Author: Aren Cambre

Sick grass

I am trying to diagnose a possible SAD infection of my new Palmetto St. Augustine grass. Even though Palmetto is advertised as a superior St. Augustine, it appears to easily catch diseases.

These are images of “sick” parts of my grass. I am not sure if I have SAD or downy mildew or something else. While some pieces of grass show SAD-like symptoms, most show strong symptoms of downy mildew or fungus.


You can barely make it out, but this blade has parallel stripes running down its length.


Another blade with stripes and burn marks.


Stripes and burn marks readily apparent.


The lighter-colored areas are where the grass is discolored. The grass on the left half is the “new” grass from Sept. 2006. The grass on the right is old grass. The grass in the foreground is some native (?) bermuda that grew over a spot where I filled in some dirt.


More representative grass sections.


Here’s a piece showing SAD-like symptoms and burn marks.


Another view with other striped grass blades shown more prominently.

Kodak camera “hard drive” disappeared, but now is found!

I had another small computer victory today.

I have a Kodak DX7590 camera. It is a great camera. It has gotten me through 7933 pictures over 21 months, and last April, it survived a 4 foot drop onto asphalt with no damage.

When I connect it to the computer, it shows up as another hard drive:

From there, I cut and paste the pictures to my hard drive. Really convenient, and I don’t have to use the terrible EasyShare software. Kodak makes this software look good, but it’s really garbage that locks up your images in its awful interface.

A couple of weeks ago, the “hard drive” stopped appearing after I connected the camera. I was unable to get any pictures off the camera. I futzed around for quite a while, eventually thinking my system was messed up.

I finally called Kodak’s technical support line in desperation. After 10 minutes convincing the tech support representative I am not an idiot, she finally admitted that Kodak removed the “hard drive” feature in EasyShare 6.0, the latest version. At first, she spun some yarn about how Kodak doesn’t retain the old software and I would have to get by with this new version. After explaining that I don’t want the full EasyShare product, she relented and gave me a link to get the old software: http://www.kodak.com/go/ess5/.

After upgrading to the old version, EasyShare 5, my computer and camera are once again happy campers.

Workout Change

I am changing my workout.

For the past 13 months–and off and on in the 9 years before that–my weightlifting routine was a single set of up to 12 repetitions on each of about 8 machines. I then repeated that circuit three times.

It has served me fairly well. Between summer 2005 and now–the time period where I have been most serious–I have made great improvements. For example, I have doubled my capabilities on the machine where you press your extended arms together (fly).

My routine concentrated on the upper body with the lower body left for improvements through jogging.

This routine has two problems:

  1. I haven’t regularly jogged in over 2 years.
  2. Multiple circuit training is not beneficial.

That’s right: the crux of my routine, which is where I repeat the circuit thrice, isn’t doing me any good. The Mayo Clinic has an article about a 1998 study that found that you should just do one workout per machine. As long as the weights are sufficient that you fatigue by the 12th repetition, you get the maximum benefit.

Starting tomorrow, I am taking that advice. That will leave me more time to do multiple machines, so I will start a full body workout.

Latest Spin On Roadway Safety

In the past few days, the nanny-state, safety-theater goons have influenced the newspapers with creative spin on recent road safety statistics. The headlines alert us that that roadway deaths are at their highest levels in 15 years, implying we have dangerous highways that need urgent solutions!

That is hogwash.

It is true that highway deaths increased 1.4% in 2005, the most recent available year. If I left it at that, you might believe that we’re reversing decades-old safety trends. Here’s why that is a faulty conclusion.

Cannot Ignore Exposure

If you spend 1 hour in 0 degree weather, you have a higher chance of suffering hypothermia than if you spend 1 minute in it. Increased exposure to cold increases your likelihood of hypothermia. Likewise, if you drive 100 miles each day, you have a higher likelihood of being involved in a crash than if you drive 1 mile. Your increased mileage exposed you to more risk.

Aggregate that to a national scale: if all the drivers in a nation drive more miles each year, then the nation as a whole have experience more deaths, not because each driver is more dangerous, but because the nation has increased its exposure to risk.

The total death count by itself does not shed much light on the total safety picture. You must to scale the death count by risk exposure–miles driven.

Go back to that hypothermia example. Suppose we do a larger experiment. On day 1, 10 people go outside for 1 hour in the 0 degree weather, and one person gets hypothermia. You might infer that each individual has a 10% chance of getting hypothermia.

Suppose we repeat the same experiment with 50 people, and 4 people get hypothermia. The chance of any individual getting hypothermia decreased by 20%! How could that be? Didn’t hypothermia cases quadruple? In fact, the risk–that is, the number of people in the cold–increased fivefold. That is a much larger increase than the increase in actual cases of hypothermia.

Similarly, if risk–miles driven–increases more rapidly than total deaths, then your roads are actually safer, despite the increased death count, because the chance of any individual dying on the road is decreasing!

