Starvation mode, my most hated nutritional myth

I may sound like I'm frothing at the mouth through most of this post, but that's mostly because, of all the nutrition myths, this one is the one that frustrates me to no end.

You've probably heard of the hypothesis that if you skip breakfast your body will go into "starvation mode", or that if you eat Splenda your body will go into the same mode, or if click click bloody click pancakes your body will start eating itself.

NO. Bad. Wrong. You will not go into starvation mode if you skip a meal or eat artificial sweeteners. No, seriously, that won't happen. Do you know how long it really takes before your body begins to actually start to starve? About 72 hours. Three days. And that would be 72 hours of eating ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. And that 72 hours is flexible based on the fatness of the person involved. If you're rail thin and have no body fat, your body will start eating protein for energy quickly; if you have ample body fat, it will take longer because your body has ample fat to eat. And you know what? That's weaksauce starvation. Real starvation starts when your body is completely out of fat to burn and all that's left is muscle. Bear this in mind next time you say, "I'm starving." No you're not.

There's no scientific evidence anywhere near this conversation, but this myth really has legs, doesn't it? Everyone I've ever mentioned it to has at least heard of it. But why? Where does this myth come from? The truth is that there was a scientific test done that came up with lots of information on starving people: The Minnesota Starvation Experiment. You know how long they starved those poor bastards? Six months. They actually fed the guys 1560 calories a day, which doesn't sound that bad till you read the part where they made them walk 22 miles a goddamn day. These guys got to actually starve for six months, fighting off real starvation side effects like depression and hysteria which were so bad one dude chopped off three fingers with an axe and then didn't remember why the hell he did it.

That's what real starvation mode does to people. It eats your body and drives you insane.

So why in the hell do people think skipping breakfast will hurt their diet? The reality is that if you skip breakfast you are more likely to compensate for that hunger later if you're not carefully controlling your food intake. So if your willpower is weak, skipping breakfast will probably not help you. However, if your willpower is strong and you eat the same lunch and dinner with or without breakfast, then cutting out those calories can help you lose weight.

People have a million excuses (very few legitimate, like drugs with side effects), but the evidence is clearly on one side: losing weight is calories in vs. calories out. Everything else is just fads, scams, and noise.

How to interact with Steve, a guide by Steve. Part Three: What, is Steve a hermit now?

I may not be a hermit, but going out for much of anything has been a harder sell with me for a while. This comes back to my problem with introversion. Recharging is a thing I need to do, especially after a work day of being around people. I don't understand the idea of going directly from work to a happy hour because to me that's just like staying at work but with a beer, admittedly slightly better, but still draining on me. What I want, after work, is time to go home, be alone, and recharge. However, in an effort to not become a hermit, I often have plans, which is to say I always have plans, which lately is biting me in the ass.

If it really was up to me, I'd go home right now, jump on my couch, and do nothing remotely social or work related for probably weeks at a time. I don't have that luxury, so I work. I also want to stay in shape and see my friends at least once in a while, so I go to classes and see my friends. Also, my girlfriend would probably be upset if I didn't see her once in a while too.

So when do I recharge? That's a good question. I haven't been recharging much at all lately, and that's something I've realized I have to change. Sadly It's coming out of my Capoeira schedule, but I need that night off. I also managed to get into a work at home deal, which is all the work of work, with a tenth of the stress of work because I'm home, completely alone, and that is apparently good for my mental health. I am trying, I really am, but sometimes it's still just not enough.

It's important to note that I actually do still like going out and doing stuff. Bars, movies, dinners, parties, etc, I still like these things. I don't want anyone thinking I've gone off the deep end and don't enjoy stuff, I just need to factor in a couple of things, my introverted nature first. Second is my anxiety in groups. If I'm out with one person, I'm perfectly comfortable; two people, still ok; three people, mostly ok; once you hit four people, I start to get uncomfortable. If you factor in the "do I know this person" variable, that all changes. If I'm out with four people I know I'm far more comfortable than I am with even one person I don't know. This is an obnoxious but real factor in my scale of comfort for going out.

For all my protesting about liking going out, sometimes, I don't wanna. Sometimes that one more thing I'm not sure about just causes my anxiety to drop into overdrive. I don't like that, but it is a reality. If I say no to something that sounds reasonable to you, I've probably just hit that point where I can't take any more social. So please don't take it personally if I turn you down for a social gathering, or even just dinner. Even if I can't take going out, I do appreciate the thought. When my mental health is on track, you will see me again.

Ultimately, I want to be invited out. I may not bite often, it may seem pointless, but I'm not trying to be a hermit, I promise. I will come out sometimes, and I will be happy to see you.

How to interact with Steve, a guide by Steve. Part Two: I haven't heard from Steve in a while...

When it comes to keeping up with people, I am about as bad as it gets. Being something other than a social butterfly, when I get home at night I don't think about people I need to keep up with, I collapse on my couch and try to recharge from a long day of pretending I'm a competent social person. It's kind of ironic that my current job is all about maintaining lines of communication between myself, others, and between those other people.

