First water cooled build

Water cooling build in my wife’s computer – Part I

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment
Build Log:

Before constructing a loop, it’s typically recommended to rinse out all of the components you will be using – the water blocks, radiators, pump and reservoir – with distilled water. While it’s good to rinse out everything, it’s only necessary to rinse out the radiators. And if you Google around, you’ll find a lot of interesting ways to go about doing that – dilute acid mixtures, the “shake and drain” method, and so on.

But one of the more interesting methods of preparing the radiator came from a video I saw on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/X9TwhwVlllo

So that got me thinking. I didn’t need something as large as what he used, which is a whole-house water filter. So I looked at under-sink water filters instead. We’re still talking a decent expense, but with the right fittings, I could use the pump and reservoir to set up a makeshift loop to get distilled water flowing through the radiator and flushing it out.

Water filter: 3M Filtrete 3US-AS01

The tubing that comes with the water filter is 1/4″ ID, 3/8″ OD. Talk about some thin tubing. And it’s also very rigid, so finding some more flexible tubing might be worth your while. But Bitspower makes fittings that will work with this tubing, and I managed to find a couple at my local Microcenter – actually they had only two in stock when I bought them, so I got lucky on that mark.

Before flushing the radiator, the filter still needs to be primed. And you need to prime it with distilled water, not tap water. So I built a small loop to run from the pump to the filter back to the reservoir, which fed directly to the pump. I let this run for about 15 minutes.

primingloop.png

Then came the loop to flush the radiator. In building the loop, I used a length of 1/2″x3/4″ tubing to run from the pump to the radiator. The fitting that in the previous loop ran from the pump to the filter now feeds out of the radiator. The purpose of this, as the above video shows, is to filter out the crap and gunk in the radiator that results from the manufacturing. And it’s a much easier – okay, lazier – way of getting that gunk out.

flushradiator.png

I let this loop run for actually several hours while I tore apart my wife’s machine to get the mainboard out and prepare her CPU for the new water block. Now because of how little resistance the loop provides, there was a lot of cavitation in the reservoir, meaning there was no way to get all the air out of the loop. Had I used a small bucket as the “reservoir”, there probably wouldn’t have been nearly as much cavitation and air churning in the reservoir, so I later put a small towel under the pump so it wasn’t making nearly as much noise.

As I said, I let this loop run while I tore apart the computer and got the mainboard and graphics cards out of the machine and turned my attention to mounting the water block to the CPU.

Recall from the introduction that her CPU cooler was previously the ThermalTake Water 2.0 Performer. The ThermalTake CPU coolers have a bracket for under the mainboard, and that bracket has an adhesive foam on it that sticks to the mainboard. Needless to say, that was a pain to try to remove, as it required going slow and steady to separate the bracket from the mainboard. And I didn’t exactly get it all off there, but I’m not concerned as it’s not exactly in view. I actually debated on just cutting the bloody thing instead of messing with the adhesive foam.

Once the bracket was off, I got the mounting screws through the holes on the mainboard.

mountingscrews.png

And mounted the CPU cooler to the CPU. For the thermal compound, I didn’t use what came with the CPU block. My go-to thermal compound has been Innovation Cooling‘s IC Diamond compound. It’s worked quite well for me in the past and I see no reason to think it won’t work well here.

cpucooler.png

And that’s where I’ll leave this iteration. In the next part, I’ll discuss the start of building out the loop, mounting the radiator and figuring out what fittings to use.

First water cooled build

Water cooling build in my wife’s computer – Introduction

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment
Build Log:

After tons of research and drooling over water-cooled builds I’d seen on YouTube, I came up with the bright idea to build a full custom water cooling loop in my wife’s computer.

Part of the concern is the fact the graphics cards she was running (details below on initial setup) ran hotter than I was comfortable under load. An option I was exploring to alleviate that concern is the Kraken G10 by NZXT, which allows you to mount certain all-in-one CPU liquid coolers to graphics cards, provided you have one of the right type. It also has a bracket for a fan to actively cool everything else on the card – since the CPU cooler will be mounted only onto the GPU – but reports indicate you may need heatsinks for the memory and voltage regulator modules (VRMs) on the card.

So before getting further, here’s what I started with:

With the ThermalTake cooler, her CPU was staying nice and cool – never getting much above the mid-50s (that’s Celsius) under typical load. And it was significantly quieter and less annoying than the stock cooler that comes with the AMD chip – we could only stand it for a couple days after initially building her system before I started researching other options.

But the graphics cards would regularly get into the 70s and 80s under load. While there was space and potential mount points to make use of Kraken G10s, only the GPUs on the board would be cooled, and I’d have to find other options to cool the VRMs and memory – and my research was not coming up with anything useful for the GTX 660 reference board. But the other complication was simply the fact it would’ve been three all-in-one CPU coolers in the same case. Finding mount points for all of them would’ve been interesting in the 750D. If she had, say, the 650D or another comparable mid-tower ATX case, then things probably would’ve been a little easier, but no guarantees on that mark.

So I started looking at custom water cooling loops. What initially started pushing me in that direction was running across YouTube tech commentator JayzTwoCents, which got my feet wet on the idea of water cooling after initially considering it. From there I found Singularity Computers and the build logs he has posted, and I think that set my mind toward doing that. So after tons of research, I started buying parts to build out the custom loop, starting with the easy stuff:

On the GPU water blocks, EK was pretty much the only option available for the GTX 660. I couldn’t find anyone else making a full-cover block for that card. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as EK is the company I’d seen continually recommended for water blocks for graphics cards. The only company I’d seen recommended close to as much as EK is XS-PC, but, again, they didn’t have a full-cover block that would fit her cards.

