Cavaliers-Celtics Game 5

Ok, I’ve watched this from the start, and at then end of 3 it is 80-63 Celtics.

Paul Pierce has 16 points and 10 rebounds so far. Garnett is having a good game (16 points), Allen has hit some 3′s (22 points) Rondo didn’t score in the first half but opened it up for others and has scored 14 in the 3′rd quarter.

But mostly, it appears as if the Celtics are the hungrier team; they are getting the rebounds, lose balls and making most of the “hustle plays”. You get the feeling that the Cavaliers weren’t expecting a hard game.

Now it is 85-63 with 10:31 to go.

Make it 90-66 with 9:13 to go; the Cavaliers still have time but they are going to have to get stops.

Now it is 92-68 with 8:16 to go; if the Cavs don’t get some stops they are toast.

97-74 with 5:50; it is getting harder and harder for the Cavaliers.

Davis is having a good game and has 12 4′th quarter points; 98-75 with 5:20 to go. Make it 100-75 with 5:00 to go. Ok; I am getting the feeling that this one is over.

Now it is going to be “foul, foul, foul”. 102-78 Celtics with 4:40

Make that 105-78 after another Allen 3. 3:58 is left. The Celtics don’t even need to score again to win.
Now it is 110-85 with 2:40 left.

It finishes 120-88. Cleveland lead 23-20 at the end of one but then Boston scored 30, 30 and 40 points; Cleveland couldn’t get any stops.

BUT I remember the 1988 season where the favored Celtics fell behind the Hawks 3-2 with game 6 in Atlanta. Boston won on the road and then won a narrow game at home. That could happen again, but only if the Cavaliers play more inspired than they did tonight.

(photos from yahoo)

Countdown: Finding support for Obama’s SCOTUS nomination

Workout notes
Slept in again; I still lifted weights and walked for 1:04: The walking came later.
Walk
3 miles on the indoor track: 13:29, 12:29, 12:12 (easy 200, quicker 200). Then 2 miles of hills on the treadmill (varied from 0 to 3 incline) in 25:50

Weights
warm up: 2 minutes arm bike
Superset:
pull-ups (3 sets of 10)
rows: 10 x 115, 10 x 135, 8 x 135 Smith Machine
military dumbbell: 10 x 45, 10 x 50, 8 x 50
Superset:
incline bench press: 10 x 135, 8 x 145
pull downs 3 sets of 10 x 140
chin ups (palms in) 2 sets of 10
Rotator cuff exercises
Abs:
yoga leg lifts (2 sets of 30)
raises (2 sets of 20)
twists (10 x 135, 10 x 135)
crunches (10 x 135, 10 x 135)
vertical crunches (2 sets of 20)
head stand: 5:00 (had trouble with balance at fist)

Injury notes: no leg pain last night (no fins with swimming either), no shoulder pain at night (no bench presses).

I am making progress!

Science and “militant atheism” fun: Get your cards now!

Yeah, I’ve read books by these men; I hope that Susan Jacoby gets a card as well.

Politics
From Hulu: Split: A Divided America This takes about 80 minutes to watch and is fairly even handed. One point this video makes is that the bases for each party tends to drive the politicians toward the extremes.

Frankly, I think that the liberal base has failed to drive the Democrats to the left as the Democrats tend to run AGAINST their base whereas the Republicans run toward their base.

Here you see that Bob Bennett was not conservative enough!

Of course, there are posts that decry President Obama for not being liberal enough but there is Democratic blowback against such sentiments.

SCOTUS Here is a good two video series (about 10 minutes each) on the liberal concerns on the Kagan nomination. Note: though this is Keith Olbermann, this is NOT a “Republicans suck” kind of post; this is more about what liberals are talking about with each other.

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SCOTUS…

Personal commentary On some websites, I’ve seen some people lampoon Kagan’s appearance (e. g., unattractive). Often those doing the lampooning are themselves, well, rather unattractive unless you find belly buttons pointing at the ground attractive.

Hey, if you have an issue with her and don’t like her due to one issue or another: fine. Make the criticism. But what is the deal with appearance? She wasn’t nominated to be a Hooters server.

About the issues:

Democratic Convention Watch has a nice “point/counter point”.

