Give the Republicans Some Cheese

Ok, I am such a good sport, I’ll post a NRSC video:

See, President Obama is failing!

Oh wait…much of the AIG bailout money came from the TARP bill that was passed before Obama became President.

What about that budget? Oh wait…that is a transitional budget left over from the previous year:

I am signing an imperfect omnibus bill because it is necessary for the ongoing functions of government. But I also view this as a departure point for more far-reaching change. — President Barack Obama

Yesterday, Congress passed the final part of last year’s budget — an omnibus bill that combined nine funding bills required to keep the government running. Included in the $410 billion dollar spending bill were nearly 9,000 earmarks, totaling nearly $8 billion. These earmarks are unrelated projects inserted into the bill by members of Congress, designed to benefit individual legislators’ districts.

President Obama decided to sign the bill, which was inherited from the previous administration, rather than compromise government operations in a time of crisis. But he took the opportunity today to call for widespread earmark reform and a new approach to the appropriations process:

Now, let me be clear: Done right, earmarks give legislators the opportunity to direct federal money to worthy projects that benefit people in their district, and that’s why I have opposed their outright elimination. I also find it ironic that some of those who railed the loudest against this bill because of earmarks actually inserted earmarks of their own – and will tout them in their own states and districts.

But the fact is that on occasion, earmarks have been used as a vehicle for waste, fraud, and abuse. Projects have been inserted at the eleventh hour, without review, and sometimes without merit, in order to satisfy the political or personal agendas of a given legislator, rather than the public interest.

And yes, many of the earmarks were inserted by Republicans.

What about those campaign promises? Actually, he is doing well with those.

(huge tip of the hat to Muzikal203 at the Daily Kos)

But I should give the Republicans some credit. They are making progress….toward putting creationism into the public school curriculum.

The Texas Board of Education is led by Don McLeroy, a creationist dentist and plagiarist who believes that the earth is only 6000 years old.

Just stop there and savor it. The man who wants to dictate what all of the children in one of the largest educational systems in the country should learn about science believes his pathetic and patently false superstition supersedes the evidence and the informed evaluation of virtually all the scientists in the world. There is no other way to put it than to point out that McLeroy is a blithering idiot who willingly puts his incompetence on display. His job is not at risk, and he’s even advancing his freakish agenda with some success.

It’s a marvel, isn’t it? A fellow just wants to laugh and shoo him back to his church and his dental practice, but instead, he’s been given all this power over the education of American children, and it’s hard to laugh, because it is so damned terrifying.

But wait! The unbelievable insanity is not yet complete! The Texas school board is debating and will vote on a revised curriculum this week, a curriculum in which the uninformed, uneducated doubts of this arrogantly ignorant man will be enshrined in the lesson plans of every child in Texas. And the board is about evenly split!

There’s a deeper problem here than the simple superficial fact that we’ve got influential people trying to push nonsense into science classrooms. It’s that somehow, we have a system that gives flaming incompetents this kind of power — that we willingly hand over important decisions about the education of our children to people who aren’t qualified, who have no understanding of science, and who want prioritize a page and a half of vague, poetic metaphor from a ragged old hodge-podge of a book of mythology over the concrete, well-tested, and well-documented body of modern scientific information.

Add that to the freakshow that is the Oklahoma State Legislature and well….you have….Red America.

Hey Conservatives: are you feeling down? Are your feelings hurt?

I’ve got something for you right here:

Less Lethal Superstitions….

Workout notes yoga, then 6 miles on the treadmill. 1 mile warm up (10 minutes), a 9:40 mile, then (at a grade of 1) I upped the speed every .25 miles: 6.7, 6.8, 6.9, 7.0 then 7.0 for 1 mile. I stopped after that, got a quick drink, and ran 2 in 19:10 to cool down.

I am not quite right yet, though I actually felt my knees lift while running.

Superstition: Yes, I know that Africa has problems with superstition:

see more pwn and owned pictures

And, even worse, some are being killed over witchcraft.

But what the Pope said was, well, ironic:

Pope Benedict XVI has urged Catholics in Angola to woo people “living in fear of spirits” into the church.

