9 April 2010 (evening)

This is Barbara and me at Than Linh, the Vietnamese restaurant near the Bradley University campus. We had just come from a presentation by Matt Dillahunty and Russell Glasser, hosts of The Atheist Experience. We both enjoyed it.

Jason Jenkins took the photo and will be writing up a report on this event, which was hosted by the Bradley Skeptics Society. The Peoria Humanist Society alerted us to it via Meet Up.

I won’t be talking too much this weekend as I’ll be working aid stations at the McNaughton Park Trail Runs. The weather is supposed be outstanding; of course that happens in a year that I am not dong it.

Ok, I had great weather for the 50 in 2004 and the 100 in 2005; I DNF’ed in 2006 (100), was injured in 2007 (worked the course), almost DNF’ed the 50 but finished in 2008 and made the 100 in 2009 (with an early start). It was muddy for my 31 miler in 2003.

In any event, I’ll assist as others have assisted me and have some fun doing it!

9 April 2010 (noonish)

Crazy day: yesterday I had planned to prepare for an upcoming differential equations that I was going to substitute for. But the morons let an afternoon meeting run on and on and on (NEVER volunteer to serve on a committee on which people on the committee don’t see the need to wear a watch…).

So I ended up rushing through the day today.

Workout notes 2200 yard swim; pull buoy, no push-offs. 17:56 first 1000, then alternate 100 paddle/100 free for 16:56 (1000), then 4 x 50 fist to cool down.

Injury note: I got ultrasound with electrical stimulation; that seemed to calm my knee down a bit. Last night was my best “sleep without pain” night in a while; I also iced it prior to going to bed.

Humor
Check out “Atheist Barbie”:

(if you don’t get the “baby in the lunch bag” joke, it is that many theists (especially Christians and Muslims) see as “so immoral that we’d eat babies”).
This is hilarious! Just darken the hair….and judge for yourself.

You’ve seen Supply Side Jesus. Now check out Tea Party Jesus.

A sample:

Posts
Evidently President Obama doesn’t worry about Sarah Palin’s opinion:

President Obama dismissed criticism by Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin Thursday over his administration’s proposal to limit the use of nuclear weapons.

Pointing to Palin’s lack of expertise on the policy surrounding nuclear weapons, Obama brushed off Palin’s claims that the move would make the U.S. more vulnerable.

“I really have no response. Because last I checked, Sarah Palin’s not much of an expert on nuclear issues,” Obama told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “If the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I’m probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin,”

At a Minnesota rally on Wednesday, Palin told Fox News that the White House’s vow to limit future use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states made the U.S. less safe. The former Republican vice presidential candidate compared the move to “a school kid asking to be hit.”

Think about it: Obama and Palin appeal to the polar opposites: Obama appeals to many intellectuals and Palin appeals to the anti-intellectuals who are proud of their ignorance.

Economics: do you think that we are on the cusp of a new Gilded age? (a Republican “heaven on earth”?)
Check out these charts on the gap between the wealthiest among us and the poorest.

Science
A new transitional fossil (with respect to human evolution) has been found; this one is between “Lucy” and us. Surf to read Jerry Coyne’s take on things.

Also: animal life that does NOT breathe oxygen has been found:.

Deep under the Mediterranean Sea, small animals have been discovered that live their entire lives without oxygen and surrounded by ‘poisonous’ sulphides. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biology report the existence of multicellular organisms (new members of the group Loricifera), showing that they are alive, metabolically active, and apparently reproducing in spite of a complete absence of oxygen.

This has profound implications for the possibility of life on other planets.

8 April 2010 (am)

Injury It ached last night (closer to the lower hamstring) but mostly I was restless due to other reasons.

