January 2, 2010 archive

Open Thread

TRENDS

The Japan Communist Party’s official newspaper, the Akahata Shimbun, enjoyed an increase in circulation for the first time in 21 years

Bosozoku motorcycle gangs saw their numbers dwindle to 11,500, from a high of 42,500 in 1982

Local governments across the country are setting up miniature torii in places where illegal garbage disposal occurs in an effort to “appeal to the better nature of even the basest trash dumper”

Fashion-conscious but cash-strapped Japanese women are renting handbags for use on special occasions

Koban in Tokyo have begun installing women-only toilets and “nap rooms”

Seafood and produce falsely labeled as being of Japanese origin are “rampant” in Taiwan

At least one out-call sex service in Tokyo specializes in married women in their 40s and 50s

Hannah Arendt argues that great evils in history are not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but by ordinary people who accept the premises of their time and believe their actions are normal.

Voltaire put it this way:

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit atrocities.

In other words, please don’t take Obama seriously when he does or says or generally promulgates patently absurd, stupid things, e.g.,

Overseas Contingency Operation on Underwear

Global War on Skivvies

Various Briefings and De-Briefings

Operation Butterballs

Going commando

Update

In a majority opinion written by Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court has now ruled that due to the ingenuity of the diaper bomb, upskirt  photography has become a powerful tool in the global war on skivvies, and that there is no longer a reasonable expectation of privacy in these nether regions.  

Hello, all!  The New Year has been good, and I have decided to reduce the heat in my house by a large amount.  I have gotten used to 60 degrees F while active, but have now cut it to 52 degrees.

At night I used to live with 53, but now have decided that 48 is well enough.  I want to save money, and reduce my carbon footprint.  Here is what I am doing.

I’m reading Art of War (among sci-f (Octavia Butler), horror (Poppy Brite) and romance (Maeve Binchy) novels) and I now see my proficiency in that kind of disciplined and strategic thinking is sorely lacking.  So I get sarcastic which makes me embarrassed because I really feel serious about it but I’m not in much understanding about it so I cover that with sarcasm.  And so on.

Enemies.

Opposition does not always result in enmity.  But sometimes it does.

All I have to say about that is:

Nothing is permanent.

So all I got at this point is I’m nice.

Ok, see now I want to be sarcastic again but I’ll try to resist that impulse.

What I want for the New Year is to find a way to engage in opposition openly and honestly and a forum in which to do so.

Thus far Docudharma seems to fit the bill for me — though I make no predictions on if I am right or wrong about this.

Not that I feel I can be totally honest and open here.  After all, in this new Millennium, we have no privacy.  That inhibits me.  I’d imagine the younger folks now aren’t as inhibited because they grew up with it and found new ways to gain privacy that I haven’t yet grokked from them.

Anyway.

Thus far my whole repertoire in fighting and opposition is impulse and emotion.

Now please don’t mistake me, impulse and emotion have gotten me far!

So the one thing reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War did for me was to reveal very plainly there are other ways to fight effectively, other resources I can develop within myself to either avoid enmity completely or, if that is impossible, to deal with it swiftly and not let it linger.

Not that I know how to do any of that.

But the book was good, I think, in illuminating that reality.

I didn’t read it in the usual way.  First, I got an abridged version, translated by Thomas Cleary (not abridged Sun Tzu root text, but abridged commentary).  I did not read it in consecutive pages but opened pages randomly in the form of an I-Ching coin toss.

Inevitably it would draw me in and I’d read a few pages.

In conclusion, I’d recommend reading this book and other ancient texts which have stood the test of time over the centuries — they’re so easily gotten from the intertron these days.  Folks like Winter Rabbit, Robyn, Buhdydharma, Meteor Blades, and more have experienced and practiced some of these ancient techniques, adapting them to their own individuality and the times we are living in.  So I recommend paying attention to that kind of writing when it appears as well.

Happy New Year.