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.
No One Has A Right To A Bathroom - If
the Obama administration is going to demand toilets be open to all
comers, the McDonald’s in Chinatown has some ‘splaining to do.
A Luxurious Adventure Vacation in a Place You’d Never Expect - Israel’s Negev Desert isn’t just home to Ramon Crater, a spectacular, otherworldly playground for biking and hiking, but it’s also where you’ll find one of the country’s most pampering resorts
For the last three decades, at least, it has been a closed system with no real competition. Both sides debated how much socialism and cultural Marxism they would inflict on the country. The Left would open the debate at 10 and the Right would offer 5 and they would settle in between. That’s how we went from telling AIDS jokes to jailing Christian bakers in the blink of eye. There was never a competition.
It's Folk with Rock-Blues drooped over it. That's Mike Bloomfield on lead guitar. Cool guitar, more flashy I think than the suave Robbie Robertson. Bob, always in motion, never stagnant, never staying put. Good stuff. 1965.
To inspire those who might like some calisthenics in their fitness routine:
- A three-set circuit of box jumps, squat-and-pull unbalanced bar reps, heavy ball smashes, burpees, and jumping jacks
- A three set circuit of sideways box jumps, unbalanced push bar reps, and floor ladder drills on hands and toes
- A three set circuit of box step-ups, ladder agility drills, and jump rope drills (regular, running man, and speed changes. I can't do arm shifts or doubles yet but these are my jump goals. 13 year-old boys can do amazing things with jump rope but I can't compete with that).
That took one hour, dripping sweat all over the floor. Mrs. BD and I agree that an hour of calisthenics is more exhausting than an hour of weights but you bounce back quicker. Calisthenics are not so much for strength-building as for muscle use and maintenance, agility, balance, core-strengthening, endurance, and cardio. Or, as we say, general athleticism. Good things for the middle-aged but I think the urban youth need these things too. That's why many of them love the demands of Crossfit.
Touche. Funny. I guess I am stuck with The Donald, for better or worse. Just wish he would read the Constitution and some other things, including Maggie's Farm website.
The Democratic base has become more liberal—we all know this part—but in a way the Republican base has, too. Or rather it is certainly busy updating what conservative means. The past few months, in state after state, one thing kept jumping out at me in primary exit polls. Democrats consistently characterize themselves as more liberal than in 2008, a big liberal year. This week in Indiana, 68% of Democratic voters called themselves liberal or very liberal. In 2008 that number was 39%. That’s a huge increase.
Very good points, but the Repub party has rarely been thoroughly Conservative in ideology
The “passions” we see seething through a Trump rally are the anger at elites of both parties who for years now have talked down to the people, dismissed their legitimate concerns, and sneered at their ignorance, even as they pander to privileged minorities or appease the Democrats. They see criticism of Trump, whether intended or not, as criticism of themselves, yet another patronizing dismissal of their grievances. The backlash against political correctness that Trump has brilliantly exploited is the obvious focus of this anger at politicians who are supposed to be on their side, but who always find excuses to cede the high ground to the other side. Why else would the Senate confirm Loretta Lynch as Attorney General, especially after she told the Judiciary Committee that she viewed Obama’s unconstitutional amnesties as “legal”? Was it because she was eminently qualified, or because she is a black woman?
Some will dispute these assertions as misleading or false, but whether they are true or not is irrelevant. Politics is about perception. How else did a cipher like Barack Obama get elected twice? In 2008 he was perceived to be a racial healer, the smartest president ever, a “no red state, no blue state” unifier, and a brilliant orator. None of these perceptions turned out to be remotely true. The second time it was partly because 81% of voters perceived him to “care about people like me,” while only 18% felt the same about Mitt Romney, one of the most fundamentally decent and kind men ever to run for president. Trump seems to get that perceptions and passions come first, and policy can be figured out later. To a greater or lesser degree, this has pretty much been true in all presidential elections. Trump has simply discarded the decorum that camouflages the truth about political sausage-making.
Trump is the warning shot. He’s the food riots before the revolution. He’s the stack of letters to the editor in protest over some issue. People do not go from happy to bloody revolt overnight. It’s a process and the early stages are warnings, at least they should be viewed as warnings. If the people in Washington insist on flooding the country with helot labor, despite what’s happening in the election, the people are going to insist on building scaffolds in Washington. The Trump phenomenon is the warning.
