11 May 2011 (AM)

Workout notes I walked with Lynn; we did about 1 hour together and I sped up to do 20 minutes on my own. Reason: the walk started off fine, but the slow pace eventually bothered my piriformis. So I needed to speed up to my usual, more comfortable pace. The discomfort went away. I note that I have a pressure point on the outside of my thigh that, when pressed, relieves the priformis sensation. So I wonder if I don’t have an IT band issue as well.

During the walk I saw rabbits and groundhogs and lots of geese; some had their fledglings with them.

Weights: yes, the shoulder is feeling much better. So I lifted:
incline bench: 10 x 115, 7 x 135, 7 x 135, 6 x 135
curls: dumbbell: 2 sets of 10 x 25 lbs, preacher: two sets of 10 x 66 (2 10′s on each size; EZ curl)
lat pull downs: 4 sets with cable handles (50 per arm x 10, then 3 sets of 60 per arm), 10 x 140 regular bar (shoulder friendly grip)
rows: medium grip: 10 x 200, 10 x 210, narrow grip: 10 x 230 (a bit of a struggle)
rotator cuff
hip hikes
stretches, back series.
sit ups: 35, 35, 30 (inclines 1, 2, 3, with 1 being the highest)
Then I did legs:
glute machine (2 sets of 90 lbs. per leg.

Hip abduction: 2 sets of 10 with 170

Hip adduction 2 sets of 10 with 185

Note: my left glute (the one with the trouble) is weaker than the right one. I’ll have to work on that.

Posts
Immigration reform (El Paso, TX)

Republicans: who is going to lose to President Obama in the 2012 election?
Robert Reich says it will be Mitt Romney:

With Trump, Gingrich, Bachmann, and possibly Palin now in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, “GOP” is starting to mean Goofy, Outrageous, and Peculiar. Mitt would pose the most serious challenge to a second Obama term.

I say this not because Mitt’s mind is the sharpest of the likely contenders (Gingrich is far more nimble intellectually). Nor because his record of public service is particularly impressive (Tim Pawlenty took his governorship seriously while Mitt as governor seemed more intent on burnishing his Republican credentials outside Massachusetts). Nor because Mitt is the most experienced at running a business (Donald Trump has managed a giant company while Mitt made his money buying and selling companies.) Nor, finally, because he’s especially charismatic or entertaining (Sarah Palin can work up audiences and Mike Huckabee is genuinely funny and folksy, while Mitt delivers a speech so laboriously he seems to be driving a large truck).

Mitt Romney’s great strength is he looks, sounds, and acts presidential.

Policy wonks like me want to believe the public pays most attention to candidates’ platforms and policy positions. Again and again we’re proven wrong. Unless a candidate is way out of the mainstream (Barry Goldwater and George McGovern come to mind), the public tends to vote for the person who makes them feel safest at a visceral level, who reassures them he’ll take best care of the country – not because of what he says but because of how he says it.

Mr. Reich seems to think less of Mr. Romney than I do. On the other hand, he thinks more of his chances than I do. Go figure.
I still think it would be a mistake to count Mr. Pawlenty out, though he might end up with a VP slot instead.

But then again, I don’t know how the Republican primary voters will go.

Nate Silver comes up with a regression model (based on polling and name recognition):

And shows how past nominations would have been predicted via this model:

He then goes on to say:

The current Republican race is, by some margin, the most wide-open in the modern era on the G.O.P. side, but there are a couple of comparable examples if you look at the Democrats. The model would have had Scoop Jackson as the nominal favorite to win the Democratic nomination in 1976 — but still would have given him only a 20 percent chance. Michael Dukakis in 1988 (26 percent chance of winning) and John Kerry in 2004 (29 percent) were in the same range as Mr. Romney is now, though for different reasons — their polling wasn’t quite as strong as Mr. Romney’s, but they were doing it with considerably lower name recognition.

That brings me to the second point. What makes the 2012 Republican race unusual is not that there isn’t much of a frontrunner at this point — that’s happened before — but rather that both the high-recognition and low-recognition names are underwhelming.

On the one hand, while Mr. Romney’s numbers and Mike Huckabee’s are considerably better than Sarah Palin’s or Newt Gingrich’s, they both fail to crack 20 percent in the polling average despite very wide name recognition. Both are also polling lower now than at the end of the 2008 campaign, in which Mr. Romney ultimately wound up with 22 percent of the Republican primary vote and Mr. Huckabee 21 percent.

There is much more there (other models, methodology, etc.).

Hasidic Newspaper Removes Hillary Clinton – The Colbert Report – 5/9/11 – Video Clip | Comedy Central

ColbertNation.com video – Brooklyn’s Hasidic newspaper removes Hillary Clinton from a photo because there’s nothing more sexually suggestive than a woman killing a terrorist.

