17 September 09 (am)

Workout notes 2000 yard swim; 500 in 8:57, 10 x 100 on the 1:45 (4 in 1:40 each, then mostly 1:37-38), 500 of alternating 50 side, 50 free. Then yoga with Ms. Vickie.

Note: I had some moderate behind the knee pain during last night’s walk; it came mostly when the knee was bending.

Posts

If Science Knew All the Answers it Would Stop. Nonsense takes a beating; note that there are few f-bombs in the monologue. Hat tip: Cosmic Variance.

Debate: Karen Armstrong vs. Richard Dawkins. Ok, that is an intellectual mismatch from the get-go. Jerry Coyne calls it a match between two atheists. Still, if it were a boxing match, the referees would have stopped it.

But there is something to be said about being vague and rejecting logic: you can never be proven wrong!

More science Yes, another rocky planet outside of our solar system has been discovered.

Republican Buffoonery
The Republicans are introducing an “anti-Czar bill”. Too bad that Czars were started by a Republican President. Of course, not many of the moronic tea baggers know that.

Speaking of tea baggers, have a laugh or two at their expense.

Here is a sample of what you’ll find at that link:

16 September 2009 (am)

Workout notes 2000 yard swim; 5 x 200 warm up (on the 4; last few were 3:25-26), drills, 5 x (50 fly, 50 paddle) to finish it up.

Later: I hope to do some gentle walking and stretching.

Politics
Will Bunch has an interesting post here. Basically he points out that the right wing has resorted to racist attacks. Sure, they manage to get away with it by, say, cherry picking what they chose to post:

Drift back to the center for a series of increasingly hysterical headlines about the ACORN scandal, which involves a few rotten employees of a community organizing group (Obama was a community organizer, remember?) caught giving tax-cheating scam advice — did I mention the ACORN workers were predominantly black? Do you remember all the fuss in the right-wing media about million-dollar, white collar tax-cheating advice-givers at banks like UBS? Me neither.) Clearly, today’s Drudge Report is a narrative, and that narrative is all about race, and a social fabric that Drudge and his readers are convinced (based, of course, on a series of scare headlines) is coming apart.

Think I’m a little paranoid? I still probably wouldn’t be reading about this if I hadn’t spent a little time in the car this afternoon, enough time for Rush Limbaugh, the de facto leader of the Republican Party who has worked tirelessly to infuse race into discussions about Obama, playing tag team with Drudge, as he so often does. As I started the engine, the radio host and his caller were prattling on about the all-important school bus assault, and Limbaugh said the story is a perfect illustration of what he called “Obama’s America.”

That alone would be beyond outrageous, the allegation that the mere presence of a black president — who just last week spoke to students urging them to study and act responsibly — is encouraging kids to fight on a school bus. But that was just a small part of Limbaugh’s show today, which was all about race. He harped on a Newsweek article that he claims shows that racism is pre-determined (just as liberals always argue that homosexuality is pre-determined, don’t you see…so…I guess racism is OK, after all — all-righty, then), and of course the massive left-wing conspiracy that is ACORN, the corn-rowed people who are the real ones trying to rob the middle class, and not the Wall Street types who so rarely get even a mild rebuke from Limbaugh, except when they vote for Obama. I thought he was done — but then Limbaugh said “remember how I asked earlier today if Obama’s brother is still in the hut” (not making this up) and read all of a lengthy article about Obama’s relatives in Kenya.

Some examples:

(see, this is President Obama’s fault)

Contrast Limbaugh’s comments with this post from a fellow blogger.

Contrast the two responses: one response is intended to provoke thought. The other response is intended to provoke hate.

President Carter Goes there: says some of Obama protest is due to racism.

More here.

Now the wingnuts will go ballistic.

Jon Stewart Returns, Slams Glenn Beck And Tea Party Protesters (VIDEO)

more about "Jon Stewart Returns, Slams Glenn Beck…", posted with vodpod

15 September, Political Version :-)

Why health care reform is necessary:

Nikki was a slim and athletic college graduate who had health insurance, had worked in health care and knew the system. But she had systemic lupus erythematosus, a chronic inflammatory disease that was diagnosed when she was 21 and gradually left her too sick to work. And once she lost her job, she lost her health insurance.

In any other rich country, Nikki probably would have been fine, notes T. R. Reid in his important and powerful new book, “The Healing of America.” Some 80 percent of lupus patients in the United States live a normal life span. Under a doctor’s care, lupus should be manageable. Indeed, if Nikki had been a felon, the problem could have been averted, because courts have ruled that prisoners are entitled to medical care.

