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.
We seem to order Thai takeout almost weekly. Thai takeout is what Cantonese and Szechuan takeout used to be around here.
In my limited experience with Thais (limited to restaurants in the US only), they are efficient, entrepreneurial, and pleasant polite people with excellent smiles, beautiful gals, and good English. I welcome all immigrants from Thailand, but I am not sure why they come here.
I am ordering a Thai delivery tonight (Penang Curry, Clear Broth Noodle Soup, Thai Salad, extra white rice, extra hot sauce on the side). Cultural appropriation - bring it on!
A close family member has been spending Christmas week in Thailand. My father-in-law, who has visited Thailand, warned them about ordering the amazing food over there: "They give you a choice of Not Spicy, Spicy, Very Spicy, and "Local." He said "Never ask for the "local."" He said the "Not spicy" is hot enough for the average lame American person but if you want to prove your toughness, just order Spicy and take it from there.
An email from a beach in Phuket:
Some of the food pics below the fold - the last one looks mysterious but I'm sure it was tasty -
We mostly post about resistance exercises and calisthenic exercises. Resistance exercises and calisthenics offer plenty of good cardio-pulmonary challenge in themselves, but some almost pure cardio exercise should be part of the fitness mix. The Conditioning or Fitness Triad is what I call it: a total of 2 hrs mostly weights, 1 hr of heavy+lighter calisthenics, 1+ hr of pure cardio.
A few comments about cardio (eg rowing, running, swimming, fast-walk treadmill, stair machine, jump rope, elliptical, bike): These exercises do not build strength. Cardio exercise does nothing to prevent osteoporosis or to strengthen bone. They do help build cardiac power and muscle endurance. These exercises do not help with weight loss in any meaningful way, but keeping your body moving with exertion every day is a good idea, and you can't lift heavy weights every day. We strongly advise against running as a cardio exercise because of joint damage. Sprinting outdoors or indoors is fine, but long runs outdoors are physically destructive (even if mentally beneficial) and offer little fitness benefit.
20-25 minutes of pure cardio, twice or at most 3X/wk, is all anybody needs as the cardio component of a fitness program. It doesn't take much time because it's intensity, not duration, that matters. If you have more time on a given day, spend another 1/2 hr on high-rep weights or calisthenics instead of wasting it on more pure cardio.
There are caveats, however. To be effective, cardio has to be HIIT - High Intensity Interval cardio - approx 1-2 minute sprints alternating with one minute sub-sprints to catch your breath. If you can talk or read during cardio, you are wasting your time. A sprint means around 80% of your max heart rate (unless, like me, you are on BP meds that limit your heart rate in which case you just push it to your max which for me is 120). To get that rate up and maximize the stress, use the max resistance (on a treadmill, for example, an incline of 10 or more) and/or your max sprint speeds and put your heart into it. Otherwise, it's fairly useless unless you are over 80 years old or infirm.
Distance runners (I used to be one) and distance swimmers (I used to swim a mile daily) are not accomplishing very much. It feels good, though.
The other Cardio caveat concerns variety. Continuous repetition of the same cardio exercise increases your efficiency with it and thus diminishes its cardio effectiveness, so we need to vary the cardio exercises to keep the stress up. Mix it up, even within one session. Less boring, too. I always add a few minutes of jump rope at the end - singles, running man, and one-footed, to make sure I finish with nothing left in the tank. Jumping is tough and you will see mostly guys doing it - few if any bouncing gals.
An example of a typical cardio day for me would be 5 minutes elliptical warm-up intervals, set above 10, then a one-minute straight-arm plank, then 15 minutes treadmill fast-walk intervals at a 10% incline, then a minute elbow plank, then 5 minutes jump rope. If I have more free time to fill, I'll do some sets of heavy ball throws, light-weight squats, high-rep curls and press-downs.
An Oregon couple has been told they must destroy a 2-acre pond
on their land — the property’s most attractive feature — because the
government said so.
The question remains, however, why any nation would want to throw out its sovereignty to institutions that are fundamentally unaccountable, that provide no mechanism for reversing direction, and whose only "solution" to problems involves arrogating to itself ever more authoritarian, rather than democratically legitimate, power.