And at the time I bought them, the only company I could find distributing it in the US was out of stock, so I had to order it from EK… who is in Slovenia. And then, not long after the order arrived, the US distributor had it in stock – had I been able to order it from the US supplier, I would’ve been able to save $30 on shipping. On the plus side, it was shipped via UPS 3-day, and it was literally 3 days to deliver: I ordered it on a Friday from EK in Slovenia, and it arrived for pickup in Kansas City the following Monday. Had I ordered it from the US supplier, it likely would’ve been later in the week when it arrived unless I paid extra for a 3-day or quicker option.

On the CPU block, I was mixed in what to select as there are quite a few options available. I ultimately decided on AlphaCool thanks to a video I saw from JayzTwoCents reviewing the CPU block I ultimately purchased. Most of the fittings I ultimately used in this build were AlphaCool fittings, again thanks to JayzTwoCents, along with some fittings from Bitspower and Swiftech – the latter courtesy of my local Microcenter. And the radiator I chose also because of a JayzTwoCents review.

For the tubing I went with 1/2″x3/4″ tubing I found at my local Home Depot. It’s stiffer than other tubing that I’d seen recommended, but it was also about 70 cents a foot, instead of several dollars a foot for other options I’d seen online. Plus it’s available just down the road from where I live. Yeah I know I’ll probably have to replace it at the same time I replace the coolant, but that’s not a huge deal for me, as soft tubing typically needs to be periodically replaced anyway. That’s just the nature of it.

And at the price I paid, I could replace it three times in a year and still come out ahead cost-wise over other options I’ve seen available!

Speaking of coolant, only one name was in mind for that: Mayhems. Specifically, Mayhems XT-1 Clear. Initially I was looking at the X1 coolant, but the XT-1’s biodegradability (90% over 10 days, compared to 85% over 30 days for the X1) and extremely low toxicity won me over.

So that wraps up this introduction. In the next part, I’ll talk about preparing the components and starting to build out the loop, including tearing down my wife’s computer.

Economics

It’s not an "anti-college" debate

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Let’s start with a simple question: if I recommend that you buy a PC over a Mac, am I anti-Mac? I think a lot of us would probably say No, especially if the context of that question includes a small discussion of your needs. Personally I have recommended Macs to people over PCs, but that was after asking numerous questions leading up to that recommendation.

So if I recommend a high school graduate pursue an apprenticeship over going to college, am I anti-college? For some reason, it seems many would say Yes. Anyone have a clue as to how the hell that fallacy came about?

For one, I am a college graduate. I have a Bachelor’s degree in business administration, plus an Associate’s degree in computer programming, and I’m putting serious consideration toward going back to community college to get a paralegal degree – for those curious, a paralegal is to a lawyer what a nurse is to a doctor. So to say I’m anti-college would be incorrect.

But at the same time, to say that everyone should go to college is also not correct. Yet the idea persists, and the most recent incarnation of it I’ve seen is Mandi Woodruff’s article on Yahoo Finance called "Is the anti-college debate over?"

Let’s get the fallacy out of the way: it’s not an "anti-college" debate. Instead it’s about asking the serious question of whether a high school graduate could spend 4 years of their life in a better way. There are people without even high school diplomas who are making more money than those with college and graduate degrees. It’s all about finding the right ideas and running with them. To support the idea the debate is essentially over, Woodruff references a recent Pew Research Center article that shows:

  • Median full-time earnings for college graduates is 45,500 (approximately $22/hr full time) per annum compared to 28,000 ($13.50/hr full time) for a diploma
  • Unemployment rate among high school graduates is a little over 3x the unemployment rate for college graduates
  • Poverty rate among high school graduates is 3.75x higher than among college graduates

Some pretty striking numbers. But does that mean that if everyone goes to and graduates from college, that the unemployment rate will be below the rate for Q4 20001According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for September through December 2000 was 3.9%? No! Instead as more people shift to being college graduates, the unemployment and poverty numbers for college graduates will go up. Because the college degree won’t keep you out of poverty and won’t keep you off the unemployment line, plain and simple. The degree is no guarantee of success.

And that is what the "anti-college" debate is all about. As such, the "anti-college" debate is not over.

Arrogantly, Woodruff opens her article saying, "Say what you will about rising tuition, student loan bubbles and the merits of early entrepreneurship but, as with global warming and human evolution, you simply can’t ignore the facts."

We’re not ignoring the facts. Fact: the numbers paint a clear picture that a good way to advance your earnings potential is by getting a college degree.

Fact: A college degree is not the only way to do that. But the "pro-college" side of the debate keeps presuming that to be the case. The "anti-college" side acknowledges that reality, along with the reality that not everyone who starts college finishes – over 1 in 4 college students drop out after 1 year or less, and over 2 in 5 students at 4-year college drop out. And not everyone with a college degree will make more than those with a high school diploma – there are plenty of examples of people without college degrees making a comfortable living.

Plus the degree doesn’t determine your earnings potential. It’s all about what you do with the knowledge that degree is to represent.

The bigger problem is that most do not follow their passions, so what they earn when they start their careers is all they earn throughout their careers, or not significantly higher than that, when you take their future earnings and adjust for inflation. They also probably do not take the opportunities to better themselves, to make themselves more valuable to their employers and to other employers in their area.

Employers know they need to pay their college-graduated employees more than their community college graduates and high school-only graduates because college graduates tend to be saddled with significantly higher amounts of debt compared to 2-year graduates. According to American Student Assistance, four-year college students are almost twice as likely to borrow money than community college students, and more than twice as likely to borrow as students who pursue professional degrees or certificates, with about 1 in 10 college graduates having over $40,000 in student loan debt by the time they graduate. According to CNN Money, the average new graduate in 2012 had over $29,000 in debt. At an interest rate of 4% across 10 years, that debt will cost them about $3,600 per year until paid off. If that debt is refinanced to a 30 year loan (something many borrowers stupidly do), then you’re looking at about $1,700 per year for 30 years at 4% interest.

