Training.

6/5 - power cleans, bb row, bench dips, alt db curls, sauna/steam

Everything is evitable.

“Amphetamines are the most American drug."

"You get so much done. You look terrific, and your middle name is Accomplishment.” - Chuck Palahniuk

America lives on coffee and loves alcohol to come down.  Wall Street runs on cocaine & we give amphetamines to kids [for 'ADHD.'  Sure.]  Marijuana is bad though, because it might make you 'lazy.'  Brought to you by the War on Some Drugs [Users.]  Remember kids, drugs are bad, mkay?

Training.

5/4 - squats, knee raise, lunges

Six of one, half-dozen of the other.

"The real problem: a simplistic, unworkable, and ultimately stifling conception of social justice..."

Continued efforts to Nerf the harsh edges of the world in order that no one ever be offended or confronted by that which makes them uncomfortable.  I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me - Vox: "I once saw an adjunct not get his contract renewed after students complained that he exposed them to "offensive" texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain. His response, that the texts were meant to be a little upsetting, only fueled the students' ire and sealed his fate.  That was enough to get me to comb through my syllabi and cut out anything I could see upsetting a coddled undergrad, texts ranging from Upton Sinclair to Maureen Tkacik — and I wasn't the only one who made adjustments, either...

As Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis writes, "Emotional discomfort is [now] regarded as equivalent to material injury, and all injuries have to be remediated." Hurting a student's feelings, even in the course of instruction that is absolutely appropriate and respectful, can now get a teacher into serious trouble...

In 2009, the subject of my student's complaint was my supposed ideology. I was communistical, the student felt, and everyone knows that communisticism is wrong. That was, at best, a debatable assertion. And as I was allowed to rebut it, the complaint was dismissed with prejudice. I didn't hesitate to reuse that same video in later semesters, and the student's complaint had no impact on my performance evaluations. 

In 2015, such a complaint would not be delivered in such a fashion. Instead of focusing on the rightness or wrongness (or even acceptability) of the materials we reviewed in class, the complaint would center solely on how my teaching affected the student's emotional state. As I cannot speak to the emotions of my students, I could not mount a defense about the acceptability of my instruction. And if I responded in any way other than apologizing and changing the materials we reviewed in class, professional consequences would likely follow...

The real problem: a simplistic, unworkable, and ultimately stifling conception of social justice...

 This shift in student-teacher dynamic placed many of the traditional goals of higher education — such as having students challenge their beliefs — off limits. While I used to pride myself on getting students to question themselves and engage with difficult concepts and texts, I now hesitate. What if this hurts my evaluations and I don't get tenure? How many complaints will it take before chairs and administrators begin to worry that I'm not giving our customers — er, students, pardon me — the positive experience they're paying for? Ten? Half a dozen? Two or three?"

...So it's not just that students refuse to countenance uncomfortable ideas — they refuse to engage them, period. Engagement is considered unnecessary, as the immediate, emotional reactions of students contain all the analysis and judgment that sensitive issues demand. As Judith Shulevitz wrote in the New York Times, these refusals can shut down discussion in genuinely contentious areas, such as when Oxford canceled an abortion debate. More often, they affect surprisingly minor matters, as when Hamsphire College disinvited an Afrobeat band because their lineup had too many white people in it."

"Reality be damned."

Cops, Media Applaud Local Busybody for Bravely Harassing Dad Who Briefly Left Kid Alone - Hit & Run : Reason.com: ""Worst-first" thinkers don't care about what is likely to happen. All that matters is what a bystander, cop, court, or CPS official imagines could happen. And since Herrmann imagined himself driving off with the kid, dad basically left his son to be kidnapped by a stranger. And while that happens to be pretty much the rarest crime of all, it is a popular one in the minds of folks like Herrmann, and the folks who applauded him on his Facebook page...

But still. Billion-to-one odds be damned. Circumstances be damned. Reality be damned. Time for the state to investigate this dangerous dad and salute a true hero. *Update: Police have arrested the dad, Nathaniel Galloway. He is charged with "endangering the welfare of a child." Unbelievable."

"What it is is contempt, disappointment, distaste, disillusionment. That plays as anger, naturally, because we're limited to these words that kind of define things rigidly."

Gettingit.com: The Happy Pessimist: "GI: In your most recent HBO special, you seemed really bitter and pissed off. I was surprised, myself, by how extreme it was. But I've heard you say you're pretty happy in your personal life. 

 GC: Yeah, there's not an ounce of bitterness, or anger, or anything in it. What it is is contempt, disappointment, distaste, disillusionment. That plays as anger, naturally, because we're limited to these words that kind of define things rigidly. Anger is a convenient way to describe what people see. It's very much like anger, and I guess by some definitions it is. But I don't experience it as anger. I experience it as contempt, disillusionment...

