Fills my cold, dead heart with joy, it does.

Comedy, plus skills.

Training.

GTG - pullups, dips, grip work
Rutten MMA Wkout - muay thai - 10x2m rounds
Waterbury challenge - 22 chins, pushups, lunges
Neck nods/rotations

Yesterday 1/21
GTG - pullups, dips, grip work
Simplefit L2W3 - 39 bw rows, 26 pushups, 26 prisoner squats - for time - 4:52 [level up]
Rutten MMA Wkout - muay thai - 5x2m rounds
Waterbury challenge - 21 chins, pushups, lunges
Hip thrusts, band dislocates/facepulls/chest pulls/bow
4x5 chins, dips, single arm DB DL

"Civility is nice; nonviolence is even better."

Well said.

Civility is nice; nonviolence is even better | Richmond Times-Dispatch:

"The frenzy surrounding Jared Loughner's rampage in Tucson this month has finally died down. As tempers cool, perhaps distance could turn reflection toward some bigger questions. Many Republicans and Democrats have lamented the frequency of violent rhetoric in politics. Fewer seem to have regrets about the actual use of violence itself.

...what about violence by the state? Liberals and conservatives alike often embrace it as a means to an end they desire.

Government, as Max Weber famously put it, is distinguished from other social organizations by its claim to a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. A church or club might invite you to join, but cannot conscript you as government can. A developer cannot take your property by eminent domain; only government can. Acme might try to persuade you to buy widgets through advertising. A gay-rights group might try to coerce Acme to adopt gay-friendly personnel policies by organizing a boycott of Acme's products. But Acme cannot make you buy widgets at the point of a gun, and gay-rights groups cannot change Acme's employee policies by kidnapping the CEO's daughter.

...The debate over the size and scope of government, then, is an argument over when to use violence to change things and circumstances consensual activity cannot. Liberals (broadly speaking) find inequality odious and think the government should use force in the economic arena by redistributing wealth but leave individuals alone in matters of personal morality, such as whom they have sex with. Conservatives (broadly speaking) are less troubled by inequality and disdain the redistributive uses of government power. But social conservatives are outraged by immorality, as they define it, and therefore think the state should use the threat of violence to enforce personal moral codes by banning prostitution, homosexual sodomy, and the like.

Then there are a small minority of diehard libertarians who would like to minimize government involvement in both arenas, and a small minority of diehard communitarians who think government should dictate behavior of every stripe.

Admittedly, this oversimplifies the issue...

Force is sometimes necessary. We must have police and courts and national defense and environmental protection and so on. But government at all levels does much more nowadays than is strictly necessary, because both liberals and conservatives delight in using it to make other people do what they would not do through mutual consent.

In the wake of the butchery in Tucson, it has been nice to hear many people say we should not speak so well of violence. It would be even nicer to hear more say we should not vote for it quite so often, either."

Via On Voting for Less Violence | The Agitator

"What Happened to the Antiwar Movement? - ...War, it seems, is a bipartisan venture."

Most were hacks and hypocrites, that's what.

Reason.tv: What Happened to the Antiwar Movement? - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine:

"War, it seems, is a bipartisan venture, which is reflected by the fact that Democrats have a favorable view of Obama's foreign policy, despite its remarkable similarity to George W. Bush's foreign policy. And though there have been rumblings of antiwar sentiment from some on the Right, Republicans remain strongly in favor of an interventionist foreign policy.

Although public sentiment is turning against the war in Afghanistan, the always-shifting withdrawal deadlines and the unwillingness to touch defense spending mean that this bipartisan war is likely to continue far into the future."

Undercover cop has sex with activist target.

The fourth, of late, apparently.  This one also married and had kids with the activist he was spying on.

The Spy Who Married Me - Boing Boing:

"An undercover cop assigned to infiltrate and surveil environmental activist groups in the UK married one of the activists he was sent to spy on."

Minus the scandalousness, a bigger point that's rarely noted is that the modus operandi for these ops is that the cops go undercover, become a "key organiser" and steer the org into criminal activity. Then bust them for it. Not dissimilar to several of the terrorism stings in the States.

Undercover policeman married activist he was sent to spy on | UK news | The Guardian:

"...He is the fourth spy now to have been identified as an undercover police officer engaged in the covert surveillance of eco-activists. Three of those spies are accused of having had sexual relationships with the people they were targeting.

...Jon Murphy, the chief constable of Merseyside, told the Guardian it was "never acceptable" for undercover officers to sleep with people they were targeting.

