Muscular Balance and Mobility for Runners - Part 1

Michael Fredericson and Tammara Moore wrote an article about ten years ago in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinics of North America titled "Muscular Balance, Core Stability, and Injury Prevention for Middle and Long Distance Runners". Most of the article dealt with a four course plan for stabilizing the core in runners:

1) Mobility - identify and stretch tight or short muscles
2) Stability - stabilize core and develop coordination of deep abdominal muscles
3) Control - develop balance and motor control

So much to go wrong. Going back to bed.

4) Function - train for functional movements

It's an excellent read, along with their complementary paper focused on exercises, and especially appropriate for older runners looking to extend their running life. However, the most interesting part of the article was the authors' identification of muscles that tend to be tight and weak in runners (movements are my addition). Muscles can be divided into postural and phasic, with the former supporting the body for long periods of time and the latter actively moving the body for shorter bursts. Postural muscles tend to be tight, while phasic muscles tend to be weak.

Tight (postural):

- Soleus - planterflexion
- Rectus femoris - knee extension; hip flexion
- Iliopsoas - hip flexion
- Tensor fasciae latae - hip flexion; medial hip rotation; abduction; trunk stabilization
- Hamstrings - knee flexion; hip extension
- Short thigh adductors - adduction
- Quadratus lumborum - lateral vertebrae flexion
- Piriformus - external hip rotation
- Sartorius - knee flexion; lateral hip rotation; abduction; hip flexion

Weak (phasic):

- Tibialis anterior - dorsiflexion; inversion
- Peroneals - planterflexion; eversion
- Vastus medialis - knee extension; patella tracking
- Long thigh adductors - adduction
- Gluteus maximus - hip extension; external hip rotation
- Gluteus medius and minimus - abduction; medial hip rotation

That's an interesting list, and most runners who have gone through injury cycles can probably identify many of the common culprits. I currently have runner's knee in both my knees (worse in my left) and IT band syndrome in my left knee.

Regardless of what my current problems are, a well balance musculature will prevent future injury, so it's worth doing a full overhaul. I'm going to assume I have all of the aforementioned tightnesses and weaknesses, and I'll outline stretches and exercises I plan to use to get my legs and hips back in order. I suppose this will correspond to part one of their article, just before core conditioning starts.

Bicycles in the Quiver

It's been said that every cyclist should have a full quiver of bicycles for different occasions. In fact, I believe the correct equations as expressed by the Velominati are:

Nf = Ni + 1
Nf = Nd - 1

where Nf is the number of bikes you should own, Ni is the number of bikes you currently own, and Nd is the number of bikes which would cause your wife to leave you.

Could you own just one or two bicycles? You could. I suppose you could have but one pair of shoes too, and maybe one wedge or even just one club; yeah, you could do that. But what happens when your slicks touch gravel? What then, Shoeless Joe Jackson? Or what if your fork bottoms out on a jump, are you really going to make it through that slight jilt of the forearms? Don't be silly.

When thinking about constructing your quiver, the two biggest considerations are: 1) riding surface, and 2) riding style. Riding surfaces can loosely be classified as follows:



All I hear is Queen.

- Nice road
- Poor road
- Gravel
- Forest road
- Flow singletrack
- Technical singletrack
- Downhill singletrack

Riding styles can be classified as follows:

- Comfort
- Racing
- Endurance
- Technical

The "racing" category is loose, as any riding style could be raced. I kept it simple with the categories I would consider racing in. Here are the surfaces and styles for each bicycle classification:

- Commuter = comfort, poor road
- Touring = comfort, endurance, poor road
- Road - training = endurance, nice road, poor road
- Road - racing = racing, endurance, nice road
- Triathlon = endurance, racing, nice road
- Cyclocross = racing, poor road, gravel
- Cross-country = racing, endurance, gravel, forest road, flow ST
- Trail = endurance, technical, flow ST, technical ST
- All-mountain = technical, flow ST, technical ST
- Downhill = technical, technical ST, downhill ST

There's an additional consideration for singletrack mountain biking: how the ride feels. Old trails feel new when switching from a hardtail to an FSR or 29er. Here are the ride feel categories and their corresponding surface types:

- Hardtail 26er - flow ST, technical ST
- Hardtail 29er - forest road, flow ST, technical ST
- Short-travel FSR - flow ST, technical ST
- Long-travel FSR - technical ST, downhill ST

