9 March 2011 pm

Workout notes Run over lunch; I decided on the treadmill for the soft surface. 10:55, 21:30, 29:50, then 4 x .25 miles at 8:34 pace with .25 mile walk in between. Yes, these were “slow intervals” but they gave me the feeling of actual running. So now I need to work on squeezing the rest time totally out; next week I walk less but still cover 2 miles. The idea is to do it comfortably and let my muscles adjust.

Then I did some sit-ups (100).

Posts
Humor

see more funny videos, and check out our Insanity Wolf lols!

What is even funnier is that some helicopter parent will probably get offended by this.

Sort of humor
Now that the internet is just about everywhere, so is your past…including stuff that you’d rather forget:

Teacher Quits After Student Uncovers Porn PastTera Myers, a science teacher at Parkway North High School in Missouri, sought administrative leave after one of her students found out she’d been a porn actress some 15 years earlier. Sad! And sadder still that it’s not the first time it’s happened to her:

In 2006, she was suspended from Reidland High School in Paducah, Ky., after a student obtained a copy of an X-rated film she was in and showed it to other students. At the time, Myers went by the name Tericka Dye.

She decided to fight her suspension and reapply for her job. News coverage at the time showed support from teachers and parents, as well an emotional plea from Myers, but her contract was not renewed.

Well, perhaps she go do a “Debbie does science” video aimed at getting undergraduate males to pay attention? Or perhaps she could work as a Fox News anchor? Or, heck, become a Republican candidate for office?

Science

Evolution is breathtakingly interesting. This article is particularly interesting as I just finished reading The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond. Of course we share a great deal of our DNA with chimpanzees (90 to 99 percent, depending on the metric used). But that part that we don’t share makes a huge difference. Evidently, there are some new results on this:

When the human genome was first deciphered more than a decade ago, some scientists expected to find extra genes that explained why humans had an intellectual edge over their closest living relatives and other species. But since diverging from chimpanzees around seven million years ago, it turns out that our human ancestors lost several hundred snippets of DNA, which together led to traits that are uniquely human, the researchers claim.

In ditching these chunks of DNA, our ancient ancestors lost facial whiskers and short, tactile spines on their penises. The latter development is thought to have paved the way for more intimate sex and monogamous relationships. The loss of other DNA may have been crucial in allowing humans to grow larger brains.

Intriguingly, hardly any of the lost DNA was from genes, which make the proteins that are the building blocks of life. Instead, the missing DNA came from areas of the genome that regulate where and when certain genes are active.

“Like someone looking for their keys under a lamp post, the genes were the easiest place to look for differences between humans and chimpanzees, and in many respects those have been studied pretty well,” said Philip Reno, a co-author on the study at Penn State University.

“But there is a larger unknown in the form of these other regions of DNA, and in those we are only just beginning to find ways to pull out the differences between humans and chimpanzees.”

In the years since the human genome project was completed it has become clear that humans and chimps share around 96% of their DNA. Of the three billion pairs of “letters” that make up the human genetic code, genes account for less than 2%.

More to come.

What about botany?
Check out this photo:

(clicking on the thumbnail takes you to the blogpost)

So, it is clear why the bee is visiting this flower, right? Well, no….it turns out that:

Photo 1 shows the long, yellow/green bristles on the involucral bracts of Crepis barbigera s.s. and a bee visiting a flower head in full bloom. Of course, the visiting bee is of little concern to the plant given that its seeds are clonal and don’t require fertilization.

(hat tip: Sandwalk)

Cool, huh?

Science and woo: What is going on here?

Is everything information? This seductive idea animates the brand-new book The Information by James Gleick (Pantheon 2011), which I just rave-reviewed in The Wall Street Journal. Gleick’s book is, among other things, an in-depth biography of information theory, which the Bell Labs mathematician Claude Shannon invented in 1948 to provide a framework for improving the efficiency of communications.

