Fruit.

One of my least favorite parts about grocery shopping is buying fruit - not because I hate fruit, but because I can't help feeling how epic-ly I'm getting screwed by our food/agricultural system. You don't have to be an economist to know something is totally not right when you can buy a cheeseburger (water, chemical fertilizers, tons of fossil fuels to grow soybeans to feed cattle to produce beef, which is processed with all sorts of other junk to make patties and milk, which is made into cheese, wheat, which is refined and baked into bread, tomatoes picked and processed into ketchup, corn processed into starch powder and reacted with catalysts into high-fructose corn-syrup which is used in the ketchup and probable the bread, and then all the fossil fuels needed to truck all the raw ingredients to their manufacturing locations and then truck all the prepared ingredients to a Mcdonald's to be cooked and serve by an employee) for less than $4.00 but have to pay fucking $9/lb of cherries (pick off tree, wash, truck to supermarket). People obviously have every incentive to not at all be healthy in this country.

Ugh. I just consumed $8 of fruit in like five minutes.

I realized this month is my one-year archery anniversary

Earlier this week, I logged into my old bank website and, just out of curiosity, looked up the first transaction I made at Viking Archery, an archery pro shop/indoor range in Houston Texas.  June 8th.  That's first day I picked up a bow and arrow!

Looking back, I know I really made a ton of progress.  This was pretty typical of my shooting a year ago (taken June 23rd, probably the nth time I had ever been shooting, where 1 < n < 10):

That's a single-spot standard NFAA target from 20 yards.  I couldn't even consistently hit that one target!  And now, look what I can do to a 5-spot NFAA target!  To be fair, in the picture above, I was using a crummy rental bow with crummy arrows, BUT STILL!

Another before-after comparison I was delighted to find is the distribution in my accuracy: these data sets are just ~5 months apart, but look at the difference!  (This is also for an NFAA single-spot target).

While I was capable of hitting 5s in January, it's much more of a regular occurrence now.  In fact, I was surprised to find that I'm now more likely to hit a 5 than a 3!

I really feel like I'm on a second archery growth spurt now.  The first was after I took a private lesson with Clint at Texas Archery Academy - he taught me a lot of useful exercises, essentially how I should practice.  Even though my actual shooting consistency wasn't too great, I began to understand what a good shot felt like.  By experimentation, I eventually realized how much little things like the slight pressure differences in my fingers (against the string) matter in affecting the arrow's flight.  This second growth spurt I'm on is more of a mental one.  Now that I know what a good shot feels like, and now that I know most of the physical movements I need to do to make that happen, it's such a mind game from here.  The hardest part about shooting the 5-spot target above is keeping my mental focus, especially when having to acquire a new target/aiming point after each shot.  

Anyways, it's been an amazing year as far as archery goes.  I feel like I can actually call myself an archer now - a novice archer, but an archer nonetheless.  Even just six months ago, I wouldn't have been comfortable with calling myself that.  I've learned a lot since then but understand there is an entire lifetime of learning to be done in this art.  I know a top priority I will have this coming year will be to work on my mental endurance.  Plus, I'm also hoping to compete in my first indoor tournament later in 2013 (and maybe early 2014 if I qualify for a state competition?).  Can't wait.  Here we go, year two!

All-Male Fox Panel Laments Female Breadwinners

Okay so this video has been posted on Facebook a lot now, and I thought I'd add in my two cents.



To start, there are few things in the world that irritate me more when people try to justify a shitty argument using science or "the natural order" of things when they actually have zero fucking idea of what they're talking about.  Basically, when these people talk about "natural law" or "traditional values" or something, they're referring to 10-15 thousand years ago and onward, aka at the development of agriculture or anything that led to the white male's rise to political/social power.  If you want to survey the time anatomically-modern humans have been around (or even earlier), you'll notice that there has NEVER, EVER EVER been anything "natural" or "traditional" about:

• The nuclear family/"traditional" marriage
• Monogamy (sorry =| )
• Females being anything less than equal in social status to males.  

