New Yellow Highlighting!

After at least a couple of years of adding no new yellow highlighting to my bicycling maps -- which means I hadn't been on any new roads -- I get to add some today! I wanted to try the brand new Legacy Trail from downtown out to the horse park. So went through Ft. Harrods Park and picked up the Beaumont walking trails and then cut through the baseball park to come out on Parkers Mill. Took that in to Versailles Rd (bike lane from Alexandria in a few blocks), then in to the new Oliver Lewis Way (bike lane) and onto Newtown Pike, which I was surprised to find had a bike lane the whole way out to the Northside YMCA on Loudon Ave, where I picked up the trailhead.

I guess that the 10 or so strips of orange tape blocking the trail in the 1st 50 or so yards should have told me that the trail was not open yet. Oops. Another biker told me that the official opening is next Sunday. There were definitely quite a few "Oh shit" moments due to the ongoing construction. But, made it through OK to the trail's end at the entrance to the Kentucky Horse Park Campground, 14.8 miles from my house.

It looks like Legacy Trail is going to connect with other trails in Coldstream. This is a great addition for bikers and walkers. Now I just need something similar to get me downtown :( I wouldn't want to try Versailles Rd during any daylight hours other than what I just did, 9:15 Sunday morning.

Came back Ironworks Pike to Yarnallton (50 yards on Georgetown Rd) to Elkchester. 34.4 miles, 2 stops, 2h45m, a beautiful cool morning.

Herald Leader had another article on the billionaires who created the Tea Party movement. Here's the FB post:

Some good historical background. Ultra-rich industrialists who have zero use for things like environmental protection, workplace safety, workers rights, unemployment insurance, or social security have been funneling mass quantities of $$$ to "grass roots" groups to fight "big government" since 1934. I think owning Fox News has put them over the top this go-round.

The article mentions The John Birch Society. Man, I hadn't thought of that in prolly 40 years. Of course, I will now be unable to get this song out of my head all day.

Also posted to FB: a nice Roger Ebert post. "Put Up or Shut Up" -- not likely. As I've already observed, Palin and Glenn Dick are making 10s of millions of $$$ just being outraged from the sidelines. Altho, I did see in an article on Dick as huckster, charlatan, and recovering alcoholic which said that he has booked the largest auditorium in Alaska for 9/12/2011. A Dick-Palin presidential ticket? Too good to be true.

Also posted a link to Christopher Hitchens' review of Glenn Dick's rally: "large, vague, moist, and undirected—the Waterworld of white self-pity".

Listening to new The New Pornographers album "Together" now. Also recently got John Legend "Evolver" 2008; india.arie "Acoustic Soul" 2001. The new Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers "Mojo" has some very tasty and creative guitar work on it. New Arcade Fire "The Suburbs" not doing too much for me.

Also went back and harvested the best Rolling Stones albums: "Beggars Banquet", "Let It Bleed", and "Sticky Fingers". Man, I think I've played pretty much every one of these at one time or other.

One I've always enjoyed doing is "Prodigal Son". I was thinking about it, I think that was a parable from the new testament, yes? So, the story is, a young man leaves home to seek his fortune, doesn't do so well, goes back home to a royal welcome from his father. So far so good, yes? Youthful ambition, hardships, parental love -- real human stories and emotions.

But then, if remember correctly, none other than JC himself follows up with "so this is just the way that god is happy when a sinner returns to him". Oops. Real human stories and emotions now followed by meaningless religious blather.

So the thing that I find so annoying in modern religious ceremonies -- shoehorning god in where he has no business (wait, that's everywhere, isn't it) -- goes back to Jebus himself. Well, I guess he was a pretty religious guy after all, not just a champion of rights for the downtrodden.

Teabagger Weekend, Part Deux

So I posted to Facebook (guilty) a nice analysis of Glenn Dick's "we're not racists" rally by Christopher Hitchens.

I received a negative comment from my musician friend Max Corona. I would like to respond to two of his statements.

"Our country is in the toilet." -- Well, W. must have forgot to flush.

Rush Blowhard and Glenn Dick were calling for Obama's impeachment on his first day of office. I was taught that patriotic Americans get behind every new president, regardless of party, and give them at least a little chance to pull the country together and lead -- say 90 days.

But not our super-patriots, no sir! They're making 10s of millions of $$$ shouting at people and making them angry, they're not going to let something as unimportant as the future of our country get in the way of their income. In 1992 Rush Blowhard was the same way with Clinton: he called for his impeachment the day Clinton was inaugurated.

"People have had enough" -- enough of what, exactly?

Obama is fighting, fighting, fighting to get us out of the hole Bush left us in. Time and time again he tried to get input from everyone involved and got nothing but complete and 100% obstructionism from the Republicans. So again, enough of what?

If it's "enough" of the Fox News "outrage of the day", do yourself a favor and stop watching Fox News. It is 100% and completely a propaganda organ of the Republican Party. The president of Fox News, Roger Ailes, was media consultant for Nixon, Reagan, and Bush #1, and is currently considered to be the most powerful Republican in the US. The Wikipedia article says he may run for president in 2012, but, why would he? Like Glenn Dick and Sarah "Hooked on Phonics" Palin (aka "The Quitter"), it's much easier to sit on the sidelines, get outraged once a day, make 10s of millions a year, and not have to actually serve your country.