As Mr. Reid recounts, Nikki tried everything to get medical care, but no insurance company would accept someone with her pre-existing condition. She spent months painfully writing letters to anyone she thought might be able to help. She fought tenaciously for her life. [...]

Finally, Nikki collapsed at her home in Tennessee and was rushed to a hospital emergency room, which was then required to treat her without payment until her condition stabilized. Since money was no longer an issue, the hospital performed 25 emergency surgeries on Nikki, and she spent six months in critical care.

“When Nikki showed up at the emergency room, she received the best of care, and the hospital spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on her,” her step-father, Tony Deal, told me. “But that’s not when she needed the care.”[...]

If we let that chance slip away, there will be another Nikki dying every half-hour.

That’s how often someone dies in America because of a lack of insurance, according to a study by a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. Over a year, that amounts to 18,000 American deaths.

After Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans, eight years ago on Friday, we went to war and spent hundreds of billions of dollars ensuring that this would not happen again. Yet every two months, that many people die because of our failure to provide universal insurance — and yet many members of Congress want us to do nothing?

So, where are the plans right now? Robert Reich sees it this way:

On one side are America’s biggest private insurers and Big Pharma. They’re drooling over the prospect of tens of millions more Americans buying insurance and drugs because the pending legislation will require them to, or require employers to cover them. [...]

On the other side lies the Democratic base (organized labor, grassroots progressives, leading activists) whose main goal is to make health care more affordable for a hundred million American families who are now paying through the nose (higher and higher co-payments, deductibles, and premiums, not to mention wages that are depressed because of employer-provided health insurance), and affordable to the tens of millions who can’t get it now. To this end, the Dem base wants a public option and wants Medicare and Medicaid to have negotiating power. [...]

Private insurers and Big Pharma are being represented in this race by Max Baucus and his Senate Finance Committee. [...]

The Democratic base is being represented by Nancy Pelosi and House Dems, who have reported out a bill that includes a public option, want Medicare and Medicaid to have negotiating power, and will pay for universal coverage with a surcharge on the rich. The Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee, formerly chaired by Ted Kennedy, also represents the Democratic base, and reported a strong bill that parallels the House. [...]

Obama’s Wednesday night speech reassured the Democratic base that the President is deeply committed to getting universal coverage. But the speech also made clear that the White House has decided to side with the Senate Finance Committee and against the Democratic base on the details. The President was careful to note that a public option is only a means to an end and he remained open to other ideas (read: Conrad’s cooperatives or Snowe’s trigger).

Paul Krugman He has a post about mathematics and economics; he points out that for him, mathematics is a tool but not the master. For me, it is the master but that is how it is supposed to be with me.

This is a classic battle both in economics and in the sciences.

Krugman also takes on critics of one of his latest articles which blasted trickle down economics and their school of thought. Though this is a dispute between schools of economists, it is fun to read. Krugman pulls no punches:
(“freshwater” is a term that refers to schools of conservative economic thought; e. g. University of Chicago)

[...]the freshwater outrage over finding their own point of view criticized is, you might think, a classic case of people who can dish it out but can’t take it.

But it’s actually even worse than that.

When freshwater macro came in, there was an active purge of competing views: students were not exposed, at all, to any alternatives. [...]

And hence the most surprising thing in the debate over fiscal stimulus: the raw ignorance that has characterized so many of the freshwater comments. Above all, we’ve seen the phenomenon of well-known economists “rediscovering” Say’s Law and the Treasury view (the view that government cannot affect the overall level of demand), not because they’ve transcended the Keynesian refutation of these views, but because they were unaware that there had ever been such a debate.

It’s a sad story. And the even sadder thing is that it’s very unlikely that anything will change: freshwater macro will get even more insular, and its devotees will wonder why nobody in the real world of policy and action pays any attention to what they say.

Emphasis mine.

(I love it when smart people fight!)

Some video: watch a tea bagger get laughed at:

A wingnut took this video of Peter Stark having a town hall. Note: a valid driver’s license is NOT proof of citizenship in all states. Note one of the wingnuts trying to call Mr. Stark a liar when in fact there was not necessarily a lie either time; this just shows that the questioner is a buffoon.

15 September 09 (politics free)

Workout notes yoga class, 2200 yard swim (500 warm up, 500 of alternate drill/swim, 10 x 100 on the 2 (1:37, 37, 37, 36, 37, 36, 36, 36, 35, 36), 200 cool down.

Then outside: 10 minutes of drills, 2 miles of racewalking (last mile was 12:30); really focused on technique, posture, etc.

Family/Relationships

I had the following conversation with a female friend of facebook (an attractive, somewhat Rubenesque attorney):

Me:
Does someone need a hug?

