books stacked on my floor to be read

1. The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould
2. A House for Mr. Biswas, by VS Naipaul
3. The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass
4. Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov
5. Shadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen

books i need to read now

Okay, new list. I'll keep adding to the previous one, slowly. These are books that need reading (in no particular order; bold indicates priority):

1. Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers
2. The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass (new translation by Breon Mitchell)
3. The Bin Ladens, by Steve Coll
4. The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, by Alvaro Mutis
5. Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, by Alice Dreger
6. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, by Wells Tower
7. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
8. Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, by Maile Meloy
8. The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes
9. Appointment in Samarra, by John O'Hara
10. Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
11. Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov
12. Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov
13. A House for Mr. Biswas, by VS Naipaul
14. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
15. The Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas
16. The Nature and Destiny of Man, by Reinhold Niebhur
17. The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould
18. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
19. Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

That should be a good start.

i am going to try to list all the books i have read this year

Came across something called the 50 books project. Obvious goal was for the participants to read 50 books in 2009. I didn't get close, but here's a list of what I did read. There must be more that I'm forgetting and I'll add as I remember others. In no particular order:

1. The White Man's Burden, by William Easterly
2. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
3. The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Mantle of the Prophet, by Roy Mottahedeh
5. Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie
6. Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee
7. Waiting for the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee
8. Slow Man, by J.M. Coetzee
9. 2666, by Roberto Bolano
10. Eichmann in Jerusalem, by Hannah Arendt
11. Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
12. The Varieties of Scientific Experience, by Carl Sagan
13. Alphabet Juice, by Roy Blount
14. Open, by Andre Agassi
15. Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges (in translation)
16. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
17. Athletic Body in Balance, by Gray Cook
18. Athletic Development, by Vern Gambetta
19. Homicide, by David Simon
20. The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
21. A Tranquil Star, by Primo Levi (again)
22. The Wheel on the School, by Meindert DeJong (again)
23. No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy
24. In the Land of Invented Languages, by Arika Okrent
25. A Spot of Bother, by Mark Haddon
26. A Wanderer in the Perfect City, by Lawrence Weschler
27. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
28. The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham (again)
29. Humboldt's Gift, by Saul Bellow
30. The Little Prince, by Antoine du Saint-Exupery
31. Logicomix, by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou
32. A Fan's Notes, by Frederick Exley

tight words/names/titles

Can't be bothered to go back through all my old posts and find the original list, so I'm just going to recreate and expand. Here will be an ongoing list of words, names and titles that I think are awesome and worth noting.

• D'Brickashaw Ferguson - football player
• Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters - by JD Salinger
• Go Tell it on the Mountain - by James Baldwin
• phenylalanine - amino acid
• Takeo Spikes - football player
• Let the Right One In - movie
• International Church of the Reign of God - church
• United House of Prayer for All People - church
• Wide Sargasso Sea - by John Steinbeck
• Malagasy - a person from Madagascar
• The Curve of Binding Energy - by John McPhee

michigan - ohio state 2009

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

two things

First: Step Rideau! I was listening to Texas Fred yesterday and I just enjoy so much some of the music he plays. Specifically, the up-beat, party, can't-not-move zydeco. The slower, more ballad-y stuff I don't like at all. But the fun stuff rocks. So after a little research I finally went and got myself a starter album: Don't Ask Why, by Step Rideau and the Zydeco Outlaws. It's an A.

Second: Steven Pinker's review of Gladwell's new book is just spot-on. A particular gem: "In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his apercus, I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer's education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong." Money. Bad typo in there, though, a parenthetical remark has no close parenthesis. OOPS.

Because I'll think this is funny to look back on in six months, here's my starting lineup this week for the East Silver Spring Pandas:

QB Philip Rivers
RB Michael Turner
RB Joseph Addai
RB Ricky Williams
WR Braylon Edwards
WR Devery Henderson
TE Kellen Winslow
D/ST SAINTS
K Dan Carpenter

I should win in a walk, but that might just be the three-game win streak talking.

hee hee

hooks

I get a lot of pleasure from finding songs that form the hooks for other songs that I like. Of course, this is not a particularly special or unique trait; lots of people are trying to make a living making new music out of the old to begin with, let alone simply enjoying what others are doing. Anyway, it's fun to hear "Eye Know" and think, "Peg." This is on my mind because I went out last night for my friend Jake's birthday and the DJ at Saint Ex was playing a fun (if not particularly original or adventurous--but hey, it was Saint Ex) mix. And he was doing the real way, with records on a pair of turntables, messing with speed and blending songs into each other. He did the Sinnerman-to-Get-By transition and at another point played the source of the hook for Common's "The Light" and then obviously played "The Light" itself. Hadn't heard that hook before so I asked him what it was. He told me, well, this:

Just for fun, here's "The Light" (beat by one of the greatest ever at making new music from old, J Dilla):


And because I feel like it, here's Sinnerman and Get By, and Peg and Eye Know.



