Although I share some aspects of Martin's nerd hating, I am not from a peasant background and have friends only among the middle class. It is still worth to emphasize that being too nerdy in general about anything will effectively lower your social status, except if you make something fun of it (at my dorm I am known as "the Hulk," because I eat all the time and throw chairs around when I'm happy).

To the story: for several months now I've watched the classic nerdy love story unfold before my eyes. Nerdy, cute girl is being stalked constantly by nerdy guy. He wants her so bad any man can smell it in the air, yet all he dares to do is to play thumb games with her. At first it's kind of cute, then it's just pathetic, because he knows what every man knows: if you don't take risks, you can't win anything. Me and a couple of other guys have bullied him now and then for it, because we like him and the girl, but nothing happens.

Today I think I made him change his mind. It was easy. I simply walked up to him when he was alone and said: "It's one month from now. You see her in the living room. She's hugging a guy in the sofa. They're making out. He's stroking her back..no wait, he's stroking her ass. Suddenly you come in. She looks at you, smiles, says hi nervously. The guy doesn't even look at you, he just continues to fondle with her hair. They continue to make out while moaning. Then you go into your room and lock the door. Repeat at least ten times a month."

The look on his face was priceless. Tomorrow he'll ask her out, or he'll die wishing he did.

Talking about the factors most important to the success of a business enterprise, Arnold Kling writes:

I personally would emphasize a desire to sell. If you cannot overcome your fears and insecurities about selling (and who doesn't have those fears and insecurities?), then you are very unlikely to be successful. The notion that you can have such a great idea that it will sell itself (or "go viral," as they say) is very seductive and in my view almost always wrong.

I don't know how many businessmen are seduced by this idea, but I know ridiculously large numbers of musicians are. All of them would be better off if they dropped this concept and stopped being ashamed to sell themselves. Even if your ideas and your music are really, really good there are thousands of other bands out there competing with you. At least some of them also have ideas that are really, really, really good, plus have charismatic personalities. To have a shot at getting anywhere you need to have good ideas, at least one person with a ton of charisma, and the willingness to self-promote (in non-stupid ways, of course). Your ideas will sell themselves only if you are extremely lucky or working in such a small niche that you don't have much in the way of skilled competition.

This goes double for bands that aren't in it to make money and prefer other rewards. They suffer from this delusion the most. Most of the members of my middle-class avant-pop band certainly do, but luckily they have a shameless pimp like me to provide a reality check.

Once you get over those fears and insecurities, selling your ideas and selling yourself feel pretty damn good. So go for it!

The pattern is to me pretty obvious at this point, having worked out at several different gyms at completely different parts of the country. The guys who are really big work out a lot less than the rest of us. They take long breaks between sets and are often seen just talking with people on the bench. I could think of a bunch of reasons why this seems to be the case:

(a) They don't feel like putting on much more weight than what they already have.

(b) They train less but more often.

(c) They've reached the point where they don't need to put much energy into exercise to get good results.

(d) They've lost the spirit.

(e) They've got superior genes and thus can achieve more by doing less.

I suspect it's a mix of (b) and (e). Some people obviously have bodies that enable them to build really good muscle mass if they train right. Unfair, it might seem, but I would stress that the beauty of lifting weights is the lifestyle itself and not only the effects it has. Work hard, eat a lot, and challenge your mind. Choosing a specific way of life and following it through should be part of every man's destiny.

In Sweden you'd be ridiculed for holding that both religion and capitalism are important to society (which explains why no one seems to vote for the Christian Democrats anymore). But at least from a historical point of view, religion and economic growth correlate quite well. And, of course to my personal liking, Protestantism seems to outrun Catholicism on capitalist growth:

That hell could matter to economic growth might seem surprising, since you can’t prove it exists, let alone quantify it. It stands as one of the more intriguing findings in a growing body of recent research exploring how religion might influence the wealth and prosperity of societies. In recent years, Italian economists have presented findings that religion can boost GDP by increasing trust within a society; researchers in the United States showed that religion reduces corruption and increases respect for law in ways that boost overall economic growth. A number of researchers have documented how merchants used religious backgrounds to establish one another’s reliability.

