Archives for February 2015

The other day I was talking with Bea about how I wish to blog going forward. I told her that I want most of it to be about what I do, and not what I think…sitting on my ass, pontificating.

Well, there’s the marriage between my anarchist spirit of various activities and deep appreciations right there—because you’re not going to find me blogging about standing in line to get a license to live a life; or, showing my license to drive, to buy a bottle of whiskey in the land of the free. It’s perfect for zoo humans though; for whom, “better safe than sorry” is their chief inspiration.

…It was about 20 years ago—maybe 19—that I began flying hang gliders. First 5 years or so was consuming and ferocious in activity—local flying and trips centered around flying. I’ve flown mountains on the west coast from SoCal (Marshall, San Bernardino) to Washington State (Chelan Butte and the flats to the east), and much in-between (e.g., Hat Creek; Lakeview, OR; Indian Valley at Greenville, CA; Dunlap, CA near King’s Canyon: to name a few). And Ft. Funston south of San Fran, on the cliffs, was a weekly mainstay.

This post is about Big Air though.

It’s an important distinction that makes for hang-glider pilot “launch butt.” It’s that point in time where your body is telling you to just go take a shit rather than fly into all of that scary uncertainty. It’s physiological.

What in the fuck is “big air,” anyway? There’s no precise definition, and many of those places I named can be that, at times. But, there are places where Big Air is BIG Air; meaning, it’s scary most of the time but where mentally overcoming it in the context of smarts and experience has important rewards. People tend to categorize and thus: hang gliding is dangerous and scary. To those who actually do it, there are 50 Shades of Grey and there’s “country club flying” too. There’s also deep red and deep black. …There’s cloud suck—where if it’s black and big enough, it’ll suck you into its caldron of misery and fear and freezing and you could die…though the bright side is that it might take you to 60,000 ft, asphyxiate and freeze you first. There’s that.

…I’m not a particularly skilled pilot, nor vastly experienced. I have somewhere between 100 and 200 total accumulated HG flying hours. Many of those old fucks who pioneered the sport in the ’70s in their late teens and early 20s are way north of 10,000 hours and still flying as often as they can. One problem in the “sport,” in terms of popularizing it—stupidly assuming that’s even possible—is that the average person sees it as a scary ride—like a bungee jump or skydive. They are currently unaware that the world record HG flight is north of 400 miles over 10-12 hours (hundreds @ 200-300 miles). There are many guys who do 100+ mile flights all the time. …Of course, don’t discount The X Games. So hubristic fucktard “rad.”

So for my pathetic self, in contrast to the true SkyGods? I’ve had many flights over 2 hours and a few into the 3-4 hour range. Been above 8,000 ft many times, but the coolest was when I was setting up for a landing in Indian Valley once and the turbulence in mid-afternoon was butt puckering. I decided that if I caught a “whiff,” I’d take it. I did, and I rode the same thermal from 300 ft to about 12,000 (I’m conflating MSL and AGL here, but this is for the layman). By the time I got back to the LZ a coupla hours later, it was a gentle setup, landing, and a cold beer from friends.

[Aside: I know many guys who’ve gotten hypoxic going to 21-22K feet without an O2 bottle and cannula—and some sailplane guys go to 30-60k feet with the O2. But officially? They got to 18,000 feet. Bonus for anyone who tells me why that’s their official story and they’re sticking to it.]

Hang gliding is not an extreme endeavor, but one of passion and longing. It’s an endeavor suited to contemplative, thoughtful, inquisitive people who love other similar people gathered around similar aspirations. A common thread: disgust, detestation and impatience with stupid and fucktard. In that way, it eats its young. If you’re new, you get dispensation to a point but at a point, if you can’t get over your stupid, you get shunned. You’ll make the endeavor look bad when you become a paraplegic or kill yourself, and then the community has to worry about your dependents. It’s a highly social endeavor (fourth time I’m avoided using the word “sport”).

Being competent at strapping tech around and over you and running off a mountain to experience, overcome and conquer the chief envy of humans in all writings forever—the envy of birds—puts you at the very top in terms of transcending those limitations and aspirations upon which doG saw fit to shackle you. You’re a .01 percenter.

Hang gliding makes you a social bird, looking down at landlubbers in figure and form. It’s individual in the air, but social too—pilots showing others where the lift is. But at the campfire at the end of the day, flying stories are fish stories. Plus, you will tell someone how you helped show them lift, and someone will tell you how they showed you lift.

…It also makes you an amateur geologist and meteorologist. Continental drift repercussions, timeless erosion, and the Sun in its billions of years of chicanery become your doGs. You don’t fantasize about space travel, because you can fly like a bird with hawks & eagles…and there’s not a president, prime minister, congress, parliament or voter on the planet who has a single fucking clue about what you do and what you know. You have great difficulty over not simply dismissing all of them, telling them to just piss off—pitching a tent with your wing alongside, waiting to be spread and free the next time.

When you watch this 5-mim very high def video, it would make me very happy if you pay very close attention on many levels, beyond assessing the age of the folks (teens and 20-something in the 70s, still at it).

1. Look at the clouds.
2. Look at the sunlight.
3. Look at the shade those clouds make on the ground.
4. Look at the shades of darkness on the cloud bottoms.
5. Look at the terrain.

Those points are kinda essence in terms of apprehending well and getting a long or far flight, or failing, or getting hurt (though you must understand what it all means). Remember: Obama couldn’t help you, even if he got tired of running the universe.

A couple of important notes before you watch. First, you’ll see hang gliders that almost appear to spin on a top and go up. This is true. Big Air. Think of a pot of water at a low boil. It’s a caldron. Analogously, there’s air going up, and air going down, churning. You find yourself in the up, you can be in air that’s 2,000 feet per minute up or more to 10K and above. But it can be right next to air that’s crashing earthward at a similar velocity, and near the surface can be found predictable mixtures of the two. Safe landing please.

OK, watch for 5min: Dreaming Awake At King Mountain Idaho.

That’s the video that inspired this entire post, three days chewing on what I wanted to say about it.

After first buying in just over 3 years ago, I just inked my third contract in 3 years. In fact, today is the anniversary date of my second contract a year ago.

The Grand Solmar Land’s End Resort & Spa, developed by HKS, same guys who did Cowboy’s Stadium.

So, this puts me at a capital investment of about $160,000, with rights of occupancy for 15 Studio and 15 1BR Suite weeks per year, excluding only the last two weeks of the year (Xmas and NY). About a 10 year lease on each of the three contracts.

From here, I’ll be buying in equally in the new resort just up the coast, also being developed by HKS. Golf course, wave pool, lazy river, lagoons…all the goodies. Hacienda style. First occupancy March of 2017.

I’m booked to go visit it all March 21, for a week. …Sure beats futzing and writing about what to eat.

And now, headed out the door to the place that started it all, back in a week.  Friends coming down from N. Cal, who we met in La Paz three years ago, at the point where I bought in here at Cabo. So, it’s full circle.

How’ya like them apples, Kathleen Sodoma, RD, LDN – Chair, you miserable, stupid cunt?

I did three preliminary posts:

• Menace to Society: North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition (NCBDN)
• Clear Thinking, Drawing Distinctions and North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition vs Steve Cooksey, Diabetes Warrior
• Who’s The Worstest of Them All?

Then, this one, that actually broke the story a few hours ahead of the press release, thanks to Jeff Rowes’ favor to me:

Steve Cooksey Sues the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition in Federal Court: 1st Amendment; Free Speech

That interview is good work on my part. I especially like how I play Devil’s Advocate with Jeff, asking him to draw a distinction between occupational licensing (hairdressers, dietitians, etc.) and professional licensing (doctors, lawyers, etc.). While as an anarchist I disagree with all laws imposed by initiatory force, the distinction he makes is logical in the context of where we are.

But in the end, could care less who wants to go to Bob’s Garage Surgery, nor what happens to them if they do. And, what if Bob is better and more experienced than any “board certified” surgeon you can find? What if he grew up apprenticing surgery in the field, where there were no “board certified” surgeons?

What if you could Yelp and check Yelp under the garage surgery category? Oh yes, I know: You prefer to vote and feel good. Anything towards shirking responsibility at the expense of others is how you get sold on almost anything, lazy asses you always are and will always be.

Anyway, here’s the news:

• Steve Cooksey’s Righteously-Rightfully Gloating Post
• The Institute for Justice’s PressRel
• Reason’s Weigh In
• The Associated Press’ Captivating Blurbishness
• The North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition Declaration of Victory

That last one is pure sodom[a]y.

Steve Cooksey Lawsuit Update

Successful Resolution of Lawsuit by the NCBDN

On September 8, 2014, Steve Cooksey voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit he filed against the North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition in 2012. Mr. Cooksey’s voluntary dismissal did not involve any exchange of money or any payment of attorneys’ fees.