There is some trepidation from the left: (see the discussion here); some feel that she is too soft on First Amendment issues; rather than taking “here is a line on what is protected speech” she seems ok with asking “why is the government seeking to regulate this speech” which man First Amendment advocates see as a “slippery slope”.

Others see here as being “too accommodating”; this would tend to give validity to right wing arguments.

Of course, much of the right wing attacks are nonsense; Media Matters has a collection of these here.

Some have pounced on a remark that she made about agreeing with Justice Marshall about the original Constitution being flawed (he was talking about slavery).

One wonders if the GOP would have attempted some sort of filibuster no matter who the President nominated; Senator Leahy lampoons this.

One interesting point: it seems as if Republican nominees become “foam at the mouth rightwing radicals” when they are nominated but the more liberal nominees tend to run away from their ideology. We liberals are still timid rabbits.

Oh NOES!!! There is a Southern Republican that Accepts Evolution!

Workout notes
First, a 3100 yard swim; 34:30 for 2000 pull (no push off) then 11 x 100 (alternating 100 paddle, 100 free, 100 pull).

Then 3 miles of easy walking (untimed; about 15 mpm); sunny, breezy.

Politics
If you are a Southern Republican and you support evolution, it will be used against you:

In Illinois, the GOP candidate for governor is also a creationist whack-job. And yes, he might win:

Via Swing State Project:

Posted: 09 May 2010 08:56 PM PDT
Research 2000 for Markos Moulitsas’ Wonder Emporium (5/3-5, likely voters, 2/22-24):

Alexi Giannoulias (D): 38 (43)
Mark Kirk (R): 41 (36)
Undecided: 19 (19)

Pat Quinn (D-inc): 36 (47)
Bill Brady (R): 39 (32)
Undecided: 25 (20)

Pat Quinn (D-inc): 35
Bill Brady (R): 39
Scott Lee Cohen (I): 3
Undecided: 23
(MoE: ?4%)

Lots of yuck here from Research 2000, who see both Alexi Giannoulias and Pat Quinn’s fortunes slide. In the wake of Giannoulias’ family bank collapsing, his favorables have fallen from 49-34 in February to 38-46. It remains to be seen whether the worst is over in terms of the bad press that has consistently dogged Giannoulias for months like a set of nasty stink lines.

And as for those gubernatorial numbers… well, can anyone think of examples of incumbents who have polled in the 30s and survived in a general election (without a freakish third-party challenger muddying the waters)? Bill Brady may be wildly out of whack with his state, but 2010 could be just the type of year that allows a few nutters like him to slip through the cracks.

But you know what? The Democrats have been in charge of State government and have, quite frankly, sucked. If the Republicans were running candidates that, say, accepted heliocentric astronomy and didn’t think that witches should be put to death, I might consider voting for them! (ok, this is a slight exaggeration but man are they running nut jobs!)

10 May 2010 (am)

Injury notes The shoulder seems better; slight ache behind the knee at night.

Posts: here is an interesting take on current politics:

Here’s Evert’s Nutshell, which hit me in a road-to-Damascus eureka moment:

Angry left-wingers mutter to themselves: “Rich people are ripping me off.”

Angry right-wingers mutter to themselves: “Poor people are ripping me off.”

With this nutshell in hand, I believe I can explain even the all-over-the-place Tea Party movement to you. I hazard to suggest we’ve hereby arrived at the basic fact of American Politics 101. In fact, I believe Evert’s Nutshell best explains everything anybody ever wanted to know about American politics. Keep this nutshell in mind, and you’ll understand everyone from Barack Obama to Jim De Mint to Michael Moore to Rush Limbaugh to Firedoglake’s Jane Hamsher to your neighbor.

If you’re in any position of power, like the folks I just mentioned, who believe they’re too smart and powerful to be ripped off by anyone, the nutshell changes emphasis. It becomes this:

Power people on the left declare to themselves: “I must help the poor people — and middle-class people — who are being ripped off by rich people.”

Power people on the right declare to themselves: “I must help the rich people — and middle-class people — who are being ripped off by poor people.”

Some power people even believe a little in both statements, which is what makes a guy like Obama confusing, especially to the left.

Anyway, if you get this, you get today’s American politics.

