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Some 25 over-65s, with an average age of 70, took part in the study and trained at a gym. Not only did they acquire new strength, but the molecular machinery powering their muscles became as active as that seen in people of 20 or 30…. Measurements of muscle strength showed that before training, the pensioners were on average 59 per cent weaker than the young adults. Afterwards, they were only 38 per cent weaker – an improvement of almost 50 per cent. But the most remarkable change was hidden in the mitochondria, the rod-like ‘power plants’ that sit within every cell and generate energy.

This is clearly a sign to go for the Holy Grail: the 21-inch guns. If you’re already a mental freak of nature, why not become a physical one as well? I’ve always wanted to have an excuse to get into a confrontation with police and shout “my arms are more powerful than your guns!”

I have noticed that people who lift weights regularly do tend to look significantly younger than their age. Not in the face, but in how their body looks and how they move. And for women, I’ve seen 50- and 60-year olds who have butts like 17-year old girls, or at least what 17 year-old girls used to look like before they all got fat.

Conservatives often forget that the two-party charade cuts both ways:

I was disgusted to learn that Congressional Democrats relented Tuesday on their demand for a timetable for United States troop withdrawal from Iraq. I am utterly baffled that an incompetent president responsible for an illegal and drastically destructive war still has the political upper hand in this shameful debacle. What is going on here?

Of course they did. I don’t know why this surprised anyone. It’s not like Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, LBJ or Clinton were averse to the occasional military adventure. Hillary’s presidency doesn’t necessarily mean an end of the Iraqi occupation in 2009. In fact, she’ll likely continue it unless we pull out as part of an invasion of Iran later this year.

In which I take a break from Dawkins and the Summa to deal with Merkur’s response.

I have no idea how many immigrants it’s possible to deport from the United States in any given space of time.

If you have no idea, then I suggest that you should stop speaking in ignorance. The empirical evidence is that a number between 221 thousand per year and 840 thousand per year can be repatriated without harming anyone. The only pertinent logistical question is whether the gap between 840 thousand per year and 1.5 million per year can be surmounted without resorting to Nazi/Communist methods.

Regardless, 12 million aliens can clearly be repatriated without harm in 14 years, if not necessarily the eight years I originally projected based on the “crass” analogy.

a) it won’t be politically acceptable to a huge number of people. Your response to this has been to fume about how “anti-American” politicians control the government. Considering that a number of people commenting here believe that all politicians are “anti-American”, is it realistic to expect that those politicians will be removed from power?

Amnesty isn’t politically acceptable to a huge number of people, and yet the politicians are repeatedly going after it. It would seem unlikely that enough anti-American politicians will be removed from power to begin mass repatriations in the near future, but then, that’s part of the democratic process. I note that the move for amnesty has more people talking openly about mass repatriation than ever before. 2008? No. 2012, maybe. 2016, very possibly.

b) that it won’t be sustainable without throwing even more money at the border. While you may have discussed it in other places, you haven’t introduced any proposals here. Is it realistic to expect sufficient funds to be put into such a scheme considering the lack of political support mentioned above?

I estimate that repatriating every single illegal alien would cost less than five years of the tax-benefit delta. From a financial point of view, we can’t afford to NOT repatriate the illegal population.

c) that it can’t be done without destroying people’s livelihoods and undermining basic civil rights. Your response to this has been to talk about how much it would cost to buy comfortable buses, which should tell most people all they need to know about the depth of your thinking. Is it realistic to expect that this would go without mass protests – not just by the immigrants themselves – and continuous legal challenges from civil rights groups?

The mass protests would make Americans more pro-repatriation, not less, as evidenced by the subdued pro-illegal demonstrations this year after the political blowback from the protests the previous year. And considering how the US government doesn’t respect the rights of its actual citizens, I’m not terribly concerned about the nonexistent rights of non-citizens.

d) that it would undermine relations with the Mexican and other Latin American governments. You appear not to care about this in the slightest, which is nice for you but not much use for actual politicians who have to think about these things. Is it realistic to expect that those governments will simply accept such an operation?

