Mindconnection eNL, 2018-05-20

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Item 1. Congressman Kevin Yoder wrote: "In another round of good news for our economy, the latest jobs report showed that the unemployment rate fell to 3.9% - the lowest in over 17 years! Our country continues to add more jobs, and the vast majority of Americans are able to find work right now. In addition, average wages have grown by 2.6% in the last year. These are clear signs that our pro-growth policies, like the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, are boosting our economy for everyone."

Item 2. The campaign of ignorance and hatred launched by the CEO of Dick's Sporting Goods (and its affiliated Field & Stream stores) is having the predictable effect. Those two properties are suffering not only a mass defection of customers, but massive rejection by suppliers. That's right, if you still shop at Dick's Sporting Goods  or Field & Stream, many of the products you might want simply won't be there. When our civil liberties are attacked by the government, we can't do much about it. But when a private company attacks our civil liberties, we can fight back by boycotting them. Vote with your consumer dollar; it's very effective.

Item 3. An uplifting video: https://youtu.be/fnc82rucSfQ

Item 4. Many Americans are still boycotting BP, the company that gave us a string of lethal disasters due to gross irresponsibility. Remember, if you see a BP sign do not pull in. That company does not deserve to be present in North America after the series of disasters culminating in the Deep Horizons disaster. Since our "government" won't do anything about this, it's up to us. Vote with your consumer dollars.

Item 5. In its early days, Google lived by the motto "Do no evil." Then as its founders became filthy rich they lost sight of their morals. The company began living by the motto "Do more evil." If you use a legitimate search engine (don't ever "google it"), you can find all kinds of dirt on Google. Lawsuits all over the world, and some with 12 digit fines (those fines are being appealed), for example.

One of the evil things Google did was destroy thousands of small websites that were competing with its large advertisers on organic search and beating those large advertisers. Now Google is losing a big advertiser. Amazon, at one time Google's biggest advertiser, has pulled out of Google Shopping ads.

Amazon has never needed to play dirty to win, so it has refrained from doing so. At the helm of this company, Jeff Bezos still uses a cheap "door desk". It's good that Amazon is distancing itself from the "Do more evil" company. Perhaps this severe blow will cause the Google executive team to find their moral compass. That would be good news, indeed.

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There's long been a correlation between Alzheimer's and sleep deprivation, because poor ability to sleep is one of the early signs of Alzheimer's (and it doesn't go away). Now it's looking like sleep deprivation is at least a contributing cause to Alzheimer's.

But that Alzheimer's issue is not why I mention sleep here. The same process that (most likely) results in Alzheimer's degrades your intelligence even if you don't get Alzheimer's.

Research clearly shows that even "a little" sleep deprivation significantly lowers your mental acuity. So you stay up late one night to finish a project or maybe to party. Just take a nap the next day and you're OK, right? Wrong. Remember that process again. Because there is left over waste to remove and there's damage done by the previous night's incomplete removal, that fog effect will last for days.

This fact alone should be enough to get Congress to repeal Daylight Wasting time, the practice of lying about what time it is and losing an hour of sleep with each clock adjustment. With DW time, your IQ plummets not just from one night of sleep deprivation, but from an accumulation of sleep deprivations during the time your body is trying to reset your circadian rhythm. It might be several months before your full brain power returns.

To be sharp, sleep well. Go to bed at the same time every night. Make your room dark and quiet; no phone or computer in the bedroom. If you "need" an alarm clock to get you up in time for work, you are not doing this right.

Here are some tips on how to reduce those bills:

• Don't prewash dishes that are going into the dishwasher. Yes, you can rinse them out (sometimes you really should!), but don't waste time or water cleaning them. Unless you have a low-end model, your dishwasher is capable of cleaning those dishes. If you're worried about something not coming off, spritz with some white vinegar before putting it into the dishwasher.
   
• Don't run the water while shaving your face or brushing your teeth. The faucet is easy to use, so use it. Run the water only when you need to run the water. This can save several gallons per shave job or tooth brushing.
   
