Mark Sisson, Trusting Authorities (or Not) Based on Appearance

I’ve witnessed people discount or dismiss folks like Greg Glassman’s (of CrossFit) or Mark Rippetoe’s (of Starting Strength) training advice simply because they don’t “look the part.”

Welcome to CrossFit: Forging Elite Fitness
Starting Strength

‘To the Size of States There Is a Limit’: Measurements for the Success of Secession by Kirkpatrick Sale

(See also his Secession Is In the Air.)

Secession News

Joe Carter, Vatican Official Proposes Ecumenical Catechism

A layout of "Nicene Christianity" -- how helpful or short would such an ecumenical catechism be, if it focused solely on the Nicene Creed? Given the differences in doctrine between Protestant sects, how could it be anything more than that? Elaboration on the Nicene Creed would have to be limited.

Joe Carter criticizes those who prefer organic food and shop at WalMart for their tastes in consumption. Rod Dreher should write a response.

Grow Your Own By HEATHER GRAY and K. RASHID NURI
Urban Farming's Challenge to Corporate Agriculture

Wall Street Moves in for the Kill By MICHAEL HUDSON
The War on Consumers and Labor Heats Up

Jason Peters, Of Friendship, Proximity, and Graves

Sandro Magister, Lent 2010. Pope Benedict's Ash Wednesday

His torment is the disappearance of faith. His program is to lead men to God. His preferred instrument is teaching. But the Vatican curia doesn't help him much. And sometimes it harms him

(via the Western Confucian)

Zenit: Pontiff's Message for Vocation Prayer Day
Theme for 2010: "Witness Awakens Vocations"

An Interview with EF Schumacher.

Even if two cultures have compatible mores, that is to say that they both observe the same norms, but do so in different ways, the mixing of those two cultures in a single community can be detrimental to social harmony and cohesiveness, peace, and the common good. Even if we presume that members of two different cultures have good will, without a common language of etiquette, showing respect to others, and acts of of the virtues associated with justice, resentment and anger over perceived sleights and disrespectful actions can lead to division, distrust, and hostility. Even with good will and the desire to rectify misunderstandings, habits of mind and soul are difficult to break. (If immigrants are retrained, they may still judge the behavior of others in accordance with their native mores, depending upon how deeply ingrained they are or if they think their ways are superior.) There must be assimilation to a single way of thinking about these matters for a community to be united, a desire on the part of immigrants to change their ways. (Without the desire to change, can they be said to be lacking in good will? If they are educated to understand the importance of mores governing the way of life of a community then I cannot see how there is some culpability in their lack of desire to change.)

Canadian gold, Rousseau's Poland, and patria in the heart. by Paul J Cella

So the confederation of nobles that won a brief respite for Poland had become a cause célèbre in the late 18th century, and provides the backdrop in our story as Rousseau puts pen to paper. That this confederation’s purpose failed, even before Rousseau completed his work, only enhances the power of his subtle argument; for Rousseau’s purpose is to speak more broadly than the particulars of his age in Poland. His purpose concerns how a people might forge their patriotic devotion even bereft of a secure territory or state. As Kendall summarizes, “let the Poles build their republic in their own hearts, beyond the reach of foreign sword.” How this feat — which, as I say, more recent history confirms the Polish people, like few peoples on earth, have been more than equal to — might be accomplished: that is the theme of Rousseau’s Poland

Perhaps piety is possible, even if "bereft of a secure territory or state"; but one must have at least a people to which one belongs. A "proposition nation" does not produce the ties of loyalty that are needed for there to be a strong group identity that can weather disaster.

Katherine Dalton, On Friendship

Well, let us snap our cellphones shut and use the word correctly: even so, there are friends and there are friends. The first sort includes those people we enjoy seeing maybe often, maybe not, learn something from, swap stories with, leave the children with, borrow books from, or work with compatibly. We reach out to them (and they to us) feeling various degrees of affection and need. Most of us require an extended social network to keep us mentally and morally awake, and for a laugh, too, and if these friends are people we can weave in and out of our lives without heartbreak, they are nonetheless dear. They respond, they amuse, and they sometimes shelter us in a way that shows as clear as paint that the world is full of goodness and not just evil. Nor do they generally require an enormous amount of time. A man who cannot keep friendships like these in good repair isn’t trying.

But the friends who are our best and closest friends are another matter entirely. They are rare, and irreplaceable, and to those of us temperamentally inclined to look at things a certain way, they seem to be one of the many excesses of a Creation that is so overflowing with good things that there is a great deal of undeserved extra. We have our families, who are stuck with us; how fortunate we are also to have our intimate friends, who are not.

Finding friends like these seems to be a matter of grace or luck, though keeping them requires time and effort, tact and finally love. Beyond fourth grade there is no instant best-friending; real friendship needs a patina. It has to be proven in order to be. It needs presence, too; communion is too subtle a matter to establish itself well long-distance. You can maintain friendships across the country, but you can’t really grow them; not without visits in between. (At least I can’t. The one exception I’d make is for letters, since a written letter can be almost as expressive as a face.) It’s very hard to be there for someone long-distance, either; in times of crisis there is no substitution for the laying on of hands. Outside of the necessity of your kids knowing their grandparents, keeping an old friend at hand is the strongest argument I know for everybody to stop moving already.

