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Your search for trains returned 96 results:
Tuesday, October 29. 2024
 Mrs. BD found, in a box of stuff in the basement, my great grandmother's journal of her trip to Egypt in 1908. 1908 handwriting is a little difficult to decipher. Elegant, but faded.
In the good old days, people journaled their travels. As I read it, they were in Paris, Munich, Italy (Stresa and Rome), Athens, Jerusalem, and Egypt. The Grand Tour with their kids.
Amused me that they stayed in the same hotel in Stresa (Grand Hotel Borromeo) that we did a few years ago. Our lad met us there from the train up from Rome. I recall we brought him one or two big jars of peanut butter, which he could not find in stores during his job in Italy. Then we all had some fun on hikes and trains. It did not all go well, but that's adventure.
Another cool thing with this find is that we are headed to Egypt in January, so it's timely.
Tuesday, July 25. 2023
 Oppenheimer, from 1948
Burn Some Witches; Save the Planet
Retract "Proximal Origin?" No, says Nature Medicine editor
Our society’s ‘top brains’ have gone mad — and dysfunctional politics is the result
The subways are an insane asylum on wheels — we must get the mentally ill off the trains
Fed-up NYC businesses sound off as migrant crisis causes chaos in the streets, hits shops’ wallets: ‘Enough is enough’
China is counting on America’s suicidal immigration policy
Stories like Russiagate and the Hunter Biden affair play into the paranoid underbelly of American politics. For those Americans that look for the hidden hand of a deep state, these scandals are proof that the system itself is rigged.
Hanania, Rufo, and Conservative Strategy - Going after the Deep Left
The Jaw-Dropping Hunter Biden–Investigation Revelations
"We Need A Real Investigation" Of Biden Bribery & Burisma; RFK Jr Says Mainstream Media Criticizing Him More Than Trump
Austria: Ukraine is a bottomless pit
Wednesday, November 10. 2021
Friday, February 12. 2021
Photo of our elegant dormitories at the school. $60/night - not bad for a living room with a chart table, kitchenette, and nice bedroom plus a spare bunk in the hall.
Mrs. BD and I spent 8 days in salty Port Salerno, Florida (a suburb of Stuart) to take a couple of powerboating certifications at The Chapman School of Seamanship.
First thing, we can recommend them for all levels of seamanship education, from beginner to commercial Captain. Half of our classes were military guys and gals, and were from all over the US and Europe too.
The best thing about their classes is that half the time is spent in classroom, half on the water practicing with whatever size and type boat you want to master. They have the dormitory right at their own marina on Manatee Pocket, which was perfect. Classes are from 8 am to about 4 pm. You need to study for an hour or two after you go out somewhere fun for a seafood dinner.
Wish I had a pic of that lovely narrow lagoon, but I was usually too busy with boat handling to take a pic.
Yes, there are tricky paper exams but the practical water components are useful. Lots of boat traffic to deal with down on the intracoastal waterway in Florida.
A few observations about food, masks, etc below the fold, with a couple of pics.
Continue reading "Florida boating and seafood, with comments on masks, marina pubs etc."
Sunday, January 10. 2021
Mrs. Bulldog and I went into the city to meet our boys for brunch and decided to visit the "new" Penn Station which is formerly the US Post Office (across the street from the "old" Penn Station and Madison Square Garden). It is designed to handle what were very crowded spaces in Penn (ugh...some nights were unbelievable, especially when trains broke down) and provide a bit of a 'link' to the past as the old Post Office's architecture and interior were somewhat similar to the original Penn Station, which was destroyed (tragically) years ago.
I have included 2 pictures. I am not impressed. The open interior, with glass ceiling that lets a ton of light in, is excellent. What was formerly an interior parking area is now the main part of the terminal. Beyond that, as Mrs. Bulldog said, "The great train halls of Europe need not worry of competition."
It is antiseptic, utilitarian and lacks a soul. Clean (though new), bright, cheery - these are all positives, but in terms of originality and whimsy, there is none. I found nothing interesting or inspiring. Where Grand Central has all kinds of angles and views to catch your eye and keep you interested, Moynihan Train Hall has none. It's boring and uninspired.
But maybe it's not supposed to be inspiring. Millions will pass through there on the average week, mostly commuters to Long Island and New Jersey. Who needs to be distracted?
