Gratuitous Common Sense

I have always been a staunch supporter of differentiating between these two concepts, correlation and causality. But recently I have come to the conclusion that confusing the two is at the root of most of the evil in this world. Evil, for all intents and purposes, is defined here as ‘ignorance and the actions inspired by it’.

All too often, people see a correlation between two things and assume a causal relationship exists when there isn’t one, like Sex Ed and having sex, for example. Many people see the correlation between Sex Education and having sex (mostly because they both have the same word) and assume causality when there is none. Becoming more educated about sex doesn’t cause sex, and having sex certainly doesn’t make you more educated about it. There is no causal relationship between the two, only a correlation.

Those individuals who say that teaching abstinence is the best sex education constantly confuse correlation and causality. Basically, Sex Education does have a causal relationship with safe sex. More specifically, sex education causes a higher percentage of the sex being had to be safe sex. But it does not cause more sex to be had, unless you count the sex being had when the people having safe sex outlive the diseased uneducated people having unsafe sex. But the abstinence preaching people refuse to make this distinction and, instead, willfully or unwittingly confuse correlation with causality.

But that’s just meant to be an example. I’ll go further into the sex education issue in another post.

Does X Cause Y, or Vice Versa?
Sex education is not meant to be the focus of this article. Correlation and causality are the subjects at hand. The sex education example is meant to illustrate one of the basic concepts in correlation. When we look at the relationship between two things, it is rather easy to see that there is some kind of relationship (correlation) between them. But it can be rather difficult to discern the nature of that relationship, like when you try to determine if it is a causal relationship or not.
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In 2006, we bought our first house. And we were just fortunate enough to be in a position to afford building a house. I even had a page set up on my site so our families could follow the build progress.

I remember going into the process, I had a lot of questions. Mostly about our ability to afford it and make sure everything came out the way we wanted. I think we came out alright, and we learned a few things along the way.

Below is a list that includes those things, as well as some additional tips for building a house that might be useful to others in a similar situation.

A buyer’s agent is not always necessary, if you have a good builder. But even if they aren’t necessary, they are still helpful.

Guttering all the way around the house is a must, and well worth the investment.

Don’t have the build schedule end in a hot month, because that’s when they do the landscaping and the plants will suffer. This was a combination of a west-facing garden and hot, humid climate.

Make sure the landscapers “roll the sod” after they lay it down, otherwise you will have grooves in your lawn.

If possible, make sure the driveway slopes down toward the street, otherwise water will pool next to your foundation.

Electricians have no idea what the carpenters are doing, and they never learn. Without fail, there are always light switch boxes placed too close to the door frame to allow for molding.

If you like to work in the garage, make it bigger. I don’t care what size it is to start with, make it bigger.

Be picky. A house is probably the single most expensive purchase you will ever make. You are paying for the right to be annoyingly anal retentive about the product you are going to get.

No matter what the Window Blinds/Shades salesperson says, you don’t need blinds on every single window. Some will be fine without them, or with your own window coverings.

For appliances, and other big purchases, shop in the scratch & dent and closeout area. Plenty of good stuff there.

I think this will be a running list that I will continually update from time to time, as I think of new things to add. Not all of these things are mistakes that I made. Some of them are mistakes that might have been made by the builder had I not pointed them out ahead of time. But hopefully all of them will serve as helpful tips for building a house.

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Building muscle for women has gotten the stigma that it’s only for women who want to bulk up and get big muscles.

This is the content of a post I wrote a while back in response to an inquiry from several females on fitness issues. The subject matter is meant to explain how muscle works and its role in burning body fat, and it is helpful and informative for both sexes…

One of the most common reasons that women shy away from lifting weights, especially heavy lifting, is that they think they will end up looking too masculine. This misconception is generated from numerous sources, including years of misinformation from so-called experts.

For so long, when it comes to building muscle for women, trainers and experts have been telling women to concentrate on a high volume of reps with low weight. The idea is that this will create a cardiovascular effect that gets your heart rate pumping without putting too much stress on your muscles, essentially using weights to do cardio. The thought is that this helps avoid building the muscle mass that women and their trainers tend to fear.

But because of the differences in testosterone, metabolism, and body composition, it is simply not effective to shy away from building muscle, especially when we’re talking about how to burn body fat.

Men have anywhere from 10 to 15 times as much testosterone as women, and it still takes a very focused effort for men to put on muscle mass. So bulky muscles are very difficult to achieve for women, and pretty much impossible if you’re not focused on that specific goal.

Other Concerns
When it comes to building muscle for women, I know that some have experienced an effect from lifting weights that feels like you’re getting bigger without getting the definition or “toned” look that you’re going for.

