Later On

An exceptionally smooth shave today, perhaps due to new toys. My new Omega “Vivaldi” brush—artificial badger—created a wonderful lather from Prairie Creations tallow & lanolin Gentleman’s Pipe shaving soap, and the Feather premium razor with a still newish Feather blade gave three smooth passes. At the end, a splash of my new Klar Seifen Rasierwasser Klassik was a great pleasure—and a fine fragrance.

Learning new physical skills and movements (as in learning, say, a martial art or a new dance or Pilates) is difficult because at least some of us (one is typing at this moment) don’t have precise control of all muscles and so have to grope about internally to try to find how to do some movement or another. It’s like trying to lift one eyebrow (if you can’t do that): you can’t figure out how to control that particular muscle.

Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress:

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, one of the most right-wing courts in the country, sanctioned a former high school cheerleader because she brought a lawsuit claiming that she shouldn’t be required to cheer for her alleged rapist:

The former cheerleader and her family are appealing the ruling by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which includes an order to pay the school district’s legal fees on the grounds their suit was far-fetched and frivolous. [...]

H.S., then 16, attended a party in her hometown of Silsbee, Texas, in October 2008. She said she was dragged into a room, thrown onto the floor by several youths and raped by Rakheem Bolton, a star on the school’s football and basketball teams.

Bolton and a teammate were arrested two days later, but were allowed to return to school after a county grand jury declined to indict them. They were later indicted on sexual assault charges, but in the interim came the February 2009 incident on the basketball court.

H.S. joined in leading cheers for the Silsbee High team. But when Bolton went to the foul line, and the cheers included his name, she stepped back, folded her arms and sat down.

This decision is hardly the first time the right-wing Fifth Circuit has come under scrutiny for its harsh judgments. As the Wonk Room noted earlier this year, the overwhelming majority of Fifth Circuit judges are invested in the oil industry, and both of the judges who voted against reinstating a drilling moratorium during the Gulf oil disaster attended oil industry-funded junkets. In one case brought by Katrina victims against the energy industry, so many judges were required to recuse themselves that there weren’t enough judges left to hear an appeal.

Yet, even in a circuit known for its knee-jerk ideology, the cheerleader rape case was heard by an unusually radical panel of three judges. Judges Emilio Garza and Edith Clement were both on President George W. Bush’s “short list” for potential Supreme Court nominees, and Clement serves on the board of the leading organization providing industry-funded junkets for judges. The third judge, Priscilla Owen, took thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions from Enron and then wrote a key opinion reducing Enron’s taxes by $15 million when she sat on the Texas Supreme Court. The panel did not include the court’s chief judge, Edith Jones, who has her own history of ignoring the pleas of women who are sexually harassed or assaulted.

Take a look, if you’re mathematically inclined.

Kate K. emailed a link to this post, commenting:

… A video with you from Newsy.com that I thought you might find interesting.  It analyzes much of the recent coverage from multiple sources regarding the Republican opposition to this rail program and compiles it into one story: http://www.newsy.com/videos/new-republican-governors-to-derail-high-speed-projects/.  It includes clips about Walker’s and Kasich’s pledge to kill the project and discusses how the cancellation of this project would affect progress and energy. 

Introverts are great, IMO. (Full disclosure: I’m an introvert.) Here’s some info by Laurie Helgo in Psychology Today:

After ten years as a psychologist practicing psychodynamic psychotherapy, I reclined on the couch of my own analyst feeling burdened by my chosen work. After a day of seeing patients, I was drained. I had been trained to listen at many levels—words, emotions, unconscious disclosures—and I took all of that in and sorted it out in my mind. I was good at helping others discover and pursue what they wanted out of life. But at day’s end I had no resources left to do it for myself.

Then I heard myself say: "I don’t like being a therapist." Pause. "I never have." I loved the study of psychology. I didn’t love seeing patient after patient. I was perpetually overstimulated, busy decoding everything I took in. Plus, I wondered why I couldn’t tolerate the large caseloads my colleagues took on willingly.