• If buying a new toilet, don't automatically go for the one that uses the least water per flush. Modern toilets are designed for people who are on a low-fiber, unhealthy diet. Someone on a human body compatible diet will have to flush that toilet perhaps a dozen times to clear the bowl. Even if the toilet is "guaranteed" to clear due to pressure or some other factor, there's no getting past the fact your solid waste will be well above the water line and that means multiple flushes. Research carefully, and be very clear that you're going to deposit far more per use than the unit is probably designed for. There are human-compatible toilets still available, make sure you get one so you flush once not twelve times.
   
• Adopt the "if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down" practice (within reason, of course). You can keep the bowl clean by periodically  adding white vinegar to the tank. The vinegar removes scale, so if you have scale in the bowl turn the valve off, flush the toilet, pour vinegar in the bowl, and let it stand overnight. It should be clean by morning.
   
• If you fell for the CFL scam and still have those energy-wasters in your home, replace them with LED equivalents and take the CFLs to a toxic waste disposal facility (they contain mercury, they don't go in the regular trash).
   
• When grocery shopping, sort your groceries at checkout. Place a bag designated for "refrigerator items" on the belt, then place refrigerator items to follow it. Repeat if you are buying so much produce that you need more than one bag (for example, I pick up six dozen eggs at Natural Grocers so one bag for eggs and then another bag for produce).
  
  Generally, people who work at grocery stores don't get the idea even if you tell them twice and even though it's as obvious as day what you want done. You will probably need to train a given checkout person over time. So watch them and correct them until they get it right.
  
  Now when you get home, you take that refrigerator-designated grocery bag, open the refrigerator once, and put everything away quickly. The refrigerator is usually the single biggest user of electricity in a home, meaning this organized way of doing things hugely pays off over the course of a year.
   
• Organize your refrigerator. Putting things in the same place every time means you don't have to stand there with the door open trying to find something. An organized refrigerator is also easier to clean.
   
• Even if you have LEDs throughout your home, shut lights off when you're not going to be in the room. These are very efficient, but they still consume electricity to run.
   
• If you don't have a setback thermostat, buy one. It pays for itself in a single heating or cooling season.
   
• Change your furnace filter often. Pick one day in a week to be the day you check that filter, and then check it every week. A dirty filter takes more electricity to run, causes premature failure of your blower (expensive to fix), and reduces the comfort of your home.
   
• Air dry your bedding. For purposes of basic hygiene, you should change your bedding weekly. Many people dry their bedding on high heat, which not only wastes electricity but permanently damages the fabric. There's no reason a properly cared for set of sheets can't last 30 years, but a set typically lasts only 5 before needing to be replaced. Dry sheets on low heat  enough to leave them a bit damp, then hang them up to dry. You can use your bed posts or if your bed doesn't have posts buy some blunt-end hooks that you can screw into a wall for that purpose.
   
• Use liquid body wash rather than bar soap. Bar soap and bar detergents leave "soap scum" in the bath and shower,  which means you're going to spend time with the lights on trying to scrub that nasty stuff off. Just don't create it in the first place.
   
• Save money by taking a warm shower rather than a hot one. (note that a hot shower also damages your skin). Don't wash your hair with hot water, that damages your hair.
   
• Save money by showering in distinct stages. Rinse off, shut the water off, lather up, scrub (and, if you choose, shave), turn the water on and rinse off. Doing it this way can save several hundred gallons of water a year versus standing aimlessly under a running shower for 15 minutes.

There's a long list of offensive actions that Dick's is taking, including the following:

• Refusing to sell firearms to 18 to 20 year olds, an act of blatant age discrimination.
• Destroying certain models of guns in its inventory, to "send a message".
• Publishing anti-gun, pro-criminal rants in official communication from the CEO.

And they even hired anti-gun, anti-gun owner lobbyists to take their message of "punish innocent gun owners for the heinous acts of criminals" to lawmakers.