In a Mass celebrated in Angola’s capital, Luanda, he said Catholics should reach out to those who believe in witchcraft and spirits.

Human rights groups say many children in Angola have been abused after being accused of possession by spirits.

The pontiff, who arrived in Angola from Cameroon on Friday, is on the last stop of his week-long African tour.

He will later meet youths at a city football stadium.

On Friday, he made a powerful attack on corruption, which analysts say is rife in oil-rich Angola.

The climax of the visit will be on Sunday, when two million people are expected to hear the Pope address an outdoor service.

‘Threatening spirits’

The Pope urged Angola’s Catholics to reach out to those who had joined the burgeoning number of sects.

“Today it is up to you, brothers and sisters, following in the footsteps of those heroic and holy heralds of God, to offer the risen Christ to your fellow citizens,” the Pope said to 1,500 Angolan clergy and laypeople at Luanda’s Sao Paulo church.

“In today’s Angola, Catholics should offer the message of Christ to the many who live in the fear of spirits, of evil powers by whom they feel threatened, disoriented, even reaching the point of condemning street children and even the most elderly because – they say – they are sorcerers,” he said. [...]

True, condemning people for sorcery is bad. The Catholic Church has grown out of that. Sort of.

He also said:

The Pope also warned of a threat to the Catholic Church in Cameroon from evangelical movements and from the “growing influence of superstitious forms of religion”.

Something reminds me about a saying concerning pots and kettles.

Speaking of the Catholic Church, the University of Notre Dame has invited President Obama to speak at its graduation (as did my alma mater). Not everyone is happy about it:

Barack Obama will give commencement speeches at the U.S. Naval Academy, Arizona State, and the University of Notre Dame this year. The Naval Academy has received the news with little dispute, and Arizona State actually moved its ceremony to accommodate the president.

But when the president isn’t sticking it to a certain Naval Academy graduate and Arizona senator, he’s riling the Catholic community at Notre Dame. Critics say that Obama’s honorary degree is an affront to the school’s Catholic teachings, citing the president’s stances on abortion, gay rights, and embryonic stem cell research. Groups like the Cardinal Newman Society and the Pro-Life Action League have encouraged all Catholics to flood the university with phone calls and to sign online petitions (which have tens of thousands of signatures already).

The Rev. John Jenkins, Notre Dame’s president, defended the choice, saying that it has been a standing tradition to invite the U.S. president to speak and that he was “honored” that Obama accepted the invitation.

“The invitation of President Obama to be our Commencement speaker should in no way be taken as condoning or endorsing his positions on specific issues,” Jenkins said. “We invited him because we care so much about those issues, and we hope for this to be the basis of an engagement with him. You cannot change the world if you shun the people you want to persuade, and if you cannot persuade them, show respect for them and listen to them.”

What is hilarious is how some wing nuts have reacted:

TS justifiably makes fun of this K-Lo sentence:

[Notre Dame] took a giant step away from their identity as “Catholic.” They rather be of this world than the one they supposedly exist to bring people toward.

But sentence structure aside, this line really says everything you need to know about conservatives — they’re angry when people live in “this world” — you know, the real one! — rather than in the fantasy one they wish existed.

Famous Last Words…

Update: the stomach still isn’t 100 percent but it getting closer. Digestion is still tough. I might run 6 miles on the treadmill after yoga and call it a day, in terms of working out.

Politics

President Obama on Energy (speech at MIT)

Note: the first 6-7 minutes of the video features the President of MIT. Then the CEO of Serious Materials talks for a couple of minutes; he discusses the Federal Research and Development Tax Credit. Direct implications of the stimulus bill on energy is discussed. The President starts talking at 10 minutes into it.

Remember this?

Now we have this:

The Mount Redoubt volcano erupted five times overnight Sunday and Monday, sending an ash plume more than nine miles into the air in the volcano’s first emissions in nearly 20 years. Residents in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, were spared from falling ash, though fine gray dust fell on communities north of there. Ash from Alaska’s volcanoes is like a rock fragment with jagged edges and has been used as an industrial abrasive. It can injure skin, eyes and breathing passages, and can also cause damage engines in planes, cars and other vehicles. Mount Redoubt, which has an altitude of 10,200 feet, is about 100 miles southwest of Anchorage.

Memo to Republicans: there are many things that we can’t do with our own money that we can do together, collectively.

23 March 2009

Workout notes 4000 yard low-intensity swim. 500 warm up (slow), 10 x 50 drill/swim with fins (slow), 5 x 100 on the 2 (slow; mostly 1:40-44), 5 x 100 on the 2 (fins), slow, 10 x (25 fly, 75 free) (slow! 1:48-50 each), 5 x 50 side, 5 x 50 (25 catch up, 25 free), then 2 x (4 x 25 back, 4 x 25 fly), 4 x 25 free.

It was crowded at 5 am and then empty by 6; this is just the opposite of the usual pattern.

I have to face facts: I am still weak, though I am much better than before.

Science, mathematics, and crackpottery.

Math and Science are under assault.

Assault from the educational sector: Well, we won ONE battle:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 25, 2008) — A new study challenges the common practice in many classrooms of teaching mathematical concepts by using “real-world,” concrete examples. Researchers led by Jennifer Kaminski, researcher scientist at Ohio State University’s Center for Cognitive Science, found that college students who learned a mathematical concept with concrete examples couldn’t apply that knowledge to new situations.

But when students first learned the concept with abstract symbols, they were much more likely to transfer that knowledge, according to the study published in the April 25 issue of the journal Science.

“These findings cast doubt on a long-standing belief in education,” said Vladimir Sloutsky, co-author of the study and professor of psychology and human development and the director of the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State.

Duh.

Now science is getting similar treatment.

At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, Berkeley’s Judy Scotchmoor introduced a new web resource called Understanding Science that’s intended to change the way that the nature and process of science are presented to students.

See the new website here

Anyone who has gone through the US public school system has undoubtedly been exposed to the textbook version of science as a linear process that takes researchers straight from a hypothesis through gathering data and on to reaching conclusions. Anyone who has actually taken part in science, however, knows that this presentation bears almost no resemblance to reality, where science is a community endeavor, anything but linear, and, as a result, much more exciting. A newly developed website called Understanding Science is intended to capture a bit of that excitement and, in doing so, change how the US public learns science.

One difference: the researchers who tackle a problem already have a firm grounding in facts. The problem is that our students, on the whole, don’t.

Assault from the administrators: The geology department at the University of Florida is in danger:

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences announced its plans to cut 10% from its budget. It targeted three departments: Communication Sciences and Disorders; Religion; and Geology. These three departments will take a far larger cut than 10% in order to ‘preserve’ the integrity of other departments. In an era of ‘green technology’, environmental awareness, the need for natural resource management, global climate change and the need to preserve access to freshwater, the thought of decimating a Geology Department borders on insanity. This is especially true of a flagship university that sits about 150 feet above sea level in a state where the top three revenue generators are, in order, tourism, agriculture and mining.

When faced with required budget cuts at a land grant university, is the best solution really to cut one department best poised to address problems directly related to the states three biggest income sources? For instance:

– The major mining industry in Florida is phosphate mining. Florida produces close to 75% of the phosphate required by US agriculture and nearly 25% of the world phosphate. In addition, heavy minerals, particularly those containing titanium (used to make anything white…paints and dyes), are found in a large deposit known as Trail Ridge.

– Global climate change and sea level rise can affect Floridians disproportionately because of its average elevation.

– The building of hotels and resorts along the coast that are important to Florida’s #1 industry of tourism have consequences for coastal erosion and sinkhole development.

– The growing population in the state has severely stressed groundwater resources to the breaking point.

The plan proposed for the department is to cut all un-tenured faculty, all technical staff who operate and maintain millions of dollars in scientific equipment, and all research staff. This reduces the department to about 10 tenured faculty. It should be noted that the final word on these proposed cuts is not in. The University could say: “Why save even the tenured faculty? Let’s cut the whole department.”

