assassin_696

Yes, but whatever their own justifications were, legally they had no right to board the ships. Israel can act paranoid and board every ship in a 200 mile radius of Gaza if it chooses but that doesn't give it a legal authority to do so. There's also the fact that boarding a ship for the purpose of "searching it" in the middle of the night with armed special forces soldiers (when they expected no resistance?) could easily be construed as an act of war but hey. They knew it wasn't a big floating nuclear bomb because they said they'd redirect it to a different port then pass on the humanitarian aid that they deemed "suitable", all of Israel's actions and knowledge up to that point indicated pretty clearly that this wasn't some sort of Trojan horse carrying hundreds of Hamas soldiers or something, so stop making out it was such a massive security risk.

Security works both ways, maybe it's a shame none of the Palestinians can search the $2.16 billion dollars worth of military hardware shipped to Israel every year by the US. But regardless, these were known to be aid ships so an illegal search really wasn't "obligatory" and no matter how many times you say it was doesn't change that.

romy, you're essentially saying that Israel has a right to violate well established international laws because of a threat that you believe might have existed? And apparently now not committing acts of piracy is "petty". Your theory still makes no sense because one action is legal and other illegal, and hence one action may illicit different consequences (i.e. violence) in the circumstances than the other, legal, action. The ships had every right to ignore the messages because they were simply under no obligation in any circumstances to stop, be very clear about that. The fact that this happened in international waters makes all the difference and is not petty, because a ship can only be boarded by another vessel if they are flying the same flag in international waters. Ignoring warnings is irrelevant. You keep saying the ships weren't supervised, what do you mean by that?

Why on Earth should the ships stop even if the Israeli's warned them, in international waters? Israel has no jurisdiction there and that's exactly what this boils down to. That's utterly stupid logic, boarding them in international waters is a crime, at a simplistic level it's like a burglar breaking into your house and then acting surprised when the home-owner gets defensive. Even if the ships were carrying arms (which as far as I'm aware there's no evidence for) they wouldn't become more dangerous when they entered Israeli controlled waters and tried to bypass (an illegal!) blockade. The Gaza Freedom flotilla was a publicity stunt to try and raise awareness of the blockade (ironically, they've succeeded), sending five slow moving ships laden with weapons probably wouldn't do their cause much good. It was naive of Israel to think these were ships carrying arms, and even if they did why does that contradict with the statements of the soldiers who said they didn't expect violence?

Sorry, you want to send (nuclear??) explosives down to the site where a lot of highly inflammable liquid is leaking into the sea to try and seal the leak? Use some common sense mate, surely.

I had two friends I used to go the same gym as, they were both close friends and we'd go cool off in the jacuzzi afterwards and have a chat which was fun. But when I started I went on my own, and now that I'm at uni I prefer going on my own. Don't rely on someone to motivate you, I know it helps, but if you can't find someone up to the job just accept that you'll have to go solo. Someone might come along eventually or when you've been going a bit more. It's not essential, and if your motivation is tied to your partner and they slack off then you might slack off.

Creatine is used by a lot of athletes in all sports though, not just bodybuilders. Professional rowers and rugby players also use it, these guys aren't vain and looking for some quick fix, they'd only use it if it helped them and it worked. I might start taking it over the summer again but I've got to weight in at under 72.5kg for a lightweight race in America in the summer so can't afford to put too much weight on just yet.

But I don't think good music is what wins it. It's all about politics and the spectacle. Does anyone even watch it in a non-ironic way any more? And why the hell is Graham Norton being paid £2.5m a year?!

BP have spent £645m trying to clean up so far, I wouldn't exactly call that a lack of effort on their part. It's absolutely in their best interests to get this sorted out as quickly as possible, they have no interest in dragging this out because it'll just cost them more monetarily and image-wise. Although to be honest I'm not surprised if they shipped in workers for the photo-op, since that's pretty much why Obama was there anyway they may as well play at his game if they want to. Their priority is stemming the flow at the source, that's where their expertise is needed, the US government doesn't have the technology to deal with this kind of thing.

