links for 2008-12-27

• As Duties Weigh Obama Down, His Faith in Fitness Only Increases
  It's a schedule he started as a 22-year-old student at Columbia University in New York, and it immediately transformed him. In his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama said he was a casual drug user and an underachiever until he decided to start running three miles each day. He stopped staying out late, fasted on Sundays and became a voracious reader, spending most of his time alone in his apartment reading classic literature and philosophical texts. Physical fitness yielded mental fitness, Obama decided, and the two concepts have been married in his mind ever since.
  (tags: Obama fitness)