Many people use firearms protect their families every day. Usually, no shot is even fired. Now Dick's Sporting Goods is on the side of violent criminals, advocating that only criminals should have guns.

We all know that when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. We all know that the Supreme Court and many lower courts have ruled the police are under no obligation to protect us. Even if they were, fulfilling that obligation is simply impossible as the police cannot be everywhere at once. Indeed, most cities, counties, and states today have a police shortage.

The police shortage is so severe that the State of Kansas has half as many troopers as it did ten years ago despite  a large increase in population during those ten years. And that's just one example.

With this new policy from Dick's Sporting Goods, we law-abiding gun owners have no choice but to boycott them and take our business elsewhere. Note that they've extended this policy of hatred to their other properties. From their corporate site, we read, "DICK’S Sporting Goods' family of businesses includes Golf Galaxy, Blue Sombrero, True Runner, Chelsea Collective and Field & Stream."

It's truly a shame that this once honorable company has been hijacked by lunatics. Let's support their competitors, at least until they come to their senses or go out of business.

It is not obesity that puts you at a high risk for Type II diabetes. Obesity is merely a symptom of what puts you at a high risk for Type II diabetes.

Obesity and Type II diabetes have the same cause: food choices that are incompatible with human health.

Do you have to starve to be lean? Some people think so, but you can be lean without starving.

Some competitive bodybuilders go through a bulking phase, then as a competition nears they dramatically cut calories to get rid of body fat. This practice is based on the mistaken idea that you need massively extra calories to build muscle (followed by starvation to lose fat).

Now, think about how obviously mistaken this idea is. Are they gaining too much muscle during the bulking phase? No, they are gaining too much fat. You need extra calories to build fat; you need only to not have a deficiency to build muscle. Swinging from 3,000 calories per day to 600 calories per day is not healthy. Yo-yo dieting this way has long-term health effects, all of them bad.

Dramatically cutting calories is physically and emotionally stressful, and it trains your body to conserve fuel rather than to stay lean. People who do the bulking/starving thing find it increasingly difficult to get lean with each iteration.

If you consume sufficient calories that you're not in starvation mode, you have sufficient calories to add muscle. Note that the adult human body adds muscle at a slow pace. I mean muscle cells, not some other tissue such as capillaries. So grossly overeating isn't needed.

Muscles grow slowly, you don't need to gorge yourself for them do to that. Fitness models know this fact well, and live it year round.

When a competitive bodybuilder trains for hypertrophy, that person moves the weights at a fast tempo (but still with muscle tension) to get the pump. That person is stimulating the body to build capillaries, not just muscle. It is the capillaries swelling out the muscles that make them look so large compared to the muscles of a person who has trained just as hard but with non-hypertrophic methods.

In many sports, hypertrophy is avoided because the extra weight of those vessels and the fluid in them slows down the athlete. The goal is to have a high power to weight ratio, not a lot of heavy "filler" inside the muscles.

So how can you be lean all year round? Let's look at some key areas. Note that none of this involves starvation and none of it involves "killing yourself" at a gym.

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

A key goal of your diet should be to manage your endocrine system. These steps will help you do just that:

• Eat six small meals per day; this evens out your insulin and provides other benefits.
• Eat reasonable portions. There's no need to stuff yourself or to starve yourself.
• No alcohol; it's an endocrine disrupter with zero health benefits and many health costs.
• No endocrine disrupters of any sort. This means no wheat, corn, or soy or anything made with them.
• No processed foods.
• Eat a variety of vegetables. At least 70% of your diet should be vegetables.
• Get the right fats. Nuts, organic butter, traditional cooking oils, etc.
• Identify the "super foods" and eat some of them every day.

Calorie restriction

Moderate calorie restriction is effective for fat loss. But it's easy to get "too much of a good thing" and trigger your body's fuel conservation response. If you're trying to lose fat, a little calorie restriction can help you. What is "a little?" Let's say you eat a big sweet potato every day. Cut it in half, eating only half per day. Out of your total calorie intake, that isn't much. But it's less than you were getting.

Something that works for me is this. I eat a piece of fruit with meal number two and another piece of fruit with meal number four. But on my one rest day of the week, I eat only one piece of fruit (typically with meal number four). Again, not much in the way of calories. But it's less than I usually get.

Exercise

A key goal of your exercise program should be to manage your endocrine system. Yes, same as with diet. These steps will help you to do just that:

• Train with weights or in some other way engage in exercise that is intense (lots of work per unit of time) so it really loads your system. Each time you do this, it's like getting a testosterone shot; do it 5 days per week minimum, six is better.
• Use a split routine when training, else you will not have enough recovery time.
• Take a coaching course and/or work with a trainer so you know what you're doing. Else, you'll be wasting much of your effort while also courting injuries.
• Don't do "cardio." It trains your body to store fat. That's if cardio is defined as prolonged low-intensity exercise. There's nothing wrong with going for a walk, but avoid the long treadmill sessions. And no jogging!
• Consider doing HIIT (high intensity interval training) at least once a week if you are trying to reduce body fat.

Supplements

Don't make the mistake of plopping down $49.95 for some bottle of fat burner that has a fancy label on it. Most of these are a mix of caffeine and dubious ingredients. They will give you adrenal burnout and rob you of your sleep while doing very little to reduce your body fat.

• Green coffee bean extract has been proven to work. Don't take it late in the day.
• L-Carnitine has been proven to work. Take it throughout the day, and take it shortly before bed. It is the working ingredient in night-time fatburners.
• CLA has zero to do with reducing body fat, though it's been hyped up for years as a fat loss supplement. The people who research lipids for a living are adamant about this fact. I know, because the editor of their professional journal contacted me about this very issue.
• Actual coffee will help you burn fat. Just don't overdo it.
• Black pepper is also noted for fat-burning. It's a stimulant.

Do not use so-called energy drinks and other caffeine bombs. They disrupt your adrenal system, and they disrupt your sleep. You will see your testosterone nose-dive as sleep deprivation kicks in. Do this long enough, and you will have a significant risk of dying in a car accident because of your deteriorated mental condition.

Back to calories

I want to address the calorie thing again. It's not a simple matter of getting X number of calories to be lean. How you manage your endocrine system will determine what your body does with those calories.

For example, consider frequency. Many people eat only two or three meals a day. This means all of their carbohydrates are concentrated in those two or three meals instead of being spread out. Let's say your body can use 100 units of carbs before needing to convert any extra to fat. You take in 500 units per day in three meals. So three times, your body is going to store the excess as fat. With six meals, this problem goes away.

Also consider type. Orange juice is an endocrine disrupter. Your body does not know what to do with all that fructose suddenly hitting the blood stream, other than convert it to fat. The body converts excess sugars to fat to prevent oxidation. If you slam down a big glass of OJ, you're going to get the fat AND the oxidation. Same issue with any other fruit juice, any corn sweeteners, and just about any processed food. If you eat the same calories as that juice in the form of whole fruit, there is zero endocrine disruption so zero conversion to fat.

Also consider endocrine effects. Intense exercise boosts your testosterone, which signals your body to burn fat, build muscle, and store calcium in the bones. As long as you don't ingest endocrine modifiers, you'll get this boost (those modifiers drive it to zero).

Dieting later to get rid of the fat that resulted from your bad choices does not undo the damage done by those choices. You've still disrupted your endocrine system, you've still caused tissue oxidation, and you've still created a cascade of dysfunctions in the body.

It's your choice

Excess body fat is a symptom, rather than the disease. The disease, if you want to call it that, lies entirely within your control. You must control what you eat and when you eat it. You can even, through intense exercise, greatly influence what your body does with it.

Having a lean, strong body is the result of making good choices, not the result of trying to repair the damage done by making bad ones. Bottom line, make good choices consistently.

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

Most graduates of American public high schools cannot pass a test of Standard Written English.