Arete Eudaimonia

I never -EVER- thought I would write about this. I had resigned myself to being uncontrollably overweight. I didn’t buy into the hype about overweight being genetic, but I figured that by the time I got the discipline to lose weight, I’d be an old dude and will have spent my whole youth as a fat person.

But it wasn’t hard -at all-. Seriously. I cheated. I cheated so much I thought ‘man, I guess I’ll never lose weight, look at how much I’m cheating.’ But it worked, and I didn’t even notice until a week ago. At the beginning of the year I was 255 lbs, pants size 42. At the time I figured ‘I’m not really that big, not as big as some other big people, so I’m okay!’ But now, after losing 47 lbs in 5 months, and getting down to pants size 36, I realize how big I was.

What worked for me:

I am a strong advocate of the Paleo diet. I’ve linked the Paleo blogs before, but I shall do it again, just for good measure.

PaNu – Getting Started
Whole health source

To summarize what I eat: meat, dairy, fruit, veggies, and nuts. I excluded (as much as possible) grains (yes corn counts as a grain), legumes (beans and stuff) starchy veggies like peas, and sugar. I regulated my Omega 6 fatty acid intake by supplementing with omega 3 cod liver oil pills, and I also took a 4000 IU supplement of vitamin D.

A typical day of eating for me is bacon and eggs for breakfast. (I fry the eggs in the bacon fat, sometimes with cheese and ham in them. Oh delicious.) Sometimes if I didn’t feel like cooking I’d have some whole, fully fatty yogurt and nuts. As snacks I’d have cheese, (real cheese not skim milk cheese) nuts, olives, or slice up some tomato and avocado and put olive oil and salt on top. Then for dinner I have something nice and big like a steak with spinach on the side, roasted chicken, fish, or ground beef. I always ate whenever I was hungry, and sometimes I stuffed myself. The best part (to me): I never exercised. No, really, I barely did any physical activity and maintained my mostly sedentary state.

So here are the before and after pics so far:

This is the beginning of the year, size 42, 255 lbs.

This is me a few days ago, size 36 pants, I weigh 208.

So there it is. Ask me more about the diet! I love talking about it. And I love talking.

(The paleo diet I am on allows for dairy products. It is not ‘orthodox’ paleo, but it’s worked for me.)

Nick recently showed me this piece on an amazing new eating disorder some psychologizt(sic) is hawking on the world.

Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.

In case you didn’t know these are mostly foods that people on Paleo and other low carb diets tend to avoid. The benefits of cutting out these foods are very – well – documented. But what does this really achieve? Think of the intended reader of this article. This article appeals to the regular conservative very easily: Organic foods tend to get hawked by vegans and whole foods shoppers. Vegans and whole foods shoppers tend to be intensely liberal. Suddenly our psychological disorder has a political use. This is an example of something the conservatives can (and probably will, fruitlessly) try to use to copy the liberals’ tactics.

When a republican says ‘no more welfare.’ The liberal can say ‘You’re a corporatist and a fascist.’

Now, when a liberal says ‘you’re eating processed pesticides from farms that contribute to global warming’ the republican can respond ‘you’re an orthorexic.’

While the names these ridiculous people call each other is of little use to me what bothers me is that specifically Paleo and low carb diets are singled out. That is an example of the mainstream Government Standard Issue Diet supporters trying to do some namecalling of their own on Paleo.

Fortunately any appeal to the ignorance of readers is doomed to fail when you’re fighting against the side of Truth.

Thanks to my buddy Nick I’ve discovered the latest fact that irks the hell out of me.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

That, ontop of the fact that this guy says polar bears are actually NOT dying. This is especially irksome to me because I just got finished having another go at watching Planet Earth on my Blu-ray player. While it is a great show to have on HD and has amazing stunning visuals the narration is mostly Richard Atkinson making off hand quips about the evil of humanity.

This is just more proof that, like the religious types, the environmentalists are attempting to pass legislation by guilt. Sorry mates, it doesn’t work on me, and it never will.

Hey futureman. I wrote this as an email to a few friends about the open beta of Champions Online. This is what I got so far:

So, I redownloaded the beta to Champions Online and began to play it first thing after installing drivers and migrating files on my computa! First off: It is better than City of Heroes.

