11 February 2009

Workout notes 4000 yard swim; then some yoga on my own. I need to watch the back and piriformis area as I am getting some leg tinges when I swim.

Swim: 500 (slow; 9:18), 10 x 50 (drill/swim) with fins, 1000 in 16:41 (4:04 first 250 then lost concentration; I was 12:29 at 750), 10 x (25 fly, 75 free), (1:47-49; one 1:53), then 5 x (alternate free/back) on the 2:10. then 100 paddle/free cool down.

At the end I got stuck with this person who smelled of mint; he more splashed in place than anything else; he has an almost vertical position in the water.

Politics Commentary: A Gary Younge editorial in the 16 February issue of The Nation cautioned against staying an Obamabot; the gist of the article is that “ok, Obama won, and now he is President. Our duty is to hold him accountable.” Younge brought up the image of someone in North Korea going to work with their “Dear Leader” photo in the workplace.

Here is the article (which was “subscription only” last night)

But it’s time to let that new reality sink in. The transition is over. We have moved from aspiration to destination. Obama has arrived. Tempting though it may be to savor the lingering aftertaste of a sweet, sweet victory, progressives need to take the posters down and the buttons off. These are no longer the emblems of resistance but of power.

A movement that does not champion the cause of the powerless has no right to call itself progressive. And a movement that attaches itself unequivocally to power does not have the credibility or wherewithal to call itself progressive. That distinction is of course much easier in times when those in power attack us and our values with impunity. But it is no less necessary when they don’t.

Our support for Obama has always been (or should always have been) contingent, as opposed to unconditional. That does not necessarily mean an antagonistic relationship but at the very least an independent one. So to remove his likeness from our walls, hats, chests and homes signals not a souring of the relationship between progressives and Obama but a maturing of it. For many this will be difficult. Obamaphilia has always been a wild beast in desperate need of taming. He already has a school named after him in New York as well as a couple of streets in Florida and Missouri. Most presidents have to be dead–or at least no longer serving–before they get that kind of treatment. All of this happened before Obama had even taken the oath.

Don’t get me wrong; I still approve of the job that Obama is doing. But I can’t let myself become blind to what he isn’t doing well.

One place where President Obama is getting criticism

President Obama has gotten some sharp criticism over the Department of Justice sticking with the Bush DOJ “state secrets” ruling in a case where former terrorism suspects were trying to file suit against a company that provided air transportation to take them to CIA “black sites” and to other countries.

If you think that the left is being easy on Obama, read this.

Here is a synopsis of the situation from Slate via 3-quarks daily.

et in a San Francisco courtroom Monday, that is precisely what the new Justice Department did. Administration lawyers held to the Bush line of using the state-secrets privilege to urge the 9th Circuit to block a civil suit filed by five foreign detainees against Jeppesen Dataplan, a Boeing subsidiary. This suit was filed by the ACLU in 2007 on behalf of the five detainees and dismissed by a district court last February. The ACLU was hoping to reinstate the suit, which alleges that Jeppesen contracted with the CIA to fly detainees to countries where they were tortured under the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program. The abuse these men describe in their court papers is appalling. Allegations have recently surfaced in the British papers that one of the detainees, Binyam Mohamed, had his “genitals . . . sliced with a scalpel.”

Note: the ACLU attorney on the case appeared on Rachel Maddow last night. He admitted that Obama’s administration was superior to Bush’s in terms of civil liberties, even though he was disappointed in this ruling.

Here is the video MSNBC videos don’t embed well. Don’t worry; the ACLU guy comes on at about 3:05 into the video.

For why the Obama administration might have gone this route:

The State Secret Privilege is perhaps the most powerful executive tool available for any president to use, and thus the Obama administration’s decision to preserve its invocation, in Mohamed v. Jeppesen, was immediately interpreted by the vocal civil libertarian community as a betrayal of its basic principles. During the campaign, Obama had criticized its use to preemptively dismiss civil lawsuits against the government. Adding to the current agitation, Obama aides have been silent about its reasoning and the process.

But based on interviews with current administration officials involved in the case, with Bush administration officials, as well as with national security law experts, a clearer explanation emerges.

Officials decided that it would be imprudent to reverse course so abruptly because they realized they didn’t yet have a full picture of the intelligence methods and secrets that underlay the privilege’s assertions, because the privilege might correctly protect a state secret, and because the domino effect of retracting it could harm legitimate cases, both civil and criminal, that are already in progress.

“If you decide today precipitously to waive this privilege, you can’t get it back,
an administration official said. “If you decide to assert it, you can always retract it in the future.”

It isn’t easy, is it?

Economy David Horsey:

Aaron Shock: here is his press release on the Stimulus Package debate.

“Given the billions of taxpayer dollars at stake in the stimulus, negotiations between the House and Senate must be completely open and transparent. American taxpayers deserve to know how and where the government plans to spend their money. I believe it is an open invitation to trouble to keep these negotiations closed.”

“Allowing this historically enormous spending package to be negotiated between a small handful of people behind closed doors would eliminate accountability to the American taxpayers and wholly undermine all efforts at bipartisanship.”

“I support fast action but not at the expense of getting this wrong. We need to work in an expeditious and bipartisan manner to proceed under full sunlight so taxpayers can have full faith in this process and the resulting economic stimulus bill.”

The conference negotiations have already occurred, but I approve of this sentiment.

Religion: those who “believe” tend to be born with this tendency?

The origin of religious belief is something of a mystery, but in recent years scientists have started to make suggestions. One leading idea is that religion is an evolutionary adaptation that makes people more likely to survive and pass their genes onto the next generation. In this view, shared religious belief helped our ancestors form tightly knit groups that cooperated in hunting, foraging and childcare, enabling these groups to outcompete others. In this way, the theory goes, religion was selected for by evolution, and eventually permeated every human society (New Scientist, 28 January 2006, p 30)

The religion-as-an-adaptation theory doesn’t wash with everybody, however. As anthropologist Scott Atran of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor points out, the benefits of holding such unfounded beliefs are questionable, in terms of evolutionary fitness. “I don’t think the idea makes much sense, given the kinds of things you find in religion,” he says. A belief in life after death, for example, is hardly compatible with surviving in the here-and-now and propagating your genes. Moreover, if there are adaptive advantages of religion, they do not explain its origin, but simply how it spread.

An alternative being put forward by Atran and others is that religion emerges as a natural by-product of the way the human mind works. [...]

The ability to conceive of gods, however, is not sufficient to give rise to religion. The mind has another essential attribute: an overdeveloped sense of cause and effect which primes us to see purpose and design everywhere, even where there is none. “You see bushes rustle, you assume there’s somebody or something there,” Bloom says.

