And I thought that modern day American parents were too soft on their kids…

Don’t know your abc’s? That’s right….daddy will waterboard you!

Joshua Tabor admitted to police that he used a CIA torture technique on his 4-year-old daughter because he was angry she couldn’t recite the alphabet. (h/t The Political Carnival)

As his daughter ‘squirmed’ to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water.

New Friday Night Fight….what a knockout!

The left comes at 1:40 into it…it maybe traveled 6 inches..if that.

Joey Hernandez (an excellent fighter) knocked out by Ed Paredes.

Wow! Saints win 31-17.

I sure as heck did not see this coming.

For a bit of Super Bowl fun: Nate Silver said to take the points and the Saints (though he picked the Colts to in straight up) and wrote a good article on the aggressive play calling.

Trivia: I saw the Saints play the Rams this year. In 1989, I saw the 49′ers play the Cowboys, and in 1982, I saw the Redskins play the Buccaneers (note: Doug Williams started for Tampa Bay that day, and went on to quarterback the Redskins to another Super Bowl victory).

So I’ve seen three Super Bowl Champion teams in person.

Key plays: 1. Saints opened the second half (down 10-6) with an onside kick; they got a touchdown. The Colts got it back to go up 17-16 but….then the Saints went up 24-17 after a touchdown and two pointer. But then they intercepted the Colts and ran it back in for the clincher.

The Colts had it at the New Orleans 3 with about 1:30 left in the game (and two time outs) but couldn’t punch it in.

I didn’t mean to post much this afternoon….and yes I defend Sarah Palin

Workout notes I got to the pool at 7 am and did an interesting (for me) workout: 10 x 100 on the 2 (very slow, couldn’t get into it; times varied from 1:54 to 1:43 at the end). 5 x (25 front, 75 free) on the 2:05 (just under 2 each), 5 x (25 sfs, 75 free) on the 2:05, 5 x (25 3g, 75 free) on the 2 (1:50), 5 x (100 fist) on the 2 (1:48 or so), 5 x 100 (25 catch-up, 75 free) on the 2 (1:50), 5 x (25 fly, 75 free) on the 2 (high 1:40s), 5 x (25 free , 25 back, 50 free) on the 2 (tight), then 10 x 100 (alternate paddle/fins). It all took 1:50 to do (averaged on the 2).

Then I went upstairs and did a slow 12.5 miles (20 km) on the indoor bike; followed that with 3.3 miles (5.5 km) on the elliptical. So, this was a triathlon of sorts.

Observed in our gym: lots of people were talking about the upcoming Super Bowl; most here are cheering for the Colts though many said that part of them wouldn’t mind seeing the Saints win either.

My take: Give the points; the Colts should win “comfortably”.

Speaking of the Superbowl: the NFL is probably making a mistake here. Sure, if they make an exception for the churches to show the game on too large of a screen, then I can see them being sued by non-churches that want to do the same, etc. But what is the big deal about allowing a Super Bowl party, since the game is on “free television” anyway? In all honesty, I wouldn’t mind hearing from someone who has a good answer (e. g. an attorney) Hat tip: Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Education and social network sites A professor got his feelings hurt when he surfed to his student’s facebook site. Personally, I WANT to get away from them when I am not on campus and I am really not interested in what they think of me as a person. But other professors responded to this professor; responses ranged from “don’t snoop”, “why are you trying to be friends with them anyway”, etc.

Politics
Many of my political friends are laughing at this:

My take: “who cares”. Really. Example: I often use notes to lecture in my “business calculus” class. Do you think that I don’t know the material? Of course I do; I use notes to discipline myself; to keep myself on target. I have a tendency to get undisciplined and start going off on a topic that strikes my interest and the notes remind me to cover the relevant topics.

Hence I think that Governor Palin was doing much the same thing; there were certain things that she wanted to remind herself to say. No big deal.

Yes, I know: some conservatives *thought* that President Obama’s use of a teleprompter somehow masked the fact that he wasn’t smart or aware (note: he had no teleprompter when he exposed the emptiness of the Republican House members, but never mind that). But you know what? The people who thought that the President’s use of the teleprompter somehow showed that he was stupid are, well…stupid. They simply aren’t worth talking to; the simplest thing to do is to dismiss them as morons and move on.

Note: I still think that Governor Palin is a retard a hypocritical, cynical self-serving anti-intellectual who kisses up to Rush Limbaugh just like the rest of “them”:

Palin says Limbaugh meant to be “satirical” in using word “retards”

From the February 7 edition of Fox Broadcsting Co.’s Fox News Sunday:

CHRIS WALLACE (host): OK, but, Rush Limbaugh weighed in this week, and he said this: “Our politically correct society is acting like some giant insult’s taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards, retards.”