Here are some other examples of things we can also verify that there is nothing "natural" about.  Spoiler: the same people who tell us the things I listed above tell us the things I list below:

• Males being "smarter" than females
• White people being "smarter"/more productive/better than colored people
• Homosexuals choosing their sexual orientation.

These are all really just bullshit messages that people in power tell us to keep themselves in power (aka from old, straight, white males…not all old, straight, white males, mind you.  Just a small, power-lustful subset).  There are many more of these bullshit messages we're bombarded with from a few powerful people like "remember the good ol' days when we could make kids or black people work to death?" or "remember when we didn't have to take care of poor people and they just died?", but I'll just focus on the ones that are involve the natural evolution of humans and human society for now.

Okay, so…women being breadwinners.  Totally against the natural law, right?  When I first saw this video, I thought, "This is totally wrong!  In hunter-gatherer (HG) societies, men hunted and women gathered!  And that meant women brought back 60-80% of calories consumed for the tribe!".  Well, while that is the true for some HG groups, the real story is more complicated than that.  Where had I gotten that statistic?  From a TED talk Helen Fischer gave, but it's backed up by some studies of indigenous groups like the bushman groups of Africa (Lee 1968, Tanaka 1976), the Australian Aborigines (Gould 1977), etc.  Murdoch's 1967 "Ethnographic Atlas" indicates that only around north of the 40° latitude do hunter-gatherer males start making the majority contribution to subsistence from hunting/fishing.

Then in 1978, Ember publishes this paper "Myths about Hunter-Gatherers" that basically said more HG groups have males being the primary provider for subsistence than females.  Great.  Conflicting data.  What now?  Well after Googling around last night, I found this anthology, "Ethnobotany: a reader" edited by Minnis (published in 2000).  There's a chapter by Hunn titled "On the Relative Contribution of Men and Women to Subsistence among Hunter-Gatherers of the Columbia Plateau: A Comparison with Ethnographic Atlas Summaries" in which he says

• Ember claims more HG groups have males being the primary provider, but that's not surprising since 77% of the HG groups she studied were…north of the 42° latitude!
• Some studies on groups of the Columbia Plateau by Hewes assume that men bringing back salmon meant that, hey, obviously they're providing majority of the calories for their group, right?  WRONG.  When you actually compare the nutritional content of the foods these people eat, the starchy roots and vegetables that the women gathered provided more calories than the salmon the men fished.
• The argument of who provides more calories is actually kind of stupid…humans obviously need more than just calories to survive.  Even when women in the Columbia Plateau provided more calories in the vegetables they gathered, we all know how healthy fresh fish is for us (and is/was to indigenous people of the Plateau).

Hunn sums it up in this awesome passage:

To single out one resource, one nutritional requirement, or one sex as the key to understanding the success of hunting-gathering adaptations is to miss the point entirely. Human foragers survived to colonize nearly the entire land surface of the earth by virtue of judicious selection of an ample and varied diet from an extensive, empirically sound folk biological inventory of the flora and fauna. To argue that either men or women were of paramount importance in the evolutionary history of the human species is to ignore the most human ecological characteristic, familial economic cooperation.

So what has happened since our HG days?  Agriculture happened.  Before agriculture, HG societies could live off whatever was around them.  There was no real concept of personal property because there was no property, no really valuable thing anyone could own.  All of the sudden, when you have agriculture, where you can farm land or raise livestock, the size of your land directly determines how much food you can produce, which directly determines your social status.  Now, instead of everyone being equal, you have haves and have-nots.  And how would you be able to grow your wealth?  By owning more land!  By farming!  And who would do the farming?  Not women.  No, you don't want those frail, delicate creatures working the fields!  You want MEN!  All of the sudden, with the advent of agriculture, the primary provider was made a position exclusively for men.  Women belonged at home.  In the kitchen.  Or raising the kids.  Preferably boys.

