Scree

noun : an accumulation of loose stones or rocky debris lying on a slope or at the base of a hill or cliff.

Everyday craftsmanship

Published March 16, 2014  ·  All posts on Mar 16  ·  

Over time, the ideal of craftsmanship was cordoned off to just the technical arts. Physicians and legislators no longer thought of themselves as craftsmen, but as philosophers and natural scientists who were more concerned with the theoretical as opposed to the practical. Such a shift is a shame, for the principles of craftsmanship truly do apply to every man, whether he makes furniture or crunches numbers. Below we take a look at how these overarching principles of the traditional craftsman can apply to all areas of your life, no matter your profession.

~ Brett McKay from, Measure Twice, Cut Once

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Are you tough?

Published March 10, 2014  ·  All posts on Mar 10  ·  

Everything is harder, or rather, I should say everything is more complex. The result is that I learn how to tolerate stress, both mental and physical, and how to adapt to make something work despite the fact that the environment is not cooperating. I deal with it or fail. When I’m out there, it doesn’t matter that I can deadlift 3x my bodyweight on a bar, because that doesn’t change the fact that a rock is completely off-balance and seems to be actively trying to roll onto my toes. And that doesn’t change the fact that I’m picking it up and carrying it up the mountain anyway.

That is the definition of tough.

~ Brett McKay from, You May Be Strong . . . But Are You Tough?

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What do you know about Koichi Tohei?

Published March 4, 2014  ·  All posts on Mar 4

Relaxation alone—even a specialized form of it—is not aikidō, however. If this internal power is a foundational skill—one largely abandoned today—the techniques of aikidō are its delivery system. Even with remarkable power, without a delivery system, one is no more able to fight than a power lifter is able to win in a boxing ring, just because he can bench press six hundred pounds.

~ Ellis Amdur from, «http://www.guillaumeerard.com/aikido/articles/it-aint-necessarily-so-rendez-vous-with-adventure»

Aikidoka: We talk a lot about Tohei Sensei, but how much time have you spent actually reading about him?

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Systemic Evil

Published February 26, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 26

Clearly, there is a moral principle at work in the actions of the leakers, whistle-blowers and hacktivists and those who support them. I would also argue that that moral principle has been clearly articulated, and it may just save us from a dystopian future.

~ Peter Ludlow from, The Banality of Systemic Evil

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…and I would argue that four, (number of examples he presents) is not a number which can be reasonably extrapolated to describe “the millennial generation.” The millenials I know are currently the “me” generation. Currently, meaning that for NOW, they’re focused on themselves. They are not going to buy into the national health care rigamarole, they are not going to buy life insurance, they are not going to carefully lay out their course with a moral compass.

Just like me, (and the members of my generation) when we were the age the millenials are currently. Also see: Generations.

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Generations

Published February 20, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 20

Strauss and Howe argue that the last five centuries of Anglo-American history can be explained by the existence of four generational archetypes that repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern every 80-100 years, the length of a long human life, or what the ancients called a “saeculum.” These generational archetypes are: Prophet, Nomad, Hero, and Artist. Each generation consists of those born during a roughly 20 year period. As each generation moves up the ladder of age and takes a different place in society, the mood of the culture greatly changes.

~ Brett McKay from, The Generations of Men

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This is some deep stuff; Deep, like Harry Seldon/Foundation deep.

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Dogs and Wolves

Published February 14, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 14

The thing is, the DNA of dogs and wolves are over 99 percent similar. … So while they do have physical differences, …what’s there to stop a dog from attacking the same herd it is supposed to guard? It’s breeding and training. In the human counterpart, it’s attitude, ethos and goals. Predators and protectors are totally different kinds of people, although they share many different traits. The sharing of traits, however, is the danger zone for protectors.

Or, as one friend in self-defense training joked about it to me, “The closest thing to criminals are cops. Both like to drive around in cars all day scoping out the joints, both carry guns, boss people around, and drink a lot of coffee.”

