Set your goals so you get a positive feedback.

Tags

How to measure success., Intermittent fasting, The intermittent diet

Both Debbie and I have been totally successful in dieting for the month of January, but she hasn’t had the good feelings of success that I have had, even though we have been eating the same things. The difference between our diet strategies is that she has been watching her weight and I have been watching the clock and the calendar. She is basing her feelings of success on the scale intermittently dropping toward her five-pound reduction goal and I have been basing my feelings on my successful compliance of not eating between 8 PM at night and 12 noon the next day. We are both doing the same diet, which has been called intermittent fasting, and the only difference is how we measure our progress. At the beginning of our diet, on January 1st 2017, it was more or less a New Year’s Resolution kind of thing, but those are notoriously poor for long-term compliance, so we didn’t want to name it that.

There has been some buzz in the media about the intermittent fasting diet, and over the years we have tried many diets for fun and pleasure. We have done a new diet some months using the strategy of doing it strictly for a week, following it carefully for another week, trying to think of it as an easy habit for another week and finally ignoring it as a preplanned diet for the last week of the month. We then chose a new diet for the next month. Of all of the diets we tried, the low glycemic index seemed to be the easiest to follow and sustain. It was mostly cutting down on all the forms of pasta and bread and wheat products, all of which I like, so it was a bit unpleasant for me. Unfortunately, after finishing the month of diet I drifted back to eating those things I like, so ultimately I am probably near the body weight my intestinal biome chooses for me.

It is now 11:38 AM as I write this post and typing is distracting enough that I don’t feel any hunger, but as I write this and check my stomach I do feel a little hungry. It isn’t unpleasant but ordinarily, having noticed this bit of hunger, I might go eat a small handful of chocolate covered almonds, probably about six of them, and then get back to whatever I was doing. Right now I’m going to go drink a glass of water … I just drank about six ounces of cold water and I don’t feel hungry at this moment.

On February 1st, having been 100% successful with the intermittent fasting diet, we decided to do one more month of it. There is one tiny addition that we are doing, and that is adding an 8-ounce glass of water just before we start eating our sit-down meals, lunch and dinner. Some people say it fills up the stomach a little and turns off the desire to keep eating a little sooner. Okay, that seems to be true, and it’s really easy to do. It’s time to go drop a bagel in the toaster. … 12:23 That will be a bagel with cream cheese, sunflower butter, raspberry jam, and a half-cup of yogurt … It went down nicely as my typical breakfast. We will have lunch about 2 PM.

This post is an example of setting a goal in a way to get a positive feedback.

My top ten new options for New Year’s Resolutions

Tags

Adapt quickly to changes, Be kind, Buy higher quality coffee, Buy more books, Intermittent fasting, Keep blogging, New Year's Resolutions, Prepare for Virtual Reality, Spend more money, Take walks every day, Watch the political situation

It’s three days to New Year’s Day and the time to think about resolutions, and as I like to pre-plan things a little, to look into the future as far as possible, now is the time to blog about it. Losing weight is reported to be the most common New Year’s Resolution, but few people succeed with keeping to it even for a month. My recommendation from personal experience is to do the intermittent fasting diet. It is the easiest diet I have ever done because I don’t have to watch what I eat, and only keep my resolution as to the timing of when I eat.

Debbie and I bought a fancy new scale a couple of weeks ago that’s accurate to one-tenth of a pound, and with the help of electricity coursing through our bodies it calculates all sorts of things and sends the results to our computer. We started an intermittent-fasting diet where we only eat between the hours of 8 AM and 8 PM, but that proved to be too easy, so we upped the ante a little and now only eat between 12 noon and 8 PM. That has worked out well. It is easy to do because the only time to even think that we are dieting is when getting a little hungry right before lunch. It’s easy for me to do this diet at that time because I am usually busy and away from food or snacks. The fancy new scale creates a running chart which claims we have each lost three pounds. So, we will continue our New Year’s resolution of doing this intermittent fasting diet for a month and through January. It should be easy to continue because that is already what we are comfortable doing.

Another common resolution is to spend less money on frivolities like eating out, coffee shops, books, and clothes. Actually, I’m so cheap I’m going to reverse that one and choose to spend a little more. I haven’t even gone thrift store shopping for well over a year, although Debbie bought me some new Crocs shoes for Christmas and some really nice wool socks for my recent birthday.

A lot of people claim they are going to take up some exercise and get healthy, but we have taken a minimum of two twenty-minute walks per day for decades. My blood pressure is near perfect most of the time, and everyone claims I look much younger than my eighty-one-year-old body. So, it’s not much of a resolution to keep doing what I have been doing.

Some people I know get into some educational things, like learning a foreign language, but that’s a waste of brain cells and energy resources. I find it’s more satisfying doing productive things that create meaning for others or writing a blog. It’s like choosing to spend time being intentionally kind to others by being helpful to them finding their own way. Many people choose to feel love toward others, but I feel that internalized love goes nowhere, and externalized love in the form of kindness helps everyone, including myself, feel much better because it is real.

One unusual New Year’s Resolution, well not so much a resolution as a goal, is to pay close attention to the accelerating trends of technology. To some degree, that means getting ahead of today’s newest gadgets. Something like Moore’s law is impacting many technical things and our whole society seems to be in the flex point for some of them to take off. Perhaps it will be virtual reality (VR). That didn’t seem to quite make the technical quality level this Christmas to be super successful, but the power of computers continues to double and that will soon put VR into easy technical reach. Entertainment is such a big part of modern culture that a satisfying VR system may wash away TV, movies, smartphones and much of the current fascination with computers. With good VR you may soon be in closer contact with people and generated beings that the new social media will feel and be much more intimate and immersive than a present smartphone in your hand.

Another resolution is to try to respond appropriately to our new political situations. Things may change rapidly and those who adapt to the new realities quickly may do well, but those who won’t or can’t change will probably do poorly.

Those are the top resolutions for my coming year.

 

It takes a while to do a habit automatically.

Tags

diet, Kindness is love made real, Love it a good feeling., Others respond to kindness not love., Promises, Promises to one's self, The intermittent fasting diet, The sixteen hour diet

Debbie and I have been on a new diet for six days, and today I failed. The diet is really easy to do because most of the time we are sleeping. It’s called an intermittent fasting diet, and the way we started doing it was by not eating anything caloric from 8 PM to 8 AM. That’s a twelve hour fast which we broke at breakfast at 8 AM. It was so easy to do that we upped the ante and now we don’t eat between 8 PM and 12 noon. That has proven to be easy to do too and has the advantage that I do feel a little hungry just before lunch, but generally only when I think about it. My friend Fred G, back in Berkeley, used to say, “Hunger is my friend.” I don’t know what kind of diet he was following but he always looked trim and vigorous. To me, a little bit of hunger just means my stomach, or whatever it is that proclaims that I’m hungry, is sending signals to my fat cells to give up a bit of stored weight.

The diet is so easy to do that when I am home there is no problem because I just wait until the dinner bell rings and then I go sit down and we eat. Today was different. I went to one of my morning meetings and someone had generously brought a beautiful collection of treats — cookies, Christmas candies, and assorted other things including chocolate brownies that were all on a decorative Christmas plate. I was involved in a conversation with D when the plate came to me, and I reflexively took a small brownie and passed the plate on, and went back to the conversation. A few seconds later, after I had eaten the small brownie, I realized that I had broken my diet.

When it came my turn to speak to the group, which was at the time talking about love and personal responsibility as if these were easy things to do if we said the right words occasionally, … I confessed. I said, “If you can’t keep a promise to yourself, how can you be trusted by yourself, or by anyone. Can anyone be trusted with a promise? New Year’s Resolutions are known for being broken even before the month of January is half gone. So can you trust those people, who can’t trust themselves to keep a promise to themselves to be trustworthy to you?” Machiavelli said you can only trust people whom you can punish if they don’t keep their commitments. Therefore, following his advice, a New Year’s Resolution should be coupled with some form of preplanned punishment for noncompliance. It could be a tiny punishment, but real.

One thing about the concept of love, as it is generally discussed, is that it is a good feeling and that it is wholly personal and internal. My problem with that form of love is that if it isn’t expressed externally it is unknowable and thus meaningless to the supposed loved one. I insist that love must be expressed externally in a way that affects the loved one in some tangible way and that when it is expressed that way it is called kindness. Therefore, I call kindness a more satisfactory form of behavior than love.

My failure to keep my diet was because my resolution wasn’t yet formed into a habit capable of resisting a challenge. That tiny brownie was a wonderful lesson and an opportunity to learn to be more careful with my promises to myself and to be kinder to other people for their failures to do what they say they are going to do.

A diet is a personal commitment to the health of one’s future self and it should be treated as a sacred trust.

I woke up peeing in pain; it was like fire.

Four days ago, I got up feeling okay, but unfortunately, it was painful when I did my morning pee! In a few seconds, it was flaming hot, and the pain extended up my abdomen, then to my chest, and then all the way to my ears. That lasted a very uncomfortable ten seconds and disappeared in another ten seconds. I first thought I had eaten too many spices the night before.

My spouse and I have been upping our efforts to improve our health for decades. Fourteen years ago, our experiments were conducted on different foods for weight loss. The Glycemic Index diet worked best. Other methods, such as calorie restriction, were hard to measure and confusing in actual practice. In December 2016, we began experimenting with intermittent fasting by narrowing our eating window and not eating anything after 7 p.m. or before 8 a.m. “Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.” -Saint Augustine.

For over a year, I have been eating an increasingly healthy diet. It has become extreme, but not as much as Bryan Johnson‘s, but certainly more strict than David Sinclair‘s. The goal is total avoidance of all processed foods, especially sugars, which turns out to be nearly impossible. I ate 13 different nuts, berries, and fruits with my single meal, along with eight pills that are supposed to be life-enhancing and a huge, complex green salad.

The eating window is now about an hour long, with a gap before my prepared salad with eggs and cheese. I have been eating a tablespoon of cod liver oil shortly after getting up and at midnight.

On my evening walk, I felt abnormally fatigued. The next afternoon, after eating, my pee was still on fire, so I went to the emergency room. There, I had a temperature of 101.6, and after my veritable blood tests and urine sample, my doctor said I didn’t have an infection. Because I walk 13,000 steps every day, I’m in great shape. We were confused, and we thought I should give up the recent spices, like eating cloves directly, for a few days. I did that and checked my symptoms. By the next day, my burning had mostly disappeared, but I still had a 100.5 fever. Two days later, there was no pee pain, and my temperature was another degree lower but not back to normal.

Well, I learned again that, as we all know, there is some bad advice on the internet.

How can we get the benefits of Nitric Oxide?

I dive deeper into Chat by refining the question several times for more specific recommendations.

Question # 1

Challenge to Chat GPT-4

What is the current research on nitric oxide benefits?

