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.
Half or more of The Guardian is difficult to distinguish from the Babylon Bee. Seems to me that their specialty to beclown themselves much of the time.
The apple is an import from the Chinese mountains. The pie idea has been around since there was flour - probably the Sumerians put some fruit or meat inside some dough.
In my view, the nurseryman Johnny Appleseed, aka John Chapman -(photo) did us all a great favor. I am not a big fan of fruit, but most people are. Well, I like cooked fruit in desserts because fruit is nothing but sugar anyway.
The idiot who wrote the Guardian article clearly did not know that pumpkins came from Mexico, not from England. Pumpkins, and all squash, were appropriated from Central American farmers by North American natives - and by the Spanish too. Shame on them.
For me, I prefer a Tarte Tatin with a hard caramelized crust to an apple pie. With some ice cream (invented in Egypt). Is that un-American of me?
As Sex Pistol John Lydon put it: 'I never thought I'd see the day when the Right would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the Establishment and the Left become the snivelling self-righteous ones going around shaming everybody.'
I'm interested in what our readers do for calisthenics, and whether they do them on separate days or just mix them in with weights days and cardio days.
I include recreational sports (other than running, biking, or swimming) as calisthenics.
Calisthenics are about agility, endurance, general fitness, athleticism, balance, and things like that. Our list and variety is long. Some of them: Pushups, pullups, planks, heavy ball throws, burpees, body-weight squats, inclined pulls, Farmer walks, sled pushes and pulls, jumping jacks, band walks, step-ups, box jumps, lunges. As we've said often, just 3 hrs of calis/wk, with nothing else, is a lot better than nothing.
4:26 He also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground,
4:27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.
4:28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.
4:29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."
4:30 He also said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?
4:31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth;
4:32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."
4:33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it;
4:34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
ProPublica compared the amount of taxes paid by these people not to their earned income but to the amount their wealth grew during the period in question. That’s not an analysis of their incomes but their wealth. So, what ProPublica is engaged in isn’t a dive into our tax code but a speculative lobbying effort in favor of taxing wealth.
Complex resistance exercises (in contrast to isolation exercises) are the best for strength and fitness. (Complex reistance exercises are those which require multiple muscle groups to work at once.)
There are several reasons, but for me time efficiency comes first. Second, it's more natural in life for different muscle groups to work together.
No single exercise counts as a full body strength workout, but the deadlift comes closest to that.
A friend reported back to me about his fly fishing trip in the Maine wilderness a week or two ago. No fish stocking goes on up there, and all fishing was catch-and-release, no barbs.
His report is that in a couple of days they caught about 70 Brookies, from fingerlings up to full-size (10-12").
4:13 But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture--"I believed, and so I spoke" --we also believe, and so we speak,
4:14 because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence.
4:15 Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
4:16 So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.
4:17 For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure,
4:18 because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
5:1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
I have claimed, rightly or wrongly, that there are no wild-bred Brook Trout in the northeast US. To persuade me otherwise, I'd need to see a photo of some fingerlings in a stream.
There are two main issues:
The foremost is that most streams become too warm in summertime to support a Brook Trout population. That has always been true. (Yes, Brookies are the only species native to the Northeast US. They like cold water). Hatchery trout can survive in springtime, for a while, in non-trout streams.
Second issue is predators, and the worst is the introduced (from Europe) Brown Trout. That fish will eat any baby fish or fish eggs it can find. They prefer meat to bugs. I oppose any stream stocking with Brownies unless they are streams that would never support Brookies anyway. The ordinary fish predators like mink and otters can be put up with but always kept the Brookies at low numbers everywhere they could breed.
Given the popularity of fly-fishing, it's up to states to decide what their stocking programs should be. I get it. Fly-fishing is a beautiful experience and it is assumed that pretty much all stream- stocked fish will either be caught, fall to predation, or die from heat by June or July because they no longer have breeding populations to support hundreds of anglers. Stocking is required to accommodate all of the avid springtime anglers. Even the southern US states have been doing this.
Everything these days sounds like satire. This is not: 
Clockwork 
GMO Fish Coming Soon? AquaBounty 
I hope you don’t
Image: An old Dylan poster 
