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.
Aging is characterized by changes in body composition. CT studies demonstrate that as we age, subcutaneous fat (below the skin, SF) decreases and visceral fat (in abdominal cavity, VF) increases. VF is the enemy. Because it causes systemic inflammation, it is an independent risk factor for coronary artery disease, stroke and death. If that’s not enough, VF also provides the Buddha-belly mid-life midriff.
The other most common age-related change in body composition is muscle loss. Because muscle has a high metabolic rate, its loss is associated with a reduction in energy expenditure. This decrease in caloric burn lends itself to weight (fat) gain.
also, re weights:
... exercise volume (repetitions x sets x load) can achieve maximal muscle fiber activation, including the important larger type II fibers. This is also much less likely to cause injury, an important consideration at any age. Bottom line: shoot for less weight, more reps, more sets, and failure.
I disagree with the powerlifts to failure. I do tend to agree with that "repetitions x sets x load" equation for most men and women over 45 or 50. Still, we aren't talking about light weights. We're talking about 25-30% of your one-rep max. Younger folks, or experienced exercisers, can ramp up the load. Generally speaking, at any age, the max number of reps for powerlift sets should be 10-12. For smaller muscle groups (eg arms, calves) it's fine and safe to burn it out with 20 reps.
“It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.”
Readers know that when the Bird Dog family travels, we often stay clear of the madding crowds. It is a preference for certain sorts of things, roads less traveled and all that.
When I get my photos in order (I took around 40 snaps which is a lot for me, mostly corny landscapes), I will show and tell about some parts of Barbados many visitors never see, far from the beach resorts and the golf courses but never far from Flying Fish Sandwiches and rum. This pic from one of our hikes, along the north coast:
Bajan Rum Punch - The recipe is so deeply ingrained in Barbados' culture that its recipe is a well-known rhyme: "One of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak."
(Makes about 2 1/2 quarts)
1 cup freshly squeezed lime juice 2 cups simple syrup (equal parts white sugar and water, heated until sugar dissolves) 3 cups Barbados rum (Clear or amber, and just 2 cups if you want to enjoy more of it) 4 cups water (or partly orange juice or papaya, or mango...) A few dashes of Angostura bitters Grated nutmeg
Many thanks to Roger for the past week's Morning Links. I can't compete with his wit and wisdom, but we all do the best we can with what we have. Pic is Bajan Rum Punch - highly refreshing after a 4-hr mountain hike in Barbados.
The great cartoonist Roz Chast put her campy irony aside to produce a heartfelt and mostly hilarious cartoon book about the aging and decline of her parents. OK, lots of gallows humor.
If you have or have had declining parents, it's required reading and you will recognize everything except Brooklyn (unless you grew up in Brooklyn - the 7th largest city in the USA if it were still its own city).
Our strength potential has a lot to do with genetic physical architecture. However, this is a statistical phenomenon, not a law. Two reasons why shorter people can be "stronger":
- More compact muscle mass. A smaller person might have the same genetic muscle base as a 6'2" person.
- The laws of levers. Most physical movements involve Third Class Levers of bone, tendon, and muscle. Longer bones mean the range of motion (say, in inches) in a physical effort has further to go, and is thus more challenging. When the fulcrum is in the same place, and the lever is longer, it takes more force to move. Basic mechanics.
So if your 5'8" friend can bench more than you, this might be part of why that is. Speaking statistically, of course, because there are plenty of short weak people and plenty of giant strong people (like Thor, in photo).
9:8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,
9:9 "As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you,
9:10 and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.
9:11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth."
9:12 God said, "This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:
9:13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
9:14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,
9:15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.
9:16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth."
9:17 God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth."
Yes, fear can be a liar. Getting outside our comfort zones is what life is all about. Good basic life advice like your Dad taught you, or maybe forgot to.
"This commencement address will never be given, because graduation speakers are supposed to offer encouragement and inspiration. That's not what you need. You need a warning."
