It’s deja vu all over again
Bookworm on Dec 07 2008 at 11:18 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
I’m a fan of the old Star Trek : The Next Generation. Much like Longfellow’s little girl, when it was good it was very good indeed (although I’ll concede that, when it was bad it was horrid). The episodes in which I think the show consistently hit the mark were the ones that involved actual time travel or ideas about whether or not time travels in a straight line. Of the time travel episodes, my favorite was a Season 5 episode called “Cause and Effect, which saw our stalwart crew trapped in an infinitely repeating time loop that always ended with their ship exploding. Throughout the course of the episode, it was their increasing feeling of deja vu that led them to the truth about their situation.
I’ve been thinking about that episode a lot lately, since I feel as if I’m trapped in an infinitely repeating loop. I return endlessly to the same things when I blog (bad Democrats; bad Islamists; weak, foolish Republicans; crazy San Franciscans, etc., ad nauseum) and, to my horror, I found myself in a conversational loop at a party last night.
About the party itself I can be fresh, since this specific party had an intriguing concept, and my attendance there was an amusing result of blogging. First, the concept: the party’s host and hostess are neocons, both of whom are former Democratic Jews who abandoned the Democratic party to become conservatives.
The host, who was born in the Ukraine, sniffed out the Democratic party failings first, as he realized that it was becoming closer and closer in behavior to the former Soviet ruling party. The wife, interestingly, began her break during the OJ trial in the mid-1990s: for personal reasons, she ended up watching the entire trial, from start to finish. What fascinated her was the way in which, in its daily wrap-ups, the press consistently misrepresented what took place during the trial. This led her to view the press with suspicion, and to investigate independently all that it said. Neocon-ism was not far behind.
As a neocon, this gal discovered what all of us have discovered in Marin: “liberal” is a misnomer, since admitting to conservative politics doesn’t trigger rational discussion, it elicits personal insults. Through stealth conversations (and, I’m sure, secret handshakes), she managed to begin identifying the conservatives around her and, in October, she and her husband hosted their first party for conservatives. It was a success. The party in November, with the original attendees inviting their friends, was a greater success. And last night’s party, which I attended, was delightful, with the network expanding even more.
I ended up there through the miracle of the internet. The hostess has a friend who has an email relationship with neo, of neo-neocon. When she told neo about these parties, neo sent me an email, wondering if I’d be interested — and I was. Acting as a conservative interest match-maker, neo hooked me up with the hostess and I got an invitation. Not wanting to be niggardly, I passed the invitation on to Charles Martel, who was also delighted by the opportunity to cast off the bland mask we assume in our day-to-day Marin lives and talk politics.
And speaking of talk, that gets me back to the start of this post, which is the idea of deja vu all over again. You can’t imagine my horror as, listening to myself, I realized I was caught in an endless conversational loop, telling over and over again the same anecdotes and making the same points. Not only was I repetitious, I felt leaden. I can often be a fairly witting conversationalist, but I heard myself in pedantic, hectoring mode. The only time I was able to break out of my self-induced verbal straitjacket was when I discovered, coincidentally, that one of the guests and I went to the same elementary school at the same time. We had a swift, joyous trip down memory lane, and resurrected topics I hadn’t thought about in 40 plus years.
I’m really not sure how I’m going to escape this stale feeling. I think we’re living in momentous times, and I truly believe that blogs are still an important means of communication in the coming years — especially if the Democrats succeed with their “unfairness” act. I’d like to be a part of this continuing communications revolution, but I’m concerned that I’m not snapping out of my own personal time warp, in which everything I say now, I’ve said before. For the time being, I’ll continue to attribute my mental malaise to post election fatigue (about which many commented at yesterday’s party), and assume that, come the true Obama administration (as opposed to this lame duck period), I’ll become intellectually reinvigorated and surprise you all with something fresh!
The good thing is that, while I may be stale, others are still turning out wonderful stuff. (Although not as much as usual, so I suspect that others in the blogoshere are suffering from the same flat feeling.) For today, I recommend Mark Steyn’s Silence = Acceptance, about the way in which Muslims slaughtering Jews is becoming normative and accepted within the MSM and the political world, with the ugly parallel that hurt feelings amongst Muslims are the occasion for much hand-wringing.
