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.

Video: A Farewell to Arms | The Daily Show | Comedy Central: Obama is worse than a Muslim: he is a nerd!

more about "Video: A Farewell to Arms | The Daily…", posted with vodpod

17 April 2010: Demonstration of the Scientific Method

Workout notes
Injury notes Once again, I wasn’t woken up by pain in the leg; it did get slightly tight. My shoulder: it was mildly painful, mostly when doing curls. So I laid off of those and focused more on pull ups; bench was ok; to a point. The wider grip felt better.

Weights: Bench: 135 x 10, 160 x 5, 190 x 1, 205 x 1 (legal, but harder than I’d like), 175 x 8 (though, but legal)
Then (mixing exercises):
incline: 10 x 135, 6 x 145
seated military 6 x 85, 6 x 85
dumbbell military: 10 x 45, 6 x 50
pull ups, 3 x 10 regular, 2 x 5 chin up style
dumbbell curls: 10 x 25, 5 x 25
barbell curls: 8 x 65, 5 x 65 (this hurt the shoulder so I knocked it off)
pull downs 3 sets of 6 x 140
rotator cuff set (each arm: 10 minutes, super light weights, 50 reps each)
Ab set ( circuits)
2 x yoga leg lifts 30,
2 x vertical leg lifts (20),
2 x machine crunch 10 x 110,
2 x side twist 10 x 110,
2 x vertical crunch 20

Arm bike (30 minutes; 8 miles; 10 minutes at high rep; 5, then raised every 2 minutes to 10 (12 minutes here)
yoga head stand (5 minutes)
walk (1.4 miles; Bradley to McArthur to Moss to Cooper). Easy; pretty, and cool.

Academia
I talked about the professor who had her class taken from her mid semester because the grades on the first exam were too low. Well, one person figured out what was “really” going on:

The case of Prof. Homberger, on its face, is indeed a troubling one for academic freedom and the ability of professors to impose standards.

But, if you want to look at this case from a purely cynical point of view, Prof. Homberger has discovered the holy grail. In the full article, the course she was teaching was described as not just “introductory biology,” but rather entry-level biology for non-science majors. In other words, she was teaching a dreaded service course, designed to provide arts/humanities students with a “breadth” experience. These are courses that are often evil to teach because they’re usually filled with students with no desire to be taking them.

And so, because she imposed real standards on the course, Prof. Homberger will no longer be required to teach biology’s equivalent to “Moons for Loons” (Intro Astronomy), “Rocks for Jocks” (Intro Geology) and “Chips for Dips” (Intro Computer Science). There may just be a silver lining for this particular tenured professor, even if the fundamental principle of academic freedom is being violated.

(note: one should imagine the author’s tongue fully embedded in cheek)

Science and the scientific method:
These women did an experiment: they wanted to demonstrate that tights, when worn by women, are more transparent than pants, especially when stretched.

The method: do a deep knee bend while taking video.

The evidence:

Conclusion: well, replication is the “gold standard” in science, therefore I’d like to see this experiment replicated. Ok ladies, any volunteers?

Note: if you go to the youtube site, this video does show a sister showing the other sister that tights are not a substitute for pants.

17 April 2010: economic reform, prayer days, topology departments and swimsuit wedgies

President Obama points out that the current system will lead to more bailouts and that he is attempting to change that. That was a shot at the Senate minority leader.

Science and Mathematics The U. S. News rankings of the respective science departments came out (I saw that on Jerry Coyne’s blog, which I link to below). Here are the math department rankings: The University of Texas is ranked 14′th (tied with Brown; just behind Cornell and just ahead of Northwestern). In Topology, Texas is 8′th. The top 10 are:

I am proof that even good departments screw up and grant a moron a Ph. D.
Hey, I am hoping to get two papers out this summer; in one of these a colleague told me that he was able to strengthen one of my results; that is, he was able to prove that my result was “as good as possible”. So at the cost of making this a joint paper, I we can make it a much stronger one! For me, that is a great trade off. And, because I have tenure, I don’t have to worry about how much “credit” I get.

