Month: July 2010

What to do in a Zombie Attack – BUILD TRAPS!

Posted by james – July 16, 2010

What is the correct response in a zombie attack, when most people around you have become the walking undead, after you survive the first 24 hours?

Should you keep running? Move from place to place? Maybe you want to find your family, or maybe you just want to hole up somewhere remote that happens to have food and water?

Chances are other people will be attempting the same thing. Which is bad news, it means more exposure to zombies by uninfected people. The aggressive nature of zombification also means that there’s a rather high chance that if one person gets infected, he will end up taking out another teammate. That’s no good. Zombie Survival 101 rule #1: Do not increase the number of zombies!

Ultimately, keeping on the move in a zombie-challenged world leads to high rates of attrition. Yet, the alternative of hiding in one place might not do much to reduce the risks. Zombies may be attracted to where you are, or you might run out of supplies. One moment of complacency and *BAM* a rogue zombie out of nowhere has just tagged you.

The best course of action is to reduce your risks, by controlling the number of zombies near you. That is, start reducing the numbers of zombies as quick as you can. What you need are zombie traps.

Zombies are dumb and attracted to sound and lights. They also have one kill point, their head. Simple traps that aren’t dependant on electricity or gas would be ideal. Traps could be entirely temporary, with people making lots of noise, standing on concrete fences to funnel zombies down a path and swing make-shift maces at the zombie heads. It could possibly be a spring noose trap, that grabs the zombies by the feet and dangles them upside down, perfect height for lopping off their heads.

Another big thing to worry about is body disposal. You don’t want your trap getting clogged up too quickly. Perhaps build your trap at the top of a steep hill (so the bodies roll back down). Or on a cliff. Or near a river.

It would be very important to quickly setup multiple zombie traps in a given neighbourhood. The traps would help drastically reduce the number of zombies in the immediate area. This brings a tremendous boost to general safety, because it gives everyone the chance to re-group properly, gather resources, etc.

Join your local neighbourhood association and make a safety plan for zombies. Be ready for any zombie attacks!

Weight Lifting for Everyone

Posted by james – July 9, 2010

PART 1:

This program is the simplest and greatest weight lifting program for everyone.

But first.. Why weight lift? Should everyone weight lift?

Absolutely! Weight lifting is more than just bodybuilding or gaining super strength. It is also the healthiest and safest form of exercise that exists.

Weight lifting invigorates the body. Healing hormones start getting released and bring improvements to all the organs and immune system. The hormones help repair insulin insensitivity, a key factor to excess fat storage and carbohydrate addiction (resulting in bingeing). It also starts reversing the effects of aging as well as improving the density of bone, reducing osteoporosis risk.

Think about how great you will feel when you are strong. You’ll be safer while playing or working. Everything will feel lighter so you’ll be less tired from lifting or carrying anything. If you run, you’ll be able to go faster.

Also, weight lifting is one of the safest form of exercise. It has the lowest injury rates of all sports and exercise programs. Done properly with good form and low amounts of repetitions between sets, it is incredibly safe.

In fact, most injuries mainly come from high amounts of repetition. For example, bodybuilders frequently do more than 10 repetitions per set. The more repetitions done, the more tired out the body gets, and the easier it is to get distracted and lazy and exercise with poor form, which can cause pulled muscles. Also doing lots of repetitions can result in repetitive strain that cause injury.

What sort of weight lifting program is good for everyone?

It should be extremely simple and take very little time to do. It should be something that everyone can do. It should also offer continuous improvement.

This exericse program I am going to tell you about offers that:

  • It only needs one exercise: The Lift
  • It only needs to be done once every 2 days (or 3 times a week)
  • It only needs 7 minutes per workout

The lift is the absolute best exercise for several reasons.

  • It is a compound exercise

    • Lifting involves the legs, back, abs, arms, and shoulders. It hits all the muscles in the body.

