A couple of Peoria, IL remarks.

I’ve noted earlier that The Decider is coming to Peoria to raise money for Aaron Schock and the RNC. Here is a rather funny Scott Shepler cartoon on that:

(larger)

Peoria and Pedestrians Some time ago, I attempted to walk to a location that was 5 miles away. This was not a training walk; this was an attempt to “get somewhere while enjoying myself” walk. Needless to say, it was not a totally pleasant experience, given that sidewalks were non-existent or in bad states of disrepair.

The Journal Star editorial staff has noticed.

For an even bigger thrill, try getting to the fair or the theater – heck, even the hardware store – without your car. We guarantee it’ll be the most hair-raising experience you’ve had in years. Straddle the shoulder on potholed streets with no sidewalks! Traverse five-lane intersections without crosswalks! Endure honks and jeers from passing motorists! [...]

Other cities have done a much better job intermingling residential and commercial areas so that banks, stores, restaurants and schools are within pedestrian reach. At the very least, they’ve built “complete” streets, ones with bike lanes and sidewalks set back a safe distance from traffic lanes. See Madison, Wis., for a stellar example. What has Peoria done? There are pockets of progress, such as the walk-to-work initiative proposed by City Hall. Still, that focuses on luring residents to older neighborhoods, many of which already have infrastructure to accommodate pedestrians.

As for City Hall’s other big idea – erecting pricey condos on riverfront parkland, then building out into the Illinois River, ostensibly to get people to live Downtown – such an enormous amount of money, time and energy would be far better spent retrofitting existing streets with sidewalks and bike lanes. Much of Peoria north of War Memorial Drive, where residential and commercial development continues to shift, lacks these. [...]

Mostly, the city needs an attitude adjustment. Walking or biking or taking the bus is not something to be looked down upon…

19 July 2008

Workout notes It rained off and on so I decided on the indoor option: 6 miles (6.38 really); 48 laps of lane 3 on the Riverplex track in 59:58: 10:24, 9:50, 9:51, 9:53, 10:10, 9:49 (or 30:06, 29:52) I slowed a bit when the cute lady who was lapping me every so often left the track.

Then: 33 minutes on the bike trainer (8 miles), then yoga with Ms. V.

In all, it worked out well. My knees didn’t hurt and I was soaked with sweat. My running motion still is too stiff; I need to bend my knees more.

Boxing: I saw an interesting pair of boxing matches on ESPN last night.

The first one was an 8 round match between light middleweights Richard Gutierrez (24-2-1, 14 KOs) and Jerome “Boomer” Ellis (11-8-2, 10 KOs). The match went back and forth; Gutierrez was a bit more aggressive but attacked in a linear fashion whereas the wily Ellis changed his tactics: he rested, went on a peak-a-boo defensive, circled, attacked, walked away, etc.

This match was hard to judge; I had it 78-75 Gutierrez (as did Terry Atlas; the difference is that Atlas had Gutierrez winning round 1 and tying round 6 and I had the reverse). The judges scores were 79-73 and 76-76, 76-76 which made it a majority draw.

If this seems strange, I should point out that, at least on my “card”, Gutierrez won many rounds by a razor thin margin; I could have easily gone the other way on at least 4 of the rounds. Hence I totally understand the disparity of the judge’s cards as all but a couple of rounds were close.

Example: in one round, Gutierrez dominated the first minute, Ellis hurt Gutierrez in the next minute and appeared to have him in trouble, only to find Gutierrez rallying in the last 45 seconds. How does one score a round like that?

The second fight had featherweight contender Yuriorkis Gamboa (11-0, 9 KOs) (and former Olympic champion) against a game but overmatched Al Seeger (27-4, 21 KOs). The fight ended early when Gamboa launched a vicious two punch body attacked followed by a perfect right to the chin.

Gamboa reminds me of a “pocket sized” Mike Tyson.

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Bachelorhood, July 2008

My wife is flying toward Samoa and my daughter is at a sleep over. I am alone this Friday which means: I’ll do what I usually do: watch PBS (Washington Week, NOW and maybe some Bill Moyers) and then Friday Night Fights on ESPN.

