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.
10X50 is a bit too much magnification for 90% of birding and for all of sports viewing, but they do have other fun uses, like watching the NoKos watching you across the DMZ.
Lower magnification (ie 7 or at most 8) meets almost all outdoor uses because higher is more than needed and makes it difficult to locate what you're looking for. Larger objective lenses (the second #) admit more light, so they are better for poor lighting conditions. Heavier, too.
Binocular skills are learned by use - those are eye skills. Clarity has to do with lens and prism quality, and that's where the $ comes into the equation.
For long-distance viewing (eg military, nautical, seabirds far off in the water and the like - and certainly for astronomy, you need higher magnification (10X +) and probably larger objective lens but those work best with a binocular or a scope on a mount or tripod.
What is best for watching high-altitude migrating raptors? Some swear by a Zeiss 8X45 or 8X42 with their wide (400 m) FOV (field of view). A wide FOV is desirable for wildlife observation. I have seen that the most experienced and expert wildlife watchers do very well with minimal inexpensive gear, but that's not me.
If James Madison or Thomas Jefferson were brought back to life and they looked at television and read the papers, they would not recognize the country.
...what the Obama administration did not say was that such cyber-crimes are by now old hat. Both the Russian and Chinese governments have been hacking into far more important U.S. records and government archives for years without earning retaliation. The administration also did not mention that the election hacking occurred largely because of Podesta’s own carelessness in using his security password. Moreover, it failed to acknowledge that the Republican National Committee was likewise targeted, but apparently had enough safeguards to prevent successful entry into its records...
The half-life of medical knowledge is approximated at seven years. That means that half of what you think you know about health, illness, and medical practice today will be obsolete in seven years.
It will be replaced by new better science of which, in turn, half will be obsolete seven years later. That's how it works. Skepticism about current knowledge is always appropriate. The cholesterol panic is just the most recent, dramatic example. Big mistake. Not all docs have got the memo yet. "Never mind."
Eat those eggs and bacon and sausages like you always wanted to, and skip the darn oatmeal unless it's all you can afford. And imagine that, in seven years, Mr. Science will tell you to eat candy and Dunkin Donuts for breakfast.
Our tummies might be smarter than today's science. Who knows? I love deep-fat fried donuts (not at Dunkin) and French Toast. Doesn't everybody?
It's nice to live in a country in which nobody is forced to be physically fit to try to minimize government medical costs, where relatively few work at heavy labor thanks to machines, and in which tasty food is so cheap. Indeed, outside of the major urban centers, one gets the impression that the majority of Americans are lazy slobs and eating machines. That impression is not entirely correct, though, because many fat people are very strong. Not fit, not conditioned, but strong - and strong is the first 1/3rd of fitness and the most difficult to achieve.
A friend spent the holidays down in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge (TN) and reports that he has never seen so many fat lethargic people, and has never seen so many people avidly demolish such volumes of food. "They eat like they're starving," he said, "They live from meal to meal to snack to meal, but they are 50-150 lbs overweight". I said I had heard that Disney is the same.
"Disgusting" just to watch the way they consume food. He said "Down there, there's a gun shop and a food franchise for fatties on every block, and not a gym to be found. The opposite of up here." Yeah, he does like guns and knives as I do, but he is fit as a fiddle too from lifting weights.
Anyway, time constraint is one of the many common excuses (along with It's boring, It's too difficult, My ____ hurts, It's just vanity, It's just vanity and I'm already married, I can't lose weight, I'm too old, I hate gyms, etc etc) for people who say they'd like to get strong and fit but never move a muscle to do it. Hey, I get it. Sloth feels good, sort-of, in some ways, but it is a mortal sin. However, I can attest that deadlifts and barbell squats are far from boring, but it is almost all painful or should be. Good pain, good stress, and good deprivation are under-rated today.
Let's address the time issue (really a rationalization because if you stop by your local gym there are plenty of folks there at 5 am before work). Yes, it is good to use a gym. People with home gyms almost never use them - plus having other people around is inspiring and fun.
And let's say that a fitness program includes the Conditioning Triad - Resistance, Cardio, and Calisthenics...Plus proper nutrition commensurate with level of exertion and weight gain or weight loss goals as desired). That takes care of Strength, Endurance, Power, Energy, Explosive Strength, Heart strength, and General Athleticism. Added bonus: We now know it's good for the brain too. Yeah, Fitness For Life and the only known Elixir of Youth.
Less than 5 hrs/wk for Conditioning for the average non-athlete citizen, male or female, over 15 years old:
- 20-30 minutes of hard, sweaty, painful cardio intervals (HIIT), twice a week. The intervals need to be anaerobic. If you want to do more to up your metabolism, fine - but it's the hard intervals that do it and your calis contain tons of cardio stress too - and long aerobic cardio is a waste of time from a fitness standpoint. If over 80 years old, a few miles of aerobic walking is better than nothing. - 45 minutes of resistance (weights) twice/week. Focus on the Big 5 or Big 6 - 2 hrs. total of calisthenics (body-wt calis, heavy calis, light weights)/wk, mixed in or separately
That's less time than the average person wastes watching TV or movies and farting into the sofa. After one year of it, you can look and feel 3-4 years younger. After 2 years, 8 years younger. It's not about virtue, it's about feeling good and energetic. Or don't bother. Life is short anyway.
