Good Reads

[toubab]

http://www.laprensapopular.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/420-oliver-sacks.imgcache.rev1326837083532.jpg

A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. Although the radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye, only in very rare cases do such tumors metastasize. I am among the unlucky 2 percent.

I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted.

It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me.

A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. Although the radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye, only in very rare cases do such tumors metastasize. I am among the unlucky 2 percent.

I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted.​

- read the full article My Own Life: Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer (from The New York Times)​

That one wasn't funny, either. But I liked it. A lot.

 

[Sean]

That’s Boris Johnson there, the freewheeling ultra-Tory ox. Like me, like us, he’s having an emotional reaction to witnessing the very fabric of the city, and the air around it, and the economy around that, being aggregated into some vast equity milking parlour by the very arseholes who smashed everything to bits the last time. Obviously, the mayor simply wants them to behave in a more gentlemanly fashion, whereas some of us want them roughly arrested, electronically tagged and confined to their extinct volcano lairs, but it’s nice to know we’re on the same page.

Oh, man, and just look at London’s privatised skyline. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so cartoonishly tragic. This one looks like a Nespresso machine. And that one, a cigar, is it? Potato? Full nappy? The utter capitulation of London’s planning system in the face of serious money is detectable right there in that infantile, random collection of improbable sex toys poking gormlessly into the privatised air. Public access? Yeah, we’ll definitely put a public park at the top (by appointment only). Oh, absolutely, we are ALL about community engagement: members of the public are welcome to visit our viewing gallery in the sky, that’ll be 30 quid, madam.


A wonderful piece by Ian Martin on the death of London and why Thatcher deserves to be dug up and burned at the stake.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics...bable-sex-toys-poking-gormlessly-into-the-air

 

[Que]

[/indent]

- read the full article My Own Life: Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer (from The New York Times)​

His attitude brings to mind that country song, "Live like you are dying."

My dad had a year of blood transfusions to keep him alive when his bone marrow failed. He simply decided how much time he needed to get his affairs in order make the amends he could. He even printed his own funeral program, with the date of death on it.

My brother, who is an MD, tells him, "Dad, it is an estimate they are making as to how long you have after the transfusions stop." he responded that the date, "felt right." He died at about 2:00am on that printed date. My mom, an RN, handled his end of life hospice care. I didn't even think they got along particularly, but were together to the end.

 

[Laurel]

http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/3/3/1425365531416/6156b417-c4cc-4db0-a3d6-a50152b0f2e0-1020x612.jpeg

International study of 15,000 penises is being used to reassure men concerned they are not within the ‘normal range’

The enduring question now has a scientific answer: 13.12 centimetres (5.16 inches) in length when erect, and 11.66cm (4.6 inches) around, according to an analysis of more than 15,000 penises around the world.

In a flaccid state, it found, the penis of the average man is 9.16cm (3.6 inches) in length and has a girth of 9.31cm (3.7 inches).

The numbers should help “reassure the large majority of men that the size of their penis is in the normal range”, said British researchers who had assembled data from studies where participants had their member measured by a professional.

The team then used the collated numbers to devise a graph that doctors can use in counselling men with “small penis anxiety”.

In the worst cases, men may be diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder – a debilitating psychological condition that can lead to obsessive and anti-social behaviour, depression and even suicide.

In reality, only 2.28% of the male population have an abnormally small penis, said the study – and the same percentage an unusually large one.​

- read the full article The results are in: study reveals average penis size (from The Guardian)​

 

[Laurel]

I could frame this piece about plagiarism by starting with a little verse about a renowned professor who won his fame by appropriating the work of another:

Let no one else’s work evade your eyes

Remember why the good Lord made your eyes

So don’t shade your eyes

But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize…

Only be sure always to call it please ‘research.’​

I might credit the author of those lines, the satirist and folk singer Tom Lehrer, but you’d likely think me less clever for merely quoting someone when I could have used an idea of my own.

