Pregnant female soldiers.

Female soldiers in the US military get pregnant to avoid tours to combat zones. Some are also getting pregnant in a combat zone. 

Why did they sign up in the first place? If you sign up voluntarily to military service, you know you agree to all the risks and control over you. 

Who let them get pregnant? 

She did. Now, it can be suggested that female soldiers must be temporarily sterilized. 

Should they be punished?

Why not? Militaries punish their members all the time for many reasons. But then if you punish a pregnant soldier for getting pregnant, the child deserves an explanation. 

And women should be responsible enough, having gained all these rights and privileged status in society and military. 

Besides, breaking the rules in the military means breaking the contract and allowing possibility of punishment. So from a military standpoint, it's fine. 

Or, the alternative is to give them maternity leave or a desk job, even though that will put a strain on resources. 

It is in the inherent nature of all human beings to reproduce, even when you're getting shot at. 

For most other armies in the world, the simple answer is to limit specialties open to women, because these issues complicate management and resources. It does make sense, because what's going to happen if the infantry start getting pregnant, and a casualty has the potential to become two casualties. 

A more insane view is that when anyone in the military is a tool, not a person, and malfunctioning tools get replaced. So pregnant soldiers get out. If you think that is a ridiculous way to put it, then it still doesn't change the fact that an ideal army would compose of machines, not human beings. The issue of pregnant soldiers is just one of many issues that happen because we are human beings and soldiers are not ideal fighting machines many people like to think they are.  

My ideal military "war machine" would consist of all citizens who volunteer to be trained in a specialty. No separate book of rules, minimal pay, mostly part-time, just a set of standardized weapons, combat uniform, high common training standards and information network. Transportation are mostly convertible between military and civilian uses, so cost of running things are compensated. 

Rapid reaction forces are the only professional soldiers. 

Police accountability

It is obvious that excessive violence by police has become an issue in many Western countries. Perceived rise in crime rates and assault of police incidents have put many police officers on edge. 

There are very simple solutions to any issues of police brutality.

Every police you come in contact with must be recorded in serial number and full name. 

Every police encounter should be caught on dated and timed video and made public as soon as possible and without delay. Failure to capture full footage will result in severe penalty and questioning of all involved. 

Slow down the pace of all conversations. Everyone should be calm and using their brains. Police officers should not be itching to pull out weapons. 

All attempts of weapon use must be documented, determined to be valid and evaluated afterwards. 

Unusual weapons that are derived from methods of torture and which have no effective use in self-defense cannot be used by police officers to protect themselves. 

Weapons cannot be used to arrest. (meaning, police shall not knock people out, so that the person is not aware of arrest.)

Police complaints must have the option of complete anonymity.

Remember the police officers are supposed public servants who are appointed to protect and serve citizens. However, this is in conflict with the current mission to enforce the laws and orders of the government, which is most apparent when the interests of the government differs from the interests of the public they were meant to serve.

Police officers not directly involved in any incident cannot interfere, so that police cannot cover for each other. This prevents the police from becoming a gang, for better or for worse. The police cannot be a secret organization where procedures are kept hidden from public scrutiny.

Sprained Ankle

I never believed sprained ankles could be this serious. I always believed that they were simple issues that go away after a few days of rest, ice, compression and elevation, even if it meant that you couldn't do serious exercise for a longer time after that. 

I've sprained both ankles many times in the past, but never as badly as this. It was bad enough to make some scary tearing sounds soon after I came back to school from football. This alone is enough for the specialist to classify it as the nastiest type of sprained ankle. 

Grade III ankle sprains are complete tears of the ligaments. The ankle is usually quite painful, and walking can be difficult. Patients may complain of instability, or a giving-way sensation in the ankle joint.

However, I was still able to wobble around for a while, because the shock of it did not sink in and temporary pain relief had not worn out. But once I got home, I realized that I could no longer walk. That was a pretty nasty feeling, and the severe symptoms seemed to tell me it was a broken ankle. I now believe that not going home immediately was the worst decision I made, somewhat comparable to Guan Yiu being dragged around for more than a day after treatment. 

So off I go for a x-ray checkup. Everything was fine, I didn't break anything and I was taught how to treat the ankle properly. Got a nice bandage and a new big ice pack in the process. And a piece of paper that would give me school leave till the 27th (full week), when I would have to go get checked again. 

Two days after the injury, I decided that since disabled people with missing arms or legs ride anyway, I would try it, after completely immobilizing my ankle. It turned out to be a wonderful session, with the help from some other riders (to get in the saddle), my favorite horse and plenty of others to clean up after me. (There is a lot to do for the horse after riding. Like taking off the saddle bits, bridle, braces and whatever the horse is wearing, followed by showering the horse, drying off and feeding.) 

Perhaps the most important thing in riding with disabilities is to be confident as a rider, compensating for the disability and not let the horse poke fun at your inability to tell it to do certain things(If I don't have a right leg, then I would have to use the rest of my limbs really well, or else the horse would realize that you can't do anything if it were crazy at the right) when the horse refuses. Because I couldn't use my leg properly this time, I had to use everything else to tell the horse what to do. 

Monday came and it seemed like a busy day at school with 3 subjects. But I made the right choice and realized that the illusion of a healed ankle was only due to the prescription pain drugs, being wrapped up nice and tight and hopping to everywhere. I wasn't going to hop around that at school with lots of books in my bag.

