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Stone Henge
Specialization is for insects
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
~ Robert Heinlein
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Are you tough?
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?
slip:4uaoyo1.
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Big Ben
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Stand erect
A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.
~ Marcus Aurelius
slip:4a157.
What do you know about Koichi Tohei?
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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The Cambridge
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The right state of mind
Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. When I believe I can, I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn’t have it in the beginning.
~ Mohandas Gandhi
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Systemic Evil
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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Rose Shumbata
My maternal grandmother, Rose Shumbata.
Oct 11, 1914 – May 18, 2010 (…thats 95!)
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Prove yourself
No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.
~ Seneca
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Generations
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
slip:4uaote5.
This is some deep stuff; Deep, like Harry Seldon/Foundation deep.
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Ice Crystals
Caught these ice crystals forming on glass; The whole area of glass was initially frosted, and as the car warmed up, the evaporating frost fed the growth of these ice crystals. I was just fast enough to catch this one photo. A moment later, the crystals, and all the frost, melted.
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Create something
If you want to really hurt you parents … the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
~ Kurt Vonnegut
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Dogs and Wolves
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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Duke of York
A 150-year-old view from the pub ‘Duke of York’ on Dering street in London. The pub was first licensed in 1722, renamed the ‘Duke of York’ in 1806, and rebuilt in its present form in 1886.
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Why Doesn’t Barnes and Noble Just…
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Meanwhile, I can click to buy the actual book.
- Over the rainbow: Ship me the book, with a B&N bookmark on the page where I stopped reading.
- Shipping the book to me? I pay shipping. (Unless of course I’m one of those B&N members, then shipping is free.)
- 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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Simple in our tastes
We greeks are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.
~ Thucydides
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Three types of human rights
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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Shelves
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