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 refer to the Fitness Triad frequently. Maybe I should trademark it unless somebody else has.
Our modern notions of fitness go back to the ancient Greeks, and probably back to the earliest hominids for whom fitness was necessary for survival. In modern times, what I call "Fitness for Life" is more self-preoccupied, some might call it narcissistic, than fitness was for the farmers, hunters, shepherds, ironsmiths, builders, masons, and soldiers of the past. Modern fitness efforts are simply about staying as physically fully-functional for as long as you can for ordinary life activities and for play.
Sooner or later, something will strike you down, cripple you or kill you but, until then, why not give life your best shot? I know we all want to be strong, to look good, and to remain vigorous and competent for whatever comes our way.
The Triad is Strength, Cardio, and Calisthenics, but Strength is the foundation of the triangle because the best use of the other two depends on it. Proper nutrition - having neither too little physical structure, nor excess fat - is a separate topic.
Sessions on Brexit: "The interests of powerful international corporations, media, special interests, and leftist international forces are not coterminous with those of our people.
Britain is leaving the European Union. But that reality doesn't begin to tell the story of the larger historical forces at work that are reshaping global politics, the global economy, and global culture and have been for much of the last decade...
In Western civilization, self-exposure is often a daunting process. I mean physical as well as psychological exposure. Self-exposure requires courage and trust, but fortunately it is rarely called-for.
In public, we cover ourselves up literally and metaphorically. We put our best foot forward, if sober. The only real exception is at the beach where everybody wears highly-exposing underwear and our flaws are out there for all the world to see.
My topic is shame, whether about our physical or our psychological beings. Most of the time, shame is not neurotic but a healthy human response to exposure of our flaws, imperfections, and general instinct for privacy. We all have all sorts of dirty laundry. We are all on some spectrum between shame-paralyzed and shameless. The extremes are problems.
What sorts of things are often on many peoples' shame/privacy lists?
Physical self must be exposed sometimes: physical exams, weight, strength, physique, dentist(!), beach, sexual encounters, excretory fuinctions
Psychological exposure: Our private thoughts, fears, fantasies, mental flaws and weaknesses. Sometimes we will cautiously expose these to close friends or to shrinks.
Other personal attributes: Money, personal habits and home, rotten behavior, political views, failures, public performances, job status, childrens' difficulties, etc.
Intimacy means showing aspects of our unadorned selves to somebody else. It is not something to be done lightly because our private selves are not necessarily appealing to others (note the expression "TMI").We know that better than anybody, hence shame.
Caveat: Sociopaths are quite good at faux intimacy for purposes of ingratiation and manipulation.
When has that approach ever worked in the world? Now, the US like Europe offers government benefits to new (including illegal) immigrants. Is that a good idea? It has never been tried in the US in the past, and immigrants did very well over time.
From 1925 to 1965 the US permitted essentially no immigration. The people had decided, and the politicians had agreed, that we had enough of them. The country thrived.
Brits vote to leave the Borg. Elites horrified, peasants pleased. Regular folks like Nigel. Farage's life's work comes to fruition with stunning Brexit vote as he lauds a 'new dawn' for Britain outside the EU and calls for new bank holiday to mark UK's 'Independence Day.'
Though an exceptionally short book, Mind and Cosmos is nevertheless, in one respect, extraordinarily ambitious. Nagel proposes not merely a new explanation for the origin of life and consciousness, but a new type of explanation: “natural teleology.” If psychophysical reduction is implausible, as Nagel has always insisted, then no materialist neo-Darwinian explanation will ever be satisfactory. The apparent alternative, a theistic-intentional account (i.e., intelligent design by a divinity), does not appeal to Nagel. He simply lacks, he explains, any sense of the divine. His interest is in the territory between the two: a secular account that allows for the emergence of mind as mind...
Are the leaders of our academic institutions complicit in the current student-led challenge to free speech and free expression on college campuses? Jonathan R. Cole thinks so.
You will have to take it on faith (or not) that I have very little racism in me. I find almost all individuals interesting and I can learn about life from anybody.
Perhaps Charles Murray has lots of thoughts about this question: Why is black male unemployment so high today among American-born blacks? Black women work.
When I was young, black guys worked and did all they could to improve themselves. The kids of black tenant farms came up from the south for jobs in industry and the trades. They got married, demanded a lot from their kids, went to church, lived with dignity but some of the women got on the government trough, dads abandoned any progeny, and kids without dads skyrocketed. Today, black male employment is surely higher than it was a decade or two ago. That ain't racism. It's not IQ either, as some argue because I see plenty of fine young black guys working all sorts of jobs - nurses, exercise trainers, UPS guys, etc., and of course as professionals too.
In entry level and second-level service jobs hereabouts, all I see are Bangladeshis, Mexicans, Guatemalans, white kids, Pakistanis, Dot-Indians, Haitians, Africans, and Jamaicans. No European, Russian, or Asian immigrants seem to be working at these beginning levels of responsibility - but no American-born black males either despite their huge unemployment levels. They are not working at all, even at the levels of new immigrants with poor English.
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.
If the government secretly can put an American's name on a secret list and, as a result, his liberty is lost, then there are no freedoms—just government-granted privileges. And if it can do this to the natural rights to travel and self-defense, can other fundamental rights be far behind?
Tomorrow is your first chance in recent history to repel German tyranny without needing an army to do it. Vote for independence, sovereignty, self-determination: Vote "Leave"!
It's your last chance. You can always rejoin if you want to.
What the heck is this tree seen in bloom on a walk with Mrs. BD and pup last weekend? Small tree growing on a riverbank, and last year's seed pods still hung on it looking like vanilla beans. Large almost grape-looking leaves.
In the early 1800s, there were more than 30 million buffalo in North America, ranging in massive herds from Alaska to Mexico. By 1890, only about 500 animals were left. By the early 1900s, there were only about 30 genetically pure animals surviving in isolated areas, such as private ranches and the Yellowstone caldera.
Well, the bison ecological niche was replaced by herds of semi-domestic cattle but sheesh - I thought people were the national mammal.
With more than 4,000 crimes in federal statutes and more than 300,000 more crimes specified in various federal regulations, every complex commercial enterprise is inevitably vulnerable to federal prosecution-and thus, given federal prosecutors' leverage, to oversight through a deferred- or non-prosecution agreement. What that means is that the Department of Justice has sweeping regulatory authority, which according to the D.C. Circuit's April decision in United States v. Fokker Services, federal judges have next to no power to review.
If you are from New Jersey, do you term this food-like product 
Bluegrass Legend 
How Subarus 