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The Seven Matters of Life

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“Everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler.”

— Albert Einstein

I’ve found that life can be optimized with respect to a minimum of seven areas. Delete any one of them from the equations of your awareness and your life will degrade, sooner or later. Since these areas are irreducible I call them the Seven Matters of Life. They are: Personal, Health, Spiritual, Business, Family, Law, & Government.

The Seven Matters exert an inevitable, if not invisible, influence on our lives. As with natural laws describing gravity, time, the speed of light, etc. they persist whether we ignore them or not. We “escape” them only through acknowledgement and mastery.

My writing is an informational vortex swirling around the Seven Matters. Ideally, it serves as a generational boost to reduce the time needed to put your own life on optimal track.

A Portrait of the Seven Matters

To portray the seven matters I’ll use a pattern-type at the core of natural design: Fractals. Before fractals were discovered, Hollywood was unable to reproduce mountain landscapes without using artist renderings or real pictures of mountains. Now, they use triangles, a computer, and a dash of randomness to create breathtaking landscapes.

The point of using a fractal to portray the seven matters of life is this:

Fractals prove that stupefying complexity can emerge from utter simplicity. The reverse is not true.

Also, I want to make a point, graphically, about the nature of optimizing one’s life:

Even when a complex solution is needed it will inevitably be constructed with simple (not simplistic) components.

The Metatron Cube

One of my favorite fractals is the metatron cube, sometimes referred to as “the flower of life”. It’s formed with 13 spheres set in relation to each other, like this:

Wire Metatron Cube
Within the metatron cube are many other shapes. For example, it contains all five platonic solids.

metatron platonic

In this revolving view the cubic relationships of the same fractal are emphasized.

Metatron in Motion

Fractals can represent infinity by putting the same fractal within itself. Here’s what a metatron cube looks like with each sphere filled with its own metatron cube:

Metatron Infinity

Working Portrait

Please don’t mistake the colorful portrait, below, as “New Age” philosophy with its nauseating relativism. To the contrary, it’s a working portrait of the seven matters  at the core of each person. Though we’re all unique, and at differing levels of development, our design is specific and persistent.

Self Portrait 1
Notice these aspects of the portrait:

  1. The seven inner-spheres of the core correspond closely to the seven matters of life.
  2. The “matter” at the center is Spirit; a reference to the spirit inside you and to God.
  3. Each sphere is a fractal identical to the others, and to the whole.
  4. The outer spheres represent personal interactions with the external world. They are the natural outward reach stemming from the inner core.
  5. To the extent the inner-core is balanced, so is the person, and so are interactions with the external world.

Everyone has these “matters” in their life, in one formation or another. My choice of their positions is, therefore, a kind of self-portrait. Change the position of the “matters”, especially the one in the core, and the resulting life of the person will be quite different.

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Anton Chigurh
Business

Using the PCL-R to Detect and Eject Your Local Psychopath

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Psychopaths are all the rage, lately. About 1% of the population meet the clinical criteria for psychopathy.1 That percentage rises to 3-4% in senior executives.2 Many articles and books list their attributes and behaviors. Still, advice on what to do about them is sparse.

I have an idea: use the new tool enabling psychiatrists to standardize their diagnosis and communicate accurately about such “patients”. That is, use the PCL-R (Psychopathy Checklist-Revised) to detect the potential psychopaths in your life. Then eject them before they have a chance to do the damage they seem born to do. You don’t have to be an expert to protect yourself.

If that seems harsh then avail yourself of the innumerable books and articles about these human predators. They rarely create anything but chaos. They’re usually parasites that rely on the productivity of others to supply for their every need. And yet, human hosts abound. Hosts, who don’t realize they’re facilitating their own demise until it’s too late.

I wrote a book about a suspected psychopath to thicken the non-fiction part of his résumé. He hasn’t been brought to justice, yet, but perhaps my book will put a digital noose around his neck, in the meantime. In Chapter 13 of “The Creature from Galt’s Gulch” I used eyewitness accounts to compare the suspect with Dr. Robert Hare’s PCL-R checklist for psychopathy.

Beginning of Book Excerpt

Johnson and the Psychopathy Checklist

Here’s a list of eyewitness accounts of Johnson and their correspondence to the attributes and behaviors on Dr. Robert Hare’s PCL-R checklist for psychopathy.

Preserving the term, “Psychopathy”

Words are often used with little respect for their original meaning. They’re used in propaganda and strung together in phrases that become memes. Memes are captured in social media, sitcoms, and movies. Within a few short years the word bears little resemblance to its original meaning. The first casualty is that the word in question may never recover it’s original, and most powerful, meaning. Even greater damage is done by obscuring the definition of a perfectly good word and thereby shrinking the vocabulary of humanity. It then takes that much more effort to  communicate effectively.

We’re all familiar with the trivial use of the word “Fascist” hurled at anyone, and anything, the accuser may not like or that presents a maddening obstacle to their whims. Only when fascism describes the merger of corporate with state powers does meaning reappear. Another word that must be recovered to understand Galt’s Gulch Chile is “Psychopath”.

If your understanding of the word “Psychopath” is anyone acting in a way you don’t understand or agree with, then maybe the word “Psychotic” or “Psychosis” is a better fit. At the heart of the GGC story there sits a man exhibiting behaviors I believe (As a layman) to be consistent with the medical use of the term “Psychopath”. I refer to him as the “Creature” or Kenneth Dale Johnson. I have been careful to refrain from throwing the word “Psychopath” around in the irresponsible manner in which the word has become a cultural meme since 2010. That was when the Showtime series, “Dexter”, portrayed one as an ersatz hero. The word “Psychopath” is a medical term used to describe someone who lacks all empathy with their fellow man, someone who has no conscience, someone who can lie about millions of dollars of stolen money as if he were handing you an ice cream cone. It gets worse, but, let’s just leave it at that, for now.

As a layman, with no psychiatric medical training, I’ll stick with the PCL-R standard the professionals use to diagnose psychopathy. Dr. Robert Hare’s revised checklist for psychopathy is something I recommend all people become familiar with as a tool to assist in spotting, and then avoiding, the psychopaths that cross their path.
If there should be some kind of future “therapy” to shift the behavior of psychopaths towards that which, at least, acknowledges empathy with their fellow man (And not their pets or animals as is characteristic of the psychopath) then I welcome it. As of today, there is no such therapy that I’m aware of. The best course of action is to understand the behavior, recognize when they are being exhibited by someone, gauge the extent to which the person under consideration may be a psychopath, and avoid them in equal measure.

I believe that, unless Johnson ends up in jail, he’ll move on to live somewhere else in the world. May what’s been written here about the damage he’s done to so many people be added to his resume.

As of June, 2015 Johnson is making the mistake of recording himself on dozens of video updates he calls “Farm updates”. As with the rare movie, “I, Psychopath” where Sam Vaknin allows a filmmaker to create a documentary about him, this is a rare opportunity to study the behavior of a likely psychopath, in real time, and on video.

“Each of the 20 items in the PCL-R is scored on a three-point scale, with a rating of 0 if it does not apply at all, 1 if there is a partial match or mixed information, and 2 if there is a reasonably good match to the offender. This is said to be ideally done through a face-to-face interview together with supporting information on lifetime behavior (e.g. from case files), but is also done based only on file information. It can take up to three hours to collect and review the information. Out of a maximum score of 40, the cut-off for the label of psychopathy is 30 in the United States and 25 in the United Kingdom. A cut-off score of 25 is also sometimes used for research purposes. High PCL-R scores are positively associated with measures of impulsivity and aggression, Machiavellianism, persistent criminal behavior, and negatively associated with measures of empathy and affiliation.”
— Wikipedia entry for “Psychopathy Checklist”

GGC Logo
GGC Logo

PCL-R1

pcl-r2

PCL-R3

With five categories unknown Kenneth Dale Johnson already rates a score of 29, in the collective recollection of those who’ve tangled with him. If correct, that makes him a psychopath in the UK and 1 point shy in the US. What do you think are the chances of him scoring a 0 in the unknown categories?

End of Book Excerpt

 

If you’re interested in the full story of Galt’s Gulch Chile the 186-page book is free for those who have access to the resource library.

Dealing with Psychopaths

You have two options:

  1. Detect and Avoid.
  2. Disentangle, Starve, and Extract.

Detect and Avoid

The unhired employee is the easiest to fire. The unentangled friend has no pretense to interfere. The unmarried crazy-maker is the easiest to divorce. Memorize the attributes of the PCL-R checklist so you can vet strangers that want to become more than strangers. Be on guard for anything over a score of 10 or for any attributes you find disturbing. Call former business associates and friends (If there are any). Did your candidate get along well with others? Did they show genuine empathy for other people? Would they do business with them again? Are they still friends? Just those four questions are probably enough.

I have a friend with an uncanny ability to detect the unseen factors about people and situations.  She refers to it as her “Spidey Sense”. In the seven years I’ve known her she’s never been wrong. Now, when she tells me something is up I adjust my thoughts and actions to be in line with her intuitions. My friend has rare abilities. However, perhaps you can assemble a group of friends to achieve a similar result? Why not invite your candidate out for coffee for an informal vetting session?

Learning to recognize an aggressive move when somebody makes one and learning how to handle oneself in any of life’s many battles has turned out to be the most empowering experience for the manipulation victims with whom I’ve worked. It’s how they eventually freed themselves from their manipulator’s dominance and control and gained a much needed boost to their own sense of self-esteem. Recognizing the inherent aggression in manipulative behavior and becoming more aware of the slick, surreptitious ways that manipulative people prefer to aggress against us is extremely important. Not recognizing and accurately labeling their subtly aggressive moves causes most people to misinterpret the behavior of manipulators and, therefore, fail to respond to them in an appropriate fashion.3

Heavily Scrutinize Claims of Pain, Hurt Feelings, or Victimhood from Prospective Friends, Partners, etc.

Are they sharing a real experience or merely evoking feelings of sympathy to put you off-guard?

The tactics manipulators use can make it seem like they’re hurting, caring, defending, … almost anything but fighting. These tactics are hard to recognize as merely clever ploys. They always make just enough sense to make a person doubt their gut hunch that they’re being taken advantage of or abused. Besides, the tactics not only make it hard for you to consciously and objectively tell that a manipulator is fighting, but they also simultaneously keep you unconsciously on the defensive. These features make them highly effective psychological weapons to which anyone can be vulnerable. It’s hard to think clearly when someone has you emotionally on the run.4

Disentangle, Starve, and Extract

If you fail to detect or avoid a psychopath it will be much harder to get rid of them once they’ve embedded themselves into your life or business. It will be like trying to capture a spider while preserving the web. There will be people, assets, and money to preserve during the extraction. You can’t possibly care less about these things than your psycho already does. A psycho will think and feel nothing in “burning” through all of them just to see your reaction. Your best bet is to proceed slowly and document their every move so that contradictions and lies can be made visible to all. Get them talking and record everything (which is what psychos, themselves, are famous for doing). The biggest lies of their twisted premises must be debunked to the satisfaction of those who don’t yet see the spider for who they are. Those who don’t yet see through the psychos deceptions are unwittingly feeding the spider that will eventually bite them. In the meantime, the spider will continue to feed on the energy of those who still believe their lies. The idea is to cut off this source of the spider’s food so it eventually starves amidst a desert of unbelieving attention.

The ideal outcome is to have the spider eject themselves from the web. They will do so in huffs and indignant cries of counter-accusations. The psycho will go down with the ship repeating the same tired stories of how they have always been the victim and don’t care how many people don’t believe them. If you’ve done your homework such cries and accusations will now be seen and recognized by all to be ridiculous.

Of course, psycho extractions are rarely smooth and are difficult even when they can be done, at all. Perhaps Kent Kiehl’s, “The Psychopath Whisperer” can help. You may also enjoy Ann Barnhardt’s presentation on Diabolical Narcissism.

Their Words are Dead until You Make them Alive

Repeating the accusations of a psychopath makes dead words come alive. You are the source of that life. The more you repeat their words the more life the words have to impact the living. Stop repeating them, or even listening to them, and a psychopaths words remain dead in their own mouths. I’ve had personal experience with this.

A former boss of mine used to plant lies among his small group of five or so consultants. The point of his lies were to gain information from how each consultant reacted to them. I knew what he was doing but was never able to persuade the others to ignore his lies, altogether. When a co-worker would feel cornered into admitting to some trivial error the boss held it up as proof of the entire group being “liars”. That story reminds me of a simple and effective method for …

Extracting the Truth from a Psychopath

It’s easier than you think. Psychos are all blabber-mouths and can’t keep their own mouths shut. Your job is to listen and record. Then, translate their accusations as what they are: projected admissions of what the psycho, themselves, have done or are doing. It really is that simple. Psychos don’t so much create their own lies as much as they describe what they’ve actually done, and what their own motivations were. Then, a few names are swapped around, and fresh accusations can be launched. If cornered, your psycho will, of course, extend the web. But that be plausibly and quickly done with the inside knowledge of having been the original culprit.

Think of it this way: They’re not performing the mental feat of keeping track of multiple lies and the rippling consequences of multiple conflicting stories. They’re merely reciting from memory what they, themselves, have done.

Example

Psycho: “You’re a lying buffoon who has doctored up your resume with false experience while taking credit for the work that Joe and Marcia have done! You’re also using company money to pay for non-business events and expenses!”

You: Excellent. Now I know that my psycho has:

  1. Lied.
  2. Doctored up his resume
  3. Taken credit for Joe and Marcia’s work
  4. Used company money for travel, food, and events.

This is as close to a direct admission of deeds and guilt as your ever likely to get from your local psychopath. Enjoy it. Now you know exactly what they’ve been up to and how they mucked things up.

Herd Immunity from Psychos?

There is little hope or evidence that such creatures will self-correct and change their destructive ways. As with most problems facing humanity the hope lies in what changes the victims can make to avoid or neutralize the attack.
In the long-term, humanity must confront and overcome the following deficiencies if “Herd Immunity” is to be attained:

  • A pervasive lack of awareness of their existence.
  • Inability to diagnose and, therefore, to defend against, avoid, or thwart.
  • No understanding of how they fit-in, demographically, with humanity.
  • Apologetic denial that notorious figures of history were obvious and diagnosable psychopaths but my “friend” (Partner, Business Associate, City Councilman, etc.) is different.
  • No spiritual discernment of the possibility that some people are just plain evil and that’s all there is to it.
  • A knee-jerk tendency to dismiss outrageous behavior happening right in front of them.
  • A tendency to take responsibility for outrageous behavior so as not to upset the guilty offender with the truth, or upset the sensibilities of the group.
  • A long willingness to “Strike-a-Deal” to cap the bleeding despite an established string of lies.

Anyone wanting to avoid being victimized by covert-aggression must redefine the terms of engagement with a would-be manipulator. To do this effectively, one must: 1. be free of any harmful misconceptions about human nature and behavior, 2. know how to correctly assess the character of others, 3. heighten self-awareness, paying special attention to aspects of one’s own character that increase vulnerability to manipulation, 4. correctly recognize and label the tactics of manipulation and respond to them ap- propriately, 5. avoid fighting losing battles, and 6. know how to maintain a position of power and strength in interpersonal relationships.5

But, what about the short-term? What might you be able to do right now about the potential psychopaths in your life?

Adopt-A-Path

Ex-CIA agent Robert David Steele advised bloggers to adopt their own zip-code and illuminate whatever hanky-panky is going on.

“If you bloggers self-organize and attach yourselves like leeches to specific issues, corporations, organizations, challenges, whatever, you will be the intelligence minutemen of this century. The power is in your hands.”

Perhaps the same could done for Psychopaths or Diabolical Narcissists?

For those inclined I recommend being quite sure of the informal diagnosis of your adopted specimen. Preserve your integrity by using words and terms accurately. You won’t need to use hyperbole as there’s no need to exaggerate behavior that’s already quite outrageous. I’ve also learned from experience the many benefits of the writer having no ties, whatsoever, to the subject or their crimes. Human cooperation confuses the living daylight out of these creatures. They can’t understand something that’s not within them to ever do. I suppose that leaves them without much light, at all.

May it leave them with no victims, either.

  1. Hare, R. D 1994, ‘Predators: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths among Us’,Psychology Today, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 54–61 ↩
  2. Baibak, P; Hare, R. D Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (2007) ↩
  3. In Sheep’s Clothing, Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People, George K. Simon, Ph.D., page 8. ↩
  4. Ibid., 9. ↩
  5. Ibid., 93. ↩
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A Life Without Words
Communication

Life without Words

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My mother had two strokes leaving her unable to walk. She hates not being able to walk. A few years later her eyes glazed over with cataracts and she couldn’t see. Since she lives with us, and we see her everyday, we didn’t notice it as it happened slowly over so many months. Her eyes were a tough case but the doctors were able to fix her eyesight with an operation.

Off all her losses, by far the worst was when she lost the ability to talk. We had to use a board with letters enabling her to point to letters to slowly make a word. To say that she hated it would be glib. She was furious! Her fury turned to desperation and then to depression.

Thankfully, over the next four months, her speech was largely restored through swallowing exercises. Along with the gift of that restoration to her was a restored confidence and insight given to me about words.

As a lyricist I felt I’d reached the limits of what words can hold or convey. I’d received the Irish “gift of gab” to the extent that, when my mother and I went to Ireland and had the opportunity to kiss the Blarney stone, I declined in disgust saying, “No thanks, mom. I talk too much already. You guys make me kiss that thing and see what kind of blabbermouth you’ll get then!”

To be fair to the legend, kissing the stone purports to confer “Eloquence and persuasiveness”; much loftier and more useful gifts than mere gab. Still, I didn’t kiss that thing and don’t regret it.