Note: today’s NOW episode is about a Marine unit in Afghanistan. The difficulty of the job that these Marines have to do is astronomical; I have to admit that I was impressed by this report. You can catch the show (or at least snippets of it) at the link.

Bill Moyers Talks about the human cost to the mortgage crisis. Yes, I understand that folks that took those bad mortgages should be responsible (though I believe that the lenders have an obligation to be honest and straight forward). But what about

1. Those who live next to those foreclosed homes? Remember that the foreclosed homes get boarded up and crumble; hence those who were responsible watch their property values drop because of the decay of the surrounding neighborhood. Many of the houses are stripped of things like copper and steel; in short what is left is often worth less than nothing. The innocent get hurt.

2. The renters: many of those who are up on their rent end up losing big time when their buildings get foreclosed on. They are given minimal time to move; consequently many lose their possessions because they can’t afford a truck on short notice. They lose security deposits and the rent that they have already paid. Again, the innocent get hurt.

Some stuff in no particular order

Onion Article: written when Bush won was awarded the presidency.

Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that “our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.”
“My fellow Americans,” Bush said, “at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us.”

Bush swore to do “everything in [his] power” to undo the damage wrought by Clinton’s two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street.

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years. [...]

Remember this was written in January, 2001 and was supposed to be satire. Chilling, isn’t it?

Redstate update: McCain and the internet. There is one line: “he might be our next President”. The reaction is priceless.

John “more of the same” McCain:

Note his confusion and his simply not knowing the basics.

John McCain: releases the details of Barack Obama’s Iraq trip?

Joe Biden: talks about the contrast between McCain and Obama and notes what “the surge” was supposed to achieve. Yes, violence has dropped to 2004-2005 levels. But what about the government?

Robert Reich: talks about the Fannie May bailout. He makes a proposal to hold some of the big corporations accountable. But alas, in the eyes of Republicans, “accountability” is for little people.

Here’s a modest proposal: When taxpayers insure a giant entity against loss — as we now are with Freddie, Fannie, and Wall Street investment banks — those entities must agree that:

(1) for the duration of the bailout, their top executives cannot receive total annual compensation higher than that received by the President of the United States, and

(2) the government gets five percent of their current valuation as shares of stock (roughly representing the benefit to their shareholders of the federal insurance) — so that if and when the entities become profitable again, taxpayers are compensated for the risk they’ve taken on.

Barack Obama Here is an analysis of his speeches. The article points out that Presidential speeches have become dumbed down over time and Obama has reversed this trend.

A major reason that Obama’s rhetoric seems to soar so high is that our expectations have sunk so low. In a new book, The Anti-Intellectual Presidency, Elvin T. Lim subjects all the words ever publicly intoned by American presidents to a thorough statistical analysis—and he finds, unsurprisingly, an alarmingly steady decline. A century ago, Lim writes, presidential speeches were pitched at a college reading level; today, they’re down to eighth grade, and if the trend continues, next century’s State of the Union addresses will be conducted at the level of “a comic strip or a fifth-grade textbook.” (“Iran’s crawling with bad guys: BAP!”)[...]
Obama seems to have taken the opposite tack: He’s a Clinton-style natural who flaunts the artifice of his speeches and refuses to strategically hide his intelligence. Compared with his rivals, Obama’s skill-set seems almost otherworldly. His phrases line up regularly in striking and meaningful patterns; his cliché ratio is, for a politician, admirably low; his stresses and pauses seem dictated less by the usual metronome of generic political speech than by the actual structures of meaning behind his words. He tolerates complexity to such an extent that he’s sometimes criticized as “professorial,” which allows him to get away with inspirational catchphrases that would sound like platitudes coming from anyone else…

Religious Right: they are whining about their speech being stifled.

Pat Robertson whines about his speech being monitored and reported.

A South Carolina State Senator whines about religious wingnuts being silenced.

In other words, they have lost their captive audience and they are upset that their “ideas” actually get challenged! You know, freedom of speech and tax exemption for their churches isn’t enough for these morons. They really want a preferred place in society. They aren’t going to get it.

Richard Dawkins: a nice readable article. One of the interesting parts of the article is where Dawkins talks about how literature and Darwin’s writings have influenced his popular writing.

Hat tip to Friendly Atheist.