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.
"The heroic Lindsay Shepherd's outrageous "investigation" by Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario caused a furor in Canada and beyond, and many of the country's most eminent columnists have weighed in on the matter. But Mark wanted to say a word about it, too, which he does in this brand new SteynPost. "
It is as if a hurricane has swept through Washington. Each fallen pillar represents a very deliberate reversal of the status quo ante policies of Barack Obama. The entire edifice the former president erected in his eight years in office is in the process of being systematically demolished. Unsurprisingly, Crain's Chicago Business reporter Greg Hinz reported a very unhappy former president warning that Trump was nothing less than a new McCarthy, Nixon, or Hitler while speaking at the Economic Club of Chicago...
President Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel will be as a stab in the heart to the Arab World. But anything else would be to succor Arab hopes that Israel might some day be defeated and eliminated
What the author might not understand is that the kids in the Success Academies tend not to be the same kids that the author probably grew up with. Inner city kids and kids from dysfunctional backgrounds often do not arrive at school with the levels of bourgeois impulse control, respect, and orderliness that middle class schools and private schools are accustomed to. To the contrary, these kids are starved for structure. Actually, most people function best with clear structure and deteriorate or unravel without it.
Moskowitz' idea is neither radical nor new. It's the old way.
Dewey was an idealist who, like idealists in general, imagined an imaginary ideal (ideal in their minds) reality. There are no, or extremely few, little John Deweys or John Stuart Mills lurking inside of most schoolkids. Is that news?
Pure reason is amoral, godless, material, resists poetry, music, magic, the soul, and the transcendent. On the other hand, reason has the tools to critique reason itself. That is cool. The dark gifts of reason.
Mendelssohn (my main man this past year) drank deep in the Lutheran A Mighty Fortress in his 5th:
Yesterday we had some agreement and some disagreement on the topic of the value or the role of "Long, slow, " aka aerobic, cardio workouts in a fitness or conditioning program.
My Conditioning program, which I hope to continue until something knocks me out of the ring, includes some pure cardio but it is a balanced and varied program designed to address all of the aspects of physical fitness.
What's the rationale, and what's that program? (Somewhat lengthy post below) -
... cities and states keep making these CDBG-funded loans on the dubious assumption that distressed areas suffer primarily from lack of investment, which government can remedy with taxpayer money. There’s little evidence that such government lending works, though, and much of it turns out to be frivolous. Recently, for instance, local officials have lent $80,000 in CDBG money to a brewery and tasting room in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, $205,000 to an apiary in northern Michigan, $25,000 to a T-shirt store in Batavia, New York, and $90,000 to a distillery in Gardiner, Maine. Funders seem to have a particular fondness for spirits. Living- ston County, in New York’s Finger Lakes region, announced a competition last year to provide loans using $600,000 in CDBG funds to four craft breweries that agreed to open in the county. The Finger Lakes region already boasts about 100 small breweries.
Exactly right. Unlike career politicians, Trump keeps his campaign promises. Let's face it: the Palis are nothing but trouble and nobody in the world likes them. Even Putin says Jerusalem is Israel's capitol.
Unless you are deconditioned, geriatric, or have a heart problem, extended (40-60+ minutes) of pure aerobic activity offers minimal fitness gains. For some people, though, a morning 3-mile jog is a pleasurable wake-up, and pleasure is good. That's recreation, not fitness-training.
You will often see people swimming half-miles of laps, on the elliptical for 45 minutes while reading the newspaper or watching TV, jogging on the treadmill for 60 minutes. If viewed as recreation, that's fine and it might feel good but there are minimal fitness gains to it. Why?
- Aerobic cardio doesn't build strength or burn fat with any effectiveness. Anyway, you don't need to get rid of any fat, do you? - However, extended cardio does release endorphins so you feel good after. That's not fitness, though - If you can do a vigorous hour of laps, cycling, elliptical, or jogs, you basically have that down and don't need "slow endurance" work more than once a week or every other week. If you can't do an hour of things like that, you are deconditioned and probably ought to work on it as a component of your conditioning program. - If the purpose of "cardio" is to build or maintain cardiovascular and pulmonary efficiency, then the long slow cardio does nothing for that. The stress on those organs is too minimal to build stamina.
To improve cardio effectiveness and endurance (except for those in the deconditioned, geritatric, or heart-disease categories) you need to up the intensity and reduce the time spent. That means sprints and other HIIT-style efforts which are anaerobic stressors. Another cardio thing you can do is to vary your cardio work-outs. Doing the same thing repeatedly (eg jogging) becomes useless as your body adapts to that one thing and it becomes too easy.
I say that if you can breathe or talk, it isn't exertion: it's recreation.
My preference for cardio/endurance fitness is to combine it in high-intensity calisthenics classes or high-stress machines like Jacob's Ladder or Stairmaster. I'll do rowing or running sprints too sometimes, but I like those things that address full-body muscular conditioning along with difficult cardio. It's time- efficient to combine the conditioning with the cardio.
When we drove up to Breakneck on NY Route 9D, Mrs. BD said "We aren't going up that, are we? No, we cant be." I said "I think so, and that's just the beginning. There are three further higher peaks." The photo does not capture the drama of this only 1300' foot rockpile that begins at sea level on the shores of the majestic Hudson River.
The site was heavily quarried for granite in the 1800s, so not all of the cliffs etc are nature's but they might as well be.
The boulder fields are nature's gradual erosion of the stumps of the ancient snow-capped Appalachian mountain range which was formed when Africa bumped into northeast America. The ancient Appalachians were the foothills of the Atlas Mountains of north Africa. Strange to consider.
Zoning is often a complex political issue. When overly-rigid, it makes for sterile environments. My instinct is for minimal zoning, but if somebody wanted to put a WalMart next door to our little exurban farm, I'd go ballistic.
The top story today continues to the be the continuing insanity of the Mueller "investigation" which, with the Torquemada-ing of Michael Flynn has officially morphed from trying to find/fabricate evidence of "collusion" into a political witch hunt into "obstruction."
If it's about obstruction, perhaps the FBI ought to investigate itself
"O Come, O Come Emmanuel carol was originally written in Latin text in the 12th Century. The author of the words and composer to the music of O Come, O Come Emmanuel is unknown. It is, however believed that the melody was of French origin and added to the text a hundred years later. The Latin was translated into English by John Mason Neale in 1851."
In a series of heavily criticized tweets (aren't they always) Trump is asserting that the FBI's reputation is in tatters. Of course, he's right. This isn't justice as it's supposed to be, not even faintly. It's Kafka meets Orwell in the Deep State.
Robert Mueller may not realize it, but the conclusion of his investigation, whatever it is, will never be accepted by a huge percentage of the public. As the French say, Mentir est honteux. Lying is shameful. Mike Flynn may have lied, but so, undoubtedly, has the FBI, multiple times, more than Flynn could ever dream of doing or be capable of doing. And they're the ones we're supposed to trust in the end.
Yesterday we had some agreement and some disagreement on the topic of the value or the role of "Long, slow, " aka aerobic, cardio workouts in a fitness or conditioning program.
Duck-like dinosaur fossil, plucked from black market,
Photo: Lamborghini tractor
When we drove up to 
Photo 
On Advent: