David Ernst Chats with the World

I burned myself. It’s a small burn, nothing serious, it’s not even going to blister, I bet. But, I hate burns. As I often say, I’d rather accidentally cut myself in the kitchen ten times than burn myself once.

What’s interesting about this burn, though (and this has happened to me at least once before) is that the burned part of my thumb never came into contact with a hot liquid or solid object. It was steam! I took the, uh, center thingy out of my rice cooker (funny, I never realized I don’t have a word for that), and while moving it across the kitchen I bumped the lid with my pot holder, allowing steam to escape right onto my thumb. It was one of those where I wasn’t sure I had burned myself. But now, a couple hours later, there’s no question. Dang. I hate burning myself.

*On Food and Cooking* taught me that liquid water cannot be hotter than 212 degrees F, but that this limitation does not apply to steam. Sometime in my teens the “conductivity” issue was pointed out to me: you can safely reach your hand into a 500 degree oven, as long as you don’t touch any solid object. But the air in there is the same temp as the solid! Why doesn’t the air burn your hand? Because it doesn’t transfer the heat as efficiently, that’s the way I understand it. Well, my thumb tells me that the steam does transfer the heat efficiently enough. Dang….

Cleaning my house a bit, I decided to put on some music, which turned out to be Chuck Berry. During a song called “You Can’t Catch Me” I was very surprised to hear him sing “Here come old flattop, he come groovin’ up..” What?? Must consult The Orb.

Needless to say, a Google search did not disappoint. That page actually says “John famously lifted” the line (originally “he was movin’ up with me”), which of course makes me feel like I should have known. (I kind of like that use of the word “famously” which I’ve felt a bit attuned to since NPR reported, on the occassion of the death of the “Queen Mother”, that she “famously” said during WWII that she wouldn’t move to the US because “The children can’t go without me, I can’t go without the King, and he can’t go.” I like that line too…) Anyway, if it’s supposed to be known famously, then I should spread the word, right? Mostly I just thought it was remarkable that such a signature line was not even original.

I hope, and expect, that for as long as I live, scenes like this one will never fail to fill me with wonder. The photo, taken this morning out of my bathroom window, really doesn’t do it justice.

When I was in college, shortly after the peak of society’s interest in fractals, Pete and I stayed up late (and by the standards of my college years, that’s really saying something) one winter night writing programs to draw simple Julia Sets (or something very similar to them anyway, it was a fractal recipe out of the book *Chaos* by James Gleick). After a short sleep, I woke up to go to class, and some amazing frozen rain was thickly covering all of the branches of all of the trees, all the way to the tips. They glistened brilliantly in the morning sunlight, and the similarity to the fractal images floating in my brain were inescapable. I’d seen such things before and since, but this was the most beautiful such scene I can recall. And, of course, the fractal factor made it even more striking.

So, every time now that I see a scene like this one, I’m reminded of that amazing morning.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been given home thermometers with wireless remote sensors for xmas. The reason I keep getting them is that they never seem to work. The indoor one will usually work, but it won’t get a signal from the outdoor one. It won’t even get the signal if they are sitting right next to each other on the same table. I do not know why. I’ve wondered if it’s other wireless stuff (like my WiFi network, or my cordless phone, or what have you), but it doesn’t seem to be. So I don’t know.

Anyway, this year I got two — one from my mom, and one from Kynthia. They both work! That is, they both pick up temperatures from the remote sensors! So that’s good news. Hopefully at least one of them will even continue working.

While I’m pleased to have a working temperature gauges, I also have to pause and chat about the reliability of these things. Typical consumer-grade digital thermometers nowadays give 3-4 significant digits of accuracy… that is, they usually offer tenths of a degree on their display. What’s funny is, the thermometers really aren’t that accurate, as you can easily confirm by putting the display and the remote sensor right next to each other. They almost never show the same temperature, frequently more than a degree off. Since I had been working with both thermometers, I set all four sensors together. Then I even grabbed my kitchen thermometer. Sure enough, the five sensors gave five different temperatures: 63.9 64.6 64.9 65.3 and 65.7 degrees F. Now, the total span here is just under two degrees, so when I am trying to figure out which coat to wear, I don’t think it’ll much matter. However, I do have to wonder: why do they design these things to display accuracy beyond the units’ capabilities? The best I can come up with is that the fractions of a degree matter more in Centigrade mode. I don’t really know, but do remember: if you need to know the temperature to three significant digits, you’ll need a sensor more accurate than these.