This over-attribution of cause and effect probably evolved for survival. If there are predators around, it is no good spotting them 9 times out of 10. Running away when you don’t have to is a small price to pay for avoiding danger when the threat is real.

Again, experiments on young children reveal this default state of the mind. Children as young as three readily attribute design and purpose to inanimate objects. When Deborah Kelemen of the University of Arizona in Tucson asked 7 and 8-year-old children questions about inanimate objects and animals, she found that most believed they were created for a specific purpose. Pointy rocks are there for animals to scratch themselves on. Birds exist “to make nice music”, while rivers exist so boats have something to float on. “It was extraordinary to hear children saying that things like mountains and clouds were ‘for’ a purpose and appearing highly resistant to any counter-suggestion,” says Kelemen.

I recommend reading the whole thing; it goes on to say that “atheism will always be a hard sell.” That doesn’t bother me as I am not selling anything.

10 February 2009 Parting shots

I am working a bit late as we are doing some of my favorite topics in my classes:

1. Uniqueness and existence theorems for first order differential equations.
2. Sylow Theorems for abstract algebra and
3. The rudiments of kernel and image for linear transformations in linear algebra.

The class preparations are time consuming, but fun.

Politics
President Obama’s press conference in its entirety

Republican Fail

Bizarre Republican Objections

Bizarre Republican Primary

Evidently, this is serious.

Oh, I love the tight white pants.

Republican Mouth Pieces: Fox News Repeats GOP talking points, complete with typos!

During the February 10 edition of Fox News’ Happening Now, co-host Jon Scott claimed that “the Senate is expected to pass the $838 billion stimulus plan — its version of it, anyway. We thought we’d take a look back at the bill, how it was born, and how it grew, and grew, and grew.” In tracking how and when the bill purportedly “grew,” Scott referenced seven dates, as on-screen graphics cited various news sources from those time periods. However, all of the sources and cost figures Scott cited, as well as the accompanying on-screen text, were also contained in a February 10 press release issued by the Senate Republican Communications Center. One on-screen graphic during the segment even repeated a typo from the GOP document, further confirming that Scott was simply reading from a Republican press release. The Fox News graphic and the GOP press release both claimed that a Wall Street Journal report that the stimulus package could reach “$775 billion over two years” was published on December 19, 2009 [emphasis added].

“Fair and Balanced”? Yeah, right.

Robert Reich on today’s Geithner’s press conference:

Geithner has to raise confidence among two groups: (1) the public, enough to allow the administration to use the second $350 billion Congress has already authorized without too much hollering on Capitol Hill; and (2) investors, sufficiently to get them to buy the banks’ toxic assets (with guarantees from the Treasury and loans from the Fed limiting the investors’ downside risks), and to buy new securities that will finance future loans to consumers, small businesses, and homeowners (also with some federal guarantees and loans limiting downside risks).

At this stage, (1) will be far easier to accomplish than (2). [...]

The public doesn’t trust Wall Street and has big doubts about the Treasury, even under Obama. But the administration isn’t asking for new legislation now. Geithner’s entire program is based on existing authority[...]

There are problems, to say the least. The Federal Reserve would be willing to grant loans in order to encourage investors to take the risks. But Reich argues that capital is hard to come by these days and this plan may rely on using hedge funds for capital….these are risky! Do you remember what happened recently?

So Geithner was intentionally vague about the plan; he needs to build in some wiggle room, but vagueness undermines transparency and confidence.

In short, this is a tough situation and we are in uncharted territory.

Republican Hate Thinking about it, I found it amusing that someone expressed, well, disapproval at my saying “GOP stands for Greed Over Patriotism”.

After all, that is all sweetness and light compared to what the Republicans routinely throw at us.

To see what happens at the extreme: recall what happened at the Unitarian Church in Knoxville. The person who did the shootings will be spending life in jail. But he is unrepentant:

In one sense, justice has been done this day in Tennessee. Jim Adkisson, the shooter who violated the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church,will be spending the rest of his life behind bars.

But there are still troubling loose ends. Still wondering whether it was a hate crime?

“This was a hate crime,” Adkisson wrote in a four-page “manifesto” he had left inside his truck and intended to serve as a suicide letter.
[snip]
This was a symbolic killing,” Adkisson wrote. “Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate and House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg’s book. I’d like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I knew these people were inaccessible to me.

I invite you, if you are strong of stomach, to read the whole thing.

If I weren’t one of the people whom he shot at, I could more easily be moved by the despair and self-loathing written here. “I know my life is going downhill fast from here,” he said. “If you would take my sorry carcass to the body farm, or donate it to science, or just throw me in the Tennessee River.” Here’s a man who felt like he had no options.

But how did he feel like he could best use this time he had remaining?

Liberals are a pest like termites. Millions of them. Each little bite contributes to the downfall of this great nation. The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather.

This is where my sympathy for him ends. He apparently remains unrepentant:

Matthew David Chamberlain, a 47-year-old nonviolent sex offender who shared a pod with Adkisson, said Adkisson insisted that the motive behind the attack was purely ideological.

“He said if he got out (of prison), he’d do it again,” Chamberlain said.

Now THAT is a display of violence and nastiness; that is a bit more than calling someone a name.

Besides, given the crap that the Republicans routinely threw at us for the past umpteen years…

So, when someone calls us “liberal haters”, ask them when you’ve seen a bunch of liberals shooting up a place?

Of course, we have been known to protest….

BRING OUT THE PITCHFORKS!

No, this group of protesters are not necessarily a group of liberals; in fact I don’t know if there is a dominant political persuasion among them.

I am a bit surprised that this hasn’t happened earlier:

Monday, Feb. 9, a group of 350 to 400 at-risk homeowners, organized by the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America , staged a series of protests outside the mansions of wealthy bankers in a moneyed Connecticut neighborhood.

More details of the people powered movement below the fold.

* AfroPonix’s diary :: ::
*

The Stamford Times reports:

Stamford and Greenwich became the stomping grounds of a grassroots campaign against corporate greed Sunday as part of a three day homeowners’ workshop sponsored by the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America. Between 350 and 400 people, most of them members, staff or volunteers for the Boston-based nonprofit organization, converged outside the Greenwich home of William Frey, manager of Greenwich Financial Services, at around 1 p.m.
[....]Called the ‘Predators Tour’ these actions were the start of NACA’s ‘accountability campaign,’ an aggressive, confrontational protest aimed at several top executives of companies that refuse to allow NACA to renegotiate the terms of loans on behalf of members, according to NACA CEO Bruce Marks

10 February 2009: Stimulus Passes the Senate 61-38 (3 Republicans)

Workout notes 7 mile run (Glean Oak hill via Springdale Cemetery (1:14) plus a 3 mile walk. I kind of sputtered but the weather was nice (but very windy!)

