Sexual Crimes, Religion’s dismissal of Science and Irrelevant Issues

Workout notes Weights: same old. Differences: 4 x 30 sit ups all at the highest elevation, 5 x 170, 3 x 170, 9 x 155 bench presses, 2 sets of 9 x 125 incline, seated military 15 x 45 lbs. (2 sets); 8 x 160 on the lat pull down.
Swim: 20 x 100 on the 2 (missed the first 3, but made up the time; last 12-13 were 1:52.

Posts

Mr. Romney has some selective editing issues.

Sexual Crimes

How do people justify staying with a pedophile spouse? This is a mystery to me, but some do. Here is a Salon article about one who did (in this case, the male pedophile sexually abused a 10 year old girl.

But it isn’t just men who abuse. This is a case where a 28 year old woman met a 13 year old boy at a Christan summer camp and then seduced him, even picking him up from school to have sex with him.

Of course, the initial reaction of many males is “damn…why hasn’t that happened to me?”. Of course, this IS a serious issue that should be taken seriously, even if many of us fantasize about an attractive woman seducing us and having her way with us.

Yes, this rape (and that is what it is; the kid is underage) can be very damaging in the long term. But sex and sexually related stuff is often difficult to discuss rationally; emotions run high.

Here is a case in which someone “on the left” gets it wrong. Background: Jon Huntsman referred to Herman Cain’s latest revelation (that he had a long running extramarital affair) a “bimbo eruption”. This struck someone the wrong way:

But in reiterating his remarks after the allegations of a decade long extramarital affair with Ginger White, Huntsman then stated, “We’ve got real issues to talk about not the latest bimbo eruption.”

Republicans defend the remark, saying it’s just a reference to the allegations of affairs that were plaguing former President Bill Clinton during his political career. But regardless, doesn’t calling all the women involved in both cases “bimbos” just continue to reek of the victim blaming and tarnishing that often accompanies the claims of a woman who said she has been harassed or assaulted?

Uh, no. Mr. Huntsman was referring to Mr. Cain’s affair and not the sexual harassment. Yes, sexual harassment is serious and involves a victim. But the affair was consensual; the woman was hardly a “victim”. The author of this article is conflating the two completely different situations.

Of course, I am still think that, for the most part, the Republican field consists of mostly sad sacks and clowns (Mr. Romney did a competent job in Massachusetts, Mr. Huntsman is a smart, accomplished man; the rest are what I said…). The German magazine Spiegel is rather harsh..but accurate:

A Club of Liars, Demagogues and Ignoramuses

Africa is a country. In Libya, the Taliban reigns. Muslims are terrorists; most immigrants are criminal; all Occupy protesters are dirty. And women who feel sexually harassed — well, they shouldn’t make such a big deal about it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the US Republicans. Or rather, to the twisted world of what they call their presidential campaigns. For months now, they’ve been traipsing around the country with their traveling circus, from one debate to the next, one scandal to another, putting themselves forward for what’s still the most powerful job in the world. [...]

They lie. They cheat. They exaggerate. They bluster. They say one idiotic, ignorant, outrageous thing after another. They’ve shown such stark lack of knowledge — political, economic, geographic, historical — that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein and even cause their fellow Republicans to cringe.

“When did the GOP lose touch with reality?” wonders Bush’s former speechwriter David Frum in New York Magazine. In the New York Times, Kenneth Duberstein, Ronald Reagan’s former chief-of-staff, called this campaign season a “reality show,” while Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan confidante Peggy Noonan even spoke of a “freakshow.”

That may be the most appropriate description.[...]

But hey, maybe that is being unfair to the Republicans as a whole. After all, Congressional Republicans are going to be hard on those millionaires:

They just can’t help themselves:

In addition, Senate Republican leaders would go after “millionaires and billionaires,” not by raising their taxes but by making them ineligible for unemployment compensation and food stamps and increasing their Medicare premiums.

I mean, there are lots of millionaires on food stamps, right?

The Republican media is on top of the situation; one of their latest issues is to take (the former Republican) governor of Rhode Island to task for calling his tree a “holiday tree”.

But…Americans aren’t alone.
I’ve wondered why we got stuck with creationists. Well, there are some Muslim students in the U. K. who boycott lectures on evolution. I don’t know whether to take comfort that other industrial countries are stuck dealing with these morons too, or to be appalled that so many are out there.

Just for the heck of it…to remind myself that we still have our own morons:

Polite is not the same as good!

