The Dangers of Yoga

Yes, that is Yoga, not Yoda. I'm refraining from commenting on the new Star Wars film until I've actually seen it.

sepiatone put me onto an article called The Truth About Yoga by a Christian woman who used to engage in this devilish practice, but later saw the light. Apparently the danger of yoga is that it can lead you to "a New Age lifestyle". Actually, that's a fair point. This poor woman started doing yoga as a kid, then gravitated to crystals, Nostradamus, channeling and other New Age fads that can seriously damage your personal credibility. I mean if I were chatting up someone and she said she was into yoga, I'd think "OK, at least she's flexible," but if she then started going on about how her Native American spirit guide had taught her to communicate with dolphins by attuning herself to the vibrations of crystals, I would go to the loo and crawl out of the window.

On the other hand, if the same woman were to say she was doing Praise Moves (the author's Christian alternative to yoga), I wouldn't even bother with making excuses about needing to go to the toilet - I'd do a Captain Kirk-style dive and roll and be out of the door before she could get to the end of the sentence.

The Dangers of Yoga

Yes, that is Yoga, not Yoda. I'm refraining from commenting on the new Star Wars film until I've actually seen it.

sepiatone put me onto an article called The Truth About Yoga by a Christian woman who used to engage in this devilish practice, but later saw the light. Apparently the danger of yoga is that it can lead you to "a New Age lifestyle". Actually, that's a fair point. This poor woman started doing yoga as a kid, then gravitated to crystals, Nostradamus, channeling and other New Age fads that can seriously damage your personal credibility. I mean if I were chatting up someone and she said she was into yoga, I'd think "OK, at least she's flexible," but if she then started going on about how her Native American spirit guide had taught her to communicate with dolphins by attuning herself to the vibrations of crystals, I would go to the loo and crawl out of the window.

On the other hand, if the same woman were to say she was doing PraiseMoves" (the author's Christian alternative to yoga - "Deep Stretching, Gentle Movement and Strong Scripture"), I wouldn't even bother with making excuses about needing to go to the toilet. I'd do a Captain Kirk-style dive and roll, and be out of the door before she could get to the end of the sentence.

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Sexism and Racism

I often hear analogies between sexism and racism. On the other hand, I have never met a Black person who said, "What's wrong with you? You're not a real White, you keep acting Black!"

Drunken Driving

I decided to see how much alcohol affects drinving skills by  driving after a couple of litres of beer and a few brandies.

OK, not real driving. A few days ago, prompted by an unexpected payment for some translation work, I succumbed to temptation and bought a steering wheel controller for my computer. My rationalisation was that this would improve my pathetic driving skills, since Turkish traffic bears a strong resemblance to video games like Crazy Taxi and NASCAR Racer. I was rather disappointed that the free game that came with the hardware was not one of these, but Age of Empires II, which I already have, and in any case is not the best piece of software to try out your new steering wheel and pedals ("OMG, there's a bunch of pikemen on the road - quick, rev up and do a handbrake turn!"). So I downloaded the demo of Live For Speed, which turned out to be pretty impressive in terms of graphics and physics, and started working my way through the tutorial. I got stuck on the slalom - however fast I tried to go, it still told me I hadn't finished the course quickly enough.

A fair amount of alcohol later, I rebooted into Windows (yech!) for another try. Sure, I finished the slalom much more quickly, but it was a case of "Whee, there goes a traffic cone! Wow, those stacks of tires go right up in the air when you hit them!"

In other words, only try this at home, kids.