Wanted: A blog feed that consists of a random sample of all past posts

I've been idly looking for a solution to the blog backlog problem. Lately I've seen others looking for the same thing, so I'm expecting a fix within the next few months.

What's the backlog problem?

The backlog problem is discovering a great blog, but reading only the most recent posts. That is, after all, how blogs were designed to work. Problem is, there's a lot of great stuff in the backlog. I'd like to read that too - the same way I read my other blogs.

What I want is a special feed for every blog I read that's the 'random post feed'. It could be generated by a WordPress extension for example -- it just has to be integrated with the blog's database and publish 1-2 posts a day. [1]

Any day now ....

[1] Google Reader could have done this because Google kept old posts around, but nobody else is going to keep billions of blog posts in an archive. The RSS feed for backlog posts has to come from a random selection of all past posts -- say 1 random selection a day. I've seen mention of using Yahoo Pipes to do something like this, but Pipes can only randomize the urls exposed by a feed -- not all past posts.

April 2014: What Americans and the world must do after the Tea Party's first defeat

Imagine it's April 2014. Winter is fading, the days are getting longer. The Tea Party is in its cave, licking wounds and sharpening knives.

America is not quite in recession, but we're still digging out from the partial default of 2013.  The American dollar has fallen relative to other currencies and we pay more interest for short term treasuries. The falling currency has been a boost to manufacturing, and maybe we're finally getting some of the inflation we need. The state healthcare exchanges are operational and the federal exchange is finally more or less working.

Internationally the past few months have been an education in American civics. There's a bit more understanding of what Presidents can and can't do, and a wariness about the future of the American nation.

At home we have a better understanding of what drives the Tea Party -- decades of static white male income, fears of loss of historic privilege, and a deep fear of minority status and changing social mores. Did I mention fear and uncertainty?

So what should Americans, and non-Americans who are collateral damage in the latest bout of our centuries old slaver war, be doing?

We, everywhere, should be working on America's wealthy and America's corporations. The only way to manage the Tea Party is to strengthen the rational minority within America's GOP. That means funding GOP reformers and fighting Tea Party candidates. The only people who are going to do that are corporate donors, Chamber of Commerce members, wealthy Americans and others who still, barely, have a place in the GOP.

I'm not going to fund the GOP, but someone has to. We all need to put relentless pressure on the GOP's 'rational' donors to fight the Tea Party. We need to be doing that now, we need to be doing that next April.

I need a feed of television commercials

Ok, I don't need the stream of scams that keep daytime television on life support, but I do need something.

The problem is I've gotten very good at hiding from marketing -- including the marketing of goods and services I'd like to know about either for myself or for my family. I don't watch television, I only listen to NPR and BBC In Our Time Podcasts, my brain blanks out Gmail ads, and my hundreds of feeds don't show me ads. When I do notice Facebook ads, they're invariably targeting the wrong person. The only ads I really see are in Silent Sports -- and I buy it largely for the ads.

I live in a weird marketing-free zone.

So I wouldn't mind a service that let me characterize my interests, and that gave me a feed of new product/service announcements and updates, paired with a searchable repository. It would be paid for, of course, by the service owners.

I'm afraid I'm the only market though ...

How to practice your French (or Chinese, English, etc) pronunciation on your iOS device. For free.

Do you have a lousy French accent?

Never fear, it's better than mine. What we need is a victim, a native speaker, who will type whatever we say. Someone who never tires and never complains. Someone who is poor at interpreting foreign accents.

Someone like your iPhone.

Here's the trick for an English speaker:

1. In Settings, General, International, Keyboards enable French (or Chinese, English, etc) keyboard.
2. Go to an app like Notes. Tap world icon to switch to French keyboard.
3. Tap microphone icon and dictate your French phrases. Watch the iPhone get them completely wrong. Keep practicing until they come out right.

It's even easier than doing the same thing on OS X. Handy for kids learning foreign languages. (I'm certain Android does this as well.)

 

(Credit to Talking to Siri by Sadun & Sande for discussing this in terms of Siri control.)

For American adults are poverty and disability the same thing?

[Preface 9/6/13: I am enjoying the app.net discussion thread on this with @duerig and @clarkgoble. When reading this, try substituting TRREP - Trait that Reduces Relative Economic Productivity for the word "disability". Also, please note disability is not inability. In my experience parenting/coaching two children with disabilities I think of managing disability like building a railroad across mountainous terrain. Sometimes reinforce, somethings divert, always forward.]

-- 

Anosmia is not a disability.

Well, technically, it is. Humans are supposed to come with a sense of smell. For most of human existence anosmia was a significant survival problem. At the least, it helps to known when food has gone bad. So Anosmia is a biological disability.

In today's America though, there's not much obvious economic downside to anosmia. Diminished appetite is more of a feature than a defect. There are many jobs where a keen sense of smell is a disadvantage -- including, I can assure you, medical practice. Anosmia is a biological disability, but it's not an economic disability. Not here and now anyway -- once it would have been.

Disability is contextual, it's the combination of variation, environment and measured outcome that defines disability.

What about if I lose my right leg? Am I disabled then? Well, if I delivered mail I'd have a problem -- but in my job an insurance company would snort milk out its proverbial nose if I tried to claim longterm disability.

I think you can see where I'm going with this. Stephen Hawking is an extreme example -- you can have a lot of physical disability and not be economically disabled.

So how can I become disabled? 

Probably not through my "risky" CrossFit hobby,  but my benign bicycle commute is another matter. Until that glorious day when humans are no longer allowed to drive cars, I'm at risk of a catastrophic head injury. An injury that may impact my cognitive processing, my disposition to use cognition ("rationality"), my judgment and temperament -- and leave me as completely disabled for high income work as if I were 85 [1]. At that point, barring insurance, I'm economically disabled and impoverished.

Clearly, acquired cognitive injury can be disabling. So what of congenital cognitive disorders like low functioning autism or severe impulse disorders? Impulsivity, inability to plan, very low IQ ... Clearly disabling. Without income support from family or government, extreme poverty is likely.

Ahh, but what of those born with average IQ, average rationality, average judgment, average temperament? Employment is likely -- but earnings will be limited. To be average in the economy of 2013 is to sit on the borderline of poverty -- and of disability. The difference will be decided by other factors, factors like race, location, and family wealth. An average person who looks and acts "white" and is born to a middle class family in Minnesota may make it into the dwindling middle class (for a time), an average person who looks and acts "black" and is born to a poor family in Mississippi is going to be impoverished.

Which brings me to my question - for American adults are poverty and disability the same thing? Not entirely -- race, residence, and family income have an impact, particularly within some ill-defined "middle range" of "native disability". Not entirely -- but they are clearly related. 

How related? Consider this OECD graph of poverty rates across nations with very different cultures, attitudes and histories:

 

Across Finland, Denmark, Sweden and the US we see a "natural" or baseline (pre-transfer) adult poverty rate of 24-32%, with Swede and the US both at 28%. Not coincidentally, 30% is what I suspect our baseline rate of mass disability is today.

We can and should deal with poverty-enhancing factors like racism, unfunded schools and the like. That will make a difference for many -- and, if all goes well, we might get the US baseline poverty rate to be more like Denmark's. We'll go from 28% to 24%. Ok, maybe, in a perfect world, we get our baseline rate from 28% to 20%. Maybe.

To really deal with poverty though, we need to understand what real disability is. Economic disability in 2013 isn't a missing leg, it's poor judgment, weak rationality, low IQ, disposition to substance abuse. To conquer poverty, we will need to conquer disability - either with Danish style income transfers or with something better.

I think we can do better.

- fn -

[1] Social security is simply a form of insurance for age-related disability with an arbitrary (but pragmatic) substitution of chronology for disability measurement.

See also

• The Post-AI era is also the era of mass disability 12/2012
• Mass disability and the middle class 9/11
• Unemployment and the new American economy - with some fixes 1/2011. There are things we can do. Ok, maybe not the US, but maybe China.
• ADHD, CDD, and Related Conditions 2002. I just came across this. This was one of the last old-school web pages I did before I started writing blog posts. It anticipates a lot of what I've written since.
• Disability and poverty - Wikipedia - yes, this isn't original :-).
• Various Supports for Low-Income Families Reduce Poverty and Have Long-Term Positive Effects On Families and Children — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 7/2013 

 

Will we get a $5000 custom app development business?