PALIN: He was satirical in that –

WALLACE: Wait, let me finish. “I mean, these people, these liberal activists are kooks.” Should Rush Limbaugh apologize?

PALIN: They are kooks, so I agree with Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh was using satire to bring attention to what this politically correct –

WALLACE: But he used the “R” word.

PALIN: Using satire. Name-calling by anyone — I teach this to my children. You teach this to your children and your grandchildren, too. Name-calling by anyone, it’s just unnecessary. It just wastes time. Let’s speak to the issues and again, let’s move on.

WALLACE: But you know what some people are going to say, Governor, and have said. They say, look, when it’s their political adversary, Rahm Emanuel, she’s going to call him out — he’s indecent, apologize. But when it’s a political friend like Rush Limbaugh, oh, it’s satire.

PALIN: I didn’t hear Rush Limbaugh call a group of people whom he did not agree with “f-ing retards,” and we did know that Rahm Emanuel, it’s been reported, did say that. There’s a big difference there.

Are you surprised? Frankly, I think that Mr. Limbaugh gets a “rush” out of getting cowardly right wing idiots politicians to kiss up to him.

Irony Sagacity notes that some denounce the stimulus money, and then scream to get some of it. Who knows; perhaps Governor Sanford wants to build new hiking trails?

More politics Tancredo’s idiotic speech to the tea-baggers resentment-fest reminded me of something. There are legitimate analysis of the 2008 election, and one of the best articles on it is here. Here is a sample of what you will find in this article:

The day after the election, Obama’s top pollster, Joel Benenson, declared, “what this election definitely says is that Democrats set out to compete in places where Republicans said it was impossible, and we won and redrew the map.” Beneson seems to suggest that the Obama campaign crafted a strategy that would be especially effective in “red” states such as Virginia, and that, as the term “redrew” implies, this strategy may have created a permanent shift. Whether the shift is permanent depends, of course, on what happens in future elections. But what about the idea that the Obama strategy was especially successful in states that had previously voted Republican?

The evidence does not support this claim. If we look at the 2008 electoral results, we find that Obama shifted the overall map in his favor: he did not redraw the boundaries by performing especially strongly in previously red states. More precisely, the economy shifted the whole terrain in the Democrats’ favor and Obama took advantage of this.

Consider how Obama did relative to John Kerry in 2004. Simply put, he did better in nearly every state. Even though we typically hear about the state-by-state battles that make up the election—Florida in 2000; Ohio in 2004—recent elections, including 2008, have each been dominated by a nationwide swing. Once we account for this national swing, the outcomes in most states were very close to the 2004 pattern. Despite the focus on battleground states, there were only small shifts attributable to state-level characteristics, as opposed to this national swing (for example, Obama did no better in states with poorer economies, whether measured by unemployment or home foreclosures). This fits the recent pattern: state-by-state election swings have generally been declining over the past few decades. The traditional red-blue map is much more stable from election to election than it used to be.

There is much more there, including the old stuff about “white working class voters”.

But the biggest lesson: what makes a state strongly “red” or “blue” is how the rich people vote; the poor mostly vote Democratic, regardless of where they live. See the state by state maps here.

Science Jerry Coyne gets on The New Scientist for publishing crackpot stuff. Yes, there are always people who don’t like the idea of “natural selection” regardless of how well established this is in science, how it shows up in things that we need vaccines for, etc. Sure, it isn’t the only mechanism for evolution, but it is a major one.

Now if you want to see how science ideas get discussed, read this post about dinosaur coloring. Check out this comment:

I have only one comment on the paper. At the end, the authors say this: “Thus, the first evidence for plumage color patterns in a feathered non-avian dinosaur suggests selection for signaling function may be as important as aerodynamics in the early evolution of feathers.” (The National Geographic website—see below—makes a similar suggestion.) It seems to me that neither signaling nor aerodynamics can explain the early origin of feathers, if for no other reason that you can’t select for colored feathers until you first have feathers, and because early feathers—the filamentous structures on some feathered dinos—could hardly have had an aerodynamic function. What seems more likely is that the origin of feathers involved some other selection pressure—perhaps a thermoregulatory one—and then those early feathers gave rise to the possibility that they could, via pigmentation, be used for intraspecific signaling. Then, later, they could be coopted for flight. In other words, flying and signaling are exaptations of a feature that originated for some other reason.

