Sports for a 50 year old…

Yesterday’s training: after my walk I had to do the pigeon pose and other stretches to stretch out the old piriformis injury. I also had to stretch my back, which has ached in my past. Then I did a modified leg routine; modified to compensate for my torn meniscus in my right knee.

Today: swam and lifted; I had to refrain from dips and bench presses and do most of my arm work with my hands turned inward and with a close grip Then when I swam, I had to mix strokes, mix pull buoy and other things to protect my sore rotator cuff. But I couldn’t do too many kick drills as it bothers the back of my knee with a meniscus tear.

Yet, in terms of aches and pains and what I can do with my body, I am way ahead of most 50 year olds.

Friday Night Fights notes: 21 May 2010

Quip: Prior to the Ji-Hoon Kim versus Ameth Diaz lightweight division fight, the referee made the “Sign of the Cross” prior to the fight. Announcer Joe Tessitore exclaimed “you thought that boxing was a secular sport”; Teddy Atlas said that he didn’t know who the referee blessed, but thought that Kim would win.

The fight itself: Diaz was doing well and hurt Kim early; in fact up to 2:48 into the round I was ready to give it to him. But Diaz made a defensive mistake and Kim landed a huge right hand to the side of the head, thereby knocking him out!

In the early bout, Ruslan Provodnikov boxed Emanuel Augustus in the junior welterweight class. Augustus is 38 years old and had a record of 38-31 going in; Provodnikov was 14-0. Though Augustus had his moments and won a few rounds on my card, Provodonikov landed the heavier blows and dropped Augustus late in the 5′th and then won by a TKO after knocking Augustus down twice. Augustus was game but was worn down by repeated power punches…and yes, old age. He also took the fight on 4 days notice; in all he really hung tough and made it competitive for all but the 9′th round.

Expert take on the Big News of the day: artifical life and the financial regulation bill

Workout notes weights:
arm bike 2 minutes:
rows (3 x (7 x 135 Smith Machine)),
pull ups: 10, 10, 10, then chins: 7, 8, 5
military dumbbell: 9 x 50, 8 x 50, 10 x 45
pull downs (shoulder friendly hands); 3 x (10 x 140)
incline presses: 2 x (10 x 135)
rotator cuff (this time with 5; it was hard; Michael Lang caught me “cheating” with my wrists)
Mini-ab set (run through the machines)
head stand: 5 minutes

Then 2200 yard swim: 500 pull (free/back), 250 free, 250 pull, alt 200 free/pull (5 200′s), then 4 x 50 drill/swim free.

Posts
Synthetic Life: Jerry Coyne’s guide for the perplexed.

The Senate’s financial reform bill: it still needs to be reconciled with the House Bill, but here is Paul Krugman’s take on what is good and what is missing.

Is Sarah Palin an Idiot? Are Republicans Idiots? No.

The idea for this post came from my seeing this facebook group:

I bet we can find 10,000,000 people who think Sarah Palin is an idiot.

Yeah, I’ve seen the Couric interview:

and stuff like this:

But, well, believe me she sounds no worse than many of us would were we to show up unprepared for a national interview.

On the other hand, she is now very rich and she is wildly popular with certain segments of our population and that takes some skill.

So, I don’t see her as an idiot: I see her as an anti-intellectual who is a bit of a con-artist; she makes money off of, well, some rather gullible right wing people as well as some gullible pro-women people.

Note: gullibility is NOT a “left-right” issue. I see many of my progressive friends taken in by quack medicine (homeopathy, small gauss magnets, over priced “health foods”) and knee jerk movements such as this one.

Do Republicans become more stupid when confronted by facts? Right data, wrong conclusion.
This was from 2008:

A new study out of Yale University confirms what argumentative liberals have long-known: Offering reality-based rebuttals to conservative lies only makes conservatives cling to those lies even harder. In essence, schooling conservatives makes them more stupid. From the Washington Post article on the study, which came out yesterday:

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration’s prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation — the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration’s claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.

A similar “backfire effect” also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts increase revenue.

In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might “argue back” against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation. Nyhan and Reifler did not see the same “backfire effect” when liberals were given misinformation and a refutation about the Bush administration’s stance on stem cell research.

