Nature

Flowing water on Mars?

People mention my PhD in astrophysics and ask me about scientific discoveries. Lately that meant asking about the possibility of flowing water and life on Mars. My work---high-energy particle physics followed by helping build an x-ray observational satellite---barely touched on observing and exploring planets. For that matter, at this stage of our ability to explore off our planet, I prefer putting resources into non-manned exploration over manned. I don't see great value in putting people into spaceÂ relative to what unmanned expeditions could achieve and I see great costs and risks. As for the possibility of finding life on Mars, or anywhere besides Earth, I would rank it as one of the most important discoveries ever, even if it were a simple life form. Or even…

October 6, 2015

Maturity and pasta

Fitness / Nature / Stories / Visualization

Maturity and pasta

I used to think of pasta and rice as staples---that is, the basic food of a meal to put everything else around. Over the years I've decreased the pasta, rice, and other staples in favor of vegetables. Now that I see restaurants' goals less to healthily nourish you and more to entertain your mouth and eyes, I see so-called staples as ways to increase their profit at the expense of your health. I want more vegetables and they want to give me less. Here is a visual tour of my view of how we mature, in pasta. Like many, I liked Spaghettios as a kid. Sweet and hardly any substance. More marketing gimmick than food, I'd say. They don't look that much more appetizing outside…

October 2, 2015

Recycling doesn’t pollute much less than throwing stuff away

Models / Nature / Perception / Visualization

Recycling doesn’t pollute much less than throwing stuff away

Throwing things away so they'll end up in landfills pollutes. No two ways about it. Not using something in the first place doesn't pollute. Recycling feels like it's roughly in the middle. If you only have two comparisons and no objective scale, how else can you compare something in the middle but roughly in the middle. Since I wanted to feel better about myself, I probably thought of recycling as closer to not using something in the first place. Reusing polluted even less. Here's how I thought of the pollution scale of throwing things out: This belief fit the phrase "Reduce, reuse, recycle." They all seemed better than throwing something away and mostly related to each other. You can pollute a lot less than recycling…

September 29, 2015

How to make less more

Awareness / Fitness / Models / Nature / Perception / Tips / Visualization

How to make less more

I eat a lot of mixed nuts and peanut butter. As far as I know, they're all healthy to someone without allergies. I eat a lot of them. I found a site that shows pictures of two hundred calories of various foods. I like and eat a lot of broccoli. Here's two hundred calories of broccoli: Looks like an amount that would go a long way to filling me up. Here's two hundred calories of mixed nuts: Not much! They would taste delicious and I love their crunchy, creamy texture, but if I wanted to fill myself with food, I'd choose the broccoli. Here's two hundred calories of peanut butter: Not much either. So how to make less more? I decided that as much as…

September 28, 2015

Awareness / Fitness / Freedom / Nature

Op/Ed Fridays: Get your hands and mind dirty if you want to be healthy

I think everyone I know knows this, but trying to keep yourself healthy by disinfecting everything you touch, thinking all bacteria and other life weakens your immune system and makes you less healthy. People misunderstand bacteria and other life. They aren't exclusively unhealthy, though some are, and don't only exist in a few places. Most of them are symbiotic and are everywhere all the time, including in us, even ones our immune systems have to battle. If our bodies didn't handle them all the time, we'd lose the ability to and an unexpected infection could kill us. The parents I've talked to tell me you get healthy children not by protecting them from every risk but though active, outdoors, dirty play. Get their hands dirty.…

September 25, 2015

Op/Ed Fridays: Banning billboards and outdoor advertising

Awareness / Nature / NorthKorea / Perception

Op/Ed Fridays: Banning billboards and outdoor advertising

Articles like "Can cities kick ads? Inside the global movement to ban urban billboards" remind me of North Korea, where I saw pictures of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-il in most rooms of every building I entered. I wondered, "how does it affect someone's life to see those pictures every day, everywhere?" Then I realized people there weren't comparing their environments to ones they didn't know about. The images probably faded into their background. The North Korean government knows that people not consciously noticing the pictures doesn't stop them from being effective. They influence people. I can only speculate the effects, but the images must give power to the state. As I kept thinking, I thought, "I wonder if anything in my environment affects me…

