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.
This whole case just goes to support my frequent contention that the only labor model the US government will fully accept is an hourly worker working 9-5 punching a time clock. Every new labor model that comes along eventually runs head-on into the government that tries to pound that square peg into the round hole of a time-punching factory worker. The Obama administration even did its best to force a large number of salaried workers into punching a time clock.
North American Porcupines are not rare in the northeastern US woodlands. The topic comes up because Mrs. BD and I watched one on his tedious climb up a Hemlock tree last week in Mohonk. Lots of fun to see one of these goofy critters.
Not only are they slow and short-sighted, they also often fall out of trees.
They are mostly nocturnal, and I rarely see them. One nailed one of our dogs (lightly) years ago in the Berkshires. We pulled the quills out of his face. As with skunks, a dog only has to be taught once.
Planks are isometric core exercises. While many or most exercises require or produce a strong core, planks are pure. They are good to throw into calisthenic circuits. (Crunches are generally not a great idea). Another good core exercise is one-handed kettlebell swings. I also do Roman Chair leg lifts weekly, the back raise thing, one-handed Farmer's Walks, and mountain-climbers.
Contrary to common belief, core exercises do not give you 6-pack abs. 6-pack abs are mainly a product of low body fat.
The key to effective planks is to make them isometrically-active. That means pulling your tummy in and tightening your glutes during the time of the plank. That's a rigid plank, not a relaxed plank.
2:1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.
2:2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
2:3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.
2:4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
2:5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.
2:6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.
2:7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?
2:8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?
2:9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
2:10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,
2:11 Cretans and Arabs--in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power."
2:12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?"
2:13 But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
2:14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.
2:15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning.
2:16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
2:17 'In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
2:18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.
2:19 And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
2:20 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.
2:21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'
IQ was less important in pre-post industrial societies. In personal experience, many people with below-average IQ have excellent common sense, work ethic, wit, and practical knowledge in abundance. Often, less interest in abstractions.
I'll admit that IQ below 80 is a handicap, but I see far more life difficulties produced by character flaws, maladaptive traits, and annoying or unsettling eccentricities than by IQ shortages.
Each year around this time I need to refresh my (poor) fly-fishing skills. I get out in the yard and renew some muscle memory. It's a beautiful, silent form of outdoor recreation.
This guy is a good, articulate teacher of this delightful sport which is far more challenging - more sporting and more aesthetic - than trolling, lure-casting, or Southern-style bass fishing with a big outboard engine.
As we always say here about fishing and hunting, if you really need the food to feed the kids, go to the supermarket....or put a worm on a line with a lead sinker and a barbed hook.
Fly-fishing is a good sport for gals, too, although some of my pals' clubs do not allow females on the grounds. Guys need their own places to act like kids, free of female judgement.
The intellectual had become not so much an occupational type as a status type. He was like the medieval cleric, most of whose energies were devoted to separating himself from the mob—which in modern times, in Revel’s phrase, goes under the name of the middle class. … Moral indignation was the main thing; that, and a certain pattern of consumption. In fact, by the 1960s it was no longer necessary to produce literature, scholarship, or art—or even to be involved in such matters, except as a consumer—in order to qualify as an intellectual. It was only necessary to live la vie intellectuellle. A little brown bread in a bread box, a lapsed pledge card to CORE, a stereo and a record rack full of Coltrane and all the Beatles albums from Revolver on, white walls, a huge Dracaena marginata plant, which is there because all the furniture is so clean-lined and spare that without this piece of frondose tropical Victoriana the room looks empty, a stack of unread New York Review of Books rising up in a surly mound of subscription guilt, the conviction that America is materialistic, repressive, bloated, and deadened by its Silent Majority, which resides in the heartland, three grocery boxes full of pop bottles wedged in behind the refrigerator and destined (one of these days) for the Recycling Center, a small, uncomfortable European car—that pretty well got the job done...
another:
American architecture had never recovered from the deadening influence of the German Bauhaus movement of the twenties. American painting and sculpture had never recovered from the deadening influence of various theory-driven French movements, beginning with Cubism early in the twentieth century. In music, the early twentieth-century innovations of George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington, and Ferde Grofé had been swept away by the abstract, mathematical formulas of the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg’s influence had faded in the 1990s, but the damage had been done. The American theater had never recovered from the Absurdism of Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, and Luigi Pirandello...
