Halloween, 2018

Two bags were needed.

I had a feeling we needed more, so I bought two 150-piece bags of candy from Costco. 132 (!) trick-o-treaters showed up tonight, more than double the typical turnout. About a hundred were pre-teen, and half were Asian, reflecting the changing demographics of Foster City. We overheard some goblins and witches tell new arrivals, "That's a good house." Praise from business colleagues is one thing, but that's a good house from a kid? It doesn't get better.

The Dread Disease

(Image from hyperactivz)

Progress towards a cure for Alzheimer's is slow, in good part because scientists have not found a definitive cause for the dread disease. For years researchers had focused on the high correlation between Alzheimer's and amyloid plaques ("a type of protein which is often found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients after they die"), but experimental drugs that reduced the plaques in mice did not reduce their Alzheimer's symptoms.

There is, however, significant evidence that factors that are associated with good health--a balanced diet and regular sleep and exercise---do reduce the risk of Alzheimer's.

Diet: [bold added]

the best evidence for nutritional prevention of Alzheimer's disease is through foods rather than vitamin supplements. Many of the foods that are good sources of vitamin E are also rich in n-3 fatty acids and unhydrogenated, unsaturated fats — the dietary components with the most convincing evidence of neuroprotection to date. Among these foods are oil-based salad dressings, nuts, seeds, fish, mayonnaise, and eggs. Patients should limit their intake of foods that are high in saturated and transunsaturated fats, such as red meats, butter, ice cream, commercially baked products, and some margarines that contain partially hydrogenated oils.

Sleep:

Impaired sleep has been associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Studies suggest that sleep plays a role in clearing beta-amyloid out of the brain. Moreover, lack of sleep has been shown to elevate brain beta-amyloid levels in mice.

Exercise:

New research shows that physical exercise can “clean up” the hostile environments in the brains of Alzheimer’s mice, allowing new nerve cells in the hippocampus, the brain structure involved in memory and learning, to enable cognitive improvements, such as learning and memory.

A healthy lifestyle is no guarantee that one won't contract the dread disease, but I think of it this way: it increases the odds of my hanging around until a cure is found.

Front Runner, C'est Moi

I thought I was a sports fan, but it's become clear that I'm a front runner, aka bandwagon-jumper (on when my teams are winning, off when they're losing).

I followed the 49ers and Raiders through the 1980's and mid-90's, after which both became perennial losers (the Raiders somehow made it to the 2002 Super Bowl but were blown out 49-21 by the Buccaneers). I didn't regularly watch football again until Jim Harbaugh coached the Niners to three straight Conference championships and one Super Bowl in 2010-2014.

Klay Thompson and fan in 2014

I first went to see the Giants in the Oughts to see Barry Bonds hit home runs in the new AT&T Park. I continued to attend games during the championship runs in 2010, 2012, and 2014 but gave up on the Giants after 2016.

As the football and baseball teams faded, the Golden State Warriors picked up the slack by winning an NBA title in 2015. After losing in the 2016 finals, the Warriors astounded the basketball world by signing Kevin Durant, one of the top-three players in the NBA.

The Warriors were champions in 2017 and 2018 but this year seem to have found another gear. Their two superstars and shoo-in Hall-of-Famers, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, have regained their MVP-level form.

Tonight the team's third- or fourth-best player, Klay Thompson, set the record for three-point shots by making 14 in a game against the Chicago Bulls. Sports Illustrated: Klay Thompson Scores 52, and Now the Warriors’ Death Star is Fully Operational

Thompson’s 52 shows what the Warriors can do when they are singularly focused on maximizing their talent on a night-to-night basis, and not taking a long-term view about saving it for the postseason. We aren’t even two full weeks into the NBA season, and we’ve already seen top-level performances from Curry, Durant and Thompson.

