The best description of Social Conservatives that I’ve ever seen

Larger: click here.

Source: Comics.com.

Iraq: John Kerry tells John McCain: “you are debating yourself”. Hat tip to beachmom at the Daily Kos. Video source. (yeah, you have to endure a commercial).

[...]SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA): Well, the Bush-McCain strategy of escalating our troops in the middle of a civil war has no relationship directly to what you need to do to resolve the civil war. So you can put additional troops in and secure a small area here or there, but everybody knows there are not enough troops to be able to secure all of the areas you need to secure and, most importantly, it does absolutely nothing to resolve the fundamental differences, Tim. A policy of putting more troops in and staying is a policy for staying. It is not a policy for winning or for changing the equation. And the fact is that over the last four and a half years, they’ve had ample opportunity to make any of the fundamental political decisions that really don’t relate to security. An oil revenue law does not take security to be passed. A de-Baathification law does not take security to be passed. It takes political will. They haven’t shown the political will.[...]

KERRY: Now, I think John and others have a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship of al-Qaeda to Iraq. Number one, it wasn’t there. I thought one of the starkest things that General Petraeus said, “Did this have anything to do with al-Qaeda? Was al-Qaeda in Iraq before we attacked?” “No, it wasn’t,” he said. There was no al-Qaeda there. So we are in Iraq today on false pretenses, in the middle of a civil war, expending our troops while Iraqi politicians use us as cover for their own games. And the only way you will change that is to change this equation. When the president says to them, “We’ll stay as long as it takes,” they can make the decision to take as long as they want to make any decision necessary. You wouldn’t negotiate the sale of your home the way we’re negotiating in Iraq. There’s no leverage. We’ve said we’re there. You have to create uncertainty. You have to create leverage. And the only way to do that is to say to them, “This mission is transitioning. You have to take responsibility for this security over the course of the next year, and we’re going to take a different position.”

Now, there’s one other ingredient to that, and it’s been missing. You have to surge the diplomacy here, not the troops. There is such a stunning absence of real diplomacy in this effort. Where’s Condi Rice? Where is the effort of this administration to be engaged in a standing summit and conference, where you go into a room and the president gives the instructions, “You don’t leave here until you know one of three things: They’re either willing to have pluralism and settle these differences and do the passing of these laws, or they’re going to live in some kind of a semi-partitioned, you know, form where Sunni can’t go kill Shia and Shia can’t kill Sunni, or it’s impossible.” [...]

Science: Japanese scientists breed trout from salmon.

Papa salmon plus mama salmon equals … baby trout? Japanese researchers put a new spin on surrogate parenting as they engineered one fish species to produce another, in a quest to preserve endangered fish.
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Idaho scientists begin the next big step next month, trying to produce a type of salmon highly endangered in that state — the sockeye — this time using more plentiful trout as surrogate parents.

The new method is “one of the best things that has happened in a long time in bringing something new into conservation biology,” said University of Idaho zoology professor Joseph Cloud, who is leading the U.S. government-funded sockeye project.

The Tokyo University inventors dubbed their method “surrogate broodstocking.” They injected newly hatched but sterile Asian masu salmon with sperm-growing cells from rainbow trout — and watched the salmon grow up to produce trout.

The striking success, published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, is capturing the attention of conservation specialists, who say new techniques are badly needed. [...]

Hat tip to Shalini at Scientia Natura.

Permafrost: we are losing it and getting methane in the atmosphere. A nice article by Oxon at the Daily Kos.

More Dogs

Today’s Hike: 2:59 for a McNaughton loop; 2:54 of which was spent moving forward. Once again, I got lost on the “disc golf section”; I have to remember to turn right and go over the footbridge, then go for the tee-pee, then take the goat trail away from that 12′th hole. The walk went well; I was 2:19 at the “last bridge), 1:58 leaving Heaven’s Gate, and 1:24 at the bridge coming off of the bluff. I came down on that downhill out of control.

The only negative were the friggin dogs! First, I encountered three dogs with a couple; at least these dogs were friendly. Then near the small family cemetery, there was this “plaid shirt and jeans” clown with a growling pit-bull dog mix; I yelled at the dog. Had I been carrying a sidearm, I would have killed the dog and it’s owner…that is why I am for gun control. Just kidding, but I was irritated. A couple of minutes later, here is yet ANOTHER dog; this one a real pit bull. But at least this owner was responsible and quickly put it on a leash. Since I was still a bit rattled from the previous dog encounter, I swerved to the side and didn’t make eye contact; normally I would have smiled and said “hi”.

