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.
Is weight training to muscle failure a good idea? It depends.
With smaller muscle groups, we all commonly train to failure, or close to it, but more often just to the point of excess pain. I'm thinking of examples like curls, forearm exercises, pushups, pullups, cable pull downs and push downs, rows. In fact, many gym machines (which I rarely use) isolate smaller muscle groups in ways that lend themselves to high-rep muscle endurance work (ie 15-20 reps).
With the powerlifts, we do not recommend lifting to failure very often. Just occasionally, to beat the heck out of yourself, and with a spotter. Rule of thumb with powerlifts is mostly to do the number of reps you can manage to accomplish 4-8 times in a row. If you can, for example, deadlift a weight 12 times, raise the weight right away to get down to 6-8 reps for each set.
These endless Happiness Studies bother me. What is happiness anyway? A warm gun? Seems to me that not feeling depressed or overly-anxious is worth feeling grateful for.
He made a real study of the city. He was impressed by the vitality, appalled by the squalor. But what angered him was the lack of international copyright. It figures. Writing was not a hobby for him. He wrote to get rich.
There are still many of us Dickens fans in the Anglosphere. That he tossed off a novelette about Christmas which captured the meaning of Christmas - the joyful spiritual rebirth - is the least of his achievements. He was just fascinated by human behavior.
We find much of the joy at Christmastime in all of the parties and festive get-togethers. Connecting and re-connecting with people in a festive and cheery atmosphere, from neighborhood pot-lucks to fancy and formal. There is a magic to it all. Dickens got that.
Researchers reported in 2016 that men who ejaculated more frequently were less likely to have prostate cancer—but the researchers didn’t know why. They now believe they have an explanation.
A lot of it is about the problems with elitism. The guy gets it. I'd vote for him for anything, but I think he loves his life as it is. Like Scott Adams, he is not a political dogma guy.
Like Adams, a superb and humble gentleman. Tucker is right: Trump is most most leftist Repub elected in many decades. In fact, he was always a Dem.
Bach's Christmas Oratorio (1734) was written to be performed in 6 parts on 6 days, the first on Christmas Day at both St. Thomas' and St. Nicholas' Churches, Leipzig. (Complete, it runs 3 hours.)
Interestingly, it was what was termed a "parody," that is, a recycling of his previous music which had been written for secular purposes.
Photo is our Christmas card from Uberhof Duer in Bulla, Italy. Dolomites' Val Gardena. Nice place to stay, classic hiking of course and great high skiing. Yes, the food up there is mainly German/Austrian. There is no single Italy.
Betrothed gays looking for wedding cakes and floral arrangements are not just carelessly stumbling into homophobic bakeries and florists. It's an organized campaign consciously targeting particular establishments. That's why no gay couples have wandered into a Muslim patisserie in Dearborn... and, if they did, they'd be the ones in hiding. Tim Cook, the Apple CEO who'll have no truck with hoosier homophobes, is happy to enrich Iran's mullahs so they can build fancier gay gallows on which to hang the sodomites. Muscle respects muscle.
Maggie's Farm is a Stilton cheese place. It's our favorite artery-smoother, although there are hundreds of other cheeses we love too. We also believe that great cheeses should be served after the main course - either instead of dessert or before dessert. (I agree with that article that you can and should eat the rind of cheeses - unless coated with wax or stuff.)
Somebody you know needs a Stilton Spoon. Give them a wheel of cheese to go with it - or what good is the spoon?
I see Williams Sonoma has them. They have the proper spoon, and the cheese too. Who needs bread or crackers? You could eat it right off the spoon like ice cream. (Correction - they don't seem to have them anymore.)
Loneliness is a tough problem. We live in a world full of all sorts of people, but connecting beyond a superficial level takes a special and complex combination of factors, circumstances, serendipity, and opportunity. Another problem is that we aren't necessarily all that appealing to many people, but we can hope we are appealing to a few people who appeal to us. We all reach out to people who we enjoy, and sometimes it works.
As the article points out, loneliness can spiral into excess neediness, or avoidance, distrust, and isolation. That's not a happy life.
We hear a lot about “male privilege” but historically it has been the “privilege” of men to make their way in the hard world in order to first win a woman’s affections, and then support the family structure financially. We might call this “patriarchy,” but this term isn’t the synonym for misogyny that contemporary progressive political culture seems to think it is. (One has to appreciate the misplaced sincerity of many of my university students who roundly condemn The Patriarchy, while driving their father’s Toyota to campus every day, and using his savings to pay for their tuition. Not infrequently it occurs to me that the people who are most vocal against The Patriarchy are those who have benefited from it the most.)
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DNA tests: