Category: Books

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Books Health

Unseen Boneyards

There’re unseen boneyards out there containing the people who didn’t survive situations that favored other people. Since we usually only see the people who make it through and not the ones who don’t, there’s a tendency to think the process (or activity) is producing or causing a result – when it’s really also favoring certain individuals over others.

For instance, swimming competitions favor certain types of bodies that are the most efficient for a certain event. By the time you see the last heat of an olympic swim race most of the racers look pretty much the same. So you might think “If I swim a lot I can look like Micheal Phelps because he swims a lot.” He does swim a lot. But so did lots of other kids who didn’t thrive in the pool but swam a lot. And so you wind up only seeing the “cream of the crop” when you’re watching the olympics and none of the shorter, stouter kids who maybe swam as much and were as enthusiastic but never wound up with a “swimmer’s body.” That shorter, stouter swimmer is part of an unseen boneyard of swimming.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger claimed he ate a particular supplement or did a particular exercise in a novel way, we tend to think that’s what makes him a champion bodybuilder. He had the genes and drive (and steroids) that allowed him to respond to a high volume of training that put other people in an unseen bodybuilding boneyard. I think he’d have done just as well missing a supplement or not doing curls using a barbell with a special shape.

Or consider the training Navy SEALS aspirants go through before graduating. The majority of the guys who try don’t make it. While the program they endure is tough, the ones that make it through are really more genetically suited to that workload. Most people who tryout will wind up in a SEAL boneyard that we never see. It’s important to realize that there’s a selection process going on that favors a certain set of genes – it’s not just the training.

One of my nephews, Ben, is a high school senior who’s keen to play college football. About a month ago, he injured his knee playing basketball and is rehabbing it. He’s still planning on playing football, but he’s in a boneyard at the moment. While looking for some  helpful info for him, I came across this talk by Doug McGuff, MD. Doug’s one of the sharpest guys in the health and fitness area. He has a good book, that I read about a year ago, called “Body By Science.” He discusses the boneyard idea in regards to workouts, basically saying that your workout should minimize any chances of winding up in a boneyard by overtraining or training in a potentially dangerous way.

About auto racing, someone said that to finish first, you first have to finish. If you wind up in a boneyard, you won’t finish. So take care in choosing the activity you want to pursue by checking out its boneyard as well as the folks at the top of the heap. Did they make it to the top because of what they do or despite what they do?

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Books Food and Drink Health

Eating Way Back

Stylewise, where on the timeline of human existence are you eating? I came across this diagram and think it’s great distillation of what lots of people are trying to figure out about their health.

Conventional wisdom, more and more, is finding fault with industrial, modern foods like Twinkies, 20 ounce servings of sodas, and trans fats and so conventional wisdom advocates eating in ways similar to our great-grandparents’ style, featuring whole grains, beans, etc. That’s a big improvement and you’ll probably get healthier because you’ll be avoiding industrial and processed foods. In the diagram above that’s going from the red area backwards into the yellow area.

But, the diagram isn’t to scale. The green area representing most of mankind’s existence should be 200 times(!) longer than the yellow. Most of our genetic make up has evolved accommodating the foods we encountered for a couple of million years. During that time as hunter-gatherers, before agriculture, we wouldn’t have been eating much in the way of grains, legumes, and sweets. And there’d have been zero processed foods.

Like most Americans, I drank the low-fat Kool-aid. After a while though, cracks started appearing. There’s the growing obesity problem that started taking off in the 80’s. And people seem to be getting unhealthier every year.

Several years ago I noticed the a low-carb resurgence. Then I read some of the early Paleo literature from Loren Cordain,Ph.D. which was intriguing but I wasn’t convinced.  And then a few years ago I heard an NPR interview with Gary Taubes about what his investigations indicated. But It wasn’t until I read Taubes’  “Good Calories Bad Calories” a couple of years ago, that I really came around to re-evaluate the standard American diet.

Gary Taubes is a top science writer at the New York Times. The book isn’t a breezy read. It’s the nature of the material combined with the thoroughness needed to challenge the accepted wisdom. But it’s worth the read if you want to dig deep. Fortunately, Taubes has just come out with the more accessible “Why We Get Fat.” One of the main ideas is that easily digested sugars drive insulin secretion in our bodies. Insulin then signals our bodies to store excess sugar as fat. Taubes says obesity is not a disease of overeating but a disease of fat storage, insightful but hard to wrap your head around.

For a couple of million years we usually didn’t have easy access to simple sugars and grains. Our bodies and big brains are fueled by sugar (glucose), so we crave it. But it wasn’t until the past few generations that easily digestible sugars became such a dominant part of our diet. We should be following the “smart money” arrow above all the way back to the green, hunter-gatherer area of the diagram. I’m not saying to re-enact the way we once lived as hunter-gatherers. Instead we need to learn what it is we’ve evolved to eat. Because you’re not what you eat; you’re what your DNA does with what you eat (to paraphrase Art DeVany).

