A Learning Process

I'm doing a lot of reading a writing lately/ Mostly it's due to M3 blog and discussions. I want to keep my mind sharp, but lately I've been questioning its effectiveness. I feel like I've been here before. Back in my early twenties I bought hundreds of books on writing and scanned them into my computer. I read them, but I didn't retain much of what I read. I want to take a moment to see what I can do differently.

Taking Care of Yourself

I can remember thinking about fitness for at least half my life and I've yet to reach any of my goals. Even though I haven't reached any of my goals I realize now that I'm much better off for my efforts even if I don't have the ripped body that I always wanted. I learned some things about myself along the way. I found that is possible to enjoy going to the gym. In fact I think that's why I've been doing so good is because I actually get something tangible from the experience of working out. I always leave the gym feeling better than when I go in.

I just like the experience of working out. I get on the elliptical I start going and my head just starts to feel in tune with the music. I also just get to listen to a lot of cool music. Pandora is awesome by the way. Today I supposed to be going to the gym and it's raining. In fact there's a tornado warning and I doubt I'm going to make it today. But it's bumming me out. I really want to get my routine on.

I also noticed how working out seems to have improved the rest of my life. I just feel better. I sleep better, I feel more focused. I can deal with the changes of life a lot better. And In my mind I know I can do things I set my mind to because after all I did do this one hard thing and I'm sticking with it. At least for now. I started a blog and a YouTube Channel with my boyfriend. I cleaned dishes today  I never do that! Really did it so I can continue to eat better

I noticed that I lost weight the other day. I don't want to look too closely becuase I think if I do the results will turn out not to be real. But I took pictures and weighed myself and both seem to indicate the weight loss is real.

Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg

So starting a new blog wasn't as hard s I thought it would be, but by no means was it easy. There were days where I was frustrated by people's lack of enthusiasm for promoting and writing posts. There were days when I felt like throwing my hands up and quitting and it's only been a week. However the whole time I was going through this process I was reading Say Everything which was a great book about the history of blogging. It really gave me perspective and made me appreciate the tools that are averrable to me now.

It also solidified the concept of the blog. What is it's papoose? As a writer I just saw it as a way of self publishing. I wanted to write and I needed people to read it. Now I understand blogging as a conversation. That my posts are only half of the equation and that I really need to get people to read and invite them to be a part of the process.

A new direction for the blog

After launching The Male Media Mind I realized that I can take this blog in a whole new direction. Since I'm going to be posting daily at Male Media Mind all the information and options I can't see the point of this blog being the same. So I feel it's a good idea to turn my blog into something more personal.

I've always been a little scare to bear myself online. I don't want to be messy or cause drama. Of course I am entitled to discuss my own experiences, but I'd rather do without the consequences that could emerge. The thing is my life isn't interesting anyway. The only thing of interest right now is the launching the new blog. So for now I think I'll use this space to discuss my feelings and thoughts about the new blog.

The Male Media Mind

Launching my new blog today. Put a lot of work into it this weekend. There's a lot of work left to do, but I'm already proud of what we have built and am looking forward to getting the conversation started. I have two great authors who will be posting about the things that matter to them. And we have so many ideas we have to pace ourselves to not get burned out. We have big plans for the blog and it will be a journey implementing the things we have in mind.

Of course the morning of the launch my internet connection is down. Luckily we got all the hard work done over the weekend.

Big Thoughts

You don't get to choose what you're interested in. Ideas, in a way, have you rather than the other way around. One such idea is God. I love big ideas and nothing is bigger than God. I can't get away from it. I stopped going to church because Christianity feels like bullshit to me now and yet I can't stop talking and thinking about God. Some people call it "The Universe" but come on we all know what you're talking about. Even if you don't believe the bullshit in the Bible you still believe in bullshit. There is no God except the one in your mind, that construction of moral rules that makes life easier to understand. The notion of a soul that inhabits your body seems like the source of all religion. It's hard to imagine that we are our bodies. It's hard to think of not existing one day. But anyone who doesn't think their mind and body are the same thing has never gotten drunk before. But then I think if my mind is my brain and we have no idea how these pattern create mind, how could we rule out patterns in the greater world around us creating a mind there as well? 

A few Thoughts about Thoughts

I sometimes can't believe that I am the way that I am. To describe myself would be to miss the point, but I know I don't see the world like most people do. Sometimes I have to admit I like the fact that I'm different. It doesn't mean that the the way I see the world is valuable or even interesting to anyone outside my own skull, but it does mean my life will be more difficult. It means that in some ways I'll I will always be a a little separate from others. Sure that's unfair and I could be upset, but what's the point? I mean I will still be the same way and nothing will change.

Ignorance is a choice

I'm laying in bed right now recovering from a cold. When I talk to people about how to get better I seem to get all this conflicting information. I go online and look up how to recover from a cold and all the information I need to get better is displayed before my eyes. It got me thinking myths and they're so readily available for people to believe. We choose to believe what we want to believe. Even when there's credible evidence to contradict our beliefs people still persist. That isn't necessarily a bad thing we should have confidence in what we believe.

With ‘Dreams From My Real Father,’ Have Obama Haters Hit Rock Bottom?

by Michelle Goldberg Sep 28, 2012 4:45 AM EDT A pseudo-documentary that slimes Ann Dunham, the president’s late mother, is being mailed to swing-state voters. A look at the film and Dinesh D’Souza’s book, Obama’s America. So this is what it’s come to. After four years of invective, four years during which the right has called President Obama a traitor, a communist, a fraud, an affirmative-action case, a terrorist-sympathizer, and a tyrant, its shrillest voices have been reduced to the most primal insult of all. They are calling Obama’s mother a whore. For a while now, pictures purporting to show Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, modeling in 1950s bondage and fetish porn have been floating around the darker corners of the Internet. Now, though, they’ve made their way into a pseudo-documentary, Joel Gilbert’s Dreams From My Real Father,

The internet is spying on you

From The Week
POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 10, 2010, AT 10:32 AM

Every time you go online, sophisticated data miners are tracking your every move. What do they know about you?

How frequently am I followed online?

Constantly. Your computer leaves a unique digital trail every time you visit a website, post a comment on a blog, or add a photo to your Facebook wall. A growing number of companies follow that trail to assemble a profile of you and your affinities. These profiles can contain shocking levels of detail—including your age, income, shopping habits, health problems, sexual proclivities, and ZIP code—right down to the number of rooms in your house and the number of people in your family. Although trackers don’t identify their subjects by name, the data they compile is so extensive that “you can find out who an individual is without it,” says Maneesha Mithal of the Federal Trade Commission.

How does the technology work?

The GOP's rude awakening on health-care repeal

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, January 21, 2011

Wednesday's vote to repeal President Obama's health insurance reform law was supposed to be a crowning triumph. We heard confident GOP predictions that cowed Democrats would defect in droves, generating unstoppable momentum that forced the Senate to obey "the will of the people" and follow suit. The Democrats' biggest domestic accomplishment would be in ruins and Obama's political standing would be damaged, perhaps irreparably.

What actually happened, though, is that the Republican majority managed to win the votes of just three Democrats - all of them Blue Dogs who have been consistent opponents of the reform package anyway. In terms of actual defectors, meaning Democrats who changed sides on the issue, there were none. This is momentum?

Bill Maher on Jon Stewart's Rally

Bill Maher took on Jon Stewart for claiming during his rally that there are extremists on both the Right and the Left.

Just Libertarianism?

from Talking Points Memo

TPM Reader SW wrote in this morning cautioning that we make clear that opposing all civil rights legislation on libertarian grounds doesn't mean you don't support civil rights. I think this is far from an uncontested claim. And since the Rand Paul situation is going to be raising it to such high salience I wanted to share SW's email with you and give you my thoughts on the underlying question.

First here's SW's email.

You write that Rand Paul is "...against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act and supporting abolishing the Department of Education..."