I will probably rant about this at greater length later, but after developing the concept of personal property with agriculture, we could get to view PEOPLE, like WOMEN (and other races!), as property, too!  Neato, right?  Now we can do all sorts of fun things like

• Exchange women for goods according to a contract between families (yay for "traditional" marriage!")
• Control all aspects of womens' lives since they're now relegated to strictly domestic duties
• Regulate their sexuality and have it be totally cool to punish your woman for coveting another man (which, biologically, THEY WILL, at least if she is heterosexual) or punishing another man for coveting your woman.  After all, you're really not supposed to covet any of your neighbor's property either - "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor's house or land, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor." (Deuteronomy 5:21).
• Rape them.  Beat them.  They're your property; you can do whatever the fuck you want with them!

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Sorry, that was a really long tangent on the historical event that began totally fucking over women.  Bringing the discussion back to "breadwinning", humans are…just…amazingly resilient creatures.  We have people living in outer space for months at a time in the ISS, so obviously we are able to adapt new environments.  It shouldn't be a surprise that in different environments, we will use different survival strategies.  So if we're talking about "breadwinning", in different parts of the world, different plants and animals inhabit different regions which will require different hunting/gathering strategies and different divisions of labor.

So does sexual division of labor exist?  OF COURSE IT DOES.  Are/were there societies where men provided the bulk of calories/nutrients?  OF COURSE.  Are/were there societies where women provided the bulk of calories/nutrients?  OF COURSE.  Contrary to what these Fox News dumbfucks are telling us, this idea that men were always the de facto primary providers is total bullshit.  It shouldn't surprise anyone that when our environment changes (from hunter-gatherer to agriculture to industrialization to knowledge-based economy), our behaviors adapt accordingly (more women are able to provide for themselves and others).  If you're a dude whose out of a job in this economy, and your ladyfriend is winning the bread (or starchy roots), you better be fucking thankful.  The alternative is that you both starve.  So just like men, women, as they have been for tens-to-hundreds-or-more thousands of years, at very minimum, ALWAYS BEEN CAPABLE OF BEING THE BREADWINNERS.

*sigh* as a guy, this world still sucks.

Oh, and I managed to find the whole Ethnobotany book online.  It was an EPUB, so I had to convert it to PDF, but the conversion quality is not the best.  Here's the Hunn chapter about male/female contributions to subsistence on my Dropbox: Link.

New fuse earrings

New earrings I made from mini automotive blade-type fuses!



 

Now go get some!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Stark060

Fabrication and the Language of Engineering

Click here to jump to the list!

Today, I went out to lunch with my friend/mentor, R - he's a professional electrical engineer who helped us out a lot on Rice Solar Car.  We started talking about a device he was working on, and we got around to brainstorming different ways to make it cheaply (fit for mass production), yet effective.  The device itself is very simple, but we spent more than an hour discussing ways to manufacture and assemble it.  That's one of the things about engineering I really like - that an object that has a simple and straightforward function can be quite challenging to make.  That's why I love the Discovery Channel show, "How It's Made".  It basically shows how everyday objects get produced in factories or by craftspeople.  In fact, I made several suggestions for manufacturing R's part that were inspired by things I saw on that show.

This whole lunch conversation reminded me of a time around 1.5 years ago when I was working in my lab making a small jig to bend a strip of thin sheet metal.  (I wish I still had a drawing of this particular part).  I drew up a design on CAD, printed it out, brought it downstairs to the Space Science machine shop, and presented it to one of the machinists.  He pointed to one of the drawings and said, "We won't be able to machine this here.  This fillet, the radius is too small.  We won't be able to make if that deep with a bit that thin."  I felt so stupid after the machinist told me that.  These are the things I never thought of...I had been used to drawing up models and having them 3D printed, which basically means I had total freedom over the geometry of the part I'm designing.  Having only occasionally worked with traditional machine shop machines, I wasn't prepared to design a part that would be fabricated using them.

