Blackcap Blog

Published at 09:06 on 22 April 2014

“No nation has the right to simply grab land from another nation.” — Vice President Joe Biden

Except if the nation having the land grabbed from it is Serbia or some other nation whose government the US ruling elite doesn’t like. Then it’s perfectly fine to grab land from other nations.

Because imperialism is only okay when we do it.

Along similar lines, egging on demonstrators to storm and occupy public buildings is also only OK when we do it. If we do it, it’s promoting democracy. If someone else does it, it’s instigating a coup.

Again, because imperialism is only OK when we do it.

If imperialists didn’t have double standards, they would have absolutely no standards at all.

Published at 07:34 on 9 April 2014

I’ve been using Mozilla’s Thunderbird client to read my e-mail since last fall, when Apple Mail’s antics finally got to the point that the camel’s back broke. (The final straw was when message filtering mysteriously stopped working for my work computer. The amount of messages I receive at work make it absolutely intolerable for filtering to not work; it’s a must if important messages that impact my ability to do my work well are to get noticed instead of buried amongst massive numbers of unimportant messages.)

Yesterday morning I notice that Thunderbird is definitely eating messages on one of my inboxes. They simply don’t show up. Sometimes, they show up but a week or more late, in one big batch. There’s no clear reason why. So far the only explanation I’ve found is to delete “bad” messages that “confuse” Thunderbird, and to be sure to “compact my folders” regularly.

Well, sorry. Neither should be my responsibility. None of those “bad” messages confuse Apple Mail or the Squirrel Mail software I use to read that mailbox over the web. Moreover, it is not my responsibility to babysit a program which is incapable of managing its own databases by manually “compacting” files. I’m busy enough as it is without having to add extra busywork to the picture, busywork that makes me miss important communications and thus mismanage my time if I don’t do it.

So the search for a mail client that does not abjectly suck resumes.

Published at 11:49 on 7 April 2014

So, I’ve been on the Island for a year it’s lease renewal time for me. I have two options: a normal lease at $1400/mo, or month-to-month at $1600/mo. The penalty for breaking a lease early is a fixed $1500/mo.

Wow, a fixed penalty of $1500/mo that’s less than the normal rent of $1600/mo without a lease. It seems like a no-brainer. Not so fast! Time to run the math.

The way to do it is with what is called expected value, essentially a weighted average taken by enumerating all possible scenarios then multiplying a scenario’s cost by its probability. After much thought, I chose a Poisson distribution with λ = 4 months as an educated guess.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the local real estate market and I actually think it will be more like three months, but I’m being a little pessimistic in case the entire spring and summer fly by and I end up buying nothing. In that case, things will get dead in the coming winter.  So, given those assumptions, here’s what happens when I find a home so many months into my continuing tenancy here:

MONTH       PROB        CUM      LEASE     M-to-M
    1     0.0183     0.0183    1427.47    1600.00
    2     0.0733     0.0916    1484.25    1575.54
    3     0.1465     0.2381    1491.58    1462.45
    4     0.1954     0.4335    1359.71    1230.32
    5     0.1954     0.6288    1086.19     917.64
    6     0.1563     0.7851     754.07     603.03
    7     0.1042     0.8893     457.11     350.16
    8     0.0595     0.9489     244.25     180.90
    9     0.0298     0.9786     116.24      83.83
   10     0.0132     0.9919      49.76      35.13
   11     0.0053     0.9972      11.39      13.41
   12     0.0019     0.9991       6.67       4.70
TOTAL                          8488.69    8057.11

PROB is the probability I will find something that month and CUM is the cumulative probability (i.e. the chance I find something that month or in an earlier month). Odd; what’s going on here?

The issue is the percentage cost. $1500 isn’t much a chunk of 11 month’s rent, but as time goes on, it becomes a bigger and bigger chunk of the remaining rent if one quits early:

MONTH %PENALTY
    1     9.74
    2    10.71
    3    11.90
    4    13.39
    5    15.31
    6    17.86
    7    21.43
    8    26.79
    9    35.71
   10    53.57
   11   100.00
   12     0.00

Why 100% instead of 107.14% for quitting in month 11? Simple: only a fool would pay $1500 in penalty fees when it’s cheaper to pay $1400 to rent an unneeded, empty apartment for an extra month.

