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 worst thing about these f-ing errors is that one tends to discount everything else the person is writing. The thing is, they could have something smart to say but somehow missed class the day they reviewed The Common Writing Errors of People Who Did Not Pay Attention in 3rd Grade.
You know how it is. People with English accents sound smarter than what they are saying and, for many Yankees I am sad to say, people with Hillbilly accents sound dumber than what they are saying. Both of these biases, interestingly, can work to the advantage of the object of the bias.
A reader offered this comment: " I heard Prince Harry or William express appreciation of a gift given “to my brother and I”. We’re doomed!"
Meanwhile no worries about Asians and people from India doing better, overall, than those white kids. I noted that she is not a Math Prof, but a Math Education Prof. But still...
Look, Harvey is a lowlife. But Hollywood hos are not as the sanctimonious Sean Hannity portrays them: “naive, innocent young things,” dreams shattered.
There are several reasons why calories- in and calories- burned equations are too simple for the complexity of animal physiology. For one thing, the calories in protein are handled differently from those in fat or in carbohydrates. Another reason is that our metabolism adapts to our nutritional intake as best it is able to.
Other than hibernating animals, few animals are adapted to handle the sort of abundance that humans have remarkably produced with brains capable of entirely changing the planet's surface and modifying nutritional sources for its own purposes. Humans are nutritional outliers, and it is not "natural." In a sense, humans are not natural animals because of the extent to which they remake nature for their convenience.
It means you have trained your body to adapt to a plentiful flow of fresh carbs and sugars (sugar is carbs and vice-versa) so it takes the burden off using fat as a fuel. Intake trains the body that way. Thus what we term the "False Hunger" of overweight people. Human physiology will never adapt to modern abundance of food because fatness tends to kill or disable people after child-bearing years.
Among other reasons, Fat Adaptation is one of the reasons heavy people feel more hunger and end up consuming food more avidly and in higher volume than trim people. In fact, overweight people have zero dietary energy requirements and minimal nutritional requirements despite subjective hunger.
In a recent discussion with a fairly knowledgeable person of centrist views we raised the question to each other, what does the government do well? Sure, there’s education, but it has become too much an exercise in inculcating left-liberal themes and not preparing needed skills. Sure, there’s the military, but it has become undersupported and used poorly by timid careerists and ignorant of war political leadership. Sure, there’s welfare, but it is a virtually unrestrained and lax stipend to secure votes from those without ambition, self-discipline, and illegal immigrants they want to legalize. Sure, there's infrastructure, but it is usually dome ineptly, overly costly due to paying off unions, and the funds drained away for pet projects outside core infrastucture needs. I could go on. What we came up with is the sole thing that government does well is to use our tax money to line the pockets of politicians and bureaucrats, most of who are really not needed except in the view of those who support interfering with and controlling the private lives of productive citizens.
The establishment is largely without merit.
That is the core understanding of at least half the voters nationally, and probably more when directly faced with the question of worth that we discussed. This well may be somewhat exaggerated, but probably not by very much.
The one-sided and contemptuous behavior and writing of the left’s politicians and their media and cultural allies in the NY-Washington, L.A.-San Francisco, and academic self-congratulatory circuits merely confirms this view of the establishment every day almost every time they open their mouths.
The half of America that takes umbrage and rejects their snotty and ignorant disregard of reality, the half of America that really toils and pays the tolls, stand up behind the Trump agenda because they understand it. The Trump agenda is to bring down and destroy if possible the corrupt establishment. It’s an imperfect agenda, opening ground that the establishment thought it has plowed under and sanitized against independent thought, but it is felt and believed to be necessary. That’s why the pouting of the left is disregarded as an immaterial and misleading defense of their status quo establishment’s self-serving.
“What has happened is these young people now getting to college have no sense of history – of any kind! No sense of history. No world geography. No sense of the violence and the barbarities of history. So, they think that the whole world has always been like this, a kind of nice, comfortable world where you can go to the store and get orange juice and milk, and you can turn on the water and the hot water comes out. They have no sense whatever of the destruction, of the great civilizations that rose and fell, and so on – and how arrogant people get when they’re in a comfortable civilization. They now have been taught to look around them to see defects in America – which is the freest country in the history of the world – and to feel that somehow America is the source of all evil in the universe, and it’s because they’ve never been exposed to the actual evil of the history of humanity. They know nothing!”
22:15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.
22:16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.
22:17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?"
22:18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?
22:19 Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius.
22:20 Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?"
22:21 They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."
22:22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.
This is about warm pasta dishes, not cold. Room temperature pasta dishes like Nicoise are nice - but that is from Nice, not Italy.
I do not care for a pasta dish as a meal. It makes me feel full and lazy. I don't mind the way the Italians do it - and the way it was intended - which is as a small plate tasty treat as a Primo. Maybe 4-6 forks' worth. That's a meal's carbs, because the Secondi usually doesn't have any. Just meat, with some vegetables in oil on the side.
Southern Italians eat pasta, but they don't eat much of it when they do. Maybe the equivalent volume of a potato. Lasagna (which is Southern Italian) is served as a small Primo. - a little 3-or 4-inch square.
Sicily is not big on pasta. They make a few classics, like with sardines or clams, but do more rice and couscous as primi. On the mainland, the further north you go the less pasta there is. They do more rice (esp. risotto), gnocchi, and polenta for their primi.
Anyway, an Italian meal with a primo and secondo - and wine or beer - is lunchtime, not supper. (Italian breakfast is typically just an espresso or a latte - cappuccino - with a biscotti. Suppers are light, like a soup and lunch leftovers.) Italians tend not be be fat and even the elderly women mostly tend to look pretty spry except for the ones who stay home all day cooking for their relatives because they taste things all day long.
