Better Swim 16 February 2009

Workout notes I surprised myself today in the pool; 500 in right around 9 minutes, 500 of 25 drill/ 25 swim (fins), 10 x 100 on the 1:45 (one 1:40; rest were 1:37-39), 10 x 100 (25 fly, 75 free) on 2 (mostly 1:45-46), 10 x (25 free, 25 back) on 1:10 (mostly 57-58), then 100 paddle, 100 side, 100 paddle, 100 side, 100 paddle.

On my side sets I was faster than all but one other freestyle swimmer; then again the top, tough swimmers weren’t there today.

Afterward, I did yoga on my own and worked my way to 20 yoga leg lifts. My dream is to someday have a tough enough abdomen to do 100. But for now, I’ll make it a goal to reach 30.

What I did was a single person version of this, except that I paused at 45 degrees, 30 degrees, and just above the floor.

Free speech: Though I have no legal training, I agree with the thoughts presented here. The video, called “two girls and one cup”, was ruled to be obscene.

Frankly, it is none of the government’s business what I choose to watch (so long as minors or those who weren’t capable of consent weren’t used in making it).

The video: basically, it is a lesbian sex scene between two women, in which one defecates into a cup and the other ingests it and throws it up on the other one.

Now why anyone would want to watch such a thing is beyond me; after all I can enter an ultra and throw up all I want without eating poop.

But my larger point: if I want to watch such nonsense, why is it your business?

Peoria Democrats Dinner Tommorow; Schock’s statement on the Stimulus Bill

Annual Democrats’ Presidents’ Day Dinner
Feb. 16th, 2009
5:30 – 8:30pm
Planned for the ITOO Hall on Farmington Road

Featuring Key Note Speaker/Entertainer R. J. Lindsey – “FDR Impersonator”

$500 sponsor, $300 table of 8, $30 per person ($35 at the door)
Tickets are required

Make check payable to:
Peoria County Democrats

and send to:
Peoria County Democrats
P.O. Box 258
Peoria, IL 61650-0258

Any readers want to get a table?

On the other side of the coin: here is the latest statement from our “representative”

Aaron Schock’s excuse for voting against America’s interest

I was compelled to vote against the stimulus bill on Friday because it was a fundamentally bad bill. My opposition was compounded by the fact members of Congress were given less than 12 hours to study such a voluminous bill involving such a large sum of money.

Ok, Mr. Shock. The next time you vote “yes” on something, I’d like to know if you’ve read the whole bill. Also, I wonder if Mr. LaHood read every line of the Bush items he voted “yes” on (e. g., the decision to go to war in Iraq?)

Let me point out that the recent federal bailouts and pledges of support from the FDIC, Treasury, Federal Reserve and this stimulus total enough to pay off 90 percent of this nation’s mortgages. It is a shame that so much has been wasted. I cannot be a part of wasting more. This money will have to be paid by U.S. taxpayers eventually, with compounded interest.

This bill has nothing to do with the bailout…but read on…

Some commentators have said no Republican has the right to talk about the overspending in this package because of the overspending under President Bush. Not only do two wrongs not make a right, but to combat massive overspending in the previous administration with another exponential increase is akin to treating an alcoholic with a warehouse of whiskey.

This isn’t an exponential increase.

By far the biggest imperative for me in considering this legislation was the need to get it right. Our workers are hurting. Savings and investments have taken a painful dive. Our federal government responded with a stimulus bill last winter of $145 billion, which was followed by the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), more commonly known as the “bailout” bill.

While our federal government took what many felt was needed and swift action in passing TARP, it’s becoming clearer that Washington got it wrong. Our economy continues to flat-line. We don’t even know where the money is being spent. As much as I agree with President Obama on the need to act quickly, getting it right is more important.

I support stimulus measures that create real jobs and invest in lasting infrastructure. I cannot support vast increases in pork-barrel spending that do not stimulate the economy but simply stimulate government.

Ok, here comes the typical Republican claptrap. Here is a rebuttal:

2. Government spending in the bill is not stimulus

Several media figures, including CNN correspondent Carol Costello, CBS Evening News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, and ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson, have all uncritically reported or aired the Republican claim that, in Gibson’s words, “it’s a spending bill and not a stimulus,” without noting that economists have said that government spending is stimulus. Indeed, in his January 27 testimony, Elmendorf explicitly refuted the suggestion that some of the spending provisions in the bill would not have a stimulative effect, stating: “[I]n our estimation — and I think the estimation of most economists — all of the increase in government spending and all of the reduction in tax revenue provides some stimulative effect. People are put to work, receive income, spend that on something else. That puts somebody else to work.” Additionally, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has said, “[S]pending is stimulus. Any spending will generate jobs. It is that simple.”

Robert Reich puts it very well:

Yet at this very moment, Senate Republicans are seeking to strip the President’s stimulus package of many of its spending provisions and substitute tax cuts. Part of this is pure pander: They know tax cuts are more popular with the public than government spending, even though spending is a far more effective way to stimulate the economy (more on this in a moment). Another part is pure partisan politics: Republicans are emboldened by Obama’s willingness to court Republicans (taking three Republicans into his cabinet, bringing Republican leaders into the White House for consultations, putting all those business tax cuts into the stimulus bill in order to gain Republican favor) without getting anything at all back from the GOP. House Republicans snubbed the bill entirely. So, Senate Republicans say to themselves, what’s to lose?

Plenty. Millions more jobs and a full-fledged Depression, for example.

Can we get real for a moment? Take a look at this chart, which comes from calculations by Mark Zandi and his colleagues at economy.com. You see that each dollar of spending has much more impact than each dollar of tax cut.

There are three reasons for this. First, most people who receive a tax cut don’t spend all of it. They use part of it to pay down their debts or they save it. Most of us did one or the other last spring with that tax rebate. From the standpoint of any particular individual, paying down debts or saving may be smart behavior — even commendable. But what’s intelligent for an individual does not necessarily translate into what’s good for the economy as a whole. The only way to get businesses to create or preserve jobs is through additional spending. And unlike tax cuts used to pay down personal debt or add to savings, every dollar of government spending flows directly into the economy and adds to overall demand.

Second, even that portion of a tax cut we might actually spend doesn’t necessarily go into the American economy. It goes all over the world. I have nothing against creating or preserving the jobs of Asians who assemble those flat-panel TVs you see at the mall, for example, but right now we’re trying to create or preserve jobs here in America. Sure, the retail workers at the mall who sell the flat-panel TV’s might benefit, but remember we’re talking about how to get the biggest bang for every dollar. When government spends to repair a highway or build a school or help pay for medical services, the money and the jobs stay here in America.

Finally, those who say cutting taxes on businesses is the best way to create or preserve jobs forget about the demand side. Even with a tax cut, businesses won’t hire workers unless there are customers to buy what those workers produce. A government stimulus that creates jobs is a necessary precondition.

Back to Mr. Schock:

When this legislation left the House, its infrastructure spending was around 7.5 percent. The returning bill was to contain much more. Instead, the word “infrastructure” has simply been redefined to include the same programs under different titles. Real infrastructure spending now only accounts for 6 percent of this bill.

The bottom line is I will not vote for something that is 90 percent wasteful just to get the 10 percent that is good.

Good? For whom?

Let me add some further perspective. For the past four years there has been widespread support for a state government capital bill to repair and build infrastructure in Illinois. Our previous governor and the General Assembly could not agree, largely due to the profound distrust legislators of both parties had for the governor. State engineers have identified $50 billion of needed infrastructure spending in Illinois.

Unfortunately, there has been no movement on a capital bill in the past 10 years. The amount that achieved bipartisan consensus last year was $35 billion. Contrast the power that would have to stimulate jobs with the only $1 billion allotted to Illinois for highways and $1 billion for mass transit in this federal stimulus bill. That $2 billion for Illinois infrastructure does not warrant putting our nation on a supersonic course to bankruptcy.

Uh, “supersonic course to bankruptcy”? Doing nothing will put us there, guaranteed. Your party put us on that path.

Our nation’s founders designed a system of government that has served us well for more than 200 years. It involves a process of committee hearings once bills are proposed. This was completely short-circuited for this bill.

This is misleading, at best. This bill had been drafted some time ago and gone in and out of committee. To claim that one had only a few hours to read it is misleading, at best.

On Thursday, I had the honor of traveling to Peoria on Air Force One with our president, who was to address workers at Caterpillar. As I sat in the audience surrounded by hard-working employees, the president called me out by name and urged those in attendance to share their opinions on the stimulus with me. The message they delivered, however, was to oppose this bill.

I sincerely want to work with President Obama on jump-starting our economy and other issues, but I could not support him in good conscience at this time. Rather than being a rubber stamp, I am more helpful to our president and our people by using my own best judgment and representing the views of my constituents, as I am empowered to do by our Constitution.

Aaron Schock represents Illinois’ 18th Congressional District in the U.S. House

15 February 2009

Workout notes Untimed 13 mile plus walk (about 3:15 worth): down to the river, through Springdale and up to upper Glen Oak park. It was slow but ok.

The weather was cold (20 F), sunny, and footing was excellent. I can take these winter days anytime.

However, long, gentle walks such as these cause me to route my course past open bathrooms; cold weather makes me urinate more often. The idea is that the extremities get colder; the body constricts the blood vessels thereby increasing blood volume.

Note: this effect is much less pronounced when I run because I am an inefficient runner and build up lots of body heat.

Note: afterward, the piriformis squawked at me a bit; I have to keep on those stretches.

Boxing

A match between heavyweights Samuel Peter and Eddie Chambers has been all but confirmed to take place on March 27 and to be televised on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights series. The article I linked to suggests that this is a sign of the times; the tough economy has hit boxing as well.

As a result, venues like Friday Night Fights are getting better match ups (or so it seems to me) and, while the boxers are being hit in the pocketbooks, the fans are getting a bonanza.

It is true that Peter got badly beaten by Champion Vitali Klitschko and Chambers lost a decision to Alexander Povetkin in the IBF title eliminator (the winner of this tournament was to get a shot at Klitschko).

But Peter and Chambers can box:

And you can see the entire Povetkin-Chambers bout in this series of videos: Chambers won the first three rounds but then got outworked; still the previous video shows that Chambers did deal out some punishment.

First round:

Last two rounds:

Humor On the Poe blog Republican Faith Chat, someone directed me to “Christian Yoga” called “Praise Moves”.

Science and environment:

Animal Camouflage

Surf to Conservation Report for yet another cool photo.

Lethal Space Junk

The amount of space junk has finally caused a “catastrophic collision”; an “in service” satellite was knocked out by a “dead” one.

Climate Change

We have videos on “weather vs. climate” and “area of ice vs. volume of ice”.

February 14 2009, Final Post of the Evening

Athletics I ran 14 miles this morning. In the days of old, I would have been tired but continued my normal activities. Today, I took a nap. Needless to say, I’ve made progress but need to get stronger.

Trains: Though this is a Daily Kos Diary (by BruceMcF), it talks about the potential effect of the stimulus package on rail systems. It would be excellent to have Peoria connected to St. Louis or Chicago by high speed rail; I know that I’d travel a bit more and flying would be easier.

Politics Remember Zell Miller pontificating at the 2004 Republican Convention about how the Democrats unpatriotic for having the audacity to question the Iraq war?

My guess is that if you want to read this book, you won’t have to pay full price.

Speaking of national parties, Frank Rich has a few things to say:

AM I crazy, or wasn’t the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had “all but lost control of the agenda in Washington,” declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress. “Obama Losing Stimulus Message War” was the headline at Politico a day later. At the mostly liberal MSNBC, the morning host, Joe Scarborough, started preparing the final rites. Obama couldn’t possibly eke out a victory because the stimulus package was “a steaming pile of garbage.”

Less than a month into Obama’s term, we don’t (and can’t) know how he’ll fare as president. The compromised stimulus package, while hardly garbage, may well be inadequate. Timothy Geithner’s uninspiring and opaque stab at a bank rescue is at best a place holder and at worst a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the TARP-Titanic, where he served as Hank Paulson’s first mate.

But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.

Rich goes on to say that many in the media and in politics spend too much time in Washington and are completely out of touch with the rest of the country. He says a few other things too:

Not all Republicans are so clueless, whether in Congress or beyond. Charlie Crist, the moderate Florida governor who appeared with the president in his Fort Myers, Fla., town-hall meeting last week, has Obama-like approval ratings in the 70s. Naturally, the party’s hard-liners in Washington loathe him. Their idea of a good public face for the G.O.P. is a sound-bite dispenser like the new chairman, Michael Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor. Steele’s argument against the stimulus package is that “in the history of mankind” no “federal, state or local” government has ever “created one job.” As it happens, among the millions of jobs created by the government are the federal investigators now pursuing Steele for alleged financial improprieties in his failed 2006 Senate campaign.

This G.O.P., a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those “zombie banks” that we’re being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets. Given the mess the country is in, it would be helpful to have an adult opposition that could pull its weight, but that’s not the hand America has been dealt.

As Judd Gregg flakes out and Lindsey Graham throws made-for-YouTube hissy fits on the Senate floor, Obama should stay focused on the big picture in governing as he did in campaigning.

Personally, I am enjoying watching this Republican party make fools of themselves. But, well, we need rational conservative voices in our country because, believe it or not, I actually will listen to reason.

But to me, this Republican party is best represented by Palin, Graham, Inhofe and other assorted sad sacks, woos, anti-intellectuals and religious fanatics. There is no place for a rational conservative to go.

Political Humor

About to be tortured again at the symphony

I got a nap prior to our symphony night; I can get another nap there.

Since the local symphony board just ran off a popular conductor, maybe I won’t have to go to any of these next year.

Articles

Democrats behaving badly
Oh *hit. This is not good. Evidently our newest Senator from Illinois (Burris, who replaced Obama) lied was less than forthcoming:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill.—Sen. Roland Burris admitted Saturday that former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s brother asked him for a campaign contribution before the governor appointed Burris to the Senate.

The disclosure is at odds with Burris’ testimony in January when an Illinois House impeachment committee specifically asked if he had ever spoken to Robert Blagojevich or other aides to the now-deposed governor about the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama.

Another little detail that seems “at odds” (what a decorous way of saying he lied!) with testimony Burris gave last month is this little nugget:

The affidavit also discloses for the first time that Burris told former Blagojevich advisers Doug Scofield and John Wyma of his interest in the post at a fundraiser in June, and later with Blagojevich chief of staff John Harris, who was arrested with Blagojevich on Dec. 9.

Scofield, Wyma and Harris were among the Blagojevich associates Burris was asked about in his Jan. 8 testimony by state Rep. Jim Durkin, the impeachment committee’s ranking Republican.

In response, Burris said he had spoken only to Lon Monk, a former Blagojevich aide-turned-lobbyist, last summer about his willingness to take the seat.

“This wasn’t a couple of questions that I can understand someone may forget, it goes way beyond that,” Durkin said Saturday. “To say that he wasn’t given the opportunity to explain himself is a load of B.S.”

So the newly minted Senator from Illinois lied to an impeachment panel about being shaken down, yes. But he also suddenly remembered that he had, in fact, expressed interest in the seat to a couple of other people he previously forgot to mention, including a guy who was arrested.

Well, the worst case is that he sticks around until 2010 until we can replace him.

Anti-gay pastor’s son caught in a gay sex sting: via the Dallas Voice.

The son of T.D. Jakes — the Dallas megachurch pastor who’s called homosexuality a “brokenness” and declared that he would never hire a sexually active gay person — was arrested in a gay sex sting in Kiest Park in January, according to Dallas police reports.

Jermaine Donnell Jakes, 29, faces a charge of indecent exposure after allegedly exposing himself in front of two undercover vice detectives shortly after 10 p.m. on Jan. 3. Senior Cpl. Janice Crowther, a DPD spokeswoman, confirmed Thursday, Feb. 12 that the detectives were both male.

According to an arrest affidavit, the detectives were conducting an investigation into citizen complaints of sexual activity when they observed Jakes and several other unknown males park their vehicles in the lot east of the park at 2106 W. Kiest Blvd.

The detectives followed Jakes into a wooded area, where he approached them with his penis exposed through his unzipped pants, the affidavit states. Jakes masturbated for several seconds while making eye contact with one of the detectives.

Jakes made no attempt to conceal his penis despite people walking and jogging on a trail nearby, the affidavit states. According to court records, Jermaine Jakes listed his place of employment as T.D. Jakes Ministries. Jakes was released at the scene after being detained.

I suppose this guy could always run for Senator as a Republican.

Louisiana: pro creationist laws drive away a science convention:

One of my favorite meetings is the annual Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meetings. One of my favorite cities to visit is New Orleans, Louisiana. The two pleasures will not be coinciding at any time in the near future because of the ineptitude and inanity of Louisiana’s legislature and governor, Bobby Jindal. Here’s the press release from the LA Science Coalition:

National Scientific Society to Boycott Louisiana over LA Science Education Act

The first tangible results of the Louisiana legislature’s passage and Gov. Bobby Jindal’s signing of the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act have materialized, and these results are negative both for the state’s economy and national reputation. The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, a national scientific society with more than 2300 members, has put Gov. Bobby Jindal on notice that the society will not hold its annual meetings in Louisiana as long as the LA Science Education Act is on the books.

That’s nice, but it’s ineffective. What we need to do is to withhold the fruits of evolution from such states (e. g., modern advances in medicine, vaccines, etc.) That might have more impact.

Republicans again: acting contrite toward the extreme right wing:

A Bad Case of the “I Don’t Want To” and other topics

Update I ran my 14 mile course from the house to Columbia Terrace, to Broadway, to McClure where I picked up the Boredom course (close to mile 1), did the Boredom (10 miles of it) then back. Total time: 2:24; footing was excellent; it was seasonably cold (high 27 when I left) and somewhat windy (also seasonable). The sweat froze my stocking hat. My pace was reasonably steady. The run was easy for the first 5-6 miles, tough from about 7-10, and not that bad toward the end.

My right leg cramped a bit (behind the knee) at times toward the end, and I got grumpy.

But oddly enough; well, I am glad that I did it. I’ve missed doing these.

Athletics: McNaughton Park Trail 50-100-150 Ok, fess up time. A year ago (14 months, really), I signed up for the McNaughton 100 miler. I figured that a year would be enough time for me to get ready.

A couple of bad performances and a reality check showed me that was wrong; I was a physical mess and unable to hold 8:30 minute miles for even a 5K!

So I decided to rebuild for all of fall 2008.

That part has worked, up to now.

But it has taken time and, where I’ve worked up to 20 running miles and 20 walking miles per week (roughly), that McNaughton race looms (second weekend of April).

Of course, I am not remotely close to being ready, though the 100 miler does feature a 12 noon start on Friday (which would give you 52 hours to finish).

I was considering that option. But to even have a shot at that, I need to get off my arse and do some “slow 20s”. But the fact is: I don’t want to.

This is what my training currently looks like:

Monday: 4000 yard swim, 3 mile walk
Tuesday: 7 mile run, 3 walk, yoga
Wednesday: 4000 yard swim, 3 mile walk
Thursday: 7 mile run, 3 walk, yoga
Friday: 4000 yard swim
Saturday: 10 mile run (95-97 minutes)
Sunday: 10 mile walk (or 5 run, 5 walk, etc)

And I’d need to boost that. But the desire to do so just isn’t there.

So, in reaction, I haven’t decided on what to do. My options are these:

1. Not do McNaughton at all but volunteer and get in some laps on my own.
2. Drop to the 50 mile and do what I did last year (30 on Saturday, 20 on Sunday)
3. Do 50 except don’t officially drop from the 100; that way I get to keep all of the cool 100 mile gear. The penalty is that I don’t get the 50 mile finisher’s trinket (as I needed another one)
4. Show up for the early start with gear, pillows and station wagon in hand; do what I can, nap/sleep, do what I can, nap/sleep, etc. and see what the total is when the course closes 52 hours later.

Anyway, what I do know is that I am going to get in some miles when I get off of this computer.

Politics

Science and Politics Here is a nice article on Stephen Chu:

WASHINGTON — Steven Chu, the new secretary of energy, said Wednesday that solving the world’s energy and environment problems would require Nobel-level breakthroughs in three areas: electric batteries, solar power and the development of new crops that can be turned into fuel. [...]

He addressed topics that included global warming, renewable energy sources like solar and wind power, the use of coal and a proposed repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Dr. Chu said a “revolution” in science and technology would be required if the world is to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and curb the emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases linked to global warming.

Solar technology, he said, will have to get five times better than it is today, and scientists will need to find new types of plants that require little energy to grow and that can be converted to clean and cheap alternatives to fossil fuels.

Dr. Chu, who once called coal “a nightmare” in the way it is currently used, said the United States must also lead the world in finding a way to burn the fuel cleanly, because other countries with big coal reserves, like India and China, will not turn away from coal.

But Dr. Chu said such developments were not impossible.

[...]

He said that while President Obama and Congressional Democratic leaders had endorsed a so-called cap-and-trade system to control global warming pollutants, there were alternatives that could emerge, including a tax on carbon emissions or a modified version of cap-and-trade.

Dr. Chu said reaching agreement on legislation to combat climate change would be difficult in the current recession because any scheme to regulate greenhouse gas emissions would probably cause energy prices to rise and drive manufacturing jobs to countries where energy is cheaper.

“The concern about cap-and-trade in today’s economic climate,” Dr. Chu said, “is that a lot of money might flow to developing countries in a way that might not be completely politically sellable.”

But, he said, he supports putting a price on carbon emissions to begin to address climate change.

The Energy Department is involved with efforts as varied as developing nuclear weapons and sequencing the human genome. Dr. Chu said the department’s nuclear weapons program, which the White House is considering moving to the Defense Department, should be more tightly coupled to science in critical tasks like safeguarding nuclear materials and detecting nuclear proliferation.

Personally, I think it is great that we have ultra smart, competent people in charge of areas such as these!

Political Rant

Watch a Republican get smacked down. Debbie Wasserman Schultz does the honor.

Bob Cesca: writes an amusing editorial about how the Republicans in Congress are acting. Here is a highlight:

The historical record of far-right ridiculousness has been well-documented here and throughout the blogosphere.

Who can forget Michelle Malkin’s inspired cheerleader skit? Or when Rush Limbaugh mocked a guy’s Parkinson’s Disease tremors. What about John Boehner’s public sobbing jags? Pat Robertson insisting he could leg-press 2,000 pounds. Sarah Palin’s turkey geeker photo op. George W. Bush telling us that Iraq is a “peeance freeance.” Remember when Bill O’Reilly shouted down the son of a 9/11 victim? Already, we’re talking about a mélange of weirdness and upside-down logic suitable for the ages, and that’s all prior to January 20, 2009.

But I don’t think we ever anticipated that the presidency of Barack Obama would, among other things, send the far-right into a freakazoid display of shockingly deranged conniptions and outright crazy talk — their manic hyperdrive engines, fueled by Rush Limbaugh’s gesticulating arm flab, blasting them out of their political Mos Eisley cantina scene and expelling them a thousand parsecs beyond the zero barrier of insanity.

Here is where the article really gets funny:

They’re screaming about fear-mongering, even though we had eight years of this.

Fear Mongering: Republicans today:

Republicans yesterday: surf to the link to reread President Bush’s “we risk a mushroom cloud if we don’t invade Iraq” speech.
[...]

They’re honest to God screaming about fascism, even though we had eight years of this and this and this.

Republicans about fascism:

I dunno about you, but I blame Jonah Goldberg for Friday’s exchange between dueling wingnuts Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck — in which Ingraham came off looking really sane in comparison:

Beck: We are really, truly, stepping beyond socialism and we’re starting to look at fascism. We are putting business and government together!

Ingraham: Glenn, you’re throwing a lot of terms around, and I’m going to play devil’s advocate, because this is fair and balanced. Now, moving from socialism to communism, that’s, that’s a pretty big leap — socialism, obviously, the economic system, communism the political system. How are we right now moving toward state ownership of all, for instance, heavy industry?

Beck: Let me first of all just explain first what happened in Nazi Germany. It was National — Socialism. We’re talking now about nationalizing the banks, and socialized programs. National. Socialism.

At first in Nazi Germany, everybody was so panicked, they were so freaked. Remember — don’t take anytime to think about it, we’ve just got to do, do, do. At first all the big companies and the big capitalists in Germany said, ‘Oh thank goodness there’s a savior! OK, great! We’ll do that, yes!’ It didn’t take too long before — like here in America, now Goldman Sachs. They’ve started to see the writing on the wall and went, ‘Whoa, whoa whoa! You guys are getting out of control here. What are you guys doing?’ And they couldn’t get out of it fast enough.

Republicans not too long ago:

Moments ago in the House debate on the electoral vote, Congressman David Dreier squealed that the objection to Ohio’s electoral vote emboldens the enemy while our country is at war.

The one issue that I take with this rant is the title: I don’t think that President Obama did anything to drive these people insane; they were always that way. Remember what you are seeing, save a handful of Republican Senators, is the remnants after their big party purge. They ran off all but the wingnuttiest of the wingnuts.

I’ll give Conservaites a Voice

Ok, I may have been too shrill and partisan in my posting. So, I’ll give conservatives a voice.

Here is a typical conservative speaking on science and how to convince people to reject evolution

Here is a typical conservative politician speaking on Charles Darwin (and talking about Lincoln )

Oh yes, the privatization is a cure all! Watch what happens when jails were privatized:

For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.

The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

“I’ve never encountered, and I don’t think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids’ lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money,” said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.

Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward.

Other stuff
Pat Condell: I get a kick out of this guy.

13 February 2009 (am edition)

Workout notes 4000 yard swim; was very sluggish so I did drills, IM (400 IM in 8:49), side stroke, etc.

Then I did some yoga on my own.

Local: Our recent run of warm weather has confused the local bunnies. They are out in force, but more winter weather is on the way (tonight?) We’ve got about 3-4 weeks of having a risk of bad weather left.

Obama’s Peoria visit I haven’t read the morning paper yet, but a friend (Lynn, who was one of my campaign buddies) got off of work to show up for the landing of Air Force One:

Science and Evolution

Richard Dawkins reviews Jerry Coyne’s book Why Evolution is True.

How can you say that evolution is “true”? Isn’t that just your opinion, of no more value than anybody else’s? Isn’t every view entitled to equal “respect”? Maybe so where the issue is one of, say, musical taste or political judgement. But when it is a matter of scientific fact? Unfortunately, scientists do receive such relativistic protests when they dare to claim that something is factually true in the real world. Given the title of Jerry Coyne’s book, this is a distraction that I must deal with.

A scientist arrogantly asserts that thunder is not the triumphal sound of God’s balls banging together, nor is it Thor’s hammer. It is, instead, the reverberating echoes from the electrical discharges that we see as lightning. Poetic (or at least stirring) as those tribal myths may be, they are not actually true.

But now a certain kind of anthropologist can be relied on to jump up and say something like the following: Who are you to elevate scientific “truth” so? The tribal beliefs are true in the sense that they hang together in a meshwork of consistency with the rest of the tribe’s world view. Scientific “truth” is only one kind (“Western” truth, the anthropologist may call it, or even “patriarchal”). Like tribal truths, yours merely hang together with the world view that you happen to hold, which you call scientific. An extreme version of this viewpoint (I have actually encountered this) goes so far as to say that logic and evidence themselves are nothing more than instruments of masculine oppression over the “intuitive mind”.

Listen, anthropologist. Just as you entrust your travel to a Boeing 747 rather than a magic carpet or a broomstick; just as you take your tumour to the best surgeon available, rather than a shaman or a mundu mugu, so you will find that the scientific version of truth works. You can use it to navigate through the real world. Science predicts, with complete certainty unless the end of the world intervenes, that the city of Shanghai will experience a total eclipse of the sun on July 22, 2009. Theories about the moon god devouring the sun god may be poetic, and they may cohere with other aspects of a tribe’s world view, but they won’t predict the date, time and place of an eclipse. Science will, and with an accuracy you could set your watch by. Science gets you to the moon and back. Even if we bend over backwards to concede that scientific truth is no more than that which enables you to pilot your way reliably, safely and predictably around the real universe, it is in exactly this sense that – at the very least – evolution is true. Evolutionary theory pilots us around biology reliably and predictively, with a detailed and unblemished success that rivals anything in science. The least you can say about evolutionary theory is that it works. All but pedants would go further and assert that it is true. [...]

It looks as if my reading list has just gotten a bit longer.

Evolution: seeks solutions, but not necessarily optimal ones.

Evolution is often likened to a process of climbing a mountain. If one follows the strategy of taking small steps, only going up (never down) and is willing to keep at it long enough, one will inevitably make it to the top of the mountain.

Alas, the strategy of small upward steps can only take a mountain climber so far. If the mountain is a single smooth surface with just one peak (like Mount Fuji), all is well. But if the mountain range looks more like the Himalayas, rough, uneven and full of peaks and valleys, there’s a distinct chance of getting stuck on a low peak that is by no means the highest peak in the range.

Neither evolution nor Darwin ever promised anything like perfection. Evolution is not about creating perfect or optimal creatures, which would require forethought, but only about the fact that the genes of creatures with modest advantages (“fittest” among those that happen currently to be alive) tend to spread throughout the population.

Darwin’s theory of natural selection tells us that a one-eyed creature may outcompete a blind creature, but that doesn’t mean that a creature with two eyes couldn’t come along later.

This seemingly subtle difference — between “fittest among the choices that happen to be lying around” and “fittest imaginable” — makes all the difference in the world.

Richard Fillmore’s Bathtub: questions that evolution can explain that creationism can’t! Think about these, then surf to the blog to see the answers (in the comments)

Mr. Bratteng’s 13 Questions

1. Why does giving vitamin and mineral supplements to undernourished anemic individuals cause so many of them to die of bacterial infections?
2. Why did Dr. Heimlich have to develop a maneuver to dislodge food particles from people’s wind pipes?
3. Why does each of your eyes have a blind spot and strong a tendency toward retinal detachment? But a squid whose eyesight is just as sharp does not have these flaws?
4. Why are depression and obesity at epidemic levels in the United States?
5. When Europeans came to the Americas, why did 90 percent of the Native Americans die of European diseases but not many Europeans died of American diseases?
6. Why do pregnant women get morning sickness?
7. Why do people in industrialized countries have a greater tendency to get Crohn’s disease and asthma?
8. Why does malaria still kill over a million people each year?
9. Why are so many of the product Depends sold each year?
10. Why do people given anti-diarrheal medication take twice as long to recover from dysentery as untreated ones?
11. Why do people of European descent have a fairly high frequency of an allele that can make them resistant to HIV infection?
12. Close to home: Why do older men often have urinary problems?
13. And why do so many people in Austin get cedar fever?

Unfortunately, ignorance continues to thrive. Just less than half of Americans accept evolution and only 55 percent can associate Charles Darwin with it.

Here is an example of some local ignorance:

May believers in Darwinian evolution may not be aware that today, Feb. 12, marks Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday and almost 150 years since the first printing of “On the Origin of Species.”

Darwin’s “In the beginning” story starts out, “A few forms or into one; … from so simple a beginning endless forms … have been, and are being evolved.” One must remember, back then people believed flies came from raw meat and frogs came from mud in a process referred to scientifically as spontaneous generation.

As scientists penetrate deeper and deeper into the micro and macro worlds, the more mysterious and complex things become. Real science only appeals to what is observable, testable and repeatable. Singular and unpredictable events are outside the realm of science.

After 150 years, Darwin’s simplistic evolutionary theory has about as much scientific certainty as the flat Earth theory and should be as dead as the dodo bird, but many people religiously cling to the concept because they think they can live in the world without dealing with their creator.

Name omitted to protect the hopelessly ignorant.

That reminds me of Evolved/Rational’s t-shirt:

Politcs

Stimulus: Krugman: “useful, but insufficient.”

By any normal political standards, this week’s Congressional agreement on an economic stimulus package was a great victory for President Obama. He got more or less what he asked for: almost $800 billion to rescue the economy, with most of the money allocated to spending rather than tax cuts. Break out the Champagne!

Or maybe not. These aren’t normal times, so normal political standards don’t apply: Mr. Obama’s victory feels more than a bit like defeat. The stimulus bill looks helpful but inadequate, especially when combined with a disappointing plan for rescuing the banks. And the politics of the stimulus fight have made nonsense of Mr. Obama’s postpartisan dreams.

Let’s start with the politics.

One might have expected Republicans to act at least slightly chastened in these early days of the Obama administration, given both their drubbing in the last two elections and the economic debacle of the past eight years.

But it’s now clear that the party’s commitment to deep voodoo — enforced, in part, by pressure groups that stand ready to run primary challengers against heretics — is as strong as ever. In both the House and the Senate, the vast majority of Republicans rallied behind the idea that the appropriate response to the abject failure of the Bush administration’s tax cuts is more Bush-style tax cuts. [...]

Of course, Robert Reich said that we guessed that Obama would settle for a less than optimal plan in order to get solicit some Republican support:

Almost every economist will tell you the stimulus has to be massive in order to have any real impact. Even Marty Feldstein, who headed Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, told Congress it had to be $800 billion. My own view is at least $900 billion. But a price tag like that scares Republicans and so-called “blue-dog” Democrats who worry about government debt.

So here’s our new president’s strategic choice. He can flight for the biggest stimulus politically possible – twisting arms and counting noses to get a bare majority in the House and sixty votes in the Senate. That’s how Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush got their huge tax cuts, and how Bill Clinton got his first budget through Congress.

Or Obama can aim to get the backing of a much larger majority than he needs to get the stimulus enacted – including a majority of blue dogs and Republicans. To do this he’d likely have to settle for a smaller stimulus package – one that may not be enough to jump-start the economy.

Why would he ever choose the second strategy? Because his goal is not just to get the biggest stimulus package he can squeeze through Congress. It’s to get a Congress that’s mostly united behind whatever stimulus package emerges. This would ensure that Republicans and blue-dog Democrats take some ownership of the package, and therefore responsibility for making it work.

And make no mistake about it: The Republicans have been the opposition the whole way; in fact they have been obstructionists. Representative Louise Slaughter writes:

As Chair of the House Rules Committee, I must clear up untruths regarding the economic recovery package.

We’ve heard a lot of noise across the aisle about how partisan the development of the bill was — that Republicans were blocked from being involved. This is entirely false. In fact, this was one of the most open processes a bill this large has had in over a decade.

They are being disingenuous, or worse. These are the facts:

The bill, as it came to the Rules Committee, the last stop before the floor vote, already incorporated 12 Republican amendments. The Rules Committee then added the 11 amendments: 6 Democratic and 5 Republican, in addition to a complete Republican substitute, and a motion to recommit. They were unable to muster the votes necessary and lost on bipartisan votes. House Republicans may have come together to vote against the final bill, but they split on their own amendments with 40 to 60 Republicans voting with Democrats. Some Republicans even voted against their party’s alternative bill, and it failed on the floor.

The Republican alternative didn’t have a final price tag, consisted entirely of tax cuts, and would actually raise taxes for 26 million American families. In two years, the Democratic bill would create 3.6 million jobs. The Republican substitute: 1.2 million – a third as many as the Democratic bill that passed the House.

President Obama even met with House Republicans more times in two weeks to discuss this legislation than President Bush did with House Democrats in two terms.

The Republicans were certainly allowed in the process, but they wanted to obstruct.

I don’t know if they are trying to set themselves up for 2010 (as the stimulus plan will be long acting), if they are hopeless ideologues or if they are just plain stupid.

What is clear is that, as a country, we’d be better off without them; they are holding us down.
So if they continue to act this way, we should just steamroll them and do what we want; it isn’t as if they have anything of value to contribute.

Others are also skeptical that Obama will be able to work with them:

It is a quick, sweet victory for the new president, and potentially a historic one. The question now is whether the $789 billion economic stimulus plan agreed to by Congressional leaders on Wednesday is the opening act for a more ambitious domestic agenda from President Obama or a harbinger of reduced expectations.

Both the substance of his first big legislative accomplishment and the way he achieved it underscored the scale of the challenges facing the nation and how different a political climate this is from the early stages of recent administrations.

While it hammered home the reality of bigger, more activist government, the economic package was not the culmination of a hard-fought ideological drive, like Lyndon B. Johnson’s civil rights and Great Society programs, or Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts, but rather a necessary and hastily patched-together response to an immediate and increasingly dire situation. On the domestic issues Mr. Obama ran and won on — health care, education, climate change, rebalancing the distribution of wealth — the legislation does little more than promise there will be more to come.

In cobbling together a plan that could get through both the House and the Senate, Mr. Obama prevailed, but not in the way he had hoped. His inability to win over more than a handful of Republicans amounted to a loss of innocence, a reminder that his high-minded calls for change in the practice of governance had been ground up in a matter of weeks by entrenched forces of partisanship and deep, principled differences between left and right.

I wouldn’t call the differences “principled”; trying to work with those idiots Republicans on the economy is like trying to do science with a creationist or with a heliocentric astronomer.

Senator Patrick Leahy’s “truth commission”:

Senator Leahy talks to us here:

During the past several years, this country has been divided as deeply as it has been at any time in our history since the Civil War. It has made our government less productive and our society less civil. In this week when we begin commemorating the Lincoln bicentennial, there is need, again, “to bind up the nation’s wounds.” President Lincoln urged that course in his second inaugural address some seven score and four years ago.



Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened. The best way to move forward is getting to the truth, finding out what happened, so we can make sure it does not happen again.



The Obama Administration has already made huge strides to restore the Constitution and renew our commitment to international law after eight corrosive years. But we must read the full page on this dark chapter in American history before we can turn it for good, which is why I feel so strongly about investigating what really happened.

 I hope you agree.



On Monday, I delivered a speech at Georgetown University where I outlined my ideas about why we need a truth and reconciliation commission and how it could work.



A truth and reconciliation commission would be tasked with seeking answers. It would provide Congress and the American people with a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past, so we do not repeat them in the future.



Thank you, in advance, for taking action at www.BushTruthCommission.com to prevent history from repeating itself and joining me to support the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission.

P.S. I’ll be stopping by several times today to respond to your questions and comments. I look forward to your feedback and our dialogue!

UPDATE (2:30pm ET): Thanks for all of your questions and comments. I’ve tried to address some of them below, but also wanted to post a more global update here. This is clearly an issue that we all feel passionately about.

Some say we should not look backward at all at the misdeeds and missteps of the past eight years. There are others who say that, even if it takes all of the next eight years, divides this country, and distracts from the necessary priority of fixing the economy, we must prosecute Bush-Cheney Administration officials to lay down a marker. I believe we should consider a middle ground, which is to find the truth. We need to get to the bottom of what happened — and why — so we make sure it never happens again.

On the issue of immunity & prosecutions, a failed attempt to prosecute for this conduct would be the worst result of all as it could be seen as justifying and exonerating abhorrent actions. Given the steps Congress and the executive have already taken to shield this conduct from accountability, any prosecution could be difficult. What’s more, prosecutions could take 5, 10, or more years to accomplish — and we need to get to the truth much more quickly.

Of course, this avenue would be pursued in consultation with the Justice Department and would not rule out prosecution in appropriate cases, particularly for perjury before the commission — or for those individuals who choose not to testify before the commission, but are implicated by others. We could certainly prosecute those people.

No Attorney General should make a commitment not to prosecute for any crime without having investigated the issue. Some asked Eric Holder to commit not to prosecute for anything that happened on President Bush’s watch. That is a pledge no prosecutor should give, and Attorney General Holder did not. My proposal does not ask for Attorney General Holder to make any such commitment.

If you think that this is a good idea, go here and sign the petition.

12 February 2009

Workout notes Yoga, then 7 mile course (Springdale) in 1:08:51 (6 minutes faster than 2 days ago) followed by a 46 minute walk (included the Michael Bridge) to give me 10 miles.

I felt better today; it was just below freezing.

Interestingly enough, this is faster than I’ve ever done this course solo, but I did it almost 4 minutes faster when Bob ran with me (yes, he slowed down to run with me….he slowed way down…)

It must be psychological.

Fun: Two of the bloggers I routinely read are in this photo: Evolved Rational and Friendly Atheist. Yes, this photo is completely safe for work, though ER’s dress is…..well, see for yourself! Heterosexual males won’t be disappointed.

Evolution: evidently the Tulsa Beacon doesn’t understand that you teach science in science departments; the clown that wrote this article feels qualified to tell a university science department what to teach (and research?)

By the way, today is “Darwin Day”: the 200′th birthday of Charles Darwin!

Science Global warming is real. As evidence: birds are migrating further and further north.
See the Daily Kos (A Seigel) or Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

Misconceptions about atheists Here is one person’s list of 10 common misconceptions. I’ll post the first one:

1: Atheists are 100 percent convinced that there is no god, as blindly faithful as religious fundamentalists.

Atheism means different things to different atheists. But for the overwhelming majority, it doesn’t mean being 100 percent certain that there’s no god. It means being certain enough. It means we’re as certain that Jehovah or Allah or Ganesh don’t exist, as we are that Zeus or Thor or the Flying Spaghetti Monster don’t exist. (I’ve read and spoken with hundreds of atheists … and have encountered exactly two 100 percenters.) Atheists aren’t saying, “We’re 100 percent convinced that there’s no god, nothing could persuade us otherwise.” Atheists are saying, “We’re not convinced. The arguments for God are weak and circular; the evidence falls apart under close examination. Show us better evidence or arguments, and we’ll reconsider. Until then, we’re assuming that God doesn’t exist.”

That’s the point. I’ll add that I don’t care for the standard gods, but I would be willing to consider the possibility that some grand “force of the universe” exists were I to see convincing evidence of it.

11 February 2009: recap

Well, our warm spell has regressed to the mean, so to speak. A cold front has moved in and the temperatures will be a bit more seasonable. I don’t know if the wet roads will become icy or not.

Swimming: the “Across the Atlantic” swim might not have been:

When Jennifer Figge touched the shores of Trinidad last Thursday, the 56-year-old American completed a 3,400 kilometre, 24-day journey that began on Africa’s Cape Verde Islands and ended on an abandoned leper colony. She became the first woman to swim across the Atlantic, a world record, perhaps.

But how much of it did she actually swim?

That is the heated dispute among aquatic marathoners, many of whom apply strict guidelines to these kinds of record-breaking firsts, right down to what the athlete wears. They believe that there is plenty to be skeptical about.

“When you do the math, it means she’d have to swim almost 150 kilometres a day,” said Timothy Noakes, professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town.” (that is 93 miles every 24 hours; that is impressive for a runner!)
[...]

Ms. Figge’s business manager, David Higden, did not respond to an interview request, but he did tell the Guardian that Ms. Figge swam only 19 of the 24 days, and that she never set out to swim the entire distance. “Nobody could swim across the Atlantic. It’s physically impossible,” he said.

If traversing the Atlantic was not the team’s objective, then they should not be surprised to hear that there are doubts about the accomplishment.

“In these swims, you have to provide evidence,” Mr. Noakes said. “You need hour-to-hour evidence from a GPS telling us that she was there. It’s up to them to prove it.”

Science There seems to be some irritation among life scientists when “evolution” is confused with “Darwinism”. Roughly speaking: the theory of evolution has become much more refined since the time of Darwin; for one, Darwin didn’t know about genes (neither did anyone else at that time). But people who can understand the difference between the various mechanisms of evolution (adaptation to the environment, genetic drift, environmental pressures) understand this.

Nevertheless, this PZ Myers blog post is worth reading:

I strongly disagree with the arguments of this essay by Carl Safina, “Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live”, even while I think there is a germ of truth to its premise. It reads more like a contrarian backlash to all the attention being given to Darwin in this bicentennial of his birth. The author makes three general claims that he thinks justify his call to “kill Darwin”.

The first is a reasonable concern, that “equating evolution with Darwin” is misleading and can lead to public misunderstanding…but then Safina charges off into ridiculous hyperbole, that scientists are making Darwin into a “sacred fetish”, and creating a “cult of Darwinism”. It’s simply not true.

[...]

Respect for Darwin is as much for the disciplined and scientific way he addressed the problem as it is for the discovery itself. When we celebrate Darwin, we are not cheering for a man who got lucky one day, but for someone who represents many of what we consider scientific virtues: curiousity, rigor, discipline, meticulous observation, experiment, and intellectual courage.

Safina’s third complaint is that we’ve discovered so much more since Darwin, that “Almost everything we understand about evolution came after Darwin, not from him”. This is trivially obvious. We could say similar things about Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Dalton, Lavoisier, Dalton, Mendel, any scientist of the past you can name.

Economics

Stimulus Our PACs are running hard hitting ads:

TARP-Bailout

I admit that my understanding of the TARP programs is, at best, superficial. I’ve been getting my information from economists and news articles.

Here are some things that I have read:

Nate Silver’s blog: many rush to judgment on what they don’t understand:

I don’t think he did well yesterday. I don’t know that he’s the right guy for the job. But what I do know is the following:

1. Nobody, absolutely nobody, has more incentive to get this right than the Obama Administration. If the economy collapses — well, more than it already has collapsed — then the Democrats get slaughtered in 2010, Obama is a one-termer, health care doesn’t happen, the poverty rate increases by a couple orders of magnitude, and the imperative to fix the environment gets put on the backburner. To suggest that Obama or Geithner are tools of Wall Street and are looking out for something other than the country’s best interest is freaking asinine. Maybe their ideas are wrong — but their hearts are in the right place.
[...]

3. I’m sorry, but somewhere between 99.9% and 99.999999% of us are severely underqualified to be making policy recommendations on this particular issue. And I’m certainly in the majority on this one. My anecdotal experience for the past several months has been that the more someone knows about the economy, the more they know (or at least are willing to admit to) what they don’t know. Anyone who is professing with certainty that this or that will work — nationalizing the banks, for instance — is an idiot.

There is more there; it makes for entertaining reading.

The White House is asking for patience:

Even as news broke mid-briefing that legislators reached their probable deal on the stimulus bill on Capitol Hill today, Robert Gibbs faced a grilling from reporters on the market reaction to the bank bailout plan announced Tuesday by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

“Yesterday’s speech, and framework were not designed for a one-day market reaction,” Gibbs said, referring to yesterday’s 350-point drop by the Dow.

Later, he suggested a reason for the drop beyond the lack of certainty offered to Wall Street in Geithner’s announcement. “There was also a psychology involved… about a hope and a wish that bad assets would be paid for in an unreasonable way. That may have also inflated some of those expectations.”

But he admitted that “a fair summation” would be “we may not entirely know all of the property lines of what we’re dealing with” because banks may not trust each other for lending bank to bank, and because the government hasn’t seen all of what is on the institutional books. [...]

Let’s just say that many who I look to for guidance find fault with it:

In other words, Geithner and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke continue to do pretty much what Hank Paulson and Bernanke did: They hide much of the true costs and risks to taxpayers of repairing the banking system. Those risks and costs should be put on the people who made risky bets on the banks in the first place – namely bank shareholders and creditors. Shareholders of the most troubled banks should be wiped out entirely. Bank creditors- except depositors – should take major hits. And top executives who were responsible should be canned. But Geithner and Bernanke don’t want to take these steps for fear of spooking the Street. They think it’s safer to put the costs and risks on taxpayers — especially in ways they can’t see.

Geithner’s plan is better than the first Wall Street bailout but make no mistake: It’s not transparent, and it’s still a bailout.