I was having lunch yesterday with a very bright young architect. Fox News was on the TV -- the blonde who looks like she just bit into a really sour pickle (I wonder if they get sneering lessons from Darth Cheney? Didn't his mother tell him his face would get stuck if he kept screwing it up like that?). "If Fox News won't make you mad, nothing will." was his offhanded comment -- how true, and how sad for this country.

I hear that MSNBC is bad the other way -- so don't watch them either. During the election (the only time I watch TV news), I watched CNN, and they had both liberal and conservative commentators -- seemed fair to me. But their ratings greatly trail both Fox and MSNBC -- the analysis being, people don't want both sides, they just want their side :-(

Response over. Back to Glenn Dick's "we're not racists" rally. They really did do an admirable job of toning everything down. I already discussed two of its themes: "christian", which excludes me along with probably half of the immigrants to the US in the last 20 years; and "values of the founding fathers", which basically translates to state rights, which make it much easier for the hereditary capitalist oligarchs (aka old money) to control things and keep their sacred traditions, such as slavery, safe from "northern aggression".

Their third theme was "Honor the military". Two of my brothers served, and all our hearts go out completely to those with family members currently fighting for the US. That said, I'm betting that former Haliburton CEO Darth Cheney still has major influence in Republican circles -- can you say, "military-industrial complex" -- against which we were warned by the man who coined the term, former general and Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower?

Did you know that the military budget of the US is currently almost as much as the rest of the world combined? That's it's 10 times that of China?

Boy, won't it be great to get the Neoconservatives back in control?

One thing's for sure tho, if the jobless rate does not go down, Obama probably will not be reelected. Hard times tend to bring out the worst in people. I recently read one of the saddest and scariest stories I've read in a while in "The Year's Best Science Fiction (27th Annual Collection)": "Escape to Other Worlds With Science Fiction", by Jo Walton. The Axis wins WW2, the Great Depression never ends, and we can't betray each other fast enough :-(

Much as I'd love to blast them, I don't think I can blame the slow recovery on Republicans or capitalist oligarchs. I saw yesterday that there are over 10 million unoccupied houses in the US now. We really, really did overbuild in the last boom. And real estate is usually what leads us out of a recession. Oops.

I wonder how many homeless there are in the US? As of 2008, looks like tops of 2.5 million. So there are 4x vacant houses as there are homeless in the US??? Maybe the homeless numbers are much worse with all the foreclosures? I wouldn't think so, I would think most of those people went back to rental properties more within their means, but, with the high unemployment, maybe not?

Hmmm, maybe we need to see if we can get some more Mexicans up here to soak up that surplus housing? Or maybe sub-Saharan Africans? Or, even better, some Indonesian Moslems?

To capture another post I made to FB, I was starting to worry that I wouldn't get to rant about the ultra-rich any more, what with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet talking half of the richest people in the US into leaving much of their money to charity. But then, saved by the Koch Brothers! Thanks guys! Eat the rich, oh yeah, eat the rich -- the flesh is sooo nicely marbled!

Teabagger Weekend

You can tell it's a big Teabagger weekend. Riding my bike I saw a pickup truck flying the stars and bars (in addition to the stars and stripes). 9/12 driving to Naples we saw 2 or 3 40-50 foot confederate flags flying. But teabaggers aren't racist, no sir, not at all. They want to "return to the values of the founding fathers" -- and if half of the founding fathers happened to be slave owners, no biggie.

I say, enough of such half-ass measures, let's return to the values of the barons who forced King John to sign the Magna Carta! Why regress to 18th century values when we can regress to 13th century values? Now you're talking!

I laugh when conservatives talk about "the values of the founding fathers", as if these guys were able to foresee the evolution of the US and the world for centuries to come. They were revolutionaries, steering by the seat of their pants. They didn't know how things were going to turn out. And if something didn't work, they tried something else. Duh. I believe that they would be very pleasantly surprised at how their great experiment is turning out.

I think that appeals to "the values of the founding fathers" are code for "state rights". And, frankly, for many, many things, state rights are not the way to go, because, it's too easy to buy a state government.

That's why Random Paul's assertion that coal mine regulation and inspection should be handled completely locally makes you want to cry. The coal barons own the governments of those counties, the chances that they're going to "do the right thing" when it conflicts with their margins are slim to none.

Here's another example, from USA Today: "Study: Drinking water polluted by coal-ash dump sites".

The electric power industry is lobbying to keep regulation up to individual states, but environmental groups argue states have failed to protect the public and EPA should set and enforce a national standard.

Much easier to buy state officials than it is Feds.

Another of the teabagger code words is "christian values". This is just a way to exclude newer non-christian immigrants from Africa and the near and far east. In the 19th century, the WASP majority used their catholicism as an excuse to exclude Irish, Italian and German immigrants. Same old tricks. To quote Bob Dylan, 1963:

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
"You got more than blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you been born with white skin" they explain
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

You keep hoping that as older conservative reactionary types die off, these old reactionary attitudes will die off with them. I smile when I'm out biking Sunday mornings and see church parking lots filled with 90% white-hairs. And, we are making progress, we did elect Barack Obama. But, the powers-that-be, the good old boys, the ones born with the silver spoons in their mouths and their dupes, will not give up, and we can't either.