Workout notes It went ok (body weight about 192)
Bench press: 10 x 135, 5 x 155, 2 x 175, 2 x 190, 1 x 205 (easy), 1 x 210 (HARD), 7 x 175.
(rotate through pullups, incline bench, standing military; minimal rest)
pull-ups: 2 sets of 10, 5 chin ups, 5 pull ups on the third set.
military: 95 pounds: 7, 7, 5
incline press: 2 sets of 7 with 135
(rotate through curls and lat pull downs)
curls: 2 sets of 10, 1 set of 6 with 65
pull downs 10 x 120 (twice), 6 x 140
dumbbells: curl 7 x 30, military press 7 x 50 (ugly), bench press 10 x 70
Ab work: 30 yoga leg lifts, then crunches, straight leg lifts, weight machine crunches, weight machine twists.
Yoga head stand (5 minutes): I was dripping with sweat when I ended. This was hard; my balance was off.
63 minutes total.

Posts
Randazza has excellent rants; here he discusses the airlines charging for carry on bags. He is disgusted that so many try to carry on too much (partly to avoid the checked bag charge).

Speaking of airlines: Schneier points out that air marshals are getting arrested more often than they make arrests. In fact, the tax payers are paying 200 million dollars per arrest! Of course, “security presence” can be of benefit even if the security doesn’t arrest anyone.

New Orleans/Katrina: This is simply sickening:

A former New Orleans police officer told federal authorities he saw a fellow officer shoot and kick unarmed, wounded civilians in a deadly incident on a bridge in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, marking the first time an officer has provided federal authorities with an eyewitness account of the events.

The former officer, Michael Hunter, pleaded guilty Wednesday to helping cover up the shootings on the Danziger Bridge less than a week after the August 2005 storm.

A court filing Wednesday that describes Hunter’s account of the shootings contradicts a police report that said civilians shot at officers before the police opened fire, killing two people and wounding four others.

Seeing no danger to officers, Hunter says he shouted “Cease fire!” after an unidentified sergeant with an assault rifle and other officers opened fire on a group of unarmed civilians who took cover behind a concrete barrier on the bridge.

After they stopped firing, Hunter says he saw several civilians who appeared to be unarmed, injured and subdued. [...]

Incidents like this one is why many Americans have a different view of police; I have to admit that I’ve always been treated well by city level police, especially in Peoria.

Mississippi prom: remember the story about the high school prom in which a lesbian was discouraged from attending; in fact they canceled the prom rather than let the lesbian bring a date?

Well, it turns out that they had a prom anyway; the parents organized their own prom and sent the lesbian to another prom while keeping the location of a larger “private prom” secret!

To prevent Constance McMillen from bringing a female date to her prom, the teen was sent to a “fake prom” while the rest of her class partied at a secret location at an event organized by parents.

McMillen tells The Advocate that a parent-organized prom happened behind her back — she and her date were sent to a Friday night event at a country club in Fulton, Miss., that attracted only five other students. Her school principal and teachers served as chaperones, but clearly there wasn’t much to keep an eye on.

“They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them,” McMillen says. “The one that I went to had seven people there, and everyone went to the other one I wasn’t invited to.”

Last week McMillen asked one of the students organizing the prom for details about the event, and was directed to the country club. “It hurts my feelings,” McMillen says.

Two students with learning difficulties were among the seven people at the country club event, McMillen recalls. “They had the time of their lives,” McMillen says. “That’s the one good thing that come out of this, [these kids] didn’t have to worry about people making fun of them [at their prom].”

I can see why this would be legal, but also troublesome on moral grounds.

7 April 2010 (pm)

Nothing original; just some interesting things that I’ve found:

I served on submarines in the early 1980′s. It was never like this:

American taxpayers are on the hook for an $89 million repair bill after a crash involving a submarine where the regulations apparently went overboard.

According to the Navy Times, that’s the latest estimate to fix the USS Hartford, a nuclear-powered submarine that smashed into an amphibious ship last March in the mouth of the Persian Gulf while the sailors at the controls were playing games and listening to music.

The sub’s commander, Cmdr. Ryan Brookhart, was relieved of duties after the Navy found that “an informal atmosphere, crew complacency, a ‘weak’ command and inferior submariner skills led to the ‘avoidable’ accident,” the Navy Times reports. “Specifically, the navigator was listening to his iPod during a critical evolution, watchstanders were known to sleep on the job, and stereo speakers were rigged for music in the radio room.” [...]

