Just Screwing Around

My “2-3 day presemester project” is to understand Fox’s Free Differential Calculus better; I’d like to use these ideas to calculate something analogous to the Alexander Polynomial for a non-compact knot.

This has been done (in some cases) by Brody (On Infinitely Generate Modules) for wild compact knots.

So, right now I am just screwing around for a few (too many ) minutes.

Here is what I’ve come up with on the internet:

Daily Kos: if you want some insight to how President Bush thinks, read this diary.

In an obscure 2003 book titled “Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes” by Kenneth T. Walsh, there is an incredible anecdote that sums up George W. Bush. Read it and weep:

Another innovation is Bush’s interest in the board game Risk, in which players amass armies and try to conquer the world. En route home from Europe in July 2001, Bush supervised a particularly competitive game. The president encouraged each participant to take the biggest risks possible and to attack each other mercilessly. At one point, he goaded his military aide, supposedly an expert on military maneuvers and strategy, to take some chances. When he did so and found his armies annihilated, Bush teased the aide for being the first to lose. Supervising another game, the commander in chief yelled “You’re a wimp! Go get ‘em.”

Risk is just a board game, not real life. But did Bush know the difference?

[...]

The book, which is actually quite admiring of Bush (as were most press accounts in the 2001-2005 period), also includes this:

“He [Bush] has a very basic belief that if he does his part-gets the information, makes the choices-the results are somehow with God,” says chief White House speech writer Michael Gerson. “He believes there’s something broader going on. He does his best and the outcome is out of his control.” This gives him a sense of peace and enables him to make decisions crisply and without anguish.

I suppose that if you think God is deciding the outcome, and God is good, then why worry yourself over decision making? Feel free to ignore pre-war intelligence reports, appoint Brownie to FEMA, let the deficit skyrocket, let Wall Street run wild, who cares?

Another article: Some Jews protest Israel’s actions.

Here’s the story from the LA Times:

J

ewish activists chain themselves to Israeli Consulate building

10:18 AM, January 14, 2009

Demanding an end to military action in Gaza, eight to 10 Jewish activists chained themselves this morning to the Israeli Consulate building on Wilshire Boulevard.

Other activists who were not chained to the building walked in a circle outside the consulate, chanting: “Let Gaza live! End the siege now.” One of the signs they carried read: “The Israeli consulate has been closed for war crimes.”

Hannah Howard, a spokeswoman for the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, which is conducting the protest, said demonstrators chained themselves to the front steps of the building at 8:30 a.m. and that two others blocked the walkway. Several more stood in front of the driveway on Wilshire Boulevard to prevent cars from entering and exiting. About 50 protesters participated in the demonstration, she said.

“Jews will not allow the violence that is being done in our name to continue,” Howard said. “Not all Jews are united in support of Israel. We [also] recognized the humanitarian crisis in Palestine.”

The consulate is on the 17th floor of the building at 6380 Wilshire Boulevard, and many other businesses have offices inside.

–Ruben Vives

Link

There have been many other protests specifically by Jewish Americans against this war in Gaza, both here in LA and in other places around the country. This is exciting in that it begins to break down the myth of monolithic Jewish support for even the worst of Israeli’s militaristic politicies.

Republicans: The Republicans have become a circular firing squad. As much as I am enjoying this, I also know that this looks a bit like we looked in 2004, so I wouldn’t get too smug.

Huckabee attacks his rivals:

Sarah Palin has complained repeatedly that she was given unfair treatment by the media during her rapid political ascent last year.

But Mike Huckabee – a potential rival for Palin in 2012 should they both decide to seek the White House – apparently doesn’t agree.

In an interview in the current issue of Esquire, Huckabee speaks sympathetically of Palin, saying she had been subjected to “sexist things that would never have been asked of a male candidate.”

But he pushed back against Palin’s assertion that high-profile journalists – particularly Katie Couric of CBS – were biased in their interviews with her.

“Now I must say I did not think that either the Charlie Gibson interview or the Katie Couric interviews were unfair,” Huckabee said. “In fact, if anything, Katie Couric was extraordinarily gentle, even helpful. [Palin] just … I don’t know what happened. I can’t explain it. It was not a good interview. I’m being charitable.” [...]