SCOUTS Evidently the President has a nominee. Here is a “good/bad” (expect to see these arguments) and here is an analysis of her record of hiring women and minorities. You can see more here. Of course the purity trolls won’t be pleased but they never are.

Education: here is an interesting read on the experience of Chinese teachers in the United States. Of interest:

Zheng Yue, a young woman from China who is teaching her native language to students in this town on the Oklahoma grasslands, was explaining a vocabulary quiz on a recent morning. Then a student interrupted.

“Sorry, I was zoning out,” said the girl, a junior wearing black eye makeup. “What are we supposed to be doing?”

Ms. Zheng seemed taken aback but patiently repeated the instructions.

“In China,” she said after class, “if you teach the students and they don’t get it, that’s their problem. Here if they don’t get it, you teach it again.”

Ms. Zheng, 27, is teaching Chinese in Lawton — and learning a few things herself about American culture — because of a partnership between an agency of China’s Education Ministry and the College Board.

China wants to teach the world its language and culture, and Ms. Zheng is one of about 325 guest teachers who have volunteered to work for up to three years in American schools, with their salaries subsidized by the Chinese government. A parallel effort has sent about 2,000 American school administrators to visit China at Beijing’s expense.

9 May 2010: some politics

Senator McCain: trying to “out right wing” his right wing primary opponent:

The Democrats: can point to results:

The Republicans: Senator Shelby gives their response to the financial bills being proposed in the Senate:

Surprisingly, I agree with some of Senator Shelby’s ideas, as does Robert Reich:

Cap the size of the biggest banks. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that the best way to reduce financial risks that could (and almost did in the fall of 2008) bring down the entire economy is to spread risk-taking over thousands of small banks rather than centralize it in four or five giant ones. The giants already account for a large percentage of the entire GDP. Because traders and investors know they’re too big to fail, these banks have a huge competitive advantage over smaller banks. This advantage will make them even bigger in coming years, and make the economy even more vulnerable to them.

That’s why Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Ted Kaufman of Delaware have proposed breaking up the nation’s biggest banks by imposing caps on the deposits they can hold and put limits on their liabilities. The proposal has drawn support from Republican Senators Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Richard Shelby (Ala.).

But the White House has let Senate Dems know it’s against the proposal, and the Senate this past week voted it down, 33-61. Twenty-seven Democrats opposed this common-sense measure. Brown and Kaufman should do everything they can to make sure the public understands what they’re trying to do, and reintroduce their amendment.

But, on the whole, Senator Shelby lets politics get the better of policy.

Notice how the Republicans continue to harp on something that really wasn’t the problem:

Economist Dean Baker: Claim that Fannie and Freddie “responsible for the financial disaster is absurd on its face.” Economist Dean Baker reported in September 2008 that the accusation that “the financial crisis is attributable to the close government relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” is “obviously not true.” He further wrote:

Fannie and Freddie got into subprime junk and helped fuel the housing bubble, but they were trailing the irrational exuberance of the private sector. They lost market share in the years 2002-2007, as the volume of private issue mortgage backed securities exploded. In short, while Fannie and Freddie were completely irresponsible in their lending practices, the claim that they were responsible for the financial disaster is absurd on its face — kind of like the claim that the earth is flat.

Indeed, in a 2006 Securities and Exchange Commission filing covering its activities in 2004, Fannie Mae stated (report available here): “We did not participate in large amounts of these non-traditional mortgages in 2004 and 2005.” In the report, Fannie Mae also noted the growth of subprime lending and reported, “These trends and our decision not to participate in large amounts of these non-traditional mortgages contributed to a significant loss in our share of new single-family mortgage-related securities issuances to private-label issuers during this period.” In a 2006 Federal Reserve analysis, Souphala Chomsisengphet, a financial economist at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Anthony Pennington-Cross, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, reported that the value of the subprime market had increased from $65 billion in 1995 originations to $332 billion in 2003.

Daniel Gross: Investment banks to blame for subprime loans. In an October 2008 Newsweek article, Daniel Gross wrote:

There was a culture of stupid, reckless lending, of which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the subprime lenders were an integral part. But the dumb lending virus originated in Greenwich, Ct., midtown Manhattan, and Southern California, not Eastchester, Brownsville, and Washington. Investment banks created a demand for subprime loans because they saw it as a new asset class that they could dominate. They made subprime loans for the same reason they made other loans: They could get paid for making the loans, for turning them into securities, and for trading them –frequently using borrowed capital.

