Prometheusnox

Villages in western state of Gujarat are barring girls and unmarried women from having phones to help with studies.

Grocery Store | London, England, UK

(I work in a small corner shop. It’s around two pm and the store is pretty dead. A lady walks in and purchases a large quantity of alcohol, paying in cash. She spots the engagement ring on my finger as I hand her the change.)

Customer: “Aww, are you getting married?”

Me: “Yeah, I’ve been engaged for almost two months now.”

Customer: “That’s nice. I’ve been married for just under thirty years now.”

(She reaches back into her purse and pulls out a twenty pound note.)

Customer: “You seem like such a sweet girl. Here, take this. Put it towards your husband’s suit or something.”

(I don’t like taking other people’s money, especially from strangers, so she puts it on the counter.)

Me: “Well, um, actually my, uh, girlfriend and I are both gonna be wearing dresses but thanks.”

(I don’t tend to discuss my personal life with customers much, and this one showed me why. Nodding for the briefest of moments before she realised what I’d said, her eyes widened in shock and she turned around and sprinted out of the store faster than I would have believed for someone of her age, leaving behind the £20 as well as all her purchases. We kept them behind the counter for a week before my boss decided to donate them to me and my now wife for our wedding. It’s been a month now since the wedding, but no-one since has asked about it.)

Reality TV is generally lambasted for its over-the-top silliness and for elevating shallow ambitions. But sometimes it gets things right.

Shark Tank is a reality show on ABC, and it has a pretty interesting premise: Budding entrepreneurs have to pitch their product ideas to a panel of billionaires. The “sharks” grill the hopeful contestant and decide whether to invest in the product.

I’ve watched it now and again, and it’s fun and interesting. But in 2012 they had a contestant on the show that I really wish I had seen at the time.

The guy’s name was Ryan Naylor, and he was selling a product called Esso Watches. These silicon watches have, he claimed, “negative ions” infused in them.

When he said that, I laughed out loud. That claim is utter nonsense. Right away, it’s impossible; if they had a net negative charge, they’d discharge it right away. That’s how electricity works. They’d either do it in contact with the air, or with your body, or with your clothing. The only way they could maintain an electric charge is if they had a battery giving them the power needed to recharge themselves.

He also made claims about being bombarded with positive ions, how negative ions protect us, and more. It’s all basically nonsense.

The beauty of this, though, was when Naylor stood up in front of the billionaire panel to try to sell this idea, and Mark Cuban wasn’t having any of it. Mediaite has the video:

Wow. Cuban is essentially right in all his claims. I might quibble over calling this a scam, in that it’s possible Naylor honestly thought his product had health benefits. But in the end the watches do not, can not, do what he claims.

This is really just the same warmed-over nonsensical claims made by other companies that sell this kind of gimcrackery. They claim it restores your body’s energy, or balance, or some whatever. The funny thing is, whenever you actually, y’know, test these claims, the merchandise doesn’t actually, y’know, work.

My friend Richard Saunders with the Australian Skeptics did a fantastic job showing this a while back, debunking the Power Balance bracelets. He even did so on the nationally broadcast TV show Today Tonight:

Note that this balance demo is the very same one Naylor used in his pitch. I’ve had Saunders do this demo on me, too, and it’s pretty funny. You’d swear it’s real if you didn’t know better (though it’s harder to think the person giving the demo can believe it’s being done honestly). Many of the companies that sell this quackery have been under a lot of fire; Power Balance was cited with making misleading claims, for example.

However, these products make a lot of money due to a gullible public. Power Balance bands sell briskly and are endorsed by a lot of university athletic departments. This, despite having no actual evidence supporting them beyond the placebo effect.

So perhaps Cuban made a mistake; I’m sure that Naylor could’ve sold a lot of these watches. Apparently, though, he didn’t: Esso Watches no longer exists, the name was changed to TAGI, and the website uses a passive voice to talk about negative ions: “Professional athletes can be spotted all over television wearing Negative Ions to boost their game.” Note how that sounds like an endorsement, but isn’t quite enough of one to get them in hot water with the FTC.

It was refreshing to see someone called out for selling a useless product like this (well, if it keeps time I suppose it does have one use) and done so unequivocally. If only more critical thinking were employed in this way, the world would be a far, far better place.

1. “Fabric is great, color is perfect, price is unbelievable… I’m sure a tailor can do something about these shoulders.”

NOOOOOoooooooooooo!! Don’t do it! First, we’ve all been there. We’ve all found a suit that’s a major steal, except the shoulders stick out just a little too much, sit a little too high, or make it look like the suit is wearing us instead of the opposite. Bad shoulders are a dealbreaker. Do the wall trick. If it fits there, fine, but if your eyeballs tell you it looks like you’ve got a deck of cards stacked on top of each shoulder? Put it back on the rack.

2. “I’m not sure. What do you think Mr. Salesperson?”