There are a lot of apps I want that that I can't find, apps like a personal-corporate search tool, or a corrosion-resistant wiki, or adding a graph navigation (link) layer to a plain text repository.

I know enough about building software that I can, fairly quickly, make up an initial set of requirements that I'm reasonably sure are a good match to readily available toolkits and technologies. I can quickly revise them to match timelines and resources. It's a bit of an odd knack but it's one I have.

There are architects I know who can, in an hour, lay out how to build to those requirements -- including specifying platform options and toolkit alternatives.

The first step is free for me. For $1K-$2K for 1-2 hours work I can find good people to do the second step.

Things get tricky when we try to turn this into code. Anyone who has done outsourcing knows that there's a gap between the theory of Ugandan MOOC grads wanting to work for $20/hour and the reality of high school quality coders who work for a year before moving into management. Not to mention little details like testing.

Open source only works if the app is something the developers themselves want to use ... and that's a special case.

So for $2K I can only get to the pre-coding step given today's methods for organizing paid work ...

The corporate wiki I want

The modern publicly traded corporation is to data as water is to iron. It is a challenging environment for use of anything but the most corrosion-resistant materials: .doc, .ppt and .xls. It's not a good home for things like Wikis.

So we need a corrosion-resistant Wiki. This is what I think we need:

• Minimal dependencies, maximal configuration simplicity. This probably means file based, no database dependencies.
• No expertise for setup and operation - if you can use basic Word and files you can implement and move the Wiki in under 1 hour.
• Rapid and perfect portability. Rapid moves, no broken links.
• WYSIWYG (roughly) and a native syntax that works. Probably markdown.
• Strong search API
• Cross-platform (shudder. Does this mean Java for the environment?)
• Low cost or open source/free. (Freemium model ok for scale)
• Maximal link preservation (Confluence, I can't believe how readily you break external links. This is simple stuff.)

There are probably other requirements, but I only have five minutes. Those are a good start.

 

This wiki doesn't exist today, but I am certain it could be built. The next time I'm unemployed it's on my list (along with a lot of other things, alas)

See also: 

• Wiki impressions: XWiki

Evolutionary economics is due for a reboot

Jupiter's red spot is a transient thing. One day the storm will dissipate -- though probably not in our lifetimes.

Life is a transient thing; a deviation from general entropy flows. One day life will go away.

NFL subsidies are a kind of emergent trap, one day they will go away.

Our universe, lives and economies are rife with transient exceptions. In the long run they go away, but we don't live in the long run. In our time frames the exceptions are the rules.

These exceptions don't appear in micro-economics, macro-economics, or even behavioral economics. Macro tells us average temperature, it doesn't describe the tornado bearing down on our house. 

So we need something radically new. Something like evo-Econ or eco-Econ or Canopy Economics; a discipline that focuses on self-organizing emergent phenomena, that recognizes that natural selection is inevitable in a complex adaptive system.

Did I put enough buzz words in there? Because I'm not dumb enough to think these are new ideas. Ecological economics is the application of economics to ecological topics, so not what I'm thinking of, but Thorsten Veblen coined the term Evolutionary Economics in 1898. Judging from the wikipedia article Evo-Econ has veered off in several different directions over the past 110 or so years -- but sometimes it tracks closely to what I'm describing here.

It's due for a renaissance today.

Project Memfail: Tackling my search space problem

I've hit the Wall.

It's partly entropy-related wetware failure, but I'd be in trouble even if I were immortal. I have two many search-spaces and information stores in too many places.

Things aren't so bad in my personal domain - I have two search spaces. My Simplenote files (via NvAlt), Email (Mail.app) and Google Docs (via Google Drive and CloudPull [1])  are mirrored back to my Spotlight search space, and I use a Google custom search engine against my blogs, archived web site and app.net streams. So my two personal search spaces are private/secure and public. I can manage that [2], and I'm careful not to add anything that would require a third search space.