Former Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld: Fannie and Freddie played “de minimis” role. Gross further reported that the following happened during testimony by Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:

At Monday’s hearing, Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., gamely tried to pin Lehman’s demise on Fannie and Freddie. After comparing Lehman’s small political contributions with Fannie and Freddie’s much larger ones, Mica asked Fuld what role Fannie and Freddie’s failure played in Lehman’s demise. Fuld’s response: “De minimis.”

I find it very ironic that Senator Shelby talks about terror and Al Qeada; in going into Iraq, the Republicans did exactly that: took the eye off of Al Qeada!

What works at combating Poverty: TED Talk

The answers are surprising (to me), especially the answers to the “how do you get more kids educated” question.

Celtics-Cavaliers Game 4

54-45 Boston at the half; it was 31-22 after 1. The Cavaliers might win this game but at least this one is competitive; so far Paul Pierce has been quiet.

I agree with the announcer that, at this point, Rajon Rondo is the most valuable Celtic.

Note: Anthony Parker is a Bradley University graduate; he was a student in one of my classes many years ago.

Half time: I am not into human interest stories, but the story about Kevin Garnett’s freind Malik Sealy getting killed in a traffic accident made me tear up. I suppose such a story makes us think of our friends who have died way before they were “supposed to”.

Third Quarter: the Cavaliers are on a roll; they cut the lead to 1 point. I have a feeling that this one will go down to the wire.

74-72 Celtics at the end of 3; they had built an 11 point lead up the Cavaliers made a run. Great game.

95-87 Boston with 17.8 seconds to go; Boston shooting two shots. 97-87; Rondo has played an all time great playoff game.

Here Rondo throws the ball off of Anderson Varejao to keep possession. Wow.

(photos from yahoo)

9 May 2010 notes

Workout note 8 mile walk on the East Peoria trail (paved bike path). Sunny, high 40′s to low 50′s; slight breeze.

These photos are from the fall; it was very, very green out there today.

It took me 56:30 to do the first 4 miles (gain of about 250 feet) and 51:27 to do the final 4. I had to talk myself out of doing 10 miles, though I did start to “feel it” 6 miles into it. I saw: rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, a “spandex with large writing on it” group of bike riders (going out for a longer ride, using the path to warm up and get to the country roads) a couple of runners and a few other walkers.

For most of the walk I felt like my old self but that is oh-so-deceiving; when I feel this way at the end of a 30 mile training walk, I’ll know that I am ready. That is a ways away.

9 May 2010 early morning

Personal: I’ll try to walk a few miles after I type this and then call mom. Mom has dementia but seems to respond “in the moment” to calls.
Injury not much in my leg last night; shoulder remains slightly sore. Cutting back on swimming and staying away from bench presses seems to be working, for now.

I’ll let my internet friends take over for the posts (I’m showing their links and blog posts here):

Athletic Injury There was a time when I reacted like this (even if only internally) to an athletic injury, especially when things appeared to be going well. But now: I suppose that a combination of age (my performances simply aren’t very good) and knowing that, when it comes to sports and physical activities, an athletic injury now usually means that I’ll simply get involved in another activity (cycling, yoga, more swimming, lifting…even walking: I got into walking after an Achilles tendon injury from running). But oh yeah, I remember back in 1999, I hurt my Achilles tendon right when it appeared that I was in peak marathon running shape and was signed up for a marathon. I’ve eaten 4 marathon entry fees due to injury or sickness.

Racism
Brotherpeacemaker says this:

The black community is so complacent that we sit back and allow our children to be abused by law enforcers and security personnel. Black children and young adults go to jail for attempted murder for getting in fights with white children and young adults. We sit back and watch videos of young black girls are punched in the face by law enforcers for resisting an arrest for breaking a curfew. We will sit back and watch a police officer pull out his gun while standing over a young black man lying face down on the ground with his hands cuffed behind him and shoot the subdued black man in his back. The officer made the mistake of automatically reaching for his service pistol when confronting a black man instead of his taser. Why he felt he needed to use a taser on a subdued black man was never explained.

