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.
Many Americans live for hours in virtual realities at least part of the time. You might be amazed to learn that many Americans without enough to do spend over an hour daily playing computer simulation games. It's sickening and pathetic when you think about it.
Nothing against games themselves because chess and checkers are also war simulations, but there is a mental difference between chess and Sim City. Or is there? Movies and fiction are virtual realities too. So are gas fireplaces and the Pokemon Go fad.
What prompted this survey is that a friend's parents recently moved to The Villages in Florida. This place is 100% phony, to the point of being creepy. The people are real, but in a fake place. It is as fake as Disney World, but people go to Disney for a day or two to try to enjoy the fakery, not to live in it. Many resorts are experiences in fake realities.
Many of my pals enjoy fake hunts. They plant 30 pheasants in a hayfield then send the dogs after them. It's a fake hunt, a virtual hunt. Those "flying mattresses" have never even flown before in their lives. I am not saying that it is not fun, but it is a fake hunting experience.
Pic above: A di Lampedusa sitting room in the family palazzo in Palermo
Il Gattopardo -The Leopard (1956) - was the only novel the Sicilian aristocrat Giuseppe di Lampedusa wrote. It is a world masterpiece, but he did not live to see it published.
As you can imagine, I adore the Internet. The Internet is like a bad writing contest with 6 billion contestants and no prize. It's the Telephone Game played in semaphore by myopics. It's a vast playground for hunches about grammar, with capitalization carbuncles appearing here and there, garnished with improvisational spelling, in a passive voice reduction. Not to mention the mixed metaphors.
Some wags went on a safari looking for bad writing, and called it the Bulwer-Lytton Contest. We all know its humble beginnings. Poor Georgie B-L was just doing his best to write a novel back in 1830:
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
That ain't Shakespeare, but honestly, it can't compete with the Huffington Post for triteness. It's just the sort of writing that makes you put the book back on the library shelf, and pick up the next one. No. Big. Deal.
But they've made it a contest, so it is a big deal. I hate it. Encouraging people on the Internet to write badly on purpose is a fool's errand. That's what they do. Encouraging them to write well, or even write gooder, would strike me as a worthier task. But then again, the contest is presented by Writer's Digest, whose raison d'etre is encouraging girls who should have flunked out of jo school to write another sparkly vampire bodice-ripper using their specious advice. Yawn.
I want bad writing that turns out that way on accident, to use the parlance of our times. I want bad writing written in dead earnest. Apparently, I wanted the Bad Writing Contest.
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.
Now that's what I'm talkin' about. I'm slightly confused, though. It says a girl wrote it, but she forgot to put three exclamation points at the end. A minor oversight, but telling.
Now, on to our quotidian dose of bad writing from all over:
Ah, the Internet, where every question is begged. Are computer coders part of the Elite Class? No. They'll revert to the equivalent of journeyman plumbers in the near future. Perfectly respectable, but hardly elite. The author's inability to order concrete without an iPhone app is telling. It's telling about him, not the concrete company. And the word "into" in the headline should be "to."
Along the same lines as Mr. I Retired at 28 and Want a Medal. They always say the answer to any question posed in a headline is invariably, "No." All I needed to see was a long table covered with Apple computers to know nothing productive was going on.
Can a free coding school run by Russian mobsters be the cheap ticket into the Elite Class? More likely than the last two entries. I bet they run Linux.
There's a question in the headline again. It's a fake though. The question is begged, not answered with a "No." Diesel engines have been obsolete for a long time. The reasons they keep making them are weird.
The practice of screwing a bizarre melange of merde to the walls in taverns is a lot older than all the chains mentioned in this interesting article. Every barroom, from the '30s on, put memorabilia from the patrons on the walls to keep them coming back. After they died, it looked randomly chosen to a new crop of drunks.
Boy howdy, the title of that blog, IN ALL CAPS, isn't exaggerating. Do they watch Danish children's television in Belgium? It seems to have broken them in some fundamental way.
Every generation has something that brings a tear of remembrance to the eye. It's a moving target. You'd kill to play Knock Down with your old baseball cards, and people younger than you want to play Donkey Kong Junior on a tabletop.
Some day, everyone will realize that the last ten years has consisted of nothing but skimming. Nothing of value was created. Google stole the Yellow Pages, Facebook stole the dry-erase board hanging on a girl's dorm room door, and Apple gave you a little handheld television to watch while driving.
Well, there's the links for today. When you're done reading, I hope you find a cheap ticket "into" the Elite Class that doesn't require learning javascript. It sucks. Happy Tuesday!
Look, I just thought you should know. I barely know how to break news like this to you. But this is the kind of earth-shaking development that must be disseminated. Send small children out of the room, pour yourself a bracer, sit down, and know this: A swimmer has been inconvenienced!