Fun:
A lady wants to help the Dutch water polo team redesign their swimsuits:

I say: she should leave well enough alone! Some time ago (10 years?) we had a lady who swam during the noon lap swim and her suit used to do that on her; you can bet that the middle aged guys didn’t miss many lap swims.

Religion and Society
Here is the “day of prayer being ruled unconstitutional” debate:

Hitchens wins the debate easily. The other guy seems to be arguing “gee, we’ve always done it” makes it ok. But ultimately law isn’t decided on who has the better debaters. Here is a detailed analysis of the ruling by a lawyer (Marc Randazza) who specializes in First Amendment cases:

Under Lemon v. Kurtzman, a government action is a violation if it fails the following test:

1. The government’s action must have a secular legislative purpose;
2. The government’s action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;
3. The government’s action must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.

If any of these three conditions are violated, then the action is an Establishment Clause violation. Additionally, in Lynch v. Donnelly, Sandra Day O’Connor wrote (in a concurrence):

The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person’s standing in the political community. Government can run afoul of that prohibition in two principal ways. One is excessive entanglement with religious institutions …The second and more direct infringement is government endorsement or disapproval of religion. Endorsement sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community. (source)

I can’t see how the National Day of Prayer doesn’t scream out that it is an Establishment Clause violation. And the judge agreed. In her ruling she seemed to fully understand that the uneducated and unwashed would find this to be an objectionable ruling: [...]

Surf to the link to finish reading his analysis.

Of course, the churches can get together and have a private “day of prayer” day if they so choose. And yes, I disagree with the President over this one.

More on the topic of religion
When a well known atheist talks about the harm that religion causes, someone points out that atheistic regimes (e. g., Pol Pot’s) have done a great deal of evil. Of course, such regimes would be opposed by “free thinkers”; no atheist I know (or read) would ever be in favor of banning religion! People should make up their own minds on these issues; I believe that above all else.

It is certainly true that I think that it would be great if we were able to persuade others to give up their superstitious beliefs, but ultimately governments cannot regulate what people believe. They shouldn’t try; nor should government regulate what people expressing their beliefs (be it a billboard for a church, or an atheist billboard, or whatever).

Well getting back to things: some journalist decided to “really take on” Richard Dawkins…but this journalist didn’t do his homework. Jerry Coyne had some fun with him:

Rory Fitzgerald’s latest rant piece at The Huffington Post is called “Richard Dawkins should be arrested for covering up atheist crimes.” It is, of course, a response to Dawkins’s and Hitchens’s call for legal action against the Pope if His Holiness sets foot in the UK. Fitzgerald, an Irish journalist, calls himself a “lapsed atheist.”

The piece is completely devoid of intellectual merit, but is worth looking at for a few reasons:

He doesn’t know who Richard Dawkins is. Until yesterday, Fitzgerald’s column identified Dawkins (twice) as a “microbiologist.” [...]

“Ape-descended Dawkins”? That’s pretty damn close to how creationists describe evolutionists! If he’s not a complete idiot—and that’s a matter for debate—Fitzgerald should recognize that he is also descended from an ape (well, an ancient apelike primate). That aside, this kind of criticism is no different in shrillness, militancy, and lack of “respect” from that of our most outspoken atheist, Christopher Hitchens. It always amuses me when accommodationists unwittingly demonstrate this double standard. But let them loose the dogs on us. I am concerned more with ideas than with outspokenness. I don’t criticize Fitzgerald for his tone. I criticize him for his stupidity. Oh, and he can’t write, either.

You’ll find more of the usual anti-atheist arguments in the column, too, like the assertion that we have no good foundation for morality (“[Dawkins's] ideology ultimately renders discernment of good and evil impossible, subjective and arbitrary”) and the claim that atheism is ultimately doomed because religious people are outbreeding us. All good fun!

Emphasis mine. As far as “outbreeding us”: I can’t help there; I am 50 and my wife is past child bearing years.

16 April 2010 (noonish)

Workout notes 1.25 mile EASY walk (to the West Peoria Church), rotator cuff exercises, ab series, 5 minute headstand.
Then 2200 yard swim: 500 warm up, 5 x 100 fist on the 2:00 (1:45 each), 1000 in 16:52, 200 back cool down.

