A most bizarre game

Last night: I decided to blow off some steam by going to a Chiefs game (they were hosting the Bandits). I got there in the first inning after the Chiefs had walked the bases full.

They got out of THAT inning without a run.

In fact, the Chiefs got a home run in the first inning and lead 1-0, and it was 1-1 after 3, though the pitchers had control problems.

And then came the 4’th…which saw QC score 9 runs. They added 2 in the 5’th, 1 in the 6’th, 2 in the 7’th to lead 15-1 going into the top of the 9’th. Then came 6 more via: walk, walk, strike out, shallow fly out (still no runs) then another walk to load the bases with 2 outs. An infielder was called in to get the final out..and he was throwing 60-70 mph pitches (NOT knuckleballs). That lead..predictably to a double, followed by two home runs which added 6 to make it 21-1, which was the final.

This disaster: Chiefs walked 16, hit FIVE batters, gave up 13 hits (ok, 3 with 2 outs in the 9’th…it was the walks that killed us).

I’ve never seen anything like it. Yes, Vickie, Harry and I stayed for the whole thing… 3:24, to do with my 4:25 game on Tuesday night.

Workout notes: just weights this morning (188 body weight) I just felt a bit bloated. pull ups: 5 sets of 10, 1 of 5 (new power rack), bench: 10 x 135, 3 x 185, 5 x 165, incline: 10 x 165, military: 7 x 50 standing, 10 x 45 standing, 15 x 40 standing (dumbbell) rows: 3 sets of 10 x 110 machine. Goblet squats: 10 x 30, 6 x 50, 6 x 50, 10 x 210 leg press, plank, side plank, crow, headstand, knee stretches.

Grades are in. one more duty.

Pitting women against men: probably not winning politics

Yes, I winced when I saw the Alabama abortion bill “signed into law” by their governor (a female, BTW). Much was made of the fact that the Alabama State Senators who voted for it were all, well, men (white men, no less)

And Democratic politicians made the most of it:

But…well, that bill, then known as HB314 had to pass the Alabama House where, yes, it got female votes (all the female R’s voted for it..though I only counted 4 of 74).

And again, a female governor signed it into law.

As far as the issue itself, “pro choice” vs. “pro life” is really pretty evenly split among men and women.

So your split is mostly about: educational level, income level, D vs. R, and religion. It really is NOT male vs. female.

But in liberal circles, it is fashionable to go after those white men…unless you want to be “one of the good ones” (aka “ally of women”, which I presume means “ally of women who think like her.”)

Now some know these statistics and dismiss it as a matter of women “internalizing the misogyny of the patriarchy”; that is, men are capable of coming to different views on their own accord, but if women were really free, they’d think just like the “woke women.” It is almost as if feminists of this type view men as volitional but not women! And yes, this attitude DOES turn some women off, including some who despise Trump and people like him.

But what the heck, I suppose it is all too human to think “if you were informed, logical and moral, you’d think just like I do.”

BTW, yes, I am pro-choice. No, I don’t have a uterus. And yes, I was told that my opinion would be different if I had a uterus (yes, pro life women have told me that).

My attempt to relax backfires

Tuesday night was my “last night before my last final” so I decided to blow off some steam by watching a baseball game. It started at 6:30…and I figured it would be the usual 2:15-2:30 length game. Wrong: 4:25.

What happened: the Chiefs lost to the Snappers 6-5 in 11 innings, but even the first 8 took well over 3 hours. This was a “walk/strikeout” type of game: Snapper pitchers struck out 21 Chiefs batters and Chiefs pitchers struck out 11. But the Chiefs walked 9 and hit 1; the Snappers walked 8 and hit 1. And that 3’rd inning; the Chiefs pitcher couldn’t find the plate and had to be relieved with 2 outs and the reliever promptly gave up a double.

Still, the Chiefs star hit a home run and a triple..only to be thrown out when trying to stretch it into an inside the park home run (and it did take an excellent throw to get him).

The game was played in patchy drizzle and there was a delay to make the pitchers mound playable (was getting muddy and slick)

The start of the game

Fans fleeing the rain

The “Goreman shift”; on this at bat he knocked it off the center field wall and couldn’t quite get the inside the park home run. He did knock one over the right field fence in the previous at bat.

Social: last night, I had dinner with a Naval Academy classmate: Steve.

it was a while ago.

Workout notes next day, I slept in; walked 2 miles with a loaded backpack and later 3 (including 30:12 for 5 laps of the W. Peoria track). This morning: yoga, 4 miles on the treadmill:

11:10, 17:40 for 2 (29:45 for 5K), then walk/jog to get 39:30 for 4. 3 miles of easy walking finished it up. Weight: a bit up; 188 prior to running.

Faith Versus Fact: a good book but not really for me?

I just finished this book; I bought it when I bought several others I was interested in. Yes, I finished it. A decent review is here.

My biggest problem with this book: it reflects what I already think; it didn’t challenge me at all. I found myself wondering: “yes, it is well written but there is nothing surprising or challenging in it for me…” (I loved Professor Coyne’s book Why Evolution is True; it was outstanding and influenced how I see the world).

