The Thin Yellow Line?

According to this article (link provided by Shoutin' Across the Pacific), police officers are cowards because they're unwilling to take the risks we pay them to take. The author may overstate his case a bit; I wouldn't necessarily have fired every police officer who was afraid to venture into bad neighborhoods during the Los Angeles riots. Police officers aren't paid to take unlimited risks, after all, and I'm not in a position to judge the risks in that case.

Still, it seemed odd to me that Littleton, Colorado police officers refused to enter Columbine High School on the grounds that they didn't know the situation inside, and they didn't want to compound the problem of civilians getting killed by risking the lives of police officers. That attitude does strike me as, well, cowardice.

Any thoughts, Jake?

Jake replies:
Well, at first blush I think about the logical fallacy of composition. It is quite tough to judge all cops by a few cops' actions. I guess most prejudices are rooted in that fallacy.

I do wonder what the price is on your life though? Cops are doing a job like anyone else. Ask yourself if you would stick your head through a door when hostile subjects have automatic weapons and are ready to blow your head off. Would you want to pull over a vehicle in the middle of the night with tinted windows in the middle of nowhere, not knowing who is in that vehicle? If you have a wife and kids only compounds your risk aversion.

Unfortunatley, headlines like this don't sell as many papers or generate as many 'click throughs' as stories about bad cops.

A police officer's job description says you need to enforce laws, and often times many police officers are killed in the line of duty. Follow this link for a few (actually MANY) stories about cops that died in the line of duty. I think the salient issue is not the cops but the laws that they must enforce.

With regards to the Columbine case, I think that to err is to be human but to err and be a cop is news... If I were to find fault with the 'average' police officer, I would say that many cops are out of shape and do not practice their perishable skills (such as marksmanship, combatives, etc.) often enough.

Michael Jackson Freak Show Continues

For those of you who are fans of Michael Jackson, or else revel
in watching a slow train-wreck of a life...

Michael Jackson is offering up his own video of the conversations
between him and interviewer Martin Bashir, who hosted the hugely-
rated and embarrassing "Living With Michael Jackson." Jackson claims
they were manipulated and edited to portray him in the worst light.

Fox will air "Michael Jackson, Take Two: The Interview They
Wouldn't Show You" on February 20, 8-10p. While the footage does not
include any new interview with Jackson, it does include a lengthy interview
with Debby Rowe, Jackson's former wife and mother of his two eldest
children.

I hate to admit that I'm a serious fan of Jackson's work. I've got
pretty much everything he's done solo, including rarities, demos,
unreleased songs, remixes, etc. It's no surprise to anyone to say
that the quality of his work has continued on a steady slide. What
people do seem surprised to hear is the horrific accounts of his
childhood abuse by his family, and the surreal life he was thrust
into as little kid. Among other things, he was apparently taught
by either his record company or his family to lie in media interviews.
As a child, he lied about how he was discovered, who discovered him,
what his day was like, who he enjoyed listening to, and even lied
about his age (consistently cutting a year or two off his already
young age.)

Reliable biographer sources say that he was practically dragged
to a brothel on his sixteenth birthday to loose his virginity
to a hooker. Jackson has talked about how, when he was on tour
with the Jackson 5, his older brothers would make him hide under
the hotel bed so they could bring in groupies and have sex in
apparent private. How could any nine year old boy listen to
his older brothers having sex with strangers on the bed above
him, and not come away from the experience tweaked?

From my limited knowledge of psychology and psychotherapy,
I watch Jackson's interviews and mentally tick off the
textbook symptoms that he readily demonstrates and exhibits.
I keep wondering, doesn't any interviewer or reporter
catch these red flags??

Blah blah blah. Whatever. Celebs thrive on controversy, and
would rather be criticized than ignored, but it's still
a shame to watch the media produce another Howard Hughes,
Elvis, and Old Yeller, all rolled into one.

David Morris
dx1mx2@aol.com

Wow finally a political movement worthy of a helping hand~
Masturbate for Peace: Using Masturbation to End War

Check the 10 Favorite Bumper Stickers:
10. War is silly, whack your willy
9. War's no joke, stop and stroke!
8. War is heinous, thumb your anus
7. I'm going blind for mankind
6. Abuse your middle piece, not the Middle East
5. All we are saying, is give peace a wank
4. War is out, pound your trout
3. Touch your sack, not Iraq
2. My bush doesn't declare war
1. I cum in peace

Dig 'em!

I don't know why, but I found this amusing.

Note that today the cereal is simply called "Smacks," just as its Post Cereals counterpart started life as "Super Sugar Crisp" and is now known as "Golden Crisp." I assume the ingredients are pretty much the same.

Gone squirrel fishin'

Looks like these college boys have too much time on their hands.

What makes the Dell Dude's arrest even more funny is that he always brags about being a devout Mormon.
People screw up, (not to say that the whole pot legality is "smart") but it's
always more entertaining to watch someone arrogant go down.

I guess we shouldn't be surprised

Benjamin Curtis, the guy who played Steven the slacker in Dell television commercials, has been arrested for possession of marijuana. (The headline on the SFGate homepage reads, "Dude, Yer Gettin' Arrested!")

Little Green Capitalists are Raping the Martian Ecosystem!

Or maybe not. Clayton Cramer makes a good point about global warming.

Warlords of the Dance.

Suni (my fiancée, on the off chance that someone other than Jake is reading this) sent me this link. I'm sure Kalaripayattu is fun and good exercise, and it may even be spiritually uplifting. Still, I suspect its practitioners would get the snot beat out of them at, say, UFC. But this gives me an idea for a new fighting tournament: let's get together all the Capoeirists, Tae-Bo people, and other disciples of the "dancey" martial arts, and have them do submission fighting. It would probably be an interesting spectacle.

