We're All Getting Poorer - But Corporations Are Doing Just Fine

In a recent The Atlantic Magazine, they show two graphs about how well Corporate America has fared over the last several years. This would be in stark contrast to how "Average Joe" would have fared during the same period. Take a look:

This one shows Corporate Profits as a whole. Highest it's ever been.

Even as a percentage of GDP, Corporate Profits are higher than since Eisenhower. I wonder why this is???

Gabby Giffords, Aurora, and The Human Condition

I think maybe the USA is just an ongoing, democratic (sort of) version of the human experience. We do nothing until there is no other choice.


I'm thinking about: 

• running out of oil
• alternative energy
• global weather
• the worldwide debt crisis
• the worldwide banking scandal
• realistic gun control

Regardless of where you live, it appears as though we're wired to try and find the "easy way out" of any situation. Nobody wants to admit the difficult truth, confront it, and do something about it.

In our personal lives, when was the last time you saw a person do "the right thing" unless that was their only choice?

Probably after every easier (wrong) choice had been made.

As a species, we're really not very evolved...

Schadenfreude

There's a German word, "schadenfreude" about taking pleasure at the misfortune of others. To help you understand it better, I'll use it in a sentence:

"I take particular schadenfruede watching Enbridge twist in the wind....."

OTTAWA — Enbridge officials made a mounting public relations disaster worse this week by not immediately accepting blame in their official statement issued after an outspoken American regulator compared one of Canada’s energy giants to the “Keystone Kops,” public relations consultants say. 

U.S. National Transportation Safety Board chairman Debbie Hersman’s scathing assessment of Enbridge’s 2010 oil spill in Michigan has also raised questions over whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper needs to distance his government from Enbridge’s proposed $5.5-billion oilsands pipeline project to the B.C. coast from Alberta.
In his initial formal response, Enbridge’s Pat Daniel said that company personnel “were trying to do the right thing” during the leak from a cracked pipeline but encountered “a series of unfortunate events and circumstances [that] resulted in an outcome no one wanted.” 

There was no apology or acknowledgment of wrongdoing in the news release, though a company official said Daniel apologized when speaking to reporters in Washington, D.C., after the safety board’s report was released.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/business/Enbridge+brand+repaired+analysts/6931281/story.html#ixzz20iDZhgdu

Big Oil and EnviroNazis

Vineet Radhakrishnan via Compfight

 I have to admit that this post is aimed squarely at my uncle in Calgary (you know who you are) and his general disagreement with my "EnviroNazi" stance on oil shipping through BC enroute to anywhere else (China?).

Although members of my not-so-immediate family (OK - cousin) are employed by Enbridge, I took particular pleasure in the recent sport of Big-Oil-Bashing that's been going on in BC. Despite the best efforts of our Federal Goverment to push through the Northern Gateway project, I think it just might be political dynamite for whoever touches it Provincially.

This week, two influential pieces in the BC media (actually, one has hit the international media) target the potential damage that could be done by an oil spill (tanker or pipeline) here in BC:

1. A Wilderness Committee (that ought to be unbiased, says the EnviroNazi) report on the affects of an oil spill on Stanley Park
2. The comments of our normally "sit on the fence and scared for her political life" premiere about Enbridge specifically.

So the net-net is, despite my earlier assurances that BetaMax would triumph over VHS, I believe that maybe this time the environment will trump big business. And our kids and grandkids will thank us for behaving like grown-ups for a change....

The News - Or Lack Thereof

This will be another rant. It's been building for a while, so with the Libor news, it's reached a boiling point.

The reason the recent Libor scandal was the tipping point for me is that, unless you actually went looking, you would barely hear a mention of this on our TV news. Who reading this knows what Libor is? If you don't - go find out.

It's likely larger than the financial meltdown of 2008, but it's a little bit difficult to understand. We would rather watch "Trending Now" on the local station and see what Joe Butthole says about Katie Perry on Twitter.

This isn't news!

Why is it that "news" programs pander to us and we reward them by watching? Every network is the same - from Global to CBC to MSNBC to CNN. And god forbid we talk about Fox.

I watched the first three episodes of Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom" over the weekend, where he ponders a network news program that, for an hour each day, actually delivers the news. Facts, not innuendo or a left/right angle, and no social media nonsense. Quite the indictment of what we're spoon fed today. If we would actually reward real news programs by watching them, networks might just do it. But they're too afraid to try, so we'll never know.

