Sometimes I think my parents went a little overboard with guilt-based raising. Unless everyone walks around feeling guilty without talking about it, I feel I live in a world where most people live in purposeful obliviousness to the minor harms they do people every day, whereas I do anything wrong and it haunts me. I read about these fearless ( Read more... )

I’ve been reading two books, “Our Culture, What’s Left of It,” by Theodore Dalrymple, and “Traveling on Grace Street” by Jeff Blake (both in my Kindle). Dalrymple is a medical doctor who has worked in prisons, on battlefields, and in impoverished African nations, while Blake seems to have made a mission of meeting the most spiritual people of his ( Read more... )

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/08/18/kseniya_ryzhova_and_tatyana_firova_russian_athletes_kiss_on_winners_podium.htmlRead more... )

So, I turned down two invitations for my Saturday afternoon because I already had plans with a “friend” who blew me off to go shopping with someone else, and didn’t even apologize. We had been friends back in Taizhou, and I’m remembering why I let her go; she pulled this stuff back then, too ( Read more... )

I read a biography of Bill Clinton that ended with his announcement of running for president (Clinton was president when it was written). Upon reflection, I think I understand him a lot better. I never liked him, but now I understand him. He and I were both raised by strong, intelligent women (my mother, his grandmother, key teachers of mine, his ( Read more... )

During dinner I had one of the most intense discussions of private emotions I’ve had since I moved to China, and the irony of it is, the discussion was of why she couldn’t feel intense emotions. It all had to do with family issues, and while I can’t go into detail about it, it made perfectly good sense no matter the “cultural barriers” between ( Read more... )

Mind: Yesterday I played chess with Rich, an engineering student here.  The last time we played, he mopped up the board with me.  He'd been trained as kid, playing every day in a class, had homework, all that stuff.  But this time I was much better focused, the rust was shaken off, and I won three out of four tough games.  He said I controlled the ( Read more... )

We live in a society in which the Mind slowly triumphs over the other two members of the Male Trinity. I do not mean that a single mind is at the helm, but rather the Mind is subverting the Heart and the Penis.  The Heart and Penis are older than the Mind, but the Mind's inventiveness has completely changed our surroundings. Now we live in cities ( Read more... )

As I explained in my post on "Building my Penis Side", I started off strong of the Mind so my Penis side was undeveloped (but of course of great natural size and ability), but my heart had issues, too.  I cared more about the people I saw on TV more than I did for my peers.  To this day I don't like watching humiliation based humor; once I like a ( Read more... )

In the original Star Trek, back when Kirk, Spock, and McCoy were played by Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelly, these three were a perfect trinity of Penis, Mind, and Heart respectively.  Spock was Logical, McCoy was Emotional, and Kirk was the Decider, the Action man who challenged the odds and got the girl (but for whom love was so unusual that when he did ( Read more... )