Mindconnection eNL, 2017-03-19

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Item 1. A break-through battery has three times the storage capacity of lithium-ion. It could make the electric car actually feasible (today's designs still make the internal combustion engine approach more energy-efficient and less polluting). Read the full story here:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/does-new-glass-battery-accelerate-the-end-of-oil

Item 2. The current Speaker of the House continues to embarrass himself by being such a $%#@%. While it's bad he acts that way, the good news is this is yet another very visible example of how "choosing" between establishment politicians is a losing strategy. It will help people see the value in voting Libertarian, instead of throwing their vote away. The (very) few honest Democrats and Republicans in this mix should consider going Libertarian (that is, in fact, happening in state governments).

Item 3. Four more states are considering "permitless" carry measures. This is good news in many ways, but think about one in particular. During the Soetoro dictatorship, Soetoro abused his office to spew anti-police sentiments. The state-run media also did this. I'm not sure why nobody went to jail for this hate speech (unlike most "hate speech" this actually is hate speech) and the police officer deaths it caused. Now with more law-abiding citizens ready to save our officers the police will enjoy an additional layer of safety.

Eleven states already have these laws on their books: Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippie, Missouri, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. And as would be expected all are low murder rate states relative to other states.

Item 4. Multiple recent polls regarding the Communist News Network (CNN) show that more than 2/3 of its viewers don't believe the hogwash being spewed at them. Apparently, most CNN viewers watch this farsical "news" show just to laugh at the idiocy. By contrast, some polls showed 99% of The Daily Show viewers trusted the news reported by Jon Stewart. Which one was REALLY the comedy show?

Item 5. The swamp got a major drain-off when 46 US Attorneys who were appointed by Soetoro were handed pink slips by President Trump's new Attorney General. Really good news, there.

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Comes with earbuds for private listening.

• Students with reading difficulties (for example, dyslexia) can take a written test.
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• Eliminates the need to police students who are using any other type of reading assistive device.
• Teachers no longer must walk a fine line between helping the student understand the test and giving the student an unfair advantage during the test.
• Students gain more independence and thus more self-esteem.

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I'm also amazed at how many people don't even think about protecting themselves against a major threat to their standard of living. That threat is your local city council. What do you know about how much they spend, what they spend it on, and why? For most people, the answer is "nothing."

My own city council recently wasted $123,000 on a wind chime sculpture that sits by a road; nobody driving by ever hears it. They could have used that money to buy a decent house for a homeless family, put a kid through college, or buy cars for several veterans who have served their country but now can't find a job. Or they could have just not spent the money at all. This last option was actually their duty. It is their job to steward taxpayer money, not dream up ways to waste it.

It is an economic fact that government spending = taxes. It doesn't matter what form of tax, it's still a tax. And yes, when they "borrow" (con people into buying bonds, which always lose buying power against inflation), that's also a form of taxation. Debt isn't free money, it's debt. In short, they spend and you lose.

Many people think of "the government" as that monster bureaucracy known as the federal government that has its locus in the District of Corruption.

But we also  have state, county, and municipal governments; these are typically incompetent and expensive, with cronyism, stupidity, and a  very low level of accountability as common features. The municipal is probably the least transparent. Nobody pays attention to the money they take from citizens, and consequently, they take enormous sums.

Few of us have time to attend city council meetings. But there are people who do attend; go onto nextdoor.com if you have a local chapter and float the question "Do you go to City Council meetings?"

See what you can do to help out those who do, even if your help is an unrelated favor. Plenty of retired people probably live in your community. On a fixed income. They have a huge interest in seeing how their sales taxes and/or property taxes will go up, something city councils are infamous for inflicting on the poor and middle class alike. Ask them to attend those meetings and report back on the debauchery.

I was originally going to write this as a finance tip. But the root issue is robbery. Does it really matter if someone steals your $600 lawnmower from your driveway or if someone steals $600 several times over a year from you via higher sales taxes and other taxes resulting from insanely immoral misuse of public money? Well, yes it does. The mower theft happens just once. The tax theft goes on and on and on.

So find out what those people are up to. Most likely, they are up to no good. My city has many monuments to bad government and abuse of the public trust. Yours probably does, too. Look around. Ask around.

To stop the stealing, start a conversation. Start a nextdoor.com chapter if you don't have one. If you do have one, identify some act of wasteful spending and ask people if they would rather have that silly project completed or have more money in their own pocket.

Once a conversation is going, you as a group will figure out how to take action and stop the stealing. This will be necessary to prevent a decrease in your standard of living, at least from stealing done by your city. You may become so good at this that you can stop the stealing by your county, too.

The phrase "bad government" is almost a redundancy, and "good government" is typically an oxymoron. But that doesn't mean we can't have good government if we make a strong enough effort to get it. One city and one county at a time. Go for it.

From my photo, you can see the results of good abs training. Note that I don't do sit-ups, don't do cardio, and don't do long, grueling workouts.

Neglecting abs training is a serious mistake. Think about their important role in posture, for one thing. Strong abs hold the core in its proper position. This orients the hips for proper back alignment.

The abs hold your organs from slopping forward; weak abs allow the connective tissue to stretch out of shape. This means strong abs prevent your center of gravity from shifting forward, and that also helps prevent poor posture with its resulting back pain.

A strong core is the seat of power for nearly all sports, from gymnastics to climbing to golf. Bedroom "sports" too. Motion originates in the hips, for most athletic movements (especially true in climbing, martial arts, and golf).

When the training is done properly, you get an endocrine response that puts you into fat-burning mode for days, helps regulate insulin, and promotes storing calcium in the bones.

The act of working your abs also makes for a fantastic colon massage, moving all that nasty stuff toward the exit .

The only way to get strong abs is through direct, high-load training. I do this once a week. By contrast, I work calves every other week.

So, what kind of training are we talking about?

• Situps? Nope. These work the hip flexors, barely working the abs at all. They do, however, cause stress in the lower back. Don't do them.
   
• Crunches? Nope. I am not actually sure what these do, except give you a sore tailbone and (if you put your hands behind your head) risk neck injury.
   
• Ab machines. Nope. These just don't work. One noticeable exception is the rolling wheel; this isn't an ab machine per se but is often used to work the abs. The first piece of exercise equipment I ever owned was a rolling wheel my grandfather gave me.

Several good exercises exist, but I use only three.

Mine is not the ultimate abs training program (there's no such thing), nor is it for everyone.

But if you want abs like mine then this is for you. Below is what I do to have those thick, powerful abs:

Top photo taken 16SEP2016, just days before 56th birthday; bottom photo taken 3 days after 56th birthday

• Hanging leg extensions. These work the lower abs and everything from the pubic floor to about the middle of your belly. They actually work the entire abdominal region including the obliques, but what I just mentioned is what gets the hypertrophic response from this exercise (and so do the obliques). Vince Gironda, who trained many Mr. Olympia and other pro body builders banned this exercise because it thickens the abs (as you can see in my photo) and those body builders want a wispy waist.
• Roman Chair. Lying back below horizontal and pulling up into it stresses what wasn't stressed during the hanging leg extensions. This also helps lengthen the back muscles. It's very good in a chiropractic sense. The hanging leg extensions tend to pull your tailbone forward, this will put it back where it belongs and relieve any tension in the back.
• Vacuums. These stress the very upper range of the abs. They really help to prevent the rounded belly look that you see on major body builders today. Do these not only on abs day but just about every day. I recommend three sets on abs day and one set on every other day; that one set is really a ligament adjustment, not an ab workout. To do these, just suck in as hard as you can, pretending you are pulling your belly button up and back.

Many people who do these exercises don't feel what's going on in the muscles. Consequently, they don't get much from these exercises. You really need to be mindful and feel what's going on. If you aren't familiar with actually doing these, work first on getting your form right.

One reason many people get suboptimal training is their mind focuses on counting reps rather than on what the target muscles are actually doing. One reason people count reps is they use them as a scorecard. If I can squeeze out one more (poorly done) rep, that means I'm improving! No, it actually means you are mindlessly doing reps and managed to cheat out an additional one.

So don't count reps with the idea that more reps means you're improving. More reps probably means you're cheating. Go slowly and focus on feeling those abs contract. It's the contraction of the abs, not the movement of your legs or torso, that produces the desired response.

Your muscles don't count reps. Your body has no idea that you are doing X number of reps. What will register is the amount of tension and the time under tension. Multiply these, and you get "work" or load. That's what the body adapts to.

All body weight and free weight exercises have a limitation: gravity pulls in only one direction. So tension in the muscle changes with the angle of the extended body part(s). Several really good cable exercises get you past this. Don't do the cable exercises without first learning the proper form. I've seen some ineffective and very dangerous use.

Another way to build great abs is to modify your front squats. But this requires a kinetic sense and precision out of the reach of beginner to intermediate lifters. Most people don't do their squats in good form, so adding another dimension to this exercise is probably not going to help.

For those of you who "get it" with squats, here's the modification. Do a vacuum as you come up, and squeeze really hard while exhaling. Try to drive your squat up from your pelvic floor. Try this first with an empty bar, until you feel how it works. Else, you could injure your back.

Some sports naturally build the abs, because they so heavily load the core. Competitive rowing is one of those, but this sport is out of reach of most people. A fairly accessible sport is indoor bouldering (one form of gym climbing). We climbers are noted for our abs. Climbing takes very strong abs once you are at the intermediate level, and the demand tends to be heavier as you move up in the difficulty of your climbing problems and routes.

I am tempted to say that if you can focus on only one area of your body, make it your abs. But the reality is your whole body needs training if you want to look and feel good. What you want is for your great abs to be an indication of your overall fitness, rather than have an unfit body except for those abs.

Abs are possibly the most neglected body part. That neglect is costly in old age and ugliness well before then. There's a huge body of literature about ab training. Some of the literature is extremely helpful and instructive; for example, anything by Shawn Phillips. There's no "secret" to great abs. You get them by hard work and consistency.

If my particular training method doesn't appeal to you, find something that does. If you aren't gung-ho about great abs, that's your choice. But at least make the choice to have adequate abs, something the vast majority of people neglect to do. They pay for that neglect, and it's costly.

A final note on abs training. If done correctly, you need an adequate recovery time. Notice that mine is a full week. If yours is something significantly shorter, your training is probably not what it needs to be. There's a reason people can do 2,000 sit-ups every day, and it's not because they are getting effective abs training.

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.