20 November 2008 Lunchtime

Workout notes 5.4 miles in, 54 minutes. I did the lunchtime West Peoria Cemetery course (flat from 0 to 2 and 3.4 to 5.4 with a big hill in between).

I got to work early so I could run after my 9 am class and get some daylight; it was chilly and windy and gray. The first few days of cold are always painful for me.

Odds and Ends

Author, international affairs expert and Obama adviser Samantha Power talks about genocide and our response to it. This talk is brutally honest; nothing is sugar coated.

She ends up talking about “talking to the devil”; that is, dealing with those who have committed genocide.

Science Avenger: basically, many conservatives haven’t come to grips that they just got beat and many feel that their candidates just weren’t wing-nutty enough.
Unfortunately, not being a viable opposition party is making Democratic leaders fat, lazy and complacent.

FiveThirtyEight.com: Debriefs a rather hostile interview he did with a wingnut; he openly wonders if the talk radio medium (which is favored by many wingnuts) is a poor method of communication when it comes to communicating ideas when the listener is actually paying close attention to what is being said.

Evolution and Public Education Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub has a stirring series on the battle over the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Some testimony from a scientist.

The damage that ignorance of basic science can do to local businesses is discussed. Note that a few years ago, the University of Texas openly complained that the regressive social atmosphere in the state made it more difficult for UT to attract world class faculty (of course, they do have many, but it should be easy to attract them to Austin).

The fact that creationists don’t publish in peer reviewed journals gets brought out.

A Bit of Fun

DemConWatch: posses a challenge question to political junkies. No fair using a search engine before you have thought about the answer!

I’ll pose some non-researched guesses: R: Wyoming, Idaho, Kansas. D: Massachusetts, Connecticut (if one counts Loserman), Vermont (if one counts Sanders), Rhode Island, Delaware, Hawaii.

I’ll have to look this up tonight.