Perhaps I should start off with what put plagiarism back in journalism’s center court—a series of allegations against prominent writers such as CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell, and BuzzFeed’s Benny Johnson. Surely I could get away with quoting from the allegations without any attribution because the two bloggers who investigated the journalists have remained anonymous. They don’t even want credit for their work!

To get at the meta-ness at the heart of journalism’s plagiarism problem—the basic question of how we define plagiarism right now—I could pierce through the jabber with this bit of provocation: Substantially all ideas are secondhand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources. The actual and valuable material of all human utterances is plagiarism.​

- read the full article Why plagiarize when you can rip off a writer’s thoughts? (from Columbia Journalism Review)​

 

[JohnnySavage]

http://www.theeverestcuisine.com/tec/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/image4.jpeg


Indian food, with its hodgepodge of ingredients and intoxicating aromas, is coveted around the world. The labor-intensive cuisine and its mix of spices is more often than not a revelation for those who sit down to eat it for the first time. Heavy doses of cardamom, cayenne, tamarind and other flavors can overwhelm an unfamiliar palate. Together, they help form the pillars of what tastes so good to so many people.

But behind the appeal of Indian food — what makes it so novel and so delicious — is also a stranger and subtler truth. In a large new analysis of more than 2,000 popular recipes, data scientists have discovered perhaps the key reason why Indian food tastes so unique: It does something radical with flavors, something very different from what we tend to do in the United States and the rest of Western culture. And it does it at the molecular level.

~~~read more Scientists have figured out what makes Indian food so delicious (from Washington Post)

 

[Laurel]

http://www.theeverestcuisine.com/tec/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/image4.jpeg


Indian food, with its hodgepodge of ingredients and intoxicating aromas, is coveted around the world. The labor-intensive cuisine and its mix of spices is more often than not a revelation for those who sit down to eat it for the first time. Heavy doses of cardamom, cayenne, tamarind and other flavors can overwhelm an unfamiliar palate. Together, they help form the pillars of what tastes so good to so many people.

But behind the appeal of Indian food — what makes it so novel and so delicious — is also a stranger and subtler truth. In a large new analysis of more than 2,000 popular recipes, data scientists have discovered perhaps the key reason why Indian food tastes so unique: It does something radical with flavors, something very different from what we tend to do in the United States and the rest of Western culture. And it does it at the molecular level.

~~~read more Scientists have figured out what makes Indian food so delicious (from Washington Post)

Very interesting read!

 

[Laurel]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2015/03/04/health/04physed/04physed-tmagArticle.jpg

Identical twins in Finland who shared the same sports and other physical activities as youngsters but different exercise habits as adults soon developed quite different bodies and brains, according to a fascinating new study that highlights the extent to which exercise shapes our health, even in people who have identical genes and nurturing.
[...]
All of this makes identical twins so valuable. By definition, these pairs have the same DNA. If they were raised in the same household, they also had similar upbringing. So they can provide a way to study the effects of changes in lifestyle among people with the same genes and pasts.​

- read the full article One Twin Exercises, the Other Doesn’t (from The New York Times)​

 

[Laurel]

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/03/08/sunday-review/08WOMEN/08WOMEN-articleLarge.jpg

IT’S easy to see how women benefit from equality — more leadership positions, better pay at work and more support at home. Men may fear that as women do better, they will do worse. But the surprising truth is that equality is good for men, too.