Paternity: This has to be disconcerting to British men:

The carton is blue and white, small, and made of cardboard. It looks innocuous enough. But according to its critics, it is little less than a Pandora’s box, capable of unleashing untold woes upon those curious enough to openPrecise statistics on human infidelity are hard to come by. What evidence there is tends to indicate that human lovebirds are little better than their feathered counterparts. In 1970 a group of researchers looking into blood groups tested the blood types of inhabitants in a block of flats in Liverpool.

“Surprised” might be understating it. According to current estimates, the levels of “non-paternity” (when a child turns out to have been fathered by someone other than the ostensible father) lie somewhere between 1% and 30%, with the “best estimate” being in the region of 10%. So one child in ten is not the child of the man assumed to be their father. Which is perhaps why so many groups have opposed their sale. [...]

They were startled to see that their results indicated a paternal discrepancy of 20-30%. Thinking, perhaps unfairly, that this might be something to do with Liverpudlians, they moved south and repeated the test, only to find similar results. In 1984 a group of scientists in Nottingham looked at women seeking fertility treatment because their husbands were sterile. Despite their husbands’ sterility, 23% of the women managed to become pregnant before receiving treatment.

Other studies have produced a more comforting picture. Recent research in Sweden and Iceland found rates of non-paternity between 1% and 2%. But while these figures may be reassuring in one sense, scientifically they are far from comforting. The disparity between them is enormous. Clearly large-scale, randomised testing is needed to find reliable average levels of non-paternity. The results would not just be interesting but useful in areas such as heritable diseases. There’s just one problem: such tests could be a source of considerable distress. As a result, much of the information that is available on paternity has emerged, like the 1970 Liverpool study, as a by-product of studies with other aims. it. It contains a DNA testing kit which, for the first time, is being sold over the counter in Britain. At the Clockwork Pharmacy in Hackney, north-east London, you can find it between the baby lotion and the bunion plasters. “You would be surprised”, says the shop’s owner, Prashant Patel, “how many children don’t actually belong to the man who seems to be their father.”

Men have reason to worry. They can be legally stuck with paying for a child that they did not father.

Politics
President Obama: yin and yang.

I like the President’s policy concerning nuclear weapons:

[...]Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons. “I’m going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure,” he said in the interview in the Oval Office.

White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike. [...]

The idea is that such a policy might be a “carrot” to make it easier for North Korea and Iran to comply with international standards. Note that at the present time, these nations are NOT in compliance hence the “no first use” policy doesn’t apply to them.

I am very concerned about the President’s authorization of assassination of this US citizen:

In late January, I wrote about the Obama administration’s “presidential assassination program,” whereby American citizens are targeted for killings far away from any battlefield, based exclusively on unchecked accusations by the Executive Branch that they’re involved in Terrorism. At the time, The Washington Post’s Dana Priest had noted deep in a long article that Obama had continued Bush’s policy (which Bush never actually implemented) of having the Joint Chiefs of Staff compile “hit lists” of Americans, and Priest suggested that the American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was on that list. The following week, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, acknowledged in Congressional testimony that the administration reserves the “right” to carry out such assassinations.

Today, both The New York Times and The Washington Post confirm that the Obama White House has now expressly authorized the CIA to kill al-Alwaki no matter where he is found, no matter his distance from a battlefield. I wrote at length about the extreme dangers and lawlessness of allowing the Executive Branch the power to murder U.S. citizens far away from a battlefield (i.e., while they’re sleeping, at home, with their children, etc.) and with no due process of any kind. I won’t repeat those arguments — they’re here and here — but I do want to highlight how unbelievably Orwellian and tyrannical this is in light of these new articles today.

