Wednesday, April 22. 2015
Tuesday, April 21. 2015
Just in time, Steyn's book is out: Climate Change: The Facts.
About the book, Dino says "the downside is it numbs the mind with numbers and equations and history lessons and so forth."
Related: On Earth Day, let’s appreciate our fossil fuel energy treasures that come from the Earth’s natural environment
Yup, fossil fuels are organic, and they are biofuels too. All of my vehicles are organically-powered.
A misguided attempt to improve healthcare has led some hospitals to
focus on making people happy, rather than making them well.
It's not either-or. Hospitals are looking for good ratings and market share. It definitely can go to ridiculous lengths and it remains a good rule of thumb that the hospitals with the best "hotel services" are not the most medically-advanced. And sometimes the "most advanced" can get you into new problems.
The U.S. Constitution Actually Bans Hillary’s Foreign Government Payola
What's the matter with these Clinton grifters?
A measly 15 percent of that, or $75 million, went towards programmatic grants. More than $25 million went to fund travel expenses. Nearly $110 million went toward employee salaries and benefits. And a whopping $290 million during that period — nearly 60 percent of all money raised — was classified merely as “other expenses.” Official IRS forms do not list cigar or dry-cleaning expenses as a specific line item. The Clinton Foundation may well be saving lives, but it seems odd that the costs of so many life-saving activities would be classified by the organization itself as just random, miscellaneous expenses.
Image via Moonbattery
Women Who Emotionally Abuse Men
Replica of LaFayette’s ship Hermione sets sail for US
Ernie Pyle was shot on the island of Ie Shima 70 years ago
Westport, CT and The New Yorker
Pasta? Ruby grapefruits? Why organic devotees love foods mutated by radiation and chemicals
Milk and OJ for breakfast?
It was good marketing. Same goes for cereal.
Twinkie's Miracle Comeback: The Untold, Inside Story of a $2 Billion Feast
The Socially Acceptable Sin-It’s everywhere in our society and churches, yet almost never talked about.
Japan stereotyping: Gear Acquisition Syndrome Has Reached a New High
Chicago: Bad Guy With A Gun Stopped By Good Uber Driver WIth A Gun
Minimum Intelligence Week at College Insurrection
Kimball: Remember the First Amendment?
Wisconsin’s Shame: ‘I Thought It Was a Home Invasion’
Steyn: The Drift toward Despotism
Expert: Obama's amnesty 'profoundly unfair' to 4 million legal immigrants, a new high
Will advise Brit friends to learn Spanish, fly to Mexico, wade thru the river, and get the freebies
For Earth Day: Michael Crichton explains why there is “no such thing as consensus science”
Jeb Bush Endorses UN Climate Change Treaty Process
Sultan:
The left is like a suicide bomber or a honey bee, it can’t win. It can only kill and die. A successful leftist regime is a contradiction in terms. The hard revolutions blow up fast and then decay into prolonged misery. The soft electoral revolutions skip the explosions and cut right to the prolonged misery.
Europe went Full Socialist and gave up. Carter’s malaise has been a reality in Europe for generations. What was four years in America was forty years in Europe. The American left’s great ambitions; bureaucratic rule, international impotence, national health care, endless education, environmental correctness and childbirth replaced by immigration were realized in Europe. And they killed Europe.
Now they’re killing America.
Why Are Many Former Workers Not Even Applying for Job Openings?
Do Americans Want To Live In Hillary Clinton’s Village?
She sure doesn't. The Villages?
White House Wouldn’t Deny That Hillary Did Favors For Donors
Menendez co-‘conspirator’ hosted Bill and Hillary at vacation getaway
Hannan: We may have the monarchy, but you have the hereditary ruling class
Hating the Daily Mail is a substitute for doing good
Replace Daily Mail with FOX and you get the idea
Saudis Brace for Home Front Attacks
It's daffodil and narcissus season at the Maggie's HQ
Monday, April 20. 2015
From Sipp's forthcoming book, The Regular:
I couldn’t buy her a birthday present. I have no money. That is to say: there is no money. Money can’t be had.
