tail in the mud

Mumford & Sons - Winter Winds

2010-08-08T19:32:00.000-04:00

Babatunde Djembe performance.

2010-03-24T11:27:00.000-04:00

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT2J1Ot9N5c&feature=youtube_gdata

"The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of
another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be
founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he
must get to live" -Leo Tolstoy

Found this today. I love it.

2010-01-21T10:37:00.002-05:00

I Am Stoner

We are Stoner.
We go to work everyday.
We've thought about life more than you can understand.
We've values that you overlook.
We are the ones who hold your hair while your poison ejects itself.
We are the ones who can talk to the cop, since you can't even stand.
We are prosecuted by those who are jealous of our zeal.
We don't need help or your opinion, or that new fancy liver.

We are understanding, compassionate and forgiving. If the laws changed tomorrow, we would not hold spite for all the years or harassment.
We are joyous, happy and outgoing. Not only do we love the greatness we have found in life, but feel compelled to share it with you as well.
We are dependable, chivalrous and loyal. We don't smoke too much pot and accidentally screw our best friend’s girlfriend.
We are accepting, trusting and doubtless. Ethnicity? Race? Social status? Don't worry about all that, sit down and have a toke with us.

We will not give up. We will survive your trials. We will endure your lies. And sooner or later, we will win.
We are all together. We all accept each other. We are all one.
We are Stoner.

Don't know if I should credit this guy with the poem or just the post, but this encapsulates the truth of our lifestyle.

Nog love

2010-01-08T11:35:00.003-05:00

Now that it's been taken off of the shelves, I wanted to say a word about the best egg nog I've ever had. I assure you, my exuberant declaration is not the opinion of a newbie to nog. I consider myself to be something of a connoisseur, in fact. I have tried the majority, if not all, of the major and/or available brands of egg nog (non-alcoholic) and I have yet to find one that comes close to this Organic Valley offering. Those of you who never consume egg nog without alcohol are not welcome to comment on this post. I am discussing egg nog that can stand on its own and this product does so and shines! The fact that it is organic and natural is, of course, a bonus, but this nog is brilliantly executed. Unfortunately, the vast majority of egg nogs on the market are flavored to strongly, often with artificial flavors. This results in the bouquet smelling much like bubble gum flavoring. This, being the standard, sets the bar abysmally low for egg nog quality. Organic Valley's egg nog is not only exceptionally well balanced, its flavor is perfectly understated when compared to all the other offerings. I rarely, if ever, wax rhapsodic about a product, but this one blew me away this season. Kudos to you, Organic Valley! You've made an amazing product.

2009-12-18T15:44:00.000-05:00

Time by ~imperioli on deviant ART

Interesting Article

2009-12-15T12:52:00.000-05:00

	THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING

You can’t handle the truth

A respected scientist set out to determine which drugs are actually the most dangerous -- and discovered that the answers are, well, awkward

By Mark Pothier | December 13, 2009

In the long and tortured debate over drug policy, one of the strangest episodes has been playing out this fall in the United Kingdom, where the country’s top drug adviser was recently fired for publicly criticizing his own government’s drug laws.

The adviser, Dr. David Nutt, said in a lecture that alcohol is more hazardous than many outlawed substances, and that the United Kingdom might be making a mistake in throwing marijuana smokers in jail. His comments were published in a press release in October, and the next day he was dismissed. The buzz over his sacking has yet to subside: Nutt has become the talk of pubs and Parliament, as well as the subject of tabloid headlines like: “Drug advisor on wacky baccy?”

But behind Nutt’s words lay something perhaps more surprising, and harder to grapple with. His comments weren’t the idle musings of a reality-insulated professor in a policy job. They were based on a list - a scientifically compiled ranking of drugs, assembled by specialists in chemistry, health, and enforcement, published in a prestigious medical journal two years earlier.

The list, printed as a chart with the unassuming title “Mean Harm Scores for 20 Substances,” ranked a set of common drugs, both legal and illegal, in order of their harmfulness - how addictive they were, how physically damaging, and how much they threatened society. Many drug specialists now consider it one of the most objective sources available on the actual harmfulness of different substances.

That ranking showed, with numbers, what Nutt was fired for saying out loud: Overall, alcohol is far worse than many illegal drugs. So is tobacco. Smoking pot is less harmful than drinking, and LSD is less damaging yet.