Yes. What is Mexico going to do, threaten to invade us?

e) that from a logistical perspective this is a huge operation not just because of the size but because of the scope. Contrary to what you believe, the logistics of mass deportation (or repatriation, for that matter) are not just a question of awarding contracts – you’re dealing with a huge number of actual people who generally don’t co-operate when their livelihoods are under threat. Oh, it’s possible to deport them piecemeal, which is what is being done right now – 6 million of them between 2001 and 2006 – but is it realistic to expect the government to sweep the country, when they can’t even track the displaced from Hurricane Katrina?

They’re not even trying to track the displaced, that’s irrelevant. As numerous folks have pointed out, we probably wouldn’t have to repatriate one million, as most illegals will head home before getting picked up.

f) that the basic reason why immigrants arrive in the US is to work. You have nothing to say about this, except to let everybody fume about how they’re coming in and using the resources of a welfare system that you don’t even agree with. Is it realistic to expect them to stop trying to come to the US by whatever means they have available?

I don’t care why they came here, that’s irrelevant. They are here where they have, quite literally, no right to be. There’s no shortage of illegals who don’t work, if they were working then they wouldn’t be on welfare or in public schools. We can probably get half of the 12 million to go home simply by refusing to provide social services to them.

Completely eliminating the welfare system is an excellent idea, we can nail two or more birds with that single stone. I have no doubt that the US military is perfectly capable of defending the nation’s borders if it is commanded to do so, if it isn’t, we might as well retroactively surrender to Japan and Germany.

John Derbyshire quite liked Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle:

A novel stands or falls by the pleasure it gives to the thoughtful and attentive reader. By that standard, and setting aside the minor blemishes noted above, the Baroque Cycle is a very fine work of popular fiction. The more you know about math, logic, and computing, the more you will find in it; but any reader who, at a bare minimum, does not mind mathematical and technological topics will find something. If you have been wondering whether you should tackle Neal Stephenson’s three big volumes, I urge you to do so.

So did I. I don’t know if it’s quite as superficially entertaining as Cryptonomicon, but it’s a more impressive literary feat and one that I suspect will eventually come to be considered his masterwork… unless we’re fortunate enough to see him again surpass himself.

I thought Liverpool outplayed the rossoneri tonight, but you can never count out Pippo, the ultimate fox in the box. It was a great move by Ancelotti to start him tonight; I was delighted when Juventus let him go a few years back and I never understood why he was so underutilized in Euro 2004 and the last World Cup.

The second goal, a lovely little through pass from Kaka, was straight playground calcio and Inzaghi’s slow, rolling finish put an excruciating end to a decent match. Rise was a step offside on the final goal, but it was a good no-call and didn’t matter anyhow.

Courtesy of that famous historical black college alumnus, Bane:

My colleagues and I were witnessing the result of low admission standards. Were we expecting too much of young people who scored poorly on the SAT, who were rarely challenged to excel in high school, who were not motivated to take advantage of opportunities to learn, who could not imagine where a sound education could take them?

An unfortunate truth was that most of my colleagues and I never got an opportunity to teach the breadth of our knowledge. I had great difficulty, for example, teaching something as simple as the distinction between “historic” and “historical” or between “infer” and “imply, ” distinctions that careful writers, especially journalists, want to know.

I wasn’t the only one. A white professor labored to get her students to critically read the assignments. She could not discuss the major themes and literary conventions when her students did not read. When she got nowhere with Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, she asked me to speak to the class. Perhaps a black professor would have more success talking about one of the best-known black authors.

A few minutes into my exchange with the class, I realized the white professor was not the problem. The students simply did not – or could not – read closely….

The majority of my students in the English class failed to complete most of the assigned readings. Most of their essays were unacceptable, and attendance was low. I had a choice: Abandon my syllabus or flunk more than half of the class.

I abandoned the syllabus.

Of course he did. Because he’s an educator. I was amused by Dr. Helen’s and Ann Althouse’s concern that there are are fewer and fewer men attending college these days. BFD! One will learn more by spending $1,000 at Amazon and reading for six months than one will by spending $150,000 and four years at an Ivy League university.

