I celebrated the start of the new year with a post-midnight meal of pasta with meat sauce, egg over medium, medium-cooked beef, toasted english muffin, italian-roll pizza, orange, and hot chocolate. I ate my 1st meal of the new year while watching the end of one of Les Stroud's Survivorman forerunner specials, Stranded-Winter, and Ray Mears's Extreme Survival-Alaska episode.
Stroud ended his special by asking and answering the question whether high heat or deep cold is worse. Both are bad. He concluded cold is worse. I agree. I asked the same question as a soldier who trained in summer in Arizona and winter in Korea. I also concluded the cold is worse. Heat makes you fuzzy-headed and stuns you. Cold sucks all the energy out of you.
I don't have any particular new year's resolutions, but I know what I need to do.
Eric
Monday, 31 December 2012
Saturday, 29 December 2012
Monday, 24 December 2012
Knot tying progress and updates
The Ashley Book of Knots is the authoritative encyclopedia of knots, at Google books.
International Guild of Knot Tyers and their forum.
A nice video tutorial. Another camp knots tutorial.
A serious knot hobbyist's blog with a long links list. He works a lot with 'Type I' 1.5mm (1/16") kernmantle accessory cord which has a tensile strength of 100 pounds. I have a spool of silvery black 1.5mm kernmantle accessory cord that stretches and sags under weight more than I like, though it seems strong enough.
Here is an instructional knots site that has a lot of content yet is low frills with a simple design, which I like.
A fusion knot artist's site.
Vocab - standing line/end, working line/end (loose end that you manipulate), bight (pinched loop made in the rope), slip knot, half hitch, collapse (knot coming undone internally), capsize (knot shifting or sliding rather than gripping in place). Loop, hitch, bend (joining 2 lengths of rope), stopper knot, lashing, sinnet, lanyard, braid.
The dictionary definitions of 'hitch' are [noun] any of various knots used to form a temporary noose in a line or to secure a line temporarily to an object, and [verb] to catch or fasten by or as if by a hook or knot (eg, hitched his horse to the fence post).
Going over or under, and left or right, makes all the difference in the knot. Those are the details I couldn't keep straight when I learned knots as a frustrated soldier whose knots kept falling apart. Knowing the principles of knots, which I'm beginning to understand, helps to keep the steps straight. Still, it's easy to forget a direction even in knots I take for granted I know.
The most useful knots so far - meaning I can link them in my mind with real-life uses - are the trucker's hitch, to cinch down a tarp or load, and the taut-line hitch, to tighten or release tension on a rope by sliding the knot without the need to undo and retie the knot. Both require anchor points, like a tie-down hook on a truck or a staked tent peg.
It's obvious how the trucker's hitch works: the standing line first is secured on its end, make a fixed loop with a slip knot in the standing line (make sure the bight is below the initial loop or else the fixed loop will pull closed), run the working line through/around the anchor, then run the working end through the fixed loop in the standing line, pull down on the working end so that the rope is now pulling on both sides, when taut secure with half-hitch or slip knot below the fixed loop; the tension is held in the loop, not the securing knot, which is only locking the working line below the fixed loop. The trick is tying off the working line at the finish without losing the tension, which is done by pinching the loop.
The adjustable taut-line hitch, on the other hand, still seems like magic to me. I first learned the taut-line hitch from my battle-buddy in Beast in order to set up our two-man tent tight rather than saggy. Boy, did I struggle learning then retaining the knot. It was humiliating. The trick is to remember that the working line goes under the standing line to start the 1st loop as well as start the final D loop, 2 loops toward the anchor, then a D loop back up and around the 1st 2 loops, working end goes under the standing line and through the D loop, which forms a half hitch, cinch the D loop and done. I still don't understand how the taut-line hitch knot, which is attached to the working line, can both slide down to loosen and slide up to tighten the standing line. It tightens the the rope by pulling the standing line down through the knot toward the anchor, which results in shortening the standing line above the knot, feeding the line to the working line loop, thus shortening the over-all length of the rope, and the knot grips the standing line. Conceptually, I can't distinguish it from a lasso knot where the working line is also looped around the standing line, but can only close the loop and loosen the standing line. Contrast to the obvious mechanics of the trucker's hitch where the two lines pull against each other. The key mechanism of the taut-line hitch is the D-loop/half-hitch on the top side of the working line which grips the standing line and stops the knot from sliding back down toward the anchor. Don't ask me how it works, though. Sometimes, it doesn't work even though it's tied correctly, then after a little pulling, poking, and prodding, it starts to work. It's a mystery to me.
An adjustable knot which is easier to tie and more reliable than the taut-line hitch: Cawley hitch. So far, the Cawley hitch has worked 1st time every time, unlike the taut-line hitch. Add the Dave Canterbury and Ray Mears versions of the taut-line hitch. (Here is an illustration of Mears's adjustable knot.) The Farrimond friction hitch builds in a Prusik knot but is a bit more complicated to tie. The key step for an adjustable knot is dressing the knot by pushing the turns around the standing line together tight.
The Prusik and Klemheist knots are used to tie a line onto a larger rope in order to add adjustable attachments to the larger rope, such as for a (vertical) climbing rope or a tarp on a (horizontal) ridge line. They apply the same coil principle as the taut-line hitch to grip the rope when pulled. Any stopper knot or bend can be used to tie the ends into a loop. Note that while the ends normally are tied together to make an attachment loop, the loop isn't part of the knot. The Prusik and Klemheist knots work equally well when the ends remain separate.
The bowline hitch is useful for making a fixed loop that won't close (squeeze) or open (loosen) once the knot is tightened, unlike a sliding lasso knot or adjustable taut-line hitch. The descriptions say bowline hitches are widely used, but I haven't linked it yet in my mind to a real-life use other than pulling someone out of a hole or up a cliff. The mnemonic for the bowline hitch is the rabbit hole and tree (standing line or tree is behind the hole, not inside it) - rabbit (working line) runs up and out from the hole, around the tree, and back down the hole. It's important to remember, one, the 'rabbit hole' loop needs to face the working end (ie, tree behind and to the left, loop is to the right, rabbit comes up the right side of the hole, then runs counterclockwise around the tree and down the left side of the hole) and, two, after the rabbit is back down the hole, adjust the size of the fixed loop using the working line before tightening the knot by pulling up/out on the standing line. Once the knot is pulled tight, the size of the fixed loop can't be adjusted without loosening the knot. Add: A good use of a fixed loop is an easily slipped tie-down by running the working end of the rope through the loop and around something, eg, the same way the shoulder straps attach to the bottom of the ALICE frame.
The key to the bowline on a bight is maintaining the integrity of the initial 'rabbit hole' loop when closing the bight to secure the knot, which locks in the initial loop. This is done by only pulling on the side that tightens the bight; pulling the other side tugs open the initial loop. If the initial loop opens or rolls over, the knot turns into a sliding hitch.
For every reason I've used the lasso knot, the proper knot is the two half hitches. From what I can tell, they work the same way: the two half hitches form a knot on the working line that slides on the standing line when pulled to tighten the end loop. The two half hitches knot is supposed to be secure for larger loads, though, which the lasso knot may not be. You can wind (or turn) the rope around the post more than 1 time and tie more than 2 half hitches for a stronger grip.
Vindication! What I called the "lasso knot" is the basic noose knot that's formed by an overhand knot around the standing line. The quick-release hitching tie is a lasso/noose knot with a slip knot. The same slip knot is used for the quick-release Siberian hitch (aka evenk hitch, aka Ray Mears knot); the same slip knot can also be used to make the fixed loop on the trucker's hitch.
Quick-release hitching tie, halter hitch, Siberian (evenk) hitch. The main difference between the similar-looking quick-release hitching tie, halter hitch, and Siberian hitch is the standing line is inside the slip knot on the hitching tie, whereas the standing line is outside the slip knot on the halter hitch and Siberian hitch. In the hitching tie, the cinching loop on the working line (for the slip knot) is formed with the standing line inside of it. In the halter hitch and Siberian hitch, the cinching loop on the working line is formed outside the standing line, then the bighted working line is wrapped around the the standing line, effectively forming a loop around the standing line when the bight is inserted into the cinching loop.
The difference between the halter hitch and Siberian (evenk) hitch is the Siberian hitch adds an extra twist in the cinching loop to form an elbow before inserting the bight so that the knot effectively forms a figure eight around the standing line. When Mears rotates his hand with the working line loop around the standing line when he's tying a Siberian hitch, he's adding the extra twist to the cinching loop.
Ray Mears, in several episodes, shows each step of the evenk hitch which he uses to secure the 1st end of his ridge line, but only partially explains the knot he uses on the opposite end. In Bushcraft season 1 episode 3 (The Pemon), Mears includes a sequence in the episode showing how he sets up his tarp. He says 3 knots are used to set up his camp. He starts his ridge line with the evenk hitch. For the guy lines, he uses an adjustable knot variant (he makes 2 turns on the standing line started over the standing line, then cinches the knot with a slipped half hitch around the standing and working lines). The 3rd knot is the mysterious knot at the opposite end of the ridge line. In the truncated version on Mears's website, the description says "tarp taut hitch". The knots in this and this tutorial look like Mears's 3rd knot that "provides tension". I don’t understand how it provides tension. It’s not an adjustable knot. It looks like a slipped half hitch that he locks with a bight. When I try the 2nd knot, my ridge line slackens when the turn around the 2nd post shifts as weight is added to the ridge line. The tarp taut hitch looks like the backhand hitch with the only difference being whether the bight goes around the standing line or working line. Indeed, the Ashley Book of Knots includes both versions of the backhand or backhanded hitch - with the bight around the standing line (#1852) and working line (#1725).
I tie my shoelaces using a square knot with 2 slip knots. A square knot with 2 slip knots is as an easier method to tie a rescue handcuff knot, which traditionally uses a clove hitch base. The 2 sliding loops can be fixed by securing the working ends with an overhand knot or half hitches.
An easy method to tie a figure 8 loop is a figure 8 knot with a bight. The structure of a bighted figure 8 knot is the same as a figure 8 loop made by weaving the working end back through the figure 8 knot to form the loop. An even easier method to make a fixed loop is tying an overhand knot with a bight. However, the weaving technique is necessary if the loop must be tied around the post rather than slid onto it over an end.
