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.
The proof of this is the fact that the GOP has no plans ready for the 2017 legislative session. They have been talking for years about ObamaCare and now we know they never planned to do anything. The same is true of taxes, which is the one thing Republicans like doing. They have no plans for anything, not even something symbolic. They not only have no plans, they are still staggering around in shock, not sure what they should be doing. Suddenly nothing makes sense to the people inside the bubble and they are scared.
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in a world where the scrupulous following of protocol is essential to maintaining the status quo, a break down in the rules puts everyone at risk. That seems to be Trump’s game here with the spying charges. The establishment has tossed out the rules in their effort to attack him, so he is threatening to further bust up the system, which works to his favor and to their disadvantage. it’s a foolish game the Left has decided to play as they have much more to lose in a world without rules.
There’s another aspect to this. Trump has fewer skeletons in his closet than any president in generations. In Washington, that makes him a very dangerous man.
Anybody can stroll for a few hours as long as there are things and people to look at, and almost anybody can walk all day, or at least for 6 hours, unless they are post-op or disabled. If out of shape, it is fatiguing but do-able. Tourist walking and urban "hiking" are no problem for most.
Hiking is not walking. Hiking is mainly about speed to destination, and hills at the least and gravelly scrambling at the most. Except for the steeps, hiking takes endurance and the steeps demand leg endurance if not strength too, especially with a pack.
We have two hiking trips planned in the next few months, one in Georgia (USA) and one in the Outer Hebrides. With 2 years of hard training, Mrs. BD and I are probably fitter than most people of our ages and life habits, but I am not sure about 6-7 hours of up and down the Highlands. Hills or mountains, whatever - serious hiking with poles and packs every day for ten days with no rest days.
The leg strength we build from deadlifts and barbell squats is great and useful, but it's not endurance. Our cardio intervals are probably most relevant for efficient endurance-building, but I think we ought to add to that plenty of stairmaster time and a weekly weekend 4-6 hr uphill hike on top of our usual fitness routine. Speed hike, not casual hike.
I think we ought to do Mt. Washington (if and when the snow melts). I am the rare outdoor person in New England who has not tackled the Presidential Range, and I should do it. Several pals of ours love to do the hut-to-hut thing up there, but I admit that I like a good bed and a good shower daily, and real good "unhealthy" food. Sheesh, I am the person who loves Urban Hiking because there is more to look at than trees and rocks, and there are fun food trucks with Falafel and stuff.
I hate myself when I need a sit-down on a serious hike.
What would you do to prepare for serious hiking trips?
4:1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
4:2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.
4:3 The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."
4:4 But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
4:5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple,
4:6 saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'"
4:7 Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"
4:8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor;
4:9 and he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me."
4:10 Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"
4:11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
Your current group of students have dishonored your elite, bucolic school. If police are not called in, and kids are not expelled, the school's reputation and image will suffer for years no matter how excellent the faculty. Forget the college rules of conduct because many laws were broken.
If this is a typical administration, nothing will happen unless the Board and the alums put pressure on a seemingly spineless, castrated administration. Typical administrators.
It’s been exactly 40 years since my late wife and I quit as English profs at Middlebury College, where hundreds of screaming students wouldn’t allow Charles Murray, one of the nation’s foremost conservative intellectuals, to speak to them yesterday, as a campus conservative group had invited him to do. Like everything else in America, no doubt much has changed at the now-trendy college, nestled in Vermont’s maple-clad mountains, in four decades. Back in the 1970s, the Arab-launched oil crisis forced school officials to choose between shutting off the electricity to the library or to the school’s private ski lift. After a student referendum, the library went dark.
... I remember two salient traits of the majority of students in those days. One was their extraordinary intellectual laziness and lack of curiosity, especially infuriating because so many were such intelligent kids. The other was their immense privilege. Shiny new BMWs filled the student parking lot, each fitted with racks holding the most technologically advanced skis for whizzing down the slopes. There were battered Volvos, too. They belonged to us teachers.
I believe that I have no talent and no skills at management. I wish I had. We had an after-church brunch last Sunday with pals, and my friend who is a management consultant challenged me to complete the %s on his simple matrix where R/W means Right Thing Done The Wrong Way, W/R means Wrong Thing Done The Right Way, etc.
I filled in the %s with my guesses, and he explained that my hypothetical business took a 70% cost in poor management. He said that my guesses were probably not too far off for many organizations but I might have the categories wrong. He said one reason for it is that, in organizations, most people have little real skin in the game and just hope to keep their paychecks coming but, in general, organizations are inefficient and one can only hope to keep it as low as possible.
