17 June 09 (pm)

Last night in Austin; I’ll probably try to swim tomorrow. It has been about a week.

Posts

Security
Here is an interesting post on people who were taken in by scams:

And some stuff that surprised me:

…it was striking how some scam victims kept their decision to respond private and avoided speaking about it with family members or friends. It was almost as if with some part of their minds, they knew that what they were doing was unwise, and they feared the confirmation of that that another person would have offered. Indeed to some extent they hide their response to the scam from their more rational selves.

Another counter-intuitive finding is that scam victims often have better than average background knowledge in the area of the scam content. For example, it seems that people with experience of playing legitimate prize draws and lotteries are more likely to fall for a scam in this area than people with less knowledge and experience in this field. This also applies to those with some knowledge of investments. Such knowledge can increase rather than decrease the risk of becoming a victim.[....]

Science Here is a comment about “science and the transcendent” at Jerry Coyne’s blog:

Over at Metamagician and the Hellfire Club, Russell Blackford takes on the idea that only faith can tell us what’s true about the transcendent world.

. . There is no good reason for scientists or advocates of science to suggest that a so-called “transcendent world” exists, that there are spooky beings such as gods, spirits, and the rest, or that religion in general, or any particular religion, can give us reliable information about anything of the kind. Stories of such things may well be charming, they may have cultural and aesthetic value, they may be worth preserving and studying. I don’t say that such stories are entirely without value. On the contrary, I love myth, legend, and folklore as much as anyone. Ask my friends about it if you don’t believe me. But that’s not the same as suggesting that any of these stories are actually true.

Exactly. I have been reading posts on other websites attacking New Atheists (they’re “new” because their books make money!) for not dealing with the subtle theological issues involved in the science/faith debates. This is the famous “courtier’s reply” described by P.Z. Myers. But all of these critiques neglect one important point: is there any evidence for the reality of the divine? It’s the hallmark of a desperate argument to worry about philosophical nuances when the big elephant in the room– the evidence for God — goes unmentioned.

(emphasis mine)

Politics

This is the price that the Democrats pay for a “large tent”; rural Democrats are very different from urban ones.

Angered by White House decisions on everything from greenhouse gases to car dealerships, congressional Democrats from rural districts are threatening to revolt against parts of President Barack Obama’s ambitious first-year agenda.

“They don’t get rural America,” said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat who represents California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley. “They form their views of the world in large cities.”

Cardoza’s critique was aimed at Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, but it echoes complaints rural-district Democrats have about a number of Obama administration decisions.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a complete strikeout, but they’ve just got a few more bases to it when it comes to the rural community,” said Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu.

A rural revolt could hamper the administration’s ability to pass climate change and health care legislation before the August recess.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23828.html#ixzz0IjkXhsXE&C

This is one reason I don’t support the DCCC and the DSCC; I don’t care to contribute to the “blue dogs”.

Republicans Some Republicans in Congress have said that their “struggles” are similar to the struggles of those in Iran. Really.

What about the fired Inspector General? He is no martyr:

Walpin was reportedly informed of his termination on June 11. In a June 16 letter to members of Congress, special counsel to the president Norman L. Eisen explained Walpin’s termination:

Mr. Walpin was removed after a review was unanimously requested by the bi-partisan Board of the Corporation. The Board’s action was precipitated by a May 20, 2009 Board meeting at which Mr. Walpin was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve. Upon our review, we also determined that the Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California, a career prosecutor who was appointed to his post during the Bush Administration, had filed a complaint about Mr. Walpin’s conduct with the oversight body for the Inspectors General, including for failing to disclose exculpatory evidence. We further learned that Mr. Walpin had been absent from the Corporation’s headquarters, insisting upon working form his home in New York over the objections of the Corporation’s Board; that he had exhibited a lack of candor in providing material information to decision makers; and he had engaged in other troubling and inappropriate conduct. Mr. Walpin had become unduly disruptive to agency operations, impairing his effectiveness and, for the reasons stated above, losing the confidence of the Board and the agency. It was for these reasons that Mr. Walpin was removed.