Pretty much sums it up. I really wanted Button to get Hamilton towards the end too!

I'm not quite sure what grounds Obama has to be so "outraged" at BP about the leak. Surely wait until the after the investigation and then discover to what degree BP can be held accountable? I mean this kind of drilling is massively cutting edge and of course there will be risks associated with it, they have pretty colossal fail-safe procedures so find out why they failed first and then see where they can lay the blame, it could well have been an accident. I mean if you're going to allow this kind of drilling because you want to try and reduce your dependence on middle eastern oil but are finding nuclear power a hard sell then you need to be prepared for these kind of risks.

How do you find getting the bar on your back? I could always lunge with more than I could safely lower to behind my neck, so it always felt a bit weird getting the weight there. I guess if the squat rack's close that'd help but at my old gym there was a bit of a walk to the indoor track. No training for rowing at the moment so just going to the gym every other day to keep things ticking over and unwind. I've got squats, cleans and a few other shoulder exercises planned for tonight. Maybe some snatches too.

Yes I should have said whether or not you follow the daily workouts is entirely up to you and your preference, but I really think the philosophy of combining pure strength training with circuits in a periodized and systematic way cannot be beaten. I just liked following it because I'm lazy and it saved me thinking of my own. Best of luck with it all.

Laikrob's dietary advice is excellent and I can barely add to it. The only thing I'd say is that eat lots of fruit and veg, but that isn't where weight gain will come from. Proteins, fats and carbohydrates are where you'll find the calories you want. From a workout perspective, I'm not sure just doing bodyweight exercises will really give you anywhere near the power you want. I would strongly recommend this program: http://www.crossfitfootball.com/ I used it towards the tail end of the summer as a way of maintaining the bulk strength I'd developed and building a better explosive ability/adding more strength based cardio. I used it to get fit again for rugby at uni, although I ended up rowing instead I'd still really recommend it! The basic principle is you follow the workout they post everyday (I think you get a rest day every third or fourth day). There's a pure strength component to each workout (for example benching a certain target weight, or deadlifting your five rep max), it'd be best if you followed the "Amateur" guide at the moment because you'll see the quickest strength gains that way (the others are much more periodized and designed for people peaking and plateuing). There's also another part to the daily workout which is more variable, it's often circuit weights or sometimes just sprints or things that might improve co-ordination, balance etc. These give you excellent all round fitness but one that's particularly geared towards contact sports. I think it's an excellent and well designed compromise between the traditional division of people who "just lift weights" and people who "run". It's not a bodybuilding program, it's not a program designed to get you as strong as possible as quickly as possible, but it will get you a lot stronger, faster and fitter and most important, it's fun! The variable nature of the workouts makes it much more interesting to do. Of course there are a million different ways to approach getting fit, but I think given your sporting background and desire to see an all round improvement in fitness you'd really appreciate the above. Let me know if you have any more questions about it.

Went to the gym last night as a way to "de-stress" after a good day's revision. Squats, deadlifts, pullups, barbell rows, chinups and curls. Primarily a back and biceps workout with some squats thrown in because squats are king. Although having a heavy bar resting on your back with epic sunburn on your back is fairly excrutiating.

Never done a 2k before?! Ah man, you should, they're fun :wink: Some people say 5k's are worse but I never want to black out quite like I do in that last 600m of a 2k. Here's a fun pic of the Cambridge crew after their last 5k [hide][/hide] Weirdly we did two more ergs this last week which were as bad as or worse than the widowmaker. First was 15 minutes/10 minutes/5 minutes at 80% of 2k max wattage with a four minute rest. That was designed so that you had to stop at somepoint (if your wattage falls below 80% for more than three strokes), then you rest for 1 min and start again where you left off. I stopped once in the 10 minute stretch, died a bit, then carried on. Thursday's was [[45 seconds on/15 seconds off] rest 5 mins]x3 at 100% 2k wattage. 15 seconds is no rest and you have to wind the flywheel going each time which takes more effort. Four of us collapsed at the end of that one and one person crawled away to throw up out of a window. I think that's the worst one I've ever done, especially in the heat. I was just swearing at my monitor by the end in a delirious rage.

