10 August 2011 pm

Workout notes Cornstalk course “run” (4.2 miles) in 44:04 (felt better toward the end; I was stiff and sluggish for the first 38 minutes or so!). The weather was cool.

Then: weights at the University gym:
rotator cuff and four sets of lunges
Bench press: 2 sets of 10 x 135; note I needed a 10 x 65 warm up.
Incline press: 2 sets of 6 x 130
Military press (standing, dumbbells); 3 sets of 12 x 40
Assisted pull ups; 2 sets of 6 (with 25 lb.)
Rows (Hammer); 3 sets of 10 x 200
Pull downs: 3 sets of 12 x 140
Curls (dumbbell) 6 x 30, 8 x 30, 4 x 25, 12 x 25. I was a bit off on my form with the 30′s.
Hip adduction: 3 sets of 10 x 170
Hip abduction: 3 sets of 10 x 170
Butt push-backs: 3 sets of 10 x 110
Sit ups: 4 x 25

Posts
Nah.

click to see at the source.

More political humor (?)

WASHINGTON—Calling a GOP victory in the 2012 presidential election antithetical to the party platform, top Republicans revealed a new long-term political strategy Tuesday: reelecting Barack Obama and making his life even more of a living hell than it already is.

“For three years, the Republican Party has coalesced around the single goal of making President Obama’s every waking moment sheer and utter torture,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters. “But we can’t continue to do that if he’s not in office.”

“If we are going to make the president a haggard shell of a human being by the time he leaves the White House, we need four more years of never compromising, four more years of miring every piece of legislation in unnecessary procedural muck, four more years of pretending we want to work with the president and then walking away from the table at the last second,” McConnell added. “Four more years! Four more years! Obama 2012!”

(yes, it is from The Onion)

Unfortunately, political factors APPEAR to be trumping policy factors:

Americans are deeply confused about why the economy is so bad – and their President isn’t telling them. In fact, the White House apparently has decided to join with Republicans and blame it on the long-term budget deficit.

Before I turn to the President, though, let’s be clear: The lousy economy is due to insufficient demand. Consumers – who are 70 percent of the economy — can’t and won’t buy because they’re running out of cash. They can’t borrow against homes that are worth a third less than they were five years ago, and most consumers are bad credit risks anyway because they’re losing their jobs and their wages are dropping. They also have to start saving for the kids’ college or for retirement, which will cut their spending even more.

Without enough consumers, businesses won’t hire enough people and pay them enough to reverse the vicious cycle. So we’re dead in the water. Even the stock market has caught on to the truth.[...]

Which gets me to the President. Even though the President’s two former top economic advisors (Larry Summers and Christy Roemer) have called for a major fiscal boost to the economy, the President has remained mum. Why?

I’m told White House political operatives are against a bold jobs plan. They believe the only jobs plan that could get through Congress would be so watered down as to have almost no impact by Election Day. They also worry the public wouldn’t understand how more government spending in the near term can be consistent with long-term deficit reduction. And they fear Republicans would use any such initiative to further bash Obama as a big spender.

So rather than fight for a bold jobs plan, the White House has apparently decided it’s politically wiser to continue fighting about the deficit. The idea is to keep the public focused on the deficit drama – to convince them their current economic woes have something to do with it, decry Washington’s paralysis over fixing it, and then claim victory over whatever outcome emerges from the process recently negotiated to fix it. They hope all this will distract the public’s attention from the President’s failure to do anything about continuing high unemployment and economic anemia. [...]

There’s still time for political operatives in the White House – and the person they work for – to change their minds. If economic stresses increase, Americans may insist on government doing more. A CNN poll released Monday found 60% believe the nation remains in an economic downturn and conditions are worsening. Only 36% believed that in April.

But for now the President is being badly advised. The magnitude of the current jobs and growth crisis demands a boldness and urgency that’s utterly lacking. As the President continues to wallow in the quagmire of long-term debt reduction, Congress is on summer recess and the rest of Washington is asleep.

The President should present a bold plan, summon lawmakers back to Washington to pass it, and, if they don’t, vow to fight for it right up through Election Day.

