Date: 4/24/14
Distance: 4.6 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Cracked Podcast "15 Things that Secretly Influence Who You Have Sex With"
First I saw a newspaper thrown in someone's driveway. I tried to read the headline as I ran by but with the jiggling of running and the hard-to-read angle and distance of the writing I only got the words "Fines Levied" before I was past it. Those words were in my head for a long time. I assume the next word was "Against" because I can do Markov-Chain modeling in my head. But after that is the actual payload of the headline I assume but I missed it and it bugged me. Can we all be less wordy? I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
It was good to run on the Carrboro route again. I did a run in Ann Arbor recently. I wanted to do one in Chicago but failed to make the time. I wanted to do one in Great Falls, VA but just didn't do it. I did a dumb one at The Farm near Carrboro while the girls had their tennis lessons: I just ran around in circles for a mile. Dumb. I like the familiarity of a well-known route. Maybe if I learned to enjoy charting new routes more I'd be more motivated to run while traveling.
Lots of dogs on this run. One scared the crap out of me: it was running behind his owner. The owner passed me but I didn't know he had a dog with him so twenty seconds later I heard a panting, running beast sound come up from behind me I was startled enough to yelp. The guy heard me, then he took his dog and stopped on the side of the trail until I passed which was nice of him but not necessary now that I knew the dog was there.
A guy stopped me on the route and asked where was a good place to run. I gave him some options I know about but he seemed oddly skeptical about all of them. Sucks to be him, I guess.
The Cracked kids were talking about that famous psych study where male subjects cross either a rickety dangerous bridge or a sturdy safe bridge and complete a survey handed them by a pretty woman halfway across. The upshot is that the subjects who filled out the survey on the rickety bridge were more sexually or romantically attracted to the woman than the subjects on the safe bridge. It's famous empirical evidence for misattribution of emotional states: subjects attributed their excitement and/or nervousness to the woman rather than the bridge. Anyhow, I somehow never knew that the dependent measure of the study was whether the subjects called the woman 2 days later (she'd given them her phone number and said wait 2 days then call if you have questions about the study). I'd always assumed there was a survey about how they felt about the woman when the bridge task was over. The actual measure is really interesting because 2 days is a long time to possible re-evaluate your emotional attribution and/or to do other things that are more interesting than meeting a woman on a bridge and then pretty much forget the whole experiment.
So anyway: what was the effect size of that study?
By the way, I'd like to see a study done on how much exaggeration goes on when journalists recount study results. I know that a publishable social science effect is something like d=.2 or so. When that happens, there's a slight nudge in the dependent measure from the manipulation but there's a ton of noise masking that nudge. But when studies like that are recounted, I think writers tend to overshoot the results ("none of the controls showed..." or "people who saw the X all responded with more Y" or whatever). Someone should quantify that. I bet it does our science a disservice by raising the expectations that published studies are accounts of big, reliable effects. Lord knows they are not and it's a new-ish fad to earn points by pointing that out to people who don't actually know that.
Also, running on trails is hard because rocks are not evenly spaced nor equally sized.
And I should buy a sweatband for my head.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Monday, April 7, 2014
Shall I get wet today?
1: It is raining.
2: I took a rest day yesterday.
3: One rest day is enough.
4: Being wet is okay but also kind of uncomfortable.
2+3 = I want to run today even though I will get wet.
1+4 = I don't really want to get wet, so I shouldn't run today.
Which is greater? 2+3 or 1+4? If you said neither, then you are right.
Am I being a wimp or am I looking out for my best interests? It all depends on my motivations for running at all: Am I running for the enjoyment of it? If so, then don't run in the uncomfortable wetness. Or am I running for self-discipline and health? If so, then run despite the uncomfortable wetness.
Thinking is hard.
2: I took a rest day yesterday.
3: One rest day is enough.
4: Being wet is okay but also kind of uncomfortable.
2+3 = I want to run today even though I will get wet.
1+4 = I don't really want to get wet, so I shouldn't run today.
Which is greater? 2+3 or 1+4? If you said neither, then you are right.
Am I being a wimp or am I looking out for my best interests? It all depends on my motivations for running at all: Am I running for the enjoyment of it? If so, then don't run in the uncomfortable wetness. Or am I running for self-discipline and health? If so, then run despite the uncomfortable wetness.