UMG sucks and won't allow embedding, but here's Get By





Hurray for music.

reading update

A few things I've been reading recently:

• Finished The White Man's Burden. Interesting and the guy certainly has good points to make, but in the end way too far off in the Friedman/Gladwell end of the pool. Cutesy, lots of fluff and lots of using anecdotes or clever framing to make things appear the way the author wants. But not so clever that it's comfortable to read and accept.
• Finished "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and "Happy Ever After" and started "The Cossacks," all by Leo Tolstoy. Happy Ever After was good and such but "TDOII" was just spectacular. Tolstoy really didn't think too much of the bourgeoisie and petty upper class. Devastatingly incisive and observant without being sarcastic. Not that I read Russian, but I think the translation could probably have been a little more elegant. Not sure what to think of "The Cossacks" yet.
• Cool article about caloric restriction and longevity. Intermittent fasting is pretty interesting. Not really interested in it for myself at the moment but there seems to be a lot of anecdotal and experiential evidence that it has benefits all over the place.
• Another awesome article, this one about the potential of synthetic biology, and also somewhat about the issues and pitfalls that people are worried about.

I need a new book.

fantasy football is fun

The end. Time to get back to Staffing Time Allocation for Africa. Yaaayyyy.

pubmed!

Well, I can't believe it's taken me this long but I finally discovered PubMed. Free online journal articles about every medical-related subject imaginable. Wheeee!!!!

Gold mine

30 days

Well, it's been exactly one month since my last post. And I just got back from a week at Emerald Isle with the fam and Bill and the Herschkowitzes and (to a lesser extent than years past) the other house. We had a wonderful time (thanks again, M&D!), relaxing, swimming, playing tennis and scrabble and celebrity (an improvement on simple charades), kayaking, etc. Plus the weather was just killer until yesterday morning when we were packing and it drizzled/rained.

In other news, I finally found the takedown of Paleo lifestyle people that I've been hoping to find since I first came across Conditioning Research and Mark's Daily Apple last year. It's here (an interesting read even if you don't know what I'm talking about): Paleofantasies of the perfect diet. Basically, I've always thought that the Paleo model was, well, not as well-thought-out as its fervent adherents might like. And that's putting it gently. There's something inherently appealing about the idea that if we could only return to our pre-agricultural roots we'd be healthy and strong again. But if you think about it for more than fifteen seconds, you start to find all kinds of holes in the logic.

Also, as I delve more and more into Lyle McDonald (of BodyRecomposition) and his forums (both the nice one on his main site, and the hidden and vastly more entertaining Monkey Island forums (the "mean" forums), I've begun to realize how deeply stupid a lot of the stuff online is, even stuff that on the surface looks legit. CrossFit, Paleo, T-Nation, most products from Eric Cressey, Mike Robertson, Alwyn Cosgrove, or whoever. Garbage, or, even if not garbage, vastly inferior and often much more expensive than whatever it's derived from. I've been reading Lyle's stuff for a few months now and from his style and forums always thought of him as kind of uptight and obsessed with keeping things clean and nice. However, the mean forums are pretty much completely uncensored. Much more awesome (and geeky).

I am a dork.

newspapers and a wedding video

The piece in the New York Review this issue about the rise of blogs and the decline of newspapers is really, really interesting, perhaps the most well-though-out and engaging thing I've read about how things are and they way they're going. Usually these things seem to take polemical form. Newspaper defenders say, "Blogs are parasites on all our hard work," and bloggers (at least the ones I read) go, "The MSM is out of touch and does nothing but defend the status quo," and everyone gets plugs their ears and says, "LALALALALALA," a la Stephen Colbert. Happens in many arenas, I suppose. But Michael Massing doesn't seem to have an axe to grind here, he's just curious about what's up. Very refreshing. Although I have to say, the article was ever so slightly harder to take seriously because of the inclusion of Ross "Douche Hat" Douthat. That nickname is just too funny.

On an unrelated note, awesome wedding video. These people are cool:

hum-te-tum

Finished Midnight's Children a while ago now. I liked it a lot but Booker of Bookers? It wasn't THAT good. Now, I'm about 150 pages into The Mantle of the Prophet and almost done with No Country for Old Men. TMOTP is pretty academic in structure and tone but it's engaging and the subject matter (Iranian and Eastern Islamic history) is so new to me that I'm really enjoying it. The author focuses on individuals as a way to examine the larger history, which, considering the apparently huge volume of interesting characters in Iranian history, was a pretty good choice on his part. NCFOM is pretty much exactly the same as the movie version. I mean exactly. Plot, characterization, tone. If it were a graphic novel the Coen brothers would have just made a frame-for-frame recreation. Entertaining but ultimately not that interesting. One difference: The book does more overt philosophizing (think monologues) than the movie.

In other news, I interviewed for a new job at CHF but don't think I'm going to get it. That's alright, though, it was worth it just to get myself out there in a positive way as a possible candidate for other job openings. And it got me to update my resume and get some more experience interviewing. Both valuable things.

