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:

see more Epic Fails

Parenting Fail (nice butt though)

see more Epic Fails

9 February 2010

Workout notes woke up late (5:15 am; that’s late for me), shoveled snow, lifted weights, 2.4 mile run on the treadmill, (changed speed from 5.5 to 7.0 mph, elevation from 0 to 4), 2.6 on the AMT, 3.11 on the stairmaster, 2.0 on the elliptical.

Leg: it hurt a bit (hamstring area; higher than the calf) but that happens in chilly weather and when I shovel.

It is still coming down though not as hard. Did I tell you that I detest northern winters?

Mathematics and Education
Here is a couple of interesting articles about mathematics education and women written by Daniel R. Hawes: here is part I:

Drawing on meatanalysis of the literature and new data gathered as a result of “No Child Left Behind” the researchers find that

“gender differences in performance were close to zero in all grades, including high school. [...] Thus, girls have now reached parity with boys in mathematics performance in the U.S., even in high school where a gap existed in earlier decades.”

A question, that is not addressed by the study, but which I am curious about is how much of the narrowing of the gender gap is girls catching up vs how much is boys falling behind; especially as numeracy is one of my pet peeves.

Universal dumbing down: I love it! But there is some good news too:

Focusing on the mathematically talented, i.e. the professors and award winning mathematicians, the researchers also find the gap to be closing. This is interesting, since one popular hypothesis regarding sex differences in mathematical (and other cognitive) abilities used to state that possibly men’s and women’s ability was spread around the same mean, but that men displayed greater variance. This would explain why men dominate the lowest and the highest percentiles for many cognitive ability scores.
However, the researchers not only find the score to be narrowing, but also cite data that shows no difference in variance for math performance in a number of countries. Given that most people will not be willing to extend an hypothesis in which sex differences are the reason for differential math performance in some countries but not in others (which does seem quite absurd), this also seems to indicate that the “greater variance hypothesis”, as I shall term it loosely, needs to be discarded.

Ok, the “greater variance hypothesis” used to make sense to me, but we should be seeing that in all societies, not just ours. But here is what is most interesting:

Getting to the final part of the study, the lead researchers Janet Hyde and Janet Mertz manage to show a significant correlation between the percentage of girls on a country’s International Mathematical Olympiad Team, and that country’s World Development Indicator Gender Gap Index. The emerging pattern is quite clear: The greater the gender parity in a country, the more girls go to the Math Olympiad; thus indicating a significant role – who could have doubted it – of social equality in girl’s performance on this (and other) indicators of mathematical achievement.

In all honesty, I haven’t seen much difference between male and female ability in upper division mathematics classes (undergraduate). I’ll leave to others more qualified than I to talk about graduate students.

Part II of the Hawes article can be found here. The argument is something like this: if the teacher is uncomfortable with math, the students pick up on it, and most elementary school teachers are female. Hence the message “women suck at math” gets propagated, even if on the subconscious level.

Trains and High Speed rail Conservation Report outlines a fantasy of mine.

Surf to the Conservation Report to see President Obama speaking about this topic.

Speaking of President Obama: Nate Silver points out that he is on the public side of most issues (and backs up this assertion by linking to the appropriate polls).

But our Senate rules are hindering progress; sure they once served us well, but now it is all too easy for a few to obstruct things (via the filibuster, “holds”, etc.) This has happened before. Paul Krugman reminds us:

A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.

Last week, after nine months, the Senate finally approved Martha Johnson to head the General Services Administration, which runs government buildings and purchases supplies. It’s an essentially nonpolitical position, and nobody questioned Ms. Johnson’s qualifications: she was approved by a vote of 94 to 2. But Senator Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, had put a “hold” on her appointment to pressure the government into approving a building project in Kansas City.

This dubious achievement may have inspired Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama. In any case, Mr. Shelby has now placed a hold on all outstanding Obama administration nominations — about 70 high-level government positions — until his state gets a tanker contract and a counterterrorism center.