I am torn. On one hand, remember the charge that Bill Clinton had a chance to kill Bin Laden but passed it up (a disputed charge, I should add)? Well, maybe 9-11 wouldn’t have happened had this been carried out? (of course, there were a ton of concerns). We’ve killed people before (e. g., we assassinated Admiral Yamamoto in World War II) but these two were not U. S. citizens. And, of course, the Admiral was a military man in uniform performing military duties in a time or war and that automatically puts him in Harm’s Way (that is why his plane had escorts). But isn’t Al Qeda at war with us?

Yes, I had the same concerns if President Bush were still in office. And yes, I gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt for his drone strikes.

But I don’t want to give President Obama a pass just because I like him and agree with him on most things; this IS a moral dilemma and worthy of discussion.

Rachel Maddow: calls out the nonsense:

You are seeing some pro-President Bush billboard saying “do you miss me yet?” Well, I see President Obama as a vast improvement, and so do many others:

“FL” means “Forest Lake” Minnesota, not Florida.

Virginia Governor: like many southerners, he doesn’t get it:

Virginia’s Republican Governor Bob McDonnell has declared April to be “Confederate History Month,” the first time in 8 years that such a proclamation has been issued in the state.

In the statement, McDonnell says that the Confederate history “should not be forgotten, but instead should be studied, understood and remembered,” and that its leaders “fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth in a time very different than ours today.”

Woo hoo! Let’s celebrate sedition and slavery!
Update: I just heard that the Governor sent out an apology.

More on Republicans: Gov. Palin and Rep. Bachmann are the “gold standard” for Republicans?

Dick Morris: you heard him: the Republicans will control both houses of Congress after 2010:

Carville’s last book touted “forty more years of Democrats.” Now he dreams of a loss of “only” 25 seats in the House and “six or seven” Senators. But these are pipe dreams. Republicans will gain more than fifty House seats and at least ten in the Senate, enough to take control in both Houses. That’s reality.

So, what says Intrade? The rate Democratic control of the Senate at 81.9 ask, House 58.9.

Here is what he said about the 2008 General Election (October 30):

The double dose of Obama’s support for spreading the wealth around and his affiliation with the toxic Rev. Wright are eroding his once-formidable lead.

If the stock market doesn’t send us all into shock again, the election could be very close – with the undecided vote looming large. The key question is: About whom are they undecided?

At the height of the financial crisis, voters couldn’t decide if McCain was really a maverick or just a Bush clone. But the spotlight has shifted: It’s no longer McCain who is caught in its glare, but Obama.

As the Democrat moved convincingly ahead last week, voters began to seriously consider what kind of president he’d be. Bush and McCain seemed increasingly irrelevant as people pondered whether they really want to trust Obama with this kind of power.

By this point, the nature of the undecided vote has likely shifted from people who are torn between wanting change and worrying about Obama to people who have basically decided not to back Barack but haven’t sufficiently collected their thoughts to come out for McCain.

Then there’s the so-called Bradley effect – where white voters lie to pollsters and say they are backing the black candidate when they’re not.

To date, it’s been a myth: As The Wall Street Journal reported, Tom Bradly had lost his lead in the polls by the time California voted on his bid to become governor. But it may be real this year.

Undecided voters may be reluctant to say they’re not voting for Obama. They may be concealing their real intentions by saying they’re undecided. (They might even not have come to grips with their intentions themselves.)

High turnout may also be a wild card. On the surface, it seems sure to bolster Obama’s chances as large numbers of poorer, less educated, younger and minority voters turn out to vote for the first time.

But the swelling turnout may have gone beyond this social outreach. And, as it does, it can help McCain. After all, white voters back McCain by double digits. If the contest inspires them all to vote, Obama will lose.

So we approach Election Day with the possibility of a rerun of 2000 plainly before us. McCain has closed to a point where the race will likely be very, very close – and we’ll have to stay up very, very late on Election Night.

Emphasis mine.

Science: a new species of lizard has been found; this one is over 6 feet long!

