Jon's B-day/FGG [Fukutsu Gaijin Gathering.]

Jon's B-day plus brand new Fukutsu ALTs is as good a reason as any to get together for fine food and beverage.

Aka Mike questions your sexuality. You know, generally speaking.

New ALT Julianne [sp?] shows her Japanese roots, wielding her camera with mighty vigor.


The essence of Japanese drinking.


Debating Japanese nationalism and the Americanization of Japan post WWII. [Seriously.]



Mocking those who fall asleep early. We've no class, we don't.


Now that is a happy man.

All class and style. But fun.

NOTHING will break Mike's concentration when gaming.




You can also click over here to Anton's blog to watch his surreptitious videography, showing what happens when guys who play at martial arts start drinking.

The return of Herbie.

Since Hawaii, all geckos have been named Herbie. I don't know why. [But geckos are good luck in Hawaii.]

"Listen, I'm not joking. This is my job!" - Animal House (1978)

Summer vacation... Jr High kids off to New Zealand so no more eikaiwa classes, so my job equals email/internet and playing with kids...

Two hours of dodgeball, badminton, tag, wrestling/judo and origami... actually pretty damn exhausting. These midgets were full of sugar and caffeine or something...


Taking pictures is not that easy when the kids fire the dodgeball at your groin. [Not kidding.]


You know, I tried the whole stilts thing, but gave up after I nearly killed myself.

C'mon, you know this is adorable.

Sticker bribery. I like to buy children's affections.



Some kids act like they don't wanna be photographed.

But they do.

This kid was cool, but, ummm, emotional. Everytime I went to go play with other kids he'd get all upset and get near tears. I had to carefully apply zerberts, judo and stickers to prevent a meltdown.


This little kid was smaller than some of the others, so I made sure to pick him for my dodgeball team. When it came to sumo/judo/whatever he was doing, he was actually beating some of the bigger kids.


New ALT Rochelle dipping her foot in the waters of elementary school kids. She chose a much saner, more energy efficient teaching methodology than my standard running-around-like-a-crazy-person strategem.

During the afternoon the sky decided to open up, tagging the kids when the dodgeball got knocked outside...

...and ensuring that my bike ride home was interesting.


My origami haul from the day... kids love me. And also they didn't want to take their creations home.

I love my job.

Michael Phelps Wins 9th, 10th and 11th Gold Medals.

Obama picks Biden for VP.

There's a bunch of stuff I can disagree with Biden on, but I've always liked the fact he's gotten in trouble a lot for shooting his mouth off and shooting from the hip. If nothing else, he seems to be a guy who'll tell you what he thinks and isn't constantly censuring himself or polling the public before telling you his opinion. He seems less ostensibly full of it than some others.

Like this:

Hit & Run > Obama Chooses Talky Joe - Reason Magazine:

"A personal anecdote: One of the few advantages in working for one of those anachronistic newspaper editorial-board thingies is that a parade of top political candidates and office-holders comes trudging through, offering a crucial opportunity for snap character assessments. During my time at the L.A. Times I saw John Edwards (insufferably insincere nancy boy), Bill Richardson (a huge disappointment: backpedaling on trade, pie-in-the-skying on Iraq, and just not particularly smart)...and then there was Joe Biden. To my great surprise, I found him pretty dang sharp, with layer upon layer of knowledge about the history, present, and future of Iraq, and also about wonky parliamentary maneuvering in the United States Senate. Afterward, the then-publisher of the paper, a Reagan Republican named David Hiller, was all hey he was pretty impressive, wasn't he? And just when you were about to say 'yes' you'd remember all the horse-puckey Biden talked about economics, trade, regulation, and so on."

The power of blogging - Exposing underage Chinese gymnasts.

How more evidence against the Chinese gymnsasts was found by a random internet/security guy using only the internet and some search engines.

How hacker found proof of He Kexin's age - Off The Field - News - Olympics:

"...In his spare time Mike Walker likes to find things on web servers that were never meant to be found.

