Reading 2023

AMOK: A Dox Thriller by Barry Eisler

No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Short Stories by Lee Child 

The Return of the Pharaoh: From the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D.by Nicholas Meyer

The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin

Body for Life by Bill Phillips

Plague of Strength’s Bite-Size History V1 by Jamie Lewis

America and Japan: Two Countries Meet by Jack Seward

Finally Fit at 50 by G. Porter Freeman

The Last Orphan: An Orphan X Novel by Gregg Hurwitz

Dinosaur Training by Brooks Kubik

Westside Connection by Jamie Lewis

The Training Secrets of John Grimek by Brooks Kubik

Never Let Go by Dan John

A Lifelong Approach to Fitness: A Collection of Dan John Lectures Kindle Edition by Dan John

The Perfect Assassin: A Doc Savage Thriller by James Patterson and Brian Sitts

Five Years After: A John Matherson Novel by William R. Forstchen 

The Puppet Show (Washintgton Poe Book 1) by M. W. Craven

Black Summer (Washington Poe Book 2) by M. W. Craven

The Curator (Washington Poe Book 3) by M.W. Craven

It Works by Roy Herbert Jarrett

Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success by Scott Adams 

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life - Second Edition - by Scott Adams

Easy Strength Omnibook by Dan John

Dead Ground (Washington Poe Book 4) by M.W. Craven

The Botanist (Washington Poe Book 5) by M.W. Craven

Monster Hunters Memoirs: Fever by Larry Correia and Jason Cordova

Radical Love by Zachary Levi

Robert B. Parker's Broken Trust (A Spenser Novel) by Mike Lupica

Fearless by M.W. Craven

The Momentum Theorem by Dave Ramsey

Redefining Anxiety by John Delony

Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis

The Secret - A Jack Reacher Novel - by Lee Child and Andrew Child

The Lucas Davenport Series by John Sandford, Books 1-5, Rules of Prey, Shadow Prey, Eyes of Prey, Silent Prey, Winter Prey

Night Owl by Andrew Mayne

Born in a Burial Gown (Avison Fluke #1) by M.W. Craven

Body Breaker (Avison Fluke) by M. W. Craven

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Lazarus Vol. 6: Fracture by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark

Department of Truth, Volume 4: The Ministry of Lies by James Tynion IV & Martin Simmonds 

Lazarus, Volume 7 Fracture II by Greg Rucka, Michael Lark

Nemesis: Reloaded by Mark Millar, Jorge Jimenez 

All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder by Frank Miller and Jim Lee

Green Arrow: Archer's Quest by Brad Meltzer and Phil Hester

Wolverine, Deluxe Edition by Chris Claremont , Frank Miller

Superman/Batman: Absolute Power by Jeph Loeb , Carlos Pacheco

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies by Jeph Loeb, Ed McGuinness 

Power & Glory by Howard Chaykin

Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye Vol. 1: Going Underground by Gerard Way, Jon Rivera, Michael Avon Oeming

Wolverine: Enemy of the State by Mark Millar , John Romita Jr.

Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis by Warren Ellis and Kaare Andrews

Batman/Superman World's Finest: The Devil Nezha by Mark Waid, Dan Mora

The Waiting Place: The Definitive Edition Paperback by Sean McKeever (Author), Mike Norton (Illustrator), Brendon Fraim (Illustrator), Brian Fraim (Illustrator), David Yurkovich (Illustrator)

Junkyard Joe, Volume 1 by Geoff Johns (Author), Gary Frank (Artist)

PUNISHER PRESENTS: BARRACUDA MAX by Garth Ennis (Author)

Kick-Ass: The New Girl Volume 1 by Mark Millar (Author), John Romita Jr. (Artist)

Kick-Ass: The New Girl Volume 2 by Steve Niles (Author), Marcelo Frusin (Artist)

Down by Warren Ellis (Author), Tony Harris (Artist), Cully Hamner (Artist)

Flashpoint by Geoff Johns (Author), Andy Kubert (Illustrator)

The Chosen One: The American Jesus Trilogy by Mark Millar (Author), Peter Gross 

Geiger, Volume 1 by Geoff Johns (Author), Gary Frank (Artist), Brad Anderson (Artist)

Batman: Creature of the Night by Kurt Busiek (Author), John Paul Leon (Illustrator)

Reading - MAR > DEC 2020

Kept up with tracking, but not publishing out into the ether, what I've read this year. Last time was in February, apparently. Wild ride in 2020, many distractions. Not to mention moving back overseas and related complications. Regardless, something like a book a week, give or take. On average. Plus comics. And OCD surfing of the internets. Lot of fiction this year, apparently. Coping mechanism for the stresses of the 'real' world? Possibly. Reread a bunch of Crichton this summer. Reminded me of my dad, who I got the 'reading habit' from - and who got it from his mom - and who used to read all the Crichton, Clancy and Griffin he could get his hands on. A handful of biographies, some financial literacy, some positive psych. We'll see if in 2021 I can post up more often, maybe monthly. Onwards.

Gladiator by Philip Wylie

Anno Dracula by Kim Newman

Anno Dracula: The Bloody Red Baron by Kim Newman

Anno Dracula: Dracula Cha Cha Cha by Kim Newman

Helltown by Dennis O'Neil

Richard Dragon: Dragon's Fists by Jim Dennis (Dennis O'Neil and James R. Berry) 

Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks

The Stranger by Harlan Corben

Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard by Kim Newman

Peace Talks (Dresden Files Book 16) by Jim Butcher

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks  

Rising Sun by Michael Crichton

The Greatest Miracle in the World by Og Mandino

Travels by Michael Crichton

Congo by Michael Crichton

Timeline by Michael Crichton

A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife: On the Other Side Known Commonly as The Little Book by Daniel Quinn and Tom Whalen

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman

The Mystery of the Iron Samson: The Life and Training of Strongman Alexander Zass by Yuri Shapshnikoff (Author), A. Drapkin (Author), Logan Christopher (Editor), Professor "Stone" Paul (Translator)

A Feast Unknown (Secrets of the Nine #1 - Wold Newton Parallel Universe) Book 1 of 3: Secrets of the Nine by Philip Jose Farmer 

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

Resurrected Destiny (The Last Witness Book 1) by Gerald Welch

Ballistic Kiss: A Sandman Slim Novel by Richard Kadrey

Playing with FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early): How Far Would You Go for Financial Freedom by Scott Riecken

The Holy by Daniel Quinn

Dirty Jokes and Beer: Stories of the Unrefined by Drew Carey 

Battle Ground: The Dresden Files 17 by Jim Butcher 

8 Mins: An Anthology of the Last Eight Minutes of Earth by Victor Dandridge 

After Dachau by Daniel Quinn

The Sentinel: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child & Andrew Child 

Levon's Home by Chuck Dixon

Art in the Blood (A Sherlock Holmes Adventure, Book 1) by Bonnie MacBird 

Unquiet Spirits: Whisky, Ghosts, Murder (A Sherlock Holmes Adventure, Book 2) by Bonnie MacBird

Uncaged: My Life as a Champion MMA Fighter by Frank Shamrock 

Shamrock: The World's Most Dangerous Man by Jonathan Snowden 

The Devil’s Due (A Sherlock Holmes Adventure, Book 3) by Bonnie MacBird

The Size of Your Dreams: A Novel that Transforms Lives by Dave Mason and Chana Mason

The Cash Machine: A Tale of Passion, Persistence, and Financial Independence by Dave Mason and Chana Mason

The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 by Lionel Shriver 

The Motion of the Body Through Space by Lionel Shriver

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The Way of the Househusband, Vol. 1 & 2 by Kousuke Oono

Savage Wolverine Vol. 1: Kill Island by Frank Cho

Second Coming: Volume One by Mark Russell, Richard Pace, Leonard Kirk, Andy Troy

Skybourne by Frank Cho, Marcio Menyz

Black Hammer Volume 4: Age of Doom Part Two by Jeff Lemire, Dean Ormston, Dave Stewart

Green Arrow: War of the Clans by Jeff Lemire, Andrea Sorrentino

Secret Volume by Jonathan Hickman, Ryan Bodenheim, Michael Garland 

Punisher: Soviet by Garth Ennis, Jacen Burrows, Paolo Rivera

Wonder Twins Vol. 1: Activate! by Mark Russell , Stephen Byrne 

Captain America: White by Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale 

Scott Pilgrim Vol. 1 (of 6): Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O'Malley & Nathan Fairbairn 

The Complete Jon Sable Freelance Volume 1 by Mike Grell

Absolute Planetary V1 by Warren Ellis & John Cassaday

Green Lantern: Legacy by Minh Le & Andie Tong

Doomsday Clock: The Complete Collection Paperback by Geoff Johns & Gary Frank 

Jacked by Eric Kripke & John Higgins 

Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale by Zack Whedon, Joss Whedon, Chris Samnee 

Batman: Three Jokers by Geoff Johns, Jason Fabok 

Reading - Winter 18/19

Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday

What Remains by Ry Beville

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman

The Killer Collective by Barry Eisler

Out of the Dark: An Orphan X Novel by Gregg Hurwitz

Gun Machine by Warren Ellis

How to Win at the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It by Mark Cuban

Normal: A Novel by Warren Ellis

Super Villains of Persuasion by Ben Settle

Dead Pig Collector by Warren Ellis

Persuasion Secrets of the World’s Most Charismatic & Influential Villains by Ben Settle

Elektrograd: Rusted Blood by Warren Ellis

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need by Daniel H. Pink and Rob Ten Pas 

(1. There is no plan. 2. Think strengths, not weaknesses. 3. It’s not about you. 4. Persistence trumps talent. 5. Make excellent mistakes. 6. Leave an imprint.)

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Injustice: Gods Among Us: Year Two - The Complete Collection by Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo, Mike Miller

Injustice: Gods Among Us Year Three - The Complete Collection by Tom Taylor, Brian Buccellato, Bruno Redondo, Mike S. Miller

Wolverine: Old Man Logan Vol. 9: The Hunter And The Hunted by Ed Brisson, Francesco Manna, Juan Ferreyra, Mike Deodato

The Wild Storm: Michael Cray Vol. 2 by Bryan Hill, Stephen N. Harris, Dexter Vines

Jimmy's Bastards TPB Vol. 1: Trigger Warning by Garth Ennis, Mike Marts, Russ Braun

Jimmy's Bastards Vol. 2: What Did You Just Say by Garth Ennis and Russ Braun

Indeh: A Story of the Apache Wars Kindle Edition by Ethan Hawke, Greg Ruth

Uber Volume 6 Invasion by Kieron Gillen, Daniel Gete

Batman: The Rebirth Deluxe Edition Book 1 Hardcover by Tom King, David Finch , Mikel Janin

Mister Miracle Paperback by Tom King, Mitch Gerads

Reading - Summer 18 - "When done right, comics are a cognitive whetstone..."

"...providing two or three or more different but entangled streams of information in a single panel. Processing what you’re being shown, along with what’s being said, along with what you’re being told, in conjunction with the shifting multiple velocities of imaginary time, and the action of the space between panels that Scott McCloud defines as closure… Comics require a little more of your brain than other visual media. They should just hand them out to being to stave off Alzheimer’s." - Warren Ellis

Artemis by Andy Weir

Ali vs. Inoki: The Forgotten Fight That Inspired Mixed Martial Arts and Launched Sports Entertainment by Josh Gross

The Leangains Method: The Art of Getting Ripped. Researched, Practiced, Perfected by Martin Berkhan

Sayonara by James Michener

Malice by Keigo Higashino

Brief Cases: More Stories From the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher 

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

Way of the Warrior Kid: From Wimpy to Warrior the Navy SEAL Way: A Novel by Jocko Willink and Jon Boza 

Time Slave by John Norman

The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote by Sharyl Attkisson

Gor Series, Vol 1-9 by John Norman

Lazarus: Sourcebook Collection Volume by Greg Rucka, Eric Trautmann, Michael Lark & others

The Wild Storm Vol. 1 & 2 by Warren Ellis and John Davis-Hunt

The Wild Storm: Michael Cray Vol. 1 by Bryan Hill and N. Stephen Harris  

"Nearly 55 years after Silent Spring we do know [that] Carson's concerns have turned out to be way overblown."

I remember one of the English lessons in the Jr High textbook in Japan was all about Silent Spring and Rachel Carson.  [Japan, despite being covered in concrete, has a huge infatuation with nature.]  And then, having done some research into her, and discovering that she was wrong about a lot of things.  A lot of her work was fear mongering and juked stats.  And the ban on DDT likely did much more harm than good, especially for the folks who died from malaria.  But she's still venerated by the eco & political folks.  

Rachel Carson: New Documentary on PBS Tonight: "It is not an exaggeration to say that we are all still living in the intellectual and public policy world that Rachel Carson constructed in that book. "Already alarmed about the environmental damage caused by the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, Carson determined to alert the public to the dangers of pesticides and began the work that would define her legacy," explains the documentary press release...

Time has proved that Carson was right that agricultural spraying of the popular pesticide DDT did reduce the populations of hawks and eagles by thinning their eggshells. She was also right that widespread use had resulted in increasing pesticide resistance among many targeted insect species. These findings did indicate that they should be used more judiciously. Somewhat surprisingly, the documentary does not delve any more deeply into what science has discovered about the risks and benefits of synthetic pesticides in the 55 years since the publication of Carson's book. So what light does subsequent research shed on the claims made in Silent Spring? 

As an elegant and effective rhetorician Carson understood that while some Americans might be a bit worried about the health of birds and other wildlife, what would really get their attention is cancer. She was most concerned about the long-term effects of exposures to pesticides and other synthetic chemicals, but she sought to frighten readers with anecdotes about acute exposure producing cancer with months or weeks. She tells a story about a woman "who abhorred spiders" and who sprayed her basement with DDT in mid-August. She died of acute leukemia a couple of months later. In another passage, Carson cites a man embarrassed by his roach-infested office who again sprayed DDT and who "within a short time … began to bruise and bleed." He was within a month of spraying diagnosed with aplastic anemia. Again, comparing pesticides to the contamination of milk by radioactive fallout, Carson aimed to worry parents about the possibility of their kids getting cancer...

The PBS documentary shows clips of Carson interviews aired on the CBS Reports program in the spring of 1963 with Eric Severeid. "We have to remember that the children born today are exposed to these chemicals since birth; perhaps before birth," warns Carson. Now what is going to happen to them in adult life as a result of that exposure? We simply don't know because we've never had this kind of experience." Nearly 55 years after the publication of Silent Spring we do know and, fortunately, Carson's concerns have turned out to be way overblown. 

For example, in Silent Spring Carson warned, "Today, more American school children die of cancer than from any other disease [her emphasis]." That is still true today. But why had cancer emerged as the greatest killer of children in the 1950s? Not because it had significantly increased, but because far fewer were dying of the infectious diseases that had killed them in droves during earlier decades. The good news is that due to improvements in treatment the death rate from cancer for children 14 and under has fallen from 6.5 in 1969 to 2 per 100,000 now. Cancer incidence has ticked up for children under age 14 from 13 cases in 1974 to 17 cases per 100,000 now. 

As the American Cancer Society notes, a small percentage of cancer in children results from inherited genetic mutations, but otherwise, there are "few known risk factors for childhood cancer." Despite activist urgent alarms, subsequent decades of research have proved that exposure to trace amounts of all sorts of synthetic chemicals are not increasing the age-adjusted incidence of cancer. In fact, the cancer incidence rate among Americans has been falling for more than two decades. According to the latest Cancer Statistics 2017 report from the American Cancer Society, the overall cancer incidence rate (2004-2013) was stable in women and declined by approximately 2% annually in men, while the cancer death rate (2005-2014) declined by about 1.5% annually in both men and women. 

As the American Cancer Society has noted, "Exposure to carcinogenic agents in occupational, community, and other settings is thought to account for a relatively small percentage of cancer deaths – about 4 percent from occupational exposures and 2 percent from environmental pollutants (man-made and naturally occurring)." The documentary also includes a clip from CBS Reports featuring American Cyanamid biochemist Robert White-Stevens. "Miss Carson is concerned with every possibility of hazard and danger whereas the agricultural school has to concern itself with the probability, the likelihood of danger and assess that against utility," states White-Stevens. "If we had to investigate every possibility, we would never make any advances at all because this would require an infinite time for experimental work and we would never be finished." 

White-Stevens was arguing against what is now known as the precautionary principle; the idea that new technologies must be proven entirely safe before they can be deployed."

#TheStruggle

Continued ハーフ (Hāfu) Domination.

Miss Japan 2016: Half-Indian elephant trainer crowned - CNN.com: "Born to an Indian father and a Japanese mother in Tokyo, the 22-year-old's big win came just a year after Ariana Miyamoto, a half-black, half Japanese woman, won the title of Miss Universe Japan 2015."

Training.

5/20 - squats, situps, speedbag, stretch

5/19 - bench, db rows, pushdowns, facepulls, curls, stretch

Hideaki Inabi

Bodybuilding.com Forums: "...winning 17 world championships IPF-more then any other lifter- only losing once because of injury. He would of had 18 consecutive world championship wins if not for the shoulder injury which caused him to lose a year. 535 squat 525 deadlift 265 bench best total was about 1300-1297 or so to be exact- all raw at 114 lbs. First man ever to do 4x bodyweight squat, also first man to total 10x bodyweight. How did such a champion train? "ideaki trained alone and in his backyard. He had a basic setup consisting of a Squat Rack ( no cage) wooden homemade platform, bench, bar and weights- and only one bar, no special bars for squats etc. He did a lot of half squats with the then stupendous weight of 600 ( no spotters) at 114 ( about 3-4 inches above) , a Lot of Deep Regular Squats and Deadlifts.His Bench was never that good- he managed 100 kilos a few times but after a shoulder injury he benched under 200 lbs , but always had a huge pull (500+) to win.When Chuck Dunbar upset him, Chuckie was at his best but Hideaki had a bum shoulder. Funny thing- after the Worlds ( the IPF Worlds the only game in town then) in November, he took about 3 months totally off- one reason was it was too cold to train outside in the area of Japan that he lived in, and he felt his body needed the break. Can't argue with results! His diet was basic Japanese- sashimi, sushi, rice, etc. Nothing fancy on his training template- 3 days per week, hard and heavy. Banzai! " Nothing beats the basics."

Stop Lying: How Painful Realizations Can Unlock A Healthier Life | Nerd Fitness:

Old Japanese people are the cutest.

Mr. Takahashi, 93 years old.

"Do you ever remember being sick?

No, I do not...

I can't help but notice that you're smoking.  How long have you been smoking?

I've been smoking since I was 25.

And Mr. Takahashi is not alone, his neighbor goes through a pack and a half a day..."

The funniest 9min history of Japan you'll ever watch.

Post For Truth.

True Story. #TheStruggleIsReal

Japan Gets It.

"...women who kill serially are much more practical." - Yay?

I blame the patriarchy, naturally.  Japan's 'Black Widow' Arrested Again After Poisoning Her Eighth Male Victim | Broadly: "Dr. Scott A. Bonn writing at Psychology Today. Unlike murders committed by men, murders committed by women aren't typically motivated by sexual or sadistic drives. Bonn asserts that women who kill serially are much more practical. "Female serial killers are much more likely than males to kill for financial profit, comfort or revenge," he writes."

And so it begins. "U.S. company challenges Japan to a giant-robot battle."

*Updated* - Oh.  It's ON.

USA vs. Japan Part II: Giant robot duel accepted - CNN.com: "On Sunday... Suidobashi CEO Kogoro Kurata responded, saying, "I'll fight. Absolutely." The MegaBots challenge gives both teams a year to make the modifications necessary to engage in robot-on-robot combat. "It's interesting, I'll give them that," Kurata said in a video response posted on YouTube and the company's Facebook page on July 5...

Referring to a rich -- if fictional -- history of giant robots, or "mecha" as they are known in Japan, Kurata explained that the country's pride was at stake. "We can't let another country win this," he said. "Giant robots are Japanese culture."

...Kurata clearly feels that there is a patriotic element at stake -- and has a way to ensure Kuratas' dominance. He suggests that robo-primacy would only emerge if the two robots were able to slug it out in "melee combat." "I want to punch them to scrap and knock them down to do it," Kurata said."

---

Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources: "After introducing the MegaBot Mark II, “America’s first fully functional giant piloted robot,” there was really only one thing left for MegaBots Inc. to do:  Challenge Japan to a giant-robot battle. Seriously, if you had a mecha what would you do? Build public-works projects? Hell no, you’d fight other robots! For America! To that end, the gang at MegaBots, whose sole purpose is to create giant piloted fighting robots, has released the most patriotic video you’ll see this week (yes, I know it’s Fourth of July weekend), throwing down the gauntlet to Japan’s Suidobashi Heavy Industry, which has its own fully functional mecha."

Can't Stop the Signal.

3D Printed Gun Prisoner's Legacy Lives on in Improved Pistol Design - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Last year, university employee Yoshitomo Imura became the first person sentenced to prison for 3D-printing a firearm. A Japanese judge put him away for two years after noting with particular fury that he'd posted his design online and that "This has shown that anyone can illegally manufacture guns with a 3D printer." So how did the gun law-flouting 3D printing community respond? You knew the answer, didn't you? Yes, tinkerers went and improved his zig-zag design, and named the sleeker .22 gun after him. Behold the Imura!"

Well? Have you?

"We lost everything." - George Takei

Day of Remembrance (Japanese Americans) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The Day of Remembrance (DOR) is a day commemorating the Japanese American internment during World War II. Events in numerous U.S. states are held on or near February 19, the day in 1942 that Executive Order 9066 was signed, requiring internment of all U.S. residents of Japanese ancestry."

Internment of Japanese Americans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States was the forced relocation and incarceration during World War II of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who lived on the Pacific coast in camps in the interior of the country...  Such incarceration was applied unequally due to differing population concentrations and, more importantly, state and regional politics: more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, nearly all who lived on the West Coast, were forced into interior camps, but in Hawaii, where the 150,000-plus Japanese Americans comprised over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were interned."

George Takei describes his experience in a Japanese internment camp: 

"JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And once your family was released from the internment, what—the process of putting your lives back together, what had happened to your possessions, to your home? And talk about that process, as well. 

GEORGE TAKEI: We lost everything. We were given a one-way ticket to wherever in the United States we wanted to go to, plus $20. And many people were very embittered about their West Coast experience, and they chose to go to the Midwest, places like Chicago or Milwaukee, or further east to New Jersey, New York, Boston. My parents decided to go back to Los Angeles. We were most familiar there. But we found that it was very difficult. Housing was impossible. They would deny us housing. Jobs were very, very difficult. My father's first job was as a dishwasher in a Chinatown restaurant. Only other Asians would hire us. And our first home was on skid row, with the stench of urine everywhere and those scary, smelly, ugly people lined up leaning on brick walls. They would stagger around and barf right in front of us. My baby sister, who was now five years old, said, "Mama, let's go back home," meaning behind those barb wire fences. We had adjusted to that. And coming home was a horrific, traumatic experience for us kids."

 

"In their minds, I could only say these things as the result of some plot, some conspiracy..."

The Wire, Serial and the Decline of the American Industrial Empire | TIME: "Social disorganization theory holds that location is the key factor for crime, not an individual’s race or personal tendencies: put very simply, people in rough neighborhoods are more likely to be rough. Paradoxically, while housing projects were meant to clean up crime-ridden areas, in many places they made it worse — for precisely the reasons the sociologists should have expected. Once criminal elements took over the projects, kids within them were more likely to be drawn to crime. These projects — and the world they created — were partly responsible for how gang crime changed since the 1960s, when it was largely a juvenile phenomenon of petty delinquency, to a system of groups that include older members and more entrepreneurial activities. Changing attitudes in social control meant that, rather than seeing troublemaking youngsters in need of guidance, authorities saw organized crime in need of punishment." 

What It’s Like to Be an Atheist in Palestine - The Daily Beast: "Like many non-religious people around the world, I use the Internet to express my thoughts. It provides a relatively safe way of speaking freely, especially in a country where the vast majority believe in one religion and do not like to hear criticism. Or so I thought. I used to run a blog in Arabic called “Nour Alakl” and ran a satirical Facebook page under the pseudonym “Allah.” But in October 2010, Palestinian security forces stormed into an Internet cafe and arrested me. Until then, I had been under the impression that I had a right to freedom of speech and to the freedom of belief. But in jail, I was told that my online statements about religion and Islam were illegal. I was told that society didn’t accept such criticisms. I was beaten by prison guards who demanded to know who had made me write against Islam. In their minds, I could only say these things as the result of some plot, some conspiracy. The idea that I might simply want to express my independent thoughts was alien to them...

My views, however, cannot be changed by a prison sentence or by persecution. I still believe that Islam often stands in opposition to human rights and women’s rights. I believe that the Qur’an relays that Muhammad demanded death for non-believers. Many Muslims may disagree with my view, or interpret Islam in a more moderate way, but I cannot accept this religion myself. That is what my conscience tells me. I am an atheist. I believe in human rights. I have the right to say these things. Whose fault was it that I was treated so unjustly? Islam is religion, but it is also a culture. Certainly some people simply cannot stand to live alongside someone who does not conform to their views."

  

  

  

  

Prewar Japanese beer posters: the most beautiful ads ever made? - Boing Boing: "if we've entered the golden age of Japanese beer, we've missed the golden age of Japanese beer advertising. That came before the Second World War, a time when, if the advertising industry needed drawing, painting, or lettering, it was done by hand."

'Hate Speech Is Misusing Freedom of Speech' - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "And who decides what's a proper use? Prosecutors and government officials, of course, who would surely never misuse their power to suppress speech or ideas they don't like. Nope, that's never been known to go horribly wrong and—oh, wait, what? Well, we'll be better about it this time! "

  

"For years I have been telling the story of Prince Peter Ouspensky, who in his early years in the Gurdjieff Work did not understand Gurdjieff’s insistance that most people are are so deeply hypnotized that they act exactly like mechanisms. Then, shortly after World War I started, Ouspensky saw a truck headed for the front, carrying artificial legs. Suddenly, looking at a truck full of artificial legs to replace legs that had not yet been blown off, but would certainly be blown off very soon, Ouspensky understood that all human behavior on the large, historical scale is so mechanical that it can be mathematically predicted." - Robert Anton Wilson

"...it's - going - down."

Japan Wins Hard. Amazon Japan Is Selling A Build-Your-Own Mech Starter Kit: "You know how it is when you're browsing Amazon - books, games, Blu-rays, even your groceries, the occasional giant mech. Wait, what? The Kuratasu Starter kit lets you build a four-wheeled mech that is almost 4 metres tall, and fully piloted by a human. Think of it almost like the world's most ridiculous car. Speaking of ridiculous, it's available for the low low price of ¥ 120,000,000 - that's just over a million dollars worth of mech. But shipping for only 350 yen? BARGAIN."

Sorry, vegans: Eating meat and cooking food is how humans got their big brains - The Washington Post 

  

Always frame your discussions.

Today's soundtrack.