Late evening, December 6 2011

Workout notes I got a late start and ended up running 6 miles including 8 x 440 yds on a 60-70 foot hill with a 440 yard jog back down. The hill portion took 43 minutes; I’d like to improve on that.

I just got back from a basketball game; basketball takes a bite out of my blogging. But I have some articles that I’d like to discuss; perhaps tomorrow.

It is the start of final exam week and I’ll be seeing students tomorrow.

Just so that you don’t leave this blog post disappointed:

I honestly don’t see the utility of this attire, but I am not complaining.

Note: I did a public 10K and then half marathon in Ottawa back in May of 2000, and some of the “normal” female runners (e. g. 7-8 minute a mile types) wore this type of attire. I loved it.

Cluelessness and Religion: Correlation or Causation?

Astronomy: Exoplanet: a planet like earth?

NASA has found a new planet outside Earth’s solar system that is eerily similar to Earth in important aspects.

Scientists say the temperature on the surface of the planet, known as Kepler-22b, is about a comfy 72 degrees (22 Celsius). Its star could almost be a twin of Earth’s sun. It probably has water and land.

It was found in the middle of the habitable zone, making it the best potential target for life. However, getting there would take some time: Kepler-22b is about 600 light years away (A light year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles.)

The discovery announced Monday was made by NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting telescope. This is the first time the agency has confirmed a planet outside Earth’s solar system in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold habitable zone. This is the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist. The planet is estimated to be 2.4 times the size of Earth, which would make it the smallest found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star like our sun.

Twice before astronomers have announced planets found in that zone, but neither was as promising. One was disputed; the other is on the hot edge of the zone. Kepler 22-B is the smallest and the best positioned of the more than 500 planets found to orbit stars beyond our solar system to have liquid water on its surface — among the ingredients necessary for life on Earth.

Science is interesting, huh? Well, not to everyone; in face many remain skeptical and some, downright hostile to science.
Is religion one reason why? There is some data that suggests that:

It also seems obvious that religion impedes acceptance of not just evolution, but science in general—at least that brand of science, like stem-cell research or work on global warming—that threatens religious views. That conclusion has just been buttressed by a new paper by Darren E. Sherkat in Social Science Quarterly, “Religion and scientific literacy in the United States.” Sherkat’s analysis plainly shows that even excluding issues of evolution, religion in America plays a substantial role in reducing science literacy. (I’m not sure if this paper is behind a paywall. If it is, email me and I’ll send it to you.)

Sherkat took data from the 2006 General Social Survey (GSS) collected by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) here at the University of Chicago, a survey of 4,510 randomly chosen Americans who were asked questions about their race, income, immigrant status, geographic region of residence, gender, urban or rural home, and so on. To a randomly sampled subset of 1,863 of these individuals, NORC gave a 13-question science literacy exam. Here’s what people were asked:

Surf to Jerry Coyne’s blog to find out.

But results were tabulated:

The percentage of correct answers on the science exam was strongly (and statistically significantly) affected by religious beliefs. Those who take the Bible as the literal word of God scored 54% correct, those who see the Bible as “inspired by God” got 68% correct, and those who see the Bible as a “book of fables” got 75% correct. This classification explained 13% of the total variation in science literacy. [...]

To put these figures in perspective, race accounts for 9% of the variation in science literacy, education for 20%, income 9%, and gender 4%.

Of course, I wonder if this is causation or correlation; does religion attract anti-intellectual people or does religion encourage one to become anti-intellectual?

So, what of religious liberals, say those who call themselves Christian but don’t take the Bible literally. I really wonder which miracles they cherry pick and why they choose those. Seriously.

Consider this woman:

It is easy to dismiss this obese, uneducated with missing teeth person. But one thing is sure: she understand that the Bible takes things like astrology and witchcraft very seriously. So if you don’t, then you don’t take the Bible seriously (which is a good thing, IMHO). But I wonder how much these liberal Christians really “believe”; astonishingly I have found that many of them see the world more or less as I do. I really wonder how many educated “Christians” really don’t believe in a personal deity that intervenes in the affairs of this universe.

Being Successful in the Republican Primary: be an idiot, or pretend to be one…

Workout notes
I kind of got off to a bumbling start this morning. The weights: same old, same old; I did get 8 reps with 160 in the pull down, did my dumbbell presses standing up and got 10 x 135, 4 x 170, 4 x 170 and 9 x 155 on the bench. Yes, the bench has the lower rack for emergencies, but there weren’t enough people in the gym for me to push my limits.

