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.
American society has divided along unreconcilable visions of the good, held by countrymen who increasingly regard each other as enemies. Any attempt by either side to coerce the other into submission augurs only the fate that has befallen other peoples who let themselves slide into revolution. It follows that the path to peace must lie in each side’s contentment to have its own way—but only among those who consent to it. This implies limiting the U.S. government’s reach to what it can grasp without wrecking what remains of our national cohesion.
I doubt the answers to their curiosity will be found in a lab, but they persevere. That article takes almost all of the sexiness out of the topic: What do women want?
Humans are bio-psycho-social critters, too complicated for labs.
The application for the inaugural students asks aspiring Social Justice Advocates to explain their interest in social justice, list their preferred gender pronouns (such as “zi” and “hir”), and describe any experience they have in facilitating workshops on “social justice” issues. Be a part of the BEST (Bruin Excellence & Student Transformation) inaugural Social Justice Advocates initiative supported by VC Kang’s office and Residential Life. We are seeking 8-10 Social Justice Advocates! The Social Justice Advocates initiative aims to empower students by developing them as conscious and critical leaders and equipping them with cultural and political capital as they navigate a world that operates on whiteness, patriarchy, and heteronormativity as the primary ideologies. Social Justice Advocates will learn about systems oppression and how they intersect and build upon one another maintain the status quo. Most importantly individuals and the collective will be empowered through liberatory scholarship and practices and strengthening their emotional intelligence to create change within their spheres of influence. students will be paid a quarterly stipend.
In New England, with our relatively brief growing season, it is difficult to have a crop of tropical and subtropical fruits like tomatoes for more than several weeks - mainly August-mid-September. Unless you are on the coast, it is hardly worth bothering to grow tomatoes (other than cherry tomatoes which ripen quickly) from mid- Massachusetts, north.
Some people, with more drive than I have, construct polyurethane tents, like greenhouses, to give their tomatoes a head start on the season. It is of minimal effectiveness. Why?
That's why putting them in early doesn't make sense unless it's your only chance to get them in at all. Experienced gardeners around here aim for putting them in around Memorial Day and their crops are generally more productive than those who try to jump the season.
The domestic tomato was bred, probably by Aztecs in Central America, into a useful food (as they did with the tomatillo). A brief History of Tomatoes. The wild version of tomato seems to be the Currant Tomato, a perennial vine with berry-like green fruit. By now, that plant has so widely cross-bred with man-made tomato that the wild type may be extinct. All of the modern colors, including bright red, are relatively recent genetic inventions. Every tomato today (including "heritage") is a testament to GMO - the slow kind achieved by the Aztecs up through the 20th century.
It's a mystery to me why, since I began a serious exercise program almost exactly two years ago, grey hairs are growing out brown, and my hair is thicker. So testifies my Sicilian barber of 20 years. My body has changed in many desirable ways - less fat, more muscle, cut abdomen (somewhat), better posture, tougher all over - but I do not exercise my hair at all and use no Rogaine, no hair dye.
Could it just be diet? I have tried to up my protein intake and go very easy on carbs except maybe in restaurants. I love mashed taters. Or potato chips which I also love. I tend to avoid vegetables unless in a Thai concoction, or unless cooked in garlic and oil. Or in bacon. Tomato is not a vegetable. I also tend to avoid fruit unless in a banana or strawberry protein smoothie because I do not like sweet things very much and, when I want some, it is never satisfying and makes me feel uncomfortable. I have always preferred savory to sweet. Generally-speaking, my program has lowered my appetite quite a bit so I focus on protein because I am told to. I do like a steak sandwich.
One case is just an anecdote, so it means nothing. I do wonder, though. Hair is mostly genetic but this change is odd.
17:22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.
17:23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
17:24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,
17:25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.
17:26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live,
17:27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us.
17:28 For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
17:29 Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.
17:30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
17:31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
Mrs. BD visited Boston this week, and stopped by Olmstead's house in Brookline. Olmstead is a Maggie's hero. Nothing is changed from when he ran his design office there - drafting tables, blueprinters, etc.
