Friday, July 1. 2016
Delicious summer side dish for meat on the barbie, but it can function as a full meal for me if served on top of some Boston Lettuce:
A pile of cooked white rice (Basmati is best). Or couscous instead.
Cool rice to cool or room temp. Then add:
roughly chopped - peeled and seeded - cucumber
roughly chopped tomatoes
roughly chopped (halved) Greek olives
lots of chopped fresh Italian parsley
not too much chopped fresh oregano
chopped red onion
lots of crumbled feta cheese
(you can add some chopped red, green, and/or yellow bell peppers too if you want.)
Salt and pepper, fresh-squeezed lemon juice to taste, then toss with your best olive oil. Serve cool or room temp.
It's a temple to the true Cocktails. All the history that’s going to die with the Campbell Apartment
By being a hipster-free zone, a quiet, dark, cozy bar filled with sofas where people behave and dress nicely, it had become one of my favorite retreats from the NYC streets. It has been almost like belonging to a fancy NY club, or a real speak-easy down to the gal at the door deciding whether you were appropriate for the place. Cool.
I am skeptical that one more trendy bar scene will support the $1 million/year rent on this little place, but who knows?
As for me, I avoid the glitzy and the trendy. The Apartment, as it will remain for a final month:
 It could not be simpler. Remember the protagonist in Walker Percy's extraordinary Love in the Ruins who lived on them? Dr. Tom More. His brain was constantly fizzing and fizzling.
There's also the Royal Gin Fizz (with an egg), and, of course, the Sloe Gin Fizz if you can find any Sloe Gin around - or any loose Sloes to soak in your gin. Looks like a Beach Plum. Cape Cod Beach Plums would probably work just fine. They are bitter, flavor-packed wild plums. Maybe I will give that a try.
Photo is the Royal.
nb: Some old comments below from our late pal Marianne Matthews. Miss her.
Why Skipping College Was One of the Smartest Decisions of My Life
For Frigate Birds, Staying Aloft for Months is a Breeze
99-Million-Year-Old Bird Wings Found Encased in Amber
Why Do Some Radio Stations Begin With 'K' and Others With 'W'?
Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person
Washington State Schools to Start Promoting Gender Dysphoria to Kindergarteners
Sick, sick, sick
New Barnard College curriculum to teach its female students ‘how to think’
So why do they admit gals who cannot think?
WHY ARE LEFTY INSTITUTIONS SUCH HOTBEDS OF RADICAL INEQUALITY?
Michelle Obama: Why Don’t We Have Football Teams For Girls?
It's oppression!
New Hires at U. Cincinnati Must Prove Commitment to Diversity
Smugglers use Uber-registered drivers to move migrants to U.S. border
A comfortable way to come
Energiewoopsie, Or, What Happens When You Dump Nuclear Power
Scientists Scorn Greenpeace’s Deadly GMO Scare Tactics
Less than 3 in 10 Americans believe the country's headed in the right direction
Do people really want Superstates?
Rationalia - the utopian totalitarianism of experts
The Elites Have Lost The Right To Rule
America’s Latest Epidemic: Bureaucrats with Guns
Brexit Shows Us the Future and It's Great
Judge upholds voter citizenship checks
Good riddance to George Will:
Anglo-American conservatism has never been a single thing. That was the whole point about conservatism, beginning with the British Glorious Revolution of 1699, which helped to define English rights and liberties against a power-grabbing royal house.
This is the drama we just saw play out again in Europe when the Brits revolted against the absurd new Juncker Class, trying to exert Franco-German power over Britain. That Sovietized political machine is not going to give up its drive to dictate the size of cherry tomatoes in Scotland: That is its only mission in life. Without those forty thousand regulations from Brussels, the Euro Soviets would have no function at all.
They are parasites. They do not produce anything useful, anymore than the Soviet Apparat did before the crumbling of the State. Vladimir Putin just pointed out the eerie similarities between the end of Soviet dominance and the end of the EU. That similarity is not an accident. It represents the eternal fight between self-serving power freaks and ordinary people trying to live their lives.
Ordinary Europe has wandered into the ancient trap of deceptive political con artists talking people into giving up their rights and powers. Obama has tried to do the same thing to us.
