Category Archives: science

Stupid people don’t read this

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“Even if they can’t read the message, they would know what this picture means.” In the days before widespread literacy, there was sacred art, sacred architecture and sacred music. But I can only paint and compose in words.

There is no comma in today’s subject line. There is no need to say “stupid people, don’t read this”, because they can’t. It is too much bother for them, poor things. tl;dr as they say these days.

I know this not just from the level of response I get, but also from this article in Business Insider: Bite-Sized Chunks Of Info Are Best. Here we learn that “Humans can only process small amounts of information at a time” … “There is no chunking here, there is not progressive disclosure. It’s just all the information thrown on the page all at once. The result? You don’t read it, you just leave.” Sounds like one of my regular pages, don’t you think?

Well, there is nothing wrong with just leaving. Even though I write mostly in middle school level language, it may just be too much for ordinary humans. I am not all surprised; I went to school with ordinary humans. They keep the wheels of capitalism turning, but I’d feel rather weird if they started hanging out here in droves. I mean, it would be kind of nice if they could learn happiness from me. But they would probably look mostly at the pictures and headlines and conclude that “the key to happiness is to be single, play computer games and watch anime.”  ^_^

***

As I have said before, I actually have a lot of respect for simple-minded people. Many of them manage to persevere and often accomplish something in this life, even though they walk as if in a fog. Many live morally, even though they are not able to foresee the sorrow and heartbreak that immoral living would cause for themselves and others further ahead in time. I am certainly not all-knowing, but often I can see such things ahead and it is simply practical to drop such temptations as gambling, non-medicinal drinking, pyramid schemes and careless flirtation. They are, past a certain point, not even tempting. But for those who can’t see the world as if from a very high place, these and many other temptations are mostly resisted by faith alone, or fear of getting caught.

I – and you, if you have read this far – are privileged. Written words are our friends, not our enemies. And so we are allowed into the library of the ages, there to learn from the great teachers who have preceded us. They teach us not only facts, but how to think, sometimes even how to think about thought. It is like a kind of superpower, of the type that starts small and grows over time and use. But with great power comes great responsibility, as Jesus Christ said. Wait, that was not exactly what he said… “unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required” is the old-fashioned English version. But the point still stands, and it is a rather sharp point and painful to touch for me.

I don’t want to go to my eternal dwellings yet. I have still so much to learn, and so much to teach. I wish to say all the worlds that should be spoken, before they are lost forever. But how, when I cannot reach those who need it the most?

 

“Fat-burning zone”

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OK, that doesn’t even make any sense. Although there are people who would like to face the fat head-on. This is easier said than done, though.

It is amazing what humans find controversial. I can see religions and unusual sexual practices causing some agitation, especially in combination. But fat burning exercise? Yet, there is a pretty intense debate around a concept called the “fat-burning zone”.

I think I first heard of this after I bought my first pulse watch back in 2005. It is already 7 years ago, around this time of the year. The watch had three zones, one for light exercise, one for medium and one for hard or intensive exercise. The medium zone more or less corresponds to the so-called “fat-burning zone”, which is generally said to be from 60 to 70% of maximum heart speed.

One thing that has made me wonder from time to time is that our muscles get tired even at moderate intensity of exercise, such as a brisk walk or a slow jog. This was at odds with the explanations I read, that we got tired because we accumulated lactic acid in the muscles (this theory is pretty much discarded now, I believe) or that we got tired because we ran out of glycogen. If we kept going in the fat-burning zone, shouldn’t we be able to run 16 hours a day until we ran out of fat?

Actually, there once was a man who could do that, run most of the day every day. His name was Mensen Ernst, and he was of course a Norwegian. (It is typical Norwegian to be good, as a former Prime Minister in Norway once said.) He was born in 1799, unfortunately, long before modern genetic testing. He seems to not have left any children either, so we will probably never know whether he was some sort of mutant, or whether it was some kind of technique (he was said to run in a different manner than other runners, described as a “loping” run). Or perhaps it mostly came down to practice. But probably not only that, for there has never been anyone like him again, and as far as we know there were none before him either.

The rest of us get tired eventually. So I once again looked at the mystery of the fat-burning zone, and found this controversy. So, based on reading various sides of the issue, and my own personal experience, I’ll try to throw some light on this.

***

First, warming up is not a one-step process. For walkers, it is recommended to walk leisurely for 5-10 minutes before speeding up to a brisk pace.  (Longer the older you are, children don’t really need to warm up at all.) However, this does not burn off the sugar and start on the fat. Warming up simply increases the blood flow through the muscles, making them more elastic and active so you avoid minor muscle damage and discomfort that you would otherwise have.

