The New Road

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Princess Megan!

Cardio Pilates

I'm a fan of Pilates. I think it does a lot of good work on the core and that's beneficial to every activity we undertake, as well as to maintaining good posture. I also like Ana Caban. Which is why this video comes as quite a disappointment. I strongly recommend her Pilates: Ab Workout as an alternative to this video.

Cardio Pilates (2 out of 5 stars)

Level: Intermediate

Pacing: Slow in the first half pilates work, a moderate pace in the cardio later

Routine: Twenty minutes of standard Pilates core work followed by a generic light intensity step style aerobic workout.

Instructions: Ana is her usual subdued self who gives carefully scripted instructions in a monotone way during the Pilates portion. During the cardio she seems out of her element and doesn't hold it together as well.

Conclusion: I'd skip this video. Get her Pilates: Ab Workout instead then use another video to get an aerobics workout. This video has the feeling like someone in the marketing department thought they needed something with cardio in the title, so they cranked this thing out. The idea of cardio is to get your heart going at 70% of maximum for 30-45 minutes. The whole first half of that doesn't even get close, and the second half is light intensity so you will have to push yourself to find it.

The Firm: Maximum Cardio Plus Abs

I actually like The Firm. I've done some of their kickboxing and such and it's a solid workout. I tried Maximum Cardio Burn Plus Abs. I can't actually review it since it required a bunch of hardware that I don't have. I mention it here because I would love for Netflix to have in the description somewhere that equipment is required. I shouldn't have to dig around in the comments to find that information out later.

Martin Luther King - As Relevant Today As Then

From a speech by Martin Luther King:

"A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

It's as if he could have said it yesterday. His revolution has not yet arrived.

iChat on Leopard

We had some fun with iChat on Leopard tonight doing a three-way conference with Terri in Boulder and Bill in Florida:

Lori said later that it reminded her of something she saw at Epcot as a kid and now it's a reality in her living room.

SVU on Torture

Law & Order Special Victims Unit did a show on torture and totally nailed it. If you think what we are doing is not torture, just try it some time. Don't think standing in a cold room, naked, chained to the floor with a hood on and forced to stand for 48 hours isn't torture, then try it.

Libertarianism

Libertarianism gets a lot of play nowadays. Primarily because conservatives like Ann Coulter now like to say they are Libertarians because conservatism has failed so badly. Libertarianism is an interesting idea; completely free markets, zero government, very few laws, no taxes. Basically the conservative cool kids, who don't do the Christian dogma thing, are Libertarians.

You would think on the face of it that I would love Libertarianism; zero taxes and you can smoke all the pot you want legally. But honestly, I find Libertarians arguments naive and simplistic. All the Libertarian arguments are suited to highly intelligent, skilled, successful individuals. It's not suited to a whole society, which contains people who may not have faired so well through no fault of their own.

Take people who are mentally retarded as an example. I've never heard a Libertarian present a reasonable idea for how a Libertarian state deals with members who are mentally retarded and unable to work.

The Libertarian ideal is that you work and make a livelihood for yourself. If you can work then you should find a charity that will support you. If you cannot work and cannot find a charity that will support you, then you die. There is no social safety net, at all. The one argument I have heard from Libertarians on the case of mental illness is that it doesn't exist and therefor it cannot be used as an excuse not to work. Thus a mentally retarded person is capable of work, but would simply not choose to and thus should die (except in case where they find a charity to support them.)

Not mentally retarded? Ok. Well, let's say you run your own business, but since it's a completely free market you are bankrupted and left in tremendous debt. Since there is no bankruptcy law in a Libertarian state, you need to find a charity, or die.

How about in cases of a disaster in your community, like one of the fires in southern California. In a Libertarian state, since there is no commons and no actual government there would be no firemen. Somebody might choose to create a fireman business and in that case they would come up to your street and have a little bidding war as to whose house they would protect. Heaven help you if you bid low because, bye bye house.

