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.
Spending a few days at meetings in midtown Manhattan. Readers know that this ol' country boy does love NYC for a regular dose of the Big Time.
Details: Park Ave. Note the line for Grizzly's food truck on the left. Smells great. Flags are St. Barnabas. Next, on left, Waldorf-Astoria (now owned by the Chinese). Other buildings are mostly banks. All day and all night, streets filled with people bundled against the cold, cars zooming, limos waiting. Vitality. Attractive, put-together people. Great fun just to amble around and check things out.
nb: I am no expert; just an 11-month beginner, sharing what I am discovering. I have been fairly athletic most of my life, but never especially strong. A runner's body.
We've said that physical fitness consists of 1. muscle strength, 2. cardio fitness, 3. physical power (strength X speed), and 4. muscle+cardio (ie calisthenic endurance) - plus minimal flab and sag.
We've asserted that beach muscles are not necessary at all for fitness, but that strength-building and maintenance are required for best efforts in all of the above to prevent physical deterioration and to maintain vigorous functionality after 40.
Strength is just one, but the key, component of fitness (unless you need diet too). Regarding the strength component, for efficient strength-building and maintenance, traditional Compound (multi-joint) exercises are best (their recommended program is ridiculous, tho, I think, because it is all strength). For many of us, it may take months of Isolation muscle work to be able to make the most of Compound efforts. For example, lots of men and women can't do enough pull-ups to make it useful at all and so have to work up to it. (Compound vs. Isolation strength exercises)
The King of Compound exercise is the essential Deadlift, aka picking up heavy things off the floor and then putting them down. I don't think any other exercise stresses as many muscle groups at once. Thus the efficiency. Some say the King is the Barbell Squat, but I disagree. Doesn't matter much.
Cosmetically, Deads are also the best thing for your posture. Mentally, Deads (and Barbell Squats) can be the greatest tests of will-power, of mind over matter. Proper technique is absolutely necessary for effect and to prevent injury. Man, these things are heavy - dead lifts = dead weight - and as soon as you can do 5 reps, they raise you 10 lbs.
They include "unwanted advances" as harassment. How is a fellow to know if it's unwanted, in advance? In workplaces with young women, romance is always in the air.
I should have known better from my experience in hospital that when it comes to the forms of self-evident stupidity and self-destruction, man’s inventiveness is infinite.
I could not understand how the entire German mass media, on nominal “right” and “left” alike, and I assume with little cross-consultation, agreed to shut the story down as if it had not happened; consciously lying to report that there were “no incidents” that night. And in the same Germany whose motto, seventy years ago, was, “I did not know.”
This fit, skinny female is talking about fat-burning, but this is really about cardio fitness and leg conditioning unless you are overweight. Fat loss comes from diet, not exercise.
Whether your cardio includes rowing, treadmill, stair machine, biking, or outdoor running, it is the intense intervals which make a difference for endurance - thus Quality Work vs. Garbage Work. Variety is key. When people say "Walking is good for you," they refer to people over 80 or obese people. Hiking maybe, but not walking.
She talks about 20 mins on those stairs. No way I could do stair intervals for 20 minutes. More like 6 minutes. Anyway, it's a damn good and demanding thing to do once a week. My cardio workouts take longer because I cannot handle such high levels of intensity. Not ready to die yet.
That's a pic of Twenty, Ladder Co. 20, in the window
The loss of a dog can make grown men cry: Firehouse Loses a Spotted Symbol of Healing. What a great dog he was. Well-trained, too - never on a leash in downtown NYC. Never missed a fire call or a meal.
The best cheese shop, by far, in the New World is the famed Murray's. The US has plenty of cheese shops, but Murray's is the big cheese. Since I enjoy discovering obscure stinky cheeses, a daughter and her boyfriend picked some out for me at Christmastime:
- Ossau-Trate Vieille - Ardrahan from Ireland (Whew! Mighty stinky, like old wet socks which have been left to ferment in a bog. Delicious and tangy.) - Chevre D'Argental - a recently-invented goat brie
That's cheese heaven for Bird Dog.
Murray's main shop is on Bleecker St., but they now have a handy outpost in Grand Central Station in that like totally cool Grand Central Market. Even better, they take online orders. Problem with that is that they have so many varieties to taste that it's difficult to select from a distance. However, you can talk to their cheesemongers on the phone.
Remember the...
