It Went Well

It's been two months today since my knee replacement surgery. After five weeks of rehab I went back to work; that was two and a half weeks ago.

Now I climb seven flights of stairs a day (up and down), do almost a half hour on the exercise bike, work out on my Bow-Flex and do my stretches (but not as often as I should).

My knee is still a little sore and swollen and I can't walk or stand for long periods of time yet, but it gets a little better every day and I thank God for it.

Now I have to figure out when to have the other knee done.

Interview This

Is there a pattern developing for Mr. Sherman?

No doubt about it, people get passionate in the pros. And after a three hour battle for the chance to play in the biggest game of the year, players may blow off steam.

Richard Sherman may or may not be as we think he is, let him explain for himself here in his own words.

Erin Andrews interviewed me after the game and I yelled what was obvious: If you put a subpar player across from a great one, most of the time you’re going to get one result. As far as Crabtree being a top-20 NFL receiver, you’d have a hard time making that argument to me. There are a lot of receivers playing good ball out there, and Josh Gordon needed 14 games to produce almost double what Crabtree can do in a full season. And Gordon had Brandon Weeden, Brian Hoyer and Jason Campbell playing quarterback.

But that’s not why I don’t like the man. It goes back to something he said to me this offseason in Arizona, but you’d have to ask him about that. A lot of what I said to Andrews was adrenaline talking, and some of that was Crabtree. I just don’t like him.

We can see that.

More here.

It's His Holiday

New Yorkers Are Crazy

Mayor de Blasio got over 70% of the popular vote in the NYC mayoral election last year. It's like everyone lost their minds.

Now it's time for a reckoning. New Yorkers will be in for a few surprises when this wingnut and his handpicked assortment of leftists get down to business. And business won't like it either.

And what's with all his repeated legal name changes?

Bill de Blasio: the Left's Nutty Professor Transforming New York into a Giant Political Petri Dish

Bill de Blasio swept into office on a pledge to transform New York's 'tale of two cities' by ending income inequality, raising taxes on the evil 1%, doling out free or reduced-cost housing for poor and working-class residents, and establishing that all-important job-creating engine, pre-kindergarten education.

But just three weeks into his tenure as mayor of America's biggest city, the man born Warren Wilhelm in Manhattan 52 years ago has already raised hackles with his many detractors -- and even some of his staunchest supporters.

I would say here that New York deserves better .... but they don't. They elected him.

He has big plans, like requiring private companies to provide mandatory sick leave and forcing developers to build affordable housing, whether they like it or not. And his "universal" pre-K programme would be a nationwide first, taxing the rich to come up with the needed $500m.

To that end, De Blasio is taking a page from Obama, running campaign-style ads to press the policy, and blanketing the city with flyers. "For over 15 years, Albany has promised funding for these programmes - and rarely delivered," the flyers say. "It's time for a new plan."

This maniac must have a picture of Detroit pasted to his bathroom mirror, or Mayor Dinkins.

"With gridlock in Washington, cities are now the place to get things done," says Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh. "And there is no bigger stage than New York City. With de Blasio's overwhelming election mandate, if he can implement his proposals and keep the city running well, then that becomes the playbook every progressive will follow."

And as far as those name changes are concerned. This guy wasn't probably vetted (surprise!) by the media. I'd like to see what's going on behind all those names he had. He sounds like Obama.

More here.

Range Safety Officer - Chinese Army

Bad British Sports Commentary

How Big Is Big?

 The largest dinosaur fossil - a human only reaches it's ankles.

The largest known dinosaur, Argentinosaurus huinculensis, weighed as much as 80 tons (160,000 pounds) and perhaps grew as long as 98 to 130 feet.

 

In comparison, the largest living mammal, the blue whale, can grow up to 111 feet long and weigh 200 tons (400,000 pounds).  It's heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

And size-wise, some things just don't make any sense at all.

Oh No!

Is that a flagella in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

To those of you who strike out more often than not with the opposite sex, here's some disturbing news. Scientists have discovered that even germs have better sex lives than you.

In the past, many disease-causing protozoa were thought to reproduce by splitting in half with no genetic exchange, which is the common way that most microbes reproduce. But new results show they also use sex to swap genes between strains. Research into the sex lives of pathogens helps scientists understand how new strains of disease-causing microbes arise.

In the case of disease-causing pathogens, like the yeast Candida or the malaria parasite Plasmodium, sex can lead to several harmful genes being combined in one new daughter cell. For example, it is through sex that genes for drug resistance can spread among different pathogen strains faster than it would through asexual methods. Mixing up the genes may also give rise to new pathogen strains that the human population has less resistance to.

Story here.

The First Gear Discovered in Nature

A tiny little insect can accelerate at 400 G's with a special set of ... gears.

