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 have gotten a kick out of winter bird-feeding since I was a kid. It helps you find out what is around. The birds don't need it, but when it is frigid and there is snow cover, they certainly appreciate it.
Once you begin, though, you should continue the freebies until March because, in your generosity, you have created dependents.
If you have bears around, forget bird feeding.
I do it on the cheap and in a squirrel-wise way. I buy 50 lb. bags of cracked corn or chicken feed and throw a few handfuls around every morning. Ground feeding birds go for it. They might prefer something else, but they go for it when it's cold. It keeps the squirrels busy too. In my squirrel-proof feeder, I just put the more costly whole sunflower seed that I mix with a small amount of niger seed.
If I bothered to put out suet, I would attract more interesting birds but would have Starlings too.
Around here, most of what we see around the food in January are Juncoes, BC Chickadees, WT Sparrows, Cardinals, Blue Jays, Red Bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Titmouse, Carolina Wren, Mourning Dove, Goldfinch, Fox Sparrow, an occasional Song Sparrow. The occasional Sharpie or Red Tail trying to catch the feeder birds. Sometimes House Sparrows and House Finches, but they don't like this food - which is a good thing. Nothing exciting most of the time. I rarely see Purple Finch, Crossbills, Redpolls, Pine Siskins, or a flock of Evening Grosbeaks. I wish they would visit sometime but I am not on the edge of piney woods. In April, blackbirds arrive.
Mine is like the one in the photo with a collapsible plastic perch thing on the bottom. I got the largest I could find so it only has to be refilled every ten days or two weeks.
40:1 I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry.
40:2 He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
40:3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the LORD.
40:4 Happy are those who make the LORD their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods.
40:5 You have multiplied, O LORD my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you. Were I to proclaim and tell of them, they would be more than can be counted.
40:6 Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.
40:7 Then I said, "Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me.
40:8 I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart."
40:9 I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; see, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD.
40:10 I have not hidden your saving help within my heart, I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.
40:11 Do not, O LORD, withhold your mercy from me; let your steadfast love and your faithfulness keep me safe forever.
The extinction of species and genera is the earth's history. In recent history, some extinction has been brought about by mankind, mainly hunting for food. The giant ice-age mammals of North America probably were all hunted out like the White-Tailed Deer in nothern New England are today. Mountains of good meat which seemed endless.
The North American Bison barely escaped that fate, but the European Bison did not.
The sentimentally-sad story of North America's Passenger Pigeon is similar. The complete eradication of those vast, sun-blocking flocks was inconceivable. They were tasty birds, and there were no hunting laws. The smaller, and not large-flocking Mourning Dove stayed around, thankfully. It is tasty too, with a slab of bacon in the oven.
As we and others have documented countless times, the liberal world has gone bonkers over Donald Trump. It is an odd thing: Trump isn’t even a conservative, or wasn’t until recently. Yet liberals have gone nuts over his ascendancy in a way that is unprecedented. They make fools of themselves hour by hour, and, weirdly, don’t seem to notice.
I use "calisthenics" as an umbrella term for exercise which is not heavy weights (except kettlebells) and is not pure cardio. These are exercises which involve bursts of intense cardio combined with muscle use so they contribute to agility, muscle "toning" and "maintenance", power, speed, endurance, coordination, balance - all good things except strength-building.
A good thing about these calis is that they are varied and fun even when they hurt. If it doesn't hurt, you aren't challenging yourself enough. Muscle pain is your friend and ally.
We suggest a total of 1 1/2 to 2 hrs/wk of calis in a 5/hr/week fitness program. There is no need to do them for an hour at a time. Lots of people will do a session of 40 mins of weights and then 20 mins of calisthenics to loosen up. The 2 hours includes 30-second to one-minute rests between sets to catch your breath without lowering your heart rate very much.
We suggest repeating three circuits of each pairing or triplet (3X3 or 2X3) with each individual item to take around 30 to 60 seconds with little to no rest between items in a set so each pairing or triplet takes under ten minutes to complete and recover. Thus about 3-5 circuits in an hour depending on your vigor and fitness. It should take your pulse and/or respiratory rate up to an hour to return to normal after an hour of calisthenics. Your metabolic rate will remain increased for a couple of hours.
Begin with a 5-min cardio warm-up, then some sumos, side stretches, band walks, etc to wake up your body. Below the fold is my list of double and triplet circuits to try. I use each of them every two weeks. Give it a try - you will feel good.
