Happy birthday, blog.

My first entry on this blog was precisely one year ago today.  That seems mind-boggling, but I suppose I cannot dispute the inexorable passage of time.

In that entry, I set out some general parameters for what I wanted to pursue: positivity, progress, heart, creativity, and accountability.  More specifically, I set forth some goals about fitness, about my music, and about my academic pursuits.  It’s amazing what happens in a year.

Since then, I’ve lost 35 lbs., while simultaneously increasing my strength considerably – I started out doing sets of squats with 135 lbs., and have now completed sets with as much weight as 285 lbs.  My efforts have not been consistent, but the results are incredibly satisfying.  It’s become a fairly regular occurrence to attempt something that used to be difficult and find it to be startlingly easy, from something as simple to hopping up onto a platform to sit to stranger things like hauling an empty boat trailer up the boat ramp at the lake.  I can now play basketball for an hour straight and not die, which is nice.

I’ve been somewhat less successful in my musical pursuits.  I have accomplished many of the goals I’ve set out for myself, but going out and playing shows on a regular basis has never developed.  I’m truthfully fairly comfortable with that, although I would like to play more than I do.

Perhaps most importantly, though, the passage of this year has left me with a great deal more confidence in who I am.  For the first time in my life, I’m developing long-term plans and thinking about the future beyond the immediate next step.  In less than a week, I start law school, which is both incredibly exciting and completely terrifying, and yet somehow I find myself calm.  I know that whatever law school throws at me, I will be able to handle.

While certainly my efforts chronicled in this blog have contributed to my newfound confidence, I can’t take all the credit.  In the same way that my physical strength has improved because of the stress I placed on my body, the rough patches throughout the last year are the real catalyst for the growth I’ve experienced.  I’ve been stretched and torn and pulled in ways I could never have foreseen, but I’ve survived, and I think I’m a better person for it.

It is, perhaps, ideal that the anniversary of this blog comes when it does.  I find myself in a period of transition, and while I believe I have done as good a job as was possible in preparing for it, I can’t truly know the ways I will be tested until the trials really begin.  For as much as I have grown as a man in the last year, there is no doubt in my mind that I have yet more growing to do.

Onward and upward.

Oops.

I have not done a good job keeping up on this over the summer.  My workouts have also been inconsistent, although I’m sitting pretty steady in the mid-260s range, which frankly is kind of amazing to me, even though I know I’ve still got some distance to go.

I’ve also slacked off on my evolution posts.  I really intended those to get written, but I don’t know that any more are going to happen at this point – law school starts next week, so I’m mostly concentrating on getting rested up for that.  I wouldn’t count on getting any more of those anytime soon, although I may surprise myself.

There should be a pretty major fitness-related post coming up soon, and there’s a pretty big day in the blog’s very near future, so look for something else later this week.

Evolution, Part 2: Science, Karl Popper, and Falsification

Since Andy apparently got impatient and decided to steal my thunder, I thought I should get in gear and go ahead and post the next piece of this series.

In the first post, I discussed a prerequisite to any discussion I was interested in having on this topic – civility.  Having established that aspect of the discussion, I’m now ready to move on to the more substantive pieces of the issue.  The ultimate configuration of this discussion will play out as follows:

• Part I: Darwin Caused the Holocaust?
• Part 2: Science, Karl Popper, and Falsification
• Part 3: Evolution and Intelligent Design
• Part 4: Problems: Or, Why Linnaeus Was a Jerk

I should also offer my qualifications, perhaps: I have a BA in political science with a minor in biology, as well as most of a master’s degree in public administration.  I am perhaps not the most qualified individual imaginable to address this topic.

Having established that, let’s now turn to the fundamental framework of the debate (what all my fellow former policy debaters might consider the “topicality” portion of proceedings).

New Goals

So it’s already about halfway through the summer, and I’ve been pretty much spinning my wheels.  Thought it was about time I get things back on track.

First step was figuring out finances.  That’s done, and my savings for the summer are figured out.

That being said, I start law school in 37 days (holy crap.), so I wanted to establish some goals.  The most important thing is that I want to make sure I’m well-rested when things get rolling.  So here are the three goals:

• Weigh 250 lbs.
• Demo at least 10 songs for the album (that’s 4 more)
• R&R as much as possible

That means playing plenty of Final Fantasy 13, reading for fun, and just taking it easy as much as I can.  Want to get my brain as rested up as possible before insanity begins.

Evolution, Part I: Darwin Caused the Holocaust?