In an April 29 letter to the chair of the Integrity Committee of the Counsel of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, which the administration cited in explaining Walpin’s termination, Brown “express[ed] … concerns about the conduct of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) Inspector General, Gerald Walpin, and his staff in the handling of United States v. St. HOPE Academy, Kevin Johnson & Dana Gonzalez,” a case which “resulted from the alleged misuse of AmeriCorps grant funds by St. HOPE Academy” and its “then Chief Executive Officer Kevin Johnson, and Executive Director Dana Gonzalez.” Brown noted that Johnson “is a former NBA basketball player and was a Sacramento mayoral candidate, subsequently elected Mayor, when this matter first came to light during fall 2008.” In his letter, Brown wrote:

In our experience, the role of an Inspector General is to conduct an unbiased investigation, and then forward that investigation to my Office for a determination as to whether the facts warrant a criminal prosecution, civil suit or declination. Similarly, I understand that after conducting such an unbiased investigation, the Inspector General is not intended to act as an advocate for suspension or debarment. However, in this case Mr. Walpin viewed his role very differently. He sought to act as the investigator, advocate, judge, jury and town crier.

Brown further alleged that Walpin and his staff “did not include” or “disclose” relevant information regarding the case to Brown’s office; that Walpin repeatedly discussed the case in the press after being advised “under no circumstance was he to communicate with the media about a matter under investigation”; and that Walpin’s “actions were hindering our investigation and handling of this matter.” Brown concluded: “Although I recognize that a strong IG is necessary to ensure that allegations of wrongdoing are investigated, I believe that Mr. Walpin overstepped his authority by electing to provide my Office with selective information and withholding other potentially significant information at the expense of determining the truth. I believe that rather than ensuring protection of a respected federal agency, he tarnished its reputation.”

Supreme Court

Judge Sotomayor’s membership in an all-female club:

In a June 17 article on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s membership in an all-women’s club, The Washington Times reported, “Gender politics have proved a minefield for male Supreme Court nominees. The wife of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. broke down in tears after aggressive questions at his 2005 Senate confirmation hearings about his reported involvement in a Princeton alumni group that opposed affirmative action.” In fact, the group in question — the now-defunct Concerned Alumni of Princeton — did not merely “oppose affirmative action,” but, as Media Matters for America has noted, actively resisted Princeton’s increased admission of women and minorities. In fact, according to The Nation, the executive committee of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton even issued a statement declaring explicitly that the group “oppose[d]” a “sex-blind admission policy” that would abolish limits on the number of women admitted. [...]

Marsha Levy-Warren, graduate of the first coeducational class (1973) and former vice president of the student government, told The Daily Princetonian that Concerned Alumni of Princeton was “a far-right organization funded by conservative alumni committed to turning back the clock on coeducation at the University,” according to a November 18, 2005, article in the campus newspaper. The Princetonian reported that the group, during its formation, was co-chaired by Asa Bushnell and Shelby Cullom Davis, both outspoken opponents of coeducation at the university. The campus newspaper described Davis as “a strong traditionalist, firmly opposed to the many of the new directions Princeton was taking, including coeducation.”

According to the Princetonian, Davis wrote in Prospect:

“May I recall, and with some nostalgia, my father’s 50th reunion, a body of men, relatively homogenous in interests and backgrounds, who had known and liked each other over the years during which they had contributed much in spirit and substance to the greatness of Princeton … I cannot envisage a similar happening in the future,” Davis added, “with an undergraduate student population of approximately 40% women and minorities, such as the Administration has proposed.”

Additionally, The New York Times has reported that in the 1980s Concerned Alumni of Princeton opposed the integration of three all-male ” ‘eating clubs.’ where many upper class Princeton students took their meals.”

These aren’t the same thing at all. All too often our conservative friends pretend that things are symmetric when in fact they often aren’t.

17 June 2009 (am)

Workout notes Travis track; 14:34 drills, 36:28 (5K: 8 x (400 form, 200 off) + 200; 35:10 at 4800), cool down (1:04:28 total for 5 miles).

Then yoga and push-ups; up to 5 sets of 12.

