The truth hurts, so laugh

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

                     - Susan Ertz

Bad breath?

Whats your excuse?

Every morning...

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle—when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Note to radical feminists

Caution: The following post contains logic not suitable or comprehensible to certain ideals. Viewer discretion is advised.

     You’re kind of a hopeless idealist to expect everybody else to alter their speech patterns to suit your preference. Sure, it’d be nice of them to do so, but attempting to make it a matter of obligation isn’t winning that battle for anyone— specifically you guys.

     50 years ago, feminism was about women fighting for the rights of women; genuine advocates of human rights who weren't interested in supremacy nor hatred. Modern feminists however, are gung-ho on their belief that society is built upon a hetero-sexist male supremacist patriarchy, as if there aren't plenty of respectable and admirable female figures in society, and radically challenge all western foundations.

9 Questions About Syria You Were Too Embarrassed To Ask...

The United States and allies are preparing for a possibly imminent series of limited military strikes against Syria, the first direct U.S. intervention in the two-year civil war, in retaliation for President Bashar al-Assad's suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians.

If you found the above sentence kind of confusing, or aren't exactly sure why Syria is fighting a civil war, or even where Syria is located, then this is the article for you. What's happening in Syria is really important, but it can also be confusing and difficult to follow even for those of us glued to it.

Here, then, are the most basic answers to your most basic questions. First, a disclaimer: Syria and its history are really complicated; this is not an exhaustive or definitive account of that entire story, just some background, written so that anyone can understand it.

1. What is Syria?
Syria is a country in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It's about the same size as Washington state with a population a little over three times as large – 22 million.  Syria is very diverse, ethnically and religiously, but most Syrians are ethnic Arab and follow the Sunni branch of Islam. Civilization in Syria goes back thousands of years, but the country as it exists today is very young. Its borders were drawn by European colonial powers in the 1920s.

Syria is in the middle of an extremely violent civil war. Fighting between government forces and rebels has killed more 100,000 and created 2 million refugees, half of them children.

2. Why are people in Syria killing each other?
The killing started in April 2011, when peaceful protests inspired by earlier revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia rose up to challenge the dictatorship running the country. The government responded -- there is no getting around this -- like monsters. First, security forces quietly killed activists. Then they started kidnapping, raping, torturing and killing activists and their family members, including a lot of children, dumping their mutilated bodies by the sides of roads. Then troops began simply opening fire on protests. Eventually, civilians started shooting back.

Fighting escalated from there until it was a civil war. Armed civilians organized into rebel groups. The army deployed across the country, shelling and bombing whole neighborhoods and towns, trying to terrorize people into submission. They've also allegedly used chemical weapons, which is a big deal for reasons I'll address below. Volunteers from other countries joined the rebels, either because they wanted freedom and democracy for Syria or, more likely, because they are jihadists who hate Syria's secular government. The rebels were gaining ground for a while and now it looks like Assad is coming back. There is no end in sight.

3. That's horrible. But there are protests lots of places. How did it all go so wrong in Syria? And, please, just give me the short version.
That's a complicated question, and there's no single, definitive answer. This is the shortest possible version -- stay with me, it's worth it. You might say, broadly speaking, that there are two general theories. Both start with the idea that Syria has been a powder keg waiting to explode for decades and that it was set off, maybe inevitably, by the 2011 protests and especially by the government's overly harsh crackdown.

Before we dive into the theories, you have to understand that the Syrian government really overreacted when peaceful protests started in mid-2011, slaughtering civilians unapologetically, which was a big part of how things escalated as quickly as they did. Assad learned this from his father. In 1982, Assad's father and then-dictator Hafez al-Assad responded to a Muslim Brotherhood-led uprising in the city of Hama by leveling entire neighborhoods. He killed thousands of civilians, many of whom had nothing to do with the uprising. But it worked, and it looks like the younger Assad tried to reproduce it. His failure made the descent into chaos much worse.

