Nose Job

What the hell is wrong with people.

I've just been watching The Ultimate Fighter, which is a silly reality show where bunches of fighters live and train together.

At one point, an entire team of fighters allowed themselves to be subjected to Cranial Facial Release. This is a bullshit therapy where a balloon is inserted into the subject's nostril, which is then rapidly inflated with fluid. The idea is that the force of the expansion will be sufficient to alter and correct the positioning of the cranial bone structure.

This treatment was created by some Chiropractor back in 1921, and is absolute nonsense, but even if it were a real treatment for some condition or other, why would it a healthy bunch of athletes allow it to be done to them?

Keep in mind that these are tough people who are used to getting slugged really hard, and choked, and having arms and legs yanked apart. They were all kicking and screaming about how horrible it was.

Noticing how stupid this all looked, I spent about ten minutes on the Google, and found did some research. I didn't go to any sites that lambasted the procedure, but instead went to several that promoted it. I read what practitioners claimed it was doing, and their own theories. It sounded like absolute nonsense; dangerous nonsense.

And these guys were letting some witchdoctor blast their sinuses with sufficient force that is either doing nothing at all, or if powerful enough to do what is being attempted, could mess them up royally.

It's like going to the spa on a cruise ship. They have all these seaweed-based detoxing wraps, and stinky-mud facials, each of which is supposed to do a host of things to purify and detox and who knows what else. It is all presented in a glowing, matter-of-fact style, as if any part of were true.

I know tons of people who run to the Chiropractor, but who would never go to their MD for the same condition. Let's say you've hurt your shoulder. A Chiropractor will almost universally perform some sort of spinal alignment in amongst whatever he suggests. A Medical Doctor will treat your injury without the heavy, spinal bias. If your spine is crooked, he'll address that. If it isn't, he won't.

Maybe Chiropractors can help with actual, back-related issues, but they adjust spines for almost everything. People think Medical Doctors are just pill pushers, but I've been many times with a wide-range of issues, and more often than not get nothing pill related at all as part of my treatment.

Did you know that you can become a Chiropractor after 3 years of university with a C+ average. That scares me right off the bat. I don't want anybody who earned a C+ at university working on my spine. They were either lazy in school, or just maybe they worked really hard and it was the best they could do. Of course, that is just in ordinary old undergraduate work. Medical Doctors have to have a full undergrad degree, with much more medically appropriate classwork, and a minimum GPA of B+. It is so competitive, that rarely does anybody with less than an A average gets accepted. They cannot have slacked off or been dumb.

Medical Doctors start their medical training with degrees already packed with much of what a doctor needs to know. This is followed by another 4 years of strictly medical training towards a medical degree. Any slacking and they are out. After that, they work supervised in hospitals as doctors for three years to complete what is called a residency requirement. Many don't make it. At that point, they are fully licensed. Altogether that makes up 11 years of training.

And yet many think these kind of folks are somehow robots following the dictates of main-stream medicine. Robots? Really?

I bet that after the airing of the stupid balloon-up-the-nose nonsense that was shown on a reality program that tens of thousands of people will be interested in having it done to them. It will be a Gold Rush for people willing to inflate the noses of the gullible.

Doctors don't know anything, but quack nose inflators do?

Still not convinced? Think of it this way.

Suppose you had nothing wrong with you at all, and you went to a physician, maybe for a checkup. The good Doctor agrees that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. He then goes on to suggest that, although nothing is wrong with you, that you let him rapidly expand a balloon inside your sinuses, which he says will magically re-align your cranial bones, and hurt like hell. You ask why, and he honestly says, “because some people think it's a good thing.”

Would you jump for joy and say, “where do I sign up?” Of course you wouldn't. Likely, you'd seriously consider finding a new physician.

So why do so many people jump for joy when a nasal-balloon scam shows up, or a body detox, or a cleanse?

Wait? You say you believe in detox treatments? They all claim they are removing different things from your body. The universal ones are sugars, and carbs (usually listed separately for some reason), caffeine, cola drinks (which are actually sugar and caffeine and shouldn't have a separate category, and alcohol. OK, let's pretend they are all poisons and you want your body cleared of them all. What do you need to do to get rid of every hint of sugar and other carbs, caffeine, and alcohol? Nothing. All of those items are easily metabolized, and result in CO2, O2, and H2O. There is nothing left in a few hours at all other than two kinds of air and one kind of liquid, none of which are harmful to your body, and all of it leaves via the normal channels.

