10 November 09 (noonish)

Personal note: I am feeling weird; just “off”. My digestion is out of whack, I have some thigh aches (due to the stepper?) and am just “off” and tired. I am recording this so I can see if this leads to sickness or not. I am not feeling horrible; my workout this morning was slightly sub par but within standard variation.

Posts

First, a humorous blog story:

We all get spam in our mail box and usually there’s nothing you can do about it. This time there is. I got this message today.

Subject: Award Acknowledgment for sharing great PHYSICS information to the public

Dear Blog Owner,

Our website Science.org is a informational databases and online news publication for anything and everything related to science and technology. We recently ran a poll asking our website users regarding what online informational resources they use to keep up to date or even to simply find great information. It seems many of our users have labeled your blog as an excellent source of Space information.

Note: his blog is about biochemistry and evolution. I had to chuckle.

Back when I was an undergraduate, I subscribed to Scientific American for a short while. Hence I got on some lists and I got an invitation to subscribe to some other science publication (I can’t remember which one). But I remember how the invitation started:

Dear Colleague,
We know of your work and….

And I thought: “they graded my advanced calculus homework?” Remember that I was a run of the mill undergraduate pin-head at the time; I hadn’t done any individual research.

My friends and I had a big laugh.

Other topics

Here is an interesting case on free/anonymous speech. Note: sometimes the Constitution is on the side of the tasteless jerk.

Religion This billboard in Italy sums up what I think: “I prefer to reason rather than to believe”.

Nevertheless, religion is sometimes an appropriate topic for discussion, and yes, it is ok to attack religious beliefs (e. g., supremacy of a race, beliefs that contradict scientific evidence, beliefs that advance bigotry, etc.):

The Issue

Last week the Vatican invited Anglicans who are, as The New York Times put it, “uncomfortable with female priests and openly gay bishops” to reunite with the Roman Catholic Church. If a secular institution, Wal-Mart or Microsoft, for example, made a similar offer — Tired of leadership positions being open to women and gay employees? Join us! — it would be slammed for appealing to bigotry. Some criticism was directed at the church, but it was faint. Are we right to speak softly when discussing a subject as sensitive as religion?

Etiquette holds that religion, especially another person’s religion, should be treated with deference or, better still, silence by nonbelievers. [....]

Yet despite the risk of provoking the ire of believers, we should discuss the actions of religious institutions as we would those of all others — courteously and vigorously. This is a mark of respect, an indication that we take such ideas seriously. To slip on the kid gloves is condescending, akin to the way you would treat children or the frail or cats.

[...] The week I rebuked an Orthodox Jewish real estate agent whose beliefs forbade his shaking the hand of a female client, I stopped counting after receiving 4,000 ferocious messages, lambasting not only my argument but my character, my appearance and my parentage: it was speculated that dogs played a part.

My political beliefs, my ideas about social justice, are as deeply held as my critics’ religious beliefs, but I don’t ask them to treat me with reverence, only civility. They should not expect me to walk on tiptoe.

Emphasis mine.

Racism and America
Some of subtle kind is discussed here:

Predictably, after the Ft. Hood shooting some idiot conservatives are suggesting that we do some sort of loyalty exam for Muslim-Americans before allowing them into the US military. Who is “we”? Who gets to do this exam? What, presumably more American people like whites or Christians?

Why don’t Muslim Americans decide which Christians get to enter the US military? Oh, does that sound offensive? Does it sound weird? Why should it sound any different than Christians getting to decide which other Americans they will allow into the US military?

* Cenk Uygur’s diary :: ::
*

A lot of people are rightfully making the point that you can not generalize about millions of Muslims in this country based on two guys. Just as you cannot generalize about all right-leaning white Christians (let alone all Christians in their entirety) based on what domestic terrorists like Tim McVeigh did, or Terry Nichols, or Eric Rudolph, or Scott Roeder or …

But there is a more important point here. Muslims Americans don’t have to prove a damn thing to you. They are Americans just like anyone else, whether right-wing clowns like it or not. They are not 80% American. They are not 90% as American as you are. You don’t get to judge how American they are.

Here is the inalterable fact that the right-wing of this country has to get used to – Muslim-Americans are 100% American. There are no degrees of how American you are. They have the same exact rights, privileges and responsibilities as any other American does. They don’t have to answer to you.

I’m agnostic now, but I was born Muslim. My whole family is Muslim. They’re all Americans. Not one of them is one percent less of an American than any other race or religion in this country.

