assassin_696

I think you're trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater in an attempt to be contrarian. Of course we don't need to walk around with our mobile phones always on us and be available all the time. But just think of the improved efficiency you can get from them for business or socialising. And more importantly, the number of lives they've saved because people can get in touch when they're in trouble. Telling an 80 year old woman who's car's broken down on a dark road at night to "take a walk" is just silly. Culture and society evolves, I'm all in favour of occasional nostaligia but to go back to a world without mobile phones would be completely pointless. If you've got the time/lifestyle where you can be relaxed about getting in touch with someone for something important then that's great, but not all of us do.

Yes it does, the fiscal deficit is huge and cutting it should be the first priority for any new government, as the conservatives have rightly made it.

Awesome

Nice. If I'm in a pub or a bar I like my beers and lagers, although I'm moving towards beers recently since I find lagers a bit weak and gassy, they can be nice though. Boddingtons is a nice beer, as well as Black Sheep ale (Yorkshire) and Doombar ale (Cornwall). I'll often drink white wine with more formal meals, not a fan of red though, and not cultured enough to really know my wines. It's a bit variable though, often the more expensive bottles don't taste as good. Spirits wise I love whisky, Glenfidditch, Glenmorangie and a few others that I forget. I quite like a Baileys with ice if i'm just relaxing at home too or with a coffee after a good meal. Vodka always gives me a bad hangover, absinthe is pretty lethal and gin a bit rough on it's own (although great in gin and tonics). That said I could probably get to like vodka and gin in a more refined way, they just often end up being drunk when i'm already smashed and wanting more. Port's nice too, it tastes particularly nice after white wine for some reason.

Many of the labour party are just as staunchly opposed to PR as the tories though, it's only now that it's become convenient that they've got this sudden interest in it. And even if there was a lib-lab coalition, they'd still lack a majority which would mean a probable coalition with lots of other fringe parties that will have their own agendas. In my opinion it would seem like such a bodge job that I can't see how they can really justify it. I think some form of conservative government, whether a minority one or some kind of coalition is the only justifiable government at the moment since they got more seats and votes than any other party. It would seem a little two-faced of the lib-dems to side up with the labour party to try and get PR, when PR in an overall sense might have given the tories a proper government now (although I don't know the exact stats of this). I mean obviously I'm biased because I want a conservative government, but another labour government would be a bit of a joke really when their opposition got more votes and seats than them.

Gordon Brown is still the Prime Minister, he's stepping down as the leader of his party when they elect a new leader, which won't be for a few months yet. He's still serving his country whilst the talks continue though. He's a good man and is doing the right thing, unforunately he's just an ineffective politican.

That's also a very childish metaphor. You're saying that we can devise and build beautiful experiments that test every facet of nature so we can explain and understand what's going on in most of the known universe but should still believe in a divine being outside the Universe simply because the human posesses the ability to ask abstract "what if?" questions? Of course our understanding of the Universe isn't complete, but there also aren't many gaps for God to hide in. Not only that but this divine being that's outside of the laws of physics regularly intervenes in the observable Universe? You seem to be wanting to have your cake and eat it. You argue for the existence of a God by saying that it exists outside the laws of nature and the Universe. If you want to believe that that's fine but it strikes me as curious as to why you should when you don't need one but that's fine. But then you say the God directly or indirectly intervenes in the Universe on a regular basis for the benefit of us. So are you a deist or a theist? If it's the former then fine, we'll never know. But an interventionist God would surely have an effect on this Universe. Quantum mechanics is a theory firmly built in space and time, so I don't know where you got that idea from.

Oh, and in his day Michael Schumacher was pretty awesome too.

It might well happen but I really can't see how Labour can justify governing with a Lib Dem pact, when they'd still lack a majority of seats. I think Nick Clegg should honour his pledge of supporting the party with the most votes in a minority government so they can begin to govern and pass essential legislature. Edit: Clegg just said he would. He seems to be a very good man, it's a shame he's leading a party that is doomed to be in the minority, but if he gets his electoral reform (and I actually hope he does) that might change.