The key to filling out your quiver is to figure out 1) what you want the bike to do, and 2) what you might like the bike to do. Some stuff you may want to do, but not at the level that requires a bike just for that activity. Fortunately, it's possible to combine a lot of bikes into primary and secondary functions. Here are some possible combinations:

- Steel road bike = commuter + touring
- Aluminum/carbon road bike + aerobars = road training/racing + triathlon
- MONSTERCROSS!!! = cyclocross + cross-country
- Mid-travel FSR = trail + all-mountain

Currently, my bike quiver is as follows:

- Commuter = '89 Trek 1100 aluminum
- Road - training, triathlon = '12 Raleigh Revenio
- Cross-country, trail = Custom steel hardtail 26er
- Trail, all-mountain = '05 Stumpjumper FSR 26er

Some obvious gaps. Here's my wish list, in order of priority:



Surly Cross Check - The World's Most Versatile Frame

1. Cyclocross. Cyclocross is the most important for three reasons: 1) It's amazing, 2) it's sport specific, and 3) it opens up new training routes. As to (2), the bike build requirements are fairly strict for cyclocross, which include handlebar shape and tire size. While a functional MONSTERCROSS!!! could handle both cross-country and cyclocross duty, it wouldn't be efficient at the former or allowable for the latter. As to (3), I currently don't have a good bike for gravel riding. The 1100 has too old of an aluminum frame for me to trust it on bumpy roads. I haven't been impressed with the road biking around College Station, so snagging a bike that can handle gravel would open up many more routes and get me away from traffic and cement trucks cruising on their sides through intersections that I frequently bike through. I'm still weighing up whether I should build it myself.

2. Touring. As I said above, I don't have a lot of faith in the 1100, so I'm not sure I want to take it on long distances. Ideally I'd find a solid steel frame and deck that out for pack-loaded cycling adventures. I plan to do a few touring trips out in the Hill Country this summer and fall, but it won't be a regular thing. In the meantime, it wouldn't hurt to deck out the 1100 with a heavy-duty rack for commuting, with the anticipation of sticking it on a steel frame in the future.

The Dream. Short two helmets, of course.

3. Cross-country. It's a no-brainer - 29er hardtail. For the moment, the 26er steel hardtail should be more than capable of handling the cross-country terrain and ride length. I certainly won't need another mountain bike for College Station trails.

4. Triathlon. I really haven't been doing triathlon stuff long enough to know whether this is something I'm going to get into seriously. My left knee is still pretty beat up, and I won't be racing for at least a couple months. For the time being, I'd be fine just sticking some aerobars on a road bike. From what I've read, the biggest gains you can get from a triathlon bike come from the aerobars and heightened seat position. The aerodynamics of the bike help with speed and the more aggressive angle of the frame changes your body position a bit, but they're really for people who intend to get into this sport competitively. I don't think I'm one of them.

5. Fixie/track or cyclo-touring. So where'd these guys come from? Well, I neglected to put in the final, and possibly most important, quiver category: the project bike. This is the one that marinades in your stand as you do your biweekly eBay part search. Ideally you would convince yourself that this bike won't cost much, and then ignore the stream of receipts that flood in. And it should be a monster; a cyborg, if you will. A cyclocross touring bike built for off-pavement adventures would be pretty incredible.

Top Five Songs About Insects

And no, Crazy Town's "Butterfly" didn't make the list.

5. "Hey There, Little Insect" - Jonathan Richman

The Modern Lovers would perform this live on occasion.

4. "The WASP (Texas Radio and The Big Beat)" - The Doors

Jim was a great song speaker.

3. "King Bee" - Syd Barrett

I prefer the Stones' version, but I chose them for another entry and don't wish to saturate the list. Syd Barrett's version is still sinister and sneering, and has that terrific slide whine.




2. "The Spider and the Fly" - The Rolling Stones

This is one of my favorite Stones singles, and really the only valid argument for the US release of Out of Our Heads trumping the UK version.




1. "I Am the Fly" - Wire

Just fantastic.




Bonus: Maggot Brain (album) - Funkadelic

It didn't make the cut because it's a whole album and the intro isn't quite top 5 material, but this album is just off the hook. The madness of "Back In Our Minds". The texture of "Can You Get To That". Off the hook.



