Mindconnection eNL, 2014-09-07

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Good News | Product Highlight | Brainpower | Finances | Security | Health/Fitness | Factoid | Thought 4 the Day

An accidental tweak to a standard chemical process has produced the first easily recyclable forms of several plastics. This could lower production costs, but more importantly it will reduce the waste stream. Don't forget that it takes quite a bit of oil to make plastic. For example, if we eliminated bottled water (talk about a costly, useless product!), the energy saved is equivalent to the usage of 190,000 typical homes. Many cities don't even have that many homes.

According to June 2014 issue of Science News, "The two nitrogen-containing polymers, a superstrong plastic and a self-healing gel, represent new types of thermoset materials, which are heat resistant and highly stable."

In case you don't know, thermoset plastics are everywhere. And they just don't recycle (it's either difficult or impossible, depending upon the exact type).

Item 2

An evil corporation takes another hit. The July search engine report (which includes Google's spammy ad server that pretends to be a search engine) shows a slight loss in market share for Google. This is an indication that more and more people are thinking for themselves and not accepting what has become a very bad product that is owned by a very bad company.

Perhaps the psychopaths at Google will start to realize that actions have consequences, and they'll return from the dark side. As their crappy "search engine" continues to decline in popularity, they may have no other choice. Such an outcome would be good for everyone, Google included. Let's expand the boycott!

Item 3

The Oklahoma legislature passed a law reaffirming the basic human right of protecting oneself from violent force. OK Governor Mary Fallin vetoed the bill, presumably on the grounds that she believes violent criminals should be protected from their victims rather than the other way around.

The good news here is the OK Senate unanimously over-rode the veto.

As of yet, there are scant signs of intelligent life in Washington, DC. But in Oklahoma, it is thriving.

Item 4

What the heck is going on in Washington, DC? Has the collective IQ there gone from zero to 60 recently? Jane Alexander reports an instance of, gasp, intelligent behavior from these folks. Really. And I don't mean a smarter way to steal or conduct sadistic experiments. I mean they actually did something commendable instead of despicable. No, I am not making this up.

Since the late 1990s, leaders in the industrial maintenance and skilled trades sectors have been trying to get some help with the many workforce-related problems that have been caused by CONgress and by other malignancies. Members of CONgress, apparently thinking they were voting for a big bank bailout or some other wealth transfer scheme, passed the 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. And amazingly, it doesn't--as is normal for such Acts--do the exact opposite of what its title indicates.

I don't know how this Act managed to slip past CONgress, but it did. They'll eventually find ways to undermine or hijack it, but for now this Act is a badly-needed tonic to the toxic environment in which USA manufacturing must try to operate. It's not a cure, but it should go a long way toward alleviating the symptoms.

Next up, let us hope we can get CONgress to eliminate Common Core-uption, No Child Gets Ahead, and the Department of Dis-education, each of which is devastating to the competence and trainability of the workforce pool (having all three is a recipe for institutionalizing stupidity).

Item 5

While it is truly weird that something intelligent or honest or lawful could occur in CONgress, there's more weird news. And it has to do with weird materials.

Specifically, topological insulators. Blurbs about these have popped up in IEEE Spectrum over the past few years. But in its 23AUG14 edition, Science News also devoted some space to this most welcome development.

If you're not an electrical engineer or materials scientist, you probably won't want the details. Some readers are engineers and scientists; you folks can feel free to pursue the nitty gritty details in one of the professional journals. I'll just give a quick overview and explain why this weird material application is good news.

Many of us have been transitioning from the Winchester hard drive (with its spinning disks) to solid state drives. The major advantage with SSDs is they don't have spinning disks and are thus farfaster in seek times than those long-beloved (and often replaced) Winchester drives. Fragmentation doesn't matter on an SSD either, because there's no need to spin platters to find bits of files.

From a comment on Tom's Hardware Forum:

"Typically, SSDs are around 200MB/s read, and 100-150MB/s write. Modern hard drives are around 120MB/s for both. This tells you how quickly it can read or write a file once it has started.

Access times on an SSD are around 0.05-0.5 ms. Hard drives range from 5-20ms (most 7200rpm desktop drives are around 12-14ms). This tells you how long it takes to find a file. This is where SSDs have a huge advantage."

Yes, we are excited about our SSDs! Especially when booting up the beast in the morning no longer takes several minutes but is done by the time you set your coffee mug down.

