20 November 2010 Science

Louisiana residents SHOCKED that there is science in science text books!

A group of Louisiana citizens, believed to be backed by the conservative Christian Louisiana Family Forum, are attacking the state’s proposed biology textbooks because, well, they teach too much evolution.

The Baton Rouge Advocate reported this week that a state panel is scheduled to review the issue Friday after the state’s school board held off adopting the biology I and biology II textbooks due to the complaints.

Winston White, one of the residents who complained about the books, said, “It’s like Charles Darwin and his theory is a saint. You can’t touch it.”

It’s worth noting that White is the son of Darrell White, who was one of the Louisiana Family Forum founders. This move is all part of an ongoing broader strategy, one that the LFF, which is affiliated with Focus on the Family, has been behind since the beginning.

Darrell White also told the Advocate that the textbooks don’t comply with the anti-evolution law known as the “Louisiana Science Education Act,” which the Family Forum helped write and successfully lobbied for in 2008. The LSEA instructs educators to promote “critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” It also allows teachers and school districts to use “supplemental textbooks,” which are just code words for creationist and pro-intelligent design materials.

Once again, our stupid “your opinion counts as much as facts” meme rears its ugly head.

Astronomy This exoplanet is unusual in that it orbits a red giant and that the red giant is a star that our Milky Way galaxy took from a nearby dwarf galaxy. Bottom line: swelling to a red giant won’t destroy the planets, though it may well (almost certainly) kill off life on them.

20 November 2010 walking.

I walked a 10.15 mile walk; basically I walked from my house to the gooseloop dam and one lap of the gooseloop and back:

I went out easy and came back in 1:13; and THAT was an effort (35 to the end of the trail, 38 minutes up the hill). I honestly tried on the way back and I had good sleep last night. But I felt cruddy from this week and “gunkked up” from my allergies/cold?

I am not in good shape right now at least in terms of being in walking shape. Then again I’ve been cross training a lot (mixing in street walking, elliptical, AMT, running, hiking) and haven’t been practicing the fast walking motion enough. Then again, I am recovering from knee surgery and I should be mixing it up.

And, on the good side: no pain at night and I am taking no pain killer.

Senate: don’t block nor filibuster the START treaty

msnbc video: Spine makes rare appearance in Congressional Dems

msnbc video: Spine makes rare appearance in Con…, posted with vodpod

November 18, 2010 – Philip K. Howard – The Daily Show With Jon Stewart – Full Episode Video | Comedy Central

Glenn Beck demonstrates how George Soros plans to destroy America,Jon reveals the true puppet master, and Philip K. Howard calls for a more efficient government.

November 18, 2010 – Philip K. Howard – The Dail…, posted with vodpod

msnbc video: Pelosi, Reid urge White House to fight

msnbc video: Pelosi, Reid urge White House to f…, posted with vodpod

19 November 2010 (PM)

Workout notes
Shoulder; some soreness but nothing major. I was still “yucky” and weak this morning; I walked to Lynn’s house, did about 4 miles with her (3.9) (1:01) and then walked more on my own; total was about 6 miles (6.38 if you believe Google maps).

Social and Political
Nate Silver wrestles with the question: do increased security measures decrease the number of airline passengers? From his article:

In the past, more cumbersome security procedures have had deleterious effects on passenger demand. A study by three professors at Cornell University found, for instance, that when the T.S.A. began to require checked baggage to be screened in late 2002, it reduced overall passenger traffic by about 6 percent. (You can actually see these effects a bit when looking at the air traffic statistics: passenger traffic on U.S.-based airlines dropped by about 6 percent from the fourth quarter of 2002 to the first quarter of 2003 — greater than the usual seasonal variance — even though the economy was recovering and travelers were starting to get over the fear brought on by the Sept. 11 attacks.)

