Back In Peoria

No working out today; we left Muskogee late (had a hard time finding an air machine that worked) but had good weather all of the way.

We did stop and eat at an I-HOP in Oklahoma; someone who had a t-shirt which said “cock fighting is a tradition; not a felony” was eating there.

On the way home we listened to Colbert’s I am America and So Can You; I laughed pretty hard though most of it.

Muskogee, Oklahoma 2009

We made Muskogee, Oklahoma where we will stay for the night.

Workout notes 2 miles, Barton Springs; 1:09:56. The mile splits were 35:03/34:52; the 5′th lap was 8:34 (I passed three old swimmers and made an effort to get ahead of them). Compare to 22 December.

Air temperature: 65; it was relatively pleasant. There was a woman alternating kick sets (with fins) and paddle/pull buoy sets.

Football

(photos from here)

Florida beat Oklahoma 24-14 last night. The game featured a bit of everything. Though the Gators outgained the Sooners 480-363, both teams moved the ball well, and both defenses came up with big plays to stop drives.

There was plenty of hitting and good defense. Tebow was intercepted twice; once by a defensive tackle who dropped into pass defense. But the Sooners failed to convert.

In the second quarter, the game was tied 7-7. But Sooner drive (featured some strong off tackle running ended on a fourth and goal at the Gator one; a Gator defensive lineman stuffed an off tackle play when the Sooners spurned a field goal try.

Later, the Sooners drove the ball from their own 10 (with less than 2 mintues to go) only to have the drive end with an interception at the Gator 2 yard line.

The Sooners had the ball at the Gator 10 and tried for one more pass (no timeouts left); the ball bounced off of a receiver, off a defender and hit a couple of more people prior to being picked off.

Hence the action packed first half ended 7-7.

The third quarter saw a Gator touchdown drive matched my a Sooner one. A Long Sooner field goal attempt was blocked.

In the 4′th quarter the Gators hit a field goal to go up 17-14.
On a subsequent possession, Bradford hit a receiver in the hands with the ball, but while the receiver was pulling the ball in, the Gator defensive back snatched the ball away; it was one of the best defensive plays I’ve ever seen. The Gators then drove the ball and scored to go up 24-14 with 3 minutes to play and held on after that.

Travel notes When we were traveling through Southern Oklahoma, we picked up an Indian radio station in Dallas! What caught our ear was that they were reading an editorial written by a Pakistani concerning the misconceptions many Indians have about Pakistan. For a moment, I thought that we had tuned to a PBS station.

January 8, 2009, Post II

Politics Dem Con Watch keeps track of Obama appointments and confirmation hearing schedules here.

Social: more from the so called “persecuted Christians”. They are complaining that the state government of South Carolina weren’t permitted to issue “I Believe” license plates.

Via AU’s Wall of Separation, we learn that supporters of South Carolina’s “I Believe” license plates gathered for a rally last night to voice their opposition to a federal court’s injunction stopping production of the plates – and they were not hesitant to declare the decision just the lastest attack in the so-called “war on Christians” and make their outrage known, with one speaker, Rev. Arnold Hiette, going so far as to condemn the plate’s opponents to hell:

State and local church leaders Tuesday were joined by South Carolina’s attorney general and lieutenant governor for a standing-room-only rally at People’s Baptist Church. More than 400 people gathered to protest the Dec. 11 injunction stopping the production and sale of “I Believe” license plates.

Lt. Governor Andre Bauer, who first introduced legislation allowing the plate, declared the need for a long-term grassroots campaign for its production, calling Christians the new “silent majority.”

“There is free speech for every group in this state besides Christians,” Bauer said. “Every citizen has the right to free speech in this country. I don’t understand why witnessing in public is considered unconstitutional. You don’t even have to be a Christian to believe everyone deserves the freedom of speech.”

…

Church pastor Rev. Arnold Hiette warned it’s only the start of what could be a prolonged battle …Red-faced and angry, shaking his fist alongside his Bible, Hiette told the congregation that the four complainants – especially the Unitarian – and one judge who took away the people’s right to witness via their vehicle tags “along with the ACLU, they’re going to burn in hell.”

