the CSA. Without the Vickburg victory, the war might have been prolonged to the point where Lincoln might have been defeated in the 1864 election and the war ended in Confederate survival.

The Marne saved France and led to the destruction caused by the Great War -- a calamity whose effects are still being felt in the form of a dying Europe.

Had the British lost the Battle of Britain, the result probably would have been either invasion or suing for peace (with Churchill booted from Downing Street as part of the process). Then Hitler could have devoted nearly all his resources to a Russian invasion. Either that, or the Second World War would have ended at that point.

Other important -- but not in my judgment decisive -- battles include: Trafalgar (1805), Gettysburg (1863), Tsushima (1905), Midway (1942) and Stalingrad (1942-43).

For what it's worth, the Cold War was hugely important, yet lacked a decisive battle.

Later,

Donald

at March 13, 2010 | perma-link | (22) comments

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

at March 12, 2010 | perma-link | (4) comments

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 common-sense appraisal of what some indicator or variable will do in the coming years, and creating a statistical model that confirms it. The second step adds nothing of value to the prediction – the math is just there for show, a means of impressing the innumerate by camouflaging shot-in-the-dark guesses in rigorous clothing.

Non-economists, from what I can tell, seem to spend most of their energies navigating office politics and cultivating a false appearance of busyness. That, and watching videos on Youtube faster than the rest of the world can upload them.

So the public service is a bloated, overpaid, underworked monstrosity, extracting truckloads of wealth from productive Canadians. For those, like myself, who’ve snaked their way inside the beast, life is good. Of course, all this is not enough! Despite having what may be the least stressful jobs in the world (and don’t even ask me about my allowance for sick days, vacation days, personal days, “volunteer” days, personal leave, training days…you get the idea) Canadian public servants are (wait for it) depressed! Depression among public servants Canada’s biggest public health crisis: Expert.

Hidden among a dozen paragraphs extolling the virtue and hardship of public servants’ noble toil for the Canadian people, a single set of facts is revealed:

“Disability claims in Canada are climbing and between 30 to 40 per cent of them are for depression. In the public service, mental health claims doubled between 1991 and 2007 and now account for 45 per cent of all claims. Meanwhile, the number of other health claims has dropped.”

There are a few ways to interpret that last sentence. Are Canadians simply becoming healthier? Is the rise of Depression as an easily-feigned disability causing workers to substitute away from other, harder-to-fake illnesses? Who knows. But only the hopelessly naïve could reflect on the recent surge in Depression without regard for the incentives involved. Depression is a legitimate mental illness in which biochemistry lpays a large role, but it is also easy to fake. A surge in reported cases among a population with no unique characteristics other than uniformly gold-plated disability leave packages must be seen for what it is. The Ottawa Citizen, cognizant of her readership’s feelings on the integrity of public servants, doesn’t even consider the possibility of gamesmanship. Yeesh.

I reiterate: If every Canadian knew what actually went down in the forest of bland office towers that is my hometown, they wouldn’t stop voting for Stephen Harper and his successors until our government had returned to 19th-century proportions, and I don’t imagine the situation is significantly different in other OECD countries. In our flattening world, secrets like this won’t stay kept for long.

Cheers,

Zdeno

When I add up the fragments of my working life, including time in the Army, I spent nearly 25 years in government. Aside from the Army, almost all of it was in highly-placed agencies at the state level. The level of effort was higher than Zdeno finds in Ottawa, though the results seem roughly comparable aside from certain data products that were used by the public at large.

Government work definitely made me more conservative in the sense that I profoundly distrust government to be efficient. Exceptions are the parts of it that face actual competition such as the military (enemies), police (criminality) and fire (the elements).

Over to you, readers.

Later,

Donald

at March 11, 2010 | perma-link | (16) comments

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

at March 10, 2010 | perma-link | (0) comments

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 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 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 almost no previous experience. Some I picked up relatively quickly, and some I still suck at. Either way, it beats a spinning class.

If you have the athleticism, youth and experience to play anything at a competitive level, do it. No gym workout will ever let you summon the same intensity that you'll find on the field. No post-step-class-Booster-Juice-run will approach the camaraderie of the locker room. There is something primal and real about team sports (the more violent the better) that cannot be duplicated in any other context.

I think the key to exercising in a way that both maximizes fitness and improves your quality of life is to free yourself from the mentality of exercise as an obligation. Think of it as play. Make sure any workout you do is the high point of your schedule. Instead of torturing yourself with timed 10k runs, put on some trail runners and take your dog out to a forest. Run, sprint, jump, climb trees. Throw stuff at other stuff. Take a break and appreciate a quiet moment.

Alternatively, make exercise functional. Chop wood. Build a deck. Maintain a garden. Walk or bike to work. I'm fortunate enough to live a 10k ride along a beautiful path directly to where I work, which I make use of most days in the summer. What possible reason could there be to use a machine for cardio, in a world full of opportunities like this?

The only "artificial" workouts I do are twice weekly HIT weight session that never last longer than a half hour. I find they increase my energy levels, make me look bigger and healthier, improve my performance in rugby, and as anti-gym as I come off, I admit that it feels good to get in and throw around some metal plates.

Conclusion: Get out of the gym. Get out into the world. Be healthy while having fun, meeting people, and doing something spiritually uplifting. Stop listening to the conventional wisdom from the public health establishment. They are the same instituions who brought you Climate Science, Blank Slatism, Economic policy that is bankrupting our civilization, and foreign policy that is unable to win wars against disorganized Afghan tribes. Do you really want to trust your health to them?

Cheers,

Zdeno

I'm neither a gym rat nor a health freak and so will step aside to avoid any comments shrapnel.

Later,

Donald

at March 9, 2010 | perma-link | (13) comments