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.
I can’t fathom the naiveté required to believe that this egregious double standard—i.e., tribal identity for everyone except white males—will end in harmony rather than disaster. It horrifies me to ponder the gullibility you’d need to think that one day, all women and nonwhites will suddenly say, “It’s cool, white dudes—we’re even. The score is settled. The historical scales are balanced. Everyone’s equal now.” Anyone with the most basic grasp of human nature knows that people never truly grow out of infancy—both as individuals and in groups, they will grab more and more candy until someone finally prevents them.
The American Robin is actually a woodland thrush. People used to hunt and eat them. From a reader this week. Look at those egg sacks on that fat (European immigrant) worm:
If she wants to topple herself, she just might. Dems need a candidate with integrity, regardless of leftiness.
Related: Mrs. Clinton and the 1 Percenters. Nothing against money, but $200 million in the bank and 2 billion in a personal foundation ain't bad for a life dedicated to public service. Dems need a credible candidate.
Our (too-occasional) contributor Gwynnie sends me an email. Something like "We will be out of town, change of plans. Will you all be willing to fill in for us to host a small, semi-formal luncheon for Luis Palau after church?"
Well, I will do anything for Gwynnie and his family, and they for us, but that is an honor and a treat. You betcha.
G noted that the hispanic workers will be delighted. Well, sure - but not just them. Luis Palau. We'll just sit back, shut up, and listen to the conversations.
This is not nearly as funny as the Yale vs. North Carolina soccer shoot-out. But since News Junkie stumbled on Studio C, the group of young comedians who made Scott Sterling famous across the globe, I thought my fellow farmer would enjoy this skit. The ending is in his sweet spot.
They've been invaded enough. New word for invaders: migrants. Like the migrants at the gates of Vienna - but they brought coffee! Starbucks! to Vienna.
It's not either-or. Hospitals are looking for good ratings and market share. It definitely can go to ridiculous lengths and it remains a good rule of thumb that the hospitals with the best "hotel services" are not the most medically-advanced. And sometimes the "most advanced" can get you into new problems.
A measly 15 percent of that, or $75 million, went towards programmatic grants. More than $25 million went to fund travel expenses. Nearly $110 million went toward employee salaries and benefits. And a whopping $290 million during that period — nearly 60 percent of all money raised — was classified merely as “other expenses.” Official IRS forms do not list cigar or dry-cleaning expenses as a specific line item. The Clinton Foundation may well be saving lives, but it seems odd that the costs of so many life-saving activities would be classified by the organization itself as just random, miscellaneous expenses.
The left is like a suicide bomber or a honey bee, it can’t win. It can only kill and die. A successful leftist regime is a contradiction in terms. The hard revolutions blow up fast and then decay into prolonged misery. The soft electoral revolutions skip the explosions and cut right to the prolonged misery.
Europe went Full Socialist and gave up. Carter’s malaise has been a reality in Europe for generations. What was four years in America was forty years in Europe. The American left’s great ambitions; bureaucratic rule, international impotence, national health care, endless education, environmental correctness and childbirth replaced by immigration were realized in Europe. And they killed Europe.
I couldn’t buy her a birthday present. I have no money. That is to say: there is no money. Money can’t be had.
I have seen money. Felt it in my hand. I have wasted it one day and built temples to my fellow man the next with money, with no good reason to do either. I have watched it slumber in a bank book with my name on it waiting for nothing more than a notion and a signature. All gone. Gone for good, I think but must not say. She hears everything I say. I utter the sounds but I don’t listen to what I’m saying
Shortly after I was born, my father was shipped off by the Navy to live at Subic Bay Naval Station, where I spent the first two years of life. During that period, my mother took classes in Japanese art. Our homes, even after we returned to Philadelphia, always had some kind of Japanese artwork on display. When I bought my first apartment, my sister ound one of my mother's works, had it framed, and delivered it to my home. It still hangs on the wall of my man-cave in the basement.
I've always had some kind of Asian influence, either art or literature, in my life. I suppose it's the result of my parents' years in the Philippines and then my father's subsequent time in Micronesia after their divorce. We children always received some kind of books or other material from his travels.
Recently, my sister commented that she'd taken my mother and half-sister to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see the Kano Exhibit. I was jealous, until she told me it was a four-part exhibit due to the nature of the material. Yesterday, we drove down and joined them for part 2 - Ink and Gold.
The Big Idea: California Is So Over - California’s drought and how it’s handled show just what kind of place the Golden State is becoming: feudal, super-affluent and with an impoverished interior.
