The Pornification of America

This is a pretty good description of the generation we call the Millenniums. It's clearer now, but you should read it for yourself. What do you think? Read

Our place

Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established. - George Carlin

Voodoo Chile - Korean style

I just stumbled on a most amazing musician I've heard in a long, long time. She goes by the name Luna and she plays a traditional Korean instrument called a gayageum. Now I've heard Korean music played on one of these, but Luna has taken it and made it do some amazing things.

I was speechless and nearly brought to tears. It's no secret that I've been a Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn fan most of my life, but she took two of my most favorite pieces and gave them a sound like I've never heard. I don't know much more than what I've told you. I showed Sue, and we watched it together all the way through.

For some reason, I never get tired of watching her play. There is something mesmerizing about the way she plays that totally captivates me. I'm hoping on one of our trips to Korea in the future, I have the opportunity of seeing her, although I have no clue how I'm going to do this yet. 

Here is Luna rocking out to Jimi Hendrix in her special way. 

Sit back and enjoy!

How to Think Like a Scientist

Skepticism 101:
How to Think Like a Scientist
a new Great Courses series by Michael Shermer

Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” These words are no less insightful today than they were when he wrote them in 1985. Despite our best efforts, we are all vulnerable to believing things without using logic or having proper evidence—and it doesn’t matter how educated or well read we are. Our brains seem to be hardwired to have our beliefs come first and explanations for our beliefs second. And although we are skilled at recognizing the cognitive biases in other people’s thinking, we often have blinders on when it comes to our own.

This is the first paragraph of the article in eSkeptic Magazine, dated May 8th, 2013. If you are interested in what else is in the article, go HERE.

Got abs?

This post comes from a good friend of mine, Marlene Harris. I post things of hers and welcome her informative inputs on things fitness and health.

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Summer is coming (I promise!) and if you're sporting a ONE-pack instead of a SIX-pack, this guest article is right up your alley. This is from my friend and colleague Kevin Stock (that's a pic of him below)... And yeah, as you can see, the dude knows exactly what he's doing in the gym AND in the kitchen. This kind of physique doesn't happen by accident. His info can help you YOU do the same. Enjoy the article!

Nick Nilsson

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Two Tricks to Getting Abs that POP By Dr. Kevin Stock, author, Magazine Abs

 

When it comes to TRULY getting abs (I'm talking REAL ABS - that pop out) there are TWO MISTAKES that EVERYONE makes. Master these two things and you will have a rippled midsection in no time.

1. CARBOHYDRATES: How efficiently and effectively your body utilizes carbohydrates is perhaps the most important nutritional aspect to getting seriously cut (i.e. really low levels of body fat). So unless you are already sub 7% body fat (if you’re a guy, 15% if you’re a gal). In this case - skip to point #2. Strategically managing and manipulating your carbohydrate intake is essential to your diced abs quest. Without smothering too much of my science nerd on you, there are a couple of "Sciencey" words we need to know.

- Insulin Sensitivity - we want our cells to be as sensitive to insulin as possible. This is the opposite of insulin resistance (characterized by pre-diabetes and diabetes). Insulin resistance and diabetes is prevalent due to the fact people have no idea  how to manage their carbohydrates. Oh, and it's no coincidence that diabetes and obesity are directly correlated. All we need to know here is, the higher the insulin sensitivity, the better the cells uptake glucose, the better your body utilizes carbohydrates ' the better you look.

- Nutrient Partitioning - this is directly related to insulin sensitivity, and is a term describing how you are directing your nutrients. Are they going to fat stores? Or are you sending them to muscle tissue to replenish glycogen and stimulate protein synthesis? With a properly structured nutrition and training strategy, you can maximize nutrient partitioning shuttling essential nutrients to muscular tissue and away from adipose (fat) tissue. The way I train people to optimize carbohydrate usage allows one to eat carbohydrates at optimal times to maximize insulin sensitivity and nutrient partition.

2. ABDOMINAL TRAINING: I have no clue when it became commonplace and socially acceptable to train abs like a wussy. If people trained their chest or biceps or legs like they train abs they would be laughed at. Imagine just doing biceps curls with your arms -no weights - just curling your forearm. Ludicrous, I know -and you wouldn't expect much bicep growth, would you?

Honestly, lying on the ground and repping out bodyweight crunches for sets of 5,000 isn't going to get you the abs you want. HERE is the key formula (that is, after you get rid of the overlay of body fat via sound and strategic nutrition):

RESISTANCE + Time Under Tension = POPPING AWESOME ABDOMINALS

Add  RESISTANCE to where you can only do 8-10 reps per set, and increase T.U.T. = Time Under Tension. And with this process we are creating POPPING AWESOME ABDOMINALS. To bring it all together, when you eat strategically and combine it with a strategic training protocol you get results. It's as easy as that.

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Nick Nilsson’s concluding comments: Just to quickly recap, I'm in total agreement with Kevin on the two points in his article. Managing your carb intake is critically important...even more important than fat intake (assuming you're not eating bacon three meals a day, of course!). And I've been preaching about using resistance for abdominal training literally for the last 15 years (probably more). In order to develop a muscle (abs included), you MUST work that muscle with resistance. Simple as that.

The abdominals are actually primarily fast twitch muscles that respond best to resistance and low to moderate rep ranges, NOT the high-rep endurance training that most people tend to default to. The final point I want to make is this...when you develop your abs with resistance, you'll actually be able to SEE them even at higher body fat levels.

Marlene’s Concluding Note: While the above tips seem simple enough, from where it sit, it’s the primarily the nutrition part that keeps us from developing that coveted six-pack. If you just can’t live without chips, party foods, desserts, pastries, candy, or if you can’t live with much more modest portions of potatoes or rice, breads, ect., it’s not going to happen, period. We tend to get hung up on eating our way through life to enjoy it, not stopping to consider there may be other forms of enjoyment out there for us if we simply modified our thinking and our habits a bit.

Of Martians and Media

A book review by Sharon Hill

This is a reprint from the Wednesday, May 1, 2013 edition of eSkeptic Magazine. It was interesting and not particularly surprising in the way the media plays on our fears and phobias.

“Such is the nature of the media with its focus on the unusual and the sensational that it often paints a distorted picture of the world.”

So begins Bartholomew and Radford’s book The Martians Have Landed: A History of Media-driven Panics and Hoaxes.

After this book went to press, we saw additional media panics and hoaxes in the false news spread in the hours before and during Superstorm Sandy that hit New Jersey and New York City in October of 2012, such as the nurse who committed suicide after being the victim of radio hosts calls to the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton’s hospital ward, and the public outrage, fear and conspiracy mongering that took place immediately after the Sandy Hook shooting. All of these events have their antecedents in stories documented in The Martians Have Landed.

The volume consists of 36 mostly short chapters written primarily by the two main authors but with several guests. The guests’ contributions tend to be slightly longer and more detailed, which makes for unevenness in the flow, but this book is meant to be a panoply of examples. Some of the examples feel familiar (even though I was not there), and readers can see how humans repeatedly react to the same stimuli with different variables even decades later.

Today, the Internet disperses rumor and gossip globally in hours. And once the horse is out of the barn, the act of closing the door is difficult if not impossible. And if it is, only a small sliver of the original audience hears about it. And the myths are perpetuated.

Broken into sections corresponding to the source of the story—radio, television, newspapers, the Internet, friend of a friend, and everywhere at once—this collection contains fascinating stories that you might not believe could happened…but they did. Not all the pieces are satisfying—some are too short or just end abruptly—but collectively, it’s an enjoyable parade of illustrative examples.

The first chapter hooked me. Did you know there was a major radio hoax that terrified London in 1926 before the famous H.G. Wells “War of the World” Martian invasion event? I didn’t. The best part was that American reporters noted that the same kind of thing could not happen here in the U.S. We wouldn’t fall for such mania! Yet, we did and still do. Over and over. Why?

We rely on our networks (the media, our friends and family) to inform us about trouble. It’s not that everyone is just gullible. It’s more about weighing what we see and hear and feel and making the decision we need to make from what we have to work with. If that means thinking that wild animals are on the loose in the city (Central Park Zoo escape hoax) or worrying that there is a razor wielding slasher sneaking around (Ghost slasher of Taiwan) or being paranoid that strangers are waiting around every corner to abduct our kids (Stranger Danger and the Predator Next Door), we reveal what social animals we are.

Problems arise when the information is not accurate or is a deliberate concoction. In the case of radio and TV fictional dramas that (at least some of) the audience thought was real, we see the failure of the disclaimers. People miss them or don’t pay attention. Or, other factors overwhelm assurances, such as a serious tone, historical context, or delivery from trusted sources.

For example, in a chapter devoted to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 1990s that was sparked by a best selling book and then fueled by problematic psychotherapy techniques, the authors note that claims of upwards of 50,000 victims of kidnapping and sacrifice went unchallenged. Yet, there was not a single verified case! The tales drew from a societal fear of an evil secret network where victims were subject to horrific scenes with trusted members of the community doing unspeakable things. These stories grew in conjunction with the expansion of television programming. With the explosion of talk shows, hosts such as Geraldo Rivera garnered lots of viewers when the topic generated a moral panic such as the lurid tales of Satanic ritual abuse.

My favorite chapter was about The Batmen on the Moon, an 1835 story that marked the beginning of tabloid journalism. The hoax story included sciencey bits that are so often compelling to readers to convince them of trustworthiness. But the rival newspapers, attempting to fact check, couldn’t confirm the story and worried that they were either missing out on a huge story or, if they bit, they would look foolish for falling for a hoax. Today, with the immediate transmission of news, rumor and gossip on the same social media channels, it hardly matters. The push is for speed, not accuracy. Scoops, not integrity.

The media does not anticipate nor feel very much responsibility for the consequences of spreading less than true tales. We have seen the results in the decline of vaccination rates due to unfounded fears and the spread of conspiracy theories into the mainstream.

That’s why the topic of media-driven panics and hoaxes is very important to comprehend. We are fooled. Often. And we should remember that media is a business more so than a public service. Hyperinflation and sensationalism is the M.O. It has been in the past and will be as far as I can see down the road, and so The Martians Have Landed serves as both a history and prophetic caution for future skepticism of the media.