5 July 09 (am)

Workout notes It started off breezy and overcast; ended up sunny. I started at 6:30 and finished at 9:28 (2:58 for the boredom plus which included a pit stop). One timed segment was 1:41:37 for 8 miles. I did see three drunken snowflake aged guys who attempted to mimic me; they said hi and I just blew off those losers.

Overall I was pleased with the training walk, though my technique felt “clunky”; I felt slow and my right “behind the knee” area barked a bit when I overstrode.

Posts
Note: this sort of thing is happening around here a bit:

Homeowners across the country are challenging their property tax bills in droves as the value of their homes drop, threatening local governments with another big drain on their budgets.

The requests are coming in record numbers, from owners of $10 million estates and one-bedroom bungalows, from residents of the high-tax enclaves surrounding New York City, and from taxpayers in the Rust Belt and states like Arizona, Florida and California, where whole towns have been devastated by the housing bust.

“It’s worthy of a Dickens story,” said Gus Kramer, the assessor in Contra Costa County, Calif., outside San Francisco. “These people are desperate. They know their home’s gone down in value. They’ve watched their neighborhoods being boarded up. They literally stand in there and say: ‘When can I have my refund check? I need to feed my family. I need to pay my electric bill.’ ”

The tax appeals and reassessments present a new budget nightmare for governments. In a survey conducted by the National Association of Counties, 76 percent of large counties said that falling property tax revenue was significantly affecting their budgets, said Jacqueline Byers, the association’s research director.

Officials in some states say their property tax revenue is falling for the first time since World War II.

The recession has already taken a significant toll on states’ budgets, [...]

And this is the sort of thing that is happening:

OCOA, Fla. — A year ago, the Brevard County Schools ran a robust summer program here, with dozens of schools bustling with teachers and some 14,000 children practicing multiplication, reading Harry Potter and studying Spanish verbs, all at no cost to parents.

But this year Florida’s budget crisis has gutted summer school. Brevard classrooms are shuttered, and students like 11-year-old Uvenka Jean-Baptiste, whose mother works in a nursing home, are spending their summer days at home, surfing television channels or loitering at a mall.

Nearly every school system in Florida has eviscerated or eliminated summer school this year, and officials are reporting sweeping cuts in states from North Carolina and Delaware to California and Washington. The cuts have come as states across the country are struggling to approve budgets, and California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, declared a fiscal state of emergency on Wednesday.

“We’re seeing a disturbing trend of districts making huge cuts to summer school; they’re just devastating these programs,” said Ron Fairchild, executive director of the National Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s having a disproportionate impact on low-income families.”

Add that to the fact that more families are joining the low-income bracket.

These problems are difficult to deal with.

Alternative Medicine Hits the Emergency Room!

What would happen if quacks alternative medicine types ran emergency rooms:

4 July…Overslept, storms etc.

Workout notes: Last night saw the potential for strong thunderstorms to invade our area so we stayed up late. It turns out it is just somewhat rainy but the family backed out of the race, so I’ll run for an hour over hills (that’s the plan anyway).

Update: 65 minute run (about 6 miles) in rain; when I finished I was completely soaked. I ran the hills of Bradley park; one “out and back” followed by a mini loop (cut off much of the flat portion); 8 uphills total: 3 Cornstalk, 3 ball field, 2 from upper to lower Bradley Park. I did some yoga afterward. My left knee barked once; behind my right leg just a bit; the solution was to take quicker, shorter strides. The knees always whine in this sort of weather. Pace: fast enough to be a “run” but slow enough to be enjoyable.

Amusing posts Here is a blog whose banner has a blond in a thong bottom sleeping it off on a table littered with beer cans and beer bottles. No, the parties that I’ve been to never end this way. It also features “Sarah Palin in Spandex”. It shows no butt-shots though. But yes, the Governor is a reasonably good runner with a sub 4 hour marathon to her credit.

Why the contempt for the Governor? Nate Silver takes a crack at it. I’ll tell you what I think: yes, she must have some political skill, else she never would have made it to the Governor’s mansion. Yes, her attractiveness is an asset, but there are lots of attractive people who don’t have this much success.

Basically, she is ill informed and seems to be indifferent to her ignorance; I’ve never liked politicians who were like that (George W Bush, Ronald Reagan, and number of current Republicans such as Jim Inhofe, Michelle Bachmann, etc.)

Yes, I’ve frequently disagreed with Orin Hatch, Dick Lugar, Christine Todd Whitman and even Bob Dole, but I’ve had respect for them; I see them as smart, informed people who disagree with me.

Religion, new atheism, etc. It appears that successful author Karen Armstrong is out with a book that makes the “Case for God”:

This is religion as it should be, and, according to Armstrong, as it once was in all the world’s best traditions. However, there is a serpent in this paradise, as in others. Or rather, several serpents, but the worst is the folly of intellectualising the practice. This makes it into a matter of belief, argument, and ultimately dogma. It debases religion into a matter of belief in a certain number of propositions, so that if you can recite those sincerely you are an adept, and if you can’t you fail. This is Armstrong’s principal target. With the scientific triumphs of the 17th century, religion stopped being a practice and started to become a theory – in particular the theory of the divine architect. This is a perversion of anything valuable in religious practice, Armstrong writes, and it is only this perverted view that arouses the scorn of modern “militant” atheists. So Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris have chosen a straw man as a target. Real religion is serenely immune to their discovery that it is silly to talk of a divine architect.

This is your basic “stoner/yoga teacher” argument; make the idea of “the divine” into something ill defined and vague and merely shrug your shoulders “you just don’t get it”.

Yes, the New Atheists have rejected this sort of idea too.

The deal is that the rejection is not as noisy because the stoners (mystics, etc.)

1. Don’t have as much power as the conventional believers and
2. Aren’t as big of a threat to our society as the conventional believers.

My feeling: if you get your shots, see the doctor, don’t interfere with science teaching, don’t count on some miraculous divine intervention to pull our collective fat out of the fire and don’t think it is in your deity’s plan to trash the environment and start wars, I am fine with that.

Go ahead and have your “mystical” experience which you can’t adequately define; we all have ways of entertaining ourselves.

One use for Sex Education

Two teenage girls head a woman screaming. They rushed into the bedroom and ended up beating up the guy that she was having sex with. Really.

Via Daily Kos: The Real Reason Sarah Palin Resigned

(from here)

Daily Kos: (Video) MELTDOWN: Palin Blames Media/Bloggers (UPDATED – BIG Insider says She Quits)

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Hat tip: here.

Hey, maybe ALL Republicans can resign!

I am Happy to Hear This:

Sarah Palin to resign at the end of July.

If she ends up being the GOP candidate for President in 2012, I’ll start to believe that there is a deity that loves me.

3 July 09 (am)

Security: This is a big time security fail.

This is a case when denying information (in the name of security) has gone too far. Senator Barbara Boxer wanted to make some data available so as to help people understand the environmental hazards that they might be living next to; her idea was nixed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Science and Religion

Republicans

Believe it or not, there are some who actually are persuaded by such bad comedy.

Here is a more high profile wingnut being interviewed by Alan Colmes.

Why do I read Republican stuff from time to time? This is why. I have to admit that many of the Republicans (or Conservatives) that I have come in contact with (mostly on facebook) are pretty clueless and ignorant; Dr. Andy is a big exception (which is why I love it when he checks in, even if it is to take me to task).

Health Care
Do you want a public option in the upcoming healthcare bill? Sign Senator Bernie Sanders’ petition.

Paul Krugman: sees an opportunity a health care bill (that is an improvement) to pass. Note: there is a good article in the recent issue of New Republic magazine that explains what is going on.

Why I don’t call myself an athlete

Workout notes 4 miles of walking, followed by yoga and pushups (2 sets of 30, 1 of 20), and one legged squats and calf raises. My main set (following warm up and drills) was 2.1 miles of 2-1 on the West Peoria track in 23:28. I got a bit more hip action this time. The day was reasonably cool.

Personal Essay:
Many years ago my wife was upset with me; she accused me of spending too much time on the internet with my “pretend athlete” friends and indicated that I too was a “pretend athlete”. She was a bit shocked that I was not insulted at all; in fact the term evolved to become “faux athlete”.

Interestingly enough, some of my friends have heard this and have at least thought about it. One even devoted a blog post to it.

So here are my thoughts: to me, “athlete” means someone who has an exceptional degree of expertise in a sport. By exceptional I mean someone who is a threat to at least win a local competition (age group or overall) or, in the elite case, good enough to where people will sacrifice time and or money to watch this person perform (either individually or as part of a team).

I’ll put it another way: I have a Ph. D. in mathematics and have published some peer reviewed articles (a modest publication record, and yes this summer I hope to add to that record!). I am far from brilliant or distinguished but I am competent. If my intellectual ability were on the same level of my athletic ability, I’d have been lucky to get an A in college calculus; it would have been hit or miss for me to have even gotten an undergraduate degree in the subject, though I would have been ok in areas that were less demanding intellectually.

