5 Things I Love but Never Talk About
I had an introspective moment this summer, while on the flight from Oahu back to Seattle after visiting my dad. I had my lap top out and just wrote for like two hours. It was basically a journaling session, and several productive realizations came out of it. While looking it over, one quote stood out to me as especially true.
Honesty is more than just not telling lies. It means speaking the full truth of your heart, this and every day of your life.
Even writing it now, those words resonate quite deeply with me. So, I decided to dedicate a post to this topic; to addressing some of the truths which we don't lie about, but often fail to express.
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Neurologists, Addictions, and JUNK FOOD
In the video I made about the Paleo Diet, I explained why I believe we would all be significantly healthier if we simply removed Grains, Sugar, and Dairy from our diets. However, in reading Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel Amen, MD, I came across a commentary of his which the paleo diet does not address, and that I found especially interesting.
Dr. Amen is, first and foremost, a neurologist. But what makes him a compelling thinker is his ability to ascertain the interrelatedness between his and other fields of study. On the topic of diet and weight loss, he had this to say:
A Lesson on Efficiency
Flashback to Seattle Prep, 2005
One day, when I was a freshman in high school, sitting in Collegio class (a Jesuit hybrid of history, literature, and religion), my teacher, Mr. Reilly, went on a tangent. He drew a picture on the white board, depicting a rough estimation of the geography of the ancient city of Chartres, France.
A Radical Thought Experiment on Occupy Wall Street
So as all you guys are probably aware, there is a huge, nation-wide demonstration going on right now called "Occupy Wall-Street," in which huge numbers of American Citizens are demonstrating in protest of our large financial institutions, specifically investment banks. Unfortunately for the protestors, there seems to be an equally large group that harbors a genuine sentiment of "what exactly are these people protesting, and what specifically do they hope to see changed?"
I think this is a very fair question to ask. For the majority of discussion of economic issues in our media is riddled with confusing jargon and very difficult to understand. What follows is a thought experiment that I came up with last night, which I think can help put a lot of things in perspective about the nature of our economy, our nation's ever-rising debt and inflation, and the "Occupy" movements that are taking place across our country.
Suspend reality for a moment and consider the following…
Men Crying in Movies
I got dinner downtown with my Dad today. Afterwards, we decided to go to a movie just because we were in the area and saw 50/50 with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogan.
The [Hollow] Rock Anthem: No. More. Tight. Hamstrings!
From my freshman year of High School, until just recently, I was worthless at squatting. Worthless. I couldn't move big weights. I couldn't break parallel with small weights. I would hit 45 degrees and the movement would just stop. I couldn't go lower, unless I rounded my back or fell on it. For the last 2 years I have scoured the internet and several books, desperate for a solution to this problem.
At long last, I believe I have found it. Please read on…
Meditation
When it comes to athletic development, I am not a writing machine. Nor do I to pretend to be. Some days you need a day off from the physiology, neurobiology, and philosophy of it all. By the same token, you can't train every minute of every day. In fact, training is only half the battle. For every workout is only as useful as your ability to recover from it…
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Body Awareness and The Great Inhibitor
Have you ever looked at an extremely muscle-bound individual and wondered why he is not the one with the largest vertical jump or 96 mph fastball? This post attempts to explain what I believe is the biggest reason for the often mysterious discrepancy between muscularity and explosive athleticism.
Swimming and Specificity
In my previous post on Crossfit Vs. Specialization, I gave an explanation for why, in almost all sports, sticking to the same exact lifts (even the best ones, like deadlift or power clean) for every training session is unnecessarily specialized, and doesn't illicit the same neurological benefits toward athletic coordination that a variable program like Crossfit does. In this post, I will consider one specific training practice, swimming, and make the argument that it belongs in the training program of all athletes, not just swimmers.
The Nature of Law
I was fifteen years old when I decided that I was an anarchist. And for at least the first year and a half after coming to that realization, anarchism was all I wanted to talk to anyone about. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a single person that would consider my ideas before completely writing them off and/or saying something condescending. It has taken me several years to realize that I didn't come to my beliefs because someone jumped in my face and started talking about them excitedly. I explored them because I was curious. I had unanswered questions about the nature of law, punishment, authority, and ownership, and I wanted to explore those questions. I was curious. But until one feels a spark of curiosity for what you have to say, you'll never reach them. As Eckhart Tolle puts it, "real change comes from within." So I decided to create this blog post, which explains as best as possible, why I decided to stop supporting the legal political institutions of my world, so that when the world is curious, they can see why I believe what I believe.
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