Representation Without Taxation

"I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car.  I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage." (link)

"We need our own kitchen and our own bathroom.  Please help."  Follow this link to the full background on this plea from Henrietta Hughes.

"Oh it's such a pleasure to see you Mr President. Thank you for taking time out of your day. Ohhh, gracious God thank you so much! UAGGGGAAA", "Mr President. I am at Edison State college at my second semester . I have been at the same job at McDonalds for 4+1/2 years because of the fact that I can't find another job. Do you have any plan to make them give me any better benefits than what I already receive?" (link)

Today, the news came out that Romney said (back in May 2012) that 47% are dependent on the government.  The media and the Obama campaign are trying to make this into a gaffe.  But the reality is, people have been talking about this subject for a long time. People agree with Romney and are finally relieved to hear a politician actually saying something people have been thinking for years.

I started off this post with three comments from Obama voters - three people who are part of that 47%.

There are a couple of solutions to this problem.

1. In order to vote, you have to show that you paid federal taxes.

2. Or, as Scott Adams (Dilbert) wrote back in June 2011: "My recommendation for putting a safeguard on the state of the union is that every adult citizen should pay federal income taxes, even if it is just one dollar per year. For the benefit of the country, it is important to blur the line between rich and poor. By analogy, no one cares that senior citizens get discounted movie tickets, but it would be an issue if the tickets were totally free. Every theater would be clogged with senior citizens and the theater owners would go broke. There’s a huge psychological and practical difference between discounted prices and free."

Another thought - when Obama said, "you didn't build that", referring to people who didn't build the infrastructure all our businesses are seemingly run on, by all means, he should have been talking to the 47%, not the 53%.  The 47% didn't build any of that, because they paid no taxes.  On the other hand, the 53% who did pay taxes, in fact did "build that."

 

looks like i'll get that tablet now :-)

30/30 Run/Walk

Over the last several weeks, I've been trying to complete the full cycle of running 3 minutes and then walking 3 minutes for a full hour - which would mean I would run a total of 30 minutes and walk for 30 minutes.

There is a series of trails behind our house ... I'd go about two loops around the outer trail.

What would typically happen is, I'd get to about 21 minutes (total) of running and then I could only walk from that point on.  I'd go about 2 or 3 times a week ... and no matter the situation, weather or my energy level, by the time I complete my 7th run cycle, I could no longer run ... it'd be just before I completed the 2nd loop.

Then we had a cold front move in ...the humidity down; temps went from mid to upper 90's to upper 80's and lower 90's.  On Saturday, we had a high of 86 and I was able, for the first time, run the entire 30 minutes ... in other words, I ran 3, walked 3 for the full 60 minutes.  And it was wonderful!

Today, I had to take the car to the mechanic.  Since I had no ride home, I just ran home.  I was able to get up to 27 minutes no problem.  I love cold fronts in the fall!

Also - just to note - I'm take up to 4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar a day now.  I mix two tbls in with a regular-sized sports drink bottle, and then I dump in some crystal light.  The ACV makes the CL quite zippy!  I noticed, that after I upped the ACV intake, all my mosquito bites seemed to vanish in a matter of days.  Also, it seems the fungus is continuing to recede.

a8

Red Eye Tree Frog

Toenails August 16

I've not been so diligent with the ACV.  But back in February/March, when I was a bit more diligent, the toe nails seemed to improve - especially the right big toe.  The left big toe improved, but then I injured it and it's been pretty discolored for a few months.

I plan to be more diligent with the ACV, but wanted to get another 'baseline'

Lazy dog Sunday

the 2pm energy infusion

how do i type this up ...?

night stand

Smoothie Recipe #1

I love smoothies.  Here's one that I've been making quite regularly lately:

1 banana
handful of ice cubes
1 to 2 cups of low fat milk
1 Dannon Pure yogurt
2 Crystal Light packets (usually one is Energy and the other is Fruit Punch flavor)

We have a BlendTec ... I choose the "smoothie" button - it mixes on super high for about 40 seconds.

It is about 340 calories.

New Year

Every year, the 4th of July feels like the beginning of a new year.  Summer is in full swing; vacation trips are beginning and ending and it is a good time for reflection.

Our vacation trip just ended.  We have a few other family events this summer before school begins again.  Also, every July, excitement begins to build for the college football season.  By the time August rolls around, the excitement grows more and then in no time, the season begins.  Baseball playoffs begin; basketball begins again, then you have the four big holidays.  In my opinion, the year begins July 1.  From July 1 to January 1, the weeks and months are packed full of wonderful things.

With that in mind, I begin a new year of sorts.  I joined the gym yesterday and started working out today.  I recommitted to myself to get into better shape.  I can't just rely on trying to minimize calories.  I've found that strategy doesn't work well.  The walking is great, but it doesn't burn enough calories.  I need to beef up the muscles and burn more calories.