Thinking is hard.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Leadership and Judgement
Date: 4/6/14
Distance: 5.66mi
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Disc 2 of Game of Thrones, Song of Ice and Fire
There is no frickin' way I can follow this stupid book while doing anything else. There are too many characters and relationships. Plus at any given point, the narrator has a 60% chance of being in the middle of describing someone's clothing. Seriously. High velvet collars and soft sable cloaks and black ringmail and black leather gloves and oh yes where was I? How am I supposed to tune in and out of an audiobook and follow it all when half the time it sounds like a 13th century QVC pitch?
But here's one thing that got me riffing: Kings. We revere independent people who have leadership skills. When people have a vision, we generally accept that as a good thing. Self-doubt and contemplation are vices that can cripple an effective person; real strong leaders "just do it" and "the tough get going" and all that.
But what if leadership skill and self-confidence are just human qualities given in some measure to each of us like height or eye color. Some have less and some more according to the great genetic dice roll. In that case, the clarity of vision doesn't inspire leadership, it's the other way around. A leader's gonna lead no matter which direction he's facing. And if charisma and confidence draw us to them, then any foolish idea the tallest leaders have will end up defining a good deal of the human endeavor.
The Egyptian pyramids were probably a good idea in some ways, but that's an awful lot of work for some fancy piles of bricks. Maybe some of that effort could have been useful for something less geometric?
I don't know. Maybe it's just sour grapes.
On on.
Distance: 5.66mi
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Disc 2 of Game of Thrones, Song of Ice and Fire
There is no frickin' way I can follow this stupid book while doing anything else. There are too many characters and relationships. Plus at any given point, the narrator has a 60% chance of being in the middle of describing someone's clothing. Seriously. High velvet collars and soft sable cloaks and black ringmail and black leather gloves and oh yes where was I? How am I supposed to tune in and out of an audiobook and follow it all when half the time it sounds like a 13th century QVC pitch?
But here's one thing that got me riffing: Kings. We revere independent people who have leadership skills. When people have a vision, we generally accept that as a good thing. Self-doubt and contemplation are vices that can cripple an effective person; real strong leaders "just do it" and "the tough get going" and all that.
But what if leadership skill and self-confidence are just human qualities given in some measure to each of us like height or eye color. Some have less and some more according to the great genetic dice roll. In that case, the clarity of vision doesn't inspire leadership, it's the other way around. A leader's gonna lead no matter which direction he's facing. And if charisma and confidence draw us to them, then any foolish idea the tallest leaders have will end up defining a good deal of the human endeavor.
The Egyptian pyramids were probably a good idea in some ways, but that's an awful lot of work for some fancy piles of bricks. Maybe some of that effort could have been useful for something less geometric?
I don't know. Maybe it's just sour grapes.
On on.
Encouragement is effective
Date: 3/29/14
Distance: 6.32mi (10k!)
Location: Richmond, VA
Catalyst: Ukrops Monument 10k
No headphones for me! The Ukrops 10k was my first official 10k race. The route was 3 miles up Monument Ave., turn around and come back. There were bands playing and DJs spinning every two blocks. At least a third of the houses on the avenue had people out front cheering us (there were at least 30,000 of us!) running.
It is much easier to run when people are cheering. Why? I can't encourage myself with nearly the same result as this throng of Richmondites produced in me. Listen to the little voices around me. If a bunch of "you can do it"'s help me run faster and better even while I think they are being unreasonable (I mean, they don't know me and they certainly don't know that I can "do it" and if I weren't there they would be cheering anyway, etc. etc. etc.) then imagine what the effect of all the people in my life are having on me even while I try to consider their opinions rationally and cautiously.
Also I should try to encourage more people.
Distance: 6.32mi (10k!)
Location: Richmond, VA
Catalyst: Ukrops Monument 10k
No headphones for me! The Ukrops 10k was my first official 10k race. The route was 3 miles up Monument Ave., turn around and come back. There were bands playing and DJs spinning every two blocks. At least a third of the houses on the avenue had people out front cheering us (there were at least 30,000 of us!) running.
