22 April 2011 afternoon

Workout notes I got a break in the action to take a short but fun walk (5K; not time but a 13-14 mpm effort). Nothing hurt.

Posts

No, taxing the rich won’t solve ALL of our problems right away, but it will close the gap. What is wrong with Ronald Reagan tax rates?

Of course, the conservatives won’t hear of it. They respond with “that’s unfair!” and “some people pay nothing”. Paul Krugman sets the record straight:

The claim that only rich people pay taxes is a zombie lie — something that keeps coming back no matter how many times it’s killed by evidence.

So, let’s try another shot to the head.

Yes, high-income people pay the bulk of the federal income tax. But that’s not the only tax! And while the income tax is quite progressive, the payroll tax — the other major federal tax — isn’t; and state and local taxes are strongly regressive.

Citizens for Tax Justice (pdf) has the goods: combining all taxes, federal, state, and local, we get this:

He also points out that the Progressive Caucus came up with a reasonable plan, not that it will get the light of day. Here is a brief snippet if you want to google past the New York Times paywall:

I’ve been remiss in not calling attention to the budget proposal from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It’s not going to happen — but then neither is the Ryan plan. And unlike the Ryan plan, it actually makes sense.

The CPC plan essentially balances the budget through higher taxes and defense cuts, plus some tougher bargaining by Medicare (and a public option to reduce the costs of the Affordable Care Act). The proposed tax hikes would fall mainly on higher incomes, although not just on the top 2%: super-brackets for very high incomes, elimination of deductions, taxation of capital income as ordinary income, and — the part that would be most controversial — raising the cap on payroll taxes.

None of this is economically outlandish. Marginal tax rates on high incomes would rise substantially — enough to make even liberal economists slightly uncomfortable — but the historical evidence suggests that the incentive effects wouldn’t be too severe. Overall taxes as a share of GDP aren’t given, but they would clearly remain well below European levels.

Oh yes, as you can tell, I am a New York Times subscriber; I love the weekend edition.

Evolution and the “homosexual agenda”:
No, I am not making this up:

The Creation Studies Institute is warning members that, like the Nazis, gay-rights activists are using public schools to indoctrinate students. While many Religious Right groups have alleged that safe-school and anti-bullying programs lead to “homosexual indoctrination,” the Creationist Studies Institute claims that the “gay agenda” has taken over schools because schools have “fully embraced Darwinian Evolution.”

“Indeed, the rampant teaching of evolution in our schools that is effectively undermining belief in God and absolute moral standards is not only creating an atmosphere of ‘tolerance’ for homosexuality, but for just about anything,” writes Tom DeRosa, the organization’s founder and executive director, who adds: “Of course, in a purely evolutionary world, homosexuals would naturally be bred out of existence.” DeRosa goes on to compare homosexuality with polygamy and pedophilia, and asks members to purchase Focus on the Family’s Secure Daughters, Confident Sons booklet:

Those who hold godless ideologies have long understood that the best way to transform societies and change the way people traditionally think is by indoctrinating children from the earliest stages of education. In the last century, this methodology was effectively employed by those who held the atheistic ideologies of Nazism in Germany and Communism in countries such as the Soviet Union, where the state assumed total control of the educational system—even to the extent of turning children against parents. Of course, both of these worldviews fully embraced Darwinian evolution as a way to justify their actions and nullify the beliefs of their largely Christian populations. While U.S. federal government does not have that kind of authority in our school system (not yet, anyway), is it any wonder that those who lack a biblical worldview in our country, including those with a gay agenda, have seized upon our primary schools as the main vehicle of transforming our nation more to their liking?

In America, the adoption of evolution in our schools has paved the way for the introduction of the gay agenda. Those pushing it understand that nothing will more thoroughly and quickly undermine the traditional biblical foundations of our country than the normalization of homosexuality among our nation’s school children, regardless of their parents’ beliefs. Currently, under the banner of “tolerance” or “equal rights,” states like Massachusetts, New York, California, Wisconsin and Minnesota are actively implementing a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) curriculum in their public schools. But those behind the effort to legitimize LGBT lifestyles won’t be content until this kind of curricula is taught in all of our nation’s schools. So what is being taught, you might ask, that should concern those of us in the creationist community?

Gee, teach science “advances the “gay agenda”"???

And yes, sadly, some of the biggest anti-gay bigots vote Democratic: re: proposition 8 in California which passed on the strength of the African American vote…70 percent of blacks voted for it!. Then there was Maine which repealed a gay marriage law and Maine both voted Democratic in 2008 and is almost all white.