~ Wayne Muromoto from, 88. Dogs and Wolves and Budo

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It’s definitely worth thinking through the “sharing of traits” being discussed. That whole attitude/goals thing is critical for you to turn out a decent human being after a few years of your martial arts training. If you haven’t thought about your attitude/goals, you are on the good-intentions-paved road to Bad Times. If you haven’t made conscious choices about what you want to internalize, you are careening along without intentionally steering.

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Why Doesn’t Barnes and Noble Just…

Published February 11, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 11  ·  

Barnes and Noble is the last man standing, right?

They tried the hardware/tablet/reader game. (Kudos for putting their money and effort where their hearts are.) But they flopped:

Barnes & Noble laid off its Nook hardware engineers, according to a source that tipped Business Insider. The engineers were let go last Thursday, according to our source. This follows Barnes & Noble dismissing the VP of Hardware, Bill Saperstein in January.

~ From Barnes & Noble Fired Its Nook Hardware Engineering Staff

Go over and search the IOS app store for “Barnes and Noble”. Nadda.

Free consulting for B&N:

  1. Develop a kick-ass (ie, hire experts) app which lets me “use” the bookstore on my IOS device. I want to browse the ENTIRE B&N catalog as if the whole thing is the world’s biggest bookstore; Every book available this instant in every physical store (you can do that today on their kiosks in the store), your second-hand “marketplace” books, special order, everything visible in one app.
  2. Do NOT make the app into Am*zon. I want JUST a bookstore. Am*zon is HORRIBLE at being just a bookstore; They jam all those ads/also-viewed, in my face, etc etc. Make a bookstore. In an app.
  3. Let me START reading in the app. (You’re big enough to go after the publishers to get the rights to start this with some books. Other publishers will follow when they realize you’re selling books for the other guys.) A few pages are free to get my feet wet. Maybe the first chapter is available for a small fee (50c? buy.), and the whole book as a digital read, (when that’s possible) for a significant discount off dead-tree book price.
  4. Meanwhile, I can click to buy the actual book.
  5. Over the rainbow: Ship me the book, with a B&N bookmark on the page where I stopped reading.
  6. Shipping the book to me? I pay shipping. (Unless of course I’m one of those B&N members, then shipping is free.)
  7. Or offer to ship-to-my-store for free. (You ship truckloads there already!). See what you just did there? PRE-sold a book, and got me into your store for some additional impulse shopping.

Nice. You just made it the best digital bookstore in the world, and made it easy for me to shift sideways to a physical book because people DO still read dead-tree books.

Extra credit:

Come up with a book recycling program so I can bring the dead-tree book back to the store — maybe I can only do this with books I bought from you. That book can then be donated to a library, resold in the marketplace second hand, or you write it off, whatever.

In exchange for me giving you the physical book, I get a wee bit of in-app credit that I can use buying those getting-started reading excerpts. Now you’ve created a cycle where I buy the book, give it back and use the “credit” to get my next hit of initial reading, to make me buy the next book . . .

You’re welcome.

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Three types of human rights

Published February 8, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 8  ·  

My point is simply this: unless you are an extreme outlier, you do believe in all three types of human rights; Whether you prefer the term “Natural Law”, “God given rights”, or something else, you think that there are ethical norms that are not merely pragmatic but objective and true. Therefore government is not merely “something we all do together”, but potentially a destructive force that can commit evil. Finally, it is not only meaningful, but almost mandatory – if one is to say anything of interest – to take great care to distinguish between “is” and “ought” when speaking of rights.

~ “Clark” from, «https://www.popehat.com/2013/08/23/three-meanings-of-the-word-rights-atheists-are-confused/»

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Knowledge workers as a political class?

Published February 2, 2014  ·  All posts on Feb 2

Other people are recognizing that we work in an important intersection of knowledge and responsibility, too. I came across a presentation from this year’s Chaos Communication Congress in Germany. It was a talk by Jacob Appelbaum and Julian Assange, who were introduced by Sarah Harrison. The name of the talk was SysAdmins of the World Unite.