I haven’t written much to the blog lately, and I attribute that largely to the holidays. I like the holidays, and they play an important role in my life and the lives of my loved ones. So, I was busy. This is the first weekend I’ve been home in a while.

And, thanks to xmas, I’ve got a bunch of new presents! My family and friends are very generous around xmas. In fact, I am struck by how often when someone asks where I acquired something I own, I say it was a gift. Really, a surprising percentage of the durable goods that I own were gifts. Of course, I try to be generous as well, and so does everyone, so perhaps the same is true of most everyone I’m close to. But I think my aversion to shopping in general probably raises the percentage for me.

Anyway, I think I was particularly easy to shop for this year because of my increasing interest in cycling. So, I had a new:

• handlebar bag;
• frame bag;
• bike gloves;
• long underwear;
• (unbelievably cool) repair tool;
• (and the biggest gift of all) GPS

Well, much to my surprise, the weather was very nice this weekend. Actually, I’ve loved the weather so far this winter… seems like it’s either snowing or clear. Clear, cold, and sunny doesn’t bother me at all, although I admit that cold does not make me excited about long bike rides. But still, what I don’t like (and what we typically get a lot of in the winter) is cold, overcast, and drizzling. Yuck.

Anyway, yesterday was very sunny, and I thought “I could bike in this.” Then, today, it was not only sunny, but even quite warm! It topped 60 this afternoon! Woah!

Well, how could I resist? I installed my new handlebar bag (with my new unbelievably cool repair tool), figured out a way to attach my GPS to it, strapped on the frame bag, donned the gloves and the long underwear, and set off! I rode a variation on one of the easiest routes that I do, one of my “12 mile after work” routes that can be ridden in about an hour. Usually I do these routes for the exercise and the mind-cleanse, so I usually push myself a bit. Today, though, I was telling myself to “play”. Every time I thought of something I might adjust or check with my new gear, I tried to check it. So, definitely a slower ride than usual. And then I went out of my way to go to Staples to buy me a new Flash/USB drive (I should write about that in a different post).

The ride went well, it did feel relaxing. But, part of my excitement to bike was to unveil the new abilities made available to me by the GPS, and some very cool software. So, now, thanks mostly to GPSVisualizer.com here is
a google map version of where I biked today and [an elevation profile](http://www.bloomington.in.us/~drernst/gmaps/20060108-surprise-ride-elevation.png) as well! I found the software and stuff necessary to do this yesterday, and I’ve been very excited about the ability. Very cool.

Furthermore, I’ve been having good luck with finding perl modules and the like to play with the GPS data myself. I was hoping I’d do a total ascent graph to post up here as well. Unfortunately, though, the data is.. not reliable. I have to learn more about some of the stuff that the GPS does with elevation, because it seems to make these corrections, often when I’m standing still. I calculated the total ascent to be about twice what the GPS said it was. I tried to correct for the corrections, but I never got it to within 20% of what the GPS said. And I’m not sure I trust what the GPS said anyway (it said ~1700 feet for this ride, that seems a bit high to me. One of my estimates came back closer to 1400 feet, but I don’t know whether to believe that or not). I wonder if part of the confusion was that it was very windy today, and that maybe the variable pressure confused the GPS’s internal barometer. Weird, I don’t know, I’ll have to research it and/or get used to it.

I could say tons about the bike ride, but I’m trying to get to bed, so I’ll just highlight a couple of things:

* Why did I ever bike up the hill on Old 37 between Dunn and Bethel? I can bike up the same hill on much more pleasant back roads. Doesn’t make the hill any easier to climb, but at least you’re not also worried about cars.
* Both of the climbs I did near Griffy were about 250 ft vertical. So that’s: from the bottom of the dam (~600 ft) to around the corner of Bethel and Hinkle (~840 ft); and from the causeway at Griffy (~650 ft (50 feet higher than the bottom of the dam!)) to the crest of the hill near the corner of Jordan and 17th St. (914 ft! I had no idea there was such a high point over there near the frats!)

