There was a time not long ago that this seemed fairly far away. I never really even thought past 25. Then 25 came. Now 25 is about to go. That was fast. It seems to get faster and faster as the numbers get bigger and bigger.

Isn’t that a strange coincidence?

This whole getting older thing is a little crazy. You always think that adults must know so much when you’re a kid. Those twenty-somethings must know something you don’t and certainly those ancient thirty-somethings must be wise. Then you become one of the twenty-somethings and you realize that there isn’t some magical secret that gets bestowed upon you.

You’ve just lived a little more.

And of course the craziest thing is that we’ll all get words of wisdom from those older and wiser and proceed to ignore it. We don’t ignore it on purpose. We actually just don’t understand it. As the saying goes, “when the student is ready, a master appears.” Apparently there’s not much fast-tracking that can be had. All the wisdom in the world will fall to deaf ears until experience allows it to make sense.

Everyone moves through life at their own pace.

Which is to say: there’s probably no good reason to compare what you’re doing to what anyone else is doing. It is certainly tempting at times but there’s also the saying that goes, “the grass is always greener on the other side.” The only measuring stick anyone needs to use is their own life. It’s the only one that will give accurate results and the only one that actually matters.

Comparing me from a few years ago to me today is almost comical. It’s the same person but a lot of the details are different. I used to go out a lot. Partying and what not. I live in NYC. I still like the few times I go out but I don’t like staying out late. It’s a health related decision and I just don’t like to feel like I was hit by a truck when I wake up in the middle of the afternoon because I was partying until 4AM in the morning. It was also fairly unproductive. But how would one know until one does it? You can’t. I can’t say it wasn’t fun. It was. I was doing it. But I’ve moved on.

I used to never cook. It didn’t seem like a necessary skill to have. Now I cook all my food. I’d rather cook than eat out. I enjoy cooking. The supermarket is a fun place. It’s almost unbelievable how completely different I am about cooking. This is also a health decision and it’s been a fantastic one.

I used to work like a mad person. I probably still do to some degree but I was spending too much time working. There’s nothing wrong with doing work. I like to work and if I didn’t have work to do I’d find work. That’s all fine but there’s a line between doing productive work and workaholism. I don’t know if I ever got that far. I wouldn’t really know it if I did. I do know that I’ve made a conscious effort to not let work take over other things in life. And as if by magic, the world didn’t fall apart. Just as much work gets done.

And since I’ve done those things and effectively rebooted my life as I knew it, I also met someone amazing. For many years, any meaningful relationship would have been inconceivable. I’m still fairly surprised that it’s happening.

This is all new for me. This is life. I couldn’t have conceived it just a few years ago. What’s scary is all the things that I can’t conceive of in another five years when this string of 2′s are replaced by 3′s.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, there is a chapter that talks about the KIPP Academy in the South Bronx. The South Bronx is not a well off neighborhood. It might be one of the nation’s worst. This is not where you expect public school students to excel. But, that is exactly what is happening at the KIPP Academy in the South Bronx. In fact, this happens at all the KIPP schools across the country. What’s their secret?

Outliers references a study that the Baltimore Public School System had conducted using the California Achievement Test on 1st through 5th graders. Baltimore gives it’s public school students the test once in September and again in June. Comparing the scores from September to those in June of the next year can give us some measurable way to determine how much students have learned in a given school year. By the same token, comparing scores from June to those in September of the same year can also tell us how much students learned or retained during their Summer vacation.

The results of scores from over four years found that there is an achievement gap that forms from 1st grade to 5th grade as the score differences double in that time period. However, when we look at the differences in scores from each September to June, no achievement gap exists. Low income, middle income, and high income students all make about the same progress from September to June while they are in school. So where does this disparity come from if the school itself isn’t failing the students?

Summer vacation.

That’s where the disparity comes from. Low and middle income students show zero to negative changes in CAT scores after the Summer. On the other hand, high income students make significant gains. The problem is that low income students aren’t learning anything academically measurable when they are not in school!

And that is KIPP’s secret. KIPP has longer hours and shorter Summer breaks. Students wake up early and stay late. They are in school when other students are out playing. Some might consider this cruel but, success never comes easy. The choice between taking the grueling KIPP route or likely staying in poverty is not a hard one.

If the secret to success is to be constantly learning then the modern world is most capable of providing that to everyone. At my job, we call Google the great teacher. And when we say Google, we really mean the Internet at large although none of it would be nearly as useful without Google’s ability to organize everything in an easily searchable fashion.

As the Internet has matured in recent years, education resources like The Khan Academy, iTunes U, MIT’s Open Courseware, and YouTube’s Education Channel have sprang up. This short list of four doesn’t even include the countless tutorials and how-to’s scattered all over the Internet.

Most homes have computers and are connected to the Internet. There are public libraries with computers that are connected to the Internet for those without home access. The Internet is more or less available to everyone. The four massive resources that I linked to are available to everyone and it’s free. All of it.

There has never been another time in modern history where anyone could learn about anything with virtually no price barrier. We don’t need to lucky enough to be randomly picked for a KIPP school or come from well-to-do high income families.

I went to one of the best high schools in the New York City Public School System. There were entrance exams so students had to compete with everyone in the city and that’s a lot of students. Some might say that such a system is biased towards having students who are already smart since a test needs to be taken. That’s probably true but, my high school also made us take extra Advanced Placement classes and we also had to have majors which added more classes that weren’t required by the public school system.

It was a lot of work and I remember waking up at 5AM in the morning to get to a first period class between 6 and 7AM. I had to get up so early because I lived over an hour away by public transportation. Students did this from across New York City. We probably cursed the school while we were there for all the work we had to do but, I can’t think of many students who went to my high school and didn’t end up graduating college.

While graduating college doesn’t have as much meaning as it once did, I can tell from Facebook that my fellow high school classmates are all doing pretty well. Coincidence? Or did all the extra classes give us an edge?

I’m going to propose an idea that isn’t actually possible but, just imagine it was. Suspend reality temporarily.

Let’s say we could apply wealth redistribution to health. Hear me out.

There’s more fat people in America than there are poor people. In fact, even poor Americans are fat. This is a problem. A massive problem. Possibly, a bigger problem than poverty. The cost to care for all the ailments that inflict fat people are enormous. The money we could save by avoiding the diseases tied to obesity would instantly make poor Americans richer!

Everybody wins.

So let’s imagine we solve the obesity problem the same way many folks recommend to solve the problem of poverty or to shrink the gap between the rich and the poor. We’ll take good health from the minority of Americans who have lean physiques, exercise regularly, and watch what they eat and give that good health to the majority of Americans who are carrying a few small children in extra weight, barely exercise, and eat Chinese takeout while watching TV.

Absurd?

Why would you think this is absurd? I told you to imagine. Forget that we can’t actually take health from one person and give it to another. Just imagine we could.

Isn’t it unfair that some people are just born with good genes?! They eat whatever they like and don’t exercise yet, they look like Greek gods and goddesses! The nerve! It is only fair that we should take their health and give it to those who are less fortunate. Those who have bad genes.

The other hoarders of good health who meticulously watch what they eat and exercise religiously? Well, it isn’t fair that they are able to have such self control and determination. Other people just don’t have that kind of mental fortitude. We should take their health as well and give it to others who just aren’t able to work that hard!

Health redistribution. Just imagine the kind of America we could have if we were actually able to redistribute health!

Before I discovered the paleo diet, I wouldn’t have thought for a second to consult with evolution or ancient cultures to deal with or help shed light on modern health issues. It seems like common sense now that we should look at how humans have lived, thrived, and evolved in order to understand what good human health ought to be. That’s how we study every other creature on the planet: we observe what they do in their natural environment.

The natural next step after modeling diet around evolution is to see what other things can also benefit by applying the same ideas. A paleo-style diet works wonders so it is logical to suspect similar benefits can be achieved in other parts of life like physical fitness, sleep, activity levels, and even sex. It is important that we remember this isn’t paleolithic times. The objective isn’t to imitate cavemen and ignore modern science but, to use what we know about human evolution to guide us.

I came across this post at Hunt Gather Love about the sexual practices of two indigenous tribes in sub-Saharan Africa through one of Mark’s Daily Apple’s Weekend Link Loves and it intrigued me! Yes. Sex interested me. Shocker! I even read the entire text of the study. I read the full text of a lot of studies and papers so this isn’t something strange but, this was more entertaining to read about than a study on how vitamin D3 supplementation affects bone density and prevents fractures in seniors. As much as I love vitamin D, sex is just more interesting!

There’s a few charts in this study and one that stood out is this one about frequency of sex in a week:

This is a comparison between married couples and not the overall population of the United States and the people from the Aka and Ngandu tribes. There’s plenty of jokes in the modern world about couples having virtually no sex once they’re married and this data for Americans seems to support it! It looks spectacularly worse compared to these African tribes. So, what the hell? Are we not doing it enough? There’s plenty of studies that point to more sex correlating to better health. Whether these studies have any merit is another story but, why would anyone ignore any piece of science that tells them to have more sex?!

This chart makes married Americans look like sexless prudes but, are these indigenous peoples really having that much sex? And if they are, why? And how are they doing this? Sex eight times a week is no physical feat to scoff at. I’m sure larger waist sizes in America isn’t helping our cause but, if we’re not having enough sex, are they having too much sex? The Ngandu tribe seems to have a much more reasonable and desirable amount of sex. Why the disparity between the two tribes?

Monogamy or Polygamy?

Firstly, some folks will look at that graph and immediately assume that these tribes practiced polygamy or were otherwise sleeping around a lot. However, the study reports that “only a few members in each ethnic group were in polygynous relationships so we were unable to determine the impact of polygyny on sexual behavior.” These two tribes also have a cultural belief called the “post-partum sex taboo”:

The post-partum sex taboo is a cultural belief that a husband and wife should abstain from sexual activity after the birth of a child until the child is walking well. If a parent sleeps with someone else the child will get a specific illness, called ekila dibongo (taboo/illness of the knees), and potentially die.

The Aka tribe that reported the greatest sexual frequency also reported the least likelihood of looking for a different mate in this post-partum period while the Ngandu males almost always looked for another mate:

Some Aka men did not believe in the post-partum taboo and continued to sleep with their spouse while most Aka men believed and respected the conditions of the taboo and did not seek out other women. About one-fourth of the Aka men said they would seek out other women, but these were primarily males under 25. It is not clear if this is due to changes in cultural beliefs or a function of their age. Ngandu men on the other hand, almost always searched for other women during this time regardless of their age.

The women of both tribes generally followed the taboo and believed or hoped their husbands did:

All Ngandu and 72% of Aka women said they followed the taboo and said that their husbands either followed or women hoped their husbands respected the taboo.