I’m going to go all train of thought here, tell me if something doesn’t make sense. There’s no villain play (yet) only heroes. Each powerset starts with two powers, and their usage is all ‘energy’ based. Some builds use less energy, making them feel more like mana classes, some builds use it and build it fast, like rogues. The two powers are separated thusly: Power 1 builds energy. It usually does minimal damage, but its purpose is to build up some energy for you. Power 2 does dips and drains energy. So for the whole newbie zone the game mechanic you are learning is how your ‘class’ uses up energy, and how it builds it back.

Each skill has a…’type.’ In the skill description you may see more than one summary of how the skill works. One might say ‘tap. blah blah blah’ and then below that ‘charge blah blah.’ This refers to how you push the button. If you just tap the button, it does whatever the skill does instantly. If you hold down the button, it charges up and may give you a special buff, or any number of things. There also seems to be ‘click’ which I believe is the same as ‘tap’ without any charging skill option.

So, you get a set of stock powersets, and these are very generic. Full list will come next email. You can choose a custom powerset, however. Here you can mix and match powers from different powersets to start off with. Examples: There is a ‘gadgeteer’ set and a ‘munitions’ set, so I started a tiger (tee hee) lookin hero, with a gadgeteer ‘energy builder’ and a munitions ‘damage’ so, when I build energy I hold down 1 (Both these skills are ‘hold the button down’ skills) and that makes me pull out this sci fi lookin pistol thing that shoots waves out of it, and then I switch to holding down 2 and pull out two desert eagle lookin’ pistols and let loose devil-may-cry style. Alternate ad infinitum till dead enemy you have. (you get more skills than this later, I’ve only begun to play outside the noob zone)

You get travel powers immediately after leaving the noob zone (you leave after a neat instanced quest at level 5) and there are many more to choose from. Flight, Super Jump, Super Speed, self esplanatory. Acrobatics: Combination of Super Jump and Super Speed, not as good as either, but more versatile. Then you get your element ones, ala-the incredibles skating on ice, one of them tunnels in the ground, there’s a disk to hover around on like Green Goblin, and one is rocket-hover boots. Still haven’t tested any personally except acrobatics, which was a tap/charge skill. Tap being a quick getaway in combat type thing, charge being a ‘ok I want to get from a to b fast’ thing.

A funny thing happened today. I opened up my inbox to find an email from Twitter telling me that someone was now following me on Twitter. I found this rather strange as I do not have a Twitter, but I checked it out anyway. Turns out to be someone whose article I commented on at the Atlasphere. It was very refreshing to be remembered and checked up on. As a consequence I am completely rethinking my aversion to Twitter. Up to this point I was pretty sure Twitter was something up with which I was not going to put. I had heard many stories of the inane goings on at Twitter and I thought “I’m on Facebook, why be on Twitter too.” But this one experience has galvanized me to possibly join twitter, but also to write in my blog finally.

I have finally come up with an appropriate theme, as it’s very difficult for me to write anything unless it’s done in my particular style. For instance, I will not write in a journal unless I like how it looks. Oh sure for schoolwork I’ll write in any old notebook to study from later, but any time I’m going to take time and chronicle the goings on in my life, or write creatively for my own benefit, it must be in something nice, usually leather bound. So this blog is the online incarnation of my leather bound journal. You see, the leather journal carries a context in my mind. I imagine myself in a fantasy story on some sort of adventure, and it is up to me to keep notes on my tale in a journal. The journal must be sturdy and rugged and be able to bear weathering. Were I not able to see this context in my mind when I write in my journal, I would not be inclined to write in it.

The same goes for my blog. The theme I have chosen is “Writing to future archaeologists.” Every time I write in it now, it will have that context. I will know who I am writing to precisely, and be able to address him or her personally. That helps to give me new ideas for my blog, and keeps my motivation for writing it up. So here I am, future man, writing to you, telling you about what goes on in my life and what I think about.

I must also apologize to you. My grammar is abhorrent and my writing skills wanting due to lack of practice. This blog may also be used as a gauge for my linguistic reeducation, as I further prepare myself to return to college and get a degree.

Perhaps in the next post I will go into what degree I might try for.