Ten minutes of leisurely walking will not budge your blood sugar or make any noticeable impact on your glycogen storage. It takes about half an hour of energetic walking to do that, less with jogging or running. With practice you should be able to feel for yourself when this shift occurs: Heart rate, breathing and body heat shift to a slightly higher level without a corresponding increase in speed or elevation. The difference in pulse is something like 10% in my experience. Not dramatic, but noticeable if you keep track. This is the point where you enter the actual fat-burning zone, no matter what your heart rate monitor may have been telling you for the last half hour. (The exact time varies – for me it was 25 minutes a year ago, but is now up to 35, probably because I store more glycogen in my muscles after almost a year of frequent, long walks.)

So when one article claims that you burn 85% fat in the “fat-burning zone” of moderate exercise, and another claim 50%, you have to ask: How long have you exercised before you start measuring? The higher number may be rather optimistic, but it may well be true if you don’t start measuring until the actual zone shift has happened.  If you measure before that, half and half sounds more likely.

However, even if half your calories come from sugar, you don’t burn equal amounts of fat and sugar. Fat contains twice as much energy, so you still burn two grams of carbs for one gram of fat. That means that even should you burn 85% fat, you don’t actually do that in terms of body weight.  85% fat calories would correspond to 59% fat weight. The rest comes mainly from glycogen in your liver, and there is only so much liver in a human.

Luckily at this point you can accept a bottle of cold, fresh Pepsi cola from your attractive friend, and continue exercising. (Imagine TV ad here.) Yeah, that would help you lose weight for sure. ^_^ But seriously, if you are planning to keep walking or jogging for hours, you should add sugar and water from time to time. For a one-hour stretch, it is not necessary. Your liver typically stores enough glycogen for one day or so of normal activity. (Jogging is not normal activity for most of us, so it will deplete faster, but not in an hour or two if you are reasonably healthy.)

***

 So to sum it up: The fat-burning zone is real, but it burns only a little more than half fat and the rest sugar or excess protein. Also it only kicks in after around half an hour of brisk walking. Also, if you exercise harder, you will burn just as much fat per minute or more, but also more sugar and you will tire much faster.

If you have plenty of time, you can keep going much longer in the “fat-burning zone” (moderate exercise), but if time is your limit, you will lose more fat by exercising harder. Speak with your doctor before starting an intensive training program, especially long-distance or high-intensity.

Universal genius

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Yozora is not desperate to have friends, because she has books and an invisible friend. Clearly a case of genius! Also note how many thin books there are on the shelf behind her. That’s because they are written in kanji, a much more compact script than ours. Yes, all these things appear in today’s little essay.

“Universal genius” is a literal translation of the Norwegian word “universalgeni”, which is roughly equal to “polymath” in English, but easier to understand. It is actually based on a Latin phrase (“genius universalis”) and is also used in nearby languages.

A related term is “Renaissance man”, as the ideal at the time was a person who was thoroughly familiar with all the arts and sciences. The world had recently emerged from the Middle Ages and retrieved the knowledge of the Classical era of ancient Greece and Rome (with a little help from our Muslim friends, or sometimes enemies). At the same time the printing press had made knowledge easy to spread, and the era of great discoveries had expanded the world greatly. It was a time of opening of the human mind in space and time, leaving the cloistered garden of the previous era. It seemed that nothing would now be impossible. That turned out to be a bit optimistic, of course.

In our modern age, nobody can be an expert in all sciences. In fact, it is probably impossible to be an expert even in one science, such as history or physics or chemistry: They each cover so much ground that you can only have a moderate knowledge of each sub-field, and there will be many, many people who know more than you about the details.

Even so, some of us feel that a broad overview of human knowledge is important. Without it, we cannot easily – if at all – understand our own place in the world. There are those who don’t care: As long as they get paid and preferably enjoy their specialized work, it does not matter to them whether it is meaningful in a broader sense. But not all of us can be satisfied with this. We want to see the world as if from a much higher place, where it becomes obvious how all things are connected. Luckily this is still possible, but perhaps not common.

Universities were founded to give a universal education, as their name implies. I think it is fair to say that things have changed a bit since then, although there is still an element of this expansive role of higher education. Even a century ago, a “liberal education” did not mean being indoctrinated in leftist politics, but rather an education that was free from attachment, a study of knowledge for its own sake or for the sake of the student, rather than associated with a particular career. The original meaning of the “liberal arts” were those that were considered suitable for a free citizen. So universities would teach universal truths with the purpose of setting the student free, to make his own decisions and choose wisely how to contribute to society. (Your university may vary.)

