Archive for June 2008
Word
I am momentarily relieved...I am not impressed. Billy Beck, on the SCOTUS DC gun ban decision.
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Arthur De Vany at the Gym
Update 8/17/2008: Since Art changed his blog around, the links below to his photos are no longer available. However, I've written a lot of stuff about Art, and you can skim through all my "EvFit" postings here. Also, here's a recent video clip of Art, taken a few months back at a seminar I attended in Vegas. For those skeptical about Evolutionary Fitness (diet and exercise) and its long-term health benefits, here's a look at Art while at the gym getting some photos done for his book. He turns 71 years old in August. I would say that almost anyone should be able to obtain those kind of results in just a few year's time, depending on where you are when you begin. It's 80% about the diet, and the workouts should be short (30-40 minutes max), intense, and no more frequent than 2-3 times per week at the gym. By the way, I'll probably devote a post to this and a few other items, but I dumped the Lyle McDonald Rapid Fat Loss Diet early in the week and went back to eating EvFit/Paleo and I'm not looking back, ever. I bring this up because I think a lot...
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How Big a Fool Are You?
Let me show you. This would apply to any of millions worldwide who think Al Gore is a great guy and good for the environment. In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month. [...] Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month –1,638 kWh more energy per month than before the renovations – at a cost of $16,533. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration. In the wake of becoming the most well-known global warming alarmist, Gore won an Oscar, a Grammy and the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition, Gore saw his personal wealth increase by an estimated $100 million thanks largely to speaking fees and investments related to global warming hysteria. Suckers & Fools. (that link was via my brother in email)
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He’s at it again
Think about it. Why on earth should children get tooth decay (see addendum)? Stephan thinks he knows. Weston price was a dentist and scientist in the early part of the 20th century. Practicing dentistry in Cleveland, he was amazed at the poor state of his patients' teeth and the suffering it inflicted. At the time, dental health was even worse than it is today, with some children in their teens already being fitted for dentures. Being a religious man, he could not bring himself to believe that 'physical degeneration' was what God intended for mankind. He traveled throughout the world looking for cultures that did not have crooked teeth or dental decay, and that also exhibited general health and well-being. And he found them. A lot of them.
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A Bit of a Roundup in Fitness
The diet experiment went OK last week, though if anyone has been checking my FitDay data, I haven't updated since Thursday (but I will). Add to that, we had a going-away party Friday night, another one at friends' on Saturday night, and then there was the Father's day festivities at mom's yesterday. Mom does low carb, and after the previous two nights of overindulgence I was off the alcohol, so it was about one for three. And now both Bea and I -- with her off school for the summer -- are back on Lyle's program. I really hate it. It's just too low in fat. But I'll stick with it until we head down to SoCal on the 2nd of July. Then I plan to resume a bit lower fat version of Paleo / EvFit. Principally, I'll forego nuts and cheese until I get the last couple dozen pounds of fat off. Maintenance will be a cinch. Hey, I already love eating this way and even when pounds were coming off excruciatingly slow, I never gained anything more than the typical fluctuations of a pound or two, which is probably digestive and water retention. By the way, I had...
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Not Even Customer (Yet) Service
I got wind of this just yesterday. So, let me see... My current provider, AT&T, delivers very reliable DSL (down once that I'm aware of in 2 1/2 years) that's advertised as "up to" 6 Mbps down and "up to" 768 Kbps up. That's their top end service, and they sell it for $35.00 per month, which I consider a good value. I consistently get the same test results from Speakeasy: 5.x megs down and 5.x kilos up. Pretty good, and as I say, it's consistent, even from the far away servers. But how on earth can that compete with 20 meg synchronous (up and down) for under $50 per month? That's 5 times faster download and 40 times faster on the upload. I'd probably do more YouTube videos, because it's really the slow upload that's the issue, there. This is god news, too: With PAXIO you will not need to purchase any routers, hubs, modems or other specialized equipment. Furthermore, you won't need to install any software on your computers. Just plug your computers into any of your home's CAT5 data outlets (all of the CAT5 outlets will be active). You can plug a computer or router (or wireless...
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Ha. Ha. Ha.
Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha...Ha... The Chinese think we're insane and self-destructive, while the Saudis laugh all the way to the bank. Ha. Ha. (Beck & Bidonotto)
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The Wonderful World of Fat
My god. Is this ever a very long way from this. That was tough, yesterday: day one of my excursion into Lyle McDonald's Rapid Fat Loss Protocol. What work to stuff down 1,000 calories without the benefit of much fat -- 10 grams of which came from fish oil capsules. Plus, worrying about -- of all things -- being hungry at night, I saved nearly 100 protein grams for the evening meal and just couldn't do it. Humongous lean ground beef burger on the grill, cooked to medium-well and pressed to get out as much fat as possible (it was 96/4 anyway), and it was tough to get all down, and I only ate half of the cottage cheese, salsa and cucumbers on the side. Note to low-fat Paleo types: here's how to do really lean ground beef so it tastes great. I chopped up some onion, then spiced with salt, pepper, garlic, and above all, quite a bit of cumin and paprika. Mix it all up in the meat, then press the patties. The cumin especially. Very, very tasty. I always get the fattiest ground beef I can, for taste, but I've got to admit that was very good...