He has a few words for Mitt Romney too:

but Mitt Romney has remained his favorite target. In his new book, Huckabee wrote that Romney was “anything but conservative until he changed the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for president.”

And then there is the race for the chair of the RNC (Howard Dean won the DNC chair in 2004-2005; Obama nominated Tim Kaine for the post this time)

The race to become the next chair of the Republican party is, as expected, a bit of a political dog-fight, with six candidates vying to differentiate themselves from one another at a time when the party’s image is in tatters.

As one anonymous consultant who worked with the RNC phrased it: “Everyone is basically pissed.” Another GOP source described it to the Huffington Post as a circular firing squad.

And so, it isn’t a shocker that opposition research tarring the different candidates is being peddled around to reporters — and some of the material crosses the line into personal, petty sniping.

One Republican consultant mailed over an opposition research document on Saul Anuzis — no author is listed, as is the case with several such anonymous files that are “floating around,” the source said. “There are certainly a number of candidates who are benefiting from attacks on Saul,” he added. The oppo research starts off, sharply enough, by making light of Anuzis’ education.

Highest degree earned: High School Diploma.

From there, it goes after Anuzis’ salary as current chair of the Michigan Republican Party, raises questions about secret business partners and ethical conflicts of interests, and generally trashes his leadership as a GOP organizer. It concludes:

Saul Anuzis is a paid political hack whose greed and misconduct lost him his job in government. After fifteen years of trying to make it in business, he came back to what he knew best: politics for pay. His goal was simple: take over the party to enrich himself and his friends. After overseeing tremendous party setbacks and election loses, he leaves his party as a failed chairman. Saul Anuzis now leaves his post after undoing most of the good party building work in the 1980′s and early 90′s. His true legacy will be a financial one: an exorbitant salary, a huge debt, contracts to his friends and himself (that obligate the party well into the future), and a party in no position to pay for any of it. Isn’t this the kind of legacy that Republicans are trying to get away from??

Here is more fun from the right wing woos: (remember that there are people walking around out there who take this stuff seriously)

Note: 8 minutes into it, one of these idiots mentions that some of the fundies went on a “Esther fast”. Hey fundies, how about your fasting for the entire Obama term?

Via Right Wing Watch:

Just before the election, relatively moderate right-wing figures like John Hagee, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, and James Dobson participated in a God TV “Election Special” where they split time with fringe figures like Jill Austin, Cindy Jacobs, and Lou Engle (and if you think people like Hagee and Robertson don’t deserve to be called “relatively moderate,” they you obviously aren’t familiar with people like Austin or Jacobs. Compared to them, Robertson and the like seem downright reasonable)

Humorous Stuff (sort of mean spirited at times)

Liberals Must Die (snark site) has just started back up; this post is….well…let’s just say that there are few things that people won’t use Obama’s name to market.

At another snark site, this video was shown. The relevant part runs from about 2:30 to 2:50. You might call it “entertainment fail”.

But getting back to the post: one of the labels was “sluts“. So, I just had to look up posts with that tag and found this one.

You ladies know who you are. You don’t have to be having sex to be viewed as a slut. You only need to put out a message that your highest value is that of sexual favors. If your normal attire is in sexually provocative clothing, or you flirt excessively with men by talking to them or touching them in a sexual manner, then you’re seen as a slut. A jerk can easily identify your vulnerabilities when you are being a slut, and target you for his own twisted purposes. [...]
When you like that men lust after you, you enjoy the power of having something that others want. It’s a natural thing to crave power. But the clear message you send when you are slutty is that you your sexual prowess is your highest power. You may try acting like you are also clever, insightful, witty, and well-read, all while wearing a very short miniskirt or exchanging suggestive email messages with a man [...]

