Month: June 2009
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Exorcism Legal in GA
Exorcism Alive and Well in Gwinnett County, Georgia.
At least, that is what the title of the news story should have been.
A mother was charged with cruelty to children and false imprisonment when she used handcuffs, food and water deprivation during an attempted three-day exorcism of her fifteen year old son. The charges were dropped yesterday.
This is disturbing to me, on several levels, but what really makes me nuts is this quote from the judge who made the ruling:
I have a hard time believing you’re going to get anybody to say in Gwinnett County, Georgia, that Satan doesn’t exist, that the Bible doesn’t exist, that the actual biblical descriptions of possession are not true. You’re not going to get anybody to say that’s all false. So it’s going to be really hard to claim that the basic precept behind any of her actions were false, malicious or criminal.
I’m willing to give this judge the benefit of the doubt. This is only three sentences and may be taken out of context. The context that it is presented in, however, implies that the judge thinks that Christians have a right to perform brutal medieval rituals on their children in the name of behavior modification. This would not fly if the family were Moslem, Jewish or atheist.
So! Everybody go out and torture a family member. When you’re questioned about it, just wave the bible.
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Today in Pictures
Well, today in a Few Pictures:
General Weirdness
Broken Bag
Feel free to talk amongst yourselves.
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Brick Workouts
I did a brick session today! “A what” you ask?
When training for multisport, it’s important to combine those sports during training. That may sound obvious, but it’s more difficult than you might think. For example, it’s frowned upon to dash out of the YMCA pool and jump on a spin bicycle. Likewise, if you’re going from bike to run, there are logistics involved in making sure your bike doesn’t get stolen, etc. This type of training, moving from one sport to the next with minimal rest between simulating race conditions, is called brick training, or just bricks.
Brick training1 is critical for acclimating muscles to the sudden switch as you transition from the swim to the bike, or from the bike to the run. Of the two, the bike-run transition is the more difficult. The change from biking to running can be a difficult and painful switch for your legs. Training for this makes it easier to manage, if not actually less difficult. As an example from the olympic triathlon I did last year, I managed a 56:43 10k, which boils down to 9:09 minutes per mile pace. However, the first mile of those 6.2 (10 k) I split in about 12 minutes. If you subtract out that crappy first mile, my last 5.2 were at an 8:36 pace. That is a huge difference in time and it’s all because of how painful that first mile was. Thus, bricks.
Of course, I don’t think anyone, even elite level triathletes, come out of the bike-run transition and pile along at the speed that will be their run race pace. Warming up those muscles is important, so an ascent up to the target pace is called for. I’ll have to ask around my triathlete friends and see what they think.
The swim-bike transition isn’t as difficult on the body as the bike-run. When you get out of the water, you may be a big logy-headed from the effort you were just exerting with your upper body, so it’s good to train the actual transition period; jogging to your bike and putting on your gear without falling over or passing out. I haven’t heard of anyone having any serious issues with their legs once they were on the bike.
Brick training can also give you an opportunity to practice your transition strategy. Making the most of the seconds in transition can save you, well, seconds. Or minutes, depending on what you do in T1 and T2. Personally, I feel that I’ve done a good job making my transitions efficient in the sprints and olympics that I’ve participated in. The only thing I can do right now to make them faster is to not wear socks. I’m not up to that point yet.2
Ironman training is proceeding apace. I need to concentrate on the pool this week.
1: Why do we call them “bricks”? No idea.
2: Once you stop wearing socks, you can also attach your bike shoes to the pedals and get into them while actually on your bike. That shaves a few seconds. First, no socks, though. -
Anatomy Lesson: Multifidus
Today’s lesson in anatomy is the multifidus spinae, an important muscle you may never have heard of. It consists of a number of “fleshy and tendinous fasciculi, which fill up the groove on either side of the spinous processes of the vertebrae…”1. Basically, it’s the part of the deepest muscles underneath your thumbs if you’re giving someone a backrub and you press into the fleshy groove just to the left and right of the spine. For a brief overview, wikipedia is your reference (although I really like my copy of Gray’s1.The multifidus performs the role of vertebral stabilization. It keeps your spine in line. It also happens to be one of my trunk-muscle achilles heels, if that’s not mixing my metaphoric anatomical references.
The reason for today’s anatomy lesson is simple: This is my first official injury of ironman training! As injuries go it’s pretty minor, but it caused me to alter the training plan. Therefore it counts. I strained the lower bit of my multifidus enough that I can feel it during normal activities (like sitting on my butt at work). Ironically, it hurts less when I’m running then when I’m walking. This might seem strange to you, but it’s a fact that muscles activate in different roles between walking and running; this must be an example of that2.
This is not the first time I’ve strained this muscle. This was the same injury that caused me to run really slowly during the Peachtree Road Race three years ago..
No worries. It’s already getting better. I’ll let you know how it goes.
1: Henry Gray, F.R.S., Grays Anatomy, 15th Edition, 1901
2: The best example of a muscle having vastly different roles between the walking stride and the running stride is the gluteus medius. During normal activity, the gluteus medius is a hip rotator, but during running its role changes to a pelvic stabilizer. I know this because the gluteus medius is a muscle that usually is severely neglected and underdeveloped in triathletes. -
Fun New Interchange Designs
I’m working with CORSIM this week. It is a microsimulation traffic modeling software that can tell you from a stochastic standpoint how well the traffic is going to move on your proposed roadway after certain improvements are installed.
One of the outputs of this software is a simulation that let’s you watch the cars run around. It’s a good debugging tool and display, and to that end, you can mess with the curvature of what would otherwise be straight point to point lines. Needless to say, you can screw it up.