I have always had my dangerous flirtations with the mainstream. I've used it to serve my purposes, and it has, in a way, used me in a fair exchange. I've always kind of been of two minds when I'm doing something fairly mainstream: One is the critical observer outside, and the other is the person who wants something and is willing to make an accommodation to get it. All of living is, of course, a series of accommodations -- with conditions as they are -- so I don't look at it as anything more serious than that. 

...a curve of behavior that can be called a series of accommodations ... in order to pursue your own purposes in life. So I say the pure person is living in the woods, eating bark, and making his clothing out of vines. That's the purest person. And somewhere along the line, when you decided to wear clothing and use buses and use the telephone, you began a series of accommodations. So for instance, Ted Kaczynski hated, hated technology. He was willing to kill because of his hatred of technology -- and yet he used a typewriter to type his manifesto. And he rode the buses, an advanced form of technology, to get to the post office, where he used a government agency to deliver his crude technologies. So he's not a sellout, and I say, therefore, who is, and what's this all about? So it's kind of a philosophical examination of that...

GI: That's cool. Are there any philosophers that you've admired? 

GC: Well, when it comes to philosophers, I'm local. So I like people like Gore Vidal and Noam Chomsky. And I correspond with Robert Anton Wilson.

GI: You were publicly associated with a cocaine problem. Do you have an opinion at this point about coke as compared to pot and the hallucinogens? 

GC: I think it's pretty apparent that the hallucinogens are mind-expanding and value-changing, paradigm-shifting, and they sort of have a self-limiting quality, if listened to. Not everyone's life is in a place where they're open to knowing that and acting on it, but essentially I think those drugs have that quality. Whenever it comes to refining things is when we get into trouble. Refining sugar, refining flour, refining these plants into higher forms of the drug is when things get twisted. So, cocaine... it was a lot of fun, and I wouldn't trade any of that time, except I wish I'd written more seriously during those years. It sure helps you clean off the desktop."

Bane gets me.

Truth.

Omniscience, amiright?

Choices.

Training.

6/3 - bench [repPR 110/242x8], chins, pushups, seated rows

Lousy night of sleep, zombiewalked into the gym feeling like hammered death, so... repPR?  Lifting definitely ain't science, that's for sure.

We 'Mirin Vol 108: 17 Inspiring Transformations - Bodybuilding.com

fit-and-skinny-kate: You can achieve anything...: "You can achieve anything once you get rid of excuses, educate yourself, work hard, and make your health a priority. Don’t hold yourself back, be limitless!" 

#TylerLives

 

 

"Jack Burton just looks that big ol’ storm right square in the eye and he says, "Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it.""

That might just work.  If anybody can pull it off, it's the Rock.  Dwayne Johnson in Talks to Produce and Star in 'Big Trouble in Little China' Remake - Spinoff Online:  "Johnson would star as Jack Burton, the role originated by Kurt Russell in the John Carpenter-directed original. Like in the 1986 film, Burton is a truck driver caught in an ancient battle, set in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Johnson and his production company, 7 Bucks Entertainment, pitched the remake to Fox; the original is said to be one of Johnson’s favorite movies."

"What does that mean? Huh? "China is here." I don’t even know what the hell that means."

Training.

6/2 - deadlifts, situps, back xt

"But we need to go."

 

Too much investment in 'who you are' keeps you from becoming 'who you can become.'

"...most people are are so deeply hypnotized that they act exactly like mechanisms."

"For years I have been telling the story of Prince Peter Ouspensky, who in his early years in the Gurdjieff Work did not understand Gurdjieff’s insistence that most people are are so deeply hypnotized that they act exactly like mechanisms. Then, shortly after World War I started, Ouspensky saw a truck headed for the front, carrying artificial legs. Suddenly, looking at a truck full of artificial legs to replace legs that had not yet been blown off, but would certainly be blown off very soon, Ouspensky understood that all human behavior on the large, historical scale is so mechanical that it can be mathematically predicted." - Robert Anton Wilson, from Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth

"Sometimes I accept a non-conspiratorial version of a conspiracy story."

RAWIllumination.net: Jesse Walker talks about conspiracy theories: "Tell me a little bit about your paranoia. Have you ever found yourself nodding in agreement with a disreputable, perhaps even absurd, conspiracy story? 

 Jesse Walker: Not any absurd ones, I’d hope. As far as merely disreputable theories go… Well, I think there’s a lot of unanswered questions about the Malcolm X assassination. Of course that’s one that everyone acknowledges was a conspiracy, since we know there were multiple gunmen. But we don’t know how far it went...

There are also plausible arguments—not proven, but plausible—that Timothy McVeigh had more than just one accomplice in the Oklahoma City bombing. He was plugged into that whole radical-right network around Elohim City, Oklahoma, and I can’t just dismiss some of the claims people have made about a wider plot there. 

