Abandoned By Wolves

IronGarm . Diet Advice That Actually Worked

2012-01-26T15:43:00.001-06:00

http://irongarmx.net/phpBB2/posting.php?mode=quote&f=2&t=220209&p=637552

The forum members chime in with "diet advice that worked". The usual
combination of surprisingly sage advice, unique ideas, and random rough
insults.

What's In Your DIY Toolkit?

2012-01-26T15:34:00.000-06:00

http://lifehacker.com/5879498/whats-in-your-diy-toolkit
The question posted has one good answer in the discussion area so far
(from bdinger), and I'd like to quote it:
"It really depends on what you consider is a tool? :) I work two IT
jobs, so I'm basically constantly on the go at meetings, doing demos, or
training (primary job). I'm also basically constantly repairing old
equipment and making it work (second job). That said, there are a couple
pieces of equipment I simply could not live without:
-Leatherman Squirt P4
-4Sevens Quark MiniX 123 light
-Various USB flash drives
-iPhone 4vand Android phone (currently a Nexus S)
Also within arm's reach, or in my truck, is my Macbook Pro, a Verizon 4G
LTE MiFi, Leatherman Surge, Leatherman Skeletool, a set of precision
screwdrivers (flat, torx, phillips), a windows laptop (currently a HP
EliteBook 8440p), a backup light (Currently a SureFire E1e) and this
ridiculously cheap and ridiculously handy toolkit.
Link to the Rosewill Toolkit:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16899261003

The last item I've had branded in various forms (mainly Belkin) since
2003, and it's a really nice little toolkit to have around for loaning
out when folks will inevitably ask to borrow a tool - or when I forget
one.
Of the items above, I absolutely couldn't live without the items that
are in my pockets, and would have a tough time dealing without the items
listed in the paragraph above. I've actually considered adding a toolbox
to the bed of my pickup to store more tools in, as I'm constantly having
to run home or somewhere else to get them.
Not listed, of course, are the mountains of spare parts and various
other things we have. For example I always keep a (charged) spare
BlackBerry battery and some AAA and AA batteries with me. Along with
that, I have a couple spare various smartphones in my truck that are
with various carriers.
It really all boils down to what you need for the job YOU do.

Kitchen Life: Turkey and Black Bean Pie with Polenta "Crust"

2012-01-25T16:04:00.001-06:00

Art Smith continues to impress me with his knack for unusual takes on common dishes. And polenta always ends up tasting better than I think it will when I make it. This is a fun version of "tamale pie" using ground turkey meat and pre-cooked polenta from one of those tubes you can find in the produce section.

On the other hand, Smith's instructions to layer 1/2 inch thick slices of pre-cooked tube polenta over a 9x13 pan in "overlapping slices" were pure fantasy. One tube just doesn't do it.

1.25 lbs of ground turkey, onion, minced garlic, some diced red bell pepper, chili powder, a can of black beans, 8 oz of tomato sauce, a 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes with green chilies, browned in a skillet and then put in a 9x13 baking dish and covered with slices of pre-cooked polenta and 1+ cup of grated sharp cheddar cheese and baked in a 350 F oven for 20 minutes is all it took.

I took a (small) chance and added some ground cinnamon to the skillet while I was cooking the filling and it turned out quite well. Chili and cinnamon powder and black beans seem to go extremely well together. I also served some sour cream and fresh lime wedges for squeezing, but it would have been fine by itself.

Training: Progressively Accelerating Cardio Exertion

2012-01-23T16:37:00.000-06:00

As winter tightens its grip on the Midwest, it's getting hard to work up the gumption to go outside in the dark and the cold and the wind for a walk. And yet I seem to need something in addition to the band work and the stretching and chi kung, something to rev me up and pump me up without putting too much wear and tear on the 50+ year old connective tissue in knees and feet.

I know just how this guy feels.

So for now, I'm trying a concept called "P.A.C.E." to get some heavy breathing in without invoking the specter of repetitive stress injury (and to avoid the muscle loss and cortisol rise and appetite/workout treadmill associated with traditional steady state cardio.)

PACE resembles interval training...except that rest intervals are "as long as it takes to feel fully recovered." Initially, I thought this mean "until heart rate drops back to normal", but rereading Art Sears' book revealed that you just wait until you "feel" recovered - i.e.,you are breathing fairly normally.

Sears makes a good case for this kind of training, although there's a lot of rhetorical handwaving and some not-entirely-convincing metaphors and similes scattered throughout the book. His central principle is that your lung capacity is your most important indicator to your health and vitality, and that the classic "aerobic fat burning zone" is actually not a place you want to spend a lot of time in. Instead, he advocates working hard enough to become really breathless for short periods (45 seconds to 3 minute), and then taking as much time as you need to recover between the work periods. You might do as few as 4 work periods or as many as 6-8, but you shouldn't total more that 12-20 minutes total work time.

If the bell curve mated with a Slinky, the result would look something like this.

Sears says that the positive changes you want to make actually happen during the recovery periods.

Again, this is similar to Tabata protocol or classic interval training, but the emphasis is on health, not performance. You wouldn't do PACE to prepare for athletic competition (although you still might do well), especially for a long distance race - for any race over a couple of miles, a person needs to lay down a base. But if all you want is to increase your "reserves" to better face the challenges of everyday living - it's hard to see how you could do better than this protocol.

I chose the Precor Ellipticals at my health club, because they allow for a "quick start" manual program that allows you to get on, quickly set resistance and slope, go like hell for a few minutes, grab the handles for a pulse check (and I do my intervals without hanging onto the rails, which makes it MUCH tougher), stop, and get off and walk around until breathing is "normal". I also stay away from peak usage times so as not to inconvenience other people who want to use the elliptical trainers- with 8 machines available, leaving my towel on one at 8:30 at night doesn't cause a problem. In the spring when things get a little nicer, I'll probably choose a nice grassy hill to run up in Memorial park.

2 weeks in, things are going pretty well. 6x3 minute intervals or 8x2 minute intervals take about 35-40 minutes, and I feel fresher and recharged at the end of the session (I do get some questioning looks from neighboring machine users when I seem to "bail" after 3 minutes, only to come back.) As I said, I don't hang onto the hand rails on these babies, so it really is a challenge. The machine gives me good feedback as to what my heartrate reaches, so I know if I really am recovered before I start again, or at peak capacity by the end of the interval (usually I'm in the high 150's by the last couple of intervals). I once worked myself into a mild case of planar fascitiis in my late 30s going too far too soon on elliptical trainers, but so far my arches and calves are still happy.

Time to start actually measuring BF% and doing some blood chemistry workups, I think. It would be nice to get some concrete feedback on any positive (or negative) changes occuring as I try various ideas out.

The Perfect Recipe: Cuban Ham and Black Bean Soup

2012-01-23T16:13:00.000-06:00

Went back to Pam Anderson's "Perfect Recipe For Losing Weight And Feeling Great" for another soup variation - this one uses a can of black beans and a diced sweet potato for the starch, diced ham (straight from a ham steak) for the protein, and onions, peeled carrots, diced red peppers and a diced mango for the veggies. I'm not sure the photograph gets this across, but this is a really pretty soup - all those colors and textures look really good sitting in the bowl. (That's a serving of "Panzanella" with it on the plate). This would be a good choice for a soup to take to a group supper or a potluck. Oddly, we could barely taste the mango the first time we had it, but it was much more noticeable when we had some for lunch the next day.

I managed to peel and diced a couple of medium size mangoes for the first time to make the soup, but it was slippery work. But I managed to not slice my own hands off in the process, and it was definitely worth the effort.

Being Boring (Ain't All That Bad)

2012-01-18T16:53:00.000-06:00

Here's how boring my life has been lately: last Friday night after dinner, I went to the basement and organized my pantry:

Let's see those jars of hoison sauce try to hide from me now!

But you know what? Boring is good, at least if you're basically content. As Shun-Ryu Suzuki once said,"Be glad if your life is boring. It means things are going well for you."

Lots of repeats, but since I didn't take pictures the first time, I thought I'd document them:

Food Network's "Great Easy Meals", Pork Tenderloin with squash and apples (and Coconut Rice from "Simply Deliciouso"):

Steamed the rice in 2 cups of light coconut milk, then stirred in dried cranberries to plump up and topped with toasted sweetened coconut flakes. It was excellent as a side and very filling.

I repeated Great Simple Suppers' "Pan Seared Steak with Cherry Tomato Sauce" with a salad bar salad on the side for something green:

Cook's Illustrated tires me out sometimes, but this sauce is genius: 2 pints of halved cherry tomatoes, 2 Tb of sugar, garlic, a bit of chicken stock, finished with lemon juice and parsley...

And potatoes tossed with lemon zest, olive oil and parsley.

At last but not least, a skillet version of Greek lasagna, also known as pastistios (sp?). I've made skillet based lasagna before and enjoyed it, but this was even better - the feta cheese on top and the cinnamon and oregano mixed in with the base before added the noodle pieces made for a tangier and lighter dish. It was danged hard to stop with one serving:

The temptation was to eat it with a fork straight from the skillet.

I also made "Chicken with Pesto Mushroom Cream sauce" from CI's "Great Simple Suppers", but it did NOT photograph well - tasted tangy and creamy and wonderful, photographed as if someone had upchucked onto a dinner plate. I'll spare you that one.

Lifehacker Rule of Thumb: It costs a dollar to drive 7 miles

2012-01-18T10:43:00.001-06:00

http://lifehacker.com/5876890/10-things-you-do-to-save-money-that-end-up
-costing-you-more?popular=true
Here's the one that really caught my eye, because I know a lot of people
who drive across the river to Council Bluffs to fill up on gas because
it tends to be 10 cents a gallon less than here in Omaha. I never
understood that (buying gas WHILE you are in Council Bluffs for other
reasons does make perfect sense, of course):

8. Driving Miles and Miles for Cheaper Gas or Other Bargains
At the time of writing this article, the average cost of a gallon of
regular gasoline is $3.28. And the average vehicle MPG is around 23.
That gives you around 7 miles for every dollar you spend on gas. Do the
math. For example, if you want to put 10 gallons of gas in your car, and
drive four miles out of your way to buy gas that is five cents cheaper
per gallon, you have spent 57 cents to save 50 cents. And you've wasted
your time, put more wear on your tires, and used up oil life as well.
True, it's not a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, it's just not
worth it. I've also talked to people who traveled 30-40 miles, one way,
to buy something used from Craigslist. So right there, you're adding up
to $10 to the cost of the item you're buying.

Personal Trainers Cincinnati: The Recovery Day Workout

2012-01-13T15:58:00.001-06:00

http://www.personaltrainerscincinnati.com/2012/01/recovery-day-workout.h
tml
Now here's a fellow who seems to have his act together!

The article also
includes videos of each suggested routine.

Foam Roller series:

(Note: embedded version below only shows the first - go to the link or to the YouTube channel for the full sequence)
Flexbility, Activation and Mobilization Trisets:

Tri-Set #1
1A. Inch Worm 2 sets of 6-8 reps
1B. Leg Cradles 2 sets of 6-8 reps each leg
1C. Lunge to Instep + Thoracic Rotation 2 sets of 6-8 reps each side

Tri-Set #2
2A. Tri-Planar Ankle Mobilization 2 sets of 6 reps each to the little toe, the big toe and straight down the middle
2B. Side Lying Clam Shell 2 sets of 10-12 reps each side
2C. Quadruped Thoracic Spine Extension/Rotation 2 sets of 10-12 reps each side

Tri-Set #3
3A. Prone Incline Bench LYT’s 2 sets of 8 reps each letter
3B. Lying Shoulder Extension/Rotation 2 sets of 10-12 reps each arm
3C. Dynamic Sleeper Stretch 2 sets of 8 reps each arm

Tri-Set #4
4A. Tri-Planar Half Kneeling Hip Flexor Mobilization 2 sets of 8 reps each plane
4B. Adductor Mobilization 2 sets of 10-12 reps each side
4C. Prone Spiderman’s 2 sets of 10-12 reps each side.

I may start bugging all my friends to at least do THIS much on a regular basis, even if they don't have time to "work out" every day.

Leftover Hacker: Make Your Most Common Leftovers Taste Just as Good As the First Time

2012-01-13T10:53:00.000-06:00

I knew most of this, but I didn't "know" that I knew it, if you follow. This is worth posting as a reminder.
http://lifehacker.com/5874716/leftover-hacker-make-your-most-common-leftovers-taste-just-as-good-as-the-first-time?tag=macgyver-tip
Clever Ways to Reheat Leftovers to Make Them Taste Just as Good as the First Time

While we often think of leftovers as not tasting as good as the original, quite a few ways exist to restore your leftovers to their former glory. In fact, if you cook with lots of spices, onions, garlic, or peppers, your leftovers can get better over time. Taste is just part of the battle, reheating can dry foods out or make them soggy, neither of which are enjoyable to stuff down your throat. Here are a few of our favorite tips for keeping food appetizing on all fronts.
Reheat with a damp paper towel: If you're microwaving foods to reheat them, you can either mix in a little water, or wet a paper towel and place it over the leftovers. This creates a little steam cooking to go along with your reheating and keeps the food from drying out any more than it already has. You can use this to your advantage with all types of foods. For instance, if you're reheating rice, microwaving it with a small mug filled with water will help rehydrate the rice. If you're reheating turkey, placing a damp paper napkin over it will moisten it up and make it taste as good as when you cut it off the bird.
Reheat pizza in a skillet for crispy crust: If you hate soggy pizza, an easy way to reheat a leftover slice is to do it on a skillet with an aluminum foil lid. The lid captures the heat and spits it back at the toppings while the skillet uses the residual oil left in the crust to reheat it without making it all floppy and sad. The result is a crispy slice of pizza that doesn't taste like it's been sitting in a cardboard box in the fridge for two days.
Use a microwave to restore stale chips: As if its part of some vast conspiracy, the amount of chips in a bag is never equal to the amount of salsa you make or buy. It seems like there's always leftover chips sitting around. It turns out, the same method that wrecks havoc on pizza, works wonders on chips because it dries them out and removes the moisture stored up.
Reheat turkey in a steamer basket: Turkey is one of the more infamous examples of a leftover that dries out quickly, but if you reheat the inside a steamer basket if keeps the turkey nice and juicy. It's a bit complicated for your run-of-the-mill leftovers, but it'll likely work well if you're planning on dishing out a full meal and not just a quick lunch.
Reheat pasta and rice by sautéing it: Two foods that seem to lose their flavor and consistency quickly are rice and pasta. It turns out, if you sauté with a little olive oil, it makes them both taste good and feel right on your tongue when you're shoving them down your mouth

IronGarm . View topic - NYT - How yoga can wreck your body

2012-01-06T16:55:00.001-06:00

http://irongarmx.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=219940&p=631005#p631005

Not to be a spoilsport, but most American yoga enthusiasts really need
to read this article. At the very least, students should have a sound
understanding of the risks of some of the more extreme postures and read
up on proper biomechanics through sources like Charlie Weingroff.

Lots of germane comments by forum members on this one, but I especially liked Dave Chesser's contribution:

What's implied but not explicitly stated by the article is that 99% of the general public thinks that yoga provides everything you need in fitness and it very clearly does not. Weak people with lots of deficiencies (the average NYT reader) take up a yoga class thinking it will fix everything because yoga gets a free pass in the press most of the time. Then lo and behold, they get hurt.

Yoga just does not have the corrective tools nor the philosophy needed to correct most people's problems or to take them to a high level of fitness. I train lots of folks, even yoga teachers, that have bad backs, no hamstrings whatsoever, poor movement skills, and no appreciable level of endurance. In almost every case, yoga has made their problems worse -- not better.

Any light form of weight training like kettlebell, DB, or BB work will usually fix these problems but that requires the knowledge that yoga itself doesn't do everything for you.

How I Stopped Sucking at Pullups | Eat, Lift, and be Happy.

2012-01-06T09:51:00.001-06:00

http://www.negharfonooni.com/2011/12/how-i-stopped-sucking-at-pullups.ht
ml#!/2011/12/how-i-stopped-sucking-at-pullups.html

Of special interest: the assistance exercises the author implemented,
notably the band supplement on one side. Excellent example of someone
who sees a gap in their training and works intelligently and diligently
to fix it.

Happy Holidays From All Of Me To All Of You!

2011-12-29T15:44:00.000-06:00

We stopped buying real, full sized trees because our vision challenged Fuzzy Avenger had trouble navigating past the lower brances without knocking ornaments off the lower branches.

Behold my Christmas loot! Oh wait, those are for my wife. And what did we give each other? Yarn, cookbooks and warm clothing, wine, and flashlights. (Yes, we are boringly happy with each other.)

My beloved wife has a thing about jigsaw puzzles and champagne on New Year's Eve. And now I do, too, although she still does most of the hard work. OK, 90% of the hard work.

A Guide to Holiday Cocktails Written After Drinking Them All | Cracked.com

2011-12-29T08:11:00.000-06:00

http://www.cracked.com/blog/a-guide-to-holiday-cocktails-written-after-d
rinking-them-all/
Start the New Year right by ruining your stomach lining and liver with a
corrosive series of cocktails that were invented solely to punish
you...Soren Bowie shows you how!
...

First Impressions (of the "Feel Like Holiday")

Ingredients:

* Vodka

* Grenadine Syrup

* Champagne

I'm warming up with something simple. There are only three ingredients
here and two of them will hopefully be working together. Carbonated
drinks absorb through the stomach faster than non-carbonated, so really
the champagne is sneaking vodka in through the backdoor to my
bloodstream. The grenadine makes this drink look pretty innocuous by
coloring the whole thing a pale shade of pink. Still, there's no way
this drink was invented by anyone other than a panicked drunk with
limited options. Even the name sounds like a grammatical accident,
unless of course it's a command, ordering me to feel like a holiday must
feel, which c'mon, is clearly drunk logic.
Conclusion

OK, bad start. Already off to a bad start. I think champagne and vodka
might be natural enemies. They have clearly had a fight to the death in
my glass because all I can taste is the corpse of something doused in
sugar. Part of the problem might be that I didn't have time to chill the
vodka or the champagne but the whole thing is a warm, syrupy mess with
subtle notes of nail polish remover. To the Feel Like Holiday's credit,
the more of it I drink, the less startlingly bad it seems. This is
particularly true when I skip the tasting portion and just swallow as
much as I can at once, which, now that I think about it, may be the
reason so many holiday parties rely on miserable drinks like this one.

IronGarm . View topic - Learning guitar knowledges, please#p627621

2011-12-28T17:05:00.000-06:00

http://irongarmx.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=219791&p=627621#p627621

Scott Sonnon » Blog Archive » My 3 Day Power Chamber Workout

2011-12-28T09:07:00.000-06:00

http://www.rmaxinternational.com/flowcoach/?p=827

Thanks to "Dave From Denver" for the link!

Love him or hate him, you gotta admit: the guy is good at whatever the hell it is he thinks he does!

This is really just a promo for his latest "Tacfit Barbarian" product, but it works pretty well as "stand alone" instruction, if that's all you want. I've seen many far less generous "give away promotions" - providing plenty of valuable free info is one thing Scott excels in.

Sonnon favors the "hollowing" principle of abdominal bracing (as opposed to Pavel/RKC style power breathing idea of pushing out the abdominal wall "as if bracing for a punch"), and all these exercise protocols emphasize implementing this "hollow". Is he right? Well, at least he has a thorough rationale for his choice (which he has explained at length elsewhere) and devotees of Pilates and Hatha Yoga would probably feel more comfortable with this approach.

