Friday, August 22, 2014

"We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being..."


No ice bucket challenge for U.S. diplomats | The Rundown | PBS NewsHour: "Lawyers at the State Department have banned American ambassadors and other high-profile foreign service officers from participating in the ice-bucket challenge to raise money and awareness for Lou Gehrig’s disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. In a cable sent this week to all U.S. diplomatic missions..."

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." - Shakespeare

Newspapers are, pretty much, dead. - Boing Boing: "Clay Shirky has some some truths: "Maybe 25 year olds will start demanding news from yesterday, delivered in an unshareable format once a day. Perhaps advertisers will decide 'Click to buy' is for wimps. Mobile phones: could be a fad. After all, anything could happen with print. Hard to tell, really.""

Because Bob Tyrrell Prefers Scotch, Marijuana Should Be Banned - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "In a column published yesterday, Bob Tyrrell, founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, explains why alcohol is better than marijuana. Both drinking and pot smoking are "coping mechanisms," he concedes, but alcohol is clearly more "civilized" because people can enjoy the taste, drink while reading or conversing, and imbibe without getting "blitzed." All this is either impossible or quite rare among cannabis consumers, Tyrrell asserts with the confidence of someone who has no idea what he's talking about.

"Pot prohibitionists have been pushing this argument for many years, utterly undeterred by how ridiculous they sound to anyone who is familiar with cannabis or with cannabis consumers. If Tyrrell were merely defending his own tastes, there would be no point in arguing with him. But he is doing more than that: He is defending the legal distinction between alcohol and marijuana, insisting that his tastes should be forcibly imposed on everyone else. Given the boldness of that demand, the frivolousness of his argument is striking." 




Why 2 Businesses Survived Ferguson Looting A Lesson for All: "There were police everywhere in Ferguson Sunday night, and not one of those stores were protected against looters. But the two businesses above WERE spared — because they were able to arm themselves. The lesson should have been learned for good after the 1992 L.A. Riots, when only shop owners in Koreatown were spared because they defended their stores with force of arms...
Why 2 Businesses Survived Ferguson Looting A Lesson for All: "At Riverfront Tattoo, owners Mike Gutierrez ( below left) and Adam Weinstein (third from left) brought AR-15s, body armor and lots of high-capacity magazines (the type Obama wants banned) to guard their store against mayhem..."






Huey P. Newton Gun Club Pushes #BlackOpenCarry to Protest Police Violence - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "In Texas, blacks are protesting police violence in a particularly Southwestern way: By invoking their right to open carry. On Wednesday, more than 30 members of the newly-formed Huey P. Newton Gun Club gathered to march through South Dallas with rifles, shotguns, and AR-15s. The group eventually entered a restaurant with their weapons while Dallas police officers were inside eating lunch."

Malcolm X - Wikiquote: "We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary."

From School Cupcake Bans to Ferguson to Iraq: George Will's Unified Field Theory of Contempt for Govt - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Washington’s response to the menace of school bake sales illustrates progressivism’s ratchet: The federal government subsidizes school lunches, so it must control the lunches' contents, which validates regulation of what it calls "competitive foods," such as vending machine snacks. Hence the need to close the bake sale loophole, through which sugary cupcakes might sneak: Foods sold at fundraising bake sales must, with some exceptions, conform to federal standards. 

What has this to do with police, from Ferguson, Mo., to your home town, toting marksman rifles, fighting knives, grenade launchers and other combat gear? Swollen government has a shriveled brain: By printing and borrowing money, government avoids thinking about its proper scope and actual competence. So it smears mine-resistant armored vehicles and other military marvels across 435 congressional districts because it can. 

And instead of making immigration policy serve the nation’s values and workforce needs, government, egged on by conservatives, aspires to emulate East Germany along the Rio Grande, spending scores of billions to militarize a border bristling with hardware bought with previous scores of billions. 

Much of this is justified by the United States’ longest losing “war,” the one on drugs. Is it, however, necessary for NASA to have its own SWAT team?... Contempt for government cannot be hermetically sealed; it seeps into everything. Which is why cupcake regulations have foreign policy consequences. Americans, inundated with evidence that government is becoming dumber and more presumptuous, think it cannot be trusted to decipher foreign problems and apply force intelligently."

Ferguson's "free speech zone" is a padlocked no-man's-land - Boing Boing: "The ACLU was denied an emergency injunction against Ferguson's cops' illegal "no standing on the sidewalk" rule because Ferguson promised to erect a "free speech zone," but the only thing on that site is a fenced-off, locked-up pen that no one is allowed to use. At least 78 people have been arrested for standing on the sidewalk in Ferguson, prompting Amnesty International to send 10 observers to the town -- the first time Amnesty's observers have been deployed in the USA. Activists point out that the rule against protesting while stationary amounts to a ban on protesting by disabled and elderly people altogether."


