I went biking with Sheri up in Cumberland on Saturday, Sept 24th in preparation for MOMAR. We started with “Momma Bear, Trail of Tears” then we rode a Two and a Juice. We made the mistake of going up this trail instead of down… We rode up the logging road and then climbed a horrible hike-a-bike called “Miners”, and at the top we turned and descended “Bucket of Blood” which was a good downhill trial despite my having 2 crashes. (Good thing for Armour).

On Sunday we rode Doumont here in Nanaimo. We did the “weekday route”. That is, we cycled up the logging roads from the motocross track, turned off just past the lovely tons of human feces. (Thank you Malispina College!) And rode Down “Scot’s” then turned onto “Cripple Creek”. I was on my game as I knew the trails, whereas Sheri had a few bails being tired from the previous ride. We finished “Cripple Creek” and rode a logging road out, and back to the car, avoiding “Mary Jane” as Sheri was having an off day.

Here is a stock image of my bike, a 2005 Kona Blast:

I went out riding at the Abyss loop trail here in Nanaimo. It was a good ride. While I was waiting for one of my friends to arrive, I practiced doing “manuals” in the parking lot. I crashed once (good thing for armour!) However, now I am starting to get it. I found doing manuals on the trail was extremely helpful as it was easier to ride down some drops and clear obstacles. I was really surprised when I climbed a 2 1/2 foot near vertical rock face at high speed with a manual. This technique has made my riding easier.

When I got back after talking to Sheri I took Daisy out for a long walk and listened to more of TTC’s Economics course.

Luke from work lent me his copy of Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. It is based on the Half Life 2 engine, and plays like Deus Ex. The game is very good. It is a of a genera that generally does not interest me, however, the game is still very entertaining as the plot, missions, graphics, and especially the voice acting is excellent. Characters feel very real, and the scripted dialogue and scenes bring this world to life.

There are some nitpicks though, the firearms system is annoying - unless you spend a good deal of experience on firearms you cannot hit the broadside of a barn - and due to your characters strength, you do more damage with melee weapons. Still, the game does offer points where firearms are more appropriate.

The game contains many in jokes - written in a book found in the sewer you can see mention of “Whitman, Price and Hadad who were running” which is a reference to the movie “The Running Man”. There are many similar references on billboards, in radio programs or in character utterances throughout the game. They are amusing when you spot them. If you can suspend your skepticism of the Vampire genere, you will find a game that is every bit as good and involved as the original Deus Ex.

Todd has gone on at some length about the price of gas and how it is artifically priced. Prior to understanding this, and prior to listining to a “The Teaching Company” lecture on Economics I believed that governments should take action to control fuel prices. I no longer believe this. Some groups of people are always angry that technology such as electric cars, hydrogen powered vehicles, or any other alternative method of powering vehicles has been blocked by “the man”. Truth is, the reason we don’t see anything competing with gas for an alternative fuel technology is that the price of gas has been kept artificially low. Governments and oil companies want to keep the cost of gasoline low. The governments want fuel prices to remain low because it effects the economy as nearly all forms of transportation are based on gasoline. Oil companies want to keep the price of oil in check (to some degree) because if the price of oil gets to high, then the alternative methods of powering transit like hydrogen fuel cells, methanol, or biodiesel start to become competitive.

So, in the short term, having high fuel prices is an awful thing for consumers. However, in the long term, very high fuel prices will make it possible for competing technologies to replace the use of gasoline on our roads - or at least begin to introduce competitive fuels or methods of power. In the short term, if the price fixing stopped, the price of fuel would skyrocket. People would seek other means to power their vehicles, or other means of transit, and since fewer people would be using gas, the price would drop. The solution is “short term pain for long term gain”. Trouble is that the politicans don’t want to do this as most people don’t understand it, so they fix gas prices to maintain their political popularity. The oil companies don’t want the price too high because then they will begin to lose their ogopoly on fuel.

