Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

What could possibly go wrong?

Two things that jumped out at me while we were in Scotland were beans and peas. Scots (or maybe Brits generally) love baked beans! For example, when we ate breakfast at our hotels, there would be the usual fare, such as cereal, porridge, yogurt, toast, pastries, sausage, fruit, juices, and scrambled eggs, but also a large container of . . . baked beans! We saw this everywhere, and not just for breakfast. I like baked beans as much as the next person, but this is ridiculous. As for peas, I would never have thought that peas, especially mashed peas mixed with ham (called "mushy peas"), would be served with fish and chips. I had fish and chips twice during our stay, but passed on the ham-infiltrated peas both times. These oddities make me wonder which aspects of our American diet strike Scots (or other foreigners) as strange. Any ideas?

Here.

Here.

Here is your weekend reading. For information about John Derbyshire, see here. The twits at National Review couldn't stand an independent thinker in their midst.

Man of Colours (1987).

To the Editor:

What does Judith Shulevitz’s brand of feminism offer to women who do not have children? They are often the ones left behind in the office, taking on all the extra work that piles up when someone goes on leave. I’ve had to travel more, work longer hours and manage more people because someone in the office had a baby. And, this has happened multiple times in my career.

It is just assumed that women like me will take over for the new moms. By the time she comes back to work, I’m exhausted, but there is no leave offered to me. The same when children are sick, or it’s the school play, or soccer games, or any other of the myriad times that mothers take time off for their children. Doesn’t anyone ever realize that all the assistance offered to women with children is at the expense of someone else? I don’t care if you call it feminism or something else, I would just like to see a system that works for everyone.

LINDA PORTER

Seattle

I’m getting to like Trump, and getting really disgusted with people like Paul Ryan who I used to think were doing as well as could be expected. Opposing Trump in the primaries was the conservative thing to do. Opposing him now is the liberal thing to do. I still think Trump is wrong about a lot of things, but Hillary is wrong about everything.

I'm watching the Tour of Switzerland on tape delay on Universal Sports. Today's stage is an individual time trial in which riders race against the clock. (The lowest elapsed time wins the stage.) I just saw a rider going downhill in the tuck position. The motorcycle immediately behind him showed "113" on the speedometer. That's kilometers per hour, which translates to 70.2 miles per hour. Yikes! The fastest I've ever gone on a bike is (as I recall) 52 miles per hour, and that was frightening beyond belief. If anything happens at that speed, such as a puncture, well, I don't want to think about it.

Addendum: Here is video of Jon Izaguirre descending at 70 miles per hour.

I had company on the trail today. These Canadian geese (click to enlarge) were in the water when I went through the first time, but were grazing near the trail upon my return. Today's ride of 34.2 miles gives me 2,772.4 miles for the year. As you may recall, my plan was to have my second-best mileage year in 2016 and then make an assault on the record in 2017; but I'm so far ahead of schedule that I may make an assault on the record this year. The record is 6,205.9 miles, set in 1990, when I was 32 and 33 years old. It was scorching hot during today's ride. The heat index was 101º when I left the house (at 11:00) and 104º when I returned (at 1:40). I got a reading of 106º during one of my stops, as this snapshot from my iPhone proves:

Having lived in Arizona and Texas since August 1983, I'm inured to the heat. I quite like it, actually. My average speed today was 17.07 miles per hour. My record on this course is 17.45 miles per hour, so you can see that the heat didn't affect me too much.