Still feel like I’m pulling my own leg here, using lots of math when common sense says it must be the other way? Consider the case where I find something in five months (that’s the point where the odds become in my favor of finding something).

With a lease, I pay 5 × $1400 + $1500 = $8500.

With no lease, I pay 5 × $1600 = $8000.

Sure, there’s a chance I’ll pay more, if I end up spending another year here and not finding anything. But the odds seem to be in favor of my paying less. In fact, the lease is only to my advantage if it takes eight or more months to do something I expect to do in four or five months.

Mine is a corporate landlord; doubtless they’ve run this sort of analysis themselves and deliberately crafted their lease-renewal offer to have a seductive yet economically disadvantageous option to it, knowing they can expect to pocket on average around $400 of pure profit each time they sucker a tenant into agreeing to it.

Published at 17:48 on 4 April 2014

Posted because if you Google “freeze dried durian review” you mostly get useless hits like this one. After this post, I will return to more typical subject matters for this blog.

I mean, sure it’s not as pungent or flavorful as the frozen kind, but it’s still not bad by comparison, and it lends itself much better to be taken as a snack on hikes than thawed frozen durian (which could be very messy should its Ziploc bag spring a leak). Some of the savory aspects (in addition to the expected sweet ones) of the flavor even managed to survive the freeze-drying.

Actually, “not bad by comparison” means “very yummy”, because face it, it’s still durian. I can only imagine how awesome it must taste fresh. If I ever visit Southeast Asia rest assured my trip will be during durian season.

The one surprise is how big the the three bags that came in the mail were; about twice the size that I was expecting, in fact. (Not that it’s going to be any challenge to consume it all or anything; maybe I’ll try concocting a recipe for durian-flavored granola.)

Published at 08:07 on 26 March 2014

The nations where it’s the most popular and beloved — Singapore and Malaysia — happen to both be repressed, right-wing, authoritarian sorts of places with a very harsh attitudes towards illegal drugs. Yet they’re both nations of junkies, where an addicting substance, capable of producing euphoria in those who consume it, is sold openly in the streets, even to children.

One would think the general lack of harm caused by this one substance might help promote tolerance for consenting adults to engage in other sorts of voluntary, pleasurable activity (tellingly, both nations are also repressive to those of us who are not heterosexual). But, no.

Never underestimate the ability of hypocrites to rationalize double standards.

Published at 21:02 on 25 March 2014

About five years ago I happened across a bag of durian candy in an Asian market. That piqued my curiosity: Many Westerners describe its odor and taste in most unflattering terms, it can’t be that bad, can it? Moreover, I’ve always tended to like strange and strong flavors, so maybe I’ll be one of those Westerners who actually likes durian. After all, all humans are the same species; there’s very little difference between the “races”, really. Race is a socially-defined construct, not a biological one.

So anyhow, I bought it. And they weren’t bad. Sort of disappointing, in fact; I had expected a stronger taste. As I recall they were sort of pleasingly vanilla and caramel flavored. They were certainly not in the slightest way repulsive (as I later learnt many Western palates found such candies).

That prompted me to purchase some frozen durian meat and try it with a friend. That was anticlimactic; sort of vaguely sweet and mild-flavored, with an oniony aftertaste and only a slight whiff of pungency. (In retrospect, it was probably underripe.) Perhaps something suited to going in an Asian dessert like sticky rice where I could mix well with other flavors, thought I.

Fast forward several years to last week, and for some reason I’m craving that sweetness and oniony aftertaste. Plus there’s a pot luck coming up. A perfect excuse to make a trip to an Asian market and purchase the ingredients for durian sticky rice.

But something was different this time. On the ferry ride home a very strong pungent odor became evident. Not vile, but definitely very strong and assertive. Yes, it was the durian flesh, even though it was still over 90% frozen and sealed inside two layers of plastic! Oh, dear. People were giving me evil glances. Apparently this sample of flesh is ripe, and the rumored pungency is no rumor.