Perfecting the 1-Legged Romanian Dead Lift - Tony Gentilcore

2011-12-27T10:45:00.000-06:00

I've been spending a lot of mental energy lately trying to figure out
how to "fix" my left hip - it's ok for day to day living, working,
walking around, etc. but when I try something fancy with balance or
swings, etc, it becomes problematic.
I'd been going through Timothy Ferriss' "The Four Hour Body" (despite my
initial post on the subject, I've found a lot to like about it) and in
his section on "pre-habbing", he mentions that Gray Cook thinks the four
most important drills you can do to assess and correct your imbalances
include the 1 legged Stiff Leg Dead Lift (of which the 1LRDL exercise
below is the basic variation.)
Why? Because it works the stabilizing motor neurons and muscles in your
hips like nobody's business, and that's exactly what I need.
I'll mention in passing that Cook/Ferris' recommended rep protocol is 7
sets of 3-5 reps, with the emphasis on the "weak" side:
Strong Side - -3 to 5 reps
Weak Side -3 to 5 reps
Strong Side - 3 to 5 reps
Weak Side - 3 to 5 reps
Weak Side - 3 to 5 reps
Weak Side - 3 to 5 reps
Weak Side - 3 to 5 reps
I am thinking of applying this to the Turkish Get Up also.

http://www.tonygentilcore.com/blog/perfecting-the-1legged-rdl/

1. Keep the neck packed. Many will view this as looking down, but in
fact, you're just keeping the neck in a neutral position. Ideally, when
performing this exercise, you want to think of your entire backside as
making a straight line (said differently, arch your back) from your head
all the way down to your toes. Resultantly, you can think of it as
making your spine long.
Now, admittedly, I did bend my moving leg slightly - but, for the most
part, you should get the general idea.
2. CRUSH the dumbbell with your grip. By doing so, you create a
phenomenon called irradiation, which forces the rotator cuff to fire and
essentially "packs" the shoulder nice and tight. This is important
because you can't think of this movement as actively lowering the DB
with your arm - many trainees make the mistake of trying to touch the DB
all the way to the floor, resulting in a significant amount of flexion,
which I don't agree with.
Instead, a better way to approach it is to think about pushing your hips
back (again, keeping your back in a straight line throughout). So,
instead of actively thinking about lowering the DB, all you need to do
is think "hips back," until the DB reaches roughly mid-shin level. At
that point, you shoulde feel some pretty significant tension in the
hamstrings.
3. Also of note, with the standing (supporting) leg, I like to tell
trainees to keep a "soft knee." It shouldn't be locked or stiff.
Ideally, you want about 15-20 degrees of knee flexion.
4. Again, pigging back on the points above, grip the DB HARD, push your
hips back, and think about driving your moving leg's heel up towards the
ceiling. Like I noted, you want to try to keep your backside as
straight as possible, and I've found that using the "heel towards the
celing" cue works wonders in that regard.
Likewise, as you push back, you should feel the brunt of your weight
shift back into your supporting leg's heel. if you feel your weight
shifting more towards your toes, try taking your shoes off as the
additional heel lift will shift your weight anteriorly (which you don't
want).
5. To finish, try to "pull" yourself back through the heel and squeeze
your glute to finish. Repeat. Don't tip over. Be awesome.
6. Lastly, I'll just add that it's perfectly okay to perform this
exercise in your "usable" range of motion. In other words, if you're
unable to do it using a full ROM, there's no rule stating that you can't
shorten the distance. Again, this is a very valuable exercise, and
there are a lot of things coming into play here. So, if you have to
limit the ROM due to poor hip stablity (for instance), that's fine. As
you grow more proficient, you'll undoubtedly be able to increase your
ROM as you go.
And there you have it. While it's a bit presumptuous, obviously, to say
that this is perfect form (is there such a thing?), I feel that the
above suggestions will drastically improve people's performance with
this exercise. Try them out today, and let me know what you think!
share

10 Ways to Watch TV and Movies on Your Apple iPad | PCMag.com

2011-12-27T07:56:00.001-06:00

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2370764,00.asp

When it was first released, many called the Apple iPad, "a big iPod
touch." That's debatable, but it does describe one of the best things
about the iPad: its big, bright 9.7-inch screen makes it ideal for movie
and TV watching. Throw in the iPad's robust battery life and obvious
portability, and you've got a top-notch on-the-go entertainment device.

Plenty of developers and media companies have figured this out, so there
has been a steady stream of new ways to watch TV and movies on your iPad
that don't involve iTunes. Some, like Netflix and Hulu, are apps that
you download, while others are iPad-optimized sites that help you find
and watch the best TV and movies the Web has to offer. If you want to
watch TV and movies from your own collection, there are apps for that,
and there are even products that let you watch live TV on your tablet.

We've tried many of these solutions, and below you'll find the top 10
ways to bring TV and movies to your iPad

Slizzardman On Shoulder Repair

2011-12-26T12:13:00.000-06:00

I feel as if I am making progress in bringing my left arm and shoulder back to something approaching optimal function with some focused work everyday. I remembered after I saw the video below on biceps strengthening that Slizzardman had also posted an interesting video for shoulder repair and rehab, so here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnAsnVNh0C0

This video focuses on the stretching component of dysfunctional shoulder posture correction. In plain English, this video will teach you the optimal stretches used to correct bad shoulder posture. By correcting posture you eliminate the impingement conditions that lead to shoulder problems in nearly all cases.

I have used this system to correct over 30 shoulders in the past 8 months, not including my own. Some are over the internet, many are in the gym. None are solicited, I have the reputation of knowing how the body works and being able to correct things very simply and effectively. This ability comes from literally an entire lifetime of reading and practicing on myself as I got injured throughout my athletic training career. These particular shoulder stretches were first shown to me by Coach Sommer of gymnasticbodies.com at his May Seminar out in Arizona and are much more effective than the wall or doorway versions of these stretches.

My knowledge of this subject (postural correction) was greatly enhanced by my discovery of Pete Egoscue's book "Pain Free." I HIGHLY recommend that everyone own a copy of this book and read it. It is in plain English with no medical language, very easy to read and understand. It is 14 dollars and can save you from months of rehab and the associated costs, not to mention more catastrophic injury later in life.

Once posture is corrected, THEN I absolutely advocate working on specific strengthening exercises for rotator cuff muscles and some stretches.

Note: I am not suggesting that protocols given for specific conditions are bad, because they are not. What is bad is not correcting the entire shoulder girdle.

When correcting shoulder problems you must fix the underlying conditions FIRST, which are nearly always postural in nature. For example, if you are throwing up because you are eating rotten meat you should get rid of the bad meat, not load up on Pepto.

Most of the time rotator cuff problems disappear on their own without specific treatment if you correct shoulder position and exercise execution. I cover the basics here.

Sometimes there are things like bone spurs that need to be removed, but when there is no such anatomical deformity (this does not include type 2 or 3 acromion, which does not have to lead to shoulder issues) the focus must be on restoring a healthy posture. Correct exercise selections can still hurt you when you perform them with bad posture. This will be covered in more detail in part 3.

A Neat Approach to Biceps Tendon Strength by Slizzardman

2011-12-23T15:40:00.000-06:00

Every time I come across this guy's videos on one subject or another, I'm impressed. Part of my ongoing shoulder discomfort is actually biceps tendonitis/nosis because the strain happened where the biceps tendon attaches to the humorus at the bicipital groove. So anything that affects this positively is bound to help.

From the text intro on the Youtube page:
...a simple series that specifically covers training principles and exercises that help beginners and injured athletes build their biceps tendons up so that they do not get injured again, and the training principles will help minimize the risk of injury for athletes who have yet to develop symptoms. This video is for, well, pretty much everyone. Most people are pretty early in their planche and/or back lever training and this video is to get all of you in that category off to a safe and well-planned start to your training. To those who try to rush their training or perhaps just have unbalanced training that leads to elbow pain: this video will help you get back into the game!
Important basics: Straight arm static holds (primarily the planche and back lever positions and any variations you care to think of) require very well-conditioned biceps tendons to perform correctly, meaning with truly straight arms. There's a problem: tendons take around 10x longer to heal than muscle tissue. That means you have to train with this limitation in mind. We all know that the full lay positions require a large amount of muscular strength to perform, so it would seem that you just need to get strong muscles to do these things. Well, I've done that and found out the hard way that if you do this before you've put in the time to condition the biceps tendons to handle the strain you will end up with horrible tendonitis... EVEN IF YOU ARE STRONG ENOUGH TO HOLD THE POSITION! You don't want that. I had to take a 5 month layoff on all straight arm work and a fair amount of heavier upper body work but even a 1 or 2 month layoff can be a serious setback both physically AND mentally.

This video is a simple series that specifically covers training principles and exercises that help beginners and injured athletes build their biceps tendons up so that they do not get injured again, and the training principles will help minimize the risk of injury for athletes who have yet to develop symptoms. The principle, basically, is that you NEVER train straight arm work in a high intensity fashion. You train fairly low intensity (sets of 50% of your maximum hold time for a total of 60 seconds, in a position where your max hold time is 20s at a minimum) 4 times a week. Keep in mind that the heavier you are the slower your progress will be. That is because your tendons need to become stronger than a lighter person's and they only remodel at a slow pace. Since a heavier person's has to undergo more remodeling, it will take longer. Use the static holds as biceps tendon conditioning. Use OTHER MOVEMENTS to build muscular strength so that you do not injure yourself in the process!

For the most complete program in regards to bodyweight strength start doing the Workouts Of The Day at the Gymnastic Bodies Forum. On the main forum index you will find a sub-forum called Workout Of The Day. There you will find the WODS.

The Moynihan Institute: Since Dragon Door Has A Better Business Plan, They Have Prevailed

2011-12-21T12:21:00.001-06:00

Rant is still bouncing all over the place on his blog (and the comments
sections are definitely NSFW), but about 1/3 of every 4th post or so is
still pretty good. Here's his opinion on the whole of idea of
"HardStyle" and their basic "muscle irradiation" principle:

http://moynihaninstitute.blogspot.com/2011/12/last-nights-training-and-2
012.html

...RKC has clearly emerged the winner in the (kettlebell) battle. This
is too bad because their methods and their different shaped bells suck.
They have some great workout ideas but the whole "we're going to make it
harder than it needs to be" just doesn't add up. Look, if I tell you to
go run 20 x 100 meter sprints you are going to be gassed any which way
you slice it. But only an @sshole would tell you do it as inefficiently
as possible. Why would I want hold my breath and clench every muscle in
my body? To get more tired? Why not just do a few more sprints running
efficiently? I never did understand this crap. But since DD has a better
business plan they have prevailed. That's how it works here. You could
be giving away bars of gold for free but people with line up around the
block for the guy selling dog(crap) for $100 an ounce. Dumb f@ckers.

The Cast Iron Skillet: Brisket in a BBQ sauce and Seared Chicken with Sausage, Green Beans and Potatoes

2011-12-20T17:29:00.001-06:00

First of all, I would like to induce teeth gnashing envy in casual visitors and friends alike by showing the hand-knitted sweater my wife is making for ME for Christmas as it sits on the launching pad waiting for final assembly:

Beauty, in'it? And it's ALL MINE (he gloated).

And now for the feast. I pulled "The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook" down from the shelves because I hadn't used it for anything, I have several cast iron skillets, and I wanted to do something simple and manly. So I figured it was high time. The first recipe I tried was a winner, and the 2nd one was pretty good.

Yes, it's brisket, cooked in a foil covered skillet for 3 hours, covered with carmelized onions and topped with a neat barbecue sauce: 1 cup ketchup, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/4 cup soy sauce, some Worchestershire sauce, and minced ginger and garlic.

Sorry, Fuzzy Avenger...this is people food. You are a most dogly dog, but you ain't getting any of this.

Pan seared the bone-in, skin off chicken breasts, took 'em out, did fingerling potatoes, garlic, andoulle sausage slices, and green beans in a nice layer, split the breasts with a big knife and put them on top, sprinkled with red pepper slices, added a bit of broth, covered and cooked on medium low heat for 20 minutes. It didn't taste quite as good as it looked, but it was still very nice.

The BOLD Study - Defining the Role of Lean Beef In a Heart Healthy Diet | Blog

2011-12-19T09:09:00.001-06:00

Thanks to Tony Gentilcore's site for providing the link.

"Cracking good cheeeese, Grommett! AAAACK, argh, gurgle...(slump)."

http://mikeroussell.com/the-bold-study-defining-the-role-of-lean-beef-in
-a-heart-healthy-diet/

Where's the Beef?
Traditionally red meat has been withheld from heart healthy diets as a
means of controlling saturated fat. However, the need to remove red meat
to reduced saturated fat is a message that has been misinterpreted by
media and many health professionals. While yes, lower quality cuts and
processed red meat products do contain higher levels of saturated fat.
But red meat doesn't even make the top 5 list of major contributors of
saturated fat to the American diet (full fat cheese is #1). There are
also 29 cuts of beef certified as lean by the USDA. These cuts have a
fat content that falls somewhere between chicken breasts and chicken
thighs. Some of these cuts include:

*95% lean ground beef
*Top Round
*Shoulder Pot Roast
*Top Loin (strip) Steak
*Shoulder Petite Medallions
*Flank Steak
*Chuck Shoulder Steak
*Round Steak
*Brisket, Flat Half
*Sirloin Tip Center Steak
*Tri-tip
*And even T-Bone steaks
Survey data shows that one of the biggest barriers of entry for people
to include beef in their diet is the thought that it is unhealthy and
bad for your heart; despite the fact that other surveys show most
Americans report enjoying beef. With that information at my disposal, 5
years ago as a nutrition PhD student, I set out with a team of
researchers at Penn State to answer the question "does lean beef have a
place in the DASH diet?" Today that research is being published, and
after weighing, measuring, and feeding 36 different people everything
they put in their mouths for almost 6 months we have a solid answer to
that question.

Yes.

Lean beef can be included in a DASH diet.
...

Christmas Confessional: Bless Me Father, For I Have Indulged!

2011-12-16T15:44:00.001-06:00

Spiced Roasted Pecans (can't remember where I got this): 1 Tb of maple syrup and 1 Tb of Olive Oil per cup of pecans, salt and cayenne pepper and/or chili powder to taste; 15-20 minutes on a baking sheet in a 350 F oven.

Beef Stroganoff from "Cook This, Not That!". OK, maybe not that indulgent,cause it used Greek yogurt instead of sour cream and relied on tomato paste and red wine for the sauce. But it FELT indulgent.

The Game Changer > Dinner: A Love Story

2011-12-13T17:12:00.000-06:00

To see this post was to make the recipe, even down to the Tater Tots (which were good, but not really a game changer for a middle aged guy who can have Tater Tots whenever he wants...)
http://www.dinneralovestory.com/the-game-changer/

Isn't she adorable? "A red wine braise with pork? If I were awake, I'd be skeptical..."

Red-Wine-Braised Pork Loin with Beans and Kale...and Tater Tots
In a Dutch Oven, brown a pork loin over medium-high heat in olive oil on
all sides, about 10-12 minutes total. Remove from pot. Add 1 clove
garlic (halved) and swirl around in the oil for about one minute;
remove.
To the Dutch Oven, add one chopped onion, 1 stalk celery (chopped), 1
large carrot (chopped), salt, and pepper. Cook until soft, 3 minutes.

It's a Christmas mirepoix, I mean Miracle!

Add about 3/4 cup red wine and 1 cup diced tomatoes (in their juices), a
dash of hot sauce, and a bay leaf. Add loin back to the pot. (Liquid
should come about a third of the way up the sides of the loin.) Boil,
then reduce braising liquid to a simmer and cover. Cook 1 hour.
If you are using dried beans add 1 1/2 cup of them now, and cook another
hour. (I used tiger beans, which had been presoaked for a few hours, but
any white bean like cannellini or Great Northern would be good, too.) If
you are using canned beans, wait another hour, then add a 15-ounce can
for the last 15-20 minutes of cooking. (My guess is that you could add a
cup and a half of uncooked French lentils at this point, instead of
beans.)

During the last 15 minutes of cooking, make your Tater Tots!

During the last 10 minutes of cooking, drizzle in a tablespoon or two of
white wine vinegar.
During the last 3 minutes, add a handful or two of chopped up kale.
Cook until kale has just wilted.

Basically until it looks like this. (I cut the loin in two so it would cook faster.)

Remove pork loin, slice in pieces and serve over bean stew. With Tater Tots.

Confession: When I tasted the bean stew for the final seasoning with salt and pepper, my knees almost buckled, it was so good.

'Manos: The Hands Of Fate': Carefully Restoring The Opposite Of A Masterpiece : Monkey See : NPR

2011-12-13T09:42:00.000-06:00

My wife noticed this on the NPR web site and forwarded it to me. I love
this movie and I loved this columnist's take on the real appeal of
watching a dog like "Manos: The Hands Of Fate".

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/12/12/143573040/manos-the-hands-
of-fate-carefully-restoring-the-opposite-of-a-masterpiece

...It's a movie to be appreciated for its sheer general disregard for
anything that constitutes filmdom. You've heard of a movie that seems
made for its own sake - if there's such a thing as a movie made against
its own sake, this is it. For filmmakers, Solovey suggests that Manos is
a chance to remember their early passions by seeing someone relive all
their own dumb blunders. And isn't that, more than anything else, the
definition of a guilty pleasure?
It's comforting to believe that that bad stuff we watch (or read, or
listen to) resonates in a wholly entertaining way. It would be wishful
thinking of the most futile kind to hope that Manos will enlighten you,
or that it's anything except utterly frivolous. But the nostalgia
Solovey identifies, and the love of what's bizarre and bad and
inexplicable, is a cultural value unto itself. The payoff of a guilty
pleasure ultimately lies in how it makes us feel; how could it be
otherwise? And watching a Mystery Science Theater version of Manos,
whether you make movies or not, feels much better than it should. And
what could deserve preservation more than that?

Training: The Best Is Yet To Be!

2011-12-12T20:55:00.000-06:00

At this point, I loves me my resistance bands. I like the way they feel when I use them for my lower body, I like the way I feel when I'm done, and I think I am on to something very useful.

Just for an experiment, I added the thin bands to several of my YiJinJing postures, being careful not to substitute "strain" for "effort", and they seem to work very well as a supplement to a few of the postures (by no means all of them). I'm convinced that if the ancient Chinese martial artists had access to this kind of technology, they would have incoporated it at a certain point in their students' training - although maybe not precisely the same way I'm doing it.

At the same time, I'm finally getting a handle on the Battle Of the Bubble, substituting several cups of black oolong tea in the evenings place of a final trip to the QT for a final fountain Diet Coke. I just said "WTF" one night and used our hot pot and a tea filter and some nice "Sunset Yunnan" from The Tea Company, and lo, I was sipping with enjoyment and pleasure (instead of a glum sense of duty).

So apparently you CAN teach a middle-aged dog new tricks. Or variations on a theme, anyway.

Wait A Minute - What The Hell Did I Just Cook?

2011-12-09T16:06:00.001-06:00

Plugged my smart phone into my PC to charge it and Windows imported some pictures from it of meals I had forgotten I made mostly because they were repeats - but I did make them better the 2nd time around, so I will post 'em.

Chicken and Mushrooms in a savory port wine sauce (this time I bought a $6.00 bottle of tawny port and I didn't drop it) from Glorious One Pot Meals

Pumpkin Bisque from "Extraordinary Meals" - this time I used less mirepoix (including shredded carrots) and more chicken stock and it came out much more like a soup instead of sludge. It was very nice served with a garnish of chopped rosemary and sour cream. Also I made another crab and corn crustless quiche.

Google's Chrome Will Run Console Games! Wait, What? | PCWorld

2011-12-09T10:36:00.000-06:00

Damn these developers and their uncanny knack for color palettes that I simply cannot resist!

http://www.pcworld.com/article/245851/googles_chrome_will_run_console_ga
mes_wait_what.html#tk.hp_new

Just what I needed...another temptation to break my "weekend luddite" commitment.

"

Don't look for id Software's Rage or Bethesda's Skyrim in your browser
anytime soon, but it sounds like Google has big time gaming plans for
its Chrome platform-plans that already involve running stuff like Xbox
Live Arcade game Bastion in Chrome directly.
Google demoed Bastion running in its Chrome browser at a press event
last night after working on the technology to make such a feat possible
for three years, says CNet, adding that "[Bastion's] gameplay was smooth
and...the graphics were highly detailed."

The technology's called "Native Client," or NaCl-an allusion to the
periodic symbol for salt, implying per the dictionary definition that it
"makes things more interesting"-and it's powerful enough to allow a
sophisticated action roleplaying game like Bastion to run in Google's
browser today. I mean literally today. You can grab Bastion from the
Chrome store now for $15 (though, caveat, gamepad's aren't yet
supported-boo hiss!).
According to Bastion's developer Supergiant Games:
This latest version of Bastion is built to run right in your web
browser, using Google's new Native Client technology. This really is the
full Bastion experience, featuring our highly acclaimed 1080p artwork,
musical score, reactive narration, and play experience, all built to run
fast and smooth just like our Xbox 360 and PC versions. And, much like
those versions, you can play through the prologue for free. The full
game can be unlocked for $14.99.
You'll need at least a 1.7 GHz dual-core rig, 2GB of memory, 1GB of hard
disk space, and a video card that with 512MB memory that supports shader
model 2-pretty minimal specs, in other words.
And all that's just for starters. Google apparently used last night's
event to announce that Chrome has over 200 million users, and to
highlight other upcoming Chrome-based games. Look for IO Interactive's
Mini Ninjas soon, for instance, courtesy Final Fantasy publisher Square
Enix."

