16613--You Don't Give Someone a Gun Unless You Know Which Way They're Going to Point It

I used to revel in the exploits of superheroes.  There were neverending thrills to be found in champions of all things good and right fighting to stem the tide of relentless evil.  The willingness of individuals to push themselves beyond the limits of the average, struggling to hew order from chaos in realms where weaker beings dared not, simply felt right.

Time marched on like it's supposed to and...the audience changed.  We learned things that made us ask more questions.  "Why?" started coming up with increasing frequency and we sought answers in places that made us look for other parties to hold responsible than whoever happened to be drawing our attention.  We wanted to know not only who was behind them, but why our superheroes weren't doing something about them.

This is to say that heroic figures as powerful as some of those presented in popular adventure fiction should also be running about like Fox Mulder, shining lights in dark corners where a lot of folks don't want those lights shining.  If these icons were going to truly uphold their ideals, Superman and Wonder Woman would be fighting corrupted governments to protect the oppressed masses, Batman would be more wanted than Rorschach for having exposed the secrets of the Kennedy assassinations and a litany of other shadowy operations far more disturbing than a midnight mugging (though fighting street crime obviously holds a special interest for him, considering...) and Thor would have been labeled an eco-terrorist years ago for his hard stance against pollution.  A wise Professor Xavier would use his resources to lead his civil rights activists discreetly lest they draw armed opposition.  These and other powerhouses would be targets of The Man.

These sorts of scenarios don't seem to be much focused upon in our fiction.  In fact, the Comics Code Authority placed a specific ban upon any creative avenues that would cast authority figures in a bad light.  Modern heroic tales go further in that direction from time-to-time since they set the CCA aside, but the protagonists still work largely within the confines of the established order and political powers don't spend their time figuring out how to track them down and kill them in their sleep.  In that regard, The Man (in his many guises) probably appreciates the distraction afforded by supervillains, natural disasters, alien invasions and random street crime.    Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?  The Shadow Government says it does.  Still, there remains the issue of our heroes not being who they appear to be.

The mystery men and women we call superheroes are much more than their colorful public personas, just as our parents had lives of their own before they started raising children.  Many of our iconic heroes are truly nothing like the champions they pretend at being.  Behind their costumes, they are royalty (Thor, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Black Panther, Sub-Mariner), they are the wealthy upper-class (Batman, Zorro, Green Hornet, Iron Man, The Wasp), they are doctors and scientists and government agents.  Some are even mild-mannered members of the respected news media (Superman, Captain Marvel).  If we want to push the issue of how much the government really knows and covers up, a few of those capes belong to aliens and alien-human hybrids.  Can you fight The Man when you are The Man?

Because of the very magnitude of our biggest heroes, they couldn't honestly be allowed to build careers on being rebels against governmental administrations because as loose cannons they couldn't be trusted.  They'd quickly be painted as selfish individualists possessed of dangerous abilities that needed to be put in check ASAP.  If anything, it looks as though we've been conditioned to celebrate extra-legal champions of the common man while being slipped a simultaneous message to blindly trust the wealthiest and most prestigious among society's power structure as figures of authority.  Conversely, it means we can't trust them to stand against the most pervasive forces in our lives.  Does that count as sneaky when it's been done right in front of us for decades?  Does conditioning us from childhood count as sneaky?

Even when they operate outside the strict letter of law, these heroes remain figures of order and justice, poster children of The Conspiracy that makes itself invisible through immensity.  As long as they're to secretly remain integral parts of traditional, institutional society and not be branded enemies of the state, bucking the system and rebelling against The Man will have to remain practices of the common man.  The common man created society and has to bear the responsibility of policing it while our heroes use their superior attributes to grab headlines for transitory accomplishments of lesser significance.  I still enjoy their adventures in the right context, but I know they can't save us from ourselves or the monsters we've unleashed.  Only we have the power to do that.

