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.
Everybody may have a devil inside them, but the people we term "psychopathic" or "sociopathic" are outliers on the bell curve of human behavior. Sociopaths have habits of exploitation, deceit, cheating, impulsiveness, manipulation, rationalization, and often of cruelty. Clever sociopaths are masters of disguise and of acting. There is a genetic component.
Clever sociopaths can put on a "mask of sanity" and, if careful enough, make successful lives in some careers.
Hi everybody. It's Friday. Light the smoking lamp early. Run the cocktail flag up the mizzen before you're under sail. It's noontime somewhere. Bust out the tonsil polish while the sun rides high. Bunk off. Take a mental health day. Slack. Don't kill the job. Make up your mind to procrastinate. Indole.
The right calls the kind of people who went after Damore by the derogative term “Social Justice Warriors” (SJWs). SJWs hold progressive views on diversity and identify politics and, supposedly, find virtue in harming those with heretical beliefs. Many on the right fear SJWs.
If you've always wondered what a conservative is, and you work in hi-tech, the nice man will tell you in fourth-grade syntax about this rare but terrifying animal.
Education: Of the 90 interventions evaluated in RCTs commissioned by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) since 2002, approximately 90% were found to have weak or no positive effects.
All of them work just fine, thank you -- if you're running them. Duh.
[Beethoven’s] talent amazed me. However, unfortunately, he is an utterly untamed personality, who is not altogether in the wrong if he finds the world detestable, but he thereby does not make it more enjoyable either for himself or others.
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are all retooling their businesses around the belief that AI and machine learning are the future of the tech industry. IBM is in a more vulnerable position than all those companies. Even though IBM was an AI pioneer it has let its lead slip and damaged its reputation with overhyped marketing. There’s a rising sentiment in from tech and finance experts that, for all the idealism, Watson just can’t deliver on its promises.
IBM should get with the times and appoint a female CEO to straighten out this mess. Oh.
Two airlines have dipped their wings into the waters of two-way texting. Hawaiian Holdings Inc.’s Hawaiian Airlines is adding the feature while JetBlue Airways Corp. took a stake in a software startup that will allow its call center staff to start texting customers in the coming months.
Listen, iPhone drones. There's only one way to tell your airline you hate it. It has a steering wheel.
Bestiary texts offer animal-lore as a source of allegorical lessons for moral spiritual guidance. The earliest bestiary manuscripts date to the beginning of the 12th century. They were made throughout North-Western Europe, but the genre flourished most in England, eventually declining in popularity in the late 13th and 14th centuries.
I and Pangur Ban my cat, 'tis a like task we are at; hunting mice is his delight, hunting words I sit all night...
Much of the software that processes the transactions is decades old, and the more modern bits are written by banks, credit card companies, and financial middlemen, none of whom are exactly winning hackathons for elegant coding. In 2010, Patrick and John Collison, brothers from rural Ireland, began to debug this process. Their company, Stripe Inc., built software that businesses could plug into websites and apps to instantly connect with credit card and banking systems and receive payments.
An Irishman, late for an appointment, prays, "Lord, if you give me a parking space, I'll give up Guinness and go to Mass every Sunday." A parking space immediately opens up. The Irishman sticks his head out the window, looks up, and says, "Never mind, I found one."
Of nearly 230 North American chemical, metals and mining, paper, forest products and packaging companies, nearly a quarter are within two notches of the investment-grade/speculative-grade border as of mid-year, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to panic. Donovan writes that the sector should remains strong at least through 2018m, and he doesn’t expect any “crossings’ before 2019.
Debts backed by physical assets are so 20th Century.
In May, the expectation was that between 40 to 60 restaurants would be shuttered in fiscal 2017. No list of the affected locations has been released. Applebee’s says the expected closures will be based on several criteria, including franchisee profitability, operational results and meeting brand quality standards.
As long as Flinger's and Chotchkie's stay open, I don't care. You want to come over and watch Kung Fu?
