Bad drivers, big cars

A friend of mine said that when she was younger she was a bad driver, so her mom bought her a big Jeep.  She got in a few accidents and each time the other cars were damaged but the Jeep was barely scratched.  Good thinking on the mom's part!

I find it odd that we live in a society where this is the norm.  In any other circumstance, if you heard "he's not competent so we put him in charge of the heavy machinery," would you be so quick to accept it?

This is not a statement about my friend (who's great and, of course, would accept a free car) or her mother (whom I don't know and, of course, would want to protect her daughter), but do other cultures enjoy this sense of entitlement?  Or do they work to make society better and safer?

Slightly more vegetables: three weeks later

I'm giving up on the diet.  After three weeks I have gained two pounds and, by the look of my stomach, none of it is muscle.  This is, by far, the fastest I have gained weight in my adult life.  It took a year at the gym to gain 2.5 pounds, so it is indeed significant.

The correlation is by no means scientific, however; my weight gain may be caused exercising less, for example, but I haven't been exercising much less.

I suspect it's the food.  I'm guessing that fruit simply has a lot of calories.  By entertaining a diet high in fruits and vegetables, I convinced myself that snacking on fruits throughout the day was healthy.  It may be a healthy alternative to snacking on chips and chocolate, but it's not necessarily a healthy alternative to snacking on nothing.

I'm still keeping up eating more fruits and vegetables than before, but gone are the days like the following:

Breakfast: Greek yogurt with stevia, a handful of berries, topped with some grainy cereal
Lunch: A small strip of steak, a dollop of pork, broccoli, mushrooms, asparagus, brussel sprouts, and a small cheese bread
Snack: A bowl of berries, lychee, grapes, a banana, or a peach; occasionally carrots
Dinner: Spinach, mushrooms, a handfuls of berries, raisins, nuts, a little cheese, and some meat

So long pseudo-healthy lifestyle.  Welcome back apparently-healthier pizza-and-saussage extravaganza!

Idolatry

Every once in a while while sitting in church I wonder what sermon I would give if it were my duty.  I always come back to the same thing - idol worship.  A few years ago I attended a sermon on idolatry; the sermon covered things like the worshiping other gods, statues, etc., and caring about money, cars, sports, fame, spouse/significant other, and sex more than God.

These are all bad things, sure, but I think it misses the big ticket item that many Christians need to understand.  I would add two items to the list: your kids, and, the big one, God.

Let's get the first one out of the way.  It's easy for people to sit back and say "I don't put money before everything else in my life" but suggest that their kids should not fill that role and they become hysterical.  While I say this from the perspective of someone without children, there are more important things than your kids.

Next, God.  How can God be an idol that detracts from my relationship with God, you may ask.  Here's how: many people don't worship God.  They worship "God."  The quotation marks are important, here indicating the word.  People create a mental image of God, combining, perhaps, passages from the Bible, sermons they've heard, and personal experience, then use this as a proxy for God, believing it to be Him.  They may worship a god who is like a father to them, or a god who sent his only son do die for them, or perhaps worship the son who died for them.  These mental images of God are just that.  These are ideas that are summarized in the few words of the Bible.

Often these images of God are extrapolations of passages from the Bible.  "God Hates Gays," says the picketers.  How do they know?  Because there are a few passages of the Bible that mention homosexuality in a negative light.  "You should love your neighbor, " says someone else.  Why do they believe this?  Because the Bible mentions loving your neighbor a few times.  They have created a model for God based on passages of the Bible, a model which they can understand and refer to instead of going back to the source.

In fact, I have heard many times Christians say that if you have a question you should go to the source - go to the Bible.  The Bible is not the source.  God is the source.  The Bible is a collection of pointers that people can use to prepare them to know God.  Jesus' messages were lessons meant to prepare people to know God.  There is a Buddhist saying that I like quite a bit.  It's summarized as "the finger that points to the moon is not the moon."  Here is one version of the story:

Wu Jincang, the nun, asked the Patriarch Huineng, “I have studied the Mahaparinirvana Sutra for many years, yet there are many areas I do not quite understand. Please enlighten me.” 

The patriarch responded, “I am illiterate. Please read out the Sutra to me and perhaps I will be able to explain its meaning.” 

The nun said, “You cannot even read the Sutra!  How are you able to understand the meaning?” 

“Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon’s location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?”

Bringing it back to Christianity - don't confuse the Bible with the opinions of God.  A more kosher way of saying this: don't confuse knowing the Bible with knowing God.  In fact, this is a message that Jesus repeated many times.  The Pharisees knew the Bible inside and out but neither did they understand its meaning or God.  They used the Bible to create a model for God and then based their laws on the model rather than the real thing.

Are you worshiping an image of God instead of the real thing?  One way to find out is ask yourself what God is like; what Godly rules to you follow?  If you have to rely on your memory, on things you read in the Bible or learned in church, then you're hindering yourself.  God wants you (or at least me, but I assume you too) to love everyone, not because Jesus said so, but because that's the way He is.

This reminds me of the book of Genesis.  Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and were forever separated from God.  The most common explanation I have heard is that the knowledge is a metaphor for sex.  This never sat well with me, as it doesn't fit with the tree's name, the separateness of human and animals (animals also have sex), or with the fall of man.  It seems more like an extrapolation from people who have demonized sex based on their own extrapolations of other Bible verses.  My pastor explained it in a sermon as the knowledge of right and wrong - that the Devil persuaded Adam and Eve to eat of the tree so that they would know what is good and evil and rely on themesleves instead of relying on God for this knowledge.  They would know what God knows and, by extension, be as great as God.

This ties back neatly to my point - by creating models of God in our mind, by relying on the words in the Bible or our own intellect, we trick ourselves into thinking that we know what God knows and we no longer rely on Him.

There are also more tangible idols closely related to Christianity.  The cross or crucifix are images of God that we can easily turn into an idol.  From Exodus 20 we see that God does not want any image of Himself created:

Do not make any gods to be alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold...If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it.

And I find it interesting that God appeared to people as ideas that are difficult to visualize.  He appeared as fire, a pillar of smoke, and as a whisper.  These are things you cannot easily carve.  He made it impossible for us to create a picture of Him, perhaps because he knew that if we could picture him we would, and we would no longer know him but our picture instead.  From Deuteronomy 4:

You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars — all the heavenly array — do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.

In the midst of writing this entry I was surprised.  My pastor gave a sermon on idolatry (not the surprising part, as we're in a series on the Ten Commandments).  He spoke of how we can create an image of God in our mind and that becomes an idol to us.  He also mentioned other potential idols that Christians may not see as such: the cross and crucifix, the church building, candles and incense, pictures of Jesus, a hymnal, your spouse and your kids.  I cannot claim that my pastor would agree with this post, as I take the idea slightly further than he, and in a more confrontational way, but it was refreshing to hear him bring up these issues.  Letters from Jesus' disciples to old churches, which make up much of the New Testament, often dealt with controversial or painful issues that the people needed to hear.

More from Exodus 20:

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.

Can do lists

You don't like to-do lists.  Same as me.  Good, you might like this idea.

'Can-do lists'

There it is.  I read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin on the way to Australia.  I don't normally like books written by women, but the premise had promise.  Anyway, she said one thing like liked.  In order to decrease the weight of unfinished tasks in her life, she decided to not put off any task that takes less than a minute.  Seemed like good advice, so I thought I'd try it.  Only make it better.

I don't like to-do lists; they don't work for me.  I don't have any interest in letting an inanimate piece of paper tell me what to do.  And if the task is added by my wife, then it degenerates to a vicarious nag.  But can-do lists, now that's another story.  I don't have to do anything on them, but they'll probably make my life better.

Since I don't like lists, I made four: a list of 1-minute tasks, 5-minute, few-hours, and important tasks.  Now, if I have 5 minutes to spare and a desire to get something done, I have a place to look, but no rush.

In order that these remain positive in my mind, I have two rules:

1. It only contains tasks I want to accomplish - that I think will make my life better.

2. My wife cannot suggest a task for me to add - it's all me.

And there it is.  My smart phone has been essential in this endeavor.  As soon as I think of something interesting, I can add it to a list and not be concerned about forgetting.

Problem sovled.

Recycled toilet paper

Earlier this week I watched a presentation on positive behavior control.  In one example, one set of people were told that they use two large trees worth of toilet paper in their lives and another set were told the same thing but also asked to visualize cutting down two large virgin forest trees.  The second set of people were much more likely to use recycled toilet paper after the session.

That's great, compelling stuff.  But I don't buy it (by default).  The unspoken assumption is that if you use recycled toilet paper, you'll save two trees.

Since only one third of paper made in the US is from recycled paper, that means that all recycled paper is used (otherwise we wouldn't be cutting down trees to fulfill the need).  So, if you use two trees worth of recycled paper, you're taking two trees worth of pulp out of the pool of paper-pulp, which must be filled by cutting down two trees.  That is, you're not saving trees.  But that's just my estimate; let's do the math!

Let's start with the facts:
1. Paper can be recycled about 6 times.
2. 1/3 of paper comes from recycled sources
3. Used toilet paper is not recycled :)

Let's make some assumptions:
1. People recycle virgin paper at the same rate as recycled paper (given a piece of paper, you don't decide to recycle it based on where it came from).
2. All recycled paper is used (recycling facilities don't throw out recycled paper because there is too much).

So, let's calculate the percentage of paper that is recycled.  It should be close to 33%.  Let's call this "m"

The pool of paper pulp has equal parts paper, wood chips, and recycled paper.  Given 1/2 a tree, 1/2 a tree's worth of chips, there is 1/2 a tree's worth of recycled paper.  That is, one trees worth of wood creates 1.5 trees worth of pulp if recycled 6 times; or one trees worth of wood creates:
    m trees worth of 1st generation recycled paper
    m^2 trees worth of 2nd gen paper

    m^3 trees worth of 3nd gen paper

    m^4 trees worth of 4nd gen paper

    m^5 trees worth of 5nd gen paper

    m^6 trees worth of 6nd gen paper

There is no 7th gen recycled paper.

That means that m + m^2 + m^3 + m^4 + m^5  + m^6 = 1/2 a tree.  Solving this gives m = 0.333640134.

Reality check:  0.333650134 is close to the 33% that we'd expect.

What happens if we use 1st gen recycled paper for toilet paper?  How many trees have to be cut down to make one unit of recycled paper?  K trees create K*m trees worth of recycled paper, so K*m = 1 or K = 1 /  m = 2.997.
So, 2.997 trees creates 2.997 + 1 = 3.997 units of paper instead of the maximum potential of 2.997 * 1.5 = 4.495.  So, 4.495 - 3.997 = 0.4986 potential trees are wasted.
The total number of trees cut down is to make your toilet paper is
    N = 2 / (efficiency of using 1st gen / efficiency of using virgin wood)
    N = 2 / ( (1 + 0.4986)^(-1) / 1.5^(-1) )
    N = 2 * ( 1 + 0.4986 ) / 1.5
    N = 1.99616
You could write this as 2/m - 4/3*(1/m) = 1.99616 (which I derived by gathering the terms in the above paragraph and simplifying; we'll double-check this a little later).

If you use 2nd gen, you cut down 2/m^2 - 4/3*(1/m^2 + 1/m) = 1.992 trees
If you use 3rd gen, you cut down 2/m^3 - 4/3*(1/m^3 + 1/m^2 + 1/m) = 1.976 trees
For 4th gen, you cut down 1.926
For 5th gen, you cut down 1.778
For 6th gen, you cut down 1.333

Reality check:  If you use 6th gen paper, you waste nothing because it can't be recycled again - it'll be thrown out anyway.  In this best case, 2 trees create 3 trees worth of paper (using the 1.5 factor), so it would take 3/2 = 1.333 trees to create the two trees you needed to wipe your butt.  This is what we calculated above so the math works out :)

Now, our last step.  If you use recycled paper, you get mostly 1st gen paper, less 2nd gen, etc.  And we have the percentages above: m/0.5 1st gen, m^2/0.5 2nd gen, etc.
So, on average, you'd cut down 1/0.5 * (m*1.992 + m^2*1.976 + ... + m^6*1.333) = 1.990 trees.