What gives individual senators this kind of power? Much of the Senate’s business relies on unanimous consent: it’s difficult to get anything done unless everyone agrees on procedure. And a tradition has grown up under which senators, in return for not gumming up everything, get the right to block nominees they don’t like.

In the past, holds were used sparingly. [...]

So, how is President Obama doing in this environment? Robert Reich explains:

Obamanomics suffers from a misunderstanding of what the President is trying to achieve and what he’s up against. Into the breach come Republicans, Tea Partiers, nay-sayers, deficit vultures, and Raging-Dog Democrats, all viewing Obamanomics as more taxes and more spending. That’s nonsense. To see the big picture, keep your eye on three big things.

1. Government spending needed to offset the continued reluctance of consumers and businesses to spend. You don’t have to be an orthodox Keynesian to understand that as long as the private sector is deleveraging, the public sector has to borrow and spend in order to keep the economy moving forward. [...]

2. The boomers now speeding toward retirement. Neither party wants to deal with the inevitable consequences for Medicare and Social Security. The President’s idea for a bi-partisan congressional commission on the deficit was too large and amorphous to gain the support it needed. He’d do better to try for a bi-partisan commission that focused just on these two giant entitlement programs. Social Security is an easier fix than Medicare, but the growth of both have to be tamed. [...]

3. Mad-as hell politics. The economic stresses of continued high unemployment and low wages are contributing to the growth of the “I’m Mad As Hell” Party – a rag-tag collection of Tea Partiers furious at establishment Republicans, left-wing Democrats angry at what they consider lily-livered Democrats in Washington, and Independents disgusted with everybody inside the Beltway.

Mad-as-hellers on the right hate government; mad-as-hellers on the left hate big business. Both share a growing sense that the economic game is rigged against them. The two are also united by how much they detest Wall Street and its bailout, and their contempt for any cozy relationship between big business and government. They distrust the Fed, and have no particular fondness for international trade, either. Mad-as-hellers are likely to be a formidable force in the upcoming midterms and beyond. [...]

In sum: If you want to understand Obamanomics one year out, look at the demand-side hole we’re still in, the gargantuan boomer deficit we’re heading for, and the mad-as-hell party these bad times have spawned. How Obama deals with all three will be the real economic test of his presidency.

Seems fair.

Religion
Susan Jacoby takes exception to being included as one of the “nice atheists” (unlike, say, Richard Dawkins, who I like):

I was somewhat taken aback recently when I found myself on a list of “kinder, gentler atheists”–most of them women–compiled by a religious historian attempting to distinguish between socially acceptable atheism and the presumably mean, hard-line atheism expounded by such demonic figures as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett. This nasty versus nice dichotomy is wholly an invention of believers who are under the mistaken impression that atheism is a religion in need of a good schism.

She then goes on to attack 5 common misconceptions that people have about atheists (I wish she didn’t use the word “myth”, which for me is reserved for a religious story that has deep meaning for many…e. g., the resurrection of Jesus, the burning bush, Mohamed’s night journey, Joseph Smith’s golden tablets, etc.)

Here are some juicy tidbits from Ms. Jacoby’s article:

Myth No. 1: The “new atheism” is a phenomenon that differs radically not only from atheism as it has existed since antiquity but from the views held by forerunners of modern atheism, including deists and Enlightenment rationalists, like Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, who played such a critical role in the founding of this nation. Try as I might, I find little in the works of Dawkins, Harris et. al.–apart from their knowledge of modern science–that differs significantly from the views of secular thinkers of earlier eras. What is different is that today’s atheists are not hiding behind other labels, such as agnosticism, in order to placate religious sensibilities. It is this lack of deference, more than anything else, that has outraged religious believers–particularly those on the right–in America. Most have confused their constitutional right to believe whatever they want with the idea that the beliefs themselves must be inherently worthy of respect.

Emphasis mine. Just because an idea has the label of “religion” does NOT mean that it is worthy of respect!

