Excuse Me! No blogging all day because it's (drumroll!)

OFFERING BOY'S SEVENTH BIRTHDAY!

Today was the family celebration, with us, the Matron of All Offerings and my sister's family. Much fun, though we had a minor barbecue tragedy. I did ribs in the smoker, but I didn't like the taste - somewhat acrid. They also got much blacker on the outside than they have previously. I see two possible problems:

1) too much hickory smoke - I used only hickory chunks this time (six bags full) instead of some hickory atop lots of charcoal;

2) "smoking uphill" - the bottom of the smoke chamber has a little drain in it for grease to run out into a hanging can; hours into the process, I realized that the slope of the ground put the drain at the high end of the unit, so most of the grease stayed in the bottom of the smoke chamber and bubbled;

3) I may have gotten the mixture of Mike's Rib Rub wrong in my haste this morning; I don't think so but you never know.

Okay, so that's three. This priceless article on smoking pork shoulder by Elder Ward seems to leave both 1 and 2 as possibilities. Got to clear this up before next month's Stand Down barbecue.

Offering Boy says he enjoyed his birthday regardless (the ribs were for the adults more than him), and we got fine haircuts this morning and I gave him some swag from the superb Beyond Comics in Gaithersburg.

Blogarama After-Action - Enjoyable if somewhat sparsely attended time last night at the blog party. Much time talking with Julian Sanchez and Brink Lindsey. (Brink: "Am I still a neolibertarian, Jim?" Jim: "I don't know. Have you changed your mind about things?" But the conversation went uphill from there.) Marie Gryphon tried, with some success, to convince me that school vouchers were not simply the State's nose under a tent it hadn't managed to enter yet. Julian and I talked about Two Different Types of Libertarian (no, not pragmatic versus principled or paleo versus neo - a different schema I'll come back to. I had an okay Ethiopian dinner that Martial of De Spectaculis kindly watched me eat. (He was not himself hungry.) Some of my favorite folks missed the party, so damn if I'll give them the satisfaction of mentioning their names.

And I had the honor of meeting CATO's David Boaz (pronounced like the speaker company), whom I've admired for years. Met Henry Farrell of Gallowglass and got to see faithful blogarama habitue, Dave Tepper of Interrobang.

To the best of my knowledge, no one took pictures this time. Are we all getting jaded?

UPDATE: Martial of De Spectaculis writes:

Jim, I just asked my wife if was in Washington Friday evening. She assures
me that I was, in fact, here in Boston, where I went out to get her pizza
and we watched the Red Sox game. Now, had I been in DC, I would certainly
have made every effort to attend the blog-bash. I guess I'm pleased that
my doppelganger turned out.

I hope he was worthy!

These Matrix agents will stop at nothing to confound me!

All right, Chuck, who really did have dinner with me, as opposed to Martial, who did not: remind me what your URL is please.

Blogarama at Kalorama tonight! 7:00 - ? at the Rendezvous Lounge on 18th Street in Adams-Morgan.

Objectively Anti-Empire - No time to discuss it now, but Arthur Silber points out this substantial critique of "neo" interventionism by Objectivist scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra. I've never been a Randian, nor even read Rand's own work, but Sciabarra quotes some very sensible statements about foreign policy. His argument is that many current Objectivists, generally enthusiastic about the Iraq War and beyond, are distorting Rand's principles. What I particularly like is that he identifies the salience of Hayek's critique of central planning for nation-building and interventionism. The longer I watch our government's adventures and misadventures abroad, the clearer this connection becomes to me.

Now That's Inconvenient - Jeff Jarvis translates a German-language interview with Salam Pax, in which Salam says

Actually, the situation is much better than we imagined before the war...

What the heck is Canadian fussbudget David Warren to make of that?

(Salam also says "One thing is sure: No one is relying on the Americans. No one expects that they will do anything for us." So he's clearly not 100% with the program, which must still mean he's the enemy.)

No Slippery Slope Here! - From an Oakland Tribune article on CATIC, the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, which played a major role in the runup to the Oakland police assaults on shipyard protestors in April:

"You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that (protest)," said Van Winkle, of the state Justice Department. "You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act."

Look people, I rest my fucking case, understand?

Said Van Winkle: "I've heard terrorism described as anything that is violent or has an economic impact, and shutting down a port certainly would have some economic impact. Terrorism isn't just bombs going off and killing people."

Or has an economic impact. What was I saying? Oh yeah. I rest my fucking case.

The state's anti-terror center also operates without a clear definition of terrorism. Asked for one, Van Winkle replied: "I'm not sure where to go with that. But as a state organization, we have this information and we're going to share it."

It's a heck of a question to ask a counterterrorism official, "What is terrorism?" One of those ambush questions, I suppose.