Cooper's Hawk in the Bird Bath

This summer has definitely been miserable hot. Apparently the resident avian predator of our neighborhood thought so too. I took the picture from in the house, zoomed (note the screen). I was sure if I tried to get outside to take it he would fly off. He flew off anyway about a minute after I took the picture. He was buzzed by grackles twice in that period.

The bird bath is 21 inches across, so I would make the hawk like 17 inches from beak to the end of the tail, wingspan maybe 28 inches.

I searched the blog for "hawk", we first saw the Cooper's Hawk Thanksgiving of 2007. I wonder if it's the same bird or a descendant. Cool. Cornell Lab Of Ornithology has a great bird book, which says oldest known Cooper's Hawk was 20 years and 4 months old -- so I'd guess that it's the same bird.

Hmmm, the article says that if you don't want the hawk using your bird feeders as a hunting ground to take them down for a few days and the hawk will "move on". I doubt that would work. I've seen this guy all over our neighborhood, we'd probably all have to coordinate to get him to move on. Plus, seems like he lives here, just as we do. Oh well. The article says he mostly likes bigger birds and lists starlings first, so more power to him.

It Would Never Have Worked

I thought I had blogged on this before but couldn't find anything. Oh well.

The wife and I saw "Inception" last night. Very nice, good acting, nice pacing, wonderful logical consistency. A bit of a thinker, but no where near the mental tickle of "Mememto".

But, it just didn't quite work for me because: the wonderfully complex plan that gets carried out was way too complex to ever have succeeded on the first try.

Think about playing Mousetrap as a kid. It never worked right the first time. You always had to tweak this, nudge that.

In the mid-80s, scientists almost universally opposed Reagan's Star Wars missile defense system because there would have no way to test the fabulously complex software. Maybe now you we have enough computing power that you simulate it, but, still, who is willing to trust that?

In some ways, it's Intelligent Design vs. Evolution. The Intelligent Design is bound to forget things, need tweaking, want some do-overs. Evolution just keeps on keepin' on, if it lives fine, otherwise, au revoir Pee-wee.

I think that this is a cognitive illusion, akin to the one that "at some point the roads should be done", where we just don't want to admit that the roads always need maintenance. We want to believe that incredibly elaborate plans can be executed perfectly the first time, and normally they can't. Hence the many incremental steps towards the 1st moon landing.

Surprisingly Cool

Biked this morning 8:30 to 11:10. Surprisingly cool breezes even towards the end. 33.6 miles, top speed 35.9 mph (???). Delaney Ferry to James to McGee to Shannawood to Dry Ridge to Scott Ferry. Back in McCracken Pike, Huntertown, and Parkers Mill.

On Dry Ridge, saw a red-headed woodpecker. The white bar on their lower back and wings is really striking. Then I saw 3 of them in a tree, squabbling with 4 kingbirds. Both of these I've only seen further out in the countryside, and this was the first time I'd seen either species flocking. The bird book says that kingbirds get their name from being very territorial and aggressive and attacking larger birds, even crows -- the woodpeckers are slightly larger than they are.

Sin #4: Hampering The Use Of Birth Control Worldwide

Man, I started this series February 6 and here it is July 17 -- must be as boring to me as it is to you. Regardless, we have made it to the final installment.

It used to be mostly the catholic church, with its third world "breed, baby, breed" strategy for keeping its numbers up, that was the primary opponent of birth control.

But, the American neo-puritan/conservatives decided to get in on the act too. And, shocker, the Bush administration's decision to quit distributing condoms worldwide and instead distributing information on abstinence-based birth control (oxymoron?) has led to a resurgence of AIDS in Africa.

I also find the posters "We'll wait until we're married" that you see in Tennessee a hoot. Horny youngsters get married too young so they can have sex, greatly increasing their chances of divorce. Family values, my ass.

I've always found it interesting that the "Right to Breed" is so fundamental that it is nowhere in the constitution or law that I know of. The Chinese, with their one child per family policy of the last few decades, are the only case I know of a government limiting that right. We should probably make "Idiocracy" required viewing for all DINK yuppies. Actually, I think that there are enough genes for smartness spread throughout the gene pool that smart people will come from every economic strata, racial group, etc -- so I really don't worry about "Idiocracy". But, we all need to slow down before we pass the carrying capacity of the earth, if we haven't already (says the guy with 4 kids).

A couple of weeks ago I was at the catholic funeral mass for my mother's sister, the last of her generation. The priest was not a good speaker, and, increasingly, I find the religious blather dished out to be completely incomprehensible:

When she was alive, Ann loved you as a mother and as a wife. Now in heaven, she loves you as god loves you, with divine love. This is a much greater love than any earthly love. So she now loves you much more than she did when she was living.

????? Where the fuck do they get this stuff? Do they just completely pull it out of their ass? They take something real, human and wonderful -- motherly and wifely love, both probably based at least in part on the hormone oxytocin -- and render it meaningless by throwing in non sequitur assertions based on nonsense.

It is hard to lose loved ones. But we all die, and that's the end of it. They live on in us in our genes and/or in the lessons (memes) that they passed to us in their lives.

Mythos

Biking at 8:15, not quite as humid, but still got an earache and sore throat after 1/2 hour, so pollen must be bad. Finally went north, Van Meter to Redd to Old Frankfort to Browns Mill to Leestown to Weizenberger Mill (pic) to Payne's Depot to Pisgah and back in Military Pike. 29 miles, 2h20m, 1 stop. After cooldown and shower, in to Louisville for jambalaya at Joe's OK Bayou and then swimming with Uncle Bruce.

