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Scott Adams is a tosser, part 2

Scott Adams is suddenly interested in global warming. Why? It isn't a new issue and he doesn't really have anything new to say about it. I think the answer is that he has become a Trump fanboi and is running cover for Trump; or is still over-obsessed by his own perspicacity; or perhaps it is just a momentary interest. Or like covfefe we may never know. Aanyway, having cartooned it once - and not again, and my patience is now exhausted - he's blogged it a bit, and has finally said something sensible1. Or at least, sensible compared to the rest. And since it is close to one of my hobby horses…

A proportionate response to Trump’s climate plans?

An interesting article by Chris Hope (a climate change policy researcher, PAGE model developer, and faculty member at Cambridge Judge Business School, interested in environment and energy; archive) of - oh dear - Arctic methane ‘time bomb’ could have huge economic costs fame. But never mind that. CH looks at Sarkozy's mooted plans to levy a "carbon tax" on US goods if trump leads the US out of the Paris agreement. Tol, in the comments, correctly points out that France couldn't do this alone: it would have to be EU-wide. Never mind, pretend its a EU wide plan. Tol, in the comments, points out…

How to Think Like a Scientist

I have made allusions to a work-in-progress at various points recently, but my general policy is not to reveal any details until things become official. Well, as you can see from the above photo of signed contracts, it's official: I sold the work-in-progress to Basic Books, my publisher for How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog. The contract calls for 70,000 words (which most likely means the first draft will clock in at 110,000...) of a work tentatively titled How to Think Like a Scientist (because I'm only allowed to publish books with "How to..." in the title...). So, what is this? Well,…

Financiers Still Aren't Rocket Scientists

Over at Slate, John Dickerson has a piece expressing amazement that "numbers guy" Mitt Romney was so badly misinformed about the election. While I'll admit to a certain amount of schadenfreude about the general bafflement of the Romney campaign and the Republicans generally, this particular slant (which Dickerson isn't the only one to take, just the latest in a series) is more annoying than entertaining. You would think that the 2008 economic meltdown, in which the financial industry broke the entire world when they were blindsided by the fact that housing prices can go down as well as up,…

Ola Wikander and Fictional Beings

On Saturday night I attended a talk by bright young philology and religion studies comet Ola Wikander. In 2003, at age 22, he published a Swedish translation of the Baal cycle and other Canaanite mythological matter for the lay reader. In the five years since then, he's done the Enuma Elish, the Chaldaean oracles, an essay collection on ancient languages, a popular introduction to Indo-europan studies and a historical mystery novel co-written with his dad. His PhD thesis on the relationship between certain themes in Ugaritic and Old Testament mythology is due in 2011. In his spare time he…

Mark Carney reckons most fossil fuels “un-burnable”?

Or so energylivenews says (thanks to J). Their text is: Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney appears to agree most fossil fuels can’t be used if the world is to avoid climate change. At a World Bank event on Friday, he is quoted as saying: “The vast majority of reserves are unburnable.” This is a reference to the idea of a so-called carbon bubble – when investors in oil, gas or coal suppliers lose out on money because the reserves can’t be used. I've bolded his words, the rest is editorial interpolation. I find this particularly irritating. If I'm reading about what Carney thinks, I…

Rowing, and some other stuff

I have far too many "interesting" things queued up in feedly, so its time for a dump. Controversial paper linking conspiracy ideation to climate change skepticism formally retracted. mt is fiercer: Journal’s Mealy-Mouthed Retraction of Lewandowsky Paper. I wasn't terribly keen on the paper myself, though I avoided commenting, but I agree with SL's "the article is fine but Frontiers does not want to take the legal risk" and that this is rubbish on Frontiers' part. See-also Sou. [Update: the shows goes on: Climate of intimidation: "Frontiers" blunder on "Recursive Fury": Ugo Bardi resigns from…

The Bottleneck Years by H.E.Taylor - Chapter 79

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 78 Table of Contents Chapter 80 Chapter 79 The Military Industrial Prison Complex, November 14, 2055 What do you do when your brother is locked up for an unconscionable crime and you have good reason to believe he is guilty? You see that he has a good lawyer. I spoke to a friend in the law faculty and got the number of a lawyer in Ottawa who came highly recommended. Then I tried to contact Jon. The Ottawa police were unhelpful. They didn't have him, they didn't want him and they didn't know where he was. The ecocops, or more properly the…