Suddenly I felt free, loosed from expectations that never fit. And just as suddenly, I felt I could say no to the demands of others. I could even say no to being a therapist.

As a card-carrying introvert, I am one of the many people whose personality confers on them a preference for the inner world of their own mind rather than the outer world of sociability. Depleted by too much external stimulation, we thrive on reflection and solitude. Our psychic opposites, extraverts, prefer schmoozing and social life because such activities boost their mood. They get bored by too much solitude.

Over the past two decades, scientists have whittled down to five those clusters of cognitions, emotions, motivations, and behaviors that we mean by "personality" factors. Extraversion, and by inference introversion, is chief among them, along with neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness—psychology’s so-called Big Five. Although introverts and extraverts may seem like they come from different planets, introversion and extraversion exist on a continuous dimension that is normally distributed. There are a few extremely extraverted folk, and a few extreme introverts, while most of us share some extravert and some introvert traits.

Although there is no precise dividing line, there are plenty of introverts around. It’s just that perceptual biases lead us all to overestimate the number of extraverts among us (they are noisier and hog the spotlight). Often confused with shyness, introversion does not imply social reticence or discomfort. Rather than being averse to social engagement, introverts become overwhelmed by too much of it, which explains why the introvert is ready to leave a party after an hour and the extravert gains steam as the night goes on.

Scientists now know that, while introverts have no special advantage in intelligence, they do seem to process more information than others in any given situation. To digest it, they do best in quiet environments, interacting one on one. Further, their brains are less dependent on external stimuli and rewards to feel good.

As a result, introverts are not driven to seek big hits of positive emotional arousal—they’d rather find meaning than bliss—making them relatively immune to the search for happiness that permeates contemporary American culture. In fact, the cultural emphasis on happiness may actually threaten their mental health. As American life becomes increasingly competitive and aggressive, to say nothing of blindingly fast, the pressures to produce on demand, be a team player, and make snap decisions cut introverts off from their inner power source, leaving them stressed and depleted. Introverts today face one overarching challenge—not to feel like misfits in their own culture.

Introversion in Action

On the surface, introversion looks a lot like shyness. Both limit social interaction, but for differing reasons. The shy want desperately to connect but find socializing difficult, says Bernardo J. Carducci, professor of psychology and director of the Shyness Research Institute at Indiana University Southeast. Introverts seek time alone because they want time alone. An introvert and a shy person might be standing against the wall at a party, but the introvert prefers to be there, while the shy individual feels she has no choice.

Introverts don’t necessarily hide. Beth Wheatley is very much in the public eye as director of public relations for The Nature Conservancy. Yet she scores squarely as an introvert on personality tests. She was led to her work by her love of nature. She runs daily, not just for the physical exercise but because running allows her time to think through the events of her day. She prefers talking with one person at a time. She usually opts out of after-work social events.

"My number-one strategy is to stay under the radar screen. I stand next to a wall and put an invisible barrier around me so that I’m not bombarded and can think about my next move," she confides.

It’s often possible to spot introverts by their conversational style. They’re the ones doing the listening. Extraverts are more likely to pepper people with questions. Introverts like to think before responding—many prefer to think out what they want to say in advance—and seek facts before expressing opinions. Extraverts are comfortable thinking as they speak. Introverts prefer slow-paced interactions that allow room for thought. Brainstorming does not work for them. Email does.

Introverts are collectors of thoughts, and solitude is where the collection is curated and rearranged to make sense of the present and future. Introverts can tolerate—and enjoy—projects that require long stretches of solitary activity. Extraverts often have to discipline themselves for bouts of solitary work, and then they prefer frequent social breaks.

While extraverts spend more time overall in social activities than introverts do, the two groups do not differ significantly on time spent with family members, romantic partners, or coworkers. Moreover, extraverts and introverts both report a mood boost from the company of others. For introverts, however, the boost may come at a cost. Researchers have found that introverts who act extraverted show slower reaction times on subsequent cognitive tests than those allowed to act introverted. Their cognitive fatigue testifies to the fact that "acting counter-dispositionally is depleting."

