Welcome to my Nightmare - What, asked Brecht, is the evil of a man who robs a bank compared to the evil of a man who founds a bank? Well, screw the old dead commie anyway. But let's extend his principle a minute.

Yesterday's car-bomb assassination in Najaf has provoked some interesting reactions. Jeanne d'Arc avers that the US is at fault for not providing better security, somehow. Tacitus thinks the US is responsible because it hasn't arrested a man whose may or may not have had anything to do with the bombing. I myself, in a comment at the Talking Dog, asserted that, Yes, if you conquer and occupy another country and assert ultimate authority over the place, then you are responsible for what happens there by definition.

It's not hard to imagine things the US could have done that would have lessened the likelihood of a successful atrocity like this. Beyond more troops, you could try preventive detentions, expanded informant networks, conspicuous shows of force against minor shows of rebellion, collective punishments against the communities from which malefactors spring.

Some of this, alas, we're already doing. Nowhere near as much as the guy who used to run the place, mind you, and that brings us to my nightmare. During the spring's torture contretemps, I got an e-mail from Eric Mauro saying

Jim, there must be a reason every government in the Middle East engages in torture. My guess is they are effectively at war all the time, or they have police states to not have wars...

I've long had a nagging worry that Saddam ran Iraq the way he did because it was the only way anyone could run Iraq, if you accepted the existence of "Iraq" in the first place - if your priority was holding that absurdly geometrical container of fissiparous faiths and fealties together in that neighborhood, with those rivals. Let me be clear: to say this is the farthest thing from saying Saddam is not really a bad guy after all. He is the worst sort of guy. It's to say that he got and stayed where he was because only a terrible man could succeed in that position. The master crime behind the crimes of Saddam was the founding of Iraq in the first place, that absurd grid laid down by the British Colonial Office early in the century. And all who have since insisted on maintaining those soveriegn borders, a.k.a. "the territorial integrity of Iraq", become participants in a decades-long RICO case, participants in a continuing criminal enterprise. Indicted co-conspirators would be the Arab League, the UN, the British Commonwealth, every Iraqi government since the founding and the United States of America among others. Plaintiffs in the class action suit would be the Kurds, Marsh Arabs, Turkomen and Assyrians. Iran and Israel could probably claim tortious injury, having often been chosen as the external enemy intended to unite the internal factions.

I'm not an anarchist, and I'm not saying "there should be no governments." Nor will I sing Imagine there's no countries. Just the one in question. The root cause of Iraq's woes may well be Iraq as such. By committing ourselves to its perpetuation, we open ourselves and Iraqis to grief and evil.

Light-Blogging Friday as it is Mrs. Offering's birthday. I'll be spending my day singing "Stacy's Mom" with special feeling.

Read Eve's homage to middlemen and her subsequent qualification.

Read Gene Healy on Josh Marshall's interview with Peter "Holy War, Inc." Bergen.

I Used to Be Disgusted but now that John Smith is back at LincolnPlawg and following British "security" "policy" like a gumshoe on a wandering spouse, I am once again amused. Read everything.

Take That, Corporate Welfare Queens - Forbes reports that the Washington Redskins, who play in a stadium their owner built with his own money, are the NFL's most valuable franchise. Number 4 on the list are the New England Patriots, whose owner declined a sweetheart stadium deal in Connecticut a couple of years ago because he felt like a crumb taking it.

Meanwhile . . . - Colby Cosh says libertarians and conservatives are natural allies. Agitator Man Group member Nicholas Weininger demurs.

Hasta La Vista, Southpaw? - The Whither Libertarians and the Republican Party? moves to Matthew Yglesias' blog. I'm particularly interested in the reactions of the liberals in Matthew's comments section.

1) Look. Guys. It's not my place to tell you your business. But what a lot of us are saying is that libertarians are "in play" for the first time in who knows how many election cycles. That is, libertarians will consider voting for a Democratic candidate for libertarian reasons. Maybe, just maybe, more of the old "you're all a bunch of selfish bastards who care only about tax cuts!" routine is not the way into our hearts just now.

