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Free The Animal

Ex Navy Officer. Owner of Businesses. Digital Entrepreneur. Expat Living in Thailand. 5,000 Biting Blog Post on Everything since 2003.

You are here: Home / 2008 / Archives for February 2008

Archives for February 2008

MacNotes

February 29, 2008 1 Comment

Well I just went out and purchased a Time Capsule and it’s working just fine & dandy. Time Machine is doing its thing backing up. This is quite cool. Any and all Mac computers in the house (two currently) will fully back up their drives automatically, completely, wirelessly, in the background. I have an AirPort Extreme Base Station, purchased months ago on the assumption that the USB drive one can plug into it would work with Time Machine as a shared drive. Well, long story short: that was Apple’s plan; but it didn’t work reliably, so they ditched it right before Leopard’s release. I didn’t bother to research before buying, and, oh well; the integrated hard drive is a cleaner solution anyway.

I’ll take the AP Extreme up to the cabin where I installed an Apple TV last weekend. We rented, downloaded, and watched three movies in HD. HD downloads take hours on a 1.2 mbps dsl connection, but it did its thing overnight, so everything was ready to watch the next morning. However, I’ll probably just rent in standard def up there from now on. It’s just not worth the money for the higher dsl speed when it’s used so infrequently. Standard def movies ought to be ready to watch pretty shortly after being rented and download commences. Another alternative would be to decide what we’re going to rent before leaving San Jose, rent on one, other, or both of the MacBooks and then just move them wirelessly to Apply TV for viewing, which takes only minutes.

Back to Time Capsule. When I got it home I opened the AirPort Utility in order to copy down all the configuration info, just to be sure. Then I went about setting up the Time Capsule, and guess what? The utility essentially says, "hey, you’ve got an AP Extreme here; ya wanna join that network with the TC, or replace it with the TC?" Replace. So it copied all the config info over, told me to unplug the APE, and everything worked right off the bat without even having to re-connect the notebooks to it and enter the wireless password. Slick. As usual, they thought of everything and what you’d probably want to do. Sure, I didn’t have to spend hours "teching around" so I could impress friends and neighbors with my troubleshooting skills; but I’m secure in that way, after 20 years of teching around with MS clients and servers.

Speaking of MS, I am really disappointed in pissed off at their Office 2008 release for the Mac, and I really hope Apple comes up with a good alternative that’s compatible with Office docs moving forward. My main reason for getting it (I had the previous one which was fine) was for Entourage, because one thing I’ve always liked is Exchange Server with Outlook and that’s what we run at the office. Long story short: its Exchange integration was crappy, so I got 2008 in hopes it would be better (RCP over HTTP, perhaps?). Not changed at all (uses OWA, and that gets you email, calendar, contacts; but no tasks and notes, and I still can’t get LDAP working so I can access Active Directory for internal office email addresses and other shit), and even more offensive is that the email client still won’t display complex HTML properly and even when it does, won’t forward it; you still have to save the email as a file and then include it as an attachment to a new email. Can you believe it? Pathetic; and Gates and MS can just go fuck themselves for that.

Hear that, Bill? Fuck you and your Office Mac 2008 scam.

So, I switched over to Mac Mail and I’m coming to love its simplicity. For email, the IMAP works fine, and it organized my .Mac and Gmail IMAP better than Entourage, so with three email accounts the overall experience is simpler, better. Mail is of course integrated with Address Book and iCal, and those each sync with Entourage, so all I really need to do is open Entourage each morning and it will sync any calendar or contacts changes with Exchange Server.

Later: Almost forgot; I also dumped all my feeds into Mac Mail, using it now as my default RSS reader. There’s a feature or two I might like added, but it’s simple and I like it.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: apple, apple tv, mac, time capsule

Land of the Free Update

February 29, 2008 4 Comments

Good news for conservative, law & order Republicans:

New High in U.S. Prison Numbers

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads
the world in both the number and percentage of residents it
incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

Got that? We’ve more people in jail than China, which has over four times our population (more than a billion more people than us). In terms of percentage in jail, China isn’t even on the map, while we exceed but keep such illustrious company as Russia, Belarus, Turkmenistan, and Cuba.