On Payne's Depot, saw some young turkey buzzards. Young because:

1. They let me get within 10 ft of them, and then they hopped off of the fence instead of flying away. Closest I've ever gotten to a turkey buzzard.
2. They were .60-.75 of the size of an adult turkey buzzard.
3. They still had pinfeathers on their heads, they weren't completely bald.

They're not as ugly as adult buzzards, but, they're getting there.

So on to the movie review. We saw "Winter's Bone" at the Kentucky Friday night. This was apparently the indie darling of Sundance, and, given that it's about crank cookers in the Ozarks of southern Missouri, one wonders why.

So the plot is, the unstoppable 17 YO heroine, who is taking care of her two younger siblings and her mostly catatonic mother, must find her crank-cooking father because he has used the family homestead as bond and if he misses his court date, they will lose it all -- and he appears to have gone missing.

So what is it about this movie? The acting is great -- the actress playing the 17 YO heroine is from Louisville, and she is unstoppable. And apparently, you don't have to have been in Eastern KY or the rural poverty center of your choice for it to have affected you, so here's my theory.

*** Spoiler Alert ***

This story is completely mythic. It could have been a Greek myth, a Norse myth, or a Grimm Brothers fairy tale. The young girl searches for her missing father to save her family. And the clannish, tribal nature of life out in in the Ozark hollers is completely wired into our lizard brains.

When the heroine gets beat up to discourage her from trying to talk to the pater familias of the head clan, the women do the damage. No man touches her, because that would require the men of her clan to seek retribution.

And when she finally gets to see the grandpa of the rival clan, he comes out, 70 YO, 6 ft tall, still barrel-chested, wearing a giant cowboy hat and a vest completely covered with badges, emblems and tokens!!! He is the tribal headman/shaman, completely channeling Odin the All-Father or Jehovah the Murderer of Children. I've got to see that scene again.

The poster for the movie in the lobby showed people in a boat. So it's getting towards the end of the movie, I'm wondering, where's the boat? But, of course, they save the crossing of the River Styx for the last.

This is The Old Ways. This is the clans of Scotland 500 years ago, or Scandinavia 1000 years ago, or the savannahs of Africa 100,000 years ago.

I really wonder if the writer and director realized they were tapping into such primal stuff, or if they were just telling the story as it came. I think the latter, but to me, they subconsciously must have opened a huge vein directly into the deep archetypes of our species. C.G. Jung would be proud! So, Joe Bob sez, check it out! I will second the 5 star rating it got in the Herald-Leader.

Random Paul: I R A Medical Certifying Board!

Per today's Herald-Leader, Random Paul doesn't like that The American Board of Ophthalmology is grandfathering in older diplomates (who were given undated certificates) such that they don't have to recertify (but he does).

I was Director of Information Systems at the American Board of Family Practice (now the American Board of Family Medicine) from 1980 to 1986. I acted as a computer consultant to the American Board of Radiology from 1984 to 1999. So I know something about this stuff.

The American Board of Family Medicine is one of newest -- I think that only the American Board of Emergency Medicine is newer. ABFM was founded here in Lexington in 1969. It was the first board to the require recertification. Diplomates -- those completing the certification procedure, which includes a multi-year residency program and written examination -- were given a dated certificate by ABFM, with an expiration date 7 years after the exam. The diplomates normally recertified on a 6 year cycle.

The older boards (some of whom also did oral examinations) have gradually added recertification, and pretty much all grandfathered in their diplomates who had originally been given an undated certificate. They really didn't have much choice in the matter, there were legal issues -- like if the state gave you a 4 year driver's license and then came back after 2 years and said "Sorry, you need to renew now."

The 20 something specialty boards are all members of the American Board of Medical Specialities (ABMS). They vigorously police their residency programs and their certification procedures, because they need to prove that they are a value-add -- which, from working with them, I believe they are.

So, Random Paul thinks it is SO unfair that he has to recertify, and older diplomates don't, that he founds his own medical certification board??? He's president, his wife's vice-president, his father-in-law's secretary??? As opposed to the medical boards I have worked with, there the board members and officers are all nationally recognized experts in the specialty.

And probably, this is some kind of "matter of principle" ??? In The Highest Libertarian Tradition???

The man is a nut-job. If he wants to form "The American Board of Nut-Jobs" and certify himself, I am totally behind that.

This is teabagger thinking at its finest: "I don't like it, I'm mad as hell, I don't care about reason, logic, or any kind of common sense. I'm going to take my ball and go home" -- good riddance.

Flame off ...

Back in the Saddle Again

Finally biked after a 2 month hiatus. 28 miles to Pauls Mill Rd prolly a little much. (Tiger)Lilies blooming everywhere, and, on US 33 just north of Troy, a Baltimore Oriole burst out of the foliage and paced me for a few seconds. Black and bright orange, amazing! I have only seem one of those once before, on Leestown Rd about 7-8 years ago, I think.

Orange tiger lilies and the oriole, I almost titled this "Orange" and dedicated it to my son.

