Here is my recipe for Coca-Cola Cookies. They are kind of like molasses cookies, but without the spices and replacing the molasses with syrupized Coca-Cola. It might be interesting to try this reciple with root beer, ginger ale, or even Pepsi, but I tried it with Coke because A. Coke is a classic American beverage, and B. Coke has an herbal pungency that other drinks don't have.

If you're kinky (and alcoholic) you might even try this with a malty beer and more sugar.

I wrote last post that this year's batch of ballot propositions in California was a lot stupider than the last batch, which I actually voted 50% Yes.

This year, I voted Yes on 4/12. Even then, one of the Yes votes was a veto. (Usually, a Yes vote changes the law, whereas a No vote keeps the law the same, which is why in general a smart batch of propositions gets a lot of Yeses. However, one of the Propositions this year was a veto, so Yes kept the law as-is. Which means this year I voted to change the law 3/12 times.)

Because a Yes vote usually changes the law, and because it can't be undone by legislative action, I have quite high criteria for a Yes. If I feel ambivalent about it I vote No, and there were a couple propositions this year where I was.

Here's how I voted and why.

• Prop 30: No. This was one of the ones I was ambivalent about: a temporary increase in taxes to fund education. Generally speaking, I have higher criteria for taxes to support education, since it's obvious the politicians are just using education to convince people to agree to more taxes. Because who's going to vote to withhold money from the children? I will, if you're using the kids to manipulate people. Still, with all that considered, I was merely ambivalent about it. (It passed.)

  
  

• Prop 31: No. Set a bunch of constraints on the legislature, set up all kinds of oversight committees, and have state budgets be set over for two years. This was easily the stupidest ballot proposition I've ever seen. A few judiciously placed oversight committees can be a good thing, sometimes, but the number of committees this proposition would have created was beyond excessive, and everything else in the proposition was too stupid to even mention. (It failed.)

  
  

• Prop 32: No. Prohibit unions and corporations from using payroll deductions to fund political campaigns. The claim that this applied equally to unions and corporations was a flat-out lie: unions derive nearly their whole income from payroll deductions, whereas corporations derive none of theirs that way. The lying nature of this proposition's proponents was enough for me to vote No on this. You know, I do think it's unfair to force workers (on pain of losing their jobs) to fund political campaigns they might not agree with, but this proposition went way too far. A well-written proposition to allow workers to earmark a certain portion of their union dues to be isolated from political contributions would be something worth supporting. This proposition was not. (It failed.)

  
  

• Prop 33: No. Allow auto insurance companies factor your prior history of insurance coverage into your current rate. Given how ridiculously specific and unappealing to the general public this proposition was, I am sure it was the work of a small group of people who stood to gain if it passed. That's enough for a No vote from me. It's kind of stupid in any case and puts needless burdens on many drivers though in some respects it does make sense to use as a criterions. (It failed.)

  
  

• Prop 34: Yes. Abolish death penalty in California. Given that criminals will rarely, if ever, make it to the point of execution in this state, as a practical matter it's best to just get rid of it and save everyone a lot of trouble. I generally disapprove of the death penalty in all but the most heinous cases, but those cases so exist. Some asshole shot up a salon recently down in Orange County and was, accordingly to witnesses, sickeningly cruel about it. I'd have no problem if the state wanted to blow that guy's head off with a high caliber rifle. Unfortunately, even that guy has people who will milk the system trying to save his life. And for everyone else eligible for the death penalty, there are doubts and unfair applications and such. So for practical reasons it's better to just let it go. (It failed.)

  
  

• Prop 35: Yes. Increase the penalties for human trafficking. This one was something I really couldn't vote against; my only nagging doubt is why we needed a ballot proposition to do this. The legislature could have done this if the penalties weren't strong enough. (It passed.)