The Warriors appear to be fully living up to the hype placed on them in 2016, and at a more sustained level than we’ve seen in the past, at least during the regular season, and certainly never this early. We don’t even need to discuss what that means for the rest of the league. It’s the same as what they feared the moment this team was put together.

Experience has shown that I can't be a fan the entire year; work and family (sigh) have their own demands. Thank you, Warriors,--and 49ers, Raiders, and Giants, too-- for allowing this front-runner to strike the right balance.

The Great Divide: Thoughts and Prayers

Tree of Life synagogue (Chronicle/AP photo)

The shooting started at 9:50 AM Saturday. The first 911 call was at 9:54. At 11:13 the gunman, Robert Bowers, was taken into custody.

Eleven worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh were killed, and four police officers and two others were wounded.

Newspaper and television commentators immediately looked at the massacre through the prism of politics--gun control, anti-Semitism, whether inflammatory speech triggers violence, and what effect the event could have on the mid-term elections. While your humble blogger does have political opinions, politics is not the be-all and end-all of existence.

Cannot the families be allowed to mourn a terrible loss that is far more important to them than who wins the seat in their Congressional district?

As for me they will have my thoughts and prayers.

Note: the above is one more example of the world-is-divided-into-two-groups trope, in this case those who believe "thoughts and prayers" are worthwhile and those who believe that they are useless. To the former, prayers are meaningful because there is a Deity who is listening (how or whether prayers are answered is a different question, but the fundamental premise is that Someone is receiving them at the other end). In the latter group it's possible that there are a few who believe that there is a God who is totally uninvolved in the Universe, but I suspect that most members do not believe in God.

The Great Divide is about much more than which party should be in office or the correctness of a court decision, it's about whether human life has meaning beyond death, in fact beyond the existence of the human race itself. It's about thoughts and prayers.

Apple Knows Me Too Well

The iPhone 6 had served me well for four years, but it had become too slow, froze when running some of the new apps, and exhausted its battery after 3 hours. Also, pictures were grainy, especially in low light.

Last month I sprung for the new iPhone XS Max. The reviewers say that non-power-users like me should wait for the iPhone XR, which offers nearly the same features for hundreds of dollars less.

Cleverly, Apple delayed the cheaper iPhone XR by a month after the release of the XS and XS Max, the latter ensnaring buyers like your humble blogger who lack impulse control (or for whom deferred gratification is no longer important). I did try to buy the biggest 512 GB model, but only a 256 GB phone was immediately available. The young Apple salesperson sized me up quickly: "What do you need 512 for?" I could have said I needed to store a lot of videos but sheepishly admitted that it couldn't be justified. (As of this writing, I've only used 45 GB--less than 20%--of the storage.)

The new iPhone's screen resolution and colors, speed, sound, camera, and battery life are so much better than the iPhone 6 that I would have paid 50% more than the $1,200 I actually spent.

My younger, frugal self would have waited and probably bought the iPhone XR, but Apple knows me too well.

Friday in San Bruno

Dropping off the Car
Having disposed of the 1997 Dodge Caravan in 2015, I hadn't seen Jack, our trustworthy mechanic, for at least three years. When I drove up in the 2004 Camry, he instantly placed me: "How's the van?" Well, I had to junk it because problems were occurring nearly every month. Re the Camry: he wouldn't be able to get to it till the late afternoon, even for routine maintenance. No problem, I could hang out at the mall.

The Wait for Plates
The dealer where we bought a Toyota RAV4 was a quarter-mile away, and it was my first stop after Jack's repair shop. After two months we still had not gotten the license plates. We had bought four new cars over the years, and the wait for plates had always been less than 30 days. Of course, those experiences were all in the previous century. The dealer told us that receiving the plates from the Department of Motor Vehicles can now take up to 90 days. As we've written before, if the DMV is an example of our government at work, why in the world are so many people eager to embrace socialism, where we would have DMV-like grocery stores, hospitals, farms, airlines, etc.?

