18 April 2010 afternoon quickies

Jerry Coyne has “coined” a new phrase: The New Creationists to describe those who believe than an evolutionary process took place that didn’t have “god in the gaps” to cause some mutations, but still believe that humans were the goal of the process and that it was driven by some deity. Of interest to me is this:

After today I promise that I won’t link to the nonsense at HuffPo for a while, but a new piece, “Evolution Presupposes Design, So Why the Controversy?”, by philosopher Ervin Laszlo, is too good not to mock. It assembles a bunch of creationist and New Creationist arguments to argue that there’s really no debate about evolution versus creationism: the truth is somewhere in the middle. (I remember Dick Lewontin once writing something like, “It is an unexamined rule of intellectual life that if there are two diametrically opposed positions, the truth must be somewhere in the middle.”) Laszlo argues:

The creationist position would be the logical choice if — but only if — scientists would persist in claiming that the evolution of living species is a product of two-fold serendipity. But at the cutting edge, scientists no longer claim this. Post-Darwinian biologists recognize that the evolution of species is far more than the chance processes classical Darwinists say it is. It must be more, because the time that was available for evolution would not have been sufficient to generate the complex web of life on this planet merely by trial and error. Mathematical physicist Sir Fred Hoyle calculated the probabilities and came to the conclusion that they are about the same as the probability that a hurricane blowing through a scrap-yard assembles a working airplane.

This argument, known as “Hoye’s fallacy,” has long been discredited by evolutionary biologists on the grounds that selection does not assemble complex organisms and traits all at once from simple precursors, but builds up things gradually, with each step conferring an adaptive advantage. This is discredited science, and Laszlo would have known it had he done a few minutes’ worth of Googling. (HuffPo columnists don’t seem to have mastered the use of Google.) Saying that evolution by selection operates through “trial and error” is surely misleading, for the trials are rewarded by being saved in successful genomes. Does Laszlo not understand this? If not, he has no business writing on evolution. If he does, he’s intellectually dishonest.

This “junkyard parts assembling an airplane” argument fails on a mathematical level as well; the assumption there is that it was inevitable that some sentient being was going to be created by the evolutionary process. This is a bit like shuffling a deck of cards, dealing one card each to a room of 52 people, then asking: “what is the probability that each person got EXACTLY the card that they got?” This must be a miracle! (answer: 1/(52!)).

Mike Huckabee

18 April 2010

Workout notes I had the easy 3.1 mile walk that I talked about in the previous post. Then after doing some grading, I walked to the university gym; I did my rotator cuff exercises, 3 minutes on the arm bike then 5500 yards of swim (no push offs).

1000 pull in 18:03
10 x (75 fist, 25 free) with pull buoy on 1:50
20 x 100 free on 1:50 (this one was hard)
1000 in 18:03 (pull buoy)
500 in 9:15 (free).
The total was 1:40:55; not using the wall makes it much harder. In fact, it is a bit tougher than open water as you lose momentum every 25 yards.

Note: I have the “top tip of the shoulder ache”; NOT the dangerous rotator cuff ache. I also made it a point to breathe on my off side (turn my head to breathe on my right side); that took some of the pressure off of my right shoulder.

Political Statement

Commentary: Why I resent Women (semi-humorous)

Check out this video: (watch a few seconds; it is pretty much the same all the way through)

Nothing remarkable, right? I don’t know these young women; visually they are reasonably attractive young women, but no more so than tens of millions of women you see on college campuses around the nation (ok, these ladies are Canadian). I know nothing about their intelligence, life views, political views, taste in music, or whatever.

But then they posted this 11 second video; the idea was for one sister to show the other that tights can appear opaque can become see-through when they are stretched.

Let’s just say that I’ve watched that video a few times; by the numbers of hits (more than a quarter of a million!), so have many other heterosexual guys. Yes, I’ll watch it more when my wife is away.

My point: even a rather ordinary woman (someone who is healthy, not too skinny and not too fat) inherently has a sort of power over me, and this isn’t “by my choice”!

