ATK List of Power

It takes a ton of work to be as nerdy as possible.  From SCIENCE to fantasy/sci-fi to video games to the best of nerd tv, I figured it's finally high-time to come out of the basement (closets are reserved for other comings-out; nerds seem to be basement-based), engage in some self-aggrandizement, and share with anyone who cares (which is really no one) the various ways I find to entertain myself and stay on top of being the biggest nerd.

This post: YouTube Channels.

The Best (IMO) of YouTube

Geek & Sundry

Founded by nerd icon Wil Wheaton and his equally nerdy friend Felicia Day (of The Guild fame), Geek and Sundry is kind of an uber-collection of various contributors.  My personal favorites on the channel are Wil Wheaton's TableTop, in which he plays wonderful board games with his friends (tv and movie stars, fellow YouTube-rs, etc), and Felicia Day's 5-minute-episodes of The Guild, a fun bit of fic that follows a group of MUD users who are online "friends" in a world much like World of Warcraft.  

TableTop has introduced me to many of the board- and card-games I own; it is actually a great way to see how some games work in a crowd; kind of a risk-free play test.

Minute Physics

Using stop-animation whiteboard illustrations, physics concepts, chemistry, and science in general is explained in 1- or 2-minute clips.  Never have Relativity and other complicated concepts been explained so simply and elegantly.  Bonus:  my kids watch it with me, and are able to "get it."

Smarter Every Day

Join Destin and his various underwater and high-speed cameras as he demonstrates and explains physics stuff.  This usually involves guns, bullets, explosions, and breaking things.

Veritasium

Another "use short vids to explain awesome science" site, but well-edited, well-done, and engaging.  Kind of Myth Busters-like in editing and use of science (just without the prove/disprove aspect).

Minute Earth

Minute Physics, but this time:  biology!

VSauce

These guys find a fun or a my-mind-just-got-blown fact, and explain it.  Sometimes deep, always well and simply explained.

ASAP Science

VSauce with an animated whiteboard.

CrashCourse

A few teachers offer "crash courses" in higher-level concepts - including biology, US History, economics, world history, ecology, and chem. "Reconstruction and 1876;" "Westward Expansion;" and "Equilibrium Equations" are just a handful of the many vids on this channel.

It's Okay to be Smart

PhD Biologist Joe Hansen's YouTube channel, based on material from his very popular Tumblr of the same name.  He won a big grant from PBS to make his Tumblr content available in vid format.  I like his videos quite a bit, and he's got a decent online presentation style.  His Tumblr site sometimes waxes a tad philosophical - drippy sometimes - but I'm almost always guilty of the same. 

A couple more that I watch on occasion:

These couple of sites are less accessible than the ones above, so I watch them less often, but they are no less fascinating when I'm in the mood:

Seven Seven Seven

Sixty Symbols

My kids have responded well to Minute Physics, ASAP Science, Minute Earth, and Smarter Every Day.

There you have it.  These channels are what I call church on a Sunday morning.  A hot cup of coffee, kids playing quietly as the house wakes up, and these vids.  Thought-provoking, fun, fascinating, funny, and celebratory of geek culture.  I hope you like them.

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Syria Question

Am I the only lefty who thinks it was a bad idea for President Obama to ask Congress for a resolution authorizing military action in Syria? (Over Syria?) I am not asking if the military action itself is a bad idea, I just don't think the President should have gone to Congress about it.

What do ATK's 1.6 million liberal readers and 2.3 conservatives think?

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Game Review

The Geekbox "Comedy Button" reviews church as if it were a video game.

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I Have Tracked Him Down

I know that things have been pretty slow around here. I have started a new job and managed to track down a real, honest to good superhero. He is hiding out in the Far East. Here is his ID:

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You Can Be My Wingman Anytime

Joel and I caught the Sunday morning viewing of Pacific Rim.

Everything you need to know about this movie can be gleaned from Top Gun.

In fact, I am 90% certain you could take the lines from Top Gun, voice it over this movie, and it would largely make sense.

Fortunately, Joel and I are Top Gun fans, so we enjoyed the movie for its entertainment value and for the fact that we tried to pick which Top Gun lines and characters would apply to a given scene or character in Pacific Rim.

The acting was actually decent (nothing like this unspeakable travesty), and the story was well-conceived, though formulaic.  But you can't go into a Giant Summertime CGI Blockbuster expecting Oscar material, except for maybe the CGI.  Largely, the storyline for Pacific Rim was a delivery vehicle for CGI fights between giant 50-story robots and 50-story alien creatures.

And. It. Was. Awesome.

But it had it all:  diamond-in-the-rough hot-shot pilot with a personal tragedy, the Ice Man, the incredulous Commander always busting the hero's balls, the uncertain "co-pilot" (each robot is piloted by 2 troops, who must be able to establish a mental and emotional link for the robot to move), the forces of good on the brink of defeat, a faceless bureaucracy ready to dismantle the world's best chance of defense, on and on.  There's actually, as Joel and I discussed, plenty of room for a series based on this, given the rich back story only hinted-at in the first 15 minutes of the movie.  Pacific Rim for sure has way more style points and predictably-satisfying scenes and outcomes, but damn...it's fun! And I can't say enough about the CGI. These fights looked and felt real without the herky-jerky, hard-to-follow Transformers fight scenes.

Now, I kept it short on the review because that's not really my goal with this post.  Go see Pacific Rim; I plan to take my 8-year-old to see it, who will probably go apeshit for it.  My goal is this, reiterated from the 2nd sentence of this post:  everything you need to know about this movie can be gleaned from Top Gun.