The above article goes on to explain that the department has acquitted itself well in the research area.

Side note: Scientists are being blamed for the stock market collapse:

A couple of weeks ago there was an interesting opinion piece in the NYTimes about how physicists are the harbingers of doom, and are responsible for the end times. Or, more specifically, it’s because of physicists that the financial markets are in tatters all around us.

The basic idea is that greedy physicists have gone to Wall Street, cooked up all sorts of arcane derivative products, and subsequently unleashed these weapons of mass destruction on the financial markets. This sentiment is best epitomized by a statement from none other than Warren Buffett (perhaps the world’s most successful investor, and certainly the world’s richest): “beware of geeks bearing formulas”

I have to chuckle about this. About 10 years ago, there was a program which recruited mathematicians to go work on wall street. I didn’t give it a second thought; besides my publication record was (and still is) mediocre so I wouldn’t have been a hot commodity anyway.

Now this appears to be catching up to us or has caught up with us.

No, this isn’t the whole problem, but it is a part of it. For more, read Nicholas Taleb’s book Fooled by Randomness. One of the biggest problems is that, by necessity, models are almost always incomplete. The more complex the situation, the more incomplete the model is. When you add in the fact that some fluctuations really do happen randomly, the potential to fool yourself (and others) into thinking that you have a worthwhile model is great. Even worse, a rare (but possible) random event can send everything crashing down and, in the case where the models are incomplete, cannot always be anticipated.

22 March 2009

Workout notes One loop of McNaughton in 3:26 (leisurely effort); a loop is 10 miles.

This is at about the 8 mile mark. More photos are here.

One note: the first Lick Creek crossing has changed a bit; there is a sharp drop-off to the water line; the creek appears to be narrower and deeper.

Humor

see more pwn and owned pictures

Do dogs read?

Red State Update editorial:

Here is an article about an idiotic lawsuit:

More than a hundred money grubbing morons employees filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida for sexual harassment. The employees were women who chose to work in a maximum security prison. The sexual harassment? The prisoners make lewd comments, wag their wangs at them, and generally act like a bunch of sociopaths.

News flash. YOU WORK IN A FUCKIN PRISON.

I don’t give a shit what your women’s studies professor said. You do not have a constitutional right to never hear the word “cunt.” You may have a right not to be called one by your boss. If you work in a zoo, you can expect that the monkeys will fling feces at you and the rhinos might try and mate in front of you. [...]

Of course, just because I think that the plaintiffs should be forced to live in Saudi Arabia for the rest of their lives doesn’t mean they will lose. In fact, I predict they will win. In Beckford v. Florida (S.D. Fla., No. 2:06-CV-14324-JEM), the exact same fact pattern led to a $630,000 award. Cha ching.

I give it a year or two before some MacKinnonite files a sexual harassment suit against a strip club owner because the patrons asked her client to shake her ass in their face for a dollar.

Note: this is a blog written by law professors.

Academia
What do you do when you get caught cheating? Answer: you ask your professor for a recommendation letter?

Bill Maher:

Maher on Sarah Palin

Maher on the “religious faith” of our candidates

Politics

Norma-Jean points out that conservatives are more concerned with union contracts than bonuses for the executives:

Oh, Lord Almighty! Chuck just stuck it to the libs every possible way!

He cut through all the smoke and mirrors than the Democrats been putting up about them poor, poor AIG executives, and exposed just how hypocritical it is for the libs to support bailing out them rich, overfed autoworkers!

Lord have mercy, think how much more them poor AIG corporate executives (i.e. REAL Americans) could have received if’n we didn’t have to pay these greedy factory line workers to get outrageous salaries of more than 29 dollars-an-hour?!

She has a few more things to say (e. g., who signed the “Hollywood Bailout Bill”? Nope: it wasn’t President Obama).

2008 Presidential Race For those of you who love statistics, here is a map by congressional district. What is listed is change from 2004: red districts are where Obama did equal to or worse than Kerry. Green ones are where Obama improved by 9 points or more.

