Today is National Tax Freedom Day. What does that mean? It means the average worker has, as of today, earned enough in 2007 to pay taxes, and is working for him/herself for the remainder of the year.

Here's a good article that reviews several stories of attempted mass murders stopped by citizens with guns... Stories the newspapers aren't mentioning in wake of Virginia Tech, despite frequent mentions of disasters at Columbine where no one on the premises had a gun, and people were left to die till the police could get there.

Now that I've had a kettlebell for a little while, I think I can give an informed review. Kettlebells are absolutely wonderful devices. They are fun, easy to learn, can be used anywhere, and greatly strengthen the lower back, which seems to be a problem with a lot of people, especially as they get older. I have noticed that people who suffer from back pain tend to protect their backs for fear of making it worse, but all that does it make it weak and more susceptible to injury. I've read innumerable stories of people who started using a kettlebell after years of knee pain and/or back pain, and the pain vanished soon after. Obviously this won't work for everyone. Some people's backs are genuinely messed up, and I'm certainly no doctor, or even an exercise physiologist.

Anyway, check out www.dragondoor.com for all your kettlebell needs. If you're a woman and have never really lifted weights, start with the 12kg, men with a 16kg. Unless you are really weak, or naturally strong. But less than 12kg is almost pointless. Even if you've never lifted a heavy weight in your life, you'll quickly work your way up to where 12kg won't be too tough. So anything less just won't last very long as a good tool, and thus is not cost-efficient.

As far as my personal results.... The most visible result I have noticed is that the tops of my forearms have grown enormously. Now I have muscles there that feel like... Well they feel like they will turn in to steel cables after a few more months of this. And my grip has increased tremendously. Pressing overhead has gone from having to tough out each rep, to throwing up sets of 6 no problem, and wishing I had a heavier bell. I could barely do one snatch one each arm when I got it, now I can do at least 10 on each, haven't gone for consecutive reps yet. My hamstrings are definitely harder, my butt is tightening up, and now I can do cool things like one handed rotating swings. I even was able to do my first windmill today. Before I didn't have the shoulder stability. Now I have that, but I gotta work on the flexibility so I can get down lower.

It's fun stuff. You can work out with a loved one in your home and minimal equipment. Just the bells. I still go to the gym, too, and just use the kettlebell as a fun alternative to my main workouts, but you can easily design an entire well-rounded workout using just one kettlebell. Eventually you'll wanna get a second, or heavier ones, but that's down the road once you have realized the benefits.

Wow! This is an incredible article on the Imus situation from Rollingstone.com. Must read.

Here's a little article about how people that think massacres like what happened at Virginia Tech only happen in the United States, that we have some sort of unique "gun culture" that creates more mass murders. Not true at all. Many countries have massacres of this type, and many have had incidents like this with much stronger gun control laws in place. Heck, Japan has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, and the mayor of Nagasaki was shot like a dog in the street just last week. Australia had a mass murder in 1996, and in response they tightened their gun control laws. Since then the murder rate has gone UP in Australia.

People who think gun control is the solution haven't actually spent much time learning the facts. And people who think this is something that only happens in the United States ignorant fools. The difference is that when something like this happens in the U.S., it is big news all over the world for at least a few days. When something like this happens in Switzerland (some guy shot up and killed an entire city council a few years ago), it gets a line or two in the paper, someone blames imported US gun culture, and everyone tries to forget about it.

The day they pass a law saying I cannot own a gun is the day I go out and buy one, however I can, because that's when I start being afraid of my government.

For the record, I just want to say that I think anyone who thinks the Virginia Tech massacre is a reason to institute more gun controls and bans is a complete moron.

Here's a reason I just thought of... Far more people have died in single instances of arson than the 32 killed in the gun massacre. Should we ban everything you could use to start a fire in a movie theatre? Why don't we ban airplanes? Every time a big airliner crashes, there are a lot of dead people. Plus they can be used to knock down skyscrapers. Airplane ban!