Science and Mathematics Is mathematics the language of the universe? My guess is “probably not” but there are some interesting times where it sure looks that way:

MARIO LIVIO IS an astrophysicist, a man whose work and worldview are inextricably intertwined with mathematics. Like most scientists, he depends on math and an underlying faith in its incredible power to explain the universe. But over the years, he has been nagged by a bewildering thought. Scientific progress, in everything from economics to neurobiology to physics, depends on math’s ability. But what is math? Why should its abstract concepts be so uncannily good at explaining reality?

The question may seem irrelevant. As long as math works, why not just go with it? But Livio felt himself pulled into a deep question that reaches to the very foundation of science – and of reality itself. The language of the universe appears to be mathematics: Formulas describe how our planet revolves around the sun, how a boat floats, how light glints off the water. But is mathematics a human tool, or is reality, in some fundamental way, mathematics?

Or, put another way: “Is God a Mathematician?” This is the title of Livio’s new book, in which he joins a long line of modern thinkers who have questioned “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics,” in the words of Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner.

I admit that I was rather blown away when some organic chemistry professors sent me a preprint of one of their papers that cited one of mine.

Religion

Mano Singham has a nice essay on agnosticism (as currently understood). Originally, the term “agnostic” literally meant that the question of the existence of a deity was unsolvable by human reason. Since, it has come to mean someone who is “unsure” if there is a deity or not.

I use the term “atheist” to describe myself because I don’t want anyone to think that I give anything but an ultra remote probability that any of the standard “known” deities exists. To me, the existence of the god of the Bible is as likely as the existence of Jupiter or Thor. On the other hand, there might well be some grand, incomprehensible “force of the universe”; I have no knowledge to decide one way or the other.

But I do know that viruses cause illness and that natural forces cause “natural disasters”; some sky-daddy pulling the strings has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Politics/Economy

The Senate passed the Stimulus bill 61-38 (3 R’s for it; the same ones that voted for cloture)

First, a Representative talks about the “bailout” and why it was done; he listens to an angry caller and points out that we were within hours of having a massive, massive, massive run on our banks:

Note: what the Congressman says about the bailout applies to the Stimulus Bill as well. Of course I don’t “know” if it will work or not. But doing nothing is not an option and I think that this is the best of mostly bad options.

(hat tip: PZ Myers)
I enjoyed Obama’s press conference; frankly I found it refreshing that we have a President who has an attention span that is longer than 1 minute or so. That isn’t true for everyone.

I agree that this recession will last for a long, long time. This Nate Silver article shows a graph which shows that the recessions have lengthened with time and that this one got bad in a hurry.

A reader (Dr. Andy, a conservative Republican), sent along a conservative view of the Stimulus Bill.

1) How much increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) can be expected from the stimulus package?

In a full-employment situation, increased government spending would largely replace private spending, so the net stimulus to GDP would likely be quite small. In the present environment, however, with growing unemployment of both labor and capital, the net stimulus would be larger since the additional government spending would put some unemployed resources to work. [...]

So our conclusion is that the net stimulus to short-term GDP will not be zero, and will be positive, but the stimulus is likely to be modest in magnitude. Some economists have assumed that every $1 billion spent by the government through the stimulus package would raise short-term GDP by $1.5 billion. Or, in economics jargon, that the multiplier is 1.5.

That seems too optimistic given the nature of the spending programs being proposed. We believe a multiplier well below one seems much more likely.

2) The increased government spending in the stimulus package is supposed to be only temporary, until the economy returns to a full employment level, but probably won’t be. [...]

3) The effects on consumers and businesses of the stimulus package depend not only on the stimulus to short-term GDP, but also on how valuable the spending is.

Whatever the merits of other government spending, the spending in this package is likely to have less value. A very large amount of money will be spent quickly over a two-year period: $500 billion amounts to about one-quarter of the total federal government annual spending of $2 trillion. It is extremely difficult for any group, private as well as public, to spend such a large sum wisely in a short period of time. [...]

The final point is that “there is no free lunch”. True enough; tax rates will probably go up.

Nevertheless, we’ve tried things the Republican way and you see the results. But don’t expect the Republicans to admit this; after all

1. Their beliefs are unfalsifiable; no amount of evidence will ever convince them and

2. Their goals are more political (e. g., to regain power) than altruistic (e. g., welfare of the country). As Robert Reich points out:

Why are Senate Republicans (all, that is, except the lonely moderates Collins, Snowe, and Specter) nixing the stimulus package, as House Republicans did? Not because Obama failed to compromise — he gave them the tax breaks they wanted, included a whopper for business. Not because Senate Democrats failed to bend — they agreed to trim more than $100 billion out of a previous version of the bill. Not because Senate Republicans are doctrinally opposed to deficit spending — many of them happily voted for Bush spending and tax cuts that doubled the federal debt.

The reason has to do with the timing of the economic recovery. If everything goes as well as possible and the stimulus and next round of bank bailouts work perfectly, a turnaround could begin as early as mid-2010. But even under this rosy scenario, employers wouldn’t start rehiring until late 2010 because they’ll want to be sure the upturn is for real (employment typically lags in a recovery). This means that under the best of circumstances — assuming the stimulus is big enough to jump-start the economy and the next bank bailout big enough to get credit moving — most Americans won’t feel much better than they do now by November, 2010. [...]

Republicans don’t want their fingerprints on the stimulus bill or the next bank bailout because they plan to make the midterm election of 2010 a national referendum on Barack Obama’s handling of the economy. They know that by then the economy will still appear sufficiently weak that they can dub the entire Obama effort a failure — even if the economy would have been far worse without it, even if the economy is beginning to turn around. They’ll say “he wanted more government spending, and we said no, but we didn’t have the votes. Elect us and we’ll turn the economy around by cutting taxes and getting government out of the private sector.”

Obama believes Republicans will eventually embrace bipartisanship. I hope he’s right but I fear he’s wrong. They want to take back Congress the way Newt Gingrich retook the House (and helped Republicans retake the Senate) in 1994 — with hellfire and brimstone. Once in control of Congress, they’ll be able to block Obama’s big inititiaves on health care and the environment, stop any Supreme Court nominees, and set up their own candidate for the White House in 2012.

