By now, we all know that ingesting too much fat of just about any kind can affect one's health adversely. So, developing handy little ways to protect your cardio-vascular integrity, without breaking too much of a sweat about it, is something a smart person is going to value. Life should not be a grim odyssey of highly disciplined regimens, focused solely on keeping the physical entity alive, while the fun-loving, relaxed side of one's spirit languishes.
Now, here's a fact that some might not know: fat, in it's many forms, is essential to your well-being!
That's right. Your physical complex needs to take in fat to be able to make your day better by keeping your psychological complex well oiled. Without fat, your nervous system is a veritable basket case of needless discomfort. Without fat, your body has to work a lot harder to give you the energy to function in a way where you aren't noticing how tired you are and how hard it is to keep going on what you need to get finished. People with too little fat to run on are MORE prone to disease conditions than those who have a little more than they need.
So, clearly, you have to keep a balanced intake of fat going. Experts tell you this fat or that is better for you and stipulate how much you should be allowing yourself to ingest. That's a good start, but most of us aren't going to be that attentive to what we eat as we do everything we can to enjoy the life we have, and the ones who are that attentive, for the most part, don't seem to be enjoying themselves all that much. I believe the trick that we use to keep ourselves roughly on the good side of fat intake has to be a lot simpler to be widely embraced. (Drum roll here).
The secret, friends, is to cook your own delicious evening dinner, leave plates, pans and dishes right there, go to bed, sleep, wake up, have a nice hot cup of your preferred beverage and then wash the dishes under a thin stream of COLD - yes, I said COLD - water, using a sponge only, NO detergent. If everything you used comes out clean, without greasy residue, and without noticeable effort, you're home free. If not, you need to change something in your cooking, like using either less, or a different kind of fat and you need to keep trying until you get it right.
Does this mean no frying or braising? Absolutely not! Food has to make your mouth water and there is no other way to make it so other than using fat as a cooking medium. In our case, for the most part, frying precedes braising and stewing. The key to great tasting food is the choreography of bringing the raw materials to the pan - first this and then that and son on - using the right temperature for the job and knowing when to take the pan off the heat. In that way, fats are incorporated into the end result in a virtually seamless process of amalgamation. Of that kind of food, you can have seconds and not wake up in the middle of the night with heartburn.
Adding vegetables to meats is essential. Sorry, carnivorous types, but that's an inescapable law of the universe.
Hey, we're not kill-joys over here. Life affords us a beautiful abundance of gustatory delights and we should indulge ourselves in those things with grace and gratitude. Take fat out of the picture and the whole thing dims to a shadow of its true glory. So eat fat, by all means, but do it most often in the context of your own cooking. Afterwards wash up with COLD water only and a sponge (keep that sponge clean, squeeze it dry after use and place it scouring side down too dry). The results of your efforts will tell you whether you're within fat intake limits, or not. Simple as that.
Arguably, this little tip has the potential to do more good for people than all the other, more complicated issues I generally turn my writing to.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Friday, August 26, 2016
Independent confirmation of a post in this blog from a high place
I know that practically nobody checks out what I post here and so, since that's the case, I might as well let it all hang out, for once. It's something like playing before an empty house; if I step over the line of tact and brag some about being right, no great damage will result. When you get corroboration from some highly credentialed party of an idea the arose out of your own life-informed deliberations, you have a right to say, "See, I'm not just some dumb shit with delusions of visionary grandeur, spouting forth. Great minds DO think alike and, man, I am ever so tired of being humored as an oddball gadfly, out there in some wobbly orbit, grabbing at tendentious threads but devoid of real intellectual grasp on the bigger picture of things work, or less than qualified to make a proposal that might actually be useful in helping to make the world a better home for humankind.
It's a reaction from people that I've had to deal with all my life, from the days I was teased for being overly intellectual while in boarding school, 55 years ago, until today. Strangely, I just can't figure it out. It could well be a problem of inadequate presence. Being thin and not very tall, with an unusually soft voice is not a combination that leads people to sit back and pay attention, intellect notwithstanding. I've never once been offered a paid position where the product of my innately intellectual mind earned me a decent paycheck. Rather, I found myself being shunted into roles where I was required to use it for generally stupid purposes, like stocking grocery shelves in a more pleasing way, or managing other people's throw-aways for the lowest ecological impact, because they were too lazy or indifferent to do it themselves. For some reason, I never managed the trick of engendering the patronage of those who could help me climb out of the humble circumstances I've grown accustomed to having to deal with, even if I don't actually accept them as fitting for the two of us, Rachel and me.