To be fair though, a lot of doctors really don't know what they're talking about when it comes to this kind of thing. There's no reason in principle why working out with proper weights when you're young would give you a bad back. Pro olympic powerlifters tend to start young, there was a program recently about a British girl who's 14 and training for the 2012 olympics. They don't have back problems in later life because they're taught how to lift properly. Anyway to the OP, I've made losts of posts in this forum answering similar questions, have a look at those, I don't feel like typing them all out again.

Dead Man's Will - Iron & Wine (& Calexico) Give this ring to my lover I was scared and stupid not to ask For her hand long before Stunning, perfect harmonies.

Yeah, I mean as others have said if you think about it starting with machines then moving to free weights is almost always a bad way of doing it. Because if you started on say a bench machine that'll train your pecs exclusively and you might get them stronger on it. But when you come to do it on free weights your stabilising muscles (triceps, deltoids, neck, back etc.) won't have been developed as much so you'll have a false sense of what you can really lift and might injure yourself if you try and translate what you can lift on the machine to the free bench. Okay, so you might think that lifting just the bar won't look that great at first but what do you care what other people think? Let them carry on with their partial squats and endless bicep curls.

My top 5: Lance Armstrong Steve Redgrave Muhammad Ali Jonah Lomu Roger Federer

Fusion is the holy grail of energy, I think a lot more energy should be invested in it.

I think he makes an interesting point which probably hasn't been made quite so publicly before. You could also subscribe to the view point that any sufficiently advanced species will eventually destroy itself (a road we could well be going down, and almost went down in the past). Anyway, I think the probability of there being some kind of life somewhere else in the universe is so close to one it hurts, I mean there are good candidates for life elsewhere in just our solar system. That life could have a very different chemistry/biology to us, but I think that in many ways it would be more similar than we might expect. I mean if we're looking for candidates of intelligent life then we're looking for Earth-like planets which will have similar selective pressures in terms of evolution as ours, and so by convergent evolution our "design" may well be optimal across the universe for planets similar to ours. Speculative, but interesting.

After my 2k erg (rowing machine) last week I'm comfortably in the second boat again. On a side note, that 2k was the most painful thing one ever done. I can't remember the last 100m and was on the floor semi-conscious for 10 minutes after. Anyway, we're back into the old routine, so had weights this morning. Did a 2x6k UT2 yesterday because we couldn't have an outing, boring and sweaty.

Yeah that's very true. And if you had the time some form of interval training once a week now and again certainly wouldn't be any bad thing. My only hesitation is that if you sustain repeated interval training sessions per week over a long period of time your recovery will be terrible and you'll actually go backwards. I suppose it's not a consideration for a beginner, but in my opinion I'd build some base fitness over a period of 4 or so weeks first and then start introducing interval training. But I suppose it's just a time consideration.

Cardio is CW garbage. http://www.marksdailyapple.com/case-against-cardio/ Did you actually read the article? He's advocating exactly what I am, prolonged low intensity UT2 training to burn fat coupled with occasional AT (sprint training) to improve anaerobic capacity and strength.

You apologised when someone else trod on your foot? You sound like an Englishman.

You'll lose the fat around your stomach by doing UT2 or HIIT cardio, abdominal work will build the muscle under the fat but that's not much good if it's buried under a layer of fat. Changing your diet will also have a positive effect on that region that's possibly more significant than cardio. You don't necessarily want a high protein diet, just change the relative proportions of protein to carbohydrate to fat in your diet. Read this article. Drop the pills and eat real fruit and vegetables, supplements should only be used when you physically can't get enough of whatever from a normal diet. Anyway there's plenty more tips on nutrition on those websites. But a personal tip, canned tuna's great. It's cheap, lean (low fat) and can be used in lots of things. I eat quite a lot of it.

