18 May 2009: am.

Workout notes Nothing yet; probably a brief swim over lunch. I am a bit stiff and sore from yesterday’s marathon walk.

Topics of the day

Science Texas has a problem with fire ants. But there is a type of fly that actually uses fire ants as a incubating place for its larva. Check out the post for some interesting pictures.

Giraffes

Science Avenger pointed its readers to this video: note that giraffes fight each other and use their necks as weapons!

Humor

What if faith healers entered the plastic surgery area?

(hat tip: friendly atheist)

To each their own I came across a site that had a post about men in lycra (a gay men’s site?). They had a photo of a guy wearing those long swimming pants (like a wet suit bottom) and noticed that they entirely missed the much more attractive image in the photograph:

How could they have missed this?

This does lead to a “serious” point though: I am hardwired to find certain sights attractive (e. g., this) and other people (including most women) are not. My brain reminds me of this but the emotions are strong; I have a hard time, on an emotional level, understanding how someone is NOT attracted to such things.

This TED video discusses this very well:

Religion and Soceity
The Los Angeles Times carries an editorial about the “angry atheists”. Yes, some atheists got their feelings hurt; I am not one of them.

Sure, I agree with Sam Harris that

This is, without a doubt, one of the most embarrassingly stupid attacks on the “new atheists” to be published in a major newspaper.

So, I’ll give a response. Frankly, I don’t care to “engage a theologian” on the existence of deities, spirits, or whatever. I care about this issue for basically two reasons:

1. The idea that some deity will intervene supernaturally in the affairs of this world is a dangerous one. This is but one reason why. Another reason: consider the number of people who think that creationism has a place in the science classroom.

2. “Morals” obtained as the result of believing in some myth of superstition can lead to painful outcomes: some are cruel but non-fatal and others can be cruel and fatal (example one) (example two); see more here.

If one accepts naturalism (e. g., things in this universe happen for natural reasons) and that one accepts that the “morals” in the major holy books are seriously flawed (e. g., accept the thinking of the people who wrote them at that time) and really don’t apply now, I honestly don’t care what people believe.

Sure I find the Christian theology (e. g. that some deity sent part of itself to be sacrificed to forgive “sin”) to be patently absurd, but, in reality, who really cares. After all, I still take yoga classes thought yoga teachers often spout off complete nonsense.

Some 17 May Remarks

I am watching the Celtic-Magic game. The Magic have burned it up from 3-point land and it is 81-66 Magic with only 8 minutes left in the game. The Celtics did come within 3 but the Magic had an answer to every Celtic charge. This game is all but over.

Oh well; where Orlando will in all likelihood get beat by Cleveland, they are in better position to at least win a game or two in that series.

Pierce just missed 2 free throws; it has been that kind of game.

Update: the Magic are up 95-78 with 3:01 to go; this one is over. Ooops, make it 99-78.

Other comments

I looked at today’s letters to the editor. There were letters from readers that said that it was good to question evolution, that creationism ought to be taken seriously.

Of course, the Journal Star was correct to publish the letters, no matter how ignorant, stupid or misguided they are.

All one has to do is to look at every major science department or at every major lab; whether evolution happened is not in question. If there was any justice at all, these creationist morons would be denied the benefits of modern medicine, much of whose development depends on the principles of evolution.

Bradley Graduation It ran well over 3 hours despite the graduate school moving its graduation to another time.

The graduation was, for me, very painful. The only part I enjoyed was, believe it or not, Representative Aaron Schock’s speech. It was the right length, and I thought that he gave good advice.

The Journal Star has the story here:

“It’s worth remembering that the best human qualities are widely dispersed. Like wisdom, neither side can claim to have them all,” Schock told the 900 graduating seniors and thousands of their family members and friends in attendance.

“When you choose your friends, what matters most is goodness of character and the way they treat others, especially the most defenseless,” he said. “Kindness, decency and honor have no political affiliation, and in a free country, they never will.” [...]

“The conventional view is that you’ve got to draw lines – between this group and that, between the ones you talk with and the ones you talk about. But nothing positive ever comes of that attitude, and besides, it’s boring – a sure way to narrow your thinking, close off other ideas, and turn away goodwill.

“The fact is, you can go a lifetime admiring someone and trying to be more like them without ever knowing or much caring what their politics are.” [...]