That's why it's really nice to find my own eccentric convictions echoed in the words of others who have managed to make themselves into respected authorities on certain topics.
The post of mine that I'm referring to is the one I wrote on lateral giving - the kind of financial help you get from people who actually DO care about your well-being enough to give you what you happen to be in need of (as opposed just saying they care about you). The person of intellectual authority from whom corroborating statements come is Paul Niehaus, champion of the idea of direct, non-controllist giving, through the organization Give Directly. There are many Google headlines to choose from. I'll let you come to your own conclusions on what he has to say about what he believes in.
The point he makes that I really like is that the poor are, in almost all cases, the best authorities on the peculiarities of their lives, better than any organization, regardless of funding, could ever hope to be. The poor aren't some nebulous, helpless mass; they're sentient individuals who are living very closely held lives, financially speaking, with little or no room for error or waste. They know, far better, how to stretch the value gained from a dollar than almost any rich person does. I totally cop to that one. It's the very life Rachel, my partner, and I have lived for decades. Having to do without things others take for granted is the life we live, all the time. We know how that sharpens your wits. When you live poor for a long time, you constantly seek and find ways to make the limits of poverty work better for you. And when you do so, your impact on the planetary environment shrinks to a tiny fraction of what the average rich person burns through.
Who better to determine how a certain individual stuck in poverty should choose to use money than that individual him- or herself?
Rich people who base their disinclination to help a poor person in need on lame excuses like, " They just use it to buy alcohol", instead of just coming out with it and saying, "Fuck them, they're just losers and I don't give a shit what happens to them, because I don't value them" - which is really what they mean - get my goat; especially the ones who have no trouble liking a drink themselves. The rich drink like fish. Are the poor not entitled to the comfort of strong drink too? Lord knows, they could use a little comfort and if strong drink does it for them, so be it. In fact, I know it too. In fact, I'm getting a little upset just writing this and will take a few seconds for a sip of red wine to allay that uncomfortable surge that inner rage stirs in my blood. That's better. What kind of self-righteous, sanctimonious fuckhead would deny a poor man the chance to sooth his inner devils with a little rotted fruit juice? As if abstinence were equivalent to virtuousness. Abstinence is simply the doing of nothing. Rarely is there any virtue in doing nothing. I'll tell you what is virtuous in the extreme - generosity, the generosity to give without condition or subsequent judgment. Now, THAT'S virtuous.
Thank God there are still a few of that kind of giver around because, if there weren't - I'll say it out loud and clear - I'd be long dead, either of exposure induced illness as a homeless dude, or from outright starvation.
The benefactors of whom I speak have been many. They are not forgotten and my hope is that somehow, somewhere, my good referrals on their behalf is being noted for future reference by such authorities who regulate the conditions that await us beyond this life.
It's a reaction from people that I've had to deal with all my life, from the days I was teased for being overly intellectual while in boarding school, 55 years ago, until today. Strangely, I just can't figure it out. It could well be a problem of inadequate presence. Being thin and not very tall, with an unusually soft voice is not a combination that leads people to sit back and pay attention, intellect notwithstanding. I've never once been offered a paid position where the product of my innately intellectual mind earned me a decent paycheck. Rather, I found myself being shunted into roles where I was required to use it for generally stupid purposes, like stocking grocery shelves in a more pleasing way, or managing other people's throw-aways for the lowest ecological impact, because they were too lazy or indifferent to do it themselves. For some reason, I never managed the trick of engendering the patronage of those who could help me climb out of the humble circumstances I've grown accustomed to having to deal with, even if I don't actually accept them as fitting for the two of us, Rachel and me.
That's why it's really nice to find my own eccentric convictions echoed in the words of others who have managed to make themselves into respected authorities on certain topics.
