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Unexpected Fruits

Cucumbers, tomatoes, melons, pumpkins, dates, strawberries, chili peppers, allspice, eggplant, lychee nuts, pepper, rosehips -- all fruits. Any gourd or melon, anything with a seed in it, that can be eaten. A fruit is, technically, an ovary. Yum. Sometimes it ripens into a shell, sometimes into something leathery or papery, sometimes into something juicy enough to recognize as a fruit. What's the big deal about fruit?

There is the large class of things with seeds. All fruits have seeds. All nuts have seeds. All nuts are fruits ... in a sense: with some nuts the part we would think of as the fruit, the ovary wall, is the shell, and we don't eat shells. A true nut is a type of seed where the actual "fruit" cannot be separated. Chestnuts and hazelnuts. Pretty small category, if we limit it the biological definition. But we shouldn't. A walnut is not a true nut -- the shell is separated and we eat the seed but not the fruit. Likewise, almonds, cashews, pistachios -- they are the seeds of nuts. But come on, they're nuts. A coconut is the seed of a nut.

As we all loved to remind people when we were 12, bananas are legumes. But legumes are fruits. We eat the seed and toss the fruit, the peel, the pod. Same with peanuts. Peas, alfalfa, lentils, beans, carob -- legumes are fruits. Same with cereal grains, wheat, corn, rice -- they are technically fruits. The fruit wall is fused and uselessly thin, and what's edible is the seed, but they're fruit.

Nuts? They, like obvious fruits, have a strategy. For animals: eat my nuts, but forget about some that you hide so they will grow. With humans the strategy is just as easy: eat my nuts, notice how useful I am, and plant orchards of me. It's the same deal that fruit trees make. Philosophically we can think of them as fruit.

It seems that human food is anything a tree or vine or bush produces that can be eaten. Likewise with berries and gourds and melons -- such vines and bushes are a subclass of fruit tree. Grains, however, do not come from trees. They come from grasses. Just different. Same with vegetables (the bodies of plants), and herbs (the leaves and twigs). Edible, but not quite the same as fruit.

Did you know that we have the gene to make vitamin C? We, and the higher primates. It's mutated though, and silent, and useless. Best evidence now, and pretty clearly correct, is that there was a pandemic virus that attacked the vitamin C gene in all species that had a sufficiently close gene-design. This is obvious from the fact that many of the passerine, perching/songbirds also have lost the ability to produce vitamin C, according to no intelligible evolutionary-mutation pattern. This argues for a non-random mutagenic cause -- ie, one that attacks various but similar species.

Point is, we are not what we once were. Maybe there are vitamins that we don't even know about, that we used to get from some common food, a fruit from a tree, a tree as it were of life. Now extinct. Some essential nutrient, for heart health, for brain function, for cancer repair. How long might we live, given nutrition that is no longer possible?

Conclusion? We live in an ad hoc world. We don't live by the old rules. Mass extinctions have withered the orchard. We have to find our nutrients where we may. Because we too are not what we were made to be. Meat? Sure, if it's necessary. Grains? Likewise. Moderation in almost all things. We wouldn't want to eat just apples, either. We've got to use some common sense -- which is not, alas, governed and guaranteed by appetite.

So we look at the nutritional content of a food, relative to the amount of calories and ease of digestion, and weigh that against taste, and get busy composing a livable, sustainable menu. It doesn't come from infonutrients, the proprietorial products that promise the moon, the sun and the stars, all in a ruby red or emerald green powder. The guy who's trying to sell you the incredible Infinite Dinosaurs Program™!!! which is just the bomb -- he has a capitalist motive. Not a bad thing, in itself. But we hope for a quality product at a reasonable price -- ethical capitalism. There is no fantastic new revolutionary mega supplement energy drink, PrimaVita-C Mutation Negation Libation™ (do not feed to canaries) , that will hyper repair your genetic macro deficiencies, so get it now, while supplies last. Don't ACT NOW!!!, because it's a ripoff.

A little common sense. Magic bullets are magic. Do you believe in magic? We believe in solid nutrition and effective exercise. You've heard about how adults are supposed to get some number of servings of fruits and vegetables every day. Less than 20% of grownups meet even the minimum requirement. What are the rest of them thinking? If they won't eat right, how do they expect to be healthy?

 It's so obvious. Yet, somehow, it's hard. If you have an adult-supply of skepticism, you don't believe in magic, and you care about evidence and results. Be effective and you will feel the difference, immediately. Promises are easy, but they're easy to test, too. At least this one is.

Be excellent.


CrossFit Burbank

Jack LaLanne

Died, January 23, 2011, age 96.

He invented the leg extension machine, and the smith machine, and the weight stack, and cable pulls, and jumping jacks. He invented the idea of the fitness health club. He had a right to be self-assured. He didn't eat meat. No dairy. No white bread. No sugar. Lots of fruits and vegetables. Worked out for two hours daily. He stopped towing submarines across the Straits of Hormuz for his birthday, but into his nineties he was still looking pretty good. A bit shaky, advertising his juicers, but looking good. His philosophy was  simple unto simplistic, and not entirely up-to-date -- but he was right.

There's talk in certain circles about the genetic lifespan of humanity being 120 years. The evidence for this conclusion is not convincing. There seems to be exactly one honest record of such a thing, outside of the Bible. All those ancient Russians and Turks and Nepalese are just lying about their age to gullible anthropologists. That is after all what happened to Margaret Mead, so why not? Theoretical expectations don't seem to meet real world demands.

Old age is unavoidable, if you live that long. Jack L looked really good for nearly a hundred, but he didn't look 60. He looked like a pretty good mid-70s. That's two decades he shaved off his apparent age. Pretty good. But time's ragged hand mars every lotus. We'd like to see vigor thrive like the sunrise. It just seems like that's what should happen. It doesn't.

We get wiser, some of us, but we will never again be what we were, or might have been had we tended after ourselves properly. How can we regret sunsets, though? As much as to mourn our disbelief in Santa Claus. We pass through stages, and regret for this fact must itself be a stage through which we pass. Our beauty will crumble, even such great beauty as yours, and your power will fail, unshaken though it now may be. There never has been an empire that has lasted. All that remains is the land, and even land succumbs to tide. There comes a day when we realize that all our school teachers are dead.

The care we take of ourselves -- diet, exercise, morals, morale -- that's part of our character. Stewardship. Integrity isn't just about business transactions. Pig-out on cream puffs? Sure. The once-in-a-while things aren't likely to do much harm, just like the passing of a moment doesn't make you that much older. But they do add up, these bon bons, these moments. And you find yourself old, if not sick.

Jack L said, "There are two things that people have in their lives that will never fail: pride and discipline." Well, he was a man who constructed himself out of pride. And he certainly didn't actually mean "never". But he was a motivational speaker, and short declarative sentences motivate.

Almost everything fails. Our bodies will fail. Our intellect will fail. But we don't fail until our character fails. That's another aspect of what fitness is. It's something that needs to be tended. We nurture it, or we become decrepit. There is an old age that has its own vitality. Mostly, it's a blessing that we bestow upon ourselves. Moderation, sensible diet, sensible exercise -- but it's a sort of jealous guarding of something valuable, too.

Competence identifies and clarifies goals, and then achieves them. It's a balance between the short- and the long-term. We've just looked at the long view. If you live that long, you'll be old. It can be an ugly thing. But it can be inspirational, too. Know what? You can be like that.  The best dreams are the ones we turn into plans.  Sensible diet, sensible exercise.  Seems like a reasonable place to start.

Be excellent.



Still Crazy

President Garfield was killed by Charles Julius Guiteau,
who wanted to be made ambassador to Paris. When his dream was dashed by the cold reality of his complete lack of qualifications -- like, sanity -- God told him to buy a gun. Having plagiarized a book on theology, Guiteau counted himself sensitive to the Lord's will, secured a revolver -- not as pearl-handled as he had wished -- and killed Garfield. At trial his defense was that he was legally but not medically insane. All the while he was planning his triumphal post-trial lecture tour and campaign to run for president in 1884. On the scaffold, he asked for an orchestra to play so he could sing a poem he had written: "I Am Going to the Lordy."

McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz,
anarchist of the Emma Goldman flock. The president had to die because, uh, there are rich people. Bang. Czolgosz was electrocuted, zap, his body dissolved in sulfuric acid and his papers and clothes were burned. Good riddance.

Kennedy? Well aside from the Mafia, which does not exist, and the CIA, and Castro and Johnson,
and, uh, all the others involved in the conspiracy, like the Dallas police, there was Oswald.
Who was a Marxist.

Theodore Roosevelt was shot but not killed by John Flammang Schrank.
TR, with a bullet lodged in his chest, continued to give his speech, for another ninety minutes. As for Schrank, he wrote poetry and was told by God in a dream to avenge McKinley's death. So, of course, what else could he do? He spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum.

FDR was shot at by Giuseppe Zangara,
a delusional bricklayer, who instead shot five other people, killed a woman and Anton Cermak the mayor of Chicago, who threw himself into the line of fire. Zangara's motive: he hated rich and powerful people. Madness? Who can say.