Let me explain this with an example. I play Pathfinder with a group of people that I like. One of my best friends is a part of this group and I enjoy conversing with him a great deal. Outside of that game, how often do you think I talk to him? If you answered "basically never", then you're catching on. One of my best friends, basically don't talk to him outside of the game. So if you haven't heard from me in a while, it's almost certainly not you.

If I'm going to contact someone, typically I am doing so for a specific purpose: dinner, movie, Capoeira, etc. Contacting someone for the purpose of saying, "what's up?" just isn't something I do like ever. It's not because I don't care, it's because I just don't do that sort of thing. If you're sitting there waiting for me to contact you, you are like to be disappointed. Unfortunately, this is a problem because when I do think I should contact someone I haven't heard from, I have no idea what to say; thanks to the anxiety of saying something wrong, I will not immediately contact that person and then I will be stuck trying to think up something to say which makes me anxious, and I will eventually either give up or more likely forget. Sometimes you haven't heard from me because I'm so anxious about what to say I can't say anything.

Just because I am not contacting you does not mean that I am not thinking of you. I have friends I rarely talk to that I still consider to be dear friends. There are people I haven't talked to in at this point years that I consider to be my friends still. Even if it is only when the winds of fate blow you and me in a coincidentally similar direction that I talk to you, if I do spend time talking to you, I probably wouldn't mind talking to you more.

There's one snag, of course, that being I hate phones. I did many years of tech support for an ISP, and that soured me on the idea of phones. I don't like talking on phones, I don't like being called, and I almost never call people on my own initiative. If I want an appointment, say a dental appointment, I am far more likely to show up in person to set up an appointment than to call, because I hate phones that much. I use phones to set up in person meetings. Beyond that, I don't call people. Text messages, emails, other forms of electronic interaction, that's fine and I have no problem with them, so they are my preferred communication methods outside of just actually talking face to face.

So what does this mean for you interacting with me? Don't wait for me to call you, just call me or, preferably, text or email me. I won't screen your call unless I cannot take your call, and if you call I will call you back as promptly as time allows. I'm not chatty on phones, but if you want to call me I will talk to you. I work, I have extra-workular activities, but I can make time for you. So call me, maybe? (Take that pop culture!)

How to interact with Steve, a guide by Steve. Part One: Background.

There are two major pieces of background you need to know about.


1) I am an introvert. 


As a majority of the people in this part of the world are extroverts and have no idea what is up with introverts, I will start here as a place to get to common ground. While this wikipedia article is a much more in depth explanation, I'll give a TL;DR here. 


Introversion/extroversion is on a sliding scale, but I am heavily on the introversion side. An introvert, to quote that article, is "the state of or tendency toward being wholly or predominantly concerned with and interested in one's own mental life." That means introverts are people who find it more rewarding to read a book than go out to a bar. If you go to a wild party and you come out of the party energized and happy, you're almost certainly an extrovert. If you go to a wild party and come out exhausted and ready to go home and recharge, the inverse is almost certain. Extroverts gain energy when with other people while introverts lose energy. Don't take this to mean that introverts can't like wild parties, far from it, it's just that being around people is harder for extroverts. 


An introvert can sit alone and read a book for hours and hours and be fully engaged where an extrovert may find being alone for that long boring. An introvert may have a boring desk at work that doesn't encourage conversation where an extrovert may have candies at their desk specifically to try to get people to come by and talk. An introvert may find it difficult to go try an activity that they have no experience with and know no one at, where an extrovert might jump at the opportunity.


I have to stress here that there is nothing wrong with being an introvert. Western societies tend to reward extroversion, and are generally biased against introverts (see the wikipedia article for more details), but that doesn't mean introversion is bad. It's just different. 


2) I have an anxiety disorder.


This other wikipedia article will give you more information, but I have this disorder, a generalized anxiety disorder to be more specific. To quote the article, "Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder that is characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about everyday things that is disproportionate to the actual source of worry." What does this mean? As an example, before drugs and therapy the thought that I might not have locked my front door either at night or after I left for work might have driven me crazy. Or if I forgot to shave in the morning, it could bug me intensely all day, enough to distract me from almost anything I was doing including my job.


Basically, with GAD, fear and anxiety ruled my life. Worrying about anything and everything all day long is exhausting, yet that same worrying could keep me from sleeping which would make me irritable. If you knew me before the drugs and therapy, you knew I was basically permanently irritable. One of the reasons I was much more of a drinker when I was younger, I realize now, was because the only time I wasn't anxious was when I was too drunk to care. In retrospect I am very lucky I didn't end up an alcoholic.


Though drugs and therapy I learned how not to let anxiety rule my life. Even when off my drugs, I can usually control the anxiety of daily life to a much better degree than I did before. However, I will always have to be aware of anxiety and fight against it. I hope someday to be able decrease or even completely stop my drugs, but that's a long slow process if it is even possible.


So there you go. This is the necessary background for the context of the rest of these posts to make sense. If you have any other questions you'd like to ask me, feel free, I'm happy to explain. 

