noun : an accumulation of loose stones or rocky debris lying on a slope or at the base of a hill or cliff.
There are a few health-related blogs which I recommend very highly. Whole Health Source is one where you should, basically, read everything he has ever posted. But, a few of the posts are just so awesome — or are great “gateway to getting interested” posts — that I’ve posted some excerpts here.
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How, then, can we find and embrace emptiness in the sea of digital activity we swim through every day? The possibility of constant communication and information can make us allergic to absence. It’s not just that the technology is ubiquitous, invasive, and addicting. Its presence in our lives belies the deeper issue that the Wilson study touched upon: the ability to sit still with ourselves.
~ Susan Cain from, «http://www.quietrev.com/the-end-of-solitude-overtaken-by-technology/»
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To begin reorienting to a life of action requires something which at first appears to be non-action: meditations. We have to contemplate what action is and understand how it plays out in our lives. … At the same time, we can appear to be doing all sorts of things externally without actually taking a meaningful action. As Thoreau asked, “It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?”
~ Brett McKay from, Meditations on the Wisdom of Action | The Art of Manliness The Art of Manliness
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The concept of endurance athletes stocking up on carbs has, I think, fuelled the notion that we should ideally have some sort of fuel inside of us prior to exercise. However, as I explain here, there is an argument for avoiding spikes in blood sugar is seeking to maximise one’s capacity to utilise fat as a fuel during exercise. I think there’s an argument for consuming little or nothing before exercise unless, perhaps, exercise is to be very prolonged.
~ John Briffa from, «http://www.drbriffa.com/2012/11/13/study-suggests-that-for-optimal-fat-loss-the-best-thing-to-eat-before-exercise-is-nothing-at-all/»
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Sometimes people don’t believe me when, around 11am in the middle of some crazy physical activity, it comes up that I haven’t yet eaten anything. I usually ask them why they think they must eat every waking hour? Why is “breakfast the most important meal of the day”? Why do you eat what you generally eat? And then I ask them to consider looking into the notions they have about nutrition…
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Then how do so many people maintain a stable weight over years and decades? And how do wild animals maintain a stable body fat percentage (except when preparing for hibernation) even in the face of food surpluses? How do lab rats and mice fed a whole food diet maintain a stable body fat percentage in the face of literally unlimited food, when they’re in a small cage with practically nothing to do but eat?
The answer is that the body isn’t stupid. Over hundreds of millions of years, we’ve evolved sophisticated systems that maintain “energy homeostasis”.
~ Stephan Guyenet from, The Twinkie Diet for Fat Loss
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This is why I’ve been losing weight, slowly for years now. Lots of little changes that shift the balance.
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Choline is an essential nutrient that’s required for the transport of fat out of the liver. NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) can be caused, and cured, simply by removing or adding dietary choline, and it appears to be dominant over other dietary factors including fat, sugar and alcohol. Apparently, certain researchers have been aware of this for some time, but it hasn’t entered into the mainstream consciousness.
~ Stephan Guyenet from, Choline and Fatty Liver
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Choline? I don’t think I’ve even heard of Choline. *sigh* Another new thing to learn about…
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When a court applies scrutiny, it’s holding the government’s justification for a challenged law to a standard. How tough the standard is depends on the nature of the law and how the plaintiff says it’s defective. In some situations, courts apply strict scrutiny — for instance, laws that punish speech based on its content generally trigger strict scrutiny. If a court applies strict scrutiny, the government must show that the law in question serves a compelling government interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest. Practically speaking, applying strict scrutiny almost always means that the court will strike down the law.
~ Ken White from, «https://popehat.com/2016/10/17/lawsplainer-the-ninth-circuit-and-compelled-speech-about-abortion/»
Don’t knee-jerk-react to the topic of the case (it’s about abortion). Instead, read this short piece as an explanation of one facet of the interation between our federal courts and our state legislatures. One of the beautiful aspects of our Republic is the way our founders envisioned a system to combine the states under a federal umbrella. I note particularly the concept of the federal courts NOT being able to just randomly intervene in the states’ affairs.
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I’m a criminal defense lawyer. I’ve represented people by appointment and voluntarily, and I’ve represented people accused of all sorts of things. I’ve made vigorous use of my client’s constitutional and procedural rights to attack the government’s case, even in cases were most observers believed it was clear that my clients “did it.” That’s my job. You’re free not to like it, and free to attack me for it. But I’m going to call you totalitarian and un-American if you do.
~ Ken White from, «https://popehat.com/2016/10/10/hillary-clinton-the-sixth-amendment-and-legal-ethics/»
QUICK! ..what is the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? I’ll accept knowing the general gist as being good enough for full credit. I couldn’t have told you if you put a gun to my head.
So I looked it up, and am going to proudly attempt to keep this loaded in my head, and — heads up — I’m likely to swing this idea around in the future as a ward against un-American Americans who spout nonsense about not “liking” defense attorneys, what they do, or how they did it in a specific case.