If I were forced to do one part of the Fitness Triad, I would do calis.
nb: Advise no more than one squat routine/day, or burpees and mountain-climbers on the same day. You can do all the planks you want, and mix them up.
Few birds store much fat. Fat adds weight which makes flying inefficient. Generally (with exceptions like ducks), birds burn what they eat during the day for energy and heat.
Most active people over 35 or 40 have at least one physical problem that limits the exercises they can tolerate or that they should do. One of the values an expert trainer can offer is to provide work-arounds, especially after getting the advice info from a medical consultation.
For examples close to home, Mrs. BD had a bum knee, a meniscus repair, but still achy and unstable knee. Could hardly do body-weight leg exercises. After a year of carefully-graded and cautious leg strengthening, she is now pain-free with full mobility and is doing squats, lunges, and deadlifts.
In my case, a traumatic arthritis in one shoulder prevents me from overhead presses and push-ups. There is a knife-like pain which forces the effort to fail and collapse. It's too bad, because those are two excellent compound exercises but there are plenty of work-arounds for shoulder strength with slightly difference force vectors which are pain-free and so probably will not do any further damage to the joint - things like cable rows, lateral raises, and Farmer Walks.
Thus there are work-arounds for almost every frailty so a frailty is not an excuse to become frail.
Since winter has arrived in the Northeast, I thought a couple of pictures from my bonefishing trip in Mexico, back in September were in order. You know, to keep the fisherpersons interested and all that.
This was my first time fly fishing for bonefish. www.costadecocos.com The lodge is in Xcalak, Mexico which if it isn’t the end of the world, you can see it from there. It’s about 12 miles north of the Belize/Mexico border and about a 4.5 hour drive south of Cancun.
I fished an 8 weight with little shrimp patterns. I can tell you unequivocally, this is the hardest technical fishing I have ever done. You need to be able to cast 50 feet into the wind and put the fly in about a 3’ diameter circle when the guide points and says “aqui” “aqui”!
I fished about 5 hours each day (30 minute boat ride from lodge to the back bays) and caught 3 bonefish the first day and 2 the second day. The first day, I know I lost at least three that hooked up but couldn’t land and another 2 on the second day, same thing. There are a lot of bonefish. Lots, but I’d be kidding if I said they are easy to catch. However, you’ll get more chances than you will in the Keys and fishing down in Ol’ Mexico is nowhere near as expensive as Abaco and the Bahamas (where the fish are bigger but get lots more pressure).
The flats are amazing – two to three feet deep at high tide and you see small sharks, rays, barracuda and permit in 18 inches of water. Like most saltwater fishing, you try and catch the tides right as the fish will hold in different spots, depending on an ebb or flood tide and where the baitfish sit. Very, very cool fishing and of course, I now have to work on my Grand Slam of a Bonefish, Tarpon and Permit, all on a fly rod.
Under any circumstances, the rest of the country -- with the exception of a few markets such as Manhattan and downtown Chicago -- could not absorb the costs for housing or the taxes California imposes on its residents and businesses. Part of the reason stems from the fact that California is indeed different; its climate, topography, cultural life cannot be easily duplicated in Kansas City, Dallas or anywhere else. People will pay for the privilege of living in California, particularly along the coast. Would they do so to live in Minneapolis or Charlotte?
“I don’t look past right now,” he said. “Now there’s this fame business. I know it’s going to go away. It has to. This so-called mass fame comes from people who get caught up in a thing for a while and buy the records. Then they stop. And when they stop, I won’t be famous anymore.”
We became aware that a young waitress was standing by diffidently. Dylan turned to her, and she asked him for his autograph. He signed his name with gusto, and signed again when she asked if he would give her an autograph for a friend. “I’m sorry to have interrupted your dinner,” she said, smiling. “But I’m really not.”
Some crackin', breakin' sounds in this recent song, Scarlet Town. Edgy lyrics here. A poor audience recording below but the heating flame adds something hellish. Ominous banjo like in High Water. I don't think Bob has made a recording of it, but maybe.
Dylan mainly on piano these days - arthritis it is said. Sucks to grow old in some ways.
The talent to be a spell-binding storyteller is rare. I suspect that Homer was one of those talents. I have known a couple of talented story-tellers, but most people who try to tell a story just bore you unless it's less than two minutes long.