In my work domain though it's a mess. I have information scattered across several Wikis, multiple document stores, my local file system and multi-GB email store, and the remnants of blog whose server died. All of this in an environment that, for multiple reasons, is driving to an information half-life of 1 year. I have too many search spaces; I can no longer track them all.

So I'm launching Project Memfail :-). I need to rescope my search spaces - esp. my corporate one.

- fn -

[1] My main information loss over the past decade was GR Shares, I have some recovery there via CloudPull.

[2] Native spotlight search has issues, but I can work around those. Of course when Google Custom Search dies I'll be in for a painful transition.

New age data loss: what do we do when backup isn't enough?

A few weeks ago my primary drive began to fail. This was painful because the recovery process exposed lots of rusty plumbing, but I was never worried. I have onsite and offsite backups, multiple iterations of each, using two different technologies (Time Capsule and Carbon Copy Cloner).

I feel pretty good about data loss due to drive failures or boneheaded mistakes.

I don't feel good about the iTunes 11.1 making my media disappear. If not for a chance post encounter I probably wouldn't have discovered the loss for months -- at which time recovery might have been impossible. In this particular case the media files weren't lost -- but iTunes 11.1 couldn't recognize media kind metadata assigned by an earlier version of the app.

Similarly Aperture and iPhoto have been known to lose track of video and images; both have added features to look for orphaned files thanks to past experiences. Users have to know to run these procedures however.

Even worse are sync errors. Apple's Discussions forum are rife with reports of data loss or corruption related to iCloud use. This is bad when it's obvious, but far worse when it goes undetected.

We need new approaches.

We need a utility that keeps a record of deletions, and has rules to notify us of unexpected deletions. That's doable, I'm looking forward to buying a copy.

I don't know what to do about data invisibility arising from application database corruption or bugs like iTunes media kind metadata conversion failure. That's a lot more subtle. Given Apple's poor record of managing these problems (I can think of several things they could do) I wonder if they'll need someday to be legally liable for gross negligence leading to data loss. In the meantime, I suppose we could Voodoo stick pins in something -- or rant in our blogs, which is probably about as effective.

Facebook's real problem -- people sharing photos and stories

Andrew Leonard writes about Facebook's awful ad targeting, and their efforts to retarget ads and posts. That made me wonder why Facebook is determined to drive away me, my friends and family, and my neighbors.

It's either incompetence or design. I suspect the latter. Facebook doesn't make any money off us now, and I suspect they gave up hope when their farm games died.

Facebook wants a passive audience consuming celebrity endorsements and product placements. The TV audience of old, or the Twitter audience of today.

People sharing stories and photos are a distracting waste of bandwidth.

Amerisclerosis? Why US underemployment (and probably inequality) persists.

Brad DeLong excerpts Olivier Coibion, Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Dmitri Koustas: Amerisclerosis? The Puzzle of Rising U.S. Unemployment Persistence: "The results suggest that only cultural factors can account for the rising persistence of unemployment in the U.S., but the evolution in mobility and demographics over time should have more than offset the effects of culture."

I can't tell from the excerpt what is meant by cultural factors. It could be "declining labor mobility, changing age structures, and ... decline in trust", in which case the term has a technical meaning rather than the usual way we think of culture.

The "decline in trust" is weird for a non-specialist, I assume it too has a technical meaning.

Declining labor mobility is a bit of a black box; for example if automation were concentrating employment opportunities in high EQ/IQ positions labor mobility would be more genetic than cultural.

I continue to follow these discussions from a non-specialist perspective. I don't know how this can be tested in economic frameworks, but I continue to think we live in a world where the rate of change, largely driven by globalization (India/China) and information technology, has outstripped our ability to adjust and adapt. Perhaps we'll catch up if/when change stabilizes.

Beyond that, I think the rise of massively powerful corporations that dedicate wealth to legal and financial manipulation rather than innovation, combined with an increasingly aged (and, in the true sense of the word, conservative) electorate, is worsening America's ability to adapt.

Mounting a bike light when you use a front bag

My NiteRider Lumina 700 seems solidly made, but since I use a front bag it's a nuisance to mount. I took apart the helmet mount and fit that into an old reflector mount that puts the light in a good position. I think this mount will work, but in case it doesn't I put together a list of alternatives. (Of course the ideal front bag would include a bike mount, but mine doesn't. I prefer not to use the helmet mount, but that can work too.)

Most of these mounting solutions are designed to work with a handlebar clamp mount like the one that comes with the Lumina:

• Gino Light Mount from Paul Component Engineering $24, uses Frame eyelet.
• Sheldonbrown.com has several mounting solutions that might be useful (Sheldon died in 2008, but Harris Cyclery lives on)
• Lamp Holders : • Milwaukee Bicycle Co. • Ben's Cycle: lots of options here, many designed for bicycle computers but will be fine with this light.
• Front Light Brackets products from SJS Cycles: UK, but lots of ideas here
• Cronometro Nob: I like this design for a fork mount.
• Origin8 Light Mount Frame/Fork Eyelet Stub B $10
• Problem Solvers Quick Release Light Mount: replaces nutted side of front QR Skewer to provide mount
• Problem Solvers brake stud mount
• Urban Velo - DIY rack or fender mount

I ended up ordering a Paul Gino Light Mount from Amazon for $17. I saw a similar "Origin8 Light Mount Frame/Fork Eyelet Stub B" on Amazon, but Origin8's web site doesn't have a light mount and the reviews were inconsistent. I suspect this might be a counterfeit based on the Gino.

Of course another option is to go all in and buy a front rack, then mount the lights there.

Update 9/30/13: I bought the Paul Gino. It seemed small at first, but of course handlebar diameter isn't big either. It's quite finally made. I expected the M5 mount screw would fit my touring bike's front fork carrier mounts, but first I tried it on an old reflector mount that came with the bike. That mount, with a jury-rigged platform, had held my older front light, but my Nite Rider Lumia 700 was too heavy for it.

As shown below, it worked quite well. The reflector mount, as it turned out, is M5 threaded and I put a solid torque into the steel bolt and steel mount. The Lumia 500, set a few cms to the right of center, just barely cleared my cantilever brake cables.

Perfect result! 

BTW, many people like to mount lights on the lower to mid fork to get a better view of the road surface. I like to see the road too, but my main goal is to be seen by cars. So I prefer this mount - visible to cars, but a good view of the road.

BBS Dial up information from 1980s

I came across a list of the BBS sites I used to get to via pre-internet call routing. I think I used something like Telnet. The NSA probably wasn't monitoring our traffic.