I even wondered: why is this book even needed? Then I read this.

What I have forgotten, and continue to forget, is that much of the rest of the world has no problem assigning “truth authority” to religious texts, church/religious dogma, etc.

So…I’d say that this is the book I wish I had read 30-35 years ago, back when I still had some vestiges of “faith” in me. I was growing serious doubts and many (most?) of them were outlined in this book.

If I had to sum the book up in a few paragraphs, I’d say:

1. Religious faith..or any religious system worthy of the word “faith” makes concrete claims about our world and universe and ..I’ll leave it to Mano Singham:

What is being asserted is that sophisticated theologians and philosophers, people who are much smarter than me, have studied these issues in great depth and have already explained everything and we need to go to them to find answers. God is so subtle that it is only through immersion in the works of these theologians and philosophers that we can obtain an understanding of him. Those of us who are not professional theologians and philosophers should shut up about our demands for dumb old evidence and not draw any conclusions on the question of god’s existence until we have devoted years to carefully studying the works of these theologians and philosophers.

This idea that god is so hard to grasp will no doubt come as news to the billions of religious believers who think they know god pretty well and have a good relationship with him without such study.

But we atheists are not talking about understanding the nature of god. We are not talking about the meaning of god. We are talking about whether god exists or not. This should surely be the prior question and is one that depends on evidence for an answer.

What atheists like me say to religious believers is simply the following: If the existence of your god has empirical consequences, then provide empirical evidence that supports your contention. If it has no empirical consequences whatsoever, then say so and we will not interfere with your theological and philosophical ruminations because we do not really care to speculate on the properties of what we consider to be a mythical entity.

(bold face is mine)

In other words, any “faith” worth pondering must leave some honest to goodness detectable signature. So where is it? If one doesn’t exist, then this conversation is over.

And no, the universe was not designed for us.

Just when I get disgusted by the left…

I read something like this:

At PragerU, we have released about 400 videos on virtually every subject outside of the natural sciences and math. Along with 2 billion views, the videos have gotten tens of thousands of comments. So we have a pretty good handle on what people most love and most hate. For example, any video defending America or Israel inevitably receives many negative responses. But no videos elicit the amount of contempt and mockery that videos defending religion, explaining the Bible, or arguing for God do.

Why is that?

There is a good reason. The Bible and the Left (not liberalism, leftism) are as opposed as any two worldviews can be. While there are people who claim to hold both a Bible-based worldview and left-wing views, these people are few in number. Moreover, what they do is take left-wing positions and wrap them in a few Bible verses. But on virtually every important value in life, the Left and the Bible are diametrically opposed. […]

• The biblical view is that nature was created for man. The left-wing view is that man is just another part of nature.

[…]

The biblical view holds that wisdom begins with acknowledging God. The secular view is that God is unnecessary for wisdom, and the left-wing view is that God is destructive to wisdom. But if you want to know which view is more accurate, look at the most godless and Bible-less institution in our society: the universities. They are, without competition, the most foolish institutions in our society.

So, they wonder why they are mocked?

1. That nature (and the universe) is created for the benefit for our species flies in the face of modern science. Evolution is directionless and our planet is just one of billions orbiting one of billions of stars in one of billions of galaxies. Yes, sophisticated believers might argue that the laws of nature would make it likely that sentient beings would evolve somewhere but that is hardly a biblical world view.

2. Wisdom: actually, it might begin by casting off ancient superstitions.

Now, yes, there is quite a bit of nonsense put out my the modern academic academy. But the science is what enables me to, say, type this on a computer and send it out via a network. The idea that we ought to be somehow ruled by selected passages of a collection of ancient books is madness.

And so…as disgusted as I get with the regressive left…this is also out there.

Workout notes: rotator cuff, pull ups (5-5-5, 5-5-5, 10, 10, 5, 5), bench: 10 x 135, 2 x 185, 4 x 175, incline: 10 x 135, military: 7 x 50 standing, 15 x 50 seated, 10 x 40 standing, 10 x 180 machine, rows: 3 sets of 10 single warm with 50, 10 x 110 machine, goblet squats (8 x 30, 6 x 50), leg presses: 10 x 210, plank, (2:30) side plank, headstand, crow (almost 30 seconds), knee stretches.

Old man: yes, I did walk to school; 1.6 miles each way.

But that was something I GOT to do..not something I had to do. I feel bad for kids who don’t get to do this.

A difference of a few hours…

I watched a couple of Bradley Baseball games…hopefully this will make up for the Chiefs games I will miss during all of the grading period from Wednesday to Friday.

But I did get in a walk:

No this wasn’t fast (14:30 mpm) and yes, it is in line with what I walked for 24 hours way back when:

7 Pmmjf Obozft 44 M Peoria IL 101.03 11:13:38 14:07:55 23:40:10

(Yes, I did that to keep my name out of the search engine)

Nevertheless, this is the best sustained walk I’ve had in several months, and it is probably due to my weight.