Too Fast, Too Loud, Too Much

Like individuals, cultures have different styles. America is a noisy culture, unlike, say, Finland, which values silence. Individualism, dominant in the U.S. and Germany, promotes the direct, fast-paced style of communication associated with extraversion. Collectivistic societies, such as those in East Asia, value privacy and restraint, qualities more characteristic of introverts.

According to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test administered to two randomized national samples, introverts make up 50 percent of the U.S. population. The MBTI definition of introversion—a preference for solitude, reflection, internal exploration of ideas vs. active engagement and pursuit of rewards in the external/social world—correlates closely with the Big Five description. But the results still surprise; if every other person is an introvert, why doesn’t the cultural tone reflect that?

It’s not just that we overestimate the numbers of extraverts in our midst because they’re more salient. The bias of individuals is reinforced in the media, which emphasize the visual, the talkative, and the sound bite— immediacy over reflection.

"In verbal cultures, remaining silent presents a problem," report Anio Sallinen-Kuparinen, James McCroskey, and Virginia Richmond, who have studied communication styles in the U.S. and Finland. Perceptions of competence tend to be based on verbal behavior. An introvert who is silent in a group may actually be quite engaged—taking in what is said, thinking about it, waiting for a turn to speak—but will be seen in the U.S. as a poor communicator.

When psychologists Catherine Caldwell-Harris and Ayse Ayçiçegi compared U.S. and Turkish samples, they found . . .

Continue reading.

The title says it all. List is found here.

The above guide is probably familiar. I follow it closely and will not even consider conventional strawberries. But now the same government that warns us that pesticides cause ”birth defects, nerve damage, cancer, and other effects” is encouraging us to eat more pesticide-contaminated food. Kiera Butler reports for Mother Jones:

You know the Environmental Working Group‘s super-helpful list of the most-pesticide-laden fruits and veggies? Well, there’s a Big Ag lobby group called the Alliance for Food and Farming that’s trying to debunk it. And the USDA just gave the lobbyists $180,000 to aid their smear campaign, reports The Atlantic.

So exactly who’s behind the Alliance for Food and Farming? According to SourceWatch, its board of directors includes honchos from the California Strawberry Commission, the California Tomato Farmers, the Produce Marketing Association, and the California Association of Pest Control Advisors, among other industry groups. The AFF’s main argument: “Promotion of the ‘Dirty Dozen’ list actually makes the work of improving the diets of Americans more difficult because it scares consumers away from the affordable fruits and vegetables that they enjoy.”

Riiiight. Considering that the EPA freely admits that pesticides can cause “birth defects, nerve damage, cancer, and other effects,” it’s totally boneheaded to suggest that raising consumer awareness about pesticides is making Americans less healthy. What’s more, it’s not like the Environmental Working Group is suggesting you give up on produce entirely and stock your fridge with Mountain Dew instead. In fact, EWG explicitly states that the list isn’t meant to discourage people from eating their veggies. From the FAQ:

Do all these pesticides mean I shouldn’t eat fruits and vegetables?

No, eat your fruits and vegetables! The health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables outweigh the risks of pesticide exposure. Use EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to reduce your exposures as much as possible, but eating conventionally grown produce is far better than not eating fruits and vegetables at all.

The bottom line: The more you know about your food, the better. Period.

Orange was today’s theme: Prairie Creations Orange tallow-based soap, which worked up a good lather with the Rooney Style 2. Three smooth passes with the Pils and a Swedish Gillette blade, followed by a splash of Royall Mandarin. Great start to the week, and now for 20 minutes on the Nordic Track.

Detailed and thoughtful article in Der Spiegel. The blurb:

America has long been a country of limitless possibility. But the dream has now become a nightmare for many. The US is now realizing just how fragile its success has become — and how bitter its reality. Should the superpower not find a way out of crisis, it could spell trouble ahead for the global economy. By SPIEGEL Staff

That’s Harry Carney on the baritone sax.

215.3 lbs this morning, a new low for this effort. Now, of course, to maintain that and continue the momentum. I did do 20′ on the Nordic Track, though not nonstop. Still: 20 minutes is 20 minutes and the stops were brief.

Breakfast was steel-cut oats and an egg, my usual.

Note how daylight is no longer being saved.

Those who view homosexuality as "sinful", as though it were a matter of choice, not only have to ignore the increasing scientific evidence that sexual orientation is NOT a matter of choice any more than is eye color, but now they fight to protect bullying in schools. Erik Eckholm reports in the NY Times:

HELENA, Mont. — Alarmed by evidence that gay and lesbian students are common victims of schoolyard bullies, many school districts are bolstering their antiharassment rules with early lessons in tolerance, explaining that some children have “two moms” or will grow up to love members of the same sex.

But such efforts to teach acceptance of homosexuality, which have gained urgency after several well-publicized suicides by gay teenagers, are provoking new culture wars in some communities.

Many educators and rights advocates say that official prohibitions of slurs and taunts are most effective when combined with frank discussions, from kindergarten on, about diverse families and sexuality.

Angry parents and religious critics, while agreeing that schoolyard harassment should be stopped, charge that liberals and gay rights groups are using the antibullying banner to pursue a hidden “homosexual agenda,” implicitly endorsing, for example, same-sex marriage.

Last summer, school officials here in Montana’s capital unveiled new guidelines for teaching about sexuality and tolerance. They proposed teaching first graders that “human beings can love people of the same gender,” and fifth graders that sexual intercourse can involve “vaginal, oral or anal penetration.”

A local pastor, Rick DeMato, carried his shock straight to the pulpit.

“We do not want the minds of our children to be polluted with the things of a carnal-minded society,” Mr. DeMato, 69, told his flock at Liberty Baptist Church.

In tense community hearings, some parents made familiar arguments that innocent youngsters were not ready for explicit language. Other parents and pastors, along with leaders of the Big Sky Tea Party, saw a darker purpose.

“Anyone who reads this document can see that it promotes acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle,” one mother said at a six-hour school board meeting in late September.

Barely heard was the plea of Harlan Reidmohr, 18, who graduated last spring and said he was relentlessly tormented and slammed against lockers after coming out during his freshman year. Through his years in the Helena schools, he said at another school board meeting, sexual orientation was never once discussed in the classroom, and “I believe this led to a lot of the sexual harassment I faced.”

Last month, the federal Department of Education told schools they were obligated, under civil rights laws, to try to prevent harassment, including that based on sexual orientation and gender identity. But the agency did not address the controversy over more explicit classroom materials in grade schools.

Some districts, especially in larger cities, have adopted tolerance lessons with minimal dissent. But in suburban districts in California, Illinois and Minnesota, as well as here in Helena, the programs have unleashed fierce opposition.

“Of course we’re all against bullying,” Mr. DeMato, one of numerous pastors who opposed the plan, said in an interview. “But the Bible says very clearly that homosexuality is wrong, and Christians don’t want the schools to teach subjects that are repulsive to their values.” . . .

Continue reading. The arguments have a familiar ring: very similar to the arguments from the same sort of groups supporting slavery and, later, segregation. Hatred and bigotry have long lives, and against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

It certainly would seem so on the surface. This example, reported by Michael Moss in the NY Times, in fact seems quite stupid on the face of it: a clash of programs showing extremely bad management and a reluctance to work things out before swinging into action.

Domino’s Pizza was hurting early last year. Domestic sales had fallen, and a survey of big pizza chain customers left the company tied for the worst tasting pies.

Then help arrived from an organization called Dairy Management. It teamed up with Domino’s to develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese, and proceeded to devise and pay for a $12 million marketing campaign.

Consumers devoured the cheesier pizza, and sales soared by double digits. “This partnership is clearly working,” Brandon Solano, the Domino’s vice president for brand innovation, said in a statement to The New York Times.

But as healthy as this pizza has been for Domino’s, one slice contains as much as two-thirds of a day’s maximum recommended amount of saturated fat, which has been linked to heart disease and is high in calories.

And Dairy Management, which has made cheese its cause, is not a private business consultant. It is a marketing creation of the United States Department of Agriculture — the same agency at the center of a federal anti-obesity drive that discourages over-consumption of some of the very foods Dairy Management is vigorously promoting.

