just to clarify - when i say 'lecture podcasts' i actually mean audiobook format or lectures just read out from a script. when lecturers at the itunes university talk off the cuff i find it very easy to pay attention.

oh - working out. Excerise, but aerobic style excercise, weight lifting doesn't help at all.

baths, lying down on the floor staring straight up... frequent breaks. i remember stuff i learn just before i go to bed more. cooking really relaxes me. video games, i assumed in the past, were for free time, ie relaxation. but they don't relax me, after battering away at gta4 for a while i'm exhausted. i listen to a lot of podcasts too...  
 
now, with recalling stuff from podcasts the two main types must be considered - the lecture type and the conversation kind. i tend to drift out much less from conversational podcasts, but i have an inkling i don't retain as much as from lecture ones - that is, when i'm forced to really pay attention. when walking/performing autopilot tasks etc i much prefer conversational podcasts, and find it difficult to pay attention to lecture ones, which i prefer when doing absolutely nothing and can give my undivided attention. but i'll have to look into it more.  
 
eureka moments do come when i'm just daydreaming. i try to watch and control my daydreaming, but it doesn't help much. ruminating on obscure political issues that barely effect you in real life isn't productive, unless you run a blog! I read somewhere that our obsession with these political issues that don't effect our here-and-now in any way stems from a biological desire to keep tabs on the high status members of the tribe.  
 
Now my friends - the man-cycle. In the book The Modern Gentleman they lay out this concept called the man-cycle. Basically it points out that men have mood cycles just like women. Male mood cycles, however, tend to diverge between two poles - cresting and slumping. When you crest, everything seems possible, ideas come to you a mile a minute, flagging friendships are reinvigorated with gusto, women are wooed... but they are unsustainable, so they must not be wasted. Slumping is the downtime, which must be combated by not taking a devil may care nothing matters attitude. Be a 10. As they say, 'maximise the sprints, shorten the stalls, and preserve an overall baseline of optimism.'  
 
Don't masturbate or have sex in the morning - with a caveat - if you're superpumped almost beyond the crest then it can bring you down and focus your already above average energies better. 
 
Try out books that tell you how to do stuff, and give you steps. As men we need to feel like we are accomplishing something, computer games provide the illusion of accomplisment very well, and that's why they're so popular. So books that say do this, now do that, how well did you do etc, are better for learing. Steven Fry's The Ode Less Travelled or Neil Strauss's Rules of the Game have taught me more than all the poetry books (re former) or game books (latter) have. I felt like I was accomplishing things along the way, and the whole experience was very satisfactory.

Only one EU country out of 26 is holding a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. Many countries would vote no if given the choice, like France and Holland did the last time. (you think the british would even consider voting yes?) Ireland is the only country getting a vote, largely because of Raymond Crotty. The Commission has spent major bucks festooning Dublin with flyers orgasmically proclaiming vote yes, yes!, YES!!

Indians, motor-boatin son-of-a-bitches all of them. A bunch of old sailors!

Agnostic, man, you don't like the motor-boat?

Sorry to interject here Thursday, but unless your opportunity cost is zilch, I would strongly advise against reading War and Peace. If a reader must, just skip to the war scenes.  
 
Gothic Edgar Allan Poe was one of the foundlings of mystery, sci fi etc, although the latter is debateable, and his stuff had serious psychological depth, but related in a manner of almost stilted objectivity. The writing was great, but so intricate as to perhaps be unsustainable beyond the short story medium, which might explain why Jing finds short story sci-fi writing best - it's a lot easier to write well for a couple of pages than a hundred. I've experienced this first when I tried to batter out some tales myself - I'd begin all complex and psychological, explaining what all the characters thought and felt etc, like the literati brainwashed me to do, but as the story progressed it would increasingly focus on externals, more and more, in a downward spiral where eventually the characters had become mere ciphers for the onward march of plot twists and turns. The closest I'd get to 'feeling' after that was a poetic description of a landscape, or the clash of bullet and bone. Razib has finally enlightened me - my male brain was simply reasserting itself!

Also this little red bookchair I got is incredibly useful.

Blood Rock by James Jackson. Amazing.

The thing i remember most from the 'cribs' tv show were always the neatly and fully stocked fridge-freezers.

Also - make sure your fridge is stocked fullish with good, wholesome food if you are taking her back to your place. I haven't any evidence, but I'm sure the disappointment she may feel over a return to your less than modest apartment will be eliminated if you have a good, full display of food. Especially meats.

ON POLO 
I remember a magazine article, TIME I think, stating that the best place to take a first date was an amusement park. true, but the reason they gave was because it was 'exciting'. i think it's actually because you are repeatedly pushing the protector of loved ones attraction switch (POLO). POLO is activated on most rides: you hold her close to you on the log floom, even brush water off her face, you protect her on the ghost train, you hold her hand on the roller coaster or even the teacups. amusement parks allow you to repeatedly kino while you also POLO, which is an awesome attraction combination.  
 
