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 a little spare time the other morning, so I did one last harvest from my rhubarb patch to make another batch of Rhubarb-Hot Pepper Jam. Golly, it is delicious and tangy. For the pepper component, I used chopped sorenos, jalapenos, and some sweet red peppers too just for their flavor. A little lemon juice and a dash of salt. Rhubarb is not to everybody's taste, but I love it.
I use one cup of chopped peppers per 3 cups of chopped rhubarb. I'll use up the rest of my chopped peppers to make ordinary hot pepper jelly. Sometimes I make it like a sauce, sometimes like a firmer jelly. Regardless, it is a bit too hot for some people.
My peppery special jams and jellies go well with cheese, cream cheese, pork, chicken, scrambled eggs, or anything else. Available at your specialty food store never. Photo is hot pepper jelly with cream cheese, but goat cheese is better. Any cheese, really.
The Suicide of the Liberal Arts - Indoctrinating students isn’t the same as teaching them. Homer and Shakespeare have much to tell us about how to think and how to live.
Like most conservationists, I believe that Smokey The Bear is obsolete. He was, in fact, an agent of the lumber industry as administered and subsidized by the US Forest Service. Lives and money should not be spent to combat a necessary natural process. As that article notes:
"What we're getting now are much more intense fires because of all those years of suppression," said John Freemuth, a Boise State University professor and a public lands expert. "Those kinds of intense fires are usually not allowed to burn."
Government fire-suppression policies, like so many government policies, have unintended consequences which are worse than the original problem. If you must have a house in the woods or fire zone, get fire insurance and hope for the best. Or don't. Monitoring fires from the air is a worthwhile government - or private -warning service, same as storms.
And let the trees burn. That restarts the natural succession which produces an abundance of wildlife and biodiversity. Brave as they are, these firefighters die horribly for no good reason at all.
When I was a poor boy in Brooklyn, I read as many biographies of great people as I could, in order to learn what character traits led to their accomplishments so I could learn how to raise myself in the world.Now, many decades later, I live content that I have lived my dreams and fantasies and along the way have marked up a few signal accomplishments that made a real difference. There was a character trait that I don’t recall showing up in the bios I devoured, one which has given me satisfaction, being content with living on one’s own terms, regardless the prices. That is the character trait that you, the reader will see in the memoir written by one of my oldest friends, Sol Sanders, PEOPLE!: Vignettes gathered along the way through a long life.
On his 89th birthday. Sol’s life and anecdotes are a testament to full tilt living a “Forrest Gump” existence as an
international journalist. I and everyone who knows him delight in his behind the curtain tales of history being made or bungled, of personal insights into the mighty and often their salacious private lives. For years, I nudged Sol to get it down in a book. There are so very few such very revealing autobiographies. Sol includes me in his dedications, writing that I “made the original suggestion for this memoir but who bears no responsibility for its metamorphosis.” That’s right, because Sol has crafted a unique memoir beyond what I had in mind as a standard chronology that emphasized the magnitude of the events he witnessed and the inside stories of the events and those who made the history of the latter half of the 20th century.
Instead, what stands out in Sol’s memoir is his journey, the rocks or rapids of fate and purpose, and the personalities of the great and influential he met. It is the personalities and environment that are the focus, and hence the book’s title PEOPLE! As Sol writes at the end of his memoir, “These individual pieces obviously were purposely not chronologically arranged, in an attempt to give the reader an overall sense of the larger tableau on which my life has been written….I do not intend that the reader will come away with any specific knowledge of my life and times, but rather a general impression.” Sol’s memoir is a series of brief chapters about the personalities and foibles he encountered, and along the way reveals his formative experiences, the happenstances that flung him from a tiny mountain town in North Carolina through the first J-School, headlong into the close of WWII in Italy, on to Paris, India, Indonesia, IndoChina, Japan, NYC editor of world news, and today still a columnist whose discussions and judgments are among the most concise and telling one can find anywhere. There are 381-pages of tales, and there could have been many times more as I recollect many of Sol’s adventures and interactions that aren’t in the book.
