Scree

noun : an accumulation of loose stones or rocky debris lying on a slope or at the base of a hill or cliff.

Fit for purpose

Published February 26, 2015 · All posts on Feb 26

For me, fitness and health are just a means to a larger end – something to enable me to live as I wish, to accomplish what I want, to face any challenge and adversity that may come my way and do my best to overcome it. Fitness isn’t the goal in and of itself; it’s just a tool, a part of my training which in itself is simply to allow me to follow my path for as long as I desire. It’s a by-product of living my life to the fullest, nothing more.

~ Dan Edwardes from, Are You Fit for Purpose?

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If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat

Published February 25, 2015 · All posts on Feb 25

This entry is part 12 of 72 in the series My Journey

Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work. That’s what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first. Don’t ever forget what a friend once wrote to Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator had decided not to run for reelection because he’d been diagnosed with cancer: “No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office.”

Don’t ever forget the words on a postcard that my father sent me last year: “If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.”

~ Anna Quindlen from, A Short Guide to a Happy Life

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From Maria Popova’s A Short Guide to a Happy Life: Anna Quindlen on Work, Joy, and How to Live Rather Than Exist.

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Monopoly’s role in inequality

Published February 24, 2015 · All posts on Feb 24

Here’s the point: Maybe you couldn’t watch Jon Stewart for a week, but the problem had nothing to do with either you or Jon Stewart. He wasn’t asking for a raise; you weren’t balking at the price of watching the Daily Show. But both you and Jon were irrelevant when two giant middlemen had a power struggle.

~ Doug Muder from, Monopoly’s Role in Inequality

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Gerrymandering

Published February 19, 2015 · All posts on Feb 19

So how did the People vote (narrowly) for a Democratic Congress but get a Republican one instead? That’s certainly not what the Founders intended: The reason there are more House districts than Senate seats and all congressmen have to go back to the voters every two years is that the House is supposed to closely reflect the will of the People.

Why didn’t that work? Why didn’t the House come out with a slight edge for the Democrats, or something closer to a 50-50 split reflecting a close popular vote?

~ Doug Muder from, How Gerrymandering Painted the House Red

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Conspiracy theories on facebook

Published February 18, 2015 · All posts on Feb 18

Do you believe that the contrails left by high-flying aircraft contain sildenafil citratum, the active ingredient in Viagra? Or that light bulbs made from uranium and plutonium are more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly? Or that lemons have anti-hypnotic benefits?

If you do, then you are probably a regular consumer of conspiracy theories, particularly those that appear on the Italian language version of Facebook (where all these were sourced). It is easy to dismiss conspiracy theories as background noise with little if any consequences in the real world.

~ Alessandro Bessi et al, from Science Vs Conspiracy: Collective Narratives In The Age Of (Mis)Information

Busy is an addiction

Published February 14, 2015 · All posts on Feb 14

The issue, just like exercise, is that each time you build, the high becomes slightly harder to achieve. Part of your hormonal reward is based on the fact the thing you just built has never been built before. It’s novel and your brain commensurately rewards the new because it has learned after millions of years of evolution that doing so is collectively good for our species.

~ Rands from, Busy is an Addiction

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Why the austerity fraud matters

Published February 9, 2015 · All posts on Feb 9

But this week a controversy broke out in economics, and it actually deserves your attention. A paper that has had a major influence on public policy around the world turns out to be wrong. And not just wrong in a subtle way that only geniuses can see, or even wrong in an everybody’s-human way that you look at and say, “Oh yeah, I’ve done that.” This one was wrong in three different ways that make you (or at least me) say, “That can’t be an accident.”

~ Doug Muder from, Why the Austerity Fraud Matters

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Really, you should read this. Foundations have moved.

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Fish don’t know they are in water

Published February 7, 2015 · All posts on Feb 7

If you know a little history, you might see some of this, and think that today’s culture battles are part of a tradition that goes back to FDR …

If you know a bit more history, you might see that this culture war stems from North Eastern progressive tradition dating back to the US Civil War.

The truth is that our culture war does date to the Civil War. Just not the US Civil War in 1861. It’s the English Civil War in 1640s I’m talking about.

~ Clark from, «http://www.popehat.com/2014/10/10/strange-seeds-on-distant-shores/»

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Religious freedom turning into passive-aggression

Published February 6, 2015 · All posts on Feb 6

To make this work, conservative Christians need to divert attention from the people they are mistreating by portraying themselves as the victims. And that requires cultivating a hyper-sensitivity to any form of involvement in activities they disapprove of. So rather than sympathize with the lesbian couple who gets the bakery door slammed in their faces, the public should instead sympathize with the poor wedding-cake baker whose moral purity is besmirched when the labor of his hands is used in a celebration of immorality and perversion.

~ Doug Muder from, “Religious Freedom” means Christian Passive-Aggressive Domination

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Carbohydrates are way more important

Published February 3, 2015 · All posts on Feb 3

This entry is part 2 of 25 in the series M. Eades' Blog

It’s much more important for your long term health to work on keeping your blood sugar down than it is to work to keep your cholesterol down. It’s especially important when you realize that most people try to keep their cholesterol levels at bay be consuming a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet, which is a diet containing, in many cases, a cup and a half to two cups of sugar equivalents per day.

~ Micheal Eades from, «http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/diabetes/the-sugar-hypothesis/»

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Trapped atmospheric waves

Published February 2, 2015 · All posts on Feb 2

Weather extremes in the summer—such as the record heat wave in the United States that hit corn farmers and worsened wildfires in 2012—have reached an exceptional number in the last ten years. Man-made global warming can explain a gradual increase in periods of severe heat, but the observed change in the magnitude and duration of some events is not so easily explained.

~ Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research from, Trapped atmospheric waves triggered more weather extremes

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Michael R. Eades blog

Published February 1, 2015 · All posts on Feb 1

This entry is part 1 of 25 in the series M. Eades' Blog

What, who?

I recently (2015) discovered Dr. Eades blog. (I had not heard of his books.) His blog contains a wealth of medical science explained in layman’s terms. The first few articles I read convinced me to start at the beginning of his “blog archive” and try to read HIS ENTIRE BLOG. I quickly learned: He has a lot of personal and current events posts which I’m not interested in, and there’s way way too much get through in short order.

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What’s really wrong with Congress?

Published February 1, 2015 · All posts on Feb 1

Everybody seems to agree that Congress doesn’t work.

If you’re liberal, you’re appalled that even something like universal background checks for gun purchases (90% public approval!) can’t pass. If you’re conservative, you’re horrified that nothing can be done about the mounting national debt or the projections for exponential growth in entitlement spending.

And even if you care not at all about parties or ideologies, it’s just embarrassing to watch our leaders create one artificial crisis after another. We’re the richest country on the planet, and yet we’re constantly threatening to shut down our government, default on our bonds, mint a trillion-dollar coin, or do some other weird thing that would shame the generalissimo of a banana republic.

Is this any way to run a super power?

~ Doug Muder from, What’s Really Wrong With Congress?

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