~ Matt Simmons from, «http://www.standalone-sysadmin.com/blog/2013/12/knowledge-workers-as-a-political-class/»

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The NSA behemoth

Published January 28, 2014  ·  All posts on Jan 28

The spate of new NSA disclosures substantially raises the stakes of this debate. We now know that the intelligence establishment systematically undermines oversight by lying to both Congress and the courts. We know that the NSA infiltrates internet standard-setting processes to security protocols that make surveillance harder. We know that the NSA uses persuasion, subterfuge, and legal coercion to distort software and hardware product design by commercial companies.

~ Yochai Benkler, from Time to tame the NSA behemoth trampling our rights

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Refining the Spirit of Parkour

Published January 26, 2014  ·  All posts on Jan 26  ·  

“Parkour is a movement discipline based on using only the body to interact with the environment and navigate one’s surroundings.”

It’s sort of long winded and it isn’t the kind of sentence that is going to sell parkour to an onlooker immediately, but I think that real philosophical grounding comes from strongly defined terms. Whether one’s style of parkour is efficient (fast), superfluous (flashy), direct (a to b), meandering (flow), applied (real situations), or supplemental (conditioning), I think that the above definition manages to cover the things that traceurs do.

~ Albert Kong, from «http://www.lethalbeef.com/blog/?p=193»

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Sharks on Twitter

Published January 22, 2014  ·  All posts on Jan 22

Government researchers have tagged 338 sharks with acoustic transmitters that monitor where the animals are. When a tagged shark is about half a mile away from a beach, it triggers a computer alert, which tweets out a message on the Surf Life Saving Western Australia Twitter feed. The tweet notes the shark’s size, breed and approximate location.

~ Alan Yu, from More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter

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Mercy does not exists without more severe options

Published January 21, 2014  ·  All posts on Jan 21

I certainly don’t doubt for a minute that O Sensei could have devastated his training partners. Their ukemi demonstrate their respect for that potential. But I’m told that Saito Sensei opined that without mercy, ukemi is impossible. Certainly that is not to imply that practicing severe forms and injuring people has a place in the dojo. Practicing the severe forms short of injury, however, may be fundamental. Without that, how can you personally claim to be merciful? You, whatever your mental state or intentions, would be constrained by your limited technical knowledge.

~ Charles Warren, from «http://blog.aikidojournal.com/2012/07/15/on-mercy-by-charles-warren/»

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Cinnamon

Published January 20, 2014  ·  All posts on Jan 20

Cinnamon comes from the bark of trees. It has long been considered a medicinal plant. There are several varieties, harvested from southern China to Southeast Asia. For years, there have been hints that adding cinnamon to your diet can help control blood sugar. And a recent spate of studies adds to the evidence that the effect is real.

~ Allison Aubrey, from Cinnamon Can Help Lower Blood Sugar, But One Variety May Be Best

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Subtraction

Published January 18, 2014  ·  All posts on Jan 18  ·  

Too many possessions is clutter, visual stress, cleaning, maintenance, debt, less happiness. Too many tasks makes it harder to focus on any one thing or get anything done. Too many things we want to learn means we never learn anything well.

~ Leo Babauta, from The Necessary Art of Subtraction

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The U.S. Federal Reserve

Published January 16, 2014  ·  All posts on Jan 16

As we approach the 100 year anniversary of the creation of the Federal Reserve, it is absolutely imperative that we get the American people to understand that the Fed is at the very heart of our economic problems. It is a system of money that was created by the bankers and that operates for the benefit of the bankers. The American people like to think that we have a “democratic system”, but there is nothing “democratic” about the Federal Reserve.

~ Michael Snyder, from «http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines/25-fast-facts-about-the-federal-reserve-please-share-with-everyone-you-know»

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