They will also be saddled with other living expenses and take on other debt in the form of car purchases and credit cards to buy things they will need when starting out on their own. All of that eats into their salaries and saps their discretionary income. In other words, higher earnings does not necessarily translate into higher standards of living, an assumption so many people tend to make.

And if the borrower falls behind on that student loan debt, it cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, meaning it will follow the borrower until it is paid in full.

Employers are paying higher for college graduates knowing their employees will have loans to pay off, and it’s better to pay an employee enough to cover what they expect living expenses to be than to have employees who can barely make ends meet. Sure they may be paying the employee more than what they might actually be worth to the company, but the company makes up for that by providing only cost-of-living adjustments to future salaries unless the employee can demonstrate additional value in some other way, thus warranting higher than just mere inflation adjustments to their salaries.

All of that debt needs to be paid back, and that hits the discretionary spending for the borrowers. That is why the economy is still being sluggish in its "recovery". When you have a mountain of debt to pay back – whether due to borrowing, collections, judgments, garnishments or foreclosures – it takes away from spending in other areas, meaning you have less to spend overall, and less money circulates within the economy to keep it going. You cut back to make ends meet, meaning less revenue for businesses, and the problem just cascades from there.

So why is the poverty rate for high school graduates higher than college graduates? To pursue higher-earning jobs, you obviously need the skills and education to qualify for those positions. College is not the only way to obtain them. I was learning what I needed to know before I stepped foot in a classroom, and my self-training has given me more than my classroom training ever did.

Beyond this, in today’s economy, college graduates are going after the jobs high school graduates tended to pursue. According to ProCon.org, 1 in 3 college graduates had a job requiring little more than a high school diploma in 2012, while 1 in 2 college graduates in 2011 had no job or were working only part time. Obviously this is going to put a squeeze on those with only a high school diploma, as fewer jobs requiring the skills of a college graduate means those grads – with their large debt loads – seek other employment, displacing those with lesser educations. This also limits the earning potential of the college graduate, both in the short and long term.

Further, of who the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls the 30 fastest growing jobs, only 12 require a Bachelor’s or better. There’s also a growing "skills gap" in the United States. It is estimated that approaching 1 in 2 job openings in the US are for "middle skill" jobs like construction, plumbing and electrical work. There isn’t enough labor to fill those jobs, though, so there is plenty of potential for people to take on an apprenticeship and earn a middle-class income in the process because of demand for those jobs and the services they provide. Even a trade school would do the trick for significantly less than the cost of a 4-year degree while still having nearly the same earning potential.

A generation ago, apprenticeships and trade schools along with the military taught people skills that could make them a living. And it tended to be better education because you tended to be taught through hard experience as well. That’s not exactly true today, but with the growing skills gap in the US, it needs to become true again.

All of this will play into the advice that should be given to high school students. It may be more beneficial for the student to take on an apprenticeship and learn a trade than to go to college, depending on what they think they want to do with the rest of their life, assuming their desires are realistic. Other students may be better served going to college and getting a 4 year degree.

Either way, there are jobs to be filled but not enough people who can fill them, and that is the problem that needs to be corrected. But touting the statistics on 4 year degrees isn’t going to improve an economy that is still dependent on the laws of supply and demand.

References[+]

Marriage and Relationships

Recognizing the obvious

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Let’s start with something that should be quite obvious:

Marriage is a union, to be sure, but it’s a union that should liberate, not incarcerate. Real love shouldn’t limit a person’s potential, it should expand it.

Seth Adam Smith is at it again:

I’m sure it may come as a shock to some people, but I let my wife go. It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do, but it was the right thing for the both of us.

He’s not talking about divorce, of course. Let’s get real. Instead it seems he’s finally realized something that should’ve been quite obvious to him for quite a long while: different people are different. He even goes so far as to admit that he and his wife are near polar opposites. In the midst of the poetic allegory of his article, he derives a point of view from either Ever After or Fiddler on the Roof (though he attributes the quote to his wife): "A fish may love a bird, but where would they live?"

And from this he comes up with the idea of a birdbath:

The bird bath is a symbol for our middle ground—the place where we come together—but it’s also the place from which we feel comfortable to let each other go. To "let go" of someone is to love them enough to let them fly or swim away (or to be themselves) and yet trust that they will always come back.

Sounds very poetic and romantic, doesn’t it? That old "let him/her go, and if it was meant to be, they’ll come back to you". Has he been watching Serendipity on repeat? Now given that movie stars Kate Beckinsale, I wouldn’t blame him, but… moving on…

Real love tells me to let Kim fly and trust that she’ll always come back. I have to let her go so she can chase her dreams, pursue her education, and develop her talents. Additionally, I have to let go of my fears that she might fly away and never come back. If the fish were to clip the bird’s wings, he would risk trimming her dreams and smothering her altogether.

Let’s rewind, shall we? In response to your previous article called "Marriage Isn’t For You" (my rebuttal here), you elaborated on the situation to NBC Today:

As Smith explained to TODAY.com, he began to struggle as Kim became ever more dedicated to her graduate studies in theater, which led the couple to relocate to Florida. Feeling isolated, Smith said he began to push Kim away.

Looking back, Smith knows his behavior was defensive, but he couldn’t help it when the tension culminated in an argument. Smith had been expecting this “ticking time bomb,” anticipating a blowout with Kim mustering just as much anger and frustration as he felt.

And now you’re talking about letting your wife "fly away" and hoping she’ll always be coming back home to you. Okay either you’ve got your mind filled with poetic allegory that you write down simply because it sounds good – hey I play on words myself as well, it’s why I have a blog – or you truly are delusional.

All of your poetic allegory can be boiled down to one sentence: Recognize each other’s differences and communicate with each other in how to work those differences, as well as your similarities, toward something workable for a sustainable and, hopefully, stable future. But then that’s not poetic is it? Or obscure for that matter.