More stringent security procedures, in essence, function as a tax upon air travel, and produce a corresponding deadweight loss. Teleconferences are often a poor substitute for person-to-person interaction, and when people are reluctant to travel, some business deals don’t get done that otherwise would have. Recreational travelers, meanwhile, may skip out on vacations that otherwise would have brought them pleasure and stress-relief (while improving revenues for tourism-dependent economies). The tenuous profits of the airline industry are also affected, of course. Revenue losses from the new bag-checking procedures may have measured in the billions, according to the Cornell study.

Other passengers may substitute car travel for air travel. But this too has its consequences, since car travel is much more dangerous than air travel over all. According to the Cornell study, roughly 130 inconvenienced travelers died every three months as a result of additional traffic fatalities brought on by substituting ground transit for air transit.

Of course my favorite First Amendment lawyer doesn’t like the new screening either, but that is to be expected.

Our friends at Daily Kos have offered some solutions, at least for male passengers (that is, make the guys wear bikini swimsuits or underwear).

I think that the women shouldn’t have to go to such extremes; having them wear catsuits would do just fine (hard to hide anything in these)

I am happy to report that I’ve seen more women wearing the spandex leggings as pants while traveling.

Statistics and Data
Here is an article which links to a database which has longevity and quality of life statistics by region, state and, yes, Congressional district.

(database link here)
If you like playing with data, there is enough here to keep you busy for a long time.

Economics
Paul Krugmann thinks that the Republicans don’t want the economy to recover so long as President Obama is in office and backs up his assertion.

Right now they are saying that they will play chicken with the Democrats on the Bush tax cut extension. I hope that the Democrats call their bluff and separate the tax cut votes in the lame duck session; make them vote on it.

Social Security: the GAO has said that raising the retirement age will hurt the poor, minorities and those who do physical labor for a living. Remember that increased life expectancy has gone up mostly for the well to do and not for those at the bottom end of the economic scale; not that Republicans care about that.

Sarah Palin: launches a dishonest attack on Michelle Obama in her book. Are you surprised? But she is a good representative for the rank and file Republican in this day and age.

And one more word to our Republican friends: what goes around, comes around:

Fun

Child pose

as seen from behind…
Note: my yoga teacher sometimes yells stuff at me when I am walking (e. g., “nice ass”). So I reminded her that when she does this pose (or others), though she is facing me, she is in front of a wall to wall mirror….same with forward fold.

Morning Fun, 19 November 2010

(note: this will probably get nuked very quickly)

From the gym (not mine, though I see similar sights)

(more at the blog Girls in Yoga Pants)

(more here)

18 November 2010 PM

I slept in a bit later and that set me back all day.

Workout: weights:
one legged squats (Smith machine): 10 x 45, 10 x 45, 10 x 95
Squats: 10 x 135, 10 x 155
Leg presses: 20 x 270, 20 x 360
rotator cuff (dumbbells and pulleys)
3 sets of : extensions, curls, toe, glute machine
3 sets of: back, vertical leg lifts

Then: 2 miles AMT
3 miles of elliptical (3.5 in 30 minutes)
1 mile walking on the track (13:50 for 1+)

It went well, though I am still having some sinus/nose trouble and didn’t feel that good.

Posts

Social
A speaker (“Mr. Science”) faints. Students respond by….texting. I’m sorry, but is just a FAIL.

Marriage: obsolete or not? I’d say “yes”; at the government level it ought to be civil unions for all.

Speaking of marriage, did you know that there is an uptick of divorces just prior to the holidays? The joke is that this means “fewer gifts to buy”, but to me it means avoiding those dreaded family gatherings. There are times when I actually dread the holidays.

Cheating in college: a University of Central Florida professor caught a bunch of students cheating. The video is 15 minutes long.

Debt collecting: yes the debt collectors are now using facebook to harass people.

