Tag Archives: oddities

Book Recommendation: Army Survival Manual

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A while back somebody posted a request for book recommendations. At the time I couldn’t think of a good non-fiction one. I can think of several good non-fiction books, but most of them are too specialized for the general public to read. The DSM-IV, for example. It’s a great read, and an absolute must for some, but for the average person? Not so much with the useful.

But I was looking over my shelves today, and I saw the perfect book to recommend:

FM 21-76 US Army Survival Manual

This is a great book. It’s chock full of information on interesting and useful topics like finding food, building shelter, basic medical and sanitary practices in the field, signaling for help, and plenty more besides. The prose is straightforward, practical, yet confident and authoritative. One of the best parts about this book is its effort to familiarize the reader with the rudiments of survival in nearly any situation, including what to do if your plane crashes into an oil fire at sea. There are sections for jungle, arctic, mountain, and desert survival techniques. What more can you ask for? There are a few sections that seem glossed over, such as evading enemy patrols (this subject is given very light treatment), but overall great book. Highly recommended.

Be Fruitful and Multiply

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Fans of Stuff’s latest about having lots of kids might find these articles interesting.

Bucking the norm, some families think big

It’s barely a blip on the nation’s demographic radar — 11 percent of U.S. births in 2004 were to women who already had three children, up from 10 percent in 1995. But there seems to be a growing openness to having more than two children, in some case more than four.

Family size in America: Are large families back?

We decided to cut through the buzz and find out whether big families really are on the upswing, and — more important, if you’re one of the 50 percent of BabyCenter moms who want a big family — what life is like for multiple-kid moms. Here’s what the experts, both the academic and the real-mom kind, had to say:

How Full Is Your Quiver?

Quiverfull beliefs are absolutist. Purists don’t permit even natural family-planning methods, such as tracking fertility cycles (the only form of birth control condoned by the Roman Catholic Church). Also taboo: any form of artificial fertility treatment. “The point is to have a welcoming heart,” says Mary Pride, a mother of nine whose 1985 book, “The Way Home,” celebrated a return to traditional gender roles. It has sold about 80,000 copies and has inspired many quiverfull families. “You shouldn’t be unnatural in going to a fertility clinic or in trying to avoid having children by regulating when to have sex with your husband,” says Pride.

‘Arrows for the War’

Quiverfull parents try to have upwards of six children. They home-school their families, attend fundamentalist churches and follow biblical guidelines of male headship–“Father knows best”–and female submissiveness. They refuse any attempt to regulate pregnancy. Quiverfull began with the publication of Rick and Jan Hess’s 1989 book, A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ, which argues that God, as the “Great Physician” and sole “Birth Controller,” opens and closes the womb on a case-by-case basis. Women’s attempts to control their own bodies–the Lord’s temple–are a seizure of divine power.

A Joy Complete

Will I never learn? The other day, I attended a Saturday vigil Mass with five of my children and without my husband. Two of the children I brought along have a combined age under 5. I didn’t anticipate any problems. Was that a sign of cockiness or stupidity?

Womb Wars

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Here’s an interesting study in contrasts.

Period: Full Stop?
For Many Women, a ‘Normal’ Menstrual Cycle Is Now One They Can Control — or Suppress

"Encouraged by drug marketers, more women are opting to reduce the length or frequency of their menstrual periods, or skip them altogether — and even trading tips online for how to do it."

Forever Pregnant
Guidelines: Treat Nearly All Women as Pre-Pregnant

"New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves — and to be treated by the health care system — as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon."

Thoughts?

Ayn Rand Goes to Hollywood?

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So Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie might be in a screenplay of an Ayn Rand novel. While Rand’s rampant sense of individualism lends itself to Hollywood egos, I’d like to ask Angelina Jolie what Rand would have to say about saving the children in Cambodia and whatnot? I try to think of a connection and can only shrug.

 

Man Boobs

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[davidhasselhoff.jpg] title=It’s hard to argue with this guy’s logic. Then again, St. Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God sounds good at first, too. That is, until you really pick it apart. So I leave it to my compitent readers. What’s wrong with this argument?

“I usually don’t send out pure opinion pieces, but let it be said: There is not one person anywhere who can give you a good reason why it’s OK to show a man’s chest on TV, but not a woman’s chest. You can ask over 100 people why — trust me, I have — and not get a real answer. It’s just a silly superstition that some people came up with, a bunch of others went along with it, and now we’re stuck with it. Have you ever heard a real reason?”

[…]

“This is different from other issues, like abortion, affirmative action, or the death penalty — I have opinions on all of those, and probably so do you, but there are two sides to each issue, and I can at least see where the other side is coming from. But I’ve never heard the other side of the boob issue.”

“A good sign of a widespread belief that has no supporting logic is that if you ask people why they believe it, they always pass the buck on to someone else. ‘Our society has decided…’ ‘The community feels that…’ ‘Judges have ruled that…’ — except with that last one, if you listen to what judges say, they pass the buck too, saying ‘According to contemporary community standards…’ What’s missing is someone standing up and saying ‘I, yes *ME* *PERSONALLY*, I believe that seeing a mammary gland is harmful, and here’s why.’

“To people who say that inciting any male lust is bad, I tell them I grew up in Denmark (although I’m American) and there you could see bare breasts in public advertisements, on the covers of supermarket tabloids, and on the beach, and nobody cared. And, the sex crime rate is much lower there. It’s not obvious that nudity even incites much ‘lust’ once you’re used to it anyway — men live in nudist colonies surrounded by naked women and don’t get turned on. (It’s the visitors who are easy to spot, because they aren’t used to it and it makes them stick out, so to speak.)”

Read the rest here and let me know what you think.