National Review Strikes Again

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,”

The latest cover is an obvious take on Sonya Sotomayor's above statement. Naturally, the clueless are in high dudgeon. The comments over on a confirm Sotomayor forum run around 10:1 against, but this one made me laugh out loud:

"How DARE some one depict their opponent as a peaceful, smiling, centered, Master of Enlightenment with the hand posture of a Teacher rising above a Lotus of the Open Mind to the Universal! How DARE they"!

This one must take the prize for the most obtuse:

"Exactly! TNR is doing a really good job of alienating everyone but the radical right...thanks, guys! Keep up the good work"!

Uh, the "offending" cover is from National Review, not The New Republic. You can tell because it says National Review, you know--right on the cover you are commenting on...

This week's runs

My Chelmsford half marathon 13.12 1:51:17 8:29 31-May-09

Bedford Neighborhood 4.1 31:35 7:42 1-Jun-09

short dog run 2.5 24:00 9:36 2-Jun-09

Landing Strip 020 11.8 96:00 8:08 3-Jun-09

Bedford Neighborhood 4.1 31:28 7:40 4-Jun-09

Faun Lake 5.5 42:18 7:41 5-Jun-09

You Go! Indian-American Girl!

Indians, especially Indian women are few-and-far-between in athletics. In my last two races there were a couple of trailblazers.

Landing Strip 020

I used roads to get from home to the start of the bike path. After running the bikepath (seen as railroad tracks on the above map), I use other roads to get back to the start of the path again. Run the bike path a second time and then go back home via roads. It is sort of like when an airplane is doing practice approach and landings: Except, all on the ground with no aircraft.

11.8 miles and it was roughly 96 minutes. This makes about 8:08/mile. I had my ironman set to time, since I needed to be home at a certain time and I was cutting it close. Coming up our road, I saw that our elementary school girls were walking home from the bus stop, so I raced them the rest of the way home and Jemma beat me. Anyway, that is how I got distracted and didn't make sure I had stopped the timer when I got home.

Will Obama be able to pound a square peg into a round hole?

Or rather, a burly blue-collar factory worker into a pencil-necked green shirt?

Okay, enough of being oblique. Foreign auto makers are good at making small, efficient cars because their home markets demanded this. There were lots of factors: They had (and have) much higher fuel prices, smaller roads, less parking and were in general, not as rich as Americans.

Here in the U.S. with our vast distances, wealth and cheap fuel, our auto companies were very good at making big powerful vehicles.

CAFE and unions

Our powerful unions have been able to extract very nice salary and benefits from U.S automakers, but the only way to support that is for the companies to have profitable product lines. Government regulations force automakers to meet an average fuel economy for their fleet. As a result, they make big profitable cars and little cars that loose money.

This little car gets good mileage and currently sells for $700 under the invoice price.

Now the government essentially owns GM and wants to run it in a way that makes Democratic interest groups happy: Environmentalists want high fuel efficiency. Unions want cushy jobs--the more the better. You can't have both.

In a rational world, we would notice that there are plenty of economical cars available, so those who want them are able to get them.

This Camaro goes for $4,500 over invoice ($3,500 over list) and has 426 hp.

There is no need to meddle in the decisions of companies; they will make whatever consumers demand.

If the government wants less fuel used, they can cause its price to rise through taxes (I don't think this is a good idea, but that is a subject for another post).

Update: Telling my wife about CAFE standards, she asked if it was a nice place to get coffee and tasty pastries. Me: No. It is a place to bankrupt major American industrial companies.

Sunday Run

I ran this same course May 13th and did it 4 minutes faster than today's 1:51:17 I just ran out of steam around the half-way point and sort of trudged the remainder. It was a bit warm, so that could have had some effect too.

MINT!

Mojito time?

fluorescent flower

Green Blueberry

Peony

Peony, early today...anticipation.

Later today...appreciation.

Mirror

He's President and he gets to...yada yada.

Tit for tat may seem childish but is actually a highly effective strategy for maximizing the outcome of a prisoner's dilemma-type game.

I've heard a lot of the following type sentiment when it comes to the latest opening on the Supreme Court:

Obama is the President and he is free to choose who he wants. All Senators should vote based only on the qualifications of the candidate.

I am all for this idea, so long as both sides play by the same rules, but do they? Senator Obama didn't, so he has no rational expectation for the qualification standard being used here.

Senator Obama voted No for both of these gentlemen. A quick analysis of why he did this.

Did he think they were unqualified? No.

He was vague as usual, but did mention the the changing ideological face of the Supreme court. So, ideology is fair-game--at least when practiced by Democrats.

So, if Republicans think that Judge Sotomayer will change the ideology of the court (in a bad way) they should be free to vote against her, even if they think she is qualified.

I think we can go even further than this. I don't think President Obama voted against both Roberts and Alito because they would change the ideology of the court: They didn't replace liberal members of the court. I think he was more interested in maintaining his ideological purity in order to win the Democratic party's nomination. He couldn't very well vote to confirm while Clinton voted against.

So, we have Obama's standard: Vote your political interest. Republican Senators, do what the President did--vote whichever way makes you look good to your voters.

It is nice when self-interest and justice are so well aligned.

Update via Instapundit:

First President in US History to Have Voted to Filibuster a Supreme Court Nominee Now Hopes for Clean Process

Some trainings this week

There were a couple of others, but I didn't save them...Which is really too bad since I blazed on one of the ones I lost.

