Idiots: useful and not

Workout notes I had to attend graduation exercises so I ran early; I did my 5.2-5.3 mile course in 51:07. It was breezy, clear and 29 F. The first mile (10:20) was the slowest. My last mile was 9:50 (ok, these “miles” are slightly long). Still, while this was hardly a race effort, it was an effort and that is probably because I am not quite recovered yet.

Posts
The President talks about the Iraq draw-down.

More on Hitchens

Some might find this tribute article to be a bit harsh as it is written in a “roast” style, but it has a “dang, I loved the mean old bastard” quality to it.

Idiots: useful and not
Ron Wyden
Paul Krugman doesn’t think much of Ron Wyden’s collusion with Paul Ryan to end Medicare as we know it:

Sen. Ron Wyden did indeed do a bad, bad thing in his joint proposal with Paul Ryan. Ezra Klein explains why; and the devil isn’t in the details.

What Wyden did was to give cover to the fundamental fallacy of right-wing attempts to dismantle Medicare: the claim that market competition is the key to reducing health care costs. We have overwhelming evidence on this — and it just isn’t true. Looking both within the United States and across countries, if you ask which systems are best at cost control, the ranking looks like this:

Government provision as well as financing (socialized medicine) > single payer > market competition.

Krugman points out that the health care reform bill that he backed passing was indeed a private insurance bill, but that was because that was the best we could get, given this political climate. So why retreat from the public plan we have in place now?

Not Useful: Michelle Bachmann
Michelle Bachmann got her feelings hurt that Newt Gingrich called her out for “getting her facts wrong”; see at about 2:20 or so:

So, does Poltifact back her up? Check out the screen shot:

As you can see, many of her public claims are false. Of course, this is nothing new; she was well known for getting even basic stuff wrong. Here she talks about the “Hoot-Smalley” act that was “signed into law by President Roosevelt” (it was the Smoot-Hawley act that was signed into law by President Hoover)

Here you can see more of her more famous ridiculous assertions.

She reminds me of the C or D student who thinks that you are being unfair when you assign them the grade that they earned. She is a living example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Freedom!!!!!

I turned in my fall 2011 grades. Overall the students did ok; then again you’d expect that from differential equation and upper division students.

I learned a few things along the way too, though hopefully the students learned far more.

Workout notes
I am still weak; I think that yesterday’s bathroom fest was caused by a combination of the department lunch (“home style” buffet) and dinner (Chinese buffet). My digestive track just couldn’t handle what I put into it. Yesterday was the “bananas and bagels” thing and that worked out ok.

So today I could work out a bit; I had a SLOW 4 mile run (untimed) which featured 3 hills. This was followed by a “60 percent” weight workout; basically I lightened up on the weight and did about 60 percent of what I normally do:
rows: 2 sets of 10 x 190
pull downs: 2 sets of 10 x 140
curls: 2 sets of 10 x 42 (pulley)
bench: 10 x 135, 5 x 155, 5 x 155
push-backs: 2 sets of 10 x 110 each leg
adduction: 2 sets of 10 x 190
abduction: 10 x 190, 10 x 170
sit ups: 4 sets of 25: level 1, 2, 3, 1
incline press: 2 sets of 8 x 125
military press: 1 set of 15 x 40 dumbbell, 10 x 75 seated on a machine.

So, it was better than nothing at all, but I sure am weak.

Posts
You’ve heard the disparaging term: liberal elite. The post I’ve linked to says that this might not be such a strong line of attack anymore as the gap between the true economic elite (the 1 percent, or perhaps 0.1 percent) and the rest of us widens. Roughly speaking: if you’ve met someone and have anything resembling a real relationship with them, they aren’t in the economic elite.

This post: talks about science and, no matter what Fox News says, is NOT like politics. It is true that scientists are subject to human foibles but as far as science itself: there is no “liberal” vs. “conservative” faction. There are some rivalries between disciplines and perhaps between the experimenters and the theorists, but it isn’t like politics.

Christopher Hitchens is Dead and…

Well, Mr. Hitchens was a successful writer. I enjoyed some of his work and mostly enjoyed his writing; I disagreed with him strongly on the Iraq war. No, I did not see him as one of the very smartest people in the nation (e. g., not with the top scientists or mathematicians) but he was a very smart guy who was very broadly educated.

The world will be a bit less without his work.

Here is what I have to say: yes, some out there are saying that they are glad that he is dead. Though I never knew Mr. Hitchens personally, I doubt that he’d mind their saying that. Here is Mr. Hitchens on the Hannity/Colmes show (Fox News) discussing the death of Jerry Falwell.

By the way, I can recommend the book God Is Not Great to any thinking person, atheist or theist or otherwise. Note: his writing is at a higher level than his snarky public performance shown above.

