LiveJournal Project - May 2004

Lots of workout logs and training stuff, plus some international political economy.

Date: 2004-05-01 08:00
Subject: week 2.5, day XXX
yes, that's right, more cardio. 65 minutes on the elliptical, no weight vest, about 60-70% effort. 6.4 miles, 1174 calories. woo. didn't even feel winded when it was all over. interval training (the treadmill shit that i did for my previous cardio workout) is definitely the way to go if i want to gas myself, but they say that long periods of moderate-effort stuff is best solution for losing weight. who knows.

Date: 2004-05-04 14:07
Subject: blah blah blah
it's been awhile since i've actually had any public entries - seems that of late my LJ is being used for nothing but gym-workout training logs - so i figure it's time for an obligatory update. probably the biggest news to report isn't even mine: _purpleglitter_ is graduating from ASU next week. hooray cory! me, i've still got another few months to go. summer classes start june 1st - i'll be taking a couple of 100-level POS classes that are degree requirements. i'm not exactly jumping for joy over this, but i figure that if i'm going to have to suffer through things which are mind-numbingly easy, the best way to do it is to cram it all in as quickly as possible. i tried taking these classes during spring semester, and the thought of 14 weeks of introductory political science (when i've already taken assloads of advanced-level stuff) was enough to make me say "fuck that shit."

some recent drama appeared with a couple of friends of mine - if you, dear reader, aren't already aware of the situation, it's probably for the best, as i don't see any point in rehashing it - if you read my friends list you might figure it out. i don't know how person A thought he could do what he did and not expect the shit to hit the fan (and boo on him for not caring), but person B could've been a little more mature in his response. it's a pain in the ass when both parties involved in a fiasco are your friends - you want to support them both without taking sides - and that's not always easy to do.

shaggy dropped by last week to shoot the shit and catch up on various happenings, and we talked of life, work, defcon, and that dude we used to know, weaver. and then we got into discussing projects and ideas and he attempted to recruit me to work on his game, although despite a good sales pitch i really couldn't see much appeal in writing AI for a text-based MUD. however, he mentioned another idea that he'd been toying with that did, in fact, pique some interest. as we were discussing the shit-poor state of american politics, he told me about an idea for a sort of fantasy-football-meets-politics game - the idea behind it being to provide an interesting way (make a game out of it, make it competitive) to educate people about what their representatives are doing in congress and how, in many cases, the will of the people is NOT being done. now, as someone who's been into computers for 20 years, i've found that doing computer stuff for the sake of doing computer stuff has become absolutely boring, and lately i've become a lot more interested in the social aspects of computing and technology - so shaggy's idea definitely has the wheels turning. i told him that i thought it'd make a good presentation for defcon, so maybe when he gets his book finished we'll do some collaboration on that. i think it's got a lot of potential - the implementation (web scripting, basically) isn't going to be all that exciting, but the finished product could be very cool. i've been bitching about how i need some new project to work on, so maybe this will be it.

speaking of projects, i've been slowly working on a webapp for tracking gym workouts - so when that gets finished, i'll post a link here and probably also in gymrats for anyone what wants to play with it.

for all you psytrance fans... i'm booked to play a DTS event on june 5th - don't know what my timeslot is yet, but it promises to be a good time to be had by all, so come out and get your stomp on. hopefully i'll have a new demo recorded and available by then.

i think that's about it. i'm not really sure what's in store for the summer other than school, although after second summer session is over i think it'd be a good time for an off-continent vacation.

Date: 2004-05-05 14:14
Subject: week 2.5, day XXX
yeah, it's supposed to be week 3 and i'm supposed to be lifting again, but i'm not. it's been a shitty week for motivation and energy, but i did manage to get to the gym this morning for another 65 minute cardio escapade. 6.6 miles, 1206 calories. now i don't feel guilty about all the sushi i just finished stuffing my face with. but, in other good news, the scale this morning said 249. a week ago it said 257. obviously that kind of pace is extremely temporary, and likely due in part to water weight, but still, it's nice to see. 239 would be even nicer.

Date: 2004-05-06 08:59
Subject: ideological changes in american politics
this is something i posted on a message board, but i thought i'd reprint it here with some further commentary...

if you look back to some of the presidential elections prior to 2000, you can see that they were all relatively one-sided in terms of outcome. reagan won election and re-election by a substantial margin, as did george bush the first. when clinton defeated him, it was again by a significant margin. clinton's margin of re-election wasn't as great, particularly given the relatively strong showing of ross perot, but he still defeated dole by a substantial amount, especially where the electoral votes were concerned.

the election of 2000, however, was the closest in american history, and this year's campaign is shaping up to be more of the same; the latest polls show kerry and bush in a dead heat. john mccain has predicted that this is likely to be the nastiest campaign ever.

so here's the question. what does this mean? does it mean that differences between the political parties are disappearing even further? does it signify some sort of shift in the american political mindset - whether towards the center, or in some other direction? does it mean something else entirely?

i think i'm inclined to the viewpoint that we're reaching some sort of major turning point in american politics, but i don't really know what it is that we're turning towards or turning away from. when you've got 80% of the people in support of something and 20% of the people opposed, you've got a certain measure of stability. there are enough people in favor of whatever it is to make sure that it happens and the opposition makes headway only gradually. but when you've got a 50/50 split, it seems to me that this is the greatest opportunity for chaos and potentially violent change. i don't know - this is something i started pondering earlier this morning, and i think it requires a bit more thought.

