31 August 2011 am (jock stuff)

Workout notes
5K walk on the track 13:56, 13:18, 13:05, ? (40:21 for 3 miles)
2200 yard swim: 500 of 25 3g, 25 fist, 50 free (on the 2:15)
500 of 25 front, 25 3g, 50 swim (on the 2:10, with fins)
10 x 100 on 2: 1:41, 1:40, 1:38, 1:37, 1:37, 1:37, 1:37, 1:37, 1:37, 1:38. Average: 1:37.9
200 cool down.

I am in a rut, sort of. I am swimming as much as my shoulder will allow (and it doesn’t ache) but not enough to improve.
Recently: see here and here.

1:42, 39, 39, 40, 39, 39, 38, 39, 39, 39.
8 Aug 1:38 1:38 1:38 1:37 1:37 1:37 1:37 1:37 1:36 1:37 (1:37.2 average)
1 Aug 1:38 1:38 1:38 1:38 1:37 1:36 1:36 1:36 1:37 1:36 (1:37.0 average)
27 July 1:40, 1:41, 1:40, 1:41, 1:40, 1:38, 1:37, 1:37, 1:38, 1:37 (1:38.9 average)
19 July 1:41, 1:38, 1:38, 1:38, 1:38, 1:37, 1:38, 1:36, 1:38, 1:36 (1:37.8 average)
This was a set back from the last time, but I did come in fatigued.

8 Aug 1:37.2 (+ .2 seconds)
1 Aug 1:37.0 (.4 seconds/week)
27 July 1:38.9 (+ 1.1 seconds!)
19 July 1:37.8 (.85 seconds/week)
5 July 1:39.5 (.9 seconds/week)
21 June: 1:41.3 (1.1 seconds/week)
15 June: 1:42.4 (1.1 seconds/week)
1 June: 1:44.6 (5.1 seconds/.5 week = 10.2 seconds per week)
29 May: 1:49.7

One Opinion on Dick Cheney’s New Book…and Illinois Politicians…

Snicker…

Julie Larson’s strip is one of my favorites.

Chubby Chasers – The Daily Show with Jon Stewart – 06/22/10 – Video Clip | Comedy Central

Josh Gad looks at the war the Obama administration is waging on what Americans are allowed to eat. Airdate – 06/22/10

Chubby Chasers – The Daily Show with Jon Stewar…, posted with vodpod

30 August 2011….

Workout notes
Yoga with Ms. Vickie. Then I did last week’s workout (without the long cool down walk):
Jog to the Gooseloop
9 laps of the Gooseloop (3.24 miles) in 31:08
Jog back (with a short recovery walk)
Total time: 55:09. It took 55:00 last week.
But….
Jog there: 11:28 this week, 11:12 last week
Laps: 31:08 this week, 31:45 last week
Jog back: 12:30 this week, 12:00 last week.
Reason: this week, I did the following: run 1 lap reasonably hard (5K’ish effort, almost), jog about .1, run another lap hard, jog .1, etc.
Points of reference: 3/4 mark, stone bench, playground, so my “harder” running totaled 6 laps, easier running: 3 laps. Hence I finished the 9 laps just a bit faster this time.
Day: couldn’t have been better; cool with a slight breeze.

I still got a ways to go, but in all seriousness, I ran this “off/on” workout at a faster pace than my two July 5K “races”. Things ARE getting better…and yes, I stopped prior to my knee starting to hurt. Imagine that!

Yoga note: Vickie put us into “almost Hero” and when I tried, the knee bent just a bit too far and I uttered an “Oh f*ck!” under my breath, so I thought. Vickie heard me and laughed. But even that is better; I can “almost” touch my heel to my butt on my right side. I am so close. I can “almost” get the “butt to the heels” in child pose…not quite. This is where I want to get to.

29 August 2011 PM

Workout notes
Weights then 2200 yards of swimming. The reason for the order: the university pool opens at 7 am and the gym at 6.

Weights
Rotator cuff, lunges
Rows: 3 sets of 10 x 200
pull-downs: 3 sets of 10 x 140
bench press: 10 x 135, 9 x 150, 6 x 150
military press (dumbbell) 2 sets of 12 x 40 seated, 6 x 45 standing.
incline press: 2 sets of 10 x 115
curls: 3 sets of 12 x 25 (dumbbell)
adduction: 3 sets of 10 x 175
abduction: 3 sets of 10 x 175
push-backs: 3 sets of 10 x 115
sit ups (4 sets of 25, various)

Then to swimming:
10 x (25 fist, 25 free)
10 x 25 drill, 25 free (fins)
5 x (100 free, 100 pull) just under 20
4 x 50 back (fins, pull) cool down.

Overall, this was a medium effort workout.

