Chronicles: Alan B. Rowley II - Success Warrior - ECoach - P90X

45 mph in a kayak?

Make sure you watch the last guy.

Ready for some more Big Brother news?

Why not?  I ran across this so I absolutely must share.  That's the generous kind of guy that I am.

Not that this is a done deal yet but here are two possible ways to raise revenue for the government to maintain roads and bridges:

1.  Raise gas tax.  The downside to this is that a lot of us are looking for the most fuel efficient (read electric) cars in order to reduce fuel consumption.

2.  Charge people by the miles that they drive. 

How will the government know how many miles we drive?  Install GPS tracking devices so they can monitor our every move track our mileage.  We would then receive a bill for the taxes due on our driving.

This isn't just idle gossip:

"The concept was tried in a pilot program in Oregon. Idaho's governor is talking about it. A North Carolina panel suggested in December the state start charging motorists a quarter-cent for every mile as a substitute for the gas tax."

The downsides to this one are obvious:

"The concept was tried in a pilot program in Oregon. Idaho's governor is talking about it. A North Carolina panel suggested in December the state start charging motorists a quarter-cent for every mile as a substitute for the gas tax."

So far, Obama has said "no" to this plan but we'll see how long that lasts.

Have you noticed that every action the government takes now is to supposedly head off some catastrophe?  If we don't raise gas taxes or charge by the mile, we can expect to "suffer grim consequences in the future: unimaginable levels of congestion, reduced safety, costlier goods and services, an eroded quality of life, and diminished economic competitiveness as a nation." [emphasis mine]

It seems like we are living on the brink of every known disaster that could ever happen, right here in the first quarter of 2009.  I go to bed praying to our new Messiah that He will be able to save us from the predicament that his government has intentionally put us in.

All quotes from this article.

$700 Billion. $800 Billion. What's Next?

  How about another $410 billion by next week?

I feel like I'm a passenger on a runaway train.

Fitness Update - Cutting

It's been a while since I've done a fitness update.  This is in part because I've missed a few posts but mostly because once I'm in the groove, there isn't a whole lot new to say.

Luckily for me and unfortunately for you, I never stay in a groove for very long.

First, the quick update.  I've lost 8.2 pounds since January 2nd.  I still have 11 pounds to go to get to where I was when I got injured oh-so-long ago.

(Am I allowed to keep using that excuse if it's been about 18 months since the initial injury?)

Hence my new groove for the next 4 weeks. 

I'm going to go on a cutting diet for the next 28 days to see how quickly I can lose that 11 pounds.  My newest experiment, if you will.

Technically, it should be possible to lose all 11 pounds in the next month.  Increase protein, dramastically decrease starchy carbs, zero sugar, and stay on my current exercise program.  I exercise like a crazy man so that part of the plan takes care of itself.  I just need to adjust my diet. 

In this case, "adjust" involves a large hammer.

I say that but in reality, I don't think it's going to be that big of a change.  I've kind of tried it for the last couple of days with the supplies I have in the house (today, we head to the grocery store) and the hardest part is eating enough times.  I usually eat 4 or 5 times a day and now I have to eat 6 times a day and it's like, "Good gawd, didn't I just eat?" 

The protein isn't outrageous.  1.1 gram X target body weight.  I've always tried to stay around 1g so this isn't a huge change from my old target.  My thinking though is that I may not have been very close to my target in recent weeks.

This will be a good calibration check for me.

Seriously, how hard is it?

I had my first test in my political science class.  It was a 2 hour open book test composed of 60 multiple choice questions.

The instructor sent out an email after the test to report that the highest score was 114 out of the 120 possible.  On top of that, he added 12 points to everyone's score because he discounts any question where the majority of students get the answer wrong to take into account poorly worded questions or computer glitches.

My score was 114, which after the bonus 12 points ended up being scored as 105%.

That's not the point of this post though.

In the same email, the instructor stated that the low score was 34.