It's Monday morning, and I know you're relying on Maggie's Farm to cover the globe like Sherwin Williams to get the stories that really matter. I'm trying to take my stint as the Farm's resident hooligan seriously. I felt an obligation to get up to speed on the most important stories on the planet, and report them here to you. I checked in with MSNBSBBclatcheyrudge, and I was shocked, shocked at what I discovered. I was expecting all sorts of bad things. Things like race riots, trouble in the Balkans, plagues of disease-carrying mosquitoes, fixed elections. I didn't see any of that mentioned, so I guess everything's OK on those fronts. But boy howdy, a swimmer has been inconvenienced.
I mean, when a swimmer can be inconvenienced by some ruffian, some footpad, some cad, some bounder, some slavering miscreant -- certainly the end times must be upon us. I forget which horseman of the apocalypse was sent to inconvenience a swimmer, but he's right up there, I bet.
Well, that's it for today's links. Tune in tomorrow, and I promise I'll find out if any swimmers discover there isn't any toilet paper in their stall, or stub their toe on a coffee table, or are made to wait in line over-long at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, or are forced to fly economy.
Let's just assume you want to raise your own eggs. Not as a farmer, just for your own use, like a 4-H project or like almost everybody did during the war.
I know two people who do backyard chickens. They keep the gardens weeded and eat all the bugs. A Red-Tail occasionally gets one. They scamper back into the coop at evening feed time, which keeps them safe from owls, fox, coons, and coyotes. That's the real "Free-range." Do you have to quickly teach your hunting dog to leave them alone? You betcha. Shock collar. What about Blacksnakes? Big fat Blacksnakes can't fit through narrow gauge chicken wire.
Duck eggs are bigger and tastier and ducks are less prone to disease and other problems.
A great project to do with kids, who should be responsible for it all. Does growing your own anything make sense in terms of time and cost? Of course not. It's for fun.
A Pull-up is with overhand grip. The challenge is mostly to your upper back. You pull with your back while your arms mostly just hang on.
A Chin-up is with underhand grip. The challenge is primarily to arms and secondarily to upper back.
I shamefully still can not do enough reps of either to make for a worthwhile exercise, so I am practicing with jumping pull-ups, pull-ups with the band, and holds. Also, the pull-up machine sometimes.
If pull-ups and chin-ups are too easy for you, widen your grip or put on a weight vest.
My goal is 10 reps of each, but I may never get there. When I was in high school you had to do 10 or they put you in remedial phys ed which was basically an excellent sort of boot camp for 2 hrs/day. In fact, it was a lot like Crossfit with medicine balls, sprints, jumps, push-ups, 1-mile races, etc.
12:49 "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!
12:50 I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!
12:51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!
12:52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three;
12:53 they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
12:54 He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, 'It is going to rain'; and so it happens.
12:55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat'; and it happens.
12:56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
At the Maggie's HQ we are partial to giving experiences as presents. This means things like theater or concert tix with fancy dinners, surprise trips, a spa trip, or especially special outings which you might not prefer but which the other loves.
We all are done with trinkets and toys and gadgets, and just want more life in our lives. US Open tix for her this year. She loves that. A good surprise for her.
What sorts of things do you like to give your spouse for presents, but especially birthday presents?
The Dictatorial, Anti-Democratic and Socialist Character of Interventionism
Many advocates of interventionism are bewildered when one tells them that in recommending interventionism they themselves are fostering anti-democratic and dictatorial tendencies and the establishment of totalitarian socialism. They protest that they are sincere believers and opposed to tyranny and socialism. What they aim at is only the improvement of the conditions of the poor. They say that they are driven by considerations of social justice, and favour a fairer distribution of income precisely because they are intent upon preserving capitalism and its political corollary or superstructure, viz., democratic government.
What these people fail to realize is that the various measures they suggest are not capable of bringing about the beneficial results aimed at. On the contrary they produce a state of affairs which from the point of view of their advocates is worse than the previous state which they were designed to alter. If the government, faced with this failure of its first intervention, is not prepared to undo its interference with the market and to return to a free economy, it must add to its first measure more and more regulations and restrictions. Proceeding step by step on this way it finally reaches a point in which all economic freedom of individuals has disappeared. Then socialism of the German pattern, the Zwangswirtschaft of the Nazis, emerges.
Roger here. Bird Dog has gone to the spa to take the waters. And by "spa," I mean tavern. And by "waters," I mean single malt. Anyway, he's left me to guard the chicken coop until he can finish his sabbatical, and make bail. I don't know what to talk about. That's because I'm not interesting, the way Bird Dog is.
I'm not interesting, but that's beside the point. What makes me even more useless to the lovely people here at the Farm is that I'm not interested. I don't care about much of anything that makes the front page of the papers, or the nightly news, or Huffpo. At least, I think I'm not interested, because I have no idea what's going on at those venues. It's not a pose like you'd suppose. I think it's all twaddle and avoid looking at it.
I'll try to take the path less traveled, and look for interesting things:
This is called "begging the question," even though it's not a question. It's the smug version of petitio principii. The real question is whether natural photosynthesis is particularly efficient. It isn't. There's just a lot of it going on.
In the crematorium, will you sizzle nicely or will your corpse burn down the funeral home?