The Bottleneck Years by H.E.Taylor - Chapter 53

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 52 Table of Contents Chapter 54 Chapter 53 Carillon, March 8, 2057 When I got home that afternoon I discovered that one of my new students had surreptitiously video logged me. Edie met me at the door with, "I watched your whole lecture today." "What?" "It's true. You're all over the forums. There have been thousands of downloads." I shook my head a little dismayed. "People want to know what's really going on and nobody believes the official reports." Anna heard my voice and came running into the kitchen. I was hot and tired, so I dropped down…

Volcanos may be countering greenhouse warming

(image info and credits) Fake skeptics of anthropogenic global warming love to set up the straw man that mainstream climate science believes that CO2 is the one and only driver of climate change.  They can then use it in many different attacks, such as gee whiz isn't it stupid that they haven't even thought of the sun's influence.  This is of course patently false as even the most cursory survey of actual scientific content will quickly reveal.  This straw man is also an implicit part of the argument that the "16 year pause" in global warming proves that CO2 is not a climate driver.  If CO2…

Connecticut Votes for Civil Unions?

It appears that Connecticut is on the verge of passing a bill that allows civil unions for gay couples in that state. It would be the first state to do so without any judicial order requiring it. The AP reports that the state Senate took up the bill today and Democratic leaders say they have the votes to pass the bill. Republicans have been trying to amend the bill, but losing the votes on those amendments: Some GOP senators attempted to amend the bill to specially define marriage in Connecticut as being between one man and one woman. The effort failed on a 23-13 vote. Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a…

Baffling Scalia Statement

I was flipping channels and came across Justice Scalia speaking on c-span, just catching the last few minutes. It was a pretty standard Scalia speech, arguing for that only a principled originalism preserves the constitution's ability to maintain a stable and free society, in contrast to the notion of a "living constitution." But then he made this statement that, given Scalia's almost constant rhetoric against courts overruling legislative majorities, can only be described as baffling: "I think the very terminology suggests where we have arrived, at the point of selecting people to write a…

Republicans Demand Accountability

While the White House scrambles like mad to cover its butt and avoid any and all questions about what went wrong in the response to Katrina, at least some Republicans are breaking the party line talking points and saying what is obviously true, that the response at the Federal level was appalling and heads need to roll. Robert Novak has this column about those reactions. He writes: Democrats have seized on the administration's performance in handling Katrina to bash George W. Bush, but Republicans are not much happier with him. The common complaint is that the President has let the lawyers…

Why Teacher's Unions Hurt Education

Over the last few years, a bizarre situation has been going on here in Michigan. In 2003, a philanthropist named Robert Thompson offered to spend $200 million to build 15 charter schools in the city of Detroit, each serving 500 students, with a guarantee that each one would graduate at least 90% of its students. That plan required approval of the state legislature and in late 2003 they had reached a deal to pass a bill that allowed this to happen, but the Detroit teacher's union called a one-day strike and marched on the state capitol to protest this plan. As a result, the Detroit mayor and…

Bible Electives in Public Schools

One of the growing trends around the country is school boards allowing schools to teach an elective course on the bible. The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS) has been very active in lobbyign school boards to do so and selling them their textbooks for such a class in the process. Such courses are legal as long as they are, in the words of first amendment scholar Charles Haynes, "taught academically, not devotionally." Schools can teach about the bible, about what people believe about it, but they may not endorse biblical teachings or any particular religious…

World Series of Poker, Day 5

Raymer took a couple big hits late last night, losing to a rivered inside straight and taking KQ up against AQ, but he's still in the hunt with a little over $750,000 chips. With 58 players remaining, that puts him just below the average chip stack. Phil Ivey is still in the top 5 with just over $2 million, but Mike Matusow has made a charge and now stands in 2nd place with a little over $2.5 million. The chip leader is Tim Phan with $3.2 million. Also still very much alive are Lee Watkinson ($1.2 million) and John Juanda ($841,000), both very dangerous players. ESPN is surely drooling over…