Posts

Mathematics: This post is about the origins of life (the possible ways life could have originated from an inorganic state). But embedded in it is an application of symmetry to organic chemistry.

Free Speech: evidently some people think that “free speech” means that they have immunity from criticism:

Now, I’m not going to go back and prosecute out the merits of the two articles that have led us to this point. But newspaper columnists, fighting in their respective pages, debating a topic, presenting arguments…this is de rigeur stuff, basically. Nothing to see here. The robust debate of America’s Men of Letters.

And that’s why I’m a bit dumbstruck by Gaffney, today, who straight up has the vapors over the fact that Krugman dared to namecheck him. Gaffney, in his lead paragraph, tells his readers that his is “surprised to see the New York Times columnist take a swipe at me and the paper that has long been my home.” Surprised? How can this be? Surely Gaffney is aware that people react to op-ed columns, and criticize them. Surely Gaffey wrote his column with the expressed intent of gaining a reaction! Why else write things like this?

This is not to say, necessarily, that Mr. Obama actually is a Muslim any more than Mr. Clinton actually is black. After his five months in office, and most especially after his just-concluded visit to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, however, a stunning conclusion seems increasingly plausible: The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich.

Surely, someone who compares a middle name to the annexation of the Sudetenland INTENDED TO ELICIT A RESPONSE. [...]

So, I’m just wondering why Gaffney closes by complaining about being “shunned into silence.” He calls that “extremism,” and it is! Good thing no one’s shunned him into silence! By the looks of things, he is still a well-compensated editorial writer at a well-known newspaper. So the answer to the question “Free Speech, but not for me?” is “No. Free speech for you. And for everyone. Even people who criticize what you say. And vice-versa.” When the government starts rounding up all the copies of the Washington Times, I’ll be the first to decry it, because I love that Liz Glover column!

Social: President Obama extends basic family rights to gay couples who work for the federal government.

Some are wondering if this is related to the flap over the Department of Justice defending the so called “defense of marriage” act and it might be; it could be that President Obama is trying to prevent a possible roll-back of benefits.

From an Apple Conference:
This never happens at mathematics conferences

Racist Social Conservatives

I am still on vacation, so I am starting my run a bit later than normal (and getting some valuable heat conditioning out of it, I think).

Update Town Lake Trail (4.2 mile loop) in 36:42; I was 25:50 at 3 miles. It was HOT and I wore out very quickly. I cooled down with 1 mile of walking and some yoga. The heat got to me.

Posts

At the outset, I’ll stipulate that someone can be conservative because they believe that government interference with the economy can cause harm (e. g., the stifling of competition and innovation that went on in communist countries) or for other legitimate reasons.

But the fact is that a significant subset of the current group of conservatives are just plain racist.

Here is the evidence.

1. Racist e-mails

(hat tip: Sagacity)

2. I’ve talked about this already but if you haven’t seen this, check out The Good Kentuckian’s post. Yes, TGK is a “colbert-jesus general” type of blog. The information came from Alan Colmes’ blog.

3. Many of Judge Sotomayor’s detractors are making racist assumptions (e. g., Pat Buchanan and many of those in the rank and file)

The assumption seems to be this: Sotomayor was an affirmative action admit at Princeton and ended up finishing at the top of her class. Therefore her high class ranking must have come from preferential treatment while at Princeton and later while at Yale Law school.

Of course, such a claim is tantamount to claiming that her professors committed academic fraud while providing no evidence for the claim.

These critics should provide the evidence or shut up.

The other side

1. Affirmative Action does sometimes lower entrance standards for some.

My experience: I was admitted to Annapolis with lack luster entrance scores and grades. Yes, I did make straight “A’s” as a senior and mostly A’s as a junior in high school, but my freshman and sophomore grades were lousy. Yes, my ACT was only 30 and my SAT was in the high 1100s (PSAT was 57/70) and so I was a risky admit.

In college (Annapolis) I finished 26x out of 9xx in academic rank; my relatively poor first year hurt my ranking quite a bit. So, no, this wasn’t “first” but the point was that I improved my academic position relative to the rest of the class while I was there, moving from near the bottom to “upper third” . Of course, later I was to get a Ph. D. in mathematics and publish part of my dissertation.

The larger point: starting off lower than average (in entrance credentials) doesn’t mean that one can’t finish much higher than that.

2. Academics: on rare occasion, a professor does commit academic fraud by grading some students differently than others. But I’ve only seen evidence for this TWICE: while at the university of Texas, some of my fellow TAs worked for a professor who would take the graded exams and regrade all of the female exams. Now I have no evidence that this professor actually gave the females more points, but he/she did treat those students differently.

But, that was ONE TIME at the undergraduate level. The other time, a female grad student was given permission to take her comprehensive exams orally because she had flunked them repeatedly. Frankly, she was a diligent but dim witted student who ended up getting tenure at some “research optional” small college; I’ve seen other faculty who were of this caliber (males). The difference is that the males had to go to a third tier academic institution to get their “doctorates” whereas she was allowed to stay there.
Yes, her advisor all but wrote her dissertation for her.

So, it does happen, but I’ve seen evidence for it TWICE since 1985, and note that I’ve never seen it happen with first rank students, only the mediocre (or worse) ones.

Good schools are protective of their reputations and they don’t want to let others think that a moron can finish near the top of their classes.

3. Yes, President Obama being African American does change things a bit.
For example, during President Bush’s term, the following was circulated:

(larger)

If someone did this with President Obama, a huge cry of “racism” would go up. The bottom line: our country does have a racial history and people often DO compare African Americans to simians.

Note: I like the above photo as it does show the similarities between chimps and humans, and yes, I’d be happy to make such a spread with MY photo in place of President Bush’s. I see nothing especially simian about President Bush’s face; in fact my face is more simian like than his.

4. Some prominent Republicans have spoken in favor of Judge Sotomayor or at least have denounced the unfair attacks:

Here, here and here.

5. Racism isn’t unique to the Republican party (e. g., look up the stuff on the Kentucky and West Virginia Democratic primaries); that is why I said “racist social conservatives” rather than “racist Republicans”.

15 June 09 (pm)

A few tidbits; my daughter is at the mall and I had a nice Mexican meal at a local “used to be hole in the wall” Mexican joint and was enjoying Dennett’s book Breaking the Spell:

I am disappointed that Mike Huckabee is associating with such fanatics.

Jerry Coyne gets a message that sounds like a threat. I admit that it could be a message that states “you know, this group of people might view you in this light” (and I hope that it is).

Here is an interesting article that talks about some bogus Sotomayor criticism. Someone read the transcripts of her unscripted speeches and criticized her writing; someone else read her legal opinions and criticized her for being too stilted?

I wonder what would happen if someone read my mathematics articles?

Free speech: yes, some speech is protected but in some cases, people are not protected from consequences that result from some speech (e. g., faculty that get denied raises because they slammed their administrations).

Republicans: certain segments of them appear to be all too comfortable with racist speech and jokes.

Note: I am not talking about the blog The Good Kentuckian (it is in the spirit of redstate update or Colbert) but rather referring to the issues that this article addresses, such as this one:

15 June 09 (am)

Workout notes 1 mile drill, (two sets of 5 pull ups), loop in 49:57 (2-1, tried to “push” rather than “pull”), then 20 minutes of yoga (with 5 sets of 10 push ups). I wasn’t as sweaty as after my runs, but I got in a workout.

I did the yoga on one of the “piers” in the new park; I saw turtles and on the drive back I saw peacocks.

Posts.

You knew that this was coming. “Mittens” Romney blames President Obama for the Iranian fiasco; doesn’t give him credit for Hezbolla’s defeat in Lebanon.

Of course, there is hope; even the Supreme Leader is calling for an investigation (is this just a tease to shut up the protesters?)

Bigotry Sure, people can have different opinions on the merits of affirmative action. But this is downright insulting:

It almost seems silly to take issue with anything else Buchanan writes after he has expressed his preference for “the old bigotry,” but he churns out some other nonsense that requires response.

