The Cheat

Richard Turner is The Man. And when I mean The Man, I mean he's the guy who's going to wander up to the card table, shake your hand, shuffle the cards, and beat you about the head with them until you cry blood. Watch the video below. What he's doing is called center dealing. He's dealing cards from the dead middle of the deck. 90% of the people in the world can't deal a card from the top without developing carpal tunnel syndrome, and this guy is dealing cards invisibly from halfway down the deck. Oh yeah, he's also BLIND. Wrap your mind around THAT.

Is There A Santa Claus?

Consider the following:

1)  No known species of reindeer can fly.  BUT there are 300,000
species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of
these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying
reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2)  There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT
since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and
Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total -
378 million according to Population Reference Bureau.  At an average
(census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million
homes.
One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3)  Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the
different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he
travels east to west (which seems logical).

This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for
each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a
second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill
the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat
whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back
into the sleigh and move on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed
around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the
purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking
about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles,
not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every
31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second,
3,000 times the speed of sound.  For purposes of comparison, the
fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at
a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops,
15 miles per hour.

4)  The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element.
Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego
set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting
Santa, who is invariably described as overweight.

On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds.
Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN
TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even
nine.

We need 214,200 reindeer.  This increases the payload - not even
counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for
comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5)  353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous
air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion
as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere.  The lead pair of
reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy.  Per second.
Each.

In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing
the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their
wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26
thousandths of a second.

Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06
times greater than gravity.  A 250-pound Santa (which seems
ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by
4,315,015 pounds of force.>
In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve,
he's dead now.

Greatest book review ever

A friend recently pointed me to the greatest book review I have ever read on Amazon, and I am reposting it here for your enjoyment. Trust me, it’s not what you think it is.

“Please allow me to share with you how “The Secret” changed my life and in a very real and substantive way allowed me to overcome a severe crisis in my personal life. It is well known that the premise of “The Secret” is the science of attracting the things in life that you desire and need and in removing from your life those things that you don’t want. Before finding this book, I knew nothing of these principles, the process of positive visualization, and had actually engaged in reckless behaviors to the point of endangering my own life and wellbeing.
At age 36, I found myself in a medium security prison serving 3-5 years for destruction of government property and public intoxication. This was stiff punishment for drunkenly defecating in a mailbox but as the judge pointed out, this was my third conviction for the exact same crime. I obviously had an alcohol problem and a deep and intense disrespect for the postal system, but even more importantly I was ignoring the very fabric of our metaphysical reality and inviting destructive influences into my life.
My fourth day in prison was the first day that I was allowed in general population and while in the recreation yard I was approached by a prisoner named Marcus who calmly informed me that as a new prisoner I had been purchased by him for three packs of Winston cigarettes and 8 ounces of Pruno (prison wine). Marcus elaborated further that I could expect to be [...] raped by him on a daily basis and that I had pretty eyes.
Needless to say, I was deeply shocked that my life had sunk to this level. Although I’ve never been homophobic I was discovering that I was very rape phobic and dismayed by my overall personal street value of roughly $15. I returned to my cell and sat very quietly, searching myself for answers on how I could improve my life and distance myself from harmful outside influences. At that point, in what I consider to be a miraculous moment, my cell mate Jim Norton informed me that he knew about the Marcus situation and that he had something that could solve my problems. He handed me a copy of “The Secret”. Normally I wouldn’t have turned to a self help book to resolve such a severe and immediate threat but I literally didn’t have any other available alternatives. I immediately opened the book and began to read.
The first few chapters deal with the essence of something called the “Law of Attraction” in which a primal universal force is available to us and can be harnessed for the betterment of our lives. The theoretical nature of the first few chapters wasn’t exactly putting me at peace. In fact, I had never meditated and had great difficulty with closing out the chaotic noises of the prison and visualizing the positive changes that I so dearly needed. It was when I reached Chapter 6 “The Secret to Relationships” that I realized how this book could help me distance myself from Marcus and his negative intentions. Starting with chapter six there was a cavity carved into the book and in that cavity was a prison shiv. This particular shiv was a toothbrush with a handle that had been repeatedly melted and ground into a razor sharp point.
The next day in the exercise yard I carried “The Secret” with me and when Marcus approached me I opened the book and stabbed him in the neck. The next eight weeks in solitary confinement provided ample time to practice positive visualization and the 16 hours per day of absolute darkness actually made visualization about the only thing that I actually could do. I’m not sure that everybody’s life will be changed in such a dramatic way by this book but I’m very thankful to have found it and will continue to recommend it heartily.”

And it begins...

And here we go. Been looking to drop some weight for a while, been feeling very run down and tired. The Crossfit is kicking my butt and I seriously need to revamp my diet. So here it goes, for the next 30 days I'm going to seriously watch what I eat and try to stick as close to a Paleo diet as I can and avoid dairy, starch, breads and sugar. This is going to suck.

Weighed myself last night before my shower and I was 209.5 lbs, looking to be under 200 by the end of the month. If I can clean up my diet it shouldn't be a problem. Back when I was wrestling I had no problem cutting weight, could go days without eating junk food, but now I can hardly walk through the kitchen without grabbing something unhealthy. What's up with that?