Date: 2004-05-08 19:14
Subject: deep thoughts (well, you decide)
i should start this entry off with a quote - one of my own... "a cat is a device used for turning kibble into shit."

not very profound on the surface of it, but there's actually a certain bit of universal truth to be seen there. the second law of thermodynamics says that entropy, chaos, and disorder rule the universe - that overall, things are moving in one irreversible direction towards a state of greater entropy. life, then, can be looked at as a continual struggle to maintain and increase order in the face of an unrelenting push towards chaos. at the individual level, we process food to build our bodies and minds. at the societal level, we process raw materials and land to build cities and highways, imposing order where there was none. life is all about processing - processing information, processing materials, turning one thing into another in an attempt to stave off the inevitable decay and decomposition that ultimately befalls everything via the passage of time.

and to tie it back to the original quote, with apologies to rene descartes, the true meaning of existence can be put into one sentence. "i shit, therefore i am."

Time: 19:16
Subject: week 2.5, day XXX
65 minutes of cardio on the elliptical, 1260 calories burned, 6.6 miles. woo. back to lifting tomorrow.

Date: 2004-05-11 10:32
Subject: week 3, day 1 - back/triceps/shoulders
i gave my elbows two weeks off, and apparently that's what they needed, as there wasn't any discomfort felt during today's workout. however, those same two weeks off also led inevitably to muscle atrophy, so it's almost as if i'm starting back from week 1. at least i don't have the first-week soreness. also, i decided that working each body part once a week is probably not enough, even if only from a psychological perspective, so i've switched it around to be able to cover everything twice in 8 days with two days off (3 on, 1 off, rinse and repeat). also, for the sake of making these tables smaller still, i'm changing the format just a little - if the table has a green background, then i did everything in that set. if not, well, you should be able to figure it out. so, my new workout schedule will be like this:
day1: back/triceps/shoulders (shoulder press)
day2: legs/traps (shrugs)
day3: chest/biceps/shoulders (raises)
-off-

Time: 15:00
Subject: week 3, day 2 - legs/traps
leg day sucks, that's nothing new - but for this workout i decided to swap out the squats for deadlift for the sake of some variety. i'll probably do squats on leg workout 2 of this cycle, which is scheduled for saturday. the thing that always gets me about leg day is the incredible disparity in strength between my hamstrings and my quads. i don't know if this is a common thing, although judging by the amounts i see other people lifting on some of these same exercises, i suspect that it isn't. it's a struggle for me to do 6 reps @ 120 on the lying leg curl, but i can do that much with one leg on the leg extension - a 2-1 difference. that just doesn't seem right to me.

Date: 2004-05-12 16:15
Subject: week 3, day 3 - chest/biceps/shoulders
today's workout went quite well; there were only two sets that i wasn't able to finish, which suggests that i probably went a little too low for my return to chest day. the preacher curls felt surprisingly good for an exercise that i always tend to suck balls at. also, i'm feeling yesterday's deadlift more in my back than in my legs, so i'm thinking that my form probably went to shit on that 305 set and that i'll need to keep a closer watch on it next time. i've taken enough time off for various injuries. no more of that.

and today's observation: it appears that the 3 stooges work out at my gym. i saw these dudes yesterday doing bench press, and they were reasonably strong (well, stronger than me, anyway) - the fat one (i guess we'll call him curly) was able to put up 315 pounds for a few reps before his spotter came to the rescue, and i didn't think too much about them, but then today they were back doing shoulder work. they started off with the 50lb dumbbells doing overhead press; ok, no big deal - but then once they got into the 75lb range and up, i don't know quite what they were thinking. the one guy did 5 reps with the 80lb dumbbells - and the spotter helped him on every rep! and then the third guy (we'll call him moe) said afterwards "hey, you could've gotten one more rep." how could he have gotten one more rep when he didn't even really get one rep in the first place? come on, you fools, who are you trying to impress? me? i don't give a shit - i actually lift under my own power. some imaginary cute girls? there weren't any. if you can't lift the weight even one time without noticeable help from a spotter, then you can't lift the weight. this lesson was apparently lost on them, however, as they proceeded on up to the 90lb dumbbells. at this weight, not even curly could manage one rep without help, and larry couldn't even get the weights into position by himself. really, what's the point, other than announcing to the world how small your dicks are? is this some new way of lifting for the benefit of your spotter? i've heard of forced reps, but that applies when you've already done some under your own power and are just trying to squeeze out the last rep or two.

Date: 2004-05-14 13:15
Subject: week 3, day 5 (day 4 = OFF) - back/triceps/shoulders
i'm thinking that perhaps the 3 on / 1 off cycle isn't going to provide enough rest between bodyparts, and that if i want to keep the current split of working two body parts in one day, i'm going to need to switch it to a 3 on / 2 off cycle - as shown by the numbers, most of today's lifting was either at the same level as day 1 or, in some cases, actually a little bit worse. that rarely happens to me, so i'm thinking that i probably needed one more day off before starting up again, and that i should've used today to do cardio or some other non-strength-oriented activity. so, i'm going to finish this cycle with legs tomorrow and chest/biceps on sunday, and then take two days off from lifting before i start up again and see how that feels.