After some deliberation, I decided to go ahead and write a few pieces here about evolutionism, wherein I’ll discuss some aspects of the debate, as well as the social and personal implications.  This first piece is going to be about the tone of the discussion.

I was reading something earlier today about the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and it linked to a really interesting web post by Richard Dawkins.  After viewing the film in question, an individual sent a message to Dawkins that’s quoted in the post, and Dawkins, in response, wrote an open letter to individuals who were misled by the filmmakers.

The thing that really struck me was that, despite the fact that I generally consider Dawkins to be a poor ambassador for science and evolutionism, he doesn’t just address the factual issues in the argument, he does so in a fashion that addresses the personal components of the letter he received while treating the individual in a sympathetic fashion.  I was truthfully quite surprised and impressed; I can’t remember the last time I had seen this issue dealt with in such a tactful fashion.

I’ve been caught in the middle of this discussion for longer than I was really aware of it.  You see, my father is an evolutionary biologist, and yet I was raised in a Southern Baptist church.  I want to be clear here and say that my life in that church has been largely wonderful, and I count myself lucky to know how many people there love me.  But periodically something along those lines would come up – a confrontation between the youth minister and my father because of the comments made to my seventh grade self disparaging evolutionists, a throwaway remark equating evolutionism with paganism or atheism, or, in one particularly egregious case, a month-long series of Sunday School lessons detailing the heresies of evolution – and the resultant pain has left me fairly sensitive to the topic.

I should also say at this point that I consider myself an evolutionist and a Christian, and see no contradiction there.  I will elaborate more on my perspective in a later post, but I want my position and biases to be clear from the outset.

What I see in that piece by Dawkins that is sorely lacking in the discourse at large is, simply put, civility.  What I mean by that is that individuals on both sides get overly caught up in generalities and sides and forget that they’re talking to and about actual people.

Take, for example, the film that started this post – I haven’t seen it, and frankly I have no intentions to do so, but all commentary seems to indicate that the overall argument being communicated is that evolutionary theory (called Darwinism seemingly in an attempt to liken it to easy-target ideologies like Marxism) is at fault for a variety of injustices, the most significant being the Holocaust.

I’m not going to get into the factual problems with that statement.  Dawkins addresses them admirably in his letter, and it’s not really relevant to the discussion.  What is relevant, however, is the implications of that statement.  Stein’s argument implies that, because I believe evolution to be scientifically valid, I am not only a heretic, but at least a tacit supporter of one of the most heinous atrocities ever committed by man.  Whether or not it’s a spurious argument, it’s an incredibly hateful thing to say.

Similarly, the scientific side of the argument has a tendency to take a very similar tack – individuals who seek to rectify the scientific theory with the faith that they’ve known since they were kids are treated not as humans with a different worldview, but as pieces of a group of fools who are too stupid or prejudiced to believe a very obvious truth.

It’s no wonder no one talks about this calmly.

The simple fact of the matter is that the generalized arguments made by both sides are reductionist, and any productive outcome from the discussion is precluded by the name-calling and adversarial tone of the discussion.  The result is division and hurt, and there is absolutely nothing to be gained from it.

To that extent, I would ask that anyone who comments on this series of posts takes personal responsibility for civility.  I have approval power on comments, and will attempt to police this, but I don’t seek to exclude anyone’s points of view, simply to exclude comments that are hurtful to other participants in the discussion.

Statistics and Soul

I’ve been thinking a lot the last couple weeks about baseball.  The Royals are doing their usual thing and being not very good, but they’re looking better doing it than they have in a while, and it seems like they’re kind of on the verge of something good, so that’s a pleasant change.  Of course, I don’t actually get to watch Royals games, because I live in Columbia, but that’s the way it goes.

The Endangered Art of Songwriting

I’ve picked up a series of albums lately that really got me thinking about songwriting.  It started in May, when I picked up Jesse Malin’s new record at Vintage Vinyl, and then built when the new records from Against Me! and the Gaslight Anthem came out the last couple of weeks.  A distinct Springsteen influence is a common thread among all three records, which probably explains why I’m currently quite enamored of all of them, but the additional factor is that all three songwriters (Malin, Tom Gabel from AG!, and Brian Fallon from GA) started their careers playing very straight punk and have moved in a direction that has as much in common with a guy like Bob Seger as it does the Sex Pistols.  The thing that really interests me is the variation in reaction.

