Sunday, April 11, 2021
Fanatic Skysup WS edition foiling video and review
I'm really liking this board now, although it was a major adjustment from the first board that I started foiling on; an older Exocet formula board. The Sky Sup is meant for maneuver-oriented sailing (as opposed to speed-oriented sailing), and is also meant to be useable without the sail for SUP foiling or with an inflatable wing for "wingfoiling." It's very short; 210 cm, and the mast track is placed very close to the front footstraps. The footstraps are near the centerline of the board rather than out near the edge like on a formula board. These aspects of the shape and the placement of the fittings required me to radically change my stance, sail position, and body weight distribution from what I'd gotten used to. The sail must be held with the mast straight up, or or even raked towards the nose a bit, rather than raked back towards the tail as it would be when sailing fast on a board with normal geometry. Controlling the altitude of flight is done more with direct foot pressure and less by applying weight to the mast base. Because of the sail rake angle you need to set the boom lower and/or use longer than normal harness lines if you want to hook in. You can actually sail it without a harness, though, since the forces in the sail are so much less than on a non-foiling windsurfer.
I've used the board with sails from 4.2 to 6.8 meters squared. It handles the 6.8 adequately, but the sweet spot is with smaller sails. Compared to the formula board, the Sky Sup is more particular about having the right sized sail for the wind. On the formula board you have some more leverage to keep the sail sheeted in and the elevation controlled when the sail is overpowered, whereas on the sky sup you just have to sheet way out. When underpowered on the formula board you can still get it foiling with some "stir" pumping of the sail that applies lateral pressure to the vertical part of the foil and translates into forward speed that allows liftoff. But that doesn't work as well on the sky sup, where pumping becomes more about "porpoising" the horizontal parts of the foil. As I learn to pump the sky sup better the liftoff threshold may end up being about the same as on the formula board, but for really gusty conditions I think the formula board may still be a more forgiving foil platform.
The most annoying thing about this new board versus my formula board is that they don't use the same "finbox" system for attaching the foil to the board. The sky sup uses a "pedestal" mount with four bolts that go into two parallel mast tracks and allow fore-aft adjustment of the foil position. The formula board uses a traditional, fixed-position "deep tuttle box" mount with two bolts that go down through the deck of the board. Further complicating things, the foil itself has different configurations placing the vertical attachment more forward or back on the fuselage, and I need it in "C" position for the formula board but "B" position for the sky sup. The whole change-over takes half an hour or so of sitting in the driveway unbolting and rebolting things, re-greasing the bolts, etc., so I kind of have to commit to whether I'm going to be using just the sky sup for a while or just the formula board for a while. I think what I'll do is use the sky sup in our "windy season," with 6.8 sail being the max and waiting for 10+ knots before attempting to use it, and I'll switch over the formula board around June when we get into the light summer winds where I need my 8.0 or 9.5 more often.
Surfski kayak downwind paddling session
Sunday, December 13, 2020
Should people be scared of the political left?
It seems like a lot of my fellow
Americans, especially those who lean right in their political ideology, are
terrified of SOCIALISM (or whatever they think socialism is) above almost all
else. Some are convinced that we're on the verge of plunging into a dismal and
oppressive communist dystopia like Stalin's Russia, and that even the most
benign liberal policies like funding public schools or healthcare are pushing
us down that slippery slope to the gulag. Others don’t go quite that far but
are nevertheless convinced that any restraints on big business and the wealthy,
or mercy for the sick and the poor, will lead to moral decay and economic
collapse. Only ruthless, unfettered capitalism can prevent corrupt lazy losers
from taking over and turning us into the next Venezuela, right? SIGH.
It's a testament to the power of
propaganda that the GOP has been able to stoke this inordinate terror of the
left at the very same time that their own party is engaged in alarming attacks
on American democracy itself. I won’t get into all the details of the right’s
voter suppression, gerrymandering, purging truth-tellers and protecting liars
within government, pushing conspiracy theories about a “stolen” election, encouraging
armed insurrection, etc. Let it suffice to say that under Trump, the GOP have come
perilously close to achieving an "autocratic transition" - a switch from
democracy to dictatorship. Yet, most conservative people still see Trump as a
savior and not a threat.
Indeed, it’s ironic that these
70ish million conservative Americans; folks who are earnestly patriotic and
scared of losing democratic freedoms, have empowered an authoritarian strongman
who closely resembles the freedom-stealing autocrats they revile; the power-mad
charlatans who’ve led their countries into dysfunction, disgrace, and worse. Trump’s
macho image, his appeals to the grievances of “the common man,” his fiery
demagoguery, his scapegoating of foreigners and minorities, his constant lying,
his efforts to control the press and suppress the vote, his ostentatious wealth
and trophy wives, his nepotism, and even his bizarre hair and style, all PERFECLY
fit the mold of a dictator. Cuba’s Castro, Venezuela’s Chavez, North Korea’s
Kim, Libya’s Gaddafi, Russia’s Stalin, and even Nazi Germany’s Hitler are cut
from the same cloth as Trump. How is this not obvious to those under his spell?
