Have you ever heard of P90X? Yea, you know what I am talking about. The workout that makes you sweat so much that you have no choice but to lose weight. What about the workout Insanity? If you have done that workout before, it will separate the boys from the men.

I am a huge workout guy. I have done it all. I have tried the workout supplements, P90X, Insanity, and even all three at the same time. Yes, it sounds crazy, and it was, but the results I got were ridiculous. I started it all my 9^th grade year of high school. I was the kid who got made fun of because of his weight. I was 15 years old, 5’6”, and over 200 lbs. I was the one who wanted to make the varsity football and baseball team, but just wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to cut it.
I started off my 9^th grade year with just supplements and used free weights. My arms got huge. There was a rumor going around my school that I was on steroids because my arms got so big, but I can assure you I wasn’t. I wasn’t satisfied with my results because even though my arms were getting bigger, my waistline was too. I then switched to P90X. I did this program for 6 weeks, and lost 25 lbs. My abs were now somewhat visible, and I started varsity for both football and baseball, but my abs were not fully formed yet.
I realized that I didn’t fallow the workout exactly. I was doing the workouts every day like I was supposed to, but I never opened up that nutrition book to see what I needed to eat out of it.
I then bought the Insanity workout, and followed that program to-a-tee. I read the nutrition book, I watched every video once before I worked out so that I would not be lost and have my form completely correct. I was dedicated to getting my body in the best shape of my life. I ended up losing 10 lbs in the first 10 days of the workout. This is amazing. I took in almost 3000 calories a day, 2,864 to be exact, and still lost a lbs a day.

Video courtesy of 7CitiesGetFit via YouTube



These workouts know what they are talking about. They help save lives. According to the video, this woman had a possibility of having diabetes, but thanks to P90X, she won’t get it now. I also saw a video where a man was diagnosed with diabetes, and was possibly going to die from his disease, but after participating in P90X, he was able to play with his grandchildren again.
The experts at dietspotlight.com, a nutrition and health fitness for men and women, created an article, P90X Review, which reviewed P90X and said this, “With a full workout plan, the money-back guarantee and a diet guide, P90X is one of the most comprehensive workout systems that we’ve seen offered“ (par. 1). This means that P90X is perfect for everyone.

Beachbody.com is the company that makes these workouts, supplements, and nutrition guides, and they are the ones to thank. If it wasn’t for this Web site, I wouldn’t be in the place I am today. I received a full paid college scholarship because the Army wanted someone that was not only smart, but physically fit too. So this is a thank you to beach body.com. Check them out. I DARE YOU!

You Have the Right to Vote!!!

We as American citizens are given the right to vote. It is announced in the Constitution of the United States of America. So what do our days of voting look like? Signs everywhere stating “Vote for…”, bumper stickers supporting a candidate’s name, and people on their way in the door to vote. Once you are in the room, and you walk up to the machine, you place your vote electronically, and then leave. You probably don’t think anything else about it. It goes smoothly. Watch the video below, and see if you still think it’s all smooth.

Video Courtesy of prov6yahoo via YouTube          

Commercials have told us time and time again that our votes count. They tell us we are important. According to the video above, our votes do count, but are they counting in our favor or against us?
Some of the problems with these machines are that they are being manipulated by hackers. This problem is the company’s fault. They created this machine to conduct a very important task such as determining the United States President, and they aren’t making it secure enough to block hackers from breaking the system and changing votes.
There are other problems with these machines that aren’t being caused by hackers, but are the ballot machine company’s fault. According to The Sun Journal’s very own P. Christine Smith‘s article, Voter Reports Problem with Ballot Machine, there was an incident where a man chose to vote for all the republicans on the ballot and when he selected that option, the monitor displayed that he had selected all the candidates of the opposite party; he then tried again, asking for assistance on the third and fourth try, but every time, the vote was the same (par. 1-3). This means that the machine was changing his vote without his request. The machine was messing with his choices.
How many other votes were miscalculated? Did your vote count? Who is to blame?
I might not know the answer to the first two, but I do know who’s fault it was. It was the ballot machine company’s fault. They are not making machines that are reliable for the system they were so carefully created for. Did we choose our president, or did the machine?

Taste or Story!

We all know about the Pepsi Challenge. For those of you who don’t, the Pepsi Challenge was created by Pepsi, obviously, to prove to Coca-Cola that Pepsi products’ taste are preferred by American’s.
They conducted this experiment by un labeling two cups and filling one with Pepsi and one with Coke. Without telling the customer which drink is which, they asked the people testing the drinks to point out which drink was liked the most. The discovery came to announce that most, almost all, testers preferred Pepsi over Coca-Cola.

Of course, Coca-Cola was not going to stand for this embarrassment, so they decided to run an experiment of their own. They placed labeled drinks of Coca-Cola and Pepsi on the tables. Then, they asked which drink was preferred by the testers. To much surprise, the results were the exact opposite. When knowing what name of drink the testers had, they chose Coca-Cola.

