|
| [This is just a collection of stuff I read over the weekend.]
Caveat:
Mostly Clean Technica articles. Biased and simplistic reporting / opinions. What facts are provided, are pretty cool though.
Overall points:
China is creating a 21st century New Deal that will greatly benefit its infrastructure, while the US is burning most of its stimulus funding on non-durable stuff like the service industry. There may be a real threat that new high-tech industrial manufacturing jobs will be lost to China, instead of retained here. On the plus side, the sheer size of the stimulus means that a lot of potentially worthwhile research into cleaner, more efficient technologies will still receive funding like never before. The Asian countries are still spending 3-5 times more than the US is, for clean tech research though.
Points of interest:
The articles below discussing US energy infrastructure seem to provide a pretty good SWOT analysis.
China's economic significance:
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/12/13/1st-world-ranking-of-clean-energy-technology-cet-sales-cet-to-become-3rd-largest-global-sales-sector-by-2020/
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Chinas_economy_grows_8_percent_in_stunning_rebound_999.html
This is an application of FDR's New Deal -- 33.6% increase in govt spending on infrastructure? Hell yeah. They managed to increase their industrial output by 9%, even as their exports shrank 21%.
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/11/03/china-forgets-china-only-wind-turbines-policy-but-why/
Who's getting left behind, eh?
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/07/24/china-invests-30-billion-in-renewable-energy-economy-rebounds/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/12/01/china-now-spending-9-billion-a-month-on-renewable-energy/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/09/29/super-high-speed-rail-for-china-4-billion-purchase/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123989461947625407.html
examples of 21st century infrastructural investment.
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/09/14/first-solar-and-china-to-partner-on-gigantic-solar-power-plant/
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-10/31/content_6976060.htm
310m Chinese households vs. 105m US
US 936 kWh/mo, 1136/mo TX
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/12/03/energy-push-rivals-manhattan-project-says-wsj/
Clean coal:
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/12/11/what-if-energy-from-un-mined-coal-could-be-tapped-while-reducing-the-co2-75/
Wind and infrastructure:
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/10/05/why-wind-storage-worth-trillions/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/09/02/pump-hydro-underground-to-store-wind-power/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/09/12/us-must-socialize-grid-to-add-renewable-energy-study-finds/
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2007/02/mid-atlantic-offshore-wind-potential-330-gw-47355
Awesome
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/09/24/no-off-shore-wind-nimbyism-gigantic-potential-for-mid-atlantic-states/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/04/29/wind-turbine-output-boosted-30-by-breakthrough-design/
Batteries:
http://gas2.org/2009/08/05/obama-unveils-largest-ever-investment-in-advanced-batteries/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/11/19/arpa-e-37-top-funding-goes-to-renewable-storage-in-liquid-battery/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/11/23/polaris-arpa-e-pump-money-into-noceras-breakthrough-in-biomimic-photosynthesis/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/11/16/using-co2-to-extract-geothermal-energy/
Solar panel installations and cost:
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/10/20/where-are-the-gaps-in-the-solar-marketplace/2/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/10/21/joe-biden-to-solar-power-the-usa-with-berkeley-first-municipal-tax-assessment-financing/
http://green.venturebeat.com/2008/11/20/banks-show-confidence-in-solar-sunrun-secures-105m-financing/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/11/04/new-cycle-capital-draper-fisher-jurvetson-invest-122-million-in-pace-solar-renewable-funding/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/07/10/really-solar-is-actually-cheaper-than-pge/
http://planetsave.com/blog/2009/10/22/neighborly-solar-from-1bog-could-raise-phoenix-property-values/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/11/14/group-buying-lowest-price-for-solar-ever/
http://1bog.org/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/92-percent-americans-want-solar-power-now.php?dcitc=th_rss
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/03/21/fremonts-solyndra-wins-first-doe-funding/
Thin film solar:
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/03/16/thin-film-solar-cells-get-a-boost-from-nanotechnology/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/11/12/thin-film-solar-panels-to-double-their-share-of-the-market-by-2013/
http://cleantechnica.com/2008/05/24/a-thin-film-solar-panel-installation/
http://cleantechnica.com/2008/09/29/a-thin-film-solar-installation-revisited/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/07/10/xerocoat-boosts-thin-film-solar-efficiency-lowers-costs-with-new-coatings/
http://cleantechnica.com/2009/04/20/srs-introduces-thin-film-solar-tile-for-clay-tile-roofs/
| | |
| Stuff on my mind lately: fitness, longsword, parkour, schedule management.