Yes, there are some terrific, knowledgeable, friendly people selling men’s suits out there whose opinions you should take seriously. But they’re a rare breed. To complicate things further, if you’re reading this website, you’re not the average suit-shopping customer. These salespeople are used to dealing with guys who want to wear jackets a size too big. Many habitually sell to this demo. Often the salesperson will get aggressive in pushing you in that familiar, ill-fitting direction. Kindly ask if you could take a few minutes with a couple of different sizes by yourself. And if they’re just a pain, leave.

3. “Looks great, as long as I don’t move my arms. Then it’s all over the place”

If shaking someone’s hand would cause your suit jacket to do the dougie, then you should try another brand. That dancing of the jacket usually means the armholes are low. Don’t just stand still when you’re checking it out in the mirror. Move around a bit.

Move around when trying on a suit. Maybe not run around, but don’t stand still.

4. “Poly-viscose-rayon-what? Who cares. IT’S A STEAL!”

No, it’s not. That’s the combo that makes up most synthetic-cloth suits. Even if you’re on a mega budget, aim for all-natural fabrics like wool, cotton, and linen. Synthetic suits are a bit like synthetic… breasts. They don’t look quite right, they don’t move the same, and they don’t feel like the real thing. On their own, viscose and rayon are a step above all poly when it comes to the lining of the jacket (Bemberg + Cupro are rayon based) since they breathe a bit and are spun from naturally occurring fibers. But when bound up with polyester for the pants and jacket, it’s a no-go.

5. ”I can’t wait to find a place/reason to wear this.”

Also a scenario that many a bargain shopper has fallen victim to. That bold plaid 3-piece suit might be the only one left in your size and 75% off, but can you picture yourself actually wearing it? Where?

6. “Where are your black suits? Especially the striped ones…”

The dominance of black suits in the 90s did a full reversal at the dawn of the 21st century. Most guys just look better in navy or grey, plus, you can wear brown or black shoes with those colors (yes, even navy). A black suit is certainly appropriate for a funeral, but so would a dark charcoal in most cases. Meanwhile, a striped black suit is something that most would have a hard time wearing… anywhere.

Stick with blues & greys. Black suits might come back, but blues & greys will never fall out of favor.

7. “I wonder how this’ll look with a pair of dress shoes and a dress shirt”

Sometimes you stumble into looking at suits while out shopping in a t-shirt and jeans. But your best bet really is to wear what you’d wear with a suit when shopping for one. That means a favorite dress shirt, dress shoes, even a tie if you want to get a good idea as to how far the lapels dip down and how far they spread across your chest.

8. “All right, got my full priced suit. Now time to pick out my ‘get two free!’ “

You’re buying suits. Not CDs from Columbia House (… too old of a reference?) Even a two-for-one deal during a big Macy’s sale is pushing it. Retail at Macy’s and similarly priced department stores are grossly inflated, and the suits will almost surely be fused. If they’re offering not one but TWO “free” suits with a full priced suit… probably not the highest quality.

9. “I’ve spent all this time looking. I’m not thrilled with it, but I can’t leave empty handed.”

Usually an internal conversation. Yes you can leave empty handed. Lots of us hate shopping, and we feel like its been a wasted afternoon if we don’t leave with a purchase. It’s not wasted. You just eliminated a lot of poor options from the pile. You’ve only truly wasted your time if you end up with a suit you don’t like because you got frustrated with the experience.

10. “Hey Mom! What about this one??”

Because… well, I mean it happens but… oh boy.

What else? Leave additions in the comments below. May you never hear any of these things spew from your mouth while suit shopping. But we’ve all been there.  Photo Credits: P. Knight & S. Chang 

This is some pretty gruesome stuff:

Governors united across party lines to protest the potential loss of their pet C-130s and other planes. Members of Congress lined up behind the potent lobbying pressure of the Guard and the reserves. The result: The Air Force was ordered not to make the cuts it thought were best for the nation’s defense, and it instead had to retain scores of planes it wanted to retire….

Here’s how the numbers (and the public interest) got crunched: The Air Force began last year with a proposal for cutting forces to meet the Obama administration’s strategic review. The cuts would total more than 223 aircraft in fiscal 2013, including five squadrons of A-10 ground attack planes and one squadron each of F-16 and F-15 fighters. Also slated for retirement were 27 C-5A transport planes, 38 C-27 transports and 65 C-130s. With half of the C-130 fleet in the Guard and reserve units, these transport planes are especially beloved by governors.

The rationale for the cuts made strategic sense. The planes being retired had been suitable for Iraq and Afghanistan, but the military needed to concentrate on potential future adversaries. The Air Force also judged that the reserve forces had become swollen over the decade of war, growing to 35 percent of total force strength in 2012 from 25 percent in 1990.

Ignatius seems completely unaware of several problems:

• There is a long-running dispute between the Air Force, the Army, and Congress over the utility of the A-10, based in profoundly different understandings of the utility of close air support and battlefield interdiction. People have even written books about it. The Air Force has tried to kill the A-10 several times since the early 1970s, with Army protests and Congressional action preventing the mothballing of the Warthog.
• Of the transport aircraft that Ignatius identifies, only the C-27 could possibly be identified as being useful specifically to Afghanistan, with its high-altitude, short take off and landing capabilities.  The C-130 has been in continuous production since 1957, and is regarded as one of the most useful military transport aircraft in history.  The C-5 is growing long in the tooth, but is also transport aircraft of considerable vintage which was neither designed nor optimized for use in Afghanistan.
• Anyone familiar with the history of the USAF understands that it has long been accused of having an institutional predisposition against transport (which it regards as fundamentally a support function), and that the commentary of USAF officers and PR flacks regarding the utility of transport aircraft should be understood against this background.
• “Pet” uses of the C-130 Hercules include firefighting, hurricane relief, search and rescue, and humanitarian assistance.

The Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?  But wait, he’s on a roll…

Find an area of policy where politicians are able to intrude, as in planning the military force structure, and you’re almost guaranteed to find a result that is skewed by lobbying and horse-trading.

It’s difficult to convey how insipid this claim is.  There’s obviously an element of truth to it; parochial interests intrude on the ideal-rational planning process.  Ignatius fails to understand, however, that parochial interests are playing out in the process even before we reach the gubernatorial and Congressional stage.  The Air Force (like any other part of the bureaucracy) is a self-interested entity with a particular vision of its role in the national interest.  This vision can be (and often is) at odds with the visions of other parts of government. Put simply, the Air Force may not be the best source of information about what the Air Force needs. The same is true of the Army, Navy, IRS, et al.

And it’s not as if we’re talking about an abstract guns vs. butter argument, or about the notion that military dollars might go to schools, lunch programs, et al.   This involves a straightforward trade between the priorities of one military service, and the priorities of civilian authorities who use the “pet” planes in question for a wide variety of domestic operations. Unless you accept that the parochial interest of the Air Force is equivalent to the public interest, then you have a public interest conflict; the Air Force wants to use resources one way and state governments want to use them in a different manner.  The only sensible way of resolving this conflict is through the political process.

Somehow, it’s that last part — the national interest — that tends to get lost in today’s Washington. Somebody has to start fixing a political system that doesn’t work to serve the public.

Comments like this make me want to thrust my head in the oven.  The national interest isn’t “lost” in a debate over the relative utility of F-35s, C-27s, and C-130s, because the answers in that debate aren’t self-evident.  Some people (like me) tend to think that having C-130s and C-27s  available to state governors tends to serve the public interest more than devoting the same funding to F-35s.  Indeed, some people (like me) tend to think that the USAF has historically undervalued air transport, and that the interests of national defense would be better served by devoting more resources to cargo aircraft than to advanced tactical fighters. THIS IS THE DEBATE THAT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. Ignatius just can’t manage to see it.

 

Frances Woolley (there is also a discussion of each point and counterpoint):

Economics is Better (in some ways) Than it Used to Be: The discipline of economics is in better shape today than it was in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Here are five reasons why:

1. Now, economists test their theories. ...

2. Now, economists are better at establishing causality. ...

3. Now, economics is (somewhat) more open to a range of ideologies and methodologies ...

4. Now, economics is engaging ...

5. Now, economic research is (in some ways) more democratic. ...

Still, every silver lining has a cloud. Each one of these positive trends has a not-so-positive flip side.

1*. Economists test their theories. But only some test results get published. ...

2*. Causality isn't everything. Correlations are interesting too. ...

3*. Economics is not that open to methodological diversity. ...

4*. Public engagement makes the senior administration happy, but no one ever got tenure by blogging. ...

5*. Old barriers have been replaced by new ones. ...

So the profession is far from perfect. But it is better than it used to be. ...

Les Etats-Unis entendent s’associer aux tentatives des autorités togolaises pour désengorger les prisons togolaises. Certains détenus, en attente de jugement pour des faits mineurs, pourraient bénéficier d’une mise en liberté provisoire s’ils étaient en mesure d’avoir un avocat.

Et c’est justement l’objectif du Programme des droits des personnes incarcérées qui prévoit une aide juridictionnelle gratuite (honoraires et frais de justice). 

Robert Whitehead (photo), l’ambassadeur des Etats-Unis au Togo vient de remettre un chèque de 20 millions de Fcfa au Barreau du Togo

«Mon pays apporte son aide au désengorgement des prisons. La chaîne judiciaire fonctionne lentement, des détenus passent du temps en prison sans jamais être condamnés », a indiqué le diplomate.

Avec cette subvention, accordée par le Fonds pour la démocratie et les droits de l’homme, 300 dossiers de détenus vont retourner devant le juge des libertés. 56 avocats seront mobilisés pour cette opération.

«Les détenus passibles de peines légères constituent le contingent le plus important de la population carcérale. Ils pourront bénéficier de l’assistance d’un avocat et une attention particulière sera accordée aux  dossiers des détenus oubliés », a précisé Dopé Ekoué-Kouvahey, présidente du Barreau du Togo.

I’m a huge fan of the gay pride movement, and how it became an equal rights movement. I even love the overtly-sexual pride parades. I also really love the feminist movement these days, with it’s smart attacks on subtle assumptions about sexism. I’m a supporter of these things in a selfish way…they will result in good things for me and everyone I know. I’m not a woman, and I’m married to a woman, so that might not make sense to some of you. And you might also be wondering if I’m going to be talking about swordfighting today or not.