Maggie's Rules of Cheese
- Cheese is health food - Stinky cheeses are the zippiest - Cheese has to be offered at room temperature - Never serve a cheese before a meal. Good cheeses are instead of dessert, maybe after a tiny scoop of sorbet. A savoury. A Cheese Board is the thing - a platter, not wood. - Cheese without a wine (or, in Stilton's case, a Port and in some cases, beer or ale) is never all it can be. Murray's recommends their beverage pairings and they know what they are talking about. (For example, their advice for a cheese board parmesan) - Cheese should always be offered with jams, preserves, pepper jelly, or fresh or dried fruits and nuts. Bread and crackers optional.
Writing this book, I came to see the new scholar subject as a performative of passionate singularity, hybrid materiality and networked relationality. This is one sense in which the humanities scholar that is becoming is possibly posthuman, and a posthumanist scholar. The locus of thinking, for the prosthetically extendable scholar joined along the currents of networked relationality, is an ensemble affair. It involves the scholar, the device, the algorithm, the code. It involves the design architecture of platform and tool, the experiential architecture of networks, and the economy of energy. It involves the cloud, the crowd and the “rooms,” bricks and mortar and virtual, in which scholarly thinking moves forward. Ultimately, thinking is a collaborative affair of multiple actors, human and nonhuman, virtual and material, elegantly orderly and unruly.
This saying good-bye on the edge of the dark And cold to an orchard so young in the bark Reminds me of all that can happen to harm An orchard away at the end of the farm All winter, cut off by a hill from the house. I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse, I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse. (If certain it wouldn't be idle to call I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall And warn them away with a stick for a gun.) I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun. (We made it secure against being, I hope, By setting it out on a northerly slope.) No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm; But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm. "How often already you've had to be told, Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold. Dread fifty above more than fifty below." I have to be gone for a season or so. My business awhile is with different trees, Less carefully nourished, less fruitful than these, And such as is done to their wood with an axe-- Maples and birches and tamaracks.
I wish I could promise to lie in the night And think of an orchard's arboreal plight When slowly (and nobody comes with a light) Its heart sinks lower under the sod. But something has to be left to God.
Friday is calisthenics day which means general fitness and agility, with no heavy weight.
Kettleball swings Ladder footwork drills and ladder hands and toes drills Floor planks Heavy rope slams Kettleball Farmer Walks (aka Costco Walks) Heavy ball smashes Heavy ball wall slams Burpees Mountain-climbers Bench dips Step-ups Lunges Body-weight squats Jump rope Inclined pull-ups Jumping jacks Hammie curls with Big Ball Pull-ups or Jumping pull-ups
3 sets of an assortment of those over an hour works up a decent sweat and creates some good total body fatigue.
(As I have reported, my fitness program is currently one hour of heavy push, one hour of heavy pull, one hour of calisthenics, and 2 or 3 days with mostly cardio/endurance work.)
Exercise tip: ALWAYS stretch calves before jump rope. And get the technique right. Can learn it on Youtube. Tougher than you might think.
Another: Muscle hypertrophy and strength are not equivalent. Olympic lifters do not look like The Hulk. Sometimes hypertrophy is more cosmetic than functional, eg bicep hypertrophy. That's body-sculpting, not functional strength. We aim for overall strength of the wiry type, but are not entirely free of vanity either.
For our foreign readers, a question: Do you folks in Euroland and Asia do this sort of stuff to stay young and strong? Or is it just us crazy Americans who try to cling to youthfulness and vigor?
From comments and emails regarding our timepiece post on Tuesday, I am left with these recommendations (it's scientific consensus):
- Watches much over $100 are jewelry, not timepieces - and not very masculine but some guys need them for work - Expensive watches can't take the rigors of real work or recreation. - I think an ordinary American guy needs a wrist watch, a knife in his pocket, and $100 in his wallet.
Practical watches, zero-pretension, (semi-disposable) that our readers like (but surprising many guys seem to hate watches so I guess that's ok too):
What about watches for women? Don't most women prefer a nice Cartier piece? For when they are not working in the fields, I mean. A pretty reward for the rigors and hazards of bambino production:
The hole in the wall inexpensive gym I use to seek the fountain of youth rarely has more than 6 customers in it at a time (aged 14 to 90), and they are all working with a trainer, or under a trainer's advice. Not a commercial gym, owned in fact by a physical therapist. You have to have a trainer in charge of your program to use it, and the trainer has to be ok with the physical therapist owner. No spandex, no guinea Ts, and no visible boobs or bouncing female behinds to distract or entertain. You are allowed to grunt as much as you need to and, for me, that is quite a bit.