2) In the course of attacking the libertarian view of property rights (property is a creature of the State doncha know, or society, and therefore the State can abridge property rights as it likes), several liberals allow that, yes, applied to other rights that are as surely creatures of the State as the right to property this principle justifies anything up to and including chattel slavery, but just because the State can do something legally doesn't mean the action is moral, and just because we hold an expansive view of the "general welfare" clause and believe that ensuring domestic tranquility is a license for the government to do practically anything it wants, that doesn't mean we support every regulation in existence or believe that every transfer payment or entitlement scheme is justified or ideally configured.

To which I say, Fine. Then how about one of you, somewhere sometime, lifting so much as a finger to get rid of some of these imprudent programs, wasteful subsidies, perverse incentives and counterproductive bureaucracies whose theoretical existence you grant. And by "one of you," I mean a politician, though sustained effort by some activists would at least be nice. From the libertarian perspective, the problem with Democrats is that all their energy goes into adding more "good government," and none into getting rid of what they themselves allow is bad government. Give me a Democrat who vows to slash corporate welfare to the bone, shut down the drug war and crank up the personal withholding exemption at the expense of targetted tax breaks. Then I'll get excited. As it is, the most one gets from Democrats, pundit and politician alike, is, Yeah. Sure would be nice if insane agricultural subsidies went away. And I wish our laws didn't call for locking up every seventh black guy for the crime of selling things people want to buy. Maybe those laws will disappear or something. Hope so. In the meantime I've got to agitate for a dozen new subsidies! I can't begin to imagine how the country has survived this long without them!

3) Have I mentioned that in a narrowly divided electorate, the couple of percent of voters with strong libertarian leanings is big enough to tip the balance?

Better Halves - Diana Moon and Jonathan "Head Heeb" Edelstein are debating the extent to which Howard Dean's wife, Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean, will hurt his chances, with reference to this profile of Mrs. Dr. Dean (Mr. Dr. Dean is also an MD) that appeared in a recent Newsweek. See particularly the comments to Jonathan's aside about Latin American Jewish first ladies for an interesting discussion among Diana, Jonathan and Ikram Saeed. I don't know how many bigots or simple tribalists will be turned off by Dean Femme's Jewishness to the point of not voting for someone they'd otherwise vote for. I'd like to think a small number, but I probably underestimate the nation's atavism quotient. In a tight election, even small numbers matter.

But I agree with Jonathan and Diana that Ikram and profile author Eleanor Clift overestimate the negatives Mrs. Dean's professional woman status brings. Both invoke the ghost of HRC, to my mind inappositely. Many of us who disliked Hillary Clinton, disliked her for her politics chiefly, and for the sense that she had ridden her marriage into a position of power rather than earning it through her own efforts. (This was probably unfair - if that 60 Minutes appearance during the Gennifer Flowers flap doesn't count as "efforts," what does?) Mrs. Dean on the other hand has not only made her own career, but expresses a complete disinterest in politics.

Even traditionalists, even the ones liberals are convinced hate Hillary Clinton because they fear and loathe "women of power," have working wives in many cases. Many of them probably take their kids to female pediatricians too. The Dr. part of Mrs. Dr. Dean will not be a problem for them. Me, I think I like her better than her husband. But she's not running.

Mine's Bigger Than That - Via Crooked Timber comes NationMaster.com, "Where Stats Come Alive." Looks very very cool.

A Fanboy's Eureka - In the course of taking up the 1602 Challenge, Nate "Polytropos" Bruinooge let's drop a major "Whoah!" aside:

The odd thing is that I ought to be annoyed at this rash of self-referentiality, but none of the above examples suck . . . Navel-gazing by the craft’s top practitioners isn’t limited to comics – it’s commonplace in twentieth-century literature, and I’d wager a guess that you’ll find the same dynamic in other art forms as well.

Jim slaps forehead: Why didn't I think of that?? Yeah yeah, cause Nate knows way more than I do about stuff. Just because the intertextuality of what I call Amber Age comics is akin to that of high-modernist and postmodernist literature doesn't mean it's an unambiguously good thing, mind you. After all, recent literature itself has not lacked for critics complaining that it is too much about other books and too little about life.

Speaking of the 1602 Challenge, by the way, responses have since come in from Neilalien (short but sweet) and Bill Sherman. Greg Morrow beat the rush by reviewing pre-challenge, while Alan David Doane expresseth but lofty disinterest in the matter. (He also makes my "conspiracy-mongering sound rather more seriously intended than it actually was. But irony: useful servant, dangerous master, you know?)

