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n3vErmind

Just for the record, I launched this OP almost a year ago. I've been off the reefer for almost two years. I subscribe to the spirit if not the letter of the 11th step of AA - "continued to increase our conscious contact with (_______________)"; fill in the blank - God, Higher Power, Dharma, Tao. I absolutely believe chi kung and nei kung offer a viable means to free oneself from addictive behavior, but in my case, progress is essential to keep complacency from dragging me back into my old habits, and I'd bet that this applies to others as well.

15 Ways to Avoid Making a Major Decision from From How to Be, do, or Have Anything by Laurence Boldt. Which ones do you use? I've mastered all of them at one time or another, but right now I'm on #s 12 - 15. Almost every one of these roadblocks could be construed as figments of delusion, as the term delusion is used in Buddhist psychology; a failure to perceive inner and outer reality without distortion. 1. Fail to recognize the need to make one. 2. Resist change (seek security in sameness). 3. Fail to adequately weigh the potential positive benefits. 4. Create distractions (or situational chaos). 5. Create conflict (or interpersonal chaos). 6. Get lost in detail (compulsive control). 7. Get lost in routine (structural control). 8. Dump responsibility on others (actively shift the locus of control). 9. Wait for permission (passively shift the locus of control). 10. Hide in depression, i.e., nothing will work (deny locus of control). 11. Escape into fantasy (avoid the limits of earthy existence). 12. Wait for the perfect time (deny the shortness of life). 13. Wait to perfect yourself (obsess on winning approval). 14. Wait for all the possible information and alternatives to be considered. 15. Deny your capacity to handle the consequences and demands of your decisions (deny your abilities). #16. Spending too much time in TheTaoBums!!

Shit New Age Guys Say -

This Ripe Moment By James Howard Kunstler on January 9, 2012 9:21 AM http://kunstler.com/blog/2012/01/this-ripe-moment.html People like to rip Kunstler because things never seem to get as bad as he says they are. I believe he's just a few months ahead of schedule. He's my favorite social/urban theorist and a popular source for urban geographers/planners. The narcolepsy of the long Yuletide draws to a close and the world reawakens to its self-spun web of mutually reinforcing fiascos. Just before the holiday, a sense of futility darkened the European banking landscape as cascading sovereign default looked more and more inevitable. It was halted by a bazooka-caliber currency swap Ponzi that allowed the European Central Bank to pretend it had a $700-billion bag of sugar-plums to hand out to more than 200 banks there. That gambit will only keep up the appearance of normality for a couple of months, until the late winter bond rollover provokes a new crisis stage. Likewise, in the USA, some pressure-cooked December employment statistics gave the false impression of a brightening jobs picture, but no major news network dared to glance behind the curtain at the short-term holiday hires, the uncounted long-term jobless, the ones who don't show up at the government offices anymore, the ones who stopped getting checks, the legions of the hopeless. A nation that can't call 'bullshit' on its own lies deserves all the suffering that might rain down upon it, and that's exactly where we are heading as things economic morph into things political. How quaint the current Republican jousting tournament will seem in a few months when real violence rides in on the zephyrs of springtime. Each new primary is like the unloading of a Ringling Brothers clown car. There is an inverse relationship between the seriousness of these times and the laughable personalities vying for a place in history. Are they running for high office or auditioning for the role of Parson Weems in a new Lifetime Network TV mini-series? Are you charmed by their absurd casual clothing? Comforted by their know-nothing jabber about the "game-changer" of shale oil and their sincere doubts about the climate change "story?" Is it morally satisfying to know that one or another of these candidates won't drink a beer? (They'd make good Ayatollahs.) In what sort of Creationist parthenogenetic incubator are such pietistic idiots hatched? What these sanctimonious pricks don't realize they are doing is destroying the very legitimacy of the idea that we're capable of governing ourselves per se. This is the long-term direction of life in North America, by the way - a breakup into small autonomous governing units. It's just that the current cast of characters brings an aura of low comedy to the process. By the time they're through with Washington, the credibility of Federalism will sound like a knock-knock joke. As for the other side, the "folks" now occupying the White House and its folkster-in-chief, Mr. Obama - the time has come to abandon them. Their failure is complete with the new national security act that allows for suspension of due process of law. The cheek of Mr. Obama in offering a "signing statement" to the effect that his administration would not enforce the law! - as he signed it! For one thing, Obama tacitly invited his own impeachment by declaring he had no intention of enforcing federal law, since enforcement is the chief duty of his office. If John Boehner were not himself such a fraud, he would have started a motion for impeachment before sundown that day. Occupy Wall Street will seem like a mere harvest dance when we look back from the uproars later in 2012. Both organized parties have managed to banish the rule of law in America. Both parties need to be driven into the wilderness of history and the rule of law has to be rescued from the oblivion they sent it to. What group of clear-thinking adults can get behind that simple project? What voices will resolve out of the phenomenal noise of gadget America, with its deafening tweets, incessant advertising, instant messaging, idiotic robo-calling, and ever-present flat-screen assault on the senses? I discern the distant sound of rebellion, a spirit that won't be appeased by bytes of Disney-babble from the pandering snouts of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, Paul or Obama. They are interested only in keeping a set of suicidal rackets going. All the yammer about "freedom" and "liberty" is hollow when the rule of law is AWOL. This ripe time is the natural moment for a true opposition to rise. A few months from now neither major party will have a credible candidate or a plausible platform of ideas. This will be painfully obvious. What angels and demons will rush into that awful vacuum?