Today is Tuesday and I woke up rather impatient about the ankle. My ankle was still very soft and obviously RICE is taking too long. To speed things up, I decided to try my friendly neighborhood Chinese medicine specialist. It was another very meaningful experience. 

It was apparent this guy had nothing in common with the other doctor/specialist. He was much more firm in the treatment. He was also much more confident about the condition. Of course, today is the 5th Day since injury and I had some time to heal. However, the swelling and pain still existed and the ankle was still soft, as expected. (Such ankle injuries are supposed to require at least 2 weeks of no walking and lots more time with support.) 

The treatment was fairly simple, consisting of wrapping lots of bandages saturated with some herbal stuff and then telling me to drink this stuff when I have time today. 

Took me only 3 minutes vs an hour. 

$150 vs a lot more, plus more in the future. 

"You can go try walk now" vs "Stay home and enjoy your leave."

That is far less complicated than anything orthopedics told me to do, and far more effective in my case. The pain is gone along with the swelling, and I have walked a fair amount today without feeling worse than this morning after using the ice-pack. Ankle strength has returned about 50% after a 3 minute procedure. This is even more amazing considering that I have not moved my ankle in 2 weeks and my right leg muscles have gotten stiff without any walking. 

Of course, this is not a fair test because the conditions were worse on Friday. But the issue is that the actual immediate effectiveness of the Chinese medicine treatment was greater, faster and cheaper than wasting away for two weeks and using up a ton of smelly bandages and ice packs. The only issue is that I didn't go to the Chinese guy last Thursday, which would be my ideal course of recovery.

I hope to make a full recovery before 2 weeks and go surprise my orthopedic specialist on Friday. I think I can make it. 

: )

Modes of the mind

I don't understand why people feel the need for someone else to make them do something.

I see that increasingly, people believe that they are small and helpless and they need external controls to make them change. They believe that they need to be "cured", or "someone needs to lead them". These people are all around you.

For example, it appears that hypnosis therapy has been marketed as a way to "reprogram" the subconscious and kick bad habits. It has been done in every habit, from smoking to seduction to procrastination. While all this sounds awesome to many people, the word "program" is already a severe, I have several concerns:

the safety issue. Almost all reviews of it claim that it is not harmful in any way. In particular, they stress that no one can be made to do anything against their will. Do you see anything wrong with this statement?

The term "will" simply means the conscious effort of the mind. But when the conscious effort is diverted (by the general process of hypnosis), then the person under the procedure is not in control. And suppose the hypnotized person does realize the immorality of what they are doing, there is still little he can do, as the willpower is controlled by the procedure. Worst still, people in a hypnotic state will most likely not reason, and therefore any sense of morality can be bypassed.

The next issue is that some believe that they are no longer capable of controlling themselves, or that a conscious effort cannot work. I'm sure there have been times when we just cannot help procrastinating and doing something else. Here, the actual situation is not that one is not capable of attention and must therefore be diagnosed of attention deficiency mental disorder, or must undergo hypnosis. What is actually going on is very simple. The person simply has things of higher order of priority for, say, watching music videos as opposed to doing homework. There is simply a higher demand within the mind for doing something else, or maybe that the work requires far more effort and stress than something else and the person is already overloaded.

What the person requires is not some reprogramming of their minds, or someone telling them what to do. What they require is a belief in themselves, that they are capable of making their own decisions and they can always be happy with the results.

Someday, some scientist may make education an entirely subconscious work. But when that happens, the individual will no longer exist and people under such a trance will not be human people anymore. Then, we the human race would be worse than any animal we currently believe to be superior to.

In our quest to understand more about ourselves and our minds, we must be careful that we do not see ourselves as mere programming objects and then become blinded by our own desires that we accept the belief that someone needs to "program" you.

Of course, in the end, it is a personal choice. Some may accept the objectification of their minds, but they must be reasonable.

The difference between feeling and emotion

Emotion: Outburst. 

Emotion is a general mental state that can be expressed in many ways.

Emotion can be the sign that you are having a feeling. You may express anger at something emotionally. 

Feeling: You take it in, you express the feeling.

The feeling comes from deep within. You only have to be a human being to feel it. It doesn't have to come out. 

I interpret feelings as deep thinking. 

Example: You can "feel" security and love, or anger and jealousy. 

One can argue that it is a matter of language definition, but that is grossly inaccurate. 

One can usually express why they are having a certain emotion, the same may not be true for feeling. 

Interesting post.

Sometime a long time ago when human beings and animals today were openly brutal and fought over resources instead of shared (the age of the zero-sum game), the game of the entire species was theoretically a zero-sum game. It was fight or run away or die. There was no such thing as cooperation, of sharing, of cooperating as a species. There was no other way.

It still is a zero sum game when it comes to the species and its survival. This is due to scarcity and the strategy adopted by the most powerful members of the species, to gain more power, influence and justify its own existence and dominance using their power. 

Much of human progress as I know it, has been done to solve the issue of win-lose situations. Yet progress has only let more win-lose situations occur, as win-win situations lead to win-lose situations due to the inherent uncertainty and eventual dominance of one party. Win-lose situations then occur, human beings try to solve it, and then the cycle continues.

I do not see this issue being resolved, as we would define it in human terms. What we mean by resolved is but the changing of the system from one state to another, whereby the second state is perceived to be better. 

That is the state of nature. We are fast approaching another of those win-lose situations as a species.