Obvious but worth noting: A slip knot is just a bight cinched in a loop. A slip knot can be locked by inserting the pull-release end through the loop, which disallows the slip knot from being released. Ray Mears locks his slip knots by inserting the pull-release end through the loop as a bight and cinching it, thus forming a double slip knot. This keeps the 1st slip knot from working free on its own, but carries the same risk of accidently tugging on the pull-release end and pulling out both slip knots at once.
The clove hitch is a basic knot for lashings. It's the left-over-right loop, left-over-right loop, right loop over left loop we were taught to use to secure the clacker line on a stake for a Claymore mine so the firing pin wouldn't pull out if the line was tugged. (It also works right/left, right/left, left/right.) The clove hitch is also somewhat effective as an adjustable knot because it can be ratcheted and the working end can be secured with a slip knot or hitch. Its one advantage over other adjustable knots is the clove hitch doesn't need to extend along the standing line, which may be useful in limited space. A disadvantage is the clove hitch may be difficult to loosen.
For a sliding loop that can widen freely but won't close all the way, simply tie a non-slip stopper knot onto the loop below the loop knot where you want the loop to stop sliding shut. By the same principle, tie a stopper knot on the standing line above the loop knot for a loop that can close all the way but only widen to a preset diameter. To tie a mid-line stopper knot, I've used an alpine butterfly loop, bowline on a bight, bighted figure 8 knot, and bighted overhand knot (easiest). I tried a directional figure 8 loop as a stopper knot, too, but the loop slides into a hard to pry open knot when pulled the wrong way - bad idea. I can't think of a particular reason to modify a sliding knot like this.
Bart Simpson ([1F06] Boy Scoutz 'N the Hood, youtube): "The guys who wrote this show don't know squat. Itchy should have tied Scratchy's tongue with a taut-line hitch, not a sheet bend."
3-strand rope braid. I found 2 lengths of 3-strand braided rope with electrical taped ends. The electrical tape is old and its adhesive is dry. One of the pieces of electrical tape fell off and the braid under it uncoiled. I was surprised and made an incompetent attempt at rebraiding it, but more of the strands uncoiled while I tried. I finally wrapped duct tape around the rope before anymore could uncoil, but not before losing about 5 inches. I used the 3-strand rope braid to rebraid the loose strands and duct taped the end. The rope is tightly wound and stiff except for the part I braided, which is soft and loose. Lesson learned: Fusing the ends of braided rope, whether by whipping, taping, splicing or burning, is important.
I tried my knot set with the rope. I learned wider, stiff, ridged rope acts differently than kernmantle cord. Simpler knots work better with rope, eg, the taut-line hitch that's hit-or-miss with cord was the easiest to tie and most reliable adjustable hitch with the rope, whereas the Farrimond friction hitch that's effective with cord was difficult to tie and unreliable with the rope. Rope grips stronger than cord due to its ridges. Slip knots are less functional with rope and may ruin the knot because the added bulk of the bight may split the knot. I couldn't get the tarp taut hitch to work with the rope; perhaps I need to try the knot on a wider post. I have a blister on my left index finger from the rope.
I tried my knot set with the 91" 550 cord (minus 2 strands). It was a pleasure to work with - as soft and pliable as the 550 cord sheath plus thickness in the cord body due to the strands inside. Someday, I'll buy myself a spool of 550 cord.
A sinnet shortens a line with a repeating pattern, like a braid. Unlike a braid, a sinnet uses slip knots to unravel quickly. The simplest sinnet is the chain sinnet (aka monkey braid, caterpillar sinnet). The line can be folded on itself for a thicker sinnet that includes a longer length of line. I made this 'survival' ripcord sinnet bracelet using the 550 cord. The instructions say to use 12 feet or 144" of 550 cord. Since I only have 91", I couldn't make a full bracelet. For now, I'm using an old cheap keychain D-ring to connect the ends and close the bracelet. Alternatively, I could have left enough cord unknotted to have sufficient length to wrap the bracelet around my wrist and tied a stopper knot onto the working ends. The hardest part is making a correctly sized 'belt' loop on the base knot. The repeating pattern was simple once I got the hang of it.
I deployed the ripcord, pulled apart the ripcord sinnet bracelet, and braided the 550 cord into a cobra lanyard knot bracelet. It's easy - the pattern basically is a repeated overhand knot. The bracelet is longer with the cobra lanyard knot (8") than the ripcord sinnet, but I'm still using the cheap D-Ring to connect the ends. I'm considering bending a piece of wirehanger into a hook fastener for the bracelet.
I tied a ripcord sinnet bracelet using 12 feet of the 1/16" accessory cord. It was about 2/5" wide and more than long enough to go around my wrist. Then I pulled it apart. The bracelet came apart easily and quickly. I then folded the same 12' line into 3 equal lengths or 48", like an 'N' and tied a 3-strand braid. The braided cord is 39.5". The biggest challenges are making a neat, tight braid, and braiding as much of the strands as possible while leaving enough at the ends to tie off securely so the braid doesn't unravel. With a tweak in how I started (I secured the 3rd strand to the top of bend of the 'N with an overhand knot, which shortened the over-all length), I might have added up to an inch to the braid. Take care to tie the repeating pattern on the same side of the braid. If the braid flips over, there will be an irregular section in the braid where the braid pattern flips over. I don't know whether flipping the pattern weakens the braid. The braided cord is definitely stronger than the single strand cord, but how much stronger? Intuitively, it should be 3X stronger than the unbraided cord but I don't know that the physics of the braid is that simple. If the cord has 100 lb tensile strength, I'll just guess the braid has 200-250 lb tensile strength.
Taking stock of cordage. 3/4" depth x 6" length spool (100 yards?) of 1.5mm (1/16") kernmantle accessory cord, probably 100 lb strength. 91" 550 cord with 2 strands removed and slightly torn sheath, so roughly 450 lb strength. 40" 550 cord sheath, say 150 lb strength. 39.5" 3-strand braid of the 1/16" kernmantle accessory cord, maybe 200-250 lb strength. Roughly 65" and 67" lengths of 1/4" diameter 3-strand braided plastic rope, strength unknown. Assorted shoelaces, 550 cord strands, hanging wire, cables, packing cord.
If I had to set up a tarp in the field and could choose one knot per task, I would use a quick-release evenk hitch to secure the 1st end of the ridge line (eg, tree). I would use a quick-release trucker's hitch to tie the opposite end and provide tension to the ridge line. I would use Prusik knots to attach and adjust the tarp on the ridge line. I would use quick-release Cawley hitches to tie and adjust the tarp's guy lines (eg, tent pegs). The Prusik knot isn't a quick-release knot, but I would use quick-release knots to attach the tarp to the Prusik knots on the ridge line.
I now know - if I can remember them - non-sliding hitches: clove hitch, constrictor knot, sailor's hitch, rolling hitch, cow hitch, backhanded (tarp taut) hitch, timber hitch, tumble hitch ... sliding hitches: hitching tie (noose knot), Siberian (evenk) hitch, round turn and two half hitches, buntline hitch, poacher's knot (double overhand noose) ... adjustable friction hitches: taut-line hitch, Mears adjustable, Canterbury taut-line, Cawley hitch, Farrimond friction hitch, trucker's hitch ... fixed loops: bowline hitch, bowline on a bight, one-handed bowline, water bowline, alpine butterfly loop, figure 8 loop, directional figure 8 loop ... 'slide and grip' friction hitches: Prusik knot, Klemheist, icicle hitch, gripping sailor's hitch ... bends: square knot, alpine butterfly bend, sheet bend, double sheet bend, slipped sheet bend, slippery bend, double fisherman's knot ... stopper knots: overhand stopper knot, double overhand stopper knot, figure 8 stopper knot, slip knot ... and miscellaneous knots: handcuff knot, barrel hitch, whipping.
Eric
International Guild of Knot Tyers and their forum.
A nice video tutorial. Another camp knots tutorial.
A serious knot hobbyist's blog with a long links list. He works a lot with 'Type I' 1.5mm (1/16") kernmantle accessory cord which has a tensile strength of 100 pounds. I have a spool of silvery black 1.5mm kernmantle accessory cord that stretches and sags under weight more than I like, though it seems strong enough.
Here is an instructional knots site that has a lot of content yet is low frills with a simple design, which I like.
A fusion knot artist's site.
Vocab - standing line/end, working line/end (loose end that you manipulate), bight (pinched loop made in the rope), slip knot, half hitch, collapse (knot coming undone internally), capsize (knot shifting or sliding rather than gripping in place). Loop, hitch, bend (joining 2 lengths of rope), stopper knot, lashing, sinnet, lanyard, braid.
The dictionary definitions of 'hitch' are [noun] any of various knots used to form a temporary noose in a line or to secure a line temporarily to an object, and [verb] to catch or fasten by or as if by a hook or knot (eg, hitched his horse to the fence post).
Going over or under, and left or right, makes all the difference in the knot. Those are the details I couldn't keep straight when I learned knots as a frustrated soldier whose knots kept falling apart. Knowing the principles of knots, which I'm beginning to understand, helps to keep the steps straight. Still, it's easy to forget a direction even in knots I take for granted I know.
The most useful knots so far - meaning I can link them in my mind with real-life uses - are the trucker's hitch, to cinch down a tarp or load, and the taut-line hitch, to tighten or release tension on a rope by sliding the knot without the need to undo and retie the knot. Both require anchor points, like a tie-down hook on a truck or a staked tent peg.
It's obvious how the trucker's hitch works: the standing line first is secured on its end, make a fixed loop with a slip knot in the standing line (make sure the bight is below the initial loop or else the fixed loop will pull closed), run the working line through/around the anchor, then run the working end through the fixed loop in the standing line, pull down on the working end so that the rope is now pulling on both sides, when taut secure with half-hitch or slip knot below the fixed loop; the tension is held in the loop, not the securing knot, which is only locking the working line below the fixed loop. The trick is tying off the working line at the finish without losing the tension, which is done by pinching the loop.
