Jillian Michaels - Yoga Meltdown

Crossposted from sun_salutation.

I have recently been on a kick of "fusion" type DVDs, so I thought I'd review a few as a theme.

First, the most "yoga" of the three.

Jillian Michaels – Yoga Meltdown. Includes two thirty-minute routines.

I bought it several weeks ago at Costco, all you Costco shoppers, for about $8.00.

After thinking about this, I would call this a "fusion," because Ms. Michael's approach to yoga has a very strong emphasis on using it as strength training by way of body weight resistance. And she adds cardio. A word of warning to the beginner, yoga postures are used as the tool for body weight resistance, but the postures *are not* taught. I cannot emphasize that enough. If you are newer to yoga, you will want to use an instructional video first, or at the very least watch this video on fast forward, pausing to see how the postures are executed before trying to actually do the workout

( Workout content first, DVD review after )

Oh, Texas...

Oh, Texas. You poor thing.

Everybody knows Texas has recently updated their history textbook standards, right? The committee that did the changes felt that the Left is too strong in academia and has taken education to liberal extremes. The committee was NOT a committee of educators. There was a dentist, a real estate agent (who bets you cannot find separation of church and state in the Constitution and promises you $1000 to the charity of choice if you can show him where it is. I shit you not.), some other people.

One of the items they are changing: "The standards will refer to the U.S. government as a 'constitutional republic,' rather than 'democratic...'"

It is so pathetic, I can't even get mad about it. They couldn't differentiate between "democratic," democracy, and the Democratic Party. Clearly they do need a change in their education system, because their clear inability to tell these things apart speaks of a serious failure on the part of Texas education.

Yes, Texas, the rest of us meanie, AP History, overly-intellectual types are laughing our asses off at you as you struggle with your placement exams with confused little faces. We would help you, but that would be cheating.

Seriously. I have not been able to shake this ever since I heard about it, and it continues to crack me up every time I hear it.

It would make me angry if it weren't SO transparent.



Quote is from Foxnews.com (http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/21/state-board-education-adopts-new-social-studies-history-guidelines-texas-high/)