It is much easier to run when people are cheering. Why? I can't encourage myself with nearly the same result as this throng of Richmondites produced in me. Listen to the little voices around me. If a bunch of "you can do it"'s help me run faster and better even while I think they are being unreasonable (I mean, they don't know me and they certainly don't know that I can "do it" and if I weren't there they would be cheering anyway, etc. etc. etc.) then imagine what the effect of all the people in my life are having on me even while I try to consider their opinions rationally and cautiously.
Also I should try to encourage more people.
Monday, March 24, 2014
We say "weight loss" but we mean "size loss"
Date: 3/23/14
Distance: 6.68 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Sawbones (Weight Loss)
For the first bit, I mostly thought about how much I had to pee. I stuck to my route, which was on suburban sidewalks for the first 3.5 miles, despite a nagging need to duck into the woods for a minute. But there were no woods for a while. And such is the dedication to my craft. For the rest of it, I was free to think about loftier things. Thanks, Maslow!
There is a world of difference between my mind when I'm running while looking down and when I'm running and looking up. The latter keeps me focused on going the distance and the former keeps me focused on dumb things like didn't that small pile of sticks look like a human figure, like literally a "stick figure" and whether pencil lines on a page are considered "sticks" in other contexts because I can't think of any they are always just called lines although technically "line segments" because "lines" technically extend infinitely in two directions...
Also I thought a lot about weight loss because of the podcast. I've been half-thinking for a bit about how almost all the desire for weight loss I see in my culture is actually just a desire for size loss. Literally no one I know would be upset if they were slimmer but weighed more. And this is probably a perfectly reasonable outcome for someone who replaces fat, which is big and light, with muscle, which is smaller and dense. This post I just found makes this point pretty well: weight loss per se is a pretty dumb goal since no one can see your weight and literally no one cares about your weight. Your bigness, on the other hand, is there for everyone to see.
Also, I've been weighing myself on the digital scale my wife bought. I like to do it: it's so easy and the number is so clear. I weigh myself several times a day and I've been keeping track using some phone app I found. Since I re-started running recently, I've lost a couple of pounds overall, but it's really only about one standard deviation of my weight fluctuations from hour to hour. I'm not sure how normal this is: this post I also just found cites some "nutritionist" as saying 3 to 5 pounds range in a day is perfectly normal. 3 to 5 pounds is a dieter's success story! And it can be attained just by weighing yourself a couple of times in the same day! I could make a fortune with the "wait four hours" diet. Or should that be the "Weight For Hours" diet? I am a genius. Do not steal my idea.
I counted calories for a while too, but it's really annoying because food is largely an undifferentiated mass, but calorie counting requires some sorting and clarity. That egg and cheese biscuit at Johnny's may have 250 calories or 350 calories depending on the weight of the thing and the size of the biscuit and the type of cheese and who the hell cares because I'm hungry and I'm going to eat it. In any case, I think I've figured out that "hungry" is really just my body keeping a balance of calories in to calories out. It's really kind of amazing to see the numbers verify this obvious conclusion. If I exercise I bunch, I get hungry and I eat more. It all kind of works out: I end up eating (in counted calories) about as much as I burn (in counted exercise) except for two things:
First, I don't know a lot about my non-exercise burning. I know I'm burning calories just typing this out: energy isn't free. I know if I were out of calories I would be hungry and tired, so I'm obviously still running on whatever calorie savings I've accrued. But typing isn't exercise so I don't know how to count it all up. Heck, just being a warm mammal burns calories. There are estimates for a man of my size and activity level and I can just lean on those, but how can one verify that I'm not burning more (or less) than I think I am?
Second, I almost always eat when I'm hungry but I don't always stop when I'm full. Because of this, my calorie overages are many and my calorie underages (that didn't type out right: "my calorie deficits" is maybe better?) are few. So even if I'm not over-eating at any given point, it all adds up. It's weirdly hard to burn more than you eat...
Unless you burn a frickin' lot. I'm starting to think that getting to that point where your hunger feels insatiable is the best place to be. So I'm going to keep running farther and harder until I get to that point. But I'm not going to hold my breath until my scale shows me lower numbers.