Surf to Robert Reich’s article to read more; I’ve only reproduced a bit. I agree with him here.

9 August 2011 pm

Swimming: this is interesting:

Sunday’s Nautica New York City Triathlon resulted in two deaths, both from cardiac events that arose during the event’s initial swimming leg. A 64-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman were pulled from the Hudson River before they could complete the 1.5-kilometer swim from a wharf near Manhattan’s 96th Street down to the West 79th Street Boat Basin. Both athletes were taken to a nearby hospital in cardiac arrest. Police said 26 others were removed from the water needing assistance for minor injuries or pains that arose during the swim portion of the competition.

The man, identified as Michael Kudryk of Freehold, N.J., was competing as part of a three-person relay team but lost consciousness halfway through the swim. Rescuers managed to get Kudryk to one of the four New York City Fire Department boats stationed in the river, but he later died at Saint Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. Kudryk was registered for another triathlon next month in Long Branch, N.J., the New York Daily News reported. Amy Martich, of Elmhurst, Ill., died Monday morning at Saint Luke’s.

Triathlons are categorized by distance. Sprint triathlons typically require a 750-meter swim, 20-kilometer bike ride and five-kilometer run. Olympic triathlons (including the NYC Triathlon) involve a 1.5-kilometer swim, 40-kilometer bike ride and 10-kilometer run. In “Iron Man” triathlons, the swimming portion can be as long as 3.9 kilometers, followed by up to a 180-kilometer bike ride and a 42.2-kilometer run (the same distance as a marathon).

Despite being the first leg and covering the shortest distance in any triathlon, swimming has proved to be the most deadly. Minneapolis Heart Institute cardiologist Kevin Harris last year published a study in JAMA: The Journal of American Medical Association analyzing the results of 2,971 USA Triathlon-sanctioned events held between January 2006 and September 2008, during which 14 participants died—13 of them while swimming and one while biking. Swimmers who died were between 28 and 65 years old; 11 were men (although it is worth noting that more men compete in triathlons than women).

I wonder what is going on; part of it might be the stress from the cold, stress from other competitors, disrupted breathing rhythms and perhaps fear of drowning? I’ve done some large open water 5K swims, but then again, I love open water.

Come on Mr. Huckabee: you should be classier than this:

Apparently Mike Huckabee wasn’t done making a fool out of himself this weekend after his appearance on Fox & Friends touting Donald Trump for Treasury Secretary. Heaven forbid he could make it through the day without throwing a little racism in to boot as well.

After slamming President Obama for the fundraiser held on his birthday that Fox Nation attacked as “Obama’s Hip-Hop BBQ” which our friends at Media Matters wrote about here — Fox Nation: Obama’s Hip-Hop BBQ Didn’t Create Jobs — Huckabee took a page right out of their playbook on his show this past Saturday night.

HUCKABEE: I’m glad that the President had such a large time with his friends. And by the way, they think that they all ought to pay more in taxes. So hopefully while they were gathered, they passed one of those great old big hats that one of the hip-hop pals wore, so that way everyone could empty their pockets and open their checkbooks, so they could give more to our ever responsible Federal government, so the fine folks at the party can bail out, our government. Well, I’m sure that happened.

So, let’s give back Jack. Let’s cut the Prez some slack. His birthday gig might just bring our economy back.

As Media Matters has documented and we have as well, but not to the extent that they have, this sort of race baiting is all too common over at Fox and at their blog, Fox Nation — Fox’s Race-Baiting “Nation”.

But that is the real crux of the Republican personality attack: WE are the REAL AMERICANS and THEY aren’t. Remember this gem from the past:

Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Wednesday that President Obama has “a different worldview” that is in part “molded out of a very different experience.”

“Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas,” Huckabee added.

Huckabee, who is promoting a book, made the comments on the talk radio program “Focal Point,” hosted by American Family Radio’s Bryan Fischer. They came two days after Huckabee inaccurately suggested that Mr. Obama grew up in Kenya.