A growing number of scientists, Gleick writes, are beginning to wonder whether information “may be primary: more fundamental than matter itself.” This notion has inspired other recent books, including Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd (Vintage 2007), Decoding the Universe by Charles Seife (Penguin 2007), Decoding Reality by Vlatko Vedral (Oxford 2010) and Information and the Nature of Reality, a collection of essays edited by Paul Davies (Cambridge 2010). But the everything-is-information meme violates common sense.

I admit that I almost stopped reading the review because of that stupid last sentence. Hey, quantum mechanics violates “common sense”. As one commenter at the original article says, this is not an argument.

The author appears to go on to say that “information” makes sense only in the context of humans and human thought.
I am not convinced. I agree that ultimately information IS physical but that physical things don’t imply information. Still, I wonder why, say, emissions from a rotating neutron star couldn’t be considered “information” in the absence of humans. The authors argument appears to me to be like saying radio transmissions don’t exist if there isn’t a receiver to pick them up.

But I am still fuzzy here and would more than welcome challenge to my thoughts or correction.

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?

On Notice/Dead to Me – Mike Huckabee – The Colbert Report – 3/7/11 – Video Clip | Comedy Central

ColbertNation.com video – Mike Huckabee is On Notice until he says something that will get him unwanted attention on The Colbert Report.

On Notice/Dead to Me – Mike Huckabee – The Colb…, posted with vodpod

Some Past Marathons

I did these marathons prior to starting my blog and decided to post the old reports.
These reports were from an old yahoo group (which is now far less active).
They are from: The Indianapolis Marathon 2000 (3:38, my masters PB), the Lake Geneva Marathon 2001, and the Rocket City Marathon 2002 (where I was injured with shin-splints going in)

Note: these were from 9-11 years ago; my capabilities have seriously deteriorated since then.

Indianapolis Marathon 2000

Hey xxx.

I started the fall as the slowest non-injured member,
and nothing has changed over this weekend. But, at
long last, I managed to do a marathon in which I did
the last 10K in….gasp…..under 1 hour.

And yes, Damon, I’ll say it: it is a sign of how
pathetic I am that I am actually pleased with this
race.

Day: sunny, slightly breezy, 32 F (0 C) at the start,
with temperatures in the low 40′s (5 C) at the end.

Time: 3:38:03 (my watch); official was something like
3:38:1X. PR is 3:33, set in December 1980. Post
morbid obesity best was 3:45, done last year.

Grade: Happy Maggot. Why? Last 10K was 53:21, which
is more than 10 minutes faster than any last 10K I’ve
done in a “post morbid obesity” marathon.

Yeah, my time was not great (corresponding to roughly
a 1:44 half marathon, and I am a better runner than
that) but it was much better than my recent times and
an “old fart” PR. But, it was how I ran the race that
made me feel good.

The race itself is on the small side; there were
roughly 800 half-marathon runners and 300 marathon
runners. We started concurrently. A good feature is
that you get a seeded number if you have done *any* of
the following within the last year: sub 42 10K, sub
1:40 half marathon, or sub 3:30 ‘thon. But, given the
small start, it was not necessary.

I had no trouble with the start. I wore a HRM again
and decided to try to shoot for a HR of 150 to keep me
from buring out (that is about 75-80% for me). There
was some guy running in SANDALS!

The first 3 miles were taken in 25:15 (roughly 26:00
for 5K) and it felt easy. We wound through parks and
neighborhoods for much of the first part of the first
“out and back”. I made an effort to hold back on the
next 7 miles and reached mile 10 in 1:20:26 (16 km).
It still felt easy, though my legs felt some fatigue.

I had to resist the urge to go with the half-marathon
runners who were starting to “kick” it in; that is
where the HRM really helped. We went back towards the
start and we kept going straight through a state park
as the half folks turned off.

I had to chuckle at mile 14. Up a ways, I saw a woman
who had passed me on the side of the road. She was
bent way over with her hands on her knees and her face
pointed to the ground. I thought that she might need
help so I looked at her. But, I then saw that she had
pulled her tights and underwear to her ankles…she
was urinating!!! Right *in front* of the trees! I’ve
never seen a woman peeing before; at least in the open
like that.

