"I am free no matter what rules surround me."

 

Training.

1/9 - squats, bw/supp squats, stretch

Still light/deload weights/sick'ish.  Bah.

WBFF Pro Diva Fitness Model Sue Lasmar Talks With Simplyshredded.com | SimplyShredded.com: "There was a point in my life where I was very unhappy with the way I looked. I decided to make a change and I cleaned up my diet and started working out 4-5 times a week. I would never skip any meals and always made sure I stuck to my training routine. I managed to drop 46 pounds and I felt great! I then decided to try something new and compete in a Brazilian Fitness Competition and I placed 4th out of 42 amazing girls. I was so proud of myself and after that I was completely hooked."

 — #transformationthursday Officially lost over...: " Officially lost over 75lbs! Almost at my end goal. "

#‎jesuischarlie‬

Treating religious prohibition with the respect it deserves.

Training.

1/8 - bench, bw row, floor knee raise, pushups, stretch

Super-light/deload workout today [having skipped yesterday] fueled only by obstinance and caffeine as I'm fighting some kind of head cold/body ache/death virus/anthrax/bird flu I brought back from vacation.  Boo.  Hiss.  Onwards.

 Bodybuilding.com - We 'Mirin Vol 96: 16 Inspirational Selfies:

Bodybuilding.com - Body Transformation: Nadine Torched Over 30% Of Her Body Fat!:

Bodybuilding.com - The 14 Best Transformations Of 2014!:

Before and After One Month On Coca Cola - DietDoctor.com & Man drinks TEN cans of Coke every day for a month – you'll never guess how much weight he piles on - Mirror Online: ""The most dramatic change was in weight: 23 pounds of gain over 30 days. I also seemed to develop a craving for Cokes, or other sugars, during the time I was drinking Cokes. "My blood pressure went up, from 129/77 at the beginning to 145/96 at the end." George said he weighed 12 stone at the beginning of his health experiment at the end of October. By late November he tipped the scales at a porky 14 stone. During the month, George tried to stick to his normal healthy diet of meat and berries but said he found it hard to eat as much food because the Coke left him full at lunch and dinner times. The BBQ accessory entrepreneur said: "I did it to get people thinking and talking about how much sugar they eat and how unhealthy it is."

fightchick23 190 on Jan 1, 2014 vs. 135 on Jan 1,...: 

"190 on Jan 1, 2014 vs. 135 on Jan 1, 2015 

Height: 5’7” 

There wasn’t any magical formula or diet pill that worked. I changed everything in my diet and cut out bad habits as best as I could.  I realized that the first step to being healthy and happy is to change your diet. Then focus on the gym. I am currently an amateur boxer training for my first fight in March. I work out 5 to 6 days a week and I run at least a mile on each of those days (even though I haaaaaate running lol). Sunday is for rest. :) you can do anything you put your mind to."

Before the Obesity Epidemic - DietDoctor.com: "What did the Western world look like before the obesity epidemic? Like this. The picture is from a popular outdoor pool in the 70’s in Sweden. Not a single obese individual is to be seen."

Reading, closing out 2014.

Second half of 2014...

Bravo (Jad Bell Series) by Greg Rucka

The Woman Who Wouldn't Die (A Dr. Siri Paiboun Mystery) by Colin Cotterill

First Blood & Rambo: First Blood Part II by David Morrell

The Zombie Flu and Other Stomach-Churning Tales (short story collection) by Calvin Voxx

Insane Training: Garage Training, Powerlifting, Bodybuilding, and All-Out Bad-Ass Workouts by Matt Kroczaleski

The Heist, The Chase & The Job (Fox and O'Hare Series)by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

Thrown by Kerry Howley

Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Power to the People!: Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American by Pavel Tsatsouline

Red Rising (The Red Rising Trilogy, Book 1) by Pierce Brown

Convict Conditioning: How to Bust Free of All Weakness-Using the Lost Secrets of Supreme Survival Strength by Paul Wade

All Our Yesterdays by Robert B. Parker

Roasting in Hell's Kitchen by Gordon Ramsay

The Naked Warrior by Pavel Tsatsouline

Pushing the Limits! Total Body Strength With No Equipment by Al Kavadlo

Love and Glory by Robert B. Parker

The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet by Nina Teicholz

Raising the Bar & Stretching Your Boundaries: Flexibility Training for Extreme Calisthenic Strength by Al Kavadlo

Dolph Lundgren: Train Like an Action Hero: Be Fit Forever

Men's Health TNT Diet: The Explosive New Plan to Blast Fat, Build Muscle, and Get Healthy in 12 Weeks by Jeff Volek and Adam Campbell

The Janson Directive by Robert Ludlum

Robert Ludlum's The Janson Command by Paul Garrison

Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, Revised Edition by Robert C. Atkins M.D.