So while there is evidence that Ngandu men sleep around in the post-partum period, it doesn’t necessarily equate to having multiple partners prior to that period. The study also had fewer Ngandu participants in comparison to the size of the tribe. Ngandu villages range in size from 50 – 400 individuals while the study included 21 participants split evenly by gender. The Aka villages consist of 25 – 35 individuals and the study included 35 Aka participants split evenly by gender.

The data collected about the Aka is therefore likely more reliable and indicative of the tribe as a whole opposed to the Ngandu data. While the data can’t conclusively determine monogamy or not, the Aka data is more reliable and points in that direction. Of course, different tribes have different customs, traditions, and beliefs that may make monogamy or polygamy the norm. Any data that sways one way or the other doesn’t conclusively prove anything except to dispel assumptions that all cavemen slept with every cavewoman he could find as an evolutionary explanation to infidelity or other such weakly supported ideas.

Ancient Sex as Play or Work?

Sex eight times a week is quite a lot by any measure and especially by modern measures. So the logical first question would be whether these indigenous tribes were doing it for fun or as a means to another ends? Both tribes have a child mortality rate of 35 – 45%. With that in mind, it becomes obvious that having as many children as possible would be a priority. And it is. Women give birth 5 – 6 times on average. The chart above demonstrating frequency of sex also shows that frequency declines in the age group that is no longer looking to produce offspring: 40 – 45 years.

According to the participants interviewed, they are primarily interested in children:

One young Aka male said “I am now doing it five times a night to search for a child. If I do not do it five times my wife will not be happy because she wants children quickly.” Aka females had similar feelings as expressed by one woman “I had sex with him to get infants, not for pleasure, and to show that I loved him”. Another Aka woman said, “It is fun to have sex, but it is to look for a child.”

They even go as far as to say:

Ngandu had similar views as one male said “Having sex three times a night is to look for a child NOT for pleasure”

An Aka male even refers to what he’s doing as work:

A 25 year-old man said, “It is work to find children and get children to make a large camp like my father.” He reported having sex 4–5 times a night.

The study goes on to discuss that:

… having sex was often viewed as bila (work). Some of following comments from Aka men and women emphasize this point. “The work of the penis is the work to find a child.” “I am always looking for a child, it is pleasurable, but it is a big work.” “Bila na bongedi” (sexual desire is work). Several informants compared the work of getting food and the work of searching for a child. “Getting food is more difficult, but both are lots of work. Sex life is not as tiring as work during day; the work at night is easier because can make love then sleep.”

Of course, this isn’t to say that they didn’t experience pleasure while doing this work:

Sex was seen as pleasurable, but pleasure was secondary or tertiary to searching for a child or to demonstrate love towards a mate. Ngandu men and women were somewhat more likely than Aka to mention pleasure as an important part of sex life. Ngandu women said “Sex is pleasure, work, sign of love and necessary for infant growth” and “Sex is for pleasure and for work to find kids.”

When it comes to frequency of sex per night and days of rest in between:

The data imply that, on average, 18–45 year-old Aka have sex about three times per week and three times per night. Ngandu 18–45 year-olds have sex about twice a week and two times per night.

So in the case of these two tribes–and likely all indigenous peoples–sex is firstly an act of work to produce children and secondly or thirdly an act of play for the sake of pleasure alone. This shouldn’t really be a surprise as it is only in the modern world that child mortality is low enough for couples to plan for children and largely expect every child born to survive into adulthood.

While this is a great conversation topic to have at ready, we really only care what this means for us in the modern world.

Sex and the Modern World

It is hard to imagine that anyone needs scientific evidence to believe sex is good for them. The sex itself can be good or bad in terms of satisfaction but, no scientific study is going to change that one way or the other–there’s also no shortage of articles on improving sex in men’s and women’s magazines every month.  The question that I want to answer is how much sex is likely optimal for health and longevity.

From a health perspective, I don’t think one can have too much sex. I’m not sure it’s even possible in all but the most extreme circumstances to have too much sex.

An article in Forbes had these snippets to say about the issue:

The best that modern science can say for sexual abstinence is that it’s harmless when practiced in moderation. Having regular and enthusiastic sex, by contrast, confers a host of measurable physiological advantages, be you male or female.

Dr. Claire Bailey of the University of Bristol says there is little or no risk of a woman’s overdosing on sex. In fact, she says, regular sessions can not only firm a woman’s tummy and buttocks but also improve her posture.

Women who abstain from sex run some risks. In postmenopausal women, these include vaginal atrophy. Dr. Winch has a middle-aged patient of whom he says: “She hasn’t had intercourse in three years. Just isn’t interested. The opening of her vagina is narrowing from disuse. It’s a condition that can lead to dysparenia, or pain associated with intercourse. I told her, ‘Look, you’d better buy a vibrator or you’re going to lose function there.’” 

“Yes,” says Dr. Eid, “It is possible for a young man who is very forceful and who likes rough sex, to damage his erectile tissue.” The drugs increase rigidity; moreover, they make it possible for a man to have second and third orgasms without having to wait out intermission.

So as long as you’re not contracting STDs or using drugs like Viagra as a performance enhancing drug, there’s little to worry about. There is effectively no ceiling on how much sex is good for you but, there might be a floor. Having no sexual activity of any kind seems to be unnatural in the sense that all creatures on this Earth have the innate objective to pass their genes on to the next generation. And the only biological way to do that is through sex.

Of course, we’re usually not looking to produce any babies when we engage in sex today. Unlike the Aka and Ngandu, sex is for play and showing affection. If we assume that these tribes act and behave as humans would have thousands of years ago or if we just didn’t have all this technology then the one group that demonstrates sexual frequency when child bearing is not a concern is the 40 – 45 age group.

They have sex anywhere from 2 – 5 times a week while Americans barely do it more than once. It is generally acknowledged by modern medicine and research that sex lowers stress, fights depression, is good exercise, boosts the immune system, and more. So what does modern research say about how much sex we need at minimum to get these benefits?

Dr. Stephen Juan shared these insights on The Register from various studies and experts:

According to Dr Carl Charnetski of the Department of Psychology at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, people who reported one or two sexual “episodes” per week enjoyed higher levels of Immunoglobin A. This is an antibody that helps fight disease.

According to a study by Dr David Weeks, a clinical neuropsychologist at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Scotland and co-author of Superyoung (1999), men and women who reported having sex an average of four times per week looked approximately 10 years younger than they really were.

WebMD notes a study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health that noted “having sex twice or more a week reduced the risk of fatal heart attack by half for the men, compared with those who had sex less than once a month.” That same article also quoted a study in the British Journal of Urology International that found ”men who had five or more ejaculations weekly while in their 20s reduced their risk of getting prostate cancer later by a third.”

If we combine the study of the Aka and the Ngandu with modern scientific research, it seems to show that sex 2 – 5 times a week provides all the health benefits and would be a natural occurrence for humans not looking for offspring.

Reality Check

Of course, no matter how many studies we can point to or data we collect about the benefits of sex and frequency of sex, we can’t actually show that sex causes things like improved health and longevity. There are no controlled studies to demonstrate this nor would any such study really be possible. All available studies are dependent on what people remember and claim they did. There can also be sample bias where healthy people just happen to have more sex opposed to sex being the reason they are healthy.

This is a case where the science is there for fun and decoration more than anything else. We can determine for ourselves whether sex is good or not based on how much we enjoy doing it. I’d make the case that we generally feel good during and after sex and we like to think about sex before we have it. If the logic holds that we should do more of the things that are good for us then we should have as much safe sex as we can.

That’s probably what our ancient ancestors did. They liked sex as much as we do. While they weren’t being chased by saber tooth cats, hunting bison, foraging for root vegetables, making shelters, tending fires, sharpening tools, or doing other things for survival, they probably had sex or some other play activity. Which is what we should strive to do more of in the modern world: play.

We should play as much as we can. And as all the science and generations of human experience seem to suggest: sex is a great candidate for play. The number of times is probably not nearly as important as the quality of the experience. Great sex fewer times probably has more benefits–and is more satisfying–than mediocre sex many times. But, we shouldn’t take the quality over quantity argument to the extreme. It should be good like a home-cooked meal and it should happen more frequently than appearances of a full moon.

There are so many things that I want to write about that I can’t sit still and write about any single one of them. It’s a problem. Instead, I’m watching Weeds on Netflix! Great show. You need to watch it if you haven’t seen it before. And speaking of Netflix, I don’t have any problems with a single thing they’ve done in the last few months. Everyone else appears to be fuming and Netflix’s stock price has sunk like a faceless corpse tied to a stone. I don’t get it. Why are people still renting DVDs?!

Anyway, I poured myself a hefty glass of merlot–a little more than a quarter of a whole bottle. I figured it was going to help me with these allergies I’m having. Changing of seasons always tends to be slightly problematic. I’m not sure if it helped since I’ve also turned on my air purifiers. That probably actually did something. Oh well, the wine has other effects and since I didn’t eat much of anything today, there’s a magnified effect! I’m writing this a little buzzed. That’s where the best writing comes from!

What Hunger Should Feel Like

One of the things I wanted to write about is the feeling of hunger. I’ve been experimenting–trying, practicing, or whatever one would call it–intermittent fasting since the beginning of the year. I feel like I’ve mastered the idea of it. Intermittent fasting is exactly as it sounds. Fasting for short periods of time. In this oddball world where conventional wisdom tells us we should be eating small meals more frequently, why would I bother trying something so antithetical to the mainstream?

That’s actually a silly question since I’m all about trying things that are against conventional wisdom. I’m hesitant to just believe without some first hand experience on the matter. I’m all about making my own decisions. It’s the rugged individualist inside.

It’s a theme in my life which I’ll get back to in a little bit but, before I get way off track: hunger. Since January, I’ve been eating 2 or fewer meals a day. No, I’m not starving myself. I haven’t told you what my 2 or fewer meals consist of. You’d probably think I’m stuffing myself if you knew! The reality is that I am neither starving nor stuffing myself. My improved body composition–bigger, stronger, leaner–can attest to that.

It will probably be difficult for most people to imagine how it would feel to not have hunger control their lives. It used to control mine. I am sitting here right now having had some cheese, an apple, and two cups of coffee. It’s late in the afternoon and that’s all I’ve eaten today. It isn’t because I’m not hungry. At least, not hungry as most people understand it. I wouldn’t mind eating but, I am not crippled by this feeling of hunger.

See, the feeling of hunger that I generally have now is completely different than the feeling of hunger that I used to have before I found the paleo diet and learned about how the human body works. I don’t get pains in my stomach and I’m able to focus on other tasks while my body would like some nourishment. I generally eat something in the morning. Sometimes, I skip breakfast altogether! Don’t tell the Obesity Police or they might arrest me!

