26 May 2009 (am)

Workout notes yoga, then 4 mile walk with Ms. Vickie followed by a social breakfast. I was slightly sore.

Walking You meet some interesting characters when you walk long distances. I’ve walked with Larry at the 2006 Houston 24 hour, the 2007 Fans 24 hour and at the 2007 Ultracentric. Well, Larry is an accomplished writer (fiction) and here is a piece on him in USA Today.

Politics: Mostly I am happy with President Obama’s pick, but there is one thing I don’t like about her.

Here is more criticism from the left and a link to more detailed discussion (which is very fair to justices Alito and Roberts) is here.

From the last link:

Opponents’ first claim – likely stated obliquely and only on background – will be that Judge Sotomayor is not smart enough for the job. This is a critical ground for the White House to capture. The public expects Supreme Court Justices to be brilliant. Harriet Miers was painted (frequently, by conservatives) as not up to the job. The same claim (absurd to anyone who has talked with him) is still made by the left about Clarence Thomas. By contrast, John Roberts was described as brilliant and Sam Alito as exceptionally smart.

The objective evidence is that Sotomayor is in fact extremely intelligent. Graduating at the top of the class at Princeton is a signal accomplishment. Her opinions are thorough, well-reasoned, and clearly written. Nothing suggests she isn’t the match of the other Justices.

Update Ten Key Points, including one that the Republicans will attack.

10. SOTOMAYOR ON THE CONSTITUTION AND “JUDICIAL ACTIVISM”: The ubiquitous conservative attack on Sotomayor stems from a 2005 statement she made describing the role appellate justices have in forming policy, which they claim is akin to an endorsement of “judicial activism.”

“All of the legal defense funds out there, they are looking for people with court of appeals experience because the court of appeals is where policy is made,” she said, laughing a bit through the next part: “And I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don’t make law. I know. Okay, I know. I’m not promoting it. I’m not advocating it. I know.”

But as legal scholars have noted, Sotomayor’s statement is entirely factual:

“She’s not wrong,” said Jeffrey Segal, a professor of law at Stony Brook University. “Of course they make policy… You can, on one hand, say Congress makes the law and the court interprets it. But on the other hand the law is not always clear. And in clarifying those laws, the courts make policy.”

Eric Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University, was equally dismissive of this emerging conservative talking point. “She was saying something which is the absolute judicial equivalent of saying the sun rises each morning. It is not a controversial proposition at all that the overwhelming quantity of law making work in the federal system is done by the court of appeals… It is thoroughly uncontroversial to anyone other than a determined demagogue.”

Indeed, during her 1997 confirmation hearing, Sotomayor spoke of her judicial philosophy, saying “I don’t believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it.”

Expect the Republicans to complain loudly about this pick. Yes, they know that they can’t stop her, but they can use this pick to attempt to fire up their base and to shake them down for money; they also will try to use this to fire up their 2010 campaign.

Science This is a very interesting and entertaining article about the evolution of the house cat. Have you ever wondered why there is more variation among dog breeds than among cat breeds? Go here to find out; also you might be interested in knowing that the domestic cat really evolved about 10,000 years ago and are, on the whole, less tame than dogs.

Rant of the Day:

No one rants better!

Priceless Expression….

It is fun to watch a woman stretch.

It is even more fun when they are wearing a thong.

It is even more fun when you don’t expect it; check out the expression of this guy’s face. He is heterosexual, all right.

Side note: her butt is too far back for an optimal stretch; it ought to be more over her feet. One way to practice this is to do this with a friend “back to back”; the first time I did this with my yoga teacher we almost knocked ourselves over.

25 May 2009 (I)

NBA: Last night’s game ended up 98-88 Magic; however the game was competitive as the Cavaliers actually lead for much of the third quarter and were within 5 points with 3 minutes to go:

In short, LeBron James played well (41 points) but the rest of the team didn’t do that much. The Magic had a much more balanced team effort; we’ll see how the Cavaliers respond.

I am really enjoying the conference finals.

Security Issues How well do you remember your various passwords or your various answers to the so-called secret questions? How secure is this method anyway? Read this post and you won’t feel too bad.