I have seen money. Felt it in my hand. I have wasted it one day and built temples to my fellow man the next with money, with no good reason to do either. I have watched it slumber in a bank book with my name on it waiting for nothing more than a notion and a signature. All gone. Gone for good, I think but must not say. She hears everything I say. I utter the sounds but I don’t listen to what I’m saying
Shortly after I was born, my father was shipped off by the Navy to live at Subic Bay Naval Station, where I spent the first two years of life. During that period, my mother took classes in Japanese art. Our homes, even after we returned to Philadelphia, always had some kind of Japanese artwork on display. When I bought my first apartment, my sister ound one of my mother's works, had it framed, and delivered it to my home. It still hangs on the wall of my man-cave in the basement.
I've always had some kind of Asian influence, either art or literature, in my life. I suppose it's the result of my parents' years in the Philippines and then my father's subsequent time in Micronesia after their divorce. We children always received some kind of books or other material from his travels.
Recently, my sister commented that she'd taken my mother and half-sister to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see the Kano Exhibit. I was jealous, until she told me it was a four-part exhibit due to the nature of the material. Yesterday, we drove down and joined them for part 2 - Ink and Gold.
Continue reading "Kano"
 'Ban GMOs: That Shit Ain’t Food' - How the rhetoric of disgust undermines responsible food choices.
Be a Rebel: Cook Your Vegetables to Death
I like that
18th c. luxury sex toy found in Gdansk
Gdansk? It figures.
Little Boy Gets A Surprise Photobomb At School Picture Day
Joy
Marathon winner loses race title because she never ran the race
Women Are Owning More and More Small Businesses
Good
LAUSD Finds That $1.3 Billion iPad Program Was Largely a Bust
I coulda told em
Dr. Oz responds after prominent physicians call for his firing from Columbia University
The transgender triumph
Lengthy, interesting article about trannies
Feds Spent $410,265 Studying ‘Satisfaction’ Levels of Young Gay Men’s First Time
Your tax dollars at work
Four Jobs Our American Universities Don't Do Anymore
College Kicks Off 'Disinvitation Dinner' By Hosting Speaker Shunned by University
IF YOU’RE MALE AND BELONG TO A FRATERNITY, YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS.
The Real Student Loan Crisis Is The One Obama Created
Christina Hoff Sommers gets Trigger Warnings at Georgetown
Forget Steak and Seafood: Here’s How Welfare Recipients Actually Spend Their Money
A Double Standard for the Poor?
No, food stamps aren’t subsidies for McDonald’s and Wal-Mart - What advocates of a "living wage" get wrong about the labor market
Another Infuriating Crackdown on Sharing Food With the Homeless
Supreme Court Weighs Bizarre Private Property Seizure
Preventing the Coming Ice Age
Global Warming Authoritarian Leonardo DiCaprio Travels Constantly by Private Jet
Obama Warns U.S.: ‘Climate Change Poses Immediate Risks to Our National Security’
Think Global Warming Is Bad? Wait Until You Meet Sustainability
The Big Idea: California Is So Over - California’s drought and how it’s handled show just what kind of place the Golden State is becoming: feudal, super-affluent and with an impoverished interior.
