24 January 2009: Chilly Thoughts

Workout notes 10 mile run on the treadmill: 1:37:55: 57:28 (6 miles), 1:52 water break, 38:34 last 4 miles. Varied the incline.

Then yoga: I lead the class. There were some groans.

Science I was pointed to these articles by 3-quarks daily.

Here is an interview with an applied mathematician; mostly it is about his books and what he reads.

Here is an article about naked singularities in cosmology. Very roughly speaking, naked singularities are black-hole like objects that don’t have an event horizon; you can exchange information with the center.

Modern science has introduced the world to plenty of strange ideas, but surely one of the strangest is the fate of a massive star that has reached the end of its life. Having exhausted the fuel that sustained it for millions of years, the star is no longer able to hold itself up under its own weight, and it starts collapsing catastrophically. Modest stars like the sun also collapse, but they stabilize again at a smaller size. Whereas if a star is massive enough, its gravity overwhelms all the forces that might halt the collapse. From a size of millions of kilometers across, the star crumples to a pinprick smaller than the dot on an “i.”

Most physicists and astronomers think the result is a black hole, a body with such intense gravity that nothing can escape from its immediate vicinity. A black hole has two parts. At its core is a singularity, the infinitesimal point into which all the matter of the star gets crushed. Surrounding the singularity is the region of space from which escape is impossible, the perimeter of which is called the event horizon. Once something enters the event horizon, it loses all hope of exiting. Whatever light the falling body gives off is trapped, too, so an outside observer never sees it again. It ultimately crashes into the singularity.

But is this picture really true? The known laws of physics are clear that a singularity forms, but they are hazy about the event horizon. Most physicists operate under the assumption that a horizon must indeed form, if only because the horizon is very appealing as a scientific fig leaf. Physicists have yet to figure out what exactly happens at a singularity: matter is crushed, but what becomes of it then? The event horizon, by hiding the singularity, isolates this gap in our knowledge. All kinds of processes unknown to science may occur at the singularity, yet they have no effect on the outside world. Astronomers plotting the orbits of planets and stars can safely ignore the uncertainties introduced by singularities and apply the standard laws of physics with confidence. Whatever happens in a black hole stays in a black hole.

Yet a growing body of research calls this working assumption into question. Researchers have found a wide variety of stellar collapse scenarios in which an event horizon does not in fact form, so that the singularity remains exposed to our view. Physicists call it a naked singularity. Matter and radiation can both fall in and come out. Whereas visiting the singularity inside a black hole would be a one-way trip, you could in principle come as close as you like to a naked singularity and return to tell the tale.

If naked singularities exist, the implications would be enormous and would touch on nearly every aspect of astrophysics and fundamental physics. The lack of horizons could mean that mysterious processes occurring near the singularities would impinge on the outside world. Naked singularities might account for unexplained high-energy phenomena that astronomers have seen, and they might offer a laboratory to explore the fabric of spacetime on its finest scales.

Event horizons were supposed to have been the easy part about black holes. Singularities are clearly mysterious. They are places where the strength of gravity becomes infinite and the known laws of physics break down. According to physicists’ current understanding of gravity, encapsulated in Einstein’s general theory of relativity, singularities inevitably arise during the collapse of a giant star. General relativity does not account for the quantum effects that become important for microscopic objects, and those effects presumably intervene to prevent the strength of gravity from becoming truly infinite. But physicists are still struggling to develop the quantum theory of gravity they need to explain singularities. [...]

Follow the link to read the rest of the article (6 short pages) and see the slides.

Sandwalk: Professor Moran gives a list of those he thinks are good science writers.

1 F in Peoria

It went from a warm (for us) 30′s (yesterday) to today’s 1 F.

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen too many warm-weather mathematics jobs advertised.

I’ll try to get in 10 miles of moderate running and then lead a “Yoga for Runners” class. My run will be on “Mr. Treadmill” once again; there is still quite of bit of snow out there on the roads though we haven’t had much new snow.

President Obama: here is his short weekly radio address.

Here is the text:

We begin this year and this Administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action. Just this week, we saw more people file for unemployment than at any time in the last twenty-six years, and experts agree that if nothing is done, the unemployment rate could reach double digits. Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four. And we could lose a generation of potential, as more young Americans are forced to forgo college dreams or the chance to train for the jobs of the future.

In short, if we do not act boldly and swiftly, a bad situation could become dramatically worse.

That is why I have proposed an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan to immediately jumpstart job creation as well as long-term economic growth. I am pleased to say that both parties in Congress are already hard at work on this plan, and I hope to sign it into law in less than a month.

It’s a plan that will save or create three to four million jobs over the next few years, and one that recognizes both the paradox and the promise of this moment – the fact that there are millions of Americans trying to find work even as, all around the country, there’s so much work to be done. That’s why this is not just a short-term program to boost employment. It’s one that will invest in our most important priorities like energy and education; health care and a new infrastructure that are necessary to keep us strong and competitive in the 21st century.

Today I’d like to talk specifically about the progress we expect to make in each of these areas.

To accelerate the creation of a clean energy economy, we will double our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, and biofuels over the next three years. We’ll begin to build a new electricity grid that lay down more than 3,000 miles of transmission lines to convey this new energy from coast to coast. We’ll save taxpayers $2 billion a year by making 75% of federal buildings more energy efficient, and save the average working family $350 on their energy bills by weatherizing 2.5 million homes.

To lower health care costs, cut medical errors, and improve care, we’ll computerize the nation’s health records in five years, saving billions of dollars in health care costs and countless lives. And we’ll protect health insurance for more than 8 million Americans who are in danger of losing their coverage during this economic downturn.

To ensure our children can compete and succeed in this new economy, we’ll renovate and modernize 10,000 schools, building state-of-the-art classrooms, libraries, and labs to improve learning for over five million students. We’ll invest more in Pell Grants to make college affordable for seven million more students, provide a $2,500 college tax credit to four million students, and triple the number of fellowships in science to help spur the next generation of innovation.

Finally, we will rebuild and retrofit America to meet the demands of the 21st century. That means repairing and modernizing thousands of miles of America’s roadways and providing new mass transit options for millions of Americans. It means protecting America by securing 90 major ports and creating a better communications network for local law enforcement and public safety officials in the event of an emergency. And it means expanding broadband access to millions of Americans, so businesses can compete on a level-playing field, wherever they’re located.

I know that some are skeptical about the size and scale of this recovery plan. I understand that skepticism, which is why this recovery plan must and will include unprecedented measures that will allow the American people to hold my Administration accountable for these results. We won’t just throw money at our problems – we’ll invest in what works. Instead of politicians doling out money behind a veil of secrecy, decisions about where we invest will be made public, and informed by independent experts whenever possible. We will launch an unprecedented effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov.

No one policy or program will solve the challenges we face right now, nor will this crisis recede in a short period of time. But if we act now and act boldly; if we start rewarding hard work and responsibility once more; if we act as citizens and not partisans and begin again the work of remaking America, then I have faith that we will emerge from this trying time even stronger and more prosperous than we were before. Thanks for listening.

(hat tip: DemConWatch)

Barack Obama has said something else: he told Republican leaders that if they wanted to get something done, they should quit listening to Rush Limbaugh:

Barack Obama is absolutely right to call them out for continually using the Rush Limbaugh playbook. Do they think that Rush Limbaugh is the savior to their party? If so, they are about to lose some more seats in 2010.

“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.

One White House official confirmed the comment but said he was simply trying to make a larger point about bipartisan efforts.

“There are big things that unify Republicans and Democrats,” the official said. “We shouldn’t let partisan politics derail what are very important things that need to get done.”

There is a fundamental struggle going on here. Rush Limbaugh with all his oxycotin glory is becoming insignificant to the Republican Party.

A Few Remarks 23 January 2009

Personal note: so far I’ve been pleased with the students; this semester they seem energetic and interested.

Humor: Ok, have some fun at the expense of these morons. Basically, they were supposed to be getting a 1,700 dollar check but the bank screwed up the decimal point and gave them 170,000 dollars instead.

These Christians thought that they “had a gift from god” and therefore took the money and went away.

On another note: some right wing morons can’t bring themselves to admit that Obama won an impressive victory (in terms of electoral votes and percentage of the popular vote); it was even more impressive outside of the south and Appalachian areas.

Here is what those wingnuts said:

President Obama received the votes of 65 million Americans, which translates to only about 22 percent of the American population. In 2004, George W. Bush received the votes of 62 million Americans, which translated into about 21 percent of the American population. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t remember the media talking about the nation having united around its president then.

In 2008, 235 million Americans did not vote for Barack Obama (roughly equal to the combined populations of 47 states).