Petty Law Enforcement and Its Effect on Ferguson - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "If indeed more people's usual interactions with police had anything to do with "protecting and serving" and less with violently messing up your life for reasons that can seem petty and pointless, from people whose version of respect is "do everything I say the way I'm comfortable with or you might die," the atmosphere surrounding what happened in Ferguson would likely be less toxic. I remember a few years ago lecturing on libertarianism to a group of community college kids in downtown Atlanta. They sniffed a bit of anarchism around what I was discussing, though I wasn't explicit about it. How would society work without police, a student asked me? I asked them this Zen question: contemplate for a moment that, in any respect in which it helped rather than harmed your life, there pretty much already are no police.  No one argued much."

Police Department Says Cop Camera Footage Not Public Record - Hit & Run : Reason.com: " At least one witness claims Brown stood with his hands up and screamed "I don't have a gun, stop shooting!" while a "source close to the department's top brass" told FoxNews.com that Brown nearly beat Officer Darren Wilson unconscious before Wilson shot Brown six times.  With such disparity between eyewitness accounts, and with high-definition video technology so inexpensive and ubiquitous, there is a growing demand for police to record their interactions with the public. As Reason's Ron Bailey wrote, "Requiring law enforcement to wear video cameras will protect your constitutional rights and improve policing." There have already been some ups and downs with experiments in police cameras. Cameras have been turned off, failed to record, and footage has been lost. It will also likely take some time before departments require their officers to record and preserve video evidence rather than merely suggesting they do so.  Still, in places like Rialto, California, the mere presence of cameras has resulted in a precipitous drop in complaints and use of force. It has also improved community relations with the police, since everyone tends to exhibit more civilized behavior when they know they are being recorded."


Trying so hard not to laugh.  BBC News - Global warming slowdown 'could last another decade': "Scientists have struggled to explain the so-called pause that began in 1999, despite ever increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere."


Awesome.  Police officer goes above and beyond for Sumter teen - WSMV Channel 4: "A few weeks ago, 13-year-old Cameron Simmons called Sumter police because he was upset after fighting with his mom. The teenager told police he didn't want to live in the house with his family anymore. Officer Gaetano Acerra responded to the call. "I said, ‘You have it good, you have a roof over your head,'" said Acerra. "I told him I would try to help him out, and here we are now."    The officer brought Simmons home, and realized the boy didn't have a real bed. In fact, Simmons didn't have nearly anything he needed for a bedroom. "My heart went out for him," said Acerra. "I thought the little things that he needed I could give him, to make him a happier kid." A few weeks after the call, Acerra showed up at Simmon's house with a truck full of gifts. "Bed, TV, desk, chair, a Wii game system that somebody donated to me because of the story I told them," said Acerra."

"Captain America:  He's Cool Now."


Millennials Are Selfish and Entitled and Helicopter Parents Are to Blame | TIME: "There are more overprotective moms and dads at a time when children are actually safer than ever...

Seventy-one percent of American adults think of 18 to 29 year-olds—millennials, basically—as “selfish,” and 65% of us think of them as “entitled.” That’s according to the latest Reason-Rupe Poll, a quarterly survey of 1,000 representative adult Americans. If millennials are self-absorbed little monsters who expect the world to come to them and for their parents to clean up their rooms well into their twenties, we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves—especially the moms and dads among us.

Indeed, the same poll documents the ridiculous level of kid-coddling that has now become the new normal. More than two-thirds of us think there ought to be a law that kids as old as 9 should supervised while playing at a public park...  We think on average that kids should be 10 years old before they “are allowed to play in the front yard unsupervised.” Unless you live on a traffic island or a war zone, that’s just nuts. It gets worse: We think that our precious bundles of joy should be 12 before they can wait alone in a car for five minutes on a cool day or walk to school without an adult, and that they should be 13 before they can be trusted to stay home alone. You’d think that kids raised on Baby Einstein DVDs should be a little more advanced than that...

Curiously, this sort of ridiculous hyper-protectiveness is playing out against a backdrop in which children are safer than ever. Students reporting bullying is one-third of what it was 20 years ago and, according to a study in JAMA Pediatrics, the past decade has seen massive declines in exposure to violence for kids. Out of 50 trends studied, summarize the authors, “there were 27 significant declines and no significant increases between 2003 and 2011. Declines were particularly large for assault victimization, bullying, and sexual victimization. There were also significant declines in the perpetration of violence and property crime...

But whatever the reasons for our insistence that we childproof the world around us, this way madness lies."

Training - "Pain will always be part of your life..."

"Your ability to endure it, to control it, and to overcome it... that is what will make you great.  Pain is temporary.  You are strong.  Push through it." - Lazarus V2, Greg Rucka 

8/22 - pullups, dips


 Heidi Somers - Mobile Uploads: "The picture on the left was me at my heaviest 130lbs (I'm only 5'0) and I wanted a change. I started working out and eating healthy and was able to lose all of the extra weight I was carrying. It wasn't easy. There was plenty of times I wanted to quit. Plenty of times I had obstacles. But you keep going. You don't give up"




Seems Legit. 

