The Neo-Paleo Gourmet

Stay smart, stay strong

I'm hanging up my spurs.  My job is more engaging, I have a longer commute and less time to blog regularly (which is the right way to do it).  Feel free to email me about anything.  A few closing thoughts:

Good Thinkers
Taleb, Dennett, Pinker, Hayek, Dawkins, Diamond, Harris (Judith Rich) - new article here, Lomborg, Gilbert, De Vany, Kurzweil, Wright (Robert), Pollan, Friedman (Milton), Ridley are good sources of insight.  Marginal Revolution is my favorite blog. 

Food and Health
I'm still 80% of the way caveman (eating and exercising), and I'm integrating it into my lifestyle.  Go to www.arthurdevany.com if you're interested in this topic.  He is my guru.  Read his essay on Evolutionary Fitness. I'll close with some recent meals:

kiwi, turkey burgers, asparagus

                                                 

                                                                                                massive omellette with red grapes and melon...salmon burger

                            so tasty....

yum....

salmon fillets with spinach and brocolli

The Encyclopedia of Life

I received this amazing email this morning.  There's never been such an amazing time to be alive.  Everything is moving so quickly!  If I weren't at work I probably would have cried while watching the video.  It's not just the Encyclopedia of Life, if that weren't enough, but also the fact that E.O. Wilson can now give a speech, the right people can watch it, that so much work can get done so quickly, and resources can be mobilized.  How can you have a pulse and not be optimistic?

"Dear TEDizens,

Those of us in Monterey this year watched in awe as E O Wilson unveiled his inspiring TED Prize wish to create an Encyclopedia of Life. (If you weren't there, you can see it  here.)

In Washington DC this morning, the first big step in that dream came true. Five major scientific institutions, backed by a $50m funding commitment led by the MacArthur Foundation, announced the launch of a global effort to launch the Encyclopedia. Ed Wilson described today's announcement as a dream come true.

As Ed hinted in his speech back in March, a broad-based effort to plan the launch was already underway at the time he made his TED Prize wish. But  he called on us to assist the effort, I am proud to tell you that members of the TED community played a key role in realizing what happened today.

In particular I'd like to salute the effort of Avenue A-Razorfish who in three short weeks were able to visualize a stunning design for the Encyclopedia and incorporate it in a video that is the centerpiece of the newly launched website. Please take two minutes (and it is literally two minutes) right now to watch this video. It does a spectacular job of explaining the purpose and vision behind the Encylopedia. It is here at  www.eol.org. This work was done entirely pro bono, and is a wonderful example of the TED Prize at work. Everyone at the launch today was blown away by it.

The video includes spectacular photography, some of it contributed by TEDster Frans Lanting. And the website address itself was contributed by an individual inspired by Ed's wish. Programmer Ray Ratelis owned eol.org, a valuable web address which he freely contributed to the project.

Many more TEDsters are meeting next month to assist the project in brainstorming its architecture, technology and design. It's proving an exhilarating example of the power of collaboration.

There are already many stories up online about the Encylopedia. Here's the official announcement.

Huge kudos and thanks to Ed and to Avenue A-Razorfish and to everyone else embarking on this journey. 

My best,

- Chris Anderson, TED Curator"

Saturn backlit by the Sun

 

Just amazing.  The beauty of human ingenuity and science.

Go here to find Earth in this picture, and also to hear why this picture upsets Steve Pinker.

Child Obesity

"McDonald's Corp. will use the film "Shrek the Third" to launch its biggest promotion ever of fruits, vegetables and milk this summer."

This is a good thing.  But the bulk of blame for childhood obesity belongs with parents, not McDonald's.

I just can't imagine having a child and letting them gorge themselves to obesity.  It's mind-blowing to me that parents let this happen.  And NO, I'm not going to "see it from their perspective".  That sort of bullshit thinking leads you to blame everyone (society, advertising, corporations, poverty, etc.) except the people who can do something about it -- YOU. 

A twelve year old forty pounds overweight?  How can parents not watch their fat kids getting fatter and not treat it like a drug addiction? Kids are becoming addicted to sugar and fat right in front of parents' eyes.  It's crazy.

What would you do if your 12 year old were addicted to cocaine or heroin?