1- The Crow's Nest 786-3161 38400 N81 F 0
2- Beowulf's Club 21 789-0233 38400 N81 F 0 BEO
3- Eagle's Nest BBS 789-1792 38400 N81 F 0 EAGLE
4- Mich Tech PC UG 1-487-2738 38400 N81 F 0
5- Lighthouse BBS A,428-3425 38400 N81 F 0 LITEHOUS
6- UPRNet BBS A,786-2179 38400 N81 F 0
7- ICU BBS D,428-3250 38400 N81 F 0 ICU
8- The Cardboard Box E,428-9135 38400 N81 F 0 CBB
9- PC exchange (lol) 13138490499 38400 N81 F 0
10- PIL Software Systems 13144499401 38400 N81 F 0
11- procomm user support 13144749543 38400 N81 F 0 PRCM
12- PC Resource BBS 16039249337 38400 N81 F 0
13- western union 18003254112 38400 E71 F 0
14- MIRNET ,,1,,786-2179 38400 E81 F 0
15- Sparta Board 1-201-729-7056 38400 N81 F 0
16- Shareware Dist Network 1-203-634-0370 38400 N81 F 0
17- NASA Space Link BBS 1-205-895-0028 38400 N81 F 0
18- Invention Factory 1-212-431-1194 38400 N81 F 0
19- NYPC BBS (Steinberg) 1-212-633-1870 38400 N81 F 0 NYPC
20- Magna Carta Software 1-214-226-8088 38400 N81 F 0
21- Free Net (Med BBS) 1-216-368-3888 38400 N81 F 0
22- Genie 1-301-340-5565 38400 N81 F 0 genie
23- Qualitas BBS 1-301-907-8030 38400 N81 F 0
24- NIST Comp Sec BBS 1-301-948-5717 38400 N81 F 0
25- Medical Sftwr XCH BBS 1-305-325-8709 38400 N81 F 0
26- ComputerDirect BBS 1-312-382-3270 38400 N81 F 0
27- IBM BBS (Atlanta) 1-404-835-6600 38400 N81 F 0
28- Pitt XPress Support Serv 1-412-864-2294 38400 N81 F 0
29- PKWare Support BBS 1-414-354-8670 38400 N81 F 0
30- The Home Computer BBS 1-414-543-8929 38400 N81 F 0
31- xerox bbs 1-414-797-5216 38400 N81 F 0
32- the Well (Whole Earth) 1-415-332-6106 38400 E71 F 0
33- ATI BBS (Video) 1-416-756-4591 38400 N81 F 0
34- The Softstone 1-502-241-4109 38400 N81 F 0
35- Micro Cornucopia BBS 1-503-382-7643 38400 N81 F 0 mcr-corn
36- Intel Tech Support BBS 1-503-645-6275 38400 N81 F 0
37- Central Pt. Software PCT 1-503-690-6650 38400 N81 F 0 cps
38- BMUG (Berkeley) 1-510-849-2684 38400 N81 F 0
39- The List: PD SW BBS 1-516-938-6722 38400 N81 F 0
40- InterNet (EMC2) 1-517-353-8500 38400 E71 F 0
41- SoftLogic BBS 1-603-644-5556 38400 N81 F 0
42- Dr. Dobb's BBS 1-603-882-1599 38400 N81 F 0
43- SSI 1-609-921-7079 38400 N81 F 0
44- Utilities Exchange 1-614-488-3991 38400 N81 F 0
45- NoGate BBS (Pak) 1-616-455-5179 38400 N81 F 0
46- Boston Computer Society 1-617-332-5584 38400 N81 F 0
47- ByteNet 1-617-861-9764 38400 N81 F 0 BYTENET
48- BYTE DemoLink 1-617-861-9767 38400 N81 F 0
49- Salemi Doghouse BBS 1-703-548-7849 38400 N81 F 0
50- Government (IRS) BXR BBS 1-703-756-6109 38400 N81 F 0
51- Online Soft. Srch. 1-704-255-8259 38400 N81 F 0
52- Western Digital Tech Sup 1-714-756-8176 38400 N81 F 0
53- Gibson Research BBS 1-714-830-3300 38400 N81 F 0
54- FDA BBS 1-800-222-0185 38400 E71 F 0
55- CSV Phone List 1-800-346-3247 38400 E71 F 0 csv_phn
56- MCI FAST 1-800-456-6245 38400 N81 F 0
57- Cristal 1-800-527-0531 38400 E71 F 0
58- PDQ (NCI) 1-800-546-1000 38400 E71 F 0
59- ETNet 1-800-546-1000 38400 E71 F 0
60- U of M Library 1-800-669-8779 38400 E71 F 0
61- Thous. Oaks Tech. Exch. 1-805-493-1495 38400 N81 F 0
62- The Shadowland --Chris M 1-814-238-4654 38400 N81 F 0
63- Internet - Caltech 1-818-405-0161 38400 N81 F 0
64- Quarterdeck BBS D1-213-396-3904 38400 N81 F 0
65- Trident bbs A,1-415-691-1016 38400 N81 F 0
66- Micro-Sellar D,1-201-239-1346 38400 N81 F 0 MSELL
67- OS/2: Fernwood D,1-203-483-0348 38400 N81 F 0
68- GMED BBS II D,1-301-402-7857 38400 N81 F 0
69- Symantec BBS D,1-408-973-9856 38400 N81 F 0 SYMANTEC
70- Exec-PC D,1-414-789-4210 38400 N81 F 0
71- OS/2: Shareware D,1-703-385-4325 38400 N81 F 0
72- compuserve D,1-800-848-4480 38400 E71 F 0 CSV
73- Sound-Advice BBS D,1-816-436-5635 38400 N81 F 0
74- Always BBS D,1-818-597-0275 38400 N81 F 0 ALWAYS
75- MCI Mail E,1-800-333-1818 38400 N81 F 0 MCI
76- Grateful Med BBS F,1-800-525-5756 2400 N81 F 0 GMED