Nutt says he didn’t see himself as promoting drug use or trying to subvert the government. He was pressing the point that a government policy, especially a health-related one like a drug law, should be grounded in factual information. In doing so, he found himself caught in a crossfire that cost him the advisory post he had held for a decade.

The same issue is becoming a hot one in America - this fall the Obama administration took a baby step toward easing federal scrutiny of medical marijuana use, and a policy report due early next year is expected to emphasize addiction prevention and treatment over criminal enforcement. Opponents are already attacking the administration for its laxity, but Thomas McLellan, a newly installed White House drug official, has begun loudly pushing for policy that incorporates more science.

“We must increase the use of evidence-based tools at our disposal,” McLellan said in an interview last week.

But as Nutt’s case illustrates, that is tough to do. The more data we accumulate about drug harmfulness, the more it seems like the classification systems used by the United States, the United Kingdom, and other governments need to be dismantled - and the more it becomes clear that societies can’t, or won’t, take that step. Drug laws are rooted in history and politics as much as science. Our own culture embraces one intoxicant - alcohol - that Nutt’s ranking deemed far more dangerous than 15 other harmful substances. And even if it were possible to divorce drug politics from drug-use facts, some policy specialists say, letting science call the shots would be a bad idea.

Intoxication has been part of human culture since before recorded history. So have its consequences. A drug can cause all sorts of harms, some devastating, some minor: It can ravage the body of an addict, or simply make a user late for a meeting with the boss. Drugs can impoverish families, trigger deadly violence, cause cancer. In modern society, drugs drive crime and increase health costs for everyone.

To Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at London’s Imperial College who chaired the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, it made sense that laws and policies should take into account the harmfulness of the drugs themselves. But when he considered ways to improve the system, he discovered a problem.

“It became clear that [the government] didn’t have any systematic, transparent way of assessing drugs at all,” he said. “If you say drug laws are based on reducing harm, you have to actually know what kind of harm they cause.”

So about a decade ago, he and some colleagues set about to gauge the dangers of 20 substances as objectively as possible. This would not be a measurement with calipers and a scale - drug risks are inevitably subjective, depending on factors like an individual user’s tolerance, the amount used, and the duration of use. But Nutt also knew he could create better data than anything the government was currently employing.

He and his colleagues assembled a range of independent experts and asked them to score each drug in three categories - its physical effects on the user, the likelihood of addiction, and its impact on society. The group included addiction specialists registered with the Royal College of Psychiatrists, as well as people with expertise in chemistry, forensic science, and police work.

They gave the specialists a detailed list of parameters to consider. In assessing the addictiveness of, say, cocaine, they would separately rate its pleasure, psychological dependence, and physical dependence, and the ratings would be combined to create an overall risk factor. After a series of meetings and discussions, the rankings were determined by averaging scores across all the categories. The result was a paper published in the public-health journal The Lancet in March 2007.

Number one on the experts’ list was an easy call: heroin. It’s extremely addictive and, by any measure, destructive to the user and the society around him. Cocaine came in second, followed by barbiturates and street methadone.

Then the list got interesting. Alcohol, which has always been legal in England and was only briefly outlawed in the United States, took the fifth position, above tobacco (9), marijuana (11), LSD (14), and ecstasy (18). The least harmful drug in all respects was khat, a stimulant derived from the leaves of an African shrub.

Included in the Lancet paper was the authors’ recommendation that the government should reclassify drugs to reflect the harms they cause. “We saw no clear distinction between socially acceptable and illicit substances,” they wrote, suggesting “a more rational debate” on drug policy, based on “scientific evidence.”

The ranking - nicknamed the “drug league table,” after the British term for sports standings - lay quietly, more or less ignored by the public and politicians, until King’s College issued a press release in October based on a lecture Nutt had given in July. Nutt thought he was making much the same point he made in the medical journal two years earlier: If we looked at harm objectively, we would engineer a drastically different set of drug policies than the ones we now use.

He was swiftly booted from his government position. Home Secretary Alan Johnson said Nutt had crossed a line. He “cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy,” Johnson told The Guardian newspaper.

“It was a funny, kind of petulant reaction,” Nutt told the Globe, “all about machismo and politics. We’re harder on drugs than you, we’re tougher.”