It can’t be worse than current situation. If you go to a public space, it’s easier to see unhealthy folks than to spot healthy ones, which seems to be the opposite of the way it should be.

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Books Heros Ideas Sites Story tools

The PaperNet

With the new year I started thinking about influences on my life. Here’s one of them.

B.F. Skinner once said “education is what remains after what you’ve learned has been forgotten.” This is an homage to the “The Whole Earth Catalog” (WEC) because exploring the world of ideas both big and small in the WEC was a huge part of my education.

When I was a young teen I stumbled across the WEC and it became my portal to a parallel universe. I grew up in a somewhat restrictive environment in the deep South. If you accepted and followed the status quo things were easy, if not, there weren’t alternatives that were presented or encouraged. At that time the WEC presented so many different ideas and access to those ideas that for me it was incredible. It was a paper version of the internet.

The WEC was a very large format paperback printed on coarse, unbleached paper which added to the experience of immersion into a big world of possibilities. There were tools, resources for independent study, and things that weren’t already common knowledge. If something was inexpensive, or high quality, and was readily available by mail, then there was a good chance it would show up in the WEC. It really was an immersive experience for me. You could follow threads of related information all over the catalog, for example hopping  from house design to info on owner built houses to the best tools to use and why they were preferred. Also accompanying each item were excerpts from submitters, staff reviewers and if it was a book, quotes. Plus the WEC was a book about other people doing other things.

From the first edition in 1968 to last incarnation of the Whole Earth Quarterly in 1998 updated editions came out every couple of years with more ideas and information. Now with the instant availability of info and links on the internet it’s hard to recall what a breath of fresh air the WEC was. Just looking through it you were sure to be waylaid by something new to investigate.

Of course with the internet there’s no real place for the WEC anymore. It almost seems quaint now up against the internet, the way a Farmer’s Almanac compares to the weather report on TV. But before there was an internet the WEC was where I was educated.

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Books Opinion

Specialization Is For Insects

“I say the last 10 percent of the way to perfection takes so much of your life that it isn’t worth the effort. This overzealous attitude is what creates religious fanatics, body Nazis, and athletes who’re exceedingly dull to converse with.” So said Yvon Chouinard, and I agree. Perfection is sort of another way of saying specialization.

Some real problems can arise with specialization; it can become more difficult to adapt to change, especially big, sudden changes. Predicting these kind of changes is a not very reliable endeavor because we don’t know what we don’t know. It’s impossible to factor in unforseen events. Just think of the recent BP oil spill or hurricane Katrina, no one had thought they’d happen.

In the “The Black Swan,” author, Nassim Taleb, asks his readers to: “Consider the following sobering statistic. Of the 500 largest U.S. companies in 1957, only 74 were still part of  that select group, the Standard and Poor’s 500, 40 years later. Only a few had disappeared in mergers: the rest either sank or went bust.” Who would have or could have predicted 426 out of 500 companies would not be around after only 40 years!

If you or your company becomes so specialized that you’re no longer robust and not somewhat nimble, you are actually vulnerable when facing big changes in your surroundings. For example suppose you had a company only able to manufacture cassette tapes – probably a pretty good business not too long ago. But you’d be out of business these days if that was all you could produce.

Sometimes an insect becomes too specialized and adapted to its surroundings and if suddenly there’s a change in its habitat… well too bad for that particular bug; but another insect with different abilities will likely take over the newly vacated spot.

Why are Homo sapiens around but not Neanderthals? Both groups were around at the same time and by all accounts the Neanderthals were worthy specimens. But,were Neanderthals so specialized to living in an ice age that they were unable to adjust to a warming planet and so perished?

It’s probably a good idea to build up your tolerance to uncertainty. Strive to be an adaptable creature instead of an over specialized one.

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Books Story Uncategorized

Four Guys And A Book

This is a hurricane Katrina story with a happy ending.

The story involves four guys and an old book. They’re all in the photo above taken this Thanksgiving while celebrating my father’s 80th birthday in New Orleans. From left to right are my brother-in-law, our family friend, the book, my brother, and my Dad.

When hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans my parents were luckily out of town. Luckily, because their house was flooded with five feet of muddy water. They didn’t return to size up the situation until more than a month later after authorities began allowing residents to come back.

But just a few days after Katrina, my brother-in-law who lives fairly close to New Orleans (in Baton Rouge), snuck (because civilians weren’t permitted into to the city) into my parents’ flooded neighborhood by canoe to sort out the situation in their house. He rescued what he could from the receding muck and got out not paying any attention to a pile of wet books ruined by the flooding.

My Dad had a small collection of antique books which were unfortunately stored within five feet of the floor in their house. His favorite was printed in 1597, an over-sized, heavily illustrated medical text written in Latin.

Our family friend is Dutch and has lived in New Orleans for 50 years and has known my parents for more than 30 years. Shortly after the Hurricane and my brother-in-law’s visit, he checked in on my parents’ wrecked home while they were we still away. There, he discovered the antique book from 1597, waterlogged and spread out in the mud like a  crow that had flown into the ground and exploded.

Our friend mentioned finding the book to my Dad who was overwhelmed with more pressing Katrina recovery issues and didn’t express much concern for a wrecked book. But having witnessed people’s reactions to traumatic life events as a young man in 1940’s war torn Europe, our friend retrieved the ruined book, put it in a plastic bag, and froze it in his freezer. My Dad might want to do something with it later, our friend thought. And so the book stayed in our friend’s freezer for four years!

Katrina hit in the Summer of 2005 and four years later our friend still had a rock hard, mud soaked book in his freezer when he talked to my brother about getting the book repaired. My brother who lives in New Orleans then transferred the book into his freezer.

Next my brother began researching restorers of antique books, eventually settling on an expert in Indiana. Once the book got to the restorer a year-long process of soaking, cleaning, page rebuilding, and rebinding started.

The resurrected book finally returned to my brother looking as fresher, I’d guess, than any other 400 year old book.

This year my Dad turned 80 and three generations of our family converged on New Orleans to celebrate. All of the people from Louisiana involved with the book rescue were there representing different links in a chain to the past.

At his Birthday party on Thanksgiving, my brother gave our surprised Dad the book he never expected to see again.

Happy Birthday Dad.

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Books Drink Heros People Uncategorized

An Atheist In The Foxhole

Christopher Hitchens has cancer. He thinks he won’t win and the cancer will take him.

Too bad. Of course it’s always too bad when someone dies from cancer. He’s been an enthusiastic, lifelong smoker and drinker and would no doubt say that he enjoyed the ride.

He’s a hero of mine. Not because of his lifestyle but because of his stances and defense of what he thinks is the way things are. A long time ago William Blake wrote “… create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.” Good advice, I think. Hitchens has never been shy about pointing out the enslavement foisted upon most humans by religions large and small.

Hitchens is an atheist. And now that he’s dying and thinks he won’t make it, he’s still unrepentant.  He’s only 61. With esophageal cancer that’s spread to his lymph nodes and lungs, he says he’ll be very lucky to live for five more years.

He’s an atheist in a foxhole; and he plans on staying one. Hitchens has gone on record about this now, while he has all of his faculties. If he is said to have had a last-minute conversion while he lie dying,  it’ll be due to him having lost his ability to think due to the cancer or its treatment.  Any claims of sudden conversion at the end will be due to having a diminished mind and not a sudden switching of sides because he sees the light. Because he’d say that religion is darkness.

As a controversial figure because of his views and  his wide exposure from his prolific writings and speaking, Hitchens has been engaged in conflicts most of his life. The title of his 2007 book is “God Is Not Great,” that’s a pretty good way to draw fire. It’s a good book too.

Hitchens has lots of experience in holding his own against what he considers bad ideas. I hope he can keep it up.

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Books BTH Happiness

Sex At Dawn

“Sex At Dawn” is a new book by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. My highest praise for a book is BTH (Buy The Hardback) and this book deserves it. It’s worth the money.

I heard about it from sex advice columnist Dan Savage. I hold his opinions in high regard and he thinks “Sex At Dawn” is the best book on human sexuality since the work of Alfred Kinsey was released.

“Understanding is a lot like sex; it’s got a practical purpose, but that’s not why people do it normally.” This is a quote by Frank Oppenheimer the authors use launch into just how much men and women enjoy sex.

The authors attempt to explain the development of human sexuality as humans evolved and the impacts this ancient hardwiring has on modern man. The case made is very convincing and well supported as well as entertaining to read. From the book: “… the percentage of our lives we  human beings spend thinking about, planning, having, and remembering sex is incomparably greater than that of any other creature on the planet.” and ” No group-living nonhuman primate is monogamous, and adultery has been documented in every human culture studied – including those in which fornicators are routinely stoned to death.”

It’s not really big news these days that both women and men have sex as a core interest. But only about 10,000 years ago as we began to settle down and start farming did we lose the fluidity of our sex lives. Womens’ sexuality was denied and mens’ was frustrated.

Though lost in prehistory, ancient practices are inferred from observations of present day hunter-gathers and the primates closest to humans, bonobos and chimps. Social interactions and physical similarities and differences are used to build their case.

I’ll digress for a minute. The other day I was chatting with a friend about a book called “Living the Good Life” by Helen and Scott Nearing. It’s a good book about a couple making a go of “back to the earth” living during the thirties in rural Vermont.  Anyway, I’d read it as a teen and while it was full of interesting insights on their lives, one glaring omission was that there was no mention of sex. Not that anything juicy was expected, more that since they covered all aspects of their lives, a missing aspect stood out. I was a sexually inexperienced teen but to not cover sex in some way seemed odd. What I’m getting at with this digression is people assume sex is part of life and when it is ignored where it’s appropriate then that comes across as strange.

With the insights from “Sex At Dawn,” we can better understand many of the undercurrents and rip tides beneath the surface of our modern lives. What to do about it will probably fill more books to come.