And as an aside, if you were going to sample "Can You Get To That", you could do worse than Sleigh Bells:

I Think I Might Have Something That Is Useful

I'm a patent attorney, and like most people who deal with the inner workings of technology for a living, I'm acutely aware of its tendency to latch on to my life force. So whenever I consider buying a piece of technology, I ask myself one question:

Will this widget make my life simpler?

If the answer to this question is "no", then I continue to give Wells Fargo an interest-free loan the size of the potential purchase. If the answer is "yes", then I do my least favorite thing not called "meeting a single friend of mine you'd really like".

Enter the smartphone. See, my GPS broke, and I'm moving down to Texas in a couple weeks. I'd read about the dangers of falling behind on technology, and how you end up turning into an old person who thinks your laptop camera spies on you (okay, they were right on that one). I spent a couple weeks thinking about the all important question of Will this widget make my life simpler? and came to the following projected uses for a smartphone contraption:

1) Telephone calls - I'm on the Verizon family plan from ten years ago
2) GPS Navigation - I could get this for my current phone, for $40/month data plan + $10/month VZ Navigator plan.
3) Email while traveling - for those trips when a laptop is too much but life without Gmail is too hard.
4) Weather - I am getting old and this is important to me
5) Spotify

All in one device. This would probably make my life simpler.

I decided to go with Republic Wireless. They sounded interesting. The phone service defaults to wi-fi when in an established wi-fi network, and switches to cell service, provided by Sprint, when out of an established wi-fi network. The pricing structure is what really sold me. No contract, $20/month, and no phone upgrade. In other words, a normal pricing system with an incentive to be content with what you have. This is something understandable! I could feel my life getting simpler.

Not to go all Chuck Murray on you, but smart is a relative term. For a smartphone with a 3G data plan, I had two options:

1) Moto X - new, fast, shiny (shiny things break), and $300. The accompanying 3G data plan is $25/month. The girl on the Motorola website looked liked she wouldn't talk to me if I said hi.

2) Defy XT - old, slow, indestructible (toilet-resistant, hole-11-downpour-resistant), and $100. The accompanying 3G data plan is $20/month. The Motorola website gave me an error when I tried to look at a picture.

Number 2 may as well be called The Joe. Here's a picture of it (from the internet - I would never own that table):

I've spent a long time staring at this thing. The manual wasn't very helpful. There are four markings that look like buttons, but have no obvious meaning. I've decided the hole on the top left is a light of some sort, because it shines when I plug it in. I don't know what the hole on the top right does; it hasn't changed since I got it, and gives off a HAL vibe (fun fact: what happens when you shift each letter of HAL one down?). There's a camera lens on the back, but I don't have a furry animal or Thai dish to take a picture of.

The service is a bit disappointing. It attempts to make calls through wi-fi, then redials on cell if wi-fi doesn't work. So far wi-fi has never worked for calling, and call recipients on the cell service say I sound empty (that is morbidity I don't need). The data access is frustrating too. The phone will randomly disconnect from the internet and fail to load apps. I screwed around with my router settings to no avail. I tried the GPS going to work today, and it couldn't carry the signal past half a mile. I have no idea what to do to make it happy.

It has a 30 day return policy, but I'll probably keep going with it. I feel cool! I haven't felt this "in" since the check-out girl at H&M told me my blazer looked "totes cray to the power of ridonkulous". And when it does work, I get simple pleasures. I downloaded this Onkyo Remote app that can play my computer songs on my receiver without me touching the Lenovo. I don't know if that makes my life simpler or not, but I smiled when "Green Hearts" started playing. The strangest part is that I carry this thing around my apartment with me, just in case I want to use it. It sounds like that's a life skill of some sort, like the home economics pet egg exercise. I hope the GPS works soon. I don't want to be alone.

King and Country is the Greatest Whistling Song

I love a good whistle. Maybe it was my standard six breakthrough performance of "Whistle While You Work" in Snow White and the Twelve (everyone got a part!) Dwarves. Eye dee kay. But I love whistling in songs. Back in two-man-band days I would whistle the horn parts of Van Morrison and B.J. Thomas tunes. Eventually the neck harmonica replaced those two tender instruments of passion, but it was fun while it lasted.

Whistling in songs has gotten a bad rap since "Young Folks" came about. I remember where I was the first time I got scolded for whistling that riff. It was May '07 on the bottom level of the CVN 76 Ronald Reagan in San Diego, on my way to check on some readings. Mike B. told me never to do that again. I haven't, although if I ever get in a situation where I want someone to move, such as a coffee shop table or subway seat, it may creep through.