Ok, enough geeky reminiscing. I’m going to bed.

I’m one those people who was brought up to respect the value of
things. Put a different way, it’s hard for me to get rid of something
if it still works. I drive my cars until they die. I use my
appliances as long as they still work. Etc.

When I visit friends houses, I am often struck by how new much of
their things seem. Take stoves, for instance. It seems like all the
homeowners I know have stoves that are less than 15 years old, and
they have all these crazy features that mine doesn’t have. Mine must
be 40 years old or so. It’s very simple. It’s a gas range, my
biggest complaint about it is that it’s hard to adjust the flame
without having it go out. But, it works, I cook on it happily, and I
just don’t think that spending $500 on a new stove would bring me $500
of happiness. So, I don’t.

Refrigerator, same thing. I’m sure there are other examples, but
really, that’s not the point here. The point is: why is everyone
using such old toilets?

(more…)

I’m such a nerd. I’m a total goober about civic engagement. Yes, I am one of those people who was glad to get summoned for Jury Duty… in the month of my 36th birthday, now that I’ve spent half of my life as an eligible juror, I finally got my call. Here’s my review of the way that my local government handles this stuff, as well as some general stories about the experience. In general, it was a very positive experience for me, and I don’t think I’m just saying that because I’m such a goober.

(more…)

It’s been eight days since my last post, but unlike other similar delays, this one felt totally justified by my holiday travels. I left last Wednesday by car, and had quite a grueling trip to Allen’s and Cynthia’s house in Cleveland. Nine hours instead of six, due to trying to make up detours around a terrible traffic jam. The next day, Allen and Cynthia and I drove to my Grandmother’s house, which took six harrowing hours instead of four. That was actually the scarier trip, the roads were bad, and the wind was unbelievable. We weren’t sure we’d make it.

But, we did! And, once in St. Marys, I had a great time. I’m amazed by how much I like my relatives. I was only there for about 48 hours, though, and then drove back to Cleveland with my parents, and then to Indy to see Sue and much of her family. The drives back were much easier, thank goodness. It was nice to see Sue and her relatives, particularly enjoyable were the rousing games of Oh Hell Sunday night. But, hey, not surprising that I’d be partial to the card games. :)

And now I’m back home, glad to be in my own house and able to lie in my own bed as I wish. And, hey, maybe I’ll even think of some things to write in my blog. :)

Woah, 17 days since my last posting! What’s the matter with me? I don’t know, but I think I’ll once again aim for a string of shorter and more regular entries.

I got a bee in my bonnet about the screen resolution on my laptop. I like high resolutions, and I realized that one of my biggest frustrations with the thing was that the resolution was a mere 800×600, but that I’d never really devoted any time to trying to fix it. So, with nothing much going on for my tonight, I decided to devote some time.

Standard procedure: google for someone else who worked on this (“modeline config file xorg.conf” turned out to be the winning search) and see what they did. The answer: run a tool called gtf that writes config file lines for you (“gtf 1024 768 60 -v” was the actual line that gave me what I wanted) and then paste it into the config file. Restart XWindows, and… voila! It was really just about that simple.

So, if it’s so simple, why did I need to google for the answer and manually edit the file? Why isn’t there a utility that does this in a nice, warm, gui environment? There is supposedly such a utility on my Fedora 4 installation, but it didn’t help at all. It only offered 800×600 and 640×480. This is what’s bad about linux as a desktop platform right now. And, of course, now that I’ve got it how I want it, I have no personal motivation to make something that does a better job. So these things remain difficult.

Idk. I’m hoping that the Linux variants that are being sold on cheap computers these days know their own hardware and thus spare their users of these kinds of frustrations. But, I’ve never used one, so I don’t know.