The ability to write down a story seems to be much more common. Film scripts, short stories, novels, plays are all constantly written but rarely published or performed. It seems to me that written stories do not need high-level wordsmithing to be successful, but high-level wordsmithing can turn the simplest story into art. Shakespeare, for example. Good plays and good TV scripts can do fine with simple conversational dialogue if the tale has a good engine and cool characters.
When I think of wonderful written storytelling with mediocre wordsmithing, I think of people like Tom Clancy and Robert Parker. When I think of extraordinary wordsmithing with uninteresting stories, I think of Updike. When I think of current transcendent prose, cosmic imagination, truthful expression, giant intelligence, knowledge, and life experience - and simple stories raised to the level of art, right now I think of Mark Helprin. Perhaps because I am in the middle of his collection of short stories, The Pacific and Other Stories.
Especially his story about Ralph, the possible baal shem tov, but the story about falling in love on the Staten Island ferry was soul-piercing too. Over the years, he has opened my eyes to many things which I will not recount now.
But back to story-telling. Much of TV writing is formulaic. It has to be. I think The Sopranos was brilliant TV, great story-telling. So was Downton Abbey even though that was more of a chick thing.
For those who are filled with stories to tell, but are not naturals like Mark Twain, there is a now-classic book: The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller by John Truby. It's not a formula except in the broadest sense: he just tells you how all successful stories work. It is like a textbook.
Can the wordsmithing be taught? I dunno. I doubt it, given that the talent is rare and life is short.
10X50 is a bit too much magnification for 90% of birding and for all of sports viewing, but they do have other fun uses, like watching the NoKos watching you across the DMZ.
Lower magnification (ie 7 or at most 8) meets almost all outdoor uses because higher is more than needed and makes it difficult to locate what you're looking for. Larger objective lenses (the second #) admit more light, so they are better for poor lighting conditions. Heavier, too.
Binocular skills are learned by use - those are eye skills. Clarity has to do with lens and prism quality, and that's where the $ comes into the equation.
For long-distance viewing (eg military, nautical, seabirds far off in the water and the like - and certainly for astronomy, you need higher magnification (10X +) and probably larger objective lens but those work best with a binocular or a scope on a mount or tripod.
What is best for watching high-altitude migrating raptors? Some swear by a Zeiss 8X45 or 8X42 with their wide (400 m) FOV (field of view). A wide FOV is desirable for wildlife observation. I have seen that the most experienced and expert wildlife watchers do very well with minimal inexpensive gear, but that's not me.
...what the Obama administration did not say was that such cyber-crimes are by now old hat. Both the Russian and Chinese governments have been hacking into far more important U.S. records and government archives for years without earning retaliation. The administration also did not mention that the election hacking occurred largely because of Podesta’s own carelessness in using his security password. Moreover, it failed to acknowledge that the Republican National Committee was likewise targeted, but apparently had enough safeguards to prevent successful entry into its records...
It's nice to live in a country in which nobody is forced to be physically fit to try to minimize government medical costs, where relatively few work at heavy labor thanks to machines, and in which tasty food is so cheap. Indeed, outside of the major urban centers, one gets the impression that the majority of Americans are lazy slobs and eating machines. That impression is not entirely correct, though, because many fat people are very strong. Not fit, not conditioned, but strong - and strong is the first 1/3rd of fitness and the most difficult to achieve.
A friend spent the holidays down in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge (TN) and reports that he has never seen so many fat lethargic people, and has never seen so many people avidly demolish such volumes of food. "They eat like they're starving," he said, "They live from meal to meal to snack to meal, but they are 50-150 lbs overweight". I said I had heard that Disney is the same.
"Disgusting" just to watch the way they consume food. He said "Down there, there's a gun shop and a food franchise for fatties on every block, and not a gym to be found. The opposite of up here." Yeah, he does like guns and knives as I do, but he is fit as a fiddle too from lifting weights.
Anyway, time constraint is one of the many common excuses (along with It's boring, It's too difficult, My ____ hurts, It's just vanity, It's just vanity and I'm already married, I can't lose weight, I'm too old, I hate gyms, etc etc) for people who say they'd like to get strong and fit but never move a muscle to do it. Hey, I get it. Sloth feels good, sort-of, in some ways, but it is a mortal sin. However, I can attest that deadlifts and barbell squats are far from boring, but it is almost all painful or should be. Good pain, good stress, and good deprivation are under-rated today.