The declaration could help unlock more support and resources to address the drug overdose epidemic, such as additional funding and expanded access to various forms of treatment, and it gives the government more flexibility in waiving rules and restrictions to expedite action.
Perhaps we should declare war on it. You know, a war on drugs.
The man - who has not been identified - was found dead around 11am when police finally stormed the home. His death ended an hours long standoff that started late Wednesday, when he showed up drunk at the 9,000-square-foot home where his estranged girlfriend lives and the two got into a fight.
It's unclear to me where Kevin Bacon fits into this.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen told lawmakers last month that "some special factors" were partly responsible for the low inflation readings. Inflation, which has remained below the U.S. central bank's 2 percent target for five years, is being watched for clues on the timing of the next interest rate increase.
Janet Yellen can't even cause inflation right. Where's Arthur F. Burns when you need him?
Most people have at least some degree of this potentially life-damaging fear. Oftentimes, the fear is justified because it is likely that many people will not find us interesting, appealing, or worthy of relationship (boo-hoo), but sometimes our fear is indiscriminate.
Faking confidence isn't a bad starting approach, but the real trick is to improve one's rejection tolerance and that can only be achieved by enduring rejection.
Toon on top via Althouse. Image below via the article.
Is academic language in the humanities and social sciences designed to obfuscate, is it just packaged cant from people with nothing to say, or is it smoke-signaling?
One prof claims "As a professor ... one seeks not to find the foundation and the conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.”
The use of words without fixed or clear meanings is a major part of what makes academic writing so terrible. People often complain that academic writing is “obscure” or overly convoluted and complex. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with either complexity or obscurity in themselves; research papers in the sciences have to be complex and technical, and introducing people to obscure and unfamiliar words or concepts can be a key part of developing human knowledge. The problem largely comes when words are vague and unclear, admitting of many possible interpretations. Infamous academic terms like “phenomenological,” “intersubjectivity,” “embeddedness,” “hermeneutical,” and “discursive” are not bad because they describe complicated concepts, but because it’s often not clear just what an author means by them...
I forget the exact quote. I forgot who said it, too. I forget what it has to do with Thursday morning links, as well. Anyway, here goes: Good manners may require me to politely listen to you, but I am under no obligation to actually believe that your child is smart and your wife is good looking.
All the guy at Google did was mention that in a private moment, he has entertained the thought that Google's wife has bingo wings and halitosis, and Google's kid eats library paste. Some how or another, it merits a sacking, followed by the kind of attention that Leo Tolstoy used to get in Russia. I don't get it.
I hereby propose that Google's original, stupid, gilt-edged lie of a motto, Don't Be Evil, be changed to a more up-to-date, honest version: Don't Be Male. Works for me. So does Start Page.
Sundar Pichai, said portions of Damore’s 10-page memo “violate our code of conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes” despite saying in the same memo that Google employees shouldn't be afraid of speaking their minds.
For a man of systematic intelligence, Schmidt’s politics—such as I could hear from our discussion—were surprisingly conventional, even banal. He grasped structural relationships quickly, but struggled to verbalize many of them, often shoehorning geopolitical subtleties into Silicon Valley marketese or the ossified State Department microlanguage of his companions.9 He was at his best when he was speaking (perhaps without realizing it) as an engineer, breaking down complexities into their orthogonal components.
That's a lot of words to call a guy a conniving jerk.
The numbers are big. Uber has titles to nearly 40,000 vehicles through Xchange Leasing. It now has to get the cars back from its drivers and sell them in the wholesale market. It wants to do most of this by year-end. If Uber loses $9,000 per car on average on these 40,000 cars, it will add another $360 million in losses on top of the losses it has already booked.
The last eight years of "recovery" consisted entirely of lending money to dorks who can't count, but understand a little javascript. A hard rain's gonna fall eventually.