Continue reading "Moynihan Train Hall"
Wednesday, September 30. 2020
Deads strengthen the "posterior chain," from neck to the soles of your feet. We tend to view deads as a legs exertion, but no, not only. That's why they are an invaluable totaly body exertion.
That posterior chain of muscles is what it makes it possible to be bipedal and to stand up straight instead of slouching. It's counterbalanced by various anterior muscle groups, expecially the abs.
I am no body-builder guy, but after 4 years of including deads in my routine twice weekly (pushing the weights, admittedly, but gradually with high-rep days and low rep days), I can no longer button my dress shirts. 2" more. That's crazy, not what I wanted but it just happened. Brooks Brothers shirts ain't cheap, and I fairly often wear jacket and tie at work, especially for meetings when it is expected. I don't have a single dress shirt that I can button now.
Deads are the single best way, and most efficient way, to stay sturdy after age 40.
Wednesday, July 8. 2020
 The Trans Cult - Review of 'Irreversible Damage' by Abigail K. Shrier
Charter Schools Going Woke
Understanding Campus Antisemitism in 2019 And Its Lessons for Pandemic and Post-Pandemic U.S. Campuses
WaPo: Now Let’s Purge Classic Literature
A NEW LOW IN HIGHER EDUCATION?
Cancel Culture: Descendant Of Thomas Jefferson Calls For Removing D.C. Monument
City Of Seattle Trains White Employees To Work On “Undoing Your Own Whiteness”
Scientists long ago exhausted their COVID-19 capital
Not dying is bad for headlines
EPA approves two Lysol products as the first to effectively kill novel coronavirus on surfaces
US Withdraws From World Health Organization and Democrats Are Losing It
Georgia Governor Declares State of Emergency, Deploys National Guard after July 4 Weekend Violence
Tucker Carlson: Democrats Are The Driving Force Behind Racial Division
Ace:
At first, I found it galling in the extreme that Trump's magnificent Mount Rushmore speech was smeared as "divisive" by the Democrat-Media Complex as well as quite a few flunkies and traitors among the cuck-servative set. But, as the saying goes, you take the most flak when you're right over the target. How could defending the greatest nation and society (warts and all) that has and will ever exist in history, be divisive unless one believes the exact opposite? As I stated yesterday, no other president or Republican leader in my lifetime, with maybe the exception of Reagan, ever defended the nation so forcefully and eloquently when it was under direct assault from internal enemies as Trump did.
Saturday, May 30. 2020
A new humanoid is discovered
The Incredible Story of the US Army's Earth-Shaking, Off-Road Land Trains
WHO recommends no routine mask use
Wait - what?
New England Journal Of Medicine On What Masks Can’t Do Regarding SARS-CoV-2
Fauci changes tune, now says second COVID-19 wave may never happen — and mask-wearing is symbolic
U.S. COVID-19 Death Toll Is Inflated
Pence: You did it, America
Minneapolis Police and National Guard DISAPPEAR — Allow Angry Leftist Rioters to Loot and Burn AGAIN Despite Curfew
MSNBC Reporter Describes Minneapolis “Protest” as “Not, Generally Speaking, Unruly” as He Stands in Front of Burning Building
Minn. mayor gives masks to crowding rioters after warning in-person worship would be 'public health disaster'
At Hot Air:
... it’s simply not true that black men have no power and are always victims, not even when some creepy white woman tries to make them victims. Society was not on Amy Cooper’s side and it’s not on the side of the cop who kneeled on George Floyd’s neck either. That’s not to say that all is well and we should just move on. But some recognition of the fact that this is not being shrugged off by most white people seems appropriate if we’re going to have this conversation.
'This is my big worry': Obama officials and other Democrats fear strong, post-coronavirus economic recovery
Sunday, October 20. 2019
Pic from of MAGA Caffeteria from my urban hike around Ostia outside Rome.
"Ostia" is the mouth, the area of the old Roman port. About 25 minutes from the airport, 20 by ambulance.
No foreigners visit Ostia. It's a Roman middle-class and working-class suburb south of Rome on one of the commuter trains. Its 3 miles of beach on the Med (The Lido) attract less-wealthy Romans in summer for beach getaways. It has a half-mile of spartan hotels, one of which I stayed in (Hotel Bellavista) for 5 days while Mrs. BD was in Ospidale Grassi about a 30-minute walk from my hotel. No fluffy towels.