I get home, put it inside a Ziploc bag, and stick it in the refrigerator, hoping the apartment doesn’t get too fragrant overnight. The extra layer worked. Mostly.

One of the things I do when cooking is conduct “quality control assays,” i.e. I sample all the ingredients as I go. That includes the now completely thawed durian flesh. Wow, vanilla custard. Then onion. Almost completely unlike the pungent odor, which of course has completely filled my apartment. Did it really do that, go from sweet to savory like that? I must taste it again and see. Yes, it does. The urge to eat more gets stronger, not weaker. But I only have as much as the recipe calls for, so I restrain myself until the recipe is complete, then conduct numerous “quality control assays” throughout the batch of sticky rice.

Must… stop…; I’m supposed to be sharing this and what with all the coconut milk it’s way too rich for me to just pig out on myself, anyhow.

So, anyhow, at the pot luck with a “warning, it is pungent, don’t let that intimidate you, it tastes very different than it smells,” two people leave early when they hear the dessert course involves durian. Everyone else stays. Most try it, some hate it, some love it, and one guy says “I’m not sure I like this garlic aspect to it or not” as he helps himself to thirds.

I return with leftovers, but that’s fine because I get to eat all the rest. And each time I have a portion it just tastes better and better and there’s more pure pleasure involved. It’s as if I’m Edmund and durian is my Turkish delight. I’m not alone, either.

And now I read that chocolate (which I can’t eat) is in the same plant family and durian is suspected of having addictive properties (which probably accounts for its popularity throughout its native range; the customers are hooked) much like its more famous and less pungent New-World cousin. I don’t just “suspect,” I know.

Well, at least in contrast to heroin, it’s 100% legal, healthful at least in moderation, and not that easy to get here in the USA, so I won’t be pigging out and gaining weight too badly.

Published at 10:45 on 20 March 2014

No, it doesn’t.

First, Chicago is but one observing station, and last winter was but one season, what matters is what happens on a global scale, over time. As Robert Heinlein once quipped “Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” You’ll always have deviations from norms, that’s what weather is all about. What matters is the general trend of those deviations.

Second, as cold as last winter was in the Midwest, just in the USA alone the extremes of warmth were more profound:

Note how most of California was the warmest on record. Despite having a very cold winter, none of the Midwest was the coldest on record.

Published at 21:09 on 18 March 2014

That’s basically the executive summary of this article.

Particularly trenchant is the role that the authoritarian class hierarchy of civilization plays in helping to facilitate the collapse:

In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most “detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners”, allowing them to “continue ‘business as usual’ despite the impending catastrophe.” The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how “historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases).”

And technology offers no quick fix:

Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use.

Published at 20:11 on 4 March 2014

That’s what the brouhaha between Russia and the West over Ukraine strikes me as.

Really: the country that went into Iraq in an invasion of choice, and whose purportedly “opposition” party leaders refuse to even entertain the thought of prosecuting those responsible, acting as if it has some sort of principled moral objection to imperialist land grabs? It is to laugh.

And on the other side, the country that was so purportedly upset in principle when the West grabbed a chunk of Serbia, doing basically the same thing to the Ukraine? Statecraft, thy name is rank hypocrisy.

If that uprising had toppled a pro-Western regime, you can bet that the same talking heads bleating in unison about national sovereignty would instead be bleating in unison about the need to “restore order” via military intervention.

Pay no attention to the rhetoric; the words have no meaning in any real sense. It’s just how the hyenas snarl.

Published at 08:04 on 2 March 2014

Right wingers have been getting their panties in a knot over some recent remarks by Spike Lee.

Really, where? I don’t see any racial hatred there. There’s plenty of resentment against both a colonialist mentality in more affluent and generally White newcomers, and against a disparity in the quality and level of city services in Black neighborhoods, but that’s a very different thing from asserting that some people are particularly evil or inferior simply because of their race.

It’s actually an anti-racist rant, taking offense at what genuinely does seem to be an instance of White privilege.

I’m a White guy, and I don’t feel threatened or attacked by Lee’s remarks. I can’t even see how I would be should I happen to live in one of those NYC neighborhoods that Lee mentioned. Criticized, perhaps. But being criticized and being hated or threatened are completely different things.