"Something has gone badly wrong here. We would not be where we are if it had not," he said, referring to three inquiries into undercover policing that have been launched in response to the Guardian's investigation into the first spy, Mark Kennedy, an undercover officer who had several sexual relationships during his seven-year deployment.

Murphy, who is the national lead officer on serious and organised crime for the Association of Chief Police Officers, declined to speak about the Kennedy case directly but said officers who infiltrated the environmental movement were not permitted "under any circumstances" to sleep with activists.

"It is grossly unprofessional. It is a diversion from what they are there to do. It is morally wrong because people have been put there to do a particular task and people have got trust in them," he said.

...During his time undercover, when he is said to have become a key organiser, Boyling met a 28-year-old woman and began a relationship with her. He later disappeared from her life..."

More theft/armed robbery under color of authority.

So How Is This Different From Armed Robbery? | The Agitator:

"Earlier this month, police in Oakland County, Michigan raided a medical marijuana dispensary in the town of Oak Park. The deputies came in with guns drawn and bulletproof vests, with at least one wearing a mask.

They made no arrests, but they did clean the place out. The confiscated all of the dispensary’s cash on hand and—in a particularly thuggish touch—also took all of the cash from the wallets and purses of employees and patients. In this update, police officials say the raid was the result of street dealers telling police they were buying marijuana from the dispensary. I suppose we’ll see in time if that’s true, and if it is, if the dispensary was actually aware that it was selling to dealers. But at first blush, the claim sounds like a pretty good way for street dealers to put a legitimate competitor out of business.

Under Michigan’s asset forfeiture law, 80 percent of the cash the deputies seized will go directly to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department...

...a former prosecutor described the Michigan forfeiture law to the Detroit News this way:

“It’s a money grab, pure and simple; a sneaky way of getting a penalty on something prosecutors can’t prove. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”"

More healing power of religion - "...the boss told him that 'he needed to attend the prayer meetings or find another position.'"

Courthouse News Service:

"A BNSF Railway worker claims he was demoted because he declined to join his supervisor in prayer meetings at work. James Dunkin claims his boss proselytized on the job, handed out booklets that contained 'instructions for raising 'masculine sons and feminine daughters,'' and says that when he objected to the coerced prayers, the boss told him that 'he needed to attend the prayer meetings or find another position.'"

Training.

GTG - pullups, dips, gripwork
Rutten MMA Wkout - boxing - 7x3m rounds
Waterbury Challenge - 20 chins/pushups/lunges
Dips, neck nods/rotations, hyperextensions
Rutten MMA Wkout - boxing - 5x2m rounds - muay thai - 3x2m rounds
2 sets pullups/chins, dips, hyperextensions

"There is never progress without hateful, reactionary blowback" - Joss Whedon just knows.

Yin and Yang. Via The Endless Season: Wrapping up Buffy Season 8 :: Blog :: Dark Horse Comics

Hate/Rage - "On-duty cop rapes woman, pleads sentence down to one year."

Sometimes you hear rumblings and get laws passed about how crimes committed against law enforcement personnel should garner greater punishment - here for example. Okay. Fair enough. As long as when law enforcement officers betray the public trust and commit crimes their punishments are harsher as well. No honest cop should have a problem with that, right?

On-duty cop rapes woman, pleads sentence down to one year - Boing Boing:

"San Antonio police officer Craig Nash raped a woman while on duty. He faced a life sentence for the felony charges, but he was able to plead that down to a misdemeanor and will serve just one year."

Obama policies validate Cheney-Bush; also lying about damage from Wikileaks.

Gah.

Morning Links | The Agitator:

"Obama has essentially validated Dick Cheney. Particularly sad, given that you could make a strong argument that he was elected because of opposition and outrage over Cheney’s policies."

U.S. officials privately say WikiLeaks damage limited | Reuters:

"Internal U.S. government reviews have determined that a mass leak of diplomatic cables caused only limited damage to U.S. interests abroad, despite the Obama administration's public statements to the contrary.

A congressional official briefed on the reviews said the administration felt compelled to say publicly that the revelations had seriously damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers.

...State Department officials have privately told Congress they expect overall damage to U.S. foreign policy to be containable, said the official, one of two congressional aides familiar with the briefings who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity."

Training.

GTG pullups + grip
Simplefit L2W2 - 5 rounds for time - 9 bw rows/8 pushups/13 prisoner squats - 264s - level up
Rutten MMA wkout - boxing 10x2m rounds
Hip thrusts, band dislocates/facepulls/chestpulls
Neck nods/rotations, hyperextensions, 2x dips
Waterbury Challenge - 19 chins/pushups/lunges

Yesterday 1/18
GTG pullups + grip
Rutten MMA wkout - boxing - 7x3m rounds
Waterbury Challengs - 18 chins/pushups/lunges

A Thing of Beauty.