For the reader who has not had such a life, or who is not familiar enough with the history of the second half of the 20th
Century, Sol’s hopping around may be unusual. For me there are many parallels which make Sol’s ruminations and adventures personally touching and sometimes a mirror, prowling the alleys of Flatbush as Sol prowled the alleys of Franklin, patient adults who took us under their wings, growing up with a Judaism, core values and integrity that was imprinted through family life and love, heedless of family restraints or prudence setting off to experience and conquer the world on our own terms, starting out as a young socialist (a quite different thing among early 20th century immigrants – focused on the dignity of the individual – rather than the overwhelming, homogenizing, incompetent welfare state of today) but becoming more conservative as reality taught other overriding lessons, bouncing from place to place to be in the centers of what’s happening in the world and meeting up with and basking in friendships with the powerful, forming judgments that come from the front line and from behind the Potempkin fronts that those who haven’t that exposure lack, and loving almost every minute of it.
Maybe in another 22-years, when I am Sol’s age, I can commit the unembarrassed self-exposure that Sol does in his memoir. For now, come along and meet Westmoreland, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Bill Casey, McNamara, Kuan Yew, Diem, Norman Thomas, and so many others your head may spin. Meet some personalities of whom you may never have heard, who shaped our history. Go through India and Pakistan, Indonesia, Vietnam (where Sol was one of the best correspondents, due to his personal relationships with Vietnamese insiders), Laos and Cambodia, Japan, journalism, as they went through the decades after WWII and took us along. Feel the friendships that Sol enjoyed. If you want to understand people and the real world, live in it, or at least get a glimpse in Sol Sanders memoir.
Germany
fact of the day, will support for immigration collapse? - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08/germany-projection-of-the-day.html#sthash.99uUvG13.dpuf
Molecular
scientists unexpectedly produce new type of glass - See more at:
http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2015/08/13/molecular-scientists-unexpectedly-produce-new-type-glass#sthash.iSthJMGb.dpuf
I keep learning more about exercise physiology. A few thoughts:
- Strength training and cardio go hand-in-hand because without increasing strength, one can't accomplish the effort and apply the power needed for intense cardio. I do resistance 2/wk, mixed cardio-resistance 1/wk, and cardio 3/wk (that's for 2015, not forever).
- Walking, hiking, jogging, recreational biking and swimming, and most sports are not cardio exercise unless you are in cardiac rehab. They are just applications of your fitness. Of course, the whole purpose of a fitness pursuit is to have something to apply vigorously in real life. I think of it like learning math: You internalize this hard thing so you can do that other thing that you really want or need to do. Like hike up Mt. Greylock or Mt. Washington, or ski all day with good control, kayak a few miles, etc.
- Cardio workouts have to be as intense and powerful as possible. It seems that plodding along is not worth the time unless you are in your 80s or 90s. Intervals are best, probably. As the trainer said, if you can talk you aren't working it and if you are not dripping and stumbling you didn't do it.
- If you are not too fit or strong, I think difficult cardio builds some degree of strength along with the endurance and the heart challenge/stress it provides. In other words, "cardio" is not pure cardio at all for most of us ordinary schlubs.
- Around 30 minutes is enough. Many cardiologists say 20 minutes 2-3X/wk is good. I do 3X for now. When up to 30 mins, you just increase the intensity, challenge, and power-required in the same time box. That's efficient, because you have a job and a family. It's not time - it's intensity. I am at 30 mins and working on increasing difficulty, stress, and intensity each week.
- I like to mix up a cardio session to keep it interesting. As long as there are no breaks at all between things, that works to maintain an elevated heart rate and pushes the fatigue envelope to the limit. Gotta jump quick between things. I think my ideal lunatic cardio morning would be 15 mins elliptical intervals, 20 fast heavy ball smashes and 20 fast mini-squats with low-weight mil. lifts done twice, then 15 min intervals on inclined treadmill. Finish up and rest with a one-minute plank of some sort. That will leave me pooped and panting for a while, and ready for the day. I would mix in a row but it inflames my back and hip flexors the same way sit-ups do.
