Adventures in Onionism

My race schedule for the coming year is taking shape. Not exactly as I wanted, but it's taking shape. I put in for the lotteries at Hardrock, Massanutten, and Barkley, but didn't get in. So I'm left with: February 23: Febapple Frozen 50 Miler (NJ) May 31: Bryce 100 Miler (UT) June 29: Western States 100 Miler (CA) I'd like to (1) break 24 at States, and (2) do something fun in July. San Juan Solstice is too soon before States. Leadville and the new Telluride Mountain Run seem kind of late (I do have to write a new labor economics course and have a new job market paper for next fall, after all.) This thing in Alaska is seeming very tempting. But what it really means is that I'm an idiot for dilly-dallying and not registering for the Vermont 100 when I had the chance.

What all the cool hipsters are doing.

Recovering after an enjoyable 5 miles in the dark while it was sleeting.

May you all be as happy as this guy during the holidays and the new year. h/t Radiolab

I have no desire to run the Spartathlon , because it is on pavement. Make it that long and on trail and I'll be there.

There weren't horses in the Americas before 1492. I like this painting, but when did the rhinocerouses get brought over?

This is the furthest George has ever gone into water on his own. A meal of fresh Canada Goose was at stake, but he gave up.

Nice 13 or 14 mile runs today along the Anacostia and the National Mall.

Just finished reading Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness by Scott Jurek (with Steve Friedman). While I'm happy that the book has motivated me to run a little (lot) more consistently, I mostly didn't like it, for two reasons. One, the writing was tired and cliched. Two, there were too many pseudo-scientific and psuedo-spiritual claims about the source of his running prowess (e.g. homeopathy, cleansing toxins, etc.). For good measure they mentioned one of the many horrible statistical studies showing that sitting makes people die early (tangent you've heard before: just because you control for smoking and other aspects of lifestyle doesn't mean you get at causality. If there is anything in the world that you did not include in your analysis that is correlated with both sitting and life expectancy, then your estimate of the effect of sitting on life expectancy is incorrect. And if there are plenty of things that you can measure that are correlated ...

A while ago I read, and loved, Peter Heller's book The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals ( my review ), so when I heard on Fresh Air that Heller had written post-apocalyptic fiction, I was looking forward to it. I stayed up till 3AM last night finishing it, and I wasn't disappointed. It's perhaps not great literature, and I found Heller's style of incomplete sentences to be mildly annoying, but I guess I'm a sucker for outdoorsy survival stories that are even halfway good. You got in your plane and flew past your point of no return. In a world maybe without any more good fuel. You left a safe haven, a partnership that worked. For a country that is not at all safe, where anyone you meet is most likely going to try to kill you. If not from outright predation then from disease. What the fuck were you thinking? Hig. My dog died, I said. Exactly.

I just read Mark Sundeen's The Man Who Quit Money , about a guy (nicknamed Suelo, see his website or blog ) who quit using money in 2000 and has lived mostly in a cave outside Moab, Utah since then. Suelo doesn't use money, and doesn't really barter either, he mostly just dumpster dives and accepts what is freely given. The book is maybe half about Suelo's spiritual quest that led him to the decision, and half about how he does it in practice and the adventures he's had along the way. Suelo was born in a fundamentalist family, and although now atheist, he is still very spiritual and talks about religion a lot. The pseudo-spiritual stuff wasn't my favorite, but the environmental and anti-corporate reasons behind Suelo's extreme freeganism I found quite interesting, and the author (a liberal environmentalist travel-writer with his own history of dirt-bagging) does a pretty great job of investigating the compromises he makes in his own modern life. He washes ou...

People are pretty stupid in general, and it's impossible to aggregate preferences well, so instead of conservation, or a cap and trade system for carbon emissions, we should just cause lots of problems and then try lots of geoengineering to fix those problems. Pipelines are a good place to start. Specifically, let's build one to move water from the Missouri River to Denver . Zero unintended consequences, guaranteed! If you want a nice economics lesson from this, it's that you people should index more of their contracts. More financial stuff should be tied to inflation rates, and when you sign your state up to divide water with six others for the rest of civilization, you should probably talk in terms of percentage of million acre feet available over some moving average window, not absolute acre feet.

My buddy Krud is making a video about his epic Reno to the Bering Strait trip last summer. Here's his trailer. In other awesomeness, the other day I was reminded of this couple who hiked the length of the Andes. Across The Andes from Gregg Treinish on Vimeo .