“Some of my new colleagues in the Congress have been around a long time. One senator was there when Harry Truman was president. I’ve gotten to know one member who was also elected when he was still in his 20s and will soon mark his 83rd birthday,” Schock said.

“It’s not hard to suppose that I came into office with a different perspective on many things. And I know that part of my job is to let an old institution hear the voice of a new generation.”

Note that one of the speakers who went on before Schock went on and on and on and on…so when Schock went on he said something to the effect that “I made it through Bradley in about half the normal time, and so to honor that my speech will be at half the usual length”. He also said that people were there to celebrate their graduation and not to listen to long speeches; the crowd erupted in cheers.

Here is a link to Schock’s speech.

Later, despite requests that individual graduates not get cheers, it happened anyway. In fact, there was a request from the podium to “keep the graduation dignified” but that went unheeded.

Also, a request went out for the undergraduates to quit playing with a beach ball that they were bouncing around.

In short, this ceremony reminded me a bit of Animal House.

There was part of me that actually was happy about the boorish behavior of the graduates and the parents; at least the upper administration got a peek at what we have to deal with on a daily basis.

Social-Political Commentary
In my community, there is one high profile person that is mostly popular. Personally, though I don’t see this person as evil, I just don’t like the person.

But because this person is so popular with others, I find myself feeling resentment beyond anything that this person has done to affect me.

I then remembered: “I’ve felt this before”.

I felt this way during the first 7 years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency (though I like what he did toward the end).

No, Reagan wasn’t evil (in the way that I see Dick Cheney) nor was he as incompetent as President George W. Bush. But I just didn’t “get” his wild popularity with much of the public; I saw him as a bit of a dim-witted buffoon who told stories and did little else. I admit that the book Role of a Lifetime helped me understand more.

So, this helps me understand some of the bitterness that some feel toward President Obama.

True, some of it is race (among a percentage of people), and some of it is anti-intellectualism. But my guess is that much of it stems from the fact that some who don’t support him just don’t see why he is so popular with so many.

Like him or not, President Obama has style and charisma and I happen to like him because he is an intellectual and because he put people like Stephen Chu (Nobel laureate in physics) in his cabinet.

To me, he is the anti-Reagan; I once said that I hope that President Obama does for smart people what President Reagan did for dummies. President Reagan made it cool to be stupid and ignorant, and hopefully President Obama will make it cool to be smart and informed.

Rockford Marathon 2009

Note to visitors If you are looking for results, I found them here. They weren’t easy to find.

Just the facts I walked 100 percent of the time, though my right knee probably wasn’t straight enough for me to call it a legal racewalk.

Time: 5:14:26 (chip) (2:35/2:39, 2.6 percent slow down). Pace: 11:59.5 minutes per mile.
Note: the official tag that they let me print out had my time exactly right, but they calculated my pace at 12:01. I don’t tolerate round off error.

Place: 191/215 (remember that I was walking) (203/227 by Marathonguide)

This was my fastest walking marathon since 2004 when I walked the Quad Cities Marathon in 5:13:21. This is my 4′th fastest walking marathon.

I’ll post official photos later; here is one of me, Froggy and Smoochie. Yes, I carried them in my pack and in my hands over the last .3-.4 miles or so. I took them out of my pack when Barbara greeted me at mile 25.8 with a “My Grandma can walk faster than that!”

At bit about the race itself; my personal report follows.

Pre-Post race amenities: excellent. Close in parking was easy, check in was easy, the goody bag had stuff you’d actually want (gum, coffee), plenty of potties, gear check, and they announced numbers of people who hadn’t picked up their gear as yet.

Post race food included drinks, bagels, fruit, and there was still a lot of stuff left when I finished.

They also had a massage table (that I did not use).

Volunteers, course support: excellent; all major intersections had police officers, lots of people on the course, potties too. Aid was frequent and plentiful though I only took water. The kids on the course cheered LOUD.

The course: I liked 25.4 of the 26.2 miles; it was mix of roads, paved bike path, parks, woodsy areas, residential streets (many very attractive), “strip mall-ish” stuff, some downtown and some along a river.

My only beef with the race was we had about a .8 mile stretch between mile 18 and 19 were we were on a moderately busy two lane road with no shoulder, no cones, no traffic control. The rest of it was well marked, coned off, etc.
Note: Runners (say, 4 hours and faster) may not have noticed this.

