Donal's blog

Is the Occupy Movement Over?

Donal — Mon, 21 May 2012 01:59:38 +0000

Based on an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (right), the Guardian announces, Occupy Wall Street's people power loses popularity:

... the public's backing of Occupy has taken a hit. Nationally, most pollsters have not even bothered to survey Americans on their views of Occupy since the end of the Zuccotti Park sit-in. The only pollster who has reasonably consistently asked about Occupy has seen a decline in its support. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that the percentage of Americans who consider themselves a "supporter" of the Occupy movement has dropped by half since November.

I read this last week, and wondered, who of course, could be more impartial about Occupy Wall Street than the WSJ's pollsters? And who, I wonder are they asking?

On a blog post pointed out today by Andrew Sullivan's Dish, Walter Russell Mead makes a lot of strange claims in OWS RIP:

Despite generally favorable coverage from the MSM (something the Tea Party has never had), OWS has essentially fallen apart.

Mead must have been reading very different articles than I saw - on both sides. The Baltimore Sun fell over themselves to channel Breitbart and other conservative memes about OB, and as I noted at the time, local TV was drawn to the most unusual-looking characters rather than those with the most cogent ideas. Since being dispersed by the city, Occupy Baltimore has not attempted to reestablish a campground, but they aren't inactive. Under the name Occupy Our Homes they continue to protest foreclosures, there have been Occupy Bank of America protests and there was a small Occupy the G8 Summit protest in Thurmont, near Camp David, this weekend. Occupy protestors were "arriving by the busload," for the NATO Summit in Chicago. And there are thousands marching under the name in Europe.

To some degree, it was killed by its “friends.” The tiny left wing groups that exist in the country jumped all over the movement; between them and the deranged and occasionally dangerous homeless people and other rootless wanderers drawn to the movement’s increasingly disorderly campsites, OWS looked and sounded less and less like anything the 99 percent want anything to do with.

From my limited perspective, Occupy Baltimore was an uneasy alliance between groups with little in common previously. Some of the homeless seemed to enjoy being noticed and being part of something, but others simply saw the campers as fodder, right there in the next tent. African American speakers harped on resolving racial disparities first. LGBT art students also wanted to be heard. College students and underemployed graduates were upset at their high debts and the piss poor job market, and brought a middle class look to the movement. LarouchePAC showed up as per usual, as did Libertarians. Old hippie leftists also seemed to enjoy being noticed but there seemed to be very serious, young anarchist apparatchiks actually making things happen.

At the same time, the movement largely failed to connect with the African American and Hispanic churchgoers who would have to be the base for any serious grass roots urban political mobilization. The trade unions picked up the movement briefly but dropped it like a hot brick as they found the brand less and less attractive.

In Baltimore, I can't speak to black church sentiment, but support from the trade unions, even the Fraternal Order of Police, kept OB in McKeldin Square a lot longer than predicted by onlookers.

One of Mead's commenters makes somewhat more sense to me:

If OWS had started as an indebted students movement, like Argentina, if they hadn’t camped out and become odd urban obstructions, and if a charismatic leader had surfaced, giving the media something to focus on, I suspect things would have turned out differently.

They may have been treated better, but I doubt they would have achieved such a high profile, or accomplished much more.

The MSM, with the exception of MSNBC’s gung-ho grad student excitement, was uneasy and ambivalent about OWS. NYT’s first articles, at least the ones I read, were dismissive, frequently focusing on Wall Street condescension and never attempted to grasp the situation. The Daily Show went for easy laughs – each segment highlighted OWS’s freak show contradictions.

But the true death of OWS, other than inertia: the violent images that came out of Oakland, teargas and surging crowds, bloody faces. I suspect that TV audiences recoiled, dreading the social the chaos of the 60′s.

Of course, behind the scenes funding, which the Tea Party received and OWS didn’t, is also a big part of the story. Dick Army and the Koch Bros knew how to effectively channel Tea Party energy.

Though it is unclear who was behind it, the Black Bloc image has been a problem, granting authorities cover to strategically charge Occupy protestors with terrorism in advance of significant actions.

Deutsch later told reporters outside the courtroom that, though he was just getting into the case and didn't know all the evidence, he believed it was a setup. At least two informants "ingratiated themselves" with the three men, brought the materials and made the alleged plans, he insisted, calling it "an entrapment to the highest degree."

I think the name Occupy will continue to have some power, but protestors and the police alike will never again be able to count on the other to be non-violent - which of course serves the interests of those that don't want protest to have any real effect. I do wonder what shape and name the next protest movement will take.