Time: 13:40
Subject: hey, look, a public post
let's see, some things to update... _purpleglitter_ graduated from ASU yesterday (congratulations, cory!!), and a bunch of us got together at cheesecake factory to celebrate, and much fun was had by all. i know i'm going to sound like an arrogant snob when i say this, but it's really nice to go to a gathering of people where i actually like everybody that's there. our end of the table had some interesting conversations on topics ranging from the iraqi prison-abuse scandal to attempting to explain the differences between various subgenres of techno to a discussion on the merits or lack thereof of getting married. good times, indeed. we'll have to do it all again in december when it's my turn. =)

in other news... i had a rather odd dream last night. it started off with predictions of the end of the world; some ancient texts had revealed that the world was going to be destroyed by a monstrous asteroid, and i remember standing outside watching the rock come plummeting to earth - so then i got a glimpse of the afterlife, and it was an airport, minus the overpriced giftshops and power-tripping TSA screeners. the airport was filled with people, all of whom had presumably died when the earth blew up, and they were going to various gates and heading off to all sorts of destinations. however, unlike most versions of an afterlife, where the outcome is usually determined by what you've done in this life, people in this airport were choosing their destinations freely. here's where it got even stranger - not all of the "airplanes" led to reincarnations as sentient beings. some of them led to planets and stars and other such entitites which were in the process of being created - so the people that chose those destinations were off to become part of a star, or a planet, or an ocean somewhere filled with single-celled organisms. also unlike most "real" airports, people in this one were quite talkative - not to the point of being annoying, but they were discussing where they wanted to go with friends, family members, and even complete strangers, often with whole families headed off to who-knows-where to become space dust.

it was at about this point that i woke up with a need to use the facilities, and all i could really think about as i was struggling not to lose the details of the dream was that it would make a really interesting short story. i haven't written any fiction in a long time, though, so i don't know if it'd come out very well or if i'd have the patience to do it. i'm also not really sure if i was supposed to get anything out of that dream - the only things that came to mind were a: watch out for falling rocks, and b: some sort of statement about the interconnectedness of everything, or that everything in the universe is somehow alive. and i suppose, if you take the long view, maybe that isn't really far from the truth - we all are, in a sense, made of space dust.

oh yeah (edit) ... not that anyone cares, but i got an A in japanese 102. go me.

Date: 2004-05-16 02:39
Subject: week 3, day 6 - legs/traps
decided to leave the regular squats until next week and a little bit more rest; swapped out the deadlift for hack squats on this workout. as much as i don't really like leg day, i will say that it does have one good point: usually my leg strength increases more quickly than any other body part, so that's encouraging. i was thinking the other day that a good goal to set for myself (and one that's sufficiently far off that it'd take some serious work to get there) would be to try to break some or all of the women's world records in lifting. why? well, because the men's records are so far off that i don't expect that i'd ever get that far - the women's world record in the bench press is, i think, about 425 or so - but the men's record is over 900. the women's squat record is in the lower 600s, but the men's record is over 1000. so you can see that one set of records is considerably more reachable than the others - and hey, it's good to think big but not completely unrealistic. =)

hm, ok, i just went and looked it up... and the women's world records are higher than i thought. for bench press, it's 501 pounds. squat is 834, and deadlift is 650. i think the only one of these i have any shot at is the deadlift, and although i don't know exactly how far off i am from reaching it, i think it's pretty far off. better get busy.

Time: 13:37
Subject: and the weird dreams continue...
now this is a really strange one. it started off with planning a trip to vegas and driving around in the car trying to pick everyone up in time so that we could get to the airport. cory and mike c. were in the car, as was kyle, a dude i went to high school with, and then somehow we also had luis gonzalez and richie sexson from the arizona diamondbacks (not that these dudes would even FIT in my car). then we're driving back down the 101, heading for the airport, and there's a massive traffic jam to the point where it's restricted to one lane. some lady cop is managing the traffic, and while we're stuck there, everybody gets out of the car to go take a piss on the side of the road. usually when i have to piss in a dream it means that my bladder is full in reality, and lo' and behold, next thing i know i'm waking up and heading down the hall. funny thing is, i climb back in bed and fall back asleep, and the dream picks up more or less where it left off - and really starts to take a turn for the strange. knowing that we're going to be late for the flight given this traffic mess, we all get out of the car and start running, and instead of the freeway, we're on some ramp leading to america west arena or some other basketball venue where there's a playoff game going on. i manage to get a pair of rollerblades or something and start skating on through, leaving everybody else behind - going through the arena and down the ramp, coming out at what looks like some sort of apartment complex. as i'm moving up toward the front, i end up in a coffeeshop sort of setting - but it's kind of a dark/mysterious coffeeshop with a decidedly dark and mysterious and somewhat magickal feel to it. i knew that i'm close to the airport, and that i've managed to get way far ahead of everyone else in my party, so i decided to sit down on a sofa (which looks oddly like the purple sofa in my living room) and take a break from skating. and then, upon looking up, i see stormshadowsong doing some kind of weird reading (not tarot) for somebody. she had a gold object in her hand - it was something egyptian-looking, and it had little holes around it that the person getting the reading would put letters in, as if to spell out the name of something or someone they wanted to know about. she looked up and saw me sitting there, and things started to feel a little odd. but after she finished doing the reading for the person at her table, i got up and went over and sat down. we exchanged some pleasantries, i told her that i was heading to vegas with some people for a blackjack tournament, and she said that she and her boyfriend had just gotten an apartment together, and that they'd been lucky to get it because of some rule change with the management. she also said that she'd finished writing a little book (i think it was a children's book), and i mentioned the essay that i'm working on for the economist (which, in actuality, is something i just started working on yesterday). i also told her about my airplane-afterlife dream (see previous entry for that), and then she asked me if i wanted a reading. i didn't quite understand the tool that she was using, but i said ok, and began putting letters into the little gold piece. however, the letters fell out a couple times, so i had to replace them. she started doing the reading, telling me that the fact that i couldn't get the letters right (even over my protesting that they simply fell out) was significant, and it was at this point that the dream-bathroom demon struck again. so i excused myself from the table and went to the coffeeshop bathroom, thinking about the letters - specifically, about why i chose the ones that i did, when they didn't even fit the subject that i wanted to know about - well, they did, but from like 8-9 years ago. so after boggling on that for awhile, i washed my face and went back out to the table and sat down. chantal got up and went to say something to a friend of hers at another table, and about this point i noticed some scraggly dude standing next to me fumbling under the table - apparently he didn't notice me, because he grabbed her handbag and started walking away with it. i got up and grabbed him, at which point he turned and pointed a gun at me - and just like jackie chan or some other television martial artist i was able to easily disarm the fool and beat his ass. he looked sorta like a thinner version of john walker lindh (the american taliban guy) - dunno where that fool came from. called security, gave them the rundown, and gave chantal her bag back, at which time the reading started to continue. she'd asked me a few questions that i don't remember anymore, although i do recall having a bunch of things that i was going to say -- and then, hey, guess what? woke up with a full bladder again. dammit!!