I started at 8:45, it was already way humid. I did the 28 miles in ~2h20m, with a longish stop on Pauls Mill Rd. That is such a pretty road, and, when you first turn onto it off of US 33, it has a stretch where it looks flat, but you pick up speed coasting, so it's obviously downhill?!?!?

I made probably 15-20 shifting errors, but none of them were horrible. I guess that's to be expected after the long layoff.

I still haven't biked north and west -- when I was biking in April Keeneland was running so was biking south only. But can't bike south next week -- "Brains for Jebus - The Musical", aka the Icthyus Christian Music Festival, will be down that way next weekend. So next weekend I'll head north out Van Meter.

Second in a Series

Jebus is OK!!! He's in this guy's lung!!! Phew, what a relief!!!

The full story is available here.

May 28: Happy Birthday to Science!

From "What's New", the newsletter of Robert L. Park, professor emeritus at U of Maryland and noted skeptic:

1. BIRTH OF SCIENCE: NEXT FRIDAY, MAY 28, SCIENCE WILL BE 2,595 YEARS OLD.

On May 28, 585 B.C. the swath of a total solar eclipse passed over the Greek island of Miletus. The early Greek philosopher, Thales of Miletus, alone understood what was happening. The world's first recorded freethinker, Thales rejected all supernatural explanations, and used the occasion to state the first law of science: every observable effect has a physical cause. The 585 B.C. eclipse is now taken to mark the birth of science, and Thales is honored as the father. What troubles would be spared the world if the education of every child began with causality? We might, for example, have been spared the absurd cell phone/cancer myth.

You can subscribe to "What's New" here:

http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnew&A=1

Facebook = not

So if I post something fabulous to my blog and get no response, no problem.

But you post something fabulous to Facebook and get: 1 child, 1 sibling, 1 coworker. I don't know. I'm tempted to just go back to the blog.

So here it is:

I found Stonewall Jackson in the marble tile floor of our 1st floor bathroom.
What's he done with Jebus? I sure hope Jebus is ok ...

This is about as funny as I can get ...

Sin # 3: Hampering Scientific Research Re Stem Cells And Cloning

After some extemporaneous rants, we return to the extended, multi-part rant.

Religous opposition to stem cell and cloning research follows two themes:

1. The "all human cells are potential people and as such may have souls" magical thinking. As in the discussion of abortion, if we are going to do everything possible to protect back to the zygote stage, then clearly these cells are off limit to any research -- even if they are being held in storage at a fertility clinic and will be destroyed if the parent couple decides they don't need them. Meanwhile, what kind of controls and limitations are there on stem cell research in China, Japan and Korea? Pretty much none. We actually wound up effectively encouraging top foreign-born researchers in these areas to return to their home countries, where their work would be encouraged by the government rather than restricted.
   It says something for the zealotry of conservatives that even in the face of a direct, emotional plea by Nancy Reagan on behalf of her beloved Ronnie -- Ronald Reagan, probably the most beloved conservative of the last 50 years -- for stem cell research as a treatment for Alzheimer's Disease, she was turned down flat.
2. The "this is the affair of god, man has no business here" cant. Fear of the various genies that science can let out of their bottles dates back to Mary Shelley and "Frankenstein". Some legitimate fears here (re Bill Joy and "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us"), but, by and large, my feeling is, you can't keep technology advances bottled up. They will break out. The sooner you realize that and make realistic plans to deal with it, the better.

Here's a little song I made up. I think you can guess the tune:

[chorus]
Don't give me that old time religion.
Don't give me that old time religion.
Don't give me that old time religion.
It ain't good enough for me.

[verse 1]
It don't know about evolution.
It don't know about relativity.
It don't know about quantum mechanics.
It ain't good enough for me.

[verse 2]
It wasn't there when they split the atom.
It wasn't there for the double helix.
It wasn't there for the human genome.
It ain't good enough for me.

[verse 32,768]

And so on ...

The iPad is Here, the iPad is Here!

So, UPS dropped off an iPad here yesterday. I had ordered the cheapest one: 16GB, Wifi only, on the 1st day you could. I thought they started at $400, oops, $500. Oh well. Two reasons for ordering:

1. For a couple of years, I have been wanting a tablet computer that I hold in my hands and sit in a comfy chair and surf the web, read RSS feeds, read Web comics, maybe read eBooks. The iPad seemed to be just that.
2. My wife loves her iPhone. She has hated every other computer, including a mac, that the has ever had. She reads books on it, and browses the web for hours on it. An iPad seemed like a great idea for her as well.

So, it came, I hooked it up to my PC. My idea is this is a shared resource that lives in the family room -- an electronic magazine on the coffee table. I put all my pictures on it, and 7 kids movies. BTW, two features that I hadn't heard about:

1. a button that locks the screen orientation, I would presume for lying on your side and reading in bed.
2. a soft button next to the "slide to unlock" that makes it a digital picture frame. Just as the iPhone replaced many devices (it's a flashlight! it's a metronome! it's a guitar tuner! ...), you wonder what devices the iPad will replace.

So the movies and pix took about 2/3 of the 16GB. No music, I decided, Pandora and web only. Then downloaded apps -- besides the top 50 paid and free in the app store this link had some good suggestions. So far, less than two screens of apps, with the personal ones (mail, notes, contacts and calendar) moved to a (hopefully unused) third screen.