“So what”, you say? Let me ask this: why is it that every time someone like Louis Farrakhan says something idiotic, some right wingers expect prominent African American leaders to denounce him? There were times when Americans of Mexican descent were supposed to denounce something stupid that the Mexican government did. Why is that?

In all honesty, if your skin isn’t white, you are always going to be viewed as a “guest”; perhaps an accepted guest or maybe a part of the adopted family. It is subtle, but it is there.

Of course, there are less subtle racists out there and they are getting more brazen.

Paul Krugman: has some advice on how to break up a filibuster.

He also tells people to cut the crap when they are looking for convenient scapegoats for the mortgage crisis:

In the midst of a seriously disgusting interview with Dick Armey, the former House majority leader offers his analysis of the financial crisis:

But at what point do we allow the government to order people that you must sell your product to this person or that person, irrespective of any good judgment? We saw what happened in housing when they ordered banks to make loans to people who weren’t qualified. Are we now going to have the same destructive influences in health care because we’re going to order doctors to provide services and so forth?

There’s a persistent delusion, on the part of many pundits, to the effect that we’re actually having a rational political discussion in this country. But we aren’t. The proposition that the Community Reinvestment Act caused all the bad stuff, because government forced helpless bankers into lending to Those People, has been refuted up, down, and sideways. The vast bulk of subprime lending came from institutions not subject to the CRA. Commercial real estate lending, which was mainly lending to rich white developers, not you-know-who, is in much worse shape than subprime home lending. Etc., etc.

In other words, what many people “know” just isn’t so.

10 November 09 (am-ii)

Slept a bit late; swam 2200 yards (500 warm up back/free, 500 side/free) slow, 500 of 25 front kick, 75 free on 2, bathroom break (very unusual to need one), but my lane was still open when I got back, so I did 10 x 25 fly, 25 free, then 50 paddle, 50 free, 50 paddle, 50 free.

Then I did 2.1 on the elliptical, then 3 more on a program; the stairmaster was broken. I then did some yoga on my own.

My day was brightened when I found that bananas and quality apples were on sale!

Note: behind the knee/calf were painless.

10 November 09 (am)

Academia: students and “moving rocks”. In short: the helicopter parents ought to let their kids grow a little.

Religion By most measures (hunger, poverty, longevity, disease control, the lessening of slavery), the world is getting better. But on the whole, Christians don’t think so. I wonder if they miss the days of inquisitions or auto-de-fes.

President Obama and Frogs, according to the Westboro Baptist Church.

22 percent of people in this poll don’t think that atheists have a right to put up a bill board.

Wasn’t going to Post Much But…9 November 09 pm

Workout Notes I didn’t swim this morning; the lifeguard showed up but no one got there to unlock the pool. Grrr…. so I swam over lunch instead (2650 yards, or 1.5 miles)

500 warm up 8:30, 500 drill/swim, 1000 in 16:17 (4:00, 8:04, 12:08); died in the last 250, but this was my fastest since September 13, 2008, (2 seconds faster than a month and a half ago) and my third fastest since March 2006.

I was angry and revved up.

Posts:
Football: this past Navy-ND game:

Academia: math professors usually don’t have to deal with the know-it-alls

We do have to deal with the “know nothings” in the public at times:

Government watchdogs are blasting taxpayer-funded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities that send college professors on free vacations and pay for programs on topics like the “cultural significance of the circus poster” — just a few items on an eye-popping list of questionable NEH projects.

As if the life of a college professor weren’t easy enough, millions of taxpayer dollars are going to fund monthlong vacations for sightseeing scholars in Europe and South America, part of the $144 million budget provided for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“easy enough”??? Ok, go out there and earn a Ph. D. if it is so easy. Don’t worry; you won’t be able to.

Here are of the projects that they deem unworthy of being funded:

$725,000 to produce a two-hour documentary on the history of American whaling.

[...]

# $130,000 for 16 professors to study the “truth and meaning” of life according to Aristotle
# $50,000 to build a computer model of an ancient city in Pakistan complete with “animated and interactive ‘inhabitants’”

[...]

$199,000 to send 25 professors to Barcelona for a month to study interactions among Christians, Muslims and Jews in old Europe

[...]

# $600,000 for a movie about starvation in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s
# $511,000 for a documentary about an interracial medical team in the South

Let’s see: whaling (a big current environmental issue), meaning of life (mental health implications), computer model to study ancient history, and interracial teams aren’t worthy of study? A period of famine (brought upon by bad policy and bad science) isn’t worthy of study? Studying how Muslims, Christians and Jews get along isn’t worthy of study IN THIS DAY AND AGE???

