Well, in the past week I've thrown out a stack of textbooks, moved a lot of other books, and destroyed a bookcase. Don't know what that says about me, but I found this, at Gus Van Horn's place:
What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Dedicated ReaderYou are always trying to find the time to get back to your book. You are convinced that the world would be a much better place if only everyone read more.
Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm Literate Good Citizen Book Snob Fad Reader Non-Reader What Kind of Reader Are You?
Create Your Own Quiz
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I read your blog, Gus! What is that saying about me?
I suggest that for all lovers of great physiques, and for all lovers of beautiful clothes, it is time to do one simple thing: it is time to shrug.
Today, October 10, is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand's stunning classic, Atlas Shrugged, and there are, well, a few radical ideas for action to be found therein.
I mentioned great physiques and beautiful clothes. Do we see those things celebrated to the extent they deserve? I say no, and since we inhabit our bodies and wear clothes every day, that's a damn shame. In fact, I have problems with bodybuilding and with high fashion both, and that problem is with, well, the bodies. They don't inspire me.
It's worse than that: I reject those models of human beauty.
Why is the contemporary professional bodybuilder look so unappealing? Ask most women whether that's the ideal physique for a man, and you'll see some facial expressions and possibly hear some language we do not normally associate with proper young ladies. Ask a man about most of the models used in the fashion industry the same question.
The answer, I think, is that health is sexy, and I think people respond to it. There are beautiful women posing as fashion models, but anyone can look at them and tell that, for the most part, they're a bit, ahhh, underfed. And it's getting worse, apparently: T.C. Luoma, editor of the web site Testosterone Nation, writes in his latest "Atomic Dog" column, "The Shape of Thighs to Come," that the latest hot erogenous zone, according to certain fashion mavens, is...(wait for it)...clavicles.
Clavicles.
I kid you not.
His source is an article in Vanity Fair by one Amy Fine Collins, itself also bearing the title "The Shape of Thighs to Come." I must say, I do think that Luoma reads Amy Fine Collins article a bit wrong -- she herself writes of "the schism between elite fashion sensibilities and vernacular tastes," while he offers to barf on her Jimmy Choo shoes -- but I still think he is making a point worth pondering.
It's not, obviously, just the fashion models. Almost anyone can look at professional bodybuilders and tell that the only way to get where they are is to ingest steroids by the bucketload, get in some human growth hormone and probably some insulin as well, on top of being genetically gifted, and then to dehydrate the hell out of yourself prior to a contest. For most folk, that does not resonate as healthy, so these "athletes" are as bad as the anorexic or bulemic fashion models.
But I can't agree with the fashionistas mentioned in the Collins article. Abandon the look of strength and muscle? No way.
Powerlifters, it's easy to admit, generally carry too much fat. Well, powerlifters are not training for esthetic appeal. Bodybuilders (in contest shape) carry way too little -- in fact, if they're not dehydrated on the night of a contest, they're damn close. Olympic weightlifters aren't working toward esthetic development, either. So what possible role models are there?
In his column, Luoma offers a few to begin with: "From the Farnese Hercules to John L. Sullivan to Sandow to Muscle Beach to comic book superheroes to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sly Stallone, men have always gravitated towards muscle."
I think the love of a mesomorphic frame is hard wired. Study after study has shown that a muscular form is a cultural ideal. Granted, we're probably not talking about the excess that's seen on the stage of a competitive bodybuilding show, but we're talking about at least running-back muscle.For better or worse, men attribute positive personality traits to muscle. Men view their bodies as instruments and those with strength or power will be more useful, more likely to be dominant, confident, and independent.
I'll readily admit that there's some minor psychological flaw in just about anybody who starts lifting weights; some insecurity or weakness that requires muscular armor to either hide it, shield it, or cure it, but as therapy it's a hell of a lot more effective and rewarding than a psychologist's couch or a lifetime addiction to smoking, drinking, or eating comfort food.
The end result, aside from hopefully reaching an esthetic ideal, is often a confident, self-actualized being who carries the lessons learned in the weight room into every facet of life.
It all comes down, continues Luoma, to a love of the heroic.
Yes.
At the Luoma column you can find a picture of the Farnese Hercules and a picture of classic strongman Eugen Sandow posing as that same character. Awesome. You can also find photographs of the Discobolus statue, and of Michelangelo's David. These suggest, I submit, man at his physical best.
Howard Roark and Henry Rearden -- characters in Ayn Rand novels -- worked in quarries. Another, John Galt, did physical labor on a railroad line, and one senses that Francisco d'Anconia -- who had also worked in quarries -- could have physically handled any threat presented to him, at any time.
