Obama, The Nation-Statist

What essentially sets a nation state apart is the monopoly of violence.
-Barack Obama

Then Obama must be saying that the USA is a failed nation state, because at most the USA is a member of an oligarchy of violence (in concert with local and state aggressors), and in reality the USA is part of a mixed economy of violence. Either way, Obama is earning his labels with gusto: socialist, communist, fascist, statist, very-bad man.

Judged By 12 Or Carried By 6

An often stated quote in the self-defense community is:

I'd rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.

It is ironic, or symbiotic, that the following encapsulates the sentiment of the self-righteous community:

That criminal deserves that he's being carried by six than judged by twelve. 

Beer Instead of Pure Water

My dad has a narrative for his theory about the necessity of beer in Middle Ages that goes something like this:

In the Middle Ages, everyone drank beer, because water was not safe to drink. The people then did not know that one  part of the brewing process was actually what made the drink safe: boiling. Therefore, with modern water purification processes, we don't need to drink beer.

That's all well and good, but it ignores a couple facts that counter those conclusions:

(1) Distilled water will leach minerals from your body. So water boiled to extreme is actually bad for you. But then again, even if they did know about boiling to kill germs in the Middle Ages, they would probably not be distilling it.

(2) Water storage. Water will turn, get infected by germs, in storage. That's why sailors made grog with bad water and rum on ocean voyages.

(3) Wine was never boiled and was also a safe substitute for water.

(4) Fermented products have additional benefits from amino acids acids, trace minerals, active live cultures (if not pasteurized), etc.