demian0311

I mentioned to a buddy that I was considering a big purchase of some adjustable dumbells. He said I should give the kettlebell a try. I hit YouTube found myself intrigued, bought a book and a 35 lb kettlebell.

Here are some reasons I'm digging it...

• It builds functional strength
• It builds explosive strength
• It encourages flexibility
• You can get good intensity quickly
• You don't need much to get a good workout (a kettlebell, some space and maybe suitable ground to lay down such as carpet or grass)
• The movements are natural
• It doesn't take up much room. If you have space in your home the size of a paint can you have room for a kettlebell
• You can't destroy it

Imagine standing in your spandex in front of a mirror concentrating on the supination of your hairless wrist so that you can get that double-peak on your bicep. Leaving you with vanity muscles useful for contrived movements and serving as great plumage. The body won't necessarily come in handy if you should have to move yourself or something heavy. Well, the kettlebell is the opposite of all that.

After a full day of work, driving 20 minutes to a gym to spend 45 minutes to an hour exercising doesn't appeal to me. I want to spend time with family and writing more code. To that end the kettlebell is a time saver.

In the Denver area, Play it Again Sports has Apollo brand kettlebells. They seem good, I've seen positive reviews, when I go up a size I'll probably go there.

Overall it's hard to describe. It's very kinetic, there's momentum, rhythm. Almost like calisthenics with weights. To get the kettlebell to do what you want it to do you are forced to move with a good amount of velocity and use leverage.

It's probably something of a fad. The main evangelist, Pavel, plays up on the Russian bravado in books and video. But the schtick is actually entertaining. Anyways, it's cheap, it's old school, it's something different, I recommend it even if you only have one nut.

Glenn Beck can be a tool on some issues but he's spot on here. This video is important. He knows the issue and expresses it reasonably well. This stuff is important, we live in interesting times and he explains why.

Freedom watch is a Fox show that is only broadcasted on the Internet. It's very big on civil liberties. I highly recommend it.

I dig watching Shep Smith (of Fox News) get pissed off about torture and coming to the conclusion that Bush and Cheney are criminals if they authorized torture. He even drops an F-bomb, you go girl.

Most of my blog posts are a couple links and a few paragraphs. Usually not much independent thought. Usually connecting a couple points to make another conclusion.

Twitter is a great medium for blasting a link out to the world and sharing a pithy comment. In the current political climate it's usually an observation of a current creeping socialist policy and me saying "what could go wrong?".

So yeah, I'm posting on Twitter these days. I'm demian0311.

Last Friday night I joined other party animals in the Boulder area at an event put on by the Boulder Young Americans for Liberty. I estimate 300 people showed up to see Dr. Thomas Woods, historian, author and senior fellow at the Mises Institute.

Prior to the event there was some minor controversy when CU Boulder decided to censor the BoulderYAL promotion of the event. In the following text, the university demanded they remove the bolded words. In the market place of ideas that is the university apparently there is no room to criticize the state. Depressing on so many levels.

In an exclusive lecture for CU students and the community, bestselling author Thomas E. Woods will explain how the current economic collapse was predicted and ignored, why Washington and the Federal Reserve are to blame, why the bailouts will ultimately make things worse and how we can put our economy on a path to recovery. Friday April 3rd in HUMN 1B50 at 7 pm, no charge. Organized by Young Americans for Liberty.

Dr. Woods was also promoting his new book, Meltdown. In the book he explains how the consequences of government meddling has caused our current crisis. At the end of the talk I bought the book and he was kind enough to sign copies.

I've read a lot of his material, listen to podcasts that he has been on and of course he makes the rounds on some 24-hour news shows like Glenn Beck. He follows the austrian school of economics. If you're like 90% of Americans and you agree that the bailouts are bad you might be interested in austrian economics. If you hear politicians say all economists agree the bailouts are necessary and you feel like throwing a brick through your television then you should look into austrian economics.

