16 March 2009

Spring break day one: Slept in; 4000 yards: 500 warm up, 10 x 100 fist (on 2), 5 x 100 (3g/75 free) on 2, 10 x 100 on 2 (only half were under 1:40; had some 1:40s; one 1:41), 500 of fly/back, 500 of side/free.

Lots of old people were there. Still sleeping in was nice.

I did some core work also.

Social: It is always interesting to reconnect with people after many years. It is especially interesting to connect with someone that one once had a lot in common with, at least in terms of political and social views.

People move on and change, and I also think that they change as they move to new environments.

There is some musical talent

The above photos are from today: My stepdaughter’s husband loaned Olivia his jazz bass. That is Olivia’s instrument.

The photos below are from Austin last year: Barbara can play the piano and keyboard; Olivia can play the bass guitar.

I have no musical talent at all.

McNaughton Trail Races: Right Around the Corner

Today I sent out the following e-mail message:

I heard from Andy Weinberg. He is directing his final McNaughton Park Trail run series (as he has moved from Illinois to Vermont). I don’t know what the future of the race is, but it is on for 2009!

The deadlines are quickly approaching!

Here is the race website.

Here is the registration link.

Here is a blog devoted to current trail conditions.

Here is a virtual tour I posted on my personal blog (warning: lots of political and social content on my sidebar)

Note: I posted the caveats as many get their feelings hurt by my political and social opinions.

My photobucket McNaughton album: summer hike (2007)

My photo spread of the races.

Extra: my posts about the race:

A couple of photos of my 50 mile attempt in 2008 (a semi fail)

The race report from 2008.

Here is a report on my 2006 failure.

I finished the 2005 version but my web page that reported on this vanished.

Tip/Wag – Rush Limbaugh | March 5th | ColbertNation.com and other topic

Pi Day:

Yes, I am a day late for pi day.
So, in honor of that I’ll give my favorite formula for pi:

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They don’t get it: watch Dick Cheney criticize President Obama and make excuses for his administration’s failures:

Economics: Robert Reich on the AIG fiasco:

[...] The scandal is that even at this late date, even in a new administration dedicated to doing it all differently, Americans still have so little say over what is happening with our money.

The administration is said to have been outraged when it heard of the bonus plan last week. Apparently Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner told AIG’s chairman, Edward Liddy (who was installed at the insistence of the Treasury, in the first place) that the bonuses should not be paid. But it turns out that most will be paid anyway, because, according to AIG, the firm is legally obligated to pay them. The bonuses are part of employee contracts negotiated before the bailouts. And, in any event, Liddy explained, AIG needs to be able to retain talent.

AIG’s arguments are absurd on their face. Had AIG gone into chapter 11 bankruptcy or been liquidated, as it would have without government aid, no bonuses would ever be paid (they would have had a lower priority under bankruptcy law that AIG’s debts to other creditors); indeed, AIG’s executives would have long ago been on the street. And any mention of the word “talent” in the same sentence as “AIG” or “credit default swaps” would be laughable if laughing weren’t already so expensive.

Religion/Science
New Scientist ran this article and then got cold feet and pulled it. But it is worth reading:

As a book reviews editor at New Scientist, I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to recognise clues that the author is pushing a religious agenda. As creationists in the US continue to lose court battles over attempts to have intelligent design taught as science in federally funded schools, their strategy has been forced to… well, evolve. That means ensuring that references to pseudoscientific concepts like ID are more heavily veiled. So I thought I’d share a few tips for spotting what may be religion in science’s clothing.

Red flag number one: the term “scientific materialism”. “Materialism” is most often used in contrast to something else – something non-material, or supernatural. Proponents of ID frequently lament the scientific claim that humans are the product of purely material forces. At the same time, they never define how non-material forces might work. I have yet to find a definition that characterises non-materialism by what it is, rather than by what it is not.

The invocation of Cartesian dualism – where the brain and mind are viewed as two distinct entities, one material and the other immaterial – is also a red flag. And if an author describes the mind, or any biological system for that matter, as “irreducibly complex”, let the alarm bells ring.

Misguided interpretations of quantum physics are a classic hallmark of pseudoscience, usually of the New Age variety, but some religious groups are now appealing to aspects of quantum weirdness to account for free will. Beware: this is nonsense.

When you come across the terms “Darwinism” or “Darwinists”, take heed. True scientists rarely use these terms, and instead opt for “evolution” and “biologists”, respectively. When evolution is described as a “blind, random, undirected process”, be warned. While genetic mutations may be random, natural selection is not. When cells are described as “astonishingly complex molecular machines”, it is generally by breathless supporters of ID who take the metaphor literally and assume that such a “machine” requires an “engineer”. If an author wishes for “academic freedom”, it is usually ID code for “the acceptance of creationism”.