Europe is the continent with the fewest people willing to fight a war for their country. Globally, an average of 61% of respondents in 64 countries said they would. Morocco (94%), Fiji (94%), Pakistan (89%), Vietnam (89%) and Bangladesh (86%) had the highest percentage willing to fight.
I remember some inter-war poll of Oxford students who claimed they wouldn't fight for their country, either, egged on by Bloomsbury pansies. They all climbed into Spitfires when the time came. Talk is cheap, coming and going.
At first, you begin to wonder why no one in Russia ever sees danger coming. To a casual American observer, the majority of these crashes seem to happen in slow motion. You can see the cars languidly drifting into the wrong lane from a half-a-mile away. Yet somehow, no one in Russia ever notices anything.
If you've never experienced the wonder of Russian dashcam video, you're in for a treat.
On The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour -- which began as a summer replacement for The Smothers Brothers Show and featured Steve Martin and Rob Reiner as writers and “Gentle on My Mind” as its theme song -- the clean-cut Campbell engaged in comedy skits when he wasn’t performing and featured many of his friends as musical guests, including The Monkees, Neil Diamond, Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
I remember that show. That was a good show. Good show all around, Glen, and RIP
Even before the race is done, organizers are reflecting on a separate challenge: how to get more women to take part in the event next year, and how to keep them in the race longer. This year was the first time that women entered as solo competitors, and neither of the two female riders, both accomplished endurance athletes, got through half of the 14 stages.
Joe Stalin knew how to get women to undertake a grueling trek halfway across Russia to Siberia, whether they wanted to or not. I guess the NYT still misses the guy.
The company is hoping to offer a wide range of videos through Watch, including live shows that feature hosts responding in real-time to users' questions and live events like Major League Baseball games. Facebook is also hoping to attract more traditional shows, like those you might see on cable or broadcast TV.
Net neutrality my keister. I wonder what the FCC fine for ten billion wardrobe malfunctions would be if cable and internet really got the same treatment.
Marijuana users had a higher risk of dying from hypertension. Compared to non-users, marijuana users had a 3.42-times higher risk of death from hypertension and a 1.04 greater risk for each year of use. There was no association between marijuana use and death from heart disease or cerebrovascular disease.
Fighting over the last Funyun is bound to send your diastolic through the roof.
After announcing intentions a year ago to produce a heavy-duty electric truck, Musk tweeted in April that the semi-truck would be revealed in September, and repeated that commitment at the company's annual shareholder meeting in June, but he has never mentioned any autonomous-driving capabilities.Tesla has been a leader in developing self-driving technology for its luxury cars, including the lower-priced Model 3, which it is beginning to manufacture.
Someone should mention to little sooper genius boy that we already have self-driving trucks. They're called rail cars.
When plaintiff Cheryl Fillekes joined the case in 2015, she claimed that because of her age, Mountain View-based Google did not hire her for an engineering position for which she was qualified, which she alleges violates the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act. In court documents, Fillelkes claimed that a recruiter told her she needed to put her dates of graduation on her resume so the company could view how old she was.
That’s what the Auralnauts discovered earlier this summer when they received word that Warner/Chappell—the global music publishing arm of Warner Music Group—had filed a monetization claim on their “Star Wars Minus Williams” video through YouTube's Content ID System. That’s right: The copyright holder was claiming ownership of something that wasn’t there.
In complex matters like these, it's much simpler to assume everyone involved, including the author of the article, is a jerk, and deserves no sympathy. Saves time and aggravation.
Well, there's the links. Have a great Thursday. And don't worry, Maggie's Farm waitstaff would never flirt with you to get a better tip. We might rifle through your belongings if you don't keep an eye on them, though.
Stairmaster intervals provide possibly the most efficient and intense cardio exercise. Your heart rate jumps up to max immediately.
You can do 30 seconds of high-speed anaerobic intervals then slow down for 60 seconds, and repeat at the speeds that work for you. If you can do two steps at a time on the higher speeds, so much the better. Another approach which I am using now is to do 3-minute stairs at the highest speed I can handle for that long, then get off and do a one-minute plank and another minute to breathe, then back on. Thus a 20-min cardio work-out which also beats the hell out of your quads.