I have an uneasy feeling I'm leaving someone out, but that's the best that Technorati, such referrer stats as I have and my memory can accomplish.

A Fanboy's FWIW - A not especially informative article in the New York Times yesterday about the legacy of cartoonist Jack "King" Kirby, on whom Marvel and DC creators dined for decades. It can probably said to simultaneously claim too much (fewer than half of the mutants in the X-Men movies were Kirby's creations, and not the ones the author lists) and too little. And since the only art reproduction is distinctly not Kirby, it doesn't even convey the flavor of his drawing. Oh well. Surely better accounts will come in time.

Kirby work that really grew on me over the years: the Hunger Dogs graphic novel for DC, a New Gods tale. Hunt it up if you get the chance.

That Didn't Take Long - The ceasefire in Liberia seems to be collapsing. Reuters reports fighting; AP quotes Liberia's defense minister du jour saying that "reports of rebel attacks on one central town were rumors spread by his own troops to facilitate looting." Everyone agrees that the multinational West African peacekeeping force needs to hasten its deployment beyond the capital of Monrovia. Meanwhile, "West Africans urge US to keep commitment to Liberia."

A couple of things: first, the people who saw the deal removing Charles Taylor (for however long) as vindicating the impulse toward intervention were making the same mistake that others made watching the happy people around the falling Saddam statue that day - mistaking a momentary upturn for lasting success. Second, Diana Moon has a point when she chides me about what can and cannot honorably be done. It's not an overriding one to me, because at some point an obdurate honor becomes folly. But "bugging out on our commitment to the Iraqi people" would still be dishonorable. That's why prudence in advance of making a commitment is so important. In Liberia, there is still barely time for such prudence.

Outside Reading - An important Christopher Dickey essay from Newsweek about a recurring theme on this site - the American government's increasingly open embrace of torture. (Link via Perverse Access Memory.) Thank heavens for on-the-record euphemisms, though!

No need to get out the battery cables or fingernail pliers, it seems. The only thing Jacoby tortures is prose. “Interrogation is the art of questioning and examining a source to obtain the maximum amount of usable, reliable information in the least amount of time to meet intelligence requirements,” Jacoby writes in a legal brief. “DIA’s approach to interrogation is largely dependent upon creating an atmosphere of dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator.”

Dickey spends much of the essay unpacking the official obfuscations. And there's this, along lines first discussed on this site back in January 2002:

But there are some real problems with all this. First of all, as a Lebanese torturer—er, interrogator—of my acquaintance once told me, the real challenge comes if someone is telling the truth: “How do you know?” And what if that truth doesn’t fit with what you really want to hear? And what your bosses really believe—really know in their souls to be the truth?

That's Dickey, in case my sentence construction threw you. I know no Lebanese torturers.

Also, via the Agitator, an article by W. James Antle III on the increasing and possibly semipermanent rift between conservatives and libertarians. (Look for a forthcoming article on this topic from a major liberal magazine.) Antle hits the obvious issues - cloning, gay Americans' freedom of contract, the war - and gets that "The commitment to limited government and constitutionalism that animated Barry Goldwater is conspicuously missing from today's Republican Party and, worse, the conservative movement." He worries, though, about the ironies of libertarians voting for a tax&spend Democrat like Howard Dean:

And Dean by contrast would pair this tax increase with greater federal spending. The centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda is a national health care plan. Thus, a libertarian's vote for Dean is also a vote for higher taxes and a bigger federal government.

Of course, a vote for Bush is also a vote for greater federal spending and a bigger federal government. Taxes are, for the moment, lower. How long will that continue with a budget deficit approaching half a trillion dollars? Not long, I think, which is why I opposed so many of the Bush policies (and non-policies) that have contributed to the deficit. A vainglorious war, a complete lack of spending restraint, the elimination of not a single substantial federal program in three years, expansion of existing entitlements - well, it adds up.

And steel tariffs. And catfish import bans. And yadda yadda yadda. Two factors are at work here: the issues on which conservatives and libertarians have never agreed have become more salient, and on the issues where conservatives and libertarians traditionally have agreed - taxes, trade, federalism - conservatives increasingly suck. Having abandoned the substance of limited government since early in the Gingrich "revolution," conservatives increasingly eschew even the rhetoric of limited government. Animosity aside, they're just no use to libertarians any more.

