Army-Navy 2007 and other topics

(photos from here)

It is about halftime at the Army-Navy game; Navy leads 24-3 but the score doesn’t represent how competitive has been. Army started with a good drive but missed a short field goal; later Navy scored on a 41 yard touchdown run following a short Army punt.

Army responded with a drive and a field goal; Navy ran the kickoff back for a touchdown to make it 14-3.

Then Army fumbled on its own 5 and Navy scored on its possession. Then, just before the half ended, Navy ran an Army punt back to the 34 and kicked a 51 yard field goal on the last play of the half.

Coming into the game I wondered if this was an upset possibility; it turns out that Army is making too many mistakes. Still, a half remains but Army is not a quick scoring team.

Update Army has driven to the Navy 1 yard line with 7:30 left in the third quarter after a bad Navy punt.

Oh my goodness; Army fumbled on a second and 1 at the Navy 1 yard line; this was the fullback that can bench press 400 pounds (and bragged about “not playing for Standford”) and replay appears to show that it is a fumble. Oh yes, he was upside down and on the way down when the ball came out. Clear fumble.

Update Navy has all but put it away with another touchdown drive; it is 31-3; now Navy has blocked a punt. One of the rushers was completely untouched. Now the Navy second team quarterback is in the game and the ball is on the 2. Touchdown, Navy! It is now 38-3 with about 8:30 left in the game. I think that I can rest easy now.

To be honest, I had worried about an upset prior to the game; I felt that Army had played a somewhat harder schedule (Georgia Tech, Rutgers, Wake Forest, Boston College; ok Navy played two of these teams) but Navy is clearly better.

Navy has the ball at the Army 3 and is not running another play; game over. Beat Army, Sir!

One post game tradition that I like: no matter who won, the teams stand together for each other’s alma mater. Mutual respect!

Running we are having a moderate ice storm; it is in the 20’s F (about -5 C) and it is raining. I made my 7:45 yoga class, signed up for the Jingle Bell 5K run (funds go to the Arthritis Foundation) and then I promptly drove home. Why? Well, when I went to walk to my truck, I found that the sidewalk was very icy and slippery. True, the road section of the course was salted, but the trail back would have been a skating rink, and I don’t need a pulled muscle.

So, I did a 5 mile run/walk on my home treadmill: 45 minutes of 4 minutes run, 1 minute walk, then 11 minutes of running. Heck, the Arthritis Foundation got my money, and that was the point.

It is spandex season though, so I’ll have to resort to a photo:

Other topics:

Youtube debate: guess what? Democrats got some “gotcha” questions as well; the difference is that they looked better and didn’t whine about it.

Media Matters noted that several questions asked during the Democratic debate could be described as Republican “gotchas,” including: one in which the questioner echoed the enduring Republican myth of Democrats as taxers and spenders, another asking the candidates’ views on gun control, and a question to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) about her reception as a female president by Arab and Muslim states.

The Los Angeles Times subsequently reported that the MySpace page of the questioner who asked whether Clinton “would be taken seriously” by Arab and Muslim states “features pictures of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Republican presidential candidate.” The article further reported that the man who asked about gun control reportedly “said he had voted twice for President Bush” during “an interview Thursday.” From the November 30 Times article:

But, CNN’s [political director Sam] Feist said, conservative commentators did not complain when questioners who shared their political ideology had videos aired during the Democratic forum in July.

During that session, one video questioner asked the candidates to choose between raising taxes or cutting benefits in order to save Social Security. Another demanded to know whether taxes would rise “like usually they do when a Democrat comes in office.” A third featured a gun-toting Michigan man, who in an interview Thursday said he had voted twice for President Bush, who wanted to know if the Democrats would protect his “baby” — an assault rifle he cradled in his arms.

Another questioner from that forum who seemed to have clear conservative credentials was John McAlpin, a sailor who asked Clinton: “How do you think you would be taken seriously” by Arab and Muslim nations that treat women as “second-class citizens”?

McAlpin’s MySpace page features pictures of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Republican presidential candidate.

