Good Peoria Journal Star Editorial

Read it.

Here we thought the birthers – those who don’t believe Obama was born in the United States – had cornered the market on kooky. Now they’re getting a run for their money. No doubt there’s some overlap here.

No one can blame the president’s tolerance for the Muslim community center near Ground Zero in New York for these numbers, as the poll was conducted before that issue grew legs. We suppose some continue to fault him for his name, which he did not give himself. Of course, some wouldn’t be satisfied unless he managed to work Jesus’ name into every other sentence; likely a few in that camp would turn the U.S. into a theocracy, if they could. Extremists come in every stripe. Some of this nonsense is fueled by irresponsible politicians and media figures looking to cash in; they could say the sun sets in the east without getting any challenge from the true believers who tune in to them. Based on his performances of the last couple years, little about Newt Gingrich is good for the country.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the president was Muslim. The proper response to that would be: So what? [...]

No one is obligated to like every occupant of the White House. Certainly there are Americans who object to this one, many even for reasons of policy that are more or less legitimate. This issue – we hesitate to even call it that, so manufactured is it – is not among them. Others so despise this president, whatever their motivation, that they’ll grasp at practically anything to discredit him. They’re actually discrediting themselves, diminishing their own arguments.
[...]

By the way, of the nation’s 44 presidents, about a quarter of them have been Episcopalian, followed by Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists and Unitarians. Though Catholicism is the single largest religious denomination in America, there has been but one Roman Catholic president – John F. Kennedy – and it was a big deal at the time, even in places like Peoria. Kennedy ran against a Quaker in Richard Nixon. (By the way, the Jewish faith is yet to be represented in the Oval Office.) Ultimately this blessedly secular government and nation survived every last one of them.

For what it’s worth, a fair number of presidents had ambiguous religious affiliations. Abraham Lincoln often tops the list of the nation’s greatest leaders and could quote Scripture with the best of them, but his spiritual allegiances, while disputed, were generally described as complicated, skeptical of organized religion, and evolving over time and personal circumstance. In any event, he never joined a church. How’d he get away with that? Feel free to take a crack at that one, conspiracy theorists.

Read the whole thing.

Time’s Stimulus article

Please read the whole thing. But the bottom line is that the stimulus did create jobs, the economy would be worse off without it, and the stimulus did enact some of President Obama’s agenda on education, increase of broad band access, increase of funding for scientific research, and doubling of renewable energy. There as a whole lot there. Here are some snippets:

The stimulus is helping scores of manufacturers of wind turbines and solar products expand as well, but today’s grid can only handle so much wind and solar. A key problem is connecting remote wind farms to population centers, so there are billions of dollars for new transmission lines. Then there is the need to find storage capacity for when it isn’t windy or sunny outside. The current grid is like a phone system without voice mail, a just-in-time network where power is wasted if it doesn’t reach a user the moment it’s generated. That’s why the Recovery Act is funding dozens of smart-grid approaches. For instance, A123 is providing truckloads of batteries for a grid-storage project in California and recycled electric-car batteries for a similar effort in Detroit. “If we can show the utilities this stuff works,” says Riley, “it will take off on its own.”

[...]

ARPA-E is funding the new pioneers — mad scientists and engineers with ideas for wind turbines based on jet engines, bacteria to convert carbon dioxide into gasoline, and tiny molten-metal batteries to provide cheap high-voltage storage. That last idea is the brainchild of MIT’s Donald Sadoway, who already has a prototype fuel cell the size of a shot glass. The stimulus will help him create a kind of reverse aluminum smelter to make prototypes the size of a hockey puck and a pizza box. The ultimate goal is a commercial scale battery the size of a tractor trailer that could power an entire neighborhood. “We need radical breakthroughs, so we need radical experiments,” Sadoway says. “These projects send chills down the spine of the carbon world. If a few of them work, [Venezuela's Hugo] Chávez and [Iran's Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad are out of power.”

Then again, the easiest way to blow up the energy world would be to stop wasting so much. That’s the final link in the chain, a full-throttle push to make energy efficiency a national norm. The Recovery Act is weatherizing 250,000 homes this year. It gave homeowners rebates for energy-efficient appliances, much as the Cash for Clunkers program subsidized fuel-efficient cars. It’s retrofitting juice-sucking server farms, factories and power plants; financing research into superefficient lighting, windows and machinery; and funneling billions into state and local efficiency efforts.

26 August 2010 Rehabilitation

Workout 6.1 mile walk in 1:23:35; I did two Cornstalk loops of Bradley Park and 1 .6 mile “extra”; last leg from the park exit to the house was 13:42.

Then I went to PT; I got a shoulder tape job.

Shoulder: I slept last night. But I had some soreness in the morning; the PT wonders if my humerus is too far forward. We shall see. We tested the neck.

Note: I had a few piriformis tingles; I did the stretches and hip hikes afterward.

26 August 2010 (early am)

Runners, cyclists and walkers: be careful out there; drivers really might not be paying much attention.

This photo: from the fail blog; it is really, well, at times, in fact MOST of the time, so appropriate.

Law: no one could object to a piece that says, in effect, “judges ought to act in a civil, professional manner when on the bench”, right? You’d be wrong. (hat tip: Randazza)

Amphibians/Toads/human evolution

Notice how this tree frog reacts to this finger:

Evidently, chimps understand this reflex too.

Note: Hawaii has no native frogs nor toads; they can’t handle salt water. But some introduced frogs and toads have become pests.

Off for a walk…then PT, then back to classes!

How can you answer this but by ridicule?

Re: overturning the vote of millions: That is what a Constitutional Democracy is about! Some rights are not subject to the whims of the majority.

Example: if we had “atheist utopia”; say a town of 10,000 in which 9,500 were atheists, it would still be illegal to ban religion in that town, even if 9500 voted to do so.

This is something similar.

Well, at least our Republican fundamentalist morons haven’t lead us to this or this, but give them time.