About this site

By "this site" is meant two sites which form a continuum:

1.  The original blog which ran from 2006 to 2009;
2.  The current blog which has run from 2009 until now.

Both are active - the original blog still gets quite a deal of traffic but posts are generally on the current one.

It began as a political outlet concerned with a third force in politics - the oligarchical "them", which in 2006 most people hadn't researched and didn't fully understand the extent of.  Quickly the blog became a sort of magazine because there were just too many other interesting things to write about as well in many fields, from technology to cuisine.

The name came from an article on China, written in 2006, which refers to Deng Ziaoping:

According to Deng Xiaoping, in order to eventually overcome, China should adopt the ancient maxim of "hiding brightness and nourishing obscurity," and Beijing adds: "to bide our time and build up our capabilities" and again: "to yield on small issues with the long term in mind."

A Short Thought On The National SecuLar Society's Victory On Prayer In Public Meetings

Not God botherers, more godless bothered.

What sort of mind does these things?

AK Haart wrote, on the topic of electric cars:

We run into difficulties when people say things of such mind-boggling stupidity that we almost wonder at their sanity. Why does he/she say such things? It's nonsense.  I’m not speaking of specific slogans here, but conceptual frameworks which may just about make sense internally, but which are obviously in wild conflict with other, more rational frameworks. Examples are not difficult to find.

Let's open with this one from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, via This is True, via email:

[think big] but don't hold your breath

A man who doesn't do things by halves:

Dalton Chiscolm is unhappy about Bank of America's customer service - really, really unhappy. Chiscolm in August sued the largest US bank and its board, demanding that "1,784 billion, trillion dollars" be deposited into his account the next day. He also demanded an additional $US200,164,000, court papers show.

Attempts to reach Chiscolm were unsuccessful. A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.

"Incomprehensible," US District Judge Denny Chin said in a brief order released in Manhattan federal court. "He seems to be complaining that he placed a series of calls to the bank in New York and received inconsistent information from a 'Spanish woman,'" the judge wrote. "He apparently alleges that checks have been rejected because of incomplete routing numbers."

Would you be able to write that amount in numeral form?

[late evening listening] dearieme presents tiny and truck parham

[devices] with one function only

Mark Fu has an amusing post. Do you know what those devices are in the photo above? They are sleeves for the bar to hold the weights in and I'd guess 'd one kilo each. They used to in Russia. Mark asks:

Some things have just one function that justifies their existence; an umbrella for instance. Scuba gear is another that comes to mind. Since most of us are weight lifters in one manner or another, we have all run into barbell collars.

They have no other apparent use. Sure, you could use the ones pictured above at the dinner table to hold nice linen napkins, but I doubt any of us would actually do that.

So are we in agreement that barbell collars have only one function?

He then points us to an article here. Now my two observations are:

1. Was the guy so small that he could do that?

2. Did the guy have a brain in the first place?

All lifters have run into the newbie who wanders around like a lost sheep or the guy who spends half his time in front of the mirror, seeing if his biceps have grown any since he did a set of exercises. I've never run into anyone like this though. :)