Obama Stoops to New Lows, Republican Job Plans and life at 100

Workout notes Yoga, then 6 miles (plus) of running. I warmed up for 20 minutes (felt better than expected), did 9 goose loop laps (3.24 miles) via 4 x .5 harder, .22 easier, then .36 harder: 4:26, 4:16, 4:12, 4:10, then 2:59. 29:06 was the total. Then I walked about .25 miles and then jogged 1.2 miles back to the car. I felt ok, though I had some knee ache just about when I stopped. Funny, but when the knee starts to hurt I have to SPEED UP; what brings on the pain is when my legs get stiff and my legs get a bit too straight.

When I got home, I did some one legged squats, step ups and Achilles tendon exercises.

Thought
Yes, this 100 year old guy, Fauja Singh, finished a marathon. It took him 8 hours (though he did 5:40 as a 90 year old!). Well, I remembered that back in 2005, it took me about 8 hours to finish the last 26 miles of the Leanhorse 100 (29:34 was my total). The surface was a groomed crushed rock bike path. I was exhausted, sleep deprived and my feet were a sea of blisters due to the rocks that had gotten into my shoes and an improperly trimmed orthotic pad. I felt as if I were barely moving at all.

In other words, how I felt in the last 26 miles of a 100 miler is the way that a 100 year old feels all of the time! Oh my…

Today: a picture is worth 1000 words day!

How do we “know” stuff? Well, there you have it. Yes, these guys (in this New York Times article) are well intentioned, but the moment you start accepting “facts” without evidence you are on the road to trouble. These guys don’t seem to understand that the “unreasonable” evangelicals are the logical extension of what they are.

Republicans: PROOF THAT OBAMA STOOPS TO NEW LOWS!!!

Yes, the Republicans have a jobs plan.

Perspective. Ok, I am not even close to being in the 1 percent; statistically speaking my wife and I together are about the upper 15 percent. But while both of us have worked for our modest amount of success, both of us have had some lucky breaks along the way and have had some opportunities that are being denied to others.

Really, this shirt says “I am a hot woman and therefore can make a man act like an idiot anytime I want; hence I can get what I want”. Yes, there is evidence of that:

It seems all it takes for 75 percent of hackers and IT security professionals to hand over their personal online information is the seductive ways of a woman.

One would hope that IT workers on the frontlines of cybersecurity, as well as the technically adept hackers they battle, would know not to disclose personal information to a stranger they meet online. But that’s not the case, according to a new study by the security firm Bitdefender, which found that both groups are likely to hand over their personal details to the right online “friend,” especially if that friend is a woman.

Bitdefender researcher Sabina Datcu used a sample pool of 100 people, half from the IT security industry and the other half online criminals she found on underground cybercrime forums. To test how susceptible both groups were to scammers trolling for their online credentials such as passwords and phone numbers, Datcu created a fake profile of a 25-year-old woman, and then tailored it to each target group.

So while the fake woman’s photos and information remained the same, for the IT experts, the woman’s interests included security, psychology and literature, PCWorld reported. For the hackers, the woman was interested in psychology, reading news, “trying new things” and, of course, hacking.

After engaging the IT professionals and the hackers in an ongoing conversation online, Datcu’s test subjects began to trust the “woman” they were chatting with, and, eventually, the woman duped 75 percent of the survey subjects into handing over personal information such as addresses, phone numbers, details about their children and their parents’ names. Thirteen percent of the IT experts even sent the fake online woman various passwords to their online accounts.

Of course, Fox News uses this to their advantage:

Off to yoga class. Got back from yoga and a run; It wasn’t quite like this though these are poses that we do…of course this is a park district class and features mostly older parents and grannies and grandpas (myself included). But there are a few MILF’s and GILF’s there.

Best part: 3 minutes into it an onward, IMHO. Here is a screen shot from that period:

OWS: start of the needed conversation (though smaller than the Tea Party) and other topics

Science and Technology
Yes, Reiki works…as does “fake Reiki”…and the latter works equally well. The study was done on cancer patients. But the upshot: non-placebo treatments like massage provide benefits beyond placebo, though the Reiki study shows that perhaps people doing massage might learn and incorporate some of the “soothing” skills in their practice.

You might have heard of “sourcing”: this is when a company puts out a reward for someone out there to come up with an innovative solution to a problem. Unfortunately, criminals are adopting this technique as well.

Society: Friendly Atheist talks about a school teacher who was dismissed for making anti-gay comments on her own time on her own facebook page. I think that I agree with Friendly Atheist here….but wonder how I feel if what was being talked about was, say, racial equality. Supporting free speech isn’t always easy or comfortable.

Political Humor: Republicans

SNL is merciless to the Republicans and their debates…and to who is watching (yes, I’ll probably watch tomorrow’s as well). Yes, Mr. Santorum whined about this parody.

Occupy Wall Street
:

(click to see in full size at Daily Kos)

Robert Reich says that this starts a conversation that our politicians are NOT having. Reich points out that while President Obama is trying something, it is too small to be adequate and that the Republicans (and some blue dog Democrats) won’t pass it anyway. He goes on to say that people really are watching the Republican debates and being exposed to either “more of the same” or completely crackpot ideas (9-9-9).

Paul Krugman hopes that this ends the immunity that Wall Street has enjoyed among the Very Serious people.

Of course, Nate Silver points out that the OWS protests are no where near as large as the Tea Party rallies and, in terms of proportion of the population protesting, are more popular on the WEST coast of the US than anywhere else.

Republican Delusions
No, the new Nobel Prize winners are NOT anti-Keynesian:

The right was quick to claim this year’s economics Nobel as an anti-Keynesian prize. Chris Sims sets the record straight:

Professor Sims doesn’t want to be pigeonholed. “I’m not ‘non-Keynesian,’ ” he said, adding that he has been an active “promoter of new Keynesian macroeconomic models,” because they “are the place in our profession where theory and data and policy decision-making are coming together.”

“It doesn’t really make much sense to stand on the sidelines and take potshots at them,” he said. “If you don’t like the way they’re working, you should try to do better.”

He and Professor Sargent have been “trying to do empirical macroeconomics using formal tools of statistics,” he said. “Those tools aren’t in themselves ideological.”

Professor Sims spoke favorably of the Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus programs, which are Keynesian in their countercyclical spending. “An expansionary fiscal policy is probably what we need right now,” he said.

So, are the conservatives lying or do they merely don’t know what they are talking about? It is hard to tell at times; read how one of their “intellectuals” doesn’t know his head from his ass about what he is talking about (with regards to the “faster than light neutrino” claim). No, Mr. Krauthammer isn’t spouting nonsense for religious reasons (he isn’t religious and has spoken out against creationism and intelligent design). In this instance, he merely doesn’t know what he is talking about, and pretends that he does.

While we are on ridiculous Republicans: Lenoard Pitts talks about Herman Cain and how he is the type of black that conservatives like: he doesn’t speak out against racism or the inequities in society and the only time that you hear that he is black it is when he lectures other black people. Sure, Mr. Pitts is right when he admits that all too many minorities (including Mexicans) use racism as an excuse to not try one’s best or as an excuse to try to get out of trouble. But that is only one aspect of the situation.

Mitt Romney: Christopher Hitchens says “hell yeah”, Mr. Romney’s religion is a factor, even if its theology is no more nonsensical than other theologies. The problem is that Mormonism has a very recent openly anti-woman and racist history.

President Obama: he has accomplished some things that liberals like; it is tough to get credit for it though:

That same legislative package also contained sweeping changes in student aid policy that aimed to help more people attend college and complete degrees. Yet when Americans were asked how much they had heard about these changes, only 26 percent reported “a lot,” while 40 percent said “a little,” and fully 34 percent said “nothing at all.”

All told, the public seemed largely oblivious to the president’s major policy accomplishments.

Workouts: Centenarian Marathoner

Workout notes Weights plus a swim. Swim: 500 of fist/free (on 100 intervals; 2:10), 500 of back/free (on the 1:10), 500 steady in 9:06 (wanted to lap the lady in the next lane 3 times), then 500 of 25 drill, 25 free (fins); some of the drill was 3g. Then 200 pull to cool down.

The swim came after weights which was routine, except for the fact that I included dumbbell military presses (2 sets of 15 with 40 lb., 1 set of 10 standing with 45) in my first circuit (rotator cuff, pull downs, hammer rows and curls). I then went to the bench press and struggled badly; only 5 reps with 155, and 3 with 165. Doing military press prior to bench always hurts it a bit.