  
  

• Prop 36: Yes. Don't apply the three-strikes law if the third strike is sufficiently non-violent. I really think the sufficiently non-violent crime shouldn't count for strikes 1 and 2 either. Either a crime is bad enough to count toward a lifetime imprisonment, or it isn't, and many of the three-strikes crimes aren't. This prop is at least moving in the right directon. Three strikes is a decent way to escalate the penalty for the worst repeat offenders, but I think a more comprehensive strategy that allows judges' discretion for first time offenses, then gradually removes it and increases penalties as offenses mount up, would be good. But this'll do for now. (It passed.)

  
  

• Prop 37: No. Require labeling of genetically modified food. Here in California, quite a large percentage of products have a notice saying that known carcinogens were used in the manufacturing of these products. The notices are so common that everyone tunes them out: apparently carcinogens are used to manufacture a lot of things, have been forever, and somehow people aren't dying of cancer left and right. Whether we like it or not, the exact same thing would have happened had this proposition passed. Just about every food product would come to contain a GM label, because soon it'll be difficult to find reasonably priced food stock that isn't GM. In any case, most GM is not bad, per se. There are problems: some particular modifications are dubious, and some Big Ag companies are tenaciously absusive when it comes to IP (and they need to be stopped). But this proposition is going to be utterly ineffective. (It failed, surprisingly.)

  
  

• Prop 38: No. Another tax to fund education. For this one, the tax is more stupid, and it's not temporary, so no ambivalence here, this was just a bad idea. (It failed.)

  
  

• Prop 39: No. Tax changes for business operating in multiple states. The law had been that businesses could choose the lesser of two tax systems, and this prop would eliminate the choice, resulting in most companies paying more. I'm ambivalent. It's not like this situation is unheard of. Even we indivuduals have a choice like this in our Federal income tax: we can take a standard deduction or itemized deductions. (It passed.)

  
  

• Prop 40: Yes. A No vote meant that the California Supreme Court would redraw the legislative districts. Of all the headaches we don't need now.... The funny thing is, the split was about 75-25 in favor, and probably would have been higher if people weren't confused about it being a veto vote. Hell, I had to reread the instructions three times to be sure I had it right. (It passed.)

  
  

I'll also mention one of the city initiatives. The Santa Monica and Malibu Unified School District wants to raise $320 million by selling bonds. That a third of a billion dollars, one school district. I voted no.

Politicians, no matter who they are or what party they belong to, are assholes.

This is a simple truth and there are almost no exceptions. That one candidate you like? Asshole, I guarantee it. If you "like" any politicians, or if you get "happy" when a candidate you like wins, you have the wrong idea. The best politician in the world doesn't warrant a reaction more positive than, "Ok, we've averted the slightly greater evil, meh."

The problem with these assholes is, some of them get very popular and start winning elections by large margins, and they start getting these ridiculous (and dangerous) ideas that they have a "mandate" "from the voters" to do all kinds of corrupt and retarded bullshit as they please. The only way to control these assholes is to make them continuously aware that their job is in danger. The closer the vote is to 51-49 [1], the more these assholes are going to behave themselves.

That is why I am voting for Romney and whatever Republican is running against Feinstein. Obama and Feinstein have absolutely no chance of losing California, and I want their margins to be as close as possible to 1%. I don't even know who the Republican candidate for Senate in California is, all I know is Feinstein is going to win and I want to use my vote to tell her to behave.

I'll be back in a few days to report my votes on the California ballot initiatives. I'm going to opine that the initiatives from two years ago were unusualy lacking in stupidity; I actually voted Yes on half. This year I'd be surprised to vote Yes on two.

Footnotes:

In New Jersey, a common local idiom for asking someone where they are in the state is, "What exit?", meaning what exit of the New Jersey Turnpike would one have to use to get to where you are. Over time it's even come to be used more generally to mean simply, "Where?", regardless of one's position relative to the Turnpike.

There is actually a bit of underlying significance to this question beyond being a quirky idiom. To some extent, what exit you live on in New Jersey also determines what kind of lifestyle you have, since the character of the state of New Jersey changes as you travel along the Turnpike. (Obviously it's not a perfect system, but in general, low exit numbers refer to the more rural southern areas, middle exit numbers to the suburban central areas, and high exit numbers to the industrial urban areas near New York City.)