David

As I was about to roll out of town for the ~4 hour drive to Chicago, I visited the library, in a last ditched effort to listen to *Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire* before the movie comes out in November. They didn’t have it. Dang. Well, I still needed something to listen to, so I just browsed.

I saw the audio version of [Ann Coulter](http://www.anncoulter.org/cgi-local/welcome.cgi)’s book [*How to talk to a Liberal (if you must)*](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400054184/qid%3D1105923271/sr%3D8-1/ref%3Dpd%5Fcsp%5F1/002-3137557-8036860?v=glance&s=books&n=507846). I had seen this book on some best-seller shelf a while ago, and thought “Woah, apparently I should know who this person is”. So, I thought I should learn more. Of course, here was my opportunity, and I didn’t really feel like it. After all, my real goal here was to ease the lonely drive, not to educate myself on current public figures. If it was bad, annoying, etc., what was I going to do?

I kept browsing, and then found [*Michael Moore*](http://www.michaelmoore.com/)’s *Stupid White Men*. To be honest, I never thought I would read this book. Although Moore is certainly a hero to many of my friends, and while I certainly am more inclined to agree with him on political issues than I am someone like Ms. Coulter, he is not a hero of mine… I find many of his tactics offensive, and many of his fundamental ideas don’t appeal to me at all…

But, I thought, maybe I should try an experiment… I’d get both of these books on tape, and then alternate listening to them. They represent what most Americans view as the far, opposite ends of the political spectrum, so much so that I think many people on the left and the right don’t really want to be associated with the one people might naturally associate them with. So, I decided to go for it, also picking up *In the Time of the Comet* by H. G. Wells, in case I couldn’t take it.

Well, basically, I couldn’t take it. I did make it through one tape of each one on the way up there before it just got to be too much, though, so I’ll say a bit about the first couple of chapters of these books and what it was like to listen to them “side-by-side” like that.

Oh, and before the start, in case it’s not obvious, I’m aware that I’m biased in this review, so if you’re tempted to write and tell me that I’m biased, don’t expect a reply.

The first chapter of Coulter’s book was certainly more annoying than what followed. I think the most troublesome thing about it to me is that she talked about liberals as if they are all exactly the same, so if Ted Kennedy did something wrong, then so did I, because she would consider me a liberal. Some of her assertions made me laugh out loud, like that liberals won’t engage in a real argument but instead will only focus on a catch phrase like “Bush Lied”. I can’t help but wonder if she can’t tell if a liberal will argue or not because she wouldn’t give them time to speak. I imagined myself on a talk show with her, and had trouble imagining how I’d be allowed to get a word in edgewise. The official amazon.com review summarizes some of her advice as “don’t be defensive, always outrage the enemy, and never apologize to, compliment, or show graciousness to a Democrat” and while I can’t say that’s an exact quote, I bet she’d think it was at least a fair summation. She offered a few examples of how some Democrats had been rude to Republicans who had shown graciousness. I agree that some of those were rude, but I was not at all convinced that this was the rule rather than the exception.

What’s certainly more striking — and, I must say, more interesting — about her writing is her actual positions on some of the issues of the day. It’s a bit hard to tell her position sometimes, because she is mixing humor with political commentary, which doesn’t bother me, but it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s hyperbole and what’s her actual position (turns out there doesn’t appear to be a website called “ihateanncoulterwithahothothate.com” (I tried google and several variations in case I was remembering it wrong, but I certainly couldn’t find it. If someone can correct me, I’d be most appreciative), but if there was, I’m sure she wouldn’t be seriously believe that the author was trying to present something unbiased).

So, for instance, I bet she doesn’t really think that the US should invade France… Like, I don’t *think* she’d support sending actual American troops to France and actually trying to topple their government. But, it doesn’t matter, because this is a good lead-in to what I have to say that’s positive about her: she presented a nice, thorough argument for why France is not a good friend to the US. I don’t agree with her, but I do respect her for presenting a historical account of all the ways that she thinks that France has hurt the US. During the whole “Freedom Fries” thing, with right-wing Americans pouring french wine down sewers and stuff, I took it as very simplistic frustration with France opposing the Bush administration’s intent to invade Iraq. Coulter’s presentation certainly made more sense than anything I heard anyone say at the time. I could say the same thing, actually, about the case for invading Iraq: I listened to most of Colin Powell’s speech before the UN, to all of Bush’s “Cincinnati” speech talking of the urgency of going into Iraq, and read/heard countless essays advocating that position. None of those made as much sense as Coulter’s presentations. So, nice work, Ann.