Here’s the thing every couple needs to learn at some point, preferably long before wedding rings enter the picture: you each will want to do your own separate things. It’s a common point of advice for couples that you each have your own separate hobbies, things you like to do apart from each other, even… taking separate vacations (gasp!). But at the same time, whatever activities or hobbies you take on should not be to the detriment of your relationship and life together. If one person loves to travel, but you don’t have the money to do it, compromises have to be made.

Your wife is pursuing graduate studies in theater. You are pursuing swimming. Now what you need to do is find out how both of you can make your separate passions workable toward a mutual goal of a life together. It doesn’t take a birdbath analogy to recognize that, nor to express it. The analogy is poetic, I’ll admit, but wholly unnecessary.

So instead of "letting them go", what you actually need to be doing is being an active, but realistic source of encouragement. Familiarize yourself with what your wife is pursuing, and encourage your wife to become familiar with what you pursue. You needn’t share passions, but being familiar will allow you to be encouraging and understanding at the same time. At the same time, you need to be an ear for your wife when she wants to unload, and vice versa. This is where having a basic understanding of her passions and pursuits will be of great importance and assistance.

But you also need to have the courage to tell your wife when her pursuits are harming your relationship. This, as I mentioned in my earlier article, requires communication. It requires you being honest with each other. I’m not entirely sure if you’re at that point. Instead it sounds like you’re trying to rationalize away something by using hindsight and deriving a birdbath.

Constitution

An amendment to support

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Normally I’m not one for amending the Constitution of the United States, and I highly scrutinize any calls to amend the Constitution. But Daylight Saving Time has me in a little bit of a pro-amendment kick right now.

Under Article I, Section 8, one of the enumerated powers of Congress is to “fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”. This includes the standards around time and how it is tracked and measured. As such, I think we need to amend the Constitution to limit this power:

The power to fix the Standard of Weights and Measures shall not be construed as to allow the adjustment of the day’s hours without the consent of three-fourths of the States. The standard of hours that exists on the first of January of the year following the enactment of this amendment shall persist until overridden under the terms of this amendment.

In other words, make non-DST the default, and if Congress and the President want daylight saving time, they’ve got to take the issue up with the States first. Or we could even take it one step further and put it up for a national referendum.

The idea behind this is simple: daylight saving time is disruptive, and studies have shown little benefit and actually a bit of disruption. It benefits some industries while negatively affecting others. The chance of heart attack actually increases in the days following the spring transition but does not have a corresponding equal reduction in the days following the autumn transition. The goals of reducing energy usage are no longer met by the transition due to major changes in energy usage across the country and the world, and there are disruptions in productivity following each transition as well

So this is one area where I would fully back amending the Constitution, to remove from Congress the power to enact or re-enact daylight saving time without the States consenting or even the direct consent of the People through national referendum.

Abortion/Feminism/Religion

Body autonomy

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Matt,

It seems you got ahead of yourself when writing your response to “Rachel”. I’m not going to address the flawed hypothetical presented as it is a severely flawed hypothetical when trying to support the idea of abortion, but the rest of your ideas attacking the very idea of body autonomy go a bit off the mark. You make five points to attack the idea of body autonomy, so let’s get right into this.

According to bodily autonomy, a mother could not be judged harshly for smoking, drinking, doing coke, and going skydiving (hopefully not all in the same day) while 6 months pregnant. If you really believe that a woman’s body is autonomous — that she has absolute jurisdiction over it — then you must defend a mother who does things that could seriously harm her unborn child, even if she hasn’t chosen to abort it. This is not a slippery slope argument; this is a reasonable and inevitable application of your principle.

Aside from “doing coke”, there is no law that says a woman cannot smoke, drink or go skydiving while pregnant – even all in the same day if she so desires. It certainly would be very bad judgment for a woman who is 6 months pregnant to do any or all of those things, but I am aware of no law that forbids such activities.

But I do not have to support or defend any woman who demonstrably places her unborn child in harm. If I see a woman smoking, drinking, doing coke and/or skydiving, regardless of whether she is pregnant, I certainly can and likely will judge the wisdom of her decisions and actions. I’m sure when Kari Byron was playing with guns on MythBusters while in her third trimester, there were people screaming at the screen and writing nasty letters to the Discovery Channel about it. Taking into account the fact she was wearing a bullet-resistant vest around her abdomen and the fact there were safety officers there at the time this was happening, was her decision to participate in that particular “myth” – they were testing the idea of curving bullets – a wise decision? Even with as vehemently pro-gun as I am, I’m still inclined to say no.

Am I inconsistent in my application of body autonomy? No.

The fact that what she did was all perfectly allowable under the law does not mean she is immune from having her actions scrutinized by others. But what allows me to scrutinize and judge her actions while still being consistent with the idea of body autonomy is simply that I wasn’t calling for Kari to be arrested or face some other reprisal because of her actions. Now if in swinging around that 1911 she unintentionally shot or injured someone on site, or even herself, then the circumstances have changed.

There are all kinds of things that individuals do that are unwise even if legal. A person’s actions being legal does not make those actions immune from scrutiny.

I support decriminalizing drugs, and in some cases I support full-out legalization. And to support that, I cite the idea of body autonomy – if a person wants to smoke pot or snort coke, who am I to say they cannot as opposed to should not. I can point to all kinds of things showing why a person should not smoke pot or snort coke. And I can say to someone “you shouldn’t do that”. But the moment I say they cannot do something is where the burden falls on me to justify forcefully stopping them from doing such, or subjecting them to any kind of reprisal for their actions.

But under your logic here, Matt, you seem to think that those of us who support legalizing drugs must also be willing to do the drugs we want legalized. Sorry but that’s not how it works. That’s like saying a woman calling for legalizing prostitution should also be willing to engage in prostitution. Uh, no.

And from there we can see the rest of your arguments against body autonomy break down.