Painting is a copy of a now-lost Leonardo painting
Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
Hello everybody. If the news seems pretty grim these days, don't worry too much about it. The government will fix everything. They're peculiarly suited to coming up with the answers to today's problems. After all, the surgeon who leaves a sponge, retractors, and his watch inside a patient knows where to look when they open the poor sod back up. Been there, done that.
In many cases, the buyer isn’t aware of Zelle, but they do a little googling to read up on it. They discover it’s a digital payments service that’s backed by their bank, which makes them feel more comfortable. Zelle is also found in some banks’ mobile applications themselves, which adds to that sense of trust. The buyer, now feeling that Zelle is a legit service, then transfers the money, assuming their bank will step in to help if anything goes wrong. After all, they’re sending money directly to another bank account – so surely the seller knows they could be tracked down and caught if they attempt fraud?! Unfortunately, that’s not proving to be the case.
Doesn't anyone take responsibility for their own actions anymore? That was a rhetorical question.
[W]hen defendants caused the embedded Tweets to appear on their websites, their actions violated plaintiff’s exclusive display right; the fact that the image was hosted on a server owned and operated by an unrelated third party (Twitter) does not shield them from this result.
The Internet is a woman riding the subway wearing a bustier and a thong while complaining that everyone is looking at her.
“Facebook informs us insufficiently about gathering information about us, the kind of data it collects, what it does with that data and how long it stores it,” the court said. “It also does not gain our consent to collect and store all this information.” Facebook has also been ordered to delete all data it had gathered illegally on Belgian citizens, including people who were not users of the social network.
A smart politician would tweak stalking laws in the US to include covertly tracking people across the Internet without their express written consent, with a one-button opt-opt that erases every bit of your data at any time from any web service. I don't know any smart politicians, and don't expect to meet one anytime soon.
Driverless cars are widely believed to be the silver bullet that will make ride-hailing profitable by eliminating the main cost: wages paid to human drivers. In the fourth quarter of 2017, Uber paid about $8 billion to drivers in earnings and bonuses, or about 72% of its gross revenue for the quarter. Uber lost $4.5 billion last year on $37 billion in gross revenue.
I hate to break it to you poindexters, but the Uber driver's only real job is to supply the car you ride in. Oh, and to clean the puke out of the back seat every third passenger. Getting rid of the driver is a sideways move.
College career centers around the country stress to their students the importance of gaining internship experience to apply the knowledge gained in the classroom in a real-world setting, develop and enhance professional skills, and forge relationships with industry professionals, believing that internship experiences will lead to better career outcomes. However, while research findings by NACE indicate a positive correlation between paid internships and job offers received before graduation, unpaid internships were found to have little or no impact on this measure of short-term success.
When I was young I learned about the Triangle Trade in history class. Sugar, tobacco, and cotton to England, textiles and rum to Africa, and unpaid interns to the Americas. I could have sworn they outlawed that sort of thing.
Surrounding the building, located in Cupertino, California, are 45-foot tall curved panels of safety glass. Inside are work spaces, dubbed “pods,” also made with a lot of glass. Apple staff are often glued to the iPhones they helped popularize. That’s resulted in repeated cases of distracted employees walking into the panes, according to people familiar with the incidents. Some staff started to stick Post-It notes on the glass doors to mark their presence. However, the notes were removed because they detracted from the building’s design, the people said. They asked not to be identified discussing anything related to Apple.
When I was young the kids who walked into walls a lot had their own classes, which were held outdoors quite often. They had their own bus, too. Now they have their own office building, which is nice.
A few of these search engines, including DuckDuckGo and StartPage began as normal search engines with no privacy enhancements. However, after they realized the massive risk associated with storing so much data, they decided to take a different approach.
I use Femgoplaces.com. It's a pretty cool search engine, you probably haven't heard of it. You type in your search terms, and they dispatch a girl to drive to a part of town she's not familiar with. When she gets there, she rolls down the window and asks the first person shes sees for the information she wants.