Oh, and love.
In no particular order, some fragments I've compiled from the past week...
When you get active, you get thirsty. Plain, cool water is the tastiest beverage when you’ve been in Houston heat running, fighting, or pounding on sheet steel.
For those of us who are not psycho, I find that a touch of 100% fruit juice helps. I love OJ, but ever since I increased my H2O intake and exercise, straight juice was too sweet. So I started cutting juice with water.
Nowadays, I cut my chilly water with about 25% juice. Stretches the dollars out, keeps your H2O intake up, and your sugar consumption down.
I also cut the sodas out after college. These were contributing factors to my 21-lb drop (from 181) over the next year.
Of course, that was like throwing out the back seat and all the doors out of a 3-cylinder car. Like in that one Herbie the Love Bug movie where they had to ditch everything that wasn't essential to driving faster. I still think they should've dumped Don Knotts out the back of Herbie for that one.
Nowadays, I'm a bit healthier in balancing activity with non-desperate cullings of dietary intake.
B/c the “cut-with-water” tactic worked so well, I started cutting my diet (in the natural, non-fad sense) with other healthy stuff I liked, or found healthier versions. I made 1-2 incremental changes every couple of weeks / months.
Plus I really like non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). This basically says:
Take the stairs, not the elevator.
Park your car as soon as you pull into a lot, then walk to the store.
Stand or pace while you talk on the phone.
Use a standing workstation (like drafting tables).
Cook.
All these are activities which burn more calories (~200-250 calories / hr) than sitting at rest (~80 calories / hr). (figures est. for 175-lb person)
B/c I've gradually added these activities in, I can consume a relatively tasty (i.e. fatty) range of treats a few times every month with no regrets or waistline consequences:
Lamb chops
Dark chocolate (which has less sugar than milk chocolate anyway)
Flan
Haagen Dazs ice cream
I heard a "French women's diet" book review on NPR maybe 10 yrs ago. Basically, it said that they walk to the grocery store and can often buy only what they can carry home. It was a revelation for me.
Americans literally back the truck up -- they pull their SUVs up into the handicapped spot, put their hazard blinkers on, and load it up.
In a strange twist of le Methode Naturelle (where one objective is to be able to carry and move your own body through basic movements that'd be required to e.g. flee a predator or chase prey), your diet becomes necessarily more healthy if you can only carry 20-40 lbs of groceries. Parkour and blacksmithing have given me a slight edge here, but then again, I have more muscle mass (think more cylinders in a car engine, burning fuel at idle or rest) than when I played Q3 Team Arena and Dawn of War all the time. Plus it helps limit my grocery bill for the week to $40-60, even with the luxury of 1 lb of wild-caught salmon.
Other changes I've noticed due to weight / quality logistics:
You focus on essentials first -- meat (incl. chicken, salmon, beef, and pork), dark green leafy vegetables, milk (soy or almond, b/c I resent teh lactose), and 100% fruit juice. Meat rations per meal go from 12-16 oz to a much healthier and reasonable 4-6 oz.
You cut out carbs, starchy stuff b/c of weight and bulk. I haven't bought any potatoes or rice since I started carrying my groceries to my car at the far end of the parking lot. :P
You buy 4 oz of nice, tasty chocolate. Not a 2-lb bag of Twix.
You cut out pre-processed, packaged food, b/c it's too bulky / sodium-heavy / expensive / untasty. My two-armed cargo capacity permits me a bag of Kettle chips every 2-3 weeks, not 2-3 bags of chips every week.
And yeah, it's a source of motivation for me to exercise more, so I can carry more food! :D
---
I recently had a couple of "just plain fencing" rounds with Scott and Chris, and I had a couple things put in perspective for me:
- Chris is pretty good with a longsword. Which is awesome, b/c he's realizing and applying the intelligence that I've known all along, but that took Scott to help Chris gel everything together and serve it up on the fencing floor.
- I'm pretty good with a longsword. Like, really good at basics of entry, timing, lines. Not so good with the fancypants ablaufen and winden stuff.
- Scott's really good. Wicked good with the timing and entries. He totally knows where I'm going, based on where I'm coming from.
- Chris is downright devious. He's got some slick feints and sturzhau strikes that always come as a surprise to Scott and me.
- I easily get adrenaline-poisoned. My judgment becomes impaired and I soon start fighting harder instead of smarter.
- Scott's really good. The only way you can tell he's getting amped, is you get hit harder. His precision and actions don't suffer, as far as I can tell.
It's helped me get over my frustration with the ablaufen / winden drills we've been doing lately, b/c I got pretty frustrated with some of them. I was like, why am I sooo uncoordinated?
---
And that carries over to parkour, too. I revisited some of the stuff I first worked on when I started PK, and I'm realizing how much progress I've made, that's stuck. The stuff that I've internalized with regards to proprioception, balance, strength, and control. I can almost taste the press and handstand. :)
---
In the past 4 months, I've dated, befriended, and come to love a wonderful woman.
Love is everything people have told me it would be. Exhilarating, tender, funny, misspoken, accidental, clumsy, awkward, deep, rich, fanciful, pragmatic, inconvenient, and most of all wonderful.
When it goes right, it really goes right. It's easy when we're in good times. You cook together, dance together, go picnicking, take a walk, check out live music and performance art, theater, movies, and all the stuff that belongs in a movie montage. And it makes me giddy sometimes to realize in the moment, just before the moment, or after the fact, that *I* am living this. Me. Not someone I know or some character in a book or movie.
But when it really goes right, I mean it *all* goes right.
I've made some mistakes and poor decisions.
Who hasn't? What matters is how we handle it.
By it all going right, I mean that Mandy and I have talked each other through each situation, without recrimination or judgment. Whether it was miscommunication or something misspoken, we held firm to the belief (hers and mine) that
the other person generally means no harm, and in most cases of family, friends, and SOs furthermore means well. And we say so.
Trite as it sounds, I have learned a lot about myself and three decades' worth of habits, obsessions, and neuroses as I try to be myself, be true to myself, and be my best possible self. And Mandy's always there with the metaphorical laser pointer, aimed precisely at what I was struggling to isolate, identify, and verbalize.
It's a wonderful, humbling experience such as I have only hitherto experienced in such a regular fashion with David, Rafael, and Scott in rapier, kung fu, and longsword. And occasional life lessons.
But to give credit where it's due, many of my friends, SCA (Sean, Connor, Steph, Kevin...) or otherwise (Mark, Leo, Danielle, Irene, jwilks...), have done so much over the years to prepare me for love and all its myriad facets, good and bad.
---
I've had to struggle with discrimination of a sort, lately. It might be partially rooted in racism, but it's more about the cultural gap than anything.
Some people who mean a lot to me have pointed out with the best of intentions that she's white, that she has kids, that we are from different backgrounds. The implication is usually that we won't work out, or will have a hell of a time at it.
And you know what? It doesn't even matter. What matters is the multicultural, cosmopolitan view of the world that two urbanites share. Green living. Progressive social / govt programs that responsibly help society to grow, not dole out handouts. Sushi. MMA (for her) and HEMA/parkour (for me) workouts.
Well, it does matter, but only in the same way that every relationship comes with its own unique circumstances and challenges. The important thing is the person with whom I'm facing these challenges together. Good communication. Self-awareness. Senses of place, propriety, priority, and humor. Trust. And the desire to make it happen. As much as we all look for it in our relationships, I feel like one of the lucky few who've found it in spades.
