#TeamFitz

Via whedonesque

"Belief is the death of intelligence..."

McLuhan Knew.

'Body Language' is real thing.

Like astrology.

VIA

Law enforcement I can support.

Teen Forced to Beat Cop at Rock, Paper, Scissors to Avoid Underage Drinking Citation - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "A Burleson County, Texas, police officer allegedly played high-stakes Rock, Paper, Scissors with an underage girl caught drinking alcohol at a music festival, Chilifest. KBTX.com reported that the officer planned to give the girl a citation if she lost the game. She won, so the officer moved on.

...it also signals to me that even the police don’t treat underage drinking very seriously. If an infraction of the law is so minor that the cops are willing to leave the enforcement of it up to chance, there’s probably something wrong with that law."

Felony charges for an autistic 11 year old.

World gone mad/the ongoing criminalization of childhood.  Schools Treat Mild Misbehavior Like Capital Crime. It Has to Stop. - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Administrators routinely treat mild disobedience from students as a criminal matter requiring police intervention, resulting in life-wrecking felony charges for kids—many of them black and Latino....

Consider the story of 11-year-old Kayleb Moon-Robinson: Diagnosed as autistic, Kayleb was being scolded for misbehavior one day and kicked a trash can at Linkhorne Middle School in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A police officer assigned to the school witnessed the tantrum, and filed a disorderly conduct charge against the sixth grader in juvenile court. Just weeks later, in November, Kayleb, who is African-American, disobeyed a new rule — this one just for him — that he wait while other kids left class. The principal sent the same school officer to get him. “He grabbed me and tried to take me to the office,” said Kayleb, a small, bespectacled boy who enjoys science. “I started pushing him away. He slammed me down, and then he handcuffed me.”

...Educators stood by, she said, while the cop took her son in handcuffs to juvenile court. The officer filed a second misdemeanor disorderly conduct complaint. And he also submitted another charge, a very grown-up charge for a very small boy: felony assault on a police officer. That charge was filed, Doss said the officer told her, because Kayleb “fought back.” “I thought in my mind — Kayleb is 11,” Doss said. “He is autistic. He doesn't fully understand how to differentiate the roles of certain people.”"

Free speech, making things better. Religion, still ruining everything.

How many issues does religion need to be on the wrong side of history before it just withers and dies?  Maggie Gallagher’s Refusal to Attend Gay Weddings - Hit & Run : Reason.com: ""National Review social conservative Maggie Gallagher has a telling and useful column today explaining to a hypothetical gay male friend who has invited her to his wedding why she... will refuse to attend. 

Excerpt: We are born male and female, and marriage is the union of husband to wife that celebrates the necessity of the two genders' coming together to make the future happen. I know you don’t think that. I know the law no longer thinks that. But I have staked my life on this truth. The problem for me in celebrating your gay wedding, as much as I love you, is that I would be witnessing and celebrating your attempt not only to commit yourself to a relationship that keeps you from God's plan but, worse, I would be witnessing and celebrating your attempt to hold the man you love to a vow that he will avoid God's plan...

The notion that someone has staked their life on marriage staying male-female is frankly bizarre. To single out same-sex couples for being disqualifying unable "to make the future happen," and untenably mired in sin—in a world with tens of millions of multiply-married people, many of whom re-couple after child-rearing age; while younger same-sex couples eagerly adopt otherwise unwanted children—is to demonstrate that some Christian conservatives are elevating homosexuality far above other sins, most of which involve actual discord and harm rather than a joyous union of two loving people. Gallagher's literal intolerance of gay marriage can quickly become an argument in its favor...

"It's a counter-intuitive point, one that many progressives find hard to swallow, but compelling people to change their minds and hounding minority viewpoints into silence is not nearly as persuasive as, well, persuasion. And it has the added benefit of being more harmonious with America's rich and enviable history of liberal free speech...

'For politically weak minorities, the best and often only way to effect wholesale change in the world of politics is by effecting change in the world of ideas. Our position as beneficiaries of the open society requires us to serve as guardians of it. Playing that role, not seeking government protections or hauling our adversaries before star chambers, is the greater source of our dignity.'"

Point.

#ProTip

"Tell me, do you bleed?"

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice - Official Teaser Trailer

#TheStruggleIsReal

"The Cosmic Schmuck Principle holds that if you don't wake up, once a month at least, and realize that you have been acting like a Cosmic Schmuck again then you will probably go on acting like a cosmic schmuck forever; but if you do, occasionally, recognize your Cosmic Schmuckiness, then you might begin to become a little less Schmucky that the general human average at this primitive stage of terrestrial evolution." - Robert Anton Wilson

Training - "If it is important, you will find a way to make it happen."

