Training.

2/9 - P90X+ D83 Yoga X -- Yin Yoga Hip Series -- burpees 10/9/8/7/6

Today's Internets.

Seattle Mayor returns police drones to the manufacturer - Boing Boing: "Seattle's police force were very hot-to-trot for a pair of new surveillance drones, an issue that became a lightning rod for criticism of the scandal-haunted force. After public outcry, the city's mayor simply returned the UAVs to their manufacturer"

10 questions with Chael Sonnen - Bloody Elbow: "1. Were you surprised at all that Dan Henderson said he'd be willing to fight you, and would it be unsettling/disconcerting to fight a friend and former training partner or just business as usual?

Perhaps "Hendo" is forgetting all the years of me destroying him in the practice-room. Or, perhaps, I am remembering events that never occurred to bolster my fragile ego, reverse-engineer the past, and provide you with the kind of clever, snide, answer that journalists like you have come to expect from me. It's one or the other. I'll get back to you."

Poliquin Blog - Tip 533: Enjoy Red Meat on A Low-Carb Diet & Strength Train To Improve Body Composition: "Enjoy red meat on a low-carb, high-protein diet in conjunction with strength training to improve body composition. It’s well known that high-protein, low-carb diets can help you lose fat and preserve muscle, and recent evidence suggests fresh red meat, such as lean pork and beef can speed the fat loss effect while improving health! Good news going into the holidays—but to get the benefits of enjoying red meats and other high-protein foods, you must restrict carbohydrates.    A recent comparison of low-carb and low-fat diets in conjunction with strength training showed that low-carb eating produces more fat loss. It also preserves muscle mass to a greater degree—about 25 percent of weight loss on a low-fat diet is from lean mass, whereas low-carb, high-protein diets can completely preserve or even increase lean mass."

God Made A Factory Farmer - watch more funny videos      

Training.

2/8 - P90X+ D82 Upper+ & Abs/Core+ -- burpees 10/9/8/7/6

We should all be working at least this hard.

Today's Internets.

WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR, “In December, [Megan Phelps-Roper, formerly one of...: "In December, [Megan Phelps-Roper, formerly one of the Westboro Baptist Church’s most vocal members] went to a public library in Lawrence, Kansas. She was looking through books on philosophy and religion, and it struck her that people had devoted their entire lives to studying these questions of how to live and what is right and wrong. ‘The idea that only [[Westboro Baptist Church] had the right answer seemed crazy,’ she says. ‘It just seemed impossible.’ "

If you want to think clearly, fear, and jump. « Random Xpat Rantings: "Learning new things is impossible, for half of the population. Don’t put them down. They make good servants and soldiers. If we didn’t have classes, we would be over-run by societies that had classes. No one who does LSD and makes art wants to drive a tank for Jeebus."

Cmpatibility & Frustration« Random Xpat Rantings: "I know many people tend to see all issues filtered through the gossip angles of self-esteem and blame. Blunt descriptions harm the sensibilities of such folk. It isn’t necessary to change the subject or downplay the importance of it as soon as variance is mentioned. People vary, and it isn’t about blame. Not every conversation boils down to whose fault it is."

I'm smart enough to *almost get it* and still have my mind blown.
Why quantum mechanics is the biggest embarrassment in all of modern physics: ""It seems to me that we have not been been trying to answer this question with as much vigor as we should," Carroll continues. "What is quantum mechanics, really? I mean, that's like saying 'what is the Universe?' What more important question is there than that?""

The Importance of Roughhousing With Your Kids | The Art of Manliness: "...recent research has shown that roughhousing serves an evolutionary purpose and actually provides a myriad of benefits for our progeny.  In their book The Art of Roughhousing, Anthony DeBenedet and Larry Cohen highlight a few of these benefits and the research behind them. Instead of teaching kids to be violent and impulsive, DeBenedet and Cohen boldly claim that roughhousing “makes kids smart, emotionally intelligent, lovable and likable, ethical, physically fit, and joyful.” In short, roughhousing makes your kid awesome."

FML: I pointed out to my boyfriend how Valentine's day, my birthday, and our one-year anniversary were…: "Today, I pointed out to my boyfriend how Valentine's day, my birthday, and our one-year anniversary were all coming up in the next few weeks. He then promptly broke up with me. FML"

Friendly, trusting Japanese system for lining up for sports tickets - Boing Boing: "Murdo sends us a video showing "an Englishman in Japan showing how the Japanese queue for local football games. They stick sellotape to the ground with their information on it, marking their places in the queue so that they can return to that point in the future. They even do it the night before the actual queue forms!""