On February 9, 2015, the Board elected to adopt a revised version of a guideline it originally adopted in 2011 in order to provide further clarity for non-licensed persons as to the Board’s interpretation of the North Carolina Dietetics/Nutrition Practice Act’s licensing requirements. The updated guidelines clarify and highlight the Board’s view that non-licensed persons whose activities are limited to expressing information, guidance, opinions, or encouragement about food, lifestyle, or dietary practices are not engaging in the practice of dietetics/nutrition where such expression is directed at the public generally or outside the context of a professional-client relationship.

Neither Mr. Cooksey’s lawsuit nor its resolution has changed the Dietetics/Nutrition Practice Act or any of the Board’s regulations. The requirements of the law remain the same. It is the Board’s hope that the revised licensing guidelines will help all North Carolina citizens in better understanding the law.

The Board is pleased that this lawsuit was effectively resolved with a voluntary dismissal and that the Dietetics/Nutrition Practice Act and its corresponding regulations remain fully intact.

Like I said, that Kathleen Sodomaizer is a real lot of cunty.

“Paleo” Tards like to wax on about…well, not beeswax.

Fuck Cordain. ThereISaidIt.

Check this out. It’s an IndiGoGo funded to nearly 3,000% (asked for $70K, now over $2 mil).

Again: fuck Cordain; …and his stupid cunt-bitch Casey Thaler, “B.A., NASM-CPT, FNS.”

That is all.

So after my revelation and ink, it appears some people are confused, since I took pics of baguettes and posted them to a bog.

My intent was not a shift in values, but in focus.

What I won’t do:

1. Blog about “anti-nutrients” in a Cordainian context
2. Blog about “toxins” in a Cordainian context
3. Blog about cholesterol
4. Blog about glycolysis
5. Blog about ketones
6. Blog about ridiculous extremes, vegan or low carb

What I might do:

1. Blog about the food I like and make myself, with pics (take it or leave it, don’t care either way)
2. Blog about nice food at competent restaurants
3. Blog about things I consider still important like vitamin D (living indoors, and/or at the wrong latitude), vitamin K2 (we don’t eat nose to tail)
4. Blog about prebiotics and probiotics; not as a focus, but as an aside
5. Blog about “anti-nutrients” and “toxins” in a human, non-Cordainian context

Are we clear?

~~~

Bea turned on The Oscars pre-laf-laf around 1 PM, I think. Here’s the deal. If you look at it as a comedy show, it’s actually quite good—in a Spinal Tap as serious drama sort of way. I did get her lafing a good deal about some of the over-the-top pretense that can only exist in Hollywood.

This year, we probably saw fewer of the best pic, best actor, and best actress (the only important ones, if “important” isn’t too reaching) films of any recent year in memory. Last year, my sole desire over the affair was to see Matthew McConaughey get best actor for the amazing Dallas Buyer’s Club. Check!

This year, I wasn’t really interested in best picture and while Birdman was just-OK for me, and I like Michael Keaton, I really don’t care much for Hollywood films about how much it sucks to be a success in Hollywood. Go. Fuck. Yourselves. …As one fat-rolodex pundit put it in the lead up, “Hollywood loves a movie about itself.”

…My interest this year was over 2 actors and 2 actresses (I did not see The Imitation Game, so Benedict Cumberbatch might have replaced one of those). Eddie Radmayne in The Theory of Everything, but thought Steve Carell edged him out in Foxcatchers. Reese Witherspoon in Wild, but thought Jennifer Aniston edged her out in Cake (not even nominated). The common thread I absolutely love is that two comedians really showed what they’re made of as professional actors. Still can’t get over Steve Carell…

~~~

For dinner, I happened to have some center cut pork chops, so got to thinking. Ever since I first did carnitas and persimmons way back in 2008, I just think pork and fruit is a wonderful thing. I’ve done a bunch of variations since.

Last night was courtesy of Emeril Lagasse: Pork Chops Stewed with Apples and Prunes, with Mashed Sweet Potatoes. A few variations. No fresh rosemary, so dry, and be careful (cut it in half). Fuji apple instead of Golden Delicious. White wine instead of cognac, half & half instead of cream. Also, my 4 chops were not 1 1/2 inches, so I basically did stuff 1/2 to 2/3 recipe. Also, big one: russet potatoes, not sweet potatoes. Sweets would have been a big misstep in my view, as I’ll explain after the pics. Click on ’em for the higher res.

Beatrice will tell you that I’m my own most vicious critic. When I’m disappointed in the slightest thing, I might just leave it after a few bites. Life is too short. It’s not to say it’s not good or decent, but in the process of the whole process, one can build up certain expectations and for me, when not met or exceeded when it’s your own hand, leave it and live to cook another day.

This one blew me away. I don’t think that in my life I have ever done a dish with such a complex profile of sweet, savory, and salty. And that leads me to the mash. What really put this dish over the top was the russet mash, with just a bit of butter, bit of H&H, but very careful salt, up until the point where you taste the salt, but it’s not “salty.” If you know what I mean.

Additionally, when the sauce was reduced, I tasted and the sweet was a bit dominating. Just a few twists from the Himalayan pink salt mill, and it brought the sweet under better control and razed the savory immensely.

…I’m going to do this basic thing again, but next time I’m going to do as a braise in the oven at 175 until the pork is fork tender. This was my only disappointment. Pork was a bit dry (but in this case, you slice thin and dredge).

Onward.

 Here are the rules:

1. Simple. Less is more.
2. Always a fresh crunchy baguette.
3. Always unsalted butter, never mayonnaise.
4. Pâté, quality charcuterie (sliced when you buy), or French-syle ham (e.g., Jambon de Paris) which is cooked, not smoked or cured.
5. Cornichon (Gherkin) often, but not always.
6. Moutarde rarely, but sometimes.
7. They aren’t for every day, or even necessarily every week.

Here’s the ones I’ve made over about the last six months.

Rather than do it all the time, do it sometimes and always make it excellent.

You can agree or disagree and change course. You can pursue a new path.

You can vow. Promise. You can sign on the dotted line.

You can ink it.

I made a significant decision the other day and wrote about it: Life Takes a Big Turn And Everything Changes. While I surely meant it, it wasn’t until I read the comments and the emails I’ve received that I felt like totally owning it.

So I inked it.

OK, here’s the symbolism. Black Flag.

The black flag, and the color black in general, have been associated with anarchism since the 1880s. Many anarchist collectives contain the word “black” in their names. There have been a number of anarchist periodicals entitled Black Flag.

The uniform blackness of the flag is in stark contrast to the colorful flags typical of most nation-states. Additionally, as a white flag has been used to request parley or to surrender, the counter-opposite black flag would logically be a symbol of defiance and opposition to surrender.

Hit the link for more history and usage.

And, don’t forget:

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” — H. L. Menken

Onto the classic Anarchy symbol everyone knows.

The Circle-A is almost certainly the best-known present-day symbol for anarchy. It is a monogram that consists of the capital letter “A” surrounded by the capital letter “O”. The letter “A” is derived from the first letter of “anarchy” or “anarchism” in most European languages and is the same in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts. The “O” stands for order. Together they stand for “Anarchy is the mother of Order,” the first part of a Proudhon quotation.[8] This character can be written as Unicode codepoint U+24B6: Ⓐ. In addition, the “@” sign or “(A)” can be used to quickly represent the circle-A on a computer.

Instead of Proudhon—whom I read in the original French in the early 90’s while I was reading The Russian Radical (Ayn Rand) at the same time—I like this quote by another:

“Anarchy is all around us. Without it, our world would fall apart. All progress is due to it. All order extends from it. All blessed things that rise above the state of nature are owed to it. The human race thrives only because of the lack of control, not because of it. I’m saying that we need ever more absence of control to make the world a more beautiful place. It is a paradox that we must forever explain.” — Jeffrey Tucker

…Here’s the deal:

• I don’t swallow TJeff, TPayne, or any number of other enlightenment thinkers and radicals I’ve read and understand, whole. From them, I take their deep understanding of despotism, “rights” of kings, etc.
• Neither do I dismiss KMarx, VLenin, or any number of other communist thinkers and radicals I’ve read and understand, whole. From them, I take their deep understanding of how institutions prefer those who pay them the most.

Most importantly, I harbor no illusions from either and consider both ideologies more wrong than right.

Let me give you an example. Now, I could pick apart the hell out of this but at the same time, understand that probably at one point—if you make the slightest effort to integrate context—Lenin was speaking to hearts more than minds.

“We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society. The teachings about this society are called ‘socialism’.” — Vladimir Lenin (1903)

Well, turned out that people really don’t work that way for myriad reasons and so decades later—and tens of millions dead—in the attempt to enforce Kum-Ba-Yah at gunpoint, now everyone’s into fascism, which I haven’t even touched on yet.

…I am above all an integrator and synthesizer, forever looking for iconoclastic opportunities for the sole purpose of making you feel like a fucktard (in consolation, I love realizing I’ve been a fucktard—means I’m not, in that context, anymore).

