Maggie's Farm

The miracle of air-conditioning

Why is the hotel room a place of such loneliness and despair?

Seven people pass test to become nation's first legal technicians

Diagnosed: My back pain is Piriformis Syndrome

Painful but harmless

When a Bookstore Closes...

People love bookstores.

Call the Midwife - Why a growing number of U.S. mothers are turning to midwives, rather than physicians, for prenatal care, labor, and delivery

OK, natural is better and there are too many C-sections, but human childbirth is dangerous. Every midwife in the US has an OB on instant call.

A Giant Squid Giving Birth Is A Crazily Surreal Experience

No midwife!

The Church of Nice

What scientists learned from a brain-eating island tribe

Medical marijuana not a healthy solution

Stop Pretending Sex Never Hurts

Science to Parents: Let Your Kids Run a Little Wild - A new literature review suggests that unsupervised play fosters resilient kids.

Duh. Thank God for studies.

FL Parents Arrested After Son Was Caught Playing Basketball in Backyard for 90 Minutes

Matt Walsh: I'll be praying for you

TSA’s New Plan to Make Screening Less Efficient

You, Andrew Marvell

And strange at Ecbatan the trees
Take leaf by leaf the evening strange
The flooding dark about their knees
The mountains over Persia change

And now at Kermanshah the gate
Dark empty and the withered grass
And through the twilight now the late
Few travelers in the westward pass

And Baghdad darken and the bridge
Across the silent river gone
And through Arabia the edge
Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra's street
The wheel rut in the ruined stone
And Lebanon fade out and Crete
High through the clouds and overblown

And over Sicily the air
Still flashing with the landward gulls
And loom and slowly disappear
The sails above the shadowy hulls

And Spain go under and the shore
Of Africa the gilded sand
And evening vanish and no more
The low pale light across that land

Nor now the long light on the sea:

And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on ...

Who was Connecticut's adopted Archibald MacLeish? A poet, and a Captain of artillery in WW1, and a lot of other things.

Friday free ad for Bob. One of his best? How can one measure words like these? It's a New York song.

Name me someone who's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him.

It is not being deceived, but undeceived, that renders us miserable.

Sophie Arnold via a commenter at The Church of Climate Change

Kate Upton update

A healthy gal

More Health and Strength Nonsense From the Mainstream Media - More "studies" that mislead the modern man.

Shouldn’t People Be Allowed to Love Who They Want?

Of course.

Even Atheists Intuitively Believe in a Creator - New research suggests seeing the natural world as purposefully created is our default setting

Bye, Bye, American History - Professors and historians urged opposition to the College Board’s new curriculum for teaching AP U.S. History.

Purdue’s Mitch Daniels: It’s not hard keeping tuition flat and quality high

My Family’s Safety Is More Important than San Francisco’s Crazy Gun Laws

Crime spike could throw police reform efforts into doubt

‘White Appreciation Day’ at Colorado barbecue joint makes colorful statement

Another Lemonade Stand Busted

Sen. Ron Johnson: ‘Political Culture Is Out to Demonize’ Entrepreneurs

CON laws stifle competition and hurt consumers.

Why Does Obama Want This Trade Deal So Badly?

Elizabeth Warren’s new plan for debt-free college, explained

Is More Democracy Dumb? And Is That Even the Right Question?

Bill Clinton contradicts Hillary on email claims

Carly Fiorina: It’s time for America to redefine feminism, free women from liberal stereotypes

Carly Fiorina’s New Ad Dismantles Hillary Clinton’s ‘Accomplishments’

UN peacekeepers forced hundreds of Haitian women to have sex with them in return for food and medicine

Isis's dirty bomb: Jihadists have seized 'enough radioactive material to build their first WMD'

Undercover Reporter Reveals Irish Businesses Willing to Buy From Iran, North Korea While Refusing Israeli Products

Colonial Williamsburg to Open Public Musket Range

Why Indie Bookstores Are on the Rise Again - Borders and B&N tried to compete with Amazon, and failed. Independent stores can’t even try—nor do they have to.

Are we too selfish to live like hippies?

The man behind Campbell Soup

The Mind of Camille Paglia

British Nobel Winner Under Fire For Comments on 'Girls' in Labs

Haha. He'll say what he wants to say.

World’s Biggest “Green” Power Station Apparently Not So Green

Putting the ridiculously large $18 trillion US economy into perspective by comparing state GDPs to entire countries

Would the Poor Prefer Cash Instead of Medicaid?

Too Much Praise Promotes Narcissism - The first longitudinal study in children supports the theory that parents with unrealistically positive views of their kids foster
narcissistic qualities

BALTIMORE: Liberal City of the Future

Alveda King: Liberal Race Baiting Is Tired, Sagging and Outdated

Deep secrets of racial profiling

Affirmative Action Applied to Air Traffic Controllers

Affordable Care Isn't

UC Faculty Training: Saying ‘America Is the Land of Opportunity’ Is a Microaggression

The get-Rubio movement.