So I'll try and keep all of you guys updated (all one of you) as to how things are going, how I'm feeling, diet changes and all that. It's gonna be five types of interesting! Yeah, whatever.

100 Pushup Challenge and another review

Way back in the day when I was stationed with the Marines, we did a lot of push ups. A lot. Large quantities. Numerous push ups of every shape and size. Now that I'm older, fatter, and in dire need of getting into shape I've been reevaluating the push up. I've started a push up regime with a goal of 100 consecutive push ups (done correctly, none of this bobbing up and down junk) and I've been experimenting with a piece of equipment that has been kicking my butt. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce to you the Perfect Push up (cue angelic music).

First, a little bit about the push up. While push ups themselves are very simple exercises to perform, they are actually bio-mechanically a very sophisticated exercise, recruiting nearly every major muscle group in some way to support the body during the movement (provided you are doing them with correct form.)
The push up is also extremely versatile, letting you emphasize certain muscle groups by simple changes in hand-arm positioning (wide versus narrow), incline or decline, or through elevation of the hands, which deepens the range of motion.

I don't have a very good history with push ups, for some reason my elbows like to drift out to the sides and I recruit more shoulder than chest. This has given me some problems with my shoulders and they tend to get rotator cuff injuries fairly often. Also, because the hands are in a fixed position, the wrists tend to become strained fairly easily. The Perfect Push Up corrects these problems for me, and also offers some added benefits.

The Perfect Push up basically takes a standard push up bar, which keeps your wrists in a neutral, non-bent position, and attaches the push up bar to a rotating base. This base allows you to maintain neutral wrist position while simultaneously rotating your arms (primarily at the wrist.) This ability to rotate is intended to allow you to compensate for your own bio-mechanics by taking stress off from the wrists and shoulders. If you've seen the commercial, it's like throwing a punch at the floor. The added twist in the movement recruits more stabilizer muscles and gives you a better bang for the buck. I've noticed new soreness in my lats, shoulders, chest and surprisingly in my abs. Doing the push ups correctly (IE SLOWLY and in good form) has really helped my abs and lower back.

Overall, I highly recommend the Perfect Push Up. Using this as an aid has made me pay more attention to form and offered a greater challenge than just push ups alone. I think I'm about 4 weeks from doing 100 consecutive push ups in good form, and it's been almost 10 years since the last time I could do that. You can pick one up for about $20 at Wal-Mart or any other retail store.

My Favorite Stephen King short story

I'm a huge Stephen King fan. My dad is a big reader and had a pretty decent sized library down in the basement. Stephen's books took up a good sized portion on one of the shelves, and during my teenage years I read all of King's books as fast as I could. I saw one book next to it that I had regularly ignored since it didn't have King's name on it. My dad recommended it to me, explaining, "It's written by Stephen King, just under a different name." I read it, loved it, and a fan of Richard Bachman/Stephen King was born.

The Long Walk is one of four short stories in The Bachman Books, published under the name Richard Bachman. The story is set in the "near future" around the annual Long Walk contest. Each year 100 boys are selected out of a pool to participate in this event, with the winner of the walk receiving The Prize - anything the winner wants for the rest of his life. Girls need not apply. Apparently the near future is sexist in nature.

Sounds like a pretty good deal, doesn't it? The catch is this. The 100 boys start at the Canadian/Maine border and walk south along the highway. If they walk slower than 4 mph for 30 seconds in an hour (all of the boys are monitored by following trucks filled with soldiers) they get a warning. Three warnings and you get a Ticket. Meaning you get shot. Dead. Game over. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200. You can get a warning erased from your record by going a full hour without getting a warning. So, if you have no warnings, within 2 minutes you can go from sitting pretty to lying face down in the road with acute lead poisoning. So it's 100 boys walking south waiting for 99 of them to crap out and get eliminated in the truest sense of the word.

Warnings are also given for infractions such as "assaulting other walkers or getting aid from the spectators", and instant Tickets are punched for "attacking the vehicles and/or soldiers, or attempting to leave the road." There are no rests stops, they get all the water they want from canteen provided by the accompanying soldiers, are issued daily rations at 9 AM every day, and all of their "business" has to be taken care of while walking.

This is a physical and mental trial that I think could make a brilliant movie if it followed the book. There is a lot of psychological intrigue in to why these boys signed up for this, the alliances formed, and the all too real truth of death. One of the walkers signed up as a means of suicide. How messed up is that? The walk itself is kind of a by line (IMHO), the real meat of the story lies in the characters. The partnerships, the antagonists, the internal struggle with knowing that there is a 1% chance of winning. How many people would knowingly go into something like this knowing that there is a 99% chance of them dying. In front of spectators. Oh yeah, people line all up and down the road watching these guys walk. It's like the Super Bowl, World Series and NCAA Basketball Finals all rolled into one.

Sadly, The Bachman Books is no longer in print, but a copy is easily picked up second hand on the Internet. Another short story, Rage, is a strong resemblance to the recent Columbine shootings that have been occurring lately (albeit written in the early 70's, it is eerily prophetic). As stated on Stephen King's website, "There will be no future printings of this book at Stephen's request due to the sensitive nature of the material found in Rage." If you want to pick up a copy, hit your local library or just break down and by it here.

This made my day