Turkey Day, 2007

Workout notes See the previous post; note I didn’t do much else.

We had 14 people over for dinner; my sister and my brother in law did a superb job with it. Later, the teenagers/young women hung around together and the older ones watched the Cowboy 34-3 rout of the New York Jets.

Of interest was the fact that the Jones brothers played for the opposing teams; they had a reunion of sorts after the game. Thomas plays for the Jets and Notre Dame graduate Julius plays for the Cowboys.

Photos from Yahoo’s NFL photo gallery.

Other notes

Zombierunner has published an updated version of Middle Income Richard’s Almanac. It is always good for a few laughs.

Travis is a strong favorite to repeat as champion at the 50K race he won last year.

Shalini has more cool photos of her Secular Society and its Enemies conference.

Here she is with Richard Dawkins.

Liberals Must Die weighs in on health insurance in the United States:

n fact, “Survival of the Fittest” is what our healthcare and public policy is all about!

For example, Rudy Giuliani (treated for prostate cancer) John McCain (treated for melanoma, the most serious type of skin malignancy) and Fred Thompson (diagnosed with lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system) have all put forward healthcare plans that, if enacted, would probably meant that they (as people who have been diagnosed with cancer) would not be able to get health insurance.

Now, the stupid dems are complaining about this, because they think it shows how clueless Republicans are.

But really, it shows that we know exactly what we are doing: Survival of the Fittest.

Giuliani, McCain and Thompson are all worth millions. They are the fittest, and so if they get sick again, they can afford to get medical treatment.

So think about it. If they were to enact these plans, it would send a clear message to Americans: “You need to save up a few million just in case you get sick, or you will die from lack of treatment.” [...]

Personal note A local blogger reports what she got from her spouse as a gift. In my household, this would be grounds for divorce!

My poor husband, he’s gift giving challanged. For example, on my last birthday I received two $10 bills, a book about Ronald Reagan [...]

Here are some fun science posts:

Cosmic Variance talks about Hubble’s law: this results in the red-shift that we see in other galaxies: the further away from us, the greater the red-shift. This implies an expanding universe. Think of it this way: consider the surface of a balloon and pretend that our universe consists solely of the two dimensional surface of the balloon. The air inside the balloon and the air outside don’t exist in our universe (in this imaginary model). Mark the surface with dots with each dot representing a galaxy. Now blow the balloon up in the conventional way. Note the surface of the balloon (our universe). It expands, but there is no “center” to the expansion; ALL of the points on the surface of the balloon move away from each other. Remember, our universe is ONLY the two dimensional surface. THAT is similar to what we observe in our own universe, only we live in a 3 dimensional universe.

Three great posts from Biosingularity:

Here is the latest on the skin cells which can be made to act like embryonic stem cells.

Here is an article which shows that exercise can reduce the risk of blood clots.

Finally, here is an article which explains the role that the brain plays in resolving ambiguous images. This has profound implications on research on disorders such as dyslexia.

On a more somber note: O’Brien Briar Patch reports on the disgusting practice of making wounded military veterans pay back their bonus money because they became too wounded to finish out their term of service!