If men want to make their work teams successful, one of the best steps they can take is to bring on more women. This fall, the Internet sensation Alibaba went public after achieving years of extraordinary growth as China’s largest e-commerce company. The founder, Jack Ma, explained that “one of the secret sauces for Alibaba’s success is that we have a lot of women.” Women hold 47 percent of all jobs at Alibaba and 33 percent of senior positions.
Continue reading the main story
Related in Opinion

Research backs him up. Studies reveal that women bring new knowledge, skills and networks to the table, take fewer unnecessary risks, and are more inclined to contribute in ways that make their teams and organizations better. Successful venture-backed start-ups have more than double the median proportion of female executives of failed ones. And an analysis of the 1,500 Standard & Poor’s companies over 15 years demonstrated that, when firms pursued innovation, the more women they had in top management, the more market value they generated.
[...]
If that isn’t exciting enough, try this: Couples who share chores equally have more sex. As the researchers Constance T. Gager and Scott T. Yabiku put it, men and women who work hard play hard. One of us, Sheryl, has advised men that if they want to do something nice for their partners, instead of buying flowers, they should do laundry. A man who heard this was asked by his wife one night to do a load of laundry. He picked up the basket and asked hopefully, “Is this Lean In laundry?” Choreplay is real.

Stepping up as a father also benefits men. Caring for children can make men more patient, empathetic and flexible and lower their rates of substance abuse. At Fortune 500 companies, when fathers spend more time with their children, they’re more satisfied with their jobs. And fatherhood itself has also been linked to lower blood pressure and lower rates of cardiovascular disease.
[...]
To make gender parity a reality, we need to change the way we advocate for it. The usual focus is on fairness: To achieve justice, we need to give women equal opportunities. We need to go further and articulate why equality is not just the right thing to do for women but the desirable thing for us all.​

- read the full article How Men Can Succeed in the Boardroom and the Bedroom (from The New York Times)​

 

[Laurel]

http://a4.files.psmag.com/image/upload/c_fit,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_460/MTI4NDUwOTMyMDUxNTgxNDA2.jpg

At America's strangest workplace, laborers are making toys for kids, picking grapes for wineries, and farming tilapia for Whole Foods—all for $1.50 an hour.

One of my daughter’s favorite stuffed animals is a chocolate-colored, beady-eyed buffalo that was stitched—lovingly, I like to think—by the hands of a convicted felon. The buffalo was born in Can~on City, Colorado, on the grounds of a large rural complex of six state prisons with a total of 4,000 inmates. Some of those inmates manufacture cute toys. Others tend real buffalo on feedlots and dairies outside in the mountain air. The goal, said Steve Smith, the prison-labor program’s mustachioed director until his retirement in December, is to convert the prisoners through labor into productive citizens. “This is a therapeutic community,” he said. “We’re trying to make them into taxpayers instead of tax burdens.” He channeled the Book of Isaiah, or possibly Ozzy Osbourne: “No rest for the wicked.”

The most familiar prison work programs involve stamping license plates or breaking rocks as part of a chain gang. As head of Colorado Correctional Industries, or CCI, Smith was responsible for thinking bigger and more creatively. And during a morning drive around the campus of his prison, it was clear he has succeeded wildly by building one of the strangest labor colonies in the modern world. None of its workers can leave without being chased down by men with shotguns. They toil in dozens of industries, ranging from fiberglass construction to floristry to the husbandry of Hungarian partridges, and a large portion of their products are niche, even artisanal.​

- read the full article From Our Prison to Your Dinner Table (from Pacific Standard)​

 

[Laurel]

http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/2/27/1425079927834/wolves-and-mamoths-008.jpg

Dogs are humanity’s oldest friends, renowned for their loyalty and abilities to guard, hunt and chase. But modern humans may owe even more to them than we previously realised. We may have to thank them for helping us eradicate our caveman rivals, the Neanderthals.

According to a leading US anthropologist, early dogs, bred from wolves, played a critical role in the modern human’s takeover of Europe 40,000 years ago when we vanquished the Neanderthal locals.

