Snowe Job and Parker’s blistering of Limbaugh…among other things

Workout notes
I slept in and woke up in time to make the 7 am swim prior to work; I got in 2200 yards of mostly “play”: 500 of 25 back, 25 free, 500 of 50 side, 50 free, 500 of 25 fist, 25 free, 500 of 25 fly, 75 free, 200 cool down. I got in my rotator cuff exercises at home.

Note: the woman next to me wore a new, tighter swim suit. I liked that.

Personal note
I am busier with students this semester; the good news is that I am some motivated science students who want to learn the math (though some aren’t naturally talented in it). But it is forcing me to be a bit more efficient with my time.

Posts
I just joined Twitter; a Carl Zimmer post alerted me to the fact that, in some humans (only a few), codeine is turned into morphine and this can be passed into breast milk. A nursing mother had her baby die because of this (her milk was found to contain morphine and she had been taking Tylenol with codeine (Tylenol III)

But Twitter can be a double edged sword for celebrities. Miley Cyrus tweeted a Lawrence Krauss statement and got some backlash because the statement implied that humans had a natural origin instead of a divine one. There is a problem when one has a less than intellectual fan base.

Speaking of celebrities Many NBA players are supporting President Obama; I knew there was a reason I liked basketball!

Churches
It is no secret that Mormonism has a racist past; their holy text says that dark skins are a curse from a deity and until the 1970′s, a black male couldn’t hold the “priesthood” (an office that males in good standing get). This policy was changed by a “revelation” (they hold that the church president is a prophet). Well, a Mormon scholar was very vocal in his defense of this policy.

Here is the rub: the LDS church views their president as a prophet, so Mormons can’t say “we humans got this wrong”; they are boxed into trying to explain why “The Lord” didn’t permit it. A top down structure has its drawbacks.

Kathleen Parker’s BRUTAL snark on Rush Limbaugh
Yes, Limbaugh’s calling out a college student as a “slut” for wanting to testify about access to birth control managed to outrage many. Kathleen Parker (a conservative) had a few things to say, many of which I disagreed with (e. g., “this is against my religion” is not a reason to modify public policy). But her slam of Mr. Limbaugh was EPIC:

Inadvertently, Limbaugh also helped advance the argument from the left that Republicans are waging a war against women. After referring to Fluke as a “slut” and a “prostitute,” he offered the following proposition:

“So, Miss Fluke, and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives . . . we want something for it. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”

The image suggested is equally degrading to Limbaugh, given his obvious familiarity with “watching,” and invites unflattering speculation. To wit: It is entirely possible that Limbaugh himself never needed contraception in college, but virtue in the absence of opportunity is hardly a moral triumph.

Emphasis mine. Note: NOW, Mr. Limbaugh would never lack for female company; no wealthy man would.

Snowe Job
Senator Olympia Snowe explains that she is leaving the Senate, in part due to the partisan atmosphere made it difficult to get anything done.
This would have been more convincing had she said that SHE was part of the problem because SHE went along with so many filibusters.
Also, some of her compromise proposals were minimal tweaks of little consequence (almost symbolic), to say the least; sort of putting sweetener in one’s tea while ordering pie and ice cream.

Simplistic Conservatives
This is what passes as an argument among conservatives:

Well, nature culls the old, sick and lame from the population and natural selection works against the latter two. So some of us want human society to be more compassionate than that (though I’ll admit that there ARE a certain percentage of no-good-for-nothing slackers).