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 am not a big pasta fan, but if you want to try one pasta dish as a primi in Sicily, this is it. Bucatini seems to be the typico pasta for this. Fennell (finocchio) grows wild all over Sicily. A roadside weed.
Recipe here., but, better, a very good instructional video here. The guy claims tinned sardines work as well as fresh, but I dunno. I can buy fresh sardines (and fresh anchovies) here. Anyway, the video makes me hungry.
A theater buff pal tells me that Farinelli and the King is the best Broadway production he has seen in decades.
The castrato Farinelli was the Elvis of the 18th Century. This review says the play is about identity and the terrors of fame. Mark Rylance stars (in his wife's play).
A lovely winter nor'easter today. Dark skies. Got in my hour with trainer anyway this morning. A mainly bench press and deadlift day. Haven't lost electric power so it's a normal work day for me. Kids love our winter nor'easters - "Snow Day!" Dads go to work.
The Cultural Revolution was largely perpetrated by young people told to feel oppressed by their country’s past. Social justice could be achieved only by the destruction of the weight of Chinese culture. Their slogan was “Smash the Four Olds”: old customs, culture, habits, and ideas.
The more government attempts to regulate businesses, the more those will in turn attempt to influence its decisions. (Paraphrase of Bowdoin Political Science professor Jean M Yarborough.)
The original civil war was fought by farmhands and factory workers, freed slaves and young boys turned soldiers; the new civil war is being fought by lawyers in blue or gray suits not with bullets, but with bullet points.
" The European Union is ignoring this trend and soldiering on with what Brussels calls “more Europe”, which often means more interventionism and central planning. And citizens are not happy with this."
Rippetoe is the pro, and I am just an educated amateur but I'd rather see this particular client engaged in a balanced fitness program along with some "nutritional" aka eating guidance. Still, the results are impressive: From Heart Patient to Lifter
But can he run (not jog) a mile? Readers know we favor a balance of HIIT Cardio (total 1/2 hr/wk), Endurance "cardio" (1 hr/wk), serious weights (2 sessions/wk), and calisthenics (2 sessions/wk) for full functional fitness. I doubt that Rippetoe would argue with that, but he is mostly a weights guy. I don't know about our readers, but I find a one-hour calisthenics class to be more challenging - and more satisfying at the end - than anything else I do. They get you jumping and moving like a 16 year-old. The endorphins make you feel like you can take on the world, but you can hardly walk or talk. That tells you that you have done something hard.
Age is no barrier to any fitness pursuit. The body is made to adapt to demands. The discipline to make those stress and dietary demands is the hardest part, but it builds character. No pain, no gain. Best not to wait until you are scared into it by a nasty problem.
There are sins I have entirely given up. Not, however, because I am so holy, but because I got sick of committing them; and tired of the associated self-loathing.
... all weather behavior—whether colder or warmer—becomes a confirmation that man made global warming is real. Or, as Dinesh D’Souza tweeted, “Since heat & cold are both taken as confirmation of global warming, what, if anything, can disprove this supposedly scientific hypothesis?”
Our local Sharp- Shinned Hawks have been daily visitors at our bird feeder. They are picking off innocent sparrows daily. It's a circus out there. Sparrows smash against our windows trying to escape. That's why Mrs. BD terms it a Sharpie-feeder. That's fine me with me because I am a carnivore too, and I like meat rare.
And each morning around 3 AM I hear our neighborhood hoot-owl - a Great Horned - establishing a nesting territory. They have already mated, will lay their eggs in January in the snow and frigid weather in an old crow's nest. That's how they roll, and it works.
The film The Zookeeper’s Wife tells the real-life story of Antonina and Jan Żabiński, a Polish couple who were the directors of the Warsaw Zoo, one of the largest in 1930s Europe. The Żabińskis risked their lives during World War II to save over 300 Jews and underground resistance fighters by providing them with shelter in the zoo’s bombed-out animal enclosures, and in the basement of their villa home.
The Zookeeper's Wife: Interview with Teresa Żabiński below. Proof to me that ordinary people can make life better for others if they decide to. Not through politics - that never works because the game of politics is just about power. Mercy and care is through personal action and it doesn't need to be heroic.
