*Sigh* Its like walking in quicksand

Not too long ago, I was pretty optimistic about meeting my deadline for my book.

But it seems every time I sit down now I write something slightly different that what I have in mind. I have Event X in my head, but I always seem to write about Event Y leading up to it. Yes, next time I sit down, I inevitably get to Event X, but that means I have twice as much to write as I thought. So my 3 writes a week are really only 1.5.

To make matters worse, this week I added onto and finessed something I had already written. That's progress, but the wrong kind at the wrong time.

Also writing related: I'm curious if anyone knows if an author as ever "rewritten" the Bible into present times? Sorta Dom DeLillo's Libra meets the Bible. But I'm not talking about keeping the names or locations, just using the basic stories as a framework for a new, updated, present day story. It wouldn't even recognizable as the Bible, except in a "hey, these stories are similiar" sorta way. Oh, and probably just the new stuff, not the creation stuff, and oh, probably without the miracles, or at least the overt, magical miracles. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magical miracles anyway.

I'm posting this because I need help understanding it

This is from Volokh.com, which while titled "The Volokh Conspiracy" isn't nearly as cloak-and-dagger as it sounds. Its just a great website for legal & some legal-related political news that I follow for work. Oh, and its conveniently Libertarian leaning, which means I can do "fun" reading/research while under the guise of "work."

Political scientists Neil Malhotra and Yotam Margalit have an article describing survey data showing that some 25% of [non-Jewish] Americans believe that "the Jews" deserve at least "a moderate amount" or "a great deal" of blame for the current economic crisis. Some 32% of self-identified Democrats and 18% of Republicans take that view. Similar results were obtained in a recent survey of opinion in several European nations.

The 25% figure is perplexing enough. Though I know enough people who are convinced of one conspiracy (oil, 9/11, et al.) or another to believe it. The author's "rational political ignorance" explains some of it, I guess. Though you would think the more likely target would be bankers or Wall Street. I guess some could have the religion and the career tied together.

What REALLY perplexes me is the 32% number from democrats. I realize this isn't only the leaders of the party; it probably includes many of the "rational ignorance" group, but still. This is the Democrats. I mean, I expect this kind of thing from the gay-hating Republicans. But Democrats?

I've always had an inkling that maybe the Dems lacked some fundamental understanding about how the economy worked and that their policies often arose from that. Chalk it up to the "Road to Hell ..." thing. This kind of confirms it.

Relatedly: Good news on the gay marriage front.

On an unrelated note: I've written 3 times this week. Hope to extend it to 4 tonight. Outside chance at 5. I'm hoping for similar output next week, then a slow down. Four or five more next week should really push me very close to my goal and it gives me time to add pieces if need be.

Differing opinions; but please, make it factual

I don't want to get into this too much or too deeply. There are certainly two viewpoints as to which direction the United States and more specifically U.S. industrial might is headed.

This guy takes one more aligned with my outlook. Its that things aren't as bad as they are sometimes portrayed. And while he makes some good points, he misses the obvious: If we make 15% more than 20 years ago, but are 50% more productive, we need less workers in manufacturing. As the economy grows and adds new kinds of jobs, workers in manufacturing jobs make up less and less of the workers around us.

I'm not going to rant. I'm just pointing that out as my stance. Trying to give a reasoned outlook for why I believe what I do. As I said, you can certainly have a differing opinion, and I'm sure there are stats to back you up.

There is no way to link to the comments to taht article, but you can scroll to the bottom and see the first group. Its worth scrolling through the 5 or so pages of virtrol and spittle-flying anger. Maybe the commentators (well, 95% of them) are right. Maybe the U.S. is doomed.

But their arguments whining isn't convincing me in the least. My guess is that they don't even see the holes in their arguments. Meanwhile, at least one of commenters, while supposedly arguing against him, makes the author's point from the second and eight paragraph.

A couple health links/stories of notes

Part 3 of the consecutive posts/days with a health-related story. I'll soon have rename the damn site & 1 Thing.

A new review shows that while obesity is the cause of heart disease, obese heart patients live longer than lean patients and respond better to treatment. And lest you object with "one study does not a fact make," take note: It's a phenom that has its own name: it's called the obesity paradox and "study after study has shown that obese heart patients have better survival and have fewer strokes and heart attacks than normal-weight or underweight heart patients with the same severity of disease." This is all relevant to yesterday's post and resulting comment. It might be the case that lean people who get heart disease have some deeper, more troubling heart problem than self-imposed "obese" heart disease and that's why they don't react to treatment as well. Or it could be something else. Either way, I think it demonstrates the folly of trying to micromanage such things. Throw out the microscale - individualized issues/choices - even on the macro scale "common sense" doesn't always rule.