“At that time, modern humans, Neanderthals and wolves were all top predators and competed to kill mammoths and other huge herbivores,” says Professor Pat Shipman, of Pennsylvania State University. “But then we formed an alliance with the wolf and that would have been the end for the Neanderthal.”​

- read the full article How hunting with wolves helped humans outsmart the Neanderthals (from The Guardian)​

 

[JohnnySavage]

http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/2/27/1425079927834/wolves-and-mamoths-008.jpg

Dogs are humanity’s oldest friends, renowned for their loyalty and abilities to guard, hunt and chase. But modern humans may owe even more to them than we previously realised. We may have to thank them for helping us eradicate our caveman rivals, the Neanderthals.

According to a leading US anthropologist, early dogs, bred from wolves, played a critical role in the modern human’s takeover of Europe 40,000 years ago when we vanquished the Neanderthal locals.

“At that time, modern humans, Neanderthals and wolves were all top predators and competed to kill mammoths and other huge herbivores,” says Professor Pat Shipman, of Pennsylvania State University. “But then we formed an alliance with the wolf and that would have been the end for the Neanderthal.”​

- read the full article How hunting with wolves helped humans outsmart the Neanderthals (from The Guardian)​

There's a great Docu on Hulu about how dogs allowed man to extend his/her hunting range, which led to cross population of the peoples. I forget the name of it, so I guess this post isn't that informative.

 

[Laurel]

There's a great Docu on Hulu about how dogs allowed man to extend his/her hunting range, which led to cross population of the peoples. I forget the name of it, so I guess this post isn't that informative.

When you remember it, do come back and post it here pls. It sounds cool.

 

[Laurel]

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/02/labor_gap/04e656c70.png

Labor has become more efficient and profitable, but employees aren't sharing in the benefits.

One of the most frustrating parts of the sluggish recovery has been paltry wage gains for most workers. The stock market may be booming, corporate profits increasing, and home values rising, but middle and lower-class workers often don't truly feel the benefit of such improvements unless wages rise.

But wage stagnation isn't just a problem borne of the financial crisis. When you look at the relationship between worker wages and worker productivity, there's a significant and, many believe, problematic, gap that has arisen in the past several decades. Though productivity (defined as the output of goods and services per hours worked) grew by about 74 percent between 1973 and 2013, compensation for workers grew at a much slower rate of only 9 percent during the same time period, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute.​

- read the full article Why the Gap Between Worker Pay and Productivity Is So Problematic (from The Atlantic)​

 

[RobDownSouth]

Why I've Posted 27,000 Times to One Online Forum

LINK

An interesting, if somewhat whiny, discourse on why the quality of online forums has declined in the Age of Facebook and Reddit.

But only 27,000 posts? Fucking amateurs....

 

[Laurel]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-3yLu3UIAAXg-H.jpg:large

“Spocking fives,” as it’s called, is not a new campaign but in fact a fine Canadian tradition that involves etching the beloved Vulcan’s profile over Canada’s seventh prime minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier on the five-dollar banknote.

“This series of Canadian bills was an easy target,” explains CDR’s publisher Todd Falkowsky. “The existing portraits are quite large and can be improvised with easily and the colour of our $5’s are the same blue as Spock’s uniform,” he tells Quartz.​

- read the full article Canadians “Spock” their banknotes to honor Leonard Nimoy (from Quartz)​

 

[Laurel]

Grey Gardens is one of my all-time favorite docs

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/03/07/arts/MAYSLES1WEB/MAYSLES1WEB-articleLarge.jpg

Albert Maysles, the Emmy Award-winning documentarian who, with his brother, David, made intensely talked-about films including “Grey Gardens” and “Gimme Shelter” with their American version of cinéma vérité, died Thursday night at his home in Manhattan. He was 88.
[...]
Explaining why his films did not include interviews with their subjects, Mr. Maysles (pronounced MAY-zuls) told a writer for The New York Times in 1994: “Making a film isn’t finding the answer to a question; it’s trying to capture life as it is.” Although the Maysles brothers had made several well-regarded documentaries in the 1960s, it was “Gimme Shelter” (1970), about the Rolling Stones’ 1969 American tour, that brought their work widespread attention. The film included a scene of a fan being stabbed to death at the group’s concert in Altamont, Calif., and the critical admiration for the film was at least partly countered by concerns about exploitation of that violence.
[...]
Albert H. Maysles was born in Boston on Nov. 26, 1926. His parents, a postal clerk and a schoolteacher, later moved to suburban Brookline, where Albert and his younger brother grew up. Albert had a learning disability, which led him, he said, to develop the intense listening skills that served him so well in documentary filmmaking.
[...]
Interviewed in 2005 for The Times, Mr. Maysles was asked the key to his successful career. He answered, “Making films exactly the way I believe they should be made.”​