Let's also say your body were to get rid of every hint of sugar, other carbs, caffeine, and alcohol, what would the net result be? No problem with losing the caffeine or booze. You'd better be ready for a meal as without any carbs you'd be approaching starvation, but as your brain would stop functioning and die before you could take a bite you'd already be dead. Your brain needs glucose, a sugar, to function at all.

If there is anything REALLY harmful in you, it doesn't get removed by mud facials, green tea, seaweed, or kale; it's your kidneys, liver, and gut bacteria that do the work, depending if the poison is in your bloodstream or digestive tract.

How about a nice cleanse? Maybe you decide to totally fast for a while, or maybe with some nice juice. Your guts don't actually need cleaning, and doing so isn't doing them any favour. We all have a working relationship with our gut bacteria. They help break things down into a digestible form, and protect us from certain threats, and get to live off a small share of what we eat. Stop eating, and they start to die. The more that die off, the less healthy you are gonna be after your nice cleanse.

Maybe the motivation has something to do with doctors sometimes being wrong. Of course they are.

I suppose it is better to be certain about these things, and picking a quack cure removes all doubt about whither something is going to work or not.

Unless you're up for a nice placebo, alongside of damaged sinuses.

Firing a Cop

People like Trump just don't understand what motivates normal people. They think it's all about a paycheck and maybe job security, which is really future paychecks.

That simply isn't how people tick.

Take Trump's recent removal of the FBI director James Comey. I think it is safe to say that it had to do with Mr. Trump's discomfort with the FBI investigating Russian involvement in the Trump administration.

Trump wanted to stop the investigation by firing the FBI's boss. This, of course, would put the FBI in it's place, cowering in the corner if fear of their jobs.

That's surely how it would work in all of Trump's business dealings over the last 50 years. Some department gets a bit out of line, so he'd fire the boss, and everybody else would live in terror that their paychecks would vanish.

Of course, that isn't what the reaction was at all. Cops don't become cops for the paycheck, at least most don't. They want to be cops; to protect the public and catch the bad-guys.

So he fired Comey, and the Deputy Director Andrew McCabe immediately took over as Acting Director. A new Director would be put forward by the President, and have to be confirmed by the Senate. That means that McCabe is in charge for at least a number of weeks, and perhaps months.

So Comey was fired by the very president that he was investigating for what might turn out to be treason. Problem solved for Mr. Trump? Not at all. McCabe, as a cop reacted the way you'd expect when faced with a potentially treasonous villain trying to cover up his crimes. He is pouring even more resources into investigating Trump's administration.

Doesn't McCabe fear he'll be fired, just like Comey? It certainly doesn't seem so. In theory, Trump could do it, but if he did, the next cop would take the FBI over, and be even more determined.

Another bit of fallout is that the Justice Department has done the job that it's supposed to do when a president goes wacko and tries something like this.

The Deputy Attorney General appointed a Special Council to independently investigate Russia's involvement. Trump has no power over this individual at all. Who is he? His name is Robert S. Mueller, and he was the FBI Director prior to Comey. He is highly thought off, and not subservient to any political party. He's also another cop.

It seems to almost always be this way with rich business types when they are put in charge of non-business types.

They don't understand doctors, for example, or nurses. Soldiers? Not a chance. Artists? Would they even try? Farmers? Scientists?

Clearly Trump doesn't understand cops, but they are very experienced in understanding people like him.

FULL OUT

Some folks say that you have to roll full out or you aren't keeping things real.

Seriously? I think that's nuts.

If you want to fight in a realistic fashion, I have a few suggestions.

First; how do you justify not hitting one another? If we're keeping it real, we'll have to hit. Real fights have hitting.

OK, maybe you don't want to hit. Very few Jiu-Jitsu people are interested in that, and justify its exclusion due to “safety concerns.”

Second; forget the nogi/gi controversy. In a real fight, nobody will be wearing a gi, but it's just as certain that there will be no board shorts or rashguards either. If you want realism, roll in an assortment of street clothes.

Have you ever done that? If not, why not?