I know of no other places that have local idiom like that, but it seems like there are many places where lifestyle correlates to nearby roads. Many locations could have a question like that.

In Pittsburgh, my home city, the question would be, "What Belt?"

The Pittsburgh area, being on the western edge of the Appalachian Range, is a mess of hills and streams, which makes it more or less impossible to have any geographic sense over a large area. Various boroughs (which is the Pennsylvanian word for town) and small cities have their own street grids oriented parallel to the nearby stream, but as soon as you leave the borough the streets begin to twist and turn, following the landscape, so that nearby boroughs will have completely separate grids and no common sense of direction. For this reason the Pittsburgh area is notoriously difficult to navigate.

To help people navigating the suburbs, Allegheny County created the Belt System. These are a system of road routes that circle (partially or fully) the city's downtown. The Blue Belt is innermost Belt, it circles the city near the city limits. As you go away from the city, you hit other belts, in the order the colors appear in the rainbow. So the Green Belt is further out, followed but Yellow, Orange, and, in the northern suburbs, Red.

The Belts are the key to navigating Pittsburgh's suburban roads: if you are on a belt, you know you're generally moving around Downtown Pittsburgh, not toward or away from it. If you are lost and happen upon a Belt, you know roughtly how far from the city you are. If you are on a Belt, and turn off it, you'll know whether you're now moving toward or away from Downtown. The belts are quite well marked, so they are hard to miss. It's a great system.

But, because the Belts all circle at a relatively fixed distance from the city, the also tend to have relatively fixed characters (although, as with the New Jersey Turnpike, it isn't perfect). The Blue Belt circles through a lot of the blighted neighborhoods, for instance. The Green and Yellow Belts hit a lot of suburban areas and boroughs, while the Orange and Red belts hit some of the rural exurban areas and outlying boroughs. There's a Purple Belt, too (which is separate from the Belt system), which is is entirely Downtown, and there probably ought to be an Indigo Belt for some of the city's trendy neighborhoods like Squirrel Hill, Oakland, and Mount Washington.

Point is, what Belt a Pittsburgher lives on says a lot about their home and lifestyle.

So, the obvious question is, what belt did I live by?

I was born on the Green Belt, but earlier than I could remember, my family moved to the Yellow Belt and stayed there till I graduated from college, and the whole family moved away from the Pittsburgh area.

The Yellow Belt didn't really suit me, though. If I were living in Pittburgh today, my belt would probably be the fictional Indigo Belt I mentioned above, or even the downtown Purple Belt.

Anyone visiting from the Burgh who stumbles across this page for some reason, I have a question for you which you may answer in the comments below: What Belt?

Recently I took a rare trip back east to my native city of Pittsburgh, and while there I took the opportunity to take a road trip and visit the last two states I haven't been to: Rhode Island and Delaware. I have now been to every state in the Continental U.S.

Here's a map showing how often I've been to each state:

Idaho is the only state that I feel shaky grounds to my claim. I never actually alighted in Idaho. My time spent inside the state was an uninterrupted train ride through the panhandle, at night no less, so I couldn't see scenery. For obituary purposes I think this suffices; if I get hit by a bus tormorrow, it can say I visited the Continental 48. For bragging rights, however, I want to shore up my claim, so at some point I plan to visit Idaho (maybe next summer).

It's not my life's ambition, but I would like to get to Alaska and Hawaii as well to complete the 50.

For all the traveling I've done inside the US, I haven't been outside the country much at all. I was a few times to the Canadian province of Ontario (Niagara falls area, mostly to watch Shaw plays and watch my parents drink wine), and once to the Mexican state of Sonora (day trip to Nogales).

Well, the greatest nightmare the Internet has ever seen is finally over: my blog is back up.

Let that be a lesson to me never to trust programs that say they will still work when something is suddenly upgraded.

I generally don't buy books that aren't available in an ebook format; therefore, I didn't read Harry Potter (in English [1]) until a couple months ago, when it was finally released as an ebook. I immediately purchesed the whole series and it has been my B read [2] up until I finished in about a week ago. Here are my thoughts.