Rush is right. It is a remarkable and disturbing situation, and the MSM is fully on board. Time for the trumpists to bring a machine gun to the gunfight.
...news merged Thursday that Obama Administration officials ran a government intel operation on the Trump campaign. The New York Times reports that political appointees signed off on surveillance of “associates” of the Trump campaign, though “the nature of these contacts remains unknown.” The officials then spread this raw intelligence throughout the government and to foreign counterparts, ensuring they’d be widely read and supposedly to prevent their Trump successors from covering up the truth.
We are in an entirely new age. When drivers listen to local or national talk radio, they assume that the host, often without a BA, is more informed, astute, and reliable than bylines from the echo chamber of Columbia journalism MAs.
DEM RED FACES... ALL OF THEIR MEETINGS WITH RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR... PHOTO CONTRADICTS PELOSI STATEMENT... History of Exchanging Gifts... RUSSIAN FM CALLS SESSIONS UPROAR A REPLAY OF MCCARTHYISM... STUDY: 7X More Coverage Than Holder Contempt... Basic Formula For Every 'Shocking Revelation'... FLASHBACK: Valerie Jarrett's Daughter Hired At CNN To Cover Trump DOJ... Prosecutor Obama promoted would oversee probes...
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Part 1 by Dr. Norman Doidge is thorough and smart but a bit dull. His error, I think, is in missing a crucial component of the Speech and Thought Police which is their destructive rage and desire for control. In a sense, he gives them too much credit for genuineness. Believe me, they are not hurt when they claim victimhood. They are victimizing.
If you only have a little time, skip Doidge. Prof. Peterson is a fascinating speaker and is able to identify human evil. He has been victimized and he is pissed and passionate. This is dynamite and I urge all of our readers to listen:
Dems and allies have declared all-out warfare. Let's see how tough the trumpists are, because they have few insider allies. Lots of outsider allies, though.
Doubtful. There are 60,000 pages of federal administrative law. Nobody knows those laws because it would be impossible, but they can nail you if you break one. Not only that, but Congress not only never passed those details of the laws, but has no control of them either. UNDERSTANDING THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE.
Feminists wish to demystify mathematics - and all science too. Go for it, ladies. Please. Math beyond Calculus was a mystery to me due mainly to my IQ limitations. Physical Chemistry stumped me too, which is how I ended up in my career path.
The teaching of science and mathematics must be purged of its authoritarian and elitist characteristics, and the content of these subjects enriched by incorporating the insights of the feminist, queer, multiculturalist and ecological critiques.
I haven't seen any queer critiques of Pythagoras yet, but he was probably gay anyway, being Greek.
Reynolds asks the right question: Would the Left be so gung-ho about a "Living Constitution" if conservative activists controlled the Supreme Court? Discussed at Althouse.
A "living Constitution" just means the politics du jour which can bend with the winds.
As we've said in the past, it depends on how one wishers to define "disease." The term is highly fluid, constantly expanding to include normal variations and things one might term "conditions" (mainly for insurance purposes), and lacks any natural definition.
My view is that substance abuse derives from one simple effect: Some people like it a lot and it makes them feel better than they otherwise feel. Any physiological dependence part is secondary to that. Also, I am not too keen on the criminalization of drugs. The "War on Drugs" has accomplished little good and has many unintended and unfortunate consequences.
The Left has a genius for ratcheting up dependency and government largess, and then daring Republicans, when they come into power, into undoing it because it’s extremely unpopular. And they did gin up a system that is completely unworkable but does have some who benefit, and some are going to lose.
“There's as much crookedness as you want to find. There was something Abraham Lincoln said - he'd rather trust and be disappointed than distrust and be miserable all the time. Maybe I trusted too much.”~John Wooden
1. The U.S. leads the world in health care spending per person, but not in health care outcomes. Many people look at that and say that health care costs too much in the U.S., and we should be able to get the same or better outcomes by spending less. Maybe that is correct, maybe not. That is not the point here. But–
2. the U.S. leads the world in K-12 education spending per student, but not in student outcomes. Yet nobody says that education costs too much and that we should spend less. Except –
3. me. I believe that we spend way too much on K-12 education...
11 
Robby Mook Can’t Really Confirm or Deny 
WHY PEOPLE 
McDonald's vows 