Finally, Some Recognition

Us advocates of the third amendment have to stick together, so I'd like to draw your attention to the shoutout we received in yesterday's xkcd. We really need a catchy slogan, something like, "The one constitutional right you'll never have to worry about being violated by the government!", except I'm pretty sure that the first clause of this sentence specified "catchy".

I'm typing this into a bog-standard browser text-box, but I just tried to move the cursor with [esc] [hjkl] , which means that I should attempt to reclaim some lost sleep. I last saw it near my pillow; perhaps I'll check there first.

Upcoming: Music, and the extent to which it makes us lose control.

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but you are my love the astronaut

The Archives Of This Blog Are Now Labeled

This should expedite the copious archive bingeing I've come to expect from my readers as a matter of course. It was more than a little embarrassing to read views espoused by the me of 2006, but this is to be expected. Now you can share in my pain, with the power of metadata.

While traversing my history, I graphed my post frequency on this blog since its inception.



Hopefully, this isn't too interesting to you, but it should show that I am fairly serious about updating more frequently. It's easy for me to say this now, though - we'll see how it plays out in the long run. I know that I have ideas, but is the world ready for them? Or will the Internet shatter under their sheer awesome might?

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until I need a pencil

Open Up The Door, We'll All Come Inside

I shopped at Costco for the first time a few weeks ago, and the duration of my visit to the store was consumed by considerations of how to fortify it in the extremely likely event of a zombie apocalypse.*

Costco is a bulk retailer, requiring a membership fee for the privilege of shopping there**. It is particularly notable for the sheer quantity and diversity of products it has for sale. A survivor trapped in a Costco would die of old age before starving for death - a single pallet of foodstuffs could provide basic nourishment for a year (though some diversity of diet would be required to avoid serious malnutrition) and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of such pallets in a given location at a given time. Hundreds of man-years of food is nothing to scoff at in a Class III scenario.

But what happens when you get bored of eating until you die? Costco also sells tools and some materials, and all sorts of useful things could be scavenged from the broad array of consumer products. Some locations sell alcohol, valuable both as a disinfectant and as a trade good.

Architecturally, the building has a lot going for it. It's essentially a warehouse, with heavy doors, concrete walls, and no windows, except for skylights. With proper preparation, you could turn a Costco into a veritable bunker.

However, this is the first hitch. The size of the building is in some ways a weakness. A single person, or even a small group, would have no way to effectively patrol the perimeter. This is not a problem where zombies are concerned, so long as all entrances are properly sealed and secured, but zombies are not the only threat one must face. A hungry human interloper would not be deterred by a simple locked door. And remember those skylights?

The warehouse-like architecture is also a disadvantage in that it offers little in the way of a second line of defense. The majority of the floor space is open and contiguous. When (not if) the outer perimeter is breached, the prepared defender will have ready a fallback location, but the design of the building offers few options. This shortcoming is not insurmountable; one could certainly construct a secondary perimeter from available materials (pallets, shelving, sofa cushions, etc.) or find an office or back room. The local Costco offers a walled-off section refrigerated for fresh produce; perhaps this will serve. But this leads us into the next issue...

Costco has a substantial quantity of fresh produce - meat, dairy, fruit and vegetables. All of this requires constant refrigeration, and we cannot assume that this will be readily available during an outbreak. Within a few days, fresh food will go from being an asset to a liability, presenting serious health concerns. Produce could be quarantined, but this represents a massive undertaking, the feasibility of which depends on available manpower and machinery. It must be done if the location is to be considered seriously as a long-term location, but even then, your fortress will become quite rank in short order.

Costco offers a wide variety of retail products; unfortunately, Costco shoppers have exhibited little demand for weaponry in bulk, and so the supply is likewise limited. Weapons must be improvised from tools; it is unlikely to find anything more effective than a hammer or shovel.

But these issues are seemingly minor. You've secured the perimeter, and established a secondary line of defense. You've eaten what you can of the fresh food and quarantined the rest. You've scavenged for improvised weapons, and are now safe and secure in your fortress until all this zombie nonsense blows over and you can go back to shopping at Costco instead of living there. Right?

WRONG, you stupid wrong idiot dummy. You'd be better off locked in your house with a can of beans.

Retail locations are, by definition, chosen to be accessible. A Class III outbreak might wreak havoc with the commute, but you'll still be in a place chosen specifically so that people could get to it. And get to it they will. There's plenty of precedent for this - retail locations like Costco are often the primary target of looters during real world catastrophes. In an outbreak with no end in sight, the complications are amplified. You can fight off the undead, but could you fight off a starving mother and her children? (Hopefully, the answer is "yes"... but would you?) How about a well-organized, well-armed militia?

At best, your group will be enlarged substantially. A thousand man-years of food seems like a lot of food... for one person. How many can you handle before you simply run out? Will you be able to handle disputes? The likelihood of a dangerous conflict increases factorially with population.

At worst, you'll be killed for a can of peas.