Yes, I am a college professor but I teach mathematics and my research is in that area (some quotes in science articles). But the math/science/engineering fields, while valuable, are hardly the only ones worthy of study and funding.

Speaking of know-nothing ignorance, we see some of that in a British newspaper: somehow, evolution leads to a decline of morality:

Whoever Dennis Sewell is, he has, as the Brits say, “gone badly wrong.” Check out what seems to be a precis of his book, The Political Gene: How Darwin’s Ideas Changed Politics, in the online Times of London. The paper has published an article that, in essence, holds Darwin responsible for not only the Columbine massacres and the Nazi Holocaust, but also the decline of morality in today’s world.

After a perfunctory nod to Darwin Year, Sewell gets down to it:

Darrell Scott, whose daughter Rachel was the first of the 13 children to be murdered, and whose son Craig narrowly escaped being shot, cannot understand why so little attention has been paid to the motivation of the killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and their interest in Charles Darwin’s ideas. “Harris wore a ‘Natural Selection’ T-shirt on the day of the killings. They made remarks on video about helping out the process of natural selection by eliminating the weak. They also professed that they had evolved to a higher level than their classmates. I was amazed at the frequent references to evolution, and that the press completely ignored that aspect of the tapes.”

Jerry Coyne responds appropriately:

I hadn’t realized that Darwinism was a “world-view.” Silly me — all along I thought it was just a theory meant to explain the development and diversity of life.

Shame on the Times for publishing tripe like this. I’d expect to see this flatulence in a creationist pamphlet, but not in a reputable newspaper. Fortunately, the Times readers are taking Sewell apart in the comments section.

One addition to what Coyne said: I frequently see this sort of flatulence at Fox News.

Politics

I’ve mentioned that Republicans often have a revisionist view of Ronald Reagan. Well, it appears that some of my political friends have revisionist views of FDR, as The Edge of the America West points out:

Steve Benen, in the course of making an argument that most of his commenters don’t want to hear, overstates FDR’s intentions with the Social Security Act.

Roosevelt, the towering political figure of the 20th century, with an electoral mandate, a Democratic Congress, and the stench of a failed Republican president fresh on the nation’s mind, had to take what he could get on Social Security, which was far less than what he wanted.

Now, in a perfect world, a unicorn or magic pony of some kind would have written a history of the Great Depression and the New Deal that corrected this gentle myth in a short, introductory fash–OMIGOD! LOOKEE HERE!

Surf to the link to see the evidence.

Health Care Reform
Paul Krugman sees the passage of the House Bill as an impressive achievement. I agree. However many are squawking about the limitations against insurance which covers abortion. I tut-tutted the ideas that this might hurt the Democrats with women as I figured that those backing these restrictions were anti-choice Representatives from anti-choice districts.

Nate Silver proves that my conjecture was wrong; many “pro-choice” Democrats voted for these restrictions.

Wingnuts and Political Humor

Paul Krugman wonders why “Nazi” has become the slur-de-jour from the wingnuts instead of “Commie”.

The Onion: just read:

Claiming that the president was preying on the public’s fear of contracting a fatal disease last week when he declared the H1N1 virus a national emergency, Republican leaders announced Wednesday that they were officially endorsing the swine flu. “Thousands of Americans—hardworking ordinary Americans like you and me—already have H1N1,” Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said during a press conference. “Now Obama wants to take that away from us. Ask yourself: Do you want the federal government making these kinds of health care decisions for you and your family?”

Yes, this is parody. But it reads believable, doesn’t it?

Speaking of “close to being true parody”:

A Zogby poll of 1,542 American grandparents published Monday found that grandsons were described as “very” to “extremely” talented by 1,542 of the respondents. “Participants in the poll were emphatic in their descriptions of the talents of grandsons in fields as diverse as advertising and sales, choral performance, baseball, talking, crawling, making their beds, video games, and instructing their elders on proper cell-phone use,” pollster Tom Waterton said. “In addition, an overwhelming percentage of grandchildren were described as outgoing, sharp, and looking just like Uncle Andy, you remember Uncle Andy, he was always up to something, too bad he passed so young, he would have loved the grandchild in question.” Sources at Zogby admitted that the survey was incomplete, as several hundred pollsters are still unable to get their assigned grandparents off the phone

I joke that our problem students must not have had parents and grandparents since every parent will gush about how “awesome”, “amazing” and “smart” their kids are….

9 November 09 (am)

Dang. The student lifeguard showed up but no one showed up to let us in the pool. This is the second time in two weeks that this happened.

So, I’ll try again over lunch.

