Today's Internets - "If you are at peace, you are living in the present."

Emotiv EPOC neuroheadset review, this is not the telepathy you are looking for - GSMArena Blog: "The gadget in question is called EPOC and is made by Emotiv. It’s a futuristic looking headset, which reads your brain activity via the scalp of your head and translates it into various actions. With that in mind, I was particularly excited with Professor Xavier and his powerful telepathic powers immediately popping into my head. Sadly, this isn’t the case… yet. The Epoc is a neuro-signal acquisition and processing wireless headset. It uses 16 sensors to capture the electric signals produced by your brain. Put simply, it’s a thought detector. But alongside this, it’s also a feelings and expressions grabber, so if you blink, smile or sneeze – it’ll know. Let’s take a closer look at the product itself."

Emotiv EPOC neuroheadset review, this is not the telepathy you are looking for - GSMArena Blog: "The neuroheadset was the sole initiator of each and every action. Of course, I had to use the mouse to navigate around the applications, as well as in-game for going forward and left/right. More and more applications, games and other utilities making great use of the headset are being published each day, so it’s definitely interesting to see how far the technology might go in the next one or two years. Conclusion The Emotiv EPOC will not turn you into a Jedi, but it’s a solid step into the future of doing everyday tasks with your mind. Imagine turning your PC on or off by just thinking about it, or pausing a movie when you need to grab some more snacks."

Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators | Politics News | Rolling Stone: "The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators."

Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators | Politics News | Rolling Stone: "The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation. "My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."

...The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war. According to the Defense Department’s own definition, psy-ops – the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on "hostile foreign groups." Federal law forbids the military from practicing psy-ops on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a "propaganda rider" that also prohibits such manipulation. "Everyone in the psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you’re not supposed to target Americans," says a veteran member of another psy-ops team who has run operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It’s what you learn on day one.""

Being fat entardates your brain « Random Xpat Rantings: "Quote: One of the things we know is that as individuals become more cardiovascular fit and their heart health gets better, their brain health also improves,” Gunstad added. “Even if we take young adults and put them through an exercise program, their memory and their concentration get better by the end of the program.”"

Being fat entardates your brain « Random Xpat Rantings: "Being a fat fuck who never exercises essentially means your brain is getting reduced oxygen and is in a constant state of inflammation. Reduced cognitive performance is therefore an inevitable byproduct. Think about that the next time you watch your fat co-worker fuck something up. They’re literally eating themselves retarded."

Men & Media|: "The next time you switch on the television, count how many programs have the token ‘stupid boyfriend’ or ‘abusive husband’ or ‘paedophilic father’ figure. Switch over to a children’s channel / time window and watch how many cartoons or programs reflect ‘silly daddy’ characters or ‘bullying big brother’. Don’t forget, of course, nearly all the women in these same programs will be smart, sexy, sassy and full of beans, capable of juggling a career lifestyle with children, a husband and a social circle...

– let’s not forget that she’s undoubtedly a wonderful cook and always remembers everybody’s birthdays. If these images are being constantly spread out over our airwaves, what does that tell our children who are growing up watching & learning daily, hourly, that men are just so stupid, abusive and … well, useless?""

Drone Hacked By University Of Texas At Austin Research Group: "When the U.S. Department of Homeland Security dared a Texas university research group to bring down a flying drone, the team accepted the challenge and did just that. Turns out it's not too difficult to hack a drone. Nor too expensive, for that matter. RT reports that the University of Texas at Austin scientists, led by Professor Todd Humphreys, managed to bring down a flying drone with a spoofer costing just $1,000. The research group gained control of the University-owned drone by using a device to hack its GPS system, according to Scientific American."

Training.

4/12 - Russian Pullup Program D26  19-1/18/16/14/14 -- chins 13/10/8, pushups x45, bw row 3x10, glute bridge 3x20 -- P90X2 D54 rest/off

Before And After Fat Loss | fitnessempowered This is my full years progress....: "This is my full years progress. I began working out on February 9th of 2012, and since then have lost roughly 45 lbs. I started at 220 and I am now 178ish."

Today's Internets - "Our actions define us, continually, because where we live is not the past or the future, but always the present."

Scavenging Is Illegal | delicioustacos: "I saw the first one right after Easter, on a garbage truck. “SCAVENGING IS ILLEGAL.” A picture of some poor fucker bent over a trash can trying to scrounge up a couple bucks worth of bottles and cans for a beer. They’ve finally done it. They have made a sign that would literally make Jesus Christ puke. Even the little crossed out baby sign on the dumpsters isn’t as bad. That one is trying to help people. You don’t have to throw out your baby, just take it to the firehouse. Also, what part of “Yard Waste Only” don’t you understand. But this one might as well be a huge middle finger flipping off a hobo and read “FUCK THE POOR.”"

Scavenging Is Illegal | delicioustacos: "They’re campaigning against people who have to live off trashpicking. Stop collecting cans, you miscreants. Get a real job. You could be the CEO of Apple if you applied yourself. Why? Of all the things on Earth, this hurts no one, and it doesn’t seem like there’s even any money in it. You chop your arm off and call 911 in L.A., it’ll take 45 minutes for them to show up. They will ask you if any city property was damaged. But if your car is on the wrong side of the street at 8:00:01 on Thursday, or at 9:15 after the street sweeper has gone by, a fleet of their Dodge Neons will materialize like Romulan War Birds uncloaking to give you a HUGE ticket. That makes sense, in a twisted way. The city needs dough."

Does Red Meat Clog Your Arteries After All? | Mark's Daily Apple: "The initial association between TMAO and cardiovascular disease in humans is just that – an association. Causation is not established, and it may even be that cardiovascular disease or some other common event increases TMAO as a response to injury or disease. An increase in serum TMAO is, for example, a marker of certain kidney injuries (PDF). It could merely be correlation or even reverse causation. We simply don’t know."

...You know what else raises TMAO? Fish. That’s right – heart attack-inducing, artery-clogging, linked-to-every-disease-state-known-to-man fish actually contains TMA, the metabolite that converts to TMAO in the body. TMA is what gives fish the “fishy smell,” and when people eat fish, urine TMAO increases. Strangely, the latest research shows that fish is consistently associated with better cardiovascular health, not worse (despite the TMA content and effect on TMAO levels)."

Ales Kot Readies For His "Suicide Squad" Run - Comic Book Resources: "I don't really see people as good or bad. Our actions define us, continually, because where we live is not the past or the future, but always the present."

Survey of More Than 15,000 Cops Finds Most of Them Oppose More Gun Control - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "The law-enforcement support site PoliceOne.com has released the results of a massive survey in which "more than 15,000 verified law enforcement professionals" were asked 30 questions about current gun control proposals. The results may surprise you. "Contrary to what the mainstream media and certain politicians would have us believe," writes Police One Editor in Chief Doug Wyllie, "police overwhelmingly favor an armed citizenry, would like to see more guns in the hands of responsible people, and are skeptical of any greater restrictions placed on gun purchase, ownership, or accessibility.""

Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.

Karen De Coster » The Police State Hates Tinted Windows: "In fact, in Aurora (IL), events are held where the voluntary slaves can show up and have their windows checked by the bullies – for free! – and thus know whether or not they need to have the tint removed. That reminds me of my Neighborhood Watch group that holds an annual “Fingerprint Festival” where all the gleeful serfs show up at the neighborhood park to get their free hot dogs and partake in an ice cream social while they get voluntarily fingerprinted by the local police department as a way of showing their obedience to their Masters. I wish I was making that up, but alas, this is my neighborhood’s annual celebration of freedom."

"Yeah, that's the point, it's funny."

Stoya on Why Las Vegas and Megachurches Are the Pinnacle of Human Achievement | VICE Canada: "During this January's Adult Entertainment Expo, I sat in a club at the Hard Rock while Taio Cruz's "Hangover" played. The song celebrates habitually drinking too much and is incredibly catchy. I perched on the back of a velvet couch with a glass of prosecco in hand and entertained myself by trying to guess which of the women tottering by in barely functional shoes were bachelorette parties and which were fellow sex workers. Aside from the near-uniform garments that did virtually nothing to protect their bodies from the elements, both ends of this spectrum seemed to have the common aim of making people feel good. Humans tend to like doing things that make us feel good. Some of us like to feel good by having sex for fun, getting drunk, or dancing around to physically palpable bass. Some of us like to feel good by eating things that are a delightful combination of sugar, salt, and fat or educating ourselves and using our intellect to do things that we think are for the betterment of humanity. Others enjoy feeling morally superior through abstinence and sobriety."