The two collected data from 59 countries where a majority of the population followed one of the four major religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. They ran this data - which covered slices of years from 1981 to 2000, measuring things like levels of belief in God, afterlife beliefs, and worship attendance - through statistical models. Their results show a strong correlation between economic growth and certain shifts in beliefs, though only in developing countries. Most strikingly, if belief in hell jumps up sharply while actual church attendance stays flat, it correlates with economic growth. Belief in heaven also has a similar effect, though less pronounced. Mere belief in God has no effect one way or the other. Meanwhile, if church attendance actually rises, it slows growth in developing economies.

Researchers based at the New University of Lisbon and the University of Illinois used a model that showed European industrial development between 1645 and 1850 took place roughly 35 years earlier in Protestant countries than Catholic ones. (The researchers posited that Protestant beliefs in economic success as a sign one might get to heaven inspired people to work harder and invest.) The German economist Sascha O. Becker looked at Prussia’s economic development and found that, at least for Germany, Weber was right about the Protestant work ethic: Protestants were more likely to be entrepreneurs than Catholics, and more likely to create bigger firms.

Unsurprisingly, it seems beneficial for the economy to scare people into cultural cohesion. I imagine this is in part, besides the tax cuts, how Bush slowed down the effects of the economic recession in America. Scare all Americans with propaganda that terrorism is threatening your country and people will suddenly feel like they are ultimately connected to one another.

Catholicism, to be fair, is far better at scare tactics than Protestantism, but the latter understands individual rights and a limited but strong national government better than any other version of Christianity. If this analysis is even remotely correct, we can expect that the devastating effects of multiculturalism in Europe eventually will lead to Far Right governments that threaten its citizens with alien supremacy. Accordingly, we might finally see an end to the current economic downturn. I can already see the slogans in front of me: "Hate an immigrant, save the economy!"

Bruce G. Charlton provides a great explanation why intelligent people don't just have stupid ideas sometimes, they are making all-out war against common sense and normalcy. You should read the whole thing, but here is a short summary from the conclusion:

Because evolved ‘common sense’ usually produces the right answers in the social domain, yet the most intelligent people have personalities which over-use abstract analysis in the social domain, this implies that the most intelligent people are predisposed to have silly ideas and to behave maladaptively when it comes to solving social problems.

Ever since the development of cognitive stratification in modernizing societies, the clever sillies have been almost monopolistically ‘in charge’. They really are both clever and silly – but the cleverness is abstract while the silliness is focused on the psychological and social domains. Consequently, the fatal flaw of modern ruling elites lies in their lack of common sense – especially the misinterpretations of human psychology and socio-political affairs. My guess is that this lack of common sense is intrinsic and incorrigible – and perhaps biologically-linked with the evolution of high intelligence and the rise of modernity.

What can we do? Well, we vastly outnumber and outgun our cognitive elites, so if we wanted to it wouldn't be all that difficult to just remove them from power and/or kill them all (in a reversal of the typical misanthropic eugenicist's calls to kill everyone with an IQ lower than himself), but I wouldn't really recommend that. I'm not sure who originally said this, but if you think sociology professors have crazy ideas about the world, try talking to someone who dropped out of eighth grade. Putting average or stupid people in charge would be an improvement in many areas, but not all and might actually be a net loss. Besides, we already tried killing millions of people in order to make the world a better place already, and that didn't work out too well. So what other options remain? Convincing really smart people to pay more attention to everyone else's ideas is a pretty hopeless task, as Udolpho points out in his commentary on Charlton's post:

Here we find the hubris of the educated (in some cases over-educated) man: because his reasoning powers have gifted him with status and prestige, it is unthinkably humbling to suggest to him that his ideas in other spheres (notably politics) are inferior to those of the common individual far below him in status and measurable intelligence. How can a man who only follows his own dumb instincts, who can barely talk or write effectively, come up with a better conception of society than an academic or pundit who is respected by his equally intelligent peers! (In fact we find this hubristic force at work among elites who are far from demonstrating a particularly high cognitive ability, notably actors and musicians.)

I'm not gonna try to come up with any grand schemes to try to fix the world, but an older Udolpho post about how loathsome computer geeks are reminded me of something that each of us can do in our daily lives.

