Mindconnection eNL, 2019-02-17

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

Item 1. The tax reform law (1040 system), which dramatically reduces compliance costs and therefore wasted capital, has had its predictable effect on jobs. Read one story about that, here: http://dailytorch.com/2019/02/trump-economy-roars-ahead-with-296000-new-private-sector-jobs-created-in-january/

Item 2. This is an honest, slightly upbeat State of the Union address, provided by the second major political party of the USA: https://www.lp.org/sotu2019

Item 3. Machines that can print metal shapes cost millions of dollars and can print only a few parts per day. Until now. A startup called Desktop Metal is planning to release this year a $750,000 machine with 100 times the production speed of today's machines. That is going to give mid-size manufacturers a huge competitive advantage, in both cost and lead time to market. That also means domestic manufacturers will have far less reason to outsource to China.

Since it's the machine doing the work, this doesn't translate into a huge spike in USA manufacturing jobs. But it does mean jobs for Desktop Metal in Burlington, MA and domestic jobs supporting the factories that would be using this machine. Those factories will have other machines (to build units using those printed metal parts) plus tech jobs.

Item 4. Buttbook, aka, Facebook, is a system that nobody prudent uses. The take privacy violation to extremes, both in the nature of the system and in their discrete actions they take with user information. Yet, millions of sheeple continue to use it.

The good news is that adult supervision was recently provided by the FTC, which slapped Buttbook with the largest fine they have ever imposed on a "technology company" (or, in this case, a company that abuses technology to sell information provided by the addicts who are careless enough to use their "product"). Read the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/612965/facebook-is-set-to-pay-a-multi-billion-dollar-fine-to-settle-a-ftc-privacy-probe

The ReadingPen2 Reading Assistive Scanning Pen

You scan, it reads to you.

• Hear text read to you. Just scan a word or line of text, and the Reading Pen 2 reads it to you (earbuds included, for privacy).
• Helps with reading fluency and comprehension.
• Currently used by many schools to help both dyslexic and non-dyslexic students and by some state agencies to help adults with reading disabilities.
• Speaks (and shows) letter by letter spelling, synonyms, and definitions of scanned words or lines.
• Shows the syllabication onscreen. Also has one-touch translation to Spanish.
• Provides definitions and other information from the American Heritage Children's Dictionary and Thesaurus, American Heritage College Dictionary, and Roget's II Thesaurus.
• Easy to use. Recommended for adults and children age 10 and up.
• Mobile, completely self-contained, requires no computer.

On sale!

Buy yours now.

Here are some tips from Midwest Computer (in Indiana)

• Ever cut and pasted text into your document and had to reformat it? Try Shift+ Control + V – problem solved. The text will be uniform with your document.
• Use the Windows + Shift + Up arrow and you have the window stretched from the top of the screen to the bottom. Hit the Down arrow to minimize again.
• Instead of clicking and dragging, hit the Control + Shift + Arrow key to select blocks of text.
• Accidentally closed the web browser you were working from and don’t want to search for it again? Control + Shift + T will bring up your last tabs.
• To permanently delete an item without sending it the Recycle Bin first, hit Shift + Delete.

See this: https://blog.avast.com/strong-password-ideas

This is exactly how most people manage their health and fitness. They'll cut back on sweets or make some other small change as they see and/or feel their physical condition deteriorate. This response is ineffective, and people who use it wind up in a game of "chase your tail."

The only effective approach is to integrate health care into your lifestyle. Eat mostly superfoods, engage in rigorous training five or six days a week, and be very disciplined about going to bed on time. Also, by focusing on what's right you're in a positive, rather than negative, mindset. All good!

By acting in the affirmative to be healthy, you aren't going to have those "exception" problems to deal with. Address failures in your process, rather than waiting for those failures to produce issues for you to deal with. This works as a general life principle, not just for health and fitness.

Photo taken about one week before 40th High School Class Reunion

Management by exception is also the model for medical care. While medical care is commonly called "health care" it is nothing of the sort. It is mostly a means of addressing the symptoms of disease, and most disease is preventable. I'm not denigrating medical care, I'm just saying that it addresses issues that usually result from bad personal decisions (process failures in health and fitness management).