America #1!

(Balko link)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: world incarceration rates

The IF Life

February 28, 2008 1 Comment

Here's another blog for you intermittent fasters out there. Just started, looks really well done.

Into my RSS reader it has gone. Oh, I found out from Chris.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Intermittent Fasting

Recession?

February 28, 2008 Leave a Comment

Bush says no. So what? He’s no better at predicting the future than anyone else. There is a formal definition of the thing: two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. We haven’t yet posted a negative quarter.

Now, setting aside all the shenanigans that comprise the broad makeup of our rather fascistic economy, by which I mean lip-service is given to the concept of "private" property but the State overseas and regulates virtually everything, do you know of many relationships amongst complex inputs and feedbacks that goes in one direction forever?

If you try to loose weight, do you expect  every step on the scale to be less than before? If you’re building a business, do you expect any setbacks? Ever found you needed to change your approach in your personal finances because of problems, unforeseen difficulties, mistakes?

Recessions, whether caused by the State’s meddling in economics and markets, normal feedbacks from markets needed to adjust themselves to various factors including new technology, or simply self-fulfilling prophesy, it seems to me that what would be strange and dangerous is not to experience economic recession. We’re probably in for one, if I had to guess. The Democrats need it to ensure the election, and really all that’s needed is for people to believe they’re minutes away from standing in the soup line and that’ll probably be enough to set one in motion. Of course, whether we’re in really in for one or not, or even whether the economic conditions are bad for most people or not is entirely beside the point. There’s no honesty anywhere in the election process, or in the voters themselves. It’s an exercise in tribal ritual where everyone is on the warpath for the most plausible lies to believe and tell others, so as to most effectively promote their tribe and its leaders. It’s how facts get "utilized."

I suppose it’s "evolutionary" in a sense, in that it’s just as primitive as ever on principled grounds; only the trappings, glitter, and sophistication have changed.

Filed Under: General

What You’re Up Against, Again

February 28, 2008 1 Comment

Everybody knows that "good cholesterol" is good, right? Well, actually, none of you probably know that. You've heard it reported, your doctor has told you so, and so you believe that "good cholesterol" is actually good. Pay attention, because that's not a trivial distinction and it has broad implications in all manner of knowledge.

So, on the heals of my summary of the Cholesterol Con, there's this:

High Levels of "Good" Cholesterol May Be a Bad Thing


A Dutch research study suggests that high levels of "good" HDL cholesterol are
not so good – in fact, they may actually increase the risk of a cardiovascular
event.

Peter, the UK veterinarian of Hyperlipid runs down the details (thought: could veterinarians in general be smarter than doctors for humans, having to deal with the biology and metabolism of multiple species, thus having a more generalized — indeed principled — approach to medicine?). I think he gets to the bottom line.

Are you seeing a pattern here? It all comes down to particle numbers,
sizes, contents. What controls all of these? Not statin deficiencies,
as in IDEAL.

Forget your cholesterol. What marker predicts heart attacks and total mortality without all of the paradoxes?

Follow EPIC and HbA1c
(yes, same that same EPIC study as this one) to get some sort of clue.
Control what you are doing wrong diet/lifestyle-wise to glycosylate
your haemoglobin and your liver will sort out whatever cholesterol
particles sizes/numbers it needs for health.

Be sure and follow that link in his quote, above. And here's another word of advice. It's a good idea to educate yourself on how to read these studies and understand them, or at least get a general idea. It takes a little time and effort, but it builds on itself, just like the more you learn of a language, the more you are equipped to learn even more, faster. The information is out there, and much of what I've been posting about is how this stuff gets misreported — or not reported at all — when it conflicts with the received public catechism. Ultimately, nobody is really going to care about your health. But you can, and the information is out there.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: cholesterol

Billy Notes

February 27, 2008 Leave a Comment

Coupla posts I’d been intending to getting to.

