Rules: were meant to be broken.

If You’ve Been Tagged: I’m probably getting revenge for some stupid email you forwarded to me. But feel free to play along anyway.

If You Don’t Know How To Publish A Note on Facebook: the world is probably a better place for it.

1. I try to walk a careful line between “lovable” and “jerk.”

2. Is really the first Prime Number. Thanks, Buck.

2 and a half. Chances are, you don’t get my sense of humor. Which means I’ve probably offended you at some point. That was (probably) unintentional.

3. Is (not) the first Prime Number.

4. I love Macs, tolerate Linux boxes, and hate windows. Solaris isn’t really an operating system, it’s a punishment.

5. I’ve written so many blog entries that I actually see HTML as it’s going to look once it’s published.

6. I’m a Compulsive Melancholy, which leads a lot of people to think I’m sort of broken. I was actually surprised at how accurate those personality profiles are.

7. I’d much rather play sports than watch sports.

8. I finally bought a TV. I haven’t owned one for almost seven years. I still never turn it on.

9. My taste in music is oddly diverse. I’m just as likely to be listening to Hillsong United or Jason Upton as Sarah McLachlan or Metallica. The music I’m listening to is an excellent indication of my mood.

10. I’m not nearly as frightening as some people think. I actually can’t even remember the last time I lost my temper with someone.

11. Even though I voted for Obama, I’m a registered Republican. I’d probably switch to Independent, if I could be bothered to find the paperwork.

12. I have a very hard time reading things written with poor grammar. I waver between pity and rage. Please, stop abusing my language. The way people abbreviate things in text messages makes me apoplectic.

13. I’m mostly Irish, with some Dutch and Sicilian sprinkled in for spice. I actually think it’s kind of dumb to be proud of your heritage – it’s not like you did anything to earn it – but I do kind of love Celtic culture. A happy coincidence, I guess.

14. I practiced martial arts, until I had to retire due to injuries. I separated my left shoulder, twice, and the clavicle still isn’t attached properly.

15. Speaking of, I hate going to doctors, which is why the clavicle isn’t attached properly.

16. Holidays really aren’t a big deal to me. I only celebrate them because people expect it.

17. If you open a cold bottle of soda, then squeeze it, a little bit of mist will come out of the top, like a tiny little volcano. I absolutely love that.

18. My vocabulary and grammar are excellent, but my spelling is atrocious. And there are times when I intentionally use bad grammar, just for the effect.

19. Foreign Nation I’ve visited: Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and New Jersey.

20. Theory is all well and good, but I learn by doing.

21. If this was an Ordered List, it would have much prettier formatting, but I would have lost count, and Facebook doesn’t do formatted lists, anyway. Actually, I get really angry when Facebook tries to second-guess my HTML. I’m a software engineer. I know what I’m doing. Shut up and display what I wrote.

22. All time favorite movie: The Princess Bride. I once dated a girl simply because she said I reminded her of Westley.

23. I used to have a ponytail. I took really good care of my hair when it was long, too. Most of my women friends were impressed. Then I shaved myself bald. Now, I’m not sure what I want to do with it.

24. Some of my friends used to think I was psychic. I’m not, I’m just observant.

25. I really like Twilight, and I have no idea why.

This is near the top of my list of “things I never thought I would have to explain,” but so it goes.

I guess I should start by saying that I really, really like 24. I like the action, I like the drama, I like the pathos. I like the idea of a lone man, abandoned by everyone, going to the limits to defend his country. I like that Jack Bauer, despite what the internet claims, is not a superman; the things that have been done to him, and the things that he has been forced to do, have taken a heavy, visible toll on him. His is a scarred, damaged, broken man, a man always a few steps away from the edge.

When Taken comes out, I’ll be there opening night, and I’ll be cheering Liam Neeson as he brutalizes the men that stole his daughter. When, in the trailer, he tells her abductors that “I will look for you. I will find you. And I will kill you.” I get chills.

But I also know that these are both works of fiction, a fact that has escaped all too many people. Some number of soldiers, having seen torture used so effectively and so necessarily on television, have come to believe that it is effective and necessary in real life, too. The truth, however, is quite different.