Anyway, mile 15 (just before 25K) came at 2:02:06 and
I felt ok. A headwind had slowed us a bit.

Then we ran through a park on a bike path. Very
pretty. I got to yell for the folks already on the
way back. The pace settled in at roughly 8:20-8:30 a
mile, and then my HR started to “creep”; higher HR for
the same effort. So, eventually, I let the HR slide
to 155 then to 160.

At 19 miles, we turned around and headed back. At 20
miles (2:44:39) I still felt reasonably good, though I
was 7:30 behind my pace from the year before.

But *this* time, I held the pace. At 22, I was still
doing 8:25′s per mile. I was actually passing folks.
Only one passed me over the last 10K. At mile 24, I
made a mistake; I was at 3:18:17 and instead of
pushing the pace, I went a bit too conservative to
ensure I’d meet my sub 3:40 goal. So, the next mile
(which featured 400 m of a gravel road) was my slowest
(9:02) and I took the next mile (which featured a
moderately tough uphill) in 8:53. I probably passed
at least a half-dozen runners here. I started to
smile at mile 26 (3:36:13)(less than 400 m left) and
picked it up a bit to finish in 3:38:03.

Next time: I’ll be a bit more aggressive in the last
4 miles or so. I probably had another minute in me.
But, if I really want to improve, I’ll have to:

1) get some more speed! (Yassos) and 2) do more
miles; long runs were fine, but I need more medium
length (12-15 miles, or 20-25 km) runs to supplement
the long ones.

So here is my long range running plan: rest, then
start Daniels “Marathon/half marathon program “C”" to
get ready for a pair of half marathons in May;
probably the Quad Cities Distance Classic and the
Madison Marathon Half. Use this base to train for a
mile over the summer (to build up speed); then ramp up
the milage for a fall marathon.

ollie
——————-
Lake Geneva Marathon 2001

This was the Lake Geneva Marathon, 2001. My time was
a Heidi-time: (3:40:24). But my place was ok; I
finished no. 36 overall; and at the time I left no. 80
was in at 4:01. So, it appears to be 36/15X-16X or
so, which is a good place by my standards.

And, to be blunt, I was pleased with my race, though I
wish I could have squeezed another 25 seconds out of
the stumps that used to be my legs. But I had a
really bad attitude on the ending of the race; I saw
how far away the end was and got a bit psyched out, I
think.

Weather was beautiful; 40′s at the start (6-7C), light
wind, lots of sun. I lined up mid-pack (they also ran
the 25K and 22 mile (35 km) cross country lake run at
the same time.

The first few miles were done rather easily; I was a
bit over 40 minutes at 5 miles (8 km) and at 81
minutes at 10. We had moved away from the Lake and
moved through some rolling farm-land. The runners
were in good spirits; very chatty. I kept the heart
rate in the very high 140′s-low 150′s.

I started to move on folks; mostly folks who were
finishing up the much-larger 25K run. The 25K course
ends with a large downhill and I got there at 2:06:02
and feeling good; Barbara was there and yelled “hi”.

But then the crowd thinned out and I hooked up with a
rather attractive red-haired lady and we took the next
few hills together. There were two rather steep
suckers in the next 5K but at 18 miles (30 k) we
passed by Yerkes Observatory.

Then there was a steep downhill (ahhaaaa) and I had
pulled away; I had nailed a half-dozen folks or so. I
hit mile 20 in 2:44 (32 km) and didn’t feel THAT bad.
We were in Williams Bay right along the lake at that
point.

Then came a series of rolling hills and the only part
of the course I didn’t like: a 1.5 mile stretch along
a highway that had minimal coning and some good hills.

We then turned into a residental area at mile 23 (36
km) and took another couple of good hills. I managed
a 8:15 for the next downhill mile segment; but then a
steep uphill slowed me to 9:22. Still, I was at 3:29
at mile 25 when the course hit the Lake Trail to the
finish. We (the red-head and I) were jockeying back
and forth; she’d pass me on the uphills and I’d get
her on the downs. We were essentially together until
40 k.