The Death of Christmas

This is what Christmas was when I was young:

I am no longer young. As I aged, Christmas, or as I will type it from now on, Xmas, slowly lost it's luster. I used to like buying things for people, and would plan out everything in advance, but grownups don't have the same time (or frankly the enthusiasm) as younger people. Eventually I felt like I was buying things for people not because I wanted to give them something but because I felt obligated to do so. If you know me at all, I don't do things just because I'm supposed to. I challenge all traditions and I've realized that if I feel like buying something for someone, I just do it. I don't need or want to wait for a specific holiday to give that person said gift. I just give them the gift because I care about the person, not the holiday.

So where does this leave me? Xmas, like all religious holidays, has become an irritating family obligation.Why the hell can't we just get together whenever? Why do families only feel the need to tolerate one another on holidays but no other time during the year? The cool holidays, like Halloween and New Years are for friends to drink (St. Patrick's day is almost non religious at this point as well), and Thanksgiving is for families to gorge themselves on food they really shouldn't. So wtf Xmas and Easter?

Religious holidays are becoming more and more pointless. For those few people who still believe that Xmas is about Christ, this time of the year must be a depressing cavalcade of consumerism and greed that has totally gone off message. Now that everyone's saying "Happy Holidays" to be polite to the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, etc, and basically just going on present fueled binges, does Christ even cross the minds of the average person anymore? I know some Christians are screaming about the "War on Christmas" but, let's face it, it's a secular holiday now, and kind of a disgustingly materialistic one.

So that's me, Xmas Debbie Downer. What's the male equivalent of that? Bobbie Bummer? Anyway, yeah, Xmas lost it's appeal to me. I get a day off work and I get to see my family, but honestly I'd rather skip the holiday and go see my family because I want to see them, not because I'm obligated by some holiday that no one really understands anymore.

Vaccine Awareness Month

Has it already been a year since the last Vaccine Awareness Month? A whole year has passed and people still are on their crusade to declare vaccines to be the greatest threat to human heath in like forever. Of course, they declare this in the face of the fact that general human health has vastly increased since the advent of vaccines. They scream about evil vaccines, apparently forgetting that smallpox is gone, polio is being wiped out, most people haven't even heard of whooping cough other than the outbreak last year, and that vaccine preventable diseases are slowly being diminished if not eradicated throughout the year.

To deny that vaccines work is attributable to only two things: gross and negligent ignorance of reality or a willing and somewhat impressive if frightening ability to lie to oneself. Well, technically there's the third option of sociopaths who are doing this because it's fun for them, but that's just scary. Simply put, there is no way to be anti-vaccine and be a rational person. "Too many too soon" is irrational fear not based in reality. "Vaccine preventable diseases aren't that bad" is cruel, evil, and obviously untrue. "I just want to make vaccines safe" is a lie, not even wrong, and makes me want to punch their infant children.

In short, as I don't need to be a windbag about this one, vaccines are very safe, they do what they're supposed to do quite well, and ever time you hear some asshole yelling about how dangerous vaccines are, you can now safely remember that that person is dead wrong. And if you want actual proof/citations of what I've said:

Immunize for Good.

'Nuff said.

My first Capoeira test

I've been taking Capoeira for over two years now, but until last night, I had never been tested. I'd never been tested simply because my first instructor never had tests because it was a UD club and not a formal class and my second and current instructor really could give less of a shit about structure like that. I was sort of vaguely tangentially involved with an actual school, but as I studied with those guys all of never, getting tested or going to a Batizado never happened. My current instructor got involved with another school and I got a third instructor who is actually a mestre, a master, and as I started taking classes up through the UD group I'm still involved with, I was invited with the UD group to participate in their Batizado.

What the hell is a Batizado? Well, according to Wikipedia it's a yearly event thing where students are baptized and officially recognized as students of a school. It's also, according to hearsay and my other research on the Internet, basically a Capoeira party. Also, someone is probably going to knock me down and baptize me with the floor. A, that's really entertaining and, B, after my test last night my mestre basically threw me at the floor, so at least I have experience with being baptized by the floor.

However, as I found out last week, the test isn't the Batizado. No, the test is done before the Batizado, usually with little warning. That may just be my luck, it may be a thing, I don't really know, all I know is I had been training my ass off for this test expecting it to be a lot later than it actually ended up being. So though I was fairly prepared, I could have been more prepared. Moving on.

Given that Capoeira is generally very laid back, the testing itself is actually laid back as well. I've been to many other tests in several other schools, and none were close to as laid back as this. However, don't even begin to imagine that it was easy. Crotch no.

Here's how it went down. I showed up, I was told I was testing, I warmed up a little, then me and the guy running the test went to a corner of the classroom and I got my test on. My tester said do ginga. I started to ginga. I didn't stop my ginga, other than for a few seconds at a time, for the rest of the test. I couldn't say exactly how long the test was, but try doing a ginga for five minutes and your legs will burn. The test was at least forty five minutes long, and the ginga was the easiest part.

To prep for this test, I had been given a sheet for the beginner, level one, and level two tests and as I was going to level two, yellow cord, I had been studying that sheet and was fairly confident with most of it. Unfortunately, as this was my first test, I had to do everything on all three sheets once on my left side and once on my right side. No pressure.

