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.
Reason has little to do with the firearms issue. I'm sorry, cutie, but The Second Amendment isn't about hunting and shooting sports. It's about freedom.
Can we please make murder illegal? It might help, or do the guns kill people? Can't we just Do Something?!?!?
I suspect that they are just terminally, willingly, spinelessly naive. Willingly naive is a kind of denial of reality so it is not too far from insane. They will not admit to themselves that they are being played because that would expose their moral and spiritual frailty.
The world, and academia, needs more Prof. Petersons and fewer profs and administrators who fold like a cheap camera, as they used to say.
The argument that introducing modern civilization to more primitive societies may have been more of a blessing than a curse in many cases seems to be One Of Those Things You Can Not Say.
What would India be without the British Raj? Well, hard to say, but debatable.
She is so wrong. Under British law, commoners were not allowed to own swords for centuries. Commoners want weapons too for whatever reason. Now the elites want their armed bodyguards but they don't want me to have my .22?
Harsanyi: Come And Take Them, Bret Stephens - As an American-Jew whose ancestors came here escaping both Nazism and communism, I totally 'get' the Second Amendment 'fetishists.'
Of course, the grandstanding hacks and moral midgets in DC are going for the guns; most shockingly (or not, really, when you think about it) some in the GOP are going wobbly as well. What-the-actual-F**K; I mean, here we are, with majorities in both houses and holding the Oval Office, a political third rail to end all third rails, science, statistics, reason, history, the friggin' US Constitution and 200 million legal, responsible gun owners to back us up and McYertle meat-puppet John Cornyn is stuttering and muttering about a possible bump-stock ban. For the love of all that is righteous and good, will no one who is putatively on our side in the Senate or Congress rise and shut these tyrants up once and for all? You've sold us out on healthcare, the budget, prosecuting the IRS and other bureaucratic tyrants and laughing at us while you do it. But on the Second Amendment, is it too much to ask to reject the propaganda and fight?! I guess it is.
I haven't visited Budapest. It certainly is a very popular destination, partly because it has become a world-class city but also because, having been commie-controlled for so long, much of it is frozen in amber due to poverty and lack of development. Well, WW2 did a lot of damage to Budapest as it did to Vienna.
100 is getting easier already. I had to take one day off, though, for "recovery". We did a 3-hour woodsy hill hike instead. Well, now I am doing sets of 15 instead of 10, and next week it will be sets of 20. Raise that efficiency despite the burn. One thing I notice is that the quicker you do them, the better.
Also, I do not do the push-ups on my bench press day. That would not be sensible.
Two years ago, I could hardly do 3 pushups. My shoulder pain problem didn't help (it has improved a lot with exercise), but I was weak too. OK, I do not have a muscular build but I am somewhat fit for my age and build at this point. Plenty of guys my age are fitter than me and I still suck and can't do pull ups. My goal for this 100/day challenge is to do 50 in one set with good form. I'll be satisfied with that. Or maybe I won't be.
A good part of fitness is that you can pursue it even if you have no special athletic talent and are not highly coordinated. The only sport I can play with any competence at all now is tennis, but fitness can be a sport or hobby of its own and it's good for mental, spiritual, physical, and sexual health. We all want to approach life with as much vigor as we can muster for as long as we can.
How are our readers doing with this game? The gals too. Any cheaters? Any quitters?
"The only reason to fire so many rounds so fast is to kill large numbers of people,” Ms. Feinstein said in a statement. “No one except the government should be able to easily and cheaply modify legal weapons into what are essentially machine guns.""
Pepper market in Budapest, the land of paprika, from my riverboat friend. Hungarian food must have been bland before peppers arrived from the New World in the 1500s
Everybody knows that having a belly is the major risk factor for heart and cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, and dozens of other nasty ailments, but the association of overweight with at least 13 cancers is not so well known.
Being heavy may be one of the greatest risk factors for a large variety of cancers. There are many theories about why this might be. Breast and prostate cancers are high on the list.
It is worth thinking about, even though we all must accept that the odds are, now that we can handle most infectious diseases, that we will die either of cancer or cardiovascular disease sooner or later. But why rush it?
"The immigration seen in recent years is changing our country not in a positive but in a negative way... Uncontrolled immigration destroys the order in a country." — Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz.
According to a leaked German government report, up to 6.6 million migrants -- both refugees and migrants seeking a better life -- are currently waiting to cross to Europe from Africa.
At least 50% of American medical students are women. That has been a dramatic cultural change in the profession, at least in the US. When I was in medical school we were around 20%.
At the obvious risk of being assaulted for stereotyping and demeaning females in my profession, I will share some of my observations (with countless exceptions, of course):
- Women in medicine are very smart and detail-oriented. Excellent students without much rebellion or cantankerousness. However, they are often too much "by the book" and rule-oriented to adjust to specific situations. I have fought this in myself. The men tend to be willing to take more risks, less rule-bound, more blunt, and willing or eager to work ungodly hours. Definitely more defiant and skeptical of authority.
- Women in medicine tend to view it more as a career than as an identity. Men in medicine have traditionally seen it as their raison d'etre, members of an ancient priestly caste. Men in medicine feel heroic and manly about responding to that 3 AM phone call, women generally not so much.
- As a career rather than as a 24 hr/day identity, women in medicine tend to be more comfortable with a regular paycheck, defined hours of responsibility or even part-time hours of duty, and good job benefits. That often means working for somebody else.
For better or worse, the coming dominance of American medicine by women will be changing the culture of the profession. Other influences, like the emergence of large group practices, and of hospital-owned practices, are changing the character of American medicine too.
From the beginning of the 1800s until WW1 (and the income tax), wealthy New Yorkers liked to build getaway estates overlooking the Hudson River. Wave Hill is one of many, including Washington Irving's charming Sunnyside (in Irvington), the Rockefeller estate, and of course the Roosevelt's Hyde Park.
Wave Hill is in Riverdale, Bronx, NYC. Rus in urba. People who rented Wave Hill to live in included Teddy Roosevelt and Mark Twain. Now it is a public garden and event site. We took my in-laws to look around last week.
I'm not saying we shouldn't help Puerto Rico. We must and should. The situation is dreadful. But this is a learning opportunity for the islanders. They should take it. Blaming Donald Trump is the most reactionary and self-destructive thing they can do. It's victimhood redux. Leave that to the rapacious ideologues at CNN, the New York Times, etc. They'd blame the eruption of the Indonesian volcanoes on Trump, if that were possible -- and even it it weren't.
Despite what global warming fanatics might say, hurricanes are nothing new in Puerto Rico.
.. the (other) major story is the hideous behavior of the hack mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz. First she praises FEMA for their response then, I guess after receiving her talking points from the Media Complex, blasts away at President Trump for letting people die in the streets; kind of an ironic statement from Cruz considering when she gave it, she was standing in front of a warehouse full of foodstuffs and supplies just brought in from the mainland. In fact, she was so utterly full of shit that even the grand wizard of being full of shit, Geraldo Rivera, called her on it. But unlike Dubya, who just silently sat by and allowed assholes like Spike Lee and Kanye West to accuse him of committing genocide against Chocolate City, the President and his team are having none of it. And the collective head of the Left is exploding because neither is a large majority of Americans having any of it either.
Mrs. BD and I are back in weekend hiking mode. I really do not like vigorous hikes when it's above 75 degrees F.
Let's talk about non-winter hiking pants for men and women. Water-repellent, not waterproof. (For waterproof, you can roll up those light-weight REI waterproof overpants in your daypack. With a good long zipper, they are easy to pull over your hiking boots if you are a cat and hate getting wet.)
Hiking and trekking pants are for long hikes with serious terrain, not for two-hour walks in the woods in nice weather when cut-off blue jean are perfect if there are no bugs. I've tested out several pairs of hiking pants. To be comfortable on hills, they have to have a little stretch to them. They also have to resist tears from brush and to be rugged enough to hold up to rock scrapes and random falls. Plus it is nice if they are light-weight, not baggy, and comfortable.
The baggy ones are not pleasant to wear, and flap like crazy in wind. Most of the ones that are convertible to shorts are baggy. I like my Prana hiking pants, which are also great for weekend chores.
Many regular mountain hikers like Montane (example in photo). I guess REI has most of the ordinary things that outdoor active people might need.
What sorts of things do you use for rugged hiking?
The Science 
A book: 
New York’s 9/11 tribute mesmerizes birds — a
Sad about Tom Petty. classic rocker, classic rock. 66. Carpe diem.
Roger Simon, 