I’m throwing this in here because most pro-aborts will not (vocally) defend abortion at 8 or 9 months. But — if bodily autonomy is your claim — you must. Is a woman’s body less autonomous when she’s been pregnant for 35 weeks? There is no way around it: bodily autonomy means that it is moral to kill a fully formed baby, at seven months, or eight months, or nine months.

It is the pro-lifer that argues, albeit implicitly, that a woman has zero body autonomy while she is pregnant, and that any claim to body autonomy is abrogated for agential claims of body autonomy for the fetus. I’ve gotten into arguments where it has been argued – despite tons of evidence (and dead women) to the contrary – that there is no such thing as a medical condition that is caused or exacerbated by an active pregnancy that places the mother’s life in danger. Worse are those that acknowledge such conditions, but still say the carrying mother must not abort the pregnancy to save her own life.

I can still support the idea of body autonomy while being against what you’ve said.

Aborting a pregnancy is to remove the fetus from the mother. In the 8th or 9th month, this tends to be called “inducing labor”. In the first trimester and early second trimester, the process itself is… not kind, to say the least, but it is still the basic general idea, and that has been the general idea for the last 5,000 years it has been practiced. That is the general idea when a woman swallows down a pill or potion with the intent of getting her body to eject the fetus – in case you’re curious, yes you can find articles describing how to do that online.

But again, what you’re saying is that arguing for body autonomy means I cannot personally hold views against certain things. And that is certainly not the case.

You say that our bodies cannot be ‘used’ without our ‘consent.’ Why should this apply only to pregnancy and organ donations?

It doesn’t. The fact one person is arguing from body autonomy in the context of abortion doesn’t mean abortion is the only context for the body autonomy argument. As an example, how would you feel about laws compelling blood donation, with the forced extraction of your blood being the penalty for noncompliance? You’d probably be rather appalled at such an idea.

Same if a legislator somewhere were to introduce a law calling for guys to donate sperm on a periodic basis, with forced extraction as a penalty for noncompliance.

An argument for absolute bodily autonomy means that it can’t be illegal, or considered immoral, for a parent to decline to do any of these things, so long as their decision was made in the name of bodily autonomy.

And a parent actually can decline to do any of those things at any time. It is not any single instance of any of those things that draws the ire of the government, but a pattern that can be demonstrated to exist, at which point we call it neglect, abuse, abandonment, or any combination therein. While it might seem appalling for a parent to decline to provide care to their child, it is not uncommon. Every parent does it, even if you don’t realize it, or you delegate the task of providing care to someone else. If you’ve ever said to your spouse after they get home from work “He’s all yours now”, congratulations, you’ve decided to not provide care to your child and instead delegate, or rather conscribe someone else.

And when a pattern does develop and can be demonstrated, there are procedures that exist for ensuring the child is removed from such a home and placed with people who are able and willing to provide the proper care.

But here’s something you’ll likely find appalling: the relationship of the child to the parent does not automatically entitle the child to the fruits of the parent’s labors. Thanks to several hundred million years of evolution, biologically we are wired in such a fashion, to care for the children born to us. But that does not automatically mean your child is entitled to what you can provide. But then given you said being married entitles you to every iota of respect from your wife, I guess I can’t entirely fault you for making that kind of fallacy.

Instead what we recognize is two things: the biological parent is immediately charged with the care of the child unless it is demonstrated they are unfit to do so, and such a charge carries with it certain duties and responsibilities that must be carried out. This is why I commonly say that parents do not actually have “parental rights”, rights that exist simply by virtue of being a parent with a child to whom you are charged with providing care. Instead parents have duties and responsibilities and a fair amount of latitude in carrying them out.

If I can ‘do what I want with my body,’ then it becomes very difficult to launch a salient moral or legal attack against a man who chooses to sit in a playground in front of children and pleasure his own body.

That is utter bullshit, Matt. You seem to think that one person’s claim to body autonomy automatically nullifies everyone else’s claims to any rights whatsoever. If a person does do such a thing, everyone else who is around can certainly drive that person away. To say that the man’s claim to body autonomy means everyone else must leave him be and just put up with him is absolutely atrocious.

That’s like saying that I can sit on a park bench shooting up crack in front of schoolchildren and no one can do or say anything about it. Even if shooting up crack were entirely legal under the law, that does not mean everyone must put up with me doing it. And if I choose to park it on a bench in front of children to do so, others can choose to intervene in that matter, doing everything short of what could be considered assault to get me to leave.

You also forget the fact that society and common law recognize what is called necessitation. Self-defense falls under this. In criminal law, the claim of necessitation on the part of the defendant to a criminal charge means the defendant believed it was reasonably necessary to break one law to prevent or end the commission of a greater harm. Body autonomy does not mean you have the right to harm others, and harm comes in forms other than just physical harm.

After all, you seem to think body autonomy means I can snort up a huge loogie onto a sidewalk, while in likely every jurisdiction in the US doing that will get you, at the least, a citation from a law enforcement officer if you’re caught. Can I claim body autonomy as I sneeze and cough wildly around others? No. It’s rude at best, contagious in the intermediate, fatally so at the worst. Same with the loogie left on the sidewalk.

Once we’ve considered every complexity and nuance, we can rightly say that our bodies are autonomous in some ways, and in some circumstances, but not in others. We cannot say that they are absolutely autonomous, and I find it hard to believe that anyone truly thinks that.

Last I checked, the concept of autonomy does not come with conditions. We have long recognized that a person should be able to do as they please, so long as in so doing they do not demonstrably harm others – which is what makes your idea that body autonomy means you can masturbate in public without consequence all the more appalling.

If my body is autonomous, my person must be autonomous, and if my person is autonomous, then my very existence is autonomous, and if my very existence is autonomous, then it is simply unacceptable and (by your logic) immoral for anyone to expect me to do anything for anyone at any point for any reason.

I think you’ve overlooked the big difference between expecting you to do something for someone else and forcing you to do such. It is immoral and unacceptable to force you to do something against your will. You recently argued on your blog that “Business owners should have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason“, and I wholly agree with that stance. But when a person walks into an establishment, there is an expectation of service, but to force the proprietor to provide that service against their will is immoral.

