A lot of people dive into the vegetarian or even vegan lifestyle and don’t do enough proper research for what your body has been getting from meat over the course of your life.  You could write an entire book on how to properly transition from a meat to non-meat diet but for today I am just going to focus in on some of the more obvious ones as well as what to look for if you are feeling really tired and sluggish during your day, especially come the afternoon.  As you can tell from the title this article is aimed at my active female readers, if you aren’t of the fairer sex feel free to head over to my Supplements article.  Keep in mind when I say ‘active’ I don’t mean someone that walks or rides their bike to work, or plays ultimate Frisbee twice a week, although that is great.  This article is geared towards the woman that is really pushing her body 4-5 days a week in a highly focused and t and probably purposeful way.  If this isn’t you then you please read on but you can take what I am saying with a grain of salreduce some of the numbers by 35-45%

So, you’re slowly phasing meat out of your diet are you?  Think it’s just that easy do ya?  Well it’s almost that easy, but you do need to know what your body needs because it’s a pretty complex machine ya got there.  There are a lot of things that you get in large quantities from meat that you take for granted.  I’ve been strength training for many years and I’ve been a personal trainer to a lot of women from time to time and over the course of my years I’ve had to do a lot of research in order to advise women what they should be doing and what their bodies need.  This will be a multi-part series, with each article dedicated to 1 or sometimes 2 important components necessary for a healthy body.  It was my intention to write one large article but after seeing my word count here top 2500 I realized this might be a bit much for one sitting and will be publishing these over the next little while.  We will be covering a broad variety of items that your body needs and most of these articles are written for a meatless diet or towards a woman that is moving towards a more vegetarian or vegan lifestyle.  There is a lot that your body needs and it’s crucial you have the low-down to lead the healthiest, happiest and fullest life possible.  Today we are starting off at the top with what I feel the most important aspect of a healthy diet:  Protein.

Protein:

As a woman working to constantly improve her health and physical fitness, protein should always be on your brain.  It is absolutely crucial in the recovery and repair of damaged muscle tissue, preventing muscle loss over time and can also allow your body to push itself up to 40% more than it normally would by provided much need fuel for your muscles during strenuous activity.  It is a misconception that increased protein intake is only for body builders or those wanting to ‘bulk up’, especially in women wanting to be as fit as possible while maintaining a feminine physique.  This commonly held myth causes many women undervalue and to be undernourished in the most important ingredient to a healthy active lifestyle. For your records the key ingredient involved in ‘bulking’ up is testosterone not protein and lacking a pair of testosterone factories in your nether-region will naturally keep your body shape generally where you want it unless you are involved in extreme weight training most likely with the use of steroids.

So don’t fear protein, it is the key building block in repairing your body and without proper protein intake you are only realizing a fraction of the results you could be seeing from all of your hard physical work!

Why?

This is the big one for sure, as nice as it is to imagine yourself being able to easily supplement chicken and fish with a lot of beans, lentils and the like they really don’t carry the amounts of protein that you think they will.  Sure they have high levels of protein compared to other vegetables however compared to meat they are a poor substitute pound for pound.  100 grams of Venison for example packs in 34 grams of protein [1] whereas 100 grams of dry lentils(200 grams wet) will carry 18-20 grams[2], almost 1/2 of what you are getting from meat.  Meaning to make up for that one small steak you’re going to have to mow back 400 grams of lentils and lentils are near the top of the totem pole when it comes to protein.  Clearly eating 300-400 grams of lentils 3 times a day isn’t something most people can stomach so we need to find new ways of supplementing the protein. And supplement we must, because protein is the building block of lean muscle tissue, it is what the body uses to repair damaged muscles and more importantly it is what the body uses to build new ones.  The higher levels of protein in your diet the more your body gets geared up to build lean muscle tissue and boost your metabolism.