i suppose i could attempt to go back to sleep and see if the dream would continue, but it's already almost 1:30 in the afternoon and after a nice 10 hour snooze i'm really not tired anymore.

afterthoughts... when i was taking intro psychology, one of the chapters discussed sleep and dreaming, and the various theories and models that we currently have regarding the nature of dreams - one of the theories says that dreams are just mental detritus, another says that dreams help us to organize information and sort out problems, still another says that dreams are just byproducts of neural activity. so which one of those does this fall under?! who knows... time for some breakfast.

Date: 2004-05-17 01:19
Subject: ravyn's stupid moment of the year
anyone who knows me even halfway well knows that i pride myself on my intelligence, and on the fact that i generally don't make too many mistakes when matters of the mind are concerned. however, on saturday night the stupidity of my blunder was matched only by my embarassment. i've lived in the east valley for about 20 years or so, so i know my way around quite well, and i don't think i've ever gotten lost while driving in the phoenix area - until last night. i had called nicantoni's and was on my way out to pick up a pizza; going down warner road i came across a stalled, dead, or somehow otherwise-incapacitated vehicle that was blocking both lanes of eastbound traffic. although it would've been possible to get around this car, the asshat in front of me refused to do so, so i ended up having to take a detour south on arizona avenue. and then, somehow i managed to completely forget where the hell i was going. i hit ray road and started going east again, and instead of driving north on mcqueen back to warner to get my pie, for some reason i thought i needed to go out to cooper. upon getting there, i realized that i'd fucked up, and at this point i had absolutely no clue where the pizza shop was; it's as if the directions had been completely blanked out of my head. so i managed to drive in circles for about 10 minutes trying to reorient myself, at which point i finally gave up, pulled over to a circle k (since i didn't have my fucking cell phone) and called the pizza place to figure out where they hell it was. back on the road again, but i'd fucked up my sense of direction, so i had to turn around 3 times before i finally started going the right way again. i'd originally ordered the pizza at 8pm, and it was just before 9pm that i rolled into the parking lot to get my pie. unfuckingbelievable.

in other news, after a little searching on the net i found that i can get a computer-based EEG unit for under $3000 - including electrodes, signal amplifier, and software. that's a good chunk of change, but not nearly as expensive as i would've expected. why do i want one of these? to experiment with, of course! =)

Time: 01:29
Subject: week 3, day 7 - chest/biceps/shoulders
it was a good day in the gym today - both chest and biceps seemed to be feeling strong, as i was able to go over several of my assigned reps/weights - perhaps what i said yesterday about my leg strength increasing more quickly than other body parts isn't going to hold true? i dunno. either way, i was definitely happy with today's training. tomorrow is cardio, and then tuesday will be a complete off day, before the cycle resumes on wednesday.

Time: 04:22
Subject: one last thing before i sleep...
i'm not sure if it's because i've been hitting the gym on a semi-regular basis, as that has seemed to be the catalyst for everything else of late, or if there are other reasons afoot, but it seems like my brain is coming back with a vengeance (minus the pizza debacle). sometime between now and june 1st i'm going to be finishing an essay on the potential long-term ramifications of outsourcing. why am i doing this, you ask? easy - for a shot at fame and fortune. i came across a couple of essay contests that i've decided to enter - one of them has a deadline of june 1st, and a top prize of, IIRC, $5000, while the other one has a deadline in late august and a top prize of $20,000 and the publishing of the winning essay in a journal from the economist. i don't really give a shit about the money (although i wouldn't turn it down) - but i'd love to get a published article or two. as it turns out, both contests are using similar topics; the second one is considerably more wide-open, however; while the first references two articles in particular that entrants are supposed to respond to, the contest from the economist covers everything from migrant workers to the movement of capital across national boundaries and various other things. should be fun.

and here's what makes it even better. in 1997, i wrote a paper for my international security class discussing this very issue. i'm not going to reuse that paper, because it's not publication-quality, but it already has a pretty well-analyzed version of the argument that i'm going to make, and references to articles which i plan to cite. my thinking behind all of this is that i'm going to address a part of the outsourcing debate which is rarely (daniel drezner makes mention of it in all of 3 sentences in the current issue of foreign affairs) discussed in the mainstream media (really, all you hear about this is anecdotal evidence from people who got screwed and politicians looking for a visceral election-year play on one side, and economists trying to convince the hysterical opposition that outsourcing is actually a beneficial component of free trade and that it's not going to destroy the american economy on the other). not to say that both sides don't have important arguments to make, but they're all missing the bigger picture.

that's about all i'm going to say for the moment - not that anyone really reads this journal, but i wouldn't want some random passerby to yoink my idea. i'll post the essay after it's been written and submitted for anyone who's curious.