The apps so far:

• the free iBooks reader from Apple. I like this much better than the kindle. The contrast is so much better, and the larger size I also like much better. They give you one sample book, "Winnie the Pooh". The color illustrations are great. In portrait mode you read a single page, in landscape, two pages (the book is open). Tap the screen to get controls at the top for Table of Contents, and changing contrast, font size and font face, and a slider at the bottom for jumping to any page. But what I really liked was: you double tap a word, you get choices: dictionary gives you a dictionary entry; bookmark creates a bookmark there, which then shows up with the TOC; and Search will find all occurrences of the word in the book, or will search google or wikipedia! What a way to read non-fiction or scientific material, a true hyperbook.
• ABC player (free) to go with YouTube. Recent series episodes with limited commercials. I think everyone's fingers are crossed for Hulu to show up.
• Nat Geo World Atlas ($2) to go with Maps. Also free Weather Channel and WeatherBug. Maps look great.
• USA Today, NPR, NY Times Editors choice, Bloomberg financial app -- all free. Readers are very clear and easy to read. The Bloomberg app is beautiful.
• wikipanion, epicurious (recipes), pandora, free books (23,000 classics -- the reader is not near as nice as iBooks, no reason why it couldn't be), dragon dictation -- all free. Wolfram Alpha 1.99, Voice recorder 0.99.
• The Elements, my most expensive purchase at $13.99. An interactive coffee table book on the periodic table, with two pages per element. Tons of pictures and video, really cool.
• IMDb movie database; Adobe ideas and another free Draw program; all free.
• A bunch of games, $9.99 to free: crosswords, scrabble, sudoku, mahjong, labyrinth, magic piano. They all look great.
• A marvel comics reader (free) - guilty as charged.

I spent a total of $45 on apps.

Overall, viewing content on this thing is great. The downsides:

• it is definitely a little heavy. My left hand cramped a few times holding it yesterday.
• the typing is not great (I am a touch typist). In portrait mode, I can type OK with my thumbs like I do on the iPhone -- a person with smaller hands could not. In landscape, I was kind of touch typing the right hand keys and hunt and pecking the left hand keys with my right hand. After I went back to my iPhone, it was like "Wow, it's so light! And so easy to hold! And so much easier to type!". So, iPad is much better for reading, if you want to do serious input I would figure on getting the bluetooth keypad. I saw one review with the guy complaining how anti-web 2.0 -- the web of participation -- the iPad was, because input is hard.

All in all, tho, I think it will fill the roles that I bought it for. I think I probably won't use it much. (I might have used it to surf, read RSS, and do FB while a basketball game was on, but b-ball season is over :-<) My wife seems to definitely like it for web access from the family room. And, we actually had some kids in the house recently, I think it has stuff to keep kids occupied for a while. I've invited my older children (and spouse) to visit in the next month or so to see what apps (particularly games) they would add, because there are introductory low prices on stuff now that may go up later.

I will advise if it does wind up just being a paper weight.

Letters to the Editor

I had a letter to the editor in the Herald Leader a few weeks ago supporting health care reform. I sent this one in Friday night, in response to a letter writer justifying the Iraq war and naysaying the health care reform (which has passed!) with, "In the Bible, the story of the Good Samaritan is a classic example of non-governmental intrusion.". My response:

I would like to discuss a couple of the issues raised by Mr. J. D. Mackey in his letter of 4/2/10.

Firstly, with regard to the Iraq war, my recollection is that, although he was very belligerent and obstructionist, Sadam Hussein did finally agree to let the UN inspectors into Iraq. But, that wasn't enough for us, we decided to invade. I don't think we will ever really know why. My worst fear is that, we were too successful in Afghanistan in 2002, and Mr. Cheney and his friends at Haliburton and Blackwater had not obtained enough data on the possible profit margins of outsourcing war, and just wanted some more data.

Regardless, we invaded, and the blood of the 100,000 Iraqi civilians who died is on all of our hands. This is several dozen times the number of innocent deaths of 9/11. And, no Weapons of Mass Destruction or facilities to produce WMDs were found, and everyone agrees, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

That blood is on my hands, and on all of our hands.

Secondly, with regard to the bible, I would direct Mr. Mackey to Acts 2:44-45 and 4:34-35.

"2:44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need."

"4:34 There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need."

A bit stronger than the trickle down economics of the good samaritan, yes?

Actually, it reminds me of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" -- Karl Marx, 1875. It's a good thing that The United States is NOT a christian country -- if it were, we'd have to change the system of government from democracy to communism!

I've been answering every teabagger post I see on Facebook, and any place where I normally comment. I try to be rational, stick to just the facts. But, it's so hard. Like the letter above, reading the verses, a christian might say "Maybe there's something to think about here". But, quoting Marx and comparing christianity to communism, although accurate, is basically a cheap shot, a finger in the eye (Stoogism rules!) -- your average christian is going to take offense. Maybe I just need to do this more often to where I can stay on point more easily.

Speaking of fingers in the eye, this NSFW Bill Maher clip also explores physical metaphors for how to deal with republicans.

Happy Bunny Day

In my capacity as Founder, Chief Elder, and Spokesperson for the Church of Holiday Movie Personages, it is my duty and pleasure to wish everyone a Happy Bunny Day! CHMP (pronounced chump) worships exclusively The Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. Santa's elves are included in the pantheon in a role similar to angels, but anyone attempting to add Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer to make a trinity is, of course, a dangerous heretic who will be excommunicated (following a lengthy ritual purification).