Jake replies:

That would be great, maybe we could throw in Richard Simmon's Sweating to the Oldies people too (just to have some Christians for the Lions...)

Do you want peace but loathe the peace movement?

Peter Bagge feels your pain.

On a related note, check out "A Dove's Guide: How to Be an Honest Critic of the War."

Psycho Cop

Hey, Jake: this could be you in a few. ;-)

Ha hah aha h hah ahaaa! Bob Sapp Rules!!!!

Remember when Michael Jackson was cool?

What the heck happened to him?

"Why can't you share your bed?" Jackson said, holding hands with the 12-year-old and letting him rest his head on his shoulder. "The most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone."

The boy, who says he met Jackson after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, said when he asked to spend the night in the singer's bedroom, Jackson gave him and his brother the bed and slept on the floor himself.

In a later interview, Jackson also said he slept on the floor that night, but he added, "I have slept in a bed with many children," including former child actor Macaulay Culkin together with his siblings.

He said there was nothing sexual involved. . . .

[W]hen [Jackson and his dermatology nurse, Debbie Rowe] wed in 1996, she understood that he wanted children from the marriage. "I used to walk around holding baby dolls . . . because I wanted children so badly," Jackson said, adding that Rowe wanted to bear children for him "as a present." It was a "lovely gesture," he said. . . .

When Paris [Jackson's second child] had a difficult birth in 1998, Jackson said, "I was so anxious to get her home that after cutting the cord--I hate to say this--I snatched at her and just went home with all the placenta all over her... Got her in a towel and ran."

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on the child molestation charges, and I kind of feel sorry for him, given all the public ridicule to which he's been subjected. But man, he really is pretty creepy.

Found this at Reason Online:

Four police officers in Forth Worth, Texas, bought drugs from a man on the street and watched as he walked into a nearby convenience store. After the man entered the store, they slipped on hoods that covered their faces and pulled out their guns. As they entered the store, the clerk thought he was being robbed and shot one of the officers.

Contrary to what the headline says, the officer wasn't killed (at least not as far as I've been able to ascertain). You can read more about the story here.

On a whole, training is probably 80% of the success, and nutrition, rest & recovery make up the other 20%. Give or take a few percentage points here & there.

I'll start off with a nutritional post here... a lot of athletes (including wrestlers) take creatine. Either 5 grams post workout, or 2.5g pre & 2.5g post. Muscle Tech CELL-TECH brand has been a favorite, no doubt. I've tried it, and I can say it helps my recovery (I am not interested in gaining muscle mass... at this point :o) Problem is, it's too expensive! A 4lb can cost $42.95 USD, which equates to $1.07 per 5 gram (of creatine) serving. But they recommend 10 grams, but that includes 75g of glucose. Hmmm, ever had a blood glucose test done? Guess how many grams of glucose is in the orange bottle (to spike your insulin up)... yup, 75 grams! (so that makes it $2.14 per serving!)

In all fairness, I tried Dymatize pure micronized creatine, added some L-glutamine, sometimes adding it to Gatorade or other recovery drinks, and to be frank, I get the same effects of recovery. Costs $29.95 USD for 1100grams (220 x 5g servings), or about 14 cents per 5 grams or 27 cents per 10 grams.

If I was sponsored by Muscle Tech, sure, I would continue to use it, but there are other supplements out there in addition to creatine that are just as important, and I don't have $50 a week to spend on supplements. I'll add some more tips later.

These are great Olympic Lifting sites with video demonstrations (thanks to FJ Lee):

Power Lifting Link 1

Power Lifting Link 2

~~Sports Entertainment vs. Wrestling~~

Vince McMahon is a genius for classifying his product as Sports Entertainment. 'Professional Wrestling' is pretty tarnished (due to 'worked' or fake matches) as a brand so the switch was a great idea for him. He could also get around the State Athletic Commissions that way too. The funny thing is, here are some of the 'Sports Entertainment' brothers and sisters of WWE:

-The first that comes to mind is the Harlem Globetrotters.
-The Ice Capades is Sports Entertainment
-Cirque Du Soliel is Sports Entertainment
-Roller Derby is Sports Entertainment
-Monster Truck Rallies are Sports Entertainment

I applaud his branding of Sports Entertainment as something completely different from wrestling and I laugh out loud to hear Ice Capades and WWE lumped together like this.

In a perfect world, the word 'wrestling' would refer to folkstyle, freestyle, greco-roman, catch as catch can, collar and elbow, etc. Unfortunately, most people still confuse the WWE product with 'wrestling'.

Maybe someday we'll get some sort of league akin to the NFL, NBA, of NHL with real wrestlers having legitimate contests. The best chance of that happening right now seems to be the guys over at the (UFC) and (Real Pro-Wrestling). I find it hard to believe given the Olympic interest in combat sports (judo, boxing, freestyle and greco-roman wrestling, and tae kwon do) that the commercial interest is not there...

it only took the mainstream media 20 years to catch on...

Lou Thesz has died...
Originally posted Sun Apr 28 19:50:56 2002

...my deepest sympathy goes out to his family. Lou was the greatest performer to enter the ring, he was the Iron Man.

Cauliflower Alley
Originally posted Wed Feb 6 19:28:31 2002

I will be in Vegas this weekend for the CAC Reunion! Looking forward to seeing my brother, some new friends (maybe I'll meet Lou Thesz!) and old ones too.