All this will change again six months into the Dean administration.

Second Thoughts - George W. Bush promised a "humbler America" in the foreign policy realm and we got - not humble. So maybe Howard Dean, who insists he'll put the world to rights, will actually - nah. Wishful thinking.

Thank God That's Over - Fox decides to stop embarrassing itself (about Al Franken, anyway). Not only does this mean I don't have to be fair and balanced any more, it means I can resume feeling mild dislike for Al Franken on those rare occasions when I think of him.

I've switched taglines altogether now, something I considered doing around the time that Gulf War Phase II began. The quote comes, as anyone who follows the hyperlink will discover, from William Stafford's poem, "Thinking for Berky." Stafford was no libertarian, though he was a peacenik, so we share that, but that line is not only sage advice for libertarians, it captures something of the spirit - it will not be sweeping gestures or grand proclamations that bring justice (or Justice), but uncountable and often unnoticed interactions, a dance without callers or choreographers.

And the advice, which boils down to "patience, my little one." It's the kind of friendly reminder that keeps one far from Montana cabins and ordnance manuals. As I read the poem, Berky has gone underground, probably violently, in the name of things the poet values but in a manner that vitiates the same ideals. The poet certainly dances around forthright criticism of her choice, but the title implies that Berky is certainly not thinking for herself. "We live in an occupied country, misunderstood;" would be a mere whine but for its placement. The two lines surrounding it redeem it into a simple acknowledgement of present difficulty, sandwiched between a reminder of what can't be accomplished and a directive on what must be accomplished and how. (And what more libertarian concept could there be than "there are things time passing can never make come true?")

The poem, and the excerpt that becomes this blog's tagline now, have been much in my mind since the spring - that and Eve's allied insight that politicians mostly do what they feel they have to do, and what they feel they have to do is determined in no small part by the rhetorical climate.

So, back to work.

This Is Whose Idea of a "Peace Candidate?" - From Fred Hiatt's Washington Post column today:

"Now that we're there, we're stuck," he said. Bush took an "enormous risk" that through war the United States could replace Saddam Hussein and the "small danger" he presented to the United States with something better and safer. The gamble was "foolish" and "wrong." But whoever will be elected in 2004 has to live with it. "We have no choice. It's a matter of national security. If we leave and we don't get a democracy in Iraq, the result is very significant danger to the United States."

But Democrats will be more sensitive to the needs and desires of our wards, right? More . . . democratic:

And "bringing democracy to Iraq is not a two-year proposition. Having elections alone doesn't guarantee democracy. You've got to have institutions and the rule of law, and in a country that hasn't had that in 3,000 years, it's unlikely to suddenly develop by having elections and getting the heck out." Dean would impose a "hybrid" constitution, "American with Iraqi, Arab characteristics. Iraqis have to play a major role in drafting this, but the Americans have to have the final say." Women's rights must be guaranteed at all levels.

Iraqis have to play a major role in drafting the Iraqi constitution, but the Americans have to have the final say. Never stir up any resentment in Iraq with that program, huh? I wonder: if the Iraqis want to amend their constitution, will the amendments need to be ratified by three-quarters of all the states? Ours, I mean, not theirs.

You'll have to go to the article itself for Dean's amusing explanation that other countries will pony up the troops to let us do more in Afghanistan and Iraq. Just because you're reluctant to send your young men and women to die for George Bush's folly doesn't mean you won't be glad to waste them for Howard Dean's after all.

Also found in the article, Dean's dislike of free trade, or what passes for it under NAFTA and the WTO.

Update Your Bookmarks - The Head Heeb, Jonathan Edelstein, has moved.

Just Go Away - The local sports talk station had a segment Friday in advance of the Washington Redskins-Baltimore Corporate Welfare Queens exhibition game about the "controversy" of whether it was possible to root for both teams or whether there should be rivalry between them. Speaking as a Redskin fan, Maryland taxpayer and Pennsylvania boy who grew up rooting for the Steelers and against the Cleveland Browns (pre-Baltimore move), my hatred of the Ravens is sincere but not conducive to rivalry. That's because my fondest wish is not that the Baltimore Ravens lose, but that they disappear. Rooting against them too much acknowledges their continued presence in what is truly, for Art Modell, the Free State. Instead of affection or rivalry I'll go with lofty if futile disdain, thank you.

The most delightful irony in the world of sports is that here in the epicenter of Big Government, both of our major pro sports team owners - well, semi-pro; we're talking about the Redskins, Wizards and Caps after all - built their teams' facilities with their own money. A shining example to others, if they would but see.

A Fanboy's Reviews - Hey, I've never really done these, so what the heck.

This week there were few enough "floppies" I wanted to buy that I decided to finally blow 10 bucks on Daniel Clowes' Ghost World. I liked ita lot. Some people will find the two main characters too annoying to abide, but it's not like Clowes gives them any breaks. The book is a pretty thoroughgoing demonstration of the limits of kitsch, not just esthetically but emotionally. You make a prison of your own contempt when the only pleasure you value is the security of feeling superior to what's in front of you, and you extend that from objects to people. Our heroines have each other for cellmates, which is company at least, but one of them escapes into valuing someone else as a companion rather than an occasion for ridicule, leaving the other quite alone. The latter's last spoken line sounds like something a parent might say as much as a lover. Strange in a good way. Heck of a story. I like the art, but lack the critical vocabulary to say anything insightful about it.

Daredevil 50 concludes the latest story arc. I read it, as I have the last couple, in the car outside the comics shop. It's hard to overstate my fondness for this book, but the current issue is an oddly unsatisfactory conclusion to what has gone before. For one thing, the course of action is too similar to the previous issue, where Daredevil in his fury achieves a brutal and final (-ish) victory over Bullseye. For another, the book follows the anniversary issue custom of bringing back great Daredevil artists of the past to illustrate sequences within the book. I think DC started this in the 1980s, and people need to start thinking twice. DD 50 is a regular-size issue. It not only has no extra pages to hold all the different artistic styles, it's basically an issue-long fight scene. The artists change every page or so - in one or two cases, I believe there are two artists to a page. Jarring. It works at cross-purposes with the narrative drive.

Arrowsmith #2 - swords and sorcery in World War I. Magic works. There are faerie beasties. And in the United States of Columbia the big controversy is whether to get involved in the Great War in Europe. Young Fletcher Arrowsmith of Connecticut volunteers for the Overseas Aero Corps, so he can learn flight spells and fight on behalf of Gallia against the Central Powers. So far, writer Kurt Busiek has not fallen off the very narrow balance beam he's decided to walk with this one. (Though there are rumors of a "Dark Lord" leading the Central Powers, which would knock him down in the judging if it turns out to be true.) Carlos Pacheco is the artist. In addition to a clean line, he does some nice story-telling. For instance, pages 4-5 are Fletcher and his date heading to a ball and then dancing, and throughout the entire sequence the arrangement of the couple "turns" from frame to frame, so that they seem to dance even before hitting the floor. Very nice.

Wonder Woman 195 I bought because it's the first Greg Rucka issue. If the gold standard for first-issues-by-a-new-writer was Mark Waid's Fantastic Four #60, this is bronze. I'll give it a couple of issues.

Fitness Blog Item Extra - Those of you who read a lot of blogs may have come across last week's tempest, which had its origin in an Atkins diet-related dispute between Michael Fumento and Rich Hailey of Shots Across the Bow. Fumento's blog does not have item-specific permalinks, but you can scroll down to the relevant entries, dated 8/21, 8/20 and 8/11. My interest is limited to pointing out some problems with Fumento's representations:

1) In his 8/11 item about Hailey's criticisim, Fumento writes

As to Atkins, there my response was made quite simple by his picture. "If it works so well why is it you have such a fat face? Time and again I've found that those who defend Atkins with a religious fervor as you do, and ignore all studies, as you do, are nonetheless little porkers. It doesn't bother you that you have a big fat bow on Atkins so long as you get to stuff your face with all the lard and cheese puffs you want. Truly pathetic.

Here's a diet-blog item of Hailey's from August 19:

Ok, for those of you interested, on Monday, I completed two weeks of induction. I've lost 13 pounds on an average of 2060 calories per day, and a carb average of 14 grams per day. For the next week, I'm adding radishes, tomatoes, cucmbers and mushrooms to my salads, plus almonds and macadamia nuts as a snack.

