Mindconnection eNL, 2008-04-20

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In this issue:

1. Product highlight
2. Brainpower tip
3. Finance tip
4. Security tip

5. Health tip/Fitness tip
6. Miscellany
7. Thought for the day

Several studies have shown these three key amino acids are extremely important to consume, especially when you are dieting and exercising. During exercise, your body uses a mix of glucose, fats, and even protein as fuel. When you diet and your carbohydrate intake is lower than normal, the percentage of protein your body uses for fuel (including Leucine, Isoleucine, and Valine) dramatically increases.

The body will pull those needed amino acids from the continuously circulating pool of amino acids in your bloodstream. If these aren't replenished from an outside source, your body will breakdown other areas of your body to supply this pool.

Read more about BCAAs by clicking the picture or the link (above). There's an informative article below the product selections. If you find those selections a bit overwhelming, stop for a second. The major difference between all of these products is ratio of the three BCAAs. There is no single formulation that is best for all people. I have found the folks at Optimum Nutrition do an exceptional job on other products (bars, MRPs, HMB) so they are also my personal choice for the BCAAs. Their low price per serving is a great value, too.

What is happening is people are separating into two groups, the stupid and the non-stupid. And these two groups are becoming increasingly differentiated from each other, such that the stupid are really stupid and the non-stupid are (mostly) getting smarter. This is much like the "rich get richer and the poor get poorer" phenomenon, except it's brainpower and not money we're talking about.

Put another way, those who have allowed themselves to get sucked into the stupidity epidemic are becoming more stupid and those who have not allowed themselves to get sucked into it are either unaffected or are even getting smarter.

This should come as no surprise. The behaviors that engender stupidity are both cumulative and degenerative. The behaviors that nurture the mind are both cumulative and restorative.

We all do stupid things, but that doesn't make us stupid. Similarly, we all spend money but that doesn't make us broke. So, what's the difference between those who descend into a spiral of stupidity and those who don't? It's not a matter of degree, because the distribution of stupidity isn't following a linear progression.

Because stupidity becomes self-reinforcing at different points for different people, the "crossover line" is impossible to clearly define. Let's look at one aspect to illustrate. We have reams of data showing that watching television makes you stupid. But how much television? Television watching causes the brain to cannibalize neuronal structures used for things like abstract reasoning and replace them with neuronal structures optimized for passively absorbing sound and video.

Consider these scenarios:

• John watches one hour of television each week but also reads a non-fiction book each week. What's his personal "tipping point," and is he even at risk?
• Joyce watches one hour of television each week, but doesn't read any books. The show she watches is a home improvement show, and Joyce spends her free time designing construction plans for a new house she and her husband would like to start building next year.

Now, neither of these scenarios is typical. What is typical is John starts out watching one hour, then adds another program and another program and so on. He doesn't have time for reading, so stops doing it. John has now stepped firmly into the stupidity zone. Next, he'll be making inappropriate food choices thanks to the brainwashing advertisements and the result will be an inorganically deficient brain. Thus crippled, John will make more stupid choices. His chances of recovery are about nil.

To protect your brainpower, stay off the slippery slope of stupidity. A choice that seems harmless might be all it takes to begin the progress of making you stupid. There aren't any alarm bells that go off, and there's no caution sign posted. This can occur without your even knowing it happened. So, don't let it happen in the first place.

People are complaining about gasoline that costs $3 or so per gallon. Those same people don't bat an eye at paying $30 a gallon for bottled water. This observation could make for an interesting foray into the stupidity topic, but let's use it to explore finances instead.

Let's do something totally outlandish and look at facts: gasoline is up 50% from 20 years ago, but the cost of the dollar actually doubled. In reality, gasoline is cheaper but you pay more dollars for it. Therefore, the price of gasoline isn't where you are being robbed. The price of government is where you are being robbed.

In the Finance Tip column, I often point out that your single largest cost is the cost of government. The cost is enormous.

Sure, you get some government services for your money--things like bridges that collapse, schools that churn out illiterate kids, a welfare system that forces fathers to abandon their families, laws that protect criminals from law-abiding citizens, tanks sent into Waco to burn kids and their parents into charcoal, warrant-less searches of private homes, and agencies that seize property on specious grounds. But do we have to pay so much for these services?

The "taxed income" portion of the 50% tax that Alan Greenspan levied on all assets (via his debasing of the currency) is a recurring tax. I read some moron's article that absurdly claimed the USA is a low-tax country compared to other countries, but it showed only the Federal Income Tax and that was down around 20% if I read the little graph correctly. Add in the 50% Alan Greenspan tax, and you are now at 70%. And that still doesn't tell the complete tax picture.

To get the complete tax picture for Americans, you have to accept the apparently radical idea that money doesn't grow on trees. Then, you have to count how many taxpayers there are in a population of 300 million people--a reasonable estimation would be 100 million, though the number is probably less. Then, you simply apportion the $9 trillion debt across the backs of those people. Remember that a billion is 1,000 million and a trillion is 1,000 billion.

A sum of $9 trillion is 9 followed by 12 zeroes. A pool of 100 million supporting that is 100 followed by 6 zeroes.

To get an idea of how much "our" government actually taxes us, I want you to do this:

1. Get out a piece of paper.
2. One one line, write 9. Then, write 12 zeroes after the nine. Looks like this: 9 000 000 000 0000. That's how much we owe, as a group.
3. On the next line, write 100. Then, write 6 zeroes after the 100. Looks like this: 100 000 000. That's how many of us owe that money (for things like collapsing bridges and illiterate high school graduates).

Now, cross six zeroes on each line. What's left is $90,000. This is simply your share of the federal debt that we know about, not adjusted for inflation. Various other estimates that include current costs, unfunded future costs, unstated federal debt, and other factors put the total federal debt per taxpayer at about $600,000. Still, the $90,000 figure is sickening enough. Not many of us have $90,000 to toss around. It's interesting to note that the very people who racked up this debt (Demopublican members of CONgress) have a salary that is now about twice that amount.

Even worse, that $9 trillion debt is growing by over a billion dollars a day. Do those numbers again, and it'll make you want to throttle the next free-spending CONgressman you run into. We put people in prison for having a coke habit that costs less than this.

This level of theft would seem to justify locking up every CONgressman with a net spending record greater than zero and tossing the key. Or maybe we should hold them personally responsible for paying it back.

Let's not complain about the price of gasoline. That's a red herring. Let's complain about where we are really being hit--and hit hard. Let's complain to the members of CONgress, whose actions tells us they think that money grows on trees and thus burning it in mass quantities is a perfectly fine thing to do. Tell them they need to spend less this year than they did last year. A lot less.

1. Deter. Make it hard for thieves to attack you, in the first place.
2. Detect. Know when your security has been compromised.
3. Defend. Take corrective action.

We will cover these three things more in-depth in future issues. In the meantime, give these some thought.  And when conducting your routine business of the day, try to apply the 3 Ds.

http://www.supplecity.com/articles/glutaminepeptide.htm

1. The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer. So did the first "Marlboro Man." Sometimes, truly evil people get their just rewards.
    

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