We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
I had been hearing how good it is for a while, so I have been giving them a try.
There are two versions of Crossfit - the Fitness version (general full-body fitness - "functional movements at high intensity") and the Sport (the cultish, extreme, heavy weight-lift) version. I do the Fitness version. It is a tough, exhausting group workout where people of all ages (I see age 16 to age 80) and all levels of fitness (fat ladies) do the same thing like a team, but each at his or her own level of ability.
In one of the sessions I like to go to, we have a blind guy. Also, a guy who had a stroke, and a couple of guys who have had heart attacks. It is good fun, bonding, and everybody helps and supports each other. It is also inexpensive, and a good place to meet gals. One of the cool things about the program is that you never know what they will have you doing. It's varied, so it stays interesting and challenging.
It has been surprising to me how quickly your body can respond to these sorts of demands. There are now 10,000 Crossfit "boxes" in the US.
It was more black families 50 years ago, now the decay has expanded.
The goal of the Moynihan Report, he said, had been to begin a serious national conversation about the implications of those sizable numbers of out-of-wedlock births and what they said about the condition of the family and marriage. His fellow liberals believed that the social and cultural pathologies Moynihan had identified could be effectively addressed by an historic expansion of the federal government. President Johnson’s War on Poverty, launched in 1964, was defined in part by a series of programs that would intervene against family and marriage breakdown, helping to arrest, reverse, and eventually eradicate the problems that Moynihan had identified.
But Moynihan was skeptical. Government could not tuck a child into bed at night; government could not save a marriage; government could not help a broken family fall in love again. These were, he said, primarily cultural problems and not economic or political ones—a bold assertion at a time when trust in big government was embraced by members of both parties.
Percy’s diagnosis was that when we are mired in the everydayness of ordinary life, we are susceptible to what he called “the malaise,” a free-floating despair associated with the feeling that you’re not a part of the world or connected to the people in it. You are alienated, detached. As Percy put it in “The Moviegoer,” “The malaise has settled like a fallout and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall.” The heroes of his books, each in his own way, embark on a search for the cause and cure of this syndrome. “What is the nature of the search?” wonders Binx Bolling, the narrator of “The Moviegoer.” “The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life.”
It's the inner totalitarianism of the worldwide Left. There is always an excuse to control and oppress the people, and to take their money. For the Greater Good, of course.
On Saturday morning, we'll be kayaking through the vast Nauset Marsh, checking out the wildlife, communing with the marsh gods, and getting a moderate workout for a few hours. It's a maze, easy to get lost when you can't see over the marsh grasses.
Everybody understands that water wants to kill you.
Same in the US, altho China is more obvious about its attempts to control markets. In the US, ZIRP and QE were errors in the beginning, and led to a bubble stock market which needs a meaningful correction, a high colonic enema. Central banks distort markets, distort reality.
The Long Rise of the Secular Faith - The threat to religious liberty has its roots in a progressivist faith that has been steadily gaining momentum in America for at least a century and a half.
Nobody understands that you have to be able to do it first. You can't deconstruct a goddamned thing until you can do it, and if you could do it, you wouldn't get the urge to deconstruct it. Frank Gehry can't design a proper two-holer so he designs giant monstrosities to hide the fact.
Politics is the same. You will never elect anyone to take the government apart. Once you know how to work it well enough to get in charge of it, you don't want to wreck it. You want to lord over it and add to it. No one wants the bulldozed empty lot where a Post Office once stood to be named after them. Humans don't work that way.
Blasphemy laws are ridiculous, outdated, historical anachronisms. But what's interesting is, in Britain, for example, we no longer have blasphemy laws - that was seen as being a great step forward... - but what they did was introduce hate speech laws instead.
So we...no longer have old-fashioned religious blasphemy laws, we have a kind of secular blasphemy laws: there are new [rules] you are allowed not to break, there are new groups you are not allowed not to offend ...and in many ways, more insidious and pervasive than blasphemy ever was - which was a dead law on the statute books for most of the last 100 years. -- Mick Hume of Spiked!
Glad my kids don't go here. It's unfortunate that this is in my home state of NJ. It's unfortunate this is the prevailing viewpoint at many universities. I am not aware of any notifications like this at Syracuse, or Miami (OH), where my boys are. However, I know this pattern of thinking is common at both schools.
There has been some strange collateral damage in the Republican War on Women. We taught them that cooking and cleaning are for squares and they shouldn’t know how to do either. This has left young women today with apartments that are complete pigsties. There is nothing in the fridge and a mountain of clothes in one corner and a futon on the floor. This means millennial males end up having to do the cooking and cleaning themselves. Oh well, you can’t win them all.
America’s two major political parties have always been fundamentally different. The Republican Party has been rooted in the moral principles and transcendent values expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Democratic Party acknowledges that the starting point of the country may have been the Declaration and the Constitution, but since Woodrow Wilson many Democratic Party leaders have contended that progress requires constant adaptation, changing morals, and liberal interpretations of law and history.
The progressive philosophy that the Democratic Party has come to embrace now has its roots less in the values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of individual happiness and more in the tenets of race and class identity, equal outcomes, and an expanding welfare state. Since individuals vary in talent, ability, and motivation and the free market system produces unequal outcomes of success, a core principle of the Democratic Party is now redressing this disparity through the redistribution of wealth.
In 2 weeks it will be time to harvest my peach crop. I have a neighbor pal who likes to get into the tree with me, and shares the harvest. Mrs. BD will make us a couple of peach pies (my favorite pie), and I will can 10-12 jars of peach chutney.
The
growing importance of social skills in the labor market - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08/the-growing-importance-of-social-skills-in-the-labor-market.html#sthash.3m0UeYyV.dpuf
6:10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.
6:11 Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
6:12 For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
6:13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.
6:14 Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.
6:15 As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.
6:16 With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
6:17 Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
6:18 Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.
6:19 Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,
6:20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.
Mrs. BD swam her daily laps, I didn't because my Greater Trochanteric Pain Syndrome - caused by my enthusiastic workout efforts - makes swimming too painful. If you workout hard, you will get aches and pains. Anyway, I did my cardio early this morning and am still stumbling around. I splashed in the salt water for a while, and worked on growing some skin cancers from the beneficial solar radiation. I dislike swimming in fresh water anyway. Grew up in salt water, even a salt water pool.
I overheard 2 languages from my beach chair. One was French and the other was Cute American Teen Girl (which is closely-related to High Gay Dialect).
Meanwhile, NYC daughter and boyfriend went out for a long sail with our pup on board. They said the pup enjoyed it until they grounded the keel on a rock. It was insensitive of me, later, to remind them that I have all of the charts. Always consult a chart in unfamiliar waters. Sheesh.
Best car ride ever filmed: C'était un rendez-vous by Claude Lelouch
Cherchez la femme. What is he driving up to Montmatre? Great film, but an excellent fake by a fine film maker. The truth ruins it, so do not watch the part after the rendez-vous.
No double moon in 2015, 
Global Warming Killed 30% Of Moose, Is Preventing Bears From Hibernating? 
In 2 weeks it will be time to harvest my peach crop. I have a neighbor pal who likes to get into the tree with me, and shares the harvest. Mrs. BD will make us a couple of peach pies (my favorite pie), and I will can 10-12 jars of peach chutney.