Okay, now the theories for why Syria spiraled so wildly. The first is what you might call "sectarian re-balancing" or "the Fareed Zakaria case" for why Syria is imploding (he didn’t invent this argument but is a major proponent). Syria has artificial borders that were created by European colonial powers, forcing together an amalgam of diverse religious and ethnic groups. Those powers also tended to promote a minority and rule through it, worsening preexisting sectarian tensions.

Zakaria’s argument is that what we’re seeing in Syria is in some ways the inevitable re-balancing of power along ethnic and religious lines. He compares it to the sectarian bloodbath in Iraq after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein, after which a long-oppressed majority retook power from, and violently punished, the former minority rulers. Most Syrians are Sunni Arabs, but the country is run by members of a minority sect known as Alawites (they're ethnic Arab but follow a smaller branch of Islam). The Alawite government rules through a repressive dictatorship and gives Alawites special privileges, which makes some Sunnis and other groups hate Alawites in general, which in turn makes Alawites fear that they'll be slaughtered en masse if Assad loses the war. (There are other minorities as well, such as ethnic Kurds and Christian Arabs; too much to cover in one explainer.) Also, lots of Syrian communities are already organized into ethnic or religious enclaves, which means that community militias are also sectarian militias. That would explain why so much of the killing in Syria has developed along sectarian lines. It would also suggest that there’s not much anyone can do to end the killing because, in Zakaria's view, this is a painful but unstoppable process of re-balancing power.

The second big theory is a bit simpler: that the Assad regime was not a sustainable enterprise and it's clawing desperately on its way down. Most countries have some kind of self-sustaining political order, and it looked for a long time like Syria was held together by a cruel and repressive but basically stable dictatorship. But maybe it wasn't stable; maybe it was built on quicksand. Bashar al-Assad's father Hafez seized power in a coup in 1970 after two decades of extreme political instability. His government was a product of Cold War meddling and a kind of Arab political identity crisis that was sweeping the region. But he picked the losing sides of both: the Soviet Union was his patron, and he followed a hard-line anti-Western nationalist ideology that's now mostly defunct. The Cold War is long over, and most of the region long ago made peace with Israel and the United States; the Assad regime's once-solid ideological and geopolitical identity is hopelessly outdated. But Bashar al-Assad, who took power in 2000 when his father died, never bothered to update it. So when things started going belly-up two years ago, he didn't have much to fall back on except for his ability to kill people.

4. I hear a lot about how Russia still loves Syria, though. And Iran, too. What's their deal?
Yeah, Russia is Syria's most important ally. Moscow blocks the United Nations Security Council from passing anything that might hurt the Assad regime, which is why the United States has to go around the United Nations if it wants to do anything. Russia sends lots of weapons to Syria that make it easier for Assad to keep killing civilians and will make it much harder if the outside world ever wants to intervene.

The four big reasons that Russia wants to protect Assad, the importance of which vary depending on whom you ask, are: (1) Russia has a naval installation in Syria, which is strategically important and Russia's last foreign military base outside the former Soviet Union; (2) Russia still has a bit of a Cold War mentality, as well as a touch of national insecurity, which makes it care very much about maintaining one of its last military alliances; (3) Russia also hates the idea of "international intervention" against countries like Syria because it sees this as Cold War-style Western imperialism and ultimately a threat to Russia; (4) Syria buys a lot of Russian military exports, and Russia needs
the money.

Iran's thinking in supporting Assad is more straightforward. It perceives Israel and the United States as existential threats and uses Syria to protect itself, shipping arms through Syria to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and the Gaza-based militant group Hamas. Iran is already feeling isolated and insecure; it worries that if Assad falls it will lose a major ally and be cut off from its militant proxies, leaving it very vulnerable. So far, it looks like Iran is actually coming out ahead: Assad is even more reliant on Tehran than he was before the war started.

5. This is all feeling really bleak and hopeless. Can we take a music break?
Oh man, it gets so much worse. But, yeah, let's listen to some music from Syria. It's really good!