On my current bug

No workout today; I had planned to and still might get a couple of miles on the treadmill later in the day.

But as far as my bug:
Friday (9 December): felt fine in the morning; started to feel fatigued and to get muscle aches in the afternoon.
Saturday: death aches, weak, blah.
Sunday: felt better; stomach was touchy though. Could even walk a bit.
Monday: better still; touchy stomach though.
Tuesday: even better though I had trouble with digestion
Wednesday: fine though I perhaps ate too much for my digestive system to handle (e. g.: a normal amount)…then at night
bam: lower GI trouble; lots of bathroom time.
Thursday: today, see end of Wednesday. Digestion issues, Imodium, etc. I don’t feel especially weak nor achy though.

My guess: I’ll have to be ultra sensitive about what I eat over the next week.

Quick Posts

Humor: From “Not Always Right”

Caller: “Hello. Do you have an Italian to American dictionary?”

(Note that the caller doesn’t seem to have trouble speaking English, and has a New York accent.)

Me: “We have Italian to English dictionaries.”

Customer: “No, no. I need Italian to American because English is a different language, right?”

Me: “The English language is what we speak in America.”

Customer: *frustrated* “Can I speak to someone who might know better?!”

The trouble with stupid people is that they don’t realize that they are stupid.

Workout notesStomach still isn’t right and it was pouring rain outside. I managed a 5 mile walk on the home treadmill; better than nothing. Time: 1:02 (12:24 pace at an incline).

I am feeling better, but eating makes me feel mildly sick.

Posts These will be very light, but I’ll (hopefully) catch up on stuff come Friday. I still have a stack of finals to grade; I am part way through them.

Paul Krugman
He is very hard on those who are held up as experts but really aren’t:

Now, Paul is unique among the GOP contenders, or for that matter among politicians in general, in making monetary policy his signature issue. So it’s worth noting that he is among those who have been wrong about everything in this slump.

Example: Paul talked about “Skyrocketing gold, silver, oil and other commodity prices” and Krugman gleefully points out that “skyrocketing” doesn’t mean “go down”, as they have. Krugman continues:

The second of those articles, by the way, predicts a surge in consumer prices in the second half of 2011. Not according to either the CPI or, for those who are convinced that the government is lying, billion price index, both of which show prices leveling off in the second half. But hey, there are still 17 days left!

I’m sure that the Paulistas will find a way to claim that their man has been right about everything, even though his predictions have been all wrong. But he really has built his political career around the notion that he’s an expert in a subject about which he actually understands nothing.

But to this I say: even famous creationists have a large (in numbers) loyal following.

2012 Election
This Slate article is about a presentation that the Obama campaign made to the press. In short: this election will probably more resemble the 2004 one than the 2008 one, with Obama being Bush in 2004.

My prediction: Obama gets reelected, and not much changes:

Perhaps, but the other guys are not going to change even if he’s re-elected. Not so, says Axelrod. An Obama re-election will liberate Republicans by showing them the folly of standing with the Tea Party. Once Obama has set them free, they will join with him to tackle the real problems of America. That seems like a stretch, especially if the Obama team is effective in so diminishing the Republican opponent that Republicans can write off the loss as simply the result of a bad nominee, not a fatal flaw in their party’s message.

Another thing to remember: Congressional districts tend to be very blue or very red, even if the country as a whole is purple. This is simplistic of course, because there are far more ways of being blue than being red. Red: “leave me alone (Alaska, The Dakotas)”, “God” (the south) and “money” (those who finance the candidates). Blue: liberal intellectuals (college towns), labor (rust belt), Blacks (urban), feminists, hippies and perhaps some more. Note: the blue subgroups tend to not like each other.

Civil Liberties/Law/Racism
I have no legal training, but am very interested in this case. It is common knowledge that one can not discriminate on the basis of disability unless the disability directly inhibits someone doing the job (e. g., blind people can’t be surgeons).

So, what are the qualifications of a female stripper? It is to look sexy to heterosexual men, right? Well….what if….race….is a factor in how sexy you appear to those who frequent that club?

A Maine strip club wrongfully fired a waitress because she is black, the state civil rights commission said, and the agency told the club it may have to offer compensation or rehire her.

The Maine Human Rights Commission, which investigated the case, said PT’s Showclub in Portland should not have fired Cecilia Smith, who was hired in February 2010.

At the time, the club’s manager was away. When the manager returned a week later and saw Smith, he fired her. Smith was initially told it was because she was overweight, according to the report.

When Smith pointed out that other workers were bigger than her, a supervisor told her, “I’ll be very blunt with you, your weight and your skin complexion is not the image that the boss wants to have in this club.”