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I’m really not sure how I’m going to escape this stale feeling. I think we’re living in momentous times, and I truly believe that blogs are still an important means of communication in the coming years — especially if the Democrats succeed with their “unfairness” act. I’d like to be a part of this continuing communications revolution, but I’m concerned that I’m not snapping out of my own personal time warp, in which everything I say now, I’ve said before. For the time being, I’ll continue to attribute my mental malaise to post election fatigue (about which many commented at yesterday’s party), and assume that, come the true Obama administration (as opposed to this lame duck period), I’ll become intellectually reinvigorated and surprise you all with something fresh!
Don’t feel bad, Book. I’ve discovered that the more I write on a particular subject, the clearer I can communicate it via written or verbal forms. The same may be true of you. You may not have found anything “new” to say about the Left or the Dems, but that is probably because you’ve covered it all here or read it on other sites like Neo’s.
This just means that you gave a polished presentation that stunned the party with how smooth you covered your points and how confident you were in its details ; )
Btw, that Star Trek episode you were talking about was also my favorite when I was watching TNG on tv, which meant missing a lot of episodes.
I also think now that you’ve seen the “other side”, you can probably look back and see all kinds of fake liberal influences in TNG ; ) Like the Prime Directive? Remember that one? Isn’t that what Dems and fake liberals use to justify “advanced” civilizations not having the right to make the lives of other societies better?
Y — re comment 1, you’re too kind. And re comment 2, you’re absolutely right. The horrible episodes are always the ones in which the writers tried to make profound Progressive political statements.
Test your knowledge with the 2008 Civics Quiz.
Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen?
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx
Look over the results when you finish. I would think this is a great example of why you have to keep repeating facts.
I missed 3 of the 33 questions.
I wouldn’t worry about it – unless you’re becoming boring to yourself.
It isn’t unique to you: everything everybody says they’ve said before. It’s part of the human condition that there are some realities we are unable to escape. One of them is that examples have to be drawn, and the same lessons have to be taught, re-taught, repeated, and reinforced – and even then it all has to be gone through again in a few years when the next colossal heap of soul-killing ignorance comes along.
The problem seems to be that it’s much easier for people to indulge in faith based on something nebulous (or nothing at all) than it is for them to actually think. Thinking is hard, uncongenial work. It often enough involves research, too; an exercise for which the average product of American education is totally unprepared.
Our current example, Barack Obama, wants to put people to work for the government repairing the national infrastructure. He wants to do this as a means of repairing not only infrastructure, but also the economy. The fact that this has been tried before and was a resounding failure does not penetrate. You cannot tell him that government jobs really aren’t jobs in the market sense and in real terms accrue nothing to a market economy. He has grown up with the belief that FDR was a saint and he therefore has faith – and the rest of us will simply have to sigh, shake our heads quietly, transfer more assets off-shore, and sit back while he takes us all through his personal journey of learning a lesson all the non-democrats already know. (Maybe Reid and Pelosi will learn it too, but I don’t know: they seem to be genuinely stupid human beings.)
The stories and lessons have to be endlessly repeated. In thirty years along will come another generation of the starry-eyed moonstruck; and damned if they won’t have to learn – yet again – that government not only can’t do everything, it in fact can’t successfully seem to do much of anything.
But you have to point it out: over and over and over and over… forever. Every hundred years, all new people. They all have to be taught, if they can be taught.
Btw, Book. I’ve mentioned this a few times: both to you and to Neo, about how you often posted the same things as each other (chocolates, petite clothes sourced from the same article no less), but I hope you realize that my reaction was always of being entertained rather than of being bored by the repetition.
Book, cut yourself some slack. How many times recently have you been in the wonderful position of being able to speak your mind freely without being trashed by your liberal betters? Of course you’re going to recite your “litany,” if only because you’ve rarely been able to get through it without interruption or attack.
Watching people talk to one another last night was like watching liberated refugees tell their stories in a safe place. Was there a commonality to the stories? Yeah, you betcha. But commonality leads to solidarity, and last night’s gathering will lead, I hope, to an awakening and a little flexing of conservative muscle.
As for your “pedantic, hectoring mode,” I didn’t hear it. You laughed at my jokes, which pedantic and hectoring people are not wont to do. If you’re going to assign blame on anything, I’d fix a laser stare on the chocolate dish. Surrounded by bright, witty conservative women, that poor container never stood a chance.
Books, the best solution is probably to, well, think about something else. I’ve been learning a couple of new programming languages and working on book proposals; just find something other than politics that interests you, and give it some attention.
If you can’t think of anything else, go into the library, pick an area of the stacks you don’t normally go into, and browse. (I’ll admit that randomly browsing the library may seem a little nuts, but it’s been productive for me on many occasions.)
First of all, let me say that I would have loved to have been there and to meet Book and Charles Martel in the flesh.
I wouldn’t feel bad, Book. You just need new material and you are a far too serious (gravitas!) a person to endlessly spew vapid prognostications (as so many bloggers and columnists are wont to do today) about what may or may not happen. We are in the lull before the storm. Methinks that the source of your anxiety is the stale air full of foreboding that precedes the deluge. We all feel this way.
Things will pick up in a month or two when the enormity of the disaster about to unfold sinks in. Already, the long lines of the jobless are beginning to form.
In ancient days under the oppression of Rome, Christians used to identify each other by tracing the symbol of the fish in the dust with their sandals. Perhaps we should be using this period to perfect our own secret recognition signals. I’m doing practical things, like trying to earn and stash cash and find new places to hide my guns.
My thermometer read OoF this morning with 4″ of snow. For Chicagoland, this is waaay early for this type of weather. Bring back Global Warming!
You guys are so dear to me, although, Charles Martel, it was cruel to give away the chocolate fixation!
As for finding another interest (that a suggestion from Charlie), I’m certainly doing that with martial arts, which occupies way too much of my time (and takes time away from blogging). I find it so rewarding, not to mention good for my cardiac health, muscle strength and bone density, that I am well on the way to becoming obsessed.
Yesterday, I spent some time watching young martial artists test for their black belts and realized that I can do half of what they can do, that I can learn another quarter of what they do, and that the final quarter of what they do will forever be impossible for me, given my age-created lack of flexibility. I do believe, though, that I will become a black belt, and I’ll keep you posted if that day ever comes.
I’m glad to see you are finding camaraderie among other conservatives in Marin. I can’t imagine how awful it must feel to live in a city where the insanity of liberalism is so heavy and overpowering that you feel like you can’t breathe.
KIm:
What was really interesting was how many people were there without their spouses. I heard many stories about husbands or wives who are openly hostile to their conservative mates’ views. Somebody observed, “If you both start out as Democrats but one of you moves right, the person who moves is considered a betrayer.”
Yesterday, I spent some time watching young martial artists test for their black belts and realized that I can do half of what they can do, that I can learn another quarter of what they do, and that the final quarter of what they do will forever be impossible for me, given my age-created lack of flexibility. I do believe, though, that I will become a black belt, and I’ll keep you posted if that day ever comes.
Don’t get me worked up here, Book; you know what tends to happen then ; )
If you like Time Travel themes, you should check out “Apocalypse Troll” by David Weber from your local library. That’s a neat and small novel using it. You’ll “love” the argument between the two different “world views” heh.
You guys are so dear to me
As before, it is all part of our nefarious conspiracy to keep you churning out those blog posts, woman!
I was wondering if Book and Ymarsakar were ever going to talk martial arts shop.
Hold on while I slide up a chair and sip some good ale.
Never, never sell yourself short on your martial arts abilities, Book.
We had a tiny grandmother of 58 walk into our dojang out of curiosity. Our Master (TKD Master AND master salesman) signed her up. She stuck with the program (said her grand kids considered her way-cool for doing that) and got her black belt at age 62. One of the tests required breaking 4-inches of pine board with her hands. She did it (OK…we helped her our a little bit, but not much).
Incidentally, one of the worst sparring sessions I ever participated in was when I was in my mid-20s. I was a green belt and was told to fight a blackbelt that was legally blind. I figured that I should be able to handle that without too much problem and tried to be kind. He totally clocked me. I never underestimated anyone after that.
Am I the only one who couldn’t stand Counselor Troi?
Charles M, what, did you miss our talks over Target Focus Training and Bas Rutten?
One notable difference between Target Focus Training and martial arts can be seen in this video.
Link
In Martial Arts, you can hit someone in that area at full speed and almost full power and keep on repeating it, because it is just a spinal reflex from hitting the nerve and muscles in the quadruceps. In TFT, you can’t do that because the target of choice would be the side of the knee cap, dislocating it. Even easier if you can drop your body weight unto the strike, then you don’t need your arm strength even.
