Gender differences in training.
Future Shock
Human brains are terrible at understanding exponential growth, so perhaps it’s not surprising that we take the crazy advances of computer processor speed and miniaturization for granted. For example, those little birthday cards that play music have more computing power than the entire Allied Forces had back in 1945.
That said, I’m still kind of blown away by my Apple Watch. I mean, the thing is less than two inches square, and less than a half-inch thick, yet I can take it with me on a run, leave my phone behind, and still track the route and check my pace, listen to music (on even teeny-tinier Bluetooth earbuds), and field calls and texts mid-run.
Though, conversely, the only other piece of tech that similarly blows my mind is the fax machine – I still kind of get overwhelmed thinking about a device where you can feed in a piece of paper, and the same thing prints out of another matching device, moments later, potentially thousands and thousands of miles away. So I may not be the best person to judge.
Exercise makes you happier than money.
And We’re Back!
Starting a month or so ago, a handful of eagle-eyed readers mentioned that some older links on this site were redirecting to the now long-defunct self-aggrandizement.com domain. I assumed that was just due to laziness on my part – I’d fallen off of daily blogging, and hadn’t updated the design or code of this site for years and years, so I figured there were likely hard-coded links, or misconfigured files, or something to that effect that was hosing those entries.
Turns out, it was nothing so benign. Instead, the German spammers who had bought the old domain name, and who had set it up as a link farm, had somehow used that domain to hack into the server hosting this site. And, slowly and surreptitiously, they were putting in 301 redirects – hundreds and hundreds of them – to automatically forward my traffic their way.
As they apparently started from the oldest pages, I only discovered as much myself when I tried to add a post, went to see that it had gone up correctly, and instead ended up reading about “Tipps zur Anwendung von Pheromonen.”
Fortunately, after a brief stretch of sheer panick, I managed to get the underlying issue resolved with Bluehost, the super nice hosting company that I use. Getting everything working again, however, took about a week. Which leads me to right now.
At this point, I believe all should again be well on this site. If not, definitely let me know. Fortuitously, I had already been intending to get back to blogging much more regularly and informally anyway, so this seems like as good a cue as any.
Back to it!
Why having kids makes people unhappy: they’re expensive.
Reboot
“Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.”
—Epictetus
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
– William Faulkner
Salmagundi in 3…2…1…
One Direction
A few months back, I changed up my hairstyle a bit: while leaving the top the same floppy length I’ve stuck with for most of my life, I now started fading the sides and back. It’s a more modern look, and one that gives me pleasingly precise instructions; ask a barber to fade the sides from a 1.5 to a 3, and the results are reliably perfect. The top, however, remains a bit more subjective. So when I got a haircut three weeks ago, while the fade was indeed excellent, once I headed home and took a shower, I quickly realized the top had been left annoyingly long and over-floppy. In the hopes of getting a full month out of the haircut, I therefore headed back a couple of days later, and asked that my barber trim the top a bit further, too.
Turns out, I should have been more specific about how much I meant by ‘a bit,’ as I left that afternoon with an inadvertent buzz. Now, even three weeks later, it’s still one of the shortest haircuts I’ve had in my entire life. And, as I recalled from a year ago, when I also ended up with an even shorter unintentional buzz, once my hair is below a certain length, it all just kind of sticks straight up, in a look I’d refer to as ‘plucked chicken.’
But what I’d forgotten from a year ago is, it then takes a surprisingly long time to get past that plucked length, to where my hair regains its normal appearance: a part on the side, with some going to the right and more going to the left, rather than all of it just sticking out in prickly uniformity.
Still, I’m hoping that, in another week or two, I’ll again reach the point of directionality – basically, that I’ll have a very short normal haircut, rather than a lengthy buzz. After which, I should still have a month or two until I need to get the top trimmed again. Which is good, as that should give me time to come up with more precise instructions, and to save myself from again getting wildly over-sheared another year hence.
HMB
Recently, a friend’s mother ended up in the hospital after taking a fall on some ice. Although she was banged up pretty badly, fortunately, it looks like she’ll be fine. Though, to play it safe, she was put on a week or two of bed rest. I recommended she take the supplement HMB for the next few weeks, which my friend had never heard of before. I’m sharing more about it here, on the chance it’s new to you, too, and might similarly be helpful in the future for you or for someone you love.
In short, beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate, or HMB, is a derivative of the essential amino acid Leucine. It’s been widely studied, and it’s extremely safe. You can find it cheaply at GNC or other supplement stores, as well as online. Mostly, it’s been researched as a supplement for athletes, as it prevents protein breakdown, inhibiting something called the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. The results there are pretty clear: if you’re just starting or re-starting an exercise program, taking 3g of HMB a day significantly increases initial strength and muscle gains, while also reducing soreness and muscle damage. In that context, definitely worthwhile.
However, more recently, HMB has also been studied for its ability to prevent muscle loss during periods of inactivity. Turns out, it’s extremely effective in a situation like my friend’s mom’s. One study followed older adults during 10 days of complete bed rest. Those given just a placebo lost 4.5 pounds of lean mass over those ten days. Which is a lot; in most cases, it would take nearly a year of training to gain that muscle back. Conversely, those given 3g a day of HMB only lost 0.37 pounds of lean mass over the ten days – barely any at all.
So, regardless of your age, if you end up unexpectedly incapacitated – or even if you just hit a crazy patch of life and realize you’re going to have to take a month or two off of your regular workout routine – consider taking HMB. It’s safe, it’s cheap. And, as research shows, it works.