But even SSDs store data as magnetic ones or zeroes. Flipping the magnetic orientation back and forth isn't an efficient process. The flipping process limits both the speed and capacity of a drive, even if you no longer have that spinning disk limitation.

With topological insulators, you don't need to flip the state of a given memory location. It's possible to use electron spin instead of charge state. And it may sound impossible, but those tiny electrons exert enough torque (in bismuth selenide, anyhow, weird material that it is) to manipulate the magnetic material with their spins. Storage no longer requires the equivalent of filling a bucket from the garden hose; it can be hugely faster than that.

Now, think about the implications. The hard drive of tomorrow may be faster than the RAM of today, and thousands of times more capacious than that stack of failed Winchesters you've been saving in the cabinet drawer. The days of measuring drive size in mere terabytes may soon be drawing to a close.

This could mean even more distracting, frustrating "features" in new cars. Sure, a downside there. But think about the huge advantages in robotics and other applications. Any time you remove parasitic drag and other losses in a system, you improve output. This will be an enabler of economic improvement on a vast scale. Nowhere near enough to overcome the damage Obama has done, but still a huge boost.

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Always avoid sources of disinformation. They can lower your effective IQ to nearly zero, by diverting your brainpower completely away from reality.

That, sadly, is what has happened to the vast majority of Americans (same problem in many other nations, too). We need to change that dynamic so the vast majority of folks "switch on" their brains. On average, that would be a 100 point increase of IQ; the difference between an average IQ and a genius one is only 30 points. So this is serious stuff!
 

In our previous issue, we mentioned the 51% unemployment rate (which is the actual rate, not the propaganda spewed by the Dept of Labor). We also mentioned that Gallup showed that the narcissistic psychopath had a 51% disapproval rating (an obviously understated number). Funny how these two figures line up.

Another Gallup poll said that "over half" (could that be 51% again?) of Americans say the economy, particularly unemployment, is the nation's biggest challenge. Gee, what a surprise.

Well, we can't do much about this criminal enterprise known as "The Obama Administration." If we had rule of law, he'd already be serving life in prison with no hope of parole. And millions around the world would be better off.

It's too bad we can't clean this up. But speaking of cleaning, I can offer you a tip that can produce real, albeit small, financial savings now. And also forestall the day when you must make a major outlay for a home appliance. The tip begins with the following question.

How much soap is enough?

Laundry detergent doesn't actually "clean" your clothes. Mainly, it acts as a lubricant to help foreign particles dislodge so the water can carry them away. Add too much detergent, and your clothes actually get less clean than if you use the right amount. That's because you go past the point of diminishing returns into the realm of negative returns; beyond a given amount, more soap (or detergent) retards the cleaning process.

One reason people do this is the top-selling brand companies make sure their containers encourage people to waste laundry soap by using too much, thus forcing them to buy more soap than they actually need (about three times as much).

How do the top-selling brands still get people's clothes clean, despite the over-use problem? Simple. They add wood fiber (look for cellulose on the label) and/or other abrasives to help scrub out the dirt. Leading toothpastes do something similar by adding tooth-destructive silica (basically, ground glass). Gee, you can really trust these people can't you?

Unfortunately, these abrasives also shorten the life of your laundered goods and of your washing machine.

The top-selling brands also add toxic chemicals, such as petroleum-based fragrances. These tend to stay in the clothing fibers, which means if you wear clothes washed with such detergents you're rubbing carcinogens into your skin all day. If you like skin cancer, consider this a benefit. Otherwise, call it what it is.

Sane people should choose an "alternative" brand that doesn't have these chemicals. Also note that if your clothes are clean there's no reason to cover up their smell with chemicals that allegedly "smell clean." These fragrances are an "acquired taste" sort of thing. To the non-acclimated, they stink.

Some quick tips:

• Don't fall for the "eco" claims on the label. Read the ingredients.
• Buy only phosphate-free.
• For reasons you can research on your own, do not use powdered laundry detergent. Period.

I have an LG front loader. I use less than a tablespoon of HE liquid with each load. How much are you using? Here's some information from the LG Website; read more on that site if you wish:

"Most people use far more soap than they require, which not only wastes money, but can harden clothes, shorten the life of your washer, and build up excess mold and mildew. Part of this is because people are used to seeing suds, which usually means too much soap, not the right amount. Of course, a wash/rinse optimizer option on LG washers can eliminate this problem."

