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.
... all these insiders were playing the careerist odds. What we view as reprehensible behavior, they at the time considered wise investments that would earn rewards with an ascendant President Hillary Clinton.
Even in overweight America there are plenty of under-developed (lacking muscle) or even scrawny (I don't mean anorectic) guys and gals who want to work on their strength, endurance, and overall fitness for life or to improve their athletic performance in some area. Chestless men and bony women.
My trainer tells me it's always an interesting challenge for him to train endomorphs (basically, skinny runner's builds) or, even more difficult, thinner or under-developed people with middle-aged guts.
People built like this will likely never have big muscles, but big muscles and functional fitness are not the same thing at all. Women, of course, can not build bulging muscles under any ordinary or non-chemical circumstances.
Weights and good nutrition are the keys to a sturdy body, but everything else is needed for balanced fitness too. A typical first-year program would be something like this:
- Weight-lifting 3 hours/wk (under age 45, 3/wk; older, maybe only 2- 2 1/2 hrs/wk with slower progress) - Calisthenics and lighter weights, 1 hr/wk - Endurance cardio 1 hr/wk - HIIT cardio 30-40 min/wk (including rests)
You can't build muscle without adding a little fat to your bones along with it. The added nutrition to support a program like this, for the skinny or the under-developed, might be something like this:
- protein and fruit shake after workouts - 2 mostly dairy snacks daily (eg yoghurt, glass of milk, some fruit or nuts) - 3 modestly-sized "balanced" (ie protein, fats+oils, moderate carbs, greens, fruit) meals/day.
This volume of food intake can be a challenge for many, so it is something to work up to gradually. For most people to gain solid (vs fat) weight, the food intake will need to match the exercise intensity.
A program like that ought to be able to build 1 lb/month of solid (not flab) gain. A 10-12 lb gain in 12 months would be a good target. More might be too much because muscle builds very slowly. Let the scale be your guide and nourish yourself accordingly. If there is a gut, it should eliminate it. A gut on an under-developed guy or gal is not useful in life except in times of famine.
Sara Carter is reporting that agents have accused McCabe of pressuring them to change the information on their FBI witness interrogation forms. If true, this will be the greatest level of corruption ever demonstrated at the top of the FBI, surpassing even their coverups for Whitey Bulger. This is perjury, and suborning of perjury.
Carter says that this is the evidence that was shown to Wray just yesterday, leading to McCabe’s immediate removal from his position. If Sara Carter is correct, McCabe could be charged with crimes leading to 20 years in a federal prison.
The simple fact is that Donald Trump’s unlikely presidency has become an unlikely success. The economy is booming. He’s doing what he promised with foreign policy and regulations. He’s outmaneuvered the Democrats again and again on illegal aliens. He’s got the momentum. And the liberals are desperate to stop him – no matter how much doing so will hurt Normal Americans.
I think Sapolsky is a smart Harvard professor, but by having an ax to grind here he makes countless logical and factual errors. I do not have time to go through them one by one.
Almirena's Aria from Handel's Opera, Rinaldo (1711). Lyrics/text here.
In Farinelli and the King on Broadway, this song is sung by a counter-tenor. In the movie Farinelli (clip below) most is sung by a counter-tenor with the high notes by a soprano and, again, the actor playing Farinelli lip-syncing.
Truth? Scalps? I have no idea. Since he has a prosecutorial role, one thing I suspect is that he has given up on the Russia-Russia thing and is looking for process misdeeds or, perhaps, looking to provoke process misdeeds. That's what they managed to do to Flynn, who did nothing wrong except to speak to the FBI without a lawyer. Never ever do that, even if they say they just want an informal chat and you know you're clean. The Feds set traps. It is a very ugly business.
Thus, even if there is no Russia story to pursue, he can try to pursue Trump and his people on their efforts and wishes to make this entire annoyance go away. Obstruction, and the like, even if there was no wrong-doing at the heart of it. Trump, as a blustery shoot-from-the-hip businessman who likes to fire disloyal people and has no legal background and minimal legal thinking, is raw meat for this sort of thing.
My guess is that Trump is talking to his lawyers like any ordinary citizen: "WTF? I did nothing wrong, and these a-holes are tangling me up in this BS and getting in my way. Just fire these jerks."
I just hope that there are some honorable citizens in DC. Count me skeptical.