Torture is not Missing from TV

Donal — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:54:20 +0000

Finale Spoiler! My wife insisted that I had to watch the ABC primetime show Missing, in which former spy Becca Winstone (Ashley Judd), married to supposedly dead spy, Paul Winstone (Sean Bean), is always searching for their kidnapped son Michael (Nick Eversman). She was sometimes hindered and sometimes assisted by Dax Miller (Cliff Curtis) at the CIA and Giancarlo Rossi (Adriano Giannini) at Interpol. There were lots of evil-looking Eastern European types wielding black semiautos, friendly but cutthroat double agent Martin Newman (Keith Carradine) and cute but deadly double agent Violet Heath (Laura Donnelly). And of course Paul was not really dead, or the walrus.

As in most series with a lot of shooting, people hardly ever run out of bullets, and major characters usually manage to avoid getting shot. Like Emma Peel, or April Dancer, or Ziva David, Becca and Violet were the sorts of slender women that could, and did, regularly beat the crap out of much larger men, often two or three at a time. Maybe that's why my wife liked it. Hmmm. I'm sure Judd would have liked to beat the crap out of critics who called her face too puffy for a female lead.

It wasn't a bad series, but ABC canceled it last week. And given the plot of the finale, I'm not that sorry. Becca kept flashing back to an assignment in the Chechen warzone, 1997, when she and Paul delivered a man to torturers. Within ten minutes she decided that torture was not what she signed up for, and convinced Paul to help her rescue the man. Which was a piece of cake.

But in real time, it comes down to only attractive but evil Violet (right) knowing where Michael is being held, and she ain't talking, so torture is back on the table. Becca explicitly explains the breaking of fingers, pulling of teeth and electrocution that is about to happen, but Violet assumes she is bluffing. Becca cracks a pinky with pliers, and before you can say melted butter, Violet gives her exactly the information she needs. Becca tells Paul, “I found our son.” And it all works out because it is TV.

Once again, torture is being sold on television as an unpleasant but necessary tactic in a world of criminals and terrorists that kidnap, kill, blow things up, but never lie to their torturer. Sometimes they hold out, but they always spill just in time.

The reality that torture is actually a means of making people confess to real or imagined crimes is what is actually Missing.

Blue Clay Disappoints

Donal — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:43:55 +0000

Tennis is in the middle of clay court season. Last year Novak Djokovic stunned everyone by continuing his winning streak on Rafael Nadal's best surface—beating Nadal on the red clay of Madrid and Rome. This year, Djokovic has been less dominant, losing to Nadal in Monte Carlo, and losing early in Madrid. So Djokovic should be motivated to defend his points this week at Rome—the Internazionali BNL d'Italia.

Everyone in tennis, except her immediate rivals, was happy when Victoria Azarenka took the number one ranking with a win at the Australian Open. By and large, Azarenka has been a deserving champion, playing well and winning often. Maria Sharapova has been a steady #2 and defeated Azarenka at Stuttgart. I expected Petra Kvitova to contend for #1, but instead Kvitova has dropped to #4, losing to many players, while Agnieska Radwanska has risen to #3, losing only to Azarenka. Samantha Stosur has quietly floated around #5. Despite her promise to come back to #1, Caroline Wozniacki has slipped to #8 and has been losing about a round earlier in many tournaments, and to lower-ranked players like Lucie Safarova, Julia Goerges, Ana Ivanovic and Angelique Kerber.

But if you thought the women's tour was now a settled meritocracy, at Madrid a newly fit #9 Serena Williams just sliced through Sharapova and Azarenka, beating each of them soundly 6-1, 6-3 in matches that weren't even close. I don't think Serena likes blondes, but I'll bet she likes the blue clay.

On the red clay there were three nasty injuries. Andrea Petkovic had just come back from lower back injuries then went down with a serious ankle sprain at Stuttgart. At Monte Carlo, both Juan Monaco and Julien Benneteau were playing well then went down with serious ankle sprains. I saw Benneteau's ankle just fold over like pair of socks while he was sliding for a ball in Monte Carlo. He also injured his wrist as he fell. It hurt just to watch.

While there were no massive ankle sprains on the new, blue clay at Madrid, even being watered twice per set it was both faster and more slippery than players expected. Ion Tiriac seems to run the tournament his own way. Instead of using young players as ball kids, he hired attractive young models. At times the cameramen seemed more intent on following the young women retrieving the balls than the ones hitting them. Instead of terre battue, the famous red clay, he asked for and received permission to experiment with Big Blue on all his courts. "Blue is a better court colour than other colours, better that the green-grey they call clay in the US and that brown stuff they use in India," he said. To accommodate television the tours have switched hardcourts from green to blue, so it does make sense to try the same for clay courts.

But Nadal went out early, to his countryman Verdasco, and Djokovic went out early, to his countryman Tipsarevic, and the final was played between Federer and fast-court player Tomas Berdych. While the ATP insists that the blue clay will eventually play like red clay, Djokovic and Nadal's coach, his uncle Toni, insist they will refuse to play on blue clay next year. As noted in the Heavy Topspin blog, service aces and third-shot winners were far more frequent on the blue clay than in years past on red clay. If you serve well, and the ball comes back weakly, you have a chance to end the point on the third shot. So third-shot winners are also an indication of a fast court.

