When I first encountered Dr. Bernstein's ideas, I was pretty skeptical. The main reason for my skepticism was that Dr. Bernstein's philosophy involves never experiencing higher-than-normal blood sugar.
I'll put this in perspective for you non-diabetics out there. When you eat a meal, your blood sugar increases from approximately 5 mmol/L to no more than approximately 6 mmol/L. By contrast, we diabetics are taught that if our blood sugar rises to no more than 10 mmol/L after a meal, we still have things under control. For Bernstein, anything over 7 is against the rules.
This has lead Bernstein and those who follow his advice to swear off all forms of bread and nearly every fruit. Bernstein looks closely at food labels and avoids anything with added sugar - which means, in his case, any ingredient that ends with "-ose." This has lead him to the unconventional conclusion that even some items that are considered safe for diabetics, such as artificial sweeteners, must be avoided. (Artificial sweeteners in powdered for often contain added ingredients such as dextrose, which are supplied in low enough quantities that they do not typically make a large impact on blood sugar for most people. But for many of us, they do increase blood sugar noticeably.)
Bernstein avoids tomatoes and tomato products. He avoids beans and legumes. While he does consume dairy, he avoids milk due to its lactose content. His diet consists almost entirely of meat, vegetables, nuts, and seeds.
Because this diet looks suspiciously like a so-called "paleo diet," my gimmick-receptors lit up the first few times I considered Bernstein's recommendations. However, Bernstein writes in his book and elsewhere that the key is to monitor one's blood sugar carefully, and to avoid unnecessarily large increases in blood sugar levels. At its core, this is sound advice. Even if one continues to eat limited bread and fruit products and legumes, as I do, it's tough to argue against personal blood glucose monitoring.
As a result, I have found my diet gravitating naturally toward a more Bernstein-esque diet. High blood sugar doesn't feel good. Good blood sugar control feels fantastic. It is inevitable that avoidance of the former and progression toward the latter will result in a diet that resembles that which works for other diabetics.
So, I am somewhat surprised, but I really shouldn't be. Nuts, of course, are out for me, because I'm allergic. And as an avid runner and strength trainer, I still need my fair share of calories. So I continue to consume sane levels of grains (like oatmeal) and breads (usually homemade).
Looking at the numbers, though, it appears that less than 50% of my diet consists of carbohydrates, and when I use that word, I'm using it in the technically correct sense. That is, a gram of carbohydrate from broccoli is counted the same as a gram of carbohydrate from oatmeal.
We'll just have to see where this journey takes me...
2013-02-04
2013-02-01
Marriage Knows No Borders
I'm late to the party on this one (again), but it seems that there has been some discussion of the recent trend toward rich American men venturing to the Ukraine to meet what are essentially mail-order brides.
Tim from Spootville points to a post on something called the "Roosh forum," which in turn posts to an entry on something called "Return of Kings," which ultimately points to additional coverage of the point elsewhere on the same blog. Reading all that stuff should catch you up to speed if you would like a really deep dive into a world in which Ukrainian women appeal to American men because they are beautiful, while American men appeal to Ukrainian women because they are rich.
First, A Disclaimer
Before I proceed, I need to make something clear: Much of the commentary expressed in the above links involves statements to which I vehemently object, and some of which I consider downright offensive. But, they are entitled to their opinions. You've been warned.
Now Back To Your Regularly Scheduled Blog
As far as I can tell, the point of all these blog-and-forum posts is to extol the virtues of marrying a mail-order Ukrainian or, perhaps by extension, any variety of mail-order foreigners. The best evidence in favor of this seems to be an impressively high 80% success rate enjoyed by participants of mail-order matrimony.
This is nothing to balk at. When we stop to consider that we are fundamentally talking about people who come from dramatically different backgrounds, different cultures, a different set of experiences, and different positions on "the ladder," who come together solely because one of them is rich and lonely while the other is poor forthcoming, it is basically stunning that such pairs enjoy better, more successful marriages than most Americans.
What could possibly explain this phenomenon?
Explanation #1: Chauvinistic "Logic"
Now, reading the "Rooshes" of the world provides us with the first possible explanation. Here's what he has to say:
Add in a plethora of vulgar insults against a straw-man caricature of how Roosh sees American women, and you've basically got the average Roosh post. And make no mistake, Roosh has a sizable following of like-minded men who think that as long as they're bringing home the bacon then they deserve a woman relegated to life-long servitude.
Explanation #2: Common Values
But let's not be stupid here. No group of people who enjoy an 80% marriage success rate gets that way by treating their relationship like indentured sexual servitude. Obviously there is more to the story than just that.
First of all, sexism is disgusting, and shame on Roosh. Second of all, unless you've spent your entire life is some backwoods corner of Nowhere, America, you have probably met plenty of non-American women, which means you are surely aware of the fact that you can't treat any woman like servant and expect a lifelong, happy, successful marriage with her.
Period, end of story. I don't want anybody to contradict me on this. If you even try, I will delete the comment.
Having said that, different cultures have different viewpoints on things like dressing up like a Barbie doll and staying home to take care of the little kids, and maybe engage in some home cooking. In some cultures, it is "an option," in other cultures it is "the only permissible thing to do," and in still other cultures it is "a crime against women." Wherever a person happens to fall on this spectrum, and from whatever culture that person comes, the fact of the matter is that men and women have been finding mates and partners successfully in all of these cultures.
Furthermore, the globe has shrunk. It is remarkably easy to explore an ever-expanding global dating pool using modern technology and affordable airfare.
So, when people find that their attitudes are not well-suited to their domestic surroundings, it not only stands to reason, but it is entirely predictable and logical that they will expand their potential pool of mates until it starts encapsulating those whose values match their own.
What I am trying to suggest is that not only will a "traditional Ukrainian girl" have good success with lonely, rich, patriarchal American men, but nontraditional, strong, and independent-minded African women will have good success with nontraditional men from the UK.
Makes sense, right? Those who have strong Protestant Christian values are going to have more success on ChristianSingles.com [note: I have no idea whether or not that is a real link] than they will on a dating sight for lesbians, and for obvious reasons.
In fact, this is pretty much how the whole dating-and-marriage industry works: By matching people up based on those values they consider most important, and introducing them to each other. A beautiful woman in a poor country who wants a man to be a provider is looking for that which will make her most satisfied in marriage. A lonely American patriarch looking for an attractive "traditional girl" is also looking for what will make him happiest.
Now, if those two people meet each other via a mail-order bridal service, what difference does it make?
To sum up: they might be enjoying successful marriages because they have correctly identified what is most important to them and have actively sought it out.
Explanation #3: Marriage Works For People Who Believe In It, Not For Others
However much sense Explanation #2 might make, there may be an even simpler explanation than all of that.
I live in North America, and I know lots and lots of people who don't really even believe in marriage anymore. These folks aren't particularly religious (although many of them are quite spiritual), have some good experience with long-term relationships, have plenty of personal interests beyond dating, mating, and committing, and generally view marriage as a sort of unnecessary hullabaloo.
What I mean is, because they don't have any religious reason to be married, nor any over-whelming personal desire to ensure that marriage is a part of their lives, they don't assign marriage much importance in life, and they are perfectly happy with this choice.
If such a person eventually does choose to marry, but over time finds that the connection fades or goes haywire, what incentive does such a person have to stay married? Not much. And not only does not staying married not feel like a terrible sin to them, but it basically makes them much better off if they separate.
It might be controversial to say that most of these people don't believe in marriage, but that is basically what we're talking about. These folks are not going to be interested in mail-order marriages because marriage is not so hugely important to them. They will divorce more quickly and readily and they will not relentlessly pursue marriage as some sort of prerequisite for living a fulfilling life.
Meanwhile, those who believe strongly in marriage, will conduct themselves in precisely the opposite way. They will spend a lot of time searching high and low for the right mate, they will make getting married a major priority of their lives and, once married, they will go through hell and high-water if they feel it will prevent a divorce.
As the proportion of people who believe strongly in marriage gradually declines in North America, it stands to reason that those who still feel that way will expand their pool of potential mates until it includes people in other countries who feel the same way about marriage as they do themselves.
This would indeed give us the impression that mail-order marriages are comparatively more successful. In reality, though, all we'd be observing is a simple truth: marriage works best for people who believe in it most.
Meanwhile, the rest of the people in North America are perfectly happy with their own chosen attitudes toward marriage. Their marriage success rate might be lower, but it also matters to them less.
Conclusion
This issue is certainly best served when it is stripped of the inherent sexism with which Roosh has treated it. We're not really talking about how men and women "ought" to behave. We're not talking about the decline of society or the fact that "stuck-up" American "feminists" are "losing out" on lonely old rich guys because they "can't compete" with a Ukrainian girl who wants to dazzle that same person.
No, we're talking about human society sorting itself based on each individual's desire for an appropriate mate. For adherents of more traditional value systems, finding other such adherents is the obvious choice! For adherents of radical American feminism, it is better to seek a mate who values that perspective than it is to try to force Roosh to change his pig-headed world-view.
