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.
Not really a new story, there have been plenty like this in the past, but it is possible to build a home that can withstand a hurricane.
It's still more expensive than a standard home, by about 20%. Those costs are coming down, though.
Surviving a massive hurricane is a mixed blessing. If everyone else has lost their home, you've lost your neighborhood, and a good portion of your value.
However, as the costs for building this sort of home continue to fall, more homes are likely to survive, and overall values along the shoreline will be maintained more effectively.
Can you lose weight by hiking? Not walking - hiking.
Sure can, and I am proof. 10 days of hiking - urban and rural, mostly hills and many of them steep because it was Tuscany - for 6 hours/day left me with a 7 lb. weight loss. That's with my usual modest but tasty meals in Italy, never hungry at all. Some daily beers or wine: good food requires it. This loss was entirely unintentional. I was shocked when I got on my scale at home (cuz my pants were falling down). Not good or healthy, really.
Also perturbed because that too-fast (1 lb/wk is normal for weight-losers, and I do not want that) loss clearly reduced my deadlifting power this morning.
We have asserted here that you can't lose weight with exercise alone, but that refers to, say, a reasonable and realistic one hour/day biking, swimming, lifting, walking, and the like.
I did a little lazy research. Jogging at 5 mph burns around 550 calories/hour, about the same as energetic hill hiking. Comfortable walking is around 250, speed walking around 300. That ain't enough burn to make measurable difference. One donut or bagel has 300 calories, a slice of pizza around 350-400. But if you multiply that hourly hill-hiking number by 6, you are getting to real daily numbers and getting into real fat-burning.
It's said that 6 hr/day hill-hikers on The Long Trail (Appalachian trail) need about 5000 calories/day to prevent weight loss over days or weeks of hiking.
It is true that all calories are not physiologically equal, but you can come up with rough numbers: the average sedentary adult female needs around 2500 calories daily, male 3000, to maintain weight. Those numbers are average and perhaps high for trim fit people.
(Sedentary - a modern sin - is often defined as daily exercise equal to or less than a 3 mile walk daily at a 3-4 mph pace. Just above that is "Lightly Active", etc. My one hour daily sched of weights, cardio, and calisthenics gets me just into the "Moderately Active" category by most measures because of the high levels of intensity with HIIT, calisthenics classes, and heavy weights. Intensity can try to compensate for duration. I'd put our hiking guide last year in the Hebrides in the "Highly-Active" category. Craig MacDonald was not only Highly-Active and highly-fit, but highly humorous and sarcastic in the Scots way. Always happy to tease you for a half hour if you bought him a dram or two ofHighland Parkat the end of the day. That is his beverage.)
Readers know that one of the rewards of my fairly-demanding work-out regimen is to be able to do things like hill-hike all day without fatigue, until I grow old. What's my point? I dunno. Maybe that fat loss is dietary, except when it isn't. Just facts to consider.
Tucked away in the giant barn at Mohonk. Not many readers who recall seeing these on the road. Even better is their large collection of horse-drawn buggies. So cool.
While making my rounds today, watched a master backhoe operator using that shovel as easily and delicately as his own hand. Just wonderful grace and expertise. Later, watched a squirrel burying a nut with his hands, digging and then replacing the soil and patting it down.
Non-breeding plumage can be confusing with birds, most especially with warblers. If you can ID fall and winter warblers, I'd term you an expert birder.
My favorite urban hiking shoes are these Merrills, their Boulder style. Not sure they make 'em anymore. I would not use them for bouldering but they might work for that. Good for clambering on ruins, cobblestones, dirt roads, and plain sidewalks. I like those Prana hiking pants too. Lightweight, lots of stretch, can put long underwear underneath if it's chilly, and truly water-resistant because I tested them.
This footwear selfie in Rome last week.
What do you like for long urban hiking with cobblestones, slippery places, dirt roads, etc?
Roy Rogers son continues performing with his dad's hit group of the 40's, Sons Of The Pioneers.
Watch it allthe way through, with a kiss and dance from Trigger, from 1944 film. (Yeah, Flatbush, my hood, is in there too!)
Aside from his 100 movies and long-running TV show, Roy Rogers led a top hit Country Western group, famous for classic songs like Cool Water, Don't Fence Me In, and Tumbling Tumbleweeds, still popular today..