Posts

Dick Cheney’s book:

What a vile human being Dick Cheney is. I think that he is the perfect representative for the money wing of the Republican party.

Speaking of vile: yes a commissioned Naval Officer scammed 9-11 money:

A retired naval officer honored for his valor during the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon was found guilty Monday of defrauding the victims’ compensation fund by exaggerating his injuries.

After a three-week trial, a federal court jury found retired Cmdr. Charles Coughlin of Severna Park, Md., guilty of making a false claim and stealing public money after he got $331,034 from the fund set up by Congress after the 2001 attacks. The charges carry maximum penalties of up to 15 years in prison, but prosecutors say they expect to argue for three to four years based on his lack of a criminal record and the nature of the offense when U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth sentences Coughlin on Nov. 21.

Coughlin’s claim said he was in constant pain after being injured twice on Sept. 11, 2001 — first when objects fell on him when a hijacked plane struck the building and later when he went back inside to rescue others and hit his head. But prosecutors said Coughlin, now 52, continued playing lacrosse and ran a marathon after the attacks and lied when he claimed he needed surgery.

The case was not a slam dunk for prosecutors: It took three trials to convict him.

Yes, I know that people can recover after injuries. But remember that he claimed 9-11 injuries in, well, September 11 and then:

But prosecutor Susan Menzer said Coughlin ran another marathon in November 2001 and showed the jury a picture of him running on the lacrosse field gripping a stick, taken after the attacks. She also showed jurors copies of check carbons she said he gave to the fund, falsely claiming they were for services he could no longer perform around the house. For example, she said he claimed a check for his lacrosse league dues was actually for someone to lay mulch in his yard. Coughlin said they were not fraudulent but mistakes due to sloppy accounting by his wife.

And, you guessed it:

Coughlin is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard Business School who spent most of his 21-year naval career in the submarine service. He had a top-secret security clearance and commanded nuclear submarines.

Gee, this fits right in with my other Class of 1981 classmates, like the ones that sank another ship out of negligence and then attempted to cash in on it by writing a very self-serving book, or one that voted against Pell grants and unions, while being on disability…via a union.

And to think, I used to be proud of that place. Now I avoid mentioning it.

Politics Here are some handy graphs; they show that the Obama administration INCREASED private sector jobs (albeit not at a rate to make a dent in unemployment) and has lower (projected) deficits.

Rick Perry

Well, if by electing Rick Perry we will get rid of Texas and the rest of the south…well, count me in!!!!

Honestly, I admit that I am a bit disgusted by all of the religious BS that he and Ms. Bachmann are spewing, even if some of it is just pandering to the nut-job base. What is even funnier is that the right wing doesn’t appreciate the scrutiny that they are getting.

But well, they didn’t make Barack Obama’s religion an issue, right? Oh wait..they did. Hypocrites.

Speaking of religious pandering, Michelle Bachmann was quoted as saying that the earthquake and the hurricane were a sign from her sky-daddy for Washington to, well, do what she thinks should be done. But she says that she was only kidding.

Don’t fall over, but after seeing the clip for myself, she WAS only kidding. So why did I believe that she said something that stupid? Well, because she DOES say things that stupid.

Republicans: anti science is good!

Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got peoples’ attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

That’s a remarkable statement — or maybe the right adjective is “vile.”

The second part of Mr. Perry’s statement is, as it happens, just false: the scientific consensus about man-made global warming — which includes 97 percent to 98 percent of researchers in the field, according to the National Academy of Sciences — is getting stronger, not weaker, as the evidence for climate change just keeps mounting.

In fact, if you follow climate science at all you know that the main development over the past few years has been growing concern that projections of future climate are underestimating the likely amount of warming. Warnings that we may face civilization-threatening temperature change by the end of the century, once considered outlandish, are now coming out of mainstream research groups.

But never mind that, Mr. Perry suggests; those scientists are just in it for the money, “manipulating data” to create a fake threat. In his book “Fed Up,” he dismissed climate science as a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart.”

I could point out that Mr. Perry is buying into a truly crazy conspiracy theory, [...]

So it’s now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party’s base wants him to believe.

And the deepening anti-intellectualism of the political right, both within and beyond the G.O.P., extends far beyond the issue of climate change.

Lately, for example, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has gone beyond its long-term preference for the economic ideas of “charlatans and cranks” — as one of former President George W. Bush’s chief economic advisers famously put it — to a general denigration of hard thinking about matters economic. Pay no attention to “fancy theories” that conflict with “common sense,” the Journal tells us. Because why should anyone imagine that you need more than gut feelings to analyze things like financial crises and recessions?

Now, we don’t know who will win next year’s presidential election. But the odds are that one of these years the world’s greatest nation will find itself ruled by a party that is aggressively anti-science, indeed anti-knowledge. And, in a time of severe challenges — environmental, economic, and more — that’s a terrifying prospect.