Here's Rolling Stone's list of the best whistling songs. "Young Folks" made it, as did "Dock of the Bay" and the absolute stunner "Colonel Bogey March" from Bridge Over the River Kwai. But you know what didn't? You do if you read the title of this post. "King and Country" by Television Personalities. I'm not surprised, since they haven't gotten a whole lot of respect outside Pitchfork's top albums of the 80's (#64). This song is fantastic, though. I'd possibly nominate it for the top 50 "Ooh" songs. Have a listen:



I got to Television Personalities down the usual rabbit hole. Their second album on is a bit psychedelic and odd, and I prefer their earlier sound. They had no idea how you were supposed to write a song, which is how punk's supposed to be. "Geoffrey Ingram" never gets old, and is so English for a wannabe mod like me.

Airport Pianist

I don’t remember much of my childhood outside of memories that look curiously like the pictures in our family photo albums. But I recall sitting in the Cairo airport and seeing a piano on a slightly raised and roped-off platform. The bench was tilted away as if someone was going to sit down at any moment. Except that no-one was going to sit down because you weren’t allowed to play; it was only for decoration. 

That’s what I want to be, guys – an airport pianist. I don’t mean the guy the airport pays to play long-winded classical pieces; that guy’s a hack. I mean the casual traveler who gets a little inspiration on his way to a Cinnabon to tickle the ivories and loosen his vocal chords on the ditty he learned when he was nine. I want to be that piece of heaven or hell, probably hell, that rings in your head as you take off your shoes and power thrust at the agents of the state running the metal detectors.

This is the first thing that came up in Google.

Part of the appeal is the mystery of it all. Strangers are only going to know two things about you – what you’re wearing and what you’re playing. If you’re traveling right, you should be taking the opportunity to wear something edgy that you don’t feel comfortable wearing on the street. I usually pull out the sub-6" inseam shorts and a shirt that shows a little chest. I gotta be me! But what do you play? Well, there’s a dynamic I haven’t been able to define. It’s where you intentionally create zones of accessibility and exclusivity with a reference. For example: Halloween costumes. The goal of a Halloween costume is to incorporate a pop culture reference that’s obscure enough that most people won’t get it, catchy enough so the “outsiders” still think it’s interesting, and treasured enough that the “insiders” will be moved. You want to carry that same dynamic into your song selection. 

Genius, looking surprisingly stupid.

With that, I’ve settled on early '70s John Cale, with his buddy Lou Reed as a back-up. Simple piano parts, baritone range, easy hooky tunes that never caught on because they’re weird, and just familiar enough that if someone knows it they’ll sing along. My mom once commented that John Cale sounded nice. Perfect. Here’s my set list:

Child’s Christmas in Wales

Gideon’s Bible

Paris 1919

Big White Cloud

Perfect Day

Satellite of Love

Is it weird having two Reed anthems to cap it off? Maybe, but I've gotta finish strong, just in case “Big White Cloud” doesn’t work. But it will work, because everyone will think it’s a Dylan song they just missed when they were ignoring his Nashville era.

There are a couple complications. I only have sheet music for the Transformer and Paris 1919 songs. That’s not a big deal, because I can just find some guitar chords and riff them on piano. And I’m not very good at the piano. Correction – I’m not very conventional at the piano. I’ve only made it through the first of three adult beginner piano books. I’ve got heart, so that probably counts for thirty pages or so. I don’t think this is a very big deal either.

I don't know how to end this post, so I'm just going to riff off the airport thing and list the three best airplane neighbors I've ever had: a Colorado State professor that hosted African immigrants at her house, a mechanical engineer from Grand Rapids doing flood cleanup work, and a 5-year-old girl from Jackson, MS visiting her aunt in Detroit (we made origami paper cranes that pooped paper balls).

Bleu de Chanel

David Angelo's got a great bit in his act about market research and the kind of people that participate. Well, here's a commercial that gets it right. Is it the Blow Up throwback? Is it the UK release '65 Stones opener? Is it Scorcese directing? It's probably all of those. I've never purchased cologne, but if I do, I'll make it Bleu de Chanel.