It is not immoral to expect you to do something. It becomes a whole other matter when I say you must do something, and an even greater matter still when I attempt to force you to do it.

If you concede that we ought to be expected or even required to do certain things, then you are placing limits on our bodily autonomy. If you place limits on our bodily autonomy, then you are admitting that limits can be placed on our bodily autonomy.

To say that someone can expect something of me is not placing limits on my autonomy. Whether my actions or the results of my actions meet, exceed or fall short of someone’s expectations is not up to me, especially since expectations can change on the fly. But what about being required to do something? Well if you agree to do something, then that is an implicit requirement, but it is a requirement you voluntarily brought on yourself. And your failure to act as you have agreed can likely result in what is called a tort injury – and the response to most tort injuries isn’t to force you to do something, but to merely compensate the other for your not doing what you promised.

It is when requirements are made of you without you having any opportunity to examine those requirements and either assent or object to them that is problematic.

As such the only reasonable limitation – if you can really call it that – on a person’s autonomy is simply that you cannot harm others. Any additional limitations to your autonomy that you voluntarily take upon yourself is entirely your concern and not anyone else’s.

Marriage and Relationships

Respect must always be earned

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

If you haven’t yet heard of Matt Walsh, you must not have been on the Internet for long. Recently he wrote a post called “Your husband doesn’t have to earn your respect“. And for about the first half of the article, he’s pretty spot on:

But I’ve noticed that the corollary – a message about the respect women must give men, a message challenging wives and encouraging husbands – isn’t quite so palatable for many people. Disrespect for men has become standard practice. That scene I witnessed was sad but unremarkable; we’ve all watched that kind of thing play out a thousand times over. Men are disrespected by their wives – they’re disrespected publicly, they’re disrespected privately, they’re disrespected and then told that they have no right to be upset about it because they aren’t worthy of respect in the first place.

Another place where you can see this attitude is in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, in which the matriarch of the family, Maria, says “The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants.”

As Matt further points out in his article, it is not an uncommon point of view that the woman is in charge of the house, that the husband is subordinate to her, and that his role is to keep her happy. If a husband is buying flowers or jewelry for his wife, it’s to buy his way out of trouble rather than just because. If you remember the show Home Improvement, starring Tim Allen, one episode featured a bouquet of flowers the florist calls the “Tim Taylor Foot-in-the-Mouth Special”, which apparently had been purchased so often that Tim’s wife, Jill, could easily rattle off what went into it.

That also was almost 20 years go. Matt says that “disrespect for men is a joke to us now”. No, it’s been a joke for at least the last two decades.

The problem is certainly well observed and readily observable. Part of the problem is that women know that in divorces involving kids, the woman will almost always receive primary custody. If there’s a house involved along with the kids, she’ll likely also get that, and he’ll be forced to pay alimony and child support. A legal landscape has been created to where men have little choice but to submit to their wives to avoid having their home and kids used as bargaining chips against them in a bitter divorce proceeding.

Divorce is costly and messy, and I think it’s safe to say that neither spouse wants to go through it. So it shouldn’t be surprising that some spouses, likely wives mostly, realize they can use that as a means of getting whatever they want, threatening divorce and taking the house and kids if compliance is not absolute.

Matt is correct as well that men need respect. But so do women, let’s not discount that. If you want to see that notion readily observed, all one needs to do is look at any high school and middle school and the things girls are at times willing to do in order to earn the respect of the other girls around them, or of a particular girl seen as socially superior.

Where Matt’s article goes south is actually when he quotes the Bible:

These cultural messages aren’t harmful because they hurt my manly feelings; they’re harmful because of what they do to young girls. Society tells our daughters that men are boorish dolts who need to be herded like goats and lectured like school boys. Then they grow up and enter into marriage wholly unprepared and unwilling to accept the Biblical notion that “wives should submit to their husbands” because “the husband is the head of the wife.” [Ephesians 5]

The idea that one person, be in the husband or wife, must be in charge, that one must submit to the other, gives marriage an adversarial quality to it. Why must the wife submit to the husband or the husband to the wife? Why must there be any kind of submission in the relationship or marriage? I’ve asked that question numerous times and have yet to receive an answer that cannot be boiled down to just “the Bible says so”.

Submission shouldn’t exist in a marriage. Instead what needs to be there is communication and compromise. Compromise may look a lot like submission when it is being exercised, but there is a huge difference. In submission, one always cedes their wills and desires to the other. In compromise, both cede their wills and desires to come to a mutually-beneficial decision.

Now which do you have in your marriage, submission or compromise?

Often, people will say that a husband should only be respected if he “earns” it. This attitude is precisely the problem. A wife ought to respect her husband because he is her husband, just as he ought to love and honor her because she is his wife. Your husband might “deserve” it when you mock him, berate him, belittle him, and nag him, but you don’t marry someone in order to give them what they deserve. In marriage, you give them what you’ve promised them, even when they aren’t holding up their end of the bargain.

And things go further south still, and here is where Matt becomes part of the problem.

Getting married does not mean the spigot of respect from the wife is always open, nor does it mean the husband’s spigot of love is always open. Marriage is little more than a government-enforced “till death do you part” legal bind to each other. I said this in a previous article discussing a husband who pursued divorce over his wife’s weight gain:

Relationships, including marriages, are about give and take. Marriage does not mean that you agree to put up with whatever the other throws at you. We all have only so much patience. And if your significant other starts him or herself down an unhealthy and self-destructive path, you have right to demand they change or reverse course, and threaten to leave and actually leave the relationship if they refuse to do so. Doing so does not mean you are not committed to the relationship, nor does it mean you don’t love them. It means you recognize they are no longer committed to holding up their end of the bargain.

