Yaniverse

The great razor-life test

2006-11-22T08:31:00.000-08:00

Our dedicated lab rat (me) is trying out two theories to enhance the life of razor blades.

Why?
I use a new razor blade a week, or my skin begins to complain. At $2.5/blah this is a $125 a year, or $4000 over the next 40 years. And it is clear Gillette want to sell more, not less, razors...

The Theories
Searching the web, the two 'life extension' theories that stood the Test of Duh were
- 1# Leaving razor blades in petroleum gel between uses may reduce moisture and blade deterioration
- 2# Applying alcohol-based gel hand sanitizer before use will reduce hair accumulation on the blade (and reduce damage) and also instant-treat any micro-cuts, resulting in a usable shave for longer
OR
- 3# Nothing helps

The Test
No way to use a double-blind test; my second-bet approach was:
1. For one week, use #1, #2, or #3 on right cheek
2. Report smoothness/microcuts at the end of the week
3. Use a different combo on left cheek
4. Ensure each theory is attempted on both left and right cheek

The test is already in progress.... final report due next week. Which theory do you believe in?

The best DIY energy drink known to Men - EnerT

2006-11-08T02:48:00.000-08:00

We all work out, we all need re-hydration, we all buy Gatorade... wait, stop. EnerT, this simple do it yourself tea-based energy drink, may be a better (and cheaper) option.

An energy drink needs sugar (of some form), electrolytes (mostly sodium and potassium) to accelerate absorption, and may contain other ingredients. I opted for tea as caffeine has a beneficial workout benefit, and tea provides a low-level caffeine, striking my personally preferred balanced between 'waking' and 'wired'. Any level of sugars under 8% is acceptable, but I find Gatorade to be overly caloric for those of us trying to balance increased workout performance with weight loss/maintenance.

[Note: Initial idea inspired by similar energy drink I found on the Diet Everywhere site ]

EnerT Ingredients (32 oz or about 1 liter):
2 Tea Bags
6 level teaspoon sugar (24 grams)
A pinch of salt (0.5 grams)
2 oz lemon juice (about 55 grams)
30 oz boiling water

Contains:
100 calories
500 mg Sodium
60mg of Potassium (from the lemon juice)
Caffeine varies, est 100mg-200mg caffeine (depending on the tea used and infusion duration)

Estimated Cost:
Lemon juice: $0.10
2 Tea Bags: $0.06
Sugar, Salt, water, etc: negligible

Compare to 32 oz Gatorade:
200 calories
440mg Sodium
120mg Potassium
No caffeine
Cost: $1.29

I use a lower potassium level as research indicates that Potassium loss is secondary to Sodium loss in hydration. You can add more lemon juice in, up to 4oz - if flavor allows. On the other hand, removing the lemon juice will still yield a good energy drink, but will reduce price by 66%

References:
http://www.medicdirectsport.com/sportsnutrition/default.asp?step=4&pid=81
http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-C00001-01c20VH.html

Added per the huge amount of interest and questions:
Q: So, is this different from a regular tea?
A: Yes, but only subtly so. The quantity of salt and sugar, and lemon juice (for Potassium) are specifically set for easy absorption. But mostly, energy drinks ARE flavored sugar water. Gatorade is water, sugar, sodium, potassium, and flavor.

Walmart is not my enemy

2006-10-30T12:28:00.000-08:00

As this article describes, Walmart is not my enemy. Free competition is good, protection inefficient or price-gauging small shops is bad. Don't like Walmart? don't shop there. But I have little patience with the constant attempts to smear Walmart and other major companies in the (masked) interest of some special interest group or another, or to bend the rules to make opening a Walmart by my home all but impossible.

Inequality and could/should it be reduced?

2006-10-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

Very interesting article here. I agree.

(Oil) Conservation and CO2 emission

2006-08-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

Most global warming activists attribute apparent effects of global warming to CO2 emissions and the greenhouse effect; So the often suggested solution is 'conservation', reducing the consumption (or the growth of consumption) of oil and other fossil fuels. In this article I will point out some of the problems with this approach.

For the impatients among us, here's the summery - Economic reasoning shows that the human race is likely to utilize the entire existing quantity of fossil fuel. As the greenhouse effect is essentially a function of total CO2 emissions, this indicates that reducing the rate of consumption will not diminish this effect.

The best things in life aren't free

2006-05-14T08:31:00.000-07:00

Proof positive - now that my income has increased (congratulations to me!), I am much happier.

Scientific? no. True? I think so.

Why I do not trust NPR anymore

2005-10-09T02:26:00.000-07:00

I was just listening to NPR's coverage of 'how much should local govronment be responsible for Katrina failures'. Very deep, impressive coverage.
Wait. I don't recall hearing this tone when Katrina was on the news. No sirree. Back then, it was FEMA this and Bush that.
Anything to get at the President.
Well, I'm disillusioned now. I will probably keep listening - the anchors have cultured, intellectual accents, and there are no commercials. But I will never make the mistake of trusting NPR again - they are no more than a partisan voice, far cry from any claims of fairness they may make.