Watching President Obama’s Press Conference

First, here are his remarks, in print:

Opening Remarks of President Barack Obama-As Prepared For Delivery

First Presidential Press Conference

The White House

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Washington, DC

Good evening. Before I take your questions tonight, I’d like to speak briefly about the state of our economy and why I believe we need to put this recovery plan in motion as soon as possible.

I took a trip to Elkhart, Indiana today. Elkhart is a place that has lost jobs faster than anywhere else in America. In one year, the unemployment rate went from 4.7% to 15.3%. Companies that have sustained this community for years are shedding jobs at an alarming speed, and the people who’ve lost them have no idea what to do or who to turn to. They can’t pay their bills and they’ve stopped spending money. And because they’ve stopped spending money, more businesses have been forced to lay off more workers. Local TV stations have started running public service announcements that tell people where to find food banks, even as the food banks don’t have enough to meet the demand.

As we speak, similar scenes are playing out in cities and towns across the country. Last Monday, more than 1,000 men and women stood in line for 35 firefighter jobs in Miami. Last month, our economy lost 598,000 jobs, which is nearly the equivalent of losing every single job in the state of Maine. And if there’s anyone out there who still doesn’t believe this constitutes a full-blown crisis, I suggest speaking to one of the millions of Americans whose lives have been turned upside down because they don’t know where their next paycheck is coming from.

That is why the single most important part of this Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Plan is the fact that it will save or create up to 4 million jobs. Because that is what America needs most right now.

He is now taking questions and, in my opinion, handling them very well.

Update Here is a text of the questions and answer period.

The Senate voted for Cloture 61-38.

The cloture vote today in the Senate to allow a final vote on their version of the Senate bill happened this evening. It passed 61-36, one vote more than was needed to pass. So where are those last three votes? Minnesota still doesn’t have a second senator. Judd Gregg abstained due to his impending job in Commerce. So who is left? Who skipped out on this important vote?

Folks, that would be John Cornyn of Texas.

We got some Republicans voting for cloture:

As expected, the Republican attempt to block a vote on the Collins-Nelson Amendment to the stimulus package has failed, with Republicans Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter joining the 58-member Democratic caucus to invoke cloture.

It’s not surprising that Snowe, Collins and Specter were the three Republicans to support the measure, as they have voted with the President the most frequently of any Republican Senators to date. Collins, Snowe and Specter are also three of the four Republican Senators to come from states that Barack Obama won by at least 10 points (the other is Nevada’s John Ensign).

So what is going on with Republicans?

The Republicans know that if the stimulus package works, it will be a long term sort of thing, with people starting to feel better after 2010, or after the next election. The Republicans would like to run against Obama’s “failure” to revive the economy, and they won’t be able to do so if they voted for the package. Hence their plans are probably political.

Robert Reich explains:

Why are Senate Republicans (all, that is, except the lonely moderates Collins, Snowe, and Specter) nixing the stimulus package, as House Republicans did? Not because Obama failed to compromise — he gave them the tax breaks they wanted, included a whopper for business. Not because Senate Democrats failed to bend — they agreed to trim more than $100 billion out of a previous version of the bill. Not because Senate Republicans are doctrinally opposed to deficit spending — many of them happily voted for Bush spending and tax cuts that doubled the federal debt.

The reason has to do with the timing of the economic recovery. If everything goes as well as possible and the stimulus and next round of bank bailouts work perfectly, a turnaround could begin as early as mid-2010. But even under this rosy scenario, employers wouldn’t start rehiring until late 2010 because they’ll want to be sure the upturn is for real (employment typically lags in a recovery). This means that under the best of circumstances — assuming the stimulus is big enough to jump-start the economy and the next bank bailout big enough to get credit moving — most Americans won’t feel much better than they do now by November, 2010. Unemployment could easily be hovering close to 8 percent; underemployment, close to 14 percent; and many other indicators, still in the doldrums.

In other words, don’t expect the Republicans to budge; expect them to fight Obama just like they fought Clinton from 1992-1994.

Remember that G. O. P. stands for Greed Over Patriotism.

A reader made a valid complaint. So I repent.

Shoot me now….wait….I want to live! :-)

Workout notes I am still scaling back as I am all but over my bug; so I limited myself to a 5.2 mile run in 49:47; my first mile was about 9:45 and my last two were just under 19 (38:38 for the last 4). Weather: damp, but 40 F (3.5 C), some wind, but no snow, no ice.

Now this is my idea of winter weather!

The “extra rest” really came from the fact that my workout (50 minutes of running) was about 30 minutes shorter than normal (80 minute swim) and that I slept in for an extra 90 minutes.

Unfortunately, Barbara has had a much rougher time with this virus; she got it on Wednesday (mine came on Saturday afternoon) and she is still weak.

Shoot me now From the front page of our newspaper (Peoria Journal Star):

Fighting Satan with prayer

PEORIA —

The city’s first homicide of the year was no coincidence, Mayor Jim Ardis said.

The murder of 19-year-old Mario McGee on Saturday morning was a challenge from Satan, the mayor said. But it’s a battle the community is ready to fight.

“It’s only going to make us dig our heels deeper,” Ardis said to a nearly full Peoria Civic Center Theater on Sunday night. “We will stand arm in arm, hand in hand until this happens no more.”

Sunday marked the last night of 40 Days of Prayer, a series of faith-based services that began on New Year’s Eve to bring together Peoria’s churches and reduce the city’s crime rate. The final service drew about 2,500 people from about 60 area churches, said the Rev. William Preston of City on a Hill Church and one of the event’s coordinators.

The huge turnout Sunday night underscored this year’s focus on unity and leadership, he said. The theater was full of worshippers who came together for a common purpose, regardless of denomination.

“The focus has shifted from last year, when we prayed mostly to end violence and crime,” Preston said. “We also have taken a more proactive approach and asked ourselves what we can do for the community because we understand an end to violence is not going to just happen.

I emphasized the part that I like. Ok, I think that praying to an imaginary deity to fight against another imaginary figure is rather pointless. But what will *I* do? Most of my “service” has been on political campaigns and on helping, well, people like myself (volunteer yoga teacher substitute, volunteer at public athletic events, volunteer instructor for beginning runners). I might have made a small difference in, say, preventing heart attacks, but none toward stopping violence.

Still, seeing that headline made me want to barf.

Never mind; I still want to live!:
Posts like this one makes me smile: Brotherpeacemaker talks about coming home after a hard day at the office (he works tech support and had to deal with lots of irate customers:

I went home a little later than my usual lateness. Baby boy saw me coming through the door, stopped what he was doing, and immediately rushed over to see me. I thought he was happy to see me. Just as he got to me instead of extending his arms in a request to be picked up he went down on his hands and knees so he could play with the tassels on my loafers. I pulled my feet out of the shoes so he could play with them. [...]

