Aquadoodiloop.com

This is clearly right into OMFG territory.

1. Travis Pastrana

2. Big Wheel

3. Big Ramp

4. …

5. Profit

YouTube - Travis Pastrana Backflip Big Wheel all 3 attempts.

BBC News - Rove ‘proud’ of US waterboarding terror suspects.

I think by this point everyone (or at least everyone who reads this blog) has seen this, but I’m posting it for posterity’s sake.

Remember remember…

Tags: Torture

Technique plates are lightweight plastic weights that are the competition size so that you can use them for teaching and practicing the quick lifts. If you buy a pair they start at 140 bucks and go up from there. Hi-Tech seems to be the most popular.

But, as you know, there’s no way in hell I’m going to 140 bucks for a 17.5″ diameter plastic plate with a 2″ hole in the middle. Oh, hell no!

So when I decided to teach myself powercleans I knew I had to make my own technique plates because I’m not sure I’m skilled enough (more likely strong enough) to clean 135#.

Materials

• Wood Glue
• 4 3/4″ pieces of plywood wider than 17.5″ in both directions
• Drill
• 2″ hole saw bit
• Bandsaw or jigsaw

First glue up your two blanks. Take 2 pieces of the plywood (I had plenty of scrap laying around the shop) and glue them together. Make sure and get a good even spread of glue so that you won’t have any voids or delamination when you saw out your circles.

Weight the center with a 45# plate and clamp up the sides.

Ok, trace your 45# plate and REMEMBER TO TRACE THE CENTER HOLE TOO! (Not a huge deal, but it saves you the hassle of having to find the center later).

Using a bandsaw or jigsaw (if you use a jigsaw do yourself a favor and buy the new bosch blades you’ll thank me later.) cut the big circle out. Take your time and be careful. Remember to cut just outside the line. That way you can sweeten the circle up with sandpaper or rasps if you need to. But these don’t have to be perfect. Just good enough.

Next you’ll need to mark the center of the interior circle. Take a triangle (I use a drafting triangle) or anything else with a 90* corner, put the 90* corner onto a point of the circle and then mark where the legs cross the circle. Draw a line between those two points. Move the triangle to another point on the circle and repeat. Where those two lines cross is the center point. Strike the center with a small nail, screw tip, or something else. You need a little divot to get the hole saw lead drill started.

After this chuck the 2″ hole saw into your drill, center it on the center point you just marked and drill away. This will take a while. Take breaks to clear out the sawdust so that the dril can operate as efficiently as possible. This took all the charge on one battery on my 5 year old dewalt, so make sure you have an extra charged battery laying around.

When you’re done you’ll have this:

Put them on your bar:

And you’re done. Now you have your own technique plates for less than 40 bucks! By gluing up the blanks so that you have a 1.5″ thickness plates they’ll be sturdy enough to not wobble and you can add weight to them until you’re ready to clean 135#.

Now go build some plates and practice your power cleans!

Tags: technique plates

French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment - Telegraph.

Hahahaha.  Oh Wacky US of A medical experiments on unsuspecting populations.  That never gets old.  Hey, the French should be grateful.  At least they got some top shelf synthesized LSD and not SYPHILIS!

The New Yorker details the David Foster Wallace Archive

Unexpectedly cool.

Michael Sporn Animation - Splog » Finian’s Rainbow - alt.

Walt Disney, who took the strike as a personal attack, found the opportunity to exact revenge on his renegade employees when he testified as a “friendly witness” before HUAC on October 24, 1947. He painted them bright Red. The strike, said Disney, was organized by “a Communist group trying to take over my artists and they did take them over.” Disney named names, including that of David Hilberman. Hilberman was a partner in the formation of a new animation studio, United Productions of America UPA, staffed by dissident Disney artists, one of whom was John Hubley.

Michael Sporn on his animation blog took the time to post this article from the 1990s that detailed how The House Unamerican Activities Committee was used to screw a lot of animators who had gone on strike against Disney. None of those animators was a communist. They were just sick of Walt Disney’s working conditions.

It also details one of the great lost films, the animated adaptation of the musical Finian’s Rainbow.

Leo and the Bear.

I randomly found these awesomely cute pictures of a polar bear cub at Vanity Fair and thought you should, you know, check ‘em out. Or something.

Also, Annie Liebowitz shot them.

Kinda weird:

Op-Ed Contributor - My So-Called Wife - NYTimes.com.

If you and your wife both work then you’ll enjoy this write-up of our modern predicament:

I don’t know how it’s going for my sisters, but as my 40s and Verizon bills and mortgage payments roll on, I seem to have an ever more recurring 1950s housewife fantasy. In this magical Technicolor world, the breadwinner husband, Brad, leaves home (where his duties are limited to mowing the lawn and various minor home repairs) at 7 a.m. When he returns from work at 6 p.m., aside from a savory roast with mashed potatoes, his homemaker wife, Nancy, has pipe, slippers and a tray of Manhattans ready.
…
What can turn into a second shift is not just negotiating the splitting of this labor with another person, but the splitting of decision-making authority. Two co-workers in the home also have the opportunity to regularly evaluate each other’s handiwork, not always to a positive effect… in the domestic equation, the work I do at home is no longer a gift, but the labor of a mediocre colleague whose performance could be better.

Me and Julia have both endured periods of unemployment (voluntary and involuntary) and we have found that without a doubt a household runs smoother if someone stays home to run it. The stress level on everyone is immediately lowered because all those things that are constantly squeezed into that brief window between 6pm and 11pm are simply done. After dinner everyone’s evening becomes free because one partner already took care of all the chores. As parents we are free to spend time with our kids. As spouses we are free to spend time with each other. And as individuals we can pursue our interests.

In what’s sure to be a winning strategy in an election year* Republicans express disdain for the unemployed:

“You know,” DeLay said, “there is an argument to be made that these extensions of these unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs.” When CNN’s Candy Crowley described his argument as “a hard sell” to the public, DeLay replied, “It’s the truth.”

Economically speaking Delay and the rest are wrong wrong wrong.  No one is really putting off getting a job because they’d rather have an unemployment check.  And extending unemployment benefits helps the unemployed and actually creates jobs by injecting cash into the market.

* I know that the GOP is going to win a lot of seats in November.  But it’s not because of arguments like this.  It’s because the Democrats are retarded.

Anti-Gay Lawmaker At Gay Club Before DUI Arrest - cbs13.com. This stuff happens so regularly that its not really worth commenting on. Just a little life lesson, if you ever meet someone who is constantly and permanently freaked out about the Gay Agenda it’s probably because what they’re really freaked out about is that someone is going to discover their secret agenda of getting hot man-man action every friday at the Truckstop Glory Hole.

This doesn’t mean every homophobe is secretly gay or anything. Just the ones who are insanely over the top about it.

We haven’t done the Monday Jam in a while! Let’s fix that shall we?

Lately I’ve been listening to P.J. Harvey’s Good Fortune whenever I need a lift. Hopefully you feel the same way.