We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
There is no target. Just fishing for dirt anywhere they can find some or induce some to justify their existence. That is not the American version of law enforcement. Anyway, the Russia thing seems to have been left behind. Russia dirt seems to lead only to the Clintons.
Magical thinking about food and nutrition is pervasive in wealthy parts of the world where nutrition is over-abundant and biological knowledge minimal. The classic example in the US is Whole Foods - organic non-GMO foods and supplements for the rich. A scam, like this one:
My friend's son benched 505 last week. He is a serious lifter, a hunk of granite. Going for your one-rep max in powerlifts (bench, squat, deadlifts) is not a great idea for us "functional fitness" people. There is no need at all to do it except as a feat. For general fitness, keeping powerlift reps in the 3-10 range is correct for heavier weights.
You can guess your one-rep max by extrapolating from your 3 or 4-rep max. I do not have a lifter build (have a runner's build), but I go for barbell deadlift one-reps about twice a year, just for kicks and to be stupid. I discovered that I can not deadlift 275 lbs this week - just up to my knees. Damn. I know a gal who deads 300 lbs. Strong, fit gal with no visible muscle mass. Perhaps I did not warm up for it right...
With the powerlifts, always warm up light and work up, usually 5 total sets with a good rest between sets. If you want to be stupid like me once in a while, How to Warm Up for a One-Rep Max
If you like to use a trap bar for deadlifts (I do, occasionally), you can move much more weight than with the barbell. I have never tried a one-rep max with the trap bar.
Below the fold, a few words on other, non-powerlift pure strength exercises -
Science is not about finding the truth at all, but about finding better ways of being wrong. The best scientific theory is not the one that reveals the truth — that is impossible. It is the one that explains what we already know about the world in the simplest way possible, and that makes useful predictions about the future. When I accepted that I would always be wrong, and that my favourite theories are inevitably destined to be replaced by other, better, theories — that is when I really knew that I wanted to be a scientist.
Read the utterly innocuous but useful piece. How the idea of debating scientific theories could be "high risk" is beyond me. Or maybe the very phrase "free speech" triggers people. If so, I feel depressed.
I've always felt that the best kid car songs are the ones you can continue to make up verses for. That used to be fun in our family. This one is good for going around the car so everybody can invent new verses (the sillier the better, and half-rhymes accepted). I like "there ain't no lobsters on me...".
People have different goals for physical training. Aspiring or real athletes have a training program designed for their specific sport. Training for tennis is different than rowing training. Endurance training is an entirely different thing. Some people (very few, though) in the gym only care about lifting heavy and nothing else. Good for them. They have a goal. Some people simply jog on the treadmill every day, sit on the exercise bike reading the news, or swim laps, etc. Putting in the time. I don't know why they do that (the elderly excepted), but they are convinced it's good for them and they are doing something besides sitting so that's good.
However, most people just want what we discuss here: Fitness for Life. That means fitness for recreational sports and activities, an energetic and vigorous approach to life with enough strength to handle tough things and enough endurance to never feel tired or lazy. Not to mention the considerable mental benefits.
I think many people (as I did) suddenly hit a point at which one is forced to face the limits of energy, or strength, endurance, vitality, agility, power - whatever. It is depressing. That is the Come To Jesus moment.
That is why we focus our fitness posts on general, functional, fitness rather than on specialized forms of training. The physical basics: Cardio, Calisthenics, Muscle and bone Strength.
Famous quote to Stalin from Lavrentry Beria, head of Stalin's secret police.
I continue to recommend the (depressing) Three Felonies a Day by Prof. Harvey Silverglate. You can count on it. You are a felon. There are 6000 federal crimes (including owning an owl or eagle feather), and nobody knows all of them until somebody looks one up to pin on somebody they decide to target. That's not counting the 40,000 pages of federal regulations.
Feel free to confess in the comments for your trivial crimes which might be past the statute of limitations.
The old idea of the virtue of a low-fat diet is in the dustbin of history. There is no correlation between dietary fats and heart disease. However, there is a high correlation between being overweight and heart disease - especially "pear-shape" (abdominal) fat. Indeed, being overweight or fat correlates with many diseases: heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, several cancers including breast cancer, arterial disease, joint ailments and arthritis, Alzheimer's - the list goes on and on. Humans were not designed for dietary abundance, but for caloric scarcity.
That is about dietary fat. If you are concerned about hyperlipidemia, let your doc treat it if it concerns you. There are many alternatives for that.
