Doesn't just seeing Anthony Hopkins make you feel warm and fuzzy?

One individual wanted to get into contact with another commenter, and so I helped him do so, and he also supplied me with some more information about Ingram.

Apparently, the guy that left a comment about having lunch with George in Chicago sparked the interest of the gentleman I was in contact with. According to him, George is violating the terms of his probation and he should still be under house arrest in San Antonio, TX.

He also led me to this write-up on George Ingram III in an oil industry newspaper. It's very revealing to say the least, but you'll have to pay five bucks if you want to read it. It discusses his attempt to take control of Petroecuador, Ecuador's state-run oil company, through some sort of ridiculous scheme where he would put 'no money down.' He also made very ambitious claims regarding potential future increases in oil production. Of course, if the deal went through, Ingram's Denver-based company Global Intelligence Corporation would receive a $155-mil contract to provide "data systems [based on] secretive decision software software supposedly in use by the US Department of Defense."

Central to all of his schemes are his ready promises of vast amounts of cash. However, this is cash that he doesn't have access to at the moment - because according to him it is tied up in illiquid foreign investments.

At least two Ingram relatives say his claims of great wealth and secretive government links are pure fantasy... "There was no big inheritance," says one cousin: "It's a fairy tale. The whole family is mystified."

"He's one of the biggest liars ever created, or he's a man of incredible means," says Texas lawyer Edward Watt. Watt won a $50,0000 judgement against Ingram in 2003 for unpaid legal bills, despite elaborate counter-claims Ingram raised, and lost. Watt says he does not expect to be paid, convinced Ingram is un-collectable.

MF Smith blasted [Ingram's claims of great wealth in his chapter 11 bankruptcy filing] as "incomplete, inconsistent, and unverifiable" and noted Ingram did not own a car, could not pay the $850 bankruptcy filing fee and his house had been foreclosed in 2000. "What is an individual with a net worth of $1.7-bil doing in bankruptcy?"

Edward C. Bahl

One commenter named 'Denis Robinson' with an e-mail address tied to globalintelcorp.com is most likely Ingram himself. Global Intelligence Corporation (GIC) is the fraud shell company that Ingram set up in order to facilitate the 'investments' he attempts to con out of people. The most amusing part as far as I am concerned is that the company purports to be an expert in 'Business Intelligence' - something I know more about than I would like.

This 'Denis Robinson' attempts to slag the name of a one Edward C. Bahl, who apparently was just another one of George's victims, along with such information-age stalwarts as Verizon and IBM.

Verizon was never paid [for funding a Global Intelligence Corporation operation] and the hardware disappeared. Ingram blamed his employees for stealing, says Edward Bahl, whose firm was stuck wtih $100,000 in unpaid consultant billings. . . "I should have known then that Ingram was a fraud," says Bahl, who went on to help Ingram found GIC in Denver, funding much of that development by maxing out his own credit cards. Ingram blames Bahl for GIC's downfall.

Ingram is often lucky in that his victims would rather not admit to their being conned out of lock, stock, and barrel and thus sometimes do not file formal complaints.

Oh yea, what about good old American PureTex Water Corporation that had such big plans to open the 'World's Largest Bottled Water Plant' in Texas?

PureTex's only "asset," says Bahl, may be the gold-plated board Ingram persuaded to lend their names to the venture. They have included former Space Shuttle pilot and Marine Gen. Charles Bolden, ex-NASA Johnson Space Center head George Abbey, president Michael Frazier of Houston Investment bank Simmons & Co, and Fulbright & Jaworski law partner Howard Wolf.

White Collar Psychopath? (a clinical definition)

some consider the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be a dyed-in-the-wool psychopath

My article on George Ingram III has been one of my favorite bits of this website to date. It was just a random and idle afternoon that led me to post the story, but little did I know about the effect that this slimy individual has had on people.

Commenter after commenter has come out of the woodwork to tell us about the lies and shady deals that George Ingram has perpetrated. Interestingly, it would appear that George Ingram himself has now commented on my story about him.

It appears George left a huge pile of pure hogwash under the name of 'mhjacks2' - an obvious attempt at appearing to be the author of the website. Note the title of the comment 'I was wrong about George'. Who is this guy trying to fool?

so why do I think it's George himself?

When I looked to see the e-mail attached to this comment that attempts to do damage control, it was gx.ingram@georgeingram.net!!

Here is a link to the WHOIS query for georgeingram.net - it's not very informative. Private registration under 1&1 Internet, Inc. located in Chesterbrook, PA.

The lengths this guy will go to are amazing. Nice try Georgie-boy. Spamming my comments will get you nowhere, except perhaps an IP ban if you get really annoying.

If you're interested in this article, also be sure to check out Increase your bench-press with just push-ups

The title of this entry is what someone typed into Google to get to my website approximately eleven minutes ago.

The short answer is: yes.

The long answer is: no more so than any other associated exercise.

All of the truly great weightlifting wisdom is regards to increasing your maximum for a given exercise comes from the power-lifters and strong-men of the world. The articles archives at the Westside-Barbell site offer a wealth of information on this topic. Interestingly, if you read deep into the power-lifter literature, you will find a deep core of Soviet strength training principles - but without the 'roids.

In reality, everything you really need to know about strength training was discovered long ago. If you want a huge power-to-weight ratio, become a male gymnast. Many of those exercises have been around for as long as we have. Past that point, if your goal is to get immensely strong, follow the principles laid down by classic strongmen. Steroid abuse and the marketing of fitness have led to a glut of misinformation surrounding a topic that was clearly understood in earlier 20th century literature.

so what about my bench press?

Well, what do you mean by bench-press? Your form will determine the maximal weight you will carry. There are also two main schools of bench-press form. The power-lifters advocate a whole-body approach that is actually quite complicated to learn. However, it allows for maximal lifts. The other is what you're likely familiar with - a form that focuses mainly on working the shoulder and chest structure.

Depending upon which form you choose to work on, different exercises will yield different performance boosts. Please note that if you choose to focus on the 'body-builder' type of bench press, you will not be able to achieve your true maximum.

Mainly this involves understanding what muscle groups are in play at particular points in the exercise; to what extent they are activated throughout the lift.

Westside barbell advocates a very nuts-and-bolts journaling methodology in order to improve your maximums. If your goal is to increase your maximums this is the only way to guarantee consistent and efficient results. They focus on one to three rep maximums in their bench press routines in order to get your form and nerves ready to handle the requirements.

However, they do not just do bench presses to increase their bench numbers - something implied by our savvy Google searcher - but rather they focus on the idea of General Physical Preparedness (GPP) and auxiliary exercises. I like to think of GPP as making your engine bigger - these are the exercises that will grow big, strong muscles. Think heavy-duty peasant laborer work.

Did you know that your lats are actually a very important muscle for doing bench press if you have good form? Weak triceps are also a frequent reason for missed maximums - have you ever just not been able to push the bar up the last couple inches to lockout? Obviously, doing bench presses over and over again is not going to fix this problem. You need to be doing skull crushers and bent-over rows.

Maybe your issue is that your left arm is weaker - maybe you should do some dumbbell presses. Maybe you just need to have more endurance because your training sessions aren't lasting long enough. Time to pull a couple hundred pound weight sled and work on your GPP. Maybe your forearms are just too weak and you need to use hammers to work on your grip strength.

and maybe push-ups will help you because...

1. your back and abs are too weak to support a good bench and pushups with good form firm you up
2. you do lots of push-up reps and thereby gain GPP
3. you do diamond pushups with elevated feet to work on your triceps
4. it hits your sweet spot for gains

Go forth and prosper.

I currently work in an extremely specialized industry. When people ask what I do, I usually just say I'm in the IT field. But I don't deal with information technology as a whole - I simply deal with one small part of it. I deal with data-warehousing and business intelligence. But further more, I am even further specialized in my areas of expertise regarding data-warehousing practice: I work mainly with a single, proprietary tool used for these purposes called 'Informatica'.

So, when my computer breaks do I fix it myself? No, I end up calling tech support just like any other asshole (this is partially due to the BS 'common operating environment' and loads of annoyance-ware that HP puts on my computer, but that is neither here nor there).

Supposedly the reason I'm not supposed to fix my computer is because of the efficiency produced by 'division of labor' (from Wikipedia):

Division of labour is the specialisation of cooperative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and roles, intended to increase efficiency of output. Historically the growth of a more and more complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialisation processes.

Division of labor is what results for the 'cog in the machine' experience that I'm sure we've all had at some point or another. If you read the aforementioned Wikipedia article, we find that several economists and sociologists feel the same way about the division of labor, even Adam Smith who is easily seen as viewing the division of labor as an economic engine, wrote that division of labor could lead to 'mental mutilation' of workers. As I'm sure you can imagine, folks like Karl Marx have an even dimmer view of the whole matter.

Ludvig Von Mises, an influential Austrian economist, absolutely loves the division of labor. According to Mises:

The greater productivity of work under the division of labor is a unifying influence. It leads men to regard each other as comrades in a joint struggle for welfare, rather than as competitors in a struggle for existence. It makes friends out of enemies, peace out of war, society out of individuals.

Civilization is a product of leisure and the peace of mind that only the division of labour can make possible.

Every expansion of the personal division of labor brings advantages to all who take part in it.

It is an illusion to believe that one can maintain productivity and reduce the division of labor.

Division of labor has a lot of things going for it. At a certain point, it almost seems like an increasing division of labor is requisite for an ever-expanding economy. You're simply imagining things if you think about it any other way, at least according to Mises.

However, it seems fairly obvious that the further one increases the division of labor, the further the isolation of workers becomes, despite Mises being apparently of the opinion that the 'alienation' of workes is a purely romantic concept.

A vast array of employment possibilities, that increasingly represent large investments of time and effort towards education, further increase the anxiety that workers experience when attempting to determine which cog is theirs to turn. This is alienation of a type far beyond what Marx was ever speaking about. His workers at least could see the machines they happened to be manipulating. Today's information worker simply describes a particular 'state' that may get applied to a particular decision-ish apparatus depending upon the 'states' that others have provided. The worker may not even work on a whole piece of a 'state'. In this super-attenuated condition, why would we not expect a degree of dissolution on the part of our laborers?

Furthermore, their plight is confounded by the fact that their superiors are rewarded with the control over the division of labor. This leaves the day-to-day existence of a modern managed worker to forces largely beyond their control; either quit and figure something else out, or weasel and work your way up until you have more control over your own destiny. In my experience this can turn in on itself and stifle innovation, enthusiasm, and workforce integration.

There also seems to me that there is another argument against promoting the utmost degree of specialization; narrow boundaries of inquiry result in narrow solutions. One could analyze this with a Marxist slant. Keep the proles subjugated by limiting their worldview. Typically, the further you go up the chain of management, the more control is present over the division of labor, and therefore it is more likely that these persons possess skills of a much more generic nature. Based on the fact the most of the world's movers and shakers spend most of their time simply reading to generate new ideas, and analyzing the 'state' of the world, rather than the 'state' of a cash register or its software, limiting yourself to a particular specialty is even more limiting than it initially appears.

Personally, I believe that division of labor is inevitable. Some times, in some instances, it will be simply more efficient for one person to do something than another. While I am not concerned about the existence of specialization, I am concerned about how it is managed. Furthermore, I believe that the rank-and-file worker needs to have more control over the division of labor in their immediate surroundings, else they are left feeling alienated and 'mentally mutilated'.

I would like it recognized that specialization to the degree that we see in certain industries such as manufacturing or technology, is a vulnerability that is thrust onto the worker. The businesses that employ specialized workers do not bear the worker's cost of specialization - namely the possibility of skill and knowledge obsolescence.

It is a fool's game for the modern knowledge worker to assume that specialization is a key to success, despite it being a key to success for the global economy. The greatest rewards will always go to those that are able to 'connect the dots' and transcend the boundaries that the division of labor produces.

Our educational institutions recognize this issue - that is why there is an abundance of interdisciplinary programs like the 'Animate Arts' degree that I received. I believe we should promote as minimal a division of labor is as possible and efficient - true innovation frequently happens when the boundaries that create such efficiency are compromised.

Update #5: Here is my latest write-up on the continuing saga of George Warren Ingram III.

Update #4: George Ingram himself appears to have spammed the comment board for this article.

Update #3: A new comment has been left that attempts to pretend to be written by the author of this website. I have flagged this comment as untrustworthy and have not deleted it so that people can see the lengths that frauds and hucksters will go to in order to further their criminal ambitions.

Apparently he IS Googling himself, and attempting to do damage control.

Update #2: You have to read the comments section! This guy is over-the-top, and all sorts are coming out of the woodwork to leave their two cents.

Update: when read in the context of the rest of the story, this article at the Sealy News is very interesting, amusing, and illuminating.

it starts innocently enough

Today while eating my lunch, I was idly reading a New York Times article regarding our love of air travel and against my lack of better judgment I began digging into the comments section. One in particular caught my eye. I think I noticed it simply because of the enumerated name that comprised its signature. It was by one George Ingram the Third. He happened to sign his message like so:

Googling someone for no good reason

For no good reason, I decided to perform a google search on his name.

The first result was some site about an operatic tenor. Obviously this was not our George Ingram. Our George Ingram has a distinct businessman tone; he's been flying on airplanes for thirty-plus years and knows just how much it sucks.

From his comment (in regards to air travel):

After you do that for 30 years (shorter time if your smart unlike me), you realize what a waste of your time, and resources belonging to others.

The second result for George Ingram III was total pay dirt! This has got to be the guy.

Mr. Ingram is a native of Houston, Texas. Mr. Ingram is a graduate of Texas A & M University with a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering in 1970, and has completed advanced studies at George Washington University in Integrated Defense Systems. He has received awards and been recognized for his contributions to science and engineering by the National Science Foundation, the National Society on Aging, the National Society of Professional Engineers, the American Society of Actuary Scientists, and was named Young Engineer of the Year, by the Texas Society of Professional Engineers, San Jacinto Chapter in Houston. In addition, he has been the recipient of numerous awards for his work in developing technologies in the area of numerical simulation, magneto-hydrodynamics, global economic forecasting, electronic warfare, and counter electronic warfare.

Mr. Ingram has over 30 years of business experience in the exploration, exploitation, and production of natural resources world wide. He currently does business in 35 countries in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and South America. His principle operating interests in those countries are in Strategic Metals, and Oil & Gas. Mr. Ingram is the Chairman of Ingram Holding Company (China), Investore Companies, and Minera Zenon S.A. de C.V., and their many subsidiaries & affiliates.

That's gotta be him. He is a distinguished international businessman and also a respected contributor to the military-industrial complex. Looks like we really found a stand-up guy here. Check out the picture and his poo-eating grin! I wanted to draw an arrow towards his mouth with the message 'POO GOES HERE' on the picture, but I restrained myself.

What next for George Ingram III?

Then we get to the third search result. I was totally floored by this one. Wanted by U.S. marshals - George Warren INGRAM III (Apprehended). WHAT?! What's the chances that I pick someone with such an interesting Google?¹

Included in that PDF link is a mugshot of Mr. Ingram. Exact same guy that is a distinguished engineer and businessman apparently was apprehended by the US Marshals. At first I thought this PDF mugshot was a joke. The poses and smiles in the two pictures are exactly the same, and it's not hard to imagine that the mugshot was just an altered version of the first photograph.

I think that this release from the US Marshal service settles my doubts. According to the release (emphasis added):

San Antonio – George Warren Ingram III made his living out of conning other people out of their hard earned money. On December 22, 2006, the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force put Ingram out of business.

The Lone Star Fugitive Task Force, led by the United States Marshals Service in the Western District of Texas, was asked by member agency the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office to apprehend Ingram. Ingram was wanted for a state probation violation stemming from an original charge of theft of service, $1,500.00 to $20,000.00.

Utilizing over 215 years of investigative techniques, the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force tracked Ingram to a suburb of Springfield, Illinois. The Lone Star Fugitive Task Force then contacted the United States Marshals Service’s Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force in Illinois.

On Friday afternoon officers from the Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force surrounded the residence Ingram had rented in Illinois. For three hours officers tried to make contact with Ingram who was inside the residence. Finally the Task Force officers made a forced entry. Ingram refused to comply with officers’ demands and resisted arrest.

Ingram was charged with resisting arrest and faces potential charges for fraud in Illinois.

Pure internet gold! I'm pretty sure this is all the same guy, and I just happened to Google someone with a distinctive name that happened to leave their real name in a comment on a New York Times op-ed article.

So what's George Ingram III's deal anyways?

The best I've been able to find regarding the whole thing is an excerpt of an article from Plastics News, titled Ex-PureTex chief fighting extradition. (PureTex Water Corp.)(George Warren Ingram III) that you can buy from a few different places, but I'm not about to buy the article. I don't have enough invested in this guy. Here's the excerpt, which fills in the basics when combined with the 'WANTED' poster from the U.S. Marshals.

An ambitious plan to establish a large Texas water-bottling business needs new financial backing after the major backer resigned as chairman amid multiple legal problems.

American PureTex Water Corp. was aiming to begin construction this month on its first vertically integrated bottling and distribution facility, near Eagle Lake, Texas, but that will not happen. George Warren Ingram III, a 59-year-old who was founding chairman of Lincoln, Ill.-based PureTex, is battling efforts to have him extradited to Texas.

Ingram, a secretive figure in the oil...

So basically we can assume this guy ran out of money to back his water bottling plant in Texas, which according to the PureTex website was to be the "WORLD's LARGEST BOTTLED WATER PLANT".

Well apparently he fled to Lincoln, IL after stealing up to $20k worth of services. I assume he just stopped paying the guys who were building his plant. Shame.

can you trust a Republican?

Amusingly, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Distinction on September 24, 2006. He was apprehended by U.S. Marshals on December 22, 2006 - just three months later. They had to bust his door down because he wouldn't come out! It's probably kind of stupid to add resisting arrest to your charges if all you got is $20k worth of service theft. This guy is supposed to be an intelligent and respectful member of the military-industrial community complex, but he can't even not resist arrest when he's not really facing that big a charge? This is after he makes a federal crime out of the whole thing because he had to be a jerk-off and cross state lines. Of course, I'm sure he has good lawyers.

Seems like the Congressional Medal of Distinction from the Republican Party is pretty hollow.

Mr. Ingram was selected based on unyielding support of the Republican Party, outstanding leadership in business and contributions to the local economies in the United States. Only an elite group of business and professional people were nominated to receive the award before the awards selection committee reached a final decision. Commenting on Mr. Ingram’s selection, Congressman Reynolds said, “Mr. Ingram has served as Honorary Chairman of the Business Advisory Council and has provided much needed support. This award could not have gone to a more deserving candidate.”

Just three months before he's apprehended by U.S. Marshals! It doesn't get any better than that.

It's too bad, because the bottled water plant would have created 380 sustainable jobs apparently. Amusingly, from the same article:

American PureTex Water Corporation is a privately held concern owned by natural resource conservationists that understand the long term importance of safe clean high quality drinking water.