This does contain spoilers.

One thing most people agree about JK Rowling is that character is her best skill, and I agree wholeheartedly. Which is why I'm going to begin by discussing what I didn't like about her characters.

For the most part, the characters are tenaciously consistent in their behavior to the point that it comes off as almost juvenile, until something happens that reveals their underlying motives. Snape is shamelessly biased against Harry and for the Slytherins, doesn't make attempts to rationalize his bias, and at no point is seen going against this for appearance's sake. The Dursleys outright hate Harry, to the point of abuse, and don't even try to pretend otherwise. Draco is completely mean-spirited and doesn't show a hint of a greater aim (good or evil) beyond putting others down.

The insidious thing about this is the shameless consistency is completely superficial. Dig beneath a character's facade and a being with complex motivations appears. The problem with that is, you never know who is secretly evil or good: nothing about their behavior foreshadows it. So for instance, nothing Draco does until the very end of the fifth book suggests that he is anything more than a petty ostracizer, so it seems that Draco's character inexplicably changes in the final two books. And yet it's not so: then more complex Draco that emerges in the final two books is completely congruent with the Draco of the first five books. Petty ostracism is exactly what we'd expect an insecure, glory-seeker would do until pressed by circumstance to move beyond that. So, although the characters are drawn up well, every character development is a random surprise rather than something that was set up previously, and I didn't like that.

Other than that quibble, the character was very good, and I can't remember a book where I had more unexpected in-character moments. (For example, Luna's question, "Is that why you dyed your eyebrow, for the party? Should I do mine too?", came out of nowhere but was so totally Luna.)

I believe that Harry Potter will be studied as a classic for how it does character alone (and especially the way dialogue supports the character).

Now for other aspects of the books.

The style of Harry Potter was natural-sounding and easy to parse, rather pleasantly concise I would say, if not spectacular. You can tell she tried to reflect the pace of the action in the prose (for instance, using shorter sentences and omitting details in the Quidditch scenes to reflect the quickness of the game); this is successful but other writers have done it much better.

The style did have an odd quirk. I once read a review that pointed out that Rowling tends to avoid using the word "said" to mark quotations, replacing it with other words like "cried", "exclaimed", "quipped", etc., and rather formulaicly, as if it were an eighth grade writing assignment. I didn't notice it before I read that review, so the overuse of words other than "said" doesn't sound overly stilted, at least. However, now that it's been pointed out to me, I do notice it quite a bit, and it does seem a little silly in many places.

The story itself it had strong and weak points, but it passed two crucial tests for me. One, I was hooked. Whenever I got near the end of a book, I found I couldn't stop reading because I had to see how it turned out [3]. Two, I regularly go back to reread sections.

The main weakness of the stories is that many plot turns are hard to swallow, even allowing for a reasonable suspension of disbelief. The fourth book, Goblet of Fire, was the one I found particularly dubious; I simply found it too contrived, and didn't find anyone's reaction to the odd circumstances believable. This, nevertheless, didn't stop me from reading through to the end once I got to the late chapters, so I suppose it wasn't a deal-breaking weakness [4].

The system of magic was surprisingly consistent, given how many seemingly random effects pop up. I wasn't expecting that.

My favorite character is Phineas Nigellus Black. My favorite living character was probably Luna Lovegood. There really weren't any significant characters I didn't like in the whole series; I would say the least interesting character was Cho Chang (and she gets a pass because she was understandably upset about her boyfriend dying).

One fascinating thing is the similarity of Harry Potter's home life with Jane Eyre's. In Jane Eyre, Jane was (like Harry) orphaned at a young age and adopted by her aunt. Like Harry, Jane had a fat, spoiled, abusive cousin. And like Harry, the reason Jane's relatives detested her so was because of her refusal to conform to their way of thinking. Jane was intelligent and creative (more of a Ravenclaw) while Harry was noble and open-minded; this was a stark constrast to their vehemently banal adoptive parents.

Speaking of Ravenclaw, that is definitely the house I'd belong to myself. However, on a lark I went to JK Rowling's Pottermore site and underwent the Sorting ceremony there; the site sorted me into Slytherin.

One of the great cynicisms in my life is the educational system, especially at the lower grades. One reason for the cynicism is my experiences when disagreeing with teachers. The educational system is supposed to be about learning the truth, but a lot of teachers can't handle being corrected by a student.

Then again maybe it's not the educational system but rather human nature that's the problem. Not a single time, not once, did a fellow student ever take my side whenever I publicly disagreed with a teacher. Maybe some of them privately agreed with me. I expect most didn't care one way or the other, and just wanted me to shut up so we could get on with it (which is understandable). But a few students were openly hostile to the fact that I would dare even question the teacher.

If, as a teacher, you are faced with a crowd who doesn't care if you're teaching the truth, and a few who are hostile to the truth, why bother even teaching the truth? You might as well go for forsake the truth for to keep things orderly, and it's not the vast majority of students are going to care.

But I can't help feeling that if the system encouraged students to speak up and have dialogue with teacher, rather than unilaterally accept whatever the teacher says, students would be more open and everyone would learn a lot more.

Anyway, here's a list of disagreements I can think of off hand.

• In Kindergarten, the whole staff at my school insisted that my name was spelled "Karl", with a K. I protested that it was spelled with a C, and every time I protested they rebuked me for it. This went on for weeks, as far as I can remember, until one day my Mom came in for some reason and I got her to confirm that my name was spelled with a C. My memory is vague, but I don't remember being all that satisfied with their apology. They did correct the name tag on my desk though.

  Now, I'm not saying that you have to believe every five-year old kid who gets an idea to try to trick a teacher. But if the kid keeps insisting on it for weeks, don't you think it at least deserves a phone call to the parents? I guess not if you're a teacher who believes that students should obey anything they say--even if told to spell their own name wrong.

• In third grade, I was taught that Mercury is the hottest planet. It's not, though; Venus is [1]. I took a moment to show our teacher a citation I had on hand (a little astronomy book I bought at a book fair) that Venus was actually the hottest planet; she looked at it and flatly told me that I was to just ignore that and learn the untruth she was teaching.

  I didn't, of course. Even at age eight I had a conception that the truth was something worth fighting and maybe suffering for, and I defiantly wrote down the correct answer, Venus, on the test. Of course, the had the nerve to mark me down.

• Also in third grade, I was taught that snakes aren't vertebrates (and, moreover, that it isn't necessarily true that fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals were vertebrates--cladists in the room feel free to cringe).

  Apparently, snakes don't have a backbone, so they can't be vertebrates. It was obvious to me that snakes had something that was like a backbone, whether you want to call it a "backbone" or not, and so they were vertebrates. But my dimwit teacher thought animal classifications really should hinge on accidents of terminology.

• This is a tricky one. In fifth grade I was taught that that to estimate a sum you round each term to the highest digit and add, even if one number had five digits and the other had three. This is not wrong, per se, but I did spend quite a bit of time arguing that it was silly to do that, since the amount you round the larger number could be much greater than the entire smaller number. (For instance, to estimate 22946+317, I was taught to add 20000+300=20300. What is the point of adding the 300 in, though, when you're already off by 2946?)

  My argument hit a brick wall. My teacher simply told me repeatedly that that what I was proposing wouldn't be correct rounding, not even conceiving that my objection wasn't about how to round numbers.

• In seventh grade, the One I Do Not Name viciously chastised me when I was absolutely correct, just for using different terminology than it used.

  "How do you solve this equation for x, Carl?" "First subtract five from both sides." "NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! You add negative five to both sides."

  "How do you convert kilometers to miles, Carl?" "Multiply by 5/8." "NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! You multiply by 0.6." [2]

  "What is the chemical represented by SiO₂, Carl?" "Silicon dioxide." "NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! It's silicon oxide." [3]

  And my favorite: on a "fun" little quiz we had to fill in the names of countries with the consonants removed. One pattern looked like this: ⬜A⬜A⬜. I wrote down QATAR. (The intended answer was Japan.) "NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! There is no country called Qatar." This time I took issue, and the One I Do Not Name relented and gave me the point, because you have to be really, really shameless to argue with a current world map.

