8 August 2011 (Monday….)

Workout notes Over lunch; first a swim: usual 1000 yard warm up, then 10 x 100 on the 2:
1:38, 38, 38, 37, 37, 37, 37, 37, 36, 37, followed by 200 of backstroke to cool down. The right shoulder: slightly shoulder; actually both are.

Next, I walked 4.1 miles (to Bradley Park from Markin; the entrance is right at 1 mile; then I went down, past the dog park, up Cornstalk hill and then to the Nebraska intersection) in 1:00:27. It wasn’t much of an effort.

Back to swimming:

From a week ago
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

Ah, all of the “easy” progress has been made; it will be more difficult from here on out.

Posts

Economics: the supply siders are full of crap.

President Obama
Some liberals are passing around an article that claims that if the President just said the right things, all would be well (or better).

Fortunately such nonsense is being refuted.
Jonathan Chait (New Republic)

There are some strong criticisms to be made of the Obama administration from the left, especially concerning Obama’s passive response to the debt ceiling hostage crisis, and his frightening willingness to give away the store to John Boehner. I’ve made many of these criticisms myself. But Drew Westen’s lengthy, attention-grabbing Sunday New York Times op-ed is not a strong criticism. It’s a parody of liberal fantasizing.

Westen is a figure, like George Lakoff, who arose during the darkest moments of the Bush years to sell liberals on an irresistible delusion. The delusion rests on the assumption that the timidity of their leaders is the only thing preventing their side from enjoying total victory. Conservatives, obviously, believe this as much or more than liberals. But the liberal fantasy has its own specific character. It is unusually fixated on the power of words. Before Westen and Lakoff, Aaron Sorkin has indulged the fantasy of a Democratic president who would simply advocate for unvarnished liberalism (defend the rights of flag burners, confiscate all the guns) and sweep along the public with the force of his conviction.

[...]

To find a case of a president successfully employing his desired combination of “storytelling” and ideological purity, Westen reaches back to the example of Franklin Roosevelt

And, as usual, things aren’t quite the way that we remember them:

Gallup Poll [December, 1935]

Do you think it necessary at this time to balance the budget and start reducing the national debt?

70% Yes

30 No

In other words, President Roosevelt didn’t convince the public even then.

Ezra Klein also chimes in:

I’d only add a general point: Be very skeptical of any critique that goes something like, “If only President X had given the speech I think he should have given, everything would be different.” For one thing, as Andrew Sprung points out, it’s frequently true that President X has already given the speech you wanted him to give, and you just weren’t listening. But more broadly, political pundits, speechwriters, political journalists and others who write about politics professionally like to criticize political rhetoric because they are specialists in political rhetoric. Rhetoric is what they do for a living. And so they have a natural tendency to talk about what they know and overestimate the power of what they do.

It’s a lot harder to confidently criticize economic policy, or legislative strategy, or foreign-policy decision making, much less to confidently analyze realistic counterfactuals in those areas. Doing so requires all sorts of specialized knowledge, and inferences about information most of us don’t have access to, and it’s not easy to work all that into op-ed form. But whereas there’s very little actual evidence that slight differences in political rhetoric actually matter, there’s a lot of evidence that the economy, foreign policy and legislative strategy matter. If Obama’s rhetoric had been 20 percent worse but his housing policy had been 20 percent better, he’d be in better shape today.

Religion: elite academics talk about religion and why they see no need for a deity:

(hat tip: Jerry Coyne)

My favorites are in bold; click on the above link to see Dr. Coyne’s.