True true, I guess we just need to wait for the LHC to start churning out plenty of data to at least confirm the Higgs. Whether it's confirmed or not though, either way it'll be fascinating.

I see where you're coming from, and largely agree, but is modifying the Lorentz force near the speed of light really controversial? I thought it was a fairly well accepted principle to account for the gamma function.

Because that's a frankly disgusting trick used to play on the maternal instincts that a woman has. You know damn well that after a woman has seen an ultrasound of her foetus she's less likely to kill it, but that's purely based on a gut emotional response to seeing something living inside you and the fact that we've got millions of years of evolution hard-wired into mothers that says "protect your child". You're not helping her make a rational or informed decision, if she's decided to have an abortion that's a tough choice and you should respect her reasons. Why the hell would you show her a picture of her child, if there are some pyschological repurcussions to abortion I don't think that's going to help. Calling it a "ball of cells" doesn't really muddy the waters because that's exactly what it is. It's also exactly what we are. The waters are already pretty muddy because everyone has a different opinion as to when you can consider a foetus a human being with the same legal rights as an adult. Personally I don't think there's an exact time, it should be roughly when the foetus has a good chance of surviving outside the mother's womb, but I'd be fairly generous in that time limit since it's a hard decision for any woman to make and it shouldn't be rushed.

Dear Science - TV On The Radio Torn between this and Return to Cookie Mountain as my favourite TVOTR album. Either way they both remind me of summer since I listened to them a lot at the beginning of last summer when I was revising, which fits with now.

I appreciate that it's never been observed but I don't see in principle why it couldn't happen. Could you refer me to the proof of how superluminal particles cannot be detected? I'm curious and have never explicity heard of it, and it surprises me that quite a few experiments have looked for them if it's known to be impossible.

Good race, I watched all of it. Webber drove like a hero, Button was pretty unlucky and Alonso did well. I love the Monaco circuit, even if overtaking is hard it's still exciting just because of the history of the place. Can't believe Schumacher has been penalised like that, seems stupid. If the safety car was coming in then that indcates that the race was on again. It didn't end with the safety car out.

No I agree, my point is that if you could detect Cherenkov radiation in a vacuum that would indicate that tachyons existed. Obviously that's inferring their existence, but did you mean that we can't directly see superluminal particles?

well, that's really a simplification of the truth. things cannot cross the boundy of the speed of light. either they've always existed above the speed of light, or below since the bing bang, just like any other mathematical limit you can approach it from either direction. As sub-lightspeed particles we'll never be able to observe above-lightspeed particles and vice versa either. I though charged tachyons would emit Cherenkov radiation, lose energy and then speed up (counter-intuitively)? Not quite. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, but technically space itself can expand faster than light. Screw that. What if you had the energy of an infinite amount of multiverses? Would you then be able to travel in "negative" time (hence going to the past)? (Not trying to troll. I think that it's a little more interesting when you can speculate what could happen in so and so circumstance rather than limiting discussion by saying that the light barrier cannot be broken.) It might be interesting but it's completely pointless. Sorry if the laws of physics are "limiting" your discussion but those are the rules and pretending they don't exist is a waste of time. More interesting is thinking about how faster than light travel might work within the current laws of physics, see for example The Alcubierre Drive. Particles travelling backwards in time have been hypothesised to explain quantum entanglement effects. The laws of physics work nicely in both directions so there's no reason why you couldn't have particles travelling backwards in time, but sending a forwards travelling particles backwards in time would be impossible.

Called the Widow maker (on an erg/rowing machine) 1 x 1000m 3 x 500m 6 x 250m 3 x 500m 1 x 1000m Minimum rate 30. Rest for the time it took you to complete previous interval. We did it in pairs with one person resting while the other did their interval, all the pairs raced. Me and my partner won, which was good. The last 1000m was properly, properly grim though. Did that on Thursday, had weights yesterday morning and an outing today and tomorrow.