Victory in Gull Lake

Last evening I attended the Gull Lake school board meeting on a sweltering night when they were to decide whether or not to allow two 7th grade science teachers to teach ID as they had been doing for the last couple of years. I am happy to report that after about a year of effort and controversy, the school board voted unanimously that ID could not be taught in science classes in that district, nor could the book Of Pandas and People be used in the 7th grade class where it had been used as a supplemental text for the past couple years by two teachers there. They did so in the face of a…

Interesting Debate on the Pledge Case

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has an interesting debate on the subject of the pledge of allegiance and the case before the Supreme Court right now. The participants are Douglas Laycock and Jay Sekulow, names familiar to anyone who follows constitutional law and religious liberty cases. Laycock, from the University of Texas Law School, is perhaps the most respected academic voice on religious freedom matters in the nation. He is no firebreathing anti-religious liberal, having been the primary author of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that was passed in 1993 (and later…

Pride Event Changed

Under increasing threats of violence, all sides have reached an agreement on the Jerusalem gay pride event. They have agreed that in lieu of a parade, they will hold a rally in the Hebrew University Stadium. The wingnuts who have been threatening violence have also agreed, apparently, not to disrupt the event. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the event will certainly be much easier to protect this way. An event in a single place, especially a stadium where you can frisk everyone going in, is a lot easier to keep safe than a moving event with an unlimited number of paths in…

Looming Fiscal Disaster

The head of the GAO, David Walker, is now saying what I have been saying for years: our government - our nation - is headed toward a major fiscal crisis. We are a nation living vastly beyond our means in almost every possible way, both personal and governmental. We are running up hundreds of billions of dollars in new Federal debt every year on top of the trillions of dollars in unfunded future mandates for social security and medicare, and we are headed into a future where we will have fewer taxpayers to pay off those debts. Their basic message is this: If the United States government…

Crystal healing

Lest this blog turn into a one-trick pony, let me tell you what I did today that's of a little different flavor. I epoxied some stuff onto some other stuff. More importantly, I calculated a band structure. This amazes me. Sure, all you squa^Wsolid-state types out there do this every day, over your cereal even, and (in some cases) just have it done for you by the undergrad, but I'm an AMO physicist. I haven't calculated a band structure since I first made sweet love to the Kronig-Penney potential back in the warrens of LeConte and Campbell, guided by the two-who-are-one, Cohen and…

Shocking News from Academia

That's shocking mostly in a Claude-Rains-in-Casablanca sort of sense ("I am shocked--shocked!"), but there are a couple of stories in Inside Higher Ed this morning presenting new findings that seem like they ought to be really obvious. The first is a new study of the University of California system that finds that different majors are different: Among the 58,000 undergraduates on eight campuses who participated in the survey, students who majored in the social sciences and humanities reported higher levels of satisfaction with their undergraduate education over all as well as better skills in…

Hugo Nominees: Best Novella

I've never really understood the distinction between "Novellas" and "Novelettes"-- I know it's a length thing, but I don't have a good feel for where the dividing line is, and I can never remember which is longer. And, as far as I can tell, the only place this ever comes up is in SF awards. Anyway, there are two Hugo categories for really long short fiction, and this is one of them. The nominees are: "The Walls of the Universe" by Paul Melko "A Billion Eves" by Robert Reed "Inclination" by William Shunn "Lord Weary's Empire" by Michael Swanwick "Julian: A Christmas Story" by Robert Charles…

G. M. Ford, Blown Away [Library of Babel]

Blown Away is the sixth Frank Corso novel from G. M. Ford, featuring the exploits of an intrepid investigative reporter and true-crime author with a knack for getting involved in spectuacularly bloody crimes. As the sixth book in a mystery series, you pretty much know what you're going to get. At least, it looks that way for most of the book. Really, the only reason this book rates prompt book-logging is the ending, which is all I really want to talk about here. There's just no way to do this without massive spoilers, which I will put below the fold-- if you've read the other Corso books,…

How to Survive the Tenure Process

Something old, something new, on the topic near and dear to every academic. The old is a post by Doug Natelson from a couple of weeks ago, giving advice on how to get tenure, as a response to the recent flurry of tenure discussions on science blogs. The new is an article by Lesboprof at Inside Higher Ed, giving advice on how to get tenure, in the wake of passing her own tenure review. She's pseudonymous (obviously) and cagey about her research field, but what's striking is how consistent the advice is between the two. And it's excellent advice, so if you're starting out on the tenure track,…

