• WOWOW: Starred Sodium Lightbulbs

    edited by Alexander Becker

    What have salt and lightbulbs in common and why should you care?

    Both have issues. While I think that Eat To Live is potentially superior to many, if not most, dietary recommendations, the salt question is an interesting and apparently emotional one, culminating spectacularly in the Salt Wars: The Phantom Menace --

    Salt also pulls out calcium and other trace minerals in the urine when the excess is excreted, which is a contributory cause of osteoporosis. If that is not enough, high sodium intake is predictive of increased death from heart attacks. In a large prospective trial, recently published in the respected medical journal The Lancet, there was a frighteningly high correlation between sodium intake and all cause mortality in overweight men. The researchers concluded, High sodium intake predicted mortality and risk of coronary heart disease, independent of other cardiovascular risk factors, including high blood pressure. These results provide direct evidence of the harmful effects of high salt intake in the adult population.

    Without implying an actual call for prohibition, ... there is a great line in the movie Demolition Man which is the vehicle to deliver today's point --

    Stallone:
    Do you have the salt?
    Bullock:
    Salt is not good for you, hence, it is illegal.

    ... hence, it is illegal. Does anyone see a problem with this kind of reasoning?

    Let's take a look at the call to ban inefficient lightbulbs in EU --

    Germany's environment minister Sigmar Gabriel has written to the European Commission proposing that inefficient light bulbs be banned in the EU.

    It gets even better with House Inspectors checking your light bulbs --

    They will go into every room to calculate the number of low-energy light bulbs and while in the kitchen they will even examine the cooker to see if has automatic ignition or a permanent pilot light.

    It is the verboten approach which rings bells -- at least it should do so -- all over the world.

    While we're there, this is what you'll do --

    Stallone:
    You'll get a little dirty...
    ... you, a lot clean.
    And somewhere in the middle...
    You'll figure it out.

    Just take action and change things for --

    ... each event triggers -- almost domino-like -- the next and the following ones with the result becoming inevitable because of cause and effect.

    Moderation is important to break up black-and-white thinking since nothing is perfectly black nor white. Moderation is the complete scale from black to white and so is life which is -- to stay with colors -- taking continuously and simultaneously from the whole spectrum, including the extremes, incorporating every color that is imaginable, all side by side.

    Or is the old concept of moderation all of a sudden broken? I don't think so.

    Note: The weekly Linking Park editions will become less weekly and more themed, for there is no day and night on the internet, nor are there timezones and certainly no weeks to adhere to. In the meantime, please check out the starred items provided in the sidebar.

    To your excellence.

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  • Assess and Improve Your Trends

    edited by Alexander Becker

    Now that you measure your data regularly, it's time to analyze and see if we can derive some meaningful information from the amassed figures...

    Measure and compare your key data over time. Compare your financial data, weight, health, ... recognize and determine the trends and make sure that each trend goes in a -- meaningfully -- positive direction.

    Everything you do or are responsible for is measurable and comparable. To keep things going or to bring things back on the right track, make sure to monitor and -- if desirable -- change trends that are possible to monitor and observe with little effort. You need at least five measurements over time and, sometimes after eliminating the extremes, you can read a general direction of progress. Do not go crazy about spikes and weird, single instances, it is the general trend that we're after.

    Getting better, staying the same, and getting worse. There are only three general, observable directions for any given, measurable, progression. By the way, in order to avoid the trap of interpreting stagnating figures as positive inactivity, try to always get on a track of -- ever so slightly -- increasing quality.

    Look at your weight, three years ago, last year, six months ago, today: Is it staying the same? Congratulations. Your net worth. This should go up. Is it increasing over the course of the key dates measured? What about inflation? Do not forget to normalize your results.

    Determine a number of key indicators and monitor them religiously, set goals to improve each one of them, ad infinitum. There is no need to stop making progress once a certain amount of growth is achieved. Do not settle for a perfect figure. The only perfect figure is the next, better one. Continue and go on and on.

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