16361--Secrets You Should Know to Keep Everything From Falling Apart

We all exist in our own private Wonderland that is more often than not summed up in the word: human.  The human creature exists as a churning mass of chemicals all built from microscopic chains of protein.  From there, those spiraling strands of DNA, all the rest of our composition flows.

Proteins, carbohydrates, fat, cholesterol, a whole pharmacy of chemical compounds make a non-stop dance within the confines of our skin suits.  There's a conspiracy of activity striving to keep us alive and thriving.  So if being of sound mind and body is actually important to us, how do we mess it up?  And what can we do to keep our equipment in working condition?

We all know the answer, even if we don't want to face it.  Life requires maintenance.  We can see it in anything that we create.  Machines need to be maintained to keep working.  Cities need to be maintained or they crumble, the territory to be reclaimed by nature.  Houses need to be cared for or they'll fall into disrepair.  The human body is the same.

That means work.  That means eating properly and it means excercise.  Now, once upon a time, this used to be easier.  Before junk food production became major industries and before we started using our brains to think up sedentary occupations for ourselves, we were hunters and gatherers.  Or at least our ancestors were.  They worked hard to survive and exercise came with that as a matter of course.  Those people walked everywhere.  A lot of the time, they were walking to find food, so there was definite motivation.  Food was much more scarce so overeating was no more likely than eating badly.

Today, we've learned to keep the food coming to us and we've crafted a civilization that makes sitting a major part of daily activity.  Instead of making time to rest, we have to make time to move.  I remember Doc Brown explaining it to the saloon audience of 1885 in "Back to the Future III" and even they thought it sounded ridiculous.  "Does anybody walk or run anymore?" Pat Buttram asked him.  Wistfully, the good doctor assured them that we modern descendants would continue the practices for fun and general well-being, but...we've managed to create some large butts.  Watch The Learning Channel for a couple of weeks and you're likely to see a few people you would swear were taking lifestyle tips from Jabba the Hutt.

OK, so if you've decided you don't want to resign yourself to having people deliver platters of food to you on an hourly basis and test the limits of the human body's fat storage system, it's time to get up and walk.  "But why?  Obviously we were meant to store lots of fat." 

Yes we were, because food used to be scarce for humankind for the last hundred thousand years.  Recently, as you might've heard, we fixed that.  We're also built for walking.  With practice, we can outdistance anything we want to eat.  That's how humans used to catch faster, stronger prey animals.  We'd push them till they were worn out, better still if we'd managed to wound them first.  Hunts might take days, but our ancestors learned to walk and run and to track things down.  We inherited a great exercise and a tremendous energy storing system.

Walking is a great exercise that requires no special equipment.  You don't even have to break a sweat for it to benefit you.  Walk thirty minutes to an hour every day and it'll be better for you than trying to run seven hours a week.  "What?  If a little is good, isn't more even better?"

Pull up a chair.  Yeah, more sitting.  I'm going to hit you with two secrets of health and fitness that they won't tell you on the diet pill commercials.  There's a limit to the health benefits you will receive from exercise.  Surprise!  After you've burned about 2500 calories on exercise in a week, you can take a break.  You won't receive any more perks after that.  That's not to say you can't keep training and teach your body to run a hundred miles if you want to; however, if that were your goal, you wouldn't need a push from me.  You would already be out there running.  So for all of you still reading, ask yourself if you'd rather walk thirty minutes a day or run for two and a half hours?  I know my answer.

Now, since I mentioned the commercials, they may have enticed you with images of smiling people sporting low-fat bodies and chiseled abs.  Many people find these images to be very motivating goals.  That's why they use them.  Assuming you're still sitting, I've got another bit of information they're not sharing with you.  Those smiling low-fat people aren't healthy.

To be medically technical about it, the images they're showing you are of anorexics.  Anorexia wasn't a desirable medical state the last time I checked.  Your body uses fat for different reasons, so it needs it.  Hell, your brain is made out of fat and cholesterol.  If you're wearing ten percent bodyfat or less, you're anorexic and so are those models on TV.  By the time of their photo shoot, they've likely dehydrated themselves, too, to really make sure the skin is tight.  That's why you can see their chiseled abs and sculpted musculature...and their ribs.  That's the only way you're going to see yours either.  Do Olympic gymnasts and weightlifters show off their abs?  No.  Their very strong muscles are hidden under fat, but that's OK because they came to perform, not to pose.