Real Clock Tutorial: Fountains

In the previous clock tutorial post, I described the basic workings of a cesium atomic clock, which looks sort of like this: It works by sending a beam of cesium atoms through two microwave cavities. The first cavity synchronizes the "clock" in the atoms with the microwaves, and the second cavity checks whether the two are still in synch. If they are, the microwaves are at the right frequency; if they aren't, the frequency is corrected. The key feature that determines the performance of this clock is the time between cavities. The longer the atoms spend in between the two, the better the…

Why I Don't Write More About String Theory

It's summed up nicely by the discussion at Cosmic Variance, and spelled out explicitly in comment #125 by Marty Tysanner: Sean coaxingly requested, Come on, string theorists! Make some effort to explain to everyone why this set of lofty speculations is as promising as you know it to be. It won't hurt too much, really. It seems remarkable to me, 120+ comments later, how few people have responded in this vein. Over at Clifford's blog there have been some angry discussions (e.g., this and this) about the merits of Lee's and Peter's books, and some string theorists and partisans were quite vocal…

Einstein on TV

The History Channel ran a two-hour program on Einstein last night. I had meant to plug this in advance, but got distracted by the Screamy Baby Fun-Time Hour yesterday, and didn't have time to post. The show restricted itself more or less to the period from 1900, just before his "miracle year" in 1905, to 1922 or so, when Einstein received his Nobel Prize. This was his most fertile period, scientifically, and they did a fairly comprehensive job of covering his life during this time, including his struggles for acceptance and his complicated personal life. There were, of course, some…

Negative Information Transfer

SteelyKid was a little bit fussy yesterday, and would only be quiet when carried in the "airplane" position. There are a limited number of ways to pass the time when doing this, so I had the tv on, and while channel-surfing past MSNBC, caught something saying that Obama would be giving his first news conference. That sounded somewhat interesting, so I watched it. The news conference itself was pretty unremarkable, but the immediate aftermath provided an excellent example of why the only tv news I watch is on Comedy Central. It's not just the mind-boggling self-importance that Timothy Burke…

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard P. Feynman

Somehow or another, I have managed never to read Feynman's famous book on Quantum Electro-Dynamics. It always seemed a little too much like work, but having found myself in the position of writing a pop-science book about quantum physics that includes a chapter on QED and Feynman diagrams, it seemed like it would probably be a good idea to get and read a copy. An odd side effect of the mythologization of Feynman-- partly his own doing, and partly the work of hero-worshipping nerds-- is that it's easy to forget just how good he was at doing this sort of thing. So much time is spent on the…

The Race for Absolute Zero

The second half of the NOVA special on "Absolute Zero" aired last night. Like the first installment, it was very well done, avoiding most of the traps of modern pop-science television. There were some mysterious shots of amusement park rides when they started talking about quantum mechanics, and I'm not sure why, but they kept the "re-enactments" to a minimum, and didn't overdo the CGI. They also deserve special mention for not insulting the viewers' intelligence with constant recaps. As you can guess from the title, this part of the story covered the history of attempts to reach ever-lower…

If Popularizers Are Treated Like Kooks, Only Kooks Will Be Popularizers

Over at Backreaction, Bee has a long and thoughtful post (they don't do any other kind) about the interaction between science and the popular imagination. She says a lot of interesting things, but I think she comes to the wrong conclusion at the end, when she writes: However, despite this general trend, what worries me specifically about popular science reporting is how much our community seems to pay attention to it. This is a very unhealthy development. The opinion making process in science should not be affected by popular opinions. It should not be relevant whether somebody makes for a…

Two Cultures in Ducking Requirements

Back in one of the communications skills threads, Karen comments about science and humanities: It's easy enough for a humanities major to avoid doing much science in school. The converse is not true. It strikes me that for those earlier scientists who attended univeristy, both their early education and university years were more suited to focusing on the science. This relates to the communication issue as this often means that the science inclined are often put in a position of being evaluated on their communication in area that are areas of weakness for them, those areas where communications…

How Dumb Are Dumb Jocks?