Onward.

Since I’ve rented out nearly all my 20 week allotment of 1,250 sqft 1BR Suites for $2,550 each, and 740 sqft Master Studios for $2,150 each for 2015, all I have left other than a single 1BR and a few Studio weeks—one of which I just booked for myself—is unlimited 3, 4, and 5 night bookings at $625 and $495 per night, respectively. I make $100 per night on the spread. Been doing a lot of those.

It has been crazy night and day with inquiries. A year ago, I sold out my 10 contract weeks in February and popped for another $50K contract, to double inventory to 20 weeks. Now, here I sit, same month a year later in the same place: almost sold out for 2015 and it won’t be until July or so when people begin booking for 2016. That’s not all. Nearly sold out, it’s only from people who fill out the form on VRBO, then deal in email. 90% of my bookings involve zero phone conversation. I have 18 or 20 unlistened-to voicemails. Sorry folks: people who can communicate in writing get priority, and I’m almost sold out.

But what if I could serve the unwashed phone callers, as well as the Internet types who I can’t get to before they make other arrangements? What if I recognize my laziness of luxury as good, but not good enough? What if I could put in play another contract or two and have enough potential revenue to pay taxes (that’s euphemism for creating real jobs)? …The world is a 7 billions collection of fucktards who believe governments exact taxes. It’s an illusion. Businesses create activity, and the state steals the most from the unclever; all while the middle ground laps it up just because they can and are so sheepishly fearful of everything that they’ll hand over an ass fucking every day with a smile. The middle is the fat part of the Bell Curve with “FUCKTARD” as the x-axis. 

…I got this review yesterday for another vacation rental place, one I own outright and the one that got me started in this business out of the blue. It’s the 66th review I think, 64 of them 5-star, 2, 4-star.

This cabin always exceeds our expectations!

This is our third and definately not our last stay at Richards cabin. It is the ideal getaway venue for the following reasons, not in particular order:

1. Richard is a breeze and a delight to do business with in every way – easy going, professional, communicative, helpful, thorough, kind.

2. The space has everything needed for a multiple family gathering – beds, linens, open floor plan, flat driveway, games, coziness, fully stocked kitchen, great location close to downtown, easy drive to big trees and bv, great music system, outdoor space from deck to fire pit to woods to explore.

3. Price is unbeatable for what you get.

4. Ease of interaction and the process – from getting in to the cabin to check out, it’s a breeze with Richard.

We had 5 families and 14 folks total and it was spacious enough for all of us. We had group meals, and game time and smores outside and night walks under the stars. We love coming to Richards and will be back again and again. As one family said, can we book this every year until eternity? I’m not sure VRBO is set up for that but you get the sentiment. Rent this space!!!

It’s tear fodder if you’re me, but when you’re me and you think about it, you serve yourself best by asking yourself what in the fuck you’re doing when you clearly have such ease, success, love, and no stress doing something you’re naturally so good at you barely need to get out of bed to do good at it.

Who’s the biggest fucktard here? I know if you don’t.

…A few hours ago I booked a three night stay in a Land’s End Grand Solmar studio for someone, just a call of hundreds over 3 years. $300 to me in the spread for the trouble. Marta Rodriguez asked me: “Mr. Nikoley, when are you going to come stay, and visit us; me, Veronica, Patricia, Becky, Hector?”

Thing is, I’d already long been reflecting on being a pusher who never once sampled his own stash. Her question put me over the edge: from contemplation, to action…and when I make a decide, I move very fast. I emailed Beatrice. 2 minutes later I get her call: do it. I already had Kayak up for a bead on direct flights, SJC –> SJD and back (I don’t do layovers). Called back and as luck would have it, got Marta again.

Done. Headed out morning of March 21, back evening of the 28th.

It’s a business trip, not a social call. I want to inspect the product I’ve been selling for three years, so as to best understand whether to buy more contracts retail, or scoop up secondary-market contracts for almost nothing. Moreover, same developer will soon break ground on a golf-centric 5-star world class resort miles away and I need to integrate that, ground floor shit. Potential problem there is capital outlay way in advance of rental revenue.

…All this to say that you may miss me, you may not, but I’m tired and basically done writing about what you ought eat. Eat good, and fast regularly. If you eat crap, fast more. Feed your gut. Just eat beans for that. That’s about it.

I’ll still blog about it sometimes; but hereafter, you’ll best consider me not a paleo[ish], food, or health blogger; but rather, an Anarchist above all: interested in illustrating all ways that you live by virtue of convenient illusions almost all the time, and how you break that vicious cycle.

I’ll give you the punch line first.

Whatever your dietary sins, it keeps coming back again and again that a really solid fast with zero food for 24 hours or so is the equivalent of your gardener, Jesus, next to you in the phone booth to doG, redeeming all those sins.

Ive done everything over weeks in terms of crazy “food” like you wouldn’t believe. probiotics and prebiotics only make you shit every 30 minutes if you stress it; with like lots of alcohol, 7-11 microwave burritos, junk food…I could go way on. It really didn’t take long to realize I was really “doing this for [my] science.” And it’s all dead end. No silver bullet. The gut, for better or worse, is the gut and if you develop it enough, it might make you vomit like a dog when it does’t like what you ate or drank (more on that later).

Now I know as much as I possibly can. Nothing you can eat for your cells or your gut can fix you in terms of making you stellar or “bulletproof.” For me, now, I have a sensitive gag and vomit reflex that’s not particularly conscious and i don’t even understand it.

But I think that eating well and feeding your gut is good in regular terms, but it truly seems to me that for me avoiding this gag and vomit reflex, I must eat good food, consume little alcohol (or give a lot of space in-between…yea, tested that too), even less wheat-type products (runnys every time, without fail, and tested by 24 hr fasts).

And. when you go off the rails, or you’re just getting started, there is simply nothing so effective as a 24+ honest fast.

Heretofore, I’m likely to focus on that more, because I can’t give a runny shit anymore about what people want to eat and in the end, forcing a natural hunger for a day or so once a week might be the easiest thing to adhere to in the long run, no worries about anything else. Moreover, you’ll likely figure out your main culprits via fasts, then eat your suspicions. You know what they are.

Guess I’ve come full circle with what Brad Pilon was saying in like 2009.

1. Beatrice is away for the school vacation week, with the dogs. Down at the parents’ place in Vista. Right now, on an overnighter with mom & sis at one of the Indian casinos down there. I don’t have to walk or feed dogs, and can watch Sons of Anarchy and The Walking Dead as loud as I want. BTW, anyone feel like TWD has gotten off to an awful start this season, 2 initial episodes of mind numbing self-reflection and whinny ass shit?

2. Had lunch with “J”—the one I’m trying to help find a smart geek for—at Original Gravity Public House. They feature ultra craft micro brews, sausages, and fries cooked in duck fat.

We shared, and competed half-half on who had the better condiment mix (sauerkraut, pickled jalapeño, sautéed green pepper, sautéed onion). Sausages were buffalo, pheasant, and duck. Highly recommended.

3. Had lunch with Kit Perkins (best Paleo transformation ever)—the guy behind Topo, the weird-ass Standing Desk Mat—at Brown Chicken Brown Cow, that do grass fed gourmet burgers and free range chicken. Topo is a great success in terms of launch, with about 1,000 pre-orders from folks like you. At last count, 65 of them from here, at the launch price of a hundred bucks. Thanks. My $650 for that has been paid, plus Kit bought lunch. You’ll like it. I don’t always stand when I work, but when I do, I stand on a Topo (prototype). You can still pre-order.

4. Duck Dodgers and I have been reasonably active in Mike Eades’ comments, in spite of my scathing post in response. Discussion has been reasonably cordial with minimal snark once things got going, and Eades has been gentlemanly in putting our comments through and responding to them. You can scan/read the thread here. My last comment, about tiger nuts of all things, is still in his mod queue but I’m confident will be up later when next he revisits the blog [it’s now been posted and replied to].

…Alright. That should about do it for now. Working on a couple of posts; one, about some new research on Vitamin K2, an old subject around here. Another has been languishing but it will eventually come to light. It’s about the very strange nutrition in raw honey, including microbes we’d normally consider pathogenic.

Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals… Emma Goldman

It’s really been tough.

Iv’e been so very very very busy with things I like to do more than I like to do other things, I’ve gotten to where cooking anything but fish is a real pain in the ass. Forget about Sous Vide, because this is done before you even get the water oven filled with water and brought up to temperature.

Here’s an example from last night, 30 minutes from start to finish—but that’s only because we were really clamoring for stinky pee and the asparagus takes the longest. And also, I had been very very very busy writing a blog post about being very very very busy, then going shopping for scallops, then walking the dogs, trip to the hot tub and the unheated swimming pool, greeting Beatrice when she got home, etc. Then, after eating, we both got very very very busy watching some stuff on the DVR.

