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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.

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Archives for December 2011

See You in 2012; It’s Gonna Be Brutal

December 30, 2011 64 Comments

People will be masturbating all year over who’s going to rule them next

Not me. I’m going to make fun of everyone who has even the slightest interest. And you get to make fun of me, if you like. But I’ll always be able to say one thing you can’t: nobody should rule anyone; nobody should be President; Everybody should endeavor—every day—to become the God of a very small minority. . .themselves.

With that in mind, we headed out Thursday with my [email protected] retro trailer.

Road
Road

I’m sitting at a Starbucks in Gilroy, CA, having just come down off the mountain where I’m totally out of communication since yesterday afternoon, and until Monday. Small family gathering. It’ll be fun and the weather in the region is already epic but will be epic-er on Saturday and Sunday, in the low 70’s.

. . .2011 has been an interesting year for the blog with what I perceive as a pretty large turnover in readership. For instance, Barbara Hvilivitzky comments today, on my post about The Flinch.

Well, this is quite a message. As a result this is the last time I will be reading Free The Animal. It has been a part of my routine because I’m hooked on low-carb and that wealth of information has been good. However, the message through the potty mouth language and the very anti-faith slant is continually grating – so that’s it. My flinch has always been that I have itchy ears/eyes and idle curiosity – fatal if one wants to grow in spiritual areas. I’ll spend my time much more productively by this year studying the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas – part of my “do something hard” resolution.

This may bring some negative comments and that’s ok, but don’t waste your time as I won’t be reading.

I pushed a ton of boundaries in 2011, far more than I ever have, and managed to keep about the same 100-120K visits per month, double the page views. But the nature of the emails I get and the comments I get has been so pleasantly improved. It’s my sense that over time, I’m getting rid of the kind of readers I don’t want—such as Barbara—and gaining readers and commenters I do want. But most interesting of all is that the readers and commenters I don’t want are boring monoliths, while those I do want are all over the map—but they’re individualists.

They like “anti-faith,” because they recognize it—faith—as distinctly different from inspiration, human spirit, gut feeling, and so on. They recognize “faith” as the robotic regurgitations of domesticates.

I’ll take that ever day.

. . .On the way down the mountain I was listening to spotty NPR coverage about the upcoming Iowa Caucuses and was just shaking my head over how far we have to go, and how virtually hopeless it is that I’ll ever live in a largely rational society not bent on having everyone live at the expense of everyone else, and/or making sure everyone eats the same regurgitated “values.”

See ya.

Camp
Camp

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Barbara Hvilivitzky, Iowa Caucuses, NPR, President Everybody, spiritual, Thomas Aquinas

The Book: The Flinch

December 29, 2011 34 Comments

First, the punchline: the book is free. It’s called The Flinch. It’s part of Seth Godin’s The Domino Project with Amazon. The Author is Julien Smith, NYT best-selling author of Trust Agents. Julien & I connected when he did MovNat last year, and then also began doing Leangains consulting with Martin Berkhan. And then, he contributed a “fucking” guest post here.

A few weeks ago he sent me an advance copy of his free book that can be read in a short time. It’s about overcoming your fears to advance your life to your own true limits—rather than those limits society suggests prudent, or even imposes. With permission, I have included the first chapter below. And I think it fits in very well in this time of resolution and renewal, redemption and new leases.

Go for it!

The Flinch

THE OPPONENT

Quitting smoking. Losing weight. Starting a business. Getting a date.

For anything you want to do, finding out how is easy. Do the research and make it happen—or so any book would have you believe. Yet every day, you smoke, gain weight, and stay at your old job. Every day, you do the exact opposite of what you plan to do. Why?

This is the Information Age. The steps to achieving any goal are easy to search for, come up with, write down on a napkin, and follow. But you’re still not doing it. Part of the movie is missing. A page is torn out of the book. There’s a big X in the equation. Do you know what it is?

The X is the flinch.

The flinch is your real opponent, and information won’t help you fight it. It’s behind every unhappy marriage, every hidden vice, and every unfulfilled life. Behind the flinch is pain avoidance, and dealing with pain demands strength you may not think you have.

The flinch is why the lazy actor never gets discovered—because she never really sweats to make it happen. It’s why the monolithic company gets wiped out by a lean startup—because the big company culture avoids the hard questions. It’s the reason you make the wrong decision, even though you may know what the right one is.

Behind every act you’re unable to do, fear of the flinch is there, like a puppet master, steering you off course.

Facing the flinch is hard. It means seeing the lies you tell yourself, facing the fear behind them, and handling the pain that your journey demands—all without hesitation.

The flinch is the moment when every doubt you’ve ever had comes back and hits you, hard. It’s when your whole body feels tense. It’s an instinct that tells you to run. It’s a moment of tension that happens in the body and the brain, and it stops everything cold.

When coming across something they know will make them flinch, most people have been trained to refuse the challenge and turn back. It’s a reaction that brings up old memories and haunts you with them. It tightens your chest and makes you want to run. It does whatever it must do to prevent you from moving forward. If the flinch works, you can’t do the work that matters because the fear it creates is too strong.

Individuals have flinches, but so do organizations and cultures. They can invoke a fear of a certain kind of person, a kind of racism or xenophobia, or a fear of new technology or outside influences.