I love her kids too. I was uncertain at first, but all the pleasures and challenges I've faced with them have been exactly what I'd dreamed of, with kids of my own. Video games, Risk, frisbee, chores, squabbles.. Everything but the diapers! They're great to be with, each one unique, they're inquisitive, and they get along with me.
There's a lot here that I'm still trying to verbalize or describe. The individual relationships being built, the family package, guidance versus acceptance. I'm still in the middle of assessing my reaction, but at this moment it's safe to say:
- I've always wanted kids
- With just my own life as it is, I have in recent years been less committed to having a kid
- Mandy's kids aren't what I expected, but they are a lot of what I've wanted
I think the biggest challenge has been to find and respect boundaries because they are, after all, not my kids.
---
Re: racism in general, racism is hard-wired into who we are. As animals, we are born to recognize and be attracted to people similar to us. Physical traits are easier to spot than mental / emotional ones. It's our sapience that enables us to not reject, but to accept this about ourselves. And once we've accepted it, we can transcend it to seek out people with similar personality / lifestyle / etc. traits that truly make for better relationship matches. | | |
| I'm glad we were in the office today, b/c after my tactical error yesterday (letting Jason talk me into getting a cheap lunch at James Coney Island for the first (and last) time), I am *still* paying for it. Nuked the bathroom four times today.
The body gets used to eating certain things, and I am apparently addicted to mostly healthy food. ;P And chips. But not too many of those either..
For a long time, I've wondered about JCI hotdogs. Growing up, I got fairly large doses of Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and nostalgic glimpses of New York, the North shore in Jersey, run-down amusement parks closed in the cold off-season, and sweet melancholy.
I have been thoroughly disabused of the notion that hotdogs are integral to this experience...
Brooklyn Pizzeria is my safe favorite -- $3 gets you a large, light, crispy, never greasy slice of supreme. It's the only pizza I've had that I can immediately dust off my fingers and use a laptop or other electronic device w/o leaving finger smears. It's that good. I indulge every other week or so. | | |
| [Note that the largely academic timeframe I discuss below renders moot any shrill pro/anti-global warming arm-waving. So chill out and enjoy this geek moment with me.]
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/earlyice.htm
So I hear from a lot of people of varying education levels that the earth "has had much higher levels of CO2 in the past than those over which we're panicking today." Such people are *usually* anti-pro-environmental reactionary types, but not always. Sometimes they're pro-environmental anti-pro-environmental counter-reactionaries who're tired of e.g. doomsday predictions that we're all gonna die in 20 years, or of Greenpeace getting in trouble for smoking illegal Japanese whaling operations. And sometimes they're just the Judean People's Popular Liberation Front.
Fine, the claim repeated above is true. However, let's pose a more accurate question:
Would you want to live on an earth with up to 20 times the current amount of CO2?
What was the earth like during such a time? Look at the Ordovician period (450 million years ago).
http://www.peripatus.gen.nz/paleontology/Ordovician.html
Note about 40% of the way down, under Climate, that global summer temperatures were 40 C (104 F).
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080916_summertemp.html
That compares against the summer 2008 global average of 15.6 C (60.1 F).
To put this in perspective, all the people whining about how hot and disgusting [fill in the blank] city is would have to add 44 degrees F to their local weather forecast.
http://weatherblog.abc13.com/2009/09/summer-of-1980-was-a-smidge-warmer-than-2009.html
That's right -- Houston's highs this past summer would have been 148 F.
My car registered 117 F at the end of the workday. If we lived in the Ordovician period, I could have left a brisket to slow-roast for 8 hours in the car (161 F is exactly the temperature for slow BBQ). Too bad the most advanced life forms then were octopi and jawless fishes (no land animals). Maybe we'll do fried calamari instead.
I am setting aside the OSU's end goal of providing support for the CO2 / global warming causal relationship, and the fact that ABC13 noted we set 9 new record high temperatures this summer.
