Duin and Kruidberg parkingspace, 360° today. Breath [ relax ]

Above: post-training stretching on a spacious mobile stretching unit engineered by Volvo.

Min/max temperature: 7°C/10°C; humidity: 69%; precipitation: 2 mm; sea level pressure: 1015 hPa; wind: W 35.4 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds: Scattered Clouds 822 m.; Moon: Waning Gibbous, 84% illuminated

"[L]achahahahahahaa"

Boudewijn de Groot 'Het Land Van Maas en Waal' ('The land at rainbow's end'), written by Boudewijn de Groot and Lennaert H. Nijgh, produced by Tony Vos, first published in 1967 trough Decca

"Aha-ahaaa"

Abba 'Money Money Money', written and produced by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, recorded in 1974, first published in 1976 trough Polar/Epic/Atlanic

"Putting aside the close calls during the various Cold War crises […] none of the cases […] seem to support the idea that nuclear proliferation is "inconsequential," much less stabilising; just the opposite. [U]ntil and unless there is nuclear use, there is no proof in these matters: we cannot predict the future, and the causes of wars are always complex. All we know is that the United States fired nuclear weapons in anger on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, and the United States and Russia threatened to use them several times during the Cold War. However, for some reason, since 1945, they never have been used. It would be nice to believe that they never will. […] The Chinese […] claim that they have built 3,000 miles of tunnels to hide China's nuclear capable missile forces and related warheads and that China continues to build such tunnels. Employing missile reloads for mobile missile systems has been standard practice for Russia and the United States. It would be odd if it was not also a Chinese practice. […] North Korea also has gone to extensive lengths to protect its strategic assets. Almost all of its nuclear and long-range military systems have underground tunnelled bases or host areas. [ It is estimated ] that North Korea has in excess of 10,000 underground facilities to protect its key military and civilian assets. […] Russia invested over $6 billion to expand a 400-square-mile underground nuclear complex at Yamantau a full decade after the Berlin wall fell. This complex is burrowed deep enough to withstand a nuclear attack and is large enough and provisioned sufficiently to house 6,000 people for months. [It is believed] it is one of a system of as many as 200 Russian nuclear bunkers. […] The question is, what is next? […] Forty years ago, when U.S. and allied arms control policies were premised upon finite deterrence -- i.e., on the evils of targeting weapons and defending against them, and on the practical advantages of holding innocents at risk in the worlds major cities [emphasis added] -- arms control rightly became an object of derision by serious security planners. Since then, it almost has become an article of conservative Republican faith that arms control is self-defeating. It also has become an article of faith among most liberal Democrats that it deserves unquestioned support. Any serious effort to reduce future nuclear threats will need to move beyond this ideological divide. […] The best way to start would be to put our Cold War fascination with mutual assured destruction theorizing aside and focus instead on what is most likely to reduce the chances of war, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear weapons use."

Henri D. Sokolski in 'Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future', page 25, 37, 47, 55, 79. first published Januari 2016 by Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press, USA

"[T]here can be few experiences more frightening than undergoing an air-raid. However, the well-documented information on the subject […] shows that during the Second World War the great majority of people endured air-raids extraordinarily well-contrary to the universal expectation of mass panic. Exposure to repeated bombing did not produce increases in psychiatric disorders. Although short-lived fear reactions were common, surprisingly few prolonged phobic reactions emerged. In the course of his official report to the Medical Research Council, Sir Aubrey Lewis (1942) said that “the doctors in Liverpool trained 18 volunteers as auxiliary mental-health workers for service in and after raids, but none of the 18 has been required: there was no such work for them to do,” […] His summary of his findings (“air-raids have not been responsible for any striking increase in neurotic illness” […]) is in keeping with many similar reports from other workers. [It is] noted that “the small number of psychiatric casualties that have followed aerial bombardment has been a matter for surprise”. Although [it] did obtain some evidence of fear induction and of an exacerbation of neurotic reactions, on the whole Lewis’s survey was remarkable in showing how uncommon these reactions were. In Coventry, Manchester, Liverpool and London, psychiatrists and other service-workers agreed that there had not been any significant increase in the number of patients attending psychiatric clinics. There was however evidence of more fear and related disturbances among the children. So for example, 4 per cent of 8000 school-children in Bristol (subjected to severe air-raids) were said to have developed anxiety symptoms attributable to raids. […] The fears were particularly common and noticeable among children who had been subjected to traumatic experiences. It was also observed in Bristol and in Manchester, that “frightened mothers communicated their fears to the children” […] This British information is matched by the reports from Japan and Germany […] Immediately after an air-raid, many people experienced acute emotional reactions characterised by startle responses, tremor, fatigue and sleep disturbance. However, these acute reactions generally dissipated spontaneously, usually within the course of a day or two. People adapted to air-raids and became more courageous with increasing experience, even when as in London, the raids became progressively heavier. The observations of comparative fearlessness enduring despite repeated exposures to intense trauma, uncontrollability and uncertainty, run contrary to the conditioning theory of fear acquisition. According to this theory, people subjected to repeated air-raids should acquire multiple conditioned fear reactions and these should be strengthened with repeated exposures."