1789:
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”
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However, he went on to talk about a mechanisms here that came as quite a surprise to the audience, I think: aerobic exercise can suppress the metabolic rate. We’re often told that exercise not only increases calorie burn while we’re exercising, and also for some time after. It turns out, that may well not be the case for many people. In fact, according to research, the opposite is quite likely to be the case.
~ John Briffa from, «http://www.drbriffa.com/2012/06/15/exercise-boosts-the-metabolism-it-seems-the-reverse-might-be-true/»
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Metabolism, and the human body in general, is very complicated. Excercise turns out to not function AT ALL the way I thought it did. I thought you could just “excercise more” to burn a few hundred extra calories a week and VOILA! L’SKINNY. Nope. Exercise is great! Good for your health, etc. But, at the quantities I do, it is not the driver of my weight loss.
Meanwhile, I’ve spent about 5 years now actively learning about food, biology, health, fitness, chemistry and more… and I’m still convinced I know very little. :/
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The term “adrenal fatigue”, which refers to the aforementioned disturbance in cortisol rhythm, is characterized by general fatigue, difficulty waking up in the morning, and difficulty going to sleep at night. It’s a term that’s commonly used by alternative medical practitioners but not generally accepted by mainstream medicine, possibly because it’s difficult to demonstrate and the symptoms are fairly general. Robb Wolf talks about it in his book The Paleo Solution.
~ Stephan Guyenet from, The Big Sleep
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I yap about sleep a lot, for a very good reason. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
Improving my sleep was the single most important thing I’ve ever done for my health. The first small improvements in sleep led to further steps onward and onward.
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The general trend in falling productivity growth does not seem to be particularly recent. OECD data shows a long-term pattern of slowing productivity growth, dating back to the 1970s for many developed economies.
~ Gail Tverberg from, What really causes falling productivity growth — an energy-based explanation | Our Finite World
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Presented without comment.
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To train successfully, you must be willing to sacrifice portions of your present self-concept to a future, higher version of the self created by your ego. It is your ego, god-like, that is initiating and driving the process of self-transformation and becoming. This process requires you to exchange something you have for something you want. Nothing worth anything is truly free, and everything worth having requires some kind of sacrifice.
Instead of “killing your ego” — instead of fighting yourself — approach training as a sacrifice of a part of yourself to a higher self.
~ Jack Donovan from «http://www.jack-donovan.com/axis/2016/08/all-training-is-sacrifice-stw-episode-18/»
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This really gets to the crux of why, when we’re in the midst of a funk, we feel like it will last forever, and yet it inevitably passes. When we imagine the future, we think we will always feel the way we do at that moment, but we do not imagine all the life events that will keep us from sitting in our room and brooding 24/7. The vast majority of minds cannot ruminate on the same thing indefinitely. Life goes on and takes us along with it.
~ Brett McKay from, This Too Shall Pass | The Art of Manliness
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“This too shall pass,” is one of the most useful bits of wisdom to which I cling. I sometimes say…
If things are going badly, be patient, they will change.
If things are going well, be patient, they will change.
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Six years ago I decided to dramatically reduce the amount of time I spent watching TV, and this single intervention (I believe) had a dramatic effect on my life. It liberated a significant amount of time that I could devote to perhaps more useful and rewarding pursuits. You may be thinking that I’m referring to things like writing or exercise. Actually, I’m referring mainly to sleep.
~ John Briffa from, «http://www.drbriffa.com/2012/07/19/want-to-lose-weight-maybe-turn-off-the-tv-and-go-to-bed/»
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Sleep — specifically, learning about sleep, fixing my sleeping environment and getting more and better quality sleep — is the SINGLE most important thing I changed in my journey these last few years.
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Crabbers never have to worry about crabs escaping when they are caught and thrown into a bucket. This is because if one crab starts climbing the walls of the bucket, the other crabs will pull the escaping crab back down.
~ Brad Pilon from, Crabs in a Bucket – Weight Training Over 50
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The aspiration to create formally verified software has existed nearly as long as the field of computer science. For a long time it seemed hopelessly out of reach, but advances over the past decade in so-called “formal methods” have inched the approach closer to mainstream practice. Today formal software verification is being explored in well-funded academic collaborations, the U.S. military and technology companies such as Microsoft and Amazon.
~ Kevin Hartnett from, Hacker-Proof Code Confirmed | Quanta Magazine
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Second tower…
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Halfway through the challenge…
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At the first tower… ɕ
Men and women may in the end be forced to admit: “I made a fool of myself,” and still be fairly happy. But no one can possibly be satisfied, and therefore no one can in my sense be happy, who feels that in some paramount affair he has failed to take up the challenge of life. For a voice within him, which none else can hear, but which he cannot choke, will constantly be murmuring:
“You lacked courage. You hadn’t the pluck. You ran away.”And it is happier to be unhappy in the ordinary sense all one’s life than to have to listen at the end to that dreadful interior verdict.
~ Brett McKay from, “Running Away From Life” Essay by Arnold Bennett | The Art of Manliness
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