So the test was basically kicks, acrobatics, movements (called floreios), and combinations. Ok, there was also singing and playing music, but that was the cake walk. So for kicks I had to do all the kicks I'd learned, around fifteen of them, but not just the simple kick! No no, I had to do multiple variations of each kick. Acrobatics? A cartwheel is the main one, except that I know at least a dozen different varations. Of course the various cartwheels can be worked into the florieos of which can easily be combined into dozens, if not hundreds, of different movements. That wasn't even including the combinations! There were fortunately only like ten combos to do, but they could include all of the shit I was being tested on, so they got a little nuts. And all of this was done between ginga steps.

In terms of difficulty, I sweat so much that I had to wipe down the floor three times, and eventually, after nearly killing myself by slipping, my tester took pity on me and we found a carpeted area for the flying, spinning, jumping, flipping end of my test. I say in jest that I sweat out a gallon, but I'm not sure how much of a jest that is because my shirt was disgusting by the end of the test. Also, though I had prepared greatly, I still didn't know like five moves, so I had to figure them out during the test. No pressure.

All told, though, the test was within my bounds. It was intimidating as hell, but I stared it in the face and did my best and I passed. All that's left is the Batizado. So I go to a party and get my belt? Oh, yes, it's so easy. Except for that little minor detail thing where the Batizado is actually spread over many days, with lots of other workshops, music, and dance lessons.

I love Capoeira... but sometimes it loves me back a little too much.

I hate nutrition more today

So as I may have mentioned I take a drug that helps me sleep called Seroquel. It's hardcore, to quote Wikipedia, "an atypical antipsychotic approved for the treatment of schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder." No, I'm not psychotic or schizo, I just don't sleep well and one of the off label uses for Seroquel is sleep aid, and it's unmatched in being able to help people who can't sleep otherwise. Since being on this drug I have been able to sleep better than ever before, but it does have a downside: weight gain. Ever had a full meal and then been just as hungry after that meal as when you started and have a desperate compulsion to continue eating? Yeah, that's Seroquel. I'm hovering around 205 lbs lately, which is really bad on the BMI scale, though not actually that bad in reality. Still, I'm bigger than I want to be.

I have fought tooth and nail to bring my weight back down. I eat much less food that I really enjoy (read high flavor high calorie) and much more reasonable stuff (fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, etc). I have slowly been cutting calorie sources out of my diet, losing sugar where I can, eating healthier breads, not eating those chips with my lunch, limiting my happiest food (desert) to one small serving a day. However, I never saw much of a difference in my weight.

A couple of weeks ago recently, I decided I needed some downtime from my very restricted diet and just ate whatever the hell I felt like for two weeks. It was glorious and delicious. So much bad food. And you know what? I didn't see a difference in my weight either up or down.

After that came my return to the UD Capoeira classes, where I decided to increase my workout schedule to a ludicrous 5 days a week. Granted I've only managed four days a week so far, but that's still doubling my already challenging workout schedule. I've been at this for weeks. Net result on my weight without increasing the amount or badness of the food I eat? No change.

I was starting to think I'd gone insane. Maybe I was sleep eating? Maybe I was unconsciously eating an additional 1000 calories a day somehow? Maybe my 15 minute walk that I've been forced to skip more often due to the new job was actually burning more calories than I thought? Then I turned to the Internet.

As it turns out, people on Seroquel who have a problem with weight gain have noticed a weird phenomenon: they gain weight to a point they hate and then that weight remains constant no matter what changes to diet or exercise are made. The only people who saw any weight loss were the ones who cut back on Seroquel or transitioned to different drugs.

Apparently if I ever want to not be 205 pounds I have to cut back on my only hope of sleeping at night. I don't have to work out or eat differently, I just have to stop sleeping. This is a really, really big problem for me, as I'm not willing to go back to the land of sleep deprivation, but I really want to get some weight off. I'm doing well in Capoeira, but if I lost even ten pounds I could be doing so much better, not to mention I'd look better.

For now, at least, I'm going to stick to the status quo. I may not be happy with my weight, but at least it is stable and not disgusting. We'll see if continued increased activity over months has some long term gains or not and, come my next doctor's apt, see if there aren't any new viable sleep aid choices.

I hate nutrition

I may have bitched about this before, but one of the side effects of one of the drugs I'm on is weight gain. I work out and do my best to eat right, but it's ever a problem for me feeling like I'm carrying more weight than I should. Because of this, I'm careful to try to eat better most of the time. Recently I started eating at Moe's and became a big fan of their burritos. I didn't want to look up the caloric info on it, mostly because I was sure it was going to be bad and I was going to have to eat them less. However, when I finally looked it up, even when I included every single ingredient, the burrito was less than 450 calories. I was pleasantly surprised. Then, just because I was there, I glanced at how much the 2 ounces of queso I had was, expecting bad things. 150 calories. Really, not that bad. So overall, 600 calories, not bad. Then I looked at the tortilla chips.

