"Many questions can only be answered 'yes' or 'no' by a moron or a slave."

"You don't end something like this by giving them what they've no right to ask."

This looks excellent. "Trumbo" starring Bryan Cranston, Helen Mirren, Louis CK, John Goodman, Alan Tudyk, Stephen Root... great cast. 

 I think my favorite line might be "I don't think you and me are gonna be pals."

"There are times when it seems like we’re moving in the direction of sanity in the drug war, at least when it comes to marijuana. These cases are a good reminder that in most of the country, things are as bad as they’ve ever been"

Kafkaesque, Orwellian insanity.  In Texas, police search woman’s vagina for marijuana - The Washington Post: ""A Spring woman claims sheriff’s deputies violated constitutional protections by conducting a body cavity search on the concrete of a Texaco gas station parking lot during a routine traffic stop in late June. Charnesia Corley, a 21-year-old African American, was driving in northern Harris County around 10:30 p.m. on June 21 when a male deputy pulled her over for allegedly running a stop sign. He said he smelled marijuana, handcuffed Corley, put her in his vehicle and searched her car for almost an hour. He didn’t find any pot, according to her attorney, Sam Cammack...

Incredibly, a spokesperson for the Harris County Sheriff’s Department told a local TV station that “the deputies did everything as they should.” And so there you have it. Holding a woman down and forcibly penetrating her vagina to search for pot is official policy in Harris County. Keep in mind that under Texas law, it takes more than four ounces of marijuana to bring a felony charge... It seems doubtful that a woman could be casually driving around with that much marijuana stuffed into her vagina. So Corley was forced to the ground, stripped, and penetrated to search for evidence that at worst would have amounted to a misdemeanor. Which means that the Harris County Sheriff’s Department believes its perfectly acceptable to allow a stranger to forcibly probe a woman’s vagina in order to prevent her from possessing a personal-use quantity of marijuana. And even that happened without a warrant, based only on one deputy’s claim to have smelled the drug...

 There are times when it seems like we’re moving in the direction of sanity in the drug war, at least when it comes to marijuana. These cases are a good reminder that in most of the country, things are as bad as they’ve ever been. A majority of the Americans now believe that pot should be legal. In a few states, it already is, at least under state law. A majority also believe that even harder drugs should be treated as a medical condition, not a crime. Yet the government is still waging terrifying raids on people because of pot. It’s still performing sexual assault because pot. It’s still taking children away from their parents because of pot. And it’s still killing people because of pot."

SketchShe is pretty entertaining.

"...kids are not in constant danger of being abducted by unknown assailants. In fact, the vast majority of crimes against children are committed by people they already know."

More fear mongering bullshit.  Are Your Kids on Facebook? Rapists Will Abduct Them, Warns Viral Video - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "And what is the message? That young people shouldn't trust anyone online? That's like telling them not to trust anyone they meet in the offline world, too. As I wrote in my rebuttal to Joey Salads, a video that “tests” whether kids can be conned by an evil stranger makes it seem as if this is a situation kids are faced with every day. But kids are not in constant danger of being abducted by unknown assailants. In fact, the vast majority of crimes against children are committed by people they already know...

"Does it make sense to teach kids about Internet safety? Absolutely. They should be warned that everything they post online can be made public, and that sharing too much information is often a bad idea. But it is stupid to assume that Facebook is teeming with stranger danger. This video also reminds me of the scary hitchhiker warnings of the 1960s, "Never pick up a stranger." (Which also became the slogan for an anti-freeze, but I digress.) Unfortunately, it's the kind of scary, misleading message that everyone loves to share, as if they are performing a public service."

"Many want to believe that women and men are identical in their underlying psychology, but the genders differ strikingly in their evolved mate preferences..."

Gosh, you don't say?  How unsurprisingly obvious.  Biology, biochemistry and evolution 101.  Genders Differ Dramatically in Evolved Mate Preferences | UT News | The University of Texas at Austin: "Men’s and women’s ideas of the perfect mate differ significantly due to evolutionary pressures, according to a cross-cultural study on multiple mate preferences by psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin. The study of 4,764 men and 5,389 women in 33 countries and 37 cultures showed that sex differences in mate preferences are much larger than previously appreciated and stable across cultures...

Many want to believe that women and men are identical in their underlying psychology, but the genders differ strikingly in their evolved mate preferences in some domains,” said co-author of the study and psychology professor David Buss. “The same holds true in highly sexually egalitarian cultures such as Sweden and Norway as in less egalitarian cultures such as Iran.”"