- read the full article Albert Maysles, Pioneering Documentarian, Dies at 88 (from New York Times)​

 

[PayDay]

Post #1888:
http://forum.literotica.com/showpost.php?p=65795775&postcount=1888
How Men Can Succeed In the Bedroom and the Boardroom

No offense, but this article is trash.----^
Woman's rights influence men? Really? Get a Constitution NYTimes.

Then there's Post #1889
Poor working foreigners?

Then there's post #1893
Poor working Americans?

Then there was the "Workout, eat right, and fear cancer" above it.

I hate this thread page.

I got worried that the next article was going to be about Obama or Taylor Swift or Katy Cyrus or someone saying something about promoting some color meaning or whatever ice bucket racism.

I felt like I was watching network television as I was reading, considering the attempt the words made on trying to brainwash me.

This thread page even had the audacity to say home prices are rising when the home market is dead because the banks foreclosed on everyone they gave loans to and then took loans to pay their own debt.

Price locking anyone?

This thread should be moved to the politics forum considering the agenda it is pushing.


At least I have a good penis.

 

[PayDay]

I'm posting this in retaliation for Post #1888 of this thread: There is no more need for conversation about equal rights in the workplace, we all have them, and the workplace is no place for your feelings unless you own the joint, and probably not then either.

Why?

A totally uneducated woman got herself shot into space by the Russians in the 60s, and they don't even have a Constitution laying out equal rights:

This marketing agenda is getting on my nerves; quit trying to feminize us classic men types while other women shove glances and lightly covered sideboob (you know who you are (yes, my brow is furrowed)) in my face everywhere I go.

(Also today is her birthday, the space lady):

http://blog.nasm.si.edu/space/valentina-tershkova/?hootPostID=2367854c07ace4f6a704dcba9d2e7e76

Happy Birthday to the World’s First Woman in Space

Nearly 52 years ago, beginning on June 16, 1963, [Valentina] Tereshkova became the first woman to orbit the Earth for two days...

Valentina Tershkova’s flight in 1963 was initially one of opportunity. Unlike her male counterparts, Tereshkova was not selected based on her flying skills; she had thrived at parachute training but had never operated an aircraft before her selection. Only one of her colleagues in the women’s brigade was an accomplished pilot and possessed a degree in Aeronautical Engineering. None of the Soviet women pilots from World War II, who were known as “Night Witches,” had been included in the ad hoc recruitment. After the group was disbanded, there was no thought of reconstituting a women’s brigade or of recruiting women for the regular cosmonaut program. This was until NASA announced the “Astronaut Group 8″ in 1978; the first class of astronauts selected exclusively for the Space Shuttle program. Among them were six women, three black men, and one Asian man. As an almost knee-jerk response, Soviet space planners plucked Svetlana Savitskaya from a career as an aerobatic sports pilot and sent her to the Salyut 7 Soviet space station after two years of training. Almost a year before Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, Savitskaya became the second Soviet woman in space. Two years later, Savitskaya returned to space, this time to perform a spacewalk three months before Kathryn Sullivan’s announced spacewalk on board the shuttle. In the years after Savitskaya’s spacewalk, there was some lip service paid to recruiting female cosmonauts to the Soviet program, but none flew again for a decade. Finally, Elena Kondakova made a five-month stay on board the space station Mir in 1994-5. Kondakova continued her spaceflight career when she flew on board the space shuttle in 1997 as part of US-Russian cooperative planning for building the International Space Station (ISS).

The last 17 years have witnessed a reorganization of the Russian space program. Funding has declined, the Russians no longer have their own space station, and Russian Soyuz rockets now carry crews exclusively to the ISS. During this time there have been a few Russian women cosmonaut candidates—perhaps one in every other entering class—but none had actually made it to space in almost 17 years.

 

[Lorilei]

"Retaliation"? Dude, you're taking this way too seriously. Go outside, get some fresh air. Or just fuck off.

 

[PayDay]

"Retaliation"? Dude, you're taking this way too seriously. Go outside, get some fresh air. Or just fuck off.

What?

 

[Laurel]

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/03/08/magazine/08ponzi2/08ponzi2-blog427.jpg

The Pigeon King delivered his closing statement to the jury dressed in his only suit. His name was Arlan Galbraith, and he was representing himself. He had abruptly fired his lawyer nearly two years earlier, during the long lead up to the trial, and then ignored the judges who advised him to hire another. He seemed adrift but also supremely confident. One of his former employees, who testified for the prosecution, speculated that he must have watched too much “Law & Order”: “I think he sat down one day and said, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ ”
[...]
The suit Galbraith wore was dark, and we know it was his only suit because one of the many outlandish questions he put to witnesses during the monthlong trial was this: “Do you believe that this suit is the only suit I own and that I bought it in 1997? Do you believe that?” He worked into the same rambling cross-examination the fact that he was now “homeless,” staying in a friend’s 16-square-foot cabin in the “remote bush of far northern Ontario” — a detail that, like his only suit, he felt undermined the idea that he could have stolen money from hundreds of people. Two days later, he mentioned to another witness that the cabin had no indoor toilet.

Galbraith’s reign as Pigeon King lasted seven years, from 2001 to June 2008, when his empire imploded. The prosecution likened his company, Pigeon King International, to a Ponzi scheme — much like Bernard Madoff’s operation, which happened to crumble just months after Galbraith’s, except that where Madoff’s scheme centered on stocks and securities, Galbraith’s used live birds.
[...]
The story Galbraith was telling was simple: He started a business and failed. Then again, the prosecution’s story was even simpler: Galbraith was a liar. “Use your everyday common sense,” the prosecutor told the jury. “This isn’t a mistake.” The legal case against Galbraith seemed irrefutable: He misled many people, destroying lives. But to actually understand who the Pigeon King was — skilled con man or hapless businessman or hapless con man or all three — it may help to put common sense aside.​

- read the full article Birdman: The Pigeon King and the Ponzi Scheme That Shook Canada (from The New York Times Magazine)​

 

[Laurel]

In my life there've been exactly two times when I experienced serious anxiety - times when I was going through personal growth/change/whatever. I hated that feeling. But other than those, I'm not an anxious/stressy person. I sleep easily. And I've always found it odd that while exercise and sex and pleasurable activities like being warmed by winter sun always give me massive natural/endorphin/chemical highs, I've never liked pot. I've tried it a few times and it's never done anything for me. It's never occurred to wonder about why any of this might be until I read the article below. I think I might be one of the 20%.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/03/08/sunday-review/08ANXIETYs-1425685854193/08ANXIETY-1425685854193-blog427.jpg

For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that a genetic variation in the brain makes some people inherently less anxious, and more able to forget fearful and unpleasant experiences. This lucky genetic mutation produces higher levels of anandamide — the so-called bliss molecule and our own natural marijuana — in our brains.