Rubber, Buns, and Liquor

The Wall Street Journal has an article today (subscription required) about the Washington State initiative to deregulate its liquor stores. The measure would privatize the state run liquor stores and enable grocery stores to sell liquor, just like they do to great effect in Cali. A Portland area news station has more, reporting that, if passed, the state would end up shedding 900 workers due to the privatization. I haven't yet been able to find out if the tax is still sky-high, but the price is bound to go down due to competition, even if it's still there.

This is great news, so long as you're not a neo-prohibitionist. When I lived in Seattle, liquor was pretty hard to access, especially if you lived downtown. Being government-run, the stores had ridiculous hours. If the idea was to prevent people from drinking too much, it backfired, as you would just stock up on a ton to make sure you didn't run out. Virginia was the same way; I would end up driving to Maryland at ten o'clock at night because the government run stores would shut down. So much for preventing driving.

I've heard (but am too lazy to look up) that one of the reasons for so much control is to encourage consumption of beer and wine, as Washington has an abundance of local breweries and wineries. As a brewer myself, I appreciate the variety and supply sources it brings, but I can't help but think that micro-distilleries are the next wave. When I was in Kentucky a few months ago, the bourbon aisle of the liquor store was packed with local labels that all held their slots in the minds of whiskey takers.

Columbian Soup with Noodles aka What To Do With Pork Drippings

A few nights ago I made some grilled barbeque ribs, which produced a lot of liquid in the oven stage. I was raised to save everything, and so I ended up with a pint or so of pork drippings for a soup. I patched together a couple Columbian and Mexican chicken soup recipes, as well as my mom's homemade noodles.

Unique points: homemade noodles, pork drippings, Indian/Italian blend of spices

Noodles

2 2/3 cup flour

3 whole eggs

2 tsp salt

1/4 cup water

Pour the flour into a bowl and make a cavity. Fill the cavity with the eggs and salt, and mix everything together well. Slowly add the water while mixing until the dough is sticky but still firm. Cut the dough in two, and roll out one section of the dough onto a well floured surface. The dough should be in a strip about three inches long, well floured on both sides. Cut the strip into pieces between a half centimeter and a centimeter. It's important to keep all surfaces floured so that the noodles don't stick.

Soup

2 cups pork drippings

4 cups chicken broth

2 tsp oil

4 cloves chopped garlic

2 tsp cumin

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp chili powder

1 bay leaf

2 stalks sliced celery

2 sliced carrots

1 can corn

salt and pepper

noodles (from above)

Add the oil and garlic to the pot over medium heat, sauteing the garlic for a couple minutes. Add the drippings, broth, and seasonings, mixing well. Add the vegetables and bring to a boil. Once boiling, add the noodles and cook for twenty minutes at a low boil, stirring occasionally.

It should make 6 or so servings. I served it with homemade buns, which were a nice side. It ends up being quite thick from the noodles and flour, so feel free to add more broth.

U.S. Ecoregions

I really love maps. They're such an efficient and accessible way to convey information, especially for a visual person. One of my favorite map subjects is ecoregions. Ecoregions are regions defined by geology, vegetation, climate, soil, and other characteristics, and they're great because each classification and differentiation tells you enough about the area that you can build a solid mental impression, especially if grouped with a nice landscape photography site like Terra Galleria and a childhood of cross-country travel. The EPA has some good maps on its site, and I've reproduced some of my favorites below. It's interesting to think about the differences between the maps and why some mapmakers thought they were worth pointing out while others didn't.

The above map is my favorite map of the US. There are things it misses - the Yellowstone Rockies, Bighorns, and Black Hills are all pretty unique, yet are grouped as the same ecoregion - but if you start picking apart mountain ranges too much things get complicated pretty quickly. It calls out the Sandhills, a somewhat surreal area probably less than a thousandth of the country knows exists. In fact, what I love most about this map is how it differentiates the western and central plains, which often are neglected for the flashier mountainscapes at their doorsteps.

The map above is a bit simplistic, but that's probably about right for most people. When you get out West there are some pretty stark changes in the landscape, which a highly differentiated map doesn't emphasize.

This map is probably the closest to what you'll see if you actually travel between regions. I doubt anyone would notice a difference between the Snake River Valley and the Wyoming Basin, other than the backdrops. The map puts more of an emphasis on mountains than basins/plateaus, and is one of the few to include the Basin Ranges in Nevada, a nice touch. Also, the jagged and vivid color outlines illustrate just how much more interesting the West is than the East. Just in case you forgot.