Yet another reason to dislike Congress. This specific thing involves Harry Reid, but I'm not trying to be partisan here, I am sure many GOPs in Congress have done this, too. Anyway, Reid was talking about the partial birth abortion ban that the Supreme Court held up yesterday, saying he was sorry O'Conner wasn't there instead of Alito because then the Ban would have been overturned. Here's my issue, though....

Reid voted in favor of the Ban when it was going through Congress.

So now he's basically saying we should ignore his votes because he only makes them for political reasons with the expectation that the Supreme Court will just overturn the bad ones. Is that the sort of attitude you want Congress to have?

So the Virginia Tech massacre is already a new rallying cry for the gun control crowd. What they don't mention is that Virginia Tech was already a no gun zone, and all this massacre did is reinforce people like me who say that gun bans leave only criminals with guns. Not that I am saying this would have turned out differently. I just don't see it as having any legitimate influence on the Second Amendment.

I have three short videos of me doing some squat variations. The cameraman didn't get the angle I would have preferred, and the resolution is coming in wrong through youtube so I looked squashed, but it's still nifty.

Back squat
Front Squat
Overhead Squat I messed up the first rep, but managed to regain my balance and get a couple more reps in.

So this Imus thing... I'd like to hear the whole initial incident for context. I don't understand why nappy headed hos is necessarily racial. I don't see why there couldn't be a white girl with nappy hair that plays college basketball. So first I'd like to know, if I can tell from the context, if Imus was simply being insulting (in which case you can hear far worse insults every day on a lot of radio shows), or if he was including their race as part of the insult.

If the latter, then maybe he should be fired. But I'd like to see the standards held all around. I believe I have heard the word "honkies" used on black talk radio shows. I know that Jesse Jackson called New York "hymie-town," and unlike "nappy headed hos," "hymie" is very definitely an ethnic slur in any context, and I'm pretty sure no one threatened to fire him from anything over it.

I really don't want to defend Imus. One, I think he's a jerk, and two, I have a feeling if I heard the tape I would agree he was over the line. But I'm going to defend him. You can't just randomly select this one comment out of all the over the line comments made on radio every day. Enforce standards on everyone or no one.

Here is a bit about space tourism. Rumors are being spread that Bill Gates is gonna go up with the Russians for $25 million. And the company that does it, Space Adventures, is going to offer a trip around the moon for $100 million. Now that companies are developing spacecraft, competition and innovation are going to drive the cost down. Who knows how many years it will be before it's affordable for someone in the middle class? By that time I expect we'll have people living in space. The future is such a neat place.

Here is a bit about space tourism. Rumors are being spread that Bill Gates is gonna go up with the Russians for $25 million. And the company that does it, Space Adventures, is going to offer a trip around the moon for $100 million. Now that companies are developing spacecraft, competition and innovation are going to drive the cost down. Who knows how many years it will be before it's affordable for someone in the middle class? By that time I expect we'll have people living in space. The future is such a neat place. I hope I get to see it. All of it. Who knows, medical science may get me there.

I don't really get the whole thing with the U.S. attorneys that Bush fired. People seem upset that he fired political appointees for political reasons. From what I understand, it's basically a tradition for every President to fire the previous President's appointees and get new ones. Isn't that political? If that house cleaning isn't political, then that means that every single US attorney hired by the last few Presidents has really sucked at their jobs. And if that were true, they probably would have changed the process by now. So yes, Bush fired the U.S. attorneys for political reasons. So did Clinton.

That's what I understand about this affair. I don't really think anything else matters, and have no real desire to look further. It seems like yet another nothing incident that the press and Bush's political opponents are pushing to manipulate public opinion. Which makes it ironic. It is purely for political reasons that they are busting Bush's balls for doing something for political reasons.
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Edit...
A few minutes later:

Ok, so I read a little more about it. Before some Patriot Act revision last year, the President could appoint attorneys, but they were just interim until Congress approved. That revision took away the Congressional approval part, so maybe I can see where people think that is a little sketchy. But then Congress had to vote on that revision, so they voted to give up that power to approve. So it's all legal, if sketchy.