But over all, I liked the course. It was fast with only a few very small “not quite a hill” sections, and there was some scenic parts.

Other stuff There is a much larger half marathon that starts with the marathon. So, even slower runners and walkers will have company for much of the first half of the race. But at my pace (just faster than 12 minutes per mile), the course emptied out after the turn off; it took me about a mile to catch up to the next participant. I mostly caught people but there were usually pretty good sized gaps between marathoners.

It took about 40 seconds to get to the start line from the back of the pack, but it was easy to get into one’s pace right away.

The race was timed with a chip; marathon and half marathon individual participants were issued a “disposable chip” which hooked into your shoe laces; after the race you could go to a small computer, enter your bib number and get your time and place results immediately.

From the blogs: I found two blog posts on this year’s marathon: we have a 3:09 view of the race (lots of photos) and a 4:30′ish view. I also found someone who did a 6.X mile segment of the relay, but this individual was said “boo on that” because relay runners didn’t get a finisher’s medal and those that went either twice as far or 4 times as far did. That tells you what you need to know.

My race:

It was chilly at the start (35 F) and was to warm up into the low 60s at the finish. Still, I had no problems. Of course, I loved the spandex.

I lined up at the back and chatted with some runners including one who was interested in ultras.

We were off and I had no problems; I was amused at some older guy (dressed in black) who was walking and straining to stay with me early. The first miles were through city roads and came very quickly; I made the decision to take succeed tablets every 2-3 miles or so. That helped me avoid nausea (at least during the race) for the first time in a couple of years.

I was really enjoying all of the slower lady runners who were doing the half. My pace felt easy though I know that my knees were not perfect. 11:30-11:50 was not a strain.

But I was having some kidney issues even though I emptied my bladder just prior to the race; eventually I used the woods during one of the woody bike-path areas. When I returned a couple of ladies laughed and said “no fair”.

I was to have to use the bathroom one more time (just after mile 10).

The pace was easy to hold. One interesting stretch was the mile 10 to 12 where we went along a bike path which was near a river. A redwinged black bird was going crazy; it didn’t bomb me but it did “escort” me out of the area.

But we were to soon separate from the half marathon people; then the course emptied out. I did get a chance to see the winner and the second place finisher make it to 25.8 or so (2:30-ish for the winner).

It took me forever to catch up to the next person; I was by myself for long stretches but managed to catch people from time to time.

I remember reaching mile 16 in a pleasant neighborhood and then seeing some on their way back. But at 18-19 we had the bad stretch along the two lane road with no traffic control and no shoulder. It got better at mile 19.

By then nausea wasn’t a worry; I felt much better than I had this deep into a marathon (over the past 2-3 years). But I was slowing; my body wasn’t ready to sustain a mid to high 11 minute per mile pace.

Eventually those 11:45s crept to 11:55s to 12:10s.

But still, I was doing ok and felt good about my finish.

I kept saying “I’ll pick it up at mile: 20, 21, 22, 23 (park), but I never did; I mostly worked at maintaining.

Just prior to mile 26, we had crossed the river and were about to head back, I saw Barbara and she harassed me. So I took Froggy and Smoochy out of the back and carried them with me across to the finish.

My shins and hamstrings were a bit sore, but overall I felt good.

But I made the mistake of drinking too much water too soon; it came up (several times). But at about 2-2.5 hours afterward, my digestion system clicked back on and I was ok.

mile	time	cum time
1	11:34	11:24
2	11:46	23:20
3	11:36	34:57
4	11:16	46:13
5	11:48	58:02
6	12:48	1:10:51 (bathroom)
7	11:29	1:22:20
8	11:27	1:33:48
9	11:40	1:45:29
10	11:48	1:57:17
11	12:49	2:10:07 (bathroom)
12	11:47	2:21:54
13	12:01	2:33:56 (about 2:35:20 at half)
14	11:46	2:45:43
15	11:52	2:57:36
16	11:42	3:09:18
17	12:05	3:21:24
18	11:52	3:33:16
19	12:09	3:45:26
20	12:01	3:57:28
21	11:57	4:09:25
22	12:17	4:21:43
23	12:11	4:33:54
24	12:18	4:46:13
25	12:41	4:58:55
26	12:47	5:11:42
26.219	2:44	5:14:26 (12:30 pace for .219)

16 May 2009

Workout notes Rest.

