Saturday, April 16, 2011
Doug Stanhope on "How To Deal With The Royal Wedding."
Something else to try... - "Jack Daniel's Launches Tennessee Honey."
...during this summer's stateside sojourn, along with Adult Chocolate Milk and the Bacon Explosion. What is America about, if not overindulgence, I ask you?
Jack Daniel's Launches Tennessee Honey: First New Whiskey in a Generation:
Jack Daniel's Launches Tennessee Honey: First New Whiskey in a Generation:
"Jack Daniel's is about to roll out its first new expression in a generation: Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey.
The new libation starts with Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 and mingles it with a special honey liqueur. The result is a smoother, sweeter version of Jack that is just 70-proof."
2 wks from humanitarian aid to regime change - "Mission transformation in Libya."
Obama quotes. Within two weeks of one another. Unbelievable in the frustrating, hair-pulling sense, eminently believable in the "of course this is what they wanted and lie to us all the time" sense.
Mission transformation in Libya - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:
Mission transformation in Libya - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:
"'broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake' vs. 'so long as Gaddafi is in power, Nato and its coalition partners must maintain their operations.'"
Entitlement, sensitivity & world gone mad, indeed.
I'm of the seemingly increasingly unpopular opinion that no one can make you feel badly about yourself. Only your own emotional reaction to stimulus determines how you feel. "Sensitivity" to "offensive" comments removes all of your own power and places it in the hands of others - which I never understood, why you'd want to give your power to those you ostensibly disagree with - and how they "make" you feel. But only you can make you feel things. You can't control the world or others, all you can control is your own response.
Plus in terms of free speech and expression, things like this just piss me off.
It's a Mad, Mad World - Reason Magazine:
Plus in terms of free speech and expression, things like this just piss me off.
It's a Mad, Mad World - Reason Magazine:
"...In short, in response to a single, isolated act of vicarious offence-taking, where a woman who had not witnessed the dance routine decided on behalf of mentally ill people everywhere that a photograph of the dance routine was offensive, a university has banned said routine, censored the dancers, apologized, changed its rules on dance costumes, and stepped up its efforts to cleanse its students’ minds of allegedly insensitive, inappropriate thoughts about mentally ill people. I told you that the only word that could accurately describe these bizarre events is “mad.”
Why did a university so quickly and willingly genuflect to the complaints of one blogger? And why have media outlets across Chicago and elsewhere treated this weird episode as if it were perfectly normal? Chrisa Hickey, the blogger in question, gets all defensive when I ask her what she thinks about the impact of her complaint. “I surmise that you intend to write an article about how I am a soul-crushing busy-body,” she says (well, if the hat fits). But, she continues, “I never requested that the school censor or in any other way stop the team from dancing in whatever costumes they see fit.”
...Hickey does have a point: she didn’t explicitly demand censorship of the dancers and possible censorship of future routines. Instead, those things were offered up to her as a kind of sacrifice by RMU, with school officials desperately hoping they might appease the gods of sensitivity and media fury.
What Straitjacketgate really shows is the power of sensitivity today, its extraordinary influence over public life and freedom of expression. But this is a two-way process. It is not enough simply for someone to feel offended; there also must be spineless institutions willing to bow and scrape and promise never to do it again..."
Friday, April 15, 2011
"Ever wonder why the US military can’t win wars?" - frustrating & judgmental, but not inaccurate.
A former jarhead lays the smackdown on the military mindset and culture. Worth reading in full, at the link.
Fred On Everything:
Fred On Everything:
"Ever wonder why the US military can’t win wars? Why a few ragtag guerillas could send it running out of Somalia (Black Hawk Down)? Why one guy with a truck bomb could chase the Marines out of Lebanon? Why the attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran was such a disaster? Why the world’s most expensive military can’t win its unending wars against peasants with rifles? How is this possible?
...Suppose your boss told everyone in the office that they had to wear exactly the same clothes and stand at attention in the morning to that he could determine whether they had dressed themselves correctly. Militaries start with odd material.
Then they inculcate in themselves an exaggerated sense of their own powers, a sort of Terminator complex. This is done calculatedly in basic training when men are in impressionable late or, in the case of officers, extended adolescence. They absorb the notion of invincibility and it persists into adulthood.
Examples abound. When I was at Parris Island in a previous geological epoch, a large sign in Third Battalion conspicuously said, “The Most Dangerous Weapon in the World: A Marine with his Rifle.” This didn’t rise to the level of nonsense. Few Marines are as dangerous as a hydrogen bomb, and Marines in general are just pretty good light infantry, well-equipped as an expeditionary forces.
But you can’t tell fresh young troops, “You’re maybe a bit above average, but the Afghans are much tougher people, having been raised fighting and living on dried goat-meat, and they know the terrain, whereas you will have no idea where you are and your equipment and tactics are badly unsuited for the region, so it’s going to be hard slogging.” Not optimal for recruiting...
This preference for mood over reality runs through their careers. Constantly they are told that they are “the best trained, best equipped, most powerful and effective fighting force the world has seen.” This is not a statement of fact but of mandatory enthusiasm. The Pentagon’s record since WW II has been a sorry one. Further, effectiveness, training, and so on are relative to a particular situation: a force well-equipped for desert war against aging Iraqi armor is not necessarily equipped to fight guerrillas in Quang Tri or Helmand.
...The compulsory belief that they are the best-trained, best-equipped etc. elides quickly into the can-do-ism of the US military. A lieutenant does not say, “Colonel, this is a half-assed idea you have and isn’t going to work. Maybe you need to think a little more.” No. He says, “Yessir! Can do, sir!” Thus the glandular optimism of “Failure is not an option!” when since World War Two it has become the norm, and “There is no substitute for victory,” when losing and going home has proved serviceable, and, “The difficult we can do today; the impossible takes a little longer.” Agreeably cocky, stirring, mindless, and rampant in the Pentagon. “Sir! Yessir! Can do, sir!”"
Ancient Egyptians & bread, beer & honey [grains & sugar] = heart disease.
Scientific cognitive bias once again confounds and confuses the obvious.
Fat Head » Honey, My Mummy Had Heart Disease:
Fat Head » Honey, My Mummy Had Heart Disease:
"...Got that? The Egyptians ate more fruit and vegetables than we do, ate leaner meat and less of it, and were more active — but they were prone to heart disease, so this proves we should cut back red meat and try to be more active. Oh, and don’t forget to eat your fruits and vegetables.
Head. Bang. On. Desk.
...Here’s how one site describes the diet of the ancient Egyptians:
Bread was the staple diet of most Egyptians...
Beer was the national drink and was also made from barley...
But apparently, the real crowd-pleaser (and deity-pleaser) in ancient Egypt was honey, which was too expensive for the peasants, but a favorite among the royals..."
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Insightful/Fascinating - "the difference between the Latin and the Anglo..."
An interesting look at cultural differences... More at the link.
Fred On Everything:
Fred On Everything:
"...the difference between the Latin and the Anglo, the Protestant and the Catholic, the engineer and the painter, between the Nordic and the Italian. As you move northward through Europe, efficiency grows, orderliness rules, things feel scrubbed and well managed and comparatively there is much industriousness. At the same time color dies, the arts give way to practicality, emotion ebbs, leisure becomes suspect and the richness of life diminishes. Germany rules classical music of chill grandeur, and has oompah bands, but one cannot imagine a German writing Carmen. The condition becomes extreme in the US where the Protestant work ethic dominates, the view that labor is the purpose of life rather than just the means of paying for it.
On one hand, the northern peoples have produced almost alone the spectacular growth of science, technology, and industry from the Industrial Revolution to the present. The benefits have been enormous. On the other hand, the Italian Renaissance alone produced more of the arts, of painting, sculpture, and architecture than the northern, English-speaking world has yet managed. In the US, music has been way-a-a-y disproportionately the work of Jews, blacks, Cajuns, and Southerners who, like Latins, have been poor, inefficient, and artistically fertile.
For people raised in places settled by northern Europe, Latins seem lazy, their churches garish, their lesser concern with time and precision frustrating, their music wild and their celebrations chaotic. It is no accident that Carnival occurs in Rio, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and neither in Indianapolis. By contrast, to Latins America seems sterile, uncultured,weirdly driven, impersonal and, ultimately, boring, with its bland suburbs and emotional restraint. Take your pick..."
Training.
P90X D4 KenpoX
World Collide! Even the political blogs I read on getting on the paleo/primal kick. Cool. Living Freedom » Blog Archive » Work, health, silver hair, and other thoughts from the drywall wars:
World Collide! Even the political blogs I read on getting on the paleo/primal kick. Cool. Living Freedom » Blog Archive » Work, health, silver hair, and other thoughts from the drywall wars:
"...Nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, a little meat, a little dairy and some fermented foods (including plain Greek yogurt; thank you, Winston), and some healthful oils. A little wine now and then. Choose unprocessed over processed, as a general rule. Skip the “foodlike” crap. De-emphasize grains. Eliminate most refined sugars in your daily diet. Indulge in anything once in a while if your body can handle it. You might not live to be 100. But you’re more likely to love the years you have..."
“The modern epistemological methods are just not up to dealing with an elf..." - Terence Mckenna FTW.
Great mp3 of the talk by Mckenna, at the link.
Podcast 261 – “The Definitive UFO Tape”:
Podcast 261 – “The Definitive UFO Tape”:
"“The imagination is the golden pathway to everywhere.”
“The modern epistemological methods are just not up to dealing with an elf, with chattering, elf-infested spaces. I mean, we have a word for those spaces, we call it schizophrenia and slam the door. But, you know, these dimensions have been with us since ten thousand times longer than Freud. And people just have to come to terms with them.”
“But I think what’s being missed is that a whole dimension of communication is being ruled inadmissible as evidence simply because it doesn’t conform to the epistemological biases of the people who are asking the question. And that is all these voices in the head that guide shamans, that obsess lunatics, that make poetry, and in other words the muse. The muse is real. . . . Well one could talk endlessly about this subject, I suppose, but until it’s resolved all of man’s epistemological dealings with reality will be haunted by this faint spookiness, which can’t be gotten rid of.”"
Ontario sounds like a magical place - "...judge declares criminalization of pot unconstitutional."
Ontario judge declares criminalization of pot unconstitutional:
"...the Ontario Superior Court struck down two key parts of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act that prohibit the possession and production of pot.
The court declared the rules that govern medical marijuana access and the prohibitions laid out in Sections 4 and 7 of the act 'constitutionally invalid and of no force and effect' on Monday, effectively paving the way for legalization..."
The short answer is 'Yes, obviously.' - "Is it Time to Lower the Drinking Age?"
Glenn Reynolds on Lowering the Drinking Age - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine:
"It's simply pathetic that here we are in the 21st century - a time of Hover Cars and Cloud Cities - and we're still stuck in a Just Say No moment that demonstrably fails to deliver precisely what it claims to: less destructive behavior on the part of kids."
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Training.
P90X D3 - Shoulders, Arms, Abs
Inspiring/Awesome Work - What are a few months? If it’s important to you begin it now! | Norcal Strength & Conditioning:
Inspiring/Awesome Work - What are a few months? If it’s important to you begin it now! | Norcal Strength & Conditioning:
"Sarah began training with us in February of this year, just a little over 3 months after [her baby] was born. As the mother of 3 boys, she needed to do something for herself and for her body. Now after 7 months... she is a completely new woman! Check out these stunning before and after photos!"
More before/after pics at the link. The young lady above also keeps a blog/site at Everyday Paleo, and is launching a book of the same name
that looks like it's going to go on my ever-increasing Amazon.com Wishlist...
that looks like it's going to go on my ever-increasing Amazon.com Wishlist...
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Training.
Bas Rutten MMA wkout - 10x2m rounds/boxing
dislocates, hyperx, chest pulls, hip thrusts
P90X D2 - Plyometrics
Yesterday - 4/11
Bas Rutten MMA wkout - 10x2m rounds/boxing
P90X D1 - Chest, Back, Abs
Awesome/Inspiring - Over 40 Transformation - Trading 57 Pounds for a New Life.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Jon Stewart at his best.
I generally find Stewart too deferential when face-to-face with politicians, but he's almost always at his comedic best when dealing with the media and its talking heads, like with Tucker Carlson, Chris Matthews and here, his takedown/sendup of Glenn Beck and this week's news that Beck's leaving FOX.
"Glenn Beck still had the third highest show in cable news ... Maybe Fox News thought it would be useful to pick some random talk radio host rehashing all same tired old John Birch Society conspiracy theories to seed ultra-conservative viewpoints into the news cycle, while making the rest of the network seem centrist by comparison. But, he then began to believe his own messianic delusions and became a giant pain in the ass. So they dropped his ass."
Awesome - "59 Ways to Tell if You’re a Gaijin, not a Gaikokujin — InvisibleGaijin."
The list triggered that healthy natsukashii/nostalgia wave...
He had me at Number 1 - "You call yourself gaijin because you know it pisses off the newbie gaikokujin." Yeah, I totally did that.
Worth a read, if you're into that kinda thing.
59 Ways to Tell if You’re a Gaijin, not a Gaikokujin — InvisibleGaijin // 透明外人 and the follow-up Another 59 Ways to Tell if You’re a Gaijin — InvisibleGaijin // 透明外人
He had me at Number 1 - "You call yourself gaijin because you know it pisses off the newbie gaikokujin." Yeah, I totally did that.
Worth a read, if you're into that kinda thing.
59 Ways to Tell if You’re a Gaijin, not a Gaikokujin — InvisibleGaijin // 透明外人 and the follow-up Another 59 Ways to Tell if You’re a Gaijin — InvisibleGaijin // 透明外人
Uncle Sam approved Thai rice in Liberia. With French subtitles.
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| The Mrs was unaccountably amused by this. |