Our cognitive elites are basically nerds on a larger scale. Even the ones who aren't nerdy in their private lives - most of the people who succeed in politics, business etc. have both high IQ and good social skills, and quite a few even had good athletic ability in their youth - basically engage in the worst nerd behavior of substituting thinking (which they are good at) for the normal social instincts which they lack. While the nerd merely irritates those near him (especially single women), though, our masters impose their nonsensical and harmful ideas upon the world.

My proposed solution is to mock and humiliate nerds at every opportunity. By relentlessly picking on nerds we can stigmatize the overuse of abstract reasoning for situations where it doesn't work well. If we do this enough, the perceived worth of reasoning powers will decline and the status of common sense will rise. At some point even really smart people will be less ashamed to follow what little common sense instincts they have instead of suppressing them with brainpower. There's no risk that the elites will fight back, either - no one likes nerds except for other nerds, after all, so no one will rise to their defense.

So, pick on a nerd today! It'll be a tiny step towards a better world.

Even the most progressive of liberals eventually face a dilemma: What if a liberal reform helps to undermine the very foundation that ensures that liberal reforms are possible? This is what Europe right now is tackling during its modern age struggle with Islam. We want to be multicultural and democratic at the same time, so we spend all of our resources on creating a moderate, Westernized version of Eastern Islam.

The Conservatives have long said this will not work. Maybe they're pessimists. Looking at the incidents in Bali, Madrid, London and Malmö, it doesn't require much to remain a pessimist about Islamic reform. The real problem starts when our fear of going back to WWII-ish nationalism results in Europe pushing back its foundation: Christian morality, Roman law and Greek philosophy.

This is why even the most progressive of leftist-leaning liberals need to take Conservatism seriously. When the foundation to a society is under compromise (should we ban right wing parties? should we ban criticism against religion? should we limit our freedom of speech when some group feels offended?), further reforms threaten the whole point of reform in the first place.

Americans observe how Europe is caving in on its own civilization. Europe does no longer possess the will and power to defend its core values. That's why Americans are now turning against Obama, because they (rightfully) suspect Obamarama politics is the European answer to America's long standing Conservative and Constitutional position. The problem is that liberals, even the best of them, has yet to realize the full significance of an anti-Conservative political climate.

In my last post I suggested some ways to piss off your betters. Gypsy mansions and Ed Hardy shirts aren't cheap, though. For those on a budget there are also other options - for example liking country music sends a similar signal, though it's not quite as good as it is not immediately obvious when someone sees you from 20 meters away. If you really want to piss off white middle-class people with your tastes in music, though, what works best is enjoying rap made by white middle-class people. I'm not sure why, but that's how it works. Maybe it's because hating black rappers would be racist, hating Eminem would be kinda racist too because he has too many black friends, and hating non-English-speaking white rappers would be unenlightened and lacking in appreciation of foreign cultures. All that bottled-up hate has to find an outlet somewhere, right?

Here is a great example of the kind of rap it's socially acceptable to hate:

These guys are also definitely OK to hate, even though they're Mexican and collaborated with E40 who is definitely not white. They must be doing something right if they can provoke even such socially risky hate.

As much as I like country, I gotta admit that all the hate for country music pales by comparison with what this stuff gets. I am impressed.

I hadn't posted in about a week because I was away on a small tour of Eastern Europe with one of my bands. Such trips are always an opportunity to learn something new, and on one of the stops I saw an Ed Hardy store across the street from the venue. I had never seen this clothing in person - it isn't popular in my part of the world - but I had read much hatred directed at it. After seeing this stuff up close, I finally understood where that hate comes from.

These clothes function in a very similar way to the mansions of wealthy Gypsy families with their imposing size, large balconies, bright paint, colorful metal roofs, turrets etc. They say two things about the owner. One is "I have enough money for this" and the other says "I care a lot about how people perceive me, but not at all about how middle-class people perceive me". That signal irritates your social betters immensely because it tells them that you enjoy freedom from their status games. We have our own status games with their own rules, of course, though we might be a little more free because our games have much simpler rules. What matters, though, is that your betters see immediately that all the subtle little ways in which they keep each other in line do not work on you. Unsubtle hatred is the only option they have left, and unlike brands such as Coogi or Crown Holder, Ed Hardy clothes are worn mostly by white guys so it's not "racist" to unleash that hatred.

I find that unsubtle hatred very appealing. I'm no good at subtlety anyway. Middle-class people don't like us, we don't like them, and it's good to get that out in the open sometimes. (Now, I play in one band with some middle-class people. They're not really bad people, just kinda weird. They know I'm not like them and we're all OK with that.) I didn't buy anything at that store, though. All the designs are tattoo-based and I don't like tattoos. Hey, I'm old...

The message hasn't sinked in to the disbelieving public consciousness. Best available evidence shows that antioxidant supplements either have no effect or, worse, increase your risk of death.

You heard that right.

These supplements either WASTE YOUR MONEY or they KILL you.

Main results
Sixty-seven randomised trials with 232,550 participants were included. Forty-seven trials including 180,938 participants had low risk of bias. Twenty-one trials included 164,439 healthy participants. Forty-six trials included 68111 participants with various diseases (gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, neurological, ocular, dermatological, rheumatoid, renal, endocrinological, or unspecified). Overall, the antioxidant supplements had no significant effect on mortality in a random-effects meta-analysis (relative risk [RR] 1.02, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.99 to 1.06), but significantly increased mortality in a fixed-effect model (RR 1.04, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.06). In meta-regression analysis, the risk of bias and type of antioxidant supplement were the only significant predictors of intertrial heterogeneity. In the trials with a low risk of bias, the antioxidant supplements significantly increased mortality (RR 1.05, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.08). When the different antioxidants were assessed separately, analyses including trials with a low risk of bias and excluding selenium trials found significantly increased mortality by vitamin A (RR 1.16, 95% CI 1.10 to 1.24), beta-carotene (RR 1.07, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.11), and vitamin E (RR 1.04, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.07), but no significant detrimental effect of vitamin C (RR 1.06, 95% CI 0.94 to 1.20). Low-bias risk trials on selenium found no significant effect on mortality (RR 0.90, 95% CI 0.80 to 1.01).

Authors' conclusions
We found no evidence to support antioxidant supplements for primary or secondary prevention. Vitamin A, beta-carotene, and vitamin E may increase mortality. Future randomised trials could evaluate the potential effects of vitamin C and selenium for primary and secondary prevention. Such trials should be closely monitored for potential harmful effects. Antioxidant supplements need to be considered medicinal products and should undergo sufficient evaluation before marketing.

This is published by the Cochrane Library, which only publishes the most rigorous and quality systematic review of best evidence.

Photo by Piku.

I urge you to get your antioxidants naturally, my darlings.

Every time guys discuss weight lifting, they compare how much they max out on the bench. It's a quite ridiculous competition, all pretension aside, because in relation to a serious exercise program, it's pretty irrelevant.

I never max out when I work out. After I've been on the bench, I need to continue lifting for about 1,5 hours. That'd not be fully possible (with good results) if I maxed out on the bench. And for what reason? If you want to collect injuries, maxing out is a good way of doing it. Maxing out is a pseudo-macho game that spells I-am-not-really-working-out-for-real. If you did, you'd look more at sets, reps, technique--and food.

If guys want to compare bench marks at the gym, I don't see a problem with that. It's just annoying when they confuse their activity with real weight lifting or body building, because that is more lifestyle than one time achievement. Without continuation and technique, you won't go anywhere.

Out of curiosity me and a friend visited a metal club last Friday. The argument went something like "we're tired of the usual places to meet girls, this place has to be interesting." We couldn't be more wrong.

The DJ was a moron who suddenly stopped playing music, then began playing again, as if he'd never mixed music in his life. And only spotty, long-haired guys everywhere, jerking around the bar and screaming. Where were the girls? The few ones that seemed to exist were far from attractive and basically every rare hottie was already occupied on the dance floor, fending off four to five ultra-horny metal heads. Hilarious.

We also spotted a guy we'd almost gotten into a fight with some time ago. We left the place, pretty disappointed. Metal clubs work like punk clubs and feminist gatherings. These are places where homogeneous groups unite under something more central than socialization, like music or ideas. This means that if you like metal, you're likely to enjoy listening to music and drinking beer at a place like this. If you want to meet a variety of interesting people--forget it.