If you want to go old-school you should listen to the man, the legend, the great Omar Souleyman (playing Brooklyn this Saturday!). Or, if you really want to get your revolutionary on, listen to the infectious 2011 anti-Assad anthem "Come on Bashar leave." The singer, a cement mixer who made Rage Against the Machine look like Enya, was killed for performing it in Hama.
But let's listen to something non-war and bit more contemporary, the soulful and foot-tappable George Wassouf:

 

  

Hope you enjoyed that, because things are about to go from depressing to despondent.

6. Why hasn't the United States fixed this yet?
Because it can't. There are no viable options. Sorry.

The military options are all bad. Shipping arms to rebels, even if it helps them topple Assad, would ultimately empower jihadists and worsen rebel in-fighting, probably leading to lots of chaos and possibly a second civil war (the United States made this mistake during Afghanistan's early 1990s civil war, which helped the Taliban take power in 1996). Taking out Assad somehow would probably do the same, opening up a dangerous power vacuum. Launching airstrikes or a "no-fly zone" could suck us in, possibly for years, and probably wouldn't make much difference on the ground. An Iraq-style ground invasion would, in the very best outcome, accelerate the killing, cost a lot of U.S. lives, wildly exacerbate anti-Americanism in a boon to jihadists and nationalist dictators alike, and would require the United States to impose order for years across a country full of people trying to kill each other. Nope.

The one political option, which the Obama administration has been pushing for, would be for the Assad regime and the rebels to strike a peace deal. But there's no indication that either side is interested in that, or that there's even a viable unified rebel movement with which to negotiate.

It's possible that there was a brief window for a Libya-style military intervention early on in the conflict. But we'll never really know.

7. So why would Obama bother with strikes that no one expects to actually solve anything?
Okay, you're asking here about the Obama administration's not-so-subtle signals that it wants to launch some cruise missiles at Syria, which would be punishment for what it says is Assad's use of chemical weapons against civilians.

It's true that basically no one believes that this will turn the tide of the Syrian war. But this is important: it's not supposed to. The strikes wouldn't be meant to shape the course of the war or to topple Assad, which Obama thinks would just make things worse anyway. They would be meant to punish Assad for (allegedly) using chemical weapons and to deter him, or any future military leader in any future war, from using them again.

8. Come on, what's the big deal with chemical weapons? Assad kills 100,000 people with bullets and bombs but we're freaked out over 1,000 who maybe died from poisonous gas? That seems silly.
You're definitely not the only one who thinks the distinction is arbitrary and artificial. But there's a good case to be made that this is a rare opportunity, at least in theory, for the United States to make the war a little bit less terrible -- and to make future wars less terrible.

The whole idea that there are rules of war is a pretty new one: the practice of war is thousands of years old, but the idea that we can regulate war to make it less terrible has been around for less than a century. The institutions that do this are weak and inconsistent; the rules are frail and not very well observed. But one of the world's few quasi-successes is the "norm" (a fancy way of saying a rule we all agree to follow) against chemical weapons. This norm is frail enough that Syria could drastically weaken it if we ignore Assad's use of them, but it's also strong enough that it's worth protecting. So it's sort of a low-hanging fruit: firing a few cruise missiles doesn't cost us much and can maybe help preserve this really hard-won and valuable norm against chemical weapons.

You didn't answer my question. That just tells me that we can maybe preserve the norm against chemical weapons, not why we should.

Fair point. Here's the deal: war is going to happen. It just is. But the reason that the world got together in 1925 for the Geneva Convention to ban chemical weapons is because this stuff is really, really good at killing civilians but not actually very good at the conventional aim of warfare, which is to defeat the other side. You might say that they're maybe 30 percent a battlefield weapon and 70 percent a tool of terror. In a world without that norm against chemical weapons, a military might fire off some sarin gas because it wants that battlefield advantage, even if it ends up causing unintended and massive suffering among civilians, maybe including its own. And if a military believes its adversary is probably going to use chemical weapons, it has a strong incentive to use them itself. After all, they're fighting to the death.