Jason Peters, (Mostly) Against Movies

I know there are some well-made movies out there. I don’t deny this. I have probably seen some of them. What I deny is that you can reach a certain age and still be addicted to this form of entertainment, that you can “go to the movies” intending not to see something in particular but intending simply to “go to the movies” or “take in a movie” or, because it’s Friday, “rent a movie.” At a certain age you must come to prefer your book and a chair by the fire, or the pleasures of argument with friends over beer; otherwise, I own, you must admit some unflattering things about yourself.

Let it be said—and then let us be done with the matter—that movies are inferior to books and conversation. If I allow that bad books are inferior to good movies, or that good movies are more to be desired than dull conversation, I hasten to add that movie-watching is never the same as reading—and it is certainly not as strenuous as engaging in dull talk. Movie-watching is like Gilligan’s exercise regimen: lifting bamboo poles weighted with empty coconut shells.

Moving-watching is to reading what phone sex is to sex.

The Lobbying-Media Complex By Sebastian Jones (via AmCon)

Zenit: Making the New Evangelization More Than a Nice Idea
San Antonio Archbishop Calls Out to Laity

Archbishop José Gomez's letter (pdf

Cows, Condos and All the Rest By GEORGE WUERTHNER
The Geography of Agriculture and Sprawl in the West

A Country of Serfs By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Rule by Oligarchs

Is More Better? Rethinking Consumption - Inner Compass 817

Defense Review: Vickers Combat Applications Sling (VCAS) by Larry Vickers and Blue Force Gear: This two-point tactical rifle sling may be just the ticket for your tactical training.

Life After RC: Revisiting forgiveness

Once again, the comments give us an idea of what distorted notion of charity is in currency in LC circles. If Dr. Conrad Baars were around, he'd have a lot of potential patients among LCs and members of RC.

Giselle also writes: The face of conservative Mexico. If the Legion is suppressed, what impact will this have on the Church in Mexico? How badly is the Church losing faithful to other sects? Is the Church doing enough to address the corruption and injustice of the political economy? (How big of a threat are the drug cartels to priests and religious?) Can the Church do more to promote relocalization there?

Sandro Magister, Ambrosian Conflicts. Biffi Bashes, Milan Lashes Back (via NLM)

Jimmy Moore, Low-Carb Community Responds To Whole Foods Exclusively Marketing A Low-Fat, Vegetarian Diet(via Mark's Daily Apple)

Hrm. Mark Sisson on running.

Energy Transitions and the Next "Paradigmatic Image of the World" by David Murphy

(original)

Asia Times: Singapore lets the crapshoot begin
By Muhammad Cohen

Resorts World Sentosa CEO Tan Hee Teck (L) �and Lim Kok Thay, Genting Group's chairman and CEO, pose with Chinese lion dance performers after officiating the opening of hotels at Resorts World Sentosa integrated casino resort in Singapore January 20, 2010. (Reuters/Daylife)

Visitors walk under a dome structure leading out from the casino, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010 in Singapore. Singapore's first casino-resort partially opened Wednesday, a key part of a government plan to reduce reliance on manufacturing and brand the tightly controlled city-state as a cosmopolitan Asian capital. Resorts World Sentosa, built by Malaysia's Genting Bhd for US$5 billion, opened 1,340 rooms in four hotels, including a Hard Rock hotel and a property designed by architect Michael Graves. (AP/Daylife)

An aerial view shows the site of the soon-to-be-opened Resorts World Sentosa casino on Singapore's Sentosa Island February 11, 2010. Singapore will open its first casino on Sunday, coinciding with the start of the Chinese New Year, as the city-state makes the latest roll of the dice to turn itself into a playground for the rich. (Reuters/Daylife)

Chairman of Resorts World Sentosa and the Genting Group, Tan Sri Lim Kok Thay, buys tips for his first play, Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010 in Singapore. Resorts World Sentosa, built by Malaysia's Genting Bhd for US$4.7 billion, opened Singapore's first casino Sunday. (AP/Daylife)

Interior view of Resorts World Sentosa in Singapore Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010. Resorts World Sentosa, built by Malaysia's Genting Bhd for US$4.7 billion, opened Singapore's first casino Sunday. (AP/Daylife)

A lion dancing troupe performs at the entrance to the Resorts World Sentosa casino on Singapore's Sentosa Island before its opening February 14, 2010. Singapore's first casino, a key part of a drive to boost tourism revenue and please wealthy visitors, opened it doors on Sunday, Lunar New Year -- the most auspicious day of the Chinese calendar. (Reuters/Daylife)

A croupier waits for gamblers in front of a roulette wheel inside the Resorts World Sentosa casino on Singapore's Sentosa Island February 14, 2010. Singapore's first casino, a key part of a drive to boost tourism revenue and please wealthy visitors, opened it doors on Sunday, Lunar New Year -- the most auspicious day of the Chinese calendar. (Reuters/Daylife)