To lose body fat, only a low carb diet works. Your body converts all carbs to sugar and then stores the excess sugar as fat. Dietary fat doesn't make people fat. Everybody knows what carbs are: sweets, fruits, dessert, root vegetables, juices, beer, grains, grain products eg pasta and bread, beans, corn, etc. The comfort foods.
To gain or maintain weight, eat plenty of everything including apple pie, ice cream, beer, Big Macs - and 70-100 gms of protein daily if you do heavy exercise (eg weights).
Can you lose weight with an hour of daily exercise? It depends on the intensity of that hour, but it's not a realistic effect for most. Still, it is worth doing for countless other good reasons including mental well-being and energy. Intense exercise tends to reduce appetite, so there's that too.
Nack was a towering figure in the history of sports journalism, a literary wordsmith and tireless reporter whose distinctive and soaring prose is revered by his peers and generations of younger writers. He stands among the best sportswriters in the history of the genre, and in many ways, among the best writers of any kind. When he stopped typing, he was a giant personality, full of endless good charm, disarmingly well-read and all times, given to entertain...
And here's Nack's reminiscences of his favorite horse, Secretariat: Pure Heart
Damasio does not view consciousness and culture as resulting from some additive ingredient unique to human beings: reason, logic, or language. In this story, a form of awareness appears in all animals equipped with nervous systems. Differences in animal mental life emerge with increasing anatomical complexity. Human beings are sophisticated, feeling, affective, social body-subjects who may speak, write, make art, and build technologies, but we share the homeostatic impulse with all other living things.
At 8PM tonight in Israel sirens will sound and all stop whatever they are doing, drivers pull over and exit their cars, and stand silently for one minute. Israel prepares to remember 23,646 fallen soldiers and 3,134 terror victims.
That number may not sound very high to an American. However, proportionate to population it would be as if the US lost almost 800,000 in WWII alone, versus the 291,000 combat casualties the US suffered in WWII, almost triple the casualties for Israel.
Details: Meet at Dunkin' Donuts, 64 Fulton St. in Manhattan, 3 blocks south of the Brooklyn Bridge. Well, it's Dunkin' Donuts or Ruben's Empanadas. Maybe it's both. I'm fairly certain there's a DD there, Google Maps is never wrong. Ever. I'm guessing we meet at 9:30 and get started ASAP. We'll leave a trail of donut crumbs for stragglers.
Weather report says high of 53, partly cloudy. Perfect for a 10-12 mile hike with some beer and pizza. Come one, come all. Exciting Brooklyn!
I have made one update, but the map was tapped out...so on to two maps (which Bing interestingly allows and Google does not). We are always open to suggestions for additional stops. At this point, the hike is about 12 miles long, close to 4 hours of walking without stops. We will have stops, however, so let's call it 5 to 5 1/2 hours right now. Maybe 6 with a stop for lunch. The map looks like this. It's a brisk stretch of the legs, and we finish at a chocolate shop (and distillery - Widow Jane's) near the Water Taxi back to Manhattan.
I believe (hope) this will be the biggest one yet. I got confirmations from people I know around here (6 people), and many have expressed great interest. I am sending them reminders, as well.
Remember - wear comfortable shoes and clothes, prepare for the weather, and if you have anything you'd like to see - suggest it now so we can add it!
Also, give us a heads-up if you want to come. No need to use your name, but we'd like to anticipate rough numbers. Right now, I've got 14 that I am 100% sure of.
“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
I was asked this weekend "In what ways are Trump's policies any different from Bill Clinton's, and how is Trump's character any more reprehensible than Bill Clinton's?"
I replied that their policies were similarly moderate, and that Trump was not a rapist.
Rats can do it, but adult humans have no capacity for growing new brain nerve cells (neurons). The idea that humans could do that (with exercise, etc) has been a hot topic for over a decade.
We know many scientific studies are false. But we usually find this out one-at-a-time. This – again, assuming the new study is true, which it might not be – is a massacre. It offers an unusually good chance for reflection.
And looking over the brutal aftermath, I’m struck by how prosocial a lot of the felled studies are. Neurogenesis shows you should exercise more! Neurogenesis shows antidepressants work! Neurogenesis shows we need more enriched environments! Neurogenesis proves growth mindset! I’m in favor of exercise and antidepressants and enriched environments, but this emphasizes how if we want to believe something, it will accrete a protective layer of positive studies whether it’s true or not.
I’m also struck by how many of the offending studies begin by repeating how dogmatic past neuroscientists were for not recognizing the existence of adult neurogenesis sooner...
Toy