Suppose you go in for a colonoscopy every five years and they look for polyps. But during those five years, nobody gave much thought to what you were putting in your colon that might give you polyps. If your diet consisted mostly of superfoods and you regularly ate eggplant (which fights colon cancer three different ways), what do you think the exam results will be? If, on the other hand, your diet consisted mostly of "processed food" over those five years you should not be surprised that something bad is found.

What is the obvious conclusion here? (That's a rhetorical question).

People show up for a "regular medical exam" to satisfy their insurance requirements or perhaps to be assured they are "healthy" (by the indirect methods doctors use). But that is again chasing your tail. Doctors usually don't ask whether you are skipping meals or if you are eating processed food (which, once processed, is no longer food). They usually don't ask if you are keeping to a regular program of physical training; even if you are, they typically have no clue as to what an effective program is.

In a nutshell, they don't try to discover how well you are managing your health and don't have the tools or expertise to do so. Yes, they do spot obvious things and counsel people. But who really needs to be told these days to stop smoking or that it's not a good idea to eat mostly "fast food"? Some people, maybe.

The job of the medical experts is to look for signs of problems that showed up because you didn't manage your health and fitness well. If they find a sign of poor health and fitness management, they'll prescribe some drug or recommend some surgery to change the condition that produces the symptoms.

For example, consider bariatric bypass. The alleged problem here is the victim (wrongly called the "patient") is too fat. This is based on the widespread misunderstanding that excess fat is allegedly the problem instead of what it actually is: a symptom of the actual problem.

So the theory they have is that by modifying the person's digestive system (rather than what is put into that system) they will correct the "fat problem." This always ends badly.

The only effective solution for excess fat is to change from endocrine-abusive behaviors to endocrine-friendly behaviors, plus manage portion sizes to avoid excessive calorie intake. Endocrine-friendly behaviors ensure the calories you do eat are used productively instead of converted to fat. So if you are too fat, don't see the bariatric surgeon. See the endocrinologist instead.

And even before you make that appointment, eliminate endocrine modifiers such as corn syrup from your diet. For even better results, eliminate all wheat, corn, and soy from your diet.

For those fighting fat

If you are struggling with the "battle of the bulge," try this for 4 weeks: get 90% of your food from the produce department. The other 10% can be beans (not canned) and rice (whole grain), eggs, olive oil, vinegar, and a few things like that. Eat six small meals a day, about as much as you can fit into a cereal bowl twice (assuming it's mostly raw spinach, kale, fruit, etc.). That's pretty strict, but you're doing it for only 4 weeks.

After 4 weeks, change the ratio from 90% to something you're more comfortable with; maybe 70%. But understand there's not much outside the produce department that is nutrient-dense and calorie-sparse. You can add unprocessed oats, small amounts of nuts,  and various spices for starters. Try to go meatless, too; it's not hard to do that and I prefer a meatless diet for many reasons.

If you've been eating baked goods, bake your own using oat flour and garbanzo (chick pea) flour; be sure to make your own baking powder (recipe is online) to avoid aluminum poisoning).

Disease response can't win

Disease response is a "chase your own tail" approach. It's why you see senior citizens on eight or more prescription medications and why they still look and feel bad even while on those medications. Those medications don't address the behavior that has resulted in the condition that produces the symptoms the drugs try to alleviate.

By the time people make it to the doctor for disease treatment, it's often too late for health care to be part of the solution. The soda drinker who gives himself esophageal cancer can't cure that cancer by eliminating soda. The person who doesn't want that cancer and doesn't have it, however, can prevent that cancer by not drinking soda.

How to win

Rather than manage your health by exception, manage the process of being healthy. The decisions you make about what to eat, how often to eat, how to train, how much to darken your bedroom (to improve your sleep), how to reduce stress at its source, and so on are all positive decisions.

You are focusing on what you are doing right. That focus allows you to keep doing what's working, instead of diverting your attention to fixing what should not have happened.

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

More people have osteoporosis from years of drinking soda than from any other cause.