Monthly Archives: January 2010

From WaPo: Authorities seek deal with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

And it just keeps getting weirder. From the Washington Post: “Authorities are inching toward an agreement that would secure cooperation from the suspect in the failed Detroit airliner attack, according to two sources familiar with the case, even as fresh … Continue reading

Posted in Politics, Terrorism | 4 Comments

New study just in! Kids watch a lot of TV

Why can’t they be like we were, Perfect in every way? What’s the matter with kids today? -Bye Bye Birdie, 1963 The results of the 2009 Kaiser Family Foundation study, “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year Olds,” … Continue reading

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Hey maybe somebody gets it – or maybe not

There might be hope yet. Or maybe not. After the first heady rush of having overcome the Senate Sixty by one vote in a special election, saner voices on the Right are cautioning against the Republican Party regressing to the … Continue reading

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Brown croaks Coakley

My weekend Op-ed on the Coakley/Brown election in Massachusetts. The Meaning of Massachusetts On Tuesday, the people of Massachusetts elected Scott P. Brown a Republican, to the U.S. Senate in a special election held to fill the seat vacated by … Continue reading

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Have they learned? Will they learn?

Thomas Sowell’s latest column, ‘Are Republicans Due?‘ is, as usual for Dr. Sowell, well written and thought provoking. When a baseball player has come to bat after failing to get a hit twenty times in a row, some fans say … Continue reading

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Last of the witnesses

Note: My weekend op-ed in the Valley City Times-Record Update: I reworked this column to make a different point about Heroes and Heroism on the Objectiviist website The Atlasphere. “A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a … Continue reading

Posted in Op-eds, Social Science & History | 2 Comments

A cheerful agnostic looks at Brit Hume and Buddhism

“The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.” Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) Well, FOX commentator Brit Hume really stepped in it. I didn’t see … Continue reading

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The underwear bomber and how I got profiled

Note: A slightly different version of this appeared as the weekend op-ed in the Valley City Times-Record. Well, 2009 sure went out with a bang. On November 5, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, suffering from the hitherto-unknown “pre-traumatic stress … Continue reading

Posted in Politics, Terrorism | Tagged , | 2 Comments

One got past the Fargo Forum

As I mentioned earlier, I get up early every workday to do the police report. Well, yesterday was one of those days that make it worthwhile. One of the officers showed me a back page of the Fargo Forum. The … Continue reading

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Martial arts and combatives, pt 2: What can you get out of it?

My point about this is, “combatives” teachers sometimes like to cop an attitude of “this isn’t martial arts, this is the real thing.” However, looking at these videos I see an awful lot of martial arts techniques. If you know something about bunkai (application) of traditional Karate kata for example, in combatives DVDs you see palm heel strickes, fist hammer, knife hand, ridge hand, and that rising outer forearm strike usually mis-called an “upward block.”

The difference is how they’re practiced. There’s something in the energy of the O’Hagan and the Defendo demonstrations that’s hard to describe, but you could call it intent. Though they’re pulling the blows, they actually look like they’re intending harm rather than trying to look good for an audience.

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