Why kid ourselves? Maintain your self-respect by resolving to meet realistic goals. One cool aspect to these is that, if you fail to keep them, it's a good thing instead of a cause for self-loathing. Samples (feel free to borrow):
1. I will not exercise at all and will avoid all forms of difficult or tedious exertion beyond walking around and looking at stuff 2. I will gain weight 3. I will resume smoking 4. I will watch more TV and movies, and read fewer books 5. I will do more take-out and minimize home cooking 6. I will quit vegetables entirely 7. I will not clean out or sort out a single closet 8. I will have a messy desk and disorganized paperwork 9. I will do more things at the last minute, or tomorrow 10. I will buy one more firearm I don't need 11. I will make the HQ a Sanctuary Space for dustballs 12. I will throw more recycles into the regular garbage 13. I will continue to try to avoid the dentist and doctor 14. I will waste more of my precious lifetime looking at ephemeral, meaningless BS on the internet 15. I will ignore "Check Engine" lights and seatbelt alarms 16. I will work harder on loving myself whether I deserve it or not 17. I will give more credit to myself, and less to God.
My Christmas feast crown roast of pork. Apple stuffing, roasted root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, taters, turnips) and mashed rutabaga and applesauce on the side. And gravy.
When you wrap the thing in bacon, and stuff the center well, the thick chops come out very juicy and succulent. Good stuff.
We had a Papillon visiting over the weekend. This breed might be in the lap dog, ankle-biter category, but this one was a delight: well-related, highly-communicative with human-like noises, feisty, high energy, highly-alert, and eager to please. They need plenty of time to run around off leash, and they seem to need plenty of time napping on somebody's lap.
A cool dog. The breed is known to be easily trained, and our visitor obeyed numerous voice commands.
This breed can have erect ears (mostly in the US) and floppy spaniel ears (mostly in Europe). These were popular in the courts of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Madame de Pompadour with her Papillon, by Boucher. Ms. Pompadour was cute, charmant, and smart too. Well-educated, she could sing, play musical instruments, recite plays and poetry, and she understood statecraft. A self-made lady who retained her usefulness to Louis XV well-past her sexual prime until her death of TB at 42.
The Farmer's Walk is a toughening exercise, not so much a strength-building exercise. It is only a true strength-building exercise for your grip - ie your forearms. However, done correctly with chest out, head up, for as long as you can, it challenges your entire body from calves to neck.
Three sets of Farmer's Walks to near-failure weekly, as part of your calisthenics program, will improve your posture and overall toughness.
Do me a favor: Do not resolve to get fit after the new year. If serious, you will work on it today. The problem with fitness is that it takes effort so there is always a good excuse for postponing.
“[Because of an imminent ICE AGE] .. even more dramatic results are possible, however; for instance, a sudden outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.” -John Holdren, 1971
Read through all of the news accounts and commentary about the Berlin attack and no where do you see any questions about whether it was wise to import a million barbarians...The Pax Americana allowed the West to remain in a state of perpetual adolescence.
Tree went up last weekend. That was our first family Christmas because a daughter will be vacationing in Asia during real Christmas. Our daughters love traveling in Asia.
Still, we have the in-laws for Christmas Eve fish supper and candlelight church, and all the other kids for Christmas Day dinner. I think Christmas Day afternoon will be a good day for a chilly long hike with the puppy if the old guy feels up to it...meaning The Dog - not me.
Image via Never Yet Melted. Grammatically correct, but the message is wrong. Good grammar does not compensate for an erroneous message. (Fact check: Spanish actually has a future subjunctive, but not English. Go figger.)
The reason (I surmise) that so many people claim to be spiritual rather than religious is that being spiritual imposes no discipline upon them, at least none that they do not choose themselves. Being religious, on the other hand, implies an obligation to observe rules and rituals that may interfere awkwardly with daily life. Being spiritual-but-not-religious gives you that warm, inner feeling, a bit like whiskey on a cold day, and reassures you that there is more to life—or, at least, to your life—than meets the eye, without actually having to interrupt the flux of everyday existence. It is the gratification of religion without the inconvenience of religion. Unfortunately, like many highly diluted solutions, it has no taste.
Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio quantified just how much private sector experience Trump's picks have: a cumulative 83 years in the private sector vs. 55 years in either government or military (mostly military). By contrast, Obama's first Cabinet had achieved a cumulative of five years in the private sector vs. 122 years in the government or military (mostly government) before joining his incoming administration. Trump's Cabinet is tilted more toward the private sector than any administration in history, and Dalio predicts this may inject into the economy the "animal spirits" that spurred so much growth in the 1980s.
News outlets such as the New York Times and NBC have no more credibility than most websites or the National Enquirer. Is it any surprise that we are witnessing the funeral for traditional journalism as we once knew it?
It's the time of year to remember to say Thank You in a material way. When it's cash, I think $50 is a reasonable token of appreciation around here. Less might constitute an insult. Of course, that depends on where you live. Our general rule is cash for people who work for somebody else, and goodies for people we pay (except for house helpers).
Garbage man - $ Mailman - $ My 4:30 AM regular Dunkin Donuts Hindu immigrant guy - $20 Docs, lawyers, dentists, and accountant - Harry & David fruit Our trainer - special goodies that he likes Our house-cleaner - Mrs. BD let her go quite a while ago...we need a more professional, less intrusive one but it's so hard to find good help these days...
Hope I am not forgetting somebody else important. Am I? I'd give something to the UPS guy, but it's never the same person.
This election didn’t merely expose the failure of six months of campaigning by the Democratic Party. This election exposed the failure of SIX DECADES of leftist propaganda to have any cumulative effect at all.
... low levels of legal immigration are probably a good thing. The people willing to go through all the steps it takes to migrate legally are going to be people who scrupulously observe the law. They are not coming here just to screw it all up for everyone including themselves. Recent legal immigrants tend to be hyper-patriotic for that reason. They take nothing for granted because they had to earn their citizenship. Their presence is a healthy reminder that citizenship has value.
Weight exercises like deads, squats, and leg press stress the heck out of your lower body - hamstrings, glutes, quads, calves and all of the little accessory muscles. It's necessary strength-building until you reach your realistic goals for your maximal life functionality.
For the calisthenic component of your fitness program, though, you can throw in a few sets of lunges to make your legs burn for 24 hrs. (That is not lactate burn, it is good muscle-damage, micro-tear burn/ache). I do 3 sets of walking lunges, with or without hand weights, weekly. Even though it counts as calisthenics, I think it toughens up the legs even though it is more endurance than strength. Good pain!
Readers are tired of my preaching that calisthenics are a necessary fitness component but I will persist. Contra Rippetoe, we preach a balance of approximately 1/3 weights, 1/3 cardio intervals, and 1/3 calis (including what I term "heavy" calis like Farmer's Walk, pull-ups, push-ups, heavy ball slams, lunges with weights, weighted planks, etc) - while agreeing that real weight training is the most important and effective fitness component.
Tomorrow, the days begin to lengthen but I have to say that I don't really mind the short days. Getting out early in the cold and dark at 330 or 4 is pleasant to me. I take the dog out if he's willing, I listen for owls, I identify constellations and O'Ryan watches me with a cautious eye, I hear little critters scampering in the leaf litter.I have a hot coffee and a cold Coke to get ready for the gym which is open at 4:45. Carpe diem.
How many MORE atrocities before our leaders stop lying to us and admit that, thanks to their immigration policies, being mowed down while doing your Christmas shopping is simply the new normal?
“It would be very difficult for us to learn that a human being committed this deed who came to Germany to ask for refuge and asylum,” the German chancellor said in a live statement.
"Would be"? You know she is praying that Lutherans did it.
The Wisconsin governor has asked Trump to restore the balance of federal and state power. Here’s why all states should rally to his call...Democrats who fear the exercise of unbridled power by a Republican president have as much reason to want state governments kept free from federal control as Republicans do for not wanting a repeat of Obama’s constitutional abuses. We can disagree about policy issues, but we should agree on the basic meaning of our Constitution.
The options are risky because the White House knows the hacking story was made up to pacify the lunatics. They also know the Russians know it was made up. Creating a diplomatic crisis over something both sides know is a fiction – and a ridiculous one at that – is very dangerous.
Image via 
We mostly post about resistance exercises and calisthenic exercises. Resistance exercises and calisthenics offer plenty of good cardio-pulmonary challenge in themselves, but some almost pure cardio exercise should be part of the fitness mix. The Conditioning or Fitness Triad is what I call it: a total of 2 hrs mostly weights, 1 hr of heavy+lighter calisthenics, 1+ hr of pure cardio.
Mead's Yule Blog: 
Why kid ourselves? Maintain your self-respect by resolving to meet realistic goals. One cool aspect to these is that, if you fail to keep them, it's a good thing instead of a cause for self-loathing. Samples (feel free to borrow):
We had a
Tree went up last weekend. That was our first family Christmas because a daughter will be vacationing in Asia during real Christmas. Our daughters love traveling in Asia.
Image via 
Here's the Real Reason 
Tomorrow, the days begin to lengthen but I have to say that I don't really mind the short days. Getting out early in the cold and dark at 330 or 4 is pleasant to me. I take the dog out if he's willing, I listen for owls, I identify constellations and O'Ryan watches me with a cautious eye, I hear little critters scampering in the leaf litter.I have a hot coffee and a cold Coke to get ready for the gym which is open at 4:45. Carpe diem.
Got