In order to reproduce that technique, and this is the type of stuff you learn and practice in martial arts, you need speed, strength, and accuracy. This is acquired through numerous repetitions. If you just try tapping somebody on the thigh like the instructor in the video, you may not get the reaction he got because you may not be strong enough. A woman has to use her body weight to apply most of the force because most women’s arms are not up to the task of applying a palm strike as hard as a kick from that posture. But regardless, even if you applied immense force, it would only damage the muscles in the quads. Enough endorphines or drugs can counter-act such pain. Most of the other muscle groups in the thigh will still work, it will just hurt like hell if they try to use it. But with TFT, we’re going for targets that, if hit with even minimum force, will end up with the guy in the hospital because regardless of what he is on a human being cannot use a dislocated knee for much of anything. It has nothing to do with “free will” or pain tolerance.
This is only one proto-typical difference. The training methodology takes this into account by taking speed out in practice and putting follow through and targeting in. You don’t hit with the speed that you see on the video nor do you apply any kind of force. You are practicing the “eye to hand” coordination and your foot work (which involves manipulating your body weight to put power into the strike).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJAdWndF3LQ
If you pay attention to these videos, you can see how supernaturally fast these master instructors are. You are not going to be able to equal their speed. These are either the top 10% or 1% in the human species. Which results in an interesting thing. How are you going to be able to use their techniques, which works for them, with your physical limitations? You won’t know unless you know the principles behind how violence work. If you can just look at any technique and say “this is why it works”.
I’ll look up one example in jiujitsu for how you can reduce violence down to very simple movements which anyone can do.
We have the dojo version of the escape from a mount.
Dojo
Then we have the street version.
Notice the difference. Notice how many additional things you have to do in the first one as opposed to the second one. Plans don’t survive contact with the enemy so what will work best for you is if you keep to the KISS principle (Keep it Simple Stupid). The simpler it is, the less problems can result when you start using it.
These “additional” things are present in martial arts for a couple of reasons. 1. They are ritualized to protect people from maiming and fatalities. 2. they put the emphasis in fighting on who has the more skills, the faster speed, the strong body, and so forth.
That being said, martial arts is a great competitive sport that can provide you a lot of things. As it does for Book here. But everyone walking into it should realize its limitations if they believe they can use it on the streets. The consequences for such a miscalculation may be grave.
Link
Another demonstration proves an interesting point. Many martial artists, black belt or whatever, know all this stuff already. But they don’t teach it. They don’t teach it cause it is not used in martial arts competition, sparring, or so forth. It is not like if you put your foot on someone’s knee, without breaking it, that suddenly they will give up because the rules of the martial art has now said he’s gone: out of the fight. No, people are taught in martial arts to keep fighting until they they have to tap out. Or if they get thrown all over the place.
The flow of a fight which includes hitting such critical targets is not a real priority. And because of this, you don’t have the training methodology to hit these targets in various postures, situations, and levels of force just by abstractly knowing that they are there.
What if, say, you are behind the guy and you want to break his knee? Do you do something complicated like spin him around then kick him in the knee to hyperextend it in Base 1 break? Or do you step around him, turn around, and then kick him? No, just put your body weight, via your foot, behind one of the backs of his knee and ride him to the ground. The concrete, his body weight, and your body weight will break that knee with ridiculous ease. All you have to do is to actually move your body weight forward, and not stay “balanced” on your feet, as martial arts has drilled into you.
One of many examples, which are useless to you unless you figure out why these things work better this way and not the other way.
Never, never sell yourself short on your martial arts abilities, Book.
If Book ever decides to take some TFT, the whole anxiety over “performance” will go away. Sure, TFT won’t win you any mat or dojo victories (probably because you’d be charged with assault or something if you use it), but there will be no anxiety or worry that younger, bigger, stronger, or faster guys will be able to harm you.
The primary reason why TFT, and not even firearms, is the first thing that comes to mind when I see women wanting to protect themselves against asocial criminal violence.
This guy has the closest I’ve seen to how strikes work in TFt
Ignore his speed and what he is hitting, watch the displacement of his body weight when he shifts it. TFT doesn’t just use your body as a weapon (described in the vid), it uses your body like a battering ram. What takes 3 strikes to the body, one strike to the temple, to knock out, can be done in a single strike using your entire body weight. Just to use one example: if you hit someone in the solar plexus in such a manner (hand fisted, arms close to your body, your legs running your fist into his solar plexus with your head to one side of his body and your forward leg 2 feet behind his leg), he will bend over (as a minimum reaction) and then fall over (maximum). Then you just grab his head (whether he is falling or not) and then put your body weight on top of his head, throw your feet up so your body accelerates to the ground, and then put that weight on his head. He falls down with his body weight combined with yours, face first (or head first) into the concrete. You can vary this in any number of ways, like using your forearms to crash into the back of his neck and ride him down, using your forearm to cushion your fall. If you don’t like taking a fall cause you are worried about the ground hurting you, just elbow him in the back of the neck, which will drop him quick. Then jump to where you are in range and bring your heel, with all of your body weight on it, on the back of his neck. Almost guaranteed spinal injury if you hit the target.
You see how the instructor held up the student when he hit the student in the back of his left knee? (0:55) That’s cause they were on concrete and you do not want to have anyone drop, with his knees, on concrete, even if it is only part of his body weight on it. Same goes for the skull.
In order to help explain what I mean when I am talking about taking “things” out for training methodologies, ChosonNinja has taken out follow through and power but kept speed. Meaning, his strikes do not follow through. You see when he has to stop his body from moving forward. If he stroke someone in a straight line at that point, in the direction his body was moving, he could NOT stop the force of that strike before it depleted its energies into the other guy. That’s why you see him moving forward while leaning backwards. He puts the speed in, so he has to take the power out, otherwise it is going to be a real strike. TFT removes the speed and puts the follow through in.
The instructor you see hitting the guy who has him in a headlock, in the thigh, is taking out follow through. His hand bounces off the thigh and his legs don’t move. He is not “following through on the strike” by putting his body weight into it. He is also using less muscle power so when his hand hits the thigh, he does not PUSH as hard as he could. But the speed is there. This results in the headlock guy falling down and feeling it. If the follow through, speed, and body weight had been in the strike, however, he would have been limping for weeks. Especially given the strength of the instructor.
Different training methodologies offer you different things. I won’t go into the details at this time.
Btw, when ChosonNinja started talking about oranges in jars… that was funny as hell. The three strikes with the hands were designed to inflict a solar plexus hit, a hit on the right arm to prevent it from being used as a block, which also traps the left hand, and a hit to the TMJ. This is a combo designed to disable the other guy’s ability to block. TFT does not bother with such things. There are no blocks in TFT and no block breakers. Only body breakers.
If you look at the video again and notice the speed, there’s no way you could predict, see, and then defend yourself against them. That’s why martial arts teach you muscle memory and certain blocking moves, so that your body moves on its own. But what matters here is who gets the injury, not who blocks or doesn’t block. What matters is who gets knocked out (gets hit in the temple). That is what matters. Don’t let all the other stuff sidetrack you from the priority here.
I couldn’t stand Troi’s mother, Charles.
This video has some of the more combat and hard orientated martial arts. You still see a couple of commonalities like tap outs and almost full speed contact.
Here’s an interesting test. Watch the video and look at the various joint breaks employed and how they are used to manipulate the arms, legs, torso, etc. If you can’t instantly recognize the base break principle at work there, and you paid good money for martial arts, you didn’t get what you needed. I’m not even sure the program in question in the vid tells you, since it is piece wise.
It is much harder to learn this stuff if you are just trying to memorize the technique and its variations. Much harder than if you learned the base principles first. The catch is, you can’t get the base principles just anywhere. That’s not nearly as well known as the technique itself.
Book,
That is why I make sure i keep talking to my liberal friends. There’s a chance you’re suffering from “echo chamber fatigue”. Like-minded people influence each other, and they will come more and more to agreement, if the only people they talk to are each other.
A pet peeve of mine I haven’t gotten any feedback on, liberal or conservative: There’s about $2 trillion in bailout money to investment firms and banks, and about $50 billion to car companies.
Guess which one is generating more heat? The two trillion, or the fifty billion. And the dysfunction is true of both conservatives and liberals. I cannot explain it. It’s totally nuts. I’d expected conservatives to get it, but they just nod, say uh-huh, and then it’s gone from their heads within seconds. Conservatives… simply… do not care… about $2 TRILLION in bailout money for rich investment bankers, but you start throwing around $50 billion to automakers, and suddenly it’s Katie Bar The Door!