Buchanan:

Thus, Sotomayor got into Princeton, got her No. 1 ranking, was whisked into Yale Law School and made editor of the Yale Law Review — all because she was a Hispanic woman. And those two Ivy League institutions cheated more deserving students of what they had worked a lifetime to achieve, for reasons of race, gender or ethnicity.

Mr. Buchanan is just plain ignorant. Yes, affirmative action might make a difference as to who gets into a school but it does NOT affect their grades once they are in. To say otherwise is to insult the professors who taught those classes.

She EARNED her top ranking in Princeton and then, on the merits of that, was accepted by Yale Law.

More Buchanan:

Two weeks ago, The New York Times reported that, to get up to speed on her English skills at Princeton, Sotomayor was advised to read children’s classics and study basic grammar books during her summers. How do you graduate first in your class at Princeton if your summer reading consists of “Chicken Little” and “The Troll Under the Bridge”?

No. That is a lie. The New York Times did not report any such thing. The Times reported that Sotomayor “spent summers reading children’s classics she had missed in a Spanish-speaking home.” That’s different from reporting that she was advised to do so. And the Times gave no indication that such childrens’ classics were the extent of Sotomayor’s “summer reading,” or that “childrens’ classics” meant things like Chicken Little rather than, say, The Hobbit.

I see. I read Tom Sawyer later in life…along side the other books I was reading (including text books in geometric topology, mathematics articles, etc.)

Bigotry is alive and well.

Some people are speaking out against bigotry though:

I’m getting really sick of seeing news stories written like this one:

Police say two black men, armed with guns, broke into a home in the 1700 block of Broadway around 2:00 a.m. Police believe the men took off in a car.

I seem to recall from my years as a reporter and editor that the standard for dealing with the race of a suspect of a crime was to not mention it, unless it was somehow relevant to the crime or if giving a description of the suspects.

Other than “black males,” there is no description here.

I agree. If they wanted to say “dark black skin, 5′ 10″ to 6′, 200 pounds, early 20′s” that would be one thing. What was reported serves no useful purpose. Note that this blogger got a comment from a white power type.

Racists in the Military: sometimes it is open. Yes, there was racism in the Navy when I was in it, but it was a bit more soft core than what this article shows.

14 June Midday Quickies

Atheism: read this post at Daily Kos; it discusses some common misconceptions concerning atheists and atheism. The comments are entertaining as well.

I think that the argument boils down to this: many people don’t understand that not believing in a deity is NOT symmetrical with believing in it. As Richard Dawkins loves to point out: most “believers” reject the thousands and thousands of gods that are believed in (or were believed in) by literally billions of people. The difference is that we (atheists) take it one god further.

NBA

I liked this Kiszla column. If a player is ready for the NBA right out of high school, why shouldn’t they go and play? Sure, not everybody who has NBA potential is ready but there is no reason to straight jacket those who are.

This Kiszla column made me yawn; it purports to argue that basketball fans are either anti-Kobe Bryant or pro-Kobe Bryant. I am neither; I think that he is a good player and I actually admire his competitive fire. But as to this:

Down on the court, Bryant was fixing to stare an angry hole through the heart of helpless Magic sub J.J. Redick after burying a jump shot that put the Lakers two points closer to raising the 15th championship banner for the storied franchise.

And I sat slack-jawed, wondering: Does Bryant really have to be that way? His brilliance is unsurpassed anywhere in sports. So why spoil the moment by acting like a bully?

Huh? This is the NBA finals, not some pick-up game. Many of the great ones used to do similar things; for example google “Larry Bird” or even just read his book.

As to Mr. Bryant’s personal life: I don’t watch basketball to see role models in action. They guy had a trial.
What happened? I don’t know; I find it hard to believe that women who hook up with him aren’t in it for something for themselves anyway.

Sure I could “tisk tisk” this but let’s face it: it isn’t as if pretty females throw themselves at me 24-7. Celebrity males (athletes, politicians, or even just really rich guys) have situations that I just don’t have; that is why I really don’t care about the personal lives of a Kobe Bryant, John Edwards, Bill Clinton, etc.

I have no idea of how I would act if I were that popular.

Oh the game . The Magic win tonight and send it back to Los Angeles where the Lakers wrap it up in 6 games.

