I Love You, Just Don't Hurt Me Anymore

Sorry about how long this one was in coming! There is a very good reason this blog has been neglected: Starcraft II came out. Giving credit to where it is due, this blog was inspired by Angie Jackson reading Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven Life".

One of the things that triggers a feeling of love in humans is utter dependence, a lack of control which we put in others hands, however correctly. Developmentally this is important. As children, we are totally dependent on our parents, and we put our lives in their hands (hopefully rightly!); this relationship builds up the deep, emotional bond that we generally share with them. Children who miss this opportunity, through neglect or abandonment, can often end up incapable of or having difficulty with forming deep bonds later in life. Of course, it's only one mechanism, there are other ways for love to emerge! But for today, for this post, it's one of the two I'm looking at.
A similar mechanism is found in victims of Stockholm Syndrome. The victims are said to love their captors after being shown token acts of kindness while under the threat of death or torture. The dependence is there, but more specifically, there is a threat. The survival instinct kicks in, encouraging the behavior. While the case giving it the name of Stockholm may be a misnomer, it has been shown to exist, albeit in less cinematic situations than a kidnapping gone wrong.
The two mechanisms combine, often with others, in emotionally and/or physically abusive relationships. While intellectually, the victim will know that the abuser is not treating them well, even that they should leave them, they often report a deep abiding love for the person (and probably an unhealthy amount of fear), and stay, to the discredit of themselves, society, and often the children in the family. The abuser will usually seek to limit emotional outreach, forcing the dependence, or simply withhold money, to foster the dependence. The cruelty comes naturally, and the token kindnesses are generally overblown by the victim's eager mind.
When the victim is confronted about this dissonance between behavior and rationality, they generally dissemble, or rationalize: consider the cliche, "I deserved it."
It's interesting that the times people are most inclined to pray when they are at their most desperate, when they are feeling completely powerless over the course of their life. It's at times like these when people say, "Let go and let God," or are on their knees at every opportunity (never mind those of us who were raised to be praying almost constantly, anyway). It's also interesting that life, will often, arbitrarily and without provocation, beat us down, crush our dreams, and generally do terrible things to us. It also does very kind things for us once in a while, and for the most part, we agree that life IS worth living, despite the setbacks. A religious person, convinced that God is in charge of their lives, would ascribe the random chances of life to the agent behind it; and there you have two mechanisms mentioned above- dependence and cruelty mixed with token kindness.
I think, for many people, religion is simply an abusive relationship with the universe.

What's the harm? This is why science is important.

This is exactly the kind of thing that depresses me about humanity. To sum up:

A COUPLE allegedly tied up and tortured a teenage employee because a Vietnamese fortune teller told them she stole from them, a Darwin court has heard.

Nhung Tri Tran and Trien Tran pleaded guilty to assaulting Leilani dos Santos on February 17, but not guilty yesterday to threatening to kill her and depriving her of her liberty.

...a Vietnamese fortune teller told the couple the person who had stolen the handbag was close to them, and was someone they loved.

Ms Tran also allegedly told Ms dos Santos they would cut off her fingers, but they loved her and would inject her with heroin, so she would not feel it.

Ms dos Santos said Mr Tran beat her in the back with a meat cleaver, threatened her with a samurai sword and burnt her arm with a cigarette.

Ms dos Santos said the couple had a Lady Gaga CD playing loudly.