I've been to metal clubs before, but only for concerts, not really in search of pick-up opportunities. I don't really understand why you'd want to spend a night at a place where lots of nerdy guys are listening to techno-versions of Iron Maiden themes and fighting over a handful of unattractive girls. I guess it's a cultural thing.

As the Far Right is gaining ground in Europe, many people now want to put racism, white slavery and intergalactic terrorism back on the agenda again. But before we wage war against racism, let's just acknowledge a few things.

• Things don't stop to exist just because we don't talk about them in public. In Sweden you're willing to acknowledge that the Earth is flat as long as you're not called a racist. In public. In private we're currently giving the patriotic Sweden Democrats more than 5 percent of our votes. The host nations of Europe are no longer honest about their intentions toward immigrants.
• Immigrants are the worst racists. You won't really understand why until you begin to actually hang out with immigrants from all kinds of places. Assyrians hate Turks, Bosnians hate Serbs, Serbs hate Bosnians, Kurds hate fundamentalist Arabs, fundamentalist Arabs hate Jews, fundamentalist Jews hate the fundamentalist Middle East, Swedes hate Russians, Cubans hate Negroes etc. etc. I haven't heard so much racism since I began to socialize multiculturally, but I also realize that much of it is tongue-in-cheek and that the rest is based on historic facts. If my people were thrown in mass graves and it never received international recognition (like the Assyrian genocide), I'd be pretty pissed off, too.
• What's the opposite of racism? Total tolerance for everyone. Yeah, it's not possible. Just as we don't like all individuals, we don't like all ethnic groups either. If you did, you wouldn't have much for preference. Over time you learn what people and what groups you get along with the best. Everyone wants to end racism, but forgets that without a small dose of racism you're unlikely to be able to get along with any group in reality. And, rest assure, you won't be liked by everyone. Some forms of racism are simply not going to go away any time soon thanks to what is happening today and what has happened in the past, like the war in Gaza or the Armenian genocide.
• Racism is a product of something else. In every day life it's mostly a product of personal problems. If you have hate inside and you channelize it towards an ethnic minority, you commit an act of racism. The problem is not the racism itself though, it's a person with emotional problems. If you look at it from this perspective, it's laughable that the government should spend millions of tax money to domesticate racism. The more the government intervenes, the more these individuals feel they're treated badly by their own country. This fuels more problems. Racism is not really threatening multiculturalism per se--public distrust and lack of cultural cohesion are the real problems. Since multiculturalism as defined is against cohesion ("our core values is that we lack core values"), you kind of see the problem facing Europe here.
• If Europe wants to combat its racism, it assumes it can solve the racism between ethnic minorities. That's a challenge not even the countries of the immigrants have been able to do. Look at Eastern Europe. Look at Italy. Look at Iraq. Look at Israel. Do you really want to play God in these conflicts, which essentially have become forefronts for civil wars in many European suburbs? Most civilizations die from within due to exhaustion, but is it in Europe's case perhaps more possible that we'll simply import other regional problems, make them our own, and then collapse?

In short, I don't think "European" racism is a big problem right now. The real problem is what direction Europe wants to take in the future. If we don't address inconveniences made possible thanks to multiculturalism, we'll essentially vote in the Far Right, which although more realistic than our current governments on this issue, hardly sensible enough to be able to steer Europe into a better future. I'm taking a step back, don't like what I see, but will remain a wholehearted European, for better or worse.

I just saw a Swedish documentary about mixed martial arts (MMA) clubs. Swedish MMA clubs, like all other sports clubs, receive benefits from the government to support their activity. Yet moralists and "health experts" now rail against MMA because it's too violent. No money from the government, they scream, this is anti-Swedish.

If the morons knew anything about martial arts in general, they'd realize that the really tough MMA matches you see on television only involve professionals. They know what they're doing, because they've been training for years. They deserve respect, not resentment. Why do we want to cut the benefits to MMA but not to other high-risk sports like hockey or football? Have you ever met a track and field athlete that hasn't been struggling with at least one serious knee- or back injury?

It's all really simple. Swedes don't hate martial arts because of its risks. They hate it because it involves two people fighting against each other. The oh-so-civilized and progressive Swedes can stand angry immigrants setting whole suburbs on fire, top political leaders supporting Communism and the end of the heterosexual family, and stand by while fanatic Jihadists demand we put an end to our freedom of speech.

