AndrewKrause Where the Eloquent Meets the Profane

How to Politicize the SCOTUS

When the founding fathers established the framework for Supreme Court of the United States, the sought to insulate it against politicization as best they could. Judges are appointed for life by the Senate. The Senate itself was politically insulated by virtue of its Senators being appointed by the legislatures of the States which they represent. That changed in 1913, when the 17th Amendment was ratified allowing - indeed mandating - the popular election of Senators within each State. (The justification given was that the election of Senators had become mired in corruption, with bribes being paid in some cases. By the time of passage, many States had already begun to elect Senators by popular vote with the Legislatures merely rubber stamping the candidates papers.)

Since the famously "Borked" nominee of President Reagan, it has become common practice for politically motivated Senators to turn nominees for the SCOTUS into punching bags to score sound-bytes for the 24 hour news cycle or to wring concessions out the opposition. Legal scholarship is now less important in choosing a nominee than superficial qualities (race, gender, passing certain litmus tests like abortion or gay rights, et al).

The last crack in the edifice of comity afforded the SCOTUS occurred at Obama's 2010 State of the Union speech when Obama challenged the Supreme Court en corpus, making politically charged assertions which have not been shown in fact. The particular yoke born by the SCOTUS is that while they don't have to campaign for their office, neither are they afforded much opportunity for public discussion of their actions whereby they can present their side of the record. The only output of the SCOTUS is in the opinions they issue.

Obama can taunt from the bull pulpit of the Oval Office in a sick cross between Chicago-style thuggery and playground name-calling. Congress can stand around and cheery maniacally as if the House of Representatives have become the Sanhedrin. It makes for great TV, but it sure as hell is not good government.

Either because he felt he had to, or because he would have otherwise done the same but not been noticed, Chief Justice John Roberts responded to the whole unpleasant affair in a forum with law students at the University of Alabama. Normally a blog rehashes what was already written. I posted a link. If you're not too lazy to click on it, you may be enlightened.

And One More Thing…

Last night a student was fatally shot outside his apartment on the GSU campus. This morning, some fool started shooting up a shoe store across from Kell Hall.

I wanted college cred, not street cred.

Cable and Hyundai – Stopped on a Dime (+ Quitting Skewl)

I've been officially separated from cable for a week now. There have been no withdrawal symptoms. In fact, I only remembered when I remembered I didn't need to pay the bill. More on that in another post... I really only wanted to pop on and say that I drive a Hyundia... so I don't have to worry.

Sarah Palin is not Presidential. I really, really like her, but she's not fit for the office. At least not yet- 2012 is two years away and a lot of transformation can take place in that time. Besides, we've already elected one amature with no experience, so Palin would be an improvement.

En epiphany hit me yesterday. President Becker at Georgia State University stated that one of the measures proposed to deal with the State Budget cuts to education would mean that GSU may have to admit 1,000 fewer students. I've long said that GSU does not have a customer-facing view with respect to its students, and in a strange way this has solidified that view. Basically, GSU has said "we're losing future revenues, so we're going to fire $2,000,000 worth of customers to offset that revenue."  The only rational reason for doing this is that the cost of servicing your customers exceeds the revenue they bring in. Students bring in revenue in two ways: the first is direct payments of tuition and fees. The second is in grants from the State through the University Board of Regents. Those payments are proportional to tuition in that it's based on credit hours registered for. In all, 64% of GSU's revenue is derived from students. So by firing 1,000 future students, you reduce overhead costs and lean back on the other 36% of your revenue stream.

I'll do GSU a favor and leave. I have to say it's not been a particularly good school. Robinson College is a bright spot, but otherwise Georgia State has shown little concern for students who aren't trust-fund babies. And the truth is that the Bachelors Degree has become the High School Diploma of our time. Easy government grants coupled with fly-by-night accredited institutions have made bachelors degrees plentiful. School names no longer matter because other than a few published rankings, nobody knows the difference between your school and any other tier 2 or lower school. You might as well save your money for where the real payoff is - a masters degree. Or, stop at an associates. Those two have long had the best ROI.

Orca 1, Shark 0

Here's a rare encounter from the folks at Nat Geo. Some eco-tourists were observing Orcas when a White Shark came on the scene. It would appear that the shark headed for the Orcas. What happenned next is a turn-of-events rarely seen in the animal kingdom: the Orca owned the shark.

Finding humor in death, as I always do, I'd like to point out that the amiable Orca offered first dibs to the tourists.

Sharks, the feared apex predator of the seas, aren't safe from being knocked out themselves. They do have to fear our aquatic cousins. Reports of dolphins attacking sharks are woven into sailors lore. And stories of Dolphins and Orcas protecting humans from sharks stretch from ancient Greece to 20th century California (link).