600 calories? Six the fuck hundred calories? For a few chips? The burrito and the freaking cheese sauce combined equals some chips? God dammit. So now I guess I just get a burrito. I hate nutrition.

Sexist, racist, homophobic thinking…

Despite being a privileged white male, I am not sexist, racist, or homophobic. I was raised in a color blind, gender blind, sexual preference blind house. When I was a child I made friends with white and black children without preference because I didn’t know there was supposed to be a difference. I was about as competent with girls as a child as I am with women as an adult, but I never thought of them as anything less than my equals. As a child I was brought up in a church with active and out gay members and talked to them like all the other adults because they were all just adults to me.

I never knew I was supposed to care.

As a result I grew up with the attitude of “I don’t care if you’re not white/a woman/gay” because I didn’t know that wasn’t a good thing. I thought it was. However, as learning is one of those things I just won’t stop doing, I’m coming to realize that my attitude isn’t the best one. It’s not that I don’t care that you’re different from me, it’s that it doesn’t bother me that you’re different from me.

As the best example I can think of off the top of my head, my Capoeira instructor Rasai is a dreadlocked Jamaican man with huge muscles and a larger than life personality. He was raised on a farm, really finds our concept of holidays annoying, and is a very dirty old man. None of this got in the way of me being his student or becoming his friend. Sure we bicker about how he should chill out about having his picture taken or maybe consider getting a goddamn cell phone, but we’re still friends. Do I not care that he’s black? Am I ignoring his heritage?

What I think I’m doing is outright accepting that he’s different in many ways and not letting those differences make me think less of him. I take these different experiences he’s had as just a fact of life because everyone is different. This is autopilot for me. Rather than being a point of contention, I find his very different outlook on life refreshing and interesting.

So from now on it's not, "I don't care if you're X." I don't have a simple one-liner to replace it, but maybe that's the point.

The Internet/atheist/skepticism/sexism shitstorm you probably don't know about

I was going to ignore this issue, mostly because it's aggravating to watch this much fail, but after reading Greta Christina's post, I came to the conclusion that talking is better, so here's a post about sexism in the skepticism / atheism world.

Here's where it started: Rebecca Watson went to some atheist shindig in Ireland, gave a speech about sexism, and later went drinking with friends. At 4 AM she headed for bed. A guy joined her in the elevator and chose that moment to say that he was impressed by her and invite her to his room for coffee. She declined and in a blog post mentioned this and said that it made her feel uncomfortable and suggested, "Guys, don't do that." That like two minutes out of the video here.

Here's where it went wrong: though some people agreed with Rebecca that the dude in the elevator (later dubbed Elevator Guy), some people, both men and women, disagreed with Rebecca. Those who disagreed were often men aggressively insisting that Rebecca was wrong, she shouldn't have been creeped out, that she was a man-hater, and other very sexist things that went all the way from slightly misogynistic to OMG WTF misogyny.

Here's where it went explode: Richard Dawkins, Dark Lord of the Atheists, posted on PZ Myers' blog some very sarcastic and dismissive comments that enraged the pro Rebecca side and fueled the fires of the misogynistic idiots. It's been an ongoing shitstorm of idiocy ever since. From "guys, don't be creepy" to massive Internet flame war spanning dozens of sites in just under a week.

Now, I think that Rebecca's comment was reasonable and, even if Elevator Guy's intentions were the purest of gold, the dude did something creepy possibly inadvertently. That's where it should have ended. Maybe some people could say, "Poor socially awkward guy." Instead, people, admittedly including women, but mostly men, made complete asses of themselves by letting both privilege and disgusting sexism flare up and out of control. And they're still going. Calmer heads have tried to calm shit down, but Mansplaining abounds.

The bad thing is a lot of guys are sexist idiots. The good thing is that as this gets SO MUCH attention, at least some guys are finally starting to actually hear what women are saying: context matters. Yes, technically guys can hit on women anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances, but sometimes that's going to be inappropriate or creepy. Picking the correct moment to hit on a woman makes a world of difference.

As an aside, my favorite part of this situation is that Richard Dawkins is a dick. Back in the "Don't be a dick" conversation Phil Plait started, Dawkins came out against not being a dick, as did a lot of other assholes. Very recently Dawkins spoke out against Phil's position again, pointing out that being a dick could be useful. Back when the conversation started I commented, "The dicks also clearly don’t care who their target is..." Well, now Dawkins has proved my point. Despite the fact that Rebecca Watson is popular, and very intelligent, and a great help to both the atheist and skeptic movements, and was in theory actually a friend to Dawkins, he chose to be a douchebag over being polite and did so publicly no less. Many of the people who advocate that being dicks is useful don't give a crap who their target is. They're too interested in getting their petty digs in to worry about offending someone, even if that person is a friend or an ally.

Before my whole figuring out out I was an atheist thing, I'd thought poorly of Dawkins, thinking him an asshole. As I was reading up on atheism, he was referred to and said some nice things enough so that I was grudgingly changing my opinion of him. Now, however, he's proved what I always thought about him: he's an asshole. He may be smart, and he may write good books, and he may even say useful and helpful things, but above all he's an asshole. I choose to listen to atheists and skeptics who understand that, yes, context matters. I have friends who are religious, and while I may completely disagree with their religious views, I'd rather have them as my friends than get in some petty digs about religion.

