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.

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