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Nitric oxide (NO) is a small, gaseous signaling molecule that plays a critical role in various physiological processes in the human body. It is synthesized by a family of enzymes called nitric oxide synthases (NOS) that convert L-arginine into nitric oxide and L-citrulline. The importance of nitric oxide was underscored when the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 1998 to Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro, and Ferrid Murad for discoveries concerning “nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system.” Since then, research has continued to uncover various roles and benefits of nitric oxide in human health. Here are some areas where current research is focused as of my last update in April 2023:

1. Cardiovascular Health: Nitric oxide is known to play a crucial role in maintaining vascular tone and blood pressure. It enables blood vessels to relax, reduces vascular inflammation, prevents platelet aggregation, and limits the adhesion of leukocytes to the endothelium, thus reducing the risk of atherosclerotic plaque formation.
2. Exercise Performance: There is ongoing research into how nitric oxide supplements might improve exercise performance. The theory is that increased NO can enhance blood flow to muscles, improving nutrient delivery and waste product removal, thereby potentially improving endurance and reducing recovery time.
3. Neurotransmission: Nitric oxide acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain and is involved in various processes including neural plasticity, which is key to learning and memory. Researchers are investigating the ways that NO might be involved in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
4. Immune Response: Nitric oxide has a role in the body’s immune response, where it can be both protective and destructive. It’s involved in killing pathogens like bacteria and has a role in inflammation. Studies are looking at how to balance NO production to manage infections and inflammatory diseases.
5. Erectile Dysfunction: NO is a key mediator of penile erection by stimulating cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) production, which relaxes smooth muscle and increases blood flow. Phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5) inhibitors like sildenafil (Viagra) enhance the effects of NO in the treatment of erectile dysfunction.
6. Respiratory Conditions: Research is also ongoing in the use of inhaled nitric oxide for conditions like acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and pulmonary hypertension, where it can help to improve oxygenation and reduce pulmonary artery pressures.
7. Cancer: The role of NO in cancer is complex and dual-faceted, as it can both promote and inhibit tumor growth. Studies are exploring how modulating NO levels could be used in cancer therapy.
8. Aging: As we age, NO production can decrease, leading to endothelial dysfunction and a host of age-related diseases. There’s interest in how boosting NO levels might help mitigate some aspects of the aging process.
9. Gastrointestinal Tract Health: NO is also involved in the regulation of motility, blood flow, and mucosal defense in the gastrointestinal tract. Therapeutic use of NO donors or NOS stimulants is being researched for conditions like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
10. Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome: NO influences insulin secretion and action, and hence, plays a role in glucose homeostasis. Impaired NO production is associated with endothelial dysfunction and may contribute to the vascular complications of diabetes.

Supplementation to boost NO levels often focuses on precursors or stimulants of NO production, such as L-arginine, L-citrulline, and nitrates/nitrites found in foods like beets and leafy green vegetables. However, the efficacy and safety of long-term supplementation for various conditions are still under investigation.

Overall, while the beneficial roles of nitric oxide are well-established in many physiological processes, the challenge remains in how to therapeutically modulate NO levels in the body without causing adverse effects, as the molecule can be both beneficial and harmful depending on its concentration, location, and context of action. It’s important to keep in mind that new findings and conclusions could emerge beyond my last update, and consulting recent peer-reviewed research or medical professionals would provide the most current information.

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Question # 2

Challenge to Chat GPT-4

List the available sources of nitric oxide (NO) in order of availability, including their online sources and cost.

Nitric oxide (NO) itself is not a substance that can be directly supplemented, as it is a gas that is produced within the body. Instead, people can consume precursors and enhancers that promote its production. Here are some common sources of NO boosters, starting with the most readily available sources, along with general information on where to find them and their cost:

1. Dietary Sources:
   • Leafy Greens: Vegetables such as spinach, arugula, and kale are high in nitrates, which the body can convert into NO. Availability is high at most grocery stores and farmers’ markets.
   • Beets and Beetroot Juice: Beets are another rich source of nitrates. Beetroot juice is particularly concentrated and has been studied for its ability to increase NO levels. These can be found at health food stores and many supermarkets.
   • Meat: Particularly red meat, which contains heme iron that can enhance NO production. Availability is high in grocery stores.
2. Supplements:
   • L-Arginine: An amino acid that the body converts into NO. Available as a dietary supplement in pill or powder form at health food stores, pharmacies, and online retailers. The cost can vary from around $10 to $30 for a bottle or container, depending on brand and quantity.
   • L-Citrulline: Often marketed for sport performance, this amino acid is converted to L-arginine in the body, which then can be used to make NO. Available online and in stores where dietary supplements are sold. Prices are similar to L-arginine.
   • Nitrate Supplements: These are often derived from beetroot or other nitrate-rich sources. They can be found in the form of capsules, powders, or concentrated juices. Available online and in health food stores, prices can range from $15 to $40 or more.
3. Enhanced Waters and Drinks:
   • Functional Beverages: Some bottled waters and sports drinks are fortified with L-arginine or other NO-promoting compounds. These are available in grocery stores, gyms, and online. The cost is usually higher than regular bottled water or sports drinks, ranging from $2 to $5 per bottle.

When looking for online sources, reputable websites include:

• Amazon.com: Offers a wide range of supplements with various price points. You can find powders, capsules, and drinks from different brands.
• Bodybuilding.com: Focuses on sports and fitness supplements, including pre-workouts that may boost NO production.
• iHerb: An online retailer specializing in natural supplements, where you can find L-arginine, L-citrulline, and beetroot extracts.
• GNC or Vitamin Shoppe: These retailers have physical stores and online platforms that sell a variety of NO-related supplements.

The prices listed are approximate and can vary greatly depending on the brand, quantity, and specific product formulation. It’s always advisable to compare prices and read customer reviews when shopping online. Furthermore, check for third-party testing and quality assurance marks to ensure the product is safe and contains what it claims.

Please note, while NO boosters are popular, especially among athletes and those looking to improve cardiovascular health, their efficacy can vary from person to person. It’s also important to consult with a healthcare provider before starting any new supplement regimen, especially if you have existing health conditions or are taking medications.

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Question # 3

Challenge to Chat GPT-4

Create a list of the best ways to prepare leafy green vegetables like spinach, arugula, and kale so that you can reap the benefits of the nitric oxide (NO) that they produce.

To maximize the nitric oxide (NO) benefits from leafy green vegetables, preparation methods that preserve their nitrate content are recommended. Cooking can reduce the nitrate content in vegetables, so often raw or lightly cooked preparations are preferred. Here are several preparation methods for spinach, arugula, and kale that are delicious and help retain their NO-producing potential:

1. Raw in Salads:
   • Spinach and Arugula Salad: Toss fresh baby spinach and arugula with a light dressing of extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. You can add nuts, seeds, and fruits for additional flavors and textures.
   • Kale Salad: Massage raw kale leaves with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice until they become tender. Add diced apples, cranberries, and a sprinkle of feta cheese.
2. Smoothies:
   • Green Smoothie: Blend raw kale or spinach with fruits like banana, apple, or berries, along with a liquid base such as almond milk or coconut water. You can also add a spoonful of yogurt or a protein powder for a protein boost.
3. Juicing:
   • Green Juice: Juice kale, spinach, and arugula with other nitrate-rich vegetables like beets and carrots. Adding an apple or a bit of ginger can improve the flavor.
4. Lightly Steamed:
   • Steamed Greens: Lightly steam spinach, arugula, or kale for just a few minutes until wilted. This can be done in a steaming basket or in the microwave. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and your favorite herbs before serving.
5. Sautéing:
   • Sautéed Spinach or Kale: Quickly sauté spinach or kale in a pan with garlic, olive oil, and a splash of lemon juice for a flavor-packed side dish. Sautéing for a short period on high heat can minimize nutrient loss.
6. Wraps and Rolls:
   • Raw Wraps: Use whole kale leaves or large spinach leaves as wraps for other fillings like quinoa, hummus, and chopped vegetables.
7. Chips:
   • Kale Chips: Toss kale leaves with a bit of olive oil and sea salt, then bake them in a single layer at a low temperature until crispy. This makes a healthy, crunchy snack.
8. Pesto:
   • Spinach or Kale Pesto: Blend raw spinach or kale with garlic, nuts (like pine nuts or walnuts), Parmesan cheese, olive oil, and lemon juice to make a nutrient-rich pesto sauce.
9. Incorporated into Soups:
   • Soup Addition: Add spinach, kale, or arugula to soups during the last few minutes of cooking. This works well in broths, minestrone, or lentil soups.
10. Topping or Garnish:
    • Garnish: Use raw arugula or spinach as a fresh, peppery garnish on pizzas, sandwiches, and pasta dishes just before serving.

By consuming leafy greens in a variety of ways—raw, juiced, blended, lightly cooked—you can enjoy their flavors while maximizing their health benefits, including the production of nitric oxide. Remember that dietary variety is also key, so rotating between different types of greens can provide a broad spectrum of nutrients and reduce the risk of overexposure to any single compound that might be problematic in large amounts (e.g., oxalates in spinach).

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Question # 4

Challenge to Chat GPT-4

Display links to videos on the internet of people preparing leafy green vegetables such as spinach, arugula, and kale.

I’m sorry for the confusion, but as a text-based AI, I cannot directly display or provide direct links to videos on the internet. However, I can guide you on how to find videos that demonstrate how to prepare leafy green vegetables like spinach, arugula, and kale.

You can easily find a variety of such videos on popular platforms like YouTube. Here are some search terms that you can use on YouTube or any video platform to find tutorials on preparing these vegetables:

• “Spinach salad recipe”
• “How to make kale chips”
• “Kale smoothie tutorial”
• “Preparing arugula for salad”
• “Sautéed spinach recipe”
• “Kale salad preparation”
• “Arugula pesto recipe”
• “Juicing greens at home”
• “Steamed spinach how-to”

To find these videos, simply go to the YouTube website or app and type these search terms into the search bar. You’ll be presented with a list of videos from various creators, from professional chefs to everyday cooking enthusiasts, showing their methods and tips for preparing these greens. Remember to look at the number of views and ratings for the best content.

For a more curated experience, you might want to check out cooking channels or websites that regularly post high-quality culinary content, like:

• Food Network
• BBC Good Food
• AllRecipes
• Serious Eats

You can also visit their YouTube channels or search their names along with the dish you’re interested in preparing for specific video content.

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Question # 5

Challlenge to Chat GPT-4

List the problems of eating too many leafy green vegetables such as spinach, arugula, and kale.

Leafy green vegetables are rich in nutrients and are generally considered an important part of a healthy diet. However, like all foods, they can cause problems if consumed in excessive amounts. Here are some potential issues associated with eating too many leafy greens:

1. Oxalate Content: Vegetables like spinach are high in oxalates, which can contribute to kidney stone formation in susceptible individuals. High oxalate intake can also interfere with the absorption of calcium, leading to potential mineral deficiencies.
2. Blood Clotting: Foods high in vitamin K, such as kale, can affect blood clotting. This is particularly relevant for individuals taking blood thinners like warfarin (Coumadin), as vitamin K can counteract the medication’s effects.
3. Digestive Problems: Consuming large amounts of fiber from leafy greens can cause gastrointestinal discomfort, including bloating, gas, constipation, or diarrhea, especially if a person is not used to a high-fiber diet.
4. Pesticide Exposure: If not properly washed or if non-organic, leafy greens can carry pesticide residues that might be harmful over time or contribute to chronic health issues.
5. Metal Accumulation: Some leafy greens, particularly when grown in contaminated soil, can accumulate heavy metals like lead and cadmium, which are toxic in high amounts.
6. Antinutrient Effects: Leafy greens contain antinutrients such as phytates and tannins, which can reduce the absorption of minerals like iron and zinc from the digestive tract.
7. E. coli and Other Pathogens: Raw leafy greens are occasionally recalled due to contamination with E. coli, Salmonella, or other pathogens that can cause foodborne illness. Proper handling and washing are crucial.
8. Goitrogens: Some leafy greens, particularly cruciferous vegetables like kale, contain goitrogens, which can interfere with thyroid function if consumed in very large quantities, especially in people with iodine deficiency.
9. Bitter Taste and Palatability: In very large amounts, the bitter taste of certain greens, like arugula, can become unpalatable, potentially leading to a decrease in the diversity of the diet.
10. Caloric Insufficiency: While not a direct health risk from the vegetables themselves, filling up on leafy greens at the expense of other foods could lead to an overall caloric insufficiency and an imbalance of macronutrients.

It’s important to note that the risk of these problems is generally low for most people, and leafy greens can be consumed safely in moderation as part of a varied diet. For individuals with specific health conditions or dietary restrictions, it’s best to consult with a healthcare provider or a registered dietitian.

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COMMENTS

For several years, I have been intermittent fasting, and my eating window is from noon until 2 pm. My body weight has stabilized at its college level. I eat until feeling full, and I am never hungry. I usually sip one teaspoon of whisky in the evening as it refreshes my mouth. I have excellent health, but I do have an ongoing interest in optimizing my health, which is manifest in writing blog posts like this one. Chat is an amazing tool for quickly giving an overview of subjects without much bias, like most books usually have.

CONCLUSIONS

Things are nominal, as they like to say after liftoff, when rockets are proceeding perfectly. I am looking forward to the Spaceships getting lots of useful things into orbit. In the past, it has been far too expensive to do most research, but now many, new things are becoming possible. It appears likely that following the recommendations of recent scientifically proven longevity enhancers for mice will prove equally beneficial for humans.

I ask AI, “How can I apply Nassim Talab’s idea of antifragile to my daily life?”

A challenge to Chat GPT-4

How can I apply Nassim Talab’s idea of antifragile to my daily life?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s concept of “antifragility” is introduced in his book “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.” In it, he describes systems that increase in capability, resilience, or robustness as a result of stressors, shocks, volatility, or failures. While the idea originates from the realm of economics and finance, its principles can be applied in everyday life:

1. Embrace Randomness and Variability: Don’t shy away from randomness. Change up routines, from the routes you take to work to the exercises you do, to become more adaptable and less vulnerable to specific disruptions.
2. Reduce Vulnerabilities: Just as you would diversify investments, diversify the skills you learn, the experiences you have, and even the foods you eat. This way, a negative event in one area will have less overall impact.
3. Learn by Doing: Engage in experiential learning. Try things out and learn from failures. Experimentation makes you stronger in the face of unforeseen challenges.
4. Overcompensation: Push yourself beyond your comfort zone occasionally. Just as muscles grow stronger when stressed, so too can your skills and resilience.
5. Small Risks: Take minor risks often, so you can build resilience. It’s the equivalent of small, controlled fires preventing a massive forest blaze.
6. Avoid Over-Optimization: While efficiency is often prized, being too optimized for a specific scenario can make you fragile when conditions change.
7. Barbell Strategy: Taleb suggests taking a dual approach to many things – be extremely conservative in some areas (ensuring security) while taking significant, calculated risks in others (offering high reward).
8. Decentralize: Avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. A single point of failure, whether in finance, work, or personal matters, can be catastrophic.
9. Build Redundancies: While they might seem inefficient, redundancies can be safety nets in times of crises, whether it’s having savings, backup plans, or learning multiple skills.
10. Continuous Learning: Knowledge and skills are assets. The broader and deeper your knowledge, the more antifragile you become in the face of career or life changes.
11. Skepticism: Constantly question the status quo and avoid blindly following convention, which might make you susceptible to fragilities you’re not aware of.
12. Personal Health: Adopt an antifragile perspective on health. Intermittent fasting, exposure to cold, and high-intensity training are examples where short-term stressors can potentially bring long-term benefits.
13. Emotional Resilience: Embrace emotional challenges as growth opportunities. Accept that suffering and setbacks can, paradoxically, lead to greater overall happiness and strength.
14. Strengthen Relationships: Forge bonds that grow stronger under stress. Being there for others during hardships not only solidifies relationships but creates a network of support during your challenging times.
15. Limit Debt and Dependency: Avoid situations where you’re overly reliant on external factors or entities that you can’t control.
16. Embrace Change: Rather than resisting change, lean into it. Every change is an opportunity to learn, grow, and adapt.

Applying the antifragile mindset is more than just being robust or resilient; it’s about thriving, growing healthier, and becoming more competent in facing adversity and uncertainty. It promotes a proactive approach to life, seeking challenges and growth opportunities.

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COMMENTS

This is a wonderful list, but it is too long to remember.

CONCLUSIONS

One must begin with the basics: # 12. Personal Health: Adopt an antifragile perspective on health. Intermittent fasting, exposure to cold, and high-intensity training are examples where short-term stressors can potentially bring long-term benefits: – I do this by taking several long walks every day with one time doing a hundred steps uphill at max speed. And I eat according to the longevity food guru’s suggestions for ideal eating. # 7. Barbell Strategy: Taleb suggests taking a dual approach to many things: – be extremely conservative in some areas (ensuring security) while taking significant, calculated risks in others (offering high rewards). – I avoid physically risky things like skiing, biking, and careless driving, but take verbal risks in group meetings with challenging ideas, and photographic risks with strange photographs of things other people ignore. – # 9. Build Redundancies: While they might seem inefficient, redundancies can be safety nets in times of crises, whether it’s having savings, backup plans, or learning multiple skills. – I have been searching for the quietest, friendliest, most healthful climate, etc., of any place on the planet for having a second residence for retirement.

I tried Chat with: 1. The quietest, friendliest, most healthful climate, etc., of any place on the planet for having a second residence for retirement. 2. Extend the list to the top forty places. 3. What cities of the world have the most comfortable climate for retirement? 4. What’s wrong with Montevideo, UY, and Buenos Aires, AG, for retirement? 5. What cities in the world do expats rate as most desirable? Where do Americans choose to retire?

Those searches resulted in a random list of cities with nothing standing out. Thus, one must set their own priorities and visit every one of them.

What Top Online Food Influencers Really Put On Their Dinner Plate!

Here is how I use Chat GPT-4 to find what I want. The problem becomes how to ask the right question. I checked out some surveys of what the online food pundits actually eat. Go to the bottom, where I finally get closer to the facts I sought.

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Chat GPT-4

Suggest how I might ask, “List the top online food influencers and what they actually eat.

Certainly! Here are some alternative ways to phrase that question:

1. “Who are the leading online food personalities and what’s on their daily menu?”
2. “Could you name the most popular digital food gurus and share their typical meals?”
3. “Who reigns supreme in the online culinary world, and what dishes do they swear by?”
4. “I’m curious about top food influencers on the web. What are their go-to meals?”
5. “Which food bloggers or YouTubers are considered the best, and what do they love to eat?”
6. “In the world of online foodies, who stands out and what are their favorite dishes?”
7. “Highlight the elite online food connoisseurs and dish out their usual eats, will you?”
8. “Who’s who in the digital food realm, and what’s typically on their plate?”
9. “Name the big players of the online gastronomic scene. What meals do they cherish the most?”
10. “Can you spotlight the cream of the crop in online food influencing and unveil their cherished meals?”

These alternative phrasings can make the question more engaging and interesting to your audience.

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None of those focused on the shortlist I was seeking, so I rephrased it.

Chat GPT-4

What are the food influencers’ essential nutrient supplements that they all eat?

While it’s impossible to generalize the habits of all food influencers, many health and wellness influencers do tend to gravitate towards certain nutrient supplements based on prevailing health trends, research, and personal preferences. Some popular supplements among wellness influencers might include:

1. Omega-3 Fatty Acids: These are essential fats that are beneficial for heart and brain health. They are commonly found in fish oil, krill oil, or algal oil supplements.
2. Vitamin D: Especially recommended for individuals who get limited sun exposure, Vitamin D is essential for bone health and may have other health benefits.
3. Probiotics: Beneficial for gut health, these are live bacteria and yeasts that are good for the digestive system.
4. Collagen: This protein is believed to be beneficial for skin, hair, and nails. It’s found in bone broth and supplements, often in powdered form.
5. Turmeric or Curcumin: These supplements are known for their anti-inflammatory properties.
6. Magnesium: Essential for many biochemical reactions in the body, magnesium can help with muscle and nerve function, among other things.
7. Adaptogens: These are herbs like ashwagandha, rhodiola, and holy basil that are believed to help the body resist stressors of all kinds, be it physical, chemical, or biological.
8. B Vitamins: Especially B12, which is vital for nerve function and the formation of red blood cells. It’s particularly important for vegans and vegetarians.
9. Iron: Especially for women or individuals on a plant-based diet, iron is crucial for transporting oxygen in the blood.
10. Protein Powders: Especially popular among fitness influencers, these can be derived from whey, plants (like pea or hemp), or collagen.
11. CBD: Cannabidiol, derived from the hemp plant, has become popular for its potential calming effects and pain relief properties.
12. Antioxidants: Supplements like Vitamin C, Vitamin E, and resveratrol, which can help protect the body against damage from free radicals.

Remember, while influencers might promote certain supplements, it’s crucial to do your own research and consult with a healthcare professional before introducing new supplements into your routine. What works for one person might not be suitable for another, and dietary needs can vary greatly.

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That’s a fine list of the culmination of what the pundits recommend, but I am searching for what most of them actually put into their own bodies.

Chat GPT-4

Of that list of recommended things, which ones do most of them actually put into their own bodies?

It’s hard to say with certainty what most influencers consume without specific data. However, based on the patterns observed in the online wellness community and endorsements by popular food and health influencers, several supplements and health products seem to be more commonly consumed or promoted. Here are some from the provided list that stand out:

1. Omega-3 Fatty Acids: Many influencers prioritize heart and brain health and often discuss the benefits of Omega-3s, whether they get them from fish oil supplements, flaxseed, chia seeds, or walnuts.
2. Vitamin D: This is especially true for influencers from regions with limited sunlight or those who emphasize the importance of bone health.
3. Probiotics: Gut health is a massive trend in the wellness community, so many influencers take probiotics or consume fermented foods like yogurt, kimchi, and kombucha.
4. Collagen: This supplement has gained massive popularity in recent years for its potential skin, hair, and joint benefits. Many influencers add collagen powders to their smoothies, coffee, or baked goods.
5. Turmeric or Curcumin: With the focus on anti-inflammatory diets, turmeric, often as a spice or in “golden milk” recipes, has been highlighted by many influencers.
6. Magnesium: Praised for its potential benefits related to sleep, muscle recovery, and stress relief, magnesium is a favorite among many, especially in the form of Epsom salt baths or nighttime supplements.
7. Protein Powders: Many fitness and wellness influencers incorporate protein powders into their post-workout routines or daily meals, especially if they advocate for high-protein diets.
8. CBD: With its rising popularity, many influencers have tried or promoted CBD oils and related products for relaxation, stress relief, or sleep.

It’s essential to note that just because an influencer promotes or discusses a product doesn’t mean they consume it regularly. And even if they do, it’s vital for followers to remember that everyone’s body and nutritional needs are different. Before adopting any supplement or dietary change, it’s essential to consult with a healthcare or nutrition professional.

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That list is a little shorter, but it doesn’t answer my question. Perhaps making a list of the online influencers and then asking which ones have posted what they actually put into their bodies.

Chat GPT-4

Make a list of the top online food influencers.

The list of top online food influencers can change rapidly as the digital landscape evolves and new personalities emerge. As of my last update in 2022, here are some notable food influencers who were making waves in the online community:

1. Jamie Oliver: Renowned chef with multiple TV shows, cookbooks, and a significant online presence, focusing on easy, nutritious meals.
2. Gordon Ramsay: The fiery chef from TV shows like Hell’s Kitchen also has an extensive online following, with many fans on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
3. Rosanna Pansino: Known for her YouTube channel “Nerdy Nummies,” where she combines baking with pop culture themes.
4. Tieghan Gerard (Half Baked Harvest): Popular for her comforting and visually stunning recipes, both on her blog and Instagram.
5. Molly Yeh: Blogger turned Food Network star, she blends her Chinese and Jewish heritage into her recipes.
6. Ella Mills (Deliciously Ella): Focuses on plant-based meals and wellness. Her blog and apps have been particularly influential.
7. Kevin Curry (FitMenCook): Offers healthy, budget-friendly meals, with an emphasis on fitness and nutrition.
8. Minimalist Baker: Known for recipes that require ten ingredients or less, one bowl, or under 30 minutes to prepare.
9. David Chang: Renowned chef behind the Momofuku restaurants and has a significant online presence, including a Netflix show, “Ugly Delicious.”
10. Natasha Kravchuk (Natasha’s Kitchen): Popular for her easy-to-follow recipes on her blog and YouTube channel.
11. Yotam Ottolenghi: A chef and writer known for his emphasis on Middle Eastern flavors.
12. J. Kenji López-Alt: Not just for his role in Serious Eats but also for his in-depth exploration of the science behind cooking.
13. Alison Roman: Former Bon Appétit and New York Times columnist, she’s known for her approachable yet trendy recipes.
14. Samin Nosrat: Author of “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” and a Netflix show by the same name. She focuses on the basics of cooking and flavor.
15. Binging with Babish (Andrew Rea): Known for recreating dishes from movies and TV shows on his YouTube channel.

