New Year’s Eve, 2010/2011

Workout notes I’ll update this. Probably something outside.

Shoulder some ache last night; it appears that I AM recovering from the last relapse. But boy, does it take time.

Tonight: I am planning on the Get Lit fun run at midnight; 2 miles through a holiday light display.
Peoria weather: screwy. When we got here, it was single digits (F) and snow covered everything. Today: 50 F (and will get warmer), rain, and 99 percent of the snow is gone (only the piled up mounds remain). This is the warmest New Year’s Eve that I remember around here.

Posts
Silly Political Stories for 2010: some civil libertarians will take issue with some of these. Yes, TSA, Sarah Palin and Cristine O’Donnell are mentioned, as is this:

The Obama comeback. I’m not saying it won’t happen; it well may. But can’t the pundits who wrote about the Dems’ shellacking a month ago at least wait until the next Congress convenes before they declare President Obama this year’s political winner? Can’t the chattering class wait until major polls show that Obama’s approval rating is above 50 percent? Are we boardwalk fortune-tellers, or can we wait for something to happen, or at least appear likely to happen?

You know the answer, and it’s not pretty.

Agreed, though Obama is doing better than Clinton or Reagan was at this point in their first terms.

Depression Here is a list of 10 jobs which are prone to be filled by people who get depressed. Of course, there are a ton of questions:
1. Are these jobs linked to depression because they attract personalities who are depression prone (artists)
2. Do some of these jobs induce depression due to low pay, harsh conditions, high pressure, long hours, time away from the family, etc.?
3. Do some of these jobs involve work that is inherently depressing? For example, a friend of mine quit a well paying job in nuclear medicine nursing because being around terminally ill people eventually got to her.
4. Do some of these jobs attract those who are desperate for work (e. g., poor and unemployed) to begin with?
5. What about male/female breakdowns: I’ve heard it said that men are more judged by the status of their jobs than women are. So do some jobs carry that dreaded “low status label”?

Atheism, Morality and the mind
Sam Harris is interesting; he is an atheist who sees value in things like meditation. I agree with him on this; religion AS A PRIVATE PRACTICE can provide some good things, so long as one isn’t shackled by superstitious beliefs and the conclusions that come from them. There are moral lessons too; for example I remember being moved by a minister saying “you know those extra shoes that lay there rotting and unused? Those don’t belong to you; they belong to those who don’t have any shoes”. That inspired me to clean my closet of extra clothes that I wasn’t wearing.

His latest kick is to say that science can lead us to morality. Though I think that this might be true in the LONG TERM, it isn’t close to being realized at this time

Note: why does he need security? That is what I try to tell people: the major religions are NOT “religions of peace”; not even close.
Do a thought experiment: park your car that has an atheist sticker on it. You can choose to park it on a college campus or somewhere in the rural south. Where would the car be safer?

Mind
Are our political views hardwired (e. g., liberal versus conservative)? Obviously, not completely since some people change their mind, but I am talking about tendencies.

Scientists have found that people with conservative views have brains with larger amygdalas, almond shaped areas in the centre of the brain often associated with anxiety and emotions.

On the otherhand, they have a smaller anterior cingulate, an area at the front of the brain associated with courage and looking on the bright side of life.

The “exciting” correlation was found by scientists at University College London who scanned the brains of two members of parliament and a number of students.

They found that the size of the two areas of the brain directly related to the political views of the volunteers.

However as they were all adults it was hard to say whether their brains had been born that way or had developed through experience. [...]

Yes, this looks suspicious given that “n” is probably small, but it is an interesting conjecture. There is also statistical evidence that cuts across lines of society too (video is 19 minutes long):

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