The way I see it our body has two instinctual modes: Long term survival and Short term performance.  When your diet is high in fat and favors carbs over protein your body adapts to be able to store those foods most effectively.  It doesn’t want to invest too heavily in tissue that consumes a lot of energy so it begins making more fat than muscle because fat can be stored longer and be used over great durations as part of a long term survival strategy.  Your body doesn’t know when the next energy rich meal is going to come so it plans for the worst.

When your body has a constant supply of protein however it doesn’t worry as much about long term survival and gears itself to use this energy rich diet in the most efficient way possible, which is by building lean muscle tissue.  In doing so it can utilize all of the protein it’s getting without worrying about running out of energy because muscle tissue uses a lot more energy and burns a lot more calories than fat, up to 7 times as much.  So we become faster, stronger and have more endurance, which in ancient times would make us better hunters furthering our protein rich diet.

How Much?

How much protein should you be aiming for?  Well it really breaks down to the type of exercise you are doing, if you are an endurance athlete a good ratio for you is about 1.2g/KG of body mass.  This works out to about 0.6 grams per pound.  If you are a 65kg woman(roughly 140 lbs) you will want around 72 grams of protein per day.  If you are body building or doing intense weight training then you are going to want to increase that more to around 1.8g/KG of body weight, meaning you’d be taking in rougly 130 grams of protein per day.  I would advise you talk to your personal trainer about this as it does become taxing on your liver if you are taking protein in great excess.  What the body can’t assimilate it will flush through the liver and if it is flushing a LOT then your liver is going to be in a bad way after too much of this. This isn’t something to obsess over by any means, just something to keep in the back of your mind and be cognizant of as you plan out your day as you want this number spread out throughout the day.  You do not want to try to grab a large portion of your protein intake all at once, either to make up at the end of the day or try to get it out of the way at the beginning.  The human body can only process so much protein in one sitting and any excess will just get flushed out through the liver.  The magic number for how per sitting depends on how much lean muscle you have and how big you are but a safe number for an athletic woman between 60-70 KG (135-145 lbs) would be about 30 grams per serving.  Also keep in mind that your body only processes protein at 90% efficiency so in reality you could get away with 33 grams.

When?

Your body will need protein more during certain parts of your day and I will list these in order of importance

“If your not getting protein in your body within 30 minutes after a training session you may as well have been sitting on you bum instead of going the gym”

Immediately after a training session: Your body has just torn it’s muscles to shreds(be it your hamstrings or your heart) and used up much of your sugar and protein reserves to keep you going strong.  It is starving for more right now and in order to get the most out of that session and not have your body rely on catabolizing existing muscle tissue to repair the damaged ones you need to get protein in you fast, and by fast I mean within 30 minutes.  I have a friend who is a body builder and he sums it up best when he says (in a sexy english accent non-the-less) “If your not getting protein in your body within 30 minutes after a training session you may as well have been sitting on you bum instead of going the gym”

Now assuming you’re goal is 70 grams per day you would roughly want to break down your intake as follows:

1. 25 grams after the workout
2. 25 grams for breakfast
3. 10 grams before your training session
4. 10 grams before bed

And of course keep in mind there is lunch in there, so you might end up having 10-20 grams for lunch depending on what you are eating and you could reduce some of those numbers accordingly.  But as I mentioned above please do not obsess over this, these are just approximate goals to aim towards, some days might be around 80, some days might be around 60, who knows.  I couldn’t tell you down to the gram what I’m taking in but I have the goals I aim towards so that I can maintain consistency and get the most out of my training.

How?