California’s troubles: California is having economic troubles. So, it is the fault of the liberals, right? Wrong.

The recession has hit the Golden State hard. The housing bubble was bigger there than almost anywhere else, and the bust has been bigger too. California’s unemployment rate, at 11 percent, is the fifth-highest in the nation. And the state’s revenues have suffered accordingly.

What’s really alarming about California, however, is the political system’s inability to rise to the occasion.

Despite the economic slump, despite irresponsible policies that have doubled the state’s debt burden since Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor, California has immense human and financial resources. It should not be in fiscal crisis; it should not be on the verge of cutting essential public services and denying health coverage to almost a million children. But it is — and you have to wonder if California’s political paralysis foreshadows the future of the nation as a whole.

The seeds of California’s current crisis were planted more than 30 years ago, when voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 13, a ballot measure that placed the state’s budget in a straitjacket. Property tax rates were capped, and homeowners were shielded from increases in their tax assessments even as the value of their homes rose.

Krugman goes on to point out that California’s laws require things like tax increases to be approved by a 2/3 vote; hence the minority party can cause havoc.

Well, in a rational world Mr. Gross’s warning would make no sense. America’s projected deficits may sound large, yet it would take only a modest tax increase to cover the expected rise in interest payments — and right now American taxes are well below those in most other wealthy countries. The fiscal consequences of the current crisis, in other words, should be manageable.

But that presumes that we’ll be able, as a political matter, to act responsibly. The example of California shows that this is by no means guaranteed. And the political problems that have plagued California for years are now increasingly apparent at a national level.

To be blunt: recent events suggest that the Republican Party has been driven mad by lack of power. The few remaining moderates have been defeated, have fled, or are being driven out. What’s left is a party whose national committee has just passed a resolution solemnly declaring that Democrats are “dedicated to restructuring American society along socialist ideals,” and released a video comparing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Pussy Galore.

And that party still has 40 senators.

So will America follow California into ungovernability? Well, California has some special weaknesses that aren’t shared by the federal government. In particular, tax increases at the federal level don’t require a two-thirds majority, and can in some cases bypass the filibuster. So acting responsibly should be easier in Washington than in Sacramento.

But the California precedent still has me rattled. Who would have thought that America’s largest state, a state whose economy is larger than that of all but a few nations, could so easily become a banana republic?

The US Military and Fundamentalist Religion

Read the whole article here. This is a snippet:

A Robert Draper article in Gentleman’s Quarterly revealed that some of the top-secret “World Wide Intelligence Briefings” that Rumsfeld provided to Bush were covered with photographs of Americans at war, and captions taken from Scripture. In one, above a huddle of GIs apparently at prayer, is the question famously put by God, “Whom shall I send and who will go for Us?” Over the soldiers is the answer from Isaiah: “Here I am, Lord. Send me.” Above a trooper hunched over a machine gun is this promise from Proverbs: “Commit to the Lord, whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.” Another cover shows Isaiah-inspired US tanks: “Open the gates that the righteous nation may enter.”

Sent by God. Protected by God. Sure to succeed. The righteous nation. A war defined not merely as just, but as holy. Such manifestations are one thing from eccentric religious groups operating on the fringe of the US military, in space guaranteed by freedom of religion. It is another when they show up at the peak of the chain of command – and from inside the intelligence community, which is charged with nothing less than defining the character of America’s wars.

Those downplaying the significance of Draper’s revelations suggest the wily Rumsfeld was just indulging the born-again commander-in-chief. Others merely blame the Bible-thumping Air Force general who prepared the briefing documents for the secretary of defense. (Once, that general would have been my father, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. A convinced Catholic, yet he would be appalled and alarmed by this business.)

No matter what the down-players say, Draper’s revelation is only the latest of many that show a US military unduly influenced by an extreme kind of Christian evangelicalism.

Why should that appall and alarm? Let me suggest a biblical seven reasons:

Follow the link to continue. But basically, this type of belief that one has some sort of divine sanction for its mission can blind military leaders to cold hard reality; remember that the Nazis were superb military tacticians and that they were mostly defeated by an overwhelming numerically superior force from an atheistic state (Soviet Russia). True, the US did fight the Germans and true, many of our soldiers died. But the fact is that we faced less than a third of the German Army.