Why we are so condescending

Get a load of this:

But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension.

Ok, evidence will follow, right? Well, no. What follows are a few stories. We see this, for example:

This is the second variety of liberal condescension, exemplified in Thomas Frank’s best-selling 2004 book, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” Frank argued that working-class voters were so distracted by issues such as abortion that they were induced into voting against their own economic interests. Then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, later chairman of the Democratic National Committee, echoed that theme in his 2004 presidential run, when he said Republicans had succeeded in getting Southern whites to focus on “guns, God and gays” instead of economic redistribution.

Never mind that other liberals attacked such ideas. For example, though I lack status (and rightfully so), I disagreed with the above and found this more plausible (e. g., how rich voters vote determine whether a state is “blue” or “red”).

But this gets to the point: liberals love to test ideas. Many of us (myself included) have no patience with people who don’t know what they are talking about. Check out the first minute of this:

Note: Rep. Pelosi condemned people who carried signs with Nazi symbols on them to town halls; she never called the people Nazi’s. Mr. Hannity is a liar.

Now, does this person know what the original Constitution even said? Answer: no. Seriously: did she want slavery revived? Did she want women’s suffrage revoked? Is she opposed to popular election of Senators?

Sorry, but if dismissing stuff like this as being ignorant and moronic is being condescending, then it is good to be condescending.

Another example: some people try to argue evolution with me; they trot out the old “tornado ripping though a junkyard and producing a 747″ canard. When they bring out arguments such as these, I quickly see that it is a grand waste of time to discuss this topic with them; the basic idea that they have is that the untrained “person on the street” should have their ideas taken as seriously as those of accomplished scientists. I don’t believe this for a second no more that I think that, say, an Army General should consider MY ideas for assaulting an enemy position.

(of course, in light of Tom Tancredo’s recent remarks at the tea bagger convention, this whole premise is ridiculous anyway)

We ARE all a bit different, aren’t we?

Workout notes weights (did some barbells; top bench press was 185), then dumbbells (top bench was with 75 pound dumbbells; did a set of 8), yoga leg lifts, headstand.

Then 2 mile run on the ‘mill (elevation 1 after 5 minutes; started at 5.5 mph and increased by .1 every minute and finished at 7.4 mph), so I had 2.2 miles total in 20:30. Then 3 miles on the AMT, 3.1 on the stair master (wanted 150 floors), then 2 on the elliptical. I was a sweaty mess when I finished.

I used the university gym; the last time I was there it was a spandex fest! Of course, one of the spandex babes talked to me and when she opened her mouth….well, they are still, well….very young…30 years younger than I. I joked about that to my department chair and he replied “you are just way too old for them.” I asked “when did THAT happen?” and he replied “Not recently”. But it sneaks up on you.

Back to today: when I was finishing up on the AMT I was surrounded by overweight people. That made me think of this video (photo slides) made by someone who was once 100 pounds overweight and is now a competitive racewalker. Back in 2004: I was walking 100 miles in under 24 hours and she was 100 pounds overweight. Last year, she won the judged racewalking division at the Portland Marathon in 4:38.

So, perhaps in a few years time, one of these current individuals will become like Tammy?
Oh that’s right; *I* used to weigh 320 pounds, but never mind that. That was a different lifetime; I’ve been my current size for about 14 years and I tend to forget.

Speaking of exercise, this study is interesting:

Researchers have discovered that the health benefits of aerobic exercise are determined by our genes – and can vary substantially between individuals.

Around 20 per cent of the population do not get any significant aerobic fitness benefit from regular exercise, according to an international study led by scientists at the University of London.

For these people, regular jogging and gym work will do little to ward off conditions like heart disease and diabetes which aerobic exercise is generally thought to resist.

Researchers say they would be better off abandoning their exercise regime and focusing on other ways of staying healthy – such as improving their diet or taking medication.

James Timmons of the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London, who led the study, said that the discovery would pave the way for more personalised treatments, with patients able to take DNA tests to find out the most effective way of keeping their own hearts healthy.

It could also be used to root out would-be recruits to the Armed Forces who will never be able to reach the required fitness standards.

Dr Timmons said the research broke new ground by using the human genome – the genetic map of the body which was decoded by scientists 10 years ago – to suggest improvements to healthcare.

“This would be one of the first examples of personalised, genomic-based medicine,” he said.

Interesting food for thought; I’d like to see more studies though. Personally, I enjoy my workouts but then again, I see running/walking/swimming as sports that enjoy, and not everyone enjoys them. I wonder if there are similar results about getting stronger.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my Dad’s birthday; but on February 8, 2004 I got the call that he had died after 76 years of living. Since my dad was my introduction to politics, I figured that I’d write about him today.