Good news for green tea, though not so much for drinkers as for growers... EGCG may be the missing ingredient for an anti-HIV gel. Me thinks this will somehow end up in green tea advertising, probably not on the tea itself, but on some cream containing it. Though the "green tea in every product imaginable" phase has seemingly past us now.

HFCS v. Sugar - Steel Cage Match BATTLE ROYALE!!!!!!

I read a book last year about the dangers of HFCS and how it might be contributing to the obesity epidemic. (This is two food/obesity posts in a row; I have my own little epidemic going on).

Anywhosit, this guy chronicles the rise and fall of HFCS as a sweetener. And while he acknowledges the worriers, and even that HFCS might be worse pound for pound, than other sweeteners, he points out that HFCS is 55 percent fructose, while "sugar" is 50 percent fructose.

And while many are American-bashing for obesity rates (American bashing, is, IMHO, a favorite pasttime of some, for deep, dark reasons they'd probably prefer not come to light and in which I don't feel like blogging about right now), its interesting to note Australia has simliar numbers with a sugar based industry.

I love the "natural is healthy" falacy, so I especially loved this...

The unwholesome reputation of HFCS has no doubt been exacerbated by the general
view that it's less "natural" than other forms of sugar. The notion that
anything natural is healthy—and anything artificial is not—seems especially
silly when it comes to added sweeteners. If fructose is indeed the problem, we'd
do well to avoid the all-natural sweeteners in health-food products and fruit
drinks, which often include concentrated apple or pear juices. These are almost two-thirds fructose—and might be significantly worse for your
health than HFCS. (Organic, raw agave nectar could be even more dangerous,
containing 90 percent fructose.)

What we have here is, a failure to, well, not so much communicate as research or think broadly. So many go astray on this failure. And not only on the "natural is healthy" argument, but that's another post for another time.

CDC's Frieden to fry fast food?

I'm not a huge purchaser of fast food. But I like me some Arby's Roast Burger.

Meanwhile, Slate.com reports that the new CDC, despite his introduction as a swine flu expert*, actually is the man behind trans fat bans and the attack on salt. Look, trans fats and salt in large quantities probably aren't good for you. But trans fat was industries reaction to the horrors of sat fats. And salt is just yummy.

I know there is some question about food, obesity and epidemics, but I think the links are weak. What's more, I'm not sure the links mean we should attack fast food establishments. Lazy overeaters who are overweight aren't suddenly going to be thin and munching celery just because Frieden flunked Friendly, or 'Bama bans BK .

I'm a big boy and can pick my food for myself; thank you very much.

Whole thing here.

* Unless this sickness I seem to be coming down with is swine flu, has there ever been a more overblown epidemic? Oh, right. Avian flu.

Artists & happiness

Are artists naturally unhappy people? Does unhappiness in some way make you a better artist? And if I'm happy, what does that say about me and my chances of being a published artist?

I vote for no, no, nothing.

Not a very deep post, I grant you. But let me explain. I might or might not be getting sick. My back is certainly killing me for no apparent reason. I'm trying to write; alot (Update: and not all that successfully).

So, no, not very deep. But the source material is good, so you should check it out.

This just didn't seem like the place ...

... so I'm going to start posting my more political rants on the Optimistic Libertarian. It'll mostly be a link site, with some venting thrown in.

Here's the first of many to come.

Friday Fun Links

Some nice light reading for a sunny Friday and hopefully what will be a nice weekend...

A neat story on why Google won't kill book authors ...

The Personality Forge: An interesting artificial intelligence chat bot site where you can create your own chatting 'bot or chat with bots created by others (the ones I tried out don't pass the Turin test) ...

A story that could help with breaking a writer's block, if only you could/would put it use: Walking backwards ...

Cisco sees the light at the end of the economic dark tunnel...

... but some warn that it might just be a firefly and that the mess could continue for a while

I'm shaming myself; Also, I owe my book to a worm

That's what this post amounts too. I'm hoping that this post maybe shames me into encouraging myself to write tonight.

I usually write Sunday night - that gives me a head start on the week and I only have to write once more during the week. It gives me plenty of chances at a third session. Only I didn't.

Monday/Tuesday are other good days for writing, in that they aren't Friday or Saturday night. Which are traditionally busy evenings. They also aren't Saturday, a housework day, or Wednesday, the night Lost is on. Lost is the only show I drop everything for and I don't plan on ending that scenerio.

So here I sit, facing Wednesday night wihtout having written anything. Now, lost is an hour starting at 9 p.m. I usually write from 10 to whenever anyway, so its not entirely out of the question. Still, given my late start, I'm half thinking of taking the week off.

The hold up: My workout routine ends next week, and then I'm taking a week off from that. I was kind of hoping to clear all the heavy lifting off my plate that week and use it as a general "recharge" week. Or.... I could take off this week, and really, really do some heavy lifting writing during that week.

