Mindconnection eNL, 2017-12-03

Home

In this issue:
Good News | Product Highlight | Brainpower | Finances | Security | Health/Fitness | Factoid | Thought 4 the Day

Item 1. You may have heard that Amazon bought Whole Foods. If you fear big, aggressive companies, this would seem like bad news. However, it's exceptionally good news. For over half a century, American grocers have been peddling processed foods and making people sick in vast numbers. Amazon is fantastic and distribution and cost-savings and is making real food affordable to vastly more people. While CONgress (the opposite of PROgress) has been lying about medical care reform and calling it "health care" reform, Amazon really is bringing health care to people who formerly could not afford it. That will bring down medical costs and suffering dramatically.

Item 2. We finally got major tax reform for the idiotic 1040 system. At least, we got a House version of it.

"According to an analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), the largest percent increases in take-home pay as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act go to income earners below the 80th percentile. According to their analysis, the average take-home pay increase for all Americans is more than 4%. This is in line with the non-partisan Tax Foundation's estimates of a 4.4% increase in after-tax income." Source: Congressman Yoder.

The typical household making $59,000 will gain $1,182. More importantly, the huge standard deduction helps reduce IRS involvement in people's lives, an involvement that means systematic abuse and terrorism plus a massive drag on the economy. The savings from a reduced IRS footprint on the economy will mean significant savings in compliance costs. By some estimates, over 9 trillion dollars from this one tax reform bill alone. Can you say, "Job creation?" That amount is nearly half our national debt, too.

Item 3. Two quotes about one of the best Good News items of all time:

1. Liberals are denouncing Republican tax reform as a giveaway to big corporations, as they always do. But the irony is that the Senate and House bills would do far more to stop corporate tax gaming than anything the Obama Administration did in eight years."
   - Wall Street Journal Editorial Board
    
2. "You have consistently stressed that the objective of tax reform should be to enhance prospects for increased economic growth and household incomes. We agree with this objective, which is consistent with the traditional norms of public finance going back to Adam Smith. We believe that the reforms embodied in the House and Senate Finance bills would achieve this objective."
   - Letter to Treasury Secretary from Distinguished Economists

Item 4. The Evil Empire is facing yet another devastating law suit. This one is a class action suit in the UK. The hubris of Google's "Do More Evil" motto has been coming back to bite them, viciously and often. It's good news when a company with zero morals is served up justice. It helps serve as a warning to other psychopath-run companies.

The C-Pen Reader pen scanner is major technological breakthrough for anyone learning English and is a life-saver for those who suffer from reading difficulties such as dyslexia. The C-Pen Reader is a totally portable, pocket-sized device that reads text out aloud with an English human-like digital voice.

Main features:

• Hear words and lines of text read aloud.
• Completely self-contained, no computer required to use reading function.
• Collins 10th Edition Dictionary onboard; look up scanned words.
• Optionally scan, store, and transfer to PC or Mac (1GB of storage, download to computer via USB with no additional software required).
• Optionally scan directly into a PC or Mac application (inserts text where the cursor is).
• Includes a voice recorder onboard.
• Includes rechargeable battery, which recharges when you plug the pen into a USB source (micro USB on pen).
• Sleek design.

Available now, in our Amazon store.

For example, we keep hearing that we need a "national health care plan" but the noise is all about paying for medical care.

Even really easy health care measures don't even get consideration. Walk into any grocery store, and you will find an entire (both sides) aisle of bone brittlizer. You can even buy colon cancer cream in one-pound cans! Yet (in my own case), I have to try three different grocery stores to get bok choy (the best dietary calcium source there is) and even then come up blank sometimes.

This is a  major health care hole. Have you heard any of the pundits discuss it? No. The whole focus is on paying for medical care, so questions of health care are left out of the "health care" debate.

Try this simple experiment at a large grocery store. Pick an observation spot that will allow you to see people getting in line at checkout. Look in their carts for one item, other than iceberg lettuce or red delicious apples, from the produce department (we're ignoring some healthy staples, such as beans and rice, for simplification). You'll find a distribution of about 20/80. Which means 80% of people are so averse to being healthy that they won't buy one item that contributes to their health care.