Mika Rips Media Blackout on Clinton-Lynch Meeting: ‘People Too Afraid to Talk About the Truth’
How Hillary has used donations to the Clinton Foundation as her ‘personal piggy bank’
What Hillary Clinton doesn’t get: It’s the freedom, stupid - Americans have hit a wall of their own, after decades of abuse by the bipartisan ruling class
Hillary Spent $26 Million on Battleground Ads in June – Trump Spent $0 => Leads Hillary by 4 Points
Hillary Clinton’s Absurd Student Debt Forgiveness Plan
Just pandering
How safe is your holiday? Turkey, Egypt and Spain at 'high' risk of terrorist attacks
Why the Generation that Left Egypt Was Kept in the Desert - They looked inside themselves and saw only their own fear, not the confidence needed to make the land of Israel their own.
Senator to 'Post': Congress acts to shut loophole on Palestinian convict stipends
Iran is as belligerent as ever
Thursday, June 30. 2016
A handsome "carriage barn," specifically. I want it.
 Recipe here.
Good on raspberries too, but hold the balsamic. Balsamic is just for strawberries, ramps up even the best strawberry to new heights of strawberriness.
What's Mascarpone?
 Photo: If you know what that is, you are old
Grizzly Bear Kills Mountain Biker Near West Glacier
Army of 1,000 Ducks Used as Brilliant Pesticide Alternative
Plus the duck eggs and the duck dinners
Why police were called to a South Jersey third-grade class party
California Hits the Brakes on High-Speed Rail Fiasco
Warmist guru Michael Mann tells DNC platform committee to use scary
propaganda, not science, to panic voters into accepting flawed theory
“Fundamentally, I’m a climate scientist and have spent much of my career with my head buried in climate-model output and observational climate data trying to tease out the signal of human-caused climate change.
"Tease out"?
Don’t blame Brits for the Brexit: The EU strayed from its roots in
post-war unity to become a neoliberal technocracy
EU Army on way? EU cannot rely on NATO and needs new defence policy says Brussels chief
Time to invade Britain
The Tyranny of the Regulations Equation
Stonewalling Muslim Homophobia - When gay people ally with their killers.
The Fed Is in an Epic Battle With Itself
Why Did Bill Clinton And Loretta Lynch Meet On Her Airplane In Phoenix This Week?
Just to say "Hi"
The FBI Investigation of Hillary: Is the Fix In?
What We Do Know about the Benghazi Attack Demands a Reckoning
A Socialist Les Miserables in Venezuela
Why more nations are reacting to migration with walls
Turkey-Israel Rapprochement
Wednesday, June 29. 2016
 Generally speaking, your body derives little benefit from an exercise itself because exercise (as contrasted with a normal active life) is designed to stress the body, to hurt it, really. That's why going for a hike, playing a round of golf, or playing doubles tennis is not exercise: it's recreation.
The benefits obtained from exertions are obtained during the recovery phase from the stress and damage. This can take a few days, and much longer to repair damaged muscle and to build new muscle fibers and blood vessels and to ramp up neural connections. Progress is thus slow.
The approach I use for recovery is to try for a good diet with high protein and enough carbs so as not to lose weight or maybe to gain some in 5 smallish meals/day, and "active recovery" meaning days of aerobic exercise between days of intense work-outs. Also, days off for pure recreational activities like sports or hiking.
Tuesday, June 28. 2016
Lyme, CT is a quaint little village, perfectly located on the Connecticut River but close to Long Island Sound. I love this 1789 farmhouse and its easily-manageable 6 acres. It's for sale. I want it. Good for boats and birds and plenty of hunting nearby. Perfect.
And, with our friends, church, kids, and complex lives, I would never have time to get there. A shame we can't have everything we like. Even billionaires can't, because time can not be purchased and it is a rare item.
Monday, June 27. 2016
 Inside Silicon Valley’s Robot Pizzeria
Narcissists Get More Dates
PowerPoint Makes Us Stupid - How PowerPoint has killed the art of rhetoric
Bill Maher: Liberals Don't Know Jack About Guns
Alaska rafting deaths highlight response challenges
No it doesn't. Wilderness adventures are not meant to be safe.
At UNC, 'Christmas vacation' is now a microaggression
The Orwellian Charge of the Campus Bias Response Team
Paglia: Transgenderism as a Symptom of Cultural Collapse
Feds: Schools Must Grant Mentally Disturbed Boy Unfettered Access to Girls’ Locker Room
Maine's First Lady Takes Summertime Waitress Job to Pick up Cash
Exercising your right to own firearms now lands you on a federal database in Hawaii
Once Again Obama Argues We Need Illegal Immigrants Because They “Make Our Beds”
The House unveils its Obamacare replacement plan—and have you heard about it?
(George) Will to Irrelevance
Everything Is Broken - Cynicism is the cancer at the heart of this election year.
Despite Market Turmoil, Britain Was Right To Brexit
Brexit’s success is unsurprising
EU To Launch Kettle And Toaster Crackdown After Brexit Vote
The EU's olive oil rules
From Crooked Cucumbers To Powerful Vacuum Cleaners, The Barmy EU Rules Britain Is Now Free Of
Shop starts selling meat in pounds and ounces after Britain voted to leave the EU
The Certainty of even More and More Disturbing Power Grabs by the EU
Moonbat Reduced to Tears by Brexit
"When
asked 'Where are you from?' almost no one would answer 'Europe,'
because after 50 years of assiduous labor by the eurocrats, Europe
remains a continent, not an identity."
Basta Ya, Brussels! British Voters Reject EU Corporate Slavestate
Brussels simply went too far. They cross the line moving from an economic union to a political subordination of Europe. Now eight more countries want to hold referendums to exit the EU – France, Holland, Italy, Austria, Finland, Hungary, Portugal, and Slovakia all could leave.
Conrad Black: A fresh start for Europe
This is not a vote against Europeans or even against Europe, nor will it divide the U.K. as the ungracious Remainers are saying. It is a vote for Britain to be governed by the British and to co-operate closely and fairly with the European countries. It is not really a vote to leave, but a vote to renegotiate for the next two years. Gove and Johnson are broad-minded, fair-minded modern Thatcherites, and they will strike the right balance between defence of British domestic interests and retention of good relations with the European powers. Prime minister Edward Heath threw Britain’s lot in with Europe, and put the Commonwealth over the side. Thatcher bet on the special relationship with the U.S., and she and Ronald Reagan were the principal victors in the Cold War, but that relationship couldn’t survive the last two American presidents. Britain has come full circle.
Abbas Goes Off Deep End, And Even the NYT Can’t Overlook It
'move jungle to uk' - Calais mayor sparks furious row after demanding that squalid migrant camp be moved to Britain
Sunday, June 26. 2016
Cook up a batch of couscous. Thin slice or matchstick a bunch of zucchini and/or summer squash. Chop up a bunch of fresh mint - enough to make it minty. Whisk some fresh lemon juice with olive oil and salt and pepper. Mix together, serve at room temp.
To make it even more Sicilian, include some chopped pistachios and there you have the classic Sicilian ingredients: couscous, lemon, mint, olive oil, and pistachio. All it's missing is pignolis - but a recipe is either pignolis or pistachios - not both.
You want measures? When you cook Sicilian (or Italian, for that matter), you eyeball it and taste it. Just keep it light, not soggy with oil.
Now back to my gardening chores. Damn weeds, I live to kill them. Need to water the tomatoes again and tie them up again too, trim the wisteria, and shave the boxwoods. That's how the gentry become rednecked on a beautiful cloudless day like this - proud bitter clingers.
Luke 9:51-62
9:51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.
9:52 And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him;
9:53 but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.
9:54 When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?"
9:55 But he turned and rebuked them.
9:56 Then they went on to another village.
9:57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."
9:58 And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."
9:59 To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."
9:60 But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."
9:61 Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home."
9:62 Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."
The writer Francine Prose traveled with three generations of family to one of her favorite places on earth and wondered: Can you ever go back again?
Saturday, June 25. 2016
I refer to the Fitness Triad frequently. Maybe I should trademark it unless somebody else has.
Our modern notions of fitness go back to the ancient Greeks, and probably back to the earliest hominids for whom fitness was necessary for survival. In modern times, what I call "Fitness for Life" is more self-preoccupied, some might call it narcissistic, than fitness was for the farmers, hunters, shepherds, ironsmiths, builders, masons, and soldiers of the past. Modern fitness efforts are simply about staying as physically fully-functional for as long as you can for ordinary life activities and for play.
Sooner or later, something will strike you down, cripple you or kill you but, until then, why not give life your best shot? I know we all want to be strong, to look good, and to remain vigorous and competent for whatever comes our way.
The Triad is Strength, Cardio, and Calisthenics, but Strength is the foundation of the triangle because the best use of the other two depends on it. Proper nutrition - having neither too little physical structure, nor excess fat - is a separate topic.
Continue reading "The Fitness Triad"
 If you are from New Jersey, do you term this food-like product Taylor Ham or Pork Roll?
How Dunkin' Donuts changed the dictionary
Shaidle: Is This Pope Catholic?
WSJ: The Book of Job’s Big Question - Why are innocents made to suffer? One reading might see Job as a devastating text.