Sure, it is kind of fun, but a bit of me kind of resents that! Part of me resents that my “reproduction instinct” given to me by evolution has made me vulnerable to being “lead around by my penis” by, well, the average woman! Women who aren’t professional beach volleyball players have this “power” (such as it is).

No, I don’t need therapy; I don’t spend hours thinking about it but I do notice it. Evidently so do many other guys. I’ll close with a story from yoga class:

our class meets in a second floor room which overlooks the entrance to the gym. One time I was looking at the entrance and chuckling: a local female triathlete was bending over her gym bag (facing my direction) and as guys came into the gym, they ALL gave a quick glance at her pushed-out-spandex-wrapped butt as the walked by…EVERY ONE OF THEM.

My yoga teacher (a substitute) asked me what I found funny and I told her. (the lass bending over the bag had left when the yoga teacher asked me). She asked: “what was she wearing?” and I responded “spandex shorts”. The yoga teacher said “I have to buy some of those” while laughing.

That was a joke, but well, many women know that they have “that power” and I think that they enjoy having it.
(ok, this “power” had a downside as well; too many times a good looking woman has passed over a better qualified women for things like promotion, and that is just plain wrong….so I know that there are good and bad things about this power).

18 April 2010: Sarah Palin and Her Supporters

Workout notes Nothing yet. I’ll probably do a short walk around the neighborhood (and resist the temptation for a 3.5 mile hike on hilly trail..a little at a time you know) and then do a longer swim this afternoon when the university pool opens at 2 pm. I’ll still avoid push offs but will also swim some of it without the buoy.

Update 3.1 mile (5K) walk; yes it took 55 minutes (clock time; I didn’t use a stop watch and so had to stop for traffic, etc.) and I kept myself from going after slower runners,etc. But not only was this snail slow, it was an effort. Not a hard effort, but it felt the way that a routine 8 miler used to feel. Oh well; coming back won’t be easy, and I sure enjoyed the walk!

I am reaching the “danger zone” of my recovery: most of the night pain is gone (I feel it slightly when I wake up, but it isn’t waking me up at night any more) and it feels good during the day. This is when I tend to tell myself “cool, now I can do 10 miles” and go out and aggravate the injury. I also have to baby my right shoulder just a bit.

Sarah Palin, Her Followers and the Tea Party in General

Here is what perked my interest in this topic:
1. A recent poll came out about the tea party members. They were somewhat more educated than the Average American (37 percent with college degrees versus 25 percent of the general population) and much more likely to be Glenn Beck fans.

2. Sarah Palin paid a visit to the area yesterday (Peoria Journal Star article is here) and

3. A recent letter to the editor made some “interesting” points.

Here is what I noticed (Journal Star article):

Palin commented on the Land of Lincoln having a “most diverse political scene” and referenced the “Will it play in Peoria?” cliche.

“Nobody here is ordinary. … Much of the eyes of America are on this part of our nation because this is a representation of good, hard-working, grounded, unpretentious, patriotic Americans,” she said. [...]

“We need a dose of that Midwestern common sense now more than ever,” Palin said. [...]

Palin took several jabs at President Barack Obama’s Harvard Law School education. She said the U.S. is on pace to quadruple the deficit, called the federal health care bill “Obama-care” and the “mother of all unfunded mandates,” and chastised Congress for what she called “bullying” of Peoria-based Caterpillar Inc. [...]

Leadership is speaking out, sticking up for your beliefs, getting involved and contributing to the community. “We want leadership that offers common sense principles and offers common sense solutions,” she said.

And then I read from today’s print edition (page 22, section A, 18 April):

“I thought she was wonderful, down to earth, just a real, regular person, not an elitist. She represents conservative, everyday values. People to criticize her don’t know her; they don’t listen to that message”
Morton resident Chuck Tanton

And yesterday I read (in the letters to the editor):

The Obama administration is full of highly educated people who seemed to count on a couple things to get their progressive “change” through. One is that the American people are mostly ignorant or apathetic.