Sexism Is The New Racism
Obamacare repeal falls off Republicans´ to-do list as law takes hold
All You Need to Know About Hillary’s Campaign
Wait, wasn't she president already? Decoding the passionate, conflicted and deeply strange launch of Hillary 2.0
Dead Broke Hillary Dodged Sniper Fire With Her Immigrant Parents In Tuzla
Biggest Donor to Clinton Foundation Violated Iran Sanctions, Got State Dept Meetings Under Hillary
New Book, ‘Clinton Cash,’ Questions Foreign Donations to Foundation
Sunday, April 19. 2015
Inside the Mind of Poetry. A quote:
I believe that to read poetry, one must have a mind of poetry. You must enter a state where you come to understand meaning-resistant arrangements of language as having their own kind of meaning. It’s quite similar to those Magic Eye posters from the ‘90s: If you haven’t figured out how to look at them, you can’t believe that anyone really sees the dolphin. (This metaphor has its limits, making learned skill seem like an on/off conversion; too, with poetry, even when you’ve mastered “the trick,” not everyone sees the same thing.)
"Mind of poetry." I like that. A floaty state of mind to get into.
 Most exercise is a terrible and inefficient way to lose weight if you are too heavy or fat. Just think about it: A four-five mile high-speed walk will barely burn off the calories in a donut, muffin, or bagel (with the cream cheese, add another few miles). You would have to walk all day, every day, to lose weight.
Remember, all carbs=sugar and yes, that includes the carbs in beans, peas, corn, carrots, potatoes, yams - all the high-carb "veggies." We feed those things to farm animals to fatten them for slaughter. Some people get wacky about sugar, but human digestion turns all carbs into plain sugar so there is lots of physiological ignorance out there about "complex carbs" and so forth. So-called "complex carbs" just get turned into sugar more slowly.
Nature designed us to love carbs because nature expected us all to be poor and half-starving on the African savannah. If you have excess fat which bothers you or slows you down, you do not need hardly any carbs. You do need some fatty meats, though, or other fats like olive oil.
If happy with your physical condition and level of conditioning, please ignore all of this.
I've been following Bird Dog's fitness renewal program which is not designed for weight loss but to convert fat weight to muscle weight, and I approve of it. A bonus of that sort of high-intensity program (which I have done for a few months in the past to rapidly get back to fighting condition after periods of relative sloth, such as after childbirth, to get back my 28 year-old weight and fitness) is that it can help a fellow survive a male's almost-inevitable MI by building up collateral cardiac blood supply.
While high-intensity work-outs will burn fat (but only if on a carb-restricted diet), the main things they build are aerobic capacity and endurance, agility, a feeling of youthful vigor, and muscle fitness if not muscle power. Those are all good things. (Gross muscle power development - body-building - requires heavy lifting instead of reps and is more about appearance than fitness. A harmless hobby for some.)
 Over the years, I am convinced that it is.
I am not saying they are crooks. I'm just asking whether, if you are a reasonably-informed person, they are worth the cost?
John Bogle did not convince me. Reality did. I am a Vanguard guy and I never speak with them. I trust their people with their bond funds more than I would trust myself.
However, help with financial planning is always good.
What's your opinion?
An oldie. Best line: "Bruce wanted me to work on my triceps. I don’t have any triceps!"
This is dedicated to every woman who ever attempted to get into a regular workout routine:
Dear Diary... For my fiftieth birthday this year, my husband (the dear) purchased a week of personal training at the local health club for me. Although I am still in great shape since playing on my high school softball team, I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and give it a try. I called the club and made my reservations with a personal trainer I’ll call Bruce, who identified himself as a 26 year old aerobics instructor and model for athletic clothing and swim wear. My husband seemed pleased with my enthusiasm to get started. The club encouraged me to keep a diary to chart my progress...
Continue reading "This is dedicated to every woman who ever attempted to get into a regular workout routine."
Barnhardt says this:
When true Christian faith in a culture is weak-to-absent, superstition fills in that vacuum. One of the main vectors of superstition in the post-modern, post-Christian west is this business of obsessing about food.
I do not think food is the main post-Christian preoccupation, but it does seem common in the higher socio-economic classes. These are often the educated who missed Physiology 101 and Biochem 101. Think Whole Foods and "organic" farming. I think we have been clear on this site that most dietary preaching here is about weight loss, not general health. Nobody can define a "healthy" human diet, as we are omnivores which means we can thrive on anything digestible. In America, we are blessed with cheap and abundant food of all sorts and spend a lower percentage of our funds on tasty food than anywhere else in the world. Thus many people eat more than they need, for fun.