In training news, I hurt my back a little over two weeks ago but it healed in a week. I did some lower-intensity workouts last week and played in my summer league games and with Joose on Sunday and then yesterday got back onto the plan I set up last month. With frisbee 3x/week I think that big gains in the gym will have to wait until the fall. After (hopefully) Regionals in early October. We got the final tournament schedule for Joose and it is as follows:
August 1/2: Summer Daze Disc Harvest in Worton, MD
August 15/16: Summer Glazed Daze in Winston-Salem, NC (won't be at this one because of the beach)
August 29: Horsetown Throwdown in Poolesville, MD (I guess the team came together too late to get a bid to the Chesapeake Open, which is a much bigger tournament)
September 19/20: Sectionals in Upperville, VA
October 3/4: Regionals in Upperville, VA (se espera)

Hurray for frisbee tournaments! Continuing the disjointed and rambling nature of this post, I just opened the 2008 UNDP Human Development Report and haven't even started reading it yet but noticed that at least half the credited staff (some of the names are of indeterminate gender to my ignorant self) and a majority of the leadership of the report are women. Cool.

some new books

I'm almost done with Midnight's Children, so I got to thinking about what I'd like to read next. Then once that ball was rolling it was hard to stop and I came up with this order from Amazon:

• Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran, by Roy Mottahedeh
• Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace - or War, by Mary Anderson
• Refugee Health: An Approach to Emergency Situations, by Medecins Sans Frontieres
• Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health, by Ruth Levine
• The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, by William Easterly

Looking at it now this next bout of reading is awfully subtitle-heavy. Also soul-searchy. I guess I'm trying to figure out a bit more about the big picture of actual aid work. And read Lolita, finally.

walking

Via Maggie Hannapel, whom I have not seen or talked to in a long time, but whose screen name still pops up when I sign into gmail, a quote from Thomas Jefferson:

The object of walking is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk; but divert yourself by the objects surrounding you. Walking is the best possible exercise.

The past couple of days have been frustrating exercise-wise. I hurt my back while doing front squats on Monday. The pain isn't as bad today as yesterday, but I'm still uncomfortable and won't be lifting heavy for a while. But that quote from Jefferson reminds me of two things. First, I can still exercise, I must still exercise. It doesn't have to be intense, but the discomfort I feel while twisting or bending doesn't excuse me to just sit around and mope. Second, that there is absolutely no greater joy in life for me than to surrender myself to simple curiosity. I haven't really explored the blocks around my new neighborhood yet. I've been driving through them for one reason or another since I was little but there are one-way side-streets and little circles and alleys that I've never been on. Today will not be a day for testing my limits but rather for getting rid of the limits I've imposed on myself by my rapidly-solidifying routine.

Time for a walk.

gladwell

I am not a fan of Blink or The Tipping Point, to put it mildly. I have ranted plenty about this before. But it's possible that one reason why this guy gets my dander up is that he's obviously a very smart guy (lazy word choice, I know). So why does he choose to squander his gifts writing dreck like Blink? For the money, I guess. His review in this week's New Yorker of a new book called Free, by Chris Anderson, is really, really interesting. Oh well.

more links

Found this website somehow or other (I forget whose blog I started at). Science-Based Medicine is full of articles about, well, the name should be pretty self-explanatory. They seem to be pretty anti-chiropractic/acupuncture/homeopathy. This is interesting to me because I just had acupuncture for the first time on Saturday morning, with mixed results. Jack has positively loved it, Dad was kind of indifferent to it, and I fell somewhere in between. The guy was quite enthusiastic about some of the same things I've become interested in over the past year (i.e. kinesiology and nutrition), but I'm not really sure the acupuncture helped my toe or ankle in a significant way. The toe actually does feel a little better, even today, than it has for quite some time, but the ankle is back to its stiff self. Not to mention the fact that he "missed" with one of the needles in my toe and I don't know what he hit but it HURT like nobody's business. So the rest of the session was not actually particularly relaxing. Even though the other needles felt fine, I was tense before each one he put in my feet.

Also, Mom has been trying to get her office on the blog bandwagon for a long time now, and just made her first post. Go Mom! It's here. Much bloggier than I expected. Plus it's pretty positive-minded instead of being droll and sarcastic, which is un-bloggy but actually refreshing. There are enough masters of snark out there.

micafone testing one two fee, in da pace to be

UPDATE: table now displays correctly. The HTML just looks hideous.

Wassup evybody my name is Tai Mai Shu, and I am going to wapping fo you today just a wi'w fweesty'w. Fus an fomos I like to thanking wody sty'w beyond compayw fo getting my bewt back an hewping me pomotion my skiws. An in retun I wiw teach them how to make on miyon dollus.

Whew, got a little carried away there. What a great song. I wish today was Sunday...

Anyhow, the themes of this post are testing and goals. I started a thread on JP Fitness Forums for my dearest goal of dunking. Because I currently have the vertical jump of a very athletic 12-year old, this will take a quite a lot of hard work on three major things: strength, power and elasticity. And because I've been working haphazardly on these things for several months, to some but not enough success, I'm going to start with a solid month-to-month plan for the final five months of the year.

So here's a table (the stupid piece of crap won't display right, even though it's unbelievably basic...please scroll down) with my current numbers and goal numbers:

	now	goal
height	5'11"	n/a
weight	165#	165#
dead lift	335#	400#
front squat	245#	300#
vertical jump	28"	36"
overhead press	115#	165#
bench press	185#	245#
pull ups	13	20
10-yard dash	1.68s	1.55s
20-yard dash	2.56s	2.4s
40-yard dash	4.69s	4.5s
dot drill	53s	45s

two unrelated and awesome videos

Saw two great videos this morning. The first is about the difference between running in shoes and running barefoot (or in this case, in socks). The girl in the video had no instructions except to run on the treadmill in shoes and then in socks. The difference is just amazing (slap slap slap...it just hurts to watch when I see people run like that) and I can tell you from personal experience that while I find it easy as pie to run on my forefoot when I'm in my Five Fingers, Vivo Barefoots or, well, just barefoot, it's nearly impossible to run that way in sneakers except at a dead sprint. And even then it just feels wrong: my feet are too heavy, I want to slap slap slap. I went to the track with Jack yesterday and ran a bunch of sprints barefoot and it just felt so good. Yet another article about the advantages of being barefoot (not just for running but for everything) are at iamgeekfit. (How did I not know about this website before!?!? I am geek fit, for crying out loud! It's in the links now, along with a couple of other geeky-ass fitness sites.) Anyhow, here's the video:

And now, for something completely different. H/t to my coworker Dan. Here's "Arlington: The Rap."

computer

Well, I finally sucked it up and bought a new computer and printer. You can see it here. I'll get a rebate for the printer so that part will end up being free. I've been getting by fine with Mom's at home, but I don't really want to be constantly borrowing my new roommate's laptop once I move out. Seems like the wrong foot to get started off on.

Speaking of which, I'm planning to meet up with the guy I'm replacing tomorrow night. This will be kind of a packed weekend. Tomorrow my coworker who's going to Fletcher in the fall is having a good-bye happy hour after work. Following that, the above-mentioned meetup with Jonathan (also, by amazing coincidence, going to Fletcher...they even met at orientation there a month or so ago) and Eyal, my roommate-to-be. Friday there's some kind of post-work happy hour, the details of which I forget. Saturday morning Mom and Dad leave for SFO, I have frisbee from noon until sometime in the afternoon, who knows what Jack and I will do Saturday afternoon/night and then we head to Old Rag for a day of hiking on Sunday.

On a different note, it's been one week since I got back from Chile. I haven't really written about that trip at all, I realize. Don't really have it in me to start right now. Another time I will write about it. I wish I'd taken more pictures.

On still another note, I was having a hard time getting into Notes From Underground, so I'm switching to a book that I had a hard time getting into the first two times around, Midnight's Children. Maybe it's just getting to be hot and sticky, but I feel like Dostoevsky is a bit too old-fashioned and not zippy enough for my state of mind at the moment. I can see why people think Dostoevsky is an all-timer, but honestly I've been knee-deep in heavy stuff for a little while and it's time for a break. Rushdie is a bit better but really what I want is some Ellmore Leonard, some Peter Hoeg. Something less thoughtful, vaguely ridiculous...I don't know.

And on that note, I think I'll go to the library and get me some Ellmore Leonard.

eventful

It's been a busy little while since my last post. I finished 2666 on the way to Chile and started reading Eichmann in Jerusalem. I liked 2666 a lot in the end. It's pretty crazy and all over the place and I completely forgot about the third part by the time I'd finished the fifth (and final) part. The fourth part is extremely, almost soporifically repetitive but I somehow never got bogged down in it past the occasional, "Damn it, not this shit again." And the last part was pretty wonderful. In the end the book made a lot of sense, was full of some very beautiful writing (good job, translator whose name I forget). I will not forget the first and final parts, which are books unto themselves (actually, all the parts are), and the middle was good, too. How's that for repetitive?

Anyhow, a book I will most certainly NOT be forgetting any part of is Eichmann in Jerusalem. I would give just about anything for a few minutes of thinking as clear as Hannah Arendt's while she was writing this book. Who knows, maybe she could barely put her shoes on in the morning but when it came to thinking about ethics, justice and law she was operating on a whole different level from the rest of us. One of the most amazing insights she had was that there is a gigantic gap between ordinary murder and genocide not just in scale but also in kind. Eichmann was NOT a murderer. What he did, which was to participate actively and willingly in the attempted eradication of whole groups of people, was far worse than murder.

Murder is a crime against a person or small (relatively) set of people. There are laws on the books just about everywhere that say you can't just go out and kill someone. But genocide is a crime that takes place as a norm. That is, what Eichmann did was follow not only the law in the Reich, he followed the prevailing mores of his time and place. The fact of the killing is incomprehensibly horrible. But what's really, really scary about it is not that the Nazis killed so many people, it's that they managed to create an environment in which killing millions was all in a day's work for ordinary bureaucrats like Adolf Eichmann. A similar rule applies to the more recent genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans. Things weren't as clinically efficient in those places as in Nazi Germany, but there's no doubt that huge groups of people came to believe that killing off another group or groups wholesale was the thing to do. That conversion of murder into an acceptable act doesn't excuse the participants in the least, of course. It just makes their evilness that much more terrifying.

What a chilling and fascinating story and what a writer!

books

Well I'm about 200 pages from the end of 2666 and I'm not really sure what to think yet. It's very big in a lot of different ways, not just because it's 900 pages long, and there's just a huge amount to take in. This is the second very large book I've read in the past few months (along with Infinite Jest) and it's interesting to think about them both in terms of sheer volume. I like it a lot, is all I'll say for now.