It Starts…

This will not be one of the short posts; I'm still entitled to an occasional manifesto.

1. Gains and Losses

Being overweight is as much a state of mind as it is a condition. Once upon a time, I weighed 335 lbs. If that sounds like a lot, that's because it is. I wouldn't even admit my weight to people. I dare not speak it aloud. I carry my weight well, so most people give me 50 lbs of lee way. That may sound like a benefit, but in reality it led to a number of extended and embarrassing conversations. It was so bad, I wouldn't even tell doctors my weight unless it was in metric units. "My weight? 152 kilos." Nevermind the physical limitations it placed on me. I got winded walking to my car. I rolled on my side to get up when most people sat up. I was a fatass.

Once upon a time, well after the 335-pound mark, I weighed 235 lbs. Where once there were great rolls of flab, they had been replaced by toned  muscles. Where once I got winded getting to my feet, I was running a mile in under 8 minutes. I was in shape - a shape other than "round". Then I got hurt, and slowly the scale edged back up. Soon I didn't recognize myself in the mirror. I had chins (plural). At 295 lbs, I realized that I needed to do something and got back to work. Within 16 months, I was better than ever. I could run a mile in 7:45 seconds. I could a 5k race in 25 minutes. Or, I could pace myself and run forever. I had large well defined muscles. I was giving clothes away because they were way too big for me. I stepped on the scale one morning and watch the needle bounce at the half way mark between 209 and 210. I rounded up, called it good and had a beer.

This morning I got off the scale, and the reading kept changing between 264.5 and 265. Giving myself the benefit of the doubt, I rounded down to 264, but I couldn't call it good - not yet. I had actually gained weight, but that didn't bother me. I've been here before. If there's one thing I know, losing weight is easy.

2. How Easy, Andrew?

So easy that most people be ashamed of theirselves for just not doing it. The reason the diet industry makes so much money is because those crazy juice diets where you pay $100 for a bottle of crap... they work. You will lose your ten pounds in week, if not in a day. My longest continuous streak of weight loss was 66 lbs. The first 10 lbs came off in a few days. I lost 20 more over the next week, and it would be two  months for the next 36. Diminishing returns; the body adapts.

That first 10 lbs that anyone can lose isn't because the magical african root extract in the fad diet pill you'll never hear of again. It's called "water". Men will lose or gain as much as 5 lbs of water weight on a day to day basis. Women coming off their cycle can lose 10 lbs without doing anything. Most people are carrying a few extra pounds of water weight because of the high-salt diet we Americans eat (salt makes you retain water). When you go on a diet, its not the restricted calories that budge the scale. You cut back on salt, the water exits and your lighter. The caffeine in the weight loss drink is a diuretic - it stimulates your kidneys to suck you dry. Some even contain mannitol; as an organic compound similar to sugar, it is used as a sweetener in diabetic friendly candies and is a very powerful diuretic.

The next 10 lbs is a bit harder, and I'll explain why later. Know this: if you simply change tactics, you can keep it going. And a good weight loss streak tends to reinforce itself. Nothing creates success like success. Most people don't go on to the next 10 lbs because losing the first ten was effortless and they don't understand that a small effort may be required to go further. For now, let's eat.

3. Food, Glorious Food

First of all, if you're fat, don't blame food. That is the moral equivalent of blaming the rape victim for weight a short skirt. Don't even go there; I will punch you in your throat. We need food. Food not only powers the molecular engines that animate us, but it provides the building blocks that make and repair us daily. If you didn't learn that through countless hours of sitting in front of the TV with your finger up your nose watching Slim Goodbody on PBS, then you should have figured it out by now.

I'm also going to cut you off from believing in good foods and bad foods. There is nothing inherently morally superior about a salad (before or after the ranch dressing) than there is for a philly-cheese steak sandwich. In the early years of human existence, we ate berries when we could because the sugars provided quick energy. We ate leaves and roots to give us long term energy. And then we incorporated meat into our diets, and our development took off. Anyone that tries to convince you to eat only meat or only vegetables or in any way try to restrict your variety should be called names and stoned to death.

Here's the secret to food: it's quality over quantity. The fad diets that tell you to only eat off a menu of specific kinds of food only serve to restrict your calories by restricting your choices. (Exception: the Atkins diet. More on that later.) If you carefully manage your food choices and also portion sizes, you can make modest cuts in your diet and lose weight without will power and without giving up your favorites.