My jerky ex talked about one of his female “friends” who often sent him pictures of herself in the nude or skimpy outfits. He showed me her public Myspace pictures where she would try to look like someone’s fantasy pin-up girl. He said she didn’t sleep around, but would wear these really hot outfits when they “hung out” together. He complained that she had lots of “daddy” issues, and that she had a very childish and an unrealistic view of relationships. Then he said that she was so damn hot that he couldn’t help but want to be around her. I don’t know if the poor girl knew that he was talking about her like she was a dumb piece of ass, but she continued to tease him while trying to show him how much of an intellectual she was.

You guessed it, he eventually cheated on me with her. In true fashion of a jerk, he kept me from meeting such a “good” friend and said that “one day” I’ll meet her. This was a lesson to me on how jerks view you if you’re slutty. They immediately hone in on your vulnerabilities. You are even more appealing when you make it known that you don’t sleep around. A slutty girl who doesn’t sleep around is a pristine target to jerks.

I have to admit that I laughed out loud when I read this; sometimes I enjoy a little (impersonal) flirtation.

More Snow…Yuck!

Workout notes I slept in again; I didn’t get to the gym until 6:52.

Swim: 4000 yards; 500 slow warm up, then 6 x (5 x 100) all on the 2:00: (25 front, 75 free) (low 1:50s), (25 sfs, 75 free) (low 1:50s), (25 3g, 75 free) (1:45), (100 fist) (1:41-1:44), (25 catch up, 75 free) (1:46-49), (25 fly, 75 free) (1:48-1:49). Then 10 x 50 fins (50 fly, 50 back)

The pool was all but empty when I go there and then there were three waves of dog-paddlers. I found out that the only thing worse than “pregnant guys” in boxers are “pregnant guys” in speedos.

Run 5K plus (33 minutes) on the treadmill; XC course (last incline was at 7). It was enough for a recovery day workout.

Then I did my calf exercises which are designed to keep my Achilles tendon healthy.

For example, in a separate study carried out at the University Hospital of Northern Sweden, researchers found that 12 weeks of heavy-load eccentric-calf-muscle training had a very positive effect on Achilles tendinosis (“Heavy-Load Eccentric Calf Muscle Training for the Treatment of Chronic Achilles Tendinosis”, The American Journal of Sports Medicine, Vol. 26, pp. 360-366, 1998). In this investigation, 15 athletes (12 men and three women) with a long duration of symptoms (18 months) of Achilles tendinosis were unable to engage in their normal running training because of tendinosis-related pain. The athletes had tried conventional treatments (rest, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications, changes of shoes, orthoses, physical therapy, and ordinary training programmes), to no avail. These 15 athletes were matched with a group of 15 similar athletes (11 men and four women) with the same diagnosis who underwent Achilles-tendon surgery instead of the heavy-duty eccentric training. All 30 individuals had the typical signs and symptoms of Achilles tendinosis, including thickened Achilles tendons, irregular tendon structure, disarray of the protein fibres within the tendon, separated tendon fibres, stiffness, and pain during running.

What the workouts involved

Two eccentric workouts were performed per day, seven days a week, for 12 weeks. Each workout consisted of three sets of 15 repetitions for two key exercises (to be described in a moment). Normal running training was permitted if it could be completed with only mild discomfort and no significant pain. The exercises proceeded as follows:

The athletes stood on their forefeet only (on both feet) close to the edge of a step, with the non-injured leg providing the force needed to rise up onto the forefeet. The non-injured leg was then lifted off the step, so that full body weight was supported only by the forefoot of the leg with the hurting Achilles tendon; the heel of the hurt leg was then slowly lowered until it came into position well behind and below the edge of the step (basically, the ankle moved from plantar flexion to dorsiflexion as the heel went down). This provided a strong eccentric contraction for the calf muscles attached to the damaged Achilles tendon, since they were contracting actively to slow the descent of the heel and yet were elongating as the heel dropped downward. No subsequent concentric loading of the calf muscles associated with the hurt Achilles tendon was carried out; the non-injured leg was used to provide the force necessary to return to the starting position.

For the first exercise (the first three sets of 15 reps), the injured leg was kept straight at the knee; during the second exercise (the next three sets of 15 reps), the injured leg was bent at the knee to activate the soleus muscle, which lies beneath the main calf muscle, the gastrocnemius. Possibly because there were just two exercises in the workout and because the exercises were straightforward to carry out, there were no drop-outs during the training period; all 15 athletes completed the 12-week programme.