7 April 2010: War Sucks Version

Workout notes 30 minutes on the arm bike; I got just under 7 miles but started out very slowly for 6 minutes and went hard at the end (15 resistance, 11 METs) and got out of breath.
Then 1 round of ab work (crunches, lateral), then 2200 yards of swimming (pull buoy with no push offs)
8:47 500, 10 x 50 fist on 1, 1000 in 16:48 (tempo-ish), 4 x 50 on 1 (paddles, 42-45 each).
The pull buoy helps me swim faster, but the “stop and turn” slows me down a great deal.

Knee: no pain behind the knee and I had a good night last night, but the knee is “thick” (rain?) this morning.

World events Don’t watch the videos here if you get sick easily; it shows what happens when human beings are hit with machine guns (video from a helicopter). The purpose of the video was to show what happens in war time; note two things:
1. The people on the ground did have arms (self protection?)
2. There was someone pointing something around a corner in the direction where US forces were or were going to be soon; it turns out that it was a camera
3. I’ve heard that RPGs were recovered from the scene
4. Two media employees were killed
5. The soldiers doing the killing..well you can hear what they said

So, what is going on? Read this diary from a soldier who had served in combat.

Bottom line: war puts our young people in horrible positions. As to the helicopter: what happened if this guy didn’t fire and the guy poking around the corner HAD an RPG instead of a camera?
This kind of decision has to be made “on the fly” without time to completely think it over; the soldiers simply don’t have that luxury.

War sucks and this is why we should only fight when we absolutely have to.

6 April 2010 (noonish)

Workout notes I swam a brief 2200 yard workout with a pull buoy and no wall push-offs. I had an 18:03 first 100, and then alternated 100′s with the paddle and free (17:22). I then swam 200 in 3:28 to cool down.

It was very crowded and nasty in the Riverplex pool; lots of old fat guys (I know…myself included)

Injury: ache woke me up last night; I am going to have to get extra sleep to account for this.

I also had an ultrasound Doppler for my leg veins. The procedure is described here. Of course, this was probably unnecessary:

The paper in question, from researchers at the University of Utah, asks whether a single ultrasound exam might be enough to determine whether someone has a dangerous blood clot in a deep vein of a leg below the knee. The paper averaged the results of seven studies that included 4,731 cases, and concluded that the usual practice of doing repeat ultrasounds looking for such a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) isn’t necessary.

The average risk of having a DVT in all the studies over the next three months was about one in 200, or 0.57%, such a low rate that the routine procedure of multiple ultrasound scans “requires further study,” the report concluded, a polite way of saying that it isn’t necessary.

But an accompanying editorial penned by two doctors who are consulting editors to the journal details serious doubts about that conclusion.

The reason for doubt, said editorial co-author Dr. Edward H. Livingston, who is chairman of gastrointestinal and endocrine surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, is that the usual practice of lumping all the results of several studies together in a meta-analysis, and reasoning from the resulting average, doesn’t work in this particular report.

One of the seven studies, which contributed nearly 25% of the total cases, included only ambulatory patients — people who came to a doctor’s office complaining of leg pain, Livingston said. That study, which found a thrombosis incidence of just 0.48%, pulled the overall results of the meta-analysis too far in one direction, he said.

Another study of 513 hospitalized people who had ultrasound exams for DVT found an incidence of 1.95%, the editorial noted. That four-times-higher incidence shows that the same criteria cannot be applied to both hospitalized and ambulatory patients, Livingston said.

In short, because I am ambulatory, I had less that a 5 in 1000 chance of having a clot.

Update: no clot, but I do have a small cyst. That might be what is troubling me. I see the physical therapist in two days.

Religion
If you think that I am hard on religion:

Pat Condell has the best rants!

5 April 2010 (am) Bench Press Edition

Workout notes 50 minute weight workout; I did most of these with little rest between sets; I’d do one exercise, then another and then another; for example I did barbell bench, dumbbell curls, dumbbell press, yoga leg lifts, then barbell bench again, etc.