Her:
you are so perceptive, ollie…your wife must be one lucky woman

Me:
“your wife must be one lucky woman”
She’d die laughing to read that.

—————-
When I was dating my current wife, I made it a point to be extra sensitive to her moods. But when we got married, well, that got old in a hurry. Bottom line; it is much easier to be tolerant of moods and compassionate at a distance; it ends when one clicks on the next screen or hangs up the phone.

But living 24/7 with it is an entirely different matter; it far more difficult.

I think that many affairs would not happen if both parties would realize this.

How Did the Patriots Pull This One Off?

Final Score: Patriots 25, Bills 24.

With 5:32 left, the Bills finished a long drive to stretch their lead from 17-13 to 24-13.

It looked good for the Bills and they knew it.

Never count the Patriots out though; they made a long drive and scored with 2:06 left to cut the lead to 24-19 (2 point attempt missed).

The Bills play for the onside, the Patriots kick deep and the return man runs it out of the endzone to around the 30, where he is stripped of the ball; the Patriots recover.

The Patriots drive it to score with 50 seconds left.

The Bills get the ball back, make a first down, but get sacked a couple of times; the first sack costs them a time out and the second one all but ends the game; a pass is caught at the 50 but no time is left and desperate lateraling doesn’t work.

Wow.

(photos from yahoo)

Lying While Remaining Factual

Here we see a Wall Street Journal article which purports to rebut President Obama’s examples of patients which have been treated badly:

To highlight abusive practices, Mr. Obama referred to an Illinois man who “lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found he hadn’t reported gallstones that he didn’t even know about.” The president continued: “They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it.”

Although the president has used this example previously, his conclusion is contradicted by the transcript of a June 16 hearing on industry practices before the Subcommittee of Oversight and Investigation of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The deceased’s sister testified that the insurer reinstated her brother’s coverage following intervention by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office. She testified that her brother received a prescribed stem-cell transplant within the desired three- to four-week “window of opportunity” from “one of the most renowned doctors in the whole world on the specific routine,” that the procedure “was extremely successful,” and that “it extended his life nearly three and a half years.”

Again, the insurance company only did the right thing when a governmental agency interfered. You get sick, then you have to fight your company? Note also: what would have the expectancy been had the procedure been done even more promptly?

The president’s second example was a Texas woman “about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne.” He said that “By the time she had her insurance reinstated, her breast cancer more than doubled in size.”

The woman’s testimony at the June 16 hearing confirms that her surgery was delayed several months. It also suggests that the dermatologist’s chart may have described her skin condition as precancerous, that the insurer also took issue with an apparent failure to disclose an earlier problem with an irregular heartbeat, and that she knowingly underreported her weight on the application.

And what does that have to do with her having cancer?

But here is a biggie:

Company representatives testified that less than one half of one percent of policies were rescinded (less than 0.1% for one of the companies).

Sure, but when does rescission kick in? That’s right: when the claims are very large; that is, when people get very ill.

Half of the insured population uses virtually no health care at all. The 80th percentile uses only $3,000 (2002 dollars, adjust a bit up for today). You have to hit the 95th percentile to get anywhere interesting, and even there you have only $11,487 in costs. It’s the 99th percentile, the people with over $35,000 of medical costs, who represent fully 22% of the entire nation’s medical costs. These people have chronic, expensive conditions. They are, to use a technical term, sick. [...]

If the top 5% is the absolute largest population for whom rescission would make sense, the probability of having your policy cancelled given that you have filed a claim is fully 10% (0.5% rescission/5.0% of the population). If you take the LA Times estimate that $300mm was saved by abrogating 20,000 policies in California ($15,000/policy), you are somewhere in the 15% zone, depending on the convexity of the top section of population. If, as I suspect, rescission is targeted toward the truly bankrupting cases – the top 1%, the folks with over $35,000 of annual claims who could never be profitable for the carrier – then the probability of having your policy torn up given a massively expensive condition is pushing 50%. One in two. You have three times better odds playing Russian Roulette.

In other words, this so called “fact check” needs to be fact checked. This is a classic example of “lying while remaining factual”.

On another note: enjoy laughing at the teabaggers:

14 September 09

Workout notes 2000 yard swim; routine. I need to stretch this evening.

I have pain behind my right knee that radiates into my calf. My guess is that something like this is going on as this pain came on when I started to use my foot more when I walked.

Politics

This guy has guts to wade into this cesspool:

More photos here.

Salvage-Seaman Race Walking Clinic

I’ll put more here; we got in from St. Louis last night.

Unfortunately, my “behind the knee/upper calf” are of my right leg hurts; I am going to have to rest it and then do stretches. So I’ll swim most of this week and I’ll stretch.