There were some pretty rough conditions expressed in this thread that I've been thinking about these last few weeks. I invite everyone who's interested to check out my book recommendation of "The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World" in the Book Section, because I think a lot of what we lay on ourselves can be eliminated with some fairly straightforward adjustments to the way we perceive our inner and outer worlds.

Right, the power of the evil unions are what established all the military bases and governmental facilities in colorado. Right, Joe. As for my 2nd paragraph, I'm up to speed on the connection between maintaining consumer culture and the need for enhanced military presence, keeping shipping lanes open just being one of the necessities. You know perfectly well the context, amongst access to cheap labor and raw materials, that I was creating. And, yes, I do hold consumer cultures, not just US but throughout the world, as complicit in international strife due to their bingeing. Being the resident cheerleader for the Establishment, I'm sure you're going to label me as another guilt-ridden Trotskyite for saying so. So be it. We harvest our data from different sources.

Your specious argument doesn't convince me of Heinberg's idiocy. If pressed to put his point in context I'd say he was referring to the ripple effect that public sector jobs have on local economies. The state of Colorado, where I was stationed and lived as a civilian, has dozens of military bases and governmental facilities and the state has enjoyed greater economic stability than states with a smaller federal payroll. This is not to suggest that public sector jobs pay for themselves but their effect on unemployment is significant. Addressing why we choose to maintain a consumer culture and global military presence seems to be a more pertinent issue than squabbling about how to afford it. It makes little sense to characterize the nature of our entitlements in the absence of military expenditures, because consumer culture requires a global military presence to maintain shipping lanes, access to resources, lexploitation of labor markets by host governments, etc. We're a culture that cannot function without enormous inputs of energy and raw materials; like the feeble attempts to coax Los Angeles drivers into public transportation, our country is one giant experiment in unsustainability that's just too big to let go of.