First time around, I went from 305 to 227 in about 7 months. My mistake was thinking that since I lost the weight so quickly, I wouldn't gain it back. I quit the plan, thinking I could eat normally without falling into the same patterns that lead to the 305 pounds in the first place.

So "fat-faced Hailey" is just starting his diet (again), and the shape of his face has no relevance to any efficacy the Atkins Diet does or does not have.

Not as big a deal as it could be, since Fumento was writing on 8/11. He didn't necessarily know that Hailey was in fact only now beginning his Mark II diet. Of course, it still counts as jumping to conclusions, which is not something I'd expect Fumento to tolerate in his critics. Also not the biggest sin in the world, but you'd think a man who has written so much about the Atkins diet over the last year would know that "cheese puffs" are just not on - 15 grams of carbohydrates in a 29-Cheeto serving, and I'm jumping to my own conclusion that at most two of those grams are Atkins-approved fiber. And I don't know about Hailey, but when it comes to Cheetos, "all I want" goes way beyond 29 pieces.

2) Unfortunately, Fumento repeats his argumentum ad Hailey's mug on the 21st, when he really should know better about just where Hailey is in his diet.

3) But it gets worse. That item also makes much of the "after pictures" at a website called LowCarbFriends.com:

I've also directed readers to a pro-Atkins site called www.lowcarbfriends.com filled with wonderful pro-Atkins testimonials. These do often have pictures and the vast majority depict fat people. Whatever it is that attracts them to Atkins, it isn't weight loss.

He includes a picture of an obese woman in his sidebar, with the caption

I'm not making this up: This is an "after" photo from an Atkins dieter as seen at lowcarbfriends.com.

Now I'd never been to this site, so I clicked through, to find - the site doesn't have "after photos" as such. It has "Before Photos" and "Current Photos." A current photo is an "after photo" if the dieter claims to be done (they usually post GOAL REACHED or some such emphasis). Otherwise it's an "in progress" photo.

Fumento's "after photo" can be found in context on this page from lowcarbfriends.com. Scroll down to "Betzi." There you find the Before Photo. You also find Betzi's personal information:

started Atkins: 02/04/02
beginning weight: 435
current weight: 333
goal weight: 175
height: 5' 9" age: 44
location: Tulsa, Oklahoma

And an e-mail address. Compare the current weight and goal weight numbers. Now recall that Fumento claims that

I'm not making this up: This is an "after" photo from an Atkins dieter as seen at lowcarbfriends.com.

But he is "making this up." A woman who says she intends to lose 158 pounds yet has no "after photos." He's also ignoring that Betzi, on her own report, lost 102 pounds in a year and 10 days. (Betzi's entry reads "Updated 2/14/03.")

The kindest construction you can put on Fumento's argument is that it is terribly sloppy. Also cheap. He posts an interim photo of a woman who attests to a 102-pound weight loss and acknowledges the need to lose 160 pounds more, calls that photo something it is plainly not, and holds her up for ridicule on the basis of his misrepresentation. Note that he makes no claim that Betzi is lying about her weight loss - he certainly doesn't indicate that he has done anything journalistic like e-mailing Betzi (the address is right there) to confirm her claims. He's just snorting "Look at the fatty!" (a Pot-Kettle maneuver if there ever was one) and calling it an argument.

I come to this as the guy who wrote "How to Go Off Atkins" a few months ago, so I disclaim cult membership. There are all kinds of criticisms one could make about the folks on LowCarbFriends.com and the data therein. That would be a cut above Fumento's recent blogging on the subject.

I should note that I agree with Fumento's statement in National Review Online that "The only weight-control regimens that work for life require both eating in moderation and exercise." I believe that, once the water weight is gone, Atkins really does "work" so long as it creates a calorie deficit for obese people. It takes a lot of calories not just to get fat but to stay fat. I am not convinced that the Atkins maintenance phase is viable long-term, which is why, while I still minimize my intake of sugars and processed starches, I am no longer myself on the Atkins diet.

But what disturbs me about Fumento's writing on Atkins is that he so rarely seems to be discussing the diet Atkins himself propounded - Fumento never acknowledges that Atkins insisted on the importance of exercise, that Atkins said Eat until you feel full, not until you feel stuffed, that Atkins provides for increasing the variety and quantity of carbohydrates throughout the diet, up to and including whole grains. When Fumento writes about Atkins, he always seems to be trying to win cheap.

Weekly Fitness Blog Item - 165 pounds, 33-frickin'-inch waist. 51 official pounds since Thanksgiving Day, and two pounds lighter than last week. Tried on 30" slacks at Target today. They fit fine around the waist, but the pocket openings ballooned out around my hipbones. Dunno if another cut of slacks would cure that or not. There's not a lot more flab to come off the hips now, so I may be down to what my bones will put up with.

Hitting the 50-pound mark makes me feel sober, reflective and, well, smug. So let's not spend much time on it. I don't know if the scale will drop much lower from here or not. I can identify flab I still want to zap - about 5 pounds worth at a guess - and I can identify muscle I want to add too. On the all-important Costume Fitness Scale, I'm just below Level 4, still. What my weight ends up being at the end of that process, I'm not sure. Somewhere between 155 and 170, likely between 160 and my present weight.

I'm not liking the Body-for-Life exercise system quite as much as Avram Grumer is, but I am liking it. It taught me to work through my leg soreness, which is good. Six sets each for four or five different muscle groups is a lot to fit into a morning before commuting, though I see the logic of how the different combinations of weight and reps is designed to fire the maximum number of muscle fibers. Author Bill Phillips claims that the routines fit into a 42 minute time block but I think he's kidding - the breaks between sets account for almost a half hour just by themselves.

I'll do it through Halloween or so, then find something else. I still believe in changing routines every couple or three months, and I might be ready for a maintenance routine by mid fall. I do much less in the way of Heavyhands now - I use the five-pound dumbbells for my day-after-lower-body-weights cardio routine so I can run less. But the day after my upper-body weight routine I don't take dumbbells on my walk/run at all. And I've stopped attempting to gain strength from Heavyhands use for the time being.

Weight Loss for Geeks: You love books and games, Cartoon Network, fantasy, sf, animation, comics or some sizable combination thereof. You live on Pepsi and pizza, know what's inside your computer. You are a geek. Maybe, you've decided you weigh more than you'd like to weigh, maybe by a lot. You may have felt this way for some time, but now the matter has acquired an urgency it didn't have for some reason - a sober consideration of your sexual prospects, anxiety about interviewing in a soft economy at your present weight, some health concern that tips the scales (in my case, a gnawing fear of Type II diabetes). It may have taken a lot to get you to this point. Among other things, your appearance may have long represented to you a rejection of false values: shallow standards of beauty and glamor. Losing weight and gaining fitness might mean, on some level, becoming more like them, the jerks in high school with big muscles or bubble butts, empty heads and vicious mouths.

That's a lot to overlook or overcome. But like I said, the time, you have decided, is here. So how to do it?

Answer: make a game of your body. Turn the venturesome intellect and sense of play that have stood you in such good stead in the one direction they've never really focused: your physical form and prowess. Become curious about what you can become capable of doing. How fast? How long? How hard? How much? What can you decide not to eat or drink after all? What do you need in the way of macronutrients and micronutrients? Which of the schemers, visionaries, nannies and charlatans in bookstores or bureaucracies gets how much right and how much wrong?

Make charts, spreadsheets. Imagine you've decided to play a thin person in a LARP of your own devising. Make it a point to observe yourself from that outside perspective you've always had on yourself, so you can say, "Well I had no idea I could do that."

Most importantly, turn your ego to the task. You know you have one. No self-respecting geek is without his or her armor of arrogance. You're a freaking intellectual, dammit. Lose a ton of weight for the best possible reason - just to prove you can do it. Promise yourself that, once you've hit your goal weight, you will scribe

I have conceived a truly marvelous method of achieving maximum fitness that this margin is unfortunately too long to contain.

Be a genius. When you want to. Until then, as you were.

Interesting-Looking Blog - IvyJews. Conservative, Jewish, intellectually and ethically rigorous. A group blog with a lot of good stuff on the intersections and collisions among politics, academia and religion. I found "Jesus Saves?" especially interesting in light of the other day's Passion items. Highly unlikely they'd agree with me about much in the way of foreign policy, but hey - it's a big ol' internet.