This article is aimed at active women, I’m writing it for someone in particular who is a professional athlete, so I’m going to assume I will getting less cringes than from most of the population but Protein powder is really going to be the easiest and most efficient way of getting what you need into your system and because your lifestyle is as active as it is you need more protein than most.  It also has the added benefit of allowing you to keep fairly accurate track of how much is going into your system, unless you plan on putting your body of lentils on a scale every time you sit down for a meal   There are a ton of protein powders on the market these days and most will be fine for men and women but for many reasons, especially if you are a vegan or a vegetarian the Whey option is out.  This leaves you with Soy, Rice, or Hemp proteins, although soy will probably come out on top just because of how much protein is found in soy protein isolates.   For example it is quite easy to find Soy powders that are 90% protein but I have yet to find a Hemp powder over the 40% mark, which means not only will you have to take in twice as much but hemp protein is usually 2-3 times as expensive, or even more for an increase of cost of up to 600%.   First place to look, if you are wanting to be frugal, would be  in your local grocery store, preferably a big box chain as they will have the greatest selection.  You want to look for Protein isolates as they contain more of what you want and less of what you don’t,plus your body is able to process the protein in an isolate much more efficiently than in an concentrate.  Now if you are in Canada I can be even more specific, skip the health foods stores and head straight to the nearest Great Canadian Superstore(or ‘Real Canadian Superstore’ as they are called now).  Go into the pharmacy section and check out the Presidents Choice Vegetarian Protein Powder.  They come in a large 900 gram tub, so don’t be fooled into buying one of the smaller containers and they are only $19.99 which puts them way under any other powders on the market of comparable quality.  It’s made up of Soy, Rice, Pea and Hemp proteins so you have an nice mixture there and aren’t relying just on Soy, monsanto soy no doubt.  As a woman you want to seek out the isolates as apposed to the compounds as they will contain less carbs and if possible avoid any flavoured mixes as you are just taking in additional sugars that you dont’ need.  If you want flavour you can always go out and buy raw cocoa to add it to the mix or blend up your shakes with fresh fruit .  The other benefit of taking a soy based protein is that it is much higher in Iron than whey, something most women are lacking in their diets.

We’ve gone over when you should be taking this and how much, but don’t feel like you just need to be making your shakes and chugging them down all the time.  You can get a little creative in how you ingest the protein to break up the routine a little bit.  For example in the mornings instead of soy milk on my granola I will use one scoop of the PC powder and then pour it over my granola.  I make sure to get 44 grams per serving so for me I have a fair amount of granola but if your goal is 25 grams of protein in the morning you might only need 2/3′s a scoop or even 1/2 depending on how much protein you are getting in your granola or cereal.  You can use it to thicken soups, put in pasta sauces, etc etc.  Most of the time though it will come in the form of a shake just because it’s quick and easy but there are other ways you can sneak it in there

Give your body what it needs to push itself

Links of Interest:

http://www.weightlossforall.com/protein-vegetable.htm

http://www.vegparadise.com/protein.html

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/vegetables-high-in-protein.html

http://ezinearticles.com/?Protein-Powder-For-Women—What-to-Look-For-in-a-Protein-Powder-For-Women&id=2316473

http://www.gainmusclemass.net/protein-powder-for-women.html

http://www.healthynewage.com/intrasound-powder.html

http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20050829/protein-exercise-may-promote-weight-loss

http://www.active.com/nutrition/Articles/The_role_of_protein_in_exercise_recovery.htm

So today, or yesterday depending on where you are from, we witness a huge huge first in viral advertising / marketing strategies and it paid off BIG, like Nintendo Wii Big!  For the first time, at least that I know of, a company decided to talk to their customers, as in literally take questions(albeit silly ones) on the air and then respond directly back to that person.  Not only that but create an endless stream of commercials in near real-time based on what their customers were saying.

As most of us living outside of caves will know Oldspice has a new Manly front man Isaiah Mustafa and new hilarious ads from Craig Allen and Eric Kallman.

The ads themselves are funny as hell and creatively shot to boot with the ‘I’m on a horse’ ad being done in one shot with the only special effects being the diamonds pouring out of his hand.  Now Oldspice in the past couple of years has developed some of the funny ads around but the news ones were a notch above the rest, however it wasn’t until today that they truly blew everything out of the water, and this time it wasn’t with a new ad in the traditional sense of the word it was by doing something that has never been done before to this scale.