Roger's victory at Madrid combined with early exits of the top two has temporarily propelled Federer to #2 in the world above Nadal. So earning points on the red clay of Rome becomes more important than expected to Djokovic and Nadal before the seeding for Roland Garros.

Solar & Wind Expo

Donal — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:57:09 +0000

On Saturday, I attended a Solar & Wind Expo, which was held about three stops away on light rail. At the Timonium Fair Grounds stop, there was no sign that anything was happening. I walked past the empty entrance kiosks, and saw a truck with a horse trailer backing up to the mostly empty livestock sheds. I continued past the empty cow palace, and eventually saw some balloons tied to two tiny cars in front of a nondescript concrete block building. The cars were Think City EVs. A small banner announced that the expo was inside.

I was a bit early and when I tried to pay the $10 entry fee with my debit card, one of the cashiers went to a table and pulled a cardswipe machine out of a box. She fiddled with it and asked, "Do you have any cash?" I had eight dollars, so she took that and let me in. That worked out about right because I was supposed to get two dollars off for arriving by light rail.

It wasn't a huge expo. The floor plan showed 70 booths, but there were actually about two or three dozen exhibitors. The more experienced reps quickly asked if I owned my own home because they were selling installs of solar PV, solar water panels, wind masts, geothermal and the like—and looking for live customers. They were polite when I told them I was an architect, and quietly ready to wave me on when I told them I mostly did institutional work. The fellow selling Leaf Filter gutters just handed me a card and said to call him when I needed work.

At the first booth were two fellows promoting Radiaflect Reflective Insulation which is two layers of perforated aluminum foil with a bit of recycled plastic foam between. They claim about R-5 for it, which sounded high, but its real purpose is to be a radiant barrier (RB) rather than a thermal barrier. Their demonstration box had two parabolic light bulbs shining down in each compartment, one above batt insulation, the other above the Radiaflect. Thermometers indicated that it was around forty degrees cooler beneath the radiant barrier. I asked if this was primarily for the South, but they claimed RBs would work well in colder climates, too. They even said you could place the RB beneath shingles, or behind siding. That sounded wrong, so I did some research when I got home.

According to the feds, and a few discussion boards, RBs are effective in reducing cooling load, so you might drape one between or under the roof joists if you live in a hot climate with more than 4500 cooling degree days per year, and have air cooling ductwork in the attic. But RBs sitting on top of your attic floor insulation can trap moisture, even when perforated. Also, RBs need an air space on at least one side to provide any benefit. If the RB is placed tight between sheathing and shingles, or sheathing and siding, heat will conduct through the foil. If you have the currently recommended R-38 batts of attic insulation in a cool climate, or R-49 batts in a very cool climate, an RB won't do that much for you.

Another guy was selling retrofit foam insulation. I designed a new school and a new library with open cell foam (soy-based) in the cavities and closed cell on the sheathing, but his stuff was a mix of closed and open cell intended for retrofitting poorly insulated residential cavity walls. They cut holes in the outside wall, between each stud, and pump in the foam. He had a video of it gradually flattening out the batt insulation against the inner layer of gypsum board. I've heard a lot of stories about gaps left behind, though, and not found until demolition years later.

Naturally there were a lot of companies looking to sell analysis, design and installation of PV or solar hot water panels, I only spoke to two at any length. A fellow from 21st Century Power Solutions made it clear that they were selling the best of the older, more reliable technology because the newer sort of tech was too expensive. Before I could even ask about Solyndra he said they were doing that very thin, almost painted-on PV that went under when the Chinese had forced everyone to drop their prices. I asked about the security of rooftop panels, and he wasn't aware of any special theft deterrence, that they were insured under homeowners, and that most people who bought PV were in secure neighborhoods anyway.

I also talked to a fellow from American Sentry Solar, who had a Velux solar water panel set up. It was a clean-looking unit. I asked if he had seen the Green Building Advisor claim that it was often cheaper to heat water with PV generated power than to use solar hot water systems.

In the northern half of the U.S. — and even much of the South — installing a residential solar hot water system doesn’t make any sense. It’s time to rethink traditional advice about installing a solar hot water system, because it’s now cheaper to heat water with a photovoltaic (PV) array than solar thermal collectors.

In short, unless you’re building a laundromat or college dorm, solar thermal is dead.

He hadn't, but he said that PV could be more generally useful for the money invested.

