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.
Last week I posted on Does Language Shape Our Thoughts? The subject provoked some discussion. It is true that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis turns out to have little empirical support, but I'll stand by my experience that a new word or phrase, and the concept in them, certainly effect the ways I think and can even give me a new tool to think in a new way. Heck, that is called "education." (a quote on the topic below the fold)
I think one problem might be taking the implications of a theory too far, too globally. This brings me to the notion of "social construction," popularized by Berger and Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality.After I read it, I asked my professor whether social constructionism might be a social construct.
Berger and Luckmann's claims were stimulating and I am certain that they have limited application despite being unreinforced by data. (I don't know how one gets data on such types of epistemologic theorizing.) However they were welcomed by radicals and deconstruction postmodernists who took them to extremes, sometimes to psychotic levels of subjectivity, because they appeared to support the ideas of the infinite malleability of the human mind and heart, and the impossibility of objectivity.
We use jump rope as a form of calisthenic/cardio exercise, and as a form of HIIT cardio with speed intervals or variations on ordinary singles. The variations are much more cardio demanding than plain singles.
Is jumping a hard impact on joints? Nope. Properly done, the steps are lighter than those of ordinary walking which pounds your heels. Ankle hops, not real jumps.
Since I have been jumping at my gym, I see more and more guys doing it. Few gals do it, maybe because of the boing-boing. One of the guys, a tall slender black dude, is a jump rope artist. He is like a dancer, varying his form from singles to doubles to side steps to scissor steps to running man to single-leg hops, seemingly effortlessly with small efficient steps. I want to get there, but I never will.
At this point, I can do singles for fairly long (but I rarely do them for more than a couple of minutes at a time), Running Man, and I am beginning to get relaxed with scissor step and the jack step. It's all about rhythm, cool and relaxed, just letting the rope go on autopilot.
Here's the scissor step. If you have learned Running Man, it's pretty easy to get the hang of it. She is pretty good, but I think the steps ideally are smaller and lighter. For good form, note how her arms and hands never change position.
The pigeon of cities and barns is actually the European Rock Dove. It's been introduced all around the world. In its natural wild state it was partial to cliffs and mountains so urban settings are comfortable for the species.
The Rock Dove has been domesticated and bred for thousands of years, so today there is much variety in feral pigeons. People raised them in dovecotes.
Perhaps the best use of pigeons is for shooting practice. I've done that. Good fun. Second best, raising them for squab. Squab is delicious. I recommend it if you can find it on a menu. A colleague of mine used to raise pigeons. He would serve rare squab breast on top of a sauteed squab liver, on a bed of lentils. Wonderful.
Pigeons are a favored food of Peregrine Falcons. They knock the stuffing out of them in the air, then catch them on their way down.
Jamie Oliver has a recipe for adult pigeon.Nobody wants to dine on a city pigeon, but I suspect country pigeons could be good.
At Powerline re economic inequality, "... the 400 richest Americans control more wealth than the poorest 80 million households, and “the richest citizens continue to capture the lion’s share of new wealth."
It is an absurd discussion, because the only way wealth can be "captured" is by theft, fraud, or taxation. The zero-sum fallacy is there, as usual. Still, the best solution to extreme statistical inequality suggested there would be to confiscate the assets of the top 400, or 1000, or 10,000, or 100,000, and to ship those people to New Zealand or Tasmania just in case they might be tempted to try to get rich again in the US.
When rid of the richest, you can begin to go after the kulaks. After a while, there is nobody left to tax and economic equality ensues (except for our Leaders, of course - some pigs are more equal than others). It's great. No, it's awesome.
Mints will invade everything. My Mom would just let it loose in a meadow. When the meadow was mowed, wow. Great smell. When you needed some for lemonade, it was out there.
Same goes for beautiful flowering vines like Trumpet Vine and Wisteria. Their desires to spread and metastasize via underground roots are relentless and close to impossible to prevent. My advice is not to plant them anywhere they cannot be mowed around.
Bamboo. Unless you have a good local Panda population, you will be sorry you even planted it. Agent Orange is one approach.
What sorts of garden plants have you had difficulty controlling?
1:1 We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life--
1:2 this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us--
1:3 we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
1:4 We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true;
1:7 but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
1:8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
1:9 If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1:10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
2:1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;
2:2 and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
People often think the title is "The Road Less Traveled." Nope. Not a poem about how special we want to feel. Some of Frost's poems became so popular that they became cliches. The cranky SOB was a skilled marketer of his image, too. Anyway, I posted this poem today to note the ambiguity here: "the passing there had worn them really about the same." A random choice for a grassy path. Fate. Hard to know what metaphysical poets are really up to: What Gives Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” Its Power?
The poem isn’t a salute to can-do individualism; it’s a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives. “The Road Not Taken” may be, as the critic Frank Lentricchia memorably put it, “the best example in all of American poetry of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” But we could go further: It may be the best example in all of American culture of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
In this it strongly resembles its creator...
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
It seems self-evident that language and ideas shape our thoughts. Almost nobody ever has an original thought, but new words and new ideas we obtain from others and from the past are exciting (or disturbing) because of their shaping or re-shaping effects.
There is some Goethe quote that we can only see what we know. If you see a "fighter jet" and I see an F-16, our mental representations of the thing are entirely different. Similarly, if you see "woods" and I see an Oak-Beech climax forest. Knowledge embedded in language shapes our perceptions and thus our thought.
My favorite question is "Who was the genius who invented numbers?" Are numbers "real"? . Remarkably, not all cultures have/had numbers. Numbers make a huge difference in how we perceive the world. And colors are just handy bunching of slices of the humanly visible electromagnetic spectrum.