It depicts Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly as a friend, while offering a caricature of a bearded, turban-wearing “Borat Hussein Obama” — a derogatory reference to Obama, the Democratic candidate who as a youth attended a Muslim school.

In other words, the Republicans can dish it out, but they whine when it gets given back to them!

Religious extremism:
The Sudan “Teddy Bear” incident: a teacher from Great Brittan had asked her school children to name a Teddy Bear. The kids chose the name “Muhhamed”. She was given a 15 day jail sentence for this, and there were many who clamored for a stiffer sentence!

And just out of curiosity, who do you think is more worthy of respect – a woman who gives up a comfortable lifestyle and job to go to a third world country to teach children, or a man screaming that he wants another human being whipped for calling a teddy bear Muhammad?

Personally, I do respect the decisions taken by Muslim associations in Britain and in Canada, to appeal to the Sudanese government to release Gillian immediately.

Religious founders and their followers do not merit respect simply because they are religious. No-one would dream of arguing that political parties (and their founders and members) should be afforded respect simply because they are political. Why shouldn’t politicians and their followers be subject to the views and skills of satirical cartoonists and puppet makers? Why shouldn’t presidents be likened to teddy bears and vice-versa? Why shouldn’t leaders be written into soap-operas with Jerry Springer? I don’t suppose for a minute that Gillian Gibbons wanted to insult the prophet Muhammad, but why shouldn’t she be allowed to if she wants to?

I leave A.C. Grayling to conclude:

… all who have secure grounds for their views should not be afraid of robust challenge and criticism ; if they are confident in their views they should be able to shrug off satire and mockery. The more insecure people are, the less confident they feel, the less mature their outlook is, the angrier they are made by what they label as ‘offence’ to their religious sensitivities – even to the point of violence. They undermine and refute themselves thus. (p.9 in Grayling, A.C. (2007) Against All Gods. London: Oberon Books.)

Pope: atheism is bad.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI strongly criticized atheism in a major document released Friday, saying it had led to some of the “greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice” ever known.
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In his second encyclical, Benedict also critically questioned modern Christianity, saying its focus on individual salvation had ignored Jesus’ message that true Christian hope involves salvation for all. [...]

Benedict sharply criticizes Marx and the 19th and 20th century atheism spawned by his revolution, although he acknowledges that both were responding to the deep injustices of the time.

“A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God,” he wrote. But he said the idea that mankind can do what God cannot by creating a new salvation on Earth was “both presumptuous and intrinsically false.” [...]

Rev. Robert Gahl, professor of ethics at Rome’s Santa Croce University, said the pope’s message was “tremendously relevant” for today’s materialistic societies “where people put hope in science and medical cures.”

Lovely. Think back to events like the Black Death which killed tens of millions of people. Modern science could have save the lives of millions, but there was the church, holding science back through threats and intimidation.

The only thing redeeming is that this doddering old fool is mostly irrelevant in western society.

Hat tip to God is For Suckers.

Fred Thompson Doesn’t want to be bothered with having to talk to voters.

he holds sessions billed by the campaign as chances to “meet Fred,” often little more than photo opportunities, with the staging not especially well choreographed. And even those are relatively few, with a typical week instead dominated by fund-raisers that are closed to the press and the general public alike. Indeed, what has defined his campaign recently has to a large degree been his absence from the trail. . .
[...]
Once the reporters were let in, Mr. Thompson took questions for about 10 minutes. When a reporter for The Associated Press tried to ask a follow-up question on immigration, a topic on which the campaign has been trying to capitalize, Mr. Thompson glared at her, said he believed she had already been told that the last question had been asked, and walked off.

More from the quoted source:

[...]Mr. Thompson’s performance at the debate capped a weeklong period in which he held only one retail campaign event: a “meet Fred” rally last Saturday in a small room at the back of Sticky Fingers, a barbecue restaurant in Summerville, S.C. There was no music or food. There were not even chairs, and so some 100 voters there to see him had to stand for three hours before he arrived.

After brief remarks in which he cited the broad conservative principles that he said guided him, he took just a half-dozen questions. The appearance lasted less than 30 minutes, and he left without mingling with customers elsewhere in the restaurant.

