8 March 2011 (pm)

Workout notes
Yoga. Then I walked on my own; I did the 6.1 mile course in 1:29 (1:23 last August). Ok, it was somewhat chilly and frankly this was a rather lackadaisical effort; I just didn’t feel like trying hard. Then again, I had some “good effort days” in a row.

As far as yoga: I am getting better though I am nowhere near flexible enough to, say, sit on my heels (as I could prior to my meniscus injury). I’ve lost some flexibility too; I can’t touch my feet to the floor in plow pose

nor am I comfortable in “bound warrior”.

Headstand: I can get into it easier when my muscles are not fatigued from weight lifting. But when they are, I really need to rely on balance rather than on muscling my legs up. I can still get into it after lifting weights, but sometimes it takes me a few tries to remind myself to rely on balance.

Social Media (facebook) Wild Celtic Rose wrote an interesting post on this. I’ll add my two cents worth:
on one hand, it is a good way to connect with long lost friends (especially from my distant past) and to connect with those who have similar interests (e. g., political, sports, etc.). And it is an eye-opener. My wife has a master’s degree and does quite well professionally, and my workplace friends are mostly academics with Ph. D’s and peer reviewed publications. I tend to attract similar “face to face” friends. What I see on facebook is far more varied.

Also, I had a bit of an incident today: a attorney friend of mine just commended two people for getting judicial appointments. One of her facebook friends said something to the effect that Senator Durbin “is an idiot”. I chimed in that I liked him. Anyway, a discussion…if you can call it that, ensued. His idea of an argument was to string a bunch of adjectives together; he sounded like a Limbaugh type conservative.
I came close to making a rather blunt personal assessment of him …but then I looked and saw that his wife is one of my facebook friends. So I did my best to be civil, said my piece and then left.

The point is that facebook relationships forced a degree of civility on me that I didn’t want to attain..and I suppose that is a good thing.

Facebook also helped drive home which should have been obvious to me all along: that person that I disagree with on politics, religion or other social issue might well be that one to coordinate volunteers or to do something good for the community.
I’ve got to learn to critique and, if necessary, attack IDEAS but not PEOPLE.

That will be difficult for me as there is a sort of person that I just don’t like.

Media

I am not the world’s biggest Christopher Hitchens fan; I think he is more of a rabble rouser and iconoclast than anything else. I enjoy his writing though.

Science
Watch natural selection in action: Jerry Coyne shows some cool camouflage adaptations. He then has an interesting post about gene transfer between fungal species; this is the sort of thing that doesn’t lend itself to “vertical” gene transfer that one sees in natural selection. He points out that this in now way diminishes the “tree of life” idea that one normally thinks of, but it does note that such a simple model does have some tweaks, exceptions and nuances.
I found this post timely since I just read an interview with Margaret Riley in Discover Magazine (no link available as of right now).

Politics
Will the serious Republican candidates for 2012 show themselves? This campaign season is starting later than normal; perhaps it is to save money?

Religion
Mano Singham on the decline of religion in the US: he points to declining church attendance, the fact that younger people are not that religious and that the percentage of creationists are dropping.

Of course this doesn’t mean that rational thought is up; after all many non-religious people embrace woo such as astrology, homeopathy, etc.

Fox News: we are supposed to take them seriously?

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