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I was more or less going to make the same point as alanschu, so no need to rephrase it. I'm going to add simply that less than 1% of the general population train with elite-level competitive goals in mind—and those who do only keep it up so for a period of their lives—so it makes no sense to have the same methods, standards and objectives for professional athletes seeking specific results in a particular sport than for everyone else. In addition, and please do not take this personally, the relation between mass and "strength" is not linear. Oly lifters in the lower weight categories handle greater poundages than their heavier counterparts, relative to their weight. Guys in the middle tiers handle more weight in 1-RM compound lifts than BB'ers that are heavier. The reason is that, assuming equal motor neuron efficency, the torque a muscle can place on a joint is a function of its cross-sectional area while its weight is proportional to is volume. The cross-sectional area increases (roughly) with the square of the area of the muscle, but the volume does so at a cubic rate. Again, this is assuming perfect motor neuron function, which is an ideal proposition. Gains in raw strength can be a result of better neuromuscular efficiency without necessarily adding (much) mass. It is also important to consider what we understand by "strength". Are we simply taking into account marks for the "big three"? Then everyone is a powerlifter. How about power? Resistance? Flexibility? Coordination? Again, I'd refer to the vid I posted. If those aren't strength feats, I don't know what is. But if you are not convinced, take a look at NFL players. Those guys have it all, speed, strength, agility, stamina. They are also usually rather massive—momentum is key if you intend to keep running after a tackle—but they are not as massive as BB'ers, powerlifters, etc. The point I'm trying to make with this long-winded tirade is that there is a continuous spectrum between not training and training for competitive results in top-tier strength events. Most people are going to be in the middle.

Holy **** this thread moves FAST. Thought Police of course. You know that's coming too. No need for that, brah. You already have the legions of conformity and cultural homogeneity doing a great job at vituperating, ridiculing and ostracizing anyone that seriously questions the foundations of "prosperity" and the "western way of life". And best of all is, they do it on their own dime. Beautiful, isn't it? Yeah... how about working towards a society where people can actually make informed decisions (education) and act on those decisions (wealth distribution)? Punitive/coercive measures are notoriously ineffectual at driving meaningful social change. There are no simple solutions that can be adopted just by signing off on a law. Access to quality food is one factor, but there are others such as affordability and the ever-decreasing availability of time to do anything that isn't slave away for minimum wage. Does anyone seriously believe that people willingly eat **** laden with poisons on a daily basis if the alternative were just as quick and easy? Ah, but who cares. So long as it's not me getting a stroke (or cancer, or multiple sclerosis, or...) IDGAF. Life's good, yoloswag, etc.

Sure is. Until you realize that, as with most mafia-style organizations, they are involved in other types of not-so-innocuous activities such as sex trafficking, weapons smuggling, racketeering, etc. It's a jungle out there.

Because shut down the corporations and and lo and behold you have paved the way for a criminal cartel to provide the same good/service at a markedly increased price, without oversight, and most importantly, outside of the fiscal revenue system. Not that the difference is too significant tbh...

This is what happens when you want to have your own cake and eat it too. Mounting costs derived from unhealthy practices and conditions endemic to developed societies coupled with population ageing are making healthcare and pension systems unsustainable. So you either do away completely with social benefits and adopt a free-for-all approach or curtail personal freedoms because abuse is risking viability of the system for everyone. In reality, it's just the latest symptom of the general lack of civic virtue and hedonism.

It's not about a specific religion per se, it's about the importance of humility and tolerance in the pursuit of knowledge. Well, yeah. It's good advice in general, I suppose. Arrogance is very much human nature. Zealots (scientific or otherwise) are often unaware of the huge void of non-knowledge that surrounds the tiny parcel of sense they clutch so desperately, but these traits aren't restricted to yokels. Not even titans of science are exempt from this—Newton allegedly wrote his Principia in a deliberately arcane and convoluted manner so as to pre-emptively defeat attempts by "mathematical smatterers" to tackle his work. The internets tends only to amplify and provide an outlet for the negative aspects of personality, so yeah. Good effort, but people gon' people...

