Age Sage

BaguaKicksAss, About your comment that bagua has made your arms stronger: A lot of the arm strength in the internal MAs comes from whole-body structure. Instead of relying on the flexation and contraction of biceps and triceps muscles, along with the traps and other muscles of the shoulders and upper back, we're activating fascia (I believe) and using joint alignment more efficiently so our unified body does the lifting and holding more than the arms themselves do.

Reminder: This seminar is coming up in a few weeks! Anyone interested in going, please check out the details using the link in the previous post. To get the early bird discount, pre-register by March 10.

I'm pretty sure that my name is one of a kind, and on top of that I'm all over Teh Interwebz, including address and phone thanks to organizations I belong to. So, for privacy's sake I keep a nom do cyberspace on forums. I don't troll and I try to be courteous but I just like to keep my private info, private.

Hm. That poor guy really got the short end of the stick on all fronts. Edison, Marconi, the government... and he ends up in poverty and near obscurity. Fat lot of good his brilliance did him. He could have used some business courses. :/

Didn't Tesla short out the municipal electric plant and blow out building windows in Colorado Springs, CO with his "wireless electricity" experiments? Seem to recall that he was banished from that city forever.

Many women don't have the luxury of high-falootin' thinking on lofty forums like Tao Bums. They're too busy juggling kids, jobs, housework, husbands/partners and all that mundane real stuff. That seems more like Tao in practice than in theory, to me.

Oh, this is a fun topic. Male humans are big and muscular ("external" power), and territorially aggressive (desire power) because they are wired to compete with other human males for access to fertile females and the resouruces to support those females and their offspring (sired, the male hopes, by himself). Female humans' energy focuses on gestating, birthing and nourishing offspring ("internal" power), which puts great stress on the body. If they had to expend a lot of energy building and maintaining a heavier skeletal frame and bulkier muscle, there would be less energy to put into the huge demands of feeing a growing fetus, producing milk, etc. Females are wired to be attracted to males who have territory and resources (power, money in modern parlance) because that's necessary for maintaining the females through pregnancy and nursing, and for maintaining the raising of offspring. When you get down to it, it's all about genetic replication and economics (the "eco" in economics is the same "eco" that's in ecology, btw).

I think there is a difference between what we find emotionally attractive, and what makes our "nether body parts" go SCHWING without our having control over that. You can love someone and find them attractive on various levels, but they don't turn you on sexually that easily, so, you turn yourself on by using mental subterfuge and leading yourself. But a total stranger bumps into you on the bus or sidewalk, and you have an instantaneous sexual turn-on. What could that be? My guess is pheromones in the guise of body aroma or other substances that you aren't consciously aware of, and visual cues that are wired into our lizard brains and go back into antiquity -- also a thing we aren't consciously aware of. That person can make you go SHA-WIIIING, but if you got to know them, their personality might be a turnoff to you. You go back to your spouse whom you love for who they are, and use mental self-persuasion instead of pheromones to get aroused. "Animal magnatism" is totally based in physiologics of our sexual wiring; human attraction is a complex layer of much more.

Perhaps the need for layers is a desire for tangible rituals and special membership -- the feeling of belonging to a group, and of having a special connection to the earth and cosmos. I get the sense that Wicca, at least as expressed by the Wiccans here, is a nature-worshipping religion. As people are increasingly both urbanized and isolated, Wicca might offer a reconnection with both one's natural world (or at least one's perception of such a world) and with like-minded people that provide a sort of family. The rites become supplementary and supportive of those two aims.

Great dream! Cool variation on the "flying" theme.

As an aside, I live in Salem, Mass. , USA - a small city infamous for the execution of innocent women (and one man) in 1692, accused of witchcraft. That legacy has in turn attracted a population of Wicca practitioners to the city -- they claim that they feel an "energy" in this city that is attractive to them; I tend to think that it's just a scenic area with affordable rents! -- as well as self-proclaimed witches, clairvoyants and mediums. We have a thriving tourism industry that is drawn here by the "supernatural" and to some extent by the region's rich maritime and colonial history. The sense I get, is that they are a mix of nature-worship with a goth sensibility and fashion. They dress in black (apparently this is a power-drawing color) and wear pentagrams, sell crystals and potions that are herbally based, and while sometimes there seem to be some territorial spats between different Wiccan business owners, in general the Wicca folk here are industrious but unobtrusive; they hold their rites quietly, run legitimate businesses and try to fit into the community without "assimilating."

@ Marblehead -- Are you from Marblehead, Mass. or Marblehead, Ohio? Just wonderin'!