Religion A group of Muslim students will be speaking about Islam and its place as an Abrahamic religion. I’ll probably have to bite my tongue as I’ll be with my wife…but I have these thoughts too:

Harris aficionados may not find much new on last night’s MSNBC “The Last Word” interview, but it’s not long and he makes a good point about Islam:

There’s no version of Islam which says, “You should be free to criticize the Qur’an: it’s just the product of human minds; the prophet Muhamed was a man like any other man and can be criticized.” There’s no Reform Judaism version of Islam, and we have to encourage one. . . It’s not an accident that we’re not having this conversation about the Amish or Quakers or Jains or even Buddhists.

Of course there are violent Buddhists too.

Science
A mystery of Natural History has been solved! From Matthew Cobb:

Anomalocaris – literally “unusual shrimp” – was first identified in 1892 by Joseph Frederick Whiteaves from mid-Cambrian deposits in British Columbia. It looked pretty much like this fossil, and was thought to look something like the drawing below. [...]

One of the many things that was odd about this “shrimp” is that it never seemed to have a body or a head. All they ever found was the “tail”. There are plenty of these fossils about, and you can pick them up on eBay for a few hundred dollars (not recommended unless you are certain of provenance, that appropriate permission has been obtained, etc).

As is now well known, in 1985 Harry Whittington in Cambridge and Derek Briggs solved the mystery of the missing head of Anomalocaris, and at the same time also clarified the nature of Laggania, which was thought to be a non-descript sponge, and Peytoia, which was seen as a pineapple ring-like jellyfish thing:

Go on to read. Now there is an argument over what this ancient critter ate…and what the evidence is! A factor is the evolutionary arms race: to eat and to avoid being eaten.

Physics: scientists have been able to isolate small bits of antimatter (via magnetic fields). That is quite a breakthrough.

Politics

Evidently James Carville is still bitter about the ass kicking his “team” took in the 2008 Democratic primary.

Rep. Michelle Bachmann: can’t seem to get her story straight on what she would cut…other than stuff from the Department of Education.

Here is an honest look at what President Obama and liberals could have done better.

Paul Krugmann: perhaps we could negotiate on a national value added tax?

More generally, it does seem that countries with strong welfare states have less progressive tax systems than those with weak safety nets; see this, from the Luxembourg Income Study (pdf).

And there’s a substantial literature suggesting that this is no accident: that in the United States, because we don’t have a national sales tax, politics ends up being about tax brackets, which in the end can’t do much to reduce inequality, while in Europe you have broad-based taxes, and politics ends up being about who gets helped, which matters much more, especially for the less fortunate. There’s even argument that American exceptionalism, our uniquely weak welfare state, reflects not so much culture and racial division as the happenstance that we don’t have national consumption taxes.

All of which says that if I can trade a somewhat regressive VAT for guarantees of decent retirement and universal health care, I’ll take it.

Rep. Alan Grayson: his style probably, in part, cost him his seat. Still, it is nice to see such outspoken honesty:

Nancy Pelosi: she is an effective Speaker of the House (she proved this when she got the Senate HCR bill through the House) even if she is NOT popular with the public (I like her though).

This chart is interesting:

So much for President Obama being wildly unpopular.

17 November 2010 PM

Workout notes I was tired from staying up too late for the game (which I enjoyed).
Still, I lifted weights (upper body) and ran 2 miles on the treadmill.

dumbbell curls: 20 x 15 lb, 10 x 20 lb, 10 x 20 lb.
dumbbell seated military: 30 x 30 lb., 25 x 35 lb.
dumbbell bench press: 30 x 35 lb.
Pull downs: 3 sets of 15 x 120
Rows: 3 sets of 10 x 180 (90 each arm)
incline bench press: 10 x 45, 10 x 95 (wimpy I know; I am getting the arms used to the motion)
Sit ups: 100 (4 x 25)
Run: 2 miles in 19:04 (10:24, 8:40). Started with 5.5 mph and increased the speed by .1 mph every minute starting at 3 minutes.
Incline: minute 1 at 0, then set it at 1.