Time: 23:59
Subject: week 4, day 1 -- cardio
65 minutes, divided up between the arctrainer and the elliptical machine. calories burned: 1275.

Date: 2004-05-18 12:17
Subject: random commentary
plans, tales of future accomplishments, lists of tasks intended for completion... they're great for pie-in-the-sky wishing, for puffing out one's chest and for getting temporarily excited about a time which has yet to be (generally due in part to some sort of dissatisfaction with existing circumstances) - but when we think about our lives, when we think about the lives of others, what is it that we reflect on: things that have been promised to do, or things that have actually been done? respect is reserved for accomplishment, not wishing - we've all got grand designs.

Date: 2004-05-19 16:53
Subject: week 4, day 3 (day 2 = OFF) - back/triceps/shoulders
nothing much to say. overall not a bad workout. i still seem to be sucking balls at the overhead press, but the upper-back workouts are coming along nicely.

Date: 2004-05-20 16:34
Subject: week 4, day 4 - legs/traps
a struggle to make it through leg day, yes it was. i dunno, even though i got plenty of sleep last night, i just didn't feel like i had 100% energy going into the gym today. there were a couple of points where i wanted to say fuck it and cut the workout short and go home, but i managed to slog through and get it done. after coming home and collapsing onto the floor in a tired heap, i decided that i should try a nutrition experiment. they say that you should, if you're lifting on a regular basis, consume 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight each day. for me, that'd be about 250g of protein - which is a LOT of fucking protein. however, if i consider what my actual average daily protein intake is, i'd say that it's 100-120g at the most - and that's on days when i go to the gym and i'm including a 40g post-workout shake. so i'm wondering - if i actually forced myself to consume 250g of protein a day for, say, a week or two, what kind of difference (if any) i'd notice in my workouts. it can't hurt, in any event. so i think what i'm going to do is shoot for 160-200g of liquid protein per day (shakes n' such) and get the rest of it from real food. i'll be keeping track of that as best i can for the next couple weeks in these logs.

Date: 2004-05-21 10:35
Subject: for all you psytrance fans ... new mix available this is, i think, my best mix ever. things just, well, flow. download from here: (nope)
and a track list...

Mood: accomplished

Date: 2004-05-22 23:44
Subject: week 4, day 5 -- chest/biceps/shoulders
this was a day where a little bit of laziness on my part actually kinda paid off - for one of my sets i was supposed to grab the 85lb dumbbells, but since they were on the upper rack and would've required more work to pick up than the 90lb dumbbells on the lower rack, i decided to give the 90s a shot - and much to my surprise, i didn't have too much trouble with them. granted, i only completed 5 reps instead of the required 6, but i think the extra mass makes up for that. i don't know if this pace of improvement will continue for much longer or if things will start to level off, but with luck i'll make it to the last rack (the rack of dumbbells with the heaviest weights - 100 - 130lbs) by the end of the month. we shall see...

a couple other notes... one, i'm getting to the point where it's becoming quite difficult to get the weights in position - lifting 80lbs in each arm from a start position on my knees up to my chest so i can do incline press is not easy. two, i don't understand why i suck so badly at the decline press - it's supposed to be easier than incline or flat benching. maybe it's the machine i'm using, maybe it's the position i'm sitting in, maybe it's the fact that i do it towards the end of the workout - or maybe all of the above.

Date: 2004-05-25 00:58
Subject: week 5, day 1 -- back/triceps
so things got a little bit messed up over the weekend - i had an off day where there wasn't supposed to be an off day, and i skipped the previous cycle's cardio day entirely, but i guess that's just the way it goes. we're back on schedule with week 5, day 1. today's workout wasn't too bad - i can definitely see the leveling off starting to happen as far as continual progress goes, but that's to be expected. i'll probably start changing things up a bit after another cycle or two are complete.

liquid protein consumed today: 90g (yeah, i still have a ways to go)

Time: 17:50
Subject: hockey?
yeah, so i'm not really a big hockey fan, except when they start fighting, but since wyldthyng and stormshadowsong are from calgary, and the flames are playing for the stanley cup, i think i'm going to have to cheer for tampa bay. go lightning!! =)

Date: 2004-05-26 02:25
Subject: week 5, day 2 - legs/traps
leg day went well - i decided a couple weeks ago that i was going to start using a belt when squatting - i've read a lot of different articles on the matter, some which say that it's better to use a belt to provide lower-back support and help prevent injuries and others which maintain it's better to squat without a belt (at least up to a point) to build core / stabilizer strength. i'm going to try to take a middle ground - using a belt for the heavier sets and taking it off for the lighter ones - we'll see how that goes. but anyway, today was squat day, and i found that with the belt on, 275 was surprisingly easy. i don't know if that's due specifically to the belt, or because i've added deadlifts to my leg-day repetoire and i'm building strength that way. i guess we'll see how it develops. i also think i'm going to stop doing the hip adductor / abductor machines. i've pretty much maxed out the entire stack on both, and if i squat more, these muscles are going to get plenty of work anyway.

liquid protein consumed so far today: 60g

Date: 2004-05-27 03:04
Subject: week 5, day 3 - chest/biceps
a good workout. not much to say. going to try the 95lb dumbbells on the next cycle for flat bench press and see how that goes. i'd like to use the 90s for incline, too, but i don't know if i'll be able to lift them into position. =/

liquid protein consumed so far: 110g

Date: 2004-05-28 21:38
Subject: new style...
as you can see, i've switched my journal style to something a little bit more interesting. now i just need to figure out how to make the text smaller on the entries. there's got to be a setting in there somewhere for font size.

oh, and that 23rd entry, 5th sentence thing that's making the rounds:

"so here's the basic rundown."