We recently posted about abdominal muscles and abdominal wall fat, but fat of course is widely-distributed on the body. It's not all subcutaneous. Much of the excess fat you have is intramuscular and most of it is stored amongst your guts in the large packets of soft lard which produce the belly.
The human body is a sponge for carbs. It is designed to be a prepper for the next famine. If you have ever assisted with surgery on a heavy person, those giant yellow blobs of adipose clinging to the organs and intestines mean trouble. They ooze a slippery oil that make it difficult to hold onto a tool and get in the way of everything you try to do. Disgusting. Surgeons hate working on heavy people because of that. It pisses them off but they deal with it. Risky, though.
But, with the first incision when the yellow subcutaneous globules billow up and flow out onto your skin, they will say things about you that you would not like to hear. It's one reason they knock you out first. Handling all of that goo in my youth helped motivate me to stay fit in middle age.
Around 15% body fat is considered good, athletic fitness for men, and about up around 19-23% for women. Women naturally carry somewhat more fat in their hips, butts, and boobs. Less than 19% in women is for under-30 year-olds, body-builders, the naturally-skinny, and if it gets too low, those with eating problems. No need for expensive tests to assess yourself. Just compare your image below the fold, from here.
No teacher is qualified to go rummaging into kids' unconsciousnesses, nor is it necessary, nor is it desirable. As a tomboy kid, I think this would have messed up my head. This is a political agenda driven by either ignorant or, more likely, deliberately-disruptive people.
Perhaps kids need safe spaces from psychological assaults by the education machine. This reminds me of the Death Education for kids that was a big deal ten years ago. The field trip highlight of that movement was to bring kids to mortuaries and see what was done to the corpses.
Is it cynical to wonder whether teaching arithmetic is just too difficult?
Actually, at the Maggie's HQ we are fortunate to have several Personal Chefs. Among them, Thai take-out, Costco rotisserie chicken, Subway, etc. Nobody has time to cook at home more than once or twice a week these days. In olden times, at-home Moms and wives used to plan and cook dinner every night. Not so many at-home Moms these days.
My Mom used to. And she always had a cocktail ready for Dad when he got home. Usually a Gin and Tonic. After supper, we kids would do the clean up and Dad would go outside to gaze at the stars and ponder man and God and law with a beer and a smoke.
Times have changed, but not for the better. I do the cooking at least once a week, specializing in red meat and general outdoor grilling. I can also make a heck of an omelette, and lots of other things. Nevertheless, home-cookin is a form of love
"The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them."
Our trainer suggests first-thing-in-the-morning (after coffee) daily calisthenics when away from regular training. That is in addition to all other physical activity (eg hiking, swimming, running, biking, yoga, garden work, etc) which he assumes active people do on weekends or on vacation. In fact, he recommends morning calisthenics for everybody of every age and condition whether they work out or not.
Readers know that calisthenics do not build strength. They build endurance and athleticism, help maintain strength by putting all muscles to use, and involve bursts of intense cardio. Very little equipment needed for this program: heavy ball, jump rope, 10 lb dumbells. Lots of core in this.
But first, a stretch/warm up of a short distance of lunges, sumos, side stretches, and toe-touching walking. All outdoors is best regardless of weather. Great fun. I think we'll have a good bunch for this each morning at 630. For a bunch of them, it will just be a warm-up before their 15-mile run and one-mile swim, but they are nuts. In damn good shape, tho.
Then 3 sets of each 3-exercise circuit:
Squats with 10 lb overhead press, 15 reps 1 minute jumping jacks or jump rope Heavy ball floor slam, 15 reps 30-sec side shuffle returning to squats
30-60 second rest after completing that circuit 3 X
Jumping squats, 15 reps 30 second side-shuffle Shoulder-slap arm planks, 15 pairs 30-secside shuffle back to jumpers
30-60 second rest after completing that circuit 3X
Mountain climbers, 15 pairs 30-second sprint or jog Burpees, 10 Sprint or jog back to climbers
30-60 second rest after completing that circuit 3X
Sideways heavy ball throws (game of catch), 10 each side Arm plank 1 minute 30-seconds of lunges with 10 lbs in hand then back to throws
Time up before finishing the last circuit? Then alternate the circuits on different days and just do 3 instead of all 4 routines. Still have a little time left? Can finish up with some elbow planks and/or light-weight arm exercises: high-rep curls, side lifts, forward straight-arm lifts with the 10 lb dumbbell.
It sounds easy, doesn't it? A good way to begin the day. Try it, and get it all in under 60 minutes. If this is too easy, you are pretty fit. It leaves me like a limp rag for an hour.
Roger here. Bird Dog has gone to the spa to take the waters. And by "spa," I mean tavern. And by "waters," I mean single malt. Anyway, he's left me to guard the chicken coop until he can finish his sabbatical, and make bail. I don't know what to talk about. That's because I'm not interesting, the way Bird Dog is.
Greenland Sharks Live 400 Years or More,