The Nitty Gritty

From 1995 through 2005, the number of vehicle miles driven annually (VMT) has risen by an average 2.1%. However, over that same time period, the total death count has risen by an annual 0.6%. This suggests that the death rate is decreasing. Our highways have been getting safer despite the increased death count! Here is a chart comparing deaths to vehicle miles traveled since 1966, with trend lines to show the long-term trends:

Clearly, the VMT count is rising much more quickly than the death count.

From 1995 through 2005, the death rate decreased by an average of 1.5% per year. It decreased every year except for 2005. Is 2005’s number alarming? I say no.

In 1995, the death rate was 1.73 deaths per hundred million miles traveled. In 2005, the death rate was 1.47. That’s a 15% decrease!

Digging a little further into the statistics shows a smoking gun.

Blame Motorcyclists

The yearly death count for motorcyclists has skyrocketed. In fact, on average, motorcyclist deaths have increased about 40 times faster than passenger vehicles every year from 1997 through 2005. Here’s a chart:

What’s going on? Two things: there are many more motorcycles on the roads than before, and most states’ helmet laws have been repealed in the past 10 years. Today, only 20 states have full motorcycle helmet laws.

What would happen if motorcycle death increases equaled instead of grossly outpaced passenger vehicle death count increases? Here’s how the numbers would change if we used an adjusted death count:

  • The adjusted 2005 death rate would be only 1.39, which would mean a one third increase in the death rate reduction from 2005.
  • The adjusted 2005 death rate would only be 0.1% higher than the adjusted 2004 rate.

Perspective

Road safety nanny state types nostalgically look back on the days of the old national 55 mph limit. Look at this chart, showing actual death rates against time:

Notice how roads today are substantially safer today than in ’74, when the 55 mph limit started? (This is a separate point deserving more research, but also notice how the death rate flattened–didn’t meaningfully improve–in the 8 years following the 55 mph limit and actually turned back the excellent safety improvement record from 1966-1973? Is this causation or correlation?)

Also note how we are starting to hit against the law of diminishing returns: the closer the death rate gets to 0, the more difficult it becomes to further reduce the rate using the same techniques.

Lesson Learned?

While there was a setback in traffic safety in 2005, it was miniscule, and its is likely to be mostly correlated with motorcycle deaths.

No deaths are good deaths. Ideally, no traffic deaths should happen. But painting a picture of doom and gloom with silly statements that castigate all drivers focuses energies on unproductive measures like low speed limits.

Data Sources

My data came from two NHTSA sources: the Fatality Analysis Reporting System and Traffic Safety Facts 1997. Here’s the spreadsheet where I crunched my data.

My childhood kitties

This is a late-’80s picture me holding my favorite cat of all times:

(Yes, I remember that sweater.) His name was Nicholas Pennington, but we called him “kitty.” My dad called him “Kitty Lickins’.” He was a huge, white, long-haired cat with coarse hair. You could see some very faint orangish tabby markings on his forehead.

We got him in Van, TX in 1985 or 1986 when a church member called us about a white, friendly cat that took residence in his tree. We drove over in our ’77 Oldsmobile with some kind of food, and he came straight to us. That was a good sign, a friendly, people-oriented cat. He may have wandered away from someone else’s house. We immediately took him to the Van Veterinary Clinic, where the vet pronounced him healthy and about 6 months old.

Did I say he was huge? I think he was around 15 lbs. He loved being held. When I used to type on the computer, he would jump on my lap and lay down, slowly cutting off circulation to my legs. When anyone would read a newspaper on the floor, he would lay down on the paper.

He succumbed to some wasting disease in 1998, probably at 12 or 13 years old. Over the course of about 3 months, he wasted until he was too gaunt to get up. My father, the family Pet Executioner, had him put down that June.

This is Micah holding our other cat:

Her name was Sophia Ludmilla (Russian-themed name since my mother had a Russian pen pal at the time). She was a calico mutt of some sort with patches of nice jet black hair, and she never got all that big. Since the other cat was named “Kitty,” and since this one was small, we called her “Widdy.” I guess that was a “small-ish” name? My dad called her “Widdy Lickins’.”

My mother got her in 1986 or 1987 from a litter of kittens at a house in Groves.

This cat had a weird, schizoid personality: she hid all day long and would only come out at night for certain people. In the above picture, she is spooked because someone is giving her attention during the daytime. I think part of her problem was that she was not well socialized as a kitten. Another problem is Micah and I weren’t particularly nice to her early on. I think we played football with her once in the Groves parsonage living room, with her being the ball. Plus she didn’t take well to Skeeter, our sheltie dog, which we may have encouraged to “play” with the cats from time to time.

When she voluntarily came out, she was extraordinarily affectionate. Female cats give the allusion of affection because of the “presentation” instinct when you rub just in front of their tail, but, I assure you, she was on a different level. She was so happy to get affection–on her terms–that she couldn’t stay still. She walked to and fro while you petted her, wrapped her body around your hand or torso, etc.

There was one exception to her skittishness: she loved my paternal grandfather. She would approach him at almost any time, day or night. All we could guess is he had some scent that pleased her?

She died of the same wasting disease that the other cat got. I think that the family Pet Executioner had her put down shortly after I left for my senior year in fall 1998.