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.
Every person's list will vary due to geographical, climatological, financial, and cultural matters, but I think it's a good topic to think about, especially for parents.
Regardless of their genitalia or gender identification, what are the basic life skills you want/wanted your kids to attain before they are/were kicked out of the nest and sent on their way in life?
I'll begin with my How To list which is probably somewhat New England-oriented (my partial list, as an example), How To:
Ride, handle, and care for a horse, ski, sail a boat and handle a powerboat in rough weather, ride a bike, handle all types of firearms, catch and clean a fish, train and handle a dog, change a tire, drive a tractor, tap a Sugar Maple, swim, golf, play tennis, play some team sports, throw every kind of ball, tie knots, play some card games, play an instrument, split wood, identify basic local birds, trees, and animals, go to church, exercise daily, basic cooking, try every sort of new food, perfect table manners and social conversation, dress appropriately to occasion, write a thank-you note and a condolence note, deliver a brief speech to a crowd, make a garden, pay attention to geography and geology, cement a post, use basic tools (and chain saws for boys), do laundry, clean a house, start a fire, tell a story without boring the listener, drive a stick shift, and, not least, travel internationally with confidence.
Put your ideas about basic life skills in the comments, please.
Defined benefit pension systems have rules that strongly favor long term workers. Workers often didn’t qualify for pensions until they worked a threshold number of years—if you left the company before you ‘vested’, you lost your pension benefits. And because length of service played a large role in calculating pension benefits, workers who changed jobs or careers often ended up with very small pensions. There have been heartrending cases of workers in manufacturing companies who lost everything when their jobs went abroad before they had worked enough years to collect a good pension. And in their 40s and 50s, many could not replace those jobs or the lost pension benefits.
Those old-time pensions are a thing of the past, except for some government employees.
Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.
Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
Like our editor, I am more interested in vigorous fitness for functional life and endurance rather than in conspicuous muscle mass. However, it has not escaped my notice than some mass has a signaling effect on females.
Limitations I have found in my (recent) mixed cardio-resistance-endurance program are strength and power in my extremities, ie forearms and lower legs. Those tend to be neglected in resistance work. They are more or less expected to respond in strength to the other things you do.
That is true to a point, perhaps, but, for examples, but my dead lifts and kettlebell walks are limited by my grip strength. Lower leg strength is needed for everything you do, posture and agility, and especially to prevent injury.
What I am learning is that I have to strengthen everything to pursue my maximum functional endurance. The two go hand-in-hand.
Biceps are not major functional muscles. There are only three good reasons to strengthen biceps in isolation: arm-toning for middle-aged women, showing off in wife-beater Ts - and, usefully, to provide some complementary balance for the far more useful and important triceps.
However, fact is that most upper-body chest, core, back exercises, and full-body exercises and body-weight calisthenics like pull-ups and ropes activate biceps enough without needing to do very much of those muscle-isolating "curls for girls."
As BD has said, the Maggie's fitness philosophy for sedentary-working people is about overall fitness, muscle and cardiovascular endurance, athletic functionality, posture, core strength, and good body-weight management rather than body-building and body-sculpting. Maximally-functional for life, not for the gym, prison yard, or for the Gay Parade..
In my view, the more muscles an exercise stresses, the better. Besides intense interval cardio, what kills me but makes me fitter are pushing the full-body, mixed cardio+strength+core exercises like ball smashes, ropes, lunges with kettles, pull-ups, burners, and the like. You just do them until you break.
The social justice warriors (known now as SJW) have a big problem with how you think and how you talk. Even one or two of them can express "outrage" or feign feeling traumatized, and then you become controversial in the press.
It should all be funny, but it's not funny because you could lose your job. Freedom of speech does not protect your job - even in academia. People tiptoe around the office as if in an Orwellian world, and nobody says what they really think.
So my query to readers is this: What are the thought crimes today which could get you in trouble?
Head (Botox, hair-do and coloring) Shoulders (planks and pull-ups at the gym) Eyes (where are my glasses?) Ears (what?) Mouth (implants and periodontist) Nose (basal cell excisions) Knees (injections) Toes (pedicures, bunion surgery, Stuart Weitzmans)
Science, policy, and politics necessarily makes for a messy combination. Theories and factual claims are generally tentative.
However, scientists are human, live in a given culture of knowledge and assumptions, and become attached to their ideas. Nobody wants to see his pet theory, worked on for 15 years, blown away by fresh data.
In the beginning there was an island off the coast of Europe. It had no name, for the natives had no language, only a collection of grunts and gestures that roughly translated to "Hey!", "Gimme!", and "Pardon me, but would you happen to have any wood?"
Then the Romans invaded it and called it Britain, because the natives were "blue, nasty, br(u->i)tish and short." This was the start of the importance of u (and its mispronunciation) to the language. After building some roads, killing off some of the nasty little blue people and walling up the rest, the Romans left, taking the language instruction manual with them.
The British were bored so they invited the barbarians to come over (under Hengist) and "Horsa" 'round a bit. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes brought slightly more refined vocal noises.
All of the vocal sounds of this primitive language were onomatopoetic, being derived from the sounds of battle. Consonants were derived from the sounds of weapons striking a foe. ("Sss" and "th" for example are the sounds of a draw cut, "k" is the sound of a solidly landed axe blow, "b", "d", are the sounds of a head dropping onto rock and sod respectively, and "gl" is the sound of a body splashing into a bog. Vowels (which were either gargles in the back of the throat or sharp exhalations) were derived from the sounds the foe himself made when struck.
The barbarians had so much fun that decided to stay for post-revel. The British, finding that they had lost future use of the site, moved into the hills to the west and called themselves Welsh.
The Irish, having heard about language from Patrick, came over to investigate. When they saw the shiny vowels, they pried them loose and took them home. They then raided Wales and stole both their cattle and their vowels, so the poor Welch had to make do with sheep and consonants. ("Old Ap Ivor hadde a farm, L Y L Y W! And on that farm he hadde somme gees. With a dd dd here and a dd dd there...")
To prevent future raids, the Welsh started calling themselves "Cymry" and gave even longer names to their villages. They figured if no one could pronounce the name of their people or the names of their towns, then no one would visit them. (The success of the tactic is demonstrated still today. How many travel agents have YOU heard suggest a visit to scenic Llyddumlmunnyddthllywddu?)
Meantime, the Irish brought all the shiny new vowels home to Erin. But of course they didn't know that there was once an instruction manual for them, so they scattered the vowels throughout the language purely as ornaments. Most of the new vowels were not pronounced, and those that were they pronounced differently depending on which kind of consonant they were either preceding or following.
The Danes came over and saw the pretty vowels bedecking all the Irish words. "Ooooh!" they said. They raided Ireland and brought the vowels back home with them. But the Vikings couldn't keep track of all the Irish rules so they simply pronounced all the vowels "oouuoo."
In the meantime, the French had invaded Britain, which was populated by descendants of the Germanic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. After a generation or two, the people were speaking German with a French accent and calling it English. Then the Danes invaded again, crying "Oouuoo! Oouuoo!," burning abbeys, and trading with the townspeople.
The Britons that the Romans hadn't killed intermarried with visiting Irish and became Scots. Against the advice of their travel agents, they decided to visit Wales. (The Scots couldn't read the signposts that said, "This way to LLyddyllwwyddymmllwylldd," but they could smell sheep a league away.) The Scots took the sheep home with them and made some of them into haggis. What they made with the others we won't say, but Scots are known to this day for having hairy legs.
The former Welsh, being totally bereft, moved down out of the hills and into London. Because they were the only people in the Islands who played flutes instead of bagpipes, they were called Tooters. This made them very popular. In short order, Henry Tooter got elected King and begin popularizing ornate, unflattering clothing.
Soon, everybody was wearing ornate, unflattering clothing, playing the flute, speaking German with a French accent, pronouncing all their vowels "oouuoo" (which was fairly easy given the French accent), and making lots of money in the wool trade. Because they were rich, people smiled more (remember, at this time, "Beowulf" and "Canterbury Tales" were the only tabloids, and gave generally favorable reviews even to Danes). And since it is next to impossible to keep your vowels in the back of your throat (even if you do speak German with a French accent) while smiling and saying "oouuoo" (try it, you'll see what I mean), the Great Vowel Shift came about and transformed the English language.
The very richest had their vowels shifted right out in front of their teeth. They settled in Manchester and later in Boston.
There were a few poor souls who, cut off from the economic prosperity of the wool trade, continued to swallow their vowels. They wandered the countryside in misery and despair until they came to the docks of London, where their dialect devolved into the incomprehensible language known as Cockney. Later, it was taken overseas and further brutalized by merging it with Dutch and Italian to create Brooklynese.
That's what happened, you can check for yourself. But I advise you to just take our word for it.
Copyright (c) 1994 Corrie Bergeron and Ben Tucker all rights reserved
We finally made it to the Picasso sculpture show at MOMA this weekend with old friends. As I expected, it was a visual feast. Furthermore, it was more fun and less tiring than spending an hour and a half looking a paintings.
He experimented with sculpture intermittently during his life, beginning with realism and moving through all of his stylistic phases: cubism, surrealism, etc., and just plain whimsical but all with what I term the Picasso Perfect Eye because I have never found the right words for his transformative genius, making the ordinary into something entirely new and startling with great discipline and economy of line.
Those were my first skis. Wood Northlands. Kept them for sentimental reasons I guess. I must be ancient. Off to the garbage. At the time, my rich friends had Heads.
Gosh do I love skiing, once I am on top of a mountain. The hassle and cost to get there is what deters me often.
We're throwing out everything we can, or giving away. Closets full of older winter clothing, spare sweaters, parkas, leather jackets, fur coats, the snow-blower, the power edger, the power-washer.
Left 10 duck stamp prints off for the Ducks Unlimited event. I have never had anywhere to hang them.
And tons of stuff to church winter clothing drive, and Good Will.
It's not to prepare for Global Warming; it's to lighten the burdens of excess possession and clutter. We have too much stuff from many years and three kids. On Thanksgiving, I am going to unload all of the family antiques, family china, and art that I can onto my sibs because I will not wait for my kids to have houses.
The only things I am "keeping for the kids when they might need them" are our substantial collection of antique oriental rugs. Rugs on top of rugs, like Armenians. Trouble is, they are so out of fashion they probably won't want them.
I have too many firearms too. More than I ever use. Should sell most of them.
The pleasure in a new possession is fleeting, isn't it? It's a cliche because it is so true. It's a relief of an interesting sort to get rid of stuff.
Did time begin at that instant, so that there was no time or space "before"? Or are space and time human constructs? Of course they are. Humans have been making up our understanding of the universe forever. We are wired to do that although we know that it is all beyond our comprehension and our feeble animal senses.
How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk - What does the way you speak say about where you’re from? Answer all the questions below to see your personal dialect map.
I came out as New York City/Yonkers/Jersey City. Odd, because I grew up in western Massachusetts. I think the test is approximately accurate, though. My parents were immigrant kids from Queens, and I have been in NYC for a few years now.
In the general fitness and endurancecategory of exercises (as opposed to strength and power), bursts of "balls to the wall"* (not sure what term women might use for that) exertion are far more useful than long stretches of less intense cardio. Except for those over 75 or in cardiac rehab, long stretches of "comfortable cardio" advance none of your goals other than plain functional maintenance. Functional maintenance is good, though, for the aging. (Comfortable cardio means you sweat but do not get winded.)
You can watch Social X-Rays, models, and quasi-anorectics jogging or doing cardio exercises for hours all the time in NYC, but they do not look like that because of exercise. They look like that because they don't eat carbs, or anything else much. Creepy.
What most of us regular exercisers do is a combination, eg 20-40 minutes of continuous cardio machines with brief bursts of maximum speed effort - sprints in effect. Distance runners train with sprints, as do swimmers. Other high-intensity sprint-like exercises? Squats, heavy ball smashes, lunges, high steps with weights, burpees, and the like. Basically, any relatively-brief spurts of demand that make you feel like you might drop dead, or might wish to drop dead.
Remember, cardio doesn't burn fat hardly at all, and does not build strength or power either. It can burn some carbs (roughly 2 slices of toast per hour), help mobilize fat-burning somewhat only when combined with low carb, and it puts whatever strength and power you have to work. It is really just about endurance/fitness. If you build your strength and power with other exercises, your effectiveness with high-intensity will obviously increase because your maximum will be more intense.
Losing fat is low-carb diet, improving fitness is demanding cardio, and improving strength/power is resistance. It's simple. Our goal is simple too: to be fit for whatever life offers.
*Thanks to reader for etymology of the balls expression
The expert consensus is that the best all-purpose exercise shoe is the Nike Metcon. I will give it a try, because the sneaks I am using are not right for all of the things I do.
Barefoot would probably be ideal, except for transmitting foot fungi. People say these Nike sneakers feel sort of like being barefoot.
I wonder how many pairs of sneakers I have been through in my life. Running shoes, trail-running sneakers, city-walking sneakers, tennis shoes, bang-around sneakers.
For whatever reason, never owned any Converse as far as I recall. Roundball is much more fun to play than to watch, but I was way too bad at it. Can dribble, can't jump. Pathetic.
Every person's list will vary due to geographical, climatological, financial, and cultural matters, but I think it's a good topic to think about, especially for parents.
Biceps are not major functional muscles. There are only three good reasons to strengthen biceps in isolation: arm-toning for middle-aged women, showing off in wife-beater Ts - and, usefully, to provide some complementary balance for the far more useful and important triceps.
The social justice warriors (known now as SJW) have a big problem with how you think and how you talk. Even one or two of them can express "outrage" or feign feeling traumatized, and then you become controversial in the press. 
Those were my first skis. Wood Northlands. Kept them for sentimental reasons I guess. I must be ancient. Off to the garbage. At the time, my rich friends had Heads.
The expert consensus is that the best all-purpose exercise shoe is the