I took the five steps necessary to walk into the bedroom and I pulled off the rest of my typical IT personnel uniform of a sports shirt and khakis slacks and put on my shorts and t-shirt. I ate dinner without bothering to spend the extra sixty seconds in the microwave to warm up the food to a little more palatable levels. And after eating I went to the couch and pulled out the notebook. I checked the blog. A few comments needed some responding. I had to write something for the next day. I had to setup a quick note. But I had no interest of doing any of it. All I really wanted to do was veg. I closed the notebook, laid myself across the couch, and started to go to sleep.

But baby boy wouldn’t have it. He kicked the tasseled loafers to the curb and wanted a little attention from daddy. He had one of his soft Tonka trucks in his hands and he decided daddy’s inert form made the perfect terrain to roll the truck around on. And he wasn’t content to just stand by the couch and roll the truck. Baby boy could get a much better perspective of that terrain if he got on top of the daddy to roll his truck around. Those dreadlocks growing from daddy’s hair are perfect for baby boy to pull himself up. I saw stars when he grabbed a handful of hair and started climbing with a yank. That’s okay. Once he gets up there the pain will go away.

And once he got up there that pain did go away, replaced by the pain of a knee to the nose and a foot on my throat. And daddy isn’t the safest place to climb and play on. At one point he took a wrong step and was headed to the floor. In my sleepy stupor I stuck out my hand and caught him and pushed him back up to his perch. And that’s pretty much how we spend the evening until it was time for him to go to bed. As his batteries started to run down he made himself comfortable and put his head on my chest.

Note to new dads: crewcut.

Seriously, that post made me smile and laugh. The good news is that my daughter’s spring break coincides with mine and so I am flying her here (non-stop flight on Soutwest Airlines from Austin to Chicago, where I’ll pick her up). There are no worries about a connecting flight SNAFU.

Politics This post talks about what goes on at liberal websites. There is a ton of advice given by those who have never held anything resembling elective office. Oh well; taking such criticism comes with the job.

Now I don’t blame people for being critical for bad results. Heck, though I voted for Gore in 2000, I didn’t really turn on President Bush until he invaded Iraq.

Some More Articles (February 8 2009)

Illness note (I log these for my future reference): the easy 4 miler was no trouble; my stomach is “upset” but nothing remotely debilitating, yet. I anticipate a full Monday tomorrow.

Athletics What causes muscle fatigue? Yes, we know, when we use muscles, they get tired and sore. But why? From the New York Times:

For decades, muscle fatigue had been largely ignored or misunderstood. Leading physiology textbooks did not even try to offer a mechanism, said Dr. Andrew Marks, principal investigator of the new study. A popular theory, that muscles become tired because they release lactic acid, was discredited not long ago.

In a report published Monday in an early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Marks says the problem is calcium flow inside muscle cells. Ordinarily, ebbs and flows of calcium in cells control muscle contractions. But when muscles grow tired, the investigators report, tiny channels in them start leaking calcium, and that weakens contractions. At the same time, the leaked calcium stimulates an enzyme that eats into muscle fibers, contributing to the muscle exhaustion. [...]

Note that this research sprang from research to help people recover from heart problems. But this mechanism appears to apply to “regular” muscles too:

Then, collaborating with David Nieman, an exercise scientist at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., the investigators asked whether the human skeletal muscles grew tired for the same reason, calcium leaks.

Highly trained bicyclists rode stationary bikes at intense levels of exertion for three hours a day three days in a row. For comparison, other cyclists sat in the room but did not exercise.

Dr. Nieman removed snips of thigh muscle from all the athletes after the third day and sent them to Columbia, where Dr. Marks’s group analyzed them without knowing which samples were from the exercisers and which were not.The results, Dr. Marks said, were clear. The calcium channels in the exercisers leaked. A few days later, the channels had repaired themselves. The athletes were back to normal.

Of course, even though Dr. Marks wants to develop the drug to help people with congestive heart failure, hoping to alleviate their fatigue and improve their heart functions, athletes might also be tempted to use it if it eventually goes to the market.

The odds are against this particular drug being approved, though, cautions Dr. W. Robb McClellan, a heart disease researcher at U.C.L.A.

“In heart failure, there are three medications that improve mortality, but there have probably been 10 times that many tested,” he said.

Running: do you get yelled at by people in passing cars? You aren’t alone. I admit that I’ve been harassed at most twice since 1996, and in each case, it was some bratty teenager.

Nature and Science: Birds can hunt with bait!

Rest Day

Workout notes: I’ve decided to take Sunday off; the reason is that I got some of the intestinal distress that my wife had on Wednesday. I don’t feel that bad but I am making lots of trips to the bathroom.

So, I’ll give my body resources to fight this virus and maybe return to light workouts on Tuesday and full schedule toward the end of this week?

Update: I couldn’t resist; it was 34 F and clear roads so I had to get in a moderate 4 mile training walk (on hills). Of course, I made sure that I stayed within 10 minutes of a bathroom at all times!

Humor Via Conservation Report

Frankly, you can taste our tap water (Peoria, IL); it does not taste good. But filtered water (say, with a Britta filter) does taste good.

Economy: This “day off” has given me the time to watch the Sunday talk-shows; I kind of miss these. I still think that, with a few exceptions, the remaining Republicans are hard-core ideologues whose beliefs are utterly unfalsifiable; working with them is like trying to do science with a creationist or a flat-earther.

Right now I am watching the delusional Michael Steele on George Stephanopoulos; he won’t admit that the Republicans got us into this mess and that their old failed ideas will work!

Get a clue: you lost the last election and elections have consequences.

But there is a silver lining here: the Republicans are showing themselves to be so unreasonable that the public might forgive the Democrats for blowing them off.

Paul Krugman (Nobel Laureate in Economics) has a few things to say:

I’m still working on the numbers, but I’ve gotten a fair number of requests for comment on the Senate version of the stimulus.

The short answer: to appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts.

According to the CBO’s estimates, we’re facing an output shortfall of almost 14% of GDP over the next two years, or around $2 trillion. Others, such as Goldman Sachs, are even more pessimistic. So the original $800 billion plan was too small, especially because a substantial share consisted of tax cuts that probably would have added little to demand. The plan should have been at least 50% larger.

Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out.

My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years. [...]

But there the political aspect of it too (via Robert Reich):

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. [...]