Dang: at first, I thought that this was the United States. But then again, one of the reasons I took so long to come around to evolution is that it was poorly explained in school; we were told that things “evolved” but not a bit as to “why” things changed.

Football: you knew it was a matter of time.

ND fans will understand this photo.

Social: I had dinner with Barbara at Aachi’s Indian restaurant last night; just as we were getting ready to leave, Kevin Lowe and Linda Groezinger came in.

I had read both of their blogs in the past and have chatted with them on facebook; it was interesting to see them in person. I was struck at how pretty Linda was; both are attorneys at law. Kevin also has a rock band.

Bears Get Creamed

Ok it is 41-21 with 1:30 left in the game.

But it wasn’t that close; it was 31-7 at the half, with Arizona getting 4 drives between 70-85 yards on their first 4 possessions plus a field goal off of a field goal return.

The Bears did close to 34-21 off of touchdown set up by an interception but got no closer.

Oh well…

(photos from yahoo)

Daily Kos: SNL Nails Fox News’s Tuesday Election Coverage (w/ Video)

more about "Daily Kos: SNL Nails Fox News’s Tuesd…", posted with vodpod

8 November noon-ish

Workout notes I took advantage of a pretty day to get 10 miles of slow walking (3:09) at McNaughton Park. Of course the frisbee golfers were there by the time I completed a loop and there were a couple of guys on bikes with ZZ Top beards. This is Pekin, after all.

My calf hurt just a little; I wouldn’t have noticed it much had I not been alert for it, and I haven’t had a pain killer in over a week.

8 November 09 (am)

Workout notes Nothing yet; I do want to get out and hike in this beautiful weather though.
I’ll leave when I finish here.

Health Care Reform It passed the House by a narrow margin. There is an excellent interactive map here.

(click to enlarge). Legend: dark blue: Democratic Representative who voted “yes”. Light blue: D. Rep. who voted “no”. Light red: Repuke Republican who voted “no”. Bright red: Republican who voted “yes” (there is one in New Orleans, Louisiana; Representative Cao; look at the “lower point” of Louisiana; it is barely visible.

Yes, Rep. Dennis “The Purity Troll” Kucinich voted “no”. Yes, I wish that single payer was possible. But we need something that we can build on. Hence, I agree with this Daily Kos diarist:

Some people wonder why I am not a fan of Dennis Kucinich and don’t take comfort when I look along the trench and find him fighting by my side or, especially, carrying my banner. Well, he voted against health care reform tonight. He can provide any reasons he wants, but I’d note that the only Democratic women in the entire House to vote against the bill (Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin of South Dakota, Suzanne Kosmas of Florida, and Betsy Markey of Colorado), are from very conservative districts. The women of the Democratic caucus swallowed hard when the Stupak-Pitts amendment passed, and they voted to go ahead with reform. So, please don’t try to tell me that the pro-life-’til-the-day-he-decided-to-run-for-president Kucinich voted no because he was standing up for women’s rights.

* BooMan23′s diary :: ::
*

I presume he voted no because this bill isn’t a single-payer bill. But he and Rep. Massa of New York are the only two proponents of single-payer to vote against reform. And Massa is just looking for cover because his district is very conservative. What really happened is that Kucinich wants attention and wants to be holier and purer than everyone else. I’d have to hold my nose to vote this bill, too, but look around, Dennis. You’re all alone. Again.

The bill passed the House with 220 votes (218 votes were required). That leaves us no room to improve the bill in Conference. We got a single Republican vote, from Joseph Cao of New Orleans. Cao was satisfied by the Stupak Amendment, but his vote will disappear if that language is stripped out in Conference. So, we have two votes to spare. Want a stronger public option? Forget it. Any small change to this deal will probably kill the effort to pass this under regular order. I give Pelosi credit for winning, once again, but she just barely made it. She did what she had to do, but it certainly wasn’t pleasant. [...]

Surf to the article to see the title by “BooMan”.

As far as the bluedogs: well, some are about as good as we will get out of such a district. No, I won’t give to the DCCC as I don’t want to support them, but I won’t push for a primary in such districts either.

7 November Football….

Navy 23, Notre Dame 21. Actually, Navy was up 23-14 with about 1 minute after a Navy safety but ND got the onside kick and scored with about 20 seconds left. Navy got the onside kick and then ran out the clock.

But in all honesty, Navy has played better teams; they had a close encounter with Ohio State and played Pitt tough and lost to a 2 loss Temple team in the last minute.

So this was a competitive game against two evenly matched teams.

Then I watched Ohio State finish off against Penn State and then Standford hold off an Oregon rally. I’ll probably put an appearance at Vickie’s weenie roast.