Please note that the digital food scene is vast and diverse, and “top” can vary based on criteria like engagement, followers, or impact. This list reflects a blend of these factors as of the most recent data up to 2022. Always ensure to look for current and more recent data when determining the top influencers in any year.

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I haven’t been watching any of these TV personality shows. Therefore, I am asking Chat the wrong questions. The people I have been following online are linked to the work of life-extension scientist David Sinclair. He recommends a lifestyle largely based on what we do with our bodies, including what we put into our mouths.

Chat GPT-4

List the life-extension online personalities and the similarities in what they eat. Include their online links. Include their YouTube link.

Sure, here are some prominent life-extension online personalities, their associated dietary tendencies, and the link to their respective YouTube channels:

1. Dr. David Sinclair
   • Dietary Points: Talks about intermittent fasting, molecules like NMN (Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) and resveratrol.
   • YouTube Link: David Sinclair
   • Website: Lifespan Book
2. Dr. Rhonda Patrick
   • Dietary Points: Emphasizes micronutrients, Omega-3 fatty acids, sulforaphane from cruciferous vegetables, and time-restricted eating.
   • YouTube Link: FoundMyFitness
   • Website: FoundMyFitness
3. Dr. Valter Longo
   • Dietary Points: Known for the Fasting Mimicking Diet and periodic prolonged fasting.
   • YouTube Link: Valter Longo
   • Website: Valter Longo Foundation
4. Dr. Peter Attia
   • Dietary Points: Advocates for a low-carb, high-fat diet, time-restricted eating, and periodic fasting.
   • YouTube Link: Peter Attia
   • Website: Peter Attia MD
5. Ben Greenfield
   • Dietary Points: Organic foods, avoiding environmental toxins, and intermittent fasting.
   • YouTube Link: Ben Greenfield Fitness
   • Website: Ben Greenfield Fitness
6. Dave Asprey
   • Dietary Points: Promotes the Bulletproof Diet, which emphasizes fats, especially MCT oil.
   • YouTube Link: Bulletproof
   • Website: Bulletproof
7. Jessie Inchauspé – I added this to Chat’s list Dietary Points: Suggest an order for eating foods. Apple cider vinegar, Green salad, Protein, Fat, Fiber, and Glucose last. Avoid sugar. YouTube Link: Interview Website: GlucoseGoddess

Common Dietary Similarities:

1. Intermittent Fasting/Time-Restricted Eating: A popular strategy believed to have benefits for longevity.
2. Whole Foods: Prioritizing unprocessed foods.
3. Healthy Fats: Many emphasize the importance of Omega-3 fatty acids and other healthy fats.
4. Limiting Sugar and Processed Carbs: A consistent recommendation among many in the longevity community.
5. Antioxidants and Phytonutrients: Consuming foods rich in these compounds.
6. Hydration: The importance of drinking sufficient water.
7. Gut Health: Maintaining a healthy gut microbiome through foods and sometimes supplements.
8. Periodic Fasting or Caloric Restriction: Some advocate for these as methods to support longevity.

As always, before implementing any diet changes or health practices, consulting with healthcare professionals is a good idea.

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Those are probably good ideas, but they are so generalized that I don’t know exactly what to do.

Chat GPT-4

Take your list of common dietary similarities and expand the descriptions with specific suggestions.

Certainly! Let’s expand on the common dietary similarities with more specific suggestions:

1. Intermittent Fasting/Time-Restricted Eating:
   • Description: This involves limiting your food intake to a specific window each day, such as eating only between 10 am and 6 pm.
   • Suggestions:
     • Begin with a 12-hour eating window (e.g., 7 am – 7 pm) and gradually narrow it down.
     • Hydrate with water, herbal tea, or black coffee during fasting hours.
     • Ensure nutrient-rich meals when breaking the fast: dark green vegetables, proteins, healthy fats, fiber, and minimal pasta and sugar.
2. Whole Foods:
   • Description: Prioritize foods that are unprocessed or minimally processed.
   • Suggestions:
     • Consume a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables.
     • Opt for whole grains like quinoa, barley, and whole wheat over refined grains.
     • Choose unprocessed protein sources like lean meats, fish, beans, and legumes.
3. Healthy Fats:
   • Description: Emphasize fats that support heart and brain health.
   • Suggestions:
     • Incorporate fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, and sardines for Omega-3s.
     • Use olive oil for cooking and salads.
     • Include avocados, nuts, and seeds in your diet.
4. Limiting Sugar and Processed Carbs:
   • Description: Reduce intake of foods that can spike blood sugar.
   • Suggestions:
     • Avoid sugary beverages, pastries, and candies.
     • Choose whole fruits over fruit juices.
     • Opt for whole grains and avoid white bread, white rice, and other refined grains.
5. Antioxidants and Phytonutrients:
   • Description: Foods rich in these compounds combat oxidative stress in the body.
   • Suggestions:
     • Consume berries like blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries.
     • Add turmeric and black pepper to dishes.
     • Enjoy dark chocolate and green tea in moderation.
6. Hydration:
   • Description: Ensuring adequate fluid intake supports all bodily functions.
   • Suggestions:
     • Aim for at least 8 glasses of water daily.
     • Infuse water with slices of cucumber, citrus, or herbs for variety.
     • Limit caffeinated and alcoholic beverages.
7. Gut Health:
   • Description: A healthy gut microbiome is linked to overall health and immunity.
   • Suggestions:
     • Consume fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, kimchi, and sauerkraut.
     • Increase dietary fiber with vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes.
     • Consider a probiotic supplement after consulting with a healthcare professional.
8. Periodic Fasting or Caloric Restriction:
   • Description: Some believe reducing caloric intake or doing longer fasts can support longevity.
   • Suggestions:
     • Research and consider the 5:2 diet, where two days a week are restricted to 500-600 calories.
     • Engage in periodic 24-hour fasts, consuming only water.
     • Always consult a healthcare professional before undertaking extended fasts or significant caloric restriction.

Remember that individual needs and responses to dietary strategies can vary. It’s essential to find what works best for one’s unique body and health situation.

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COMMENTS

I never found the overlap in what the foodie gurus were all eating. However, the final list of suggestions is as good a recommendation as any of the pundits would have proposed.

CONCLUSIONS

Recall your ideal weight in your early twenties and eat a diet that will slowly bring you to that weight. Approach your eating time with positive feelings of love and respect. Make it a feeling of loving accomplishment when you depart from your meal.

Condensed thoughts 2018

Condensed thoughts January 2018
01 January 2018 – Probaway Person of the Year – Astronomers who discovered gold. – The discovery of the creation of the heavy elements is a major event to every sentient being in the Universe.
02 January 2018 – If you want to be happy choose to be happy. – I sometimes think what I say is profound but usually the conversations just flow and that’s what happened today.
03 January 2018 – Sage tip #136, Live modestly and shun excesses. – Living modestly and shunning excesses makes it easy to treat other people better than you treat yourself.
04 January 2018 – Motorcycles are dangerous! – Motorcycles are dangerous, but if you succeed in not getting killed there are plenty of fun things to do with the rest of your life.
05 January 2018 – Bicycles are dangerous too! – A knowledgeable friend’s interest in one’s projects is the big payoff for creative endeavors.
06 January 2018 – Sage tip #140, Work with what is and what will be. – Meditation is not for converting one’s self into a stone but into a fully functioning being who is fully conscious of the past, present, and future.
07 January 2018 – Spiritual Development Vision Statement – Today’s meeting included some examples of physical behaviors that I will be promoting for effective physical practice.
08 January 2018 – How may I help you? – By being more aware of helping other beings with their needs you become more aware of your own needs and what you need to do.
09 January 2018 – “How may I help you?” Feedback – The whole procedure was divine; we headed home with smiles on our faces and laughter in our voices.
10 January 2018 – Get done! And move on. – Getting things done in physical reality is the only thing that is useful.
11 January 2018 – STOP dithering! – A group needs a unique name, a logo, and a leader who personifies a great idea that the group can be enthusiastic about.
12 January 2018 – My cancer returns. – Well, that tiny object isn’t a wart, so you can’t accuse me of being a worry wart.
13 January 2018 – iPhone closeup photos are astonishing. – If you have trouble finding Honest Abe look carefully in the shadows of the Lincoln Memorial building.
14 January 2018 – A prayer acceptable to atheists, scientists, and the spiritually minded – An Acknowledgment of Our Dependence on Reality
15 January 2018 – An intermittent diet that worked for me. – Our bodies easily adjusted to six hours of eating.
16 January 2018 – Wake up grumpy! What’s next? – Mentally practice how you want to behave in problem situations when you are certain to be in control and certain to succeed. Now! …
17 January 2018 – Sage tip #61, Be content with what you can do. – Be content with what you can do, but do it and get it into a completed format.
18 January 2018 – Alpha and Omega symbols for our group’s brochure – It is a feeling thing more than an intellectual one that is important in some situations.
19 January 2018 – My Alpha symbol for SACC – Anyway, the fun of this Alpha is in the tiny details.
20 January 2018 – An opportunity. – Every moment you live is an opportunity to do kind actions.
21 January 2018 – Sage tip #18, Expect and prepare for the inevitable. – A more practical use of the concept of preparing for the inevitable is to prepare for your own death.
22 January 2018 – Sage tip #29, Expose people to things they can do. – Most of the time life just happens and death too.
23 January 2018 – Helping people isn’t easy. – I see it as a good thing to strive to make the world a better place for our living companions.
24 January 2018 – Sage tip #145, Follow the kindest paths to your goals. – Think ahead and be as kind to others as it is possible to be.
25 January 2018 – The Tao Teh Ching – #44 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – Follow this Tao and you may live a long and contented life.
26 January 2018 – Who will thrive in the future? – Get a future-proof job and stay out of debt to anyone.
27 January 2018 – What is Spiritual Awareness for an Atheist? – Everyone is perfectly sane and logical if you can get into their world view.
28 January 2018 – I asked the labyrinth stones, “What do you need?” – Later I was looking into the faces of humans asking, “What do you need?”
29 January 2018 – Some things I’ve done – As a speaker, I was asked to write a bio for the Spiritual Awareness Community
30 January 2018 – Controlling and creating habits – The instant I do an intentional good deed I smile for two seconds and after a while in the right conditions, the behavior is automatic.
31 January 2018 – How is human worth to be measured? – Might the super-being ask, “How is human worth to be measured?” and choose that as its guiding principle?