You should go do some push-ups.  Start with as many as you can handle and remember to breathe deeply.  Some days do a few less.  Switch it up to surprise your muscles.  Notice how much easier it becomes.  You don't have to set an hour aside for this simple activity, just one minute at a time throughout the day while you're taking those stretch breaks to keep from sitting all day.  You will increase your strength and your stamina over time. 

The great thing about the simple push-up is that you're not just working your arms.  There are a variety of ways to do push-ups and you're going to work your core muscles, strengthening your back and your abdominals, as you go.  That means you're less likely to hurt yourself as you perform other activities.  And since you're breathing deeply, your breathing will improve.  When your breathing improves, everything improves.

Now, when you build muscle, you will become stronger.  You will also become heavier, so don't freak out when you hit the scale.  Another secret ("Man, how come nobody's been telling me this stuff?") is that as you build muscle, your body will store a little more fat.  Don't panic.  I'm not saying that push-ups and other resistance exercises will make you fatter.  Actually, the accumulation keeps a pretty even pace.  If you started at twenty-five percent bodyfat and added ten pounds after a few weeks of strength training, you'd find that you were still at twenty-five percent bodyfat.  That means you've added a few of those pounds in the form of fat.

Getting rid of the fat is a little trickier.  The commercials don't tell you this one either, but there is a limit to how much fat you can burn.  A pound of fat stores thirty-five hundred calories.  It's a lot and it's a lot to burn.  It's even a lot to eat in a day, but we've proven we can do it.  Unfortunately, it's more than we need.  Due to the efficiency of the human body, you won't burn more than two pounds of fat in a week.  If you could, no one would've needed to invent liposuction.  When the commercials tell you someone lost thirty pounds in two weeks, a little math will tell you that it's not all fat.  If it wasn't fat, then it was something that person should've kept (muscle, water, etc.). 

That gets us back to the basics, but that's OK because we're trying to keep things simple.

• Eat right: protein first, followed by vegetables and low-starch carbohydrates
• Eat less: unless you're involved in intense exercise, you probably don't need more than two thousand calories a day--no super-sizing!
• Walk more, sit less.
• Get regular sleep and drink plenty of water: like I said, basics

Your total body weight isn't the indicator you want to watch when determining your health.   Pay attention to your body mass composition.  If you haven't already, shop for a good bodyfat scale.  For detailed reading, you might look into the writings of biochemist Dr. Bart Sears.  He developed the Zone Diet.  A lot of different diet plans have built on its simple framework and touted themselves as revolutionary (The Miami Beach Diet, for example, was a hybrid that starts as the Atkins Diet and segues into the Zone Diet).

One other bit of exercise you might want to look into is rebounding.  If you think you're not familiar with it, it's basically jumping on a trampoline.  Not the big ones, like in your backyard, which is undeniably a lot of fun.  No, this involves the little ones like you'd find in the exercise equipment department.  There is a difference, though.  The mini-trampoline will cost you about $40 and the "rebounder" about $200.  Unlike most products, though, the difference in quality really is reflected in the price.  Use the $40 model like the $200 model and you'll wear it out in about a month.  A "rebounder" is bouncier, sturdier and designed to last for years.

If you like bouncing on the big ones, you'll probably enjoy the small version.  On the small one, you can bounce inside and get more bounces.  The importance of this is that you're altering the stress on your whole body at once repeatedly.  At the height of a bounce, you're airborne and feeling weightless.  At the bottom, you've momentarily multiplied the g-force stress on yourself, over and over, but without the impact stress of jogging or even walking.  Even though it's fun, ten minutes of that counts as work.  Do a few thousand bounces every week and who cares whether or not you go for a walk?