How difficult was it to run America’s foreign policy during an era of virtually unquestioned dominance? Why—with so many advantages—have our elites produced so many failed policies? And why do they feel no shame? No matter how many individual positions he changes, Mr. Trump will never satisfy the architects of these massive mistakes or, for that matter, their ardent supporters on editorial boards and television screens. To be clear, it is entirely appropriate to criticize Mr. Trump’s views or, for that matter, his temper. Both have long been important components in our electoral politics. What is not appropriate is to attempt to shut down public discussion of critical national issues.
This
is How Democrats Will Absolutely Destroy Donald Trump if He’s the
Nominee - See more at:
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/05/this-is-how-democrats-will-absolutely-destroy-donald-trump#sthash.Swnlod14.dpuf
Guru–the
most important free market movie ever made? - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/05/guru.html#sthash.YrGwG2Cp.dpuf
Standardized
Test Discontent Spreads Across the Nation - See more at:
http://educationblog.ncpa.org/standardized-test-discontent-spreads-across-the-nation/#sthash.bcJ9FteQ.dpuf
I know many of those who voted for Trump, and they are by no means stupid, irrational, racist or anti-democratic. They are frustrated with politics as usual and they are taking their constitutional rights seriously by voting for change.
Second, Trump says what many of us have come to believe is true: that the Iraq War was a tragic mistake that shouldn’t be replicated. He was the only candidate to be so explicit in his denunciation, and I think it helped him with a big chunk of voters.
Third, he has a clear message on the economy that resonates: The middle class is getting screwed because the political class is looking out for their interests rather than for the broader interests of the American people. From being open to increasing taxes on the very wealthy to expressing concerns about trade deals to promising to protect Social Security, Trump is stating clearly that he will change the direction of the American economy.
I am not of the opinion that a Trump candidacy will do long-lasting damage to the party or the country. I guess that’s why I am not part of the conservative intelligentsia.
When you stress your muscles sufficiently with resistance training, you damage muscle. This only happens with extreme stress to failure and beyond. Not high reps, but heavy weights. High reps are mainly maintenance and toning.
Muscle (but not heart muscle) only grows stronger in the repair, or recovery, process, which can take a week. Without damage, there is no strength-building.
Early on in my resistance training I realized that I was not getting enough protein for good repair. Feeling tired and weak. A hard boiled egg (8 gms of protein) and a glass of milk (8 gms) was not enough. For your maximum strength-building efforts, you probably need 100+ gms of protein/day for repair and reconstruction.
As long as I am in the intense strength-building phase of things (almost 12 months now with a few to go), I am sticking with these meathead drinks in the photo for breakfast.
40 gms. is a good start towards 100 with a heavy shot of protein after your barbell squats, deadlifts, bench presses, pull-ups, dips, etc. You get used to the lousy flavors.
You can make your own sort of thing cheaper with whey powder, some blueberries, some milk, and a blender.
If you do not push and pull weights to the point of good damage, 100+ gms/day is not necessary at all. For maintenance, not needed either. Maintenance efforts do no muscle damage and just keep things working.
...how culture wars are lost: through the slow accumulation of individually defensible but collectively unjustifiable decisions not to resist. It’s the decision that objecting during diversity training simply isn’t worth the hassle. It’s the decision not to say anything when you see a colleague or fellow student facing persecution because of their beliefs. It’s a life habit of always taking the path of least resistance, keeping your head down, and doing your best to preserve your own family and career. The small fights don’t matter anyway, right?
I recently spoke to a mid-level executive at a major corporation who had been forced to sit through mandatory “inclusivity” training. The topic was transgender rights, and the trainer proceeded to spout far-left ideology as fact, going so far as to label all who disagreed with the notion that a man can become a woman “transphobic.” I asked if anyone objected to any part of the training, and the response was immediate. “Are you crazy? No one wants to deal with HR.”
...trade is a good thing, but only when it is a net positive to the American people as a whole. Deals that allow plutocrats to shift their costs to the public so they can privatize profits are not good deals. Trump pointing that out does not make him a protectionist. It makes him a realist. It’s the innumerate phonies, clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, desperately trying to shut off these debates, who are divorced from reality. Trade, like all pubic policy, is about trade-offs. Those trade-offs are debated in a healthy society.
We are entering a disruptive era driven by extraordinary levels of human creativity. A new generation of curious, strong-willed and talented individuals is unhindered by convention or the past. This new “Indigo” generation is now shaping tomorrow’s economy and creating national wealth. I use the term Indigo because it has been used to refer to children with special or unusual abilities. This is an era where abnormally talented individuals and entities are now able to realize new levels of human potential and economic achievement.