It's time for another Maggie's request of our readers.
We want readers. We welcome commenters too, regardless of points of view. We don't only do politics - we do a perspective on Life in America.
We are a good site for international readers too, to get some idea about what ordinary, every-day, middlebrow Americans are up to and thinking about. We are interested in almost everything.
Readership growth is our only reward here, but that grows mainly by word of mouth (which includes others linking to us).
If you wish to do us a favor, let your (blog) readers, friends, colleagues, relatives, neighbors, etc. know about our eclectic website. It might be an uplifting, interesting addition to their days. Cheaper than a newspaper and we have very few ads.
Regarding comments - we do not require your emails, and you can use a fake name. Just follow the Three Unwritten Rules for Commenters:
Pic of old dude deadlifting 300+ lbs. from article below. Mrs. BD felt proud to be deadlifting 100 lbs on Monday. Not bad for a semi-beginner fitness-seeking lady but despite strength she still can't find the strength to "Make me a sammich." "Make your own - and make one for me too. I'm busy." Sheesh. These modern women.
I am reaching towards 200, but my grip is now becoming a limiting factor. I can lift it, but can't hold on to the bar for very many reps. Need more forearm strength to reach my modest goals. A weakling - I admit it. Deadlifts are the best, though, for middle-aged people, because it uses your whole fizzicle and mental self. Man, it is so damn hard. Back flat, chest up, ass back. F- gravity. Pick it up. Grunt loud. Drop it with a big crash. Good hard fun.
By hyphenating or ethnicizing one’s name, creating a non-Western superficial identity, or perhaps writing a diatribe against the West — the more venomous and incoherent the better — one increases one’s chances of tapping Western largesse. And in such a fat society, there are literally billions of dollars in excess that can fund therapeutic “ethnic studies” programs, assistant provosts of Diversity, ethnically separatist houses and centers, unprofitable Hollywood movies such as Truth, and “space to destroy” during times of riot.
... imagine it’s the old Soviet Union, and there’s a colorful dissident saying everything other citizens want to say but fear to. Now imagine the government sends its secret police to silence him, and they just get consumed. Bullets have no effect on him, and with every assault he simply becomes bigger. Imagine how frustrated and fearful the Kremlin commissars would become.
And imagine how the people would be in his corner.
Former State Dept. Rep. Says Stabbing Jews OK Under Islamic Law Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/michigan-woman-stabbing-jews-animals-okay-islamic-law-lina-allan-state-department-154182/#jIwQdiebiyXXtWh7.99
My leather watch band broke. Mrs. BD brought it into town and asked me about a $125 leather band. I told her my Timex had cost about $37. She advised me to toss the old watch and get another from Amazon.
Wrist watches: The young folks do not use them. I feel unclothed without one, even wear it to bed. Often, business people like expensive ones, to demonstrate that they know how to make money. That's fine - it's jewelry for men, like ghetto glitz, but it does not say much about how wisely they spend money. I had a semi-fancy watch once but it died and the parts were no longer available. Now I am a Timex guy.
The humble Timex is like Toyota - Timex can wear out many bands, and Toyotas can wear out many tires.
Interestingly, both of my doctors are Timex guys too. I do not like digital watches, because I like to see the bigger picture of time.
I was rummaging through my safe this weekend, looking for a car title, and found my grandpa's engraved gold watch. I think he used it in his youth, but switched to wrist at some point to keep up with the times. It's an Elgin. Mainly of sentimental value. Antique gold pocket watches do not have much value - under $1000 generally. My watch expert pal tells me they are gold-filled, not solid gold.
Do you use a watch? If so, a cheap one or a fancy one?
60,000 pages of fed regs, and mounting. Nobody knows them, so everybody breaks them. Thus is everybody a crim so they can nail you whenever they feel like it
These Praying Mantises 
Pic: Tree in New England this week 
Authentic Academic Gibberish:
Good Bye and Keep Cold
You 
It's time for another Maggie's request of our readers.
Pic of old dude deadlifting 300+ lbs. from article below. Mrs. BD felt proud to be deadlifting 100 lbs on Monday. Not bad for a semi-beginner fitness-seeking lady but despite strength she still can't find the strength to "Make me a sammich." "Make your own - and make one for me too. I'm busy." Sheesh. These modern women. 
My leather watch band broke. Mrs. BD brought it into town and asked me about a $125 leather band. I told her my Timex had cost about $37. She advised me to toss the old watch and get another from Amazon.