An especially positive feature of this eccentric training was that it was progressive. When the athletes could perform the eccentric, loading exercise without experiencing pain or discomfort, they increased the load by adding weight placed in a backpack. If very high weights were needed, the athletes used a weight machine to increase the eccentric strain.
And the results?

As it turned out, the eccentric training produced dramatically positive effects on both concentric and eccentric calf-muscle strength. Before the eccentric training was begun, the injured-side calf muscles had significantly lower concentric plantar-flexion strengths at 90º and 225º per second (12 and 18%, respectively) and significantly reduced eccentric plantar flexion strength (11%), compared with the non-injured-side calf muscles. After 12 weeks of training, however, the eccentric plantar-flexion strength and also the concentric plantar-flexion strengths at both speeds had improved considerably, and the there were no differences in strength between injured and non-injured sides. In contrast, the 15 athletes who underwent surgery were unable to bring their injured-side strength up to par with the injured side through the utilisation of conventional calf-muscle exercises and physical therapy, even after double the time period (24 weeks). Scores on the VAS were similarly positive. In the group which undertook eccentric calf-muscle training, the average VAS score was 81 before the 12-week training programme commenced but plummeted to a miserly 4.8 after the 12 weeks of daily work. All 15 individuals were able to resume their normal running training in a pain-free manner after 12 weeks of training. In the control group (consisting of the individuals who underwent surgery), VAS scores dropped from 72 to 21 over 24 weeks, but, as mentioned, strength in the injured-Achilles leg remained sub-par. [...]

Snow shoveling. At least it was mostly powder.

Yes, I checked the academic jobs in warm weather places.

I have to admit that it is tough to be a consistent atheist during these times as I’d love to be able to call on some deity to condemn the weather gods while I shovel!

Then again, even Richard Dawkins admits to condemning his broken bicycle chain to eternal torture.

Fantasy During winter, I like to fantasize about open water swims, such as this one.

Humor I have talked about Barbara’s stuffed frog “Froggy”. She tends to let things go right to her little green head.

Well, we got one of those “You are invited to the (public) Inauguration” certificates and of course Froggy thought it was special invitation just for her:

Groan….

More Humor Via Friendly Atheist

Middle East Events

Once again, among the blogs that I read, Mano Singham appears to be the voice of reason:

The rule in the US is that whenever the actions of the Israeli government are criticized, it must be immediately preceded or followed by equal or harsher criticism of the Palestinians. Otherwise one is deemed to be ‘not responsible’, or biased, or worse.

Moreover, the rule requires the opposite behavior when the parties are switched. Harsh criticism of Palestinian atrocities against Israelis need not be accompanied by a similar balancing act, such as pointing out equivalent or worse acts by Israel. In fact, attempting to do so immediately opens one up to criticism, the charge that one is ‘excusing’ the atrocity, or implying ‘moral equivalency’ between the two sides. [...]

I do not choose to follow that rule and will criticize actions that need to be criticized on their own merits without worrying about what motives may be imputed to me. Anyone who has read my writings will know that I think that tribal allegiances based racial, ethnic, religious, and national identities are not only stupid but even evil, and that the resultiing wanton harming of civilians that is a consequence of these allegiances is also an evil, whether done by al Qaeda, the US, Israel, the Palestinians, the Sri Lankan government, the Tamil Tigers, or whoever. Life is precious and ordinary people have the right, wherever they live, to be free of the fear of being the victims of political power plays.

The implication that ‘moral equivalency’ is necessarily a bad thing is another symptom of how these kinds of rules are internalized. It seems to imply that ‘our’ side because of our very nature, by virtue of who we are is morally superior to ‘their’ side. Hence ‘our’ actions can never be evil by definition, but must be due to mistakes or accidents or unavoidable events. Meanwhile ‘their’ actions, even if identical to ‘ours’, are intentionally evil, carried out with cruel deliberation. So again, by definition, there can never be moral equivalency between acts committed by ‘us’ and ‘them’, even if the acts themselves are identical. [...]