Personal I have to march in graduation today. The speaker will be Aaron Schock, R-IL (18). He is a Bradley graduate and, in my opinion, a potential rising star in the Republican party. I’ll have to take notes.

Graduation exercises leave me with mixed feelings. On one hand, many of the students there did learn something and did put in some honest work. On the other hand, far too many were there to get their credential and were more interested in “gaming the system” than in doing the work to improve themselves.

And let’s face it: in terms of intellectually difficulty, undergraduate degrees (at most institutions) really aren’t difficult to attain. I admit that, for many, meeting the auxiliary challenges (financial, family problems, etc.) is a tough task.

Politics

President Obama’s weekly address:

Science: here is a snippet from an interview with Richard Dawkins:

The accusation is unfair, however. He is certainly uncompromising, but not wilfully rude or overbearing. He is generally polite, softly spoken, and precise in his statements – often taking uncomfortably long pauses to weigh up his replies to questions. He is certainly not a ranting demagogue. On the other hand, he is a ferocious debater.

I once caught him in action at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, at a public discussion with the then Archbishop of York, John Habgood. The latter, a quiet, rather restrained cleric had trained as a physiologist before finding God and was speaking in favour of the motion that science and religion were compatible.

Dawkins begged to disagree: science has shown that the universe is ruled by chance, not predestination, and has no room for God, an entity that should now only be spoken of “in the same way as Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy,” he argued.

One by one, Dawkins smashed down each attempt at compromise put forward by Habgood, who eventually left the stage, looking dazed and punch-drunk. “That was easy to sum up,” muttered a gloomy cleric sitting beside me. “Lions 10, Christians nil.”

For Dawkins, such performances are simply a matter of holding to one’s beliefs.

“I am most proud of The Selfish Gene, that is true, but I would also like to be remembered for standing up for sceptical rationalism, not just with respect to religion but with respect to homeopathy, astrology and all those other things.”

Indeed, this may turn out to be Dawkins’ real legacy. His last book, The God Delusion, published in 2006, says little about evolution and a great deal about organised religion, including a description of God as “a misogynist, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochist, capriciously malevolent bully”.

These words do not go down well in certain quarters, as you can imagine. Yet The God Delusion has since sold two million copies and has been translated into more than 30 languages. This was a book the world has been waiting for, it would seem.

“My dream is that it may help people to ‘come out’ as atheists,” adds Dawkins.

Emphasis mine.

Religion, The Bible, and all that

I sometimes write for The Good Kentuckian; this is one of my posts and here is a post made by the owner of that blog. What I find interesting are those replies by “Christian, Bible believers” who call our posts “bigoted” and “hateful”. Heck, we are showing EXACTLY what it would be like to follow Biblical law. In fact, one could argue that the Islamic Republics seem horrific to us precisely because they do a better job of following the Koran than we do of following the Bible; tolerance and the belief in the equality of human beings is a modern idea and NOT a Biblical one.

I admit that the books of the Bible represented an incremental shift toward equality at the time they were written but it is a woefully inadequate guide for today.

Frogs Scientists are onto finding out what is causing a frog pandemic and evidently have found a potential solution:

The Scientist: The Smithsonian Institution and six other zoos and institutes in Northern and Central America aim to collect $1.5 million as a part of the Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project. What are the primary goals of this effort?

Reid Harris: In broad strokes, it’s to attempt to pull out amphibians that look like they’re in the line of fire of the chytrid and to rescue as many species as possible before they become extinct due to this chytrid fungus.

TS: You tested the effectiveness of these skin bacteria on the mountain yellow-legged frog, a species from the mountains of California. How did those experiments work?

RH: It was a fairly simple experimental design. The three treatments were a control, where we just added the bacteria to see what effect that had, either positive or negative, a treatment where we just added the chytrid fungus, and the one we were really interested in — the treatment where we added the bacteria first with a bacterial bath and then added the chytrid fungus. As we expected, when we just added the chytrid fungus, 80% of the frogs died, and the rest were showing signs of severe chytridiomycosis. However, when we added the bacteria first, there was no mortality at all.

Follow the link to see more:

A Recommended Daily Kos Diary

Workout notes 4000 yards; 500 warm up, 500 drill/swim (fins), 1000 in 16:49 (8:24/8:25), 500 of off stokes, 10 x 50 fist (on 1), 500 (alt. 100 paddle/free), 10 x (25 fly, 25 free)(fins).