Applies to men & women, actually.  [Which the author cops to at the end of the piece, actually.]

The Kitchen Is A Window To A Woman’s Soul: 

"What A Woman’s Refusal To Cook Means

Cooking is not hard – making a healthful, tasty meal has never been easier. Between modern kitchen appliances, supermarkets, farmers’ markets, car ownership and the wealth of information on the internet, making your own meals is fairly simple. The only thing that cooking requires is the desire for something better, and the will to make it happen. This is what I hear when a woman says she does not cook: “Everything that can be bought, should be bought.”

After all, she’s not used to giving up her time to do things for others, except within the confines of her job. She will do anything for her boss, but make a slight request of her as her man, she will blow up and call you a misogynistic asshole. You’re basically as bad as one of those Iranians who stone women to death for getting raped.

“I’m not your slave, I’m not cooking for you.“ ...If I was already preparing some food, and I had a girl over and she asked to have some, I’d have no problem throwing in another couple eggs or slices of bacon. Flip the script, ask her to make you something, and suddenly you’ve turned back the clock to those dark days when uh, women didn’t get free birth control from the government, and couldn’t fuck around on their husband and expect to keep the kids. She actually will equate cooking for you with being your slave.

“I can’t be bothered to take my health seriously.” Healthy, satisfying, affordable – pick two. The only way to have all three is to cook your own meals. When a woman eats most of her meals out, she’s compromising somewhere. Usually, she’s eating food that she’s been brainwashed into thinking is good for you, like Yoplait and oatmeal cookies, food that’s actually stuffed with sugar, refined carbohydrates and oils cooked up in a chemistry lab. She’s always straddling the line between starving herself and getting fat, because her diet leaves room for nothing else. In a time when restaurants serve such fattening meals, the argument for cooking at home has never been stronger. Yet she can’t be bothered."

"To be fair, many of  my criticisms of single women can be levied in equal measure against men... And for every point I made above, the woman who cooks merits the equal and opposite compliment. With such obvious benefits to preparing your own meals, the fact that she doesn’t is disconcerting. Thankfully, there are women who do cook, and even for those that don’t, some are apt to change. I’ve known a few women who knew nothing about cooking when single, but became great cooks once married..."

What Is The CIA Doing With Charles Xavier's Thesis On Human Genetic Mutation In X-Men: Days Of Future Past? - Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors:

Funny - Qualities of the Prince |: "One of the best ways to illustrate how insaturated feminization has become in society is to flip the gender script on certain gender-specific dynamics. As funny as all this was, it serves to show that women live and operate in gender assumptions that they simply take as normalized conditions. Were a Man to publicly expect the terms and demands for his own provisioning and intimate access that women demand without an afterthought, he’s instantly accused of misogyny at worst, comedy at best."

Three key lessons from the Obama administration's drone lies | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "For years, senior Obama officials, including the president himself, have been making public claims about their drone program that have just been proven to be categorically false. The evidence of this falsity is so conclusive that even establishment sources are using unusually harsh language - including "lies" - to describe Obama's statements. McClatchy's national security reporter, Jonathan Landay, obtained top-secret intelligence documents showing that "contrary to assurances it has deployed US drones only against known senior leaders of al-Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified 'other' militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan's rugged tribal area." That article quotes drone expert Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations as saying that "McClatchy's findings indicate that the administration is 'misleading the public about the scope of who can legitimately be targeted.'"

In his own must-read article at Foreign Policy about these disclosures, Zenko writes - under the headline: "Finally, proof that the United States has lied in the drone wars" - that "it turns out that the Obama administration has not been honest about who the CIA has been targeting with drones in Pakistan" and that the McClatchy article "plainly demonstrates that the claim repeatedly made by President Obama and his senior aides - that targeted killings are limited only to officials, members, and affiliates of al-Qaida who pose an imminent threat of attack on the US homeland - is false.""

Three key lessons from the Obama administration's drone lies | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "Beyond the obvious harms of having the president and his administration continuously lie to the public about such a crucial matter, Zenko explains that these now-disproven claims may very well make the drone strikes illegal since assertions about who is being targeted were "essential to the legal foundations on which the strikes are ultimately based: the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force and the UN Charter's right to self-defense." Marcy Wheeler uses the documents to show how claims about drones from other key officials, including Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, are also unquestionably false. Both Landay's article and Zenko's analysis should be read for the details, but I want to highlight the three key points from this: 

(1) The Obama administration often has no idea who they are killing...