The kind of thinking decribed by Avnery illustrates the worst kind of tribalism, where we demand to be judged by the good intentions that we say lie behind our actions, while we judge ‘them’ by their actions alone and the intentions that we get to assign to them. To look at the actual acts and use the same standard of judgment for those committed by both sides is to commit the sin of moral equivalency.

The propaganda system can only work if we internalize the rules of discussion set by the dominant forces and follow them unthinkingly. It is encouraging that more and more people are breaking them.

Emphasis mine. He quotes someone else; the quote itself (which gives a version of history that the Nazis might have written had they won World War II) is interesting.

Also of interest is this article that 3-quarks daily alerts us to. It links us to an article written by an Arab in 1948! Here is part of it:

This fascinating essay, written by King Hussein’s grandfather King Abdullah, appeared in the United States six months before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In the article, King Abdullah disputes the mistaken view that Arab opposition to Zionism (and later the state of Israel) is because of longstanding religious or ethnic hatred. He notes that Jews and Muslims enjoyed a long history of peaceful coexistence in the Middle East, and that Jews have historically suffered far more at the hands of Christian Europe. Pointing to the tragedy of the holocaust that Jews suffered during World War II, the monarch asks why America and Europe are refusing to accept more than a token handful of Jewish immigrants and refugees. It is unfair, he argues, to make Palestine, which is innocent of anti-Semitism, pay for the crimes of Europe. King Abdullah also asks how Jews can claim a historic right to Palestine, when Arabs have been the overwhelming majority there for nearly 1300 uninterrupted years? The essay ends on an ominous note, warning of dire consequences if a peaceful solution cannot be found to protect the rights of the indigenous Arabs of Palestine.

“As the Arabs see the Jews”
His Majesty King Abdullah,
The American Magazine
November, 1947

I am especially delighted to address an American audience, for the tragic problem of Palestine will never be solved without American understanding, American sympathy, American support.

So many billions of words have been written about Palestine—perhaps more than on any other subject in history—that I hesitate to add to them. Yet I am compelled to do so, for I am reluctantly convinced that the world in general, and America in particular, knows almost nothing of the true case for the Arabs.

We Arabs follow, perhaps far more than you think, the press of America. We are frankly disturbed to find that for every word printed on the Arab side, a thousand are printed on the Zionist side. [...]

Our position is so simple and natural that we are amazed it should even be questioned. It is exactly the same position you in America take in regard to the unhappy European Jews. You are sorry for them, but you do not want them in your country.

We do not want them in ours, either. Not because they are Jews, but because they are foreigners. We would not want hundreds of thousands of foreigners in our country, be they Englishmen or Norwegians or Brazilians or whatever.

Think for a moment: In the last 25 years we have had one third of our entire population forced upon us. In America that would be the equivalent of 45,000,000 complete strangers admitted to your country, over your violent protest, since 1921. How would you have reacted to that?

Because of our perfectly natural dislike of being overwhelmed in our own homeland, we are called blind nationalists and heartless anti-Semites. This charge would be ludicrous were it not so dangerous.

No people on earth have been less “anti-Semitic” than the Arabs. The persecution of the Jews has been confined almost entirely to the Christian nations of the West. Jews, themselves, will admit that never since the Great Dispersion did Jews develop so freely and reach such importance as in Spain when it was an Arab possession. With very minor exceptions, Jews have lived for many centuries in the Middle East, in complete peace and friendliness with their Arab neighbours.

Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut and other Arab centres have always contained large and prosperous Jewish colonies. Until the Zionist invasion of Palestine began, these Jews received the most generous treatment—far, far better than in Christian Europe. Now, unhappily, for the first time in history, these Jews are beginning to feel the effects of Arab resistance to the Zionist assault. Most of them are as anxious as Arabs to stop it. Most of these Jews who have found happy homes among us resent, as we do, the coming of these strangers.

