July 06, 2006
Runner's Woes
Back in the before time, that is before I went to college and got lazy, I did a lot of running. I missed state in Cross Country by less than two seconds, twice, because in my league around Portland a 16:29 5k just wasn't fast enough to get you there. I didn't exactly do badly at track, but 4:14 in the 1500 is pretty mediocre as far as these things go and my 800 time never got under two minutes. Anyway, I used to do that whole running thing. And I liked it.
Unlike Miss Vague whose relationship with that particular beast is a little more...complicated. She suffers a pain known only to hikers, joggers, and distance runners: shin splints. Most folks think of shin splints as any form of pain on the front of the lower leg below the knee. Not true! There can be localized muscle soreness from use like with any other muscle, but shin splints are a quite specific injury. Basically, the WebMD suggests ice, rest, stretching and strengthening. Interestingly, they give a pretty decent explanation of everything but the last. When I had this problem, thankfully only a couple of times, the following two steps worked for me.
1) Immediately after running and cool down, take a whole cube of ice out of the freezer and run it up and down your shin until it is completely melted. Repeat for the other shin. You will want to put a towel down, probably.
2) In order to strengthen the shin so that the muscle adheres to the bone better, stand on your heels with your toes pointed up as high as possible and walkd 30-60 meters a day. We always did this as part of our warm-up just to make sure it got done, and it worked wonders. Calf-raises also help, but they don't help nearly as much as the shin strengthening.
And that is today's random tidbit from my wealth of random knowledge. Go forth and do this in rememberance of me. Or something.
Posted by Timothy at 09:40 AM | TrackBack
July 04, 2006
230 Years Ago: Americans Were Braver
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.
Two hundred thiry years ago a gaggle of terribly flawed individuals embarked upon what, at the time, seemed like an impossible task. In order to guard their own freedoms, having already taken up arms against Britian, they declared themselves a new and independent nation. Men from many walks of life, with myriad reasons, took it upon themselves to cast off the outrageous yoke of tyranny and go forth under a new, post-enlightenment banner. It took another seven years to win independence, and another four after that to form the Republic.
The system of government was likely the best that could've been established at the time: freedom for all men, so long as those men were white and owned land. Slaves counted 3/5 for tax purposes. By 1791 there were 10 amendments to the document, all of which ennumerated specific controls on government and outlined some very basic freedoms for individuals from which all others could be built. Granted, those freedoms were only for white land-owning males, but the ideas laid to paper over 200 years ago still speak to a fundamental need for individual freedom and limits on state power. Fortunately, the idea of who qualifies as an individual has expanded greatly over the last 230ish years.
Expansion of another sort has also proceeded at break-neck speed, which is unfortunate, because the size and power of the central state in the daily lives of the citizenry has become such that one wonders if there will soon be a license to breathe. Like at least every Executive in the 20th century, and like every Congress since 1913, our Dear Leaders have been busy solidifying their own power while using dubious legal precendent to expand the role of the state. What started with the 17th Amendment has culminated with Bush's Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit and McCain-Feingold. Incremental decay over a period of roughly 90 years has left the citizenry complacent, uncaring, and suckling at the teat. While police arrest you for videotaping them on your property and Our Dear Leaders attempt to restict freedom by soiling the very document they have sworn to protect, you have people in media demanding that the government censor the press.
Isn't there a law against that or something?
It has come to pass that we obtain freedom too cheaply, and thus we do not value it. Unlike generations before us, unlike our forefathers, and unlike many in much of the world today, we're born with liberty and face no great struggle in keeping most of it. Or at least keeping enough to go about our daily lives without too much hassle. And parts get neglected, or we don't feel too bad about giving up things at the margin: flashing an ID here, filling out a form there, being searched without cause this other place.... And each transgression taken individually perhaps isn't that much, but taken in sum the results are disastrous. To simply enter into an agreement with a private party to hold our money, we must show two government pieces of identification. To move from one state to another by air, we must show ID and walk barefooted through the airport. It's come to the point where we are not even secure in our homes. Liberty dies slowly while nobody is watching.
What a tragedy that a mere 230 years after a few thousand brave men took up arms against the world's stongest Empire we can barely muster the energy to be upset when the NSA monitors our calls. What a sad state of affairs that only 230 years past the dawn of a new post-enlightenment era, the serious debate is not about whether or not the government should pay for healthcare, but about how and for whom. What American government has become is pathetic, a top-heavy morass of special interests and power-hungry bureaucrats. The Federalists won the day after the Articles of Confederation failed, but the power of the central state serves as a bright beacon of the anti-Federalist's worst fears.
However, I do not believe that all is lost. While the course will be difficult, government can be rolled back. Power can be limited, the individual states can be granted their more powerful role once again. This will not be an easy road, nor one that is likely to move swiftly, but between playing the partisans of the left and right against one another and making the average citizen sick of state interference, it is possible to rebuild what the framers sought: a free nation, where individuals can seek reward in their own pursuits largely free of interference from the state. This is the vision of America that I love, and this is the vision worth celebrating 230 years after a bunch of uppity farmers told King George to stuff it.
Happy Fourth of July, burn a flag in rememberance. And watch Frank Zappa make a fool of John Lofton. Makes me wonder if we ought to ban Christian Rock.
Posted by Timothy at 12:00 AM | TrackBack
June 27, 2006
Review Contest
Just in case any of my minimal readership is interested, there is a book review contest being hosted at Nightcap Syndication. Write a good book review and you could be the winner of a freelance gig with a major US newspaper. If you enter, I get absolutely nothing. In fact, it only broadens the pool of people against whom I'll be competing. So...please enter but write crappy reviews, because I could sure use that $150 a shot. Details at the link and, for the sake of completeness, below the fold.