It’s the SAME experience I’m used to getting from liberals on media bias, and I’m actually rather surprised at the reaction, or lack of, by fellow conservatives. I won’t go so far as to call it a blindness… but I will come close.
Feeling free to be critical of conservative shortcomings, or at least to wonder about things and whether they do indicate shortcomings, will break you out of your comfort/dead zone.
Another one: The worst deficit spenders/government debt creators since Lyndon Johnson were Reagan and Bush. Qualify conservatism based upon that.
Book,
Trying to be too kind when disagreements rise up will also straightjacket you.
There have been some *wonderful* disagreements here in the comments on religion, abortion, the gay agenda, libertarians vs religious conservatives. They’ve been spirited disagreements, sometimes ranging over the line to insulting. I doubt the participants feel any malaise over it.
As the mother hen of this blog, perhaps you are having to be too circumspect in expressing your own feelings, to avoid offending anyone, and that can reduce your enjoyment, and exploration, as well.
>>Conservatives… simply… do not care… about $2 TRILLION in bailout money for rich investment bankers, but you start throwing around $50 billion to automakers, and suddenly it’s Katie Bar The Door!>>
I understand what you’re saying here, and both agree and disagree. Technically, you’re absolutely correct, but I think it’s explained by the fact that the investment banker money is already a done deal, and the automaker deal isn’t. I think what you’re seeing is really a response to the banker deal, but since it’s too late to say/do anything about that one, the response it to the automaker deal.
The other part is that the investment banker deal was really complicated, and involved the international economy, sales of securities ant other financial mechanisms that most of us don’t understand (plus the fact that they whipped it through the system incredibly fast). Most of us _do_ understand losing $2200 on each and every car, and $75 per hour union compensation compared to the $45 per hour cost of non-union labor (plus the 450,000 workers paid for not working because they’ve been laid off from plants that have closed). How can a bailout work if they continue to lose money on each and every car? How can they not lose money on each and every car when they can’t cut their labor costs? _Those_ questions we can all understand.
Conservatives don’t have the option of letting the banks and economic infrastructure go bankrupt. For auto industries, however, preventing bailouts to them and the Unions, thus forcing Ford to go bankrupt and change their policies, is doable. Meaning that if it is done it will benefit America more than it would hurt. For the economic infrastructure, we have already seen how Democrats are benefiting from these “emergency times” with the election of Obama. Letting things get worse would only let Democrats control the flow of all the money and the votes.
Politics is about picking things that you can make progress on, not about idealistic crusades. In this respect, Republicans and conservatives are limited and not just because they don’t have the House or the President on their side.
Mike: The only reason you can say that conservatives don’t care about bailing out the investment firms and banks is that you weren’t around my house when all that was going down. I was CHEERING when the House voted it down the first time – our local congress-critter (Zach Wamp) voted “No”, and I loved him for it. Almost ready to forgive him for reneging on the “6-term and out” pledge he took in 1994. Then came the second vote – the only difference being that the Senate had porked it up, and the political heat in Washington had been put on him. Zach just melted – he voted “Yes” and my wife was all over me for the language I was shouting at the radio when that @#$%^&* came on the radio to “explain” why he did the right thing the first time, and had done the right thing the second time. I assure you that I CARE….and a fat lot of good it did me, too.
I’m still convinced that allowing the institutions to value their portfolios realistically, rather than “mark-to-market”, and then forgiving the capital gains taxes on any of those mortgages for five to ten years would have cleared the lot of them. The institutions that had gone wild buying crazy stuff would have taken it in the shorts, of course, but they should have. And the careful banks, and the responsible investors (including me, by the way) would have been rewarded for their wisdom……
As it is, the worst of the high-flying, devil-take-the-hindmost financial “wizards” are getting made whole, and guess who’s paying the bill? Everyone who played by the traditional rules and did the right thing. And I’m ANGRY about that……but life’s too short to spend it angry, Mike. I’ve got work to do, a family to enjoy, and no time to spend screaming about something I can do absolutely nothing about.
By the way, check out the Atlantic story on bubbles – why they occur and why they will always occur. I agree with him, but I still think at the end that the people who took part in them ought to bear most of the pain…here’s the link: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/blodget-wall-street
Earl, you’re absolutely right on all counts.
