18 December 2010 am

Workout notes
Last night, my knee was sore (same spot), the piriformis ached at the party and my shoulder had a dull ache (didn’t wake me up). Is it the weather? I am not whining so much as trying to figure out if I am doing anything wrong.

This morning I walked for 10 minutes, 1 run, 1 walk for 20 minutes, run for 30 straight (varied the incline…mostly at an incline) then walked for 5 minutes. Total: 6 miles. My guess is that I covered about 3.1-3.2 during the run segment.
Then: rotator cuff, 18 minutes of yoga (Baron Baptiste Power level II; I couldn’t squat deep enough to do crow; I’ll have to play with another entry.)

Marathon running:

Here is a video which summarizes a series of interviews of those who ran a marathon in England. It lasts 16 minutes; note that there are many different reasons people do this activity.

Me: I’ve both walked and ran marathons (and longer) for many different reasons.

Running: it is always to meet some goal (time or place), though once I did it just to finish (when I had no refundable airline tickets and did a 4 run, 1 walk) 4:04 at Rocket City, 2002.
Walking: once in a while I have a time goal. But mostly I do it for a hard supported workout and just to take part in an event. I’ve done just to see the course or just to do it.

Posts
President Obama on START

Science and math
Evidently, spending money on obesity prevention does NOT save the country money in the long term. It does reduce obesity and the cost of obesity related diseases. But it also increases longevity which leads to…you guessed it, more end of life medical expenses.

Bottom line: economics should not be the basis for all of our policy decisions.

Evolution: Michael Behe published a paper which appears to be sound. That does NOT make the case for intelligent design however.

Economics
Fannie May and Freddie Mac did not cause the mortgage crisis. Note that their critics are not always honest either

And sure enough, Richard Green points us to this 2006 article by Peter Wallison in which he attacks Fannie and Freddie for … not doing enough to promote borrowing by low-income home buyers:

There are many lenders aggressively competing to make the higher-amount loans, and the GSEs are not doing the job they should for low-income homebuyers.

Fannie and Freddie should do a much better job of providing affordable home financing to a neglected portion of the mortgage market.

Less than a year after that article was published, by the way, the subprime meltdown began.

So, a quick summary: the Republican position is that Fannie and Freddie caused the bubble by doing what we said they should be doing but denounced them, at the peak of the bubble, for not doing. Got it?