Suddenly, Nutt was everywhere - the papers, the BBC, YouTube, a Facebook page started by his backers. Critics accused him of sending England’s youth a mixed message about drug use. Supporters charged the government with stripping the professor of his right to speak freely.

Amid the charges and countercharges, others wondered whether, beneath all the controversy, the government shouldn’t just start paying more attention to that list.

If Nutt’s list is accurate - if we really do know which drugs are really bad and which are relatively benign - the next step is figuring out how to make use of that information.

It might seem obvious that the most harmful drugs should receive the most attention from the government, with beefed-up prevention and treatment programs, and tougher punishments for producers and distributors. And to conserve their limited resources, it might make sense for drug officials to stop worrying about the least harmful substances, even decriminalizing or legalizing them.

But real-world drug policy is not like that. To a certain extent, say analysts, legal drugs are acceptable and illegal ones are dangerous because, well, because they’re already illegal.

“There’s a crazy kind of logic that argues, about some currently illegal drug, ‘Look how dangerous it is! You couldn’t possibly legalize a drug as dangerous as that!’ ” said Mark A.R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at UCLA. The fact that a drug is against the law makes people overestimate its risks, he said, while legal status causes them to underestimate dangers.

Politicians tend to follow that same line of thinking, leaving socially acceptable legal drugs alone, while making easy prey of would-be liberalizers. In the United States, for instance, it would be politically insane to call for the legalization of the least harmful drugs on Nutt’s list - khat, GHB, and steroids - while campaigning to outlaw tobacco.

One indisputable fact that emerged from Nutt’s study is this: We have assigned a high social value to booze. Alcohol causes many of the harms associated with “harder” drugs - lots of people die or become deeply dysfunctional because of drinking - yet it has been entrenched in society for so long that scientific evidence of its hazards relative to other intoxicants doesn’t get much of a public hearing.

Kleiman and other experts - including Nutt - are not suggesting that either Britain or the United States should ban alcohol. America tried that once, and even during Prohibition, people didn’t stop drinking - they simply built a system of illegal manufacturing and distribution big enough to satisfy their thirst. Instead, Kleiman believes a good strategy on alcohol should include increased taxes to discourage drinking - young people and heavy drinkers are price-sensitive - and an outright ban on sales to people who have been convicted of drunken driving or other alcohol-fueled crimes.

Of course, that would require new laws, and more political wrangling. How many convictions? How long of a ban? If the science is complicated, the politics would be more so. The fight would last more than a few rounds.

Nutt, for one, seems ready to go the distance. “The majority of people in [Britain] are more damaged by alcohol than any other drug,” he said. “Let’s get the scaling of harm right.”

For drugs that are currently illegal, he said, that means having prevention efforts and laws that are proportionate to their dangers. For instance, British law allows up to five years imprisonment for marijuana possession, a penalty Nutt called “infantile and embarrassing.” McLellan, the White House drug adviser, echoed him, saying jailing pot smokers “is idiocy, a really bad use of resources.”

But drug law will never be as simple as making a list, and even experts say it shouldn’t be. At a certain point, scientists should excuse themselves from the discourse, Kleiman said. Intoxicants are part of our culture in ways that a list can’t sort out for us.

“Science gives you facts about the world,” he said, “and you have to assign values to those facts. It doesn’t tell you what’s worth having and what’s not worth having.”

Mark Pothier is the Globe’s senior assistant business editor. He can be reached at mpothier@globe.com.

Geoffrey Bosmann

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Journey of the Blade by Chuck Pippin

2009-12-08T11:16:00.002-05:00

The KSMA blog has just published Chuck's article on his bladesmithing journey. Go check it out here.

Our knife rights are being taken away

2009-06-11T15:53:00.002-04:00

Those of you who know me, know me to be blade-crazy. Well, they want to take the majority of my blades away. Please go to this PDF and take a look at the situation. I'm going to do my part to raise hell about this!
My friend Terry Trahan has an insider's perspective on this (he's employed by a knife manufacturer) and he has a synopsis of this on his blog as well: WeaselCraft

From my WuWei blog in 2005

2009-05-30T14:52:00.000-04:00

I was asked for about the bizillionth time recently about the genesis of the name Lost Tortoise. I became interested in Taoism at a relatively early age (fourteen) and became an adherent to the philosophy over twenty years ago. In the early stages of this path, I had a favorite parable from one of the two main texts of Taoism, the Zhuangzi/Chuang Tzu. The reproduction of this parable that follows is from the famous translation by Lin Yutang:

Chuangtse was fishing on the P'u River when the Prince of Ch'u sent two high officials to see him and said, "Our Prince desires to burden you with the administration of the Ch'u State." Chuangtse went on fishing without turning his head and said, "I have heard that in Ch'u there is a sacred tortoise which died when it was three thousand (years) old. The prince keeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a chest in his ancestral temple. Now would this tortoise rather be dead and have its remains venerated, or would it rather be alive and wagging its tail in the mud?"