PT’s Showclub said Smith was dismissed because she “did not meet the minimum appearance qualifications especially concerning weight and beauty,” and that she could reapply for her job if she lost weight.

What is a club to do if their patrons don’t find black women (or at least fat ones) sexy?

I really don’t know what to say here, nor do I understand how the law should rule. It does tell me that law isn’t easy.

Mr. Romney picks up a key endorsement!

Yep, my favorite drunken ladybug herself has endorsed Mitt Romney:

Christine O’Donnell, the former Republican Senate candidate and a tea party favorite during the 2010 election, has officially endorsed Mitt Romney for president.

O’Donnell made her endorsement during an appearance this evening on Fox News’ “Hannity.”

“It was not an easy decision because I too think any of our candidates would make a great president and a great candidate going against Barack Obama,” O’Donnell said. “But I think there are certain tie breakers and I know that in making my decision I might be hurting some people but I think infrastructure and executive experience are important, and for that reason I’m endorsing Mitt Romney.”

“I’m very happy,” she added. “This is not anti-[Newt] Gingrich or anyone else, it’s a pro Gov. Romney endorsement. [...]
In a written statement, Romney welcomed the endorsement.

“Christine has been a leader in the conservative movement for many years,” Romney said. “Christine recognizes that excessive government threatens us now and threatens future generations, and I am pleased to have her on my team.”

Yes, THIS is what endorsed Mitt Romney:

And she is already doing good things, pointing out that Mr. Romney is consistent “since he has changed his mind”:

I suppose we can all say that until we, well…change our mind again.

I suppose I could scoff over Ms. O’Donnell’s “mice with fully functioning human brains” statement (which is a grotesque misunderstanding of this) but how would we explain things like:

Mighty Mouse

Speedy Gonzalez

The mundane…

I almost forgot to record my workout: I have recovered some more. I managed to run (easy pace; 10:20 for mile 1) the Cornstalk 4.2 mile loop. I then followed it by a half-lifting workout. I am still weak (170 x 2 was my bench press) and the jog tired me out. But I got it in; I couldn’t even do that yesterday.

So the recovery has gone: Friday: lift (good), Friday afternoon: sick, Saturday: death, Sunday: easy 4 mile walk, Monday: better 5 mile walk, couldn’t run, Tuesday: 4 mile run, 1/3 to 1/2 of my lifting workout.

Things are getting better.

This leads me to state this: I can recommend that older runners (40 and older) consider learning how to do some fast walking. Here is why: many times one can run when one cannot walk (though, rarely, it HAS been the other way around!!!!). Walking outside gives some emotional, mental and physical benefits. Also, walking allows for a wider range of exertion.

This is what I mean by the latter statement: though running at an 11 minute per mile pace is relatively easy and running at an 8 minute pace is hard, both are genuine exertions and I couldn’t keep an 11 minute per mile pace up for longer than a few hours.

On the other hand, walking at a 20 minute pace is something I could keep up for 12 hours or so…it is much, much, much easier than walking at a fast (for me) 10 minute per mile pace. The range of possible exertion ranges is far greater; hence one can sometimes walk when one is too fatigued to even attempt an easy run.

Also, learning to walk faster with less effort can come in handy if one ever decides to try an ultra marathon. Sure, there are some people who can literally run the whole way in a 100 mile race, but if you are reading this post, there is probably a 10^-4 probability that you are one of those people!

Science Tuesday: from the Higgs Boson to the ID Bozos….

The Higgs Boson

Ok, no 60 symbols video, though this one was pretty cool anyway. For a background, here is an interesting interview with Lisa Randal (Harvard University physics department) in the New York Times.

Of special interest to me is how the data is being crunched and how it is interpreted (Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance):

The news from Geneva this morning is in. Essentials: what we’re seeing is pretty consistent with the existence of a Higgs boson around 123-126 GeV. The data aren’t nearly conclusive enough to say that it’s definitely there. But the LHC is purring along, and a year from now we’ll know a lot more.

It’s like rushing to the tree on Christmas morning, ripping open a giant box, and finding a small note that says “Santa is on his way! Hang in there!” The LHC is real and Santa is not, but you know what I mean. [...]

Let’s put it this way: if we were testing a theory that everyone thought was wrong, rather than one that everyone thinks is right, nobody would take these results as strong indications that the idea was correct. We have a strong theoretical bias that the Higgs exists and is somewhere close to this mass range, so it’s completely reasonable to think that we are seeing hints (tantalizing ones!) that it’s there, but wait-and-see is still the right attitude.

Here is one of the charts (see another at the source). The plot is, roughly, “observations vs. energy level” with “energy level” on the x-axis

The bands represent “standard deviations away from the expected” with the idea that if there is an extreme spike at a given energy level, we could reject the null hypothesis that there is nothing special at that energy level. Note they are doing the calculations with two different kind of p-values: one p-value is “what is the probability that we could expect a spike AT THIS ENERGY LEVEL of this magnitude if there were nothing special about this energy level (the local statistic) and the other is “what is the probability that we’d expect a spike of this magnitude anywhere within these energy ranges”.