But nevertheless, high profile black people willfully ignore these kinds of happenings and stand ready to absolve the white community of any responsibility in our social condition. Shit like this is reasonable in a lot of people’s opinion considering the potential of antisocial behavior associated with people from the black community. And such reasoning in defense of racial disparity is in itself racist. And way too many black people have learned this support of racism simply too well.

So now we live in an age where the black man can be called the racist for pointing these kinds of thing out. The black man is the racist for talking about racism. And yet, we see one of our state legislatures pass a law that requires its law enforcers to somehow determine who is an illegal alien, and therefore who is responsible for the influx of crime and unemployment and illegal drugs and other manifestations of malfeasance, within that state’s borders. And if that’s not bad enough, a recent poll says that America is nearly split down the middle in support of and opposition to this law, with a slight majority in support. And so what, does that makes it okay or understandable or somewhat more acceptable? The Declaration of Independence said that all men are created equal and have unalienable rights. But because we tolerate racism, we can collectively convince ourselves that such obvious want for racial disparity is acceptable for the greater good.

People, if you believe that life is the same for those of us with darker skins, you are sadly mistaken.

Of course, if one gets in anything resembling an honest conversation, it tends to go something like this:

“I am for equality of opportunity but not for a guaranteed equality of outcome”. They might point out that, say, minorities, ON THE AVERAGE, do worse in school than Asians and Whites. (of course there are the racists who will never give the minorities who excel any credit at all (here and here) but I am NOT talking about these mediocre bigots here).

Here is what people who make the “equality of opportunity” argument don’t seem to get: it is true that individuals who are given an opportunity sometimes blow it. That is undeniable. But what we see is an entire class of people who achieve at a statistically significantly lower rate; there has to be something greater going on.

Sure, there are the IQ tests and minorities score lower on these ON THE AVERAGE (see this reference) but unless one wants to believe that such differences somehow appeared during a relatively brief period of human history (a couple of thousand years?) there have to be factors other than pure genetics acting; that is cold blooded reality. Genes do provide an upper bound on ability, but they don’t tell the whole story. For example, imagine a fetus which carries the genes to be a great athlete being carried by, say, a mother who is malnourished and breathing in pollutants.

On a different note, I also thank brotherpeacemaker for this cartoon.

Technology and Freedom
The FCC is allowing movie companies to remotely block your analogue input devices (to your TV) IF you watch new movies in high definition. Of course, it is just a matter of time before countermeasures are developed, but this kind of thing happens when TVs become more than just passive receptors.

World: the IAEA will take a look at Israel’s nuclear program:

Israel’s secretive nuclear activities may undergo unprecedented scrutiny next month, with a key meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency tentatively set to focus on the topic for the first time, according to documents shared Friday with The Associated Press.

A copy of the restricted provisional agenda of the IAEA’s June 7 board meeting lists Israeli nuclear capabilities as the eighth item – the first time that that the agency’s decision-making body is being asked to deal with the issue in its 52 years of existence.

[...]

Even if dropped from the final agenda, however, its inclusion in the May 7 draft made available to The AP is significant, reflecting the success of Islamic nations in giving concerns about Israel’s unacknowledged nuclear arsenal increased prominence.

The 35-nation IAEA board is the agency’s decision making body and can refer proliferation concerns to the UN Security Council – as it did with Iran in 2006 after Tehran resumed uranium enrichment, a potential pathway to nuclear weapons.

A decision to keep the item would be a slap in the face not only for Israel but also for Washington and its Western allies, which support the Jewish state and view Iran as the greatest nuclear threat to the Middle East.

Iran – and more recently Syria – have been the focus of past board meetings; Tehran for its refusal to freeze enrichment and for stonewalling IAEA efforts to probe alleged nuclear weapons experiments, and Damascus for blocking agency experts from revisiting a site struck by Israeli jets on suspicion it was a nearly finished plutonium producing reactor.

Iran and Syria are regular agenda items at board meetings. Elevating Israel to that status would detract from Western attempts to keep the heat on Tehran and Damascus and split the board even further – developing nations at board meetings are generally supportive of Iran and Syria and hostile to Israel.

That in turn could stifle recent resolve by the world’s five recognized nuclear-weapons powers – the U.S., Russia, Britain, France and China – to take a more active role in reaching the goal of a nuclear-free Middle East.

We’ll see how this all shakes out.