Matt is correct when saying that the husband needs respect. But it is not automatically due and payable to him simply because he’s married to his wife. Sorry that’s not the way it works, and to declare that to be the case means that the wife has no choice in the matter but to respect her husband, even if he doesn’t respect her. At the same time, his love to her is also not automatically due and payable simply because she’s married to him.

Everything in a relationship is a two-way street. Respect is also and always a two-way street. So is love. If you’re not getting it, it’s likely because you’re not giving it. But if you are giving it but not getting it in return, that’s going to take a toll on the relationship. And it doesn’t matter if it’s the wife or the husband who’s being more of the giver than the getter when it comes to respect.

It’s this line of thinking that respect becomes automatic because of the marriage vows that feeds into thinking that children must always respect their parents simply because they are the child’s parents, which is another notion that comes from the Bible. Again, that’s not the way it works.

This doesn’t mean that a man has a license to be lazy, or abusive, or uncaring. He is challenged to live up to the respect his wife affords him. If his wife parcels out her respect on some sort of reward system basis, the husband has nothing for which to strive. As the respect diminishes, so too does his motivation to behave respectably. Respect is wielded like a ransom against him, and he grows more isolated and distant all the while.

He’s spot-on with this notion, but it contradicts the idea that the wife “ought to respect her husband because he is her husband” (emphasis mine). Again to say that the wife should respect her husband simply because he is her husband essentially means that nothing he does should diminish the amount of respect she shows him. That means that, contrary to this assertion, it is actually a license to be lazy, abusive and/or uncaring, because it means she has little option but to put up with it, because, as the Bible says, she is to submit to him.

And the notion is continually displayed throughout the remainder of the article: women should always respect their husbands. He even concludes the article saying, “Respect your husbands. Even when he doesn’t deserve it.”

We all have limits. Everything is conditional in some way. There is no escaping that reality. The husband or wife who stands up and says that there isn’t anything that could cause them to contemplate divorce is a person with their head in either the clouds or buried in the sand. Not being able to immediately say what would cause you to contemplate divorce does not mean nothing will. It just means you’ve never contemplated the idea.

But to say that respect and love both must be unconditional ignores reality. Again, we all have limits, and you can only say your love and/or respect are unconditional so long as you never encounter a condition wherein you would no longer give respect and/or love to your spouse. Again, going on what I quoted of myself earlier, marriage does not mean that you agree to put up with whatever the other does, nor does it mean the other must put up with whatever you do. We all have limits, we all have only so much patience.

There are always conditions under which a person will withdraw their respect for their spouse, even if you’ve never contemplated or encountered them. I highly doubt you’d still respect your spouse if they became abusive or displayed a complete loss of self control on one or more fronts. Indeed Matt even implies such in his article:

Luckily, it’s usually pretty easy to love my wife because she’s kind, warmhearted, and beautiful. But if she becomes less kind, and I withdraw my love because of it, then my love was never love to begin with. It was just a pleasant feeling; a natural response to her nicer tendencies.

Wrong!

Now if you were to withdraw your love because she became only a little less kind, then yeah I’d have to wonder if you ever really loved her or if you were just merely infatuated with her. Would you try to determine why she’s become less kind, or would you just abandon ship? If the latter, yeah it was never really love. But if she were to become less kind to the point where she’d be confrontational with you, possibly bordering on physically, verbally or emotionally violent, I think you’d say a limit has been reached or exceeded and you’d set an ultimatum. And if that ultimatum were not met, you’d leave.

If you were to just put up with it, you’d be implying to her that she can basically do whatever she wants. If you set the ultimatum but don’t follow through, you’d be implying the same, that she can do whatever she wants.

Respect and love must still be earned, even in marriage. Even Matt recognizes that as evidenced by what he’s written in his article, even if he keeps stating the exact opposite.

Law/Life

Jasmine Edwards

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 9 Comments

This is Jasmine Edwards:

1798311_810396675640326_339135693_n.jpg

This picture is from an incident on February 2, 2014, involving an acquaintance, Jazmine Bryson. Bryson is currently being held on Class C felony charges for the injuries Edwards sustained. Now the details are sketchy, but according to a news report on the incident, these facts can be established:

  1. Jasmine Edwards, 19, and Jazmine Bryson, 20, are acquainted
  2. Edwards and Bryson allegedly had “ongoing problems”
  3. Bryson entered the IHOP where Edwards works
  4. At some time after entering the IHOP a confrontation between Edwards and Bryson was initiated
  5. That confrontation escalated to where Bryson threw a glass at Edwards’ face, causing injuries requiring stitches at a local emergency room

On Facebook, Edwards is alleging that the confrontation led to her termination:

My name is Jasmine Edwards i worked at ihop in Evansville indiana as you can see i got hurt at work.A lady hit me with a glass of milk and i had to get 8 stitches. My boss told me that it was fired and that my people didnt know how to act,I didnt do anything wrong customers even said that i handled the situation very well.Any way he fired me and another lady for standing up for me.This is not right and i ask that you Please Share-thanks

So let’s talk about this incident a little. Presuming she was terminated, I’m of the conclusion that her termination was completely justified. Now for those thinking that I don’t understand what it’s like to be in her shoes, bear in mind that I do have experience working retail, and I know that retail and service employees don’t have many options when customers start getting hostile. You walk away and you can be written up for providing bad customer service. If the situation escalates, regardless of how or why, you can be fired.

The one thing many forget is that every confrontation involves at least two people, meaning one person always has the ability and power to end the confrontation by walking away.

In retail settings in any confrontation between an employee and customer, the employee is always presumed to be at fault in the confrontation. Now you might see this as unfair, but it’s part of customer service. I’ve had my share of asshole customers during the time I worked in fast food and retail, so I know what it’s like. Sometime you just need to suck it up.