Somewhere in the middle, there's the very real possibility that your defenses will be overrun by rude houseguests who won't close the door behind them, and who will have little consideration for your personal notions of how much is appropriate for a guest to eat.

When considering the viability of any location as a defense, consider the following question: Who else would want to go here?

If the answer is "anyone and everyone", just keep moving. A survivable location should be unappealing to anyone who doesn't think of it as home. If you think that it's a good idea to hole up at Costco, that probably means that everyone else thinks so, too.

So, Costco is a bit of a trap, but don't let that dissuade you from sending out parties from your real secure location to raid the shelves. They have these giant things of fruit snacks for like $10. Beware, however, of those who failed to heed my sage advice - they'll be waiting for you in Aisle 10 with a shotgun.

*For the purposes of this discussion, consider an outbreak of Class III or larger.
**Most of these tactical conclusions can be applied to other general retailers. (Wal-Mart, Kroger's, etc.)

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I don't see you laughing

The Things That Have Kept Me Awake At Night and/or Woken Me Up Early

• Automobile traffic
  
• Loud university students
  
• There's this train, which isn't particularly loud in and of itself, but I guess it's really important that it blows its whistle for a good five minutes straight
  
• Garbage trucks
  
• Street sweepers
  
• Carpentry
  
• My roommate's ring tone, which is the Dr. Horrible theme
  
• A jackhammer
  
• My roommate's "text message received" noise, which is the "get item" sound from Zelda
  
• People in the apartment above mine, holding combined track and field events / stomp dancing competitions at 0200
  
• The ceiling fan, which will every so often start doing this "click click click" noise.
  
• My roommate's alarm clock, which is the standard cell phone ring
  
• Church bells, though this is usually not on Sunday
  
• The knowledge that I will die alone and unloved.
  

It's a wonder that I get any sleep at all.

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tell me all of your secrets

Every Society Is Only Three Meals Away From Revolution*

This article in today's New York Times speaks to a lot of the issues I've recently been considering regarding food.

The matter is both complicated and simple. It is complicated in that it intricately brings together aspects of economics, agriculture, and politics both foreign and domestick. It is simple in that it is at heart about the answer to the question, "What should we have for dinner?".

One of the most important observations, made implicitly by the article, is the foolishness with which we try to outdo nature in her own element. Nature abhors a monoculture, and with good reason - the resilience of any ecosystem lies primarily in its diversity. And yet every aspect of the American agricultural system is designed (deliberately or accidentally) to promote monocultures. It's astonishing to think that much of the magnificent topsoil of the American midwest lies bare for five months of the year, but it's the natural outcome of the system implemented by the federal government. The dual problems of nitrogenous fertilizer and waste from high-density feedlots only emphasize the inherent clusterfuckedness of the situation - American industrial agriculture is akin to forcing round pegs into square holes.

Mother Nature tacitly notes that they are doing it wrong.

In attempting to divine the source of these problems, one comes to the inevitable conclusion that when the only tool available is federal subsidies, everything starts looking like a nail. The system was designed using subsidies to provide cheap calories, and it does so quite well. However, it's a house of cards, relying heavily on cheap energy both for fertilization and transport. And given the end result of the system, it's not a particularly appetizing house of cards. The design goal of the modern industrial agricultural system was the McDonald's hamburger.

It's really nice how the article is phrased as a potential agenda for our next president - there's no shortage of reasonable suggestions. It seems to me that the easiest way to politicize this issue is to phrase it in terms of energy, which is already a known quantity within political spheres. The article discusses the necessity of energy independence, which would be part and parcel with a comprehensive energy plan. It's one thing for our economy to be dependent on oil, but our food? See the title of this post.

There's a lot that I'm not even touching upon here - regulation of CAFOs, water use issues - but it's reassuring to me that this issue is continuing to loom large in the public consciousness. Real change will be slow, since the current system has a lot of momentum. But the question is not if change is coming, but rather what will happen when it comes. Will we direct it, or will it direct us?

Next: More about zombies.

EDIT: Oh, it's by the guy who wrote The Omnivore's Dilemma. That makes a lot of sense, actually.

*I couldn't find a legitimate source for this saying, so I'm just going to claim that I invented it.

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i got more records than the K.G.B.

This Space Intentionally Left Blank

Today was Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, and while considering my sins of the past year, first and foremost among them was the degree to which my posting here has lapsed. It's been, what, six months? And it's not like I don't have anything to write about.

The problem is that I'm only taking a single humanities course this semester, and that course has only a single paper, so I'm worried that I'm going to forget how to write. Without constant vigilance, my already tenuous grip on the English language will continue to wane like the sort of simile I could come up with if I could still remember how to write.

After that realization (and getting hassled by some security guys from this one place. Funny story.) my atonement was complete - but it will lapse immediately if I don't keep posting.

So, for the sake of my immortal soul, I will keep writing.

I will leave you, dear writer, with a link to my friend Jokeserver's blog of jokes so you can appreciate what I have to put up with on a daily basis.

Also, his jokes are really bad.

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forgive me for leaving you alone