The post of mine that I'm referring to is the one I wrote on lateral giving - the kind of financial help you get from people who actually DO care about your well-being enough to give you what you happen to be in need of (as opposed just saying they care about you). The person of intellectual authority from whom corroborating statements come is Paul Niehaus, champion of the idea of direct, non-controllist giving, through the organization Give Directly. There are many Google headlines to choose from. I'll let you come to your own conclusions on what he has to say about what he believes in.
The point he makes that I really like is that the poor are, in almost all cases, the best authorities on the peculiarities of their lives, better than any organization, regardless of funding, could ever hope to be. The poor aren't some nebulous, helpless mass; they're sentient individuals who are living very closely held lives, financially speaking, with little or no room for error or waste. They know, far better, how to stretch the value gained from a dollar than almost any rich person does. I totally cop to that one. It's the very life Rachel, my partner, and I have lived for decades. Having to do without things others take for granted is the life we live, all the time. We know how that sharpens your wits. When you live poor for a long time, you constantly seek and find ways to make the limits of poverty work better for you. And when you do so, your impact on the planetary environment shrinks to a tiny fraction of what the average rich person burns through.
Who better to determine how a certain individual stuck in poverty should choose to use money than that individual him- or herself?
Rich people who base their disinclination to help a poor person in need on lame excuses like, " They just use it to buy alcohol", instead of just coming out with it and saying, "Fuck them, they're just losers and I don't give a shit what happens to them, because I don't value them" - which is really what they mean - get my goat; especially the ones who have no trouble liking a drink themselves. The rich drink like fish. Are the poor not entitled to the comfort of strong drink too? Lord knows, they could use a little comfort and if strong drink does it for them, so be it. In fact, I know it too. In fact, I'm getting a little upset just writing this and will take a few seconds for a sip of red wine to allay that uncomfortable surge that inner rage stirs in my blood. That's better. What kind of self-righteous, sanctimonious fuckhead would deny a poor man the chance to sooth his inner devils with a little rotted fruit juice? As if abstinence were equivalent to virtuousness. Abstinence is simply the doing of nothing. Rarely is there any virtue in doing nothing. I'll tell you what is virtuous in the extreme - generosity, the generosity to give without condition or subsequent judgment. Now, THAT'S virtuous.
Thank God there are still a few of that kind of giver around because, if there weren't - I'll say it out loud and clear - I'd be long dead, either of exposure induced illness as a homeless dude, or from outright starvation.
The benefactors of whom I speak have been many. They are not forgotten and my hope is that somehow, somewhere, my good referrals on their behalf is being noted for future reference by such authorities who regulate the conditions that await us beyond this life.
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
The principal, plain and simple reason America's disastrous wealth dichotomy continues to grow and resist being fixed
A life spent yearning to be poor no longer is not necessarily an opportunity wasted. It keeps prodding one to understand how that happened to you and to look for keys in the workings of the national life we all share together - broadly, unchallenged social constructs - that keep America stuck in a self-destructive state, obstructing it from moving towards a condition where the difference between what wealthiest class has, versus the poorest, is far less extreme.
I have long sought that magic bullet - a short pithy argument - that would streak straight into the dark heart of the Frankenstinian complex of our most damaging shared misconceptions. Today, it came to me.
America will only get sicker until it learns to face the truth that no great nation can ever endure as long as those earning below the median permanently forfeit more of what they earn to the challenge of housing themselves than those above that line. The key to fully comprehending this grotesque reality lies in understanding the role that home ownership plays in preserving and expanding individual and family held equity (roughly, the total potential value of the things one owns that can be sold for money plus the cash one has).
The average American will spend about 65 years having to pay for a safe roof over his or her head. That translates into 780 months. Currently, in any one of the top fifty cities to live in in America (one per state, average), the average monthly rent paid by the individual for housing is around $800. Rents don't fluctuate to the same degree over time that house prices do, so that figure is a pretty reliable extrapolative tool. Census records show that a little more than half the people in the US live in rented housing. Of those, around 8 in 10 rent or are compelled to rent because the action of coming up with the down payment needed to initiate buying a home (as opposed to just making payments, after having concluded a purchase) is not within their financial reach. The approximate number of Americans who fall into this broad category is 130 million. Each, reaching the end of his/her life as a permanent renter - often penniless and on state assistance - will, on average, have shelled out an amount equivalent in today's money of $624,000 or $1,248,000 per couple, with nothing in held equity to show for that huge outlay that can be exchanged for cash, and nothing to leave as assistance to their heirs.