That last mile of trail just killed me. My legs were
stumps and I just didn’t have the mobility to run well
on this stretch. My companion and another runner got
away from me, and a Euro Course member got me. But
that was it; I wish I had just a bit more left but I
got to watch the clock tick past 3:40 *#@$!!.

But, realistically, this was a better race than last
year’s 3:38 as this course was much harder. Next
time, I’ll do 2-3 22 mile training runs before hand
and I won’t race a hard, hilly 12K the weekend before.

My half-way split was about 1:46:50 (just under 1:46
at 13 miles) so my second half was about 1:53:30.

About the course: The Ultimate Guide to Marathons
rates this as “7-” (Big Sur rates 6+) on the
difficulty scale; Marathon and Beyond ranks it the
9′th toughest in North America (Big Sur is no. 10).
Anyway, I now really appreciate what the J-boys did a
couple of weeks ago!

The good news is that I am not that beat up (by
marathon standards) due to my 6 50+ mile weeks I did
as preparation.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on (as usual) but, hey, I had fun
today! Next time, I go into the race with some longer
runs under my belt; I had a half-dozen 18′s but only
one 20.

O-spandex-note: there was a 8 min/mile 25k runner on
the course. She wore WHITE spandex shorts; nada
underneath. And yes, she got nice and sweaty along
the way…..:-)

ollie

Rocket City Marathon 2002 (December)
Note: I had torn my shins up in early November and therefore could barely run at all a month before the race; in fact I had TWELVE miles running TOTAL the month before the race, but I had non-refundable plane tickets. So I went in hopes of doing what I could and then catching a ride on the sag wagon.
“Mawk” is the guy I stayed with in Huntsville, Alabama. He had hoped for a 3:40 or so. I just wanted to finish.

———
hey, Gordo! I’m glad someone is looking forward to the results. (mawk)
I’ll hand this over for a minute to Ollie.

Well, I can’t tell whether this is Ollie or Heidi. Socaially, this is a great
trip! Mawk has a beautiful house and a hospitable, wonderful family. I am have
an excellent time.

Oh, the race. Let’s put it this way: in the last 4 weeks I had a grand total
of 23 running miles, and the sum total of my long runs were 13 and 15 miles in
October (last one with Janet).

So, I did 4-1 run/walk the whole way and ended up with a 4:04:20 (watch time).
I hit mile 1 in 10 minutes, 10 in 1:31 and 20 in 3:01. I thought that sub 4 was
still doable at mile 22, but at 23 I had slowed to about a 10:20 pace (sound
familiar, Marty?)

My shin was not a factor, but my non-training was. One thing I noticed: since
my longest run in the previous motnth was 4 miles, I started to feel fatigued
and tired at 6 miles! I really wondered if I was even going to finish. But the
run/walk technique really extends one’s capactity to suffer without falling
apart.

I’ll turn this over to Mawk; I can say that Heidi really liked the post-race
Moon Pies.

————-

“Mooon Pies”!!! Oh so THAT’s What those crumbs were on my shoulder! And here I
thought that was snow flakes! Apparently Heidi was breathing down my neck
toward the end and blew crumbs on my back!

Short story: Plan was to avg 8:45 all the way. Started out around 8:20s that
felt easy. Saw a lot of sweat dripping off my hat early on during a cold day
that I wondered about. Did hit water/g-ade at every aid station, but I did
notice that my lips got dry at about 10miles and I was feeling pretty thirsty
despite drinking at the aid stations. Hit the 13 mile mark on pace for a
3:47:00 feeing pretty good. The course turned back north into a 15mph breeze
at 15 and between 15-18 there is a slight gain in elevation, that coupled with
the wind sapped me by mile 20. Mile 20 my left ham tightened and I stopped to
stretch. Hit the 23 mile mark at 3:29:XX Figured I could get in under 4.
Ollie caught me about 1/4 mile later.
About 100 yds before mile 24, my left quad tightened up. I stopped again to
stretch however stretching my left quad caused my left hamstring to seize up,
causing my RIGHT quad to lock up. So here I am, standing to the side of the
course, pointed at about 02 o’clock because I cannot move my legs. Finally,
after about 2 minutes of playing statue I shuffled off.
Anyway, the 3:50 goal turned to 4:00, finally becoming 4:08:14.
As I was finishing, the announcer was saying “The next runner is Mark Johnson,
from Madison, this is his third marathon..”
I was thinking, “…. yeah, and my last DAMN one too…”
The most fun was after the finish line, was a sweet young highschool thang that
held my hand and helped me to the post-race refreshments. I felt like
proposing…

Mawk

guess it wasn’t so short, huh?

7 March 2011

Workout notes
AM: 4.2 mile run (Bradley Cornstalk course) in 44:36. Too damned slow; 11 minutes at the entrance of the park! I felt better and it was “only” 10:30″ back but I never felt “free and easy”.

PM: before lunch, weights, squats, sit ups and headstand.
The headstand was hard to get into until I calmed down and used balance rather than muscle; I was fatigued from the weights.
Weights:
squats: Smith: 10 x 45, 10 x 135, 5 x 185 (strove for depth, especially on the 135)
squats, free: 10 x 135 (better depth)
incline presses: 10 x 115, 4 x 135, 10 x 120
curls: 3 sets of 15 x 20 lbs.
rows: 3 sets of 10 x 200
pull downs: 10 x 120, 10 x 120, 10 x 120 (last set: shoulder friendly grip)
head stand
exercise ball hamstrings: 3 sets of 15
sit ups: 4 sets of 25 at different inclines.

Posts
Blogs
Daily Kos: most there are Democrats and the site is dedicated to help elected more and better Democrats. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves; we are NOT the Democratic base. We are wealthier, better educated and more atheistic than the rest of the base.

Mathematics/Science Why am I posting this from the Fail Blog? Note how the fish react and the pattern that they form: they are are obeying “local rules” when they do this; there isn’t some overriding master plan. Our genes work in much the same way; they have complicated instructions telling them what to do given what they sense around them.

see more funny videos, and check out our Insanity Wolf lols!

Political/Economics

Here is one good reason the Republicans absolutely infuriate me:

Let’s focus, in particular, on the ridicule some of the quoted Republicans heap on “comparative effectiveness research.”

Ask yourself, what do we have to do to control Medicare costs? We can save some money, maybe a lot, by reforming payment systems so that providers are paid for overall treatment rather than on a fee-for-service basis. But over the long term, the fundamental issue is going to be to decide what Medicare will and won’t pay for. We need, as Henry Aaron has often said, to learn how to say no.

Notice that this is very different from the issue on Social Security. You can propose simply cutting retirement benefits by 25 percent, and that’s doable. But you can’t decide to do only three-quarters of every operation and test that Medicare pays for (and no, you can’t demand that patients pay 1/4 of the cost without effectively denying care to many Americans.) So Medicare cuts are an inherently harder problem than SS cuts. In fact, I suspect that’s one reason, beyond the political motivations, why inside-the-Beltway types love to talk about Social Security, a trivial concern, while avoiding the vastly more important Medicare issue.

So how are you going to make decisions about what not to do? Um, you need good information about which medical interventions work, and how well they work: comparative effectiveness research. And no, that information isn’t already out there: doctors know surprisingly little about how effective procedures are relative to one another.

Why, then, are Republicans opposed to this kind of research? Some of it is sheer stupidity and/or anti-intellectualism — hey, those researchers are probably atheistic Democrats, you know.

Krugman goes on to point out that the Republicans would love to simply eliminate Medicare and hopefully do so in a way so that the Democrats get the blame.

Education and the future
Fareed Zakaria says that we cannot skimp on investments, and one of these is an investment in education.

On the other hand, Krugman doesn’t see education as a magic bullet:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that education is the key to economic success. Everyone knows that the jobs of the future will require ever higher levels of skill. That’s why, in an appearance Friday with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, President Obama declared that “If we want more good news on the jobs front then we’ve got to make more investments in education.”

But what everyone knows is wrong.

The day after the Obama-Bush event, The Times published an article about the growing use of software to perform legal research. Computers, it turns out, can quickly analyze millions of documents, cheaply performing a task that used to require armies of lawyers and paralegals. In this case, then, technological progress is actually reducing the demand for highly educated workers.

And legal research isn’t an isolated example. As the article points out, software has also been replacing engineers in such tasks as chip design. More broadly, the idea that modern technology eliminates only menial jobs, that well-educated workers are clear winners, may dominate popular discussion, but it’s actually decades out of date.

The fact is that since 1990 or so the U.S. job market has been characterized not by a general rise in the demand for skill, but by “hollowing out”: both high-wage and low-wage employment have grown rapidly, but medium-wage jobs — the kinds of jobs we count on to support a strong middle class — have lagged behind. And the hole in the middle has been getting wider: many of the high-wage occupations that grew rapidly in the 1990s have seen much slower growth recently, even as growth in low-wage employment has accelerated.[...]

Yes, we need to fix American education. In particular, the inequalities Americans face at the starting line — bright children from poor families are less likely to finish college than much less able children of the affluent — aren’t just an outrage; they represent a huge waste of the nation’s human potential.

But there are things education can’t do. In particular, the notion that putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have is wishful thinking. It’s no longer true that having a college degree guarantees that you’ll get a good job, and it’s becoming less true with each passing decade.

So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer — we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen.

What we can’t do is get where we need to go just by giving workers college degrees, which may be no more than tickets to jobs that don’t exist or don’t pay middle-class wages.

Read the rest; he notes that there are blue collar jobs that can’t be easily replaced.

Civil Liberties: Randazza writes an interesting piece on smoking. I tend to agree with him though I am conflicted on the child in an enclosed space being subjected to high doses of cigarette smoke.

He also takes a shot at racial profiling (e. g., profiling by the color of the skin and the type of money used…at toll booths.

Moral: if you are black (or dark skinned), pay will change or small bills.

Atheism Again, these authors think that “accommodationism” means “respecting believers”. No. It means saying that religious ideas and scientific ideas are compatible when, in fact, they aren’t. (e. g., evolution is an undirected process, hence humans are not here as some direct intention of some master plan).

Of course believers should be treated with respect, even if some of them hold some wrong ideas. Now their IDEAS such be subject to scrutiny.

The Conservative Christian Case For Gay Marriage: it could lead to gay celibacy!

Genesis for the discussion:

http://baptistsforbrown2008.wordpress.com/2011/03/05/whats-next-will-farmers-marry-their-goats/

(cut and paste into your browser; I don’t want the track-back)

I (in my poe character) made the following remark:

True, Gods Holy Word does prescribe the death penalty for homosexuality; that is beyond dispute. And yes, the Apostle Paul condemns it too. So on Biblical grounds, there is no room for dispute.

However the laws of our country aren’t always going to be in line with the Bible. So I submit the following:

1. Why shouldn’t gays be as miserable as the rest of us? Why do they get “free sex” sans all of the nagging, complaining and the raiding of our wallets? What makes THEM so special?
If the “male” of a gay couple is stupid enough to fall for the “if you love me you will marry me” line, he deserves all of the misery that he gets!

To which someone else (BrotherinChrist) replied:

It is tempting to support gay marriage, only a man could understand, “why shouldn’t gays suffer too?” [...] If gay marriage could lead to celibacy, the same way as normal male/female marriage, let the gays experience life being on their knees begging instead of having a mouthful. Let the $3 dollar bill crowd experience the typical change in relationships, from once a day to once a week, month, then year soon followed by “You want to do what? You want to do it again? You begged me to just once, you’re done now”.

(snicker….)

6 March 2011

Workout notes
5 mile treadmill walk in just under an hour, then after a quick breakfast, 8 miles on the East Peoria trail with Lynn (2:15) which, while not fast, is 13 minutes faster than last week. The weather was sunny and right about at freezing, with little wind.

Science and Mathematics

Andrew Wiles

Well, my desk is as messy has his desk is…that is where the resemblance ends.

Climate change and the US Navy:

The human brain: surprisingly, different parts of the brain can be co-opted for different uses:

When your brain encounters sensory stimuli, such as the scent of your morning coffee or the sound of a honking car, that input gets shuttled to the appropriate brain region for analysis. The coffee aroma goes to the olfactory cortex, while sounds are processed in the auditory cortex.

That division of labor suggests that the brain’s structure follows a predetermined, genetic blueprint. However, evidence is mounting that brain regions can take over functions they were not genetically destined to perform. In a landmark 1996 study of people blinded early in life, neuroscientists showed that the visual cortex could participate in a nonvisual function — reading Braille.

Now, a study from MIT neuroscientists shows that in individuals born blind, parts of the visual cortex are recruited for language processing. The finding suggests that the visual cortex can dramatically change its function — from visual processing to language — and it also appears to overturn the idea that language processing can only occur in highly specialized brain regions that are genetically programmed for language tasks.

“Your brain is not a prepackaged kind of thing. It doesn’t develop along a fixed trajectory, rather, it’s a self-building toolkit. The building process is profoundly influenced by the experiences you have during your development,” says Marina Bedny, an MIT postdoctoral associate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and lead author of the study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Feb. 28.

Creationism: the battle against it never stops.

Now, more than 80 years after the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial” in Tennessee, creationism proponents are pushing for state legislation there that could make it easier for teachers to bring unscientific ideas back into the science classroom in public schools. To bolster their cause, the backers of the new bills are invoking none other than teacher John Scopes, the trial’s pro-evolution defendant, as an icon of independent thinking.

Evolution Horses teeth evolved to handle the new diet…over a long period of time:

Fossil records verify a long-standing theory that horses evolved through natural selection, according to groundbreaking research by two anatomy professors at New York College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYCOM) of New York Institute of Technology.

Working with colleagues from Massachusetts and Spain, Matthew Mihlbachler, Ph.D., and Nikos Solounias, Ph.D. arrived at the conclusion after examining the teeth of 6,500 fossil horses representing 222 different populations of more than 70 extinct horse species. The records, spanning the past 55 million years, indicate a “critical” lag time between the evolution of horse teeth and dietary changes resulting from climate change.
[...]
“Lag time in the evolution of horse teeth in comparison to dietary changes is critical,” Mihlbachler explained. “We found that evolutionary changes in tooth anatomy lag behind the dietary changes by a million years or more.”

While paleontologists have long held horses as classic examples of evolution through natural selection, the theory has been difficult to test because the majority of horse species are extinct. However, Mihlbachler and Solounias’ observation that dental changes in horses follow their dietary changes is consistent with evolution due to adaptation.

“‘You are what you eat’: we hear this all the time, but now we know it is true,” explained Thomas Scandalis, Dean of NYCOM. “This study shows that the evolutionary path of horses as we know them today was affected by the food available to their prehistoric ancestors.”

Evidently the evolutionary advantage to the better teeth was oh-so-slight…

George Will Republicans and the 2012 race: are the fringe candidates who are trying to “out stupid” each other hurting the more viable candidates?

If pessimism is not creeping on little cat’s feet into Republicans’ thinking about their 2012 presidential prospects, that is another reason for pessimism. This is because it indicates they do not understand that sensible Americans, who pay scant attention to presidential politics at this point in the electoral cycle, must nevertheless be detecting vibrations of weirdness emanating from people associated with the party.

Mr. Will goes on to slam Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Gingrich and then:

Republicans should understand that when self-described conservatives such as Malzberg voice question-rants like the one above and Republicans do not recoil from them, the conservative party is indirectly injured. As it is directly when Newt Gingrich, who seems to be theatrically tiptoeing toward a presidential candidacy, speculates about Obama having a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” mentality. [...]

Of course, Mr. Will goes on to call Mr. Obama a “professor president” in the mold of Woodrow Wilson. But he then concludes:

Let us not mince words. There are at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon – Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Utah governor and departing ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty.