Imagine if you will Libertarian Louisiana. The chopper flies over your house, they pick you up off the rooftop. They winch you up into the chopper and present you with a credit card swiper. Either you pay the $10K for the service, or they throw you back into the drink.

Think of everything you take for granted on a daily basis; roads, streetlights, power, firemen, police, air traffic control, coast guard. All of this would be privatized and turned for a profit. So everything you didn't pay in taxes would be paid for at flexible market rates. Today you could happily pay $0.0001 per kilowatt hour, tomorrow you may have to pay $100 if the power company becomes a monopoly. Today you could pay only $0.10 a mile to drive to work on the private road, tomorrow you might have to pay $10 per mile as one company bought another and destroyed the other road to reduce competition.

There is such a thing as the commons, and the common good. Libertarians go too far. Viewing police and fire as privatized functions is nuts. And don't get me started on how they choose to handle the weakest amongst us. Libertarian ideals are dog eat dog taken to the extreme. It's not building a civil society, it's destroying what took us two thousand years to even try to approach.

Actually, saying it's "dog eat dog" is an insult to dogs. Dogs treat each other far better than a Libertarian society would have us treating each other.

Update: There is a strong Libertarian bent in the neo-con group that's running the White House. You hear it in the rhetoric; "Government so small you can drown it in a bathtub", "No taxes", "Government isn't the answer, it's the problem." The initial Katrina response was Libertarianism in action; it's not the federal government's problem, in fact it's no government's problem, those who could get out got out, those who didn't died. Problem solved. It's culling the herd, separating the weak from the strong.

Thankfully, this insanity is morally abhorrent to every decent sane human. You can't let someone die because they don't have a car, or because they don't have enough money to pay the heating bill. Libertarianism sounds great when everything is going well but it shows it's devoid of any moral center in times of adversity. The times when we need each other most and rely on our strength as a community to uplift us all.

Poker and Heroes

Last night was good for me at the poker table. I was doing pretty well, but the last hand put me way up over the top. We were playing a game called Oma-draw, which is Omaha but you can draw up to two cards after the flop. The flop was three fours. Everyone took two cards. I joked that everyone was looking for the fourth four. And when I looked at my hand I had it, woo hoo! So I had the nut and two more cards were coming to rake some more money out of everyone. Winsha was already all in. Mel caught pocket kings and Joe got pocket aces, the third and second best hands respectively. As you can imagine, much overbetting and all-in'ing ensued and I ended up with $50 of the $70 on the table. Sweet.

After that we packed it in and watched Heroes. I like that it's finally getting some real plot action going, but the whole Samurai stuff is really jarring. It's pretty clear that the Englishman is going to die (or something) and Hiro is going to have to take over and turn into a real Samurai, so that he can wear the black coat, but damn it's a long setup.

Creative Core Abs

I'm all into being creative in my workouts but Shiva Rea's Creative Core Abs is a joke. You know what would really help keep workouts fresh, is if one workout DVD had three different variations on the workout on it. Then you could just randomly pick one and get a different sequence or some other moves to emphasize different parts. Now that would be good value for the money.

Shiva Rea's Creative Core Abs (1 out of 5 stars)

Level: Basic

Pacing: Mind bendingly slow

Routine: Forty minutes of torturous new age nonsense.

Instructions: There are no instructions, it's all about finding your inner blah-de-blah and guiding yourself and, man, it's awful.

Conclusion: Wow, what a joke. What a completely worthless waste of time. It's hard to even convey what this woman is trying to do since it's so insane. I think the idea was to give the viewer a vague impression of what the exercise should be, then have them kind of experiment with it to find out if they like it or not, or something... I don't know. The whole thing was just nutty. If I want new age I'll go with Yoga and light a few votive candles. At least I know I'll work up a sweat while I'm aligning my chakras.

A Changed America

With money flowing to the Democrats by 3 to 1 over the Republicans, with Republicans bailing out of the Congress in droves, with an overwhelming majority of Americans opposing the Iraq war, the time for change is clearly here. It's no longer just about anti-Bush, it's about the cleaning up the nightmare created by the lunatic fringe hate radio driven right.