CrossFit at 54

There was a competition underway when I first visited CrossFit St Paul; it had pounding beats, tattoos, (relatively) young people. Something new for an old guy. I felt dorky, but I'm good with that. I decided if I lasted a few months I'd have something worth sharing -- one old guy's experience with the relatively new fad of high intensity workouts.

Four months and one back injury later, I'm still at it. My initial exposure was misleading; I'm usually the oldest person in my regular classes -- but often not by much. There's one guy who might be about 60; he's a lot stronger than me. I'm getting used to the beats, and even wearing short socks and semi-fashionable gym shorts -- though my shoes aren't the right tech. Contrary to my initial impression my CrossFit classes are about half women.

So why did I start with CrossFit, how has it worked for me, and what's the downside?

I started because 50 is not the the new 40. It is same as its ever been -- early old. Among other things that means getting noticeably weaker from year to year. For me it also meant calorie restriction took as much muscle as fat. I need to keep up with my kids, so I needed a lot more exercise.

No problem -- I like exercise. Not running mind you -- I've not done that since undergrad days. Lots of other stuff though - cycling, swimming, nordic skiing, hiking, hockey.

Problem is my version of 54 comes with a lot of family obligations, not to mention (still and for the moment) a job. My life is good, but rich. The only thing I can cut out now is sleep -- and I need more of that. So I needed lots more exercise, but I had only a couple of hours to spare.

So that's why I took a look at CrossFit five months ago. Group psychology to drive effort, coach driven but cheaper than a private trainer, no contract, extreme variety, enough danger to keep me awake (more on that later), lots of sessions I can fit into a packed and variable schedule, facility directly on my weekly commute, engaging franchise owners - it was a good fit.

Ok, Andrew, it was also because you kept bugging me about it.

There was one other motivation - a big one. I didn't believe the late 90s reports that significant exercise delayed dementia onset, but the evidence has continued to accumulate. I suspect it's not as beneficial in humans as it is in animal studies, and I suspect it works better for some genotypes than others -- but it's all we have. Nothing else makes much difference. I need to keep my brain until my youngest is in college - 8 years from now. So moe exercise.

I did a private "on boarding" -- extra cost but it let me work around my schedule and my health status. I learned I was even less fit than I'd expected. After I joined the regular program I experienced three phases over 4 months. In the first phase I had remarkable muscle soreness, which led me to wonder about bursts of apoptosis. In the second phase my muscles did better, but I was limited by my poor endurance. In the third phase I was able to run a few miles for the first time in 30 years, and I was no longer always the slowest or weakest participant.

Sometime around the last phase, I had my first CrossFit injury - a back strain. I'm familiar with that problem, and the rehab routine went well. I'll get back to the injury bit.

I now do CrossFit twice a week; that's about as much as I have been able to safely handle. I currently need 3 days to heal between each session. Between sessions I do my usual 2 hours of bike commuting one day a week, 1-2 hours of inline skating with my #2 son, and 40 minutes of conventional Cybex workouts with my #1 son, focusing on back, abdomen and some base arm strengthening. Time spent with #1 son is considered family duty, so the new regime added about 2 hours to my week. I made that up by spending less time writing on my blogs, I manage my writing compulsion by microblogging with Pinboard, PourOver and app.net.

After five months, despite my back strain injury, St Paul CrossFit has worked well for me. I haven't developed much visible muscle, but I'm significantly stronger and I can handle more exertion. My weight didn't decrease until about month 4, since then I dropped 8 lbs and am close to my optimal weight.

The net effect is that physically I perform and feel more like I did at 44 than at 54. That's a big difference; if I feel at 62 the way I was at 52 I'll be content.

