Dodging work

I have a math idea but fear that it might not work out…so I’ll blog instead (just kidding…sort of)

But I did see some interesting blogposts so here goes:

Triathlete “Crackhead” (aka Sheila) has some, uh, interesting photos of herself here. Think: “bikini” and a word that means “planatary satellite” and has two o’s.

Here is one strategically cropped shot:

Blackinformant: evidently unimpressed with some of Barack Obama’s poverty fighting ideas. Here is where I disagree with conservatives such as him: “physical soundness” is not the sole criteria for govermental programs. For example, it has been shown that, on economic grounds, programs which help adults get diplomas and degrees later on in life are not physically sound; the goverment never gets its investment back (though it might for select individuals, it doesn’t get it back on the whole). Nevertheless, I see moral worth in such programs in that it helps to enhance the dignity and emotional welfare of my fellow citizens.

Liberalsmustdie: points out that this person (soldier) is committing TREASON!

But alas, this fellow won’t be joined by many college Republicans in Iraq.

Hmmm, World War II: we had a draft, shortages, shared sacrifice, etc. Al Qaida in Iraq: only a small percentage of those we are fighting with.

That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term “Al Qaeda” to designate “anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq” is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as “Al Qaeda.”

But what is even more notable is that the establishment press has followed right along, just as enthusiastically. I don’t think the New York Times has published a story about Iraq in the last two weeks without stating that we are killing “Al Qaeda fighters,” capturing “Al Qaeda leaders,” and every new operation is against “Al Qaeda.”

The Times — typically in the form of the gullible and always-government-trusting “reporting” of Michael Gordon, though not only — makes this claim over and over, as prominently as possible, often without the slightest questioning, qualification, or doubt. If your only news about Iraq came from The New York Times, you would think that the war in Iraq is now indistinguishable from the initial stage of the war in Afghanistan — that we are there fighting against the people who hijacked those planes and flew them into our buildings: “Al Qaeda.”

What is so amazing about this new rhetorical development — not only from our military, but also from our “journalists” — is that, for years, it was too shameless and false even for the Bush administration to use. Even at the height of their propaganda offensives about the war, the furthest Bush officials were willing to go was to use the generic term “terrorists” for everyone we are fighting in Iraq, as in: “we cannot surrender to the terrorists by withdrawing” and “we must stay on the offensive against terrorists.” [...]

Each of these articles typically (though not always) initially refers to “Al Qaeda in Iraq” or “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia,” as though they are nothing more than the Iraqi branch office of the group that launched the 9/11 attacks. The articles then proceed to refer to the group only as “Qaeda,” and repeatedly quote U.S. military officials quantifying the amount of “Qaeda fighters” we killed. Hence, what we are doing in Iraq is going after and killing members of the group which flew the planes into our buildings. Who could possibly be against that?

Are there some foreign fighters in Iraq who have taken up arms against the U.S. occupation who are fairly called “Al Qaeda”? Probably. But by all accounts — including the President’s — they are a tiny part of the groups with guns who are waging war in Iraq. The vast, vast majority of them are Iraqis motivated by a desire to acquire more political power in their own country at the expense of other Iraqi factions and/or to fight against a foreign occupation of their country. To refer to them as “Al Qaeda” so casually and with so little basis (other than the fact that U.S. military officials now do so) is misleading and propagandistic in the extreme. [...]

Fellow liberals: actually, few are atheists, and many don’t like some of the new atheist books(Smirking Chimp):

Christopher Hitchens, the bilious Brit, has bagged a bestseller. Give Chris a big hand and a mug o’ Guinness. Good show, old sport! His latest vowel movement is called God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. It has everyone’s knickers in a twist. Jesus, you have to hand it to Hitchens, who has a knack for showing his ass in a way to maximize the outrage. Years ago, he picked on Mother Teresa, a shriveled old nun who lived with untouchables. He’s graduated to God. That is, he’s finally picking on someone his own size.

Hitchens has also struck a profitable nerve. In its eight weeks of existence, God Is Not Great has gone through 11 printings and inflated the author’s ego beyond anything heretofore seen in the annals of psychology. In the meantime, he’s compiling a companion volume called (swear to God!) The Portable Atheist. That is, if he finishes it before being smitten by a bolt of lightning.