Vicious KO.

Anonymous in the DC Universe, maybe?  Interesting.  And Gail Simone is a great writer.

Big Shiny Robot - INTERVIEW: Gail Simone on “The Movement”: "Gail Simone: The Movement is an idea I’ve had for some time. It’s a book about power–who owns it, who uses it, who suffers from its abuse. As we increasingly move to an age where information is currency, you get these situations where a single viral video can cost a previously unassailable corporation billions, or can upset the power balance of entire governments. And because the sources of that information are so dispersed and nameless, it’s nearly impossible to shut it all down. I’ve been in countries where the internet is heavily censored, but they can’t possibly keep up with millions of users from every corner of the world. The previous generations of superheroes were not created to address this, it’s a legitimately new frontier, both for the real world and for storytellers. The thing I find fascinating and a little bit worrisome is, what happens when a hacktivist group whose politics you find completely repulsive has this same kind of power and influence…what if a racist or homophobic group rises up and organizes in the same manner? It makes you wonder where the next battlefield will be. "

Big Shiny Robot - INTERVIEW: Gail Simone on “The Movement”: "THE MOVEMENT #1 Written by GAIL SIMONE Art by FREDDIE WILLIAMS II -- "We are faceless. We are limitless. We see all. And we do not forgive. Who defends the powerless against the GREEDY and the CORRUPT? Who protects the homeless and poverty-stricken from those who would PREY upon them in the DARK OF NIGHT? When those who are sworn to protect us abuse their power, when toxic government calls down super-human lackeys to force order upon the populace…finally, there is a force, a citizen’s army, to push order BACK. Let those who abuse the system know this as well: We have our OWN super humans now. They are not afraid of your badges or Leagues. And they will not be SILENCED. We are your neighbors. We are your co-workers. And we are your children.""

Coffee Shop Diary: One Who Is To Be Loved « delicioustacos: "There is a woman talking about using a juice cleanse to cure bronchitis.  She is attractive, but I didn’t need to tell you that.  Ugly women know enough not to talk about a juice cleanse.  Not to talk about astrology.  Only a beautiful girl can go through 22 years of life talking about putting carrot juice in your ass to cure cancer, how the doctors all know the real score; all their fancy chemo drugs are just a scam to keep you sick and Big Pharma doesn’t want you to know the truth because freshly harvested organic carrots don’t make them any money. Only a beautiful girl can go through decades of saying shit like this without being told to shut the fuck up.  This girl, if you saw her– she hasn’t received so much as a cocked eyebrow over anything since she was twelve.  The schlub she’s talking to has such a stink of the unlaid about him that she could start denying the Holocaust and he would be like “wow… yeah.  Interesting.” "

Fat Head » Surprise, Surprise! Animal Fat Beats Vegetable Oil In ‘Rediscovered’ Study: "That’s the polite, academic way of putting it. Allow me to interpret for the non-academic masses: The Lipid Hypothesis is a crock of @#$%. Cholesterol doesn’t cause heart disease. Saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease. TIME magazine, your doctor, your government health officials, and everyone else who warned you to cut back on saturated fats, switch to vegetable oils, and lower you cholesterol to save yourself from heart disease had no @#$%ing clue what they were talking about."

Training.

2/7 - P90X+ D81 Kenpo Cardio+ -- burpees 2x10/3x6

Today's Internets PT II - Rap News 18 The Great Gun Debate - "Like KRS says, 'You'll never have justice on stolen land.'"

"Look, if the slaves want guns, let 'em be.

Our supremacy doesn't depend on weaponry.

With schools, media, money and meds, we control every

Aspect of your lives through ideological hegemony.

But if you think you need guns to stop tyranny, 

Then what'cha waiting for?

We've already stripped you of your

Liberty

Privacy

Civil Rights 

and Dignity...

You want some more?"

"...Certainly it's not our place to pass judgement

But let us end with a question, and a last comment.

If your passion for the 2nd Amendment

Were matched by that for the 1st
And an independent, honest media
And a free internet

Were prevalent

Today

Wouldn't tyranny always be prevented and held at bay?

If it's in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins

So it follows that the first and best line of defense

Lies in being heavily armed

Not with guns
But with the truth.

Stay safe, everyone."

Today's Internets.

Lesism - by Les Floyd: Disidentifying From Depression: "The more we attach ourselves to the idea (i.e. the dysfunctional thought) that we are in some way ‘faulty’, the more we galvanise that notion, within. It becomes a form of self-discrimination, perpetuating the ego’s perceived control over us, and the more we feed our ego, the tougher it is to break the cycle of critical over-thinking, which is the source of emotional anxiety and pain."

