Combat! - Page 258 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Friday links! Richie Richer edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized July 27, 2012 5 Comments

Just do the right shoe—no, the left! Never mind; do them both. Hang on a second. What do you think?

God, I love it when Mitt Romney does things. Yesterday the presumptive Republican nominee went to London the way your aunt goes to a new Olive Garden: critically. While most of his remarks about the 2012 Olympics have been positive, he told Brian Williams that reports of logistical problems before the games were “disconcerting.” I hope you’re happy, Mitt Romney, because your wife’s horse is screwed now. Today is Friday, and rich people around the world will take a half day but get no less money. It’s a fantastic time to be wealthy, even if you are an asshole, and today’s link roundup is bedazzled with cash and anuses. Won’t you get it but not get it with me?

On the ethics of keeping ethics to yourself

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas July 26, 2012 7 Comments

Nietzsche in a cowboy outfit for some wonderful reason

The people I know who do not believe in god tend to wind up with the same ethical systems as the people who do. Maybe it’s the beneficent influence of a traditionally religious society; maybe it’s biological, but people of all creeds enjoy consensus on basic altruism. You don’t need the Bible to tell you stealing is bad, for the same reason that you don’t need a referee to play backyard football. Ethical systems are based on actions, results and sometimes motives. Provided they agree on what’s right and what’s wrong, two ethical systems can be functionally congruent while totally disagreeing on why wrong is wrong and not right.

With mouse and wife in North Korea

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media July 25, 2012 5 Comments

Mickey and Minnie Mouse will perform the sex act as instructed.

North Korea is the funniest country in the world. The New York Times is the funniest newspaper in the world, but only in the way that your grandfather’s jokes are so out-of-character as to be invariably hilarious. Example: North Koreans Learn They Have First Lady. The woman seen with Kim Jong-un at various state functions has been identified on Central TV* as his wife. It explains why she was hanging around talking to generals and stuff. Boyfriends take note: if you have to wait for state-run television to introduce her, and you are not supreme dictator, you are going to hear about it later.

Usman Raja and “dismantling that perception”

By Dan Brooks in Fighting July 24, 2012 0 Comment

Some guys just don’t get cauliflower ear.

CNN has a fantastic article about Usman Raja, the former British MMA fighter and respected trainer whose Unity Project uses fight training to rehabilitate convicted terrorists. You read that right: Raja’s plan is to make terrorists better at hand-to-hand combat. Anyone who came back for two day two of muay thai class knows how it feels to start learning a practical fighting system. It feels bad. The sensation of being a tough guy who can’t get the hang of a check-and-counter drill—or of being a talented striker who’s getting guillotined over and over the first month of jiu jitsu—is immensely humbling. That seems to be the operating principle of Raja’s approach. “Any idea you’ve got of yourself will be challenged as soon as you come in here,” he told CNN. “Once that idea of yourself is challenged and that opening happens we are able to go in and start dismantling that perception.”

Rolling Stone runs scariest global warming article ever

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas July 23, 2012 10 Comments

Make no mistake: they’d drive Denalis and eat your family if they could. Because your family is so fat.

I talked to a lot of farmers this week, and they disagreed about whether there would be no corn crop in Iowa this year or if there would simply be a catastrophically small one. The Midwest is wheezing through the worst drought in 50 years. Everybody’s lawn is dead. May was the 327th consecutive month in which the global temperature exceeded the 20th-century average; the odds of that happening by chance are 3.7 x 10^-99, which exceeds the number of stars in the known universe. That last number comes from Bill McKibben’s terrifying article on global warming in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone. If McKibben is to be believed, climate change is not a scientific controversy or even a problem that threatens to make life unrecognizable in 100 years. It is a thing that could put Africa underwater in 20 years, and nobody is doing dick about it.