Yes, I agree that politeness can be good; it is good to let the person ahead of you merge in traffic, or to open the door for someone, etc. But being a polite person really isn’t the same as being a good person; bigotry with a smile is still bigotry. Superstition with a smile is still superstition.

GROAN……or is it PURRRR….

Too “groan worthy” for words….

(click the thumbnail to see the original at Why Evolution is True)

Mitt Romney Debating Himself (thank you, Jon Huntsman!)

Workout notes 6 mile run after yoga (clear sky, mild wind, but subfreezing); I had to remind myself to lift my knees.

Politics

Hmmm. It is one thing to change your mind. It is another thing to lie about never changing your mind after you have changed it, many times.

Of course, we have Michelle Bachmann who said that when she said that “she’d close our Iranian embassy” (which hasn’t existed since 1980), she meant that if we had an embassy, we should close it.

Politics: Michelle Bachmann helps set the bar low for Newt Gingrich

Maureen Dowd has this hilarious column in the New York Times:

What does it say about the cuckoo G.O.P. primary that Gingrich is the hot new thing? Still, his moment is now. And therein lies the rub.

As one commentator astutely noted, Gingrich is a historian and a futurist who can’t seem to handle the present. He has more exploding cigars in his pocket than the president with whom he had the volatile bromance: Bill Clinton.

But next to Romney, Gingrich seems authentic. Next to Herman Cain, Gingrich seems faithful. Next to Jon Huntsman, Gingrich seems conservative. Next to Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, Gingrich actually does look like an intellectual. Unlike the governor of Texas, he surely knows the voting age. To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, if brains were elastic, Perry wouldn’t have enough to make suspenders for a parakeet.

In presidential campaigns, it’s all relative.

She goes on to simply take him apart for all of the ridiculous things he has done. But right now, I’ll focus on the stupidity in the GOP field…and how they typify the typical Republican: they are too stupid to even recognize their own ignorance!

Today’s target with be Michelle Bachmann. Sure, she has little or no chance:

For the record, Obama is at 50.5, Romney at 22.0 and Gingrich is now at 20.0. But Bachmann trails people that aren’t even running!

Nevertheless, she is supposed to be a “serious” candidate.

So let’s see: she claims that she has never said “anything inaccurate” in the debates. This is laughably wrong.

Well, now she is saying that she would close the US Embassy in Iran. One problem: we don’t have one.

What is troubling is that being this ignorant is, well, normal for a Republican.

Remember that she isn’t some moron with an obscure blog; she is running for the top spot of her party, and evidently SOMEONE is backing her.

Of course, she isn’t alone. Republican candidate Rick Santorum is whining about public schools not teaching creationism as an alternative theory to evolution:

During a meeting with the editorial board of the Nashua Telegraph, Rick Santorum urged public schools to begin teaching claims that undermine evolution, no matter their scientific veracity. He blamed “the left and the scientific community, so to speak,” for the inability of schools to teach about the role of God or a Creator, and said that “maybe the science points to the fact that maybe science doesn’t explain all these things.”

Note: if he were on the left, he’d be (rightly) dismissed as a crackpot. But he is completely in the mainstream among Republicans, at least on this issue.

On another note
This New York Times article discusses why presidential primaries are much harder to predict than general elections. Upshot: the candidates are rarely at a great funding disadvantage by the time they win their party’s nominations and they have the time to get well known and to get their message out. That isn’t always the case in primaries, though, perhaps, we might be seeing a change in that in this new internet age.

Cool sounds and Cynicism

A Fun NPR Post: NPR has this cool little article about sounds that you may have heard a long time ago (e. g., the sound of a rotary phone dialing, or the sound of a manual typewriter) versus the type of sounds you’d hear today.

Am I cynical?

This reminds me of the photo: “How to Spot a Rich Guy”

Politics and Cynicism
It sure appears this way to me at times:

As I teacher, I learn more from my students than they do from me….NOT!!!

Bill Maher

“New Rule: Any teacher that says, ‘I learn as much from my students as they learn from me,’ is a sh***y teacher and must be fired.” – Bill Maher

I laughed pretty hard at this…and though it is supposed to be a comic line, I agreed with it. But of course, this drew the ire of many “teachers” (not all). On facebook I said this:

Yeah…..fortunately I teach in a university mathematics department and if someone complains about a bad grade, I can always show them their final exam and ask “do you want this person designing the bridge that you are driving over?”

