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Eco's Ur-Fascism

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Last Updated: 09 February 2023
“If you browse through the New Age sections in American bookshops, you will even find Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a Fascist. But putting together Saint Augustine and Stonehenge, now that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.”
 

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Tuesday, February 7, 2023

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Last Updated: 08 February 2023

Before: It's 4:08 AM, 25 F., with no breeze. Time to get out there.

 

After: Decent run, but slow: 13:44/mile. I did not tire excessively by the end of the run, nor was the cold too excessive.

Afternoon: I tired excessively by the end of the day. I did my compound push movements, but my ability to execute the repetitions declined substantially in the second movement. I skipped the biceps curls.

 

Chinese Tilapia

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Last Updated: 04 February 2023

Denise's "Chinese" tilapia recipie, with pictures.

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Global Warming and Capitalism.

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Last Updated: 29 January 2023

I was thinking about capitalism, shareholder capitalism, economic expansion, consumerism, and global warming. 

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Stream of Mind

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Last Updated: 18 September 2022

Fundamental Principles of Mind: objectivity, empiricism, limits, evolution, and turtles.

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Pre-Run

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Last Updated: 16 August 2020

No part of me wants to go out there this morning. It is already 75 F and 0615. I'm late for my run on the hottest morning of the year. I have coffee and a slice of bread with peanut butter. I remember yesterday's 7 miler. To run like that is to completely embrace sweat. It runs down my entire body, stinging my eyes. It is an embrace of what humans evolved to be. We evolved sweat glands as we chased prey across the savanna. But upright, we have an advantage. With each gallop, our target's hind legs come forward together, compressing its abdominal cavity and pushing up against its diaphragm. This compresses the area available for the lungs to expand, hindering its inhalation. Humans, however, run unimpeded, with the additional benefit that we can carry weapons with our non-running limbs to make up for our lack of claws and teeth.

It is hot out there, in contrast to my dry home, cooled to a comfortable 76 F. But being cool and comfortable is not natural. It is not even healthy.

21st Century Genocide

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Last Updated: 16 August 2020
While working out today, I had an interesting thought. The African-American and Hispanic urban communities are far away the most hardest hit by COVID. The politicians who most oppose the sensible tools to control it, think face masks, tend to be right wing types with identifiable leanings or connection to racists and/or white supremacist groups. These are the same types trying to reduce minority populations in the US by cutting immigration and deporting the undocumented. The ones they cant deport, they seek to limit their access to ballot boxes.
I
think we may be witnessing the first attempt at genocide in the Americas in the 21st Century.

Fear

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Last Updated: 07 April 2020

I grew up in an imperfect household, like many, if not most of us. One of the lessons clearly instilled in me at an early age was that responsibility and duty are primary. I read the Odyssey at 12. Odysseus had a primary responsibilty to return to Ithaca. I started the Iliad, but could not find my way to go through it. I could not experience the origin of Western literature. It was just too hard, too coldly violent for me to experience. I have picked up the book several times over my 60 years, it remains true to today. I cannot read it. I understand that the Classical Greeks, the people that gave birth to the entire Western Civilization, were an unimaginably hard people.

In 9th grade, my English teacher used to select passages of literature, have us read them, and then do a writing assignment describing our reaction to them. Looking back all those decades, I know there must have been dozens of assignments. But the 14 year old boy only remembered one, which I quote, probably with small errors, here: “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant only taste of death but once. Of all the strange things I have ever heard, it seems to me most strange that men fear death, given that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar)

We get one journey through life. After that, nothing. For most of us, we may be remembered by the generation that succeeds us, but thereafter, our lives are consigned to be utterly unremembered.

Given inescapable annihilation, we must choose how to create ourselves on the canvas of a lifetime. We can chose to do it with a nod to excellence, an embrace of responsibility and duty, and a touch of panache. The alternative is to amount to nothing.

Fear (2)

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Last Updated: 05 April 2020

I grew up in an imperfect household, like many, if not most of us. One of the lessons clearly instilled in me at an early age was that responsibility and duty are primary. I read the Odyssey at 12. Odysseus had a primary responsibilty to return to Ithaca. I started the Iliad, but could not find my way to go through it. I could not experience the origin of Western literature. It was just too hard, too coldly violent for me to experience. I have picked up the book several times over my 60 years, it remains true to today. I cannot read it. I understand that the Classical Greeks, the people that gave birth to the entire Western Civilization, were an unimaginably hard people.