  • It handles the heaviest weights

    • Of all the compound exercises, this exercise lets you handle the heaviest weight. The effect of lifting the heaviest weights creates the biggest benefits for the body. The sheer recruitment of all the muscles to handle the heaviest weight safely, causes the body to respond with the most growth hormones.

  • There are different ways to lift safely

    • There are several variations for lifting, which is useful because some lifts will be more suitable for our body. The primary lift is known as the Deadlift, which is done with a big bar and some weights on each end. This is one of the exercises that the olympic powerlifters do. There are several different ways of doing the Deadlift, using different stances, depending on body type. For example, a sumo-stance is often used by people with shorter legs and longer torsos.

    Another lift is known as the ‘Health Lift’ which was popular in the 1800s. It involves lifting weights starting at knee height, which is easier and safer than the Deadlift.

  • It can be done with simple equipment anywhere

    • No need for a squat cage or a bench or any fancy equipment at all. All you need are weights of differing poundages. In practice, this might just be as simple as having a bar and some weights that you can add to the bar.

To Be Continued in Part 2

Favorite Sci-Fi Authors/Books

Posted by james – July 9, 2010

True mind fucks, singularity/quantum mechanics:
Permutation City, Planck Drive, etc by Greg Egan
Accelerando by Charles Stross

Favorite example of capitalism/economics in Sci-Fi:
First Contract by Greg Costikyan

Exo-Skeleton/human enhancement:
Armor by John Steakley *** Amazing psychologically ***
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein

Some cool nomadic/social technology ideas I liked:
Distraction by Bruce Sterling
Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling

Scariest First Contact:
Blindsight by Peter Watts

Superhuman, central figure that changed history:
Childe Cycle series by Gordon Dickson
Dune series by Frank Herbert
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Distancing effect of time-dilation effects from space travel:
The Forever War series by Joe Haldeman

This is just a bare fraction of the scifi I have read and enjoyed.

Barefoot transition idea – Coat bottom of foot for protection

Posted by james – July 4, 2010

Many people interested in Barefoot Running or Hiking find it hard to transition into going 100% barefoot. It takes a long time for the feet to toughen up and the nerves to stop being so sensitive to sharp rocks.

Some people end up trying to transition with light-weight shoes with minimal support, like Vibram Five Fingers, old classic Vans, or Water/Surf shoes with minimal padding.

But what if you can skip the shoe completely and still protect the bottom of the feet?

I’ve noticed that when hiking around barefoot in the forest, tree sap will collect on the bottom of my feet and small leafs will stick to the bottom. This acts as extra protection. Works great!

Except it’s a bit of a pain to clean the sap off the bottom after you’re at home.

Perhaps we can find a coating that acts as protection. Also, perhaps we could use a pre-coating that makes it easy to clean the foot afterwards.

Any ideas?

I’m thinking of natural coatings. Something that sticks. Like maybe honey covered with oatmeal flakes.

The barefoot community will need to test out different things on the bottom of their feet to see what works ;)

There is no such thing as the Big Bang

Posted by james – July 4, 2010

I am blogging this for posteriority. My prediction is that within the next century from now, the Big Bang theory will be discarded.

Right now, the theory seems to adequately explain the current expanding behaviour of the universe, and various properties of space-time.

Some months ago I was studying the nature of time and the dimensions of space, and I intuitively grasped that the Big Bang Theory is actually nonsense, even though it fits most of our current understanding of things.

I fully expect that the current Big Bang model will be replaced by a different model.

My intuitive grasp is that there is actually no beginning to the universe, that you cannot go to before time existed, that time never not existed (even though it is an artefact of our dimensions).

I think I probably have close to 34 bits of data that leads me to realize there’s a high probability that there is no beginning to the universe, or no Big Bang. Something else is going on that makes it look like the universe started from a small point and is rapidly expanding, but I have no hypothesis to put forward to explain that.

Perhaps the so-called dark matter have something to do with the fundamental “origin” or properties of the universe.