The Internet is Awesome - Religion Edition.

Click to enlarge, if so required.

The Internet is Awesome - Kids Edition.

Click to enlarge, if so required.

Training 143-144.

143-144 - Diet - 3 steaks, diet soda, 2 avocados, butter, lotsa coffee w/cream, equal, shake w/3 eggs, cream, equal

PT - 143 - Chins 5/5/5/4-1/3-1-1 - Push Press 70x5 100x5x3 - Single arm DB row 52.5x5x5 - Pushups 5x6 - Single arm DB curl 30x5 35x5x4 - Dips 5x10 - Shrugs 2x30

144 - rest

Oh boy.

Overheard Everywhere | Obviously Not:

"Student #1: I have to go to class.
Student #2: Which one?
Student #1: Quantum physics.
Student #2: Is that where you go back in time to set right what once went wrong?

Georgia Southern University

Overheard by: Sydney"

That's Quantum Leap, people.

The Matrix has you - Neo's passport expired on 9/11/2001.

You know, despite the psuedo-trainwreck that was the two sequels, the first Matrix film was easily one of my fave films of the last 10 years or so... even if a buncha it was ripped from Grant Morrison's Invisibles, imho... but this is one of those things that makes you realize that, yeah, "the universe wants to play*." In case you forgot, The Matrix was released in 1999. "Woah," indeed.
[Click to see full size.]

*Hakim Bey.

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."