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.
I have spent a good part of my life talking with people about the role of faith in the face of imminent death. Since I became an ordained Presbyterian minister in 1975, I have sat at countless bedsides, and occasionally even watched someone take their final breath. I recently wrote a small book, On Death, relating a lot of what I say to people in such times. But when, a little more than a month after that book was published, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I was still caught unprepared...
The main idea behind complex systems is that the ensemble behaves in way not predicted by the components. The interactions matter more than the nature of the units. Studying individual ants will never (one can safely say never for most such situations), never give us an idea on how the ant colony operates. For that, one needs to understand an ant colony as an ant colony, no less, no more, not a collection of ants. This is called an “emergent” property of the whole, by which parts and whole differ because what matters is the interactions between such parts. And interactions can obey very simple rules. The rule we discuss in this chapter is the minority rule.
We aren’t supposed to care anymore about how the FBI ginned up the conspiracy theory about Donald Trump and “Russian collusion.” The damage is done, and there are thousands of people who unthinkingly take as a given that Trump was a Putin puppet. They’re impossible to talk to. I’m reminded of the old saying about never trying to teach a pig to sing. (It wastes your time and annoys the pig).
Bordewich's other book, The First Congress, is another page-turner and an eye-opener. For example, the so-called First Amendment was not given pride of place because it was viewed as the most important. Instead, the First Amendment, as originally drafted, failed to pass so this one was swapped in at the last minute.
I also am a member of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, which I heartily recommend. It sponsors very interesting periodic ZOOM lectures and is raising money to save Stevens' house in Lancaster, PA.
2:13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2:14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.
2:15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
2:16 He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!"
2:17 His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me."
2:18 The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?"
2:19 Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
2:20 The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?"
2:21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body.
2:22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
The Maggie's Fitness for Life Program is of course somewhat controversial. All fitness programs are.
Our program is 2 days/wk of heavy weights, 2 days of calisthenics, and 2 days of cardio (meaning heart stress - HIIT, jump rope, stair machine, etc).
Besides plain obsessionalism, I do heavy weights twice/week with a trainer, and no need for a trainer for the other things. Right now, I need to be pushed hard with heavy and he is needed for that. Rightly or wrongly, he pushes me past my limits.
We do not prefer tough calis on the day before weights because tough calis need a bit of recovery too, and for the over-40 crowd maybe a bit more than 24 hrs.
Anybody with a touch of gray, I believe, needs 2 days of recovery after lifting heavy. Calis and cardio more or less count for that.
Our readers know that the Maggie's Farm Fitness for Life Program includes two days of calisthenics, and that we view calis as valuable for toughness and athleticism, but not so much for strength-building.
(It is best not to do calis on the day before a weights day.)
It sounds to me like the "soft bigotry of low expectations."
As an average caucasian person, I never understood math until I was 18. Then it all clicked in and became obvious to me. Lots of white kids do not get beyond arithmetic, perhaps because they avoid it. I never got beyond Calc ll, but in life I never needed it. Many careers do need it, though, and many very bright people just love it.