So today, or yesterday depending on where you are from, we witness a huge huge first in advertising / marketing strategies and it paid off BIG, like Nintendo Wii Big!  For the first time, at least that I know of, a company decided to talk to their customers, and not only that but create an endless stream of commercials in near real-time based on what their customers were saying.  As most of us living outside of caves will know Oldspice has a new Manly front man Isaiah Mustafa and new hilarious ads from Craig Allen and Eric Kallman.

The ads themselves are funny as hell and creatively shot to boot with the ‘I’m on a horse’ ad being done in one shot with the only special effects being the diamonds pouring out of his hand.

The Numbers

Instead of paying Isaiah to spend another day or two shooting an expensive ad what they did was put him in a bathroom with a high quality camera and simply had him answer youtube comments, tweets, facebook messages and the occasional reddit blurb here and there. Obviously his retorts are hysterical and of the same tone that you’d expect his commercial character to be in, but that is it.  Well I should’t say ‘that is it’ as if it we’re no big deal, it’s the sheer magnitude of what they are doing that is amazing.  At last count there was 181 video responses from Isaiah up at http://www.youtube.com/oldspice , ranging from 30 to 75 seconds – and this is only the FIRST DAY.  In 24 hours http://www.youtube.com/oldspice has become the most watch youtube channel for the day, each of these videos is getting around 16,000 views on the low end and upwards of 340,000 views on the high end for replies to celebrities like Paris Hilton, Ellen Degeneres or even Twitter themselves, keep in mind this is just the First 24 hours.

Now Youtube doesn’t update their overall stats for upload views in real time but in total all of the oldspice videos up until these new video replies garned an impressive 53,022,437 views at last count with the original Isaiah ad that starts in the bathroom having 13 million views over the past 5 months.  After the first day the combined viewership of all of these replies was sitting at 6,703,414 and considering these numbers are only updated once every 3-5 hours you can bet your bottom dollar this number is actually closer to 10 million.  36 hours after the first replies went live on Youtube they had garnered a combined viewership of 23,198,055

Pretty god damn impressive, but just how impressive?  Well let’s put this into perspective.  First off the cost of producing these ads was basically the electricity to run the camera and lighting, the writers salaries for the day and then Isaiah’s salary for the day.  There is no post-prod or much editing so you can budget minimal amounts for that.  That’s IT!  Now we are looking at around 10 million views in 24 hours, roughly 24 Million views in a 60 hour time frame and no doubt topping 30 million views after 72 hours.  That is as many ad views as you garner during a SuperBowl(considering a 102 viewership with 25% of the people staying for commercials[1] and 30 seconds of ad time during the superbowl is roughly $3 million  [2].  In 72 hours this stroke of marketing brilliance has accumulated a worth in the advertising world of $3 million, what will it be worth in 96 hours?  What about next week?

These guys are for the first time, in a massive way leveraging the power of all major social networks and completely decentralizing the efficiency of the delivery platform.  They are relying on youtube for the actual delivery, but it isn’t because of youtube specifically that these ads are being seen as they could have easily gone on vimeo or any other video hosting site.  Granted youtube is the top dog and they are the reason the videos are available but they aren’t the sole reason the videos are so popular, that power has been given to the users, the viewers themselves.  The people are promoting the videos because A.) They’ve democratically voiced their opinion that they are funny as hell and worth watching and B.) Because the ad geniuses realized if we just had Isaiah talk directly to theseusers on twitter, facebook, reddit, etc etc then of course they are going to tell all of their friends to watch it, causing this massive explosion of free viral promotion the likes that this world has never seen before.

This is definitely breaking ground around the world of marketing and you can bet your ass every single advertising executive and their neighbours dog is making phone calls trying to figure out how the hell to emulate this, and you can also bet that everyone over there at Old Spice is sitting extremely smug all saying the same word over and over and over again in perfect unison.