The change is not to new ideas, it's to what we already were:

• An America that doesn't torture it's prisoners. Since the Revolutionary war we have had a proud tradition of never torturing. Why did we start?
• An America where we can talk rationally about the cost of war without questioning each others patriotism.
• An America where we welcome immigrants into the melting pot that has given this country it's strength. Where we don't hide bigotry behind terms national security and advocate building fences on our Mexican border while keeping our Canadian border completely undefended.
• An America where we can respect each others political and religious views even when we differ. And where we defend each others right to say things we abhor.
• An America where we gauge patriotism by a persons involvement and not by their subservience.
• An America where we defend our civil rights even though we personal may never need them.
• An America where we believe in the common good and the strength of community as opposed to only looking out for our own best interests.

That's the America I grew up in. That's the America I love. It was never truly there, sure. It's always been an ideal. But let's at least agree that we should strive to uphold the best in America and not wallow in what's worst about it.

Dissent is un-American

With the conservatives losing as badly as they are it always amazes me when you get some high level staffer vividly demonstrating Hannity/Limbaugh overdose syndrome. In this case the chief of staff of a house member goes off on an activist calling him un-American and finally not an American because he dissents on the Iraq war.

What I find so amusing about this is how short-sighted it is. Conservatives are going to lose big time in 2008. They will lose the White House. They will suffer further losses in the House and Senate. And overnight you will see a change, dissent will go from un-American to deeply patriotic overnight. Just as it did with Clinton. It was ok to criticize the war in Bosnia, because it was Clinton's war. It's not ok to criticize Bush's inept handling of the Iraq war because it's Bush's war. Conservatives will make this flip without the slightest sense of irony or self-reflection. Which is tragic.

What I find really sad is that the elite in the Republican party are willing to sacrifice thousands of American soldiers just to hand the Iraq turd over to a Democrat before they start to dissent from the war strategy. On January 11th, 2009 conservatives are going to run from Iraq like cut cats. It's really, really sad.

Perfecting Ann Coulter

Maxim's taken a shot at perfecting Ann Coulter. Awesome!

On the Frost front, Nancy Pelosi took a chunk out of hate radio ass on the subject. Good going Nancy!

Billy Blank's Ab Bootcamp

I admit to being a huge Billy Blank's fan. I thought I had bought most of his stuff, but he is so prolific I've only scratched the surface. He is fun to work out to. There is great energy and enthusiasm in the group. The routines are awesome and for the most part easy to follow along with. In addition they can be extremely challenging which provides some incentive to repeat them. This video, which concentrates on the abs, is one of his best.

Billy Blank's Ab Bootcamp (5 out of 5 stars)

Level: Advanced

Pacing: Both fast and slow, with some portions where you stick and hold a move to really build up the muscle

Routine: Twenty minutes of upright work concentrating on legs raises to work the core. Everything in the upright segment returns to core twisting which after a while starts to burn. Fifteen minutes on the floor with various core work. The longest fifteen minutes of your life.

Instructions: Billy is very easy to follow on this one. You will know what you are supposed to do, but whether or not you can pull it off is an entirely different matter.

Conclusion: This has become my abs routine. I was doing a Pilates video for abs, which was challenging, but this thing is straight up brutal. Several times he has you contract the abs then work from there to get deeper into the contraction. After ten reps of that your abs are screaming. You will really feel it directly afterwards and the next day. After repeated viewings you will know more about what to expect and be able to get deeper into the core twists right away which will help you get more out of it. Being able to complete this is quite a statement about your level of ab fitness.

Trainer's Edge: Killer Butt

I restarted my NetFlix queue so that I could try out some new workout videos. NetFlix appears to be ideal for this as they have a really good selection that all of my local video stores don't. In fact my local video stores don't appear to stock exercise DVDs at all.

