What they didn’t do and what they didn’t say….

Workout notes
Slept in but made the 7 am swim. 1000 in 19:38 (way slow), 5 x 100 on 2 (1:50-1:53), 3 x 100 IM.
The swim felt pleasant but wasn’t much exercise (just over 1 mile)

Mormon Practice: Baptizing the Dead
I was a bit surprised to see atheists being upset over this:

Gawker’s substantial Mormon readership has come through for us: Two readers have sent us confirmation that Edward Davies, Mitt Romney’s militantly atheist father-in-law, was indeed posthumously converted to Mormonism by his family, despite the fact that when he was alive he regarded all religions as “hogwash.”

Just to set the record straight: this is NOT lying about a “death bed conversion”; no one is claiming that this man DID anything. And no, this isn’t desecrating a burial place as nothing physical was done. (I said these two things right off of the bat because I got remarks such as these).

My question: why does any atheist care who does what ceremony in whose name? Sure, right now, I’d be a bit concerned if some religious leader condemned me to death in some spiritual sense but ONLY because some whack job might attack me. But aside from direct physical acts, who cares? Really…those nut jobs who baptized the dead are DOING NOTHING AT ALL. It is the same as some kid pretending to cast a spell or something. Really….

They didn’t say that
Though I sometimes talk politics, I don’t like it when people repeat stuff that isn’t true. One of the favorite memes of the polyester pants set is that Al Gore said that he “invented the internet”. He never said that. He was clearly talking about policy and legislation and while you might argue that he took too much credit, he clearly was not talking about “inventing it”.

But this is not a left-right issue.
Dan Quayle never intimated that people in Latin America speak Latin; this meme came from a comedian’s joke.

And no, Spandex Sarah (Sarah Palin) never said that “she could see Russia from her house” though she did (correctly) say that you can see a part of Russia from a part of Alaska. The “seeing Russia from her house” was a Tina Fey joke.
This is what she really did say (which was bad enough):

Living in a Bubble
Joe Paterno died recently. My view: he was a good coach who did a lot right (gave back to community, got his players to graduate, etc.) but what he did wrong (NOT calling the police) was inexcusable; he should have been fired IMHO. It appeared to me that he was more concerned with his job and legacy than stopping a horrendous wrong.

Nevertheless, at the funeral, you are seeing much sentiment at how Paterno was giving a raw deal (example, example)

The pro-Paterno people are living in some bubble, I think. My guess is that this will hurt them in the long run; note that this year the got the Big Ten 7′th pick (8′th if you count the Michigan Sugar Bowl team) despite their fine on the field record. Some of that was the scandal, but this type of blind loyalty to Paterno isn’t helping.

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