 Sometimes I accept a non-conspiratorial version of a conspiracy story. It’s obvious, for example, that the people who meet at Bilderberg wield a lot of power, in the same sense that the people who meet at Davos wield a lot of power. But there’s a difference between recognizing that these are powerful people and embracing this strange notion that Bilderberg is the annual Lollapalooza where the big decisions get made. It’s an elite institution; it’s not some sort of secret parliament."

Fascinating look at one experience with ketogenic diets and brain cancer.

More at the link.  Healing Brain Cancer with a Zero Carb Ketogenic Diet by Andrew Scarborough | Eat Meat. Drink Water.: "Eventually, the doctors determined that I had suffered a brain hemorrhage caused by a highly vascular malignant brain tumor located between the speech and movement areas of my brain. I was misdiagnosed a few times before I received the actual pathology report because there was just so much blood in my brain. Six weeks after my operation on May 15th, I was told I had an Anaplastic Astrocytoma. It was treatable, but not curable. In other words, they could slow the progress, but ultimately it would prove to be terminal. I reluctantly went ahead with the standard radiotherapy and chemotherapy that my doctors recommended, but I felt extremely depressed...

I stopped the chemotherapy and radiation treatments after a few months because they were making me too sick and were not helping to eliminate the cancer. (Sadly, everyone I know who continued with the conventional treatments for this type of cancer is no longer alive.) After all the research I had done, I decided that a ketogenic diet was crucial to slowing the progression of this cancer and was my best hope. Therefore, I adopted a very high fat, very low carbohydrate, ketogenic diet. I included low sugar fruits and vegetables, lots of heavy whipping cream, coconut milk and oil, nuts, cheese, avocados, etc. All the typical keto-friendly foods...

My current diet is 85% fat, 15% protein. I have 70-75g protein per day, and over 200g fat. The only real difference between the recommended Ketogenic diet and what am doing is that I am eat only foods that come from the Animal Kingdom. I do not include any plant foods or the oils derived from them. I am still very careful about my macronutrient ratios (protein/fat), and counting carbohydrates is no longer an issue. The only beverage I drink is water or bone broth. Each day I eat 2-4 eggs, liver, lambs brain (from a local sheep rancher who raises his animals with care) or sardines/mackerel, bone broth, crickets or other insects like wax worms (either whole or as a flour) mixed with eggs, herbs and animal fat cooked in a frying pan or in the oven, and bacon or red meat with cheddar cheese. I rotate in a variety of other organ meats like sweet breads. Sometimes I drink double cream on its own if I’m on holiday because it’s an easy way to get the fat, but it tends to make me sleepy so I don’t do that often! Basically, I’m experimenting with new foods all the time and continually learning and expanding my options...

My most recent brain scans taken earlier this month (May 2015) show no disease and the scar tissue is even healing. I have a new oncologist that I found through a Ketogenic diet conference last year is completely supportive of the approach I am taking to treat my cancer and rebuild my health. He is one of the few oncologists who support metabolic diet therapy for cancer management, and I am blessed to have him on my team. In fact, he is so impressed with my results that he has offered me an opportunity to work and study at Charing Cross Hospital and Imperial College London to push forward the research on this type of metabolic diet therapy."

"Superheroes were a monthly reminder that every tight spot had a workable solution and giving up could never be an option."

DC Comics' August 2015 Solicitations - Comic Book Resources: 

  

   

"Keep moving."

Orbital Operations: "It's all about forward motion. Doesn't matter what breaks, catches fire or falls over. Get up. Eat fire. Step over the debris. Keep moving. It's been a trying couple of weeks, to be honest. But the above is what I always try to bear in mind. Keep moving. It's okay to be sad, angry, frustrated, lonely, determined to strangle someone and ordering enough cow shit to drown somebody's house while they and everything they ever loved are locked inside it -- so long as none of those things make you stand still. 

 These, of course, are the sort of remarks that led one young man to email me two weeks ago to tell me he hoped he would have the courage to kill himself before he got old enough to be as boring as I have apparently become. To which I responded: why wait?" - Warren Ellis

Training.

6/1 - press/push press, chins, dips, pulldowns

Reading, May '15 - “But still in the game.”