4. A Lesson in Biochemistry

Don't panic. Here's all you need to remember; fats, carbohydrates, carbohydrates, starches, sugars, proteins, insulin and leptin. In that order.

One of the biggest mistakes out there is to go on a low fat/no fat diet.Fat is good. Say it with me, "fat is good." Do you know why a big slice of pizza is so satisfying? Because it's full of fat! Do you know why dressing makes a salad tolerable? Fat! Fats have been demonized as being something bad. But, you need them. They contain vitamins like D and K which are absolutely essential for good skin and to prevent you from bleeding to death (in that order). The fat molecules themselves are a great way to provide long term energy for strenuous activities. They also have an uncanny capability to coat your stomach and make you feel sated. If you cut fat out of your foods, you tend to eat  more. And when food manufacturers make non-fat versions of foods, they put in carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates actually covers almost everything else. A If you start with a sugar molecule and start stringing them together, you get starches. Add some more sugar molecules and your starches turn into simple carbohydrates. Add some more sugar and you get complex carbohydrates. You need the carbs, but if you can help it go for the complex carbohydrates. The thing about fats and carbs are that the body breaks them down to use for energy. Any excess you consume gets stored as fat. If you eat simple carbs or sugars, you quickly overwhelm the bodies need for that energy and the insulin kicks in transporting those sugars to your energy stores; your fats. With fats and complex carbs, your body has to use energy to break them down into usable components. A gram of fat has about 9.6 calories of stored energy, but your body will consume 2 calories to break it down and transport it. A complex carbohydrate might have 5 calories, but the body only expends .6 calories to break it down. A sugar molecule is a little more than 4 calories, but they pretty much fall apart.

As your body breaks down foods and converts them into energy in the form of glycogen, some of the energy is used right away. If you're fat, then you probably tend to overeat; that surplus of food is carried away by the blood and stored as energy in our cells. The hormone that regulates this activity is insulin. As we overeat, our bodies produce more and more of it commanding our cells to take more in. Eventually we become resistant to our own insulin and our pancreas produces excess amounts and our cells begin to go into a state of constant storage. We get fat and we stay hungry.

The flip side of this is leptin, a hormone that signals the brain when we've had enough food. Again, the act of overeating deadens our brain's sensitivity to leptin. Soon, we feel hungry all the time, we eat way too much and we gain weight.

Scientists are only recently understanding the interplay between leptin and insulin. They don't directly interact, but instead operate in similar fashion to regulate our eating. Insulin makes us feel hungry, and leptin makes us feel full. In overeating, we raise our levels of both and become resistant to their effects; we're always hungry and never satisfied.

5. What about that Atkins Feller?

Remember how we were talking about the calories in our dietary components? Try this: a gram of protein is 4 calories, and the body may expend up to 6 calories to break it down. That's -2 calories earned. We don't eat protein to get energy, we eat  protein to get proteins to rebuild our body. Being well adapted survivors, our body has developed a way to get usable energy when we can't get carbohydrates. The liver begins breaking down our fat stores to produce ketones which can be used instead of glycogen. Your body is taking in food and you feel sated, but there's no energy to be had. Hence, people who go on high protein, low carbohydrate diets do lose weight. None work better than Atkins.

There are risks. For starters, these diets can overwhelm the kidneys and lever. You also don't get a range of vitamins and minerals normally supplied by fruits and vegetables. People on Atkins tend to consume more salt when they don't need to. And you can be the victim of your own success - the rapid weight loss induced under Atkins often leaves you with large flaps of loose skin. Your skin won't tighten up as fast as Atkins pulls the pounds off. Here's my quick advice on Atkins: don't use it to lose weight in general. Use it to break log jams in your weight loss efforts, but as soon as you get over the hump, work the carbs back in over the course of a week.

6. This Is All Leading Up To A Point

I promise. Just bear with me.

7. Bad News: You'll Need to Exercise

You need to exercise. The health benefits to exercise have absolutely nothing to do with losing weight. In fact, you can exercise all you want and probably won't lose a pound. You might even gain weight. Muscle is more compact than fat, so a person that weights 225 lbs at 6'2" could either be a pudgy couch potato or a sculpted body builder. For that reason, don't ever trust a height-weight chart to determine if you're a "good weight". They lie and it will hurt your heart.

Exercise increases your metabolism. You have something called a resting metabolic rate - it's the amount of energy you consume doing absolutely nothing more than being alive. An average person might have a RMR between 1,500 and 2,200 calories per day. If you jogged for an entire hour (and you know you probably can't), you would only burn a little over 700 calories. So you should not think of exercise as a way to burn off that candy bar you just pushed into your face hole. Rather, exercise increases your overall metabolism in part by adding muscle.