This is a common trap that comes from low intensity weight training. And it eventually scares some away from weight training altogether. We don’t want that, so let’s talk about what is happening and how to avoid it.

Myofibrillar and Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy
Hypertrophy simply means to increase in size, usually referring to an organ or skeletal tissue, like muscle. And the increase in size is due to an increase in the size of the cells, as opposed to an increase in size through cell division.

For hypertrophy to occur in the muscle for women, the muscle must be directly stimulated. And it matters how that muscle gets stimulated, because it will make the difference between sarcoplasmic and myofibrillar hypertrophy.

Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy occurs when the sarcoplasmic fluid in the muscle cell increases rather than the contractile protein. Myofibrillar Hypertrophy occurs when there is an increase in myofibrils, which are fibers that increase the contractile strength of the muscle.
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I recently tried putting some merchandise on Craigslist for the first time. And, it took about 12 hours for the online scams to start rolling in, as you might expect with anything that involves money and the Internet. Now, I’ve always used eBay because, well, it was around first, and since I’m human, I don’t like change.

Actually it’s because eBay markets to a much larger customer base. But I decided to try Craigslist because I had some stuff that I couldn’t ship and needed to sell locally. I was going to sell it in a garage sale, but thought I’d first try something that would signal less desperation to get rid of my stuff and attract far fewer bartering cheapskates. Plus it’s free to list my merchandise.

Craigslist warns you right off the bat about possible scams, even before you post your items for sale, on this page that contains mostly, and by its own admission, common sense information about scams. Now, I like to consider myself somewhat technologically savvy. I can’t sit down and code a double-reversible caching table page with flash intros and buttons and stuff… all by myself… in under 3 minutes. But I’m smart enough to be aware of people running online scams.

For example, on one of my recent Craigslist listings, one gentleman contacted me for more information. I could tell right away that it was some guy running an online scam, because he asked for a price and other information that was plainly displayed in the ad. But for fun, I told him he could buy it for twice the listed price, which was $200. This is what I received as a somewhat comical (scam) reply:
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Here’s your daily dose of Gratuitous Common Sense.

I was engaging in the altogether dangerous, ill-advised, and sinful activity of wandering aimlessly around the Internet with no purpose or forethought, and I happen to come across a gaming( ) forum which had a section that contained this comment:

One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn’t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.

When it was pointed out that, not only do scientists know about it, but he can see it himself, his response was, “The Sun doesn’t count.” Ahhh, theists… what would the world be without them? seriously.

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It really is shame what some “News” organizations will pass off as news these days. I mean, really a shame. And the real problem lies, not in the fact that they do it, but that it isn’t a surprise when they do. It’s expected behavior now, for CNN, MSNBC, and FOX (faux) News to report on Britney Spears’ haircut, and Paris Hilton’s < insert alcohol related misstep here >, and the up-to-the-second whereabouts of Anna Nicole’s corpse. Thanks in no small part to the Associated Press.

It’s insane.

And it gets even worse when you throw in the grand-daddy of insane topics - politics. It is amazing that politicians can get away with e-molesting minors for years when we know about the drugs that their brother-in-law’s mother’s cousin did, including which nostril they ingested it through. Somehow, and through some fault of my own… I know about bush’s college parties, I know his daughters’ criminal records, I know the occupations of countless parents of politicians and I know how their parents came to the United States, what obstacles those long-dead people had to overcome, and probably how they died. Why do I know all of this, because someone, somewhere, thought the information was news-worthy, and decided to spend part of their short life on this planet writing about it.

All of this has led to a well prepared media that is ripe and ready for the circus that is Democratic Presidential Hopeful Barack Obama. I swear, I now know more about Obama’s family genealogy than I do about my own. This morning, both CNN and Fox had a story posted on their front page with this headline: Obama’s White Ancestors May Have Owned Slaves 1 2

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Below is a graph that shows the relationship between Mean IQ and strongly held religious beliefs. When you graph the data you’ll notice that it is, not surprisingly, an inverse relationship. Now, I am a big proponent of exercising restraint when it comes to inferring causality from simple correlation, so I won’t do that. That is to say, I will refrain from using this relationship to show that low IQ causes strongly held religious beliefs, or vice versa. But I found the relationship interesting nonetheless. Here’s the graph:

Click on the image for a larger view. The United States is the data point with the red circle around it, a bit askew, if you ask me.

The IQ data was taken from the book, IQ and The Wealth of Nations. The religious belief data was taken from a survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project. The question from the survey was, “How important is religion in your life—very important, somewhat important, not too important, or not at all important?” The report only gave the results for those that answered “very important”.

Take it as you will.

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