If something could be done to change their attitude, the result might be an 80% reduction in disease and thus an 80% reduction in the need for medical care (this is a simplistic analysis, but suitable for our purposes here).

What is that something that could be done? Force poison peddlers to drop the euphemistic and inappropriate names of the health-destroying garbage their marketing people convince people to buy. If that can of hydrogenated oil had to be labeled "Colon Cancer Cream" in big letters and feature a picture of a colostomy bag being changed, how many people do you think would continue to buy it? If this extended to products made with colon cancer cream, imagine the change in health care!

If cola containers had graphic photos of broken bone ends and esophageal cancer, how many people would want to be part of the "Pepsi Generation?" On and on it goes.

Most Americans recently underwent one of the twice a year jet lag situations inflicted by Congress as a population control method. For three weeks following each clock change, the DOT reports a spike in traffic fatalities and OSHA reports a spike in industrial deaths and injuries. To sell this program to the people, Congress has mislabeled it "Daylight Savings Time" though for people on an early schedule it means you get up in the dark and it's still daylight when you go to bed unless you opt out of this madness and refuse to change your clocks.

Yet rather than demand that Congress stop mandating clock changes and let people adjust (or not) their schedules for summer hours if they want to, people go along with this death program because they are "saving daylight." Saving lives doesn't matter, but pretending to save daylight does; all thanks to this manipulation of people's minds by misusing their language.

Inappropriate name use dupes people into looking at something other than what is at issue. The effect is that zero brain power is applied to the issue. Look for this trap at all times. It is the norm, so evaluate the facts and then re-name things as you see fit.

Names matter. Inappropriate names foster stupidity.

Let's consider laundry detergent as an example. Let's say you go through a jug of premium laundry detergent every six months or so. The jug you have is low, so you add laundry detergent to your shopping list. At the store, it's on sale for $4 less per jug. It makes sense to buy an extra one, but not two extra ones. Why?

You'll double your savings with the extra jug and you shouldn't have too much of a problem stowing it. It extends your detergent supply to a full year. For only $1 savings, the extra jug wouldn't have justified tying up the extra capital for so much time. The $4 savings is a much stronger incentive. But it's not enough incentive to have a third jug waiting more than a year to be opened (tying up capital and taking up space).

During that year, you could come across a detergent you like better. Or a sale at $5 off. But you're already overloaded with laundry detergent. You've now got multiple heavy containers of liquid to keep out of the way; this is how jugs end up being punctured accidentally.

The vast majority of sales-chasers don't apply basic math correctly. For example, John buys a one-year supply of beer because there was a 20% off sale. He claims it's the same as a mutual fund making 20% a year except the mutual fund gets taxed on that 20%.

The calculation of the rate of return is much more complex than he believes; how much is he investing and how much does that capital cost him are among several factors that must be considered.

Nor is he consuming that beer all at once. Sure, he saved 20% on the first day. But halfway through the year, his savings drop to 10% for the remaining beer (this is finance degree kind of stuff, but if you think about it you'll see why).

For any kind of good, there is a "limit of reason" on how long you should store it. Beyond that limit, your "sale savings" fail to make up for the economic losses involved in storage, clutter, damage, loss, excess use, waste, and the misallocation of capital.

This concept is hard for some people to take and hard for many to understand. One thing to keep in mind is sales occur all the time. Rather than misallocate limited capital to "save money", try to use each sale as a means of saving money on whatever quantity you were going to buy anyhow. Allow exceptions only rarely, with good reason.

Yes, you will miss some savings that way. But you will have more money and less stress than if you let sale prices seduce you into overspending on one item after another.

That is when we need to push for massive budget cuts at the Institute. The fewer of these reprobates there are to prey upon innocent people, the more secure we all are. Be ready to write to your Congressional Representative and both of your Senators about the need to massively scale back this agency's budget.

Arnold used flyes, instead, to develop his massive chest. The bench press also involves many joints and thus a lot of risk for the gain.

Yet walk into almost any gym and what do you see? People (typically guys) working on the bench press (in bad, joint-damaging, tendon-inflaming form). And with far too much weight.

What are some other common training mistakes?

• Momentum lifting. People who fixate on the weight instead of tension in the muscle usually have an ego issue going on. They use way too much weight, and to move it they throw it. That weight has to stop at the end of the swing. You can calculate the force (speed times mass); the more momentum, the more damage when that weight stops (the momentum transfers to the joints, ligaments, and tendons--Law of Conservation of Momentum).
   
• Rocking. This is often paired with momentum lifting. It prevents any adaptive response and is hard on joints, ligaments, and tendons. Recently, I saw a really bad case of this while out of town and visiting a local gym. An undermuscled guy believed he was doing lateral raises. This is an isolation exercise, and you want the tension to stay in your deltoids. I could not believe how much he moved his hips from front to back! He looked like a disco dancer! His shoulder joint barely moved, but the weight did.
   
• Counting reps instead of making the reps count. I use a weight that is moderately difficult and then stop the set when it becomes very difficult. I do count reps, but only as a general guide. I don't keep track of them and try to increase my weight or reps from session to session; that only makes you cheat to make your numbers and that's how you get injured.
   
• Failing to assess and set (changing) goals. For example, if you have a body part that is lagging you could (per Arnold's advice) do more sets to bring it up. That is, you pump it more and stimulate an increase in capillarization. Simply "working out" with no plan or purpose means you won't have the physique you want.
   
• Failing to focus. On my recent visit to a gym, a trainer was working with a client. This client had a poorly developed body. He was lifting with momentum and chatting about his family problems. Do you think he will make any progress over the next six months? It's almost certain that he won't. He was not fully there and was not in tune at all with his body.

Top photo taken 16SEP2016, just days before 56th birthday; bottom photo taken 3 days after 56th birthday

• Doing "cardio." This trains your body to conserve fat and consume muscle. Cardio is low-intensity, high-duration work. The body adapts to this by storing energy (in the form of fat) and reducing the metabolically active tissue we call muscle.
   
• Not including burst training. You don't have to do much of this to get results (fat loss) and you can incorporate it into your regular weight training by taking short rests between sets. Short as in 20 seconds at most. Not every session or with every exercise in a session, but occasionally.
   
• Whole body workouts. This has been all the rage, lately. Stop and think about why this doesn't work. If you didn't get the answer, it has to do with a limited supply of energy to generate the intensity needed to get the adaptive response that builds muscle and reduces fat. So you have to dial things down, and you get the same effect as with cardio. That is, you are training your body to store fat and metabolize muscle.
   
• Being sloppy with angles. For example, when doing lateral raises you need your shoulders fully back else you will put excessive strain in the biceps tendon. Correcting this can be done with the help of a personal trainer, physical therapist, chiropractor, or just a friend who will watch what you are doing.
   
• Doing "full range of motion" with a single exercise. This does not work because of something called gravity. For example, picture yourself doing biceps curls with "full range of motion." That weigh feels really heavy at full extension and light as a feather at full contraction. You need to work the mid-range position, full contraction position, and the full extension position each with a different exercise that puts the force of gravity in that particular arc.
   
• Working legs twice a week. I have never understood what people think they are doing with this practice. The quads and glutes are major muscles. You load them, and it takes a huge amount of energy. Recovery time is several days, if not longer. You would be much better off doing an intense squats workout once a month and a leg pump routine once a month (so these are two weeks apart).
   
• Doing sit-ups. These do not work your abs, they work your hip flexors. They also arch your back in the wrong way, creating back strain. Don't do these. Period.
   
• Cutting carbs. You need carbs to fuel your workouts. If you run out of energy and can't engage in the intensity required to stimulate the adaptive response, you won't strengthen or grow your muscles.
   
• Cutting fat. You need fat for many purposes, including burning fat and fueling your brain.
   
• Consuming whey protein drinks. First of all, these are typically made with milk from mastitis-suffering cows. That is not only totally gross, it's unhealthy. Second, an average man can metabolize about 20 grams before the excess is turned to fat. The typical serving is 40 grams.
   
• Having inconsistent bed time hours. Your body gets into a rhythm when it comes to sleep. If you fail to respect this, you will be sleep-deprived. This condition lowers your effective IQ and it retards recovery.

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.

Over 780,000 people in America die each year from "hospital errors." And these are only the ones where stretching the truth or outright lying does not result in assigning some other cause.