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?

Mike Hucakbee….once supported cap and trade.

Here is the longer version of that clip

I hope that he merely forgot.

17 December 2010 (AM)

Workout notes
3 mile run on the treadmill (28 minutes) then 3.5 mile snow hike on the outer loop of the Forrest Park Nature center with Lynn. Yeah, it was cruel to take a rookie out there but it was good for her.

Shoulder: ok last night…given that I shoveled snow.
Knee: Last night, I had that lateral (inside) ache; I probably squatted a bit too far down during yoga class. The ache wasn’t severe though.

Posts
Science It might be possible to change surfaces to as to make them harder to ice up:

“Our approach to tackling ice buildup is inspired by the technology used by many organisms to manipulate water droplets on their surfaces,” said Joanna Aizenberg, a materials scientist at Harvard and leader of the project.

The results could reduce the use of salt or other de-icing chemicals that can corrode metals and are simply just not good for the environment.

In nature, animals don’t worry about ice buildup at all, because they have mechanisms for preventing water droplets from sticking to surfaces. For example, mosquito eyes automatically defog and the legs of water striders prohibit water droplets from sticking. In both cases, the water-repelling nature of the tissue is due to a microstructured pattern that prevents water droplets from accumulating.

Aizenberg likens these surfaces to a “bed of nails.” The air gaps between the nails provide a nearly friction-free condition, where water droplets cannot get a grip.

Based on this, the scientists fabricated a variety of water-repelling — or hydrophobic — surfaces with different patterns, including bristles, blades, honeycombs and bricks, and then investigated how water droplets behaved on top of these surfaces. [...]

Politics Politifact’s Lie of the Year: Health Care Reform was a massive government takeover. Of course, Republicans will now argue that politifact is biased.

Tax cut compromise Count me among those who thought that all of the tax cuts should have been allowed to expire. That didn’t happen. But this reaction by Mitt Romney was hilarious:

“A number of conservatives, including likely 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, were challenging the deal because it doesn’t permanently extend the Bush tax cuts and would add to the deficit.”

Uh, extending the tax cuts WILL add to the deficit. Why does he get away with spouting off gibberish like this?

16 December 2010 early AM

Workout notes
I got to the Riverplex at 5:00 and lifted prior to yoga:
Squats: 20 x 45, 10 x 135, 10 x 155, 10 x 175 (depth not the best but not the worst), 10 x 135 wider
Leg press: 20 x 180, 20 x 270, 10 x 360
Extension: 3 sets of 10
Leg Curls: 3 sets of 10
toe: 3 sets of 30
Rotator cuff (2.5 pound dumbbells) easy stuff

Shoulder: feels much better, but I am on Naproxen again. Still it isn’t bothering my sleep nearly as much.

Personal: done with grading!

College Football: I created my pick set on Yahoo and then did one in which I blindly used the Sagarin ratings to make both the picks and the confidence ranking.

The closest (according to the computer; these are less than 1 point apart)
1. Champs Sports: North Carolina v. West Virginia
2. Poinsettia: San Diego St. v. Navy
3. Beef O’Brady: S. Mississippi v. Louisville
4. Humanitarian: Northern Illinois v. Fresno State
5. Sun: Notre Dame v. Miami
There are also several other games where the spread is less than 3 by the computer
6. Cotton: LSU v. Texas A&M
7. Sugar: Arkansas v. Ohio State
8. Texas: Baylor v. Illinois
9. BCS: Oregon v. Auburn
10. Chick Fillet: South Carolina v. Florida State.
11. Liberty: Georgia v. Central Florida
12. Music City: North Carolina v. Tennessee

The Bowls I am interested in, besides the BCS game:
Poinsettia (Navy), Sun (Notre Dame), Texas (Illinois), Rose (TCU), Capital One (Michigan State), Rose (TCU v. Wisconsin), Sugar (Ohio State)
4 of those are on the “closest list”.

What about the blow-outs?
1. Fiesta: Oklahoma v. Connecticut
2. Go Daddy: Miami-Ohio v. Middle Tennessee
3. Fight Hunger: Nevada v. Boston College
4. New Mexico: BYU v. UTEP
5. Holiday: Nebraska v. Washington
The above have a spread of 10 points or more.
6. Insight: Missouri v. Iowa (this one surprised me; the spread is about 9 points)

There a few in the 8 point range; Standford v. Virginia Tech, Maryland v. East Carolina and one that surprises me: Alabama v. Michigan State (Alabama favored by 8 points according to the computer).

