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 basic powerlifts are Deadlift, Overhead Press, Barbell Squat, Bench Press, Rows of all sorts - and maybe accessory things like curls and tricep push-downs. Maybe Pull-ups should be on the list but I consider pull-ups and push-ups to be technically calisthenics because they are body-weight.
Of course, your body weight is plenty of weight...
You rise from a chair maybe 100 times daily, but how often do you do it with 150 lbs on your back? Never. But if you do it with 100 lbs on your back now, odds are that getting out of a chair at age 85 won't be a chore. Powerlifting is not Body-Building.
There are plenty of heavy accessory lifts with which to fill an hour, but the powerlifts are the core for strength conditioning.
So the powerlifts are not functional so much in themselves as they are designed for total body power, and muscle and bone strength. Total body strength feeds indirectly into everything you do in life except, perhaps, endurance activities. Your fitness for mostly everything, energy level, general appearance, and posture. Men and women of all ages include powerlifts in their workout programs.
We had a major migrant wave last night. Most songbirds migrate at night. This morning, flocks of cheeping and chipping White Throated Sparrows and Juncos all over the HQ.
Today in a meeting, which for the sake of clarity is 50% male and 95% white in its make up, someone mentioned a trade article. The article stipulated that "watching XYZ practice occur among companies is like watching a middle-aged white man try to dance." Obviously, the idea is that middle-aged white men can't dance, it's awkward, and funny to see them try. These companies clearly are not doing something well, I get it. That's not an issue.
The issue became the humor of the statement, as our leader stood up and pretended to do a 'dad dance' and soon everyone (except me) was howling. The jokes about middle-aged white men dancing flew for about 2-3 minutes. I've got a sense of humor, so I wasn't offended, and I even think the joke was on the mark. But I started thinking what if the joke had been "like watching an obese woman climb the stairs"? Add in any racial qualifier just to salt it a bit. What might have happened? Would someone have been fired or, at the very least, brought into HR for a stern talking-to and some sensitivity training? Absolutely.
The other night, Hillary Clinton stated that Political Correctness is about "politeness". Boy, that's pretty telling. As far as I can tell, PC behavior is about not having a sense of humor about yourself and your background. It's about taking yourself too seriously. What was even more amazing, to me, was that she followed that up with a joke about Eric Holder and Cory Booker being black and "they all look the same." Well, she's a female, a Democrat, and wife of the first 'black' president (remember that gem?). So she gets a pass. She's fundamentally diverse and I, as a middle-aged white male, most certainly have no diversity in me.
Diversity is not a goal. Diversity is barely a thing. If it's something you want, great. Diversity is important. Maybe it isn't. That's up to you, it's up to the companies that want to pretend it's something more than virtue signaling. But if it is real, then the behavior I saw today has to stop. Nobody has a claim on the right to champion 'diversity' if they think this kind of thing is 'funny' but changing the gender or race makes it 'not funny'.
That's my Sugar Maple today, with dumpster and porta-potty. The dumpsters keep getting smaller, which is a good sign that we are getting to the end of fix-up.
It demonstrates just how racialized liberal thinking—liberal in the American sense, not in the classical, Adam Smith sense—has remained in America. Once you start down the road of equality of outcome as the measure of justice, rather than equality under the law, you inevitably start dividing humans into groups, and one of the most obvious ways to do so is race. So, having spent years denying that there is any objective reality to racial classifications, liberals start sifting people into racial categories with an obsessiveness that puts South African policemen under the old regime to shame. Race, among other classifications, becomes a lens through which the whole of social life is examined. In short, there is no racist as fanatical as an anti-racist.
"A TV interviewer recently asked Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, ‘What existed before the universe began?’ and was snubbed. ‘That’s a meaningless question.’ Oh no, it isn’t..."
There is a thing called "complicated grief," but I feel all grief is complicated. I do not believe that grief ever heals.
I think griefs scab over, but it doesn't often take much to knock off the scab. A long-term incapacitating depression after a loss is another matter, but I do not even think that a lengthy mourning is pathological. There is a lot of pain in life. It's part of the deal.
While attempting to return my refreshed work space to some simulacrum of order (with books back on shelves, minus 1000 of them) and somewhat different pictures on the walls to lighten things up, I came across a book I read about ten years ago and want to re-read. I read lots of books, but never remember enough of what I read. Not demented yet, but it reminds me of the joke about Alzheimer's patients being able to hide their own Easter eggs.
Right now, I am going through the Patrick O'Brian naval series. Delicious reading and you learn a bit about running a serious sailing warship.
Guys never listen to anybody, but we have some amateur decorators around here who have all sorts of ideas about how to make my work space and living space brighter, less cluttered, and lighter. I am going along with it, because I know nothing. My current plan for the entire HQ in general is to get rid of stuff and lighten everything.
One of my daughters is ordering a Task Rabbit for me. They are known to be miraculous helpers for moving stuff around and throwing stuff out. One just has to be brave and get rid of stuff, however sentimental. And we have had dumpsters here since July. Dumpsters' gaping maws beg to be filled with stuff.
42:2 "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
42:3 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
42:4 'Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.'
42:5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;
42:6 therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
42:10 And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.
42:11 Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring.
42:12 The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys.
42:13 He also had seven sons and three daughters.
42:14 He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch.
42:15 In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job's daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers.
42:16 After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children's children, four generations.
Bowl of lentils. Bread and circuses. Lots of people want freebies and "services" more than freedom. I will admit that freedom is scary, not for the faint of heart. I still think of freedom from government as an American virtue. Old-fashioned, maybe. Do people now expect government to make reality right? That will never happen, because the structure of reality is extremely difficult. Reality seems to expect us to adapt to it, rather than the other way around.
The bumper sticker on many Ford 150s: "Reality Sucks."
I spent the summer of 1982 with a group of 7 other people, one who was my brother, the rest were his high school and college friends. We had a 36 year get together not too long ago, and 2 of them had become lawyers. As the weekend wound down, we were entertained as the two of them talked 'shop' and one asked the other a question - "Does your firm have a diversity officer?" The reply, not surprisingly, was "Yes." Thereupon they launched into a Q & A regarding "What exactly does a diversity officer do?" The answer from both was "I don't really know."
I work at a major corporation and we have a diversity officer. I'm not sure what that position does, besides pay well and provide a public face at industry events which address diversity. The reality is the position isn't much more than virtue signaling.
I happen to support diversity as a concept, but not as a goal. For one reason. It can't be a goal because it can never be 'finished'. My favorite moment at any HR event was many years ago when my firm was giving everyone an update on diversity and pointed out that our employee base mimicked the make-up of the US in terms of percentages for gender and race. That, in itself, was considered an accomplishment. But more needed to be done, of course.
My boss, a female, raised her hand and asked a simple question. "When are we finished?" HR was floored. What did she mean? My boss said, when you have a goal to achieve something, you are finished at some point. She was curious what the goal of diversity was and when it would be met.
I've mentioned this story before. It's important to revisit. What's really at stake when corporations invoke 'diversity' isn't anything truly tangible. I know there are almost no firms that value older employees. They are expensive and their experience is no longer valued the way it once was, so the 'diversity' they offer isn't a valued diversity. Older employees are often viewed to be technologically impaired, owning mindsets which are not as 'out of the box' or forward-thinking (I take issue with both these points). Diversity for most firms isn't really diversity at all. It's just virtue signaling to the public. True diversity is recognizing that different personalities and viewpoints have value and welcoming them as part of the mix so the overall organization benefits. It's not a goal, just something which should be done naturally. Do you need an officer to tell you how that's done?
Many devils: 
The basic powerlifts are Deadlift, Overhead Press, Barbell Squat, Bench Press, Rows of all sorts - and maybe accessory things like curls and tricep push-downs. Maybe Pull-ups should be on the list but I consider pull-ups and push-ups to be technically calisthenics because they are body-weight.
We had a major migrant wave last night. Most songbirds migrate at night. This morning, flocks of cheeping and chipping White Throated Sparrows and Juncos all over the HQ.
That's my Sugar Maple today, with dumpster and porta-potty. The dumpsters keep getting smaller, which is a good sign that we are getting to the end of fix-up.
Why Are There 
I spent the summer of 1982 with a group of 7 other people, one who was my brother, the rest were his high school and college friends. We had a 36 year get together not too long ago, and 2 of them had become