MTheads

If Everyone Else But You Is Racist And You Know It, Clap Your Hands

The Frank Rich article from the NYT is mental masturbation for the enlightened crowd.  They can just plug it in and enjoy the ride without straining a brain cell.  Nothing new, but oh so satisfying to remind oneself of the true nature of all those who oppose your world view.   No deep insights here into the minds of those opposed to the health care plan...guess what, we're all racists.  New one.  Is there a tenet in the health care plan for stale thinking?  How about a plan to eliminate staid and cliche passages better left to college undergrads in the less demanding courses?    

The people who agree with this article already thought all Republicans were racists long before the tea party rallies.  They think everyone who didn't vote for Obama is racist.  They think all whites who don't say and wear and live in the right places are racists.  The only way to not be a racist is to be a Democrat.  Otherwise, you are a racist.  If everything we do is racist and we really are racists, then what is the point of screeching it again and again and again?  Rhetorical.  They hope their stain sets. 

These people really do think that by not supporting their world view, we are racists.  It's not just an attempt to bully their opponents into silence, though that too.  But they have come to believe in their own self-righteous infallibility.  Against that, it's easy to disdain, smear, and hate anyone who veers from the true path.

The real racists must be very confused.  They see their crowds dwindling while at the same time more people are falling into the racist category every day of Obama's presidency. 

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?

I read a disturbing set of essays in the March 6th-12th 2010 issue of The Economist titled Gendercide: What happened to 100 million baby girls and it got me thinking.  The articles were about the heartbreaking and soul rending trend in certain cultures to abort the fetuses of girls or to resort to infanticide in preference for sons, and the cultural consequences.  I'm not offering criticism on the essays.  These are just some of the things I thought about after reading them.

One interesting fact is that the highest ratio of boys to girls is among those groups best able to use and pay for modern technology such as ultrasound.  This group of educated and well-off partners also tends to have fewer children, and therefore they are less likely to off-set a one time sex selection abortion with subsequent births.

Here is birth control at its purest.  The groups most likely to abort a girl are also the groups best able to raise one, and subsequent children.  We can't rationalize away their moral choice due to unbelievable poverty and societal pressures.  They are making a true choice.  Is it morally wrong?  Many feminists and their supporters who otherwise defend abortion think so.  Laws, to little effect, are passed to prevent such selections.  But how can one decide one type of abortion is morally wrong while maintaining other abortions are morally right?  On what do they place their moral meter stick? 

Pro-choice advocates use arguments that make it difficult to logically argue against abortions for sex-selection.  One of the tenets of legal abortion is that it is the mother's choice because it is her body.  She wants a boy.  How is that any different from she wants a career?  How can we tell a woman which sex to carry for ten months if we don't have the right to make her carry a pregnancy to the end.  And if privacy works as a pro-abortion argument, a woman doesn't have much of a right to privacy if we can legally stop her from aborting a girl. 

The deleterious long term effects culturally of aborting girl fetuses are rather obvious and are one of the best arguments for outlawing sex-selection.  But to the individuals involved, having a son could be personally the best of choices.  Pro-lifers also make cultural arguments against abortion, arguing they degrade our society in numerous ways.  What takes precedence, the individual or society?  Argue society and you may have to rethink abortion if the facts demand it.  Argue individual, then legal abortion can't be circumscribed.

Make sure you go into the doctor's office mouthing the right slogans.  I find it revealing to read the arguments of pro-choice people explaining why women shouldn't be allowed to decide the sex of their children yet should be allowed to choose whether or not to bear children.  Something doesn't add up.

I Wish He had Never Read That Book.

During a discussion one evening, my dog got really animated.  He was comparing our current political environment with that in Atlas Shrugged, and he was saying how much he'd like to live in an invisible city.

I Called You A Racist, Why Aren't You Shutting Up?

The Democrats sure are trying hard to find their own Kristallnacht-lite to use against people who are making a ruckus.  Maybe some trumped up racist threats, a noose or two, some homophobic messages scrawled in some public place and blamed on...wait a minute, those things have already been done by crazy liberals in moronic attempts to make the world look like the one in their tiny brains.  Luckily, one has to be cleverer than your typical activist student to smear half the population. 

The time is over when people could be bullied into saying or doing anything to prove they weren't racists or other epithets.  But the spectacle of publicly-connected men and women drooling with scarcely concealed pleasure over conservative types leaving threatening phone messages is still disturbing. It's their intentions I fear, rather than their methods.

The Sky Is Falling When The Democrats Increase The Size Of Government!

