"What Happens To Your Body When You Drink A Coca-Cola."

That stuff is just evil.  Via Ripped & Fit.  [Click the image to embiggen.]

Training.

8/6 - leg press, hack squats, cybex front squats, leg x, leg curls, glute press, calf raise, donkey calf raise, hyperx

The last pic is a good reminder of the fact that the scale is a useful tool, but it's not everything.

Maybe.

"I see you're a gangster."

This - "Secure Your Own Mask Before Helping Others."

HARDCORE ZEN: Secure Your Own Mask Before Helping Others:

"Zen, on the other hand, tends to seem self-centered.

...It’s always comforting to be told that the source of the world's troubles is out there, in other people, in our surroundings and circumstances and not in ourselves... It’s those other people that need fixing, not us. It’s painful when that assumption is challenged. I understand that because it was painful to me when I first came across the supposedly selfish aspects of Zen.

The underlying problem is the same as the problem with the emergency oxygen masks on airplanes. In our usual condition we are far too woozy to be of much service to anyone else. When our own condition is all messed up our attempts to be helpful are more likely to make things worse than to improve them.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t do anything when we see someone is in trouble. We always have to act from the state we’re in at this moment. It’s our duty to do what we can with what we have.

One of the greatest and most useful lessons I’ve learned from Zen practice is how not to help. Zen teachers are often seen as cold. Lots of times in this practice when you go to your teacher in times of distress, instead of being met with warm hugs and reassuring words you’re given the cold shoulder. You're told to take care of the problem yourself. This seems mean, heartless, even cruel.

But as Shakespeare and Nick Lowe noticed sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind (in the right measure). The best way to be truly helpful is often to leave things be... It was often best to allow a bad scheme to fail and then fix it. Jumping into the fray and try to fix things before they broke often was the worst idea. Because then the same thing just kept happening over and over. People learn best from their own mistakes and learn nothing when you fix things for them.

This is not always easy. We want to help. Our self-image is tied up in being a good person and a good person is a helpful person. It damages our ego when we have to let things be instead of jumping in to fix them. Sometimes the hardest thing you can do is to not be helpful. People resent it. They label you as a bad person. Because they don’t want to have to deal with their own shit, they want someone else to deal with it for them. They want Superman to rush in and save the day after they’ve messed things up..."

Training.

8/5 - pullups, chinups, tbar rows, 1ADB rows, cybex pulldowns, hyperx, curls, preacher curls, db curls, db time holds, wrist curls, rv wrist curls
8/4 - pushups, situps, hindu squats, situps, pushups, MILO dynamic tension, deep breathing, pulldowns, pullaparts

Motivation/Inspiration.

I laughed my heathen laugh - "Athiest Barbie."

With some things, Japan does not fuck about.

Surrealism 101. Or, "How to deal with dumbness on the internets..."

Training.

8/3 - calisthenics, dynamic tension, band work, isometrics
8/2 - G.U.T.S. circuit - pushups/situps/hindu squats/situps/pushups/MILO - Kettlebell swings [2H, alternating, 1H], halos, Turkish get-ups.
8/1 - 21m jog + windsprints x5 - Bas Rutten MMA Workout/Shadowboxing/Boxing 2m rounds x5 - Elastic Steel Grapplers Routine/Beginner

Archevore - Archevore Blog:

"A typical 'paleo' meal, consisting of either a fat or lean steak, a green salad and a sweet potato, is not only healthy but is indeed closer to ancestral diets... Not because of what it contains, but because of what it does not contain...  Processed white flour, a concentrated source of gluten and wheat germ agglutinin, sugar in the form of sucrose or high fructose corn syrup, and especially, industrial vegetable oils heavy in n-6 linoleic acid - such as corn, soy, canola, peanut, etc..."

Faster internet connection means lot of motivation/opportunity/inspiration.  The tumblr Ripped & Fit is pic intensive but awesome. 

I'm old now. Dilbert says so.

Yeah, I've actually noticed this too.

Summer Vacation 2011, Phase I - NC/OBX.

Fine southern dining, heading home from the airport, after a 12 hour flight. My wife, she has the priorities, clearly. Four of the five southern food groups are present - meat, cheese, fried and gravy. Rest assured, the fifth food group, sugar, was covered by sweet tea [not pictured.] Type II Diabetes? What's that?

OBX road trippin'.

Bed and Breakfast'ing. That's right. We're fancy.

You know, we can blame the Adachi-gene on Sandy's side for her affinity for dress up. There's really no excuse for me.

We are... what's the word? Oh, yes. Ridiculous. [At the Wright Brothers' first flight monument...]

The relaxation. I has it.

Chocolate. Beer. That is all.

I love the beach. Could float, swim, bake and read for damn near forever without getting tired of it.

@Hatteras Lighthouse, one of three Outer Banks lighthouses we visited.

For more pics, you can hit up this link. 

Wife tends to find the most accurate greeting cards.

Almost as spot-on as this one.

Salt is good for you.

So is cholesterol.  So is fat.  Nobody listens, nobody cares...  just keep watching Dr. Oz, America.

Further info on how we arrived at all this bad nutritional advice [hint: politics] at the link.  Fat Head » Another A-Salt on Science:

"This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.

I’d say labeling the evidence linking salt to heart disease as tenuous is being generous. Non-existent would be the more accurate term, unless you engage in some major cherry-picking. In real science, no consistency means no validity, and the associations between salt and heart disease or mortality aren’t even close to being consistent. If anything, the associations are all over the place...

For every study that suggests that salt is unhealthy, another does not.

Bingo. No consistency, no scientific validity. Given an honest analysis of the science, we’d have to conclude that restricting salt is pointless from a public-health standpoint, except as advice given to the few people who are hyper-sensitive to salt...

Pic via.

Michael J. Lopez of Nederland, Texas - I salute you.

This would be awesome. If slightly dickish.

Stephen Fry, Hero.

"Only troubled people seek peace." - Charlie Crews

Dani Reese: So everyone going to that Zen center was just completely screwed up. Right?

Charlie Crews: People go there seeking peace. People seek what they don't have. Only troubled people seek peace.

"The more things you can do, the more choices you have..." - Robert B. Parker

"...The more choices you have, the less life kicks you around.  It's better to be strong than weak.  And it's better to be quick than slow.  

Better to know than to not know."

"Religion. It's like history class..."

Heh.

Wifi War.

So. Much. This. - "For introverts like myself, it takes energy to engage with other people. Doing so requires thoughtfulness. It's tiring. Expending energy, for us, isn't energizing..."

Via 4 ways technology can enable your inner introvert – Boing Boing:

"For introverts like myself, it takes energy to engage with other people. Doing so requires thoughtfulness. It's tiring. Expending energy, for us, isn't energizing. Please note: we're not talking about shyness, some character flaw. The problem isn't with the introvert -- it's with the demands you make on the introvert. An introvert can't force an extrovert to sit quietly in a room and read a book, but extroverts (and the stigmas they've inadvertently created) can impose social demands with ease."

Full article here.