Yep.

msnbc video: Dick Cheney rewrites history in new book

msnbc video: Dick Cheney rewrites history in ne…, posted with vodpod

28 August 2011 PM

Workout notes
Cool morning (61 F, 87 percent humidity) and so I did an 8.25 run/walk (to the end of Heading and back):

43:12 out, 43:29 back. I did 4 run, 1 walk and averaged about 10:30 mpm. The right knee (behind the knee) started to twinge at 4, ache (slightly) at 6 and hurt (mild) at 7.5. You might say I pushed things about .5 miles too far, which, for me, isn’t THAT bad. Still, that means I’ll stay at 8 miles until I am strong to do it with minimal knee pain; I have some strengthening to do.

Then I went to Wild Life Prairie Park with Lynn; we hiked for about 4 miles. I felt is some there too, but that was due to the previous run.

Other posts
I am not a big fan of the National Review. I have to give them credit though. David Limbaugh (Rush’s brother) tweeted this photo:

Gee, Mr. Perry looks much more like a “man” than Mr. Obama here. Gee, why might that be? National Review commented:

(For what it’s worth, the Obama picture seems to come from a roll of film shot by a friend at Occidental college, which Obama left, in favor of Columbia, years before he was 22.)

But you get the idea: Mr. Perry, All America USAF jet flying REAL AMERICAN hero vs. Mr. Obama who is “one of them”….of course they might over look Mr. Perry’s coddling of treason…and hey, he ended up flying C-130s (a 4 engined turbo-prop airplane)

Hey, it is an honorable job…but not quite as “sexy” as a smaller jet fighter, huh?

Fareed Zakaria is right; this election is going to get very nasty.

Other stuff
Atheism: an atheist tried the 12-step program Alcoholics Anonymous. Though AA’s only requirement is a “desire to stop drinking”, she was confronted by the usual:

But I don’t believe in God.

And this can be something of a sticking point when you’re sitting in a meeting room, desperate for almost any route out of hell, and someone cites “the blood of Jesus” as the only way to go. Or when you realize that six of AA’s 12 steps explicitly refer to God, a Higher Power, or He.

But this shouldn’t be a deal breaker. I’m going to make a lot of old-style AA’s cranky with this, but it’s perfectly possible to sober up, sans belief in God.

…

People told me their stories — of God, the divine, the power of love, an intelligent creator. Something that made all this. Some origin, some end.

I told them I believed in math. Chaos, I said. Infinity. That sort of thing.

They looked at me in despair.

And not infrequently, they said, “So you think you’re the biggest, most important thing in the universe?”

On the contrary. I think I am among the smallest. Cosmically speaking, I barely exist.

This attitude is common; many people think “oh, so you think that there is nothing bigger than YOU” when you mention that you are an atheist. Uh, no. I just don’t see the need to just make stuff up.

Yes, ALL of humanity put together, on the whole, knows more than I do. But that has nothing to do with believing in the existence of some Jewish Zombie who died for me and that is willing to let me eat his flesh.

And, on the whole, I see it this way:

This universe isn’t all about me!!!!!!!

Oddball stuff
Is being ugly (whatever that means) on its way to being a protected class?

A more radical solution may be needed: why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals?

We actually already do offer such protections in a few places, including in some jurisdictions in California, and in the District of Columbia, where discriminatory treatment based on looks in hiring, promotions, housing and other areas is prohibited. Ugliness could be protected generally in the United States by small extensions of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Ugly people could be allowed to seek help from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other agencies in overcoming the effects of discrimination. We could even have affirmative-action programs for the ugly.

The mechanics of legislating this kind of protection are not as difficult as you might think. You might argue that people can’t be classified by their looks — that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That aphorism is correct in one sense: if asked who is the most beautiful person in a group of beautiful people, you and I might well have different answers. But when it comes to differentiating classes of attractiveness, we all view beauty similarly: someone whom you consider good-looking will be viewed similarly by most others; someone you consider ugly will be viewed as ugly by most others. In one study, more than half of a group of people were assessed identically by each of two observers using a five-point scale; and very few assessments differed by more than one point.

For purposes of administering a law, we surely could agree on who is truly ugly, perhaps the worst-looking 1 or 2 percent of the population. The difficulties in classification are little greater than those faced in deciding who qualifies for protection on grounds of disabilities that limit the activities of daily life, as shown by conflicting decisions in numerous legal cases involving obesity.

There are other possible objections. “Ugliness” is not a personal trait that many people choose to embrace; those whom we classify as protected might not be willing to admit that they are ugly. But with the chance of obtaining extra pay and promotions amounting to $230,000 in lost lifetime earnings, there’s a large enough incentive to do so. Bringing anti-discrimination lawsuits is also costly, and few potential plaintiffs could afford to do so. But many attorneys would be willing to organize classes of plaintiffs to overcome these costs, just as they now do in racial-discrimination and other lawsuits. [...]