As someone who grew up in the Bay Area, I can tell you that the place is historically rich in opportunities for studying all things Asian. San Francisco was the major port of entry for Bhuddhists coming to America from china and Japan. It still has it's share of problems endemic to American metropolis' but there are many wonderful reasons for moving there. I wish I could move back but my wife's job here in LA is just too good to give up. Master Kam-chuen Lam, author of "The Way of Energy" has moved from the UK to Oakland, CA - http://www.lamkamchuen.com/lamkamchuen.com/News_%26_Events/News_%26_Events.html I'd be taking regular workshops from him if I were back in town. Across the bay in Fairfax is none other than Bruce Frantzis and his www.energyarts.com If I could move back to Sonoma County in the North Bay I'd make Teja Bell my first choice - he's at http://www.qigongdharma.com/ Hope this helps. Scott

Here's another forecast by one of my other favorite researchers, Richard Heinberg. I know this subject matter has little to do with Taoism, if we exclude the pertinence of ascendency and descendency of empires...Change, in other words. Call me a hopeless romantic but I still see the pertinence of Taoist/anarchist communities springing up to take the place of unsustainable, spiritually impoverished, fossil-fuel dependent suburban consumer asylums. Not everyone will be ready for the adaptations ahead, but I like to think that Bums can get a valuable "Heads Up!" "Empire in Decline" Geopolitical Implications of Peak Everything From Solutions Journal, January Richard Heinberg is a Senior Fellow-in-Residence of Post Carbon Institute and a member of the Editorial Board of Solutions. He is the author of ten books including The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. Portions of this article are adapted from The End of Growth. From competition among hunter-gatherers for wild game to imperialist wars over precious minerals, resource wars have been fought throughout history; today, however, the competition appears set to enter a newand perhaps unprecedentedphase. As natural resources deplete, and as the Earths climate becomes less stable, the worlds nations will likely compete ever more desperately for access to fossil fuels, minerals, agricultural land, and water. Nations need increasing amounts of energy and raw materials to produce economic growth, but the costs of supplying new increments of energy and materials are burgeoning. In many cases, lower-quality resources with high extraction costs are all that remain. Securing access to these resources often requires military expenditures as well. Meanwhile the struggle for the control of resources is re-aligning political power balances throughout the world. This game of resource musical chairs could well bring about conflict and privation on a scale never seen before in world history. Only a decisive policy shift toward resource conservation, climate change mitigation, and economic cooperation seems likely to produce a different outcome. Americas Resource Geopolitics The United Statesthe worlds current economic and military superpower entered the industrial era with a nearly unparalleled endowment of natural resources that included an abundance not only of forests, water, topsoil, and minerals, but also of oil, coal, and natural gas. Like all other nations, the U.S. has approached resource extraction using the low-hanging fruit principle. Today its giant onshore reservoirs of conventional oil are largely depleted, and the nations total oil production is down by over 40 percent from its peak in 1970despite huge discoveries in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. Its total coal resources are vast, but rates of extraction probably cannot be increased significantly and will likely begin to decline within the next decade or two. Unconventional hydrocarbon resources (such as natural gas liberated by the hydrofracking of shale deposits) are beginning to be commercialized, but come with high investment costs and worrisome environmental risks. U.S. extraction rates for many minerals have been declining for years or decades, and currently the nation imports 93 percent of its antimony, 100 percent of its bauxite (for aluminum), 31 percent of its copper, 99 percent of its gallium, 100 percent of its indium, over half its lithium, and 100 percent of its rare earth minerals.