I admit it: I kind of LIKE Rush Limbaugh.

Ok, before you think that I’ve lost my mind, I am well aware of how much of what Mr. Limbaugh says is simply not true (I can recommend Al Franken’s book: Rush Limbuagh is a Big Fat Idiot for a list of his early failures.)

And no, the couple of times I managed to listen to his show, he has bored me more than fired me up. Once, I was driving and getting tired and I found his show on the radio. I figured that listening to it would fire me up; really get my blood boiling. But no: it consisted of the following: “a golf course wanted to cut down a tree, some liberal group objected, but they cut down the tree anyway; much of the rest of the show was the sound of a chain saw and Limbaugh yelling “timber”. That’s it. Meh.

So, what do I admire about him?

1. He makes lots of money, mostly off of his moronic listeners. Anyone who takes money from that collection of losers gets at least a grudging nod of approval from me.

2. Republicans routinely kiss his big fat butt. Sarah Palin was the latest, but check out the list of others:

Many other Republicans have walked back their criticism of Limbaugh

Michael Steele walked back comment that Limbaugh is an “entertainer” and his show is “incendiary” and “ugly.” On the February 28, 2009 edition of CNN’s D.L.Hughley Breaks the News, Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele responded to Limbaugh’s comment that he wanted Obama to “fail,” by saying: “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh, his whole thing is entertainment. Yes, he has this incendiary–yes, it’s ugly.” He later reportedly apologized to Limbaugh, telling Politico: “My intent was not to go after Rush — I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh. … I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

Rep. Gingrey apologized after saying it’s “easy” for Limbaugh to “stand back and throw bricks.” After Limbaugh said on his show that Obama is “more frightened of me,” than other Republican leaders, and that it “doesn’t say much about our party,” Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) reportedly said that “it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party. You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of thing.” Gingrey later apologized, saying he sees “eye to eye” with Limbaugh, that he and other conservative radio hosts “are the voices of the conservative movement’s conscience,” and that “we are inspired by their words and by their determination.”

Gov. Sanford backpedaled comment that “anyone who wants Obama to fail is an idiot.” In a February 25, 2009 interview with Real Clear Politics, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said of Obama: “I don’t want him to fail. Anybody who wants him to fail is an idiot, because it means we’re all in trouble.” According to a Think Progress post, Sanford’s spokesperson later said “the governor was not referring to anyone” and was speaking “generically.”

Rep. Tiahrt hedges after saying Limbaugh is “just an entertainer.” During an April 2009 interview with the Kansas City Star, Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) reportedly said Limbaugh is “just an entertainer,” after being asked “by a Kansas City Star Editorial Board member whether Limbaugh was now the de facto leader of the GOP.” The Wichita Eagle later reported: “Tiahrt spokesman Sam Sackett said Tiahrt was not speaking negatively about Limbaugh but was trying to defend him against the suggestion that Limbaugh could be blamed for the GOP’s woes. ‘The congressman believes Rush is a great leader of the conservative movement in America — not a party leader responsible for election losses,’ Sackett told The Eagle editorial board. ‘Nothing the congressman said diminished the role Rush has played and continues to play in the conservative movement.’ “

This is hilarious!

End of the Workday 10 February 2010

The wife has to work late, and so it is time for some blogging!

We’ll start with some interesting videos (via PZ Myers):

This lampoons a creationist movie:

The placebo effect, well explained:

President Obama: sometimes people are a bit too quick to jump on him. Here is why I say this:

Arianna’s screaming, bright red headline:

OBAMA: I DON’T ‘BEGRUDGE’ BIG BANK CEOS FOR THEIR MASSIVE BONUSES

What Obama said:

I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.

Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney et. al. : it sure appears that she is running; so how does the primary math look for her? Nate Silver takes a look at her, and at other Republican hopefuls. But remember 4 years ago, not many were taking Barack Obama seriously, myself included.

My guess: the Republican nominee will be someone who isn’t on our radar screen at the moment.

Science, philosophy and all that Jerry Coyne’s latest post really hits home; I’ve had a discussion on facebook (a somewhat painful experience) and was frustrated that people really don’t know the difference between a suggested scientific model (which can be tested for utility, refined falsified) and just making stuff up:

Can the lucubrations of philosophers and journalists manqué get any sillier than this? A scientist’s confidence that he or she is on the right track is not the same religion’s absolute belief in the verity of propositions that can’t be supported empirically. And, of course, none of these scientific “leaps of faith” are accepted by scientists as true until they’re vetted by scientific experiment or observation. Einstein’s general theory of relativity, for example, wasn’t widely accepted as a true theory until Eddington demonstrated the bending of light around stars during an eclipse in 1919. In what way does this equate to a believer’s assertion that Jesus died for his sins because that believer simply knows that it’s so?

Now Vernon seems to know that something is amiss here. After all, he notes that “revelation purports to come from God and is untestable, two characteristics that the scientist would certainly reject.” But he then implies that revelations have their own sort of “truth,” for they “make sense to people”, who “test [these relations] against their lives, that it can account for the evidence of their experience.” But is that the same as testing the theory of relativity? Certainly not, for those revelations that are “tested” against people’s experience, and “make sense” to them, conflict among people of different faiths!

AMEN. Or…RAMEN….or something.

Seriously: I wish I could post the relevant parts of the discussion but it goes something like this: “ok, how did it happen?” Me: ” I don’t know”. Them: “oh, so you are giving up? What if Einstein did that?”. Me: “Einstein came up with a falsifiable conjecture”. They can’t seem to get that; they confuse Einstein using his mind and mathematics to come up with a model (which WAS published prior to be verified by experiment) with just making stuff up. They don’t seem to get the point that what Einstein came up with WAS subject to verification or falsification. They also confuse “intuition” with the need to have one’s result verified.

Once, my intuition told me that a certain mathematical conjecture was true. But I spent 2 years trying to prove it but couldn’t…it turns out that what I was trying to prove was false. Happily I published the counterexample. Of course, that was a mathematical result and not a scientific one.

Sarah Palin Uses a Hand-O-Prompter

ColbertNation.com video – Sarah Palin uses a hand-o-prompter and defends Rush Limbaugh for calling liberals ‘retards.’

more about "Sarah Palin Uses a Hand-O-Prompter", posted with vodpod

Mad at the world workout

My leg was achy (weather? injury not healing? It is very hard to tell as this was my oft-operated on knee). Snow finally quit falling and the city plowed and, of course, buried the sidewalks (as the sidewalks go right up to the curb )

So I skipped the elliptical, shoveled snow, cursing most of the while. Got to the pool, 500 warm up, 500 swim/drill with fins, then my “mad at the world set”: 10 x (25 fly, 75 free) on the 2. I couldn’t swim fast, so I swam hard: 1:43, 41, 40, 40, 40, 39, 38, 38, 38, 37. Then 200 cool down.

Why I don’t call myself an agnostic

I made the mistake of posting this Susan Jacoby article on my facebook account. I talked about this in a previous post

She quotes Robert Ingersoll:

Integral to the myth of atheism as a religion is the false proposition that atheists claim to “know” there is no God. Robert Green Ingersoll, the 19th-century orator dubbed the “Great Agnostic,” put it succinctly in 1885 when asked a question by a Philadelphia reporter who was trying to get him to denounce atheists. “Don’t you think the belief of the Agnostic is more satisfactory to the believer than that of the Atheist?” the reporter asked. Ingersoll replied, “There is no difference. The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The Agnostic says: “I do not know, but I do not believe that there is any god. The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he knows there is a god: but we know that he does not know. He simply believes. He cannot know. The Atheist cannot know that God does not exist.”

Ingersoll is not 100 percent correct; there are some atheist who claim to “know” that there is no god. But he is right that many of are merely “unbelievers”; in my case I see no evidence for one, hence I don’t believe.

Now the classical agnostic believes that “knowing” is impossible but I don’t “know” this. I just operate under the assumption that “there isn’t” and will continue to do so but I remain open to evidence.

However, I do NOT bill myself as an agnostic. Why? Well, it is mainly to keep “believers” from bothering me. I am reasonably sure that their “intervening, miracle causing” deity doesn’t exist though I understand that some of the more liberal “believers” just use the idea of a deity as a metaphor to help them live better lives. I understand this; also, some religious tools (yoga, prayer, meditation) can help the body and calm the mind.

Unfortunately, I still get some who bother me from time to time, actually confusing the proposing of new scientific theories (explanations which predict and are subject to falsification) with guesses about “spiritual” matters (deities, spirits, etc.).

I have no patience with this. Part of what I do for a living is read nonsense (student work) and I have no desire to do this on my own time; I need to formulate a polite way of saying “go away”.

Grumble…winter…grumble…

It is cold but not unseasonable outside, and I have to go outside to shovel AGAIN prior to work today. Back in 1991 I took this job, though my university did give me an option of a 1 year lectureship to try again the next year. I now wish I had done that and found a warm weather location. Too late now though.

Health care reform: Robert Reich gives an example of why it is so desperately needed:

Now, Anthem Blue Cross is going a step further. It’s raising rates for individual policyholders by as much as 39 percent. That’s fifteen times faster than inflation. So far, my group policy hasn’t been affected but I’m expecting the worst.

Anthem says it has no choice. It says the recession has forced many policyholders to drop coverage because they can’t afford it. So Anthem has to spread its costs over a much smaller pool, which ratchets up the cost of each. In addition, says Anthem, too many of those remaining policyholders have greater medical needs than the average. So Anthem is just doing what it has to do to survive.

This argument sounds logical until you look more closely. First, Anthem and its corporate parent, WellPoint, are enormously profitable. WellPoint’s profits rose to $2.7 billion last quarter. Even if you subtract one-time-only financial maneuvers, WellPoint is still fat and happy, which makes Anthem fat and happy. Everyone is fat and happy except Anthem’s policy holders, who are being skewered. [...]

The only way it could possibly raise its rates so high and expect to keep its customers would be if Anthem’s customers have no other choice. In other words, Anthem’s strategy makes sense only if Anthem faces little or no competition from other health insurers.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case. Insurers, remember, are exempt from the federal antitrust laws. And WellPoint, Anthem’s parent, is the largest insurer in America.

Humor
I thought that our geese were bad:

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Parenting Fail (nice butt though)

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