Third; change the surface that you train on. Not only will a “real” attacker come at you throwing punches and wearing jeans and a hoodie, you won't be taking them down onto a nice, soft, padded, floor-mat.

Maybe start slow and practice take-downs onto a hardwood floor. Grind around on your knees submitting one another. After warming up this way, take it outside to train on dirt, concrete, and gravel.

Guess how long it took me to come up with these three little suggestions for realistic training. I type about 60 words a minute, and I typed this in less time than it took me to come up with the list.

More thoughts? Train in pitch dark, in the rain, over logs on the beach, or surrounded by tables and chairs.

If all this seems kind of ridiculous, it is, but so is insisting that rolling full power is any more realistic other variations.

Personally, I prefer flow rolling over going full out. More things happens, you can try goofy shit, and not get hurt so much.

Our school sometimes does rolling against punching opponents who wear boxing gloves. This helps us anticipate where strikes can come from and how to shut them down.

I don't know why we don't do this out in the parking lot, wearing hoodies.

Great May

May this year is really great.

One way that it is special is the weather. For some reason, it has been a cold and crappy year so far. There has been more snow than I can remember, followed by incessant rain and by low temperatures.

Aprils are supposed to be great; full of sunshine and early flowers. That didn't happen this time around. The rain and cold continued into the start of May.

There has been precipitation every day so far this month, and although warmer on average than April, I don't think the temperature has cracked 13 degrees. Luckily, it is only May 3^rd. There is a lot of month left to go.

Today isn't going to buck the trend, but tomorrow is supposed to be different. A high of 19 is predicted and a generally warm period to follow after that, if not quite as spectacular.

It is also a month of goal reaching for me personally.

After our annual trip to big-restaurant-meal Arizona, my weight was up in the neighbourhood of 185 pounds. My ideal is in the 173-175 range. As a result, I've been nibbling away at it to get back to where I like to be.

Today, my morning weigh-in had me at 173.7, which is the first day in about a month where my mass was within my chosen range.

I will also be hitting a Jiu-Jitsu goal very shortly. In order to qualify for a little stripe promotion, we have to wait 8 months, and to also have attended 100 classes of specific types. My 8 months won't be up until the very end of July, and normally that's more-or-less exactly when a student manages to tally up their 100 classes.

This time around my attendance card will be filled early. The most likely date will be in about 2 weeks. This happened because of two weeks of intensive training down in Los Angeles, and continuing to train steadily for a month in Arizona, and by adding an extra class to my normal schedule by training once per week in Vancouver.

This is cool in two ways. Firstly; the stupid tally will be done, and won't cause any delays. Secondly; as I will continue training full-speed-ahead, I'll likely end up about 50% above the minimum requirement by the time I'm actually up for promotion.

It is also a good month, in that we will be having visitors. Some years nobody from out-of-town comes to our little village by the sea at all. We make visits to our family in Victoria quite a bit, and to friends in other places. This is likely why they don't feel the need to make the ferry voyage to reach our isolated stretch of coastline.

This month my sister Kathy, her husband Al, and their cat, will be coming over for a visit. That's right; they have a travelling cat.

Overall, May is rounding up to be a very nice month.

Bus Zen

There is a kind of Zen involved in going to train in the city.

Plenty of time for everything on the way in. I am out the door before 7:30am to catch a ferry that will get me to Marc's Jiu-Jitsu academy by the noon start time.

Even with the bus transfers, there is still too much time, so I go to Starbucks for coffee, and sometimes a snack, and a good long sit-down.

The trip home is less puffy. The finish time is a little soft. If we don't roll a lot, there is time for a quick bite before boarding the first bus. If we roll all the way to the official end time, or even later, haste has to take over or I'll miss my boat, and get home two full hours later than the goal back-in-the-door time of 5:30pm.

None of it is stressful, as getting to training is always easy, and failing to catch the right boat home only entails a delay which doesn't really impact anything at all, other than evening TV viewing.

It is full of differing paces. Some is fast, some slow; some connections come late, and some are impossibly early. Each is a step, or a milestone; they pass and are replaced by the next.

The training in the midst of all the travel is an oasis of calm, cooperation, and quiet voices discussing movements of violence. Rolling as if lives were at stake, but with relaxation and precision. Frantic has no hold on these mats.