[1] America has much to lose from any substantial reshuffling of global alliances and resource flows. The nations leaders continue to play the game of geopolitics by 20th century rules: they are still obsessed with the Carter Doctrine and focused on petroleum as the worlds foremost resource prize (a situation largely necessitated by the countrys continuing overwhelming dependence on oil imports, due in turn to a series of short-sighted political decisions stretching back at least to the 1970s). The ongoing war in Afghanistan exemplifies U.S. inertia: most geostrategic experts agree that there is little to be gained from the conflict, but withdrawal of forces is politically unfeasible. The United States maintains a globe-spanning network of over 750 military bases[2] that formerly represented tokens of security to regimes throughout the worldbut that now increasingly provoke resentment among the locals. This enormous military machine requires a vast supply system originating with American weapons manufacturers that in turn depend on a prodigious and ever-expanding torrent of funds from the Treasury. Indeed, the nations yawning budget deficit largely stems from its trillion-dollar-per-year, first-priority commitment to maintain its military-industrial complex. The U.S. currently engages in special operations in 120 countries[3], using elite commando units skilled in assassination, counterterrorist raids, foreign troop training, and intelligence gathering. These teams can be deployed to support U.S. geopolitical interests in a variety of ways, including influencing elections or supporting factions within revolutions. The U.S. also maintains the worlds most lavishly funded ($80 billion in 2010) intelligence bureaus, the CIA and NSA, which conduct electronic and human information gathering activities in virtually every country on the planet.[4] Yet despite Americas gargantuan expenditures on intelligence gathering and high-tech weaponry, and its globe-spanning ability to project power and to influence events, its armed forces appear to be stretched to their limits having continuously fielded around 200,000 troops and even larger numbers of support personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan for the past decade, where supply chains are both vulnerable and expensive to maintain. In short, the United States remains an enormously powerful nation militarily, with thousands of nuclear weapons in addition to its unparalleled conventional forces, yet it suffers from declining strategic flexibility. The nation still retains an abundance of natural resources, but its consumption rates of many of those resources have grown to nearly insatiable levels, necessitating growing flows of resource imports from other nations. Meanwhile, its ability to pay for those imports is increasingly in question as its domestic economy shrinks due to financial system volatility, government spending cutbacks, high unemployment, an aging workforce, and shrinking average household net worth. For all of these reasons, the U.S. is widely characterized as an empire in decline. The Global Geopolitical Resource Landscape China is the rising power of the 21st century, according to many geopolitical pundits, with a surging military and plentiful cash with which to buy access to resources (oil, coal, minerals, and farmland) around the planet. Yet while it is building an imperial-class navy that could eventually threaten Americas, Beijing suffers from domestic political and economic weaknesses that could make its turn at the center of the world stage a brief one. These include limits to available coal resources, a domestic real estate bubble, weakness in its banking sector, falling demand for Chinese exports in the U.S. and Europe, and widespread local political corruption. Even as countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua reject American foreign policy, the U.S. continues to exert enormous influence on resource-rich Latin America via North American-based corporations, which in some cases wield overwhelming influence over entire national economies. However, China is now actively contracting for access to energy and mineral resources throughout this region, which is resulting in a gradual shift in economic spheres of interest. Africa is a site of fast-growing U.S. investment in oil and other mineral extraction projects (as evidenced by the establishment in 2009 of Africom, a military strategic command center on par with Centcom, Eucom, Northcom, Pacom, and Southcom), but the continent also a target of Chinese (and European) resource acquisition efforts. Proxy conflicts there between and among these powers may intensify in the years aheadin most instances, to the sad detriment of African peoples.[5] The US still maintains a dominant position in the Middle East, but the region is is characterized by extreme economic inequality, high population growth rates, political instability, and the need for importation of non-energy resources (including food and water). The revolutions and protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, and Yemen in early 2011 can be interpreted as showing the inability of young, growing, and largely unemployed populations to tolerate sharply rising food, water, and energy prices in the context of autocratic political regimes.[6] As economic conditions worsen, many more countriesincluding democratic nations outside the Middle East, the U.S includedcould become destabilized in much the same way. Americas best shot at expanding its oil interests lie in the deep oceans and the Arctic.