Rainy Tuesday 10 March 2009

Workout notes yoga with Ms. Vickie, then 6 miles on the treadmill (run); 1 at 9:55 (zero incline), 1 at 9:50 (1 incline from here out) and then I upped the speed .1 mph until I got to mile 4, and then I did the next mile at 7 mph (8:34 mpm), .25 at 8:54, .25 at 8:45, .5 at 8:34 (55:10 total; 26:10 for the last 3).

I walked to get to mile 7 and then couldn’t take the treadmill anymore; I went out into the rain (just as it started to clear) and did 3 more (included the Bob Michael Bridge).

Now to make up some exams. I’ll have some serious grading to do very soon.

Daily Kos ranks third on Bill O’Reilly & Bernie Goldberg’s media enemies list – Daily Kos TV (beta)

Awww, we only made number 3? My feelings are hurt

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Back in the saddle….

Today’s workout: Not sure; I think I’ll do yoga class and then go home and do miles on the home treadmill. I want to stay near a bathroom and it is raining pretty hard outside.

Science

Did you know that there is a chimp that throws rocks at his human visitors (in a zoo)? What is interesting is that this chimp actually gathers rocks ahead of time; not just on the days of the visit but he would start his stone gathering a few days prior to visiting season opening!

The more that the animal kingdom is studied, the closer the animals (as a whole) appear to us.

Politics:

The economy: why change won’t be easy. Of course there will be resistance and opposition from the “screw em if they aren’t rich” Republicans. But compromise will be just as difficult among the Democrats for a variety of reasons:

Democratic leaders in Congress did not expect much Republican support as they pressed President Obama’s ambitious legislative agenda. But the pushback they are receiving from some of their own has come as an unwelcome surprise.

As the Senate inches closer to approving a $410 billion spending bill, the internal revolt has served as a warning to party leaders pursuing Obama’s far-reaching plans for health-care, energy and education reform.

Those goals, spelled out in Obama’s 2010 budget blueprint, continue to enjoy broad Democratic support. But as the ideas develop into detailed legislation, they will transform from abstract objectives into a tangle of difficult trade-offs. Crop subsidies, the student loan program and Medicare radiology rules are all currently niche concerns, but any one could become the next crisis for party leaders, with the potential to derail a major agenda item. One major proposal, to limit itemized deductions for wealthy taxpayers, has already raised doubts among prominent Democrats in both chambers.

Example: a raise in the amount of money for Pell grants hurts some private lenders; Senator Nelson in Nebraska doesn’t like that. Some language could signal a significant policy change toward Cuba; Senator Menendez doesn’t like that. Doing away with unneeded agribusiness subsidies to firms making large profits rubs many farm-state Senators the wrong way.

Either way one goes, you are going to step on many toes.

You can see some of what President Obama is trying to do here.

Videos: US Military Advisor Talks to Iraqi Police, A Student Whines

A college “student” complains about her mathematics professor….

Can’t you just hear the violins playing?

Giving Conservatives a voice…again….

Remember this ad:

Mr. Norris also writes a column:

On Glenn Beck’s radio show last week, I quipped in response to our wayward federal government, “I may run for president of Texas.”

That need may be a reality sooner than we think. If not me, someone someday may again be running for president of the Lone Star state, if the state of the union continues to turn into the enemy of the state.

From the East Coast to the “Left Coast,” America seems to be moving further and further from its founders’ vision and government. [...]

How much more will Americans take? When will enough be enough? And, when that time comes, will our leaders finally listen or will history
need to record a second American Revolution? We the people have the authority according to America’s Declaration of Independence, which states:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

When I appeared on Glenn Beck’s radio show, he told me that someone had asked him, “Do you really believe that there is going to be trouble in the future?” And he answered, “If this country starts to spiral out of control and Mexico melts down or whatever, if it really starts to spiral out of control, before America allows a country to become a totalitarian country (which it would have under I think the Republicans as well in this situation; they were taking us to the same place, just slower), Americans won’t stand for it. There will be parts of the country that will rise up.” Then Glenn asked me and his listening audience, “And where’s that going to come from?” He answered his own question, “Texas, it’s going to come from Texas. Do you agree with that Chuck?” I replied, “Oh yeah!” Definitely. [...]

What parts of America?

The red area was more Republican in 2008 than in 2004; the blue areas were more Democratic.

Hey, I’ve got an idea: why don’t these areas of the country leave, NOW!!! They can feel free to take their “brainpower” and all of the advances that they’ve made in science and technology with them.

Financial Discrimination? Yep, that is what some conservatives are whining about.

Click on the link if you want a chuckle.

Explain to me why ANYONE listens to Republicans at all?

This latest gem from the Republicans deserves its own post:

A top congressional Republican on Sunday criticized President Barack Obama’s expected decision to reverse the Bush administration’s limits on embryonic stem-cell research, calling it a distraction from the country’s economic slump.

“Why are we going and distracting ourselves from the economy? This is job No. 1. Let’s focus on what needs to be done,” Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican whip in the House of Representatives, told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Obama’s move, scheduled for Monday morning, is part of a broader effort to separate science and politics and “restore scientific integrity in governmental decision-making,” White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes said Sunday. The Bush administration’s 2001 policy bars federal funding for research on embryonic stem cells beyond the cell lines that existed at the time.

What? An executive order opening up some research is a distraction?

What an ignorant asshole! jerk!

The Republicans have zero credibility on anything; they’ve done absolutely nothing right over the past decade or so.

How anyone who has a 3 digit IQ can remain a Republican is beyond me.