But when two people fight each other in a ring, the line has been crossed. It's violent, and we want the Nanny State to ban it immediately. Let's all go back to our bureaucratic desks and shut the hell up. Life is safer that way.

From a reader:

Would there be any chance you might put together a set of nice high-protein recipes for the body-builders among your readership? I've been getting a little tired of the stuff I've been making, but I don't feel like compromising my results without some really nice looking/tasting incentives. There's only so much Bro-Science I can tolerate surfing
through on body building forums...

I'm sure you know more about this than me, but one of my favorites is flying Jacob, which is a very simple and protein-rich Swedish chicken dish. Here's how you do it:

Ingredients

1 BBQ chicken / 1 kilo fried chicken breast
4 bananas
6 dl curd cheese
6 dl yoghurt
3 dl chili sauce
1 bag peanuts/cashew nuts

Oil in an ovenware, then spread out the chicken meat at the bottom. Slice bananas on top. Mix curd cheese, yoghurt and chili sauce, and pour over the bananas. Spread out nuts evenly on top, then gratinate for about 15 minutes in an oven set to 225C degrees until it's gathered some color. Serve with rice, potatoes or pasta.

I like this recipe for being quick and fairly cheap to make. It should give you enough protein for one meal, but can easily be stored in the fridge and eaten later, cold or warm, together with carbs. Martin has got a second recipe advice for those who are looking for a really wholesome meal:

It's easy as long as you live in a country where rabbits are available. So, here goes:

If you're tired of eating tons of chicken breasts, rabbit is a good
alternative lean meat. In the summertime I might BBQ it, but since
it's November I will usually roast it in the oven. The process is
stupidly simple. Cut the legs off and split the torso in half. Rub the
pieces with salt, generous amounts of chopped garlic, paprika and
cayenne pepper. Cover with sliced bacon and roast in an oven at 170
degrees till the back thighs are done. That's all! If your rabbit came
with a liver, that makes a nice snack while you wait for the rabbit to
roast. I recommend frying it up in olive oil, then eating it with a
mango-based sauce.

For something more laborious, try oxtail stew. Buy an oxtail and split
it into segments - just feel where it flexes at the joints and cut it
there. Cover the segments with a mixture of flour, salt and black
pepper. Brown these in olive oil, then transfer to the biggest pot you
have. Once you've got all the segments there, cover them with water
and bring it to a boil. While you wait for it to boil, peel a few
cloves of garlic and cut up two or three onions and bell peppers. Once
the water boils, turn it down so it simmers and throw in the garlic,
onions and peppers, plus a few bay leaves, a dozen juniper berries and
a dozen allspice berries. You can throw in some hot peppers if you'd
like. Now comes the boring part - you have to boil this till the meat
starts to come off the bones. That will probably take around four
hours. Once you see that the meat is getting there, slice up three
carrots and cut two potatoes into small (1 cm or so) cubes. Throw
those in. If you time it right, they'll be tender by the time the meat
separates completely from the bones. At that point add two chopped-up
tomatoes and a can of green peas. Cook for five more minutes, then
you're finally done. Serve with a garnish of freshly chopped onion and
some crushed chipotle if you can get it.

If your grocery store doesn't offer rabbit meat at discount, I guess your only choice is to go out in the forest and hunt down a few. We hope these suggestions provided some inspiration!

(It is for readers like this that we continue doing this.)

Chinatown (1974)
Roman Polanski

A yes or a no to any statement are like lids, sometimes known as contradictions, on top of a greater truth. Jake Gittes, a Californian private detective, gets to know this fact face to face during the interwar period, when he is drawn into a complex political tangle concerning the future of Los Angeles. Gittes was once a policeman in Chinatown, where corruption keeps the lid on, so although he is a pretty coarse detective, he is one of few people who really wants to know what’s actually going on.