I just can't get into this hysteria over the health care bill.  I don't think the communists or the fascists have taken over.  We're not being herded into the cattle cars.  And I don't think this bill means the end of everything good in the United States.  Our health care system has problems.  Year after year the problems have multiplied and intensified.  The Republicans had ideas to reform the system, but they were not willing to pay the political price to bring their ideas to fruition when they had the chance.  They spent their political coin on the war. 

A party only has so much political pull before the forces of our two-party system bring around the other side.  The Democrats took on the issue with all its risks.  And they got to shape the issue.  If not this bill, some other egregious liberal bill would have been passed.  That's to be expected in a highly polarized country. 

The good news is, the Democrats will have to pull their punches from now on.  They have spent their ability to push through controversial legislation.  Republicans will most likely pick up seats and be in a better position to shape legislation.  And health care does need to be fixed.  At least this is a start.  It's not unimaginable that we could tweak this thing into something that works.  We aren't Europe or Canada.  We don't have to be anyways.  Perhaps we can come up with something new. 

I'd like to see the Republicans start to prioritize their own goals for when they get back into power.  How about reforming our tax system?  Or decreasing the size of government?  Or vouchers for education?  Unfortunately, I bet the government will grow under their watch also, but with less hysteria from their side.

Got Your Ticket to the Gun Show Yet?

I took a weightlifting class as an elective in high school and loved it.  After that, I joined a gym and started to work out fairly seriously for the next ten years.  And after a break of over 15 years, I've finally made it back to the gym.  Yeah!

I'm always hesitant to recommend my way of doing anything to others. This includes weightlifting.  I'm a to each their own kind of gal.  But I'm going to try to get over my reluctance to give advice and start writing more on weight lifting. 

Lifting heavy a few times is better than lifting light a lot of times, except in certain cases.  I spend more time on multiple-muscle lifts than on muscle-isolating ones because I find the big lifts are more efficient and effective.  Though I do include smaller lifts, like the bicep curl, occasionally, or for a few specific exercises.  I like to start with the heaviest weight I'm going to use and go down from there, rather than spend the time to pyramid up and down to my max. This way I can lift my heaviest while still fresh. 

I generally use a weight that allows me to do no more than 8 or 10 reps.  And for most sets I do btwn two and six reps. Again, I have exceptions.  Sometimes I do two sets, sometimes five.  It depends on how I feel that day and on the particular lift.  I tend to push really hard each workout.  This of course leads to soreness and sometimes needing to skip an extra day.  I just get bored if I'm not working hard.

Also, I don't like to rest for too long.  My heart definitely feels worked after a good session in the gym.  I think many fitness experts don't consider weightlifting aerobic enough.  Well, I disagree there.  I've done quite a bit of aerobic exercise in my life, and I find lifting heavy to be just as effective an aerobic workout.  And I can feel the effects on my heart for hours after, just like after a fast 10k or a long bike with hills.  I'm not arguing weight lifting is superior to other exercises, just equivalent and as worthy of respect. 

To sum up my weightlifting philosophy:  lift heavy, lift big, and keep moving.  Push yourself.  Don't be afraid to find that weight too heavy to lift once.  Then you'll know your limits.  If you feel tired, do fewer sets.  Take a day or two off if sore.  Go back refreshed.  Don't be overly worried about numbers and sets and reps.  Don't be hemmed into anyone else's program.  Find what works for you.  Just be sure to have a balanced workout that hits all muscles and one that is taxing enough to provoke muscle growth.

Oooh Oooh Aaah Aaah

I've been working on my Russian for months now.  I took several years of it in college.  I've worked with it.  I can read it.  And yet, I still can't speak it!  Something takes over my brain whenever I try to speak to an actual Russian.  Yesterday, a Russian woman asked me where the Polish embassy was.  Now, I understood her fine.  I had just passed the Polish embassy two blocks back.  In Russian I would only have to say "straight ahead."  I know how to say "straight ahead" in Russian.  Everything was set up for a win-win encounter.  Nope.  Instead, I pointed in the general direction of that half of the earth and made monkey sounds.  And she slowly backed away without taking her eyes off of me until safely on the other side of the street.  I felt awful.  Oh well, more studying.

The Price of Perfection

When I read education blogs, I often come across people who make the argument I like to call "fix society first, and then we'll fix education." They argue that it is the racism and the inequalities of our society that are really behind many of our educational problems.  And as long as inequalities remain, many children cannot be educated.

This argument bothers me in so many ways. 

1) First, it assumes our society is irredeemably racist.  Their yard stick is perfection and anything less counts for nothing.

2) There's no acknowledgment, or perhaps knowledge, of how far we've come over the last so many decades.  The law of diminishing returns must have kicked in early.

3) It assumes only white people are truly responsible for their actions, while minorities are products of their environment.

