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My man Mike Seril, a renowned, award-winning Los Angeles based personal trainer, is starting his “Don’t Doubt Me!” Boot Camp, which provides a group-oriented approach to fitness training, bringing folks together to form a support structure while undergoing group training.

Mike’s a former NCSA Personal Trainer of the Year, so he knows his stuff.

If you’re still trying to get rid of 2005′s holiday pounds, Mike’s the man you want to call.

I subscribe to several financial newsletters, and I got one today that linked to a post that made my blood boil a bit, wherein the author seizes on Time Magazine’s having named Ben Bernanke as “Man of the Year” as evidence that “American culture rewards bad behavior”.

It seems we cannot learn the actual lessons taught by the ongoing economic meltdown. Instead, the money men seem determined to sort the causes of this mess into neat ideological categories, prepackaged to divert blame from the originating causes, and onto their favorite bugaboo “lib’rul Democrat” boogeymen.

Somehow, their narrative goes, loosening credit to poor families on the part of FannieMae and FreddieMac single-handedly caused the Great Recession. Deregulating the financial and insurance industries, somehow, did NOT have anything to do with this. Somehow, the creation of a $600 TRILLION derivatives market –a market entirely consisting of imaginary products backed only in the loosest of senses by tangible goods– didn’t cause this mess, when that market happens to represent TEN TIMES the GDP of the ENTIRE WORLD. Continue reading…

http://www.tissuepathology.typepad.com/files/prayson_anndiagpath_dec2008.pdf

ABSTRACT: Americans consume about 5 billion hamburgers a year. It is presumed that most hamburgers are
composed primarily of meat. The purpose of this study is to assess the content of 8 fast food
hamburger brands using histologic methods. Eight different brands of hamburgers were evaluated for
water content by weight and microscopically for recognizable tissue types. Glial fibrillary acidic
protein (GFAP) staining was used to evaluate for brain tissue. Water content by weight ranged from
37.7% to 62.4% (mean, 49%). Meat content in the hamburgers ranged from 2.1% to 14.8% (median,
12.1%). The cost per gram of hamburger ranged from $0.02 to $0.16 (median, $0.03) and did not
correlate with meat content. Electron microscopy showed relatively preserved skeletal muscle. A
variety of tissue types besides skeletal muscle were observed including connective tissue (n = 8),
blood vessels (n = 8), peripheral nerve (n = 8), adipose tissue (n = 7), plant material (n = 4), cartilage
(n = 3), and bone (n = 2). In 2 hamburgers, intracellular parasites (Sarcocystis) were identified. The
GFAP immunostaining was not observed in any of the hamburgers. Lipid content on oil-red-O
staining was graded as 1+ (moderate) in 6 burgers and 2+ (marked) in 2 burgers. Fast food
hamburgers are comprised of little meat (median, 12.1%). Approximately half of their weight is
made up of water. Unexpected tissue types found in some hamburgers included bone, cartilage, and
plant material; no brain tissue was present. Sarcocystis parasites were discovered in 2 hamburgers.

Stewart nails Jim Cramer:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/090131/4_generations_of_gm.html

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/12/microsoft_big_security_hole_in.html

So this is the big heads-up to the 25-50% of people who are still using Internet Explorer, version 6, and making my life a living hell……UPGRADE! OR THE INTERNETS WILL EAT YOU!

Get Firefox NOW.

A week after claiming they were done pursuing Yahoo, Microsoft has again made an offer. This time around, it’s so preposterously one-sided that Yahoo would be twice the fool to take it as they’d have been to accept Microsoft’s truncated stock-price offer the last time around. [link]

But that’s not what it’s really about, and everyone knows it. What it’s really about is taking advantage of Carl Icahn lurking as a stalking horse; the barbarian at the gate. What it’s really about is bringing Yahoo to terms on Microsoft’s original offer. Continue reading…

Personally, I feel that there’s no reason to stick to any policy or concept dogmatically, but there’s one concept out there in business that’s always really rubbed me the wrong way, and that’s the old barb about the customer always being right.

The actual concept being conveyed by this missive is that the customer can always vote with their dollars, and buy elsewhere. This is very true, and very much worth keeping in mind. If your policies, products, or postures are out of step with the marketplace, you won’t be in business much longer.

But as we’ve transitioned into being a consumer-driven culture, some people have taken these words and twisted them into some kind of childish mantra, wherein they need to be given whatever they want, just because they want it. Alex Kjerulf gives us 5 reasons we shouldn’t be so quick to service the needs of ultra-demanding customers on positivesharing.com.

Continue reading…