Social inequity is the permanent emergency that the left uses to justify its totalitarian state and the perpetuation of social inequity is the means which the left uses to maintain a state of permanent emergency. If one form of social inequity diminishes, the left finds another. And another. This endless search leads to a deconstruction of every aspect of society and the destruction of every human system. Human ways of living are replaced with grafted on artificial modes that fail and destroy their users. And the worse the society becomes, the more the state of permanent social emergency is justified.
In civil societies, showng weakness can be a power play. In uncivil societies, signs of weakness are suicidal.
The Real Housewives of Isis:"Another woman models her new suicide vest for her fellow jihadist wives. “What do you think?” she asks. “Ahmed surprised me with it yesterday.”"
This is mainly for guys, because women generally lack the upper body power for unassisted pull-ups and chin-ups. Guys under age 30 can usually do at least ten, and fit guys can do more with varied grip widths.
Guys over 40, regardless of weight issues, commonly have more trouble due to muscle disuse and decay. The US military considers 20 pull-ups or chin-ups to be a perfect score for that exercise. Few Generals can do that, but I bet Mattis can.
Like all of the Big Functional Exercises, a pull-up stresses many muscle groups. Pull-ups stress upper-body muscles from hands to abs, but the greatest stress is on back muscles - the lats.
To do a pull-up correctly, you do not focus on using your arms but you focus on driving your elbows down. It's not primarily a biceps exercise except secondarily.
To work towards doing some pull-ups if you can't, here's how:
- work on raising the weights on seated pull-downs - jumping pull-ups - pull-ups with those rubber bands
and perhaps most important, Hangs. If you can't hang on, you can't pull yourself up. To work on hanging, you hop up to the bar with an overhand or underhand grip with your elbows down at your sides or as close to that as possible. Suspend yourself as long as you can. Your muscles will slowly (or quickly) give way, but keep suspended as they collapse.
One or two sets of three of those weekly will help you move forward towards the goal of doing just one lousy pull-up with chin above the bar. I do three sets of hangs/wk and three sets of either jumpers or band-assisted weekly. If I can get to 10 pull-ups again, I will be proud of my achievement but I doubt that I will get there. When I was young I could do 15 or more.
Instead of picking apart mistakes by Trump, let's focus on the damage the Democrats have done. It's legion. In the guise of economic "fairness," they gave us the worst economic recovery since World War II. They simply ground to a standstill our economic engine, causing massive unemployment and a job market that gives no hope to Americans for the future. They ruined our alliances and fed our enemies under a horrifyingly stupid, feckless president and secretary of state. They laid the groundwork for ISIS to become a power and were virtually useless in dealing with that organization. They destroyed our borders under the idea that it is racist to have them, flooding us with illegal aliens who don't care a whit about American values of the past, and they steal from our kindness. They were on the way to destroying health care, paving the way for massive government control of doctors, insurance companies, and yes, us as patients. The evidence is in: Obamacare was a failure. They lied to get it passed, they lied to keep it, and they are lying about how good it is now. Thankfully, most people understand they now have a pig in the poke that costs a ton, and they can't use it. They corrupted our bureaucracies in Washington, destroying the faith the American citizens had in their government.
They did a lot more damage than this short list, but the point is that they ruined everything they touched.
People babble on about how “Trump will never do anything about illegals” and “He’ll never repeal Obamacare.” Yeah, put your money on Trump failing – I did, and the guy I wrote checks to lost. News Flash: Donald Trump is not only going dance with the ones who brung him but afterwards he is going to take them to his limo to make out. This guy is interested in trying to please the people who elected him, not the urban swells who write for or read the NYT or WaPo – he knows they will never stop loathing him even if he somehow simultaneously cures cancer, brings world peace, and convinces Coldplay to disband.
No, he’s going to do what he said he will do – and I expect that when we hear the name of his Supreme Court nominee (Please, for many reasons, make it Judge Willet!) every conservative in America is going to seek a cigarette and a cuddle.
Good essay. Trump is no Conservative. I see him as a moderate pragmatist and probably an old-style Liberal at heart. I still can not understand why progressives and lefties hate him so much. He seems to love America and Americans, and he is entertaining. And character flaws are de rigeur for politicians because normal people avoid that game.