This is merely a thought exercise. Even if we did absolutely nothing and let pollution run rampant, it would still take another hundred years to see another 1.4 - 5.8 C (2.5 - 10.4 F) increase (based on temperature readings since 1880 and projections for the future).
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080202093935AAGUJ9R
So it'd take about 688 years for my car to reach slow roast temperature.
Mind you, the Stern report says that a 2 C increase will cause considerable global instability as traditionally fertile areas become marginal farmland, and different marginal areas become more productive or completely barren.
That really puts into perspective how slow global warming will be to affect our lives. The sheer magnificent scale of climate change is something that both the panic-mongers and the stubborn reactionaries in denial don't realize (or conveniently gloss over to push their short-term, 20-year horizon human-centric agendas). They're no better than two ants on a kitchen tile.
http://www.xkcd.com/638/
(and I include myself in this category)
The final question (and one that I've harped on before) is: What will our legacy to our grandchildren (and beyond) be?
Other links I didn't use:
Way more detail on CO2 and ice age correlations than I can stomach right now:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7193/full/nature06949.html
What it says:
http://www.usnews.com/articles/science/2009/06/22/carbon-dioxide-not-to-blame-in-ice-age-mystery.html
Also what it says:
http://www.usnews.com/articles/science/environment/2009/09/21/sinking-river-deltas-threaten-millions.html
(subtext: There's too damn many people. Y'all need to get the hell offa this boat 'afore she sinks!) | | |
| I haven't updated much since I got into the swing of things in June. Unless you really like me and want a Being John Malkovich style journey into my cogitations, stick to my FaceSpace updates. This thing is gonna go onnnnn forever.
New job's going well. In four months, I've gotten reasonably settled in, learned a little about electrical wiring and code, and the client has waxed effusive about our three deliverables to date. Now that I've got the work process down to near autopilot, I've started looking at what other skills I can develop. Have a lot of stuff I can study or practice on, like CAD, more code / spec stuff.
Overall, the longsword HEMA practices are going fantastically well. We're slowly but steadily getting new guys in, and Scott's drills and exercises keep them moving and excited. I'm almost envious of how quickly and easily they can learn this stuff, as opposed to the highly enlightening yet arduous 9 years that it took me to puzzle out what they're getting served weekly.
That said, I've recently hit some major frustration, b/c I gimped my back for about 8 weeks, and am getting back into shape. In strength and aerobic fitness, I'm better off than I was 2 months ago. But I'm having to relearn a lot of my sense and awareness. Plus I'm worse than ever at chugging hard coming out of the gate. I can feel myself gathering and launching on every action I start. And that means that I must be easily readable a whole second ahead of my strikes, b/c I was already telegraphing clearly in the videos from May.
Speaking of gimping, I got back into parkour a bit more, in July. Jonathan persuaded me last-minute to hit San Antonio over a weekend for the National Jam. 15 awesome hrs of parkour strained my back more than a little, and I kept re-aggravating it everytime I got back to the 80-90% point. So I've sat hard on it, did very low-impact workouts, and I think I'm back in it now.
The most important thing I've gained from parkour is a really visceral level of body awareness. From the past month of my own training and some personal relationships which involve parkour, I've also become aware of some of my personality shortcomings. And I recognize these shortcomings as long-standing issues. So I'd be daft to expect I can just sweep them away overnight. But I've already started working on them, and oddly enough, I feel that I'm on the cusp of a new stage in maturing. Specifically, debate resolution, anger and frustration mgmt, communication of needs vs. wants, negotiation, and acceptance of other viewpoints are my foci. We'll see where things go in 6-12 months.
WRT body awareness, I'm still fumbling with inversion. But I'm much more comfortable on all fours now. And I've got the beginnings of understanding about how animals walk on the pads of their forepaws. It's the part of the hand that corresponds to the ball of our foot, except that it's less centered than the foot's ball is under the big toe; more distributed across the bases of all four fingers.