In Los Angeles he discovers how corruption has completely drained all trustworthiness from even what seems to be the most respectable citizens. For a while, he feels he can trust Evelyn Mulwray, but his faith in her falters and his desperation in not knowing makes the palm of his hand do the talking. Because as a detective, Gittes is no genius in forming a whole out of many parts. He’s good at clutching to details, but otherwise he’s just as lost as the viewer in a world in which the truth is always just out of reach, as though we never get to "the thing in itself." Gittes accuses loads of people, but just as when most others try to formulate theories about how the world works, he is mostly wrong, quite unlike the perfect private detectives who figure everything out without a problem.

This is a pessimistic movie to say the least. You shouldn’t seek truth, you shouldn’t make a living in honest ways, you shouldn’t be benevolent – it always ends up badly. Everything reeks of dishonesty, the cops included, but the sad conclusion seems to be that people get used to it: "Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." As the detective of life itself the thinker is by necessity striving for truth, but what happens if our fundamental worldview is corrupt?

"Chinatown" at Amazon

Please stop for one moment and behold the majesty of the horse head nebula:

How many years since you found yourself
Staring at an endless sky?

Unaware of yourself
Who you are and where you're going
Only living
Only breathing
Losing all sense of time

The most fragile of things
Captivates and embraces you
Surrender and be witness
To this rarest of moments

You live within the sense
Of the order of things
What is truth
What is important
What defines you

No need to fear
No need to worry
About years that passed
About time you lost

Live seconds as a lifetime
Time it does not matter
You live within the sense
Of the stillness of time

(Lyrics: VNV-Nation, "Endless Skies")

This isn't a soldier issue, a religious issue or any issue. This is a man called Nidal Malik Hasan's issue. This man does not represent any group of people, because he is essentially unique. He was a single man who couldn't get married to a woman who matched his religious beliefs (you could connect him with George Sodini and all men, then?) , he was a muslim religious man who couldn't resolve it with the military's actions (therefore you could connect him with jihadists who also represent all muslims, then?) -- yet I'm not as religious as he was and still wouldn't go into the military; he made a terrible decision there which others paid for and nobody stopped. He was a deeply disturbed psychiatrist (who have -- in their profession -- elevated levels of mental troubles anyway). He had bad reviews about his psychiatric practice which weren't addressed. He wanted to leave the army and they wouldn't let him. He experienced discrimination which -- in his case -- turned out to be justified.

This situation is a confluence of multiple factors.

The Quran -- although the unquestioned authority full of evidence -- is not by itself the determinant of any one muslim's actions. It is interpreted by each individual muslim who reads it, each muslim who gains guidance from scholars, the Prophet's legacy in terms hadiths and the stories of his seera -- his life's path -- as passed on through the ages. There are schools of thought and interpretation taking it all into account responsible for Islamic jurisprudence. Muslims can reach a consensus between them. They can also be divided.

The point of meritocracy is that you decide in terms of the individual in front of you: you take into account their beliefs, their troubles and treat them based on this. You do not be blind to their ethnicity, culture or religion if it effects them neither do you assume based on religion: the most prominent example is what has happened to Christianity, there're people naming themselves Christians who only remember that when they need to write it on some Equal Opportunities form.

The first point of failure was Nidal Malik Hasan, his mistakes, his arguably self-inflicted mental hell and his horrifying indiscriminate killing. He shot at a pregnant woman. That it is justified Islamically is something only a pathological personality will believe. That he justified it Islamically when it was a grudge against the Army itself of which religion and discrimination by individuals played a part seems very likely. It was a vicious cycle: he felt persecuted and out of place due to his own choices, which resulted in him becoming more defensive and unhappy, which resulted in more isolation and a higher sense of feeling persecuted. Repeat until you have a personality feeling so victimised that you have a remorseless shooter with misdirected anger, instead of finding real solutions.

The second point of failure was the Army for retaining him in service, of which a policy of organisational non-discrimination as well as a failure of policy played a part. Why was he retained against his own feelings and beliefs, as well as giving a poor performance?

The big irony in this situation is that both discrimination and anti-discrimination played a part. This is what happens when you allow individuals to foster a victim mentality.

It doesn't matter whether a person is muslim or not. You need to listen to them and evaluate them as an individual: what do their beliefs mean to them, how are they practically applied? Is it merely lip service? What part of life's buffet is particularly to their taste? Is it family, charity, war? You must protect yourself and others from them if you see signs that are a warning.

