Monday, November 30. 2020
It is interesting that the COVID-19 epidemic has not moved the needle on the overall US death rate.
Statistically-inclined readers may offer their explanations for this data, if valid.
Add: I doubt this was retracted for narrative reasons.
 It is Advent
Back from the brink of extinction, blue whales return to South Georgia
"The multimillionaire former CEO of online shoe store Zappos died on Friday, nine days after he was dragged unconscious by firefighters from a blazing Connecticut house..."
David Prowse, towering actor who played Darth Vader in 'Star Wars,' dies aged 85
UVA student newspaper opinion writer: 'Stand up’ to ‘racist family' at Thanksgiving
I Published A Fake Paper In A “Peer-Reviewed” Journal
"A Horrifying Future" - WEF's Vision For A Post-COVID World
Johns Hopkins Takes Down Article Showing US Deaths in 2020 No Different than Prior Years – It Doesn’t Fit their ‘We’re All Gonna Die’ Narrative
“Why are ‘major’ U.S. news sources so massively more negative (about virus) than their international counterparts?
One Third Of All Of New Jersey’s Small Businesses Are Now Gone Forever…
Teachers union’s latest bid to bury any hope for NYC schoolchildren
Who Wants Social Insurance?
Hard-hitting journalists break riveting news about Joe and Jill Biden’s pets
Media Pivots From Steady Stream Of Anti-Trump #FakeNews To Biden Slobberfest
Study: Democrats Fast Becoming Party Of Wealthy Coastal Elites – GOP Now The Party Of Working People…
Morning Joe: We Have No Reason to Tolerate, Understand Anyone Who Supported Trump
As NY politicians eye new taxes on the rich, high earners eye the exits
Reasons why the 2020 presidential election is deeply puzzling. If only cranks find the tabulations strange, put me down as a crank
Native Americans in Arizona Given TVs, Tablets, Resort Stays for Votes/Registering to Vote
EU Condemns Assassination of Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Mastermind, Offers Condolences
CCP Imposes Tough New 'Social Credit Score' Rules
Sunday, November 29. 2020
Bands with handles, and those without, are excellent general fitness tools. For people who just want to keep moving and to stay functional without powerlifting or high- intensity cardio, you can do almost anything with them: legs, arms, back, and abs.
I tend to think of bands as ways to intensify the calisthenics part of the fitness triad. Many people are not very disciplined with home exercise (including me), but anything stressful is good.
- Resistance bands with handles
- Resistance bands without handles
Isaiah 64:1-9
64:1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence--
64:2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
64:3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
64:4 From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.
64:5 You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.
64:6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
64:7 There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
64:8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
64:9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.
Saturday, November 28. 2020
Friday, November 27. 2020
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Ben Franklin
I was thinking about that, reflecting in a superfical manner about the Supreme's injunction about churches being open if they decided to. Of course, with parishioners or congregants attending if they wished to, or not.
It's a good topic for a Thanksgiving weekend given that some of our ancestors came to the US only for religious freedom. Not that the early settlers permitted religious freedom except for the Congregationalists, because here in Connecticut you would be in big trouble if you missed church. They hung Quakers in Boston but, interestingly, made exceptions for the Jews.
To get back to Ben Franklin's quote, it was likely taken out of context. All the same, if raises the crucial issue in freedom.
I saw this: Justice Sotomayor Upbraids SCOTUS Majority for ‘Playing a Deadly Game’ With COVID Restrictions. Her seemingly emotional response is misguided, as seems obvious, because some danger to self or others is implicit in most things we do.
How much does selective news control our thinking? Scott Adams, an expert in hypnosis and brainwashing, explains how the MSM and social media have taken over the country by deciding information flow.
 Did you like your dinosaur dinner yesterday?
Thanksgiving Caused ‘Climate Change’, You Know
The Drudge Report has become a conformist shadow of its formerly bratty, oppositional self. Why?
FIGHTING WORDS, BY DAVID HOROWITZ - Our friend David Horowitz wrote this essay, which he titled “Fighting Words.” It is a call for freedom-loving Americans to fight back against the totalitarian Left.
