Category: borrowed content

Money, Money, Money

Though the conference I’m attending is, in fact, quite off-the-web, I don’t think that I divulge too much if I say that it’s all about the money. Generally, federal grant funding. Specifically, federal grant funding flowing out of the stimulus bill. Even more specifically, federal grant funding flowing out of the stimulus bill to liberal-arts colleges like the one that employs me.

The news is, by and large, good. Fuzzy, still, but pretty good. The words “astounding” and “stupendous” were thrown around pretty freely as descriptors of the size of the monetary figures. Thankfully, novelist William Gibson has recently provided a little guide to the million/billion/trillion scale:

A million seconds is 11 days
A billion seconds is 32 years.
A trillion seconds is 32,000 years.

This lines up pretty well with how long it’ll take to pay off the debt.

Want

The other day, led by Google to the blog of a Danish athlete who is training for the big Vasaloppet race in Sweden, I came across this photo:

Thoraxtrainer
Thoraxtrainer

I duly dug up the website of the pictured device, the “Thoraxtrainer,” which has been designed by Jonas Thor Olsen, a Danish cross-country skier notable for finishing way down the results sheet in pretty much every major race of the World Cup – but who nonetheless races every damn race. Tough guy, and apparently smart, to develop this poling machine, which looks pretty cool.

So naturally, I want one. At current exchange rates, it costs about $6,000. Not too bad, but maybe I should just finally build a rollerboard for those wet days when I don’t want to rollerski or run.

Kikkan!

This morning started very well, with news from the Czech Republic that Kikkan Randall (Anchorage, Alaska) finished second (by a toe!) in the women’s freestyle sprint at the Nordic World Ski Championships. Kikkan – who is a prolific and adept blogger as well as a hellaciously fast skier – thus earned the first-ever medal by an American woman in cross-country skiing, and the first medal by an American cross-country skier since 1982 (the same year she was born). In winning the silver, Kikkan completes a decisive comeback from a blood clot that nearly killed her last summer.

What’s more, Kikkan’s medal puts the United States near the top of the medal count at the Liberec Worlds – one medal behind Norway, which literally invented modern skiing, and ahead of countries like Sweden, Finland, Germany, and Russia where many, many citizens ski at a very high level and where governments and companies rush to sponsor racers. By comparison, Kikkan’s biggest sponsor (besides the U.S. Ski Team) is her hometown Subway restaurant chain!

But years of hard work by the athletes and coaches are paying off at Liberec, and in a big way. As a longtime fan of U.S. nordic skiing (and someone who’s sent them a couple donations), I couldn’t be happier – not least because the championships calendar still includes a number of events in which Americans could conceivably medal.

Kikkan Randall, Arianna Follis, Pirjo Muranen
Kikkan Randall (USA; silver), Arianna Follis (Italy; gold), Pirjo Muranen (Finland, bronze)

(Photo from Universal Sports, where you can watch videos of all of the Nordic World Ski Championship races – including Kikkan’s silver.)

GM: Generally Meliorated

I’m pleased to report that this afternoon’s automotive drama has ended with a simple repair, a fully-functioning vehicle, and no (monetary) cost to me. The “master body module” – some sort of microprocessor for the “electromechanical systems” (i.e., power doors, windows, steering, but not the radio) – had failed, essentially disabling the entire car. We could turn the car on, but not, you know, turn the wheel. At the Saturn dealership, they popped out the old “MCB,” popped in a new one, rebooted the car (srsly!), reprogrammed the keyless entry fobs, and sent me on my way.

As a friend said later, “We’re all hanging on by a thread, aren’t we? We’re one bad embedded system away from the brink.” I think he’s right. On the drive home, I listened to NPR’s “Marketplace,” which was all about the banking crisis. American finance has the same problem as the car, only there’s no warranty.

The U.S. Nordic Experience

American nordic skiing has a short list of great days, including Bill Koch‘s silver medal in the 30km at the 1976 Olympics, Koch’s World Cup title in 1980, Kris Freeman taking fourth place in the 15km classic-style race and Johnny Spillane winning a nordic combined gold at the 2003 World Championships, and the recent top-three finishes in sprint races by Torin Koos (Otepaa, 2007), Andy Newell (Lahti, 2008, and Changchun, 2006), and Kikkan Randall (Rybinsk, 2007).

Today’s excellent results by Americans at the World Championship in Liberec topped everything. Lindsay Van (Utah) won the first-ever gold medal in women’s ski jumping with the day’s longest jump. Todd Lodwick (Colorado) won a gold after finishing first in both the cross-country and the ski jumping portions of the mass-start nordic combined event. And – best of all, at least given the depth of competition – Kris Freeman finished fourth, just 1.3 seconds from bronze, in the men’s 15km classic-technique cross-country race. Recently diagnosed with a severe case of compartment syndrome, has had to curtail his racing over the last months, but he pulled off a great race today. Starting 21st, eight slots ahead of the best racers, Freeman worked his way into the race, moving up steadily at each checkpoint (his placings: 48, 42, 34, 21, 14, 10, 8, 6, 4, 4) but failing, finally, to find the 1.4 seconds he needed to move into third and the medals. (For a really good analysis of Freeman’s race strategy, see my friend Colin’s post over at our Nordic Commentary Project blog.)

Even so, the accomplishment is superlative, and bodes well for other races Freeman can run this season. It should also give the American team a good boost as the World Championships continue with ten more races between tomorrow and March 1.

Kris Freeman (image via Universal Sports)
Kris Freeman (image via Universal Sports)

(Crossposted to Nordic Commentary Project.)

Tea Party

Wednesday night, I played “school” with the girls. As the teacher, I was able to choose each activity, so I combined snacktime with art class by having the girls sketch our tea party. (I was running a high-class school, you know.) Though Vivi was frustrated that she couldn’t draw our teapot, Julia was amazed and intrigued by the idea of drawing what she saw in front of her. (With few exceptions, all of her considerable drawing to date has been from imagination.) Here’s her take on our tea party. Note the steam from the cup and teapot, and the slanted top of the slice of chocolate cake. Rather than drawing the three of us, she drew just one girl. “She’s about five. Or seven.”
Tea Party

Senior Year of High School

Another repurposed Facebook “meme.”

IN YOUR SENIOR YEAR DID YOU…
1. Did you date someone from your school?
Not really.

2. Did you marry someone from your high school?
No.

3. Did you car pool to school?
I walked to school.

4. What kind of car did you have?
When I needed a car, I borrowed by one from my parents – either a brown Ford Escort station wagon or a Ford Taurus.

5. What kind of car do you have now?
A silver Saturn VUE, but I ride my bike to work.

6. It’s Friday night…where are you?
At home, probably. If the stars were aligned just right, I worked out, then crashed with the laptop.

7. It’s Friday night…where were you then?
Driving around the Houghton-Hancock (MIchigan) metroplex, periodically stopping for burgers or pizza. We would have driven further and longer if we’d known about the power of coffee.

8. What kind of job did you have?
I worked at the local grocery store – bagging groceries, stocking shelves, running a register.

9. What kind of job do you do now?
I’m a grantwriter at a small liberal arts college.

10. Were you a party animal?
The opposite.

11. Were you considered a flirt?
Girls frightened me.

12. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir?
None of them.

13. Were you a nerd?
I suppose so, but I didn’t like math or science and we didn’t have a decent computer lab, so it was pretty much quiz bowl. Upper Peninsula champions, 1991!

14. Did you get suspended or expelled?
No.

15. Can you sing the fight song?
I don’t even know if my high school had a fight song.

16. Who was/were your favorite teacher(s)?
My favorite was my current events teacher, who took a lot of time to help me become a better writer. I also like my biology and French teachers a lot. The most important “teacher” I had, though, was the coach of my cross-country and track teams, who probably did more to reshape my life than any adult except my parents and, later, my wife.

17. Where did you sit during lunch?
In a chair, I suppose. I don’t really remember. We did go to McDonalds a lot for lunch, if someone had a car.

18. What was your school’s full name?
Hancock Central High School.

19. When did you graduate?
1991

20. What was your school mascot?
A bulldog.

21. If you could go back and do it again, would you?
Not unless I was being paid a ridiculously large sum of American dollars. Eight figures at least.

22. Did you have fun at prom?
I didn’t go to prom.

23. Do you still talk to the person you went to prom with?
…

24. Are you planning on going to your next reunion?
Probably not. My hometown is far away, literally and figuratively.

25. Do you still talk to people from school?
A few, though not enough.

26. School Colors?
red and yellow

27. What celebrities came from your high school?
None, as far as I know. The photographer Edward Steichen was from my hometown, but never attended my high school.

28. Do you have any regrets from High School?
Sure. I wish, paradoxically, that I’d been more serious (taking some hard science and math, just to see if I could have succeeded) and that I’d been much less serious (getting less wrapped up in the drama). Then again, there’s a reason it’s called “growing up.”

Happy Birthday!

Today is Shannon’s 3xth birthday. Happy birthday, babe! I hope her day was as good as she looked.

True to the personality that’s developed over the previous three-plus decades, Shannon staged her own brunch party, making a frittata, scones, and muffins and doing all the considerable setup. The only thing I had to do was run to the store for a few miscellaneous items, including the all-important chocolate cake, which the girls painstakingly chose from the fridge at Cub.

My “presents” to the birthday girl were a dress she already bought at Target and taking care of the girls while she went out with friends to a movie yesterday. I don’t wear that “Big $pender” tshirt around for nothing.

Come to think of it, I also supervised the girls’ fabrication of birthday cards, a task which they dispatched with great excitement and aplomb yesterday evening. This morning, after Shannon opened the cards from our brunch guests, I was struck by the girls’ flawless sense of style: clearly, pink and brown are the fashionable card colors this season.
Shannon's Birthday Cards

Here’s the outside of the card Julia made:
Shannon's Birthday Card from Julia (exterior)

and here’s the inside, including a drawing of a birthday party (orange table, blue frosted cake, balloons) and some taped-down confetti:
Shannon's Birthday Card from Julia (interior)

Here’s how Vivi decorated her card. Click here for explanatory notes.
Shannon's Birthday Card from Genevieve

I dunno about you, but I’ll say my birthday was a success if it’s half a heartfelt as this one.

Rolling Up the Sleeves

Remember the silly kerfuffle a few days ago when Andy Card, W’s chief of staff, insinuated, on the basis of the already-famous photo of a jacketless Obama working at the Oval Office desk, that our president probably didn’t have the right amount of respect for the presidency?

It was stupid for Card to say in the first place, but it’s all the more stupid now, when one can see – thanks to some research by our friends at the Huffington Post – several other jacketless presidents at the same damn desk, including

St. Ronald

Jacketless Reagan
Jacketless Reagan

And the Worst President Ever, right after his first inauguration, chilling with Harriet Miers.

Bush: No Jacket Required
Bush: No Jacket Required

(Link to the source via the great Apsies microblog.)

City of Lakes Loppet Race Report, or, That Really Hurt

Today’s City of Lakes Loppet took place in warm sunshine under robin’s-egg blue skies. The springlike weather was pretty much the best part of the event, because my race was pretty much a disaster. It was fun in a “the worst day skiing is better than the best day lying around” sort of way, but otherwise, it was a sufferfest. I didn’t so just spelunk in the “pain cave” that racers talk about; I was there so long I practically evolved into one of those eyeless transparent cavern-dwelling fish they show in National Geographic.

And I skied about as fast as one of those fish would. I simply couldn’t go, and for no other reason than the most straightforward one: I didn’t train enough or correctly. (I also missed my wax, but the Swedish national ski team’s wax servicemen couldn’t have saved me today, and I dressed too warmly, but I could have taken off a layer before the race started.)

In more detail: the first half of the City of Lakes Loppet course (which you can see in its entirety here) is very hilly, a relentless rollercoaster of lots of short, sharp “walls” covered (this year) by the deep granular snow that skiers call “sugar” but which is not sweet to ski through. After going up and down the 1,000 hills (plus or minus) between the start and the five kilometer mark, my legs were already screaming, and they never recovered.

On the flats, much later in the course, I was able to pole quite well – indicating that my doublepoling sessions to build upper-body and core strength weren’t for naught – but my legs would not cooperate, and instead alternated between achingly stiff and painfully wobbly. Not a good combination, unless you’re looking to watch people pass you in droves, and neither latch on nor pass anyone back.

The final result wasn’t pretty: a finishing time of 2:10:49, “good” for 450th of 840 racers (putting me in the bottom half), 44th of 83 in my age division (ditto), and 397th of 678 men (ditto ditto).

So I’m chalking this race up to “an important lesson, painfully learned.” Next year, I’ll hit this City of Lakes – and who knows: maybe more than one race in a season! – after many, many more uphill workouts, and a least a dozen sessions of at least 25 or 30km. If I do, CoLL 2010 will be a bigger personal success than 2009 was.

Minutiae of some slight interest:

  • According to my heart-rate monitor, I completed my 130 minutes of skiing at an average heart rate of 161 beats per minute and hit a high of 174 (respectively, 88% and 96% of my maximum heart rate). In the first hour of racing, I only briefly saw my HR under 165. Also according to my HRM, I burned 1900 calories between the start to the finish – that’s roughly equivalent to one large thin-crust pepperoni pizza from Dominos. Snacktime!
  • Last year’s men’s winner, Andrey Golovko, finished in 1:13:15. This year’s winner, Bjorn Batdorf, finished in 1:22:20, 9 minutes or about 12% slower than Golovko over a slightly shorter course. My time this year was about 20% slower than last year’s time (1:48:16). Apparently the course was slower for everyone, my terrible fitness aside.
  • In the first 5km, I saw at least a dozen good crashes (none involving me), including at least two by the same guy, who kept trying to snowplow from a very deep tuck (the Italian-style sitdown, for those who know what I’m talking about).
  • This race is ridiculously well run: the course is superbly groomed and marked, the website and other printed materials are highly useful, and, most importantly, the zillion volunteers are omnipresent and wonderfully energetic.
  • I did get into the photo collection published online by Skinnyski.com, the Midwestern ski-racing website, though. In this shot of the third wave on the start line (i.e., before the suffering started), I’m on the left side, in bib 3100. Nice shades, huh?
Wave Three on the Starting Line
Wave Three on the Starting Line

Inaugurated Out

I think I’m a little bit worn out, after yesterday’s frenzy of texting, Facebook posting, and blogging – just on the production end of things. Today was all about consumption, and here are three things worth your time.

I.
The new president, working in the Oval Office (from a slideshow by the Chicago Tribune):

Obamas Oval Office
Obama's Oval Office

II.
Elizabeth Alexander’s brilliant inauguration poem, “Praise Song for the Day.” The last lines get me:

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

III.
My friend Rob Hardy’s equally brilliant response poem, “Praise Song for January 21, 2009.” Again, the last lines:

Today is a new day,
like any other.
Today we must stop
congratulating ourselves.
Today we must stop saying
that history’s been made.
We must start making it.

Things are better today than they were on Monday night, or even on Tuesday night. On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp…