A Psychologist Diagnoses Humanity

Inventing a new and universal mental disorder -- 'juvenioa' -- out of whole cloth, psychologist Chris Ferguson writes:

Every generation believes that the generation before was too rigid and conservative—and the generation after too wild and out-of-control.

Speaking as a member of the generation after the Baby Boom, let me assure you that this generalization does not hold true. Any criticisms I would field toward nearby generations are, if anything, wholly reversed -- except that the 'rigidity' exhibited by the Millenials tends to be left-leaning rather than 'conservative.'

Insofar as it is useful to criticize a 'generation,' that is. There were, and are, lots of good folks in both.

The blueberry in the tomato soup

It's too bad Rick Perry crashed and burned in the last presidential election cycle, because he's a solid guy.  I enjoyed his interview with Jimmy Kimmel at Austin's SXSW festival, where he shrugged off boos from the crowd by observing that Austin was "the blueberry in the tomato soup" of Texas.  Kimmel asked him about reports that he'd shot a coyote while jogging.  "You carry a gun while you're jogging?" he asked, amazed.  "I carry a gun to interviews," Perry replied.

It's probably hard to imagine, if you don't live in one of Texas's larger cities, how utterly the polite classes here loathe the Governor.  "Governor Good-Hair," they usually call him, appalled by the bad name he gives to the state.  He does have pretty good hair.

Backpacking

I'm getting ready for a 5-day, 50 mile hike on the AT early next month. One of the irritating things about the AT authorities is that they do not permit open fires anywhere on the trail. As a result, you have to either haul a stove (or some alternative heat source), or do without.

This time I'm thinking of doing without, but I need to figure out good meals with plenty of calories, protein, and carbs, but which never need to be heated. Obviously sealed, hard-cured sausages and nuts are good protein sources. I could take pre-baked cakes of various kinds (perhaps aiming for something like lembas), as long as they were baked hard enough that they won't go bad over a few days. Dried fruits, maybe.

Actually, on reflection, maybe I should just go back through the Hobbit and Fellowship of the Rings to see what they are given at their various waystations. Tolkien seems to have known a lot about trekking.

Do any of you have suggestions?

Please Stop Helping

Over at Cass', I've been arguing that conservatives should pay more attention to the difficulties of the working man. By the same token, it would be really helpful if the Obama administration would pay much less.

On Thursday, the president will direct the Labor Department to revamp its regulations to require overtime pay for several million additional fast-food managers, loan officers, computer technicians and others whom many businesses currently classify as “executive or professional” employees to avoid paying them overtime, according to White House officials briefed on the announcement.

So the geniuses who came up with Obamacare -- to force evil corporations to provide their workers with health insurance -- ended up creating the following effects:

1) Part time workers, who used to carry fewer than 40 hours a week, now carry fewer than 29 hours a week to stay under the mandates.

2) Full time jobs largely ceased being created, because they come with the mandate.

3) Part time jobs were increasingly likely to be classified as 'temporary' or 'seasonal,' which means they can be paid less than minimum wage.

4) Businesses close to the mandatory lines either shrank to get under the line, or stopped expanding to avoid getting over it.

5) Regulatory uncertainty prevented job creation and new business formation.

Now you're going to 'force evil corporations to pay overtime.' What that means is:

A) Reduced hours, and,

B) Pay cuts.

Stop it. I agree that we should be giving more attention to the misery afflicting the lower-middle and working classes in America, because this recession has been brutal on them. The Right needs to develop its own discussion about how to address those problems, though, because the Left's solutions invariably make things worse.

Attention Womyn!

A buried bomb lies within this enjoyable little piece about linguistic drift:

Borrowing from other languages can give rise to an entirely understandable and utterly charming kind of mistake. With little or no knowledge of the foreign tongue, we go for an approximation that makes some kind of sense in terms of both sound and meaning. This is folk etymology. Examples include crayfish, from the French écrevisse (not a fish but a kind of lobster); sparrow grass as a variant for asparagus in some English dialects; muskrat (conveniently musky, and a rodent, but named because of the Algonquin word muscascus meaning red); and female, which isn't a derivative of male at all, but comes from old French femelle meaning woman.

"Woman" has an interesting etymology too, in terms of drifts of the type the article is talking about. The use of '-man' is a drift of that sort, with the original word having a non-masculine form of 'human being,' "quean." (A related word: "English is one of the few Indo-European languages to have a word for "queen" that is not a feminine derivative of a word for 'king.'")

Not that it matters, of course, because the folk etymology is true in the minds of the folk. Still, it's interesting given how many times I've heard the charge brought up over the years.

Visual feasts

I started clicking links at the joke site Grim linked to.

Maybe They're Both Wrong

I have some sympathy for the judge in the BG Sinclair case. On the one hand, the general is clearly in the wrong to some degree, and has already plead guilty to some charges that would have resulted in serious punishment for an enlisted man or NCO. On the other hand, the command influence problem seems to be real -- real enough that the judge has dismissed the jury over it, and has to reconsider how to proceed.

The judge has decided not to dismiss the charges entirely, though that option existed.