I spent the day stretching a bunch of the painting I acquired in Kenya. I just ordered the stretcher bars off frenchcanvas.com, bought a staple gun at the TrueValue down the street, and occasionally used the landlord's right angle square, though a tape measure to test both diagonals would do the trick. I suppose I had to live in East Africa to acquire the art as well. My friend EK is trying to build a library in Busia, Kenya, where she and I once lived at the same time. To raise the funds for the library, she's teamed with some artists she met in Kisumu. I finally met these artists earlier this year when I lived in Kakamega, and I really like the work of one of them. Seth Amollo. So I bought a few of his paintings.  Look for him at the Coca Cola stand by the Impala Park in Kisumu if you happen to be in the neighborhood. Seth Amollo         Fish Ladies (AL bought this one she visited) Women Drawing Water. Man, I should really just wait u...

you should try Gashcat , the most Neutral Milk Hotely thing since Neutral Milk Hotel This one came up randomly in the youtubes, but the video's kind of fun.

Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me , by Harvey Pekar C- I love Harvey Pekar, and I'm pro-Palestine, but this book was disappointing. Mostly a dry history of the land changing hands over the last couple thousand years. The more modern, the more relevant, in my opinion. Coming into the Country , by John McPhee C- Very disappointing. Took me forever to finish. I felt like most of this book was minutia about Alaskan state government, or even worse, local government gossip. I do think the claim that too little of Alaska is privately owned, and that BLM shouldn't be kicking individual homesteaders out of their handmade log cabins, is interesting, but I couldn't care less about Alaska's attempt to relocate the capital, or at least the way McPhee wrote it. I'd recommend that outdoorsy types read book I (traveling the rivers), skip book II entirely (relocating the capital), and start book III (homesteaders mining, trapping, hunting, and surviving hard winters) but q...

"We do not believe that God ever raised up a Prophet to christianize a world by political schemes and intrigue. It is not the way God captivates the heart of the unbeliever; but on the contrary, by preaching truth in its own native simplicity." Nauvoo Expositor , June 7, 1844 (The words of the opposition newspaper whose printing press Joseph Smith had destroyed, leading directly to his arrest and murder by a mob three weeks later.) My having read Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet (and the glowing review to follow) may upset Mormon friends or family, but I sincerely hope not. Although I think that the large majority of the book is likely very near to the truth, I think the really fascinating part is just being exposed to the nuances of a completely different take on events. Having grown up Mormon, I was quite familiar with most of the characters and basic events surrounding the origins of the Mormon church (mostly from...

Here's a photo from the day I went to the field earlier this month. I spent Thanksgiving with The Bit. We watched Happiness, In a Lonely Place, Quantum of Solace, Headhunters, Lady in the Lake, When We Were Kings, Saturday Night Fever, and Skyfall. Those whose titles start with the letter "H" were quite good; the rest were stinkers. I put in for Hardrock and Western States. Lotteries are next month. I kind of hate running hundreds, so I'll probably only sign up for 2 or 3 more on December 1 when the registrations opens up. At a work dinner I had a conversation with a nutritionist about veganism. She thought I'd be low in iron. I said I don't really take supplements, and wasn't especially worried about it. She seemed to  advocate more of a paleo diet than the whole foods plant-based thing I swear by.  I'm pretty easily swayed by evolutionary arguments, so this gave me pause, and made me think I eat too much grain (though it's usually wh...

An ad in the international terminal of the ATL airport. Atlanta public transit sucks. Not only did whites vote against expanding public transit to the 'burbs because they feared that inner city blacks will take the train to come and rob them, it's a 10 or 15 minute shuttle drive from the international terminal back around to the domestic terminal to catch the train downtown.

I think I've posted this before, but this dude looks exactly like me. Shirtless, tats, baseball cap with sunglasses on top, jeans that are probably too baggy by annoying hip people standards, he's got the whole package. Oh, and how 'bout those election results? Pretty freaking amazing. Basically everything that was in the realm of possibility went the progressive way. Obama (1-3 Supreme Court justices), marriage equality 4 for 4, marijuana 2 for 3, improving the Senate (Warren!), and not only did California vote to raise taxes so as not to further pipe-bomb public schools, they elected a Democratic supermajority who will be able to raise taxes on their own. (I'm pretty sure--some of the assembly races were very close.) If you read the quotes from the party leaders, I think their humility is pretty reasonable--they'll lose it in the very next cycle if they overplay it, but still, an oil extraction tax would be great, and they'll be able to put a marriage...