Mr. Vanderleun found this excellent recording of the haunting anthem Not Dark Yet from Dylan's 1997 Time Out of Mind album. Was it that long ago? Sheesh, the time is runnin' away.
A commenter on Youtube:
This guy has reached me intensively in every stage of my life..Been with him since I was in hs, and now I'm a senior citizen. hearing this song as I face less than what was behind.
There is only one French salad dressing - mustard vinaigrette with shallots. This guy learned how to make it.No reason to ever use anything else other than laziness (I can be lazy and I like to put Ken's Steak House salad dressing from Costco on tomato slices).
The only French variation is to add tarragon or to use tarragon vinegar. I don't care much for tarragon flavor although it grows vigorously in my garden. Tarragon Chicken is a classic, but I don't care for it.
Isn't it strange that commercial "French Dressing" and "Russian Dressing" are American inventions? So is commercial "Italian dressing." Well, they all taste ok. Russian is great on a roast beef sammich.
What is a genuine Italian salad dressing? Salt, olive oil, vinegar (3 parts oil to one part vinegar). Toss it extensively - 30 times seems to be an Italian standard. You can add a few drops of Balsamic to that if you want, or use lemon juice (very Sicilian) instead of vinegar. Without salt, salad is not edible. It's barely edible anyway because it is rodent food and minimally-digestible by humans. I figure if you want to eat greens, eat a herbivore instead because they have the tools to break down and digest cellulose and thus the contents of greens. We do not.
Whether news or science, nobody can tell real from fake anymore. Everything seems to be from The Onion. Is there anything we can take at face value, or is everything fake?
Nothing has changed. The Yale Daily News was full of despicable little leftwing shits back in my day just like today. If they could see what Yale became, Henry Luce & Briton Hadden would be throwing up in the street.
The media mouth-frothing has reached unbearable levels, and quickly. ... This is not a new observation by any means. It was almost as bad in favor of candidate Obama in 2008, but a slobbering lovefest was far different a media trying to bring down a presidency without a single shred of substantive evidence to date.
Let's face it, there's going to be a new, and most likely completely baseless, instance of Trump derangement blaring from the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post more or less every day for at least the next three and a half years. It can be amusing to make fun of these things, but at some point the Manhattan Contrarian has to find something better to do. How about looking into recent reporting on Venezuela?
Based on a tip from a reader, I turned to interior page A4 of Monday's edition of the New York Times...
OK, but worse probably in the social sciences. Generally, it is very easy to cheat in science. Biggest problem might be that negative results are almost never published.
...power, while dangerous in anyone’s hands, is especially dangerous in the hands of people who are enticed during early adulthood into believing both that they are fit to order others about and that such commandeering of the lives of others is noble rather than nefarious.
LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!
There are (at least) two kinds of tantrums: irrational volcanic explosions and manipulative tantrums. Spanking does not work for the former, but works for the latter. The problem is that the kids know to mainly have the latter in public places, like in supermarkets. They know what they are doing.
What works best for older kids, like college students with tantrums?
Good morning, kids. I am actually sitting here absolutely stunned and amazed at the spectacle we are witnessing. A duly elected President and his advisors are being systematically, methodically crippled by a witch hunt that has been manufactured out of whole cloth by the media. It has been so pervasive and poisonous that the media's underlings in the Democrat party, along with their willing accomplices in the GOP wing, are now openly discussing impeachment proceedings, based on nothing. Actually, less than nothing. Nothing-Lite. Remember that the standard Leftist playbook is that the veracity of the allegation is not important: it's the seriousness of the charge. When Jeff Sessions recused himself way back when, it opened the door for the Left to demand more and more concessions and put the President and his team on perpetual defense. I'm not a fan of Dick Morris at all, but he's 100% correct in his analysis that the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate, again NOTHING, does one thing: puts a taint of guilt on the President and serves to delegitimize his entire agenda, which is exactly what the Left wants, impeachment or not. And let's not forget the crickets coming from our putative side of the aisle. Call it fear or call it collusion with the Left (let's face it, PDT is an enemy to the GOP-e as much as he is to the Left), this is sabotage, or as Jeffrey Lord puts it "a high-tech lynching of an uppity president."