The adjustable taut-line hitch, on the other hand, still seems like magic to me. I first learned the taut-line hitch from my battle-buddy in Beast in order to set up our two-man tent tight rather than saggy. Boy, did I struggle learning then retaining the knot. It was humiliating. The trick is to remember that the working line goes under the standing line to start the 1st loop as well as start the final D loop, 2 loops toward the anchor, then a D loop back up and around the 1st 2 loops, working end goes under the standing line and through the D loop, which forms a half hitch, cinch the D loop and done. I still don't understand how the taut-line hitch knot, which is attached to the working line, can both slide down to loosen and slide up to tighten the standing line. It tightens the the rope by pulling the standing line down through the knot toward the anchor, which results in shortening the standing line above the knot, feeding the line to the working line loop, thus shortening the over-all length of the rope, and the knot grips the standing line. Conceptually, I can't distinguish it from a lasso knot where the working line is also looped around the standing line, but can only close the loop and loosen the standing line. Contrast to the obvious mechanics of the trucker's hitch where the two lines pull against each other. The key mechanism of the taut-line hitch is the D-loop/half-hitch on the top side of the working line which grips the standing line and stops the knot from sliding back down toward the anchor. Don't ask me how it works, though. Sometimes, it doesn't work even though it's tied correctly, then after a little pulling, poking, and prodding, it starts to work. It's a mystery to me.
An adjustable knot which is easier to tie and more reliable than the taut-line hitch: Cawley hitch. So far, the Cawley hitch has worked 1st time every time, unlike the taut-line hitch. Add the Dave Canterbury and Ray Mears versions of the taut-line hitch. (Here is an illustration of Mears's adjustable knot.) The Farrimond friction hitch builds in a Prusik knot but is a bit more complicated to tie. The key step for an adjustable knot is dressing the knot by pushing the turns around the standing line together tight.
The Prusik and Klemheist knots are used to tie a line onto a larger rope in order to add adjustable attachments to the larger rope, such as for a (vertical) climbing rope or a tarp on a (horizontal) ridge line. They apply the same coil principle as the taut-line hitch to grip the rope when pulled. Any stopper knot or bend can be used to tie the ends into a loop. Note that while the ends normally are tied together to make an attachment loop, the loop isn't part of the knot. The Prusik and Klemheist knots work equally well when the ends remain separate.
The bowline hitch is useful for making a fixed loop that won't close (squeeze) or open (loosen) once the knot is tightened, unlike a sliding lasso knot or adjustable taut-line hitch. The descriptions say bowline hitches are widely used, but I haven't linked it yet in my mind to a real-life use other than pulling someone out of a hole or up a cliff. The mnemonic for the bowline hitch is the rabbit hole and tree (standing line or tree is behind the hole, not inside it) - rabbit (working line) runs up and out from the hole, around the tree, and back down the hole. It's important to remember, one, the 'rabbit hole' loop needs to face the working end (ie, tree behind and to the left, loop is to the right, rabbit comes up the right side of the hole, then runs counterclockwise around the tree and down the left side of the hole) and, two, after the rabbit is back down the hole, adjust the size of the fixed loop using the working line before tightening the knot by pulling up/out on the standing line. Once the knot is pulled tight, the size of the fixed loop can't be adjusted without loosening the knot. Add: A good use of a fixed loop is an easily slipped tie-down by running the working end of the rope through the loop and around something, eg, the same way the shoulder straps attach to the bottom of the ALICE frame.
The key to the bowline on a bight is maintaining the integrity of the initial 'rabbit hole' loop when closing the bight to secure the knot, which locks in the initial loop. This is done by only pulling on the side that tightens the bight; pulling the other side tugs open the initial loop. If the initial loop opens or rolls over, the knot turns into a sliding hitch.
For every reason I've used the lasso knot, the proper knot is the two half hitches. From what I can tell, they work the same way: the two half hitches form a knot on the working line that slides on the standing line when pulled to tighten the end loop. The two half hitches knot is supposed to be secure for larger loads, though, which the lasso knot may not be. You can wind (or turn) the rope around the post more than 1 time and tie more than 2 half hitches for a stronger grip.
Vindication! What I called the "lasso knot" is the basic noose knot that's formed by an overhand knot around the standing line. The quick-release hitching tie is a lasso/noose knot with a slip knot. The same slip knot is used for the quick-release Siberian hitch (aka evenk hitch, aka Ray Mears knot); the same slip knot can also be used to make the fixed loop on the trucker's hitch.
Quick-release hitching tie, halter hitch, Siberian (evenk) hitch. The main difference between the similar-looking quick-release hitching tie, halter hitch, and Siberian hitch is the standing line is inside the slip knot on the hitching tie, whereas the standing line is outside the slip knot on the halter hitch and Siberian hitch. In the hitching tie, the cinching loop on the working line (for the slip knot) is formed with the standing line inside of it. In the halter hitch and Siberian hitch, the cinching loop on the working line is formed outside the standing line, then the bighted working line is wrapped around the the standing line, effectively forming a loop around the standing line when the bight is inserted into the cinching loop.
The difference between the halter hitch and Siberian (evenk) hitch is the Siberian hitch adds an extra twist in the cinching loop to form an elbow before inserting the bight so that the knot effectively forms a figure eight around the standing line. When Mears rotates his hand with the working line loop around the standing line when he's tying a Siberian hitch, he's adding the extra twist to the cinching loop.
Ray Mears, in several episodes, shows each step of the evenk hitch which he uses to secure the 1st end of his ridge line, but only partially explains the knot he uses on the opposite end. In Bushcraft season 1 episode 3 (The Pemon), Mears includes a sequence in the episode showing how he sets up his tarp. He says 3 knots are used to set up his camp. He starts his ridge line with the evenk hitch. For the guy lines, he uses an adjustable knot variant (he makes 2 turns on the standing line started over the standing line, then cinches the knot with a slipped half hitch around the standing and working lines). The 3rd knot is the mysterious knot at the opposite end of the ridge line. In the truncated version on Mears's website, the description says "tarp taut hitch". The knots in this and this tutorial look like Mears's 3rd knot that "provides tension". I don’t understand how it provides tension. It’s not an adjustable knot. It looks like a slipped half hitch that he locks with a bight. When I try the 2nd knot, my ridge line slackens when the turn around the 2nd post shifts as weight is added to the ridge line. The tarp taut hitch looks like the backhand hitch with the only difference being whether the bight goes around the standing line or working line. Indeed, the Ashley Book of Knots includes both versions of the backhand or backhanded hitch - with the bight around the standing line (#1852) and working line (#1725).
I tie my shoelaces using a square knot with 2 slip knots. A square knot with 2 slip knots is as an easier method to tie a rescue handcuff knot, which traditionally uses a clove hitch base. The 2 sliding loops can be fixed by securing the working ends with an overhand knot or half hitches.
An easy method to tie a figure 8 loop is a figure 8 knot with a bight. The structure of a bighted figure 8 knot is the same as a figure 8 loop made by weaving the working end back through the figure 8 knot to form the loop. An even easier method to make a fixed loop is tying an overhand knot with a bight. However, the weaving technique is necessary if the loop must be tied around the post rather than slid onto it over an end.
Obvious but worth noting: A slip knot is just a bight cinched in a loop. A slip knot can be locked by inserting the pull-release end through the loop, which disallows the slip knot from being released. Ray Mears locks his slip knots by inserting the pull-release end through the loop as a bight and cinching it, thus forming a double slip knot. This keeps the 1st slip knot from working free on its own, but carries the same risk of accidently tugging on the pull-release end and pulling out both slip knots at once.
The clove hitch is a basic knot for lashings. It's the left-over-right loop, left-over-right loop, right loop over left loop we were taught to use to secure the clacker line on a stake for a Claymore mine so the firing pin wouldn't pull out if the line was tugged. (It also works right/left, right/left, left/right.) The clove hitch is also somewhat effective as an adjustable knot because it can be ratcheted and the working end can be secured with a slip knot or hitch. Its one advantage over other adjustable knots is the clove hitch doesn't need to extend along the standing line, which may be useful in limited space. A disadvantage is the clove hitch may be difficult to loosen.
For a sliding loop that can widen freely but won't close all the way, simply tie a non-slip stopper knot onto the loop below the loop knot where you want the loop to stop sliding shut. By the same principle, tie a stopper knot on the standing line above the loop knot for a loop that can close all the way but only widen to a preset diameter. To tie a mid-line stopper knot, I've used an alpine butterfly loop, bowline on a bight, bighted figure 8 knot, and bighted overhand knot (easiest). I tried a directional figure 8 loop as a stopper knot, too, but the loop slides into a hard to pry open knot when pulled the wrong way - bad idea. I can't think of a particular reason to modify a sliding knot like this.
Bart Simpson ([1F06] Boy Scoutz 'N the Hood, youtube): "The guys who wrote this show don't know squat. Itchy should have tied Scratchy's tongue with a taut-line hitch, not a sheet bend."
3-strand rope braid. I found 2 lengths of 3-strand braided rope with electrical taped ends. The electrical tape is old and its adhesive is dry. One of the pieces of electrical tape fell off and the braid under it uncoiled. I was surprised and made an incompetent attempt at rebraiding it, but more of the strands uncoiled while I tried. I finally wrapped duct tape around the rope before anymore could uncoil, but not before losing about 5 inches. I used the 3-strand rope braid to rebraid the loose strands and duct taped the end. The rope is tightly wound and stiff except for the part I braided, which is soft and loose. Lesson learned: Fusing the ends of braided rope, whether by whipping, taping, splicing or burning, is important.
I tried my knot set with the rope. I learned wider, stiff, ridged rope acts differently than kernmantle cord. Simpler knots work better with rope, eg, the taut-line hitch that's hit-or-miss with cord was the easiest to tie and most reliable adjustable hitch with the rope, whereas the Farrimond friction hitch that's effective with cord was difficult to tie and unreliable with the rope. Rope grips stronger than cord due to its ridges. Slip knots are less functional with rope and may ruin the knot because the added bulk of the bight may split the knot. I couldn't get the tarp taut hitch to work with the rope; perhaps I need to try the knot on a wider post. I have a blister on my left index finger from the rope.
I tried my knot set with the 91" 550 cord (minus 2 strands). It was a pleasure to work with - as soft and pliable as the 550 cord sheath plus thickness in the cord body due to the strands inside. Someday, I'll buy myself a spool of 550 cord.
A sinnet shortens a line with a repeating pattern, like a braid. Unlike a braid, a sinnet uses slip knots to unravel quickly. The simplest sinnet is the chain sinnet (aka monkey braid, caterpillar sinnet). The line can be folded on itself for a thicker sinnet that includes a longer length of line. I made this 'survival' ripcord sinnet bracelet using the 550 cord. The instructions say to use 12 feet or 144" of 550 cord. Since I only have 91", I couldn't make a full bracelet. For now, I'm using an old cheap keychain D-ring to connect the ends and close the bracelet. Alternatively, I could have left enough cord unknotted to have sufficient length to wrap the bracelet around my wrist and tied a stopper knot onto the working ends. The hardest part is making a correctly sized 'belt' loop on the base knot. The repeating pattern was simple once I got the hang of it.