Urged on by government warnings about saturated fat, Americans have been moving toward low-fat milk for decades, leaving a surplus of whole milk and milk fat. Yet the government, through Dairy Management, is engaged in an effort to find ways to get dairy back into Americans’ diets, primarily through cheese.

Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese a year, nearly triple the 1970 rate. Cheese has become the largest source of saturated fat; an ounce of many cheeses contains as much saturated fat as a glass of whole milk.

When Michelle Obama implored restaurateurs in September to help fight obesity, she cited the proliferation of cheeseburgers and macaroni and cheese. “I want to challenge every restaurant to offer healthy menu options,” she told the National Restaurant Association’s annual meeting.

But in a series of confidential agreements approved by agriculture secretaries in both the Bush and Obama administrations, Dairy Management has worked with restaurants to expand their menus with cheese-laden products.

Consider the Taco Bell steak quesadilla, with cheddar, pepper jack, mozzarella and a creamy sauce. “The item used an average of eight times more cheese than other items on their menu,” the Agriculture Department said in a report, extolling Dairy Management’s work — without mentioning that the quesadilla has more than three-quarters of the daily recommended level of saturated fat and sodium.

Dairy Management, whose annual budget approaches $140 million, is largely financed by a government-mandated fee on the dairy industry. But it also receives several million dollars a year from the Agriculture Department, which appoints some of its board members, approves its marketing campaigns and major contracts and periodically reports to Congress on its work.

The organization’s activities, revealed through interviews and records, provide a stark example of inherent conflicts in the Agriculture Department’s historical roles as both marketer of agriculture products and America’s nutrition police…

Continue reading.  Sounds as though some agencies should be broken up—perhaps give the FDA a much bigger budget and also give them responsibility for all food safety and nutrition standards and NO responsibility to market foods.

Weight this morning was 216.8 lbs, a new low in this effort, and I still have another day of the plateau buster. In the meantime, I did 20 minutes on the Nordic Track again (listening to my Libravox recording of Robinson Crusoe) and this afternoon have a Pilates class.

It may well be that I benefit from a month of steady weight with no loss, and that I can now resume losing without worrying about losing weight too fast.

For example, this post by Steve Benen:

The first post-election GOP freak-out happens to be an odd one. Perhaps disappointed by the lack of voter fraud allegations, the right is seizing on President Obama’s upcoming trip to India as being overly pricey.

We talked yesterday about the tantrum, and how utterly ridiculous it is. To hear Limbaugh, Fox News, and Republican lawmakers tell it, the trip will cost Americans over $200 million a day — a figure that’s not only wrong, but appears to have been made up.

The Wall Street Journal, not exactly an outlet that’s friendly to the administration, described the allegations as being based on a "demonstrably incorrect" article in the foreign press. (In the 1990s, it was not uncommon for far-right activists to plant stories in international outlets, and then use them as the basis for domestic controversies.)

Yesterday, the idiocy got worse when Drudge trumpeted allegations that President Obama will be accompanied by a fleet of 34 warships, including an aircraft carrier.

The Pentagon was not amused.

The Pentagon did not mince words in dismissing as "absolutely absurd" and "comical" media reports from Indian news outlets that the US Navy was sending 34 warships off the coast of Mumbai as part of the security preparations for President Obama’s upcoming trip to India.

Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell … told reporters he was making an exception to the practice of not discussing Presidential security details to shoot down the reports. [...]

He acknowledged that a Presidential trip requiring security needs "should not come as a surprise to anyone" and that the Defense Department "does play a role in support of Presidential missions." He said it was customary to not discuss such security requests, but "I made an exception in batting down this absurd notion of there being 34 ships, or more than 10 percent of the Navy, deployed in support of this trip. That is most certainly not the case."

As Steve M. reminds us, though, that Fox News and several prominent conservative blogs continue to cite already-debunked figures as fact.

There’s a reason so many Republican voters seem confused about current events — they’re lied to as a matter of course.