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What You’re Up Against
As usual, Stephan the biologist delivers. Takes apart the biases in the study and all. Of course, the biases were incorporated in order to explain away the fact that one of the healthiest diets ever observed is one high in saturated fat and animal flesh, to the exclusion of much of everything else. Let me sum it up: the heavy smoking Masai, who eat almost nothing but raw cow's milk, raw cow's blood, and meat, are healthier -- far healthier in every marker -- than you, Mr. and Ms. low-fat America. Later: Just thought of something. Look at the picture on the link to Stephan's blog. Notice anything? How about that nice set of white sparklers in the one tribesman. This reminded me of a Discovery episode the other night I surfed into. It was covering some deeply indigenous population way far from any civilization in Papua New Guinea. I forget the name of the peoples, and they do live in squalor (I'd eat white flour and sugar first), but they looked remarkably healthy. They subsist on tadpoles, frogs, sweet potatoes, and tobacco they grow and dry themselves. The men were all lean, with nice pecs, shoulder decks, and defined...
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Gas
I simply have no stomach for this election disaster whatsoever, and even, politics in general, just now. Life is full, otherwise. Those of you who come here for the rants and ridicule, I sincerely apologize. I'm sure I'll hit on some things here and there. In the meantime, we've always got Billy. It's way past time for people to start owning up to what they laughingly call their "ideas". Fucking morons. I hope they freeze in the dark, listening to the cries of their children. The real sin in all this is how they take sensible people along with them on the ride. Goddam right. I am fortunate in that the price of gas doesn't affect me very much, but I know it's effecting alot of other people, and for no good reason. If we truly were "running out of oil," then we should rightly welcome such increases in prices, as such is a natural, free-market means of both rationing what's left of supplies, as well as driving the search and development of alternative energy sources and alternative means of getting shit done, such as getting from point A to B. But you have the state, globally, in the whole...
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200
Well I finally hit the 200 mark on the scale at the gym, Friday. It's eight years since I've been there, and it feels good. What feels particularly good is that rather than just losing 30 pounds of weight, I lost 45 pounds of fat and gained 15 pounds of lean mass, an estimate my personal trainer thinks is low. My strength has increased dramatically over the last year, and particularly so since I began fasting and going to full body workouts last January. The whole mainstream diet world is focussed on weight loss rather than on body fat loss, and so the approach is too often one where plenty of lean mass is lost right along with the fat (thanks to insane amounts of "cardio"). So, the metabolism slows, people get weaker, and then simply end up with a small version of their previous selves, at roughly the same percentage of body fat to lean mass. Now, instead of being big & fat, they're skinny and fat. It's interesting when you develop and eye for this. You no longer look at people in terms of size, but in terms of leanness. Almost everyone is fat. Very fat. You would...
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Learning to Walk
I've been spending time in the evenings catching up on some of the blogs I'd not read in some time and Modern Forager is on the list. Did you know that "You Walk Wrong And Your Shoes Are To Blame"? I do; that is, I did, but I don't anymore. If there's anything I know a whole very lot about, it's walking, and I've never even read anything about it. I walk. I walk a lot. I walk a fuck of a lot. It began in February, 2003, so nearly 6 1/2 years ago. Every weekday morning, very nearly 100% without failure, my day begins -- be it 6 am or 8 am -- with a morning walk with the dog -- now dogs -- for about 3 1/2 miles which, with all the sniffing an peeing -- them, not me -- takes just about 55 minutes. I figure we're coming up on 7,000 miles, and that doesn't count the one or sometimes two additional walks in the afternoon and evening, many of which Bea does, but I do plenty. A very lot of what I believe I now understand about health and fitness and our maladaption to many aspects...
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Ha!
Well, Kyle had a better take than I. One might add that she did say she wanted to stick around (just in case, y'know). She really brims with concern.
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It’s All Over But the Lots of More Bullshit
ObamaNation clinches the Democrat nomination, according to the AP tally. If you find this in any way exciting, glorious, marvelous, or anything like that, please do check your own propensity to lap up foolishness. Footnote: I haven't read the book, but George Will's column on Caesaropapism -- as coined by Gene Healy in his new book: "The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power" -- makes me want to run out and get it. Although, I'm one of the last people on earth to need to read it. Lot's of you do. Billy doesn't. Let me put it this way: the nice cleaning ladies that come to my loft every Thursday are immeasurably more important to me than any politician that has ever held the office of President of the United States. Later: Told you: "Lots of More Bullshit." Hey, if she can "endure" the philandering of the low-life scum she's married to for the sake of appearances in the eyes of fools, then I suppose any sort of pathetic self-subordination isn't beyond her.
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I Comment
Brad: This is so right on. Thing is, we learn it from the time we're kids ("eat all your dinner, so you can grow up big and strong"). That implies that food is causal to growth, but that's a cause/effect reversal. Growth hormone causes us to grow and build more muscle. Eating more is an effect, in response to a higher baseline metabolism. I like to use the analogy of a skyscraper. If the raw material caused the growth, then one presumes you could just pile up raw material and have a skyscraper. Instead, you need construction workers (analogous to GH), and the more of them and the more they work, the more raw material (food) you'll need. Here's the thing: I made good but slow progress from last May '07 to the end of the year on a Paleo diet with twice weekly intense workouts, but I was only doing half upper body per session (30 minutes). Then at the first of the year I began the fasting, and that's when muscle growth and huge increases in strength began to really accelerate. Then I went to full body every time, and I concentrate on legs, chest, back and shoulders....
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The Very Interesting Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Pretty sweeping interview in the London Times. I think he gets it right a whole lot more than he gets it wrong. As it turns out, that's probably the very best anyone can hope for. (via Art De Vany, whom Taleb mentions in the interview)
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