Describing what a part is supposed to do is always easy.  Sometimes, even making a sketch of what the part should look like is pretty easy, too.  But 3D printing is still a relatively young technology, and many parts are constrained by the methods of manufacture available to the designer.  That fabrication step is almost always going to be a challenge.  I remember a lot of times during solar car design sessions, it'd be like:

Someone: Well for this part we can just use/do ___.
Someone else: Okay...how are you going to make that?
Someone: ....

or

Someone: Well for this part we can just use/do ___.
Someone else: ...Yeeeeaah you're not going to be able to machine it like that...

And just today, I was trying to (re)design another part with fabrication constraints:

Me: UGH I'll have to 3D print another thing to hold this part up...that's going to take so long...Chad: ...Do you have to 3D print it?

So anyways, after I got back to my room, I decided to watch some more "How It's Made".  In the first couple seasons, the intro shows a bunch of fabrication words like "trim" or "compress" or "apply heat" along with a little animation performing that action, which I think is really cool.  There are just so many different, creative techniques engineers, craftspeople, artisans, and tradespeople have developed over the course of human history  to build stuff that at one point never existed.  Sometimes the idea is so far ahead of current technology, you need to build the tool to build the thing you actually want to make...or even build the tool to build the tool to build the thing you want to make (you get the idea).

Anyways, after watching a couple of episodes, I decided to list all the fabrication-related words I could possibly think of (in a reasonable amount of time).  There are just so many awesome techniques people developed to make all the stuff we have today, I just wanted to try capturing all that in spoken/written language.  Now I tried to ROUGHLY categorize these by a general topic, but obviously such groupings are artificial, and some techniques can easily be put under another category I've listed.

Oh, one more thing.  I noticed a lot of these verbs are also nouns, which probably means those things (probably a tool of some sort) have become so popular or so functional that their use is some generally accepted technique.  But then think all the verbs (techniques) you'd have to perform to make that noun.  Take, for example, bolt.  You BOLT something together.  But to make that bolt you had to use some sort of dye to CUT threads into that bolt, which you had to EXTRUDE or STRETCH or LATHE from some other piece of metal, say stainless steel, which you had to MINE, REFINE/SMELT, and MIX with PULVERIZED carbon black and chrome and nickel.  Anyways, it's amazing how much stuff you have to do to make a simple bolt.

Okay.  Without further ado, here is a list of all the things you can do to make stuff (that I could think of in maybe 1.5-2 hours or so).

Kerry's list of things that engineers, tradespeople, craftspeople, and artisans do

Topic	Technique
Computers	Upload, download, program, compile, execute, debug, sync, type, query, signal, transmit, receive, sort, search, comment, time, loop, count
Raw materials	harvest, extract, condense, reform, mine, drill, grow, farm, refine
Measurement	Measure, align, calibrate, mass, weigh, graph
Attachment	Glue, JB-weld :), cement, tape, screw, nail, bolt, bind, rivet, velcro, hook, weld, braze, solder, clamp, pin, mount, fuse, sinter
Soft materials	Sew, string, stitch, weave, knot, zip, tie, zip-tie, wrap, wind, reel, pultrude, fold
Subtractive manufacturing	Cut, laser-cut, waterjet cut, saw, carve, lathe, mill, route, drill, tap, thread, trim, punch, dye-cut, perforate, enrave, wipe, chisel, scrape, whittle
Fluids	Spray, pour, vent, dry, mix, whip, brew, agitate, inflate, ventilate, blow, suck, vacuum, rinse, filter, purify, pump, pressurize, drain, treat, fill, percolate
Design	Trace, draw, draft, model, CAD, scan, photograph, film, print, mark, optimize, simulate
Shaping	Bend, press, compress, sand, grind, chamfer, fillet, sculpt, extrude, sharpen, dull, file, taper, deburr, roughen, texturize, stretch, twist, shave, flange, hammer, roll, sand/shot-blast
Heat	Heat, fire, bake, forge, burn, autoclave, cool, chill, freeze, steam, refrigerate, boil, vaporize, melt, temper, smelt, quench
Solid handling	Pulverize, atomize, sieve, trawl, scoop, funnel, shoot, push, pull, rotate, lift, screen, gear
Additive manufacturing	Cast, mold, print, 3D-print, inject, layer
Finishing	Finish, coat, paint, stain, seal, insulate, wrap, shrinkwrap, vacuum seal, laminate, dye, polish, wax
Electrical	Wire, connect, plug, crimp, strip, pulse, de-noise, dampen, power, charge
Chemical/Physical	Cure, react, sputter, ionize, oxidize, reduce, expose (light), excite, spin-coat, activate, dissolve, acidify, alkalize
Civil/construction	Demolish, pave, reinforce, lay, scaffold, cantilever, support