Ultra Solar and Wind Solutions had several wind displays. I first looked at the three bladed turbine, 46" in diameter, but they said that the 13 lb Air Breeze, generating 160W at 28mph of wind, was usually used to recharge batteries on sailboats or offshore platforms. Marilyn, a vertical axis, omni-directional rotor looks like a sheet dangling from three points. Marilyn models vary from 3 to 7 feet in diameter, generate 500W, 2.5kW or 3.3 kW depending on the size, require only about 6 or 7 mph in wind speed and are claimed to be avian-friendly. You can mount one above the ridge of your roof line.

The Marilyn rotor has the advantage of a larger power coefficient at the same wind speed over other rotors of similar size. Rotor movement begins at a wind speed of 2-3 m/s. At high wind speeds of more than 20 m/s, its geometrical construction provides a hydraulic self-brake limiting rotor revolutions to 150 rpm. This feature ensures protection for mechanical and electrical elements at high wind speeds without mounting brakes or electronic safety systems.

Ground Loop Heating & Air Conditioning had a display of geothermal exchange solutions featuring a three ton Water-Furnace unit and diagrams of horizontal, vertical and pond loop geothermal fields. With my small house and yard, I'd need a two ton unit and a vertical loop to a depth of maybe 100 feet, and the fellow threw out a number of maybe $30,000. I've heard quotes of $20K for larger systems, but obviously I wasn't going to get a serious price without an analysis.

Ground Loop also had a mockup of three methods of running underfloor hot water radiant heating—which is something we want to do in our house. One method requires that the fluid lines run in grooves that are routed into a plywood subfloor. Another has a few inches of gypcrete poured around plastic tubing above the subfloor or sheathing. Since we want to keep our heart pine floors, the easiest retrofit for us would be to run plastic tubing below the floor sheathing, between the floor joists.

There were about five more Think City cars inside the building, and someone was maneuvering a Leaf and two Volts into spots nearby. EuroStar Auto Gallery, a nearby dealer, was discounting them from the list price of $36,495 to about $22,500, and advertising them as costing $15,000 after the federal rebate—plus tags and title. The Think is a two seater about the same size as a Smart car, and has a skin of recycled plastic. (Later I asked a young man what he thought of the Think. He said it would be odd to own a car that felt like a trash can lid.)

Think claims 50-75 mile range in winter, 75 miles on the highway with AC and 110 miles in the city. The speedometer goes to 120 mph, but the top speed listed is 70 mph. The dealer pointed to the door edge to show off the solid construction. It wasn't nearly as tinny as the Chinese-made Electrovaya EV I rode in a few years ago, but it wasn't nearly as solid as a Leaf or Volt, either. I asked him if they were still made in Norway. He seemed surprised and said that the parts were made there, but were assembled in the US. Think! has gone bankrupt several times, and I had thought they were finally defunct, but Autoblog reports that they were bought out by a Russian investor in March 2012.

The Leaf and Volts were personal cars, immediately plugged in to extension cords. Dave Goldstein, President Emeritus of the Electric Vehicle Association of Greater DC (EVADC) owned one of the Volts, and was preaching to a retired fellow about how much he loved his Volt after 30K miles, how it was really a luxury car despite the Chevy badge, how people shouldn't be saying bad things about it on the internet, and that everyone should see Revenge of the Electric Car. He asked me what kind of car I drove and I told him, "a bike" but that I had seen the Volt at the car show, and liked it. He said he rented from Enterprise when he needed to make a long trip. We briefly discussed the idea of people sharing their personal cars with strangers, which has been an insurance nightmare for one owner, but he thought it would get worked out by the insurance companies.

I sat in on a seminar, Electric Vehicles Explained by Doron Shalvi, who is the current President of EVADC and was the owner of the Leaf recharging nearby, and Dave Goldstein. They handed out this fact sheet PDF. There wasn't a lot I hadn't heard before.

Michael Hindle, of both INDRAlogic Architecture and Chesapeake Passive House, and the Acting Chair of the Mid-Atlantic Passive House Alliance, preached fire, brimstone and climate change about the importance of designing your house to meet Passive House standards from the get-go— rather than letting some architect or builder try to "add green" too late into the design process. Despite using the word architecture in one of his company names, Hindle is not an architect; he is a Certified Passive House Consultant per the PHIUS.

Hindle didn't surprise me by pointing out that LEED was a poor measure of a building's energy efficiency, LEED basically follows ASHRAE, but he did surprise me by complaining that Watershed, last year's Solar Decathlon winner, was a climate change loser because of the long carbon payback time of the types of foam insulation they used.

Hindle showed the charts above, from Building Green, which work together—all the insulation types in the lower chart are lumped together at the bottom of the upper chart. Hence the payback years of the closed cell Sprayed Polyurethane Foam (ccSPF) and Extruded Polystyrene Foam (XPF or XPS) are far above any other sort of insulations. And these were used at Watershed.

