"I have news for everybody: Get over it. There's going to be political influence in foreign policy,"

- A totally unironic Mick Mulvaney

I mean, I love Radiohead and all, but do they just get their lyrics from a generator? reads like every. Radiohead. Song. Ever.

Every once in a while, I stop to consider that if it weren't for my wife, I couldn't have pursued the life I did right out of college. I wouldn't have gotten to live out my dreams, and I don't think I'd now be as comfortable with myself as I am. She worked her ass off with a full-time job through nursing school while I tooled around being a musician. She's been the primary breadwinner for our family as I've solidified my career choices, and she's stayed on the night shift for way too long for the bump in income and so that we can trade off childcare. She gave me the time and the room to grow up, and she never- never- complained about it. All she asked in compensation was that we started a family sooner rather than later- given that we made three other people for whom I'm equally thankful, I'd say that's a pretty damn good deal.

Without her love, I wouldn't believe in myself as I do. Without her support, I couldn't have ever self-actualized. I can confidently say that she's at least twice the person I am, and I have no problem with that. Today's her birthday, actually- think I'll say all of this to her.

My oldest brother introduced me to the phrase "gotta piss like a racehorse" when I was young. Given my tiny bladder and significant drinking appetites, I've since found ample opportunity to use it. Never thought about what it meant.

Then a few months ago- during the Kentucky Derby, probably? There was an NPR piece about racehorse drug culture. Yeah, it's a thing. It swings two ways:

A) Racehorses are subject to all the competitive pressures that your average Tour De France cyclist experiences. Correspondingly, jockeys will try to "dope" their horses if they can get away with it. And given that a horse is much less likely to object, they've been known in the past to get pumped full of all sorts of crazy shit.

2) The nature of the race puts all sorts of weird pressures on a horse's system, which is already apparently sort of wonky. Racehorses are particularly vulnerable to something called "exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage," wherein capillaries in the airway burst, expelling blood all over the fucking place including down into their lungs and out their noses.

So jockeys end up pumping all sorts of other fun drugs into their horses to curb race-related maladies, which can be potentially fatal. Like, mid-race-drop-dead fatal.

To control EIPH, they've been known to use Furosemide, which draws fluid away from the lungs. Here's a breakdown that does it justice in a way I can't:

http://www.thehorse.com/articles/29833/eiph-and-furosemide-use-in-racehorses-explained

Furosemide is a diuretic. Takes all that water and deposits it into the horse's bladder for disposal. Side note: it's also postulated that Furosemide is in itself a performance-enhancing drug, as it allows the horse to expel all unnecessary fluid and presumably shed a few pounds right before the race. Don't know the specific science behind that claim, or if it holds up.

So! A) horses are known for their prolific bladders in totally normal conditions and B) Furosemide is a strong diuretic. It all adds up to a whole lot of piss, most specifically in regards to racehorses.

I'm proud of this assessment because the news piece never directly mentioned the "piss like a racehorse" thing. Just mentioned in passing that Furosemide was a diuretic and light bulbs went off in my head.

I'm also proud that I can retain as much information as I did from a half-year old news piece. Don't take that for granted these days.

Everything about this feels way over-simplified. I would quote, but literally the whole article is the example I would use.

It's one thing to ask the questions the author is asking about Just War. Fine fine fine. It's another to paint Israel's current wartime tactics as the only wartime tactics, and thus inherently just if you've already accepted the morality of the overall campaign. And therein lies the problem- author isn't just laying out a justification for the invasion, he's laying out a justification for the way Israel is choosing to conduct the invasion as well. The first point is at least arguable from a philosophical, political and historical standpoint (for instance, your point w/ blackfox026 re. the continued existence of Israel). The second...?

Israel has more than enough support, funding, training, experience and outfitting for a ground war that would by design end up engaging way more of the militarized anti-Israel contingent than, you know, kids in a UN schoolyard, and still give them a shot at dismantling the infrastructure of violence. The fact that these instances are still cropping up is appalling, and stand completely isolate from the broader question of Just War.