If I had a large dinner–which happens quite often, again, don’t tell the Obesity Police!–then I usually don’t wake up feeling like I really need any food in the morning. I am aware of all the studies that say eating breakfast is the key to staying lean but, let’s be honest with ourselves: eating breakfast does not cause you to be lean. There happens to be some high correlation which means we should look into why there is a correlation. Eating breakfast alone doesn’t guarantee you’ll be lean. I’m lean and I skip breakfast. There’s many people who are lean and do the same. Granted, there’s many who carry a few pounds too many and also skip breakfast. So this tells us eating breakfast doesn’t mean you’ll be lean or fat one way or the other. Don’t let pseudo science trick you!

So my hunger feeling is more a sense of heightened alertness. I am actually more alert during these periods of fasting when my body would like to eat but, doesn’t necessarily have to. I don’t let my body get to a point where it has to or it’ll die–that’s just stupid–but, I don’t let meal times dictate my day. I am so much more efficient not having to take lunch in the middle of the day.

I believe that’s how humans should feel when it comes to hunger. Chronic hunger is bad but, not this heightened sense of alertness. It’s hard to explain until you feel it yourself and the key to get to such a place is to stop eating bread, grains, processed foods, and carbs. Once you get lean–low teens or less–you can eat as many carbs as you want like tubers but, not bread or potato chips. Until then, you want to chow down on lots of fat and protein–err on the side of fat. Your body will then adjust to using fat for energy and you’ll be able to go hours and hours without eating. I did it. Many others have as well. A body that runs on sugar–carbs–is a very inefficient body. You want to run on fat; it frees you from having to eat every 2 – 3 hours and from feeling grumpy just because you missed a meal.

It’s a wonderful thing.

Occupy Occupy Occupy!

And now back to the rugged individualist thing. Occupy Wall St is still going strong. I’m a little surprised that there’s so much momentum behind this thing. I’m not a supporter of all the messages that are coming out of there but, I support the people’s right to assemble and freedom of speech. I’m not going to get into scum-on-the-bottom-of-a-barrel behavior and make fun of them like many Liberals/Leftists/Democrats decided to do with the Tea Party. I have my own gripes with the modern day Tea Party but, there is much in common between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall St.

I don’t want to get into that exactly but, I was an original Tea Partier. Back in 2007 when Ron Paul supporters donated $6 million to his campaign in a single day on December 16th–the day of the Boston Tea Party. That’s where the Tea Party originated. It was then co-opted by Fox News, Neoconsertives, and the far Right. It was sad. I was disappointed but, what can you do?

So with Occupy Wall St, I’ve been trying to convince some individuals that the focus should be on the real problems and not the symptoms and I’m not really sure I’m getting through. But, whatever. There’s an ideological divide that I have with the core of the movement and that is the idea of the 99%. I really hate collectivism. I’m all about being me. I love being me. I don’t like being another faceless person in the crowd.

Which, if I was in the 99%–and technically I am–then I would be just another faceless person and I’m really not willing to give up my individualism. That doesn’t sit well with me and I know I am a lot different than the folks who thought up this 99% thing. Firstly, I’m not out there protesting and I have a damn good reason not to. I don’t believe in protesting. I don’t see the point. I can’t change minds but being out there annoying the crap out of other people. If I want to change hearts and minds–and that’s what I want to do–I need to convince people without annoying them to death. It’s not so showy but, I think it works better if I can change their minds by listening, talking, sharing, and understanding where they’re coming from and why they believe what they do. And maybe I’m wrong but, I’ll never know if all I’m doing is out there making noise that will leave 99% of the people I’m trying to inform annoyed, disgusted, and generally displeased.

Marketers should understand what I’m saying.

I don’t like playing the victim. Yes, I know that these big corporations got a lot of bailout money. I hate that. I hate this corporatist system we have where Big Business is in bed with Big Government. This is all terrible and I shine the light of criticism on it daily–my Facebook friends can attest to that. But, I’m not just going to sit and complain hoping that something magical will happen. Yes, I see how incredibly broken this world is and the only thing I can do is work around it. I’m going to work my ass off and do what I can. I will take the information I have and make the best of it. I will not go and lobby for handouts just because other people got handouts. No chance in hell. I’m going to do it right.

And that might just be my biggest gripe with Occupy Wall St. The protestors are largely looking for something. They want to end all the corporate welfare–which is a good thing–but, they also think they deserve some kind of welfare. Whether it be their student loans being forgiven or free health care or more free education or whatever. These are people who want to abolish one form of welfare and replace it with another. I can’t support that but, I will absolutely fight for those people’s rights to express themselves and assemble peacefully.

The Fall of Men?

Now enough of that, let’s go to an entirely different topic. I’ve come across a few articles recently about the fall of men or basically how women are improving their standing in society–collectively–and men are falling behind. The fact that these are all things that take men and women as collective groups annoy me already but, I can understand the usefulness of it when it comes to studying groups.

The whole idea that men are in trouble and that women are leap frogging us is ridiculous. It makes for great books and editorials but, that’s about it. There is only a story here because we have separated people into two teams: males and females. If we just combined the two groups and viewed it as how the United States population doing, it would be good news. Apparently, good news doesn’t sell so we need to somehow make a story out of this and you can’t have a story without a conflict. So, let’s use the oldest rivalry known to man: Man vs Woman.

Does no one else see this?

It really couldn’t be more apparent. Why is this a story? Men and women have had different roles all throughout human history. In some cultures, women are on top. In others, men are. And if we were to look even further, gender roles change constantly. There are times when women were viewed as equals to men and other times when women were held in higher or lesser regard. So what? This isn’t some kind of danger for men nor is it a danger for humanity.

What is a danger for humanity is that we’re playing this game of dumbasses where we want separate into two different teams when in reality, there’s one team: human kind. Men and women have worked together for hundreds of thousands of years to get to where we are today so this tiny blip in human history–and in this country specifically–is meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

Whatever roles men and women are going to play in our collective future is likely going to be the right ones. It is a reaction to a changing society than a sign of the end of civilization as we know it. And for all the hardcore feminists: no, you cannot continue the human race by yourselves. So try not to use this fabricated story to gloat too much. I know you folks like to degrade men because you feel men have degraded your kind in the past but, how about you grow the hell up? You cannot make things right by doing wrongs. Also, your concept of history is entirely too narrow. Expand your understanding of how human beings have lived since the dawn of time and you’ll discover that neither gender owes the other anything.

A Shortage of Good Men?

On a similar topic, I’d like to address this other asinine idea that proponents of the men are doomed theory that there are no good single men out there. You’ve heard, I’ve heard it, your mother has heard it, everyone has heard it. There’s a shortage of good men out there!

And that might be true. I don’t know, I’m not out looking for men. However, I happen to have the insight of someone looking for the other sex! Of course, no one thinks the opinion of men in these editorials are important. I’m not sure why. You’d think these authors and editors would want both sides of the story–unless they’re fabricating a story, of course.

Let’s say there really are no good men out there. Well, I hate to break it to you but, there are also no good women out there. Well, okay, not none but very few. I’ve never complained that there’s few good women out there. Why? Because this is nothing new! Are we just expecting that every person we meet is going to be awesome? What kind of fairy tale story are we trying to live? To find that one person who is the most amazing, you’re going to need to look a while and meet a lot of people who suck–how else would you know what awesome is?

And, for the most part, it isn’t because awesome people only exist in small quantities and only a few lucky ones are going to ever find such a rarity. How could that possibly make sense? How could everyone in the world be looking for the same thing and only a few people hold such qualities? The idea itself is absurd.

But, that’s the idea we’re given and told to believe. Well, I have a different idea: maybe the problem is that we don’t understand ourselves. That we aren’t sure who we are so we don’t know what we’re looking for. It is impossible to find what you want if you don’t know what it is that you want! And it is close to impossible to know what you want if you don’t know who you are.

Yes, I am bringing this all back to the idea of individualism. Maybe it’s just my own bias but, I don’t believe there is someone else out there that “completes me”. I am a whole person by myself. Another person would not make me whole, she would make me two. One plus one is two. One plus one is not one–and no, multiplication wouldn’t make sense.

This isn’t to say I don’t believe in love. I believe in it just fine. I’m probably more of a romantic than most people. I just don’t believe in stupid senseless shit–how’s that for alliteration? I’m not some expert of relationships or love or any of that. I just happen to be a living person and I tend to distrust experts when my life experience tells me otherwise.

In a future day, I will elaborate on all of this. Until then, I’m going to leave it at that. But, speaking of living…

Look Amazing and Have a Life?

I have finally tried going to the gym only twice a week for a month. It wasn’t easy. I wanted to go more often. I still want to go more often but, I had to try this experiment. If I am able to make solid gains by just going twice a week then I have to ask myself why I bother wasting time going more often. There’s so many other things that I could be doing and I’ve been able to do some of them in the last month.

It’s a beautiful thing. The verdict so far is that I am making solid gains. I haven’t turned into a pile of weak mush or gained fat. I am as lean as ever and it does appear I’m putting on muscle. I know I’m getting stronger because the weights are going up. I also feel great because I am fully rested and recovered every time I hit the gym. It really is amazing that two times a week is able to garner results.

I will continue this twice a week plan because it frees up time for me to do other things while allowing me to make progress in body composition and strength–that’s why I go to the gym. I’ve had to be more creative about how I train because I can’t just bombard myself with more days. I need to do the most efficient exercises, rep/set scheme, etc. in order to get the most out of just two days.

If you really don’t know what you’re doing at the gym, a twice a week plan will make it glaringly obvious. The key? Big compound movements and intensity. There’s a little more to it but, that’s the core concept. My plan is simple and could probably use more improvements but, so far this is what I’ve come up with:

Warm Up Complex

• hang snatch x 5
• overhead squat x 5
• military press x 5
• hang clean x 5
• front squat x 5

This complex is performed as many times as I want. Usually, I just do it once since twice seems to affect my other lifts.

Front Squats

• 4 sets of 5
• 1 set of max reps at a solid weight

A solid weight is something that I can rep at least 5 times but, could also do more. The idea is to blast the last set with volume to trigger more hypertrophy than if I just did another set of 5 reps with a heavier weight.

Dead lift

• 5-3-2 set scheme

Bench Press

• 4 sets of 5
• 1 set of max reps at a solid weight

A solid weight is the same idea as for the front squat.

Pull-ups

• 50+ in shortest time
• temporary failure on every set

My 3000 in 30 experiment showed that going to failure on every set made the most difference in muscle growth and strength so leave nothing in the tank. I just chose 50 because after doing over a hundred a day for 30 days, anything else seems too little. You can scale it to whatever number best suits you. I also try to do them in the shortest amount of time possible because I can either do a lot of reps or do fewer reps in less time. Just tweaking the variables there.

That’s all for this edition of General Musings. It was scattered but, there was a lot swirling in my mind. I didn’t even get to all of them! Almost everything I talked about here deserves it’s own in-depth blog post and perhaps they’ll get one eventually.