Commenter there: What the Times hopes is that the smarter people amongst the Left base realize that people like Rubio and Walker appeal to the public partly because they aren't elitist douche-bags. Being "born in a log cabin" has a long history of being an effective back story in America and Rubio and Walker both have plenty of that in its modern incarnation.

Marco Rubio Is The Presumptive Republican Nominee For President In 2016

Highlights From the New York Times’ 2008 Hillary Clinton Endorsement

The Average Joe’s Proviso - Surprising numbers of white working-class voters will support the Democratic agenda—if Democrats promise to reform the government that would carry it out.

The Gimmes vs. the Freedoms

Greece: U.N. Warns That Migrants May Overwhelm Tourist Island of Lesbos

Media warn Marco Rubio is dangerously middle-class and not wealthy

Democrats might want to re-think a counter-productive strategy of highlighting Rubio for being so middle-class, still residing in his childhood neighborhood near his mother in a 2,700-square foot home with four children and buying himself a boat for family outings.

Many American voters might just identify more with that lifestyle over a woman who admits not having driven a car in almost 20 years, you know, because of all the chauffeurs.

"Pain is the feeling of weakness leaving your body."

I am not so sure about that.

My trainer told me that it would take about three months of 6-7 day/week work to get me past the initial "wake-up" Phase 1 of Middle-Age Boot Camp - Getting Fit For Life With a Touch of Grey.

I do not know what Phase 2 is but I can fit into my 20 year-old Brooks tux.

He agrees with my view that physical training is to fully enjoy and participate in life, and not for its own sake. He also understands that physical training is partly mental training in discipline and maximum effort. I need the external discipline.

I am about 2 months in. I am sore and tired every day. My lower back is hating me, crippling me, and my multiple right shoulder injury (body surfing after hurricane on Martha's Vineyard + skiing tree injury + past bad-technique weight-lifting) is a constant dull ache. It's all good but I dread picking up anything from the floor. I do Mon, Weds, and Fri with him, and the other days mostly aerobics and crunches per his instructions. Move vigorously every day and walking doesn't count. He increases my weights each week and takes pleasure in my progress.  Or pretends to.

I've lost 8 lbs while gaining some strength and muscle mass and a bit more endurance on exertion. He expects his people to follow his spartan training dietary regime, min. carbs except blueberries/strawberries or a half apple, 3 or 4 small proteins during the day, vegs as desired. I still have a slight inner tube which may be a permanent part of my anatomy. Do I enjoy this discipline and exertion? Not really. Like everybody, I like to do "whatever I feel like." However, I like challenges and tend to rise to them. That's how I have achieved my modest goals in life thus far so it has always worked for me.

He pushes me to the breaking point. I know it's for my own good and that doing "what I feel like" rarely has good results in life. Squats? How many kinds are there? Sheesh. I hate them all. Pain.

Difficult aerobic endurance on days "off" is a tough challenge for me. 10 min elliptical, ten min bike, ten min rowing machine (no rest time, all with resistance), then around it again. Then you are supposed to be able to walk. No, I still cannot do ten min on the elliptical rapidly, at the 6 setting. I am in terrible condition I guess - but I can walk all day long without steep hills. Hiking uphill for a couple of hours fatigues me and I do not want to accept that.

My darn siblings hike up the White Mtns. almost every weekend, swim miles, and run half-marathons. But they are nuts...or maybe not. None of them even contemplate retirement and neither do I.

Las Vegas Strip Club Posts Ads Seeking High School Graduates: ‘Pay Your Way Through College’

TS Eliot and Student-Loan Deadbeats: Fashionable Theft

Feds Spend $150,000 to Teach Rural Mainers How to Cook

Why Does author Ursula K. Le Guin Hate Amazon?

Are Evangelicals Winning the World? Why are parts of Germany formerly under the enforced secularism of the Communist party rediscovering charismatic religion?

‘Wounded Warrior’ Charity Fights—To Get Rich

Liberal Author And Princeton Professor Laments The Death Of A Dinosaur

This is where American women find themselves after a century of feminism. The role models for their daughters are lesbians and lunatics, but no one is allowed to mention that these women are lesbians and lunatics.

Building the New Dark-Age Mind - America’s descent into the Dark Ages will not end well. It never has in the past.

The Hartford Way: Keep Raising Taxes In Connecticut

Does Illegal Immigration Explain the Disconnect Between Jobs and Wages?

NYPD Chief Bratton Says Hiring Black Officers Is Difficult Because “So Many Have Spent Time In Jail”…

Rubio Pushes Back Against NYT Story Citing Financial Imprudence

Fun Fact Of The Day: John Kerry’s Yacht Is 87 Times More Expensive, And Over 3 Times The Size Of Rubio’s “Luxury Speedboat”

Nothing More than Feelings: The Liberal’s Policy Yardstick

When Liberal Pieties Collide

The Right Way and Wrong Way to Win the Presidency - Hillary Clinton appears to be taking the easy path. It would be the wrong one

As ISIS brutalizes women, a pathetic feminist silence

Time to be honest about Israel's capital

Inside Mosul: What's life like under Islamic State?