‘Ka-Ching’

Update: Ah, alas, as was mentioned in the below videos it looks like all good things must come to an end.  Old Spice is not having Isaia do another day of replies

Update #2: As of 12 noon 3 days after the video replies there are a total of 183 replies(including the good bye video) that have received a total of 23,198,055 views which was nearly 1/2 of the total views that all of the other Old Spice videos combined on youtube have received since the channel went live 4 years ago

Heres Interview with Leo Laporte on the Making of the ‘I’m on a Horse’ commercial, showing how they did it with one long continuous prop shot using very little special effects:

I was sitting in Vancouver with a very special person when this audio clip came on the CBC’s Radio show ‘Aprapo’ and we just had to stop everything we were doing and give this hauntingly beautiful voice of the late Lhasa our full attention.  I have not heard such a wonderful metaphor for life in a very long time and I was just captivated by it.  Take some time, find a quiet place where you can listen to this undisturbed.  For the entire CBC radio show head over to http://www.cbc.ca/apropos/archives.html and listen to the show from Jan 16/17

Here’s the song to listen to:

And now a little info on Lhasa care of Wikipedia:

Lhasa was born in Big Indian, New York, of a Mexican father, Spanish instructor Alex Sela, and a Lebanese-Jewish-American mother, photographer and actress Alexandra Karam.^[1] Her first decade was spent criss-crossing the United States and Mexico in a converted school bus with her parents and siblings, who were home-schooled by their mother.

She started singing in a Greek cafe in San Francisco when she was thirteen. Aged 19, she moved to Montreal, and sang for five years in bars, where she developed the material that eventually became her first album, La Llorona, released in 1997. La Llorona, which mixes traditional Latin American songs with original songs, was strongly influenced by Mexican music, but also Klezmer music, Eastern European gypsy music, Middle-Eastern music and alternative rock. The album was released by the Canadian independent record label, Audiogram, in Montreal, and brought her much success, including the Quebec Félix Award in Canada for “Artiste québécois — musique du monde” in 1997 and a Canadian Juno Award for Best Global Artist in 1998.

After touring in Europe and North America for several years, Lhasa left her singing career in 1999 and moved to France to join her sisters in Pocheros, a circus/theatre company. She eventually reached Marseille, where she started writing songs again. She then returned to Montreal to produce her second album, The Living Road, which was released in 2003. While La Llorona had been entirely in Spanish, The Living Road included songs in English, French and Spanish.

A two year tour followed the release of The Living Road, taking her and her group to seventeen countries. She was a guest singer on the Tindersticks‘ track “Sometimes It Hurts” off their Waiting for the Moon album, and later joined Tindersticks’ singer Stuart Staples for a duet on the track “That Leaving Feeling”, found on his Leaving Songs album. She also appeared as a guest on the albums of French singers Arthur H and Jérôme Minière, and the French gypsy music group Bratsch. She received the BBC World Music Award for Best Artist of the Americas in 2005. The accumulated worldwide sales of her two albums are nearing one million. ^{[citation needed]}

De Sela’s third album Lhasa was released in April 2009 in Canada and Europe^[2], and the next month in the U.S. She could also be heard on the title track of Patrick Watson’s new album, Wooden Arms, released in April, as well.

Following a 21-month-long battle with breast cancer, Lhasa died, age 37, on the evening of January 1, 2010, at her home in Montreal.^[3]

http://www.indiegamethemovie.com/

I stumbled across this today and thought I would share.  An indie film by Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky about indie developers and their craft.  The teaser is masterfully done and the icing on the cake is that this was a kickstarter project that not only got funded completely from donations but actually got overfunded.  Go world!

Indie Game: The Movie – Growing Up Edmund from IndieGame: The Movie on Vimeo.

The New York Times has recently published an article this week quoting a couple of studies that demonstrated that regular alcohol consumption increases the severity and frequency of allergy and asthma symptons for those with pre-existing conditions.

