Natural hypocrisy:

This is part of a series I like to call “Things we should agree on before we talk.”

Humans are, by nature, hypocritical animals and when you put a bunch of us together, being hypocritical is actually a healthy sign. So, if you have a large population with a notable degree of personal freedom, a lack of hypocritical behavior is actually a bad sign. Take, for example, the United States of America. We regularly bomb countries, to whom, we also send foreign aid. This assumes that you cannot tell the difference between the groups within our nation who have a nuclear powered Navy and the groups that beg for prop-planes and volunteers to help to drop bags of rice for starving refugees. The first-world West, in general, very notably gave a Nobel Peace Prize to a first term sitting US senator who was then elected President of the USA and proceeded to tomahawk missile the f&^k out of a North African nation on live television 17 months later.

We use derogatory words in our music and claim artistic license but then condemn any TV personality who uses it in an interview. We claim to have equality under the law, but look at the incarceration rates and police brutality rates and tell me everything is working as planned. We appear, incredibly, hypocritical.

In politics, the anti-abortion party supports the death penalty. The anti-big-business party support workers unions that can't exist in a small businesses/free market economy. The pro-religion party wants to keep out the most devote immigrants. The save-our-planet party seems to only want to crowd us into pollution causing cities where we can't feed or care for ourselves.

My initial argument was that “this is natural” and I meant it because, as creatures that filter everything through their perceptions and then communicate them, we are prone to idioms and hyperbole.  We constantly speak in metaphors. I am trying not to do so now and it is excruciatingly hard. It would be much easier to break out some literary analogy and say “We want to be 1940’s Earnest Hemingway but we’re actually 1950’s L Ron Hubbard.” (see what I did there?)

Then there’s the “many-different-me’s” theory. One of my favorite youtube/podcast personalities preaches how he is not who he was before [/paraphrasing]. It’s not some born again/AA/making-things-right bull shit. He’s saying that as you grow and mature your brain changes and you become someone new. Another family example is my ultra left-wing sister who got pregnant, worked her way through college and is now basically 180 degrees (politically) from where she was. If you quizzed her on certain topics, such as immigration, you’ll find that she is still the person she was at 20, but ask her about her taxes or guns andwow!

From these (and dozens more) examples I am extending the hypothesis that I WILL BE hypocritical at some juncture in the future. So understand that I am about to explore what things mean to me and how I perceive the world around me. If, at some point I seem at odds with myself, it’s because we all are.

(There's so much more I should have written about this but I am pressed for time. So be it.)

The media is still all middle men:

So, the other day I was thinking about writing a gun-control blog post because firearms are a very important subject to me. I live in the country and the daily conditions of my gun-ownership & usage is very different than that of most Americans but we just have the one constitution and there are two very divided sides to the modern debate and I think there’s a discussion to be had there and this is a run-on sentence.

However, when I saw a headline story on the drudgereport.com I started down a rabbit hole that turned out to be its own topic.

The drudgereport makes no bones about the fact that it is, first and foremost, a central hub for sourced news reports.  No flies on them. But I clicked this link to a Breitbart story that turned out to be about a Washington Post piece about a Pew Research report about blah blah blah (who’s still paying attention?). So, why did the drudgereport not just link to the f%$king Pew Research piece?

Possible answer #1: I bet the answer has to do with advertising and click bait and link-whatevers.

Possible answer #2: Each additional story throws its own spin on the initial data based on what they think their readers want to hear. Which they do so that they can sell advertising and get clicks and blah blah blah illuminati.

The point is, if FACTS are what you want, you have to follow the rabbit down the rabbit hole. Being the cynical a$$hat that I am, I immediately assumed that these “news agencies” were spinning the Pew Research data to support a mindless pro-gun philosophy (verses my mindful pro-gun philosophy) so I headed straight to the opposing sides web sites for “the other spin”.

What I found was that gunpolicy.org took the EXACT SAME DATA as pewresearch.org and used a different start date point. If you look at the numbers pewrearch went back to 1993. Gun deaths dropped drastically from '93-'99. Then they rose slightly from '99 to today. (In this context the word "slightly" is quantified by the word "drastically", we are talking about deaths after all.) Those are the mother f^%kin facts, folks. Spin them however you want. Neither web site is lying to us but they are carefully choosing what they tell us. Now I could pass judgment on either side of this debate right now based on where they chose to start counting gun deaths but my true unrefined disappointment is for everyone who didn’t bother to do the research I did to see how we are being manipulated and pandered to by both sides of a debate that costs real lives and real liberty. Turn off the news. Turn on your brains.