Kissing the Blarney Stone in 1897

While searching for a picture to portray the point of this article I found the poster for the film, “A Life without Words”. The trailer is fascinating with the film telling the story of a brother and sister in Nicaragua who are deaf and can neither speak, write, nor read until a sign language teacher comes along and teach them their first “words”.

Their father says (At 0:30 seconds on the film trailer) that, “Because they are disabled the authorities can’t touch them. They’re incomplete. The law can’t touch them.”

No Law? No Transgression!

True enough. When you have no words you can’t legally consent to contracts (That you can’t read!). As you look at the kids (Young adults, really) you can tell they’re intelligent and can think clearly even though they “have no words”. And yet, think of it from the state’s point of view: If the kids were to “sign” a contract they could always claim they had no idea what they were signing. If problems arose, later, how could one argue the point? “For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.”1

Self-Defense from Psychopaths

The father’s words remind me of another story where a known criminal psychopath was able to manipulate all those around him except for those who didn’t speak his language. The criminal spoke English and was perpetrating his schemes in a Spanish speaking country. The English speakers around him were manipulated, one by one. The Spanish speakers were immune. The psychopath could not “get inside their heads” with his words. His power was neutralized. Now that’s an idea someone could write a book about!

(I didn’t emphasize this phenomenon in the book I wrote about the story. However, if you’re interested in knowing more about the exploits and damage one psychopath can do, read “The Creature from Galt’s Gulch” (Free).)

That these two groups of people “with no words” were protected from their adversaries shows the power of words from the opposite side of the usual vantage point. Without words, you can’t be mislead or fooled by them.

The truth (And law) comes to us in words and can be taken away using words. Most of our liberties are not taken but rather given away by our own consent. We consent through various contracts and sign away precious liberties. I tackle these dangers in my book, “The Outlier’s Handbook”. In short, the wise must sometimes find ways to retain the advantages of the fool.

Better than Words?

Word Alternatives

These contenders are wonderful tools that may greatly assist your communication. They’ll probably decrease the number of words you’ll need to communicate. But, they won’t eliminate the need for words, entirely.

If you hand someone a picture without saying anything they’ll just look at you with questions in their eyes. You have to write or say something to put pictures in context. The inverse is not true: If you say something to someone you don’t have to follow it with a picture of what you talked about. Pictures and the rest are great, but optional.

Here to Stay, Forever

As long as mankind is walking the planet, words are here to stay. They’re the hardest ingredient to delete with any hope of communicating fully. “Use your words.”, the teachers at my children’s school say when the kids get frustrated. Those teachers know what they’re talking about!

Blindness is a dreadful affliction as would be the loss of any of the senses or faculties. However, take away someone’s words and you rob them of the dearest part of their humanity.

Postscript: My mother lives with us, now. We talk, everyday.

Mom and I on the cliffs of Donegal, Ireland

  1. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2001). (Ro 4:15). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. ↩
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The Outlier’s Handbook

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The world discards ideas and people that present multiple standard deviations away from “normal”. And yet, Reality has always been phenomenal and noumenal. To ensure you’re able to thrive in the artificial chaos of this generation you’ll need to be an outlier, in many ways. Here’s “The Outlier’s Handbook” to optimize your trajectory.

The Outlier’s Handbook

(Thriving in Artificial Chaos)

Table of Contents

Part 1 — What Outliers?

“Let Your Reasonableness Be Known to Everyone”

  • Ockham’s Razor: Benefits & Limits
  • The Bookends of Normalcy Bias & Cognitive Dissonance
  • “This Book Goes Too Far!”

What Outliers?

  • Outliers Defined
  • You Know You’re An Outlier If . . .
  • Outlier Benefits
  • Outlier Costs
  • Personal Secession and Other Outlier Mindsets

Part 2 — It’s Your World, Boss!

This Is Where You Live

American Roulette

  • The Constitution is Safe!
  • A Bank with Social Services Around It
  • Democracy: The God that Failed
  • The Corporation
  • The Deep State
  • Fascism, American Style

Lifecycle of Nations

  • “Poverty of Nations” Report Card
  • Imperial Collapse Playbook

Danger, Will Robinson!

Technocracy: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation

Regional Bloc Head Mercantilism

  • Gee, Maybe Nation-States Weren’t So Bad, After All
  • Solutions Amidst Global Fascism
  • Change Happens Like This, Now

Part 3 — The Usual Suspects

Call Them As You See Them

Origin & Story of Rulers and Authorities

  • Angelic Gen 6 View: Consistency & Insights
  • So, Who are “They”?
  • The “New” Face of Evil (Follow the Blood)
  • Long Term Trends Require Spiritual Unity
  • The Minions
  • A Working Structure of Oppression

They Walk Among Us

  • Serial Killers
  • How Can You Spot One?
  • Political Ponerology
  • 7 signs you might be dating one
  • Protection From Them
  • Speech Patterns
  • I, Psychopath
  • The Hidden Cost of Killing Psychopaths
  • Beware the Backlash

Elements of Their World View

Their Goals

  • ”Ye Shall Be As Gods”

Their Methods

  • The Moral Code of Evil
  • Inversion
  • Undisclosed Adhesion Contracts
  • Counterfeit Money
  • Controlled Markets
  • Technocracy
  • Stacked & Interlocking Pyramidical Structures
  • Consolidation
  • Democracy
  • Eugenics
  • Perpetual Fear
  • Long-Term Planning
  • With Methods Like This, Who Needs the Occult?

Part 4 — Acquiring Immunity

Move #1: Acquire Personal Immunity

Personal Matters

  • Purpose is Everything
  • Managing Outlierhood
  • Growth
  • Ethical Time Travel

Health Matters

  • First Do No Harm
  • Clean Food, Water, Air & Place
  • Nutrient Dense Diet
  • Gut Flora, Probiotics and the Second Brain
  • Optimal Exercise
  • Stress & Breathing
  • Life Extension & Blood Sugar Management
  • Sensible Health Insurance
  • Putting It All Together

Spiritual Matters

  • Intelligent or Random Design
  • Oneism (Monism) vs. Dualism
  • CINO’s & MINO’s
  • Christianity Leads To Science, Islam leads to Murder
  • Gandhi or Jesus?
  • Get Blessed
  • Get Uncursed
  • Supernatural Immunity: The Mind & Way Of Christ
  • The Whole Council of God
  • Spiritual Warfare
  • Practical Examples of Spiritually Based Solutions

Locational Matters

  • The Best Place to Live
  • Where Not to Live
  • Should you relocate?
  • The World is Yours
  • The Illusion of Ownership
  • Mobility
  • G.O.O.D Project – Lessons Learned

Family Matters

  • Instrument of Recursive Perfection
  • Spouse Choice
  • Children
  • Extended Family
  • Friends Worth the Title are Family
  • Community

Legal Matters

  • Natural Law
  • The Constitution is Safe!
  • Jurisdiction Matters
  • Where is the Agreement?
  • It’s Hard to Be a Free Man
  • Unraveling Your Liberty

Financial Matters

  • Money is for Immunity & Purpose
  • Business as Extension of Purpose
  • Tax Penalties for Fear and Poor Planning
  • Mortgage Slavery, Repealed
  • Austrian Economics is Real Economics
  • Investments in Immunity & Purpose Have the Highest ROI
  • Asset Protection

Political Matters

  • Terms of “State” & “Government”
  • The Diversion Of Left – Right Thinking
  • The Votes that Matter
  • Optimal Government = Perfect Self-Government
  • The Chief Asset Of The State: Fear & Belief In It’s Necessity
  • All Matters of Liberty Are Related
  • Caveat Viator: Libertarianism and Anarchy are Aspects of a Complete Worldview
  • Govern Thyself Perfectly and Hold Death Dear

Perspective Matters

  • The Most Valuable Commodity on the Planet
  • Philosophers On Donuts
  • Terms of “Freedom” & “Liberty”
  • Equality & Authority
  • Freedom & Structure
  • Peace Does Not Flow From Passivity
  • Proof and Truth
  • You Can’t Beat Everything with Nothing
  • “Let’s Just Split the Difference and Find a Middle Ground”
  • Stoicism
  • The Opportunity in Uncertainty
  • If Swamp Rats Can’t be Exterminated Why Can You?
  • What About America?