We of CHMP believe that if we live good lives and follow the gold and silver rules, when we die we get to go either to Bunnyland, to help in the production of The Bunny's goodies, or The North Pole, to help Santa. (How did you think they got all that stuff made and organized?) In both places, you are allowed to snitch and eat as much as you want, and you never get fat!

We also recognize The Grinch in the role filled by the devil. But, happily, he gets converted from The Dark Side to The Light Side every year! We are working to adapt this process to republicans ...

Family History

I pulled some off-topic expansion from the last post on abortion: on

the whining WASPs still want those rights applied only to "real Americans" -- i.e., whining WASPs

and

patriarchal societies wanting to keep women in their place to bolster the fragile egos of a male mindset that deep down knows that it is losing its place in the world

Leonard Pitts, Jr. touched on this topic in his column today with regard to teabaggers (disagreeing with Keith Olbermann that it's all about race):

This is race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, "culture," and the fact that those who have always been on the right side, the "power-wielding" side, of one or more of those equations, now face the realization that that their days of dominance are numbered.

This story goes back through all of human history, and even though we left much of european feudalism behind us when we came to America, it still stays with us. It is pecking order, it is love of hierarchy, it is found in everything with a backbone.

I'm reminded of Martin Scorsese's movie "The Gangs of New York". Set in the 1860's this has the whining WASP "natives" opposing the (socialist, anarchist, catholic) Irish immigrants.

So why am I not a whining WASP? Because I grew up being told how my maternal great-grandmother had a cross burned in the front yard of her farmhouse outside Lagrange, KY by the Ku Klux Klan, I would guess in the 1920's. Why? Because they were Catholics and second generation German immigrants. And who were the klansmen doing the burning? That generation's crop of whining WASPs, who in this generation are teabaggers.

During the civil rights movement of the 60's, I was told in no uncertain terms by my mother which side we were on -- we were on the side that didn't burn crosses.

So when I see a sign at a tea party saying "We want our country back", I know that I'm one of the people that the whining WASPs want the country back from. And you know what? A lot of the teabaggers probably are too, but they've made enough money to become Republicans and think that they're WASPs. I've made enough money to become a Republican, but, you know what? Fuck that.

We can build a world where no one is hungry or homeless, but the ultra-rich aren't sure that they would still be rich enough if that happened, and the whining WASPs aren't sure who they would then get to look down on.

We have to put the conservative, patriarchal, backward-looking mindset of the teabaggers ("dumbass dupes descend on DC") behind us and get on to solving the world's real problems -- chief of which is, how do we contain human population growth and build an economy not based on growth?

Still, you gotta love the teabaggers opposing health care reform with "Keep your government hands off of my Medicare". I'm sure they are showing their opposition to "socialism" in the US by tearing up their social security checks and refusing to use Medicare --- yeah, right.

Sin #2: Interfering in Women's Reproductive Rights

So we're driving to Florida a couple of weeks ago. We saw several anti-abortion billboards, with two major messages:

Every day another 3600 children die.

We'll get to the "children" later, but first let's do some math. 3600 times 365 equals 1,314,000. So that's 1.3 million women per year whose intelligence, rights and moral decision-making the religious would like to trample. If breeding age women make up 1/6 of the population of the US, that's about 3% per year.

The second message (I wonder who or what is supposed to be saying this):

My heart is beating after 10 days.

This kind of reminds me of the ancient Egyptian views on the importance of the various body parts. They took great care in their embalming to preserve the heart, liver, and stomach. The brain was thought to be worthless; it was pulled out in shreds through the nostrils and discarded. Oops. A beating heart is a muscle. Enough of a brain to hold the beginnings of a thinking (or dreaming) human mind comes much later.

I had a book that listed the cultural universals of the human race -- the things that all of the hundreds of human cultures known to anthropologists have in common, like shrugging, incest taboos, dogs, and a couple of hundred other things. I couldn't find it to check, but I'm pretty sure that abortion was listed there -- it has been practiced by every known human culture. I read somewhere else that the general wisdom was that it was completely unrestricted up until the fetus could be observed externally, normally about half way through the pregnancy, after which restrictions were applied. So, not so dissimilar to the reasonable restrictions we have now: third trimester abortions only in dire circumstances.

Abortion rights opponents claim that abortion is murder -- taking the life of a human being. This usually is supported by arguments that a zygote is given a "soul" as soon as it forms, or that as soon as you have a zygote you have everything required to make a human being. This also leads to opposition to Plan B birth control -- morning after pills. But, Stephen Pinker pointed out in one of his books, the union of the genetic material of sperm and egg actually takes an indeterminate amount of time. So there is no "magic moment" that can be used to identify when the ensoulment happens. And even if the zygote does represent 50% of the nature vs. nurture that goes to make a human being, it is still not a human being, it is a potential human being. A substantial percentage of zygotes fail to implant into the uterine wall or are otherwise spontaneously aborted -- so nature doesn't put any magical significance on them.

The union of a particular sperm with an egg to form a zygote does represent a collapse of astronomical proportions in possibility space (see "Possibility Space and the Chopstick of Doom" blogged a few years ago). But, it's still just a possible human.