What distinguishes me from an athlete? I’ll save the most obvious factor for last.

1. Body Awareness/Kinesthetic intelligence .

One time, several years ago, I swam a workout with the Houston Masters H20 group which is coached by Emmit Hines (I highly recommend the book Fitness Swimming by Hines, by the way). Coach Hines relayed a coaching observation to me: he said that most people didn’t have good body awareness. For example, if you told people to get in a certain position with their left arm fully extended, they’d get into an improper position and have no idea that they were in that position unless they were either told that their position was wrong or if they could somehow see themselves. Most people need to associate a picture with a feeling.

On the other hand, the good athletes could tell if their arm was straight or not!

I’ve also observed this in yoga classes; when you demonstrate a pose, most new people think that they are in that position, even if they aren’t. I find that, even after 6 years of practice, I still need cues, mirrors or other feedback to learn what a correct position “feels” like.

The athlete knows what his or her body is doing. Of course, they still have to practice long and hard, but they have superior body awareness.

How this shows up This tends to show up when the athlete performs. For example, when I do an athletic activity, my movements are very “sequential” and “robotic”; for me the motion is a bunch of discrete movements. I don’t “flow”; I come across as “stiff” even when I have, say, above average yoga flexibility.

Examples from walking: (good walking from Ray Sharp’s blog)

The slow walker is easy to spot, no? (yes, I was moving at a bout 9:45 minutes per mile when this photo was taken; it was from a judged 5K in 1993).

2. The athlete’s mind
The athlete has a very strong mind. No, most athletes are NOT as smart as I am (though some are and a few are much smarter!). What I mean here is that an athlete has the mind that can get their body to take that extra step; they can drive themselves to push through the pain and to leave nothing back.

On the other hand, I have a built in governor that shuts down at a certain point; when things get too painful I just shut down. I suppose the hardest I’ve ever driven myself is that 2004 24 hour walk when I got 101 miles; I still wince when I think of what I went through in hours 16 to 23. But afterward, I was still able to walk off with my cooler and supplies; yes after the race I carried a cooler that my wife was unable to lift.

Here is what I looked like at mile 100:

On the other hand, my former racewalk teacher (Augie Hirt) looked like this after his centurion walk:

Yes, Augie walked a 19:55 on a muddy track; my best was 23:41 on a synthetic track in perfect conditions; Augie owns a 4:19 PR for the 50K (as opposed to my 6:20 PR) and a 7:30 for the 50 mile walk. Read the stirring story of his centurion success here.

Another example: I had a roommate at the Naval Academy named Dave Kroupa. More than once, he ran himself sick at races; he literally ran so hard that he was sick enough to have to stay in his room the next day. Dave was NOT elite, but he managed a 32 minute 10K run and a 2:38 marathon run on the hilly Maryland Marathon. Dave told me that I looked “way too good” at the end of races.

This is what many competitive cross country runners look like when they finish:

3. Training

Of course, those who have a chance to win and to possibly receive fame or financial reward have more incentive to train hard. After all, it might make sense for a college runner who has managed to run a 28:30 10K take a job with a shoe store in order to have time to train to make the Olympic team; it would be utterly stupid for me to do so. But the fact is that the true athletes train much, much, much harder than the rest of us.

Many top distance runners put 100-140 miles a week in on a regular basis, as do many top distance walkers. An Olympic distance swimmer (1500 meter) will put in up to 15,000 meters (9.3 miles) per day! Frankly, each day would be a pretty good week of swimming for me! As far as walking, my top walking weeks (aside from those when I completed a 100 miler) were in the 70 mile range; I did quite a few of those between 2004-2005. But I didn’t have high intensity; when an athlete does a high mileage week they include speed work, tempo workouts, etc.

4. Performance

Of course, there is the “performance” thing. My best run (39:50 for the 10K, back in 1982) would be a light warm-up run for an athlete. College runners usually run 32 minutes or faster; Olympic runners (males) run 28 minutes or faster.

My best performance is that aforementioned 23:41 100 miler; the best time (that I am aware of) is 17:00.

This is what I looked like the day of my 39:50 10K:

This is me trying to run this year

And this is what running looks like

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Alan Colmes’ Liberaland » Mark Sanford’s Campaign Ad Promoting “Christian Values”

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If you want to know why the media is being so hard on Governor Sanford, look at the above.

Now he is comparing himself to King David!

Of course, in my view, the bigger problem (by far) is dereliction of duty (his leaving his state).

One side note: why are “Christian Values” a good thing? Does believing in the redeeming power of some fictional Jewish zombie somehow redemptive?