With two diminutive legs locked into a leap-ready position, the tiny jumper bends its body taut like an archer drawing a bow. At the top of its legs, a minuscule pair of gears engage—their strange, shark-fin teeth interlocking cleanly like a zipper. And then, faster than you can blink, think, or see with the naked eye, the entire thing is gone. In 2 milliseconds it has bulleted skyward, accelerating at nearly 400 g's—a rate more than 20 times what a human body can withstand. At top speed the jumper breaks 8 mph—quite a feat considering its body is less than one-tenth of an inch long.

This miniature marvel is an adolescent issus, a kind of planthopper insect and one of the fastest accelerators in the animal kingdom. As a duo of researchers in the U.K. report today in the journal Science, the issus also the first living creature ever discovered to sport a functioning gear. "Jumping is one of the most rapid and powerful things an animal can do," says Malcolm Burrows, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge and the lead author of the paper, "and that leads to all sorts of crazy specializations."

Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

There is possible evidence that Supreme Court Justice Roberts is being blackmailed by the Democrats.

[...]There is very good reason to believe that regardless of the media’s skillful smothering of the story, John Roberts is being blackmailed to make certain Obamacare never falls in a Supreme Court case. The basis of this charge surrounds the fact that a series of strange (and probably felonious) acts are attached to the adoption of his two children.

In 2005, when they thought they were doing the Democrats’ bidding, the New York Times dug into apparently easily accessible records and found that the children Roberts and his wife adopted in “South America” started life as Irish citizens. This is a red flag. The laws of Ireland regarding adoptions are very clear: adoptions by non-citizens are prohibited, as are private adoptions.

Apparently, when the Democrats realized they could control a Supreme Court Justice’s vote through blackmail over his having committed a number of international crimes, the Times pulled back and dropped its investigation.

If true, this is very disturbing. It must be brought out into the open as soon as possible.

Iraqi Immigrant Expresses His Gratitude

A disabled vet gets a cab ride from a north Iraqi Kurd. Read the story here.

I am constantly amazed at the circumstances that evolve in life, and events that transpire, such as my cab ride tonight.
1:08 AM - 9 Jan 2014

My cab driver spoke broken English, like most I've had around the country. After figuring out my hotel address, we were on our way.
1:11 AM - 9 Jan 2014

My conversation with my cab driver hit all the usual points. How cold it is in the Midwest, changes in weather, and the Texas summer heat.
1:13 AM - 9 Jan 2014

Eventually my cabdriver asked about my missing arm. I told him I lost it in Iraq. He asked which city, and how I lost it. I said Baghdad.
1:15 AM - 9 Jan 2014

I told him I was blown up by an Iranian weapons expert, using an Iranian shape charge. He stopped talking after that.
1:16 AM - 9 Jan 2014

After a couple minutes of silence, I asked him if he would mind telling me where he was from. He choked out the words, "I'm a Kurd."
1:19 AM - 9 Jan 2014

H/T iOTW

Best. Photobomb. Evah.

Butterfly Bob On Tattoos

Criminals Running The UK Gov't?

Just think what is happening in America before you pooh-pooh this article.

The entire criminal justice system was infiltrated by organised crime gangs, according to a secret Scotland Yard report leaked to The Independent.

In 2003 Operation Tiberius found that men suspected of being Britain’s most notorious criminals had compromised multiple agencies, including HM Revenue & Customs, the Crown Prosecution Service, the City of London Police and the Prison Service, as well as pillars of the criminal justice system including juries and the legal profession.

The strategic intelligence scoping exercise – “ratified by the most senior management” at the Met – uncovered jurors being bought off or threatened to return not-guilty verdicts; corrupt individuals working for HMRC, both in the UK and overseas; and “get out of jail free cards” being bought for £50,000.

The report states that the infiltration made it almost impossible for police and prosecutors to successfully pursue the organised gangs that police suspected controlled much of the criminal underworld.

The author of Tiberius, which was compiled from intelligence sources including covert police informants, live telephone intercepts, briefings from the security services and thousands of historical files, came to the desperate conclusion: “Quite how much more damage could be done is difficult to imagine.”

The fresh revelations come a day after The Independent revealed that Tiberius had concluded the Metropolitan Police suffered “endemic police corruption” at the time, and that some of Britain’s most dangerous organised crime syndicates were able to infiltrate New Scotland Yard “at will”.

If you will, consider the disarming of the British population in light of the above.

Desperately Seeking Sulafah

The SecState scours the beaches of Libya seeking the murderers of Ambassador Stephens

The Benghazi outrage happened 15 months ago.

Only now does the State Department issue a call to identify the persons responsible and offer a reward.

The State Department today publicly announced a $10 million reward "for information leading to the arrest or conviction of any individual responsible for the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attacks." The announcement for the reward is posted on rewardsforjustice.net.

Frickin' incompetent idjuts. Why not wait another year?

And then there's the poor slob who spent months in jail for making a video that no body watched that supposedly caused the riot in the first place. Remember that lie?



Clinton and Kerry: between those two, I can't decide who needs to be shot first.