At times abortion rights opponents claim that they are representing the rights of the unborn. In general I do think that the more advanced a civilization is, the more it extends rights. When the founding fathers wrote that "all men are created equal", their worldview was such that "men" meant "white males who own land". Over the years, equal rights were granted to blacks and women (kind of) and non-landowners.

But, we can still see in the current culture wars the whining male WASPs trying to keep rights to themselves while denying them to others: immigrants and gays, and in the case of abortion rights, women. I find it funny that conservatives so strongly oppose the ACLU, which has a single stated purpose -- to uphold the bill of rights of the constitution. The problem is, the whining WASPs still want those rights applied only to "real Americans" -- i.e., whining WASPs.

PETA is another group that is trying to extend rights, to other species. I don't particularly agree with PETA, but I would say that they do represent advancement in our culture and civilization.

So is attempting to extend rights to the unborn not a sign of a more advanced and enlightened civilization? If this were really the thinking, they maybe. But, my gut tells me that this is really about denying women control over their own bodies. It is the same conservative mindset that manifests in other parts of the world as women being forced to wear veils; women being not allowed to drive; honor murders; and female genital mutilation. It is patriarchal societies wanting to keep women in their place to bolster the fragile egos of a male mindset that deep down knows that it is losing its place in the world.

The sad part about the cultures that repress women, the worst of which are probably the Islamic ones, is that they are sentencing themselves to being also-ran cultures. You can't compete in the world economy if you keep half of your most intelligent workers (i.e. the women) out of your workforce.

Abortion is probably the worst form of birth control. Women who have talked to me about it have said that's a very hard choice. And there is often regret later -- but who of us does not regret some possibility from earlier in our life that we decided not to pursue? The bottom line is, it is the woman's decision, and no one else's.

My friend David believes in "the 50 year rule". This is that if you disagree for 50 years, then both sides give up trying to convert the other and live and let live. There are some examples -- the Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants seem to have quit murdering each other. Roe v Wade was in 1973. Ugh, that means the 50 year rule doesn't kick in until 2023 -- 13 years from now. Oh well.

One final note. The authors of "Freakonomics" received major static for suggesting that a precipitous drop in crime rates in the early 90's was due to the fact that it occured 18 years -- when young male criminals enter the "work force" -- after Roe v Wade presumably greatly decreased the number of unwanted children born. Food for thought, I guess.

So the final conclusion: we have magical thinking, "souls" to the catholic church, and keeping women in their proper biblical state, i.e., subservient to males, in the religious right, making what should be a total no-brainer -- let the woman decide -- into a divisive issue that keeps us from solving real problems. For example, health care reform is having problems with house democrats because the senate version doesn't restrict abortion funding strongly enough. Abortion rights opponents say, they don't want their money spent on abortions. I didn't want my money spent on killing 100s of 1000s of Iraqi civilians -- but, I guess they're not as cute as babies, so it doesn't matter. Opposition to abortion rights is probably 99% religious-based. So, another reason to actively oppose religion.

Sin #1: Hampering Science Education re Evolution

"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" -- Theodosius Dobzhansky, 1973.

Evolution is one of the four great theories of modern science. The other three are special and general relativity; the standard model of elementary particles; and quantum chromodynamics. Thanks to christian academies, home schooling, and things like the creation anti-museum, we now have, what, maybe 10-20% of the students in the United States being taught creationism and intelligent design instead. 90% of the new scientists and engineers in the world are being created in China and India. They are not being taught that folk tales are rational alternatives to one the greatest theories in science. The current industrial might of the United States comes from the dominance of its science, technology, invention, and entrepreneurism since The Civil War. Our universities are still the best in the world, but we risk all this when we fill our children's heads with nonsense.

I often think that the main problem people have with evolution is that we just cannot conceive of how long millions and billions of year are. I have been thinking about a potential teaching aid, in the form of my official gigging t-shirt, shown below: Actually fairly accurate. Our solar system is 2/3 of the way out from the center of our beautiful spiral galaxy, the Milky Way: 26000 light years. It takes our solar system 250 million years to circle the galaxy. Let's call that a Galactic Year (GY). So 1 GY = 250 million years.

Our galaxy is probably almost as old as the universe: 13.7 billion years old -- that is ~55 GY old. Our solar system is ~4.5 billion years old => 18 GY old (time to register to vote!). Life in the form of bacteria and their precursors have been around maybe 3 billion years => 12 GY. Complex life has been around since the Cambrian Explosion of 530 million years ago -> 2.1 GY.

Now let's get down to our favorite topic: us. Homo sapiens sapiens (us) has been around ~200,000 years => 7 galactic hours. On the shirt, this would be around 1/4 of a degree, or .008 inches -- about the thickness of a thread.

Human civilization, in the form of agriculture and domestication of animals, is around 10,000 years old => 21 galactic minutes. On the shirt, it's .0004 inches or around 10 microns -- microscopic. The 70 years or so that is all any of us get to experience is about 9 galactic seconds. So it's awfully hard for us to comprehend the ~10 GY it look life to find its way from single-celled to multi-celled organisms, or the 2 GY since then.

Scientific theories are compression algorithms: they compress vast quantities of data and observations into as few equations as possible.

Imperfect Replication With Differential Survivability

Five words. That's all it takes to describe evolution. Just add galactic years of time, and it will produce all the life on earth, and the human mind and "soul". What a compression algorithm!