– Additonal:

I should not have said I want the price of gas to go up, but rather I want the supply to no longer be controlled.

I have been listening to the basic Economics Course by The Teaching Company. I must say I am impresed. I was originally very skeptical of The Teaching Company, but I must now say that their faire in audio education is excellent. The professor/narrator is great, and my only annoyance is the canned applause and unneeded classical music introduction to each lesson. I am only about 1/4 way through the course, but it is certanly enjoyable.

Other than that, I recently finished David Bach’s “The Automatic Millionare” and Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot.” I must say that having Sagan narrate parts of Pale Blue Dot in his familiar halting New York drawl brought the book to life far better than the printed version did for me.

As mentioned in the post below, I was surprised that the search to Impeach Bush had ranked so high on Technorati. And, as I watched, most of the blogs on Technorati were, just like me discussing this phenomenon. In fact, people are now posting “Impeach Bush” in their blogs just to see if they get archived by Technorati. There is no doubt that this post itself will contribute to the cycle.

However, the fact that the Impeach Bush search string got into the top ten searches on Technorati is what is important, not that it is now currently self replicating. I wondered what could have caused this, and I looked over the older blogs, and prior to Katrina there were few posts along this line. Google News had only older articles about this, the most recent showing when I checked a few hours a go being a 3 day old news article from France.

Yesterday, the term did not appear on the top 10 searches on technorati, but many people were blogging about it. Each blog seems independant, and is generally acompanied by a rant at FEMA or similar organizations, and of course, the problems in New Orleans. Thus, the “Impeach Bush” term got into Technorati of its own volition. Now, everyone is blogging about it being in the top 10, myself included. As I mentioned before, what is to be the fallout for this? Are people that blog only younger? Is it the younger generation in the United States that is angry with the current administration and leadership? Or, is it polls like this that demonstrate that the people of America are unhappy with the administration?

But seriously, what really started it? Sentiment to Impeach Bush has been on the net for some time. Wordtracker reports that over 1500 searches a day on google are for “impeach bush”, and the website votetoimpeach.org was registered on January 16, 2003.

What I believe really started the sentiment is this article by Paul Craig Roberts:“What is Bush’s Agenda in Iraq?” Roberts, a former Reagan offical wrote this article on June 20, 2005. Now, with the fallout of Hurricane Katrina, people are angry, so they blog about it. Enough people have blogged about it now that “Impeach Bush” is a popular search term, and it is self sustaining. I think it is self sustaining now because people are angry, but also because people are so surprised to see such negative terms about the administration appear in the blogsphere.

What do you think? Are the bloggers in the United States really angry as the Angus Ried poll would suggest? Is it just a self sustaining meme that happened to jump into the blogsphere?

Impeach Bush: The Tipping Point in Politics. I have yet to read or listen to “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. However, I noticed something surprising creeping into popular media. While over at Sheri’s place, I spent the weekend watching CNN and the BBC. The coverage was, unsurprisingly about Hurricane Katrina. What was surprising was all the people who were directly accusing George W. Bush of being responsible for the devistation. Now Bush did not summon Hurricane Katrina. However, there are fundamental problems with FEMA and with U.S. Federal funding in general that can quite possibly be Bushes fault. At the very least, they are his responsibility. He is the leader after all.

All this aside, what is surprising is that for the first time CNN is airing negative comments about President Bush. Not only that, but more air time is being given to antiwar dissenters. These voices are getting more press. I see change coming. Now, looking at Technorati two of the top 3 search terms are “Katrina” and “Impeach Bush”. This is damming. So many people now seem unhappy with his leadership - enough that the meme of “Impeach Bush” is popping up on blogs everywhere. Surprisingly, it is not common within Google News yet.

Maybe things won’t cascade. Maybe bloggers, and users of the internet in general are more likely “liberal” or “democrats”, thus such comments are just one sided, but I don’t think so. I think political change is coming in the U.S.