I married into a family with some roots in Caserta (lots of ziti and spaghetti pasta down there) and I know the rules:
- When pasta is cooked al dente, you take it out of the pot with pasta-grabbers and dump it directly into the saucepan with the sauce. Then you mix it with the sauce with the heat on. You don't drain pasta.
- Depending on the volume of sauce you have made, you dump a cup or half-cup of the pasta water into the pasta-sauce mix, and slop it all together with the pasta-grabber (with the heat on). Enough pasta water to be right. Heat is on. The pasta water binds it all together and helps the sauce coat the pasta completely.
What is the ultimate pasta Primo? The festive Timballo. I have never had a slice of one, and probably never will have the chance because it's not a restaurant item.
Tomato sauces? Yuk. Cristoforo Columbo and his pals, in my view, wrecked Italian cooking by bringing the tomato back from Central America. Not to mention the Cultural Appropriation sin of putting the Mayan tomato in Italian food. But wait - the Italians stole pizza from the Greeks? And pasta from China. Is there anything that college kitchens will be able to feed the brats now? I mean, like, ice cream is Egyptian and yoghurt is Turkish. Let them eat gluten-free cake.
If President Trump or anyone even remotely close to his presidency, including his best friend from 2nd grade that he hadn't seen in 40 years, sought to meet with key Russian nuclear officials, in Moscow, just months before the federal government approved a very controversial deal handing Vladimir Putin 20% of U.S. uranium reserves, despite an ongoing investigation into Russian fraud, bribery, extortion and money laundering, it would be the only story played on a 24 x 7 loop on CNN and MSNBC.
You can be fat and very strong, but unable to hike a mountain vigorously for 6 hours. You can be a fast runner or swimmer but unfit in most ways other than cardio endurance.
To participate to the maximum in all that life offers or demands, we preach a doctrine of "Fitness for Life." This is not training for a specific purpose (ie a specific sport, pure strength, or aesthetics), but just to maintain or, preferably, improve fitness after age 30 or 40 or 50 or whatever for people with relatively sedentary (less than 5 hrs/wk of physically-challenging or strenuous effort - not walking). Balanced, general functional fitness for strength, endurance, and athleticism builds energy, attractiveness and sexuality, effectiveness - and the mental toughness that comes from the discipline of physical training.
First, some terms:
Conditioning, or Athletic Conditioning, usually refers to your overall athletic preparedness. "Conditioning" can focus on retrieving or building your speed, agility, endurance, muscle fitness, body composition, and the like. General conditioning-specific activities, like calisthenics, often just use body weight and some light weights with very high reps (20+), and no rest. Burpees, lunges, box jumps, ball slams, roll-ups, and step-ups are classic conditioning exercises but there are tons of them.
Cardio/endurance training is one compnent of the above. An hour of intense, no-rest calisthenics is powerful and exhausting cardio/endurance training, as is HIIT cardio. If you aren't short of breath, it's not "cardio." (It's not "exercise" either. "Exercise" refers to exertion.) For naturalistic HIIT, a tough tennis lesson where coach runs you ragged, or a basketball game.
Bodybuilding is an approach to balanced muscle improvement. It entails about 5 sets of semi-high reps (8-12) of 50-70% of your max weights, with only a minute rest between sets. Contrary to the sound of it, it's not primarily meant to look good at the beach (but nobody wants to look nasty with lots or all of their clothes off).
Powerlifting is an approach designed to improve brute strength and power. This entails lower reps with higher weights, and more rest between sets. Often, out of shape newbies need a good period of powerlifting before shifting to bodybuilding. Experienced people often alternate between the body-building approach and the powerlift approach every few months to maintain muscle function.
All of the above play a role in general fitness.
I'll review our recommendations for people in half-decent health below the fold. Feel free to offer comments or critiques.
It's a real NYC expression of surprise, not for the effete. Can be good or bad surprise. It can also be used for sarcastic surprise, as in "Hillary fell down the stairs holding a cup of coffee? Oofah."
Ken Burns portrays the young soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines of the Vietnam War as pot-smoking, drug-addicted, hippie marauders.
Those with whom I served were anything but. They did not commit the atrocities alleged in the unforgivable lies John Kerry described to a congressional committee so prominently featured by Mr. Burns. The troops my brother and I were blessed to lead were honorable, heroic and tenacious. They were patriotic, proud of their service, and true to their God and our country.
To depict them otherwise, as Mr. Burns does, is an egregious disservice to them, the families of the fallen and to history. But his treatment of my fellow Vietnam War veterans is just the start. Some of the most blatant travesties in the film are reserved for President Nixon...
As the days grow shorter, my annual request that dawn, twilight, and night road walkers wear highly-visible or reflective clothing, or a reflector vest as in photo. Cheap, lightweight. Wearing a light is good too. I suggest both.
I do not want to hit you, but I might get close if you walk on a roadside dressed in dark clothing. That would be a bad thing for you and me. Please do not make yourself invisible. I have come too close to night walkers.
The worst thing about these f-ing errors is that one tends to discount everything else the person is writing. The thing is, they could have something smart to say but somehow missed class the day they reviewed The Common Writing Errors of People Who Did Not Pay Attention in 3rd Grade.
Internet is a big deal.
Image borrowed from Ace 
Consider the Brooks 24-pounder. Brand new and ready for firing. The bore is too small for tennis balls, so I am not sure what you can shoot out of it.
This is about warm pasta dishes, not cold. Room temperature pasta dishes like Nicoise are nice - but that is from Nice, not Italy. 
Yes, 
Should Inclusive Restrooms
How to
As the days grow shorter, my annual request that dawn, twilight, and night road walkers wear highly-visible or reflective clothing, or a reflector vest as in photo. Cheap, lightweight.