Hmmm….:)

Science
Believe it or not, cosmic radiation from “exploding stars” can affect earth’s weather:

A team at the Danish National Space Center has discovered how cosmic rays from exploding stars can help to make clouds in the atmosphere. The results support the theory that cosmic rays influence Earth’s climate.

An essential role for remote stars in everyday weather on Earth has been revealed by an experiment at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.

It is already well-established that when cosmic rays, which are high-speed atomic particles originating in exploded stars far away in the Milky Way, penetrate Earth’s atmosphere they produce substantial amounts of ions and release free electrons.

Now, results from the Danish experiment show that the released electrons significantly promote the formation of building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei on which water vapour condenses to make clouds.

Hence, a causal mechanism by which cosmic rays can facilitate the production of clouds in Earth’s atmosphere has been experimentally identified for the first time.

Read more at the article; the experiment is described. It is fascinating.

Haplogroup K????

What the heck?

Al Qeada number 2 man killed and other topics

Remember this BS from 2008?

A thinly-sourced Washington Post article suggests that al-Qaeda wants John McCain in the White House. This prompted an outburst of rage from the McCain campaign which pointed out some obvious holes in the story, not least the fact that much of it is based on a single web posting on the extremist site al-Hesbah stating: “Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election.”

As former CIA director and current McCain adviser James Woolsey put it in a conference call: “If one takes one individual Islamist blogger from one terrorist Islamist blog, who has come up with this statement that it would be good to have McCain in the White House, I think one has to consider the motives.

“This individual knows that the endorsement of people like him is a kiss of death, figuratively and literally, so it seems to me it’s pretty clear that by making this statement that he wants, that it would be a good thing for McCain to be President, he is clearly trying to damage John McCain, not speaking from his heart.”

But then another adviser Randy Scheunemann argued – by implication – that Islamists really want Barack Obama as president, first quoting a Hamas spokesman, Ahmed Yousef, as saying: ‘I do believe Mr. Biden is a great man and we do count on him as also a good partner with Mr. Obama to put the right policy regarding how to handle problems in the region. It is good for America to have the new administration with someone like Mr. Obama and his vision for change.”

Emphasis mine.

Well, things aren’t working out so well for Al Qeada, are they?

Aug 27, 1:27 PM (ET)

By MATT APUZZO

WASHINGTON (AP) – Al-Qaida’s second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, has been killed in Pakistan, delivering another big blow to a terrorist group that the U.S. believes to be on the verge of defeat, a senior Obama administration official said Saturday.

The Libyan national who was the network’s former operational leader rose to al-Qaida’s No. 2 spot after the U.S. killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden during a raid on his Pakistan compound in May.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last month that al-Qaida’s defeat was within reach if the U.S. could mount a string of successful attacks on the group’s weakened leadership.

“Now is the moment, following what happened with bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them,” Panetta said, “because I do believe that if we continue this effort we can really cripple al-Qaida as a major threat.”

Then there is the “leading from behind” in Libya.
Funny how the Republicans still haven’t learned that Rambo is only a movie.

Christine O’Donnell

Things didn’t go so hot with her book signing:

Not even tea party favorite Christine O’Donnell could draw a large crowd for her book signing Wednesday in staunchly Republican Naples during August, a month when there are few tourists and many locals are on vacation.

Still, O’Donnell took the turnout of five people — members of the media outnumbered customers — at Barnes & Noble in stride.

Well, let’s revisit one of her “greatest hits”

This is what she was confused by:

Geneticist Fred Gage injected embryonic human cells into two-week-old fetal mice as they developed in the womb. When the mice matured, some human stem cells survived and became functional components of the mice’s brains and nervous systems.

Less than one-tenth of one percent of the test mice’s brain cells are human.

Cystic Fibrosis Run

I attempted to run the Cystic Fibrosis 5K today. Problem: they held it at 10 am; by then it was 80 F, 65 percent humidity. I died out there. Reason: I started with my department chair and though we went out easily, when he picked up the pace at .5 miles into it, I didn’t maintain; instead I picked it up just a bit (though not enough to stay with him). That was a mistake; my first mile (8:53) was fine for a cool day but not for today. I was 13:45 at the half way, but then had to walk. I struggled to 18:21 at mile 2 and 28:01 at mile 3. It was “run”, then walk a few steps. I did pick it up just a bit toward the finish line to finish at 28:48.

The heat just killed me. Total: 6 miles for the day.

One bit of good news:

These show me today, and then in July 9 of this year. I think that I see improvement…I appear to be a tad lighter though my shorts are pulled down in today’s photos.