[7] However, both military maneuvering and engineering-mining efforts will see diminishing returns as costs rise and payoffs diminish. Climate change is likely to exacerbate geopolitical rivalry with China, although it's important to recognize that climate risks will not be evenly apportioned. Unstable states will become more unstable, poor nations poorer. Many of the areas of greatest geopolitical risk are also most at risk for impacts from climate change. Equatorial regions are most likely to suffer from extreme drought and occasional catastrophic flooding, while some northern temperate regions may see some transitory benefit from warmingthough unpredictable weather will plague nearly every region. With the melting of Arctic ice, new mineral and energy resources in the northernmost portions of the planet will become accessible, as will new trade routes; this may lead to a Cold Rush of economic and military exploitation and open a new theater for international conflict.[8] Which raises the question: Can such consequences be averted, and how? The answer may hinge on whether, and in what ways, humanity chooses to compete or cooperate in response. Competition versus cooperation The worlds governments engage continually in both cooperative and competitive behavior, though sometimes extremes of these tendencies come to the forewith all-out conflict exemplifying unbridled competition. Geopolitics typically involves both cooperative and competitive strategies, with its long-term goal centering on the furtherance of national interest (including increased control of territory and access to resources). Recent decades have generally seen increasing international cooperation, showing up in the expansion of trade, the proliferation of treaties and conventions, and the development of international institutions for justice and conflict resolution. The UN, WTO, World Bank, International Criminal Court, as well as regional economic (e.g., Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO) and military (e.g., NATO) cooperation groups exemplify this trend. While some of these efforts appear to be geopolitically motivated, others seem to be genuine attempts to reduce both international tensions and global environmental problems while advancing human rights. This trend toward increasing international cooperation could see a reversal in coming years and decades. As noted above, history is replete with instances of resource scarcity fomenting conflict.[9] In such cases, competitive advantage typically resides either with nations that have domestic resources and the ability to defend them; or with nations that develop a vigorous, flexible, and motivated military force able to take advantage of other nations weaknesses in order to seize control of their resources. In addition to international conflict, a failure of human cooperation in the face of resource scarcity may also manifest as increasing conflict within nations. Since 1945, three-quarters of all wars have occurred within nations rather than between them, with most occurring in the worlds poorest countries.[10] About as many people may have died as a result of civil strife since 1980 as were killed in the First World War. Civil conflicts devastate poor nations by destroying essential infrastructure, driving human and capital flight, diverting scarce financial resources toward military spending, undermining social trust, aggravating existing food shortages, and spreading disease. If the path toward increasing competition leads to both internal and external conflict, then the resultfor winners and losers alike, in a full world seeing rapid resource depletionwill most probably be economic and ecological ruin accompanied by political chaos. Yet this is not the only outcome available to world leaders and civil society. A cooperative strategy is at least theoretically feasibleand its foundations already exist in institutions and practices developed during recent decades. The world has seen successful efforts to rein in commercial whaling, to ban the use of CFCs, and to respond to natural disasters. If we are to avert deadly resource competition in the future, further agreements on climate change mitigation and non-renewable resource conservation will be needed, along with cooperative efforts to stabilize population and engineer a comprehensive global energy transition. Some of these agreements are already under discussion. For many years, the UN has led cooperative scientific efforts to understand climate change (via the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC) and governmental efforts to combat it (via the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC). In international meetings beginning with the Kyoto Climate Change Conference of 1997, nations have discussed politically acceptable ways to cap global carbon emissions. A potential international mechanism for conserving non-renewable resources is outlined in the present authors book The Oil Depletion Protocol. An agreement along these lines would require nations each year to reduce oil production and imports by the annual global depletion rate (about 2.5 percent). [11] Cooperatively capping and diminishing both petroleum production and consumption in this way would reduce oil price volatility, promote energy conservation and conversion to alternative energy sources, and head off geopolitical struggle over dwindling petroleum supplies. Such a plan would likely work best in combination with national quota rationing programs for individuals and businesses; if annually shrinking quotas were tradable, energy misers would benefit financially while energy gluttons would have to pay extra.