The next two books on my list I bought myself last week after hemming and hawing for a while. First is Eichmann in Jerusalem, by Hannah Arendt. Professor Markovits talked a lot about Arendt and the whole fallout from the post-WW2 Nazi trials. Eichmann's trial came way after Nuremberg, but it's still a question of being tried in one country for crimes committed in another. Given present circumstances and the hope that, if our leaders are too weak to prosecute their predecessors for the war crimes that were obviously, unquestionably, committed, then maybe some other country will have the guts to demand extradition like Israel did. Not to say that Donald Rumsfeld is as bad as the Nazis, or even Slobodan Milosevic and Omar El Bashir, but it's a matter of degree. They're all war criminals, but Rummy's just weren't nearly as bad as theirs. Anyhow I can't wait to see what the whole Eichmann thing was about, and why everyone is STILL up in arms about Arendt's book.

The other is Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I guess he's one of those guys that doesn't need his first name anymore, because I feel a bit silly or self-congratulatory or something putting it there. But I've been meaning for a while to start reading some more classics, and why not start with that? My sense of its context is a lot less developed than my sense of Eichmann, but I can't wait to read it, either.

But they both have to wait until I'm done with the last part of 2666.

this just in: steroids are technology, just like glasses -- UPDATE

H/t to Dad for sending me a link to this article in Salon about why steroids (and, by obvious extension, other performance enhancers) aren't cheating anymore than are wearing contact lenses or using some new training technology.

I feel pretty strongly about my view that taking performance-enhancing drugs is not cheating and have been making the arguments that the author of the above article makes for years. Not to say that they're original to me, obviously; I'm sure I read them somewhere else. But still, it's nice to have some validation from a highfalutin' philosophy professor at Berkeley that my own personal logic regarding this issue holds water.

Preach, Alva Noe. Preach.

UPDATE From an interview with Lyle McDonald, of Body Recomposition, well, not really fame, but whatever.

TTT: What is your opinion about steroids in general?

LM: In general, I think used in reasonable doses intelligently, they are exceedingly safe and provide an enormous amount of benefits under certain situations (such as muscle loss with aging and various wasting diseases). I think used in absurd doses unintelligently, they can cause problems but not nearly the types of problems that the scare-mongering media tends to ascribe to them.

I’d tend to say the same thing about almost any drug you care to name. People always want to blame a drug for something or other but it’s more about how a drug is used than the drug itself that is the issue. Used intelligently, many drugs are completely safe; used unintelligently they are not. Is it the drug or the use that’s at fault.

TTT: What is your opinion on steroids in professional sports?

LM: I think they are a reality of modern day sport and have been for a solid 30-40 years. I think that anybody who thinks we can ever clean up sport and get drugs out of the equation is naïve as hell. Humans are creatures of opportunity and people will always look for an advantage so even if you get 99 out of 100 people to stop using drugs, that 100th will just see it as a chance to get an advantage over the others.

Frankly, I think people should get over it, legalize everything, let the athletes get proper medical advice without having to source drugs from unreliable sources so that they can protect their health. I think that’s better than the current model where most use but have to lie about it. I know the public wants to believe that performances in modern day sport can be accomplished without drugs but, in general, that’s simply not the case.

Any time they have managed to ‘clean up’ a sport (Olympic weightlifting comes to mind), nobody can even get close to the old world records. Drugs simply provide too much of a benefit to performance (and in being able to handle the training loads required at that level) for anyone to come close doing it clean. So either people get used to mediocre, non-world record performances or they accept that drugs are here to stay.

Again, damn right.

vacation, back to work

Well, my vacation was amazing. Hard to know where to start, so I'll just start with the places I went: Barcelona, Montpellier, Nimes, Sete, Palavas, Limoux, unknown village hosting a wine festival. Saw Gabby and Jon, Cori, Sam Falik and Colleen Rozier (!). Met a bunch of cool people that I'll probably never see again. Took a ton of pictures (I'll upload some later).

Now I'm back at work, and it's same-old, same-old, pretty much. That's alright, but I'm reeeally hoping not to be in this job longer than a year. Mind-numbingly easy tasks are getting quite old, as is being at the absolute bottom of the organization. I've basically got to get promoted or go to grad school, I've decided, because otherwise I'm afraid I'll get stuck in an admin-only loop. No one will hire someone without prior development or program experience, of which I have (and can get) very little in my current job. No one, that is, except the organization you already work for. Come on, CHF!

Lots of other things going on: Jack is home; I'm looking to move out again (those two things are unrelated); frisbee is starting up again (Quick Decisions is now Huckin' Around, and I think we're 4-2); workouts are, well, going. On that last item, two addenda: Jack came with me to the gym last Saturday to do a session with Jim so that he could learn the basic lifts. Not sure whether he'll keep coming or not, but I hope he does. Also, I'm going to do a speed workout with Graham (one of the gym's owners) on Thursday so that I can learn what's the matter with my technique -while accelerating, decelerating, cutting and running at top speed- and how to make it better. Looking forward to that.