But this post wouldn't be complete without some sentimentality thrown in, so here goes: these regions are a reminder of how geographically insignificant state lines really are. States are just jurisdictions, a patchwork of property rights that lays claim to the land but doesn't actually influence it. As any South Dakotan knows, an East River farmer has more in common with a downstate Minnesotan than with his West River rancher brethren. The simplicity of rivers, lakes, and latitude are measurable etches, caged by welcome signs and outstretched commerce clause jurisprudence. But they only hold place on paper or a hundred feet below the land surface, a scratch compared to the significant but transitional personality of ecology. Or if you'd like a more favorable spin: it's nice the states share the mountains and deserts.

A Brief Guide to Trail Etiquette

I enjoy a run through the woods, and encourage everyone to do the same. However, some people's kids just don't follow the rule of the trail when it comes to etiquette. I generally have a pre-Nixon quaker's temper, so violators don't bother me much, but here's a quick summary of the more frequent encounters:

1. Too much body spray. Nothing takes my breath away like a lung full of Someday by Bieber (if I had a dollar for every time someone said that...). I don't understand, why would you hose yourself down with perfume and body spray before a run? You're around someone for at most a few seconds, so it isn't as if you're going to gag them (and let's be honest - how many of those heavily scented people have you seen that are really working up much of a sweat?), and you end up leaving this trail of daffodil-scented diethyl malonate that steals the life of everything behind and takes away a much needed gulp of oxygen. I don't even wear deodorant before I run, since sweat can prevent underarm chafing. This is the one time you should not have used Odorono.

2. Passing. It's like driving: run on the right, pass on the left.

3. Dog or cellphone. It's odd that this is a problem. People on cellphones are fine, people with dogs are fine, but when the two combine they create this distracted, twenty foot leashed menace that tripwires the path like that flying creature scene in The Crow. I take it back, it isn't odd at all that this is a problem.

4. iPod Reverse Red Rover. This is where an O-line of gals will go for a walk with either ear buds or just Jersey style speaking volume (de facto death metal). Your calls of "on your left" will be in vain, and you'll have to run behind them until someone approaches in front and you can sneak in through the hole they open up like a linebacker filling in a fullback's gap. Will they learn after the twelfth person pulls this move? No, they will not.

5. Just friends zoners. I feel for these people. Here's the thought process. I don't want Steve to think I'm interested, so we'll hang out and talk, but it should be around people. We'll go walking! That way I can hit two birds with one stone! But I don't want people to think we're together, so I'm going to keep a good four feet between us, maybe even walk on the other half of the path. Here's why it'll fail. When I come running by, and Steve hears my heavy footsteps (I always make more noise when I'm coming so that people will hear and move, and I don't have to say anything), he'll move over to Jill so I can get by on his side, trapping Jill on the other side of the path subject to his ever closer encroachment. Nice try, Jill, but should have just gone for coffee.

6. Speed-workers. This isn't so much for etiquette as it is amusement. At the busier trails or paths, there are a lot of guys in their 20's that see running as a way to pick up "tha ladiez". This makes them competitive, and when a skinny guy with a sub-7-minute mile passes them, they feel the need to show their value by sprinting ahead of him a short distance and coming to a stop, as if they just finished their run and the question of who is faster is still up in the air. After all, they were just doing some speed work today, training for the flag football game and toning some of the mass they squatted onto their thighs, you know bra?

7. Bicycling Hasidic Jews. I lift them up as model path users. They populate the trails in the hundreds, yet have never once breached a rule of etiquette. Do as they do, and good things will come.

8. James Deans. Rebels without a cause. These are the fly daddios that go against the grain and bike towards traffic on those paths that specify a direction. I don't need to explain why this breaches etiquette. And your glares only fuel their BMX bike pedals.

9. Brady Bunch biker gang. Who am I kidding? Etiquette doesn't apply to you folks. Biking four across + training wheels? No worries, it'll give me an excuse to tighten my shoelaces as I watch the dying remnants of Americana spin by. Bless their hearts, I'm glad they're out there, I really am.

10. Bridge trolling. I can usually dodge around lines of people, but trail bridges are barely wide enough for the average American, let alone two of them. If they refuse to go single file I'll be sure to brush my sweat frosted left arm against their scarlet Rutgers sweatshirt.