The closest I've found for real news today is Al Jazeera. It's staggering to go back and forth from CNN to them and see the difference. One is talking about Mitt Romney's Jet Ski, and the other is talking about the possible poisoning/assassination of Yassar Arafat. Guess which one.

I suspect that the BBC News could also be a good choice, but they've shut down their web feed here in Canada, so the only way to get it is via your local cable TV company. If anyone has it, and finds that it's a whole lot better than the trash we get now, send me a note.

So here's a suggestion - reward your local news (and national/international news) by not watching it. Get your information on-line from a trusted, non-biased source (there are some of them out there). This way, you can consume it when you want, and read interesting things to the depth you're comfortable.

It won't be like the baby food you're getting now, but I bet it'll be a lot more satisfying.

PS: Cap yourself at a half-hour a day on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. Your brain is a valuable thing to destroy.

An Average Day - And More Anecdotal Evidence

Ina Todoran via Compfight

I had a conversation with a good friend yesterday about diet.

She has had to adopt a very-high-fat diet over the last twelve weeks because of an intense medical treatment she is on.

A big part of her treatment is a drug that must be consumed with 20g of fat. She had to take this particular medication three times a day (7:00AM, 3:00PM and 11:00PM). Finding 20g of fat in one place that she could tolerate was hard. About the only thing she could keep down was a smoothie she had every day (sometimes three times a day), or a cracker loaded down with butter.

She also had to take other medication with food at various different times during the day (Noon and 7:00PM).  The medication taken at this time also needed food intake but did not require high fat servings.  She consumed these pills with such items as salad or meat. During this treatment she could ot tolerate any type of bread at all.

Anecdotally, In the past 4 months since she's been on this calorie rich, fat rich, carbohydrate poor diet she's lost about 20lbs from her pre-treatment weight, and 30lbs from her highest weight at the beginning of the course of drug therapy - when she could stomach a greater variety of food.

This led me to yet another high-fat/low-carb story I've heard (first hand) about losing weight - without ever intending to lose weight. It is an incidental side effect of this whole high-fat process.

I'm now doubly convinced that everything we've been told about how to lose weight is wrong. Neither my friend nor I can exercise at this point, so burning all those excess calories isn't an option (as all the weight loss people would have you believe).

I'm now down to my high school weight of 148lbs. I seem to be quite steady.

Just for kicks, I wrote down everything I would eat in a typical day:

The surprising thing is the total number of calories consumed is about right for a man my size (almost 2000), and the amount of fat that  used  to make me cringe (133g - are you kidding!!). I'd like to get the sugar/carbs down even lower, but most sources are consumed with lots of fat as well, so the insulin load (the whole reason I'm doing this) is blunted - so I'm not too worried about it.

So take this to your dietician and ask him/her to explain. Either you don't exercise enough, eat too many calories,  or their whole idea of what makes you fat is wrong.

A Seattle Diversion

Ballard Locks

How could something so boring be so captivating?

We were in Seattle for the weekend with friends from Calgary, and due to a missed exit on my part we ended up at the Ballard Locks. We had been in the neighbourhood the night before for dinner at Ray's, so once we found ourselves in that part of town it was easy for me to say "I planned it this way".

Now normally you'd think that watching boats go up and down in a lock, and watching mature salmon migrate upstream through a fish ladder would be really boring. Especially to people who have no particular affinity for boats and boating (or fish and fishing).

But it turns out that all four of us had a really great time watching the whole process. A few times. And the fish swimming up through the fish ladder was a bonus - that's really cool too.

So the net-net of all this is if you ever find yourself in Seattle, don't just do the average touristy stuff - the Space Needle, Pike Place and the Underground Tour, but go have a look at the locks on a nice day (I imagine in the rain it wouldn't be quite as captivating). All it will cost you is parking - access to the locks and park is free.

Underground Seattle - Old Wooden Water/Sewer Line

Here's The Problem With Our Diet

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Credit: Lam Thuy Vo / NPR

I happened upon this article from Mother Jones, called "The American Diet in 1 Chart".

The article goes on to talk about the chart, but I don't think it needs any explanation.

If you're searching for a cause of obesity (and the consequential Type II Diabetes, Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure, and a host of other problems) look no further. Taking processed foods out of your diet (especially sugar) solves almost the entire problem.

On another note, I had a visit with my doctor yesterday, and we discussed the lab results from a few months ago - I had to get a requisition for new lab work to see how things are progressing.