Lesism - by Les Floyd: The Weight of the World: "I used to worry about everything I could find to worry about. I’d actively hunt down subject matter that would help me wallow in that fear, such as watching footage of the Asian Tsunami or the World Trade Centre atrocity. I’d consider what it must have been like to be on the beach and see that tremendous wave coming, or to feel the floor beneath my feet give way in those towers, visualising myself utterly powerless to prevent my imminent doom and demise. Did my grim empathy do anyone any good? Did it force time to rewind and allow me to save lives? Did it comfort the survivors or the families of the dead? No, all it did was help exacerbate the depressive, negative swirl of thought in my mind, further deepening the darkness of my perception of life. This process of thought was no use at all, to anyone. Quite the opposite: it caused mental torment within myself and that negative energy would have spread to the people around me, either through my communication with them, or because of my general sullen demeanour.

...If you’re worried about the world, the most positive thing you can do, today, is to clear up your inner-environment – i.e. yourself – and make it a calmer and more peaceful place to live. Once you’ve mastered that, you’ll radiate positive energy to those around you. Be kind to those you love (and even to those you don’t), make them smile when you have the chance and do what you can to help, when they need it (which isn’t necessarily when you think they need it)."

Are we in the end times of trust in government?: "...as bad things are, there is a tendency to assume that the current attitude toward the federal government is sort of how it always has been. Except that it hasn’t always been like that."

Hooray! - Mixing Alcohol With Diet Soda May Make You Drunker : The Salt : NPR: "Looking to cut back on the calories in your cocktail by mixing, say, diet soda and rum? Well, get ready for the buzz. According to the results of a new study, this combination will leave you drunker than if you'd mixed the liquor with a sugary, caloric mixer. "Alcohol, consumed with a diet mixer, results in higher (BrAC) Breath Alcohol Concentrations as compared to the same amount of alcohol consumed with a sugar-sweetened mixer," says Cecile Marczinski, a cognitive psychologist who authored the new study."

Texts From Last Night: "(603): trying to figure out what happened last night by looking around the apartment. 

(603): naked man under the piano. THE PLOT THICKENS."

FML: "Today, my husband started a conversation with, "In Pokémon" and ended the same conversation with "and that's why we should divorce." FML"

Texts From Last Night: "(989): Lets go hit some boners bro! 
(1-989): I appreciate the acceptance and inclusion, but that's not how we gay men talk."

best of craigslist: Vasectomy: $400. Speechless look on her face: priceless.: "I'll try to sum up a funny story that happened a few years ago: I got a vasectomy. I met a girl soon afterwards. She was nice and attractive but with a selfish streak that raised a big red flag. She was 32 at the time and I could practically HEAR her biological clock ticking...

Four months into dating, I get the "I'm pregnant" talk. She's going on and on about how the condom must have broke and now we really need to think about getting married "for the baby". She's positively giddy. She has a baby in her and she thinks she's gonna have a good meal ticket (me) to go along with her new 7lb annuity. 

At this point, I'm just as giddy. I get to pull the reverse "oops" on her. I figured that she slept with some bad boy and got knocked up. Good thing I was using condoms! Better still that I have a serious mistrust of women who can't think beyond their own uteri. 

So I wait a couple of days to "think about all this." I meet her again. I say I don't want kids and that she should have an abortion. I know where this is going and sure enough it goes there. She goes completely batshit insane on me. There were the usual insults about my manhood. There were threats of legal action. It was all very ugly and I was loving every minute of it. 

Well, I let her stew for a few days. She leaves me nasty messages on my phone. She sends awful emails. I'm laughing hysterically. 

...I ask her the $64,000 question. "Are you sure that this baby is mine?" 

Well, she goes batshit insane again. Hell, she ought to. Her plan could completely unravel if there is ANY question about my paternity. Oh, she's really screaming now. How dare I question her morals. Do I think she's a slut. I'm just trying to weasel out of my responsibilities... blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda. 

I'm not really mad. I'm kind of embarrassed for her. But since she won't shut up and the neighbors can hear all of this, I ask her to step back inside and sit down. She sits on the sofa and calms down a bit. She is glaring at me with all the moral self-righteousness that only a woman can muster up. She thinks she has me trapped. She is 100% convinced her plan has worked. Oh, the tangled web of lies and deceit she has wrought around herself...

I tell her simply, "You're screwed". 

Her look doesn't change. There is no way she can fathom what I have prepared. 