On the firing side... When a new President assumes office, traditionally all the attorneys either write letters of resignation, or their terms are scheduled to end at that same time, so the house is cleaned. No, they aren't technically fired by the President, but what else do you call it when all 93 members of a group quit or leave office at the same time? I'm sure what is now a tradition started with some past President wanting to clean house and actually firing them. So in this recent instance, the firings were not upon a new President's assumption of office. In either case, the attorneys are no longer government employees because the President, for political reasons, wanted different ones. An important part of a US attorney's job description: "Serves at the pleasure of the President."

Blogs are a relatively new medium and a lot of people don't seem to know how to handle them. Recently there have been several stories by journalists as well as entries by various bloggers attacking other blogs for things readers said in the comments on an entry. As if a popular blogger like Charles Johnson from LGF should really be responsible for the probably thousands of comments his blog gets each day. If a couple of assholes get on a right wing blog and write comments like, "We should rip off all their heads and shit down their necks," is that a reason to condemn the blogger, or the person that actually wrote the comment? And why should that even affect your opinion of the blogger? Does the blogger get attacked by a journalist when a left wing asshole gets on a right wing blog and says things like, "You are all ignorant fucktards and deserve to die for supporting the traitorous murderer George W. Cunt!" Does that comment on a right wing blog mean the right wing blogger shares that opinion, too? Cuz I see that sort of junk all the time.

Bloggers, journalists, pundits, politicians, and people everywhere.... The comments section of a blog is open and relatively uncensored and there are going to be some jerks who take advantage of that. This is a good thing. It provokes discussion and it helps separate nutcase extremists from thinking people who simply share differing opinions. You cannot ascribe comments written by other people to the blogger. I don't understand why I should need to point this out, but what is obvious to me seems to be beyond comprehension to others.

So the 15 British soldiers that were captured and released.... I think you are nuts if you don't believe the Iranians took the Brits outside if Iranian waters and did it under orders of the government of Iran. This was yet another in a series of tests. The phrase, "Give 'em an inch, they'll take a mile," comes to mind. It reminds me of a kid that bullied me in 5th grade. He was, supposedly, my friend, but he started picking on me just a bit here and there, and I let him. And so he got a little more mean, and I let him. And eventually he just become a full on bully who tried to make me into his codependent lackey, or whatever you would call that sort of thing in 5th graders, but thankfully I'm not weak-willed, and I stopped thinking or acting like he was my friend. So I'm wondering when the west is going to stop letting Iran pick and pick. I fear too many people are too filled with Bush-hatred to realize the real dangers here.

I noticed I began two of my last three entries with the phrase "This is too cool...." Thus, until further notice, I am instituting a moratorium on said phrase.

This is just too cool not to share. The short story of the life of Milton Humason. He was a mule driver who worked carrying building materials up the mountain to the new Mt. Wilson Observatory in the early 20th century. From there he was hired by the observatory as a janitor, then got promoted to night assistant. His observation skills and organization quickly gained notice and eventually he rose to become the #2 man at the observatory, behind Hubble. He developed several methods that are still used by astronomers today. And only a small accident prevented him from being the person to discover Pluto. All this from an uneducated mule driver.

I was just reading about "Pistol" Pete Maravich. For those that don't know, he was one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He retired in 1980 after 10 years in the NBA and breaking something like 35 NCAA records while in college at LSU. Anyway, what I found really interesting is that when he was just out of college he said in an interview, "I don't want to play 10 years in the NBA and then die of a heart attack when I'm 40." Ironically, that's exactly what happened.

This is just too cool! To sum up, EMT, crazy 85 year old man who works out with 80 lb kettlebells, fun ensues. I work out with a 44 pounder.

News about people no one gives a damn about anymore...