Can you think of any others?  If so, please comment!

The Hunger Games...I likes it.

I'm not a big reader of fiction, but I did very much enjoy The Hunger Games (THG) series.  I watched it again this evening, after having listened to the series on audiobook (during my Europe trip).  This is definitely a movie you get more out of after reading (or listening to) the book, since the book is written in first person, in Katniss's POV.

One of most believably brave characters I've ever encountered.

Even after the first time I watched the movie, though, before the audiobook, I was pretty impressed.  The story has so many elements I like: survival, archery, a strong female character, slight romance (more interestingly, questions about romance), an anti-authoritarian and wealth gap theme, etc.  I think I was most impressed, though, and most disturbed by how real the story felt.  I can't help but see so many parallels to real life - the Hunger Games are being fought everyday.  The main thing I think of are all the public services that are being pitted against each other.  Which one do we kill?  Do we lay off a bunch of firemen or close a bunch of post offices?  Do we cut budgets for education or for NASA?  Do we cut classes or raise tuition again?  These parallels seemed especially strong to me at the time, since when I first watched The Hunger Games, it was right after I read that University of Florida cut their computer science department...all while their athletic budget grew.

The last two big parallels might contain spoilers (although they probably won't surprise you coming from a story of a dystopian future).  Still, the following spoiler-containing text will be colored the same as background color.  To read it, just highlight the text below.

There's pretty obvious connection between the brutal crackdowns of the Peacekeepers during uprisings and real-life police crackdowns on Occupy protestors, journalists, and whistleblowers.


The last real-life analogy I found especially heinous.  In the last book, Mockingjay, President Coin uses a tactic in the war against The Capitol which involves bombing a group of children, waiting for first responders to arrive (of which Prim is a medic), and detonating a second round of bombs afterwards.  The bombing was made to look like it was done by The Capitol to turn public opinion against President Snow.  Turns out this tactic has a name...our government calls it "double-tapping".  We use it during our drone strikes.  We bomb a neighborhood that is supposedly inhabited by a suspected militant, kill a bunch of civilians in the process, wait for first responders to arrive, and then bomb them again.  Another alternative is that we wait for a funeral procession to begin for those killed in the first wave, and then bomb that funeral.  And then we cover up the whole thing by blaming the strikes on other militants.  The same tactic was actually used in the Collateral Murder video released by Wikileaks - the Apache helicopter fired a couple of rounds, injuring/killing one or two journalists, waited for survivors to assemble to transport the injured, and then opened fire again.  ....And we tried to cover that one up, too.  It's just so obvious that nothing the bad guys in THG is below what America does in real life.

Well that's about it.  Oh wait...I forgot to mention.  At the end of the Mockingjay audiobook, Suzanne Collins (the author of THG) gives a little 3-minute talk.  The last part the talk is given below:

What would I like young readers to ultimately take away from The Hunger Games trilogy?  Questions about how elements of the book might be relevant in their own lives...like how do you feel about the fact that some people take their next meal for granted when so many other people are starving in the world?  What do you think your government, past or present, or other governments around the world make?  What's your relationship to reality TV versus your relationship to the news.  Is there anything in the books that disturbed you because it reflected aspects of your own life?  If there was, what can you do about it?