34?  On an open book test?

Seriously, how does that happen?

It took me 75 minutes to do the test.  That meant that I had 45 more minutes available to me.  And I thought I was working through it slowly.  Since it was open book, I checked some answers that I was sure about.  Why not?  There were no bonus points for going fast.

Can you even score a 34 after just reading the assigned chapters?  That's 28%.  Given that just guessing would give you an average of 25%, how does something like this happen?  For this student, something has gone dramastically* wrong and they might want to reassess their college career.

While I'm at it, let me tell you something that I have learned from my discussions in this class.  Our government is made up of 3 branches: legislative, judicial, and supreme.

Bectcha didn't know that!

Now, for those that believe that Obama is the second coming of Jesus Christ, this might actually be true.  We may now have a Supreme branch of government. 

It's very different attending college with people who may not have voted last November because they weren't 18 yet.

* "Dramastically" is a new word that was used in the discussion boards for this class.  From the context of the rest of the post, I don't believe the author was trying to create a new word by combining "drastic" with "dramtically".  I believe the author just has a gift for word destruction and lucked into something that sounded plausible.  However, it was the one part of the post that I enjoyed the most and I have now added this new word into my blogging vocabulary.

How to get a six pack in a little over a minute

I've been using plenty of pics this week featuring abs. I came across this great training video on how to get a six pack and I thought I better share.

Workin' It

Obama is trying to get people to trust the government and has set up a website so we can see where all that wasted money is going. 

You can even leave a testimonial about how the Messiah has made your life better.  Just reading all the comments and deciding which ones gives the right spin is going to be a full-time job.  Hey!  There's one job created!  3,499,999 more to go.

All sarcasm aside, I think this is a great idea - in theory.  There should be more of these kinds of things.  They should have done this with the first bail out bill.

I say "in theory" because in order for this site to work, there has to be some inherent trust in the first place.  This kind of site isn't going to build trust.  If you already trust Obama, then this won't help.  If you don't trust Obama, it's easy to dismiss this as propaganda.  Is the government going to be honest about the little gifts that it gives out from these billions?  I don't think so.

Every time the government spends huge amounts of money, a bunch of it "just disappears".  I doubt this will be any different.  Who's going to miss a billion here and there out of a trillion dollars?

So, I love this idea and if it was a third party that I trusted keeping track of the spending, this would be one of the best ideas on the planet for our government.

I'm Sharp

Following Mrs. Chili's lead, here's my super hero:

  Glorious, mind you? 

Umm, not sure how the program comes up with the title for the comic but okay.

Give it a try and leave a comment with a link to where we can find your alter ego.

Validation

Things Will Get Worse Before They Get Better

That's what the president said yesterday after getting the stimulus bill pushed through.  It was going to be the end of the world if he didn't get his bill passed and now that he's going to sign it today, he's already downplaying how effective it will be.  Shock Doctrine played out on America by a master.

Jim Kunstler stated the situation beautifully this week:

"Now we've arrived at the moment of wreckage. Meanwhile, Barack Obama sailed into the White House on a tide of "hope" for "change." The change was unspecified, by both Mr. Obama and the general public (and the news media that audits its thinking). What is dogging many of us who supported Mr. Obama is the delayed entrance of much-vaunted change. At this moment of "stimulus" and TARP-II, it seems to have been about a desperate attempt to preserve the hypertrophic debt economy of "miracle" mortgages, blue-light-special shopping on credit cards, and endless happy motoring at all costs. And by "all costs" I mean literally bankrupting our society at every level to keep on living as if it were still 1999."

Obama isn't trying to change anything.  He's trying to restore a system based on fake paper used as collateral to borrow paper money off of a printing press to fund mortgages to people that couldn't repay them so they could buy stuff that they couldn't afford with credit cards.

Really,is it any wonder that things are going to get worse when this is the target? 

Another $800 billion down the toilet.  Sigh . . .