Yep, and my daughter was one of them. Oh wait….she was 14. The article that I linked to goes on to point out that Ronald Reagan’s landslides look far less impressive when you apply the above “standard” to his victory.

I suppose that the tendency to whine is built into wingnut DNA?

Barack Obama, good and bad.

Good: Obama appears to be listening to others but does have a firmness about him:

President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning – but he also left no doubt about who’s in charge of these negotiations. “I won,” Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.

The exchange arose as top House and Senate Republicans expressed concern to the president about the amount of spending in the package. They also raised red flags about a refundable tax credit that returns money to those who don’t pay income taxes, the sources said.

The Republicans stressed that they want to include more middle class tax cuts in the package, citing their proposal to cut the two lowest tax rates — 15 percent and 10 percent — to ten percent and five percent, rather than issue the refundable credit Obama wants.

At another point in the meeting, sources said Obama told the group: “This is a grave situation facing the country.” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama would hold another economic meeting in the White House Saturday for a “broader group.” [...]

Or, more cheekily: video.

Bad. I admit that I don’t like this:

The week, President Obama announced that lobbyists wouldn’t be allowed in his administration and nominated a defense lobbyist to be deputy Secretary of Defense.

The rule, and it’s an inspiring rule, is that lobbyists can’t work for agencies they’ve lobbied in the last two years. The nominee is William J. Lynn, who was working for Raytheon until late last Thursday. Since then, of course, he’s had his memory scrubbed clean with a powerful amnesia agent — not unlike the one in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind — and now he doesn’t even know what Raytheon does.

It’s like he was never Senior Vice President of Government Operations and Strategy at all.

Obama announced that the revolving door between government and lobbying would be slammed shut — wait, can you slam a revolving door? — “for as long as I am president.” And broke the pledge while he was saying it.

Talk about hitting the ground running. That’s fast.

An anonymous senior White House official explains:

When you set very tough rules, you need to have a mechanism for the occasional exception. We wanted to be really tough, but at the same time we didn’t want to hamstring the new administration or turn the town upside down.

In other words, you can’t let what you say get in the way of what you do.

Obama should have said that his “no lobbyists” was a strong guideline that might be broken from time to time.

Science Scientists have made a major step toward making quantum information systems a reality:

ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2009) — For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart – a significant milestone in the global quest for practical quantum information processing.

Teleportation may be nature’s most mysterious form of transport: Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, without traveling through any physical medium. It has previously been achieved between photons over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third. None of those, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances.

Now a team from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Michigan has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a substantial distance. That capability is necessary for workable quantum information systems because they will require memory storage at both the sending and receiving ends of the transmission. [...]

Science and Apologists for Religion

These thoughts by PZ Myers are well worth reading:

Somebody is going to have to declare Jerry Coyne an official member of the “New Atheist” club and send him the fancy hat and instructions for the secret handshake. He has a substantial piece in The New Republic that is both a review of two recent books by theistic scientists, Karl Giberson (who really detests me) and Ken Miller, and a definite warning shot across the bows of those who believe science and religion can be reconciled.

First, let’s consider the reviews of the two books — they’re less interesting, not because they’re poorly done, but because Coyne’s opinion is almost identical to mine. The main point is that both books shine when they’re taking on the misconceptions of the creationists, but are weak and unconvincing whenever they move on to religious apologetics. [....]

I do have one quibble with the article. In it, Coyne defines four common traits of all creationists.

But regardless of their views, all creationists share four traits. First, they devoutly believe in God. No surprise there, except to those who think that ID has a secular basis. Second, they claim that God miraculously intervened in the development of life, either creating every species from scratch or intruding from time to time in an otherwise Darwinian process. Third, they agree that one of these interventions was the creation of humans, who could not have evolved from apelike ancestors. This, of course, reflects the Judeo-Christian view that humans were created in God’s image. Fourth, they all adhere to a particular argument called “irreducible complexity.” This is the idea that some species, or some features of some species, are too complex to have evolved in a Darwinian manner, and must therefore have been designed by God.

This is true for the vast majority of creationists, but it isn’t quite universal. I know a few atheist creationists, and they are just as incoherent as the necessary conflict between the two terms in that phrase implies. They do exist, however. There is a subset of creationists who are more like radical denialists: they reject evolution because the majority of scientists accept it, or in some cases because they are so egotistical that they reject anything they didn’t think of first, or because they have some other wild hypothesis that they have seized upon, or because, frankly, they’re nuts. Coyne’s generalization may be accurate in 99% of all cases, and is certainly true for the leadership of the creationist movements in the US, but saying “all” opens up the idea to trivial refutation when the DI makes a sweep of the local insane asylums or trots out David Berlinski to pontificate supinely.

I should also point out that there are atheists who reject evolution because, well, they don’t understand it at all and, in their minds, anything that doesn’t make sense to them must be false.

If Philosophers ran attack ads…

(hat tip: 3 quarks daily)

23 January 2009

Workout notes 4000 yard swim; stretching. I warmed up with 1000 free (9:05/8:26 for 17:31). I then did 1000 in 16:25 (4:06/8:12/12:18; that was good, even pacing…if slow). Then I did 10 x (25 drill, 25 free) with fins, 5 x 100 fist on the 1:50, 5 x 100 (25 fly, 75 free) on the 2, alternate 100 paddle, 100 free for 500 (8:53).

I felt good today; though the pool got really crowded again I did have a lane to myself for about 2500 yards.

Other stuff The Texas School Board had a hard time with creationism. Here is some of the testimony from the evolution side. Hat tip to Millard Fillmore’s bathtub, which also reported that the creationists lost this latest battle.

Animal Camouflage Surf to the Conservation Report to see if you can spot this animal. I had trouble at first until I realized that I was looking for the wrong size of animal.

Obama Administration Hillary Clinton makes an address. Hope is on the way!

Town Meeting and other topics….

Local Politics Barbara and I went to a town hall meeting given by IL-92 (State) House Representative Jehan Gordon and State Senator David Koehler (IL-46 (State)).

First, Senator Koehler started by admitting that the Democrats have collectively screwed up and need to get their act together.

Then they basically let us ask questions; Koehler talked about the process of impeachment; since he is part of the tribunal he is not allowed to discuss what he is thinking about in terms of outcome. He said that there are two issues: should the Governor be removed from office and, if so, should he ever be allowed to serve in a State of Illinois office again.

They talked about taxes (of course) and how they want to get our educational system less dependent on property taxes in exchange for raising income taxes; there might be some resistance to that as some more affluent districts would see a more equitable system as one that takes money from them and gives it to the poorer districts.

Funding for local programs (e. g., Boy’s and Girl’s clubs, local entities to encourage small businesses) were discussed, as was the funding for community college programs and for state parks

There were a few folks there who didn’t seem to understand that some issues were really state issues and others were county/city/township issues; in some cases the legislator can solicit permission for a local entity to raise a particular type of tax, but the state legislator really isn’t in a position to tell them what to do.

Also I noticed that Rep. Gordon seemed to go the way of Katherine Harris in terms of attire; she wore the tightest pants I’d ever seen on a legislator.

Update The Peoria Journal Star had an article. Reading this article reminded me of something else Senator Koehler said: he said that we might need a “one time tax hike” to enable the state to pay off its bills. Koehler noted that the State isn’t allowed to run a deficit in the way that the Federal government does:

Representatives from some social service agencies raised concerns about getting state payments they’re owed.

Even if it requires a one-time tax increase, Koehler said the state will pay its bills.

“We’ve got to catch up and then we’ve got to be disciplined not to get sloppy again. The whole system is broken at this point and we’re going to fix it,” he said.

National Politics
Obama’s saying that we are a nation of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and non-believers didn’t sit well with some of the religious woos. Follow the link to Right Wing Watch so you can laugh at their paranoia!

Science:

Steven Chu (Secretary of Energy) addressed our major national labs on what he expects out of the Department of Energy. This is a link to the post at Cosmic Variance; it is non-technical and well worth reading.

Reading this put me in a very good mood.

Evolution
This P. Z. Myers post explains a bit about evolution, natural selection and how the existence of genes does not totally determine the development of an organism.

sually, Begley is reasonably good on science, but her latest piece is one big collection of misconceptions. It reflects a poor understanding of the science and of history, in that it confuses long-standing recognition of the importance of environmental factors in gene expression with a sudden reinstatement of Lamarckian inheritance, and it simply isn’t — she’s missed the point of the science and she has caricatured Lamarck.

Some water fleas sport a spiny helmet that deters predators; others, with identical DNA sequences, have bare heads. What differs between the two is not their genes but their mothers’ experiences. If mom had a run-in with predators, her offspring have helmets, an effect one wag called “bite the mother, fight the daughter.” If mom lived her life unthreatened, her offspring have no helmets. Same DNA, different traits. Somehow, the experience of the mother, not only her DNA sequences, has been transmitted to her offspring.