So both sides of any conflict, not to mention civilians everywhere, are better off if neither of them uses chemical weapons. But that requires believing that your opponent will never use them, no matter what. And the only way to do that, short of removing them from the planet entirely, is for everyone to just agree in advance to never use them and to really mean it. That becomes much harder if the norm is weakened because someone like Assad got away with it. It becomes a bit easier if everyone believes using chemical weapons will cost you a few inbound U.S. cruise missiles.

That's why the Obama administration apparently wants to fire cruise missiles at Syria, even though it won't end the suffering, end the war or even really hurt Assad that much.

9. Hi, there was too much text so I skipped to the bottom to find the big take-away. What's going to happen?
Short-term maybe the United States and some allies will launch some limited, brief strikes against Syria and maybe they won't. Either way, these things seem pretty certain in the long-term:

• The killing will continue, probably for years. There's no one to sign a peace treaty on the rebel side, even if the regime side were interested, and there's no foreseeable victory for either. Refugees will continue fleeing into neighboring countries, causing instability and an entire other humanitarian crisis as conditions in the camps worsen.

• Syria as we know it, an ancient place with a rich and celebrated culture and history, will be a broken, failed society, probably for a generation or more. It's very hard to see how you rebuild a functioning state after this. Maybe worse, it's hard to see how you get back to a working social contract where everyone agrees to get along.

• Russia will continue to block international action, the window for which has maybe closed anyway. The United States might try to pressure, cajole or even horse-trade Moscow into changing its mind, but there's not much we can offer them that they care about as much as Syria.

• At some point the conflict will cool, either from a partial victory or from exhaustion. The world could maybe send in some peacekeepers or even broker a fragile peace between the various ethnic, religious and political factions. Probably the best model is Lebanon, which fought a brutal civil war that lasted 15 years from 1975 to 1990 and has been slowly, slowly recovering ever since. It had some bombings just last week.

Credit to Max Fisher | Washington Post

 

5 Things Super Successful People Do Before 8 AM

Article by Jennifer Cohen | Forbes

Rise and shine! Morning time just became your new best friend. Love it or hate it, utilizing the morning hours before work may be the key to a successful and healthy lifestyle. That’s right, early rising is a common trait found in many CEOs, government officials, and other influential people. Margaret Thatcher was up every day at 5 a.m.; Frank Lloyd Wright at 4 am and Robert Iger, the CEO of Disney wakes at 4:30am just to name a few. I know what you’re thinking - you do your best work at night. Not so fast. According to Inc. Magazine, morning people have been found to be more proactive and more productive. In addition, the health benefits for those with a life before work go on and on. Let’s explore 5 of the things successful people do before 8 am.