Anyway, the latest one I tried out was The Trainer's Edge: Killer Butt with Dolores Munoz. I'm wasn't much on point specific videos, like butt, thighs or abs videos. But recently I tried Billy Blank's Ab Bootcamp (highly recommended) and it was awesome. So I figured I've give a few more a shot.

The Trainer's Edge: Killer Butt with Dolores Munoz (3 out of 5 stars)

Level: Intermediate

Pacing: A little slow for my taste, this is more scuplt than cardio

Routine: Twenty minutes doing lunges, squats and forward kicks in all manner of variation. Then ten minutes on the mat doing all manner of donkey kick.

Instructions: Dolores is kinda bland and I found myself going blind into some of the moves and not following at times. Which is odd for a routine as simple as this.

Conclusion: It is a sold workout for your butt. If your advanced you will probably have to double up on some of the moves to get much out of it. It's pretty dull and insanely repetitive. Most of the moves are done in sets of twenty. That gets tedious and my guess is that this video will only work for a couple of viewings before it gets too monotonous. There is very little energy or banter. That being said it's a good workout for the butt and thighs with some benefit for the back and abs.

A Frost Update

Keith Olbermann has a segment with the Frost family who was attacked by the right over their son's two minute speech on SCHIP. Michelle Malkin who lead the jihad against the family is of course not backing down even though Senator Mitch McConnell who started this all has backed off the family. When you have attack dogs like this in the party you are bound to get bit, Mitch.

Megan's Brand Loyalty

All the advertisers want to push brand loyalty on Megan. And she certainly seems to buy into it. She definitely wants 'Barbie' for her sixth birthday. I figured I would take a shot at it, so on an errand last night I asked her what kind of computer she wants. I said that she had two choices; "Apple" I said loud and proud, "and Windows" I said in a tiny voice. First she said, "Silly, there are no apple computers!" And I said sure there were, and showed her the back of my phone and said, "What's that?" She said, "Apple." So I tried again; "Apple or windoze." To which she replied; "Pink!". Then "Flower!". Then a raft of silly stuff and we just ended up laughing and trading silly names. So much for my attempt to foster some brand loyalty.

Death Star Design Flaw Explained

This Family Guy clip about the death star is fantastic!

Attacking a 12 year old boy

I thought that conservatives had found the low point with Terri Schiavo, but now they have sunk even deeper by attacking a 12 year old boy for talking about the SCHIP program. They have posted his addressed. Michele Malkin even stalked around his house asking questions of his neighbors. And if that wasn't enough the boy has received death threats. This is really beyond disgusting.

Republicans: On the wrong side of progress

Guest blogger Carlos Luria writes:

In speeches on the health care issue before the Senate on October 2nd. Republicans engaged in a favorite tactic: bashing Government -- but only when it suits their purpose.. Can Government do a better job than business? Often Yes! Who do you want fighting our wars: Our Military, or Blackwater? Who do you turn to when your child is kidnapped: The FBI or your local alarm company? Do you know who provides lawmakers and their families with their health coverage? Why, bless their hearts, it is that US Government run health care system that insures nine million present and former Federal employees, and every member of Congress. It is, in essence, the system that Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama,. John Edwards and others are recommending for the 47 million Americans that are uninsured, and for those not satisfied with their present coverage. If you like the plan you have, stay with it; if you don't, the Democrats are offering you an alternative. The Republicans and their cronies, backed by the health insurance industry, would deny you that choice. Why are the Republicans always on the wrong side of progress?

It's Not Monday Night

I used to be a big Monday Night Football fan, and I've found myself not caring so much anymore. The problem is that the real crew from Monday, notable Madden, is now on Sunday. So I love watching the Sunday crew. The new Monday crew on ESPN sounds like a bunch of high school color guys. There is none of the fast paced funny insight that Madden brings to the game. Sure the games are better on Monday because the schedulers put it together that way, but my guess is that they will gravitate to Sunday over the next couple of seasons and Monday night will fall off. It's not the night that counts, it's having Madden.