Hate/Rage - "Vatican ordered bishops to... not report pedophile priests."

I'd been doing so well of late, mitigating my outrage and hate - reading but letting slide by all manner of abuse of authority and political malfeasance - but this, this... god how I detest them.  Under the veil of moral authority and righteousness, as god's representatives on earth...  evil bastards.

Vatican ordered bishops to protect and not report pedophile priests - Boing Boing:

"'A 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police -- a disclosure that victims' groups described as 'the smoking gun' needed to show that the church enforced a worldwide culture of covering up crimes by pedophile priests.' (AP)"

Love Japan so much - "Japanese Scientists Plan to Resurrect Mammoth Within Five Years."

Japanese Scientists Plan to Resurrect Mammoth Within Five Years | Disinformation

Training.

GTG pullups & grip work
Waterbury Challenge x17
Atlas Perpetual + DB/PA/PD
Simplefit L2W1 - max rounds 20m - 3 bw rows/3 pushups/4 prisoner squats - 26 rounds
Neck nods/rotations, hyperextensions

"Everything is alive. This is reality. I wish you could see it. I wish I could talk in technicolor."

I find things like this utterly fascinating.

Via Housewife's LSD trip, 1956: Harvard Psychedelic Club - Boing Boing

Of course the win quote, from the comments, is: "The moral of the story is that one person's bliss might be another person's epic, galactic struggle with Satan, leprechauns and evil parakeets."

I laughed.

On junk food addictions.

Point.

How to Stop Eating Junk Food | Mark's Daily Apple:

"Our moods, of course, can influence our vulnerability to old favorites. Many of us have indulged in emotional eating, and carbohydrates figure into this equation all too strongly. There’s a legitimate serotonin boost from a carb binge, but then comes the inevitable crash and then the ongoing habit. Our desire for comfort foods, researchers have found, only increases with additional stress.

...A favorite food offers momentary pleasure and maybe a meaningful bit of nostalgia. But what is your life without that favorite food? More energetic? Less congested? More restful? More even-keeled? Less medicated? Just as happily reminiscent. Just as meaningful. Your taste buds are but one small part of you. If your whole body could vote on each food you put in it, what would it tell you?"

MLK - "The saving of our world from pending doom will come... through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”

“This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Our planet teeters on the brink of annihilation; dangerous passions of pride, hatred, and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; and men do reverence before false gods of nationalism and materialism. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Captain America looks pretty superheroic-y.

From the film this coming summer, via Captain America In Action – Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors

Training.

Waterbury Challenge x16
GTG pullups + grippers
AP +
5 Tibetans

Yesterday 1/15
GTG pullups + grippers
WC x15
Rutten MMA wkout/boxing 3m rounds x7
AP +
5 Tibetans
Band dislocates/facepulls/chestpulls, hip thrusts, neck nods/rotations, hyperxtensions

"Every moment you spend wishing you were someplace else is a moment you can't get back." - Charlie Crews

Charlie Crews: Every moment you spend wishing you were someplace else is a moment you can't get back.
Dani Reese: What about every moment I spend wishing you were someplace else.
Charlie Crews: If would hurt my feelings if I thought you meant it.

Fresh Liberian Seafood.

You can't beat the fact that here in Liberia you can get fresh seafood delivered right to your door. [The economy here is all about the hustle - in the good sense of the word.] Got four dozen shrimp and eight good sized crabs all for about $30 US.

Though there was one thing I hadn't anticipated... after four hours of boiling, seasoning, shelling, peeling, cracking and shucking crabs and shrimp, the last thing I felt like doing was eating any of it. Kind of exhausting, actually. But now I've got a good stockpile of fresh seafood for next week.

The week in food.

Food log/culinary experiments.

The week's food.  Only thing that I ate/not pictured is a tossed salad w/shredded cheese I had at a friend's house.  No camera, plus I'm only willing to go so far to be the "weird food" guy.  Only water & coffee w/cream this week.  No more than 2 cups a day of the lifer-juice, but still seem to need it in the AM to shake the cobwebs loose.  Better on the veg this week, but playing around with the meatzza recipe might've had too many carbs & calories w/the sauce.  Not sure.  Onwards.

Not as much food for the Mrs, as she was still working on leftovers the early part of the week.  Shrimp, salad, fresh cut pineapple, pizza quesadilla, celery w/tahini, meatzza & scrambled eggs w/cheese.