The big story today, and it's a biggie yet it really comes as no surprise (which is both big and tragic) is the report that leakers to Slim's Slimes (the NY Times for you rookie morons [new readers]) are confirming that the FBI essentially ran a completely illegal spy operation against the Trump presidential campaign. There were no warrants, there was no judge. The FBI at its highest levels went out and spied on a US presidential candidate for the purposes of gathering information that could be used to either sabotage his campaign or to take him out, politically or by prosecution in court. I suppose the question is did Obama and Clinton know of, authorize, approve of or even plan and initiate this or did we (and still do) have a group of "little Eichmanns" committing crimes all on their own merely because they were fellow travelers? And all things considered, is that even an important question to ask anymore considering the nature of these revelations which, frankly, we all have suspected for quite a long time now? Fact: We have a bureaucracy that lords over us no matter who we elect. Fact: we have a rogue judiciary that mostly exists to violate the Constitution in order to move the country ever leftwards. Fact: we have one political party that is hell bent on overthrowing the nation as founded and another whom elect to oppose it, yet do the exact opposite of what they promise and what we elect them for.
It certainly seems so. In retrospect, Watergate was not a big deal because political spying and oppo research is always done. The cover-up was the thing that got them. It wasn't worth covering up, really. In this case, it was the government itself, not a campaign.
You're 30 or 35 or 40 or 50 or 60 (or 70) and you have decided that it's either now or never to make a serious commitment to fixing or maintaining physical fitness.
I don't blame anybody who refuses to do that, because it is unpleasant and requires discipline and effort well-beyond comfort. Effort means effort, pushing every mental and physical limit. I have learned more about the meaning of that word in the gym than I ever learned in regular life. If pleasure and comfort is what your life is about, fine. We reject those decadent values because we are morally-superior we do not want to decay and, in fact, fear it.
Friends have asked me for advice on how to get started, so I wrote down a program, in stages, for ordinary mostly-sedentary (ie less than 5-6 hrs/wk of challenging exertion) people. Non-athletes. There is plenty of exercise advice available, and everybody has an opinion so I expect debate, but I believe my advice is rational, non-faddish, well-balanced, efficient, and practical. Don't rush it - if over 30, it takes time to adapt to demand so it's best to go step by step instead of rushing in and either get injured or burning out. Slow and steady.
Somebody somewhere highlighted the distinctions between the two, especially as regarding political issues, and suggested that we consider which might be guiding our points of view.
Opinions, I suppose, require rational arguments whereas attitudes do not. Attitudes, it seems to me, come from temperamental predispositions, personal experiences, social environment, and the like. Nobody asks you to support a general attitude with data.
What's your view? Is it a meaningful distinction or not? I think it is.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. These are nice. Little Roquefort cheese morsels rolled in crushed nuts. Very tasty. Very subtle. It’s the way the dry sackiness of the nuts tiptoes up against the dour savor of the cheese that is so nice, so subtle. Wonder what the Black Panthers eat here on the hors d’oeuvre trail? Do the Panthers like little Roquefort cheese morsels wrapped in crushed nuts this way, and asparagus tips in mayonnaise dabs, and meatballs petites au Coq Hardi, all of which are at this very moment being offered to them on gadrooned silver platters by maids in black uniforms with hand-ironed white aprons . . . The butler will bring them their drinks . . . Deny it if you wish to, but such are the pensées métaphysiques that rush through one’s head on these Radical Chic evenings just now in New York. For example, does that huge Black Panther there in the hallway, the one shaking hands with Felicia Bernstein herself, the one with the black leather coat and the dark glasses and the absolutely unbelievable Afro, Fuzzy Wuzzy-scale in fact—is he, a Black Panther, going on to pick up a Roquefort cheese morsel rolled in crushed nuts from off the tray, from a maid in uniform, and just pop it down the gullet without so much as missing a beat of Felicia’s perfect Mary Astor voice. . . .
The whole thing is hilarious. A socio-cultural history of American cosmopolitan wealth.
They are the smallest of our warblers, but their call (at the link) is distinctive even if you can't see them foraging high in the forest canopy.
A factoid about these birds is that they breed in southern forests (in Spanish moss nests) and in northern forests (where conifers have Old Man's Beard lichen), but pass over a band across the middle of the US where there are neither of those tree parasites.
In warbler migration season (right now, in the US) you will quite likely hear one in the woods in the morning.
I wish my memory for warbler songs were better. I forget them every time May comes along.
In the US and Canada during these weeks, go outside in the morning where there are brush areas and some tall Oak trees, and listen to the migrating warblers singing. Experts don't bother with binoculars. Warblers do not really warble, but they do sing.
Good discussion. The racism theme seems mainly to be applied to native black Americans, but not to other races and not to the Africa-born either. Is it mostly just politics at this point?
North American Porcupines are not rare in the northeastern US woodlands. The topic comes up because Mrs. BD and I watched one on his tedious climb up a Hemlock tree last week in Mohonk. Lots of fun to see one of these goofy critters.
Acts 2:1-21
It is
I was curious about why I never see cabooses anymore. 
You're 30 or 35 or 40 or 50 or 60 (or 70) and you have decided that it's either now or never to make a serious commitment to fixing or maintaining physical fitness.
They are the smallest of our warblers, but their call (at the link) is distinctive even if you can't see them foraging high in the forest canopy.