12 July 09 AM

Workout notes 3:15 for the Bordeom plus 2 course; my “behind the knee” area of my right leg was killing me. That hurts me from time to time…I do note that we had a rise in barometric pressure and that there are thunderstorms in Missouri headed in our direction, though we aren’t supposed to get them today. I gave into it and took a naproxen tablet after I finished (I hate to do that).

Walking form: a friend of mine had some racewalking shots taken of her:

See her rear foot? That is getting a complete push-off and that is what I am attempting to work on.

Social: Barbara is on her way to her camp; Olivia and I will “bach it” for a week or so.

Articles

Do you think that I am hard on Sarah Palin? Read what Peggy Noonan (a long time Republican) has to say:

Ten months ago she was embraced with friendliness by her party. The left and the media immediately overplayed their hand, with attacks on her children. The party rallied round, as a party should. She went on the trail a sensation but demonstrated in the ensuing months that she was not ready to go national and in fact never would be. She was hungry, loved politics, had charm and energy, loved walking onto the stage, waving and doing the stump speech. All good. But she was not thoughtful. She was a gifted retail politician who displayed the disadvantages of being born into a point of view (in her case a form of conservatism; elsewhere and in other circumstances, it could have been a form of liberalism) and swallowing it whole: She never learned how the other sides think, or why.

In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn’t say what she read because she didn’t read anything. She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn’t thoughtful enough to know she wasn’t thoughtful enough. Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. “I’m not wired that way,” “I’m not a quitter,” “I’m standing up for our values.” I’m, I’m, I’m.

In another age it might not have been terrible, but here and now it was actually rather horrifying. [...]

Health Care: the upcoming debate is over what sort of system we should have and how we should pay for it. Here is Nate Silver’s analysis of the statistics of the politics of the debate: in other words, what is most likely to fly with the public and be politically feasible? I’ll highlight this:

Why pick the income tax hike rather than higher cigarette and alcohol taxes, which are just as popular? For one thing, it’s not clear that higher cigarette and alcohol taxes alone would be enough to finance health care; they were generally being considered along with other funding mechanisms. For another, alcohol and particularly cigarette taxes would be quite regressive. For a third, we have to consider the political fallout from a tax once it actually hits taxpayers, and not just when it’s in the proposal phase. Joe Six Pack might not think it’s a horrible idea in the abstract to increase the price of beer, but when he’s actually paying extra for his case of Michelob Ultra, he might not be so happy about it.

We should point out that raising taxes on the wealthy is probably not the most economically sound way to pay for health care, which would be to limit or remove the benefits tax exemption and tax benefits like all other types of earned income. This alternative, however, is considerably less popular and is opposed by many unions, who have generally negotiated very attractive benefits programs for their employees. In a perfect world, of course, these things wouldn’t be mutually exclusive: you could remove the benefits tax exemption and make the tax code more progressive. But practically speaking, trying to do both those things might just give more people a reason to be unhappy. The surcharge proposed by Charlie Rangel and the House Democrats at least has the benefit of being simple.

The one thing the Democrats ought to be aware of, however, is that if this proposal is passed, it will probably become more difficult later on to repeal the Bush tax cuts for high-income earners. Raising taxes is always difficult, and I’m not sure the Democrats will get more than one bite at the apple, at least until/unless Barack Obama is re-elected in 2012 and has some fresh political capital. But this proposal, overall, is probably more attractive than repealing the Bush tax cuts, since it focuses more of the burden on $800K+ earners.

New York Times: Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to lie to congress. Nah.

Religion/Science: the accommodationism battle continues

Well, here are two more things that can’t happen, given what we know about modern biology: a human female can’t give birth to offspring unless she is inseminated, and people who are dead for three days don’t come back to life. Do Scott and Mooney not recognize that the foundational claims of the Abrahamic religions are truth claims? And that for many, many believers, the truth of these claims is a bedrock for belief? This is, of course, why so many Americans reject evolution: it is in absolute and irreconcilable conflict with the “truth” of Genesis and the view that we were the special objects of God’s creation. There is nothing that better demonstrates the incompatibility between science and faith than the rejection of the scientific truth of evolution by people who have a revelatory “truth” about where we came from. Is that too hard to grasp? And saying that “well, people shouldn’t accept what it says in Genesis” doesn’t solve the problem, for that’s just telling people that they should have a kind of religion that they don’t have. Try telling a devout Muslim that it is impossible for Mohamed and his horse Barack (yes, that was his name) to have been bodily sucked up into the stratosphere, and that this was merely a metaphor.

The final misconception, which I’ve also discussed at length, is this, asserted by Scott in the video:

“Science can’t test statements having to do with God. . . Science can weigh and accept or reject fact claims made by religion. . . The basic idea of whether the supernatural exists or not is not something science can measure.”

Wrong. Of course science can test statements having to do with God. It can test statements deriving from what people claim about their god. Here is one: God answers prayers. (Many people think this is true, of course.) Tests of intercessory prayer have shown that it doesn’t work. End of story. Here’s another empirical claim: God is omnipotent and benevolent. It’s falsified: God fails to prevent natural events, like tsunamis and earthquakes, that take the lives of innocent people. (Theologians, of course, don’t adhere to the same standards of evidence as do scientists, and so don’t see this as a falsification of an ominipotent and benevolent God. They are wrong.)

I think that this is right. Really, name one discovery that came about because of “faith”? That’s right; there aren’t any.

One’s religion can give peace, serenity and comfort, but “faith” can lead to no knowledge. And yes, science can say stuff about serenity, faith and feeling peaceful. If this sounds strange, look up stuff on people who have had brain damage; yes, emotions are affected. In short, these things are natural phenomena.