There are a few things to this story, but one that jumps out at me is regardless of how much she stole, there's no justification for being subjected to loud Lady Gaga. This is exactly my problem with non-evidence based world views: it's not the everyday people that go around doing insane things, but as long as this kind of irrational, delusional belief is encouraged, we leave ourselves open to just this kind of abuse. Those in the "psychic" industry need to be more responsible (I'm looking at you, Sylvia Browne).
Granted, the egregious abuse in this story may be telling of a serious mental health issue, suffered by the Trans, or even dos Santos- that's beside my point. I'm not interested in placing guilt, or even blame- the fortune teller had a job to do, the Trans had a business to run, and the victim is right to sue for damages.
What I want to examine is the kind of person that could take something like this seriously. Why would anyone even believe in a fortune teller, for one thing? For the exact same reason one believes in magnet therapy, chiropractic, homeopathy, witches, or breaking mirrors for bad luck (or glasses for good luck). Because they've been told it's true. That's all it boils down to- and society plays it off as harmless, which it is, most of the time. Most Christians I know go to doctors, and get vaccinated (even if they refuse to accept the theory of gravity).
<> There are lists of cases as long as my arm where kids are neglected to death, or even murdered, by their parents because of their ridiculous beliefs. When people take homeopathic talismans to protect them from malaria. Men in Africa sleep with virgins to be cured of AIDS (also, see the even more depressing dissenting opinion here). Vultures are hunted to near extinction for gambling on soccer. Rhinos are killed to make ineffective potions against arthritis. Tigers are killed to make manly wards.
So yes, I get upset when otherwise intelligent people ignorantly ruin our planet, kill our innocents, or spread disease needlessly, because they want to believe in superstitious drivel. < /Rant >
I feel that people believe this sort of nonsense because of the way we're wired. I'll use myself as an example, though according to studies of human beliefs, many people fall into these (and other) traps. 1.) I know that if someone tells me something confidently, I'll be inclined to believe them without trying to verify it. 2.) Similarly, if I hear something multiple times, or I read it in several places, I'll be inclined to believe it. 3.) I also know that if I already believe something, or am inclined to believe it, that I'll tend to remember the things that confirm belief.
I could go on, but let's stick with those three.
1.) Obviously, this is a terrible reason to believe something! And yet, most of us will, and salesmen and preachers alike take full advantage. There are two things I do to avoid this tendency toward blindly obeying. First, I avoid making decisions when caught up in the moment. I give myself a chance to cool off and think about my actions. Second, if I catch myself doing this, I do research to find out whether it's justified.
2.) Just because a billion people believe something, doesn't make it true. One thing that makes this one so dangerous is because of our tendency to gossip and spread rumors. When at all possible, I go directly to the source, if it's about someone, or I verify the story with multiple sources (as above, when I mentioned the dissenting opinion on the virgin cure of AIDS myth).
3.) This is also called confirmation bias, and this one can be tricky to countervail. To do so, I must, on a regular basis, actively seek out dissenting information and re-evaluate my beliefs on a given topic. For instance, after catching myself uncritically repeating the above AIDS myth, I've done some more research- and sadly, it holds up.
The dissenting story was saying that the infant rape in South Africa had nothing to do with the Virgin Cure myth- it still exists. People believe you can cure an STD by transferring it to a virgin. And that's the harm.

Raising Kids Without God

As a single atheistic parent in the veritable buckle on the bible belt, it can be difficult. What do I do about the god thing? Well, biologically, my kids are at the age where they should, with very little reservation, believe anything they're told by an adult. That, coupled with the fact that atheism for me is a simple extension of skepticism and rationality, makes it difficult for me. On the one hand, realizing that there was no god was an incredibly liberating experience- ironically, one of the most legitimately religious experience of my life- and I'd like my children to realize that. But, the more important issue to me is thinking for oneself. As such, just like with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, I'm keeping my mouth shut, and asking questions, and encouraging the kids to ask questions. Telling them the answer is like helping them cheat on a fundamental, and incredibly easy, test in life.
What I do do, mostly out of fun, is talk about Jesus or Muhammad(PB&J) with the same reverence I discuss Thor, Ra, Zeus, and leprechauns. And for the most part, they see them as they truly are, irrelevant to our lives. That's actually all I want- I hope the time for atheism is drawing to a close. There are so many more things of far more interest out there.
The important thing is ultimately, as a human species, we've outgrown the need for religion. It's still hanging around, and probably will, realistically, for hundreds of years more. But there are better sources, now, for anything that religion can offer. Better sources for community, for morality, for indulging our musical whims, for inspiration and guidance when we go astray, and plenty of real, tangible reasons to be good. Like Sesame Street, I don't believe there's much to be learned from religion at this stage in our development. It kept us from annihilating ourselves, but we're adults now, most of us, and quite capable of taking the next step into the future together. My fear is that those who cling so strongly to the history of our species that, in fear of venturing from their caves and finding a path in this marvelous present, they will turn the world's future into their apocalypse.
In an uncharacteristically beautiful and inspired chapter, the words of Paul the Apostle resonate with me. "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." 1 Cor 13:11, KJV

Hepatitis C is natural.