As I have said, I have seen 6'3" football players who grew up on nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, and the occasional hot dog.
Now let’s talk about one of the biggest, most successful and STUPIDEST cons out there today. ORGANIC FOOD. Guys, it is a complete racket.
John 20:19-31
20:19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."
20:20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
20:21 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
20:22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.
20:23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
20:24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.
20:25 So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."
20:26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."
20:27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe."
20:28 Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"
20:29 Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
20:30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.
20:31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
Saw these Hellebores in a springtime garden yesterday. Some varieties bloom in the snow, but most varieties bloom during the Lenten season. Unique plants.
Here's Hellebores: An Introduction to the Genus Helleborus
Saturday, April 18. 2015
The Economic Classes and their Respective Plights. (h/t American Digest)
Quite interesting. I am in the Rat Race Class. Moral of the story? Life is tough. Is that news?
Much better than the popular Atlantic Grill (near Lincoln Center), we think: Blue Water Grill on Union Square, very good jazz too, and no horns. It's a pleasant walk from Classic Stage which we frequent. We saw the fine Hamlet there recently.
There is more theater in NYC than in London, and lots of it (Off- and Off-off Broadway) is affordable and excellent. Lots of actors in NY.
Union Square - just one of the hundred fun neighborhoods of Manhattan. Just slightly north of Greenwich Village.
 There is a musical called Menopause
Who Owns the Copyright to "Happy Birthday"?
Middle age now lasts until 74 as baby boomers refuse to grow old - Old age does not begin until 74, researchers suggest in a new report which looks at the real impact of an aging population
It's true. It's not just health and medical advances, it's attitude too. Who rarely retires until incapacitated? Farmers, carpenters, surgeons and most other docs, small biz-owners, people with family businesses - you name it. Most government-employed people like cops and firemen go on to new careers, as do ex-military. Some people are quitters, and some are workers. "Retirement" itself is a modern, decadent, government concept.
Do You Know the World’s Largest City?
School blames ‘poor lighting’ for paltry Michelle O lunch
Sheesh. Worse than jail food.
Mexican food is insensitive
Well, I don't know about insenstive but it's not very good, altho fun once in a while. Really just a side dish for Margueritas and beer. Beer, of course, is insensitive to Germans so we must be careful about that too.
I Thought Legalizing Pot Would Be a Disaster. But It Turned Out To Be Wonderful.
Smoking and Vaping Keep Moving in Opposite Directions Among Teenagers
New York Times Op-Ed: It Was a Mistake to Believe the Hockey Stick
So yes, I know exactly what it would take to convince me that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is really happening. And no, the warmists haven’t even come close.
Who cares?
SECOND AMENDMENT: Ted Cruz Throws Down
Leftwing Website Commits Crimethink, Begs Leftwing Mob for Mercy
The Greek Complexity Problem
Nails it
Hillary! news summary, for fun:
Hillary Clinton’s Uterus For President!
Hillary Embraces Disastrous Biofuel Policy
Hillary Clinton Has a Long History of Talking With Plants
Hillary Clinton, an inauthenticity you just can’t fake
Krauthammer: Hillary’s Authentic Inauthenticity:
She doesn’t just get media coverage; she gets meta-coverage. The staging
is so obvious that actual events disappear. The story is their
symbolism — campaign as semiotics.
Hillary’s Attempt at an Elizabeth Warren Impression Isn’t Going Well
Hillary Clinton Re-emerges, by Design
Hillary Potemkin Clinton busted for driving in Dem campaign worker to pose as 'student' at staged event
Hillary Clinton’s astroturf candidacy is in full swing
 I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed---and gazed---but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
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Star Wars: 
The Environmental Insane Asylum