Sure, college degrees are required now for a lot of jobs. But that’s only going to last as long as it takes for businesses to realize that clueless HR departments who use pieces of paper in place of a demonstration of competence to be a fundamental structural problem that prevents them from hiring the most capable employees.

And if you’re genuinely capable, doesn’t it make more sense to pick up a piece of paper from an Internet paper mill for a few hundred dollars instead of blowing four years to get a more recognizable piece of paper?

St. Paul of the Good Fraters indulges in some righteous Schadenfreude:

If it’s one thing I hate, it’s sports guys popping off about politics. I read sports as a refuge from the constant conservative beat down that is the front page and most MSM political reporting. Plus sports guys typically don’t know squat about anything besides sports. They’re idiots, only feeling the need to talk about politics because they’re bored with a job that typically takes them about 1 hour per day to finish up. And finally, they’re always Democrats…

The Celtics FALL 3 positions to number 5, out of the Durant/Oden jackpot! Take that Simmons! It will be a pleasure to read his suffering for at least another half decade of Celtic futility. My work here is done.

I quite like the Sports Guy, and I like Dr. Z and Peter King, but the way they all occasionally take shots at the Republican Party is both annoying and unprofessional. And I’m no Republican.

Keep politics off the sports page.

Are there any regulars here who attended the academy? I’m interested in obtaining a description of the course program for the four years there. I’m also interested in knowing how pilots are sorted into their various occupations.

Mara Liasson poses a stumper:

Critics of the bill as amnesty have to answer the question, What would you do with all the illegal immigrants here if you’re not going to deport them all?

Um, deport them all. I find it amusing that the anti-American pro-migrationists continue to assume that no one wants to deport them all. There’s certainly a lot more people that want to deport every single illegal alien – and possibly more than a few of the legal ones – then want to continue occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.

Perhaps it’s time to contemplate a single-issue anti-migration party. Once America is assured of remaining America, we can then argue over what America should do. Because otherwise, Republicans and Democrats are opening up the discussion to Mexicans and a myriad of other alien voices.

As you read this, do keep in mind that Merkur is the one accusing me of “feeble semantic evasions”:

“It’s true, you never said any such thing. What you said was that the two other bloggers said it couldn’t be done without killing people. Obviously a complete strawman! I stand corrected.”

Thank you. Unfortunately I didn’t specifically support their arguments – I said it couldn’t be done without a disregard for their lives and dignity. I also didn’t say that the two other bloggers said it, and only one of them actually said it, and that was IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EXAMPLE THAT YOU GAVE. So unfortunately your strawman still stands.

Yes, there’s a massive distinction between “disregard for lives” and “considering the costs in human lives” and “killing people”. It’s almost as big as the difference between the synonyms “impossible” and “unrealistic” that Merkur was previously complaining about. Of course, if one does not kill people, THEN THE COST IN HUMAN LIVES IS ZERO. Because I only referred to the one other blogger who Merkur admits made the statement, not only is there no strawman, it raises real questions about whether Merkur even understands what a strawman argument is.

Merkur’s quibbling is particularly stupid because what the other blogger was saying was that there is no other way to deport large numbers of people WITHOUT DOING IT IN THE CONTEXT of the Nazi example, without doing it in the murderous way that the Nazis and Communists did. I not only rejected that contention from the very start, but have even cited current examples that prove it to be false. Of course, once I cited the Iranian example that proved my case, Merkur began distancing himself from the very statements he has been defending and quoting and echoing, though apparently not “specifically supporting”, from the start.

Allow me to demonstrate the vacuity of your feeble semantic evasions. It has been empirically proven that a man can pole vault 6.14m – would it be impossible for “Vox Day” to pole vault 6.14m? Clearly not; with a high level of commitment, focused through an intensive training schedule, with the right conditions in place, it has been demonstrated that it is physically possible for “Vox Day” to do this. Is it realistic to expect “Vox Day” to pole vault 6.14m? Absolutely not; he is highly unlikely to be able to commit to this task, would probably not be able to fulfil such an intensive training, and cannot depend on the right conditions being in place. So it is possible, but it is unrealistic.

I shall certainly allow him to demonstrate away, as by doing so Merkur provides a nice analogy to show how he is dancing madly away in an attempt to avoid having to provide an answer.

The question I asked was not whether “Vox Day” could be realistically expected to pole vault 6.14m, but HOW HIGH CAN “VOX DAY” BE REALISTICALLY EXPECTED TO POLE VAULT? This is the answer that Merkur has repeatedly refused to answer, because he knows that doing so will destroy the last vestiges of his argument. We already know that we are currently pole-vaulting the equivalent of 110cm without even trying, we know that the Iranians are currently pole-vaulting the equivalent of 3.36cm, so how high can we realistically be expected to vault?

Merkur won’t answer.

Moreover, the pole vault is an imperfect analogy because the height has to be surmounted in a single go. Deportation is more akin to lowering the bar by the height of the bar cleared previously. So “Vox Day” doesn’t have to pole-vault 6.14m, he only has to vault 3.1m twice, which is less than the Iranians have already managed. Or 1.5m four times.

I’m not evading the question, because there isn’t a question to evade. Practical issues do have practical answers, “Vox”, but you don’t seem to understand the practical implications of mass deportation. Your risible proposal to hire a lot of buses as if that’s the only component of a mass deportation scheme shows that you have little to no understanding of what you’re talking about.

“There isn’t a question to evade.” That’s not just evasion, it’s an outright lie. Of course there are other practical issues. There always are. The aliens have to be identified. The bus drivers have to be hired. The contracts for provisioning the buses have to be awarded. Congress doesn’t even have to pass a law, it merely has to leave the states and localities alone to do what they want. But all of these issues are easily resolved in theory, and in any case, Merkur characteristically avoids spelling out what he believes to be the practical implications he mentions. It’s so much easier to simply assert that I don’t understand the complexity of logistics, which should provide regulars who were here two summers ago no little amusement.

Since Merkur so enjoys picking nits, I’ll note that I never said anything about hiring buses, but rather proved that the government could afford to PURCHASE 80,000 expensive 12-passenger luxury coaches, complete with sleeping berths and TV lounges, for less money than they are currently losing on the illegal alien tax-benefit delta in a single year.

It is possible, it isn’t realistic, and in most cases it does require an approach which disregards the lives and dignity of the deportees. The reason it is unrealistic is not because it is logistically impossible, but because to carry it out would require certain conditions to be in place which are simply not in place – just like a pole-vaulting Vox.

I first note Merkur attempts to sneak a weaselly insinuation that human lives are somehow at stake despite his awareness that they’re not. And obviously, we’ll avoid the “most cases” that require disregarding “the lives and dignity” of the deportees and utilize one of the cases which he admits do not. Although I suppose that an approach which involves comfy coaches and catering might lead to a risk of increased heart disease; perhaps we should equip the TV lounges with a PS/2 and a DDR dancepad too.

However to ask such a question would only compound the vacuity of your reasoning – for it is not a question of what is physically possible, but a question of whether you would even pick up the pole to begin with.

Merkur here is referring to the “certain conditions which are simply not in place”, which involves the politicians currently in office. But this brings us full circle, since the entire discussion began with George Bush’s declaration that the deportation of 12 million illegals was “unrealistic”. Merkur’s argument boils down to a tautology: our politicians say we can’t deport aliens because our politicians say we can’t. Brilliant stuff, clearly it’s way over the average individual’s capacity to comprehend, let alone mine. If mass deportation of criminals is “unrealistic” as long as George Bush is in the White House and anti-American politicians control the House and Senate, whatever could the solution to that intractable problem possibly be?

So, last chance, Merkur. You’ve avoided answering the question twice already. You’ve split hairs, lied and made demonstrably false accusations. You’ve been empirically proven conclusively wrong. Now, you have three choices. You can either admit you’re wrong on this issue and survive to fight the next one, you can answer the question of how high “Vox Day” can be realistically expected to vault and list those practical implications that show my lack of understanding, or you can go away.

I don’t really care which option you choose, but don’t bother with any more evasions, obfuscations and accusations, they’ll simply be deleted.