One way you can test to see if you're using too much soap is to grab a washcloth from your linen closet. Rinse out a beverage pitcher or similar container than can hold half a gallon of water. Run the tap to get the water hot, place the washcloth into the container, then fill the container with hot water. Let this sit until it cools, maybe 30 minutes. Then wring the cloth out into the water. If you see soap, this tells you that you're using too much in your laundry. Cut back.

Another method is to put a few "clean" towels into the washing machine without adding any detergent. Set it for hot and run the rinse cycle for about 5 minutes. Shut it off and open the washer. If you can feel any soapy residue, this means your towels are loaded with soap because you used too much when you washed them.

Another method is to just smell your clothes. If you can smell the detergent in the fabric the day after it's been washed, use less the next time you wash.

What about fabric softener? It's just animal fat that goes rancid, laced with toxic chemicals. There is no sane "reason" to add this to your laundry. All it does is make your clothes toxic with chemicals and bacteria.

To me, it smells like rancid fat mixed with toxic chemicals, but people who use this bad product get used to the stench and think it actually smells good. This stuff does not soften your fabrics, it merely coats them with grease to give the illusion of softness.

If you want your clothes to come out soft, cut back on the detergent! It's the excess detergent that causes fabrics to stiffen, because it fills in spaces between the fibers and thus reduces the suppleness of the fabric. And if you like soft fabrics, don't buy polyester and other such fabrics. Buy quality clothing made of quality natural fabrics; these can last you 20 years or more so are worth the money (assuming you dress conservatively and don't shell out hundreds annually for the latest fads).

So, to save money, reduce repair bills, and make your clothing last longer:

• Use a liquid detergent.
• Use the correct detergent, such as HE for an HE machine.
• Use the correct amount of detergent. For hard water, this is a maximum of two tablespoons for a maximum washer load. The optimal amount is probably much less
• Don't re-dirty your clothes by applying the rancid fat and chemical mix falsely called a "fabric softener."

And finally, don't destroy your clothing and bedding fibers by drying clothes in a clothes dryer. Use the clothes dryer to get the clothes to a semi-damp state, then air-dry them indoors on a rack or outdoors on a line. This makes a huge difference in how long your clothes will last.

Sheets, for example, should last 20 years or more but bad washing and drying practices can reduce that lifespan of only 3 to 4 years. A set of high quality sheets is great to sleep in, but they are expensive. Protect your investment.

Now, it is true groups like those just mentioned have quite a bit of information on you already, but why give them confirmation and/or additional information such as how much water and electricity you use?

There is no reason for your electric company or any other utility to have your antiSocial inSecurity Number. So don't give it to them. If they insist, tell them that the law specifically states what sorts of entities are entitled to this number and they aren't on the list. If this is a phone call and a bureaucratic rep tries to spew some nonsense at you in response, just say you are not interested in speaking with someone who wants to break the law. Demand the supervisor or hang up and call back to get someone else.

One way to limit the privacy intrusion is to incorporate with an LLC. If possible, have the LLC hold the deed to your home (this is often not possible, especially if you have a mortgage, but look into it). Then register the utilities in the name of the LLC.

You can also just try registering the utilities in the name of the LLC regardless of the deed to the home, and have an autopay made from a checking acct that is in the name of the LLC and has the EIN of the LLC.

This tactic is just one of a long list of things that make up a larger privacy/security strategy. The principle behind this is to reduce the spread of information about you--by simply not giving it out.

One of the best ways to accomplish this is to give out information about somebody else, instead. That somebody is the "fictional person" (a legal term) that you create by dint of creating an LLC. In most states, you can form an LLC online for under $200. That sounds like a lot of money, but it is very well-spent.

If you have significant assets, form multiple LLCs. Each forms its own "bucket" that has to be opened, and opening it is not easy. For example, if some creep at the Institute of Reprobates and Sociopaths decides to personally acquire everything you own you can make that very, very difficult by putting different assets into different LLCs. The reprobate or sociopath has apply to a judge to obtain a court order, a process that can take a very long time.

And unless you have provided some reason that the Institute can show the judge that you're actually a bad character, it may take multiple court orders for each LLC. The prospect is so daunting that the reprobates and sociopaths normally will not use it when running a scam of their own on an innocent person. They want to make money, not waste time on hardened targets.

Note that I am not advising that you can somehow cheat on your 1040 taxes and hide behind a slew of LLCs. The only sure way to get away with tax evasion is to be appointed the Secretary of the Treasury or to be the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Well, there is a third way: become a high-ranking Institute official as Kevin Brown did. That gives you a license not only to cheat on your taxes but to steal tens of millions of dollars with no fear of being arrested for your crimes.