Date: 2004-05-30 06:38
Subject: week 5, day 6 (day 4,5=lazy/OFF) -- back/triceps
so, yeah, my left elbow is starting to bother me again - not really sure where this is coming from, but i'm going to see if i can make adjustments (maybe no more preacher curls?) over the next couple of workouts to see what happens. i'm not at all keen on the idea of taking another two weeks off. other than that, it was an ok workout - a couple of disappointments (the skullcrushers, for example - i guess my triceps were just burned all to hell when i did them) and a couple of surprises (overhead press went better than i'd expected).

liquid protein consumed today: not enough. 43g

Time: 06:52
Subject: stuff n' things...
let's see... _purpleglitter_ and i went to see "the day after tomorrow" on friday night - it SUCKED BALLS. i think we were both hoping for more of a disaster, things-get-destroyed kind of movie, and there was just way too much human drama. i really didn't give two shits to learn more about the characters, the kid that was hot for his classmate, or the father-son issues that more or less comprised the bulk of the movie. an azcentral.com review of the film noted that if you'd seen the trailer, you'd seen the best parts of the movie - and that's a pretty accurate assessment. it's also obvious that the writer/director was trying to make an environmentalist anti-global-warming statement, but the movie was so miserable that any message he might've had was both drowned out by the sound of the film sucking so badly. i will give credit for one thing, though - the vice president, who in the early part of the film pooh-poohs the whole notion of global warming and is more concerned about his pocketbook, bears a striking resemblance to dick cheney. as if that wasn't intentional....

in other news, for shits and giggles, and while i was doing that 23rd entry/5th sentence meme, i went back and read a bunch of my old journal entries. looking back on it all, and thinking about where i am now, it's kinda disappointing, and to a certain extent i feel like i've more or less wasted the last two years of my existence. i noticed that i'm pretty much at exactly the same point in my life now as i was then - that i haven't done anything, made any progress, etc, etc. now, it's my belief that one need not always be moving towards a goal - particularly when one has no goals in mind - but one should always be improving. whether that be improving the size of your bank account, the number of IQ points you have, the amount you can bench press, or simply your contentment with life, stagnation is not and should never be an option. so that's something i need to keep in the back of my mind over the next few months - i don't really want to write an end-of-2004 entry that's the same as my end-of-2003 entry that's the same as my end-of-2002 entry.
Editor's note: this is interesting... might be useful when we come back for the review.

and in still more news, i finished the second draft (i basically scrapped the first one and started over) of my outsourcing essay for the contest that's due by june 1st. it turned out a bit differently than i'd originally expected - i decided not to go with the globalization leads to stratification which leads to conflict argument that i'd originally envisioned because it didn't really fit with the contest guidelines. instead i basically just dismantled the entire pro-outsourcing case from a theoretical and pragmatic viewpoint, casting outsourcing as a practice based on flawed theoretical grounds (the doctrine of comparative advantage no longer applies) and supported by poor empirical argument (not to mention the national security issues). the only problem i have now is that the damn thing is too long. the word limit for this contest is 2500, so i need to figure out how to chop 320 words without turning my paper into swiss cheese.

oh yeah, and summer school starts on tuesday. blech.
Mood: accomplished

Date: 2004-05-31 01:50
Subject: week 5, day 7 - legs/traps
leg day... yah. ugh. adding the squat machine squats in place of the hip machines makes a significant difference - mainly in the sense that it makes me a hell of a lot more tired. =/

liquid protein consumed so far today: 85g

Time: 05:38
Subject: it's done!
so, the essay which i've been referring to over the last couple weeks has been completed, checked over, and submitted to the contest, one day ahead of the deadline. go me! i don't know if i'll win or not, or even if i'll place in the top 5 - but it was a good exercise to get the brain flowing for the start of school (tuesday) and in the process i learned a few things about a subject that i didn't really consider myself well-versed in. anyway, here's the essay, minus footnotes/citations, for any of you that would like to read it. to make your friends' pages happy, i've put it behind an lj-cut:

Future Uncertain: Offshoring, Economics, and National Security

Georges Clemenceau noted that "war is too important a matter to be left to the military," warning, in a larger sense, against the dangers of allowing those with a provincial outlook to control the discussion over matters essential to the vitality of a nation. In the modern world, it would be impossible to not count economics among those matters, and thus in the debate over offshore outsourcing we must resist the temptation to leave economics to the economists. This issue cannot simply be summarized as a case of protectionism versus free-trade or readily dismissed with an appeal to the doctrine of comparative advantage, and a closer examination of the evidence reveals quite a different story: offshore outsourcing is dangerous. This essay argues that the economic theory behind offshore outsourcing is suspect at best, and not only do arguments in support of offshoring fail to stand up under scrutiny, the practice itself endangers U.S. economic and national security.

This paper is thus divided into three main sections. The first part addresses outsourcing and the doctrine of comparative advantage. The second part discusses and criticizes several of the more empirically-based arguments made in support of outsourcing, thus leading into an examination of national security issues in the final section.