The first will use hydrogen to clean up existing diesel engines, increasing their fuel efficiency by a third and eliminating over half their air pollution, with an average nine-month payback, the company says. That’s a potentially enormous market with plenty of existing demand, which HyTech hopes will capitalize its second product, a retrofit that will transform any internal combustion vehicle into a zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) by enabling it to run on pure hydrogen. That will primarily be targeted at large fleets. And that will tee up the third product — the one Johnson’s had his eye on from the beginning, the one that could revolutionize and decentralize the energy system — a stationary energy-storage product meant to compete with, and eventually outcompete, big batteries like Tesla’s Powerwall.
Yes, but will they shoot a tractor trailer into space? That's the true measure of technical innovation nowadays.
“Utah’s economic and political success is a model for our nation,” Romney said in a written announcement distributed Friday morning. “I am ready to fight for this great state and advocate for solutions that improve the lives of Utahns.” In his announcement, and in a video, Romney touted his leadership of the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, his tenure as Massachusetts governor, his degree from Brigham Young University and his 24 grandchildren.
If I recall correctly, Romney really cornered the Mormon vote in Massachusetts. Well, he drove his wife to the polls. Same thing. Say, are there any Mormons in Utah?
A New Zealand company is on the cusp of granting its employees the ultimate in work-life balance: four days work for five days pay. Perpetual Guardian, a trustee company, has become the first major business in the country to embark on a creating a workplace “fit for purpose for the 21st century”. New Zealanders work an average of 1,752 hours a year, making them close to average compared with their OECD peers.
When I read the headline, I assumed all the employees joined a New York City longshoreman's union, and one of their brothers was a union delegate.
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
From Frank Herbert's Dune, The Litany Against Fear
One more shooting. One more chance for the Progressives to screech and whine about gun control. I'm really tired of this cycle. Progressives complain about the cycle, too, because they want action, and they want it now. In 3 weeks they'll be bored again, or outraged about something new such as the fact that Trump doesn't have a dog and doesn't seem to care for them. Progressive try to make it seem like those of us who actually support freedom and the Constitution are uncaring, because we don't do something other than the one thing they deride - "Thoughts and Prayers". I've noticed some are taking a new tack. Not necessarily better. Like every other event, they trot out the same emotions, same flawed statistics, bizarre comparisons to nations without cultures remotely similar to ours, and then one or two tricks. Progressives are not old dogs. They are young dogs and haven't learned that new tricks aren't necessarily smarter or better.
I wrote about mass shootings, and school shootings in particular, slightly over 5 years ago. Have my views changed since then, and the presumed thousands of mass shootings that Progressives point out? No. Not in the least. Does the fact this involved children change my views? Nope. Am I cold and heartless? No. I'm just rational. Gun control won't stop this. People who want to kill will kill and they will use whatever method they can. The Progressive argument is "with guns, you can kill MORE" and that's just not proven to be true. It's an assumption based on incomplete data sets. What is the real issue that needs to be discussed after a shooting and the outrage is building?
I'm sorry, I was being pretending to be pleasant. As you know, I'm no good at it. Let's start over: Keerist, what drivel. But it's unexceptional drivel. No need to comment on how trite and meaningless the message is. Let's look at the spelling. I guarantee it was written, and shared quite a bit on social media, by college graduates. "You body"? Really? However, I'd like to point out that the word isn't misspelled. It's not a typo, either. The person who wrote it, and apparently a lot of people who read it, are blind to the fact that it's the wrong word. They have a condition I hereby christen Facebook Aphasia. They no longer have the mental ability to tell one word from another. It's not that they don't have the innate intellectual horsepower to learn the difference between you and your and you're. After all, they probably learned Klingon for their cosplay wedding ceremony. They're broken, not dumb.
I think, technically, I'm talking about semantic anomia, but I'm just a blowhard on the Internet, so Facebook Aphasia is good enough for me.