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely

Never Let Go: A Philosophy of Lifting, Living and Learning & Intervention: Course Corrections for the Athlete and Trainer by Dan John

The Dolce Diet: Living Lean by Mike Dolce

Lift-Run-Bang 365, Base Building & Strength Life Legacy by Paul Carter

Comics
Earth 2 Volume 4: The Dark Age by Nicola Scott & Tom Taylor

Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 2: Dangerous Paperback by Joss Whedon  & John Cassaday

Batman: The Strange Deaths of Batman Paperback

Nowhere Men Volume 1: Fates Worse Than Death by Eric Stephenson , Nate Bellegarde, & Jordie Bellair

Batman - Knightfall (Vol.1

DC Universe Presents Vol. 3: Black Lightning and Blue Devil by Marc Andreyko, Robson Rocha & Oclair Albert

Sensational She-Hulk by John Byrne

She-Hulk by Dan Slott: The Complete Collection Volume 2

Lazarus Volume 2 by Greg Rucka, Michael Lark, & Santiago Arcas

Vertigo Pop: Tokyo Days, Bangkok Nights Paperback by Jonathan Vankin, Seth Fisher, Giuseppe Camuncoli

Incredible Hercules run by Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente

Corto Maltese: The Ballad of the Salt Sea by Hugo Pratt

Zero Volume 1: An Emergency & Volume 2: At the Heart of It by Ales Kot

The Secret Service: Kingsman by Mark Millar & Dave Gibbons

Aquaman Death Of A Prince

Batman: A Celebration of 75 Years

Punisher 2011 series V1-3 & Punisher: War Zone by Greg Rucka & Marco Checchetto

‘Je suis Charlie’?

At Least 12 Killed After Gunmen Attack Satirical Newspaper in France - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "At least 12 people were killed in an attack by masked gunmen on the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The gunmen were reported to have been chanting “Allahu Akhbar” and the newspaper has received threats for its satirical depictions of Mohammed, considered a prophet by Muslims."

Forever re-blog for ever important relevance.

The Comics Industry Responds To Attack On Charlie Hebdo - #JeSuisCharlie (Arrest UPDATE) - Bleeding Cool 

‘Je suis Charlie’? No, You’re Not, or Else You Might Be Dead - Hit & Run : Reason.com

"I think that all religions are wrong in the same way in that they privilege faith over reason but they're not all equally bad in the same way all the time..."

And fuck Bill Donohue & Catholicism too.  Catholic League President Bill Donohue on Charlie Hebdo: 'Muslims Are Right to Be Angry' - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, blamed the horrific murders of a dozen employees of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on... Charlie Hebdo. No, really. "It is too bad that he didn’t understand the role he played in his tragic death," said Donohue of Stephane Charbonnier, Charlie Hebdo's publisher. "In 2012, when asked why he insults Muslims, he said, 'Muhammad isn’t sacred to me.' Had he not been so narcissistic, he may still be alive."

Thanks to Dedroidify for a couple of the images & the Hitchens vid.

"Nothing is unannounced. There is no such thing as a surprise..."

  "...Everything is preceeded by the ghost of its appearance...  That's part of the nature of a fractal cosmos." 

"You can perfectly model the DNA using the I Ching." - Terence Mckenna

Genetic code - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The genetic code is highly similar among all organisms and can be expressed in a simple table with 64 entries."

I Ching - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The basic unit of the Zhou yi is the hexagram (卦 guà), a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines (爻 yáo). Each line is either broken or unbroken. The received text of the Zhou yi contains all 64 possible hexagrams"

via Podcast 429 – “Leprechauns, Elves, or Dead Souls?”