1. Exercise. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again. Most people that work out daily, work out in the morning. Whether it’s a morning yoga session or a trip to the gym, exercising before work gives you a boost of energy for the day and that deserved sense of accomplishment. Anyone can tackle a pile of paperwork after 200 ab reps! Morning workouts also eliminate the possibility of flaking out on your cardio after a long day at work. Even if you aren’t bright eyed and bushy tailed at the thought of a 5 am jog, try waking up 15 minutes early for a quick bedside set of pushups or stretching. It’ll help wake up your body, and prep you for your day.
2. Map Out Your Day. Maximize your potential by mapping out your schedule for the day, as well as your goals and to dos. The morning is a good time for this as it is often one of the only quiet times a person gets throughout the day. The early hours foster easier reflection that helps when prioritizing your activities. They also allow for uninterrupted problem solving when trying to fit everything into your timetable. While scheduling, don’t forget about your mental health. Plan a 10 minute break after that stressful meeting for a quick walk around the block or a moment of meditation at your desk. Trying to eat healthy? Schedule a small window in the evening to pack a few nutritious snacks to bring to work the next day.
3. Eat a Healthy Breakfast. We all know that rush out the door with a cup of coffee and an empty stomach feeling. You sit down at your desk, and you’re already wondering how early that taco truck sets up camp outside your office. No good. Take that extra time in the morning to fuel your body for the tasks ahead of it. It will help keep you mind on what’s at hand and not your growling stomach. Not only is breakfast good for your physical health, it is also a good time to connect socially. Even five minutes of talking with your kids or spouse while eating a quick bowl of oatmeal can boost your spirits before heading out the door.
4. Visualization. These days we talk about our physical health ad nauseam, but sometimes our mental health gets overlooked. The morning is the perfect time to spend some quiet time inside your mind meditating or visualizing. Take a moment to visualize your day ahead of you, focusing on the successes you will have. Even just a minute of visualization and positive thinking can help improve your mood and outlook on your work load for the day.
5. Make Your Day Top Heavy. We all have that one item on our to do list that we dread. It looms over you all day (or week) until you finally suck it up and do it after much procrastination. Here’s an easy tip to save yourself the stress - do that least desirable task on your list first. Instead of anticipating the unpleasantness of it from first coffee through your lunch break, get it out of the way. The morning is the time when you are (generally) more well rested and your energy level is up. Therefore, you are more well equipped to handle more difficult projects. And look at it this way, your day will get progressively easier, not the other way around. By the time your work day is ending, you’re winding down with easier to dos and heading into your free time more relaxed. Success!

The Catcher in the Rye II

  SPOILER ALERT.... kinda  

J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”, Pretty interesting, might hold on to the book for a couple more days in order to jot down some quotes and re-read some of my favorite parts and gather more final thoughts. The book tells the story of Holden Caulfield, the narrator. Holden is 16 years old and feels rather uncomfortable with almost everything and anything he comes in contact with. A bit of a cynic, Holden comes from a wealthy family, and I say this because he has attended several private schools; his parents reside in a townhouse in Fifth Avenue, he describes many childhood memories that most middle-class or lower-class children wouldn’t be able to relate too such as his summer house in Maine and playing golf with his family at a country club in Long Island. Throughout the story, Holden is constantly in a depressed mood, there are one or two instances of happiness I can account for. He hates communicating with people, he believes he is surrounded by “phony” people in every aspect of his life. There is this one part where he expresses his desire to live in a cabin close to the woods and away from everybody, another where he plans to run away from home and hitch-hike his way out west and once he settles down, he’ll pretend to be a deaf-mute, that way, if anybody wanted to communicate with him, they would have no alternative other than to “write stuff down on a piece of paper”. I personally think Holden is just a spoiled brat, for lack of a better word, who thinks he has nothing to lose and unaware of the abundance of resources at his disposal.

BUT WAIT…

Don’t like stories revolving around spoiled brats? Hold your horses, there’s a lesson to be learned. The most intriguing characters of the book, besides Holden, have to be the two teachers Holden goes to seek advice from, unintentionally or at least subconsciously. He visits them knowing they’re going to lecture him about the truth; the truth I’ve been wanting to tell him myself, the truth that even he, Caulfield, knows he should hear but doesn’t want to. The truth that he has to grow up, that he ought to be more mature, and take advantages of the opportunities around him. He visits them knowing those lectures will happen, knowing that certain conversation might come about or at least with the idea of knowing that conversation might take place but hoping it won’t, certainly a sixteen year old trait. In both cases, he visits the teachers just before he is about to make a decision to head off somewhere, which is pretty interesting and maybe the author did that purpose. The first was before he was going to leave his school and head home and the second was before he was going to leave home and head off out west. In my opinion, these two characters, Mr. Spencer and Mr. Antolini and the conversations shared with Holden defined the book for me; the author really nailed it with that one. I think we can all relate to Holden in a way, in the sense that we all wish things to go our way and have perfect things happen to us but of course, we must be realistic and stop living in Disney land. There is certainly no justification towards Holden’s behavior throughout most of the book, though. Part of me wishes to give him the benefit of the doubt in a way, justify his lack of maturity due to his young age but he is certainly a piece of work. A cynic; everything affects his mood, makes him depressed and on top of that he doesn’t want to change his behavior. After reading this book, I sort of dislike Holden Caulfield but at the same time see why he would do or say certain things that mixed feeling proves how brilliantly this book was written. J.D. Salinger left me hanging by the book’s end, I didn’t know how or what to feel. He left me to reflect, and that’s always a sign of a good piece of writing. Although I may dislike Holden, or at least most of his attitude, I must admit that I learned because of him. Salinger’s use of the “ducks at central park” metaphor, in which Holden kept pondering and asking anybody he’d have a chance to ask during a conversation, if they knew where the ducks, that swam in a lake at central park, went during the winter time. It must’ve been around the 3^rd or 4^th time Salinger brought it up in the story that I realized why he kept mentioning it. It occurred to me that Holden, himself, is “the ducks” he keeps asking about and the lake, where the ducks swim in, is “home”. Holden was unintentionally or subconsciously trying to find out where the ducks went during the wintertime because he himself wanted to somewhere to go. He had no direction, and in some way he wanted to know of somewhere he can leave to.

