12 September 2011

I am watching the imbeciles Republicans debate on CNN as I type this. Why is anyone but Romney and Perry even there?

Workout notes
Weights plus swimming.
Swimming: 500 of fist/swim, 500 of 3g/swim (fins), 1000 of 100 free, 100 pull (18:2x) 200 cool down (back, with fins)
Weights (prior to swimming)
rotator cuff, lunges (lunges with slightly heavier weights)
Hammer rows: 3 sets of 10 x 200
Pull downs: 3 sets of 10 x 145
curls (dumbbell): 3 sets of 10 x 25
Bench press: 10 x 135, 7 x 155, 6 x 155
Incline press: 10 x 115, 10 x 125
dumbbell military: 2 sets of 15 x 40
standing military: 10 x 75 (barbell)
adduction: 3 sets of 10 x 180
abduction: 3 sets of 10 x 180
sit ups: 2 sets of 50 (vary incline)

Posts

Debate: Huntsman: reduce corporate welfare (good), says that corporations need certainty (no, they need customers)
Perry: lying (and no, you can’t do math).
Bachmann: see Perry.
Tea Party: I am appalled that there so many morons there.

Posts
A note about terrorism, via Mano Singham:

Via Progressive Review, I learn that the chance of:

Being killed by a terrorist is 1 in 20 million
Being struck by lightning is 1 in 6 million
Being executed in Texas is 1 in 1 million
Dying in a bathtub is 1 in 800,000
Dying in a building fire is 1 in 99,000
Dying in a car accident is 1 in 19,000

Until the terrorism threat approaches that of a car accident, I don’t see any point in worrying. So let’s shut down the national security state and bring back civil liberties and the rule of law.

Science
The evolutionary tree: sea jelly gives us more clues about the evolutionary tree:

A 580-million-year-old fossil is casting doubt on the established tree of animal life. The invertebrate, named Eoandromeda octobrachiata because its body plan resembles the spiral galaxy Andromeda, suggests that the earliest branches in the tree need to be reordered, say the authors of study in Evolution and Development.

The researchers, led by paleontologist Feng Tang of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing, believe that Eoandromeda is the ancient ancestor of modern ocean dwellers known as comb jellies — gelatinous creatures similar to jellyfish, but rounder and with eight rows of iridescent paddles along their sides. If they are right, it would be the oldest known fossil of a comb jelly. And that would support a rewrite of the animal tree.

Comb jellies sit alongside two other major groups near the base of the tree, but their relative positions remain contentious. Normally, sponges are identified as the first to evolve, followed by the cnidaria — jellyfish, sea anemones and their kin — and then by the comb jellies.

” Eoandromeda puts a little piece of weight in favour of a more basal position for comb jellies,” says Stefan Bengtson, a palaeontologist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History and a co-author on the paper.[...]

If Eoandromeda appeared after the cnidarians, the authors argue, bilateral symmetry would have to have evolved twice — once for the cnidarians and again for the bilateral organisms that came after Eoandromeda . Far simpler is the idea that Eoandromeda evolved first. “This model of animal relationships calls for the least number of origins of bilateral symmetry,” says Bengtson.

Cancer research: Some new cancer drugs attack the tumor and leave the healthy cells alone:

Chemotherapy breakthrough could dramatically reduce side-effects

Scientists have developed ‘smart-bomb chemotherapy’ which can isolate and destroy tumours without damaging healthy cells:
Cancer researchers have developed a “smart bomb” treatment that can target tumours with drugs while leaving healthy body cells intact. The technique means that patients will suffer fewer side-effects from the toxic drugs used in chemotherapy.

The side-effects of cancer therapy – including hair loss, nausea and suppression of the immune system – can be debilitating. In many cases, the effects of the drugs can contribute to the ultimate cause of death.

In experiments on mice, Laurence Patterson of the University of Bradford found that he could localise a cancer drug to the site of tumours and thereby limit its toxic impact in the body. All the animals, which had been implanted with human cancer cells responded to the targeted treatment and saw their tumours shrink. In half the animals, the tumours disappeared altogether. Professor Patterson will present his work at the British Science Festival in Bradford on Monday.

“We’ve got a sort of smart bomb that will only be active in the tumour and will not cause damage to normal tissue,” he said. “It’s a new cancer treatment that could be effective against pretty much all types of tumour – we’ve looked at colon, prostate, breast, lung and sarcoma so far, and all have responded very well to this treatment.”

Science and Mathematics Education

But not everyone is encouraging people to be good in math and science.

Republicans
They are traitors stubborn obstructionists :

From a senior Republican in the legislature:

“Obama is on the ropes; why do we appear ready to hand him a win?” said one senior House Republican aide who requested anonymity to discuss the matter freely. “I just don’t want to co-own the economy by having to tout that we passed a jobs bill that won’t work or at least won’t do enough.”

You need to think carefully about this quote. Implied in its logic is the idea that House Republicans can avoid any ownership of a bad economy if they continue to refuse to take any meaningful action to improve it. They can stonewall the president and the public will simply blame the president. The Republicans actually believe this. To see why, let’s go back to Mike Lofgren’s piece from two weeks ago. Remember that Mr. Lofgren is a career Republican staffer who resigned in disgust after the debt ceiling debacle. He explains the Republicans’ strategic thinking on obstruction:

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

It isn’t as if the Republicans have serious ideas that will work better:

It’s not just the 21st century they want to turn the clock back on — health-care reform, global warming and the financial regulations passed in the wake of the recent financial crises and accounting scandals.

These folks are actually talking about repealing the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, created in 1970s.

They’re talking about abolishing Medicare and Medicaid, which passed in the 1960s, and Social Security, created in the 1930s.

They reject as thoroughly discredited all of Keynesian economics, including the efficacy of fiscal stimulus, preferring the budget-balancing economic policies that turned the 1929 stock market crash into the Great Depression.

They also reject the efficacy of monetary stimulus to fight recession, and give the strong impression they wouldn’t mind abolishing the Federal Reserve and putting the country back on the gold standard.

They refuse to embrace Darwin’s theory of evolution, which has been widely accepted since the Scopes Trial of the 1920s.

One of them is even talking about repealing the 16th and 17th amendments to the Constitution, allowing for a federal income tax and the direct election of senators — landmarks of the Progressive Era.

What’s next — repeal of quantum physics?

Not every candidate embraces every one of these kooky ideas. But what’s striking is that when Rick Perry stands up and declares that “Keynesian policy and Keynesian theory is now done,” not one candidate is willing to speak up for the most important economic thinker of the 20th century. Or when Michele Bachmann declares that natural selection is just a theory, none of the other candidates is willing to risk the wrath of the religious right and call her on it. Leadership, it ain’t.

Sorry, but the people that are supporting these people are idiots. Period.

Back to the debate (such as it is; it appears to be a competition to obtain applause from the morons):
Huntsman and Romney are conservative, but they don’t scare me.
Perry: he’d be an unmitigated disaster. The others are a side show.

The people: MORONS!!!!!!!!!! It makes me sick to think that they are reproducing.