First, this cite of H.L. Menken on Public Enemy Number One. Note: the "police officers" you see today are of the same character makeup as those Good Germans who — as Billy himself puts it — "didn’t listen to their own conscience as they loaded Jews into cattle cars." Go read the whole cite, but here’s the essential:

What the common man longs for in this world, before and above all
his other longings, is the simplest and most ignominious sort of peace:
the peace of a trusty in a well-managed penitentiary.

Next, some old notes on our beloved Constitution.

…the very height of what America was all about was stated in the Declaration of Independence.

And it was all downhill from there. Read it.

Filed Under: General

What You’re Up Against

February 27, 2008 Leave a Comment

I think I touched on this earlier, but Michael Eades has a good one about how you simply cannot trust the media to accurately report the findings from diet studies. It's bad enough that so many of the studies are flawed with selection bias, but even when a study is honesty done and its finding sound, you can't get honest reporting on it.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: low carb diet

Land of the Free Update

February 27, 2008 Leave a Comment

Here’s a guy determined to get himself fined $2,500 and potentially subject himself to jail time in Illinois because he audaciously claims that his business belongs to him, and that smoking is allowed.

What nerve. Freedom comes with responsibilities, you know.

(Balko link)

Filed Under: General

A Path In Pictures

February 23, 2008 9 Comments

This was me, tipping the scale at about 230. For perspective, I was 165 when I graduated high school. Normal adult weight would probably be around 175 without doing anything to build lean muscle. You'll notice how lean, trim, and lovely is my wife Bea, with whom I celebrate seven years of marriage, tomorrow.

Lunch_toulon_france

One reason I've delayed publishing photos of my progress is differences in perception. I write a lot about this, so my credibility is at stake; and even though I feel the changes all over, I just can't tell how other people will generally react to photos. If they react negatively, that doesn't do me any good, which has nothing to do with making progress, but it does have to do with the blogging aspect. This is bolstered by the fact that I've seen a few such expositions other bloggers have posted, and have been less than impressed. So, there's a balance of sorts. Ultimately, due the subject matter, I feel it's necessary to put my skin where my mouth is. So I've waited until I was certain the results were objective enough that readers and lookers aren't going to think I'm full of shit.

Another aspect is that part of why I do this is to hold myself accountable. I was a Big Fat Gluttonous Slob. It's the simple truth of the matter. Yea, it's partly not my fault because of the carbohydrate culture and I was just unaware, and often uncertain due to all the contradictory information. But now that I know, and can see the results of the combination of weight lifting, low-carb, moderate protein, high (animal) fat, and intermittent fasting (the key and foundation), I simply have no excuse, since I value having a lean, healthy looking physique. If you don't care about yours, I've got no argument with you. Some people don't, and they ought to be left alone. I'm really not trying to shame anyone. If you value something better, then you already feel the shame. Apply some knowledge and discipline and I believe you can make progress. I harp on it, but intermittent fasting is the essential key, and it's not so much the added wight you loose more quickly, but the radical reprogramming of your ancestral appetite. I would probably already be at my target had I discovered fasting in May rather than December.

More old me. Notice the almost ape-like posture. "Lovely."

Somewhere_in_france

So I began working out at the beginning of May '07 with short, 30-minute highly intense weight lifting sessions, twice per week, with a personal trainer of 13 years experience and a bachelor's degree in exercise physiology (he really knows his stuff). There's virtually no rest in-between sets, so I was accomplishing in a half hour what I never did in three times the duration when on my own. Initially, my bodyweight increased, which was to be expected due to lean gain. Then it dropped, and seesawed its way down to about a 7 pound net loss in the first six to seven months. But I wasn't eating even close to properly, believing perhaps that if I just built enough lean muscle, I could go on eating lots of the junk I loved. I also wanted to focus on one primary thing, initially. It was progress, but it was taking long. So I eventually decided to clean up my act and eat more "Paleo" or "Art DeVany-style," beginning in about November '07, or so. The net loss rate seemed to about double during November and December, and it was right prior to the Xmas holidays that I discovered intermittent fasting, thanks to both Art and Brad Pilon, author of EatStopEat.

So here we go. On the left is from November, after nearly seven months of working out, and a few weeks of eating better. On the right is today, almost three months to the day later. I began fasting nearly two months ago and generally try to do two 24-30 hour fasts per week, and usually ending right after my two weekly workouts.

Before_and_now

In the last two months of "appetite reprogramming" due to fasting, I've gone from eating "paleo," to a more highly "carnivorous" diet with little in the way of fruits of vegetables (some nuts, yes). It was high protein, and this was driven by appetite as a result of fasting, so I just went with it. But it kept changing and now I eat less than half the meat, lots more fat (animal; saturated), and bits of veggies, fruits, and nuts.

Here's the entire photo gallery which I will continue to update and provide notice here. Comments and questions are welcome and encouraged — in the comment form or via email. I'm happy to assist anyone if I can.

Later: Karen DeCoster has some keen observations and kind words about my progress. I have always looked to Karen as sensible about diet and exercise and am proud to have made her grade. She knows what she's talking about.

Update 6/23/2009: Here's an update from September 2008, and the most recent, June 2009.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: diet, evolutionary fitness, exercise, fasting, paleo diet

Cholesterol Con

February 23, 2008 10 Comments

For those following along with me on this exercise, diet, fasting journey, it should be quite apparent that my diet has shifted considerably since I began this in May '07, to where now I am quite comfortable eating a diet very high in saturated fat mainly from animal sources (coconut oil would be an exception). But how did that happen? Did I do a lot of research on it and decide it was the best approach, or what?

Nope. I just followed my nose, or, more specifically, my appetite. None of any of this was remotely apparent prior to having undertaken a number of fasts, normally of 30-hour duration, culminating in a workout for most of them. At first (prior to beginning the fasting), I gradually adopted a "Paleo" approach because it made logical sense. In evolutionary time scaled to one year, humanity has been exposed to grains for about a day, and concentrated vegetable oils for ten minutes (that's a short YouTube; check it out). But then something odd happened with the fasts. My appetite changed dramatically. Now, why would that be? Why does it persist? Long story short: it originally changed to wanting just lots of meat, but over time, even my appetite for huge cuts of meat has subsided. Now, I seem to desire mostly very high fat content (animal, including unsalted butter), modest meat, and just very small bits of carbs in the form of some vegetables, nuts, and a little fruit (had some pineapple with breakfast, yesterday). Incidentally, these cravings, tastes, and hungers are unmistakable. Fasting seems to heighten the senses in this regard. For example, I have become very sensitive to salt and add little to none on most things, anymore. Normal salted butter tastes very salty to me now.

So in order to accept the hypothesis that dietary saturated fat I hunger for is damaging, in the context of mostly non-agricultural diet — i.e., little to no grain-based products — it would be necessary to conclude that either (1), human hunger adversely motivates the human organism to harm itself (which is prima facie absurd), or (2), that I suffer from some ailment most other people don't have that's causing me to hunger for things that are harmful to me, which seems unlikely as no other symptoms present (quite the contrary: I feel better than I have in 20 years). A third possibility, equally unlikely in my view, is that just as my hunger changed from lots of meat to more modest portions with higher fat, I'm on the cusp of yet more appetite changes that'll have me eating from fruit baskets and standing in line at Fresh Choice in no time.

So there I was, in somewhat of a quandary. Virtually the whole nutritional world stands against me, while friends jokingly propose that they take out life insurance policies on me. Yet, I know what I hunger for, and I'm pretty sure that some reasonable semblance of the path I tread has been traveled before me, before "nutrition" was even approached as a science, and with nothing but apparently excellent human results. So mostly just to satisfy my curiosity, along with the perverse pleasure in pointing out to the horrified that they actually know nothing of what they talk about, only that they "know" "artery-clogging-saturated-fats" from everything they see, hear, and read in the major media outlets. So what do I know, now? Well, after lots and lots of poking around, reading the abstracts and texts of many studies, I know at least some of the actual data upon which much of what's reported is based. I also know that many studies are not reported at all in the mainstream. I know there is nothing like a scientific consensus; say, like the consensus that a certain strain of viruses cause the common cold. I know that there is tons and tons and reams and reams of studies and data, going back decades, that not only doesn't support the saturated fat, cholesterol hypothesis, but actually contradicts it, and I know that from these data emanate hyper-complex sub-hypotheses in attempts to explain it away.

There has never, ever been a single study even remotely linking high saturated fat intake to either elevated total cholesterol, or heart disease (there is to the contrary, though). Not to mortality either (though there is to the contrary). Neither are there any studies conclusively linking high cholesterol to heart disease or mortality, though there are studies linking low cholesterol to higher mortality. It just goes on and on.

Via Carbophobe, I came across this book review of Dr. Malcolm Kendrick's The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It. From there, I found this great article by the doctor, which I understand to pretty much summarize much of what's in the book. Read it, though here are a few short excerpts to wet your appetite.

The cholesterol hypothesis can be likened to a cathedral built on a bog. Rather than admit they made a horrible mistake and let it sink, the builders decided to try and keep the cathedral afloat at all costs. Each time a crack appeared, a new buttress was built. Then further buttresses were built to support the original buttresses.

Although direct contradictions to the cholesterol hypothesis repeatedly appear, nobody dares to say 'okay, this isn't working, time to build again from scratch'. That decision has become just too painful, especially now that massive industries, Nobel prizes, and glittering scientific careers, have grown on the back of the cholesterol hypothesis. The statin market alone is worth more than £20billion each year. […]

The MR-FIT trial in the USA was the most determined effort to prove the case. This was a massive study in which over 350,000 men at high risk of heart disease were recruited. In one set of participants, cholesterol consumption was cut by 42 percent, saturated fat consumption by 28 percent and total calories by 21 percent. This should have made a noticeable dent in heart disease rates.

But nothing happened. The originators of the MR-FIT trials refer to the results as 'disappointing', and say in their conclusions: 'The overall results do not show a beneficial effect on Coronary Heart Disease or total mortality from this multifactor intervention.'

In fact, no clinical trial on reducing saturated fat intake has ever shown a reduction in heart disease. Some have shown the exact opposite: 'As multiple interventions against risk factors for coronary heart disease in middle aged men at only moderate risk seem to have failed to reduce both morbidity and mortality such interventions become increasingly difficult to justify. […]

This quote followed a disturbing trial involving Finnish businessmen. In a 10-year follow-up to the original five-year trial, it was found that those men who continued to follow a low saturated fat diet were twice as likely to die of heart disease as those who didn't. […]

Variations on a theme emerged. It is not saturated fat per se that causes heart disease. It's the ratio of polyunsaturated to saturated fat that is critical. Or is it the consumption of monounsaturated fats, or a lack of omega-3 fatty acids, or an excess of omega-6? Take your pick. These, and a host of other add-on hypotheses, have their proponents.

As of today nobody can – or will – tell you which type of fat, in what proportions, added to what type of anti-oxidant, vegetable, monounsaturated fat or omega-3 is the true culprit. Hugely complicated explanations are formulated, but they all fall apart under scrutiny. […]

Before looking at the connection between blood cholesterol levels and heart disease, it is worth highlighting a critically important – remarkably unheralded – fact: After the age of 50, the lower your cholesterol level is, the lower your life expectancy.

Perhaps even more important than this is the fact that a falling cholesterol level sharply increases the risk of dying of anything, including heart disease.

There's lots and lots more, so read the whole thing if this is of interest to you.

And so back to my own personal experience, I took this just an hour ago. Less than a year ago I pretty much filled these out. And by the photos, you know what I've been eating.

Baggy_pants

Filed Under: General Tagged With: high cholesterol

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About FreeTheAnimal

I'm Richard Nikoley. Free The Animal began in 2003 and as of 2020, has 5,000 posts and 120,000 comments from readers. I blog what I wish...from lifestyle to philosophy, politics, social antagonism, adventure travel, nomad living, location and time independent—"while you sleep"— income, and food. I intended to travel the world "homeless" but the Covid-19 panic-demic squashed that. I've become an American expat living in rural Thailand where I've built a home. I celebrate the audacity and hubris to live by your own exclusive authority and take your own chances. [Read more...]

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