Huckabee said he misspoke about the president’s childhood and had meant to reference Mr. Obama’s four-year stint in Indonesia. But the explanation was not sufficient for many critics, who noted that Huckabee suggested that the president’s views were shaped by growing up in Kenya with a father who sent the message “that the British were a bunch of imperialists.” Mr. Obama barely knew his father as a child.

But I will say this: I have far more in common with Mr. Obama than I do with Mr. Hukabee, and that is a good thing.

Republican Candidates
No, the Michelle Bachmann cover on Newsweek is not sexist, even if The Nation says that it might be. If you want to say that blindly lumping Ms. Bachmann with Sarah Palin together is sexist, I might listen to your argument. Sure, both are tea-party favorites and both are dumb, but the resemblance ends there. Ms. Palin goes more on personality (That spunky Hockey Mom!) whereas Ms. Bachmann seems to be more driven by ideas (albeit crazy ones). Also, Ms. Bachmann finished her term and got reelected; she seems to be far harder working and more interested in governing. She is worthy of more political respect than Ms. Palin, though I find no merit in her ideas.

But this article drives home two things for me:
1. I tend to get very tired of The Nation very quickly; some of their articles are good. Others are shallowly argued crap (e. g., their articles denying climate change …in fact, denying that CO2 could even act as a greenhouse gas!)

2. Our side is not good at politics. She is the political enemy so don’t go attacking articles that correctly characterize her as, well, crazy. Could you imagine National Review taking Newsweek to task over an Obama cover?

Tim Pawlenty
No, he isn’t Sarah Palin in a suit:

1. He actually finished TWO terms as governor of a largish state; not one HALF term as a governor of a state with a small population.
2. He hasn’t been blessed by a pastor who hunts witches.

So while his IQ is probably is within, say 5 points of Ms. Palin’s, he has a much stronger work ethic.

(first comment)

Oh my…

Yesterday, I posted two videos of famous academics talking about their disbelief in a deity (or a deity that interferes in the events of this universe).

Now here are 20 academics who are believers talking about why they believe:

I admit that I was embarrassed for the scientists shown here. The philosophers: not so much; I really don’t expect much out of them.

9 August 2011 (am)

Yoga Class with Lynn (substitute instructor), then I ran my 4.1 mile rivertrail course in 42:12 (21:08 out, 21:04 back). It was relatively cool and breezy (69 F, 84 percent humidity). My right knee (the one that got operated on 13 months ago) still isn’t quite right; I felt it tighten up a oh-so-slightly. I might have to add some light exercise bike to my routine (perhaps 30 minutes three times a week or so).

I’ve come to believe that my days of focusing on just one major activity for several months at a time are over. For the vast majority of the time I’ll have really mix it up: running, walking, swimming, lifting, maybe some light cycling and perhaps take a couple of months to emphasize one activity more than the others.

Yoga: the class was ok and I learned one new move. The sub was very different than my usual yoga teacher; the sub (Kimberly?) was one of those who is 30-35 years old(?), hair in a pony tail, spandex shorts and she used the aerobic instructor’s microphone.

(not her, but she was this “type”).

My usual yoga instructor is about 20-25 years older; she has an old woman’s, sort of squatty body.

It is very easy to underestimate her when you first see her. But her usual routine for us is MUCH harder; when she gets on her “abs” kick, you sometimes start to wonder “just how much longer am I going to last”; and that was when I was in my best shape!

8 August 2011 Evening…all over the place

Tomorrow I return to yoga class:

No, it won’t be outdoors and no one in the class is this flexible.

Posts
Remember when Senator McCain said this:

Well, he heard about it at a town hall in Arizona.

President Obama continues to catch flack at places like Daily Kos (not that he cares that much). But some of us have had enough:

I thoroughly enjoy watching keyboard warriors talk about how weak Obama is on this, and how terrible he is at that, when the biggest decision these folks have to make is “do you want fries with that?” You think you’ve got the resolve, you think you’re a better decision-maker than he is, and you think you know so much more than he does because you read Krugman or Greenwald or that totally underrated super-hipster political website that hasn’t hit the mainstream yet. Guess what? There’s a reason why he’s president and you’re not. If you think you’ve got what it takes to do a better job, then run for President! I’d love to see how you do to fix the entire free world’s every little problem in three years.