Wow that's even better. If this guy was really a community leader and he really wants to help people, he would realize that bottled water is ultimately a wasteful pursuit. If the money spent on bottled water went into managing our water supplies, it'd start being the bottled water that's bad for you. As it is, only the minimum amount of water treatment is performed in this country. Maybe he should use his politico-industrial clout to tighten up water treatment standards. Nah, that's too sensible, and he's gotta make a living for chrissake!

You gotta wonder, does he Google himself?

an achievement-oriented mindset

Ever since I was a little kid, I've liked to learn new things. I tend to have a lot of interests, and like most people, my interests mutate over time. Very frequently, they loop back around, but some times it can take a while.

Because of my proclivities, I end up forcing myself to learn new things. Recently, I learned quite a bit more than I ever expected to about physics simulations, C++, and using OpenGL. Learning new things sometimes just for the sake of learning is something I've always been very passionate about.

I've learned that the attitude I've always had when learning new things seems to be part and parcel of an important psychological construct: the achievement-oriented mindset. You can read an excellent synopsis of the phenomenon in this Scientific American article.

It boils down to the fact that people who believe that they can improve on their skills and abilities through sustained, concentrated effort do better in various measures of achievement. On the other hand, people that believe intelligence and abilities are innate, fixed qualities, simply give up before they even have a chance to learn something.

Granted, it's kind of silly they had to perform empirical research in order to quantify this situation, but it's nice to know that something I've understood intuitively for years has some research backing it up.

personal development literature- useful for fostering an achievement-oriented mindset?

It seems to me that most of the literature about personal development/self-help are simply a bunch of different strategies to get around to developing an achievement-oriented mindset. They then wrap this very basic piece of information around heuristics that make most peoples' lives easier; waking up early or surrounding yourself with a 'peer group that will hold you accountable' - part of one of Tony Robbins' 'pillars' apparently. Is that like one of the Pillars of Islam? Probably not.

If you have any self-help or personal development books, I would say that's a sad waste of money. One great, classic coming-of-age novel or an autobiography of a successful person (by your own definition) has scads more 'personal development' material that's way more applicable and actionable than what you'd find in the best ten percent of the most prolific personal development writer's canon.

academic research and the rhizome at work

Write down your goals. Track your progress towards them. Figure out what stands between you and your goal. Whoop-dee-fricking-doo. Really this sort of behavior just makes me think that these 'self-help gurus' are simply just living out a particular type of life story. My former professor Dan McAdams outlines a personality type in his book The Person: A New Introduction to Personality Psychology that seems awfully similar to the personality types these goo-roos seem to possess. They're these very outwardly-focused individuals that tend to have a lot of intensity and energy. The ones that McAdams profiled also frequently spent a lot of their time working to better their communities. I hear the same thing come from self-help gurus: pay it forward, help others because by helping others you help yourself, use willpower to break through barriers blah blah.

McAdams researched these people in a relatively simple fashion; he would have them recount their life stories. McAdams believes that a person's own narrative of their life is the key to understanding them. McAdams had an assistant of some kind that was working with him on the study that had no idea what the study was about, and she had to interact with these people each day. For a while, McAdams only sent her people with these outwardly-focused and very intense personalities. When he started sending her just random people, she remarked to him about how she really liked the new people much better because they were much more normal, cordial, and laid-back!

closing the book on personal development

I would posit that self-help and personal development gurus can only assist you if you fit a relatively narrow set of criteria. I would also say that it's almost one hundred percent certain that if their thoughts can assist you then you don't really need their ideas. You are perfectly capable of coming up with your own ways to write down your goals and achieve them. It's astounding, I know. You can thank me later.

More or less, it seems to me that the gurus of personal development are simply following the path of their biological personality imperative. The chicken and egg relationship is very apparent.

Of course, if you're just a dullard and not particularly creative, they deserve to make money off of you. Get your ass to the bookstore, but I'd always recommend something with a little more substance.