The researchers suggest that these patterns of mate preferences are far more linked to gender than any individual mate preference examined separately would suggest. 

Researchers found that they could predict a person’s sex with 92.2 percent accuracy if they knew his or her mate preferences. 

According to the study, men favor mates who are younger and physically attractive. Women seek older mates with good financial prospects, higher status and ambition. 

“Because women bear the cost of pregnancy and lactation, they often faced the adaptive problem of acquiring resources to produce and support offspring, while men faced adaptive problems of identifying fertile partners and sought cues to fertility and future reproductive value,” Conroy-Beam said."

In other news, men like asses.  Lumbar curvature: a previously undiscovered standard of attractiveness - Evolution and Human Behavior:  "This paper reports independent studies supporting the proposal that human standards of attractiveness reflect the output of psychological adaptations to detect fitness-relevant traits. We tested novel a priori hypotheses based on an adaptive problem uniquely faced by ancestral hominin females: a forward-shifted center of mass during pregnancy. The hominin female spine possesses evolved morphology to deal with this adaptive challenge: wedging in the third-to-last lumbar vertebra. Among ancestral women, vertebral wedging would have minimized the net fitness threats posed by hypolordosis and hyperlordosis, thereby creating selective pressures on men to prefer such women as mates. On this basis, we hypothesized that men possess evolved mate preferences for women with this theoretically optimal angle of lumbar curvature...

"In Study 1, as hypothesized, men’s attraction toward women increased as women’s lumbar curvature approached this angle. However, vertebral wedging and buttock mass can both influence lumbar curvature. Study 2 thus employed a forced-choice paradigm in which men selected the most attractive woman among models exhibiting the same lumbar curvature, but for different morphological reasons. Men again tended to prefer women exhibiting cues to a degree of vertebral wedging closer to optimum. This included preferring women whose lumbar curvature specifically reflected vertebral wedging rather than buttock mass. These findings reveal novel, theoretically anchored, and previously undiscovered standards of attractiveness."

"A lot of people support a woman's right to choose. I think, if *I'm* paying for it..." - Jimmy Carr

"I'm joking.  I never pay."

 

"This is a true story about UFOs and a government who denied their existence. Then wanted people to believe in them."

Great documentary.

"What if the UFO conspiracy was turned on its head? Instead the modern mythology of governments covering up UFO sightings, the military had been and still is actually encouraging it as part of their ancient cold war counterintelligence arsenal. Mirage Men draws viewers into a saucer-shaped hall of mirrors, a shadow-world where every lie contains elements of the truth, and the truth is far stranger than the UFO believers, or their detractors, would have you believe."

Training.

8/14 - mobility, treadmill, chins, pushups, bw squats  8/13 - mobility, squats, bench, leg press, incline bench, situps, curls, pushups, bw squats

Bill Phillips Transformation: "I don’t know anyone who can honestly tell me they ended up in poor physical condition, overweight, or weak on purpose. It’s something that happens unintentionally. Oftentimes, when people focus their attention on their careers, their education, or dealing with a life crisis, they put their health and fitness on “cruise control.” They let go of the steering wheel and take their eyes off the road. Before long, their physical condition and health are completely off track. The style of living that causes poor health is not that complicated to understand. And, fortunately, neither is the process of getting back on track. But you have to disconnect the cruise control, put both hands on the wheel, and focus your vision on where you want to go. You have to start driving, and stop just going along for the ride. You have to intentionally undo the things that happened accidentally." ~Bill Phillips

Training.

8/11 - treadmill, chins

#TheStruggleIsReal

Same coin.

"...and a little child will lead them."

Biochemistry 101 - "It just feels good to be asked."

What Next on the Slippery Slope to Freedom? | Scott Adams Blog: "Our bodies and the environment jack our body chemistry, the chemistry changes what we think and how we feel, and the result is our moods. The more common view of the world is that our moods are somehow a mind-generated problem that can be fixed by thinking better, resolving annoyances, or by taking prescription meds. But sometimes the world is simpler. 

I can’t speak for women, but most men are going to be in a good mood if you offer them a sandwich and oral sex for lunch. Even if they say no. It just feels good to be asked. And ladies, if a guy thinks he has a chance of getting that sort of lunch now or any day in the infinite future, and you ask him to hand-wash your car, he will probably rearrange his schedule and maybe power-wash your driveway too. Just in case. Because it might be a good investment in the future.  