Doing Matters

  • Tony Robbin’s Best Trick
  • Think Spiritually, Act Locally
  • Getting Things Done
  • Low Hanging Fruit
  • Tragic Flaws of Conventional Prepping
  • Expert Tips
  • How To Lose Without Fighting (An Outlier’s Not To-Do List)

Part 5 — Ants & The Human Mosaic

Change The World in Four Moves

  • Humans as an Ant Army
  • Move #1: Immunity
  • Move #2: Specialize
  • Move #3: Move
  • Move #4: Cooperate
  • Humanize the Best Attributes of Animals & Insects

Part 6 — Problems: Solutions

Move #2: Specialize & Pick One

Personal Concerns

  • Training Disguised as Education
  • Shortening Attention Spans
  • Media Agitprop

Health Concerns

  • Eugenics
  • Vaccines Vs. Immunity
  • Socialized Medicine
  • Food Fascism & GMOs
  • Fluoridated water
  • Nuclear Waste & Meltdown Disasters
  • Geo-Engineering
  • Disease(s) Cured

Spiritual Concerns

  • Psychopathy
  • Moral Relativism
  • Odious Debt (Slavery)
  • Wars of Conquest
  • False-Flag Attacks
  • End Times Decoder Rings
  • 501c3 Churches

Locational Concerns

  • Agenda 21
  • Scientific Control Grid
  • Power Grid Fragility

Family Concerns

  • The State as Great Father
  • Broken Families

Legal Concerns

  • Patent Squelching
  • Webs of Undisclosed Adhesion Contracts
  • Drug Wars
  • Licensing
  • Militarization of Police
  • Surveillance State
  • Monopoly
  • Bonus: Beating Traffic Tickets

Financial Concerns

  • Fractional Reserve Banking (The Theft of Human Labor)
  • Disappearing Middle-Class A.K.A Unemployment
  • Currency Wars
  • US Bankruptcy
  • World Banking Systems
  • Institutional(ized) Theft
  • Market Manipulation
  • Global Cooling, Warming …Climate Change?
  • Technocracy

Political Concerns

  • Collectivism
  • Globalism

Part 7 — Appendices

  • In Case of Emergency: Read First!
  • Four Ways to Parse Solutions
  • Reading List for Outliers
  • Outlier Creeds
  • Sovereignty & Law
  • Agorist Manifesto in 95 Theses
  • Agorist Road-map Kyle Bennet
  • 100 Ways To Leave Leviathan
  • Wayne & Barry’s Guide for World Rulers
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Patagonia, Chile
Banking

Two Paragraph Expat Guide to Chile

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Rent and K.I.S.S.

All the land development talk in my Galt’s Gulch Chile series seems pretentious. Then again, merely telling the average person you’re flying to Chile has a good chance of causing eyes to glaze over as if one is doing something exotic. Flying to Chile is not exotic; it’s merely something that’s possible the instant one decides it is.

If there’s a storm headed your way it’s time to cut the crap-talk about some castle you own and get to a motel room anywhere the storm isn’t. Why be grandiose about the simple and elegant act of leaving to let the storm pass? In fact, why say anything at all except to make a few calls to shutoff utilities and keep any promises you’ve made to others before leaving town? With mouth firmly closed, just hop a flight and get a room.

Engaged Withdrawal is Not Passive

The point of all this ex-pat business is to contribute to the solution through engaged withdrawal. Having gone through much of the advanced work of ex-patting my family I can vouch for the truth that engaged withdrawal is not a passive undertaking (Hat tip to Wendy McElroy for this link).

Two Paragraph Expat Guide to Chile

Forget about all this talk of land development and ownership. Motels, Hotels, Apartments, houses and cabana’s dot the entire country, have already been developed, and are yours for the renting. Your best second home is a rental anywhere you want to be. Keep it that simple and you won’t even be limited to Chile.

Nine out of ten Chilean ex-pats end up in NE Santiago (Las Condes) so just rent there for a few months and make scouting trips on the weekends. When the 90 days is up on your visa fly to Argentina for the weekend and reset it. That’ll get you out of the US for six months with your “measly” first passport. You have one, right?

It’s Your World, Boss

The world is yours the instant you recognize it is. The nagging urge to “own” things, perhaps stronger in the American psyche, is best kept at bay when conducting one’s life across multiple nation-states.

I recall streaming the movie “Inglourious Basterds” [sic, indeed] from netflix to the ipad and realizing the adjoining cabana could be rented for my kids, along with the one we were in, for less than our US mortgage. With that thought, the fear of being trapped in proximity to the endless artificial problems of the state’s creation started to melt away. My second thought was that all this was achieved for the price of a plane ticket, rental car and a hotel room.

As Billy Joel Sang in “NY State of Mind”. . .

“Hop a flight to Miami Beach, or to Hollywood”

to which I add:

. . . or to Panama, New Zealand or to Chile.

 

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Body Flawss
Defense

There’s Something Wrong with Every Body

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Find out what’s wrong with yours and deal with it.

That’s what my friend Seroj said when I told him I had hemochromatosis. He’s right. We all have at least one thing wrong with our bodies. And finding out what it is can be a life boosting insight.

Seroj has a form of diabetes and is now glad for it. Dealing with it conferred benefits beyond the condition. He’s healthier now because of (How he dealt with) his diabetes!

No Body is Perfect?

When preparing for Mr. Olympia, Arnold said that no matter how perfect a body appears none have perfect symmetry. All parts have to brought into balance with the whole. His sloped shoulders and small calves made his point.

Lack of symmetry is a visual cue to lack of internal perfection. No body is perfectly symmetrical on the outside so why would the inside be any different?

It’s a miracle our bodies are as perfect as they are. We take for granted billions of complex relationships and functions that keep us alive. Our bodies are changing every second with all cells replacing themselves every seven years. Look at a picture of yourself seven years, ago. It’s not you, anymore!

Not IF, but WHAT?

Don’t waste time wondering if something’s wrong with your body. Just find out what it is. It’s liberating and the benefits to dealing with it may be enormous. The remedy, itself, will most likely benefit the rest of your body and life. If you have the conditions I do then dealing with them may even safe your life!

What’s Wrong With Me?

There’s two things wrong with my body: An inherited predisposition to high blood pressure and a blood problem called hemochromatosis. Both are silent, painless and deadly. But, not for me. Dealing with each has been a boost to overall health and quality of life. The remedies, nutrients, change of habits and diet needed to neutralize these ailments conferred benefits beyond the correction of the initial conditions.

For more on how I’ve eliminated the deadly threat of hypertension see my article on how to eliminating Hypertension without using drugs. The treatment for hemachromatosis is bloodletting like they used to do with leeches to rid the bodies of evil spirits. For more on that journey see, “How To Save Your Own Life“.

The Earlier, The Better

The earlier you find out what’s wrong with your body, the better. The condition(s) won’t go away through ignorance. You may not get the luxury of symptoms for a problem that can probably be balanced or avoided.

I found out about my high blood pressure while donating blood and hemachromotosis when it was diagnosed in my brother. Both of my body’s deficiencies are silent killers if left untreated.

My doctor friends joke that everyone should be their own doctor. Maybe that’s reaching too far. But, we should understand our bodies as well as we understand our cars.

Come to think of it . . . there’s usually something wrong with my car, too!

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Superman on his way
Charity

How to Save Your Own Life

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One of the contributing factors to my brothers’ death was hemachromatosis. By the time he was diagnosed, a year before he died, it had already caused serious damage to his organs.

It was a hereditary condition and my brother told me to get checked for it. So, I went to a doctor and had blood tests taken along with a painful liver biopsy. In the follow-up appointment to discuss the results the doctor was puzzled. He said I definitely had the condition but was not showing any symptoms. He asked if I had ever donated blood. “Yes, all the time”, I said. “I’m in the gallon club at Cedar Sinai.”

Then the doctor said, “Well, congratulations. You just saved your own life.”

Bloodletting is the only way to get rid of excess iron in the blood for someone with hemachromatosis. Donating on a frequent basis had cleared my blood of excess iron. If the iron hadn’t been removed it would have built up to high enough levels to do severe damage to my internal organs. At my age the damage would have already been life threatening.

This is How

You save your own life by contributing directly to mankind for the sake of humanity with no strings attached.

Not tithing. Tithing is to God.

Not your work. The work you do to create value for others in exchange for money is a wonderful thing. There’s no conflict between that work and the direct contribution I’m referring to here. They’re separate offerings made for a different purpose.

Not an action you take for a direct benefit. Although, its almost impossible to do something for others that doesn’t return to you, in some way.

Like Putting Quarters in a Strangers Parking Meter

Sometimes I use spare quarters to load the parking meters of strangers. I especially like to feed the meters of those who are about to get a ticket. It sounds like a cheap thrill, but, I find it thrilling for less obvious reasons:

  • I hate getting parking tickets.
  • I can’t save myself from getting one, but, I can save someone else.
  • Maybe one day someone will do the same for me.
  • I like the idea of being nice to someone before they’re nice to me.
  • I know the hassle I’m saving my stranger.
  • I know the cost to me is less than the hassle saved for my stranger.
  • I know my stranger will be in a better mood and their mood is contagious.
  • It’s possible their contagious mood travels around the invisible world and improves my own.
  • The state gives out parking tickets to make money, not to encourage people to change their parking habits.
  • Denying the state the proceeds of its deception gives me a thrill. Cheap for me, but not for them.
  • It costs me a quarter. But, it costs the state $25. 100 times ROI in money alone!
  • If my ROI is 100 in money what does it return in the improved and contagious mood of my stranger?
  • If my stranger has $25 more than he would, otherwise, what will he be able to do with the money?
  • If the state has $25 less what may it be prevented from doing that, like all state interference, would decrease the liberty and wealth of society?