What is it good for? It's for intense cardio training, lower body endurance, core stress. It doesn't build strength per se the way squats and deadlifts do, but it does work for lower body "toning" at the least.
Because it is very low-impact, about the same as walking, it is also a cardio recommendation for people with bad knees, hips, and lower back.
(Readers know that we believe that two 20-30 minute cardio stress sessions weekly is enough cardio, if combined with the other weight and calisthenics routines.)
Five hours or less per week of weights, calis, and cardio is all it takes for general Fitness for Life. Then throw in some sports or hiking or yoga or golf or swims or whatever for fun, plus some Cokes or beers as rewards, and you've been a darn good steward of your body, which is your most important real estate. Anybody can find time for that. Just avoid any distance running or you will regret it.
I'm busy moving into my new digs today, so no time for a fresh post. Here's an oldie but goodie.
Spanning the spectrum of mankind's achievements, there are certain key moments that stand out in each field. I'm going to cover a few here, and if you have any additions that you think I might be interested in doing a future post on, leave a synopsis and maybe a link or two in the comments.
When it comes to the heading of 'Inventions', I think the sublime moment is this:
The main character in the marvelous book 'River God' is the head slave of the imperial palace. He's one of those do-all kind of guys; physician, astronomer, architect, inventor, etc. But, as exciting as his long life is, there is one moment that surpasses all others.
The enemy has invaded and their war chariots, with long razor-sharp blades coming out of the hubs, are slicing the Egyptian legions to ribbons. The horses and riders are both covered with armor and are almost impervious to the Egyptians' weak spears and arrows. This devastating new weapon panics the remaining Egyptian solders and the battle, and finally the kingdom, is lost.
On a hill high above the battle the slave takes all of this in, but what has him reeling with shock and despair isn't the fearsome war machines before him.
It's the wheels the chariots are mounted on.
I admit, it must have been stupefying to the first Egyptians who saw them. After veritably a lifetime of rational, scientific endeavor like the hero in the book; to suddenly see something so obvious must have come as the most mind-altering, ego-shattering blow humanly imaginable.
Not to mention civilization-changing.
As I note in the piece, what's particularly baffling about it all is that we have natural axle-ready 'wheels' around us in nature, i.e., an eroded pebble in a stream bed or a sawed-off piece of tree trunk with a knot in the middle which pops out. So you'd think it would have evolved naturally, like fire, without any historical point of reference you could point to. But nope.
So, if you had to boil it down to one single moment, the great architects of the Egyptian empire seeing the wheel for the first time gets my vote.
Our current exercise regimen is 2 days/wk of mostly weight work, 2 days/wk of cardio, and 1 day/wk of calisthenics. In the fall, will switch to 2/wk of calis and one of cardio to mix it up, but when we can we put in one additional day of cardio on a weekend if there is no physical outing planned. This fits, because church in summer is 10 AM instead of 9.
What we call "cardio" is really endurance-maintenance and endurance-building for people with sedentary (ie less than 6 hours/wk of short-of-breath exertion) lives. The idea is to keep heart rate far above walking or recreational biking, with sprints of max heart rate, for 1 hr+. At this point, I can tell how hard my heart is pounding without looking at any gauge.
Our current cardio routine gets us moving with vigor and lots of sweat, and the time flies:
- 15 minutes elliptical, moving resistance up and down the scale from 3 to 15 - 30-60 second sprint on assault bike - 15 minutes treadmill at incline of 4, moving speed up and down from fastest walk possible to moderate walk (3.2 for me). I willnot run anymore - I ran enough in past years with great pleasure, but the thrill is gone. - 2 minutes Jacob's Ladder semi-sprint - 15 minutes stair machine, moving the speed up and down the scale (I just go from 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 then back down. At 5, I sort of need double steps - 200 meter sprint on ski machine - 3 sets of 1-minute jump rope with 30-second plank/rest between sets. Sometimes the heavy rope, sometimes a speed rope.
That's just a bit over an hour if you take very little rest to breathe - which you are not supposed to do.
A friend sent along this video from a recital for a music store in Los Angeles. Holy cow she's only ten years old. Double-plus good: That's her mother accompanying her on the piano. Cool choice of music, too. "Sicilienne" by Maria Teresia von Paradis. She was a blind musician and composer who had Salieri for a teacher and Mozart for a friend.
I don't know about you, but when I was ten years old, I was still eating earthworms I found in the playground, and my mother only played the radio. There's some hope for the human race yet.
USA Today said in a phone call on Sunday, Mr Trump and Moon Jae-in, his South Korean counterpart, “affirmed that North Korea poses a grave and growing direct threat to the United States, South Korea and Japan, as well as to most countries around the world”."
Little Kimmie better not work outside in the yard too often. Shame if something fell on him.
Scientists have adapted the ice cream by injecting it with polyphenol liquid extracted from strawberries. Polyphenol liquid has properties to make it difficult for water and oil to separate,” Tomihisa Ota, a professor at Kanazawa University, was quoted as saying.
Mmm. Polyphenols. If I recall my chemistry correctly (I bet I don't), Polyphenols are called "anti-nutrients." I don't go out of my way to eat anti-nutrients.
Across southern Europe, from the choked boulevards of Gaudi's Barcelona to the swarms of cruise liners disgorging passengers into Croatia's mediaeval Dubrovnik, residents are complaining that a sharp rise in tourism is making life intolerable. The backlash has sparked concerns for one of the region's biggest economic drivers and prompted authorities to act.
It appears that everyone in Europe is a French waiter now.
As wrangles over the peace treaty to officially end the war were reaching a climax in Paris, the German commander, Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, believed that his ships were about to be seized as spoils of war and divided up between the victorious Allies. He felt duty-bound not to let that happen. Von Reuter's flagship, Emden, sent out the seemingly innocuous message - "Paragraph Eleven; confirm". It was a code ordering his men to scuttle their own ships.
If you scuttle your ship, do you have to keep up the loan payments? I'm asking for a friend.
The sighting is the first living record in the area since about 1982 and the first confirmed record since 1993, when a skull was found. The pine marten arrived in Britain after the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. They made their home in the woods that covered the country and at one point were the second commonest carnivore, with an estimated population of 147,000.
The digitization project currently focuses on discs that are less likely to be commercially available--or available at all in digital form--particularly focusing on underrepresented artists and genres. Digitization will make this less commonly available music accessible to researchers in a format where it can be manipulated and studied without harming the physical artifacts.
Neato. I wonder if they have a copy of Good Old Shoe?
The company has spent more than six years planning and building Apple Park to precise specifications. From a 100,000-square-foot fitness and wellness center, to meticulously designed fire exit signs, the company spared no expense in getting the details right — except, perhaps, when it comes to employee workspaces.
The national preference for cash, then, seems to be the flip side of aversion to debt, which, in turn, can be interpreted as a sign of deep-seated doubt about the future. (German businesspeople are also notorious for their pessimism about the future.) And fear of the future, of course, is rooted in the past.
I would have answered, "Because, unlike Greeks, they have some."
CEO Bob Iger told CNBC's Julia Boorstin Disney had a "good relationship" with Netflix, but decided to exercise an option to move its content off the platform. Movies to be removed include Disney as well as Pixar's titles, according to Iger. Netflix said Disney movies will be available through the end of 2018 on its platform. Marvel TV shows will remain.
I love the term "cord cutters." People who used to pay one cable TV bill and a small internet bill will now pay seventeen streaming service bills and a giant internet bill for bandwidth. You know, to save aggravation and money.