So what have I been doing? Ninja Gaiden mostly. This brings me to the second part of my headline. For weeks I was stuck on this one sub boss - a worm - in the game. It was discouraging, frankly, and led me to play less. I would either choose not to play, or play through once, die, lose interest and write. Now I'm flying through the game and enjoying it again. Its been a bummer as far a writing goes.

A final link of interest: Kindle 2.1 has been released, with a larger screen that better supports newspaper & magazine reading. A last, great hope for newspapers? Maybe.

The power of roots

I guess it turns out ...

... you can do strikes in blogger.

... and you can do half powers, too. A number to a half power is actually the equivilent of the square root of the number. For instance, 25 to the half power would be 5.

So in my little hypothetical, 2 to the power of 4.5 would, I guess, be (2 x 2 x 2 x 2) x 4 (root of the resulting 16) = 64. Not the answer I was looking to arrive at, but it works. *

Or I guess it could be (2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 1.41421 35623 73095 04880 16887 24209 69807 85696 71875 37694 80731 76679 73799.... = 22.627. *

* Disclaimer - I'm not a math genuis, or really even a math... above normal? Not even a math slightly above average. I'm pretty much a math adequate. Therefore, I disclaim any liability or contention that the above numbers, formulas, theories or ideas are presented logically, accurately, intelligently or coherently. They could be spot on. They could be off by a factor of 1,000. I have no real idea. I have presented them to the best of my abilities, that is all.

It's a lovely begining start

I like love the strike function. You'll see why.

I'm also OK with fond of the occasionall crazy post.

I wrote something, well, took notes on something that I think is a pretty great opening couple of sentences or paragraphs to a future book. Hopefully interesting writing. Promisingly unique premise. I'll probably be posting it here, or google doc'ing it for some thoughts.

Meanwhile, as I approach the end of the current book, I'm thinking more and more about openings. I feel like the opening sentence has to have a real hook. Both to attact the eye of editors and readers. Its, outside of the headline, the first chance to bait the reader. It sets the whole mood from there on out. Ok, maybe that's a bit overselling it, maybe not the entire mood. But the reality is that I'm not sure its overselling it too much. An interesting first sentence sets the table, so to speak.

Since this book was written kind of from the middle plot point and expanded outward in both directions, I don't have a opening line in mind.

I'm sure its a battle that will be well documented.

Out of the mouth, into the ... belly of the beast?

... into its pancrease? Frying pan? Wouldn't the last one be absolutely backwards, I mean, who spits into frying pans? Wait, don't Italian spit on people for luck; or at them; or something? Something to do with the devil? You can't tell, but I'm squinting my eyes right now trying to work this out. Like this, or this. NOT like this. Insensitive bast@ard.

I'm desperately trying to tie this post's headline to the last one. Unfortunately, the analogy doesn't work very well. Maybe you could tell. Maybe you couldn't. I hid it pretty well, I thought. Keep that in mind while you're scratching your head wondering what the hell this rambling means: don't hold me to a strict interpretation.

Writing last night started off slowly, but by the time I was done had gone very nicely. I even had to write ideas down on paper after I quit because they just kept flowing. That's twice this week. My new goal is three times a week. The problem now is that I sit down to write one of the 14 pieces I have left, and I end up writing something leading up to said piece. Then my next "sit down" is writing the original idea. So while I'm writing frequently, and not really adding to my list of stuff to write, I'm not really making as much progress as you might expect. Thus the increased writing sched.

I FINALLY beat the boss I was fighting. I'm not exaggerating at all to say I probably died 40 times fighting this guy. Plus a couple times on the way to him. Although this guy claims, in a hilariously snarky walkthrough, that the boss is "quite easy" even though it might take a "couple tries" to get the timing right. Yeah, F that. I have choice words for him. A couple tries times, oh I don't know, 20, maybe. Maybe to the power of 4.5. Can you even do half powers? Did I even do the powering thing correctly? Who knows. Probably a math specialist, I guess. Then again, I'm probably better at Ninja Gaiden than a math specialist. Though, those math people can be pretty geeky, so maybe they are pretty good at it too.

Anyway, relieved to have written well. Relieved to be past the infuriating boss fight. SUPER relieved that its Friday. WEEKEND! I need it. Almost took off today with a touch of spring fever. Had the sun been scheduled for an appearance, I just might have done it.

Random wishes/thoughts:

- I wish Blogger had a strike command so I could strike out words. Or at the very least that I could find it. I could have some fun with that, I think.

- I also wish Blogger had one of those post-category box search thingies where the lables you post in frequently are bigger than the shitty little ones you never post too. Those are just cool. You know what I'm talking about. Or maybe you don't.