I would take measures to save his or her life.  The measures would be in proportion to the importance of the goal.

The Era of Personal Genetics is dawning

"23andMe is an early stage startup developing tools and producing content to help people make sense of their genetic information. Our goal is to take advantage of new genotyping technologies and help consumers explore their genetics, informed by cutting edge science.

Combining computer science, biology and informatics, we are at the cutting edge of a new era of genetics. Genome deciphering technologies have reached affordable levels, allowing consumer access. This information has the potential to empower both individuals and society in a way that will deliver tremendous value. For the individual, such information will provide personal insight into ancestry, genealogy and health. For society, the collection of genotypic and phenotypic information on a large scale will provide scientists with novel avenues for research."

Not much else on the website, but bet on it.  Founded by Sergey Brin's fiancee.  Via Valleywag.

50 is the new 40

Just take Julio Franco, still playing major league ball at 48 -- and now the oldest major leaguer to ever hit a home run.

Watch Aubrey de Grey on why aging can be defeated:

"In a shocking challenge to conventional wisdom, Cambridge researcher Aubrey de Grey argues that the process of aging is merely a disease -- and a curable one at that."

I particularly like his illustration of "Longevity Escape Velocity", showing how he believes a person can expect to live more or less forever provided that they are healthy enough once the relevant medical breakthroughs accelerate.  Aubrey is also head of the Methuselah Mouse Prize, giving researchers an incentive to extend the life of mice.

Misfortune aside, I expect to live well over a hundred years.  Did you see the stem cell discovery today?

Hat tip to Robert Cantwell.

A typical Saturday afternoon...

...sipping champagne at the Harvard Club.  Can you guess what we were talking about?  Not global politics.

(They offered me a free brunch to model for this ridiculous photo....and two glasses of champagne...and fame.)

Photo in context here.

Corporate Ghost Towns

"Could you imagine if the City of New York banned advertising in Times Square? How about advertising in all public spaces?

Well, that's exactly what the city of São Paulo, Brazil, voted to do last September, by a vote of 45 to one, and it took effect January of this year. Madison Avenue has mostly swept this story under the rug, but it's real -- and daunting."

Article here, and more importantly, see pictures here.

Hat tip to Brian Crandall.

Putting the fundamental attribution error to work

Directly from MR....

Use visualization to improve your life

Tyler Cowen

...we tend to interpret other people's actions as saying something about them, whereas we interpret our own actions as saying more about the situation we're in.  So, when we picture ourselves acting in the third-person, we see ourselves as an observer would, as the 'kind of person' who performs that behaviour.  "Seeing oneself as the type of person who would engage in a desired behaviour increases the likelihood of engaging in that behaviour", the researchers said.

Here is the article, which claims you should envision your desired successes through the perspective of a third person, to better bring them about.

Presidential Debates: Better in France

 

The French Presidential Debate sounded so much more combative and direct than any American debates I can remember.  That means both more substantive AND more entertaining.

Good one-liners:

"In the middle of an exchange on schooling for the handicapped, Royal sought to paint Sarkozy as unreasonably hard-hearted. He urged her to calm down, whereupon she insisted three times: "I will not calm down!" Sarkozy then said: "To be president of the Republic you have to be calm..' "

...

No skirting the issues:

"A combative Royal riposted by sketching a devastating picture of France today, a country deeply in debt with two million people living below the poverty line, three million unemployed and prey to rising violence.

"I want to get France out of the situation it finds itself in today," she said, challenging Sarkozy to say whether as a member of the government he accepted responsibility for the current state of affairs.

Sarkozy came straight back at her: "Yes, Madame Royal," he said. "I am responsible for a part of the record of this government." But he added that when the center-right government took over from the Socialists in 2002, "I found a situation that was catastrophic."

...

Exposing the preposterous economics of the Socialist left:

In one of the more heated exchanges of the evening, Sarkozy accused Royal of having no credible economic program.

"It seems to me that when it comes to debt," he said, "you given no indication how to reduce it. That's your right. When it comes to growth, you have given no means of reviving growth. I have: because you're right we need more growth. The problem of France is that there is about 1 percentage point of growth less than in other big democracies and economies in the world. Why: For a simple reason, Madame Royal: Because we work less than the others.

