Thanks to Victor Markland for passing this along: Sunday, September 20th, 10am-4pm,
Western martial arts classes and demos at the "Manly Arts Day", at the Hampton National Historic Site (in Towson, MD -- directions here).

Ongoing demonstrations of swordsmanship, fencing, boxing, stick fighting, and more will show skills used by men to defend their honor, homes and country in Colonial times to those used by men and women in the Victorian era. (Although historically viewed as “manly” arts, all are welcome to participate in the exercises and demonstrations.) New this year will be a class on Bartitsu the “Gentlemanly Art of Self Defense” as practiced by Sherlock Holmes, and featured in the upcoming film due for release this fall.

Visitors will be able to view an array of historical weapons and practice their own technique using a variety of safe, wooden swords . Guest instructors include two internationally recognized martial artists and authorities Steven Huff and Mark P. Donnelley. They will be assisted by Park Ranger Victor Markland and members of the Mid-Atlantic Society for Historical Swordsmanship.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlZiWK2Iy8

From the Taoist philosopher Lieh-Tzu (trans. Lionel Giles):

A man, having lost his axe, suspected his neighbour's son of having taken it. Certain peculiarities in his gait, his countenance and his speech, marked him out as the thief. In his actions, his movements, and in fact his whole demeanour, it was plainly written that he and no other had stolen the axe. By and by, however, while digging in a dell, the owner came across the missing implement. The next day, when he saw his neighbour's son again, he found no trace of guilt in his movements, his actions, or his general demeanour.

'The man in whose mind suspicion is at work will let himself be carried away by utterly distorted fancies, until at last he sees white as black, and detects squareness in a circle.'

TPMmuckraker reports on a leaked oil industry memo about a plan to stage astroturf rallies in opposition to climate change legislation:

The memo -- sent by the American Petroleum Institute and obtained by Greenpeace, which sent it to reporters -- urges oil companies to recruit their employees for events that will "put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy," and will urge senators to "avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill."

API tells TPMmuckraker that the campaign is being funded by a coalition of corporate and conservative groups that includes the anti-health-care-reform group 60 Plus, FreedomWorks, and Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform.

The memo, signed by API president Jack Gerard, asks recipients to give API "the name of one central coordinator for your company's involvement in the rallies."

And it warns: "Please treat this information as sensitive ... we don't want critics to know our game plan."

Seems we can look forward to the same sort of lies, manipulation, and manufactured outrage about climate change we're currently enjoying about health care. (I did see some teabaggers at the healthcare town hall I went to last week.)

Peter Moskos and Neill Franklin both served as Baltimore City police officers; Franklin is the former commanding officer at the police academy, and Moskos is now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In the Washington Post, they write:

We all learned similar lessons. Police officers are taught about the evils of the drug trade and given the knowledge and tools to inflict as much damage as possible upon the people who constitute the drug community. Policymakers tell us to fight this unwinnable war.

Only after years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies -- and the disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men -- have we and other police officers begun to question the system.

...

Legalization would not create a drug free-for-all. In fact, regulation reins in the mess we already have. If prohibition decreased drug use and drug arrests acted as a deterrent, America would not lead the world in illegal drug use and incarceration for drug crimes.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write about something from a list of topics...I picked swimming

when I have flying dreams --
which is one of my top repeat themes --
it's like I'm swimming thru the air

breaststroke, freestyle crawl
sometimes the backstroke
occasionally in my dreams I find myself doing the elementary backstroke twenty feet above the ground while my childhood swimming instructor's voice repeats the mnemonic for the arm stroke:
tickle (as hands come to the armpits)
T (as they go straight out to the sides)
touch (as hands pull down to hips, the propulsion stroke)

(some notes toward a manifesto of sorts)

I've generally found myself in agreement with Thoreau:

"I heartily accept the motto, -- 'That government is best which governs least'; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, -- 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."

and with Kerry Thornley's "Zenarchy":

"As a doctrine, it holds Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which the State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn."

Over the years, some of you have heard me rail against many things the government has done: war, drug policy, domestic surveillance, censorship, and so on. For example, way back in 1993, in a USENET discussion about drug policy I spoke of the feds as

"...the government that gave us the Dredd Scott decision, Prohibition, McCarthyism, MK-ULTRA mind-control experiments with LSD, the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam police action, Watergate, Iran-Contra, the House banking and Post Office scandals, the Waco [assault], and 20-page MILSPECS for brownies..."

and a decade and a half later, I find nothing to disagree with in that statement.

(I Am Not Making This Up: the 2003 version of the military specification for brownies actually runs to 26 pages.)

So, how is it that I now find myself arguing in favor of that same government taking up a greater role in health care?

It is because, under current and foreseeable circumstances, the alternative is health care from the same sorts of massive corporations that brought us the Bhopal disaster, the Exxon Valdez debacle, the Merck fake medical journals, the Enron and Halliburton and KBR and Blackwater and Madoff and Goldman Sachs scandals.

A large corporation is an animal dedicated to its own preservation and growth; if actual goods and services are produced, that's just a fortunate by-product of its metabolic processes. And that's fine when we're dealing with ordinary consumer goods. But a health care system in which some people might occasionally receive care, if it doesn't affect the bottom line too much? Stacked against that, a government-regulated system (however subject to inefficiency and corruption and mistakes) that claims as its prime directive to provide care, starts to sound attractive.

ExxonMobil's 2008 profits, according to Fortune magazine: $40.6 billion dollars. That's profit, mind you, not total revenue; that was a bit under $373 billion.

2010 budget for the entire EPA: $10.5 billion.

I.e., if the EPA devoted itself entirely to policing this one oil company, ExxonMobil could outspend it three to one and still remain profitable.

Res ipsa loquitor.

Les Paul, one of the inventors of the solid body electric guitar, pioneer of multi-track recording, has left us. Rest in peace Les, you did good work.

Zelda's exercise: from the random word generator at
http://watchout4snakes.com/creativitytools/RandomWord/RandomWordPlus.as…
use a couple of the following words in a poem:

coddled
syncopate
furbish
relearn
conjoin
clunk
destruct
sleepwalk

clunk! clunk! clunk!
like a sleepwalker barely aware I stumble through
stumbling with syncopated step
not dancing but tripping over my own feet

seems I have to keep relearning the same lessons over and over
cleaning and furbishing my brain -- a do-it-yourself job, always
not even your most closely conjoined partner can do it for you