Deads are about picking up heavy stuff, and putting it back on the floor. A basic functional effort and good training for how to pick things up without back strain.
Good technique is essential. Do them wrong (eg lifting with your back istead of your legs) and you can hurt yourself. Do them right - it's not complicated - and your whole body gets stronger including your back. Deadlifts prevent aging! Mrs. BD does them weekly, and swears at by them.
Besides general fitness, just doing 5 sets (including a warm-up set) of heavy deads once-weekly has been great for my posture. Generally finishing with my 6-8-rep max. I only aim for a max one-rep effort every couple of months, just for fun (?). Since I am not a big strong guy, I can probably only get to around 300 with a trap bar at this point, and that is good enough for government work. With a plain bar, my grip tends to fail first. (I do need to work on my grip strength.)
Mens sana in corpore sano. (The former is a tougher challenge than the latter.)
(An important deadlift tip - and for barbell squats too - that is rarely mentioned: Make sure your bowels are well-emptied first. The intra-abdominal pressure gets high with heavy weights, and you do not want an accident. Farts are expected, but...)
Imagine a new president whose first year saw: withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord; wiped out ISIS; reversed hundreds of Obama Administration regulatory overreaches; saw back-to-back quarters of 3 percent economic growth; a stock market gain of over 20 percent; illegal immigration plummeting by more than 50 percent; a sterling originalist appointed to the Supreme Court and a record number of similarly-minded judges to the lower appellate courts; and the most fundamental pro-growth tax reform in 30 years.
50% of max heart rate for an hour? It seems inefficient and not stressful enough for my taste (not to mention boring), but maybe as a once-weekly thing on a day following a strenuous weight session it might be warranted as a form of "active recovery." Or, of course, for beginner exercisers, anorectics, the elderly, or the terminally-sedentary.
At the same time, moving at all is probably a better idea than not moving. It burns no fat (not that you need that) and builds no strength, but certainly helps maintain some minimal degree of endurance and mobility.
I tried to introduce one hour of this sort of thing into my weekly regimen a few months ago as a "recovery day" (with a mix of treadmill, stairmaster, and elliptical) but I just can't stay with it. My body seems to insist on bursting into one-minute sprints in the course of it every several minutes, thus converting it to HIIT. Maybe it's because I am in half-decent shape, but my body just wants to pound it every few minutes instead of slogging along. I guess that's a good effect of my fitness training - energy.
VDH notes the paradox of middle class people filling gyms while immigrants do their physical chores for them. Brawn in an Age of Brains:
Sometime in the 1970s and 1980s, millions of Americans—far more than just those constituting an economic elite—decided that a key to the good life was to be free from, say, the need to cook, watch children, mow the lawn, or rake leaves. Illegal immigration promised cheap help for the upper middle classes that had once been the exclusive domain of the aristocracy. In theory, skipping the gym for four hours a week would provide more than enough time to mow the lawn, prune the bushes, or vacuum the floor. Yet sweaty and studied exercise is often deemed preferable to rote labor, given that it is more scientifically calibrated to making one look and feel better. Repetitive muscular work is not seen as commensurately valuable, whether for the exercise it provides or for its psychic benefits. Yet for all one’s degrees and income, a person can still retain some sense of autonomy and an ability to master the surrounding material landscape, if only for a few hours each week, and to appreciate how the other half lives that does such physical labor for wages. It is a choice...
I get his point, but I do not think that fitness is equivalent to physical labor. Our carpenter lifts weights in the gym with the intention of continuing to be able to carry heavy things at work through his 70s. In my case, I have always done all of the outdoor labor at the HQ and the farm that I have time for (ie weekends), but I never saw any fitness gains from that. It is enjoyable for me, though.
For house-cleaning and laundry, we have two high-energy Polish immigrants who leave everything spotless, neat, and sparkling. Their only requirement of us is that there be no clutter, nothing on the floor, and nothing on any surfaces.
When you have day jobs, nobody wants to spend a weekend house-cleaning and doing laundry. Heck, we even do our workouts Sunday morning before church.
Photo: 
Deads are about picking up heavy stuff, and putting it back on the floor. A basic functional effort and good training for how to pick things up without back strain.
NYT: 
Genetically engineered ‘super-horses’