10 May 2011 am

Workout notes
Yoga; at first I lined up in the back. I teased Lynn that I would have a better view of her butt from the back row…but then I relented and lined up front.
Then I walked 5 miles (almost on the button); time was 1:08 (slow first mile); I focused on posture and feet. I felt a few tingles in the calf; that was about it. But this was a very flat course.

Then I swam 1000 yards: 5 x 100 (25 front, 25 side, 25 side, 25 free) on the 3:15..though I did a few on the 3. Then I did some drill/swim (25 drill/25 swim) and ended up with some 25 3g, 25 swim. The shoulder felt fine though it was oh-so-slightly sore this morning. Then again, we do have rain coming in.

Posts
Paul Krugman on why saying “we are going to spend at percent of GDP that we had in 2007″ means “drastic cuts”:

The key thing to remember, always, is what the federal government does: it is basically an insurance company for old people that also has an army. Look at a normal year, like 2007 (things are distorted right now by the cost of safety net programs.) What you’ll find is that about half of total spending was on programs for seniors: Social Security, Medicare, much of Medicaid, and other retirement and disability programs. Half the rest is defense.

So why can’t this insurance company with an army make do with the same level of spending it had in 2007?

First and most obviously, the baby boomers are retiring. Look at the old-age dependency ratio. For the past 20 years we’ve had about 21 Americans over 65 for every 100 Americans between 20 and 64. But by 2020 that number will rise to 27.5; by 2030 it will rise to 35. So half the budget now is devoted to programs that will have to serve a lot more people fairly soon.

Add to this the rising cost of health care: even if we take strong steps to control costs (death panels!), costs will surely rise faster than GDP for some time to come.

And one more thing: yes, the deficits we’ve been running since the financial crisis — deficits we had to run to avoid another Great Depression — will mean higher interest costs, too.

This is why the idea of capping spending at historical levels, while it may sound reasonable if you don’t know anything about these facts [...]

It is always helpful to read some Krugman so as to see what the Republicans are up to.

Religion and Education
Mano Singham has a nice essay on the subject. Where it is true that the most educated among us are the least religious (e. g., the members of the National Academy of Science), religiosity does NOT go down with educational level…not from high school to college anyway. In fact:

Even if one infers a direct link between education and disbelief, the relationship need not be monotonic in that people with lower levels of education are necessarily greater believers. I wrote about four years ago that “a longitudinal study of 10,000 adolescents actually found the opposite effect, that those who did not go on to college had greater declines in attending services, in the importance or religion, and in disaffiliation from religion” and that there is some evidence that religious belief can actually increase when people go to college. Why? Because they learn how to better find rationalizations for the beliefs they were indoctrinated with as children. Thus up to a point, an increased amount of formal education can actually lead to greater belief because it suppresses people’s natural curiosity and makes them more accepting of the verdicts of ‘authorities’ (such as ‘experts’ and the authors of textbooks), while not being able to distinguish between reliable authorities who use good evidence and closely reasoned arguments to arrive at judgments, and unreliable authorities (like priests and theologians) who simply assert dogma as if they were deep truths, without providing any evidence to back them up.

Emphasis mine. Besides, one can make business contacts at church and perhaps find some like minded people.

I admit that I mostly enjoyed my association with the UU church and I stopped going mostly because the 1030 start time to the services took away from my time to do my long training walks. But in all honesty, though I deeply appreciate and share the liberal social views that the UUs tend to have (pro gay rights, pro women’s rights, pro-social justice), I cannot say that I respect an idea just because it is labeled a “religious idea”. It is true that UUs tend to lampoon traditional Christianity, but they also accept all sorts of other nonsense.