In one study in Sweden in 2005, scientists looked at thousands of people and found that compared with the general population, those with diagnoses of asthma, bronchitis and hay fever were far more likely to experience sneezing, a runny nose and “lower-airway symptoms” after having a drink. Red wine and white wine were the most frequent triggers, and women, for unknown reasons, were about twice as likely to be affected as men.

Obviously warning people with such conditions to avoid other products containing high levels of histamines such as aged cheeses, pickled or fermented products and yeast-containing foods, like bread, cider and grapes.

A blog post put out at www.drvino.com (http://www.drvino.com/2010/04/26/wine-sulfites-allergies-histamines-red-alcohol/) goes into much more detail and does more independent fact checking, a very accurate depiction of the state of journalism today.  In a back and forth conversation with scientists he gets a more accurate summary of what’s going on here:

Dr. Bhutani suggests that when someone’s allergies are flared, alcohol can act as a congestant (a direct vasodilator, in his terms; because it is related to blood-alcohol levels, lower-alcohol wines should cause less congestion.). It’s similar to the way that people with allergies experience increased symptoms around other irritants such as second-hand smoke or strong scents. But he cautions that these indirect irritants are causes of allergy-like symptoms (called rhinitis), not allergies per se. He says that women are affected by this condition three times more than men.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sk6py#synopsis

The show is called the ‘Esportsman’ that touches the surface of the emergence of the Esports movement mostly in Europe. Obviously this is a mainstream style broadcast so don’t expect it to go into too much depth into much but it is still nice to listen to something spreading more authenticity and validity in the Esports movement.  I found the broadcast through reading the following article that shows what pro-gamers have in common(psychologically speaking of course) with professional athletes:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/358525/what-gamers-have-in-common-with-top-athletes

And of course this is the European Esports movement, and while the player intensity might be there as a whole it is but a drop in the bucket next to what is and has been evolving in South Korea for the past decade.  If you want to take a nice close up look at what that scene, the grand daddy of all eSports looks like head over to Nevakes ‘Subtitled’ section of his channel and get into either the Old boy series or Hyung Joon Becomes A Progamer series.  It’s a good watch if you are a big time geek and those Korean’s can be so damn cute when they want to

http://www.youtube.com/nevake#g/c/8FDA0CC867061233

Ah talk about life changing! It will be my mission to spread the deliciousness of patacones to the rest of the world from this moment onwards. This deceptively simple food is like the duck tape of Colombian cuisine. It’s versatility is not to be underestimated as I have used patacones with just salt, with the standard rice dish, to finish left over pasta, with raspeberry jam and even with Nutella.

A patagone is basically squished deep fried plantains. What you do is you take a green plantain and you cut it up into 3-4 chunks(depending on the size) and then take those chunks and lightly deep fry them so they are just browned on the outside.  After they are deep friend you squish them flat, usually with a plate covered by a plastic bag.   After they are squished flat you can put them away for use later or you can go to the next step which is to fill a bowl with water, add some garlic and then dip the flattened, partly deep fried plantains into the water and throw them back in the oil for their final bath and Viola!  All done.  In this state you want to salt them immediately when they come up and then use them to scoop up your rice, or you can top them off with a fresh salsa, or a cooked salsa.

The other option is to use a patagone device that creates mini-bowls instead of flattened pieces.  You can then fill these bowls with whatever you like for awesome goodness, which I have done with just about everything.

Patagones do such an amazing job at complimenting just about every piece of food I’ve eaten down here that it feels like something is missing out when I don’t have them handy.  It is also possible to bake them in the last step instead of frying them, which does work well when you make the bowl patagones, but it’s just not quite the same.

To top it all off you can even shake the plantain into very thin slices and then deep fry those for Plantain chips which are about 100x more delicious than potato chips. Finally if you want to use ripe plantains instead you can cut longer thicker slicers for a sweet deep fried treat

This delicious and very versatile fruit comes out on top as far as one of the best culinary inventions I have come across anywhere in the world and it’s the rest why we always have a pot of oil ready for frying sitting on the stove at all times because there is never more than a couple days where the smell and sound of sizzling patacones doesn’t fill the kitchen.. hmmmmmm!!