One thing that continually bothers me are the sparkling connotations given to the word "natural." Organic too, to a lesser degree (more oriented at sales), but especially natural.
Have you ever heard someone talking about a natural birth? A water birth? Those are good, right? They must be- they're natural. They're better for the baby and the mother because they don't involve those unnatural doctors with their unnatural life-saving apparatuses (apparati?).
Death in childbirth is also death by natural causes.
Also, this definition of natural neatly sidesteps the whole problem of humans somehow being "Outside of Nature". Having a birth inside your air conditioned home, with your fluorescent lights buzzing, on a bed of polypropylene fibers, listening to an iPod playing soothing sounds of the beach on your $450 Sony Home Theatre System is about as natural as wearing clothes or cooking your food before you eat it. Of course, if you use natural to include everything we do, which it rightly should except in extreme cases, then I really don't have an argument. A human's natural environment is in the city, with ponchos and all the considerable delights of science and technology. That doesn't mean that all those delights are good for us, either- just natural.
For the rest of this post, I am going to kick humanity out of nature. I don't understand why, but generally when we say "natural" we really mean "we didn't do it."
Now, don't get me wrong- I'm a big fan of nature. I enjoy learning about minerals or metazoa or the milky way. I enjoy experiencing them, too- when I take my kids hiking or to watch the stars on a summer night. Nature is awesome- but it is something to be respected. If you've ever had the misfortune of staring into a hurricane, or lived through an earthquake, or seen a volcano erupt, it is breathtaking. Turn your attention down in scale, and you will find the world literally teeming with life- at every level!
Let me sum up with a list of things that are natural: Botulism, plague, Mt. Vesuvius, sociopaths, cancer, velociraptors, and salad. Unnatural: Pizza, refrigeration, the flush toilet, vaccines, clothing, farms, and Wall Street. The universe is truly amazing. Natural is a term that should inspire and imply awe, caution, or even fear. While nature is the mother of us all, she was also an abusive, neglectful monster by human standards. For no reason should we take comfort in the idea of some medicine or treatment being "natural."

Something from Nothing

An argument I hear a lot is that the Big Bang is the process of something coming from nothing, and therefore can't be correct. There are several problems with this view, not the least of which is exactly what the nothing actually consists of.

First of all, whatever existed "before" the first few seconds of our universe, let me warn you that prepositions don't apply. Before, after, during, below, behind, etc., because whatever it was, it didn't have space or time to describe it. To the best of my admittedly shallow knowledge on the topic, we don't know what it was. It wasn't nothing, that's fairly certain, but at the same time, nothing exists now that even comes close- everything we know exists in our universe, but we are talking about the origin of that universe. Everything that ever has or will exist, at least in a rudimentary sense, existed in the singularity*. What it exists "in" is likely unfathomable by even our greatest minds. This is because the terms we must use to describe it don't apply- it is simply our language, or our minds, failing us. How can we assign a time to a time when time was irrelevant and a location where places didn't exist?

How do we know about the big bang? Well, there's a lot to that question. One of the best forms of evidence we have is the red shift of the rest of the universe. There are literally billions of galaxies all around us- and they are all moving away from us. Think about ripples in an infinite pond- if we watch them long enough, we can deduce where the pebble initially hit. It's the same thing with galaxies- and they all point to the same place. If you want to know more about how we know this, google the Doppler Effect. I could ramble about it for hours.

Consider the degree of evidence, here- billions of galaxies to measure, and every one checked fits into a neat little one inch formula. And they all point back to a single instant in time, a single point in space, a single event in space-time.

Space-time is another fascinating topic, and important to understanding the difference between "something from nothing" and "something from nothing you can even imagine". Consider this. You and I are walking along an old train track. I see something shiny off in the grass and run off, let's say 50 meters into the grass. You're standing on the tracks waiting to see what I procure, facing me. Then something happens. Two lightning bolts strike. One strikes 25 meters behind you (A), and one strikes 25 meters between you and I (B). You see A and B, and hear them, simultaneously. But I see B as happening a fraction of a second before A. Which of us is right? Well, both.
Simultaneity, in other words, the times of events that occur relative to each other, is also relative to the observer.
Another example that may be easier to grasp is this: open a new document in a word processor. Now, copy this blog and paste it into the document. OK, consider this your singularity. Now, in MS Word**, open the find and replace dialog, type ? in the find box and in the replace box type "^&^l", without the quotes. Check use wildcards underneath and then hit replace all. This is the equivalent of typing return after every character in the document. You can keep hitting replace all, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger (after 1 time, I was up to about 70 pages- twice and it went to 200+). The striking thing about this is that the information stays the same, but space expands to match it. This is what the universe did, kick-started by dark energy. Consider the replace all button dark energy.