On Monday, after curiosity got the better of him, the 33-year-old computer security consultant toiled for hours without success, as he tried to dig up more information about the allegedly under-aged Chinese gymnast He Kexin.


...On Google's cache he found evidence of a record of He Kexin's birth on a spreadsheet belonging to the General Administration of Sport of China - the country peak sports body.

But the data had been removed.

On the Chinese search engine Baidu, he went one better. He found two caches of Excel spreadsheet which had been published on the web and both of them showed He Kexin's birthday as January 1, 1994.

The cache is the snapshot of web pages crawled by a search engine spiders which map the web and database their findings.

The following day on Google's Chinese search engine, google.com.cn, he found yet more cached spreadsheets from the General Administration of Sport of China also showing the birth date as January 1, 1994.

This would make the tiny gymnast - who won two gold medals at the Olympics - 14 years old. Her Olympic credentials list her birth date as January 1, 1992, which would make her 16.

..."I put it on Blogger (a free Google blog service) and went out to dinner and the world came calling."

As a direct result of Walker's findings and the resulting press coverage that it sparked, the International Olympic Committee yesterday announced that it had called for a review of the age falsification allegations surrounding China's dual gold medal gymnast..."

Also of note, this Chinese gymnast admitted on national TV that she was underage when she won the bronze in the 2000 games, indicating that this type of age falsification is probably old hat for the Chinese teams.

Records Say Chinese Gymnasts May Be Under Age - NYTimes.com:

"Yang Yun of China won individual and team bronze medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and later said in an interview on state-run television that she had been 14 at the time of those Games. A Hunan Province sports administration report also said later that she had been 14 when she competed in Sydney."

Training 140-142.

140
Diet - bacon - avocado w/mayo, salt, pepper - 4 cups of coffee w/cream, equal - buncha diet soda - 1L water - Subway BLT salad

PT - Single arm DB row 40x5, 52.5x4x5 - Pushups 5x5 - DB DL 105x5x5 - Alt DB Curls 20x5, 30x5, 35x5x3 - Shrugs 2x105x30 - Neck nods 40x all directions - Front and back bridges 40/20

141/142 - wkend/free/rest/carb

Training Chinese child athletes.

This is actually really fucked up. The things done in the name of nationalism, I swear...

*Update* Video was working for a little bit, but not any longer, apparently.

*And now it's back.

Another reason to low carb/skip the sugary junk food.

Carbs kill cells that regulate appetite - Boing Boing:

"Carbohydrates don't just screw up your blood-sugar: they release free radicals that kill appetite-suppressing cells. The research is from a Nature article by Dr Zane Andrews, a neuroendocrinologist with Monash University's Department of Physiology.

'The more carbs and sugars you eat, the more your appetite-control cells are damaged, and potentially you consume more,' Dr Andrews said."

This looks damn good - "Frost/Nixon" Movie Trailer.

Frost/Nixon [film] based on the play Frost/Nixon by the British screenwriter and dramatist Peter Morgan. Its subject is the series of televised interviews that Richard Nixon granted David Frost in 1977 and that ended with a tacit admission of guilt regarding his role in the Watergate scandal.

Honestly, what the f*** is wrong with people?

Mayor shuts down home produce stand operated by kids - Boing Boing:

"Clayton, California Mayor Gregg Manning is punishing two little kids for taking the initiative to sell their own garden produce from a card table in front of their house.


Manning ordered police to raid their operation because the neighborhood isn't zoned for commerce, and because it constituted an imaginary traffic hazard."

"Americans get 10 days jail, Chinese grannies get 1 yr forced labor, Tibetans get shot."

Updated from here.

Beijing and Tibet: GRL's James Powderly, Brian of "Alive in Baghdad, 4 other US citizens receive 10-day jail sentence - Boing Boing:

"A representative of Students for a Free Tibet tells Boing Boing that 6 American bloggers and pro-Tibet activists who went missing in Beijing for days after being detained by authorities have re-appeared -- and that authorities have given them a sentence of ten days in jail each for 'upsetting public order.'