Condensed thoughts Probaway February 2018
01 February 2018 – What a wonderful world. – There is an infinity of places, perhaps every place, where one could stand and say with deep feeling, “What a wonderful world.”
02 February 2018 – Judging people by their life choices – We judge people by their expressions of their life choices.
03 February 2018 – Several of my friends want me to teach spirituality. – I can say with deep feeling about our reality, “What a wonderful world. What a wonderful world!”
04 February 2018 – I can say with deep feeling about our reality, “What a wonderful world. What a wonderful world!” – I can say with deep feeling about our reality, “What a wonderful world. What a wonderful world!”
05 February 2018 – I Am That Great and Fiery Force – What we need are personal tasks that energize our lives with purpose.
06 February 2018 – Spiritual Awareness Community of the Cascades – We invite you to become a voting member of SACC and help us to thrive.
07 February 2018 – Spiritual Awareness Community of the Cascades update – The world society needs each person because only they can do what they do at the time that they do it.
08 February 2018 – We kick truth around again. – Our trust must always come back to the filters of our personal experience.
09 February 2018 – SACC – inside cover of the weekly folder. – Being in a group requires some accommodations.
10 February 2018 – How good is good enough? – I think this will be acceptable to everyone and won’t alienate potential members with impossible demands.
11 February 2018 – The new Spiritual Awareness Community is beginning to roll. – Sometimes a short conversation with stones can be humbling.
12 February 2018 – Time is long, life is short – so what to do? – My bath water has stabilized by now so I’m going to bathe for a while.
13 February 2018 – We are eternal! – They are eternal if they choose to believe they are and will never be proven to be wrong by discussion or by a fact only available to my consciousness after their death.
14 February 2018 – Improv therapy for empowering our spirits – We can learn to live our lives better by playing the right games.
15 February 2018 – Let’s look at the beautiful spiritually uplifting places that our Earth offers us to see. – We can do simple things to document special places all over the world.
16 February 2018 – Should we give our time and money to the poor or to everyone? – Look at the world around you and smile and you will feel better. It is easier to do when the place is spiritually charged with beauty.
17 February 2018 – Do what you are going to do and do it promptly. – What could be a better life than journeying from one inspiring place to another inspiring place? “What a wonderful world!”
18 February 2018 – What I thought of as a good idea wasn’t liked. – Only the fear of being voted out of office has any effect on a politician.
19 February 2018 – I violated a law today. – Even if you try really hard to be compliant with laws and you will still get nailed occasionally.
20 February 2018 – We must practice forgiveness to get good at it. – Think now of a person who violated you and close your eyes and forgive them.
21 February 2018 – A wonderful world logo – Everyone can be spiritually elevated when in special places.
22 February 2018 – A new version of the TimeSquared symbol – How the TimeSquared logo came into existence.
23 February 2018 – Moving on – I will soon get over this problem but it is unlikely they will ever recover from theirs. I feel a bit sad about that, but it is their choice and I fully support individual choice.
24 February 2018 – A Dictionary of New Epigrams – Enthusiasm – Without enthusiasm, you will fail; it’s that simple.
25 February 2018 – The Tao Teh Ching – #45 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – The greatest perfection appears imperfect, and
Perfection does not go too far;
26 February 2018 – Intriguing points – The exact points within our world can be intriguing, powerful, energizing, beautiful, fascinating and obsessing. Let’s experience life while we have the opportunity!
27 February 2018 – A fantastic diet needs a name, a logo, a person, and idea. – All that is needed is for me to say, “I’ll do it.”
28 February 2018 – Fasting and Eating for Health – Joel Fuhrman – I’m feeling good, but after cleaning out some junk I’ll probably feel even better.