I believe that to read poetry, one must have a mind of poetry. You must enter a state where you come to understand meaning-resistant arrangements of language as having their own kind of meaning. It’s quite similar to those Magic Eye posters from the ‘90s: If you haven’t figured out how to look at them, you can’t believe that anyone really sees the dolphin. (This metaphor has its limits, making learned skill seem like an on/off conversion; too, with poetry, even when you’ve mastered “the trick,” not everyone sees the same thing.)
"Mind of poetry." I like that. A floaty state of mind to get into.
Most exercise is a terrible and inefficient way to lose weight if you are too heavy or fat. Just think about it: A four-five mile high-speed walk will barely burn off the calories in a donut, muffin, or bagel (with the cream cheese, add another few miles). You would have to walk all day, every day, to lose weight.
Remember, all carbs=sugar and yes, that includes the carbs in beans, peas, corn, carrots, potatoes, yams - all the high-carb "veggies." We feed those things to farm animals to fatten them for slaughter. Some people get wacky about sugar, but human digestion turns all carbs into plain sugar so there is lots of physiological ignorance out there about "complex carbs" and so forth. So-called "complex carbs" just get turned into sugar more slowly.
Nature designed us to love carbs because nature expected us all to be poor and half-starving on the African savannah. If you have excess fat which bothers you or slows you down, you do not need hardly any carbs. You do need some fatty meats, though, or other fats like olive oil.
If happy with your physical condition and level of conditioning, please ignore all of this.
I've been following Bird Dog's fitness renewal program which is not designed for weight loss but to convert fat weight to muscle weight, and I approve of it. A bonus of that sort of high-intensity program (which I have done for a few months in the past to rapidly get back to fighting condition after periods of relative sloth, such as after childbirth, to get back my 28 year-old weight and fitness) is that it can help a fellow survive a male's almost-inevitable MI by building up collateral cardiac blood supply.
While high-intensity work-outs will burn fat (but only if on a carb-restricted diet), the main things they build are aerobic capacity and endurance, agility, a feeling of youthful vigor, and muscle fitness if not muscle power. Those are all good things. (Gross muscle power development - body-building - requires heavy lifting instead of reps and is more about appearance than fitness. A harmless hobby for some.)
I am not saying they are crooks. I'm just asking whether, if you are a reasonably-informed person, they are worth the cost?
John Bogle did not convince me. Reality did. I am a Vanguard guy and I never speak with them. I trust their people with their bond funds more than I would trust myself.
However, help with financial planning is always good.
An oldie. Best line: "Bruce wanted me to work on my triceps. I don’t have any triceps!"
This is dedicated to every woman who ever attempted to get into a regular workout routine:
Dear Diary... For my fiftieth birthday this year, my husband (the dear) purchased a week of personal training at the local health club for me. Although I am still in great shape since playing on my high school softball team, I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and give it a try. I called the club and made my reservations with a personal trainer I’ll call Bruce, who identified himself as a 26 year old aerobics instructor and model for athletic clothing and swim wear. My husband seemed pleased with my enthusiasm to get started. The club encouraged me to keep a diary to chart my progress...
When true Christian faith in a culture is weak-to-absent, superstition fills in that vacuum. One of the main vectors of superstition in the post-modern, post-Christian west is this business of obsessing about food.
I do not think food is the main post-Christian preoccupation, but it does seem common in the higher socio-economic classes. These are often the educated who missed Physiology 101 and Biochem 101. Think Whole Foods and "organic" farming. I think we have been clear on this site that most dietary preaching here is about weight loss, not general health. Nobody can define a "healthy" human diet, as we are omnivores which means we can thrive on anything digestible. In America, we are blessed with cheap and abundant food of all sorts and spend a lower percentage of our funds on tasty food than anywhere else in the world. Thus many people eat more than they need, for fun.
As I have said, I have seen 6'3" football players who grew up on nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, and the occasional hot dog.
20:19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."
20:20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
20:21 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
20:22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.
20:23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
20:24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.
20:25 So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."
20:26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."
20:27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe."
20:28 Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"
20:29 Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
20:30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.
20:31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
Pic: Mr. Volcano in Chile celebrates Earth Day with megatons of CO2 and air pollution, via 
Star Wars: 
The Environmental Insane Asylum
'Ban GMOs: That Shit Ain’t Food' - 
Most exercise is a terrible and inefficient way to lose weight if you are too heavy or fat. Just think about it: A four-five mile high-speed walk will barely burn off the calories in a donut, muffin, or bagel (with the cream cheese, add another few miles). You would have to walk all day, every day, to lose weight.
Over the years, I am convinced that it is.