Octopodial Chrome

Last week was a pretty good week. Monday I did 146 push-ups (28, 35, 25, 22 & 36) & 221 sit-ups (42, 52, 38, 33 & 56) and ran three miles in 28:20 (½: 4:28; 1: 8:56; 1½: 13:33; 2: 19:16; 2½: 24:00; 3: 28:20).

Wednesday I did 162 push-ups (18, 18, 20, 20, 14, 14, 16 & 42) & 244 sit-ups (27, 27, 30, 30, 21, 21, 24 & 64) and ran three miles in 27:37 (½: 4:26; 1½:13:18; 2: 18:57; 2½:23:27; 3: 27:37).

Friday I did 176 push-ups (18, 18, 20, 20, 17, 17, 20 & 46) & 262 sit-ups (26, 26, 30, 30, 26, 26, 30 & 68) and ran three miles in 28:35 (½: 4:49; 1: 10:13; 1½: 14:45; 2: 20:33; 2½: 25:01; 3: 28:35). I’m pretty proud of that run: while it was my worst two-mile time in quite awhile, I sprinted the final mile and turned in a not-too-shabby 8½ minute mile after already running two miles. That tells me that if I work on pacing I should have no problem getting three miles in under 27 minutes.

My total miles run since I started logging them is up to 29. Not that many—still, almost a third of the way to a century!

Gentlemen, the Lord’s Prayer

With these words, five American officers attempted to start Sunday services while imprisoned by the North Vietnamese, and were tortured for their trouble—but the sixth attempt succeeded. I’ve recently been reading up on the Code of Conduct instituted after the Korean War; this is exactly how one’s expected to behave.

I added banana pancakes to my list of bachelor recipes. Tasty stuff!

I don’t really have an excuse for being late. Of course, I guess my blog readers probably don’t care that much anyway. I was unable to run on Monday due to snow, but did do a sit-up and push-up exhaustion test. The verdict? Not nearly where I want be, but good enough for government work (literally). On Wednesday I combined my sit-ups & push-ups with my running (which is how the real PRT does it), doing 90 push-ups in sets of 17, 19, 15, 15 & 24, 150 sit-ups in sets of 26, 30, 23, 23 and 48 and running 1½ miles in 13:07 (4:03 for the half, 8:40 for the full mile).

Today I did another full slate of exercises: 101 push-ups in sets of 10, 10, 13, 13, 10, 10, 9 & 26; 171 sit-ups in sets pf 15, 15, 20, 20, 15, 15, 15 & 56; then I ran a full three miles and walked half a mile. Unfortunately I didn't properly hit my split timer at the three mile point: my split times were: ½ mile, 4:24, one mile, 9:02, 1½ miles 13:38, two miles19:04, 2½ miles 23:53 and 3½ miles at 37:34. I'm guessing that my three mile time was something like 29:00.

Roland Martin is a commenter on CNN; he lauds the recent tobacco tax increase. This is the single largest federal tobacco tax increase of all time: the excise tax on cigarettes has gone up from 39 cents per pack to $1.01; the tax on large cigars goes up 35.36 cents; on little cigars 97 cents; pipe tobacco goes from $1.75/lb to $2.83; rolling papers are going up $1.97. The worst of the increases is on loose cigarette tobacco: it has gone from $1.10/lb to $24.78. Indeed, the majority of the cost of rolling tobacco is not the tobacco itself but the tax.

Martin approves of this because he doesn’t like smoking and he thinks that increased taxes will decrease smoking. What if I don’t like fat people like Roland Martin? Is it okay to tax people by weight? I propose $1/pound/month.

Roland Martin can take a long walk off a short pier. The rest of us should support a fair, just and uniform tax code. Taxes are necessary; excess taxes are not.

One thing social conservatives often have trouble with is describing exactly why sexual conservatism matters. Jim Kalb has a pretty good list of frequently asked questions about exactly that. I don’t know that I’d phrase all of my own answers identically, but all-in-all he makes some excellent points.