I deployed the ripcord, pulled apart the ripcord sinnet bracelet, and braided the 550 cord into a cobra lanyard knot bracelet. It's easy - the pattern basically is a repeated overhand knot. The bracelet is longer with the cobra lanyard knot (8") than the ripcord sinnet, but I'm still using the cheap D-Ring to connect the ends. I'm considering bending a piece of wirehanger into a hook fastener for the bracelet.
I tied a ripcord sinnet bracelet using 12 feet of the 1/16" accessory cord. It was about 2/5" wide and more than long enough to go around my wrist. Then I pulled it apart. The bracelet came apart easily and quickly. I then folded the same 12' line into 3 equal lengths or 48", like an 'N' and tied a 3-strand braid. The braided cord is 39.5". The biggest challenges are making a neat, tight braid, and braiding as much of the strands as possible while leaving enough at the ends to tie off securely so the braid doesn't unravel. With a tweak in how I started (I secured the 3rd strand to the top of bend of the 'N with an overhand knot, which shortened the over-all length), I might have added up to an inch to the braid. Take care to tie the repeating pattern on the same side of the braid. If the braid flips over, there will be an irregular section in the braid where the braid pattern flips over. I don't know whether flipping the pattern weakens the braid. The braided cord is definitely stronger than the single strand cord, but how much stronger? Intuitively, it should be 3X stronger than the unbraided cord but I don't know that the physics of the braid is that simple. If the cord has 100 lb tensile strength, I'll just guess the braid has 200-250 lb tensile strength.
Taking stock of cordage. 3/4" depth x 6" length spool (100 yards?) of 1.5mm (1/16") kernmantle accessory cord, probably 100 lb strength. 91" 550 cord with 2 strands removed and slightly torn sheath, so roughly 450 lb strength. 40" 550 cord sheath, say 150 lb strength. 39.5" 3-strand braid of the 1/16" kernmantle accessory cord, maybe 200-250 lb strength. Roughly 65" and 67" lengths of 1/4" diameter 3-strand braided plastic rope, strength unknown. Assorted shoelaces, 550 cord strands, hanging wire, cables, packing cord.
If I had to set up a tarp in the field and could choose one knot per task, I would use a quick-release evenk hitch to secure the 1st end of the ridge line (eg, tree). I would use a quick-release trucker's hitch to tie the opposite end and provide tension to the ridge line. I would use Prusik knots to attach and adjust the tarp on the ridge line. I would use quick-release Cawley hitches to tie and adjust the tarp's guy lines (eg, tent pegs). The Prusik knot isn't a quick-release knot, but I would use quick-release knots to attach the tarp to the Prusik knots on the ridge line.
I now know - if I can remember them - non-sliding hitches: clove hitch, constrictor knot, sailor's hitch, rolling hitch, cow hitch, backhanded (tarp taut) hitch, timber hitch, tumble hitch ... sliding hitches: hitching tie (noose knot), Siberian (evenk) hitch, round turn and two half hitches, buntline hitch, poacher's knot (double overhand noose) ... adjustable friction hitches: taut-line hitch, Mears adjustable, Canterbury taut-line, Cawley hitch, Farrimond friction hitch, trucker's hitch ... fixed loops: bowline hitch, bowline on a bight, one-handed bowline, water bowline, alpine butterfly loop, figure 8 loop, directional figure 8 loop ... 'slide and grip' friction hitches: Prusik knot, Klemheist, icicle hitch, gripping sailor's hitch ... bends: square knot, alpine butterfly bend, sheet bend, double sheet bend, slipped sheet bend, slippery bend, double fisherman's knot ... stopper knots: overhand stopper knot, double overhand stopper knot, figure 8 stopper knot, slip knot ... and miscellaneous knots: handcuff knot, barrel hitch, whipping.
Eric
Friday, 21 December 2012
Knots and the ascetic life
I need to teach myself how to tie different knots and their uses. File this goal under the ascetic independent man's life.
The only knot I know is the basic lasso knot with the loop that slides shut when pulled, which every young boy knows. In the Army, I was taught how to tie different knots for tasks such as setting up a two-man tent, making a swiss seat for rappelling, and making a one-rope bridge, but I didn't understand the knots, memorized the steps by rote, then promptly forgot how to tie all of them. Shameful ... and had I stayed in, dangerous.
Recently, with my mindset taking an MGTOW turn, I've been watching old Les Stroud (Survivorman) and Ray Mears (Bushcraft) episodes. (Mears's program is more instructional, though both shows are designed to expose viewers to the survival world rather than teach survival techniques. Mears has a few instructional videos on his youtube channel.) Among the baseline survival skills, knot-tying is one of the most versatile and useful. Indeed, in my soldiering days, we normally were missing set-up parts for our crappy equipment and held them together in the field with 550 cord and 100-mile-hour tape. A skilled soldier with a multi-tool, spool of 550 cord, and roll of 100-mile-hour tape can work minor miracles in the field. It was also as a soldier I learned that Boy Scout skills, such as knot-tying, which I didn't learn growing up but many other soldiers had, matched basic soldiering skills.
Here are several instructional on-line knot-tying sites:
ArtofManliness.com's 7 Basic Knots Every Man Should Know. Youtube videos.
Animated Knots by Grog. Animated.
Boys' Life (Official Publication of the Boy Scouts of America) Learn to tie knots. Animated.
The Six Boy Scout Knots. PDF.
Knots & Their Uses. PDF slides.
Netknots.com. Pictures and animated.
DoD's Knots, Bends, and Hitches (1973). Training film.
Boy Scout Knots. Animated.
The Eight Basic Boy Scouts Knots. Pictures.
Ropers Knots Page. Extensive links page, but links need to be updated.
That's enough to begin, I think.
Eric
The only knot I know is the basic lasso knot with the loop that slides shut when pulled, which every young boy knows. In the Army, I was taught how to tie different knots for tasks such as setting up a two-man tent, making a swiss seat for rappelling, and making a one-rope bridge, but I didn't understand the knots, memorized the steps by rote, then promptly forgot how to tie all of them. Shameful ... and had I stayed in, dangerous.
Recently, with my mindset taking an MGTOW turn, I've been watching old Les Stroud (Survivorman) and Ray Mears (Bushcraft) episodes. (Mears's program is more instructional, though both shows are designed to expose viewers to the survival world rather than teach survival techniques. Mears has a few instructional videos on his youtube channel.) Among the baseline survival skills, knot-tying is one of the most versatile and useful. Indeed, in my soldiering days, we normally were missing set-up parts for our crappy equipment and held them together in the field with 550 cord and 100-mile-hour tape. A skilled soldier with a multi-tool, spool of 550 cord, and roll of 100-mile-hour tape can work minor miracles in the field. It was also as a soldier I learned that Boy Scout skills, such as knot-tying, which I didn't learn growing up but many other soldiers had, matched basic soldiering skills.
Here are several instructional on-line knot-tying sites:
ArtofManliness.com's 7 Basic Knots Every Man Should Know. Youtube videos.
Animated Knots by Grog. Animated.
Boys' Life (Official Publication of the Boy Scouts of America) Learn to tie knots. Animated.
The Six Boy Scout Knots. PDF.
Knots & Their Uses. PDF slides.
Netknots.com. Pictures and animated.
DoD's Knots, Bends, and Hitches (1973). Training film.
Boy Scout Knots. Animated.
The Eight Basic Boy Scouts Knots. Pictures.
Ropers Knots Page. Extensive links page, but links need to be updated.
That's enough to begin, I think.
Eric
Taleb's aphorisms
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the author of the influential and seminal Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (which I've read about, but not actually read). Taleb explains his underlying philosophy in The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms, which as the title alerts, is entirely composed of aphorisms. The Greek myth of Procrustes is a parable about the disjunction of reality and formula.
Some key words: unconditionals, heroism, courage, magnificent, sacred and profane, suckers, nerds, slavery of employment*, robustness and fragility, ascetic, aesthetics, domain dependence, epistemology.
I didn't understand or respond to many of the aphorisms in my first reading. I reacted more in my second reading. I'll need to read the book, a quick read, again to cull all the value I'm going to get from the book for now. The preface and postface bookending Taleb's aphorisms provide a clear explanatory frame and tie the aphorisms to his more-famous works. Next on my reading list is Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness. I looking forward to finding out how Taleb's aphorisms inform my reading of Rand.
* Taleb earned millions as a Wall Street trader before reinventing himself as a sociologist -slash- political scientist.