He did however like Self-Reliance which both my wife and I thought was very successful. Apparently Hindle's wife was urging him to tone it down, but I thought his talk was a good counterbalance to the naked capitalism of the rest of the show.

Luxury Electric Motor Bikes

Donal — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:17:21 +0000

Along with their hybrids and EVs, luxury automakers have been developing prototype e-bikes, like the Audi Wörthersee above. These aren't full-fledged motorcycles, like the Brammo or Zero, but they aren't just bicycles either:

Audi e-bike Wörthersee (above) is being marketed as a trick bike, but it could be a commuter. You can pedal the 46 lbs with no assistance, or you can let the bike squire you around at 30 mph, or if you can pedal hard enough, the electric motor will assist you up to 50 mph. Range varies from 31 to 44 miles.

Daimler also has their smart e-bike, starting at €2,849, or $3,700. They claim up to a 62 mile range, which is good because pedaling a 61 lb discharged bike would not be fun. One review says the standard 230W smart e-bike is difficult to pedal faster than 15 mph, but reviews of the 500W Brabus version list its top speed as 28 mph.

Lexus and Volkswagen showed slick prototype e-bikes (above) two years ago but there is little word on them now. The Daimler does seem to be for sale.

There are all sorts of e-bikes out there, especially in Asia, and as shown below, the simplest ones help you pedal easier or faster. But I see a continuum of motorized two wheelers from motor-assisted bicycles to full-fledged motorcycles like the Brammo and Zero. I rode a Honda 250 for several years, and had my share of near misses, so when a bike starts moving me way faster than I can pedal I start asking myself, How much rubber is on the pavement? How strong are the brakes? If that car turns left can I stop? etc.

Tesla and the Uncertain Middle Class

Donal — Thu, 10 May 2012 15:33:04 +0000

Tesla is about to release its Model S sedan. Despite operating at a loss, despite never having turned a profit, despite being the recipient of government loans (which the right wing hates about the Volt), despite its stock price dropping due to perceived competition from the Toyota RAV4 EV, some Wall Street pundits are still bullish on Tesla.

Why? Well it promises decent range:

Tesla: The Time Has Come

The Tesla Model S will give you significantly more range than a Nissan LEAF or any other practical all-electric car to date. The Nissan is EPA-certified at 73 miles on average. Tesla claims 160 miles for the base version of the Model S. ...

Tesla will also sell you an alleged 230-mile and a 300-mile version of the Model S. Each step up is $10,000 more.

Who will buy these cars? According to Rocco Pendola, writing for The Street, rich people will.

Sell Ford, Buy Tesla on Growing Income Inequality

We have what I will hesitate to call an income inequality "problem" in America. I use the word "problem" with caution, as that word can take us deep into subjective territory. Objective data does show, however, that both income and wealth concentrate in the relatively small upper echelons of society. Expect that trend to hold constant or intensify, but not revert meaningfully anytime in the foreseeable future. ...

My bull case on Tesla has always focused on three things:
- Tesla's ability to build a revenue bridge between models by developing EVs for other companies, such as Daimler and Toyota.
- The existence of that revenue as an additional stream of income during periods of core EV sales.
- Tesla's prime and well-positioned target market.

Again, that target market is ... rich people:

It's well-to-do types from places like Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Southern California who will fork out more than $50,000 for a Model S, just like they did for Tesla's inaugural $110,000 (sold-out) Roadster. ...

To achieve this level of success, Tesla does not have to concern itself with a very large portion of the population.

So far, Pendola's few commenters think he's nuts. I have to wonder if rich people will buy a car from a company that abandons customers with bricked batteries—but that's just me. But Pendola is also concerned that no one will have enough cash to buy Ford's EVs:

At day's end, in a nation (and world) increasingly divided between haves and have nots, I do not want to be long companies, for the most part, that serve an uncertain "middle class" American. Nine times out of 10, I get bullish stocks that serve the relatively poor and the modestly-to-filthy rich.

While this somewhat snobby view of the landscape does not sit well with my socially conscious side, it is what it is. I do my best to not let that part of me influence my investment decisions to any great extent.

Bilateral Breathing

Donal — Thu, 10 May 2012 02:24:20 +0000

I've always admired the grace, efficiency and symmetry of swimmers that breathe to both sides at any pace and distance. Laure Manadou, Rebecca Adlington, Federica Pellegrini and many other elite female swimmers breathe bilaterally while competing, as do many excellent masters swimmers. But, many other women and almost all of the elite male swimmers in the world breathe to one side, or unilaterally, in their races.

Welsh distance swimmer Dave Davies is one of the few male swimmers I have seen consistently breathing bilaterally. World 1500m champion Sun Yang quickly breathes to both sides before and after turning, but mostly breathes to one side. Many male swimmers can sneak a breath to the opposite side to keep an eye on an opponent, but most opt for the additional air available when breathing every other stroke.