This morning’s over-coffee interweb reading was a bit of a rarity in the world of martial arts, being an attempt at an actual journalistic approach to an issue. An actual attempt at a story, with implied press badges and everything. I’m a sucker for that. Ask me, the world needs more of that. The article, here, was the first part of a series on the extra challenges women face in mixed martial arts competition. I was a bit tempted to skip the article, expecting the usual sorts of fluff, but it was posted on the Invicta facebook feed, so I took a chance.

It turns out, with no real surprise, that some of the women who train like monsters and fight like beasts, who endure so much agony for a fleeting chance to test themselves in the ring…feel a bit frustrated that the media tends to focus on their looks. Fight your heart out against someone else doing the same, earn a W through luck and insane effort, and someone wants to jabber on about how hot you are? And then instead of asking you meaningful questions in an interview, treats you like a beauty contestant, waiting for you to give a “I just want world peace!” quote. Yeah, I can see that causing a bit of frustration.

Blood, sweat and tears poured into your life’s ambition, and all people seem to give a crap about is how you look. The ugly meme of it these days is that it’s okay if the recipient of the empty praise is a pretty woman. Or sometimes, just a woman with the rare grace to not be completely ugly. It’s a compliment, right? What’s the big deal?

You’re probably fat.

Most people are, in the demographic region that makes up most of the readers of this blog. And to be stupidly blunt, if you aren’t fat, you are probably tall, good-looking, naturally athletic, and never earned a bit of those benefits.

Being told you are fat stings. Being told you didn’t earn what you have stings.

It’s a rare fat person who really thinks of themselves as being fat. We are each the person we are inside. Fat people who dislike mirrors don’t do so because they hate the way they look, as much as they feel a powerful subconscious disconnect with how they feel they look, and what they see in the mirror.

What you see in the mirror, there is no way on earth, will not disappear before you step out the door to work. It’s not a bad choice in clothes. It doesn’t matter what you ate or did yesterday, or will do or eat tomorrow, you can’t just up and change your body today. And every single person who so much as glances at you will feel free to judge you based on that. But it’s not who you are inside. It’s not the you that you still feel like, the athletic teen who ran and played for hours, the you that you still think you will get back to being once you find the time.

Getting back to swordplay for a moment, you know who the hardest students to teach are? The tall ones. The ones really built for the art of rapier. The ones with the natural advantage. The ones who have had years and years of being commenting on their tallness. The one’s who’ve had every small victory they’ve ever achieved dismissed with a wave of the hand and comment on “of course they won, look how tall they are!” When I take on someone tall as a student, I take on the need to fix the damage caused by years of a tall person trying to shrink down to being a more normal person, of trying to cram their frame into a less admired height.

As fighters, we carry the weight of a lot of words and opinions into battle with us. When we go to war with our drills and exercises, when we battle against our teachers expectations, we are buoyed or crippled by the words of friends, families, co-workers and random strangers. Every blow bends and twists our bodies, latches a weight onto us that we have to overcome to move correctly.

As a teacher, I have to find a way to overcome all of that. I have to look past the skin, the clothes, the attitude, the language…I have to see into the bones that were meant to be, and grow the student out from those. The art of the sword demands nothing less than the most perfect a person can be. I’ve learned to look deep , and ignore what is visible…and in doing so I’ve learned to look at myself the same way. Eventually I’ve learned to try and see everyone around me in the same way. The world really is full of beautiful people. And most of them have been covered in other people’s crap.

So yes, I love that the pride parades challenge people to accept overt sexuality, because that means those parades are fighting for all of us. They are challenging us, not to live the drag lifestyle, but to open up and have a healthy relationship with our own “normal” sexuality. It’s a fight that we may not engage in or celebrate, but can benefit from because it alters our perceptions. It turns us away from looking at the outer form of a thing, and seeing the people underneath. When a gay man is just a man who prefers other men, and the “gay” label makes about as much sense as “serf” and “noble” do to our modern world? Everyone benefits. Labels are a limit, and a burden. They get in the way of communication and understanding.

Modern feminism, having already hit the “big” questions like voting, education and work, is now hitting on the deeper questions of assumptions. The new ugliness isn’t in policies, but in opinions. The rot has sunk into comments and forums, where men argue for the right to label a woman on her looks. There is a terrible sadness in hearing people try to claim one last fleeting attempt at feeling righteous in bigotry. Racism has been stolen from them, and now sexism? How is this fair? How can there be humour without the easy labeling that assumption affords? How can anyone make it through life without conveniently profiling everything into neat little slots?

It sucks when you can’t be lazy anymore, when you actually have to understand the person you are talking to, when you have to put the work into actually seeing them for who they might really be. Maybe that’s why I like martial arts, and martial artists so much…we all work at trying to see the truth under our opponents lies, and it gives us the tools the see the people around us in a new light. Not everyone chooses to use those tools, but at least they have some practice with them.