"It would rather be alive," replied the two officials, and wagging its tail in the mud."

"Begone!" cried Chuangtse. "I too will wag my tail in the mud.

Well, this is still my favorite taoist parable and I still adhere strongly to Taoism's principles; I fail to see any conflict with my "Christian" path. This parable combined with my tendency towards sociopathic behavior in my youth caused a group of my martial family to come up with the name Lost Tortoise. It was one of the few monikers from that period that stuck.

Gathering of the Tribes 2009

2009-05-29T10:49:00.012-04:00

This was my first Gathering with this group. Indeed, I knew these folks only through their collective web presence. Any apprehension that would normally occur when heading into the home turf of a bunch of strangers was assuaged by my correspondence with the primary host, Chuck Pippin. I was confident that I was going to be training with like-minded brothers and sisters. The experience exceeded my wildest expectations.
I had signed up for the combat sessions as well as the blade-making class. All instruction was very well thought out and executed without feeling regimented. The atmosphere was so relaxed, in fact, that I never felt uncomfortable, pressed for time or out of place. This, believe it or not, is no small feat. The balance of top notch instruction with a welcoming, accepting and ego-free dynamic is one seldom realized. The Gathering of the Tribes accomplished this effortlessly and with a competence rarely seen.
The combat instruction included San Yun Do answers to bladed attacks from Chuck Pippin and Don Young, the Sword and Shield applications of Maharlika Kuntaw from the incomparable Brian "Buzz" Smith, Pencak Silat Pertempuran's Ales material brought to us by Sterling Heibeck, Nick Gutschow's Silat Sharaf groundwork movement reminiscent of Harimau, Krav Maga from Craig Gray and Kapatiran Suntukan Martial Arts (KSMA) material (Nick Stick) from the man himself, Jay M. Carstensen. Terry Trahan brought WeaselCraft to the group with an impressive display of skill and no B.S. self defense. Mel Hebert brought some of his personal flavor of Rossi Kuntao to the group, energizing everyone and facilitating some light entertainment in the form of flying bodies. The instruction was of world class caliber and I was blown away by the dynamic fostered by all who participated.
The bladesmithing class was amazing! Although Mel and I started with forged blanks, there was plenty of work to do to turn them into blades. The instruction was thorough and incredibly enjoyable, taking some of the drudgery out of the process. I'm hooked! Chuck's instruction and guidance was impeccable and detailed. Ian Robbins' depth of knowledge and understanding with regards to the smithing process was a wonder to observe and a pleasure to learn from. The experience has crystallized my intent to start making knives.
The bladesmithing experience segues nicely into the most extraordinary aspect of the Gathering: The generosity and hospitality. Handle woods, tools, machine time, steel and even Chuck and Ian's time can be claimed to have been paid for by the nominal fee. But, the bladesmithing class and the time put in by the teachers was invaluable and more than exceeded what we paid.
The most amazing example of generosity was the lodging, food and acceptance that was offered to all. Chuck and his wife, Jeanne, took in a complete stranger and treated him as though he were royalty. I pulled into Chuck's driveway and was greeted like an old friend. Perhaps I've gone soft in my stable, comfortable old age, but I've never felt so welcome and accepted in my entire life. Jeanne was amazing! She was the rock upon which this whole shindig was built. She kept us well fed and happy and opened up her home to the rabble that are the warriors that descended upon it.
Overall, the Gathering of the Tribes 2009 was an experience of a lifetime. I feel like I left there with an entirely new set of brothers and sisters for life. Thank you to all who made that weekend one that I will always recall with fondness.