Centenarian Marathon: yes, a 100 year old man finished a marathon. Sure, it took him 8 hours, but so what. 100 years old and being able to MOVE is good. Click on the link to see the AP video. Hey, that is how I am moving at the end of my 100 milers!

Paul Krugman Explains How Occupy Wall Street Is Refocusing America

Paul Krugman was on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS today where how Occupy Wall Street is refocusing America on the issues that caused the stock market to crash and the economy to collapse in 2008.

Paul Krugman Explains How Occupy Wall Street Is…, posted with vodpod

Academic Accommodation, 999 and OWS commentary

Science
Not so fast with the “faster than light neutrinos”…

What often happens: scientists, like all people, like recognition. People in the media like to have the “scoop”. Hence there is a tendency to announce “results” before they are really, well, results! This “relativity is false” is probably a case of this.

Education
This article raises a host of issues:
1. How much accommodation should be given to students that have disabilities that might affect the rest of the class? In this case, a professor wanted to limit (but not eliminate) the participation of a student whose stuttering problem was severe enough to cut into class time if this student talked “too much”.

2. How wise is it to have a 10′th grader in a college class, even if he/she is intellectualy ready for the material? I ask this because even a bright 10′th grader might have the emotional maturity of an ordinary 10′th grader (mine was worse when I was that age) and a college professor is used to relating to more mature students. I’ve found that I have to treat freshmen differently than I treat, say, juniors and seniors. Even second semester freshmen are different than first semester freshmen. In other words, how one might explain the classroom situation to the student depends on the age of the student, and college professors aren’t trained to deal with 10′th graders.

Politics

Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan (9 percent income/payroll tax, 9 percent corporate tax, 9 percent VAT tax (sales tax). Paul Krugman shows why this plan would really hammer the middle class. Yes, income tax and payroll tax would drop dramatically for most. But things would become 9 percent more expensive to buy (when demand is already too low!) and the 9 percent corporate tax is likely to be taken out on the middle class in terms of prices (competitive pressures might mitigate this effect; in some cases) AND in decreased wages. Krugman talks about the “decreased wages” effect here.

The Occupy Wall Street (and other streets)

This post at Fox News, of all places, seems to “get it”.

On the other hand, the oligarchs don’t seem to get it; they see a “Gilded Age” as a good thing:

Second, I’m a bit behind on this, but the Times had an excellent piece yesterday on what the lords of finance are saying in private. Whiners take all!

I especially liked the guy who said that we must treat finance nicely because it’s the only thing America is still good at. Aside from the fact that this is an insult to American workers, who are actually quite productive in a lot of areas given a chance, how, exactly, did we become a society in which so many of our elite students end up going into finance? Was that, you know, sort of a choice — and a bad one?

It’s also useful, for a bit of perspective, to go back to another good Times article from the summer of 2007, The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age :

These days, Mr. Weill and many of the nation’s very wealthy chief executives, entrepreneurs and financiers echo an earlier era — the Gilded Age before World War I — when powerful enterprises, dominated by men who grew immensely rich, ushered in the industrialization of the United States. The new titans often see themselves as pillars of a similarly prosperous and expansive age, one in which their successes and their philanthropy have made government less important than it once was.

The prosperity, such as it was — it never did trickle down much — is gone. But these guys still think they earned it all, and the rest of us should be grateful to have them.

Now I am NOT against the “elite”, if we are talking about truly elite performers such as world class scientists, engineers, medical doctors and the like. ALL of us benefit from what they do. If a top research mathematician, engineer or scientist makes more than I do: GREAT. My doctor: GREAT.

I don’t count those who created these financial “products” among that group.

I’ll comment on what one of the members of the financial elite said:

“It’s not a middle-class uprising,” adds another veteran bank executive. “It’s fringe groups. It’s people who have the time to do this.”

As the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have grown and spread to other cities, an open question is: Do the bankers get it? Their different worldview speaks volumes about the wide chasms that have opened over who is to blame for the continuing economic malaise and what is best for the country.

Uh, look you clueless a**hole: the point is that the fact that “people have time to do this” is what is being protested! These people would rather have jobs!!!!

Robert Reich sees some hope in the OWS movement.

Bonus: A couple of Marine veterans tell Sean Hannity what they think:

Yes, I know; being a Marine veteran doesn’t make someone informed, and one can find veterans calling President Obama names, etc. I still enjoyed this though.

