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.
Public confession is light to send sin scurrying. As a refusal to let sin stay hidden, it's also an invitation to accountability. If we want real freedom from the sins that invent and reinvent themselves in our lives with guile and force, we should involve others in our confessions. Their prayers for our forgiveness are likely to become their participation in our change.
Hope y'all have as fun a summer weekend as I am planning - fishing and thriving on seafood and beer with my gal off Block Island on the usual shared Whaler. I still have no idea why the gal likes me. Yes, I do have a cooler with wasabi, fresh ginger, and soy sauce so we can have sushi fresh from the sea, still flipping, so that might be why. Sushi + Corona with some lime in it.
They predict good sized seas on the ocean this weekend. Ride 'em, cowboy! Carpe diem, friends.
A wonderful, low-key place to get away to with plenty of good restaurants, lakes, ponds, bay, harbor, and Atlantic Ocean all within a couple of miles in the pine-scented, salt-sprayed National Seashore. Sea breezes, no bugs, genteel people but no rich jerks.
We do not make fun of true mental ailments here because there is nothing funny about them, but sometimes we encounter relatively-normal people who sound totally batshit crazy. Not sometimes, often. Good example: Undone By Her Radical ‘Do. "New frontiers of outrage."
Annah Anti-Palindrome is “a Bay Area-based writer, musician, optical sound-smith and queer/femme antagonist.”
Wow. She sounds mighty talented but she seems to be all about her hair style. Probably lives on the dole. Heck, reality and haircuts are difficult for everybody. I try to be understanding towards those who avoid reality, but there are always plenty enough nuts around to make you feel normal within your own "community." The internet says 2% of people are Borderline psychotics living in a mental world between ordinary and totally nuts. That 2% manages to get plenty of press if only for entertainment value.
To maintain fitness and conditioning from middle age onwards, there are just a few exercises that are most efficient and essential. They are efficient because, combined, they are full-body, all-muscle engagements which require balance and control, and which can eventually pretty much eliminate the need for other exercises. This applies to gals too.
If unfit, it seems that most of these need to be worked up to gradually with smaller muscle groups (eg calves, quads, curls, pull-downs) to be able to handle them with proper technique and without pulling a muscle or damaging a tendon. That's called conditioning.
I mention this topic today because I have just started with barbell squats so I am slowly getting to the full deal as I move from unfit and sort-of weak but fully-functional to borderline-fit for my age. An adventure, physically and mentally:
Push-ups Pull-ups Bench press Barbell squats Planks of all sorts Dead lifts
Plus...general fitness interval-type cardio aerobics of a great variety of fun sorts on off-days, from heavy ball smashes and throws to farmer walks to lunge walks to step-ups to squat+mil pushes to ropes to sprints (elliptical, bike, run, swim, row, etc). It doesn't need to be boring but it does need to be stressful and varied. If not stressful to the max, it's a waste of time: if you can move afterwards and are not dripping with sweat it's not tough enough to make much difference. Gasping and heart pounding for 20-30 minutes.
Lots of the exercise machines and lighter weights seem to be made just to raise you to the point that you can do a few sets of those simple, basic, demanding multi-muscle resistance exercises in a reasonable time before you go to work in the morning. For example, I can't do 20 push-ups or 10 pull-ups yet, so we try to condition the things to make that possible. Intensity, simplicity, and weights save time and money. (nb again - this is not about body-building, it's about maintaining general fitness for life for as long as possible)
This is what I am learning. I get lots of arguments from readers. Go ahead and argue with me while I begin to rediscover my 22 year-old abilities. Painful and deeply-fatiguing, but do-able over time. I know a fit 55 year-old gal who can do 35 regular pushups. She shows no muscles and looks fully trim and feminine.
I like to soak sweet corn in the husks, and grill them in the husks. Three ways. Boiled corn is boring and it's summertime so you are grilling your food outside anyway.
I just had to get a new vegetable grilling basket from Amazon. Nice. Fewer of them fall through the cracks that way.
For those who actually want to do something other than make noise, there is no shortage of challenges. Chinese-sponsored gangs, well armed with heavy rifles and automatic weapons, are presently killing elephant at an unprecedented rate. Recently, elephant-rich areas of Tanzania, Mozambique, and Zambia have been all but wiped out. The demand for lion and leopard bones from the Far East is at an all-time high, putting a premium on big cats. Meat hunters are wiping out the antelope and buffalo herds throughout Africa. For many of these animals the safari hunters were their only hope.
“Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it… gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
. . . when you repeatedly use the term “provider” to describe those professionals in the caring arts—and yes, on our best days, the healing arts—it becomes an eloquently sad commentary on the state of medical care . . . the term “provider” for clinical caregivers, like the term “client” for patients, depersonalizes and commodifies that which is neither and [is] so very much more.
Mental health care and treatment in America is a hodge-podge of state, federal, charitable, and private programs. That is not a bad thing that there is no "system," because caring can not be a "system" and because there are no cures for the most severe ailments like autism, schizophrenia, dementia, and so forth. That's why mental health care is not a problem in America any more than it is everywhere on the planet.
There is no better place on earth for those with manageable problems under the mental health umbrella than in the US. Perfection is unobtainable, because it can not be defined, and some people will always be beyond effective help if only because they refuse it.
Because so many problems lack cures, and so many patients resist possibly positive amelioration, what people lobby for are governmental and private "services," not utopian fixes. As always with medical issues, lobbyists lobby for their fad interests and fad approaches.
There is no "mental health industry." I do not necessarily agree with the premises of the article, but I do agree with this: "Congress needs to understand that throwing money at mental health is not the same as delivering effective treatment to the seriously ill." Caring, like education, is not intrinsically expensive.
More
Green Cards in 10 Years Than Population of Iowa, New Hampshire, and
South Carolina Combined - See more at:
http://moonbattery.com/?p=61492#sthash.HQShWIRR.dpuf
Ten here, but there lots more. Just use your imagination.
Most can be learned in trade schools or ideally via apprenticeship: carpenter, cabinetmaker, gunsmith, programmer, video game inventor, professional lifeguard, medical marijuana dealer, hunting and fishing guide, writer, musician, gambler, office assistant, receptionist, illustrator, Uber driver, 16-wheeler truck driver, mechanic, train conductor, gardener, cook or chef, air traffic controller, retail manager or sales, landscape designer, entrepreneur of anything - the list is endless but you have to know how to do something useful.
The arc of progressivism is on the wrong side of history when it comes to the disruptive technologies that benefit the middle class that progressives love to defend. Whether conservative and libertarian-leaning leaders can offer an alternative vision remains to be seen, but the progressive tendency to stand athwart history on these matters has given them an open door to try.
Do we really believe that many thousands of local children growing up in fractured and often chaotic families can do as well academically, on average, as other kids growing up in much more stable homes? Honestly? …
Notes on the Republican Presidential Debate
Whole Foods’ $6 a Bottle ‘Asparagus Water’ 
How To Make 
To maintain fitness and conditioning from middle age onwards, there are just a few exercises that are most efficient and essential. They are efficient because, combined, they are full-body, all-muscle engagements which require balance and control, and which can eventually pretty much eliminate the need for other exercises. This applies to gals too.
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