Stanley Rachman in 'The Conditioning Theory of Fear-Ecquisition: A Critical Examination', page 379, 380, first published in 1976 by Pergamon Press. Printed in Great Brittain

Kennemer dunes, today. Jumping out of the office.

The benefit of bare -- unprotected running¹ -- comes from digesting reality as it makes contact. It is a way of perceiving information. Just as driving, after a certain amount of experience allows for relaxed conversation with other people in the car -- as it is so well expressed in these Volvo films. So does barefoot running, regardless of underground surface, such as sand, stones and shells, flat, up, down and trough the water, trough snow, over ice and trough mud and over asphalt. After a certain amount of training it is all OK. As said before: the foot is a miraculous piece of biomechanics. When people sometimes ask: how do you do it, doesn't it hurt, don't you get injured? Lawrence of Arabia would have said: "The trick is not minding if it hurts." My reply is: my feet only get hurt at home. Never out in the open. At home, nasty pieces of glass prove to be leading to bloody injuries. Always unexpected. While running, apart from the experience of stimulating the flow of blood during running  -- in the feet and trough the legs -- rough surfaces such as small stones, shells and all that create what I call the experience of sensory offensive training. A mental experience. Flow on demand. After the path doesn't scare anymore, the way of information digestion becomes -- however pretentious that may sound -- 'bread and butter' and you start to apply that attitude upon digesting information 'in general'. Stuff starts to make sense within a broader perspective. You open up to a more free perspective upon things. The muscles move, the mind is at ease. Barefoot running burns fear.

Such as this experience. Today it struck me, after having seen television for the first time in maybe 10 years, last Saturday evening, how annoying TV and commercials are².  Around 8'O clock in the PM we watched some TV in a hotel room. On channel one of the Dutch public television there was a nature documentary broadcasted by the Evangelical Broadcast organisation. ZAP. On channel two of the Dutch public TV there was a church service with purple light effects upon the wall and flashy crane shots and people singing, broadcasted by the Evangelical Broadcast organisation. ZAP. On channel three there was the news for children. "Please leave it on", Melle said. Shortly followed by at least 12 minutes of annoying commercials aimed at children. For Lego, and sugarcoated cereals. And they repeated it over and over and over. Just like the Teletubies do: repetition must lead to deeper recognition. Someone must have found that out. Public television. It struck me: TV creates anxiety. Unfulfilled wishes. And you can't start providing that experience too early it seems. This was not commercial television, this was STER, responsible for selling advertising time on radio and TV on Dutch public television (with a section on their website: "how to trigger the lust to buy?"). If politics is the part of the iceberg under water, media is terrorism for the mind, the visible part of the iceberg. In neo-liberal Holland everything looks very decent from the outside (people who drive like assholes do so in respectable cars). The real wars are fought in the living rooms. If you go by houses, regardless of size and neighborhood. Big villas, small workershouses, appartmentsbuildings, poor, rich, old, new, rented, bought: inside it seems that everybody is watching television. Terrorising the mind! The good news is: something can be done about it. Switch it off. Find and read books. Go out. Talk together. Have fun out in the open.

________________________

¹ Currently approx. 80 - 100 kilometres (49 - 62 miles) per week, the whole year round

² Regardless of the label of programming: progressive, alternative, truly alternative, even more truly alternative, most alternative, for the youth, governmental, liberal, adventurous, sportian, kathological, protestantical, muslimian, buddhistical, evangelical, intellectual, social, musical, regional, local, technological, folkloristical, political, historical, commercial, educational, dramatical; it rarely ceases to amaze in any other way than by its sheer, overdressed, cold, single-minded, power hungry unscrupulous stupidity! A primary coloured, brightly lit electric poultry house: talk-talk-talk-tok-tok-tok. And that is odd. It is a great invention, given center stage -- as a shrine -- in just about every home on the planet.