Robert B. Parker's Kickback (Spenser Book 28) by Ace Atkins
Gone Tomorrow (Jack Reacher, Book 13) by Lee Child
61 Hours (Jack Reacher, Book 14) by Lee Child
Worth Dying For (Jack Reacher, Book 15) by Lee Child
The Affair (with bonus short story Second Son) (Jack Reacher, Book 16) by Lee Child

Stumptown Volume 3 by Greg Rucka, Justin Greenwood & Ryan Hill
Ultimate Comics Captain America by Jason Aaron, Ron Garney
Ultimate Hulk vs Iron Man: Ultimate Human by Warren Ellis & Cary Nord
Ultimate Comics Thor by Jonathan Hickman, Carlos Pacheco

Gone Tomorrow
I am afraid of very little, but hassle with today’s security apparatus is always best avoided. Franz Kafka and George Orwell would have given me the same advice.

The World War Two-era Red Army greatcoat that Lila Hoth claimed to have been conceived under had almost certainly been made in America, as part of the Lend-Lease program. We had shipped a hundred million tons of woolen and cotton goods to the Russians. Plus fifteen million pairs of leather boots, four million rubber tires, two thousand railroad locomotives, and eleven thousand freight cars, as well as all the obvious heavy metal, like fifteen thousand airplanes, seven thousand tanks, and 375,000 army trucks. All free, gratis, and for nothing. Winston Churchill had called the program the least sordid in all of history. Legends had grown up around it. The Soviets were said to have asked for condoms, and in an attempt to impress and intimidate, they had specified that they should be eighteen inches long. The United States had duly shipped them, in cartons stamped Size: Medium.

Look, don’t see, listen, don’t hear. The more you engage, the longer you survive.

You can’t help anyone from a jail cell. Outside is always better than inside.

If you wish for peace, prepare for war.

61 Hours
“Certain situations and certain operations called for what the field manuals described as alertness, focus, motivation, and mental clarity, for extended periods. The doctors had all kinds of pep pills available. Straight meth was on its way out when I came on the job, but it had been around before that, for decades.” Janet Salter nodded. “It was called Pervitin. A German refinement of a Japanese discovery. It was in widespread use during World War Two. It was baked into candy bars. Fliegerschokolade, which means flyers’ chocolate, and Panzerschokolade, which means tankers’ chocolate. The Allies had it, also. Just as much, actually. Maybe more. They called it Desoxyn. I’m surprised anyone ever slept.”"

Worth Dying For
...you don’t start fights but you sure as hell finish them, and you don’t lose them either, and he was the inheritor of generations of hard-won wisdom that said the best way to lose them was to assume they were over when they weren’t yet.

The Affair
“Federal spending. You know how it was. Washington couldn’t let large parts of the South turn into the Third World, so we threw some money down there. A lot of money, actually. You ever notice how the folks who talk loudest about small government always seem to live in the states with the biggest subsidies? Small government would kill them dead.”"

Kickback
“What are your thoughts about cops in schools?” “When I was a counselor, we didn’t have them,” she said. “It’s a relatively new idea, and while I understand the need, I don’t like the message.” “Meaning?” “Some horrific things have happened in schools lately,” she said. “But while the old model had the counselors or teachers or administrators looking for solutions to most problems, all those problems now seem to fall to the school resource officer, and they’re ill-equipped to solve them. From what you’ve told me about Blackburn, and other things I’ve heard, it’s gotten very much out of hand. They’re cops. They have only one approach to a problem.” “Cops make an arrest and the school’s hands are clean.” “Out of sight and out of mind.”

“Nobody gets out of this world without a little maintenance.”

“At least you love your work.” “Some days,” she said. “When you make things right.” “Doesn’t last long,” I said. “Never does,” she said. “Only live for the moment. Order is an illusion.” “Who said that?” “Probably some dead white man.”

“You know why I hate golf?” Hawk said. “Too many assholes play it?” I said. “Exactly.”

“Turn here,” he said. I turned. “Turn there.” I turned there.

“But nobody is really going to care when you disappear, Spenser. You know how many guys I know who will throw a freakin’ party when you’re gone?” “How many?” I said. “Lots.” “But we’ll need a head count,” I said. “Appetizers. Cocktails.” “Arty?” DeMarco said. Arty looked up. Howdy Doody and Baldy had joined him to stare at me as Jackie DeMarco shamed me so thoroughly.

“White BMW,” I said. “Two guys up front.” “That’s them.” “You think you could redirect their attention while I attempt to talk to Miss Bennett?” “Be my pleasure, bawse.” “You do a good job,” I said, “and I’ll let you wax the car later.” “Lawdy,” Hawk said. “You just too good to me, Mista Spensah.” “Is that really necessary?” “Sometimes it’s important to underscore the racial dynamic to our relationship.”

“The law isn’t justice,” I said. “It’s a very imperfect mechanism.”

“For-profit prisons,” she said. “Their incentive is not to rehabilitate but rather to create a returning customer.” “Therein lies the rub.”

I’ve had worn-out parts replaced and improved the older ones. Did I not mention I’ve achieved my fighting weight?” “Better than ever.” “Maybe not better,” I said. “But still in the game.”