Mindconnection eNL, 2010-03-07

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How so? The human brain can process only so much information in a given amount of time. If you try to process more than you're capable of, something has to give. What usually "gives" is the careful study, analysis, and assimilation of good information. What takes its place is scanning, followed by acceptance based on superficial "understanding."

Let's consider just one of the many sources of information overload. How many e-mails do you get cc:d on each day? Of those, how many (if any) do you actually need to read? Would it not make sense to just delete e-mails that weren't important enough for the sender to address them to you?

Imagine if you got copies of all the snail mail of everyone at your company. You'd have a big pile of irrelevant information. If this happened to me, I'd toss all of it in the circular file. Unopened.

Now, I'm not saying ignorance makes us smarter. What I'm saying is your brain can handle only so much information and still do the job right. So be selective as to what information you force it to handle.

An entire category to exclude immediately is the category of disinformation sources. In addition to chewing up brain cycles, these sources are a bit like connecting a sewage line to your water supply. The agenda-driven, integrity-free mudstream media (television, newspapers, "popular" magazines, and the Websites run by these folks) cannot help you understand the world you live in. They only help you misunderstand.

Buying a newspaper for the purpose of reading it is like hiring a coach to help you train how to miss while up at bat. This situation doesn't need to be so, but it is so because the newspaper culture puts staist proselytizing ahead of reporting. The newspaper folks can't understand why they are losing audience. The reason why is they refuse to produce newspapers and instead produce propaganda sheets. People get tired of being treated this way, so they stop buying.

What other information can you exclude, so that you can focus on information that best serves your interests, goals, and proclivities? That is something you'll need to determine for yourself. There's no one answer that's best for everyone. But think about it, and then make sure you're not subjecting yourself to information inflation.

But it's also very costly to us. For most Americans, the income tax is their fourth highest tax (after the inflation tax, the cost of capital tax, and the social insecurity tax). But most of us far, far under-calculate the cost of any of these taxes. Let's take a closer look at that revenue-losing federal income tax.

The amount due by April 15th is a relatively insignificant fraction of the actual cost of the federal income tax. The compliance costs are much greater than the actual bottom line figure on the Form 1040. Those, and corporate income taxes, are passed along to the taxpayer in the cost of every product and service.

• Additionally, each taxpayer also pays several thousand layers of income tax with a typical purchase. If you buy a car, for example, the price includes the income taxes of all the auto workers, accountants, attorneys, marketing people, sales people, auto mfr suppliers (and their suppliers), truck drivers, etc. who worked on getting that car to you. Then, each of these businesses and people had their own layers of suppliers with attending layers of income taxes. It's like those Russian dolls--you keep opening one inside the other.
   
• Additionally, because this tax has such a dampening effect on the economy it creates "collateral damage" in ways we can't even measure. Things such as job loss (companies outsource to countries with no income tax to reduce the embedded taxes in their product price) come to mind. How many millions of jobs aren't here because of the income tax? Some big number, for sure.
   
• Additionally, there is the huge cost of a massive agency whose employees outnumber our combined army, navy, and air force. These people are not productively employed. They are, in fact, counterproductively employed. The nation would save money if it tripled their salaries and told them not to come in to "work" (I use that in quotes, because according to the GAO these jackals spend less than half of their time actually doing any work).
   
• Additionally, because the federal income tax has a net negative effect on federal revenue (the govt denies this, but their math uses all funny numbers), we subsequently pay MORE in other taxes such as inflation and cost of capital. The liberals are now amping up the inflation movement, even though the dollar lost half its value over the past 10 years (that's a 50% tax on your income plus anything you happen to own).

The cost of capital tax is huge. It's what we are paying on our $11 or $13 or whatever it is now trillion current debt (the total debt is north of $75 trillion and exceeds the GDP of all the world's nations combined, but we aren't paying interest on it yet).

Here we have President Obama actually saying he wants to make the debt even worse. And our misrepresentatives n CONgress signing off on it! Are they stupid, criminal, or traitorous? You decide.

If we had $11 trillion of capital in the marketplace instead of in the debt column, prices on everything would be much lower and fewer businesses would be going under due to cash flow and credit problems. What's really interesting here is the $11 trillion debt is the official number. It does not account for the fact that the empty SS fund is counted twice and subtracted from the total debt or that we have hundreds of billions of dollars of unfunded obligations.

A person who pays, say, $2,700 per the 1040 is probably paying more than $20,000 in the form of the hidden component of the federal income tax (which shows up in higher prices and lower wages), with another $150,000 deferred to the future (for just that year). So essentially, a $170,000 tax on a $30,000 income. That's the real math that we're looking at today.

Let's not allow the govt to manipulate the truth and minimize this horrendous problem. It is far, far more costly than anything we can dream of on April 15. There is a huge difference between a $2,700 tax and a $170,000 tax. Let's not let the govt hide this.

Things are not simply "much worse than you probably think," they are monumentally worse. We can still do something about this. Let your misrepresentatives in CONgress know you want spending reductions large enough to start paring down our national debt.

But what else can you do? How can you get that bulging biceps vein, and how can you work your biceps so they are forced to adapt and grow?

Well, I personally don't like the bulked up look. But I do have deceptively strong biceps as people who've see my demos can attest.

A technique that hugely builds arm strength is the negative curl. When done correctly, it's painful and you feel it for about the next three days. Challenge the typical gym rat to these, and that person won't complete a single set. It's just too hard. I sometimes do these after my normal back and biceps workout, and again later that day. But I won't do negatives every time, because the body has only so much recovery ability.

See the full article, here: http://www.supplecity.com/articles/bicepsbuilder01.htm

As regular readers know, I was 48 years old in the picture (above, right), taken in December 02 2008. I don't diet down for summer. I don't have good genes for maintaining a lean body, either. I really have to be conscientious and disciplined about it. That doesn't mean I suffer, eat bland foods, or starve myself.

At www.supplecity.com, you'll find plenty of informative, authoritative articles on maintaining a lean, strong physique. It has nothing to do with long workouts or impossible to maintain diets. In fact:

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.

Nor does it mean being hungry all the time (you are less hungry on six small meals a day than three large ones), being weak from hunger (on a proper dietary regimen, you will have much more energy than otherwise), or "giving up pleasures" (I have no idea where this concept comes from, unless a person considers being sick a "pleasure.")

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