Dragon Door and Dan John: If I Could Do One Thing For The Fitness Industry

2011-12-07T16:48:00.000-06:00

http://www.dragondoor.com/if_i_could_do_one_thing_for_the_fitness_industry/?idevd=B21FDC46E10211DF89F5AAB6DFD72085&idevm=3547d6fe63e14d3781b8759bc95cb782&idevmid=353670
...
".

In Frank Herbert's wonderful book, Dune, there is a great line that I don't repeat often enough:

"The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen," which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing."

By the time I get to most athletes and people, they have a lot of mileage in the weight room or aerobic studio, but usually don't know how to squat. They may have a big bench, but couldn't hinge a hip to save their life. Yet, the goal that they tell me they have is often one of "big ones:" the NFL, the SEALs, or a TV deal in a collision sport.

Pavel and I call the collision sports "Quadrant II." It is rare to meet someone who is at the top of the heap in these areas. The number of qualities (those things like speed, size, strength, mobility, technique and all the rest) that it takes to even participate in QII is nearly everything and level of mastery of each of these qualities is sneaking up on world class in every example.

And, that takes years. Probably DECADES to get there!

So, to make it at the highest end of collision sports (including the military, the epitome of collision sports), one has to take the time to walk up the stairs of mastery in MANY different disciplines. It is not something you can get "instantly in two weeks." Moreover, there are three overriding points that demand your time and insights: Attention to Detail, Shrink the Gap, and "Who's Next?"

Casey Sutera, one of the fine young coaches I work with in the weight room, came from an outstanding Division One football team. They were taught sprint work, agility work, every form of lifting and much, much more. He taught me a few important concepts worthy of note from his experience:

Attention to detail. I love this concept. It is one of the cornerstones of the RKC and, to be honest, every quality organization. If there is one lesson I have learned about QII coaching it is this: it always comes down to the little things. The best of the best programs insist on the little things, for example, today we wear the blue tops and the white shorts. If someone shows up in blue shorts and a white top, we punish them. Why? Well, I don't know why. But I know this: under pressure, under stress, we revert to our training. If any aspect of our training is slip slap, our response to pressure will be the same. NFL games are usually decided by five plays. Often, it is the infamous stat "Missed Opportunity to Make A Big Play" that decides whether a team lives on the bottom or wins the Super Bowl. Big Plays come from "luck," but it takes a lot of discipline, work and effort to get "lucky" at the high end of sports.

Shrink the Gap. I love this concept. Casey's program used it as a way to relate the idea that the athletes with the lowest commitment to excellence had to be brought up to the athletes with the highest levels. That "gap" is wide in many things. The movie Office Space is a wonderfully funny look at the restaurant and cubicle world, but the same gap is evident even in something that seems wonderfully self-motivating like elite team sports. I took this concept into the weight room. I began to look at our award boards and our "big lift" charts and noticed something interesting: our championship teams certainly were present in the lists, but our years with problems were actually better represented!

I have coached sophomore boys (age 15) who have benched 385. I have had two deadlift over 600 and another boy did a double from the floor with a 315 clean. These are outstanding lifts for any age at any time. But, to win in QII, which is almost universally team sports, "everybody" has to be strong. To "Shrink the Gap," we looked back over our standards and realized that we seemed to do best when the bulk of the teams were at certain levels...

When you have the bulk of the team on (at certain levels), you tend to meet your goals. It is possible to shrink the gap by simply raising the bar up a little for everyone.

Who's Next? Finally, a not so nice point: in QII, if you don't cut it, you're cut. Team sports are always looking for someone faster, bigger and better than you. It's not just a Hollywood movie cliché, it is the reality of team sport.

The raging popularity of MMA and UFC has made many people believe that the way to fight is to work on everything all the time. Guys are racing marathons, doing yoga, learning the O lifts and doing every feasible bodybuilding move. But, they aren't getting on the mats. And, when they do, they get schooled. Fighting arts probably have many built in qualities, but to get them you should be on the mat.

Recently, I was told a secret from someone who is on TV a lot fighting in the cage. He nodded to me at the end of my workshop and told me: "You got it right. It's on the mat. Get strong as fast as you can (Easy Strength?), then get on the mat."

Am I trying to get you to play in the NFL or become a Spartan? Well, if it is your goal set, I think I can help. But, for most people, we need to stop and think clearly about how the Strength Coach can help you. And, honestly, it is this simple:

The Strength Coach can make you stronger!

And, as my good friend Brett Jones, Master RKC, always reminds me, "Strength is like the glass. Everything else (all other qualities) is the liquid that goes into the glass." The stronger you are, as Josh Hillis notes time and time again, the easier it is to lose fat.

So, if you have a simple goal, like fat loss or throwing the discus far, focus more on simply getting stronger and we can improve your chances of getting there.

And, happily, of all the qualities, getting strong is, well, Easy. That's why we called the book, "Easy Strength." Don't get angry when you discover how little it takes to get stronger and meet most of your goals

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Moynihan Institute: Intuitive Training Is The Thinking Man's Training

2011-12-07T09:15:00.000-06:00

(Warning: Rant himself uses some strong language in places, and some of the commentors are complete jerks, so be prepared for a lot of homosexual panic in the comment section - or just don't read the comments.)

http://moynihaninstitute.blogspot.com/2011/12/ayurvedic-exercisethe-next
-big-thing.html
After several weeks of essentially going off the rails and going on and on about caloric restrictions and meat being toxic/veganism, and how his dietary regime has made him the greatest person on the planet, John Walsh finally posted something I quite like, something more in line with his previous philosophies about the differences between training for health vs for sport and the reality that the 30+ year old body is an organic system, not some machine you can just load up and abuse indefinitely.

The full post has a lot of extra nonsense about "Rant's" supposed superiority to all other living creatures...but I thought this portion was worth noting and passing on:

"...I have never appreciated the sport dominated approach to fitness
where everything is couched in militaristic language. I hate the
military and don't "support the troops". I support people. If they
happen to be soldiers and decent people that's fine but I don't support
anyone simply because there chose some line of work. It doesn't make any
sense.

Anyway I have always found the military industrial complex approach to
fitness oppressive. This is not a health affirming approach to fitness.
It reaches a point of diminishing returns quickly. Let's say you jog for
fitness. Anything after 15 miles a week is no longer enhancing your
health. As a matter fact it is destroying your health. You can't pound
the shit out of your body and expect to reap all sorts of health
benefits. Adults need to stop thinking that they are competitive
athletes. I have said it a million times. Recreational sporting is fine
but all this "going for it" or whatever is preposterous for a grown man
when it comes to chasing around balls or whatever it is that these
flabby middle aged people think they are doing.

If you are training primarily for health then you really need to
reorient the way you train. I am a long time proponent of intuitive
training. This is the thinking man's training. Oddly people seem to
think that one "progresses" more if they stick to some "program". It's
one thing if you are 17 and you want to win the big game and be the
toast of the malt shop afterward but I am talking about grown men and
women with jobs, children and so forth. To me if someone is over 30 and
basically training for health and they should be training intuitively.
Following a system shows lack of character. I distrust all systemizers.
(Snotty remarks edited out to keep in line with the mellow, beneficent
intent of my own blog).

I understand that people who are brand new to training need some
guidance. That's fine but they are of no concern to me. I am not an
exercise teacher or a couch (sic). I really only care about myself and
can only relate to other high level fitness enthusiasts. Yes I still
power lift competitively but my approach is much different than most of
my powerlifting peers. Strength is not of primary concern to me. It's
strictly ancillary, a byproduct of being fit and healthy."

How To Make Eggs Taste As Good As Bacon | Healthy Eating Tips - Upgrade Your Healthstyle | Summer Tomato

2011-12-06T08:56:00.000-06:00

The secret is farm fresh eggs and smoked paprika. I'll buy that. Smoked paprika is a life-altering experience!

http://summertomato.com/how-to-make-eggs-taste-as-good-as-bacon/

How To Cook Perfect Rice Without A Rice Cooker (and store it for months) | Healthy Eating Tips - Upgrade Your Healthstyle | Summer Tomato

2011-12-06T08:54:00.000-06:00

http://summertomato.com/simple-gourmet-rice-for-dummies/

Why city rankings always get it wrong - Will Doig - Salon.com

2011-12-05T12:36:00.000-06:00

This article does an excellent job of clarifying the BS of "City
Rankings". Omaha doesn't rank high on anything and ranks pretty low on a
lot of scores, but it's home and I like it and the typical "Rankings
criteria" used by the media never has anything to do with my experiences
living here - the friends I've made, the little nooks and crannies of
the city I've come to think of as my own, the Bikram Yoga studio and my
kung fu sifu, Phillip Starr and the massage school I attended for 9
months...how can you possibly quantify that?
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/why_city_rankings_always_get_it_wrong/

"...The essence of a city is, says Peach, is something more than the sum
of its parts. If it wasn't, New York and Los Angeles, with their epic
congestion and high rents, would quickly depopulate. Instead, these are
the places that the best and brightest dream of moving to. And cities
don't lend themselves to rankings that pick winners and losers either,
says public policy consultant Otis White. "Cities aren't engaged in a
zero-sum game. This isn't football. Boston can do well and New York can
do well." Both can be great places for different people.
"What is vibrant and interesting to one person is loud and overwhelming
to another," says Peach. In the end, it all comes down to how you, as an
individual, interact with that particular city. "Where is the category
in these lists for 'That awesome time I cycled with my boyfriend on the
back of my Boris bike to our favorite Communist-themed cocktail bar'?"
Peach asks.
Cities are experiences as much as they are physical locations. They're
not just places with a certain number of coffee shops or Apple stores or
anti-depressant users. Those data points may gesture in the general
direction of a city's temperament, but what matters most to urban
dwellers are the things that are much harder to nail down. A 2008 study
that surveyed 43,000 people over a course of three years found that what
attached them to their communities the most weren't the things that are
easy to measure, like job availability or quality of schools. They were
more ephemeral aspects, like openness, social offerings and aesthetics -
"Very much the same qualities that make a good place and can only be
measured qualitatively," says Ethan Kent, vice president of the Project
for Public Spaces."

Before 'The Hunger Games:' When entertainment keeps the people down | TechRepublic

2011-12-05T07:44:00.001-06:00

I have no problems whatsoever with this list.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/geekend/before-the-hunger-games-when-en
tertainment-keeps-the-people-down/8552?tag=nl.e101
Takeaway: Ken Hardin lists the five greatest Ultra-violent Entertainment
As Opiate of the People movies.
With the upcoming release of The Hunger Games (catch the trailer here),
a generation of megaplex-going teens raised on misfit wizards and
misunderstood vampires will get an overdue introduction to one of the
more interesting sub-genres of dystopian science-fiction: ultra-violent
entertainment as opiate of the masses.
In the wildly successful tween books by Suzanne Collins, an evil (of
course) central government recruits teens (who else) from outlying
districts to fight to the death on a "reality" TV show. The object: To
mollify most folks while reminding others that the central government is
powerful enough to do stuff like make your kids fight to the death on
TV. Dystopia, as we said.
Hollywood (along with tween lit) seldom does anything particularly
original, and The Hunger Games is no worse than a million other bits of
popular fiction in borrowing from past works. Most geeks will have seen
some, or perhaps all, of the films on this list - some certainly are
considered canonical entries in the great '70s dystopian sci-fi wave.
Think of this list as a kinda creepy holiday shopping list for nieces
and nephews who you are trying to help start off right in their
fledgling geekdom. And of course, lists are always fun to fight over.
And so, the five greatest Ultra-violent Entertainment As Opiate of the
People movies are:
5: Logan's Run (1976): The true opiates in this semi-classic are never
having to work and a futuristic version of Match.com that teleports
random booty calls right to your door. However, the Carousel - a ritual
/ game in which the clueless populace is slaughtered under the guise of
offering possible "renewal" - makes the list for two reasons. One, it
offers a false sense of hope to people in a hopeless situation. Two,
it's the only game show in history that requires less participant skill
than "Deal or No Deal."
4. The Running Man (1987): This neon-laced set piece extravaganza is
either the high point or low point of Arnold Schwarzenegger's reign atop
"action sci-fi," depending on your perspective. The government keeps a
ravaged population distracted by televising the struggle of condemned
prisoners to defeat over-the-top gladiators en route to their freedom.
So, of course, they pick a guy who looks like Schwarzenegger as their
patsy. It's so dumb it's fun, and Richard Dawson just tears through the
scenery in his turn as the maniacal game show host.
3. Battle Royale (2000): Collins caught flak from some critics for
knocking off this Japanese film in The Hunger Games series, but again,
there's nothing really new under the sun. An entire class of punk teens
are served up (by their teacher, no less) to participate in a TV show
where, yes, they are forced to kill each other in order to survive.
Well, not entirely forced - some of the kids gravitate to the raw
violence, while others use the game as the ultimate outlet for every
teen pathology imaginable. As much an indictment of human nature as
oppressive government, you have to work pretty hard to get the Japanese
perspective to truly appreciate this film. It is ultra-violent (the
safeguard device is a collar that blows off the heads of recalcitrant
players), and frankly the ending is pretty hackneyed. But the
performances are all remarkable, and this movie finally answers the
question of how far teen boys will go for sex.
2. Death Race 2000 (1975): The high point of the Roger Corman's '70s
low-budget machine (apologies, Riff Randell), Death Race follows the
exploits of weirdo celebrity drivers as they race cross-country, running
over hapless bystanders for bonus points. And of course, people can't
get enough of the violence and the star-watching and jingoism it comes
wrapped in. As directed by Paul Bartel, the movie is inherently an
absurdist comedy with plenty of political commentary layered close to
the surface. The sped-up-film car chases only add to the overall effect.
And how can you not love a movie in which the United Provinces of
America wages a disinformation campaign against the French Air Force?
1. Rollerball (1975): This Norman Jewison film accomplishes the rare
feat of both condemning and celebrating sports, the current real-world
opiate for a whole lot of the masses. Corporations have seized control,
and to keep folks in tow, they've invented a sport that's so violent and
pointless that nobody should ever be able to get good at it; the entire
point of the game is "to demonstrate the futility of individual effort."
But somebody (James Caan, no less), does get good at it, and what
follows is a struggle of individualism against dehumanizing complacency.
Scenes of homicidal fans slamming into barricades and wanton tree
poaching make this movie about as '70s as you can get.

Christmas In Aksarben Village

2011-12-03T15:23:00.001-06:00

I grumble sometimes about the direction Omaha has taken in the last two decades. We swapped The Ranch Bowl for a Wal Mart, Peony Park for a Hy-Vee Grocery Store, and the Howard Street Tavern for a boutique, (in fact, the Old Market is now basically just restaurants and boutiques) and the AkSarBen race track for a bunch of apartments and shopping...

But some things are here that actually are kind of nice. "M" really wanted to go see this Christmas event in the AkSarBen Village, and was willing to walk back if I had to take off due to being on call. So off we went, to a big heated tent that kept off the inches of snow falling outside,

We walked into the tent and were hit in the face with a blast of roasted almonds and cinnamon. Not a bad start...

Even Mrs Flash is interested in local high quality beef!

Tea junkies always find a way to get their fix. I may have to stage an intervention...

I would have loved to talk at length to these folks, but (being partially deaf) I can't do conversations in crowded, noisy places. Got their website, though!

And as always, a doggie bag to go.

Don't blame the information for your bad habits - O'Reilly Radar

2011-12-02T14:34:00.000-06:00

This articulates my attempts at a personal approach to avoiding
information burnout very well.
I started with John MacDonald's philosophy as proposed by his iconic
fictional hero, Travis McGee:

"There's always news, and its always bad. Looks like that new tribe over
the hill is going to kick the sh*t out of us, Og. Looks like the locusts
are going to wipe out the crops again this year, Ned...If you find
yourself in a room where people are yelling bad news and scary updates
and apocalyptic threats non-stop, eventually your mind will stop paying
attention and you'll find yourself wondering off, singing a little song
to yourself and looking for a cozy place to take a nap..."

I also use a simple idea suggested by Reinhart Engles on his "Everyday systems" website: "Weekend Luddite". Staying off the PC for 2x12 hour blocks out of 48 is a do-able way of cutting way back on info gorging on the weekend...I still have some harmless fun and stream some old movies and training sites, but the break is enough that I can feel my eyestrain easing and and rate of internal chatter slowing considerably over the course of the weekend.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/11/information-overload-overconsumption-di
et.html

We assign blame for our overconsumption in odd ways. Gulp down one too
many cupcakes and that's 100% on you. Yet, if you're overwhelmed by the
fire hose/deluge/tsunami of information, blame must be placed elsewhere:
on those glutton-minded information sources or the overall degradation
of society or ... anywhere really, as long as it doesn't reflect back on
your own lack of control. Information overload seems to always be
someone else's fault.
Clay Johnson (@cjoh), author of the forthcoming book "The Information
Diet," believes the information overload problem is actually an
information consumption problem. In the following interview, Johnson
explains how reframing the issue around consumption and taking ownership
of our info intake are the keys to finding information balance.
Is "information overload" the wrong term?Clay Johnson: Information overload is the wrong term because it blames
the information. That doesn't make any sense because information isn't
something that can make decisions or be malicious. Information is
something that informs decisions, and those decisions are made by
people. We never say someone suffering from obesity is suffering from
food overload. Bad food is manufactured by companies that are being run
by people, being distributed by companies that are run by people, and
being purchased with money from people. Spend a night in a room with a
bucket of fried chicken, and provided you don't eat it, your cholesterol
is unlikely to change.
Because of this mistake in how we look at the problem, we're unable to
fix it. Information overload's message is, "put these tools on your
computer, and you'll better manage the information." This kind of
practice would be like trying to go on a food diet by buying a different
kind of refrigerator, or trying to become a professional athlete by
relying solely on the purchase of running shoes. The problem is, we
don't need to manage the information. We need to manage our consumption
of it.
In other words, we don't suffer from information overload - we suffer
from information overconsumption and poor consumption habits. The
solution is just as simple as a successful food diet. It's about
building habits and healthy choices for yourself, and sticking to it.
Why do we place blame on the information itself?Clay Johnson: Information is different from the three things we need to
consume to survive: food, water, and air. Without getting too mystical,
food, water and air are made out of matter, but information is ethereal
and comes at us from everywhere. Information is much harder to think of
as something we consciously consume.
It's certainly easier to blame the information than it is to take
responsibility for our consumption. It's also easier to worry about the
economic system that we've set up that values information that affirms
our beliefs, makes us feel good, or terrifies us rather than pursue
information that informs us and empowers us to make smart decisions.
It's just easier to think about a bogeyman than it is to be consciously
aware of our consumption.
What are the physical and mental effects of information overconsumption?Clay Johnson: The book starts out with what I think are the two examples
of information overconsumption, and the biggest problem I'm trying to
solve in writing it: an electorate that's massively disconnected from
the mechanics of their government. In front of the White House in 2009,
I saw someone holding a sign over his head that said "Keep your
Government Hands off my Medicare." Shortly thereafter, I saw someone
else holding a sign over his head in front of the (now closed) Walter
Reed Army Hospital that said "Enlist Here to Die for Halliburton."
Now, neither of these signs made any sense: you're not going to be able
to keep government's hands off of a government-run program, and nobody
enlists to join the Army at an Army hospital. But after speaking with
some of the people behind these sorts of messages, they didn't come
across as stupid. Medicare man, for instance, spoke with me for about 45
minutes about the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank in Jekyll Island,
Ga., and he could name the first 10 amendments of the Constitution. It
made me think that there's probably a form of ignorance out there that
results from the consumption of information rather than the lack of it.
And sure enough, when you look at our history through that lens, you can
see a lot of problems - from the tobacco debates of the late 20th
century to the climate change and vaccination debates of today.
In other words, information overconsumption can make democracy less
scalable. Thomas Jefferson said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and
free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never
will be." Information overconsumption can cause as much ignorance as a
lack of education.
Overconsumption has all kinds of other individual consequences -
cognitive ones like a poor sense of time and shortened attention spans,
or social ones like shallower relationships. Let's not forget the
physical ones - stress, hypertension and sedentary lifestyles are
nothing to laugh at. We're not sedentary because we're silently
meditating. We're sedentary, usually, because we're consuming too much
information.