This goes to one issue of mine: the temptation in such cases is to start trying to outlaw this or that. But if *I* could do that, then someone else might outlaw what I like to do. So it is best to put up with the occasional irritation that an occasional irresponsible person provides. And, taking in the big picture, only one of the dog encounters was bad; one was slightly irritating and one was fine.

And, I got in a nice 10 miles, saw some deer (lots of them, actually) and got to see the fruits of my recent commitment to walking faster. The other slight downside is that I picked up a nice sized blister on my left little toe.

One other note: from time to time I pick up Alberto Salazar’s book on road racing. Mr. Salazar was the top marathoner back in the days when I started to run distance races. I remember him upsetting Bill Rodgers (and a host of other good runners) in the 1980 New York Marathon with a 2:09; he would break the World Record (sort of) a year later (2:08:13, on a course that was 128 meters short), win New York again with another 2:09, win the 1982 Boston Marathon in 2:08:5X, besting Dick Beardsley by 2 seconds, run a 2:10 in Rotterdam in 1983, 2:09:21 in Fukeoka in December, place second in the US Olympic trails in 1984, and then place 15′th with a 2:14 in the 1984 Olympics.

He had a long lay-off due to accumulated overtraining, sickness and injury, but came back to win the Comrades 88 km Ultra (56 mile) in 1994.

Well, I looked up his records on the internet, and found that he had a heart attack a few months ago, and yet he is, like me, 48.

Wow. On one hand, his success at athletics exceeds any success that I’ve had in anything. On the other hand, I still have much more complete use of my body that he has had in years (he has had Epstein-Barr virus for some time)

I certainly wish him well; he was one of my favorite runners. But this is a good caution against being too envious of anyone.

Hillary Clinton: picks up a nice endorsement. General Wes Clark endorses her (and: remember, it is “Clark” and not “Clarke”.) From the General’s website:

“Senator Hillary Clinton has earned the support of millions of Americans in her campaign for president — and today I am pleased to count myself among them. The world has reached a critical point, and we need a leader in the White House with the courage, intelligence and humility to navigate through many troubling challenges to our security at home and abroad. I believe Senator Clinton is that leader, and I whole-heartedly endorse her for President of the United States. Senator Clinton and I share a worldview in which diplomacy is the best first-strike tool in our arsenal; in today’s complicated global system, the United States should be making more friends than enemies.”

Never before have so many Americans had our well-being so closely tied to world events. Our economic and national security has become more complicated than ever before, and we deserve a leader who draws on wisdom, compassion, intelligence and moral courage — in short, we need Hillary Clinton. She is tough but fair, a rock-solid leader equal to the many weighty challenges ahead of us.”

U. S. Senator talks about the General Petraeus report: “it’s dishonest, it’s hypocritical, it’s dangerous and irresponsible.” Damn those liberal MoveOn.org members! Oh wait, that was Senator Hagle, R-Nebraska.

Maher: Isn’t a dirty trick on the American people when you send a military man out there to basically do a political sell-job?”

Hagel: It’s not only a dirty trick, but it’s dishonest, it’s hypocritical, it’s dangerous and irresponsible. The fact is this is not Petraeus’ policy, it’s the Bush’s policy. The military is — certainly very clear in the Constitution — is subservient to the elected public officials of this country.. but to put our military in a position that this administration has put them in is just wrong, and it’s dangerous.”

Lazy Sunday

In a few minutes, I’ll go to McNaughton and take in a 10 mile loop; maybe more if so inclined.

Football: my picks went 6-9-1 against the spread, though Yahoo shows me winning 11 out of 21, due to the “straight up” picks which are usually easy to win. So I am 31 out of 60, officially. It is a good thing that I don’t bet on games.

USC is really rolling along; to me Florida, USC, and LSU are a cut above the rest. Oklahoma: ok, they blew out a good (but not great) Miami team. So I’d have them at 4′th.

Navy lost to Ball State 34-31 in overtime.

(photo hotlinked from the Yahoo Football Gallery)

In wild west action, Tulsa beat BYU 55-47 (yes, that is a football score) and Utah beat UCLA 44-6. I had picked Utah to cover the spread, but this result surprised me.

Science, Religion and all that.