***

Myself, I don’t even have a university education. I have two school years of college-level education, paid by my employer, and it was (unsurprisingly) mainly about economy and law, not philosophy. I have read randomly about the sciences from my early childhood, but did not really think hard about First Principles until middle age. Still, already for many years I have seen the sciences as a vast dome, where there are no lines (much less walls) between each science and its neighbors. For instance, astronomy seamlessly changes into cosmology as the scale of things increases. But cosmology is not the end of the world (except in the most literal sense). It wraps around to quantum physics, which again is fundamental to chemistry, which again cannot be separated from biology and medicine…

I don’t see many people who are even officially interested in seeing the world like this, as an organic unity. It is not something I have striven to achieve, cutting out parts that did not fit in or adding controversial fillers. It is a natural result from grazing all over the place since I was little. My father has a similar attitude, I think, but he grew up in an age where knowledge was hard to come by. So did I, for that matter, but not for as long. Today, the place where I had to dig wells for information is so flooded with it that people are striving not to drown. Information overload.

***

As I said, it is probably not possible to be a universal genius today, but one who still tries is your would-be god and savior from Venus, Ryuho Okawa. Those extraterrestrial and religious aspects may be somewhat creepy, but you can’t go wrong with reading 1000 books a year. Of course, I can’t prove he actually does that, but it certainly looks like he has an extremely wide-ranging knowledge. And it just may be possible in Japan, because Japanese books are mainly written with kanji, signs that represent a basic concept.

There are a bit over 1000 kanji in modern Japanese books and newspapers; most words consist of two kanji, some common words of only one. For grammatical particles and words that lack modern kanji, Japanese use hiragana, a syllabic script (each letter is one syllable rather than one sound). This makes for extremely compact books compared to English, and particularly well suited for speed reading.

When we speed read, we don’t look at the individual letters but use the brain’s amazing pattern matching ability to recognize words or even groups of words by their shape. Expremients have shown that we reogcnize words, epseically long words, mainly by their first and last letter and the length of the word. (Teachers are probably an exception to this as they are conditioned to become very agitated if every letter is not in the right place.)

Japanese, and Chinese even more, skips the whole letter phase and teaches the shapes of the concepts that are the building block of the language. As such, once you know all the signs so well that you don’t have to stop and think, you can read these languages at a ferocious speed. The more you read, the better you get. So 1000 books a year is definitely doable.

For the same reason, I believe that the West will inevitably fall behind in the information age. China, Japan and Korea will dominate the world unless they manage to get themselves into yet another war with each other. It is too late for us to change to a pictographic language now, and we also lack the culture of reverence for learning. We had some of that, but not to the same extent, and it seems to be fading now. Japanese children do as much homework in a day as American children do in a week, according to The Economist. Here in Norway it has been proposed to abolish homework entirely.

To return to what may be the world’s strangest man, Ryuho Okawa, you can (and almost certainly will) be wary of his claims to be a god from outer space and able to summon the spirits of everyone who has ever lived on Earth (and probably Venus as well). But anyone who has written 800 books and reads 1000 books a year is definitely a genius, and probably the closest we come to a “universal genius” these days. Although the words of Aristotle come unbidden to mind: “No great genius has ever existed without a touch of madness.”

It may be that the price of being a universal genius is a touch of universal madness. That would be a high price indeed. Of course, madness may be partly at least in the eye of the beholder. According to the Gospel, Jesus’ family thought he had lost his mind when he was out preaching. I have acquaintances even today who hold the same view on him. And while I am just barely extraordinary myself, I would not be surprised if people are already getting suspicious. Not least after an entry like this. ^_^

 

Stupid, ignorant fools!

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Don’t get it? Color me unsurprised.

“Stupid, ignorant fools!” Does today’s title sound like someone you know? Perhaps like a good many people you know? It should, for it is the human condition. If I am a little wiser than the average, it is largely in this that I am aware of the foolishness in myself as well as others.

There are the great thinkers of history, of course. I would be a real fool to not admit that they tower above me intellectually. But they were also limited. Aristotle was one of the founders of philosophy as we know it; he thought you could choose to have a boychild or a girlchild by tying off the appropriate testicle. Martin Luther, no matter what you think of the Reformation, was a great scholar, speaker and linguist; he was also a raging anti-semite.

As I have previously quoted C.S. Lewis on, by reading the books of previous ages we realize that each age has its own particular myth-takes which are accepted without question at the time, but not in our time and not even in other ages before and after. And unless we are complete morons, we should begin to suspect that the same is bound to be true about us.

Apart from the collective delusions, there is also the fact that we are born knowing nothing but a few basic instincts, and only live for some decades at best. It is the rare soul that stays lucid for as long as a century. Of those who do, not many have devoted themselves to knowledge and insight. Not saying that this will shorten your life – quite possibly the opposite – but few people are scholars at the best of times, and few people grow old without losing their mind. And even if you do both, there is still simply too short a time to become an expert on more than a couple things, and get a passing acquaintance with some others.

It is not like we have unlimited processing capacity in our brains, either. We learn a little more than we forget for much of our lives, but only a little more. Things we don’t understand deeply tend to fade unless we use them. And to understand things deeply, we often need to know quite a bit already. “Inspiration comes more frequently to those who make effort.”

To once again quote Ryuho Okawa (although this may well be a familiar view in Japan), you should not consider yourself an intellectual until you have read a thousand books. I would assume fluffy entertainment and trashy romance novels don’t count in that number, but a lot of people would not reach it even then. How then can one think himself a scholar on a particular topic without having read at least a hundred books from various sources? I hope I have mentioned this before, but on Google+ I frequently see people who have very strong opinions. And in very nearly all cases it all comes down to the Dunning-Kruger effect: Being too ignorant to realize even that one is ignorant.

I am convinced it is hard to have a strong opinion on, for instance, Islam or Mormonism once you’ve read a couple *dozen* books by insiders, outsiders, friends and enemies of the faith. What I don’t really know is what happens once you have read a couple *hundred* books on the topic. Are you still uncertain? I think perhaps not. But I do not know:  There is no single topic I have read hundreds of books on. I tend to flit from one topic to another, so I am at best a jack of a few trades but a master of none. So perhaps you are certain – but something I know, even if you are certain, you deeply understand the views you disagree with. Now that I think about it, Aristotle said the same: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

Quick note on that ancient proverb. What you find with the people with the intense opinions is that they have latched on to a thought and accepted it, then either simply not come across an opposing view, or shunning the opposing view. Usually, they are not able to entertain the opposite thought because that would be like accepting it. There is nothing morally wrong with this when used rightly: If you have found a virtue you should not seek a vice. But intellectually speaking, it becomes wrong, because the burden of an intellectual is to see things from many sides. Not necessarily to live many different lives: Life is too short for this, and it may be bad in other ways too. But the price of being an “educated mind” is to be exposed to lies, lots and lots of them. The reward is sometimes knowing them for lies, when you would otherwise not.

Even if you are educated in the most literal sense, having a Ph.D or some such, that actually only tells something about your mastery of one particular field. You probably also have had to sit through some more general classes, of course, but that may be a while ago and their impression on you may not have been all that deep. I see from time to time people who are experts in one field and make bold statements about unrelated fields of which they are clearly ignorant. Having a long education or even having contributed noticeably to the world does not make you a universal genius. And even if you are that, you may still end up saying something stupid. That’s human nature.

We all make mistakes, walking in twilight at best compared to the blinding light of absolute Truth. But we should not stop trying to chase truth and wisdom, even if our progress is like that of the snail. If we do not, then who? And if not truth and wisdom, then what?

 

 

The miracle of understanding

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If only I could transfer understanding like that! But in this world, understanding is quite unpredictable even if all involved do their best, not to mention when not.

Last spring I wrote in one entry: “Madness is not the only danger in books. There is also the danger that something may be understood that can never be forgotten.” But what is this unique experience of understanding something, that suddenly makes a permanent change, completely different from the normal mode of learning?

It occurred to me recently that if understanding was not already widely accepted as a fact, it would fail the Randi bet.  Former “stage magician” (illusionist) James Randi has organized a standing prize of $1 million to whoever can prove supernatural or paranormal powers or events in a controlled test environment. So far nobody has run off with the prize, although some have complained about the conditions. Generally, the supernatural event must be predictable, so that one can ensure that it takes place during the experiment. It must be repeatable, so that it is not just a chance occurrence. And it must be unusual. It is on the last count that understanding (barely?) would be rejected at the outset. But actually it would not fit the other two either.

