on the way, sort of

Workout notes 2200 yard swim; 500 warm up, 5 x 100 fist, 5 x 200 on the 3:30 (3:17, 3:17, 3:17, 3:20, 3:18). There was an older woman (60s?) in a workout bikini next to me, and she was doing butterfly drills and keeping up with me (and passing me), for at least one length at a time anyway.

Most of the rest of the crowd was the elderly “pregnant guy in boxers” crowd.

Comment: Just a thought: why do people think that adding layers of bull *hit to their arguments makes their arguments any more credible?

The validity of an argument isn’t measured in the number of pages, or the layers of “reasoning” and baseless assumptions.

Jan 2 2009: the trip to Texas

Workout notes Nothing yet; I’ll let my food settle prior to doing something; probably at the Riverplex (swim? walk? a little of both?)

We’ll leave at about lunchtime and look forward to the great Austin, TX weather.

Football: My bowl picks aren’t doing so hot. I got the USC-Penn State game right, but little else.
As a conference, the Pac Ten is 5-0; the Big Ten is 1-5 so far.

Conference Schools Record Percentage
Pac-10 (5) Ariz,Cal,Ore,OSU,USC 5-0 1.000
Big 12 (7) KU,Mizzou,Neb,OU,OSU,Tex,TT 3-1 .750
C-USA (6) EC,Hou,Mem,Rice,SMiss,Tulsa 3-1 .750
SEC (8) Ala,Fla,Ga,Ky,LSU,Miss,SCar,Vandy 3-1 .750
Big East (6) Cin,Pitt,Rut,UConn,USF,WV 3-2 .600
MWC (5) AF,BYU,CSU,TCU,Utah 2-2 .500
Independents (2) Navy,Notre Dame 1-1 .500
Sun Belt (2) Fla. Atlantic,Troy 1-1 .500
ACC (10) BC,Clem,FSU,GT,Mary,Miami, NC,NCS,VT,WF 4-6 .400
WAC (5) BSU,FresSt,Haw,LaTech,Nev 1-4 .200
Big Ten (7) Iowa,MichSt,Minn,NWestrn,OSU,PSU,Wis 1-5 .167
MAC (5) BallSt,Buff,CMich,NIU,WMich 0-3 .000

Sorry about the formatting, but I am too lazy to cook up a html table.
But the key to a conference having a good bowl record is to, well, only send your good teams to bowls?

Other topics:

Politics

TPM’s Golden Duke awards (named after disgraced Republican Duke Cunningham)

Note: some Democrats received (warranted) criticism here; this is far from a partisan rant.

Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize winning economist) gives the Republicans a huge, well deserved smackdown. Read the whole thing; here are some highlights: (hat tip: Jed Report)

As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners. [...]

But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck — either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House.

The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision. [...]

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?

Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.

Oh, and the racial element isn’t all that abstract, even now: Chip Saltsman, currently a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, sent committee members a CD including a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” — and according to some reports, the controversy over his action has actually helped his chances.

As I said, read the whole thing. But the results are clear: in the Presidential election, the Republicans made gains and did well among white southerners and got drilled just about everywhere else. Here is a map that shows were the Republicans did better in 2008 than they did in 2004:

Evolution: here is a fun post on a dozen interesting examples on how natural selection solves problems. I was lead there by 3-quarks daily.

The face of Jesus in a pita bread? Hey, as of the time of the blog article, you can have it for only 65 dollars.

Note: why do so many of the portraits of Jesus have him looking like a western European?

Atheism: does atheism lead to a life without meaning? I don’t think so; but read what Mano Singham has to say.

I think that what happens is this: when we say that “the universe has no inherent meaning” we mean that the universe came about by strictly naturalistic causes; it wasn’t “designed” just for humans. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have some rather breath taking, awe inspiring moments.

I challenge anyone who thinks that atheists live a purposeless and meaningless life to watch Richard Dawkins’ lecture series called Growing Up in the Universe. (I have my DVD set)

Here is the first hour long lecture:

There are 5 more.

World Events: Middle East. One blogger writes about the Israeli airstrike that killed a Hamas leader. Though this blogger sides with Israel (my position is more neutral), the article and this blogger’s thoughts are worth reading.