So I don't follow professional bodybuilding (I do know who the Mr. Olympia winner is -- Jay Cutler -- because it's news, but I don't care.) and I don't buy tickets to any contests. Who cares? I don't buy or read the magazines which cater to that interest. I don't understand why women would buy the major fashion magazines, either: the clothes, sure, I can understand, but the images? The women shown wearing those clothes? Strikes me as a slap in the face to most women.
But I lift.
Look, I'm a skinny guy myself, and I struggle with lifting both barbell and fork in my pursuit of the ideal physique, and I say as a skinny guy: it's not healthy, whether we're talking pro bodybuilder or anorexic-bulemic cokehead fashion model, to get one's bodyfat percentage that low. It's not healthy being that skinny.
We have lost something. Take a look at these pages, which simulates bodybuilding champions of various years facing each other in a photographic "virtual posedown." It's instructive.
Building muscle improves one's appearance because it improves the symmetry and proportion you present, visually, to the world. More men and more women should build more muscle. But piling on more and more and more mass, for the sake of piling on mass, is not the way to go.
Mind you, I'm not anti-steroid, not at all. But I'm not anti-knife or anti-fire or anti-rope, and all of those things can be used for bad things, like murder and arson and lynching. The top bodybuilders of the so-called Golden Age (1960-1980) all used steroids. But the mass monsters of today who compete and win titles like Mr. Olympia are not my ideal, because when I think of esthetic reasons for lifting, I think of beauty and yes, TC Luoma -- and thank you for saying it --heroism. I think of David and of Discobolus. I want women to like and admire my body, and yes, to desire it.
We've lost something with regard to our images of feminine beauty, too. I don't care what is said by which luminary at Barney's or Vanity Fair or Pucci: any look that belongs in a "Girls of Auschwitz" photo spread is never going to be anything more than a fad, and a brief one at that, and if such people are going to put their names to such pronouncements, then you know damn well that as of now, their pronouncements aren't worth listening to. Look, I know women who are too skinny and yet were sexy, and so have you, just as I've known a few who were overweight and yet managed to be sexy. And so have you. Maybe you, reading this, are one of those women. Well, then you know what I'm talking about. No one ever (credibly) said that life would be simple. But health and vitality, strength and muscle, are sexy. Period. Starvation and dehydration are not.
Luoma also mentions (in this column and in many of his others) that the striving to improve the physique is heroic, too. Yeah, I'd say so. Roark and Rearden and d'Anconia (have I mentioned that October 10 is the 50th anniversary of Atlas Shrugged?) worked in quarries because they had goals they were pursuing, and those quarries were way stations on the way to achieving those goals, just as squats and deadlifts, while physically demanding and uncomfortable, are mile markers on your road to a great physique.
And on mine: I'm recently back to the pursuit, after taking off over a year due to painful injuries, and it feels great. I'm weaker and smaller than I was, and I need to be careful, and it's tough getting all the calories down -- but I'm back, just after my 48th birthday, and the baby steps feel great.
I'm with TC Luoma, and I declare that curves are good and fat is good. You don't want to be Mr. Creosote, but damn it, fat is healthy and fat is good. And muscle is great. Clavicle? Bone? Bone is something for muscle to hang on to...so while I'm glad for that attractive woman that she has functioning clavicles, I'm not going to pursue some Machiavellian strategy for getting a look at them. So screw clavicles, and screw the clavicular curia while we're at it.
And shrug. Eschew the bodybuilding "mainstream: and the couture elite both. You probably already do, and hey, they're dissing you, aren't they? Sure they are. They've abandoned beauty. You don't have to.
You celebrate it.
And if you do, then by all means, take a read at Atlas Shrugged. Wildest ride you'll ever be on -- and a beautiful celebration of beauty, as well.
This is what was said, according to the Wall Street Journal:
Chris Matthews; Congressman Paul, I think you have questions and concerns about the bonanza in the hedge fund industry. Do you?
Mr. Paul: Yes. I think this is not a consequence of free markets. What's happening is, there's transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy.
Mr. Paul: This comes about because of the monetary system that we have. When you inflate a currency or destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out.
So the people who get to use the money first which is created by the Federal Reserve system benefit. So the money gravitates to the banks and to Wall Street.
That's why you have more billionaires than ever before. Today, this country is in the middle of a recession for a lot of people. Michigan knows about it. Poor people know about it. The middle class knows about it. Wall Street doesn't know about it. Washington, D.C., doesn't know about it.