If you’ve ever gotten in an argument with your conservative friends (assuming you haven’t offered each other a mutual Carville-Matalin-style political ceasefire to preserve the friendship), you’ve probably seen this “backfire effect” in action. The more you try to tell people that Sarah Palin is lying when she says she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, the more they believe she was telling the truth. The more you try to explain how similar McCain’s policies are to Bush’s, the more they maintain he’s “the original maverick.”

I don’t doubt the data; I just attribute it to “tribalism” as, yes, even Obama supporters were prone to:

(here: a Obama supporters started to back McCain policies when they were told that they were Obama policies)

Note: some Hillary Clinton supporters were ALSO Sarah Palin supporters, even though these two women couldn’t be more different in deportment, intellect and on the issues.

21 May 2010 (am)

Here are a couple of interesting and unrelated issues:

Trademark law: no, it isn’t as dry as it sounds. Here is what I learned: an aspect of a product that is functional cannot be trademarked though one can obtain a patent for it. Here a brownie pan has a design similar to a Hershey bar (little rectangles and a border); it turns out that one could argue that the rectangle design (small rectangles; surf to the link) is functional and therefore can’t be part of a trademark, though non-functional aspects to the design can be part of a trademark.

Banning of the burqa This isn’t the United States but it does raise issues:

It would seem there are some things in Australia we are not allowed to discuss. A ban on the burqa is clearly one of them. But the time has come to get over our fears and cultural fragilities – and grow up. The call to ban the burqa is receiving serious consideration in European parliaments. And it should here, too.

Belgian legislators voted last month to outlaw the burqa in public places. On Wednesday, a bipartisan resolution passed by the French parliament deploring the burqa – on the grounds of “dignity” and “equality of men and women” – was presented to the French cabinet, and a ban is expected later this year. Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada are also grappling with the issue.

But in Australia, in a sign of cultural timidity and intellectual weakness, we seem intent on shunning any meaningful debate about the burqa and its place in a liberal democracy. At one level this is understandable, given the issue has become a confusing tussle between feminists and well-meaning liberals; nervous libertarians and right-wing ideologues; and the usual smattering of racists and dog-whistling shock-jocks.

Unfortunately for Muslim women, the burqa is not just a garment. It has become a weapon in a war of ideology: a war in which women are the battleground and their rights and freedoms are at stake.

Here’s the problem. Those who are critical of calls to ban the burqa perceive it to be an attack on personal freedoms. [....]

The article goes on to argue that the burqa is really a method of attacking women.

My take: I have the typical knee-jerk American response: FREEDOM! How dare you say that we can’t wear what we want! Of course, I understand restrictions for security reasons (e. g., banks, drivers license photos).

But then I thought about it further: some schools have dress codes that, say, ban professional sports team type attire as well as other types (fear of gangs) and some have turned students away for attempting to cause dissension by the t-shirts that they were wearing.

So, when it comes to schools (not the general public) could one also ban the burqa for similar reasons? Well, I don’t see evidence that the burqa incites violence in the United States other than, perhaps, some prejudice directed at the wearers. So, this would not fall into the same category; this would be an example of “don’t wear that because it isn’t good for YOU” versus “don’t wear that because it might harm OTHERS”.

Of course, I welcome comments and illumination from others on this; perhaps I am missing something?

Draw Muhammad Day! I don’t get it…

People were up in arms over the “draw Muhammad” day:

What started out as a cartoonist’s call to action against censorship — an open invitation to submit caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad — has led to death threats, a court order to temporarily block parts of the website in Pakistan and a call for a boycott of Facebook to protest what Muslims believe is blasphemy.

“Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” began last month as the brainchild of a Seattle-based cartoonist named Molly Norris, who was appalled by Comedy Central’s decision to censor an episode of “South Park” that depicted Muhammad in a bear costume.

As a way to protest the network’s decision — which came after an Islamic extremist website warned of retaliation against the show’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker — Norris created a poster with likenesses of Muhammad as a domino, a teacup and a box of pasta.

This was going to be my entry:

(you can see a larger print and buy it here)

I don’t see what the big deal is, unless you are a George Foreman or a Joe Frazier fan.

Ok, to be fair to Foreman:

(ironic: Moorer’s trainer Teddy Atlas yells “stop standing in front of him Mike” just before he gets clobbered)

And for Frazier:

These Science Posts Go On my Reading List

Archaea: these life forms can live in low-Ph (acidic) water, near boiling water…and yes, in normal temperatures too. Here is an article about them.