Whatever form it takes, the flinch is there to support the status quo. It whispers in your ear so you’ll dismiss a good idea that requires a lot of change. It stops you from seeing an up-and-coming competitor as a threat. It’s the reason most modern movies are remakes and most successful books are sequels. It hides under the guise of the hard-headed boss, the skeptical publisher, or the cautious friend.

But the problem with the flinch is that it’s based in a brain that wants to protect you. It sees shadows as threats and creates blind spots. It’s endemic to cultures that embrace the old, even though the old might not work anymore. Both individuals and groups must develop systems to handle the flinch, or they’ll always fall prey to outside forces.

Everywhere your flinch avoidance hides, you have to find it, and face it. You need to take back control and stop the flinch, like the boxer in the ring, because you have a job to do—you have a fight you need to win.

For most of your life or your business’s existence, the flinch has been there, guiding you. As you discovered your world and learned best practices from others, the flinch was learning too. It pushes you to judge some ideas as good and others as bad, guiding your behavior over time, until your decisions became streamlined.

Whatever you avoided, whatever you and authorities considered a threat, became a blind spot—it became something that could make you flinch.

The flinch has a complex history. It appears whether you want it to or not. Every day, you make decisions based on it. But you may not think much about it at all. But this is exactly what the flinch wants.

Facing the flinch is hard internal labor that comes with no up-front promise of reward. But one day, your world will change, maybe drastically, and it will do so without warning. On that day, you won’t be prepared—unless you’ve fought the flinch before.

Do this work now, and your future self will thank you.

Finding the flinch reveals a secret passage, hiding in plain sight. It’s why some people know how to sell, and others can’t—because they see the flinch in others. It’s why you can’t quit your job or be the person you want to be—you can’t see the flinch in yourself. The flinch is why you don’t do the work that matters, and why you won’t make the hard decisions. It’s why your organization isn’t competing. It’s why you don’t lead the life you want.

Take this time to learn about it. It won’t take long. Once you see it, it will be visible to you forever.

Filed Under: General

Guest Post: Greg Swann and Resolving to Master Something Difficult in 2012

December 28, 2011 49 Comments

Greg Swann, a real-estate broker in the Phoenix area, is a long time friend of mine. And actually, he’s the real writer behind the Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie stories I posted about last week. He also blogs about the human condition at SplendorQuest.com. I hope you enjoy the challenge he poses to all for a more fulfilling 2012 and the years to follow.

Want to become a better, more-perfect version of yourself? Master something difficult in 2012

I always love to read about the outrageously nefarious bad guys who are doing all the things we hate. Doesn’t matter who “we” are, since the bad guys afflicting every “we” are always blindingly brilliant, amazingly competent masterminds of evil.

I guess it’s useful to exaggerate your opposition, but here’s the thing:

Everyone I remember from school was a fuck-up.

Start with a good solid two-thirds compliant drones, dutifully going through whatever motions seemed to be required. Maybe half of the rest were glib and lazy. Even the straight-A apple-polishers were just phoning it in, doing the minimum necessary to get the grade from the glib-and-lazy grown-up teaching the class.

Am I misrepresenting the world of education? Is there anything you can think of that you did in school that you’re truly proud of now? Away from athletics or the school play, was there anything in your academic life that you gave everything you had? Was there anyone else who did that?

Was there any class that you took—ever—where you had to bust ass every day or risk get hopelessly lost? And when you got to that class, was that the end of your forward progress in that discipline?

The kids from the hard side of the quad—the maths, the sciences—know what I’m talking about. The kids from the soft side of the quad—the arts, the social sciences—may be recalling a graceless exit from the maths and sciences.

But the truth is that virtually all of us were denied the kind of education that was a matter of expected routine for our grandparents. Partly this is our fault: Too often we were grade-greedy glib-and-lazy fuck-ups. But mostly it was the fault of our teachers—and their teachers.

Were they outrageously nefarious bad guys, hell-bent on depriving us of a decent education? Were they blindingly brilliant, amazingly competent masterminds of evil, conspiring to enslave us in a state of perpetual, unsuspected ignorance?

No. They were just cash-greedy glib-and-lazy fuck-ups. For a second thing, teachers generally intend to do nothing more than the minimum necessary to get the money from the glib-and-lazy politicians who employ them. But for the first thing, they are themselves glib-and-lazy know-nothing fuck-ups skating through life on a frozen river of knowledge a mile wide and a micron thick.

Belay that testy comment, at least for a moment. I absolve myself of nothing in these charges. I know how ignorant I am. I know how much of the time that I could have spent acquiring an education was wasted on trivia instead, or on tendentious cant, or on outright lies. But the fault for that is no one’s but my own.

When our grandparents went to high school—if their families were prosperous enough for them to get that far in school—they were expected to conquer the maths through calculus. It was understood that they would master biology, chemistry and physics. Their curriculum demanded a thorough grounding in the arts, including the ability to play an instrument while sight-reading musical notation. To call themselves educated, to graduate, they had to attain fluency in a foreign language—very often classical Latin or Attic Greek.

To have graduated from high school in the United States in 1880 or 1910 was to have acquired an education far beyond that attained by all but the smallest few college graduates today. All hail the math gods, but how many of them can play a Beethoven sonata on the piano or violin? How many of that cohort can translate from Seneca? How many people reading this are not quite sure who Seneca was?