(2) Whisteblowers are vital for transparency and accountability, which is precisely why the Obama administration is waging a war on them...

(3) Secrecy ensures both government lies and abuses of power...

Blood Money, Kill Lists, Favors for Favors: Deep Inside the CIA's Targeted Killings | Danger Room | Wired.com: "DR: Whose idea was it to pay blood money to Pakistanis for the release of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, and what was the broader impact of the Davis episode on CIA’s relationship with Pakistan? MM: It’s funny, many people have claimed to be the first to come up with the blood money idea. It certainly was discussed both among Pakistani and American officials, and both Pakistani ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani and General Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the Pakistani spymaster, were instrumental in the arrangement. It’s hard to overstate how big a deal the Raymond Davis episode still is in Pakistan. When I travelled there last year, I heard far more intense anger about the Davis affair than about the Osama bin Laden raid. For many Pakistanis, it seemed to confirm all the conspiracy theories that the CIA had deployed a secret army into Pakistan to sow violence."

Blood Money, Kill Lists, Favors for Favors: Deep Inside the CIA's Targeted Killings | Danger Room | Wired.com: "DR: What are the rules for “signature strikes,” the strikes in Yemen and Pakistan that target military-aged males and not specific, known terrorists? MM: It’s hard to know the specific rules, because all this remains classified. But I’ve been told that strikes are carried out based on “patterns of activity,” and can be authorized even when the CIA does not know specifically whom they are targeting. Signature strikes are probably the most controversial aspect of the targeted killing program. It’s my understanding that, for instance, a group of males can be targeted based on accumulated evidence that they are engaged in some kind of “militant behavior,” and one example that is often cited is a group of people with guns heading from Pakistan to Afghanistan."

"Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you’re just a reflection of him?” - Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes

Duane Ludwig discusses working with Team Alpha Male, leaving active fighting behind - Bloody Elbow: "I was always the type where I would train till I was dead tired. I had to. There was no other way for me. If I left the gym with energy, then I must have been doing something wrong. "

WonderCon 2013 Photo Parade: Saturday - Comic Book Resources:

Former Tennessee legislator "drove 90 MPH while masturbating out window" - Boing Boing: ""At over 90 miles per hour, he had his penis out [the window]... he was masturbating... and that's when it got really, really bad. I wouldn't look over any more, and I wrote his tag number down on my hand, which I believe he noticed, and he exited very quickly.""

Brad Paisley & LL Cool J Will Solve Racism Now - The Superficial - Because You're Ugly: "If you haven’t heard by now, the Internet was handed a goddamn golden goose yesterday when Brad Paisley released his latest song “Accidental Racist” featuring LL Cool J. (If that seems weird to you, LL Cool J stars on a CBS police procedural making him technically white.) A self-pitying tune lamenting Brad’s inability to love the Confederate flag and the South without being thought of as a racist. Fortunately, his spirits are lifted when LL raps into say he’ll forgive slavery – yup – if Brad won’t think he’s trying to shoot him just because he’s wearing gold chains. So needless to say, it cuts right to the very core of racial tensions in America, except not at all, Jesus fucking Christ, who thought this was a good idea?"

Parodie Eddie Murphy & Joe Piscopo by PeteRock

Religion is destructive.

Two more babies stricken with HERPES after ritual oral blood sucking circumcision in New York City | Mail Online: "Two more infants have been infected with a deadly herpes virus in the last three months after undergoing a controversial religious oral circumcision in New York City. The latest cases bring the count to 13 infants since 2000, two of which suffered brain damage and two died from the virus which can rapidly spread throughout its body. The ultra-Orthodox Jewish practice of metzitzah b'peh requires a practitioner to orally suck the baby's penis to 'cleanse' the open wound following its circumcision, making them susceptible to the virus."

Internet Ranting and the Myth of Catharsis | Psychology Today: "The idea that “venting” anger has a beneficial cathartic effect is well entrenched in modern culture. Belief in the value of venting has manifested in the online world in the form of “rant” sites (e.g. Rant Rampage) where people not only get to freely express their vitriol, they can also read and comment on rants left by other venters. However, decades of research have shown that venting, far from releasing anger, actually makes it worse. Not surprisingly, a recent study has shown that online ranting seems to increase anger and is associated with anger-related problems. Ranting may be problematic because it associated anger with aggressive behaviour. On the other hand, expressing anger in a constructive and non-aggressive way can actually be beneficial."