Semantic anomia is a disorder in which the meaning of words becomes lost. In patients with semantic anomia, a naming deficit is accompanied by a recognition deficit. Thus, unlike patients with word selection anomia, patients with semantic anomia are unable to select the correct object from a group of objects, even when provided with the name of the target object.
Of course proper doctor-type persons know you generally need brain damage from a shovel to the parietal or a tumor that makes tempura of your temporal lobe to give you a proper dose of semantic anomia. I hereby posit that a contemporary public school education followed by a trip to the academy is on par with a severe blow to the head. People have become brain damaged by a refusal to enforce abstract standards of right and wrong for grammar, or anything else for that matter. Through a continual process of calling anyone who notices you're in error a Nazi, and exposure to a continuous stream of word salad on electronic devices, there are entire generations who are literally unable to tell one word from another. They've been taught from the cradle to simply take a stab at all things grammatical. They've been conditioned to rely on hunches, and they're blissfully ignorant of where the knee-jerk reactions they call hunches are spawned.
So, welcome to the Facebook Aphasia world, where every voice is passive, every sentence starts with an adverb, and to, too, two is just the sound a Sesame Street train makes. There's no use whining about it, when wining about it works better. And dismember, never leaf anyone who touches your sole more than you body.
This means that the first time a user goes to a restricted website, they will be invited to amend the filter settings, or turn it off altogether. However, only the account holder will have the ability to do this - not necessarily a hurdle for families, but potentially a problem in shared houses of adult occupants.
The horror! Pornography will not be immediately displayed by default on your computer screen? What do I need one for, then? And remember, never leave anyone who touches your soul more than his own winkie with safe search turned off
The White House plans to stop funding the station after 2024, ending direct federal support of the orbiting laboratory. But it does not intend to abandon the orbiting laboratory altogether and is working on a transition plan that could turn the station over to the private sector, according to an internal NASA document obtained by The Washington Post.
Remember kids, Tesla's taxpayer-subsidized piece of automotive space junk is brilliant, and Donald Trump is a doodyhead for wondering if a space station could be useful to anyone. It's just a hunch you have, but you hunches is always wright.
Typically, small mammals like mice reproduce fast and die young. The oldest mouse-eared bat ever captured of the Myotis genus was 41 years old, and they regularly live past 20 or 30. While they don't live as long as the average human does, these flying creatures live extremely long considering their size—nearly 10 times longer than an animal of that size would be predicted to live.
I hereby support research that may, one day, after millions in grants, allow humans to live to be 41, too. I sleep by hanging upside down in the closet already, so I've got a head start.
We chose to highlight this study for two reasons. First, it helps illustrate a pattern that we believe is widely under-appreciated in the policy community: Most programs—even many that are thoughtfully designed and well implemented—are found not to produce the hoped-for effects when rigorously evaluated in well-conducted RCTs. (Randomized Control Trials)
I bet conditional cash transfers break the poverty cycle from the moment the recipients get the dough until the moment their boyfriends make it to the strip joint.
Using police accident reports for Tippecanoe County, Indiana, and exploiting the introduction of the augmented reality game Pokémon GO as a natural experiment, we document a disproportionate increase in crashes and associated vehicular damage, injuries, and fatalities in the vicinity of locations where users can play the game while driving. We estimate the incremental county-wide cost of users playing Pokémon GO while driving to be in the range of $5.2 to $25.5 million over the 148 days following the introduction of the game. Extrapolating these estimates to nation-wide levels yields a total ranging from $2.0 to $7.3 billion.
Hmm. Maybe brain damage from Pokemon-induced car crashes is the reason no one can spell "definitely" anymore.
Reflektive encourages customers to use more regular feedback to keep employees improving their efforts more regularly. New areas the company plans to look at include learning, compliance and training. While plenty of startups are tackling those issues on their own, such as Pluralsight in corporate training, Behera says his goal is to create a command center for a manager to see how their employees are performing and adding skills, making companies like Pluralsight more of a potential partner.