I've covered before why cardio work out is an overrated method of burning fat. Here's another article confirming this:

To their surprise, the researchers found that none of the groups, including the athletes, experienced “afterburn.” They did not use additional body fat on the day when they exercised. In fact, most of the subjects burned slightly less fat over the 24-hour study period when they exercised than when they did not.

Here's why:

Each of Melanson’s subjects spent 24 quiet hours in the calorimeter, followed later by another 24 hours that included an hourlong bout of stationary bicycling. The cycling was deliberately performed at a relatively easy intensity (about 55 percent of each person’s predetermined aerobic capacity).

Cycling, like much of the traditional cardio exercise programs, really only burns fat during work out session. The problem is that when you've done your running or cycling, you will still want something sugary and you'll still eat more food than usual. This means you gain at least the amount of calories you just burned:

“The message of our work is really simple,” although not agreeable to hear, Melanson said. “It all comes down to energy balance,” or, as you might have guessed, calories in and calories out. People “are only burning 200 or 300 calories” in a typical 30-minute exercise session, Melanson points out. “You replace that with one bottle of Gatorade.”

I noticed the change in metabolism as soon as I began lifting weights at the gym instead of just running or using machines. Commonly my afterburn lasts for 48 hrs, sometimes more. No wonder I eat tons of food and still cannot get enough. And my aim is to remain lean and not put on fat--the guys who just want to get insanely big have to go to McDonald's a few days a week to get by.

“If you work out at an easy intensity, you will burn a higher percentage of fat calories” than if you work out a higher intensity, Carey says, so you should draw down some of the padding you’ve accumulated on the hips or elsewhere — if you don’t replace all of the calories afterward.

This is why all serious fitness models do powerwalks every day: high-intensive training is not enough. You need low-intensive work out to get really lean. Clean the house, work in the garage, chase the kids down the hall etc. However, there's no question that resistance training beats all other popular forms of work out in terms of burning calories. Of course, exercise cannot be separated from diet. Yet, the irony is that many people who light weights end up eating "too healthy," e.g. avoiding all kinds of fatty and high-carb foods. I've been eating fatty sausages these couple of weeks and noticed increased results compared to just eating lean meat and fish. There's apparently room for experimentation.

So, to reiterate: cardio exercise is good for you, but ineffective at burning fat, since you'll simply gain all those calories again after work out. More and more people, especially women, are discovering the power and effectiveness of resistance training. Start lifting weights--it's fun, demanding, and it makes you mentally and physically powerful enough to take on any challenges in life.

Berlin, Germany - As Germany celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, a free music concert staged by Irish rock-band U2 drew controversy as a section of the capital had to be walled in to separate the crowd from the rest of the city.

For those old enough to remember, the temporary barrier reignited memories of the panic surrounding the sudden erection of the old wall in August 1961.

One of those who were trapped said today: "I had just sat down, next to what looked like a makeshift bandstand. I turned around and suddenly I saw a huge barbed wire cordon going up. Some were trying to make it over to the other side. I turned back around and my worst nightmare was confirmed: U2 were performing and there was no way out."

As the concert continued, thousands could be seen inside the zone trying to escape by climbing the gates and throwing themselves against the razor wire fence.

Families were eventually reunited with teary-eyed loved ones who had managed to become stranded inside the restricted zone overnight.

"It was absolute hell," one man said, continuing: "we thought it couldn't get any worse, but then Jay-Z came on. This was advertised to us all as a free concert; a social paradise for everyone."

"But I guess you really do get what you pay for."

Students and teachers at my university program discuss an American science report to highlight gender inequalities. The report suggests that younger women losing their virginity at young age suffer greater risk of depression. The word "chastity" in the report creates a wave of laughter throughout the room.

Male student: "Chastity"? Is this a serious report?

Female teacher: This is what one could expect from America, haha.

Me (with an exaggerated irony): Haha, yeah, good thing we all prefer to be whores in Sweden.

(Silence.)

Female teacher (still baffled): Hrm, so, where do we find linguistic gender inequalities in this report?

[In Sweden everyone thinks Americans are fanatic Christians of low intelligence who want to torture, kill and brainwash the world's population. Except Obama and the Democrats, because they resemble Europe.]