Classy Republicans!

George Bush At the G-8 Summit, he joked about us being the world’s biggest polluter.

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world’s richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions. [...]

John McCain: thinks that killing Iranians is funny?

Last year, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) joked about bombing Iran to the theme of the Beach Boy’s “Barbara Ann.” McCain was widely criticized for the remark, but simply told critics to “lighten up and get a life.” The Washington Post notes that McCain tried joking about “killing” Iranians again today:

Responding to a question about a survey that shows increased exports to Iran, mainly from cigarettes, McCain said, “Maybe thats a way of killing them.” He quickly caught himself, saying “I meant that as a joke” as his wife, Cindy, poked him in the back.

According to a report released today, U.S. exports to Iran “grew more than tenfold during President Bush’s years in office even as he accused Iran of nuclear ambitions and helping terrorists. America sent more cigarettes to Iran, at least $158 million worth under Bush, than any other products.”

John McCain’s campaign stood by Phil Gramm’s whining Americans remark. Ok, they did at first.

The McCain campaign is working hard to distance itself from statements made by economic adviser Phil Gramm describing the current economic downturn as a “mental recession” and saying America had “sort of become a nation of whiners.”

But in an initial statement published by Politico and then, seemingly, removed from its site, a McCain campaign aide actually stood by Gramm’s remarks, saying the interview as a whole was merely meant as a preview of the Senator’s economic agenda.

“Mr. Gramm was simply saying that we are laying out the economic plan this week,” the piece quoted a “McCain official” as saying. “The plan is comprehensive, providing immediate near-term relief for Americans hurting today as well as longer-term solutions to get our economy back on track, secure our energy future and deliver jobs, prosperity and opportunity for the next generation. We’re laying out that plan this week with an emphasis on the critical importance of job creation, and it’s been a great success so far.”

Only after the fallout from Gramm’s statement did the McCain campaign fully backtrack.

“Phil Gramm’s comments are not representative of John McCain’s views,” read a campaign statement. “John McCain travels the country every day talking to Americans who are hurting, feeling pain at the pump and worrying about how they’ll pay their mortgage. That’s why he has a realistic plan to deliver immediate relief at the gas pump, grow our economy and put Americans back to work.”

The two statements – the first one issued to Politico and the one offered to the press list this morning – are diametrically different. And they seem to reflect recognition, by the McCain camp, that Gramm’s remark on the economy is simply un-spinnable.

Barack Obama responds: “recession is not in your head“

“Today, one of [McCain's] top economic advisors, former Sen. Phil Gramm, said that we’re merely in a ‘mental recession,’” Obama told a crowd of about 2,800 today at a town hall meeting in Fairfax, Va.

“He didn’t say this but I guess what he meant was that it’s a figment of your imagination, these high gas prices. Sen. Gramm then deemed the United States, and I quote, ‘a nation of whiners.’ Ho! A nation of whiners. This comes after Sen. McCain recently admitted that his energy proposals for the gas tax holiday and the drilling will have mainly, quote, ‘psychological benefits,’” Obama said.

It is no secret as to what is going on: the Republicans are social darwinists, pure and simple. If you have the talent, luck and good start in life, then you deserve things like health care, housing, education and the like.

If you are not one of those, well, tough. They have no problems letting you drown.

Barack Obama

Says that our kids should learn another language.

Believe it or not, this was sent out by NewsMax. Why? Because NewsMax views what Obama said (that Americans ought to learn more languages) as a negative! In short, Newsmax thinks that the rank and file conservative is somehow proud of ignorance.

Obama’s speech on the economy (20 minutes)

Here is a 3 minute clip of a speech at a joint Clinton-Obama fundraiser.

Jefferson Perez World Record holder in the 20K racewalk

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No, I don’t walk like this. How fast is this guy?

Ecuadorian Jefferson Pérez highlighted the first day of athletics competitions of the XV Pan-American Games of Rio de Janeiro, by winning the 20Km Race Walk in 1:22:08 yesterday (22 July).

For the 33-year-old from Cuenca, this is the third title at the games. Pérez is also a two-time World champion (2003-05), 1996 Olympic champion, and the distance’s World Record holder (1:17:21).

That is 6:13 minutes per mile for 12.4 miles in a tightly judged racewalk!

In the 2004 Olympic games (high heat and humidity) he walked a 3:49:48 in the 50K to take 8′th place as well as a 1:20:38 to place 4′th in the 20K.

Soreness

Workout notes 3.25 mile walk to yoga, then 7.x mile walk back. I did have a couple of red winged black bird encounters; I know where they are (at the entrance of the Detwiller Marina and near where you exit the trail.

I did feel some “behind the knee” pain in the left leg; I am not sure if this is a result of yesterday’s weights, too deep yoga knee bending or just one of those random glitches. I’ll have to keep aware of it though.

The walk back was mostly pleasant.

However, on the green areas by the river trail I did see several people outdoors sleeping in sheets; some alone, some in couples. I am not sure as to what is going on there.