Of course the sigmas they are using:

ATLAS gives 3.6 sigma local significance, 2.3 sigma global significance; CMS gives 2.6 sigma local significance, 1.9 sigma global significance (although CMS points to about 124 GeV, while ATLAS points to about 126, which might be important).

Uh, don’t physicists usually lampoon biologists for using such wimpy significance levels? Ok, ok, they have admitted that the data is inconclusive so far.

Biology/Life Science/Evolution

No, we (humans) aren’t the only animals that “share”:

Sharing food has widely been considered by scholars as a defining characteristic of human behavior. But a new study by Iowa State University anthropology professor Jill Pruetz now reports that chimpanzees from her Fongoli research site in Senegal also frequently share food and hunting tools with other chimps.

Co-authored by ISU anthropology graduate student Stacy Lindshield, their study is posted online in Primates and will be published in a future issue of the journal.

The researchers witnessed 41 cases of Fongoli chimpanzees willingly transferring either wild plant foods or hunting tools to other chimpanzees. While previous research by primatologists had documented chimps transferring meat among other non-relatives, this is the first study to document non-meat sharing behavior.

Oh noes! The chimps are socialists! Ok, no politics……but I will discuss some stupidity.

Evidently some “intelligent design” types (“tarted up creationism”, according to Charles Krauthammer) got their feelings hurt when mathematician Jerry Shallit and biochemist Larry Moran gave a rather blunt (and accurate) critique of one of their videos. I was made aware of this here, and this is the ID whine here.

My beef: the ID people have done nothing to warrant being critiqued seriously.
Think of it this way: I have a Ph. D. in mathematics and a very modest publication record. But I’ve shown that I can do mathematics and get stuff accepted by the peer review process in mainstream journals.
Were I to write something up, say, on the Higgs Boson and present some off-the-wall conjecture as a model, I am plenty capable of putting the ideas in rather dense “mathematical sounding” language and ideas.

But no one would take my “contribution” seriously nor would anyone waste precious weeks to months of their professional time to comprehend what I wrote. Why? I’ve done nothing, absolutely nothing in that field what would warrant my being taken seriously.

Now were I to claim to have, say, found a non-trivial smooth knot with a trivial Jones polynomial, then yeah, someone would probably check my work, provided I didn’t claim that the example had a low number of crossings (these have already been checked).

My point: one has to establish some credibility in order to be taken seriously, and the ID proponents haven’t come within miles of doing that.
When they do something like: we predict that “you’ll find this line of mutations in this environment” or design a vaccine that works because of ID principles, then ok. Otherwise, they are merely crackpots in the park:

Humor Political and Otherwise

I sure love the Rat character in Pearls Before Swine:

To see an example of why I like Rat so much, read this customer service experience at Not Always Right. In a nutshell, someone calls the plumber. Their hot water is out….but the hot water heater is electric and electricity was out due to a storm and….well…..

If there is anything I can’t stand it is someone who is dishonest about their cheating:

see more epicfails

Hey, one of our serial adulterers (running for President) says he isn’t going to cheat anymore. So, are you going to trust him?

Speaking of candidates….snicker…

I don’t know what to make of this

see more epicfails

Oh yes, there is a new craze called “Tebowing”: that is dropping to one knee in a “prayer” position, though it looks a bit more like “the thinker” to me. Nevertheless, some of the photos are funny; there is a chimp, someone going off a diving board, etc.

Tebowing.com

This is why we call Fox News Liars…

Note where 8.6 in November is plotted, relative to the 9.0 and 8.8 at the beginning of the graph.

I suppose there is no problems here from the Republican point of view, because in their eyes, data is irrelevant.

Here is another example: the Republicans claim that Obamacare is “not paid for” even though official CBO statistics say otherwise:

I’ve noticed an odd thing in comments whenever the subject of Obamacare comes up. Many commenters scoff when I say that the Obama health reform was fully paid for; not only that, but some of them confidently assert that the Congressional Budget Office says that the reform will increase the deficit.[...]Oh, and it’s paid for year by year, too — whatever you may have heard about 10 years of taxes paying for 6 years of coverage, or whatever, they’re basically lies.

If you have heard from your favorite source of information that the CBO says that Obamacare increases the deficit, you’ve just learned how reliable your source is.

Whether the conservative media are fundamentally intellectually dishonest, intellectually retarded (in that they can never acknowledge error), stupid or just plain dishonest…it is hard to say. My guess: they see themselves as a provider of entertainment of a type.