Free the Animal

Let's Get a Move On

The fun begins.

In minutes, we make our way to dinner at a friend's house (significant other of one of my favorite relatives -- "Big George") in the Oakland Hills above Berkeley. The view will be spectacular.

I've shopped...this afternoon, and tomorrow at 10 a.m. we'll have Sunday Brunch for about 8 of our dearest neighbors in the 350 N. 2nd Lofts. Frittatas shall prevail; along with fried potatoes, a fruit salad of berries and melons, pork breakfast sausages, and a green salad.

We'll get buzzed beforehand on mimosas.

OMG - White People Can't Clap

Oh, laf. Via Steve L, just right now in email (who's apparently a reader), Chuck Love and the oh, so, Reverend, Wright.

Oh, what the hell...

Talking dogs.

Simon Says

Guess who wins.

Note to Robert Lawrence

Just received in email, forwarded from a "Robert Lawrence," along with a linked graphic.

Dear Friends:

Texas has declared the ICR Graduate School Science Education program unsuitable for Higher Education in the state! The following ad will be distributed through Texas newspapers on Sunday, May 4. Please pray with us that many will "see" and understand the significance of this action in "The Long War Against God." Thank you.

Dr. Henry M. Morris III, CEO

On general principles, anytime I get a communique from a stranger that has "friend" in the salutation, I instinctively want to reach for my wallet, my mind, and my gun -- all at the same time.

My reply:

Get the hell out of my email with your imaginary friend fantasies, you primitive moron.

But since I bothered to blog this, allow me to be charitable and offer a word of advice: when you go begging to the state (the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, in this case) for your "Certificate of Authority," you deserve everything you get.

Dipshits.

Punctuation Bleg

I was fortunate to learn very early on (maybe first year HS or even before) the rule that but for a single exception, all punctuation always goes inside quotation marks -- that sole exception being a question mark, when the sentence as a whole is a question but the quoted material is not, in itself.

I see this -- "This is an example". -- all the time and it drives me crazy. Please, people.

Provanta Corporation Blog

We've now been live for a couple of days and I'm blogging over there as well. Of course, it's industry specific, there's tons of regulatory land mines, I have responsibilities and commitments to others, and so the commentary and style will be substantially different than over here.

It is what it is.

Solar Electric

Here's the electric and solar powered vehicle I want. Electric to get you there, solar to keep you there. Be sure and catch the short video.

Resistance

I got an email about resistance training, yesterday. My response was to say that I pretty much just go with my trainer. I also provided links to Art De Vany's workout and his essay on EvFit (PDF).

Upon further consideration, I came to a realization. I read lots and lots of stuff about different ways one can go about doing their training. Lots of 'em, I'd like to try. But right now, my goal is singular and focussed, which is to get somewhat ripped at <10% BF, and to do that I've got at least 20 more pounds of fat to shed.

OK. So what of the workouts? Here's what I realized, and it's kind of remarkable. When I began, last May, I was at 230 pounds. In the first couple of weeks of workouts, I went up to 236 or so, perfectly normal. Since then, I've shed weight down to around 206 or so. So, about 25 net pounds. Cool. Then, I realized the big important thing. I have pretty much doubled my strength during the year. Where I could barely get in 10x3 bench presses at 90 pounds, I can now easily do 10x4 at 165. In other areas, I'm doing 300% of what I began with.

So, what I'd say is that whatever you do, if you need to drop net pounds (more fat mass than the muscle you're going to build) make sure that in the whole scheme of things that you are not getting weaker. It's fine to have a crap workout -- I sure have. But those should be offset by explosive ones. In total, you should be gaining strength, even while you are loosing net weight. That's what tells you you're on the right track.

Starving Cancer

Chris sent this to me earlier in email (thanks, man). Whilst considering whether to blog it, or not, I note that he already has.

America: Love It or Leave It

SWAT raids of poker games. My heart swells with pride.

In the last couple of months, police have broken up games in Charleston, South Carolina (netting a poker playing cop and prosecutor in the process) and, no surprise here, in Dallas and Houston.

In the Houston case, prosecutors planned to file felony organized crime charges against the operators of a $300 buy-in tournament.

In the Charleston case, investigators went back more than a year to find names of players who may not have been playing on the night of the raid. They then went out and arrested them, too. They were eventually charged with misdemeanors.

Here’s a first-hand account of similar Charleston raid from a couple of years ago:

At the game in 2006, Chimento said there was a knock on the door and then “…all of a sudden it was like a commandos SWAT team raiding a bunch of crack dealers. It’s was like the SWAT team that you see on TV, busting into your home, guns drawn, ski masks on, full protective gear, and demanding we put out hands on top of our heads,” Chimento said. “At first we thought we were getting robbed, then we realized they had police written all over them, and we were like ‘Oh my God, check this out.’ Someone could have easily been killed that night.”

A 78-year-old grandmother was one of the players swept up that night. Police issued citations on the spot and seized about $6,000 in total from all of the players.

One of Balko's commenters issues a point of order.

“At first we thought we were getting robbed…

…Police issued citations on the spot and seized about $6,000 in total from all of the players.”

Guess what…

They were robbed.

Life Preempts Blogging

Much as I love to blog -- indeed I do -- lots of life, 99% of it really fun at the moment, is getting in the way.

Lot's has to do with this.

To Fly

One of the things that's been on my mind lately is getting back into hang-gliding in earnest. For the last few years it's basically been a single outing during our annual family camping trip to Hat Creek Rim. That's real easy flying, compared with the highly physical activity. It was getting increasingly difficult to do and enjoy, but I have twice the strength now.

Here's a few items that serve to wet the appetite.

One guy with one Indy film under his belt is trying to do a full length film.  The in-air footage is fantastic. Here's the direct link to watch in Quicktime. He's looking for help in promoting, so if you like it, he'd like a comment on the YouTube version which is a bit longer with less than stellar actors and dialog.

Here's a real artsy short someone put together. Nice.

Speaking of Hat Creek, here's how it looks basically from our view. Notice how low the sun is in the sky. We typicaly launch after 6:30 p.m., when the air is glass and going up everywhere. Second thing: notice on the landing, the severe wind gradient from about 25 ft to ground effect. Nasty. It's almost always like that. A real down-tube eater.

Here are a couple of my own HG videos: Hat Creek Rim (WillsWing Eagle) and Ed Levin Park (ATOS rigid wing).

And yea, Billy, I do intend also to get out to the airport and finish up there as well. Onward.

Good Calories, Bad Calories

After a period of reading another couple of books, I have just picked back up on Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories once again over the last couple of days.

You know what? This is an amazing work on general grounds. Taubes is a consummate and meticulous advocate of the scientific method; i.e., you first form a hypothesis and then do your honest, dead level best to refute it. To the extent you fail time after time, the hypothesis gets stronger and stronger because you are systematically eliminating everything that can be speculated to count against it. It's the only valid way to do science. You can't "confirm" a hypothesis in the sense of coming up with conditions under which it holds, for no matter if it holds under a million such conditions, you need but one to obliterate it.

The depth and research into this book is amazing. No wonder it took five years to write. In a nutshell, you have the Ancel Keyes fat-cholesterol-heart hypothesis that just won't die, which is itself based upon his flawed Seven Countries Study. From the Wikipedia article:

These studies found strong associations between the CVD rate of a population and average serum cholesterol and per capita intake of saturated fatty acids. Then, as now, critics have rightfully pointed out that this "strong association" vanishes when data from other countries are added to the mix and there have been allegations that Keys "cherry picked" the data to support his hypothesis.

I might have to eventually go and create a table to keep track of it all, but since then, there is study after study after study, and not for the purpose of attempting to falsify the flawed, cherry-picked study, but rather to "confirm" it. And how do they attempt to do that? By designing other flawed studies with multiple factor variation, i.e., so that a failure to confirm can be attributed to ambiguity. Even then, they have not been able to confirm anything. Those studies that fail to find any correlation between fat, cholesterol, heart disease, cancer, and so on are "disappointing." Those that show higher fat consumption correlated to lower heart disease and cancer (such studies exist) are dismissed. They may show up in a journal, but never get reported in the mainstream. If by chance they do, they are attacked vigorously by the "medical" establishment. Over and over.

Anyway, that's my report after only getting about a third of the way through. But I do agree with one blogger who wrote that Taubes ought to take on anthropogenic global warming next. Principally, it is the exact same thing going on.

A Motivation I Haven't Written About

There's a motivation underlying my food & fitness obsession I've not written about.

My mom, aged 67, is a Type 2 diabetic. I intend for her to be around for a good long while, and so far as I have witnessed, the "help" she was getting from the medical establishment -- whom she paid to treat her -- is beyond malpractice; but I'll refrain from telling you what I really think.

There's lots of anecdotes I could tell; like how I sent her to my personal trainer to do resistance training, and then how just two weeks ago I showed up at her house for the 66th birthday party to see her backyard sporting about 25 new large plants of various things for the spring. Each one had come in a 5-gallon pot, for which she had dug all the holes herself. Said she wasn't even sore afterwards.

She was diagnosed some years ago, was put on oral medication, given diet recommendations, regular checkups and so on. But there was considerable confusion about what she ought to eat. And I don't think she was ever admonished to increase her lean muscle mass. She was aware of the low-carb advice, but that wasn't really the advice she was getting. And, of course, the low-fat-crap is pervasive throughout the medical community. It is very hard to maintain a low carb diet that's also low in fat. The difference has to be made up with protein, and that can get very unpleasant. Just in terms of sheer mass, fat is more than twice as energy efficient as either protein or carbs (9 kcal per gram vs. 4).

And yet, her blood glucose levels just kept creeping up, she'd have huge swings, spikes well over 200, and so on. Then -- it was perhaps a couple of years ago -- they determined she had to go on the self-administered shots, which really got to her emotionally. She's no dummy. She could see the downward progression. Type 2s always get worse and worse.

The gym helped a lot, I think. Also, she has recently gone to a super low-carb diet, with no concern for fat or protein. This means no grains or grain products at all and very limited fruit. Her blood glucose has now stabilized between 85 and about 105 most of the time. 125-140 is the very upper spike range for a normal person. I also got her Dr. Bernstein's book, regarded as the Diabetes Bible for those in the know.

She shoots two types of insulin, a fast-acting and a time-release. Several weeks ago she was able to drop the fast acting one (no spikes). Then, this weekend, her and my dad hitched up the 5th-wheel trailer for a camping trip. She forgot her insulin at home. They were only a couple of hours away, so it could be had, but she decided to just monitor closely. Pretty much, it's staying in the 85-95 range. The highest measures was 123, but usually the highest reading is the first of the day, and that's coming in at 105.

Every doctor she has ever seen has been exactly worthless. No; destructive with their bogus low-fat, high carb, whole grains bullshit.*

Anyway, if you know any Type 1 or 2 that might benefit, send them over to Bernstein's place. He's a Type 1, living with it now for nearly 60 years. He was trained as an engineer, was literally dying as a young man from the disease, determined he had to take matters into his own hands, figured it out, nobody would listen because he wasn't a doctor, so he went and became one. His story is a very interesting read. Also, there's a link to his diabetes forums on his website. It's chock full of Type 2s who have cured themselves through exercise and low-carb dieting.

Later: *I don't think that's really even it. What I suspect is that lots of doctors are tired of trying to get people to follow any diet that doesn't' allow them to consume as much as they want, of anything they want, whenever they want. I have actually read in various places that even diabetics who were able to control their blood sugars via low-carb diets ultimately decided to just do the insulin. They don't know what a path of self-destruction that is, and I don't think doctors are making sure they know.

Refined Carbs Cause Alzheimer's Too?

I'm typically very skeptical -- really -- of cure alls. Chiropractic is a good example. Now, about every couple of years I end up waking up having done some damn thing to my neck whilst sleeping, and I can barely move my head without sharp pain in my neck & shoulder. It can take a week or more to work back right, and it's very painful every step of the way. Just trying to raise my head off the bed can be excruciating, and I end up having to roll out. In each case, I'll go to a Chiropractor, he/she cradles my head and pops/cracks it to the left, then to the right, and it's like 50% relief on the spot. The rest of the discomfort melts away over the next 24 hours.

Fine. Cool. Love 'em. But then they always want to get kooky, suggesting x-rays, regular visits to keep my spine "aligned," and its all justified under some silly notion that spine "mis-alignment" is the ultimate and fundamental source of all trouble. Nonsense. Quackery.

On the other hand, the notion that refined carbohydrate over years and years lies beneath a lot of our modern diseases carries some weight with me. What I know is that eliminating them completely over the last few months has delivered remarkable benefits. I've been on medication for sinus allergies, hypothyroid, and chronic heartburn for about seven years or so (in the case of the allergies, about 10 years). I'm off all three as a daily thing. I have a couple of times had to use the prescription sinus spray now that it's spring and everything is in bloom, but it's only as needed, now, which has been rare. The only thing this can possibly be in my case is the elimination of refined sugars and gluten completely from my diet resulting in a reduction of the inflammation they cause.

Now there's this, via Matt Metzgar.

An integrated and unifying hypothesis for the metabolic basis of sporadic Alzheimer's disease.

Acquired disturbances of several aspects of cellular metabolism appear pathologically important in sporadic Alzheimer's disease (SAD). Among these, brain glucose utilization is reduced in the early stages of the disease. Hyperinsulinemia, which is a characteristic finding of insulin resistance, results in a central insulin deficit. Insufficient insulin signaling impairs the intricate balance of nitric oxide regulation of the central nervous system. Reduction in central insulin decreases neuronal nitric oxide synthase and increases inducible synthase activity. This, in turn, decreases astrocytic energy substrates and antioxidant supply of neurons. In addition, an increase in peroxynitrite formation impairs redox balance. Hyperleptinemia and glucose excess, which are the other parameters of insulin resistance, may worsen the reduced astrocytic energy supply and the ongoing inflammation via the inhibition of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). Consequently, energy deficit and inflammation in neuronal tissue may cause neurodegeneration of SAD.

And as Matt points out, we know what causes insulin resistance. For me, it's a no-brainer. I get so much benefit from being off grains -- no exceptions. Added bonus that I may be doing something as well to keep my mind from eventually melting.

In a separate post, Matt also calls attention to this PDF on childhood obesity. Very much worth a read.