The problem with ignoring reality and basing your programs on a foundation of lies is that failure, when it comes, is very bad indeed. And it goes on. Kevin Drum:

Read the rest of this entry »

Brad Johnson at ThinkProgress:

Republicans who were elected on Tuesday are beginning to deliver on their campaign promises to kill America’s future. Within hours of declaring victory, the incoming tea-party governors of Wisconsin and Ohio stood fast on pledges to kill $1.2 billion in funding for high-speed rail in their states. The funding, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will revert to the federal government for investment in other states — unless Republicans in Congress are able to kill that, too. Walker warned he would fight President Obama to keep the Milwaukee-Madison link killed “if he tries to force this down the throats of the taxpayers.” Kasich — who called the high-speed rail project linking Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati “one of the dumbest ideas” he’s ever heard — used his victory speech to announce, “That train is dead“:

Scott Walker, the incoming governor of Wisconsin, for instance, vowed on Wednesday to carry out a campaign pledge to kill a proposed high-speed rail link between Milwaukee and Madison, part of a larger project to create a high-speed rail corridor across the upper Midwest, from Minneapolis to Chicago. The project was to be fully paid for with $810 million in federal stimulus funds. Mr. Walker said he wanted the money spent on roads, although under the terms of the grants, such a use of the funds is prohibited.

The newly elected Republican governor of Ohio, John Kasich, who ousted Ted Strickland, a Democrat, has also reiterated a campaign pledge to kill a $400 million stimulus-funded rail project in his state. “Passenger rail is not in Ohio’s future,” Mr. Kasich said at his first news conference after the election. “That train is dead.”

In addition to their ideological opposition to creating new jobs through government investment, both Walker and Kasich question the reality of climate science, like other new Republican governors threatening clean energy projects across the nation.

And, in the House, the GOP is moving to gut the financial industry reforms that were enacted and plan to defund any efforts to guard against another financial meltdown.

Confidence gone, America now cowers within its borders, frightened (it seems) of everything. We have hired thugs at our borders and airports, harassing citizens and visitors. We read of incidents like this one, recounted by Terrance Chan, a poker player of some fame within poker circles:

And so, it came to pass, that before my 30th birthday, I am declaring myself done with the United States of America.

I had a plan for the next couple months; it was a simple one. Go down to the no-gi World Championships in Long Beach and compete. Train some jiujitsu and some muay thai and some wrestling. Rent a place, maybe on the beach, somewhere with a good taco stand nearby.

The Department of Homeland Security had other ideas.

My first attempt to cross the border was last Thursday. I figured it was no different than any of my other land border crossings, whether they were the ones for the 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 or 2010 WSOPs. I expected to be pulled into secondary screening and interrogated, as I had for every trip except for the 2009 one. I parked my car, handed over the keys, and waited in line with all the other fortunate souls.

After an hour of waiting, I made it to the front, where I was asked the usual questions. Where do I live? What do I do for work? What is the purpose of my trip? How long will I be there? I answered every question with what would turn out to be the worst possible answer — the truth. I told them that I am a professional poker player with rental property in Hong Kong and Vancouver, and that I was going down to train martial arts for two months, including participating in a major tournament. I made it very clear I had no plans to stay in the United States past December.

They told me to sit down.

About 30 minutes later, I was asked another round of questions. These questions from the same officer were much more accusatory. How could I prove I wasn’t trying to stay in the states indefinitely? What ties do I have to Canada? What ties do I have to Hong Kong? What assurances can you give that you will leave the US? I answered that I own property outside of the US that I have to manage, that all my family lives outside of Canada, that I have poker sponsorship opportunities awaiting me in the Asia-Pacific region.

"But none of these things prove that you will leave the U.S."

I was told to sit back down, and waited for another 30 minutes. I was then called up again, taken to the back, fingerprinted, and told to sit back down.

After another 30 minutes, I was called back to the front, and told I was being denied entry. I was told I was welcome to try again if I could prove ties and equities to my home country. I asked what constitutes proof and the officer told me that was up to the immigration officer that was making that decision. He said I had to demonstrate to that officer I had ties to my home country. When pressed further he said I should bring title deeds, and a plane ticket departing.