Alan Keyes has entered the GOP race for President. Hey, getting 30% in a Senate election can encourage a guy! Hat tip to Friendly Atheist for reminding us of what the 2004 Illinois Senate race was like:

If I had an unlimited amount of money, I’d contribute to Keyes’ campaign as he is always good for a laugh or two! But Keyes does make some good points: many people claim to be Christian but then run away from some of the daffier aspects of their religion! Wouldn’t it be simpler to say something like “hey, I find these aspects to be useful in my life, but I can’t really be that because it makes no sense.” For example, I do yoga poses because it limbers my body, and I do find some aspects of the physical practice to serve as useful metaphors for life. But I believe none of the supernatural/extranatural nonsense that comes with a “true practice”, even if some of the teachers say wise things from time to time.

I’ve found wisdom from Christian ministers and Jewish Rabbis as well; that doesn’t mean that I am going to say that I embrace their religion.

Evolution: what is evolution, anyway? Sandwalk walks us through a detailed definition; there is more to it than people realize. Some of the popular non-technical definitions can embrace things like Lamarkian processes, for example.

From Professor Moran’s Sandwalk blog:

Most non-scientists seem to be quite confused about precise definitions of biological evolution. Part of the confusion is because the word “evolution” has many different meanings, depending on the context. When we talk about biology we are thinking about biological evolution and that’s the term I want to define here. What do biologists mean when they refer to biological evolution?

One of the most respected evolutionary biologists has recently defined biological evolution as follows:

Biological (or organic) evolution is change in the properties of populations of organisms or groups of such populations, over the course of generations. The development, or ontogeny, of an individual organism is not considered evolution: individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are ‘heritable’ via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportions of different forms of a gene within a population, such as the alleles that determine the different human blood types, to the alterations that led from the earliest organisms to dinosaurs, bees, snapdragons, and humans.

Douglas J. Futuyma (1998) Evolutionary Biology 3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc. Sunderland MA p.4

Note that biological evolution refers to populations and not to individuals. In other words, populations evolve but individuals do not. This is a very important point. It distinguishes biological evolution from other forms of evolution in science (e.g., stellar evolution). Another important point is that the changes must be genetic, or heritable—they must be passed on to the next generation. Evolution is the process by which this occurs and it is spread out over many generations. Thus, the short minimal definition of biological evolution is,

Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations.

This is a good working scientific definition of evolution; one that can be used to distinguish between evolution and similar changes that are not evolution. [...]

Unfortunately, outside of the scientific community, the common definitions of evolution are quite different. For example, in the Oxford Concise Science Dictionary we find the following definition:

evolution: The gradual process by which the present diversity of plant and animal life arose from the earliest and most primitive organisms, which is believed to have been continuing for the past 3000 million years

This is inexcusable for a dictionary that’s supposed to be a dictionary of science. Not only does this definition exclude prokaryotes, protozoa, and fungi, but it specifically includes a term “gradual process” that should not be part of the definition. More importantly the definition seems to refer more to the history of evolution than to evolution itself. [...]

Standard dictionaries are even worse.

evolution: …the doctrine according to which higher forms of life have gradually arisen out of lower.. (Chambers)

evolution: …the development of a species, organism, or organ from its original or primitive state to its present or specialized state; phylogeny or ontogeny (Webster’s)

These definitions are simply wrong. The problem is that it’s common for non-scientists to enter into a discussion about evolution with such a definition in mind. This often leads to fruitless debate since the experts are thinking about evolution from a different perspective. When someone claims they don’t believe in evolution they cannot be referring to an acceptable scientific definition of biological evolution because that would be denying something that is easy to prove. It would be like saying they don’t believe in gravity!

Anyway, this is a debate I have with some of my friends. Dr. Andy is a very smart person with an M. D. and Ph. D. from the University of Chicago, who earned his first job at Harvard Medical; unfortunately he is completely confused about politics . Anyway, Andy maintains that most people should be able to grasp the basics of evolution. I claim otherwise; it requires a bit of effort (from those of us with average IQs) to even grasp the basic definition of biological evolution!

For example, if you look at the commenter to my previous post about Fred Thompson: can you imagine that individual even beginning to grasp the nuances of a correct definition of biological evolution? Heck, can you imagine Fred Thompson understanding a word of it? What I can say is that there are now at least four Republic party candidates who deny evolution (40%); but hey, they are doing slightly better than the public at large!

(ok, so none of these really have a chance; the other three, besides Keyes are:

Three – THREE – of the ten Republicans running for President of the United States of America raised their hands. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas and former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas don’t believe in evolution. Just like that. As if they’d been asked if the earth were round.

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