How you do it in about 30 minutes:

1. Oven to 400
2. Toss asparagus in good EVOO and salt liberally
3. Cook on a cookie sheet in the 400 oven for 20 minutes, go 2-5 more if you need
4. Soon as it’s in, make a tarter sauce quick. Apart from stock, it’s got the juice of a whole mandarine orange, fine ground pepper, lots of dry dill, and a tiny bit of crushed jalapeño.
5. Soon as that’s done, get two fry pans, add butter and olive oil, bring to medium to melt and heat
6. Soon as the asparagus comes out, hit one fry pan to high and set your oven to broil (hi) and move a rack to second position from top.
7. Soon as the oil begins to smoke, toss your salmon in skin side down and season the top liberally with salt & pepper (make sure the other pan doesn’t overheat)
8. After a minute or so, pop the whole pan under the broiler and set a 4-minute timer
9. Turn the other fry pan to high and when it starts smoking in a minute, put scallops in an season with salt and pepper (one side only)
10. After exactly 1 minute, 30 seconds, flip the scallops for exactly another 1 minute, 30 seconds
11. Take ’em off, get them to the plate immediately, take the salmon out and plate immediately, dress with asparagus and garnish with tartar.

It’s to die for. So simple, very inexpensive, so quick and if you do that asparagus right, you’ll have crispy flowers and sweet stalks. Letting it cool while you finish everything else makes it kinda like a vegetable and salad all in one.

The following is a guest post by my newest collaborator: Tar Baby.

Tar, as I’ll call him, is coming out of the muck and to the forefront…in response to a new post by Mike Eades that prefigures an upcoming post of his, where he’s going to show how little we all know about “basic biochemistry,” and how we don’t read the work of “serious anthropologists.” Mind you. The post is not up yet. After 10 months, he’s letting you know he’s been very very very busy, is still very very very busy, that goings on here aren’t really worth his very very very busy time, but in charity, he really owes it to readers to—eventually—answer open questions so that those who haven’t taken a breath for 10 months—owing to him being very very very busy—can finally breath easy.

~~~

Dr. Eades promised long ago to settle the matter regarding the questions raised here in about 17 posts, about Inuit being in ketosis or not (he claims they absolutely are, but are so “keto-adapted” that the absence of detectable ketones in urine or blood is evidence of an even more profound ketosis—and it’s very simple, but he’s been too busy to explain the simplicity). He got himself tarred via that substantial series here delving into many on-scene Inuit studies going back 100 years, and initially tried to extricate himself from the mire in an ironically titled post: Beware the confirmation bias.

He subsequently found time to engage in comments at the Hyperlipid blog: The P479L gene for CPT-1a and fatty acid oxidation. He didn’t really fare well. Mostly vacuum, no art. Notably, someone posted a comment he never even tried to answer, an artful comment it was.

Your definition of keto adapted is not ”eating a diet that is named ‘ketogenic diet’ even if it fails to generate ketones.” It has always been about GENERATING and USING ketones:

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ketones-and-ketosis/beware-confirmation-bias/

“What he fails to understand is that the Inuit are keto-adapted. Their lifelong diet of high-fat meat has gotten their ketone-producing-and-consuming systems working in precisely controlled fashion. Like, dare I say it, a well-oiled machine.

The Inuit burn ketones as they make them, so it stands to reason that they might not have measurable ketones under normal circumstances.”

This thinking is unreasonable in itself, it’s like saying “the traffic is high, but because there are no traffic jams, you can’t see cars on the road”. Don’t you understand that in order for ketones to go from the liver to the other places they have to be in the blood in the mean time?

Notice how those enjoying thread-bare illusions of authority for dwindling numbers of hopeless, regurgitate-eating sycophants use metaphor all the time.

Like, dare I say it, a well-oiled machine.

Or, they’re vaguely assertive in an authoritative way (“so it stands to reason”). It’s like when Richard was in comments on Hyperlipid’s most recent post this morning, having to bear someone telling him that “high protein doesn’t kill ketones,” then being unable to explain what he means by use of the metaphor.

Eades’ post that ironically exposed his own confirmation bias was published in April of last year and had a bit of a comment thread run, owing to the activity here. Duck Dodgers posted a comment in October—4 months ago—and Dr. Eades just got to it (he’s always very, very, very, very busy). It coincided with his post of yesterday. Since Duck’s comment hadn’t been published in what might be considered a reasonable time for a science-based contribution that 80% quotes studies in the literature, it got published by Richard here: The Comment Dr. Michael Eades Doesn’t Want You To See.

Here’s the thing. Unlike Duck and Richard’s other collaborators—who count as biochemists, PhDs, MDs, DDSs, Grad Students, and a handful of plain smart laymen they check their work against—I’m the collaborator where, when you mess with me, it bounces off me and sticks to you. I’m the Tar Baby! No science here, unless you consider the art or vacuum of discourse to be science. For the consumption of Eades’ sycophants, clamoring and exuberant for a post every 3-4 months, it’s vacuum in masquerade.

I’m going to go through Eades’ post to demonstrate the level of poisoning the well, always in advance of actually addressing any issue he gets taken to task on (he’s been poisoning the well on this subject for 10 months, his last post is the final few doses).

Poisoning the well (or attempting to poison the well) is a rhetorical device where adverse information about a target is pre-emptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing everything that the target person is about to say.

[It’s also just as commonly used to falsely bolster the confidence in what the poisoner is about to say contra the poisoned.]

1. As many of you may know, I got caught up.
2. I was variously accused.
3. I didn’t have the time.
4. If I didn’t…no one would know.
5. I also figured if…it would imply.
6. I dawdled while I tried to find the time to deal with the thing.
7. Then Nikoley gives me an out.
8. He throws…demanding that…or he will.
9. Which was great because the whole debate got moved to his blog so that all his readers, most of whom understand even less than he, could listen to him expound on it.
10. I decided I would let the comment lie for awhile.
11. Then Nikoley wrote yet another…this last post on the subject that made me realize how much misunderstanding there is about the basic biochemistry and physiology of ketosis.
12. I realized I had been a victim of Curse of Knowledge…that someone knowing something or possessing some expertise has a difficult time understanding how little others know about something he sees as so simple.
13. This was the error I made.
14. So, I need to fix it.
15. Readers…could be led astray.
16. It really doesn’t make a difference.
17. The physiology of ketosis probably needs to be explained so that people don’t come away from all this thinking about it in the wrong way.
18. I’ll be writing a post on the basic physiology of ketosis.
19. Not in brain-numbing detail.

Now, to that, Richard in his infinite abrasiveness might write something like, “what a poor busy busy busy victim combined with blowhard, condescending little prick.” That’s why he enlisted my help, Tar Baby.

I’ll simply point out that Eades being so unfortunately burdened and “Curse[d] of Knowledge” is exactly what someone suffering from the Dunning-Krueger effect would say all the time.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude.

By unskilled, I of course mean in the logic of artful discourse, not medical science, per se. In that, Eades is simply like most others in the field who spend their lives “showing” how they’re right and were always right; and not, as Richard might put it in terms of his own approach: how he’s wrong, has always been wrong, but gets a little less wrong every day.

Some of you who’ve seen Eades in action going way back might recall his backs and forths with Anthony Colpo. For a long time, Richard defended Eades on this very blog and even ridiculed Anthony a time or two. But the way in which Eades operated, by going for long periods pleading time constraints—combined with his many well poisoning tactics—such that readers had such unrealistically high expectations by the time he finally got around to being a little less very very very busy—it would have caused readers embarrassment to admit he’s dancing around naked rather than sporting a fine set of new clothes.

Richard told me just this morning that when he realized what was going on, he actually went and read Colpo’s The Fat Loss Bible and realized that Eades simply never deals with stuff head on.

Rather, he tells you over and over and over that after he’s less very very very busy, he’ll help you to not be so hopelessly ignorant and fooled. He’s your knight in shining armor; and to really make it easy on you, he’s not going to numb or worry your poor little head with all the very very very simple facts and explanations exhaustively. But he could. Of course. And if he was less very very very busy, and you were way way way smarter, he would.

~~~

Well, so there it is, and if I wasn’t so busy, and you were smarter, I’d put in one hell of a wrap on that. Instead, I’ll point to Peter at Hyperlipid who wrote a post about Ketosis and Protein. Those who actually read our series on the Inuit understand that the stuff about meat glycogen was just a means to expose how busy Eades really is, and that it was really about too high of protein to be in perpetual ketosis.

Can’t wait for Eades to say that Peter and his readers don’t understand basic biochemistry. In the meantime…

Duck just rang in, so this be a double guest post. Here’s the thing: Eades picked a stupid fight. First, because he’s “so busy,” he didn’t even realize that the stuff about glycogen in fresh kills was entirely beside the point. It’s the high protein levels by any dietary standard, stupid. But, Eades can never, ever be wrong, see, so he has to poison the well for 10 months—at which point he’s going to dazzle everyone with bullshit, declare “put paid,” and then “wash his hands.”