On to his talk. He's a great speaker, I didn't hear much that I haven't already heard him say or write. It's so refreshing to hear someone sound logical when talking about our current situation. I don't want to repeat anything you could already find on videos or articles.

At the end of the talk he took questions. One of the questions I found the most interesting was from someone that already read the book. He talked about how at the end of the book Dr. Woods explains what should be done. The questioner acknowledged that no one realistically will listen, no one in attendance disagreed.

He went on to ask what should we do individually. It was interesting to hear an author and academic go on to suggest putting some of your cash into precious medals. This isn't a surprise from an austrian who thinks that the Federal Reserve is at the core of our problems and their leadership is incompetent and misguided. He sees a good chance that bad things will happen to the dollar.

He also suggested cultivating skills that will have relevance in more adverse times. In talking to students he said that degrees in art history, English literature and the like might not be the best route. Basically if you don't already have a fundamental, useful skill you might want to get one.

I went to a Denver gun show this weekend. It's a great chance to grab breakfast with former co-workers and peruse weapons for a few hours. We have gone a couple times a year for the past few years.

Consistent with all other reports of gun sales being up and ammunition flying off the shelves the gun show was well attended. Frankly it was shocking. The line was long, about five times as long as I've ever seen it. After we got all the accessories we needed we left because the crowds were insane. When we left we figured out they wouldn't let anyone in unless people were leaving because of the fire safety codes. I've never seen that before either.

You're a gazelle on the African plains drinking at a pond. You're lapping it up when you realize everyone else stopped. That's the zeitgeist of this crowd. They know something is happening and they are preparing. Maybe it's as simple as fear of an Obama administration and gun laws, bad economy or maybe it's something else. I don't know if their impression is valid or founded but something is happening at least in the collective psychology. Their reasoning may be mistaken, the manifestation cannot be ignored.

Give millions...
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000085

Get billions...
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aPzu3EtQ99Jk&refer=home

Can you even blame them if we continually put up with it?

Feel left out of all the hate that the WBC sends out? Maybe you're not gay enough? Maybe you're not a veteran from Iraq? Maybe you're not American?

Fret no more. You can generate your own WBC hate sign. Holy crap the Internet is flippin awesome.

Finally, I can be part of the action.

The assault weapons ban expired in 2004. It was a silly law. For law-abiding people it meant that you couldn't purchase a new gun that had a few cosmetic features. It turned into a silly game where manufacturers would tweak rifles until they came within the letter of the law. For example, a rifle couldn't have a bayonet lug if it had X other features that made it look like an assault rifle, a pistol grip being another example.

The Obama administration wants to permanently bring back the assault weapons ban. Here's the kicker, part of their argument is that it will help prevent assault weapons from getting into Mexico. That's right, the US government is going to restrict your rights to protect the good people of Mexico. I feel safer already.

Here's the money blurb from an article by ABC News:

Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.

The US Military and the state of Texas are preparing for a political collapse in Mexico. They both predict an influx of people escaping violence if the scenario plays out. So people from places like New York, Chicago and Washington DC (shining examples of violence and organized crime) are going to tell Texans they can't protect themselves?

Here's a cool quote:

The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves.

Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small.

It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what?

Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.

She kept it real under Nazi fascism. Not a healthy activity in those days, she ended up with the guillotine.

The grandparents in Louisiana sent a happy birthday video to Ryder. At the end he tries to kiss the computer.

In the exact same vein as yesterdays post, over at the Financial Times:

China will continue to buy US Treasury bonds even though it knows the dollar will depreciate because such investments remain its “only option” in a perilous world, a senior Chinese banking regulator said on Wednesday.

...

“Except for US Treasuries, what can you hold?” he asked. “Gold? You don’t hold Japanese government bonds or UK bonds. US Treasuries are the safe haven. For everyone, including China, it is the only option.”

Mr Luo, whose English tends toward the colloquial, added: “We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion [$1,000bn-$2,000bn] . . .we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there is nothing much we can do.”

This is amazing stuff, amazing times.