So my plan, at least for the next few months, is this:
4:50am - get up, drive to gym
5:15-6:15am - work out (M/W/F cardio days (W=basketball); Tu/Th/Sa weights)
6:15-6:30am - shower
6:30-7:30am - commute to work
4:30-5:30pm - commute home
5:30-6:30pm - M take dog on walk, Tu/Th take boys to gym to play basketball or shoot around, W rest, F open.
6:30-10:00pm - M family time, Tu/Th dinner, chess club on line, W Boy Scouts, F open/date night

I plan on using my fitness pal again - to track what I'm eating as well as posting my exercises and weigh-ins.

My goal is to get to 180 ... to be a "fit" 180.

The NBA (Fart) Finals

How dumb are the team names in this year's finals?  Both names are related to farts.

I'm not rooting so much for the Thunder as I am rooting against the Heat.

Alien 1979 and Oatmeal

My memory is a little fuzzy since I was so young ... but I think my older sister was getting married and for some reason only my parents could go, so my oldest brother stayed with my sister and me until my parents got back. He was in college at the time I think.

It must have been a Friday night ... he rented and watched Alien.  The scene below horrified me and my sister so much that we wouldn't eat our oatmeal the next morning.  The video doesn't really show it, but I think the dude was just eating something resembling oatmeal.  So my sister and I made the connection in our minds that eating the oatmeal would cause an alien to burst out of our chest.

Anyway - Prometheus is out now and one of these nights I plan on checking it out.  Looks just as good as 1979 Alien.

Habits

Nigel Davies had a great post (as is almost always the case) on his Chess Improver Blog.  His recent post is about a OpEd piece in the New York Time entitled The Amygdala Made Me Do It.  This general topic of the science behind our decisions is very fascinating to me.  It has implications for pretty much everything in any one person's life - especially mine.

Having dabbled a bit with the concept of changing a habit (it's much more difficult to simply drop a habit; you must change it instead), I've found that it indeed works.  You just have to stay focused on it long enough.  It's worked for me before, but then I slipped back into 'bad' habits.  However, a few good habits have stuck.

Anyway - I was preparing a "productivity" minute for my job and I decided to discuss this simple formula for changing a habit.  Here it is below:

1. Identify your habit's routine

• every habit has a basic pattern
• routine, reward, cue
• identify the components of your loop

2. Experiment with different rewards

• rewards satisfy cravings
• to figure out which cravings are driving a habit, change the reward and keep experimenting until you figure it out.

3. Isolate the cue

• isolating the cue is vital
• take note of 5 things when you 'crave' the bad routine/reward
• location
• time
• emotional state
• other people you're with
• the immediately preceding action

4. Have a plan

• now that you've figured out the loop (routine, reward, cue), you can shift the behavior with your plan (new habit)
• when I see a CUE, I will do ROUTINE, in order to get a REWARD

5. Look for keystone habits

• where do you begin to change your habits?
• focus on keystone habits - those habits that have the power to start a chain reaction which shift other patterns in your life
• ask yourself: which habits are most core to my self image?

More info at http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/5-ways-to-change-a-habit/

Midway & Memorial Day Weekend

Cable TV was a luxury for my family when I was a kid.  I don't know when cable TV was invented, but my parents didn't get it hooked up until the mid-80s ... I don't even remember the exact year.  If I were to guess, it'd be 1985 or 1986.  Anyway, the coolest thing about cable TV were the movies!  Back then before TBS was a comedy station, it was a movie and Atlanta Braves baseball station.  So I would spend my summers watching movies on TBS and then flipping back and forth between WGN and TBS watching Cubs and Braves baseball.

With Memorial Day weekend, TBS would usually air the movie Midway or Tora, Tora, Tora.  I loved these movies!  My parents would often remark that my (much) older brothers would replay the battle of Midway with these little wood blocks.  I remember finding those blocks in our first home's garage.

On Saturday, my wife took one of our kids out on a date and errands.  While they were out, my oldest son and I were watching TV.  We started watching the Texas Rangers plays, but then started flipping channels and landed on the AMC channel which was playing Midway.  We caught it about half-way through - right in the thick of the battle.  I didn't know if my son would like such an old movie, but we watched and he was hooked. Yeah, the special effects aren't great ... or the original film footage they spliced in was kind of grainy ... but it was still great action and it was history.

Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Tipping Point was a very interesting read.  It read quite a bit like a marketing guru how-to book more than anything else.

This book talked about quite a few things ... Hush Puppies, the STD epidemic in Baltimore, the crime wave in New York city and how it all came to a halting stop, suicide in Micronesia, teenage smoking rates, Sesame Street, Blue's Clues, Gore-Tex, the rule of 150, Airwalk shoes, the Good Samaritan 'test' and on and on.  The book was full of stories and what it was about those unique stories that made them examples of tipping points.

And this essentially was the author's point ... that we tend to think we need complex solutions to our big problems, when in fact, all we need is to think about the situation a bit ... really understand it and then more often than not, a "band-aid" solution will fix it.

