With Both Hands

CrossFit 2010-03-13

Ben Espen — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:37:48 +0000

I did Thursday's workout today, I had a school board meeting that night.

Deadlifts 20-15-10-5-1

30 second static knees to elbows in between sets

Max weight 75 kg

DSM-5 to include the Big 5

Ben Espen — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:43:12 +0000

The Five Factor Model in the DSM-5

The current Axis II disorders will be replaced by a mixture of continuously-rated personality disorder types (carrying forward psychopathy, avoidant, borderline, obsessive-compulsive, and schizotypal) and 6 personality traits. According to the rationale, four of the traits are pathological versions of 4 of the Big Five (Openness/Intellect apparently doesn’t have a pathological extreme).

h/t John D Cook

Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System

Ben Espen — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:46:40 +0000

Slate has a review of Diane Ravitch's new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. I found a lot of good information in Ravitch's earlier book, The Language Police, so I may have to read this one as well. Ravitch recently created quite a stir by opposing the No Child Left Behind Act and sharply criticizing charter schools, because she had been a strong supporter of both. This book is where she marshals the evidence that caused her change of opinion.

I suspect that I won't find anything too surprising in her book, but I'm curious anyhow. Ravitch takes a hard look at the work of William Saunders, who I have been critical of here and in other forums. Saunders pioneered the current fad for teacher effectiveness, but the concept has been picked up very broadly, by the Gates Foundation, the Brookings Institution, and even the Department of Education. However, despite its popularity, the best idea proponents have come up with is to fire teachers whose kids don't learn enough and hope the replacements are better, because no one has been able to predict which teachers will be good.

Ravitch also argues that charter schools are not a miracle cure for education. She is of course right. You don't make kids any smarter by putting them in a different building. The real value of charter schools is that they are smaller, they group kids by similar ability levels, and there is more local control. These are all good things, and helpful for education, but none of them can affect what we are really testing with standardized tests, which is mostly intelligence. This is of course a touchy subject, so it is not often addressed.

I don't know how to fix all the schools, so I focus on the one school I can actually do something about. Hopefully I'll do a good job.

h/t Steve Sailer

Jerry Pournelle's Comments

Wall Street Journal article by Ravitch

NY Times article about Ravitch

How Star Trek should have ended

Ben Espen — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:00:57 +0000

h/t John D Cook

Ghosts in a Bottle

Ben Espen — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:48:36 +0000

This is right out of a Tim Powers book, Expiration Date.

'Ghosts' sold in online auction

CrossFit 2010-03-10

Ben Espen — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:50:14 +0000

Ab workout

3 rounds, 21-15-9

Left arm and right arm snatch [15 #]
Tossing Italian twists [15 #]

Time 13:22

There was a bonus workout of 180 degree pushups with one arm squat thrusters and pullups, but I didn't finish it because we had to go to confession.

CrossFit 2010-03-08

Ben Espen — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:46:41 +0000

Today focused on form for the clean and jerk.

16-12-8-4-1 post max weight on 1 rep

Max weight 40 kg

300 Movie Review

Ben Espen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 05:49:30 +0000

300

Directed by Zack Snyder
Written by Zack Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, and Michael Gordon
Starring Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, Vincent Regan, David Wenham

Yes, I know damn good and well this movie came out three years ago. I think I can do it better justice now.

300 has taken a lot of abuse. I think war porn is my favorite epithet applied to the movie directed by Zack Snyder. There are many just criticisms that can be leveled against the movie, but I think that most critics miss the point. Hell, it is possible that even Frank Miller misses the point. Nonetheless, the Battle of Thermopylae has loomed large in the Western imagination for 2500 years, so a modern reimagination is not unexpected. The least fair complaint is the dialogue of the movie. Part of the consensus stated on Rotten Tomatoes, "full of...ready-made movie quotes," is at best ignorant. All of the seemingly worst lines from the movie are actually contained in the most ancient historical source. For example, the boast of the Spartan Dieneces that if the Persian army was capable of shooting so many arrows that the sun would darken, "...we shall have our fight in the shade," is from Herodotus.

So what is the point? The point of the movie is to make a modern man feel what a Greek man would feel, a resident of Thebes or Athens, or even Sparta, in 480 BC. The function of fiction is to make arguments by means of appealing to the emotions, and thereby to affect the world when reason alone is insufficient to the task. The intended audience is the average modern man, so I think the comic book/comic book movie is pretty much the perfect demotic medium for this. I say man, and for once I actually mean men, because this story is really intended for men, because it is meant to instruct us in one of our proper tasks.

The Battle of Thermopylae teaches us that a man fights mostly nobly for his wife and his children, and his comrades, and for the land that he loves. This story would have less resonance in the West [and Christian parts of the East such as Russia, where Leonid is still a popular name], were it not firmly in accord with Christian doctrine: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

The culture of the West is founded upon three great cities: Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome. Athens can be understood to include that that was meritorious in Greece, which must surely include the stand of the 300 at the Hot Gates. This is so even though all great cities were built upon a foundation of sand. Sparta was a cruel place, built by the sweat of slaves, unforgiving and ruthless. Rome and Jerusalem were no better, yet some places and some regimes really are worth defending, even though all merely human things fall short.

The fundamental question a man [or woman in this context] must ask himself [or herself], is do I love pleasure, or wealth, or even life itself, more than the good of my brethren? If the time came that I were forced to choose, what choice would I make?

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
that here, obedient to their law, we lie.

My other movie reviews

CrossFit 2010-03-07

Ben Espen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:54:45 +0000

Tonight's workout was a modified Miracle Mile. Modified, because there were no treadmills available to do sprinting, so we had to do jumprope instead.

Miracle Double Chipper, 2 rounds

Lunge lap
500 jumprope [or 100 double-unders]
50 pushups
50 kettlebells [16kg]

Time 27:50

Humidor DIY

Ben Espen — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:38:20 +0000

I had been having some trouble keeping the humidity at the proper level of 70%. I bought an extra sponge, but I was having trouble keeping mold out of it. The local cigar store sells a glycerol mixture that is supposed to prevent this, but I found the stuff rather expensive.

A couple of weeks ago, I was smoking cigars with my friend Fintan, and he showed me his DIY humidor. Fintan made a giant humidor out of a 30-gallon cooler by screwing cedar planks into the sides, and he made an equally large humidifier out of a tupperware and a sponge.

What I brilliant idea! I decided to copy him, so here is my much, much smaller example.

Ben's Humidor

Humidifier

The bottle you see in front of the humidor is a mixture of 30% IPA and 70% filtered water. I needed something to keep the mold and whatnot out of the sponge, and that is what Fintan uses. The sponge is sitting in the bottom of a $1 first aid kit from Target. I had to trim the sponge a bit, but it fits nicely, and it holds much more liquid than my previous humidifer. I hope for better results.