Posts

Census Data: see maps of the United States or your own location by race, educational level, income, etc.

Don’t bother me with facts (as Paul Krugman says):

So Republican members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission are going to issue their own report, placing primary blame on the government — because it’s always the government’s fault.

And according to reporting at the Huffington Post,

all four Republicans voted in favor of banning the phrases “Wall Street” and “shadow banking” and the words “interconnection” and “deregulation” from the panel’s final report, according to a person familiar with the matter and confirmed by Brooksley E. Born, one of the six commissioners who voted against the proposal.

Yep. It was all Fannie and Freddie, which somehow managed to cause housing bubbles in Ireland, Iceland, Latvia, and Spain as well as the United States; and the repo market had nothing to do with it.

And bear in mind that this wasn’t one Republican; it was all of them.

I really do wonder how this country can remain governable, when one party insists on creating its own reality. Next thing you know they’re going to reject the theory of evolution. Oh, wait …

These people really are a trip. You should see some of the “oh heck, it is cold outside so global warming must be a hoax and Al Gore is a moron” posts by my right wing classmates. When I tried to explain that weather was caused by factors such as the jetstream and the location of the arctic air mass, I got “oh, so now cold weather is proof of global warming”. Sigh…..either they are deliberately being obtuse or they are too stupid to understand that “does not invalidate” is NOT the same as “I claim that this is evidence of”.

Yes, I know that some people make the equally stupid argument that a heat wave during the summer is evidence for global warming…but I don’t.

In any event, communicating with stupid people people who act this way is unpleasant
Keep in mind that many of these people are young earth creationists or intelligent design creationists.

Here is one reason why talking to these types is a complete waste of time:

Ok, in fairness, let me stipulate that many who vote the same way that I do are creationists OR openly embrace new-age woo.

Civil Liberties
Other countries don’t have the same free speech protections that we do. That leads to hilarious stuff like this:

An Austrian has been fined for yodelling while mowing his lawn because it offended his Muslim neighbours next door.

A judge decided Helmut Griese, 63, was ‘ridiculing’ their beliefs and fined him nearly £700.

Rather than face a protracted court case with all its attendant legal costs, Griese agreed to pay.

The court heard how the Muslim family regarded Griese as a ‘grumpy old man’ and came to view his open-air versions of the Alpine chanting as racist asides aimed at them.

Austrian media reported how the pensioner was accused in the court in Graz of trying to ‘mock and imitate’ the call of the Muezzin.

They alleged that he always began his yodelling just as they knelt down to pray to Mecca.

‘It was not my intention to imitate or insult them. I simply started to yodel a few tunes because I was in such a good mood’ he told Austria‘s Kronen newspaper.

Get that? People felt ridiculed when they prayed to their imaginary friend in the sky. Well, perhaps I can claim insult when my neighbor opens up with his leaf blower when I am playing with my stuffed frogs? I know; that wasn’t in the US where speech is protected.

History: this is supposed to be a list of “Myths of the American Revolution”. Actually, it would be more accurate to call this: “there is more to the simple minded stories that you’ve heard.”

Peoria: Damn it is cold!

Perhaps this might warm me up:

Nah…I like the bikinis but it makes me shiver to look at them.

I’ll have to settle for some winter spandex:

Rachel Maddow: Broken Senate in lame duck frenzy

Note: though the Republicans have abused the filibuster as never before, I see this as a consequence of the “escalation effect”; notice that the numbers of filibusters appears to be growing exponentially and that the rate of growth doesn’t appear to change when the Senate changed hands. Hence, it might be time to change the rules…all the well knowing that the Senate will change hands. After all, if a party is in office, it ought to be able to govern without needing a super-majority every time.

Rachel Maddow: Broken Senate in lame duck frenzy, posted with vodpod

14 – December – 2010 – Parker Spitzer – CNN.com Blogs: Zakaria on Manana Politics

Note: Zakaria doesn’t let the public off of the hook; in fact he takes us all to task! Politicians who “do the right thing” will get voted out of office. Ultimately, we get the government we all deserve. Note that he thinks that the government does need to make some public investment.

14 – December – 2010 – Parker Spitzer – CNN.com…, posted with vodpod

15 December 2010 am

Workout notes
2 mile AMT, 3.12 mile treadmill run: 9:59, 19:16, 27:44, 28:41, 1.1 mile elliptical, 15 minutes of walking (1 mile) for 7 miles total.
Then rotator cuff stuff (forward, side, 3/4, side pulley, “bench push toward the sky”, row/rotate and press. I did not do the “volleyball” rotation; I am not ready for that one yet.

Last night: I took naproxyn and the shoulder felt somewhat better; I have to remember that when the shoulder gets to be pain free again, it will be about a 3-4 month period before I can lift hard.

Posts
Economics
Robert Reich talks more about the the disparity of wealth and how that is unsustainable and how nothing we are doing is helping with that problem.

Of course, the Obama-GOP tax cut deal is catching heat from conservatives though it has now passed the Senate.

Health Care Reform: The mandate provision was struck down by one right wing judge, though other judges didn’t find a problem. My guess: it isn’t going away, no matter how much the right wing bellows.

How is all of this playing out politically? President Obama’s job approval numbers really haven’t changed much at all.

So, what about compromise and labels? I share the opinion with some of my fellow liberals and hated conservatives that labels, in fact, matter and tell you something about how someone sees the world.

Religion
Many people try to claim that atheism is a “type of faith”. Nonsense; being an atheist is a bit like not accepting alchemy or astrology or not accepting the power of healing crystals. This is a good little video that explains it:

Political Humor Evidently John Boehner likes to cry a lot; this man CARES about the plight of the very rich. How touching.

.

So, I think of him when I hear this song:

Peoria in Winter Sucks
It has been bitterly cold lately and though our streets are still slick with snow, we are getting dumped on AGAIN; right now it is coming down in buckets. Gads, I hate this place. I wonder if the old Soviet industrial towns are like this.
So, I need some cheering up:

Ok, these women are fine athletes; those moves are difficult to do and to time. But I kept wondering: “how high is that suit going to hike up?”

And though right now this place is a dirty, stinky (ADM factory), frozen ice box, summer will be in a few months:

(be sure to click on the image on the site “thespandexstatement” as it enlarges quite a bit)

And there will be some time to walk and run on the trails:

I just need to hang on until spring.

Saying Goodbye to Another Running Parter: Jerry Crump RIP

Within the past couple of years, I said goodbye to a couple of running buddies (Steve and Sam); today I said goodbye to another. Jerry Crump died yesterday after a long illness; he was 67.

I met Jerry through the running races; it was his style to have a training partner and I was to become good friends with his first one. He also was active in Building Steam (to train new runners).

He was a fiercely competitive runner who cared about his times and places; he even ran a marathon in the 2:50′s as a 50 year old.
We ran a few long runs together; he took me on a variety of courses and I took him on my half marathon course from our house through Springdale Cemetery. He also introduced me to Farmdale Cemetery.

We entered many of the same races, but unless he was recovering from something (say, a 50 miler), I was rarely ahead of him.
I especially remember the 1998 Galesburg half marathon. It was very, very windy. I was in 1:3x shape but the win whipped me and whipped me bad; I ran a 1:42 and it was a real struggle. But Jerry just tore through the wind with no trouble at all; he was exiting a park just as I was entering it and he was in full stride, with his skinny body upright and tearing through the wind.

He didn’t strike an imposing figure; he was very, very slender with a bald stop and scraggly beard. He was an accountant and his personality very much fit the part. He was organized, dependable, sincere and very, very private.

He appreciated the beauty of a course; there was time to push, a time for speed work, and a time to do a course that was “good for your soul” as he used to say.

I found out that he was terminally ill this summer; he just didn’t look good. He told me that he was ill but also asked me to keep my mouth shut, and so I did.

Here are a few of our adventures:
Our last race together was the Park to Park 5 miler in 2005; he did very well in his age group:
96 Jerry Crump East Peoria IL 62 1 M 60-64 36:41.8 7:20/M
165 Ollie Nanyes Peoria IL 45 18 M 45-49 41:04.5 8:13/M

(ok, I was in ultra walking mode and had no running speed. )
That day was hot as all get out; my friend Tracy and his training partner went with us.

We also traveled to the Quad Cities to do a half marathon in 2002; this was my last half marathon at a pace faster than 8 minutes per mile:
2 Jerry Crump Peoria IL 58 49 1:38:44.69 7:32 (2n’d age group, 49′th overall)
16 Ollie Nanyes Peoria IL 42 78 1:43:06.23 7:52 (16 out of 39, 78′th overall)

And we met at some other races:
At Delevan in 2001, he and I ran the first part of it together; he was worried that we had gone out too fast. Of course, I couldn’t stay with him all the way.