At the least, it gives me the hope that when I am amongst a group of martial artists, they might see past my ragged beard, my scars, my old and worn clothes, my wrinkles and my weight. I’m always more comfortable with people that might really see me, people that might talk to me and not the shell that they have built around me. I might as well be a swimsuit model to everyone else. Just another shell.

The post Face Value appeared first on Box. Wrestle. Fence..

Like any reasonable person, I watch the Fast and the Furious film franchise primarily for its insights into moral philosophy and political economy. At a fundamental level, the franchise is about what Harvard philosopher Christine Korsgaard identifies in The Sources of Normativity as the "intractable conflicts" that arise from our conflicting practical identities. As moral actors we are, first and foremost, human and subject to impersonal moral obligations. But in this neo-Kantian, human-centered framework we face the unavoidable reality that as humans we are each beautiful unique snowflakes with our own particular lives and particular obligations to particular people. To simply ignore our concrete obligations to one another in the face of abstract obligations to humanity would, itself, be inhuman.

The key idea of the films is a strong—and somewhat unusual—assertion that this conflict not only exists but should be uniformly resolved in favor of particularism. Dominic Toretto's overwhelming emphasis is on the importance of literal and metaphorical family ties.

In the first film, Brian O'Conner heroically abandons abstract obligation to law and order to discharge a debt to Toretto. In the second, O'Conner is motivated not by the chance to put a halt to law-breaking but by the chance to discharge an unrelated debt to a childhood friend. The less said about Tokyo Drift the better. In Fast and Furious O'Conner and Toretto revisit their mutual obligations, and O'Conner literally and metaphorically joins the family. In Fast 5, new character Luke Hobbs starts down the O'Conner path and ultimately ends up violating his obligations to law and order to discharge a personal debt to Toretto et al. And while I don't want to reveal too much about the details of Fast & Furious 6, suffice it to say that Letty Ortiz shows an extreme form of loyalty turnabouts based on personal ties and eventually the entire NATO command structure is subverted for essentially personal reasons. At no point in the films is there any suggestion that one ought to put an abstract ideological or ethical commitment above a specific obligation to family.

Sociologically speaking, this is a classic moral outlook of a low-trust society well-captured by the allegedly Bedouin phrase "I against my brother, my brothers and I against my cousins, then my cousins and I against strangers."

The problem, of course, is that this sort of particularistic outlook is very dysfunctional on a social level. You can't have a prosperous and secure society unless the law is enforced. But how can the law be enforced when the prison guards are massively corrupt? Ultimately, a functioning economy depends on functional politics, and functional politics depend not just on monitoring and incentives but on esprit de corps and a willingness to make abstract ideals a priority.

It would be comforting to simply dismiss the Fast and Furious franchise as an ethically unfortunate series of movies about illegal street racing. But as David Madland has written, the low-trust ethics it embodies are, in fact, typical of societies featuring a high and growing level of income inequality:

Studies across U.S. states, of the United States over time, and across countries all find that societies with a strong middle class and low levels of inequality have greater levels of trust of strangers. Trust is based upon the belief that we are all in this together, part of a “moral community,” according to University of Maryland Professor Eric Uslaner. It is difficult to convince people in a highly stratified society that the rich and the poor share common values, much less a common fate.

As John Stuart Mill argued, “The advantage to mankind of being able to trust one another, penetrates into every crevice and cranny of human life: the economical is perhaps the smallest part of it, yet even this is incalculable.” Mill may have thought the impact of trust on economic growth incalculable, but modern researchers have sought to quantify it. One study of U.S. states measured the percentage of state residents who think “most people can be trusted”—ranging from about 10 percent on the low end in Arkansas to more than 60 percent in New Hampshire—and then analyzed the long-term economic growth of those states, controlling for a host of economic and political factors such as initial levels of education and income. It found that “a 10 percentage-point increase in trust increases the growth rate of GDP by 0.5 percentage points” over five years.

Trust reduces transaction costs because less time and resources are spent verifying and policing. And trusting people see the world as full of opportunities. With higher levels of trust, people are more likely to innovate, seek out trade and new technologies, and generally take economically sound risks.

In a world where the system increasingly seems to be rigged, it's natural to turn to the Dominic Torettos of the world as heroes. Yet Dom, for all his hard work, ingenuity, and undeniable skill doesn't really do anything useful or productive. He's a nice guy who's loyal to his friends and family. He lives by a code. And his outlook is increasingly appealing in an increasingly unequal America. But it's ultimately destructive of the social institutions needed to generate prosperity. And yet at a time when elites long ago stopped caring whether the gains of economic growth would be widely shared, and in recent years seem to have turned their backs on the unemployed altogether, then these are the heroes we'll turn to.

Correction, May 29, 2013: This post originally misspelled Brian O'Conner's last name.

Today, being Decoration Day, we remember the crushing of the slave-owning Confederacy by our brave pro-Union soldiers during the Civil War. Jamie Malanowski takes the opportunity to ask an important question: Why does the United States still have military bases named after those who committed treason in defense of slavery?