Here are Taleb's aphorisms that stood out to me:
p 66, Ethical man accords his profession to his beliefs, instead of according his beliefs to his profession. This has been rarer and rarer since the Middle Ages.; p 62, My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal. (Former U.S. Treasury secretary "bankster" Robert Rubin, perhaps the biggest thief in history, broke no law. The difference between the legal and ethical increases in a complex system . . . then blows it up.); p 66, Weak men act to satisfy their needs, stronger men their duties.; p 54, You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic; the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration.; p 39, You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.; p 32, In most debates, people seem to be trying to be trying to convince one another; but all they can hope for is new arguments to convince themselves.; p 8, Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.; p 3, The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.; p 41, Skills that transfer: street fights, off-path hiking, seduction, broad erudition. Skills that don't: school, games, sports, laboratory - what's reduced and organized.; p 47, Just like poets and artists, bureaucrats are born, not made; it takes normal humans extraordinary effort to keep attention on such boring tasks.; p 57, Mental clarity is the child of courage, not the other way around. (The biggest error since Socrates has been to believe that lack of clarity is the source of all our ills, not the result of them.); p 60, Most people need to wait for another person to say "this is beautiful art" to say "this is beautiful art"; some need to wait for two or more.; p 64, You can only convince people who think they can benefit from being convinced.; p 65, Don't trust a man who needs an income - except if it is minimum wage. (Those in corporate captivity would do anything to "feed a family."); p 68, Just as dyed hair makes older men less attractive, it is what you do to hide your weaknesses that makes them repugnant.; p 81, For Seneca, the Stoic sage should withdraw from public efforts when unheeded and the state is corrupt beyond repair. It is wiser to wait for self-destruction.; p 82, To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.; p 83, To be a philosopher is to know through long walks, by reasoning, and reasoning only, a priori, what others can only potentially learn from their mistakes, crises, accidents, and bankruptcies - that is, a posteriori.; p 84, Conscious ignorance, if you can practice it, expands your world; it can make things infinite.; p 85, In Plato's Protagoras, Socrates contrasts philosophy as the collaborative search for truth with the sophist's use of rhetoric to gain the upper hand in argument for fame and money. Twenty-five centuries later, this is exactly the salaried researcher and the modern tenure-loving academic. Progress.; p 5, Your brain is most intelligent when you don't instruct it on what to do - something people who take showers discover on occasion.; p 6, Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working; be selective about professions.; p 7, Compliance with the straitjacket of narrow (Aristotelian) logic and avoidance of fatal inconsistencies are not the same thing.; p 7, Don't talk about "progress" in terms of longevity, safety, or comfort before comparing zoo animals to those in the wilderness.; p 19, If you can't spontaneously detect (without analyzing) the difference between sacred and profane, you'll never know what religion means. You will also never figure out what we commonly call art. You will never understand anything.; p 19, People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse.; p 24, What fools call "wasting time" is most often the best investment.; p 27, Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur.; p 29, Preoccupation with efficacy is the main obstacle to a poetic, noble, elegant, robust, and heroic life.; p 29, Don't complain too loud about wrongs done you; you may give ideas to your less imaginative enemies.; p 9, It is as difficult to change someone's opinions as it is to change his tastes.; p 30, Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.; p 31, The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.; p 45, You need to keep reminding yourself of the obvious: charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten, and the undisplayed. It takes mastery to control silence.; p 36, People are so prone to overcausation that you can make the reticent turn loquacious by dropping an occasional "why?" in the conversation.; p 49, The exponential information age is like a verbally incontinent person: he talks more and more as fewer and fewer people listen.; p 49, Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope to, some day, find something to say.; p 64, Trust those who make a living lying down or standing up more than those who do so sitting down.; p 69, For soldiers, we use the term "mercenary," but we absolve employees of responsibility with "everybody needs to make a living."; p 71, When conflicted between two choices, take neither.; p 72, For the robust, an error is information; for the fragile, an error is an error.; p 75, Games were created to give nonheroes the illusion of winning. In real life, you don't know who really won or lost (except too late), but you can tell who is heroic and who is not.; p 56, The tragedy is that much of what you think is random is in your control, and what's worse, the opposite.; p 58, Finer men tolerate others' small inconsistencies though not the large ones; the weak tolerate others' large inconsistencies though not small ones.; p 86, What they call "risk" I call opportunity; but what they call "low risk" opportunity I call sucker problem.; p 94, The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.; p 94, The mediocre regret their words more than their silence; finer men regret their silence more than their words; the magnificent has nothing to regret.; p 97, The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death.; p 103, A good foe is far more loyal, far more predictable, and, to the clever, far more useful than the most valuable admirer.; p 84, It takes a lot of intellect and confidence to accept that what makes sense doesn't really make sense.; p 78, They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns); p 17, You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else's narrative; p 34, There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.; p 40, We are hunters; we are only truly alive in those moments when we improvise; no schedule, just small surprises and stimuli from the environment; p 52, What I learned on my own I still remember.; p 96, The magnificent believes half of what he hears and twice what he says.; p 66, There are those who will thank you for what you gave them and others who will blame you for what you did not give them.; p 56, The sucker's trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don't know, rather than the reverse.; p 95, Regular men are a certain varying number of meals away from lying, killing, or even working as forecasters for the Federal Reserve in Washington; never the magnificent. (I had to read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics Book IV ten times before realizing what he didn' say explicitly (but knew): the magnificent (megalopsychos) is all about unconditionals.); p 96, The weak cannot be good; or, perhaps, he can only be good within an exhaustive and overreaching legal system.; p 12, The characteristic feature of the loser is to bemoan, in general terms, mankind's flaws, biases, contradictions, and irrationality - without exploiting them for fun and profit.
Eric
Some key words: unconditionals, heroism, courage, magnificent, sacred and profane, suckers, nerds, slavery of employment*, robustness and fragility, ascetic, aesthetics, domain dependence, epistemology.
I didn't understand or respond to many of the aphorisms in my first reading. I reacted more in my second reading. I'll need to read the book, a quick read, again to cull all the value I'm going to get from the book for now. The preface and postface bookending Taleb's aphorisms provide a clear explanatory frame and tie the aphorisms to his more-famous works. Next on my reading list is Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness. I looking forward to finding out how Taleb's aphorisms inform my reading of Rand.
* Taleb earned millions as a Wall Street trader before reinventing himself as a sociologist -slash- political scientist.
Here are Taleb's aphorisms that stood out to me:
p 66, Ethical man accords his profession to his beliefs, instead of according his beliefs to his profession. This has been rarer and rarer since the Middle Ages.; p 62, My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal. (Former U.S. Treasury secretary "bankster" Robert Rubin, perhaps the biggest thief in history, broke no law. The difference between the legal and ethical increases in a complex system . . . then blows it up.); p 66, Weak men act to satisfy their needs, stronger men their duties.; p 54, You want to be yourself, idiosyncratic; the collective (school, rules, jobs, technology) wants you generic to the point of castration.; p 39, You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.; p 32, In most debates, people seem to be trying to be trying to convince one another; but all they can hope for is new arguments to convince themselves.; p 8, Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.; p 3, The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.; p 41, Skills that transfer: street fights, off-path hiking, seduction, broad erudition. Skills that don't: school, games, sports, laboratory - what's reduced and organized.; p 47, Just like poets and artists, bureaucrats are born, not made; it takes normal humans extraordinary effort to keep attention on such boring tasks.; p 57, Mental clarity is the child of courage, not the other way around. (The biggest error since Socrates has been to believe that lack of clarity is the source of all our ills, not the result of them.); p 60, Most people need to wait for another person to say "this is beautiful art" to say "this is beautiful art"; some need to wait for two or more.; p 64, You can only convince people who think they can benefit from being convinced.; p 65, Don't trust a man who needs an income - except if it is minimum wage. (Those in corporate captivity would do anything to "feed a family."); p 68, Just as dyed hair makes older men less attractive, it is what you do to hide your weaknesses that makes them repugnant.; p 81, For Seneca, the Stoic sage should withdraw from public efforts when unheeded and the state is corrupt beyond repair. It is wiser to wait for self-destruction.; p 82, To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.; p 83, To be a philosopher is to know through long walks, by reasoning, and reasoning only, a priori, what others can only potentially learn from their mistakes, crises, accidents, and bankruptcies - that is, a posteriori.; p 84, Conscious ignorance, if you can practice it, expands your world; it can make things infinite.; p 85, In Plato's Protagoras, Socrates contrasts philosophy as the collaborative search for truth with the sophist's use of rhetoric to gain the upper hand in argument for fame and money. Twenty-five centuries later, this is exactly the salaried researcher and the modern tenure-loving academic. Progress.; p 5, Your brain is most intelligent when you don't instruct it on what to do - something people who take showers discover on occasion.; p 6, Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working; be selective about professions.; p 7, Compliance with the straitjacket of narrow (Aristotelian) logic and avoidance of fatal inconsistencies are not the same thing.; p 7, Don't talk about "progress" in terms of longevity, safety, or comfort before comparing zoo animals to those in the wilderness.; p 19, If you can't spontaneously detect (without analyzing) the difference between sacred and profane, you'll never know what religion means. You will also never figure out what we commonly call art. You will never understand anything.; p 19, People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse.; p 24, What fools call "wasting time" is most often the best investment.; p 27, Modernity: we created youth without heroism, age without wisdom, and life without grandeur.; p 29, Preoccupation with efficacy is the main obstacle to a poetic, noble, elegant, robust, and heroic life.; p 29, Don't complain too loud about wrongs done you; you may give ideas to your less imaginative enemies.; p 9, It is as difficult to change someone's opinions as it is to change his tastes.; p 30, Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.; p 31, The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.; p 45, You need to keep reminding yourself of the obvious: charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten, and the undisplayed. It takes mastery to control silence.; p 36, People are so prone to overcausation that you can make the reticent turn loquacious by dropping an occasional "why?" in the conversation.; p 49, The exponential information age is like a verbally incontinent person: he talks more and more as fewer and fewer people listen.; p 49, Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope to, some day, find something to say.; p 64, Trust those who make a living lying down or standing up more than those who do so sitting down.; p 69, For soldiers, we use the term "mercenary," but we absolve employees of responsibility with "everybody needs to make a living."; p 71, When conflicted between two choices, take neither.; p 72, For the robust, an error is information; for the fragile, an error is an error.; p 75, Games were created to give nonheroes the illusion of winning. In real life, you don't know who really won or lost (except too late), but you can tell who is heroic and who is not.; p 56, The tragedy is that much of what you think is random is in your control, and what's worse, the opposite.; p 58, Finer men tolerate others' small inconsistencies though not the large ones; the weak tolerate others' large inconsistencies though not small ones.; p 86, What they call "risk" I call opportunity; but what they call "low risk" opportunity I call sucker problem.; p 94, The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.; p 94, The mediocre regret their words more than their silence; finer men regret their silence more than their words; the magnificent has nothing to regret.; p 97, The classical man's worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man's worst fear is just death.; p 103, A good foe is far more loyal, far more predictable, and, to the clever, far more useful than the most valuable admirer.; p 84, It takes a lot of intellect and confidence to accept that what makes sense doesn't really make sense.; p 78, They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns); p 17, You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else's narrative; p 34, There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same.; p 40, We are hunters; we are only truly alive in those moments when we improvise; no schedule, just small surprises and stimuli from the environment; p 52, What I learned on my own I still remember.; p 96, The magnificent believes half of what he hears and twice what he says.; p 66, There are those who will thank you for what you gave them and others who will blame you for what you did not give them.; p 56, The sucker's trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don't know, rather than the reverse.; p 95, Regular men are a certain varying number of meals away from lying, killing, or even working as forecasters for the Federal Reserve in Washington; never the magnificent. (I had to read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics Book IV ten times before realizing what he didn' say explicitly (but knew): the magnificent (megalopsychos) is all about unconditionals.); p 96, The weak cannot be good; or, perhaps, he can only be good within an exhaustive and overreaching legal system.; p 12, The characteristic feature of the loser is to bemoan, in general terms, mankind's flaws, biases, contradictions, and irrationality - without exploiting them for fun and profit.
Eric
Saturday, 15 December 2012
Mass murder of young children and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut
Psychotic. Evil.