1. Lawrence Krauss, World-Renowned Physicist
2. Robert Coleman Richardson, Nobel Laureate in Physics
3. Richard Feynman, World-Renowned Physicist, Nobel Laureate in Physics
4. Simon Blackburn, Cambridge Professor of Philosophy
5. Colin Blakemore, World-Renowned Oxford Professor of Neuroscience
6. Steven Pinker, World-Renowned Harvard Professor of Psychology
7. Alan Guth, World-Renowned MIT Professor of Physics
8. Noam Chomsky, World-Renowned MIT Professor of Linguistics
9. Nicolaas Bloembergen, Nobel Laureate in Physics
10. Peter Atkins, World-Renowned Oxford Professor of Chemistry
11. Oliver Sacks, World-Renowned Neurologist, Columbia University
12. Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal
13. Sir John Gurdon, Pioneering Developmental Biologist, Cambridge
14. Sir Bertrand Russell, World-Renowned Philosopher, Nobel Laureate
15. Stephen Hawking, World-Renowned Cambridge Theoretical Physicist
16. Riccardo Giacconi, Nobel Laureate in Physics
17. Ned Block, NYU Professor of Philosophy
18. Gerard ‘t Hooft, Nobel Laureate in Physics
19. Marcus du Sautoy, Oxford Professor of Mathematics
20. James Watson, Co-discoverer of DNA, Nobel Laureate
21. Colin McGinn, Professor of Philosophy, Miami University
22. Sir Patrick Bateson, Cambridge Professor of Ethology
23. Sir David Attenborough, World-Renowned Broadcaster and Naturalist
24. Martinus Veltman, Nobel Laureate in Physics
25. Pascal Boyer, Professor of Anthropology
26. Partha Dasgupta, Cambridge Professor of Economics
27. AC Grayling, Birkbeck Professor of Philosophy
28. Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate in Physics
29. John Searle, Berkeley Professor of Philosophy
30. Brian Cox, Particle Physicist (Large Hadron Collider, CERN)
31. Herbert Kroemer, Nobel Laureate in Physics
32. Rebecca Goldstein, Professor of Philosophy
33. Michael Tooley, Professor of Philosophy, Colorado
34. Sir Harold Kroto, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
35. Leonard Susskind, Stanford Professor of Theoretical Physics
36. Quentin Skinner, Professor of History (Cambridge)
37. Theodor W. Hänsch, Nobel Laureate in Physics
38. Mark Balaguer, CSU Professor of Philosophy
39. Richard Ernst, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
40. Alan Macfarlane, Cambridge Professor of Anthropology
41. Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson, Princeton Research Scientist
42. Douglas Osheroff, Nobel Laureate in Physics
43. Hubert Dreyfus, Berkeley Professor of Philosophy
44. Lord Colin Renfrew, World-Renowned Archaeologist, Cambridge
45. Carl Sagan, World-Renowned Astronomer
46. Peter Singer, World-Renowned Bioethicist, Princeton
47. Rudolph Marcus, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
48. Robert Foley, Cambridge Professor of Human Evolution
49. Daniel Dennett, Tufts Professor of Philosophy
50. Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in Physics
51. Frank Wilczek, Nobel Laureate in Physics, MIT
52. VS Ramachandran, World-Renowned Neuroscientist, UC San Diego
53. Bruce C. Murray, Caltech Professor Emeritus of Planetary Science
54. Sir Raymond Firth, World-Renowned Anthropologist, LSE
55. Alva Noë, Berkeley Professor of Philosophy
56. Alan Dundes, World Expert in Folklore, Berkeley
57. Massimo Pigliucci, Professor of Philosophy, CUNY
58. Bede Rundle, Oxford Professor of Philosophy
59. Sir Richard Friend, Cambridge Professor of Physics
60. George Lakoff, Berkeley Professor of Linguistics
61. Sir John Sulston, Nobel Laureate in Physiology/Medicine
62. Shelley Kagan, Yale Professor of Philosophy
63. Roy J. Glauber, Nobel Laureate in Physics
64. Lewis Wolpert, Emeritus Professor of Biology, UCL
65. Mahzarin Banaji, Harvard Professor of Social Ethics
66. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor of Practical Ethics, Duke University
67. Richard Dawkins, Oxford Evolutionary Biologist
68. Bruce Hood, Professor of Experimental Psychology, Bristol
69. Marvin Minsky, Artificial Intelligence Research Pioneer, MIT
70. Herman Philipse, Professor of Philosophy, Utrecht University
71. Michio Kaku, CUNY Professor of Theoretical Physics
72. Dame Caroline Humphrey, Cambridge Professor of Anthropology
73. Max Tegmark, World-Renowned Cosmologist, MIT
74. David Parkin, Oxford Professor of Anthropology
75. Robert Price, Professor of Theology and Biblical Criticism
76. Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Psychology, Virginia
77. Max Perutz, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
78. Rodolfo Llinas, Professor of Neuroscience, New York
79. Dan McKenzie, World-Renowned Geophysicist, Cambridge
80. Patricia Churchland, Professor of Philosophy, UC San Diego
81. Sean Carroll, Caltech Theoretical Cosmologist
82. Alexander Vilenkin, World-Renowned Theoretical Physicist
83. PZ Myers, Professor of Biology, Minnesota
84. Haroon Ahmed, Prominent Cambridge Scientist (Microelectronics)
85. David Sloan Wilson, Professor of Biology and Anthropology, SUNY
86. Bart Ehrman, Professor of Religious Studies, UNC
87. Seth Lloyd, Pioneer of Quantum Computing, MIT
88. Dan Brown, Fellow in Organic Chemistry, Cambridge
89. Victor Stenger, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Hawaii
90. Simon Schaffer, Cambridge Professor of the History of Science
91. Saul Perlmutter World-Renowned Astrophysicist, Berkeley
92. Lee Silver, Princeton Professor of Molecular Biology
93. Barry Supple, Emeritus Professor of Economic History, Cambridge
94. Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Professor of Law
95. John Raymond Smythies, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatric Research
96. Chris Hann, Max Planck Institute For Social Anthropology
97. David Gross, Nobel Laureate in Physics
98. Ronald de Sousa, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Toronto
99. Robert Hinde, Emeritus Professor of Zoology, Cambridge
100. Carolyn Porco, NASA Planetary Scientist