Begley goes on to argue that this phenomenon points toward some sort of Lamarkian like inheritance of traits. This, of course, is false:

Stressed and unstressed mothers switch on different genes in their offspring epigenetically, which lead to the expression of different morphology. It’s very cool stuff, but evolutionary biologists are about as shocked by this as they are by the idea that malnourished mothers have underweight babies. That environmental influences can have multi-generational effects, and that developmental programs can cue off of the history of the germ line, is not a new idea, especially among developmental biologists.

This is just wrong on evolution:

Water fleas pop out helmets immediately if mom lived in a world of predators; by Darwin’s lights, a population of helmeted fleas would take many generations to emerge through random variation and natural selection.

It misses the whole point. The population of water fleas have a genetic attribute that allows the formation of spines under one set of conditions, and suppresses them under others.

I recommend checking out the post itself.

Of course, the teaching of evolution is still under attack. This link is to a Conservation Report article; they also have some interesting cartoons posted. This is one of them (which I posted some time ago; there are others as well)

Education It is no secret that there is grade inflation in many departments in many universities. Rate Your Students has a snippet of the article here. Here is what I find amusing:

More students at the University of Minnesota get A’s in classes than get C’s, D’s or F’s combined, according to a Pioneer Press review of grades.

The examination of marks handed out at the state’s leading university between fall 2004 and spring 2007 also found that in lower-level courses, more than 70 percent of students get either an A or a B.

School officials say the top-heavy grading is the result of smarter students.

That is absolutely false in my courses; if I gave the same exams that I gave in 1992-1993, the students would flunk in truckloads (though my current “A” students would still have done well). I think that there is a difference between those students in technical disciplines and those in other ones.

World Events: this article is quite thoughtful:

This brings us to the heart of a terrible thought. It is difficult for Westerners — and I include all of us, from every spectrum of the political rainbow — to recognize the essential humanity of the Palestinian people.

Andrew Sullivan touched on this problem recently in his Daily Dish blog, bringing attention to Glenn Greenwald’s powerful arguments about the inability of many Western liberals to fully identify with the Palestinians in the same way they do the Israelis. Sullivan puts the problem like this:

A refusal to grapple with the moral costs of this conflict, and a glib dismissal of the terrible human carnage now being inflicted by Israel (and paid for in part by Americans) is a sign of moral unseriousness. But it is the same mindset that can authorize the torture of human beings and see it as “coercive interrogation” only when Americans do it to Muslims.

Greenwald, going a little bit further, argues that:

If you see Palestinians as something less than civilized human beings: as “barbarians” — just as if you see Americans as infidels warring with God or Jews as sub-human rats — then it naturally follows that civilian deaths are irrelevant, perhaps even something to cheer. For people who think that way, arguments about “proportionality” won’t even begin to resonate — such concepts can’t even be understood — because the core premise, that excessive civilian deaths are horrible and should be avoided at all costs, isn’t accepted. Why should a superior, civilized, peaceful society allow the welfare of violent, hateful barbarians to interfere with its objectives? How can the deaths or suffering of thousands of barbarians ever be weighed against the death of even a single civilized person?

The tragedy of the Palestinian people is that their suffering, somehow, by some horrible underlying logic, does not rate as equal.

The more I’ve come to see the dilemma in this light, the more the footage of carnage in Gaza has become impossibly heartrending to watch. A terrible dialectic is at play. As the Palestinians are battered to bits they rush, with camera in hand, to the scenes of devastation and to the hospitals where the wounded are being carried. They want to show the world. “Look,” they are saying, “we are human beings, just like everyone else. If you prick us, do we not bleed?” But the footage they capture gets perverted as it is conveyed. We see it on the other side as a chaos of bodies and activity that, while upsetting, is almost too kinetic. More tragically, the people sticking cameras into the scenes of injured children and families begin to look lewd. “Well,” we say, secretly in the dark whisperings of our private thoughts, “that’s no way to act.” The very attempt by everyday Palestinians to express their common humanity, to show their essential vulnerability, begins to look to us like opportunism, like the uncouth acts of a people fundamentally different from us. Barbarians.

Personally, I think that it more natural that we identify with Israel because, let’s face it, if I were forced at gunpoint to live in the Middle East, I’d choose Israel. But that doesn’t excuse what they are doing.