Swim: 10 x 100 on the 2 (slow), 18:17 for 1000, 200 cool down. There were people in the pool today. One woman was pretty fast; I couldn’t stay with her. I know; that doesn’t mean that she is fast.

Republicans
Paul Krugman is less than impressed with the Republican presidential field:

There are two crucial things you need to understand about the current state of American politics. First, given the still dire economic situation, 2012 should be a year of Republican triumph. Second, the G.O.P. may nonetheless snatch defeat from the jaws of victory — because Herman Cain was not an accident.

Think about what it takes to be a viable Republican candidate today. You have to denounce Big Government and high taxes without alienating the older voters who were the key to G.O.P. victories last year — and who, even as they declare their hatred of government, will balk at any hint of cuts to Social Security and Medicare (death panels!).

And you also have to denounce President Obama, who enacted a Republican-designed health reform and killed Osama bin Laden, as a radical socialist who is undermining American security.

So what kind of politician can meet these basic G.O.P. requirements? There are only two ways to make the cut: to be totally cynical or totally clueless

Krugman goes on to note that Mitt Romney is not a stupid man, but he plays the party base…or at least attempts to. Then Krumgan talks about Newt Gingrich:

And Mr. Gingrich has some advantages none of the previous challengers had. He is by no means the deep thinker he imagines himself to be, but he’s a glib speaker, even when he has no idea what he’s talking about. And my sense is that he’s also very good at doublethink — that even when he knows what he’s saying isn’t true, he manages to believe it while he’s saying it. So he may not implode like his predecessors.

The larger point, however, is that whoever finally gets the Republican nomination will be a deeply flawed candidate. And these flaws won’t be an accident, the result of bad luck regarding who chose to make a run this time around; the fact that the party is committed to demonstrably false beliefs means that only fakers or the befuddled can get through the selection process.

Of course, given the terrible economic picture and the tendency of voters to blame whoever holds the White House for bad times, even a deeply flawed G.O.P. nominee might very well win the presidency. But then what?

Might…maybe. But maybe not.

Off to work out in a little bit

And I might be using the public gym a bit more in the near future.

(Click on the snapshot to see the full sized photo at Girls in Yoga Pants)

That will convince me to get out there.

Knowing the Geese By Name…

Today’s walk: about 10 miles (probably a bit more); I started at the Riverplex parking lot and walked to East Peoria and around Bass Pro until the path ended (32 minutes; probably about 2.3 miles) and then walked back; I then did some around the goose loop; past the field, along the dam at the arena entrance.

But I saw the domestic goose and its friend that hangs around some Canadians as well as the white face family of 4. In short, I recognize some of the individual geese by sight…pretty sad. I hope that these geese stay away from the hunting areas.

Later: the behind the knee area hurts a bit; it might be a weather ache plus my not using orthotics for regular walking around.

Post
The main stream media can’t afford to tick off a group by appearing to be “unbalanced”. Hence Republican lies and ridiculous assertions are likely to go unchallenged.

Hence, blogs and rapid response will be more important than ever before.

Jobs

The yin: we are still adding jobs rather than losing them.

The yang: given a growing “potential work force”, we need to add a certain amount of jobs just to break even. We are right about at the break even rate right now:

(from here)

My wife had adequate warning and other topics….

She has no one but herself to blame.

There are some other funny things at this site (where I got the above from):

Here is another one my wife can relate to (albeit with the sex roles reversed)

see more Dating Fails

I’ve had a couple of these, especially in crowded high school hall ways.

And no, I’ve never carried facebook check-ins this far.

see more Dating Fails

Bloody Truth About the Bible – Fox News Video – Fox News

Watch the latest politics, entertainment and breaking news videos at FoxNews.com.

Bloody Truth About the Bible – Fox News Video -…, posted with vodpod

Satan, Santa, Gigs, Cold and Jobs…

Yes, it is better to add jobs than to lose them. But the growth is still too anemic to make a serious dent in unemployment (which is dropping…a little)

Though the economic debate is hot, much of the country (northwest mostly) is going to be cold this week. Right now Illinois is unseasonably mild and since it is on the edge of the projected map, should return to seasonable temperatures.

Humor

see more epicfails

Gossip
I found the blog “not always right” about the wacky things that some customers (or potential customers) say. I happened to enjoy this one:

Customer: “I need a new laptop. I want one better than the one I have. I want to spend no more than 600 dollars.”