"It may surprise you," he said, that none of the 10 countries in Europe that have fuller employment have the 35-hour week. "You want more civil servants?" he added. "That's nice. But how do you pay that?" She shot back: "Don't deform my words. I will maintain the number of civil servants not increase it. I will redeploy them in a more efficient way."

Notice the arrogance of the expert planner.  "I will redeploy them in a more efficient way."  Ha!

The Internet, circa 2003

Red - Asia/Pacific

Green - Europe/Middle East/Central Asia/Africa

Blue - North America

Yellow - Latin America and Carribean

Cyan - Other

White - Unknown

Mapped at C-Level Networks (which I think is a few levels about IP address?)

From here.  Also from USA Today via Drudge recently, but I saw it long before they did. 

Temperance

As my general state of health has improved, the difference between how I feel when I'm hungover and how I feel when I've just worked out has widened.  So I notice hangovers and lack of sleep more.  Which causes me to drink less and try to get more sleep, particularly on weekends.

To restate it: My average health initially improved because I raised my "max".  The resulting increase in variation caused me to notice and raise my "min".

Interesting example of positive reinforcement.

Asking the right questions

The wrong questions to ask: Why is there poverty?  Why is there war?

Historically, subsitance living and violence are the natural condition of man.  It is wealth and peace that require explanation -- they are the abberation.

The right questions to ask: Why is there wealth?  Why is there peace?

Constraints that lead to freedom

1. Gravity, electromagnetism and other physical forces are fundamentally constraining, but they allow a predictable framework for stable atom and molecules to come to be.  This allows for organisms to evolve, and organisms are pretty good at scooting around.

2. Political institutions that constrain the ways in which power can be used in a society provide a predictable framework for economic growth, freedom of migration, and freedom of thought.

3. Some moral constrains can make you less of a slave to the addictions of sex, certain chemicals, or materialism.

4. Constraints on what you eat can make you healthier, faster, and happier -- and better able to accomplish whatever you want to accomplish.

Milk...does a body bad

"Mongolian physician Ganmaa Davaasambuu has linked increased tumor formation and growth in laboratory animals with chemically induced cancer to high levels of hormones in commercial milk. Seasonal milking practices among Mongolian nomads ensure that cows produce milk only during the first three months of a new pregnancy, when hormone levels are low. Because modern dairies, on the other hand, milk cows well into their next pregnancy, commercial milk often contains much higher levels of biologically active hormones."

Not all bad: Of the milks they tested, "Levels of hormones and growth factors were low in both American skim milk (hormones are carried in the milk fat) and Mongolian milk."  They also found that Mongolian children started growing faster when they drank American milk.

It's a drink for children.

That's from a recent article in Harvard Magazine.

Why is unhealthy food so inexpensive?

Not because it's cheap to process a Twinkie.  The government massively subsidizes the main sources of processed ingredients: corn, soybeans, and wheat.  Three cheers for the farm bill!  Protecting the (fat) American way.

Here is the beginning of the excellent new article by Michael Pollan:

"A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person’s wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?

"Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods — dairy, meat, fish and produce — line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.)"

...

Anarchy isn't madness

This short video should clear up your misconceptions about Anarchy -- it isn't what you think!

Note: My sound card hasn't been installed yet, so I don't know what the audio is.   Hat tip to Nick Orenstein for the inadvertent pointer.

A habitable planet discovered

Astronomers have discovered a planet with the conditions likely necessary to sustain life.  An amazing, exciting discovery.  And it's old...

"Just because Gliese 581c is habitable does not mean that it is inhabited, but we do know its sun is an ancient star - in fact, it is one of the oldest stars in the galaxy, and extremely stable. If there is life, it has had many billions of years to evolve."

Article here, though I'm sure there will be better sources over the coming days.

Don't Diet

Most dieters gain weight.

Read why here, as well as a simple reiteration of the Evolutionary Fitness way.

Walmart's Supply Chain

Have a look at at a map of where Walmart's products come from.  (Via MR.)

How did Walmart become so successful?  Supply-chain management.  When others competitors were opening stores all around the country in "target markets", Walmart was building out in concentric circles.  This allowed it to build their reknowned supply chain, and to learn to how to squeeze every penny out of suppliers.