I guess ideally adjustable ones that go up to about 20kg (about 45lbs) on each arm. It's tricky with dumbells though to translate the big lifts that promote fast bulk muscle growth (squats, deadlifts, cleans and bench). It's possible, just not as effective. The most effective way to gain muscle mass in my opinion is a 5x5 strength program squatting heavy 2-3 times a week, that's not possible with dumbells. But anyway, stuff to do: Chest: Bench press Incline flyes (if possible, if not do them flat) Shoulders: Arnold Press Shoulder press Lat raises (front and side) Upright row Back Pullups Bent over one armed rows Deadlifts Cleans Legs (HARD to do with dumbells) Squats Deadlifts Biceps Curls of all varieties (hammer, normal etc.) Pullups Chinups Triceps Dips (can do with two chairs, one chair etc.) Overhead tricep extensions Tricep kickbacks Maybe split it something like Legs/back Chest/triceps Shoulders/biceps 3x10 of each exercise should do the trick I guess. Work on core and abdominal strength throughout (and know the difference). I dunno, what i've said really isn't anything revolutionary but it might be effective.

Buy heavier dumbells, or get to a gym. You won't build much with 10lbs.

From the sounds of it you seem to have two requirements, to burn fat and build muscle. These can easily be done in conjunction and i'm going to give you a few possible ways of doing it so you have some options. The first thing I'd recommend you do is buy a heart rate monitor, nothing too expensive, just something that gives you an average and instantaneous heart rate. Because the best way to build the "base fitness" people here are talking about is through UT2 training, which stands for Utilization Training 2. Don't worry about the jargon, all it means is that you train at roughly 55% of your maximum heart rate. You can work this out by subtracting your age from 220, which gives you a max heart rate of 203. So for UT2 training you want your heart rate no higher than 112. Once you sustain this level of exercise for longer than about 30 mins your body starts to burn fat, which is what you want to do. So ideally you'd go and do 2 intervals of 30 minutes on a rowing machine (do you have access to one?) with a heart rate of 112. If you don't have a heart rate monitor a good way to assess whether or not you're at UT2 is whether or not you can hold down a conversation without gasping too much. You should be able to. Ideally do this twice a week, it will build excellent base fitness and burn fat effectively. If you do this kind of exercise I'd couple it with weights 2-3 times a week (if possible). As for what kind of exercises to do my best advice is to keep it simple and focus on lifts that use as many muscles as possible. Free weight squats, deadlifts, bench-press are all excellent because they develop core stability, raw power and neuromuscular pathways that get your body used to lifting weight. Stronglifts is an excellent program for beginners to strength training based on the Starting Strength program, it teaches you how to do all the exercises correctly and safely (very important) as well as giving training ideas and diet tips. I'd highly recommend giving the website a throrough read, you'll learn a lot from it. The other route is to do HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts which develop strength and cardiovascular fitness at the same time, something like CrossFit. They post a daily workout that varies between metabolic conditioning (cardio type stuff) and pure strength. The problem with starting a program like this is that to start with, you won't be anywhere near fit enough to complete most of the metcon workouts (don't take that personally, they're designed so that top athletes struggle) and won't have the strength or knowledge of the lifts to complete the strength workouts. Nevertheless, it's a very informative website and i'd recommend you give it a read just to see what you can learn. The final thing probably worth mentioning is diet. For someone trying to lose weight but build lean muscle mass I'd recommend a diet high in protein, with plenty of fruits and vegetables, nuts, dried fruits etc. Limit your carbohydrate intake somewhat (less potatos, pasta) etc. but obviously don't cut it out completely, just maybe have one less potato with each meal. Obviously cut down on any processed fatty foods, sweets and sugars. I'm not saying cut them out completely because that's boring and you don't need anything that drastic, just make them treats. This probably all sounds quite time consuming but once you know what you're doing it'll quickly become part of your daily routine. If you're short on time and can only do a few workouts a week I'd prioritise the strength training stuff over the UT2 training since you will burn fat naturally by lifting weights and you'll build muscle, you just won't burn the fat quite as quickly but that might be okay. Good luck, stick with it and you'll easily see results.

I really enjoyed it, I like the way they're developing their sound and not just stuffing it with more club ready electro-pop anthems, as good as those songs were this seems more interesting as an album as a whole.

Streets of Philadelphia by Bruce Springsteen is an absolutely blinding song and was written for the film Philadelphia, which deals with HIV/AIDS and homophobia.