TIM WORSTALL SAYS:
You are one of those bloggers that wants to get published in the newspapers, correct? You are also one of those bloggers capable of writing something that the newspapers would like to publish, yes? However, you don’t know any editors and don’t know how to approach them even if you did.
Excellent, we can help. Here at Nightcap Syndication we have partnered with one of the top 20 newspapers in the USA. The Books Editor is looking for more reviewers and we’re going to run the competition to help him find them.
Yes, we realize, doing a book review isn’t quite what you had in mind, you’re holding out for the New York Times to offer you Paul Krugman’s slot. Or Maureen Dowd’s (please!). However, time for a little reality check here, this isn’t going to happen immediately. It is also true that book reviews have a long history of being a way into the journalistic citadel: the most difficult sale of your writing, the hardest one to ever make, is the first.
So what exactly is it that you have to do? Simple. Write a 650 word review of any book that takes your fancy and post it here at Nightcap Syndication. At the end of July the Editor will read through all of the entries and offer freelance book review contracts to some or all of those who meet his standards.That’s it. There are no entry fees, no reading costs, nothing to purchase and nothing to pay. Simply take a book off your shelf, review it and see if you get a contract out of it.
Details are below the fold.
Details Schmetails.
Book reviews can vary in length but this particular editor likes 650 words. 647 or 652 is fine, 600 or 700 is not. For non-American writers (and there is no problem with your being outside the US. I have just been hired to write for this paper and I’m English and live in Portugal: globalization you see!) please make sure you set your spell-checker to US English. There is more to the difference than dropping the occasional "u" from UK English.
You can review any book you wish. Our categories are here. Our general rules for reviews are here. An ironic or satirical review of the Old Testament will show your skills just as well as something on the latest Chomsky. Fiction, non-fiction, business, self-help, whatever takes your fancy.
What will you get if you "win"? Why, in fact, "win", not win? This isn’t really a competition for only one slot. Our partner editor needs a number of reviewers in a number of specialities so he may well decide to take on as many people as show that they have the requisite skills. What you get will be the standard freelance book reviewing contract. No, unfortunately, these don’t actually make anyone rich. The fee is $150 per review and you have to sign over all rights. However, the paper then assigns back to you (for no royalty) all subsidiary rights so that same review can then be sold on to other, more minor papers. If they themselves syndicate it then further payments will be made. You also get a free copy of the book, of course.
We’d like to make sure that everyone understands this point properly. We at Nightcap will have no part of your contract directly with the newspaper nor of any money you make from it . We are offering purely (and entirely for free) an opportunity for you to strut your stuff in front of one of the United States’ first class commissioning editors.
We here at Nighcap are working with ScooptWords to try and build a syndication system that will make such further sales much simpler. That’s going to be a little time in coming.
Finally, please look at this technical note here. When you post your review please do, if you should so wish, add in a link to your Amazon (or other retailer) affiliates account.The purpose of our review section is that writers get a chance to make money from their reviews. As a general guideline you can review anything you like here, not just books, and we’re delighted for you to earn the commissions that result from people purchasing.
So that’s the deal. Review a book, post the review, maybe make a little from your affiliate links. If you’ve got what it takes to do this professionally, we’ve organised a professional, one actively on the lookout for new talent, to look the reviews over and offer proper commercial contracts to those that interest him.
There is no limit on the number of reviews you can submit.
This is probably the easiest way you’ll ever come across to try out for a job on a major newspaper. Good luck and we look forward to reading your reviews!
HOW TO ENTER ON NIGHTCAP
1. Login.
2. Select the Submit Competition Entry from the User Menu at the bottom right.
3. Select the competition that you wish to enter: in this case Book Review 06/06.
4. Please note on your entry, which of our Book Review Categories best fits your review (this will make it easier for us to reassign it when the competition is over).
5. Write your entry and then click the Disk Icon.
6. Come back and write some more!
Posted by Timothy at 08:52 PM | TrackBack
June 26, 2006
GOOOOOOOOO D....BEAVERS!
Congratulations to the Oregon State Beavers NCAA Division 1 Men's Baseball Champions! WHOO!
Posted by Timothy at 09:20 PM | TrackBack
June 25, 2006
The Plank Demonstrates Why I Don't Have Comments
I blog purely for my own amusement, so I don't have much to add to the whole Jerome Armstrong-Kos-Astrology-Stockpumping thing, but the comments on that linked post at TNR and this one in which Zengerle admits to making a really bone-headed mistake go fairly quickly to the dogs. Not the most vicious I've seen in the blogosphere, but still farily ad hominem and unfair. Of course, the interntron mixes anonomity with distance, a recipie for childish and vitriolic attacks. Then again, I put to print a magazine issue with "take a goddamn bath and get a job, you lazy, socialist fuck" as a pull-quote. What the hell do I know?
Posted by Timothy at 11:09 PM | TrackBack
Dear (Dis)Astros Management,
Please, please, trade Brad Lidge. His ERA is 4.67, he's blowing saves all over the place, and today he gave up two hits and a walk with two out in the 9th, and then a grand slam.
In fact, get rid of the whole bullpen besides Wheeler. I realize that things will get better when Backe gets off the DL, but if the damn bullpen gives up nine runs in two innings, that's a bit of a problem. You should win games that you're up 9-2 in the 7th. Even against the White Sox. Lidge hasn't been impressive since NLCS versus St. Louis last year, he got rocked in the World Series and I don't think he ever came back from it mentally. Get the hook, a closer can't be giving up homeruns.
Maybe get rid of Ausmus in favor of a catcher who can hit, too. Geeze.