I was puzzled for a long time about the odd belief which apparently persists in America that Palestine has somehow “always been a Jewish land.” Recently an American I talked to cleared up this mystery. He pointed out that the only things most Americans know about Palestine are what they read in the Bible. It was a Jewish land in those days, they reason, and they assume it has always remained so.[...]

The article continues and is worth reading.

Note I am reading a book on the history of the US and the Middle East (Power, Faith, and Fantasy America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present by Michael Oren) and am to the period right up to and including the U. S. Civil War.

I am also reading a Peter Irons book called God on Trail; it studies several famous Church-State court cases.

Obama’s Cabinet Grilled…sort of.

First, the right wing hasn’t lost any time in making false statements about Obama:

On job-loss numbers, Fox’s Garrett changed the metric, falsely asserting Obama’s statement was untrue

Summary: Summary: On Special Report, Major Garrett falsely accused President-elect Obama of making an untrue assertion when Obama said that the 2.589 million jobs lost in 2008 were “the most since World War II.” In fact, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there has been no greater net job decline in any calendar year since the end of World War II than occurred in 2008. [...]

Garrett said of Obama’s comments: “Mr. Obama says the 2.6 million jobs lost last year was the worst since 1945. Is that true? No.” Garrett continued:

Last year’s job losses were the fifth worst since 1945. The key statistic is percentage of workforce laid off, meaning the number of layoffs as a percentage of the entire workforce. In 1945, 6.6 percent of workers lost their jobs. Last year, 1.9 percent lost their jobs. Are things bad now? Of course they are. As bad as 1945? No. And four years — four other years between then and now were much worse than what we’ve just gone through.

Rather than note that he was using a different index from Obama — percentage loss rather than net loss — Garrett simply accused Obama of a falsehood. In fact, data from the BLS, shown in the graph [1] below, confirm that the estimated net job loss for 2008, totaling 2.589 million jobs, was indeed the worst in absolute numbers since 1945, when 2.75 million jobs were lost:[...]

Ok.

And, of course, we have Dick Morris whining that Obama is going to stop the U. S. from torturing people:

President-elect Barack Obama’s new head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, Dawn Johnsen, called the legal reasoning which gave the president broad powers to authorize “rough” interrogation of terrorists “shockingly flawed…bogus…outlandish.” She said it allowed “horrific acts” and demanded to know “Where is the outrage? The public outcry?” This is the person who will decide how to interrogate terrorists. If she errs on the side of weakening methods of questioning, there’s no chance her boss, Eric Holder the new Attorney General, will reverse her. He approved of the Clinton/Reno “wall” preventing intelligence from finding out what criminal investigators had found out and took the lead in pardoning the FALN terrorists.

What is Obama thinking? How could he weaken so dramatically our protections against terrorism? Doesn’t he realize that without warrantless FISA wiretaps we could never have uncovered the plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge (how could we have gotten a warrant for conversations about the bridge when we didn’t yet know that al Qaeda had it in its sights?) Has he forgotten that we only found the name of the operative who was tasked with destroying the bridge because we subjected Kahlid Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11, to “rough” interrogation techniques? Does he really mean to leave us vulnerable to terrorist attacks?

Yes he does. Not because he is callous or fiendish, but because the new president seems to carry the thinking that animated the decisions of the Warren Court on defendant’s rights over into the battle against terror. [...]

Or maybe it is because Obama is listening to experts?

NEW YORK—Fifteen former interrogators and intelligence officials with more than 350 years collective field experience have declared that torture is an “unlawful, ineffective and counterproductive” way to gather intelligence, in a statement of principles released today.

The group of former interrogators and intelligence officials released a set of principles to guide effective interrogation practices at the conclusion of a meeting convened by Human Rights First last week in Washington. The meeting participants served with the CIA, the FBI and the U.S. military.

The principles are based on the interrogators and intelligence officials’ experiences of what works and what does not in the field. Interrogation techniques that do not resort to torture yield more complete and accurate intelligence, they say. The principles call for the creation of a well-defined single standard of conduct in interrogation and detention practices across all U.S. agencies. At stake is the loss of critical intelligence and time, as well as the United States’ reputation abroad and its credibility in demanding the humane treatment of captured Americans. [...]

