My girlfriend and I have about six rules we try our best to follow (more successfully now than before).

1. When arguing – no swearing or name calling
2. No bringing up old arguments
3. Unless we agree to do so
4. Tell the other person before we go to bed if we’re angry.
5. If we get far apart, we must come back close together (read: make up sex)
6. No breaking up over a petty argument. If we break up, it’s serious.

She came up will rule #6 herself after she had a conversation with a co-worker who got into an argument with her boyfriend, broke up with him, cried about it, and got back together with him all in the same hour.

The only rules we’ve had trouble following?

#4 and #5

We tend to get silent when we’re mad and I don’t see her that much because she’s a three hour drive from my university.

She’s been my longest relationship so far and I suspect these rules may have something to do with it.

~Wald

Think about playing chess. When you play the game, you try to outsmart your opponent to checkmate his king. As you get better at playing the game, you learn to think several moves ahead. As you start to get to good at playing the game, you start to think ten or more moves ahead.

With relationships, every day you deal with the relationship, you’re playing a game of reverse chess. You play according to how the relationship is today, and how it was three hours, three days, three weeks, or three months ago. Women, with their masterful memories, lodging exact dates of arguments, what you said verbatim, and other otherwise innocuous actions play the game this way. This is why I think guys are surprised when relationships fail – they fail to think far enough in the past and fail to accurately identify fault lines in the relationship.

Players who find themselves surprised may accurate identify fault lines, but find themselves being outclassed in the ‘reverse chess match’ if they don’t deal with them right away.

~Wald

I’m learning Russian at a neighboring university to mine. My teacher hails from Ukraine and often has much to say about Putin and what’s going on in that part of the world. One day, she informs the class that we will be listening to a speaker talk about his time in Ukraine. He’ll lecture to us about his experiences, ask us questions, in Russian of course, and a teacher will translate all of it for us, including our responses. Our speaker was former military and apparently took part in the riots.

He then went on to tell us the story about there’s four countries. But let’s focus on two of them; the US and Canada. Both countries speak English and all is dandy. But then Canada decides its national language is now French and the US, headed by hypothetical president McCain, decides to declare war on Canada. He explains a few more details like how Russia is using cluster bombs and that’s against the Geneva convention and then asks the group on our opinions about the whole thing. He also said that they’re plagued by the lack of good intelligence; the Russians had drones and Satellites and could bombard the Ukrainians with impunity. With a lack of imaging information, the Ukrainians would fire back and hit nothing or civilians, as the Russians allegedly fired from between buildings in villages. Our speaker recounted how young soldiers could go off and train for months and then get to the frontlines and die in a hail of accurate artillery fire.

To my memory, the students who were non-ROTC all agreed that Russia was being bad, but didn’t offer much beyond that. So the Ukrainian man asked the commissioning students what they thought. One guy nearly fluent in Russian, believed we should put tanks in Kiev, point them at Moscow, but not shoot. Another cadet expressed concern about what would happen if the US got involved and that it might escalate things. Judging by the reaction, his was not an especially popular answer.

I was curious about clarifying a few things. My first remark was, “Ukraine should stop trusting the EU and the US, since they’re operating under the idea that Ukraine will receive assistance.”

I then asked if either Ukraine or Russia had signed the Geneva Convention.

Are you crazy? Of course they signed the Geneva Convention.

That was the response I got. So I decided to remain quite and do a little research with the aid of my friend’s smartphone. With a cursory search, I discovered that it was the Soviet Union and not the Russian Federation who signed the Geneva Convention, and then, not even all of it. So if we were to say that Russia in its current iteration didn’t sign the convention, then the complaint about the cluster bombs is about as meaningful as complaining that the Taliban don’t fight by the rules like gentlemen.

I then contemplated a possible solution to Ukraine’s lack of proper ability to gain visual contact on Russians so as to fire upon them. I remember the speaker talked about how the Ukrainian armed forces had trouble even building trenches, for the Russians would fire upon them as they worked.

Then a light bulb appeared to me.

If the Russians can see the Ukrainians but the Ukrainians can’t see them, there is a solution. If the Russian armed forces are really in Ukraine, the Ukrainians should have some Russian prisoners by now. If so, they should use them to build their trenches. If the Russians can see the Ukrainians as well as claimed, they should not fire upon their own people and thereby allow construction of defensive fortifications. If the Russians can’t see so well, they’ll fire upon the prisoners and kill their own people. The resulting press outrage should be enough to cool even the Russian people’s perception of their country’s war against Ukraine.

Does that solve the war? No. But it’s more solution than I’ve heard anybody else come up with yet so far*.

~Wald

*It should go without saying that I have yet to hear everyone’s opinion and therefore, it’s entirely possible there’s a good solution out there that I’ve missed.

I know I wrote on vaccines a while back. My opinion hasn’t changed much, but perhaps it’s a little more refined. My basic issue with vaccines is not the science behind it – rather the people behind it – the government and big pharma (that’s pharmaceutical corporations and companies that deal with any thing medically related).

Anyway – I read an interesting article on vaccination – by ingesting natural honey produced by Bees.

A letter to the New York Times editor about how local honey helps to fight allergies got me thinking, does it really work? I’ve heard about this natural allergy-fighting remedy before, but I’ve always wondered, how do you know it works? How much would you need to consume?

I only use local honey. The wildflower honey I get from a South Jersey honey producer is amazingly delicious. Tasted alongside of the grocery store honey that comes in a little bear, there’s no comparison. I always stock up at the end of the farmers market season so I have enough to last me through the winter.

No one in my family suffers terribly from seasonal allergies. My oldest son and I get itchy eyes and a bit of a sore throat when the seasons start to change in the spring and fall, but it only lasts a couple of days. We wait it out and don’t take any medication.

I wonder if our symptoms would be worse if I didn’t buy local honey? Could the honey mustard chicken recipe that my boys like so much that I may it weekly in the winter be medicinal?

The theory about the local honey and allergies is this: your local bees are more likely to collect pollen from the local flowers in your area. That pollen will end up in small amounts in the honey produced. By ingesting that honey on regular basis, the person eating the honey will build up immunity to the pollens from the flowers in their local region. It’s sort of like a vaccine taken little by little.

That’s the theory. There doesn’t seem to be any scientific evidence to back that up, however. I cant find any scientific studies that test the theory. Even without scientific evidence, this sees like one of those ideas worth trying.There are other proven benefits, too. Honey can immediately sooth a sore throat (whether it’s caused by seasonal allergies or not). It’s a natural, temporary energy booster. According the National Honey Board, it “contains small amounts of a wide array of vitamins and minerals, including niacin, riboflavin pantothenic acid, calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc.”

In addition to the health benefits, buying local honey helps support local honey producers. Small bee farmers are on the front lines of helping to save our decreasing bee population right now, and purchasing their local products can help keep them in the fight.

My question to you is, do you use local honey to alleviate the symptoms of your seasonal allergies? Do you believe it works and why? I’m really curious.