POLO can also be pushed by simple, tiny things, like sharing an umbrella during the rain (ensure YOU hold the umbrella or the POLO effect is neutralized), stopping her from crossing a dangerous road and leading her by hand across, stuff like that. 
 
As mystery points out - the simple act of giving a woman food is more effective at building attraction and comfort than giving her a $25,000 car. Restaurants should never be used on a first date, as A. money is vague, and ethereal, you can spend it on her, but it will never push POLO to the extent that actually, physcially doing something for her (this added to the thousand other reasons restaurants are idiotic dating locations) COOK FOR HER, in your home, using as many natural ingredients as possible (ie make the sauce rather than use a jar) This will push that ancient but everpresent attraction switch whereby men essentially exchange food for sex. Much more effective than money for sex (not prostitition, i mean spending money on a woman you're courting)

Yes, the protection of loved ones attraction switch in the female brain is quite powerful. And it is likely that men evolved, in turn, to flip that switch and thus feel a rush of good emotions when they flip it. I once comforted a crying girlfriend after a ghost train (she didn't know there would be 'live actors'), and got an enormous rush from it. Amusement parks are good places to push this attraction switch.

by the way, every guy should buy this book, even if you have a girlfriend, the knowledge is invaluable. i can't believe how much of my life i wasted reading history and philosophy without knowing the basic principles of social dynamics.

I think guys evolved the game. ItÂ’s highly probable that males have evolved this circuitry, but our rational brains get in the way and come out with beta crap. For example, remember when you were a kid and there was a girl you liked – youÂ’d treat her like crap, fight with her etc, it just seemed like the natural thing to do. I really think the game is hardwired into us, but our rational brain considers things like that ‘irrationalÂ’, ‘surely it doesnÂ’t make sense to treat a girl with contempt if you like herÂ’, and so we go with the neocortex and ignore our heart. I mean, if the game worked even a very small percentage of the time (negs etc), and it must have even accounting for the evolution of approach anxiety or the fact that your mate choice was largely controlled by parents, then over thousands of years it wouldÂ’ve been selected for and would predominate in the male population. It sure as hell makes a lot more sense than some of the other things believed by some to have been selected for (religion).  
 
And in fact, I used to treat women I liked with mild contempt, and they were more into me as a result. But then when I got older and genuinely started dating I abandoned all that and started using my brain, rationalising ways to attract women – ie, being really nice to them, buying them drinks etc, which never worked. Reading a book by Roosh V called ‘Bang’, the first game book I read, felt not so much like the discovery of a new and novel knowledge, but the rediscovery of old and natural wisdom long buried, a kind of renaissance

Interesting qualifier for Italian guys, something to do with more pathogen load on the peninsula? at least until mussolini sorted it out.

Score another one for East Asian collectivism over European individualism. 
 
careful now. remember when some pc fool managed to somehow anthropomorphize racially the differences between 'docile' european bee and the 'agressive' african one.

The Nazi / Republican analogy is pretty exact. Homosexuals in either group are closeted, and both groups were actively anti-homosexual (the Nazis put thousands or tens of thousands of homosexuals in concentration camps because of their orientation -- probably the "flagrant" ones.) Goldberg misrepresent the Nazi facts and ignores the Republican facts. Gay Republicans show up all the time (not that there's anything wrong with that). 
 
i wouldnt describe the republicans as actively anti-homosexual. opposing gay marriage does not make one anti-homosexual. and that jibe about the possible development of a paramilitary group is ridiculous. whenever conservatives rabbit on about gay marriage they always bathe themselves in a sea of pc platitudes first (nothing wrong with consenting adults etc, just dont want to 'undermine' marriage) also, in the past it seemed to be the conservative parties who were more open to homosexuality, indeed homosexuality was considered a kind of vice of an effeminite toff elite.  
 
one of the most popular conservative novels of the 20th century had at least an implied homosexual relationship at its centre. i was leafing through a cs lewis book the other day and he approved of relationships between boarding school boys, considering it 'inevitable' in the absence of females.

multiply the anti-abortion terrorists by a few hundred, and they'll have that too. 
 
wtf 
 
Some early Nazi leaders were closet homosexuals, but so are many contemporary Republican leaders.  
 
oh come on

i recently happened upon 'the triumph of the west' by jm roberts, published by bbc, very large. it was really, really brilliant. a large narrative history of the west, very idea-based. dichotomized the two strands of christianity - eastern and western, somehow managed to link emperor justinian with communist russia, and pretty much argued that augustine was the main ideaman behind the western project.  
 
first chapter is free online