4/17 - squats [repPR 110/242x10.  First squat repPR in '15/since Dec.  Turned into a set of breathing squats, but I wanted/needed a repPR today, so just decided 'Fuck It.  If it crushes me, then it crushes me.'], knee raises, calf press, leg xt, sauna

Lessons Learned - John Welbourn: "You make their own prisons in life, regardless of how much you want to blame those around you. If 20 bucks or 60 minutes a day is what is preventing you from reaching your goals, get a new job or set an alarm clock. You have to make time for it. No goal was ever attained by just thinking about. No amount of dreaming gets your ass in shape...

If it is important, you will find a way to make it happen. If $20 is the difference between success and failure, ride a bike, skip the bar one night a month, or brew your coffee at home and save the $1.45 at Starbucks. If meeting your goals by fitting in your training into your busy schedule means you have to wake up at 4 AM to get in your training, throw away your TV and go to bed. Because there are thousands of people meeting their goals by prioritizing what is important, waking up early and making it work. I always smile when I see a video of a guy squatting in his home garage gym at 5 AM with snow on the ground. Whining about 20 bucks makes you sound like an unsuccessful fucking loser. And complaining you can’t find 60 minutes a few days a week to train makes you sound like a lazy incompetent fuck...

No amount of supplements, macronutrient timing or stretching will replace sleep and sunlight when it comes to performance...

Training is a long slow road. And it requires you to prepare for your long journey by learning the basics. If you never take the time to learn the basics, you will fall for every lie and piece of bullshit charlatans peddle. Nine out of 10 times, the most successful plans are the simplest ones. Stop dieting and make food quality a lifestyle. Stop exercising and start training. People who exercise just want to get sweaty; training implies you have a plan and a goal."

Aging is a Choice.

"...if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant, and the intransigent." - RAW

If you think it will be better with the 'other' party in office, you haven't been paying attention.

I'd watch that.

Actually, I already kind of do.  via whedonesque:

"The gender preference in hiring decisions was 2-to-1 in some areas for candidates with equal qualifications..."

Huge Gender Bias Found in Hiring - New Study | Scott Adams Blog: "CNN reports on a new study showing there is a HUGE gender bias in hiring decisions in the United States and it has been this way in some fields since the eighties. You already knew there was gender bias in hiring (duh) but you probably did not know how bad it was. Check this out: The gender preference in hiring decisions was 2-to-1 in some areas for candidates with equal qualifications.  That is an embarrassing number for a country that prides itself on equal opportunity. A 2-to-1 advantage is not even within driving distance of equal rights...

I’m not sure if I mentioned that the study shows the gender advantage in hiring favors women by 2-to-1."

The myth about women in science - CNN.com: "The prevailing wisdom is that sexist hiring in academic science roadblocks women's careers before they even start. The American Association of University Professors and blue-ribbon commissions attest to this. An influential report by the National Academy of Sciences in 2006 concluded that "on the average, people are less likely to hire a woman than a man with identical qualifications," and noted that scientists and engineers "are not exempt." Wendy M. Williams Stephen J. Ceci Many female graduate students worry that hiring bias is inevitable. A walk through the science departments of any college or university could convince us that the scarcity of female faculty (20% or less) in fields like engineering, computer science, physics, economics and mathematics must reflect sexism in hiring. 

But the facts tell a different story. National hiring audits, some dating back to the 1980s, reveal that female scientists have had a significantly higher chance of being interviewed and hired than men. Although women were less likely to apply for jobs, if they did apply, their chances of getting the job were usually better...

When we searched the literature, we could not find one empirical study of sexism in faculty hiring using actual faculty members as evaluators and focusing on fields in which women are most underrepresented. So we did the study ourselves (published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), testing 873 faculty members at 371 institutions in 50 states. To tease out sex bias, we created fictional candidate profiles identical in every respect except for sex, and asked faculty to rank these candidates for a tenure-track job...

We ran five national experiments with these otherwise-identical female and male candidates, systematically varying their personal attributes and lifestyles in a counterbalanced design. Every time we sent a given slate of candidates to a male faculty member, we sent the same slate with sexes reversed to another male faculty member, as well as sending both slates to two female faculty members. Then we compared the faculty members' rankings to see how hirable each candidate was, overall. What we found shocked us. Women had an overall 2-to-1 advantage in being ranked first for the job in all fields studied. This preference for women was expressed equally by male and female faculty members, with the single exception of male economists, who were gender neutral in their preferences.  In some conditions, women's advantage reached 4-to-1. When women were compared with men who shared the same lifestyle, advantages accrued to women in all demographic groups—including single or married women without children, married women with preschoolers, and divorced mothers."

Training.

4/15 - bench, chins, pushups, inv rows, inc db press

Training - "Whatever your all is, give it."

4/13 - deadlifts [repPR 160/352x11], situps, back xt, pulldowns, seated rows, curls

Dean Understands Politics.