As I am sure any teacher can testify, there is a big difference between rote learning and understanding. Learning – such as memorizing vocabulary in a foreign language – follows a predictable curve. The amplitude of the curve may vary from person to person, but the shape of the curve is the same for nearly all. In contrast, understanding may or may not occur at all. It is certainly not possible to predict exactly when someone will understand something difficult. It may be today, tomorrow, next year or never. Furthermore, once you have understood it, the event is not repeatable: You cannot un-understand something simply by waiting, the way you can do with French irregular verbs. Once it clicks into place, it takes extreme measures to wipe it out.

If this is the case with scholarly topics such as special relativity, it is even more so with moral and emotional understanding. I have repeatedly mentioned how my life changed in a matter of minutes one day while I was reading a tract by Elias Aslaksen about the way to react. Until then, I had been like almost all children: If you insulted me, I would fly into a rage. My oldest brother had made this a routine amusement, it seems to me. But at that time – I think I was 15, but it may have been the year before – as I was sitting in my grandfather’s rocking chair, my view of life changed completely. I realized with blinding clarity that no one else can lift my hand. (Well, technically they can, but I mean they can’t do so by words or gestures.) I was responsible for how I acted, it did not matter what others had done to me. As long as I was alive and in control of my own body, I was the one who could – and must – decide what it would do.

This did not automatically change my life completely, but pretty drastically. There are certain reactions that are bordering on instinct, but even there a range of different actions exist. This understanding has continued to spread through my life, but its actual creation – or whatever you would call it – happened in a matter of minutes at most. I rose from that chair a different and much freer person than I had been when I sat down. Yet there are people who die at a ripe old age and have never had this experience, never gained that understanding. They continue to believe that their behavior is formed by their genes or their environment or some such that they have no control over.  Of course, these things act as input on us. But there is something between the input and the output. There is a space between impulse and action. For some of us.

There are various types of understanding, but it seems to me that they are all to some extent unpredictable and non-repeatable. As such, they fall short of the Randi bet in the same way that healing by prayer or reading thoughts. These things simply don’t happen on command, but sometimes they happen when you don’t expect it at all. And to some, they don’t happen at all. But once they do, they don’t unhappen. You cannot spool life back and play it over.

So if we were to categorize it, I would say that understanding is a miracle. (And understanding between humans even more so, but let us limit ourselves to understanding things this time.) Whether it is supernatural, depends on how super you consider nature itself to be. But it can certainly feel like a magical moment.

Tech levels and gender roles

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Women warriors in plate male, from the game Skyrim. I’ve seen less realistic things. But also more.

In the current era, gender roles are a lot more loose than they used to be. The career choices, for instance, are actually choices. Female soldiers may have a tough time getting along with their male comrades (this varies a bit from country to country) but there are still a bunch of them. More and more doctors are women, although the number of male nurses have not risen to the same degree. And while most carpenters are still men, this is now largely a personal choice: You won’t become an outcast if you take an unusual job, at least if you are a woman.

When kids these days play sword and sorcery type role playing games, they are as likely to run into a female warrior or thief as a male, even though the setting of the game is “medieval”, and in the actual Middle Ages this was extremely rare. Is it simply a projection of our modern ways of thinking into the past? Why didn’t women become soldiers and adventurers in the Middle Ages?

If you think it was because of the particular religion in the Middle Ages, you are way off. The religion may have made up a cultural framework for the era, but all religions had to adapt to the real world to some degree. And in the real world, women needed to have children, lots and lots of children, to even keep the population steady.

The era of rapid population growth started only a couple centuries ago. Part of this was progress in agriculture, of course. But if starvation was what limited population size, it would have made perfect sense to have female soldiers. That way, in the unfortunate case that they fell in battle, there would be no children of them henceforth and fewer mouths to feed.

But in the real Middle Ages, and before and later as well, there were other factors that checked the population growth. One was war itself, of course. From time to time, a king would decide to invade a neighboring country which he thought he had some claim to, and armies rode off (or marched off, in the case of peasants) to do battle. While there were no weapons of mass destruction at the time, battles were quite savage. Many died on the battlefield, and others died afterwards from the wounds. (Even minor wounds were often fatal because of infections.) Thus, in order to have enough warriors at all times, it was necessary for the women to stay at home and give birth to more boys. A woman would generally be much less useful than a man on the battlefield, due to the difference in size and muscle, but if she stayed at home she could give birth to several boys who would grow up to strong warriors in the wars of the next generation.

Basically, if there were any societies that sent their women to do battle, these societies were conquered and replaced by those who did not.