26 Jerry Crump M 57 East Peo. IL 1:36:59
28 Ollie Nanyes M 41 Peoria IL 1:37:32

Still, that was a good one for me.

And there was the Mitsubishi Half Marathon in 1999; I ran my PR and beat my “special rival (Jerry’s training partner); Jerry was upset with his time.

26 Jerry Crump 56 M 1:33:57
30 Ollie Nanyes 40 M 1:34:16
31 Deborah Wresinski 33 F 1:34:28

There were many other events.

Jerry, you left us much too early. You’ll be missed.

14 December 2010 (PM)

Workout notes yoga in the morning; 5 mile walk on the treadmill in 1:02:30 in the evening.
Shoulder: somewhat sore later in the day, so I used the stretch band for rotator cuff and iced it afterward.

Peoria: very cold still. No, I haven’t gone Christmas shopping yet…but this might inspire me to get out there:

This was from Best Buy.

Humor and Frogs
This is from a German Volkswagon commercial:

That reminds me of this classic:

More humor

More funny photos here.

Science
Some “nearby” exo-planets have been imaged!

(click to go to the larger photo at Richard Dawkins.net)

Among one of the first exoplanet systems imaged was HR 8799. In 2008, a team led by Christian Marois at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Canada, took a picture of the system directly imaging three giant planets. The team revisited the system in 2009 – 2010 with the Keck II telescope and discovered a fourth planet in the system.

The new planet, designated HR 8799e, orbits at a distance of 14.5 AU, making it the innermost planet in the system. The other planets all orbit at distances of >25 AU. The images were taken in the near infrared where they are most noticeable because the system is relatively young (<100 Myr) and the planets are still radiating large amounts of heat from their formation.

This discovery is cool not only because it is, well, cool, but also because it challenges the current theories of planet formation (material obtained in one catastrophic event or a core formed with material added later. Surf to the article.

Political/Social
My favorite drunken ladybug:

Christopher Hitchens: Nixon tapes show that Kissinger was as bad as many of us thought he was:

Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized, and excluded. No more dinners in his honor; no more respectful audiences for his absurdly overpriced public appearances; no more smirking photographs with hostesses and celebrities; no more soliciting of his worthless opinions by sycophantic editors and producers. One could have demanded this at almost any time during the years since his role as the only unindicted conspirator in the Nixon/Watergate gang, and since the exposure of his war crimes and crimes against humanity in Indochina, Chile, Argentina, Cyprus, East Timor, and several other places. But the latest revelations from the Nixon Library might perhaps turn the scale at last. (Click here to listen to the conversation; the offending section begins at 13:56.)

Chatting eagerly with his famously racist and foul-mouthed boss in March 1973, following an appeal from Golda Meir to press Moscow to allow the emigration of Soviet Jewry, Kissinger is heard on the tapes to say:

The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.

Politics
Fareed Zakaria wrote an article that he talked about in tonight’s Spitzer-Parker show. Here it is:

This is the wrong time to raise taxes, say the politicians. The economy is fragile, say the economists. The recovery is halting, say the pundits. In a few years, they all affirm, we will need to get our fiscal house in order. Of course, just a few years ago, the economy was doing fine, and Washington decided it wasn’t the moment to worry about the deficit. Instead, over the past decade, we cut taxes, added a massive entitlement program (prescription drugs for the elderly) and spent trillions on two wars. Somehow, no matter what the economic clock says, it’s never time in Washington to cut spending or raise taxes. Call it mañana economics.

I understand the politics of compromise and the politics of reelection, and this deal makes sense on both grounds. It doesn’t make much sense for the long-term growth of the American economy. What Washington is trying to do is reignite the consumption bubble – hoping to get Americans to spend money and take out loans. This plan, presidential adviser Lawrence Summers tells us, will get the economy to “escape velocity.” It’s an intriguing theory. If Americans keep spending money, using their credit cards, and buying houses, this will trigger the next technological and economic revolution.

China has a different theory of how to get long-term, sustained growth. The Chinese have doubled their spending on education – with stunning results – and continue to build the world’s best infrastructure. Reuters reports that Beijing is contemplating a plan to invest $1.5 trillion over the next five years in seven crucial industries. The targeted sectors are alternative energy, biotechnology, new-generation information technology, high-end equipment manufacturing, advanced materials, alternative-fuel cars, and energy-saving and environmentally friendly technologies. Somehow, housing and retail didn’t make the list.