‘There is but one way to defend Samoa,’ he lectured them. ‘Hear it before it is too late. It is to make roads, and gardens, and care for your trees, and, in one word, to occupy and use your country … If you do not others will.’
Bannon’s basic argument, as he has outlined it to people who’ve spoken with him, is that Facebook and Google have become effectively a necessity in contemporary life. Indeed, there may be something about an online social network or a search engine that lends itself to becoming a natural monopoly, much like a cable company, a water and sewer system, or a railroad.
I think they misunderstood him. I think he was just referring to hanging them all on telephone poles.
"Resting and vesting" is when an employee, typically an engineer, has an easy workload (if any job responsibilities at all) and hangs out on the company's payroll collecting full pay and stock. Stock is often the bigger chunk of total compensation for a senior engineer than salary. Once the engineer was in rest-and-vest mode, this person spent the days attending tech conferences, working on pet coding projects, networking with friends, and planning the next career move.
Harrumph. Back in my day, sonny, we just married the boss's daughter.
Well, there are the links for today. I hope you're all ready for another grueling day of resting and vesting, or being henpecked, or maybe even working if you can't avoid it.
The project attracted Blanchett and Sorkin two years ago. “Lucy and Desi” will center on Ball’s 20-year marriage to Desi Arnaz. She eloped with the Cuban bandleader in 1940, and the two created the massively successful sitcom “I Love Lucy” in 1951 through their Desilu Productions. She won four Emmys for the role.
Lucille Ball? That Lucille Ball? Cate Blanchett is pretty enough to play Ethel Mertz. Maybe
The fish, a variety of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), is engineered to grow faster than its non-genetically modified counterpart, reaching market size in roughly half the time — about 18 months. AquaBounty sold its first commercial batch at market price: US$5.30 per pound ($11.70 per kilogram), says Ron Stotish, the company’s chief executive. He would not disclose who bought it.
UBS estimates the industry could save $35 billion and pass the savings along to passengers through lower fares if airlines could operate pilotless planes. The technology to do so could be developed by 2025, according to the report.
"And pass the savings along to passengers." Pull the other one. It has bells on
Richard and Tatu argues that differences in national income are correlated with differences in the average national intelligence quotient (IQ). They further argue that differences in average national IQs constitute one important factor, but not the only one, contributing to differences in national wealth and rates of economic growth.
No one brings the potato salad to the Mensa meetings in Equatorial Guinea
So email doesn't necessarily support social patterns, group patterns, although it can. Ditto a weblog. If I'm Glenn Reynolds, and I'm publishing something with Comments Off and reaching a million users a month, that's really broadcast. It's interesting that I can do it as a single individual, but the pattern is closer to MSNBC than it is to a conversation.
Poor Glenn. What did he ever do to this guy to get compared to MSNBC? Shoot his dog?
This video compilation is awesome. The awesome screen capture on this awesome video is awesome, but not nearly as awesome as the awesome video clip it’s so awesomely standing in for.
I remember the good old days when we called it "gnarly" instead of "awesome"
If you’re heading east on the 105 freeway to go from LAX to Pasadena, it’s just a few miles to the Beach Boys Historic Landmark in Hawthorne, California. It’s near the freeway at 3701 W. 119th Street. The monument marks the site of the childhood home of Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, the core members of the Beach Boys.
I remember the good old days when surfing was gnarly
France is world famous for its nudist beaches and its topless sunbathers but there are some rules or customs you need to abide by when it comes to taking your clothes off this summer. Here's what you need to know about dropping your top (or bottoms) on French beaches.
I think I'm supposed to warn you there's some naked people if you follow the hyperlink. The way the internet is going, pretty soon we'll have to warn you when there aren't naked people at the link
Swedish-Turkish writer Hamza Yalcin, 59, was arrested while holidaying in Spain, after Turkey accused him of plotting terror acts against the country, according to reports.
You have to admit, that headline is right up there with Headless Body In Topless Bar.
