Today’s workout

Though not a Workout of the Day

I call this workout the flying accordion, because the linked 80s music video was on my mind at the time.

• Speed bag 20 minutes
• Heavy bag 20 minutes (intervals)
• Three sets of chin-ups, as many as possible
• Four sets of push-ups, one side elevated, 2 sets each side, as many as possible
• Between sets of chin-ups and push-ups, mow the yard
• Finish in two hours.

The suggested recovery meal is two hot dogs with chips and a bottle of beer, and a piece of cake. The beer is optional, but don’t skip the cake.

“Immigration” “reform”

There’s a biometric database of all adult Americans hidden in the immigration reform bill. Good thing the federal government is in charge of this, otherwise there would be real cause for concern. If this were some corrupt oligarchy people would worry about the information being misused, for example to target opponents of the regime for harassment.

Still, being a paranoid right-wing nut, I will actively work against the re-election of any politician who votes for this.

Speech codes

If we’re going to have them, they need to protect all of us, not just Democrats.

FIRE is right to note that fair, inclusive enforcement of this mindlessly broad policy is impossible. But I doubt it’s intended to be fairly enforced. I doubt federal officials want or expect it to be used against sex educators, advocates of reproductive choice, anti-porn feminists, or gay rights advocates, if their speech of a sexual nature is “unwelcome” by religious conservatives. — Wendy Kaminer, quoted by the Instapundit

Oh, surely federal laws and regulations will be fairly enforced, whether the accused is liberal or conservative. Why would anyone think otherwise?

Water and science

Water is reality. H2O is a model.

Ships sailing around

All sorts of critically important things go on, out of sight of most of us: dredging operations on the Mississippi; rail freight operations; undersea cable maintenance. Here’s a mostly-live map that tells where ships are all over the world. Seen here.

Herring

Off the menu again

For some time I bought from Walmart a particular brand of canned herring I like, for a dollar a can. Then last year they bumped the price up to a dollar eighteen. Eighteen percent seemed a bit much, so I stopped eating herring – surprisingly, it wasn’t all that difficult.

Then around the beginning of lent they dropped the price back to a dollar a can, so I stocked up and ate a lot of herring.

The other day I looked and they wanted a dollar thirty-eight a can. That’s just not happening. Frankly, I question who besides me is buying very much canned herring. We’ll see if it goes on sale. Until then I’m switching to sardines and salmon.

In praise of zero tolerance

Crack-brained zero-tolerance policies are condemned as stupid by everyone but the school administrators who impose them. You’ve read about these. A little girl points her Hello Kitty Magic Bubble Gun at a classmate, and gets suspended. A little boy gnaws his Pop Tart into the shape of a gun, and gets suspended. Another points his pencil and says “pow!” and gets suspended.

Teaching the constitution

Regular people think these are just kids playing, and educated idiots making fools of themselves. In fact the suspending authority will be an experienced teacher with a Ph.D. in Educational Administration or a similarly rigorous field. He-or-She is teaching the children a great lesson, teaching their parents too, and doing it all by in an inclusive cross-cultural modality. You may not speak English or know much about America before the lesson, but after the lesson you’ll be an American patriot committed to the constitution. By suspending a boy for making a threatening gesture with his fruit snack, the child who might otherwise have become a solid citizen respectful of authority is radicalized into a conservative patriot who respects the constitution.

It’s an end run, just like the liberals’ brilliant campaign to make every American buy a rifle and a thousand rounds. If President Obama had issued an executive order that everyone had to buy and maintain an AR-15, people would have fought for the right to be gun-free. Instead, he took the shrewd approach of a master psychologist. Every time a politician says something stupid about guns, a hundred more people buy guns. Merely an accident by tone-deaf nit-wits stunningly out of touch with the people who elect them? I think not.

This level of ignorance just isn’t natural, it’s deliberate. They’re maximizing the number of stupid things they say about guns. When Senator Obama chose Joe Biden as his running mate, people wondered if he was crazy (wondered if Obama was crazy, I mean, not Biden…) Hah! Obama was crazy like a fox! Similarly, those elementary school principals are shrewd operators who know exactly what they’re doing. They have graduate degrees, after all. It’s not like you can finish grad school and be a idiot.

They’re doing it on purpose. Every time a school administrator suspends a second-grader for pointing his pop-tart aggressively, a family joins the Tea Party.

Drone as metaphor

Michael Chertoff says Google Glass is like a drone:

“Now imagine that millions of Americans walk around each day wearing the equivalent of a drone on their head: a device capable of capturing video and audio recordings of everything that happens around them.”

Google Glass is a drone on your head. A security camera is a stationary drone. Conventional aircraft are drones with an on-board operators. Cameras are personally operated drones. Heck, an AR-15 is a personally operated drone. That makes as much sense as anything else pundits say about the AR-15. In fact, a pundit is basically a talking drone, apparently self-operated.

Media and fascism

“The primary thesis of the book [Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview, by Gene Edward Veith] suggests that the replacement of rational debate with media manipulation, the subordination of logic to emotionalism, and the trivialization of politics–all tenets of our popular culture–form a fertile breeding ground for new forms of fascism. Veith points out that fascism has stood in opposition to the Judeo-Christian worldview because of its rejection of a transcendent God and His moral law. [...] Veith’s concern is that when transcendent values are excluded from a culture, politics can become reduced to sheer “will to power.” And if there are no absolutes, no basis for moral persuasion or rational argument, then power becomes arbitrary, allowing the side with the biggest propaganda machine and the dirtiest tactics to win. In Modern Fascism Veith relies on Postman to show how electronic media, particularly television, has eroded linear logic, sustained inquiry, tradition, and deferred gratification.” — The Secular C.S. Lewis: Neil Postman’s Unlikely Influence on Evangelicals, by Arthur W. Hunt III

Screens in church

A Catholic church put in video screens to modernize the sanctuary. And everything was wonderful (it probably wasn’t, but let’s pretend) until the US Catholic Bishops told the church that they could not project the Gospel reading on the screens, the mean old men. Because, they said,

“…the readings are not supposed to be read. They’re supposed to be proclaimed… In a letter to the church, the United States Conference of Bishops says projecting the scriptures would be a distraction.” — Catholic parish not allowed to project Scripture readings on screens

Screens are a distraction, and I hate them. But what is most interesting here is the idea of the Gospel being proclaimed and not simply read. That does seem like something Christians are obliged to do, inside the church as well as outside.

The article suggests the Conference of Bishops invoked their copyright on the Bible translation used. If so, that’s worrying. It’s unwise for Christians to use the State to compel other Christians, or to feed any kind of State claim to supremacy or ultimate legitimacy. The result in this case is good, but then that’s how it happens. We give the State power to do something good, and a few years later the State uses that power to oppress. But of course, the American Catholic Bishops of all people know that well. Right?