Barbell bench: 10 x 135, 10 x 155, 7 x 175
Dumbbell curl: 10 x 25, 7 x 30, 7 x 30
Dumbbell military (seated) 10 x 40, 10 x 45, standing: 5 x 50
Dumbbell bench: 10 x 70
Seated military (barbell), 2 sets of 7 x 85
incline press: 6 x 135, 7 x 135
pull ups: 2 sets of 10 regular, 1 set of 7 chin up
pull downs: 120 x 10, 140 x 6
Abs: 2 sets of 20 (bent knee; raise knee to chest)
Yoga leg lifts: 3 sets of 20
Yoga head stand 5 minutes

This took about 48 minutes.

Then I swam 2200 yards with the pull buoy; I’d go to the wall, turn around; NO PUSH OFF
500 in 9:30
10 x 50 fist on the 1 (53-55)
10 x (25 free, 25 back) on the 1:10
5 x 100 free on 2 (1:45 each; the “no push off” really slows you down)
4 x 50 with paddles.
The workout took about 45 minues.

Hey, it is better than doing nothing.

Injury: last night, it got to me once; I am becoming better at responding to it though. When it tightens the pain isn’t quite as severe and I merely roll over onto my belly for a while and it goes away.

Speaking of weights: given that I am out of action from running, walking, or even “fast” swimming for a while, I am interested in the bench press again. When I lifted weights (1975 to 1981, then 1984 to 1988), the bench press was my first love.

My lifetime PB is 310 (hips down) at a body weight of 226 (1985); in a contest I got 11 reps with 230 at a body weight of 228 (1988).

Other bench press feats: 5 reps with 275, 10 with 240 (all hips down)

I was blown away to see the modern records into 4 digits!

Here is what is going on:

For years, the bench press world record crept up slowly and steadily. In the 1950s, Canadian Doug Hepburn became the first man to bench 400, 450, and 500 pounds. In 1957, Hepburn told Muscle Power magazine that a 600-pound bench press was possible, but it wasn’t until 1967 that Pat Casey cracked that barrier. Ted Arcidi broke 700 in 1985, and it took another 17 years until Ryan Kennelly benched 800 pounds in 2002. Now, just two years later, 10 men have benched 800, and a couple are closing in on 1,000. So, why have records that stood up to the strongest men in the world for 50 years crumbled in the last two?

A super-shirt, mostly. In 1983, a college student and powerlifter named John Inzer started making shirts that supported benchers’ shoulders and deltoids. Word spread that the bench shirt not only prevented injuries but actually helped bounce the weight off your chest. The terminology on Inzer’s Web site reeks of pseudoscience—the top-of-the-line Inzer Phenom shirt “features the EVS (Escape Velocity System) built inside”—but the shirt’s effect is undeniable. As the record for the shirted bench press shot up to 965 pounds, the unshirted or “raw” mark has stayed at an earthly 713 pounds. (Scot Mendelson has that record.) Nowadays, every top bench-presser uses the shirt for safety and power. “The whole raw thing, you’re just asking for trouble if you’re going to be dealing with any kind of weight,” says Ryan Kennelly. “If you rip your pec, you rip your rotator cuff, you’re out of there. Thank God for bench shirts.”

The bench shirt—which comes in denim or polyester—has arms that jut out zombielike, perpendicular to the chest. The position is so awkward and the fit so tight that lifters typically need help swaddling themselves. As the bar starts to press the weightlifter’s arms down, a percentage of the load goes to deforming the shirt. High-end shirts are so taut that for the bar to even reach a bencher’s chest, the fabric has to be compressed with incredible force. (At one meet, Rychlak had to abandon an 890-pound lift because it wasn’t heavy enough to force the weight down to his pecs.) When the bencher starts to push the bar back up, the shirt acts like a spring. As the material snaps back to its original, zombie-arm orientation, the lifter’s elbows get a bit of extra help moving the weight back into the air.

Notice I didn’t say chemicals mainly because many of the 600 pound bench pressers of the late 1970′s early 1980′s used them too.

For your amusement here are some bench press calculators:

convert reps with weight X to what your max should be. You have to scroll down past the ad to see your result.

How well do you stack up for your age?

I grade out as “excellent” so I don’t believe this.