Rich Americans, in total contrast, play a much more sophisticated and financially rewarding game with their need for housing. Leaving aside the ridiculously rich who don't need to care if they lose a few million on some ill-chosen piece of real estate, most of the simply rich use the houses they buy to live in to get significantly richer, often ending their lives doing a reverse mortgage on some insanely expensive piece of real estate which they either get to live in as the cash-out winds toward its end point, or deed to their surviving heirs.
Nothing puts the lie to the vaunted boast of American class mobility like this dichotomy.
The stark contrast between these two outcomes tends to transfer an equally stark contrast in wealth outcomes for the survivors of these two radically different classes of home occupants. That dichotomy in outcomes for survivors inevitably rolls over into the larger nationwide dichotomy between the wealthy and the poor. In fact, if there is any greater contributing factor to that lamentable outcome, I'd sure like some genius to fill me in on the details of what it is. Most often, the simplest explanation is the best one.
If government would like to see the wealth dichotomy reduced, (it professes to), it might get up off its generally lazy intellectual rump and look somewhat harder for ways to mitigate those factors of our social system that lead Americans to exploit the need for housing in trying to make the kind of money that most cannot hope to earn in ordinary employment. Across the board leveling actions need to be added to the general mix of how our society works, with great care taken to ensure that it does not adversely affect net employment created by private enterprise. This is not some socialist, pie-in-the-sky wish. The whole point of it would be to free up money held by the average person and redirect it away from the rapacious housing sector towards the consumer products-and-services sector. The overall effect of such actions would help free enterprise by increasing the money supply on the demand side of the economy (outside of housing), particularly among younger adults. There would be a shift in the general shape of the economy, with a greater variety and number of jobs created for each million dollars diverted out of the housing sector toward other forms of enterprise.
It's just that simple.
The day the average poorer person parts with less for a lifetime of being housed than the average richer person will be the day the New American Economy begins.
So why is it proving so hard to get the ball rolling? Because, whether they're rich or poor, the great majority of Americans cherish the daydream of making it big someday, the easy way and, unless you're close to brain-dead, you know that real estate is the most accessible way to get rich at other people's expense, either by selling a property at the right time to some sucker who believes the right time is still a few years ahead, when the last buyer will be left holding the baby during a downturn - sort of like in a pyramid scheme - or by renting to suckers who are always a dollar short and a day late of being able to buy a house and who simply can't face moving one more time.
We're little better than a nation of hucksters. It's in the blood. The less risk-enthralled remained behind in the countries that waves of immigrants came from.
But time is running out. The game of appropriating the luck of dupes in an entirely legal way is headed at speed toward a crown fire of social rage. This new generation of young adults, fleeced at every turn, is well aware that the rules are stacked against them having any chance at becoming as comfortable as as their parents were at the same age. They're about ready to burn the place to the ground, politically speaking. They see capitalism as the enemy, even as they try to use it to make a living (if you can call it that). To increasing numbers of them, unbridled socialism is the answer. The subtle truth that capitalism depends upon a socialistically-maintained material/legal infrastructure which depends upon capitalistic success for the tax revenue that is its lifeblood, making the two systems interdependent, lacks visceral appeal. Kicking somebody's ass, on the other hand, has great visceral appeal. You can see it all coming like a sucker punch in a slow motion snippet.
Before it's too late for reasonable minds to prevail, those currently in the winner's seat had better make this thing called America work better for all or sit down and start planning living compounds like the rich have in places Americans are too scared to visit.
I have long sought that magic bullet - a short pithy argument - that would streak straight into the dark heart of the Frankenstinian complex of our most damaging shared misconceptions. Today, it came to me.
America will only get sicker until it learns to face the truth that no great nation can ever endure as long as those earning below the median permanently forfeit more of what they earn to the challenge of housing themselves than those above that line. The key to fully comprehending this grotesque reality lies in understanding the role that home ownership plays in preserving and expanding individual and family held equity (roughly, the total potential value of the things one owns that can be sold for money plus the cash one has).
