Mindconnection eNL, 2016-08-21

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Item 1. The evil empire known formerly as "Google" and now as "Umbrella" is facing backlash for its "ethically-challenged" misconduct. Even the Russians don't like this much corruption (politicians in the USA, of course, live for corruption).

From MIT Technology Review:
"Europe has been steadily aiming antitrust charges at Google for some time, but the rest of the world is also joining in. In July, the European Commission filed a third antitrust charge against Google over its AdSense advertising business, adding to existing filings over Android app provision and its shopping service. The search giant has now been fined $6.75 million by Russia’s Federation Anti-monopoly Service.

The Russian authorities say that Google has demanded its own search tool be front-and-center on all Android devices, as well as bundling its own services with Google Play, while stopping manufacturers from pre-installing their own competing software. The relatively small fine was calculated as a proportion of Google Play’s sales in the country. Elsewhere, the Korea Fair Trade Commission is now looking into whether Google has violated the country's anti-competition laws, though specific details of the investigation are yet to be announced. One thing is clear, though: decreasing trust in Google's practices appears to be spreading still further around the globe."

Item 2. Concealed carry permits have become quite popular. There are many reasons for this, but what makes it good news is America is becoming safer and safer outside the lunatic areas known as "gun free zones." I'd rather see "free gun zones," where the underprivileged in subsidized housing get a free gun to protect themselves with rather than a free cell phone that allows them to text while driving.

Item 3. Even in the criminal-friendly People's Republic of California, law-abiding gun owners save lives. That's reported in the news all the time, so it's not something that really stands out. What does stand out is when a law-abiding, 79-year old woman in the PRC rescues two of LAPD's finest from what would surely have been certain death. Read the full story here:

http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/grandmother-with-ak-47-saves-cops-being-attacked-by-street-gang/

Of course, the criminal safety advocates (including  the PRC's own Nutcase Nancy) who should be locked up in a looney bin instead of being in public office will dishonestly twist this all around to yet again vilify law-abiding citizens. These ongoing efforts to make our streets and neighborhoods less safe are despicable, and we sane individuals need to speak out against it. Make your voice heard.

Item 4. I had mentioned a long time ago in this column that a drawback of the miracle substance graphene is it has band gap. A new production technique for separating silicene from its metal substrate could break the 2-D form of silicon—which, unlike graphene, has a bandgap—out of the lab. The trick: a breath of oxygen. Read the full story, here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/materials/breakthrough-in-silicene-production-promises-a-future-of-silicenebased-electronics

Item 5. Just so you don't get all disappointed, I have (yet again) more good news about graphene. It's now possible to grow single-crystal graphene films 100x faster than previously possible. Read the full story, here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/materials/singlecrystal-graphene-films-grown-two-orders-of-magnitude-faster-than-previous-methods

Item 6. Betcha like that graphene good news, doncha? Here's more. Now graphene-enabled paper can be used to make a flexible display. Read the full story, here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/optoelectronics/grapheneenabled-paper-makes-for-flexible-display

Item 7. Scientists think they may have found a way to use graphene to restore rule of law and civil liberties in the USA, ending the plutocracy and the destructive lawless that the privileged few engage in with no fear of reprisal. OK, that just has to be pure science fiction and it is. I just thought I'd follow the example of the New Jerk Times for this one item and publish pure fiction. We all know that ending the crime spree will take more than a new use of an amazing material. It's going to take a critical mass of people standing up to this and not taking the same old BS for an answer.

Item 8. We mere peasants can now access NASA research for free. Read the full story, here: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/from-now-on-youll-be-able-to-access-nasa-research-for-free

Item 9. We are used twisted people, such as those in the IRS. What's new, however, is twisted light. And it can dramatically boost data rates. Read the full story, here:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/twisted-light-could-dramatically-boost-data-rates

Item 10. The nation's youth are awakening much faster than their elders. Polls show that Gary Johnson leads in 18–24 demographic over both Clinton and Trump. Perhaps it's because they generally avoid the mind control systems that are newspapers and television "news." Read the full story, here: http://www.redstate.com/brandon_morse/2016/08/08/gary-johnson-leads-18-24-demographic-clinton-trump./

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This year, I decided to get serious about it (yes, the results of that effort have been noticeable). In addition to books and videos, I made a point of stealing a free lesson from better climbers whenever I could. The goal was to replace "struggle your way up and never able to progress beyond a certain point" with strong technical climbing skills.