 Keebs Losing It: "That USED to be me.. I USED to come home everyday, make an unhealthy dinner, eat an unhealthy portion of it, and then watch hours of TV! I ate fast food all the time, and hated even the thought of a small walk.. I Never took the stairs.. I Hated myself so much it’s unbelievable.. My knees hurt, my back ached, my clothes were too tight, and I was sick and tired of it! So what did I do? I changed, and there is NO secret for me to share with you as to how.. I stopped eating junk, and I started eating real food.. I limited eating out, I ate smaller portions, I started to see changes so I kept going. Eventually I got up and I got moving, I started walking, and then running. I loved how I felt, I was happy, I was proud. I went from a size 28w jeans to a size 6-8, my ring size went from 8.5 to 5, i threw out all my old 3X tops and traded them in for mediums, I enjoy going for a walk and being active, my knees don’t even hurt after a five mile run. So screw all of the people who used to call me fat, and to those that think I didn’t work hard to become who I am today! MY SWEAT SAYS IVE EARNED THIS! I changed, and so can you! If you can relate to anything I said, do it for the only person that matters, YOU! ❤️"



  


  

 I like lift.: ""Why do you work out so much?"… When I try to explain that I’m training and not working out, a lot of people don’t understand what this means. You wouldn’t ask a marathoner why they do so much "cardio", a sprinter why they do so much "HIIT", or any competitive athlete why they "exercise" so much. Powerlifting is my sport and I train to increase my 1RM for the squat, bench press, and dead lift. I don’t do ab exercises. I don’t try to "tighten" or "tone" anything. I don’t work out specific body parts to make them look different. I just train to be a better athlete. The physique I have achieved through weight lifting is just a plus. I hope this explains my mindset!"


Truth wrapped in a joke surrounded by an enigma.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Training - "Henry Steinborn might not have invented the squat style subsequently named after him..."

8/21 - squats, calf press










ChAoS & PAIN: Baddest Motherfuckers Ever: Henry "Milo" Steinborn: "Henry Steinborn might not have invented the squat style subsequently named after him, but he was definitely the greatest of all time at it.  Lacking a rack out of which to squat, Steinborn loaded up a barbell with 553 lbs, up-ended it, dropped that quarter ton onto his back at the bottom of a squat, and powered out of the hole with it.  No person before him had ever come close to that record, and it's only been in the last decade or so that anyone has done so since (IAWA World Records).  Steinborn was so far out ahead of his peers in the squat that at one point the richest man in the world at the time, Jean Paul Getty, took notice of Steinborn and ended up paying him a considerable sum when Steinborn busted out 33 reps with 315 at a bodyweight of 205, presumably after betting him that Steinborn couldn't break 30 reps with 315 (Strossen 5)." 
ChAoS & PAIN: Baddest Motherfuckers Ever: Henry "Milo" Steinborn: "Milo weighed around 170 when he was 92.  Here, he's in his 80s and looking better than 3/4 of the people in any gym you visit." 

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

"Who among us can truly said to be good?"





Kevin Smith and Johnny Depp Team for Action-Adventure 'Yoga Hosers' (Exclusive) - Hollywood Reporter: "Hosers, written by Smith, centers on 15-year-old yoga nuts Colleen Collette (Lily-Rose Depp) and Colleen McKenzie (Harley Quinn Smith), who have an after-school job at a Manitoba convenience store called Eh-2-Zed. When an ancient evil rises from beneath Canada’s crust and threatens their big invitation to a Grade 12 party, the Colleens join forces with a legendary man-hunter from Montreal named Guy Lapointe (Depp) to fight for their lives with, according to the producers, “all seven Chakras, one Warrior Pose at a time.”

Smith, a comic book geek who has written titles for Marvel and DC and who once wrote a Superman movie script, said he considers this his entree into the comic book movie genre. “People always ask me 'Are you ever going to make a comic book movie?' " Smith said. "This is it — but instead of yet another dude saving the day, our antiheroes are the most feared and formidable creatures man has ever encountered: two 15-year-old girls.”"

 Militarized cops: arms dealers bribed Congress to ramboize Barney Fife - Boing Boing: "The 355 Congresscreeps who voted to continue Program 1033 (through which the military buys war-weapons at full retail, then gives them away free to local cops) accepted 73 percent more campaign donations from defense industry sources than the opposition. More than 8,000 feds/state/local and tribal forces have armed up since the program started in the 1990s."

Just Wait Until Ferguson Police Get Federally Funded Drones - Reason.com: "...maybe it's not too early to wonder: When, exactly, did the United States become a banana republic? "Why armored vehicles in a Midwestern inner suburb?" asks my Cato Institute colleague Walter Olson. What could possibly justify police "red-dotting" peaceful protesters with laser sights, or an attempted head-shot, with a tear gas canister, at a man standing in his own yard, insisting, "this [is] my property!"? Here you can watch police fumigate a news crew and take down their cameras — then chase off the other journalists filming the assault."


"WENDY: Is it true what you said? That if there’s one thing you hate more than scientists trying to take over the world, it’s scientists who twist innocent primates with computer enhanced mind control to live out their sick and perverted fantasies of criminal power? 
THE MIDDLEMAN: Why would I lie about that? 
WENDY: It’s a very specific thing to hate. 
THE MIDDLEMAN: Self-knowledge is the gateway to freedom."


Training - "Lift Heavy Or..."

8/20 - bench, inc db press, dips, pushups