Why is that?

A man who has been preaching for over thirty years, and teacher Abilene once taught a lesson, and talked about Coke. His name is Randy Harris. Randy Harris once brought to my attention that Coke has discovered the method to the madness. People don’t want just products, they want more. Coke sells you a product with a story. When you think of Coke, what color comes to mind? Bright Red correct? When you think of Coke and Bright Red, you think of Santa. Santa wins the hearts and minds of children, and research shows that once you have won a child’s heart, you have won them for life.

　

Photo Courtesy of fotumainia! via Flickr

This is how great corporations are made to function. Coke is an establishment that grabs the hearts and minds of children. It is almost creepy to think that corporations can affect our emotions like that. Who would you choose in the Pepsi Challenge; the taste or the story? How affected are you?

Earthquake Reality

On my way to class this morning, I was listening to a discussion on the radio. It wasn’t my car, therefore I had no control over the radio, or else we would have been listening to music because those discussions are boring. But since I had no control, I decided to listen. The man that was talking on the radio mentioned that the earthquakes in Greenbrier, AR had come to a complete halt.

Before I go any further, let me give you one small step before this observation occurred.

Have any of you noticed the increase in gas prices? I’m sure you have. Our President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, decided that he wanted to stop all oil drills because he wanted to promote the buying of electronic cars. I personally think that electronic cars is a genius plan, but forcing people to buy them because you raise gas prices is not going to fix it.

The crazy catch is, that after he started this new plan, and all the oil drills stopped pumping oil out of the ground, the earthquakes stopped. Is that coincidence or is there a connection here?

                                              Photo Courtesy of AJ Baxter via Flickr

Obviously oil rigs will claim that it is not, and others will claim that there is a connection. Scientifically, can it be proven? After some research, here is what I found.

According to Joe Lamb, a frequent writer for the Log Cabin Democrat, states in his article, Large Earthquakes Unlikely, Geologists Say, gives the times of the 6 earthquakes occurring in the area within a 12 day span from October 15 to October 26.
The Time and Magnitudes are as follows:

“1. Oct. 15; 1:55 a.m.; magnitude 2.6
2. Oct. 15; 1:53 p.m.; magnitude 3.0
3. Oct. 24; 4:10 a.m.; magnitude 2.6
4. Oct. 24; 4:24 a.m.; magnitude 2.5
5. Oct. 25; 9:54 p.m.; magnitude 2.9
6. Oct. 26; 7:47 a.m.; magnitude 2.5” (in the picture) Even though this article is more focused on the sizes of the earthquakes to come, Lamb also states that,

“Those who believe there is a connection often cite the gas recovery process known as ‘fracking,’ in which a liquid is injected into a bore hole at high pressure to break up rock layers, thereby giving trapped natural gas an avenue to escape…the drilling and ‘fracking’ occurs at a shallower depth than the geologic structures thought to be causing the earthquakes.” (par. 9)This means that there is a possibility that the drills could be causing these earthquakes, but not anything big because they aren’t stationed far enough into the earth to move the tectonic plates to a significant amount.

In contrast to this theory, a blog post entitled Scientist Blames Arkansas Earthquakes on Drilling, TXsharon, states that a man named Haydar Al-Shukri, the director of the Arkansas Earthquake Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, thinks that the earthquakes are brought to life because the earthquakes are extremely inconsistent time wise (par. 3). TXsharon then states that “earthquakes caused by a fault would cause more ‘constant activity’.”(par. 3) He is directly relating the earthquakes to the drilling based on the evidence that the new earthquakes on the fault line that are occurring are not occurring regularly.

Haydar Al-Shukri also said that the problem with ‘fracking’ is that when you are drilling, you are “injecting the holes with fluid create pressure underground and cause shifting of tectonic plates” (TXsharon par.4)”.

I think that scientifically, these quakes have been proven to be slightly caused by the drilling. Yes, the drilling is only causing small quakes to occur because they are not planted extremely deep into the ground, but they are still causing earthquakes. Could they be slowly building up to make one huge earthquake? Has the earthquake already occurred?

Japan was just recently hit with a tsunami. This tsunami was created by an earthquake.

What does this have to do with Americans? There are two point. Possibly causing these earthquakes leads to another reason for the president to stop the drilling of oil. Like I mentioned earlier, this will raise gas prices. That is self explanatory on how that affects Americans. The other point is that if it was the cause of the Japan tsunami than it was also the cause of the tsunami that hit Hawaii. My sister is in the Army, and she is stationed in Hawaii with other soldiers that have families from around the nation. This can affect the emotions of families around the country.

If I was a oil drilling company, I would sure hate to find out that I was the cause of all those lives and homes destroyed.