In footwork, we move more softly, quietly, efficiently, quickly, balanced, on the balls of our feet and with flexed and relaxed knees. A soft landing with no noise means little to no excess energy wasted as sound, which means less impact on the joints, which means less strain and injury.
Applying this to the arms, I've begun to find my quadrupedal stride. The ball of the hand lands first, followed by rolling onto the heel of the hand (to be minimized or reduced, as I develop more upper body strength). A flexion of the elbow follows as the body's weight is transferred onto the hand, then I spring off the hand as the weight passes forward to the other hand. Relaxing the hands every time I pick them up increases endurance, and the motion begins to resemble that of dogs, cats, and apes.
Also, there are two gaits I am looking at developing. The slower one, for strength training and cat walking on rails, is what would be called a 2-beat diagonal ambling gait in the equestrian world: left foot and right hand, right foot and left hand. The one for speed will be the canter, a 3-beat gait: left foot, right foot and left hand, right hand. A gallop would be the ultimate goal -- the right foot starts landing separately and before the left hand, making for a 4-beat gait.
For that, I'll need a messload more core and upper body strength.
I hit 24 pull-ups, 37 push-ups on Wednesday. Probably could've gone for 5 and 8 more respectively. 30.5% of where I want to be. Plus 9.7 cat-passes over the tallest damned obstacles (42") I've ever cleared from a standing start. That 0.7th one was a doozy. I'd already done about 50 monkey vaults, so the knees and toes weren't tucking very tightly on that last cat-pass. I lightly clipped a foot and knee, and hung onto just enough of a landing to tuck and roll.
No real harm done, and I'm even more resolute now in emphasizing drills on landings and rolls for the noobs.
For myself, I absolutely have to hammer down on handstands, push-ups from the same, and the yoga crow pose.
Two-week goal: a single full-range assisted handstand. I'm able to do 15 little 1/3 dips now.
October: 5 assisted handstand push-ups, full-range.
I'll have to be careful not to strain or injure my shoulders, esp. the left one.
By November, I think I can change things up and work on free handstands and push-ups.
Otherwise, no brand new novel skill goals. I already can do most of what I want to do (for the present) -- I just need to be able to repeat my moves at least 50 times over, and preferably 100 times. Safely. Then in a row w/o bailing.
Hrm.. I think the same thing applies to longsword, then. And all the more so with sword and buckler. I definitely do not work 100 reps with every strike. So should I be so surprised that my first couple hundred 1-2-3-4 pattern strikes *with* buckler (to properly complicate matters) should suck terribly?
OK. I feel better. We have the tools and the know-how. Now we have the will and clarity of purpose.
Revisiting rapier with a new eye, after something like 2 years away from it. I have a rough idea of key concepts to teach, and about 2 drill tree structures. I am sooo not ready to do any teaching, though. What I've learned about what makes a great coach / teacher makes my previous efforts look like donkey dookie.
Overall, as I've explored and expanded upon my skills, I've gradually come to some realizations that are corroborated in a book Scott lent me, noted above. For those of us always looking for the more perfect simulation, the better way to train, this book is absolutely vital. And as I and the author have both said, at the end of the day, there is no one to whom you can pretend to be other than as you truly are. Even if everyone else is fooled, you will know whether you can or can't do something.
That's what parkour taught me, as I considered an 8' drop onto grassy turf, looked across an 8.5' gap, and looked at a 32" high rail. There's no audience, no judge, no saved game restore point. Just me and the next repetition, the first jump all over again 20 times. Sometimes I mentally shy from the leap on the 1st rep, and sometimes on the 15th rep.
But it teaches me what Miller describes as the "commitment to never make a half-assed decision again." It's something I think successful people (athletes, businessmen, artists -- humans) all learn. Beyond parkour and self-defense, it poses major ramifications for life. Living this way is what can make people assertive, confident, decisive, as well as direct, blunt, hard, unsympathetic. But through our actions and training, we choose which of those adjectives others will apply to us. It's all just tools. Good and evil spring from the user.