To quote J. B. S. Haldane, "Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

*It's entirely possible that there wasn't so much a singularity as there was the observable portion of our universe compressed (or unexpanded) into a tiny size. We do know the universe is much larger than we can see, we just don't know how much.
**I'm sure a similar method exists in OpenOffice or Word Perfect, I just don't have them installed on my computer.
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Now playing: Disturbed - "Another Way To Die" Lyric Video

Weight Loss: What Really Works, part 2

I promise I'll get to something more interesting soon, but I told a friend I'd write about my weight loss methods. I'm not a nutritionist, and am only interested in nutrition inasmuch as I don't want to die of scurvy or some other deficiency. So without further ado:
In the last post, we discussed exercise, the oft-overlooked but crucially important method of body control. Then there's the other component: energy intake. Eating. For some reason, this is what gets all the play in the media and the ads that will no doubt riddle this blog for a few weeks. I suspect it is because eating is something you must do, where exercise is something you have to make time to do, and we're naturally lazy.
So, let's look at this handy tool on nutritionData. According to it, my daily needs are about 3000 calories per day. Now that we know that, let's revisit our equation. If I'm gaining weight, it's most likely because I'm consuming more than 3000 calories per day. So, if O is my output, approximately 3000, and I is my intake, and the difference is D, then I-O=D. D needs to be negative to lose weight. Don't focus on either I or O too much- D is the important one, and best achieved by a balance between the other two. Whether you decrease it (remember, it should be negative!) by exercising, or eating less, or a combination of the two, try to keep it to absolutely no more than 1500 calories per day. A pound of fat contains 3500 calories. This is handy, because 3500/7=500, or how many calories you need to lose per day to lose 1 pound in a week. It's a nice, round number. 1500 is actually easy to exceed if you become extremely active and crash diet. It can cause severe harm to your heart. Don't do it. The best, healthiest process is slow, steady weight loss. Lifestyle change. Start acting like someone who weighs your target weight- eat a little less, move a little more, and it'll happen. Give yourself time. Drink plenty of water, and stay away from empty calories (you know that FDA food pyramid? Actually a good idea, based on good science).
Don't do what I did- rush myself into a borderline medical condition courtesy of a fad diet. I had headaches for 3 days before almost collapsing at work one day because I wasn't getting enough. Nutrition is important. Carbohydrates are your friends- in fact, you should shoot for about 70% of your calories to come from carbs alone.
A few quick tips:

• Drink a tall glass of water before you eat. At first, your stomach is stretched out and you'll feel hungry, even if you've eaten enough. Over a few weeks, this will fade.
• Eat eggs or something high protein that stays with you during the day. This will help diminish hunger pangs.
• Keep a food journal.
• To get your fruit and vegetable servings, eat fruit and vegetables. Don't drink them unless you blend your own- you miss out on a lot of the nutrients and fiber.
• Fruit juice, ranch dressing, or soft drinks (and yes, even alcoholic drinks) are largely empty additions to your diet that introduce a LOT of calories without making you much more full.
• Get rid of potato chips and other junky snacks.
  

If you're really having trouble, consider calorie cycling. There's lots of background info there, but I like to eat, and being a compulsive calorie counter hurts that. Pick days of the week where you'll eat less, and days you'll eat more. My fat days and skinny days alternate- on my fat days, I eat around 4000 calories. On my skinny days, I only eat about 1500. Over a week with 4 fat days and 3 skinny, I consume 20,500 calories, shaving a neat 500 off of my requisite 21000. On odd weeks, I eat 18000, knocking the rest of the pound off through controlling my eating. Add to this 90 minutes of vigorous cardio per week and you'll see I can expect to lose about 4 pounds in a month. The main advantages of calorie cycling is you won't put your body into starvation mode, and you can still enjoy eating with less restraint. The major downside is that you'll probably slow your weight loss, and it is easy to get lazy in the long term.