Since it has been said – rightly, for what it’s worth – that I don’t have any training in interrogation or torture, I’ll appeal to an authority on the matter: US Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

This past November, US Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind “24.” Finnegan, who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and FBI interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew was filming…

…Finnegan and the others had come to voice their concern that the show’s central political premise – that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security – was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. “I’d like them to stop,” Finnegan said of the show’s producers. “They should do a show where torture backfires.”

From the Christian Science Monitor

Why are the Brigadier General and those FBI Agents against torture? Are they “soft on terror?” Do the want Americans to be in danger. No. That is absurd on its face. The truth is, torture simply does not work. Why? A number of reasons:

Torture is Immoral

He who fights monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

This is me following through on not just a commitment I made during the campaign, but I think an understanding that dates back to our founding fathers, that we are willing to observe core standards of conduct, not just when it’s easy but also when it’s hard.

-US President Barack Obama, immediatly before he signed an executive order closing the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, and forbidding the use of torture in interrogating captives.

These two above quotes essentially make this point: there are some things that good people simply do not do.

If we resort to torture, we become the enemy we seek to defeat. We become no better than them. Good people hold themselves to a higher standard, even when, as Obama said, it’s hard.

Furthermore, while the torture depicted in 24 and Taken is dramatic, the truth is that a normal human being is unable to perform torture without himself being damaged. It either leaves severe psychological scars or the torturer, or reveals a preexisting pathology.

From The New Yorker:

Only a psychopath can torture and be unaffected. You don’t want people like that in your organization. They are untrustworthy, and tend to have grotesque other problems.

Not Everyone Breaks

There is a great myth circulating that, if you apply enough pain, everyone will break, giving you exactly the truth you need to “save innocent lives.” This is untrue:

“In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence,” Lagouranis told me. “I worked with someone who used waterboarding”—an interrogation method involving the repeated near-drowning of a suspect. “I used severe hypothermia, dogs, and sleep deprivation. I saw suspects after soldiers had gone into their homes and broken their bones, or made them sit on a Humvee’s hot exhaust pipes until they got third-degree burns. Nothing happened.” Some people, he said, “gave confessions. But they just told us what we already knew. It never opened up a stream of new information.” If anything, he said, “physical pain can strengthen the resolve to clam up.”

Again from The New Yorker.

One of the key phrases there is “I never saw pain produce intelligence.” Not a few dozen times, not a few times… never. Torture has never saved an innocent American life. Torture has never prevented a terrorist attack. Torture has never made us safer.

Torture Produces Unreliable Information

And when someone breaks, there is no guarantee that the information that they produce will be true. In fact, victims of torture will tell their captors anything they want to hear, just to make the pain stop:

There’s no such thing as “a little bit of torture,” McCoy said of the “light” tactics that are preferred today. Detainees are just as likely to tell their interrogators whatever they want to hear under psychological distress as they are under physical distress, he said, a statement backed up by Sen. John McCain, who himself was tortured as an officer during the Vietnam War.

From LiveScience.

And there are numerous examples of cases where relying on information obtained through torture has disastrous consequences. The reality is that use of torture produces inconsistent results that are an unreliable basis for action and policy. The overwhelming consensus of intelligence professionals is that torture produces unreliable information. And the overwhelming consensus of senior military leaders is that resort to torture is dishonorable. Use of such primitive methods actually put our own troops and our nation at risk.

Lt. General Harry Soyster, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as quoted by Human Rights First.

Torture Creates More Terrorists

From an interview on Democracy Now:

[Matthew Alexander, whose interrogation techniques helped capture Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] goes on to say that the number of Americans killed in Iraq because of the US military’s use of torture is more than 3,000. He writes, “It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in [Iraq] have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse.

Not only is torture wrong, not only is it unreliable, but it also has the effect of strengthening sympathy toward your enemy. The friends and families of the people you torture are now much more likely to join the insurgency to fight off the “evil Americans.” The innocent man you torture today may very well become a “freedom fighter” tomorrow. Enemies that may have surrendered and willingly provided information now will not, because of the fear torture creates.

Torture, plain and simple, makes us less safe, not more.

In Closing

24 is good television. Taken promises to be a thrilling drama. But they are also fiction.

We live in the real world. We need to set aside our bravado, machismo, and pseudo-patriotism, and deal with the facts. And the facts show that we don’t need Jack Bauer to save us from the evil brown people. The facts show that we do not need to become evil in order to defeat evil.