4) It assumes that the mere idea of racism is a stronger deterrent to a good education than any real obstacle, such as bad schools, low expectations, or poor parenting.

5) It is to be completely ungrateful for all the opportunities we do have here in the States.  Get out and travel.  See how many people would love to get into our racist, flawed country and take a shot at getting a good education.

6) It assumes society can be reformed into a utopia devoid of human prejudices and flaws.  That's called a cemetery.

Children don't have multiple childhoods to waste waiting for the perfect society to be formed.  We have to do the best we can in the times we live.  When would have been a better time to fix education?  When will these people be content with the progress we have made? 

I think it all comes down to laziness.  Much easier to blame a society you find distasteful anyway than to actually do anything concrete.

A Fascist Regime

Now that the kids are older and in school, I'm able to once again hit the gym.  And while I can put together a good workout, it has been awhile and I wanted to read up on the subject.  So I bought the book The New Rules of Lifting for Women: Lift Like a Man, Look Like a Goddess by Lou Schuler. 

Generally, I wouldn't buy a workout book which promised to make me look like a goddess.  Usually that denotes a lightweight approach to working out.  But the reviews on Amazon convinced me the book took weight lifting seriously.  So I went ahead and bought a copy.  I was disappointed.

This book is like most fitness books for women  --  promises of weight loss, lots of peppy hand-holding, and endless repetitions of the main points.  I suppose if one is completely new to working out with weights, this would be a decent book.  Though if a woman is serious about starting a weight lifting program, I'd advise getting a more serious book also geared to the beginner, but not one geared to the woman customer looking to get thinner.

The author went on and on about women not having to worry about bulking up.  I think he is wrong here.  Some women will develop largish muscles if they lift heavy weights.  Some women do not want rippling biceps in a cute summer dress, even if these biceps are only relatively a bit bigger.  These women should choose another activity.

At least the author emphasizes lifting heavy weights with fewer reps.  He encourages women to work out hard and to put aside the 2 lb dumbbells.  He includes the big moves like squats, dead lifts, bench presses, push-ups, and pull-ups.  But I don't like how the author completely dismisses weight machines and other common exercises used by body builders.  He cannot definitively say what will or will not work when it comes to lifting weights.  No one can.  That's why we all have to figure it out for ourselves through experience and education.  Every weightlifter endeavors to find what works best for him or her. 

The nutrition section is the same kind of thing you can find in almost any fitness book these days -- a moderate diet within a fascist framework of meal plans, scheduled snacks, and forbidden foods.  If you refuse to eat at least five meals (approved meals, of course) a day, expect to get fat.  If you skip breakfast, might as well stop working out now because you have no chance at becoming fit.  Too much is made of the details of eating.  There is no one right way to eat.

Bodybuilding is so much more than losing weight and finding the one perfect workout and nutritional regime.  It's about endless ways to push oneself. It's about finding what works through trial and error.  It's about getting stronger and seeing the physical proof of that. 

I'm now ordering The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Where's Mine And You're Too Slow Getting It To Me.

People are always demanding that the rest of us provide them with any number of proclaimed inalienable "rights" -- the right to health care, to cheap education, to well-paid jobs, for compensation for past injustices, to free reproductive services, for the right not to be offended, etc.  Unfortunately, these sorts of "rights" demand other people's time, accommodation, and money to make them possible.  And no effort is ever enough to fulfill the demands of providing these sorts of "rights".  That's because these rights are really privileges and luxuries only possible in wealthy countries.

These new "rights" remind me of my favorite actual real inalienable right -- the right to economic freedom.  If I had to choose between freedom of speech or economic freedom, I'd choose economic freedom.  Yes, I know, now I'm going to hell.  Freedom of speech is everyone's favorite.  It's the most popular one and now I'm uncool.  Freedom of speech is sooo hot.

Why is economic freedom my favorite?  Because my financial choices have a huge impact on my life.  My choices reflect what I wear, where I go, which products I prefer, how I dress, what companies I support, what products I'm willing to spend a lot on, which ones I bypass, etc.  I am what I buy or don't buy.  We all are.  A free market is essential to individual freedom.

This is because economic freedom is as much a form of expression as speech.  It's speech with real, immediate consequences.  Our economic and entrepreneurial choices shape our lives and our society without most of us even being aware we're actually making philosophical choices.  We express our opinions and beliefs with each dollar we spend or save.   How we use our financial resources is just as important as any opinion or argument we can express in an article, in a book, on a placard, or in a speech. 

My next favorite right, right behind the right to spend my husband's money any damn way I wish, is the right to bear arms.  Without this right, all the other rights are just "for now"s.