He simply can’t be content with arguing that VLC or ketosis can be therapeutic for some or all on its own merits, Inuit irrelevant. But since he’s been invoking the Inuit for better than two decades at least, he simply can’t be wrong about it—even though the game is already over and they are by no means metabolically like the rest of us.

~~~

Check Mate

Here’s a list of researchers who believed that the Eskimo native diet was a high protein diet:

Krogh & Krogh 1914 (Nobel Prize winner)
Lusk 1914
Joslin 1917 (first doctor to ever specialize in diabetes in the US)
Schaffer 1921
Heinbecker 1928, 1931, 1932
Tolstoi 1929
McClellan & DuBois 1930 (Stefansson’s own doctors)
Rabinowitch 1936
Rabinowitch & Corcoran 1936
Rabinowitch and Smith 1936
Kaare Rodahl 1952
Sinclair 1953 (A detailed review of the literature)
Ho 1972
Hui 1975
Bang, Dyerberg & Hjorne 1976
Draper 1977 (anthropology)
VanItallie & Nufert 2003
Leonard & Snodgrass 2005

“Serious anthropolgists,” like Harold Draper, who have expertise in Eskimo nutrition believe that pre-modern Eskimos ate a very high protein diet along with high fat and only minimal carbohydrates. And just the other day, Peter wrote a great post on how protein inhibits ketogenesis.

Meanwhile, I have yet to find a single paper that claims the Eskimos ate a high fat ketogenic diet that didn’t use a false basis to make those claims. In all cases, authors A) made no observations on the dietary habits of actual Eskimos and B) only cited Stephen Phinney, who only cites Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s experience from the Bellevue Experiment and Schwatka’s own high fat sledging diet—all of which are about white explorers who could only survive by eating fatty cuts of meat. It’s circular reasoning. In other words, there are zero scientific papers showing actual Eskimos ate a high fat and low protein diet. The only people in the Arctic who apparently ate a high fat and restricted protein diet were white explorers.

And that’s the problem right there because it turns out that the Eskimos have a unique metabolism that is not shared by the white explorers.

It is now known that as much as 68% of Eskimos have the Carnitine palmitoyltransferase I (CPT1A) gene that causes carnitine palmitoyltransferase I deficiency—a severe reduction of an enzyme found in the liver that is essential for fatty acid oxidation. CPT1A enables Eskimos to have an extremely rare metabolism, which results in a significantly reduced ability to produce ketones either from a high fat diet or from fasting. In fact, the differential diagnosis of CPT1 deficiency is a ketogenesis disorder.

CPT1a is known to cause extremely low levels of ketones as well as hypoglycemia—together known as hypoketotic hypoglycemia. The CPT1a mutation is only particularly dangerous for Inuit children, who cannot fast or rely on ketosis, due the fact that their livers are not fully developed.

It is believed that CPT1A is an adaptation to cold environments. [While the data in those two papers is sound, the authors claim the Eskimos traditionally ate a ketogenic diet only citing Phinney, using the same flawed circular reasoning discussed above]. The mutation still enables the Inuit to obtain energy either as glucose from carbs, or from protein, however their excess polyunsaturated fat intake was preferentially burnt for heat, and not stored as LDL or triglycerides and their ability to create ketones was severely diminished.

For this reason Inuit children are especially well known to have difficulty fasting and it is common practice for the Inuit to eat snacks every hour. It may also explain why Inuit children were traditionally breastfed regularly until the age of 3 or 4 and irregularly up to the 4 to 6 years of age. Due to the autosomal recessive inheritance pattern of this genetic mutation, as well as its high prevalence in current Eskimo populations, nearly all full-blooded Eskimos would have had this genetic mutation prior to modern interbreeding with white people.

Interestingly, the expression of the CTP1 enzyme can be upgregulated with a diet containing minimal carbohydrate intake, blueberries, or good gut flora.

Furthermore, CPT1-deficiency in the Eskimo population may protect from the effects of a high fat diet, by increasing oxidation of glucose and by storing of excess fats, in what has been called “healthy obesity” in Eskimo populations exhibiting low prevalence of insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and Type II Diabetes.

It should be clear that the Inuit have metabolisms that are nothing like ours. They might as well come from a different planet. You’d have to be absolutely and completely insane to use their population as a proxy for studying the effects of a long term ketogenic diet.

~~~

Here’s the list of Inuit/Ketosis posts with comment counts (as of 12-Nov-2014).

1. Disrupting Paleo: Inuit and Masai Ate Carbs and Prebiotics, Part 1 (110 Comments)
2. Disrupting Paleo: Inuit and Masai Ate Carbs and Prebiotics, Part 2 (193 Comments)
3. To Reiterate, Just In Case You Missed It: No Elevated Ketone Levels in the Inuit (150 Comments)
4. One Thousand Nails in the Coffin of Arctic Explorer Vilhjálmur Stefansson, and His Spawn (150 Comments)
5. When Confirmation Bias is the Landscape, Dialectics is Your Path to Better Truth (109 Comments)
6. What Did Indigenous People Inhabiting the Coldest Places on Earth Really Eat? (69 Comments)
7. Sweden Update: Resistant Starch On The Rise, LCHF Stefansson Myths On The Ropes (14 Comments)
8. More Uncovering of the Inuit Myth: Stefansson and Anderson Belleview Experiement; Compromised Glucose Tolerance (72 Comments)
9. Logic 101: Why The Resistant Starch And Gut Biome Revolution Means Doom For VLC/Keto (179 Comments)
10. Hunters Of Wild Game Can’t Remain In Ketosis (14 Comments)
11. The New Nutritional Starvation Diet (32 Comments)
12. The War On Tastebuds (78 Comments)
13. 7 Bigger-Than-Ever Challenges Everyone Should Know About Low-Carb Ketogenic Diets (65 Comments)
14. Physiological Insulin Resistance = Low Carbohydrate Diet Induced Insulin Resistance (25 Comments)
15. The Swedes Look Beyond Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s NYT Obituary, to The Science He Ignored (9 Comments)
16. Lies, Damned Lies, and The Inuit Diet (15 Comments)
17. The Comment Dr. Michael Eades Doesn’t Want You To See (163 Comments)

– Young people take it for granted, as a birthright.

– Middle-adged people contemplate the fact that shitting on that birthright with impunity—while taking it for granted—comes with repercussions, costs, and in some cases, long term effects that will remain too long term to be correctible. One moves on.

– Old folks are retired and resigned. It’s a good thing; because, then you get to laf at AARP, which is just too fun—the hubristic levels of over-the-top entitlement. It’s fortunate. It makes it easy to hope they all die and give the Earth a break soon. After all, the chief cause of global warming is all the hot wind being expelled by old fucks all the time over what a raw deal they have. Fuck ’em, and nobody ought care about old folks.

…It’s hilarious to me. “Ethicists” wax on about euthanasia, as though people already can’t wait for most of them to depart on their own demerits. It’s not a huge ethical dilemma. To be an ethical dilemma, lots of people have to care a lot and the cool thing about old fucks is that only close family do.

Thanks. I don’t care and really never want to hear about it even, even while being polite (lying). Keep your unique specialness to your own special self. It’s too special not to. To you.

…America is the first country on Earth to make the scorning of old people a wonderful thing.

I’m sure it’s an error. The American Dream has no downsides ever.

I was recently contact by a friend (looks 20-something—always gets carded) whom I originally met IRL via all the Original Ancestral goings on, my blog, etc., and who’s been a longtime reader.

AHS11 Pre Symposium Get Together at Aaron Blaisdell’s Home

We last met for lunch last spring at the kitchen of what’s now Mission Heirloom Garden Cafe in Berkeley.

“J,” as I’ll call her, is smart & attractive. She’s never experienced any of the metabolic dysfunction so many of us old farters have. She’s lucky, because she and her offspring never will.

A few days back I got a communiqué from her, saying she had a weird favor to ask, but without actually asking it. I told her to ask away, so turns out she was wondering if I knew any young cool guys—with long term serious views and independent liberty minds—that I might be able to introduce to her. I actually did have a such someone in mind, but he’s “off the market.” Chewing on the [t]ask, I proposed doing up this post, fully expecting her to to let me off the hook, say thanks, but maybe not. But, she’s a bold one, “J” is, and so here we go. Men: do you like bold, smart, attractive women? …I thought not. So close this browser tab now. Read no further.

…I should add that I would not do this for just anyone and certainly not everyone, or even anyone other, so I beg of you not to ask. “J” is a special sort of young person to me, with a mind and shared values that motivated me to see what I could do about helping her.