More below the fold….

If anything defined my father, it was his service in the United States Air Force (23 years) and his football coaching (service ball and high school). His specialty was vehicle maintenance (various kinds, including refueling rigs).

I don’t remember much about him in the very early years (Itazukie Air Force Base in Fukuoka, Japan) and my first memories were of Travis Air Force base in the very early 1960′s.

He was subsequently sent away to Korea for a 1 year isolated tour and I lived in Shertz, Texas during that time. My first memories were of President Johnson speaking on the television; my mom had said “be quiet; the President is speaking to us.”

We ended up living in many different places; probably the hardest time was when my dad did his first tour in Vietnam (Tan Son Nhut Air Base) We lived in Austin, Texas at the time. Of course, my mom kept most of her worry to herself; I was in the 4′th grade.

When dad returned it was a joyous day. Interestingly enough, he didn’t appreciate the protesters but yet, in private, questioned the wisdom and necessity of the war. He said that the toughest times where when they had to take cover during a rocket attack.

We then moved to California (Mather Air Force Base, near Sacramento). It was during this time that I began to understand his politics.

He was an old time Roosevelt Democrat; when I asked him the difference between the two parties, he’d say “The Republicans care about the rich, the Democrats care about the poor.”

This pretty much described how he felt:

I remember staying up to watch the returns of the Nixon-Humphrey returns; we didn’t have a great feeling about the election.

My Dad gave back to the community by coaching various sports; football was his favorite:

I am number 64 in the photo; this team went 6-2 for the season. Dad took this undersized team and made a winner out of it; his favorite play was the halfback “option” pass and we ended up scoring a ton of points that season.

Another thing my dad (and my mom) did was take me to the library at an early age. Neither of my parents made it out of junior high but they ensured that I went to school and had access to education.

Neither parent really interfered though; my school education was really my own thing; they never checked homework, pestered me about grades, etc. They more or less left me alone, which appeared to work out for me.

Politics

Our family had three brass plaques on the living room wall: Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. That more or less said it all. Both of my parents were die hard Democrats, albeit the “socially conservative”, “anti-abortion” variety. Note that my dad was really a deist; he didn’t believe in any of the religions though he allowed mom to raise me as a Roman Catholic.

Yes, much to my embarrassment, my parents did participate in a so-called “pro-life” march; still they never once voted for a Republican. They didn’t let a “single issue” get their vote.

Dad never liked Ronald Reagan (he called him “a dummy”) and he disliked President George W. Bush to his last days.

I remember when Gore lost in 2000; of course I was a bit down but told my parents (who lived in Austin, Texas, where Dad retired) that “we are still in good hands.” They warned me: “son, he isn’t like his dad; he doesn’t have it upstairs; he will ruin our country.”

Were they right about that!

Mostly though, Dad despised anyone who sent troops in Harm’s way when it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

In summary, I owe both my parents for the raising and for introducing me to books. I also owe my love of politics and football to my dad…and well one silly thing: my dad loved to play with stuffed frogs..and so do I.

Here is one regret: when I got introduced to facebook, several of my former football team mates who had played for dad asked me to say “hi” to him and to tell him how they remembered how he had pushed them to do their best and how that had helped them later in life. Sadly, Dad will never know how highly they thought of him.

One thing that makes me smile though: where Dad liked Bill Clinton, he would have been delighted to see Barack Obama elected President of the United States.

Thanks for reading.

Tom Tancredo’s Opinion versus the Facts

Tom Tancredo started out with typical tea-bagger boilerplate

Well, that didn’t take long — Tom Tancredo kicks off the teabagger convention by:

.. asserting that Obama was elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country.”

So what do the FACTS say?

1. 76 Nobel Laureates endorsed Barack Obama.

2. According to CNN exit polls, Obama won the “graduate degree” vote 58-40. (see also: here; the CNN data takes a while to load but can be found here.)

5 February 2010

Workout notes Better than yesterday; 1 mile on the AMT, 2 on the treadmill: started off at 9:50 mpm and worked the elevation up from 0 to 5 (going up every 2 minutes) and staying at 5 for 5 minutes…then back down.
Then 1 more mile on the elliptical.

Afterward: swimming; 500 easy, 500 of drill/swim (fins), 10 x (25 fly, 75 free) on the 2; mostly 1:41-1:42; I had two 1:40′s, one 1:39, and the last one was 1:36. The swim-babe in the next lane pushed me a bit. 200 cool-down with paddles.

Overall: afterward the “injury” is oh-so-slightly achy; my elbows are a bit achy too (weights).

Posts This is funny: it describes a typical news short:

(hat tip: Legal Satyricon)

Religion Yes, I’ve read about wars making people religious. But sometimes it works the other way too:

The highlight of the article, though, is when Christian talks about the toughest times during the war:

“They say there are no atheists in foxholes. But as we sat in those holes, praying that God would save us, I thought about the fact that the other side was doing the same thing. And then I wondered if God is just playing some kind of game with us. Pretty much I decided at that point there was no God,” Christian said.

Retard Wars Alan Colmes has a bit of the background here. But it is getting better:

In the Connecticut Senate race, Republican hopeful Linda McMahon is going to have to answer for how her company, WWE, created a character, Eugene (named because of “eugenics and played by Nicholas Dinsmore), portrayed as the mentally handicapped nephew of the RAW general manager. Rob Simmons, McMahon’s opponent, is planning to call her on it.

When he was introduced in 2004, according to press reports at the time, viewers complained to WWE, forcing them to issue a statement saying they intended him to be portrayed as a “hero” who would inspire “other people with disabilities to strive to achieve their dreams.”

But there’s footage all over the internet of Eugene getting savagely stomped and beaten, and even demeaned, and one storyline even ended up with him getting savaged in a steel cage. And the Simmons campaign is going to demand that McMahon account for this.

So, look at this 4 minute video. Is there anything “heroic” about this portrayal?

5 February 2010

Science Ok, this isn’t really funny, but it IS possible for a woman without a vagina to get pregnant: the recipe is rather tersely written here. In a nutshell: a young woman had oral sex, swallowed, and then was stabbed in a fight. The puncture wound opened a hole from her GI system into her womb where the still surviving sperm made it.

But this woman has a birth defect in which she literally has no vagina.

In the days of old, can you imagine how this would have been seen as a miracle?

Politics (via Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub)

Politics: why the Senate is not designed to get anything done: Senator Shelby from Alabama has put a blanket hold on 70 of the President’s nominee (meaning: there needs to be a “cloture” vote on each of them) because of some earmarks that he wants for Alabama:

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put an extraordinary “blanket hold” on at least 70 nominations President Obama has sent to the Senate, according to multiple reports this evening. The hold means no nominations can move forward unless Senate Democrats can secure a 60-member cloture vote to break it, or until Shelby lifts the hold.

“While holds are frequent,” CongressDaily’s Dan Friedman and Megan Scully report (sub. req.), “Senate aides said a blanket hold represents a far more aggressive use of the power than is normal.”

The Mobile Press-Register picked up the story early this afternoon. The paper confirmed Reid’s account of the hold, and reported that a Shelby spokesperson “did not immediately respond to phone and e-mail messages seeking confirmation of the senator’s action or his reason for doing so.”

Shelby has been tight-lipped about the holds, offering only an unnamed spokesperson to reporters today to explain them. Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid broke the news of the blanket hold this afternoon. Reid aides told CongressDaily the hold extends to “all executive nominations on the Senate calendar.”

According to the report, Shelby is holding Obama’s nominees hostage until a pair of lucrative programs that would send billions in taxpayer dollars to his home state get back on track. The two programs Shelby wants to move forward or else:

- A $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers. From CongressDaily: “Northrop/EADS team would build the planes in Mobile, Ala., but has threatened to pull out of the competition unless the Air Force makes changes to a draft request for proposals.” Federal Times offers more details on the tanker deal, and also confirms its connection to the hold.

- An improvised explosive device testing lab for the FBI. From CongressDaily: “[Shelby] is frustrated that the Obama administration won’t build” the center, which Shelby earmarked $45 million for in 2008. The center is due to be based “at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal.”

Though a Shelby spokesperson would not confirm that these programs were behind the blanket hold, the Senator expressed his frustration about the progress on both through a spokesperson to both CongressDaily and the Federal Times.

A San Diego State University professor and Congressional expert told the Mobile paper “he knew of no previous use of a blanket hold” in recent history.

I understand that the Senate gives more power (per person) to the small states. That is by Constitutional design. But the current Senate rules give too much power to individual people. I assure you that this move will be popular with his constituents (as if would be with any set of constituents).

Just keep this incident in mind when the Republican Senators bellow on about spending. This is a bit like my right wing Naval Academy classmates whining about taxes when they’ve been on the tax-payer dime for most of their lives…many now work for defense contractors.