She further adds:

One point, however, is indisputable: there is a strong correlation between simplistic fundamentalist beliefs, relying on a literal interpretation of sacred texts, and lack of education. As the level of education rises, the number of people who believe in materially impossible tales such as the creation of the universe in six days; the literal resurrection of the dead; and the Virgin Birth diminishes. That is why fundamentalists have been tireless in their efforts to inject religious teaching into public schools. So it is generally true (although there are of course many exceptions) that the less people have learned about science, history, and different belief systems, the more likely they are to cling to a rigid form of faith.

She goes on with the usual caveat that “educated doesn’t mean smart”. True, but there is an undeniable correlation between intelligence and education level, though, of course an imperfect one. For example, I firmly believe that an average competent engineer or scientist with an undergraduate degree is much smarter than a typical person with an doctorate in education. And yes, there are people without college degrees who are smarter than most with them. But the correlation is undeniably true.

She doesn’t make this point, but she points out that many educated atheists follow stupid things like Ayn Rand’s philosophies. She does close this section with a winner:

What ultimately distinguishes atheists from religious believers, however, is that no intelligent atheist can ever claim that his or her ideas constitute absolute truth.

In all honesty, many liberal “believers” also think this; for them, religion is, more or less, a nice metaphor to live life by and that people in different cultures will find value in different kinds of metaphors.

Her article continues on and is excellent reading.

Some Evening Fails

At a Sarah Palin/Rick Perry rally in Houston

Now what was Tancredo saying about “literacy tests”?

Speaking of science and crackpottery: I just love this cartoon posted in Why Evolution is True. In some sense it is easier for those with a shallow knowledge of a subject to convince themselves that they know what is going on.

Ok, the Republicans are good for at least one aspect of the economy: collection agencies:

We often hear about the role that the pharmaceutical industry, for-profit health care companies, and big banks have in influencing and corrupting elections and elected officials. But there is another group to add to this list: Debt Collectors. This is a billion dollar industry, and its political agenda goes far beyond the day-to-day regulation of collecting debts. The debt collection industry opposes any number of financial reforms as well as access to health care. Why? Predatory lending and huge health care bills keep people in debt. The more people that are in debt, in turn, the more profitable the industry. [...]

Although I had head that these phone calls were taking place, and, by phone calls, I mean millions of phone calls. It was all laid out in an ACA press release sent after the election. The press release is entitled “ACA Members Help Influence Brown Election.”

It goes on to state:

ACA Immediate Past President Jay Gonsalves and fellow New England Collectors Association member David Sands reached out to ACA members and mobilized them….Not only did members send money, but many agencies offered use of their phones as an in-kind contribution to the campaign.

Why would they do this?

With the very real threat of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency looming in Congress, as well as wholesale changes to a health care system that would affect many credit and collection professionals’ livelihoods, ACA members helped the Brown campaign create a groundswell to victory.

So, Republicans ARE good for something.

On Being Married….

Workout notes Only a swim: 2200 yards: 500 warm up, 500 of drill/swim (fins), 10 x 50 (25 3g, 25 free) on the 1 (55 each), 10 x 50 fist on the 1 (mostly 48-49, a 52 and a couple of 50′s), cool down with paddles.

On being married

I’ve only been married to my wife for 13 years and 11 months. But we’ve been married long enough to have the following type of conversation: Me: “I wonder….” Her: “Yes!”. We have this conversation about 4 times a week, usually in the early evening. No: it has nothing to do with gene propagation.

8 February 2010

Workout notes: I slept in a bit and will only swim…maybe I’ll have time for a short jog (2 miles) first. I didn’t sleep well.

Illinois Politics I admit that I didn’t research the Illinois Lt. Governor candidates (though I knew the other races) and so left that spot on the ballot blank. Well, I wasn’t the only Illinois Democratic voter who didn’t do their home work; we elected a known wife-beater to the position! Fortunately, he resigned and won’t be running in the general election.