Columbine. The Amish school. SSG Bales and the Afghan village. The congresswoman. The nanny. Virgina Tech. Aurora movie theater. The Stuy grad. There are other shocking, relatively recent murders that I'm not remembering right now. I've read that typical-crime rates are going down, but mass murders are on the rise.
Add to them an elementary school in peaceful Newtown, Connecticut. The New York Times reports that the Children Were All Shot Multiple Times With a Semiautomatic, Officials Say. The incident's wiki page.
First graders, 6 and 7-year-old children, surprised then shot multiple times. The killer presumably kept shooting into the increasingly mangled bodies after the children were dead. Six school staff, all women, including the principal, school psychologist, and teachers, killed. He also killed his mom. Reports say the principal and psychologist ran to the sound of guns and the teachers died trying to shield their students.
Apparently, the murderer had no current personal relationship with the elementary school but reports say he attended the school as a child. Some reports say his mom continued to volunteer there. People, classmates and instructors, who knew him in high school say he was socially awkward with odd behaviors, though there were no violent indications, no criminal record. While he kept apart from others in school, he was not devoid of friendly social interaction. He played sports and was part of the technology club. There's no mention that he was attending college, despite that he was 20 years old and reportedly very smart. Add: He reportedly had congenital analgesia (inability to feel pain) and Asperger's Syndrome. A possible beginning of an explanation are reports that in the weeks or months leading up to the killings, he was self-hurting, his mom talked about 'losing him', he was jealous of his mom volunteering at the elementary school and the children his mom helped, and he was upset his mom had begun the involuntary commitment legal process. The murderer was 20, an age when many young men seriously take account of their lives, reflect, introspect, and envision the long term of their lives for the first time. Did he reach a conclusion that informed his final decision?
Neo-neocon comments on and recommends a sociologist's commentary, written in September before the Newtown massacre, on "rampage killers". A psychologist's theory that resonates.
There seems to be a growing trend of shocking multiple or mass murders that are random, unpredictable, and involve murderers who offer no warnings in the traditional sense of a personal conflict, criminal record, or a stated cause. They're not crimes of passion. They're not serial murderers who plan for secrecy. They killed for the sake of killing. They plan to cause death on a grand scale. They often have a trail of mental illness, but not always a psychological record that is predictive of their final acts.
By the time law enforcement can react, the killing is done. Like many, but not all of them, the killer in Newtown concluded his murder spree by committing suicide. The nanny also tried to kill herself.
I asked about the nanny killings, why? Now again, why? It doesn't make sense.
It's like they're possessed or rabid. Were I religious, I would say they were possessed by the Devil. I'm not religious, so I'll just call them psychotic, even evil. But that's not an explanation.
I initially wanted to call the Newtown murders terroristic, and terrorism has much in common with these sensational killings, but there normally is a cause behind terrorist acts and a strategic purpose, however twisted. These murders seem to have no sense to them at all. Just crazed killing.
A smart seemingly unremarkable, if odd and awkward, perhaps alienated kid commits mass murder-suicide of children who were strangers to him for no apparent reason. There's something very very sick here. Very wrong.
What am I going to do about it? What should I do? What can I do when I can't even answer why?
Eric
Columbine. The Amish school. SSG Bales and the Afghan village. The congresswoman. The nanny. Virgina Tech. Aurora movie theater. The Stuy grad. There are other shocking, relatively recent murders that I'm not remembering right now. I've read that typical-crime rates are going down, but mass murders are on the rise.
Add to them an elementary school in peaceful Newtown, Connecticut. The New York Times reports that the Children Were All Shot Multiple Times With a Semiautomatic, Officials Say. The incident's wiki page.
First graders, 6 and 7-year-old children, surprised then shot multiple times. The killer presumably kept shooting into the increasingly mangled bodies after the children were dead. Six school staff, all women, including the principal, school psychologist, and teachers, killed. He also killed his mom. Reports say the principal and psychologist ran to the sound of guns and the teachers died trying to shield their students.
Apparently, the murderer had no current personal relationship with the elementary school but reports say he attended the school as a child. Some reports say his mom continued to volunteer there. People, classmates and instructors, who knew him in high school say he was socially awkward with odd behaviors, though there were no violent indications, no criminal record. While he kept apart from others in school, he was not devoid of friendly social interaction. He played sports and was part of the technology club. There's no mention that he was attending college, despite that he was 20 years old and reportedly very smart. Add: He reportedly had congenital analgesia (inability to feel pain) and Asperger's Syndrome. A possible beginning of an explanation are reports that in the weeks or months leading up to the killings, he was self-hurting, his mom talked about 'losing him', he was jealous of his mom volunteering at the elementary school and the children his mom helped, and he was upset his mom had begun the involuntary commitment legal process. The murderer was 20, an age when many young men seriously take account of their lives, reflect, introspect, and envision the long term of their lives for the first time. Did he reach a conclusion that informed his final decision?
Neo-neocon comments on and recommends a sociologist's commentary, written in September before the Newtown massacre, on "rampage killers". A psychologist's theory that resonates.
There seems to be a growing trend of shocking multiple or mass murders that are random, unpredictable, and involve murderers who offer no warnings in the traditional sense of a personal conflict, criminal record, or a stated cause. They're not crimes of passion. They're not serial murderers who plan for secrecy. They killed for the sake of killing. They plan to cause death on a grand scale. They often have a trail of mental illness, but not always a psychological record that is predictive of their final acts.
By the time law enforcement can react, the killing is done. Like many, but not all of them, the killer in Newtown concluded his murder spree by committing suicide. The nanny also tried to kill herself.
I asked about the nanny killings, why? Now again, why? It doesn't make sense.
It's like they're possessed or rabid. Were I religious, I would say they were possessed by the Devil. I'm not religious, so I'll just call them psychotic, even evil. But that's not an explanation.
I initially wanted to call the Newtown murders terroristic, and terrorism has much in common with these sensational killings, but there normally is a cause behind terrorist acts and a strategic purpose, however twisted. These murders seem to have no sense to them at all. Just crazed killing.
A smart seemingly unremarkable, if odd and awkward, perhaps alienated kid commits mass murder-suicide of children who were strangers to him for no apparent reason. There's something very very sick here. Very wrong.
What am I going to do about it? What should I do? What can I do when I can't even answer why?
Eric
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
12:12 12/12/12
I am commemorating the last reiterative time and date we'll see in our lifetime, unless you're still alive after 2100. I know I won't be.
Eric
Eric
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Thoughts of the day
At Bigwowo's post on the Psy controversy, my attempt to correct misconceptions about the Iraq mission in the comments is a depressing reminder that pushing back against the memetic wave of the false narrative on the Iraq mission doesn't make a difference. The pattern is they'll first confidently state the false narrative as truth, become sullen when I introduce my case, and then disengage the discussion to avoid further disturbing their beliefs or they'll circle back to insist on the false narrative. By now, the false narrative, with the damage it has wrought, is hardened and impossible to loosen. Anti-Iraq protestors have too much invested in it. Even in 2003-04, when minds were not yet set about the Iraq mission, I found to my frustration and sadness the same unwillingness to weigh the argument for the Iraq mission against the misinformation tidal wave. They self-select into the echo chamber. Their mindset is adversarial - tribal and competitive - not inquisitorial. The phenomenon speaks to the tribal uniformity theory of political beliefs. They don't want truth; they want their narrative. They don't want peace; they want allegiance.
My failure to make a difference after 9/11 fuels my impulse to turn away from my INFP idealism and go MGTOW. I feel like the boy hero of the fable of the Dutch boy who stuck his finger into a leak in a dike, stayed there faithfully through the cold night, stopped the leak from growing into a destructive flood, thus saving his home. Except my heroic finger didn't slow the leak in the slightest. Instead, the dike has crumbled around my finger while many other large leaks have sprung. The dike is collapsing, the flood is growing, and I wonder what further point there is for me to keep sticking my fingers into holes that are larger than I am.
My leadership in SU4A, MilVets, and CU ROTC advocacy showed I can make a difference when I'm in position with sufficient authority and power to do. However, my failure to influence the course of events after my leadership also showed the very limited effect of talking when not coupled with the power to do. If I can't do and lead others doing, then talking about what should be done is mostly wasted effort. I can set a course when in charge, but I'm not confident my course will be followed when I'm not steering the ship.
Interesting concept: the Cathedral, or academia + education + entertainment + media that work together to form, propagate, and reinforce the dominant set of public beliefs of a democratic society. The government and effective NGOs are not part of the Cathedral per se, but bureaucrats conform and build the social structure based on the dominant set of public beliefs. Mencius Moldbug's Cathedral seems loosely related to the famous The Cathedral and the Bazaar concept.
It is useful to know the different axes of political discourse (h/t Mad Minerva): "My hypothesis is that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians view politics along three different axes. For progressives, the main axis has oppressors at one end and the oppressed at the other. For conservatives, the main axis has civilization at one end and barbarism at the other. For libertarians, the main axis has coercion at one end and free choice at the other." ... It's illustrative of the evolution or manipulation of popular political language that the outlook classically assigned to Marxists - "the main axis has oppressors at one end and the oppressed at the other" - is assigned to progressives, instead, while the outlook classically assigned to progressives - "the main axis has civilization at one end and barbarism at the other" - is assigned to conservatives, instead. The axis for conservatives should be order on one end and chaos or anarchy at the other.
For most, risk incentives (fear, loss, failure, suffering, shame, danger, ostracization) are more powerful motivators than reward incentives. For the primitive hindbrain, losing is worse than gaining is better. We most want security, stability, and reliability.
Law professor lectures on the 5th Amendment's "right to remain silent" and not volunteering information to law enforcement authorities.
My brief breakdown on American gun culture: 2nd Amendment, principle of liberty and independence, anti-authority or loss of faith in authority * . . . self-defense and property defense . . . self-reliance, robustness, and resilience, up to survivalists and doomsday preppers . . . rural American life, hunting, pioneer and frontiersman tradition . . . sport, hobby and collectibles. *Loss of faith in authority pervades the 1st 3 groupings.
Chilling horror stories of once-upon-a-time success stories: St Johns Dean Cecilia Chang (who earned her Ed D at Columbia) and Flushing developer Thomas Huang. My god, is that what it takes for someone of Taiwanese descent to make it in New York?
The living ideal combines health, peace of mind, the ascetic life, and the aesthetic life. Self-reliance, robustness, resilience, and independence. Music and dance - active, rather than passive, art of mind and body. Athletics, too, maybe, for health and socializing.