In the locker room, a biologist told me that part of this new flu virus IS invariant since the early 19′th century (though much of it has evolved) and the invariant part seems to react to a particular type of antibody. So there is good hope for a vaccine.

If I remember correctly, this is my third Daily Kos diary to make the recommended list.

Oh yes, here is a note to my conservative friends: lest you think that liberals give a pass to Democrats, read this recommended diary about Nancy Pelosi and what she knew (and claims that she didn’t know) about torture and waterboarding.

15 May 2009: am

Workout notes I might swim at lunch, if the electrical storms don’t close down the pool. If they do, I’ll walk, jog and maybe lift a bit.

Personal notes all I have to do is to type up a very short report and to enter in my linear algebra grades!

Academia: at Rate Your Students, a (humanities) professor was going on about how good it is to be personal friends with their students. This woman is a complete crackpot; I’ll focus in on the following:

I feel very sorry for those of you who don’t see the possibility of very strong relationships with these amazing women AND men who are in our classes.

“Amazing”? Yeah, I suppose that seeing “work” like is “amazing” all right, but not in the way that Professor Snowflake intended.

But this comment was revealing:

But, you see, I don’t want to lead them. In fact many times my students lead me to new understandings.

No mathematics or physics professor (other than, say, the handful that end up at places like MIT) would say that. Yes, even we (at my nondescript small university) have had a prodigy (who got his Ph. D. at Harvard and is at a research department); but this guy did our whole undergraduate program while in high school.

The bottom line: even the best students in each graduating class still haven’t had the time to digest all of the material that it takes to be able to make anything resembling an original contribution to the subject; every once in a long while a student will come up with something clever tidbit (usually on how to think about an elementary manipulation) that I hadn’t thought of yet. But that is about it.

Again, there are some prodigies that master the material at a very young age, but they are the rare, rare, rare exception.

That is life in mathematics and in the hard sciences.

Uplifting Fluff From Conservation Report.

Civil Liberties
I’ll let this blurb speak for itself:

No Warrant Required in U.S. for GPS Tracking

At least, according to a U.S. District Court ruling:

As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights — even if the drivers aren’t suspects.

Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel based in Madison.

This is one of those examples of technology and society changing faster than the laws do; this is but one example of why law and things like interpreting the Constitution aren’t easy.

Workplace
One of the things I love about being in a mathematics department is that I don’t have to put up with stuff like this. People who go around saying that this deity or that deity will perform a certain magic trick would be openly laughed at; therefore people who actually believe such things keep it to themselves (out of embarrassment? ). Sure, there are intellectual religious people, but even they tend to dismiss the “simple magic” (e. g. “I prayed for a parking space and my god gave me one”, etc.)

More workplace I’ll just report on this without comment; let’s just say that times are changing.

Today the New York Times headlines a story, “Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and more.“

It’s Explorers, a group which has been distanced from Boy Scouts by moving it to BSA’s Learning for Life programs. These are not traditional Boy Scouts. I suspect that distinction, small as it is, will get blurred quickly.

It will be interesting to watch discussions about Scouts pictured with semi-automatic weapons and bullet-proof vests.

Emphasis mine; surf to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub to read more and discuss.

Catholic Cardinal: Atheists aren’t “fully human”

So if this wheezing, pathetic double chinned old man needs modern medicine, he should be denied it as chances are, an atheist had a hand in developing it.

No, I honesty don’t care what he thinks of me, but I did want to present evidence on how many religious people think; they see believing in their fairy tales and myths as an essential “good”.

Game 6: Magic 83, Celtics 75

This game was chippy; it was close the whole way and the Celtics lead 62-61 going into the 4′th quarter.

But Orlando pulled away in the last 2 minutes; it is 83-75 with 49 seconds to go. The Magic have played very well on defense all game long; especially in the last 2 minutes.

Aside from 3 quick Pierce shots and a Rondo 3-pointer, the Magic shut down the Celtics to force a game 7.

The Magic earned it with defense.

And dang, I am a heterosexual male, but Dwight Howard has an awesome body.

(photo from yahoo)

14 May 2009

Workout notes Last night, 5.5 miles on the treadmill (32 minutes steady (3 miles)), 10 x (1 minute run hard, 2 minutes walking) followed by 3 miles with the group (hard walking to catch up).

This morning: yoga, 3 mile run then 3 miles of walking with Ms. Vickie.