He was quite pleased - my risk ratio is now lower than he has ever recorded for me. When I asked "what's the typical HDL level for someone with no cardiovascular disease" he said about 1.2 in his practice.

My HDL is now 1.8.

HDL and Triglycerides are the best predictors we've got for heart problems, so I've got a real interest in keeping my numbers as good as I can. With as few drugs as I can.

I've been off Niacin for a couple of months now, so am very interested to see what my bloodwork looks like this time. Today, the only thing I'm taking for heart/stroke risk is a baby aspirin once a day.

Results from the lab should be in a couple of days.

ADDENDUM - June 20/2012
Just got the results back and I now have even more questions than before. A link to my results is here. Total cholesterol and LDL are quite high, but not alarming (after all the fat I've been eating - no wonder). HDL is still higher than most of the population, but started back on Fish Oil every day to see if it bumps it up a bit more. Hesitant to go back on Niacin.

Fish Oil Supplements and Heart Disease

Alan Bell via Compfight

Since I've gone off the statin (Crestor) and now the Niacin (2g a day) I was supplementing with 1000mg of fish oil every day to do two things:

1. Try to get more Omega 3 (N-3) fatty acids in my diet - our current diets have a preponderance of Omega 6 (N-6) fatty acids in them, and the ratio of the two should be much closer than it is now. That's why all the encouragement to eat oily fish (salmon, sardines) twice a week.
2. Several previous studies had promoted N-3 as being protective to your heart - something where I need all the help I can get. I opted for fish oil capsules over some expensive pharmaceutical (Plavix, Crestor).

A recent study of 12,500 at-risk people (diagnosed diabetics, which have a high rate of cardiovascular events) called  n–3 Fatty Acids and Cardiovascular Outcomes in Patients with Dysglycemia showed that there was a very, very small difference in ultimate outcomes (death) between patients receiving the N-3 and a placebo.


The study appears to be really well constructed (double-blind) - and factored out as many variables as possible. The full protocol for the five year study is here.


So now I'm in a quandary - there seems to be no statistical advantage to taking fish-oil supplements if you're a diabetic (I'm not a diabetic, but this is a really high risk group, so if you think an advantage would show up with someone, it would show up here).


The study really is quite interesting to read, and even if all you can handle are the conclusions they reach, there are several of them. But in the end, they wrapped it all up in one paragraph:

In conclusion, the administration of 1 g of n–3 fatty acids did not reduce the rate of death from cardiovascular causes or other outcomes during a period of 6 years in patients with dysglycemia and additional cardiovascular risk factors. Whether similar results would have been observed at higher doses is unknown. Furthermore, these findings may not be relevant to dietary recommendations to consume more fish, because dietary change not only increases the intake of foods containing n–3 fatty acids but is also associated with a reduction in the consumption of foods such as red meats, which may be harmful.21

So I think the best course of action for me (and for anyone, really) is to increase their consumption of oily fish, and ditch the supplements. Much like multivitamins, it turns into expensive pee! 

First Time Author

Nice photo, huh? I took it.

First things first - I submitted my sleep ebook to Amazon for publishing today - it's available as of now in English (I don't know if it actually comes out in any other language - this is a first for me). I had to list it for $2.99 so that Amazon would let me give it away for free five days out of the next ninety. If you price it any less than that, they take away all their incentives. Call me selfish.

I'll be posting a date for a free version as soon as I figure out how to do that ... and would appreciate any comments you might have on the book itself - please post them directly on Amazon.

I've also started to write a second book - fiction this time, and it involves sailboats. So much for anyone who might like to read it ... audiences for nautical books are somewhat wanting ... so I'm trying to make it less about the boat, and more about the story. I'll thrown in a little time travel and some history just for fun. I've been reading up on Captain James Cook and Captain George Vancouver for the history part of the book. Pretty fascinating stuff, actually. These men would think nothing of coming to the Pacific NW, down to California, across to Hawaii, over to China, down to Australia and New Zealand, and then do it all over again. Several times. Amazing.

I'm also thinking I should formally document all the stroke stuff as well. So much to do, so little time!

I kinda like this writing thing. Hopefully, you will too.....

Does Sugar Make You Stupid?

 Socar Myles via Compfight

I read a report in Neuroscience News that was thought provoking, to say the least.