Let's address the time issue (really a rationalization because if you stop by your local gym there are plenty of folks there at 5 am before work). Yes, it is good to use a gym. People with home gyms almost never use them - plus having other people around is inspiring and fun.
And let's say that a fitness program includes the Conditioning Triad - Resistance, Cardio, and Calisthenics...Plus proper nutrition commensurate with level of exertion and weight gain or weight loss goals as desired). That takes care of Strength, Endurance, Power, Energy, Explosive Strength, Heart strength, and General Athleticism. Added bonus: We now know it's good for the brain too. Yeah, Fitness For Life and the only known Elixir of Youth.
Less than 5 hrs/wk for Conditioning for the average non-athlete citizen, male or female, over 15 years old:
- 20-30 minutes of hard, sweaty, painful cardio intervals (HIIT), twice a week. The intervals need to be anaerobic. If you want to do more to up your metabolism, fine - but it's the hard intervals that do it and your calis contain tons of cardio stress too - and long aerobic cardio is a waste of time from a fitness standpoint. If over 80 years old, a few miles of aerobic walking is better than nothing. - 45 minutes of resistance (weights) twice/week. Focus on the Big 5 or Big 6 - 2 hrs. total of calisthenics (body-wt calis, heavy calis, light weights)/wk, mixed in or separately
That's less time than the average person wastes watching TV or movies and farting into the sofa. After one year of it, you can look and feel 3-4 years younger. After 2 years, 8 years younger. It's not about virtue, it's about feeling good and energetic. Or don't bother. Life is short anyway.
Social inequity is the permanent emergency that the left uses to justify its totalitarian state and the perpetuation of social inequity is the means which the left uses to maintain a state of permanent emergency. If one form of social inequity diminishes, the left finds another. And another. This endless search leads to a deconstruction of every aspect of society and the destruction of every human system. Human ways of living are replaced with grafted on artificial modes that fail and destroy their users. And the worse the society becomes, the more the state of permanent social emergency is justified.
In civil societies, showng weakness can be a power play. In uncivil societies, signs of weakness are suicidal.
The Real Housewives of Isis:"Another woman models her new suicide vest for her fellow jihadist wives. “What do you think?” she asks. “Ahmed surprised me with it yesterday.”"
This is mainly for guys, because women generally lack the upper body power for unassisted pull-ups and chin-ups. Guys under age 30 can usually do at least ten, and fit guys can do more with varied grip widths.
Guys over 40, regardless of weight issues, commonly have more trouble due to muscle disuse and decay. The US military considers 20 pull-ups or chin-ups to be a perfect score for that exercise. Few Generals can do that, but I bet Mattis can.
Like all of the Big Functional Exercises, a pull-up stresses many muscle groups. Pull-ups stress upper-body muscles from hands to abs, but the greatest stress is on back muscles - the lats.
To do a pull-up correctly, you do not focus on using your arms but you focus on driving your elbows down. It's not primarily a biceps exercise except secondarily.
To work towards doing some pull-ups if you can't, here's how:
- work on raising the weights on seated pull-downs - jumping pull-ups - pull-ups with those rubber bands
and perhaps most important, Hangs. If you can't hang on, you can't pull yourself up. To work on hanging, you hop up to the bar with an overhand or underhand grip with your elbows down at your sides or as close to that as possible. Suspend yourself as long as you can. Your muscles will slowly (or quickly) give way, but keep suspended as they collapse.
One or two sets of three of those weekly will help you move forward towards the goal of doing just one lousy pull-up with chin above the bar. I do three sets of hangs/wk and three sets of either jumpers or band-assisted weekly. If I can get to 10 pull-ups again, I will be proud of my achievement but I doubt that I will get there. When I was young I could do 15 or more.
I have gotten a kick out of winter bird-feeding since I was a kid. It helps you find out what is around. The birds don't need it, but when it is frigid and there is snow cover, they certainly appreciate it.
Outside Truckee, big rig driver 
Academia
Photo: Salvador Dali and Walt Disney
I use "calisthenics" as an umbrella term for exercise which is not heavy weights (except kettlebells) and is not pure cardio. These are exercises which involve bursts of intense cardio combined with muscle use so they contribute to agility, muscle "toning" and "maintenance", power, speed, endurance, coordination, balance - all good things except strength-building.
Tyler Cowen's 
Newly Discovered Photographs 
A pal commented on our birding binocular post that excellent German Army Hensoldt 10X50s can be found on eBay for reasonable prices. Good optics.