Every time I drop a quarter this list comes to mind and makes me smile. Not such a cheap thrill after all, is it?

A Pint of Blood vs. 25 Cents

How much more beneficial is a pint of blood to save a life than a quarter to save a parking ticket? The prospects are enormous and powerful. Powerful enough to save a life. Maybe it would even save your life. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But, not for me.

It did save my life.

Copyright © 2014 by Terence Gillespie. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given to McGillespie.com

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Ladies with Wine
Diet

How To Stop Drinking Wine

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The best way to quit drinking wine is to replace it with something else. For wine you’ll need direct and indirect replacements.

The indirect replacements are for the routines, sights, sounds, textures, tastes, feelings, circumstances and occasions that surround your wine drinking.

The better your choice of replacement(s) for the drink and all these other things that surround your drinking the easier the quitting will be.

I wrote similar words about quitting coffee, last week. And I’m testing their limits by simultaneously giving up wine and coffee. Wine is the tougher of the two because I like wine more. It’s also become more ingrained in my lifestyle and eating habits than coffee ever did.

I thought about calling this article, “How to Give Up Alcohol”, but, I don’t have experience with drinking other forms of alcohol, besides wine. I can’t tell you how to stop drinking alcohol unless its the alcohol in wine your trying to give up. Like every article I write this is about my direct experience. In this case my direct experience is in giving up wine.

It’s possible that some of my experience may be useful for wine alcoholics, but, that would be presumptuous. If you have a more extreme form of addiction than I’m writing about here the additional benefits of an isolated environment, group support and a counselor is probably warranted. It’s never been easier to find an Alcohol Treatment Program near you.

Should you stop drinking Wine?

The biggest stumbling block for quitting anything is knowing if and why you need to quit. In the case of wine you have to be very clear and honest with yourself on your reasons for giving it up. Wine, itself, is not a harmful drink. But, you can make it into one by drinking too much of it.

How much is too much? I’ll give you my answer, but, you’ll have to come up with yours. In terms of health one glass of wine a day is good. Between one and two glasses the benefits drop off, rapidly, according to bodyweight. There is no literature anywhere recommending more than two glasses, regardless of bodyweight. So, if health is your value there’s your answer.

If you exceed the amount good for your health its bad for your body. At that point you can no longer claim health benefits as your excuse for drinking more.

I am giving up wine for the following reasons:

  • It’s interfered with the length and quality of my sleep.
  • Lack of sleep has compromised the clarity of my thoughts and the quality of my writing.
  • I’ve been exceeding the small quantity that’s good for my health.

These are not acceptable tradeoffs for my enjoyment and they’re certainly not Optimal. I won’t be having wine until its just another drink option and I can take it or leave it. Here’s how I think about it: “Wine that detracts from my health and productivity has got to go.”

Being this clear on my why and if is probably the only thing that enables me to actually stop drinking it. Seems to me the more wine detracts from your life the more motivation you have to stop drinking it. I highly recommend being honest here and getting extremely clear on your motivations.

Replacements

Quitting is a transition to something else. With wine its a transition to alternative beverages, routines and choices . With that in mind here’s a few important points to keep in mind about picking and using replacements:

The best replacements usually have a lot in common with what you’re trying to quit. Things we have to quit often involve routines, sights, sounds, textures, tastes and feelings surrounding the thing we’re trying to quit. You need replacements for them, as well. For wine, there is the taste, the wine buzz, the smell, the cool liquid flowing down your throat, the occasions where its served and the mood and social interactions that occur around it. Since we live up in wine country in northern California there are many events that occur on vineyard grounds, as well.

You may need a series of replacements to step into the routines that are optimal for you. That means that your optimal final replacement may not be the best choice to use first. Your body may have to detoxify or have other reactions and compensations it has to cycle through before you can ultimately quit. In extreme cases that may mean moving from something toxic to something less toxic and eventually to something non-toxic.

It may be effective to allow yourself as much of the replacement as you want (Assuming your replacement is not toxic). It may serve as a psychological reward for following through on the quitting.

My Replacements for Wine

My first replacement for wine is sparkling water.

Sparking water is fun, cold, quenches my thirst and is poured out of what looks like a wine bottle. Like wine, I have to make a separate trip to the fridge to find a cold bottle. After opening it I pour it onto a wine glass. When we’re eating out at a restaurant and I have wine I usually pour sparkling water into the empty wine glass. So, there’s a psychological sense that I’m finishing up a good meal and a few glasses of wine at a restaurant when I pour the sparkling water without having had any wine, at all.

My second replacement is a RockStar energy drink. This is similar to the sparking water but comes in a can. Like wine it gives me an energy boost and usually gets my writing started if I’m procrastinating on an article. Many people don’t know that wine gives an energy boost, as well, and that’s part of what’s missing when you stop drinking it.

My third replacement, used in the afternoon, is a nap. I was using coffee and wine as a crutch to power through the afternoon without a nap or a break. I decided not to fight afternoon naps any longer and just take one. The benefits of afternoon naps have been enormous! If fact, I feel it gives almost a full extra day of productivity every day! Wow, talk about a replacement.

My fourth replacement is my ace in the hole: Exercise! Physical exercise is the best way to get high. And when it comes to drinking wine the physical high from exercise completely wipes out desire for anything but water or electrolytes.

I have a RockStar after waking up from my afternoon nap. So far, its been a great way to start my ’second day’. It’s one of those sugar free health drinks that has healthy ingredients. I’m skeptical about the pink, blue and yellow stuff they use in sugar free drinks and prefer stevia. But, for now, I’m enjoying the Rock-Star until I find something better. Leading candidates are pelligrino with a little fruit juice added for taste or some of the exotic teas my wife gets on her trips to China.

Exotic teas will probably become my number one beverage replacement for wine in the future. I don’t think they are the best first beverage, but, they are probably the my optimal replacement. There are an infinite variety of them, they are excellent for a wide variety of health aspects, its fun to make them and experiment with preparation and taste. They are also like wine in the sense that it feels like I’m drinking the earth. Call me nuts, but, I think drinking wine and tea feels like drinking the earth. They make me feel like I’m absorbing all the best minerals and herbs from the leaves and trees and fruit that they were made from.

How Long Does It Take?

It took about three weeks before it didn’t occur to me to have wine with dinner, any longer. That’s longer than I thought it would take and shows how much I associated food with wine.

As much as I was addicted to coffee it was easier to stop drinking coffee than wine. That was another surprise because I craved coffee but never wine. I think wine was actually providing more energy and calories than the coffee was. I was actually using wine like an energy bar. Who knew?!

One of the surprising things for me was how much I slept. Without the energy from the wine I was more tired, even during the day. I could not have a cup of coffee to bridge this gap because I was giving up coffee at the same time. This is all ok with me because one of my goals was to sleep more. I just didn’t expect to be more tired in the afternoons. This may be the temporary adjustment of my body making up for lost sleep. I sleep much better at night, now, and that has enourmous health benefits.

How Will You Know When You’ve Quit?

You’ll know you’ve quit when you can take it or leave it. Wine will take its place among the multitude of drink options available to you depending on the occasion and what you’re in the mood for at the moment.

You’ll be able to have a meal and not automatically think of having wine with it.

You’ll be able to engage in social interactions in a relaxed and enjoyable manner without the wine buzz that used to loosen up your inhibitions.

A few days ago, we were over at a friends house and I was starting to fade. We were late in getting together and didn’t want to leave, yet. The conversation was interesting and another couple had just walked in the door that we wanted to socialize with. This is the point at which I would normally pour a glass of wine. Instead I had one cup of coffee. Luckily, I had already gotten to the point of not needing coffee to start my day and it was just another drink option to me. It was just the thing needed to keep the conversation going for a little while until it was time to go. One cup of coffee and that was it. No coffee needed the next morning and no problems sleeping that night. And best of all, no wine either, which probably would have kept me up all night.

Unlike coffee, wine has never been a drink I couldn’t do without for things like starting my day or thinking clearly or what have you. It’s always been an optional drink added to the existing circumstances. My desire for it was mental more than physical because I never really craved more of it unless I was already drinking it. And that’s just part of my obsessive nature. Most of the time my obsessive nature helps me finish things. I’ve learned to redirect that urge into finishing a bottle of pelligrino instead of a bottle of wine.

Being straight is the ultimate high. Spend time with any 5 year old if you need to prove this to yourself. You’ve always known it. Children don’t need anything but a glass of water and a baloney sandwich to be ecstatic about life. And the only way to experience the full bandwidth of life is to be straight.

The irony is that If I have a glass of wine in a few months one glass will probably provide more enjoyment than three glasses used to. One glass is all I’ll want. And, its all I ever did need. If a second glass is poured I’ll be thinking about sleepless nights and less productivity the next day. Hopefully, I’ll be thinking about that while reaching for the pelligrino.

Copyright © 2014 by Terence Gillespie. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given to McGillespie.com

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Lew Rockwell Poster
Banking

Read Lew Rockwell!

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I read LewRockwell.com, every day, because he writes or posts the best line-up of articles in the world…every day!