The dearth of retail events on his schedule contrasted with the pace kept by Senator John McCain, a rival for the Republican nomination, who flew back from Iraq last Saturday, sat down for a television interview with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday morning and headed Monday to South Carolina, where his retail stops included a town-hall-style meeting on Tuesday and another on Wednesday, only hours before the debate. On Thursday, Mr. McCain held a news conference here in St. Petersburg, then headed back to South Carolina for several stops Friday, including more meetings of the town hall variety.

Bill Lacy, Mr. Thompson’s campaign manager, says the candidate keeps a full schedule, even if not so visible as those of his rivals. “Republican voters are going to decide if they want the Energizer Bunny or Richard Simmons, or a consistent conservative,” Mr. Lacy said. The campaign, he said, “clearly put our chips” on a belief that frenetic campaigning was not the key to success. [...]

Note: Mr. Thompson, I understand. Frankly, I think most voters are (*)idiots and I wouldn’t want to go out of my way to talk to them either. That is why I’d never attempt to run for public office!

(*) Ok, I don’t really think that. People can do tons of stuff that I can’t do or at least do well: they fix cars and computers, do carpentry, write articles, fly planes, repair roads, fix pipes, start and run successful businesses, cure diseases and provide physical therapy to get people back to speed. But as one crusty people-oriented politician tells me: “they don’t pay attention; consequently you need to repeat the same message over and over again.” That is why politicians sound so dumb to political junkies, at least while they are campaigning.

But my main point is that a good politician has to at least act as if he/she likes people.

Not like this one:

[...]And finally, these are trying times for technophobes. Last week New York State Assemblyman Willis Stephens (R-Obviously) was reading the comments of about 300 members of his constituency on a local community message board. Mr. Stephens then wrote an email to one of his aides to inform them that he was “watching the idiots pontificate.”

But how do we know what the assemblyman wrote in a private communication to one of his aides? Because unfortunately for Mr. Stephens, instead of sending the comment to the aide he accidentally posted it on the community message board, where it was promptly read by his constituents and shortly thereafter delivered to the media. Whoops. See you next week!

Actually, go ahead and view the link; it has a top ten list of “Conservative Idiots”.

Ok, three places are occupied by George W. Bush, one of the people (position zero) is hardly an idiot (though I don’t like him), and one is a fellow Naval Academy graduate and an expert fighter pilot who won medals for honorable service in Vietnam (but alas, this guy IS a homophobe and a crook). For a discussion of an aerial dogfight this guy had in Vietnam, go here. Video here.

Back to (*) people are idiots(*) thought: people may not be idiots, but they, I mean, we act like idiots at times. For example, just read this post:

In their paper, Loffgren and Fefferman describe what they call the “stupid factor.” People will try to get close enough to observe the chaos inflicted by the epidemic out of morbid curiosity and end up getting infected themselves, promoting the spread of a virus. Epidemiologists have long recognized that it is difficult to keep people within a quarantine zone, but no one ever thought about people actually sneaking in and then out again.

Thus, the WoW phenomenon is actually helping to advance science and develop strategies to prevent viral pandemics. Maybe it’s not just a massive black hole sucking up human productivity. Whoda thunk?

Back to politics and Republicans:

Ok, here is a gotcha on Tancredo. Fred Tancredo is strongly anti illegal immigrant. Ok, fine so far. But, there is more (hat tip to Watertiger)

Source

When Republican Representative Tom Tancredo isn’t railing against the “scourge” of illegal immigration on the presidential campaign trail, he relaxes in the 1053 square foot basement recreation room of his Littleton, Colorado McMansion. There, he and his family can rack up a game of billiards on their tournament size pool table, play pinball, or enjoy their favorite movies in the terraced seating area of a home theater system. Tancredo, who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War by producing evidence that he suffered from mentally illnesses, especially likes entertaining his buddies with classic war movies.

“We have friends over and I have now shown Pearl Harbor about six times,” Tancredo boasted to the Rocky Mountain News about his 102-inch television. “But I mainly just show the attack scene because the sound is so good.”