Despite the prevalence of unilateral breathing, some coaches recommend bilateral breathing to develop symmetrical body roll to each side and to avoid the lopsided stroke that often comes with same-side breathing. Michael Phelps breathes to one side, but in this training video, his coach, Bob Bowman, recommends learning bilateral breathing:

On CoachesInfo.com, aquatics scientist and masters swimmer Ross Sanders advises that same side breathing can interfere with streamlining:

... 'Twisting' of the upper body during breathing is common and increases resistance. Observation of swimmers indicates that this twisting is more common among swimmers who have a preferred breathing side. I believe swimmers should learn and practice bilateral breathing. Coaches should establish symmetry of action to improve balancing of rotations and streamlining.

Total Immersion founder Terry Laughlin is all about making your breathing motion so streamlined that it doesn't slow you down no matter how often you breathe, but even so he recommends bilateral swimming while training:

One of the most common questions I get from swimmers is whether they should use alternate-side, or bilateral, breathing. The quick answer is yes, you should breathe to both sides. At least in practice. And on some occasions it can be an advantage while racing too.

... The problem with single side breathing is that, over time. it tends to make your stroke lopsided and asymmetrical. And small wonder; in just an hour of swimming, you'll probably roll to your breathing side about 1,000 times, meaning all your torso muscles pull more in that direction and less to the other side. Multiply that by hundreds of hours of swimming and you can see how a lopsided stroke can easily become permanent.

One would think that bilateral breathing should at least be attempted by any serious swimmer, but in an online interview with staunch bilateral breathing advocates at Swim Smooth, Swimming Fastest author and swim coach Ernest Maglischo cautions that teaching bilateral swimming might be a waste of time for some:

I believe bi-lateral breathing is a good way to teach beginners because they will tend to be more rhythmic. But, I am of the opinion that competitors should breathe to only one side when racing. Oxygen consumption should be greater when more breaths are taken during the race. Having said that, swimmers in races should resort to breathing to both sides on occasion in order to check their direction and the position of their competitors. As for using bi-lateral breathing in the training of experienced swimmers, I have found that it is a waste of time. They will swim more symmetrically in training when breathing to both sides, however, they will revert to the same somewhat lopsided stroke when they breathe regularly in competition.

When I used to follow rec.sport.swimming, some posters claimed that asymmetrical stroking, or what they called loping, had less to do with breathing than with arm dominance, aka motor laterality. One doesn't see noticeable asymmetry in backstroke though, where one breathes facing up, or in breaststroke or butterfly, so I did not find such claims convincing. In 2005, Seifert, Chollet and Allard ran a study (PDF) that asked:

... does an asymmetric arm pattern emerge from internal properties (functional pathology, dominance of one arm) or in response to external constraints (breathing)? And what is the direction of causality: Is the asymmetric pattern determined by unilateral breathing? Or, conversely, does an asymmetry due to arm dominance lead to unilateral breathing?

[But their conclusion to the chicken or egg question was ... chicken and egg:]

This confirmed the relationship between unilateral breathing and coordination asymmetry, and suggests that coordination symmetry relates to both motor laterality and breathing laterality.

My bilateral breathing strategy for the last decade has been to breath to the right and left on alternate lengths. I breathe right going out and left coming back. I'm a 5% faster swimmer breathing to the right, though, and even faster when I breathe bilaterally once every three strokes.

So despite some of the cautions, my experiment for this season has been to incorporate one right, one left (1R/1L) bilateral breathing into my long practice swims and all my sprint sets. To retrain my body, I quit same-side breathing altogether. I started by alternating 50m crawl lengths with 50m easy breathing backstroke lengths. On the first few swims, I was desperate for air before and after the flip turns, and gasped as I surfaced in backstroke.

But a few swims later, I was not feeling so bad after the turn, and stroked hard on the backstroke. By about 600m, bilateral breathing was feeling like the right and proper way to swim. Moving to the outside 25m lanes last Sunday, I swam three lengths of crawl for every one of backstroke. Due to a sprained ankle I was doing open turns, which gave me an extra breath, of course, and I felt no air desperation at all. I knew that flip turns would be more challenging.

One day I swam a full 1500m of crawl and 500m of backstroke. I was able to manage flip turns with tentative pushoffs. I found that extra breathing just before the turn tended to mess up my flip timing, and I had to tuck a lot to make the rotation. For about the first half of the swim I stuck with bilateral breathing--one breath every three strokes--but gave myself extra breaths before and after the turns. I even tried breathing on successive strokes, like Sun Yang, but I don't exhale fast enough to be ready for the next inhale. For a few lengths I tried breathing twice to the right and once to the left (2R/1L), and eventually settled into breathing twice to the right and twice to the left (2R/2L), which seemed to be enough air. Both 2R/1L and 2R/2L average four breaths per ten strokes, but the rhythm differs.

