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.
Prof. Peterson's stats are surely correct, same as Charles Murray's. Stats do not account for individuals very well, though. Obviously, low or average (100) IQ people with amiable personalities can do well in many fields including politics and sales. High IQ people can be easily found working in the "trades" because they like the freedom and hate cubicles.
These were not issues when 90% of people lived on family farms. In a complex post-industrial society, it's pretty clear that low IQ and character weaknesses can be limiting but there is still plenty of work to be done out there.
As I have mentioned many times, character traits can be more important in advancing one's life goals than IQ. Also mentioned many times, not everybody's life goal is wealth. Wealth is just a default goal for people without other more interesting goals. That said, money is darn useful and I like it.
From The Ultimate Guide to Sets and Reps for Strength Training, I think these are pretty good common-sense guidelines for the powerlifts, based on your goals. For powerlifts, however, I would not ever go over 10 reps per set. Instead, up the weight or the sets. Too many muscle twinges can happen with higher rep powerlifts, I believe. Higher reps for small or isolated muscles are fine, eg tricep push-downs, calf lifts, curls.
Exercisers need to know their max, approximately, for their powerlifts. For example, if I can deadlift 300 lbs for one or two reps, my 80% intensity is 240 lbs. What I do with powerlifts (not saying it's the best thing to do) is a warm-up set of 10 at 50%, then 4 working sets which gradually work up to about 80%. Just for fun, about once a month I will see if I can increase my max for 1 or 2 reps but I don't count that as a working set.
She intervenes in popular visual media like reality television to interrogate how time moves and for whom to catalog desire and identification as taxonomy and type. Her preferred gender pronouns are she/her.
Arnold Kling mentioned it here.It seems to be about how people adapt to change, or fail to. Rules of the game change. Life can be like Calvinball. Winners adapt, losers fail to adapt. One must be quick on one's feet in life, like a hunter.
He has good ideas about what America is all about. I find it difficult to see anything to object to in what he says, although his data do support the outrageous ideas that the cultural foundations of "the American project" remain keys to building a decent functional life which does not cause trouble or add burdens to others: Industriousness, Honesty, Marriage, and Religion.
Ultimately, though, he is talking about character traits and American civic culture. Worthy character traits support civic culture, and vice versa. Think Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Interesting quote: "The upper middle class is keeping its effective values to itself." Also, his point about "churn" seems important, because in the US lineages go up and down socioeconomically and socioculturally over time. No fixed classes as in most societies and it's not mainly about wealth either.
People who move to the NYC area for good work love it, not just because of the vitality, or sight-seeing, or theater, or jazz clubs, or museums, or parks, or great food and pubs, or the smart ambitious people, but mainly because there are always very cool and unique things to do.
Going on campus to harass Charles Murray is not changing minds and it is not intended to change minds. It’s just something to do in order to show off to friends. Its bored children coloring on the walls, even though they know mom with be pissed. Since mom is not going to give them up for adoption over it, the act is just pointless, risk-free theater.
Every citizen should do what I do: write quarterly payment checks for Social Security, Federal and state taxes, Medicare tax, etc.
It makes it real. People who get regular paychecks never get all of their earned wages. That is not right. Does the government not trust citizens to pay their taxes themselves?
It's the recovery from the controlled damage and stress which produces the improvement.
All forms of personal growth require high stress to produce improvement, whether physical, mental, or emotional.
The purpose of intense physical exertion itself is to break you down, to damage muscles, to stress tendons, ligaments, bones, and neuromuscular connections to the point that they are forced to adapt. That is why only very difficult and unpleasant physical demands get results.
Building strength and power is meant to wreck your body and to blow your mind, but in a careful, controlled way.
We have all had the experience of feeling like a deadlift barbell is glued to the floor. Then somebody else, or your own head, says "You can do this, just get it off the floor" and suddenly "giving it your all" shifts and the meaning of "your all" expands into new territory.
With exercise, we should gain muscle weight. Unless we're fat, we should put on solid weight.
After an hour or so of power lifting, we recommend 48 hrs. with just an hour of Active Recovery before another day's power lifting. Passive Recovery is just decent sleep and adequate protein intake (over 80 gms/day). Active Recovery gets the blood moving, includes activities which require minimal recovery time, like calisthenics, cardio intervals, speed walking, etc. - just no heavy weights.
It all works together that way, at least for the middle-aged, in 5 or so hours of structured exercise - which is less time than most people waste watching TV and movies:
Preaching (ie Teaching) seems over-emphasized. I think people go to be part of a community which is body of Christ. Jesus clubs. When teaching becomes performance, I turn off.
Vernal Pools are (usually temporary except in high-rain years) marshes. "Wetlands," aka swampy areas. They are a cool and productive part of an ecosystem because they contain no fish or turtles to eat all of the baby amphibians.
Generally the spring pools are fed by snow melt, early Spring rain, or slow seeps from springs which do not produce enough water to keep the area wet in high summer. Springs are interesting things.
Critters that breed in vernal pools clearly need to lay eggs which produce rapidly-maturing young who can leave the pools before they dry up. For example, Bullfrog tadpoles take a long time, up to a year, to grow and mature via that crazy amphibian metamorphosis so large frogs require permanent bodies of water.
Around here, typical Vernal Pool breeders are Spring Peepers, Common Toad, Wood Frog, Cricket Frog, various salamanders. Spring Peeper eggs - tadpoles - tiny frogs are ready to leave the water in 8 weeks. Toads can do it in 12 weeks.
Early Spring is here and, anyway, I am at the end of my bird seed.
Seen today at the HQ: An Easter Bunny laying colorful eggs, Mourning Dove, Cardinal, Common Grackle, Red Bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Common Flicker, Tufted Titmouse, Chickadee, House Finch, Song Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow, WT Sparrow, a few remaining SC Juncos, Blue Jay, Goldfinch, RW Blackbird and overhead a RT Hawk.
Weakness relates us profoundly with other people. It allows us to feel with them the human condition, the human struggle and darkness and anguish which call out for salvation. For to be a human being is to take a certain amount of suffering into life. It is hard to get at this consideration, since so much in Western civilization attempts to disguise it or affects to despise it. One of the most debilitating aspects of American society is that we do not authentically admit the cost in a struggle and almost never allow real fear to surface. Yet most of us must struggle to make a living, must wonder about our future and about our sense of personal value in a market economy, must deal with the half-articulated and half-understood problems of our children, must fear what our death will be like—what it will mean to die; we must deal with the temptation to believe that life is without meaning, that actions are inconsequential and selfish, and that other people are to be used...
Now the nature of man Is to beg and to steal I'd do it myself It's not so unreal The call of the wild is Forever at my door Want me to fly like an eagle while Being chained to the floor, but
You changed my life Came along in a time of strife In hunger and need You made my heart bleed You changed my life
"People stay up at nights thinking of what next to put on the racist list. Next it will be mayonnaise for glorying whiteness…"
There is so little racism in this great country -that "they" have to hijack the English language and invent new definitions for "racism" -in order to have something to point at and say "see?".
How to 
Image via 
I Learned The Hard Way 
It's the recovery from the controlled damage and stress which produces the improvement. 
Why do you attend church? 
Leg of