Okay, back to work. Powers of Attorney are calling my name.

rec ultimate

Had my first game yesterday with Team Eight, a.k.a. Quick Decisions (a name agreed on, appropriately, within a minute of starting to talk about possible team names). The theme for this year is Things I Hated About My Ex. Our opponents were either Whiskey Disks or Not Enough Hucking. They hadn't decided yet. At any rate, we won pretty easily, 15-7 or 15-8. I had forgotten how SLOPPY rec is with lots of newbies on the field. The best player on the other team was just a tall athletic dude that I could cover easily because he had no field sense and made terrible loopy cuts, and threw flicks off his thumb. (What's that throw called? Not a thumber but the one where you hold the disc on your wrist. It's not coming to me.) We have some people who can throw solid flicks and backhands and very athletic girls (especially our captain, Sarah) but I for sure had the best throwing/experience/athleticism combo of anyone on the team. That hasn't happened to me in a long time. It also shows me just how far I have to go. More laying out is needed, to begin with. This will become my mantra. Lay out...lay out...lay out...lay out...lay out...

In other news, I'm leaving for Barcelona on Friday and still don't really know what I'm going to be doing there! Or, more importantly, how and when I'm going to get to Montpellier. Gabby sent some info about the train and bus. I think I'm just going to have to suck it up and buy a train ticket, but maybe I'll wait until I get there to see if I can get a better rate. I know I have to see the Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi park and buildings and the Picasso and Miro museums. More research must be done, although what I'm kind of hoping is that there'll be some cool people in whatever hostel I end up in and we can just kind of go traipsing around for a couple of days. We'll see, I guess. And now that the morning has flown by and it's 12:15, I'm going to get some cheap calories and tally up people's brackets. Cheers.

writing reflection

All of a sudden I write. In short, choppy. Sentences.

What's up with that?

frisbee

Last Saturday I played in the inaugural St. Hatrick's Day (no typo) Tournament down in Occoquan. My team, Kiwi Green (team cheer: "Fuck Australia!"), won the tournament. We led pretty much the whole way in all three of our pool games, but had to come back from a significant deficit to prevail in the championship. It was cool in the morning and cold and rainy in the afternoon (very sad I didn't bring my Under Armour), but a ton of fun. Winning usually is, but the people on my team were great, too. Our best player, John Agan (who plays for Truck Stop), also happened to be a really nice guy. It's always kind of a surprise when someone who's really good also manages not to be a douche. I played okay, but I've got so much improving to do. Hopefully with Spring League starting up soon I can find some people out in Silver Spring who are willing to throw all the freaking time. Or barring that, willing to meet up in DC to throw on the days I'm already going to the gym. My throws are pretty much where they've always been: so-so. I don't make very many turns but my deep throws are uneven and I need to be more confident breaking the mark. The only way to get better at those things is to do them a lot. If I could get three or four people together to just throw, do marking drills, huck drills, pulling... Really I should stop with the wishful thinking and just make it happen.

Not to mention all the speed and quickness I need to make up on a lot of more athletic people. In other words, it was a good reminder of how much I love ultimate, after a pretty long layoff, and why I've been in the gym so much this winter. And also a good reminder of how far I have left to go before I get to be as good as I can be.

(Note to self: lay out more.)

Yoooooo

From Gary Kamiya's piece yesterday about John Yoo's rape of US law:

And yet the wreckage wrought by the Bush administration goes beyond Yoo. The just-released memos remind us of just how radical, secretive and destructive that administration was. Its misdeeds are so grave and far-reaching that they must be thoroughly investigated, and the perpetrators punished. Whether by a truth commission or criminal investigations, the dark history of the last eight years must be told.

So far, President Obama has been reluctant to call for such an investigation, saying he wants to focus on the future, not the past. But he's wrong. This is not about politics. This is about our American laws and values -- about our very identity. It would be easy to turn the page on the Bush administration, or to claim, as Yoo and his defenders try to do, that its sins should be forgiven because of 9/11. But it is precisely in a crisis when a nation shows its true mettle -- or lack thereof. To pretend that the last eight years never happened -- or to continue some of Bush's disastrous legal policies, as Obama shamefully appears to be doing -- would be to betray our nation's ideals, leave the door open to future misdeeds, and ultimately endanger our democracy itself.

We don't need revenge. We need truth.

Damn skippy.

okay, i am a muscle head

Just kidding. But I did set a new PR for my deadlift yesterday, at 315#. That means I've added 40# to my deadlift in three months. I'm still not especially strong, but that's not too bad as far as improvements go. I forgot to do the vertical jump test first, which was very stupid of me. I tried to do it after I'd tried and failed at 325# for the deadlift, but only got a little more than 26 inches. Needless to say, I did NOT feel fresh. Still, that's higher than my initial test in January, which gives me hope that when I do legitimately test the vertical, it will have gone up to about 29 or so. We'll see on Monday, I guess. I'm going to test front squat then, too. I need about 37 to dunk a volleyball or soccer ball (something I can hold easily). I also have no idea what my running vertical is. More like 40 to dunk a ball with two hands. I may never get there, but I think 37 is still possible. Not in the next couple of months, but I'll get there.

The past month and a half I've done two days a week of heavy lifting and one of plyometrics. No crossover (that is, no plyos on lifting days and vice versa). So my strength has gone up but I don't feel like I've gotten a whole lot more explosive. Maybe it'd be better to start doing a heavy lifting day (for deadlifts, probably, plus explosive squats and step-ups), a plyos day, and a combo day with heavy lifts (maybe just front squats and one-leg deadlifts) and plyos. For the upper body, I had been following the 100 pushups and 20 pullups programs, but they were frustrating and I wasn't seeing any improvement, so I think it makes sense to go back to overhead presses, bent rows, and other weighted upper body stuff. The bodyweight gymnastics skills are so awesome (check out Jim Bathurt's page for some of those), but it's too much. My upper body could stand to get stronger, but my real focus has got to be on my legs and hips. Especially because now I've got to start actually playing frisbee again and working on quickness and speed. I'm afraid I've gotten too gym-focused this winter. Oh well, I like the gym.