After breathing 2R/2L for several weeks the rhythm became routine enough that I could take time to count strokes. I felt like I was taking a lot of strokes, but my Poolmate swim watch had been confusing me. It counts arm strokes on the watch hand to give an average stroke cycle count per length, which should be fairly consistent between swims. But I saw 14, then 7, then 6 in the 25m lane, and 32, then 15 in 50m lane. I was convinced that the watch was going bonkers until I realized the problem.

When I finished a long swim, I was sometimes pushing the start button too briefly, then taking off my goggles, looking at the results, etc. That meant the timer was paused rather than stopped, so the watch would start another session. That second session would only end when I pressed again to switch back to Clock mode. Since there were no strokes in the second session, the watch gave me an average of both sessions (14 + 0) /2 = 7. Or (31 + 0) /2 = 15.

14 left arm strokes should mean 27 or 28 arm strokes, and 11 breaths, but I actually count 25 strokes, so the watch probably interprets balancing arm movements during the flip turn as a stroke or two. Last season I started at 25 and got down to about 18, so now I'm in the Ministry of Silly Swims until I can lengthen out my strokes again.

For now, the 2R/2L pattern is giving me enough air for longer swims. And when I do sets of shorter crawl swims, the 1R/1L pattern feels very smooth and natural. And I have the rest of the summer to see how it works out.

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Three Articles

Donal — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:19:34 +0000

I found these three posts interesting, and rather than fill up the news section, I decided to put them here:

The Birth, Decline, and Re-Emergence of the Solid South: A Short History

Since the Civil War, the American South has mostly been a one-party region. However, by the turn of the 21st century, its political affiliation had actually swung from the Democrats to the Republicans. Here’s how it happened.

It is not an oversimplification to say that slavery was the single most important issue leading to the Civil War. For not only was slavery the most important on its own merits, but none of the other relevant issues, such as expansion into the western territories or states’ rights, would have mattered much at all if not for their indelible connection to slavery.

Initially, Northerners rallied around the issue of Free Soil: opposition to slavery on economic grounds. Small farmers and new industrial workers did not want to compete with large slave plantations and unpaid slave labor. This was the philosophy that bound together the new Republican Party.

What Money Can’t Buy

Guernica: The book cites some resistance from economists about getting involved with moral questions. Has this always been the case? Is this endemic to the discipline?

Michael Sandel: Well, most economics that is taught in college and universities today projects itself as a value-neutral science. This claim has always been open to question, but I think it’s especially in doubt today.

Over the last three decades economics has enlarged its ambition and subject matter. If you look at the economic textbook of Paul Samuelson, which was the most influential economic textbook in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s, he defined economics by its subject matter—inflation, unemployment, foreign trade, the money supply, what made economies grow. Questions like that. Today if you look at most economic textbooks, economics is not defined by subject matter. It’s presented as a science of social choice that applies not only to material goods—not only to flat-screen televisions—but to every decision we make, whether it’s to get married, or to stay married, whether to have children and how to educate those children, or how to look after our health. Economics has increasingly become the science of human behavior in general, and it’s all the more unlikely to think that it can possibly be value-free—and, in fact, it isn’t. Economics rests on un-argued assumptions that need to be examined.

Do Some Americans Really Want More Poverty?

[Edward] Conard is a former partner of Romney’s at Bain Capital, the private equity firm that made them both staggeringly rich. Conard has spent the last four years writing a book, which will be released shortly. One of the premises is so foul as to make you marvel at humanity’s capacity to perform the mental gymnastics necessary to justify just about anything.

People believe what they want to believe, and apparently Conard believes that rising income inequality among Americans is a good thing for the United States.

... Conard claims the real cause of our current economic calamity wasn’t irresponsible and unethical dealings by financial institutions that engaged in chicanery alike levering their debt by factors of twenty and misleading people about the credibility of junk investments. No, don’t you know, it’s simply because regular people got panicky and tried to pull their money out of the banks. Silly plebeians. If they’d just left it there so the super rich and financial institutions could have kept investing it, we’d all be fine.

Alexander Dale Oen

Donal — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:46:29 +0000

At the pool, you often see people swimming a very relaxed style of breaststroke—head out of the water, breathing freely, legs frog-kicking deep down—but swum properly, modern breaststroke is as physically grueling and technically demanding as butterfly, itself an evolution of breaststroke. One would expect a world breaststroke champion to be in fantastic physical condition. Norway's Alexander Dale Oen was 26, almost 27. In Beijing, he had won the Silver medal in 100m Breast behind Kitajima Kosuke, and was in training for the London Olympics.

Champion Swimmer Found Dead in Arizona

At last summer’s world championships in Shanghai, Dale Oen turned in the most emotionally charged performance of the meet. Competing in the 100 breaststroke final three days after 77 people, mostly children, died in the worst massacre in Norway’s history, he won in 58.71 seconds. It was the fastest time recorded by a swimmer not wearing the now-banned polyurethane suits and the fourth fastest in history.