Other Confederate namesakes include Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, Fort Rucker in Alabama and Camp Beauregard in Louisiana. All these installations date from the buildups during the world wars, and naming them in honor of a local military figure was a simple choice. But that was a time when the Army was segregated and our views about race more ignorant. Now African-Americans make up about a fifth of the military. The idea that today we ask any of these soldiers to serve at a place named for a defender of a racist slavocracy is deplorable; the thought that today we ask any American soldier to serve at a base named for someone who killed United States Army troops is beyond absurd. Would we have a Fort Rommel? A Camp Cornwallis?

It’s a fair question. And it is indeed an insult to ask African-American soldiers to serve at a fort named after P.G.T. Beauregard or John Gordon, who followed his war career by becoming the head of the KKK in Georgia.

If I could only ever do one thing to improve my fencing, it would be slow work with a competent partner. It’s the mother of all good technique, it’s the best teacher there is. In one bout of slow work, I can find my focus for my personal drills and exercise for the next week. I can learn where my posture is off, how my habits are leaving openings, and what things I should be developing as new attack skills. It’s simply the most important skill there is in martial arts, and it’s easily the one people screw up the most.

The things I’ve done to try and make people do slow work correctly are numerous…Forcing everyone to move on the same count, bringing doumbek’s to class and playing at different speeds to entice people to follow the tempo, rants, explanations, grabbing someone’s arm and physically moving it at the right speed, peer pressure, observation, grading, gentle touch feedback, yelling, dropping my defense and staring at my partner while they speed up and hit me…

The truth is slow work is hard. People that are good at it hate it, because we know, more than anything, it’s physically painful. What is easy at speed is excruciating when done slowly and deliberately. Lunging and recovering at one-tenth speed is an excellent exercise in posture and balance, as well as shoulder endurance. But mostly we hate it because of the people that try to win at slow work, the same way they try to win at working out. “I grunted louder than you! My sweat is more prolific! I win! Worship me!” Or whatever the thought process is…

I usually tell people not to try to win at slow work, because that’s what it seems like they are trying to do. They move slowly…until they decide there is something they want to do. When that happens, they go from exaggerated slowness to just a hair under full speed. It’s frustrating for both people, I’m guessing. For the person doing the drill correctly, they don’t get a chance to develop the range they were looking for, because the moment they start to work a slow parry, the other person has done a rapid disengage and planted the sword point on their chest. Any attack is met by a magically speedy block or evasion and another rapid thrust. I can only imagine it gets boring and confusing for the winner to be suddenly having the best fencing experience of their life, and wondering why it’s not like this when it’s at full speed…

What I’m trying to do now is change, a little bit, my language around this essential drill. Slow is a relative thing, I know I’ve had people in the past complain on occasion that I’ve sped up in the middle of slow work. It’s a thing we can all do from time to time. And often people don’t understand exactly what slow is, and may really believe they are going slow. Or they get frustrated about not being successful, or not really understanding what I, as an instructor, want from them in this drill. Frustration disconnects you from your body, and makes for jerky actions and reactions.

Tempo work is a phrase I’d like to start using more (separate from tempo drills, which are specific family of full-speed timing-based action drills). When I call for tempo work, what I want from the students is for them to work on moving every part of the body at a consistent tempo. If I’m going to throw a punch, as an example, I need to co-ordinate a number of actions. I want my left knee to bend ever so slightly, my right heel to start to lift and rotate. My shoulder will start to slide forward, my abdominal muscles will start to control my pelvic tilt while my butt muscles start some rotation. My lats tighten down to get the shoulders co-ordinated and to prep for hand rotation, the infraspinatus clamp to guy the spine for the coming weight shift, etc…

I want all this to happen in a proportional tempo. This is slow work, tempo work, this is my chance to work on how all these different actions time together.  If my hand outreaches the movement of my knee or hip, I’m losing part of my kinetic energy transfer chain. I’m losing efficiency and total power. If this is happening at slow speed, it’s probably happening during a fight as well. Why? I can listen to my body, get deep inside myself, and hear what is going on. Maybe in this case I find something feels off in my left knee. I deduce that I’m making an error in the placement of my left foot. I need to place it a little more forward. Now I know that I need to spend some time on footwork drills to increase my punching power.

And that’s just my first punch. It’s a partner drill, so while I’m thinking about all this, trying to listen and get my tempo down, my partner is reacting to what she sees. I can see her moving to block. Sure, I can pull back my punch and do something fancy, because I see what’s going on. But here’s the trick. If my tempo is correct, if I’m successful at moving each atomic element of my movement chain in proportional synchronicity…it’s not going to make sense to me to pull my hand back. Even at slow speed, I am as committed to that punch as I would be at full speed. That’s the key test. When you get to that point, you are doing slow work right.

And this is our second point of value in this drill. I’m committed to my punch, I’ve coordinated my tempos correctly, my punch is moving and my opponent is countering it. I can’t change the punch. I’ve got a million things to think about…and time to think about them.  I’ve got time to pay attention to my opponents counter, time to think about what’s going to happen. She’s going to block the punch, and I can’t stop that. And I can see that’s she got her right hand starting up on a nice big cross to my jaw. That’s gonna suck. But my weight is still shifting…if I pick my left foot up a little, and step just right, at the right time, I’m going to juuuust pull my jaw free from that counter. As a bonus, my left hand will be in a perfect position for an uppercut to her liver. Beautiful. Would I have seen this counter if I had pulled my right hand back? Probably not.