Against Me! in particular started as what seems at face value to be a pretty straightforward anarcho-punk band – anti-mainstream, anti-consumerism, anti-government, etc.  Gaslight Anthem is from Jersey and as a result always had a real distinct Springsteen influence that softened their straight punk sound, but used to have a much harder, louder sound.  Finally, Malin was originally a member of a band called D Generation that frankly I’ve never heard.  In the last 6 weeks or so, all three of them released albums that have a lot to do with Born to Run, and they’re all great records.

Two of the three bands also represent a range of fan reaction – Malin’s most recent record, Love it to Life, has received acclaim as his best yet, and it is unquestionably very good.  The songwriting is top notch and the result is that the songs are not only enjoyable, but affecting on a personal level.  You relate to the subjects of the songs, in particular the last track, “Lonely at Heart,” where Malin’s profound loneliness is framed beautifully by his great lyrics.  It’s the kind of song everyone wishes came out of the low points in their lives.

Against Me! released their new record White Crosses two weeks ago, and it is much the same story.  AG! has always been a vehicle for Tom Gabel, whether or not he sees it that way.  Gabel’s an incredibly talented and unique songwriter whose material  recalls great rock and roll songwriters, sometimes very directly (“Because of the Shame” from the new record almost directly pilfers the intro from Springsteen’s “No Surrender”), and yet somehow still manages to sound like an entirely new, personal piece.  Part of this is simply that he writes not about the sort of American archetypes that many of his predecessors wielded to great effect, but rather about things closer to his own experience, as in “I Was a Teenage Anarchist,” which describes his falling out with the anarchist beliefs of his youth in favor of a more realistic worldview.  The other piece of this is a biting, strikingly intelligent wit that is only really comparable to some of Dylan’s best work.  It’s a great combination, and he’s in top form on White Crosses.

The fan reaction to the new album, however, has been intensely negative.  Many fans seemingly missed the longstanding undertones of dissatisfaction with the trappings of the punk scene, and are in revolt as a result of Gabel’s departure from them.  Cries of “sellout” are common.  It doesn’t take much to see that Gabel was never fully comfortable with the culture gestapo, even as far back as Reinventing Axl Rose, the typical favorite of punk-era AG! fans.  On the track “Those Anarcho Punks are Mysterious,” Gabel subtly parallels the anarcho-punk culture with the kind of mainstream attitudes and cultural superiority that anarchism and punk seeks to rebel against.  It’s the same recurring theme that he ultimately explored more explicitly in the first single from White Crosses.

While Gaslight Anthem has received some similar criticism for their movement toward a more mainstream rock sound, the intensity has been much lower level, likely because of two factors: first, they didn’t have the long-standing independent fanbase that Against Me! accumulated before moving to a major label, and second, they were always on the Springsteen and accessibility side of the punk spectrum.

The real shame in all of these varying reactions is that, with the apparent exception of Malin’s record, people are so caught up in the genre politics and how distorted or clean the guitars are that they lose out on appreciating the phenomenal songs that all three of these men write.  Gabel, Fallon, and Malin are some of the very few new artists producing songs anywhere near the level of the peak output of guys like Springsteen, Dylan, or Kristofferson.  Whether they’re backed by a punk band or a polka quartet (is that a real thing?) shouldn’t matter – these are phenomenal songs that should be appreciated for what they are, and a truly great song is great regardless of how it’s played – check out this acoustic version of “Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen for proof of that.

In a music industry increasingly defined by an industrial mentality (whether or not you think that’s a good idea), it’s vital that great songcraft still be rewarded and appreciated.

Workout Summary, Week of 6.14.10

Revising my posting schedule – I’ll do these type of updates weekly instead of every workout now, in order to better facilitate the different way I’m doing fitness this summer.

Monday: Batting cages, 144 pitches

This went well.  One of my ongoing goals is to develop some legitimate softball skills over the summer in order to have fun and improve my ability to contribute to softball teams (church and law school both, hopefully)

Tuesday: Weights

• Weight – 268 lbs.
• 1/2 mile run
• Squat – 135, 225, 270 (failure), 250 (failure)
• Bench Press – 170 lbs.
• Reverse Crunches – 3×12

This was something of a mixed bag.  I decided to add a warmup run to the beginning of my workout, and it turns out that from my apartment to the rec is exactly a half mile, so I went with that.  I had less trouble with that than I would have expected (it really is amazing the difference having 25 lbs less of me to carry makes), but I also suspect it contributed to my failure at squats.  The squats went fairly poorly.  I’m trying to get back into doing a straight 5×5 so I can just increase my weight slowly (or even just maintain for the time being) and have something that I can get away with only 2 days a week of free weights on.  I finally finished the 5×5 at 170 lbs on bench, though, which was incredibly satisfying.  I realized that I can pull my body weight in 2 of the main 3 exercises I’ve been working on – squats and deadlifts – and my bench weight is increasing steadily.  It would be 5 different kinds of awesome to be able to bench press myself.