It's worth noting that Libertarians are against the Civil Rights Act, but not against civil rights. Indeed you'll find no stronger defender of civil rights of any type than libertarians. For us its a matter of approach. A different means to the same end. But the means does matter both in principal and practice. I think you understand this, but the way you characterize Paul's policy positions gave me pause.

He's not against civil rights, people with disabilities, or against educating today's youth.

Let's start the conversation by agreeing that as a technical matter, this is true. Libertarianism is a political philosophy rooted in a belief in radical limitations on state power. And I'm inclined to follow my friend Mike Lind's argument that unlike a lot of mishmash conservative claptrap libertarianism is a political philosophy I can disagree with but still recognize as internally consistent and rooted in important principles. As Mike wrote once, I simply think its assumptions and understanding of human nature are off. But this is hardly the end of the story.

Political philosophy can never be free of history. And there is no denying that similar states rights or libertarian arguments have been the arguments of choice for those who want to defend racial discrimination since avowed defenses of racial prejudice and subordination became publicly unacceptable outside some parts of the South in the early second half of the last century. That's simply a fact. In principle, it doesn't delegitimize libertarian political philosophy. But we don't live in classrooms or treatises. We live in an actual world where history and experience can't be separated from philosophy.

When he ran for President in 1964 Barry Goldwater ran on opposition to federal Civil Rights legislation on what he claimed were states rights grounds. And there's some reason to believe that for him that really was what it was about. But it is entirely clear that his political punch came from supporters in the South who wanted to keep Jim Crow in effect. Again, that's just a fact.

So that's the history.

Then there is the simple matter of priorities. To a degree the argument Paul is making is something like saying that I don't like rape or murder, I just don't believe in a police force to prevent it or a judiciary to punish the offenders. The reason we, albeit imperfectly, have equality before the law and in the society at large (in terms of public accommodations and so forth) on racial grounds in the whole of the United States is because of federal legislation that forced that to be the case. The reason we don't have white and colored drinking fountains or pools for whites only, etc. You can say you think all those things are awful and you may be telling the truth. But what are you going to do about it? The variant of libertarianism which Paul espouses, while internally consistent in theory and separate from race, has you saying, I wouldn't do anything about it -- though I'd decry it as an individual.

Folks who espouse this kind of philosophy deserve to be held to account for that fact, whatever their inner beliefs about race and equality may be.

And having said all this, I'd be remiss not to say that an awful lot of folks in the South seem to have these views and theories of the constitution that are completely divorced from history that end up bringing them to these conclusions. As one observer said in a totally different context about the Nation of Islam, they may not be looking for trouble, but they sure do seem to find it.

S.C. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer Compares Helping Poor to Feeding Stray Animals

South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer, who hopes to succeed fellow Republican Mark Sanford as his state's governor, drew a comparison between government help for poor people and "feeding stray animals" – who, he noted, "breed."

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals," Bauer said during a town hall meeting, as the Greenville News reported over the weekend. "You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."

As the Greenville News notes, more than half of the students in South Carolina participate in a program that allows them to get their lunch for free, or at a reduced cost.

Bauer later said he wasn't saying those who receive government help "were animals or anything else."

He added that his metaphor was taken out of context, WSOCTV reports, and added that "maybe the stray animals wasn't the best metaphor."

Bauer made the comment as part of an argument that people should lose government benefits if they fail drug tests or don't attend parent-teacher conferences or PTA meetings.

"Look folks, if you receive goods or services from the government and you don't attend a parent-teacher conference, bam, you lose your benefits," he said. In a follow-up story, the Greenville News reports that Bauer said "he would penalize only adults and that he never advocated taking away a child's free or reduced-price lunch. His speech was about breaking the cycle of dependence on government aid, he said."

During the town hall meeting, Bauer said he "can show you a bar graph where free and reduced lunch has the worst test scores in the state of South Carolina." He added: "So how do you fix it? Well you say, 'Look, if you receive goods or services from the government, then you owe something back.'"

South Carolina Democrats responded harshly to the comments, and there were calls for Bauer to apologize and to drop his gubernatorial bid. Some in his own party were also critical, with Republican state Rep. Harry Cato saying Bauer "has gone overboard."