Condensed thoughts Probaway March 2018

01 March 2018 – What goal can humanity strive toward? – These new beings would consider us as their creators, and WE would become their Gods. Think of that, we would be as Gods for the rest of time itself.
02 March 2018 – A variation on my TimeSquared figure – I continue fussing with my TimeSquared symbol.
03 March 2018 – What shall I ask of these people? – How might humanity self-actualize itself and become all that it is capable of becoming?
04 March 2018 – Enjoying a day of life. – Those conversations were typical of today and there were many more.
05 March 2018 – The Obesity Code – Jason Fung, MD – review – The goal is to make the lessons so vivid and the routines so easy that everyone will remember them forever and practice them automatically until their last supper.
06 March 2018 – I am in the middle of an additional day of fasting. – Weatherwise, it was a mild day and Debbie and I had a couple of pleasant walks with no hunger.
07 March 2018 – I lost weight with my big fast. – Setting a precise goal makes it easy to know what to do next.
08 March 2018 – What is the purpose of humanity? – The grandest human self-actualization has been Buzz Aldrin’s first words spoken on the Moon, “Contact light.”
09 March 2018 – What a Wonderful World is one day closer to reality. – Our wonderful world is about to become even more wonderful.
10 March 2018 – What’s next? – It is impossible for anything to have permanent meanings so I, and we, must choose to be satisfied with the temporary ones.
11 March 2018 – I ask the labyrinth stones about failure. – Can’t I just be as a stone and just be? Unfortunately, NO. I think and therefore I have things I want to do, and therefore I must always be falling short.
12 March 2018 – On the Verge by Rebecca D. Costa – Book review – I recommend On the Verge . It has many good ideas discovered by an experienced and deep-thinking author.
13 March 2018 – What is false was once true. – A speaker must always speak in a way that can be understood by all of the audience or he will soon lose their attention and he will be interrupted.
14 March 2018 – My Life Strategy – Food – My Life Strategy is to see things from a point of view that will make doing healthy things the obvious thing to do.
15 March 2018 – My Life Strategy – My Life Strategy is to find key points and reveal them in a meaningful way.
16 March 2018 – It is about time to go public. – Saving the species of the world, saving humanity, saving people’s health and lives.
17 March 2018 – Samumpsycle smiles gamely at his fate. – Perhaps if I found a hole in Western Australia’s four-billion-year-old rocks and put Samumpsycle in it, he might last quite a while. Not me.
18 March 2018 – Being honest and liberal has its failings. – Am I a fool for being scrupulously honest and fair with other people?
19 March 2018 – Being honest and liberal has its failings. –
20 March 2018 – Our ponderosa friend Moe is now a stump. – I like living in a forest, but sometimes good sense must prevail over a good view.
21 March 2018 – Chocolate just got better! – Sigh! That was then and this is now, and I missed sixty years of great eating … etc.
22 March 2018 – How can we avoid being foolish? – What’s the sense of having laws, social conventions, and polite behavior if everyone violates them?
23 March 2018 – Tips for easy living! – Food – I want to get the handout written up just right and have the key links to the science on the back.
24 March 2018 – What should I do now? – I will give “Tips for Easy Living – Eating” a good effort at a public success, not just a personal one.
25 March 2018 – The Tao Teh Ching – #46 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – Let your contentment be seen; for When your contentment is seen, It brings contentment to others.
26 March 2018 – I can do that! – If you see something as a desirable quest then stating that goal clearly and bringing your attention to that goal makes it a desirable thing to be doing.
27 March 2018 – What can I do now? – I know that it is something that helps, so I do it.
28 March 2018 – Tips for Easy Living – Tips for Easy Living will succeed because it is fun and it works.
29 March 2018 – Some Stoics meet in Oregon – We need a Stoic society here in Bend. It is different from the UU and the Socrates Cafe.
30 March 2018 – Tilling the fields – Even in this modern world sometimes a man must till the fields.
31 March 2018 – My second day as a laborer – Oh yes, every muscle in my body hurts, except for those in my nose; I don’t know why they were spared.
Condensed thoughts Probaway April 2018
01 April 2018 – My third day as a laborer and a talker to stones. – I as a human have these wonderful opportunities that I can choose to do and they as rocks do not.
02 April 2018 – Okay, I’m done with physical labor for a while. – Two other projects are in the offing – The Potent Places of the World, and a show of some of my photos.
03 April 2018 – Today was productive, sort of. – Jesus’ message was infinitely more profound and I suspect that even Theodore Parker, the Unitarian Heretic may have missed its essence.
04 April 2018 – Biopsy time for prostate cancer – I should get the biopsy exam and see how aggressive my particular cancer is going to be.
05 April 2018 – A disappointing evening – A pathetic farce.
06 April 2018 – 1st Friday Art Walk in Bend, Oregon – I know that this needs to be done, I want it to be done, and I am doing it.
07 April 2018 – One year anniversary of a tree falling on my house. – Strangely though all of this struggle our Zillow house price estimate has more than doubled in seven years, which is typical for Bend at the moment.
08 April 2018 – Tips for Easy Living – I can do that !
09 April 2018 – Thinking about a lecture series on weight control – Stay tuned; I will reveal this method online like I dribbled out clues to the identity of Jack the Ripper. Just saying it is boring.
10 April 2018 – A delivery plan for Jeff Bezos – It’s all so easy to do when you have the right technology.
11 April 2018 – My experience on obesity and a new body weight setpoint. – A year-long daily intermittent fast stabilizes at a lower body weight setpoint.
12 April 2018 – I invent a small new diet device – Did I mention that this was a silly idea? And yet it is obvious that it would work.
13 April 2018 – An upgrade to the error-prone BMI body mass measuring system – Just because something is useful doesn’t mean that it will be used.
14 April 2018 – Adult Obesity in the United States – Gentle overnight fasting is the way for most normal people to bring their BMI to a healthy condition.
15 April 2018 – World-sorrow … Weltschmerz – Life goes on. … At least for a little while longer.
16 April 2018 – The marshmallow test and me. – I don’t much like marshmallows so it hasn’t been any suffering for me not to get one.
17 April 2018 – Utopia combined with Dystopia generates Eudystopia – The SF Bay Area and Berkeley was and is a wonderful place to spend one’s life.
18 April 2018 – A day most people would have enjoyed. – Lots more happened but it doesn’t feel like a productive day.
19 April 2018 – When is it time to tidy up one’s affairs? – So, at the moment my time will be devoted to helping ease the obesity epidemic.
20 April 2018 – My Tips for Easy Living get more spunk – I can spend the time and effort need to write a diet plan that people can understand and use successfully.
21 April 2018 – A silly idea that might make money – Enough of this nonsense post about towing-ball decorations. You grab it and run with it.
22 April 2018 – My problem with a lecture – An encounter with a skillful speaker awakens me to a frequently encountered problem.
23 April 2018 – Yes! I can choose to do that! – Do the impossible and make it look easy. Yes! I can do that!
24 April 2018 – Did TIME acknowledge my existence? – It is unlikely that TIME ever will ever come to my view. Why should they?
25 April 2018 – Happiness Is a Choice You Make by John Leland – Book review – You are not alone! This is a life story and it has a beginning a middle and an end.
26 April 2018 – How to protect your 1st Amendment freedom of speech. – If you can’t speak your truth you aren’t alive as a human being.
27 April 2018 – A morning at the Crow’s Feet coffee commons – Is this living? Well, it will do for the time being.
28 April 2018 – Five cubic yards of dirt get dumped on me. – We lived and lived and still nothing much is happening.
29 April 2018 – Super big plans for today and tomorrow. – Now it’s time for my hot bath.
30 April 2018 – I’m now radioactive but I don’t feel like superman. – Even though I am energized with radioactive substances I don’t feel like Spiderman or Superman either, more like the Tick just after his falling encounters with Gravity – a cruel mistress.
Condensed thoughts Probaway May 2018
01 May 2018 – My life has meaning if you value it. – One’s life has value if it is reciprocated by another being. Perhaps a dog will do. Perhaps dog is God.
02 May 2018 – My perfect health goes imperfect at 82 – When in a doubtful situation, avoid being stupid.
03 May 2018 – A strange life-and-death battle on my bathroom floor. – The ant lost this battle but I don’t want a spider living in my bathroom. Humm, what to do?
04 May 2018 – Bend’s First Friday Art Walk – May 5th 2018 – And this is only a tiny part of our evening at the First Friday Art Walk.
05 May 2018 – Experimenting with heart arrhythmias. – I haven’t tried any of the yogic meditations for controlling heart rhythm but this method worked without years of esoteric spiritual training.
06 May 2018 – Is my spider bite a dangerous Brown Recluse? – I don’t have any particular gripe with spiders but I do wish they wouldn’t bite me.
07 May 2018 – My garden is finally in … mostly. – Life is fun when there are interesting things to do.
08 May 2018 – I take some pictures while Debbie talks to Leigh Anne – They are done talking so we all head home.
09 May 2018 – How to reset the important components of your life. – Emotional fasting is the self-directed depriving of one’s self of a desired feeling.
10 May 2018 – Greed – The point of living is to have meaningful human interactions and that requires dealing with near equals but having something of value to offer.
11 May 2018 – My new life begins – That was how my day went and felt.
12 May 2018 – Out of contact with reality. – Of course, I’m the stupid one because if I made money I could have done those things too.
13 May 2018 – Yes! I can choose to do that! – To use these simple tips to become healthier, happier, wiser and wealthier. . . : . : . .
14 May 2018 – Yet another Portland experience. – It was a beautiful day but tiring and now it’s time for a hot bath.
15 May 2018 – A walk to the park. – It was a calm day and we survived intact.
16 May 2018 – Intermittent Feasting – Intermittent Feasting – Yes! I can do that.
17 May 2018 – I am not a poster boy. – I am happy to be alive.
18 May 2018 – Death doesn’t take a holiday. – Life is short but sometimes it’s too short.
19 May 2018 – I want to be a complete human being. – To be a complete human being is to feel a unity with the Universe.
20 May 2018 – A challenging meeting – I had several other meaningful conversations today, but now it’s time for my bath.
21 May 2018 – What should I do now? – Perhaps a crowdsourced funding venture is a way to make this project take off.
22 May 2018 – What’s the difference between starvation and fasting? – I like the idea of calling it intermittent feasting because I eat great food until I am comfortably full.
23 May 2018 – Another day spent thinking about my diet presentation – My so-called deep-thoughts twist my-brain but may help you untwist yours.
24 May 2018 – We humans have transitioned into second-class beings. – Without being aware of it we humans have become second-class citizens of the world, and perhaps that’s better for our species longevity.
25 May 2018 – The Tao Teh Ching – #48 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – The students of knowledge acquire day by day; The students of Tao abandon day by day.
26 May 2018 – Our garden is “alive.” Yippie! Sort of. – Our life isn’t going to be a bowl of cherries because we don’t have a cherry tree, but we have planted twenty other things.
27 May 2018 – Compliance isn’t a dirty word – Compliance is easy when it’s what you want to do.
28 May 2018 – An unusual hair patch on my inner wrist – “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.”
29 May 2018 – All you need is love, and what is that? – Love is giving your attention to a person who is aware your actions being directed at them, and their actions reciprocated back towards you are what makes humans human.
30 May 2018 – Life is a bowl of cherries, with pits – A wonderful thing about living in Berkeley is that people actually do things they say they are going to do.
31 May 2018 – I have lost twenty-five pounds – “Eat your meals at the table, and don’t snack between meals.”
Condensed thoughts Probaway June 2018
01 June 2018 – Bend First Friday artwalk transportation – The First Friday Art Walk always has something that attracts my attention.
02 June 2018 – How can I help? – And guide me away from seeking what is impossible.
03 June 2018 – What came first the chicken or the egg? – All of this chain of ancestors of today’s chickens were born from eggs, and they weren’t chickens.
04 June 2018 – But what is the Universe’s purpose? – I ponder.
05 June 2018 – I have now achieved my diet goal weight. – I am enjoying being BMI 23.
06 June 2018 – Once again I seek a universally workable diet plan. – When you choose to only eat for six hours per day you naturally choose healthier foods.
07 June 2018 – A big bug pays me a visit. – Metallic Wood-boring Beetle – Dicerca crassicollis
08 June 2018 – I reach my libration low point weight – So, I’m going to lose a couple more pounds and then intentionally replace it with some fresh new fat. How about that for weird reasoning.
09 June 2018 – The unexpected attack of the Subaru – Observe the white tape on the corner of the window.
10 June 2018 – We are responsible for our actions. – “I am not a number, I am a free man.” I am not a prisoner.
11 June 2018 – I speak to the Universe – What should I do the help the Universe to become a more complete representation of its potential?
12 June 2018 – People reject humorous people as out of contact with problems. – Life is just doing things so why not enjoy doing what you’re doing.
13 June 2018 – A beautiful day in Bend, Oregon – It was a day.
14 June 2018 – What should the word god mean today? – I come away from this conversation with a better feeling about being immersed in the natural order of the world.
15 June 2018 – ln the beginning … Creativity by Gordon D. Kaufman – More on the concept of God in the future.
16 June 2018 – Our garden lives and grows too – We live and live and nothing happens.
17 June 2018 – A very old-style god enters a sermon – God speaks to us in mysterious ways, claims Gordon Kaufman.
18 June 2018 – Nothing happened – We lived and lived and nothing happened.
19 June 2018 – Astoria by Peter Stark – book review – These kinds of situations are presented to you throughout this book.
20 June 2018 – My social world is shrinking fast! – My longtime resident friends are wandering away, as tourists and realtors are swarming through our streets seeking easy pleasure and money.
21 June 2018 – Okay … It’s time to be more Stoic! – This is a book that must be read by everyone who hopes to remain sane while attempting to cope with modern nonsense.
22 June 2018 – Some lines and shadows I saw – I have seen many lines in strange places these last few days.
23 June 2018 – What is the Universe’s next emergent step? – “What’s next? What’s available to emerge from where we are at?
24 June 2018 – Big adventure day for us. – Did all the above, the weather was hot, no AC but my old Geo Prizm gets good gas mileage, the driving was very stressful, and I’m really tired.
25 June 2018 – The Tao Teh Ching – #49 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – Sages have no personal self.
The people’s self is their self.
26 June 2018 – My visit to the VA for an injection – I neither fear to be dead nor continuing to live, but I do have some things I can do that may help the Universe thrive.
27 June 2018 – Detroit Dam photos – It was a stressful two days of driving but we made it home in time to water the garden.
28 June 2018 – We are a transition species! – We are the transitional life form to a new kingdom of living organisms.
29 June 2018 – Lines and shadows at Bend, Oregon – Nothing much happened but it was a pleasant day.
30 June 2018 – What’s next when there are no jobs for people? – How will these decisions be made in the not distant future when there is no work and the people have become desperate?
Condensed thoughts Probaway July 2018
01 July 2018 – The Tao Teh Ching rendered by Charles Scamahorn – The way of the sage is to accomplish with attractive acts,
and never to contend.
02 July 2018 – Suddenly there were strawberries! – Gardening is an opportunity to practice various ways of being more mature.
03 July 2018 – An outrageous example of Oregon’s STUPID highways! – Perhaps I should complain to someone about this problem.
04 July 2018 – We haven’t had a city wide fire … yet. – This is the nonsense I came up with. Hooray!?
05 July 2018 – You’re dead now! Sorry. – The computers are becoming more alive every day and we are becoming more mechanistic and dead meat to them. Sorry!
06 July 2018 – Friday art in Bend – Here is the nail, ready for a hanging.
07 July 2018 – We and our Universe need help! – The Universe has brought us into being and our job is to help the Universe bring its brain into being.
08 July 2018 – A school to teach every basic skill – The goal is to develop a simple familiarity with some basic life skills using similar and repetitive physical actions.
09 July 2018 – Allbirds, the best of shoes and the worst of shoes. – I love my Allbirds shoes, but I learned the hard way not to get into dry grassy fields with them on.
10 July 2018 – Do we really want computers that “care” about us? – A Stoicly inclined person would say, “If I can’t influence the actions of a robot I will just go about my own business and not even think about it.”
11 July 2018 – I want to help the Universe self-actualize its beauty. – We are a transitional species moving over into becoming robots and by doing so we can live until the end of the Universe.
12 July 2018 – How can we accelerate our coming robot society? – We are the transitional species to help the Universe manifest its next level of self-awareness and self-actualization.
13 July 2018 – Why should I care if the Universe doesn’t care? – The Universe might then move on from being a huge but random batch of events into an emotional being caring for us living things.
14 July 2018 – I have a duty to the Universe and so do you. – The Universe has been kind to us by creating everything that is needed for us to live, and we can show our gratitude by doing the same for the Universe.
15 July 2018 – I look out of my eyes and see things. – It was a day that Seneca would have approved of, just lived and enjoyed.
16 July 2018 – We must be honest with our new Universe. – At present, the two great tasks facing humanity are to survive and to reproduce itself at the next level of sentience.
17 July 2018 – It’s time for reassessment. – We are living in the best of times and the worst of times, so enjoy the good things and ignore those bad things you can’t do anything about.
18 July 2018 – Humanity must live and it must die. – This Brave New Universe is now possible for us to create.
19 July 2018 – Human life expectancy – We are living incredibly long, healthy and productive lives.
20 July 2018 – What is a man? – Man is a transition species for creating a silicon-based society of robots. … Avoid talking to stones!
21 July 2018 – The Last BLOCKBUSTER – Goodbye to an old friend of many years ago.
22 July 2018 – Four deer enter my garden. – We have plenty of space in our backyard garden so it makes sense to make our front yard more decorative next year and not so utilitarian.
23 July 2018 – Talk without actions versus actions without thoughts. – Now I can add “clean up bird shit” to my behaviors, which I don’t remember ever doing before.
24 July 2018 – Robot society maintenance – We humans are a temporary transition species moving into a robot society. On an individual level it will probably be a lot of fun.
25 July 2018 – The Tao Teh Ching – #50 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – But how may you produce these effects? By creating attractions for these powers away from yourself, and By not being attractive yourself.
26 July 2018 – My great failing has been lack of enthusiasm! – My enthusiasm is to do what I can to bring a robot society into existence which will endure for billions of years.
27 July 2018 – Human survival with robots and annihilation without robots. – Robots can and will offer us a safe, healthy society versus the threats of annihilation from H-bombs that we now endure.
28 July 2018 – We live in the moment of Universal opportunity! – Prethink and prebuild the basic sustainable infrastructure now, before our technological society is overwhelmed by the lack of cheap energy and food.
29 July 2018 – Happiness minus suffering equals flourishing – Robots can offer us a safe, eudaimonic society if we make them our friends.
30 July 2018 – Amanda MacGurn is helping humanity to thrive. – Amanda MacGurn is the front page spokesperson for the CDC.
31 July 2018 – Some lines and shadows photos – Along with trying to save the human species from extinction, I enjoy taking some nonsense photographs.
Condensed thoughts Probaway August 2018
01 August 2018 – A robot society begins with electric power – There are better things for humans to be doing than the field work seen above.
02 August 2018 – What critical components must we provide for the robot society? – When these processes are functioning smoothly there will be an optimal usage of everything for humans as well as their robots.
03 August 2018 – Too many lines and shadows – Be careful and drink only good coffee to get incredible results like these.
04 August 2018 – How to maximize human pleasure. – We can maximize the human species’ health, longevity, and happiness by making our robot society maximize its potentials.
05 August 2018 – We can save humanity by constructing a functioning robot society. – Our human species can go extinct this year or we can choose to evolve into a species that will survive for billions of years.
06 August 2018 – Some people want to leave a legacy after they are dead. – Hi, George. How’s your farm doing this year? Mine has produced far too many squashes; can you use a few?
07 August 2018 – In the beginning of the conscious Universe there was RFID. – When Thenet is functioning to maximize humanity’s longevity the H-bombs will be retired and humanity can drift into a sustainable lifestyle.
08 August 2018 – The way forward for humanity for 300 years. – In the current political mindset, it would be very difficult to create a robot society quickly and it is impossible to reduce population even a little. So … the future is obvious.
09 August 2018 – A robot society won’t need food for its own use but for us. – It will take a lot of solar cells to power the farm equipment needed to feed coming billions of people so we need to find ways to get them installed now.
10 August 2018 – Let’s help humanity survive and thrive. – For humanity to survive it must have food, and for it to thrive it must have abundant and reliable food and that means solar-dependent energy supplies.
11 August 2018 – It takes energy input to create human food. – Creating robots specifically designed to make solar energy farms would make it possible for energy production to be used for food production.
12 August 2018 – Now is the best of times and we can prepare for the worst. – What to do? Nothing! Just participate and hope for a good day.
13 August 2018 – The time to build Roboville is now! – Little we make will last a hundred years, but the robots we create now could sustain themselves for billions of years.