As to my opinion on the matter? I prefer to remain as impartial as possible to politics, especially politics outside Canada. However, if Bill Clinton could be impeached for a blow job, then one could impeach bush for a mishandling of a war and the destruction of New Orleans.

I have been investing a good deal of energy in Audiotasking. Audiotasking is my word for listening to audio books while performing some other task. It is different from multitasking as multitasking works for computers, but it does not work for people. People only get one thing done at a time generally speaking. Indeed, people who try too hard to multitask often get less accomplished. Audiotasking is different. When you read a book, your eyes and your brain are engaged in reading, it is very hard to accomplish another task at the same time, unless the task is fairly simple and automatic such as walking.

Audiobooks on the other hand, can be listened to while performing a number of different tasks that do not require the comprehensive part of your brain. Examples are, driving, jogging, mowing the lawn, cleaning the house etc. These are all tasks that you can accomplish while listening to music - or books. Since you have to accomplish these tasks on a day to day basis anyways, you might as well put the downtime in your comprehensive thinking to good use. Enter the audiobook. Again, I think of this as Audiotasking because it is different from multitasking. Now, I can read very fast, probably 3 to 5 times faster than most of the narrators of the audiobooks, perhaps more. What I can’t do is read and perform household chores. Since starting using audiobooks and getting heavily involved in Audiotasking I have found that I have been able to listen to about 2 hours of audiobooks every day on the average. This lets me absorb approximately 2 books per week, or, about 104 books per year.

Now, I don’t know how voracious a reader you may be, but I bet you don’t read 104 books per year. Neither do I. Although I wish I could say I did. Audiotasking is powerful; you should give it a try.

I have been listening to more of The Wisdom of Crowds and the author portrayed the dangers of groupthink. Now, I had heard the term “groupthink” before, however, I could not remember a concise explanation. Basically, groups of people with like ideas tend to re-enforce their ideas to the point that they believe that their common ideas as a group are correct. This is made worse amongst groups with no voices of dissent, and the author uses the Bay of Pigs Invasion as an example of groupthink.

Now, while I have no love for the Bush Administration (Strangely, no one has noticed that my middle inital is Dubya, therefore, I am “George Dubya” as well) I have noticed that as a group they all stick very closely together. They also seem to have a large amount of commonalities, for example, Cheney, Bush and Rice all worked in the oil industry. Now, I am not about to launch into a conspiracy theory on the invasion of Iraq and the relation to oil. This is a correlation, and causation cannot be drawn from it. However, we do know that members of the Bush administration have very similar ideals, are closely bonded in their ideas, and finally, that they tend to eschew any outside opinions. This then, would be a classic example of groupthink. Yet, I have seen no reference to it in the modern press, or, any blogs as of yet, although I have seen references to supposed groupthink in the Clinton administration.

In my opinion, the current administration is suffering from groupthink, however, I also have to wonder how an administration could possibly be immune to it.

I have just started listening to The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. So far I have been surprised by the premise that crowds of diverse people are, on the average, more intelligent than a group of experts. Indeed, while listening to the introduction and summary I doubted Surowieckis conclusions. However, as I get further into the audio book, I have realized that the author is referencing a specific kind of crowd circumstance, and, that there are conditions such as mob rule where these ideas do not apply.

The statistics behind these conclusions show some fairly important numbers for economists, and would give employers even more reason to listen to the aggregate data of their employees opinions. Doing so would, (if Surowieckis conclusions are correct) result in an increased efficiency and profitability of the business.

Other audio I have been listening to: David Bach’s “The Automatic Millionare”, which has been surprisingly good despite the large number of books on economics and finance I have read. I find that he pads his audio book with lots of “fluff”, and takes time to get to the meat of the ideas. However, for people who have not studied money management it would be an excellent place to start, and the parts that I find “fluffy” others might find enlightening.

Other than that, I am still working my way through Virgil’s The Aeneid. Now that they have landed and founded the city that is to become Rome, the tone of the book has changed from that of the Odyssey, and as a result I have found it to be a bit less interesting.