This diet is a very special diet, with a very special name. It is called “The Live Abroad Diet”

I noticed that when I went to China for a month, I lost 10 pounds.

So when I moved abroad to the Philippines, I was prepared for the ensuing weight loss.

I stuck to a filipino diet, home cooked meals, usually by a maid.

I ate lots of rice, rice with every meal, breakfast, lunch, and supper. Occasionally I treated myself to cookies or ice cream or pizza. However, the portion sizes tended to be smaller, so even when I tried to pig out, it didn’t impact my weight loss. I got used to smaller portions of everything.

I went from 235 pounds to 205 pounds in 19 weeks, while leading a mostly sedentary lifestyle (indoors on the computer almost every day). Amazing!

This is for zsh. I simply put it into my .aliases file, but your .zshrc file is fine.

function rmdir() { rm -f $1/.DS_Store; command rmdir $1 }

The zsh function given at macosx hints is wayyyyy overkill.

It’s always okay to delete the .DS_Store file so there is no need to do any checking.

Saved a friend from hiccups after he had it for 3 hours.

friend> I had hiccups for 3 hrs
friend> Im seriously suffering guys
me> i figured out something that cures my hiccups nearly instantly.. i swallow some air and trap it in my throat, then i swallow on top of that as rough as i can
me> do you know the trick of swallowing something and then being able to bring it back up again
me> where you trap it in the throat
friend> hmmm
friend> dont think so
friend> I tried doing what you just said
friend> but didnt work
me> it has to be done as rough as possible
me> swallow the air as rough as possible and trap it then swallow again on top of it
me> swallow more air on top of it i mean
friend> wow you my friend are a fucking genius
friend> the hiccups actually gone
friend> on your crazy little invention

No! For the last time, I am NOT interested in joining your organization, donating to your organization, or meeting up with you every week to discuss your crazy, boring old book!

It’s poorly-wrtten fiction and you think it’s real! Well guess what? There IS not such thing as eternal life! There IS no magical immortal dude who’s gonna save you from your own stupid shit on the paradoxical condition that you obsess over him and love him unconditionally!

All that baloney in your book – it’s just made up by some uneducated hack to brainwash and take advantage of vulnerable people and has no relevance in today’s society!

And yet you go around, distributing millions of copies of it, forcing it down people’s throats, using it to subvert the minds of CHILDREN, no less, so that they’ll get a grossly inaccurate view of the world and grow up socially maladjusted! That’s practically child abuse! It sickens ME! YOU sicken me! Now take that MIND POLLUTION away from here and throw it in the bin if you know what’s good for you!

Every sensible, rational person despises you people, you know. We all wish you’d shut the hell up and stop annoying us with your dumb, delusional cult and its daft book. You’re holding us back and the only reason we aren’t making your shit illegal is because we feel sorry for you in the same way that we feel sorry for retards in general! Now GET LOST!

Bat-Amen!
excerpted from NSFW Comics

Truer words never spoken.

The other day I realized that religions have changed over history, the earliest forms of religion were animalistic, in tribes, because people were mostly hunters and gatherers at that point.

Later, as people became farmers, their religion had multiple gods based on the seasons, the sun, the moon, mother earth. Then also the gods became more abstract, for example the greek mythology of Zeus and the pantheon of gods.

Then the religions of multiple gods were replaced by religions of only 1 god, such as in christianity and islam and heck, perhaps buddhism.

Now there are more and more people that adhere to a religion of 0 gods. Or no religion at all.

The apex of the evolution of religion seems to be non-religion.

An Episode of Doctor Who made me realize that religion could be morally outlawed.

Specifically, the Doctor and his sidekick, Rose, were approaching a space station when an automated message told them “Guests are reminded that Platform One forbids the use of weapons, teleportation and religion.”

I had an epiphany at that point, the transmission of religion is essentially a virus. A viral meme, rather than a physical one. It requires active proselytizing and is most effective on the young or uneducated. It takes advantage of people’s emotions in order to short-cut their reasoning abilities, and often is based on fear.

Religion is really a form of terrorism. And coincidentally, most terrorism is religious in nature.

We don’t tolerate terrorism, and even though religious propaganda doesn’t direclty kill people, many negative things have been done in the name of religion. We should not tolerate religion, we should discourage public proselytizing, and educate people on why religion is immoral and irrational. We should avoid empowering religion at all, and not give them tax advantages and other kickbacks.

There is a saying “misery loves company”, and so long as there is one religious person, he will ardently be seeking people to join his religion. But let’s not make it easy :P

The above also applies to ideologies. However, the word ‘ideology’ is more vague, and can include a rational non-ideology. Tricky huh!

A fully acceptable alternative to barefooting is to run in flats. Shoes that are completely flat, have a thin sole, and have no heel cushion.

I have been running with shoes very similar to these thin aqua shoes. Basically been running around in my kayaking shoes.

Just got back from an hour and half of walking/jogging. This is the third time I’ve gone out for a barefoot walk, and I can tell it is starting to toughen up a bit. However, when the feet get tired, it can be painful to get back home.

There is this gravel road that I walk on half way through, and boy is it painful. But pain isn’t a bad thing. It teaches me to walk differently, to distribute my weight better. It’s too painful to run on yet. I can’t wait to learn how to run on such a painful surface, I’m sure it will teach me a lot about how to run properly and distribute my weight effectively.

I get so excited about walking around barefoot, and I take off my shirt when nobody is around too. Barefooting it is so much simpler, so much lighter. No need to worry about shoes and socks and all those encumbrances. Heck, most of the time a guy only needs a pair of shorts, now that’s freedom!

My goal is to keep doing this and become a tanned greek god. Also, I’d like to do some hiking barefoot this summer.

Today I went for a long walk barefoot, I even ran a bit. It was a bit painful walking over asphalt, pebbles, gravel, but I survived with no cuts. The feet are over-sensitive from lack of use.

Why am I going barefoot? Mainly because it is the natural thing to do. Our bodies are the products of thousands of years of evolution, shoes have only been around for a tiny fraction of that. I discovered that shoes change the gait a huge amount, resulting in heel-first walking/running. I always thought heel-first was normal. How wrong I was.

Just look at this video:
Gait changed by shoes

For a good overview of shoes vs barefoot:
The painful truth about trainers

barefoot 101

Lets make Ceres a case for asteroid colonization.

It is a nice big asteroid and it rotates 1/544 times per minute. If we wanted to, we could increase the rotation significantly and achieve artificial gravity with an outward centripetal force. We would naturally dig inside and live inside the outer surface of the asteroid initially. Perhaps later on we would hollow out the asteroid fully, a big spinning cylinder.

Here are some of the calculations involved:

The main equation is:
radius = gravity / 0.011 x RPM^2

Cere’s radius = (930×10^3 m diameter)/2 = 465 x 10^3 m

gravity (what we want) = 9.81 m/s^2

Plug into equation, solve for RPM. RPM = 1/22.8

The increase of rotation from 1/544 to 1/22.8 is a 24X increase.

Problem we need to consider is whether the asteroid would fly apart, how much of it is solid rock or just an almagam of a lot of smaller rocks.

Another alternative would be to perhaps build a train and train tracks that surround the asteroid. If the train went fast enough then it would be just the same as spinning the asteroid.

Also, we’ll need mirrors to magnify the sun intensity, due to the distance of the asteroid from the sun.

Earth: 1 AU, Sun intensity: 1300 watts/m^2 (what hits the ground in the summer).
Ceres 2.767 AU, Sun intensity 330 watts/m^2

A factor increase of 3.5 to 4X for growing plants would likely be needed. Perhaps even less, especially with some plant breeding or genetic engineering.