Economic Fallacies
First proposed in 1817 by economist David Ricardo, the theory of comparative advantage contends that even if a given country is a high-cost producer of most goods, it will still manufacture some goods at a lower relative cost than its trading partners, thus maintaining an advantage in those sectors. The country should then focus its productive capacity in those sectors with the lowest opportunity costs of production and then engage in trade with other nations to obtain goods that are more expensive to produce domestically. "Allowing countries to specialize accordingly increases productivity gains across all countries. This specialization translates into cheaper goods, and a greater variety of them, for all consumers." Advocates maintain that outsourcing is a practical application of Ricardian principles, and therefore a boon to society. This conclusion is incorrect.

Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Treasury Secretary during the Reagan years, contends that the doctrine of comparative advantage simply does not apply in the current debate over offshore outsourcing. "For comparative advantage to work, a country's labor, capital, and technology must not move offshore. This international immobility is necessary to prevent a business from seeking an absolute advantage by going abroad." During the 19th century, when Ricardo was formulating his theory, climate and geography were important variables in a nation's economy, making realistic the assumption that factors of production would not be internationally mobile. As such, Roberts contends, "the assumption that different countries would have different relative costs of producing tradable goods was also realistic." In today's world, where the basis for most tradable goods and services is acquired knowledge, the Ricardian assumptions are unrealistic. Modern production is no longer location-dependent, and the relative costs of production need not vary from nation to nation. "Yet without different internal cost ratios, there is no basis for comparative advantage."

Myopic Visions and Unanswered Questions

It's the Jobs, Stupid
Advocates of offshore outsourcing regularly claim that only entry-level, low-skilled, or otherwise commoditizable tasks are likely candidates for overseas migration. Indeed, Daniel Drezner claims that there is "no evidence that jobs in the high-value-added sector are moving overseas….The parts of production that are more complex, interactive, or innovative-including, but not limited to, marketing, research, and development-are much more difficult to shift abroad." An article in The Economist supports Drezner's contention, noting that any jobs lost in America will be of the low-paying variety, such as bank tellers and switchboard operators and that the bulk of the white-collar exports to India "will not be the high-flying jobs of IT consultants, but the mind-numbing functions of code writing."

However, it is naive to assume that companies will not seek to shift more-skilled positions overseas. Case in point: at Intel's processor design center in Bangalore, India, employees are working on a new version of the Xeon processor, and the entire design process for this new chip will be done in India. "Processor design work does not fit in the call center/low-level programming category that tends to dominate U.S. companies' offshoring plans. These are highly-skilled workers going head-to-head against their U.S. counterparts." Moreover, Technology Review refers to Microsoft's Beijing research facility as "the world's hottest computer lab," noting that the lab has, over the last five years, produced 750 published papers and hundreds of filed patents. IBM, Intel, Bell Labs, and Motorola also maintain research facilities in China, working on technologies ranging from optics to natural-language processing.

The New Math
Offshoring advocates are quick to cite examples where outsourcing has actually increased the number of available domestic jobs, yet they fail to recognize that it is sufficient income, not the mere possession of a job, that ensures an individual's economic security. Delta Airlines is cited as an example of increased domestic job creation due to offshore outsourcing; the company outsourced 1,000 call center jobs in 2003 and used the resulting $25 million in savings to add 1,200 reservation and sales positions domestically. Simple mathematics reveals that $25 million spread across the paychecks of 1,200 people results in lower wages than $25 million spread across 1,000 people. More jobs? Yes. Better wages? No.

Job dislocation also has significant costs even when workers eventually find new jobs. "There are long periods of unemployment, retraining costs, and costs of searching for a job. And the new jobs usually pay less than the old ones. In the meantime, skills are lost as well." Economists Michael Klein, Scott Schuh, and Robert Triest observed in a 2003 paper that previous studies which attempted to weigh the benefits of free trade against international competition the resulting unemployment failed to account for these costs. If the costs of job dislocation are factored in, they contend, the benefits of trade would outweigh the costs by a far smaller margin." Adding in additional social costs not already listed above and not referenced in the study, including the dollar value of welfare / unemployment benefits paid by the state, losses to the tax base, and the damage to worker morale and self-esteem that often accompanies forced unemployment, the benefits of outsourcing appear less and less convincing.

Peace and Love, Inc.
In detailing what he terms the "considerable noneconomic benefits" of outsourcing, Drezner notes that "[s]ome of the countries where U.S. firms have set up outsourcing operations-including India, Poland, and the Philippines-are vital allies in the war on terrorism." The implication is that outsourcing has somehow helped make these alliances possible, but this is an egregious case of false causality. When George W. Bush proclaimed "you're either with us or against us" in the campaign against terror, plenty of nations that were not host to U.S. outsourcing operations sought to offer their assistance. To further illustrate the weakness in Drezner's contention, Poland has sought better ties with the United States since the end of the Cold War, and relations between the U.S. and the Philippines date back over one hundred years. Outsourcing is not a factor here.