Apologies

Sorry for the recent lack of posts.  My first lapse since I started.  I've taken a new job with an internet start-up, and I'm currently on the West Coast.  Once I'm up to speed and back in New York, I'll get right back to it.

Living on the edge

"It's not surprising that contrarians end up being the drivers of change.  Conventional wisdom, middle of the road people, that's not where the action is.  Things happen on the margin, whether you are making a decision about stocks or cultural change.  The place where decisions happen is at the edge.  And out there laboring in obscurity, if not in derision, have been these people who have been able to keep a pretty pure idea going, and adapting it to circumstances and watching it be validated by the march of history."

That's Louis Rossetto talking about libertarians in Radicals for Capitalism.

Three medical breakthroughs

There are so many reasons to be optimistic about the world, human society, and the blessings of science.  Here are three, all from the last two weeks:

Blood Type Conversion Breakthrough (April 2nd)

"A life-saving method of converting blood from one group to another has been pioneered by scientists. The breakthrough could potentially mean the end of blood-donor shortages and boost supplies of sought-after group O negative blood."

Type I Diabetes Breakthrough (April 11th)

"Diabetics using stem-cell therapy have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time, after their bodies started to produce the hormone naturally again."

Chemotherapy Effectiveness Breakthrough (April 12th)

"Cancer treatment could be on the brink of a revolution following a study showing that it may be possible significantly to improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs without causing side effects."

The bottom line: Science, Science, Science.

Quick Quotes: Psychiatry

"The psychiatrist's two most important social functions," [Thomas] Szasz wrote, are "incarcerating innocent persons in mental hospitals and freeing guilty persons from prison" through the insanity defense.

From Radicals for Capitalism.

Have you ever been truly hungry?

So hungry that instincts take over.

Probably not.

Hunger defeated, conquered by Plenty

As of 2002, the American Obesity Association states, "Approximately 127 million adults in the U.S. are overweight, 60 million obese, and 9 million severely obese."

Okay, okay, I get it -- America is fat.  Let's work towards a solution.  But let's not harp on the ills of modernity and America without acknowledging the problems humanity used to face.   As of 1943, Isabel Paterson could correctly write that the United States was "the only country on record that has never had a famine since it became a nation."

I'd much prefer to deal with obesity than starvation.  Let's not lose sight of that.

The Cavemen are coming!

Good news faithful readers....we now have more than 10 people giving the Caveman Way a try.  You are not alone.  You are going to be more physically AND mentally fit than all those human drones out there.  Keep up the good work.  And let me know how things are going.

Now if each one of you recruits two more people, and they each recruit two more...why....why...we could change the world!

Civil comments only, please

I love watching the internet evolve new voluntary institutions to address problems.  The issue is impolite, unproductive, and even threatening comments to blogs.  The solution is...

"Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about."

It would be so easy just to pass a law!  But the law would be static next to the dynamism of evolving standards and media, one lousy size fits all, and an actual assault on free speech (not being a voluntary restriction).

"Mr. O’Reilly said the guidelines were not about censorship. “That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make — believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech,” he said. “Free speech is enhanced by civility.”"

Constraints are often very liberating.  To offer another example, my food restrictions have made me a freer person: more physically fit, no longer slave to cravings, and more confident to make my own way.

Article here.

Sugar Addicts

Sugar is a drug.  Anyone who wants evidence need only look at children.  They get "hyper" (read: a cocaine-like rush), having much more energy than usual, followed by a crash.  It's not called a sugar high for nothing.  And kids will do just about anything to get more sugar -- that's why strangers use...candy to lure children away from parents.  Frightening when you step back and think about it.

Sugar not only means refined sugar of the kind you find in sweets, but also the sugar that gets converted from simple carbohydrates in your body -- like pastas, breads, crackers, croissants, cereal, and potatoes.  That's why so many people refer to these as "Comfort Foods".  We get a rush of hormones and feel-good chemicals after we eat them.  It's a real physiological addiction.

The shape of things to come

JC is getting in shape:

"The determined Savior has also forsworn His favorite
high-calorie, high-carb foods such as fatted calf, loaves, and even His own body and blood, instead embracing muscle-building high-protein shakes and electrolyte-replacing sports drinks. And when temptation calls, Christ need only look at two pictures taped to His refrigerator: an icon of Himself prior to starting His regimen and a reproduction of Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" fresco torn from a magazine."