Pick any movie about pilots, piloting big machines, and maverick-y heroes, and they all stem from Top Gun.  Top Gun, IMO, is the progenitor of that type of movie.  These pilot/co-pilot, fantastic machinery flicks follow the Top Gun formula devised by late MSU professor Jim Cash.

This led our discussion to:  all cop movies stem from Lethal Weapon (the uptight 'gimmie your badge and your gun' commander whose past turns out to be strangely similar to the hero's, the cop-on-the-edge, the reluctant but faithful partner who is wounded or dies, etc).

No point on a summer Monday other than:  discuss.

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My Mid-Life Crisis

So my team of maniacs has now signed up for the Iron Warrior Dash on September 21 in Walker, MI.  Ity is the same day as the Warrior Dash, with a couple key differences:

1. The Warrior Dash is a 5k; the Iron Warrior Dash is 15.6 miles.
2. The Warrior Dash has 12 obstacles; the Iron Warrior Dash has 24.
3. The entire Warrior Dash if, again, a 5k; the Iron Warrior Dash has a 5k smack in the middle of it just for fun.

The Tough Mudder was a really good time, and weighed-in at 12.4 miles.  Not too shabby.  But it also wasn't a timed event; rather, it was a "can you finish" event.  Yes, apparently, these 40-year-olds can indeed, thank you very much.  The Iron Warrior, however, is a timed event, so not only is it about finishing, it's about racing as well, so we're all training a little harder to get our run times a tad faster.

I took a look at the obstacles for this event, and they look a good deal more physically demanding than the Mudder, which varied in terms of difficulty and relative misery.  Really, the obstacles along the Mudder were more designed to make you dirtier, wetter, and more miserable as you went along.  These look to do the same, but involve much more climbing, hanging, and relative strength/endurance.  Lucky for us, at least 2 of us on our team have years of experience being wet, dirty, miserable, and tired.

Bob asked how one trains for this.

First, I have gone over to the insane asylum and do Crossfit.  Here's my gym.  Regular gym guys who like to scream through 8 bench presses and then sit on the bench for 5 minutes between sets flexing or watching Sports Center like to disparage Crossfit because it involves a lot of leaping, Olympic-style lifts, and bad decisions; they think it looks silly or that they get better results.  But I submit:  the Marine Corps was the first branch to switch their entire fitness regimen to Crossfit, and now all the branches use it to keep the troops in top shape.  I've never been in such good shape (down to 184 lbs now!!).  And the guys who crushed the Tough Mudder?  Every one of them wore a Crossfit gym's shirt.  Every guy who was walking by mile 4 and skipped obstacles?  Muscley-looking dudes in Fitness World shirts.  But I digress:  a typical Crossfit "WOD" (WorkOut of the Day) might look like:

Warmup
2 times:

• 200 M run
• 30 jumping jacks
• 20 air squats
• 10 lunges

Mobility/Stretching
Strength

• 5 x 1 push press (think: standing military press), increase weight every set to achieve 1-rep maximum (mine is 180#)

WOD
15 minutes, As Many Rounds As Possible (AMRAP); each round consists of:

• 12 push press (50% of max)
• 12 pull-ups
• 24 air squats

Done.  In and out of the gym in 40 minutes.  And it's all I can take.  Check out my gym's site for more examples of just how well Crossfit conditions your entire body.

Then, I mix-in running.  I kinda-sorta use this site as a rough week-by-week guide of how far and how many times a week I need to be running to get myself to the half-marathon mark.  But as aggressively as Crossfit works me, I break-down my Crossfit and Running schedule: odd weeks - Crossfit 3 days, run 4 days; even weeks - Crossfit 4 days, run 3.  2/3 of my runs in a week are 5k, some at a slower pace to "feel" the pace I need to survive a half marathon, and some at a blistering pace to push myself and my limits, which ultimately makes the "slower" pace faster and faster.  Then the remaining runs I have in a week are longer distance, starting at 6, then 8, then 10 miles.

Then the week before the race?  1 or 2 light jogs, some nice brisk walks around the neighborhood to keep the hips and ankles mobile, some light, basic, "open gym" work at the gym just doing some light basics, a solid deep tissue massage and hot tub soak about 3 days before.  The day before?  Nothing much at all, and eat only meals I am really familiar with and have eaten many times before.  Hydrate like MAD to the point where I have to piss on the hour every hour.

Now, with diabetes, I have to watch my sugar.  Hours and hours of physical exertion can threaten to leave me hypoglycemic.  So I load up on good, diabetes-friendly carbs (whole grains) and protein bars and shakes to further slow the absorption of the carbs.  For instance, the night before the Mudder:

• Dinner:  grilled salmon over a double-helping of mixed greens, Sesame dressing, whole-grain roll
• Snack: Popcorn (it's a whole grain!)

Morning-of:

• Race time: 11:40 am
• Breakfast (6:30 am): 1/2 C Egg Beaters mixed with 2 T hummus, 1 C low-fat Greek yogurt topped with 1/2 C granola
• 8:30 - Protein bar, with dark chocolate
• 10:30 - Another protein bar with dark chocolate
• 11:20 - Gu packet

Every 45 approximate minutes of race time: Gu packet

"Hypoglycemic" is a blood-sugar level of less than 70.  45 minutes after the race, after I was finally hosed-off enough to do so (but my body was still, after all that, burning energy like crazy), my reading was 83.  The race company offered Cliff protein bars just past the finish line; in the future, I'll take advantage of that just to get my levels to a comfy 100 or so.

And that is how I prepare for these "adventure races."

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Too Many Craft Beers?

Time Magazine Asks: Are There Too Many Craft Beers?

What?

Don't the big two or three beer producers in the U.S. have like 90% of the market share?

No, there aren't too many craft breweries as long as they are making a few bucks and there are more Coors drinkers to convert.

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