But on the other hand, what Israel is doing is, well, perhaps a bit too similar to what we’ve done to others?

A Pleasant “Schock”

Workout notes Yoga with Ms. Vickie, then a bad 6.4 mile (48 laps of lane 3) track run (59:42; first 4 was 40:04); I just never felt “right” and my right leg (lower hamstring and hip) didn’t feel “right” (that is the inner leg today).

Then a 2 mile walk (27 minutes) on a treadmill (elevation change every .25 miles: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) felt MUCH better.

Credit where Credit is Due
Aaron Schock (Republican, IL-18)made a good vote on the TARP oversight bill. Hat tip: Prairie State Blue.

Ray LaHood Confirmation (Secretary of Transportation). I admit that I was upset when I first heard this. But LaHood seems to be on the same page: he has pledged to ensure that infrastructure money is well spent and he wants to work on rail transportation. He has also said that he wants to cooperate with labor.

Barack Obama: is serious about closing GITMO and otherwise reforming our practices:

President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said.
The orders, which would be the first steps in undoing detention policies of former President George W. Bush, would rewrite American rules for the detention of terrorism suspects. They would require an immediate review of the 245 detainees still held at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to determine if they should be transferred, released or prosecuted.

And the orders would bring to an end a Central Intelligence Agency program that kept terrorism suspects in secret custody for months or years, a practice that has brought fierce criticism from foreign governments and human rights activists. They will also prohibit the C.I.A. from using coercive interrogation methods, requiring the agency to follow the same rules used by the military in interrogating terrorism suspects, government officials said.

Middle East: here is an article (or a link to one) about the sanitized war coverage that we get in the US.

In short, you simply don’t see photos like this one in the US media (by the way, if I am not mistaken, this photo shows the result of violence between Iraqi factions)

Obama is even better than I thought.

From weather underground:

January 19: temperatures ranged from 5 to 18 F (with Bush as President)
January 21: temperature is at 33 F (Obama’s first full day).

Dang, he is good!

(ps. to wingnuts: I am kidding)

One bit of news: Hillary Clinton gets confirmed 95-2

Kudos to Senator John McCain.

Clinton also won support from GOP presidential candidate John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), both of whom said they believe Clinton will succeed in the job and that the country needs a secretary of State as quickly as possible, given growing tensions in the Middle East, North Korea and Afghanistan.

McCain: I would remind all my colleagues, we had an election and we also had a remarkable and historic time yesterday as this nation has come together in a way that it has not in some time. I like all good politicians pay attention to the president’s approval ratings. They are very high. But more importantly, I think the message that the American people are sending us right now is that they want us to work together and get to work. I think we ought to let Senator Clinton, who is obviously qualified and obviously will serve, get to work immediately. And so I would ask unanimous consent at the completion of the remarks that any of my colleagues might have, that we initiate the vote at 4:30 and proceed by voice vote to the confirmation of Senator Hillary Clinton to be the next secretary of state of the United States of America.

Who were the two assholes no votes?

Vitter
You remember Vitter, right? The prostitutes do.

DeMint (South Carolina)

Before the vote, however, DeMint voiced further concern about foreign donations to Bill Clinton’s foundation. DeMint said he wished Clinton well in her new post and defended her qualifications, but said he would vote against her confirmation.

He said he was also concerned about Clinton’s pro-abortion beliefs and warned against using foreign assistance dollars to fund abortion.

Congratulations Secretary Clinton!

First Day of Classes

Workout notes 4000 yard swim; 500 warm up (9:10), 5 x 100 fist on 2 (high 1:40s), 5 x 200 on the 3:30 (3:22, 3:20, :18, 19, 19), 10 x 100 on the 1:45 (three 1:40, rest were 1:39), 500 strokes (fins), 5 x 100 on the 2 (missed the last couple) (25 3g, 75 free).

Then 3 mile walk at 13:30 pace (XC Number 2, I had to lower the incline 2 notches).

Pool: there was the kick ass distance swimmer, some faster babe who split with me for a while, and tons of dog-paddlers; it was a real zoo.

Other issues:
Beck infers that atheists are somehow crack-pots.

Hmmm, does that include 93 percent of the Academy of Science level scientists?

Note: his 89 percent is misleading. Note that “only” 60 percent believe in a personal deity.