September 18, 2015

The farm where most of my food this summer came from

Entrepreneurship / Fitness / Nature

The farm where most of my food this summer came from

Almost anyone who talked to me over the summer heard about how much I love the vegetables I've been getting through what they call Community Supported Agriculture. You pay a farm at the beginning of the season, then when the plants start growing, each week they deliver what's ready that week. I go to a drop-off location a few blocks from my home and pick up my share. Once a season I volunteer at the drop-off point, helping organize. They organized a trip to the farm, about 120 miles north of New York City, and I jumped at the chance to go. Here are pictures. I learned that the farm lies on a lake bed from eons ago, which they said made the land fertile.…

September 14, 2015

Fitness / Nature

People who push addictive substances on us

The poppy plant grew forever. People consumed it for a long time and it was no problem. As a raw plant it caused no serious health problems. Eventually someone figured out how to refine part of it and found that refined part brought them pleasure. Then people refined it more. To their credit, they found helpful uses for it, but then others realized they could make a lot of money on turning it into a powder or other highly refined form and selling it. It made people feel very good. They would forget about their problems while under the influence. Their addiction also led them to let go of the rest of their lives. Many destroyed their health because of it, driving them back to…

September 13, 2015

“Get in touch with your masculine/feminine side” misunderstands and undervalues men and women

Awareness / Models / Nature / Nonjudgment / Perception / Visualization

“Get in touch with your masculine/feminine side” misunderstands and undervalues men and women

Two quotes misunderstand and undervalue people, I contend: "You should get in touch with your masculine side." "You should get in touch with your feminine side." People say the first to women mainly, sometimes men, to imply they should learn to act more like mainstream views of men, like learning to fix things around the house, not sweating small things, and enjoying things like pizza and beer. People say the second to men mainly, sometimes women, for them to act more like mainstream views of women, like making their home look pretty, showing affection, and taking care of children. The belief behind masculine and feminine sides When you suggest a woman act on her "masculine side" you're suggesting she's doing something unnatural for a woman.…

August 19, 2015

Awareness / Nature

How do you justify polluting?

A friend commented on my experiment not to buy food where I'd have to throw away wrapping after, "Avoiding food packaging" and "Buying no food with packaging, eighteen days and counting." I started doing it mainly to pollute less. He said "You know, the difference you'll make on the world is less than a billionth of a percent?" That's how he justified whatever behavior he does that pollutes. I responded, "I care about what I'm responsible for." I don't take responsibility for anyone else's behavior, nor was I criticizing his. He has his values and he lives by them. I try not to impose my values on others. But I take responsibility for my actions and their results on others. To me, it's a matter…

August 14, 2015

Awareness / Evolutionary Psychology / Leadership / Models / Nature

Language, communication, evolutionary psychology, and leadership

A client who knows I've applied a lot from evolutionary psychology to leadership and self-awareness wrote: What's your opinion of the theory that language serves primarily as persuasion? In its raw form, I'm currently telling you that you are an authority by asking a question. And that sentence might seem like it's an authoritative statement, but instead it is clarifying my question, which in its clarification is a neediness to be understood on my part, and distancing us even further. Does that make sense? I read the Red Queen and I don't know what to think anymore. Noting that [an entrepreneurial friend of his who is very successful] mentions the book often, I can guess that at some of the theories in the Red Queen…

August 1, 2015

Creativity / Education / Nature / Stories

The hardest problems I’ve solved

How did it begin? After the first two years of classes in graduate school I had to take Qualifying Exams to continue to research. Columbia's Qualifying Exams are three days of about six hours a day. You get eight problems and have to solve six of your choice. They can cover any physics subject covered in classes to that point. If you remember high school or college physics being difficult, graduate problems are harder. Since they can ask questions on any subject you can't focus on one area. You have to study everything. What was the process? First you read all the questions. Some you can see how to solve right away. Some you can't understand the question. I solved the ones I knew I…

July 27, 2015

Fitness / Nature

Justified! Research confirms that restaurants aren’t that healthy.