Great videos on the site of my new fish sauce provider

2009-05-07T11:23:00.000-04:00

2008-09-09T16:17:00.002-04:00

All,

United Systems Combat Group is moving to Lexington on Wednesday evenings. It looks like Buell Armory on UK's campus is open to us, so we plan on training at 1800 hrs. on Wednesday, 17 September 2008. Please try to make it to train. Remember, this is a very casual group, so there is no pressure to kill yourself training. This is a laboratory atmosphere where all of us bring ideas and scenarios to the table for discussion and real time analysis. Occasionally, it degrades to a bull session depending on the energy level on any given night.
My focus is on the Filipino and Indonesian stuff, but we have guys (and women, although not lately) that come from Goju Ryu, Judo, Bujinkan, Wing Chun, Krav Maga and redneck beer-drinking systems.
Lastly, one of the reasons we've moved to Wednesday nights is to accommodate Charles Lewis who is currently a bouncer and will hopefully bring some real world flavor to the dynamic. Hope to see you there.

Peace,
Geoffrey

Stumbled upon this; thought it was funny

2008-09-05T09:01:00.000-04:00

P H Y S I C A L T H E O R I E S
A S W O M E N .

BY SIMON DEDEO

- - - -

0. Newtonian gravity is your high-school girlfriend. As your first encounter with physics, she's amazing. You will never forget Newtonian gravity, even if you're not in touch very much anymore.

1. Electrodynamics is your college girlfriend. Pretty complex, you probably won't date long enough to really understand her.

2. Special relativity is the girl you meet at the dorm party while you're dating electrodynamics. You make out. It's not really cheating because it's not like you call her back. But you have a sneaking suspicion she knows electrodynamics and told her everything.

3. Quantum mechanics is the girl you meet at the poetry reading. Everyone thinks she's really interesting and people you don't know are obsessed about her. You go out. It turns out that she's pretty complicated and has some issues. Later, after you've broken up, you wonder if her aura of mystery is actually just confusion.

4. General relativity is your high-school girlfriend all grown up. Man, she is amazing. You sort of regret not keeping in touch. She hates quantum mechanics for obscure reasons.

5. Quantum field theory is from overseas, but she doesn't really have an accent. You fall deeply in love, but she treats you horribly. You are pretty sure she's fooling around with half of your friends, but you don't care. You know it will end badly.

6. Cosmology is the girl that doesn't really date, but has lots of hot friends. Some people date cosmology just to hang out with her friends.

7. Analytical classical mechanics is a bit older, and knows stuff you don't.

8. String theory is off in her own little world. She is either profound or insane. If you start dating, you never see your friends anymore. It's just string theory, 24/7.

2008-08-18T10:43:00.003-04:00

Triple I.M.P.A.C.T. 2008 is coming up soon! Make sure to register. Mike Casto has been hosting this event for many years now. This year promises to be another fun and informative weekend. Also, for you Tai Chi nuts, Rick Barrett is going to conduct a seminar on Friday. Take a look at the flyer here.

Meditations on Violence

2008-08-06T10:18:00.002-04:00

I just finished Meditations On Violence by Sgt. Rory Miller this weekend. Wow...I mean, wow! For many years now, I've been purchasing copies of Sanford Strong's Strong on Defense for all those folks that I felt needed a kick in the ass about real life violence. Without question, Meditations on Violence is going to get equal billing on that front; perhaps even replacing Strong's book in some instances. This book does in 169 pages what dozens of "reality based self defense" books have failed to do over the years. Miller's perspective on and articulation of the various aspects of violence is astounding and profound. I can't stress enough how important this book is to those of you who have drank the kool-aid when it comes to martial answers to real world violence. One of the first things Rory Miller asks the reader to do is examine her assumptions about, well, everything. This is a wake up call for all of us, including us JKDC folks. More on the book is coming in the future...hell, I've already discussed many of the concepts in and out of class.

Combat at church?

2008-04-27T21:32:00.002-04:00

This Thursday, I'm starting the "martial arts" program at church. It should be fun, but I'm a bit nervous. There could be anywhere from 5 to 50 people that show up at this thing and they all seem to be expecting something different. We'll see...more later.

Another blog?!?

2008-04-11T20:22:00.002-04:00

I know what you're all thinking. Geoff Bosmann has created another weblog?!? Yup! I am expanding my web presence like wildfire. Here it comes kids, another long-winded log of every random thought that bounces around in my cavernous, seemingly vacuous head.