But let's step back for a moment...
Read it all. Of course the press wants to take Trump down. It is just a partisan thing, the sport called scalp-hunting, because Trump isn't even a conservative.
Lust, infatuation, True Love, erotic intoxication, romantic passion - call it what you will. We all know that new passion is exhilarating and agonizing too. Humans will do unwise things to taste that fruit. From a scientific standpoint, this is caused by a little devilish prankster named Cupid who gets a kick out of making people crazy.
It is obviously a normal and frequent occurrence, and it is powerful stuff. How is a bourgeois Christian person to handle it when Cupid's arrow strikes in a way which complicates life? How to break free when you have feelings for the wrong person.
We are convinced that a balanced fitness program is the best route for ordinary people who just want to stay Fit For Life, with all-round functional fitness being the goal. Some readers disagree with our view, but that's ok. We're happy to hear your opinions because fitness remains a field with more questions than answers, every body is different, and everybody is an expert.
Readers know that our idea of "balanced" entails a mix of cardio, calisthenics, and strength-building/strength-maintenance while getting into fighting shape with enough protein and neither too much nor too little fat on your bones.
Some athletes, and many exercisers, tend to focus on just one of the three categories. That is unbalanced. Pure cardio exercisers (treadmill jockeys, runners, bikers, swimmers) tend to be weak in muscle and bone. Many guys who just lift can't run or hike up hills 15 miles or negotiate a ladder drill. And so forth.
One sensible way to structure a balanced 5 day/wk program is to put a 30- min HIIT (anaerobic) cardio day after a weights day, and a 45-60 min endurance (aerobic, aka "fat-burning") cardio day for the day after the second weight day. Then fit in a calisthenics/plyometric day somewhere else. That schedule allows 48+hr recovery from the strength days because the cardio doesn't interfere with muscle recovery, while heavy calis can. That's our under-5 hr/wk fitness program. Every high school and college should offer, or require, something like that.
My high school did require weights, sprints, and calisthenic drills for everybody for an hour after lunch, followed by your daily sport afterwards. They rightly figured that adolescent boys needed it, and the coaches were like drill sergeants. Mens sana in corpore sano. I think only elite private high schools require things like that now. It's a shame because all kids should have the chance to learn about fitness routines.
Answers to FAQs about the Maggie's recommendations are below the fold -
The retired general said he can live with Trump's inexperience, as everyone lacks experience when they start a new job. However, he said he's more focused on Trump's "seeming lack of humility in the face of obvious inexperience."
"Here is a president who seems to go into these encounters with, frankly, an unjustified self-confidence in the ability of his person to make these things come out right," said Hayden. "He throws away, pushes to the side, and doesn't pay attention to what the institutions of the government have set up for him to be successful."
... wait a minute! Isn't the President specifically allowed to reveal classified information to other countries if he wants to? Indeed, isn't that the very essence of being given the authority (by the Constitution!) to conduct the foreign policy of the United States? Of course the President has that authority! I would have said that the whole idea behind collecting classified information in the first place is to assist the President in conducting the foreign policy of the United States in whatever manner as he may see fit in his discretion. And, while Russia and the U.S. may be geopolitical rivals on many subjects, the two countries certainly share an interest in preventing having their aircraft blown up by ISIS terrorists. (Recall that an ISIS bomb blew up a Russian aircraft over Egypt back in December 2015.) Why wouldn't the President and senior Russian officials discuss this subject when they have one of their infrequent chances to meet? And why wouldn't they share information to help each other prevent future attacks?
So what is it about this story that makes it news at all, let alone front page news?
5 Tips On 
In New England, with our relatively brief growing season, it is difficult to have a crop of tropical and subtropical fruits like tomatoes for more than several weeks - mainly August-mid-September. Unless you are on the coast, it is hardly worth bothering to grow tomatoes (other than cherry tomatoes which ripen quickly) from mid- Massachusetts, north.