This just makes me love this series even more.  It's just so real, and it's awesome that the author is actually trying to communicate a meaningful message to her audience.  I fell in love with superhero stories as a kid because they were always trying to teach a lesson (Spider-Man's themes of power and responsibility, X-Men's mutant civil rights movements, Batman's themes of fear and mental dexterity/determination, etc.).  Unfortunately, I don't feel like the stories that have been popular with my generation have really had any  interesting message or lesson to communicate.  Pokemon, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Twilight...I mean I never liked English class, so maybe I'm missing something super obvious in these stories, but they all kind of just feel like generic good-vs-evil stories.  Epic, sometimes, but not terribly interesting; I don't feel like I learned anything or became wiser from knowing those stories.  (Okay I'm not really sure if that applies to Twilight, since I really don't know enough about it to make that call.  I did watch the first movie with some friends using it as a drinking game once, but I left not really knowing what the plot/point of the movie was).

Anyways...Yes, I really liked The Hunger Games, and I'm glad it's gotten pretty popular.  Media does matter.  The kind of stuff in movies and on the radio...it does affect people.  So I think it's good that THG is out there, hopefully encouraging young adults (and children) to question things in our society and prevent it from becoming a Panem.

Lastly, in case you wanted to read the entire transcript of Suzann Collin's mini-talk at the end of the Mockingjay book (I wonder if this "talk" is in the print versions of the book.  It'd be really cool if it were!), here it is below.  It's pretty interesting.

Hi, I'm Susanne Collins.  The spark that triggered the Hunger Games trilogy?  A significant influence would have to be the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.  The myth tells how in punishment for past deeds, Athens periodically had to send seven youths and seven maidens to Cree, where they were thrown in the labyrinth and devoured by the monstrous Minotaur,  Thesius who is the son of the kind, volunteered to go.  I guess in her own way, Katniss is a futuristic Theseus.   

But she may be more closely tied to the historical figure of Spartacus.  He was a roman slave and gladiator who lived in the first century BC.  He broke out of his gladiator school in Capula, started an uprsising, and that led to what is known as the Third Servile War.  I send my tributes into an updated version of the Roman gladiator games.  While the details are different, the three essential elements remain: 1.) You have a ruthless government that 2.) forces people to fight to the death as 3.) a form of popular entertainment. 

The actual moment of inspiration for the trilogy came when I was channel surfing between reality TV programming and news coverage of the war in Iraq.  One night, I'm sitting there flipping around.  On one channel there's a group of young people competing for, I dunno, money?  And on the next, there's a group of young people fighting in an actual war.  And I was tired, and the lines began to blur in a very unsettling way, and I thought of Katniss's story.

I never directly base my characters off real people.  Since the situations that theykk be entering will be futursistic and specific to that time, but there are differently bits and pieces of characters that were inspired by people in my own life.  For instance, if you take the crew who create the The Hunger games each year, a lot of their personalities, their attitudes, their absorption with the show they're creating come from my work in television.  I've been a TV writer for over 19 years.  In a way it's very easy for me to imagine the world of the game makers because in a much gentler way, I was one myself. 

What would I like young readers to ultimately take away from the hunger games trilogy?  Questions about how elements of the book might be relevant in their own lives like how do you feel about the fact that some people take their next meal for granted when so many other people are starving in the world?  What do you think your government, past or present, or other governments around the world make?  What's your relationship to reality TV versus your relationship to the news.  Is there anything in the books that disturbed you because it reflected aspects of your own life?  If there was, what can you do about it? 

I think it's important for everyone to read.  It exposes you to people and places and times and ideas that you might never encounter or encounter in such an intimate way. there's this one on one connection, no one's interpreting the material for you.  If there's an opportunity for your mind to meet the author's mind, grab it.

Answer to Question