What are the first steps you should take to address information overconsumption?Clay Johnson: Step one is measurement. Just like with food, it's a good
idea to get a non-obsessive look at how much you're consuming. Count the
stuff that requires effort for you to consume - anything that involves a
power button, page, switch, tap or click. There seem to be all kinds of
gadgets that track when you sleep and how well you sleep these days, but
not that many that help you when you're awake. On your computer, you can
use a service like RescueTime that will count everything you consume.
When you're not in front of a computer, keep a little media journal.
Step two is to cut cable TV. Going on an information diet with a
high-end cable sports package is like trying to go on a diet while
subscribing to a daily fried chicken and ice cream delivery service.
Cutting cable does two things: it reduces your exposure to advertising
(probably the junkiest of all information) and reduces your ability to
"couch surf." Plus, it's just cheaper. You'll save a lot of money going
Internet-only and getting your television through Netflix, Hulu, iTunes
and Amazon.
Step three is to adjust your consumption habits. Just like with food,
it's good to go local. Start your media consumption with the things that
are the most local to you: your closest family and friends, then your
local and professional communities, then national issues, then
international. Too often we focus more on the issues of Washington or
the world when it's our local school boards and state legislatures that
make the decisions that affect us most.
Step four is to fix your computer. Try and get rid of anything with a
number by it. Your inbox number, all those notifications that pop up,
that little red box for notifications on Google+, even the stuff that
might be popping up to tell you when a song is playing. Get rid of them.
End the battle for your attention on your computer. It's your computer,
not Google's, not Microsoft's, not Facebook's. Yet these guys seem in a
constant battle for getting in front of your eyes every waking moment. I
put together a list of tips and resources to help rid your system of
notifications.
Step five is, again just like with food, to not consume information that
would be unrecognizable to your grandparents. Avoid highly processed
stuff and go straight to sources. Actively avoid news articles that
don't empower readers or viewers with the source materials (so few do)
and seek out source materials for yourself.
How do you know when you've got information consumption under control?Clay Johnson: When I first put myself on this kind of diet, especially
after removing the ads and notifications of my life, it was as though I
lost weight. It's like being in a room with a really noisy air
conditioner - you don't realize you're suffering, but you breathe a sigh
of relief when the the air conditioner turns off.
Unfortunately this only lasts a few minutes before your brain starts
wondering when it's going to get its next dopamine hit. But keep at it.
For me, after about a year of being on an information diet, I find I
have more time for my wife and family, I'm better at my work, and I have
less stress overall.
This interview was edited and condensed.

Siri is Dumb. There, We Said It. PCMag.com

2011-12-02T11:02:00.000-06:00

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397118,00.asp

A valuable reminder about the proper way to think about technology and
our new high-falutin' tools. As a guy who does a lot of fiddling around
with desktops for a living (or sorts), I may be a little less
susceptible to this kind of thinking than some are - because every day I
am reminded (as I tweak settings and reconfigure drivers and look for
patches and argue with the network guys) that these boxen are just that
- boxes. They aren't intelligent - they're just high-falutin' hammers.

"The problem, however, is that as technological tools have increasingly
become an indispensible part of our lives, we sometimes forget that they
are just that-tools. Nobody is shocked to discover that a hammer isn't
very good at sawing wood, yet when it comes to the more complex
technology in our smartphones and PCs, we often get angry when it can't
do stuff it was never built to do.

Then we yell at the offending device as if it was an incompetent or
outright malicious person who's out to make our lives miserable.

View Slideshow See all (5) slides

That's nothing new. Humans have been practicing anthropomorphism since
the dawn of time. And you better believe that this proclivity really
kicks into overdrive with a technology like Siri, which, unlike that
hammer, is actually designed to fool us into thinking it's intelligent.

Siri is only as smart as its programming, its inputs, and the resources
it can access to provide answers. It's not pro-life or pro-choice or
much of an instrument of human agency at all, beyond the various
manipulations of search engine optimization experts.

Apple is treading carefully in response to this issue, because like many
consumer technology companies, it is selling tools masked as a
"lifestyle," an "experience," and that sort of thing. The last thing
Apple wants to get across is that Siri is just a high-falutin' hammer.

A very elegant hammer, to be sure, but a hammer nonetheless. Until the
singularity happens, that's what all of our technology is."

Bre Pettis : The Cult of Done Manifesto (via PC World)

2011-12-02T10:29:00.000-06:00

http://www.brepettis.com/blog/2009/3/3/the-cult-of-done-manifesto.html
This is...interesting. I tend to dislike the "Get-R-Done" mentality, which tends to substitute motion for thought and to encourage busyness and "productivity" for their own sake...but this has a cheerful, jump-in-and-get-your-hands-dirty feel to it that I quite like.
Apparently, the authors are working on a book. Might be worth checking out when its "done" (heh).

The Cult of Done Manifesto
1.There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2.Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3.There is no editing stage.
4.Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5.Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6.The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7.Once you're done you can throw it away.
8.Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9.People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10.Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11.Destruction is a variant of done.
12.If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13.Done is the engine of more.

IronGarm . View topic - How to cure the majority of shoulder problems

2011-11-30T09:33:00.001-06:00

http://irongarmx.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=219481

An extended discussion of the benefits and possible problems caused by
the classic "shoulder dislocate" drill. Well worth reading, especially
the back-and-forth between Dave Chesser and a couple other forum members
about whether the "back to front" portion of the exercise should be
avoided.

Don't believe the sex addiction hype - Salon.com

2011-11-30T09:32:00.000-06:00

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/29/dont_believe_the_sex_addiction_hype/
One more reason why you can't trust the weekly news magazines anymore -
(not that you ever really could, but their transgressions are becoming
more transparent every year as they try to play catch-up with reality TV
and Rupert Murdoch:
"Have you had a chance to read the Newsweek cover story?
I did. It's the same old story.
And what is the same old story, exactly?
There's a gross over-representation and exaggeration of research. The
sex-addiction concept is a belief system, not a diagnosis; it's not a
medically supported concept. The science is abysmal.
What's the worst example of the pseudo-science?
The thing that drives me craziest is that over the past year or two,
[proponents of the sex addiction model] have started trying to use brain
science to explain it. They're now talking about morphological changes
that supposedly happen in the brain as somebody watches porn or has too
much sex. The reality is, careful scientists will tell you they are
absolutely unable to identify any brain differences between these
alleged sex addicts and non-sex addicts. The other thing that they'll
tell you is that the brain changes constantly - any behavior that a
person engages in, especially repetitively, changes your brain. So,
identifying changes related to this sexual behavior and distinguishing
it from anything else is absolutely ridiculous.
What they're doing is trying to build credibility. The major way that
they build credibility is through metaphor, or "valley-girl science," as
I call it. They will tell you, and [the Newsweek] article is a good
example of it, that sex addiction is like an eating disorder, it's like
a heroin addiction. The reality is this is an incredibly weak form of
argument, because it's so subjective; and when they tell you that sex
addiction is like an eating disorder, they don't tell you all the things
that are different about it. They live by anecdotes, because they don't
have good science.
It seems the question underlying the whole conversation is: What does a
healthy relationship to sex look like?
They are typically unable to put forth a healthy model of sexuality, and
when they do, it is so transparently conservative and religiously driven
that it's frightening. Most of the leaders of the sex-addiction movement
are themselves recovering supposed sex addicts and religious folks.
That's fine, it's fine for them to be advocating, but what they're
advocating for is a moral system, not a medical one.
For a while, they were pushing the idea that if you had an orgasm once a
day, every day, that made you a sex addict - but they finally had to
back off on that because data was building up showing that there are
lots of people who have sex once a day and have no problems. That's the
other big hole in their argument: For every one of the behaviors they
raise as addictive - whether it's porn, strip clubs, masturbation,
infidelity, going to prostitutes - I can present 10,000 people who
engage in the exact same behavior and have no problems, and they can't
explain why that is.
They are trying to connect a lot of disparate behaviors. Frankly, I
think that it is ludicrous to try to apply one sex-addiction concept to
the behavior of a person who spends 12 hours a day masturbating and that
of a person who has three or four mistresses."

Great Simple Suppers: Lemon Chicken With Potatoes and Artichokes

2011-11-28T16:35:00.001-06:00

My wife spent more than a week nurturing something called a "barm" so she could make a Swedish specialty bread called "Limpa" - rye bread with hints of cardamom, orange and other exotic flavors, and it was totally worth it! (Note that the loaf on the left is not malformed - we had samples as soon as it was cool enough to eat.)

ATK has you microwave quartered baby reds in the microwave in a covered dish for 4-7 minutes before you brown them in the same skillet you used to brown the chicken cutlets, saves scorched raw potatoes.

Thawed 9 oz pakage of frozen artichoke hearts, lemon juice, lemon zest, salt, pepper and love complete the picture.

Our own version of "The Splendid Table". Yes, I drink shiraz and/or fountain Diet Coke as the mood suits. I said I liked to cook - I didn't say my appetites always made sense!

You Are Not So Smart: Procrastination

2011-11-28T10:55:00.000-06:00

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/10/27/procrastination/

Thinking about thinking, this is the key. In the struggle between
should versus want, some people have figured out something crucial -
want never goes away.

Procrastination is all about choosing want over should because you don't
have a plan for those times when you can expect to be tempted.
You are really bad at predicting your future mental states. In addition,
you are terrible at choosing between now or later. Later is murky place
where anything could go wrong...

The tendency to get more rational when you are forced to wait is called
hyperbolic discounting because your dismissal of the better payoff later
diminishes over time and makes a nice slope on a graph.

Evolutionarily it makes sense to always go for the sure bet now; your
ancestors didn't have to think about retirement or heart disease. Your
brain evolved in a world where you probably wouldn't live to meet your
grandchildren. The stupid monkey part of your brain wants to gobble up
candy bars and go deeply into debt. Old you, if there even is one, can
deal with those things.

Hyperbolic discounting makes later an easy place to throw all the things
don't want to deal with, but you also over-commit to future plans for
the same reason. You run out of time to get things done because you
think in the future, that mysterious fantastical realm of possibilities,
you'll have more free time than you do now...

You must be adept at thinking about thinking to defeat yourself at
procrastination. You must realize there is the you who sits there now
reading this, and there is a you sometime in the future who will be
influenced by a different set of ideas and desires, a you in a different
setting where an alternate palette of brain functions will be available
for painting reality.

The now you may see the costs and rewards at stake when it comes time to
choose studying for the test instead of going to the club, eating the
salad instead of the cupcake, writing the article instead of playing the
video game.

The trick is to accept the now you will not be the person facing those
choices, it will be the future you - a person who can't be trusted.
Future-you will give in, and then you'll go back to being now-you and
feel weak and ashamed. Now-you must trick future-you into doing what is
right for both parties.

This is why food plans like Nutrisystem work for many people. Now-you
commits to spending a lot of money on a giant box of food which
future-you will have to deal with. People who get this concept use
programs like Freedom, which disables Internet access on a computer for
up to eight hours, a tool allowing now-you to make it impossible for
future-you to sabotage your work.

Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind,
about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more
will power, more drive, but because they know productivity is a game of
cat and mouse versus a childish primal human predilection for pleasure
and novelty which can never be excised from the soul. Your effort is
better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through
plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push ups.

Lunch in a Box: Building a Better Bento - Frypan defrosting

2011-11-28T09:48:00.000-06:00

http://lunchinabox.net/2008/06/16/speed-tip-frypan-defrosting/

Lunch in a Box: Building a Better Bento :Stew in thermal lunch jars

2011-11-28T09:46:00.000-06:00

http://lunchinabox.net/2007/03/29/stew-in-thermal-lunch-jars/

You Are Not So Smart: What "Farmville" teaches you about how you deal with loss

2011-11-23T15:36:00.001-06:00

You Are Not So Smart recently had an interesting article on "The Sunk Cost Fallacy", as embodied by the infamous Facebook game "Farmville"...

(I remember one of this games' precursors, Nintendo's utterly addictive "Animal Crossing", which worked the same way and had a (at the time) revolutionary social component...I had a coworker who played this game obsessively...which actually was pretty cheap entertainment for guys like us who made less than $25K a year at the time...) And of course, there was always Tamagotchies...

Farmville is a valuable tool for understanding your weakness in the face of loss. The sunk cost fallacy is the engine which keeps Farmville running, and the developers behind Farmville know this.

Farmville is free, and the first time you log on you are transported to a netherworld patch of grass where you float above an abeyant young farmhand eager to get to work. His or her will is your will, and his or her world is empty save a patch of land ready to be plowed and a crop of vegetables ready to be picked.

Wading into the experience, you feel the game designers have made every attempt to turn your head toward the screen in a way which brings no attention to the grip on your scalp. It is all your choice, they seem to be saying, no one is forcing you to proceed. Here, harvest these beans. Hey, why not plant some seed? Oh, look, you could plow a patch of land, you know, if you want. A loading bar appears and then quickly fills as you watch your grinning Aryan-ish avatar with his messy-on-purpose haircut virtually dirty his digital overalls. The cheery music, which sounds like the cyborg interpretation of clumsily extracted memories from the brain of a reanimated Old West piano player, drones on and on. The moment the loop restarts is difficult to pinpoint.

Within a few minutes, you’ve done everything which can be done on your first garden, but there are hints all over the screen portending a fully functioning Texas-ranch-sized megafarm, should you plant your seeds well. Once you learn you must wait at least an hour or so to continue, you start clicking around and find you have coins and cash which can be spent on trees, plants, seeds, an impressive bestiary of jaunty fantastical creatures and a bevy of clothes, devices, buildings and props. You have just enough currency when the game starts to buy a caramel apple tree or some honeybees, but the nice stuff like pink tractors and magic waterfalls, will have to wait until you’ve played the game a while. If you stay vigilant, checking back throughout the day to see how close your strawberries are to being ripe or if a wandering animal has visited your feed trough, you can earn more virtual currency and advance in levels and unlock more stuff. You’ll need to plant and plow and harvest to advance, most of which is also an investment in something which must be harvested…later.

This is the powerful force behind Farmville. Playing Farmville is a commitment to a virtual life form. Your neglect has consequences. If you don’t return, your investments die and you will feel like you wasted your time, money and effort. You must return, sometimes days later, to reap the reward of the time and virtual money you are spending now. If you don’t, not only do you not get rewarded, you lose your investments.

"I'm gonna teach you kids the meaning of loss...!"

Meridian Stretching: A Followup

2011-11-23T14:58:00.001-06:00

I went back to Bob Cooley's site to get that wonderful jpeg of the stretching lioness and stayed to look at some of the extra copy on his website (which doesn't seem to have changed much since its creation, but that's another issue, and anyway, the guy seems to be the absolute opposite of a trendy self-marketer), and found this on a page where he discusses meridian/resistance stretching for athletes and "elites":

...If you drive a VW bus around a race track 1000 miles it does not make the car run faster than if you drove it 20 miles. If you want a faster track time, then up grade the car or how you body works. More and more repetitions do not upgrade a car or your body —instead it prematurely ages both. If you cannot perform better nearly every day, then you are being treated like a rental car or disposable resource by your coach. Get rid of the coach, decrease the repetitions, and dramatically increase the time you spend upgrading your body, diet, psychological health, etc.

...You must use maximum resistance when stretching, just as you use maximum resistance in your strength training and maximum exertion in your aerobic training. Anything less than maximum produces less than maximum results. You shouldn't resist "full-throttle" all the time, but you must use maximum resistance daily and regularly. All of the spiritual stretches—#4, #6, #11, and #15—teach you how to develop maximum resistance.

...10 repetitions of each stretch and as many sets as necessary—these are absolutely necessary to create flexibility gains. These repeats engage more of your entire muscle each time. Remember to do three sets for each group on both sides, and to resist maximally several times during each stretch. Sometimes literally hundreds of sets need to occur to remove chronic damage or tenseness in a particular muscle group.

I wish he had included this in his original book, as I think it would have made his system more approachable and applicable to a lot more people.

It's an interesting system. Dara Torres and her trainers came out with a modified version some time back, but I think they missed some of what makes Bob Cooley's ideas so appealing. (They essentially went with "It's DARA TORRES and SHE LOOKS FANTASTIC and SHE'S AN OLYMPIC MEDALIST, so DO THIS AND YOU'LL BE FANTASTIC TOO!!!!!")

Granted, she looks pretty damned fantastic.

But what bothers me about it is that the stretches themselves seem sort of static and isolated in their effects - and worse, if the average person tries them on their own without proper coaching, they are almost bound to start "turtling" their head and neck forward as they exert, shrug their traps when they should be packing their shoulders down, losing their neutral spine alignment...I hate to think of all the bad postural tics and compensations that a person could develop in the name of "improving their health".

Of course, I could be off base here. I welcome comments and testimoney from people whose experience differs from mine.

Training: Yi Jin Jing and Resistance Band Stretching

2011-11-22T16:37:00.001-06:00

As much as I like the Yi Jin Jing for its calming and strengthening effects, it's not perfect. 2 of the fist postures hurt my left shoulder no matter how gently I tense them. So I made some substitutions:

Upper back and neck scapular strengthening (From Men's Health "7 Easy Stretches to Do at Work") replaces posture 6 in my Yi Jin Jing "fist set" - same energetic effect, almost same posture, doesn't hurt my left shoulder and tricep, probably actually superior in orthopaedic effects.

"Rhomboid Range of Motion" from the same article replaces fist posture number 9 for the same reason.

I also finally started playing around with Jumpstretch/MWOD/resistance stretching for the hips and lower body as a supplement (along with pushups, goblet squats and a few rounds of the Sun Salute.)

This site has a decent combination of products and information - in fact I found this DVD far superior to the "freely available" information from Dick Hartzell (for $50+ ,it better be) - the rationale, protocol, and alignment for the basic lower body Jumpstretch band routine is spelled out in detail - boring as hell, of course, but much more effective for long term persistence and results. I can put in 35-40 minutes on this routine (with pauses to relax) and my lower body feels as if I've been doing Bikram for hours - in a good way.

In fact, I'd say that as much as I liked Bob Cooley's "Genius Of Flexibility" as a concept, resistance/meridian stretching with bands seems a far better and more effective application of the idea, especially for solo trainers, especially for the lower body.

But I do like his signature "kitty cat".

The Stupid Things You Do When Shopping (and How to Fix Them)

2011-11-22T10:57:00.000-06:00

From Lifehacker, via "You Are Not So Smart":
http://lifehacker.com/5860761/the-stupid-things-you-do-when-shopping-and
-how-to-fix-them?tag=mind-hacks
...Stupid Thing #3: Your Desire for Greater Social Status Affects Your
Choices
You might think you're always out to buy the best possible
product, but most of the time your purchasing decisions are just a means
of competing for social status. In a consumer society, you do this
because your product choices are a means of expressing yourself. With
the massive amount of choice, it's easy to convince yourself that what
you buy strongly conveys your personality in a way that makes you appear
trendy and more attractive. In reality it helps you fit into a
stereotype and dump money into a series of purchases that are ultimately
pretty meaningless.
This is because everything is capable of becoming a product, whether
it's a part of popular culture or belongs to a group trying to defy it.
David McRaney, writer of the book and blog on self-delusion You Are Not
So Smart, explains how the system works:
In the 1960s, it took months before someone figured out they could sell
tie-dyed shirts and bell bottoms to anyone who wanted to rebel. In the
1990s, it took weeks to start selling flannel shirts and Doc Martens to
people in the Deep South. Now, people are hired by corporations to go to
bars and clubs and predict what the counter culture is into and have it
on the shelves in the cool stores right as it becomes popular.
While something may start out as authentic, it quickly loses that status
as it grows in popularity and becomes a product. People then seek out
new, more authentic experiences and the cycles repeats. There's little
we can do about this, and it's not necessarily a problem. The thing we
have to accept in a consumer society is that the choices we make about
the stuff that we like is not really that important. You should dress in
clothing that you feel makes you look your best and you should own the
computer, toaster, or toothpaste you enjoy. What you shouldn't do is
believe that those decisions make you special or more authentic, because
then you're playing into a system whose only interest is winning your
money. Real authenticity has to come from you.