And in the end, everybody gets the mate they want.
Frankly, this is a major step toward a society that thinks of itself more in terms of individual needs and less in terms of international borders. It is a great thing. It is a beautiful thing! We are growing ever-closer to an open society based on individual desires, in which the imaginary lines between us are ever more irrelevant. Bring it on.
Tim from Spootville points to a post on something called the "Roosh forum," which in turn posts to an entry on something called "Return of Kings," which ultimately points to additional coverage of the point elsewhere on the same blog. Reading all that stuff should catch you up to speed if you would like a really deep dive into a world in which Ukrainian women appeal to American men because they are beautiful, while American men appeal to Ukrainian women because they are rich.
First, A Disclaimer
Before I proceed, I need to make something clear: Much of the commentary expressed in the above links involves statements to which I vehemently object, and some of which I consider downright offensive. But, they are entitled to their opinions. You've been warned.
Now Back To Your Regularly Scheduled Blog
As far as I can tell, the point of all these blog-and-forum posts is to extol the virtues of marrying a mail-order Ukrainian or, perhaps by extension, any variety of mail-order foreigners. The best evidence in favor of this seems to be an impressively high 80% success rate enjoyed by participants of mail-order matrimony.
This is nothing to balk at. When we stop to consider that we are fundamentally talking about people who come from dramatically different backgrounds, different cultures, a different set of experiences, and different positions on "the ladder," who come together solely because one of them is rich and lonely while the other is poor forthcoming, it is basically stunning that such pairs enjoy better, more successful marriages than most Americans.
What could possibly explain this phenomenon?
Explanation #1: Chauvinistic "Logic"
Now, reading the "Rooshes" of the world provides us with the first possible explanation. Here's what he has to say:
How can American women compete with a girl like Galina (0:30). Answer: they can’t. I’m greatly enchanted by Galina’s body, hair, smile, nails, flinty voice, heels, carefree personality, and—most importantly—the desire to please a man. [...] No wonder American women are so quick to shame men who go abroad for women—there will be less beta males to tolerate their slovenly appearance and entitled attitudes. Comparing Galina to your standard issue American woman is like comparing Grey Goose to moonshine.And later:
I don’t know where I’ll be in life when I’m past 50, but I’m pleased that one option can be going to Ukraine and marrying a woman half my age who will serve me as long as I can provide for her. I can live with that.The way this works in "Roosh's" mind is fairly crude: (a) Because he considers himself a real alpha male, and (b) Because his primary interest in women is having them please him, ergo (c) the whole thing makes sense. The women want to please and the man wants to be pleased, so presto!
Add in a plethora of vulgar insults against a straw-man caricature of how Roosh sees American women, and you've basically got the average Roosh post. And make no mistake, Roosh has a sizable following of like-minded men who think that as long as they're bringing home the bacon then they deserve a woman relegated to life-long servitude.
Explanation #2: Common Values
But let's not be stupid here. No group of people who enjoy an 80% marriage success rate gets that way by treating their relationship like indentured sexual servitude. Obviously there is more to the story than just that.
First of all, sexism is disgusting, and shame on Roosh. Second of all, unless you've spent your entire life is some backwoods corner of Nowhere, America, you have probably met plenty of non-American women, which means you are surely aware of the fact that you can't treat any woman like servant and expect a lifelong, happy, successful marriage with her.
Period, end of story. I don't want anybody to contradict me on this. If you even try, I will delete the comment.
Having said that, different cultures have different viewpoints on things like dressing up like a Barbie doll and staying home to take care of the little kids, and maybe engage in some home cooking. In some cultures, it is "an option," in other cultures it is "the only permissible thing to do," and in still other cultures it is "a crime against women." Wherever a person happens to fall on this spectrum, and from whatever culture that person comes, the fact of the matter is that men and women have been finding mates and partners successfully in all of these cultures.
Furthermore, the globe has shrunk. It is remarkably easy to explore an ever-expanding global dating pool using modern technology and affordable airfare.
So, when people find that their attitudes are not well-suited to their domestic surroundings, it not only stands to reason, but it is entirely predictable and logical that they will expand their potential pool of mates until it starts encapsulating those whose values match their own.
What I am trying to suggest is that not only will a "traditional Ukrainian girl" have good success with lonely, rich, patriarchal American men, but nontraditional, strong, and independent-minded African women will have good success with nontraditional men from the UK.
Makes sense, right? Those who have strong Protestant Christian values are going to have more success on ChristianSingles.com [note: I have no idea whether or not that is a real link] than they will on a dating sight for lesbians, and for obvious reasons.
In fact, this is pretty much how the whole dating-and-marriage industry works: By matching people up based on those values they consider most important, and introducing them to each other. A beautiful woman in a poor country who wants a man to be a provider is looking for that which will make her most satisfied in marriage. A lonely American patriarch looking for an attractive "traditional girl" is also looking for what will make him happiest.
Now, if those two people meet each other via a mail-order bridal service, what difference does it make?
To sum up: they might be enjoying successful marriages because they have correctly identified what is most important to them and have actively sought it out.
Explanation #3: Marriage Works For People Who Believe In It, Not For Others
However much sense Explanation #2 might make, there may be an even simpler explanation than all of that.
I live in North America, and I know lots and lots of people who don't really even believe in marriage anymore. These folks aren't particularly religious (although many of them are quite spiritual), have some good experience with long-term relationships, have plenty of personal interests beyond dating, mating, and committing, and generally view marriage as a sort of unnecessary hullabaloo.
What I mean is, because they don't have any religious reason to be married, nor any over-whelming personal desire to ensure that marriage is a part of their lives, they don't assign marriage much importance in life, and they are perfectly happy with this choice.
If such a person eventually does choose to marry, but over time finds that the connection fades or goes haywire, what incentive does such a person have to stay married? Not much. And not only does not staying married not feel like a terrible sin to them, but it basically makes them much better off if they separate.
It might be controversial to say that most of these people don't believe in marriage, but that is basically what we're talking about. These folks are not going to be interested in mail-order marriages because marriage is not so hugely important to them. They will divorce more quickly and readily and they will not relentlessly pursue marriage as some sort of prerequisite for living a fulfilling life.
Meanwhile, those who believe strongly in marriage, will conduct themselves in precisely the opposite way. They will spend a lot of time searching high and low for the right mate, they will make getting married a major priority of their lives and, once married, they will go through hell and high-water if they feel it will prevent a divorce.
As the proportion of people who believe strongly in marriage gradually declines in North America, it stands to reason that those who still feel that way will expand their pool of potential mates until it includes people in other countries who feel the same way about marriage as they do themselves.
This would indeed give us the impression that mail-order marriages are comparatively more successful. In reality, though, all we'd be observing is a simple truth: marriage works best for people who believe in it most.
Meanwhile, the rest of the people in North America are perfectly happy with their own chosen attitudes toward marriage. Their marriage success rate might be lower, but it also matters to them less.
Conclusion
This issue is certainly best served when it is stripped of the inherent sexism with which Roosh has treated it. We're not really talking about how men and women "ought" to behave. We're not talking about the decline of society or the fact that "stuck-up" American "feminists" are "losing out" on lonely old rich guys because they "can't compete" with a Ukrainian girl who wants to dazzle that same person.
No, we're talking about human society sorting itself based on each individual's desire for an appropriate mate. For adherents of more traditional value systems, finding other such adherents is the obvious choice! For adherents of radical American feminism, it is better to seek a mate who values that perspective than it is to try to force Roosh to change his pig-headed world-view.
And in the end, everybody gets the mate they want.
Frankly, this is a major step toward a society that thinks of itself more in terms of individual needs and less in terms of international borders. It is a great thing. It is a beautiful thing! We are growing ever-closer to an open society based on individual desires, in which the imaginary lines between us are ever more irrelevant. Bring it on.
2013-01-31
You're Doing It Wrong
A CBC article entitled "7 Obesity Myths Shattered" takes a turn for the hilarious as it tackles myth number seven: "A bout of sexual activity burns 100 to 300 calories for each person involved." One Stefanie Senior, a Toronto dietician, disagrees: "'At the end of the day, it only burns less than 50 calories,' she told CBC News."
There certainly is a large gap between 50 and 300 calories, isn't there? Using the exercise lookup tool over at MyFitnessPal.com reveals the following (the default value of 150 pounds of body weight was used for all results):
There certainly is a large gap between 50 and 300 calories, isn't there? Using the exercise lookup tool over at MyFitnessPal.com reveals the following (the default value of 150 pounds of body weight was used for all results):
- 30 minutes of cooking burns 68 calories
- 30 minutes of playing lawn darts burns 85 calories
- 30 minutes of walking at a slow pace burns 85 calories
- Sitting and playing the guitar for 30 minutes burns 68 calories
- 30 minutes of mild stretching burns 85 calories
2013-01-30
Things Have Changed
By the time you finish reading this, the world will have changed in so many ways that it would be impossible to keep track of them all.
Some of the changes will be small and relatively insignificant. For example, some time has to pass in order for you to read what I've written. Once that time is over, you will still have to go about your day as usual, your list of responsibilities will be more or less the same, you will feel roughly the same, and you'll be wearing the same clothes. Nothing significant will have changed on that front.
But other changes will be so drastic and important that they will change life on Earth as you know it forever. Some important public figure may spark a national debate. Someone's grandparent may pass away peacefully in her sleep somewhere. A young child may come across an important idea or experience that shapes his life forever. Two romantic partners may separate. The seed for a great business idea may be planted in a bright entrepreneur's head.
My intention here is not to wax. I'm being serious. Any and all of these things are happening out there in the world, shaping our destiny, and changing everything. Just because you don't see it - because you're here, reading this blog post - doesn't mean it's not happening.
It is happening. Life is change.
But Don't Change - I'm Comfortable
Just as sunny days turn to cool nights, or sometimes even a week-long drizzle, nothing that happens in life continues into perpetuity. And, also like sunny days, no matter how much we prefer the current state of things, eventually things change.
No, it's even more transient than that, as a matter of fact. It's not as if sunny days are the inherent state of things, and then along comes some cosmic force that flips the entire universe on its head, rendering dark and rainy days the official New Normal. That's silly, right?
In reality, the air is constantly moving. The sunny day you are enjoying is currently in the process of turning into a rainy day. The air is moving, the Earth is turning, the forces of nature are in flux. Gradually, the same evolution of conditions that made for a sunny day further evolve into the conditions that make for a rainy day. It was happening even as you were sitting out on a patio, enjoying a sandwich.
It's not one or the other. It's the same process of changing creating a variety of conditions that can appear drastically different as time goes by. This is an unpleasant fact - an inconvenient truth, if you will - for many politically literate people in the world.
For example, some people feel that because their neighborhood, or even their whole darn state, has been run by the same five rich white families for the past 200 years, it should always be so. In their minds, the world is in a state, a current state of some kind. They prefer this state to an alternative future state in which (again) things are different. They see a lot of immigrants moving in and gaining affluence, and this threatens the current state. If it continues, the future will not look anything like the current state. So they object to immigration.
What they fail to see is that various different kinds of people are always migrating all over the surface of the globe. This has always been the case; humans are hunter-gatherers, and hence somewhat migratory. There is no guarantee that your town or country will possess its current racial demography in perpetuity, in fact, the opposite is far more likely. One day, your whole country will be populated by people who look and sound like strangers to you. Welcome to change, the real state of things.
Others suppose that, because we have been collecting climate data for the past 200 years, the world should always possess exactly the same climate and ecology that it does today. If things on this front change then that's bad! It no longer matches the current state! We must do something! Again, though the Earth's ecology has been in a state of constant evolution since long before the existence of the human race or any of the preferences of its individual members. Climate change is an ongoing process that humans cannot prevent. If the climate suddenly becomes significantly different than what it used to be, we may seek to explain the cause, but we cannot simply declare that the change was a negative one and that the true state of the Earth's climate "ought" to be something else. That is a little childish, actually.
The list goes on. Some believe that, because we have been at war with "the terrorists" for the past 12 years, we should continue to wage war against them. Gone from their minds is the state of the world as was prior to 2001.
Even many critics of the war on terrorism fail to recognize that 9/11 was not a cataclysm, but rather the world's governments had been steadily increasing domestic "anti-terrorism" measures for several decades, and the major world powers had been aggravating foreign chieftains for about the same amount of time. The policies of George W. Bush were no different than those of his predecessors.
Conclusion
Change is constantly happening. Static conditions are a self-delusion we use to preserve the rules of thumb we invoke in order to simplify our thinking process. These kinds of rules can often be quite handy in simple situations like work and play.
But the world as a macrocosm is anything but simple. Imagining that it exists in some kind of static set of conditions that become suddenly disrupted by major cataclysms is a silly and unfortunate protective device we humans have created to insulate ourselves from having to audit our world-view on a regular basis.
Illusions don't get you off the hook, though. You have to change with the times, or recede into a dark delusion in which bad people did bad things that put the universe asunder of how you would prefer it to exist.
When I put it in those terms, doesn't it seem rather primitive?
Some of the changes will be small and relatively insignificant. For example, some time has to pass in order for you to read what I've written. Once that time is over, you will still have to go about your day as usual, your list of responsibilities will be more or less the same, you will feel roughly the same, and you'll be wearing the same clothes. Nothing significant will have changed on that front.
But other changes will be so drastic and important that they will change life on Earth as you know it forever. Some important public figure may spark a national debate. Someone's grandparent may pass away peacefully in her sleep somewhere. A young child may come across an important idea or experience that shapes his life forever. Two romantic partners may separate. The seed for a great business idea may be planted in a bright entrepreneur's head.
My intention here is not to wax. I'm being serious. Any and all of these things are happening out there in the world, shaping our destiny, and changing everything. Just because you don't see it - because you're here, reading this blog post - doesn't mean it's not happening.
It is happening. Life is change.
But Don't Change - I'm Comfortable
Just as sunny days turn to cool nights, or sometimes even a week-long drizzle, nothing that happens in life continues into perpetuity. And, also like sunny days, no matter how much we prefer the current state of things, eventually things change.
No, it's even more transient than that, as a matter of fact. It's not as if sunny days are the inherent state of things, and then along comes some cosmic force that flips the entire universe on its head, rendering dark and rainy days the official New Normal. That's silly, right?
In reality, the air is constantly moving. The sunny day you are enjoying is currently in the process of turning into a rainy day. The air is moving, the Earth is turning, the forces of nature are in flux. Gradually, the same evolution of conditions that made for a sunny day further evolve into the conditions that make for a rainy day. It was happening even as you were sitting out on a patio, enjoying a sandwich.
It's not one or the other. It's the same process of changing creating a variety of conditions that can appear drastically different as time goes by. This is an unpleasant fact - an inconvenient truth, if you will - for many politically literate people in the world.
For example, some people feel that because their neighborhood, or even their whole darn state, has been run by the same five rich white families for the past 200 years, it should always be so. In their minds, the world is in a state, a current state of some kind. They prefer this state to an alternative future state in which (again) things are different. They see a lot of immigrants moving in and gaining affluence, and this threatens the current state. If it continues, the future will not look anything like the current state. So they object to immigration.
What they fail to see is that various different kinds of people are always migrating all over the surface of the globe. This has always been the case; humans are hunter-gatherers, and hence somewhat migratory. There is no guarantee that your town or country will possess its current racial demography in perpetuity, in fact, the opposite is far more likely. One day, your whole country will be populated by people who look and sound like strangers to you. Welcome to change, the real state of things.
Others suppose that, because we have been collecting climate data for the past 200 years, the world should always possess exactly the same climate and ecology that it does today. If things on this front change then that's bad! It no longer matches the current state! We must do something! Again, though the Earth's ecology has been in a state of constant evolution since long before the existence of the human race or any of the preferences of its individual members. Climate change is an ongoing process that humans cannot prevent. If the climate suddenly becomes significantly different than what it used to be, we may seek to explain the cause, but we cannot simply declare that the change was a negative one and that the true state of the Earth's climate "ought" to be something else. That is a little childish, actually.
The list goes on. Some believe that, because we have been at war with "the terrorists" for the past 12 years, we should continue to wage war against them. Gone from their minds is the state of the world as was prior to 2001.
Even many critics of the war on terrorism fail to recognize that 9/11 was not a cataclysm, but rather the world's governments had been steadily increasing domestic "anti-terrorism" measures for several decades, and the major world powers had been aggravating foreign chieftains for about the same amount of time. The policies of George W. Bush were no different than those of his predecessors.
Conclusion
Change is constantly happening. Static conditions are a self-delusion we use to preserve the rules of thumb we invoke in order to simplify our thinking process. These kinds of rules can often be quite handy in simple situations like work and play.
But the world as a macrocosm is anything but simple. Imagining that it exists in some kind of static set of conditions that become suddenly disrupted by major cataclysms is a silly and unfortunate protective device we humans have created to insulate ourselves from having to audit our world-view on a regular basis.
Illusions don't get you off the hook, though. You have to change with the times, or recede into a dark delusion in which bad people did bad things that put the universe asunder of how you would prefer it to exist.
When I put it in those terms, doesn't it seem rather primitive?
2013-01-29
Growing Weary of Spin
Today, USA Today reports:
It does beg the question, though: How will we know if Obama's speech campaign is successful? How will we measure overall popular support of whatever it is Obama wants to do?
It seems to me that there are two ways that the average person can get a sense of to what degree there is "popular support" for something: (1) Read the results of a public opinion survey, or (2) Get a vague and unscientific "feel" for how "people" feel, based on personal observation.
Given that (1) quite typically yields controversial or inaccurate results, I think most people will rely on (2). But here's the rub: Few of us go around asking strangers about their views on immigration policy. This means that our impressions will most likely be based on what we read in the news and see on TV and on the internet.
So, Obama's genius plan is to give speech after speech after speech on the topic. Because it is a presidential speech, it will be reported and discussed in the news media. Because people watch and read the news, they will pick up on the fact that Obama favors Policy X on immigration.
Think about it: Obama builds popular support just by giving enough speeches to convince people watching the news that there is popular support. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's All Spin
I hate it when people say, "It's all spin." But it's getting difficult to put your finger consistently on the truth. Obama's self-fulfilling-speech campaign is a great example of this. Another great example of this is what I wrote about yesterday with respect to Jeffrey Tucker's claim that "the great inventor" is a myth.
I understand that he's saying this in order to make a point about intellectual property. Fine. But what does intellectual property legislation have to do with whether or not there have been "great inventors" throughout history? I mean, why do you have to discredit society's perception of genius in order to argue against intellectual property legislation?
You don't. That's the point. He's engaging in spin. He's being deliberately inflammatory in order to riff on one of his favorite whipping boys.
And the same goes for Scott Sumner when he writes on his blog that "...low interest rates are not a monetary policy." Sumner is technically correct, because the Federal Reserve uses monetary policy to attempt to influence market behavior in such a way that interest rates reach the Fed's target at equilibrium. Fine. But every economics and Federal Reserve educator in the world simplifies that statement to, "The Federal Reserve sets interest rates." No, technically the Fed does not actually go around making sure that everyone is paying a particular interest rate. That's silly. But it's also pedantic to raise that technicality, because everyone who talks about the Fed's policy with respect to interest rates knows what the phrase "the Fed sets the interest rate" means.
So when John Taylor writes an op-ed saying:
So why does Sumner spin? What do the technicalities of "setting the interest rate" have to do with the actual positions being discussed?
Conclusion
What I find unreasonable about all this is the level of pedantism to which we have to descend in order to get beyond the spin of it all. Seriously, Scott Sumner and John Taylor are both about as intelligent and respected as economists get. Why do we have to wade deep into the weeds of simple phrases like "setting the interest rate" just to have a discussion about what each of them would prefer the Federal Reserve Board do?
And why do we have to stipulate that "no idea occurs in a vacuum" in order to acknowledge that Einstein was a great inventor?
And why do we have to conduct an expensive public opinion poll just to to decipher whether the public supports Obama's immigration policy or if they've just seen a lot of news reports about it?
Can we all just give the spin a rest? This is getting ridiculous.
Part of President Obama's immigration strategy -- and his gun control strategy -- is to build public support through speeches; that's why he's in Nevada on Tuesday.I like this idea much better than the behind-the-scenes bullying that other reports of Obama's management style have described. I also like it a lot better than a new anti-immigration law of any kind. Life is a lot better when people talk and persuade each other, rather than ruling and bullying each other. So, insofar as Barack Obama uses unaggressive persuasion to win popular support for his policy goals, more power to him!
It does beg the question, though: How will we know if Obama's speech campaign is successful? How will we measure overall popular support of whatever it is Obama wants to do?
It seems to me that there are two ways that the average person can get a sense of to what degree there is "popular support" for something: (1) Read the results of a public opinion survey, or (2) Get a vague and unscientific "feel" for how "people" feel, based on personal observation.
Given that (1) quite typically yields controversial or inaccurate results, I think most people will rely on (2). But here's the rub: Few of us go around asking strangers about their views on immigration policy. This means that our impressions will most likely be based on what we read in the news and see on TV and on the internet.
So, Obama's genius plan is to give speech after speech after speech on the topic. Because it is a presidential speech, it will be reported and discussed in the news media. Because people watch and read the news, they will pick up on the fact that Obama favors Policy X on immigration.
Think about it: Obama builds popular support just by giving enough speeches to convince people watching the news that there is popular support. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's All Spin
I hate it when people say, "It's all spin." But it's getting difficult to put your finger consistently on the truth. Obama's self-fulfilling-speech campaign is a great example of this. Another great example of this is what I wrote about yesterday with respect to Jeffrey Tucker's claim that "the great inventor" is a myth.
I understand that he's saying this in order to make a point about intellectual property. Fine. But what does intellectual property legislation have to do with whether or not there have been "great inventors" throughout history? I mean, why do you have to discredit society's perception of genius in order to argue against intellectual property legislation?
You don't. That's the point. He's engaging in spin. He's being deliberately inflammatory in order to riff on one of his favorite whipping boys.
And the same goes for Scott Sumner when he writes on his blog that "...low interest rates are not a monetary policy." Sumner is technically correct, because the Federal Reserve uses monetary policy to attempt to influence market behavior in such a way that interest rates reach the Fed's target at equilibrium. Fine. But every economics and Federal Reserve educator in the world simplifies that statement to, "The Federal Reserve sets interest rates." No, technically the Fed does not actually go around making sure that everyone is paying a particular interest rate. That's silly. But it's also pedantic to raise that technicality, because everyone who talks about the Fed's policy with respect to interest rates knows what the phrase "the Fed sets the interest rate" means.
So when John Taylor writes an op-ed saying:
Consider the "forward guidance" policy of saying that the short-term rate will be near zero for several years into the future. The purpose of this guidance is to keep longer-term interest rates down and thus encourage more borrowing. A lower future short-term interest rate reduces long-term rates today because portfolio managers can, in a form of arbitrage, easily adjust their portfolio mix between long-term bonds and a sequence of short-term bonds.He is stating that he thinks the Fed is "setting the interest rate" at too low a level, and everyone knows that he really means that Fed policy is too expansionary. In fact, he spells out the technicalities in the paragraph I have just quoted. Nothing coy about it.
So why does Sumner spin? What do the technicalities of "setting the interest rate" have to do with the actual positions being discussed?
Conclusion
What I find unreasonable about all this is the level of pedantism to which we have to descend in order to get beyond the spin of it all. Seriously, Scott Sumner and John Taylor are both about as intelligent and respected as economists get. Why do we have to wade deep into the weeds of simple phrases like "setting the interest rate" just to have a discussion about what each of them would prefer the Federal Reserve Board do?
And why do we have to stipulate that "no idea occurs in a vacuum" in order to acknowledge that Einstein was a great inventor?
And why do we have to conduct an expensive public opinion poll just to to decipher whether the public supports Obama's immigration policy or if they've just seen a lot of news reports about it?
Can we all just give the spin a rest? This is getting ridiculous.
2013-01-28
Sometimes Good Ideas Don't Take
Coming up with ideas is a skill that gets better with practice. Those of us who regularly come up with ideas (set aside the question of whether any of them are good
ideas for now) know that it's not really about being the world's most
brilliant or creative person. It pretty much comes down to the idea of
getting into the habit of coming up with stuff. Not a big deal.
Even if you come up with a brilliant idea, there is no guarantee that it will be adopted by others.
For that matter, there is no guarantee that you will adopt your brilliant ideas yourself. So it goes with one of my better ideas, that I unfortunately did not really adopt: Project Guitar God.
Sometimes, the reason an idea doesn't stick is because its time hasn't yet come. In hopes that this is the case for PGG, I would like to provide a quick guide to my previous Guitar Exercises of the Week. Perhaps with greater dedication, I can make some better headway on this.
Work on these in your spare time, and perhaps we can add to the list!
Even if you come up with a brilliant idea, there is no guarantee that it will be adopted by others.
For that matter, there is no guarantee that you will adopt your brilliant ideas yourself. So it goes with one of my better ideas, that I unfortunately did not really adopt: Project Guitar God.
Sometimes, the reason an idea doesn't stick is because its time hasn't yet come. In hopes that this is the case for PGG, I would like to provide a quick guide to my previous Guitar Exercises of the Week. Perhaps with greater dedication, I can make some better headway on this.
Work on these in your spare time, and perhaps we can add to the list!
Beauty And The Beast
On his Facebook page, Jeffrey Tucker states:
Let us set aside for the moment that Tucker probably means "takes another blow," not "takes another hit." I am fairly certain that myths are incapable of doing drugs. Apparently - and this may shock those of you who regard science as a legitimate pursuit - many brilliant physicists paved the way for the scientific developments that occurred after them! Shocking, I know...
Doesn't it just completely invalidate the idea that a single person could ever be responsible for something amazing? Isn't that a great message for your kids? "Sorry, Junior. Even Einstein was nothing more than a media concoction used to popularize physics. No one person could ever be that smart or talented."
Meanwhile, The Atlantic decides to write a screed exposing Lance Armstrong as a mentally ill aggressive narcissist whose most profound lie was the one he told himself.
Beauty And The Beast
In the classic fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast (the real story, the way it was before falling into the sanitizing hands of the Walt Disney Company), a kind but naive young girl named Belle agrees to live almost as a captive in a beautiful palace ruled by a terrifying beast so that she can spare her father the same fate. Each day, Belle is treated to the Beast's unbelievably kind generosity and hospitality. Each evening, the Beast offers a marriage proposal to Belle. Each evening she refuses.
Each night, Belle dreams of a handsome prince, with whom she falls in love. In Belle's dreams, the prince wants to know why she refuses the Beast's proposals, to which Belle gives the classic female response: "I don't like him like that." Basically, Belle confines the Beast to the Friend Zone.
After a while, though, Belle begins to suspect that the Beast has imprisoned the handsome prince somewhere in his luxurious castle. Despite the Beast's lavishing her with kindness and every possible amenity, Belle comes to believe that the Beast is a fundamentally bad person, who has taken her dream guy as his prisoner.
What follows is classic human nature. Belle decides she wants to go stay with her family for a while. Her family is a bit greedy and can recognize a good thing when they see one, so they conspire to sabotage Belle's relationship with the Beast. They convince her to break her promise to return to the Beast within a week. When the Beast learns of this, he nearly dies of heartbreak. Wracked by guilt and the impending end of her gravy-train relationship with the Beast, she sobs and declares her realization that - gee, whiz! - she actually loves him, after all!
The spell is broken. The love and the tears were all the Beast needed. Poof! He turns into the prince that Belle always wanted.
Normal And The Hero
This story plays itself out in front of us every day, day after day. Only, instead of calling it "Beauty and the Beast," we call it "Normal and the Hero."
In our story, we all play the role of Belle, being the naive, but basically nice and well-intentioned folks that we are. Most of us are born into a simple existence, in which we play a very minor role. While we observe the greedy nastiness of some people, just as Belle observed such traits in her own sisters, most of us just want to be simple, good people. I think. We live the grand designs and great aspirations to those who care for us, just as Belle left such things to her father.
All the time, though, we are basking in the generosity and hospitality of those few among us who have managed to produce important things, achieve heroic things, go beyond the humdrum of life and push for something new, something different.
I say "generosity and hospitality" because these people have produced things like automobiles and iPads, technology old and new. They have produced art, food, music, stories, and so forth. They have managed to produce our every convenience and respite from that harsh, unyielding law of life on Earth: that living is hard as hell.
We can fry our brains on drugs and TV only because other people are out there producing the things we need to keep life going the way we know it. And not only do they manage to do that - fabulously so - but they manage to keep humanity on a basically upward trajectory. Every year, we as a species get a little richer, a little better-fed, a little better-entertained. As time goes on, things improve.
Of course we love the people who do these things for us! We love them as a friend, just as Belle loved the Beast as a friend. Sort of like, "Thanks, pal, I really appreciate that your technology provides enough food to allow me to stay alive and even over-eat if I want to. Thanks for the pace-maker. Thanks for the Nobel-Prize-winning advance in medicine that may save my life one day...
"...but I don't want to marry you!"
Hang In There, I'm Getting To The Point
Meanwhile, as we bask in our luxurious world, we start to dream of imaginary princes. These princes are beautiful people, rich, powerful, just, and kind. They are everything we want our society to be, but we see them only in our dreams. Worse yet, we start to imagine that all these folks who are producing the things that keep our lives as wonderful as they are have imprisoned our imaginary princes!
What I mean is, we have come to believe that our society is capable of great things. Yet, somehow, we feel that our society has not managed to achieve these "great things" because there are evil people out there - corporate bogey-men, bad illegal immigrants, evil pharmaceutical producers, polluting farmers, and so forth - all conspiring to keep our society away from its princely potential.
The truth is right in front of our eyes, but we can't seem to see it. The handsome prince and the ugly beast are one in the same person.
That is, all these people out there who are producing plenty and achieving wonderful things, all these people that we demonize whenever we pause to think about it, are not keeping us from our prince. They are the prince. You dolt.
The Plot Thickens
This would be bad enough, if it weren't also so sad. Why sad? Because all those great people achieving brilliance and producing plenty are us. We are the beasts, and we are the handsome princes. And, yes, we hold the key to society's potential.
And, like Belle, all we have to do is learn to recognize this truth and we can avail ourselves of it. Instead, we're too busy tearing down our heroes, and tearing down ourselves, all in the name of some absurd fantasy that everything we love about life exists without its ugly side.
There is always room for improvement in life. I know that better than anyone. It's important to stay restless so that you can achieve more. But that doesn't mean that there are hideous beasts standing in our way to progress. The only "beasts" out there are us. We see ourselves every day, so we know full well that we're not standing in anyone's way. We're just living.
But maybe - just maybe - we'd all be a little happier if we learned to recognize that perfection exists in hypothesis only. Kiss the beast, so that you can recognize that the person who is making your life so good is you, and people like you. Get happy about it.
Then, stop tearing down the beasts.
This refers to a recent article suggesting that Albert Einstein might not be solely responsible for his world-famous, ground-breaking equation.
Let us set aside for the moment that Tucker probably means "takes another blow," not "takes another hit." I am fairly certain that myths are incapable of doing drugs. Apparently - and this may shock those of you who regard science as a legitimate pursuit - many brilliant physicists paved the way for the scientific developments that occurred after them! Shocking, I know...
Doesn't it just completely invalidate the idea that a single person could ever be responsible for something amazing? Isn't that a great message for your kids? "Sorry, Junior. Even Einstein was nothing more than a media concoction used to popularize physics. No one person could ever be that smart or talented."
Meanwhile, The Atlantic decides to write a screed exposing Lance Armstrong as a mentally ill aggressive narcissist whose most profound lie was the one he told himself.
Beauty And The Beast
In the classic fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast (the real story, the way it was before falling into the sanitizing hands of the Walt Disney Company), a kind but naive young girl named Belle agrees to live almost as a captive in a beautiful palace ruled by a terrifying beast so that she can spare her father the same fate. Each day, Belle is treated to the Beast's unbelievably kind generosity and hospitality. Each evening, the Beast offers a marriage proposal to Belle. Each evening she refuses.
Each night, Belle dreams of a handsome prince, with whom she falls in love. In Belle's dreams, the prince wants to know why she refuses the Beast's proposals, to which Belle gives the classic female response: "I don't like him like that." Basically, Belle confines the Beast to the Friend Zone.
After a while, though, Belle begins to suspect that the Beast has imprisoned the handsome prince somewhere in his luxurious castle. Despite the Beast's lavishing her with kindness and every possible amenity, Belle comes to believe that the Beast is a fundamentally bad person, who has taken her dream guy as his prisoner.
What follows is classic human nature. Belle decides she wants to go stay with her family for a while. Her family is a bit greedy and can recognize a good thing when they see one, so they conspire to sabotage Belle's relationship with the Beast. They convince her to break her promise to return to the Beast within a week. When the Beast learns of this, he nearly dies of heartbreak. Wracked by guilt and the impending end of her gravy-train relationship with the Beast, she sobs and declares her realization that - gee, whiz! - she actually loves him, after all!
The spell is broken. The love and the tears were all the Beast needed. Poof! He turns into the prince that Belle always wanted.
Normal And The Hero
This story plays itself out in front of us every day, day after day. Only, instead of calling it "Beauty and the Beast," we call it "Normal and the Hero."
In our story, we all play the role of Belle, being the naive, but basically nice and well-intentioned folks that we are. Most of us are born into a simple existence, in which we play a very minor role. While we observe the greedy nastiness of some people, just as Belle observed such traits in her own sisters, most of us just want to be simple, good people. I think. We live the grand designs and great aspirations to those who care for us, just as Belle left such things to her father.
All the time, though, we are basking in the generosity and hospitality of those few among us who have managed to produce important things, achieve heroic things, go beyond the humdrum of life and push for something new, something different.
I say "generosity and hospitality" because these people have produced things like automobiles and iPads, technology old and new. They have produced art, food, music, stories, and so forth. They have managed to produce our every convenience and respite from that harsh, unyielding law of life on Earth: that living is hard as hell.
We can fry our brains on drugs and TV only because other people are out there producing the things we need to keep life going the way we know it. And not only do they manage to do that - fabulously so - but they manage to keep humanity on a basically upward trajectory. Every year, we as a species get a little richer, a little better-fed, a little better-entertained. As time goes on, things improve.
Of course we love the people who do these things for us! We love them as a friend, just as Belle loved the Beast as a friend. Sort of like, "Thanks, pal, I really appreciate that your technology provides enough food to allow me to stay alive and even over-eat if I want to. Thanks for the pace-maker. Thanks for the Nobel-Prize-winning advance in medicine that may save my life one day...
"...but I don't want to marry you!"
Hang In There, I'm Getting To The Point
Meanwhile, as we bask in our luxurious world, we start to dream of imaginary princes. These princes are beautiful people, rich, powerful, just, and kind. They are everything we want our society to be, but we see them only in our dreams. Worse yet, we start to imagine that all these folks who are producing the things that keep our lives as wonderful as they are have imprisoned our imaginary princes!
What I mean is, we have come to believe that our society is capable of great things. Yet, somehow, we feel that our society has not managed to achieve these "great things" because there are evil people out there - corporate bogey-men, bad illegal immigrants, evil pharmaceutical producers, polluting farmers, and so forth - all conspiring to keep our society away from its princely potential.
The truth is right in front of our eyes, but we can't seem to see it. The handsome prince and the ugly beast are one in the same person.
That is, all these people out there who are producing plenty and achieving wonderful things, all these people that we demonize whenever we pause to think about it, are not keeping us from our prince. They are the prince. You dolt.
The Plot Thickens
This would be bad enough, if it weren't also so sad. Why sad? Because all those great people achieving brilliance and producing plenty are us. We are the beasts, and we are the handsome princes. And, yes, we hold the key to society's potential.
And, like Belle, all we have to do is learn to recognize this truth and we can avail ourselves of it. Instead, we're too busy tearing down our heroes, and tearing down ourselves, all in the name of some absurd fantasy that everything we love about life exists without its ugly side.
There is always room for improvement in life. I know that better than anyone. It's important to stay restless so that you can achieve more. But that doesn't mean that there are hideous beasts standing in our way to progress. The only "beasts" out there are us. We see ourselves every day, so we know full well that we're not standing in anyone's way. We're just living.
But maybe - just maybe - we'd all be a little happier if we learned to recognize that perfection exists in hypothesis only. Kiss the beast, so that you can recognize that the person who is making your life so good is you, and people like you. Get happy about it.
Then, stop tearing down the beasts.
2013-01-27
Rhesus Pieces
This week, it's Rhesus 13: Gaucho. A nice little piece of music for those epic moments in life...
2013-01-25
Should You Read This?
It is a funny quirk of human psychology that we can radically change the way a person views a given situation, depending on the way we ask the question. Indeed, sometimes it even depends on whether one perceives that there even is a question in the first place.
Child Eating Lunch
For example, here's a photo that came up in a simple Google Image Search for the string "child eating lunch:"
The contents of the lunch itself are positioned in a bad angle to determine exactly what they are. From my vantage point, it appears to be that the child is eating the following for lunch: A sandwich, some orange wedges (perhaps?), a cup of Jell-O, and a glass of juice.
Just look at that photo, and let it sink in for a moment.
Should Children Be Given Juice?
Okay, suppose we change our search string to "should children drink juice at lunch". What do we come up with?
Before we get to the picture, specifically, let's take some time to consider the thoughts that are already forming in your head, without any real prompting. As you read this blog post right now, your mind is already at work, forming perspectives and arguments and takes on the supposed issue of children's drinking juice. Some of you are forming chains of thought centered around sugar content, and perhaps that involves some tangential thoughts about sugar and corn production, subsidies, high fructose corn syrup, food allergies, diabetes, tooth decay... and so on. Some of you may already have thought a phrase close to, "But it's no big deal if kids drink juice sometimes!"
The point is, these thoughts are occurring to you in some form or another. The results of the Google Image Search are reflective of this fact, as well. Here's one example that came up:
Magic!
For decades, we have seen pictures of children drinking a glass of juice at lunch, and most of us haven't given it a second thought. The fact of the matter is that children drink juice. So, when you see a child drinking juice, or a picture of a child drinking juice, it makes about as much impact on you as the fact that you saw the hood of your car while driving into work today.
But if I ask a question with the word "should" in it, then suddenly things change, and drastically.
It's not just a matter of juice, either. You can take a completely, pathetically, boringly descriptive statement like, "The office floor is carpeted," tack the word "should" in front of it, change the verb tense accordingly, and you'll end up with something that is basically political.
Should the office floor be carpeted? Suddenly the environmentalists chime in. The interior designers. The ergonomics experts. The employee's union. The contractors. The accountants.
It's just juice. It's just carpet. There is nothing about either of these concepts that demands the solicitation of public opinion. They are as innocuous as sand on a beach or feathers on a bird. They have no special power in and of themselves. They do not require special CNN coverage or an intimate Piers Morgan interview.
But do you know what does have special power? Do you know what does require special coverage on CNN? The word should, that's what.
Ten Thousand Years Of Human History, And We're Still Just Bald Monkeys
Of course, the political pundits have known this for eons. There is some wonderful magic in the word "should." "Should" takes boring things and makes them interesting. "Should" makes a person's thoughts about even office carpeting matter! "Should" pits brother against brother.
In the face of "should," we just can't help ourselves. We fall over ourselves to supply our take on what should be, no matter how pointless the issue actually is. Worse than that, when confronted by the word should, we will make a pointless issue a matter of national importance. Something that we never would have given a second thought becomes an excuse to post slogans and "info-graphics" on our Facebook page.
Oh, the power of the word should! He who controls the word should controls the world!
Conclusion
The next time you hear someone ask a "should" question, I would like to challenge you to first ask yourself if you would ever have given the matter a second thought had the question never been asked. If the answer is no, you would probably be better off not venturing your opinion.
Child Eating Lunch
For example, here's a photo that came up in a simple Google Image Search for the string "child eating lunch:"
 |
| Photo courtesy www.visualphotos.com |
Just look at that photo, and let it sink in for a moment.
Should Children Be Given Juice?
Okay, suppose we change our search string to "should children drink juice at lunch". What do we come up with?
Before we get to the picture, specifically, let's take some time to consider the thoughts that are already forming in your head, without any real prompting. As you read this blog post right now, your mind is already at work, forming perspectives and arguments and takes on the supposed issue of children's drinking juice. Some of you are forming chains of thought centered around sugar content, and perhaps that involves some tangential thoughts about sugar and corn production, subsidies, high fructose corn syrup, food allergies, diabetes, tooth decay... and so on. Some of you may already have thought a phrase close to, "But it's no big deal if kids drink juice sometimes!"
The point is, these thoughts are occurring to you in some form or another. The results of the Google Image Search are reflective of this fact, as well. Here's one example that came up:
 |
| Photo courtesy www.carolinejinghory.com |
Magic!
For decades, we have seen pictures of children drinking a glass of juice at lunch, and most of us haven't given it a second thought. The fact of the matter is that children drink juice. So, when you see a child drinking juice, or a picture of a child drinking juice, it makes about as much impact on you as the fact that you saw the hood of your car while driving into work today.
But if I ask a question with the word "should" in it, then suddenly things change, and drastically.
It's not just a matter of juice, either. You can take a completely, pathetically, boringly descriptive statement like, "The office floor is carpeted," tack the word "should" in front of it, change the verb tense accordingly, and you'll end up with something that is basically political.
Should the office floor be carpeted? Suddenly the environmentalists chime in. The interior designers. The ergonomics experts. The employee's union. The contractors. The accountants.
It's just juice. It's just carpet. There is nothing about either of these concepts that demands the solicitation of public opinion. They are as innocuous as sand on a beach or feathers on a bird. They have no special power in and of themselves. They do not require special CNN coverage or an intimate Piers Morgan interview.
But do you know what does have special power? Do you know what does require special coverage on CNN? The word should, that's what.
Ten Thousand Years Of Human History, And We're Still Just Bald Monkeys
Of course, the political pundits have known this for eons. There is some wonderful magic in the word "should." "Should" takes boring things and makes them interesting. "Should" makes a person's thoughts about even office carpeting matter! "Should" pits brother against brother.
In the face of "should," we just can't help ourselves. We fall over ourselves to supply our take on what should be, no matter how pointless the issue actually is. Worse than that, when confronted by the word should, we will make a pointless issue a matter of national importance. Something that we never would have given a second thought becomes an excuse to post slogans and "info-graphics" on our Facebook page.
Oh, the power of the word should! He who controls the word should controls the world!
Conclusion
The next time you hear someone ask a "should" question, I would like to challenge you to first ask yourself if you would ever have given the matter a second thought had the question never been asked. If the answer is no, you would probably be better off not venturing your opinion.
2013-01-23
Being Real In A Fake World
It's not as if this is anything new.
Life In The Twenty-First Century
I am not really talking about Barack Obama or the office of president. I am not talking about Beyonce Knowles or the state of popular "live" music. Neither am I talking about the Manti Te'o media hoax, nor the fact that Lance Armstrong "never" doped to win the Tour de France. Nor will I mention that Bill Clinton "did not have sexual relations with that woman. Not once." I'm not going to write about the pantomimed YouTube video I saw of "five people playing the guitar" while covering that Gotye song and that there are people out there who really believe that the video depicts a live performance.
What I would like to say is this: As the 1990s wound to a close and Photoshop, AutoTune, teleprompters, and air-brushing all became household names, some of us lost our ability to decipher truth from... fantasy.
I say "fantasy," because "lie" is not exactly the right word to use. It's not as if anyone ever lied about using pitch-correction software in the music studio. It's not as if anyone lied about employing a teleprompter, or hiring a public relations specialist to craft our messages in a more favorable light. Everyone seems to understand, at least on some level, that the models shown on magazine covers do not really have perfectly sculpted abs, right?
Reality Check: Do we all understand that models as skinny as those used for magazine covers simply do not have sufficient muscle mass to make the painted-on abs shown in the picture to be real? If you want great abs, you have to build muscle and add body mass. Those little magazine waifs simply don't have what it takes for their abs-as-shown. This is a simple, logical point that should be universally recognized, but if you're still not convinced, then I can pull out some quotes from industry insiders, i.e. the guy who actually gets paid to paint the abs on.
Polished Fantasy Is A Tempting - But Unsustainable - Alternate Reality
Well, that's a case in point. You see, some of us willingly engage in the suspension of disbelief. We can't really blame them, either. Isn't it a lot more fun believing that Barack Obama is The Greatest Orator In The History Of The World? Isn't it more fun to believe that Beyonce sang that anthem live-and-in-the-moment? Isn't it better to aspire to a more fantastic vision of beauty than exist in a world where perfect abs and a 22-inch waist are two things that can never coexist? Isn't it better to believe that all the amazing performances we see on YouTube really do depict what we want them to depict?
For what it's worth, all of my YouTube videos show the very performances heard in the recording. Note, though, that my videos will never have as many views as those five hipsters pretending to play the Goyte song. And that's the key point, right there: As a society, we tend to prefer deluding ourselves with an attractive lie than keeping ourselves honest. It's just a YouTube video, right? It's just some Goyte song. Who cares if they didn't record it in that one take like that?
Look, it's not just TV inauguration ceremonies, magazine covers, and YouTube videos. (I may seem like a relatively trivial guy, but I'm not that trivial.) We humans enjoy that which we perceive to be "harmless" delusion. How many of these things can we think of? The delusion of "god." The delusion of "good government." The delusion of "there ought to be a law." The delusion that simply voting for something or posting a cute little "info-graphic" on your Facebook page will "affect change." The delusion that those Kiva micro-loans actually produce economic development. The delusion that the American Idol competition really does single out the one, most talented unsigned musical artist in the nation.
Har har har...
It's not that I object to anyone's belief in god, government, or the artistic merit of obvious media concoctions. Instead, I'd argue that when you live your life under the weight of all these seemingly harmless fibs, the truth eventually catches up with you.
Eventually, you realize that Barack Obama's promise to end the wars and close Guantanamo Bay was just a lot of empty political talk, no different than "saving or creating jobs." Eventually the money and time you spend at the doctor's office hits your pocketbook, no matter how much you believe that the ACA "is supposed to" cut health care costs. Eventually you die and God doesn't pat you on the back for eschewing bacon and wearing a magic hat. Eventually you and four of your friends try to play Goyte on one guitar and discover that it doesn't actually sound that way. Eventually you turn 40 and realize that no matter how much dieting you combined with how many crunches, you still didn't develop the physique of a 13-year-old girl with picture-perfect abs.
What happened? Reality happened. Life didn't conform to your wishes. Instead, it conformed to reality. In the meantime, you could have done something that made a real impact on politics. You could have saved real money on health care. You could have eaten bacon occasionally and wowed a cute guy with a gorgeous head of hair. You could have learned to play a real song on a real instrument, the way music can really sound, and you could have made your body genuinely healthy.
But, you couldn't do any of those things because you were too busy hiding from the facts, replacing them with a fantasy you would prefer to be true.
Getting Real
That slimy guy who got a promotion over you even though he never did any real work? Don't worry about him. He got fired and then got divorced. You never saw him fall back down to Earth, but it wouldn't have been satisfying, anyway.
It wouldn't have been satisfying for exactly the same reason it was so unsatisfying watching him attempt to build a career on a lie. I'm all for justice, but being the spectator at an execution is macabre. It's not gratifying to watch someone receive their come-uppance.
For the most part, this is because someone else's failure has nothing to do with your own success. Even if that someone else is initially successful in living life according to an elaborate delusion, reality catches up at some point. We have to ask ourselves how we're going to feel about it on our death beds.
Someone like Lance Armstrong can dope his way to the top, sure. He won 7 Tours, retired, and set his sights on living out the rest of his days comfortably; but reality had other plans. Now he has to go begging for our National Forgiveness on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Someone can dedicate their lives to a false idol, a false god, a false government, and drive a lot of wedges between themselves and other people, all for the sake of what they wish to be true on their death bed. But for those people, there will come a moment when they will realize that the conflicts we have with other people in our lives are never worth an imaginary hug at the end of a losing battle with death.
Your god, your politics, your art, and your work all come down to how you feel about yourself. If you consider yourself morally reprehensible, you will seek forgiveness from a kind Santa Claus who will lavish you with toys in reward for being good. If you don't think your neighbors can trust you to respect their privacy, you will seek control of your entire community through politics, where respect for property and privacy is enforced by your raw, political will. If you feel you have no creative talent, you will imagine that anyone brave enough to post a YouTube video is a budding virtuoso. If you feel incompetent on the job, you will seek success through perception.
It goes without saying, that a person fully satisfied with herself will feel no need to seek out imaginary redemption, political power, artistic delusion, or undue career success. She'll never achieve any of those imaginary things, of course. But neither does anyone else, not permanently.
In the meantime, every second of her life will be hers, lived according to her creed and her values. Everything she counts on will be the truth.
Conclusion
It's a shame that our presidents, artists, and colleagues are phonies. We can't change that, even if we wanted to. (To believe that we can change this age-old fact of human existence would be to suffer yet another silly delusion.)
What we can change - what is perfectly easy to change - is our own behavior. We can shrug off our delusions and stop engaging in the suspension of disbelief. We can learn to value the beautiful colors of the real world, using our own two eyes, over and above the imaginary life we see in pictures and Facebook .jpegs.
The result is a beautiful life lived in reality, in spite of the phoniness surrounding us. It's worth it!
2013-01-22
Movie Review: Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola
Unfortunately, as we learn time and time again, casting two fantastic actors is not sufficient to make for a great movie. While I did enjoy Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola, it fell far short of my expectations. It was, nevertheless, a good movie.
The movie begins by depicting some of the drunken antics of local bigwig Harry Mandola (played by Pankaj Kapur), a corrupt businessman, landowner, and incorrigible alcoholic. As his mischief unfolds, we learn that he owns all of the farmland that the local villagers farm, and that his dream is to convert this huge expanse of agricultural land into a modern metropolis, full of factories, shopping malls, and high-rise apartments.
Of course, building a huge subdivision on top of an enormous expanse of wheat fields will mean the end of the villagers' livelihoods, so we are not surprised to discover deep resentment and political unrest among those villagers. Aiding them in their fight for land ownership is Hukkam Singh Matru (Imran Khan), who works as Mandola's personal assistant ("servant," in Hukkam's telling of it) by day, and moonlights as a crafty political dissident and public organizer who goes incognito by the pseudonym "Mao Tse Tung." Matru, trained as a lawyer, fights the villagers legal battles while keeping a close watch on Mandola from the inside.
The final element to the story is the inevitable Bollywood romance. Mandola's daughter, Bijlee (Anushka Sharma), is to be wed to the son of the corrupt politician who is helping Mandola in his plot, for mutual benefit. Naturally, the marriage is more about the ambitions of the parents than it is about the love of the children. Nevertheless, Bijlee commits herself to loving Baadal (Arya Babbar), even though, deep-down, she understands that she does not really love him. Matru sees this easily, and while he and Bijlee are first at each other's throats, their romance begins to blossom as they discover more and more about each other over the course of the movie.
The most striking thing about this movie is that, by Hindi standards, the plot is remarkably complex. The complexity is not so much about many twists-and-turns as it is about nuanced characters and parallel storylines set amid a real-world backdrop. The script is incredibly well-written. While many Hindi movies bite off far too much and leave many of the plot strings dangling unsatisfactorily, Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola really does wrap up all its loose ends, and does so without the often cheesy and unrealistic liberties taken in most Hindi films.
Indeed, unlike most Bollywood films, this one deftly avoids the trappings of cheap melodrama. The good characters are flawed in realistic ways. The bad characters are more than just pure, ridiculous evil - they are also human, with redeeming human qualities, too.
Of course, not every aspect of the film is good. Much of the film revolves around Harry Mandola's alcoholism. While this aspect of the movie was, in my opinion, quite well-depicted, I felt that the writers too-often regressed to cheap slapstick humor. A drunk is indeed a stumbling buffoon, but this is no laughing matter. All alcoholics see their fair share of "pink buffaloes," but this is no real source of comic relief. As I heard the audience in the theater bellow out their laughter at the various drunken antics displayed, I couldn't help but feel that the filmmakers had perhaps focused too much on humor and not enough on the seriousness of alcoholism.
Then again, cinematic treatments of alcoholism have always danced between tragedy and comedy, and this film is no different. Perhaps this reflects the nuanced reality of substance abuse.
By putting Marxism front-and-center in the villagers' struggle, the writers fail to do justice to the intricacies of real-world poverty. Why, for example, would building factories and modernizing the village be bad for the villagers? The script suffers from an unjust romanticism toward traditional Indian life, unnecessarily casting the antagonists - most notably Harry Mandola - as greedy, evil scumbags. The truth is, modernizing a poor village is equally as noble a goal as fighting for political independence and land ownership.
That said, I would be asking too much of a script writer to demand that he do justice to all sides of a political issue when the film is, at its core, more of a statement about political corruption than it is about Marxism or capitalism.
All said, Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola is a good, solid film featuring some excellent acting and a surprisingly good script. I would not recommend this film for younger viewers, owing to some strong language (if you understand Hindi - it is sanitized quite a bit in the subtitles), and to its treatment of alcoholism. But it is a good, solid film that adult fans of Hindi cinema will really enjoy.
Change And Blood Glucose
I still remember the day my first endocrinologist told me (and I quote verbatim), "One to two mild lows per week is part of good blood glucose control." Doesn't that just roll off the tongue? Isn't that just the perfect soundbite in answer to the question, "How often should I experience hypoglycemia as a diabetic?" Critical as I am of the Canadian health care system's ability to treat me, that doctor was a really great one, and I miss her every time I find myself in a doctor's office. (Probably no coincidence: she was not a Canadian doctor at all; she was Irish, doing a sabbatical in Canada.)
Over the last few weeks, I have gone from experiencing one mild low per week to experiencing several of them. While one low is not a big deal to me at all, having several is somewhat bothersome. So what changed?
While I can probably point to a handful of minor recent lifestyle changes, the biggest change of them all is a new exercise regimen I have undertaken. This began with three strength training sessions per week, plus some mild cardiovascular exercise. As the weeks went by, my strength training sessions became much more intense. Over the past weeks, I have increased the intensity even further. And, in the past week, I have made regular and somewhat intense cardiovascular activity a consistent part of my workouts.
It is always true that increasing one's activity level reduces one's need for long-acting insulin. So, at least some of my recent lows can be attributed purely to an increase in my overall activity level.
But that doesn't really tell the whole story. I have increased and decreased my activity level many times and many different ways since my 2009 LADA diagnosis. Not every change in activity level has resulted in a significant change to my blood glucose levels. Considering that fact, it seems likely that there is more to it than just a bald increase in activity.
Which brings me back to my post from the other day. My recent blood glucose levels seem to lend additional credence to the notion that the important aspect of physical fitness - at least with respect to diabetic exercise - is the degree to which one's fitness regimen changes and progresses.
In summary, I'd like to make a recommendation to my fellow diabetics. Don't merely exercise. Vary your workouts to the tune of doing something new every two weeks or so. This "something new" can consist of increasing the weights you're lifting or increasing the speed at which you do cardio, but perhaps more ideally it should involve entirely new exercises every one to two weeks. If you used the stairmaster all last week, good for you; now try jumping rope. If you played a lot of racquetball last week, that's great; now try swimming for a week. If you went to a CrossFit gym last week, excellent; go to a boxing gym this week, for a change.
The point here is that variety is more than just "the spice of life." It's an important component in blood sugar management as it pertains to exercise. Shake it up!
Over the last few weeks, I have gone from experiencing one mild low per week to experiencing several of them. While one low is not a big deal to me at all, having several is somewhat bothersome. So what changed?
While I can probably point to a handful of minor recent lifestyle changes, the biggest change of them all is a new exercise regimen I have undertaken. This began with three strength training sessions per week, plus some mild cardiovascular exercise. As the weeks went by, my strength training sessions became much more intense. Over the past weeks, I have increased the intensity even further. And, in the past week, I have made regular and somewhat intense cardiovascular activity a consistent part of my workouts.
It is always true that increasing one's activity level reduces one's need for long-acting insulin. So, at least some of my recent lows can be attributed purely to an increase in my overall activity level.
But that doesn't really tell the whole story. I have increased and decreased my activity level many times and many different ways since my 2009 LADA diagnosis. Not every change in activity level has resulted in a significant change to my blood glucose levels. Considering that fact, it seems likely that there is more to it than just a bald increase in activity.
Which brings me back to my post from the other day. My recent blood glucose levels seem to lend additional credence to the notion that the important aspect of physical fitness - at least with respect to diabetic exercise - is the degree to which one's fitness regimen changes and progresses.
In summary, I'd like to make a recommendation to my fellow diabetics. Don't merely exercise. Vary your workouts to the tune of doing something new every two weeks or so. This "something new" can consist of increasing the weights you're lifting or increasing the speed at which you do cardio, but perhaps more ideally it should involve entirely new exercises every one to two weeks. If you used the stairmaster all last week, good for you; now try jumping rope. If you played a lot of racquetball last week, that's great; now try swimming for a week. If you went to a CrossFit gym last week, excellent; go to a boxing gym this week, for a change.
The point here is that variety is more than just "the spice of life." It's an important component in blood sugar management as it pertains to exercise. Shake it up!
2013-01-20
The Phoenix
A few years ago, I wrote a piece for steel-string acoustic guitar that encapsulated how I felt after thoroughly embarrassing myself. What better way to find your footing than to come up with a fun piece of music? Actually, what happened was that the next day, I set my sights on "buttressing my cool." Not sure if worked, but it's a nice piece nonetheless.
And, apparently, it works on the guitalele also:
And, apparently, it works on the guitalele also:
2013-01-16
From Which I May Never Return
The funny thing about my most recent recording, Rhesus 11: I-35, is that I originally intended to record every track with a different instrument. The underlying idea was that a person watching the video on YouTube would be able to identify which instrument is playing which part easily, via visual cue. I also wanted the rhythm guitar (seen at bottom-left) to be extra-chunky - played on my solid mahogany Agile Valkyrie - the "lighter" lead guitar (seen at top-right) to be extra-twangy - played on my single-coil-equipped Carvin bolt kit - and the "heavier" lead guitar (seen at bottom-right) to be thick and meaty - played on my Carvin DC400. It would also have been nice to record the lead guitars with my Washburn BT-10.
See? Every track recorded with a different instrument. That would have been great. So, what happened?
The truth is, I did record the rhythm guitar with the Valkyrie and the lighter lead with the Bolt Kit. The problem is that I couldn't capture the feel that I was going for, using those instruments. My picking attack was throwing some of the notes slightly out of pitch (I have a pretty heavy picking attack). My Bolt Kit, which is easily the most comfortable guitar I own, wasn't quite nailing the kind of twanginess I hoped for. Everything felt awkward and funny. I recorded half of the piece on Saturday and had to just stop. I called it a day and went back to it on Sunday.
When I started recording again on Sunday, I picked up my DC400 and just went with it. This is my newest guitar; I bought it late in 2010. Now, as "chunky" as I like to think the mahogany Valkyrie is, and as comfortable as I like to think my Bolt Kit is, there is something about this DC400. It responds to my picking attack in exactly the way it should. My hands fall against the fretboard in exactly the right way. Simply stated, it just works.
Not surprisingly, I was able to wrap up the recording in a couple of hours, and that includes completely re-recording the rhythm guitar and the "lighter" lead (invoking the DC400's phase switching feature for added spirit). The fact is, when it's right, it's right.
So I now find myself faced with the following "problem:" Having acquired the DC400, I can't seem to warm up to any of my other electric guitars. They don't quite have the right thing, the right mojo. They're all great instruments, but they don't have the same magic ingredient that the DC400 has.
This leads me to believe that I'm on a journey from which I may never return. The DC400, with it's ergonomic comfort, beautiful core tone, and tonal flexibility through its active preamp, coil-tapping, and phase-switching functionality, has rendered my other guitars somewhat obsolete.
I'm doomed. Once you play a DC400, it's hard to return to any other instrument. I am seriously considering selling off my inferior instruments, and maybe even using the money to purchase another DC400, or perhaps a DC700. We'll see. For now, I can't stop playing my beautiful, walnut DC400. What a wonderful guitar.
See? Every track recorded with a different instrument. That would have been great. So, what happened?
The truth is, I did record the rhythm guitar with the Valkyrie and the lighter lead with the Bolt Kit. The problem is that I couldn't capture the feel that I was going for, using those instruments. My picking attack was throwing some of the notes slightly out of pitch (I have a pretty heavy picking attack). My Bolt Kit, which is easily the most comfortable guitar I own, wasn't quite nailing the kind of twanginess I hoped for. Everything felt awkward and funny. I recorded half of the piece on Saturday and had to just stop. I called it a day and went back to it on Sunday.
When I started recording again on Sunday, I picked up my DC400 and just went with it. This is my newest guitar; I bought it late in 2010. Now, as "chunky" as I like to think the mahogany Valkyrie is, and as comfortable as I like to think my Bolt Kit is, there is something about this DC400. It responds to my picking attack in exactly the way it should. My hands fall against the fretboard in exactly the right way. Simply stated, it just works.
Not surprisingly, I was able to wrap up the recording in a couple of hours, and that includes completely re-recording the rhythm guitar and the "lighter" lead (invoking the DC400's phase switching feature for added spirit). The fact is, when it's right, it's right.
So I now find myself faced with the following "problem:" Having acquired the DC400, I can't seem to warm up to any of my other electric guitars. They don't quite have the right thing, the right mojo. They're all great instruments, but they don't have the same magic ingredient that the DC400 has.
This leads me to believe that I'm on a journey from which I may never return. The DC400, with it's ergonomic comfort, beautiful core tone, and tonal flexibility through its active preamp, coil-tapping, and phase-switching functionality, has rendered my other guitars somewhat obsolete.
I'm doomed. Once you play a DC400, it's hard to return to any other instrument. I am seriously considering selling off my inferior instruments, and maybe even using the money to purchase another DC400, or perhaps a DC700. We'll see. For now, I can't stop playing my beautiful, walnut DC400. What a wonderful guitar.
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