In a nutshell, researchers at UCLA took two groups of rats, both fed a diet high in fructose. Both groups were fed a diet of rat feed, and trained on a maze for five days before the experiment. The maze included landmarks so that the rats could more easily remember their way around it. After the five days, one group was fed fructose only while the other group was fed fructose plus flaxseed oil and DHA (both Omega 3 fatty acids).  This went on for six weeks. The results were interesting.

1. The group that received the fructose, but no extra Omega 3, had a measurable decline in their brain activity, and increased their insulin resistance. This was determined by both how fast they navigated the maze, and in examining their brains after the experiment.
2. The second group (with the Omega 3's) performed much better than the first in navigating a maze. 
3. They never explained how well the rat's performance compared to pre-fructose for either group.

The thinking is that too much fructose changes the way your brain responds to insulin, and that DHA can help mitigate much of the damage. So the net-net is to:

1. Cut down the amount of fructose (sugar in whatever form) you consume.
2. If you do eat the sugar, supplement with DHA or another Omega 3 fatty acid like salmon or walnuts at the same time to help mitigate the damage.

So grab the berries and the whole-fat greek yogurt, and throw away the Coke and the chocolate cake!

The Quantified Self - FitBit

As part of the ongoing process of measuring sleep, I took a leap and bought a FitBit Ultra.

Initially I was interested in evaluating my sleep to see how it tracked compared with the Zeo, and maybe I'll eventually do that, but an initial glance at the FitBit sleep stats tells me that it won't stack up to the way Zeo monitors actual brainwaves.

What it does do very well, though, is count the steps and stairs you take in a day, convert them to miles traveled and stairs climbed, and give you instant feedback on how well you've done that day. It initially sets targets (for me, anyways) of 10,000 steps a day, and 10 flights of stairs. On days when I'm out riding the bike and walking the dog, it's easy to get a lot more exercise than that recommended. When it's raining outside (like yesterday) and you want to take the dog for the shortest walks possible, I find I fall to about 50% of the recommended activity.

I read until 11pm, but FitBit thought I was asleep

Since FitBit can't really "measure" the bike properly, I'm thinking that it considers each pedal revolution as a step, and measures it that way. If you're a real keener, there are ways to more accurately measure activity on a bike.

For those of you who run, FitBit can be calibrated (as it can with walking) to measure your average stride length and give you distance based on that measurement. It will also track things manually - like BP, heartrate, blood glucose levels, caloric intake and weight.  You would enter these values on their user website, where it would time stamp them so you can see progress over time. It might be a powerful feedback tool for self-measurement.

This is on a day I did a long bikeride

The FitBit attaches to your clothing and is pretty unobtrusive. For sleep, it comes with a wristband you wear at night with the FitBit attached to the wrist (it measures motion at night, so that's why it's data is more inaccurate compared with a Zeo).

FitBit costs $100, and I'm using it as a glorified pedometer - but it's got that hi-tech edge which is hard for me to resist.

Learning Through Frustration

The Unintended Rest-Stop

We had been anticipating our annual May Long Weekend trip down to Deception Pass for months. Bruce reserved the sites for us in November, and we had six couples commit.

Last year, we had a problem with one of the brake shoes on the Airstream, and ended up having it replaced. So all the brakes were essentially of the same vintage, I had the other three replaced this year.

Driving down the highway, only a few miles south of the trailer service business, we had to pull over at a rest-stop and call the repair place. Our wheels (well, 3/4 of them) were red hot, and smelled terribly of burning rubber. Fortunately, we weren't too far down the road, and a mechanic and the service manager came to meet us at the rest-stop (bringing half the garage with them - they had no idea what to expect). They re-adjusted the three affected wheels, and after a short test drive, sent us on our way to Deception. When we pulled into the campground, the wheels were hot again. So we spent most of the weekend wondering what was up. We called the service folks again, and said we'd go slow, and bring the trailer back to them on Tuesday for a closer look.

Half of Us

We drove about half way home on Monday, and spent the night at a KOA in Burlington. This is where we discovered that our converter system (converts 120VAC into 12VDC for the trailer) wasn't working properly. It wouldn't recharge the batteries or supply 12VDC to the coach, so the lights in the trailer started to dim. Now we have a converter problem and a brake problem.

And we could smell propane too.

And it's raining.

And the trailer is filthy from having a dog track in the outdoors.

All this was getting to be a bit much for me. I do find I get more easily overwhelmed now, but still acknowledge that getting upset about all this solves nothing.