Mutationism: part of an ongoing series at Sandwalk; I’ve read the first two in this installment and want to sink my teeth into the third:

Today in the Curious Disconnect we continue with our series on the Mutationism Myth. In this oft-told story (see part 1), the discovery of genetics in 1900 leads to rejection of Darwin’s theory and the rise of “mutationism”, a laughable1 theory that imagines evolution by mutation alone, without selection. “Mutationism” prevails for a generation, until Fisher, Haldane and Wright show that genetics is the missing key to Darwinism. In the conclusion to the story, the world is set right again when the “Modern Synthesis”, combining selection with Mendelian genetics, shoulders aside the mutationist heresy, which ends up in the dustbin of history with the other “doomed rivals” of Darwin’s great theory.2

Thats the story, at least. In reality- as we found out in part 2-, the Mendelians rejected Darwin’s errant principles of heredity, not his principle of selection. What kind of view did the Mendelians develop? Addressing this question is our next challenge. Today, in part 3, we’ll consider aspects of the Mendelian view that became the foundations of mainstream 20th-century thinking. In part 4, we’ll delve into some “non-Darwinian” or “anti-Darwinian” aspects that were rejected, or merely ignored.

Artificial Life: you’ve seen the headlines; here is an expert’s explanation.

20 May 2010 (pm)

This will be more of a “wow, I found these links to be interesting” than anything else.

Social-Republican Politics A Republican attacked anther Republican for embracing evolution and for not being enough of a Biblical fundamentalist. Bill Maher has fun with this:

Republicans The Republican party is not any more right wing than it’s been since early in the decade but the rank and file numbers have gone up; Paul Krugman says that he was wrong about thinking that economic problems would drive people left; instead it drives them right.

News organizations have taken notice: suddenly, the takeover of the Republican Party by right-wing extremists has become a story (although many reporters seem determined to pretend that something equivalent is happening to the Democrats. It isn’t.) But why is this happening? And in particular, why is it happening now?

The right’s answer, of course, is that it’s about outrage over President Obama’s “socialist” policies — like his health care plan, which is, um, more or less identical to the plan Mitt Romney enacted in Massachusetts. Many on the left argue, instead, that it’s about race, the shock of having a black man in the White House — and there’s surely something to that.

But I’d like to offer two alternative hypotheses: First, Republican extremism was there all along — what’s changed is the willingness of the news media to acknowledge it. Second, to the extent that the power of the party’s extremists really is on the rise, it’s the economy, stupid. [...]

So why has the reporting shifted? Maybe it was just deference to power: as long as America was widely perceived as being on the way to a permanent Republican majority, few were willing to call right-wing extremism by its proper name. Maybe it took a Democrat in the White House to give some observers the courage to say the obvious.

To be fair, however, it’s not all a matter of perception. Right-wing extremism may be the same as it ever was, but it clearly has more adherents now than it did a couple of years ago. Why? It may have a lot to do with a troubled economy.

True, that’s not how it was supposed to work. When the economy plunged into crisis, many observers — myself included — expected a political shift to the left. After all, the crisis made nonsense of the right’s markets-know-best, regulation-is-always-bad dogma. In retrospect, however, this was naïve: voters tend to react with their guts, not in response to analytical arguments — and in bad times, the gut reaction of many voters is to move right.

That’s the message of a recent paper by the economists Markus Brückner and Hans Peter Grüner, who find a striking correlation between economic performance and political extremism in advanced nations: in both America and Europe, periods of low economic growth tend to be associated with a rising vote for right-wing and nationalist political parties. The rise of the Tea Party, in other words, was exactly what we should have expected in the wake of the economic crisis.

Republicans: Rand Paul, GOP candidate for the Senate in Kentucky. He really thinks that private businesses should be able to discriminate on the basis of race, though he finds such discrimination evil (e. g., your business should serve whom it wants to serve, even though it would be evil to discriminate on the basis of race)

(hat tip: Jerry Coyne)

Mr. Paul on Rachel Maddow:

Sticky issue: I think that businesses benefit from things like law enforcement, infrastructure (e. g. roads), and other things. Hence they have a responsibility to society and that includes NOT discriminating on the basis of race.

