First weekend in July 2008, gone

And a nice weekend it was, though in terms of athletic performances, it wasn’t much.

My body is rebelling against running (just a bit) but this higher intensity activity will help me with my trail races in 2009. So all this fall will be rebuilding, with maybe a marathon here, 50K there, just for fun.

That means I need a 20 miler this next weekend.

I also have to prepare to sub for Nancy’s “yoga-lattes” class so I had better practice my routines. I had better also practice my professional look as some of those ladies in her class cause me eyestrain!

Other, more “noble” topics…cough, cough…

More from The Edge of the American West

Jesse Helms up and dies, unleashing from the depths of Nexis the long history of his views on race:

* “The nation has been hypnotized by the swaying and gesturing of the watusi and the frug.”
– WRAL Viewpoint, 1966
* “They should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro.”
– In response to Duke University students holding a vigil after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, 1968
* “I’ve been portrayed as a caveman by some. That’s not true. I’m a conservative progressive, and that means I think all men are equal, be they slants, beaners or niggers.”
– February 6, 1985
* “All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction.”
– After Mexicans protested his visit in 1986
* “I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing Dixie until she cries.”
–of his new colleague, Senator Carol Moseley-Braun

The article also has a copy of the “white hands” political ad. But that is an interesting question: should a true progressive celebrate the death of an Imperial Wizard? My take would be this: probably not, but let’s not let people overlook the kind of life that this man sorry example of homo sapiens lived.

High Intelligence linked with atheism? We do know that the vast majority of elite scientists are either agnostic or atheist and that 60% of non-elite scientists are. But I wondered if this came from repeated viewing of the world through a purely naturalistic lens; after all, “goddidit” is a sorry explanation for a scientific phenomenon.

But an article points out that high intelligence itself might be a factor:

A British researcher, Richard Lynn, claims to have found a correlation between intelligence and relgious scepticism. In a study spanning 137 countries, Lynn found that high intelligence produced an extremely high likelihood of the rejection of religious faith.

This blog quotes this source; note that the paper itself has not appeared as of the time of this article. I’d be interested to see if, say, elite historians or intelligent non-scientists are atheistic or agnostic at the same rate.

No, obviously this study doesn’t apply to me at all; I am anything but “elite” at anything.

Entropy and the start of the universe A Cal Tech physicist argues that the “low entropy” initial phase of our universe at the time of the big bang helps make the case for the mulit-verse model of the universe (e. g., there are lots of parallel universes out there). But before you jump to conclusions about his using this as a “creation from design” argument:

Does God exist in a multiverse?

I don’t want to give advice to people about their religious beliefs, but I do think that it’s not smart to bet against the power of science to figure out the natural world. It used to be, a thousand years ago, that if you wanted to explain why the moon moved through the sky, you needed to invoke God.

And then Galileo and Newton came along and realized that there was conservation of momentum, so things tend to keep moving.

Nowadays people say, “Well, you certainly can’t explain the creation of the universe without invoking God,” and I want to say, “Don’t bet against it.”

It is kind of a weird “our starting state is so improbable it must be part of a bunch of other states” argument (think of it this way: if one had a truly randomly shuffled deck of cards, it would be highly, highly unlikely that it came from pure chance. So finding a “perfect” arrangement of cards would mean that it came from some place with higher entropy (the factory). Or, if we had millions and millions of shuffled deck (billions?) then chances are we’d find one that was “perfectly arranged” (e. g., by suit and order).

To me, this sounds like a rebellion against the anthropic principle.

Hat tip to 3-quarks daily.