His closing remarks in the afterward were very interesting.  He said that with the explosion of the Information Age, we all need to beware of isolation and information overload.  The people who will really help us in this new age will be the Mavens.  If we can find Mavens, then the market or epidemic you are trying to start will be successful.

Restaurant Rave: Mooya

Get the Iceburger!

I'm a sucker for a good burger every now and then.  Steak-n-Shake and Culver's are two of my favorites.  Last summer, I ate at In-n-Out for the first time - that was pretty good too.

So when I saw a Mooya open up just down the street from where I live, I decided I needed to check it out.

After a Cub Scout pack meeting one night, I took my boys to Mooya to get some shakes.  The shakes were pretty good.  I like Culver's better.  Of course, being an ice cream fanatic, I'm fairly picky about my ice cream.  But the boys loved it.

A week or so later, another opportunity presented itself to go to Mooya.  This time I ordered a burger and fries.  Generally speaking, I try to have a bare minimum to nothing in the carbs category - so I was feeling a little anxiety about getting a full burger.  I figured I could just eat everything but the bread.  But as I was ordering, I found that they sell what they call the "iceburger" which is just their normal burger, but the buns are replaced with giant pieces of iceberg lettuce.  I was very happy with the iceburger.

Their fries are pretty darn good too.  So if you see a Mooya near you, go check it out.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

In 22 days, I ready 655 pages - about 30 pages a day.  But in reality, when I did read it, I would read 40 or 50 pages at a time, so I read this book over about two actual weeks.

The first two books were suspenseful and enthralling.  This one had all the suspense and thrill too.  But as I was reading it, I wondered if it really was going to be predictable or not.  I had this feeling about how I knew the book was going to end, but at the same time, I wondered if that is what the author intended and therefore was going to throw a major curve-ball at the end of the book.  It was that way for about the first 3/4ths of the book.

But by the time Blomkvist is rescued from the Yugoslav hit-men, I knew how the book was going to end.  Up the that point, I was teetering between "predictable ending" vs. "curve-ball".  After Blomkvist survived and the trial started, I wasn't in suspense as much.  The best way I can describe it is how I feel playing a long chess game.  Who is going to win remains in doubt for about the first 20 to 30 moves.  But then one player begins to gain small advantages and then reaches a tipping point when you know what the outcome is going to be.  From that point on, it's just a matter of finishing the game.  That's how this book read for me.

Now, the last part of the book was a bit unexpected.  I had completely forgotten about Niedermann until he entered the scene again at the very end of the book.  The last 30 or so pages were like the last big firework in a 4th of July fireworks display.

I'm selling all three books to Half Price Books tonight - I don't really want these books sitting around collecting dust and I don't think my wife will want to read them.  Also, I found all three movies (Swedish versions) on Netflix.  Not sure I'll watch them, but I'm tempted.

If I can find them at HPB tonight, I plan on getting Tipping Point, Outliers & Blink - all three by Malcolm Gladwell.  I keep running into articles citing one of these books - it must be a sign.

New Shoes!

The soles of my old Brooks Adrenaline GTS 10 shoe were wearing extremely thin.  I've been suffering the last few weeks and months with this 'ol boys.  But they have served faithfully the last few years.

I think I got them back in 2009 or maybe early 2010 - can't quite remember.  But they have a lot of miles on them.  Go ahead and click on the picture and take a look at that sole ... its worn out.

My new Brooks GTX arrived.  These are the trail version of the Adrenaline GTS shoes.  The GTS shoes are up to version 12 now.  So I guess that means I probably bought my GTS 10's back in 2010.  Anyway, the GTX is a trail show - more durable, the sole is beefier, the shoe is made of Gore-tex and is more resistant to water.

I'm really looking forward to my 4 mile walk today.

Just a quick update on the diet ...  I had tried intermittent fasting several months ago after reading fitnessblackbook and eat-stop-eat.  I came across a new blog - leangains - this week.  He talks extensively about the good things of fasting.  He also mentioned that LISS - low intensity steady state - while fasting might be better at burning more fat than HIIT.  So this week, I've been eating once a day; waiting 18-24 hours, walking 4 miles between meals and then having a dinner of mostly protein.  I've never felt better!

My mind is clear; I LOVE my 4 mile, hour-long walks with my dog Fritz every day.  And when I finally break my fast, I feel full really quickly and therefore eat less.  Now when I fast, I still drink lots of water.  And when I eat, I try to have mostly protein.  This week started off at above 217.  I last weighed in on Thursday and was at 213.2.  My wife's birthday was Thursday - we went out to eat.  And then we went on a date last night - out to eat again.  And I've not weighed in the last two days.  But today I'm fasting again until 6pm, and then having a light protein dinner.  Tomorrow morning will give me a good indication of how this week went.

Also, I have this goal of walking 4 miles every day for 1 year.  So far, I've walked 4 every day this week; I started Sunday night.