Speaking of racists: many believe that most agree with them. Wrong. Sure, most of us have our prejudices but most of us are classy enough to keep them to ourselves and to work on them.

Prejudices I differ with many of my liberal friends on the issues of Islam. Sure, both my friends and I find things like these abhorrent:

On May 10th, a middle-aged man carried a can of gasoline and a pipe bomb into the Jacksonville Islamic Center of Northeast Florida during evening prayers and detonated it. Fortunately, there were no injuries to people, though the bomb did damage property.

The surveillance video above gives a fairly decent picture of this man, who is clearly white, middle-aged, and on a mission.

The local news is all over it, of course. WOKV.com reports the FBI investigating it as a hate crime and possible domestic terrorism.

“It was a dangerous device, and had anybody been around it they could have been seriously injured or killed,” says Special Agent James Casey. “We want to sort of emphasize the seriousness of the thing and not let people believe that this was just a match and a little bit of gasoline that was spread around.”

Casey says surveillance video from the Islamic Center shows the arsonist carrying gasoline and the pipe bomb. When the explosive went off, parts of it were found 100 feet away on 9A.

So, a mosque is bombed by a white guy and the bomb isn’t exactly small, but the national media sees no value in reporting it? Really? And yet, that is evidently the case.

But the disagreement comes here: where I find the beliefs of Muslims to be no more absurd than the beliefs of Christians and Jews, the facts are these:
1. Islamic Republics continue to execute people for things like sexual morality “crimes”, homosexuality, apostasy, ans sorcery.
2. Religious motivated violence is often NOT condemned from the religious leaders; in fact it is often encouraged (fatwas) On the other hand, most Christians will denounce what I just described, as most have denounced, say, the abortion clinic bombings.

Nevertheless, Muslims who have chosen to live in our society and follow the laws should be treated the same as anyone else; of course that does NOT mean that their ideas shouldn’t be subject to scrutiny.

World Events This incident off of the coast of Korea is troubling:

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea accused North Korea today of firing a torpedo that sank a naval warship in March, killing 46 sailors in the country’s worst military disaster since the Korean War.

President Lee Myung-bak vowed “stern action” for the provocation following the release of long-awaited results from a multinational investigation into the incident. North Korea, reacting swiftly, called the results a fabrication and warned that any retaliation would trigger war.

Investigators said evidence overwhelmingly proves North Korea fired a homing torpedo that caused a massive underwater blast that tore the Cheonan into two on March 26. Fifty-eight sailors were rescued from the Yellow Sea waters near the Koreas’ maritime border, but 46 perished.

“(We) will take resolute countermeasures against North Korea and make it admit its wrongdoings through strong international cooperation,” Lee told Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in a phone conversation, the presidential office said.

The White House called the sinking an unacceptable “act of aggression” that violates international law and the truce signed in 1953.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a former South Korean foreign minister, called the investigation results “deeply troubling,” his spokesman said in a statement.

China, North Korea’s traditional ally, called the sinking of the naval ship “unfortunate” but stopped short of backing Seoul. Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai refused to comment further other than reiterating long-standing Chinese comments on the need to maintain peace on the Korean peninsula.

South Korean and U.S. officials have said they are considering a variety of options, ranging from U.N. Security Council action to additional U.S. penalties.

North Korea already is chafing from international sanctions tightened last year in the wake of widely condemned nuclear and missile tests.

Pyongyang, meanwhile, continued its steadfast denials of involvement in the sinking and said it would send its own investigators to conduct a probe, while warning that any punishment against the North would spark war.

Peoria There is a claim going around on the blogs that a Police officer was robbed of his gun. I haven’t seen this claim substantiated. But what cracks me up is that the gun nuts…you guessed it….says this is a reason we need concealed carry in the area. Great, more guns on the street being carried by people with minimal training and no rigorous long term screening and training.

Why I write about religion and other topics

Personal athletics
Workout notes: Yesterday, 2200 yard swim with no pull buoy: 500 warm up, 10 x (25 3g, 25 free), 5 x (25 half kick, half swim, 25 swim), 5 x (25 fist, 25 free), 5 x 50 side, 5 x (25 free, 25 back), 5 x 50 free, 200 of different things. I did “mild push offs”.
PM: 1 mile on my own, 4 with the group at about 14 mpm).