One of the points Codevilla makes is that America is so diverse geographically, culturally, and attitudinally that one-size-fits-all constructed by the elites, the "anointed," in Washington will be certain to make many people feel ignored if not oppressed.
Consider sanctuary cities (and states). Some hundreds of cities in America have declared that they are taking no part in enforcing national immigration laws. The government of great big California has set up an executive office to figure out all the ways in which to evade or just to stiff anything it does not like coming from the Trump Administration. And why not? Practically speaking, the federal government doesn’t have the power to make local officials enforce its rules, or even court judgments, against significant popular opposition. Yes, nowadays every federal agency has its SWAT team. But state or city officials, backed by the voters, can nullify or simply ignore a federal law, regulation, or court order, because countering peaceful nullification is hard—and usually unwise, too. Sending paramilitaries to arrest elected officials or citizens who comply with local law or policy is a blind alley. Yes, President Eisenhower sent the 101st airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 to enforce school desegregation after Brown v. Board of Education. But that symbolic act (no resistance, no force, no arrests) succeeded because the government then enjoyed a moral authority that it has since squandered. Nothing like that will ever happen again.
The reality is that, today, the people of California and Massachusetts continue to diverge from those of Texas and the Dakotas in so many ways that applying the administrative state’s formulae to them requires ever more force. Substituting administrative force for waning consensus makes for less national unity, not more. Why not, then, deal with the problem by accepting reality?
Mille grazie to Roger de Hauteville, the Norman King of Sicily (recent photo on the right) for his change-of-pace morning links while I was away. Much more clever and fun to read than mine are.
President Trump sees Honduras as “a distressed property” that will become “the jewel of Latin America after it gets the Trump treatment,” according to a new brochure release by the White House to attract investment partners to the new property, tentatively dubbed Trump-Rico International. “The Trump Organization will create a luxury experience delivering a sense of style with unrivaled customer service — a real boutique nation for the discriminating resident or traveler.”
“Last night, I was sitting on the sofa watching TV, when I heard my wife in the kitchen ask: ‘What would you like for dinner, sweetheart: chicken, beef or lamb?’”
“I think I’d like chicken, dear,” I replied.
“You’re having soup, numbnuts. I was talking to the dog.”
Prof. Gelernter: "For now, though, the left’s only issue is “We hate Trump.” This is an instructive hatred, because what the left hates about Donald Trump is precisely what it hates about America. The implications are important, and painful..."
That means Situation Abnormal All F-ed Up. Things generally go OK for us. When I got home, learned my office phone had been out for 12 days. Not good. And more.
If any readers care, when I get reorganized here I will post some photos from my reconstituted HQ and after a semi-catastrophic (4 days in Italian government hospital for Mrs. BD, but then 6 days buzzing all around the environs of southern Tuscany with our great VW were pretty fun using an elegant villa in the countryside outside Montepulciano as our base). Good food, still lost 5 lbs which I did not need to lose.
It's a long story, but, in brief, due to the accidental stay in the hospital in Ostia, we made a wonderful new friend of a lovely young Slovenian gal who speaks 8 languages fluently, I got to spend 5 hours wandering around Ostia Antiqua, spent a day on the Lido in Ostia, and hopped the train to spend a day urban-hiking Rome which reminded me of how much I dislike that city. I can say that 5 days in an ordinary Italian suburb, no tourists, was a cultural education than few if any Americans could get. I was an alien.
Also learned that I need to update my Civil War-era iphone.
A lengthy interview with many good moments. Listen while cleaning a closet or something. It will save you the trouble of reading their book. Peterson does the interview but he properly keeps himself out of it and lets them talk.
3:1 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
3:2 For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle.
3:3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies.
3:4 Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.
3:5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!
:6 And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell.
3:7 For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species,
3:8 but no one can tame the tongue--a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
3:9 With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.
3:10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.
3:11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water?
3:12 Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.
' The
Can you lose weight by hiking? Not walking - hiking.
Non-breeding plumage can be confusing with birds, most especially with warblers. If you can ID fall and winter warblers, I'd term you an expert birder. 
Is there a 
Mille grazie to Roger de Hauteville, the Norman King of Sicily (recent photo on the right) for his change-of-pace morning links while I was away. Much more clever and fun to read than mine are.