The basic problem in the U.S. economy is that for a generation now, we have been consuming more and saving and investing less. Consumption ranged from 60 to 65 percent of gross domestic product for decades; then it started moving up in the early 1980s, reaching 70 percent of GDP in 2001, where it has stayed ever since. More spending has not been triggered by rising incomes but entirely by an expansion of credit – the underlying cause of the crash of 2008. And yet our solution to our problems is to expand credit and consumption.

Of course, we don’t have the money to pay for our new tax plan, so we will borrow it, in part from foreign central banks. While China spends its money to invest in long-term growth, it lends us cash so that we can give ourselves one more big tax break. Someone in Beijing must be smiling.

Later I’ll post the CNN segment; basically he said that Congress lacks political courage and that Americans really don’t want to face pain. I saw that is especially true of our rich people.

13 December 2010 pm

Workout/Shoulder notes
The shoulder ached last night and woke me up…right when it was time to wake up. I tried to return to lifting too soon (overhead lifts)

Workout:
Squats (one legged, 10 each leg, no weight)
45 x 10, 135 x 10, 155 x 10, 175 x 8, 135 x 10 (free); better depth
Leg press: 180 x 20, 270 x 20, 360 x 10
rotator cuff: 3 sets of 10 front, side, angled, arms up, then light row-and-press-
cables (one arm only)
I also did curls (3 sets of 20 with 15), rows (90 each arm, 10 reps, 3 sets), incline presses (90 x 10, 115 x 10, 115 x 10)
leg extensions (3 sets of 10)
leg curls (3 sets, two were done with too heavy a weight)
glute extensions (3 x 10 with 130)
back (3 sets of 20)
vertical leg lifts (3 sets of 20)

Peoria: cold! 3 F in the morning….warmed to 12 F. There is some some snow but not a ton of it…still my feet feel frozen.

On an amusing note, last week I trudged a 7 mile urban hike on icy roads. For the second time in a month, a Jehovah’s Witness attempted to stop me and give me literature. Really…they tried to do this when I was out walking! That is what makes this “atheists won’t keep their views to themselves” whine so amusing.

Posts
Why is it so cold? Basically, it is because the jet stream let that cold arctic air mass out over our region. What is hilarious is that some Fox News types are going on and on “ha, it is cold…so much for global warming“. That people fall for this is unbelievable…after all global warming is about 1-2 degrees F and if it is 18 F instead of 16, it is still frigging cold! Besides, how chilly a day is has to do with the jetstream, air masses, and many other factors. Of course Fox News caters to the moron demographic.

For more:

And related: watch a climate scientist refute nonsense here:

Science, Economics and Politics
Paul Krugman talks about economics and improvements in the economy. He claims this:

(note: November 10 means “November 2010″, November 11 means “November 2011″, etc.) He claims that while graph A is better for the economy (it certainly is), graph B is better for the President’s reelection process as people tend to notice the immediate trend, which would be “wow, we are improving rapidly” even though we’d all be better off with the top graph.

One reason this interests me: this is an example of a calculus derivative.

Speaking of the economy: President Obama’s compromise is actually reasonably popular with the public at large even if it is unpopular with liberals and, ironically, conservative deficit hawks.

Weirdness
Researchers found a 2400 year old pot of soup. That is even older than the stuff in our refrigerator!

This is an example of what can happen when church and state aren’t separate: a man in Pakistan got in trouble with the law for….throwing away a card that had the name Mohamed on it:

Pakistani authorities have arrested a doctor on suspicion of violating the country’s contentious blasphemy laws after he threw away the business card of a man who shared the name of the Prophet.

The blasphemy law was widely criticised after Asia Bibi, a Christian woman, was sentenced to death for insulting Islam. Critics say the law should be repealed because it is used to settle grudges, persecute minorities and promote extremism.

Naushad Valiyani, a Muslim doctor in Hyderabad, in Sindh province, was arrested after a complaint to police alleging he had insulted the Prophet.

Politics
Christine Todd-Whitman, A moderate Republican talks about the current Republican party and Sarah Palin. I’ve always been ok with this type of Republican; what I can’t stand are the know-nothing-Fox News-Newsmax type.

Social
You may have heard the name “white privilege” and wondered “what in the heck is that about”? It is really more of “there is a lot of stuff that white people don’t have to put up with that non-white (especially black) put up with every day. Here is a short list.
For the record: yes, I deal with most of the stuff on the list, though at the level I have to deal with, it is really more of an occasional nuisance than a real obstacle. I can honestly say that I’ve achieved at a level consummate with my natural abilities and work ethic.