More Jokes

Since you all enjoyed the last set, here's a similar set of jokes. There's a small amount of overlap, but mostly they are different.

Field Hospital

We're going somewhere interesting with this, I guess. But this is exactly right.

Pope Francis told an interviewer last year that the church should be a, “field hospital after battle.” He added, “The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity.”

Foreign Policy

Regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, there is little difference among most Republicans on what to do. All of us believe we should stand up to Putin's aggression. Virtually no one believes we should intervene militarily. So we are then faced with a finite menu of diplomatic measures to isolate Russia, on most of which we all agree, such as sanctions and increased economic pressure.

Yet, some politicians have used this time to beat their chest. What we don't need right now is politicians who have never seen war talking tough for the sake of their political careers.

America deserves better than that. So do our soldiers.

What our soldiers deserve is victory. It doesn't make sense to deploy them where they cannot win. Nor where we will not let them.

For T99

But here’s the most important thing she told me: Despite the fact that the middle-school principal herself told me I had a legal right to opt out (and none of the players in this morality play ever told us otherwise, whether explicitly or implicitly), that’s not actually true. In Colorado, kids are required by law to test. The “refuse testing” option on the enrollment forms? It’s “being phased out” because it’s “confusing.” If kids don’t show up for school on testing days? Zurkowski told me that some districts have sent truant officers to their homes.

The author is a law professor. I'm surprised by how many people go into the law with a hatred for institutional discipline. Maybe it's the same reason that the most messed up people on earth are the ones who choose to pursue psychology?

An Author Writes to Vladimir Putin

The author is a fan. Huge fan.

Follow-up Advice

Back in January I asked for some advice on all kinds of stuff -- camping, horsemanship, hunting, martial arts, etc. And I got some really good feedback from the Hall. This is a follow-up post with some results & more requests for advice.

I ended up buying a surplus 'Military Sleep System' and am looking forward to trying it out on a trip in a couple of weeks.

I asked for suggestions on boots for hiking & hunting. Some of my reading since then suggests that, especially when you're packing light, running or trail-running shoes are a good choice. I also remember Grim talking about his sister, I believe, running barefoot. I'm looking at hiking in low hills carrying less than 30 lbs, only in decent weather -- no extreme cold or heat, no snow hiking, no real mountains, no monsoon trekking. Anyone have experience with or thoughts on this?

Along with that, I've been reading about feet a lot lately, and am thinking about getting some Vibram FiveFingers. Any thoughts on the whole FiveFingers / barefoot running movement? Would any of you hike in these things? UPDATE: These boots also look interesting.

Once I get out and start using gear, I'll post reports and pics.

Thanks in advance!

A Little Sunday Morning Celtic Punk

Flatfoot 56 is a Celtic punk band out of Chicago. They also happen to be openly Christian. Here's one even those who don't like any kind of punk might like.

Reading faster

Spritz is publicizing a speed-reading app that really seems to work.  The program feeds you one word at a time.  This site lets you experiment with up to 600 wpm, though apparently the program can go faster.  I guess the idea is to load your reading material into the program, which is something I'd like to try.

Lost flight

It's starting to look as though the missing Malaysian flight en route to Beijing was the victim of some kind of explosion.  The Boeing 777 and its experienced pilots lost contact shortly after reaching cruising altitude, in crystal-clear weather, without any sign of distress.  It may or may not be a coincidence that two passengers were traveling on passports that had previously been stolen in Thailand.

Boids

A team of Hungarian programmers struggle to teach autonomous drone copters to use alignment, attraction, and avoidance to simulate the flocking behavior of birds.

Can they ever be taught to behave as beautifully as these roosting starlings near Oxford, England?

Evolution of Species

For those of you who followed YAG's and my long discussion of whether there really is such a thing as "species" outside the human mind, an article on translating Darwin into Arabic, which lacks a word for species. How do you begin to convey the concept?

There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
O earth what changes hast thou seen!
There where the long street roars, hath been
The stillness of the central sea.
And:
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.

It's strange to think that Tennyson was wrong, but perhaps -- at least in animals -- the single life is all there is. It is different in plants. You can take a cutting off a tree and graft it to another, often even one of a very different 'type.' You can pluck a green twig and put it in the right compound, and it will grow a new tree.

Perhaps we could do that with adequately advanced technology even with people. Presumably if I took your right arm and made a new you, it would not be the same person. The seat of consciousness would differ, and that alone means you are not the same. Do trees have consciousness? Somehow they know the sun.

Fear and Awe

Perhaps it's no surprising that I gave a minute to this 'test,' because is built strictly around mythology.

What Kind Of Mythical Creature Are You?

You got: Dragon

You inspire fear and awe, and you’re fiercely protective of the people and possessions you cherish. You’re a creature of comfort, you enjoy living luxuriously, but you’re by no means lazy. If provoked, you’re a fearsome enemy, but you’re not easily angered. You enjoy time to yourself, but you also require intellectual stimulation, because behind all that raw power, you’re also sharp as a tack.

Friday Night AMV

Ain't no rest for the wicked. Another appropriation(?) of old film noir style.