One of the concepts in technical climbing is to identify the crux. That is the hardest part of the route or problem, and what defines its difficulty level. Figure out the crux before trying to "send" the route or problem, and the rest of the climb should easy for you. Some routes or problems may have multiple cruces, and in those cases they will be of varying difficulty. This gets more nuanced, but the point here is that a problem (of any sort) typically has one "nut" or crux that you need to focus on to solve the entire problem.

Too often, people get distracted by minor issues and waste their energy on those. And what typically happens is they see all these fairly simple components to the whole problem and just start in. Then when they get to the crux, they try to solve it on the fly and things get ugly.

Here's an example. Let's say you replaced your refrigerator with a new one, but the old one is still good and you sold it to a friend for $50. You need to move that refrigerator from your kitchen to a trailer outside. Looking at an overview of the path, you see plenty of clear space going through the living room and down the driveway. Piece of cake, right?

Well, it's a split-level entry and the stairs down to the door present a crux due to the fact they are stairs and due to the fact there are two sharp changes in direction. How will you negotiate that? If you wait until you're actually on the stairs, you're going to look pretty stupid.

This problem is solved the same way a climber solves a bouldering problem. You mentally map out where you're going to place the center of gravity relative to its base of support. You imagine the twists and turns needed at each change in the route.

For the refrigerator, there are multiple cruces not just that stairway crux. The first is that the refrigerator measures 31 inches from back to handle tops, but the door between the kitchen and living room measures 30 inches. Solution? Open the refrigerator doors, and angle the unit through the opening.

When facing any problem, identify the points of difficulty and solve those independently before proceeding. This principle applies to any problem in any area. Note also that the required solution may completely change how you must address the non-crux issues that are also part of the problem.

How can such huge differences be possible, and what were the modifications?

1. K&N permanent air filter.
2. Mobil 1 synthetic oil. Change at 5,000 miles, along with filter.
3. Tires with very rigid sidewalls and hard compound.

The synthetic oil is a major contributor to this efficiency. All the molecules are the same size, reducing friction within the lubricant. A "blend" defeats the main advantage of synthetic oil.

Also be sure to:

• Drop a container of fuel injector cleaner into the fuel tank once a year.
• Use a good quality gasoline, such as that available at Shell stations.
• Avoid ethanol. It's not compatible with your engine and it lowers MPG dramatically.
• Keep your tires inflated. Check pressure once a month, if your car doesn't have automatic pressure monitoring.

But it's not just the car. The EPA ratings assume "normal" driving, and are always low compared to what a qualified driver gets with the same car. So some tips on general driving habits:

• Don't let the engine idle any more than you have to; this causes fuel to drop out of suspension and can easily ruin your oil.
• If an automatic transmission, put it in neutral or park when sitting at a light. Most folks keep it in gear, which wastes fuel by engaging that torque converter when you don't have to.
• You don't have to drive like an old granny, but anticipate the traffic flow by watching well down the road (as taught in any defensive driving course) and adjust your speed gradually where possible and where not obstructing other traffic.

Once place you do NOT accelerate gradually is the highway onramp. In my opinion, anyone who is not at merge speed well before exiting the ramp onto the highway should receive a minimum $500 fine and have their car impounded until that's paid. This kind of behavior has ripple effects well down the road, and is responsible for all kinds of mayhem. It's stupid and it's dangerous. If you've been doing this, drive safely instead and get up to speed while on that ramp. The only exceptions of course, are if someone else in front of you is blocking your path by dawdling or weather conditions do not permit safe acceleration.

Safety tip: When pulling up behind another car at a light, keep enough space so that you can see where their tires touch the pavement. If someone attempts a carjacking, your car won't be boxed in. Also, you won't be breathing the fumes of the car in front of you. And if you get rear-ended, that is all you are likely to get.

As the Depression deepens, crime is increasing (even outside Washington, DC). Only a minority of drivers in the USA have taken a defensive driving course, and that's really not a good thing. One of the basics taught in reputable defensive driving courses is when you pull up behind another car you keep enough distance so you can see where that car's wheels touch the pavement.

A typical carjacking scheme goes as follows. Car A sits on a side street, waiting for a Target Car. As Target Car approaches, Car A pulls out in front of it and then proceeds normally. Car B pulls out behind Target Car and proceeds normally. Until Car A arrives an an intersection.

Since very few Americans have any clue about how to drive defensively, this scheme works nearly 100% of the time. Car B pulls up to Target Car's bumper. Because Target Car was too close to Car A, Target Car is penned in. Target Car B's driver gets out and robs Target Car's occupants.

Then Car B backs up, does a U-turn, and drives away. No way to make out the license number.

Only then does the driver of Car A get out and pretend to be concerned. This ruse is necessary in the typical scheme because Car A has a license plate that may have been read by Target Car's driver.

If you're stopped at a stop sign and cannot see where the tires of the car in front of you touch the pavement, you are too close to that car. Back off!

Of course, truly desperate thieves may perform this stunt less elegantly by, for example, using both cars as attackers (the front one backs into the Target Car). That's why you need Plan B, which is to ensure you have adequate weaponry (a cell phone doesn't count) to stop the attack.

Plan B is problematic in carjacker havens such as the anti-citizen People's Republic of New Jersey, because in the PRNJ it is assumed that violent criminals need state protection and ordinary citizens do not have fundamental human rights. That leaves Plan C, which is don't go inside the lunatic zone known as the PRNJ. If you are already an inmate there, find a way to move to a state that has a more enlightened attitude toward law-abiding citizens. If your job is in PRNJ, you'll need to find employment in a sanity-based state and move there.

One of my readers says she's been "working for months" on reducing her body fat level. She's frustrated, because that just isn't happening. Her food choices have been good, and she works out. A lot.

She runs on a treadmill for 45 minutes, twice a week. She "knows" that "cardio" gets rid of fat. Except in her case. She hits the gym four times a week, and her workouts take up to three hours.

 So what can be the problem?

First of all, "cardio" doesn't get rid of fat. It tends to promote fat and reduce muscle, by adversely affecting your hormonal environment. It raises cortisol levels and depresses testosterone. While you might burn 200 calories on that treadmill, you don't keep burning them when you're done. There is another way.

Second, those long weight workouts are inefficient. Does she even have a life, with all that time at the gym? And they are counterproductive. They have the same effect as that "cardio" does. Not to mention the wear and tear this must be having on her joints, ligaments, and tendons.

With cortisol high and testorone (which is scant in women to begin with ) driven down, her body is in fat storage mode. No matter what else she does, she can't win in this situation.

So what is the solution?

Whether an isolation exercise (e.g., triceps extensions) or a big compound movement (e.g., squats), the key is to focus on contracting the muscle through a given range of motion. Most people focus on hefting a weight, using momentum and bad form. But you don't want to make things easy for the target muscle (group), you want to make things hard.

Training for a hard contraction with very deliberate and very slow motion isolated to and initiating from the target joint(s) with as few other joints as possible involved will get you that adaptive response. Intensity over endurance. Quality over quantity.

She never got "the burn" during her long workouts. We changed that, by making each rep count. And when she used correct form, she had to use lighter weights. That three hour workout took us 17 minutes. And it produced the results she'd been looking for.

It is sometimes advisable to add HITT into your program, but that's a subject for a different article.

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

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) found that gang members, er, employees of the Institute of Reprobates and Sociopaths spend 50% of their office time surfing p*rn and gambling sites. How does this compare with the sweat shop where you work? Speak to your Congressman about this.

What about the other 50%? A significant portion of that is spent conducting scams for their own enrichment (e.g., The Hoyt Fiasco, the AMCOR Atrocity, etc., there have been dozens in recent years) or simply abusing defenseless "customers" because they can. Speak to your Congressman about this, too.

Do you actually think? Most people believe they do, but it turns out they are actually on autopilot. Think about it.