8. Good News: Exercise is Easy

I happen to enjoy running. My passion for running exceeds what my feeble body is capable of. I long ago learned to suck it up and run through the pain. That pain used to be my body resisting any attempt to accomplish exercise. When you're out of shape, that pain is your muscles and tendons tearing and your bones developing microfractures. On a small scale, this is necessary and good; our muscles and bones are built up and strengthened through cycles of stress and repair. But that extreme level is not necessary simply to raise your metabolism.

For starters, running is an aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercises are good for the heart, but won't help you achieve your weight loss goals directly. Aerobic activity does burn fat, but only after you've done it for about ten minutes and have exhausted the glycogen supplies in your cells and liver. Once you stop, so does the fat burning. Alas, aerobic exercise does not raise your metabolic rate. If you over-do it with aerobic exercise you will go into a state of anaerobic exercise. If you do that for extended periods of time, you will damage your muscles in a way that breaks down the muscle, which is the opposite of what you want to do.

The best way to raise your metabolic rate is through weight training. Weight training will build muscle. Muscle will burn energy doing nothing more than being there because muscles never really rest - they always are in a state of tension known as "tone". If you're thinking that by doing weight training you'll turn into some muscle-bound gorilla, let me save you some trouble and bring you down a notch: not in your wildest dreams. Champion body builders spend upwards of eight hours per day in a gym building muscle. These are athletes at the extreme balancing weight training and nutrition to get the biggest muscles and baddest pumped up look they can. And even after all that, the guys and girls you see on tv or magazines are winners of life's lottery of genetics. Do your best and you'll get a nice toned look, but not much more.

That being said, don't not do the aerobic exercise. In fact, the best way to start your weight training routine is by warming up with a twenty minute session of high intensity interval training. HIIT works like this: you do a brisk walk. About five minutes into the walk, you run flat out for 20 to 30 seconds, then go back to the walk. As you increase in fitness, you will walk a little more briskly and increase the amount of time to spend running all out.

Be careful - with aerobic exercise and HIIT especially, your breathing ability (VO2Max) and muscle strength will quickly outpace the ability of your bones, tendons and joints to absorb the stresses. This is when most excercise routines fail. People injure themselves and have to take time off to recover. Things like shin-splints or microfractures can heal in a few weeks, but a few weeks can easily turn into months, years or forever. Learn to pace yourself and don't feel bad if you don't go the distance every time.

9. That Point

I'm fat. Again. I could complain, but instead I'm going to do something about it. My goal is to lose 25 lbs by the start of summer. My other goal is to run in the Peachtree Road Race. I'm not even going to harbor dreams of running the whole thing, but if it happens that's good too. I've started with exercise. After a month of building up my body, I'll begin backing off the calories. I'll eliminate salt and caffiene to minimize their effects. The point of this blog is to track my progress on both goals and to make myself accountable. If you don't see an update, feel free to send me a nasty gram.

Ruskies Unveil New Fighter

I briefly toyed with the headline "Ruskies Still Copying US, But Getting Slower." The Sukhoi design bureau unveiled their latest prototype of a Generation 5 fighter jet - the Su T-50, or "Pak FA" with what appeared to be a maiden test flight (video). Note that the gear is kept down for most of the flight, indicating that this was a test of the retraction capability. However, the designers claim that the aircraft has already sustained super-cruise.

The aircraft is a shared project with India - Russia bringing the metallurgical technology and ample supply of titanium to the deal. India brings their advanced understanding of composite technologies and billions of dollars of capital to the table. Together they will be able to have this fighter operational in about 10 years.

The bragging rights for Russia is that they'll finally have a plane to go against the American F-22. Not so fast professor - the F-22 is fully stealth. The Pak Fa is clearly - at face value - limited in its stealth. Clearly they've chose maneuverability over stealth (something the F-22 didn't have to do) by having fully gimballed exhaust ala the Mig 29 OVT. And by the time this thing gets into production, we'll be hammering on our prototype Generation 6 fighters.

A reset has occurred

First, my brother has a blog. From the clear blue sky, he got a website, set up the blogging software and even wrote a few posts. Of course he's capable. The surprising thing is that he never struck me as a blogger.

The thing about having a blog is that you have to maintain a blog with regular frequency. Your readers won't mind if you post hourly, daily or weekly as long as you keep the same rythm. Upon realizing that I hadn't posted since November, it occurred to me that I simply don't have the time to post the kind of content I did before. And if you're going to change your style, then change your style.

I've a new wordpress theme, mainly because there is an entire generation of newer wordpress software to be had.

Alas, all the old content is gone.