Related to that is the idea of giving yourself permission to do. Something. Anything. Our minds and bodies are capable of many things. The most extreme actions are possible, but risk or cause damage to ourselves. However, far far short of that utter limit of human capability, we limit our actions because of (in order) what we can safely perform, what we *think* we can safely perform, what society will permit, and what we ourselves will permit. According to Miller, the last limitation is very often the one that dictates how we act.
In cases of self-defense, however, an antagonist has already chosen to violate many of society's rules. The antagonist's actions challenge our safe worldview, and if we are not mentally prepared for this, it can create a mental disjunction as we struggle to digest and accommodate the new data. i.e. we freeze in shock when confronted with the situation.
Therefore, we ourselves must unlearn being the "good kid" who always follows the rules. In order to deal with a situation outside of society's accepted rules of behavior, we have to step outside those rules for our own behavior.
Note that this is not a call to return to a Lord of the Flies -esque existence or any such nonsense. This only applies in the specific case described above. Miller does a fantastic and well-researched job of examining the idea of total self-defense. His writing style is intelligent, clear, and deep -- intended as instruction for instructors. Always, the book aims at the practical end result of drilling down to the core of our pre/misconceptions about what self-defense is and requires.
And I see a similar message in Blane's parkour blog:
http://blane-parkour.blogspot.com/2009/01/frequently-asked-questions.html
So when done in good ways, for good purposes, knocking down personal or societal limitations is admired. And when done in bad ways, we consider such acts to be criminal or evil.
Otherwise, not much going on here.
Lightly broiled salmon fillets, spinach salads with homemade raspberry vinaigrette, horseradish cheddar, etc.
I've succeeded fairly well in cutting out anything more prepared than raw meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, milk alternatives.
My indulgences in unhealthy food (smoked, sugary, salty, processed, fatty) are more than I'd like, but less than in 2009 Q1. I craved doughnuts a couple weeks ago for the first time in a year, and had two. Two bites into the second one, I suddenly realized, "This is gross. What the hell am I putting in my mouth?" So I guess 1-2 doughnut holes per quarter is about right for satisfying my craving. I'm far from it but getting there with salty greasy stuff like chips. Still a once per 2-3 weeks kind of thing.
And the weirdest thing is that it's not b/c I want to lose weight or body fat % (though those are minor goals). It's b/c good food just tastes better, and I feel more.. clean and energetic.
I remember two years ago, I had some McDonald's fries, and I endured some .. gastrointestinal distress afterwards. Since then, I've noticed that every time I eat out at a restaurant, I get that a bit. The greasier and more fast-food oriented, the worse the effect.
I am not complaining. :) Now I get to save up for very occasional, but tasty, dining experiences. Anything from a pho noodle shop to Cafe Rabelais lamb chops to rare seared tuna.
For a couple months, I mildly binged on picking up the lamb specials at the meat counter and brisket (1-2 lbs / week and 1 10-pounder / month, respectively), but I got tired of that. So that's down to once per 2-3 months as well.
And I'm perversely proud of the fact that, ever since I moved out of my parents' again in April, I have only gone out to eat in company with friends or my girlfriend. I've never needed to eat out on my own.
So. Comfort zone established. New cooking challenges must be found! I am thinking Eastern European..
And since May, I have spent maybe 4 hrs on computer games. Which makes me mildly sad, b/c I scored Fallout 3 for half price ($25) in May, and it can still run attractively on my 5.5-year old machine.
What makes me *very* sad is that my reading time has similarly dropped off to about 30 mins a week. Since I realized this, I've tried to reserve 30 minutes a day for reading. I succeed every other day or so. Will work on it.
Ditto for news. I used to be terrible at it, got great at keeping up on world, environment, business news for a while, and then fell off again this past year. So that gets 15 minutes a day or so on Google news and the BBC.
I'm painfully slowly working through my call list of friends. No timetable on that, but I try to spend about an hour catching up with everyone. I might be done and ready to cycle through again in 12-18 months.. :P
So that's it. Good night, and good luck. Remember, the light at the end of the tunnel... may be you. | | |
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