In God is Not Great, with the intolerant zeal of a fundamentalist, Hitchens contends that religion is “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.” And, of course, because of this, it poisons “everything.”

I’ve never been one to argue with atheists or even fuss over the finer points of theology with religious people. And I don’t argue from the standpoint of religious faith, which I’ve always seen as a private matter. Thus, I can’t say, “Hey, Chris, what about my God? What’s He, chopped liver?” But, as a product of a liberal arts education with a general interest in many subjects including those embracing matters of the spirit, I am not one to slam any door of inquiry. To bang a drum for religion’s demise because it “poisons everything” seems so pathologically Chris-centric. To paraphrase a person whom Hitchens has all but equated with Satan, it depends on what the meaning of “everything” is. I know many people with religious faith — Quakers, Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. — and it seems to enrich, rather than poison, their lives. I often find myself envying the inner strength and serenity that their religious faith offers them.[...]

But even more from our side via scienceblogs (Pharyngula):

Imagine you found a population in the US where the majority of the people believed that 2+2=5, and that attempts to correct them with the actual, correct result of adding two numbers were regarded as insults to their revered traditions. I think we’d all agree that they a) they were wrong; b) they were misled, misinformed, and miseducated; c) that they were ignorant of arithmetic; or d) might very well have been maliciously deceived by someone in their midst. Somehow, though, if the ridiculous error involves God, some people take a big step backwards and are appalled that anyone might criticize them. Those “revered traditions” become more than mere excuses, they are inviolate.

You guessed it, once again someone was aggravated that I have dared to call adherence to religious belief a case of being “ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed.” This time our indignant contestant is Mark A. R. Kleiman, who considers it atheistic bigotry to enumerate the reasons why people might come to absurd and erroneous conclusions. That 80-90% of this population, which is not hypothetical at all but is the entire US, believes that chanting their wishes into the sky might get them granted by a magic being, or that over half use the excuse of their religious dogma to reject the basic facts of modern biology, is something we must not question and especially must not criticize. Because it is religion, it must be respected.

Except, well, Kleiman has an out. There is a “childish” religion that can be criticized, but then there’s this mature, adult religion that is “always metaphorical.” He’s not really defending those ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed religious kooks that believe the earth is 6000 years old or that we go to war in the Middle East to smite the wicked brown-skinned Muslims, oh no — those are the negligible, unrepresentative fringe elements. True Religious People™ know that everything in their religion is a metaphor. They don’t really believe in an anthropomorphic god … why, that is only a symbol for “an infinite, omniscient, beneficent, immortal being”. [...]

This is ridiculous on two counts. One, talk to some real people sometime, willya? The majority of religious people in this country do believe in a completely non-metaphorical god, who acts non-metaphorically, who has non-metaphorical desires and plans, and who non-metaphorically wants their high school football team to win the championship, if they pray hard enough. This god of the rarefied nebulous metaphor is the product of theologians who’ve studied the subject long and hard enough to know that the god of the people is untenable nonsense, and must be cloaked in metaphor.

Two, there’s no reason to believe in a metaphorical “infinite, omniscient, beneficent, immortal being,” either. There is no evidence, no explanation, no mysteries which we need to fill with this superman — excuse me, superentity — of the supernatural, so why should saying that this silly concept is actually just a metaphor for that other silly concept salvage either one? It’s a shell game: the abstract deity exists only as a distraction, a pawn to use to draw away attacks on the invisible man-god, and if we criticize the metaphor, the man-god can be mocked to let our theologian pretend to be sly and clever and just as skeptical as his interlocutor. [...]

After trying to undercut my argument with puffs of metaphorical smoke, Kleiman does ask an interesting and revealing question.

I’ve always wanted to ask someone like Meyers — or Dawkins, or Pinker — how much smarter he thinks he is than, let’s say, Heraclitus or Socrates or Maimonides or Newton, who thought hard about religion and didn’t dismiss it as nonsense.