American Liberals and Their Discontent
Politicians’ Attacks On Thanksgiving Gatherings Are Not ‘Data-Based,’ Epidemiologists Say
Cuomo Calls Supreme Court Ruling On Churches 'Irrelevant'
Some rationality on COVID lockdowns from President Trump's Supreme Court
After Warning People To Not Travel For Thanksgiving, Denver Mayor Takes Two Flights To Texas To Be With His Family For Thanksgiving…
The New 'Woke' Times: The Death Of News As We Once Knew It
Post-George Floyd, a Wave of 'Anti-Racist' Teaching Sweeps K-12 Schools Targeting 'Whiteness'
Convicted Killer Scott Peterson Among Death Row Inmates Who Scammed Over $400,000 In Fraudulent COVID Benefits
The Healer in Chief, Barack Obama: Hispanics Who Voted for Trump Are Racists
The Left Approved of Obama Granting Clemency to Terrorists and Traitors, But Is Triggered by Flynn's Pardon
Alyssa Milano Extends An Olive Branch To Trump Supporters – It Doesn’t Go Well.
MSNBC: Biden's Cabinet will save us all
Joe Biden Tries To Deliver A Thanksgiving Message Quoting From The Bible, But It Doesn’t Go Well
Joe Biden is reviving all of his past failures — and it won’t stop: Goodwin
Mattis Hopes Biden Won’t Put America First
Millions in Africa Being Sacrificed to Extreme Poverty, Premature Death on Altar of ‘Green Energy’
Military lessons from Nagorno-Karabakh: Reason for Europe to worry
Trump’s leaving Biden a Christmas gift of Middle East peace — will Joe throw it in the trash?
Thursday, November 26. 2020
2 days of cooking, 25-30 friends and family, all fireplaces blazing, pre-dinner silly games and a long after-dinner walk in the dark and, often, chilly drizzle. Mrs. BD did the flowers for each table. Usually 4 tables set up in the living room, dining room for buffet and kitchen table for desserts.
Maybe next year. Last night we took our team of 12 out for a pre-TG dinner. Good times, and Mrs. BD brought her own squash pies for dessert.
Didn't get any port this year. Happy Thanksgiving to all. There is so much to be thankful for and I do not mean material comforts although those do matter too. We're doing diner take-out for the three of us (us two, and F-in-law) to celebrate in front of the fireplace. Bought a bottle of Highland Park just for him. Maybe me too.
Photo from a young friend on a farm in Georgia
Wednesday, November 25. 2020
“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
G.K. Chesterton
PhD in Physics, speaks 6 languages, legal immigrant. Looks pretty good, too. Too good? Maybe women resent women who are too accomplished, too fascinating, too elegant, or too beautiful. I get that. I hate men who are taller or smarter than I am.
Tuesday, November 24. 2020
Children of Quarantine: What does a year of isolation and anxiety do to a developing brain?
... after 37 weeks of pandemic, too many American parents are too tapped out. Decades of research has definitively shown that the presence of a responsive caregiver, especially during early childhood, when the brain is extremely plastic, is the crucial ingredient in healthy development. This stable adult attention is exponentially more meaningful when children are growing up in persistent adversity: environments of neglect, abuse, deprivation, or poverty that medical and psychological professionals call “toxic stress.”
 At the turn of the century, the Eastern Wild Turkey was nearly eradicated by hunting and habitat loss, and was entirely absent in the Northeast.
By the mid 1800s, the woodlands of New England had disappeared for farming, charcoal production, and lumbering.
But the woodlands have returned as farming moved west, and the wierd gobble now can be heard even in residential areas.
Thanks to dramatically successful conservation and transplantation efforts, there are now estimated to be 7 million of these huge iridescent birds, which Ben Franklin felt to be so quintessentially American that he wanted one on the US Seal. (Video of the turkey's comeback here.)
There are six species of wild turkey in the New World, and none elsewhere. (The domestic turkey is likely a descendent of the large Mexican species.) It is the Eastern which we feature here which has, in recent years, been transplanted successfully west of the Mississippi, and elsewhere.
As a sought-after game bird, the turkey's habits have been much studied. They are wary and cautious. In most areas, there is a spring and a fall hunting season for turkey, and they are pursued with bow or shotgun. It is the one game bird which it is sporting to shoot on the ground.
I have hunted them on a couple of occasions. Never managed to shoot one, though. Had a good time however, sitting at the base of a tree in camo, watching the other wild critters pass by.
Does the wild turkey taste different from a supermarket bird? Yes - the wild turkey tastes like turkey and the supermarket bird tastes like a supermarket.
The tail-fanning? That's part of the male's mating strut. The CLO page here, and the website of the worthy National Wild Turkey Federation here.
 On a reader's deck in CT this week
The link yesterday was obsolete. Here's one that works.
Image via Moonbattery
Monday, November 23. 2020
Losing sucks, but you have done a heck of a good job for the US and I hope most of it sticks.
And let the legal things roll along to wherever they roll. Ya win some, ya lose some. That's life.
Biden will be a disaster. Boring, but maybe people want no fun news. Let's go back to giving money to Germany, and giving China a break.
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