Now about the games:

Last night: total disaster. Illinois State won 14-1 in a game that was as lopsided as the score would indicate; it was 1-1 going into the 5’th when ISU exploded; 3 run home run shot as part of a 7 run explosion (11 Redbird batters saw the plate in that inning) and then they added 2 in the 7’th (another home run) and 4 in the top of the 9’th.

Bradley’s line: 1 run, 2 hits, 3 errors as opposed to ISU’s 14, 12, 2. Total mismatch.

Today: much better; the pitchers dominated early but BU “small balled” it to take a 1-0 lead in the 4’th. Then in the 5’th, Bradley caught a break on an error and then converted to score 4. Then a 2 run home run in the 6’th put the lead to 6-0.

ISU rallied a bit for 2 runs in the top of the 9’th but it was too little, too late.

Both teams had good defensive plays.

Social: Vickie (my yoga teacher) and Harry (her s. o.) joined me in a box for the teeth chattering Saturday night game.

Today’s game was a Mothers’ Day special.

Aging changes the formula

One thing about trying to run as an older person: the training formula that worked in your late 30’s/early 40’s fails to work 20 years hence. I figured I needed to do at least a little bit of faster (less glacial) running so I jogged to Bradley Park and did 2 lower loops (featuring Dog Park Hill); it is about 2.5 miles for 2 loops. Time: 22:18 (11:15, 11:03) or just under a a 9 minute pace. This is faster than I did last October but in Spring of 2016, my times were 11:04/10:52 and 11:05/10:34 (and one loop was 10:29). But I think that more “faster running” can help; I’ve been mostly on a diet of slow 7-9 mile runs as 12 minutes per mile.

We’ll see where this leads.

Some photos

Just drinking my coffee..getting ready to run. 6 miles with a faster segment or 9 steady/ I do have a final exam at 2:30 pm.

I got the photos from last weekend’s 5K

My time was 27:12 which equates to about a 23 minute 5K for a younger person. The age tables suggest that I might be able to work down to just under 26. So, I need to get to work and stay patient. Recently I hurt myself with a slow 20 lb. weight gain, and I need to spend some time at my current weight and train up.

And there is no denying that I took a big hut after my last (2010) knee surgery.

Note: I can race a 43 year old woman on equal terms. I don’t know why I thought to check on that.

Baseball/Softball

My weird final exam schedule allowed me to make the Drake vs. Bradley MVC softball game. I saw yesterday’s game, a 4-0 BU victory over Indiana State. But this time BU faced no. 25 ranked Drake and their all-America pitcher who threw a perfect game and struck out 18 over 7 innings. Still BU hung tough and was trailing 1-0 going into the 4’th inning when the BU catcher hit the pitcher with a hard throw as a Drake runner was attempting to steal. The ball went into the outfield and allowed the Drake runner to score. The BU pitcher was not the same after that and had to be relieved and eventually the dam broke and Drake won 7-0.

It was simply a matter of Drake being a strong team with an excellent pitcher.

Then I got to see Illinois State’s 1-0 win over Bradley. The lone run came on an home run in the 3’rd. ISU made it interesting in the top of the 9’th when they loaded the bases, but BU escaped the threat. But the Redbird reliever shut BU down in the 9’th. It was a honey of a pitcher’s duel on a great day for baseball. I just wish Bradley had won.

The case for Donald Trump

If you think that I have lost my mind:

1. I think that this meme is spot on.

2. I certainly will NOT vote for him…for ANY office, much less POTUS. I value technical competence and deportment. IMHO, he has neither.

But Trump’s approval rating seems to be in the mid 40’s (45.1 by Real Clear, 42.4 by Fivethirtyeight) and if Trump can maintain a mid 40’s to high 40’s, he can win reelection.

Why? Easy: not everyone who disapproves of Trump will vote for the D; someone can disapprove of Trump but disapprove of the Democrat even more.

And here is how I see it:

1. Money Republicans: they get their tax cuts and judges who will deregulate businesses. Yes, some get left behind but in their eyes, as long as there is opportunity for the worthy to excel, they are fine. They really do not care about those who make poor life choices (e. g. have more kids that they can afford to raise, etc.).

2. Cultural Republicans: many of them do not care for the smug, sanctimonious liberals who appear to be “triggered” by EVERYTHING. (ok, I don’t like some of them either). So Trump is a massive thumb in their eye. The “woke” liberals scream “you can’t say X” and Trump, well, “says X” and their heads explode. Many Trump supporters just LOVE this.

So, the above …that Trump talks Christianity but doesn’t practice it..that Trump touts his business success but really doesn’t have that much of it…that Trump says he is smart but offers little evidence….none of that matters to Republicans. Fact checking Trump doesn’t move the needle at all. He is all about attitude for the masses and tax cuts/judges for the financially elite.

So barring a financial crash or national emergency where he gets in over his head…we will not be able to flip many Trump voters. This election is going to be a tough one and if we nominate someone who is uninspiring or unpopular, heaven help us.