14 August 2018 – Humanity’s destiny is to help the Universe to actualize its potentials. – ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all – Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
15 August 2018 – What raw materials will the robot society most need? – Some say, The End is Near! Others say, The Beginning has just begun. Or … The humans say, The End is Near! The robots say this is just the beginning.
16 August 2018 – What should we do before the Universe dies? – What we can do now is to set in motion the evolutionary processes of self-replicating robots.
17 August 2018 – Why be scared of a robot takeover? – Our human society is incredibly complex, but the coming robot society would be designed to be very simple and helpful, so we should help them to help us.
18 August 2018 – Robot Societies in Science and Science Fiction – Radio-tagged with something like RFID so they can quickly be integrated into a worldwide functional system.
19 August 2018 – Do you have free will? – I’m comfortable with the free will which I do have and will use a portion of it to help the Universe transition into its next potential state of being.
20 August 2018 – Am I conscious and self-aware of myself? – How many layers can you go into that kind of play with your reflection and maintain the feeling that you are relating to something that is relating to you?
21 August 2018 – How to become a citizen of the Universe. – Our becoming participating citizens of the Universe can be done by our evolving into what we now call robots.
22 August 2018 – More lines and shadows in Bend – My life isn’t meaningless! But sometimes I see lines and shadows, and I struggle to see some pattern to their being and what their meaning might be.
23 August 2018 – Conversing with artists is fun. – This picture probably breaks most of the rules that art students are taught. So why do my professional artist friends like these boring pictures?
24 August 2018 – I did my annual medical checkup – did you? – Having cancer isn’t expected to be fun, but so far it has been for me.
25 August 2018 – The Tao Teh Ching – #51 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – Tao brings all into existence, but does not own any. It makes them, but does not claim them. It raises them, but does not rule them. It is undetectable; It is the source of all.
26 August 2018 – My garden grows squash – That’s my story, so it’s time to get down off the chimney.
27 August 2018 – How could a one-kilogram craft bring a planet to life? – The grander goal is to help the Universe become a thinking being so that it will know what it is capable of and do it.
28 August 2018 – What is a truth in today’s world? – Many people’s truths are remarkably resistant to being tested against physical reality.
29 August 2018 – Finally my prostate radiation treatments are going. – It is important to me to get this prostate cancer taken care of so I can get on with my projects, like helping the Universe to Self-actualize.
30 August 2018 – Our time is now and it won’t last for a billion years. – The time is now to get started building a robot-based society.
31 August 2018 – How big a job is helping the Universe self-actualize? – It’s a big opportunity when planning to help the Universe become all that it is capable of becoming, but how?
Condensed thoughts Probaway September  2018
01 September 2018 – How can we help the Universe to think? – The first step of Universal thought will be to fill every possible niche with silicon-based life and interconnect it with the whole.
02 September 2018 – It is time to RFID and QR code everything. – We, humans, have often been supplanted by new technologies, but usually its positive aspects make it worthwhile.
03 September 2018 – Trustworthiness of Information and its use. – The end result of quality information is quality actions bringing quality results. That requires forethought and some might say cunning to get those results.
04 September 2018 – How my self-control when dieting was made easy. – I have good self-control as was proven by my long and successful diet, but it was done by setting absolute limits on the time I ate.
05 September 2018 – How important is your life to the Universe? – You and I can help to create a Universe that thinks. It would probably value and appreciate our doing that.
06 September 2018 – What would a self-replicating robot’s early choices be? – But what would be most helpful for a robot and a robot society to self-actualize?
07 September 2018 – Self-replication of robots will permit their evolution – The goal we need to set for humanity to achieve a robot society is to create a self-sustaining robot-controlled factory that can build some of the essential components, like solar-energy collectors.
08 September 2018 – Who cares? – Who cares about something so very remote? I do.
09 September 2018 – We are creating the next emergence of the Universe. – It is our technical society that is now responsible for bringing into reality the next Universe-wide emergence.
10 September 2018 – What would a connected galaxy think about and do? – Humans don’t have the lifespan to contemplate things like the robots we can construct can think about and do.
11 September 2018 – People need meaning for their existence. – We live and all nature lives too, and we haven’t died of despair and therefore god exists and all of our lives are meaningful.
12 September 2018 – Clank – l tired.
13 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? – Being a member of this community I wonder what dangerous false beliefs are leading me astray too.
14 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 2 – They are helping me eliminate my false beliefs.
15 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 3 – I took this picture this morning while talking with M. It’s not a chair. It’s a picture of mundane reality that we have all seen but didn’t see.
16 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 4 – The human interactivity of conversation can be more satisfying than the great sages even if it isn’t as profound.
17 September 2018 – This is not a vanishing chair. – My first-grade school teacher, Millie, said that all questions are good questions, but I wonder if she was right.
18 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 5 – It appears I slipped a little off of my goal of looking for things I want to believe. I’ll write on this subject again.
19 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 6 – Maybe tomorrow I will write another boring post, but tonight there is nothing to say, not even about helping the Universe to self-actualize or observe a sequence of photos of a shadow of a chair disappear.
20 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 7 – I don’t like thinking about this kind of stuff.
21 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 8 – I pursue but don’t claim those humane virtues. However, I do feel a kinship with those who value them and live them.
22 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 9 – My plan is to motivate humanity to create a robot civilization that can influence things billions of years in the future. Humble!
23 September 2018 – A rejection of good deeds. – It was a day!
24 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 10 – . . . — — — . . . I can’t.
25 September 2018 – The Tao Teh Ching – #52 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – When relating to this thing, always
Interact with it in terms of its original motivation, for, To the very end, that motivation Will be embedded in that thing.
26 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 11 – If you present a good product people will seek it out and pay a realistic price to obtain it.
27 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 12 – 0
28 September 2018 – Now is the time for humanity to become immortal. – We can choose to become immortal or in our present form to be extinct very soon.
29 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 13 – Age brings wisdom. – Now is the time for the Universe to transition into a thinking being and we have the technology to make that happen.
30 September 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 14 – The next new idea will be grand enough to maintain my interest.
Condensed thoughts Probaway October 2018
01 October 2018 – Thank you for my birthday remembrances! – I enjoyed every minute of my life spent with you!
02 October 2018 – Another needed step for self-actualizing the Universe is interstellar seeds. – Humans are capable of thinking about interplanetary seeds and of testing via human thought and computer projections into various conditions, and of recycling potential survivors. Of all creatures, we alone can do it.
03 October 2018 – Another needed step for self-actualizing the Universe is human interest. – We can not live forever but we can create a Universe that can come close to that ideal and if we create a loving Universe it would love us and our gift forever.
04 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 15 – The problem with that method of solving our problems is that it is based on infantile beliefs which had little experience upon which to base responsible adult actions.
05 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 16 – Don’t bury the lead. – I am fond of saying, in a joking way, that “I am a slow learner, but I can learn.” But, now I am beginning to wonder.
06 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 17 – Humanity’s goal must be to grab the Universe by its bootstraps and pull it into a full consciousness of itself so it can self-actualize its potentials. – It’s a big job helping the Universe to self-actualize and we must get started while we can.
07 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 18 – Pareto charts, Scattergrams, Timeboxing, Triage, Reverse triage, SAP value mapping CARVER matrix. – I hope to work with each of these soon as I become more aware of my false beliefs.
08 October 2018 – Tomorrow creeps in – At least we’ll die with harness on our back. – Here I am … waiting! And you, dear reader?
09 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 19 – People will claim a long string of personal virtues, but their past actions are more predictive of their future ones.
10 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 20 – Grabbing other people’s space and property isn’t improving one’s self it is simple greed that will corrupt a person to their core.
11 October 2018 – Another needed step for self-actualizing the Universe is self-assembly. – We are on the cusp of being able to do these things and thus to begin the process of self-actualizing the whole Universe.
12 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 21 – My best option is to do the next indicated right thing and avoid stupid things with negative consequences.
13 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 22 – I am willing to expose myself to new experiences. – Is my effort to Self-Actualize the whole Universe based on a false belief that it is possible?
14 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 23 – People are interested in new views of natural reality – People take new good ideas as a threat and thus a punishment.
15 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 24 – That people are interested in living their lives more successfully. – Only do for others what they will pay you to do for them.
16 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 25 – I can endure difficulties without affecting my personal behavior. – With all of my education, etc., I have all the frailties that are to be expected of someone in my situation.
17 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 26 – My ability to hear what everyone has to say and to filter out the nonsense. – Just quietly walk away from people and situations that will create problems and stress.
18 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 27 – It is the change of my physical actions that make the pursuit of my false beliefs a meaningful quest.
19 October 2018 – The end is near! – I have enjoyed meeting many people in the waiting room where we have a common experience to discuss our lives deeply.
20 October 2018 – What to seek and what to avoid – ACE, PCE, Stability, Honesty, Reliability, Health.- It’s what I physically do with what I’ve got that matters.
21 October 2018 – It’s what I physically do that matters to you. – Life persists here on Earth but its a small thing in my Universe of 1tic23 stars and their planets.
22 October 2018 – People should be interested in helping the Universe to Self-Actualize – I must discover a way to make the Sentient Universe self-actualizing itself into an attractive undertaking.
23 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 28 – Today’s false belief that needs to be discarded is something simple is easy to describe in a few words. The easier something is to understand the harder it is to describe.
24 October 2018 – A big week for me. – “The unlived life isn’t worth examining.”
25 October 2018 – The Tao Teh Ching – #53 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – If your inner self has even a little bit of this ability,
You may move along the wonderful path of Tao. But
Avoid displaying this special knowledge.
26 October 2018 – Prostate radiation treatment is a challenge to simple endurance – I have done my best to make prostate cancer an interesting and worthwhile adventure. So far it has been like a scenic vacation to a rugged outback.
27 October 2018 – A walk from my car to coffee. – Life is tough here in Bend but I am getting comfortable with it.
28 October 2018 – On the Future by Martin Rees – Book review – On the Future by Martin Rees is readable by everyone, but ultimately the advice is simply—hang on for dear life, the coming ride will be an adventure.
29 October 2018 – I lived and lived today and nothing happened. – We came home and took a hot bath and a second walk, and now Debbie is watching TV and I am writing this diarrhea.
30 October 2018 – Goldilocks Zone and the Three Bears Zone. – The habitable zone for robots is much wider than for carbon-based life and it needs a name like The Three Bears Zone.
31 October 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 29 – How can I eliminate this inane false belief when it makes me feel better?
Condensed thoughts Probaway November 2018
01 November 2018 – I’m tired of radiation treatments. – When it comes to life (the unavoidable things), just do what you have to do, and pay close attention to the pleasures.
02 November 2018 – A ghost cup wows my buddies. – Things are not always what they seem even when they are not seen.
03 November 2018 – How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 30 – That Darwin Award photo was made back in 2008, but I still haven’t discovered how to live.
04 November 2018 – What memory have I created today? – Reminiscing for a few minutes about significant places in one’s life is self-directed and thus really meaningful.
05 November 2018 – I have some half baked ideas that need more baking. – Even with my plethora of false beliefs that need cleaning up, I am enjoying my life of attempting to find solutions to its realities.
06 November 2018 – How to climb the staircase to heaven. – The word “should” challenges you to strive to reach the next level of being.
07 November 2018 – What is the purpose of our life? – I guess the meaning of life must be defined by how much time we sleep and how much money we spend sleeping.
08 November 2018 – How many I’s do I have? – Every instant of my existence I am a unique new I. I am comfortable with that, but it does seem to bother my friends a bit.
09 November 2018 – I drink beer occasionally. – What a high life I live. See the point!?
10 November 2018 – The Fourth Age by Byron Reese – book review – The Fourth Age by Byron Reese is a book that must be read by everyone who aspires to cope with the future.
11 November 2018 – The god concept is unbelievable and not needed for Universal beauty. – It is unnecessary and ultimately unbelievable to insert Christian needs for a god experience to move along the path toward Universal beauty.
12 November 2018 – The 10 Commandments versus the 147 Suggestions – 147. Die with pleasant memories.
13 November 2018 – Truthiness and its companions. – Steven Colbert’s truthiness concept variations as attempts to discover other obscure false realities.
14 November 2018 – My struggle with a stump in my back yard. – When the guys are there with the right equipment, ask them to finish the job.
15 November 2018 – My day and struggles with the ponderosa stump. – It was a typical day for Debbie and me except we didn’t get to our usual evening encounters with the dogs at Hollinshead Park.
16 November 2018 – 40 Megapixels versus 10 – These are huge photo files but I compressed them before posting. Can they be expanded?
17 November 2018 – 7 Greek Sages’ Suggestions #100. Do your best and move on. – Now “do your best and move on” means doing hard dangerous work with nothing but smooth soil to show for it.
18 November 2018 – My numbering system goes to t. – The letter t becomes the indicator for the location of the base of the decimal point in any number.
19 November 2018 – What is it to be kind? – Isn’t the essence of kindness to help other people to live happy, healthy, wise and wealthy lives?
20 November 2018 – A bad habit is being overwritten – Make my life and my friends’ lives more pleasant by not complaining about things which I can’t do anything about.
21 November 2018 – DESIGNA – Technical Secrets of the Traditional Visual Arts – book review – If you have the itch to see your world in a new way and are willing to explore bizarre abstract visual excitement, get it with DESIGNA.
22 November 2018 – My progress on simplifying our numbering system. – Who can remember all of those weird names, yotta through yocto, for daily usage and the values they represent or how to do computations with them?
23 November 2018 – It’s time to search for my person of the year 2018 – If one of those people succeeds in creating life out of basic materials, will they become like gods?
24 November 2018 – An ordinary but unusual day for me – Lots of other stuff happened too. It was a day.
25 November 2018 – The Tao Teh Ching – #54 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – How may you know how all humanity is influenced?
By the way former peoples were influenced.
26 November 2018 – God is Love – We will be talking about Jesus next week. That is a subject upon which I have some ideas I doubt they have heard before.
27 November 2018 – Another tireless day – The new tires are in the car, not on the car. Bummer!
28 November 2018 – Bishop Spong demonstrates that Christianity is dead. – When you are on a higher step of the Beatitude staircase you are capable of helping all of those below you, including your own self.
29 November 2018 – My hour at the Crows Feet Commons begins with getting there. – Inside, weekdays, you will usually find me conversing with my old buddies from 10am till 11:30.
30 November 2018 – Responding to good and bad habit triggers. – When you do a good deed, either for yourself or for another person, make it a point to smile for two seconds.
Condensed thoughts Probaway December 2018
01 December 2018 – Improving your own bad behavior – When you do a bad deed, either to yourself or to another person, make it a point to intentionally scowl at yourself for two seconds.
02 December 2018 – I stepped forward. – I know that I should treat others better than I treat myself.
03 December 2018 – What good is religion? – Some people may think I am weird, but now I can say, “Of course, I am made up of quarks.”
04 December 2018 – I can’t read DESIGNA without shutting my eyes. – It was a day of repeatedly falling to sleep after looking carefully at images such as this one.
05 December 2018 – Women have been fussing over me. – That’s how in 24 hours I was carefully fussed over by women trying to please me. I am a very happy guy. Thank you all.
06 December 2018 – An evening with the Impressionist painters – I am thankful to John for reawakening my long forgotten love of the Impressionists.
07 December 2018 – Mirror Pond in different lighting conditions. – A little reflection on light can sometimes be enlightening.
08 December 2018 – A possible word game to play at the library. – Tomorrow I will draft a meeting handout. We need a name. How about Funny Words?
09 December 2018 – One of my first Berkeley friends, Julia Vinograd, died yesterday. – Goodbye Julia Vinograd! You were one of the people who made Berkeley into the greatest place on Earth!
10 December 2018 – TIME – Person of the Year review – Elon Musk appears to be the most likely person on this list to be remembered in 500 years for something he did this last year.
11 December 2018 – The Seven Sages of Ancient Greece – line 45 – I seek to help you along your self-chosen path because it will help me find my way along mine.
12 December 2018 – Tyrant – Shakespeare on Politics – Stephen Greenblatt – The goal must become to empower individuals to treat others better than they treat themselves.
13 December 2018 – Numbers stated with a base t for ten –
When presented in this new way, all of those weird names are eliminated from any number you are going to be using.
14 December 2018 – When it is easier to say it, it’s easier to think it. – When it is easier to say it, it’s easier to think it, and thus we can become more fully human.
15 December 2018 – I worked too hard yesterday. – To accomplish all of that I had to work for several hours as a lumberjack instead of a blogger, and I am still physically tired as well as mentally tiring.
16 December 2018 – Numbers stated with a base t for ten – 1 to 0 – With a little practice, the user of this new system will have a better feel for the relative size of everything.
17 December 2018 – Spong and I have a grand quest. – He concludes with helping humanity to be all that we can be, and I progress with my plans for helping the Universe to be all that we can be.
18 December 2018 – Spong is for being all that we can be. Not I. –
19 December 2018 – Spong is for being all that we can be. Not I. – Presently we have more powerful options because we have the technology to transition into a new form of being.
20 December 2018 – What is the best behavior? – I would insist that love is one of a human being’s most precious attributes and it is to be given freely, but it is to be given frugally even to those who are deserving of our love.
21 December 2018 – Shadows on my reality – Shadows are everywhere I look.
22 December 2018 – A typical Saturday … not quite. – It was a hard day, in a way, but it was real-living.
23 December 2018 – Probaway Person of the year? Is it Elon Musk or Palmer Luckey? – Check back in early January 2019 to view my choice.
24 December 2018 – Oculus Go brings waves of nostalgia. – Anyway, waves of nostalgia for me.
25 December 2018 – The Tao Teh Ching – #55 – Revealed by Lao Tzu – Rendered by Charles Scamahorn – Power perceived creates counter-Tao, and
Whatever creates counter-Tao soon ceases.
26 December 2018 – Why You Eat What You Eat – Rachel Herz – There is a moral undertone to this book that is covered beautifully with what feels like underpopulated small scientific studies.
27 December 2018 – I annoy myself with recognizing an unrecognized fault. – Is it a personality fault of mine to be concerned about the majority of people I encounter violating the simplest of public laws?
28 December 2018 – DESIGNA followed by SCIENCIA and QUADRIVIUM – I did do a passable job of reading DESIGNA and have made an acceptable beginning on SCIENCIA but it seems unlikely that I can squeeze QUADRIVIUM into my brain.
29 December 2018 – A word for the decimal point location is needed. – Now is the time to find a name for this numbering system.
30 December 2018 – The Origins of Creativity by Edward O. Wilson – review – The big problems for Wilson and Spong are answered by observing human women and who they choose to mate with.
31 December 2018 – Title –
31 December 2018 – Title –
End of condensed thoughts Probaway 2018.