But: I don’t want you to feel bad about yourself. To the contrary, I want to show how to feel better about yourself—how to have more self to feel better about.

Yes, you were cheated of an education. And, yes, you were complicit in cheating yourself—with every daydream in class, with every gossipy note you passed, with every sneer, every snicker, every spitball you shot at a clueless teacher. With every half-assed, half-stepping, half-hearted effort you turned in, hoping it was just enough to get by—you cheated yourself of an education.

But that’s over. The past can’t be undone, but the future is yours to make of it what you will.

‘Tis the season for New Year’s Resolutions, and that’s a good thing. Join that book club. Remodel that kitchen. Lose that unwanted weight. But you can make this a landmark year of your life with just one resolution:

Resolve to master something difficult in 2012.

There is no shame in knowing how to say, “¿Dónde está el baño?,” but you are fluent in a foreign language when you can read and admire its poetry, when you get the jokes, when you can twist that language into clever witticisms. That’s mastery.

We are victims of Art Appreciation and Film Studies classes, glib-and-lazy time-wasters in which we learned nothing but how to pretend to know something. But there is no class called Geometry Appreciation. In the maths, you can either do the work or you can’t. This year you can pick up where you left off in math and push yourself as far as you can go.

And tell the truth: Every time you see a musician performing—popular music or classical—don’t you wish you could do that, too? The good news is, you can. All it takes is commitment and effort—and time.

Mastering a demanding new skill will take a while. The desire for instant results is how all New Year’s Resolutions get abandoned. But to learn a serious discipline will require your time every day—an hour or more a day of serious, dedicated effort. I like the idea of working every day, since, if you take no breaks from the work, you won’t have to resist the temptation to extend a break by one day and then another and another.

But the benefits to be realized are huge—far beyond anything you might be expecting. In Art Appreciation class, everyone participates in the group discussions, there are no right or wrong answers and the class is graded on the curve. That is, everyone, including the teacher, is wasting time on a pantomime of education.

But mastery of a truly difficult discipline can only be done alone. Your teacher can help, and, as always, we stand on the shoulders of giants. But it is only your brain, working all alone, that can distinguish educere from educare in Latin. Only you working alone can solve that quadratic equation—and prove your work. Even if you’re playing in an ensemble, the music will jar unless you yourself are competent to play your part.

You’ll be better for having improved your mind. But your mind will be improved for having learned something you may have overlooked in school: Only an individual mind can learn and master any branch of human knowledge. You’ll be a better scientist, a better mathematician, a better musician, a better linguist. But you’ll be a better person, too—more independent, more competent, more whole.

How much progress can you make on any resolution in a single day? Almost none. How much progress can you make in a year’s worth of serious, daily effort? You’ll be amazed. It may take you more than a year to get the education your grandparents had by the age of eighteen. But, unlike them, you have instant access to all the world’s knowledge at your fingertips—most of it for free.

And once you’ve mastered something truly difficult, you can take a second look at those outrageously nefarious, blindingly brilliant, amazingly competent masterminds of evil and see them for what they truly are: Glib-and-lazy fuck-ups doing the minimum necessary to get by.

In Latin we can say, “Educere est educare”—to bring up is to bring out—to cultivate your mind is to liberate it, to lead it forevermore away from the slavery of ignorance. No matter what your pedigree, unless you were very lucky you were cheated of an education when you were young. This is the year you can begin to amend that deficit.

You’ll be better for the effort, and wiser, and more confident. But you’ll be more independent, too, more indomitable. And you’ll be more admirable—to your spouse, to your children, to your family and friends—and to yourself.

You weren’t just cheated of an education when you were young, you were cheated out of the full awareness of your own humanity. Not by outrageously nefarious bad guys, but by glib-and-lazy fuck-ups.