In addition to death by sword, there was also death by plague. From the High Middle Ages onward, bubonic plague was a recurring scythe over Europe. Other horrors like typhoid fever and diphtheria ravaged the land later, and not least smallpox. “A pox on your house” was a curse that was quite likely to come true. While starvation made all these worse, even the well fed could not stand up to the Great Plagues. It was not uncommon in a village for farms to be empty as everyone in the house had died, or only a child or two remained to be taken in by relatives elsewhere. So if you had more than your fair share of kids, there was a decent chance that they could take over someone else’s farm, or smithy, or fishing boat. Usually a relative, of course, but for a while after the Black Death there was land enough for pretty much anyone who could work it.

With germ theory and improved hygiene, death by plague began to dwindle. While it is still a threat, we don’t think much about it right now. Maybe a new super-plague will wipe out most of the human population, in which case I suspect gender roles will begin to revert to their earlier form. I am not eager to see that hypothesis tested in practice, though.

***

 If you are planning to write a fantasy novel, or for that matter a science fiction novel, you should keep the above in mind. Basically the question is: Your population, is it limited by free will? By starvation? By plague? By war? Alien abductions? Infertility viruses? Any combination of the above?

The first of these – contraception and starvation – encourage sexual equality, as this brings population growth down. Any other limiting factors will encourage women to stay home and give birth to babies and raise them.

If food supply is the limiting factor but only temporarily, there may be other ways for society to bring down birth rates, such as women becoming nuns in large numbers. A more drastic solution is to kill female babies, to ensure that most children who grow up are warriors who can expand our lands.

So you see, if you want to have lots of chicks in chain mail, you need to do your worldbuilding right. Or you could target a stupid audience, I suppose.

 

 

Fructose revisited

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Don't mess around, we're baking here!

Don’t mess around, we’re baking here! But what kind of sugar are we using?

I have spoken out against fructose in the past, so maybe it pleases the Light that I am now looking to eat more of it. In this particular case, I cannot recommend you follow my example. But I do have a reason for what I do. It is not just because the voices in my head tell me. ^_^

I am first going to sum up some useful facts about fructose. Then I will explain why it may be useful for me and a few others like me. Finally I will argue why most people should stay away from it.

***

Fructose is a sugar that appears naturally in honey, and in fruits (thus the name) together with glucose. (The proportion varies among different types of fruit.) It is easy to create from corn (maize) and therefore very cheap in the US, where it is widely used as a sweetener.

Where fructose appears in the intestines, it is absorbed into the blood and goes to the liver, where it is given a special treatment that no other sugars get. Unlike all other sugars, fructose can be converted to fat with very little loss of energy. More exactly, the liver converts it to triglycerids which are released into the bloodstream. Hopefully fat cells will pack these away, otherwise they may settle on the inside of your arteries and bad things are likely to happen.

Approximately 20% of the fructose is converted to glucose instead and ends up as blood sugar. This is much less than ordinary cane sugar, which ends up as 80% blood sugar. If you are a diabetic or pre-diabetic, this is definitely something to consider! (I am diagnosed with pre-diabetes, so this is relevant to me.) Fructose is also almost 50% sweeter than common sugar, so for the same sweetness you get about 6 times more blood sugar with cane sugar than fructose!

High-fructose corn syrup, which is the usual sweetener in soda etc in the USA, contains both glucose and fructose. Glucose becomes blood sugar directly, so you still get a spike in blood sugar when you drink it, and then a little later you get the fat from the fructose.

***

Most people with diabetes II (late-onset diabetes) or pre-diabetes are fat, to put it bluntly. Usually you can see this at a glance, but there are also some who have the fat stored mostly around their guts and kidneys where it is not so easy to spot. It is mostly this fat that contributes to diabetes. Fat on the hips and thighs is pretty much harmless, while the fat that is scattered around on your body under your skin is somewhat dangerous but not as bad as the gut fat.

In my case, however, things are a little different. I have another illness that means I can only eat small quantities of fat. After I stopped eating normal fat-rich food in spring 2005, I lost weight for several months. At the end I had lost almost 15% of my weight, and I was only moderately overweight before. The thinner I became, the hungrier I became too. This cannot be helped, after all, the body will try to preserve itself.

Since I could no longer eat fat, I ended up eating twice as much carbs instead.  (Carbohydrates contain half as much energy as fat, and in addition much of the energy is lost when the body tries to convert it to fat. Except for fructose, as I mentioned before, which is converted almost perfectly into fat.)