The only sore spot of the inauguration for me was Rick Warren’s buffoonery. Ok, what harm was caused? Well, check this out:

Not unexpectedly, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) was besieged with emails and phone calls from members of our armed forces today following Rick Warren’s invocation. These weren’t complaints about the inappropriateness of Warren being chosen to deliver the invocation, or even about the content of Warren’s prayer. They were complaints about the pressure put on our servicemen and servicewomen by their superior officers to applaud Rick Warren, whose book The Purpose-Driven Life is second only to the Bible itself as the most promoted religious book by the U.S. military, currently being incorporated into everything from pre- and post-deployment family programs to suicide prevention.

* Chris Rodda’s diary :: ::
*

The following is an email from one decorated combat officer, a man with the courage to repeatedly put his life on the line on the battlefield, being wounded twice, but who could not muster the courage to resist the pressure of his “serious and committed born again Christian” commanding officer to applaud Rick Warren. The author of this email is typical of the majority of servicemen and servicewomen who contact MRFF for assistance. Like 96% of MRFF’s clients, he is a Christian — but not the “right” kind of Christian or Christian enough for today’s military.

To Mikey Weinstein and MRFF:

My name is (name withheld) and I am a (officer rank withheld) in the U.S. Army currently stationed stateside at Fort (military installation name withheld). I, my spouse and my children are Methodists attending church regularly on both Wednesdays and Sundays. I will always remember today as the low-point of my long (number of years withheld) year career in the Army. I have only myself to blame. Today I firmly established myself as a shameful person. Mikey, I write about 3 things; Rick Warren, my cowardice and your bravery. Today, I watched President Obama’s inauguration on the television set up in our Brigade staff conference room. I attended as a member of (unit level designation withheld) staff along with over 40 other senior officers, senior enlisted an few senior Army civilian staffers. There had been much talk here about Pres. Obama’s selection of the evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at the ceremonies.

Our current Commander is a very intolerant and “serious and committed born again Christian” as he always describes himself to all his subordinates. At every military assignment I’ve ever been to it’s always the same thing; if you are not a born again “serious” Christian you are branded as pretty much worthless. My current Commander is bad but not the worst I have seen. I have served 2 combat tours; one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. I have seen those under my command killed and grievously wounded. I was wounded twice. I have been awarded many combat medals and decorations. I have also stood by silently while my combat superiors have openly and repeatedly proselytized me and my troops. I did nothing. I have stood by and watched them continuously proselytize the Iraqis and Afghans. I did nothing.

Today, after Pastor Warren ended his invocation by praying in the name of his personal Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, our Commander jumped to his feet clapping and yelled “God Bless him for having the courage to pray for all of the lost souls in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ!” About a third of those attending also clapped. I did not. That was until our Commander turned around to survey everyone’s reaction to his statement. When that happened, the officer next to me started to clap and the one to my left clapped too. I felt like I was in a spotlight as the Commander looked at me and the female officer in front of me who had also not clapped. Then she clapped. And then I clapped too. I tried not to but could not muster up the strength to be the only one in the room not clapping in support of our Commander and Warren. I know what I should have done but I just couldn’t. Despite the many fierce combat situations I have been in, including hand-to-hand, I just couldn’t. I hate myself for this failure. I hate myself for my cowardice. I hate myself. [...]

And that is the thing for many of us to remember. Fortunately, my job removes me from such pressures. If someone at work tried to do that to me, I’d feel free to taunt him/her about the Flying Spaghetti Monster; I am an academic with tenure. But not everyone is in that situation.

More on the inauguration:

The swearing in flub:

The Constitution gives the oath as:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Welcome to the job, Mr. President:

This was in Iran. From The Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Baggy Pants and the Constitution Via the Legal Satyricon.

Basically, the Jackson City (Mississippi) wanted the city council to draft an ordinance to forbid “sagging pants”. They consulted with an attorney who told them that the ordinance would probably be ruled as being unconstitutional. The Mayor replied:

I certainly respect the Constitution,” Melton said, “but we have some issues that are much bigger than the Constitution.”

Baggy pants trumps the Constitution?

When Reality Laps Satire?

From a “Poe” blog (google “poe’s law” if you don’t get it)

The headline:

I have been saying for over a year now that if Obama were to be elected President, he would work as a sleeper agent for Al Qaeda, and attack our country from within.

But not even I believed that he would launch the attack so openly and so quickly.

Just moments after being sworn in, all TV networks caught sights of Obama led military firing on the capital:

Now from the Fail Blog: