Links for the day

Workout notes We’ll see what the hip/butt/leg can stand; I’ll probably go to yoga class, do some gentle walking on the track/treadmill and see what machines that I can use. “no pain” to the affected area will be the key; if the thunderstorm passes I’ll swim a bit as well.

Oddly enough the pain seemed to go away after I climbed some stairs, which indicates that perhaps all I had was a cramp.

Computers this stupid computer is “giving me updates” as I type this. I hate the loss of control that comes with this. So, later today, I’ll take control of this situation. This webpage shows you how.

Ultra: I am sorry to say that the Western States 100 miler had to be canceled (due to the wildfires). I had a friend who trained his butt off for this one; I hope that he can find an alternate event to use his fitness on.

Having a bad day: do you think that you are having a bad day? Not too far from my house there is a relatively new neighborhood. One of the houses caught fire about a year and a half ago; a baby died and a lady who tried to save her foster child suffered severe burns while trying to save the baby.

She racked up $1,000,000 in medical bills, and is trying to get her life back together. She has a ton of painful burns that are still healing; the amount of surgery she needs (as the melted skin hardens and needs to be loosened) is astonishing. Needless to say, she has both physical and emotional pain.

Valerie Edwards didn’t feel her skin burning the morning her house was engulfed in flames.

She was determined to save her foster child, who was trapped in her crib upstairs.

“It was a blaze,” said Edwards, who repeatedly entered her burning house the morning of Dec. 26 in an attempt to save 11-month-old Anariah West. “I ran out of the house, got some air, then went back in. All I was seeing in my head was that baby.”

Firefighters eventually rescued the infant, but she died later that day of smoke inhalation.

Edwards, 50, suffered third-degree burns and was in a coma for about five weeks. Her house, 821 W. Spring Hollow, was destroyed in the fire, and she is facing nearly $1 million in medical bills, having been through several surgeries and only needing more. Full of pain, both physically and emotionally, Edwards didn’t think it could get any worse.

Then last month, Edwards received a letter that she is being sued by Anariah’s mother, Tanesha West, who is claiming damages in excess of $50,000 for the wrongful death of her baby.

That’s right: she is being sued.

The happy part is that people saw her front page story in the Peoria Journal Star and are helping out; a law firm is giving her free legal representation.

Just a day after she went public about her overwhelming pain – both physical and emotional – Valerie Edwards is now filled with hope.

Sobs of joy replaced the 50-year-old burn victim’s tears of sadness as she learned Wednesday a local law firm has volunteered to defend her in a wrongful death lawsuit.

“I’m just so glad and so, so thankful people are willing to help me,” Edwards said. “I really didn’t know what I was going to do.”

Local law firm Husch Blackwell Sanders LLP has stepped forward to represent Edwards in the lawsuit filed by Tanesha West, mother of 11-month-old Anariah West who died in a fire at Edwards’ house six months ago. Tanesha West is claiming damages in excess of $50,000, though Edwards and her husband were foster parents of the baby at the time.

Still, this is an example of where we need some sort of government cooperation to get at least some form of public catastrophic health insurance; I really don’t want to see people get bankrupted for having something bad happen to them.

Back to normal topics

An ex credit card service representative gives advice for those with credit cards, even those who don’t have problems.

Barack Obama Though he has backing from the net roots, many in the net roots are not happy over his saying that he backs the FISA compromise. In short, Obama has never sucked up to us (and from my point of view: that’s good! I don’t back this FISA bill but I don’t want to vote for anyone who sucks up, even if they are sucking up to me).

In fact, Obama has even refunded some people’s campaign contributions.

Offshore drilling Robert Reich reminds us why this is a bad idea, and points out that this so called “effect on the oil futures” is negligible.

Uncontacted Tribes: the folks I talked about are uncontacted, but agencies were aware of them. They haven’t had contact with larger society since 1910 or so though; that is, things like airplanes and technology are not part of their lives.

But reports that these tribes were unknown to anyone else and were discovered by accident were mistaken.

Mathematics and Cosmology Is our universe arranged in a fractal pattern? There is a new research paper that suggests that.

Religion/Atheism If you want to know how religion can harm attitudes, check out this amusing article concerning space exploration:

God hates Mars

I sometimes wonder just how messed up some people’s logic can be.

The answer, in many cases, is none. None more messed up.

I present to you one Rob Hood, commentator on The Conservative Voice. He has written a remarkably logic-free screed saying that the Mars Phoenix Lander is a waste of taxpayer’s money. Why?

Because searching for conditions supporting life on Mars is silly. We already know where life came from. Can you guess? Bueller? Bueller?

Mars is a desert planet and perhaps there is ice and maybe even water there. So what? Who cares? It’s water! That doesn’t mean a thing. Life originated on Earth when God spoke it into existence and there is no need in wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer money searching for an answer that is based upon faulty evolutionary ideas.

Ignoring the fact that we’ve known about water ice on Mars for decades, and that Phoenix didn’t cost billions, and that lots of people care about exploring the real universe around us, and that evolution is a fact, there is still a pretty big hole in his logic.

Applying his (heh) reasoning, I guess there’s no reason for, say, research into malaria. If God created it, why cure it? It’s part of God’s plan. Same goes with cancer, smallpox, lupus, Down’s syndrome, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, glaucoma, pertussis, and oh, say, one million other ailments. After all, as he points out in the case of astrobiology, all our medical research — all of it — is based on “faulty evolutionary ideas”.

Now I agree that one must figure out some priorities on how to spend public funds and reasonable people can disagree. But to say “we think that our god did this and that so you need not look here for that” is just downright stupid. Saying “my values dictate that we set these priorities” during the debate over what to spend where is ok, so long as you accept that you don’t have veto power.

It turns out that many theists don’t seem to understand that there are really people that really believe that no deity exists; they think that we are either rebellious or somehow “feel abandoned” by a deity.

Guess who is picketing the George Carlin funeral? You guessed it! (think: the church that was picketing dead soldier’s funerals).

So just for them: (Carlin on war)