The conversation Holden had with the cab driver, is the most accurate illustration of the metaphor, in which Holden asks Horwitz about the ducks at central park…

Caulfield: “Hey, Horwitz,” I said. “You ever pass by the lagoon in Central Park? Down by Central Park South?”

Horwitz: “The what?”

Caulfield: “The lagoon. That little lake, like, there. Where the ducks are. You know.”

Horwitz: “Yeah, what about it?”

Caulfield: “Well, you know the ducks that swim around in it? In the springtime and all? Do you happen to know where they go in the wintertime, by any chance?”

Horwitz: “Where who goes?”

Caulfield: “The ducks. Do you know, by any chance? I mean does somebody come around in a truck or something and take them away, or do they fly away by themselves--go south or something?”

Horwitz: “How the hell should I know? How the hell should I know a stupid thing like that?”

Caulfield: “Well, don’t get sore about it,”

Horwitz: “Who’s sore? Nobody’s sore.”

Horwitz: The fish don’t go no place. They stay right where they are, the fish. Right in the goddam lake.”

Caulfield: “The fish—that’s different. The fish is different. I’m talking about the ducks,”

Horwitz: “What’s different about it? Nothin’s different about it. It’s tougher for the fish, the winter and all, than it is for the ducks, for chrissake. Use your head, for chrissake.”

Caulfield: “All right. What do they do, the fish and all, when that whole little lake’s a solid block of ice, people skating on it and all?”

Horwitz: What the hell ya mean what do they do? They stay right where they are, for chrissake.”

Caulfield: They can’t just ignore the ice. They can’t just ignore it.”

Horwitz: “Who’s ignoring it? Nobody’s ignoring it! They live right in the goddam ice. It’s their nature, for chrissake. They get frozen right in one position for the whole winter.”

Caulfield: “Yeah? What do they eat, then? I mean if they’re frozen solid, they can’t swim around looking for food and all.”

Horwitz: “Their bodies for chrissake—what’sa matter with ya? Their bodies take in the nutrition and all, right through the goddam seaweed and crap that’s in the ice. They got their pores open the whole time. That’s their nature, for chrissake. See what I mean?”

Caulfield: “Oh… Would you care to stop off and have a drink with me somewhere?”

Horwitz: “I ain’t got time for no liquor, bud, how the hell old are you, anyways? Why ain’tcha home in bed?”

Caulfield: “I’m not tired.”

                      

                        Moments later…

Horwitz: “Listen, if you was a fish, Mother Nature’d take care of you, wouldn’t she? Right? You don’t think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?”

Caulfield: “No, but--“

Horwitz: “You’re goddam right they don’t,”

            Sometimes a pretty long book, that appears to be endless, can make up for it by having three or four moments that make everything come together; sweet as tea. The attention to detail, J.D. Salinger’s got enough to go around.