Thursday: Weights

• 1/2 mile run (3 minutes 14 seconds)
• Thrusters – 75 lbs.
• Deadlift – 280 lbs.
• Prone Bridges – 3×30 sec

Tried some different things here, too.  Did the warmup run again, and this time, I timed it.  3 minutes for a half mile seems mind-bogglingly fast to me.  I’m not certain whether or not I could maintain that pace for a full mile, but that’s a 6 1/2 minute mile, which is way, way faster than I’ve ever been able to run that distance.  I’m planning on adding some running in on rest days for lifting, so I should be able to get a much better sense of that when that starts happening.  Maybe I’ll actually follow through on my goal from last summer of doing the Zoo Run.

That’s all for now.  I’m planning on a lengthier post in the near future setting out some new goals as well as my plans to meet them, so look forward to that.

Workout Summary/Philosophy

So I’ve hit the end of my semester membership in the Mizzou Rec, and haven’t gotten up the motivation to go over there and tell them to bill me so I can continue going.  I’m going to do it, but I have instead been doing some calisthenic stuff wherever I happen to be at a given moment.  Saturday, that included push-ups, reverse crunches, prisoner squats, vertical jumps, and supermans.  Today, that was a push-up variant that’s sort of an overhead press equivalent, prisoner squats, bicycle crunches, some kind of improved super reverse crunch (instead of just doing the crunch, I extended my legs and held for a beat before I lowered back down), supermans, and elastic band rotator cuff exercises.  For the most part, I just did 3 sets of each exercise until failure.  I suspect I’m going to have difficulty moving my arms tomorrow, and I suspect my abs won’t be real happy with me, either.

I’m still trying to figure out where I’m going next with my workout regimen.  I’m not real happy with what I’ve been doing in terms of heavy lifting.  It’s real inflexible – the old regimen, I could maintain what I was doing week to week even if I could only lift two days a week.  This one, I feel like I’m not making any progress because I frequently am unable to do my Friday workout due to not being in town.  So I’m not sure what to do.  I haven’t had much luck finding alternatives.

One option I’m considering is shifting from a pure strength-building type workout to something more holistic.  That is, instead of setting myself on lifting weights 3 days a week, try to incorporate a lot of different things (including weight lifting) in order to increase my overall fitness and make things more flexible.  This week, that might entail something along these lines:

• Monday: Calisthenics in apartment, extended Guitar Hero drums playing
• Tuesday: n/a (busy all evening)
• Wednesday: Weight lifting
• Thursday: n/a (driving to the lake)
• Friday: Running and calisthenics
• Saturday: Playing outside with friends
• Sunday: Rest day

That could include playing ultimate frisbee, basketball, or racquetball, running on a treadmill or elliptical machine, going to the batting cages, riding a bike (once I finally learn how), whatever.  Just getting out and being active, getting better at doing things.  I think it would be advisable to continue to work in at least 2 days of lifting every week to keep building muscle mass, but that seems like it’d be a lot more feasible given how my summer is looking.  Perhaps more importantly, it might be a better fit for my overall goal, which is essentially to get to a point where my body doesn’t prevent me from doing anything I want to do.

Thoughts?  Insights?

Workout Summary, 5.24.10

After being a big slacker while I was home for the break, I worked out again yesterday.

• Weight – 268
• Squat – 145, 180, 220, 250, 290 (failure, 290 lbs. set, 4th rep)
• Inverted Rows – 8, 4, 3
• Bench Press – 170 lbs (failure, 5th set, 3rd rep)
• Reverse Crunches – 3×12
• Push-ups – 12, 6, 4

Actually a pretty miserable workout.  Due to what I think was the cumulative effects of a caffeine crash (I drank a 20 oz. Cherry Coke Zero at about 2:00, then worked out at about 5:00), a short night’s sleep (about 5 1/2 hours due to having to reset my sleep schedule), and increased fatigue from the sudden increase in heat, I was just dragging.  I suspect I would have finished both sets had I been feeling better, but that’s the way these things go.  Otherwise, the only news is that once again, I went home for 10 days, didn’t work out or even walk much, ate lots of crappy, delicious food, and lost weight.  How strange.