...A Tibetan nun named Sonam Yungzom is reported to have been shot while shouting slogans in Kardze town, eastern Tibet (now part of Sichuan province) on August 10th. One source says she yelled out: “There are no human rights in China, there is brutal oppression in Tibet, still the Olympics go on in China.” She was hit by five to six bullets and then her body was thrown in a vehicle and taken away. "

"Now, when I say, 'Who's da mastah?' you say, 'Sho'nuff!'"

"I AM the Shogun of Harlem!"

Damn right, he was. RIP.


Julius Carry dies of pancreatic cancer.:

"Julius J. Carry III (March 12, 1952 - August 19, 2008), was an American actor. Carry has appeared primarily in numerous television roles, including Dr. Abraham Butterfield on Doctor, Doctor and the bounty hunter Lord Bowler in the The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. He also portrayed the main villain Sho'nuff in the cult classic film The Last Dragon.

He died on August 19th, 2008 of pancreatic cancer."

The Last Dragon (1985) - Memorable quotes:

"Sho'nuff: Am I the meanest?
Sho'nuff 's Goons: Sho'nuff!
Sho'nuff: Am I the prettiest?
Sho'nuff 's Goons: Sho'nuff!
Sho'nuff: Am I the baddest mofo low down around this town?
Sho'nuff 's Goons: Sho'nuff!
Sho'nuff: Well who am I?
Sho'nuff 's Goons: Sho'nuff!
Sho'nuff: Who am I?
Sho'nuff 's Goons: Sho'nuff!
Sho'nuff: I can't hear you...
Sho'nuff 's Goons: Sho'nuff!"

"Stakeout Fail."

see more pwn and owned pictures

Training 139.

Diet - 3 cups tea w/cream, equal - Shake w/3 eggs, cream, equal, inst coffee, ice - Steak & 2 eggs, grilled chicken - Ham - 1L water, buncha diet soda.

PT - 30m footwork/shadowboxing

Worry.

James Ray:

"'Worry is supreme weakness and is a vampire to life. Worry causes man to cling desperately to his model of the world even if that model does not serve him. By clinging he drains the life out of himself and his entire existence.'

— James Arthur Ray
Creator of Harmonic Wealth®'"

All white people look alike.

Video: White guy mistaken for Michael Phelps | Japan Probe:

"If you’re a non-Asian foreigner living in Japan, chances are you’ve been compared to a foreign celebrity at least once, and that celebrity probably looks nothing like you.

But have any of you experienced something like this:

30 minutes of outstanding close up card magic.

This guy has amaaaaaazing sleight of hand. Dude makes the cards fly. Funny too.

I love well done magic.

Lennart Green | Profile on TED.com:

"Swedish card trick maestro Lennart Green has been baffling audiences for years with card tricks that seem barely under control. In 1991 he won the grand prize in close-up card magic from the International Federation of Magic Societies (FISM), sometimes called the 'Olympics of magic.' He might've won it in 1985 also, except his act of seemingly impossible cardplay fooled even the judges.

...including his famous 'Snap Deal' (where cards seem to vanish without a trace as they are dealt). His talents have carried his trickery around the world, including an appearance on NBC's The World's Greatest Magic."

In other Olympic News - "Beijing update: New detentions, 6 US protesters missing, Tibetan protesters in Tibet reportedly shot dead."

Beijing update: New detentions, 6 US protesters missing, Tibetan protesters in Tibet reportedly shot dead. - Boing Boing

That explains a lot.

And yes, I've sat through just about every BBC production of Austen's novels ever. On multiple occasions. [Hi Sandy.]

Virginity = Productivity?:

"...Despite the “quite a bit of sex” smeared on [Jane Austen’s] life and work by the biopic Becoming Jane and virtually all the recent screen adaptations (notably the obnoxious Mansfield Park), the author of Pride and Prejudice (invariably voted best ever English novel) died intacta. All six of her major heroines are as virginal on the last page as they were on the first. Does the fact that Austen “never had it” make her a greater, or lesser, writer? Is chastity the enemy of literary genius?…"