Why would anyone think I regard myself as smarter than Newton? I think there are religious people who are much smarter than I am even now. I do not make the logical fallacy of believing that because people are wrong in one thing, religion, they are therefore wrong in all things; I don’t believe that Christians are irreparably stupid or that their gullibility about god translates into some gross systemic defect in their entire ability to reason. I also do not equate “smartness” with “infallibility,” and know that even certifiable geniuses like Newton can also believe fervently in erroneous matters … like alchemy or Christianity. It would be like noting that Mark Kleiman cannot spell “Myers” properly, therefore he is incompetent in all things and must be less intelligent than me, who can spell it correctly.

One other note: Heraclitus or Socrates or Maimonides or Newton lived in the days prior to Darwin and modern cosmology, no?

Thunder, Lightning!

Workout notes: thunderstorms prevented my swimming, (they close the indoor pool until 30 minutes after the last lightning strike)

(photo from here)

but I did do a 4 mile treadmill run prior to yoga class, then a 3 mile walk afterward. The treadmill run was an easy mile at 0 incline (easier than outside running), then 1 mile at 1, then increasing the incline by .5 every .1 mile until I got up to 5 (at mile 2.7) which I held to 3.2, then back down to 3, 2.5, 2, 1.5, 1, then 0.
The walk itself was interesting; I started off with a 13:20, the 1 mile of 1/8 mile easy, 1/8 faster (11:20) then 1 mile in 10:20. When I sped up a “runner” really worked hard to stay ahead of me; every time I started to draw even she sped up, at one point even pumping her arms.

I really didn’t mind as she was mildly rubenesque with sort of a cute butt.

Speaking of walking: Why do we walk? That is, why do humans walk upright? From RichardDakwins.net

(photo from here)

Humans evolved to walk upright because it uses less energy than travelling on all fours, according to researchers.

A US team compared the energy used by humans and by chimpanzees in walking.

The human bipedal gait is about four times more efficient than chimps getting around on either two or four legs, the researchers found.

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they say this may explain why we walk bipedally, and some of our anatomical features.

Other research groups have proposed alternative explanations for our two-legged gait.

Some suggest it evolved because early humans needed to reach upwards to collect food or pass it to a mate, while others maintain it predates four-legged locomotion in primates, citing the often upright posture of orangutans as they move across slim branches.

On the treadmill

A study from 1973 found little difference in efficiency between two-legged and four-legged walking in primates, but its conclusions had been disputed because only juvenile chimpanzees were used.

So David Raichlen from the University of Arizona in Tucson and colleagues set up a study in which five adult chimps were trained to use a treadmill, either on two legs or four.

The subjects were fitted with masks to collect exhaled air so that parameters such as oxygen use could be measured. Blobs of white paint on critical parts of the body such as elbows and knees allowed researchers to analyse the gait using video.

The results were compared with four human subjects using the same treadmill.

Generally, the humans were about four times more efficient than the chimps.[...]

Also from the Dawkins site:

Artificial God? Don’t laugh, this article (ok, video with transcript) by Douglas Adams has some interesting things to say:

[...] This is very speculative; I’m really going out on a limb here, because it’s something I know nothing about whatsoever, so think of this more as a thought experiment than a real explanation of something. I want to talk about Feng Shui, which is something I know very little about, but there’s been a lot of talk about it recently in terms of figuring out how a building should be designed, built, situated, decorated and so on. Apparently, we need to think about the building being inhabited by dragons and look at it in terms of how a dragon would move around it. So, if a dragon wouldn’t be happy in the house, you have to put a red fish bowl here or a window there. This sounds like complete and utter nonsense, because anything involving dragons must be nonsense – there aren’t any dragons, so any theory based on how dragons behave is nonsense. What are these silly people doing, imagining that dragons can tell you how to build your house? Nevertheless, it occurs to me if you disregard for a moment the explanation that’s actually offered for it, it may be there is something interesting going on that goes like this: we all know from buildings that we’ve lived in, worked in, been in or stayed in, that some are more comfortable, more pleasant and more agreeable to live in than others. We haven’t had a real way of quantifying this, but in this century we’ve had an awful lot of architects who think they know how to do it, so we’ve had the horrible idea of the house as a machine for living in, we’ve had Mies van der Roe and others putting up glass stumps and strangely shaped things that are supposed to form some theory or other. It’s all carefully engineered, but nonetheless, their buildings are not actually very nice to live in. An awful lot of theory has been poured into this, but if you sit and work with an architect (and I’ve been through that stressful time, as I’m sure a lot of people have) then when you are trying to figure out how a room should work you’re trying to integrate all kinds of things about lighting, about angles, about how people move and how people live – and an awful lot of other things you don’t know about that get left out. You don’t know what importance to attach to one thing or another; you’re trying to, very consciously, figure out something when you haven’t really got much of a clue, but there’s this theory and that theory, this bit of engineering practice and that bit of architectural practice; you don’t really know what to make of them. Compare that to somebody who tosses a cricket ball at you. You can sit and watch it and say, ‘It’s going at 17 degrees’; start to work it out on paper, do some calculus, etc. and about a week after the ball’s whizzed past you, you may have figured out where it’s going to be and how to catch it. On the other hand, you can simply put your hand out and let the ball drop into it, because we have all kinds of faculties built into us, just below the conscious level, able to do all kinds of complex integrations of all kinds of complex phenomena which therefore enables us to say, ‘Oh look, there’s a ball coming; catch it!’

What I’m suggesting is that Feng Shui and an awful lot of other things are precisely of that kind of problem. There are all sorts of things we know how to do, but don’t necessarily know what we do, we just do them. Go back to the issue of how you figure out how a room or a house should be designed and instead of going through all the business of trying to work out the angles and trying to digest which genuine architectural principles you may want to take out of what may be a passing architectural fad, just ask yourself, ‘how would a dragon live here?’ We are used to thinking in terms of organic creatures; an organic creature may consist of an enormous complexity of all sorts of different variables that are beyond our ability to resolve but we know how organic creatures live. We’ve never seen a dragon but we’ve all got an idea of what a dragon is like, so we can say, ‘Well if a dragon went through here, he’d get stuck just here and a little bit cross over there because he couldn’t see that and he’d wave his tail and knock that vase over’. You figure out how the dragon’s going to be happy here and lo and behold! you’ve suddenly got a place that makes sense for other organic creatures, such as ourselves, to live in.

So, my argument is that as we become more and more scientifically literate, it’s worth remembering that the fictions with which we previously populated our world may have some function that it’s worth trying to understand and preserve the essential components of, rather than throwing out the baby with the bath water; because even though we may not accept the reasons given for them being here in the first place, it may well be that there are good practical reasons for them, or something like them, to be there. I suspect that as we move further and further into the field of digital or artificial life we will find more and more unexpected properties begin to emerge out of what we see happening and that this is a precise parallel to the entities we create around ourselves to inform and shape our lives and enable us to work and live together. Therefore, I would argue that though there isn’t an actual god there is an artificial god and we should probably bear that in mind. That is my debating point and you are now free to start hurling the chairs around! [...]

This is, I think, one reason that religious practices (e. g., prayer, meditation, yoga, etc.) sometimes help non-theists such as myself.

And another one: how aggressive should non-theists be when sharing our beliefs with our theist friends? I agree with much of what this author says:

f there’s one thing worse than an evangelical Christian, it’s an evangelical UNBELIEVER. Someone who insists on preaching the “good news of UN-belief.” Sheesh. Will it never end?

There must either be something in the water, or something in our genes, but for some reason every human being, at one time or another, believes it is their (forgive me) “god-given” right to tell someone else how to live/what to do. Why do we often believe that WE have the “right answer” for everyone else? Why do we find it so damned difficult to just shut the hell up and leave other people alone? Why do we derive so much carnal satisfaction from assuming the role of Authority Figure in everyone else’s lives? From governments to parents to teachers to best selling authors to comedians to friends to spouses to neighbors to co-workers, everybody seems to get off on being “right” and correcting someone else’s alleged deficiencies.

And if there weren’t enough know-it-alls roaming the landscape, now added to the list are the newest evangelical busybodies — the religious unbelievers. Those people who have made a successful break from god-belief and now believe it is their DUTY to convince (force) the “deluded masses” of the error of their ways.