Well, that's it. There's a wealth of information at NutritionData.com, including blogs by actual nutritionists, and lots of tools and resources. Now let us never speak of nutrition again.

Follow this equation to lose weight. No, really.

When it comes to weight loss, there's a lot of information out there. Everything from magical rituals involving acai berry elixirs to gimmicky and suggestive full body workouts to "simple rules" to crash diets.
Unfortunately, they're almost all fluff. There's no reason, or no good reason, to spend money on any of those schemes. It's simple physics- if your energy output is greater than your energy intake, you will lose weight. Period. The relationship between these two variables determines whether you gain, lose, or maintain your weight. In other, overly simplistic words, move more. If you want to lose weight, that's all you need to keep in mind. Park at the first parking space you see rather than getting the closer one (this one will make you popular at parties, especially when it rains). Return your cart to the actual store rather than a return bin. Eat standing up. Walk around when you're on the phone. But those are little things. And you aren't going to drop amazing amounts of weight doing them, but they will help. It's going to take focused exercise, which is usually a disclaimer on ANY diet commercial.
Ok, I should probably give some back-story, here: I wanted to join the military after being a couch potato my whole life. I weighed at least 230 pounds (I wasn't a big fan of scales at the time) when I first talked to my recruiter, and over the next several months, by following the advice in this post, with one notable exception, I dropped down to 145 pounds, though I've put some back on because I don't like looking like a zombie.
Because this is going to be a topic I'm inclined to discuss at length, I'm going to break it up over several posts. Today, I'm going to focus on exercises to increase how much energy you put out. Next time we'll talk about consumption, and tricks to reduce it without messing yourself up.
But first, let's talk calories: Another easy way of increasing our energy output is by raising your basal metabolic rate. The BMR is how much energy you'd expend if you just stayed in bed all day. This varies from person to person based on age and gender, and there's a calculator you can use to estimate it here. Now that we know that, note that one pound of fat contains 3500 calories (or kilocalories, kCals, for you non-American types)- so you can shoot for 500 calories of exercise per day to lose about a pound a week.
The single best thing I can recommend for burning calories is cardio- some kind of cardio. Any kind. If you have back problems, consider a recumbent bike or even an arm bike. Rowing is another good method, and many gyms have a row machine you can get on. Lap swimming is also good. Something to get your heart rate up and keep it up. When I was too fat to run at more than a slow jog, I trundled around the cul-de-sac, and as I got better, I increased the distance, until I was doing a half-mile or more. I didn't know how much more- I was just moving! If you can have fun while you're doing it, whether by listening to an iPod or whatever else, singing softly to yourself, squirting random passers-by with a watergun (actually, this may lead to interval training, which is great for that extra burn!), so much the better. For an idea of how many calories you'll be burning, there's a good chart here.
But there's something else that's often overlooked and just as important- weight training. Why? Because, for one thing, when you run, you burn calories, and your body will tell you you're hungrier than usual. So you'll eat more, often more than the calories you burned, and you'll be healthier, but you won't lose much weight. Remember the initial equation? A good way of increasing this is the development of new muscle tissue. Running helps there, but an even better way is weight training.
Curls, squats, and anything else to increase the density of your muscles (not necessarily mass, but that helps too), will help improve your BMR. Ideally, they should be done at a gym (or using free-weights) so you can increase resistance as your strength begins to plateau. Push-ups are great, for instance, but they only go so far- you'll eventually hit a wall and need something extra (if you can do 100, or even 50 push-ups in one sitting, doing more isn't going to do much good). There are plenty of great workouts you can do with simple free weights- my favorite is the Spartacus workout. Or go to the gym and grow your own- remember, for maximal fat loss, you want to target large muscle groups, and change up the exercises every few weeks. You can pack on 5 or 10 pounds on your quadriceps (the muscles between your knee and the pelvis on the front) with relatively little effort by doing squats- and it's great for increasing your metabolism. That said, it's slow if you're looking for quick weight loss- you'll lose weight slowly, or even gain weight, as muscle increases. Over several weeks, you can expect to see a drop in weight as your fat loss catches up to your muscle gain. Also, warm up before the exercises with light weights, and stretch afterwards. Stretching before a workout actually reduces your strength, and can improve the chance of injury.
This post is already longer than I'd hoped for- so more to come next time.