These 22 Incredible Pictures Explain Everything We Achieved In Technology In 2014:

Why is it so difficult to eat real food in the 21st century? | The Verge: "I’m trying to do the same and return to a diet of real food, free of deleterious additives or deceptive imitations, but it’s hard. It’s very hard. WHO DECIDED THAT VALENTINE’S DAY AND EASTER EGGS SHOULD BE ALL ABOUT CHOCOLATE? The power of marketing over diets in the developed world is overwhelming. Every cultural trigger for eating has now been geared toward "indulging" in junk food: hot dogs are a tradition of attending baseball games, popcorn is a cinema institution, and birthdays wouldn’t be birthdays without cake. Halloween fetishizes the collection of candy and conflates it with the fun of being social, forever imprinting on the minds of children the idea that sugary confectionery and a community spirit go hand in hand. The actually healthy pumpkin is converted into a perverse decorative effigy."

Australian Activists Rebel Against Growing Speed Camera Use Via Amusing Facebook Campaign - Hit & Run : Reason.com: " An Australian Facebook group called “Block Their Shot,” has sprung up to fight the government’s use of speed cameras. How they do so is right in the group’s name. They fake roadside problems and park their cars directly behind the vans that are monitoring vehicle speeds...  

The folks behind the campaign argue, much some of us do here in the states, that these cameras aren’t about safety at all but are revenue raisers for the government. Even with its rather biting opening, the Telegraph does show the numbers that have led to this behavior: Between January and October 2014, the amount collected in speeding fines from mobile cameras jumped from about $310,000 to $1.35 million per month, figures from the Office of State Revenue show. The number of fines leapt from 1590 in January to more than 5200 in October. "

"Scott, I've been watching you for a while now. You're different. Now don't let anyone tell you that you have nothing to offer. Second chances don't come around all that often..."

The Playboy Conversation: Patton Oswalt and Wil Wheaton | Playboy: "Before we get into that, the masterful two-part trolling tweets you did were amazing. It was phenomenal. It was like, parts of it felt like this great Andy Kaufman prank and then it was so much smarter. And just the way it revealed so much about the people who lost their minds. That was brilliant. How did that happen? [Real quick for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about: earlier this year, Patton went on a tear where he posted two separate tweets back to back that, when separated, sounded profoundly racist, homophobic, antisemetic, and just terrible. But, when you read them together, they were actually strong statements for equality, tolerance, and social justice. A portion of the Twitterverse that I call The Stupidsphere went predictably nuts, demanding that Patton apologize for their perception of what he said, ignoring the actual substance of it. It was amazing.]

The Playboy Conversation: Patton Oswalt and Wil Wheaton | Playboy: "PATTON: ...it was weird because I actually got one of these reactions — it seemed like a new class of citizen was showing up with my profession looking for things to be outraged at. There’s capital at being pissed of at things. Like, okay, I’m going to give people something where a click away negates whatever they’re outraged by, let’s see if they’ll do that. So people were freaking out. What the hell was that? Then it started. “Oh, he’s doing this thing.” Then one guy said — and I should have taken a screen shot of this — he said, “I understand what Patton’s doing, but I still think I have the right to my initial reaction.” 

WIL: Wait. Like, “I’m allowed to be a dumbass and be angry about it”? 

PATTON: “That was my initial reaction, that’s my right.” It is really weird. When I read Suey Park’s Salon interview this year she said something that was really frightening, which was “Context doesn’t matter.” Those three words are so terrifying for a comedian. I can show you a 30-second clip of Blazing Saddles and say “Mel Brooks is a racist. There’s the evidence. Context doesn’t matter.” 

WIL: “I’m entitled to my own initial reaction.” 

PATTON: “And I deserve reparation. I deserve some kind of remedy. An apology.” We just saw the giant kaiju monster of this with The Interview. That idea of context doesn’t matter is a scary thing. Especially because the oppressive, racist, homophobic forces in the world don’t have comedy as a weapon. We progressives do. If we’re going to start giving that up and start policing progressives twice as hard as we do the conservatives and homophobes and haters, then we’re fucked. Then they get to be the rebels and they’ll find a way to make homophobia and racism look cool. Because all we’re doing is attacking each other. 

WIL: You feel like it’s another area where the progressive establishment has just ceded ground to the right-wing reactionaries? 

PATTON: No, there’s no right or left wing to it. It’s all corporate. “Well, we can get more clicks if we’re outraged by things. It doesn’t even matter anymore what we’re outraged by.” If they’re outraged by the same old things… But if they put a picture of Jerry Seinfeld and put the word “rape” next to his picture, ooh, people will stop and click and we can sell ad space. It doesn’t matter who it hurts. It’s all revenue. It’s all commerce."

Oz was the best.