The facts show that torture is wrong, and worse than useless.

Barack Obama. With a Samurai Sword. This is why I love the Japenese. There are even more pictures (Obama with Super Flag Waving Action, Obama with a machine gun, and Obama vs. Darth Vader) here.

Like any society, there are a lot of things wrong in America. Abortion, poverty, education, health care… everyone can run down their own personal list of things that, if they had the power, they would change.

For me, one of the most pressing issues, one of the things that made me sad and angry, afraid and disgusted, all in equal measure, has been the so-called War on Terror, and the things that it has wrought. We invaded a nation that posed no threat to us, destabilizing that region and hampering our ability to go after our real enemy. We siphoned trillions of dollars out of an already fragile economy. We squandered our good name and international good will.

But perhaps worst of all, we became the enemy we sought to defeat. We took people, some guilty, some innocent, and locked them away, without trial and without charge, for years. Some of these people – again, some guilty, and some innocent – were tortured.

We, America, the land of freedom, denied freedom to these people. We denied them basic, human rights that we ourselves hold so dear: the right to know what you stand accused of, the right to face your accuser, the right to not be tortured.

When I cast my vote for Barack Obama, it was with a mixture of hope and fear. Hope that things really would change, hope that America would rediscover what makes us great, but the fear that he would prove to be just another politician, breaking just another promise.

Earlier today, on his second full day as President of the United States, Obama issued three executive orders that make me believe that my vote may not have been cast in vain.

The first was an order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center “as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from now.” The second order mandates that all interrogations be conducted according to the Army Field Manual, and adhere to the Geneva Convention. The third sets up a task force to review the cases of all current detainees. Some of them will be set free, because there is no evidence that they are anything but innocent. Some will finally be tried for the crimes of which they stand accused. Other face an unknown future; they are innocent, but for political or medical reasons, cannot be returned to their home countries.

In one day, with three strokes of a pen, our nation has been changed for the better. Those who may be our enemies will be tried. They will not be tortured. And we will search for a solution for those that have been caught up in this nightmare.

I had hoped that Obama would change America, but I never thought it would be this quickly, nor this sweepingly. This is the change I voted for. This is, to borrow a phrase, change I can believe in.

Just a quick catch-up on my gym sessions.

Monday: Metcon
Chinups: Bodyweight, 5×5
Pushups: 15
Dumbbell Swings: 50lbs x 15
Side Lunges: 15 per leg
Pikes: 15
3 Circuits, about 15 minutes

Tuesday: Strength
1a. Chinups: Bodyweight, 5×5
1b. Overhead Press: 115lbs, 5×5
2: Deadlift: 315lbs, 25 singles
3. Snatch: 115lbs, 25 singles

Wednesday: Metcon
Chinups: Bodyweight, 5×5
Pushups: 15
Dumbbell Swings: 50lbs x 15
Side Lunges: 15 per leg
Pikes: 15
3 Circuits, about 15 minutes

Thursday: Metcon
Chinups: Bodyweight, 5×5
Dips: 15
Dumbbell Swings: 50lbs x 15
Side Lunges: 15 per leg
Crunches: 15
3 Circuits, about 15 minutes

I decided to do both my Strength and Olympic lifts on Tuesday, which turned out to be fortuitous, since my week fell apart after that, and I wasn’t able to get to the gym very much.

I enjoy the Celtic motif – as you could probably tell by the look of my site – and because of that, I have a lot of Celtic “stuff” laying around; a Lion Rampant on a t-shirt, a few Celtic crosses, a number Claddagh rings (I keep damaging them), and an Irish war sword, because that’s how I roll.

Anyway, one of those crosses, a gift from my father, is inscribed with a traditional Irish blessing:

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

I looked at it as I walked in the door today, and I realized something. “May the road rise to meet you” kind of implies that you’re walking uphill. And that’s considerably harder than walking on level terrain. For hundreds, maybe thousands of years, my people have been cursing each other, and calling it a blessing.

Also, it’s pronounced “keltic.” Thank you.

I bring a book with me when I go to the dentist. I think that whole “sit here with your back to the door while the doctor decides if its worth his time to come and visit you” thing is a power play, like they want to let you know who’s boss. Bringing a book turns that on its head. One: I will not just sit here and stare at the wall; I will accomplish something while I’m here, thankyouverymuch. Two: oh, you’re ready to play dentist now, are you. Well you can just wait until I’m done with this paragraph, buster.