After his time flashed on the scoreboard, Dale Oen pointed to the Norwegian flag on his cap, rose from the water and flexed his biceps in a show of strength to those back home in Norway.

“We need to stay united,” he said after the race. “Everyone back home now is of course paralyzed with what happened, but it was important for me to symbolize that even though I’m here in China, I’m able to feel the same emotions.”

A Faroe Islands blogger I follow is in shock, as are swim fans in Norway. He translated a tribute by a Norwegian blogger, When the hero of your kids dies, part of which follows:

The thoughts swirl: I’m also struggling with the tears. Alexander Dale Oen is the first sports hero that I’ve had together with my wife and children. And the greatest. My daughter wonders why he who was so good could die. I wonder too. She thinks his family must be very sad. They are. She is afraid that the same will happen to her brother, mom, daddy and everyone she loves. I do too. If this hadn’t happened, could he have won Olympic gold. That is not so important. The thoughts swirl and it is difficult to find good answers. Talking gives little comfort.

Swimming World interviewed Dale Oen shortly before his death, embedded below:

The Hydrogen Dog and the Quadrium Cat

Donal — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:11:17 +0000

The public reputation of nuclear power plummeted after the Fukushima meltdowns, but many in the energy sector still see nuclear fission as the only way to keep the lights on and stave off climate change. No private entities, and vanishingly few governments, though, want to spend billions to build new plants, so at least one manufacturer is offering smaller pre-packaged units. Will, The Stars Align for Small Nuclear Reactors?

The Westinghouse Electric Company has lined up Ameren, a St. Louis-based electric company, as a partner for its small modular reactor project. Getting a strong indication of commercial interest is critical because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission can review only a few of the many proposed reactor designs and gives priority in the licensing process to those with a stronger chance of getting built.

Some utility analysts have argued that small reactors would be good “drop-in replacements” for 1950s and 1960s-era coal plants that are now being retired, given that that their generating capacity would be about the same.

The long term problem with nukes, though, is still handling and disposal of spent rods.

In, The Quantum Fusion Hypothesis, Tom Whipple keeps plugging away at any sniff of an unlimited source of power, aka a free lunch:

There have been so many of these [LENR] reports by reliable and respected scientists that it has become absurd to claim that the phenomenon is fraudulent or that all these scientists are mistaken in their observations. Currently there are at least six different organizations around the world saying they have a commercially useful heat-producing device under development which they will be demonstrating soon. ...

This situation however seems to be changing following a lengthy interview with a fellow out in Berkeley, California by the name of Robert Godes of Brillouin Energy. He has been working in this field for the last ten [!!] years and says that he not only has a reliable heat-producing device, but also understands the physics behind it – which he calls the Quantum Fusion Hypothesis. He says that this theory of just how low-energy nuclear reactions work has allowed the development of a device which produces heat immediately and reliably. Most interestingly, Godes says he has shared his insights with scientists at the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratories and SRI International, one of the leading US laboratories investigating the phenomenon. He says that both have verified that his theory does indeed work and that they can now produce heat from hydrogen every time they try.

Godes' hypothesis is interesting for those with even a smattering of physics in their background. First of all, he holds that the heat which is coming from infusing hydrogen into nickel or palladium is not coming from "cold fusion" in the classic sense of the term. It is not a deuterium fusing with deuterium reaction as takes place in the sun or H-bombs and which requires extremely high energies.

What seems to be happening in this new kind of fusion is that when hydrogen is "loaded" into nickel or palladium and subjected to the proper kind of an electromagnetic pulse, the hydrogen nucleus which is a positively charged proton acquires ~~and~~ [an] electron which turns it into a low energy free neutron. Now a low energy free neutron is something very nice to have for it quickly combines with other protons to form deuterium, tritium and finally quadrium. The quadrium only lasts for an instant before undergoing a process called beta decay turning it into helium. This is where Einstein and E = MC2 comes in. The beta decay of quadrium results in a loss of mass which is turned into heat. If all this pans out as claimed, it could be one of the most important secrets of nature that has ever been discovered, for our energy problems are over.

As I understand it—and I studied more statics than physics—protons can only change into neutrons when both are part of a large nucleus, under either electron capture or inverse beta decay, and the atomic mass remains constant. Decay energy is released, but that appears to be much smaller than the change of mass into energy theorized by Godes. But I suppose we have room in the backyard if one of these things actually works.

Update: I'm not sure whether Quadrium is an accepted term. It directs to the H4 isotope in wikipedia, but does not appear in online dictionaries. Quadium was used to refer to the the H4 isotope that powered the Q-bomb in The Mouse That Roared.