Another One of Those Self-Tests - You don't get graphics to paste up on your website, but this short quiz for would-be occupiers from Airstrip One has its moments.

The I-Word Revisited - Oh Imperialism! Are you the right word or not?

Consider this passage from the NYT story discussed below on Baghdad's woes, electrical and other:

But because the system is a hodgepodge of Chinese, French, Russian, American and other parts, replacing what is stolen has not been easy — since spare parts were also stolen.

Turn now to a WashPost story from yesterday, in which "The U.S. executive selected by the Pentagon to advise Iraq's Ministry of Oil suggested today that the country might best be served by exporting as much oil as it can and disregarding quotas set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries."

No, that's not it. I mean, it would do, but there's more:

Hussein's government had an official policy of steering contracts for drilling services, joint production and machinery to companies based in France, Russia and China, whose governments tended to be more supportive of Iraq in the United Nations Security Council.

And those contracts are all . . . up for review. "Though Carroll did not single out any potentially imperiled contracts, he asserted that the old system of preferential treatment ended with the demise of Hussein."

Indeed, we shall have a new system of preferential treatment! And we will punish France, Russia and China for opposing us at the UN too. But that's still not (quite) it. There's one more key piece:

Carroll stressed that his first priority is resuming enough production of oil, gasoline and cooking fuel to relieve painful domestic shortages. Questions about Iraqi exports and the country's participation in OPEC remain moot for now.

Iraq is about to begin importing gasoline from Kuwait, according to this AP story. US and Iraqi experts at the Oil Ministry allow that they will not meet their target of restoring Iraqi oil production to half its prewar levels in June:

"We shall meet that target" 1.5 million barrels a day "at a later date."

If your overriding priority were to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet as fast as possible - the US plans to use the money to fun Iraqi reconstruction - the logical thing would be to turn to the people who best know Iraq's physical plant and systems, the Iraqis themselves (check) and . . . the French, Russian and Chinese companies who were already doing business in Iraq and know its infrastructure.

But if you put a higher priority on punishing France, Russia and China (and possibly rewarding your own industries), you wouldn't. And that's where we are - making decisions on Iraq's key revenue source for it, based on the imperatives of American geopolitics rather than what makes sense for Iraq economically. And that's about as pure an example of "imperialism" as you'll find.

Who Turned Out the Lights II - Last week or so I wondered why Baghdad was without power when the Pentagon stated before and during the war that they were going to go lightly on Iraq's infrastructure this time. Did they misspeak, did the old Iraqi regime take the power down for reasons of their own or what? Reader Nell Lancaster e-mails a useful New York Times story that indicates the power outage is mostly due to - looters.

While some of the damage to the electrical grid resulted from the war, as advancing troops plowed past power lines, most of the difficulties are the result of looting, according to Dr. Hassan, the senior Iraqi electricity official. "They are taking anything," he said.

Thanks, Nell, for clearing that up.

Postwar Tour - Salam Pax has a long report on his tour of southern Iraq with a charity survey. Idiots will want to anxiously vet the contents for the proper attitudes. The rest of us can simply profit from the most vivid reporting coming out of Iraq, from a perspective you won't get elsewhere.

Dammit, by the way, I was the first blogger to suggest that Salam would/should bring out a book.

Weekly Fitness Blog Post - 178 pounds, 35" waist. On one perspective, weight loss has slowed to a crawl. But poundage and waistline continue to decrease, more or less, given the tolerance of my crummy scale.

This week: shilling for corporations, plus fitness method evaluations.

Let's shill first. Via the first issue of Muscle & Fitness I ever bought, I discovered Powerblock selectorized dumbbells. These things are expensive but cool. If I had an Amazon Wish List I'd put these on it, if Amazon carried them.

When it comes to dumbbells you traditionally have two only partially satisfactory options: 1) "Adjustable" dumbbell rods using the classic weight-plate-and-stoppers method; 2) A variety of cast dumbbells, each a single piece of fixed weight. The problems with the first option are safety (the stoppers can slip and send weight plates flying, plus this kind of dumbbell has sharpish and pointy bits) and convenience (it takes too much time to swap out plates in the middle of an intense workout). The problems with the second are space and expense.

I went with cast dumbbells because Mrs. Offering had some lying around and it just made sense to continue into heavier models as I progressed. But now I've got five feet o' dumbbells lining the rec room floor, from one-pound Heavyhands through 35# cast-iron Keys handweights. As of today's purchase of 35-pounders we have an even dozen sets. It's hard to cut down, since one person needs different sets for different exercises. (I'll only be using the 35-pounders for squats for the next month, most likely. I do most everything else with 25-pound dumbbells, going as low as 15 for a couple of exercises.) Theoretically you can sell or give away the old ones as you progress, but really - to whom? Plus, Mrs. Offering sometimes lifts, so she may progress into weights that I no longer need. Plus, I need three or four sets for Heavyhands routines at any given time, with progression to higher loads there too.