What these morons will never understand is that having free speech does NOT entitle anyone to

1. Have a government sponsored platform for their views and
2. Being granted a captive audience for their views.

Free Speech: they are free to put whatever bumper stickers they want on their cars…they can profess to believe in whatever nonsense they want. How is their speech being restricted?

Middle East/World Events: 3-quarks daily has had a series of articles, mostly which presents the Palestinian side of things. Here is another one.

I think that it is important for me to read articles such as these as, well, on some level I identify a bit more with Israel than I do with the Arabs; I view the Israeli population as being more technologically advanced, better educated, on the average wealthier (Saudi sheiks aside), and, on the whole, more sane when it comes to religious matters.

Anyway, here is a map which tracks the amount of land controlled by the Palestinians verses those controlled by the Israelis.

8 January 2009

Workout notes I got up early (Mom is going to the doctor) and ran 6 miles outdoors on the Hike and Bike. 27:58 out, 27:35 back for 55:32 total.

I did the run just as the sun was coming up; it was crisp (high 30′s to low 40′s) and there were spandex ladies all over the place! Pity I didn’t find any to chase; evidently I am running right at that pace to where I seldom gain on the other runners but few gain on me.

One guy did blast past me at a 6 minute pace or so and he was making it look easy.

Interestingly enough, this run was far easier than the one I did on the same course on December 23; and this one was actually 9 seconds faster (though it felt slower). That is progress, I think.

Anyway, I love these runs which are done right as the sun is rising.

I Guess that God is Getting Old…just like the rest of us

More here.

Then again, I have some questions about the God of the Bible. We read in Joshua that God gave Israel the command to commit genocide (though they were allowed to keep the virgin women for themselves from time to time)

But then we read in Judges 1, verse 19

And the LORD was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the hill-country; for he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.

Good thing that the valley folks didn’t have B-52s.

January 7, 2009

Workout notes 2 mile swim in Barton Springs in 1:11:43; mile 1 was 36:06 and the second mile was 35:37.

Barton Springs was more or less empty; when I started there were a couple of women swimming with fins; then a couple of old guys came in. Later, a faster woman swimmer with a suit that didn’t quite cover everything came in; and when I got out there was a fast but pot-bellied guy.

This was a bit slower than my last swim prior to my getting a cold, but I was still ok with it.

The air temperature was 35 when I got in and close to 50 when I got out.

The suit I brought was a tiny bit too small for me, and so I wore by small blue boxer cut over it.

Comment: Postsimian has an interesting cartoon:

This is how it goes:

1. Science that they don’t understand is viewed as being magic.
2. Magic, of course, is considered absurd. Of course, “magic” means “supernatural but not coming from their deity”.
3. Rejecting their magic is being seen as being either hypocritical or being closed minded.

What they don’t seem to get is that rationality and the scientific method has yielded observable things; “thinking” the way that they do has yielded absolutely nothing.

6 January 2009 part II

Best Jobs? Check out the list. Yes, “mathematician” is ranked number 1, and yes, some of my friends associated that with me.

But you know what? I am nothing of the sort; true I do have a few publications but these are, at best, minor contributions to the subject and whereas a few appear in mathematical databases and literature indexes, none of them are important.

What I do mostly is teach, or attempt to teach, college mathematics to folks who either lack the interest, ability or maturity to handle it.

Ever see a college football game? Have you ever seen the players score a touchdown and then selfishly dive over the end zone line when it means an automatic 15 yard penalty? Well, a large numerical minority of students that I have to teach have that level of maturity.

But, at least I am not breathing coal dust or..as one commenter to the linked article says:

I’m lucky enough to work in an environment found more-or-less near the top of the list, and spent my college days in a recurring summer job where I did a fair amount of roofing, along with rough carpentry and other aspects of home construction. Really puts things in perspective. I put a roof on a 4500 sq. ft. house once in the blistering heat of early August, and there’s nothing quite like hauling two 80 lb. bundles of shingles up a 40′ ladder when it’s 90 def. F out. Over and over. Follow that with baking above them as you try to nail them in place before they melt in your hands, leaving you covered with grit and tar. And did I mention bituthene? The evil that is bituthene? They don’t call it “bitch-a-thene” for nothing. I hate to make references to tar babies, but that’s exactly what I looked like after wrestling with a huge roll of that one hot, humid day. [...]