Ok, ok, yes, some of the protesters are clueless, and some (some, not nearly all nor the majority) are those who seem to like to protest. I know people like this. Many ARE probably misinformed on some issues.

But what seems beyond doubt is that unemployment is too high, the government seems to be responsive and that the Republicans seem to only offer “more tax cuts for the wealthy” as a solution, even though worker productivity is up and demand is down. And it seems as if NO ONE (not the Democrats either) are on “our side”; we (the non wealthy interests) can’t afford to buy politicians.

It also appears that every attempt to make something even slightly better (say, health care reform) is met with fanatical, oligarchy funded resistance. The message seems to be “we are in control, and YOU are going to learn to like it.”

I find it strange that sheer greed has blinded them to the fact that the masses could be easily pacified with a modest tax increase on the wealthy, more humane health care and a modest jobs stimulus. I doubt that anyone realistically expects a European style government benefits.

Rough walk…and other topics

This morning I walked right about 4 hours; 2:01 out, 2:00:01 back (really). Upside: pretty day (cool, but windy) and a scenic course…and I really enjoyed the first 2:20 or so. Downside: the knee started to hurt and I had to keep switching gait.

This course featured about 700 feet of climb (total). As far as the knee: I haven’t been taking anti-inflammatory medication and there was a weather system moving in. Also, I wonder if the shoes I wore (Brooks Cascadia) were suitable for the road; my feet hurt at times as well. Still, that is 16 more miles in the bank.

I am going to have to get serious with my knee strengthening and to do more yoga:

No I don’t look this good when I try this pose (hat tip: Girls in Yoga Pants, where you can see a larger shot))

What’s left for me this year?
Screaming Pumpkin Prediction Marathon (7 hour time limit) 28 October (Friday Night)

10 mile trail (run? Walk? Slow hike?) the next day at McNaughton Park (Mc-not-again).

Toward the end, you see some of the first 4 miles of the loop; it ends with the toughest climb on the course (at mile 4: “Golf Hill”)

But this weekend will be a “participatory” weekend; I won’t be trying for a performance goal. That might come at the end of November/beginning of December when there are a couple of 4 milers and a 5K. Well, that is, if we are not buried by snow and or ice, which is all too possible.

Off road running (or fast walking) has its charms:

5K race plus Illinois-Ohio State game

Well, the only thing bad about today is that my Illini got whipped by the Buckeyes. But otherwise…

5K race: my university had a homecoming 5K race. It was a cool day (windy) and a dry course. Upshot: I finished in 26:21 (my watch); good for 34 out of 104. I must have slowed down just a bit in the last 6-7 minutes as many gained on me: I struggled a bit from the part on Bradley avenue through the parking lot. My conditioning is not where it needs to be for racing. My legs were ok; it is my cardiovascular conditioning is holding me back.

I warmed up in the indoor 200 meter track (run 3 laps, walk 1, run 3, walk 1 stretch, and repeat) and cooled down on the track as well.

Football
(photos from yahoo)
After the race, I got a quick shower, picked up my friend Tracy (who is an Ohio State graduate) and went to the Illinois versus Ohio State football game. We were quite a pair; her with her OSU shirt and me with my Illinois orange.

Yes, this is Tracy and I at the game.

This is close to the view that we had; we were sitting a bit to the right of this. Note: this was “stripe the stadium” day where those in the odd sections wore orange and those in the even wore blue.

In terms of offense: Illinois technically outgained OSU 272-224, but most of the Illinois yards came in the 4′th quarter when we were down 17-0. Ohio State attempted 4 passes and completed 1..for a 17 yard touchdown.

The game started with a lengthy OSU drive capped by a field goal through a swirling wind. That was the scoring for the first half; the rest of it was a defensive struggle. It appeared that the OSU line was winning the “battle in the trenches” on both sides of the ball.

Second half: started with some promise and a couple of completions…then a big interception that was run back to the Illinois 12. Ohio State scored on the next play on a run (what else?).

Illinois had a drive but ended up settling up for a “pooch punt” and field position. But they got no points out of the exchange. Then when Illinois got the ball back, fumble! OSU recovered and picked up a personal foul penalty to boot.

Then came the 4′th quarter, and Ohio State’s only pass completion; 17 yard touchdown. It was 17-0 OSU with 13 minutes to go and the fans started to leave.