For a modest incentive to checkout Lew’s site (And put it in your daily reading routine) please see the following articles on Lew’s site:

Mr. Party’s Gun Bible

Selecting Your Optimal Armory

Ammo for Barter – Ammo vs. Money

The Best Gun in the World

Fractional Reserve Banking Made Easy

Checklist for Hard Times

76 Reasons To Have a Gun

The Ten Best-Read on LRC for October 2009 Source of readership stats: Google Analytics

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Brain and Heart Picture
Diet

Beating Hypertension, Naturally

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It’s time to get my high blood pressure under control, again.

Again, because I’ve fallen off the blood pressure wagon after a two-year whirlwind of getting married, buying a house, relocating, starting a business and having a child. My schedules have changed and its time to rework good health routines into my new life.

Again, because I’ve done this before, know what to do and that my ‘program’ works.

Hypertension runs in my family. My grandfather and mother have had strokes and my uncle had an aneurysm two years ago. My BP is too high and medication is the only alternative if I don’t control it myself. So far, I’m the only family member who’s been able to control it without using drugs. I hope this article changes that.

Essential vs. Secondary

I have essential or general hypertension. That’s what this article is about. Essential hypertension is a primary condition caused by how my body functions and, to a large extent, the result of my habits, good or bad.

Secondary hypertension is when some other disease is causing your hypertension. In other words, you might not even have high blood pressure if it wasn’t for this disease. It could be type-2 diabetes, kidney disease, cirrhosis of the liver, Cushing’s disease, sleep apnea and a rare tumor known as a pheochromocytoma.

Most people with high blood pressure have what I have: essential hypertension.

Natural Method is Mandatory

The side effects of Blood Pressure meds are a disaster! . . .

Impotence, insomnia, extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, dizziness, flu-like symptoms, arrhythmia, severe depression progressing to catatonia, disorientation, memory loss, liver failure, esophagitis, fatal angioedema and even agranulocytosis, another potentially fatal disorder.

They’re so bad that over 40% of the patients that are put on the BP Meds stop taking them! Since the meds lower your blood pressure without addressing any of the root causes those patients are now much worse off than when they started. And, what happens when you stop taking them? Your BP skyrocketts and have have a stroke!

No joke, that’s what happened to my mom when she stopped taking her BP meds. She had two strokes. When I asked her why she stopped taking them she said, “I felt alright and didn’t want to take them anymore”. It took three months before she could speak in order to even tell me that.

The side effects of BP meds may even cause high blood pressure. I feel my BP rising just reading the list. However, the real problem with the BP meds is that they don’t address the root causes of the condition.

Treat or Cure

Eating is the cure for starvation, not the treatment for it.

Likewise, using natural methods for controlling hypertension is the only way to address the root causes of the condition. All together they may even qualify for the lofty ‘C’ word: Cure.

My experience has been that the regimen for normalizing my blood pressure is something I should be doing anyway regardless of any medical condition.

My Approach – Past and Present

The previous approach was not easy, but, it worked. I used a combination of:

  1. Weight Loss
  2. Diet
  3. Exercise
  4. Food Avoidance
  5. Dr. Atkins recommended Nutrients

This time around I’m going to take another look at the consensus for the root cause of hypertension. I want to take advantage of the latest medical information out there and work some of the suggestions into my program.

I’ll be using an issue of The Blaylock Wellness Report entitled “Eliminate Hypertension Forever!” I subscribed to these reports just for this issue on Blood Pressure. It has some interesting new theories on the root cause and new recommendations on addressing them.

My previous program works. However, a better understanding of the root cause and the latest thinking on treatment may improve my lifetime plan by: 1) More directly addressing the root cause of the condition, and, 2) Making it easier to stay on the plan through the ups and downs of life.

Doctors Know Natural is the Best Way

Doctors know the best way control a patients high blood pressure is through the patients own natural efforts. They also know that patient success rates are low. A good doctor might tell their patients that its possible to influence their own hypertension by losing weight, eating healthier, etc. However, the doctors can’t wait long before prescribing drugs to a hypertensive patient because the condition is a silent killer.

In other words, doctors need to do whatever it takes to get the numbers down. If you can’t or won’t do it yourself, then get ready for your meds.

I agree with their approach. I also know that I can lower my own high blood pressure without taking drugs.

The routines, diet and nutrients that address the root causes of high blood pressure yield enormous benefits for your overall health. In fact, even if you don’t have hypertension anyone would benefit from them.

Theories on Root Cause

Doctors know more about the treatment for Hypertension than the do about the cause. That means I have to sift through the various theories on root cause if I’m going to improve on my previous program. I’m going to focus on two doctors: Dr. Atkins and Dr. Blaylock.

I trust Dr. Atkins because I followed his recommendations and successfully normalized my blood pressure for years using his methods. I trust Dr. Blaylock because his recommendations build on the foundation and conclusions of Dr. Atkins.

Its helpful to read their individual recommendations separately. I’ll paraphrase each doctors root cause theories and recommendations. Then I’ll put their recommendations together and build my own new program.

Dr. Atkins’ Vita-Nutrient Solution

In a book of the same title Dr. Atkins is specific about how he’s successfully treated hypertension without the use of drugs. I followed his recommendations to the letter and was able to successfully normalize my blood pressure. Dr. Atkins says:

“While scientists debate what actually causes hypertension, one thing is clear: it is very responsive to nutrient and diet therapy. At the Atkins Center we routinely see blood pressure return to normal when the Atkins diet is used along with the right nutrients. A low-carbohydrate diet is important, because this helps bring down the elevated insulin response that appears to be one of the major causes of hypertension. To that we add the following nutrients:” (Listed Below).

Atkin’s Root Causes

  1. Hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance (Blood Sugar Stability) – Dr. Atkins says, “Why ban the salt shaker when 60 percent of all hypertension cases are a consequence of insulin resistance. A rich chromium content and low carb foods would be better. The repeated rise and fall of blood sugar apparently stimulates the body’s sympathetic nervous system, which helps regulate blood pressure.”
  2. Lack of the nutrients in the body that control BP – Although Dr. Atkins does not put it this way its implied by the nutrients he recommends.

Summary of Dr. Atkins Recommendations

  1. Low Carb Diet to Stabalize Blood Sugar and Insulin Levels
  2. The Nutrient Program (Below)

Dr. Atkins doesn’t comment on every nutrient he recommends. His total nutritional regimen starts with a broad based Vitimin and Mineral complex (And possibly a superfood type supplement) with the following specific nutrients for hypertension:

Most Important

  • Taurine 1,500-3,000 mg
  • Magnesium 500-1,000 mg
  • Hawthorn 240-480 mg
  • Potassium aspartate 400-800 mg
  • Vitamin B6 100-200 mg
  • Essential oils formula 3,600-7,200 mg
  • Garlic 2,400-3,200 mg
  • CoQ10 100-200 mg
  • Carnitine 500-1,000 mg
  • Chromium 300-600 mcg

Moderately Important

  • Vitamin C 1-3 grams
  • N-acetyl cysteine 1-2 grams
  • GABA 2,000-4,000 mg
  • Arginine 2-5 grams
  • Inositol 500-1,500 mg
  • Kava 100-200 mg
  • Reishi extract 2-4 capsules
  • Choline 1,000-1,500 rng
  • Calcium 750-1,500 mg

Specific comments on the above nutrients by Dr. Atkins:

Taurine – An amino acid that promotes fluid excretion by restoring a natural balance between potassium and sodium, the minerals that govern how much fluid our tissues retain. Regulates water retention.

Vitamin D – Shown to lower BP.

Calcium/Magnesium Balance – Although Dr. Atkins thinks Magnesium is the more important of the two.

Magnesium – Addresses all of the primary causes of excess insulin in the blood, low potassium levels, constricted blood vessels.

Sodium/Potassium Balance – Atkins thinks the sodium side of the equation is overemphasized and that potassium is more important to regulating blood pressure. A low sodium diet only cut readings by a few points. But, a high potassium diet, combined with a sugar-free diet, magnesium and taurine are very effective. Apparently there is a high-potassium high-magnesium salt substitute that may be useful. The longer potassium is used the less effective an anti-hypertensive agent it becomes. Diuretics cause loss of potassium and magnesium and weaning patients off these diuretics was a major goal for Dr. Atkins. The diuretics also cause the body to make an increased amount of its normal blood pressure-raising biochemicals.

CoQ10 – The BP lowering effects of taking 60-100mg per day of CoQ10 only is so significant that Dr. Atkins found that 85% of his patients could end their reliance on hypertension medications. The effects are so significant that he cautioned patients with low blood pressure against taking CoQ10 in case it would lower the BP too much.

Vitamin A – Allows the body to use insulin more efficiently, helping the hormone to get blood sugar into the body’s cells (And thereby helping to beat insulin resistance.)

DHA/EPA Levels – 4 grams of fish oils per day have been quite successful in lowering blood pressure. Taken alone they may not lower BP enough. But, combined with Magnesium, potassium, CoQ10 and taurine within a context of a sugarless diet will avoid the need for drugs more than 80 percent of the time.