Feedback loop. OODA decision-making loop. Breaking out of a slump. Aware and self-aware, analytical and reflective, fluid and adaptive, self-conscious invention of self. Mining life for building blocks. Developmental, rather than judgemental, learning style - experience is scarring for growth, like building muscle, not win/lose or pass/fail (by what judgemental standard anyway?). Like this admirable blogger who changed her life with a 2012 new year's resolution.
Dating advice from 1923 for women reads like modern dating advice for men, ie, Game. The alternative to Game? One-two, one-two, knock-out.
The socio-sexual hierarchy.
In the same self-help and MGTOW spirit of watching Les Stroud's and Ray Mears's survival shows, I should watch more TED (acronym for Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks on youtube. This appears to be TED's official youtube channel.
Website with useful military technical references that are contemporary with my service, eg, this 2000 11B manual and FM 21-15. The site is likely temporary since the information is for participants of a March 2013 combat simulation.
Bachelor chow classic: About $1.50 worth or about half a 20.8 oz box of ground turkey, $1 28 oz can of crushed and pureed tomatoes, $1 10 oz box of frozen chopped broccoli or whole spinach, roughly 3/4 of a $1 16 oz box of pasta. (Disclaimer: all items bought on sale.) A little season salt, pepper, and hot sauce. Maybe garnish with cheese. I've taken to mixing types of pasta for a little added variety in the texture. The canned crushed and pureed tomatoes are too thin to work on their own as pasta sauce; it tastes like unflavored pasta with a thin watery tomato-flavored garnish. The crushed and pureed tomatoes work fine in a meat sauce, though. The dish cooks up easily and relatively quickly: brown the meat, cook the pasta, add the tomatoes and broccoli to the meat, add the cooked pasta and extra liquid for the pasta to soak up, simmer, and done. It looks like a large long-lasting heap in the electric skillet, but it's easy-eating comfort food that disappears fast with 2nds and 3rds.
More bachelor eating tips: Tip 1: Tostitos dip 15 oz glass jars make fine drinking glasses due to their size and wide mouth. They hold hot drinks, too. (Caveat: While I microwaved broth in the jar without an apparent problem, instructions on the jar say dip should be microwaved in a separate container.) Tip 2: Boil the leftover bones from a meaty meal and add salt for a tasty broth. It may help to crack the bones, especially uncut bird bones, before boiling them. Tip 3: Used cooking oil may taste stale rather than infused with the flavors of past tasty meals. Tip 4: Vegetable (soybean) oil smells bad and hardens into a solid like hard rubber that is difficult to remove and smells gross when reheated. Tip 5: The Nesco 6 quart roaster oven, because the heat comes from the sides, is a poor choice for cooking that's best done with direct heat, like heating soup, scrambling eggs, or popping corn. Tip 6: Using the lid on the Sunbeam electric frying pan makes it an effective oven.
Bachelor cookware (1 quart = 4 cups = 32 oz): Set of 1/2/3-quart nested Farberware Classic stainless steel mixing bowls, 9 cup Sunbeam electric frying pan, 5 cup Salton rice cooker, 6 quart Nesco roaster oven, Toastmaster basic burner, T Fal square griddle pan, Maverick Henrietta Hen egg cooker, George Foreman grill, Regal 5 cup poly hot pot, Proctor Silex toaster oven, Sharp Carousel microwave oven.
The right-end nail of my improvised poncho curtain fell out while I was trying to tighten the taut-line hitch on the curtain's ridge line. There are now 2 enlarged holes on the right end that can no longer hold a nail, at least nails of the diameter I'm using. The other 3 nails (left end and 2 weight-bearing nails, although the right-center weight-bearing nail is now the right-end nail) are still holding, but the 2 current end nails are bent and may pull out like the failed right-end nail if I attempt any more adjustments that are less than gentle. In retrospect, a tug-and-tie-off trucker's hitch would have been the smarter knot given the awkwardness of adjusting a taut-line hitch at that angle, but the same thing could have happened if I tried to fix the sag in the ridge line with a trucker's hitch. I later discovered after my best effort to tighten a line using the same accessory cord on 2 door hinges that the line sags when significant weight is hung from it; I believe the ridge line sags under weight because the accessory cord is stretchy, not because it's loose. Oh well, sorry, nail. Why nails don't work above my window: There's a weight-bearing concrete or possibly metal lintel above my window that requires a special drill and inset pieces. Hammered nails only go in about a 1/4 inch. Thicker nails than I'm using might be strong enough to hold up a poncho, though. There may also be adhesive hooks I can use instead.
The NFL Films bells song, Power and Glory: A New Game by Tom Hedden. I've wanted the NFL bells song for a while. Bonus: The NFL Films opening song The Power and Glory: Classic Battle by Sam Spence.
Eric
My failure to make a difference after 9/11 fuels my impulse to turn away from my INFP idealism and go MGTOW. I feel like the boy hero of the fable of the Dutch boy who stuck his finger into a leak in a dike, stayed there faithfully through the cold night, stopped the leak from growing into a destructive flood, thus saving his home. Except my heroic finger didn't slow the leak in the slightest. Instead, the dike has crumbled around my finger while many other large leaks have sprung. The dike is collapsing, the flood is growing, and I wonder what further point there is for me to keep sticking my fingers into holes that are larger than I am.
My leadership in SU4A, MilVets, and CU ROTC advocacy showed I can make a difference when I'm in position with sufficient authority and power to do. However, my failure to influence the course of events after my leadership also showed the very limited effect of talking when not coupled with the power to do. If I can't do and lead others doing, then talking about what should be done is mostly wasted effort. I can set a course when in charge, but I'm not confident my course will be followed when I'm not steering the ship.
Interesting concept: the Cathedral, or academia + education + entertainment + media that work together to form, propagate, and reinforce the dominant set of public beliefs of a democratic society. The government and effective NGOs are not part of the Cathedral per se, but bureaucrats conform and build the social structure based on the dominant set of public beliefs. Mencius Moldbug's Cathedral seems loosely related to the famous The Cathedral and the Bazaar concept.
It is useful to know the different axes of political discourse (h/t Mad Minerva): "My hypothesis is that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians view politics along three different axes. For progressives, the main axis has oppressors at one end and the oppressed at the other. For conservatives, the main axis has civilization at one end and barbarism at the other. For libertarians, the main axis has coercion at one end and free choice at the other." ... It's illustrative of the evolution or manipulation of popular political language that the outlook classically assigned to Marxists - "the main axis has oppressors at one end and the oppressed at the other" - is assigned to progressives, instead, while the outlook classically assigned to progressives - "the main axis has civilization at one end and barbarism at the other" - is assigned to conservatives, instead. The axis for conservatives should be order on one end and chaos or anarchy at the other.
For most, risk incentives (fear, loss, failure, suffering, shame, danger, ostracization) are more powerful motivators than reward incentives. For the primitive hindbrain, losing is worse than gaining is better. We most want security, stability, and reliability.
Law professor lectures on the 5th Amendment's "right to remain silent" and not volunteering information to law enforcement authorities.
My brief breakdown on American gun culture: 2nd Amendment, principle of liberty and independence, anti-authority or loss of faith in authority * . . . self-defense and property defense . . . self-reliance, robustness, and resilience, up to survivalists and doomsday preppers . . . rural American life, hunting, pioneer and frontiersman tradition . . . sport, hobby and collectibles. *Loss of faith in authority pervades the 1st 3 groupings.
Chilling horror stories of once-upon-a-time success stories: St Johns Dean Cecilia Chang (who earned her Ed D at Columbia) and Flushing developer Thomas Huang. My god, is that what it takes for someone of Taiwanese descent to make it in New York?
The living ideal combines health, peace of mind, the ascetic life, and the aesthetic life. Self-reliance, robustness, resilience, and independence. Music and dance - active, rather than passive, art of mind and body. Athletics, too, maybe, for health and socializing.
Feedback loop. OODA decision-making loop. Breaking out of a slump. Aware and self-aware, analytical and reflective, fluid and adaptive, self-conscious invention of self. Mining life for building blocks. Developmental, rather than judgemental, learning style - experience is scarring for growth, like building muscle, not win/lose or pass/fail (by what judgemental standard anyway?). Like this admirable blogger who changed her life with a 2012 new year's resolution.
Dating advice from 1923 for women reads like modern dating advice for men, ie, Game. The alternative to Game? One-two, one-two, knock-out.
The socio-sexual hierarchy.
In the same self-help and MGTOW spirit of watching Les Stroud's and Ray Mears's survival shows, I should watch more TED (acronym for Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks on youtube. This appears to be TED's official youtube channel.
Website with useful military technical references that are contemporary with my service, eg, this 2000 11B manual and FM 21-15. The site is likely temporary since the information is for participants of a March 2013 combat simulation.
Bachelor chow classic: About $1.50 worth or about half a 20.8 oz box of ground turkey, $1 28 oz can of crushed and pureed tomatoes, $1 10 oz box of frozen chopped broccoli or whole spinach, roughly 3/4 of a $1 16 oz box of pasta. (Disclaimer: all items bought on sale.) A little season salt, pepper, and hot sauce. Maybe garnish with cheese. I've taken to mixing types of pasta for a little added variety in the texture. The canned crushed and pureed tomatoes are too thin to work on their own as pasta sauce; it tastes like unflavored pasta with a thin watery tomato-flavored garnish. The crushed and pureed tomatoes work fine in a meat sauce, though. The dish cooks up easily and relatively quickly: brown the meat, cook the pasta, add the tomatoes and broccoli to the meat, add the cooked pasta and extra liquid for the pasta to soak up, simmer, and done. It looks like a large long-lasting heap in the electric skillet, but it's easy-eating comfort food that disappears fast with 2nds and 3rds.
More bachelor eating tips: Tip 1: Tostitos dip 15 oz glass jars make fine drinking glasses due to their size and wide mouth. They hold hot drinks, too. (Caveat: While I microwaved broth in the jar without an apparent problem, instructions on the jar say dip should be microwaved in a separate container.) Tip 2: Boil the leftover bones from a meaty meal and add salt for a tasty broth. It may help to crack the bones, especially uncut bird bones, before boiling them. Tip 3: Used cooking oil may taste stale rather than infused with the flavors of past tasty meals. Tip 4: Vegetable (soybean) oil smells bad and hardens into a solid like hard rubber that is difficult to remove and smells gross when reheated. Tip 5: The Nesco 6 quart roaster oven, because the heat comes from the sides, is a poor choice for cooking that's best done with direct heat, like heating soup, scrambling eggs, or popping corn. Tip 6: Using the lid on the Sunbeam electric frying pan makes it an effective oven.