I dunno. Screaming, "No raises for anyone, NOW GET BACK TO WORK," always works great for me. I find this saves the employees the embarrassment of hearing how worthless and lazy they are during formal reviews. See, I worry about other people's feelings too much. It's a curse, really.
The poetry world is abuzz this week in the wake of a controversial essay published in PN Review by British poet Rebecca Watts, denigrating a new generation of ‘amateur’ poets. She takes aim at ‘a cohort of young female poets who are currently being lauded by the poetic establishment for their “honesty” and “accessibility” – buzzwords for the open denigration of intellectual engagement and rejection of craft that characterises their work.’
In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
Assemblyman Ed Chau (D-Monterey Park) says an increasing number of websites and apps are collecting personal information and content from young users that can be used to market brands and products. But the consent agreements that make these practices possible are often buried in general terms and conditions for use of service, and companies often allow minors to sign up with no more than a promise that they have asked their parents for permission.
By definition, a parent who wants their minor child to get a Facebook page is unfit, so wangling clear consent from them shouldn't be too difficult.
Thankfully, I am not the only investor demanding Facebook keep users safe. On Monday, two major investors in Apple sent an open letter criticizing the company for not doing enough to protect children from the negative aspects of smartphones and social media. This is a potential game changer. The players are combining two corporate governance strategies in ways that may be harder to resist than traditional strategies.
I thought Mark Zuckerberg's mentor's name was spelled "Beelzebub."
The data initially was gathered by Bongo International, a company that helped North American retailers and brands sell online to consumers in other countries, the researchers said. FedEx acquired Bongo International in 2014 and eventually changed its name to FedEx Cross-Border International. FedEx shut down the service last April. The discovery of the customer IDs and other personal information suggests that not only was the information never properly secured to begin with, but FedEx officials failed to purge the data once the service was discontinued.
Yes, I'll be glad to give a screenshot of my driver's license to "Bongo International." Sounds as buttoned-down as the Bank of England.
Everyone have a great Friday. I hope today's links touched your soul more than you body!
For powerlifting and related high-resistance exercises, we tend to alternate between higher (10) rep days and lower (5-6) rep days. Obviously, the number of reps reflects the max weights that we can do at those reps. 10 reps means you can't do 11 with good form.
Of course, over time you keep upping the weights.
Our format is to do a light warm-up with the specific exercise, then only four-five working sets. And that's it for my weekly deadlifts, for example. A younger person could do more each week (like twice), but there is a time consideration too.
The endurance of teeth has to do with genetics, diet, hygiene, and injuries. Due to bad luck, I have ended up with a fine (expensive) bridge which is anchored in (expensive) implants. After all, nobody wants to look like they come from England.
The question du jour is this: What do you do about dental hygiene?
- Once daily or twice? Or, God forbid, after every meal? - Toothpaste, salt, or nothing? (I have read that toothpaste is a useless product of genius marketing) - Regular brush, electric rotary brush, or water pic? (My people recommend the latter, along with an office deep cleaning every 3-4 months. Takes 1/2 hour. I feel sorry for those gals, disgusting but very useful job.
Eloquent. Extraordinary. Timeless. Paradigm-shifting. Classic. Six decades after it first appeared, Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil” evokes such adjectives of praise. Rightfully so, for this little essay opens eyes and minds among people of all ages. Many first-time readers never see the world quite the same again.
The Forgotten History of New York’s Bagel Famines -
Many thanks to Roger for the past week's Morning Links. I can't compete with his wit and wisdom, but we all do the best we can with what we have. Pic is Bajan Rum Punch - highly refreshing after a 4-hr mountain hike in Barbados.
The great cartoonist Roz Chast put her campy irony aside to produce a 
Our strength potential has a lot to do with 
A new book
Nobody writes a beach-reading book with the wit and dark craziness as Carl Hiassen, but he has a new book coming: 
For powerlifting and related high-resistance exercises, we tend to alternate between higher (10) rep days and lower (5-6) rep days. Obviously, the number of reps reflects the max weights that we can do at those reps. 10 reps means you can't do 11 with good form.