Priorities. I has them.

Sort of a retraction...

So this is sort of embarrassing, but as it turns out I am an atheist, I just didn't know it. Yeah, really. In fact I have been an atheist for a very long time, I just wasn't aware of it. How is this possible? Allow me to quote YouTube user AronRa: "Atheist does not mean that you reject the possibility of a god," and "The only thing that defines an atheist is that you are not convinced that there must be a god." I am not convinced.

What's more amusing to me is that I wrote AronRa an email to thank him for helping me figure this out and he actually responded that it was his intention to share this story at future atheist meetings and conventions. That is, I think, freaking hilarious.

In further researching this it turns out that Greta Christina had something similar to say about atheism. "For me, and for the overwhelming majority of atheists I know, our atheism is a provisional conclusion, based on careful reasoning and on the best available evidence we have. Our atheism is the conclusion that the God hypothesis is unsupported by any good evidence, and that unless we see better evidence, we're going to assume that God does not exist. If we see better evidence, we'll change our minds."

Seems that what I though atheism was isn't what atheism is. I thought that atheism is the belief that there is no god, and that is apparently the general belief. Instead atheism is the lack of a belief in god. A bit of a quibble, but it shoots the "is atheism a belief?" question right in the face. I don't believe there is no god, I lack the belief that there is a god. If you could give me indisputable evidence that god existed tomorrow, I'd change my mind. Even Richard Dawkins, Dark Lord of the Atheists, said that on a scale of 1 being an absolute certainty that there is a god and 7 being absolute certainty that there is not a god that he was at a 6.

Granted, if you did give me that evidence, you'd still have to work to make me care much, so even though my atheism might change, my apatheism probably wouldn't. And, yes, it's possible to be both. It's possible to be an agnostic and an atheist at the same time as well apparently.

So what does this change? In many ways, not much. I think the same things I thought before this revelation. But in some ways, huge changes. I used to be pissed off because the Pledge of Allegiance (yes I will not shut up about this) was an insult to a group I cared about but didn't consider myself to be a part of; now the Pledge is an insult to me. Every time I see "In God we trust" on a coin or dolla bill, it's me that's devalued. I'm as patriotic as the next guy. I'm more patriotic than the next guy. But because I lack a belief that some people have I'm looked down on, considered unelectable, and untrustworthy?

In some ways I'm the same guy. In others I now burn with an anger I didn't feel before. I may be the same shouty, opinionated, arrogant, patriotic, pro underdog guy as before, but it's different now... Now I am the underdog.

Should you be afraid of high fructose corn syrup?

No. No you shouldn't.

...

Yeah, I know, you've heard that HFC causes all kinds of things from obesity, diabeetus, and high blood pressure to heart attacks and cancer! Everyone's heard about how bad HFC is for us. Well, the truth is, HFC is not dangerous and it isn't the cause of modern American obesity.

HFC is a sugar and, chemically speaking, a sugar is a sugar is a sugar. There are lots of sugars: glucose, fructose, sucrose, lactose, and many others. Your body, assuming you aren't a diabetic or lactose intolerant, treats them all generally the same way, that is as a sugar. That means that your table sugar and that "healthier" raw sugar, are just different combinations of the same simple sugars. The flavor may be different, but your body breaks them down easily with no regard to flavor.

So why have you hear SO MUCH BS about HFC? Because somewhere someone reported that ingesting large amounts of HFC can cause cause obesity, which can lead to diabeetus (and then idiots on the Internet lay on the cancer BS). What everyone neglects to mention immediately following that is that EVERY SUGAR CAN DO THAT. If you eat two pounds of table sugar a day, you gonna get fat and are increasing your chances of getting diabeetus. Remember how eating anything to excess is bad for you? That's true here. A diet with HFC in it is not automatically worse than a diet high in honey, which is largely fructose as well.

As our country becomes more and more health obsessed, people continue to look for single bullet causes for obesity. There isn't one. Still, HFC is popular because it is cheap and readily available, so people will try to blame it. But the problem lies not with HFC, but with stupid people who drink the equivalent of two pounds of sugar in soda a day, or have a high calorie diet with a lot of HFC in it in some other form.

So don't avoid HFC as a sweetener. It won't cause cancer, it won't give you diabeetus, and it certainly won't make you fat. Eating like a fatass and not exercising will make you fat.

Skepticism

Once upon a time I believed in the possibility of all sorts of things: gods, ghosts, demons, angels, aliens, yeti, energy flows, ley lines, acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, folk remedies, and so on. Over time I became more skeptical and started questioning things I previously believed. Why is it that photos of alien craft have deceased as the prevalence of camera phones has increased? Why do ghost hunters present laughable evidence and get taken seriously? Why does acupuncture perform no better than a placebo when tested outside of China? Why do soft-style chi masters get massacred by MMA fighters?

Now I consider myself a hard line skeptic. All that shit I mentioned above? Either intensely unlikely (99% probability) or complete bullshit (like homeopathy). Every new claim I see (e.g. "1 tip to a flat belly" ads) is viewed with great distrust. Nothing is free of the question, "How does that work?"

One issue I have run into, as have many skeptics, is that skepticism is viewed pejoratively, that we skeptics are Debbie Downers, the people out to ruin the party. I have run into this with both family and friends and have had arguments over many things. In my experience, people seem less mad about hte topic and more angry that I am objecting at all.

I don't understand this. I think that the general perception is that I am only being skeptical to be annoying, or a know-it-all, or even just to alienate people. I fail to see how going through life credulously believing every stupid idea thrown at me is a bad thing. Despite this, I'm the jerk for pointing out that homeopathy is complete BS.

The reason I am a skeptic is, despite what some seem to believe, is because I value knowledge. I want people to do what works, not fall for an anecdote strong but evidence weak fad. I don't want friends or family wasting money on scams or wasting hope on anything that won't ever work better than a placebo.

So what is a skeptic to do? I'd rather not be seen as a jerk by family and friends, but I'm not going to back down about any quackery or other BS that can hurt people or waste their money. I try to keep an open mind about new ideas, but considering the cavalcade of nonsense I see every day, it's hard to not just assume that everything is a scam, a lie, or worse. Suggestions?

Interesting...

Yesterday my boss sent out an email saying that another team in the company had an opening and was anybody interested. The way the email was framed, it was pretty clearly just an "I sent this email out because someone asked me to, but no one will actually say yes, so there's no danger of losing any people here" email. I thought about it for a few minutes, then responded that I was interested and found a person on that team and talked to her about it just so I was sure they knew I was interested.

This new job would be much more like an actual job in that I would have stuff to do constantly, would actually involve more writing and less actual technology (something I've been interested in for a while now), and would be with a team full of people I generally enjoy, so there aren't many downsides (though there are some big ones, like many more meetings). I have my reservations, but this sounds like a good move for me, so I'm moving forward to see what happens.

I haven't heard anything interesting today and have had some free time to fret about it, but with any luck, I'll have information soon. Maybe I'll be able to move out of my boring stressful and into a busy stressful job! If that sounds dumb to you, I can say with great confidence that I would rather be busy and stressed then bored and stressed. More news as it appears...

An eloquent defense

I don't know who this Stephanie Z chick is but her comment is a very clear and calm explanation why atheists can seem aggressive.

It’s worth remembering where this debate came from. Atheists, only recently starting to stand up and be counted in any number, are seeing the people who have been saying the same things that atheists have been saying for centuries (as noted in comment 5, then largely ignored) being told to hush up because they’re being noticed for once and that’s making trouble. These are frequently also the people who gave your rank-and-file atheist the courage to come out and who provide sympathy when coming out results in the crap it always results in. But hush, because what these other people are doing is really important.

Of course, it is important. But so is being supported and encouraged as an out atheist. So is being able to tell people how religion hurt you or those you love without having to put bows on it. So is being able to tell other people that they have a real choice to get out of abusive religions. So is being able to run for public office. So is being able to keep your job. So is being able to keep your kids.

But hush. And be really nice to the people who are telling you to hush. Be nice to the people who are telling you that you matter less than what they’re doing. Be nice to the people who are doing good work but only talk about why people like you are bad. Be nice to the people who might, someday let you eat at the grown-up table if you stay quiet enough at the children’s table first (and when there are no more grown-up problems you might interfere with). Hush and trust them, despite the fact that they’re calling you the problem.

Yeah, no. Atheists are being aggressive, in part, because they’re being told to go back to being passive. They’re being argumentative because there’s a constant onslaught of messages leveled at them and everyone they have to deal with that becomes the unquestioned social background if they don’t. They’re being rude because everybody is rude sometimes, and they’re not going to be left out if you’re not. They’re being condescending because you’ve been told this before in some form, but you can’t seem to move past the fact that someone insulted you in order to hear it.

Damn straight.

Oh, the sprain!

So my instructor sprained my ankle two weeks ago today. What, I didn't do it? No, it's legitimately his fault. I was doing a leg kick, he caught my leg with both of his legs and twisted, and with a resounding pop my ankle was sprained. Now, I've had sprains before, and they've been usually painful and annoying but short lived. This situation was quite different as there was no pain. That's right, sprained ankle, no pain whatsoever. It led me to wonder if it was actually sprained, but as it swelled up like a wee balloon, yes I'm now sure it was sprained. However, the lack of pain really confused me. Anyway, the usual response to a sprain is RICE:

Rest
Ice
Compression
Elevation

So did I rest it? No. It didn't hurt, so I kept working out on it, not just immediately following but in the past two weeks as well. Did I ice it? Not initially, but when the swelling didn't go down I iced it some to no avail. Elevation I tried, but again lack of results. Eventually I decided to try compression, and that seems to have worked to some degree, as my ankle now actually hurts sometimes. However, the swelling is still there, so I'm going back to mostly apathy.

