Valentine’s Day, 2011 (AM)

Ok, here is a little something for my female readers: some hearts on Valentine’s Day, just for you!

(click the thumbnail to go to his photo; you might check out the rest of his photos. He is pretty good)

Yep, that is a guy but those are little hearts….

This also demonstrates something that I cannot do with my right knee; it won’t bend like that yet. I have made a lot of progress though and can almost do a full squat.

Workout notes Some PT stuff (hip hikes, Achilles tendon stuff). I ran on the treadmill due to the number of “hard to see” patches of ice and the snow-pack on the sides of most roads around here. I “ran” 4 miles in 42:40 (easy effort, but at a good incline which I varied) and then walked for 14 more minutes to get 5 miles.

Of course, some of my racewalking friends are show-offs:.

I warmed up for 1600m in 10:29. Slooooowwwish for a warm-up,

Remember that she is talking about WALKING here…..and 1600 is a couple of seconds short of a mile.

Show off!
(seriously, she has overcome injuries and illnesses to “hit her stride” once again..and that is nice to see!)

Posts

Ed Current cracks me up:

Science
Check out a simplified version of a wind turbine. It features (of course) a speed up gear and something that helps it turn into the wind.

Human Evolution Lucy was not a tree dweller. There is a nice discussion of the human foot here.

Economics On google reader, the title of the post is “The Obama budget: “meh”. And I mean that.” Yes, it isn’t the disaster that the Republican budget is. But:

It’s much less awful than the Republican proposal, but it moves in the same direction: listening to the administration, you’d think that discretionary spending, not health care, is at the heart of our long-run deficit problems — and you’d also think that the job of rescuing the economy was done, with unemployment still at 9 percent.

It could be worse — the GOP proposal is — but it’s hardly something to cheer about.

Note: there are some cuts to Pell Grants in the Obama budget, but these are not “meat cleaver” cuts:

The first proposal would end the “year-round Pell” policy that let students collect two grants in a calendar year, with the second grant used for summer school. The official said the costs exceeded expectations and there was little evidence that students earn their degrees any faster.

The change would save $8 billion next year and $60 billion over a decade, the official said.

A second proposal would reduce loan subsidies for graduate and professional students. That would free $2 billion next year and save $29 billion over 10 years, according to the official.

The government currently pays the interest on student loans for some graduate and professional students as long as they stay in college. But the official said experts think the subsidy has failed to encourage more students to attend graduate school and it isn’t well-matched to borrowers who have trouble repaying the loans.

The administration also has expanded other programs that help students reduce loan payments and ultimately forgive debt they can no longer afford to repay.

Another $4 billion in savings over 10 years would be achieved by broadening the use of IRS data to determine eligibility, reducing improper payments and easing the application process, the official said.

[...]

So, hopefully, this might get tweaked if there are unfortunate consequences.

13 February 2011

Parting shots:
Evidently Secretary Rumsfeld didn’t know what he said that he knew:

The attachment is from Major Gen. Glen Shaffer, then the director for intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense, responding to Rummy’s request to know the “unknowns” about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

“We range from 0% to about 75% knowledge on various aspects of their program,” Shaffer wrote. Unfortunately, the 0% had to do with actual weapons.

“Our assessments rely heavily on analytic assumptions and judgment rather than hard evidence,” the report said. “The evidentiary base is particularly sparse for Iraqi nuclear programs.”

It added: “We don’t know with any precision how much we don’t know.” And continued: “We do not know if they have purchased, or attempted to purchase, a nuclear weapon. We do not know with confidence the location of any nuclear weapon-related facilities. Our knowledge of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program is based largely — perhaps 90% — on analysis of imprecise intelligence.”

On biological weapons: “We cannot confirm the identity of any Iraqi facilities that produce, test, fill, or store biological weapons,” the report said, adding: “We believe Iraq has 7 mobile BW agent production plants but cannot locate them … our knowledge of how and where they are produced is probably up to 90% incomplete.”

On chemical weapons: “We cannot confirm the identity of any Iraqi sites that produce final chemical agent.” And on ballistic missile programs they had “little missile-specific data.”

Somehow that was twisted into “a slam-dunk.” You go to war with the army you have, but the facts you want.

But if you think that this is bad, wait and see how things will be under President Palin.

Science and the environment
this is a very good video for the genuinely conflicted:

Hat tip: Conservation Report.

Oooops!

Froggy Love gone very wrong; the upper amphibian is a cane toad; the lower one is a green treefrog.

Nope; though they are in amplexus (the eggs are fertilized by the male outside of the body), they won’t be able to interbreed; there is too much genetic distance.