Memorial Day Operation Santa Race

Today, I went with my friend Tracy Harris to participate in a 4 mile running race; this was to benefit “operation Santa” (which provides holiday gifts for members of our armed forces).

It was cool (65 F), breezy and there was some very sporadic light drizzle. The course was mostly flat and consisted of 3 loops (minimal turns) followed by a finish on the warning track of a A baseball stadium.

Facts: my watch: 31:58 (much faster than my 32:03 “official” time ) via: 8:04, 8:00, 7:53, 8:01.

I managed one warm up mile; my legs were heavy but not as heavy as I feared that they would be, given that I had the marathon (walking) a week ago, 20 miles (total) on Saturday and a hilly 10 mile hike yesterday.
I started off near the back (hence the 5 seconds to the start line) and the first mile was slow going. I was tracking Terry Whitehead and Bill Holmes; both who usually either beat me or come close.

I was able to pass them at mile one and I focused on bending my knees and taking slightly quicker, shorter strides. The first loop passed without incident.

The next mile came about the same; I was moving up slightly and didn’t feel that bad.

Mile 3 came a bit quicker as I had a tail wind for much of this leg; note that as I started the third loop, the winner blew past me.

I was passing the slower walkers by then and trying my best to catch up to Pat O’Bryan (I never got her); I could spot her bouncing pony-tail in the distance. I did catch a few people though one guy with a shaved head got me at the end. As I struggled against the breeze, it was difficult to keep the leg turn over higher; I kept wanting to overstride. I didn’t feel THAT bad but I couldn’t make myself go; I can do what I don’t practice.

Mentally I was content to “maintain” which is what I did.

Afterward, I walked back onto the course to see Tracy (who got 3′rd in her age group); we ate and then socialized a bit. Whether or not we go to the baseball game (class A team) depends on the weather; it is a bit rainy).

This is the stadium where the race started; the course was three “rectangles” followed by a short stretch into the stadium and part way around the warning track.

24 May 2009; Memorial Day Eve

Workout notes I thought about swimming but it was too pretty to not get outside. It was a bit warm but I hiked the McNaughton 10 mile loop in 3:35. I saw a deer, a toad (quickly) and a snake (near Heaven’s Gate). I didn’t get lost on the Bluebird stretch this time. It was in the low 80s (warm by comparison to recent weather) and my right “behind the knee” squawked a bit as it usually does in warm, humid and “rain in the forecast” days.

Overall, the hike was pleasant. I went to visit the frogs at the pond, but they jumped in the water when I went to say “hi”.

NBA This year’s playoffs have been exciting. Last night the Lakers beat the Nuggets in another good game; Kobe Bryant made some key shots down the stretch. The Lakers trailed for most of the game.

Tonight I’ll watch Cleveland versus Orlando.

Here is a treat from the past (1985-1986 Celtic season):

Watch the Hawks bench at 4:15 into the video; Bird just hit a difficult shot.

I saw Larry Bird play in person (once); he scored 39 points (and had 2 dunks) and finished with a triple double. I’ve also seen Kevin McHale, Robert Parrish, Dennis Johnson, Magic Johnson, Kareem Jabbar (several times), James Worthy, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon (twice), Moses Malone, Karl Malone and John Stockton. This was during the 1985-1991 era where it was easy to get San Antonio Spurs tickets. In those days, 5 dollars got you a nose bleed ticket and 22 dollars got you rim level for a PLAY-OFF game against the Magic Johnson lead Lakers!!! Those days are long gone.

Nature
Check out animal camouflage at Conservation Report. Remember that for most animals, to be seen is to be eaten.

Politics
Robert Reich: presents a modest proposal to help people pay for college. He proposes that students be eligible for a “full ride” in return for 10 percent of their annual salary for the next 10 years. The plan is worth reading; but this type of plan has, say, someone going into teaching pay less than, say, a medical doctor. Sure, this system can be gamed and my guess is that many conservatives will bellow about “socialism”, but so what? Hey, it is an interesting idea to consider anyway.

