22 April 2009

Workout notes 3000 yard swim; 500 warm up, 10 x 50 swim/drill (fins), 5 x 100 fist, 5 x (50 free, 50 paddle), 10 x (25 fly, 75 free) on the 2 (1:43-46 each; last was in 1:49).

No comment on this:

Beach volleyball could be heading back to school.

An NCAA committee voted this month to add sand volleyball to a list of women’s sports being considered for intercollegiate competition. The sport, known on the professional and Olympic levels as beach volleyball, could be under NCAA auspices as soon as 2009-10.

“It’s a very exciting development, and it’s certainly an acknowledgment that there’s substantial growth in popularity in beach volleyball,” said Leonard Armato, the commissioner of the domestic pro tour. “I think it’s going to be an easy transition for the schools, and there’s going to be lots of girls that want to play.”

Although it spun off from the indoor game almost a century ago, beach volleyball didn’t get competitive until after World War II, and it was first recognized as an Olympic sport in 1996. After the 2004 Games in Athens, when American women won the gold and bronze medals, the AVP recorded 48 percent growth in its fan base.

“I would imagine a similar spike, no pun intended, after the Beijing Games,” Armato said. “Especially since we have the two gold medal favorites.”

Good Sleep Again!

My sleep patterns have returned to normal. Yes! I am drinking coffee and will swim at 7 am.

I’ve been on facebook for a few weeks. Right now some LDS person (aka Mormon) is trying to convert me. It is interesting: what many don’t seem to get is that atheists (such as myself) find ALL magic (reading plates with seer stones, magic golden tablets, etc) to be incredible nonsense.

True, if someone already believes in resurrected bodies, burning bushes, miracles, etc. then they would be far easier to reach.

Politics
I’ve been reading The Nation magazine and I see that some are disappointed with President Obama.

All is not well in Obamafanland. It’s not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury’s latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president’s chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Or perhaps it began earlier, with Obama’s silence during Israel’s Gaza attack.

Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.

This is a good thing. If the superfan culture that brought Obama to power is going to transform itself into an independent political movement, one fierce enough to produce programs capable of meeting the current crises, we are all going to have to stop hoping and start demanding.

I am not; far from it; I am thrilled with President Obama! Why the difference?

Well, I took then candidate Obama seriously when he said that good change would not be easy. But mostly, what I really wanted was to have a President who is smart and in touch with reality. I didn’t expect to have someone who agrees with me on every single issue or who was going to wave problems away with a magic wand.

I think that we HAVE that smart, capable president in charge right now.

Politics: torture memos This is an example of the honest conversation that I expect to see:

WASHINGTON – President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.

Admiral Blair sent his memo on the same day the administration publicly released secret Bush administration legal memos authorizing the use of interrogation methods that the Obama White House has deemed to be illegal torture. Among other things, the Bush administration memos revealed that two captured Qaeda operatives were subjected to a form of near-drowning known as waterboarding a total of 266 times.

Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past,” he wrote, “but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.” [...]

Mr. Obama’s team has cast doubt on the effectiveness of the harsh interrogations, but in a visit to the C.I.A. this week, the president did not directly question that. Instead, he said, any disadvantage imposed by banning those tactics was worth it.

“I’m sure that sometimes it seems as if that means we’re operating with one hand tied behind our back or that those who would argue for a higher standard are naïve,” he said. “I understand that. You know, I watch the cable shows once in a while.”

But he added: “What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy.”

Emphasis mine.

Now for a different topic: small government: this is a link to a case study. Basically a village wanted to lower taxes at all costs. This was one consequence:

There’s only one problem in Crestwood! The municipal water is too cheap!

For more than two decades, the 11,000 or so residents in this working-class community unknowingly drank tap water contaminated with toxic chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems, a Tribune investigation found.

As village officials were building a national reputation for pinching pennies, and sending out fliers proclaiming Crestwood water was “Good to taste but not to waste!,” state and village records obtained by the newspaper show they secretly were drawing water from a contaminated well, apparently to save money.

Twenty-two years ago, state environmental regulators told Crestwood’s that their cheap well water was contaminated. Likely by one of the “mom and pop” businesses the mayor extolled. But Crestwood kept using the contaminated well, and kept telling residents that the water was tested and safe.

Jon Stewart on Torture, Richard Dawkins, Earth Like Planets and Inhofe’s amazing stupidity

overcoming irrationality, religious and otherwise, one post at a time

more about "The Invisible Pink Unicorn: Were Hars…", posted with vodpod

Science/Religion/Society

Here is an excellent hour long talk by Ricard Dawkins. He discusses origins, “faith”, underhanded theistic tactics and other topics.

Science Two earthlike planets discovered “nearby” (ok, 20 light years away) It turns out that one of these lies in a “life possible” zone:

It probably wouldn’t feel exactly like home. But the planet known as Gliese 581d has a lot more in common with Earth than astronomers first thought.

New measurements of the planet’s orbit place it firmly in a region where conditions would be right for liquid water, and thus life as we know it, astronomer Michel Mayor, from Geneva University in Switzerland, announced today.

“It lies in the [life-supporting] habitable zone, and it could have an ocean at its surface,” Mayor said during the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science conference, being held this week at the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K.

First discovered in 2007, Gliese 581d was originally calculated to be too far away from its host star—and therefore too cold—to support an ocean.

But Mayor and colleagues now show that the extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, orbits its host in 66.8 days, putting it just inside the cool star’s habitable zone.

At the same time, Mayor and colleagues announced that they have spotted a fourth planet orbiting in the Gliese 581 star system—and it’s the lightest exoplanet found so far.

The planet, dubbed Gliese 581e, is only about twice the mass of Earth and is the closest planet to the star, completing its orbit in about 3.15 days.

Stupidity The epitome of Republican stupidity: Senator James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma:

Senator James Inhofe, the other batshit crazy, searingly stupid Senator from Oklahoma, took time out from his daily, fact-deprived denials of global warming to declare that he plans on filibustering the nomination of Judge David Hamilton of Indiana to the Seventh Circuit because . . . wait for it . . . he thinks Hamilton is an undercover Muslim.

Inhofe’s San Andreas-sized faulty logic, via the blog Overruled:

In his conclusion [of Hinrichs v. Bosmah], Hamilton wrote: “If the Speaker chooses to continue any form of legislative prayer, he shall advise persons offering such a prayer (a) that it must be nonsectarian and must not be used to proselytize or advance any one faith or belief or to disparage any other faith or belief, and (b) that they should refrain from using Christ’s name or title or any other denominational appeal.” Further, ruling on a postjudgment motion, Hamilton stated that invoking the name of “Allah” would not advance a particular religion or disparage another. So, praying to Allah would be perfectly acceptable.

Talk about a leap of faith. If Inhofe had the reading comprehension skills necessary to score higher than a 200 on the SATs, he’d understand that what Hamilton was actually stating was that according to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Marsh v. Chambers, opening a government proceeding with the generic term “God”, in any language, be it English, Urdu, or yes, even Arabic, is to be considered nonsectarian and thus, acceptable under the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. However, specifying “Jesus Christ” is, ipso facto, Christian, and thus, sectarian and violates that silly document we use to create and monitor our laws.