I think I’ve figured out what the anti-Obama crowd wants. You want a George Bush. Not the “Obama = Bush” bullshit, but a ruthless bloodthirsty president who will kill and character-assassinate his way to fulfill political goals. You want a liberal president who uses the same tactics to get what he wants that you complained about for eight years when the other guy did it.

You want Obama to raise taxes on the rich. You want him to focus on jobs. You want him to pass a robust stimulus plan. I would love that too. Okay, we all want it, but how does he do that in the House? He can talk a good game and say “tax increases!” three times and click his heels together, but it doesn’t amount to diddlysquat unless 218 teadrones in the House of Representatives vote for it. President Obama can talk until his mouth goes dry, but it won’t do a lick of difference unless you work to elect over 218 Democratic votes in the House.

If you need to hear him talk angrily to a wall, that’s fine. Whatever makes you feel better. But the reality is that the Republicans in Congress want him to lose. They’re not going to help him at all no matter how sternly he words a speech.

If you want to make a change, go fix the damn House.

Now it is true that President Obama is far more cautious on the economy than many of us would like; there is nothing wrong with us wanting to pressure him from the left, and I happen to agree with Robert Reich here. But from what you read on Daily Kos…well, putting up with arm-chair quarterbacks is part of the job.

So, how will President Obama do? Intrade has him barely over 50 percent (stock market?)

Other topics
Paul Krugman on weighing arguments:

Some people seem confused about what I meant in my post on pulling rank. They seem to believe that I meant that you should never consider the source of an argument — and that therefore my poking fun at S&P is somehow a contradiction.

Um, no.

What’s illegitimate is saying “I pay no attention to what Joe Blow says, because I’m a tenured professor at Harvard, and he isn’t.”

It is, however, perfectly legitimate to say “I pay no attention to what Joe Blow says, even though he has a fancy job title, because he has a track record of being wrong about everything.”

Notice that what’s happening in the case of S&P is precisely that many people are giving them credence because of where they sit; it’s therefore highly relevant to point out that they may be a prestigious organization for some reason, but their track record is ludicrously bad.

Note: stocks are down but US Treasury bonds….ARE UP.

Science

Frogs and toads (via Conservation Report)

This is fascinating; the eggs are forced into the mother’s back during amplexus. They “dig in” so to speak and form pockets; they then hatch to tadpoles in the pockets and eventually work up to becoming fully formed toadlets that push out of those pockets.

Life: building blocks for DNA have been found in meteorites.

Illinois weather in July The weather patterns have been strange; dry in some areas and record rainfall in others. For example: Chicago had a record July rainfall, though 6.86 inches fell in THREE HOURS time (yes, during our visit…we were in a museum when this happened).

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.

7 August 2011 Back in Peoria

Workout notes I will start swimming tomorrow. Today: ran my 4.2 mile course in 41:36; 10:18 at the entrance; 9:32 back. It was 74 F with 80 percent humidity, which is a big improvement over the last time.

Then I ate a bagel and then went to the gym to lift:

Bench press: 10 x 135, 6 x 145
Incline press: 7 x 130, 6 x 130
Military press (seated, dumbbells): 3 sets of 12 x 40
Curls (dumbbells): 12 x 25 lb, 2 sets of 10 x 30 lb.
rows: two sets of 6 x 140, 12 x 110 (Riverplex Row machine)
pull downs: 3 sets of 12 x 137.5
100 sit ups (40, 40, 20)
adductors: 3 sets of 10 (70)
abductors: 3 sets of 10 (70)
lunges
rotator cuff stuff.

Note: I wonder if my malaise is part mental/emotional; I felt myself tightening up when I ran; when I tried to relax I could actually feel my face lighten up. I think that I need to do yoga again, and perhaps do some purposeful meditation.