In short, some people are prone to be less anxious simply because they won the genetic sweepstakes and randomly got a genetic mutation that has nothing at all to do with strength of character. About 20 percent of adult Americans have this mutation. Those who do may also be less likely to become addicted to marijuana and, possibly, other drugs — presumably because they don’t need the calming effects that marijuana provides.​

- read the full article The Feel-Good Gene (from The New York Times)​

 

[Laurel]

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/03/01/us/00marine-web02/00marine-web02-articleLarge.jpg

AUSTIN, Tex. — Last fall, Patrick Maxwell, a 29-year-old Iraq war veteran now selling real estate in this bustling city, saw something in news footage of Islamic fighters in Iraq that he never saw as an infantry Marine there: the enemy.

“We patrolled every day, got shot at, mortared, hit by I.E.D.s, one of my friends was killed,” said Mr. Maxwell, a former sergeant who deployed in 2006 to Anbar Province. “But I never saw the enemy, never fired a shot.”

With the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, hoisting its black flag above many Iraqi cities that United States troops spent years working to secure, he saw a second chance. He connected with a Kurdish military officer online, packed his body armor, some old uniforms and a faded green ball cap with a Texas flag patch on the front, and flew to Iraq.
[...]
“I may not be enlisted anymore, but I’m still a warrior,” said Mr. Maxwell, who left the Marines with an honorable discharge in 2011. “I figured if I could walk away from here and kill as many of the bad guys as I could, that would be a good thing.”

Mr. Maxwell is one of a small number of Americans — many of them former members of the military — who have volunteered in recent months to take up arms against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, even as the United States government has hesitated to put combat troops on the ground. Driven by a blend of motivations — outrage over ISIS’s atrocities, boredom with civilian life back home, dismay that an enemy they tried to neutralize is stronger than ever — they have offered themselves as pro bono advisers and riflemen in local militias.
[...]
The fight against ISIS is not the first time Americans have joined wars independent of their military. Pilots flew for the Allies in World War I and II long before the United States officially declared war. In the Spanish Civil War, Americans formed a contingent of more than 2,500 troops.
[...]
The decision to fight ISIS carries risks. Beyond being killed, captured or kidnapped and held for ransom, Americans could also get caught fighting with a group that is viewed as a terrorist organization by the United States government. John Walker Lindh, for instance, joined the Taliban to fight other Afghans during that country’s civil war but then was captured by American forces during the invasion after the Sept. 11 attacks. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for a list of crimes including conspiracy to murder American citizens.​

- read the full article Disenchanted by Civilian Life, Veterans Volunteer to Fight ISIS (from The New York Times)​

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

In my life there've been exactly two times when I experienced serious anxiety - times when I was going through personal growth/change/whatever. I hated that feeling. But other than those, I'm not an anxious/stressy person. I sleep easily. And I've always found it odd that while exercise and sex and pleasurable activities like being warmed by winter sun always give me massive natural/endorphin/chemical highs, I've never liked pot. I've tried it a few times and it's never done anything for me. It's never occurred to wonder about why any of this might be until I read the article below. I think I might be one of the 20%.

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/03/08/sunday-review/08ANXIETYs-1425685854193/08ANXIETY-1425685854193-blog427.jpg

For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that a genetic variation in the brain makes some people inherently less anxious, and more able to forget fearful and unpleasant experiences. This lucky genetic mutation produces higher levels of anandamide — the so-called bliss molecule and our own natural marijuana — in our brains.

In short, some people are prone to be less anxious simply because they won the genetic sweepstakes and randomly got a genetic mutation that has nothing at all to do with strength of character. About 20 percent of adult Americans have this mutation. Those who do may also be less likely to become addicted to marijuana and, possibly, other drugs — presumably because they don’t need the calming effects that marijuana provides.​

- read the full article The Feel-Good Gene (from The New York Times)​

Yep. I get no kick from any of it. My anxiety level is always around one percent of the possible. I experience fear at times, some shit is definitely for real, but I don't sweat imaginary devils. On the other hand a geriatric multivitamin kicks my geezer ass big time. I need a cane if I take one. About the most I get from drugs is serious sedation to the point of sleep. In my youth alcohol made me harder and good to go all night. Pussy was always my poison.