Fun With Logic: Guns | The Blackdragon Blog: "Okay. Let’s be logical and rational for a minute and walk through this. Let’s say we had banned all assault weapons and made them illegal to purchase. Just one problem. The Portland shooter didn’t purchase his assault weapon; he had stolen it from someone else. Same deal with the Sandy Hook shooter; he stole the gun from his mother. Banning assault weapons doesn’t make the millions (and there literally are millions) of assault weapons people already have instantly vanish. Want proof of this? Connecticut already had an assault weapons ban. Hm. Therefore making assault weapons illegal at the federal level wouldn’t have changed a thing. Both of these shootings would have still happened."

Fun With Logic: Guns | The Blackdragon Blog: "So what do we do now? Do we we make it “illegal to steal guns”? Do we have the cops bust into everyone’s home and make sure they don’t have any assault weapons a crazy person might steal? That’s just assault weapons. What about handguns? The deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in U.S. history, the Virginia Tech massacre, was done by a guy with two little handguns, one of which was a Walther P22, one of the weakest handguns you can buy. So should we ban all handguns too? I’m not making a joke here. I’m very serious. What exactly should we do and how exactly would it work in the real world?"

Cognitive Dissonance on Gun Rights - Reason.com: "In political debates, it seems fair to say most of us think we operate as follows: First, we study the issues. Second, we reach conclusions based on the best arguments and evidence. Then we seek out those who share our conclusions and the reasons for them. Finally, we make common cause with the like-minded.

Unfortunately, research suggests people often do precisely the opposite. To a much greater degree than we would like to think, we choose up sides first. Then we align our conclusions with what our side thinks about a particular issue. Then we adopt the arguments that best support the conclusions our side favors—even if we dispute those same arguments in other cases."

"If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world." - C.S. Lewis

The Gay Sex Club Next to the Vatican Is the Saddest Place on Earth | VICE United States: "Last month, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica discovered that the Vatican had paid $35 million for an apartment block housing the Europa Multiclub, which calls itself the “number-one gay sauna in Italy.” The media used the story as another example of the Catholic Church being so obviously gay that they should just come on out and admit it. As a former Catholic schoolboy who believed in God till I saw Hugh Jackman in The Boy from Oz, a Broadway musical about Liza Minnelli’s first gay husband, I wasn’t surprised. I remember my school’s baseball coach sexually assaulting students and my first-grade teaching assistant nearly losing her job after she had an alleged lesbian make-out session with a PE coach—Catholics and shady sex shenanigans go together like red wine and wafers."

Training.

4/11 - P90X2 D53 Base + Back & X2 Ab Ripper

4/10 - P90X2 D52 Shoulders + Arms & X2 Ab Ripper

That's impressive - http://runningtowardmygoal.tumblr.com/post/44487450228/another-before-and-after-for-a-lovely-anonymous

Training.

4/9 - P90X2 D51 Plyocide

Today's Internets - "You know you’re dealing with an ideology when happiness for someone else means YOU need to change."

Two Ways To Pursue Happiness: "You know you’re dealing with an ideology when happiness for someone else means YOU need to change. When YOU need to man up or when YOU need to start doing behaviors that serve others. If your approach to happiness is trying to changes the masses, then the bad news is you can change everyone in the world and you still won’t be happy. Work on changing yourself instead."

This sounds like one of those things in relationships where it obviously seems to mean one thing, but it's probably a trap.

Jada Pinkett On Will Smith Open Relationship Rumor: 'Will Is His Own Man' (VIDEO): "In an interview with HuffPost Live, 41-year-old Jada addressed speculation that she and Will have an open marriage. "I've always told Will, 'You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be okay,'" she told HuffPost Live's Marc Lamont Hill. "Because at the end of the day, Will is his own man. I'm here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be and that's not for me to do for him. Or vice versa.""

WonderCon 2013 Photo Parade: Friday - Comic Book Resources:

The United States government does not give a fuck about the people it sends to fight its wars, whatever rhetoric to the contrary they like to spout.

Fred On Everything: "For a country always at war, the United States is remarkably not interested in taking care of soldiers it has broken in its wars. Having bankrupted the country, Washington sinks every available penny into the two purposes of the military: funneling money into the arms industry, and fueling imperial ambitions...