In 9th grade, my English teacher used to select passages of literature, have us read them, and then do a writing assignment describing our reaction to them. Looking back all those decades, I know there must have been dozens of assignments. But the 14 year old boy only remembered one, which I quote, probably with small errors, here: “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant only taste of death but once. Of all the strange things I have ever heard, it seems to me most strange that men fear death, given that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar)

We get one journey through life. After that, nothing. For most of us, we may be remembered by the generation that succeeds us, but thereafter, our lives are consigned to be utterly unremembered.

Given inescapable annihilation, we must choose how to create ourselves on the canvas of a lifetime. We can chose to do it with a nod to excellence, an embrace of responsibility and duty, and a touch of panache. The alternative is to amount to nothing.

1/2/2018 Running with Dogs

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Last Updated: 20 February 2019

While on a run, I thought of Candace Burt's recent post about running with her dogs. Current research suggests that dogs were domesticated from wolves multiple times in multiple places as humans spread across the Earth. This suggests that the mutual benefits were strong. It is easy to see how homo sapiens or even his predecessors derived advantage from this partnership. Proto dogs brought increased visual, aural, and olfactory acuity to the relationship. Wolves and humans are nearly unique in their ability to trot and run across vast distances to hunt or, in the case of humans, gather. Some paleoarcheologists believe that running may have been humans' killer advantage in competition for scarce food. But, as I run and think of dogs as running companions, have to wonder if the partnership between humans and dogs might have been the actual advantage that propelled humans to the position of apex predator. Dogs extend human hunting senses far beyond our natural limitations. It is easy to envision how this was a strong selective mechanism on both species; we both ate well thanks to the partnership. When the night came, humans must succumb to sleep in a world of night time predators. Any dog owner knows what good sentinels his partners can be. Likewise, with our relative lack of need to sleep, proto dogs may have gained increased protection by remaining near human encampments.

 

As Canis Lupus slowly became Canis lupus became Canis lupus familiaris, it became the only animal that could actually read human facial expressions, as research now suggests. This would be valuable feedback to man's best friend as not all humans and not all human emotions are beneficial to dogs. There is some preliminary research suggesting that dogs can even communicate back to humans with facial expressions of their own, increasing the richness of the inter-species communication. One can view the human-dog relationship, at least in hunter-gatherer societies, as a symbiotic one.

 

In light of this, we can understand the human love for dogs and their mindless, instinctive need for us, no matter how we often treat them. We can also think of those who abuse them as something proto-human, sub-human.

Association of Cardiorespiratory Fitness With Long-term Mortality Among Adults Undergoing Exercise Treadmill Testing

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Last Updated: 05 November 2018

The inverse association between cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and mortality has been well
established and is independent of age,1-3 sex,4-6 race/ethnicity,7,8 and comorbidities.9-13 Increased
CRF is also associated with numerous cardiovascular and noncardiovascular benefits, including
reductions in coronary artery disease (CAD),14 hypertension,15 diabetes,16 stroke,17 and cancer.18

However, recent observational studies19-22 have described adverse cardiovascular findings
associated with habitual vigorous exercise and have raised new questions regarding the benefits of
exercise and fitness. The hemodynamic stress of habitual vigorous exercise produces cardiovascular
adaptations, including increases in cardiac chamber volumes, a balanced increase in left ventricular
mass, and alterations in autonomic tone. Although these adaptations are usually thought of as
physiologic and reversible, newer evidence has suggested associations between habitual vigorous
exercise and potentially pathologic cardiovascular findings, including atrial fibrillation,19 coronary
artery calcification,20 myocardial fibrosis,21 and aortic dilation.22 These findings have led some to
propose a U-shaped dose-response association between exercise and cardiovascular events.23
In terms of mortality, a large pooled-cohort analysis of physical activity by Arem et al24 suggested a
plateau effect of increasing physical activity volume. Other studies25,26 of self-reported jogging
habits have revealed a dose-response plateau or even harm associated with the most strenuous
jogging habits. However, studies27 linking physical activity levels with outcomes have relied on selfreported
data and/or questionnaires; therefore, the inferences drawn from these studies are
compromised by the limitations of recollection bias.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/well/move/being-fit-may-be-as-good-for-you-as-not-smoking.html

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/270742

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2707428

 

 

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