Bloomberg interview with former Advisor to Chinese central bank:

China should seek guarantees that its $682 billion holdings of U.S. government debt won’t be eroded by “reckless policies,”

Translation: Quit printing dollar bills to get yourself out of your mess.

Another quote in the article (my emphasis added):

“The biggest concern for China to continue buying U.S. Treasuries is that if Obama’s stimulus doesn’t work out as expected, the Fed may have to print money to cover the deficit,” said Shen Jianguang, a Hong Kong-based economist at China International Capital Corp.

China and America are in a precarious relationship here. It's mutually assured economic destruction. We need them, they need us. If they dump the dollar they screw themselves if they keep buying more they add more risk. But we need to keep printing to prop up our fictional economy. The dollar hegemony has the world by the throat. How much longer will we get away with it?

Michael Phelps, obvious screw up, got high. Now America gets to rake him over the coals. The last 3 presidents admitted to doing drugs. Heck the last 2 have used cocaine. When are we going to be honest with ourselves about drugs.

What almost pisses me off more than the public response America has had is the response Michael Phelps has come up with. You would think after what he has done with his life, the kind of discipline he has demonstrated that he would have a little authority to say, "no kids, pot doesn't automatically make you a screw up despite what Nancy Reagan says."

Maybe after seeing known drug users have about the same success in life as known alcohol consumers we would change our mental model. Just because this stuff was demonized at the turn of the century doesn't mean we need to accept the current law.

The good folks over at The Smoking Argus have been kind enough to let me guest-post over there a few times. I just recently did a little write-up of the John Adams miniseries that was on HBO.

Of course I recommend the site. They post very well thought out content and have the fortitude to speak the truth.

That's what our legislators were threatened with if they didn't support the stimulus. Fear is an awesome motivator.

Nice data and graph from the FBI showing the spike in gun background checks after the presidential election.
http://www.nssf.org/share/PDF/NICS_checks.pdf

Is the herd correct in thinking that they need to get guns before the Obama administration turns their attention to the 2nd Amendment? With Rahm Emanuel and Eric Holder at the top of the administration I think we all know where this is going.

Over the past few years I have been wonking out on a lot of things. I've read websites, Wikipedia entries, followed blogs listened to podcasts watched videos and devoured RSS feeds to shape how I think our near future is going to be.

Some of this is from Peak Oil ideas that a friend introduced me to. I got into Austrian economics and monetary policy by way of Ron Paul and Peter Schiff. Of course everyone knows about the environmnet issues and the effect baby-boomers will have on society and the economy.

At any rate, I just stumbled onto a presentation by someone who has done more research than I have and has come to the same conclusion he has also articulated it well. I wish I would have found this sooner because I had to a lot of work to assemble these thoughts.

Chris Martenson has created a presentation as a set of YouTube videos that are an excellent crash course on where we're at and where he thinks we're going. In a nut-shell he explains the exponential function and how it 'hockey-sticks', he shows how we are in a perfect storm of hockey-sticks and not in a good way. Basically we will all have a good, prolonged opportunity to demonstrate our character to our fellow man.

The refrain is that the next 20 years will be far different than the last 20 years. The entire video set is 3 1/2 hours, frankly the visual portion of the video doesn't add much so it's something you can watch while cooking or whatever. Fair warning, in the last 20 seconds he says it'd be cool if you sent him money to help him get the word out.

I highly encourage you to go watch the Crash Course.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/02/01/GR2008020102389.html?n=unitedliberty.org

The Washington Post has a good timeline of neo-conservativism. Showing Ayn Rand and George Orwell in there is insane. Unless they define influence as neo-cons reading 1984 and thinking that's a swell way to run an operation. I'd be interested to hear that rationale. Showing Trotsky at the root is accurate.

It's important to understand that neo-cons are big government, imperialist perpetual war adherents. In some circles they'd even be called socialists.

Nice little montage of Ron Paul and Peter Schiff.

They were right then, they're right now. We'll just keep printing dollars, we're screwed.