- When I am done, I go home and have a well-salted hard-boiled egg for breakfast. A little protein, just in case. Trainer says to have 2, but one egg is all I want. Plus coffee, an Advil, and a cigar of course. Rewards. And Mrs, BD says "Whoa - lookin' good. How do you feel?" "Tired."
If you want to see what unlimited immigration (against the consent of the people) looks like, take a look at Europe. Mezzican immigrants now amount to what had been 1/3 of the Mexican population. That is an invasion, and it is without our consent. If we want to consent to that, then fine. However, I can say that there is not a single job I had while growing up which is not occupied by immigrants. What work would I do today as a 13 or 15 year-old eager beaver?
The dominant issue in the West is immigration. The ruling elites are obsessed with filling up our lands with people from other lands. It’s nearly impossible to get members of the elite to discuss the matter, much less explain their reasoning. A politician or party that embraces immigration reform, even mild reform, is treated like a Holocaust denier. Even climate change, which is pretty much a religion at this point, is more open to debate than immigration.
As I mentioned previously, my fitness goal is not body-building per se, just overall fitness for life. No real weight-loss goals. Strength-building is necessarily part of it, but balance, posture, and endurance for stressful activity is more important to me for things like steep hill hiking, 2 hrs of singles tennis, hunting in deep snow with weighty boots, rock-hopping in trout streams, lugging heavy stuff, kayaking, chain-saw juggling, and churning out morning links on Maggie's.
I am now into my 5th month. In middle-age, it takes a while to adapt to intense new demands, to ramp up - and I was in worse shape than I realized. I am developing muscles where I had never had them in my life (eg triceps, lats). I do barbell squats, bench presses, dead lifts, barbell work, and all of it. I have aches and pains where I never had them, too, so my guy has to find ways to accommodate that (damn Piriformis Syndrome, damn old shoulder injuries). My grey Brooks suit is getting tight in the shoulders. As I have reported, it's still 3 days/wk with sadistic trainer, and 3/days/wk doing whatever cardio etc he asks me to do. Since I pay him, I try to do whatever he says.
Mrs. BD is doing a similar program with the same fine fellow, but I head out at quarter to 5 am and she goes at 7. She is supplementing her program with some sort of impossible yoga which she loves (I term Yogurt) 3/wk, in the evening. It's isometric and I could never do it. Holding a headstand for 3 minutes? Two minutes of Down Dogs (is that s sexual pose)? Holding a squat for minutes?
Trainer has advised me to up my carbs a bit due to my workouts, no more wt. loss, but I'd like to eliminate another 4-5# of disgusting mid-body Daddy-lard if possible. Vanity. I am about 12# down in pudge and maybe 4# up in muscle.
My favorite day is Fridays, my day for Total Body Break-down for one hour, combo cardio and resistance, no rest except a few seconds for water. Crossfit-style. Destroy Bird Dog to the point that he can not walk or lift a Dunkin coffee cup without shaking. When you catch your breath 2 or 4 hours later, you feel pretty mellow but are ready for a nap in the sunshine.
Bonus fitness tips:
Core strength and fitness. Do it right with tight butt-cheeks and tight belly, pulling belly-button into your spine. 47 fun plank variations:
Planks are the MacGyver of bodyweight movements: They're super tough and great for almost any situation. The versatile move is best known for working your core, but planks also engage more than 20 muscles, including your shoulders, back, arms, legs, and glutes. Even better, planks allow you to work your core without the risks of back injury and overstressed hip flexors that come with traditional sit-ups.
True, sit-ups, crunches, and crunch machines can hurt your back and hip flexors. Planks can't. Take it from one who knows - me. I will never do those again. Just plank varieties.