Here’s what I ended up with while trying to get a nice arc out of that loop ramp.
This would probably increase congestion because people would go out of their way to drive on it. But, for the coup de grace…
I was highly entertained when both of these popped up. I confess, however, that the second one was done on purpose, just to see what it would spit out.
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New Career
Jenn thinks that the sweat staining on this shirt is indicative of my new job as Batman. Do you see it?
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Support the Morgan Falls Bridge!
The City of Sandy Springs, Georgia, has proposed a pedestrian bridge across the Chattahoochee River between Morgan Falls Park (Sandy Springs) and National Park Service land adjacent to Hyde Farm Cobb County). There is a public information meeting on June 17, 2009 from 7-9 PM at the North Fulton Government Service Center, 7741 Roswell Road, Sandy Springs, GA 30350. If you can’t make it to the meeting, you may comment at their online survey.
Why should you support this bridge? Because you want to walk or bike across the river without being hit by a car.
If you are not familiar with the geography and road network of East Cobb and North Fulton Counties, then you might not be aware that it is difficult to move from northwest to southeast due to the Chattahoochee River. The Chattahoochee is the primary land feature in this area, forcing roads to conform to its meanderings. Between where US 41 crosses “the Chatt” near Cumberland Mall (just south of I-75) and where SR 140/Holcomb Bridge Road crosses at the Gwinnett County border, there are only three pedestrian- and bicycle- accessible crossings. This is a distance of 19 miles along the river. That’s an average of 3.8 miles between crossings and that’s along the river. It’s much farther by road.
To make matters worse, all of the crossings mentioned (including the ones at the ends) are pedestrian unfriendly, designed as arterial roads to maximize the amount of vehicular traffic that may flow across the river. I can state with personal experience that of the five crossings, I would hesitate to use two of them (Johnson Ferry and US 41), and downright refuse to use another two (Roswell Road and Holcomb Bridge Road).
The Morgan Falls Bridge would address these concerns by building a ped/bike bridge which is accessible through low-volume streets on both sides of the river. It would … (dammit, I’ve falling into passive engineer talk! I hate the way I’ve been trained to write like this) … This bridge will make it easier to bike and walk across the river between the parks. From my personal perspective, it will make it easier to travel between Cobb County and Atlanta by bicycle. My route of choice to cross the river on bike is Johnson Ferry Road. Johnson Ferry is unfortunately steep on both sides of the river. It is fun going down, but very much un-fun going up. The Morgan Falls bridge would have less terrain for me to enjoy and that’s fine. If I need to train on hills I’ll go to the mountains.
The Map above shows the location of Morgan Falls park, which is one end of the bridge or you can use this link to get the Google Earth KMZ file that I hacked together.
Comment online or show up at the public information meeting! There is a vocal minority (primarily Cobb County citizens) who oppose this bridge and from professional experience I can tell you that the squeaky wheel indeed gets greased. All too often, the people who show up and/or comment on transportation projects are those opposed, rather than those for. Help make this project an exception and support the growth of Atlanta Metro’s pedestrian and bicycle accessibility.
Here is a quote from the public affairs officer:
Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area (CRNRA) is working with The Sandy Springs Conservancy, City of Sandy Springs and Cobb County on preliminary plans to construct a bridge below Morgan Falls Dam. The bridge would be for pedestrian and possibly bicycle use only. It would be constructed as a free span bridge over the Chattahoochee River and would connect visitors to the Sandy Springs’ riverside parks at Morgan Falls with National Park Service land in Cobb County below Hyde Farm. Funding for the bridge has not yet been obtained, but the planning and public review process began in March 2009. In addition to the bridge, the plan will evaluate possible trail connections to Hyde Farm and the Johnson Ferry North unit of CRNRA
Link to the Sandy Springs Conservancy
Directions to the North Fulton Government Service Center
Google Earth link to the project location
Chattahoochee River facts -
Life Equilibrium
As the saying goes, “Old Chemists never die, they merely reach equilibrium.”
I think in some respects I’ve reached my new equilibrium with work/play/live/drive/run. As you’re probably aware, I and my entire office were laid off on March 31 of this year as G&O shut down the Atlanta Office. I was picked up by Moreland Altobelli exactly four weeks later and I continue to do the traffic engineering thing. The changes since March 31 involved:
- 4 weeks of doing whatever the heck I wanted to which were immediately followed by 4 weeks of getting used to a new job, new coworkers, new ways of doing things
- Longer commute, with consequently less time for other activities
- Ramping up my Ironman training
- Shifting my sleep schedule to an hour earlier wake up
During all this time, we were also significantly committed to assisting some friends of ours first prepare and then move into their first home.
Now it’s the first week of June. I believe I’m getting used to waking at 5:15 AM, even though I don’t like it, plus the commute is only bad in the evenings1. I’m starting to get into the flow of my workout routine which had suffered for the past month. Now it’s on to doing some of the work on the house that needs to be done.
Things have changed a bit in my mindset. I can say that the difference in commute times is making me less willing to drive around town more than I have to. I’m already spending approximately two hours in a car everyday; I don’t like to add on to that unnecessarily. I’m also less willing to interrupt scheduled events for spontaneous items. That’s something that I’ll have to be mindful of. I don’t want to turn into a schedule nazi.
There are upsides to this equilibrium. You should start to see more blog posts out of me and maybe even a Talking Traffic episode or three. I will also stop feeling as guilty for neglecting my yard.
All hail my new equilibrium!
1: Although I have three times now just barely dodged2 a morning crash that shut down the interstate lanes I was using.
2: By “barely dodged” I mean that I drove through the area within 10 minutes of the crash. Nothing more exciting than that.