I received a link this morning to an article which suggests readers should more or less 'be afraid' of a certain group of technology companies. Over the course of time, many firms have acted in an amoral or immoral fashion. These tech firms have all probably also behaved poorly at various points. But the value they provide is significant. Fearing them is not sensible. There is good reason to not fear them. History indicates they are likely to all be undone or greatly diminished at some point in time. For most of the 1980s, the 'company' I was supposed to fear was the entire nation of Japan. For most of the 2000s, it's been China. Funny how Japan has been in a 20 year funk while China is just now dropping like a stone (apparently, Bitcoin prices are soaring over there - a sure sign of instability).
I consider articles like the above link to be a form of fake news, because it's an emotional appeal based on faulty logic. Articles of this nature appear every 10 years or so about various companies. Aside from China and Japan, I've read articles like this about GM, GE, Exxon, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, Bank of America, Citibank, AT&T, Coca-Cola, ITT, and a host of other large firms who, in total, represented large and innovative firms at various points in time. They were firms which happened to benefit from temporary blips in demand and consumer behavior. Point is, almost all are still fairly large firms, but their dominance has diminished, our fear subsiding as our interests and spending patterns change.
In every case, consumer behaviors shifted, innovation moved in different directions, or smaller more competitive firms caught up with these firms. But in almost every case, the dominant positions they claimed were lost. I see the same thing happening with Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft at some point. In fact, Microsoft is no longer the dominant company it once was - it, too, was part of the group mentioned above back in the 90's as a potentially dangerous 'monopoly'. I guess being downgraded from 'monopoly' status is just as frightening as being part of a group of large firms which all compete with each other?
The idea that there is something new and different happening with these tech firms is misguided. Railroads dominated the economic scene for many decades in the 1800s, then oil companies, then car manufacturers. Each one was demonized in similar fashion. Tech offers greater opportunity than any of these firms did, as well as great potential for abuse. But you take the good with the bad, and the good usually outweighs the bad in an overwhelming fashion. I'll take my chances with these firms as opposed to any government oversight and regulation, thank you. Their fear and dislike of each other will keep them on a far more even keel than any pinhead politician.
We made an Italian supper for great pals Sunday night. It's fun to cook Italian; it takes four hands so it's handy to have a spouse.
- Antipasto: Zucchini boats stuffed with shallots, onions, chopped zucchini, with Bechamel sauce and parmesan on top - Primo: Straw and Hay (white and spinach fettucini with chopped mushrooms and mortadella with cream-parmesan sauce) - Secondo: Pork tenderloin braised in wine vinegar with a ton of peppercorns and a bunch of lauro leaves, and sauteed spinach with oil and garlic as a contorno - Dolce: Strawberries with balsamic vinegar
1. If the USA is the mostest evilish oppressive imperialist country in the world, why do so many want the federal government to have more power over the states and the people?
2. Is Washington Rome? The federal city looks like Rome, a hideous statement of power and the smallness of the individual citizen. Are the states of America just Roman colonies, creating the goods and food and money for the wealthy imperial capitol and its power people?
Our hard-exercise friends know that results require working in pain; that "pain is the feeling of weakness leaving your body." We all know that if you stop when it begins to hurt, you get nowhere. That is why so many people avoid it.
Same applies to weight-loss plans: it hurts. Indulgence is briefly rewarding, pain and deprivation are painful. Good pain, but pain.
It turns out that resisting the deterioration of age requires stress and pain - mental and/or physical. It is no surprise to me that much-maligned "stress" is what can keep us physically and mental fit until something inevitably cuts us down: How to Become a ‘Superager’
In the United States, we are obsessed with happiness. But as people get older, research shows, they cultivate happiness by avoiding unpleasant situations. This is sometimes a good idea, as when you avoid a rude neighbor. But if people consistently sidestep the discomfort of mental effort or physical exertion, this restraint can be detrimental to the brain. All brain tissue gets thinner from disuse. If you don’t use it, you lose it.
Interesting that the brain deteriorates also with lack of physical stress. Who knew? Up here in Yankeeland, many of us still view "leisure" and "relaxation" with Puritan suspicion, and the notion of retirement the same. Maybe we are right to seek challenge, discomfort, and stress and to avoid leisure and passive recreation. Learn piano, or a language. Get a hard job. Lift heavy weights. Let's all get deep into life this year to try to slow down Time. I will.
The American people are sick unto death of liberals. They are sick of a lousy economy; they are sick of Hillary Clinton’s grating voice. They are sick of worrying whether a careless word will get them hauled up before the lame feminists in HR. They are sick of being called racists sexists homophobes. And they are sick of their adult kids living in the basement.
But never mind about all that. The real reason for the crisis of 2016 is that liberalism and globalism have been tried and found wanting. The truth is that the nation state is still the best -- although flawed -- way of conjuring up that abstract notion we call human community, and ordinary people feel it in their bones.
A pal commented on our birding binocular post that excellent German Army Hensoldt 10X50s can be found on eBay for reasonable prices. Good optics.
The half-life of medical knowledge 
Drudge announces that 
Boudreaux: 
Lightning activity around the globe, 
An Ancient City