I continue. "I am sterile" 

Her look changes just a bit. Something is beginning to sink in. Naturally, she reverts to women's logic. "You're full of shit. You're trapped and you know it." 

I hold up the letter and the test results. "Three months before we met, I had a vasectomy. Here is a notarized letter from him stating what I had done. Here are two test results showing that I tested negative for the presence of sperm. Blanks. I am shooting blanks. That baby inside you is simply not mine." 

This woman is not to be swayed by logic and clear documentation. "Bullshit, those are fakes." 

I was ready for that. "No, they are real. This last piece of paper is from my attorney. It's a simple letter to you that states if you pursue any kind of legal action against me for child support that I will insist on a DNA test to prove paternity, that is, to prove that your baby is not mine." 

I give the woman all the documents. She reads them slowly, deliberately. With each passing second she can feel in her soul that she has made a very bad mistake. With denial swept away, she started to cry. It's a small cry at first. Then it becomes deeper and more painful. By the time she gets to the letter from the lawyer she is sobbing. 

I had no sympathy for her. I turned and walked out the door. Even after I closed the door I could still hear her sobbing. 

Epilogue - 

I never heard directly from this woman again. I did hear through my friends that she did indeed have the baby. I also heard that the real father was some guy in a band she had met. I assumed that after 30, women stopped going after musicians, bikers, criminals, and thugs. Silly me..."

 

These are Awesome.  Via JL8: A Webcomic

Training.

2/6 - P90X+ D80 Total Body+ -- burpees 8/2x6/2x5/8

Bodybuilding.com - We 'Mirin Vol. 21: 17 Bodies You Have To See:

Today's Internets.

Are You An Addict?: "I am an addict and my addiction has been going on for years.  I spend a lot of my day thinking about this addiction and will sacrifice almost anything to get it.  In just a day or two going without it, I experience withdrawal symptoms that can only be remedied when I have another fix.  Even after that fix, however, I am almost immediately consumed by thoughts of how I can have more.  I constantly crave and even dream about my addiction.  When I am unable to satisfy my habit, I feel irritable and become uncomfortable to be around.  Many people around me don’t understand why I act and do the things that I do on a daily basis as a result of my addiction.  To them, I am a real junkie.  My addiction has removed people from my life and brought other characters that share my vice into it.  I don’t really think I am doing anything wrong and although people have tried to make or convince me, this is not something I plan on ever giving up.  I don’t want anyone’s help and am not looking for recovery…  You see, I am addicted to positive self development through physical training."

Interesting.

Don’t Believe The Lies About Foreign Brides: "Next up is the Centre for Immigration Studies who again state a 20% divorce rate with mail order bride marriages. A separate organisation comes to the same conclusions the Immigration Department did, focusing on statistics gathered from foreign countries and agencies as they try to build a picture. Again, we see the same statistic: 80% of the marriages have been successful."

Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice."

Death by Loophole - By Rosa Brooks | Foreign Policy: "If you were worried about whether it was okay for the U.S. government to secretly kill an American citizen overseas, you can relax: The Justice Department says such killings are hunky dory, as long as some "informed, high-level official" decides that citizen poses an "imminent threat" and capture would be "unfeasible." Like many legal documents, this one does fine on its own terms, but looks a lot less satisfying when taken out of its hermetically sealed legal universe. In other words, it's all tree, no forest -- and it nicely illustrates the fact that "legality" is not the same as morality or common sense. 

...here's the problem. This isn't World War II. When the "enemy" (not just a few of the enemy, but all of the enemy) wears no uniform and appears on no traditional battlefield -- when there's substantial disagreement about what it means to be a "combatant," a "belligerent," or to "participate in hostilities" -- stating the legal principle that even U.S. citizens can be targeted if they join the enemy in a war against the United States tells us nothing whatsoever. It restates a legal truism, without offering any criteria for determining who's an enemy beyond stating that U.S. citizens who are "senior operational leaders of Al Qaeda and its associated forces" are targetable anywhere on the globe. But what's a "senior operational leader"? How is that defined? How many "senior operational leaders" are out there? And what's an "associated force" of al Qaeda? That's not defined either. For that matter, no criteria are offered for determining whether or not there's an armed conflict in the first place. Is the United States in an armed conflict with, for instance, al Shabaab in Somalia? Is al Shabaab an "associated force" of al Qaeda? 

...what constitutes an "imminent" threat? Traditionally, both international law and domestic criminal law understand that term narrowly: to be "imminent," a threat cannot be distant or speculative. To the Justice Department, however, "distant and speculative" are apparently perfectly consistent with "imminent": According to the white paper, the requirement of imminence "does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.""