President Obama: easily dismisses former Vice President Cheney:

President Obama is reprising some of his most familiar campaign rhetoric to criticize Dick Cheney, saying in an interview that the former vice president has no room to criticize him on national security.

“How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?” Obama asked on “60 Minutes,” according to excerpts released by CBS ahead of its Sunday airing. “It hasn’t made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment.”

Hey Republicans: don’t you miss the good old liberal punching bags?

A note to those who are calling the current economic crisis “Obama’s Katrina”: Read this.

A note on improving education:

Ms. Rhee, 39, who became Washington’s sixth school superintendent in 10 years, has ousted one-third of the district’s principals, shaken up the system, created untold enemies, improved test scores, and — more than almost anyone else — dared to talk openly about the need to replace ineffective teachers.

“It’s sort of a taboo topic that nobody wants to talk about,” she acknowledged in an interview in her office, not far from the Capitol. “I used to say ‘fire people.’ And they said you can’t say that. Say, ‘separate them from the district’ or something like that.” [...]

The reform camp is driven partly by research suggesting that great teachers are far more important to student learning than class size, school resources or anything else. One study suggests that if black kids could get teachers from the profession’s most effective quartile for four years in a row, the achievement gap would disappear.

As a result, Ms. Rhee has proposed that teachers surrender some job protections in exchange for the chance to earn more money — up to $131,000 annually, more than double the average salary for an American public school teacher. But teachers worry, not unreasonably, that their performance is difficult to measure, that they will be judged by incompetent principals, and that promised bonuses may later dry up. For now the two sides seem stalemated.

That is the hard truth. On one hand, there ARE bad teachers (at all levels, college included). On the other hand, teaching effectiveness is very difficult to measure as is “student learning”. Even worse: those doing the measuring are often the most incompetent ones.

Dropped my daughter off at Midway Airport…

I just got back from dropping off my daughter at Midway Airport in Chicago; it is a 162 mile trip each way. Normally it takes just under 3 hours, but on rare occasion, one gets into a traffic jam that adds 2 hours to the trip and on a very bad day, it can take 2 hours to get through everything.

So we allotted ourselves 7 hours…and ended up with 3+ hours to spare.

As I let her go through the door to the walkway (I had an escort pass) I watched some other dad hug his daughter goodbye. He turned and walked away, obviously trying not to cry in public.

I know that feeling all too well.

I know that males, on the average, may not post as many “cute kid” photos as females do, but we love our kids just the same.

The good news is, if all goes well, I’ll be able to see her again in a few weeks (May is not that far away…)

Off to the Airport (21 March 2009)

Later this morning Olivia and I will leave for Midway Airport in Chicago. I hate for her to go but she misses her mom and visa versa.

I will try a short to medium (3 to 7?) mile run around the neighborhood; I’ll make the decision to cut short or go a bit longer at 30 minutes into the run; fortunately my course never takes me much more than 1 mile away from the house at a time.

I feel great but I know that weakness lingers for a while.

Update 10K (approximately) “run” in 1:02 (two Cornstalk loops plus the 1000 meter lower loop; 5 good uphills in all). 30s, breezy, overcast. I felt great for 45 minutes and then started to tire and my stomach started to rumble. So I am not 100 percent but am much, much better than 2 days ago.

Science:

Poe blogs Reading this made me think a bit:

The other day this comment was posted by an atheist:

What’s wrong with killing babies? I see no problem with it. I have enough mouths to feed. I don’t get the argument and I am an atheist. Since I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in anything characterized as good, bad / right, wrong. So, what’s the big deal?

At first I was shocked that anyone could say that. Then I realized that it must be a fundie in disguise, a sheep in wolves clothing. I wasn’t the only one — wintermute and Ty immediately called him out for “lying for Jesus.” They have good bullshit detectors.
[...]

Who would do such a stupid thing?

It turns out, a pastor would. After some more digging, I was able to figure out the commenter’s identity: Pastor Chris Fox of Kendalls Baptist Church in New London, NC.