Meanwhile, it looks as at least two of Obama’s top picks are doing well.

Hillary Clinton had a good afternoon.

At the opening of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearings for the post of Secretary of State on Tuesday, the ranking Republican on theSenate Foreign Relations Committee offered a bit of perfunctory praise for the former first lady.

“President-elect Obama has boldly chosen the epitome of a big leaguer,” said Sen. Richard Lugar, who spoke of Clinton’s confirmation as a certainty. “Her qualifications for the post are remarkable… Her time in the Senate has given her a deep understanding of how United States foreign policy can be enriched… She is fully prepared to engage the world on a myriad of issues that urgently require attention.”

The sentiments may have been customary Senate pleasantries. But Clinton, over the course of several hours, proved the Indiana Republican correct. Her confirmation hearing was a tour de force, one that demonstrated not just her breadth of understanding of the policy issues, but the meticulous preparation that she has brought to most every political task in her career — and, likely soon, Foggy Bottom.

Pressed by her soon-to-be-former Senate colleagues, Clinton fielded questions on topics ranging from the impact of the Law of the Sea treaty on Alaska, to Russia’s purchase of a Serbian gas utility, to the piracy crisis off the coasts of Somalia.

“I’ve never seen anybody know so much about so much,” Chris Matthews, a sometimes-critical voice on the Clintons, would gush on Hardball later that day.

If Clinton’s performance was, as Matthews claimed, virtuoso, it was owed to hard, behind-the-scenes preparation. [...]

Stephen Chu had a good day as well:

It wasn’t exactly a love-fest, but the initial hearing, today, on Steven Chu’s soon-to-be-formal Energy Secretary nomination couldn’t have been more cordial.

Although senators can be a fairly imperious lot, members of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources were respectful — in most cases, downright deferential — towards the Nobel physicist that Barack Obama wants to head federal energy-research and -development enterprises.

Most senators at the hearing asked whether Chu would support a reinvigoration of the U.S. nuclear power industry. Yes, Chu said again and again — as long as work continues on how to cope long-term with nuclear wastes.

How about coal, which powers half of U.S. electricity? Yes, Chu would support continued use of coal — as long as work continues on limiting the release of greenhouse gases and other pollutants from conventional coal burning. Carbon sequestration and cap-and-trade emissions limits were mentioned repeatedly.

Only a couple senators actually showed any interest in research details. Among the few: Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.). She asked about the Helios program at the national facility Chu currently heads, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. According to the lab’s website, this renewable-fuels initiative has a heady goal: to “cut across divisions and programs in profound ways to produce transforming technologies in synthetic biology and nanotechnology.” It also seeks to “fuse our core strengths in biological, chemical, and physical sciences in the search for a sustainable carbon-neutral source of energy.”

No wonder Lincoln asked what, in practical terms, this venture actually involves.

Chu explained that the two-year-old program is striving to develop fourth-generation biofuels. To date, researchers at the lab have “trained” bacteria and yeast to take simple sugars and produce “not ethanol, but gasoline-like substitutes, diesel-fuel substitutes and jet [fuel] substitutes.” He says a cadre of “brilliant” scientists who had previously spent most of their careers in basic research is now “very focused on making this technology commercially viable.”

Asked about what type of plant material would be used — since Lincoln was hoping it might be grown in Arkansas — Chu perked up and chuckled: “Now we’re getting to science. I love this!” [...]

See the hearing (2:15) here.

13 January 2009, Part II

It is cold (4 F) and more snow is on the way.

Here are some articles to take the pain of the weather away:

Science and Evolution: human hunting (and gathering) is driving evolution at a far more rapid rate than normal. Example: there is a type of caribou which is hunted; the bigger the antlers, the more that hunters desire it. Hence these animals are evolving smaller antlers.

Note that one of the “proposed strategies” for dealing with this is for hunters to act more like animal predators: prey on the young.