When Tancredo hired a construction crew to transform his drab basement into a high-tech pleasure den in October 2001, however, he did not express concern that only two of its members spoke English. Nor did he bother to check the workers’ documentation to see if they were legal residents of the United States. Had Tancredo done so, he would have learned that most of the crew consisted of undocumented immigrants, or “criminal aliens” as he likes to call them. Instead, Tancredo paid the crew $60,000 for its labor and waited innocently for the completion of his elaborate entertainment complex.

During the renovation process, two illegal workers hired by Tancredo were alerted to his reputation for immigrant bashing. They went straight to the Denver Post to complain. Tancredo “doesn’t want us here, but he’ll take advantage of our sweat and our labor,” one of the workers complained to the Post on September 19, 2002. “It’s just not right.”

The Post report momentarily threw Tancredo on the defensive. In a fiery speech soon after the story’s publication, Tancredo blamed his foibles on the INS. “I haven’t the foggiest idea how many people I may have hired in the past as taxi drivers, as waiters, waitresses, home improvement people,” he boomed from the House floor. “I haven’t the foggiest idea how many of those people may have been here illegally, and it is not my job to ask them.” Then defiance gave way to vitriol as the congressman dubbed undocumented immigrants, “the face of murder.”
[...]
Of all the major GOP candidates, only Sen. John McCain has countered Tancredo with big tent appeals to socially conservative Latinos. The other candidates have reliably parroted his talking points, parrying accusations of ideological impurity by accusing one another of being soft on illegal immigration. “All I’ve heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo,” Tancredo observed during the debate. “It is great.”

But there is one way the Republican candidates can never out-Tancredo Tancredo. The congressman lives in a “sanctuary mansion” built by the kind of people he has made a career out of demonizing. Tom Tancredo may have no hope of winning the Republican nomination, but in the cause of hypocrisy, he is the frontrunner.

Oh by the way, Tancredo is the one who wants us to keep the option of destroying Mecca with nuclear weapons if we are attacked by terrorists who are muslims.

Rudy Giuliani

I’m surprised that the Thompson and Romney campaigns aren’t using this.

For more Giuliani follies: check out this Daily Kos post:

Oh my Lord.

Rudy made the NYPD — the Heroes of 9/11 — walk Judi Nathan’s dog.

He made them walk her dog!

Can you imagine?

What a damned scumbag! Mr. 9/11 Security 9/11. Making real cops scoop his girlfriend’s dog’s poop.

Forget being president. This imperious jerkass would make me puke as the Prince of Wales.

Moment of honesty here (I mean “honesty” as in, “I am admitting this in public” honesty): if “your” candidate does this, you grit your teeth, your stomach turns, but you mumble about how the person you’d like to eat dinner with isn’t the one you want running the country. Yeah, this makes him less likable (though the Bourbon Republicans won’t be bothered by it) but it won’t make that much difference in the great scheme of things.

End of November 2007

Football I was flipping through the channels and came across the Fresno State-New Mexico State football game. It is pouring down rain and not much is at stake for New Mexico State; it was 13-8 Aggies when I tuned in.

The game eventually got to 30-13 Bulldogs when I started to blog. But with about 5 minutes left and the Aggies have cut the lead to 30-23; the game is now getting interesting.

Fresno State drove the ball down to the 3 yard line with 1:23 but missed a short field goal (in the driving rain; the kicker is now 20 out of 22, so this was a rare miss) so now New Mexico State is attempting to drive; they are now at their own 33 with 26 seconds remaining.

I’d say that this one is over, but given this season who knows? 14 seconds remaining and they are on their own 38. Miracle time? Nope, they turned it over on downs.

More Football: Terry Bowden talks about the Army-Navy game and points out that, while other teams have had the pain of having a teammate die, this has happened all to frequently to those who played for Army or Navy.

I hadn’t planned on blogging again, but there was some interesting stuff out there so here goes:

Politics
Republicans continue to whine and whine about the last Republican Debate.

Dear Duncan, Fred, John, Mike, Mitt, Ron, Rudy, and Tom:

The CNN-YouTube Debate was a disgrace. The blame lies largely with CNN, which wanted Republican voters to meet their Republican candidates but only on Democrats’ terms. They did so by portraying the GOP as women-arresting, gun toting, confederate flag-waving simpletons.