Shoulder/knee: knee was somewhat achy last night due to sitting with the knees bent at the game. I’ll have to stretch.

More Stuff

Health care: yes, end of life decisions can be tough. If one is very old and dying, how much treatment should one take and at what cost?
This is not an easy question.

Science/Frogs If nothing else, check out this adorable little frog.

Evolution yes, even our gut bacteria are influenced by evolution; the conjecture is that evolution determines what sort of bacteria can find a haven in our gut.

Video/Free Speech
Yes, an advertiser can refuse a sign due to complaints. But as to those idiots who claim that religion is persecuted in this country:

And some get upset when you listen and critique what they have to say:

Republicans
I don’t care about reality shows. But Sarah Palin remains a very shallow thinker. Watch the clip:

Wow, those grizzly cubs are taught to be SELF-RELIANT!!! But….what if some other more powerful animal prevented certain grizzly cubs from fishing in the best streams? What if that mean-old-government got out of the way and allowed industry to pollute those streams and lace the waters with harmful chemicals? What if acid rain destroyed the environment and killed the fish? Self-reliance indeed…….

Wingnut crazies

Just read:

But, just like nearly everything else this President does…trust someone to have a problem with it.

We have feminized the Medal of Honor.

According to Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, every Medal of Honor awarded during these two conflicts has been awarded for saving life. Not one has been awarded for inflicting casualties on the enemy. Not one.

Gen. George Patton once famously said, “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other guy die for his.”

When we think of heroism in battle, we used the think of our boys storming the beaches of Normandy under withering fire, climbing the cliffs of Pointe do Hoc while enemy soldiers fired straight down on them, and tossing grenades into pill boxes to take out gun emplacements.

That kind of heroism has apparently become passe when it comes to awarding the Medal of Honor. We now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.

So the question is this: when are we going to start awarding the Medal of Honor once again for soldiers who kill people and break things so our families can sleep safely at night?

Uh…in this day and age, we can kill millions with a push of a button. That is hardly…uh…brave and macho.
These people are idiots.

Liberals At Daily Kos, it almost takes guts to defend the President. This diary author captures how I feel:

First, “left puritans.” What do I mean by that? I’ll explain in a second, but first and foremost, it does not mean the entire political left or the progressive movement. I am a progressive, and as far as ideology is concerned, a liberal that would like single payer health care, a carbon tax, universally available and fully funded reproductive choice, marriage equality, and so on. I am also a pragmatist. I know that one need not agree with me on everything, or even fully on a single issue for us to work together and make progress. [...]

The public option debate was a perfect example. We can have another whole conversation disintegrate into whether or not it could have passed if the President did this or did that. The health reform bill represented a paradigm shift in both the government’s responsibility for health insurance for individuals, as well as in holding insurance companies accountable, with or without the public option (at least as it was constructed in the House passed version or subsequent versions). But simply pushing for a public option did not make that action a left puritan action. In fact, I’d say it was courageous. But the action became left puritan as soon as one started opposing the passage of health reform without a public option. The action became left puritan when Jane Hamsher went on Fox News, breaking her own vow, to try to stop this law. The thought process behind it: damned be the 32 million Americans who would get insurance, damned be the community health center expansion, damned be the Medicaid expansion, damned be the closing of the donut hole in Medicare Part D, damn it all; we didn’t get a public option, so tear down the whole thing. That’s left puritanism.

When we lose perspective of how something could affect the lives of people, and say it’s not good enough on items A, B, or C, so reject it, that is not sound public policy. Public policy is not about what “you gave” or what “they took” in the writing of a bill. It’s about whether progress is made at the end of the day. If it is, progressive pragmatists will support it. That is our way of showing our commitment to our values and principles: by making some progress, and continuing to push for more at the same time.

Yes, I get frustrated with President Obama; at times it appears that he caves into every Republican whim and tantrum….but in the end we got stuff done though we paid a political price. But isn’t that what we want our politicians to do?