Toxic Atmosphere…

Frank Rich in today’s New York Times:

That honeymoon, if it was one, is over. Conservatives have legitimate ideological beefs with Obama, rightly expressed in sharp language. But the invective in some quarters has unmistakably amped up. The writer Camille Paglia, a political independent and confessed talk-radio fan, detected a shift toward paranoia in the air waves by mid-May. When “the tone darkens toward a rhetoric of purgation and annihilation,” she observed in Salon, “there is reason for alarm.” She cited a “joke” repeated by a Rush Limbaugh fill-in host, a talk-radio jock from Dallas of all places, about how “any U.S. soldier” who found himself with only two bullets in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden would use both shots to assassinate Pelosi and then strangle Reid and bin Laden.

This homicide-saturated vituperation is endemic among mini-Limbaughs. Glenn Beck has dipped into O’Reilly’s Holocaust analogies to liken Obama’s policy on stem-cell research to the eugenics that led to “the final solution” and the quest for “a master race.” After James von Brunn’s rampage at the Holocaust museum, Beck rushed onto Fox News to describe the Obama-hating killer as a “lone gunman nutjob.” Yet in the same show Beck also said von Brunn was a symptom that “the pot in America is boiling,” as if Beck himself were not the boiling pot cheering the kettle on.

But hyperbole from the usual suspects in the entertainment arena of TV and radio is not the whole story. What’s startling is the spillover of this poison into the conservative political establishment. Saul Anuzis, a former Michigan G.O.P. chairman who ran for the party’s national chairmanship this year, seriously suggested in April that Republicans should stop calling Obama a socialist because “it no longer has the negative connotation it had 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.” Anuzis pushed “fascism” instead, because “everybody still thinks that’s a bad thing.” He didn’t seem to grasp that “fascism” is nonsensical as a description of the Obama administration or that there might be a risk in slurring a president with a word that most find “bad” because it evokes a mass-murderer like Hitler.

The Anuzis “fascism” solution to the Obama problem has caught fire. The president’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and his speech in Cairo have only exacerbated the ugliness. The venomous personal attacks on Sotomayor have little to do with the 3,000-plus cases she’s adjudicated in nearly 17 years on the bench or her thoughts about the judgment of “a wise Latina woman.” She has been tarred as a member of “the Latino KKK” (by the former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo), as well as a racist and a David Duke (by Limbaugh), and portrayed, in a bizarre two-for-one ethnic caricature, as a slant-eyed Asian on the cover of National Review. Uniting all these insults is an aggrieved note of white victimization only a shade less explicit than that in von Brunn’s white supremacist screeds.

So, what is the difference between the rhetoric we are hearing now and what went on when President Bush was in office?

1. Liberals weren’t taking guns and shooting people.
2. The (absurd) “Bush is Hitler” rhetoric came from liberals on blogs and websites and not from the established political leadership.

In fact, those of us on Daily Kos remember being dressed down by then Senator Obama:

From traveling throughout Illinois and more recently around the country, I can tell you that Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon. They don’t think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced, but have become aware that his administration is irresponsible and often incompetent. They don’t think that corporations are inherently evil (a lot of them work in corporations), but they recognize that big business, unchecked, can fix the game to the detriment of working people and small entrepreneurs. They don’t think America is an imperialist brute, but are angry that the case to invade Iraq was exaggerated, are worried that we have unnecessarily alienated existing and potential allies around the world, and are ashamed by events like those at Abu Ghraib which violate our ideals as a country.

It’s this non-ideological lens through which much of the country viewed Judge Roberts’ confirmation hearings. A majority of folks, including a number of Democrats and Independents, don’t think that John Roberts is an ideologue bent on overturning every vestige of civil rights and civil liberties protections in our possession. Instead, they have good reason to believe he is a conservative judge who is (like it or not) within the mainstream of American jurisprudence, a judge appointed by a conservative president who could have done much worse (and probably, I fear, may do worse with the next nominee). While they hope Roberts doesn’t swing the court too sharply to the right, a majority of Americans think that the President should probably get the benefit of the doubt on a clearly qualified nominee.