Of course my opponent will see what I’m doing and react, and that will be the start of our chess game. Done correctly, it’s going to play out just like a full-speed, full contact sparring session, with the difference of us having time to think about what is happening. We will both learn new things about our fighting style and our opponent, and walk away with things we want to work on. It’s a true cooperative competition. By focusing deeply on our own tempo, and being consistent with that tempo, we can try to beat each other, while giving each other opportunities to learn and improve. For my money, there is no better drill for fighting.

 

 

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Après de longues heures de discussion, le gouvernement et la Synergie des travailleurs du Togo (STT) l’une des centrales syndicales du pays) sont parvenus à un accord qui devrait mettre un terme à la crise sociale.

La STT a accepté le principe des primes forfaitaires exceptionnelles et non imposables accordées à l’ensemble des fonctionnaires. De son côté, le gouvernement s’est prononcé en faveur de l’adoption d’une nouvelle grille salariale et d’une valeur indiciaire adossée.

« Nous avons défini un calendrier de travail qui nous permettra de nous retrouver très bientôt. Le gouvernement continuera de façon déterminée à œuvrer pour le bien-être des travailleurs. Cet engagement a été pris et le cap sera maintenu », a déclaré à l’issue des pourparlers Nicoué Broohm, le chef de file de la délégation gouvernementale et ministre de l’Enseignement supérieur.

Pour Nadou Lawson, la coordinatrice de la STT, c’est un « accord d’étape » ouvrant la voie aux négociations proprement dites qui débuteront lundi prochain.

Vendredi, la STT demandera à ses adhérents, lors d’une Assemblée générale, de lever le mot d’ordre de grève.

Document signé entre la STT et le gouvernement 

Relevé de conclusions des discussions entre la Synergie des Travailleurs du Togo (STT) et le gouvernement les 16, 17 et 23 avril 2013

A la suite des discussions entamées entre la STT et le gouvernement, relativement à la plateforme de revendications formulée en huit points par cette organisation syndicale, il est dressé ce jour 23 avril 2013 le présent relevé qui fait office d’accord entre les deux parties.

1-      En ce qui concerne les points 1 et 2 relatifs au doublement de la valeur indiciaire et l’adoption de la grille salariale redressée par rapport aux deux dernières augmentations du SMIG, la deux parties s’accordent sur la nécessité du pouvoir d’achat des travailleurs, à travers l’adoption d’une nouvelle grille des salaires et une valeur indiciaire adossées au statut général de la fonction publique et à la loi des finances.

Nicoué Broohm (G) et Nadou Lawson paraphent l’accord

Toutefois, en attendant de parvenir à un accord sur ces deux points, les deux parties conviennent du paiement à tous les agents de l’Etat à partir du mois de mai 2013 d’une allocation forfaitaire non imposable, afin de répondre à l’urgence. Le montant de ladite allocation est fixée d’accord parties.

2-En outre, à l’exception du point relatif au paiement des arriérés d’allocations aux agents permanents, les deux parties ont convenu de discuter de l’ensemble des points de la plateforme en deux commissions paritaires qui commence le lundi 29 avril 2013. Ce travail permettra de programmer la prise en compte des points d’accord issus des discussions dans le cadre de la préparation du budget de l’Etat pour la gestion 2014.

3-Pour ce qui est du paiement des arriérés d’allocations familiales qui sont des droits acquis, il a été retenu un apurement progressif suivant un échéancier à définir. Le premier paiement équivalent à trois mois d’arriérés, interviendra dès le début du mois de mai 2013. Un deuxième paiement de trois mois d’arriérés sera effectué avant la fin de l’année.

4- La STT accepte la proposition du gouvernement d’octroyer une prime forfaitaire de 30 000 FCFA aux catégories A et 20 000 FCFA aux catégories B, C, D et aux agents permanents. 

5- Sur la question des retraités, la STT a demandé que ce point soit discuté lors des négociations avec le gouvernement et que l’application des mesures qui les concernent soit effective en 2013.

6-S’agissant de la mise en place des commissions techniques et de leur calendrier de travail, il a été retenu deux commissions composées chacune de dix membres dont cinq pour le gouvernement et cinq pour les syndicats.

7-Suite à cet accord, la STT décide de proposer la suspension de son mot d’ordre de grève à son assemblée générale du vendredi 29 avril 2013.

At the Diplomat this week, some strategic lessons from the Falklands:

Lyle Goldstein, Christopher Yung, andThe Diplomat’s James Holmes have all gone over the many lessons the PLA Navy (PLAN) may have drawn from the Falklands War. Unlike many countries, China is in a position to draw lessons from both the British and the Argentine experiences during the war.  The effectiveness of British naval aviation surely impressed upon the Chinese the need for intrinsic air support for maritime operations, while at the same time providing grist for the need to improve the anti-access system of systems. Submarines had long played an important role in PLAN doctrine, but the destruction of General Belgrano by HMS Conqueror put an exclamation point on the vulnerability of surface ships to undersea attack.  Perhaps more importantly, the sinking deterred the Argentine Navy from any further serious sorties during the conflict. The Argentines were unable to reply in kind due to their small and obsolescent undersea force.