"Quest Started: Zip Up Your Fly"

I guess you mean pull ups? Unless you mean with a pronated close grip? It's odd because supinated grip gives the elbow flexors a better mechanical advantage than when you use a pronated grip. Maybe your lats are naturally dominant in comparison to your arms. At any rate, if you are doing more than 10 reps throughout multiple sets, you should consider adding weight. No slacking... As for the sore chest, this is what I do when my chest is sore from a previous workout. The vid says shoulder stretching, but you'll feel it in your chest for sure. Me, I'm in my deload week, so not really busting my ass off. (I'll get to your other post tomorrow btw, argument's too interesting to pass up)

^ I think it can be inferred from the context that the good Dr's talking about the upper limit of what can be attained by humans. If there is such a thing as a set of "defined" starting conditions and rules for the universe (thereby introducing determinism) but they are unknowable, the question is largely philosophical. Seems from what is currently known about QM that the very idea of certainty is a "residue" of our mental representation of the macroscopic world. Fortunately, we have math nerds trampling all over our quaint little fantasies about reality 24/7, bless them. I don't very well see how this relates to God or religion, however.

Poster child for "Trying Too Hard".

Someone's got to pay for those roads and stuff, y'know. Still waiting on paper work so I can file mine, bank always is slow with them though so will be another month. Sure... roads... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUtyUTLeW1g @GD: You don't need to tell me how ****ed up my country is—chances are whatever you can dig up around the Internet, I've already spent some time raging about. Can't argue with the numbers, though, so don't take it too personally. It's funny because I have nothing but nice things to say about the Americans I've had contact with... you guys really need to take back your country. OT: Slept late, took it easy with the iron, watched some free physics lectures from MIT. It's interesting that the knowledge is more or less given up for free, but if you want to have an official piece of paper that says you are XYZ, then you have to shell out some serious dough.

Tell me what you think. Both ideas are referred to as "time", so both warrant consideration. Is there a relationship between them? How can space and time be the same thing if space allows me to go backward, or forward, but not time? No, what is not allowed is >1 copies of yourself existing simultaneously. How can you know that you haven't travelled to the "past" if your memory only registers events from... the past? But is me from the future the same as me from the past or are they two completely separate entities? Also Slaughterhouse 5 I don't know about this Slaughterhouse 5, but Google indicates it's a novel with time travel themes. Might have to check it out. A notion of different "you" at a different point in "time" only makes sense if you picture time as a linear dimension, in which you have a degree of freedom. Think of yourself at different points in "time" rather as roughly the same entity, with some changes. What is popularly imagined as time travel makes about as much sense as going to the other room while simultaneously remaining exactly where you are before you start moving. The whole experience is still shaped by the way your memory stores a (linear) summary of events and your mind struggles to make sense out of it.

How do you like the game? I've been watching some videos and am kinda drawn to the aesthetics and the premise. But combat looks unbelievably clunky and obviously there's no way to judge the storytelling from a bunch of YT clips. I'm finding it harder and harder to drag myself to try new games so I'd rather not waste the effort if it's not very good...

Tell me what you think. Both ideas are referred to as "time", so both warrant consideration. Is there a relationship between them? How can space and time be the same thing if space allows me to go backward, or forward, but not time? No, what is not allowed is >1 copies of yourself existing simultaneously. How can you know that you haven't travelled to the "past" if your memory only registers events from... the past?

Agreed. But if you have to make that decision, why not choose to be good at everything? (or as close to as is within the realm of possibility) I'm familiar with the principle of specifity, but making it the basis for an either/or viewpoint is sadly limiting. Clearly the gymnast in the vid isn't going to be able to bench 600 lbs. But outside of world-class athletic feats, which is not what most people train for, a better general conditioning is possible... without necessarily compromising other fitness aspects. The point I was making is that to a bodybuilder, size (and definition, etc) is the #1 priority, raw strength being simply a means to achieve that, and everything else an afterthought... why then are they still so prominent in general fitness culture? Traditional, bodybuilding-influenced strength training regimes are great for building strength and size... and little else. This is what most people have access to owing to the fact that "normal" gyms, and the equipment and instructors therein have evolved from the bodybuilding culture of the 60's and 70's. Check this dude out, for contrast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzUcQM58kDY He has some beast DL and BP vids, too. He's no weakling. How many pro BB'ers can do half that stuff?