Stupid Thing #4: You Set Yourself Up for Buyer's Remorse
You've heard that the grass is always greener on the other side
of the fence, and you've probably also applied it to your shopping
experiences. Perhaps you bought an iPhone and wished for an Android,
then switched and realized Android wasn't so great after all (or vice
versa). Or maybe you've rushed into a decision to grab a limited-time
offer only to find you spent a bunch of money on something you didn't
want. With all the choices available, and all the manipulative
advertising surrounding them, it's easy to make mistakes-or at least
think you're making them-when choosing a product.
You might think that the solution to buyer's remorse is weighing all
your options carefully, but you'd be wrong. We are terrible at
predicting the future, especially when it comes to our happiness, and
we're generally happier when we just make a choice-even if that choice
might be a bad one. Near-endless deliberation just stresses us out and
causes us to wonder if we made the right decision after the fact. You
can avoid that by just not thinking too much and going with your gut.
Of course, you don't want to end up buying a bunch of stuff you
don't need or really want as much as you might initially think. Doing
that can incite buyer's remorse as well. It's common to make a quick
buying decision because of a good deal and then find yourself regretting
that choice soon after. The best thing you can do to combat this problem
is to enforce a mandatory holding pattern of 24 hours or more before
making any medium or large purchases and only buy from stores with great
return policies. This way you won't purchase on a whim, and if you do
end up with buyer's remorse you'll be able to undo the damage.

Extraordinary Meals: Roasted Mediterranean Vegetable Soup (plus a Spanish Omelette)

2011-11-21T16:45:00.001-06:00

In a 450 F oven: In a roasting pan: garlic and oil for 5 minutes, followed by potatoes, rosemary and bell peppers for 15 minutes, followed by diced yellow squash and red onion chunks for 15 more minutes. Yum!

The soup base was 1 and 1/2 cups of carrot juice (!), 12 oz of seeded and diced plum tomatoes, and some tarragon brought to a simmer for 15 minutes. Added the roasted vegetables, deglazed the roasting pan with a cup of water and poured the contents of the roasting pan into the soup and heated through.

I wanted to use up the Manchego cheese I'd gotten for another dish, so I also made the "spanish omelette" from the Nigella Lawson "Express Book", substituting leftover peppadew peppers for the roasted red peppers (the jar of red peppers had gone moldy).

I usually try to "clean as I go", but the kitchen still looked as if a tornado hit it...

But the end results were quite nice.

How to survive cooking Thanksgiving dinner - Thanksgiving - Salon.com

2011-11-21T13:25:00.001-06:00

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/21/how_to_survive_cooking_thanksgiving_dinn
er/
I don't have to do the turkey this year (although I might do one anyone
after Thanksgiving just for fun), but I really liked this nice little
thought piece (from Gilt Taste by way of Salon.com).
As for the remark about a Thanksgiving dinner so heinous it ended up at
a Chinese restaurant...could someone be channeling the memories of that
glorious movie adaptation of "A Christmas Story"?

"First of all, forgive me for saying this, but turkey, even when done
the best it can be, is just not that good. I'm not saying you should
replace your holiday turkey with lobes of foie gras or porterhouse
steaks, but I'd just like everyone to be honest and lower the bar a
little. Admitting that what you're really attempting is to channel all
the glory of American history and elevate a humble, relatively bland
beast to the heights of culinary excellence is the first step towards
sanity. "
Secondly, remember that this is not any of your guests' first rodeo.
Chances are that, no matter how badly you botch the job of cooking your
bird, these people sitting around your living room have had much worse.
Guaranteed: Someone in the room has attended a Thanksgiving dinner so
heinous that it ended up at a Chinese restaurant. Are you feeling a
little less anxious? Great! Now we can begin to plan a stress-free day
of thanks."

Dollars To Doughnuts: Sicilian Pasta With Tuna and Capers

2011-11-18T16:53:00.001-06:00

Original recipe is HERE on the author's site.

Yeah, my dish looked like this, except the whole wheat thin spaghetti broke into tiny pieces and the tuna I used sort of "melted"...so my dish looked kind of dreary compared to this. Tasty, but dreary.

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 garlic cloves, finely minced or pressed through a garlic press

1⁄3 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

2 tablespoons capers, rinsed and roughly chopped

1 can (28 ounces) chopped tomatoes with juice (about 3 cups)

1 tablespoon + 1⁄2 teaspoon salt

1 pound spaghetti

2 cans (6 ounces each) olive oil–packed tuna, drained

Freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1⁄2 lemon

Make the sauce. Pour the oil into a large skillet. Add the garlic and cook gently over medium heat until the garlic is fragrant, about 1 to 11⁄2 minutes. Add the parsley and capers and cook for 30 seconds, then add the tomatoes and their juices. Bring to a simmer and then reduce the heat to medium-low, add 1⁄2 teaspoon of the salt, and simmer gently until slightly thickened, about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Boil the pasta. While the sauce simmers, bring a large pot of water to a boil with the remaining 1 tablespoon of salt. Add the pasta and cook according to the package instructions until it is al dente. Reserve 1⁄4 cup of the cooking water, then drain the pasta and return it to the pot.

Add the tuna and serve. Break the tuna into small flakes and add to the sauce along with the pepper. Add the sauce and the butter to the pasta, tossing gently until the butter is completely melted (add a little pasta water if the pasta seems dry). Squeeze the lemon half over the pasta, toss, divide the pasta among 4 bowls, and serve.

So this was good, but was almost too salty even for me, even when I rinsed the capers and drained the tuna. Nice change of pace though, and while the ww pasta made for a less appealing looking dish, it probably helped with the fiber and glycemic index. Another fine "workhorse" recipe from "Dollars To Doughnuts", easily one of the best "go to" books in my collection. I sort of wish the author would do a sequel.

Write Down What You Want to Remember NOW-Before You Leave the Room

2011-11-17T16:48:00.001-06:00

...But what do I do if my pencil and paper are in the OTHER room???
http://lifehacker.com/5856370/write-down-what-you-want-to-remember-nowbe
fore-you-leave-the-room
Write Down What You Want to Remember NOW-Before You Leave the Room

Ever have a brilliant idea and then walk into another room only to find
your idea vanished (poof!)? A new study suggests it's not just you:
Walking through a doorway makes it harder to remember thoughts from the
previous room.
In two studies, researchers found that participants' memory performance
was poorer after they walked through a doorway than if they stayed put
in a room. The researchers theorize that the doorway serves as an event
boundary where new memory episodes are created, thus hampering recall of
prior memories.
Another interpretation, BPS Research Digest says, is that the increased
forgetting wasn't about the "boundary effect of a doorway" but that the
context had changed. In other words, participants had better memory
about objects in the room where they created those objects.
Yesterday I had a brilliant idea-I think. I can't remember because
between having the idea on my first floor then walking up the stairs to
my office, the idea vanished. I blame the stairs.
So next time you want to remember something, don't leave the room before
you write it down.

Extraordinary Meals From Ordinary Ingredients: Earl Grey chicken with coconut rice

2011-11-16T15:45:00.001-06:00

I don't poach chicken all that often, but I have heard and read about cooking with tea and I thought this would be worth a try. 8 bags of a generic Earl Grey tea in 6 cups of water, with a big squeeze of fresh lemon juice:

And then removing the tea bags and poaching chicken cutlets (which I made by slicing chicken breasts in half the long way with my SHINY RAZOR SHARP SHUN CHEF KNIFE) for 10 minutes or so:

The pan sauce was 1/2 of a diced onion and a clove of garlic sauteed in oil, 1 cup of chicken broth, 3/4 of a cup of evaporated milk, and 1/4 cup of the poaching liquid, all reduced to about 1/2 the original volume.

I screwed up on this though - too much oil, and I didn't reduce it enough, so it didn't "distribute" well over the cutlets. It tasted fine, in fact it made the dish, but it didn't stick to the cutlets.

I also made coconut rice - 1 cup of basmati simmered in 1 and 3/4 cup of water and coconut milk.

The best way I can describe this meal is, well, "delicate." The texture of the rice and the chicken were wonderful, the chicken cutlets looked wonderful, the aroma of coconut and tea were tempting and pleasant, and the flavors were...maybe a little bland for a guy who likes to grill tenderloins and slather them with mustard and peach sauce.

This would be a great dish to serve someone who didn't want "heavy" food or maybe had an upset tummy or something. It seemed to need something to me - maybe some smashed cardmom pods for the rice, or some curry or fruit in there somewhere. Or maybe if I'd made the sauce thick enough that would have been enough, because it certainly was good.

Coffee Consumption and Health: The Final Word - Part 1 | Eric Cressey

2011-11-15T16:52:00.000-06:00

I am gradually developing a better appreciation for coffee (or maybe I'm
just drinking better coffee overall.) Still haven't managed to ditch the
Rockstar and fountain Diet Coke for it yet, but I can start the day with
a cup of coffee and it no longer feels as if my gullet has been doused
in burning mud and my hair set on fire.

http://www.ericcressey.com/coffee-consumption-and-health-1
Coffee is the second most popular drink in the world, trailing only
water (and debatably, tea). As you all know, caffeine is a key component
of coffee and is a compound of great debate. It is the world's most
consumed psychoactive drug, with 90% of North American adults consuming
caffeine daily. However, is this such a bad thing?
Many health advocates would try to convince you to give up coffee and
possibly even caffeine altogether. However new research has certainly
raised the question, should we actually give up our beloved Cup o' Joe?
Does Metabolism Matter?
There is a lot of conflicting research on coffee consumption, and it
seems to be because people have different clearance rates for caffeine.
On one hand, you have the "slow" metabolizers of caffeine: people who
are adversely affected by caffeine, get the jitters, and are wired for
up to nine hours. Then, there are those who simply have an increase in
energy and alertness that wears off within a few hours; they are
considered "fast" metabolizers of caffeine.
This seems to be a defining difference in whether or not coffee will
help you or hurt you, as those who are slow metabolizers may be at an
increased risk for a non-fatal heart attack, while the fast metabolizers
may not.
If you are a slow metabolizer of caffeine and coffee, steer clear. It's
not for everybody, and it is not for you. In your case, it can do more
harm than good, and this may explain why coffee consumption has been
associated with:
*Increased risk of miscarriage
*Interference of normal sleeping patterns
*Increased PMS symptoms
*Increased blood pressure, even in people without hypertension
*Non-fatal myocardial infarction
Fortunately, this seems to be a minority of the population. For those
lucky enough to be fast metabolizers, there is good news - and lots of
it.
Why Coffee Rules
Coffee has more antioxidants than dark chocolate or tea, and may make up
as much as 50-70% of the total antioxidant intake for the average
American!
A recent study found that men who drank the most coffee (6 or more cups
per day) were nearly 60% less likely to develop advanced prostate cancer
than non-coffee drinkers.
In fact, at least six studies have found that regular coffee drinkers
have up to an 80% decreased risk for developing Parkinson's.
In addition, other research has shown that when compared to non-coffee
drinkers, people who regularly consume two or more cups per day may have
a 25% decreased risk of colon cancer, up to an 80% decreased risk for
cirrhosis, a 35% decreased risk of type 2 diabetes, and up to a 50%
decreased risk for gallstones!
In terms of the gallbladder protection, it was only seen in people who
drank caffeinated coffee. So, if you drink decaf, it's not doing much
for the gallbladder.
The final verdict on coffee and cancer is that coffee consumption is
associated with a lower overall risk of cancer. Period. Specifically,
coffee consumption has shown to be associated with a lower risk or oral,
esophageal, pharyngeal, breast (in post-menopausal women), liver, colon,
and aggressive prostate cancer. Sounds good to me!
Beyond the health benefits, there are many noted mental and physical
performance benefits as well. Caffeine has been shown to reduce the rate
of perceived exertion, so it doesn't feel like you are working as hard
as you really are. In addition, people who regularly drink coffee have
been found to have better performance on tests of reaction time, verbal
memory, and visuo-spatial reasoning.
Taking it a step further, another study found that elderly women over
the age of 80 performed significantly better on tests of cognitive
function if they had regularly consumed coffee over the course of their
lifetimes.
In addition, many people think of coffee as increasing their risk for
cardiovascular disease (CVD), but the reality is that coffee consumption
has been found to moderately reduce the risk of dying from CVD. Another
study, done in Japan, followed 77,000 individuals between the ages of 40
and 79. Researchers found that caffeine and coffee consumption were also
associated with a reduced risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
One other coffee/caffeine myth is the idea of dehydration. It is widely
believed that caffeine-containing beverages like coffee and tea cause
the body to expel more fluid than they provide, but does the research
actually back this up?
Nope.
A recent review of 10 studies found that consuming up to 550mg of
caffeine per day does not cause fluid-electrolyte imbalances in athletes
and fitness enthusiasts. Another review the following year found that
consuming caffeine-containing beverages as part of a normal lifestyle
does not lead to fluid loss in excess of the volume of fluid ingested,
nor is it associated with poor hydration status. Myth busted.

Dragon Door: Calf Work

2011-11-15T16:32:00.000-06:00

I don't pay too much attention to Dragon Door these days (they went way
over the edge years ago when it came to exploiting their target audience with
kettlebell related hype), but this caught my interest, since I'm trying
to rehab a sore outer gastroc trigger point. This trigger point makes it hard for me to
run or jump rope for any length of time without paying a price in pain.
Band related ankle mobility work seems to help, and Kstarr's MWOD lower
leg stuff also targets it nicely - but I believe in using as many
resources as possible to tackle a chronic problem.

As they say, "It's so crazy that it just...might...work!"

http://www.dragondoor.com/calf_work/
Calf Work
by Andrew Read, RKC Team Leader

------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------

Consider the following: A recreational runner has an 80% chance of an
injury every twelve months of running that will require up to 4 weeks
off running.

The average runner is forced to absorb between two and three times
bodyweight through the feet on each step.

The average person takes between 1000 and 1200 steps per kilometre
(based off Tony Benson's chart for runners averaging 6-8 minutes/
kilometre).

So if the average person weighs 80kg (180lbs) they are forced to absorb
up to 240kg of stress on each step, and then do that for another 1000 or
so times per kilometre! In a 5km run your body withstands the equivalent
of 1200 tons of force.

It's no wonder people get hurt when they run.

Running technique is beyond the scope of this article, but injury
prevention isn't. And I'm going to share with you the plan that Tony
Benson gave me to help me repair myself from a torn calf to run a 1.34
half marathon at the end of my one and only triathlon a year later -
after a decade of no running.

The problem most people have is two fold -

1. Their body simply isn't ready to absorb that kind of punishment, and
2. Their running technique isn't good enough for the body to do it's job
naturally, so they rely on the mechanical aids provided in shoes.

The two go together hand in hand in an interesting way. Running shoes
are probably the worst kept secret in the fitness industry. Here's what
happens when you put on your expensive cushy shoes -

The body's sense for what it needs to do when - proprioception - starts
at the foot. Without a firm message to the nervous system our body is at
a slight loss as to which muscles to use when, how hard to turn them on
and even how long to keep them on for.

To get a clear message we are forced to strike the ground harder, to
drive the foot onto a firm surface to give us the feedback we require to
create sound movement. So to overcome our shoes, which we were
originally wearing to prevent us from slamming our feet into the ground,
we are forced to slam our feet into the ground. Ironic, no?

To make matters worse this is usually accompanied by heel striking. The
foot is designed to be this amazing shock absorber that works on a
combination of the plantar fascia and the lower leg. The plantar fascia,
in particular, is an enormously strong spring that is capable of
assisting in energy return during gait and has been shown to withstand
forces well in excess of our calculated forces for running - if we allow
it to. But landing on the heel prevents this from happening as we are
landing with a non-absorbent object (bone) onto the hard ground! (And
this is exactly why learning how to run properly is absolutely vital for
both speed and injury prevention. As an example I did a first session
with a young man last week and nearly halved his 400m time in a single
hour just based off technique alone).

When you consider how many steps we take per kilometre running it is no
wonder people get sore calves - up to 5000 eccentric calf raises in a
5km run! When was the last time you did 5000 calf raises in a workout
with loads up to triple body weight?

The muscle soreness associated with running is almost entirely
associated with the thousands of eccentric contractions that the calf/
foot has to cope with. To help to strengthen the lower limbs to deal
with this I give my athletes the following plan before we start any
running:

Eccentric calf drops 1 -

Begin by standing facing a wall, feet together. Raise up to your toes on
two feet but lower only on one.

The secret here is not to "lower" but to "drop". You need to almost try
to force the heel of the working leg into the ground as hard as you can.
At the very last fraction of a second you stop the heel, rapidly
decelerating it.

Repeat this sequence - up on two, drop down on one. 3 sets of 15 reps
each leg.

It is important to note that these should only be done on a flat
surface. There is no need to try to increase ROM yet.

Eccentric calf drops 2 -

There is no need to rush into this stage and to be honest I have barely
used it. I include it because it was in my original plan, and those who
know better than me recommend it.

With increased ROM, be very cautious as adding range to the drop can
lead to big increases in soreness or even cause injury.

This exercise is performed the same as the first progression except you
will be increasing ROM by standing on a step or an incline.

Weighted calf drops -

I am about to commit RKC heresy, but there is actually ONE good use for
a Smith machine beyond a coat rack and this is it. Because of the nature
of the exercise, the potential for the lower leg to absorb so much
force, it is important that to really strengthen and bullet proof the
lower legs for maximum effect we need to add load. Unfortunately
standing on one leg with load on your back isn't very safe but using the
Smith Machine here works like a treat.

Return to flat ground for this option - DO NOT use an increased ROM no
matter what.

Given the loads that the lower legs cope with during running are up to
triple body weight you can use a LOT of weight for this exercise. I have
gone up to double body weight for sets of 4-6 reps for 2-3 sets at a
time. Unlike the other two options, which can be performed daily, use
this only twice per week.

Perform exactly as you would for the other two options - raise on two,
down on one catching the heel just before it hits the ground. Reset and
repeat and for the desired reps.

Do not go high on the reps with this option as injury is likely to
follow.

I often shake my head in wonder when I hear people say things "training
claves isn't very functional". Given the lower leg is responsible for
absorbing up to three times body weight during running one can only
imagine how much it is forced to absorb during sprinting, jumping,
cutting, acceleration...

A simple lower leg strength program can help to alleviate time off
training due to injuries, strengthen the start of the chain of movement
and give a strong base of support that allows greater athletic movement
to take place.

I used to predominantly perform just version one of this exercise in a
GTG format - basically just doing it as many times during the day as I
remembered. And if I'm being completely honest I only did the Smith
Machine version a few times. The main reason was simplicity - to have to
go to the gym to get access to the Smith Machine versus just standing
against a wall or hanging off a step is much more difficult - time that
was better used running, riding or swimming.

Try this simple idea - boosting lower leg strength will increase stride
rate, decrease risk of injuries, help to balance out the lower leg and
avoid shin splints and stress fractures. It'll give you some nice
looking calves too!

So This Is Hastings! Hastings Is Nice!

2011-11-14T17:03:00.001-06:00

Apparently the nightlife in Hastings is, er, "livelier" than I gave it credit for...

While we missed our chance to try the best of the wurst...

...the java was flowing freely at the Blue Moon...

We did get to be there when Yeast met West at the Back Alley Bakery...

...and a Certain Someone got high on yarn fumes at Plum Nelly...

...It certainly gives a person pause for thought.

Mali, Mali, short and jolly
Won't mistake her for a Collie
Put herself upon a trolley
Rode it all the way to Raleigh!

You can fight City Hall (or at least distract it while you spike their coffee with bourbon)

It didn't seem to bother anyone that the village firearms dealer...

...was right next to the village bar...

...but at least you can always get trans-fats, high fructose corn syrup, coffee and soda to sober up before you do anything rash!

Automobile, Take Me Away!

2011-11-13T13:27:00.000-06:00

I heard 30 seconds of this on a recent "Car Talk" episode, and I just had to run it down. As November progresses and the days get shorter and winter bears down on us like a runaway train of Suck, it's nice to think of people somewhere having fun in the sun.