(Of course, if Jesus understood evolution a little better, he'd make some improvements to his workout.)

Via Sarah via Clark.

A Cold Shower X 1,000

After my post on cold exposure a good friend of mine sent me this photo of him "practicing" diving into freezing cold water.  Military training in a Non-US country.  Now that's cold.

First, know thyself

"We need inoculations against our own potential for evil. We have to acknowledge it. Then we can change it."

That's from an interview with Dr. Philip Zimbardo in the Times.  He was the scientist who ran the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, and who is now working on getting people to understand why Abu Ghraib happened and WAS BOUND TO HAPPEN.

So important to come to grips with human nature.  And knowledge of what is relatively fixed will make 
us more flexible and able to improve.

Taking stock: Six Months In

Well, I've been living the neo-paleo lifestyle for six months now, and for the last three I've been able to share it with all of you.

As for me, the results are still terrific (for details, see "Taking Stock: Five Months In").  Over the last two weeks I've also had two completely separate people tell me unprompted that I have a "glow" about me.  Having a glow comes from being physically fit, but also being emotionally fit -- combining physical health with confidence, positivity, and energy.  And the two reinforce each other in a positive feedback loop.  (Incidentally, both people were straight males.)

As for the blog, the average number of page views has been climbing consistently for all three months, though still at a modest level.  My mother's contribution to traffic is negligible.  And I'm sure that I could take it up a level by promoting it a bit more on various platforms (facebook, stumble upon, myspace, etc.) or by reaching out to other bloggers, but I really don't have the time.

Anyhow, thanks for reading!

Why evolution favors the Religious Right

Religious people have more babies than secular people.  All things equal, the same is true of conservatives and liberals.  If you read one article I link to, read this one.

Via MR.

Google is offering free TiSP broadband

...for a limited time only, so be sure to check it out.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Answer: the egg.

Chickens and other birds evolved from reptiles, who laid eggs, but were not chickens.

Addendum: Here is the wiki entry.

"Evolution is Cleverer Than You Are"

I've been getting the saying wrong with my "Evolution is Smarter Than You" series.  It's actually....

"Orgel's Second Rule: Evolution is cleverer than you are."  Said by Francis Crick, Nobel Laureate and discoverer of DNA.

Sunday

11:30am
Worked out

1pm
Three scrambled eggs with fresh ground pepper
Quickly (but at high heat) sauteed green and red peppers
Four large stalks of celery (only two pictured)
Decent bit of salsa
Three strips of bacon
Two oranges

5pm
An orange

9pm
LOTS of delicious sushi and sashimi from an excellent place (I got a deal).  About 25 pieces with soy sauce and half a small bowl of rice.

Saturday

12pm
Baked eggs, a few potatoes, a small piece of chocolate 

3pm
An apple, a bag of mixed nuts

8pm
Sauteed Mahi fillets
Large salad with red/green peppers, cucumbers, apple slices

11pm-2am
Two beers
One chicken sish-kabob
An apple

Friday

8am

12:30pm

730pm
Worked out at my usual gym

830pm
Two leftover turkey burgers, mustard, usual salad, a few olives, an apple

9pm-2am

Five beers

Violence is on the outs

Steve Pinker's excellent article on the long-term decline in violence is up at Edge.

"The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon, visible at the scale of millennia, centuries, decades, and years. It applies over several orders of magnitude of violence, from genocide to war to rioting to homicide to the treatment of children and animals. And it appears to be a worldwide trend, though not a homogeneous one."

Hat tip to Lauri Tahtinen who sent me the original article, published in The New Republic.

Thursday

8:45am
Seeds, a few nuts, and raisins
Grapefruit

2:40pm
Tilapia with sun dried tomatoes, beef tenderloin with red peppers and a little hollandaise sauce
Asian greens salad, zuchini rolls stuffed with veggies, broccoli, cauliflower, okra
Melon, strawberry, pineapple, lots of red grapes

(It was half off by weight, and it cost over 7 bucks.  That's a lot of food.  And the amazing thing is that even though it was probably more than I needed, I didn't crash after eating it.)