A slightly more convincing, but still flawed, argument claims that the increased interdependence created by offshore outsourcing and globalization will result in greater stability for the international system, in particular by reducing the likelihood of interstate conflict. Stephen Krasner, commenting on North-South relations, delivers a direct rebuttal to this perspective. "Given fundamental conflicts stemming from outlandish disparities in power, there would be more security in a world with lower levels of transnational interactions. Self-reliance and collective self-reliance rather than interdependence may serve the interests of the North as well as those of the South." The pro-interdependence viewpoint also ignores a fundamental rule of systems engineering: complex systems are more likely to fail than their simple counterparts, and when a failure does occur, it is likely to have wide-ranging implications. The case of pre-1914 Europe presents an archetypal example. Mired in a web of interconnecting alliances and incompatible national interests, it required only the assassination of one man to cast the entire continent into war.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Finally, there are simply too many unanswered questions. For instance, if companies continue to send entry-level jobs offshore, how will new American workers break into the system? How will displaced workers be compensated, when identifying those displaced due to trade are already difficult to identify? "Is it realistic to expect an electrical engineer with 20 years of experience to spend four years studying to become a nurse?" How will workers gain the experience and on-the-job knowledge necessary to move into higher-level positions? Rafael Sanchez, Chief Information Officer for fast food chain Burger King, explains this last dilemma from a longer-term perspective: "Let's talk about 10 years from now. Where am I going to get my systems architects? I work with a number of CIO organizations and with academia, and that is the No. 1 question….If all of the entry-level jobs go offshore, where is the entry point? How do you become a good business analyst?"

What about the security of intellectual property, business records, and sensitive personal information? "Although trade secrets can theoretically be stolen anywhere, in physical or digital form, the U.S. legal system is believed to be far more rigorous than that of many of its foreign counterparts." Robert Hutchings, chairman of the National Intelligence Council, warns that "[c]orporate leaders need to be on guard and know who their business partners are and what security measures they have in place to protect against loss, whether through unintended leakage of proprietary business information, deliberate thefts of intellectual property, or outright economic espionage." Cases of such activities have already been reported, and given the extraterritoriality of the perpetrators, U.S. law is powerless to prevent, stop, or prosecute these crimes. As the foreign workforce expands, gaining access to increasing amounts of potentially-sensitive information, these events will proliferate.

Interdepdence and Insecurity
Questions over information security and trade secrets lead directly into a completely different class of pitfall which is rarely addressed: national security implications. "Information technology has become as important to the US economy as oil, and the growing dependency of the US on foreign IT raises concerns for corporate as well as national security."

In 2003, computer viruses and worms, written to exploit vulnerabilities present in commonly-used software, caused an estimated $8.4 billion in damages and lost productivity. These vulnerabilities, however, must be researched and discovered before they can be exploited; they are the result of bugs in the software, not intentional elements of the programs' design. Now imagine the potential for harm if the software developers intentionally included malicious code. This scenario is not outside the realm of possibility. Foreign workers, developing software for American companies, whether acting on their own, at the behest of their own governments, or on behalf of a well-funded third party with cyberterrorist designs, could introduce all manner of rogue code elements into their finished products, enabling anything from unauthorized access to economic or military espionage to outright sabotage of critical systems.

During the Cold War, the United States employed exactly these tactics against the Soviet Union. In 1982, U.S. intelligence agencies, aware of various hardware and software needs within the Soviet military-industrial complex, embarked upon covert operations to provide the Soviets with the technology they needed, but in booby-trapped form.

The Soviet oil and gas industry proved especially vulnerable. The Soviets required sophisticated control software to automate the operation of a new trans-Siberian natural gas pipeline, but after being turned down by the U.S. when attempting to purchase the requisite software, a KGB operative attempted to steal the needed code from a Canadian software firm. U.S. intelligence, aware of the plot, enlisted the Canadians' help to modify the software. Thomas Reed, former Secretary of the Air Force, describes the results:

In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines, and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to the pipeline joints and welds. The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space….While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy. Its ultimate bankruptcy, not a bloody battle or nuclear exchange, is what brought the Cold War to an end.

Michael Mina suggests that the Soviet Union may have been forced to acquire the pipeline management software from external sources due to an inability to produce it domestically, and he astutely reminds that the first lesson in geopolitics is that "[c]ountries which are economically dependent upon other countries can get hurt. Very badly."

Furthermore, increasing dependence on foreign IT also makes the U.S. vulnerable to an interruption in the supply of foreign-built critical components. "For example, half of the world's laptops, one quarter of all desktop computers, and half of all PC motherboards are now assembled in China. Taiwan is now responsible for about 70 percent of all semiconductor production for hire." In addition, "some of the technologies needed for the M-1, F-16, F-18, the F-117 Stealth fighter and the Tomahawk cruise missile are only available from foreign sources."

Once again, the historical record bears witness to these dangers. Poorly conceived trade policies on the part of the United States and Britain created a dependence upon Swiss manufacturers for military materiel; during Operation Iraqi Freedom, due to opposition to the war, the Swiss government blocked a shipment of smart-bomb components to the United States and about twenty five thousand grenades intended for the British army. "We should not expect only our enemies to use their economic leverage against us, even neutral countries upon whom we depend may try to degrade our military capabilities if they disagree with the policies of our government."

The Big Picture
The inescapable fact is that offshore outsourcing is not merely a passing fad - it is here to stay, and it is unrealistic to believe that the genie can be returned to his bottle. However, to accept without question that outsourcing is based firmly in unassailable economic theory with benefits far outweighing the limited, manageable costs is pure folly. In order to protect American economic and national security, it is absolutely essential that the debate be expanded and that the arguments, statistics, and conclusions presented by those in the pro-offshoring camp are carefully scrutinized; many of them will not stand up under detailed examination. "The problem goes beyond loss of jobs, and may actually lead to the loss of capabilities. We've lost jobs in agriculture, but we can still grow our own food. We've lost jobs in steelworking, but we can still make our own steel. But...when we jeopardize our ability to innovate, then we endanger our future. We must work against these trends."