Over at Cognitive Daily, Dave Munger post about research into the effect of athletics on academics: Achievement can be measured in many ways -- grades, homework, attendance, standardized test scores, and enrollment in college. In all of these areas except standardized test scores, even after controlling for economic status, race, and other background variables, athletic participation was significantly correlated to academic achievement. Even after controlling for academic success in 8th and 10th grade, athletic participation was still associated with positive academic outcomes in 13 out of 21…

More Republican incoherence

I'm sure most of us remember how incoherent Sarah Palin was about climate change (well, okay, about most things), but John Boehner seems to have his sights set on out doing the master! In an interview with George Stephanopoulos (partial transcript here) his mangling of anything even remotely resembling an intelligent thought is really quite astounding! His answer to climate change incredibly includes: we need American-made oil and gas Because foreign CO2 has such a higher greenhouse potential than good ol' American CO2. Boehner offers this boner about the recent EPA ruling: the idea that…

New facial attractiveness study

This one of what women find attractive in men. "We have found that women evaluate facial attractiveness on two levels -- a sexual level, based on specific facial features like the jawbone, cheekbone and lips, and a nonsexual level based on overall aesthetics," said Robert G. Franklin, graduate student in psychology working with Reginald Adams, assistant professor of psychology and neurology, Penn State. "At the most basic sexual level, attractiveness represents a quality that should increase reproductive potential, like fertility or health." On the nonsexual side, attractiveness can be…

My critique of Morgan's Aquatic Ape TED talk

This is a follow-up on the TED talk I just posed. These are my reactions in real time as I watched the video: We start off with a very inaccurate statement that we are not interested in the chimp-human differences. It is, in fact, all we palaeoanthropologists think about. She overemphasizes the difference to say that they are total, but yes, there are differences. She makes the error of implying that "something" happened (when it would well have been a lot of things that happened over time, or some other pattern of change) She correctly identifies the "coming out of the trees" and…

"Gustav is expected to be a large powerful hurricane as it approaches the northern Gulf coast"

.... Or so goes the last sentence in the current National Hurricane Center forecast discussion. This is Gusav. Even though it is only a strong tropical storm, it looks a lot like a hurricane already. This could be a Category IV hurricane in two or three days (Gustav, Atlantic Floater 1 Visible, Friday AM). Right now, the level of complexity of Gustav's immediate future is higher than average for a hurricane. This is mainly because the two or three major atmospheric features that will determine Gustav's direction and rate of movement over then ext two days are themselves less predictable…

Animal Rights Terrorism: Update and opinions

With all the talk about the theory regarding animal rights, AR activism, animal research and terroristic attacks on scientists, this bit of news in the aftermath of the recent California firebombing may have been missed: Law enforcement officers Thursday raided the same Riverside Avenue house that was searched after a UC Santa Cruz researcher's home was targeted by animal-rights activists in February. Police ... wouldn't say what the federal search warrant sought, what was taken from the house ... At least four agencies were involved in the search, including Santa Cruz and UCSC police and the…

Is there anything to the Catholic League's complaint against PZ Myers?

I would like to take a moment to examine Catholic League president Bill Donohue's statement regarding PZ. (Details of the CL's attack on PZ Myers here) Here is the statement: "The Myers blog can be accessed from the university's website. The university has a policy statement on this issue which says that the 'Contents of all electronic pages must be consistent with University of Minnesota policies, local, state and federal laws.' One of the school's policies, 'Code of Conduct,' says that 'When dealing with others,' faculty et al. must be 'respectful, fair and civil.' Accordingly, we are…

Some Linux News

Hans Reiser asks for a new lawyer (see below) This first item is not exclusively Linux at all... Remember the effort by Firefox to break a downloading record? They did it. Guinness has given Firefox the record, officially. Over eight million hamburgers sold... The de facto registrar of superlative achievements has credited Mozilla for officially setting a record for downloads in a 24-hour period: 8,002,530 copies of Firefox. Mozilla's Download Day on June 17, whose server-crippling success delayed its official start, sought to popularize the open-source Web browser. Mozilla, which…

Final Thoughts on Charlie Hebdo

I don't have much to add to what I have already said about the Charlie Hebdo killings. However, having had some time to think about things a little more, and to read what other people have said, I do feel inclined to change my mind about one aspect of this. First, Charlie Hebdo put out a new issue today. Here is the cover image, which I think is brilliant: The caption translates to “All Is Forgiven.” In my original post I was rather dismissive of the artistic value of the Muhammad cartoons. I now think I was too hasty. I hadn't fully appreciated the context in which some of the…