Was that too preachy?

Don't worry, Norris, you'll get there.

Why I quit sugar:

In 1979 my mother took me to the Dr and said “Dr! You have to help me! My son is rambunctious, fidgets all the time, won’t listen and can’t focus on anything for more than a few seconds!”

The Dr replied, “He’s five years old.”

(pause for comedic effect)

My mother followed up with “I know that! But he’s worse than all the other five year olds in our neighborhood put together.”

“Oh.” The Dr replied, “We have a pill for that.”

I don’t remember my mother’s face when he told her this but a talented writer would say something like “Her usually lively eyes dulled and seemed to sink into her skull as her striking bronze, Mediterranean skin turned, slowly, to a sullen ash.” In short, this was not the answer she was seeking. Needless to say, I was not put on any pills (we'll discuss this in a later blog). Instead my mother went home and threw out everything with refined sugar in it.

This was just before the height of the sugar-verses-fat debate of the 1980’s (followed immediately but the cola wars of the 1980’s, ironically). These were the days before we had to admit we couldn’t believe it wasn’t butter. My father smoked in the hospital room where I was born, the church where I was christened, and the car where I sat unbuckled in any seat facing any direction I wanted. Those were simpler times, with 21% interest rates on mortgages and an ever present, faceless communist horde prepared to destroy the world with the push of a nuclear missile launching button.

(Norris wipes away a tear)

But my mother wasn’t to be swayed by western medicine, hippie gurus, new aged self help books, or Reaganomics. She took control of the situation. We still had sugary food when it mattered. Someone’s birthday would get you a small piece of sugary cake. A major holiday, like Christmas, might merit a candy cane AND a soda. Halloween let us look at a lot of candy but then we were tricked into “you can have X number of pieces per night” (which always resulted in most of it being thrown away) and dear sweet Easter got us the largest (and most hollow) of chocolate goodies. But the idea of having a coke while watching your favorite Tuesday night TV shows was something only the regular families did. If you think this was oppressive, consider that 5 short years later we sold everything, moved half way across the country and bought 30 acres in rural east Texas where we began to raise more than half our own food.

Not only was there no soda, cookies, candy, or pastries I had to get up every morning before the sun and feed these large dirty, stinky animals that eventually turned into raw, blood dripping protein sources. I must admit, I didn’t really notice the lack of sugar until I was old enough to earn money and buy my own food.  We had blackberry bushes, peach trees, pear trees, and apple trees. We grew water melons, cantaloupes, tomatoes, potatoes, and all the greens you can imagine. We raised cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens, and rabbits. And to top it off, mom did almost all her own baking, so bread was something special. It was something to be coveted on baking day.

But time goes by, families break up, people get cancer and die, other people knock up their girlfriends, get married, get jobs, get divorced, move a couple times, and end up eating shit because HEY! Who cares what you eat? Well, I cared when I hit 230lbs and my knees and ankles started hurting. So it was time to do something about this. (note: this is a gross over simplification for the purpose of moving the story along)

So I wanted to lose some weight and stay mobile but I wasn’t motivated until I watched
"that sugar film" which asserted that not only were refined sugars horrible for your physical state but also your psychological state (there was also a major point about how all calories are not the same but I'll touch on that in a later blog). Suddenly I had to process some data. I have a friend who took a very stressful job sitting behind a desk and decided he needed to lose some weight. He took the “Glycemic Index” approach. He staunchly avoided anything that would spike his blood glucose levels and lost ~30 lbs in 6 months. He talked about it endlessly. It was SOOOOOOOO annoying. And then I decided to do something similar but I’m much cooler about it because I only post in my blog, condemn my co-workers for their eating habits and preach to anyone who will listen.