A modest (flood damage prevention) proposal

2005-09-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

When the Katrina rescue efforts are at last over, the inhabitants of New Orleans would no doubt want to rebuild.
Should they?
In fact, people building houses on mud hills, in flood plains, and other danger zones places a burden on the ret of society. It is their right to do as they wish with their property, but it is our obligation to see that the true costs of those decisions lay on those who opt for it. Maybe houses on the flooding riverfront should not be so common. Here's my proposal, which of course would not be popular with propery owners in risky areas:
1. A risk criteria will be federally established, defining areas as low, medium, and high risks.
2. All building in medium and high risk area will require adherance to standards (we have this, but the standards are low)
3. All sale and rent of property (houses and land) in medium or high risk must have the seller disclosure and the buyer's written acknoledgement (e.g. a line in the contract) that the property is in a high risk area. Not doing so is a criminal offense.
4. All built properties in medium and high risks should be assessed a federal 'mandatory rescue costs' tax, maybe 0.25% or more. This should be structured so over time, those taxes would pay the cost of rescue, federal help, and other damages to the US economy from building in those areas.

That's it. Maybe half of New Orleans should not have been built on. and no, federal help for drainage or levy building was not appropriate. If the true cost of a $100,000 home in New Orleans was $100K + $30K in infrastructure cost, this cost should be borne by those living there, not by the entire country.

Being risk averse

2005-07-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

I saw this post on chaostheory and it really made me think - how risk averse are people in general (and me in particular?)

I think trading $1000 for 60% chance of $2000 might make sense, but trading $1000 for 0.06% for $2,000,000 does not, for me. There are two ways to look at this:

1. Expected resulting satisfaction: I will be happy if I win the 2 million, of course. but not a thausand times more. and most likely I'll be disappointed. If I try this 100 times, I will quickly 'learn' that this is too much frustration and not enough (or any) gain

2. Declining value of money: The value of the $10,000 between $100,000 and $110,000 me is quite high, as it would affect my investment.
The value of the difference between $1,000,000 and $1,010,000 is low. Therefore, the value of a dollar is a function of how much I already have, nd declines with wealth (duh?). So $1,000,000 does not really offer twice as much benefit as $500,000 do, just as ten Mars bars do not offer ten times as much benefit as one bar.

On profiling and game theory

2005-07-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

Two sources I've encountered this weekend were this paper, which uses 'quality control' logic to show (among other points) why profiling is effective, and Bruce Schneier's post which raised the legitimate point that profiling based on some attributes (say, ethnicity) will motivate terrorists to masquerade those attributes (e.g. dye their hair blonde). However, this possibility does not mean that profiling is ineffective. Since the opponents have finite resources, and since masquerading has an associated cost (for example, the supply of likely terrorists might be reduced if they would need to take accent-reduction classes, or learn to convincingly masquerade their origin.
It is easy to see that while the approach of ‘only inspect people with suspect attributes’ is ineffective, equilibrium (at max probability of screening) is reached when the screening strategy chooses people of ‘profiled’ attributes more often than people without it.

This is really common sense, however.

Possibly in a future post I will run some simulations with fictitious numbers to demonstrate how the numbers work out.

When will blogging peak?

2005-07-23T19:26:00.000-07:00

see this article - I agree, blogging can't be that important forever, not when half the bloggers out there would figure 5 people are reading them :)

Fallacies - How arguments lie

2005-07-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

this webpage discusses a classification of fallacies. While I don't care how you classify them, the list of fallacies (or misleading ways of arguing) is very helpful.
My favorites:
Ad hominem - we use this one all the time. While an interested party may make biased *decisions*, his logic should stand (or fall) on its own merits.
and
black&white thinking - all or nothing thinging.

I highly recomend you read the website above - and I know you trust my judgement

Tags:Opinions Philosophy Logic

Job choice is like the stock market

2005-07-21T16:26:00.000-07:00

Look what I found here:
I thought education and career are like stock exchange, you should always buy low and sell high, but most people tend to buy high and sell low.

Wedding Bills

2005-07-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

"Maybe there's a good reason that so many people shed a tear or two at weddings while the rest bear a grin of pure schadenfreude. The average cost of a traditional wedding in the U.S. is now up to $25,000" says the Christian Science Monitor.

Link brought to my attention on Plastic.com

The food we eat

2005-07-16T20:20:00.000-07:00

This link discusses how deceptive labeling is hiding the true content of the food we eat. While I usually am more pro-business than pro-newage-liberalism, this is at least somewhat alarming. They are out to get you, or at least, get their profit margines.

MCSE certification hurts salary? really?

2005-07-14T02:05:00.000-07:00

This blog post discusses how MCSE holders aherage $10K less than people who hold no certification. "The title is a little misleading, but this article is a pretty interesting read."