Way to lie for Jesus, pastor! I’m sure you make your congregation proud.

I confronted him about his deceitfulness. He apologized “for upsetting me,” but doesn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing.

I wonder because I sometimes like “poe” blogs; I even contribute to one. Sure, the blog OWNERS are fully aware of what I am up to; they have even visited here. I think that my satire is way obvious but many times, others are fooled.

Here is a sample:

http://thegoodkentuckian.blogspot.com/2009/03/thank-god-for-oklahoma.html

(if you want to see it, use cut and paste into your browser window as I don’t want to create a pingback and I am too lazy to look up the no-pingback code at this time)

Isn’t my satire obvious?

Politics

Economy Robert Reich properly notes that the public outrage over the AIG bonus scandal is providing political cover for Congress to overlook more important issues:

But much of this is for show. When the public isn’t looking, Congress reverts to its old ways. The Obama-supported plan to allow distressed homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages under the protection of bankruptcy has run into a Wall Street wall. Although Citigroup temporarily broke ranks a few months ago when it was receiving one of the most generous bailouts, the rest of Wall Street has remained adamantly opposed, and apparently Democratic leaders have decided not to push back.

Meanwhile, Obama’s plan to limit itemized deductions for the richest 1.2 percent of taxpayers (including the top 1.9 percent of small business owners) to 28 percent, starting in 2011, is also in trouble on the Hill. Wealthy contributors and friends of congressional leaders involved in setting tax policy have balked. So Congress is telling the White House to look elsewhere for the $320 billion it needs over ten years to finance half of the tab for health care reform. Congressional leaders have also informed the White House that they don’t have the votes to pass Obama’s proposal for treating the earnings of hedge-fund and private-equity managers as income rather than capital gains.

President Obama has a tough job.

Religion
This is a clip from the film Religulous; here Bill Maher talks to Francis Collins, who really is a brilliant scientist.

Entertainment
There are some full feature films on youtube; here is one of them. I’ll probably watch it tomorrow between grading differential equations papers and watching a bit of basketball.

Yin-Yang: Dawkins and Oklahoma

The yin: the woos in the Oklahoma state legislature are attempting to “investigate” the appearance of Ricard Dawkins at the University of Oklahoma:

Well, it’s official: Oklahoma’s state legislature is investigating the University of Oklahoma for hosting a speech by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

As I noted in a post over the weekend at Dawkins’ website, the legislature first considered two resolutions condemning both Dawkins and the theory of evolution as “an unproven and unpopular theory.” (I highly recommend reading both of the proposed resolutions.) Despite their efforts, the legislature failed to prevent Dawkins from speaking on March 6 to an audience of thousands at the University of Oklahoma.

Last week, however, I received multiple reports that the legislature was now investigating the speech, and I wrote the University of Oklahoma President David Boren directly asking to know if this was true.

Sure enough, I just received confirmation today in a letter from the Open Records Office at the University of Oklahoma. The letter confirms that on the day of Dawkins’ speech, Oklahoma State Representative Rebecca Hamilton requested substantial information relating to the speech from Vice President for Governmental Relations Danny Hilliard. Representative Hamilton’s exhaustive request included demands for all e-mails and correspondence relating to the speech; a list of all money paid to Dawkins and the entities, public or private, responsible for this funding; and the total cost to the university, including, among other things, security fees, advertising, and even “faculty time spent promoting this event.”

The yang: many Oklahomans are not putting up with such buffoonery.

Look at that crowd!!!

It may take a while, but as a society, we shall outlast the ignorant.

Yin-Yang: bill on AIG bonuses. Nate Silver has a point; AIG still angers me.

First, a pleasant diversion:

Imagine that: we have a President who knows that other nations have their own holidays! It is nice that our country is no longer being run by C students.