Mom and Dad have been in TN for the past couple of days, which means I haven't slept much because the dogs demand walking at ungodly hours of the morning. For example, this morning Izzie was pawing at the door at 5:45. Thbphbth. Maybe that had something to do with why I felt kind of out of whack yesterday. There's an interesting distinction. I'd definitely say "out of whack." But I'd never spell "that shit is wack" with the "h." That'd be wrong. I'm reading Alphabet Juice, by Roy Blount, right now. It's really a fun read, even if he sometimes reaches juuuust a tad with trying to claim words sound like what they mean. I'll give him "sinuous," and that lots of languages use the "m" sound for mother-related words. But what about "with?" Even within Western European languages you've got "con," "avec," "mit." Or "copyright?" Or "copy?" I don't know, maybe I'm overstating his case, which wouldn't be fair. Sonicky words are fun, but I don't think they're as prevalent as Mr. Blount seems to believe. Still, he's a good writer and takes such obvious pleasure in words (a characteristic I share with him) that it's a really enjoyable read.

Other recently read or in-the-process books:
1) The Varieties of Scientific Experience, by Carl Sagan. This guy could think with the best of them. Comes as close to articulating where I'd place myself on the God question as anyone I've read.
2) A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. Speaking truth to power, even when it hurts. Maybe especially when it hurts. Should be required reading for everyone in this damn country.
3) Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges. Read this in Spanish, now reading it in English. Understanding some things I'd missed before.
4) Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. I don't remember if I posted about this book already. Suffice it to say: holy shit.
5) Watchmen, by Alan Moore. Re-read in anticipation of seeing the movie tomorrow night with Jack.
6) Athletic Body in Balance, by Gray Cook. Learning learning learning. I need to take anatomy and physiology.
7) Athletic Development: The Art and Science of Sports Conditioning, by Vern Gambetta. Learning learning learning. I love this stuff.
6) A bunch of other books that aren't coming to mind at the moment.

Anyhow, I'm going to cut myself off for the time being. I was going to write some stuff about my upcoming trip(s), but I realized that I'd just get on a roll and not stop. See above paragraphs. Before I go, let me note the current temperature: 72 freaking degrees.

cabecita de musculos

Well, Vale has now officially warned me not to be a muscle head. This after she thought the protein shakes I was drinking after workouts (incidentally, I've decided to move to chocolate milk: cheaper and evidently just as good in most respects) were steroids! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! GROSS! For the record, I am NOT a muscle head. What a negative label that is.

However, I do seem to get more interested in training every day. It'll be interesting to see how all this translates to frisbee when that starts up again in earnest. The St. Hatrick's Day tournament in Occoquan on 3/14 ought to be a good indicator. Speaking of which, I need to figure out how I'm getting down there.

Here are some training thoughts that I will now collect in one place:

1) Last night I took the beep test (see here for an explanation). I got 11 rounds and 3 beeps, which translates to a VO2 max (a measure of aerobic capacity) of about 51. That's above average for my age group but not very good. My new goal is to get to 13 rounds and 3 beeps, for a VO2 max of around 58. This will mean more dedication to interval training at least once a week. I found some really appropriate-looking workouts here.

2) I talked with Jean and Fred a little about diet when I saw them this past weekend because apparently Mom and Dad are telling people now that I'm on a health kick. I've reached a point with this interest now where I love talking about it because it's very interesting to me, but I realize that a lot of people aren't really that interested or don't care enough to change their current way of thinking. Take eggs, for example. There's a whole heck of a lot of evidence that eggs are very, very healthy and have little to no effect on the cholesterol levels in your blood. However, most people are stuck thinking that eggs raise your cholesterol. This is at best an exaggeration, but when it comes up, how hard should I push back? Do I tell people that they're flatly wrong? People don't like to hear that, I know I don't. Or going on a low-fat diet. I read somewhere yesterday a brilliant quote: "All diets are high-fat diets." To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn. This is simple math. The energy deficit - the rest of the fuel that your body needs to function that's now not coming from food - comes almost entirely from the fat that your body has stored. So if your body burns 2500 calories a day and you cut back to 2000 calories a day from food, fully one-fifth of your body's "diet" is from pure animal fat, even before you get to what's in your food! Your body - down to each individual cell - needs fat to survive and be healthy. Plus it tastes awesome. Don't cut it out! But then, when dieting comes up, how should I bring that up? It makes people feel awkward to find out that everything on TV is wrong. Jared might have lost a lot of weight on the Subway diet, but he's still flabby and out of shape. WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE WANT TO BE HEALTHY?!?!?! I don't get it.