Science and Religion

One of the biggest issues on the science blogs is “accommodation”: how accommodating should hard core scientists be toward religion and religious beliefs?

Here is one example: Christianity (at least, what is commonly thought as Christianity) sees human beings as the deliberate creation of a deity. Frankly, this flies in the face of what we now know about evolution, at least at this stage of our scientific understanding; human evolution was NOT inevitable. That is, if things started from scratch all over again, there is no guarantee that “we” or another human like creature would be here.

This mathematician writes a nice essay on accommodation and how I feel about it:

short version: I’m with Coyne and Myers. Now for the long version…

It is not because of Richard Dawkins that people think there is a conflict between evolution and Christianity. Most people can see for themselves that a view of life in which humans arise as an accidental byproduct of a bloody and violent evolutionary process is not the same as a world in which an all-powerful, all-loving God created the world specifically for human beings. Such people should not be derided as ignorant or theologically unsophisticated. They don’t need to be lectured about Augustine or about the proper way to read the Bible, and they are usually thinking more clearly than your average professional theologian.

Evolution makes a mockery of the Biblical account, exacerbates the problem of evil, kills the argument from design, and reduces the status of human beings. Very clever people constrained only by their imaginations have concocted arguments in reply to these points. They have yet to come up with anything remotely convincing, however, and we should not be surprised that so many people see an obvious conflict.

It is flatly wrong to claim that it is only Biblical literalists who have a problem with evolution, or that the vast majority of religious denominations have made their peace with it. Biblical literalists are thin on the ground at the ID conferences I have attended. Many of them loathe the literalists for having made anti-evolutionism seem so benighted. I simply know too many people who are deeply skeptical of evolution but have no use for Christian fundamentalism or evangelicalism.

He then talks about short term strategy and long term goals:

Accommodation and outreach is fine as a short-term political strategy, but it’s a loser in the long-term. If the idea is that we’ll keep putting Ken Miller and Francis Collins out there, people will be persuaded to accept more liberal sorts of religion, and then this problem will simply go away, then I think we are following a very bad idea indeed. The only long term solution is to create a society where traditional forms of religion are far more marginilized than they currently are.

I do not believe it is impossible to bring about such change, but it will not happen from polite discussion and philsophical discourse. It will happen when atheism becomes so mainstream that the younger generation no longer regards it as something exotic or strange. Eloquent polemics are a good start, as are billboards and other sorts of advertising.

There is a need for both the NCSE and P.Z. Myers. They both have an important role to play in defending science education and fighting creationism. But people who whine about polemical atheists hurting the cause are wrong. They are helping the cause. They are, in fact, the only hope for a long-term solution.

Civil Liberties and issues with technology whose results are used in trials We know that things like DNA test results and blood alcohol test results are used in law enforcement and in criminal prosecution. This means that the defense has a right to know how the specific mechanisms work (e. g., so they can present how a “false positive” may have come about). Here this issue is discussed:

This is an excellent lesson in the security problems inherent in trusting proprietary software:

After two years of attempting to get the computer based source code for the Alcotest 7110 MKIII-C, defense counsel in State v. Chun were successful in obtaining the code, and had it analyzed by Base One Technologies, Inc.

Draeger, the manufacturer maintained that the system was perfect, and that revealing the source code would be damaging to its business. They were right about the second part, of course, because it turned out that the code was terrible.

Consequently, the defense should have a right to see the source code; it would be unfair for the State to be able to treat this as some sort of “black box” that everyone else must accept.

More religious quackery
Are you upset that your prayers to your deity aren’t giving you the results that you want? Well, you now have options!

1. You can accept that your deity can answer your prayers “yes”, “no”, “not now” or “I have something better in mind”. Of course, you can get the same results by praying to a jug of milk:

2. You can buy a Prayermax 5000 from Edward Current:

3. You can change your “prayer position”:

Surf to the above link for more tips.

Note: I know that prayer and meditation can have a calming, centering, stress relieving effect. These techniques can help with personal growth. I am NOT talking about that kind of prayer; what I am talking about is someone asking a deity to intervene and perform magic tricks (aka “miracles”).

Political Issues: stuff I am struggling with.

