When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.
― Dale Carnegie
Every morning I get a slew of articles on health. I read them when I have time, which unfortunately is not often these days. But today there were several that were just too good to pass up. To start us off right, let’s read about this poor woman:
Thus it appears to be the necessary duty, and the interest of every person living, to improve his understanding, to inform his judgment, to treasure up useful knowledge, and to acquire the skill of good reasoning, as far as his station, capacity, and circumstances furnish him with proper means for it.
–Isaac Watts
There’s always things to read. Keeping up with it all is impossible, but keeping up with some of it is good for you! An educated mind is not easily coerced, enslaved, or deceive; and by “educated” I don’t mean “got a degree in business administration” or “went to plumbing school.” I mean a mind that seeks to know what it can about as much as it can. With these salutary thoughts in mind, let’s look at what’s going on in the world as you head into the weekend.
Just because something isn’t a lie does not mean that it isn’t deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.
― Criss Jami
We’ve looked at the good. We’ve looked at some bad. Now…the ugly.
As you probably already guessed from the idiotic statement that the same protein that will kill you if you’re 64 will suddenly protect you from death once you turn 65, this is a load of baloney. This contention alone ought to be enough to put every reasonable person on alert. Continue reading The Good, The Bad and The Ugly III
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
–Albert Einstein
Anymore, I can’t resist the ads that pop up on my screen inviting me to investigate some surefire way to lose weight. I almost always know what I’ll find, and I’m always excited that it might be good fodder for the blog. Since I’m regularly researching health news now, the ads come fast and furious no matter what I’m doing.
Plus, I like to blow up online calculators.
Tom Naughton has put his recent speech at Springfield college up on Youtube. This is 45 minutes that are worth your time, as he explains how we went from a nation where people knew pretty much what to eat from experience and common wisdom, to one that is disgustingly fat and sick after The Anointed told us all how to eat; and why we’re going back again.
It’s an easy watch/listen (throw it on while you’re doing the dishes or something if you don’t have time to sit and look at it).
I believe that every human has a finite amount of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.
― Neil Armstrong
You probably know, if you read this blog, my basic stance on exercise. I’m agin’ it.
Well, not totally against it. I’m just against what is in vogue today, which is hours and hours of useless treadmilling/biking/jogging/running. All those things do are wear out your joints. Running can make you a better runner–but that’s it. It can’t make you a better jogger, a better dancer, a better swimmer, or help you improve your “cardiovascular fitness.” Take three devoted runners and three sedentary fat guys. Tell them you’ll test them in two weeks to determine their heart/lung rate when using an elliptical for 20 minutes. Tell the “fit” runners to just keep doing what their doing. Tell the fat guys to hop on the elliptical once a day for 20 minutes till the test, but otherwise behave normally.
The fat guys will pass your test, and the runners will not.
Continue reading Exercise
You can’t keep trouble from coming, but you don’t have to give it a chair to sit on.
–New England Proverb
When I was visiting Brother #3 in this summer he asked me:
Is there anything your magic diet doesn’t help with?
We both laughed–it was meant in jest, and he himself had seen some real benefits from changing up his way of eating. But what I said and thought at the time is: No. It does help just about everything.
Even though you weren’t there at the time, I’d like to clarify that statement for you. By it, I do not mean that I think eschewing grains, sugars, and Frankenfats and eating lots of saturated fat and meat is a miracle cure of any ailment. There are three things I do mean:
Ensam är stark. “Alone is strong.”
–Swedish Proverb
Forgive the long silence. I cracked my head on a wall last week and writing has been difficult till now.
My favorite Swedish proverb is actually Det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder. “There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.” However there’s no doubt that the Swedes are standing alone just now; they are certainly also standing strong.
[Think] of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else would you remember it? But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there. Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place . . . Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.
― Steve Grand
Just a thought about how we are so much more than our atomized stuff, before we talk about that stuff.
Ask Me How It Happened 