3) This week is an unloading week. Next week I will retest the things I tested in December with Jimmy: deadlift, front squat, and vertical jump. Not in that order. My numbers in December were: DL 275#, FS 215#, VJ 25". I'm hoping for 315/245/29. We measured overhead press, too, but I have worked on that approximately twice since; I'm so much more concerned with lower body strength that I've mostly stuck to bodyweight stuff for my upper body (other than DL, obviously). This (the testing next week) makes me nervous. How am I coming along in my goals? Is all this training actually making me stronger and more powerful? It's hard to make this stuff up as I go along. I'm learning a lot but when it comes down to it nothing beats having a coach who knows his or her shit. But that's expensive.

4) It's lunch time.

barca?

Well, it seems I've decided to go to Barcelona. On the one hand, this is great and will be a wonderful trip. On the other hand, a big part of me really does want to go sit on the beach in Colombia or somewhere, really doesn't want to let Vale down. I talked to her today on gchat and I know she is. Let down. This is the first time I've decided to go on a trip for myself with money and vacation time that I've earned, and honestly I miss Cecilia and Rodrigo and Santiago, miss having not met Vale's brother and sisters. I miss Vale and still love her, friend or more. So why am I not going back there? Or at least going to the beach? I don't know. It's a weird feeling.

breakfast

Hello again, blog. My guess is that everyone has stopped reading you because I stopped writing you. That's fine. I'm just going to write some thoughts down.

First thought: I finally ate eggs for the first time a couple of weeks ago, albeit diluted by milk and smothered in cherry tomatoes, spinach, cheddar cheese and bacon. My ideal breakfast now consists of this omelet plus a smoothie made with strawberries, blueberries, a banana, two scoops of plain yogurt, half a scoop of protein powder and a tablespoon or two of flax meal.

Second thought: Barefoot=awesome. The (very nice) shoes I have on at the moment feel cramped and limiting. I finally heard back from the FeelMax people and it looks like it'd be around $130 to get a pair of Pankas (here), including shipping them here from Finland. Also I'm going to check out the Terra Plana store (here, Vivo Barefoot line here) in NYC when I go up this weekend.

Third thought: Nursing? MPH? MPH. Nursing? The fact is, I want to do something helpful without three layers of bureaucracy and 6500 miles between me and whoever it is I'm helping. Nursing sounds like a great way to do that. But I don't think I want to practice nursing forever; what I really want to do at the moment (and this could easily change by next month) is disaster relief and humanitarian response for refugees/IDPs. For that, this program at Hopkins looks effing sweet. I actually got little excited heart flutters looking at this program just now. Innnnteresting...

Fourth thought: I'm going to NYC this weekend! Jenny invited me to come see the Will Ferrell one-man show about Dubya. Hurray! Also, I'm hopefully going to see Alex, Jill and Johanna, Jean and Fred, Anita and Sam. A bit more planned, this weekend than the last time I was there (in September), but should be a lot of fun. Jill and Joho are having a no-pants party on Saturday night, which I will be attending.

Fifth thought: Travel at the end of March? Barcelona, Montpellier? Cartagena? I've got to stop dilly-dallying and decide if I'm going to do this or not.

Sixth thought: People at this [rest removed due to good advice].

also

Dad was right. Pete Seeger for Nobel Peace '09.

back

Well, after quite a long layoff, I've been inspired to return thanks to fantasizing at work about what I'd like Obama to get on TV and say w/r/t the Republicans taking a stand against the stimulus package. Here we go:

"Good evening. Today the US Senate passed a stimulus package very like the one my administration suggested to the Congress several weeks ago, and I signed it into law. Tomorrow we will begin the process of expanding health care to include all American children. We will start to rebuild our roads, bridges and ports along with schools and hospitals. We will cut taxes for the people who are most likely to spend it and stimulate GDP growth.

"In the bill, a sunset date has been firmly fixed on the Bush-era tax cuts that gave so much to so few, and took away so much from so many. At the conclusion of those cuts, the marginal tax rate will be raised to 50% for the richest among us, but kept at the same low rate set in the stimulus package for the vast majority of Americans.

"Every effort at bipartisan outreach was made in the bill, including cutting programs, such as family planning, that I know most Americans support. I met personally with Republican leadership from both houses of Congress and listened to their input with an open mind. The concessions that their colleagues in the House made in order to win some cooperation from the Right were to no avail. Instead, Republicans put their hopes for future electoral success ahead of the aid that we all know is desperately needed. Their actions were the true essence of partisanship: selfish and unpatriotic in the utmost.

"I promise to you tonight that I will continue to extend a hand to all who are willing to cooperate with me in rescuing our country from this dangerous downward spiral. But I will not compromise with anyone whose fist remains closed while they issue shrill and unreasonable demands, demands that have been shown over and over to harm America and Americans. I will not throw this country's future under the bus to appease the most extremely right-wing members of Congress. The partisan warfare of Gingrich, Rove, DeLay, McConnell and Hatch is over, and so is the era of gutless kowtowing on the part of Democrats. Our ability to work together despite differences is what makes this country great, but when a lunatic few manage to hijack the leadership of this country, everyone is harmed. As of January 20th, the leadership is back in the hands of the American people, and of their faithful servants."

Then he whips out a guitar and sings a rousing rendition of "Solidarity Forever."

Not much of a conclusion, and maybe a little redundant. Hopefully the song makes up for that. Maybe the happy little boob-squeezer can polish the rough edges and make it TV-ready.