The average American will spend about 65 years having to pay for a safe roof over his or her head. That translates into 780 months. Currently, in any one of the top fifty cities to live in in America (one per state, average), the average monthly rent paid by the individual for housing is around $800. Rents don't fluctuate to the same degree over time that house prices do, so that figure is a pretty reliable extrapolative tool. Census records show that a little more than half the people in the US live in rented housing. Of those, around 8 in 10 rent or are compelled to rent because the action of coming up with the down payment needed to initiate buying a home (as opposed to just making payments, after having concluded a purchase) is not within their financial reach. The approximate number of Americans who fall into this broad category is 130 million. Each, reaching the end of his/her life as a permanent renter - often penniless and on state assistance - will, on average, have shelled out an amount equivalent in today's money of $624,000 or $1,248,000 per couple, with nothing in held equity to show for that huge outlay that can be exchanged for cash, and nothing to leave as assistance to their heirs.
Rich Americans, in total contrast, play a much more sophisticated and financially rewarding game with their need for housing. Leaving aside the ridiculously rich who don't need to care if they lose a few million on some ill-chosen piece of real estate, most of the simply rich use the houses they buy to live in to get significantly richer, often ending their lives doing a reverse mortgage on some insanely expensive piece of real estate which they either get to live in as the cash-out winds toward its end point, or deed to their surviving heirs.
Nothing puts the lie to the vaunted boast of American class mobility like this dichotomy.
The stark contrast between these two outcomes tends to transfer an equally stark contrast in wealth outcomes for the survivors of these two radically different classes of home occupants. That dichotomy in outcomes for survivors inevitably rolls over into the larger nationwide dichotomy between the wealthy and the poor. In fact, if there is any greater contributing factor to that lamentable outcome, I'd sure like some genius to fill me in on the details of what it is. Most often, the simplest explanation is the best one.
If government would like to see the wealth dichotomy reduced, (it professes to), it might get up off its generally lazy intellectual rump and look somewhat harder for ways to mitigate those factors of our social system that lead Americans to exploit the need for housing in trying to make the kind of money that most cannot hope to earn in ordinary employment. Across the board leveling actions need to be added to the general mix of how our society works, with great care taken to ensure that it does not adversely affect net employment created by private enterprise. This is not some socialist, pie-in-the-sky wish. The whole point of it would be to free up money held by the average person and redirect it away from the rapacious housing sector towards the consumer products-and-services sector. The overall effect of such actions would help free enterprise by increasing the money supply on the demand side of the economy (outside of housing), particularly among younger adults. There would be a shift in the general shape of the economy, with a greater variety and number of jobs created for each million dollars diverted out of the housing sector toward other forms of enterprise.
It's just that simple.
The day the average poorer person parts with less for a lifetime of being housed than the average richer person will be the day the New American Economy begins.
So why is it proving so hard to get the ball rolling? Because, whether they're rich or poor, the great majority of Americans cherish the daydream of making it big someday, the easy way and, unless you're close to brain-dead, you know that real estate is the most accessible way to get rich at other people's expense, either by selling a property at the right time to some sucker who believes the right time is still a few years ahead, when the last buyer will be left holding the baby during a downturn - sort of like in a pyramid scheme - or by renting to suckers who are always a dollar short and a day late of being able to buy a house and who simply can't face moving one more time.
We're little better than a nation of hucksters. It's in the blood. The less risk-enthralled remained behind in the countries that waves of immigrants came from.
But time is running out. The game of appropriating the luck of dupes in an entirely legal way is headed at speed toward a crown fire of social rage. This new generation of young adults, fleeced at every turn, is well aware that the rules are stacked against them having any chance at becoming as comfortable as as their parents were at the same age. They're about ready to burn the place to the ground, politically speaking. They see capitalism as the enemy, even as they try to use it to make a living (if you can call it that). To increasing numbers of them, unbridled socialism is the answer. The subtle truth that capitalism depends upon a socialistically-maintained material/legal infrastructure which depends upon capitalistic success for the tax revenue that is its lifeblood, making the two systems interdependent, lacks visceral appeal. Kicking somebody's ass, on the other hand, has great visceral appeal. You can see it all coming like a sucker punch in a slow motion snippet.
Before it's too late for reasonable minds to prevail, those currently in the winner's seat had better make this thing called America work better for all or sit down and start planning living compounds like the rich have in places Americans are too scared to visit.
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