Actually, statistical analysis shows that those numbers mean little for the person trying to decide whether to get certified. It stands to reason that people who feel the need to get MCSE are less credentialed (or otherwise less successful) than those who do not - no-one who was just promoted to a development manager, for example, would have the time or inclination for a resume-building effort. It is those who did not get the promotion/job/assignments they wanted who will. And those are just the people who would be paid less.
Yet, stands to reason isn't statistics, and reason is often wrong. My take? inconclusive. an interesting double blind would be to have half of a group (randomly chosen) get certified, and the other half not, revisit them in 2 years and see their salary delta. Double blind? not quite, but almost. Is this experiment going to happen? I thinketh not.

Prisoner Dilemma: Tit for Tat or Suicide Bombing?

2005-07-14T01:14:00.000-07:00

As described in this article, the latest prisoner dilemma competition (game theory is very cool) was won not by the usually 'tit for tat' algorithm ("be nice, fair, but tough") but by a "identify your friends, collude with them, walk over everyone else" system.

This shows that, in this game theory problem at least, there is a balance and there are weaknesses. Overly-altruistic (say-civilized) are vulnerable to overly aggressive approaches; as the number of aggressors increases, cooperation gives a competitive advantage, turning the tide.

Also read this plastic article

Firecalc and retirement

2005-07-09T19:34:00.000-07:00

using firecalc, a tool that calculates the probability of being able to withraw a specific pension from fixed savings based on past stock market behavior, I got the following:
assuming a desired withdrawal of 30K, the probability per initial investment is:
700k - 89%
650k - 78%
600k - 72%
550k - 56%
500k - 51%

What is morality?

2005-07-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

This quiz is an interesting way to get a good insight on what you consider moral. Thanks to Paula and Ruth who had the original link (or link to link, or...).

So what do I think? I think almost nothing which harms no-body is immoral; and I don't believe the source of morality is some higher power. And yet - society has the right to prohibit behavior which isn't strictly immoral.
--- if you plan on taking the quiz, do it before reading the rest of the post ---

The results analysis discusses 'the yuk factor', the tendency to call something disgusting 'immoral'. That is human nature - delude yourself as to the reason of your actions.
However, it is hard to take this test's results seriously. They do specify in the question that "you should assume the action does no harm". But that reminds me a story:
Q. How many wheels do 10 SUVs have?
A. 40
Q. If I told you an SUV has 6 wheels, how many wheels would 10 SUVs have?
A. 40
It does not matter what they claim the results of an action is, the reader must (and will) reject unreasonable assumptions. "Assume you kill all the bad guys and only them, noone ever gets hurt" is a fine question. But we do know that this isn't reality; someone will get hurt, and the bad guys have friends.
In actuality, when we read a statement such as 'assume this has no consequences' we read 'assume you were told this has no consequences'. Which leads many people to 'well, I assume I was told wrong'.

Unequivocality

2005-07-09T12:20:00.000-07:00

More and more it seems some people insist on seeing the terrorists' side of things. "They only kill innocents because that is their only way of expression".
Fvck that.
If your only way to fight a war is to murder innocent civilians, you shouldn't be fighting. you lost. There is no justification to terror, of course they have reasons, people always have reasons, Hitler had reasons, I'm sure the Devil (if I believed in him) had reasons, so what?
The word 'understanding' has two, conflicting meanings.
Understanding the enemy point of view in order to best defeat him, that is one meaning. That's good. understanding the enemy in order to explain away immorality, that's an equine of another color.
.. and now, Hollywood wants to make a 911 movie. just great.

How much is your time worth?

2005-07-08T19:01:00.000-07:00

This article states you should look at the value of your time; spending a lot of time today to save $10 does not make sense - because an hour today is worth 3 when you're retired; so you'd better use said time now.
The suggestion? decide on a value for your time (maybe based on your after-tax hourly wage) and use it to make decisions.

Tags: time tagtag

Salary Analysis - US software developers

2005-07-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

using this data, across all industries, using median salary:

US: $75,000.00
Greencard holders: $87,000.00
[possible explanation: imported programmers are more talented than average since mostly very talented programmers are imported]
Greencard holders 10-15 years of experience: $91,000.00

By experience years:
0-2 : $50,000.00
3-5 : $60,000.00
6-10 : $80,000.00
10-15: $85,000.00

Software consulting rates - US

2005-07-08T15:25:00.000-07:00

Below is a breakdown and analysis of consulting rates based on this rate statistics page, for industry=Computer-software:

Median Rate: $63.50 [134 responses]
By experience years:
0-2 : Median Rate: $45.00 [43 responses]
3-5 : Median Rate: $52.00 [16 responses]
6-10 : Median Rate: $65.00 [419 responses]
11-15: Median Rate: $75.00 [33 responses]

Median Broker Cut (for the ~45% who use brokers) by experience:
3 - 29% | 6 - 27% | 10 - 21%

Quit your job? why should you?

2005-07-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

This freshmeat article suggests that better programmers don't get equivalently better compensation. I guess the lesson of this is - if you are much, much better than average, you should work hard to get a better deal, since no-one will hand one to you.

How to be a millionaire?

2005-07-05T11:28:00.000-07:00

Beats me. But this guy offers some advice.