We have discussed the topic in the past. Muscle degradation occurs partly from disuse, but also from age. It ramps up in middle age. Low energy, feebleness, frailty, and bone fragility are the final results. The older you get, the more difficult it becomes to build and maintain muscle functioning so the ideal approach is to get on board before the deterioration becomes measurable.
From what is known now, only intense physical effort can delay it (ie heavy weights, sprints, maybe high-volume anaerobic calisthenics, and the like. Comfortable or aerobic exercise doesn't help). Many claim it can be reversed to some extent, and I think it can.
We will all experience a 10% decline in muscle mass between the ages of 25 and 50 and a further 45% shrinkage by our eighth decade – if we do nothing about it. To illustrate this decline by example, the biceps muscle of a newborn baby has around 500,000 fibres while that of an 80-year-old has a mere 300,000. As we age, we also produce less growth hormone, which leads to reduced levels of protein synthesis and, again, muscle atrophy. This is not the kind of acceleration needed by the veteran athlete in search of speed, as decreased muscle equates to reduced strength and power and less ‘oomph’ ...
That is from a somewhat grim article explaining physical performance and ageing, mainly focused on running but applicable to all physical activity. Yes, high-intensity exertion does raise levels of growth hormone, and that is good.
They also recommend supplemental creatine for middle-aged, and above, heavy daily exercisers. There is good evidence for its helpfulness. Especially for those over age 30, supplemental creatine (naturally found mostly in red meat and especially in rare red meat) permits a higher level of intensity of exertion for sprinting and weight-lifting, resulting in more muscle stress, resulting in stronger muscle repair (protein synthesis) during a recovery day or two.
Strength Training Helps to Stop Age Related Muscle Loss. Mind you, "training" means it is unpleasant and highly aversive for good reason: it's hateful, stressful work requiring delayed gratification, not recreation. Not for everybody (obviously).
I suggest that we get our own act together instead of waiting for utopia. There is no utopia, and heaven, I am told, is like a boring vacation. A harp is a fine instrument, but all day long? Not to say that meeting God would not be an exciting moment.
HIIT is the only efficient form of pure cardio training, and cardio is 1/3 of fitness maintenance and development. "Cardio" means stressing the heart and oxygen delivery. That is, it strengthens cardiac muscle, increases cardiac vascularization, and ramps up pulmonary function.
HIIT (High-intensity interval training) comes in many forms. As usual, everybody has his opinion about it. The general format is 30-60-second full-out sprints followed by active recovery (slow) intervals at a 1:1 or 1:2 time ratio. For me, the !:2 works best. For example, when I do HIIT on the treadmill I do 60-second sprints followed by 2-minute slow walks but I probably should do 30-sec sprints with 60-sec walks. Trouble is that it takes several seconds to get anything up to max speed.
- Speed? Obviously the pace of a "sprint" depends on fitness level. All that matters is that you give it everything you've got. Pace will improve over weeks.
- Warm-up? A 5-10-minute warm up before an HIIT session is recommended. My habit is a 10-minute low-resistance elliptical before I do any exercise at all. Gets everything warmed-up without fatigue and reduces risk of cramps or sprains.
- How many HIIT reps? Generally 5-10 is the limit. Stop when the quality of the sprints deteriorate noticeably. I aim for 10, but it depends on the day.
- Jump right in to HIIT? No, not if over age 40. Crawl, walk, then run.
- Does a tough hour of calisthenics count as HIIT? Sort-of, but not entirely. Thing is, people usually do not do calisthenics at max pace. They pace themselves (as do I) to be able to complete the routine. 60 seconds of max intensity/speed of jumping jacks is very tough. 60 seconds of warm-up jumping jacks is not so tough.
- How often can you do HIIT? As often as you want, but you won't have time for your other exercises if you do them daily.
- Does HIIT build strength? Really only cardiac strength. Keeps the muscles working and functional, though.
- Are things like Soul Cycle HIIT? Yes, they are.
- Does HIIT build endurance? Yes, generally-speaking. While some different energy systems and muscle fibers are activated by different forms of activity, a good sprinting regimen builds endurance. That's why endurance/distance athletes use HIIT in their training programs. Marathoners today run sprints to train, as do distance swimmers and bikers.
- What forms? Almost anything. Probably ideal to vary it week to week. Swim, run, speed jump rope, combat bike, rower, ski erg - whatever you can speed up and slow down with. I see good jumpers do 15 minutes of HIIT - with all the jump rope variations and the speeds up and down. It's like a dance. I can not do 15 minutes of jump rope at any speed.
- Time? Say you do a ten-minute warm-up and then 20 minutes of HIIT. What to do afterwards to fill out your daily hour of exercise? Well, I do whatever I want to fit in. Some calisthenics like pushups, pullups, curls, goblet squats, lunges, etc. Stay busy. There is no end to things to do. An hour goes by fast.
- What about weight-loss and fat-burning? No exercise does much for that. That's nutritional. If you are fat, you eat too much, and it will slow you down. Too skinny? Grab a Big Mac with fries.
- What about "Long, slow"? "Long, slow" exercises like an hour of fast walk, jogging, swims, biking, etc are fine for maintaining endurance but do not count as cardio training because they do not raise the heart rate high enough. As I have said, I often do an hour of "long,slow" weekly, mixing it up between elliptical, stair machine, and treadmill or rower unless there is a multi-hour hill hike instead. My genius trainer approves of these things as a "recovery day," not as exertion. For fitness beginners, though, they can feel exertional.
NECCO wafers
The pigeon of cities and barns is actually the European 