The Senate rejected an amendment by Senator Bernie Sanders which would have capped credit card interest rates at 15 percent. I don’t know how I feel about this. The knee jerk liberal in me says that they should have passed this amendment. On the other hand:
1. this amendment could have torpedoed our chances to get a comprehensive credit card bill passed
2. the “libertarian” in me wonders if the government should be regulating this sort of private contract; though I might be ok with a law that makes things like “late fees” non-binding. That is, if you are late with a payment, you might owe the agreed upon interest but perhaps be able do blow off the late fee provided one is comfortable getting the card canceled.

I don’t know; I feel a bit conflicted on this issue.

But an even more important issue is the one about the release (to the public) of photos which show our prisoners being mistreated. President Obama has changed his mind on this; he was for the release of the photos (transparency is good) but now he is against it (he says that he talked to the military commanders and that the release would be inflammatory and make our soldiers less safe).

People who I normally agree with have taken different sides of this issue (example here and here)

Again, I don’t know how I feel; one one hand, it sure looks like, to the world, we are tying to save ourselves from embarrassment. On the other hand, I can see these photos used to recruit Al Qeada, and I can see the photos causing embarrassment to those who were being humiliated. On still another hand, perhaps President Obama wants the ACLU to force his hand by winning in court, that way he can say “I tried” to those who didn’t want the photos released?

And of course, there are other factors that I am almost certainly ignorant of.

This is a hard decision and I am glad that I don’t have to make it.

Social stuff
I get annoyed with poor cell phone etiquette. Evidently I am not alone:

Yes, I blog at Daily Kos. Well, it turns out that one of our bloggers is going to jail for extortion.
Basically, this guy is a truck driver who picked up a load of paper from a casino to dump; he found out that some of the paper that he had contained sensitive patron information. So he called up the casino and told them that he had such information and offered to tell them “where the leak was” for a fee.

I don’t know enough about the law to know exactly what was illegal about what he did, but I do know that was a dumb thing to do and that we’ll probably get roasted on the conservative blogs about this. Hey, we’d do the same to them if the situation was reversed.

Back to Politics

Republican lies and distortions

Here, Rush Limbaugh says that we should worry about atmospheric levels of CO2 since this is a gas that is produced naturally.

I wonder if this idiot has heard about this. Yes, I know, we are worried about the effects of green house gases getting too high thereby leading to excessive global warming (though we probably will never get to a Venus like state)

Hey, water is natural, hence we shouldn’t worry about flooding right?

Of course, the conservatives are misleading about a recent White House memo:

SUMMARY: The Wall Street Journal reported that “a White House document … says regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act ‘is likely to have serious economic consequences,’ ” but did not note that the statement was reportedly made by the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, which is independent of the SBA and headed by an acting chief counsel appointed by President Bush. [...]

n a May 13 article, The Wall Street Journal reported that “Republicans pounced on a White House document that says regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act ‘is likely to have serious economic consequences for regulated entities throughout the U.S. economy, including small businesses and small communities.’ ” The Journal further stated that “[t]he document, an amalgamation of comments by government agencies sent from the Office of Management and Budget [OMB] to the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year, presents a more dire view of the consequences of regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act than the Obama administration has publicly stated” and quoted House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) saying the memo “suggests that a political decision was made to put special interests ahead of middle-class families and small businesses.” However, the Journal did not mention that OMB director Peter Orszag said the document did not necessarily reflect the administration’s position or note that the specific claim regarding “serious economic consequences” reportedly came from the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, which is an independent entity headed by acting chief counsel for advocacy Shawne McGibbon, a Bush appointee.

In a May 12 post on the OMB blog, Orszag wrote that the document was a result of “disparate comments from various agencies during the inter-agency review process of the proposed finding” and that the “collected comments were not necessarily internally consistent, since they came from multiple sources, and they do not necessarily represent the views of either OMB or the Administration. In other words, we simply receive comments from various agencies and pass them along to EPA for consideration, regardless of the substantive merit of those comments. In general, passing along these types of comments to an agency proposing a finding often helps to improve the quality of the notice.”

And yes, they are misleading about a governmental program on “Chinese hookers” as well:

SUMMARY: NewsBusters’ Warner Todd Huston falsely claimed that President Obama funded a $2.6 million NIH grant to “help train Chinese prostitutes to ‘drink responsibly on the job.’ ” In fact, the grant was awarded during the Bush administration.

President Bill Clinton: Mocks Dick Cheney.

Daily Kos: State of the Nation: Cheney is destroying the Party

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