To begin with, the VA is so disorganized, its web sites so badly designed, its technology so primitive, its staffing so inadequate, its unending forms so incomprehensible, that few vets can navigate the system. I can’t. The kid from Tennessee, with a room-temperature IQ and what passes now for a high-school education, doesn’t have a chance. He will simply be ignored. I know this from personal experience. I have sent letter after letter to the educational-benefits office in Buffalo, and nothing comes back. This is common. So much for supporting our boys in uniform. They are broken goods. What the hell. We can recruit new ones...

My rep and I requested my VA records. Easy, right? They pop up on the computer? No. They exist only on paper. Scanning the records of veterans of Viet Nam, who are aging and need care, would cost money. Washington has much more interest in making new cripples in remote countries than in caring for the  cripples it has already made. My country, ‘tis of thee….

The following is a letter to me from an attorney who represents vets pro bono before the VA: “Fred: Of course, your suggestion (about screen-reading software) makes perfect sense and that's why it will never happen. Secretary Shinseki means well and has done what he can to improve the claims backlog, but no one ever expected that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would lead to the number of service-connected injuries that currently exist. One of the biggest problems is orthopedic injuries caused by the 100-pound-plus combat loads these kids have to carry. I currently have four claims for Iraq and Afghanistan kids for shoulder, hip and knee injuries, usually caused when they fall going up or down hilly terrain with these loads. Then there are the injuries caused by IEDs.

The truth is that the President has given more money to the VA in five years than Bush did in eight, but it's not enough, thanks to Republicans in the House. The new budget proposes a 4% increase to $63 billion, but it does not include enough money to hire thousands of new people to work on claims. Most of the increase is to hire more medical staff, particularly mental health providers. It does no good to offer mental-health services when the vets who are suffering can't get their claims done in less than a year. It is forcing many to live on the streets, sleep in their cars or they end up in shelters. We see this right here, in Central Oregon.” It makes me feel so patriotic I could choke."

7-Year-Old Bro Battling Brain Cancer Scores a 68-Yard Touchdown - BroBible.com: "Heartwarming feel-good story of the day. Jack Hoffman, a 7-year-old from Nebraska battling brain cancer, is without a doubt your Bros of the Week.At Saturday's University of Nebraska spring football game, Hoffman scored a touchdown on a 69-yard run at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln infront of 60,174 cheering fans. Jack's touchdown run will give you chills. Huge props to the Cornhuskers for making this little guy's dream come true."

Do Not Be Afraid to Be Alone | StrongFirst: "A smart alec newspaper columnist made fun of the “guys who bench a lot and then stare at the wall.” You have missed the point, champ. These gents have their act together. You should have made fun of the nerdlings who “update their profile” and tweet about their chicken sandwiches between their sets of “Bulgarian split squats.” A cultural observation. Today’s young Americans are afraid to be left alone. They have to be constantly chatting or texting and they are afraid of silence. If this describes you, either change your ways, or be content to be weak."

"If murder was legal you wouldn't trust somebody who didn't murder."

Interview with Louis C.K.

Weekend Journal: Curse of the Monkey’s Paw | delicioustacos: " And of course, the night after you can’t get hard, you wake up with morning wood that could penetrate tank armor. Your penis is cruel. It taunts you. And often the amount of booze you need in your body to get laid is the exact amount it takes to kill your erection."

Fat Head » Here We Go Again: Another Meat Kills! Study: "As I explained in my Big Fat Fiasco speech, this technique is referred to as teleoanalysis. In a nutshell, it works like this: we can’t prove that A causes C, but if we can find evidence that A is linked to B and B is linked to C, we’ll go ahead and declare that A causes C. Teleoanalysis is partly what has kept the Lipid Hypothesis alive. Studies have failed over and over to prove that a high-fat diet causes heart disease – and in fact, low-fat diets have failed to reduce heart disease in clinical trials over and over. So the anti-fat hysterics trotted out a version of teleoanalysis that looks like this: High-fat diets (A) raise cholesterol (B) Raised cholesterol (B) is associated with heart disease (C) Therefore, a high-fat diet must cause heart disease If this sounds logical to you, consider my own favorite version of teleoanalysis: Drinking lots of water (A) causes frequent urination (B) Frequent urination (B) is associated with diabetes (C) Therefore, drinking lots of water causes diabetes..."