Walmart has a problem that's threatening profits — and it's driving police nuts
Climate and Human Civilization for the Past 4,000 Years
To please Muslims, Shall we burn our books and empty our museums?
Report: Released Criminal Aliens Committed Nearly 10 Times More Crimes Than Obama Admin. Told Congress
NY DEM Charlie Rangel – Law Abiding Citizens Don’t Need Guns – But He Does
Even Some Liberals Disgusted by Congressional Sit-In Farce
Coyote: Government, Arrogant Ignorance, and the Power of Incentives
Stockman: In Praise Of Ignorant Politicians…..Unschooled In Beltway Delusions
“Absence of legitimacy is the EU’s main feature."
Britain Exits, Democracy Lives, And Everything Has Changed - A dispatch from liberated London.
HOW BREXIT WILL CHANGE AMERICA AND THE WORLD - Britain is free of global government. America can be next.
Brexit and Trump v Clinton got you down? The good news is we still know how to fix things.
Sessions on Brexit: "The interests of powerful international corporations, media, special interests, and leftist international forces are not coterminous with those of our people.
How Immigration Fueled the Brexit Result
FLASHBACK: UK Prime Minister Cameron Warns Brexit From EU Could Lead to WORLD WAR
Worldwide popular revolt confirmed by Brexit vote:
Britain is leaving the European Union. But that reality doesn't begin to tell the story of the larger historical forces at work that are reshaping global politics, the global economy, and global culture and have been for much of the last decade...
Why Brit Islamist supported Remain
Hillary IT Guy Pleads The 5th 125 TIMES In A 90 Minute Deposition
Right thing to do
Revolting: Sheryl Sandberg is now part of Lena Dunham’s Girl Squad
A big group of major business leaders just endorsed Hillary Clinton
The bad moon rising over Hillary
Friday, June 24. 2016
Brits vote to leave the Borg. Elites horrified, peasants pleased. Regular folks like Nigel. Farage's life's work comes to fruition with stunning Brexit vote as he lauds a 'new dawn' for Britain outside the EU and calls for new bank holiday to mark UK's 'Independence Day.'
Have a whiskey on us, Nigel.
Thursday, June 23. 2016
Reviewed: Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False:
Though an exceptionally short book, Mind and Cosmos is nevertheless, in one respect, extraordinarily ambitious. Nagel proposes not merely a new explanation for the origin of life and consciousness, but a new type of explanation: “natural teleology.” If psychophysical reduction is implausible, as Nagel has always insisted, then no materialist neo-Darwinian explanation will ever be satisfactory. The apparent alternative, a theistic-intentional account (i.e., intelligent design by a divinity), does not appeal to Nagel. He simply lacks, he explains, any sense of the divine. His interest is in the territory between the two: a secular account that allows for the emergence of mind as mind...
How Subarus Came to Be Seen as Cars for Lesbians
For More Children, Puberty Signs Start at 8
I blame climate change
A Scientist, A Sprinter, And A Sumo Wrestler Attempt To Cross A Human-Sized Cockroach Trap (video)
Reporter goes to shop to buy gun - gets rejected because he's a reporter because of domestic violence
Unfair “Fair Housing" - The new Obama administration policy to “deconcentrate” poverty is a threat to communities.
Butler won her award for writing:
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.
Shock Report: Blacks Commit 11 Times More Homicides than Whites in America
Mostly other black people
Scott Adams: Why Gun Control Can’t Be Solved in the USA
Honor and politics
Politics is not an honor society
House Dem: Constitution was designed to increase government power
Sheesh
No Fly, No Buy' Means No Freedom: New at Reason - If the government can take away our natural rights to travel and self-defense, can other fundamental rights be far behind?
If the government secretly can put an American's name on a secret list and, as a result, his liberty is lost, then there are no freedoms—just government-granted privileges. And if it can do this to the natural rights to travel and self-defense, can other fundamental rights be far behind?
TV Reporters Laugh At Hillary For Avoiding Questions
Anatomy of the terror threat: Files show hundreds of US plots, refugee connection
Afghan War Rules Leave U.S. Troops Wondering When It’s OK to Shoot
Wednesday, June 22. 2016
No, it's not a request for donations.
What the heck is this tree seen in bloom on a walk with Mrs. BD and pup last weekend? Small tree growing on a riverbank, and last year's seed pods still hung on it looking like vanilla beans. Large almost grape-looking leaves.
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Photo: If you know what that is called, you're old 
Bluegrass Legend