Sunday Chess Problem

The Sinquefield Cup is turning out to be not just one of the strongest chess tournaments in history, but also one of the most exciting. In today's round five all three games ended decisively, but the commentators were lamenting that the games were not as thrilling as in previous rounds. The sensation of the tournament has been Fabiano Caruana of Italy...who currently has a perfect score. You read that right. He's five and oh, winning three games as black no less. And it's not like his opponents have just been blundering left and right. Meanwhile, the rest of the field is mostly losing…

Christie is Finished

So, have you heard what's going on in New Jersey? New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) denied any involvement in a political payback scheme carried out by some of his top aides on Wednesday, saying the whole thing was “inappropriate and unsanctioned.” “What I've seen today for the first time is unacceptable,” Christie said in a statement. “I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge.” “One thing is clear: this type of behavior is unacceptable and I will…

World Chess Championship Headed For Overtime

It's time to stop sulking about the various headaches caused by the migration and get back to blogging.  I managed to get the banner the overlords sent me to load properly, so that seems like some sort of victory at least.  Alas, there doesn't seem to be much space between the base of the banner and the top of the first post.  Does anyone know if there is a simple way for me to fix that? Anyway, let's dip our toes into the water by getting updated on the big World Chess Championship.  We last tuned in at the halfway point.  Six games played out of twelve, six draws.  Five boring draws. But…

Barnyard Week: White Chickens are ERV mutants

So I got the idea to do this after stumbling across a bunch of viral/farmyard stories this week. I know its currently Tuesday, not Sunday, so, SURPRISE!!! BARNYARD WEEK! If you ERV readers are anything like me, you have spent countless nights tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep, unable to stop pondering one of lifes greatest mysteries: Why are some chickens white? I finally accepted the fact that this question was ultimately unanswerable, like "What is the meaning of life?" or "Why did anyone ever think Jim Carrey was funny?". Then I found out that the question actually had an…

Green our vaccines! Part IV

Every Spring, you can count on a handful of posts here at ERV on allergies. Ive got em. I hate em. But I recognize that in many ways, Im 'lucky' as far as allergies go. I only have to deal with them for a few months of the year, I can move somewhere else and not have to worry about them at all anymore, and even though my symptoms are annoying, they certainly arent life threatening. Not everyone with allergies is this lucky. Some people are allergic to 'indoor' things that are around year-round. And some of the 'indoor' stuff isnt as simple as not owning a cat-- some people are allergic to…

Pseudo-paleovirology

Paleovirology is one of my favorite topics to read about. Whether its bringing extinct viruses back to life, or finding ancient HIV-1 integration sites, or finding millions of year old viruses in genomes, or studying the modern side-effects of ancient viral infections, I love old viruses just about as much as modern ones. I even like wild guessing concerning ancient viruses, like this pic from Ancient Egypt: We *think* this fellow has a bum leg and a cane because of polio! And there were several 'plagues' that ravaged Ancient Greece. Scientists and scholars have proposed various pathogens,…

Epigenetics and Cancer: Making a messy mess messier.

As Carl Zimmer recently (and rightly) pointed out at the end of an article on epigenetics, while the concept of being able to alter our epigenetic profiles for therapeutic purposes is a really attractive concept, our current epigenetic therapy options are very, very messy. Like I said last week: Lemme give you an example. Lets say we find out that in people with Ke$ha Disease, their GTiM (Good Taste in Music) gene is underexpressed due to hypermethylation of the surrounding DNA. So, YAY! Thats treatable! We have drugs that could fix that, like 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine! Um, well, your DNA is…

In just seven days... oh baby...

Since last weeks post on fitness (or lack of it) on SciBlogs*, blag brother Ethan suggested a blag-wide fitness event-- lets all talk about our personal 'fitness'. What we do, why we do it, mistakes we made along the way, even though we are totally amateurs :P Heres his pretty post :) My post is going to be primarily directed towards women, but it applies to men too. Doesnt matter whether you want to get big, get small, or just get healthy. *clears throat* LIFT WEIGHTS. A long time ago in a galaxy right here, I worked out like a Generic Woman. Treadmill. Eliptical. Bike. Aerobics…