Dr. Blaylock’s “Eliminate Hypertension Forever!”

While Blaylock’s theories on causes have a lot in common with Dr. Atkins he has several new theories and recommended dietary changes and nutrients that go along with them. As with Dr. Atkins I am only paraphrasing a long and thorough report. I highly recommend anyone with hypertension read Dr. Blaylocks full report and Dr. Atkins book. Both doctors have excellent advice on most of the elements of longevity, quality of life and other ailments along with natural ways to address them.

Lower Than You Think

Dr. Blaylock says hypertension starts at 120/80. Depending on the risk factor studied the negative effects of the condition rise rapidly after this point. Therefore, you should not take comfort if your blood pressure is only, say 130 over 85. Any reading over 120/80 is a serious issue and needs to be addressed. This strict definition puts 25% of the US as having the condition and 50% at some risk for some sort of blood pressure problem.

Blaylocks Root Causes

Dr. Blaylock describes hypertension as one of three symptoms of something called metabolic syndrome. The other two are type-2 diabetes and abnormalities in blood lipids. Without delving into these other (Related) conditions I would summarize Dr. Blaylocks root causes of Hypertension as:

  1. Excess Insulin – Caused be eating too much sugar, ingesting excitotoxins (MSG, Aspartame, other food additves). Also caused by insulin resistance. Excess insulin causes inflammation and generates huge quantities of free radicals and lipid peroxidation products.
  2. Free Radicals – Caused by eating the wrong foods, not having the vitamins in your body to cleanse them and especially having too much iron in the blood. Free radicals damage the brain stem and the cells
    lining the arteries (endothelial cells) through a process called Lipid peroxidation whereby the free radicals steal electrons from the lipids in cell membranes. Apparently, this damage itself produces more free radicals. The damage to the arteries decreases the control the elasticity of the
    artery. The damage to the brain stem affects nuerons that may be responsible for some kind of primary BP control.
  3. Inflammation – A natural immune system response, but, can be triggered by excess insulin. Chronic inflammation seriously inhibits BP control.
  4. “Beer Gut” – The fat underneach the muscles of your stomach (Visceral fat) and not the fat underneath your skin (Subcutaneous). Excess visceral fat secretes immune chemicals (adipokines or cytokenes) that cause insulin resistance which leads to excess insulin. The link is so strong that surgical removal of belly fat has
    been shown to cure hypertension in
    62% of people.
  5. Bad Diet – Too much sugar intake, too much caffeine and alcohol, not enough of foods containing the right nutrients for BP control.
  6. Lack of the nutrients in the body that control BP – Once again, although Dr. Blaylock does not put it this way its implied by the nutrients he recommends.

Summary of Dr. Blaylock’s Recommendations

  1. Stabalize Blood Sugar by elimintating Sugar and excitotoxins from the Diet.
  2. Control Free Radicals by Getting Rid of Excess Iron in the Blood and other means.
  3. Cut back on Caffeine and Alcohol.
  4. Exercise to Get Rid of Belly Fat.
  5. Add the Following Nutrients to Dr. Atkins Recommended Nutrients
    • Flavoniods (quercetin / hesperidin)
    • Aged Garlic, in particular
    • Alpha Lipoic acid (R-lipoic acid)
    • Ginko biloba
    • Green tea extract (The benefits of Green Tea without the caffeine)

Iron and Hypertension Are Linked

As luck would have it my yearly checkup was scheduled on Day 3. I showed the doctor my article and we discussed the whole program. Because I have hemachromatosis it was also important to talk about how iron in the blood may affect hypertension. While writing the main article for this new blood pressure program I ran accross research that described the link between the two conditions. And the doctor confirmed it.

Excess iron in the blood causes free radicals which are one of the root causes of hypertension. Blaylock says that even an iron level on the high side of normal can significantly raise blood pressure.

Free Radicals – Caused by eating the wrong foods, not having the vitamins in your body to cleanse them and especially having too much iron in the blood. Free radicals damage the brain stem and the cells lining the arteries (endothelial cells) through a process called Lipid peroxidation whereby the free radicals steal electrons from the lipids in cell membranes. Apparently, this damage itself produces more free radicals. The damage to the arteries decreases the control the elasticity of the artery. The damage to the brain stem affects nuerons that may be responsible for some kind of primary BP control.

What this means for me is that I could make all the lifestyle changes for my new program and still have problems if my iron levels are not kept in check. Practically speaking I’m going to need a convenient way to measure them without having to get a blood test everytime.

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Dvorak Keyboard
Health

Dvorak – Your Optimal Keyboard?

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The QWERTY keyboard most people use was designed for the typewriter in the 1870’s. It’s named after the key sequence on the upper left of the keyboard.

There were no ‘typists’ before the typewriter, so, QWERTY was designed for the typewriter. Many key combinations caused the machine to jam so were placed on the new keyboard to slow them down. This was a good thing because untangling the levers was time consuming. Ironically, you could get more typing done by typing slower! Typists were also taught to strike the key hard and release quickly; another jam avoiding technique.

Today, there are no mechanical limits on typing yet most are using a keyboard designed to slow them down. The widespread use of computer keyboards provides the means to escape from this mechanical prison to whoever wants to be free. In fact, most of the typing world is a few clicks and a decision away from keyboard freedom.

And what does keyboard freedom look like?

It looks like typing as fast as you can think. It looks like being comfortable writing as long as you want. It looks like being able to type for the rest of your life with no arm or hand pain.

The Dvorak Keyboard

You probably have a QWERTY keyboard in front of you. Here’s what the Dvorak keyboard looks like:

Dvorak studied hand shape, letter frequencies and combinations and arranged the keyboard to minimize hand movement and maximize the speed of typing the most common letters and combinations.

For instance, the most frequently used letters in the English language are “ETAON RISHD LFCMU GYPWB VKXJQ Z” (In that order). The first 12 of these letters are used 80% of the time. Notice how 10 of those 12 letters are on the ‘home’ row of the keyboard. You can type thousands of complete words without even moving your hands off the ‘home’ row of the Dvorak keyboard!

Notice how all vowels are on the left side of the ‘home’ row (except for ‘y’) with consonants on the right. Since English words are mostly a pattern of Consonant | Vowel | Consonant | Vowel most words are formed with the letters typed by alternating hands like beating a drum. The most common letter pairs in English are “TH HE AN RE ER IN ON AT ND ST ES EN OF TE ED OR TI HI AS TO”. Looking at the Dvorak layout notice that those letters are either right next to each other or easily typed with alternating hands.

The hardest row to reach is the bottom row. That’s where Dvorak placed the least commonly used English letters. Dvorak also factored in right-handedness and ‘inboard stroke flow‘ (Think of the way we roll-tap fingers on a table top from the little finger to the index finger).

Other Dvorak Layouts

Using the same Dvorak principles there are also Left and Right one-handed keyboards, a layout for C programmers and a keyboard for most latin script based languages.

Reviewing the Options

For English and languages based on Latin script you have the following keyboard options:

  1. QWERTY -English or your language version.
  2. COLEMAN – ‘Improved’ QWERTY meant to ease retraining of QWERTY typists.
  3. Dvorak (English or your language version).
  4. Map your Own Keyboard Layout. – An interesting alternative now possible using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, KbdEdit or Keyman Developer.

(Non-Latin script languages like Chinese, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Russian, etc. may have to Map their own keyboards if their default hasn’t been optimized).

My Take

QWERTY is not an option for me because it hurts my hands. The faster and longer I type the more it hurts. Coleman is a compromise meant to save on retraining QWERTY typists rather than optimize hand movement for language– No thanks. The idea of mapping my own keyboard layout is fascinating, but, I couldn’t improve on Dvorak and Dealey’s design; They were exhaustive and thorough in their quest to Optimize the keyboard for English.

Speed is One Thing

A fast typer can type as fast as they can think in words. Faster than that is useful for dictation and contests, I suppose. There are four non-speed benefits to optimizing keyboard layout:

  1. Comfort
  2. Long term injury avoidance
  3. Increased daily stamina (And no soreness)
  4. Increased lifetime stamina

Based on soreness near the end of my QWERTY days I’d be in trouble, today, if I hadn’t made the switch.

The Big Picture

Keyboard use is so widespread that almost every job requires it. The more keyboard use the more productivity gains to optimizing it for the user.

Writers, programmers, travel agents, secretaries, bloggers and publishers may get the biggest payoff. However, that list is growing as is the keyboards role in every day life.

Making the Switch

The Dvorak Keyboard is a button push away on on most computers. You change the setting in your preferences and “Voila” the keys are remapped. You don’t need to buy anything.

I switched to Dvorak five years ago because my hands hurt. As a piano player I was a very fast QWERTY typist and my hands ached and cramped at the end of long writing days. If I didn’t do something I would have been in trouble just when I needed to type more than ever.

Actually, Dvorak was not my first choice. Dragonfly was.