I actually had a pretty healthy diet before I quit sugars. I cooked or prepared all my own meals from real ingredients that didn't come pre-packaged in a cardboard box or resealable bag. I stuck to lean meats, green veggies, fresh herbs and spices, and I drank lots of water. But when I got honest about what I was eating between meals, well, I had to rethink things. For example I drank a lot of Gatorade (very high in sugar). I was drinking whiskey sours each night and the mix for that was loaded with High Fructose Corn Syrup. I was eating tons of carbs at night before sleeping (when I didn’t need any).  So I upped my fruits and veggies, cut out anything with refined sugar or high fructose corn syrup, and started a “food as fuel” practice. First thing in the morning I get fruits and some fatty veggies like avocados. I also tend to hit the cheese which is apparently as addictive as crack .(Not really. For God's sake do your research, people) I get, maybe, a shot of Orange Juice but never more than half a glass.

I snack on fruit and nuts through-out the day with a protein & fat rich wrap (see lunch meat, cheese and lots of veggies in a flax based bread thingy for lunch) and then usually a salad at night. A couple times per week I make an actual dinner with meat and veggies (little to no carbs). In all honesty, I get too much salt and too much fat, but I think I’m onto the ketosis phase of this experiment.

I am down 20 lbs in 4 months but the trick is the pattern of weight loss to emotional stability. The first few weeks nothing happened. Anyone can loss 5 or 10 lbs in a week by changing their eating and water intake but then your weigh goes right back up. It took me 2-3 weeks to lose anything. Then I lost 2-3 lbs per week steadily for almost 3 months before plateau-ing. This is my fault, I started working out. I am still 10 lbs from my initial goal but I feel so much better and now I spend time on sit-ups, pull-ups and riding my bicycle. If it takes a few months to lose that next 10 lbs I’m not worried.

And that not being worried is what’s worth talking about. 3 months into this diet I did something stupid and thought “Man, when you get up tomorrow you’re going to hate yourself for doing that.” But I woke up and I felt OK. I said “That was dumb. Learn something and move on.” 6 months ago I couldn’t have pulled out of the self loathing spiral that would have resulted from saying something stupid in public or getting drunk and buying something useless off Amazon.com. Now I feel more grounded and more leveled out than I can ever remember being in my adult life. (there's a whole microbiome part to this discussion but I'm not going their tonight) I feel better and I haven't been able to say that for the last 20 years.

I have one neighbor who stops by from time to time and brings me food. She’s a super nice old lady and the sweetest person you could ever want to meet, but it doesn’t register with her that I am not eating sugar. I smile and tell her thank you and when she leaves I eat the protein and throw out the sweets she’s brought me. It’s not worth feeling bad again.

I look forward to eating pasta again but f^%k candy bars and sodas in their life destroying asses.

the value of a vote

What follows is what happens when oil prices are down and I have time at work to read the internet and play with spreadsheets:

So this is a nice hairy spread sheet with a bunch of data that means nothing to most folks but let's see what I did with it in the graphs below.

Notice that the trend lines are ever so steadily moving towards 50%? I did. I expected to see a more divided USA becoming more 50/50 and this seems to support my beliefs.

But then the electoral vote shows us a couple crazy things. #1 it s almost a mirror image (except for when Reagan switched parties and the south didn't know what to do about voting) Seriously, cover up '72-'88 and it's like a Greek vase. Despite third party candidates the electorate is a mirror image of winners and losers. I did not expect to see that. I expected to see losers chasing winners. The popular vote might be 60/40 but the electorate is 90/10. The libertarian in me screams out that a well informed, moral society would be rioting in the streets for reformation based on this single fact. The rational middle aged white guy in me says "well what did you expect from a well fed populace?" 40% of the people get 10% of the vote but get to keep 100% of their suppers. Smarter men than me will be thinking about this long after I am gone.

This is the bread & butter of this exercise. I wanted to know how much a popular vote was actually worth. I expected to see rampant voter inflation. As it turns out Michael Crichton was right "Things were not always thus". They were much, much worse. A highlight of my life was the fact that Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 but lost the election. I HATE Al Gore and his politics but he won the damned election. I can't tell 50+% of my fellow citizens their votes don't count. But in November of 2000 they did not. The whole of the US citizenry was cheated when our laws failed us and not one change was made to correct it. I'm blathering on. I'll get back to work.