Fed Soc on Property vs. Policy

Last November at the Federalist Society's annual lawyer conference its intellectual property practice group held a panel on whether IP should be treated as a property right or regulatory policy. Peter Menell and Richard Epstein have duked it out in Cato and elsewhere over the validity of intellectual property rights, which this panel sort of takes as a given.

The video speaks for itself, though I think Epstein's response to Bell at 46 minutes in says a lot. He justifies any exceptions to the patent and copyright system with social welfare, and is more concerned with free speech restraints on copyright than he is on property rights on patent law, since it's unlikely that a free user of patented technology will use it except as a free rider. I think this treatment of these exceptions is at the core of the property/regulatory distinction: does the rule restrict what you carve out (property right)?

This rests on positive/negative language, which can be a matter of semantics, but I think it can have real consequences in the debate. It's easy to see how, when IP is caked in the language of property rights as opposed to regulatory policy, a strong supporter of property rights may forget that IP rights involve a confiscation of other, more established common law property in the name of economic efficiency. And for conservative policy, which generally wants to strengthen property rights while scaling back the administrative state, semantics do matter.

Dr. Strangebrew or: How I Learned to Stop Watching ESPN and Stir the Pot

In the spring the law school has its annual raffle to raise money for student funded fellowships, and this last year I volunteered to brew a batch of beer. The high bidder (winner isn't the word I'd use) chose a German brown, which was a first for me, but the style wasn't all that different from a porter I'd made a few years earlier. After hopping I performed the following steps:

1. Left the pot to watch college basketball.

2. Watched the pot volcano into a steady flow of brown hopped magma.

3. Removed said pot from the burner.

4. Rushed to the brew store to buy some replacement hops.

5. Ignored the actual label and grabbed 2 oz of Chinook.

6. Transformed a jolly Bavarian accordionist into an angry Arrogant Bastard-ish warrior.

I kid, it wasn't that strong, as I keep my boiling batch size on the small end. I ended up brewing him a different batch, and keeping half for myself, which has mellowed out in recent weeks. Here's the recipe:

Grains

1 pound chocolate malt

1 pound toasted rye

Extracts

7 pounds amber liquid malt extract

2 pounds amber dry malt extract

Hops

1 oz Hallertau (60 min) *remove by boiling over and caking onto stove

2 oz Chinook (60 min) *the mistake

1 oz Willamette (15 min)

Yeast

German Ale yeast

No real clues on what to call it, except you can't drink it very quickly and girls don't even pretend to like it. Dark IPA?

Hyperion

I finished Dan Simmons' Hyperion last night. The book's pegged as a sci-fi Canterbury Tales, which it sort of is, but without any time piece value. If fits into that Sci-fi/Fantasy niche populated by Star Wars outer Rim adventures and later Magic: The Gathering artwork.

One of my common complaints about sci-fi, and a mistake Dan makes in the Cantos, is the movement away from reality as a reference point. This is where ordinary objects are given a new name so as to create a feeling of being in a totally new world. It's annoying because you have to juggle a whole new set of terms and language, which makes it harder to visualize the environment and breaks the flow of the story, at least initially. A reasonable reference can go beyond just reality too, to popular sci-fi conventions. Everyone knows the concept of a teleportation device; why use an elaborate new term? This is one reason I like magical realism as a genre - it has fantastic elements, but is still grounded in the world that we know. It's a small complaint, but if you've had a long day or put away the book for a week or so, the last thing you want to do is struggle through language.

The love scenes are dreadful. In general, I'm not sure if love scenes are better or worse in book form versus a movie. In a book you can just skip over the scene and skim to find out where you need to pick up. But you can do this with a DVD too, and usually the scene selections are spaced so that you can skip right to the next segment. I think what makes books more painful is that you get to see exactly what the creator was thinking and trying to achieve with the scene. In a movie you can pass off the heavy petting as an attempt at drama, but in a book you get to see that his stroking was "passionate and wistful"; it tells you EXACTLY what to think. There's also the awkwardness of steering clear of slang while making sure it doesn't sound like a biology lesson or Napoleonic poetry. You know what I'm talking about.

I wonder why authors think romance strengthens a book. Do they think romance is more meaningful than brotherly love? I remember reading in a Morrissey interview that "There is a Light" wasn't a love song in the traditional sense, but meant more broadly. It's like when you switch the radio onto a Christian music station and it takes a minute to realize that they're singing about God, not a girlfriend. And why couldn't adventure be a motivator? Is adventure any less selfish?