At age 56, Steve Jobs has passed away. It was quite shocking even though the state of his health was no mystery. I found out through a text message from a friend. It was sad news and the Internet quickly swelled with quotes and memories of Steve Jobs. The man will not be soon forgotten.

It wasn’t too long ago that I called myself a PC. Not that it really meant anything, I didn’t know why I didn’t like Apple products. I didn’t know much about Steve Jobs aside from the fact that he headed up Apple and Bill Gates headed up Microsoft. Microsoft was the champion of Team PC and Apple was the champion of Team Mac.

I used PCs all my life so I was on Team PC.

I grew up with Windows based computers. That’s what my parents understood because that’s what they used at work. My parents aren’t particularly computer savvy. I am often reteaching them how to do things with their laptop, digital camera, digital camcorder, digital picture frame, etc. that they promised to remember and understand if I taught them once.

I’ve used Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows ME, Windows ME Second Edition, and Windows XP. I’ve toyed with Windows Vista and Windows 7 but, I haven’t owned a PC with Microsoft’s latest OS offerings–Vista was also terrible so I stuck to XP like a lot of other people did. Microsoft and Windows in particular underscored my technological life from my first computer until I got an iPhone–the 3GS model.

That was the trojan horse that will forever change the way I appreciate technology.

One would be hard pressed not to appreciate the attention to detail and glaring pride in workmanship that went into every inch of the iPhone. I work in the technology industry and develop software. I do a lot of work for iOS nowadays and that has only strengthened my ability to see the difference in a piece of software written by Apple for OSX and software I used to use on Windows: it’s a non-comparison. Both pieces of software will work if you know how to use them but, the Apple version will be beautifully designed, thought out, and user-friendly.

Apple’s approach to their products has changed how I view software and how I view what quality work looks like. I can make things that work  or I can make things that work beautifully. The first is easy and any competent person can do it. The second is what fascinates and gets wide-eyed reactions.

I’m naturally opposed to mediocrity. I had a teacher in high school who often railed against mediocrity. I don’t remember if he taught chemistry or physics but, I will always remember his message to never settle for mediocrity. And for as long as I can remember, I always try to outdo myself or some other standard whenever I can.

So while Apple’s marketing was never able to convince me to buy a Mac because I was so ingrained with how Windows worked, I had no such baggage with smartphones. I also owned a first generation iPod Nano but, that didn’t convince me of much more than that Steve Jobs knew how to deliver a keynote.

The iPhone combined with Microsoft’s inability to produce a solid operating system and the surge of work brought about by the Apple App Store took me from being pro-PC and anti-Mac to respecting, appreciating, and loving Apple’s business model, business practices, and their products. I bought a MacBook Air recently and I love it.

When my parents ask me what new computer they should get, I tell them to get a Mac.

In my journey from PC to Mac, I’ve also learned a lot more about Steve Jobs. There’s a lot about the man that I like. In fact, the more I learn about him, the more I like him. I love his dedication to hard work. To constantly improve upon what he’s done. To never settle. His 2005 Stanford commencement speech is one of the best speeches I’ve ever listened to.

I secretly wish that Apple has clones of Steve Jobs in their top secret underground bunker and are just waiting to bring one to life. The world has so much to benefit from his genius. The world is already immeasurably better off because Steve Jobs existed. People may not realize it but, our lives would all be drastically different–and generally poorer–if it was’t for these little boxes we call computers. Steve Jobs pioneered the personal computer. Those iPhones are tiny computers that we can have with us at all times. Steve Jobs had a very visible hand in that.

The man has done a great deal to benefit mankind and made a fortune in the process. That’s how we know his affect on the world was great. Not because he signed legislations into law or started public programs with no means of measuring effectiveness. He gave the world advanced machines that could only be conceived of in science fiction films a few decades ago. Machines that you aren’t even aware is making your life better, easier, or more convenient until you no longer have access to them.

Steve Jobs is also partly responsible for my job. I know that I am most responsible for my job but, it is because of the App Store, iPhone, and iPad that I have a job doing what I’m doing. Apple’s products–under the direction of Steve Jobs–has created an ecosystem that is responsible for more jobs than any government stimulus program. I could very well just be doing something else if Apple never released iOS devices but, it’s been the biggest boom in business in the last two years as the economy continues to tank. I–along with thousands of others–could very well be unemployed if Apple didn’t release the products that ended up creating these jobs that no one could have predicted would exist.

And that’s the true magic of Steve Jobs and people like him: their work benefits others in ways that no one could predict.

I only wish I had known more about Steve Jobs earlier but, there’s little one can do to change the past. I’m just glad Jobs’ genius touched me while he was still alive. The way I see the world, work, and life has changed greatly since the days I played for Team PC. It wasn’t all because of Apple, Jobs, iPhones, and Macs but, they all contributed to it.

The culture and mindset–Think Different–that Steve Jobs cultivated at Apple compliments my beliefs and views tightly and that’s largely why and how I became a Mac.

Before we get too excited, I’m talking about man-breasts. Not so appealing now, is it?

So, what does bread have to do with jugs on a dude? Everything. It might be the single biggest factor leading to more and more men walking around with a protruding belly and a pair of man-breasts as a complement. I’ve advocated breaking up with bread in the past but, this might be the best one yet. My past reasons to break up with bread were good ones but, nothing holds a candle to how bread–specifically the wheat–causes you to gain visceral fat, develop a pot belly, and then the dreaded man boobs.

Conventional wisdom is to eat healthy whole grains. Things like whole wheat bread, cereal, pasta, etc. Whole grains are healthier than white flour. This is true. Studies have shown that markers of health all improve when you replace white flour with wheat flour. However, as Dr. Davis, the author of Wheat Belly, points out, just because something is better doesn’t mean a lot of it is even better.

Stated differently: just because filtered cigarettes will kill you slower than unfiltered ones doesn’t mean that more filtered cigarettes will make you live forever.

That’s the logic error we’ve made with wheat. It’s better than white flour but, that doesn’t mean it isn’t still detrimental to your health. And just by using our observational abilities, we can see that folks are getting fatter and fatter while they are eating more and more healthy whole grains. We can’t claim causation through such a general observation but, you’d have to be blind as a bat to not see that there is clearly something going on!

How Bread Makes You Fat

Bread doesn’t give you man cans in a direct A leads to B scenario. So, we’re going to look at how eating bread leads to weight gain of the visceral fat variety and then how the visceral fat creates a host of health issues including it’s physical manifestations of pot bellies and man-breasts. This is a two step dance so stay with me. You should always be skeptical of folks who just says A causes B without something to substantiate it so I will give lay it out for you.

A study came out in 2008 that said vegetable-rich food pattern is related to obesity in China. Now, that’s a pretty absurd thing to say. The full text was freely available  in 2008 but, has been locked behind a pay wall now. Luckily, folks much smarter than me had a chance to read it and write about it. The Internet is a wonderful thing. I direct you to what Stephen Guyenet and Denise Minger had to say about this study if you want a more in depth look at it. I will just summarize.

So, how in the world can a vegetable-rich diet be related to obesity?! Are the vegetables in China made out of candy?

This study separated people into four different groups that ate different foods. A glaring difference was that the vegetable-rich group was wheat based instead of rice based. The study concludes that it was the use of vegetable oils in the stir-frying that was responsible for the weight gain; I’m willing to wager that the vegetable oils probably added some since they are very bad as well. However, the fat intake in the vegetable-rich group wasn’t any higher than any other group so that’s not a strong hook to hang your hat on.

The researchers were probably stumped as to why the vegetable-rich group gained weight while everyone else didn’t since the world at large is so indoctrinated into the idea that wheat is heart healthy and is what we need for weight loss. Their best explanation within this mindset was: the vegetable oils did it! If we consider that wheat plays a role in weight gain, it is glaringly obvious that the wheat also explains why the vegetable-rich group gained weight. It correlates better, too.

Certainly, the idea that vegetables is responsible for weight gain is highly unlikely. People in China have been eating vegetables and rice for a very long time and there is no record that shows Chinese people having been traditionally obese. The big difference is the wheat flour and whole grains. Vegetable oils are foreign to the diet as well but, wheat was a bigger factor than vegetable oil.

This study demonstrates that wheat is responsible for weight gain even though the researchers concluded it was the vegetables. I guess they were more willing to throw vegetables under the bus than wheat.

Now, there’s more to the bread story than just this study! According to Wheat Belly, the protein gliadin in wheat also leads us to eat more. It has an addictive nature that accounts for about 400 extra calories a day than folks who do not eat wheat. The study I referenced above also noted that the vegetable-rich group consumed more calories. This is all consistent with what wheat does: it makes you eat more.

We know that eating more insulin-spiking foods like wheat bread leads to more fat storage as that’s what insulin does. Insulin takes excess blood glucose–which are derived from carbohydrates in food–and stores it as fat. Gary Taubes of Why We Get Fat summarizes it as: carbs drives insulin, insulin drives fat.

It is pretty clear: wheat makes you fat.

An Active Fat

There’s essentially two types of body fat: subcutaneous fat and visceral fat. We’re going to look at the more deadly and active visceral variety. Visceral fat is different than subcutaneous fat in that visceral fat isn’t just sitting there like a blob. It’s actively producing inflammatory signals and abnormal cytokines. Basically, visceral fat disrupts normal body signaling. The more visceral fat you have, the greater the disruption of normal body signaling and the worse your health becomes.

Visceral fat is also tightly associated with metabolic syndrome. It appears that visceral fat is a necessary component for the development of insulin resistance which leads to diabetes and a host of other issues.

Now, that’s all things that you cannot see and ultimately not that scary until you need to get a foot amputated. But, here comes the kicker, that tire of visceral fat sitting in your midsection is also an estrogen factory. Yup, we’re talking about the female sex hormone that turns girls into women complete with women parts. A little side note for the ladies, excessive estrogen in women is also detrimental to health.

Estrogen is largely responsible for the development of breasts and so the visceral fat living happily in the protruding bellies of men everywhere is the cause for man cans. Men require very little estrogen to function normally so even the slightest increase in estrogen is going to be detrimental. The health consequences of estrogen production by visceral fat is wide and varied. Levels of the hormone, prolactin, is also stimulated by visceral fat. That’s the hormone responsible for stimulating milk production and breast tissue growth.

Are you ready to declare a jihad bread yet? It is literally making you less of a man by giving you female parts and hormones.

Leave the Bread to the Birds

So I recommend you take all the bread in your house and feed it to the birds. They actually do eat grains; that’s their natural diet. If you have GrapeNuts, feed them that too–it practically looks like bird food; I’m not sure how any human can eat that stuff.

Bread might taste good and you may have grown up eating it but, that really doesn’t mean you should keep doing it. The wheat used to make bread 50 years ago, 100 years ago, or longer are different than the wheat we eat today. We’ve genetically modified and hybridized our wheat crops so much that they are nothing like what they used to be.