I have been running (when our schedules mesh) with a younger and more talented runner, but he is just getting back into it, so I will be able to keep-up for a little while more.

nutting lake 3.54 26:39:00 7:31:42 28-May-09

home 4 miler 4.28 33:44:00 7:52:54 25-May-09

Affy loop 5.2 38:50:00 7:28:05 29-May-09

Tandoori Chicken made at home

--Prepare chicken by removing all skin and then rinsing under cold water. The best parts to use for this dish are legs and thighs.

--Sipe the meat with a sharp knife. This gives an attractive look to the dish and allows the spice to penetrate.

--Rub the meat with plenty of dry tandoori masala powder mix. You should be able to find this in any Indian market or easily on-line. Feel free to modify the powder mix by adding what you like, for instance--Cayenne powder if you want more heat.

--Place the meat in a bowl and add enough buttermilk or plain yogurt to coat the chicken. Cover and refrigerate until ready to grill.

--Grill just as you normally would for chicken using charcoal (best), or gas (if you must).

--Garnish with slivers of onion and small wedges of lime.

Oven Method:

If it is Winter or you just do not want to grill, the recipe can be done in an oven. Just coat the marinaded meat in bread crumbs and place them onto an oiled cookie sheet. Then spray the top of the meat with Pam, and place into a 375F oven. Once there's good color on the chicken (around 40 minutes) turn the pieces over and cook an additional 10-15 minutes.

Gulden's and GU

These are really the opposite of each other: One has essentially no nutritional value, but just adds flavor. The other has flavor, sure, but the purpose of the product is to efficiently get easy to use calories into your system.

I tried GU for the first time while about 2/3's of the way through the Boston Marathon. I nearly gagged on it, but in fairness, I would have found it hard to stomach anything at that point. By pure coincidence I came into possession of the scanned GU (the same flavor as I had in the marathon) as part of a goodie bag given to participants of the Groton Road Race.

I'm not sure what value the GU is--I tried it because...well, it was there and free. It only has 100 calories and I burn around 800/hour while racing, so I don't see how it could have much impact. Even if you could choke one down every 30 minutes that would only provide 1/4 of the calories being used.

I put in the Gulden's mustard packet for scale and because I love their graphic design.

Some trainings this week

home 6.5----6.47----56:50:00----8:47:03----20-May-09

Bedford Neighborhood----4.15----32:32:00----7:50:22----21-May-09

Affy loop----5.2----39:53:00----7:40:12----22-May-09

Also, ran Mon and Tue but didn't keep track of the time or distance Monday or the time on Tue. Did run with a serious and fast runner on Tue, but he is getting back into the sport and is temporarily slower than he will get very soon. I will run with him while I can--he is 13 years younger than me and much more talented to boot.

Historical note:

The U.S. Senate had approved the the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution by a vote of 52 to 47 on Jan. 12, 1991 (the majority including 42 Republicans and 10 mostly Southern Democrats). The House of Representatives approved the measure 250 to 183, with 164 Republicans and 86 Democrats in favor of the use of force, 179 Democrats, 3 Republicans and 1 independent opposed.

Neither house would have passed the authorization without some Democratic support since they had majorities in both houses. If they had been as monolithically against it as the Republicans were for it--Bush would have invaded anyway and there were not enough votes in the Senate to sustain an impeachment.

Slow Cooking a Chuck Roast in the oven

1. Take the roast out of the fridge and place it onto an open roasting pan with a rack in it.

2. Preheat the oven to 500F

3. Make a rub out of Olive oil, crushed garlic, black pepper, herbs and a dash of prepared mustard. Rub the entire surface of the meat with this rub.

4. When the oven reaches temperature, reset it to 170F (or lower if it goes lower) and put the meat into the oven.

5. In an hour, turn the meat over and insert a temperature probe.

6. When the meat has reached 5 degrees less than what you want (I want medium rare, FWIW) Remove from oven. Cover with foil and then a cloth towel as an insulator.

Nice article on running in the WSJ

Running for Lean Times It's no accident that jogging took off in the 1970s..

What they don't point out is that most of the people taking up running now are the same ones who took it up back in the 1970's! Take a look at the race results from any local road race: The largest and toughest bracket is the 40- year olds. Even my time this year would have placed me 3rd in the under 19 bracket, while I came in 18th in my own 40- group. Just for perspective on how competitive running was when I was a kid: I was a middle of the pack B-squad cross-country and track runner. But when I was 18 I ran fast enough to have come in first in this years race in both the under 19 age bracket as well as the under 29 bracket.

The running rage in the 1970's attracted young people. If there is a resurgence, it doesn't seem to have worked its way down to the young yet. If it had, the young runners would be far more competitive. Here are the third place results for The Groton Road Race this year.

FIN10K - MALE AGE GROUP: 19 - UNDER

3 ANDREW RILEY 142 16 PEPPERELL MA 46:27

FIN10K - MALE AGE GROUP: 20 - 29

3 THOMAS WOLEJKO 68 27 ALLSTON MA 45:24

FIN10K - MALE AGE GROUP: 30 - 39

3 STEVE LEVANDOSKY 465 38 HOPKINTON MA 39:33

FIN10K - MALE AGE GROUP: 40 - 49

3 LIAM SKINNER 485 42 LOWELL MA 38:50

It is bizzaro world! The 40's are faster than the 30's who are faster than the 20's. Even I came within 21 seconds of the 27 year old third place finisher.

Added: Why the third place finisher instead of first? I am trying to show depth of talent for each group. Another way of putting it is that there were only 10 guys under 20, 27 in their 20's, 68 in their 30's and 102 guys in their 40's.

Turkey