There is more; click on the above link.

Religion and Society: Rise of the “faithless”. Note: all of our local Blockbuster copies of Religulous were rented out today.

There is one thing that is not allowed in American national politics – and that is atheism. “In God We Trust” is on the currency; and the number of congressional members who avow no faith at all are about as plentiful as those who are openly gay (none in the Senate; five in the House).

Under the last president, religious faith – evangelical Christianity or Benedict-style Catholicism – was a prerequisite for real access to the inner circle. But the requirement is not just Republican. Among the more excruciating campaign events of last year was a faith summit for the Democrats in which candidates vied with one another to express the most piety. Barack Obama’s Christianity – educated, nuanced, social – is in many ways more striking than that of, say, Nixon, Truman or Eisenhower.

Americans are losing faith, though; and those who have it are moving out of established churches. The nonreligious are now the third biggest grouping in the US, after Catholics and Baptists, according to the just-released American Religious Identification Survey. The bulk of this shift occurred in the 1990s, when they jumped from 8% to 14% of the population – but they have consolidated in the past decade to 15%.

As elsewhere in the West, mainline Protestantism has had the biggest drop – from 19% to 13%. Despite heavy Latino immigration, the proportion of Catholics has drifted down since 1990, and their numbers have shifted dramatically from the northeast and the rust belt to the south and west. Take South Carolina, a state you might associate with hardcore Protestant evangelicalism. It certainly does exist there – but in that southern state, the percentage of Catholics has almost doubled since 1990 and the percentage of atheists has tripled.

America, it turns out, is a more complicated spiritual place than the stereotypes might imply. Islam is still tiny – and integrated and largely successful. Catholicism, while buoyant among new Hispanic immigrants (who are, nonetheless, drifting rapidly towards evangelicalism in the southern hemisphere whence they came), has plummeted in its heartland. Think of Massachusetts, the home of the Irish and Italian and Portuguese. In 1990, Catholics accounted for 54% of all residents of the Kennedys’ state. That’s now 39%.

About to go out (15 March 2009)

I am about to go out for a 3-4 hour walk. I won’t worry about pace too much. It should be a pretty day.

Update Almost perfect day; started in the high 30s then close to 50? I saw lots of runners out there; I couldn’t stay with a couple of slower spandex lady runners.

Still, I stayed right at 13:00-13:15 the whole way; I hit mile 10 right at 2:10; finished at the house at just under 3:00, did the 5.15 mile “West Peoria Lunch” course in 1:07:38 and the last 14:30 for the last 1.1 to finish in 4:21:43.

Yesterday I picked up Olivia from Midway Airport in Chicago. What I noticed is that several women who were traveling were wearing those clingy spandex tights. That made the wait to get through security a bit easier (Olivia is 14, so I get a “meet at the gate” pass).

Note: CNBC has come under fire for their compromising their news coverage in order to gain access to CEOs. This practice (relying on representatives of those organizations they are supposed to be covering) is, evidently, widespread in the major mainstream media:

The New York Times’s David Barstow, whose excellent and aggressive journalism led to the uncovering last April of the Pentagon’s domestic propaganda program involving network “military analysts,” today returns to this topic with another lengthy front-page exposé. Barstow focuses today on the numerous, undisclosed conflicts of interest of Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who continues to be featured frequently by NBC News as an objective analyst as he opines about war policies in which he has a substantial (and concealed) financial stake.

Some of the key facts which Barstow reports concerning the improper behavior of McCaffrey and NBC News were documented all the way back in April, 2003, in this excellent article from The Nation, which Barstow probably should have credited today. That article — entitled “TV’s Conflicted Experts” — detailed the numerous defense contractors to which McCaffrey had a substantial connection — including Mitretek, Veritas and Integrated Defense Technologies, all featured by Barstow today — and highlighted how the policies and viewpoints McCaffrey was advocating as a “military analyst” on NBC directly benefited those companies.

Because those conflicts were brought to light by the anti-war Nation, and because that article was published in April, 2003, as the country was drowning in a war-crazed frenzy, NBC was able to blithely dismiss these concerns, unbelievably telling The Nation that its military analysts’ business interests were “not their concern.” Unsurprisingly, the Nation article generated little attention and controversy. Few people were interested back then in challenging war-praising retired Generals and the networks which were glorifying the invasion. NBC continued without objection to feature McCaffrey, and the similarly-conflicted retired Gen. Wayne Downing, as objective “military analysts.” [...]