Today’s bread is killing you. Get rid of it. You don’t need it and it’s turning you into a woman. Male fertility is declining all over the world. The whole world is eating more and more wheat of the GMO variety. I am unaware of a study that demonstrates a connection between wheat and fertility but, observationally I think we can make a loose correlation: increased wheat consumption correlates to decreased male fertility. There’s something going on here!

The health of populations deteriorate everywhere that wheat is introduced along with its partners in crime: vegetable oil and high fructose corn syrup.

So how can you avoid a fate of man-breasts and pot bellies? Or reverse such a fate? It isn’t that hard. Stop eating wheat. Remove processed foods from your diet. Eat real, whole foods. Shop the perimeter of the supermarket. Cook your own foods. Eat out less–it’ll be better for your wallet, too.

Just changing your diet without adding a lick of exercise will lead to results. Try the ancestral way of eating or what is more popularly known as the paleo diet. Ignore the conventional wisdom experts. They’ve been spewing the same information for decades and America’s health has gone from bad to worse. It might be time to try something new.

Things are clearly escalating and getting out of hand with this protest. I support everyone’s right to a peaceful assembly and I am strongly against police abuse of power. The police are not above the law even if they think they are. I read an article about Marines and other members of the United States armed forces joining the protestors to protect them from police brutality. I support all of that.

But, it appears this is all getting out of hand.

I’m not entirely sure what is being protested. Bailouts? Unemployment? Jobs? What exactly is being protested?

From what I’ve seen on YouTube and read on OccupyWallSt.org, it appears people are angry that Wall Street is making a lot of money while everyone else is unemployed or underemployed. If that is what this protest is about then I really can’t support the reasoning for the protest.

Wall Street is making a lot of money while the rest of us aren’t. I don’t work on Wall Street. I have nothing to do with Wall Street. But, Wall Street weren’t the ones who forcibly took money from me and gave it to themselves in the form of huge bonuses while their companies were financially unsound. They are still financially unsound. Nothing has been fixed. The big banks will be asking for more bailouts again.

I know that Wall Street took dirty money. They took money stolen from you and me. They took it to continue living their lifestyle of plenty while the rest of us are barely getting by. I get it. It’s happening. I see it.

However, it wasn’t Wall Street that did this to us. Even if we were to blame the economic downturn entirely on the housing bubble, Wall Street didn’t create the bubble. Wall Street merely profited from the bubble and the subsequent bursting of the bubble. Those aren’t commendable actions and if Wall Street had more moral fiber, they wouldn’t have done what they did. Clearly, they don’t but, having poor character isn’t a crime.

Stealing my money, your money, your grandmother’s savings, and the money of people yet to be born: those are crimes. Wall Street didn’t do the stealing, they just took the stolen money. The thieves are in DC. Don’t let the bright white buildings in the capital blind you, the only entity in the whole country that has the power of legalized theft is in Washington, DC. The Congress and the President–the current one and the previous one–stole money from you, me, your grandmother, and still-nursing children to give to their friends on Wall Street and elsewhere.

Wall Street took it. Wall Street obviously isn’t an angel but, they also aren’t the source of the problem. Their influence on Washington, DC is a problem but, why does Washington, DC have the power to legally steal from anyone anyway? No one else has this power.

Maybe–just maybe–Washington, DC has gotten too big and has too much power? Think about it.

While, I think it’s refreshing to see people motivated to do something. To show their distaste for what is happening today. I would suggest Occupying Washington, DC instead. Or, occupy the Federal Reserve Bank in New York–it’s right there by Wall St–or the main Federal Reserve building in DC. If there’s an entity possibly more guilty of this reverse Robin Hood theft than the politicians in Washington, DC, it’s the money changers at the Federal Reserve.

I hope that all those involved with Occupy Wall Street takeaway one thing from my message:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Our Founders were wise and we should try to channel them from time to time. Ignore the fools who dismiss them as slave-owning white folks. No one is perfect in any time period but, even flawed individuals can produce at least one insight of genius in their lifetime. We have theirs written down in our Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers–rarely mentioned with first two but, just as important.

Government derives it’s power from the consent of the governed. That’s us but, we haven’t consented to this. We didn’t consent to bailout Wall Street. And even if we did, the Americans who are yet to be born didn’t and this government has taken their future wealth and prosperity as well.

We don’t need violent revolutions and I am weary that Occupy Wall Street is becoming too violent. I don’t want to see European-style riots in America. No one needs to get hurt or worse. Our Republic, even in this dilapidated and crippled state, still offers us the means to fix the problems that plague us: an out of control and gigantic Federal government.

Stay safe. Stay peaceful. The solutions to our problems lie with Liberty and the rest of our founding principles.

One of the reasons people try vegetarianism is to boycott the inhumane treatment of animals. Namely cows, chickens, and pigs. Spectacular documentaries like Food, Inc have shed light on the horrible living conditions of these animals in factory farms. There is no reasonable person who would question how cruel and disgusting our conventional livestock farming system is.

But, the moral question isn’t and shouldn’t be the only unacceptable reason. Animals raised in these filthy and cramped conditions are substantially poorer in nutrition and kept alive by drugs to combat the illnesses they develop because of the unsanitary living conditions. It is no coincidence that a population eating these nutritiously inferior and sick animals are also themselves nutrient deficient and sick.

The old saying is right: you are what you eat.

The fight to raise livestock humanely is not solely a vegetarian cause. In fact, vegetarians have little affect on the food producers compared to those of us who consume meat. Which is why choosing to become a vegetarian for moral reasons is misguided and unhelpful to the cause of improving the living conditions of livestock.

Imagine you wanted to change the way farmers–all farmers–grow their vegetables. You want pesticide free, organically grown, and non-GMO produce because it doesn’t have harmful pesticides, is more nutritious, and isn’t genetically modified. Would you stop eating vegetables? Of course not! That wouldn’t do anything to change their practices. If we opt out of doing business with them, we have no pull with them. We are no longer in the market.

Instead, we chose to buy vegetables that were organically grown, pesticide free, and non-GMO. And this has created an industry of better farmed produce.

That’s the most effective way to affecting change in farming practices. You reward the farms and companies who are inline with your beliefs. This idea should be applied to changing the way cows, pigs, chickens, and other livestock are raised.

Even though I don’t believe vegetarianism is a healthy diet choice, I am not interested in debating that. If you believe that a vegetarian diet is best for your health then who am I to tell you otherwise? Only you can decide what’s best for you and I accept that. But, on the issue of morality, deciding to boycott meat does nothing to change the system.

Imagine the size of the market of vegetarians who decided to become vegetarians for moral reasons and other people in the growing whole foods movement. Together, we are a powerful incentive for big farms to cater to our wants. There’s substantial market share to be had and that’s what every business wants.

We saw it with produce and we’ll see it with meat but, we can get there faster if those who chose vegetarianism for moral reasons can see that it is not helping the cause of raising livestock humanely. I would urge those considering vegetarianism for moral reasons to reconsider. The logic is there. Boycotts are rarely effective. Companies tend to cave due to the negative press but, there is no negative press associated with your choice to not eat meat. Vote with your dollars by rewarding those who are doing the right thing opposed to withdrawing completely and indirectly punishing the farmers doing the right thing.

And besides, when was the last time you salivated over a piece of lettuce? Just the thought of a delicious steak cooking on a grill is mouth watering. There’s a reason for that.

Do you want a bigger back? That highly coveted V-shaped torso? The even more coveted six pack abs? Or any abs at all really. How about forearms with the strength to crush rocks? Or at least other people’s hands? There might be some women on the planet who aren’t interested in such things at all but, I can’t think of many men who wouldn’t. In fact, we–as men–are willing resort to almost every form of exercise and nutrition trickery to get there.

Well, I am going to give you the secret to the V shaped torso, bone crushing grip strength, and ab definition that you’ve only dreamed of. Are you ready? The secret to all those things is the pull-up.

How could it be that simple? Why should it be difficult? There is a caveat, of course. You’d have to be in fairly good shape to begin with for this to work. If you can’t do a single pull-up, this isn’t for you. Part of the secret is doing an insane volume of pull-ups. If you can’t do 1, it’ll be very hard to do 100.

Come back to this after you’ve improved your base strength. For the rest of you, here’s what over 3000 pull-ups did to me–and can do for you–in 30 days. I wish I was selling you something but, I’m not. The idea couldn’t be simpler. It is up to you to do it.

Back to Basics

3305. That’s how many pull-ups I mustered from August 18th, 2011 to September 16th, 2011. I also managed 3422 push-ups and 3431 box jumps in the same time period. I called it my 3000 in 30 Challenge. Why did I attempt this seemingly insane volume of basic exercises? Because I read this article. In it, the author did 13,064 pull-ups in 5 months. My volume and his volume are about the same. I wanted to see what this kind of high volume training would do. And I am quite pleased with the results.

I probably don’t do 3000 pull-ups in any given year. Most people probably do a lot less than that–like 0. I haven’t done high volume exercises since my early high school years when I didn’t really know much else or have access to much equipment. The push-up was my MVP of exercises. Push-ups require no equipment so I did them to death. I worked up to knocking out a couple hundred a night. My record is 104 push-ups non-stop.

Pull-ups, on the other hand, I hated. They are hard. I was a chubby kid and weak to boot–those two things tend to go hand in hand. Physical fitness tests in gym class had pull-ups. I could never muster a single a pull-up. Most kids couldn’t either. Except for the few superstars–they were good at all athletics. I survived embarrassingly hanging on the bar in an attempt to do pull-ups. A lot of other kids did as well. Childhood is embarrassing.

Somewhere along the way I fell in love with strength training and weight lifting. Like a lot of young boys, I found bodybuilding and related men’s magazines.  The physiques of those models just seemed right–except the freakish bodybuilders. I was a big Men’s Health reader. I still like them. Their models are what men should look like. Most men don’t look like that. I didn’t look like that.

And there began the lifelong journey to look like those fitness models. I’m still on the journey but, my priorities have evolved. I’ve never been closer to being there and with the right lighting and some Photoshop, I might just look like I fit on the pages of Men’s Health. Looking like a gladiator is important to me but, so is being healthy. Truly healthy and not just appearing to be so. My training has always been low in supplements and high on different schemes like rep/set variations, low volume, high volume, high intensity–including HIT, intervals, complexes, etc. Pretty much anything I can find information about.

It is not unlike me to try something as seemingly insane as 3000 pull-ups in 30 days. In fact, I might not do enough of these crazy things! Like any normal human being, I fall into a pattern at times because life is too complex as it is. If I can keep my gym routine more or less predictable, it’s one less thing I need to think about. Not always the best approach but, it sure beats not training at all. Either way, I experiment on myself all the time.

These 3305 pull-ups taught me a few things and I can’t say for sure if it was the pull-ups alone or the pull-ups with the push-ups and the box jumps. All I know is that I did those 3 exercises for 30 days and got some pretty dazzling results. Here’s some highlights of the results:

• My back grew; my brother commented that I have a noticeable V shape now
• My chest grew; the mirror doesn’t lie
• My forearms grew; I’m pretty sure I blasted them
• My abs grew and they are more visible; it is surprising how well pull-ups work your abs
• I got leaner overall; I didn’t measure it with any respectable body fat tool but, sometimes the bathroom mirror is all you need
• I can do 21 pull-ups in a row; that’s up from 9 when I first started

There’s more than just that. My muscular endurance also improved. I am a low rep kind of guy so muscle endurance is not something I have a lot of. Doing at least a hundred pull-ups a day requires endurance. I am stronger: 21 straight pull-ups is nothing to scoff at. The pull-up is one of the best measures of upper body strength.

Things to Consider

This might seem too good to be true but, I can assure you that it isn’t. This type of high volume training is something most people never do and I was certainly in that camp. There might be little benefit to do this workout after more than 30 days but, the initial compensation your body makes due to the new stimulus will transform you.

The first week was hell on earth. I shit you not. I was sore. Everywhere. The soreness went away in about 7 days. The hard part is continuing to do those pull-ups while your body is sore. Your grip will complain. I dead lift 315lbs with an overhand grip. I thought my grip was pretty good. It wasn’t. You might make a similar discovery.

Do the pull-ups on hammer grips or rings but, I don’t recommend doing this many pull-ups on a straight bar. Your elbows will hate you for it if you do. And you can’t do pull-ups if your elbows won’t cooperate.

You will develop massive calluses like you’ve never seen before. I did. In fact, they even split open half way through so I wiped the blood off, grabbed some paper towels, wrapped them around the bars, and kept going. You may literally have to fight through blood and sweat. This little endeavor will separate the men from the boys.

The most important thing in all of this may be that you should do every set to failure. Don’t just do 10 if you can do 11. Don’t save any in the tank. Go all out on every set. Rest. And then do it again until you can’t do anymore. I think that makes a huge difference in the gains you’ll make. Your muscles will cry. It’ll suck. You’ll want to quit. But, what you’ll get at the end of it all is worth it.

A missed day won’t kill you. I missed 3. I think that the rest was actually beneficial. I did more pull-ups in the second half of the month than the first. I did at least 100 on every non-missed day. My best day was my last day. Finish strong. I don’t think it actually matters but, it’s a good habit to have.

Tell everyone you know what you’re doing. They’ll think you’re crazy. And let’s be honest, you have to be a little crazy to even think about this. They will also keep you on the straight and narrow. Do you really want to tell them 30 days later than you gave up on day 10? That doesn’t make a very good story. You want to finish and then tell them all about it–or brag, whatever works for you.

Lastly, more people will come up to you at the gym due to this than anything else you’ve ever done. Specifically, more women. I don’t know why this is but, women don’t find heavy dead lifts, squats, or bench presses very impressive. They do find this impressive. I can’t explain it. I’m also not going to think too much about it. You shouldn’t either, you have a lot of pull-ups to do.

Everything Works

I recently read Never Let Go by Dan John. One of his big points is that everything works for about six weeks. Any switch in workout routine will give you some kind of results for at least the first six weeks. Then it stops. Anyone who has trained for any substantial period of time can attest to this. Every time I try something new my body responds by getting stronger, growing, becoming more endurant, more flexible, or something. There’s something to almost every workout program in existence.

This is no different. This will stimulate but, it won’t stimulate forever. Just keep that in mind. I did it for 30 days and not for months because I don’t think there’s much more to be gained by doing it for longer.

This won’t solve all your problems and might not even be for you. Depends on your goals. I’m not an athlete and at the risk of making athletes cringe, I train to be strong, healthy, and to look good naked. That’s really about it. This works for those goals. It works for at east six weeks.

Before we begin, I am going to tell you that I am here to show how Foxconn is not evil. If you would rather keep your head in the sand and continue to feel ashamed for your using your iPad, Macbook, iPhone, Android phone, HP computer, or a lot of other electronics, you are free to do so. But, I am sick of hearing people repeat economic idiocies they hear from the media so I am going to debunk this myth of slave labor and slave wages in Foxconn factories that produce the very electronics these people condemning Foxconn love to use.

Most of the outrage over Foxconn came about as reports of their employees committing suicide piled up. Why these folks are committing suicide is anyone’s guess. However, this big bad slave driving company gives the families of deceased employees 8.5 – 10 years worth of wages. How evil! The reason people are committing suicide at Foxconn plants is something a psychologist can look into. I am not a psychologist and I’ve never had suicidal tendencies so I don’t have first hand experience to draw from. But, I think it’s pretty safe to say that an evil corporation is under no obligation to pay families of deceased employees ten years worth of wages. A dead employee is not making Foxconn any money. Foxconn sounds like an altruist more than anything else!

Slave Wages

But, you still aren’t convinced so let’s say Foxconn does this as some kind of PR stunt to appease everyone involved. Fair enough. We will instead look at the actual wages Foxconn pays their employees. The average monthly wage for Foxconn employees is $300. “Aha!,” you exclaim, “$300 a month couldn’t pay for my daily cup of Starbucks! Slave wages!” Hang on to your trousers there. This doesn’t sound like much when compared to folks in the United States or other developed nations but, that would be an unfair comparison. Cost of living is lower in China and China is not in the same economic position that we are. I won’t go into detail about how wages and standards of living rise but, the fallacies thrown around for low wages in China are the same as the ones that claimed low wages during the Industrial Revolution and that’s been debunked many times.

So you think $300 a month in China is a slave wage. Fine. We can agree that these folks are more than welcome to leave Foxconn and work somewhere else. If you thought your job wasn’t paying you fairly, you’d go look for another one. Common sense. So why aren’t these people going to work elsewhere? Why are they sticking with these slave labor conditions at Foxconn? Are these Chinese folks just a bunch of a dumbasses? Poor and dumb, right?

For the sake of argument, lets say these poor Chinese folks aren’t dumb. Let’s take a look at their other options. The average hourly factory wage in China is $0.75. It was reported that the Foxconn worker who committed suicide worked 60 hours a week. I’m pretty sure there are accountants during the busy season who eat 60 hour weeks for breakfast but, we’ll consider these slave hours at the risk of offending accountants. So with a little magic of math we can say that the average Chinese factory worker makes $180 a month.

Those greedy capitalists at Foxconn are paying their workers 1.7x more on average. Monsters! I can’t imagine why any Chinese factory worker wouldn’t just get up and leave their terrible positions at Foxconn with all the greener pastures around.

Beijing’s monthly minimum wage is $140. Foxconn pays their employees twice as much on average. Foxconn also employes 800,000 people. Can you believe these people? Almost a million morons who aren’t smart enough to go look for a job that pays better with shorter hours in better working conditions. What rubes! All the smart Asians must have moved to America.

The Value of Money

Now, all this talk about wages is of little importance unless we know what these wages can buy. Absolute numerical value is meaningless when dealing with money. You could have $1 million Zimbabwe dollars and not be able to buy a cup of coffee. Using the famous Big Mac index, it costs $2.30 USD or 14.7 Yuan for a Chinese person to buy a Big Mac. The average Foxconn worker could eat Big Mac’s 3 times a day for 30 days and still have more than a third of their money left. It is important to note that Big Mac’s are not a bargain in China–they are actually more expensive than local foods so no one in China is subsisting on Big Mac’s.

The key point is that Foxconn’s wages do not leave their employees living in cardboard boxes barely able to afford food. No one is crawling around in the dark looking for worms to sustain themselves. To further put things into perspective, an editor for Sina, an online media company in China, is paid the equivalent of $624 a month. That is a little more than twice what a Foxconn factory worker is paid. Let’s look at some other jobs we consider high paying in developed nations: $18,725 annually for a telecommunications engineer, $14,979 annually for an actuary, and $7,490 annually for a western medicine practitioner or what we call doctors–real doctors practice Chinese medicine in China, obviously.

These folks aren’t making boatloads of money but, the cost of living is much lower in China. These engineers, actuaries, and doctors aren’t living poorly. Factory workers aren’t living as well as folks with higher paying jobs but, that’s to be expected. Their daily existence is not nearly as dire as the media or busy bodies over here would have you believe.

Poverty is the natural state of human existence. All the great wealth that we take for granted today didn’t just appear out of no where. Henry Ford didn’t dream of a car and magically put a car in every American’s drive way. Steve Jobs didn’t dream of an iPod and slip it into all of our pockets. That’s not how it happened or ever happens.

People in America used to be as poor as the folks in China. We didn’t have cars, microwaves, televisions, radios, computers, tractors, or anything. We had a farm. We got up at the crack of dawn to do back breaking farm work. Leisure time was a luxury. And even if you had more money than everyone in the world combined, you still couldn’t buy a laptop or a TV or see what your friends are up to on Facebook. It didn’t exist. Money doesn’t create wealth.

Working and saving creates wealth. These Foxconn workers will outgrow their jobs and as the rest of the world continues to improve technology, these low paying entry-level jobs at Foxconn won’t exist much longer. It will become increasingly difficult for people with no real skills other than the mechanical labor to find a job and I’m sure Foxconn will then be condemned for not providing jobs. You can’t appease people who don’t understand economics.

Everyone Wins

We live in a strange time where people believe you go to school to learn a skill so that you can start at a high paying job. That has to be amongst the most ridiculous ideas society has ever spread. We know that most college students come out of college knowing little more than they did before they blew $100,000 and four years. We have decided to throw out a system that has worked for hundreds of years: start at the bottom and work your way up. You learn the skills on the job as people have done for hundreds of years and continue to do.

What’s happening at Foxconn factories and other factories and industries all over China and Asia is how economies grow and standards of living rise. If our schools would teach real history instead of the politically correct version of history, none of this would be shocking.

The debate isn’t whether the Chinese is living as well as we are because they aren’t. Their GDP is tiny compared to ours. It would be comparing a ripe strawberry to an unripe one and complaining the greener strawberry doesn’t taste good. The debate is whether Foxconn is paying slave wages within their economic context and it is pretty clear that they are not.

Go forth and use your Mac’s, iPads, and PC’s with no guilt. You are ensuring poor people in Asia continue to have jobs and can improve their standards of living. You are also ensuring Americans continue to have jobs designing and innovating new electronics. Everyone wins.

*This post was written on a Macbook Air manufactured by Foxconn in China.

I had an urge to flex my study-demolishing muscles and this study about social networking increasing the risk for teen drug and alcohol abuse found it’s way to my attention–it has also made its rounds all over the internet. Here’s the study in it’s entirety. It was produced by Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse or CASA. As in: mi casa es su casa–I’ve also been working on a Spanish translation project at work. There were a whole bunch of findings but, let’s look at these three first as they were the most talked about:

- Five times likelier to have used tobacco (10 percent vs. two percent)

- Three times likelier to have used alcohol (26 percent vs. nine percent)

- Twice as likely to have used marijuana (13 percent vs. seven percent)

Parents would hard pressed not to put the kibosh on their child’s social networking use right now. Computers are only for homework! 5x more likely smoke cigarettes, 3x more likely to drink, and 2x more likely to smoke weed! My god, hide your kids, hide your wives, hide your husbands, social networks are destroying the world!

Now this is compared to kids who apparently don’t spend any time on social networking sites. I’m not really sure where you find these kids. Do they not have computers? No Internet maybe? Are there really kids between 12 and 17 who aren’t on any social network? I find it hard to believe but, let’s say there are.

In order to conduct this survey: 1,006 teens were telephoned and 1,037 teens took an Internet survey. Thirty percent of the teens reported spending no time on social networks or about 600 teens. The study also had this nugget of wisdom:

Despite assurances of confidentiality, some teenage respondents will be reluctant to admit inappropriate or illegal activities to someone unknown to them over the telephone or the Internet.* Therefore, this survey–like any telephone or Internet-based survey conducted in the home and asking respondents to self-report proscribed behaviors–may under-report the extent of the use of illegal drugs, the consumption of tobacco products and alcohol by teenagers, and other negative behaviors, and may over-report positive behaviors.

Really? Can we–with a straight face–really think that extrovert types who spend time on social networks to talk about themselves and be social with others are going to under-report their use of illegal drugs or alcohol? I’m going to suggest that the opposite is more likely to happen: teens who spend time on social networks are going to over-report–privacy is a lesser concern–and the kids who don’t use social networks are going to under-report–privacy is a higher concern. But, this is all anecdotal either way. We’ll just assume the teens are stating the truth.

So how do we account for the increased risk of tobacco, drug, and alcohol use among teens who spend time on social networks and teens who don’t? Firstly, no one should look at these risk factors as being causal. They are little more than correlations. The study does not show that social networks cause teens to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, or smoke weed. It strongly suggests that social networks lead to such behaviors but, an objective view of the study only shows that there’s a larger cross section of teenage social network users who are also teenage substance users compared to the cross section of teenage social network abstainers who are also teenage substance users.

In fact, we could very well say that a great deal of teenage substance users like to use social networks or that being a teenage substance user increases your risk of being a social network user. So why not report it that way? The data equally supports such a statement. The folks who conducted this study had a conclusion that they wanted to prove and they mangled the data to support it.

They also reported this:

Compared to teens who have not seen pictures of kids getting drunk, passed out or using drugs on social networking sites, teens who have seen these pictures are (Figure 2.D):

- Three times likelier to have used alcohol (35 percent vs. 12 percent)

- Four times likelier to have used marijuana (21 percent vs. five percent)

So now you must think that this correlation is more than just some obscure link! Kids who see others doing bad things end up do bad things themselves! Monkey see, monkey do. While it is more than possible that teens will imitate other teens, we also know that birds of a feather flock together. In the case of this study, it could very well be that teens who drink and smoke will have friends who also drink and smoke and they are also friends on social networks. They would see these pictures because they are friends. Social networks don’t generally show you updates from people who aren’t your friends.

The best part of this whole study is at the end when they talk about how the parents feel.

Eighty-seven percent of parents say they think spending time on a social networking site does not make it more likely their child will drink alcohol; 89 percent say spending time on a social networking site does not make it more likely their child will use drugs.

This was in a section titled, “Parents Fail to Appreciate Relationship of Social Networking to Teen Risk of Substance Abuse.” Even though there is not a single causal relationship in the entire study, the authors believe that parents do not appreciate the relationship that social networks have on teenage substance abuse. Parents don’t think social networks are the devil’s work because they understand their children and understand that teens will experience peer pressure and communicate with their friends with whatever means are available–social networks today, telephones a decade ago, letter writing before that, and smoke signals in the stone age.

Teens acting like teens is not a phenomenon of the social age. Trying to link teenage smoking, drinking, and drug use to social networks is akin to pinning those things to going to school. I bet there’s a correlation between drugs and school but, no one is idiotic enough to think that school causes those things.

This is not science. If Facebook didn’t exist, this study would blame something else for the use of drugs and alcohol among teens. The fact is that some teens are going to try drugs and get drunk no matter what you do; no matter how well or poorly they were raised. The problem with drug and alcohol abuse has more to do with the mythology society gives them in the eyes of teens than anything else. Making something forbidden to teenagers only makes them want it more. You were a teen once, this isn’t news.

We should not forget that this is a study based on surveys answered by teenagers. Such observational and uncontrolled studies are inherently too weak for an respectable person to draw conclusions from. There is no evidence to suggest that social networks are doing harm to today’s youth. It has more to do with older folks being unable to grasp the new medium and therefore fear it. That fear leads folks to manipulate studies to support their biases.

That’s all we have here: a study with no causal evidence manipulated to support a preconceived notion that social networks are harming teens. Would somebody please think of the children! 

“We should make the poor uncomfortable and kick them out of poverty.” —Benjamin Franklin

It is socially popular and acceptable to take punches at capitalists and businessmen who create jobs, wealth, and keep society running but, any jokes at the expense of poor people on welfare who are clearly abusing the system has to be said quietly or under one’s breath. You never know when a self-appointed do-gooder is within earshot and ready at a moments notice to jump down your throat for saying something so dastardly! After all, it is distasteful to make poor people the butt of our jokes or have a laugh at their expense.

Everyone knows that it’s not the poor person’s fault for their state of poverty! Why, it’s the businessmen! The white man! The weather. The internet. The illegals. Those damn immigrants! An act of God–or gods. To so much as suggest that a poor person should get off their ass and find a job is unthinkable–there is obviously some other explanation for their sad state like the alignment of the planets or the migration of the whales.

People who say these things on TV or in their political campaigns might believe this nonsense but, ordinary people who go to work to support themselves and their families despise and ridicule welfare freeloaders in private and among friends and family. And the Great Recession has made everyone much less willing to turn a blind eye to supporting these societal parasites.

I have certainly grown to hate seeing beggars on the NYC Subway system and in the streets. I don’t know whom among these people are really incapable of working due to physical handicaps. The freeloaders have gone so far as to manufacture physical deformations and injuries to garner more charity from subway riders and the commuting public. As far as I’m concerned, the con artists have killed any sympathy for people who are truly in need of help.

The Con Artists

There is a man near my place of work who stands in front of a grocery store asking patrons coming out of the store or just passing by for “a little help”. I’ve seen him sit there with an electric wheelchair and a warm winter jacket on cold days. The man isn’t in rags nor is he handicapped–the wheelchair may suggest otherwise but, I’ve seen him standing without help.

There’s also been men and women–who do not appear to be homeless–who get your attention in the street as if they were in need of directions and then ask if you can spare any change. The first few times I responded with a, “sorry”. I now just look away as if they weren’t there. These freeloaders don’t deserve so much as a thought from me let alone a word of acknowledgement.

Just the other day, I saw the man who pesters people in front of the grocery store for help walk into the store–with no cane or wheelchair–and walk out with a can of Budweiser. I was standing in the doorway waiting for a sudden rainstorm to pass. Now you tell me, does this man deserve anything from me? Or you? The sad fact is: he’s not alone. A few blocks away from this grocery store is a similar store. And at this store, there is another man who stands there asking for “help”. I’ve also seen him in an electric wheelchair. It’s a beggar’s racket!

So what does this have to do with welfare freeloaders? A few blocks away from where I work is a government housing complex. This neighborhood used to be little more than empty buildings but, has seen a revitalization recently with the construction of luxury apartments. Luxury apartments attract people who are well off so trendy shops, bars, restaurants, and an organic market have opened here too. It would be no understatement to say that things are a bit expensive here.

An economy has been built here because evil rich people were enticed to the area. We moved our offices to this neighborhood last year because we liked the vibe and the environment. It’s outside of the busy Manhattan crowds but, only a single train stop away. It’s near the water and offers a magnificent view of downtown Manhattan. There’s a ton of creative people in the area and it’s a growing neighborhood. All good attributes for a small, artistic technology start up like ourselves.

There is little doubt that the shops and businesses that have opened up in this neighborhood have provided jobs to people in the surrounding area like the poor people who live in the nearby government housing complex. This is what is known as job creation and the only effective means by which poverty has been eliminated for hundreds of years.

The Disease of Entitlement

Unfortunately, the system of welfare in this country has gotten to a point where there’s a large swath–possibly an overwhelming majority like the moon passing over the sun in a solar eclipse–of the welfare population who–not only don’t feel a need to get a job–feel entitled to a comfortable existence without adding to the welfare of society. And I use the word welfare as it was originally intended and not as it has been perverted to mean.

I mean welfare as in the well being of taxpayers and hard working individuals of society–the people who keep the wheels turning–who are compelled by force of law to hand over a third or more of their hard earned money so that the growing welfare population can shuttle themselves on electric wheelchairs wrapped in a warm jacket during the chilly New York winter to loiter in front of grocery stores to harass the same hard working, tax paying people for more handouts.

The pervasiveness of these practices and this mindset should leave no one in the United States scratching their heads as to why the country is on a death spiral while the Chinese are poising themselves to be the economic superpower of the world by working hard, saving, and investing. The thought of future generations–or if things spin out of control even faster: ourselves within the next decade–having to learn Mandarin should motivate every American into returning to habits of working hard, self-reliance, and kicking mediocrity in the face at every opportunity.

If my personal anecdotes of daily occurrences in New York City haven’t convinced you of the welfare problem, here’s something that clearly points out the ineffectiveness of welfare and the detrimental impact of the disease of entitlement:

This is where we are. This is what America has become.

For the obnoxious do-gooders who have pushed for the ever growing welfare State by loudly and proudly shaming others–who had the good sense to know that laziness shouldn’t be rewarded–by throwing around terms like racist, bigot, heartless, careless, monster, or whatever other phrase that has been rendered meaningless by its overuse like the development of insulin resistance after years of chronic overproduction of insulin from a sugar-heavy diet: I am not making a case against the welfare State from atop an ivory tower.

Poverty is a Temporary State of Being

My parents are immigrants to this country who worked as hard as they could to make a life they would have otherwise never had. I know little of how my Mother grew up but, my Dad’s stories of poverty in Hong Kong has no comparison in modern America. His stories of poverty when he got to America and lived in the slums of Harlem also have no modern rival. My parents now live comfortably but, are far from being classified as rich. These are people who barely have a high school education and surely no college education. They were given nothing except the opportunity to work for a better life. This story applies the same to my Aunts, Uncles, and just about everyone in my family as well as thousands and millions of other Americans who came here and worked their asses off to escape poverty.

And lets not forget everyone who has ever moved here by boat, airplane, or swam here in the last two hundred years. All of them came here with nothing and made something of themselves while turning America into most prosperous nation in the world.

People didn’t flock here in the last two centuries for a free lunch, dinner, breakfast, or mid-afternoon snack. Today, a minority of people do come here for our welfare but, the majority still do not. The beacon of hope, prosperity, and freedom in America is being drowned out by the hoard of welfare freeloaders who take as much as they can from society while adding nothing to it without thinking twice or considering the consequences.

And me? I grew up in a neighborhood with it’s own set of government subsidized housing. My parents purchased a house with the help of government incentives that lowered the cost of owning a home. These homes were built around the government housing complexes to improve the neighborhood. The city has been trying to improve the neighborhood for as long as I’ve been alive. While I no longer live there, I was there up until I was an adult as recognized by law.

I didn’t grow up in the same poverty stricken existence as my father but, I also didn’t grow up in the quiet neighborhoods with neatly mowed lawns and two cars parked in the driveway that you see in Hollywood movies. I went to public school. Both of my parents worked because there was no other way to support a family of four. I didn’t get all the toys I wanted or wear expensive clothes. I grew up like most people did. I didn’t know if I was rich or poor or what difference it made. How in the world would I have known? The only life I could have known was the one I was living and there was nothing to compare it to.

Thinking back, my parents were probably somewhere in the lower-middle class. Nowadays, they’d be classified to be in the middle class with their increased income and without a mortgage or kids to take care of. They take a lot more vacations now as they deservedly should.

I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth or with much more than what most poor people grow up with today. My parents weren’t irresponsible or incompetent and that’s a blessing I’ll probably never truly appreciate but, my story is a common one. There are people who had it better than me who are worse off and people who had it worse than me who are better off.

I am not speaking against the welfare State from a position of poverty ignorance like most who advocate for ever expanding welfare. In fact, my childhood experiences are much less meaningful than those of my adult life. I didn’t know anything as a child but, I know difference between rich and poor as an adult. I’ve been in worse economic straits during certain periods in the last 6 years than I ever had in my childhood. Things are not so dire now because I worked through it. I’m still not as successful as I want to be–measured monetarily or any other way–but, I’m working my ass off to get there.

I know exactly what it feels like to have to prioritize money spending and what it feels like when credit overwhelms your ability to service it. Unlike the morons running around Washington, D.C. trying to come up with a scheme to raise the nation’s debt limit in order to avoid having to make tough decisions of prioritizing payments and cutting spending, I’ve been there and done that.

So, I will not give people–whose only obstacle to getting a job is their own laziness and refusal to take any job they can find–a break of any kind. They abuse the welfare system and the more prevalent the system, the greater the number of these freeloaders as if a zombie infection had taken hold. Rarely, do the people who deserve welfare actually need it or will even use it. And as sure as the day comes after night, they never stay on welfare for long. The people who deserve welfare would find a way even if welfare didn’t exist–that’s why they deserve it.

Society should not feel as though making fun of welfare freeloaders is taboo. In fact, it’s a good thing that should be encouraged. Societal parasites, on the other hand, should be ridiculed, discouraged, and shamed. Such an existence should not be acceptable or subsidized during good economic times or bad economic times.

The audacity of welfare freeloaders cannot be allowed to flourish if we care at all about our own future or the future of generations yet to be born.

“Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come”  - Sir Victor Hugo, 1852

Life is all about ideas. It’s the lens through which we see our world. It’s how we choose whom to build relationships with. It’s how we form opinions. And at any given point in life, we are in a battle of ideas.

Whether the idea is something as inconsequential as iPhone vs Android or important as organic foods vs processed foods, the battle of ideas is taking place all the time and everywhere. There is no escaping it, hiding from it, or ignoring it. As long as you are a thinking human being, you are in it.

I am one who often finds himself in the minority or controversial side of the battle of ideas. I do not believe in a low-fat diet to prevent the diseases of civilization. Instead, I subscribe to an evolutionary diet that is generally high in fat. I believe the science is there to support it. I’m also on the side of climate change skeptics. I don’t believe man’s output of CO2 has any meaningful impact on the warming or cooling of the planet. I believe man does pollute but, CO2 does not cause warming or cooling. I believe there’s science to show that increased sun activity has warmed the Earth as it has every other planet in the solar system along with other forms of evidence. I also don’t believe in doing cardio to lose weight and get in shape. No matter what age or sex, I believe the key to increased physical health is through lifting weights. The science is there as well.

All of those ideas except the last is quite controversial. Environmentalists wouldn’t think twice about stoning me and mainstream doctors and nutritionists think I’ve fallen off my rocker. And the majority of public opinion on both of those issues aren’t on my side so there is little shelter from looks and opinions of shock, disgust, and/or confusion when my views are made known.

Of course, that’s only the tip of the iceberg in my battle of ideas that will throw people for a loop. Regardless of any hostility that I may receive from expressing such views, I am incapable of expressing any other. It is who I am. The summation of these ideas make me who I am. The thought of betraying myself to pacify others is preposterous.

It is largely preposterous because of another idea that I have. The idea of Liberty and individual freedom. The idea that people should be free to live their lives as they see fit based on their views and beliefs. This doesn’t sound controversial until you take it to it’s logical conclusion: there is no place for the use of government force in the way of laws to enforce behaviors that are acceptable to the majority at large or loud minority.

Even that sounds perfectly reasonable until you get into the issues. I live in a blue State and City that often elects Republicans to office. New York City has had two Republican mayors since I’ve been old enough to remember. However, New York City is considered liberal and sympathetic to liberal causes such as climate change, planned parenthood, gay marriage, welfare for the poor, etc.

Since I don’t stand with either of the two sides, I often clash with anyone who is politically minded. But, not because I support legislations that oppose their views. There are few bills that I do support and those are rarely hot topics. This, for the most part, also tends to confuse people as they can’t seem to see the issues in any other way than a for or against paradigm.

There’s a mountain of popular issues that I can use as an example but, let’s take the issue of gay marriage for it’s recency in the news and because I’ve had a recent discussion relating to it. New York has recently made gay marriage legal and the LGBT community is ecstatic about it. Those sympathetic are also happy about it.

I am sympathetic to the idea that an individual can marry any other individual they want. I am also sympathetic to the idea that 3 or more people can marry each other. My definition of marriage is the union between two people but, I am in favor of defending and supporting private contract rights that don’t necessarily agree with my personal biases.

However, I am not necessarily in favor of the bill that makes gay marriage legal. This is not because I am a closet homophobe and merely stating my support for gay marriage while at the same time being unsupportive of a law that would allow it. I have no fear of expressing unpopular opinions.

By not necessarily being in favor of the bill, I do not mean that I wouldn’t have voted for it if I was in a position to. I would eliminate the government’s involvement in marriage completely. It is not up to the government to define what a marriage is and it is not the government that grants rights. Two individuals had the natural right to marry each other in NY before the bill was passed and still have it after the bill was passed. It was merely the government who blocked the rightful exercise of that right to begin with.

So it is the height of absurdity that they should look like heroes for remedying a problem of which they were the cause!

On the one hand, it is good to see that a segment of society has been reunited with a right that they should have had and on the other, I am wary of future problems that this course of action will bring about. The problem being one where we further ingrain the belief that government is the source of our rights. Maybe you and I don’t believe in polygamy–just as there are those don’t believe gays should get married–but, there are those who do and their natural rights to form a contract is still denied. We haven’t so much restored a right or progressed society as much as we’ve allowed overlords to pacify us and frame the idea of rights as something they bestow upon us.

And let’s not forget, the next election cycle can bring in new politicians and they can overturn that law just as quickly as it was voted for. And then what? Are we to continue fighting the same battle forever hoping for some miracle that all those who are elected into power share the same beliefs as we do?

That’s an impractical strategy. It is also unproductive and prone to failure.

The solution is to allow people to believe whatever they want and do whatever they want so long as it doesn’t harm you or your property. A community in the Bible Belt who believe gays are going to hell and are inflicted with some horrible disease can believe that as long as they aren’t out there using the force of law to violate the natural rights of gays. And from their perspective, the City of New York with all it’s vices and evils should be allowed to exist as it does as long as New York doesn’t violate the natural rights of bible thumpers. As long as the Federal government isn’t taxing them to pay for something over here or we’re taxed here to pay for something over there.

The solution is not more government. The battle of marriage equality is not finished when every State in the Union legalizes gay marriage. It is in fact a detriment to marriage equality because we’ve further ingrained the idea that it is up to government to allow us to marry. Ingrained the idea that we belong to the government instead of the other way around. The government belongs to us. It is here because we’ve decided to grant it some of our power and sovereignty as individuals in order to remedy and protect us from the violation of our natural rights from other individuals, foreign governments, corporations, and the government itself. It is not here to grant us rights.

This idea of Liberty is the biggest in the battle of ideas. No other battle can result in allowing those who disagree with me to force their ideas on me or those who agree with me to force our ideas on those who disagree. But, as with all other battles of ideas, the fight for Liberty can only be won by presenting a solid case and changing hearts and minds peacefully.

The idea of Liberty underscores the health and viability of all other ideas.

I was at the NYC premiere of Farmageddon. It’s a documentary about the unseen war on American family farms. That war is being perpetrated by our food overlords in the FDA, USDA, and government bodies at large.

I’ve been on the paleo diet for a year now and the paleo diet is largely a branch of the whole/real foods movement that’s been brewing for quite some time. People are learning that their health is better suited with real foods grown locally and humanely.

We don’t want cows that are fed an unnatural diet of corn and soybeans and are then injected with antibiotics to remedy the problems brought about by such a diet. We don’t want our animals huddled together like a can of sardines unable to get any exercise and literally living in their own excrement. Livestock raised this way are less nutritional and more liable to causing illnesses in humans.

Farmageddon is not advocating that we get rid of these factory farms in favor of small local farms. It is merely presenting the case that we should be allowed to choose between factory farmed goods and sustainable, locally  farmed goods. And the powers that be are making it harder and harder for local family farms to get their goods to market.

There is a demand for these goods and the free market is doing what it’s supposed to: bring together consumers and producers. We see that across the country at farmer’s markets, CSA’s, food coops, and other organizations geared towards providing real, whole foods to average Americans looking to feed themselves.

Roadblocks are being put up by government agencies with a political agenda and it is negatively impacting the availability of locally farmed foods as well as the financial viability for farming. If it becomes impossible for family farms to stay afloat, we will lose access to these sustainable, locally farmed foods.

Whether you believe in a steady diet of Mountain Dew and Doritos or a diet of whole foods made from scratch in your kitchen, we can all agree that we should have the choice to do either or both. I highly recommend seeing the movie.

Check if the movie is playing near you or if you’re in NYC, it is playing at the Cinema Village. NYC is a particularly important market for the movie to gauge it’s viability to bring in movie viewers so definitely check it out if you can.