Hasidic Newspaper Removes Hillary Clinton – The…, posted with vodpod

10 May 2011 Mystery….

Note this photo; I recommend clicking on the thumbnail to see the original.
Now note what happens if you view this from above (looking downward onto the screen). The pants don’t seem that transparent at all.
Now look at the photo from below (looking upward at the photo on the screen). The pants are barely there at all!
I wonder why this is?

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.

10 May 2011: GOP field

This is what Young Turks says.

Frankly: Huckabee would be a disaster for the Republicans; Americans don’t want “Pastor in Chief” (though that would be fine in the south)

9 May 2011 posts

Workout notes
Swimming: 1000 yd, PT (hip hikes, rotator cuff, stretching), walking (3 miles, flat)

The walk: from the Riverplex .75 to the end of the trail near Hooters, then .75 out (near the Marina). Foggy but pleasant weather; painless…but it came after swimming.

Swim: 10 x (25 right side, 25 left side, 25 free), 5 x (25 front, 25 free)

This isn’t fair
Daily Kos: there is a post lampooning Aaron Schock (Representative, Republican, IL-18; he has Ray LaHood’s old seat).
The skinny: he is young and has had quite a bit of success. For now, he mostly goes in lock-step with the money Republicans.
Here is what isn’t fair:

(relax ladies…he isn’t into you. )

A couple of years ago, I ran in a 4 mile race and Mr. Schock ran in it too:
48 AARON SCHOCK 29.26 M 27
77 OLLIE NANYES 32.06 M 49

Yeah, he beat me pretty badly. He also ran the Steamboat 15K in 2007:
20 148 169 Aaron Schock M 26 - 1:12:14 07:44

But…..in my lifetime, I’ve run much faster (1:07 for Steamboat at 39 years of age, 25:xx for 4 miles at 38 years or age).
But I’ve never, never, looked this good. Not even close.

Humor/Mathematics

I LOVE the Rat character.

But yeah, the lottery is basically a tax on the poor and ignorant….for the most part.

Political/Social
This is one reason I don’t trust “alternative media”. Check out this article:

7 Deceptions About Bin Laden’s Killing Pushed by the Obama Administration
As the week wore on, many of the details of the historic raid were “revised.”[...]

The Obama administration deftly shaped the media coverage of its prized kill by detailing a picture-perfect, morally unambiguous special forces operation, which culminated in the death of Osama bin Laden. Most of the details of that narrative have now unravelled, but the conventional wisdom that the tale established remains.

What is true in this article is that the seven points that the article remains are indeed inaccuracies from the original raid report. I have no quarrel there. But the rest is worthless. The “details of the narrative” that have “unraveled” were, in fact, corrected by government officials.
Raids such as these are messy affairs and the correct narrative must be pieced together from a mosaic of often contradictory reports. It isn’t a matter of the administration trying to hide anything; remember that they reported right away and issued corrections very quickly.
My guess is that we’ll know more in a month or two.

Religion
Notice the difference in these two photos?

Yes, this Orthodox (right wing) Jewish paper can’t stomach a woman being in the mix of high officials. (hat tip: Paul Krugman)

Update: Here is their excuse:

In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women, which in no way relegates them to a lower status. Publishing a newspaper is a big responsibility, and our policies are guided by a Rabbinical Board. Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize if this was seen as offensive.

That is pathetic. Simply pathetic. How can anyone take these clowns seriously?

I agree with Paul Krugman frequently; for example he lampoons the media for taking the Ryan plan “seriously”:

What the Post fact-checker seems to want, nonetheless, is for Democrats to talk about what Republicans are proposing only in big words and complicated sentences, so that the public doesn’t understand what they’re saying.

And the editorial page is still trying to claim that there’s something honest and important about the Ryan plan — even though it is completely clear to anyone paying attention that this plan offers nothing constructive in the way of solutions to the problem of rising health costs.

Here’s an analogy: think of Medicare as a footbridge that is deteriorating and will eventually become unsafe. You could propose structural repairs to fix its faults; Ryan doesn’t do that. Instead, he proposes knocking the bridge down and replacing it with trampolines, in the hope that pedestrians can bounce across the stream. And the Post declares that he deserves credit for pointing out that the bridge is falling down, and proposing a solution. Um, we knew that the bridge was in bad shape — and his solution is a fraud.

What’s going on here? Chait points out that denunciations of “scare tactics” only seem to happen when someone is trying to protect the social safety net, suggesting that what’s happening here is a reflection of the Beltway’s fundamental hostility to social insurance. I’d also add that VSPs invested heavily in the Ryan bubble, and are still not willing to face up to the extent to which they were flim-flammed.

In other words, it is fair to say that the Republicans are trying to destroy Medicare, even though they are proposeing a program that has the same name.

