15 June 2010 (am)

Workout notes Yoga, weights and a 3 mile walk over the Bob Michael Bridge.
Weights: pull ups (regular, 10, 10, 5, hands facing toward each other: 8, 7, 7, 5, 5). Dumbbell military presses, seated: 20 x 40, 15 x 45, standing: 5 x 50.
Dumbbell rows: 10 x 40, 10 x 40, 10 x 45. Machine (supine) 10 x 45 (3 sets). Pull downs: 10 x 137 (3 sets), incline bench (8 x 135, 2 sets), Smith Machine squats (3 sets of 10 with 135, each set followed by 20 toe raises on a plate), butt machine (2 sets of 10, forgot the weight), rotator cuff exercises.

There weren’t many people there, but many were very strong. Janice was there too, doing squats in her “loose” spandex.

The walk was unremarkable.

Shoulder: didn’t inhibit my weight workout; slightly sore from the swim.

Posts I’ve been happily distracted by a math problem; I hope to do my extension of it today.

I’ll post a couple of items though:

1. Bumper sticker that I saw: “the minds that created the problem won’t be the ones that solve it.”

2. Mano Singham is writing a series about liberal democracy (one in which minorities have rights) and religion.
Example: the United States has a liberal democracy. Why? Well, say if the state of Illinois voted on a referendum to require, say, everyone to go to church, it would be illegal under our Constitution even if the referendum passed with 90 percent of the vote.

So, he wonders what would be good ways to ensure that other governments don’t turn into elected theocracies. He says this:

Liberal democratic values can flourish only in those countries where religious beliefs are weak or non-existent. As long as religions and religious authorities are kept out of power, then democracy can exist. The problem of religion in liberal democracies is what to do when religious groups threaten to use the processes of democracy to take over the power of government and then impose their religious practices on everyone. When confronted with this possibility, you are forced into a choice between allowing undemocratic forces to exploit the democratic process to force everyone to live in a theocracy with its denial of basic freedoms of democracy, or using undemocratic means (such as banning religious parties) to prevent such a theocratic takeover. Neither of these outcomes is desirable since liberal democracy dies either way.

Is there a solution? I believe that the best thing to do is to not let religion gain a foothold in the first place. The only way to do so that is consistent with liberal democracy is to use our freedom of speech to show that religious beliefs are false, the idea of rights and values given by god makes no sense, and that no reasonable modern person should take religion seriously. If we can do that and make religion less appealing, then it becomes highly unlikely that religious political parties will ever gain power. After all, it is unlikely that any political party today that bases its platform on the sayings of Greek gods will win any elections because those gods have been discredited. It is not necessary to ban the worship of Greek gods or throw its believers in jail because believing in such gods is now seen as ridiculous.

He goes on to point out some of the troubles that accommodationists are having: they want to keep religious freedom but they are reluctant to criticize religious ideas. Think about it: if there really were a deity that punished a whole country because the people of the country allowed for “witches to live” or for certain religious crimes to go unpunished (e. g., “sorcery”), you’d enforce the bans on those practices, wouldn’t you?

Of course we do nothing of the sort; a belief in the type of deity described in the Bible is absurd.

14 June 2010 pm

Workout notes
Swam 1800 yards as follows: 5 x 100 free on 2, 10 x (25 3g or 5g, 25 free) on 1:10, 10 x (25 free, 25 back) on 1:10, 250 in 4:23 (slow), 50 back.
Walk: 3 miles, 39:40; 1 mile easy, 1 mile in 12:3x via 200 quicker, 200 easy, 1 mile in 13:2x, all on the Bradley indoor track. Rotator cuff exercises.

I admit that I spent the day doing math and watching a lecture on black holes.