Sentences to contemplate

“The death of the interview has spawned a generation raised on generalities and clichés.”

From Tim Keown, Death of the Interview

Curing Disease Through Diet

This is a nice talk on using a paleo diet to reverse disease.

Sentences to contemplate

“You cannot afford to live your life as if it were a dress rehearsal for some future life.”

From reading a blog post on overcoming the fear of public speaking, by Sam Harris.

Collapse or Transcend

It seems unlikely either of these scenarios will play out to their extremes. Though, the prophecies made by the men at the center of these documentaries make for a couple compelling movies.

From an entertainment perspective, Collapse trumps Transcendent Man. Perhaps because its bleak outlook is easier to imagine than Kurweil’s singularity.

Quotations: Vonnegut on Happiness…

“Human beings will be happier – not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”

–Kurt Vonnegut

Excerpts: Experimentation, Zen and the Art of

An experiment is never a failure soley because it fails to achieve predicted results. An experiment is a failure only when it also fails adequately to test the hypothesis in question, when the data it produces don’t prove anything one way or another.

Biphasic Sleep

Humans’ natural sleep cycles are biphasic, meaning sleep is separated into two parts.  In a natural environment with no artificial light and mostly equal amounts of night and day (think near the equator), sleep happens shortly after the sun goes down, followed by an hour or so of calm wakefulness around mid-night, followed by another bout of sleep, which is finally broken after dawn.

Here is a brief TED talk by Jessa Gamble.

Anecdotally, I don’t remember having any meditative periods that break up two cycles of sleep.

I have experienced the wonderful feeling of deep sleep followed by extreme wakefulness. The most notable of these experiences generally happen during the summer, and more so during a camping expedition.

On a trip to Belize that involved little to no artificial light (and fairly even amounts of day/night), shortly after sundown profound sleepiness set in.

Mark’s Daily Apple has more.

Starting Strength

The first paragraph of Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training

Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not. As humanity has developed throughout history, physical strength has become less critical to our daily existence, but no less important to our lives. Our strength, more than any other thing we possess, still determines the quality and the quantity of our time here in these bodies. Whereas previously our physical strength determined how much food we ate and how warm and dry we stayed, it now merely determines how well we function in these new surroundings we have crafted for ourselves as our culture has accumulated. But we are still animals – our physical existence is, in the final analysis, the only one that actually matters. A weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up.

Strong people are hard to kill (I’ve heard).

 

 

Organic Fitness

Loren Cordain (from The Paleo Diet) along with a few other MD’s recently published this paper:

Organic Fitness: Physical Activity Consistent with Our Hunter-Gatherer Heritage

As Mark Sission points out, this paper is a neat package to send friends, relatives, and acquaintances who are interested or skeptical of your ideas on an ancestrally informed diet and exercise program.

Evolution of the Human Diet

A nice lecture on the study of the evolution of the human diet.

http://fora.tv/embedded_player

The Natural Living Test

[I found this in the back of Spent:  Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior.  It's more useful for contemplation than any sort of definite test of one's quality of life.]

This quantifies how closely your life matches that of our happier ancestors.  Write down honesty how many times int he past month you have had each of the experiences below:

Rocked a newborn to sleep

Made up a story and told it to a child

Felt the sunrise warm your face

Satisfied a genuine hunger by eating ripe fruit

Satisfied a genuine thirst by drinking cool water

Shown courage in protecting a child from danger

Shown leadership and resourcefulness in an emergency

Shared a meal with parents, siblings, or other close relatives

Gossiped with an old friend

Made a new friend

Made something beautiful and gave it to someone

Repaired something that was broken

Improved a skill through diligent practice

Learned something new about a plant of animal that lives near you

Changes your mind about something important on the basis of new evidence

Followed good advice from someone older

Taught a useful skill, charming art, or interesting fact to someone younger

Petted a furry animal such as a dog, cat, or monkey

Worked with earth, clay stone, wood, or fiber

Comforted someone dying

Walked over a hill and across a stream

Identified a bird by its song

Played a team sport

Made a physical effort to achieve a collective goal with others

Sustained silent eye contact with someone to show affection

Shamed someone who was behaving badly, for the greater good

Resolved a serious argument using humor, emotional self-control, and social empathy

Sang, danced, or played instruments with a group of friends

Made friends laugh out loud

Reached a world-melting mutual orgasm with a sexual partner

Experienced sublime beauty that made your hair stand on end

Experienced an oceanic sense of oneness with the cosmos that made you think, “this is how church should feel”

Applied the Golden Rule by helping someone in need

Warmed yourself by an open fire under stars

Add the numbers.  If your score is lower than 100, contemplate why you expect your life to be happy or meaningful if you are not doing anything meaningful for others or feeding your brain any of the natural experiences that it evolved to value and to find meaningful.

The New Evolution Diet

I first stumbled upon Arthur Devany’s essay on Evolutionary Fitness a few years ago, relatively soon after having ran the Chicago marathon.  It changed my life.  The marathon was a great experience and more of a mental achievement than anything, but I felt that this was no way to an optimal, fit, and vigorous existence.

For me, DeVany opened the door to thinking about diet and fitness in an evolutionary context.  After all, we are all animals, no matter how far we remove ourselves from the savannah of Africa and we should remember this.

So DeVany finally released his book, The New Evolution Diet, after a few years in the making.  I will say that I am quite pleased with the result.

His book maintains the same high mindedness that is typical of DeVany’s approach; it’s not too diluted.  Yet, it remains approachable and not too steeped in science (but there are plenty of notes and further reading).  It’s a quick read that gives people a great launching point to change their lifestyle and does so in an elegant way.

The way the NED seperates itself is in its philosophical, almost zenlike approach.  DeVany speaks of the “metaphysics” behind the diet and the book features an afterword by Nassim Taleb (Fooled by Randomnes, The Black Swan) who ties together his thoughts on randomness and extreme events to diet and fitness.

The main points to take away are:

Eat meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts (take the latter two easy, eliminate grains, carbs, dairy, and sugar, limit alcohol)

Skip meals sometimes

Do vigorous exercise/strength training anywhere from zero to 3 times a week.  Make it random.  Don’t spend much time at the gym, just make it intense.  (Try his 15-8-4 hierarchical approach with little to no rest between sets and increasing weight)

Don’t overtrain

Play and take walks

Sprint every now and then – avoid jogging and treadmills

Don’t be too strict, break the rules on occasion

Great advice from a phenomenally fit 72 year old.