Injury: no knee pain last night AT ALL. It really is getting better; evidently the literally hundreds of wall push offs were taking a toll.

Shoulder: still slightly achy. Reason: my swimming is ALL swimming; I don’t have those side/kick drills as filler, and no gliding off of the wall. Hence the yardage will have to be dropped slightly.

Mathematics
If are both irrational, is ever a rational number? Note: the answer is more elementary than you might think; there are no sophisticated arguments and the result (and proof) is very, very, very short and easy to understand.

Polls: how you word the poll makes all of the difference, especially given that the public’s knowledge of civics is weak. Here is an example: in California, the state legislature must pass any tax increase by a 67-33 super majority. So there is a poll about people’s opinion on the law.

If the poll question is asked: “decisions should be passed by a simple majority vote”, most people are FOR this. But if the question talks about “raising of taxes”, then people vote to NOT repeal this law. It is weird; surf to the link for a conjecture as to why people respond in that manner.

Politics Being correct means nothing to the right wingers. President Obama pointed out that the vast majority of Americans paid less tax this years than last and joked “perhaps the Tea Party members should say “thank you”. ”

This, of course, infuriated the right wing. But as Paul Krugman says, if you correct their facts, they call you condescending.

Of course, that doesn’t stop some of us from pointing out those facts.

(photo at the Daily Kos blog and also here; there are many, many more)

Humor

I love Ed Current! Of course, it turns out that the tea party types are really more driven by economic issues than social religious issues.

More humor: at first I completely missed the point in this video:

At first, I thought that the butt slapping female was either trying to get the distracted male to pay attention or to get him in trouble. I then came to realize that the butt slapper was attracted to the woman in question! Assumptions…..

I suppose that I have an inner Republican…then again some Republican Senators….

Higher Education: I hope that there is more to this story…

I’ll admit it: I have less respect for an undergraduate college degree than I used to. Sure, there is a percentage of very intelligent, hard working undergraduates.

But the blunt fact is that there are some undergraduates who don’t perform up to their capabilities and need a push (and yes, some who really aren’t up to the standards of their program).

But what happens when a professor does his/her job and holds them to rigorous standards? Well, sometimes, they are undermined:

Dominique G. Homberger won’t apologize for setting high expectations for her students.

The biology professor at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge gives brief quizzes at the beginning of every class, to assure attendance and to make sure students are doing the reading. On her tests, she doesn’t use a curve, as she believes that students must achieve mastery of the subject matter, not just achieve more mastery than the worst students in the course. For multiple choice questions, she gives 10 possible answers, not the expected 4, as she doesn’t want students to get very far with guessing.

Students in introductory biology don’t need to worry about meeting her standards anymore. LSU removed her from teaching, mid-semester, and raised the grades of students in the class. In so doing, the university’s administration has set off a debate about grade inflation, due process and a professor’s right to set standards in her own course.

To Homberger and her supporters, the university’s action has violated principles of academic freedom and weakened the faculty.

“This is terrible. It undercuts all of what we do,” said Brooks Ellwood, president of the LSU Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and the Robey H. Clark Distinguished Professor of Geology. “If you are a non-tenured professor at this university, you have to think very seriously about whether you are going to fail too many students for the administration to tolerate.”

And here is the real shame of it all:

Ellwood, the campus AAUP chapter president, said that his group had verified that no one informed Homberger of concerns before removing her from the course, and that no one had questioned the integrity of her tests. He also said that the scores on the second test were notably better than on the first one, suggesting that students were responding to the need to do more work. “She’s very rigorous. There’s no doubt about that,” he said.

Do you see the message? The students GOT the first message: they had better work hard, and they were rewarded when they did! But no…administration steps in and says “oh we are sorry you didn’t do well…it wasn’t your fault”.

The ones that needed the push now see that they can get away with slacking, and I’ll bet that the better students lost respect for their degree. I know that I would have.

Even more galling: this happened in a SCIENCE CLASS. My goodness….I’ve grown to expect this sort of nonsense in the soft disciplines. But SCIENCE????

Other articles here and here. This is also talked about at Rate Your Students.

Hat tip: Dr. Andy.