Blog I’ll probably write on mathematics a bit later; for now, I found this article to be interesting:

Barack Obama is not a skillful strategist like Bill Clinton. He is not a gifted rhetorician like Ronald Reagan. Nor is he a bold and inspiring leader like Abraham Lincoln. And he can’t seem to shake himself loose from the strings that attach him to the trial lawyers, to big labor, and, surprisingly, to the standard banker-economists who got us into the mess we are in now. But he is an honest man. He is intelligent, analytical, and knowledgeable. And he tries hard to think through the dilemmas which confront us and to tell us clearly and straightforwardly what he wants to do and why he wants to do it.

But it doesn’t seem to work.

Contrast this to the politicians he is up against. When John Boehner at the height of the debt ceiling crisis answered him on the national media he simply did not tell the truth. He said that the president would not compromise, would not take yes for an answer, and wanted it all his own way. But he cannot have forgotten that he had negotiated Obama into far more cuts than Obama and his caucus had wanted, thought wise or even palatable in return for a modest increase in revenue to be achieved by closing egregious and unfair loopholes in personal and corporate taxes. This is the same compromise recommended by the “Gang of Six,” which included the extremely conservative and admirably patriotic Senator Tom Coburn, by the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson group, and by Republican economists like Martin Feldstein. It was the Speaker who, Arafat-like, walked away from that deal because he concluded he lacked the skill or the muscle or the spine to sell it to his own caucus. Let it be said that this compromise included recalculating the cost of living formula for social security—a change every responsible economist recommends—but the equally rigid Nancy Pelosi rejected.
[...]

Look at the roster of leaders vying for my party’s nomination. At the top of the list stand Mitt Romney, who will say anything, and Michele Bachmann, who assured us that defaulting on the national debt is no big deal, while a sensible man like Jon Huntsman is in single digits.

Oh, I know: it’s not funny, but one must either laugh or weep.

Really, I wonder what is going on; sometimes one can get burned by assuming the “better angels” in one’s opponents.

6 August 2011: leaving Lexington

Workout notes After the second math talk, I drove to the bikepath and walked 7 miles. Total time: 1:36:05, but 1:21:42 was my time for the marked 6 mile stretch (from the 5 mile mark near Citation Blvd. to the YMCA and back). It was warm: 82 F, 69 percent humidity.

Travel Two glitches: on I-64 near Louisville, they had two of three westbound lanes closed because they were working on an overpass; this made for about a 10-15 minute tie up.

Then the I-74 westbound exit off of I-465 (Indianapolis) was closed; you had to take the next exit (38′th street) and double back on southbound I-465. But the entrance to southbound I-465 was on the right and side and if you didn’t know that in advance, you had to try to cross 3 lanes of traffic…so I had to do a run around in a mall.

Otherwise, the drive home went smoothly.

Pet peeve: I stopped for lunch at an I-HOP near Louisville. But then it was hard to get back on the interstate; you had no left turns permitted at any of the lot exits and no U turns on the side street either; I had to do a lap in an apartment parking lot.

Math: I’ll have to write in my math blog and complete the notes that I wanted to take from the conference.

Posts

Paul Krugman directs us to a pithy one-sentence commentary on the SP-downgrade of US securities.

Here, he summarizes the so-called debate on economics between the left and the right:

Read what Robert Barro is saying lately, or Robert Lucas, and try to find any commonality between their explanations of the current slump and what they have been saying about business cycles these past 30 years. I can’t.

By contrast, the Krugman/Thoma/DeLong axis (I still like it!) is basically using standard macroeconomics, applied to a nonstandard situation. The Hicks/Keynes model — in which demand drives output in the short run, interest rates are determined by the tradeoff between liquidity and yield, and extreme negative shocks push you into a liquidity trap in which conventional monetary policy loses traction and deficits don’t crowd out private spending — has worked very well in this crisis, which is why we keep using it with a few twiddles (such as emphasizing the role of private debt).

The point is that at this point we’re not having a debate between opposing models; we’re having a conflict in which one side has a model that has been working, while the other side has prejudices, and makes stuff up to justify those prejudices.

But that is what a conservative really is, isn’t it: someone who has non-falsifiable beliefs on an issue.