But I disagree with Krugman here…sort of:

Well, what I’ve been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite — self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing — is the claim that it’s mostly the public’s fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.

So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong.

The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes.

Here is where I agree with Dr. Krugman: yes, the public didn’t specifically want financial products like credit default swaps or tax cuts for the wealthy. But they did elect these @ssholes and they did it because they appealed to the fears lesser angles of the public…and the public bought it. Anyone who speaks honestly (“yes, taxes will have to go up, and no, MOST of our problems aren’t caused by poor “n-word”s on welfare) risks losing an election.
So yes, I do blame the public.

Frank Factor puts it rather bluntly here, in the first 30 seconds:

Energy
This is a long article, but it speaks about the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission; the upshot is that the regulators are too closely aligned with the industry that they are regulating.
But I see the real problem: nuclear power is highly technical; hence the regulators have to be nuclear experts. But how does one become an expert?
Yes, the Navy makes it work and the Navy safeguards are merciless. But that is a small, tight culture and….there is no profit motive. I wonder if this industry would work better if it were socialized?

9 May 2011 eary morning

Marathons: a rich person’s sport?

It’s 10:00 on a beautiful Sunday morning in California. To my left is some of the most spectacular coastline America has to offer. I’m walking along a road on Point Lobos that is ordinarily packed with cars on days like this, but today, thanks in part to my $135 entry fee, the road has been closed to traffic.

There’s only one problem: I should be running, not walking. Over the past year, I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on running gear and race entry fees. I’ve logged more than 1,600 miles training for this event, including nearly 1,000 miles in the past four months alone. I’ve lost over 35 pounds and steadily improved my speed and stamina. Why can’t I make my body do what I’ve trained it to do?

Dozens of runners pass me on either side, each of them experiencing varying degrees of misery similar to my own. Most of them, like me, have traveled hundreds or thousands of miles to get here, spending $500, $1,000 or more to participate in this event, the Big Sur International Marathon. Like Boston, New York, Paris, and Berlin, Big Sur is a “destination marathon,” a once-in-a-lifetime experience that is so beloved, many runners return year after year.

There are cheaper, local races (The Quad Cities Marathon is well organized and costs 70 dollars if you register early; the Chicago Ultra 50K charges 40 dollars for its early sign up option and offers food and a t-shirt and aid)

Of course the article I linked to is about the physical cost to doing long distance races as well. Sure, I get aches and pains, but so do most people my age. But yes, sometimes you can push your training beyond your body’s ability to “adapt and recover”. Yes, I’ve done that a few times.

No shirts A high school track coach is fired because, in part, some of his male runners took their shirts off.
Or is there more to this story? I suspect the latter…

8 May 2011 Midday

This is a panel debate on “is the Bible relevant”. It is in 4 15 minute segments.
The skinny: the priest says “we are good because of my god”. The rest of what the priest does is to attempt to compare the best of his tradition to the worst in other traditions. The scholar: “don’t take this stuff literally but the writers were geniuses”. Her one falling: she refuses to see that the Bible writers were ignorant (“ignorant” doesn’t mean “stupid”; they just didn’t know much of what we know). The rabbi: “it is one book and helpful because I want to find god (her god, of course). Dawkins: “how can you believe this?”

The Bible doesn’t deserve its special perch but it is a key work of literature for those in western civilization.

Politics
Sarah Palin in India. The interview did not go well.

I found some people who miss George W. Bush

Bin Laden and his followers.

8 May 2011 (am)

Workout notes
1000 yard swim: 8 x (25 front, 25 side, 25 side/front/side, 25 free) on the 3, 4 x (25 front, 25 free) on the 1:30
There were a couple of ladies in the lane next to me.

(click the thumbnail to see the larger version on flickr)

No not these, but it was enough to cheer me up.
The swim felt fine and I had to discipline myself to stop.
Next: weights. I was lifting with different benches and machines:
Incline bench press: 10 x 115, 6 x 135, 4 x 135, 8 x 125
curls: 3 sets of 10 x 25 lb. dumbbells, 1 set of 10 with 66 (EZ curl bar, preacher)
rows: different machine, 2 sets of 10 with: 90, 110, 1 set of 6 with 140 (different leverage)
rows (dumbbell): 1 set of 10 with each arm: 40 pounds. I have to look this one up.
pull downs: 3 sets of 10 with 125
sit ups: 4 sets of 25 (8, 7, 6, 5)
rotator cuff
piriformis stretches, hip hikes
some yoga stretches (Camel, etc.)

Then I went outside in the fog and walked 3 easy miles; the goose loop was no longer flooded. The walk was pain free, BUT the piriformis was well warmed up and the real challenge will come later today: how much will it ache?