So you end up with a lot of dumbbells. Even at $.40 a pound for the cast iron ones, you end up spending quite a bit, and respending. Buy 25-pound weights today (50 pounds total). When you buy 30-pound weights next month you pay for 50 pounds again when what you really need is 10 extra pounds (five for each hand), not sixty. At some point you have to consider buying a rack to hold them, which is more expense and space.

The Powerblocks only take up two square feet on a single pedestal. Depending on which set you buy, one set covers between 5 and 40 or 5 and 60-100+ pounds. Way it works is, you have a handle set with square-ends that sits in a kind of basket of weighted endcaps. You insert a pin arrangement to determine how much of the "basket" comes along when you pick up the handle. I got to play with a set today and it's pretty simple and quick.

I reluctantly decided against buying them, based on the expense of the Powerblocks themselves and the sunk cost of the dumbbells I already own. But if I knew then what I know now (that Powerblocks exist) I'd have done it differently.

There's another set of selectorized dumbbells from ProBell. I haven't seen these but they are dial-based, have a more traditional form factor and boast that you don't need a color-coded pedestal to tell how much weight you're choosing. They look like they might be easier to handle for certain exercises than Powerblocks. Problem is, their "bigass model" only goes up to 30 pounds, which will only take you so far.

By the by, the reason I bought Muscle and Fitness is that it has a pullout dumbbell-and-bench workout in it, and another article on strength training at home without machines. The magazine is too focused on bodybuilding to interest me on a regular basis, but Fitness Blog Item readers know I can't resist new dumbbell workout info. The current issue's articles are not available on the website. There is a lot of material on the website. Here's a suggestion from their boxing-based cardio workout that I will not be rotating into my repertoire:

5) 10 6-8-pound medicine ball chest passes against a wall. Stand in a semi-staggered stance facing a wall about 15 feet away. Hold a 6-8-pound medicine ball at your chest. Execute a chest pass as hard as you can into the wall

Guys, this is not how you subvert those stereotypes.

Exercise evaluation section - Damn if I'm not getting sucked back into the "Heavyhands - the Ultimate Exercise!" mentality. I did two weeks of Heavyhands in a row, instead of weight training every other week as planned, because I wanted the most possible cardio exercise before yesterday's cholesterol test blood sample. Subjectively, I made at least as many gains in muscle mass and definition as I've tended to get from slow-cadence weight training. And my resting pulse is down to the low 60s. And no injuries in two weeks, either - perhaps my earlier assessment of the injury potential of Heavyhands was too harsh. Maybe it really is all you need. (I'm lifting tomorrow anyway. I mean, I have to use the #^$@@$ 35# dumbbells, right?)

For what it's worth, here are my tips for successful Heavyhands training, based entirely on personal experience and no physiological expertise whatsoever.

1. Get one of Dr. Schwartz's two books.

2. Do NOT, when starting out, do the different movements (pumps, flyes, presses, ski-poling etc.) in 5 and 15-minute blocks, as the book seems to suggest. Rotate arm movements every minute or so at the most. This cuts down on strains and pulls and lets you keep your intensity up. The idea is to let you maximize time at your target heart rate without tearing your limbs apart.

3. Adopt the following mindset: Aerobics is strength training. At least, it is if you're doing it right. Work short sessions with the next weight up into your indoor routines. When you walk outdoors, you're stuck with one weight size, so mix in intervals with wider ranges of motion. That uses different muscles and more energy.

4. Aerobics is strength training so only work out every other day. Work hard, let your body build muscle on your day off, repeat. If you're very sore on the second day, consider resting again. A half hour of intense Heavyhands four times a week will give you two more hours of effective exercise than most of the country.

5. Your abs are just more muscle. That means you need to work them hard, rest them and then work them harder the next time. The Heavyhands abdominal routines are perfect for this - you can increase speed, duration and weight from session to session.

The lesson has been spoken.

Fitness blog bonus material: 8 Healthy Foods. I'm down with five of these: quinhoa I never heard of before; yogurt I'll eat when it dies; and tea I reluctantly abjured when I gave up sugar and caffeine. But it's a pretty tasty list. Weight Watchers (the publishers of the article) are good for something.

Wither Canada (sic) - Are Canadians pussies? New evidence from Miss Manners:

I am a telesurveyor (we do not sell anything) in Canada and have been making calls to the USA recently. The people on the East Coast and in the Southern states do not have a clue how to be polite on the phone or use proper phone etiquette. I realize the nature of the business causes people to be upset and irascible but in the States the people are particularly vulgar and rude. In contrast, when I make calls up north the disposition and demeanor changes 180 degrees.

(My emphasis.) Remember that this very early Offering enables you to deal with telemarketers the Unqualified Offerings way.