Yin: this latest “tax the hell out of AIG bonus money” might have unintended, unfortunate consequences (via Nate Silver)

I’d call this the law of unintended consequences — except that the consequences are explicitly written into the bill. The bonus tax, which passed the House earlier today, applies not only to AIG but also to some 12 other firms that received substantial levels of government assistance. This includes both financial institutions like AIG and nonfinancial ones like General Motors; it includes banks that are preforming poorly, like Citibank, and those that are holding up fairly well, like JPMorgan Chase and PNC. The government has dictated that nobody at anybody of these companies is deserving of incentive-based compensation, unless their household income is less than $250,000 per year.

Just think about some of the implications of this.

A senior engineer at General Motors, who shepherds the production of a new hybrid vehicle that will turn out to be a best-seller, shouldn’t get a bonus for that. Really?

Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan, who has managed his company’s assets adeptly and kept it mostly off the taxpayer’s dole, is no more deserving of a bonus than an AIG crook. Really?

An mid-level investment banker at Morgan Stanley, who works her butt off to persuade her bosses to facilitate a deal for a new wind-power company that turns out to be a big economic and environmental winner, should have her incentive compensation taxed at 90%. Really?

An administrative assistant at PNC, who is volunteering to work 70-hour weeks because of cutbacks in the company’s staff, deserves a Christmas Bonus — unless her husband happens to be a lawyer earning $250,000 per year, in which case it should be taken away. Really?

$500,000 in salary for an employee that performs badly is perfectly fine, but a $500,000 bonus for one who performs exceptionally well isn’t. Really? [...]

On the other hand, I still hate the arrogant bastards at AIG (though, as President Obama said, hatred can’t drive our policies). Here is one reason why:

Just when you couldn’t stand to hear another thing about AIG, this comes out:

A.I.G. Sues U.S. for Return of $306 Million in Tax Payments

While the American International Group comes under fire from Congress over executive bonuses, it is quietly fighting the federal government for the return of $306 million in tax payments, some related to deals that were conducted through offshore tax havens.

A.I.G. sued the government last month in a bid to force it to return the payments, which stemmed in large part from its use of aggressive tax deals, some involving entities controlled by the company’s financial products unit in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, the Dutch Antilles and other offshore havens.

A.I.G. is effectively suing its majority owner, the government, which has an 80 percent stake and has poured nearly $200 billion into the insurer in a bid to avert its collapse and avoid troubling the global financial markets. The company is in effect asking for even more money, in the form of tax refunds. The suit also suggests that A.I.G. is spending taxpayer money to pursue its case, something it is legally entitled to do. Its initial claim was denied by the Internal Revenue Service last year.

I bet if the lawyers win the case they’ll ask for a bonus.

But such arrogant “we can do whatever we want” attitudes has its consequences

AIG boss Edward Liddy says he fears for his employees’ lives if Congress goes through with a threat to name and shame recipients of lavish bonuses awarded by the bailed-out insurer.

Reading out lurid death threats received by AIG, including a vow to garrotte executives with piano wire, Mr Liddy said he could only release the names of the bonus recipients if Congress promised to keep them confidential.

“I would hope that it doesn’t take a subpoena. I’m just really concerned about the safety of our people,” he told a hearing in the House of Representatives.

But financial services committee chairman Barney Frank said he could not guarantee confidentiality and said he would press ahead with subpoenas if needed.

“Clearly those threats are despicable. But this is an important public subject,” the Democrat said.

“I will consult with the federal law enforcement people and if they do say there’s a credible threat, we will have to take that into consideration,” he said.

Atheist Day on Facebook

Workout notes One more rest day; I am feeling much, much better. I might do a short, slow hike just to enjoy the crisp air and sunshine.

Atheist Day on Facebook There has been quite a bit of discussion from late last night; I’ve participated in the early morning discussions.

What I will do is post some of the photos/artwork that have appeared in the “photos” section. Yes, some of these pieces contradict each other and a few of them express a view that I don’t share.

For example, I think that religion has value in that it provides mental/emotional and even physical health techniques (e. g., prayer, meditation and yoga); it provides a way of bringing people together and, at its best, it can provide some positive peer pressure.

But that poster which shows the “black hole” in intellectual progress that coincided with the rise of Christianity is right on point; I see Christianity as being a disaster for the intellectual progress of humankind (in much the same way that Islam is today).