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.
SOMETIMES WHEN I LOOK in the mirror I don’t recognize the grey-haired fellow with a receding hairline who stares back. Happily, I don’t yet feel as old as I look. Aging is inexorable, but senescence, the deterioration of function associated with advancing years, correlates much less strongly with age. Instead, senescence is also influenced strongly by environmental factors like diet, physical activity, or radiation, and thus can be slowed, sometimes prevented, and even partly reversed.
Another:
IN 1966, a team of physiologists in Dallas, Texas, decided to compare the effects of sedentariness versus exercise on health by paying five healthy 20-year-olds to spend three weeks in bed, followed by an intensive eight-week exercise program. The bed rest was ruinous. When they were finally allowed to arise from their beds, the volunteers’ bodies resembled 40-year-olds by many metrics: they were fatter, had higher blood pressure, higher cholesterol levels, less muscle mass, and lower fitness. The eight ensuing weeks of exercise, however, not only reversed the deterioration but in some cases led to net improvements. To the lead researcher, Bengt Saltin, the take-home message was simple: “Humans were meant to move.” Time marches on, however, and to evaluate how aging affects the effects of inactivity, researchers had the bright idea of restudying the same five volunteers 30 years later.
Three decades of typical American lifestyles had not been kind to the original volunteers: they had each gained about 50 pounds, had higher blood pressure and weaker hearts, and were less fit and healthy in numerous ways. But they agreed to be studied once more as they tried to undo the consequences of 30 sedentary years with a six-month program of walking, cycling, and jogging. Fortunately, this second late-in-life exercise intervention helped the volunteers lose about 10 pounds, and, most astoundingly, largely reversed their decline in cardiovascular fitness. After six months of moderate exercise, the average volunteer’s blood pressure, resting heart rate, and cardiac output returned to his 20-year-old level. Many other studies confirm the anti-aging benefits of exercise. But few of them explain why.
New York City is home to 118 billionaires, more than any other American city. New York City is also home to nearly one million millionaires, more than any other city in the world. Among those millionaires some 8,865 are classified as “high net worth,” with more than $30 million each.
They pay the taxes. The top one percent of NYC taxpayers pay nearly 50 percent of all personal income taxes collected in New York. Personal income tax in the New York area accounts for 59 percent of all revenues. Property taxes add in more than a billion dollars a year in revenue, about half of that generated by office space
The moving parts of our skeleton operate as levers, powered by skeletal muscles. Levers are nifty mechanisms which make force application more efficient. Using a crowbar is easier than grunting a boulder out of the dirt.
Any form of exercise can be made more interesting by thinking about the sort of lever action applied in single-joint exercises (like bicep curls or calf raises) or the multiple lever actions applied in complex, multi-joint movements like squats or running.
If you are fortunate enough to use the services of a professional trainer, that trainer will not be focusing on your muscles. He or she will focus on the mechanics of your movement(s) - proper lever use - to make your motion or activity as safe and effective as possible. That's why a trainer will make frequent corrections to your technique: Palms out (or in), wider stance (or narrower), head up (or down), chest up (or down) etc.
Even if you are not a fitness person, everybody knows that there is a right and wrong way to pick up something heavy, or to get out of a chair. It's all leverage.
Trump's suggestion that it might be helpful, and the fact that he takes it, discredited it. There are many physicians who take it, even without complete proof that it is helpful. They take it with zinc.
I will grant that the future on offer from the Democratic Party is dystopian. In my view, they want to “reform” what works (the market). They want to double down on what fails (state-run and state-subsidized education, health care, and “green” energy). And they want to cozy up to the religion that persecutes heretics.
The Republican Party that I would prefer would offer a better vision of the future. Let health care and education be reformed by market forces. Do so by reducing subsidies to demand and restrictions on supply. And protect the principles of the first amendment from the religion that persecutes heretics.
Between now and Labor Day weekend, I have tried to schedule to post a book each day while I am semi-vacationing. These are books that have made an impression on me and stuck with me, for whatever reason. All sorts of books.
For starters, Melville's Billy Budd.
Yes, his cosmic magnum opus Moby Dick is a grand and ever-interesting American tale (the Great American Novel, if there is one), but Billy Budd gets to the heart of human nature and civilization.
No, not to read each day. Sheesh. It's just a personal book list.
... it is probably too late already. The wholly unsupported and frankly insane Trump-Russia narrative, cooked up out of nothing on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and propagated by the Democratic Party media, has taken hold. And we live in a world of narratives, not a world of truth, thanks in large part to our utterly corrupt press. The Russia collusion hoax was the biggest scandal in American history, but it will be left to a future generation to take its full measure.
15:10 Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, "Listen and understand:
15:11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles."
15:12 Then the disciples approached and said to him, "Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?"
15:13 He answered, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.
15:14 Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit."
15:15 But Peter said to him, "Explain this parable to us."
15:16 Then he said, "Are you also still without understanding?
15:17 Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?
15:18 But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.
15:19 For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.
15:20 These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile."
15:21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon.
15:22 Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon."
15:23 But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us."
15:24 He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
15:25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me."
15:26 He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."
15:27 She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."
15:28 Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly.
He had a relationship with a PhD candidate after she left the university. In this world, I would advise that male and female faculty and students stay far apart. It's not like the old days, when college and university romances were commonplace.
It's coming and I don't personally agree that mail-in voting is an option. I can't get anything delivered on time, why should I expect the USPS to handle my vote any better? Not only that, but unless the government pays for the envelope, isn't a stamp a form of "poll tax"? Seems to me, mail-in voting is just make-work to keep a government jobs program (the failing USPS) viable.
There are ways, as Fauci (though he's been all over the map with his views) states, to allow in-person voting. One thing we can do is pay attention to South Korea over the next few weeks.
My personal opinion is that voting should be a three to five day long process and no early exit polls or counts should be publicly shared until polls are closed.
Not that I fear the virus, particularly. But some do - so set some voting guidelines, stick to them, and let's make this work.
The Building of the Ship (c 1850). Yes, about boat-building, skill and craft, but also a metaphor about the American nation.
It begins:
"Build me straight, O worthy Master! Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!"
The merchant's word Delighted the Master heard; For his heart was in his work, and the heart Giveth grace unto every Art. A quiet smile played round his lips, As the eddies and dimples of the tide Play round the bows of ships, That steadily at anchor ride. And with a voice that was full of glee..
The rest of the delightful saga is below the fold -
'They're owned by all Alaskans': 