If a customer starts getting unruly and starts a scene, the employee needs to just walk away. In part the burden is on the employee to walk away, to terminate the confrontation if one starts and to not initiate contact if an escalation to a confrontation of some kind is predictable. It’s best to be written up for failing to help a customer than fired for confronting them, especially if that confrontation turns violent, as it did in the case with Bryson and Edwards. After all the manager can always get the customer to leave, calling police if they refuse.

Had Edwards not initiated contact, or not acquiesced when Bryson initiated contact, the entire situation could have been avoided. Regardless of who started it, the onus was on Edwards to walk away. If Bryson was seated at one of Edwards’ tables, she could’ve asked another server to take the table, with a brief explanation being all that is necessary.

Edwards had more than enough opportunity to avoid or terminate the encounter, and she instead participated in it, and the encounter escalated to the point where Bryson threw a glass at Edwards, causing the injuries she sustained and putting other employees and patrons at risk of injury.

As such Edwards’ termination, presuming she was terminated, is completely justified given the circumstances.

Technology

It’s the learning curve, Jack

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Jack Wallen on TechRepublic is a major open source zealot, and like other Linux zealots, he’s been predicting the "downfall of Microsoft" for years, thinking that any release now, Linux (in particular Ubuntu Linux) will overtake Windows on the desktop.

So what’s his recent gripe? The "language of Linux":

Honestly, the language of Linux doesn’t register on the radar of many computer users. And while it’s a great feeling to be a part of the “in crowd,” that’s also one of the reasons why Linux often has a hard time gaining much of a foothold with desktops. Sure, anyone these days can learn a GUI — but Linux users are challenged to learn a completely different way of thinking, a different language, and a different wiring of the brain.

Here’s the thing that needs to be kept in mind: every system has concepts to be learned and a curve to that learning. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about an operating system or an image editor, a financial management system or an EMR system. You could take someone familiar with a Mac and drop them on Windows and they’ll probably be able to figure out a few things, but it’ll take a bit.

About five years ago, I released a program called the Puzzle Pirates Trade Profiteer, or "Trade Profiteer" for short. It’s a relatively simple program, but there are some concepts that you need to know in order to use it, and I say explicitly on the website for that program that it is designed for those who are seasoned merchant traders in Puzzle Pirates, people who understand what the commodity market interface shows, how bid tickets work, and the like. It is not a tool for the uninitiated.

And when it comes to financial management software, sure you can find a basic program that’ll allow you to track your checkbook. But as Mint.com and other online systems show, there is so much more information that can be garnered. Displaying that information is what Mint.com does. Understanding that information is your job. Understanding that information in such a way that you don’t misinterpret it and find yourself in bankruptcy proceedings is the learning curve. Okay, probably a stretch on that example, I’ll admit.

The problem with Linux is the number of concepts that must be learned.

That is why Microsoft and Apple try to keep the number of concepts you must learn on Windows and Mac OS X, respectively, as low as possible. But you still need to learn them to be effective with the software. This is why Apple and Google have had so much success with iOS and Android, respectively: there are so few concepts to learn and such a low learning curve that it has allowed for widespread adoption of both platforms.

Language isn’t the problem, Jack. The learning curve is the problem. The concepts that need to be learned are the problem. And if describing one concept continually leads you to having to describe or explain more, you’re going to lose your target audience to frustration.

Marketing/Politics

Coca-Cola

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

I’m pissed. Yeah I said it, I’m pissed. I’ve been drinking Coca-Cola for years and recently I heard about and watched the ad they played during the Super Bowl (no, I didn’t watch the Super Bowl) and now I’m absolutely livid…

At the way people have responded to it.

No I’m not changing my tune anytime soon. I’ll still be drinking Coca-Cola as it’s the brand I prefer. But the outrage over their commercial featuring “America the Beautiful” sung in several different languages, English included, is what has me absolutely livid and very, very worried about the direction this country is going.

I’ve said here on this blog that I’m descended from Hungarian immigrants. I also have Polish and English in my lineage, and my surname suggests Scottish blood as well, plus I have Portuguese ancestry and a spot of Native American. If you were to look back on your lineage, and you’re Caucasian, you’d likely find European ancestry as well, possibly some Native American to go with it.

In the United States you will find people from every other continent on the planet. And on every other continent of the planet, you will find Coca-Cola or one of their brands (they were involved in an expedition to Antarctica, so technically they have been on all continents).

Coca-Cola is the multinational company and a leading sponsor of the Olympics. They have done what no government ever has done. They have done what no other company has done. They have crossed borders where previously, and even still currently, only our military has crossed.

For them to ignore that diversity, the diversity of the entire fucking world, the diversity that formed and feeds the cultural landscape of the United States, would be the outrage.

Singing “America the Beautiful” in various languages acknowledges where everyone in America is from, acknowledges the cultural landscape herein. Now if you’re upset that the vehicle by which they acknowledged that cultural landscape is mixed-language lyrics of “America the Beautiful”, then all I can say is that you need to get over yourself. For one, “The Star Spangled Banner”, “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful” have been translated and performed in other languages. The Federal government has commissioned such translations in the past. So there is no reason to say that these songs can only or must only be performed in English.

Former Representative Allen West said “If we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing ‘America the Beautiful’ in English in a commercial during the Super Bowl, by a company as American as they come — doggone we are on the road to perdition.” Here’s my take, how about being proud enough as individuals to sing “America the Beautiful” in whatever language you are comfortable singing?

It is only the cultish patriotism that has flooded this country since 9/11 that is causing people to take the position that these “sacred hymns” must only be performed in English and cannot be performed in other languages.

The Coca-Cola Company started in the United States and has its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia – if you haven’t visited the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta, I highly suggest it. Coca-Cola, however, cannot be called “a company as American as they come”, namely because they aren’t trying to force America on the world, only bring a product to people who will buy it.

And hey, if you’re going to boycott Coca-Cola because of their latest ad, that just means more for me and more for the rest of the world.

And one last note: English is a language originally foreign to the United States.