For years and years I’ve heard the bullshit spew out of advocates for tanning salons, well it’s time for them to swallow their own crap now and come to terms that they have been peddling death all along as pretty much any common sense person would have suspected.

According to a study that will appear in the June issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention:

People who spent more than 50 hours tanning indoors had a threefold increase in risk, compared to people who never used a tanning bed, after adjusting for known risk factors for the deadly skin cancer.

Although the Tanning Industry is spouting it’s classic rhetoric that tanning may actually prevent skin cancer it is clear that science and research is stacking up against it as last year, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) weighed in, concluding that indoor tanning does cause melanoma.

People who spent more than 50 hours tanning indoors had a threefold increase in risk, compared to people who never used a tanning bed, after adjusting for known risk factors for the deadly skin cancer.

I couldn’t stop laughing as I read through this article in the Times today about the ‘Prison trains’ being setup in South Africa to deal with the potential hooligans showing up for the World Cup.  The reality of the situation isn’t the funny part, it is the thought of drunken idiots from rich first world countries showing up in literally the most hostile, violent and dangerous part of the world thinking they are king shit(with the aid of alcohol of course) and starting trouble.   I think it may be the thought of these drunken clowns, who are so used to getting away with their bullying, violent behavior in their home country finally getting what’s coming to them and hopefully teaching them a looonnnggg overdue lesson is what makes me smile.

I just love the blunt, no beating around the bush warning that the African police give to these potential trouble makers:

“The message I send to any England fans thinking about starting trouble is simple,” Young said. “We police the Third World every single day. Do you think we are intimidated by a bunch of drunken boys in football jerseys?

“We are at war in the townships. It is a front line where our officers get shot at and killed all the time. What can a drunk football hooligan do?”

Part of my laughter problem also comes from putting myself in the shoes of these African police officers who must just be looking forward to this like no one’s business.  As stated above these brave souls spend their time fighting and dying against the most brutal, violent and insane gangs on the planet but for the next little while they get to take all their aggression out on stupid, fat drunken english clowns who are going to deserve and ask for every piece of punishment they get.  It’s going to be like a trip to Disneyland for these boys in blue.

Obviously it’s no cakewalk, there are tough motherfuckers in England who basically have a profession just fighting and sometimes killing people in violent gang like brawls during, before and after football matches.  But to make it clear on the differences between these two parts of the world, this is what English gang members look like:

And of course this is what the equivalent in Africa looks like:

I am predicting some interesting news headlines coming out of this part of the world in the coming weeks that have nothing to do with winning or loosing teams.

I have the good fortune of being motivated to finish up a very mundane and repetitive task tonight which means my brain is free to listen to something thought provoking while I work for a change.  Tonight that happened to be Sam Harris, so I just had to share.

Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

Questions of good and evil, right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can — and should — be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out what constitutes a good life.

Sam Harris at Idea CIty ’05

Speaking at the TED of Canada, Sam Harris has a solo talk at Toronto’s Idea City 2005

Reza Aslan vs. Sam Harris Debate

This was hosted on Cspan2′s Book TV in 2007.  It wasn’t the same caliber of discourse that was found in the Chris Hedges vs Sam Harris debate for Truthdig but it still offers some great food for thought.  I found it particularly interested in the last portion of it that Sam says that the underlying problem with the middle east is Tribalism, not religion which is the main moot point that Chris Hedges has with Harris during the Truthdig debate.

Atheism – Sam Harris “Believing the unbelievable”

The Four Horsemen HD: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens

On the 30th of September 2007, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sat down for an unmoderated 2-hour discussion, convened by The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and filmed by Josh Timonen. In this conversation the group trades stories of the public’s reaction to their recent books, their unexpected successes, criticisms and common misrepresentations. They discuss the tough questions about religion that face the world today and propose new strategies for going forward.