I Must Go - My People Need Me

2011-11-09T10:03:00.001-06:00

see more Very Demotivational

Fat girl trapped in a skinny body: Salads

2011-11-08T16:05:00.000-06:00

http://fatgirltrappedinaskinnybody.blogspot.com/search/label/Salads
There are a ton of us in this, not so secret club, now. It's rad! I look
forward to 'reveal day' every month to see all the fantastic recipes
that have been made. And quite honestly, I also look forward to seeing
who got my blog. Of aaaaall the recipes they could have picked, why THAT
one? I can't help but think that...
So then, why do I chose the recipes I do? What made me pick THIS recipe,
of aaaall the recipes on Creative Kitchen Adventures, why a salad
dressing??? I love salad, period.
After reading pretty much every tidbit on Denise's blog I concluded
she's an amazing woman, mom and wife.
By the way, using words like 'concluded' make me feel like I'm writing a
paper for college...I digress... She does the best she can to feed her
family well. And by well I don't just mean 'down home cookin.' I mean
well, like healthy well. I appreciate that, so much! GO DENISE! Given
that, I decided I needed to make a salad. Ok wait, I did make her
caramelized onion and cheese omelet too. But I scarfed that before I
could take a picture. And her brownie cookies, I think I had a dream
about them on Thursday night. Those will for sure be made in the very
near future!
One of the great things about the SRC club is you can modify the recipe
you choose. While I didn't modify the vinaigrette, I did modify the
actual 'salad' ingredients. I modified simply because well, I used what
I had on hand. That's all. Don't think for a second I wouldn't LOVE the
spring mix with apples and raisins...do you know I'm like REALLY into
raisins? I can't be trusted around them,. I'll eat an entire pack. And
not the little snack size 'I got my hand stuck because the boxes are so
small' size. I mean the jumbo bags from Costco.
A few notes on the dressing:
1. I added all the dressing ingredients in a blender to see what would
happen. I mean, besides the obvious, it would blend. Duh. I wanted to
see if blending it would prevent oil/vinegar separation. You know how at
restaurants their salad dressings seem to not separate? How do they do
that? Well, my little experiment shed light on their secret: a blender.
At least for me, when I added these ingredients to a blender, cranked it
up for only about 30 seconds, my dressing stayed almost 100% mixed for
an entire week in the fridge.
2. My mom taught me a few years ago that adding water to salad dressings
help save a buck. Add a little water, which is practically free, and it
will help spread out your dressing for another couple salads. Th water
isn't 100% necessary, although, it doesn't impact the integrity of the
taste of the dressing and it saves a few pennies, soooo, it's worth a
shot.
3. You can add any 'flavorings' to the dressing. Roasted garlic, basil,
shallots, onions...This is a great dressing as is, or as a base for
adding additional flavors.
Balsamic Vinaigrette
Recipe from Creative Kitchen Adventures
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1-2 tbsp water (more or less depending on the consistency you want)
2 tbsp honey (can be replaced with agave or brown sugar)
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
Directions
Place all ingredients into a small jar (canning jar). Anything with a
lid works well.
Shake to mix thoroughly. Stores in fridge for 1-2 weeks.
*Or use my blending method: throw everything in the blender, blend for
about 30 seconds, then store in a jar for 1-2 weeks.
Salad
Makes 2 salads (Salads pictured were made in 32 oz mason jars)
1 cup cooked quinoa
2 big handfuls spinach
1 cup chopped mushrooms
1 cup cherry tomatoes
1/2 red onion, diced
4 tbsp balsamic vinagrette
Layer the ingredients in the jar as follows:
dressing
onion
mushrooms
tomatoes
quinoa
spinach
The most important part of the layering is making sure the dressing and
the spinach (or whatever 'leaf' you choose) don't touch. As long as they
stay separate, these salads can be made up to 4 days in advance and will
stay fresh in the fridge with a lid on. This is one of my tricks to
eating salad everyday for lunch at work. I make a few jars on Sunday
night and just grab one to bring to work everyday. When you're ready to
eat, just shake it up.

Remember the McSalad Shakers form Mc Donald's? Now THAT was a great
idea! Ever since then, I shake my salads.

Not "Goodbye" but "See Ya Soon"

2011-11-07T16:20:00.000-06:00

I looked at my "overview" for the blog today and JEEZUS CHRIST - 1000 page views on Sunday??? Wow...who ever you guys are, welcome and I hope you find this little corner moderately entertaining and that I can point you to some interesting and intriguing articles by people much better than me.

However, posting will be light for the next several weeks - most of my online time away from work will be devoted to a 6 week online course preparing for "Network+" certification.

But since I learned how to post to my blog from email, I've been able to tag a lot more things that have caught my attention, and so ABW may not be completely inert.

And who knows, I may not be able to resist the urge to take pictures of what I cook and brag about it.

Joe Robinson: Job Stress? How to Keep Catastrophic Thoughts from Killing You

2011-11-04T13:27:00.001-05:00

I put more emphasis than any else I know on staying on top of stress and
recharging the batteries every day, but some weeks even I feel as if I'm
losing ground - and this feelings becomes more dishearteining as I get
swallowed up in work-related crisis situations and then don't have time
for workouts, walks, meditation etc at the end of the day due to family
situations and other domestic emergencies (including a
niece-turned-junkie-turned cancer patient who is driving us all nuts).
So daily recharge sessions are good, even essential - but even more
essential is minute to minute mindfulness.
(Thanks to Lifehacker for the link.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-robinson/job-stress_b_861889.html

...Yes, there are plenty of stressors coming at us in a warp factor 9
workplace, but it's not the deadline, what a customer says, or the
conflict with a colleague that's causing your stress. The reality is you
are. It's the story you tell yourself about the negative event or the
stressor that's causing the stress. We all have the ability to change
the stories that create our stress, if we know how the dynamic works.
The problem is a design flaw in our brains that leaves us prone to false
emergencies. We were designed for life-and-death struggles on African
savannas, not overflowing in-boxes or sales quotas. That's especially
true for the part of your brain that sets off the stress response, the
amygdala, a hub of the emotional brain, the ancient limbic system, which
ran operations before we evolved the higher brain organs that can make
decisions based on reason and analysis, not raw emotion.
In times of perceived danger the amygdala hijacks the 21st century brain
and takes the helm again. This ancient alarm system is as good at
measuring threats in the workplace as a yardstick is at calculating the
distance to the sun. A hundred and fifty emails a day is a hassle, but
it's not life-or-death. But if an overloaded inbox makes you feel you
can't cope, off goes the signal that sets off the stress response, which
floods your body with hormones that suppress your immune system to help
you fight or run ... away from your computer?
Researchers have discovered that there are a couple of keys to
controlling the stress response (which can be shut off in three minutes,
as soon as the brain can see the danger is over): increasing "latitude,"
such as the amount of control you have in your work -- possible through
changes in how you do your tasks -- and the story you tell yourself
about the problem. The first story you get when the stress response goes
off is supplied by your caveman brain, the amygdala. Since it thinks
those 150 emails will overload your coping ability, it interprets the
matter as life-and-death, unleashing the stress response and the
panicked thoughts that come with it. The initial thoughts of a panicked
brain are exaggerated, catastrophic. We get swept away by a surge of
emotion from these distortions, buy the false beliefs, and go down the
irrational track, causing any number of consequences, all based on a
fantasy.
Stress constricts your brain to the perceived crisis and inhibits all
the things that can reduce the stress, such as relaxation, recreation
and play. Active recreational experiences are one of the best stress
buffers available, something I detail in my new book on the power of
engaged experiences, "Don't Miss Your Life." But stress shuts off
diversions from stewing and ruminating, leaving us to obsess about the
perceived emergency. The more we stay caught up in a cycle of stress and
rumination, the more we miss our lives.
We're never taught to contest the illusions of stress, so the hysterical
stories stick. If we don't dispute these stories with the 21st century
brain, the stress response spirals in intensity, locking in a false
crisis mentality. Since the process suppresses the immune system, you
become vulnerable to any number of health problems -- adrenal
dysfunction, back pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, hypertension. The
biochemical changes increase the bad cholesterol and decrease the good
kind. The stress response steals from various body systems to pump more
blood to your arms and legs to fight and run. It was intended to last
for the minutes or perhaps hours it took to get out of harm's way, not
to pump 24/7, day after day, month after month, as it does with modern
chronic stress.
You can exit the trap of work stress by increasing your control over the
work environment as best you can and changing the false story of the
caveman brain to one based on the facts of the situation as soon as you
feel the wave of emotions and irrational thoughts go off. There are a
number of effective techniques that can help reframe the story, as well
as relaxation tools that can reduce the anxiety so you can build in your
rebuttal to the irrational thoughts.
Some processes, which involve deep breathing and reframing, are good for
situational stress. They let you step back when the going gets tense and
create counter-stories that can stop the stress spiral in its early
stages, before the catastrophic thoughts get entrenched. The stress
spiral is weakest at the very beginning of the cycle, so that's when you
want to contest it. It takes time and effort to change reflex behaviors,
but you can learn to reframe emotional panic with realistic appraisal of
stressful situations.
Stress is by no means easy to deal with, since we react to stressors
before we think. It's an automatic response, which is why we are so
under its thumb. But we can build in the thinking and catch ourselves
before we rush headlong down the irrational track and wind up with a
dump truck of angst -- for nothing.
Real courage lies not in absorbing punishment but in managing reflex
emotions and work tasks that set them off. As Lao Tzu put it, "He who is
brave in daring will be killed. He who is brave in not daring will
survive." Opting out of the stress reflex is the real home of the brave.

Four Destructive Myths Most Companies Still Live By | LinkedIn

2011-11-04T10:50:00.000-05:00

http://www.linkedin.com/news?actionBar=&articleID=881785693&ids=0Ue3wQdj
gOe3wIe3gRcj0Ud3wUb3kVdPkNc3cUe2MPejoRe3sNe3wIej4Tc3gTdPsU&aag=true&freq
=weekly&trk=eml-tod-b-ttle-4&ut=0eTGfTWp3KP4Y1
For Chrissake, even Harvard Business School no longer believes these
myths (see below), and yet the crypto-Puritan Industrial Business
Machine continues to work on the assumption that employees are machines,
not organic systems and if you feel good on the job then obviously
something is wrong with the system. Arbeit doesn't Macht Frei, guys, it
machts "Tot".
Myth #1: Multitasking is critical in a world of infinite demand.
This myth is based on the assumption that human beings are capable of
doing two cognitive tasks at the same time. We're not. Instead, we learn
to move rapidly between tasks. When we're doing one, we're actually not
even aware of the other.
If you're on a conference call, for example, and you turn your attention
to an incoming email, you're missing what's happening on the call as
long as you're checking your email. Equally important, you're incurring
something called "switching time." That's the time it takes to shift
from one cognitive activity to another.
On average, according to researcher David Meyer, switching time
increases the amount of time it takes to finish the primary task you
were working on by an average of 25 percent. In short, juggling
activities is incredibly inefficient.
Difficult as it is to focus in the face of the endless distractions we
all now face, it's far and away the most effective way to get work done.
The worst thing you can do as a boss is to insist that your people
constantly check their email.

Myth #2: A little bit of anxiety helps us perform better.
Think for a moment about how you feel when you're performing at your
best. What adjectives come to mind? Almost invariably they're positive
ones. Anxiety may be a source of energy, and even motivation, but it
comes with significant costs.
The more anxious we feel, the less clearly and imaginatively we think,
and the more reactive and impulsive we become. That's not good for you,
and it also has huge implications if you're in a supervisory role.
As a boss, your energy has a disproportionate impact on those you lead,
by virtue of your authority. Put bluntly, any time your behavior
increases someone's anxiety - or prompts any negative emotions, for that
matter - they're less likely to perform effectively.
The more positive your energy is, the more positive their energy is
likely to be, and the better the likely outcome.

Myth #3: Creativity is genetically inherited, and it's impossible to
teach.
In a global economy characterized by unprecedented competitiveness and
constant change, nearly every CEO hungers for ways to drive more
innovation. Unfortunately, most CEOs don't think of themselves as
creative, and they share with the rest of us a deeply ingrained belief
that creativity is mostly inborn and magical.
Ironically, researchers have developed a surprising degree of consensus
about the stages of creativity and how to approach them. Our educational
system and most company cultures favor reward the rational, analytic,
deductive left hemisphere thinking. We pay scant attention to
intentionally cultivating the more visual, intuitive, big picture
capacities of the right hemisphere.
As it turns out, the creative process moves back and forth between left
and right hemisphere dominance. Creativity is actually about using the
whole brain more flexibly. This process unfolds in a far more systematic
- and teachable - way than we ordinarily imagine. People can quickly
learn to access the hemisphere of the brain that serves them best at
each stage of the creative process - and to generate truly original
ideas.

Myth #4: The best way to get more work done is to work longer hours.
No single myth is more destructive to employers and employees than this
one. The reason is that we're not designed to operate like computers -
at high speeds, continuously, for long periods of time.
Instead, human beings are designed to pulse intermittently between
spending and renewing energy. Great performers - and enlightened leaders
- recognize that it's not the number of hours people work that
determines the value they create, but rather the energy they bring to
whatever hours they work.
Rather than systematically burning down our reservoir of energy as the
day wears on, as most of us do, intermittent renewal makes it possible
to keep our energy steady all day long. Strategically alternating
periods of intense focus with intermittent renewal, at least every 90
minutes, makes it possible to get more done, in less time, more
sustainably.
Want to test the assumption? Choose the most challenging task on your
agenda before you go to sleep each night over the next week. Set aside
60 to 90 minutes at the start of the following day to focus on the
activity you've chosen.
Choose a designated start and stop time, and do your best to allow no
interruptions. (It helps to turn off your email.) Succeed and it will
almost surely be your most productive period of the day. When you're
done, reward yourself by taking a true renewal break.

IronGarm : An Excellent post on breath work

2011-11-04T10:10:00.001-05:00

http://irongarmx.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=219215&p=615470#p615470
The original question was:
As I've gotten deeper into my practice I'm wanting to explore more of a
meditative practice as well to calm and center myself as I tend to be
very high strung and nervous and the breathing meditation seems to help
me more than anything else I've ever tried.
I was thinking that Qi Gong would be a good fit, but need to place to
start. What about JDC's stuff on DD? Any thoughts from Qi Gong or other
meditation practitioners is welcome.

Dave Chesser's response was pure gold:

First of all, all qigong systems have a purpose and if that purpose is
not what you're wanting to emphasize then you won't be working on what
you want. Almost all qigong DVDs will give you qigong systems that
incorporate movement and that isn't really what you're going to want
considering what you've stated above.
Breath work is one of the most powerful practices you can do and is
woven into many systems but IMO it's best to focus on it by itself
rather than learn it in the context of a martial art or other movement
system.
The practice i would recommend most is learning to do a 20 second
breath, then 30 sec, 40, then 1:00. The practice is simple: inhale
slowly and evenly for :10, then exhale slowly and evenly for :10, repeat
for 5:00 to start with. As you get better, go for 10:00, 15:00, etc. As
you get deeper into the practice, start working a :30 breath (:15
inhale, :15 exhale) into the practice about 3/4 of the way through your
meditation period. It's actually easier to do once you've relaxed a bit
instead of doing it right at the beginning. Never move on to a longer
breath until you can breath evenly and consistently with the breath
you're on. going too fast is the number one mistake. When you eventually
get to the point that you can breath once a minute, your meditation
practice will be able to go very deep.
When I did this intensely, almost nothing could angry me. If you're high
strung, this is for you. By controlling my breathing I could detach
myself from most anything because the breath and the emotions are
connected.
The problem with this method is that it's too simple for some folks and
you can't make a DVD or write a book around it so you almost never hear
about it. People want bells and whistles and this doesn't give it.
Try it out for a while and let me know what you think.

If I used it for insomnia, I would make the inhale shorter and the
exhale longer. Maybe a :05/:10 ratio would work well. The :10/:10,
:20/:20, etc. is designed to oxygenate the body enough to maintain focus
but still allow relaxation. You would want to lengthen exhalation to
emphasize relaxation. This might take some practice and you might have
to start with the 1:1 ratio breaths first to get it. BTW, this is an
advanced technique so be careful with it. You might experience enough
relaxation with the 1:1 ratio breaths to not need it.
One thing, the OP (original poster) said he had some experience with
breath work so I recommended he start with the :10/:10 breath but people
with little to no experience might need to start with :05/:05. When
you're really stressed out, making one breath last even that long might
be difficult.
Also, don't hold or control your breath with your throat. Use your chest
and diaphragm. If you practice and your throat hurts afterward, you'll
know what part you're using.

I Grilled You A Sandwich...

2011-11-03T16:38:00.002-05:00

My wife's idea - fried egg, turkey slice, cheese slice, and RASPBERRY JAM on homemade bread. (It was my idea to grill it as a mock "croque monseiur".)

(See the original HERE.The original LOL cat, I mean.)

The 100 Up Drill - "Run As Though You Were Sneaking Up On Someone"

2011-11-03T14:50:00.000-05:00

Mustard yellow shorts and 1000 yard stare optional

This is a fascinating followup/extension to McDougall's book "Born To
Run" (thanks to Lifehacker for the link:)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/magazine/running-christopher-mcdougall
.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
Below is a Youtube video featuring Cucuzella, which includes 4 "light skipping" drills that are also meant to help teach the mechanics of the altered stride and foot plant that barefoot running supposedly thrives on:

...The only way to halt the running-injury epidemic, it seems, is to find a
simple, foolproof method to relearn what the Tarahumara never forgot. A
one best way to the one best way.
Earlier this year, I may have found it. I was leafing through the back
of an out-of-print book, a collection of runners' biographies called
"The Five Kings of Distance," when I came across a three-page essay from
1908 titled "W. G. George's Own Account From the 100-Up Exercise."
According to legend, this single drill turned a 16-year-old with almost
no running experience into the foremost racer of his day.
I read George's words: "By its constant practice and regular use alone,
I have myself established many records on the running path and won more
amateur track-championships than any other individual." And it was safe,
George said: the 100-Up is "incapable of harm when practiced
discreetly."
Could it be that simple? That day, I began experimenting on myself.
When I called Mark Cucuzzella to tell him about my find, he cut me off
midsentence. "When can you get down here?" he demanded.
"Here" is Two Rivers Treads, a "natural" shoe store sandwiched between
Maria's Taqueria and German Street Coffee & Candlery in Shepherdstown,
W.Va., which, against all odds, Cucuzzella has turned into possibly the
country's top learning center for the reinvention of running.
"What if people found out running can be totally fun no matter what kind
of injuries they've had?" Cucuzzella said when I visited him last
summer. "What if they could see - " he jerked a thumb back toward his
chest - "Exhibit A?"
...
Not that he has everything figured out. I was at one of Cucuzzella's
free barefoot running clinics in May when he confronted his big problem:
how do you actually teach this stuff? He had about 60 of us practicing
drills on a grassy playground. "Now to run," he said, "just bend forward
from the ankles." We all looked down at our ankles.

"No, no," Cucuzzella said. "Posture, remember? Keep your heads up."
We lifted our heads, and most of us then forgot to lean from the ankles.
At that moment, a young girl flashed past us on her way to the monkey
bars. Her back was straight, her head was high and her bare feet
skittered along right under her hips.

"You mean like - " someone said, pointing after the girl.
"Right," Cucuzzella said. "Just watch her."

So what ruined running for the rest of us who aren't Tarahumara or 10
years old?
.....
"All right," he said in the middle of our run. "Let's get a look at
this." I snapped a twig and dropped the halves on the ground about eight
inches apart to form targets for my landings. The 100-Up consists of two
parts. For the "Minor," you stand with both feet on the targets and your
arms cocked in running position. "Now raise one knee to the height of
the hip," George writes, "bring the foot back and down again to its
original position, touching the line lightly with the ball of the foot,
and repeat with the other leg."

That's all there is to it. But it's not so easy to hit your marks 100
times in a row while maintaining balance and proper knee height. Once
you can, it's on to the Major: "The body must be balanced on the ball of
the foot, the heels being clear of the ground and the head and body
being tilted very slightly forward. . . . Now, spring from the toe,
bringing the knee to the level of the hip. . . . Repeat with the other
leg and continue raising and lowering the legs alternately. This action
is exactly that of running."

Cucuzzella didn't like it as a teaching method - he loved it. "It makes
so much physiological and anatomical sense," he said. "The key to
injury-free running is balance, elasticity, stability in midstance and
cadence. You've got all four right there."

Cucuzzella began trying it himself. As I watched, I recalled another
lone inventor, a Czechoslovakian soldier who dreamed up a similar drill:
he'd throw dirty clothes in the bathtub with soap and water, then jog on
top. You can't heel strike or overstride on slippery laundry. There's
only one way to run in a tub: the one best way.