Politics The Republicans are a laugh a minute. Sure, they whine up a blue streak about poor old businesses being saddled with things like environmental controls and taxes. But when it comes to the public in general: we are whiners who should just shut up! Heck, the big corporations are making money hand over fist; who gives a flying *uck if the rest of us are having trouble affording health care (e. g., my 600 dollar PHYSICAL EXAM). We should just “suck it up” and take it:

In an interview with the Washington Times, McCain’s top economic adviser Phil Gramm tells America to suck it up and stop complaining about the economy:

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

Gramm, whose extensive ties to Enron proved problematic during the firm’s implosion several years ago, was serving as a lobbyist for the international banking and subprime mortgage giant UBS until April. As Mother Jones documented, Gramm played a key role in the subprime meltdown during his time in the Senate.

Just yesterday, McCain himself said “I would imagine that we are” in a recession. But he and Gramm are still on the same page: in April McCain said “a lot of our problems today are psychological.”

This is the lovely Phil Gramm:

The same one who joked about the poor in the US being fat (look in the mirror, pork-face).

For more on this *sshole: go here.

A couple of notes:

1. He started off as a Democrat. I am so glad he defected to where he belongs.
2. He did show some moral courage in marrying a woman of Korean descent (and a Ph. D. in economics too!). Anyone who is attracted to smart women can’t be all bad. Wendy Gramm likes to rollerblade and once made a trip across Maryland as part of his campaign.

Here are a few more links:

A scientist who has posed the “multi-verse” model (several universes) talks about how he frequently gets the “god question”:

Here is a Q&A interview with me in the LA Times, to which I link only reluctantly, as somehow they managed to take a picture that makes me look like I’m wearing a bad toupee. And a halo! So that’s a mixed bag.

The interview was spurred by the recent Scientific American article on the arrow of time, and most of the questions are pretty straightforward queries about entropy and cosmology. But at the end we veer into matters theological:

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.”

I’m not really surprised that people bring up God when asking about cosmology; the subjects are related, like it or not. But I really do want to separate out the science from the religion, so in the context of an interview about physics I’m reluctant to talk about the existence of God, and I haven’t really perfected an answer when the subject comes up. [...]

This was the second recent incident when I was prodded into talking about atheism when I would have liked to have stuck with physics. At my talk in St. Louis in front of the American Astronomical Society, I was introduced by John Huchra, the incoming AAS president. He had stumbled across “Why (Almost All) Cosmologists Are Atheists,” and insisted that I tell everyone why. So I gave a version of the above argument, presumably in an equally clumsy fashion: whether or not you choose to be religious, it’s a bad idea to base your belief on natural theology (reasoning towards God from evidence in the physical universe), as science has a way of swooping in and explaining things that had previously been judged inexplicable by purely natural means.

And I think that’s very true, but I think something stronger as well: that claims about God can be separated into two classes — (1) those that are meaningless, and (2) those that can be judged by standard criteria for evaluating scientific claims, and come up wanting. But it’s an argument I just don’t want to force on an audience that came for some science. After all, there are plenty of claims that I think are true, but I don’t feel an urgent need to insist on every single one of them in every imaginable venue.

He goes on to make wild speculation on how the 76′ers will be the team to beat in the east; I suppose that could be true if the Celtics break up.

Darwin’s Origin of Species: should we read it? 3-quarks daily points us to an interesting NYT article:

It always happens the same way. A glance around the room to make sure no one else is listening. A clearing of the throat. A lowering of the voice to a conspiratorial tone. Then, the confession.

“I’ve never read ‘On the Origin of Species.’ I tried, but I thought it was boring.”

Thus, a number of eminent scientists — biologists all — have spoken. Or rather, whispered.

As the first major statement on evolution and how it works, Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” not only transformed the way we humans see ourselves. It marks the beginning of modern biology. But reading it is evidently not a prerequisite for a successful career in biology — not even for those studying evolution.

Which is not surprising. The book was written almost 150 years ago, and the subject has (needless to say) evolved since then. Moreover, the central enduring idea in the “Origin” — evolution by natural selection — can be learned from any number of textbooks.

But the author goes on to point out that some explanations are still first class, and it is worth it to wade though the tedium to see how a great mind works.

In my case, I’ve made it about 1/3 of the way though; I’ll try again. It is NOT fast moving.

One thing I noticed: Darwin didn’t seem to be aware of the “training effect”; he noted that domestic ducks have heavier legs and notes that they walked more than wild ducks, whereas the wild ducks have heavier wings but fly more than the domestic ducks.

He seemed to think of this as some sort of inherited adaptation rather than the result of doing more of an activity.

What is this photo about?

Yep, you guessed it: it is explaining why Muslim women should wear veils.

Hat tip to Friendly Atheist.

Note: I posted a diary about the stolen Eucharist wafer on the Daily Kos and asked the question: was Dawkins too harsh to use the word “delusion” in the title The God Delusion. The poll results: 61 “no”, 12 “yes”, 3 “I don’t care”.

Humor: Check out this office cube.

In those jars are,…you guessed it. Uncooked pasta!

I couldn’t never do this at work because I am simply too darned messy.