Dragonfly

Why type when you can talk?

They say it’s best to write like you talk. People complicate their written words and keep their spoken words simple. I also think more clearly when speaking than writing because of the person I’m talking with. Why not bypass writing, altogether, and go right to the spoken word to capture thoughts and let the computer do the work?

Dragonfly is great, but, it slowed the transition to Dvorak since there was less need to type. That’s not a complaint. I felt more comfortable making the switch to Dvorak because my dependency on the keyboard was less. I recommend that transition technique if you don’t mind learning both Dragonfly and Dvorak at the same time.

I stopped using Dragonfly because my aging Windows computer couldn’t run it and the Adobe Suite at the same time. Now that Microsoft has been banished from my life and a beautiful and powerful UNIX machine awaits Dragonfly will soon follow.

How Long Does It Take?

The websites and books on Dvorak say it only takes a few months. It took me six months. During the transition I was using Dragonfly to dictate most writing right onto the screen. Since I wasn’t typing as much there was less practice time on the ‘new’ Dvorak layout. Otherwise, it probably would have taken the normal two or three months.

Labels on the Keys?

I tried putting labels on the keys, but, found it confusing. When logging into the computer the default keyboard is QWERTY. It doesn’t switch to Dvorak until it boots up and reads your preferences. Therefore, you have to type your password using QWERTY. Having the Dvorak labels on the keys made password entry confusing. I took the labels off and printed out a reference diagram for Dvorak forcing myself to find the keys by looking at the diagram. You have to type without looking at the keys to gain any speed. Why not skip the crutch of looking at the keys right off the bat?

What about Phone Keyboards?

Many people wonder if I get confused when using the keyboards on phones since they are all QWERTY. No, not at all. In fact, I prefer that phones have QWERTY because I can visually find the QWERTY keys faster than Dvorak!

Dvorak is in my muscle memory and QWERTY is in my visual memory. That reads much more confusing than it feels. When typing I never look at the keys; I just feel where the letters are. Since the letters are in the Dvorak layout those are where I ‘feel’ the letters. Without the Dvorak labels my keyboard is still, visibly, QWERTY. When tying in my password in the morning to login I look at the keyboard.

What About Using Other Computers?

99% of the time you use your own computer. If you need to use another computer (And the owner lets you!) just temporarily change the keyboard setting. When you’re done switch it back.

I still hunt and peck in QWERTY faster than many can type. However, I have to take my hands off the keyboard and look at the keys. I was a touch QWERTY typist so memory of the keys is still there. What I’ve lost is the muscle memory of QWERTY. My muscle memory is now Dvorak.

It ‘feels’ similar to being bilingual. The idea of knowing two words for everything is only hard to imagine for someone who has not yet learned a second language.

Nobody Wants to Use My Computer!

People start typing on my computer and can’t figure out what’s ‘wrong’ with it. My wife won’t even do quick web searches, technical support frowns, friends shake their heads . . . everybody hates it.

And I love it!

Anything that keeps people off my computer is a good thing. It adds another layer of security for snoops in places where they don’t belong.

Going From Hard to Easy

You may think switching to Dvorak is going from something easy to something hard. That’s backwards: Going from QWERTY to Dvorak is going from something hard to something easy. Sure, the transition will take some effort and probably shouldn’t be done in the middle of a project. However, thereafter your life will be easier, not harder. That goes double if you’re a writer or depend on the keyboard for your work.

Good Reasons to Delay the Switch

After using Dvorak for five years I recommend considering it for Your Optimal Keyboard in English. It’s hard to imagine QWERTY being Optimal in this age of computers unless:

  • Your job requires using many different keyboards not under your control.
  • You must use a dumb terminal that’s not switchable.
  • You share your primary computer with someone not open to switching.
  • You’re in the middle of a pressing project and are waiting for things settle down before making the switch (Referring to a project here, not life).

Otherwise, save your hands and increase your productivity: Either switch to Dvorak or Roll Your Own . . . .

Rolling Your Own

The optimal keyboard layout is specific to the language. Dvorak was originally developed for English after exhaustive studies of language use. To reach the Dvorak level of Optimal in your language would require the same exhaustive studies. This work has already been done in Latin script languages. But, if you’re not satisfied then there’s never been an easier time to roll your own.

Computer now have the option of using any keyboard mapping you’d like. Marcus Brooks has some great tips if you’re interested in developing your own keyboard layout.

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Health

Chewing Gum that Won’t Kill You

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I used to love chewing gum. Something about it is soothing. I’m one of those who keeps their hands busy tying knots, flipping coins, throwing a yo-yo or rolling chinese yin-yang balls. Chewing gum hits that spot when hands aren’t free.

Yeah, the sugar in the gum is bad, but, it beats a cigarette all day long.

Back to the Good Ole’ Days

As unappealing as some of the ingredients are these were the good old days:

It all came to an end for me with the invasion of the the pink, blue and yellow stuff lovingly called sugar substitutes:

  • Pink is Sweet & Low which is saccharin where anthranilic acid successively reacts with nitrous acid, sulfur dioxide, chlorine, and then ammonia to yield saccharin (Yummy!).
  • Blue is Equal which is aspartame derived from the amino acids L-aspartic acid and L-phenylalanine and breaks down into formaldehyde, formic acid and DKP (Ghostly delicious!).
  • Yellow is Splenda which is dextrose, maltodextrin and sucrose where food chemists substitute chlorine atoms for three hydrogen-oxygen groups on the sucrose molecule (Why chew water when you can slurp down chlorine?).

Turns out the Blue stuff lost market share to the yellow stuff because the yellow stuff still tastes sweet when heated. Guess it’s back to the drawing board for the blue team.

Sugar substitutes, like stevia, are good for diabetes, hypertension and obesity. Stevia doesn’t cause an insulin spike like sugar and is a near perfect solution to the obscene amount of sugar consumed by the average person. But, the calorie cutting aspect of sugar substites in gum is trivial. Most people burn the 15 calories of sugar in a stick of gum in the very act of chewing it.

Can there be any doubt that sugar is the more healthy choice among these Frankenstein sugar creatures?

Xylitol to the Rescue?

Xylitol. That’s the sweet stuff that gets rid of harmful bacteria in the mouth, right?

Gee, maybe it does kill harmful bacteria in the mouth. But, not so fast. According to Dr. Jim Humphries many dogs have died of liver disease as a result of xylitol poisoning. He advises keeping children’s chewable vitamins and candies (Ok for the kids, you see) away from dogs.

As for humans, Dr. Russell Blaylock says studies have shown that xylitol can cause damage to brain cells in his September 2008 Blaylock Wellness Report.

Without delving further I think it’s IX-NAY on the Xylitol-NAY.

SteviaDent?

Awesome: A gum sweetened with the natural herb Stevia. What could be better?

SteviaDent has Xylitol in addition to stevia extract.

Other Ingredients in SteviaDent: maltitol, gum base (i.e. original latex from sapodilla trees), xylitol, natural flavoring (peppermint oil, menthol), gum arabic, lecithin, glycerin, carnauba wax, beeswax.

Bubblelicious Burst?

Better than most, but, what’s up with the BHT? BHT and BHA prevent rancidity at the expense of being carcinogenic for the gum chewer.

INGREDIENTS: Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Gum Base, Invert Sugar, Water, Artificial and Natural Flavoring, Soy Lecithin, Glycerin, Corn Oil, Red 40 Lake, BHT (to maintain freshness) and Red 40.

Come On, Bazooka!

Now, we’re talking. For me, Bazooka is the very symbol of the good ole’ days. Surely they just kept stamping out this classic bubble gum and we can pop one for a trip back in the time machine?

Ingredients for Bazooka:
Sugar, gum base, corn syrup, natural and artificial flavors, citric acid, softeners, red 40 lake, red 40, BHT (preservative).

Yikes! Foiled again. Hey, I was just a kid. For all I know it always had BHT.

Peelu

You may have seen this one at the health food stores. I opted out because of the Titanium Dioxide.

Ingredients:
Sorbitol, Gum Base, Maltitol Syrup, Natural Oil of Spearmint, Lecithin, Peelu Extract, Titanium Dioxide, Resinous Glaze, Carnauba Wax. Does not contain Sugar.

Last Commercial Gum Standing – Ginseng

There’s a warning for pregnant women, but, with immune system benefits and a nice minty taste this one might be worth the risk.

Ingredients: Sugar, Chewing Gum Base, Glucose, Corn Syrup, Glycerine, Gelatine, Sucrose Fatty Acid Ester, Ginseng Extract, Ginseng Powder, D-Sorbitol, Licorice, Peppermint Flavor, Propylene Glycol, Persimmon Juice Concentrated.

Note the corn syrup, propylene glycol and sucrose fatty acid ester and keep it away from your pregnant wife.

Just Roll Your Own

Sorry to put you through all this. Barry Lewis has got you covered if you can spare the hour to roll your own in batches. If you can stomach the gum base, corn syrup, sugar you can pretend you’re back in the ’50’s with chewing gum that won’t kill you:

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