I am back in Western Kenya for a week to help with the launch of our baseline survey. Looks like the Lake Vic hyacinth is really bad again. Venus Williams was on the same flight.

PBS Frontline has a pretty good show on money in politics post-Citizens United, specifically in the state of Montana, that everyone should watch: Big Sky, Big Money . You should especially watch it if you don't know what a 501(c)4 is, or if you think SuperPACs aren't coordinating directly with campaigns. I have to say that I was hoping for a bit more dirt, or something more explosive, but honestly, Stephen Colbert pretty much nailed it months ago with his SuperPAC shenanigans. They obviously coordinate with campaigns. At least they have to name their donors. Non-profit non-campaign "issue advocacy" 501(c)4s  don't, however. Except in Montana they not only coordinate with campaigns, they straight up run them. As far as I know, only one supreme court justice (Thomas) believes that even anonymous corporate and individual speech is protected by the first amendment. So this is something we could actually win. But it's not like the Supreme Court is going to up an...

Does everyone hit their thumb on the spokes or hub taking a bike pump off the tire, or is it just me?

Apparently George does not have the same qualms about the quality of bread machine bread as I do.

I haven't found a decent bakery anywhere near my house. I miss Acme something fierce. So I started using the landlord's bread machine from the basement. The results are mediocre when compared to virtually the same recipe when done by hand. It does save four hours and it's great to be able to use the timer to wake up to fresh bread, but still, would it kill someone to make a decent cranberry walnut around here, and is this just a function of bread machines?  I'm an economist, so it wouldn't surprise me if there's no such thing as a free lunch (magically saving four hours), but does anyone have suggestions (preferably of the mult-grain variety) to diminish the problem?

I'm tired of bike lights breaking every year or so. I liked my Portland Design Works set, but now the rear one won't turn off. Plus I feel like around here where drivers aren't looking for cyclists and there aren't many streetlights, I need an especially bright front light. (Just yesterday oncoming young idiots made a left turn and I barely stopped in time to avoid broadsiding them.) Suggestions?

I found some reasonably priced Continental Grand Prix 4000's in red. 700x23, so I may also look for some wider ones for a softer ride. But I put Mr. Tuffys in these Conti's so hopefully I'm done with flats for a good long while. Also, if anyone wants my 700x23 Michelin Speedium 2's, I'll send them to you for the cost of shipping ($5?). They're cheap tires ($20 each new), it just seems sort of wasteful to throw them away. They've probably been ridden ~1200 miles.

What's the over/under on when these are all dead?

I've only read the abstract, but this paper says eating fruits and veggies makes you happier. Actually, to be clear, they do the rare honest thing and don't claim it's causal, they just identify an interesting and apparently robust partial correlation. So, clearly, it's causal. Be vegan, be happier. I'm sold.

I got three flats on my touring bike today. I've been rocking Continental Gatorskins on my crappy commuter for quite a while, with no flats that I can remember. And I rode 700 miles on the Michelin Speedium 2's that are on my nicer Lemond touring bike just fine, but they seem to have fulfilled their lifespan. Gatorskins are around $55. (Are these better than Continental Touring Plus? They're more expensive.) Bontrager Hardcase, Serfa, Specialized...everybody makes tires that are supposed to be puncture resistant. Does anyone make them in red, and sell them for less than $75? Because in all seriousness, these ones look cool, and despite the fact that my current red and black tires get punctured, and my red and black seat is not comfortable on long rides, I kind of want to keep the color scheme going.

There's not much new to me in this NYT article about the relationship between the Mormon church and the Boy Scouts of America. But their bigotry is still loathsome. Next week I'll be interviewing to volunteer again with a more inclusive youth organization. UPDATE: And today there's this .

Long Lake, Adirondacks Catskills Lean-to on Long Lake On the Northville Placid Trail, Adirondacks On the Fort Ticonderoga ferry from NY to VT George facing his fears at Clarendon Gorge Pretty much George's first snow George's coldest night at Skyline Lodge, a GMC shelter Vermont was too cold and the leaves had already fallen, so we headed south to the Catskills, though it rained there too. Catskills Long Lake, Adirondacks Well, after getting rained out in the Catskills, I stopped in NYC and Philly, and now I'm home. Hopefully I'll get out to a couple nearby state parks that I've been wanting to visit, and I may go camping on the AT near Harrisburg this weekend. I'm off to print out my Hardrock 100 application.