 Hence, some people would say monogamy is male slavery disguised by words such as soul-mate and “good man.” The man might tell himself that he does nice things because he is a nice guy, or that no one can wash cars as well as he can. But in reality the man just loves sandwiches for lunch and he doesn’t want to die lonely. He’s not a liar; he just doesn’t know that his body is driving his moods, not vice-versa. We are all under the persistent illusion that our bad moods are caused by the “problems” in our lives as opposed to the chemistry inside your skulls."

He beat Deathstroke and Ra's al Ghul, I'm sure he can take Stardust.

"Arrow" Star Stephen Amell Confronts Stardust on "WWE Raw," "SummerSlam" Match Official - Comic Book Resources: "The feud between "Arrow" star Stephen Amell and WWE pro wrestler Stardust (formerly known as Cody Rhodes) reached new heights on Monday's "WWE Raw," broadcast live on USA from Xfinity Arena in Everett, Washington."

Training.

8/10 - deadlifts, press/push press, chins, dips, tbar row  8/8 - treadmill, chins 

We 'Mirin Volume 118: 16 Backs In Action - Bodybuilding.com:

How Joseph Lost His Gut—And Gained Self-Confidence - Bodybuilding.com:

Best. Parents. Ever.

So. Much. Truth.

"Eating Only Meat and Eggs Did THIS to My Cholesterol."

Awesome.  My Zero Carb Life: "As it turns out, your “total cholesterol” number seems to have only marginal value when it comes to making those predictions.  People with high total cholesterol numbers aren’t any more likely to have a heart attack than those with low total cholesterol.  It’s been researched and studied and proven.  Seriously, Google it. 

 And if you’re wondering why so many people are on statin drugs to lower their cholesterol, if after all it is indeed a meaningless number, you should know that statins are a $29 B-B-B-BILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY. There is CRAZY money to be lost if people stop believing that cholesterol is bad for you.  And, in case you haven’t noticed, business people don’t like to lose money.  (Here’s a very helpful article about the great cholesterol myth: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/01/29-billion-reasons-to-lie-about-cholesterol.aspx ) 

 In my research, I found article after article stating that I really need to know only a few things when it comes to my bloodwork, and none of them include the “total cholesterol” number. 

 1)      Blood sugar. Blood sugar numbers should remain steady throughout the day. Steady, level, not-high, not-low blood sugar numbers allow the body to lose weight and are a very good sign for overall health.  Somewhere around 80-100 is where most people end up if they eat a diet that is free from carbs and sugars.  

2)      The Triglyceride/HDL Ratio.  THIS IS A BIG ONE.  Your triglyceride number divided by your HDL number is the absolute greatest indicator of your risk for heart disease.  Here is an article explaining why: http://www.docsopinion.com/2014/07/17/triglyceride-hdl-ratio/  

If you want to focus on any one number when you have blood work done, make it this one.  The goal is to get that ratio number as low as you possibly can.  To do that, you want your triglycerides low and your HDL (deemed “good cholesterol”) to be high.  A ratio of less than two is desirable.  Anything above four is statistically a very bad sign that you may be at risk for heart disease.  (For further reading: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2664115/)"

1500 years of lost knowledge.

The idea that we're constantly moving forward is... quaint.  Antikythera mechanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient analog computer designed to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendrical and astrological purposes, as well as the Olympiads, the cycles of the ancient Olympic Games...

 The artifact was recovered in 1900–1901 from the Antikythera shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera. Believed to have been designed and constructed by Greek scientists, the instrument has been dated either between 150 and 100 BCE, or, according to a more recent view, at 205 BCE.  After the knowledge of this technology was lost at some point in Antiquity, technological artifacts approaching its complexity and workmanship did not appear again in Europe until the development of mechanical astronomical clocks in the fourteenth century."

Lost history is a thing.  We know so little.

The Holographic Universe.

Is The Universe A Hologram? - YouTube: "According to Leonard Susskind ("Bad Boy of Physics"), our reality is much stranger than it appears to be and life, the universe, EVERYTHING, might just be a holographic projection! Is the universe a hologram? Is reality an illusion?? Will we ever comprehend the vastness of outer space?"

Makes even more sense if you posit we're living in a computer simulation.

I read Michael Talbot's The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality years ago, but probably just avoid thinking about because it gets into how unreal reality is.  When you get there, there's little else.