Truman was shot at by Puerto Rican leftists, Oscar Collazo, right,
and Griselio Torresola.

Ford was shot at by Manson freak Squeaky Fromme
and by SLA radical Sarah Jane Moore.

Samuel Byck
-- a Sean Penn look-alike
-- was a psychiatric patient, who tried to join the Black Panthers and also incidentally wanted to fly a plane into the White House, to kill Nixon because the government conspired to oppress the poor. He killed the pilot and co-pilot, then himself. Bang bang bang.

Reagan was shot by John Hinkley
to impress Jody Foster.
The madman thought that Jody might be interested in a man of his caliber.

Saddam Hussein
tried to get HW. So, another madman.

Frank Corder,
a drug dealer, tried to fly a plane into Clinton. Francisco Duran
fired 29 rounds at what he thought was Clinton. Tourists tackled him. His defense at trial was that he was trying to save the world from a mist fed by an umbilical cord connected to a space alien hidden in the lofty mountains of Colorado. He might not have been insane.

Robert Pickett,
emotionally problematic and employmentally aggrieved, stood this side of the fence and unloaded a handgun at the W White House. Sentenced to three years. The gun got off scot free again. Then on 9-11, aside from other notable events, some dudes tried to sneak into Bush's motel room in Florida.

These two pasty geniuses,
Paul Schlesselman and Daniel Cowart, complete with swastica tattoos, had it against Obama, as did these three, Shawn Adolf, Tharin Gartrell and Dwaine Johnson,
also geniuses.

So that's about it then. Everyone who's gone for a president. But it just seems like maybe ... maybe there's another one? OH! LOL!!! How silly!!!!!! LINCOLN! HAHAHAHA!!!!!! Killed by a man who thought slavery was a very good thing.

Assassins are all insane, or extremists, or potheads. People who listen to their delusions and want ambassadorships for which they are not qualified. Well. There is craziness that does not lead to murder. Dishonesty is a sort of madness. Reality should be affirmed, after all. The political blame-game is nothing but shameful. Let's not be shameful. Let's be, oh, say, excellent. And integrity applies to the physical as well as to character -- to lifestyle as well as philosophy.

So? No blame. Accountability. Sensible exercise, sensible diet. No excuses, only valid reasons. You do know what that leads to. It leads to excellence. So?

Be excellent.


CrossFit Burbank

Apples to Apples

The workout that the FW crew did on Jan 6 is a good demonstration of the power of the Power Grid.  Some surprising results after crunching the numbers.  Case in point:

ETo, of the Amazing Chinup Prowess, racked up a stellar total of 427 -- 134 chinups, 186 pushups and 107 ball slams.  Because each movement got 6 minutes, we can find their individual grid results:

chins: 37K workload/ 6100 power/ 25 power ratio;
pushups: 29K/ 4900/ 20
ball slams: 12K/ 2100/ 8
Workout total: 79K/ 4400/ 18 PR.

Looks unbeatable.  And it was.

But JHo's results have a few surprises.  Total points, 348 -- 77 chins, 141 pushups and 130 ball slams.  That total is like ... well, a lot less than ETo's.  So sad.  Some might say, pathetic.  They however would be wrong.  The results for the individual movements are:

chins: 26K WL/ 4400 power/ 19 PR;
pushups: 28K/ 4600/ 20;
ball slams: 16K/ 2700/ 12.
Workout total: 70K/ 3900/ 17 PR.

Analysis:  Even though JHo outperformed in the ball slams, that workload was relatively smaller, and had a small effect on the total -- regardless of the movement's subjective difficulty.  Even though ETo did 45 more pushups, when we make a pound for pound comparison, a relative power comparison, JHo and ETo performed approximately the same.  But talent will out, and ETo is a chinup prodigy.  To match his power ratio for that movement, JHo would have to do approximately 100 -- nearly 25 more.  On the other hand, to match JHo's ball slam power, ETo would have to do about 155 -- nearly 50 more.

Takeaway lesson?  There are several.  The thing that you're best at may not be enough.  Or it may make you the champion.  An apparently smashing victory may actually be rather more modest, when objectively considered.  A murky performance may turn out to have been an impressive effort.

It is unlikely that JHo, heavier and longer, would ever match ETo's raw number for this WOD.  Boo hoo.  But the Power Grid shows that to beat the pound-for-pound results for the total workout, all other things remaining the same (which they wouldn't since we do not remain static), JHo would have had to do only 8 more chinups, 85 instead of 77.  The total power ratio would then be ETo's 17.9 to JHo's hypothetical 18.0 -- instead of the 17.3 that implacable reality insists upon.