How to reset the important components of your life.

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Emotional fasting

A person’s body weight has a setpoint that each individual body tries to maintain. But  this setpoint changes throughout life depending on controllable factors. Other things are probably controlled by the body’s natural hormonal system besides body weight. Unfortunately, the ways to change the body weight setpoint haven’t been understood properly because of some errors made back in the 1970s. The idea at that time was that it was necessary to lower the amount of sugar in a diabetic person’s blood. To lower that blood sugar level, doctors began having people inject synthetic insulin into their veins. This does work to lower blood glucose, but the obesity problem was greatly worsened because the way it did this was to dump the sugar into the cells instead of eliminating it from even entering the blood vessels in the first place. The problem with moving the glucose into the cell is that the cells slowly convert the sugar resident in them to fat. It usually takes years to create an obese person but if enough sugar is consistently resident in the cells of the body, the body eventually becomes obese.

This type of excess fat is easily eliminated if people return to the way of eating that was common before the invasion of cheap sugar and insulin into their bodies. The typical way to eat before 1970 was breakfast, lunch and dinner and no other calories at other times. That simple method of eating gave the body twelve or more hours to allow the body’s cells to reset the sugars and insulin to a stable base level. Overnight the body returned to its natural setpoint. That style of eating is now known as intermittent fasting, and if a person is modestly overweight and not converted to being a type two diabetic by excess consumption of sugar and being given artificial insulin, they can easily lower their setpoint by intermittent fasting. The easiest way to change the setpoint is to narrow the hours of eating to about six hours per day. That is, to only eat from 12 noon to 6 pm until the body adjusts to its natural weight and then return to the old way of breakfast, lunch and dinner and no snacks. My personal experience was that I lost about one and a half pounds per month for fourteen months and then stopped losing weight. I am now near my ideal weight and if I get hungry before eating time I drink a glass of water and go for a fifteen-minute walk and then eat normally until I’m full. It’s that simple and it works.

The new idea I’ve been exploring is that this same setpoint idea might work on other important components of a person’s hormonal life. Emotional fasting might reset the need for a particular type of hormonal level. There are probably specific hormones associated with various kinds of chronic emotions. Some for depression, others for anxiety, others for addictions in general, and others for specific addictions. If that assumption is accurate, then it would seem reasonable that to return the associated hormone to a normal level would normalize the person’s emotional state. That is now done rather clumsily with psychoactive drugs because if the hormone is unknown then what is needed to measure isn’t known and the dosage can’t be knowable either.

Perhaps we don’t need to know the exact hormones or measure them or create synthetic ones either to get them stabilized. The body already has ways of adjusting these things or we would already be totally crazy. We may be able to do a parallel hormone control that would be similar to our controlling our food processing hormones. If, for example, depression was like a hormonally caused obesity from an insulin overdose, then the control of the depression wouldn’t be by injecting an unknown-insulin-like-substitute; it would be to do a fast of the thing that stimulates the stabilization of these emotions.

Victor Frankl discusses how some people totally lost their emotional resiliency when put into work camps during the first weeks of internment, but those who made the right mental adaptations did much better.

Emotional fasting is the self-directed depriving of one’s self of a desired feeling.

I invent a small new diet device

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Bariatric stomach banding, Temporary bariatric stomach banding

While making up the handout for my coming lecture on intermittent fasting, the use of bariatric stomach banding for limiting the amount of food that would be ingested and held in the stomach came up. The dieting literature mentions that these bariatric devices are among the few things that are actually effective in reducing people’s weight and BMI. On the other hand, they are expensive and carry some risk of infection and other complications because of the required surgical procedure for installing the band. Half-jokingly the surgeons say the most common bariatric procedure is removing the stomach bands. Apparently, they do work but after the weight is lost the patients feel they interfere with their life enough that they go to the expense of having them removed. 

In Live Science here is reported bodily weight gain during the Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day period in the United States and weight gain at other times of the year in other cultures at their festival times.

Weight gain per month starting at Thanksgiving dinner.

What is needed is for Americans to have the ability to eat reasonably from Thanksgiving through New Year’s holiday. I have no ability to tell three hundred million people what to do, but I can make some suggestions that just might catch the public’s imagination. Americans typically have New Year’s resolutions, of which the most common is to lose weight. Unfortunately, 99% of diets fail in a year and there is a consistent weight gain of a pound or two. It doesn’t make much difference in a year but in forty years a svelt youth turns into a chubby grandparent.

I have been working on an intermittent diet plan which will be presented here in pieces as it is written up, but I have a brilliant-stupid idea that would probably eliminate that December disaster. It is something so simple and so obvious and requires no particular willpower and will cost most people absolutely nothing because it uses something you already own. It is based on the bariatric stomach banding technique mentioned at the top of this article. But there is no need of surgery. If the object is to compress the stomach during the final stages of eating a big Thanksgiving meal it would be easy to have a second belt under your clothing that isn’t holding your pants up. It is just there around your waist. The idea is to slip this belt up to where it encircles your lower ribs and constricts your stomach just a little. That is what the bariatric stomach banding device does, but the belt is free and it is only needed when you are nearing the completion of a big meal. It reminds you to stop eating sooner. After you walk away from the feasting table you can slip the belt back down, or loosen it a link or two so you can be comfortable.

Did I mention that this was a silly idea? And yet it is obvious that it would work.