The constant intake of carbs means my body is always awash in sugar. (More complex carbs are broken down into sugar before they are absorbed into the blood.) So my high blood sugar is not because my fat storage is full and cannot store away the sugar: There is plenty of room for more fat, I am well below my natural weight. Rather, the blood sugar comes from constant intake of carbs, which I have to do:  If I stopped eating carbs as well as fat, I would starve.

However, since my problem is not too much fat, I could eat fructose. The liver would convert it into fat and only 20% would become blood sugar. This would solve the pre-diabetes problem. Furthermore, because of my exercise asthma I can not exercise at high intensity, where you burn mostly carbs. My exercise is mostly in the fat-burning range.  So once again, fructose to the rescue. As long as I exercise regularly, the fat from the fructose would be burned away before it had time to settle on my arteries. Probably.

*** 

 Most of you, however, eat fat. You may not actively seek it out, but you eat ordinary food: Cakes, bread with butter or margarine, mayonnaise, steaks, sauces, fast food, chips and milk chocolate among others. Even cookies contain quite a bit of fat. When you become sensitive to fat, you discover how much fat there is in food that does not even taste fatty. Anyway, you eat fat already.

I am not a fan of the Atkins diet, but one thing it got right (for most people) is that if you eat fat, your appetite for more fat will fall. You will still happily eat something sweet, though. I am sure most of you are aware of the “dessert stomach” phenomenon: You could not eat one more bite of sausage, but you will happily eat a plate full of sugary dessert. The thing is, if you use fructose for this, your body will get far more fat than it thought. Not a good idea. You already have plenty of fat without tricking your body into eating more of it!

Of course, if you have a treadmill at your office desk as some people here in Norway have recently, you can get away with it. But if you live a sedentary life and eat fat, stay off the fructose. Leave it to us who can’t get fat the normal way, OK?

 

The other fools’ days

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Do people on your planet save each other because they want something?

“What, do people save each other on your planet just because they want something?” You could certainly get that impression sometimes. Don’t be fooled though!

I won’t write much, since this is April Fools’ day. People are naturally skeptical of whatever is written on this day. I certainly understand that.

What I’d like was if people would be skeptical of the foolishness of the other 365 days of the year. (Since it is a leap year, I mean. The other 364 next year.)

There are people trying to fool you every day. Fool you into buying something that you don’t need and which won’t make you happy. Fool you into supporting policies that will cause more misery than happiness. Fool you into believing in wrong myths that only close your mind instead of opening it to the true brightness.

For the most part, those who wish to fool you have something in common: They want something from you. Or if not, they are fooled by those who do, and are running their errands. Trace the chain of command back and see whether you find someone who wish to give or someone who wish to take. This is your best bet, I believe.This is what I was taught when I was young, and it has served me well so far.

I hope you will find that I, and the One that I revere, want to see you happy for your own sake. We do not want or need to take anything from you. But if you don’t believe me – and it is understandable if you don’t – then look at those who tower far above me. Buddha, who left a castle and a kingdom to seek Enlightenment. Moses, who chose to suffer with God’s people rather than be called Pharaoh’s daughter’s son. Jesus, who turned his back on the kingdoms of this world and all their glory, and testified that his Kingdom was not of this world. And many, many great lights throughout history, who gave without asking anything in return. This is your best bet to find someone who is not out to fool you. Let us rather become fools for your sake, than you for ours.

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.
-Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah.

An immense beyond

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A breakthrough of LightAn immense Beyond will one day burst forth and absorb the universe?

I want to share a quote from Frithjof Schuon. It is eerily double in its meaning. Perhaps you don’t find it as spine-tingling as I do, but let’s give it a try:

Our world is but a furtive and almost accidental coagulation of an immense beyond, which one day will burst forth and into which the terrestrial world will be reabsorbed when it has completed its cycle of material coagulation.

Schuon means this in a metaphysical sense; that is his area of expertise, after all. But lately, theoretical cosmologists have come to almost exactly the same description of the physical universe.

You are no doubt familiar with the “Big Bang” hypothesis about the origin of our universe. But what has gained less attention is the “cosmic inflation scenario”. In this, which is our best approximation to facts so far, the Big Bang was not actually the start of our universe. Well, it was a prerequisite for it, but the energy (for lack of a better word) of the Big Bang is not contained within our known universe. Rather, our universe appeared as a bubble of “false vacuum”, most likely one of a myriad such bubbles (although we will never be able to know, since we cannot see beyond our bubble).

Yes, what became our universe was simply a bubble in the stream that flowed from the Big Bang, a limited area that was filled with fields of potential – protoenergy, perhaps we could call it – which later coagulated into matter and energy as we know them today. The current laws of nature did not appear until this bubble universe coalesced from a field-filled bubble into actual space, time, matter and energy. (And dark matter and dark energy, presumably, about which we only know that they probably exist, not what they are.)