This was an accidental visit by this accidental tourist. (Mrs. BD fainted on the plane to Rome - face plant - and fractured some facial bones. Dangerous to her eye, and she looked by post-car crash.) While stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues, I did spend one day hiking Ostia and getting lost and hiking the beach with my trousers rolled up like T S Eliot, took the train to Rome to urban hike one day, took train to Ostia Antica (do not miss that visit when near Rome) and had a wonderful day there until it closed.
So before I post some photos of Ostia Antica later (a truly magnificent ruin of a Roman port city, just 3 train stops from Ostia, an hour from Rome) I thought I'd post some fun observations about some aspects of the real, non-tourist Italy. Remember, Rome is sort-of on the edge of northern and southern Italy, and a blend of both cultures but more southern than northern. I've been to Rome several times. Once is enuf in my view. Fun stuff below the fold (BTW, Mrs. BD is just fine now)
Continue reading "Reposted from one year ago because I wanted to relive it, sort-of: Notes from an accidental tourist, with MAGA. What is Ostia, and what is Real Italy like?"
Thursday, August 15. 2019
Monday, May 20. 2019
What is a "woman"?
Meet the Bold Sexologist Questioning Transgender Orthodoxy
Learning about Cotton in School Is Racist Now
So try harvesting some polyester plants
Why is a new history of the United States necessary? Why now?
Socialism Is about Taking, Not Giving
Want To Dismantle Capitalism? Abolish The Family
Philadelphia’s Soda Tax Bombed As Predicted
Harvard is failing its students by allowing them to live in a fantasy world
NYC schools chief accused of creating environment ‘hostile’ to white people
The Australian election: Cathy Wilcox, a newspaper cartoonist, tweeted: “It seems unfair that the morons outnumber the thinking people at election time.”
Canadian Government Imposes 'Social Justice' on All Universities
Sounds like China
California half-fast ‘hi speed rail’ plan now pondering old fashioned diesel trains to salvage something from failed project
Al Gore inserts himself into Australia's election — and Aussie voters run the other way
Financial Collapse Of The United States Postal Service Is Coming
Byron York: Mueller changed everything
HERE’S HOW THE ASYLUM SYSTEM IS BEING EXPLOITED
Monday, April 22. 2019
Maggie's has been having fun with Boats, Trains, and Planes posts lately. Also, with Scott Adams who always has fresh, brainy, and provocative perspectives. Our website goes through phases, various enthusiasms. It's good that way. We can do whatever we want to do.
Fun ideas from Scott today:
- Gen 4 nuclear power is the only option for everything. Why are people anti-science?
- President Trump’s Tweet about impeachment when the OTHER SIDE committed the crimes, colluded with Russia, and attempted to overthrow the government
- We are living in the best time ever in human history. We have the best of everything right now. Only the media tries to bring us down to sell us their ads or, in the case of NPR, to sell us their frowns about everything.
- So, a cool idea for happiness: Go on a news diet. No newspapers, no tv news. Most news is wrong. Your life will be the same, or better because life is good these days.
- The desire for "fairness" in life is infantile kindergarten thinking. The most anybody can wish for is rules that apply to everybody. The whole point of competition is unfairness in ability. He likes trannies playing on girls' teams.
Wednesday, April 17. 2019
Thursday, February 14. 2019
While he was not considered a generally 'good' mayor, Robert Van Wyck certainly is an integral part of the city. I've taken the Van Wyck Expressway many times, but I've never wondered who Van Wyck actually was.
A Tammany operative, his scandals eventually cost the group power. Robert was the first mayor elected after the consolidation of the five boroughs.
On Valentine's Day 1899, he signed a law renaming Western Boulevard. Western ran north of Columbus Circle, and his law changed its name to Broadway, thereby extending the famous thoroughfare. Today, Broadway runs all the way north on the west side, then turns east at Inwood toward the Spuyten Duyvil, across into The Bronx, and up into Yonkers (where it becomes South Broadway). At 178th Street, it becomes Route 9.
Robert A. Van Wyck (1849-1918) was born in New York City and graduated from Columbia Law School in 1889. In 1897, Van Wyck became the first mayor of Greater New York after the consolidation of the five boroughs in 1898. During his term in office, Van Wyck renamed Western Boulevard north of Columbus Circle “Broadway” in 1899, extending one of Manhattan’s most famous streets. On March 24, 1900, Mayor Van Wyck began another New York institution by breaking ground in front of City Hall for the city’s first subway.