For your Sunday Evening Pleasure

A collection of Tea Bagger FAIL: the Illustrated Tea Party Dictionary. Here is a sample:

America, the real America, Americans: this is code for white, conservative people who dwell within 49 of the 50 United States (Hawaii is suspicious), but preferably away from the coasts. Especially the east coast. America, the real America and Americans all love guns and God and hate abortion. Activities such as shooting things are American. Activities such as helping other people to do anything are un-American.

See the other 23 entries!

Nature by Numbers and other topics

Where mathematics leaves the boring classroom and starts to describe the world around us. Take a journey into the natural world with this amazing video.

more about "Nature by Numbers", posted with vodpod

No: I don’t find the classroom to be boring (all of the time anyway). But the video is fun and very artistic; I’d call it “symmetries in nature”. Hat tip: Richard Dawkins.

There is another interesting article: Jon Mooallem in the New York Times Magazine wrote “Can Animals Be Gay“? It is long (10 pages) but worth reading. That one finds hard to explain “courtship type behavior” in animals doesn’t surprise me and it wouldn’t surprise me to find that such behavior might not have an evolutionary purpose. After all, evolution need not be an efficient process and there is some randomness in it.

So read the article to see how some scientists have observed and studied it. What surprised me was

1. Scientists often have trouble distinguishing the females from the males and
2. There is a human tendency to fit animal behavior in human paradigms.

What didn’t surprise me is that this science was often attacked for political reasons:

A Denver-based publication for gay parents welcomed any and all new readers from “the extensive lesbian albatross parent community.” The conservative Oklahoma senator Tom Coburn highlighted Young’s paper on his Web site, under the heading “Your Tax Dollars at Work,” even though her study of the female-female pairs was not actually federally financed. Stephen Colbert warned on Comedy Central that “albatresbians” were threatening American family values with their “Sappho-avian agenda.” A gay rights advocate e-mailed Young, asking her to fly a rainbow flag above each female-female nest, to identify them and show solidarity. Even now, the first thing everyone wants to know from Young — sometimes the only thing — is, what do these lesbian albatrosses say about us?

“I don’t answer that question,” she told me. [...]

Many people who contacted Young after the publication of her first albatross paper assumed she was a lesbian. She is not. Young’s husband, a biological consultant, was actually an author of the paper, along with Brenda Zaun (who is also not gay, for what it’s worth). Young found the assumption offensive — not because she was being mistaken for gay, but because she was being mistaken for a bad scientist; these people seemed to presume that her research was compromised by a personal agenda. Still, some of the biologists doing the most incisive work on animal homosexuality are in fact gay. Several people I spoke to told me their own sexual identities either helped spur or maintain their interest in the topic; Bruce Bagemihl argued that gay and lesbian people are “often better equipped to detect heterosexist bias when investigating the subject simply because we encounter it so frequently in our everyday lives.” With a laugh, Paul Vasey told me, “People automatically assume I’m gay.” He is gay, he added, but that fact didn’t seem to detract from his amusement.

Jerry Coyne directed us to this paper and points out some of the difficulties in assigning a genetic reason to this behavior.

I suppose that this sort of research does have some social impact: there was a time (in high school) when I was “against homosexuality” (for religious reasons? To please my parents and friends?) and argued that “you don’t see this in the wild kingdom”. How ignorant I was!

On another note: I don’t celebrate Easter but…

I’ve Got To Get Healthy Enough to Race

I sure miss the local 5K/10K road races.

Yeah, I know; these ladies probably average 5:30 to 6:00 minutes per mile for a 10K and I wouldn’t see them after the start and they would be finished and showered by the time I finished. Still, I can watch them warm up.

Workout notes 7.2 miles on the arm bike (interval program), ab work (3 sets each at two different stations), 5 minute yoga head stand. I was dripping with sweat when I finished.

Injury update: same old last night, though the intensity of the pain has dropped just a bit. I feel it sporadically during the day; it is never severe.

Just remember: if you are using swimming as cross training for running or walking, the wall push-offs can aggravate a leg injury.