I was flying home from a martial arts tournament and had all my dirty gis and rash guards in my carry-on because uniforms are not cheap. The TSA guy stopped me after the X-ray and asked if I minded if they searched my bag. I told him to be my guest but described the contents and told them I was on my way home not heading out at which point they thanked me and sent me on my way...

Not at the UFC.

To be fair, if you take out retirees and tourists then Tampa's transit problems go away. Of course so does 80% of its traffic. The point being that there is not much you can do about the "problem children" of Tampa other than yearly mandatory driving tests after a certain age. Not the same problem as Paris, NYC, Houston, etc...

Erwin Rommel would disagree. He once said,"A risk is a chance you take; if it fails you can recover. A gamble is a chance taken; if it fails, recovery is impossible."

If you lose the bet (either player or house) then that money is gone. You can play again, but that is another gamble. The odds of winning on either side have nothing to do with it being a risk or gamble.

Excellent book. There is also an Android and iPhone app for it that has all of the workouts pre-timed so you don't have to worry about setting timers, looking up exercises, etc... Any exercise plan takes a certian amount of self-control to get on and stay on but the lack of equipment required and the automation of the workouts with the app make this the way to go for someone starting to try to get into/back into shape. For anyone thinking that they are either not fit enough or too fit for a body weight only program the author explains ways to make the exercises easier/harder to fit almost any fitness level.

Let me help you guys out here. I am a sales engineer, so I am close enough to marketing to know how to spin this. I can see a Galaxy commerical going like this:

An old judge is his chambers using some sort of app designed for the buggy whip enthusiast on his iPad. He exclaims how "cool" this is.

Now we cut to a hot young chick snow-sking down a mountain in a bikini and using her Galaxy to find the nearest nightclub with Google Maps and posting pictures to Facebook to arrange a "gathering" that evening. She exclaims how "hot" that is.

Bradbury and Lovecraft combined ??? Where can I get me some of that???

MMA is awesomely fun and not as dangerous as you may think. I train 2-3 times a week and while I am too old for competition myself, it is great fun to help the younger students prepare. You get both a physical and mental workout everytime you step on the mat. Every move has counters and you have to think several moves ahead to get yourself into a superior position. If your opponent is younger they will probably be faster but you have that big brain going for you. You can create a better defense and win the positional battle. Pretty soon your opponent is tired and in a bad position and you counter-attack for the win. I have beaten opponents much bigger, faster, and stronger than myself and lost to your typical "98 lb weaklings". You will learn a lot about anatomy, physiology, psychology, physics, and much more.

As far as health benefits go; I lost 50lbs in my first year of training (and gained a lot of muscle), I am totally off my blood pressure medication, and I am about to go off my chloresterol medication. I am more focused which leads to me being able to evaluate situations and react to them faster at work (it makes you a better geek too). If you find yourself a good gym with a trainer that really cares about their students then they will ease you in at a pace that will be challenging, but not dangerous. When I started I would be gassed after a 15 minute warmup. Now I do back to back striking and ground fighting classes and still can stay after and help out new students.

I would highly reccomend you try a free lesson and see what you think. You might just be able to improve your health and your mind at the same time. Just remember in practice you are there to learn techniques and counters not to hurt each other. Take care of your partner and tap fast, if you want to prove how tough you are there is always competition. You do not take many head blows and if anything solid connects (either a strike or a throw) then you are required (at least at my gym) to sit out the rest of the lesson and have a trainer evaluate you to see if you need futher medical help. If this guy can do it, then so can you. The first lesson will leave you sore and tired, but it gets better, after a month you will be looking forward to training sessions and plotting how to take down the guy that submitted you last week.

Really...

So you are going to tax them 1% to keep them from losing the other 99% ? That sounds like a protection racket to me.

You realize then, to be fair, you will also have to subsidize the bullies in order to compensate them for their lost income.

It can be a foot in the door (albiet a rather expensive one). We have a pre-sales support engineer from DeVry. He did not have the grades/money to go to GA Tech, so he worked as a test technican while he went to DeVry. He is very good at what he does but I mostly attribute that to his intelligence rather than anything he learned at DeVry.

His degree allowed HR to "check the box" for college education and thus his manager was allowed to interview him and find out that he could be trained as well as tie his own shoes. The customers love him and he often finds very creative solutions to difficult problems. Had he not attended DeVry then he never would have made it past HR or, if he had gotten a job here, it would have been on the production floor.

I would imagine, and this is just a guess, that the variable nature of electronica and dance music has to do with the fact that no-one is actually playing an instrument and that it is computer generated in non-real time. So as long as you keep to a pattern, everything fits. Not that I am knocking that, but when a human is creating the sounds live then I have found they tend to follow their heatbeat in the abscence of anything else to sync on. There is, of course, variance whenever human beings play anything but when you tap it out with a metronome you do see the centers in increments of 15 and typically 30 (sixteenth notes at 15 BPM = eighth notes at 30 BPM = quarter notes at 60 BPM, etc...). 120 BPM is what most drummers lock into when on autopilot.

The reason I noticed this in the first place was analyizing the walls I was hitting in my own playing. My friend explained the heartbeat theory to me and I have found it generally fits with the other musicians that I know. This also only applies when you are playng "naturally". People like jazz guitarists who try to break all the rules will avoid what feels simple or cliche, but they are making a conscious effort to fight against what feels relaxed and expected.