I was pretty pissed to be turned away. I was enraged, really; no other way to put it. The officer told me (as he was sending me on the road back into Canada) that I was welcome to try again with my documentation but if I were attempt to try to another port of entry that I would be arrested. I grabbed my passport and snarled that I wasn’t likely to come back again, ever.
A few hours later though, I cooled down. I had this plan, and I wanted to see it through. So I had my dad send me all my papers from Hong Kong — my properties, bank statements, even water and electric bills. I collected as much stuff as I had on hand in Canada with the same. I did my research online and was told by a dozen people that if I had all my shit in order there was "no way" I’d be denied a second time. I even allowed myself to be confident that this time, they’d (perhaps grudgingly) let me in.

We were all quickly proven wrong.

My trip today was pretty much the same as the one on Thursday. But it was apparent their mind was already made up, even with me having put together all my paperwork. They went through every piece of paperwork I had and found something wrong with it in one way or another. I had last month’s internet bill in Vancouver and my electric bill in Hong Kong; they now told me I needed six months of bills. They said I needed credit card statements with activity to prove I was spending time in those places. They said I needed a job with pay stubs, and they said that that job had to be where I was physically present, such that it would not be possible for me to do it in the States. They didn’t like that my plane ticket from Vancouver to Hong Kong was only for two months, even though neither of those places is in the United States. He even tried to twist my words of "I’m going to train martial arts" as meaning that I was going to work illegally. "If you don’t have a visa for that, you can’t come in."

Quite simply, they never had any intent of letting me in the country, no matter what I showed, said, or did. There is no conceivable way that I could have convinced them otherwise. I was fingerprinted again and once again shown the door.

Could I try one more time, get all six months of documentation they want, hell, hire an immigration lawyer? Yeah, I could do those things. I could continue to jump through their hoops. But I have no assurances the hoops will not just be higher and farther back every time, and I have no desire to spend five hours at the border just to find out. I am a law-abiding, honest, wealthy and mobile Canadian who wanted to come for two months, rent a property, buy groceries, pay fees to a school, spend money on entertainment, and leave.

For this, I get treated like a criminal. Well, no more. I’m done with the United States.

When I said it on Thursday, I said it out of anger. But when it was apparent I was getting turned back today, I felt no anger. My primary emotion was sadness. I already knew what decision I was going to make. I knew I was giving up going to Canucks playoff road games, giving up big jiujitsu tournaments, giving up the WSOP, and most importantly, giving up visiting my American friends. That’ll be the toughest part. I have people down in that country whom I adore; people I wish I could see every day, people that I planned on seeing and having fun with. I’m going to miss seeing these people, a lot. Missing the WSOP is going to be very hard for me, but I feel like it’s something I have to do. For the most part, my friends are also mobile people, so hopefully I can see them in Canada, Hong Kong, or on neutral soil. But some of my friends are going to have very valid reasons for not being able to travel. Others may simply not want to leave the comfort of their homes. Time will tell.

I’ve got no anger now, just disappointment and sadness. This isn’t a knee-jerk reaction of anger. This is me saying that I cannot in good conscience support this country with my tourism dollars. As I was driving back I wonder how this decision and this day will ultimately affect my life. I do know people — including American citizens — who have sworn not to go to the United States, for various but similar reasons. I know two who even relinquished their passport. They’ve gone decades without going to the U.S., and they seem to do just fine. From Hong Kong or Vancouver, I don’t really even need to transit through the United States except possibly to Latin America, but even then I can often transit through Toronto.

Goodbye, America. It’s been fun, and I’m sad it had to come to this, but we’re through. It’s not me — it’s you.

The men-ü artificial badger brush created a fine lather from the Paisley lavender soap—too bad they no longer make it. Three smooth pases of the Feather Premium (with a newish Feather blade), a splash of New York aftershave, and I’m ready for 20 minutes on the Nordic. I even have a choice of books: Dombey and Son or Robinson Crusoe. (Novels written in the days when novels were often read aloud make much better listening, I find.)