I broke it, now YOU fix it.

Obama Judicial Nominations: record diversity

(cross posted on Daily Kos, where I’ll either get flamed or be ignored outright. )

I’ve read that President Obama is really a conservative, especially when economic issues are being discussed.

But there is one issue in which President Obama is clearly liberal: diversity in judicial nominations. I’ll quote from a New York Times article below the fold.

(note: I said “diversity” because I did not research the judicial philosophy of the nominees)

I read the following in this Sunday’s New York Times:

President Obama made history when he nominated Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. He did it again with his second nominee, Elena Kagan, raising the number of women on the nation’s highest court to three.

And Mr. Obama has also added judicial diversity further down the federal ladder. His administration has placed a higher percentage of ethnic minorities among his nominees into federal judgeships than any other president.

So far, Mr. Obama has had 97 of his judicial nominees confirmed — compared with 322 for President George W. Bush and 372 for President Bill Clinton, who each served two terms. So far in Mr. Obama’s presidency, nearly half of the confirmed nominees are women, compared with 23 percent and 29 percent in the Bush and Clinton years.

Here are the numbers:

Women
Barack Obama: 46 of 97
confirmed judges; 47 percent
George W. Bush: 73 of 322
confirmed judges; 23 percent
Bill Clinton: 109 of 372
confirmed judges; 29 percent

African-Americans
Obama: 20 of 97; 21 percent
Bush: 23 of 322; 7 percent
Clinton: 61 of 372; 16 percent

Hispanics
Obama: 11 of 97; 11 percent
Bush: 29 of 322; 9 percent
Clinton: 25 of 372; 7 percent

Asian-Americans
Obama: 7 of 97; 7 percent
Bush: 4 of 322; 1 percent
Clinton: 5 of 372; 1 percent

I can recommend reading the rest of the article; there is much more there. There has been Republican obstructionism, of course. And there are the usual ridiculous whines from some conservatives that “diversity” means “lowering of quality”.

Anyway, I doubt that we’d be seeing this from a Republican president; President Obama richly deserves some credit.