Last night: the injury woke me up again. The difference: The swimming; evidently kicking or swimming too much without the pull buoy really aggravates it. Oh well; I was getting ready to toss the pull buoy in the trash. Not yet…:)

This morning: untimed 5 mile walk; so-so at first; felt good at the end when…I picked up the pace and focused on bending my knee.
Then: leg weights (quarter squats; 2 x (10 x 135 on the Smith Machine), 2 sets of leg extensions, 2 sets of curls, 2 sets of calf machine, yoga stretches, 2 times through my ab routine.

Religion and why I write about it: From a facebook conversation:

Someone that I like asked the following question:
” It’s quite interesting the curmudgeon brainiacks spend so much time to convince folks who make the personal choice to believe in something that makes them ….happy….fulfilled….euphoric (insert an adjective). If believing in the “Unicorns & Easter Bunny” can… See More make me love my neighbor, add 10 years to my life, make me motivated, help me attain success……what’s the point of trying to prove I’m wrong to believe? “

I used to think that way. However I now think that there is a place for those who combat superstition and do so in a public way.

Here are some of the harm that superstitious beliefs can cause:

The teaching of science can be harmed.

People can be put to death for superstitious reasons.

People can be ousted from their jobs for saving a person’s life!

People can refuse to save lives due to religious rules.

The death penalty currently exists and is enforced for:

being gay

And some religions have the death penalty for apostasy

And the death penalty for things like sorcery are still being enforced.

yes, there are some secular totalitarian regimes that have cruel rules against freedom, but I am opposed to those too.

One addition: Melissa Harris-Lacewell had an interesting article in the May 31 issue of The Nation. She writes:

When faced with the circumstances that reveal human vulnerability, people have two choices: they can determine that the world is an unjust place, or they can decide that the victims must somehow be responsible for their suffering. Decades of psychological research have found that those most attached to the idea of a just world become most cognitively frustrated when they are presented with stories of victims who suffer though little fault of their own. In an unexpected twist, those most attached to the belief that the world is fair are those most likely to reconcile their distress about unearned suffering by blaming the victims.

Of course, if the world is made by a perfectly just deity, it can’t really be unfair, can it? Or perhaps the “fairness” will be manifested in some sort of afterlife?

Anyway, that sort of thinking strikes me as dangerous, even if the believers sometimes help out the suffering.
————–
I should add: yes, private use of religious things; e. g., prayer, meditation, yoga, etc. can have beneficial effects on one’s physical, mental and emotional well being.

And yes, there is some evidence that church attendance can teach ethical behavior such as giving time and money to charity. As my wife likes to say, church (in her case, a UU church) is one place where one gets challenged to live a better life.

Of course, there is also evidence that the feelings of charity that occurs in church stays in church.

People are complicated.

But in any event, there is no evidence that the superstitious beliefs (angels, devils, resurrected people, burning bushes, talking donkeys, flaming chariots, golden tablets read by magic seer stones) makes anyone better.

One more comment I notice that on facebook, people frequently make religious posts and I don’t see them catching flack for doing so. So why is it acceptable to carry on about one’s religion but NOT for an atheist to express his/her views? Why are religious bill-boards acceptable (and they should be) but atheist bill-boards are not?

Frankly, I think it is useful for us to present our message to let people know that there is another way and that millions of highly intelligent people go that direction. Oh yes, I do too.

A concluding remark
So, how am I different from a “person of faith”? I am different in this fundamental way: if presented with enough credible evidence, I will change my mind. Ask a “person of faith” what would be sufficient to change their mind.

Alabama!

Yes, this is the real ad.

Dale Peterson’s political ad with a few extras that were cut the first time! … Watch videos about Dale Peterson, We’re Better Than That, Alabama, Political Ad, Agricultural Commisioner, Republican, Ad, Almost Twins, Jake, cop, fireman, hick, redneck, country, horse, horses, horse riding, farm, farmer, summer, money, job, resume, handjob, hand job, on FunnyOrDie.com

more about "We’re Better Than That, Too!!!! w/ Da…", posted with vodpod

The parody.

No Alabama: most will overlook that you have some fine universities and a high tech center (Huntsville).
At least some don’t like it.