  And people wonder why I don't utter this teacher's name.

• In 11th grade I was taught that cardiac muscle was skeletal, skeletal muscle was smooth, and smooth muscle was cardiac. By this time I was jaded, so when I showed the teacher the correctly-labeled diagram from the textbook, I acted so utterly shocked ("Oh, how could you possibly be wrong?") that the people in my lab group told me to quit acting immature. And they were right; it was immature and uncalled for.

  But still, right after that little epiphany, the teacher went back up to the front of the class and told everyone the wrong answer again. Considering my behavior, I forgive it, but it broke my heart a bit because I kind of liked this teacher.

• In 12th grade I was kind of dozing off in class when I noticed the teacher was telling everyone to take the square root of each term in an equation to solve it. This was dead wrong.

  The equation was of the form a²+b²=c². Our physics teacher told us to take the square root of each side, resulting in a+b=c, then we would be able to solve it for for the variable we were seeking. The problem is, a+b isn't the square root of the left side. Remember from algebra, (a+b)²=a²+2ab+b², not a²+b².

  A long argument ensued. Meanwhile the kid sitting in front of me just kept laughing at me like it was a big joke.

  Interestingly, the teacher actually conceded that I was right a few days later, privately. I guess that's a start.

This year a couple of interesting things happened while filing my taxes.

1. My federal withholding was exactly the same as the amount of tax I owed. Therefore once again I owed nothing, barely.
2. In 14 or so years of paying taxes, this is the first time I ever had last year's tax return handy, and didn't have to back calculate or guess last year's adjusted gross income so I could file electronically.

Just thought I'd share.

Ok, so back in May I joined the Y and began to work out (for the first time in awhile). It's also the first time I took working out really seriously, for real.

My plan was to try to build upper-body strength first, then, when I reached a goal or two, to switch gears and focus on cardio health and stamina. Because I was really serious for real this time, I actually studied what to do, made a plan, and set realistic goals. One thing I discovered, that pretty much everyone agrees on, is that to build muscle, you have to gain weight. Therefore, on days that I worked out, I would splurge at the only buffet in the Westside, or eat 40 chicken wings during happy hour at Hooters.

This worked quite well. I reached my first strength goal (to bench press 200 pounds), added three inches to my arms, and overall am much stronger, in about six months, while not being all that consistent. The only problem is, I put on 30 or so pounds in the process.

So now it's time to lose it. I'm shifting the workouts to more aerobic exercises, of course, but it's also time to diet. I've never been on an official diet before, although I have implemented temporary eating rules here and there. But this time I am counting calories, with the help of a nice cell-phone app.

I have utterly no hope that I'll be able to stick to counting calories for very long. However, if I stick to counting calories for at least a few weeks or months, I'll get a good feel for how many calories foods really have (which I don't have now), and will make wiser decisions from then on.

Here are the rules I have in place for at least a couple months:

1. Limit to 2000 calories per day; absolutely no carryover. (If I find out 2000 is around what I eat normally, which I highly doubt, I'll knock it down a few hundred.)
2. No more ordering additional side dishes when eating out. (This one might depend on me managing to eat breakfast or lunch.)
3. No sweets. Minor exceptions:
   • up to two teaspoons honey or fruit syrup topping for yogurt
   • bran muffins
   • medium-sweetness fruits

Finally, I get a cheat card for Christmas day.

Update: December 26, 2011

Well, it's the day after Christmas and I am still counting calories faithfully. Am getting a feel for how expensive calorie-wise foods are. Pickles are nearly free, who knew? I had a glorious Christmas Day where I ate a couple small chocolate bars and some cookies, and 3500 total calories. Now back to 2000 a day max for a couple months.

Rule #2, no sides, didn't last long. I found out that I had a lot of trouble eating enough calories if I didn't order an additional side, especially when I eat late in the day.

I guess I should mention that I'm noticeably thinner in the waist. I haven't (and won't) weigh myself, though.