Global warming and climate change: Here is an article from Salon that talks about climate change. Here is the start to the article:

The more I write about global warming, the more I realize I share some things in common with the doubters and deniers who populate the blogosphere and the conservative movement. Like them, I am dubious about the process used by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to write its reports. Like them, I am skeptical of the so-called consensus on climate science as reflected in the IPCC reports. Like them, I disagree with people who say “the science is settled.” But that’s where the agreement ends.

The science isn’t settled — it’s unsettling, and getting more so every year as the scientific community learns more about the catastrophic consequences of uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions.

The big difference I have with the doubters is they believe the IPCC reports seriously overstate the impact of human emissions on the climate, whereas the actual observed climate data clearly show the reports dramatically understate the impact.

But I do think the scientific community, the progressive community, environmentalists and media are making a serious mistake by using the word “consensus” to describe the shared understanding scientists have about the ever-worsening impacts that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are having on this planet. When scientists and others say there is a consensus, many if not most people probably hear “consensus of opinion,” which can — and often is — dismissed out of hand. I’ve met lots of people like CNBC anchor Joe Kernen, who simply can’t believe that “as old as the planet is” that “puny, gnawing little humans” could possibly change the climate in “70 years.”

Well, Joe, it is more like 250 years, but yes, most of the damage to date was done in the last 70 years, and yes, as counterintuitive as it may seem, puny little humans are doing it, and it’s going to get much, much worse unless we act soon. Consensus of opinion is irrelevant to science because reality is often counterintuitive — just try studying quantum mechanics.

Fortunately Kernen wasn’t around when scientists were warning that puny little humans were destroying the Earth’s protective ozone layer. Otherwise we might never have banned chlorofluorocarbons in time.

Consensus of opinion is also dismissed as groupthink. In a December article ignorantly titled “The Science of Gore’s Nobel: What If Everyone Believes in Global Warmism Only Because Everyone Believes in Global Warmism?” Holman W. Jenkins Jr. of the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote:

What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged “consensus” arrived at their positions by counting heads?

It may seem strange that scientists would participate in such a phenomenon. It shouldn’t. Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof. Many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses, especially well-funded hypotheses, they’ve chosen to believe.

Less surprising is the readiness of many prominent journalists to embrace the role of enforcer of an orthodoxy simply because it is the orthodoxy. For them, a consensus apparently suffices as proof of itself.

How sad that the WSJ and CNBC have so little conception of what science really is, especially since scientific advances drive so much of the economy. If that’s what Jenkins thinks science is, one would assume he is equally skeptical of flossing, antibiotics and even boarding an airplane. [...]

Read the rest; but there is a reason I linked to this article. Read on and watch some of the videos at the end of this post.

Religion: this pastor rejects a new-age nice guy Jesus. To a degree, so do I: Jesus was a Jew who lived roughly 0-35 C. E.; his beliefs and his values would have appeared strange to us, and visa-versa.

This wingnut pastor takes it a bit further:

New members can keep their taste in music, their retro T-shirts and their intimidating facial hair, but they had better abandon their feminism, premarital sex and any “modern” interpretations of the Bible. Driscoll is adamantly not the “weepy worship dude” he associates with liberal and mainstream evangelical churches, “singing prom songs to a Jesus who is presented as a wuss who took a beating and spent a lot of time putting product in his long hair.”

. . .

What really grates is the portrayal of Jesus as a wimp, or worse. Paintings depict a gentle man embracing children and cuddling lambs. Hymns celebrate his patience and tenderness. The mainstream church, Driscoll has written, has transformed Jesus into “a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ,” a “neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture that . . . would never talk about sin or send anyone to hell.”

With this hyper-masculine theology, it’s no surprise that Driscoll says women “must submit to their husbands, and they are forbidden from taking on preaching roles in the church.”

Some kick-butt videos from TED;

Calculus and architecture

Science and experiment: Karry Mullis. Yes, he won the Nobel Prize for his work on DNA (biochemistry). Yes, he is a climate change skeptic.

Murray Gell-Mann phyics truth and beauty. Yes, he won a Nobel for physics; he is the father of quark theory.

Paul Sereno on fossils and what we can learn on them. At the end he talks about a science program for “at risk” students.