Bachelor cookware (1 quart = 4 cups = 32 oz): Set of 1/2/3-quart nested Farberware Classic stainless steel mixing bowls, 9 cup Sunbeam electric frying pan, 5 cup Salton rice cooker, 6 quart Nesco roaster oven, Toastmaster basic burner, T Fal square griddle pan, Maverick Henrietta Hen egg cooker, George Foreman grill, Regal 5 cup poly hot pot, Proctor Silex toaster oven, Sharp Carousel microwave oven.
The right-end nail of my improvised poncho curtain fell out while I was trying to tighten the taut-line hitch on the curtain's ridge line. There are now 2 enlarged holes on the right end that can no longer hold a nail, at least nails of the diameter I'm using. The other 3 nails (left end and 2 weight-bearing nails, although the right-center weight-bearing nail is now the right-end nail) are still holding, but the 2 current end nails are bent and may pull out like the failed right-end nail if I attempt any more adjustments that are less than gentle. In retrospect, a tug-and-tie-off trucker's hitch would have been the smarter knot given the awkwardness of adjusting a taut-line hitch at that angle, but the same thing could have happened if I tried to fix the sag in the ridge line with a trucker's hitch. I later discovered after my best effort to tighten a line using the same accessory cord on 2 door hinges that the line sags when significant weight is hung from it; I believe the ridge line sags under weight because the accessory cord is stretchy, not because it's loose. Oh well, sorry, nail. Why nails don't work above my window: There's a weight-bearing concrete or possibly metal lintel above my window that requires a special drill and inset pieces. Hammered nails only go in about a 1/4 inch. Thicker nails than I'm using might be strong enough to hold up a poncho, though. There may also be adhesive hooks I can use instead.
The NFL Films bells song, Power and Glory: A New Game by Tom Hedden. I've wanted the NFL bells song for a while. Bonus: The NFL Films opening song The Power and Glory: Classic Battle by Sam Spence.
Eric
Sunday, 9 December 2012
Psy the Useful Idiot
Useful Idiot: "In political jargon, useful idiot is a pejorative term for people perceived as propagandists for a cause whose goals they do not understand, and who are used cynically by the leaders of the cause."
Psy is the teddy-bearish American-educated Korean pop singer who became world-famous with his fluffy fun and quirky viral Youtube hit, Gangnam Style.
Except in a 2004 concert, Psy rapped a song that looks like something penned by an al Qaeda lyricist:
In addition to the 2002 accident, the other reason given for Psy's song is anger over the terrorist beheading of Kim Sun-Il in Iraq in June 2004. Rather than reacting to the Kim beheading by supporting the American and Korean efforts to defend Iraq from terrorists and help the Iraqi people build a new nation after Saddam, Psy instead supported the agenda of the terrorists who beheaded Kim.
Psy blamed Americans for the suffering in post-war Iraq despite that US and allied forces were urgently trying to secure and stabilize Iraq, rebuild Iraq, and protect the peace-builders and Iraqi people from the Islamic terrorist onslaught. Psy seems unbothered by the actual torture inflicted by terrorists and, instead, vilified as "torture" the efforts by US-led forces desperately trying to stop the daily atrocities that terrorists were committing in Iraq. Psy seemingly was unfazed by the relentless stream of the terrorists' mass murders, kidnappings, tortures, assassinations, other sundry acts of terror inflicted on the Iraqi people, and non-stop efforts to foment civil war in Iraq. Instead, Psy directed his anger towards the Americans and Koreans fighting to build the peace in Iraq.
Fortunately, the ROK resisted the pressure to abandon the Iraqi people and honored the commitment South Korea made to Iraq before completing its military mission as scheduled in 2008.
Based on what I've heard so far, I don't believe Psy made a deliberate choice to be a terrorist spokesman, though he acted like one. I believe Psy was bamboozled into being a useful-idiot celebrity who boosted the Islamic terrorist cause to expel foreign aid from Iraq so the terrorists could dominate Iraq and the north Korean cause to divide South Korea from its chief ally and lifetime defender.
Today, Psy will perform in person for President Obama and the First Lady in Washington DC for a TNT Christmas special to be aired on December 21. In a sane America, Psy would be removed from the program and President Obama would give Psy a stern public rebuke with a history lesson explaining why Psy was wrong. That won't happen, though, because President Obama was one of the opportunistic self-serving politicians who were complicit in the vicious propaganda/misinformation campaign that attacked President Bush and the critical Iraq mission. Publicly rebuking Psy would mean repudiating the root cause of Obama's rise to the Presidency. I expect Obama will accept Psy's apology, whitewash Psy's terrorist-concordant message, and perhaps even legitimate Psy's useful-idiotic "opinions".
Eric
Psy is the teddy-bearish American-educated Korean pop singer who became world-famous with his fluffy fun and quirky viral Youtube hit, Gangnam Style.
Except in a 2004 concert, Psy rapped a song that looks like something penned by an al Qaeda lyricist:
싸이 rap : 이라크 포로를 고문해 댄 씨발양년놈들과Rokdrop.com has solid coverage of the Psy controversy and a detailed account of the 2002 accident given as an excuse for Psy's anti-American views. Anti-American groups exploited the tragic accident to incite anti-American sentiment in South Korea. Their vicious propaganda/misinformation campaign reads exactly like the playbook used to attack President Bush and America's War on Terror campaigns, including the opportunistic complicity of media and politicians who exploited the mob anger to advance their own interests.
고문 하라고 시킨 개 씨발 양년놈들에
딸래미 애미 며느리 애비 코쟁이 모두 죽여
아주 천천히 죽여 고통스럽게 죽여
Translation:
Kill those fucking Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives
Kill those fucking Yankees who ordered them to torture
Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law, and fathers
Kill them all slowly and painfully
In addition to the 2002 accident, the other reason given for Psy's song is anger over the terrorist beheading of Kim Sun-Il in Iraq in June 2004. Rather than reacting to the Kim beheading by supporting the American and Korean efforts to defend Iraq from terrorists and help the Iraqi people build a new nation after Saddam, Psy instead supported the agenda of the terrorists who beheaded Kim.
Psy blamed Americans for the suffering in post-war Iraq despite that US and allied forces were urgently trying to secure and stabilize Iraq, rebuild Iraq, and protect the peace-builders and Iraqi people from the Islamic terrorist onslaught. Psy seems unbothered by the actual torture inflicted by terrorists and, instead, vilified as "torture" the efforts by US-led forces desperately trying to stop the daily atrocities that terrorists were committing in Iraq. Psy seemingly was unfazed by the relentless stream of the terrorists' mass murders, kidnappings, tortures, assassinations, other sundry acts of terror inflicted on the Iraqi people, and non-stop efforts to foment civil war in Iraq. Instead, Psy directed his anger towards the Americans and Koreans fighting to build the peace in Iraq.
Fortunately, the ROK resisted the pressure to abandon the Iraqi people and honored the commitment South Korea made to Iraq before completing its military mission as scheduled in 2008.
Based on what I've heard so far, I don't believe Psy made a deliberate choice to be a terrorist spokesman, though he acted like one. I believe Psy was bamboozled into being a useful-idiot celebrity who boosted the Islamic terrorist cause to expel foreign aid from Iraq so the terrorists could dominate Iraq and the north Korean cause to divide South Korea from its chief ally and lifetime defender.
Today, Psy will perform in person for President Obama and the First Lady in Washington DC for a TNT Christmas special to be aired on December 21. In a sane America, Psy would be removed from the program and President Obama would give Psy a stern public rebuke with a history lesson explaining why Psy was wrong. That won't happen, though, because President Obama was one of the opportunistic self-serving politicians who were complicit in the vicious propaganda/misinformation campaign that attacked President Bush and the critical Iraq mission. Publicly rebuking Psy would mean repudiating the root cause of Obama's rise to the Presidency. I expect Obama will accept Psy's apology, whitewash Psy's terrorist-concordant message, and perhaps even legitimate Psy's useful-idiotic "opinions".
Eric
Thursday, 6 December 2012
New York Times: U.S.-Approved Arms for Libya Rebels Fell Into Jihadis’ Hands
Another consequence of President Obama's purposely anti-Bush, arms length, deferred to surrogates, but still interventionist Libya policy: U.S.-Approved Arms for Libya Rebels Fell Into Jihadis’ Hands.
Money quote: "The Qatari assistance to fighters viewed as hostile by the United States demonstrates the Obama administration’s continuing struggles in dealing with the Arab Spring uprisings, as it tries to support popular protest movements while avoiding American military entanglements. Relying on surrogates allows the United States to keep its fingerprints off operations, but also means they may play out in ways that conflict with American interests."
The elephant in the room that pundits are studiously ignoring is that current events justify President Bush's choices in the Middle East. However, that admission by the media would open the door to re-evaluating Bush's record in a positive light that casts a contrasting critical shadow on Obama's Middle East policies, which would be a reversal of the punditry's dominant narrative. Bush merely applied the logical means necessary to achieve a liberal foreign policy, while Obama's histrionic rejection of Bush's methods (except for drone assassinations, which Obama has expanded dramatically) has invited failure in our foreign affairs.
It seems the Obama administration believes that a cheaper hedging failure and defeat of America on the world stage is preferable to a deeply invested commitment to victory and success.
Eric
Money quote: "The Qatari assistance to fighters viewed as hostile by the United States demonstrates the Obama administration’s continuing struggles in dealing with the Arab Spring uprisings, as it tries to support popular protest movements while avoiding American military entanglements. Relying on surrogates allows the United States to keep its fingerprints off operations, but also means they may play out in ways that conflict with American interests."
The elephant in the room that pundits are studiously ignoring is that current events justify President Bush's choices in the Middle East. However, that admission by the media would open the door to re-evaluating Bush's record in a positive light that casts a contrasting critical shadow on Obama's Middle East policies, which would be a reversal of the punditry's dominant narrative. Bush merely applied the logical means necessary to achieve a liberal foreign policy, while Obama's histrionic rejection of Bush's methods (except for drone assassinations, which Obama has expanded dramatically) has invited failure in our foreign affairs.
It seems the Obama administration believes that a cheaper hedging failure and defeat of America on the world stage is preferable to a deeply invested commitment to victory and success.
Eric
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