This headline on a Daily Kos article about sums it up:

Updated: President Obama Should Suspend Running the Country Until the Economy Is Fixed

Of course the Republicans don’t care about the welfare of the country; only their own political aspirations:

GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry, a key player in helping craft the Republican message, has offered an unusually blunt description of the Republican strategy right now.

McHenry’s description is buried in this new article from National Journal (sub. only):

“We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., an outspoken conservative who has participated on the GOP message teams. “Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

McHenry’s spokesperson, Brock McCleary, tells me his boss is standing by the quote.

I should keep my mouth shut here…but won’t…

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Marital Fail!!!!

9 March Rest Day (2009)

Workout notes Rest. Both my wife and I have intestinal distress; not sure if it is a mutual bug that we caught or the food we had on Saturday night. My Sunday morning workout went ok so I am not sure as to what is going on.

This week and the next one will be relatively light in terms of workouts due to a heavy school week and my daughter coming for Spring Break.

As for now, we’ll be giving the pink bismuth companies some more of our money.

Science articles Cosmic Variance had a “writing on the nature of time” contest and has decided on the winners. Here is a link to the prize winning essays. I’ll have to tackle these this week as lunchtime reading.

Religion and society: The Invisible Pink Unicorn talks about what happens when an agnostic reads the Bible with an open mind:

You notice that I haven’t said anything about belief. I began the Bible as a hopeful, but indifferent, agnostic. I wished for a God, but I didn’t really care. I leave the Bible as a hopeless and angry agnostic. I’m brokenhearted about God.

After reading about the genocides, the plagues, the murders, the mass enslavements, the ruthless vengeance for minor sins (or none at all), and all that smiting—every bit of it directly performed, authorized, or approved by God—I can only conclude that the God of the Hebrew Bible, if He existed, was awful, cruel, and capricious. He gives us moments of beauty—such sublime beauty and grace!—but taken as a whole, He is no God I want to obey and no God I can love.

That is pretty much my reaction when I read it (back when I was a Christian); the people in the Bible struck me as a bunch of crude savages who believed in a primitive, gruesome deity.

The author gives the responses that he gets: many Christians remind him that Jesus made it all better in the New Testament and the Jews he talked to said that “he didn’t get it; God works in mysterious ways”.

The response I got from the more educated Catholic priests was “don’t worry about that (the atrocities in the OT/Hebrew Bible); this was some little tribe popping off about how powerful they were and dressing up their (often empty) boasts in
“god talk”. Many of the Catholic footnotes even say “this can’t be true but this is what the people thought at the time” several times.

The Catholic explanations made the most sense to me, though I decided that the most honest approach is to take the “well, that isn’t true but the primitive people at the time thought that” to ALL of the incredible stories, not just for the unpalatable ones!

Is the United States a Christian Nation? The wingnuts says “yes” but….sometimes say no?

he next time you get into a debate with a fundamentalist who insists that this is a Christian nation, ask them which denominations they consider Christian. Do they consider Catholics Christians? You might be surprised to find many do not. Likewise for many of the more liberal sects. When you go through the list, you’ll find that to many fundamentalists (Church of Christ, Nazerene, Pentecostal, Methodists), a very small minority qualify as Christians. Yet when wanting to persuade people that we are a christian nation, they include all those liberal sects. They use a double standard and should be called on it. The only way they can rightly claim the nation is majority Christian, they have to grant that status to Catholics and Episcopalians and all the other liberal sects.

Yes, in terms of “cultural values” I’d say that this is a mostly Christian nation though there are many, many (if not most) who don’t follow a religion that would be recognizable to the early Christians; most appear to take a cafeteria approach (use what is palatable, dismiss what isn’t). And of course, we have a number of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, New Age religion types and generic theists. Yes, we have unbelievers too; some professions (science) are dominated by these.

Update: there was a new survey that was reported in this morning’s paper:

The percentage of Americans who call themselves Christians has dropped dramatically over the past two decades, and those who do are increasingly identifying themselves without traditional denomination labels, according to a major study of U.S. religion being released today. [...]

The only group that grew in every U.S. state since the 2001 survey was people saying they had “no” religion; the survey says this group is now 15 percent of the population. Silk said this group is likely responsible for the shrinking percentage of Christians in the United States. [...]

A pdf file of the report can be found here.

Here is a graphic from USA today:

Here is a discussion on this report at Friendly Atheist.

I hasten to point out that the “no religion” types are NOT necessarily atheists or agnostics. For example, my father rejected all of the established religions and yet believed in a god of some sort; in fact he would sometimes talk to it. But he didn’t believe in the god of a particular religion; he could best be labeled as a “generic theist”.

Fails:

This hits way too close to home:

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I have a running friend who has since moved to St. Louis. She used to date a current friend of mine. Anyway she asked me to stay for dinner with her and her boyfriend; he asked her “aren’t you embarrassed to let Ollie see your house like this?” She said “no, I’ve seen his office”.

This Fail also makes me smile:

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It kind of reminds me of this Julie Larson cartoon (which is a bit of a fail; can you tell me why?)

3quarksdaily

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A Former Republican Speaks out

From the Huffington Post:

You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the “architect” America just hired — President Obama — to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created. [...]

President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited. I say economic and military cataclysm because without the needless war in Iraq you all backed we would not be in the economic mess we’re in today. If that money had been spent here at home on renovating our infrastructure, taking us toward a green economy, putting our health-care system in order we’d be a very different situation. [...]

The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors.

Wow.