Notes

Good morning, Happy Tuesday. 😎

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While the rain was pouring down around 4 AM this morning, it has stopped and it’s going to be fairly sunny and mild by mid-day at least by December standards. All goes well, this might be my first chance to ride into work since the month got underway. It’s been tough with the snow, cold, and then loosing my bike lock. Plus I need to repair the front brake on my bike which is low on the brake fluid and needs new pads.

I got say I certainly do ride a lot of miles. 🚴 At this point, I am around 13,000 to 15,000 miles on my bike. All that commuting plus riding around town adds up. I don’t ride as much in the winter, but certainly in the summer I’m all around. That 17 mile commute round trip to work, igoring all side trips adds up, though this past few weeks it’s been a lot less. 🤷‍♂️ December is tough for riding, the trail is often wet or covered with ice and snow ☃️ not to mention it’s real cold out.

Installed both the state voter file and property tax database on my phone. 💾 Between the two, it’s like two gigabytes of data, which really isn’t that much as the Parquet file format compresses very well, and is so fast. I did it primarily for work – – I often get asked for data when I’m out of the office, 🏢 plus I’m always thinking of interesting ways to query and summarize the data. Did you see that NYS GIS is now posting a statewide shapefile of all election districts in state? Too bad it doesn’t quite match up with the state voter database for field names, and there still isn’t a statewide database of ED by ED election results, though Benjamin Rosenblatt has been collecting and aggregation such information. ❎

Went to Walmart and got groceries last night. Only $70 worth of groceries, so not a lot when you consider prices these days. 🍌 Still may want to run to the store before heading up to camp most likely on Thursday, 🏕️ I particularly want to get nuts 🥜 for roasting. I am thinking of heading out of town for Thursday to Saturday, before it gets too cold, though Sunday I’m planning on doing a family Christmas event 🎄 🎅 but that’s fine, it’s going to be cold come the weekend. 🌬️

Bad health 🧑‍⚕️

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People have real reason to be unsatisfied with public health in America. After decades of public health campaigns, most well meaning, the effective useful lifespan of the average American is stuck at 66 years old. Beyond that age, the average American is in poor health and unable to live a full life due to a serious health issue such as diabetes, heart attack, gout, breathing difficulties etc. Not all Americans but averaged together, beyond 66 years of age more Americans are severely crippled then not. And that’s a big failure of public health.

While it’s true that on paper American lifespans are longer than 50 years ago, much of that lifespan is not in good health. We’ve been warned for decades about the dangers of smoking and chemicals, when it’s really the sugars, fats, salts, and lack of exercise in every day life that’s killing Americans. Public health has failed to make a difference where it really matters.

Will bringing back cigarette smoking to office buildings and beef fat drenched French fries make Americans more healthy? Probably not. One unhealthy behavior doesn’t cancel out another. But the promises of banning such things has been a clear failure because it’s occurred at a time when cities only became more car dependent and people are eating more processed foods and walking less. Javon’s paradox!

It’s not like seatbelts in cars – it’s well established fact that drivers who use seatbelts are more reckless – though there are clear benefits to be buckled up during a crash. But it still makes for drivers who drive more recklessly and are more likely to get in an accident in the first place, as they know the risk of dying is lower in a crash then operating without safety equipment! There is an net benefit, but it’s not at a cost of more crashes.

Cpp Tutorials

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Cpp Tutorials

These tutorials explain the C language from its basics up to the newest features introduced by C 11. Chapters have a practical orientation, with example programs in all sections to start practicing what is being explained right away.