1.99 trees is really close to 2 trees.  That is, you cut down the same number of trees if you use recycled paper as non-recycled paper.

So, does this mean you shouldn't use recycled toilet paper?  Not necessarily. There is some talk that toilet paper comes from virgin forest rather than tree farms.  I can't tell how true this is.  If tree farms are going unused in favor of toilet paper companies using virgin forest trees, then using recycled paper saves virgin forests.  According to this article, 9% of paper comes from virgin wood, and it would certainly be good to decrease that.  9% is pretty small though - it's conceivable that the no virgin trees are cut down for paper and the 9% comes from the wood chips left over from cutting down virgin trees for other purposes.

There is also a macro economic argument that if people buy more recycled toilet paper, the price of recycled paper will go up and business and government will persuade the people to recycle more (such as how certain states will buy back aluminum cans and beer bottles).  I expect that one person has little effect on this.

The real lesson, however, is how important it is to recycle.  The more people recycle (above 33%), the more paper each tree can produce.  If we recycle 100% of paper, then each tree can produce 7 trees worth of paper.  This is, of course, assuming that it is better for the environment to recycle paper than to cut down trees from tree farms.  An International Institute for Environment and Development study states that:
“Most of the studies support the view that recycling and incineration are environmentally preferable to landfill. There is less agreement on whether recycling is preferable to incineration. Critical factors are the nature of the pulp and paper making process, the level of technology at all stages of the life cycle and the energy structure of the countries under study. Interpretation also plays a role in weighing up of increases in some emissions against reductions in others.”

Overall, the best plan is to simply use less paper.  Everyone, wipe with your hands :)

Slightly more vegetables: one week later

Inspired by my mom's decision to eat and live healthier, my friend's obsession with testing diet myths, and the decreasing price of produce as summer arrives, my wife and I decided a week ago to eat more fruits and vegetables.

Here's the plan: eat at least one significant serving of vegetables and fruit every day.  By a significant serving, I mean that half of the meal has to be fruits and vegetables.  And the following don't count: rice/grains, potatoes, peanut butter, and alcohol (yes, even amaretto).

Okay, so it's not a 7-day water diet followed a month of Savannah eating, but it's something.

Two days we had salad for dinner - spinach, nuts, cheese, sausage, berries, and a vinaigrette.  Other days it was asparagus, broccoli, bok choy, and mushrooms.

And the result after week one: I can't sleep.  5 hours a night most nights.  I go most months without sleeping pills but this week I've had two.  Let's hope it's not related to the vegetables.

Of Stars and Trash

For the inaugural entry, let's talk about everyone's favorite subject - celebrity gossip.

I'm not at all into celebrity gossip or the personal lives of movie stars.  They entertain us, that is all - they are not our friends, our heroes, our lives, or our role models.  We should not expect them to behave well off camera, we should not be recording their phone conversations, and there is no need to buy magazines detailing their actions.

I have never been interested in the celebrity magazines, which is why it was so surprising that I couldn't help but snatch one off the shelf a few weeks ago.  I even skimmed through an article.

Stepping back two weeks, in the airport awaiting my plane to Australia, I had a conversation with someone in the movie scene.  We were talking about how much crap is in the celebrity gossip magazines, how much of it is complete fabrication.  And she gave a few examples, one being the perfect marriage stories of John Travolta.  "And everyone knows he's gay," she exclaimed; "he's sleeping with one of my friends."

That small encounter made me a happy - I was glad to have this inside information.  And then when the story came out, I was intrigued.  I knew something before the rest of the world!  It's completely unimportant, but there are millions of people who care and I knew it before them.

And there it is; there's the draw.  Maybe people read these magazines to feel like they know something, no matter how insignificant, before their friends.  I don't care about John Travolta and I don't care that he's gay, but do enjoy knowing that I found out before the world.

That feeling lasted for a few seconds before the thrill of wondering if the leak had something to do with me.  Did someone overhear our conversation in the airport?  Did I have an effect on the gossip that millions of people will read?

I suppose it's only a small step between being happy that you knew something useless before the entire world and being happy that you knew something useless earlier than your friends.