Illinois got a touchdown but it took 7 minutes; it came on runs, short passes and via plays in the middle of the field. So with 6:5x left in the game, it was 17-7.

Though OSU went 3 and out, they ate up 2 more minutes off of the clock. Illinois decided to throw an interception. More fans leave.

Illinois gets the ball back with some time left (about 3:3x). They drive had have 4′th and 3 at the Ohio State 17 with 1:14 to go. So: Illinois passes on a field goal attempt and goes for it…incomplete pass and it is now time for OSU to run out the clock (got one more first down via the ground game).

Upshot: well, the win over Arizona State was an upset and the other two: wins by 3 against decent but middling teams. OSU was a step up…and it showed.

Afterward, Tracy (who enjoyed the game) and I went to the Jerusalem restaurant on Wright Street; delicious!

About the game: Illinois did better against “fast” passing teams (like Arizona State, Northwestern and Western Michigan) but struggled mightily against the power running attack. I think that we have a good shot at beating Purdue, Minnesota and have a decent shot against Michigan (whose offense is wide open). But Penn State might give us trouble on the road…and Wisconsin at home…might be ugly for us.

I predict: 9-3 finish with wins over Purdue and Minnesota (who beat us last year) and one win out of the games against Penn State, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Fast Neutrinos….

Ok, Republicans aren’t ALL bad; Dr. Andy sent me this non-political joke from National Review.

Since we are on bad “nerdy” jokes:

Republican Rabbit Holes, Election Videos and Other Topics

Non-political
Science and Technology

Sad news: Dennis Ritchie, the “father of the computer language C” died. What an awesome lifetime accomplishment: to have your very own, widely used computer language.

Interesting Puzzle Security:

What could one agent be told that he would not forget but would be unable to recall? Something he could pass on (not in writing) to the other agent, but that if captured and tortured he’d be unable to reveal.

Perhaps it might be something that has meaning only to the person that the message was intended. Or, perhaps the intended person has some sort of key and what the agent would have to remember depends on a reaction to this key (say, a photo) that is all but impossible to duplicate from memory. Who knows; this is fun to think about.

Living Stromatolites: found in Europe
Jerry Coyne reports on living stromatolites being found in Europe; these are the oldest known lifeforms (evolved 3 billion years ago). It was thought that such colonies would only be found in places that had protection from predators; this was NOT the case here.

Religion
We know that Christian and Muslim fundamentalists sometimes behave very badly. Well, so do some Jewish fundamentalists. Evidently some school girls weren’t dressed modestly enough for these clowns; hence they felt they had the right to yell and throw stuff at them. Bottom line: some religious conservatives don’t seem to have a concept of “mind your own business”.

Politics
Do the state primaries “more national” than they used to be? I found this to be interesting:

The argument: cable TV (and perhaps the internet?) make national issues more important to people in the states than they used to be; that is, one does well in a state by doing well nationally rather than investing a lot of time in the state itself and talking to the local party people. I don’t know; Mr. Morriss admits that the states had a big impact in the 2008 primary elections. Will that be the case in 2012?

Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann got her J. D. at the now-defunct Oral Roberts law school, where religion and law were mixed. She then went to work for the IRS (yes, the government). And yes, she passed the Minnesota Bar exam. This makes me wonder if she is not as mind numbingly dumb as I had thought; perhaps she is someone who runs her mouth prior to engaging her brain.

Republicans
Yes, they are belly aching that Obama is calling them out on their obstructionism. But in fact, Republicans cannot (or will not) grasp reality, as Paul Krugman points out:

In the real world, recent events were a devastating refutation of the free-market orthodoxy that has ruled American politics these past three decades. Above all, the long crusade against financial regulation, the successful effort to unravel the prudential rules established after the Great Depression on the grounds that they were unnecessary, ended up demonstrating — at immense cost to the nation — that those rules were necessary, after all.

But down the rabbit hole, none of that happened. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because of runaway private lenders like Countrywide Financial. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because Wall Street pretended that slicing, dicing and rearranging bad loans could somehow create AAA assets — and private rating agencies played along. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers exploited gaps in financial regulation to create bank-type threats to the financial system without being subject to bank-type limits on risk-taking.

No, in the universe of the Republican Party we found ourselves in a crisis because Representative Barney Frank forced helpless bankers to lend money to the undeserving poor.