I'm not as keen on CrossFit as some but I enjoy the people, the exercise, and the game of staying within my limits. My two sessions a week are well worth the $135/month I'm paying; I'll probably go to three times a week when ice and snow stop my bicycle commute.

Which brings me to injury risk, and Jason Kessler's CrossFit experience ...

 Why I Quit CrossFit (Jason Kessler)

On my very first day of CrossFit, I threw up. It happened my second day, too. And the third. And pretty much all of the first month...

For the next three years, I squatted, pulled, pushed ...

… CrossFit was unlike any workout I had ever done before. It throws out the traditional-health-club model of machines and isolated exercises and replaces them with a whole-body approach rooted in the real world. Calisthenics, Olympic lifting, and gymnastics combine to form a workout that emphasizes ten basic physical skills: cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, flexibility, stamina, strength, speed, coordination, power, accuracy, balance, and agility. Every day, a new workout (called the Workout of the Day, or WOD) is written on a whiteboard, and everyone in a class completes the same workout no matter what fitness level they’re at.

... Your typical CrossFitter wants to zap his fitness tank down to zero by the end of a workout. He’s not content to be just sweaty — he wants to collapse into a heap on the floor...

…. quickly amped up the frequency of my visits from three to four, then five days per week. Without even realizing it, I became that evangelizing asshole who makes people think that CrossFit is a cult...

… Not everyone gets injured to the point where he has to get knee surgery, but I did. I also developed a chronic shoulder injury that to this day, eight months after my last CrossFit workout, is still a constant reminder ... the penalty for not executing movements with perfect form, but I’ve come to believe that having perfect form 100 percent of the time is literally impossible...

Jason was lifting an awesome amount of weight but even for less ambitious athletes the injury risk is real - largely because of the focus on technique-critical Olympic style free weight lifting and on continuous improvement. At 54 I'm into managed-decline rather than improvement, but at 34 I'd have been tempted. CrossFit workouts are intense -- and I'm not sure five or even four workouts a week makes sense for most 35+ bodies.

My gray hair means I get gentle encouragement that I can use or ignore, but younger, keener people could get in trouble. I think CrossFit could do a better job of teaching early recognition of injury and ways to respond to it. Since we pay based on our use rate there is a bit of a perverse incentive at work here, but the St Paul franchise has added Yoga and other lower intensity programs that can round out 2-4 high intensity workouts.

For me the risk feels less than pickup hockey (head, knee, face, laceration) or serious downhill skiing (knees), but a bit higher than inline skating (head) or road biking (cars -> infrequent but serious injury). In other words, it's in the risk range I'm used to, even though it's higher risk than traditional gyms or high intensity Pilates. Honestly, for me, managing the risk is part of the appeal. I suspect as CrossFit evolves, however, there will be tracks that deemphasize the riskier weight maneuvers and more focus on early response to injury.

Will I still be doing CrossFit at 64? It seems unlikely, but it's not impossible. I'll let you know.

Update 9/23/2013

Still enjoying CrossFit and staying injury free, but I do wonder if our gym is a little atypical...

Getting Fit, Even if It Kills You - New York Times 12/2005

... For his first CrossFit session, he swung a 44-pound steel ball with a handle over his head and between his legs.. ... That night he went to the emergency room, where doctors told him he had rhabdomyolysis, which is caused when muscle fiber breaks down and is released into the bloodstream, poisoning the kidneys. He spent six days in intensive care.

... The short grueling sessions aren't for the weekend gym warrior. The three-days-on, one-day-rest schedule ... "Murph," a timed mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 squats and then a second mile run. (A weighted vest is optional.)

Mr. Glassman, CrossFit's founder, does not discount his regimen's risks, even to those who are in shape and take the time to warm up their bodies before a session.

"It can kill you," he said. "I've always been completely honest about that."

... "If you find the notion of falling off the rings and breaking your neck so foreign to you, then we don't want you in our ranks," he said.

I rather doubt I'll be doing "Murph" in this life, and I like 1 day on, 2-3 days of something else. Good thing I've never run into "Coach" Glassman.