>> but life’s too short to spend it angry, Mike. I’ve got work to do, a family to enjoy, and no time to spend screaming about something I can do absolutely nothing about. >>
I agree with this, too, but if people *are* going to get hot about the auto bailout – because it’s still not a done deal, and because it’s more concrete and easier to grasp, I’d feel a lot better about conservatism if we also spoke up simultaneously about the sickening aspects of the investments bailout, and especially its phenomenal size. Else we DO simply just look like the party of the Rich, rather than the party of Principles, and play right into the hands of Obama and his socialist ilk.
Absolutely right, Mike…..all those “conservative” pundits who gave the Wall Street bailout a pass make me sick. And if they are caviling at the “tiny” auto bailout, they DO make themselves look like the stereotypical Republican. If the Party walks down that road, they deserve the oblivion they’re heading for. Anyone who comments negatively on money going to the car companies had better (in the SAME piece) be trashing the politicians who allowed a former Wall Streeter promise to use our tax money to buy up mortgages and then turn around and bail his buddies out with it, instead. I SPIT on them all.
By the way — if anyone else actually reads the article in The Atlantic, please get back to us here and see if you agree with me about the absolutely EGREGIOUS blind spot (or was it an averting of the eyes?) in the assigning of blame for the Bubble……I want to see if it’s as obvious as I think it is.
P.S. On another subject entirely – does anyone take the Reader’s Digest anymore? Gail and I still do (but we’re older than dirt), and the new issue has 50 jokes, each one aimed at a State of the Union. Someone read those and tell me how they differ from the joke the Polish guy told about Obama….. I laughed out loud at that one, but a lot of folks apparently took offense. Yet, these “State jokes” trade in outrageous stereotypes as well……and yes, many of them are roll-on-the-floor funny. Sometimes I really miss the ’50s and ’60s, when the ability to laugh at one’s self and at one’s ethnic identity was in greater supply.
Republicans always had the problem in that their best support goes to efforts to block or vote down large government bills. However, in reality, that will only get you a slowly evolving socialist state. If all Republicans can note as their legislative successes to be negative reactions and votes of “no” on bills in Congress, then this just means that compromise will eventually set a Democrat agenda in America: with all the incumbent results like Fannie Mae and subsidization of large corporations (Big Business).
The only long term solution is to pre-empt the Democrats by corrupting them first, rather than the other way around. Congress is designed for people to make deals and trade favors. Eventually, if the GOP sits around trying to be conservative, they are going to lose to greed and the thirst for power. People should look back at the Founding Fathers and how they used people’s self-interest and greed against them. That is the only way to sustain a Republic based upon good government.
At the risk of needlessly complicating things, I posted a couple of youtube videos to demonstrate what I was talking about. However, the KISS principle summarization may be easier to comprehend in the end. This was the explanation I liked best when I was learning this material.
Striking is not just punching or kicking. It is the difference between having a bag of rocks and throwing one rock at a target in a sequence and taking the entire bag of rocks and hitting them in the head with it. It is the difference between getting hit by a baseball going at 35 miles per hour and getting hit by a truck going 35 miles per hour.
My own little take on this concerns acceleration. Gravity accelerates at 9.8 meters per second per second. Meaning, in one second your velocity is now 9.8 meters per second. Force is mass times acceleration. Since nobody can accelerate their arm or fist to 9.8 meters per second or 32 feet per second in one second… human beings must rely upon their mass if they want the maximum force for open handed strikes. Martial arts comes very close to this by training the muscles and the reaction speed of the human body. This, however, is never as reliable or as available to the common population as something like a firearm is.
All the complicated techniques you see function upon three basic principles. It doesn’t matter if you do some complicated and flashy technique which causes the guy to fall on the ground or if you just smash him in the head with a back a few times. What matters is results; what matters is getting the injury on the other guy.
One slight clarification; human beings can’t accelerate that fast with their muscle strength. This is why using your mass and the planet’s gravity well is the best solution. This is why I talk about using your body mass in strikes. You are not using your body to punch through someone so much as you are letting the planet’s gravity well use your body to punch through someone by adding a vertical component to your strikes. This is the most powerful strike, where the vertical component is 100% of your strike and you just drop on someone from above. However, if you simply take a horizontal strike across the planet’s surface, it will still be stronger than if you tried to use your muscles to maintain a constant acceleration equal to 9.8 m/s/s.