Days after posting "Eating at restaurants seems weirder the more healthily I eat. Same with pre-prepared food" I found the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition posted an article, "Fast-food and full-service restaurant consumption and daily energy and nutrient intakes in US adults." It found that eating at fast food and full service restaurants affected people's diets roughly equally---in particular, increasing calories about the same amount, as well as other indicators, like amount of fat, cholesterol, etc. A summary of the article wrote More than 18,000 adults answered survey questions about what they'd eaten over a two-day period. Compared to participants who ate food prepared at home, those who visited fast food restaurants consumed an average of 190 more calories per day, 11 grams more fat,…

July 15, 2015

Awareness / Fitness / Habits / Nature

Eating at restaurants seems weirder the more healthily I eat. Same with pre-prepared food.

I can't believe the changes in how I see food my last two changes in food habit created. And I can't believe how easy and cheap the changes were. The changes were to buy a farm share, where I pick up fresh vegetables from a drop-off place near me each week, and the other was my two-and-a-half-week experiment not buying food where I had to throw away packaging after. Each farm share shipment has enough vegetables for side dishes for a family for a week. Since I'm one person, I have to eat vegetables as main dishes every day to keep up with all these vegetables. I don't have space for pasta, bread, and other filler. I was worried about not knowing what to do…

July 11, 2015

Recycling doesn’t pollute much less than throwing things out compared to not using stuff in the first place

People think recycling pollutes a lot less than throwing things out. They don't seem that different when I compare them both to not using stuff you'd have to throw away anyway. Even reusing something beats recycling. Recycling plants have to send a lot of stuff to landfills. They use plenty of energy. This article, "American recycling is stalling, and the big blue bin is one reason why," which reminds us that recycling has problems, got me thinking about it, not that the article doesn't have flaws (in particular that it doesn't promote reducing consumption). In other words, recycling still pollutes. I think of it as a last resort after resorting to using something that pollutes and not being able to reuse an old one. That…

June 27, 2015

Fitness / Nature

I don’t listen to people who talk science about nutrition.

Knowing a lot of science of nutrition is like knowing a lot about physics for billiards---it probably indicates poor behavior. I think pool reminds people of high school physics problems. They often ask me or presume I'm good at it. But knowing physics doesn't help you play. What helps you play is practice. There's physics in pool but there's physics in everything. Knowing where you should hit the ball doesn't give your muscles the precision to hit the ball accurately. Likewise, knowing what you should eat doesn't help you eat what you think you should. People in the United States act like they have the greatest knowledge of nutrition yet they eat about the least healthy of any place. Nutrition has more variables than we…

June 12, 2015

Exercises / Fitness / Freedom / Leadership / Nature / SIDCHAs

Have you striven for excellence?

Have you put everything you had into something? Have you tried as hard as you possibly could? Have you run until you dropped? Skied as fast as you possibly could, risking injury? Decided to lift a weight you couldn't conceive of lifting and done it? Have you run sprints in the rain, alone? Have you put your name and reputation on the line for all time? Have you said no to things anyone would say yes to because the sacrifice was worth it? Have you doubted everything you thought was right because your experience taught you things school never could have taught you? Have you risked bankruptcy, friendships, jobs, your home? Have you put yourself into the unknown so deep you didn't know if you…

June 6, 2015

Awareness / Models / Nature / Perception

How a different model can change everything: genius, shoes, planets, the universe, humans, gods, and sex

Following up yesterday's post on how one simple change in perspective can dramatically change how you view things, which then changes how you react to them, here are a few other examples. Note that I'm not writing about right or wrong, just different beliefs and following how small changes in beliefs can lead to big changes in behavior and mood. My goal is to promote flexibility in beliefs. Running shoes Old view: The whole weight of your body lands on your heel when you run, especially if you land with your leg straight. Also you should transfer your weight from your heel straight through the center of your foot to your toes, otherwise you "overpronate." Old view result: Put shock absorbing padding under your heel…

June 5, 2015

Models / Nature / Perception

How a dramatically different model can change everything: addiction

I wrote before about "One of the best books I've read on the environment, our impact on it, and what we can do about it" as well as two videos based on it. The book is called Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air. There several books in the "Without Hot Air" series. If the others are half as informative and useful as the environment one, I'll love them. An article recommended by their publisher I read yesterday, The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think, suggested I will like their book, Drugs Without The Hot Air, as much. I can't comment on the book since I haven't read it, but the article illustrates one of the major…

June 4, 2015

Fitness / Nature

When were you last out of breath?