I think the failure of so many to
see the obvious has to do with how we have confounded the left-right spectrum
with other types of societal variation. (In this context, “confound” means to
mix something up with something else; to fail to recognize them as distinct
things, like thinking that “hot” and “spicy” are the same thing.) Some other
dimensions of societal variation that can get wrongly lumped-in with the
right-left spectrum include autocracy-democracy, corruption-integrity, wealth-poverty,
and dysfunctionality-functionality. All those things greatly affect the quality
of society, and they can vary *independently* of the left-right spectrum. For
example you can have a left-leaning society that is autocratic, dysfunctional,
and poor, like Venezuela or North Korea, but you can also have a left-leaning society
that is democratic, functional, and wealthy, like Norway or New Zealand.
Anyway, when we develop a
blinding commitment to a right- or left-wing idealogy, many of the real
complexities of the world collapse into an oversimplified, “right is always good,
left is always bad” kind of thing. Our tendency to latch onto certain
simplified views is a natural response to living in a scarily complicated and
often hurtful world. For example, it’s totally understandable that someone who
grew up under a left-wing dictator like Castro would associate socialism with
corruption, oppression, and poverty, and would be generally averse to the
political left. And of course, American politicians on the political right are
in no hurry to disabuse Cuban Americans of those negative associations. Unscrupulous
people love to take advantage of our oversimplifying tendency. They get us all
emotionally riled up about something that genuinely concerns us, but then they hitch
our fervor onto a dubious agenda that serves only them. Regardless of whether
we’re tricked into the oversimplifying or we do it to ourselves, our
confounding of left-right and right-wrong leads to all sorts of trouble,
including:
1. Failing to recognize and address problems
like corruption and incompetence when they’re coming from our own side of the
left-right spectrum.
2. Reflexively rejecting anything and everything
we associate with the other side of the spectrum, even if it might be
beneficial.
3. Uncritically accepting lousy people and
policies just because they’re under the banner of right or left that we’ve
pledged to.
4. Thinking, “if right is good, further right
must be better,” leading to extremism. (Or the same thing but with left.)
5. Believing lies or baseless conspiracy
theories about the other side because they fit in with our feelings and ideologies.
The way to get out of this “confounding”
problem might be to increase awareness of all those other, important societal
gradations besides just right-left. I think it would be especially helpful to
recognize integrity-corruption and democracy-autocracy as important societal
variables separate from the right-left axis. Autocracy and corruption are not
endemic to left-wing societies. They can absolutely afflict right-wing
societies, too, as folks now suffering from oppression in Turkey, or Saudi
Arabia would attest.
There’s a kind of X-Y plot called the “political
compass,” which has an up-down axis as well as a left-right axis, and which is
accompanied by a quiz that places you in one of the four quadrants based on
your personal views. https://www.politicalcompass.org/about
On that, typical, political compass, the up-down axis is designated as “liberty-authority,”
and it helps distinguish libertarians from classic conservatives, democratic
socialists from authoritarian socialists, etc. That helps a little with the “confounding”
problem that I’m talking about, but it’s not quite what I’m looking for. I
think it would be more useful to make the up-down axis be more clearly a
good-bad axis, with something like “functional democracy” at the top and “corrupt
dictatorship” at the bottom. Then you could put different countries that we’re
familiar with in the different quadrants to better illustrate that both right
and left can fall into corrupt dictatorships.
Rough draft diagram-
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Final thought: I’ve said that many important aspects of societies, such as integrity-corruption and democracy-autocracy, are independent of the left-right spectrum. An implication of that is that we do not need to be inordinately afraid of moving right or left, as long as we’re watching out for those other aspects of how society can go good or bad. However, I do think there is some danger of going to the EXTREMES of right or left because an extreme philosophy is more likely to get blinded to the other nuances.
Saturday, November 14, 2020
Windsurfing edge of TS Eta, Lovers Key, FL
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Sloppy stars surfski kayaking practice in the ocean
To improve my rough water balance and comfort level for the October 3rd Key West Classic race, I've been deliberately paddling in the ocean at odd angles to the wind and waves. (It's not THAT hard to go straight upwind or straight downwind, perpendicular the bumps, but getting the waves from the side and at oblique angles is quite tricky.) I've sometimes done a workout like this as "sloppy squares," drawing boxes with my path, but I changed it up this week with what I'm calling "sloppy stars." I program the workout in my Speedcoach GPS as 10x800m with no rest between the segments, and then I just have to estimate what angle to go at and remember to always turn left at the end of each segment to make the star pattern. I'm pleased with how this turned out.
Monday, September 7, 2020
COVID-19: What is our endgame?
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Learn Marine Ecology: My Narrated PowerPoint Lectures
These presentations are not National Geographic quality, and some of them move a little slowly with an inordinate amount of "ums" and "ok, so"s. Anyway, with those disclaimers done, here are the videos, in the order that I would normally present these topics to the students. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments, if you note mistakes or unclear segments, etc.
Introduction and Patterns in the Marine Environment
Intertidal Ecology
Primary Production Pt. 1
Primary Production Pt. 2
Estuaries
Seagrass, Saltmarsh, and Mangrove Ecosystems
Coral Reef Ecosystems
Deep Sea Ecology
Foodwebs, Biodiversity, and Ecosystem Functions (this one is long with a lot of theory; casual watchers may want to skip or save for last)
Fisheries Ecology
Aquaculture (aka Fish Farming)
Disturbance Ecology
Pollution and Climate Change