(After finding out that he has a machine running Windows 98 with 512 MB of ram and 60 GB of hard drive space, I provide him several different laptop choices within his price range. They have either 3GB or 4GB of RAM, running Windows 7.)

Customer: “No, no, no! I said better! I have 512 memory, but you keep recommending only 3 and 4! Also, 7 is way lower than 98! Get me someone who knows what I mean by better!”

It isn’t the ignorance that I am laughing at; it is the attitude that this customer just “knows” that they are right and that the professional is an idiot. Yes, sales people are sometimes idiots but here…well…dumb people are often the most cocksure.

News of the hilarious
Someone was upset that some car shows wouldn’t accept his cars:

Blevins said as he pointed to cars he refinished with skulls and devil’s horns.
Blevins told News 5 his cars were banned from area car shows, [...]

So he put up a sign in front of his house praising Satan:

It’s not a light display you’d expect this time of year. “I was just horrified, horrified,” Deborah Jones said of the first time she saw the sign.

Bright red letters saying “The Devil’s Inn is closed until Judgement Day”, along with a message reading “Satan Satan Hear My Plea, Satan Satan Come To Me” illuminate the side of Highway 19-E each night.

Evidently this is too much for some of the local bumpkins:

But with a controversial message in plain sight, some who drive by don’t see it that way. “Knowing that a child could ask a parent is Satan really there? Is Satan in his home? What is a parent supposed to say to a child,” Jones told News 5 Friday.

One could tell the kids that Satan is a fictional character that less enlightened people once believed in. Really; it amazes me that people in a non-third world country would be up in arms over this. Sure, in a Muslim country this guy would probably be put to death, but we (correctly) condemn that sort of backwards behavior. So our fundies and religious whack-jobs aren’t as ignorant and backwards as those people. But we are supposed to be more advanced than that.

Jingle Bell 5K run: 2011 run finale

I didn’t know whether I wanted to do this race as this race has been a total zoo in the past (2005, 2008). This one was no exception; most of us were lined up at 9:55 (10:00 scheduled start) and the start finally went off at 10:15. Much of the crowd was chanting “Start The Race” as we stood there getting rained on (it was in the 40′s…warm for this time of year in Illinois).

Still, it was fun to kid with the other runners; Theresa and I tried to sandbag each other.

I got to the Riverplex in time to register and start some individual yoga and rotator cuff exercises at 9; at 9:30 I went outside and jogged 2 easy miles. I felt good.

But the start: I was a bit stiff at first and we did come to a halt; as usual there were way too many slow people lined up at the front (though not as high a percentage as in years past). So there was some mild broken field running but by 4-5 minutes into it I was running ok. I was breathing a bit too hard too early going up the small incline. Mile 1 came at 8:14. I stretched it out a bit and tried to concentrate on turn over. Mile 2 featured a downhill and I got that in 8:02 (16:16). This mark came just before we exited the gooseloop. But then came a small incline and I went to feeling good to feeling “OMG, I hope I don’t have to walk!” very quickly!

I told myself to focus on turnover and bending the knees. At this time my glasses fogged up; I couldn’t see the spandex of the ladies passing me during this stretch.

The last mile was kind of ugly (8:26) but I kept moving and crossed the finish line in 25:35 (my watch, 25:45 official). This was 8:14 minutes per mile which was good for 233 out of 1096. I walked a cool down mile.

This was faster than my Boo Run 5K on 22 October (25:48) and much faster than the 27:30 to 28:00 that I was running in September.

One other note: a key workout of mine has been the “Deek” 8 x 400 with 200 float and adding a final 200 to get to 5K.
In 2001, I did this workout on a track and did it in 22:35. My 5K race after that was 20:47. I ran my 5K in 92.0 percent of the time it took to do this workout. Now, I ran the same workout in 27:33 and raced (approximately) the same course as today in 25:35; this is 92.8 percent.

Some things are just consistent.

Note: I wore green tights under shorts, a red shirt and a red and white striped “Santa/Elf” hat…and I have a white beard.

About to join the unruly mob…

The Jingle Bell 5K will start in just over 2 hours. I am getting ready to leave and sign up, even though it will be a zoo (as usual) (people who don’t run races regularly will line up too far in the front, come to complete stops, etc.)

Some “fun”:

You have to be a bit of a science nerd to “get” the second one.