When were you last out of breath? Not just winded. I mean completely, thoroughly, can't-speak-for-a-minute, can't-think-straight out of breath? Was getting there glorious? Painful? Fun? In competitions, sprinters get there in ten seconds, though they recover fast. Kids do it a lot. Dogs seem to do it. Did it happen to you because you were doing something fun? Playful? Was it within the last week? Month? Year? Decade? Do you miss it? Was it because you were out of shape and got winded climbing a flight of stairs? Do you never want to feel that way again? I think playing or competing until you can't do any more must rank with the most fun and rewarding activities you can do.

May 25, 2015

Fitness / Habits / Nature

First half-marathon of the year

New York City has a sunny, breezy, dry day in the sixties. Yet another perfect day for running. How could I resist. I've made a Memorial Day weekend tradition of my first long runs of the year to start the summer. Some details that make running fun The saltiness of the sweat mixed in the water when you shower after The exhaustion on finishing Continuing to run when your body says stop but you know you can keep going Running the long downhill on 58th Street from Central Park to the Hudson that you earned running up that hill before The cool breeze on your skin How much water you can drink during and after, and how satisfying it feels---just plain cool water The chafing…

May 23, 2015

Plants are made of air

Plants are made of air

I used to think plants used energy from the sun to pull material out of the ground and that they were made of that material, meaning they were ultimately made of earth. Seems plausible, but wrong. They use energy from the sun to pull carbon from carbon dioxide and make themselves out of that. In other words, they're made of air. They get some material from the ground, but not much. How much? When you burn a log, most of the plant goes back into the air and the ash that remains is mostly what it took from the ground. I think they get water from the ground too, but that water probably got there from rain, which is kind of like air too. I…

May 21, 2015

Exercises / Fitness / Habits / Nature

Central Park in the Spring

This morning was beautiful in New York City. I was thinking of a running, but when I saw how nice it was I couldn't stop from taking the train to Central Park and running in my favorite place in the world. A mile in it started drizzling. It turned into a downpour, for roughly the second mile. You rarely want to run in the rain but once it happens, you like it, especially a warm spring rain like you haven't felt since before the marathon in November. Last week's run that made me so sore was a mile and a half longer but almost all flat. Central Park has hills, which makes it more interesting. We'll see if this run makes me sore, but so…

May 16, 2015

Bought first food with packaging after 2.5 weeks

Fitness / Nature / Tips

Bought first food with packaging after 2.5 weeks

I've been avoiding buying food with any packaging. I started April 20. I updated my progress with pictures in "Buying no food with packaging, eighteen days and counting". Saturday evening I bought some onions in one of those net bags. Onions make you cry. Today I'm scheduled to get a shipment of vegetables from my farm share and that comes in a box so the experiment would have ended today had I not bought the onions in the bag. Still, I could have bought loose onions to avoid polluting the plastic bag. In the meantime I've Produced almost no trash or recycling Eaten a higher ratio of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes than ever Probably fiber too, in particular Spent as little on food…

May 12, 2015

Fitness / Nature

Pain I like

Spring came late this year to New York City. Two days ago the weather was beautiful enough I had go running. I ran down to the Hudson and turned north, usually about a five-mile run when I turn around at 45th Street. The weather was so beautiful I kept going. Figuring out how much farther makes you balance enjoying the outdoors, risking being too tired to get back too far from home, overcoming a challenge, having to give up, stressing a body part you haven't exercised in a long time, getting a blister, and so on. The night before I had met a couple friends at a cafe on the river around 70th Street, so I decided to turn around there, making it a seven-and-a-half…

May 8, 2015

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