Seriously, I think that the starry eyed mushbrains that mutter such claptrap should be operated on by surgeons who taught their medical school professors more than they learned and they should fly on planes that are piloted by pilots who taught more than they learned in pilot school.

Of course, I got responses such as this one:

think you need to try traching or being with young children to understand the idea conveyed. Like in UU Sunday school. -from a mushy-headed liberal who also likes math

That’s stupid.

I never said that teachers “don’t learn anything” when they teach; for example they (hopefully) become better teachers. At times, one can review a subject and go deeper when one prepares lessons; once in a while a good question might spark some thought or other research. Yes, I enjoy the interaction with students…though not with this type of student:

Some students: I can feel my brain cells dying when I interact with them! As for the “student” in this example: about the only thing I might learn from interaction with this student is that dumb, ignorant people often find their way into college. But I already know that!

But getting back to the saying: let’s get real. When I teach differential equations, the students start with near zero knowledge and leave with (hopefully) with some basic knowledge. I hope that they learned considerably more than I did!!!

Now about the little kids: well, think about it. When they are very small, they can’t do much more than suck and fill up their diapers. Now think about them 17-18 years later…..BIG change, right? Now what about the parents and those that taught them? Sure they learned stuff, perhaps a lot of stuff along the way. But I would hope that it was the kid that underwent the more radical change; i. e. learned more!

That gets me to another topic my responder identified herself as a mushbrained liberal. I agree with at least half of that assessment. To me, being liberal means doing things like questioning well established aphorisms, including those that are popular with the group that you hang out with. Also, words have meaning…”learn as much” means, well, “as much”. Now had the teacher said “I learn from almost every time I teach”, well, I’d agree with that.

Booing at Football Games…

Workout notes
Today’s workout went ok; 4 miles on the track in 44:05. 13:08 warm up mile, 11:04 (twice: 3 laps hard, 1 easy), 10:38 (twice: 3 laps hard, 1 easy), 9:13 final mile (hard). Legality: I didn’t lift; not strong enough to. Left knee: probably legal. Right knee….let’s change the subject.

Then I swam 2200 yards; 5 x 100 free (rests), 10 x (25 free, 25 back), 10 x (25 fist, 25 free), 200 pull, 50 paddle, 200 pull, 50 paddle, 2 x 100 IM. The fly sets went ok.

I was pleased with this one!

Sports
Yes, there were some boos at the last Rams game I attended. Evidently, it takes some getting used to:

The way things have been going lately at the Edward Jones Dome, maybe it’s a good thing the Rams are playing their next two games on the road, because the natives are restless. Very, very restless.

[...]

Boos cascaded down from the stands early and often during Sunday’s wrenching 23-20 loss to the Arizona Cardinals. Coach Steve Spagnuolo says he doesn’t always hear the boos when he has the headsets on during games. But he understands the fans’ displeasure.

“I’d rather have that than people not caring,” Spagnuolo said. “I want to thank the fans for their passion, and I mean that sincerely. I know with that it goes both ways. Frustration and disappointment, and their reactions to that. I understand it. I get it.”

[...]

“It’s frustrating,” quarterback Sam Bradford said. “It drives me nuts. I understand it. I understand the fans are frustrated. I understand that they expected and want more out of us. I can tell them that I expect and want more out of this offense — 10 times more than they do.

“With as much work as we put into it, we think that we should be able to come out here and execute at a much higher level. When you get booed in the first half and you continue to get booed in the second half, it’s not a good feeling. It’s something that I really wish wouldn’t happen.”

But many of the younger Rams, even veterans who have joined the team in the last year or two, don’t understand the depth of the fans’ frustration. It runs much deeper than what’s happening this season.

Basically, the Rams had an excellent run from 1999 to 2004 and then hit a thud. But in 2010, it appeared that they had turned it around; they missed the playoffs on the last game of the regular season. Now they are 2-9.

My thoughts: sure, a fan at an NFL game has every right to boo; the prices are high enough and the coaches and players make a ton of money.

But I don’t boo; perhaps the reason is that I don’t live vicariously through the teams that I follow. Yes, I enjoy watching them and when I watch a team frequently, I find myself pulling for them. But mostly I go to the games because I like high level football; the NFL is as high as it gets. I cheer, but I feel no need to boo, unless I think that an official missed a call.

Note: I have tickets for the Bengals and 49′ers games too. That is the one “good” thing about the team not playing well: tickets are cheap. Hopefully, I’ll see a couple of upsets. Ok, probably not.