Social

First, a bit of chest thumping for liberals: Paul Krugman mocks the “know nothings” of economics:

The PEN/New York Review panel discussion on the economy is online. I’ll outsource the discussion of what went down to Brad DeLong. Just this to add: it’s bad enough to have people resurrecting 75-year old fallacies about macroeconomics right in the middle of a crisis in which knowledge is our only defense against catastrophe. What’s really bad, however, is when they do so believing that these fallacies are deep insights that have somehow eluded those of us who have, you know, been studying these issues for a while, and saw some (not all) of this crisis in advance.

I love it when an expert tells the “wannabes” to STFU.

Here is more from Professor Krugman:

As I noted a while back, a lot of anti-environmentalism in America these days is about symbolism. And I think the same thing is true about pro-sprawl commentary. Consider the case of Portland, Oregon. Conservatives really, really hate on Portland; examples here and here. Aside from the tendency to engage in factual errors, the hate seems disproportionate to the cause. But it’s an aesthetic thing: conservatives seem deeply offended by anything that challenges the image of Americans as big men driving big cars.

Me, I like dense urban areas. But I’m a pointy-headed intellectual. And bearded, too.

Now that got me up, clapping, and reacting like the Atlanta Hawks bench reacted to Larry Bird’s shooting (see the video at 4:15 into it)

Some snark
I didn’t know that Republicans lived in China:

Chen Fuchao, a man heavily in debt, had been contemplating suicide on a bridge in southern China for hours when a passer-by came up, shook his hand _ and pushed him off the ledge.

Chen fell 26 feet (8 meters) onto a partially inflated emergency air cushion laid out by authorities and survived, suffering spine and elbow injuries, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.

The passer-by, 66-year-old Lai Jiansheng, had been fed up with what he called Chen’s “selfish activity,” Xinhua said. Traffic around the Haizhu bridge in the city of Guangzhou had been backed up for five hours and police had cordoned off the area.

“I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest,” Lai was quoted as saying by Xinhua. “They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities’ attention to their appeals.”

Lai would fit right in.

Republican hate mail: see some of the hate mail Markos Moulitsas got.

Dick Morris Mr. Morris makes the argument that, “yeah, the Guantanamo detainees won’t escape from US prisons, but there are Federal Judges just dying to turn them loose if they (the detainees) were ever to enter the US judicial system.

More Serious Politics

Fareed Zakaria: Iran might not be as insane as you think; they have no desire to enter into an “end times” type of war.

verything you know about Iran is wrong, or at least more complicated than you think. Take the bomb. The regime wants to be a nuclear power but could well be happy with a peaceful civilian program (which could make the challenge it poses more complex). What’s the evidence? Well, over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were “un-Islamic.” The country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral. In a subsequent sermon, he declared that “developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam.” Last year Khamenei reiterated all these points after meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Now, of course, they could all be lying. But it seems odd for a regime that derives its legitimacy from its fidelity to Islam to declare constantly that these weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them. It would be far shrewder to stop reminding people of Khomeini’s statements and stop issuing new fatwas against nukes. [...]

Iran isn’t a dictatorship. It is certainly not a democracy. The regime jails opponents, closes down magazines and tolerates few challenges to its authority. But neither is it a monolithic dictatorship. It might be best described as an oligarchy, with considerable debate and dissent within the elites. Even the so-called Supreme Leader has a constituency, the Assembly of Experts, who selected him and whom he has to keep happy. Ahmadinejad is widely seen as the “mad mullah” who runs the country, but he is not the unquestioned chief executive and is actually a thorn in the side of the clerical establishment. He is a layman with no family connections to major ayatollahs—which makes him a rare figure in the ruling class. He was not initially the favored candidate of the Supreme Leader in the 2005 election. Even now the mullahs clearly dislike him, and he, in turn, does things deliberately designed to undermine their authority. Iran might be ready to deal. We can’t know if a deal is possible since we’ve never tried to negotiate one, not directly. While the regime appears united in its belief that Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear program—a position with broad popular support—some leaders seem sensitive to the costs of the current approach. It is conceivable that these “moderates” would appreciate the potential benefits of limiting their nuclear program, including trade, technology and recognition by the United States. [...]