I’ve finally had hair long enough where it’s time to get it cut. So, two things. One: anyone know a good hair stylist? Two: any recommendations as to what I should do with it? “Shaving it all off” isn’t an option, for now.

Speaking of, a whole lot of people apparently thought that I was actually bald, and not just shaving it off. In the last week, I’ve had at least five people come up to me, run their fingers through my hair, and say something like “wow, I thought you were just trying to hide a bald spot.” That wouldn’t be nearly so creepy if most of the people doing the finger-running weren’t men.

Also speaking of, no, my hair is not really this shade of red. It’s actually brown, and goes blond if I’m out in the sun too much. My eyebrows were nearly white, they got so bleached out over the summer. Anyway, the highlights are just for kicks, and available at Wal Mart for about six bucks. Nice & Easy #114: Dark Auburn. Tell them Thomas sent you.

SPOLIERS for Marley and Me. If you advertise your movie as a feel-good comedy, it isn’t fair to kill the dog at the end. If I wanted my tears jerked, I’d cut up an onion. Which doesn’t bother me, actually. END SPOILERS.

A few days ago, a friend told me that I have “excellent grammar,” and that “that’s very enjoyable.” On the list of compliments that have been paid me, that is… certainly one of them. I mean, she could have said “dashing” or “witty” or “insightful,” but “you know where the apostrophe goes” is good, too.

I’ve started incorporating a lot of Olympic lifts into my routine again. I tell you, the US Team should send out a camera crew and video my workouts, then show them to their lifters. The series could be called “This Is Exactly What Not To Do.” Seriously, I’m pretty sure I screw up every cue that you can and still wind up with a bar somewhere over your head.

If you’re being given a psychological evaluation, and you know you’re being given a psychological evaluation, you can have a whole lot of fun. This may not be particularly beneficial to your career, however.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that makes me as angry as sexual abuse. Rape, in my mind, is the most violent, horrible crime one can commit, and when that is done to a child… I’m not even really capable of thinking about it rationally. That the perpetrator of such a crime should be killed isn’t even a question to me, it’s a simple statement of fact. I take an almost personal offense when I hear about something like this.

I know I’m not saying anything shocking; there isn’t a very large “pro-rape” crowd.

Except that there is.

Over one million children are trafficked in the sex industry every year. Over one million children who are bought and sold for the evil pleasures of others. Over one million children who have had their freedom, their personhood, stripped from them. Almost two children every minute. Almost thirty-two billion dollars every year.

“Rape” is second only to “drugs” in profitability. The worst crime I can imagine is also one of the most popular.

Love 146 is a great organization that is dedicated to ending this tragedy, through efforts to prevent more children from falling prey to sex traffickers, and by rescuing children who have already been victimized.

When I first heard of this group, I assumed that they were named for a Bible verse, and flipped through my mental rolodex, trying to figure out what passage they were referring to. But it turns out that they weren’t named for a Scripture; they were named for a little girl.

When they began this ministry, the founders of Love 146 actually visited a brothel. Rob Morris recounted his experience, telling of how it felt to be standing in that place, standing next to men who were buying children for sex.

The girls were kept in a room, watching children’s shows on a small television, until their services were required. They didn’t even have names; they were all referred to by numbers.

Morris says that their eyes were haunting, dead. The life they had been forced to live had destroyed whatever was supposed to be inside of them. All of them except one. One of the little girls wasn’t staring at the television; she was staring back at the men who were arguing over her price. There was still life, still fight, in her eyes.

Her number was 146.

It must be daunting, so discouraging, to be fighting a battle that you know you will never win. No matter how effective Love 146 and similar organizations are, the sex industry will still exist. But that doesn’t stop them from fighting on, doesn’t stop them from touching one life here, one life there.

You can donate to Love 146 on-line.

Having a gym five minutes from my house and my office is freaking awesome. One of the things that really messes with going to the gym, especially in the winter, is the whole “I don’t want to drive a half hour to get there” thing. Now, at least for my morning sessions, that isn’t an issue.