An expressway bearing Van Wyck’s name was built to connect John F. Kennedy, then Idlewild, Airport to several of the main east-west thoroughfares that run through Queens. Initial construction of the Van Wyck Expressway (I-678) was completed in 1950, and the road was officially opened on October 14 of that year. The construction of the Van Wyck Expressway required the impressive engineering feat of elevating the Long Island Rail Road switching yards and terminal in Jamaica, Queens (at 1,100 trains a day one of the busiest railroad junctions in the world), up into the air to allow for construction of the roadway underneath
Wednesday, October 17. 2018
Very few exercises are pure forms of those four categories, but there are differences in emphasis which is why we recommend balanced programs of resistance, calisthenics, and cardio training to maintain or improve fitness.
Strength is the ability to move things which resist moving. Power is the ability to move things (including yourself) with speed and force. For example, bench press and rows are mostly strength exercises. Powerlifts are power exercises: deadlifts, squats, military press, etc. in which bursts of speedy intensity are required.
Where would we categorize pull-ups? I'd say Strength.
What’s the difference between strength training and power training?
We have discussed cardio training at length. The main muscle it trains is the heart muscle. While any difficult exercise stresses the heart, only pure cardio training (HIIT via HIIT calisthenics/ aerobics class or sprinting intervals) gives the heart a specifically strength-building stress.
So what about endurance? If you are somebody who "gets too tired" from non-resistance activities, you have an endurance issue. It is not rare for very strong people to have poor endurance or for high-endurance people to be relatively-weak. We want both strength and endurance. Anything that is high-rep builds endurance but not strength or power: long-slow "cardio", high-rep (10-20) resistance work, calisthenics.
One caveat: Do not ever do high-rep (over 10) deadlift sets. The human body is made for low-rep heavy floor lifting (8 or fewer). If you can do over 8 deads, you need to increase the weight and reduce the reps.
Thursday, April 19. 2018
 Asking animal-loving liberals about bird-frying solar power
How Instagram Is Killing Fish
A video trip through NYC in 1911
Well-dressed - with hats too
Eating less enables primates to live longer
Prolonged Sitting Tied to Brain Atrophy
Offensive Songs That Wouldn’t Be Allowed Now (video)
People Are Losing Their Minds Over Starbucks
How to Rein In Student Mobs
Scripps College denies requests for conservative Andrew Klavan to speak on campus
Dangerous guy
College Professor 'Happy To Be Retired' After Dealing With SJWs
Fresno State Professor Gloats Over Barbara Bush's Death, Says She Won't Be Fired
Victimhood Culture Engulfs Our Campuses
They aren't snowflakes - they are cry-bullies
CIVIL WAR ON THE LEFT, PART 54: CAMPUS CANNIBALISM
New National Test Scores Show Betsy DeVos Was Right About Public Schools
Money does nothing for schools
IS THERE ANY BASIS FOR CONSENSUS IN AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE?
94% of Immigrants in US Federal Prisons, Over 35,000 Individuals, Are Criminal Illegal Aliens
DHS reveals dozens of MS-13, other gang members released by 'sanctuary' policies
Homeless People on Tracks Slow California Trains
Meghan McCain To Comey: You Present Yourself As Apolitical But You Sound Like A Political Commentator To Me
Comey puts CNN coverage in the toilet . . . literally
Sweden’s violent reality is undoing a peaceful self-image
The Pentagon needs both a bigger force and advanced technology
North Korea peace deal - Neither a new nor a simple idea
Saturday, March 17. 2018
 Irish ancestry as a % of each state's population
The St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York is 14 years older than our country, dating to 1762. The parade’s line of march is traditionally led by the honor guard of the 69th Regiment of the New York State National Guard, the storied “Fighting 69th.” And therein lies a tale.
2 Dead Sea Scrolls Displayed for 1st Time at US Museum
Most people think they have improved their significant other
Dazzling Dendrites - Beholding the brain, in sketches by the 'father of neuroscience.'
Would-be writers: Why they hate Margaret Atwood
Hollywood director Gilliam hits out at #MeToo 'mob rule'
Academics reeling as market discipline comes to the University of Wisconsin
How To Stop School Shootings (video)
Training Manual Clearly Tells Florida Deputies to ‘Confront the Shooter‘
Student Suspended For Refusing To Leave Classroom During Gun Control Walkout
It Pays To Have Good PR: Compared to Jeff Skilling, Elizabeth Holmes Gets Slap On the Wrist for Outright Fraud
Ruth Marcus’s defense of aborting children with Down syndrome shows the danger of appeals to the majority consensus.
