I’ve been pondering a new workout regimen (i.e., one at all), and I thought I’d just start up with the usual – running early in the morning. The problem with that is waking up and dragging myself out of bed early enough to give me time to run, shower, and get to work. It hasn’t gone well this week. So instead, I’m considering biking to work every day, since home is only about 3.5-4 miles from the office. But I wanted to be sure I was getting the same amount of exercise, so I did some Googling.
Dr. Edward Coyle of the University of Texas determined average values of oxygen consumption by cyclists to develop a table to estimate the approximate caloric equivalence between running and cycling.
He found that if you ride 20 miles at 15 mph, you burn 620 calories 20 miles X 31 calories per mile = 620 calories. Take the 620 calories and divide them by 110 calories per mile for running and you get 5.63 miles to burn the same number of calories. So riding a bicycle 20 miles at 15 miles per hour is equal to running 5.6 miles at any speed.
Dr. Coyle made the calculations easy by providing conversion factors for different riding speeds: 10MPH=4.2, 15MPH=3.5, 20MPH=2.9, 25MPH=2.3, and 30MPH=1.9. Divide the number of miles ridden by the conversion factor for your riding speed to tell you the equivalent miles of running at any speed.
I’ve made the trek before, and it usually takes me a little more than 15 minutes, so I’m going to assume an average riding speed of 15mph. If my math is correct, I’ll probably do the equivalent of about 2 miles of running per day if I consider my round trip. That’s probably more than I’d get if I forced myself to try to run every day, it saves gas, it’s zero-emissions, plus it’s easier on the joints and more time-efficient for me. I’m just going to have to be a little sweaty at work, I guess.
For some reason, whenever the economy has come up in the last couple of years, my typical response has been to enthusiastically shout “stagflation!” Like economist Jeffrey Sachs, I’ve been seeing a few similarities:
The similarities with the first half of the 1970s are eerie. Then as now, the world economy was growing rapidly, around 5% per year, in the lead-up to surging commodities prices. Then as now, the United States was engaged in a costly, unpopular, and unsuccessful war (Vietnam), financed by large budget deficits and foreign borrowing. The Middle East, as now, was racked by turmoil and war, notably the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The dollar was in free fall, pushed off its strong-currency pedestal by overly expansionary U.S. monetary policy. And then as now, the surge in commodity prices was dramatic. Oil markets turned extremely tight in the early 1970s, not mainly because of the Arab oil boycott following the 1973 war, but because mounting global demand hit a limited supply. Oil prices quadrupled. Food prices also soared, fueled by strong world demand, surging fertilizer prices, and massive climate shocks, especially a powerful El Niño in 1972.
He also draws another connection:
Then as now, Dick Cheney was close to the helm. Whats more, the erroneous lessons he took away from the 1970s contribute to the problems that haunt us today. Cheney was Gerald Fords chief of staff in 1976, when soaring oil prices helped doom Fords reelection campaign. Cheney became obsessed with the fight to control the flow of Middle Eastern oil. That obsession, which by many accounts contributed to Cheneys urge to launch the Iraq war, has made the United States much more vulnerable in terms of energy, not only by tying the United States down in a disastrous military effort but also by diverting attention from a more coherent energy strategy.
It’s an interesting piece, and he does offer a suggestion or two for how we can avoid the mistakes of our last stagflation recovery. If you’re going to be influencing monetary policy for a large governing body, I highly recommend you read it. If you’re Ben Bernanke, hopefully you’re taking all of this in.
With the probes inserted into the monkeys motor cortices, computer software was used to interpret the brains electrical impulses and translate them into movement through the robotic arm.
This arm was jointed like a human arm and possessed a “gripper” that mimics a hand.
After some training, two monkeys – who had had their own arms restrained – were able to use the prosthetic limbs to feed themselves with marshmallows and chunks of fruit.
For some reason, the BBC is reporting on a 3-year-old story, but it’s still cool and there’s a video, so I’ll post it anyway.
This has been blogged ubiquitously today, so much so that the original site exceeded bandwidth. It should be back up soon, but until then there are still pictures around, and more background on the story here. Mental Floss says it best:
Yesterday I came across a slightly mysterious website — a collection of Polaroids, one per day, from March 31, 1979 through October 25, 1997. There’s no author listed, no contact info, and no other indication as to where these came from. So, naturally, I started looking through the photos. I was stunned by what I found.
In 1979 the photos start casually, with pictures of friends, picnics, dinners, and so on.
Sadly, the story ends abruptly. But the Polaroids live on, giving their owner’s life a warm tint as only Polaroids can – a Time-Zero flipbook of a man’s daily life from 1979-1997. It’s such a powerful piece of work to me: the thousands of neatly categorized images, the inherent nostalgia of the Polaroid color palette, the mundane alongside the intimate portraits of happiness and illness, and those who lived on and honored their friend with this exhibit – the story of a life recounted by an SX-70.
May 20, 2008 at 10:01 am · Filed under Music, People
I’m going to steal Ben’s job for a minute. I can’t resist a good web-based nostalgia site, especially one that elevates analog. CASSETTE FROM MY EX takes old mixtapes, streams them, and posts the interesting stories from interesting people to go along with them:
They were into you, so they made you a tape. Today you dont have a cassette player, but you still cant toss that mix. We share the stories and the soundtrack to your earliest loves.
There are some really great stories and some interesting mixes to be heard. I love the sound of a needle scratching vinyl. This one’s going in my feeds.
Blendor is run by a guy named Ali in Austin, Texas. It fits neatly in the Photography / Politics / Health Care / Music / Technology / Miscellany category.
I’ve been pondering a new workout regimen (i.e., one at all), and I thought I’d just start up with the usual – running early in the morning. The problem with that is waking up and dragging myself out of bed early enough to give me time to run, shower, and get to work. It hasn’t gone well this week. So instead, I’m considering biking to work every day, since home is only about 3.5-4 miles from the office. But I wanted to be sure I was getting the same amount of exercise, so I did some Googling.
For some reason, whenever the economy has come up in the last couple of years, my typical response has been to enthusiastically shout “stagflation!” Like economist Jeffrey Sachs, I’ve been seeing 
With the probes inserted into the monkeys motor cortices, computer software was used to interpret the brains electrical impulses and translate them into movement through the robotic arm.