It’s not the strategy his predecessors used to get their economic plans enacted. It’s not hardball politics, and it may not be the best move for the economy in the short run. But given the challenges our new president and our nation face over the long run, this may be the smartest politics and smartest economics.

Of course, it appears that Obama has had to placate the Blue-dog Democrats (DINOs; Democrats in Name Only) rather than the out-of-the-closet Republicans.

One thing that President Obama shouldn’t do, of course, is underestimate the current state of the anger that the general population has toward those who are benefiting from this fixed system:

SOMEDAY historians may look back at Tom Daschle’s flameout as a minor one-car (and chauffeur) accident. But that will depend on whether or not it’s followed by a multi-vehicle pileup that still could come. Even as President Obama refreshingly took responsibility for having “screwed up,” it’s not clear that he fully understands the huge forces that hit his young administration last week.

The tsunami of populist rage coursing through America is bigger than Daschle’s overdue tax bill, bigger than John Thain’s trash can, bigger than any bailed-out C.E.O.’s bonus. It’s even bigger than the Obama phenomenon itself. It could maim the president’s best-laid plans and what remains of our economy if he doesn’t get in front of the mounting public anger.

Obama’s brilliant appointees, we keep being told, are irreplaceable. But as de Gaulle said, “The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.” You have to wonder if this team is really a meritocracy or merely a stacked deck. Not only did Rubin himself serve on the Obama economic transition team, but two of the transition’s headhunters were Michael Froman, Rubin’s chief of staff at Treasury and later a Citigroup executive, and James S. Rubin, an investor who is Robert Rubin’s son.

A welcome outlier to this club is Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman chosen to direct Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. But Bloomberg reported last week that Summers is already freezing Volcker out of many of his deliberations on economic policy. This sounds like the arrogant Summers who was fired as president of Harvard, not the chastened new Summers advertised at the time of his appointment. A team of rivals is not his thing.

Americans have had enough of such arrogance, whether in the public or private sectors, whether Democrat or Republican. Voters turned on Sarah Palin not just because of her manifest unfitness for office but because her claims of being a regular hockey mom were contradicted by her Evita shopping sprees. John McCain’s sanctification of Joe the Plumber (himself a tax delinquent) never could be squared with his inability to remember how many houses he owned. A graphic act of entitlement also stripped naked that faux populist John Edwards.

The public’s revulsion isn’t mindless class hatred. As Obama said on Wednesday of his fellow citizens: “We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success.” But we do know that the system has been fixed for too long. The gaping income inequality of the past decade — the top 1 percent of America’s earners received more than 20 percent of the total national income — has not been seen since the run-up to the Great Depression.

Science: here is a nice series of videos on Charles Darwin done by National Geographic (via Richard Dawkins.net) Each video is short (about 2 minutes each) and there are 5 of them. Richard Dawkins is the speaker.

Religion Though I probably have lots in common with this guy, we disagree on something:

I think that prayer can have benefits….to the person doing the praying. Asking some deity to give me this or that or to change physics for my benefit is rather stupid. But praying to make make myself less selfish and more caring does seem to help; prayer can help the individual with their emotional state and attitude.

It can’t heal anyone else, stop a hurricane or get someone else to do what you want them to do.

7 February 2009 parting quips

First, this video was sent to President Obama’s supporters:

and this one:

Now for some “you just don’t understands”:

1. You just don’t understand: those who are making huge amounts of money are accustomed to a certain lifestyle! It is, like, so unfair, to expect them to dial back (even if they do lay-off people by the boxcar load…)

Given this the plea to “Save the Bankers” which will appear on the front page of the style section of tomorrow’s New York Times is all the more galling.

* ManfromMiddletown’s diary :: ::
*

The article begins by explaining how $500,000 a year (the CEO salary cap propose by the Obama administration) is simply not enough to keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

“As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable,” said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, “The Manny,” and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. “Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale.”

Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.

So how much does the New York Times think is needed so that our bankers don’t lose face:

The total costs here, which do not include a lot of things, like kennels for the dog when the family is away, summer camp, spas and other grooming for the human members of the family, donations to charity, and frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity, are $790,750, which would require about a $1.6-million salary to compensate for taxes. Give or take a few score thousand of dollars.

Does this money buy a chief executive stockholders might prize, a well-to-do man with a certain sureness of stride, something that might be lost if the executive were crowding onto the PATH train every morning at Journal Square, his newspaper splayed against the back of a stranger’s head?

And who’s going to foot the bill so that these banker’s can feel fancy?

With TARP, and the planned son of TARP, it’s all those working Americans that these bastards feel that they are better than that are picking up the tab when they go on a shopping spree. And, wait, it gets better.

See? “Suck it up” is for little people. Now you know how some of the excesses of the French Revolution came about.

2. You just don’t understand those who noisily disapprove of gays! Really.

Research psychologist Jesse Bering writes in Scientific American about how homophobes have “secret gay urges”:

I may have failed as a homophobe, but unfortunately, many people succeed. And it turns out we may have something in common—many young, homophobic males may secretly harbor homosexual desires (whether they are consciously trying to deceive the world about them as I was or not even aware they exist).

The best part of the article seems to be the methodology of the experiment. They divided a group of men into two groups: homophobic and non-homophobic.

Then they showed them porn — Straight, lesbian, and gay.

The best part (well… the second best part):

Surf to the article to see the conclusion; you probably guessed it.

7 Februrary 2009 part II

Workout notes It has warmed considerably but there are some trails that are still covered with ice. So I drove away from the East Peoria trail and did my running out by the riverfront (ice and snow free): 10 miles in 1:37:58. 38:34, 39:33, 19:51 (last 2).

I have to rethink how I work out; in the days of old I wouldn’t bother to drink on a 10 mile run. But those runs were less than 90 minutes and got me to “the edge” of being dehydrated. Here are some points that I should remember:

1. I should bite the bullet and drink every 3 miles or so, even though it is a pain to carry a bottle.

2. a 9:48 pace is not a “super easy” pace for me at the moment.

3. I probably need to lose 10 pounds; I am at about 193 pounds and I did my best running when I weighed in the low 180s.

4. I need to do my lower leg strengtheners if I want to run.

5. I need to remember what crappy running shape I was in during the summer. I was barely able to cobble together a 10 minute mile or two at a time. Though I’ve got a long ways to go, I’ve made a ton of progress.

Humor: Marriage Fail. That’s right: a man goes to a brothel (presumably to use its services) and finds his wife working there! You’d think that they would merely cut out the middleman.

Politics

President Obama speaks to us:

Conservation Report takes the hypocrites to task:

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) argued with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) for not supporting the stimulus bill and pointed out that the South Carolina Senator has supported former President George H. W. Bush’s huge spending measures before. Senator Graham also claimed that Obama is trying to scare people, but former President George H. W. Bush used the so-called shock doctrine against America, and the Democrats supported his policies. However, unlike Bush’s policies, there are data showing a failing American economy. Furthermore, are the Republicans offering anything new besides tax cuts?

Watch Lindsey Graham howl. Guess what? You had your shot; we did things your way and the results were disastrous. But you know what? These clowns still don’t think that they did anything wrong; my guess is that many of the remaining Republicans are ideologues who won’t be convinced by things like evidence. Their “faith” in their ideology is non-falsifiable. It is probably best to view most of them as being delusional or mentally ill.

More Barbara Boxer:

Religion and Society There was a post about missionaries showing up at your door to proselytize.

That reminds of these two videos:

One quibble with this second guy: I think that the cognitive dissonance that “faith” entails is damaging, especially in the long run.

7 February 2009 Check in

Workout notes Nothing yet; I hope to get in 10 miles outside when my breakfast settles. The day is way warmer than it has been recently and much (if not all) of the snow has melted.

Personal My sister went to the hospital; I am thinking about her. Her symptoms sounds like gall stones (very painful but not potentially lethal) but we will have to see.

Politics Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight wonders if President Obama’s declining approval ratings (down from 70 to 64 percent) have to do with his trying to be too bipartisan. Frankly, I see it as “regression to the mean“; Obama’s approval ratings were a bit inflated to begin with.

Frankly, President Obama will disappoint all of us at times, and that includes his supporters (e. g., people like me). Frankly, I am pleased with how he has performed so far and, aside from a “vetting” mistake here or there, I don’t see how he could have done much better, even though I could do without his commitment to so called “faith based” programs and I would prefer less piousness.

But much more importantly, he continues to openly include non-believers and he has fought to keep most of the science funding in the Stimulus package.

The following is an e-mail message from Science Debate:

Dear Ollie ,

Well it’s been a long, long day with thousands of , but we are happy to report that your efforts, and those of the rest of the U.S. science and technology community, have paid off in a big way – for the time being.

Senators Nelson, Collins, Lieberman and Specter held a press conference earlier this evening, also crediting Senator Snowe, and followed up by Senate Majority Leader Reid, declaring a compromise bill has been reached on the stimulus package. You can read the exact line items of the bill here in an xls document, but the parts we focused on today are below:

Agency	Original amt	Proposed cut	% Cut final compromise	% final cut	Final comp amt	Science funding preserved
NASA	$1,502,000,000	$750,000,000	50	$200,000,000	13.31	$1,302,000,000	$550,000,000
NSF	$1,402,000,000	$1,402,000,000	100	$200,000,000	14.26	$1,202,000,000	$1,202,000,000
NOAA	$1,222,000,000	$427,000,000	34.94	$200,000,000	16.37	$1,022,000,000	$227,000,000
NIST	$575,000,000	$218,000,000	37.91	$100,000,000	17.39	$475,000,000	$118,000,000
DOE enrgy effy & renewbl energy	$2,648,000,000	$1,000,000,000	38	0	0	$2,648,000,000	$1,000,000,000
DOE offc of science $100,000,000	$100,000,000	100	$100,000,000	100	0	0
Totals	$7,449,000,000	$3,897,000,000	52.32	$800,000,000	10.74	$6,649,000,000	$3,097,000,000

This is a terrific $3 billion victory for U.S. Science – thank you!

This bill will be voted on by the full Senate on Monday. It could still fail then. But it reportedly has the strong support of President Obama, and if it passes it will form the (likely strongly prejudiced) basis for conference committee negotiations.

Let it be noted: Science Debate is made up of people of wide political diversity, and there are some of us who question whether research belongs in a stimulus package at all. Neither do we see Science Debate as a legislative advocacy initiative. However these are exceptional times with high stakes and there is no guarantee that the political appetite for new money will not be exhausted after this major package. Additionally, we believe scientific research is one of the best investments in stimulating economic growth in both the short and long term that this country can possibly make in a science-dominated global economy. Here are some ways these contemplated amounts are stimulative:

1. Literally ‘shovel ready’: the American Physical Society identified billions in ‘shovel ready’ science programs that include immediate construction items associated with science. So, much of what is being targeted as ‘research’ and therefore not stimulative, is in fact direct stimulus for construction and expenditures.

2. Stimulus money for federal science funding agencies will translate into support for thousands of graduate students and postdocs this year and next year, as faculty who get funded hire them. This is a good way to create high quality jobs right away and to invest in the future at the same time. NSF supports over 2,000 institutions and reaches nearly 200,000 researchers, postdoctoral fellows, trainees, teachers, and students every year.

3. Current economic conditions have hit the states particularly hard. Many are experiencing severe budget constraints and growing job losses. In many regions, universities and colleges are the main employer, and the source of economic growth in local and regional economies. Any additional funding targeted to NSF has an immediate and direct effect on high-quality jobs and economic growth across America.

4. A report, for example, from the Council for Chemical Research concludes that a federal investment of $1 billion in R&D funding in the chemical sciences can be leveraged into $40 billion in GNP and 600,000 jobs. NSF is the principal agency that supports research across all disciplines of science and engineering, including the chemical sciences.

Finally, as you may have heard Matthew announce today on Science Friday, after a year of delay, we finally received 501(c)(3) status today. Contributions made on or after January 7, 2008 are tax deductible.

Speaking of Science, I found a new blog (thanks to PZ Myers) It is Jerry Coyne’s blog; here he has an article about the so-called “human hobbit”; a population of very small humans who seem to have either bypassed the ordinary evolution process or even “devolved”?

As recounted in WEIT, one of the most remarkable hominin fossils is that of Homo floresiensis, discovered on the island of Flores in Indonesia in 2003. This creature was remarkable in that although it lived only 18,000 years ago, when modern H. sapiens had already evolved, it was only a meter tall, weighed 50 pounds, and had a brain of less than 500 cc.–similar in size to of our distant cousin Australopithecus afarensis (”Lucy”). It seemed that some relict populations of Homo had survived on this Indonesian island, bypassed by modern humans.

Ever since H. floresiensis (dubbed “The Hobbit”) was found, it has been the center of heated controversy. Some have said that rather than being a long-surviving ancient hominin, for example, the one good specimen found is simply that of a modern human afflicted with a growth disease (such as goiterious cretinism) that produced a small skull. Others counter-claim that the wrist bones of the hobbit are clearly not that of a modern human, but of an earlier relative.

In this article, it is relayed that the claim that these remains showed modern dental work is false.

Coyne also started a bit of a stir with his review of a couple of “science and religion can be reconciled” books in The New Republic magazine.

I’ve blogged about this recently.

The Edge carried the opinion of some public intellectuals over this issue; here are some of them:

LAWRENCE KRAUSS

There is too much ink spent worrying about this question. Religion is simply irrelevant to science, and whether or not science contradicts religion may be of interest to theologians but it simply doesn’t matter to scientists. What matters are the important questions science is dealing with, from the origin and future of the universe to the origin and future of life.

All this talk about science and religion gives the wrong impression, as it suggests reconciling them or not reconciling them is a big issue… it isn’t. As I once put it to theologians at a meeting at the Vatican: theologians have to listen to scientists, because if they want to try to create a consistent theology (and while I have opinions about whether this is possible, but my opinions about this are neither particularly important nor informed) they at least need to know how the world works. But scientists don’t have to listen to theologians, because it has no effect whatsoever on the scientific process.

I agree totally!

Lisa Randall had a few remarks too:

By sheer coincidence the day I read this Edge question, a charming young actor sat next to me on my plane to LA and without any prompting answered it for me. He had just returned from the inauguration and was filled with enthusiasm and optimism. Like so many young people today, he wants to leave the world a better place. Prior to his acting career he had studied molecular biology and after graduating coordinated science teaching for three middle schools in an urban school system. He described how along with his acting career he would ultimately like to build on his training to start schools worldwide where students can get good science training. [...]

But he himself believes in Man descending from Adam as opposed to ascending from apes. I didn’t get how someone trained as a biologist could not believe in evolution. He explained how he could learn the science and understand the logic but that it is simply how Man puts things together. In his mind that’s just not the way it is.

This reinforced for me why we won’t ever answer the question that’s been posed. Empirically-based logic-derived science and faith are entirely different methods for trying to approach truth. You can derive a contradiction only if your rules are logic. If you believe in revelatory truth you’ve abandoned the rules. There is no contradiction to be had.

Here is how I interpret what she said: “you aren’t going to convince them with logic because their belief in religion precludes accepting any contradictions deduced from logic”. I don’t think that she is offering any validity toward his point of view, but I could be wrong.

Sam Harris also wrote a piece that was dripping with irony.

It’s All True

It is a pity that people like Jerry Coyne and Daniel Dennett can’t see how easily religion and science can be reconciled. Having once viewed the world as they do, I understand how their fundamentalist rationality has blinded them to deeper truths. I’ve wanted to say to both of these men—”Some things are above reason. Way above!” Happily, George Dyson has done this for me in a brilliant essay on this page. He demolishes the intellectual pretensions of militant atheists like Coyne and Dennett in the most elegant way imaginable: by merely divulging the title of a 17th century work by the great Robert Boyle. When I was a militant neo-rationalist, I had a sinking feeling that my colleagues and I had not fully reckoned with Boyle on the argument from Design and were, as a result, risking public humiliation. Now it has come to pass…

If I have one quibble with Dyson, it is that he has been far too modest in drawing out the implications of his argument. He is, of course, right to declare that “science and religion are here to stay.” But magic is here to stay too, George; Africa is full of it. Is there a conflict between scientific rationality and a belief in magic spells? Specifically, is there a conflict between believing that epilepsy is a result of abnormal neural activity and believing that it is a sign of demonic possession? Dogmatists like Coyne and Dennett clearly think so. They don’t realize, as Dyson must, that the more one understands neurology, the more one will understand—and honor—demonology. Have Coyne and Dennett read the work of sophisticated magicians like Aleister Crowley or Eliphas Levi? Don’t count on it. Ask yourself, how could matter conflict with spirit in any way? Answer: it cannot. Forgive me, but I find it embarrassing to have to explain these things to people who are supposed be well educated. [...]

Consider Lisa Randall’s moving account of having traveled by airplane in the company of a “charming young actor” who just knew in his heart that our species descended, not from apelike precursors, but from the biblical Adam. I urge readers to linger over these points, as Randall’s prose is condensed nearly to the Planck scale. Just picture what it must have been like to be at thirty thousand feet in the company of a man who studied molecular biology at the college level. Next, consider that this prodigy is both a working actor and an enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama. Finally, realize that the stranger at your side believes evolution to be nothing more than a sinister piece of secular propaganda. I can dimly imagine how Coyne and Dennett felt upon reading Randall’s tale this far.

But Randall drills deeper:

“Empirically-based logic-derived science and faith are entirely different methods for trying to approach truth. You can derive a contradiction only if your rules are logic. If you believe in revelatory truth you’ve abandoned the rules. There is no contradiction to be had.”

I am confident that Randall’s airplane adventure will mark a turning point in our intellectual discourse. Not only has she resolved all the contradictions between science and religion (and magic, voodoo, UFO cults, astrology, Tarot, palmistry, etc.), she has reconciled apparently conflicting religions with one another. Hindus worship a multiplicity of gods; Muslims acknowledge the existence of only one, and believe that polytheism is a killing offense. Do Hinduism and Islam conflict? Only “if your rules are logic.” Just as paths ascending a mountain slope can seem discrepant at the mountain’s base, and yet once we stand upon the summit, we find that all routes have led to the same destination—so it will be with every exercise of the human intellect! The Summit of Truth awaits, my friends. Simply pick your path….

[...]

How can a militant secularist atheist neo-dogmatist like Coyne not see the plain truth? There simply IS no conflict between religion and science. And even if there were one, it would be an utter waste of time to say anything about it. Lawrence Krauss has established this second point beyond any possibility of doubt. Go back and read his essay. It’ll just take you five seconds. I’ve read it upwards of seventy times, and each perusal brings fresh insight.

I think that Harris was too hard of Krauss and Randall; to me Randall pointed out why you aren’t going to change their minds and Krauss says that it is a waste of time to try.

I tend to agree; that is why I spend more time blogging on these matters and almost no time in face to face conversations on these matters. A woo (e. g., someone who accepts mysticism or divine revelation) isn’t going to accept facts, reason and logic as the basis of determining what “is” and what “isn’t”.

I’ll go running with them. I’ll go walking with them. I’ll swim with them and do yoga with them. I’ll even campaign with them (if they are so inclined). But I won’t discuss these issues with them; it is a waste of time.

My arguments remains: “rational thought” has lead to huge innovations, discoveries and advances. “Revelation” and “mysticism” and “spirituality” hasn’t lead to new knowledge, though some useful personal growth techniques (yoga, prayer and meditation) have resulted, and some benefit from a sense of community that comes from belonging.