How to study anything ✍️
— Prof. Feynman (@ProfFeynman) September 30, 2023
• Indulge in the joy of discovery
• Embrace uncertainty and doubt
• See every problem as an opportunity
• Be curious about everything
• Love the details
• Think constantly
• Focus deeply
• Reject the "genius" myth
Father’s Day – 2024
Enjoying the weekend with the Tiny Tornadoes.
Teaching myself how to write blog posts on a pad with my arthritic thumbs.
Beans for Breakfast – 06.11.24
Lead author Yanni Papanikolaou and colleagues analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey’s What We Eat in America program to study how often U.S.-based adults consume beans. In their analyses, they focused on how often Americans consumed white and red kidney beans, black beans, chickpeas, and pinto beans. The researchers observed that adults who routinely consumed these beans had improved ratios of polyunsaturated fatty acids, monounsaturated fatty acids, and saturated fatty acids compared to those who did not consume beans. Those who ate beans also consumed 30% more fruits and 20% more vegetables. Higher Intake Of Beans Linked To More Nutritious Diet — https://www.forbes.com/sites/anuradhavaranasi/2024/06/11/higher-intake-of-beans-linked-to-more-nutritious-diet/
Remember Research Reveals One Simple Habit That Promotes Longevity AND Provides Extra Income in Retirement.
I’ve expanded my collection of cookbooks in search of more bean recipes.
It’s bean a lot of fun.
Rice – The Electronic Sticky Note
Most of us buy, cook, and eat it frequently, but what actually is rice? It’s a starchy cereal grain that comes from a grass species called Oryza sativa (in the scientific world, rice is referred to as Oryza). What are the Benefits of Eating Rice? (Plus, Tasty Recipe Ideas) Rice is everywhere. https://vegnews.com/vegan-health-wellness/benefits-eating-rice-tasty-recipe-ideas
The only reason why I’ve made this post part of my world famous Electronic Sticky Note series is for the Vegan Spinach, Chickpea, and Lemon Pilaf recipe.
Of course I’ll forget about this reminder in a day or two.
Eat The Real Paleo Diet…(eat more plants)
It has long been thought that meat played an important role in the diet of hunter-gatherers before the Neolithic transition. However, due to the scarcity of well-preserved human remains from Paleolithic sites, little information exists about the dietary habits of pre-agricultural human groups. A new study challenges this notion by presenting compelling isotopic evidence of a strong preference for plants among 15,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Morocco. This is the first time a significant amount of plant consumption has been measured for a pre-agricultural population, shedding new light on the dietary practices of ancient human societies. More plants on the menu of ancient hunter-gatherers — https://www.mpg.de/21865602/more-plants-on-the-menu-of-ancient-hunters-gatherers
Memo to My Younger Self
Tommy Lundberg, an exercise researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden, and the author of The Physiology of Resistance Training, says that strength training is far more important than most people realize.
“You get improved glucose control, especially if you have Type 2 diabetes,” he says. “You feel better —which is a very important effect, as it can reduce stress levels — and you typically get better sleep. As you age, it helps you function better so you can carry out your daily activities for a longer period of time. It also helps reduce your risk of falls.” https://www.newsmax.com/health/health-news/strength-training-resistance-longevity/2024/01/24/id/1150856/
Quote for Today – 05.24.24
“We’re not born with unlimited choices. We can’t be anything we want to be. We come into this world with a specific, individual destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it. Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”
Steven Pressfield
Still Not a Vegan?
On average, 86 percent of people surveyed for Statista’s Consumer Insights in 21 countries said that their diet contained meat – highlighting that despite the trend around meat substitutes and plant-based products, eating meat remains the norm almost everywhere in the world. To satisfy the world’s hunger for meat, 340 million tons of it were produced globally in 2021. Because meat consumption typically increases as countries grow wealthier, that number has been rising.
Eating Meat Is the Norm Almost Everywhere — https://www.statista.com/chart/24899/meat-consumption-by-country/
I had a vegan meal while posting this. Just sayin’.
Lessons I Wish I Had Learned From a Lifetime of Cooking #4
How to Use Chopsticks – the article https://thewoksoflife.com/how-to-use-chopsticks/
The video:
Lesson #4. You can always get better at something.
Back in my East Coast days I would take a bunch of guys into NY Chinatown for some authentic Chinese food. The restaurant was a classic hole in the wall, one of the places that didn’t cater to non-Chinese diners. All the menus were in Chinese and the family banquet style menus were posted near the ceiling on the wall. The group would get seated, tea was served, and I would point to the menu on the wall for our table. Sometimes I pointed to a menu I thought I had ordered in the past and the food was different from the last visit. Didn’t matter. It was all good.
My friends all got forks, spoons, and knives. The waiter would remove my silverware and return with a pair of chopsticks and one of those awkward soup spoons. I always had to ask for a fork and regular spoon because I was really bad at using chopsticks.
I still can’t use chopsticks very well. Too bad we didn’t have the internet or YouTube back then. At least I now have instructions and a video to watch.
Time to practice!
Papa, Why Don’t You Celebrate Your Half-Birthday?
Today is my half-birthday on The Road to 70. The question came from my 6.5 year old granddaughter on her 6.5 half-birthday. My initial response was totally adult, something about not celebrating half-birthdays the older you get. But the more I pondered the question the more the real answer should have been why not? So for the first time in a very long time I am celebrating my half-birthday today. No party, no cake, no presents. I’m simply basking in having created the life I wanted and still being around to write about it.
I don’t feel old. I know I’m old. I felt old a few years back when this happened:
And unlike some of my relatives, I grew up.
I knew I grew up when I stopped buying/collecting guitars. I finally cured myself of the proper number of guitars equation.
(I think this one is still in a guitar bag somewhere in the house, forgotten until I saw this picture.)
Two I released into the wild that somehow ended up in Owasso Oklahoma.
After a four year hiatus due to The Great Pandemic I rejoined the Y and got back to some serious resistance training. It didn’t take long to discover various muscle groups of mine that had stopped working. Absolutely no surprises here since I sit on my butt for hours on end, working, writing, reading. So to commemorate my half-birthday and to prevent other muscle groups from withering away I started a new age-friendly exercise. Rucking.
There’s no denying rucking is an efficient workout. The added weight on your back strengthens your legs and trunk, while simultaneously giving you a low-impact cardio session. These benefits increase when you add hills to the mix. Heading uphill with a pack pushes your VO2 max, while going downhill challenges your stability and eccentric muscle control, according to longevity expert Peter Attita.
I Rucked Every Day for a Month—Here’s What I Learned — https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/30-days-of-rucking/
It was a short ruck, with maybe 15 pounds in my backpack and my calves are telling me I need to do this more often.
My half-birthday happened to fall on the last day of the NBA regular season. Although I wrote “no presents” it would be awfully wonderful if the Thunder finished the season with the number one seed going into the playoffs.
If any of my relatives in Oklahoma happen to read this post you can tell Tiny Human #1 I celebrated my half-birthday this year. And for the curious who would like to see a current snap of the 6.5 year old, here you go.