The year 2012 is your chance to break the chains of ignorance forever. And in the process, you just might find that you have also broken the imaginary chains that bind you to supposed masterminds of evil.

~~~

So what are you going to resolve to master in 2012 and beyond, and how will you go about accomplishing that objective?

Filed Under: General

New Rule for 2012: Don’t Let Anything “Offend” You

December 27, 2011 48 Comments

I have a guest post coming up probably tomorrow about an idea for a New Year’s Resolution for 2012, but here’s one of my own for you to consider. I got this idea when yesterday, a Facebook friend put up this quote of a “politically correct” holiday greeting and best wishes for a new year, attributed to Lars Petrus.

Please accept with no obligation, implicit or explicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice, with total respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, and their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

Additionally,

A fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2012, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our society great, without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, sexual orientation and choice of smart phone and computer platform of the wishee.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! . . .And I don’t give a runny shit about Hanukkah, Ramadamabingbangboopadon, Kwanzaa. . .or the fucking Mayan or Chinese calendars. So there.

To me, people who are easily “offended” are kind of like those people who wear all of their problems—financial, health, relationship, etc.—on their sleeve. You know who I’m talking about. The victim mindset. Something or someone is always out to get them and they’re more than happy to let you know that whatever or whoever it is, it got the best of them yet again. It always gets the best of them because their best is piss poor and never good enough.

They’re fragile little flowers, susceptible to just about everything. They’re weak, and they’ve somehow convinced themselves that being weak and susceptible is a badge of honor. To relate it to diet and health by way of analogy, let’s take Don Matesz and his “Farewell to paleo” post back in June. Of course, that post alone was chock full of his own alleged “health problems” on a Paleo diet, and those of his new wife and his “patients.” And then, who rang in comments but none other than Matt Stone?

For fun I will list my health problems as well as that of my ex-girlfriend on a prolonged diet high in meat and fat – that neither of us have after switching to a high-carbohydrate diet….

1 Autoimmune iritis
2 Abdominal pain
3 Pain in the spleen and gallbladder
4 Irritability
5 Hyopnatremia from long duration exercise
6 Muscle cramps
7 Amenhorrea
8 Mood disorders
9 Low sex drive
10 Mediocre sexual function
11 Bad breath
12 Foul body odor (mmm, ammonia)
13 Occasional constipation
14 Chronic heartburn
15 Food allergies
16 Shakiness during exercise
17 Loss of lean mass
18 Fat gain eating to appetite on a mixed diet – particularly abdominal fat and love handles
19 Poor exercise performance
20 Poor exercise recovery
21 Insomnia
22 Tooth pain

That’s a short list. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things.

Yea, pretty “short list.” One gets the sense that there’s almost some longing to have the biggest list possible, as if to announce: “look at what a pussy I am!” A few comments down I got to laugh my ass off.

nothing91 said…

LOL @ Matt Stone

You are the most psychosomatic, delicate flower on the planet. Every time you switch diets you crow about how the new diet has eliminated every health problem you’ve ever had. Then a year later you’re on another diet making the same claims.

So, give it some thought. Are you the type of person who, when you see, hear or read things from others that don’t correspond to your own values, you take some offense?

If so, why do you allow others such power, influence and authority over you? It’s really a queer sort of behavior when you think about it. Presumably, by taking offense you are in some way desiring to assert some power or authority over the “offender,” but you do so by admitting weakness? By being a victim? By first letting the offender know what great power and authority they have over your own mind and sense of values?

Stop it.

Update: Someone just dropped this YouTube in comments of Steve Hughes doing a bit on being offended and political correctness and I simply have to add it.

Filed Under: General

What You’re Up Against Update

December 26, 2011 103 Comments

Hope everyone is enjoying the day after Christmas. One more week to go, and it’s back to life as usual. Got an email the other day and thought I’d share it.

The subject of the email: paleo Discrimination

I decided to write this for two reasons: First, I want to make others aware of the bureaucracy and politics I, and possibly others, have faced. (If you have experienced anything like this, please share.) And second, to be honest, I’m looking for some encouragement and support. I’ve kept this anonymous because I don’t want to get into any more trouble; I’ve got to keep my job, right? Thank you for respecting that.

So I’ve been paleo since January of this year (2011). I’ve lost 40 pounds and 7 inches off my waist. My health has improved dramatically! But you’ve heard stuff like that before. I’m a nurse and work for the government (vagueness is very important here). I work directly with patients to, ultimately, help them get healthier and out of the hospital. Nurses are supposed to stay current on research and utilize that research in our practice. We’re supposed to educate others and share information not only with our patients, but with our fellow coworkers.

I’m always talking about the paleo lifestyle, and I love helping others get healthy and realize how amazing they can feel. I tell them all about the research and science behind the diet. But in the end I always say, “If you’re happy, keep doing what you’re doing. But if you’re not, and you want to get healthier and make a change, why not give this a shot for 30 days?” Then I tell them to buy Robb’s book.

As a new nurse, I have to attend some additional training beyond college before I can work as a “real nurse.” In this new training, my diet was naturally brought up because I was immediately refusing all the candy, cookies, and sugary drinks being passed around on day one. After hearing me discuss some basics of paleo (like cholesterol and saturated fat are not bad), my supervisor approached me and told me I should not discuss my diet with patients. I said that I would never go into a room and start preaching that the patients should start eating more cholesterol and saturated fat; it’s not that simple. She still warned (nicely) that I should not bring it up because it’s not in line with the government’s dietary recommendations. So I “silently” rolled my eyes and have not discussed my diet with patients. However, I have discussed it amongst staff at the hospital. People get curious and want to get healthy, so they ask and I answered their questions.

Fast forward a few weeks and I’m told that I need to report to my supervisor, “We have an issue to discuss.” I was given a counseling (a formal, written report) about discussing my diet in the workplace. I was told to cease discussing my diet while at work. This was extremely unfair considering I was never told I could not discuss my diet amongst staff, only patients. And I was never given any kind of verbal warning that what I was doing was wrong.

So I guess discussing accurate, research-based science is not appropriate for the hospital environment? But it’s okay to discuss the Kardashians, right? And I have to sit quietly while other people talk about which brand of low-fat yogurt or oatmeal is better for your health. And let’s not mention the barrage of candy and cupcakes being passed around daily. But most importantly, let’s not discuss what’s healthy for our patients who are fighting multiple diseases and eating disgusting foods. It really feels like discrimination. I feel singled-out. While everyone else is free to discuss their favorite fast food restaurants, I have to keep my mouth shut.

Sadly, what I learned from all this is that selfishness is more important than service. It’s better to keep my mouth shut and protect my career than help others get healthy. Inspiring message, huh? I suppose this situation will piss most people off. And it should! But there is some hope. I do have goals of becoming a doctor or…something one day where I can have more authority to help people. And I know some people (like Robb Wolf) are working to get more physicians on board with paleo. I did meet one doctor in the hospital who eats paleo. I was so excited. I felt like I’d met a celebrity. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to chat much about it.

Let’s just hope I can bite my tongue while in this government role and not get in any more trouble. But you can bet I’ll still be spreading the word and trying to help people get healthy outside of work. Thank you for reading.

Sumthin’ isn’t it?

Filed Under: General

Christmas Eve Dinner Party: Deviled Eggs “Ikura Style,” Mussels, Roasted Butternut Squash Soup, & Baked Salmon

December 25, 2011 9 Comments

As you’ll see, I spent most of the day shopping, then in the kitchen to prepare dinner for eight last night. All the images can be clicked for their higher-resolution versions.

On appetizer, we have some of by beef and chicken liver pâté.

P1020552
Pâté with Celery

Alongside was my favorite way to serve up deviled eggs. I originally did it way back here.

P1020550
Deviled Eggs with Salmon Roe (Ikura) and Nori

The first course was muscles using this basic preparation. Forget to get a picture so this is actually from a previous preparation of the same thing. In addition to what the recipe called for, I had about a cup of vegetable stock in there. You can use chicken as well.

IMG 0282
Mussels Steamed in Garlic, Shallots, White Wine & Tarragon

Then it was on to the Roasted Butternut Squash Soup, a Williams-Sonoma recipe. I added some heavy cream to it as well as cinnamon for a particularly holiday flavor, in combo with the nutmeg.

P1020557
Roasted Butternut Squash Soup with Fresh Sage & Hazelnuts

And finally, the salmon, which I had acquired fresh at a fish market early in the day. North Atlantic wild caught. Here was the preparation before going into the oven.

P1020548
Wild Caught Salmon

Very easy. I lined the roasting pan with three long sheets of foil. On that I drizzled olive oil and spread it around so the skin wouldn’t stick. Then I just tossed in a bunch of chopped fennel, fresh parsley, and sliced lemon. Laid the two sides of the fish on. added a cup or so of white wine, dusted the filets with sea salt, and then added more parsley, fennel and lemon. Then I closed it all up with foil.

Cooking time was 35-40 minutes at 400 degrees.

P1020553
Salmon at the Table

Easily the best salmon I’ve ever cooked. Totally rare and moist. I served it with white rice cooked in vegetable stock and at the end, stired in finely chopped celery and fennel.

My cousin brought an amazing desert that was a small indulgence for me in return for all the work in the kitchen: a dark chocolate soufflé with a dark chocolate peppermint sauce. I was glad they were small, cupcake sized, because they were amazingly rich. Totally home made and delicious. Thanks Frank & Charlene. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture.

This afternoon, we’ll be headed over to my brother’s house where an 8-bone prime rib is about to go in the oven at 200, low & slow. Here’s another time. And yet another, thin sliced English style.

Alright, have yourselves a mery ‘ole time, indulge yourself a bit, but always cheat well.

Filed Under: General

Vegetarians and Vegans Get Well Deserved Bare-Assed Spanking

December 22, 2011 63 Comments

“Why a group of longtime vegetarians and vegans converted to the idea that flesh and other food from animals can be healthful, environmentally appropriate, and ethical”

That’s the kicker to this new piece in The Atlantic: Eating Animals.

As Americans gather around holiday tables this year, many of us will be setting places for vegetarians and vegans. In some families, diverse diets co-exist peacefully. In others, well … maybe there’s a health-obsessed uncle who relishes warning that “Meat will kill you!” Or an idealistic college student, eager to regale her complacent elders with grim details of the cruelty and environmental damage wrought by factory farms. Or omnivores who resent the suggestion that they should worry — or feel guilty — about eating meat.

The three of us can relate to both sides of such discussions. Though reared by omnivorous families, as young adults we each came to the conclusion that meat was to blame for health problems, environmental destruction, and cruelty to animals. Collectively, we have lived 52 years vegan or vegetarian. Yet we no longer think that vegetarianism is the answer to these ills. Now — as a rancher, a hunter, and a butcher — we firmly believe foods from animals can be healthful, environmentally appropriate, and ethical.

The piece goes on to profile each of the three individuals, their past vegetarianism or veganism, and what they do now (one still follows a vegetarian diet, but supports other people’s choice to eat meat). That one, Nicolette, says:

At first, my new job — touring factory farms and researching their water, air, and soil contamination — reinforced my rejection of meat. But as I studied ecologically based food production, I learned that animals were essential to sustainable farms, which don’t rely on fossil fuels and chemicals. Animals can increase soil fertility, contribute to pest and weed control, and convert vegetation that’s inedible to humans, and growing on marginal, uncultivated land, into food. And as I visited dozens of traditional, pasture-based farms, and came to know the farmers and ranchers, I saw impressive environmental stewardship and farm animals leading good lives.

And Tovar says:

I realized that all food has its costs. From habitat destruction to combines that inadvertently mince rabbits to the shooting of deer in farm fields, crop production is far from harmless. Even in our own organic garden, my wife and I were battling ravenous insects and fence-defying woodchucks. I began to see that the question wasn’t what we ate but how that food came to our plates. A few years later, my wife — who was studying holistic health and nutrition — suggested that we shift our diet, and my health improved when we started eating dairy and eggs. It improved still more when we started eating chicken and fish. Two years later, I took up a deer rifle.

Joshua adds:

Eventually I went, literally, whole hog into eating meat again; it was bacon that pushed me over the edge. Once I saw how the meat we were selling had been raised, and met the farmers who were striving to raise animals sustainably and ethically, I overcame my aversion to consuming meat. I realized I didn’t have a problem with meat. I had a problem with the inhumane practices of the commercial meat industry. Once I saw how things could be done, I was happy to support the farmers who make our business possible and profitable. […]

…not all forms of animal farming should be painted with the same brush. And it’s simply inaccurate to suggest that a vegan diet is necessary for optimal health.

There’s a mix of good and bad, as the article goes on to mention “overconsumption” of meat:

In short, eating animal-derived foods is not a health risk. Only overconsumption is.

I have no fucking idea what that even means. Oh, yea, great…eating animal derived food is not a health risk. Yea, and…

  • Getting a good education will probably not harm your career
  • Finding a good spouse will not automatically tank your eventual marriage
  • Doing a good job at something is not likely a risk to your well being
  • Being the best you can be is certainly no a risk to your social standing
  • Et cetera

Get it? How about: eating animal derived food is optimally healthy and, getting a good eduction will help your career, a good souse will give you better chances at a successful marriage, doing a good job enhances your sense of well being, and being the best you can be will likely get you somewhere in life? How about accentuating the positive rather than apologizing through negativity?

You see, it’s like I always say. There’s this underlying, all-pervasive guilt & shame, guilt & shame, guilt & shame surrounding the simple adherence to our very natures as omnivorous beings—and even in a goddammed article spanking veggies, you can’t get rid of it.

You see what a blasphemous abomination the idea of Original Sin is? You remember. That’s the one where you’re guilty by your very nature.

The stupid bla bla bla continues.

Although health and nutrition research has yielded diverse and conflicting findings, there is consensus among mainstream experts: overconsumption of meat, dairy, and eggs can be harmful, but the optimal human diet includes some food derived from animals. “Animal source foods … play an important role in ensuring optimal health and function, and their consumption is particularly important for women of reproductive age, fetuses, and young children,” states a comprehensive 2010 collaborative report about livestock published by Stanford University, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and five other respected organizations.

So let me get this right. Consumption of animal source food is “particularly important for women of reproductive age, fetuses, and young children.” But, if you’re a young woman not yet of reproductive age, yet older than a fetus or child, a male older than a fetus or child, then watch out you don’t over consume!

Why even have that aforespouted balderdash in the article, if not to demonstrate some pansy-ass sentiment about “not going to extremes” and other such pussy bullshit when, right away it follows with good stuff like this:

Even vegan advocacy groups generally counsel their followers to take nutritional supplements because the majority of vegans are deficient in vitamin B-12, found almost exclusively in foods from animals, and because the human body is far less capable of utilizing the forms of iron and zinc found in plants. Yet there is little proof that pills can adequately provide essential nutrients. “Clinical trials rarely show much benefit from taking supplements,” says nutrition professor Marion Nestle. And a new University of Minnesota study raises fresh doubt about the wisdom of relying on pills for iron and other nutrients. It found that middle-aged women who took nutritional supplements — especially iron — had shorter lifespans than those who did not. Meat and eggs, in contrast, contain ample iron, zinc, and B-12, in forms that are easily absorbed by the human body.

Meanwhile, many popular beliefs about the health-related downsides of foods from animals are being revealed as myths. Take cholesterol. Early human diets apparently included (PDF) a hefty 500 mg daily dose of cholesterol, more than what’s found in two eggs. During the 20th century, consumption of eggs declined and overall animal fat consumption dropped by over 20 percent, while consumption of vegetable fat (which contains no cholesterol) increased by over 400 percent. Yet blood cholesterol levels steadily rose and deaths from heart disease increased more than fivefold. Harvard School of Public Health researchers have concluded that eating foods that contain cholesterol does not affect blood cholesterol levels. [emphasis added]

This is reminiscent of The Vegetarian Myth.

As any attentive observer of nature knows, life feeds on life. Every living thing, from mammals, birds, and fish to plants, fungi, and bacteria, eats other living things. Humans are part of the food web; but for the artifices of cremation and tightly sealed caskets, all of us would eventually be recycled into other life forms. It is natural for people, like other omnivores, to participate in this web by eating animals. And it is ethically defensible — provided we refrain from causing gratuitous suffering. [emphasis added]

Even vegans eat other living things. They just pretend they don’t. It’s unavoidable.

Pay attention below, to which groups have been advocating vegetarianism and veganism.

…Over the past two centuries, various groups — including religious sects, social reformers, naturopathic physicians, environmentalists, and animal rights advocates — have promoted vegetarianism in the United States. Yet the diet has never really taken hold. Today, only about three percent of Americans are vegetarian and 0.5 percent are vegan. And surveys consistently show that the vast majority of Americans who do try vegetarianism or veganism — about three-quarters of them — return to eating meat. Rather than urging people to consume only plants, doesn’t it make more sense to encourage them to eat an omnivorous diet that is healthy, ethical, and ecologically sound?

But for God’s sake, don’t over consume animal products!

Alright, let’s end on a positive note.

From where we stand — on a California ranch, in the Vermont woods, and in a New York butcher shop — we welcome diverse approaches to eating and applaud thoughtful, considered choices about food, including vegetarianism and veganism. But we reject the suggestion that animals should be banished from our farms and our plates. This holiday season, we are pleased that our families (and two of us) will be enjoying pasture-raised heritage turkey, wild venison, and grass-fed beef brisket.

Concerns about health, the environment, and ethical eating do not require giving up meat. What they do require is a new ethics of eating animals: one rooted in moderation, mindfulness, and respect.

Well, two outta three ‘aint bad, I guess.

I say, go for it and if it comes down to a choice, just Go Ahead and Fuck Those Vegetables, just like I toldja.

Update: and if that’s not enough, try this: Ordering the vegetarian meal? There’s more animal blood on your hands.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: vitamin d

What’s in the Free the Animal Book Chapter by Chapter?

December 22, 2011 16 Comments

This is a draft, so there may be some changes by the time it actually comes out. And the bullets are just general descriptions of what’s in the chapters, not the sub-headings, of which each chapter contains quite a few.

~~~

Free The Animal 1: Losing Weight And Fat The Primal Way

Drawing on evolutionary logic, scientific research, and his own personal experiences, blogger Richard Nikoley of Free the Animal (freetheanimal.com) presents a complete guide to losing weight and fat the natural way.

After many frustrating years of trying to lose weight by adhering to mainstream nutritional guidelines, Richard made a radical decision to throw the rules out. Instead of eating whole grains and lean meat, he ate what his body had always craved: animal fat, and lots of it—and the extra weight started falling away.

In Free The Animal 1: Losing Weight And Fat The Primal Way, Richard shares his tips for eating, fasting, and exercising as wild humans did for millenia. Find out how to embrace your primal cravings for nutritionally dense animal fats and fiber-rich plant sources. Learn to stop listening to the “experts” and start tuning in to your body’s natural signals. Richard’s approach to the paleo lifestyle will help you lose fat, gain muscle, and unleash the energy of the animal inside you.

What’s In The Book:

  • The basic principles of the paleo, primal, ancestral lifestyle
  • A primal plan for losing weight by eating Real Food
  • A guide to exercising like our ancestors
  • Instructions on how to lose fat by fasting
  • Recipes, shopping tips, and videos

Introduction

  • Introduces the paleo way as an alternative to mainstream diet choices

Chapter 1: The paleo, Primal, Ancestral Lifestyle

  • Describes the basic principles of the paleo, primal, ancestral lifestyle
  • Includes a brief summary of 6 key paleo life changes

Chapter 2: Your Inner Animal

  • Reviews how our ancestors lived, and how modern humans have evolved in unhealthy ways
  • Explores what is meant by “inner animal”—the animal inside all of us—especially as it relates to food

Chapter 3: The Standard American Diet And Other Diet Health Disasters

  • Describes how eating processed foods and excess carbohydrates leads to obesity
  • Includes a section on the perils of veganism

Chapter 4: Fat Is King

  • Counters the common assumption that fat is unhealthy
  • Explains how to eat fat to lose weight

Chapter 5: The Cholesterol Con

  • Includes research proving that saturated fat is not unhealthy
  • Reveals the truth behind cholesterol numbers

Chapter 6: Natural Disease Prevention

  • Discusses the role paleo can play in preventing and curing diabetes and cancer
  • Explains how vitamin D is a key factor in paleo nutrition

Chapter 7: Eat Like A Caveman

  • Provides a guide to choosing Paleo-friendly foods
  • Includes information on CSAs and other resources for grassfed meat and eggs

Chapter 8: The Power Of Fasting

  • Explains how humans evolved to undergo periods of hunger
  • Includes a guide to incorporating fasting into your lifestyle

Chapter 9: Evolutionary Exercise And Fitness

  • Richard describes his workout routine
  • Explains why cardio exercise is the wrong approach to weight loss

Chapter 10: A Primal Weight Loss Plan

  • A concise guide to eating, exercising, and fasting the paleo way
  • Includes common pitfalls for beginners

Chapter 11: Recipes and Supplements

  • Includes six Paleo-friendly recipes
  • Provides a list of supplement recommendations

Chapter 12: Success Stories

  • Richard shares his blog readers’ success stories

Filed Under: General Tagged With: vitamin d

Book Update: Here’s the Cover. Live Soon

December 21, 2011 32 Comments

 Updates to follow.

Screen Shot 2011 12 21 at 1 30 39 PM
 

One guy on Twitter, when I uploaded this earlier, tweeted: “it’s not pretty, but I’ll buy your book anyway.” Yea, these things are subjective to the max.

All I really hope for is that it’s ultimately judged in context of the intention:

  1. That it’s actually read. Non-fiction books are notorious for being purchased but not read. I’ve heard this over and over, from marketers of how-to books. It seems that the purchase scratches the itch.
  2. That it’s recognized as a total beginner’s primer. Yea, I’ll leave the deep science and whatnot to those with the credentials and whatnot. That said, I do touch on a lot of science stuff from the saturated fat and cholesterol dual cons, vitamin D epidemiology, to Weston Price’s K2, AKA, Activator X. But I do so in a hopefully light and conversational way, trying not to seem too pretentious for a non-scientist with zero credentials.

I think it would have been silly to try to put a book together for those already familiar with and getting results from Paleo/Primal. It’s just my sense, but I reasoned that what they might really want is something to give to friends & family that stands a good chance of actually being read.

It’ll take about 3 hours; more if one chases rabbits.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: AKA, cholesterol, fat, Paleo Primal, saturated fat, vitamin d, Vitamin K2, Weston Price

Christmas at the speed of life… A Guest Post by William F.X. O’Connell AKA Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie

December 21, 2011 10 Comments

Some years ago I became acquainted with someone over the internet who shares my penchant for individualism. I’d known of him years earlier via USENET, but it wasn’t until I began blogging in 2003 that I one day received an email from him concerning a particular post of mine. We’ve exchanged emails and chatted on the phone now and then, ever since.

Along with all the other writings he does, both in terms of his cultural / political writings and his professional writings, he does short stories and I’m not sure if he has other characters, but Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie must certainly be the main one.

I’ve read a number of these down through the years and they always, always give you something to think about. And it’s hard to pin down if there’s any central theme beyond the most important one: you as an individual and you as an egoist—so enamored with your one & only life that everything is important. The stories contain elements of regret, of loss, of sorrow and of random accident but most of all, the possibility of redemption.

Christmas at the speed of life… is a collection of such stories that takes place always during the holidays and are thus emotionally charged from the perspective of what the holidays truly mean to some. There are a number of religious overtones but then, the author believes none of them literally. Doesn’t mean they don’t have meaning metaphorically or in whatever other way you want to look at it.

The season’s greetings
A dumpster diver’s Christmas
A canticle for Kathleen Sullivan
A future more vivid
A father for Christmas
Merry Christmas, Princess Peach
A Costco family Christmas
How to slay dragons
Courtney at the speed of life

I downloaded the stories yesterday from Amazon for 99 cents and in all, it’s about a 2-hour read and well worth it to put yourself into a mindset of real appreciation of friends, family and your own life in this time of festivities.

Below is an excerpt from How to slay dragons, heavily bent toward the individualism theme.

I’ve been doing this, walking this nation and writing about what I see, for more than twenty years now. In that time, I’ve evolved four rules for these stories, the Willie stories, and this one breaks three of them. First, a Willie story is almost always short, and this one isn’t. Second, a Willie story is almost never self-revealing, and this one is. Third, every Willie story has at least one joke, and this one has none.

But the fourth rule stands: Every Willie story is about you. You think they’re about the people I’m making fun of, but they’re not. They’re about you, about people who are basically honest and decent, but who come to be complicit in everything that is vicious and venomous and vile. Not from loving vice, but from failing to love virtue.

Your mind or your life, lie or die. That’s the demand at the bottom of your tax return. Lie or die. That’s the threat they issue to your son, compelled to register for military enslavement. Lie or die. That’s the threat they make to your employer with thousands of pages of regulations. Lie or die, all day, every day, everywhere you turn. Lie or die, again and again, for every day of your life.

And every day of your life, you choose the lie. You choose to cooperate and to pretend to surrender control of your life, to insist by your actions that some other mind can control your behavior, but your own cannot. You lie and you lie and you lie, and millions of innocents die. And you yourself persist only by refusing to acknowledge your groveling. Your mind—the means of your life, the awareness and memory and anticipation of your actions—becomes the enemy of your survival. To be aware that you have desecrated the glorious gift of human sovereignty is the path to self-slaughter, so you must slaughter self-awareness instead.

This is a mistake.

The worst, most loathsome, most vicious tyrant on the Earth is no different from my late, unlamented non-mugger. He is nothing without your cooperation. Without your active voluntary cooperation. Even I am apt to say “compelled this” and “coerced that,” but in actual fact, human behavior cannot be coerced. Only human bodies can be coerced, pushed around like mannequins. Human behavior can only be initiated by an act of will originating within the person acting. It cannot be caused or controlled from the outside. If you refuse to cooperate with the tyrant, he cannot cause your cooperation. He can push you around, even kill you, but he cannot cause you to initiate any purposive action.

You live in chains. In this awful century just passed, more than 150 million innocent people died in chains. And yet every person ever born was born free—unalterably, inviolably, immaculately free…

And the tyrants know it. That’s why they have guns. That’s why they want to take away your guns. Again and again they demand that you lie or die, and they never for a moment doubt that you might choose neither. And they bluster and brag that you never will, and they toss and turn in sleepless nights, because they know someday you shall. Sic semper tyrannosauris. Thus always to dinosaurs.

Choose neither. This is my wish for the Third Millennium. Choose neither, that we might finally become a fully human race, neither killing nor being killed, neither enslaving nor being enslaved, neither seeking to control others nor pretending to surrender to their control.

Choose neither. Because this is the only human choice.

Choose neither. And the dragons will be slain.

Be well in this time of what should be both festive and reflective.

Filed Under: General

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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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