My paramedic teacher was clearly a hard-core adrenaline junkie, though there can be very little excitement to the job much of the time. In fact, in my three months, the most “exciting” thing I ever encountered was an old lady immobilized in her bathroom with a prolapsed rectum. I worked a rural area. Which was fine, because the stories I heard about car wrecks made me atheistically pray for boredom.

Science: an article about a pink iguana from the Invisible Pink Unicorn:

On his groundbreaking voyage, Charles Darwin never had knowledge of all the species on the Galapagos islands. For starters, he missed a rare, endanger iguana. But had he known about this creature, it would only have strengthened his theory of species divergence:

Pink iguanas unknown to Charles Darwin during his visits to the Galapagos islands may provide evidence of species divergence far earlier than the English naturalist’s famous finches, researchers said Monday.

The findings also for the first time describe the black-striped reptiles — first seen in 1986 and only a few more times since — as a new species, said Gabriele Gentile of the University Tor Vergata in Rome, who led the study.

They also add to understanding of the evolution of species on the remote islands, which remain much as they were millions of years ago and which inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Many of its species are found nowhere else.

[...]

I wonder what creationists think of the Galapagos island. They must figure that they were used as God’s creation laboratory back in the Garden of Eden days.

Social: Free Speech

An airline passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic script has been awarded 240,000 dollars in compensation, campaigners said Monday.

Raed Jarrar received the pay out on Friday from two US Transportation Security Authority officials and from JetBlue Airways following the August 2006 incident at New York’s JFK Airport, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced.

“The outcome of this case is a victory for free speech and a blow to the discriminatory practice of racial profiling,” said Aden Fine, a lawyer with ACLU.

Jarrar, a US resident, was apprehended as he waited to board a JetBlue flight from New York to Oakland, California, and told to remove his shirt, which had written on it in Arabic: “We will not be silent.”

He was told other passengers felt uncomfortable because an Arabic-inscribed T-shirt in an airport was like “wearing a T-shirt at a bank stating, I am a robber,’” the ACLU said.

Jarrar eventually agreed to cover his shirt with another provided by JetBlue. He was allowed aboard but his seat was changed from the front to the back of the aircraft.

Last week, nine Muslims, including three children, were ordered off a domestic US flight after passengers heard what they believed were suspicious remarks about security.

Although the passengers, eight of them US citizens, were cleared by the FBI, they were reportedly still barred from the AirTran flight.

Hmmm, I wonder if I could report that I didn’t feel comfortable with someone wearing a Christian t-shirt on a plane? Personally, I am tempted to get a shirt that has Maxwell’s equation (written in differential forms, of course) with the logo: And God said: …..and there was light.

Hat tip to the Legal Satyricon.

Middle East
From Rootless Cosmopolitan:

It’s fear of another Holocaust that has driven Israel to bomb the crap out of the Palestinians in Gaza — at least, that’s if you believe what you read on the New York Times op ed page. (Never a good idea, of course, because as I’ve previously noted, when it comes to Israel and related fear-mongering, there simply is no hysteria deemed unworthy of the Times op ed page.)

Morris, a manic fellow at the best of times prone to intellectual mood swings — having laid bare the ethnic cleansing that created modern Israel, Morris then didn’t as much recant as complain that the problem was that Ben Gurion hadn’t finished the job. And since the 2000 debacle at Camp David, of course, he’s been a de facto editorial writer for Ehud Barak, the failed former Prime Minister nicknamed “Mr. Zig-Zag” while in office because of his inconsistency — and who, of course, is the author of the current operation in Gaza.

Barak, never shy about spewing utter rubbish when his audience is American and prone to be taken in by demagoguery, last weekend offered the priceless suggestion to Fox News that “expecting Israel to have a cease-fire with Hamas is like expecting you to have a cease-fire with al-Qaeda.” Presumably it would not occur to Fox’s anchors to ask why, then, had Barak maintained just such a cease-fire for the past six months? And why had he been seeking its renewal?

And from a Norwegian doctor:

(hat tip to the last two items from 3-quarks daily)

6 January: Football Hangover

No, I am not actually hung over, but I really loved last night’s football game between Ohio State and Texas.

The game was a thriller with Ohio State leading 21-16 with 16 seconds to play when Texas scored on a 20 plus yard touchdown pass.

But of course the Texas receiver had to “show off” and dive into the end zone thus incurring a penalty; that made Texas kick off from the 15 and gave Ohio State a shot at a short field (and they have an excellent field goal kicker).

A sack ended Ohio State’s dreams of an upset.

So what does that mean?

If I were voting on the top 10, well, of course, I’d still have to wait for the outcome of the Florida-Oklahoma (lost to UT 45-35) match up. But for now, I’d probably go with

1. Utah
2. USC
3. Florida
4. Texas
5. Alabama
6. Oklahoma
7. Penn State
8. TCU
9. Ohio State
10. Georgia

So, I stayed up too late and will be doing something of a workout; 40 minutes of running again? Rain has taken out my swimming plans as I have nothning to keep my gear dry while I swim (and it is chilly).

Update 4.2 mile Hike and Bike run, 36:51. I was 26:03 at 3 miles and actually had to walk for about 10 seconds as I was out of breath! Still the last 1.2 was done in 10:48 as opposed to the 11:20 yesterday and I was 3:50 faster today.

The course was wet from rain, a bit cool but I overdressed; still it felt good to actually do something approximating running. 10 years ago, this would have been an “easy effort”; today it was “an effort”.

I have to remind myself that back in August, this would have been “race pace”.

Other topics
Normally, the internet provides some “safety of distance”; if some woo comes on my site and argues I usually feel free to point out their logical errors and to tell them to “go away”, with or without calling them a “moran”.

But what happens when one of the visitors is someone you might actually encounter in your town? The “discussion” is going something like this:

Woo: “ok, where does an atheist get his/her values”.
Me: “the same place that he/she gets her mathematics, science, literature, poetry, music, medicine, etc.”
Woo: “mathematics and science aren’t values”.
Me: (teeth gritted): “I know that, but I get them from the same source: the ideas of other humans interacting with my brain”
Woo: “but mathematics aren’t values”
…………..

Readers: is my point really that nuanced, or am I missing something? This really reminds me of this article.

More on this topic
I’ve started to follow Pharyngula. He links to a fundie site where they whine about Christians being persecuted in this country. What are these “persecutions”? Well, there are some unruly folks who supported defeating Proposition 8 in California, there is Barack Obama calling himself a Christian, the author of Pharyngula destroying a cracker, the film Religulous, etc.

In other words, not much.

In short, these morons think that they have a right to criticize others who don’t live by what they think is right, but if they are criticized, then they are persecuted. The blog I linked to is Norma-Jean’s The Good Kentuckian. Before you jump on old Norma-Jean, you might read about Poe’s Law.

But what is even sadder are those non-fundamentalist Christian apologists who think that they are smart because they have half-digested some pop-theology or pop-Bible scholarship books but are, in fact, unable to make a single, coherent logical argument.

Other social issues:

Where is the right wing headed? Evidently they are going to take their “pro-life” case to the African American community. I doubt that it will work as they have several decades of “southern strategy” to try to overcome.

Middle East: Mano Singham has some interesting thoughts (he writes some original stuff as opposed to the “link dumping” that I do)

Part I

Part II

Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, in an article well-worth reading titled Palestine’s Guernica and the Myths of Israeli Victimhood painstakingly tries to refute all the reasons given by apologists for Israel’s actions to justify this latest assault on the Palestinians. Those myths, which the mainstream media and both democratic and Republican politicians in the US tend to repeat uncritically, consist of the following:

1. Israelis have claimed to have ended the occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005.
2. Israel claims that Hamas violated the cease-fire and pulled out of it unilaterally.
3. Israel claims to be pursuing peace with ‘peaceful Palestinians’.
4. Israel is acting in self-defense.
5. Israel claims to have struck military targets only.
6. Israel claims that it is attacking Hamas and not the Palestinian people.
7. Israel claims that Palestinians are the source of violence.

Like nearly all durable myths, they do contain factual elements but these are merely used as scaffolding to create a propaganda edifice designed to hide the truth. Interestingly, Barghouthi’s article was published on the allegedly ‘liberal’ Huffington Post website with an extraordinary disclaimer not usually given for other writers, in which they essentially disowned him

Interestingly enough, Pat Buchanan (THAT Pat Buchanan) actually comes across as the “voice of reason” here!

About Israel’s right and duty to defend its border towns, there is no dispute. When Hamas permits Gaza to be used as a launch pad for rockets, it must expect retaliation. Nor can Hamas claim some right to dictate the limits of that retaliation.

Yet the wisdom of so savage a retribution for rockets that killed not one Israeli is open to question. And crass Israeli politics seems to be behind this premeditated and planned blitz.

With Likud’s hawkish “Bibi” Netanyahu ahead in the polls for the Feb. 10 election, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Labor’s candidate, had to show that he, too, could be ruthless with Hamas.

Kadima Party candidate and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has an even greater need than the highly decorated Barak to show toughness. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, departing in scandal, wants to exit in a blaze of glory, to blot out the memory of a botched war against Hezbollah that he launched in the summer of 2006.

However, while Israel’s politicians all seem to have a stake in these devastating strikes, Israel herself will pay the price.

Given the casualty toll, over 300 dead and 1,300 wounded as of this writing, Hamas will have to exact its pound of flesh. The Hamas wing that seeks renewed war with Israel will now shout into silence the wing working with Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak on a new ceasefire.

The moderate Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas, who has been talking to Israel, testifying to her good faith, has been made to appear the puppet and fool. A new intifada spreading to the West Bank, with suicide attacks inside Israel, is now possible. [...]

And Barack Obama? Forty-eight hours after the Israeli blitz began, he and his national security team remain silent.

Hopefully, Obama will bring with him a new Mideast policy, one made in the U.S.A., for the U.S.A. Hopefully, just as Israel has its private links to Syria through Turkey, to Hamas through Egypt and to Hezbollah, Obama will establish independent U.S. channels to all three, and adopt a separate U.S. policy toward all three, as Israel does.

While the United States must support Israel’s right to defend her towns and to strike bases from which Israelis are being attacked, Obama should denounce the collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, by Israel’s cutting off their electricity in the dead of winter and denying them the food and medicine many need to survive.

That brings me to the following point: if someone is right about an issue, they are right, even if they are wrong on just about everything else.

I suppose it is time to resubscribe to The American Conservative.

Half Time at the Fiesta Bowl

Ohio State is up 6-3; Texas missed an golden opportunity to at least tie when the Buckeyes intercepted a Longhorn pass at the 1 yard line with 2 seconds left in the half.

Ohio State is running the ball well but only has two field goals to show for it. Texas did have a couple of long drives (a 80 yard drive ended with the aforementioned interception) and one ended in a field goal.

So, it is still anyone’s game, but Texas needs to be able to stop OSU’s running game if they want to win.

OSU has used their backup quarterback (Boeckman) from time to time, but has mostly gone with Pryor and the running game.

(photos from yahoo)

Update Texas pulled it out 24-21; Texas got two long touchdown drives in the 3rd quarter while holding Ohio State to a couple of 3 and outs to take a 17-6. It seemed as if Texas was going to take command.

But a long pass put Ohio State in a position to kick a field goal and cut it 17-9.

Another stop and yet another drive had OSU pull to within 17-15.

Then yet another stop followed by a nice drive put OSU up 21-17 with 2:05 left in the game.

Then Texas started their drive from 78 yards away; a key play was a pass reception on 4′th and 3 on the 43. Texas gained 3.1 yards.

The winning score came with 16 seconds to go; it was a slant pass followed by a rare missed tackle.

The game couldn’t have been any closer.

5 January 2009: Spoiler…

Note: if you are a movie fan and haven’t seen the film (or play) Doubt yet, don’t scroll too far down.

Workout notes 4.2 mile run around the Hike and Bike; 40:41 (same as yesterday); I did get passed by one young woman who was finishing up; she passed me just as I was starting to feel better and so I felt just a bit weird; I didn’t want her to think that I was stalking her.

So I moved to one side and relaxed.

Social/Political

Friendly Atheist asks “who should we want representing atheists in the mass media”?

My knee jerk answer is “no one” as I really believe that one doesn’t rally around the beliefs that one rejects. I am more concerned with the process by which people use to make their decisions (e. g., do we fund science? What about stem cell research? etc.).

But if you want to know which famous person represents my point of view most closely, it would probably be someone like Richard Dawkins.

Academia: The folks at Rate Your Students are hard on the snowflakes. But we are harder on each other; read this comment by someone who is interviewing new Ph. Ds for a professor position:

If you are interviewing for a junior position, it is almost a given that you are the only person in that room who has not written a book. And to be totally honest with your little asses, that means you have no fucking idea what it takes to do so. You have not yet had your editor write to you and say “we’re ready to go ahead, but we want you to cut 30,000 words from the manuscript.” You haven’t been told that “you need to make the work more accessible so we can sell it at Barnes and Noble.” And since you haven’t got a clue about the brutal compromises that you are going to have to make to write your book, we’d all appreciate it if you would not piss all over the work of people who in many cases have successfully navigated that minefield several times. And it would be even better if you tried not to whip it out and give a senior and well-respected member of our department a golden shower from the lofty heights of your vast experience as a snowflake, as someone did this weekend. Being critical is good. In fact, it is desirable, and the only form of respect that counts in my book. Any candidate who can’t critique the historiography in her field is not getting a job in my department, and any scholar who can’t engage with a genuine critique is just a pussy. But a good critique requires that you treat the object of your critique with respect. Intellectual engagement requires that you take the ideas of others seriously. If you are openly dismissive, then you are still little more than an overgrown under-flake. You are, to be brutal, simply not ready for prime time.

Just some unsolicited advice for new math Ph.Ds: the job entails more than you think, and staying intellectually active for a long period of time is harder than you think, especially if you are bound for a 12 semester hour teaching load job.

And yes, I too got a publication out of my Ph. D. dissertation. No, it was far from my last, and yes I am getting ready to send another one out now. Still, well, if you haven’t done it, you have something to learn.

The good news is that your freshness and energy are positives; that is why we are interested in you to begin with.

Austin As my belated holiday present to my family, I treated everyone (wife, daughter, mom, sister, great niece) to lunch and a film at the Alamo Draft House.

The Alamo Draft House is a movie theater in which there is a table in front of each row of seats; during the film you can drink or even eat a meal; we all ate lunch. Most were happy with their food; I had a burger and fries; my wife had natchos and the others had individual pizzas.

The bill for 6 was 39 dollars for the film (three seniors) and everyone ate their fill for 55 dollars; 94 dollars for dinner and a theater caliber film for 6 people.

I’d do it again.

Stop reading here if you haven’t seen the film (or play) Doubt and you will eventually see it.

You can find the synopsis for the film here; basically the film is about a show down between an “old school”, “cold as ice disciplinarian” nun and a warmer, more modern and more progressive priest. The nun suspects that the priest is a pedophile and plots to get the priest removed.
But the nun has no proof; she has some weak, circumstantial “evidence” and her “certainty”.

So, is this nun really protecting the children, or is she merely fighting tooth and nail against modernism? It is hard to tell.
Did the priest do what the nun thought that he did?

It comes out that the child (8′th grader) in question is indeed gay; that is why he is there. My guess is that the Priest is also gay and he has a platonic bond with the boy because he understands his pain. But I think that the priest does NOT molest the boy though he attempts to hide his own homosexuality.

But I have doubts.

See the play or the film; or see both (as I did).