9pm
Worked out at my normal gym

9:45pm
Two lean turkey burgers (bought ground turkey, not just frozen patties) with chopped garlic on the inside, sauteed mushrooms
Salad with sliced pears, red peppers, celery, cucumbers with half a lime and olive oil
A small apple

Prioritizing Problems: Bjorn Lomborg

Bjorn Lomborg is phenomenal.  If you have twenty minutes today, watch this video.  It's all about cost-benefit, and being smart about solving world problems.

There is ZERO dead air, it's jam-packed with great ideas, and moves briskly -- you'll want to give it your devoted attention.  The TED Talks search function is also great -- you can search for a topic, and it will search the actually video for mentions of the topic, then show all videos that match.  AND it allows you start the video at the point its mentioned, though I recommend watching these start to finish -- they're that good.

Hummer v Prius update

I'll direct you to a very thoughtful comment regarding the Hummer/Prius article.  Even if Prius' come out on top, I don't think enough people do a serious cost-benefit analysis when making these types of purchases.

More on that soon...

TED Talks

The TED Conference is now posting some of their talks online.  I was in disbelief when I came across this.  I don't even know where to start.  Bjorn Lomborg?  Robert Wright?  Richard Dawkins?  Steven Johnson? Dan Dennett?

I'm delirious.

Wednesday

8:30am
Worked out at my usual gym

9:15am
Part of a hamsteak
Two large stalks of celery
Two scrambled eggs, a little salsa
Sauteed green and red pepers, mushrooms
A small orange, a small apple
(Whew!)

12:30pm
Shrimp salad with endive and some other mysterious leafy greens
A few olives

9:30pm
Sea bass with grilled vegetables
Arugula salad with pears and walnuts

11pm (shouldn't be snacking this late)
Two small apples
Two large stalks of celery

Does a Hummer cause less environmental damage than a Prius?

                      VS.

 

 

This article questions which is less damaging for the environment, a Toyota Prius (a hybrid) or a Hummer.   I don't know whether he gets the right answer (he says a Hummer), but he's asking the right questions.

"Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

"The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

...
"All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?"

Found via Art De Vany.

A Cold Shower

Great post by Art De Vany on the beneficial effects of exposure to cold.

"I have long practiced forms of cold exposure. The brief shock of cold encourages a stress response and increases adaptive capacity to those exposures that are unplanned and more lengthly or severe. The adaptive capacity extends to other stresses as well and, thus, may protect you against a heart attack or a life-stressing event. Warm and cozy all the time is one of the many pathways to obesity in this comfortable, physically non-demanding we live in."

This morning I started with a warm shower, then turned the knob to blue for a few minutes.  Wow!

Here is a photo of The Polar Bear Club of Coney Island, circa 1994.  Makes you have second thoughts about this whole cold exposure thing.

Tuesday

9am
One small apple
One small orange
A large amount of mixed nuts

11am
One small orange

2:45pm
Tilapia, salmon, calamari
Tehboulleh, watercress, green peppers, a date

10:30pm
Chicken curry, a few side sauces
Some basmati rice
Spinach with a little bit of cheese
One small chocolate

A Communist lurks in every American family!

Communism has been discredited as a method of allocating resources in large scale economies.  But what about small scale economies?  What about the nuclear family?

Joseph McCarthy would hate to admit it, but he probably ran his household according to Marx's classic dictum, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."  Mr. and Mrs. McCarthy paid the bills, children got free room and board, and gradually were expected to work as they grew older and more capable.

Not only is communism the dominant form of economic exchange within families, but IT WORKS PRETTY WELL.  I certainly wouldn't recommend a market-based family economy (though it would be interesting to imagine what it would look like).  Hayek was onto something when he distinguished between the intimate order (of recurring interactions with small numbers of related people as occurred in our evolutionary past) and the extended order (of anonymous exchanges with  people you may never see again).

"One of Hayek's most challenging propositions is that our evolutionary past has 'hard-wired' us for norms appropriate for small group settings, while modernity and the extended order of the 'Great Society' requires us to adopt norms and morality appropriate for anonymous interactions."

The bottom line: Let's give communism it's due.  In doing so, we can better recognize why markets are necessary to govern large scale interactions.

 Quotation from here.