Want to be fit and trim, attractive, high-energy, light on your feet, and signaling that you have your act together?
You know the popular approaches:
- Low-carb Atkins-like plan. This means fats, protein, and non-root vegetables and greens, with nuts and berries to complete the nutrition. This makes physiologic sense because it trains your body to burn your fat for energy instead of the carbs you shovel into it normally.
- Small but ordinary meals. Eg, a hard-boiled egg and coffee for breakfast, half a sandwich for lunch, a couple of slices of cheese for a snack, and a half-portion of supper. This is a sustainable approach for most people, but it still might not work for you. It works great as a maintenance program for me, but I do not need to lose any fat and I do not have a voracious appetite. By the way, eating "until full" is disgusting and has nothing to do with nutrition. It's just a measure of how much you have stretched your stomach or ignore satiety signals. Normal people eat until satisfied, not until full. "Stuffed" is for the Thanksgiving turkey, or on Thanksgiving.
- Keep a nutrition calendar. Write down everything you put in your mouth. It's even more effective if you include Why you ate that donut. Bored? Tempted by flavor? Anxious? etc. Best idea: When those things happen, do something else as a diversion. If you are overweight, your subjective appetite is a liar because your body is lazy and doesn't want the hassle of burning your fat.
- Exercise is basically useless for fat-burning in any ordinary time frame unless combined with a nutrition program of caloric or carb restriction. However, this is not an argument for a sedentary life. Furthermore, intense exercisers should have a small dose of carbs/sugar before a session to be most effective at pushing the effort.
I have written about the "False Hunger" of the overweight in the past. Paradoxically, the people who least need food experience hunger more than fit people, and consume food more avidly. I think it's usually an effect of being overweight, not a cause, but everybody is different.
Often forgotten: Fruit and fruit juices do not really belong on any fat-burning program. A glass of OJ or apple juice is the same as a Coke. The Big Fruit industry somehow convinced people that there was something "healthy" about fruit. There is not. Fruit is dessert, a treat. Neither do cereals or grains, except minimally, belong on a fat-burning plan.
Lifting things off the ground is as basic and functional as any exercise gets. I disagree with Dr. Rusin's concern about ordinary barbell deadlifts, but he makes a good case for doing trap bar deads here.
One can certainly move heavier weight with the Trap and, for lower body strength, that's the most important thing. He also says that the Trap deadlift combines aspects of squat too. It does, but is not a substitute for squats.
For what it's worth, I switch from Trap to bar every once in a while, if only to keep it varied and interesting. (Unlike Mrs. BD, I hate deads - which means I need to do them.)
The only wisdom I can impart about the essential Deadlift is to use correct technique, and keep the weight high enough that your max reps are 6-10. With those large muscles, it's not a high-rep game.
That is a deep psychological truth. The deep psyche has no sense of time. Memories, for example, can affect us as if they were happening today. ("effect" and "affect" always challenge my grammatical memory.)
My topic however, is the internet. This thing has become a gigantic repository of everything, and it is all basically accessible to anybody. Even the FBI can't really "lose" old emails. There is no need to get paranoid about it because nobody gives a damn about most of us, but it is a strange development that much of our lives have become searchable.
It's like living in a small town, where everybody knows everything that goes on and especially the secrets. How easy was it to find out about Trump's goumada?
A friend and I were discussing this over drinks the other night, and we agreed that we were glad that the shameful things and misdemeanors we had done in reckless youth were pre-internet. We both grew into straight-arrow adults after our careless phases, so that worked.
If anybody can find it, there was a Calvin and Hobbes toon in which Calvin as a 6 year-old (?) was documenting a false childhood for himself in case he ever decided to run for president or something. Genius. Hobbes took a photo of Calvin pretending to read a book.
A fake past is a cool idea, but how does anybody turn over a new leaf when the past is always dragged behind them? It makes it difficult to do or say stupid things, which means it makes it difficult to be normal.
Image: 
Even in overweight America there are plenty of under-developed (lacking muscle) or even scrawny (I don't mean anorectic) guys and gals who want to work on their strength, endurance, and overall fitness for life or to improve their athletic performance in some area. Chestless men and bony women.
We Just Got More Evidence For 
Want to be fit and trim, attractive, high-energy, light on your feet, and signaling that you have your act together? 
Lifting things off the ground is as basic and functional as any exercise gets.