How could someone like myself, with only a GED from the state of New Jersey, understand their grand plan to transform America? Of course I can’t understand. I never went to Harvard or Yale to learn how bad America is compared to the enlightened governments of Europe. I can’t understand because apparently I’m part of the ignorant masses that need government to tell us what to do and hold our hands because we don’t know what’s best for us.

Before President Obama ever got elected to anything, I’d already spent five years overseas, three of them in Europe. I saw how the average European lived. Has President Obama ever been on a train when it just stops because the union decides to strike for a few hours/days? No water, no food, nowhere to go. The locals were used to this, so they brought supplies. Stupid Americans! [...]

Do you notice a theme here?

I have to admit that I have trouble understanding human beings. One one hand, this particular group of people appear to have a huge inferiority complex. On the other hand, they appear to think that THEY are really smarter and better qualified to run things than all of those “elites”. Oh, for the day when “elitist” meant that one attained one’s position by “birth” rather than by merit; now “elitist” means “was successful in a meritocracy”.

Well, here is one thing I am grateful for: at least most of the local “megalomaniacs with inferiority complexes” appear to be non violent; that isn’t always the case:

(Pat Oliphant published this cartoon during the 1995 militia scare; around the time of the Oklahoma City Bombing).

Anyway, that is the rub: we have a large group of noisy people who think that THEY (the ones who haven’t had their thinking spoiled by elite education) should be running things, and you have people like myself who WANT “elite people” to be in charge (e. g., our President, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu (Nobel Laureate in physics), NIH head Francis Collins (mapper of the human genome). )

I think that Sam Harris nails it:

Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the “Who would you like to have a beer with?” poll question in 2004, and won reelection.

This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages—and loses—both necessary and unnecessary wars.

And columnist Leonard Pitts wants to find out:

Dear Sarah Palin:

I hear you’re pondering a run for the White House in 2012. Last week, you told Fox News it would be “absurd” to rule it out. I’m writing to ask that you rule it in. I very badly want you to run for — and “win” — the Republican nomination for the presidency. [...]

No, you represent the latest iteration of an anti-intellectualism that periodically rises in the American character. There is, historically and persistently, a belief in us that y’all just can’t trust nobody who acts too smart or talks too good — in other words, somebody whose “general persona” indicates they may have once cracked a book or had a thought. Americans tend to believe common sense the exclusive province of humble folks without sheepskins on the wall or big words in their vocabularies.

I don’t mock those people. They are my parents, my family elders, members of my childhood church. I honor their native good sense, what Mom called “mother wit.” But if it is insulting to condescend to them, it is equally insulting to mythologize them.

More to the point, something is wrong when we celebrate mental mediocrity like yours under the misapprehension that competence or, God forbid, “intelligence,” makes a person one of those “elites” — that’s a curse word now — lacking authenticity, compassion and common sense.

So no, this is not a clash of ideologies but a clash between intelligence and its opposite. And I am tired of being asked to pretend stupid is a virtue. That’s why I’d welcome the moment of truth your campaign would bring. It would force us to decide once and for all whether we are permanently committed to the path of ignorance, of birthers, truthers and tea party incoherence you represent, or whether we will at last turn back from the cliff toward which we race.

If the latter, wonderful, God bless America. If the former, well, some of us can finally quit hoping the nation will return to its senses and plan accordingly.

I should point out that I was raised by and among uneducated people. But you know what? One of the things my parents did was take me to the library, and my whole family reads constantly; a visit to their house would reveal books scattered all over the place. Yes, I don’t agree with some of their attitudes, but one thing that we agree on is that learning is a good thing!

But back to myself: frankly, I WANT my leaders to be smarter, wiser and more successful than I am. I do not apologize from that attitude and I will NOT back down from openly expressing it.

Ed Shultz: nails the tea-baggers.

By the way: the only quibble that I have is Mr. Schultz saying that “there isn’t a mandate: there is a tax”. Yes, that is how it works: if you don’t have health care, you’ll pay a tax penalty. But that is what a mandate is (with regards to health care policy).

But otherwise, this is good.