Relaxed Focus: April 13, 2014

Thursday, April 17, 2014

IRL.

Offline for a couple weeks. On the other side, then.

“You're problem is you've spent your whole life thinking there are rules. There aren't."

Texts from Star Trek: The Next Generation

Bjørn Lomborg - My new oped on the UN Climate Panel's reports:...:

"We live in a world where one in six deaths are caused by easily curable infectious diseases; one in eight deaths stem from air pollution, mostly from cooking indoors with dung and twigs; and billions of people live in abject poverty, with no electricity and little food. We ought never to have entertained the notion that the world’s greatest challenge could be to reduce temperature rises in our generation by a fraction of a degree. The solution is to stop applauding politicians who warn of catastrophe and promote poor policies. Instead of subsidizing inefficient solar and wind power with little benefit, we need to invest in long-term green innovation. And we need to give more attention to all of the other problems. This is perhaps less entertaining, but it will do much more good.

Climate change has been portrayed as a huge catastrophe costing as much as 20% of world GDP, though brave politicians could counter it at a cost of just 1% of GDP. The reality is just the opposite: We now know that the damage cost will be perhaps 2% of world GDP, whereas climate policies can end up costing more than 11% of GDP."

Bjørn Lomborg says that the UN climate panel's latest report tells a story that politicians would prefer to ignore. - Project Syndicate

Training - "Just Bring It."

4/18 - squats, leg xt, calf raise, abs

55/No Excuses. Bodybuilding.com - Body Transformation: Feeling Young, Ripped, And Unstoppable At 55!

"What's your favorite hue?"

Whedonesque:
"MING-NA: When we saw a rough cut of The Winter Soldier, the way we were reacting to-
CLARK: We were kinda walked down the hallway together afterwards thinking of new names for the show.
BRETT: What kind of names did you come up with?
MING-NA: What do we have now?
CLARK: The Agents Formerly Known as S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Stay with me."

ZEN PENCILS - 149. MOTHER JONES

Training - "Get Comfortable With..."

4/17 - deadlifts, pulldowns, back xt, seated rows

Eat a steak. 4 Foods That Have Surprising Medicinal Benefits | Mark's Daily Apple:

"Red Meat Really, red meat? Not Shetland sheep liver, moose thyroid, or cow brain? Just plain old red meat? Those are all great, powerful foods, but standard red meat (of any ruminant) is quite medicinal and, more importantly, highly available and widely palatable..

Beyond the protein, iron, zinc, B-vitamins, and other well-known nutrients, red meat is the best source of carnosine, a nutrient with a host of brain benefits. It improves cognition among schizophrenic patients, reduces glycation, protects against cataracts, and scavenges reactive oxygen species and mitigates the toxicity of malondialdehyde, methylglyoxal, hydroxynonenal, and acetaldehyde. Vegetarians have the least amount of carnosine in their muscles. Beta alanine supplements, which increase the amount of carnosine in the muscles, increase the total amount of work an athlete can do. Or maybe it’s the creatine, which doesn’t only come in tubs of white powder. Red meat is perhaps the most potent natural source of the brain – and muscle-boosting nutrient. This all adds up to red meat being an extremely important medicinal food, especially for the people at the greatest risk of cognitive and physical decline. Sure enough, elderly women who ate a diet high in red meat experienced the largest gains in cognitive functioning and muscle strength, and vegetarians – but not omnivores – who supplemented with creatine improved their scores of brain function...

Many other foods offer many other benefits that complement red meat, but I argue that red meat is almost irreplaceable. It’s hard to say that about any other single food. Hate kale? You can get by okay eating spinach, chard, and broccoli. Ruminants are special. We’ve enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of years. Even if you’re only eating it sparingly, we could all benefit from at least a modicum of ruminant flesh in our lives."