I may never look at disposable chopsticks the same way.

Lyle McDonald has a thought-provoking piece up titled Pole Vault your way to a Hot Body. Good for me to read this, as I'm always singing the praises of intervals. I'm not giving up my intervals anytime soon, but it's nice to have a little perspective.

• 15 minutes to name the elements of the periodic table. I got 33 out of 118.
• Jay is Games on XSketch (online Pictionary, basically). Very fun.

I want one of these drum tables. Scroll down that page for the video.

Extreme... beds?

Boy, it doesn't get any simpler than Stew Smith's push-up workout:

On ODD days: Do 200 pushups in as few sets as possible in addition to your regularly scheduled workout of cardio exercises. You can still do upper body workouts on these days if you are already on a program. This is a supplemental 200 pushups using maximum repetition sets (4 x 50, 8 x 25 ... it's your choice how you get to 200).

On EVEN days: Do 200 pushups throughout the day. This can be little sets of ten done every half hour or fifty pushups done four times throughout the day.

RULE: If your maximum is under 50 pushups, do 200 a day. If your maximum is above 75, do 300 pushups a day.

Repeat the ODD/EVEN routine for a total of 10 days. Then take three days off and do NO upper body pushing exercises that work the chest, triceps, and shoulders. Then on day 14, give yourself the pushup test.

He says folks who start at 50 pushups end up at 80 (generally, I'm sure). Pretty nice return on two weeks work.

P.S. I know it sounds like overtraining, but he discusses that in the article.

Cass Sunstein @ The Chicago Tribune: The Obama I Know.

@MAKE: Superficielle (forest mirrors). Very cool effect, although I imagine you have to break out the windex (and lots of it) pretty regularly.

Two via kottke:

• Novelists Strike Fails To Affect Nation Whatsoever
• A.J. Jacobs makes George Clooney Google himself, and then some. Fantastic.

Telegraph: Author Terry Pratchett on NHS Alzheimer's policy:

"The NHS kindly allows me to buy my own Aricept because I'm too young to have Alzheimer's for free, a situation I'm OK with in a want-to-kick-a-politician-in-the-teeth kind of way."

Be sure to read his full speech (PDF). He donated £500,000 (a bit over $1M) to the Alzheimer's Research Trust.

Same drum I've been beating here from the get-go, but it's always good to reinforce it. Vern Gambetta on the myth of the "aerobic base". Plus, even better, his follow-up post on the subject:

I asked Jack Blatherwick to address his viewpoint on establishing an aerobic base. Jack is with the Washington Capitols and was conditioning coach for six American Olympic Ice Hockey teams including the 1980 "Miracle Team"). The following is his response:

Definitely click through and read the rest.

1. 135 lbs. on the overhead/military/shoulder press (whatever you call the thing that's harder than a push press or a push jerk). I'm particularly happy about this because I can now just leave a set of 45s on the bar all the time. Hooray for laziness. :-)
2. Broke 1:30 on the C2 500m row. Specifically, 1:29.6. Owwwww. I never want to do that again; the 1.4 seconds I needed came really hard. I think deadlifting, even though I'm fairly new to it, helped with this one. More power in each stroke. Also, this workout of mine may have helped, as it really gets you pulling hard.

The 500m reminded me of a really weird symptom I get when I really push myself to the brink: my teeth feel weird. Like a numb ache. Very unpleasant. Lasted for like 20 minutes after this effort. It's probably a heart attack warning sign, or something.

Okay, that's more than enough about me.