But, at the end of the day, I do not feel bad about not ascribing to her feelings about how to deal with Islamic nations: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” I don’t recall any lip service in what I heard to respecting Islam, or that the majority of Muslims are not terrorists. Her case really seems to be that we should irradicate the religion, not by killing all Muslims, but I guess by killing enough of them to control Islamic countries, and then deliberately converting them to Christianity. No, I don’t see that as good. I believe in the freedom of religion, not just for Americans, but for everyone. Furthermore, I do not see the survival or prosperity of the United States as being fundamentally threatened by this religion. And, I guess I just need a really good reason to think that we should be risking American troops and overthrowing other nations. So, I guess I’m definitely a liberal to her. For this, according to her, I hate my country (I even hate homosexuals!) and I don’t want to engage in reasoned debate. I don’t know, maybe she’d make an exception for me. *chuckle*

Ok, after finishing the first tape of Coulter’s book, I put in Michael Moore. It’s a difficult comparison. I think Moore is probably just as set in his ways as is Coulter, I’m not sure I could say which one is more fundamentally biased. But, the parts of Moore’s book that I heard were much more about bashing the Bush administration specifically, not conservatives in general.

I liked both books best when they were being specific, and the least when they were generalizing. So, Moore went into detail about his understanding of how the Bush team won the 2000 election illegitimately. I don’t know if all of his facts are true or not (I suspect that at least some of them aren’t). But as with Coulter’s France presentation, I appreciated that he was at least presenting a thorough case. And, what can I say, I do think there’s real reason to question the legitimacy of that election. But, hey, that’s ancient history at this point.

I admit that I listened to more of Moore than of Coulter… it is really difficult to listen to someone insult and belittle you for your beliefs and those of people who you associate with. I’d be much more inclined to hear people like Coulter out if I didn’t have to feel like I was being whipped at the same time. But, she’s not writing to me, she’s writing to people who already hate liberals. Perhaps this is why it doesn’t feel like real political discourse.

And, of course, that exact same criticism is true of Moore. I don’t know how many conservatives actually sat through *Farenheit 9/11*, but if they did, they knew that this movie was not made to get them to defect from the GOP… it is an opinion piece, created for people who are already inclined to agree with the author. *Stupid White Men* is the same way. So is *How to talk to a Liberal*.

My favorite part of what I head in *Stupid White Men* was Moore’s talk about black Americans. It was definitely not the standard Democratic party line, or any other standard line. It was quite a bit different than any treatment of the issue I’ve ever heard. Thought-provoking.

Well, anyway, the end of the story is that as I entered Chicago it was time to turn on the radio to hear the results of Patrick Fitzgerald’s news conference, which turned out to be the indictment of Libby, who subsequently resigned. I actually got to hear a good deal of the actual news conference, which totally triggered my “CSPAN Syndrome” (the feeling I get when I’m seeing original political sources live). I loved it. Compared with what I’d just been hearing, it sounded so… calm, so rational, so predictable in its reason. I didn’t feel like I was trying to be convinced to believe something, I felt like I was hearing a report on something. Patrick Fitzgerald did a great job dealing with the press, I thought, giving very consistent answers and refusals to answer all of their questions. I also thought the press did a great job of probing him, trying to get a sense of the things he didn’t want to tell them about.

So, what can I say? I prefer to learn about politics in less venomous ways. I don’t think many people are stupid. I don’t like being called stupid, nor do I like people calling people I disagree with stupid. I do like the American political process. I like it when the press *presses* politicians for information, and I like watching politicians handle these encounters with grace. I like hearing political opinion, too, but I definitely prefer it when it’s presented civily rather than with lots of belittlement of others in the public debate. But, I guess, in the abstract, I’m glad that it all exists. I just know what I prefer.