According to this theory, it is more probable than not that an enormous number of “universes” exist, with a varying number of dimensions, with and without matter and energy as we know them or some other waves and particles that may have a similar relation to each other as our energy and matter have in our known universe. If these universes don’t share any forces or particles that interact with ours, they could occupy the same space and time and we would never know. Of course, it is not obvious that they have space and time at all, they could have completely different dimensions.

According to the same theory, it is not at all obvious that our configuration is the most stable. If it is not, then elementary particles will eventually decay and the universe will evaporate. Or another universe might burst into ours and engulf ours, triggering a change in our natural laws that would make the universe spontaneously change into a different configuration. There is no particular reason why matter and energy should continue to exist indefinitely. There is however an extremely high probability that they will do so for many millions and even billions of years yet, so this is not exactly something scientists lose sleep over.

***

Atheists generally assume that consciousness is a more or less accidental function of matter and energy. Schuon, on the other hand, holds the opposite to be true: Consciousness is pervasive, the form it takes is accidental. In our universe, consciousness settles in certain configurations of atoms, but this could not have happened unless the universe was already permeated by consciousness. Much like energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed by natural processes, information theory says that information can also not be created or destroyed, only transformed. It is then no big leap of faith to assume the same for consciousness, as the next step up from matter – energy – information. Well, for metaphysicists it is not; for physicists, it may be too big a leap, perhaps.

But in any case, regardless of whether we will be around in some form to witness the end of the universe, it is still an amazing thing to speculate about. In a manner of speaking, our mind is already present at the Big Bang through the power of our imagination. If we were to know enough about the end of the universe, we would in a manner of speaking be able to “fore-see” it with our mind’s eye. The human mind, as I have said before, is not bound tightly to the flow of time. We constantly make jumps backward in time (memory) or forward (anticipation), showing that we ourselves belong to a higher dimension than the fourth dimension of time. If not, we could not traverse it with our mind.

This fifth dimension, through which we can break “the fourth wall”, is itself part of the immense beyond. So it seems likely, in a way, that the end of the universe need not be the end of consciousness. That said, most of us would probably prefer to stay in this “coagulated” universe as long as possible. ^_^

Everyone else too

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“I have trouble talking to people who look like they have friends” says this girl. Not all pains or disabilities are visible on the body.

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” I was surprised to see this attributed to Plato, and by all accounts this is just a way to add authority to it. It is not much over a century old. But the idea itself has certainly been true since Plato and before. It is also a fundamental tenet in Buddhism, although not a direct quote there.

If we look at it simply, we can say that people experience suffering from their body, from their mind, and from their relationship with other people. It is rare to meet anyone who does not have at least two of these three more or less constantly, or at least frequently. Some carry all three of these burdens at the same time.

Even if you do not see a person wince in pain, chances are they still have their afflictions. And if not directly painful, then certainly limiting. Some weakness of the body, or some phobia, or some obligation to a family member, may keep one from the path in life that they have always been longing for. You cannot see such a thing and will not hear about it unless you learn to know them well, perhaps. But these things are very common even among those who seem successful.

Of course there are differences, and some people are simply luckier. But it is not easy to know which. It is not always those who complain the most who carry the heaviest burden, far from it.

We should understand that everyone else too is carrying a burden, and cut them some slack at the least, if we cannot help them. Unfortunately people will sometimes lash out, not knowing the other person, adding insult to injury and salting the wounds. Sometimes we may have to act to protect one person from another, to stop an injustice, but to attack simply because we are irritated or upset is not a good thing.

One of the things I have learned from Happy Science is to notice this, that illness tends to make us self-centered. If we experience pain, the first thing we drop is helping others. This is not in itself evil, for we also have an obligation to look after our own body. If we let it continue to grow sicker because we exert ourselves, we will soon be unable to even care for ourselves, even when we otherwise could have done so. But there is a seductive side to this being excused from our duties. It is something we can get addicted to, and make use of more than is right. It may even turn into a subconscious desire to fall ill, for those who are weary of their duties and wish to relax. So that is something to be aware of.

Of course I am thinking of my own recent experiences when I say this. We each have to look out for our own tendencies and temptations first and foremost.

But even those who don’t write about it on the Net, have their struggles. Let us be kind, let us be merciful. Would we not hope to meet that kind of good will ourselves on our day of need?