Joni Mitchell said in an interview that she doesn't get much press these days because depth and emotion have been bred out of the straight white males that control the press. Speaking as a straight white male, I can tell you for sure that I still have all three of my dimensions, specifically including depth. And I had tears coming down my cheeks while watch Field of Dreams. And the series final of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Emotion I got. Of course I don't control the press. Maybe her point is that, of the people who control the press, a certain percentage are white straight males, and they are the type with no depth or emotion, but the general population of straight, white males has depth and emotion. It's just those press-controlling bastards!

To her credit, Ms. Mitchell goes on to say that many feminists are Amazons and not really her cup of tea. I think what she means is a woman can be empowered and still be feminine and enjoy the company of men. Which makes a lot more sense than the man-hating (woman-hating is misogyny, what's the opposite?) attitude of many modern feminists. Wouldn't that lead to the end of humanity, if taken all the way? I guess not, they could always take over and enslave all the men to be used as breeding tools.

Actually if you take a look around the US, you see women beating the men in a lot of areas these days, college enrollment the most salient example. The always befuddled father with the wife who always gets him out of the bad situations he gets himself into kind of character that a lot of sitcoms have had in recent years is a subtle sign. Men can't do anything right, right? I'm absolutely not the first person to point this out, of course. There are other strange views on TV. You have all the diamond commercials, where they basically give the idea that men had better cough it up for a big ring if they wanna get some action. This represents two things: that all women are materialistic whores, and that men serve only one purpose, to make money so he can afford his whore.

Enough of my sociology for the day. Back to figuring out where to have lunch....

The interview went pretty well. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict they make me an offer. It's consulting, and I would be travelling most of the time, which I don't like, but the money is going to be good, and the actual duties will be interesting.

Today was the Georgia State business school career fair, and it went pretty well for me. I started the application process for two jobs that I am VERY interested in, as well as several more I'm not so interested in. The ones I'm not so interested in have some amount of personal risk involved. There were, for instance, a few positions in insurance claims, and they pay decent, but they don't require an MBA. I have this fear I will get in a position like that and there will be a guy, let's call him Bob, who works in the same position but is just out of undergrad. So Bob and I work together with about equal performance for a year, then Bob decides to get an MBA. Maybe Bob and I both get promoted during this period. Then Bob gets his MBA and gets a promotion/pay raise for it. I already have an MBA, so I can't go get it again, and lose out on that upgrade Bob got, even though we have the exact same qualifications. Not only that, but several additional skills I picked up during school have remained underutilized and are no longer skills I am up to date with. So then my MBA was not only useless, but actually a negative.

The two jobs I'm really interested are both positions that would take advantage of my additional education in risk management. One of them will also utilize my writing skills and some amount of creativity. So that's the one I'm most excited about.

Got an interview tomorrow morning, I'll make sure to fill you in on how it goes.

The old school extremely simplified definitions of conservatives and liberals that I remember learning in grade school is that liberals want to change things and move forward, whereas conservatives have a "If it ain't broke, don't fix it attitude" and that the extreme ones want to move backwards.

Now I know how simplistic and untrue that is, but I think it's an example of the kind of indoctrination you get in public schools these days. I mean look at those two definitions, which would you want to be a part of, just based on the first paragraph up there? Any good little kid would know that good people want to move forward, bad people want things to remain the same so they can keep their current power, right?

Well right now you've got conservatives that want to help transform the middle east, fix our education system with vouchers, lower taxes to spur economic growth, and lower welfare and other socialist like programs to stop people from becoming dependent on it. And on the other side, you have liberals who want to pull out of the middle east and leave them to themselves, ignore any real solutions to our education system by throwing more money at it and changing nothing, raise taxes, especially corporate taxes to punish successful companies, and increase our welfare state with universal health care. And which group has talked about reinstituting the draft? The liberals, not the conservatives.

Which group seems like it wants to move forward and which wants things to stay the same or move backwards? Looks like the groups are exactly opposite of the definitions I was indoctrinated into in school, but I seriously doubt many grade school teachers are teaching that reality.