So the Republican winnowing process is far advanced. But the nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons.

No, maybe most Americans wouldn’t trust some of the wackos with nuclear weapons. But many of the people that vote in Republican primaries would…and note that Mr. Will left Ms. Sarah Palin off of the list. Tisk, tisk.

Republican radio call shows: some callers are paid-for plants with scripts!

America’s #1 and #2 radio broadcast hosts today and for decades have been Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, whose ratings and profits have dominated once thriving local markets. After industry deregulation paved the way, their boss, Premiere Radio Networks and parent company Clear Channel Communications have used a Wal-Mart model of steamrolling or acquiring small, independent original radio businesses, syndicating everything from robotized genre music stations to a political talk show hosts selling snake oil.

But according to an online account, Premiere is hiring actors to fake on-air calls to radio shows who do not divulge the scam. Before being abruptly removed, their website read:

“Premiere On Call is our new custom caller service… We supply voice talent to take/make your on-air calls, improvise your scenes or deliver your scripts. Using our simple online booking tool, specify the kind of voice you need, and we’ll get your the right person fast. Unless you request it, you won’t hear that same voice again for at least two months, ensuring the authenticity of your programming for avid listeners”.

As reported, once the actor “passed the audition, he would be invited periodically to call in to various talk shows and recite various scenarios that made for interesting radio.” In addition, the source was specifically told there would be no on-air disclosure of the fabricated nature of the call. He subsequently landed the job, at $40 per hour and a minimum one hour of work per day.

5 March 2011 am

Workout notes

Yes, I “ran” this in 1:04:36; too damned slow. No, I didn’t push hard, and it was windy and damp. Nevertheless, it was 2 minutes slower than I ran about 2 years ago, back when I had much more running under my belt (and ran 24:4x for 5K a couple of weeks later). And nothing really hurt so it wasn’t a complete disaster.

I went to a small statistics gathering a couple of hours later.
Note: running appears to make my shoulder sore.

Weight: two days ago I was at 192 just before lunch (Bradley gym; I like to be 186-187 on that scale).

Posts

Politics
Perhaps Mr. Huckabee ought to keep his mouth shut about certain issues. Recently he said:

“…I do think [Pres. Obama] has a different worldview and I think it’s, in part, molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas.”

Does he really want to get into this “guilt by association thing”?

As Trish reported here in December 2007, during the 2008 presidential primaries, it came out that, at age 18, Huckabee’s son David had been fired by the Scouts as a camp counselor after he and another counselor captured a stray dog, hanged him by the neck, slit his throat and stoned him to death.

The elder Huckabee, who was governor of Arkansas at the time, later fired a local prosecutor who had investigated the matter with the aim of filing animal cruelty charges against David Huckabee and the other boy. In the end, other than being fired by the Boy Scouts, the boys were never held accountable for killing the helpless dog.

Since Mike Huckabee has chosen to spend the week smearing the president’s family by criticizing his upbringing and the way it purportedly shaped his worldview, someone should ask him who warped his own son into the kind of person who would commit such a heinous and gruesome act — was it David Huckabee’s bigoted Southern Baptist preacher father, the Boy Scouts of America — or both?

Also, I’d say there may have been more that Rotary Clubs where Mr. Huckabee lived much of his “real American” life.

(outside of Harrison, Arkansas; yes there was an ACLU case about his where the ACLU went to bat for the KKK)

Science
You may have read about the “circadian clock without dna” papers. This was a break through, but it wasn’t the first time this had been studied. It has been studied, but by less modern methods.

Black holes: do at least some come from black strings which collapse and bead them off?

See the universe in 7 minutes. Yes, it is far from static.

From here.

Jon Stewart Nails Fox News Hypocrisy On Teachers Vs. Wall Street Pay Levels (VIDEO) | TPM LiveWire

Jon Stewart Nails Fox News Hypocrisy On Teacher…, posted with vodpod

msnbc video: Rebutting Huckabee’s definition of what’s American

msnbc video: Rebutting Huckabee’s definition of…, posted with vodpod