The ordinances (called visitationszoner in Danish) allow police to stop anyone within a predetermined area and search them for weapons without having probable cause. Copenhagen Police’s zone, set up last month, covered areas of Nørrebro, Husum, Brønshøj and Tingbjerg, where several shootings and stabbings have occurred in recent weeks.
Wow. That kind of fascist policing wouldn't fly in an enlightened country like the USA. And shootings and stabbings in Denmark? Must be fake news
The premise is familiar: Six young strangers live in a house—the first one’s located in Tokyo—and interact as relationships form. That’s where comparisons to American reality TV basically end. Terrace House is different from other reality shows in almost every way.
Who could have predicted that Japanese youngsters would be better behaved than Americans?
The results of the research showed that on average German firms had 26 employees per supervisor. In Switzerland this ratio was 13.6 to one, in the UK it was 10.3 to one, and US firms had 7.1 workers for every superior.
Baylor played for the Orioles, Athletics, Angels, Yankees, Red Sox and Twins over a 19-year career. He was an All-Star and the MVP winner with the Angels in 1979, when he led the majors in RBIs and runs and also set career highs in home runs and hits.
Don Baylor was a blast to watch. He'd stand in one batters box and lean over the other one. RIP, big fella
There were lots of them. German immigrants nurtured a boom in brewing. 1880s Manhattan was a beery paradise. NYC still has plenty of beery pubs, but fewer per block than back then.
My Meindl "Light Hikers" have over 100 miles on them by now, and are as comfortable as sneakers. Although they are lighter than the Meindl hikers, they are not exactly light (3 lbs). My old Adidas hikers are lighter, but not as tough on rocks so I will keep them for ordinary hikes without steeps, scree, or boulders.
What those Meindls have, besides excellent stability when tied properly, is a velcro-like grip on steep and wet rock, gravel, and mud. I tried many times to see at what point they would slip, and they just would not. That is very cool.
For serious Alpine stuff, I'd go for their regular "Perfekt Hiker", but I have no plans for that.
A couple of points:
- I use liner socks with these boots. Probably don't need to, but why not?
- Since my feet are not used to long hikes day after day, I go prepared for dealing with hot spots and blisters. Didn't have a single problem with that.
- Nothing is waterproof with heavy rain and wind. "Waterproof" boots do nothing for rain pouring in from the top, or from having to cross water that is over boot-level. Fortunately, human skin is waterproof.
- Word to the wise: In Europe, "walking" adventures typically means off-trail steep hill and non-technical mountain hiking with cliffs and boulders. It's not what I call "walking."
Perhaps the author has not read about what Manhattan was like in the David Dinkins era. You can keep that kind of gritty if you want it with the muggings and the morning dead in the parks from gunshot and ODs. What is most obnoxious about the false-sentimentality of it is that the author seems to see Manhattan as NYC.
The author needs to get off the magic island and hike around like the Forgotten New York guy does. There are a lot of neighborhoods in New York, most not Dinkins-era gritty anymore but many fairly rugged and ungentrified. Regular people live there. Millions of them.
Bird Dog has gone fishing for the week. His Raja Isteri figured his audience would bridle at seven full days without a little touch of Bird Dog in the night, so she kindly sent me a picture of him up to his old angling tricks. Bird Dog isn't much of a fisherman, truth be told. Just between you and me, he jacklights great whites. He even tried a salt lick once, but it didn't work all that well. I'm not sure why. Anyway, as you can see, Bird Dog is just another square old man who wears his shoes when he goes swimming.
The invention suggests employing a super tall chimney to facilitate heat exchange in the atmosphere as a remedy to Global Warming. Calculations show that if we can construct a chimney 5 kilometers (3 mile) tall and 20 meters in diameter out of flexible fabric material. Such Chimney will be sturdy enough to stand upright and withstand side winds. We will need as many 25,000 of such chimneys to stop global warming.
Little-known fact: The best jokes are unintentional
It had been a hectic news day. In one of the shrillest moments in
America’s infamous anti-communism “red scare,” husband and wife Julius
and Ethel Rosenberg were both found guilty of conspiracy to commit
espionage.