The Panhandlers
The female panhandler was ensconced at the median strip by a stoplight on El Camino Real. She was of indeterminate age; years of hard living on the streets wore her body down. She darted across the street, trying unsuccessfully to avoid a police van. The two officers grabbed her brown paper bag, and after sniffing its contents, poured the liquid on to the sidewalk. They continued to talk to her as I walked past; my guess is that they weren't going to arrest her but try to chase her out of San Bruno.

Two other panhandlers were seated by the freeway exit ramp by the shopping center. Both middle-aged, the Asian man and the Caucasian woman did not appear to be a couple but chatted like they knew each other. They were dressed neatly but inexpensively and appeared to practice better hygiene than most homeless whom I have observed (indeed, they may not have been homeless). In fact, in my worn jeans, flannel shirt, and Nikes I could have fit right in with them. We avoided eye contact, and they didn't approach during the four minutes it took the light to change. When the walk signal came on, I handed them each $20, much to their surprise. I like giving money to non-aggressive panhandlers and do enjoy confounding expectations.

The shopping center was built on the Tanforan Park racetrack.

At the Mall
Several homeless people wandered the Food Court. One went upstairs and, after shouting for a while, assaulted a worker at Burger King. Three security officers eventually subdued and carried him from the building.

A pretty blond girl sat at a nearby table and was engrossed in her phone. A non-white man (I could be but won't be more specific) approached her and asked if she would come with him. She politely declined, and he went away. A few minutes later, she got up and left, too.

Picking Up the Car
The Camry was ready at 4 o'clock. Jack looked tired. I asked him how long he planned to keep the business going. This stretch of San Bruno Avenue is pretty run down, I said, and given the development occurring all over the Peninsula the whole area could change in the next ten years. Everything's so expensive, he said, the taxes and regulations are killing him, and two houses on his block sold for over $1.2 million! Are you thinking of leaving the Bay Area? Not just the Bay Area, California.

You Gotta Have Balls

It's old technology that we've just adopted: Tennis balls reduce drying time.

They move around between the items in the dryer, allowing the warm air to circulate more freely and thus reach more surface area of the drying items. They also seem to reduce static electricity in the finished load.

There's an optimal number of tennis balls that will minimize drying time and maximize "fluffiness", however it's defined.

In my younger geekier days I would have worked the puzzle, but now that I'm older (and lazier) 2-3 balls seem good enough, so that's what we'll use.

In many, many areas of life having more balls is helpful.

An Environmental Problem to Worry About

From top: lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic (Slideshare)

Consumer Reports has a "troubling" report on heavy metals in American food:

CR bought 50 popular packaged foods intended for babies and toddlers, and tested them for arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. What we found was troubling. Every food had measurable levels of at least one of the four heavy metals.

Heavy metals have been linked to a host of medical conditions, including cardiovascular, kidney, and bone disease, cancer, and diabetes. The toxins aren't flushed easily, meaning that frequent ingestion at "safe" doses may lead to harmful accumulations. CR has advice on what consumers can do:

While you might not be able to eliminate heavy metals from your food, adults and children can follow these steps to minimize risks:

Limit consumption of foods that tend to be higher in heavy metals...

Eat an array of fruits, vegetables, and grains. "That helps you avoid overconsuming any one type of food, plus a varied diet has many other health benefits," says Amy Keating, R.D., a Consumer Reports nutritionist. And getting enough calcium, vitamin C, selenium, and certain other nutrients may offset some of the harm from some heavy metals.

Rethink rice prep. To help reduce arsenic content, rinse rice, cook it in a lot of water (as you would pasta), and drain it afterward.

Your humble blogger stopped eating brown rice five years ago. The benefits of higher fiber weren't worth the cost of higher arsenic consumption.

Another piece of advice: avoid eating food imported from China. The potential toxicity of imported foodstuffs is due to decades of rapid economic development: 20 percent of China’s farmland is polluted with heavy metals.

My hunch is that this environmental problem is more likely to kill us than climate change.

Performance and Success: Not the Same

Reams of pages have been written on how to improve performance and achieve success.

But performance and success are quite different, according to physicist and network scientist Albert-László Barabási.

“Performance is deeply linked to the individual,”.....Success, on the other hand, is “the collective response of the community to your performance and how well it acknowledges or rewards you for that.”

In many occupations performance is increasingly amenable to quantifiable measurement (e.g., jobs completed, sales completed, papers published), while success is still largely a social concept.

One famous example of the difference is Emily Dickinson, who was unknown--unsuccessful!--during her lifetime but became recognized as one of the greatest American poets after her papers were published posthumously.

Professor Barabási has different advice for both performers and those who evaluate them (the ones who determine "success").

“If you’re good at something, that’s like having loaded dice,” says Prof. Barabási. “If you only roll once, you’re wasting your chances. You have to roll over and over again!”

In other words, keep writing, keep auditioning, keep inventing.

if your company brings job candidates in for interviews, each member of your team should speak to them in a different order or on separate visits...You should review potential investments in random order, lest you be influenced by whether they come toward the beginning or the end.

If you are an evaluator, these are structural aids to eliminate bias.

Come to think of it, it's not surprising why top performers often make poor managers.

Peak Real Estate, Part 2

(Note: part 1 here)

National housing sales have been falling for four straight years:

A combination of rising mortgage rates and high home prices, a dearth of inventory and a new tax law that reduces incentives for homeownership have weighed on the housing sector this year.

(CNN image)

People think that the red-hot Bay Area housing market is immune, but even last March I doubted such a pollyannish outlook:

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act reduces the deductions for state and local taxes and for mortgage interest. The elimination of these tax subsidies may well cool off the overheated real estate market in New York and California.

Now it looks like more shoes are dropping. All the factors mentioned in February are now at hand:

The warning signs are widespread. I don't know what may trigger the fall; perhaps it will be rising interest rates, dropping tech stock prices, or fed-up tourists, but it would not be surprising to see a collapse, and an exodus of individual and business taxpayers, in San Francisco's near future.

If I could short Bay Area real estate (no, I'm staying in my paid-up house) as easily as I could short a stock, I would.

Pride and Pressure

I first noticed variations of the guilt-inducing question at the Costco and Whole Foods checkout counters:

"Would you like to donate a dollar to XYZ charity?" or
"Would you like to donate to XYZ instead of claiming a bag credit?"

Under the watchful gaze of the cashier and the people in line, I usually decline the invitations, but sometimes I succumb to social pressure and say yes.

(For the record--and realizing that this is defensiveness and pride talking--I have always itemized our deductions, thanks in part to charitable donations that are high for our income, at least that's what the IRS says. Furthermore, why must I give to Costco's XYZ when my donations to ABC also address the same need, for example, children's health?)

Now similar social pressures are being applied at takeout counters, where pay screens are becoming common. The pay screens come with tip suggestions.

Tapping "no tip" requires courage.

Consumers face that disconcerting ritual at bakeries, coffee shops, food trucks and other businesses that use tablet credit-card readers such as Square. The devices often ask customers to make tipping decisions on the fly—with the person who just served them looking on, along with everyone else waiting in line.

“It guilts you into it,” said Thom Kenney, a patron at Squeeze Juice Company in Boston on a recent morning. “It absolutely does, because they are standing there. You want to make them happy.”

Now that I see what the tech manipulators are doing--nudging me to doing their version of the right thing under social pressure--I will steadfastly decline to tip or donate at the pay screen, unless I've received table service. Yes, I will probably experience the disapproval of strangers whom I'll never see again. (Actually, I will try to avoid those establishments altogether.)

It's an ancient lesson, all but forgotten: one does not acquire virtue by trying to appear virtuous in front of others.

Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:

That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
-----Matthew 6:2-4

Just Suck It Up

Brain scientists are figuring out the biological basis for fear--and courage:

(from neuroscientifically challenged)

Most of the science focuses on the amygdala, the almond-shaped structure deep in the brain (one on each side) that generates such feelings as fear and anxiety...Indeed, taking the amygdala entirely out of the picture can virtually eliminate fear. Justin Feinstein, a clinical neuropsychologist at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research at the University of Tulsa, works with three women, known in the literature just by their initials, who have Urbach-Wiethe disease, a rare genetic disorder that destroys the amygdala. One of them, SM, has never experienced fear in her adult life.

Scientists also think they can explain why meditation works:

cells called OLM neurons produce theta brain waves, which are seen during meditation and when you feel safe despite a threat in the environment. By manipulating those cells in laboratory mice, the scientists were able to dial up a mouse’s willingness to venture into unexplored areas and tamp down its indications of anxiety, even when smelling a cat. Nicotine also stimulates OLM neurons in humans, a reason that some people chain-smoke to relieve stress.

Your humble blogger prefers to manage fear in a traditional way...

(Image from perpetualkid.com)

California: The Government We Deserve

The Bay Area tops another list, one not to be proud of: [bold added]

In 2017 potholes closed Highway 101 by Palo Alto (NBC)

The Bay Area has the worst roads in the nation, according to a new report by TRIP, a Washington, D.C.-based transportation research group, that seeks to bolster a campaign by California transit officials to preserve the state’s recent gas tax hike.

Seventy-one percent of the streets in San Francisco, Oakland and nearby cities are dilapidated, and the average motorist loses $1,049 a year in repair costs from driving on the bumpy pavement, the report said. The San Jose area has the second-worst roads, with 64 percent in poor condition.

Last year California raised its State gas tax to the second highest in the nation (53.5 cents per gallon). Coupled with our unique, expensive gasoline formulation, California is neck-and-neck with Hawaii, which has to ship in its petroleum, for the country's most expensive gas.

In two weeks we'll vote on Proposition 6 , a measure that would repeal the gas-tax increase. Naturally all the powers that matter want to leave the taxes in place to fix the "worst roads in the nation", but the real question, of course, is how come we have paid so much and the results are so abysmal?

The one-party State says it's my way or the broken-down highway. We keep voting them in, so I guess we're getting the government we deserve.

The Ear Knows

Years of studying English vocabulary and grammar will only take a student so far.

Here, for example, are four unofficial rules that native speakers know but "don't realize they know". They can be illustrated by example:

Right: my brother's car      Wrong: the car of my brother
Right: abso-freakin'-lutely      Wrong: absolute-freakin'-ly
Right: what did you say he ate?   Wrong: what did you shout he ate?
Right: I cheered up my friend.      Wrong: I cheered up her.
(but "I cheered her up" is okay)

I suspect that many of the rules of proper English will fall by the wayside, buried under an avalanche of words, images, and videos that come at us unceasingly; tut-tutting the misplaced modifier or antecedent is not worth the effort.

At one time educated English speakers were fluent in French and Latin, both important now only to a few. And so it will go with the Queen's English.

Let the Sound Prolong

Entrance to the assisted living wing

An HDMI cable was missing, so I picked one up from the store and connected Dad's monitor to his computer. Dad has a large monitor that displays oversized icons and letters; does it say anything about me that I liked it better than my own computer?

I selected the retirement home's WiFi secure network and typed in the password (no, its network isn't the first name on the list).

Walking around the facility, I passed by the lounge where ten (10) seniors had gathered for karaoke. The final number was America (My Country 'Tis of Thee). They rose from chairs, leaning on their canes and walkers. They turned to look as I sung along, since we younger folk don't usually join in.

Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees
Sweet freedom's song.
Let mortal tongues awake;
Let all that breathe partake;
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong. (verse 3)

The lounge at mid-morning.