Distance: 6.68 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Sawbones (Weight Loss)
For the first bit, I mostly thought about how much I had to pee. I stuck to my route, which was on suburban sidewalks for the first 3.5 miles, despite a nagging need to duck into the woods for a minute. But there were no woods for a while. And such is the dedication to my craft. For the rest of it, I was free to think about loftier things. Thanks, Maslow!
There is a world of difference between my mind when I'm running while looking down and when I'm running and looking up. The latter keeps me focused on going the distance and the former keeps me focused on dumb things like didn't that small pile of sticks look like a human figure, like literally a "stick figure" and whether pencil lines on a page are considered "sticks" in other contexts because I can't think of any they are always just called lines although technically "line segments" because "lines" technically extend infinitely in two directions...
Also I thought a lot about weight loss because of the podcast. I've been half-thinking for a bit about how almost all the desire for weight loss I see in my culture is actually just a desire for size loss. Literally no one I know would be upset if they were slimmer but weighed more. And this is probably a perfectly reasonable outcome for someone who replaces fat, which is big and light, with muscle, which is smaller and dense. This post I just found makes this point pretty well: weight loss per se is a pretty dumb goal since no one can see your weight and literally no one cares about your weight. Your bigness, on the other hand, is there for everyone to see.
Also, I've been weighing myself on the digital scale my wife bought. I like to do it: it's so easy and the number is so clear. I weigh myself several times a day and I've been keeping track using some phone app I found. Since I re-started running recently, I've lost a couple of pounds overall, but it's really only about one standard deviation of my weight fluctuations from hour to hour. I'm not sure how normal this is: this post I also just found cites some "nutritionist" as saying 3 to 5 pounds range in a day is perfectly normal. 3 to 5 pounds is a dieter's success story! And it can be attained just by weighing yourself a couple of times in the same day! I could make a fortune with the "wait four hours" diet. Or should that be the "Weight For Hours" diet? I am a genius. Do not steal my idea.
I counted calories for a while too, but it's really annoying because food is largely an undifferentiated mass, but calorie counting requires some sorting and clarity. That egg and cheese biscuit at Johnny's may have 250 calories or 350 calories depending on the weight of the thing and the size of the biscuit and the type of cheese and who the hell cares because I'm hungry and I'm going to eat it. In any case, I think I've figured out that "hungry" is really just my body keeping a balance of calories in to calories out. It's really kind of amazing to see the numbers verify this obvious conclusion. If I exercise I bunch, I get hungry and I eat more. It all kind of works out: I end up eating (in counted calories) about as much as I burn (in counted exercise) except for two things:
First, I don't know a lot about my non-exercise burning. I know I'm burning calories just typing this out: energy isn't free. I know if I were out of calories I would be hungry and tired, so I'm obviously still running on whatever calorie savings I've accrued. But typing isn't exercise so I don't know how to count it all up. Heck, just being a warm mammal burns calories. There are estimates for a man of my size and activity level and I can just lean on those, but how can one verify that I'm not burning more (or less) than I think I am?
Second, I almost always eat when I'm hungry but I don't always stop when I'm full. Because of this, my calorie overages are many and my calorie underages (that didn't type out right: "my calorie deficits" is maybe better?) are few. So even if I'm not over-eating at any given point, it all adds up. It's weirdly hard to burn more than you eat...
Unless you burn a frickin' lot. I'm starting to think that getting to that point where your hunger feels insatiable is the best place to be. So I'm going to keep running farther and harder until I get to that point. But I'm not going to hold my breath until my scale shows me lower numbers.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Kids don't know anything about fire safety or drug use
Date: 3/14/14
Distance: 1.64 miles, then 1.34 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Stop Podcasting Yourself 310 (the middle bit)
The first time I ever encountered drug use was a late spring day after school. I was in 7th grade, I think. I was walking home from the bus stop and I saw a kid lighting a fire in the yard next to his house. That week there had been lots of news reports about the dry, windy weather and all the adults were concerned about fires, fire safety, and fires getting out of control. So I did what I thought any reasonable citizen would do: I approached this guy (he was probably a couple years older than I was) and asked what he was doing.
I asked in part rhetorically because that's why I'd gone over to him in the first place: I wanted to call attention to his possibly irresponsible behavior. But I also asked because I literally didn't know what exactly he was doing. I still don't think I know exactly what he was doing.
He was pouring lighter fluid on some dark green plant matter that he'd scooped into a small pile on a bare spot on the lawn. Then he was lighting it with a match, putting his face directly over the fire, and covering his head with with his jacket.
Now that I'm a wise old man, I think it was pot and he either had no idea what he was doing or he was really bad at huffing. Probably both. In any case, he looked at me like I was nuts and I mumbled something about being careful with fire because of the wind and stuff and then walked away.
That poor kid. I hope he was jaded and thought I was dumb. Otherwise he probably spent the rest of the afternoon worried that dorky little me was going to call the cops about some kid setting fire to his lawn...
Distance: 1.64 miles, then 1.34 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Stop Podcasting Yourself 310 (the middle bit)
The first time I ever encountered drug use was a late spring day after school. I was in 7th grade, I think. I was walking home from the bus stop and I saw a kid lighting a fire in the yard next to his house. That week there had been lots of news reports about the dry, windy weather and all the adults were concerned about fires, fire safety, and fires getting out of control. So I did what I thought any reasonable citizen would do: I approached this guy (he was probably a couple years older than I was) and asked what he was doing.
I asked in part rhetorically because that's why I'd gone over to him in the first place: I wanted to call attention to his possibly irresponsible behavior. But I also asked because I literally didn't know what exactly he was doing. I still don't think I know exactly what he was doing.
He was pouring lighter fluid on some dark green plant matter that he'd scooped into a small pile on a bare spot on the lawn. Then he was lighting it with a match, putting his face directly over the fire, and covering his head with with his jacket.
Now that I'm a wise old man, I think it was pot and he either had no idea what he was doing or he was really bad at huffing. Probably both. In any case, he looked at me like I was nuts and I mumbled something about being careful with fire because of the wind and stuff and then walked away.
That poor kid. I hope he was jaded and thought I was dumb. Otherwise he probably spent the rest of the afternoon worried that dorky little me was going to call the cops about some kid setting fire to his lawn...
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Some dogs care about runners a lot more than other dogs
Date: 3/13/14
Distance: 2.5 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Stop Podcasting Yourself 310 (the first bit)
Some dogs obviously want to join the running game. If they are off leash, they often will. If they are on leash they will often seem to forget and try to join anyway. Yank! My dog is somewhere in the middle. He'll sort of feign running the way you might say "yeah, yeah, yeah" to an idea you like but don't really like. He'll get up to speed for one or two paces and then peter out quickly (obviously not tired) and kind of circle back to where he was before. Sometimes he won't even look at you while he does it. It's like an annoying job that he feels everyone expects him to do.
Also, Dave and Graham say "yeah, yeah, yeah" a lot. Dave mostly, but now Graham does too. I've been listening to these guys for too long. This particular episode is odd because it's the first time I've noticed how much they need a guest to keep the discussion grounded. They are like identical twins who speak to each other in a secret language made up by them and for them only. Not that I can't follow along, but I imagine my years of dedicated listening help me understand things.
There is a funny feeling from changing one's stride from long and loping to quick and staccato and then back again. Speed is independent of this: both strides can be fast or slow. It's just something to do. Running can be boring.
Distance: 2.5 miles
Location: Carrboro, NC
Catalyst: Stop Podcasting Yourself 310 (the first bit)
Some dogs obviously want to join the running game. If they are off leash, they often will. If they are on leash they will often seem to forget and try to join anyway. Yank! My dog is somewhere in the middle. He'll sort of feign running the way you might say "yeah, yeah, yeah" to an idea you like but don't really like. He'll get up to speed for one or two paces and then peter out quickly (obviously not tired) and kind of circle back to where he was before. Sometimes he won't even look at you while he does it. It's like an annoying job that he feels everyone expects him to do.
Also, Dave and Graham say "yeah, yeah, yeah" a lot. Dave mostly, but now Graham does too. I've been listening to these guys for too long. This particular episode is odd because it's the first time I've noticed how much they need a guest to keep the discussion grounded. They are like identical twins who speak to each other in a secret language made up by them and for them only. Not that I can't follow along, but I imagine my years of dedicated listening help me understand things.
There is a funny feeling from changing one's stride from long and loping to quick and staccato and then back again. Speed is independent of this: both strides can be fast or slow. It's just something to do. Running can be boring.
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