...
This new Indigo era undermines the hypothesis that depletion of natural resources is imminent. The innovative potential of developed countries has allowed people to find alternatives to any such shortage. This does not mean that the world no longer requires natural resources. But it eliminates the real or imagined shortage of those resources and deprives commodity exporters of what have been super profits. Oil and gas was the last bastion of these bottlenecks and it too has crumbled, thanks to Indigo economies.
The main source of national wealth is not the resource rent but the social infrastructure that allows every person to realize his or her intellectual and creative potential. It is for this reason that Exxon, once the world’s largest company, has been overtaken by Apple and Google. This represents a paradigm shift in which creative, non-linear thinking and random ideas are turned into new scalable services in a short space of time.
Amusing piece by Ott. The author of the NYT article has not spend much time on ships. As one who has probably had the pleasure of traveling on ships and boats much more than the average (not including those who served in the USN), I have a few thoughts:
- Travel by ships and boats is a wonderful thing to do. Being at sea is a delight, regardless of weather. Do not cruise the Caribbean. It's a silly thing to do, I feel, unless you go to gamble. - There are less-expensive mass market cruise lines, and there are "luxury" lines. They are quite different in "atmosphere". - Regardless of the line, you get what you pay for on a given boat. Same as a hotel. If you want to pay for a suite, you can usually get one. - Older ships did indeed have three classes. When we were kids, we used to sneak into First Class to check it out. With 5 kids (and thus 3 cabins) no way my Dad was going to pay for First. - I strongly dislike the mass market cruise lines with their giant Vegas-style hotels on barges. I advise avoiding them. It is not a great experience.
If you want to cruise in comfort with pleasant, interesting people, instead of getting a fancy suite on a tacky ship I have better choices below, and good discounts can be had if they don't have a full ship. These boats (except for Windjammer) have either explicit or implicit dress codes) :
Holland America Line is neither mass-market nor extreme luxe. No classes. Very gracious and civilized with wonderful trips
Whistleblower:
Cockroaches Served for Dinner at Chicago-Area VA Hospital - See more
at:
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/04/whistleblower-cockroaches-served-for-dinner-at-chicago-area-va-hospital#sthash.daXFAWgF.dpuf
It is true that if you jog a mile three times/wk for a month you can add another mile the next month, and so on until you hit your limit (or the limit of available time). That's fine, but far from efficient endurance training.
It's good to see that the media is finally catching up with what exercise physiologists have known for decades: Mild-moderate aerobic cardiorespiratory/cardiovascular ("Cardio") exercising does not lead to much improvement (but it's better than sitting):
At the ordinary gym, you will see many people diligently, virtuously, monotonously, putting in their 45-60 minutes on treadmills, bikes, ellipticals, rowers. You will see joggers doing the same outdoors. They will not lose weight by doing that, they will not get stronger doing that, and it can only benefit (and then, only slightly) a damaged heart in cardiac rehab.
The American Heart Association doesn't tell you that. It's not their narrative. They are still telling people to avoid fats, so that tells you how out of touch they are.
This will surely be the most entertaining election in US history, and probably the most pointless, too. After all, Hillary wants to use government to make Government Great Again. And Trump promises to use government to make America Great Again.
With Springtime finally upon us up here, the skis are put away and the hiking boots come out.
When people get out of town, they want and need to get off the sofa and hiking in the woods and mountains. Here are a few ideas for tougher, and easier, hikes:
Squats are among the Big Five or Big Six essential multi-muscle strength conditioning exercises. Contrary to what this lady implies, it's not for "toning." It's for functional strength and general endurance (but I guess it can cure Saggy Butt Syndrome too).
I found that I had to work up to barbell squats by using the leg press machine, doing plain squats, and doing goblet squats or heavy ball squats. Now I can do barbell squats. I did 5 sets of 6-10 this morning of increasing weights, and man do I feel it.
Her form is perfect. Get that butt back, chest out, head up, and go low. Perhaps lower than she goes if you can. This gal is strong and fit:
China 
Look at Mark Rothko. 
Widespread Mental Illness 
No breadcrumbs 
Image via 
Toon via 
When you stress your muscles sufficiently with resistance training, you damage muscle. This only happens with extreme stress to failure and beyond. Not high reps, but heavy weights. High reps are mainly maintenance and toning.
Cruising 
Book Review: 
Eagles 
HII is High Intensity Interval Training.
Photo: Why does this compassionate German gal hold a sign in English?