To you exercise-doubters: I am with you, sort-of. Fitness does not extend life, is sort-of narcissistic, and all that. All that I can say is that it's a cool and highly-demanding adventure for somebody like me who is trapped in his head and lacks enough outlets or time for productive, difficult physical labor. First World issues. You feel stronger and good to be in fighting shape.
Citizen government was the original idea, not professional careerists looking for an easy unskilled government job for life. Thank God she's not a lefty. Quick as a whip, compelling and highly likable. I do not agree with her on everything, but so what?
She is an effective spokesperson, which is what she is running for.
A good, personal description of one form of what we put under the umbrella label of "depression":
Having anxiety & depression is like being scared and tired at the same time. It's the fear of failure, but no urge to be productive. It's wanting friends, but hate socializing. It's wanting to be alone, but not wanting to be lonely. It's caring about everything, then caring about nothing. It's feeling everything at once, then feeling paralyzingly numb.
Yesterday's NLRB ruling came as a surprise to nobody but the groups seeking to unionize, and it's not a decision so much as kicking the can. The NLRB decided it has no jurisdiction in the Northwestern case, but this non-decision has some interesting implications. While Northwestern, and other state-run universities, won't see players unionize any time soon, the case for unionization can be taken to private universities and did not outright rule against unionization. The union pushing for this has vowed to try again.
It's widely known that college football and basketball are de facto minor leagues for the NBA and NFL. But they are not true minor leagues, and while the athletes are not paid in the same fashion as professionals (they are 'amateurs', after all), they are actually paid quite a bit of money. Most of these payments are utilized at their own discretion, such as getting an education and not just taking Underwater Pottery 101.
At any major school, the education itself carries a cost of $18,000-50,000 a year. At some elite schools, it could be substantially more. Very few people in the 18-24 age range earn this much money, let alone are given the opportunity to supplement that 'payment' through the use of educational facilities.
There are other payments as well. 'Free' food (the players eat substantial portions at the school cafeterias), 'free' living facilities (not always 5-star quality, but I liked my college digs), 'free' health care and fitness facilities, travel to and from games, and the likelihood of a free meal at a host of local bars and restaurants (if you're the big star).
My neighbor's son is currently playing Wide Receiver at a major northeastern university. I've spoken with him many times since he's been up there, and he works hard. His freshman year was a bust, due to pulled hamstring (he tells me the workouts for injured players are harder than for those who are healthy, but you work on other muscle groups that usually go ignored). To hear his stories, however, you come to realize these young people have a very good lifestyle, even if they are not the rock-star QB.
The NCAA needs reform, no doubt. College athletics (and education - but that's a completely different matter), in general, needs reform. I don't think unionization will solve any of these issues, nor will any kind of governmental interference. It's fair to say these are well-compensated student/athletes (emphasis on athlete) for the level of play they are engaged in. If the players want to unionize, I really don't have a problem with that. I suppose if they did and pushed for more 'stuff', they'd find out just how important or unimportant they are (I'm thinking unimportant, at many schools, though not the big-sports ones).
It's also fair to say that, if some people have their way, and these athletes get paid, the Title IX athletics will disappear. The wide-ranging effects of unionization and paid student-athletes has never truly been investigated. My guess is the only logical end to this will be to turn major college sports into a true minor league. For now, however, the NCAA continues to hold sway.
New book: Thoughts on ‘The Devil’s Pleasure Palace’ - Subversion is Michael Walsh’s primary focus and the battle he describes is nothing less than a battle between good and evil
From
the UNEXPECTEDLY!!! Files: In the Wake of Proposition 47, California
Sees a Crime Wave - See more at:
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=57497#sthash.XI1BP41p.dpuf
The gals of UA's Alpha Phi strike back. Yes, they are in college, but they want friends, fun, dates, and a good husband at the end. But do not be fooled: some of them are math majors. I met one from this tribe, every bit as smart as the grouchy, unfeminine, poorly-dressed northern girls but full of charm, optimism, good cheer, and humor.
The Suicide of the Liberal Arts 
Her
Fallen firefighters remembered as heroes 
6 Things You Should Know About