She Comes Fourth In Your Life vs. Children Come First: "All I know is that all these women proudly saying “the children come first” are keeping me in business. Because you know that somewhere in the background there’s a hollow-eyed man raking the leaves out of the gutters…  

You can say “the children come first” all day long. The husband always hears it as “you’re last in line.” When they start having an affair, they won’t even need to hide it from you, because you don’t notice them anyway. Exact same thing goes for husbands with the super Alpha careers. Little woman at home wondering if he’ll ever call or show up for dinner on time. That shit gets old fast. Let alone telling her his mother trumps her. Gotta sting like hell to hear that. Thank God for Facebook and old friends…"

Men Love Commitment: "The Gym This is my main hobby. I love to workout, I love the feeling afterwards, and it’s my opportunity to get away from life’s problems and exert any frustrations I have. My ex tried to get me to stop working out as often so we could hangout. So I stopped dating her. Some may say it’s a douchebag move, but the gym is my hobby, and it’s one that takes dedication. The offer was there for her to join and she refused. The option was pretty obvious. An additional fact is that if I don’t workout or do something active enough I get grumpy."

No, The Actual Libertarian Movement Didn’t ‘Go Nuts’ — It’s Just The One Inside Bill Maher’s Head | Mediaite: "Maher showed his hand a bit: Despite once calling himself a libertarian, he revealed that he really does not have a grasp on what the movement/ideology actually represents. For starters, the fact that he somehow believes libertarianism was ever a movement not predicated on a belief in free market economics is astonishing. The ideology never “morphed” into a free-market “obsession,” as he believes. In fact, the study of markets has always been a fundamental part of the movement, from the Austrian school of economics (F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises) to the Chicago school (Milton Friedman, Gary Becker). When Maher declared himself a “libertarian” back in 2001, Salon declared it a “joke,” noting that only a handful of his beliefs (specifically in the social issues realm) overlapped with libertarian ideology.

No, The Actual Libertarian Movement Didn’t ‘Go Nuts’ — It’s Just The One Inside Bill Maher’s Head | Mediaite: "His staunch support for the expansion of government over guns, education, business, etc., were all in direct opposition to what libertarians generally believe — and yet, somehow, he bizarrely believes to this day that the movement left him. Ultimately, it seems what Maher thought “libertarian” meant is actually what “liberal” is supposed to mean. American liberals are supposed to support the social issues and civil liberties causes he extols, yet they never fully commit when in power. Maher was never a libertarian; just a staunch liberal. As Reason‘s Nick Gillespie notes: “For better or worse, a Venn diagram of Maher and libertarianism is going to show a huge amount of overlap on things.” And that’s a welcome fact. Libertarians and honest liberals will always get along on civil liberties; but we’ll just have to respectfully disagree on economics."

No, The Actual Libertarian Movement Didn’t ‘Go Nuts’ — It’s Just The One Inside Bill Maher’s Head | Mediaite: "On a related note, another misunderstanding of Maher’s: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is not and never has been a part of the libertarian movement. Reason magazine regularly pans his budget proposals that pay lip service to fiscal restraint, but really only cut the rate of increase and don’t balance the budget anywhere in the near future. He is also an outspoken social conservative, unafraid to use legislation to back that up. And during the Bush years, Ryan was a proponent of the bailouts, TARP, an expanded warfare state, and Medicare Part D."

No, The Actual Libertarian Movement Didn’t ‘Go Nuts’ — It’s Just The One Inside Bill Maher’s Head | Mediaite: "At one point during his monologue, Maher painted a dystopian vision in which entitlements are eviscerated, “human skeletons shit in the river,” and pollution is rampant. What a goofy way to invoke the most extreme possible goals for his strawman version of libertarianism. Opposition to expansive government social programs does not mean total anarchy or zero regulations. The left’s favorite strawman is to paint libertarians as people who want the poor to suffer, the air to fill with smog, and the wealthy to cackle their way to bank — but, in reality, we just believe the economy functions better with a lighter touch.

We do have our share of thoughtful radicals, but the majority of libertarians are generally pragmatic when it comes to policy. For instance, many of us believe pollution controls are necessary in situations where the market cannot effectively produce the best outcome. Either way, painting libertarians as dark-hearted souls wanting to revert mankind into some Thunderdome-like anarchic existence is just as silly as saying liberals’ ultimate goal is a barren wasteland full of Stalin-esque labor camps and thought police..."