What I am advising is that you keep your personal information to yourself as much as possible. Letting an LLC own things instead of owning them yourself helps you do that.

And it helps protect you from psychopaths like Kevin Brown. If you have an LLC that holds your property and someone comes after you (via identify theft, abusing government agency power, hitting you with a frivolous lawsuit, etc.) then that property is much harder for them to acquire.

Depending upon your situation, a Subchapter S is an even better way to go. But do take 1040 taxes into consideration if this Subchapter S is going to have any income. If you can afford it, sit down with an attorney who specializes in tort law or financial planning and map out a legal structure that might even combine Subchapter S with one or more LLCs.

Don't forget that criminals besides those on government payrolls exist. Not every criminal can score a job at a government agency. While government-employed criminals are the hardest to defend against and almost never are made to answer for their felonies, private sector criminals can be just as destructive.

Consider a private sector stalker. This person might, for example, hire a private investigator with some sob story lie about your rich uncle's will or whatever. The PI then will (among other things) check the databases of cable TV companies (I hope you don't actually subscribe to this brainwashing system!), and the utility companies that serve your general area. If the PI has any identifying info about you (e.g., your name or address), he hits the jackpot and so does the stalker.

Other private sector criminal specialties include extortionists (they get some dirt on you and start a never ending series of demands for payment), precision burglars (they are looking for specific targets, so why tell them you fit the profile), and faux career "coaches."

This last type isn't really a coach at all. Real career coaches offer huge value and are worth hiring. But a scam on this honorable line of work is to call yourself a career coach and for a fee conduct a negative reputation campaign on people who may be competing with you for a promotion. I can't imagine why anybody would think this sort of "service" is OK or that the "coach" won't extort you later, but some folks get desperate and go down that road. It can only end badly. If approached by such a person, politely decline.

This routine ensures the workout will have low productivity, mostly because it sacrifices intensity. Anyone on such a routine will pace himself to get the reps out.

What you want, instead, is to perform your exercises in a way that stimulates the adaptive response. I presently weigh 150lbs, but can curl more than half that amount with one hand. And, yes, I bench quite a bit more than that also.

But this isn't just from moving beyond the 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps thing. One way to stimulate more muscle fibers is to perform "finishing exercises."

For example, on chest day I do bench presses followed by flyes. I use 55lb dumbbells for these flyes and typically do 5 or 6 sets. Each set might be 2 to 4 reps. This does stimulate an adaptive response, but only to a point.

What I do to go way beyond that point is the finishing exercise. At the end, my pecs are more than doubled in size and my veins are really standing out. It's very motivational, to say the least, so if you have had a hard time sticking with your training then solve that problem by training this way.

The exercise is this. I grab 40lb dumbbells and do more flyes. But these are really slow, maybe 8 seconds down and 6 seconds up. I can feel my pecs "vibrate" (individual fibers are twitching) on the way down and on the way up.

When I say down though, I mean way, way down. I let my arms go past the horizontal and then just hold this stretch for a few seconds. I might do 3 sets of 2 reps, then switch to an even lighter weight such as 30lbs with even slower motion (about 30 second down) and greater stretch (I let the weights just pull my arms down).

In addition to building bigger, stronger pecs, this range of motion type of work gives you greater athletic ability and greater resistance to injury.

All of this is great, but  it's a waste of time unless you keep your shoulders back while lying on that bench. Most guys rotate their shoulders forward, thus using their delts instead of their pecs. Women do this too, but usually not so egregiously.

A woman who benches 110 can usually do a max of 75 after switching to correct form. With men, it's usually a drop of 100lb or more. So a guy who can cheat-bench 200lbs can barely push 100lbs with correct form; he simply has not trained his pecs because he's misused the bench press chasing that "how much can you bench" BS.

Why such a difference between the guys and the gals? I think the reason for this difference is women don't base their self-esteem on how much they can bench press compared to other women they know. But gym rat men usually are obsessed with this meaningless metric so they cheat to get a higher number. That cheating sacrifices building strong pecs.

Don't worry about how much you can bench or what the other person is benching. Focus on that adaptive response and getting that amazing pump with the finishing exercise.

When you and the "I bench more than he does" dude walk out at the end, anyone can tell at a glance who got the better workout.

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

Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent. That's not only good for your teeth, it helps reduce overall inflammation. Drink up!

No matter how much you push the envelope, it will always be stationery.