Sex and Punishment: Eric Berkowitz Talks 4,000 Years of Judging Desire - Reason.com: "Eric Berkowitz, author of Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire. "After we ate the apple and did what we did, the sex organs to Augustine became like little dictators that we have to either succumb to or overpower."  ReasonTV's Tracy Oppenheimer sat down with Berkowitz to discuss original sin, trends in sex laws, and societies' perceptions of sexual transgressions."

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Coming Out of the Locker Room Ghetto: "Some questioned why a man my age would watch a show about girls in their twenties, as if they'd just discovered me hanging around a school playground with a shopping bag full of candy in one hand a fluffy puppy in the other. Of course, these critics are right. When I read Moby Dick I first had to convince the bookseller that I was a former whaler named Queequeg. When I read the poetry of Sylvia Plath, I had to pretend I was a depressed white woman with daddy issues. Don't worry, I used a fake ID."

Training.

2/5 - P90X+ D79 Plyometrics -- burpees 2x17/4 -- pullups x16, wg pullups 2x5, chinups 8/7/2x5, dips 15/10, band pull aparts/dislocates superset 2x10

2/4 - P90X+ D78 Upper+ & Abs/Core+ -- shrugs superset inverted/band 2x20 -- burpees x10/3x6/2x5

53 years old/NO EXCUSES - Bodybuilding.com - Over 40 Amateur Of The Week: Down To The Core:

Louis C.K. was awesome.

"Of course... but, maybe..." is made of winning awesome.

Louis C.K. in pitch-perfect, standup form at City Center - NYPOST.com: "His closing routine, which he dubs “Of course . . . but maybe,” is an instant classic. It begins with an innocuous statement, such as the Make a Wish Foundation for terminally ill children being a wonderful thing. Then, after a perfectly timed pause, he adds, “But maybe, maybe, giving a beautiful memory to a kid who’s gonna be dead in a week is a waste of time.” He makes us utterly complicit in his wickedness even as we can’t stop laughing."

Today's Internets.

Rather on point - The Hulk is Ally Sheedy in this Avengers/Breakfast Club mash-up video:

Someone Just Leaked Obama's Rules for Assassinating American Citizens - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "While the White House continues to deny that such memos exist, NBC is reporting that it has acquired the next best thing: A secretish 16-page white paper from the Department of Justice that was provided to select members of the Senate last June."

5 Disturbing Aspects of the DOJ White Paper on the President's License to Kill - Hit & Run : Reason.com

Japan’s suicide statistics don’t tell the real story | The Japan Times

Awesome - "No Asians" - cornering a racist turns out unexpectedly well - Boing Boing:

Report: More Than 50 Countries Involved in CIA Torture Program - Reason 24/7 : Reason.com: "More than 50 countries have been implicated in kidnapping, detention, and torture as part of the CIA’s secret detention and extraordinary rendition programs, said the Open Society Justice Initiative today in a report that provides the most comprehensive documentation to date of the human rights abuses associated with the intelligence agency’s post-September 11, 2001, counterterror operations."

Necrophilia Variations - Thoughts on 'Hysterical Literature': "Photographer Clayton Cubitt has begun a video series called "Hysterical Literature" in which he films women reading from a book while something happens out of sight beneath the table at which they're seated. For the first installment, the divine Stoya chose to read an excerpt from Necrophilia Variations while she was being masturbated by a conspicuously effective Hitachi vibrator... The concept is pure genius, a demented equivalent of the experiments sex researchers undertake in MRI laboratories as they scan the brain at the moment of orgasm. It sets up a conflict — mind vs body, more or less — and dramatizes it in Stoya's physiognomy..."  

Watch Here.

I liked this a lot.  Subversive.

GI Joe: Retaliation Viral Video Subverts Military Recruitment Ads - Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors: "The only real difference between this recruitment video for Cobra and one for any other military force is the name of the organisation.

Why Police Officers Lie Under Oath - NYTimes.com: "In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so. That may sound harsh, but numerous law enforcement officials have put the matter more bluntly.  Peter Keane, a former San Francisco Police commissioner, wrote an article in The San Francisco Chronicle decrying a police culture that treats lying as the norm: “Police officer perjury in court to justify illegal dope searches is commonplace. One of the dirty little not-so-secret secrets of the criminal justice system is undercover narcotics officers intentionally lying under oath. It is a perversion of the American justice system that strikes directly at the rule of law. Yet it is the routine way of doing business in courtrooms everywhere in America.” The New York City Police Department is not exempt from this critique."