Woodswise

Lessons I have learned about hiking:

1. Forests regulate their own temperature, and therefore are nice and cool in the summer heat. The patchy areas between forests aren't, not even the shady spots.
   
2. Bugbites and sun exposure are things your body adapts to over time.
3. Surefootedness and stealth both come from leading with the toes.
4. Wild animals are mostly scared of noisy humans.
5. Avoid bear cubs.
6. If you look closely at the ground, you will eventually notice tracks.
7. Pack extra water if you're with a group. Someone else will be short.
8. Machetes are handy, whether or not you brought a knife.
   
9. Knives are handy, whether or not you brought a machete.
   
10. Lightning does actually strike. It can also hit more than one person at once.
11. Humans have better peripheral vision, hearing, and sense of smell than commonly realized. They just have an annoying habit of ignoring them.
    
12. Trail blazes are really useful.
13. Have a first aid kit; whether you're hiking alone, with a buddy, or with a group, not having one around is an invitation for disaster.
14. If you don't feel spiderwebs, someone else was already through here today.
15. Walking sticks are very much optional, but somehow always seem handy when you have one.
    
16. The deadliest mushroom in North America looks really innocuous.

Legal, regulated, taxed?

Today, for a change of pace, I've decided I'm going to try to think of a list of things that I think can be questioned on moral grounds, or on the grounds of their social cost, but should be legal - since making them illegal causes more problems - but carefully regulated, and that are worth taxing to recover the full social cost of the enterprise.

• Tobacco
• Meat
  
• Alcohol
• Driving
  
• Firearms
• Cosmetic surgery
  
• Hunting
• Sharp pointy things
• Marijuana
  
• Prostitution

This list is sorted by approximate increase in mortality caused by allowing them in the US, so far as I could tell. Prostitution is at the bottom, because as best as I could tell from the comparative statistics and studies, legalizing prostitution seems to actually reduce prostitution-related mortality. Curiously, it's the least lethal two at the bottom that are most often illegal in this country.

One kilogram does not equal 2.2 pounds

How you react to this statement tells me something, I think. If you've taken physics, you know that pounds are a unit of force, while kilograms are a unit of mass, and therefore, 2.2 pounds does not equal 1 kilogram. 1 kilogram of matter, on Earth, weighs 2.2 pounds (give or take a few small fractions; Earth's gravity field isn't quite uniform); on the moon, the same object will still mass one kilogram, while it will weigh only a few ounces.

So it's quite technically correct to say 1 kilogram doesn't equal 2.2 pounds. On the other hand, for all practical intents and purposes, that's the useful conversion to make, since the newton (metric unit of force) and the slug (standard imperial unit of mass) are more rarely used units.

Some people react with a nod. They're aware of the difference, and consider it an important one. Others react with a groan - they know that technically it's correct, but as far as they're concerned, the difference is a technical distinction that doesn't really matter. And a few become quite confused, because they don't know what the distinction is between weight and mass.