O.K., I’m exaggerating a bit — but not much. Mr. Frank’s name did come up repeatedly as a villain in the crisis, and not just in the context of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, which Republicans want to repeal. You have to marvel at his alleged influence given the fact that he’s a Democrat and the vast bulk of the bad loans now afflicting our economy were made while George W. Bush was president and Republicans controlled the House with an iron grip. But he’s their preferred villain all the same.

The demonization of Mr. Frank aside, it’s now obviously orthodoxy on the Republican side that government caused the whole problem. So what you need to know is that this orthodoxy has hardened even as the supposed evidence for government as a major villain in the crisis has been discredited. The fact is that government rules didn’t force banks to make bad loans, and that government-sponsored lenders, while they behaved badly in many ways, accounted for few of the truly high-risk loans that fueled the housing bubble.

But that’s history. What do the Republicans want to do now? In particular, what do they want to do about unemployment?

Well, they want to fire Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve — not for doing too little, which is a case one can make, but for doing too much. So they’re obviously not proposing any job-creation action via monetary policy.

Incidentally, during Tuesday’s debate, Mitt Romney named Harvard’s N. Gregory Mankiw as one of his advisers. How many Republicans know that Mr. Mankiw at least used to advocate — correctly, in my view — deliberate inflation by the Fed to solve our economic woes?

So, no monetary relief. What else? Well, the Cheshire Cat-like Rick Perry — he seems to be fading out, bit by bit, until only the hair remains — claimed, implausibly, that he could create 1.2 million jobs in the energy sector. Mr. Romney, meanwhile, called for permanent tax cuts — basically, let’s replay the Bush years! And Herman Cain? Oh, never mind.

By the way, has anyone else noticed the disappearance of budget deficits as a major concern for Republicans once they start talking about tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy?

But remember that the Republican belief in the Magic of the Free Market and in trickle down economics is utterly unfalsifiable; it is pure religion to them. No amount of data will phase them.

Here is Barney Frank being amused that Newt Gingrich continues to blame him…for policies that were passed when the Republicans had control of the House!

Here is a take on Mr. 9-9-9:

Though Dick Morris thinks that it is a workable idea:

So, let’s discourage demand exactly when we need more of it???? Oh wait…demand side economics is bad, bad, bad..except that it works.

Mitt Romney
Evidently he sees Rick Perry as his true competition; hence he freely talks up Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann:

Silly Friday: workout notes, Parent FAILS, Spandex and Transparent Pants..

Workout notes
Weights: the only difference is that I did curls with the EZ curl bar and that I got 9 x 155 and 5 x 165 on the bench press.

Swim: the usual 2200 yards: 500 of fist/free, 500 of kick/free (fins), 500 of back/free (50′s on the 1:10), 500 alternating 100 pull, 100 free, then 100 side, 75 fly kick, and yes 25 fly (fins).

Entertainment
There is a site that catalogs parent FAILS: The Proud Parents.

(to see the FAIL, look in the lower right hand corner of the photo that you can get to by clicking on the thumbnail)

Anyway….there is much more of the above there.

Spandex and VPLs

Sporty Spandex

If you like track women and enjoy checking out their legs and butts, you won’t see a better photo collection than this one. This is but one partial photo from 65+ pages of photos!

(click the cropped photo to see the full photo; there are other ladies dressed just like this in the original!)

Ok, there are a few photos of men too, but who cares about them?

VPLs

If you like women in thin white pants with very visible panties, well, this photo collection is for you. This is a collection of hundreds of photos of women wearing either white or light colored all-but-transparent pants.

Now I’ll have to fess up: I don’t know why I like these sort of photos.
Yes, I know why I find women attractive: I was designed to. Daniel Dennett talks about this here:

But why the visible panties? After all, our ancestors did without these up until recently, so this can’t really be an evolved taste. And interestingly, my attraction to this has only a little bit to do with how attractive the woman is; there is something like “OMG, she is wearing THAT” that attracts me. I suppose if I grew up in a culture where this was the norm that I wouldn’t be quite so attracted to this; perhaps it is the perceived “sluttiness” or “daring” or even the “cluelessness” or the “indifference”; something is at work here. I suspect that it is more of a mental reaction.

As far as the track women: that is more easily explainable: healthy, strong women SHOULD be attractive to me.