Speaking of; I’ve never liked doing morning sessions; my body just isn’t awake first thing in the morning. I’m doing two things to deal with that. First, I’m doing MetCon stuff, and relatively light MetCon at that, so I don’t have to worry about dropping a two-hundred pound weight from seven feet in the air (which has happened to me). Second, I’m actually going through my usual morning routine before I go to the gym; I brush my teeth, shower, get dressed, pack my things for work, et cetera. That gives my body time to wake up a little bit. It also means that I’m taking two showers within ninety minutes of each other, but I think that’s a relatively small price to pay for Not Dying Under A Huge Weight.

You’ll notice that I’ve started doing assisted chinups in the morning. I’m actually fairly strong in that exercise – I can do a chinup with ninety pounds hung around my waist, putting the effective weight well over three hundred pounds – but I have no endurance whatsoever. This is an effort to correct that. Oddly enough, it’s my forearms that give out before anything else. My grip has always sucked.

I’ll keep to this plan, or one very, very similar to it, for the next week. After that, I plan on bumping my reps up to 20 for all exercises, and continuing that plan for another two weeks. Then, I’ll start adding circuits, doing four for two weeks, then five. After that, it will probably be time to change things up again.

I will probably keep my afternoon strength training the same for the next six weeks or so. Progression will be ten-percent per two-weeks, give or take.

Aside from Tuesday, when I had a couple of cookies, my diet has been spot-on. I”m eating low-carb, and very calorie-restricted (personal reasons, not fitness-related), which is part of why my volume is lower than usual.

Monday – 4:30am
Assisted Chins: #20 x 15
Dips: BW x 15
DB Swing: 50lbs x 15
Drop Lunge: BW x 15
Pikes: BW x 15
3 circuits, 15 minutes

Tuesday – 4:40am
Assisted Chins: #20 x 15
Pushups: BW x 15
DB Swing: 50lbs x 15
Lunge: BW x 15
Crunches: BW x 15
3 circuits, 15 minutes

Tuesday – 3:40pm
1a. Chins – BW x 5
1b. Overhead Press: 115lbs x 5
2. Deadlife: 315lbs x 5
3 sets of each
Lat. Raises: 20 lbs, 8 sets of 8

Wednesday – 5:10am
Assisted Chins: #20 x 15
Dips: BW x 15
DB Swing: 50lbs x 15
Side Lunge: BW x 15
Pikes: BW x 15
3 circuits, 15 minutes

Thursday – 5:30am
Assisted Chins: #20 x 15
Pushups: BW x 15
DB Swing: 50lbs x 15
Lunge: BW x 15
Pikes: BW x 15
3 circuits, 15 minutes

Thursday – 4:30pm
Snatch: 95 lbs x 5
Snatch: 115 lbs, 25 singles

Friday – 6:00am
Assisted Chins: #20 x 15
Dips: BW x 15
DB Swing: 50lbs x 15
Drop Lunge: BW x 15
Crunches: BW x 15
3 circuits, 15 minutes
Lat. Raises: 20 lbs, 8 sets of 8

Henry Cloud is a psychologist, speaker, and author that has become rather popular in the Evangelical world. I was introduced to him by our Pastor, who suggested we read his book Changes that Heal. I’ve written pretty extensively about my reactions to this book, but I wanted to mention it again here.

Cloud goes through some mental gymnastics to get past the whole “evolution vs. creation” debate, but I can forgive him for that, because the things he talks about are so right. I am very self-aware, and I have a pretty good sense of what I’m doing, and why I’m doing it, but I also tend to doubt that anyone has any kind of insight into me as an individual.

Which made reading Cloud’s book somewhat unnerving, because it often felt like I was reading a very accurate, very articulate description of myself.

Cloud writes about boundaries and relationships. He writes about learning to say “no,” and learning to say “yes.” He writes about learning to trust people, learning to reach out to people, learning to allow yourself to become vulnerable. His “three stages of isolation,” anger, depression, and detachment, were something of a frightening mirror into my own life.

I have been isolated, to one degree or another, for most of my life. Cloud was one of the first people to suggest to me that that might not always need to be the case. I haven’t claimed victory in this, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m thankful to Cloud for suggesting that victory is even possible.

–

My Changes that Heal series:

Object Constancy
The Mechanism
Healing Hurts
Distorted Thinking
The Care and Feeding of a Taciturn Man, not directly related to Changes, but useful for understanding how I, and people like me, see the world.