Fortunately, with Laura and I it seems that if one is down, the other is up. So on the whole we're pretty steady, and one of us can see that the "glass is half full". It's just that I wish these lessons came one at a time, and not in groups of five or six.

Is The Paleo Diet Improving My Sleep?

Photo Credit: Bryan Wright via Compfight

I have to wonder whether this Paleo (Primal, Archevore) eating  I've been doing for the last 100+ days has had an unintended side effect.

Sleep.

• I now get to sleep quickly at 11pm, after reading in bed for an hour or so. 
• I still wake up frequently during the night, but get back to sleep almost immediately. 
• I'm able to return to sleep successfully as late as 6am in the morning. 
• Finally, at 7am, I cannot sleep any longer, and get up for the day. I don't need an alarm to wake at 7am anymore. 

I've noticed all of this in the last few weeks, and this relatively new phenomenon could be related to one of three things:

1. the introduction of calcium and magnesium supplements into my diet 
2. the natural healing of the brain 
3. the change in my diet 

I cannot tell which of the three has had the most significant impact - mostly because I've done #1 and #3 almost simultaneously, and we have no way of measuring the healing of the brain.

My inclination after thinking about it, is that the most radical change I've made in the last six months is the way that I eat. Specifically, I've cut down the carbohydrates I eat by about 75%, and the grain products I eat by nearly 100%. I've also double or tripled the amount of fat in my diet (both saturated and unsaturated, including all the derivatives - polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, etc).

I wouldn't think that diet could have such a large effect on something like insomnia (unless you're eating habits do something to cause you to wake up during the night).

Now I'm not so sure.

Sailing and One and Two Thirds Book Reviews

The weather this last weekend here in Vancouver was wonderful. It was still a bit (a lot) chilly on the water, but when we dropped anchor somewhere it was toasty warm. Funny thing was, there was almost nobody out on the water ... kinda spooky. This is from our first night anchoring at Wallace Island - almost postcard perfect. Thanks again to Andrew M for allowing this incompetent "can't read a tide chart if his life depended on it" sailor to go with him.

And now on to the reading list this week. I've got several books on the go - one I've finished, two I'd like to comment on, and then a whole bunch more that need no comment (at this point anyways).

1. Abundance - The Future Is Better Than You Think. For the longest time I've been a "cup is half empty" person when it came to the world's problems. Global Weirding, Water Shortages, The Financial Crisis - it's a long list. After Harry W's suggestion last year I read "The Rational Optimist", thinking that it might change my mind about all this - but it didn't. This time, even though the authors of Abundance refer to The Rational Optimist all the time, something finally stuck. In example after example, the authors show how we've (the human race) repeatedly pulled back from the fire, avoided catastrophe, and moved on. And this time, we really have technology on our side. Maybe it was the repeated references to technology that got me on board this time, but whatever it was, I'm now a "cup is half full" person. But my money is still in T-Bills.
2. Religion for Atheists. This book was brought back from London for me by Dave K, who thought that I'd enjoy the read. I'm only at the first part of this book, but I can already tell that it will cause me to think in a different way about religion. The premise is to throw out all the standard theology arguments and dogma (free will, suffering children, hurricanes and tsunamis, etc), and concentrate instead on what religions of all sorts have brought to the party. If you take God out of religion, it becomes interesting and and the whole a force for good. Fascinating stuff. More later.
3. The Four Hour Body. This is the second best-seller by a blogger/human experimenter that I follow - Tim Ferris. Andrew's wife, Cheryl, lent me the book while we were off sailing and I read through most of the parts that interested me - but it's encyclopedic in length, so it should serve more as a reference book that you have on your shelf. This morning when I got to my desk, the first thing I did was some research on what the Paleo community said about this book. Tim talks a lot about diet, among a lot of other things, and although I follow much of what he says there's a lot that I don't. The best interpretation of the diet part of this book is that it's a fantastic transition from the SAD (Standard American Diet) to a more Ancient, Whole-Foods Diet (Paleo or, as I prefer, Archevore). He has things like "cheat days" where you eat whatever you want for one day a week, but the comments about this I read were "it takes you a week to recover from the cheat" - and Laura and I can confirm this after an over-the-top meal for our anniversary. He eschews processed foods and "anything white", and I think that may just be the single biggest thing you can do to improve your health. Ferris also has several other sections on exercise and sexual health that are quite enlightening. I'll probably get this book for my Kindle and use it as a reference!