Tell me what you think. Both ideas are referred to as "time", so both warrant consideration. Is there a relationship between them?

Electromagnetic radiation (of which visible light is a small subset) considered as a single photon is postulated to have a "rest mass" of zero, because of how rest mass is defined—you can find a "rest frame" for some particles but not for photons as a result of special relativity. Attempts to give a single photon a non-zero mass have some interesting implications such as light no longer actually traveling at the speed of light, etc. It's not possible to prove as far as I know that it is strictly zero because no experimental measure of a zero-magnitude can be taken, but results put the higher limit for its mass at an exceedingly small value. This is compounded by the fact that rest mass is not additive. Individual photons have zero rest mass, but this is not necessarily true for a pair of photons taken together. Also, EM radiation does exhibit a quality that in the macroscopic world is proportional to "mass": momentum. Radiation pressure preventing the gravitational collapse of a star (or blowing it away in a runaway reaction) is a manifestation of this momentum. However the case of a photon, (rest) mass has no bearing on momentum, being a function of wavelength instead. I'm not a physicist so I'm sure somebody around here can provide a more rigorous/complete/easy to understand answer (which I'd appreciate). Now, what is time?

Had not heard of this word. Synonym for spatial awareness, I guess. I may just borrow the first half for a PoE paladin character name ... Proprio the Defiler!! Close. It's a fancy term to refer to the feedback mechanism that provides your nervous system with information about joint state and the muscular activity with regards to that state. Improved proprioception results in more efficient motor patterns and decreased risk of injury. "Proprio" is actually latin for self, so "self-awareness" is a pretty good summary.

I had some buddies from a different game that had a squadron going. Tried to drag me into IL2. They were adamant on playing on "full realism" only. I could barely get off the ground and was basically of no use airborne—and this was in coop missions (which were otherwise fckn awesome), vs the AI. From what I understand, the game is a sim's sim, the flight model being especially accurate, with different types of aircraft handling closely to historical reports. So good luck to you sir...

Serious point? Was I making that? Oh **** I must be getting old... In Japan's case it's a done deed though. They already have the industrial/logistical train to manufacture nuclear arms so the point is moot. Best we can hope is that stuff in the Sea of China doesn't escalate. And let's not get into the who-sends-volunteers-where game. That's never pretty.

Yep, that's Japan's situation IIRC. Nobody seems to care that they could just start pumping out bombs tomorrow. And hey, turns out their rhetoric (good ol' Abe's mostly) has been getting more aggressive of late. Also, Israel. Ho-hum. Regardless, I find it difficult to believe that Iran is really pursuing 100% peaceful nuclear power applications, without any intention whatsoever of securing a strategic deterrence element as well. Oh, and since apparently nobody mentioned it and the idea that civilian nuclear power entails nuclear arms is taken as gospel by most people, I'm going to be a hipster and point out that Thorium power is an alternative to that. Or rather, it could be if somebody bothered to invest in and develop it to make it competitive. No nukes out of it though, and that makes both petty autocrats and grand western democracies go all sadface and less inclined to throw buckets of cash its way.

Oh, man. Deep down, you really are a romantic! I knew it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jhWOSoWhs8 Props to the man for stepping outside of his comfort zone and into a setting where all the effort and sacrifice he's put in through the years is seemingly rendered pointless. That takes some balls in general, but it's even more impressive when dealing with something so ego-sensitive as one's physique. Still, goes to show how show-oriented a sport bodybuilding is. The guy is seriously lagging behind in motor control and proprioception, auxiliaries development and resistance, with respect to his apparent fitness level.

I have to admit, I LOL'd.

Poor, poor crabs. (don't even ask how I came across that...)