Isn’t that merely an accurate portrayal of Republicans???

There is a reason that, according to a Republican source, the percentage of people calling themselves Republican has dropped from 37 to 31 percent (this Daily Kos diary quotes a National Review article)

Joe Biden: will push to impeach Bush if he attacks Iran. This is the source of the quote.

Sen. Joe Biden, the loquacious long-shot Democratic presidential candidate, warned President Bush Thursday that he would move for impeachment if the president unilaterally authorized a military strike against Iran.

“The President has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran and … if he does, as foreign relations committee chairman and former chairman of judiciary, I will move to impeach him,” Biden told a crowd of about 100 potential voters at a campaign stop in New Hampshire.

Biden said he is meeting with constitutional law experts and plans to send Bush a legal memo formally outlining his warning, according to Seacoast Online, which reported his comments.

The senior Delaware senator told the crowd that calls for Bush’s immediate impeachment were valid but may not have enough constitutional support to make them viable. He added that Bush wasn’t the only White House figure who deserves to be booted.

“If you’re going to impeach George Bush, you better impeach Cheney first,” Biden said, garnering applause from the crowd.

Nice. I hope that he means what he says.

Politics: margin of error on political polls. Read the first comment on this thread; it is quite interesting. What do you think? I might make a blog post about this; the article that it is talking about is here.

Huckabee: a scientist weighs in.
In this post, the blogger discusses this video (along with the Chuck Norris one):

A phone call from God! Quite the thigh-slapper. Huckabee artfully includes an assurance that God doesn’t take side during elections — although we all know his preferences, apparently.

I understand that it’s a joke. But there are moments of solemnity during the “phone call,” when Huckabee is being perfectly serious. One of those is at the 2:00 mark, where we are reminded that the President talks to God. And then we receive a list of instructions, including “protecting marriage.” (It needs to be protected from The Gays, for those who don’t have your decoder rings.) George W. Bush himself has occasionally mentioned talking to God, although usually in private meetings where it’s difficult to get objective verification, and admittedly his theology is somewhat unsystematic.

A lot of people who don’t really believe in the old-fashioned supernatural nevertheless think it’s a good idea to appropriate spiritual terminology for their own uses — re-defining “faith” as “any hypothesis that has not yet been proven,” or “God” as “the warm feeling I get when contemplating the universe,” or “religion” as “a nice kind of social club that brings people together to reinforce each other’s goodness.” It’s not a good idea. These are words, and they have meanings when you say them — people think they know what you have in mind. When you say “God,” most people think of the dictionary definition — “the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.” They’re not thinking of “the laws of nature.” And they honestly believe in this dictionary-definition God. And they let that belief affect, or at least justify, how they govern the country. Shouldn’t every non-religious person be deeply alarmed about this state of affairs? [...]

Evolution: Professor Moran talks about an article on a free access online journal, which should be of interest to those interested in evolution. There is a fight going on in the comments section to this post; the on line journal can be accessed here.

From the discussion of a Kos diary:

Humor
How can you deny the truth of evolution after reading this?

Neurobiologist and anthropologist Michael Platt of Duke University is studying differences in how the sexes respond to pictures in general. On average, his research shows, men will pay to see images of women. But you have to pay women to look at images of men!

Platt started with similar studies in monkeys.[...]

Platt found that male macaques strongly preferred to look at pictures of females’ rear ends [...]

A funny off-color joke… from Sex Whispers…

SMART ASS ANSWER OF THE YEAR 2007
A college teacher reminds her class of tomorrow’s final exam.

* “Now class, I won’t tolerate any excuses for you not being here tomorrow. I might consider a nuclear attack or a serious personal injury, illness, or a death in your immediate family, but that’s it, no other excuses whatsoever!”

A smart-ass guy in the back of the room raised his hand and asked,

* “What would you say if tomorrow I said I was suffering from complete and utter sexual exhaustion?”

The entire class is reduced to laughter and snickering. When silence is restored, the teacher smiles knowingly at the student, shakes her head and sweetly says, [...]

For the rest, go to the site.