So, who is she, and what’s she all about?

~~~

She’s a little bit nerdy (okay, a lot) and a little bit rock n’ roll; kind-hearted, family-oriented, driven, constantly curious, and seeking a parter for life.

A little Settlers of Catan; a lot of rock climbing
A glass of wine; a hike up the mountain
XKCD, UAVs, A’s, C’s, G’s, and T’s.

Adventure travel to Patagonia or the Transiberian railway anyone?
Fiscally conservative, alt currency systems, competitive governments
Just no karaoke please

Foods delicious and paleo-ish; swing and blues dancing
Quantified Self; learn to surf
Nap anywhere; camp anywhere
Love and live in San Francisco
Make the world a safer, kinder place, with technology!

…She graduated from a top university but her real learning started after, as her career took her from policy, to politics, to media, to biotech, and now web development.

In her heart she’s a West Coast gal (comfortable in the cold waters of Northern California—open water swimming FTW) and up in the mountains skiing and backpacking. She’s open to considering a move to other parts of the country (PDX, Austin, etc.) or other countries: for the right guy.

She’s sorta bilingual—English & Chinese (Mandarin & Cantonese)—and loves getting to know other languages and cultures (svenska, francais, etc.) whilst traveling.

Family for her is a team where they all support and respect each other as individuals. Everyone is to be encouraged in their curiosity, to pursue their own interests…with parents being cheerleaders, soft shoulders to cry on, and advisors.

Her top 3 must-haves:

• A good man: morals, kind heart, patience, and humility.
• A curious man: he wants to explore depths of the the worlds there’s so much to learn about, outwardly and inwardly.
• A family man: he wants to create a model that expresses all of these values. Hopefully, supportive of unschooling.

Additional areas: chemistry/attraction (tbd IRL!). Loves to be outdoors, likes building things, and can make me laugh (and vice-versa).

~~~

Ok, here’s the procedure. You could reply in comments and I can get her an email to hit if she wishes (provided you enter a working one in the field). Alternatively, you can hit my About Page and email something of a “profile” along with whatever contact info you like, for me to forward. Feel free to include Skype info. Both should consider getting on 2-way video ASAP.

Do I need to say it: please be nice. This is a friend of mine and I’m doing her a favor. If you can’t respect any of that in comments, comment is summarily deleted. Also, please have some rational perspective. You can see that she’s out of college, done a few things, never been settled, and is ready to settle down. You should not be interested in steering her path, but do consider her if you’re on a similar path (college or not—life experience may count more, you unschooled, you!) with similar exhilarations, passions, frustrations, impatience, disappointments.

Way back when, 2 guys decided to write a book together and a damsel got distressed. And so she plied her wares, and fucked it all up.

This is a section from Chapter 3, Chemical Warfare. It’s about the myriad ways that bacteria are in a constant state of warfare, and beyond just the quotidian synthesized chemicals they excrete, it really doesn’t even contemplate Quorum Sensing, or Horizontal Gene Transfer. Viruses play in the gut biome, too. This was written and edited just about a year ago. Tim Steele, in North Pole, Alaska, was the collaborator, as most of you know, and links are candy.

In spite of a wayward cunt, it will get published; along with the other 8 sections of the same chapter, and the other 19 chapters.

~~~

ET TU, BRUTE?

The largest threat to every Establishment in the 10,000 or so years since man first waged war was itself. Complacency, corruption, and unrealistic growth at the expense of society’s resources have toppled many regimes. Human governing systems attempted to solve this problem with layers of bureaucratic oversight, but it’s generally a hostile takeover that ends dictatorships. Our gut bugs must regard us as sheer amateurs. Our microbes, in their 3 billion year history of warfare, saw fit to build in a self-regulating, continuous coup d’etat.

Sidebar:

A common argument used by those who eschew animals as food sources for humans, in favor of various plant-based diets is the fact that humans don’t have claws, flesh ripping fangs, and they can’t run as fast as predators like big cats, wolves, and wild dogs. Such reasoning, however, doesn’t account for the chief predator of humans: other humans.

Humans are vicious predators, possessing the most marvelous weapon ever devised by evolution: a big brain. Rather than relying on physical attributes to engage in predation, man’s big brain allows for the development of tools, weapons, strategy, and tactics such as persistence hunting. Moreover, humans are masters of deception on all levels, both individual and socially collective.

…Anywhere bacteria are found, phages are not far behind.[22] Phages are viruses that prey on bacteria. There are 10 times as many phages in the world as there are bacteria, making phages the most abundant life form in numbers on the planet.[23] Seawater contains more phages than anywhere else. And there can exist over 900,000,000 phages in a milliliter of seawater!

The official name is bacteriophage, Greek for bacteria eater. In the human gut, phages operate on a principle known as “kill-the-winner.”[24] Any time a bacterial population gets too big, phages come along and knock them down to size—the world’s most brutal police force. By killing overpopulated bacteria, any single gut bacterial species is prevented from gaining too much control of the biome. This drives microbial diversity and guarantees there are sufficient different types of gut bugs to perform each specific role. A gut without this government regulation would soon be populated by just one or two global superpower microbes good at doing a few things, but completely unprepared to deal with contingencies or disasters.

Gut bugs must interact with each other to form a common defense and tackle shared duties, but they must also compete for space and food. Phages are the great equalizer. When everything is going fine, diversity is high, and populations are stable, the phages do nothing. They’re not indiscriminate killers. If an invading microbial population overcomes all defenses and is then able to grow rapidly, the phages jump into action and kill the intruders.

A phage does its dirty work in one of two ways: either exploding the bacteria outright, or infecting it with its DNA—forcing the microbe to become a breeder of phages. We told you this was going to get weird. The different types of phages can be differentiated by their knife-like tails, or lack thereof. The lunar lander-looking structure includes a capsule where the phage’s DNA is stored. [You can Google for images of what phages look like under an electron microscope.]

~~~

…So, I’ve had this tab up in my browser for days, unwilling to close it, unsure what to do with it, no inspiration to blog it until I recalled the foregoing.

Bacterial Microbiome Move Over: the Gut Virome Makes Its Debut

A new study reveals that eukaryotic viruses are able to both shape mucosal immunity and support intestinal homeostasis in mice. Specifically, infection with murine norovirus (MNV) appears able to replace the beneficial function of bacterial colonization in the gut.

Scientists have long known that RNA viruses are commonly found in healthy infants and children, as well as in individuals recovering from acute gastroenteritis. Such viral infections have generally been assumed to be detrimental to the host. The new study turns that assumption on its head and hints that these viruses may play a role similar to that of the bacterial microbiome. […]

The new findings are the first strong evidence that viruses in the gastrointestinal tract can help maintain health and heal a damaged gut. Before this study, there had been very little investigation of the viruses that colonize the gut.

The team infected germ-free mice and antibiotic-treated mice with MNV and found that the infection triggered the repair of intestinal tissue damaged by inflammation, restored intestinal cell numbers, restored intestinal cell function, and normalized tissue architecture. The results were apparent after just 2 weeks of MNV infection.

Infection with MNV also helped restore the gut’s immune system. The investigators do not yet know how the virus supports the immune system. They did find, however, increased signaling by antiviral type 1 interferon proteins, suggesting the virus was playing a key role in driving the immune response.

The investigators also documented a doubling of T-cell levels in the blood and detectable levels of antibodies in the gut and blood of antibiotic-treated mice after MNV infection. These measures were consistent with a normalization of the immune response. The authors conclude that viral infection of the gut may be helpful once antibiotic treatment has wiped out intestinal bacteria. […]

“We have known for a long time that people get infected all the time with viruses and bacteria, and they don’t get sick,” senior investigator Ken Cadwell, PhD, also from New York University, noted in a university news release. “Now we have scientific evidence that not every viral infection is bad, but may actually be beneficial to health, just as we know that many bacterial infections are good for maintaining health.”

Or, you know, go order up another free delivery of paleo brownies and/or cookies, tell everyone you’re “PALEOW!!!” Start a blog, hook up with affiliate accounts. It’s a trend.

It’s solid. It’s bankable. For. A. While.

Or, just go long term view and get lafs. At you.

A little self-indulgence here.

First, Beatrice and I are done buying new cars. To me, purchasing or leasing new cars more often than 10+ years in-between is about the biggest waste of money Americans succumb to in their entire lives. And every time I see someone driving around in a well maintained, perfectly functioning old car with some retro stylish class, I’m reminded of that.

My car is a 2006 BMW X5 4.4i. It’s got 120K miles. Hers is a 2003 Infinity FX-35 with 150K miles. Both are in pristine condition and run like champs (we use only full synthetic, changes every 7,500 miles—plus, remember doing 4-Qt oil changes in big block V8s back in the 70s? My BWM takes 8.5 Qts, which is a lot of leeway in terms of breakdown). Anyway, my sense is that they’re at perhaps half life, at most.

We haven’t had car payments in years, so we’re very good about regular maintenance instead. And, for me, some upgrades. Some years back, I went from the stock wheels and tires…

To this…

20″ Rims

…With phat 315s on the rear (BMWs never need tire rotation—they have proper German-engineered suspension instead).

Problem was, those “hi-performance tyres” (for whom and what?) don’t wear very well. The rear tires alone were $500 per copy, and when you get 20K miles out of them at best…do the math. Moreover, I actually do mild off roading, dirt and rocky roads to get to hang gliding launches. So, I had more than one flat, and sidewall damage in the front a time or two.

So, since I’d decided to keep the car because I love it so much, I hatched a plan sometime back to make it more of a serious contender in off-roading: My BMW X-5: Going Stealth and Zombie Apocalypse.

Deal is, the job featured in that post relied on the front fenders being chopped. When I took it over to Tommy at California Wheels, he took out his calculator, measuring tape, and within a few minutes showed me that with that total tire/wheel height, I’m going to get rub-rub at wheel lockout—something I was familiar with when I put big tires on a ’93 Jeep Grand Cherokee once, and ended up having to get a 3″ lift to eliminate the rub.

Glad I didn’t try to save $1,000 or so and DIY. In the end, it was a 2″ lift that required a preliminary drop-off in the shop for measurements. They’d never done a lift on an X5—there’s nothing on the Internet—so had to fabricate their own lift kit in the shop. Picked up my lift Saturday afternoon, using Lyft—for the first time—to get a lift there and it was a cool experience.

It’s remarkable what sitting 2″ higher + the added total wheel height does in terms of general “feel” and visibility. I really like it, and now, no worries when I head up to the cabin in Arnold and there’s a fresh snow. Those low profile tires just never cut it, and all-wheel drive is useless. For all-wheel or 4-wheel drive to be anything meaningfully functional and advantageous, it begins with where the rubber meets the road.

Now, all this plug-&-play rubber already mounted on alloy rims and balanced, go up on Craigie’s List.

Next comes the wrap. Still haven’t decided between matte black and drab green.

…Alright, now to resume blogging for different kinds of geeks… Back to your semi-regular programming, like about weird bacteria and viruses, and such.

A: Because they can.

…I’ve been waiting for over 4,000 posts in 13 years of blogging to use that in a prescient way. It involves light reading, from The International Journal of Surgery, 1916:

Autotherapy is a subject the importance of which is bound to be generally appreciated when its principles are better understood. Its remarkable efficiency, simplicity of technic, and economy should appeal to the medical mind, and have already attracted wide attention. The results obtained by a host of physicians who have employed it in the treatment of localized infections, in both men and animals, surpass anything medicine or surgery has yet offered.

In its simplest form autotherapy consists of licking the wound, as animals do. This procedure has demonstrated the important fact that pus by the mouth, in wounds not connected with the alimentary tract or the respiratory system, acts therapeutically at once and the results tend to be permanent.

Physicians who have used it on themselves claim that it acts magically in boils and other purulent infections. Others, who have administered the exudate from the cervix in treating deep infections of the pelvis, assert that they are afraid to publish their results for fear their veracity might be doubted.

At the inception of autotherapy the writer employed exudates containing live pathogenic microorganisms as a therapeutic agent. Later, in an effort to make a more elegant autotherapeutic preparation, a dilution of pus was passed through a Berkefeld filter and the efficacy of the filtrate tested thoroughly both by the mouth and hypodermatically. This was found to be equally effective when given in the manner described. Here was a second medical fact or stepping-stone in the development of autotherapy. Filtering can be done by any family physician at the bed-side, and the filtrate is applicable to all localized infections. It contains the toxins from both the causative and complicating micro-organisms in the same proportions as they appear in the locus of infection. Let us remember that the antitoxins of commerce are obtained in response to the action of injected toxins. With autotherapy the patient is auto-immunized, i.e., immunized to his own toxin-complex.

The consensus of medical opinion of the many who use autotherapy in daily practice is tritely expressed by Dr. J. C. Parham, Past Assistant Surgeon of the United States Navy, who says: “I am convinced that once your method of treatment is generally known its advocates will be legion; Surely, the theory is sound, and still mare surely sound are the results.”

The autotherapeutic remedy is the only strictly autogenous agent at our command in fighting disease. It is quite generally admitted that the therapeutic effect of autogenous vaccines is superior to that of stock vaccines. Yet even Wright’s vaccine is lowered by every step through which it passes in the laboratory. Its therapeutic effect is altered by growing in foreign culture media, by heat, by chemical preservatives. We may not be able to grow the infecting micro-organisms outside the human body; under such conditions an autogenous vaccine cannot be prepared. It takes time to prepare Wright’s vaccine and meanwhile the patient grows worse, passes the crisis, or often dies before the remedy is available. If Wright’s vaccine cures, this is not due to laboratory manipulation, but in spite of it.

There is no certainty of cure with any heterogeneous toxin or set of toxins; experience for upward of a century clearly proves this. Administering stock conglomerate vaccine has been frequently termed shot-gun therapy [I’ve called it “carpet bombing,” but we’re reading from 1916, pre-WWII metaphor – Ed] pure and simple, and considered unscientific. What is new today is often old tomorrow. With the advent of autotherapy our ideas of the treatment of infections have changed, for the autotherapeutic remedy is Nature’s remedy. Self-therapy or self-preservation is the fundamental principle of life. Natural therapy is the culmination of vaccine therapy. The autotherapeutic remedy will cure an acute localized infection in a thousand years from now as quickly as it does to-day, for the principle upon which it rests is everlasting and immutable.

The condemnation of autotherapy is usually in direct proportion to the ignorance or bias of the critic. The main criticism of autotherapy is that it is crude. With those who prefer so-called scientific to effective treatment of their patients, we have no basis for discussion. Natural methods may appear crude and simple. The fault is not with nature; but lies in the fact that we have moved so far away from her that we fail to appreciate or perceive the truths she holds out to us in all their bearings. This accounts for the endless speculations, controversies and uncertainties that have characterized the study of medicine through past ages. In spite of all of our vaunted knowledge, it is, perhaps, humiliating to be told that the patient brings his natural remedy with him in his body to the physician, and that it often can be obtained.

That was in 1916, and Duncan’s warnings are only more prescient 99 years later, still unheeded in the name of carpet-bombing antibiotics that can make huge profits for drug companies.

When I was forwarded that by one of the many collaborators who copy me—because they never know that when something becomes of serious interest to me on many levels of health—including drug company profits and their bedfellow functionaries in positions of power—it goes on out here to thousands in form of payment for their efforts.

…You’d never know, unless I told you, that it began days ago as a thread between about 5 people exploring the idea of urine-drinking therapy, which the consensus is still very undecided and skeptical about, as indistinguishable from placebo, basically.

As well, how is pee drinking (comes down to like “homeopathic” in the stuff I’ve been asked to read—like just a drop on the tongue) differentiated from modern proclivities involving sucking cock and eating pussy? To me, it’s a human-animal proclivity to enthusiastically exchange bodily fluids. …A 10-second open mouth kiss transfers about 80-million microorganisms.

And mamalian mom’s transfer kagillions of stuff to their infants, for another dot. But yet another dot: infants may transfer back pathogens for mom’s breasts to create antibodies. Whoa, eh?

Maternal and infant infections stimulate a rapid leukocyte response in breastmilk

Breastmilk protects infants against infections; however, specific responses of breastmilk immune factors to different infections of either the mother or the infant are not well understood. Here, we examined the baseline range of breastmilk leukocytes and immunomodulatory biomolecules in healthy mother/infant dyads and how they are influenced by infections of the dyad.

In addition to maternal infection, a small but significant breastmilk leukocyte response was observed when the infant had an infection, but the mother was asymptomatic. This finding is supported by a recent study from Riskin et al. that also reported a response of breastmilk leukocytes to active infection of nursing infants.

While the mechanism behind the leukocyte movement into the breast during an infection of the infant is still unclear, exposure of the mother to the infant’s infection may stimulate an immunological response in the mother that is manifested without evident symptomatology, but which influences breastmilk leukocyte content.

A potential way for this to happen is during breastfeeding. During a milk ejection, duct pressure increases, milk ducts dilate and milk flows toward the nipple / baby’s mouth. As oxytocin wears off, duct pressure decreases, milk ducts reduce in size and milk flows backwards, likely together with saliva from the baby’s mouth. This is a time when it is possible that microorganisms from the infant could be transferred back into the breast, most likely during a pause in suckling, stimulating a local immune response.

Or, go to any of thousands of “paleo” sites now, and order up your “paleo” brownies, and take sweet pleasure that you know it all while reading the same things you’ve been reading for years. Go read Cordain, whose known it all since 2,000 and spends all of his time asserting that he’s known it all, since 2,000.

Did you catch it though? Mammals created biological WiFi eons ago in the form of both beneficial and potentially pathogenic microorganism transfer via tits.

No wonder society worships them (I like small-rockets, just so you know).

Oh, any microbiologic horizontal gene transfer going on? I don’t know. But I know who to ask. 🙂

Let me tell you why I jumped off my ass and created this post:

I have always licked my wounds I can reach, for one; and, to admit to it, if I missed something like a bit of wood from a splinter and it festered, I’d always pop it, lick up the tasty puss, and keep licking the wound. Since I was a kid. All my wounds healed remarkably fast and the way I spent my childhood on my grandfather’s 10 acres next to the Truckee River outside Reno, NV, I was always sporting wounds as a function of natural environment.

In follow-on collaboration, I was admonished to emphasize that it’s not just licking fresh wounds that’s important, but perhaps more important, festering ones, where you take up the pussy antibodies.

It’s the very first time I ever told anyone: because, y’know, I got “socialized,” too.

Free the Animal.

Glenn Greenwald has pissed me off at times. That’s good and healthy.

I’ll not get into how, what, or why; and plus, apparently, we’re both moving targets in terms of what we think about some thing, TODAY. I operate from my playbook and he does too—very important for a biased journalist and 101% are.

This 45-min long Reason TV interview took me several sessions to watch—admitting that I’ll watch a similar-length episode of Sons of Anarchy straight through (or Deadwood, my latest flings). How pathetic are we, in our various forms of opium over wholesome food? Guilty. Me.

Here’s the deal: Glenn Greenwald’s Plan to Poke, Prod, and Piss Off the Powerful.

I began pausing the video to jot down uber-prescient quotes and ultimately, tossed the paper in the air because there are just too many. Way too many.

Then, I got angry over all the fucktarded duplicity exposed, over and over and over. Democrats and Republicans, both and several.

…I get very impatient with meaningless distinctions over media, which is why I no longer waste my time on any of it. Some in my own family even…who inexplicably seem to think Fox News or CNN, depending on who, is some special case of virtue. They’re all just smoking opium with general antagonism being the high; having their fantastical biases confirmed so they feel good about their ignorance and unwillingness to critically think for themselves.

It’s pathetic. I know people who literally have Fox News or CNN running throughout the day. Hilariously, they believe they’re being informed rather than indoctrinated. Idiots. …To stupid to know how stupid and uncritical they’re growing daily.

Fox and CNN (and MS-C-NBC) are both voluminously fucked—from top to bottom and wall to wall—and that they’re fucked up differently is the equivalent of liking someone’s pretty marbles more than another’s, thinking it’s somehow important on a global scale. It’s fucktarded.

These mega media companies are all super profitable big corporations whose principal aim is to make money by enticing people to watch—and they don’t care how lazy, stupid, or incurious you are. In fact, they take great aims to keep you lazy, stupid, and incurious. Fox is more pernicious, actually—probably because more of their audience can read, but I digress—in that they give all sorts of pretense about how you can check the facts yourself, knowing on the one hand that lazy, stupid, incurious people generally won’t and on the other, they’ll go “check facts” at approved outlets of “facts.”

To make matters worse, both Fox & CNN sycophants will spurn the slightest pretense of a more wide reporting of facts, even in the midst of the bias that always exists. In other words, these people are so indoctrinated that any source that has the barest smattering of a challenge (even if a biased smattering) is tantamount to suborning blasphemy.

Do I need to even get into how all the major media is in bed with the State at so many levels that when they do “rough it up,” it’s the equivalent of Bread & Circuses entertainment, just so that The Usual Morons will go on believing the myth that they’re watching Hard-Hitting Journalism Speaking Truth to Power!

What a helenahandbasket piece of crap.

I can’t help but think Greenwald is very serious, though. With any luck, CNN Fucktards will run away, accusing them of being a right-wing outlet and Fox Fucktards will run away, accusing them of being a left-wing outlet.

That’s when you know you might be getting actual journalism. And as often happens, eventually it takes the actions of fools to expose foolishness.

As a Paleo-ish guy, I’ve always had mutual value to exchange with celiac folks. There’s much common ground.

But as sure as the sun rises, “disabled” people will eventually try to pick your pockets:

P.F. Chang’s is Sued for Extra Charges on Gluten-Free Menu Items

See, just like any “disability” that’s significanty apart from the very socialized norm, we must socialize costs for outliers. Way back, see, it was all about socializing income: Social Security. Now, all fucktards believe that because they “invested” in a government Ponzi Scheme—where those who do it privately go to jail for fraud—are entitled to get a paycheck for life—even if they never again produce anything in the general social market.

That werk is done; now, it’s time to pretty up the P&L by focussing on costs for an ultimately more important black-number bottom line for the disabled, crippled, handicapped, retired. The fact of their existence is your mortgage on living your own life and trumps your values—no exceptions. To complain about it is to be tagged.

…Ironically, P.F. Chang’s was my first experience with a gluten free menu section. No good deed goes unpunished. I was just happy to see it, didn’t really notice that perhaps they were charging a premium for special, outlier service. I also understand that when in many restaurants and my wife and I split a plate, we’re taking up a table that could be more profitable, and since they give me double the plate and flatware, a surcharge for that extra, outlier SERVICE is reasonable. We don’t own the place, nor do we pretend that “society” does. …Or, that irrational laws apply, just because: a bunch of fucktards voted in a bunch of fucktards only smart enough to know their own fucktards.

…I’m guessing that in light of this lawsuit, lots of big chain restaurants are going to be signing up to include gluten free menus. The whore-lawyer involved is no surprise. They’re all whores—though some whores are more service oriented than others. The plaintiff has to be either the equivalent of a welfare mom in the projects with six dads for six kids—living on your dime while daddies are in prison or rapping—or, she’s a lilly white stay-home, helicopter mom whose worldview is formed by afternoon talk shows. Or, she’s the wife of the lawyer-whore in the top-left-hand corner of the filing. Or, just typical lottery whore, dime per dozen, who spends far more on lottery tickets or other ridiculous proclivities than the premium she’d pay at PF to serve her interests. Unfortunately, she can’t yet sue people for her random fucktarded proclivities.

Or, maybe I’m wrong and she’s just a fucking quotidien cunt. Lots of them. …Shit, I just had to check to make sure. Yes, as usually 100%, a bitch-with-a-cunt filed the lawsuit, with the whore-lawyer for bitch-cunts (they’re just as numerous).

…Some days, I observe snails and remark at how true to their nature they are. That never happens with humans. I’m absolutely never, ever surprised. No amount of human slime-trail ever surprises me.

I will never, ever champion the Celiac cause, again.

I say that with much confidence; because, I know that the vast majority will not be able to resist paying less than 2-3 bucks at P.F. Chang’s for special service for a whole meal as a result of a lawsuit (you watch: either PF “settles,” or it becomes precedent and everyone falls into line—all the while recognizing that “settle” in this day is euphemism for going from hands up to hands in pockets, while a gun is still pointed). All the whilst, I’ll just observe a 12-car line in the drive-through at a Starbucks and nod about the disproportional human decay and depravity I deal with.

The society that undeservedly calls itself American, now, is so fucked up, the rest of the world ought to be taking away its keys; and yet, the opposite is going on. The entire world’s opium-antagonism now is focussed on these United Fucktarded States; and far, far too many people are giving it a pass. Forget the past. This is not the America of Ellis Island, anymore. you’re far better off finding someplace else.

…It was at least good enough to promote longevity. Now, everyone over some age wants you to pay for their perpetual non-productivity after some age—as though there’s a natural way humans get to fuck off for the rest of their lives at the expense of stranger others. And that sort of cancer is a candy that grows. The idea of retirement that’s not 100% on your own dime or a gift of close loves is completely fucktarded and will always result in Roman-Empire-esque collapse. Or, just retire to Greece: the embarrassing bed of western philosophy, since gang banged like a cheap whore.

…Arguably, in WWII, America was the right and proper geopolitical entity to dispose of the matter, and it did so resoundingly. It’s so fucking historical now that all hubris on this ground is ridiculous—it’s literally no more relevant that when the Romans did cool shit. The people who did that were not at all like any of you, either still alive and indoctrinated, or new and smarter.

Dumbshits: this is 1+1 shit

First of all, I’m no slave, so jury duty is an impossibility for me. My fee to serve on a jury is $250 per hour. Otherwise, you’ll have to compel me. But, I don’t make an issue of it. For over 20 years, the dozen or so “summonses” I have received went straight to the round file.

I’m absolutely certain they were sent by people who hate me and want to fuck with me. Unless I’m personally served by a Sheriff of the County with proper identification, I will continue to know that anyone can send me mail, and some people are fucking with me.

I also refuse to sign for all certified mail.

What good news comes in certified mail?

Don’t be a fucking stupid fucktard, behaving like the 99% of stupid fucktard pawn servants inhabiting planet Earth.

…Whose very first big thing is to bend over for “authorities” and sign that you got their commands. Fuck them in the mouth, deep throat like.

(Inspired by just having a Federal Mail Official knock at my door. It’s always the same: I won’t sign for it. I don’t sign for anything wrapped in paper and you’re not being a proper human animal if you ever do.)

That is all, for now.