I'll ice it and compress it some more tonight, but I doubt it will make a difference. Besides, since I'll only be working on the ankle after Capoeira tonight I'll be at a disadvantage anyway. You'd think my trip to FL this weekend might force me to rest it, but as I'm already hunting down a Capoeira school to play at while I'm out of town, I don't see that happening.

If my foot rots off or something equally horrifying, I give you full rights to call me an idiot.

Attempt eight...

Religion, the lack, and everything else, is a difficult subject to tackle. The problem here is that I have friends on all sides of this argument. I have atheist friends. I have friends who range from casually to devoutly held faith. What's important to me is that I keep these friends. Unfortunately it's also important that I speak my mind. This is a post I've been unable to finish several times, but I'm having another stab at it. I may even post this one.

What I am is apathetic, an apatheist to be precise. Basically I don't care if there is or isn't a god. God or not god has had no meaningful or relevant affect on my life other than to be something to argue about, so fuck it. I have better things to do with my time, like stare at walls, chew gum, or get in pointless arguments on the Internet. I don't agree with atheists or theists, so once again I'm in a tiny corner where few others bother to tread. So what do I think about everyone else?

Atheists first. The following is why I'm not an atheist courtesy of Carl Sagan: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." I actually agree with atheists for the most part. However, there are New Atheists, or Gnu Atheists, who basically called open season on religion and are attacking religion at every step. They are rational thinkers and back up their assertions on typically good evidence, but they don't care who they offend at the end of the day calling the religious deluded and worse. While I appreciate the sentiment, being dicks about it isn't really helping as I see it, so I find them annoying even as I agree with much of what they say. But there are plenty of atheists with a live and let live attitude, so fine.

Now religion. Religion is based on faith; that means that you can't prove what you believe but you believe it nonethless. I do not discount that it takes strength to have this faith; I respect that it's difficult. However, what I don't respect is when the faithful viciously attack atheists for daring to dissent or even just for asking questions. Still, there are plenty of religious people with a live and let live attitude, so also fine.

Then we get to politics. Who are the people who hold political offices? Christians. Sure there's the occasional Jewish or Muslim person, but 99% of the time Christians. Most people wouldn't vote for an atheist no matter his qualifications. That attitude is so un-American it makes me want to punch babies. When politicians start bitching about being persecuted by the atheists, secularists, or anything else like that, I want to punch their infant children. That's like republicans AND democrats complaining about being persecuted by libertarians! Like atheists, we libertarians aren't even invited to the party. However, I've never heard anyone say they wouldn't consider voting for a libertarian based on his party alone (just because we're crazy). I can say that I've heard, many times, that people wouldn't vote for an atheist entirely because that person was an atheist. That, in a nutshell, is why I'm so aggressively pro-atheist. If you hate blacks you're a racist and that's not ok; if you hate jewish people you're anti-Semitic and that's not ok; if you hate gay people, you're a homophobe and that's increasingly not ok; if you hate fat people, you're an asshole and that's not ok; if you hate atheists, well, that's just fine? Fucking no.

We are guaranteed religious freedom by the Constitution, all of us, every single American. Choosing to not follow a religion, while unpopular, is something that, as Americans, we should be defending. Unpopular views, even those we find extremely distasteful, are the right of all Americans. I may hate what the Westboro Baptist Church is and says, but they have a right to say it, just as I have the right to revile their existence.

So what's my point? Whatever you believe, so long as you accept the glaring flaws of your belief and don't force it upon others, is fine by me. Whatever you believe, so long as you agree that people who completely disagree with you have the right to believe what they want, then we're good. Fortunately, I think this includes nearly everyone I count as a friend. I am a lucky man.

I hate my fucking job

I have been asking for programming work for now no less than nine months. Last week I was finally given a programming project which I got quite far into on Friday. Then today, I come into work and my computer is hosed. Can't work! I put in the request to get it fixed, but how fast do they get here? They don't. So the only programming work I've had in forever is immediately passed on to another programmer. And it turns out that the information I was given to complete this task was actually wrong. So even if I had finished the stupid programming job, it wouldn't have been right and I would have taken shit for that, despite the fact that I would have been doing what I was told in the first fucking place. Fuck my life.

Breaking up is hard to do

I just ended a relationship with a young lady I had met on the Internet. The attraction was there and while I did like her, I knew that long term potential wasn't there, so I broke it off with her. I did the best I could, I was honest and clear, tried to blunt the hurt as much as possible. She really liked me and she didn't take the news too well, and I hate giving good people bad news. I don't know if it speaks well of me or makes me a wuss, but I really feel like a jerk right now. I made the right choice, that I'm sure of, and I made it very clear to her that she did nothing wrong, but she was shocked and hurt and I hate that I had to make her feel that way.

In a way it's almost better when relationships explode in a fiery conflagration that makes everyone involved angry and screamy. That kind of pain is easy to deal with, or it is for me. This quiet, sad, and drama-free breakup just sucks. I wish there had been something I could have done differently to make it better, but short of staying in the relationship till something better came along which is a most dick of dick moves, there was no way to avoid this.

Stupid emotions. I should, like, be a robot. Or something.