A few thoughts regarding how we should think about the Falklands War today…

1. The people who lived on the Falkland Islands were committed to remaining British in 1982, just as they’re committed to being British today.
2. Argentina’s claim is based on an argument of questionable validity dating from 1833.
3. While Argentina’s case for “just war” is based on the kind of squishy logic that you often find in specious just war arguments, the United Kingdom’s case is iron clad.
4. I suspect that any British Prime Minister would have fought to keep the Falklands in 1982; Thatcher is not particularly special in this regard.
5. While negotiations continued over the course of the conflict, Argentine success (interpreted as sovereignty over the islands) depended on two questions; will Britain fight, and can Britain be beaten. Argentina had no reason to withdraw prior to the point at which the first was decided, and Britain had little incentive to negotiate after committing the task force. Both sides were constrained by public opinion.
6. The war was conducted, on both sides, in fairly strict accordance with the Laws of Armed Conflict. With regard to the General Belgrano, there is no serious case that the sinking represented a war crime.

Put differently, the Falklands War is pretty much all on Galtieri, not Thatcher.  I find it odd that for a time during the 1980s (and this has certainly faded) displaying anti-colonialist cred meant supporting the (mostly specious) claims of a vile right wing dictatorship over a Western democracy (notwithstanding who headed that democracy).  The best case against Thatcher is simply that the Falklands were not worth the risk.  There’s a certain merit to that, even if you’re skeptical (as I am) that Argentina could ever have been convinced to hand back the Malvinas without a fight; some war just aren’t worth fighting, just or no.  But then I suspect that if the Malvinas had remained in Argentine hands, even if victory hadn’t extended the lifespan of the military junta more than a year or two, that the situation of the British population on the islands would remain a significant human rights concern today, and would continue to poison Argentine relations with Europe.

I'm getting toward the end of Antony Beevor's The Second World War. If you only know the outlines of World War II, I would very heartily recommend it. Speaking for myself, this is the first book I've read that devotes considerable attention to the Holocaust. It's one thing to know the numbers. It is another to be faced with the methodology.

When studying a great evil, my general approach is to try to preserve my judgment but suspend my judgmentalism. In other words, I want to be able to tell you very forthrightly about the evils of, say, slavery, while at the same time telling you about the psychology of the slaveholder. And I want to do this with the full knowledge that I could have been on either side of the whip.

No historian whom I've read better handles this than Drew Gilpin-Faust. Her work on the women planters during the Civil War does not excuse anyone. When she speaks of patriarchy or white supremacy, she does it with seriousness and specificity. She manages to avoid the temptation to lump women, blacks, and poor whites into some vague activist mélange called "The People." And at the same time, Faust is able to sketch the very real societal bonds that kept these women in a cage. That humanist approach to history, as opposed to marshaling history for condemnation or the improvement of collective self-esteem, is one I have tried to emulate.

In the case of the Holocaust, it is failing me. For all the talk of supremacy, Nazism in Beevor's telling is savagery and cannibalism. I don't mean that for rhetorical effect. The Nazis are using human body hair, human skin, and human fat to make products. When practiced by the darker peoples of the world, we call this savagery. Here is Beevor quoting a Nazi paymaster in the Ukraine:

In Bereza-Kartuska where I took my midday break, 1,300 Jews had been shot the day before. They were taken to a hollow outside the town. Men, women and children were forced to undress completely and were dealt with by a shot through the back of the head. Their clothes were disinfected for reuse. I am convinced that if the war lasts much longer Jews will be processed into sausage and be served up to Russian prisoners of war or to qualified Jewish workers.

Vasily Grossman looking at Treblinka noted that 800,000 Jews and 'Gypsies' -- a population of "a small European capital city" -- were killed by a staff numbering just over a hundred. "Never before in human history," writes Beevor, "had so many people been killed by so few executioners."

So I find humanism failing me here. Perhaps it is because I am American and not German, and thus there's greater distance. Or perhaps it's because I just haven't read enough. (When I first began studying slavery, I was not a humanist.) Certainly the scale of death, and its industrialization, presents a challenge. The irony of slavery (in the United States) is that planters have an incentive to keep enslaved people alive. You see the embers of the kind of hate that could lead to genocide, but never the fire. There's just too much money involved.

Anyway, I am not saying this as though it's a fresh insight, I strongly suspect that the entire field of Holocaust Studies is grappling with this challenge. Or maybe the field has gotten past it. I just don't know.

One final point. It is often said that racism is the result of a lack of education, that it must be defeated by civilization and progress. Nothing points to the silliness of that idea like the Holocaust. "Civilization" is irrelevant to racism. I don't even know what "civilization" means. When all your great theory, and awesome literature, and philosophy amounts to state bent on genocide, what is it worth? There were groups of hunter-gatherers wandering the Kalahari who were more civilized than Germany in 1943.