Thoughts while running around Town Lake (Austin, TX)

Back in 1980-1983, I’d come home on leave from the Navy. The “short loop” (about 4.1 miles) took just about 30 minutes to run; hardly anyone passed me.

In 1998-1999, the same loop took 33-34 minutes. A few people passed me.

Today: it takes about 37-38 minutes; EVERYONE passes me.

Ok, I wasn’t used to the heat (it is suffocating) and I did walk a mile to cool down (and did an easy set of 5 pull ups).

14 June 09 (am)

Posts: Paul Krugman points out that, in the past, Republicans were very willing to say “hey, let’s show some patience as it takes time for changes in economic policies to take effect. Now, they are yapping about President Obama’s policies not reversing the course of the country right away.

Iran

Of course Iran just had an election and the result is hotly disputed. Also, the leadership structure did come up during the 2008 general election in the U. S.:

Here is a handy guide from 3-quarks daily that shows how the Iranian political leadership is structured (the role between the President (who is elected), the Supreme Leader (who isn’t) and the council of mullahs, etc.

Science: We know about absolute zero (roughly speaking: the temperature at which molecular motion stops). Is there an upper bound? Maybe. (hat tip: 3-quarks daily)

Size of objects in the universe: are you ready to feel insignificant?

Does Language Affect the Way that We Think? Probably. This is a snippet from an article that 3-quarks daily pointed us toward:

Follow me to Pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia. I came here because of the way the locals, the Kuuk Thaayorre, talk about space. Instead of words like “right,” “left,” “forward,” and “back,” which, as commonly used in English, define space relative to an observer, the Kuuk Thaayorre, like many other Aboriginal groups, use cardinal-direction terms — north, south, east, and west — to define space.1 This is done at all scales, which means you have to say things like “There’s an ant on your southeast leg” or “Move the cup to the north northwest a little bit.” One obvious consequence of speaking such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot speak properly. The normal greeting in Kuuk Thaayorre is “Where are you going?” and the answer should be something like ” Southsoutheast, in the middle distance.” If you don’t know which way you’re facing, you can’t even get past “Hello.”

The result is a profound difference in navigational ability and spatial knowledge between speakers of languages that rely primarily on absolute reference frames (like Kuuk Thaayorre) and languages that rely on relative reference frames (like English).2 Simply put, speakers of languages like Kuuk Thaayorre are much better than English speakers at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes or inside unfamiliar buildings. What enables them — in fact, forces them — to do this is their language. Having their attention trained in this way equips them to perform navigational feats once thought beyond human capabilities. Because space is such a fundamental domain of thought, differences in how people think about space don’t end there. People rely on their spatial knowledge to build other, more complex, more abstract representations. Representations of such things as time, number, musical pitch, kinship relations, morality, and emotions have been shown to depend on how we think about space. So if the Kuuk Thaayorre think differently about space, do they also think differently about other things, like time? This is what my collaborator Alice Gaby and I came to Pormpuraaw to find out.

To test this idea, we gave people sets of pictures that showed some kind of temporal progression (e.g., pictures of a man aging, or a crocodile growing, or a banana being eaten). Their job was to arrange the shuffled photos on the ground to show the correct temporal order. We tested each person in two separate sittings, each time facing in a different cardinal direction. If you ask English speakers to do this, they’ll arrange the cards so that time proceeds from left to right. Hebrew speakers will tend to lay out the cards from right to left, showing that writing direction in a language plays a role.3 So what about folks like the Kuuk Thaayorre, who don’t use words like “left” and “right”? What will they do?

The Kuuk Thaayorre did not arrange the cards more often from left to right than from right to left, nor more toward or away from the body. But their arrangements were not random: there was a pattern, just a different one from that of English speakers. Instead of arranging time from left to right, they arranged it from east to west. That is, when they were seated facing south, the cards went left to right. When they faced north, the cards went from right to left. When they faced east, the cards came toward the body and so on. This was true even though we never told any of our subjects which direction they faced. The Kuuk Thaayorre not only knew that already (usually much better than I did), but they also spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time.[...]

13 June 2009 Climate Change Crock