Apparently little-known fact to some people: The USSR is no longer operative. We've read their files. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were guilty, guilty, guilty
The report suggests new types of leadership will emerge. Rather than aiming to become a professional manager (“to take expert bricklayers, so to speak, and make them managers of other bricklayers”), top talent would shift to contribute directly to a company’s service or product and communicate directly with each other rather than through managers (they should be”guilds of bricklayers”).
Little-known fact: You can hire bad writers who shotgun quotation marks and parentheses into everything to pretend to be impartially reporting on a newsworthy trend just to get a link back to the company that hired them, because the FTC isn't paying attention to the internet. Yet
Little-known fact: My parents produced an emotionally intelligent machine using nothing but a bottle of Mateus, a Bobby Darin record, and some private school tuition
There is no such thing as EQ. Let me repeat that: "There is NO SUCH THING AS EQ." The idea was popularized by a journalist, Daniel Goleman, not a psychologist. You can't just invent a trait. You have to define it and measure it and distinguish it from other traits and use it to predict the important ways that people vary.
Little-known fact: You can't mention this at Google, either
Have a great Monday, everyone. If you can manage it, you should go fishin'.
AVI reminded us that the Cape Cod National Seashore turned 50 this week. That Sponge-headed Science Man loves the Cape as much as we do. The Farm is wonderful, but being inland has always made me feel a little claustrophobic. I like access to sea and sky.
Pic above of a stretch of South Beach, with our group of intrepid birders. We hopped down from Wellfleet to Chatham last week to catch a Mass. Audubon birding trip out to Monomoy Island (about which we posted recently). Monomoy is designated a National Wilderness. The size and shape of Monomoy is constantly in flux, as is its intermittent connection with Chatham's South Beach (which is an extension of Nauset Beach - the Cape's southern barrier island group which now reaches down towards Nantucket.
We ended up boating down to lower South Beach instead of Monomoy proper, due to tidal water depth. Our guide du jour, Ellison, an expert birder, led us on an arduous 4 mile barefoot (watch for sharp shells) hike through mud flats, soft sand, and sharp-edged marsh cordgrass - and non-stop biting marsh bugs - to check out the early migrants and the breeding shorebirds. Ya gotta be tough to be a birder.
The guys began work on one like the one in the photo but with fieldstone not cut stone. It will be on the edge of our bluestone patio. Have to keep up with the Joneses.
Actually, I like any reason to be outside, day or night. On these global cooling summer evenings, a fire, a cigar, and a little whisky make for the perfect contemplative moments. And the smoke keeps the bugs away.
I might decide to learn to make home-made pizza too. How difficult can it be?
Life isn't fair. We all know that. We also know that everybody has "issues," from the mild to the severe. While I would advise most people to try to address their issues, my first advice would be to try to conceal them in public.
That starts with behaving "appropriately" at all times, dressing well, getting a good hair style or haircut or whatever, and, if a guy, shaving before going out in public. I've been out and about quite a bit lately and see some women going to work almost looking like bag ladies or schizophrenics and guys looking like alcoholics. Maybe they are, but they should not advertise it. Odd and unstylish (relatively-speaking) appearance is only a good idea on Halloween.
Whatever people have going on inside, looking together and making a good social presentation makes a big difference in life. I do not mean to be superficial but first impressions carry a lot of weight. Like Peterson's "start by cleaning your room and getting rid of old stuff", acting and looking like you have got it together is a good first step. If you or your living environment look a little "off," that's an unfortunate impression. It's off-putting.
Toon on top via Althouse. Image below via the article. 
Stairmaster intervals provide possibly the most efficient and intense cardio exercise. Your heart rate jumps up to max immediately.
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The guys began work on one like the one in the photo but with fieldstone not cut stone. It will be on the edge of our bluestone patio. Have to keep up with the Joneses.