Spandex butts
Lynn said that she wouldn’t read my post without a spandex butt shot so here you go:

Now I will admit that I did some cropping in the above photo since the original had a guy’s butt right in the center and I am not interested in that. But you can see it by clicking on the thumbnail.

But this person’s photo spread contains more than just bike shots; it also contains some political photos like this:

(click the thumbnail to see the larger version at the source)

Well done!
I attended our health care rally but our Representative is a right wing Republican (Aaron Schock, IL-18) and it was of little use.

22 April 2011

No workout this morning; I’ll REST and perhaps stretch sometime today.

Weather Thunderstorms…it was 31 F yesterday prior to that. But my perception of what April has been like has been off; statewide (but perhaps not in Peoria?) rain is actually down a bit….and temperatures are actually up and rain is slightly down. I suppose what has happened is that we’ve had a unusually warm day here or there which set me in the “all right! We are now in our warm phase” when in fact, it is still April.

Perceptions can be wrong.

News of the weird
We had that thunderstorm which is continuing. Perhaps Gov. Rick Perry’s god made a mistake? (there was a proclamation to pray for rain for Texas, and perhaps his deity missed?).

Killing cats…for costumes?

see more funny videos, and check out our Yo Dawg lols!

Politics
the national mood (perhaps, driven in part by gas prices?) is low; neither the President nor Congress is especially popular:

Amid rising gas prices, stubborn unemployment and a cacophonous debate in Washington over the federal government’s ability to meet its future obligations, the poll presents stark evidence that the slow, if unsteady, gains in public confidence earlier this year that a recovery was under way are now all but gone.

Capturing what appears to be an abrupt change in attitude, the survey shows that the number of Americans who think the economy is getting worse has jumped 13 percentage points in just one month. Though there have been encouraging signs of renewed growth since last fall, many economists are having second thoughts, warning that the pace of expansion might not be fast enough to create significant numbers of new jobs.

The dour public mood is dragging down ratings for both parties in Congress and for President Obama, the poll found.

After the first 100 days of divided government, and a new Republican leadership controlling the House of Representatives, 75 percent of respondents disapproved of the way Congress is handling its job.

Disapproval of Mr. Obama’s handling of the economy has never been broader — at 57 percent of Americans — a warning sign as he begins to set his sights on re-election in 2012. And a similar percentage disapprove of how Mr. Obama is handling the federal budget deficit, though more disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are.

Still, for all the talk from Congressional Republicans and Mr. Obama of cutting the deficit as a way to improve the economy, only 29 percent of respondents said it would create more jobs. Twenty-seven percent said it would have no effect on the employment outlook, and 29 percent said it would cost jobs. [...]

Most Americans think neither Mr. Obama nor the Congressional Republicans share their priorities for the country. Mr. Obama’s job approval remains below a majority, with 46 percent saying they approve of his performance in office, while 45 percent do not. And support for his handling of the military campaign in Libya has fallen since last month: 39 percent approve and 45 percent disapprove. In a CBS poll in March, 50 percent approved and 29 percent disapproved.

Republicans have their own challenges. More than half of poll respondents, 56 percent, said they did not have a favorable view of the party, as opposed to 37 percent who said they did. (The Democratic Party fared somewhat better: 49 percent did not have favorable views of it and 44 percent did.)

As the House speaker, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, becomes the face of his party in Congress, more disapprove of his job performance (41 percent) than approve of it (32 percent); 27 percent said they did not have an opinion of him.

Speaking of approval, note that the a President’s approval is often linked to stuff like gas prices, as Bonddad Blog points out.. Here is a graph showing the Bush approval ratings with gas prices and surf to the blog to see a comparison between Obama approval ratings and gas prices:

Prof. Pollkatz notoriously kept a record during the eight years of Bush’s presidency of a graph he called “Bush Approval: In Fact It’s a Gas”:

Barack Obama should be thanking his lucky stars that it is 2011 and not 2012. And he’d better hope that Oil’s choke hold on the economy loosens by then.

The President can also take solace that the Republicans aren’t exactly thrilled with their current field.

Science This is fascinating:

Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have for the first time observed the activity of a single gene in living cells. In an unprecedented study, published in the April 22 online edition of Science, Einstein scientists were able to follow, in real time, the process of gene transcription, which occurs when a gene converts its DNA information into molecules of messenger RNA (mRNA) that go on to make the protein coded by the gene.

21 April 2011: “serious” posts :-)

Science
People can be divided into blood type. Well, now, they can be subdivided into what kind of microbes they have in their gut:

Just as there are a few major blood types that divide up the world, so too, a study has found, there are just three types of gut-microbe populations. The result could help to pinpoint the causes of obesity and inflammatory bowel disease, and to personalize medicine.

“This is important. Say you want to compare ill people and healthy people; you better match them properly [by gut type],” Dusko Ehrlich told Nature at a human microbiome conference in Vancouver, Canada, in March. Ehrlich, a senior researcher on the paper published in Nature today1, is director of the Microbial Genetics Research Unit at the National Institute for Agricultural Research in Jouy-en-Josas, France, and part of a European consortium aiming to unpick links between gut microbes and disease.

The finding of just three types of gut-microbe population was an unexpected result that fell out of the team’s early analysis. The types aren’t related to age, gender, nationality or diet. “What causes it? We don’t know,” says Ehrlich. [...]

A person’s gut type might help to determine whether people can eat all they like and stay slim, whether they will experience more gut pain than others when sick and how well they can metabolize a certain drug.

It’s unclear whether a person’s gut type might change over time, either naturally or in response to something such as a steady diet of probiotic yoghurt.

Climate NASA: 2010 was tied for the warmest year on record:

NASA Research Finds 2010 Tied For Warmest Year On Record

WASHINGTON — Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.

The two years differed by less than 0.018 degrees Fahrenheit. The difference is smaller than the uncertainty in comparing the temperatures of recent years, putting them into a statistical tie. In the new analysis, the next warmest years are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2009, which are statistically tied for third warmest year. The GISS records begin in 1880.

The analysis found 2010 approximately 1.34 F warmer than the average global surface temperature from 1951 to 1980. To measure climate change, scientists look at long-term trends. The temperature trend, including data from 2010, shows the climate has warmed by approximately 0.36 F per decade since the late 1970s.

“If the warming trend continues, as is expected, if greenhouse gases continue to increase, the 2010 record will not stand for long,” said James Hansen, the director of GISS.

Technology:
Here is a Nature Video Channel rundown on the Fukushima nuclear accident:

Science and religion Jerry Coyne has a series on “scientists that are believers”. Color him unimpressed:

Here’s an interesting answer to the New Statesman‘s recent query about why public figures and scientists believe in god. This answer comes from Nick Brewin, a molecular biologist at Britain’s John Innis Centre (my emphasis):

Humankind has become Godlike, in the sense that it has acquired the power to store and manipulate information. Language, books, computers and DNA genomics provide just a few illustrations of the amazing range of technologies at our fingertips. Was this all merely chance? Or should we try to make sense of the signs and wonders that are embedded in a “revealed religion”?

Perhaps by returning to the “faith” position of children or disabled adults, scientists can extend their own appreciation of the value and purpose of individual human existence. Science and religion are mutually complementary.

In other words, to grasp the truth of religion, you need to have an infantile or poorly functioning brain.

Ouch.

Coyne has other posts in this series.

Education Hey, you know that school consolidation will save us tons of money right? Well one such study that “proved” that was a fraud. No, this isn’t a political issue in the sense that it was a Democratic governor (Michigan) that used this study…and school consolidation is a hot topic in Illinois. Sure, it might prove to be worth doing, but we shouldn’t be so blinded by what we want to see that we stoop to backing up our ideas with shoddy research.

Economics
Paul Krugman doesn’t suffer fools well:

Brad DeLong and Noah Smith have some fun with a bizarre post by Steve Landsburg — even more bizarrely endorsed by Alex Tabarrok — in which Landsburg asserts that you can’t tax a man if you can’t persuade him to reduce his consumption.

There are multiple things wrong with this claim, but the most fundamental, I think, is that it represents a remarkable misunderstanding of the reasons why we have taxes in the first place. They don’t primarily exist as a way to induce lower private consumption, although they may sometimes have that effect; they are there to ensure government solvency.

Consider first the taxes raised by, say, the state of New Jersey. Chris Christie doesn’t tax me because he wants to reduce my consumption; he taxes me because NJ needs money to pay its bills. [...]

And may I say that now is an especially peculiar time to think that taxes matter only if they reduce consumption. We have lots of excess capacity in the economy; the government can easily buy more goods and services without requiring that the private sector buy less. The only reason to raise taxes now, or promise future rises, is to address solvency concerns.

Discussions like this really disturb me; they indicate that there are a lot of people with Ph.D.s in economics who can throw around a lot of jargon, but when push comes to shove, have no coherent picture whatsoever of how the pieces fit together.