Just for fun the bottom graph shows the actual number of people who could vote that did. It is meant to exaggerate the value of the people who show up to vote. It does not take into account the value of gerrymandering which hit a new record in that 2000-2004 era. Get-out-the-vote worked more efficiently than anything since the cold war. Also there was some sort of period of peace right there where we weren;t at war with anyone. Seriously, people vacationed in Beirut.

I then break down the winners and losers by votes, popular and electoral, with trend lines. Why? Because I 'm a thorough mother f&^ker, that's why.

In summation: I am slightly ashamed to say it but things are getting better. (On paper anyway) I expected to see things worse than ever. A larger disparity between the value of an individual vote and the actual weight of the electorate, but that's just not true. Despite the rampant gerrymandering and the growing polarization of the populace things are actually more equal than ever. I want to argue with these numbers but I can't. I must instead look at the fact that the last 20 years have opened us up to greater shared information than ever before. Knowing more seems to mean being less biased and less segregated. I still thin there are much better systems of voter representation, but I can't argue with the numbers. At least not yet.

Christmas Day

I took a nasty spill on my bicycle the other day. That seems like a good place to start. It was totally my fault and it leads to several discussions.

#1 I live in rural east Texas and I love to ride my bicycle on the back roads.

#2 The bane of my cycling experience is dogs.

#3 Wear a f%@king helmet!

Let' see how I do with this:

#1 explained: Living in the rural south can be an enjoyable experience but it also has its drawbacks. I don’t know where you live but the southern US (and particularly Texas) has certain global stereotypes. Granted these people are primarily post-reformation Christian influenced, Germanic European genotype, pro-gun, FOX news watching, football worshiping, red-necks but they are also proud of their ignorance, accepting of some subtle truth behind most bigotry and basically, pretty nice folks when you are bleeding from more than one side of your skull.. I don’t fit in very well with most of that but I do enjoy riding my bicycle early in the morning whenever I can. As a middle aged white guy I am left alone for the most part. It’s nice to know that when I need help I can ask and receive (this doesn’t seem like a very good narrative but it is honest and that’s what I aim to be).

#2 Dogs are very social creatures. They live among us because they are like us despite the difference in amount of hair and succinct ability to v

ocalize our emotions. That being said, they are very territorial and I happened upon a pair who were outside their comfort zones. They were sniffing around a trash can as I zoomed by on my bicycle. The first dog, froze in place, the second dog ran for his dear life as if the hounds of Hell were on his tail (both puns intended). I, the hyper-intelligent sentient being in the story, was picking up speed on the down-hill approach and rather than hit the brakes (which would justify calling myself hyper-intelligent) to give the scared dog room, I caught him and began to pass him. Upon seeing this he did what any mammal would do. You may not be aware, but if you are running away and see a predator catching you, the evolutionarily correct choice is to change directions. In this case he jumped right in front of my bicycle. Now, assuming you’ve never fallen down because maybe you are a super intelligent 2 year old reading this blog, you don’t reach for the ground. It’s coming to get you. This is lesson #1. I tucked for a roll. I hit forehead and knuckles. I bounced to my back (including the back of my head). I slid on my right side across the asphalt (shin to ass) until I hit the rough rocks of the ditch at which time I flipped onto my stomach. I landed with a severe case of tunnel vision that made my outstretched arms seem to be out of the sockets. I could not move but I could scream. I took several seconds until I could move my arms at which time my vision corrected, I stood up and began to walk away. I was amazed that nothing was torn off, broken or missing 9except a chunk out of my nose which I discovered once I showered off at home. The dog was nowhere to be seen but everyone asks “what happened to the dog?” Thanks for caring.

#3 Once upon a time I had an accident late at night. I called the first person in the world I thought of to help me in such a situation, my father, to come and help me. He never showed up and I walked the several miles home in very bad shape only to find he had hit a deer on his motorcycle coming to help me and died. His story and mine now coincide. Wear a f&^king helmet. I walked away from my accident on my bicycle.  The DPS trooper who went to my sister’s house the next morning had to show her my father’s mug shot for identification. He was smiling. He was like that. I am not.

To lighten the mood I'd like to end with a joke: I hit a dog on my bike but the CAT scan was negative.