To this I cry, “Shenanigans!”

[I recognize the delicious irony of my telling people that THEY are "wrong," in a hit piece admonishing people to "mind your own business!" But it just can't be helped. Simply take solace in that this is just an informative rant, and you are under no obligation to agree with what I say here. I'm not speaking as any Authority Figure. Just someone with a salient point of view. Okay?]

Now, before I begin casting my stones, let it be known that I also shared in this particular “sin.” I’m as guilty as the next impertinent a-hole who dared to stick his nose where it wasn’t wanted. So I KNOW whereof I speak. Back when I was a new atheist I considered it my Duty to de-convert all and sundry. I wrote many hostile anti-Christian diatribes and formulated many plans for my Atheist Evangelical Crusades. I even called myself an “Evangelical Atheist.” Fortunately none of my plans ever saw the light of day. By spending time on these forums, and others like this one, I was humbled to confess the error of my ways. A few people (Christians and Ex-C) correctly beat it into my thick skull that ANTI-evangelism is equally as wrong and as offensive as it’s counterpart.

The reason that I’m re-visiting this subject is that it appears that the lesson must be taught anew to the newly “born-again” unbelievers. I’m seeing a resurgence of people who wish to perform door-to-door anti-evangelism, begin forum wars with Christians or engage in e-mail debates with family and friends, just to delight in telling them how “wrong” they are for believing. Not cool, people. Not cool.

Your zeal is commendable, but misplaced. Rather than labor fruitlessly to free those who resent your efforts, you should simply enjoy your new lease on life. [...]

n general, anti-evangelism is wrong because A) We don’t have the RIGHT to take away someone’s beliefs, and B) IT DOESN’T WORK ANYWAY!

Religious beliefs aside, people of all ages, creeds, sex, races, politics, etc. have ALWAYS believed something “stupid” (i.e. something someone doesn’t agree with). And as I said earlier, there seems to be a never-ending procession of self-appointed Authority Figures lining up to correct/control these “errant thinkers.”

Do I REALLY need to belabor the point that it is FUNDAMENTALLY wrong to abrogate another’s freedom of choice? It all boils down to the Golden Rule. If YOU don’t want someone telling YOU how to live/what to do, then it sure is hell is wrong for you to force YOUR views down another person’s throat. It doesn’t matter how ill-advised or self-destructive you believe someone is being. So long as their choices don’t infringe upon YOUR life, then we are all obliged to shut the hell up. Case closed. No debate necessary.

No one is saying that you aren’t entitled to your opinions. Nor that you must hide what you believe, or not defend your beliefs. Not at all. I happen to be one of THE Most Strongly Opinionated curmudgeons this side of the Antares Maelstrom, and I will defend my beliefs with every nefarious weapon in my considerable mental arsenal.

But note that I said “DEFEND my beliefs.” If someone wants to start an argument with me then I’ll be more than happy than to assail them with whatever beliefs I have, simultaneously laying assault to THEIR beliefs. What I WON’T do is start a fight with someone in an attempt to “convert them” to my side. I think that is rude. And anyone who does such a thing deserves to get their head handed to them on a platter. I’m a firm believer in “Live and Let Live” and “Mind Your Own Damned Business!” [Present case excepted! I'm giving advice, not challenging your world view.]

Aside from any necessary defenses, I believe that it is the height of decency and good manners just to ignore people’s religious foibles. Don’t get your knickers in a twist every time someone casually says something religious. It’s not a Call To Arms. They’re just words. Don’t be such a prickly pear. If mom and grandma think their prayers are doing YOU some good, then how does this harm you? Let them have their pacifier. Humor them and politely change the subject.

Besides, you won’t change their minds anyway.

From youtube

They salute Michael Chertoff’s gut. Gotta love it!

Al-Jazeera: Claims of rampant child abuse in Aboriginal communities has seen the Australian government take controversial steps. I don’t have a special interest in Australia, but I find it interesting that they have problems with their minority populations.

Later: The Pan Am games are underway; I hope to catch some of the women’s beach volleyball action.

(last images from here)