Does it matter?  Well, for all that we want to be excellent in ourselves, we want to be excellent when compared to others.  So, yes, it matters, sort of.  In this, the New Year, a new decade of a new century of a new millennium, there is much talk about resolutions.  At the root of that word is resolve.  A fierce and firm determination, unwaivering.  Talking won't do it, neither scheming, nor grand emotional declarations.  Reality, like resolve, is about doing.  So?

Be excellent.


CrossFit Burbank

Incurring Debt

Bob Dude sent FW an email, asking that it be posted, with the above title.  His email goes on and on about how effective his workouts are, now that he's adopting a different fitness modality. He says he was doing a strength workout the other night, making himself "even more gorgeous, if such a thing is possible," and a fellow he'd shown some stuff a while back was doing his thing. Sort of slow, deliberate, not actually what Bob Dude would suggest, now that he's doing things differently. He asked the fellow what his goal was, and the reply was, "Strength. And endurance." Oh. Both. With that workout. Hmm.

Well, it's possible, the way pyramids on Mars are possible, or base metal into gold. You know, where things happen in a progression that has no relationship to cause and effect -- just one thing that happens after another thing that went before, for some reason other than what logic and experience would support.

But it got Bob to thinking, he says, about what actually is the outcome of such slowish movements, like pushups from dumbbells and then you lift one of them and twist it into the air while supporting yourself on the other one. Like something you see on an infomercial about DVDs that will get you INSANELY RIPPED! There's no actual intensity -- a slightly elevated heartrate, the fellow said, and some perspiration -- we shan't call it sweat -- and some breathing ... but no intensity. But there's muscular activity, so it is exercise.

The benefit of real exercise? There are two goals. Evoking a hormonal response, which builds muscle by adding contractile protein and therefore strength; and evoking CNS efficiency, so that existing motor units fire more efficiently, resulting in agility, strength, athleticism and so on. Which of these would result from the ponderous workout the fellow was doing? There was no meaningful intensity, so there was no effective (in terms of cost-benefit, effort to outcome) hormonal response. The brain responds to the stress of intensity by causing the release of anaerobic hormones, testosterone and HGH. And there was no meaningful CNS training, since the motions were so slow, so deliberate, that they were entirely under the conscious direction of the forebrain.

If there is such a thing as passive exercise, that was it. Like passive learning, sitting in front of the TV and letting it soak in. Maybe. But if so, the last several generations should be supergeniuses. Having someone else manipulate your limbs into the semblance of an activity that requires actual motor skills may have some therapeutic benefit, like, say, if you have spinal damage. But it's exercise the way a ventriloquist act is conversation. Take charge, is the point. Participate in your pursuit of excellence. There's a cost. But there's a benefit.

The benefit of slow, not very intense exercise? Of course there is one. Of course. Long walks, brisk hikes, bowling or golf -- good pastimes that give a health benefit. Not something however that a gym, of any meaningful description, is about. Not what weights are about -- you know, added strength. Not what athleticism is about -- the mild, moderate leisure-time display seen in most glass-and-chrome gyms sucks up time, and promotes short-term self-esteem, and raises heartrate and gives a pump, but in terms of reaching actual training goals, not so much.

Nagging doesn't do any good, of course, and the observations that Bob Dude made aren't really a criticism. People can spend their time and energy as they please. Be happy. And we have to make our own mistakes, hopefully free from harsh judgments or tragic consequences. And we can receive advice only when our experience has brought us to such a place where it may be heard. So Bob was non-committal, apparently non-judgmental, seemingly supportive in the fellow's greater goals, encouraging in his quest to find what works for him. Bob said, "Do what you enjoy doing. It's not as good as the more effective thing that you don't enjoy, but maybe you'll actually do the thing you enjoy." And they laughed, because it seemed funny and wise.

Now Bob Dude wants you to send him one hundred dollars. He says, "Homie. You were warned up front. You can read. This is called "incurring debt". You don't know what that means? This is a legally binding contract. This is my new career, giving unsolicited but debt-incurring fitness advice on the internet. You read it, you owe me. Send me your Social Security Number, so I can sue you for non-payment or at least ruin your credit. Cuz I know how you are."

It seems Bob isn't as wise as we had come to hope. His character is not entirely reformed. Our opinion about him may have to be revised. Bob says that next time his email, that he wants posted, will be called, "Sexual Satisfaction." He says you should be sure to read it.

No matter. Be excellent.


CrossFit Burbank
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