High Court to Say if Pregnancy Centers Can Be Forced to Advertise Abortions
Big Storms Brewing in California, Other Places for Clinton Foundation
Andrew McCabe, Trump’s foil at the FBI, is fired hours before he could retire
Friday's firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, based on a report from the Office of Professional Responsibility, is only the beginning of what is likely to be the most explosive series of revelations in American history.
Democrats, who are all over Twitter at the moment defending McCabe, are making a huge mistake. They will be embarrassed when the details come out. The Office of Professional Responsibility is not a partisan adjunct of the Republican Party or anything close. Furthermore, it was the Democratic Party that called for the Inspector General to investigate. He was appointed by Obama. As the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for.
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The real draining of the Swamp has finally begun. Jeff Sessions may have quietly been engineering it in ways his critics, even Trump himself, didn't realize. It is time for every concerned citizen to keep up the pressure. At moments like this, it's easy to be cynical and think, oh, this is a good moment, but it will go back to business as usual soon.
The guy lied to government officials. Regular people would be jailed for that - see Martha Stewart. Anyway, he's too young for retirement.
Robert Mueller Isn’t Mr. Integrity — He Wants to Destroy Donald Trump
A permanent hunt never ends well.
Hiring John Bolton Would Be a Betrayal of Donald Trump's Base - The president won the 2016 election with foreign-policy positions antithetical to those championed by the perennially hawkish Iraq War supporter.
UMich Sentiment Soars To Record High As Poorest Americans Rejoice
China will ban people with poor ‘social credit’ from planes and trains
Here's Why You Probably Won't Read This Article About Syria
London Police Issue 'Hate Crime' Guidelines. Think Twice Before You Open Your Mouth.
Big Brother is watching you
EU TO POKE A BIG HOLE IN GOOGLE'S INTERNET MONOPOLY
50 years after My Lai massacre, survivors remember: 'I had to climb over so many bodies'
Friday, January 26. 2018
 Want to be fit and trim, attractive, high-energy, light on your feet, and signaling that you have your act together?
You know the popular approaches:
- Low-carb Atkins-like plan. This means fats, protein, and non-root vegetables and greens, with nuts and berries to complete the nutrition. This makes physiologic sense because it trains your body to burn your fat for energy instead of the carbs you shovel into it normally.
- Small but ordinary meals. Eg, a hard-boiled egg and coffee for breakfast, half a sandwich for lunch, a couple of slices of cheese for a snack, and a half-portion of supper. This is a sustainable approach for most people, but it still might not work for you. It works great as a maintenance program for me, but I do not need to lose any fat and I do not have a voracious appetite. By the way, eating "until full" is disgusting and has nothing to do with nutrition. It's just a measure of how much you have stretched your stomach or ignore satiety signals. Normal people eat until satisfied, not until full. "Stuffed" is for the Thanksgiving turkey, or on Thanksgiving.
- Keep a nutrition calendar. Write down everything you put in your mouth. It's even more effective if you include Why you ate that donut. Bored? Tempted by flavor? Anxious? etc. Best idea: When those things happen, do something else as a diversion. If you are overweight, your subjective appetite is a liar because your body is lazy and doesn't want the hassle of burning your fat.
- Exercise is basically useless for fat-burning in any ordinary time frame unless combined with a nutrition program of caloric or carb restriction. However, this is not an argument for a sedentary life. Furthermore, intense exercisers should have a small dose of carbs/sugar before a session to be most effective at pushing the effort.
I have written about the "False Hunger" of the overweight in the past. Paradoxically, the people who least need food experience hunger more than fit people, and consume food more avidly. I think it's usually an effect of being overweight, not a cause, but everybody is different.
Often forgotten: Fruit and fruit juices do not really belong on any fat-burning program. A glass of OJ or apple juice is the same as a Coke. The Big Fruit industry somehow convinced people that there was something "healthy" about fruit. There is not. Fruit is dessert, a treat. Neither do cereals or grains, except minimally, belong on a fat-burning plan.
Thursday, December 7. 2017
 Yesterday we had some agreement and some disagreement on the topic of the value or the role of "Long, slow, " aka aerobic, cardio workouts in a fitness or conditioning program.
My Conditioning program, which I hope to continue until something knocks me out of the ring, includes some pure cardio but it is a balanced and varied program designed to address all of the aspects of physical fitness.
What's the rationale, and what's that program? (Somewhat lengthy post below) -
Continue reading "Aerobic exercise, and balanced fitness programs in general for ordinary people"
Monday, October 23. 2017
There are several reasons why calories- in and calories- burned equations are too simple for the complexity of animal physiology. For one thing, the calories in protein are handled differently from those in fat or in carbohydrates. Another reason is that our metabolism adapts to our nutritional intake as best it is able to.
Other than hibernating animals, few animals are adapted to handle the sort of abundance that humans have remarkably produced with brains capable of entirely changing the planet's surface and modifying nutritional sources for its own purposes. Humans are nutritional outliers, and it is not "natural." In a sense, humans are not natural animals because of the extent to which they remake nature for their convenience.
One example: What Does It Mean to Be Fat-Adapted?
It means you have trained your body to adapt to a plentiful flow of fresh carbs and sugars (sugar is carbs and vice-versa) so it takes the burden off using fat as a fuel. Intake trains the body that way. Thus what we term the "False Hunger" of overweight people. Human physiology will never adapt to modern abundance of food because fatness tends to kill or disable people after child-bearing years.
Among other reasons, Fat Adaptation is one of the reasons heavy people feel more hunger and end up consuming food more avidly and in higher volume than trim people. In fact, overweight people have zero dietary energy requirements and minimal nutritional requirements despite subjective hunger.
Thursday, July 20. 2017
 How did dogs become our best friends? New evidence
´Let them eat food off the floor, play in the soil!´: It IS important to expose your children to germs to boost their immune system, expert urges
At age 111, America's oldest veteran is still smoking cigars, drinking whiskey and loving life
The Royal Family's dress code uncovered
Why Americans Are Having Less Sex
Perfect: Listen, Area Boss Gets It
USA Today: People Might Be Upset By Lack Of Women, Black People In ‘Dunkirk
Green Cronyism Gone Wild: It Looks Like The State Of California Is Bailing Out Tesla
What Facebook Can Learn From Company Towns - As the technology firm plans to build a village in Silicon Valley, history suggests what can sustain a company town long after its founders are gone.
No Justification for Importing More Low-skilled Labor, Study Claims
The Myth of Technological Unemployment - If the nightmare of technological unemployment were true, it would already have happened, repeatedly and massively.
The Mother of All Disruptions - Yes, robots are coming to the workplace, fast—and yes, America will change.
These Technologies Are Changing Farms in Some Surprising Ways - As agriculture adopts recent advances in automation and data science, farms will become super-efficient — and perhaps a bit lonely.
My University Treated Me Like a Criminal Over a Joke
Why It's a Bad Idea to Tell Students Words Are Violence
The English Language Is Under Attack. We Must Defend It.
Contrarian:
Fifteen posts into this series -- and I certainly hope that you have read all of them -- perhaps there are still a few of you out there who continue to believe that this whole global average surface temperature (GAST), "hottest year ever," "record warming" thing can't really be completely fraudulent...
WaPo’s Latest Worries About How Somali Community Will React To Police Shooting
Epstein: The Single-Payer Siren
Ronald Reagan has the answer to GOP’s ObamaCare riddle
The Left’s ‘Hamburger Problem’ Is Not Going Away
Josh Barro is a recovering ex-Republican who is now a member of a niche political group: the non-crazy Democrats. He coined a cute phrase — “the hamburger problem” — to describe the relentless politicization of everything by progressives and Democrats. He writes, “Democrats’ problem isn’t that they’re on the wrong side of policy issues. It’s that they’re too ready to bother too many ordinary people about too many of their personal choices, all the way down to the hamburgers they eat.” He cites nonstop Democratic hectoring on, inter alia, the team name of the Washington Redskins, the way men sit on subway trains, and even some Americans’ choice not to abide by China’s one-child standard as the reasons why the party is today as electorally wobbly as Rocky Balboa in the 15th round. Yet the GOP’s success puzzles him still, because so many core Democratic cultural ideals (notably, gay marriage and marijuana decriminalization) poll more and more strongly.
...
When John Stuart Mill called the British conservatives “the stupidest party,” it stuck. Today the Democrats are the Annoying Party. The Left thinks Americans are picturing Mary Poppins when they talk about the nanny state; in truth, they’re thinking of Nurse Ratched. The prospect of a new set of nuisances being dreamed up and lashingly enforced by Hillary Clinton is what led voters to roll the dice with an Atlantic City grifter.
Elizabeth Warren Attends Martha’s Vineyard Fundraising Dinner Hosted By Big Bank Executive
About erasing history:
It would be far better to teach the vital lesson that good men, well-meaning men, brave men and women, can be dreadfully wrong by our current standards and understanding. Charlemagne’s world is not the post-modern European Union. Neither was that of Cortez and De Soto. We need to be studying these men and women in order to remember that they did great things in terrible ways, they did what we today consider heinous things in the name of what they believe to be a great good, that they were not perfect and neither are we. Napoleon was a great man. A great and terrible man, because the wars he unleashed on Europe and his exporting the ideas of the French Revolution led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, people left homeless, and sowed the seeds for troubles that were and are still bearing fruit. So do we erase Napoleon from European history? Or do we learn from all his complexity?
While Nation Is Focused On Healthcare, The WH Press Corps Continue To Push Russia Conspiracies
Taxing Hospitals Is a Lousy Way to Fix Health Care- Higher hospital profits were a feature of Obamacare, not a bug.
Fmr. U.N. Amb. Power Emerges As Central Figure In Obama Unmasking Investigation - Congress demands answers on why Obama officials demanded classified intel that harmed Trump
Pavlich: Clinton’s Russia dirt
Tucker Carlson Calls Out Dems For Double Standard On Russia
USPS broke law in allowing workers to boost Clinton campaign, watchdog says
New Documents Suggest “Puff Pieces” On Dem Sen. Kamala Harris Due to Major Spending With PR Firm
Palestinians: Another Lopsided Deal
Palestinian Authority’s 2017 Budget Shows ‘Huge Increase’ in Funding for Terror Payments
Mosul and Urban Warfare
The city is severely damaged, with neighborhoods reduced to rubble. Its people have endured sustained terror.
Blame ISIS for the terror and ruin. ISIS commanders relied on beheadings and torture to control the population. They obliterated numerous shrines and historic sites in the region, with the biblical city of Nimrud a special target. Why? Erasing history ISIS leaders deemed "un-Islamic" was a key political policy.
UNESCO is an Immoral, Anti-Semitic Organization - Decent Countries Should Leave
Wednesday, January 25. 2017
My pic is from the mirador a good hike down and up from Alhambra, longer due to getting lost wandering through the old Muslim quarter - everybody gets lost trying to get to the mirador. Part of the fun. We linked up with a charming Turkish gal, and a German couple who were equally confused. There is always a jolly party of mostly young people up there at the mirador in the evening.
My previous Spain posts from last November:
Real Flamenco
High-speed trains
Tapas in Spain
Moorish Design and Marble Plaster
Moorish Architecture
A few comments on visiting Spain, with lots of Seville photos plus Carmen's work site
With the amusing election, family matters, and holidays past, I will catch up on my Andalusia photo travelogue from early November.
Another inspiration is that I am re-reading (with more interest and understanding after having been there) Menocal's
In the 700s and 800s, Spain was invaded by Moslem immigration partly from Damascus (then the center of the caliphate before it moved to Baghdad) but especially by newly-Muslim Berbers from North Africa. That immigration wave brought civilization to post-Roman Visigoth-ruled Iberian peninsula, Christian in a Visigoth way, which was a dying place where the term "Dark Ages" accurately applied. That immigration/invasion produced the first Golden Age for Spain. The Muslims brought modern irrigation, agricultural wealth, architecture, art, landscape design, education, medical knowledge, enlightened governance, and poetry to a god-forsaken corner of Europe.
The only other place where something similar happened, as far as I know, was in Sicily where the Normans kept the Muslims on the job because they knew how to run things properly and were well-educated. Those were not the Muslims who grab the news these days.
Note to all history teachers and profs: My problem with your courses is that you never seem to locate the details in the Big Picture, into the Big Timeline. Please do it - it's for the kids!
All right, onward from Cordoba to Jaen and Grenada below the fold. I'll do a Madrid post later.
Continue reading "Andalusia travelogue #3, approximately"
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