[12] The Oil Depletion Protocol has been endorsed by several city councils in the U.S. and by the Portuguese Parliament. Similar protocols could be applied to other internationally traded non-renewable resources. The protocol in itself is not likely to be enough. Measures are also needed to limit population growth, and to convert existing infrastructure to a low carbon future, especially in developing countries, where efforts can be made to bypass fossil fuel-dependent transport and food system altogether. All of the required effort need not come from governments. Grassroots conservation and cooperation efforts have already sprung up in the form of groups like Transition Initiatives, which have sprung up in hundreds of towns and cities around the world. Transition Initiatives got their start in 2005 in Britain through the work of a Permaculture teacher named Rob Hopkins. In his Transition Companion, Hopkins tells how he came up with the strategy, and sets forth a range of useful guidelines for groups.[13] Nearly all of Robs prose is saturated with irrepressible optimism: Transition Initiatives are not the only response to peak oil and climate change; any coherent national response will also need government and business responses at all levels. However, unless we can create this sense of anticipation, elation and a collective call to adventure on a wider scale, any government responses will be doomed to failure, or will need to battle proactively against the will of the people. . . . Rebuilding local agriculture and food production, localizing energy production, rethinking healthcare, rediscovering local building materials in the context of zero energy building, rethinking how we manage waste, all build resilience and offer the potential of an extraordinary renaissanceeconomic, cultural and spiritual.[14] Taken together, current cooperative efforts toward resource conservation, climate mitigation, and population stabilization are woefully insufficientas exemplified by failed climate talks, continued global population growth, and ever-heightening international competition for access to dwindling fossil fuels supplies. There are plenty of justifications for pessimism: after all, wont the first nations to engage in resource conservation lose economic advantage to those that engage in conquest and consumption maximization? Wouldnt even one major national holdout undermine a worldwide cooperative effort at climate protection? Dramatically expanding international and domestic cooperation at this worrisome moment in history may seem like a tall order. The only advantage to doing so is that it is the only path going forward that doesnt end in a global tragedy in which the fate of the winners is hardly preferable to that of the losers. References [1] U.S. Geological Survey, 2011, Mineral commodity summaries 2011: U.S. Geological Survey, 198 p. [2] Department of Defense, Base Structure Report Fiscal Year 2010 Baseline (A Summary of DoDs Real Property Inventory), 206p. [3] Tara McKelvey, The Age of Special Warfare: An in-depth look at U.S. special operations around the world (copyright 2010-2011). [4] Nick Turse, August 3,2011 (6:21 PM), Tomgram: Nick Turse, Uncovering the Militarys Secret Military, TomDistpatch.com. [5] Michael Klare, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (New York: Henry Holt, 2008), chapter 6. [6] Vicken Cheterian, The Arab Crisis: Food, Energy, Water, Justice, Energy Bulletin, Posted January 26, 2011. [7] Brice Pedroletti, China Seeks to Mine Deep Sea Riches, The Guardian, December 7, 2010. [8] Naval Postgraduate School, Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom, publication announcement for the second volume in the Arctic Security Project . [9] Philippe Le Billon, "The Political Ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts." Political Geography 20 (2001), 561584. [10] Colin H. Kahl, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World (Princeton University Press, 2006), accessed online August 8, 2011. [11] Richard Heinberg, The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse (Canada: New Society Publishers, 2006). [12] A proposal for tradable energy was proposed in the UK by the late economist David Fleming, and has drawn significant interest from government. See TEQs. [13] Rob Hopkins, Transition Companion (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2011). [14] Hopkins, Transition Handbook, (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2008), p.15.

Sorry, I may have falsely set you up. The book I own that contains the Lessons from the Masters of Huainan is The Book of Leadership and Strategy, not Thunder in the Sky: The Acquisition of Power.

This is who I'm voting for. Yes, she's real, and airs in my dreams every night.

I wanted to make a general point about the role of food and chi. I've read dozens of references to getting chi from food but for the longest time I thought "eh, BFD." That was before I was running my energy at will. After that, and following a 10-day fast, I noticed how much more powerfully my energy was. I stayed with a fairly pure diet for about a month after that fast and eventually found my way back to standard crappy American indulgences and I'm sure the current came down a few milliamps. So, my experience showed me beyond a reasonable doubt that the quality of the food and the chi was strongly related. If you're living on Jack-in-the-Box Tacos - 2/99cents - until payday, it will definitely have an effect.

This point is why I chose to list my assumptions first, framing a Taoist/anarchist model in a hypothetical post-industrial future. I think it's very easy, using both eastern and western thought, to underestimate the goodness of human nature. The eastern psychological model claims that nurture is the greater determinant of human personality, in the west, nature. I prefer the eastern model; at least it gives us a chance.

Yep, I have my Cleary translation in "On the acquisition of Power." As one reviewer said, "It's almost spooky how relevent these truths are for our modern age." True enough.

Here's a cool pic of my offspring - Natalie Jean. I wish I could come up with some measure of profundity to describe all that is new and wonderful and life-affirming about finally having my first child at 51 years of age, but there is nothing. I am merely more convinced that life is precious - all life, human and non-human, including entire ecosystems and all the plants and minerals that bring the miracle of life to fruition.

Our experience was similar following a 10-day fast; we don't have celiac, but we felt better without it, and Tim Ferriss (4-Hour Body) says if you replace wheat with beans and legumes you can lose 10-20 pounds the first month without exercise, and his reasoning seems sound. I eat a Lot of Buckwheat. If everyone knew the advantages they'd be buying it before the weekend is over. It's also great for working out.

Tonight I'm repeating a dish that went over well the first time and falls within our fitness goals. We used to serve spaghetti over pasta with sauted zucchini as a side, but we're trying to dispense with as many wheat products as we can, so I just served the sauce over the zucchini. The 15 year-old, who appears deadly allergic to anything that is not a refined carbohydrate or a meat product, gets to mop up the sauce with some mini baguets from Trader Joe's. I've also overcome my aversion to preparing a separate meal for her and the rest of the family, but I've conceded that my food choices would be a little weird (maybe not by TTB standards) and have accepted the need to cook more than one menu to keep everyone happy. Fighting over food with a fussy 15-yr old girl is futile.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/06/paul-repudiates-supporters-china-jon-huntsman-ad/ UPDATE - Ron Paul has repudiated the attack ad leveled at John Huntsman. The ad was composed by a supporter of Paul.

Yeah, right. Here's Ron Paul's hit piece on John Huntsman, raking him over the coals of primitive ethnocentrism because he pursued a career as diplomat, learned to speak fluent Chinese, and became US ambassador to China. I guess that makes all us Bums committed Maoists. To his credit, he's the only one who talks seriously about Eisenhower's warning of the power grab by an out of control military-industrial complex, or our militarized foreign policy. But that's precisely why he's been marginalized by the State. And here's the record of recess appts made by previous presidents. Reagan - 243 Bush I - 171 Clinton - 139 Bush II - 77 Obama - 29 what a surprise

Just to add another wrinkle in the equation... the 8 principles of zhan zhuang (Embracing Horse) as taught by my Nei kung instructor, and his instructor, Master Chu (www.chutaichi.com) are 1.head suspended 2.pelvis tucked in, toe in and knees out 3. chest concave 4. Body rounded 5. Shoulders and elbows lowered. 6. Waist loose 7. "Qua" loose 8. Deep breathing (diaphragmatic) " 'Toe in and knee out' means slightly pushing the knees outward and pulling the toes inward in such a manner as to create a tension in the tendons and the legs thus focusing most of the body weight on the heels and outer edges of the feet. The insides edges of the feet can be raised off the ground, if necessary, depending on the structure of the individual's foot. This aspect of alignment enhances the stability of the lower body." From "The Book of Nei Kung" I would add that the goal is to create a sense of roundedness in the legs as if you were holding a beachball with your knees. Standing on the edge of the feet stretches and recruits the iliotibial band. There is evidence that tendon and cartilege facilitate the movement of chi due to there piezoelectric quality. Tai Po

Thank you for that. I was looking for theory that could contribute to my understanding of my Nei kung practice and the manipulation of energy. http://www.neikung.com/neikung.shtml I believe that Master Chu's Nei kung is sufficient for me at this time, and probably has similar goals to the 8 Brocade work. Including the Brocades would be too much and not possible with my time constraints anyway. Regards, Scott