The park can be a great source of enlightment, huh? Among geese, in a flock there will usually be a dominant male-female pair (the "alpha" geese), and then a "pecking order" that goes down the line in rank and status. It rarely involves any kind of violence. Both ganders and geese (the name "goose" is also the term for a female of the species; "gander" is the male) will lower their heads and stretch out their necks, and charge at the individual they wish to show dominance over. If the other individual acts submissively, that's that and the rank is established, and everyone goes about his/her business. Sometimes (though I've never seen it) geese will tussle over dominance; they will pinch a beakful of the other bird's feathers and tug at each other till one backs down. The wing-spreading is a dominance display that ganders do, but I've never seen a goose do that, only the neck-stretching approach (by the way, mallard ducks and their domestic descendents do a somewhat similar head-down/neck-stretch dominance thing). I think the goose in your park is a male, based on the wing-spreading behavior. And, I suspect he is young. Wish we could discover what species he is! The muscovy duck is not impressed by the (alleged) gander's attempt to display dominance, because muscovies aren't wired for that behavior and thus not wired to interpret it. I think your muscovy is either a very young adult male or else a duck (as with geese, "duck" is also the term for the female of the species; "drake" is the male) -- females also have the red "warts," it's just that those growths are a lot smaller and less pronounced than on a drake. If your little friend is a female, that might explain why she is followin you. She sees you as a better drake than the gander who keeps speaking to her in a foreign language she doesn't understand, with that weird wing-spread!

The muscovy duck is not as familiar to some people as the mallard duck is. Mallards are the root and source for all of the domestic breeds of duck EXCEPT for the muscovy. Mallards (Anas platyrhyncos) belong to the grouping of ducks called "dabbling ducks," so called for their habit of dabbling -- getting their food by "rooting" in the mud and dunking their heads and upper bodies underwater briefly to grab water plants, fish, etc. Muscovies belong to another group called "tree ducks," so called because they actually roost and perch in trees, while dabbling ducks are strictly inhabitants of the ground and water. They have different behaviors and make different sounds. The lighter bird is a gans - a goose - of some kind, and I agree with you that it might well be a hybrid of a couple different goose species. And perhaps a juvenile as well, not yet in its mature form. It doesn't look like any domestic breed at all. The wing-spreading behavior you saw is very typical of geese; it's a dominance display behavior that ganders (male geese) do to establish their rank in the dominance hierarchy. He's trying to be the boss! The muscovy has no clue what the gander is talking about, since they "speak different languages," I'm not an expert on muscovies -- I raise dabbling ducks and domestic geese -- but I do believe that the raised crest on the head may indeed be an excitement response, or perhaps a defensive one (raising or puffing out the feathers to look bigger and more threatening, is a form of defense). Geese can interbreed with other species of geese and brants, even those of different genera (for example, Anser anser -- the Greylag goose and its domestic descendents -- can breed with the Canada goose, Branta canadensis, They produce sterile offspring, like a mule), but they cannot interbreed with ducks. There is a point, genetically, at which the two groups are just too different to be viable. Even though they aren't interfertile, ducks and geese can make perfectly good companions for each other. I have four ducks and an African gander. The gander lost his goose mate several years ago, and since then has been content hanging out with the ducks. They have similar enough habits that they are compatible.

I keep ducks and geese as pets, so this thread is a fun one! The black bird on the right is a Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata), a species of tree duck native to Brazil/South America but widely domesticated in the USA and around the world. The buff bird on the left was more of a challenge! It does look like a goose, but I don't recognize it. It's not a domestic breed or from either of the two species from which domestic geese are descended. The tree is as others already stated -- a weeping willow (Salix babylonica).

Apparently, I live a double life.

Oops. Double post. Fixed.

That Christian felt the need to publicly announce that no one knows the Way here, rather than PM a moderator and quietly ask to have his account removed, hints that he has some issues to deal with. May he find his Way successfully elsewhere.

Seriously, when it comes to parenting, one of the worst things parents can do is try to shame their kids into certain behaviors, or to force comparisons. Instead, the parents should strive to be role models for what they believe is best and right. The child is no fool. He will learn by example.

Why should Billy want to be like the Kid, either, if we don't think the Kid should want to be like Billy? Neither of the boys should want to be like anyone else! We shouldn't be encouraging either boy want to "make" someone else try to be like them. Billy the Kid, on the other hand, is someone that no one should want to emulate.

Coincidence! Or maybe some mysterious cosmic connection. Or not! Here's a cheer (for poker team cheerleaders, in case you ever play in a poker league) I got from a Mad Magazine back in the late 60s or maybe early 70s: Aces, aces back-to-back Fill that Straight with a One-Eyed Jack Come on team, plaaaaaaay Poker!

Damn! It we don't get to gloat, what else is there?!

I'll see your OMG and raise you one LOLZ. Great thread title.

I'm not a practicing Taoist or Buddhist, but I practice internal MAs and find taoist principles in much of the applied principles and concepts of these martial systems. I'm interested in discussions along those lines, and it looks like TTB has some of that kind of topic, so here I am!

Thanks, bubbles. That was informative.