Tinfoil O’Reilly: “Vast left wing conspiracy” promoting Obama agenda – Daily Kos TV (beta)

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Pi Day 2009…sort of

Workout notes Ironically, zero, even though the day was pretty. Barbara and I went to pick up Olivia from Midway Airport in Chicago (3 hours north of here).

Posts of the day

President Obama announced his pick to head the FDA and a deputy.

Climate Change Crock

He points out that the cycles of nature are changing; 90 percent of these changes point toward a warming globe.

Religion and Society:

You’ve probably seen lists of famous atheists.

Do you remember Larry Holmes?

From his fight with Ken Norton (1977) when he won his world title; he held the world title (in one form or another) until 1985; he won his first 48 fights.

He had some interesting views on religion as well; I read these in the book Facing Ali by Stephen Brunt: (page 281)

I’d like for people to remember me when I’m gone, but I’m not going to know anything about it. I’m not like the Jehovah’s Witnessess who believe that dead people still walk around the earth and see what’s happening. I believe when you’re dead, you’re just dead. Just like before I was born, I didn’t know nothing. So I believe that you do what you can do right now when you’re here. I believe you do the best that you can. And you certainly would like to leave something behind for your kids so they don’t have to grow up in starvation or hunger. You don’t watn them to grow up like I did with poorness and ghettoness and the welfare. You want them to have something, to be able to say “My dad did this.” That’s how I guess you live on. But still, you gonna be dead. You know what I mean? You ain’t gonna be here to look at it.

Obviously, I don’t know what his religion is. But it is clear that he doesn’t believe in an afterlife.

Just Prior to Spring Break…

First, some political humor. At Redstate update:

Science Animal camouflage (check this out; it is excellent)

Politics
Megan McCain went on the Rachel Maddow show and, I thought, made a good account of herself.

Of course, the Republicans really criticized her for this; one even made fun of her weight. Doing the right thing sometimes carries a political price.

Obama, a socialist? Count on the Republicans to belly-ache when the wealthy are asked to sacrifice a tiny bit of their excess. But here is a chart that shows the facts about President Obama’s tax rate:

From MoveOn.org:

Dear MoveOn member,

This is ridiculous. The media has been obsessing about President Obama’s plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans—from 35% to 39.6%—even asking if that makes him a socialist.1

But do you know what tax rate the wealthiest Americans paid on the top portion of their earnings at the end of Ronald Reagan’s first term? 50%.

Under Richard Nixon? 70%. Under Dwight Eisenhower? 91%!

Shocking, right?

And for all the whining about rolling back Bush’s irresponsible tax cuts, the truth is that Obama’s plan cuts taxes for 95% of working Americans. Further, it closes huge tax loopholes for oil companies, hedge funds and corporations that ship jobs overseas so that we can invest in the priorities that will get our economy back on track.2

We saw a great chart in The Washington Monthly3 that shows just how absurd Republican complaints about Obama’s budget are.

Remember that GOP stands for Greed Over Patriotism.

President Obama:

Nate Silver mentions that, in spite of what you might read, President Obama’s approval ratings remain high while his disapproval ratings have gone up some. That is to be expected.

Robert Reich gives the advice that he’d give to President Obama. In a nutshell, he recommends two basic things:

1. That President Obama get a second stimulus package (equal in size to the first one) and have it kick in when (if?) unemployment hits 8.5 percent and underemployment hits 15 percent.

2. That the Treasury Secretary:

put the irrevocably insolvent banks into receivership under the FDIC, sell off their assets, protect depositors, and reimburse taxpayers with whatever remains? Let the rest of the banks fend for themselves — working out their bad loans with their creditors. As to AIG, well, that’s a complete basketcase. Put it out of its suffering. Take it over, sell its assets, protect policy holders (you’ll need to create a big co-insurance plan with every other major insurer in the world), then get out.

Always Welcome: An Ed Current Video

Side note: I surfed on facebook and found a woman who I had a major crush on when I was in college. She ended up becoming an Lieutenant Commander in the Navy and now sells real estate (with her husband).

In college, she was a fearsome volleyball player with a vicious killer spike.

No, I am not going to contact her. But from time to time, it is kind of cool to see “where are they now”.

I’m Upset With President Obama

I went to swim at our university’s pool; no lifeguard showed up. Therefore, I didn’t get to swim. This is the same old crap; new facility, same lousy people running it therefore the same lousy operation.

This is Change That We Can Believe In?

Oh wait…maybe the Republicans won’t blame this on President Obama. Maybe.

I did get a nice run in though; 6 miles which included 6 nice sized hills; I finished in about an hour and then did some yoga.