At the 1952 Olympics, Emil Zatopek became the only runner ever to win
gold medals in all three distance events: 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters
and the marathon, the first he ever ran. Granted, "the Human Locomotive"
wasn't a pretty sight. During his final push to the finish line, his
head would loll and his arms would grab at the air "as if he'd just been
stabbed through the heart," as one sportswriter put it.

But from the waist down, Zatopek was always quick, light and springy,
like a kid swooping across a playground - or like this once-arthritic
physician in front of me, laughing with excitement as he hopped up and
down in his bare feet in a parking lot.

Just a side note on the subject: "Barefoot Ken Bob Saxton" recently published an instructional book called "Barefoot Running Step By Step". It's obvious the man is a free spirit and a fellow who thinks outside the box and colors outside the lines (and good for him). It's also obvious that he sports a considerable paunch for a man who runs as many marathons as he does. (To his credit, he doesn't try to hide it.) I have far less of a paunch, and I haven't run more than 20 meters at a time in the last 10 years (OK, a lot of those runs were actually timed sprints and hill intervals). It just goes to show - you can't outrun either a doughnut or genetics... and running by itself probably won't give you the body you want.

I Suck at Photoshop; Except I Don't, and You Don't Suck at That Thing You're "Bad at" Either

2011-11-02T13:26:00.000-05:00

http://lifehacker.com/5855584/i-suck-at-photoshop-except-i-dont-and-you-
dont-suck-at-that-thing-youre-bad-at-either

"...In short, aptitude is mostly shit. It means you're competent without
trying. Nobody wins a Nobel for being competent, just like you don't win
an Olympic medal without trying. (Fine, neither of us have won a Nobel
or Olympic medal. [If you have, email me. We should talk about a guest
post!]) You've gotten good at the things you've worked at. You've told
yourself you're bad at the things you weren't born with an aptitude for.
Instead of developing any amount of competence, we often opt for
ignorance. Which brings me to where we started."

John Sifferman: 3 Bodyweight "Ground Engagement" Workouts

2011-11-01T20:05:00.000-05:00

Sifferman continues to be generous (and expansive) in the material he supplies to the public. I'm socking this away for this winter, when I'm stuck in the gym and can't get my walking in.

STCG: Halloween Chimichitos

2011-11-01T16:30:00.001-05:00

Poor flossing habits and sugary between meal plutonium snacks lead to an inevitable outcome...

On the other hand, they certainly seem to be in a good mood...

We hadn't done a thing to get ready for Halloween, so "M" butchered a pair of pumpkins at 5:00 pm Monday night while I looked for something fast and easy to throw together. I decided to make "Sam the Cooking Guy's" version of a burrito or maybe a chimichanga, which is brushed with oil and baked in the oven at 400 F for 20 minutes. This actually left me with a little time to try to punch up the canned enchilada sauce while the "chitos" were baking, but every search I tried led me to sites saying, "oh, canned enchilada sauce is crap, make this instead".What all the recipes seem to have in common was oregano and cumin (no surprise) and sometimes garlic and tomato paste, so I added some extra of all those and called it good.

And it WAS good. The tortilla shells came out crisp and flaky, the salsa/chicken/green chile filling was just right, and the sauce and sour cream and cilantro topping balanced everything. The recipe made 4 "chimichitos". We only had one apiece, and it was plenty, but we could easily have scarfed down the remainder of the servings without a second thought.

This was so danged easy I'm kind of pissed now at my local Mexican restaurants for charging me $9-10 for one of these and loading it down with a bunch of crap the dish doesn't need. I'll have to play around with this and see what develops.

IronGarm . View topic - Who was it that said

2011-11-01T16:05:00.001-05:00

Iron Garm has been fairly quiet recently,but this discussion about food
plans was interesting. Dan John posted a reference to trainer Josh
Hillis that I thought was worth archiving:
http://irongarmx.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=219186
...Josh has several "very smart" ideas about this. I think the best one is
this: Each week, you fill out a chart of your week, so you have either
three meals a day, or three meals and two snacks, or whatever. You then
put a red X on the meals where the rules don't apply. So, a birthday
party on Tuesday, Friday night after the game, Sunday Brunch and,
honestly, as many Xs as you want. It occurs to most people right there
that:
Ooo, I better tighten the diet (whatever that means) before and after
those meals.
That's a lot of Red Xs.

Next, he has you look at the "Cheat Meals" of the week before.
Literally, Josh tells me it is usually like 14. 14 meals off of whatever
diet in the world you think is going to work...because every diet works.
Josh's great insight is this: he will ask you, "Hmm, that's a bit high.
Let's strive for just 12."

And, now you have the million dollar insight...backed up by a great book
called "Willpower." This approach, called "Not now, later," seems to be
a way that humans operate when it comes to food. As Omnivores, and there
are dozens of new books about this "issue," we literally can and will
and must eat everything. Our bodies are waiting for the Ice Age to hit
tomorrow and, and this is a tough one, obese people and diabetics might
have the edge if the Ice Age hits tomorrow...at least, in some ways.
Our brain WANTS to "eat better," but whatever triggers you to consume is
stronger. But, and "Willpower" does a great job on this, we have some
energy to stop eating. For a little while and not much energy. So,
Josh's great first two insights of first being proactive about cheat
meals or whatever and, second, not going to zero cheat meals...seems to
be the way the brain works.

By telling me to only have twelve cheat meals, I will first argue that
is too easy. I then march off to prove Josh wrong...I come in next week
with only five cheat meals (planned, too) and "what a good boy I am."
Win-win. You are on the road to fat loss and you are convinced that you
have more dietary firepower than celibate monks on an island.
The key here is to then say to me: "Alright, let's hold it to under ten
cheat meals this week!" You laugh and tell me that five was easy. In
just three weeks, you have some things under control.

Here is the next gem: record all food in a food journal and NEVER judge
what you ate. Do, however, try to remember the story. If you ate two
pizzas, stop and think about why later on. There is always a story. Josh
told me that this is the key...whatever the triggers are for a binge,
try to deal with them. This is the great insight that Tiffini and my
daughters tell me why they like to vacation with me: I insist on
stopping early and eating. Ask Mike about this: my family will break
away and dine long before we get:
Hungry
Angry
Lonely
Tired
The famous HALT of Anonymous groups. So, if you are eating because of
any of the above, note it and deal with it next week. Yes, people binge
because they are hungry. It is so obvious, you wouldn't think it worth
the time to type it but it is absolutely true. Ellington Darden used to
talk about eating dessert before a meal for sugar reasons, but it
probably would work as hunger stopper, too. Once we get into the
chemistry of the body, I'm at a loss, but I think you can see the point.
Of all the steps, the most important one is the proactive weekly planner
with the Xs. You could probably do this with other things like booze or
whatever, too. Once you plan, you seem to have much more control.
This is also a good time to mention slow cookers, soups and stews. I
think that coming home to the smell of a stew or soup will make you very
hungry for the stew or soup. But, you need to make it early. Again, this
is the "right" thing to do, but it takes foresight and planning. So,
every minute you spend prepping a stew or chili in either the morning or
night before is going to free up more willpower or whatever for other
decisions.

The bottom line: Josh is amazing with this stuff. He specializes in fat
loss for woman, a market that is just basically a pile of gold, really.
He has absolute clarity about what body fat percents are and what it
takes women to get there. His clarity and his tool kit make him someone
that I literally "must read."
So, there you go.

"The Factual Mumbo Jumbo He's Showing Me Clashes With The Story I've Told Myself"

2011-11-01T15:49:00.000-05:00

Intriguing article from "The Last Word On Nothing" via Boing Boing. All
too often, this also describes my reaction to being told I'm wrong:

http://boingboing.net/2011/11/01/why-being-wrong-makes-us-angry.html
...We'll be hiking and we'll come to a split in the trail and I'll point
one way and say, we need to go here. And Dave will say no, actually,
this is the right way (as he points in the opposite direction). And I'll
insist that, no, this is the way.
And then he'll point out that my way peters out below some cliff face.
Which only pisses me off. The more evidence he shows me that I'm wrong,
the more insistent I become - I'm right and he's wrong. And it's not
just me. This political scientist named Brendan Nyhan at Dartmouth has
documented what happens when you show people evidence that their beliefs
are wrong.
So when Dave tells me that his way is right and mine is straight up a
cliff, I think, oh yeah? Well I'm smart, independent and capable, so
therefore I'm correct. I would never point us in the wrong direction.
See, it's never really about the hiking trail. It's about some bigger
story you've told yourself. I'm not taking issue with Dave's direction.
I know he's right. But the factual mumbo jumbo he's showing me clashes
with the story I've told myself. I don't like what it says about me.

What's interesting to me about this, though, is that I don't react this
way when I prove my own beliefs wrong. For instance, when I hear about a
new study, and then have to dig into the evidence that presents a
different perspective than the one I originally came up with. In fact, I
kind of like doing that. But, then, challenging my own beliefs makes me
feel more capable. It fits the story I tell me about myself.
Ouch. I know I've had experiences very much like that one before. I'm
sure you have, too. What we believe about ourselves affects how we react
to people who show us that we are wrong about something.

Faster-than-light neutrino update: What's going on behind the scenes? - Boing Boing

2011-10-31T15:29:00.001-05:00

"Certainly Error-prone Regarding Neutrinos"?

I thought this was fascinating, not only because I didn't know about arXIV, not only because I didn't understand the background to the original experiment and its potential flaws...but because it proves once
again that "real" science is self correcting and validating in a way religious cant and doctrine never can be.

And it also demonstrates the problems with the media when they cover stories about scientific research and technology with the same people they use for celebrities and human interest stories.

Also....what if they repeat the experiment with the corrected parameters...and they still get FTL results??!!

http://boingboing.net/2011/10/31/faster-than-light-neutrino-update-whats
-going-on-behind-the-scenes.html
The publication process for a research paper about physics works a
little differently than other subjects. That's because of arXiv. Funded
by Cornell University, this site posts research papers, before they're
formally published in a scientific journal. Unlike most scientific
journals, which charge big fees for subscriptions or even to view a
single paper, arXiv is free and open to the public. You can read
everything published there-more than 700,000 papers about physics, math,
computer science, and more. The other big difference: arVix isn't Peer
reviewed.

A lot of the time, when you read a newspaper article about a new study
in one of those fields, the study hasn't actually yet been published in
a peer-reviewed journal. It's just been posted to arXiv, which sort of
becomes a crowd-sourced peer review peer review of its own. Especially
for headline-grabbing research making big, bold claims.

That's the background you need to understand what's going on right now
with the study that claimed to find neutrinos traveling faster than the
speed of light. That announcement was made in an arXiv paper. Putting
those results on arXiv was as much a way of saying, "Woah, we just found
something crazy, please tell us if you see something we've done wrong,"
as it was a formal declaration of scientific discovery.

(see complete article on the link.)

"Hopelessly Behind" Is The New "All Caught Up"

2011-10-28T17:26:00.000-05:00

Cool graphics make even the hardest Stoic wisdom easier to swallow!

The last weekend in September marked a new era in my job - the one where the Powers That Be decided that since I was supporting 400 users so well, I might as well support an additional 200 or so when the county consolidated most of its Health and Human services staff into a renovated building just south of where I spend most of my time.

And then dropped 35 "urgent" installs and refreshes on me, including 15 that my predecessors hadn't got around to completing and were now way overdue.

And yet...I'm basically OK with it. Maybe it's the fish oil capsules I've supplemented my diet with...maybe it's the calming and invigorating effects of the Yi Jin Jing. Maybe being married has given me a "base" where someone is always glad to see me when I get home. Or maybe I'm resigned to my lot in a good way ("The Wisdom of No Escape" in a positive light.)

Or maybe I'm finally an "adult". (Gawd, I hope not...most of the middle class adults I know are fairly miserable.)

Punchfork: Orange and Carmelized Onion Salad & Ancho Chile Shrimp and Pasta

2011-10-28T16:53:00.001-05:00

I cheated and bought pre-grated Parmesan...it had been a loooong day!

Obviously my wife pays more attention to skin care than I do.

http://punchfork.com/recipe/Ancho-Chile-Shrimp-and-Pasta-Simply-Recipes
http://punchfork.com/recipe/Oranges-Caramelized-Red-Onions-and-Spinach-with-Balsamic-Vinaigrette-Serious-Eats

I messed up on this one - I just assumed I still had (dried) ancho chilies left in the pantry, but when I got home I discovered all I had were arbol and chipotle chiles - which are fine, but much hotter than the smoky goodness of the ancho (which I belive is actually a dried pasilla chile.) And my wife's tummy gets upset if the dish is too hot.

So I improvised with sundried tomatoes and sweet/hot chili sauce. It wasn't quite what the authors had in mind, but it worked.

I also tried to save myself some work by using "baby langoulettes (sp?) instead of peeling shrimp, work I promptly used up making the orange and onion salad.

But we loved this salad - marinating orange slices in the cinnamon/balsamic vinaigrette and broiling red onion slices that had been dipped in that same dressing made for an usual-but-compelling combination. I could eat a ton of onion slices treated like that just as a side dish.

Guy Fieri I ain't...but I am getting better at just going into the kitchen and picking a direction and going with it.

The Invincible Super Blog: Amazingly Bad Retro Halloween Costumes

2011-10-28T15:59:00.002-05:00

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/10/26/bad-halloween-costumes/

Before you judge this one too harshly, consider that it was made for toddlers. Because that's what you want to do with a two year old: Wrap him up in something that looks like it's probably more flammable than an actual bucket of gasoline, and then cover his face in whatever fume-spewing chrome paint they had at down at the costume refinery. Just sayin', I can see the standards they had for appearance, and it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that "not spontaneously bursting into flames it rubbed against a sidewalk" was high on their list of concerns.

Anyway, enough speculation. What really confuses me about this costume is that the mask is roughly -- very roughly -- R2-D2-shaped, and since it's the only part of the costume that even makes an attempt at looking like what it's supposed to be, you're basically just wearing a costume on your head. Your face is R2-D2, floating over a picture of himself, somehow levitating a bag of candy down the block.

That said, if the next inevitable round of special editions replaced all the droids and Chewbaccas with dudes in these costumes, I would buy a copy for every person I know.

Read More: http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/10/26/bad-halloween-costumes/#ixzz1c71Fc3sz

Sophie Madeleine: 30 Ukelele Covers In 30 Days

2011-10-27T17:01:00.000-05:00

One of my nieces has recently taken to the noble ukelele as a way of dealing with the stress of a demanding college schedule.. and I have to admit: there was a time when I'd rather listen to cattle being mutiliated than ukelele arrangments.BUT I seem to have mellowed to the point where I enjoy the simple charm of the instrument...maybe because it's my niece (of whom I am very fond) reintroducing the instrument into my sphere of influence.So when Boingboing.net linked to this via buzzfeed, I was intrigued enough to run it down...and yes, it's exactly as charming and wonderful as you'd hope such a thing would be. Unless you're a 16 year old male into death metal, in which case this stuff will send your brain into vaporlock.

The Simpler The Better: Red Curry Paste Beef (and an unusual potato side)

2011-10-27T16:18:00.000-05:00

This is almost a balanced meal - the plate on the left has as much food as the plate on the right!

My "Simpler The Better" series of cookbooks by Leslie Revsin fell into disuse as I chased other, more glamorous recipes (and Sam The Cooking Guy is more fun to read and watch), but I was in the mood to do something "Simpler" recently, so I went with this: "organic" Amana style stewing beef from Trader Joes, cooked with onions, red curry paste, potato slices, coconut milk, garlic, and green beans (those weren't in the recipe, but I figured they couldn't hurt.)

It was pretty good, but couldn't compare with Dave Liberman's version with Merlot, or Art Smith's version with coffee and zinfandel used for the braising liquid. Still, it was a nice change of pace, and I like to kid myself that I could taste the quality of the beef.

Somewhat more interesting was the side dish, which I found in About.Com's Shortcut cooking guide: hashbrown potatoes and onions (or shallots) topped with pear slices and brie and then broiled. I made a 1/2 recipe of this, which may have been a mistake, because the dish didn't hang together well as I tried to flip it while browning the hashbrowns. It was still very nice - 3 minutes under the broiler softened the pear slices nicely and melted the brie, and the whole thing was tangy and crisp and salty and sweet all at the same time.

Exercises You Should Be Doing: Multi-Planar Hip Activation Drill - Tony Gentilcore

2011-10-24T13:38:00.000-05:00

If you've read or seen Sonnon's stuff (which I haven't in nearly a year), this will look familiar - Sonnon calls it a "4 corner balance drill". I think this will make an excellent supplement to my current emphasis on YiJinJing's "Fist Set:.

See the article for the video clips.

http://www.tonygentilcore.com/blog/exercises-you-should-be-doing-multi-p
lanar-hip-activation-drill/

...I've gone on record numerous times as saying that, generally
speaking, people like to do what they're good at and what's easy. Bicep
curls are a helluva lot easier than front squats. Heading to Papa
John's for "Half-Price Tuesdays" is a lot more convenient than grilling
up some grass fed beef with sauteed vegetables.

Additionally, people tend to skip what they deem is least important.
Take the dynamic warm-up for example. How many of you can honestly look
me in the eyes and say, unequivocally, that you go through an ENTIRE
warm-up from start to finish before EVERY training session?

Yeah, I thought so.

It's okay, I forgive you. I skip them, too. Sometimes. But keeping
that thought in mind, today I want to showcase a drill that I feel
provides a lot of bang for our warm-up buck.
What Is It: Multi-Planar Hip Activation Drill(s)
Who Did I Steal It From: None other than Quinnipiac University strength
coach, Brijesh Patel.
What Does It Do: A lot of dysfunction and imbalances can be attributed
to the hips. And, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise given there are
upwards of 30+ muscles that attach to the pelvis alone. I'd list them
all here, but I'm too lazy, and well, that's what Google is for.
Speaking specifically, though, the glute max, and to a lesser (albeit
important) degree, the glute medius tend to get most of the attention
when it comes to hip activation drills, and rightfully so! They're both
kind of a big deal in terms of playing major roles in overall hip
function.

Succinctly (because the hips are a fairly complex cornucopia of muscles,
tendons, ligaments, and fascia), one of the more popular
corrective/activation movements are side lying clams. I talked about
this drill briefly HERE, but my man Mike Robertson wrote an excellent
blog not too long ago that discusses them in more detail HERE.
As much as I LOVE this drill, I think it's rather self-limiting in the
sense that it doesn't take into account the more dynamic nature of life.
Now, don't get me wrong, pretty much everyone needs to start with side
lying clams -and perform them correctly - before moving on to something
more advanced. But once there, I feel that the multi-planar drill(s)
demonstrated below are a nice progression moving forward.

Hip Activation Phase I
What I love about this variation is that it challenges both the glute
max and glute medius to do one of their main jobs, which is to CONTROL
the femur in multiple planes of motion (saggital, frontal, and
transverse).

Moreover, another benefit to this drill is that it really challenges the
small, intrinsic muscles at the bottom of the feet which tend to be
woefully weak and inactive given the footwear we wear on a daily basis.

Hip Activation Phase 2

What I love about this variation is that it challenges both the glute
max and glute medius to do one of their main jobs, which is to CONTROL
the femur in multiple planes of motion (saggital, frontal, and
transverse).
Moreover, another benefit to this drill is that it really challenges the
small, intrinsic muscles at the bottom of the feet which tend to be
woefully weak and inactive given the footwear we wear on a daily basis.

In phase II, we're going to do the exact same sequence as above, except
now, instead of holding for time, we're going to add movement.
Again, to reiterate, try to keep your weight back in your toes and not
in your forefoot. Too, if you can, try to keep your non-standing foot
off the floor throughout the duration of the drill - but it's not the
end of the world if you can't. "Gathering" yourself by placing the foot
down on the floor in between reps is perfectly acceptable.

Phase III:
Here, with each sequence (Sagittal = foot going foward, Frontal = foot
going to the side, Transverse = foot rotating), 5-6 reps/each/per leg
should suffice.

Here, much like in Phase II, 5-6 reps/each/per leg will be plenty.
As you assuredly noticed by watching me perform them, it ain't easy.
Ideally, I'd suggest mastering one phase before moving on to the next.
Obviously, some people will progress faster than others, but I implore
you to not be an asshat and just go straight to phase III. Seriously,
don't do it.