Budget deals and middle ground
Suppose I want to go out to dinner with a friend. I am open to most types of food, but she thinks that tire rubber and arsenic would make a great meal. Guess what: there really isn’t any middle ground here. The same can be said with the current budget negotiations: the Republicans want a Hoover like tax rate on the rich and a new Gilded age; the Democrats want to preserve the New Deal:

According to the most recent Washington Post-ABC poll, 78 percent of Americans oppose cutting spending on Medicare as a way to reduce the debt, and 72 percent support raising taxes on the rich – including 68 percent of Independents and 54 percent of Republicans.

In other words, the center of America isn’t near halfway between the two sides. It’s overwhelmingly on the side of the President and the Democrats.

I’d wager if Americans also knew two-thirds of Ryan’s budget cuts come from programs serving lower and moderate-income Americans and over 70 percent of the savings fund tax cuts for the rich – meaning it’s really just a giant transfer from the less advantaged to the super advantaged without much deficit reduction at all – far more would be against it.

And if people knew that the Ryan plan would channel hundreds of billions of their Medicare dollars into the pockets of private for-profit heath insurers, almost everyone would be against it.

The Republican plan shouldn’t be considered one side of a great debate. It shouldn’t be considered at all. Americans don’t want it.

Now, I’ll differ with Robert Reich here: I’d be careful about pegging your position on what Americans want. I’ll tell you what Americans want: they want great highways, a strong defense, secure Social Security and solvent Medicare….but they don’t want rationing and they don’t want to pay taxes. In short: Americans, on the whole, are idiots.

Effective government services means high taxes, and low taxes means almost no government services. That might be ok when you are young and healthy but what happens when you get to the age when it doesn’t make good business sense to insure you for anything resembling an affordable rate?

The Tea Party base

Enjoy:

21 April 2011: athletic navel staring

This post will contain no politics and no spandex butts.

Workout notes AM: kind of weird workout. I planned on running a bit given that I am racing and won’t be able to get in a longish run. But I forgot that I had a good (for me) run on Saturday and again on Tuesday; I wasn’t recovered enough to run well.

So when I started at a 10:30′ish pace or so I more or less gave up .6 miles into it and ran/walked a bit. I then walked/jogged to my usual 2 mile mark (at the bottom of a hill than ran up it reasonably hard. That felt good, so that is what I did for the remainder of the workout: I ran up a hill, jogged down, walked the flats and repeated; 8 uphills in all (I visited 4 different uphill segments, 2 times each). I then walked it in to get in about 10K.

Over lunch; lifting:
Squats: 10 x 135, 10 x 135, 10 x 155 (free; no Smith machine; decent depth)
barbell curls: 3 sets of 10 with the EZ bar plus 30 pounds (52 pounds?)
dumbbell curls: 1 set of 10 with 25
incline bench press: 10 x 115, 8 x 130, 5 x 135, 4 x 135
light rotator cuff
pull downs: 10 x 120, 10 x 140, 10 x 140 (shoulder friendly grip)
rows: 10 x 180 (wide grip), 10 x 200 (wide grip), 8 x 220 (narrow grip)
Sit ups (100)

Pings and Dings: shoulder was getting better and is now sore; also I had some whining from my left piriformis muscle.

What I am finding:

1. I can’t run more than three times a week at anything resembling a pace that feels like running. For example, check out my easy run paces (based on a 26 minute 5K, which…well, I was running 24 minutes in 2009 and I am slower now: (via the Team Oregon Pace Wizard)

Note: using 24:10 (my 2009 time), one gets 10:28-11:10 for the short easy run pace.
I can’t stand “running” at that pace; it just feels crappy! I’d much rather walk at 13-14 minutes a mile. So for the time being, I’ll have to discipline myself to 3 runs per week with faster walking on Sunday (long) and a combination of faster walking and social walking on the other days. I think that the hill workout is a keeper.

2. I am enjoying the longish walks (14-17 mile) again.

3. Weights: I have to mind my shoulder; it got a bit sore today. But these are going ok.

4. Yoga: I skipped today’s class: that was a mistake. I am finding that the flexibility that I get is essential, even if my teacher is ADD.

Events: I am running the Wild Life Trail 4 miles on Saturday and a university 5K the following Saturday and probably the Race for the Cure the next one. Hence I need to get in a longish midweek run (8 miles?) on Tuesday (after yoga class?)

Knowing myself, I’ll try a “not trained for it” 24 hour; I haven’t decided on the local trail 24 hour (20-21 May) or the FANS (first weekend in June). If I do the latter, I could do the 8 hour trail ultra instead of the 24. I’ll know more after this week’s longer walks.