Party Discipline FiveThrityEight has an interesting article about party discipline in the United States versus the rest of the world:

While the trends are quite similar in overall voting clarity, one importance difference emerges between the Senate and the EP with regards to discipline. In the U.S. Senate, with two similarly-sized parties, the party in power tends to vote more similarly. Or conversely, the party that votes more similarly tends to be in power. The opposite seems to be true in the EP, with the ruling EPP-DE coalition struggling to match the voting unity of the smaller PES and Green parties. The two more volatile of the coalitions, the EPP-DE and ALDE – both alliances of two smaller pan-European parties – have in some years posted cohesion rates of 10 to 15 points lower than their rivals.

Of course, the House is larger and more unwieldy.

23 May 2009 Running and Walking

At 5:50 I woke up and ate breakfast. At 6:30 am I decided to go ahead and run a certified 5K in a nearby town, Chillicothe, IL.
The event was called the Riverrun (results here)

Time: 25:40, or 8:16 minutes per mile.

I got there at 7:20, registered, and then warmed up. My legs were like lead; my calves were heavy. So, I did about 2 miles.

Then came the race; I decided to stay behind someone who had been finishing a few seconds behind me; I forgot that he had been doing speedwork.

This strategy got me to mile 1 in 7:35. I thought “hey, I didn’t know that I could sustain this for 5K”. About 400 meters later I found out that I couldn’t; I ended up walking. I took a few more jog and walk reps before I could return to easy running; that disastrous second mile took 8:43 and got me to mile 2 in 16:19. I was able to sustain a medium run for the last 1.1 miles (9:21, or about 8:31 for that mile) and get it over with; afterward I walked around trying to shake it off.

The cool down gave me 6 miles total.

I then drove to the Rock Island Trail and walked 14 miles (plus). It was warm though we were to get a brief rain shower when I was 12 miles into it.

This walk (easy effort) took 3:24; (14:35 pace) I was about 1 minute faster on the return leg. The trail is crushed limestone and that makes for somewhat slower than road walking.

The highlights of my walk

1. I saw a coyote; it was on the trail, scrambled off and then I saw it running though the brush along side of me.

2. With three miles to go, I heard the unmistakable mating call of the green frog. The recent heavy rains had made a temporary ditch and it was sitting beside the water! It jumped in very quickly, as did its buddy.

Later, I heard the cry of the American toad.

My right leg bothered me a bit (behind the knee) but given the fact that it was warm, humid and rain was on the way, that was entirely understandable.

One other thing I noticed: trail traffic is highest within 1-2 miles of the entrances (Alta, Dunlap, various McMansion parks) but tapers off very quickly. I like getting past those points where the “once in a while when the weather is pretty” types are long gone.

I did notice my former mechanic (the shop that he worked at closed due to owner retirement) on the trail; he was running very smoothly and efficiently.

In all, I collected 20 miles (5 run, 15 walk) for the day; I’ll shut it down for while, aside from a “fun” social 4 mile run on Memorial Day and perhaps something longer on the weekend of June 6-7.

Cavaliers 96, Magic 95; the series is tied.

Wow. There were two field goals in the last second. Orlando had been down by 23 points in the third quarter and rallied to trade the lead over the last few minutes of the 4′th quarter.

Then with the game tied at 93, Turkoglu drove and hit a runner to put the Magic up 95-93 with ONE second left on the clock.

The Cavaliers inbound, and James does a quick catch and shoot from well behind the three point line: swish.

Instead of being down 0-2, it is now 1-1.

(photos from yahoo nba)

All of the 4 semi-final games have been outstanding.

U. S. Naval Academy Graduation

The story can be found here.

(hat tip)

Goodness, was it really 28 years ago when I did that? Vice President George H. W. Bush was our speaker.

Waterboarding

Keep in mind that this person knows that the water boarding people will not kill him.

The Body vs. Evil

more about "The Body vs. Evil", posted with vodpod