Try adding these in as part of your general dynamic warm-up and let me
know what you think!

About.Com's Shortcut Cooking: Mango Curry Glazed Pork Tenderloin

2011-10-21T17:21:00.000-05:00

Only one thing smells like bacon, and that's...!

This was an easy combo: Make a glaze of Hot Mango Chutney, curry powder, oil and minced onions, brush most of i it onto a prepared pork tenderloin, put in on a baking pan in a 425 F oven for 15 minutes, take it out, turn it over, and brush with the remainder of the glaze, and bake/roast it for another 15 minutes. (I hedged my bets by cutting the tenderloin into 2 smaller pieces so it would cook a bit faster).

Meanwhile, I cooked a cup of quinoa in 1 and 1/4 cups of boiling chicken broth for 15 minutes and stirred in a handful of grated Parmesan cheese for one side dish. The author also had a suggestion for a simple side dish of peas and pesto: frozen petite peas thawed under cold running water, sauteed/heated through with a couple minced shallots, and finally a few TB of basil pesto in the skillet, and everything heated through. I decided at the last minute to add several slices of "ready bacon" to the peas, and it turned out very nicely.

I used to not understand the deal with pesto - in fact I thought it looked kind of nasty - but I think I had it mixed up somehow with tapenade (which I still can't bring myself to try.)

Oh, and my glorious wife had another go at "Pumpkin stuffed with Everthing Good" and it came out even better than before (thanks to the addition of Emmenthaler cheese and some sliced apple;)

You may all gnash your teeth with envy now.

Live! From The Inside Of My Pocket!

2011-10-21T17:06:00.002-05:00

I also seemed to have downloaded some ringtones with my butt. Stupid butt!

The Maker Movement Creates Jobs | PCWorld

2011-10-21T09:16:00.000-05:00

http://www.pcworld.com/article/242234/the_maker_movement_creates_jobs.ht
ml#tk.hp_new

As the unemployment crisis continues month after month, I'm tempted to
climb to the roof of my house and yell at the top of my lungs, "Themaker movement creates jobs."

This so obvious a fact seems lost on national decision-makers. The entire personal computer industry was born when a small group of hobbyists, The Homebrew Computer Club, met at Stanford University in 1975. Other industries are on the verge of being born if only our nation did more to support hobbyists.

What more could be done? Provide makers--hobbyists--spaces to gather and
tinker.

The hobbyists shouldn't have to put up the full cost of renting such a space. The work that is happening at these hacker spaces is often of a public nature. The scope of public work should not be constrained by the limits of private, personal funding.

Here is what happens at hackerspaces: realizations and discoveries. A single realization or discovery can be worth a billion dollars or more.It stands to reason that our nation needs to be doing much, much more to promote the maker movement.

Not far from Washington, D.C., where I live, 13 Catholic high schools in Baltimore, Maryland, are vacant. These schools were sadly closed last year and are now for sale. Wouldn't 13 large hackerspaces serve our country very well? Think of how much learning, exploration, and discovery could happen in those buildings if the buildings were open seven days a week.

You could have high school robotics teams meeting there, elementary students learning Scratch computer programming, green tech inventors doing their thing, computer refurbishers fixing up old computers, media production people pushing the limits of community-produced videos, classes in Google SketchUp, classes in
soldering, classes in 3D printing. The list goes on and on.

...The maker movement has given so much to this country, it's high time the
country put some wind beneath its wings. Let the maker movement soar and
new jobs will materialize from thin air.

Here is one way of thinking about this. Each time someone realizes something, they understand or "see" it. What we need is a nation that shines from see to shining see.

- Phil Shapiro
The blogger, a member of the Internet Press Guild, is an educator at a
public library in the Washington, D.C., area and teaches an occasional
graduate educational technology class at American University, in
Washington, D.C. He can be reached at philshapiroblogger@gmail.com and
on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/philshapiro

The ultimate Time Travel Mind F*ck - Primer (2004) - FAQ

2011-10-19T15:50:00.001-05:00

Chuck Klosterman mentioned the 2004 film "Primer" as the "best" time
travel film he's ever seen. This is because it does time travel right -
and looks hard at the "real" consequences of having a box that is able to
go 1300 minutes into the past. I HAVE to see this movie.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/faq#.2.1.5
Where did the title come from?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First thing, I saw these guys as scientifically accomplished but
ethically, morons. They never had any reasons before to have ethical
questions. So when they're hit with this device they're blindsided by
it. The first thing they do is make money with it. They're not talking
about the ethics of altering your former self. So to me, they're kids,
they're like prep school kids basically. To call it a primer or a lesson
was the easy way to go. And then there's also this power they have in
using the device is something almost worse than death. To put someone
else in the position where they're not sure they're in control of
anything. They're not in the front of the line anymore and they're
living in someone's past, to be secondary in that world. The thing that
is most important is to feel like you're at the front of the line, to be
prime or primer. I definitely never wanted to say that in the film, but
that's where it comes from.

Cooking For Two: Sukiyaki

2011-10-18T17:07:00.001-05:00

This is actually a "repeat" of a dish I made several years ago. I bring it up because I was going to make the version of sukiyaki I found in one of my Food and Wine collections, but the more I looked at that version, the less I wanted to make it - yes, the caramel sauce on the beef would have been nice, but everything else was just basically poured onto the noodles and mixed around, and the tofu was soft instead of firm, and they wanted Napa cabbage in there (which appears in my local Hy-Vee like, never)...it just seemed to promise to turn into a soggy mess, and way too reminiscent of those nasty La Choy/Chun King things out of a can that my grandmother would inflict on us when she was out of ideas and energy and wanted to cook something "exotic" like "chicken chow mein".

So I diverted and went with this: 1/2 lb of petite sirloin sliced thin, and seared in oil in a straight sided 10 inch skillet. Meanwhile, I combined 2/3 cup of low sodium soy sauce, a couple Tb of sugar, 1/2 cup of sherry (mirin would have been nice, but I haven't seen any in Omaha since World Market closed) and a bit of water and simmered it until the sugar dissolved.

I moved the seared beef strips to one quarter of the pan; put 8 oz of cubed firm tofu in the 2nd quarter; put some baby bella mushrooms in the 3rd section (the original recipe called for "enoki" mushrooms - yeah, good luck with that one in the Midwest, pal!); 3 oz or so of mung bean noodles in the last portion. I heaped some 3 inch sections of scallions in the middle,poured the soy/sugar/wine mixture over it, covered, and simmered on medium heat for about 7 minutes, long enough for the noodles to cook and soak up most of the sauce. (I did uncover the skillet a couple times to turn over the noodles and stir up the veggies so that everything had a chance to simmer in the sauce/fond/oil combo.)

I served it directly from the skillet into two pasta dishes, tossed some more sliced scallions on each portion and sprinkled some sesame seeds for cosmetic effect, too.

This worked quite well. You'd think all that soy sauce would make things unbearably salty, but the sugar and the wine mellowed it out...the mung bean noodles especially became a thing of beauty.

Four ways to grow your LinkedIn network | TechRepublic

2011-10-18T11:13:00.000-05:00

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/career/four-ways-to-grow-your-linkedin-
network/3547?tag=nl.e056
Here's an interesting tidbit: According to Job Searching with Social
Media for Dummies, the magic number of LinkedIn connections is 143.
Apparently, if you have fewer than that you're not going to have second-
or third-degree connections in any of the companies you want to work
for.
So how do you grow your LinkedIn network? Here are four ways:
1.Import your email addresses from Gmail, Hotmail, etc., and invite the
contacts to connect. If you use a desktop e-mail client, you can click
on Import your desktop email contacts and upload the file to LinkedIn.
2.Mine your classmates. On the Add connections page, you'll see a tab
called Classmates. Clicking this will bring up colleagues based on the
schools you have listed in your profile. You can sort by graduation year
as well.
3.Colleagues. Using this tab you can find people who work or worked at
the companies you have indicated in your Experience section. You can
scroll through the list and connect with anyone you recognize.
4.People you may know. This tab is an extension of the box you see when
you first log in. Based on the information in your profile, LinkedIn
will make a guess on other people you may know and lets you send an
invitation to connect.

5 Kitchen Tools That Moonlight as Other Things | The Feed

2011-10-18T07:55:00.001-05:00

Plus, you can use your floor wax as a desert topping!

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/curious-shortcuts/2011/09/5-kitch
en-tools-that-moonlight-as-other-things/
This is why I like ATK - they keep coming up with stuff like this. A
muffin tin to hold all my little setups instead of 17 ramekins and tiny
bowls? Why didn't I think of this???

Build muscle and cardio with the tire sled | Formosa Fitness

2011-10-17T10:59:00.001-05:00

I'd caption this "MUSH!", but Dave might kick my butt.

http://formosafitness.com/?p=445&cpage=1#comment-102
Man, I really like this idea. It's practical, inexpensive and looks like
a fair amount of "fun".
Three cheers and a dragon to Dave Chesser for posting this one. I am
definitely looking into it.

Lifehacker: Learn a New Skill This Weekend

2011-10-17T10:40:00.000-05:00

Note: I am posting this link because it has a lot of good information - but I think most people need their weekends to recharge their batteries, go outside in the fresh air, and maybe spend some quality time with their friends and family. You can't be a rah-rah-go-getter ALL the time.

http://lifehacker.com/5845274/learn-a-new-skill-this-weekend?tag=Weekend
hacker

A weekend may not seem like a lot of time, but you might be surprised by
what you can learn in just 48 hours. Here are a bunch of new skills you
can pick up on the weekend, or at least master the basics.

Learn to Code, Design and Create a Web Site, and Other Computer Skills
It's hard to get involved and obsessed with technology without wanting
to make some of it. That might mean designing a cool web site or
developing an app of some kind. We've put a lot of effort into bringing
relevant lessons and resources to help get you started in all those
areas. On the coding side of things, we have Lifehacker Night School
courses on the basics of programming and making a web site. You can even
learn about the design aspects in our Photoshop lessons. We even have a
previous Weekendhacker on the basics of design.
For a more in-depth look at learning all sorts of new things, we really
like Lynda. It's not free or anything, but you don't pay much per month
for a membership and you can pay for that membership for only as long as
you need it to learn the skills you want to learn. You can pick up a lot
in a weekend through one of our lessons, but you can learn a ton more
over the course of a month. If you're looking for other alternative
resources, however, you'll find those at the end of all our lessons.
Video-based learning isn't for everyone, and we've got plenty of books
and digital text that can help you as well.
If hardware is more in tune with your interests, you'll want to check
out our lessons on building a computer. Perhaps you'd like to make that
computer a hackintosh, in which case you should bookmark our always
up-to-date guide on building one. If you're looking for something a
little less intense, check out our home networking lessons. It'll help
you learn more about how your home network works, plus add some great
new features.

Advance Your Knowledge of Photography, Drawing, and Other Artistic
Skills
If you'd rather indulge your artistic side this weekend, we can help you
out there as well. In addition to learning Photoshop, we've got a whole
set of lessons on the basics of photography. If you're still trying to
find the perfect camera before you get started, we can help you pick one
out. Of course, you don't have to limit yourself to still photography.
We have video editing lessons as well.
Cameras aside, you might want to learn to draw. We can teach you digital
drawing and painting, or there are plenty of other resources that can
help you do it the old fashioned way. YouTube has plenty of lessons,
such as drawing everything from eyes to feet to hands to manga. A quick,
specific search will dig up pretty much anything you want to learn to
draw, but those videos should give you a good start.

Pick Up a New Musical Instrument
Plenty of people have learned to play a musical instrument just through
the help of the internet, thanks to so many people offering their
expertise for free. You can learn popular instruments like the guitar,
piano, and drums drums (and maybe you'll someday be as good as this
91-year-old woman), or even orchestral instruments like the flute and
violin. Searching on sites like YouTube and VideoJug bring up tons of
options, so you really only have to decide what you want to learn to
play, watch the videos, and practice.

Master Some Handy DIY Skills
We post a lot of DIY projects, but many require a few skills. Learning
to solder is a great place to start. Some of the coolest projects
involve an arduino, as it's a tool that makes it possible for some
amazing electronic hacks. Here's a getting started with arduino guide,
plus a comic to help you familiarize yourself as well.
If you're thinking of making anything from a new t-shirt to a laptop
sleeve, it helps to learn how to sew. While this might seem like a skill
you can get by without, it really opens you up to a world of new things
you can make. I've made my own wallet, sling-style backpack, a laptop
sleeve that converts into a memory foam pillow on the airplane, and lots
more. If you're design-savvy, it also helps to know how to screenprint
(or just fake it with a permanent marker) so you can truly customize all
the stuff you make.

Learn to Cook
Cooking is a really handy skill that everyone can appreciate. Even if
you don't love to do it, learning a few dishes is a great way to impress
people or save some money while still eating tasty food. We've put
together more than 10 dishes everyone should learn to make, so that's a
good place to start if you're particularly new. If you're looking for
recipes and demonstrations, we've found some great stuff on How2Heroes,
Epicurious, and Gojee. Also, don't forget to check out all the great
content generated from our food weeks. There's a whole weekend worth of
knowledge right there. But if fast food is more your style, learn to
make it at home. Sometimes nothing is better than a homemade Frosty.

Five Minute Getaway: Las Vegas

2011-10-17T09:54:00.000-05:00

see more

I was in the area for several days in 2007, and I can attest that in the right light, Las Vegas can look fabulous even in daylight (at least on the Strip, at least when you frame the shot right.)

Exuberant Animal: The Solo Short Form

2011-10-16T22:36:00.000-05:00

Exuberant Animal Short Form from Frank Forencich on Vimeo.

I see this as an exercise "kata" - there are all kinds of possibilities suggested by this form.

Weaknesses? Sure - no indications of breathing patterns or intention (or "I" in chi kung). And it might give you a false sense of confidence in your balance - as far as I know, balance (like flexibility) is highly position specific.

Still, a daily challenge to your kineasthetic sense isn't a bad thing. And it would be a nice supplement to my current emphasis on the Yi Jin Jing, which has no balancing postures at all. I imagine the book and further examination of the web site might fill in the gaps.

Memebase: How Men (Including Me) Feel About Driving

2011-10-13T16:59:00.000-05:00

I'm 54, and I can testify that everything here is accurate (so far):

see more Memebase and check out our Troll Face lols!

There I Fixed It (Historical Thursday) : "The Isolater"

2011-10-13T16:46:00.001-05:00

That Hugo Gernsback - what a card!

Training: Yes, Virginia, Even TCM Can Hurt You!

2011-10-13T16:28:00.000-05:00

After about 10 days of diving back into practice of the "Muscle Change Classic" (the tension oriented "fist" set seen in Yang's book "Chi Kung: Health And Martial Arts"), a strange thing happened: I was squirming around on the floor at work, under a carrell in the Youth Center while trying to reach a port in the wall and something in my sacrum went "twang!"...and I was in a bit of pain after that. Nothing horrible, mind you - maybe a 3 on a scale from 1 to 10, certainly nothing like the Bad Old Days when my SI joint was out of whack - but still, nagging pain where there should be none.

And I realized - "Crap, I probably upped the repetitions and volume in my practice too quickly." I let the wonderful calming and energizing effects I felt from the set fool me into thinking that there was "no downside" to standing in place doing static tension exercises for 40 minutes at a time.

It's humbling to realize that when you're approaching mid-50s and you are still essentially working indoors at other peoples desks all day, that almost anything new or radical can injure you. (It was actually much worse in my 40s when I was stuck at my own desk all day, but still.)

On the other hand, I figured out that with all the time I was spending standing with my arms extended in various positions (and most of that time pulling "backwards" with the muscles in the lats, scapulae and rotator cuffs), even with a vastly improved posture (no more thoracic "slump"), my lower back was getting overloaded.

So the good news is that I've learned enough from various sources to figure out some "compensations" to add to the classic recommended "recovery work" - essentially I've added several floor exercises (pose of he child, angry cat and dog, bird dogs. etc) and mobility drills to unjam the facets of the lower back and stretch out the ankles and feet.

Also, I will hold back on adding any more repetitions or postures from the supplementary "palm" set while my tissues adjust, no matter how good I feel.

The Frugal Foodie: Roast Chicken With Potatoes and Tomatoes

2011-10-07T16:47:00.000-05:00

"Two Fat Als" (they're not really obese) don't have this exact recipe on their website, but there is one pretty close to it HERE. TFF adds rosemary and thyme (and some quartered red onions) to be tossed with the vegetables (instead of oregano) before roasting, and they also have you squeeze a lemon over the ingredients before you start baking, and then add 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth after 20 minutes. Then when the chicken is done, you pour off the drippings into a sauce pan, skim off the fat, whisk in a Tb of flour and a Tb of whole grain mustard (and salt and pepper) and simmer until it thickens. This goes over the roasted goodies on the table (and boy, is it good!)

You know, looking at the "similar" recipe - (it's from Jaime Oliver)...man, I want to make that one, too!!

Seeded Roma tomatoes, new red potatoes, red onions and absolutely NO OLIVES tossed with salt, chopped fresh rosemary, dried thyme, salt, pepper, and olive oil...

Squeeze the juice of a lemon over the pan goodies before placing in a 425 F oven...

If you've never roasted tomatoes, you may have no idea how good even mediocre store-bought tomatoes get when you do this. My wife looked at these tomatoes with a shine in her eyes that she normally reserves for Hugh Jackman.

The 10 Rules of Social Media Commentary | BNET

2011-10-07T15:38:00.001-05:00

http://www.bnet.com/blog/ceo/the-10-rules-of-social-media-commentary/859
2?promo=713&tag=nl.e713

The 10 Rules of Social Media Commentary

1.Share thought provoking stuff, not trite fluff. There are hundreds of
microbloggers and commenters that are complete frauds who pass
themselves off as leadership gurus and the like. They post mountains of
obvious platitudes that thousands of mindless followers eat up. If you
want to be taken seriously by real business people, steer clear of that
route.
2.Differentiate; don't be a contrarian just for clicks. Sure, you've got
to have a bold, unique value proposition to rise above the noise these
days. Still, if you're going to challenge conventional wisdom, you'd
damn well better have something solid to back it up. Otherwise you'll
instantly lose credibility.
3.Tell interesting anecdotes; don't overreach with broad conclusions.
One commenter recently ranted about the screwed up, dysfunctional, evil
little family-owned business from which he was recently fired, then
concluded it foretold the demise of corporate America. Bit of a reach.
4.Relate to the post; don't spam it with gratuitous self-promotion. When
you comment on a post just to get your link in there, you're like a
parasite who adds no value. It's tantamount to unwanted telemarketing
calls and spam that fills up our email in-baskets. Really.
5.Have a sense of humor and humility; don't be thin-skinned and
fatheaded. Some people wear their emotions on their sleeves or puff
themselves up to appear like they're big shots. It's sad to watch. All
that does is make you look frail and small. Business people see right
through that stuff. Great example: "I'm unsubscribing." Nobody cares.
6.Comment with passion and resolve, not anger and vitriol. Conflict can
be constructive or destructive depending on how you do it. It helps to
follow the golden rule of conflict resolution: address the problem, not
the person. Too many use comments to act out and throw tantrums like
whiny children.
7.Stay on topic; don't go off on a tangent. One of my recent posts used
a metaphor that involved orange juice (don't ask). You wouldn't believe
how many people commented about orange juice - all the sugar, the
calories. Sheesh. And God forbid you use a politician as a leadership
example - some people will always go off on the politics.
8.Give your opinion; don't pass judgment. Saying "you're right" or
"you're wrong" can be a figure of speech to denote agreement or not, but
some folks come across as the social media equivalent of judge and jury.
You'll find plenty of sad examples of that - even by some well-known
people - in controversial posts like The Gender Pay Gap is a Complete
Myth.
9.If you can't write, don't. When comments are incomprehensible jumbles
of misspelled words and poor grammar, that doesn't reflect well on you.
It doesn't have to be perfect, but if you wouldn't speak that way in a
business situation - at work, in an interview, with a customer - don't
write that way when you link or comment.
10.Read the whole post; don't go off on a headline or one sentence. All
too often, folks retweet or comment on something they haven't even read
all the way through. They come across like they have the attention span
of a flee or they don't know what they're talking about. Ever heard of
RTFM? Same thing, except I'll call this RTFP

2011-10-07T11:23:00.000-05:00