But it's because of the monetary system and the excessive spending. As long as we live beyond our means we are destined to live beneath our means.
And we have lived beyond our means because we are financing a foreign policy that is so extravagant and beyond what we can control, as well as the spending here at home.
And we're depending on the creation of money out of thin air, which is nothing more than debasement of the currency. It's counterfeit. And it is a natural, predictable consequence that you're going to have people benefit from it and other people suffer.
Mr. Paul: So, if you want a healthy economy, you have to study monetary theory and figure out why it is that we're suffering. And everybody doesn't suffer equally, or this wouldn't be so bad.
It's always the poor people -- those who are on retired incomes -- that suffer the most. But the politicians and those who get to use the money first, like the military industrial complex, they make a lot of money and they benefit from it.
And this is how it was "drunkblogged" at VodkaPundit:
2:09pm Ron Paul takes a simple question about the time, and explains how to build a watch. He's going on about inflation -- at near-record lows -- and how it's the real inflation causing the recession poor people are already in, and how the gold standard will save us, and Masonites are running the Federal Reserve with their zombie pirate enforcers. Or something.
How...witty.
You can be for or against the Ron Paul candidacy, but this strikes me as a cheap, cheap shot. It wasn't so long ago that conservatives were advocating gold coins with the likeness of Ludwig von Mises on them, or celebrating the Nobel Prize in economics being awarded to Friedrich Hayek (a student of von Mises). Now, though, we have right-ish pundits writing "look at the conspiracy nut!" dreck like this.
How...sophisticated.
Note that our drunkblogger has nothing at all to say about this:
Mr. McCain: Everybody is paying taxes and wealth creates wealth. And the fact is that I would commend to your reading, Ron, "Wealth of Nations," because that's what this is all about.
A vibrant economy creates wealth. People pay taxes. Revenues are at an all time high.
Um, right. Tax revenue is a proxy -- or even an indicator -- for wealth? My, Zimbabwe must be in pretty good shape, then, and I guess Hong Kong isn't. Ah, but I do not have the sophisticated economic understanding of Stephen Greene or Senator McCain.
Now, look, I suppose it is possible that Senator McCain read The Wealth of Nations while he was searching for investment ideas for his share of the Keating Five loot, but to suggest that he's more likely than Ron Paul to have actually read the damn thing and digested it is...reaching.
So, here we are, on this October 10 -- the anniversary of Atlas Shrugged's publication in 1957 and the death of Ludwig von Mises in 1973 -- that we not only have a long way to go in creating a free, capitalist America, but that most conservatives and libertarians are not really allies in that struggle. I offer the above as Exhibit A.
I often listen to NPR's Morning Edition with my porridge (I find it helps keep my blood pressure up). This morning I heard a woman at a political event in Iowa complain to Senator Hillary Clinton about the length of this presidential campaign. Later, I heard a comment I'd missed in last night's Republican debate. One of the candidates (I missed which one), said, about the same Senator Clinton, "I'm looking forward to debating her." I was left to believe that these were important concerns, more important, perhaps, than which soap I shaved with this morning.
Well.
Never let it be said that The Anger of Compassion is not here to help.
I propose borrowing an idea from Major League Baseball. I propose inter-league debates. That's right: under my proposal, Republican candidates will not only debate each other during the primary season (and the pre-primary season), but will also debate the Democratic candidates. All through the season.
There would also be an All-Star primary, and wild card positions in the primaries.
This is not so unheard of: some states allow cross-registration in their primaries, and some states have caucuses instead. There is already some variety in the system. My modest proposal adds not only more variety, but the possibility, nay promise, of some excitement.
Think about it: while a Romney-Edwards debate might be one the great sleep experiments of all time, as would Tancredo-Dodd, a Ron Paul-Barack Obama debate might be a decent slugfest. And, with the field of debate open to candidates of both major parties, imagine the office pools and futures market contracts on which debate would cause John McCain's head to explode.
There would be no designated hitter rule.
Glenn Reynolds has a review in today's Philadelphia Inquirer of Larry Sabato's new book on revamping the Constitution. Must say, things like that do scare me, and here's why:
Our current political system certainly appears dysfunctional, and it seems to have been captured, to a greater degree than in the past, by special-interest groups that place their own welfare ahead of the public good. As Sabato observes, the framers' "feared corruption has come in many stultifying forms, from extreme partisan gerrymandering to the unresponsiveness of the political system produced by ossification over the centuries."
Yet this raises another difficulty. The framers believed that no Constitution could protect a people who had fallen away from political virtue. If our political class is too lacking in virtue to make the current system work - a proposition I think Sabato would accept - then how likely is it that this same political class would produce a better system than the one we have now?
Nor is the electorate much better, as Sabato demonstrates with a series of damning statistics regarding the public's ignorance of the current Constitution and government. So the question is, given that we have - by Sabato's estimation - a corrupted political class and an ignorant electorate, how likely is it that things will turn out well?
It wouldn't turn out well. For those who are enthusiastic for a new Constitution or even for a few new amendments, as well as those Objectivists urging more political activism and even "our" own party, I have a question: where do you think the members of that corrupt political class come from? How do they get there? Who supports them?
Consider who belongs to that corrupt political class: all public school teachers, for one thing. All government employees, for that matter, at all levels. And they vote. You think these people don't like things just the way they are? Do you think they can be reached via political activism?
You see, I'd take it beyond "corrupt political class" and "ignorant electorate." We have a corrupt electorate as well.
And their ideas -- rather, what is left of them -- are influential. Listen, Objectivists: Try telling twenty people you meet today that you favor private ownership of all roads, and a gold standard, and voluntary taxation at all levels, and no military conscription ever, and abolition of Social Security ...
...and you'll get twenty people looking at you like you've just grown a second head.
I was asked, this past Labor Day, what I thought of Barack Obama. "Scum," I replied. I was pressed to opine on Hillary Clinton, McCain, and Giuliani, and I used the same word three more times. I was then informed by this person -- who was raised and educated in the Soviet Union -- that I was being simplistic and cynical. Even after I pointed out, in terms of principles and political philosophy, why I despised each of these politicians, it made no difference. I had obviously, according to her, not given any serious thought to any of this, nor to any of the candidates.
Holding one's nose and voting Giuliani in order to "stop" Hillary isn't a solution, either. If anything, he's worse than she is, and a Giuliani victory would be a worse result for this country than would a Clinton victory. Do you really think, to take but one example, that any Republican will stand in the way of socialized medicine? If anything, they're the ones delivering us into such a disaster. We need to work on engaging and transforming our culture, not on creating an Objectivist political version of the Reagan Revolution, or the Russian Revolution, or any other damn revolution.
In quite a few ways, the political culture in America is worse than it's ever been.
Her comment was made over forty years ago, but I agree with Ayn Rand's statement: "It is earlier than you think."
Variations of this list are making their way around, through, and across the internet; friends and colleagues have sent it to me due to rumors of my misspent youth service in the Marine Corps. I've made a few adjustments, and here's my version:
Marine Corps Rules:
1. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one.
2. Decide to be aggressive enough, quickly enough.
3. Have a plan.
4. Have a back-up plan, because the first one probably won't work.
5. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet, even your friends…
6. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun whose caliber does not start with a "4."
7. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.
8. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral & diagonal preferred.)
9. Use cover or concealment as much as possible.
10. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.
11. Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
12. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
13. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating your intention to shoot.
14. You should be shooting.
US Navy Rules:
1. Go to sea.
2. Drink coffee.
3. Deploy Marines
US Army Rangers Rules:
1. Walk in 50 miles wearing 75 pound rucksack while starving.
2. Locate individuals requiring killing.
3. Request permission via radio from "Higher" to perform killing.
4. Curse bitterly when mission is aborted.
5. Walk out 50 miles wearing a 75 pound rucksack while starving.
US Army Rules:
1. Curse bitterly when receiving operational order.
2. Make sure there is extra ammo and extra coffee.
3. Curse bitterly.
4. Curse bitterly.
5. Do not listen to 2nd LT's; it can get you killed.
6. Curse bitterly.
US Air Force Rules:
1. Have a cocktail.
2. Adjust temperature on air-conditioner.
3. See what's on HBO.
4. Ask "what is a gunfight?"
5. Request more funding from Congress with a "killer" Power Point presentation.
6. Wine & dine 'key' Congressmen, invite DOD & defense industry executives.
7. Receive funding, set up new command and assemble assets.
8. Declare the assets "strategic" and never deploy them operationally.
9. Hurry to make 13:45 tee-time. Make sure no one thinks you're hurrying.
10. Site the base as far as possible from the conflict but close enough to have tax exemption.
Navy SEAL's Rules:
1. Look very cool in sunglasses.
2. Kill every living thing within view.
3. Adjust speedo.
4. Check hair in mirror. Apply lip gloss.
(Disclaimer: With the exception of Ranger units, I have worked with all of the above -- and I've worked with individual Rangers, too. If you take this as hostility toward your branch or component, sorry, but you're off base. But I think most military guys can take this for what it is.)