A fantastic article from the July/Aug 2011 issue of The Atlantic Monthly on the increasing acceptability of alternative medicine in the conventional medicine world. Here's the money quote:

Morie Gertz, a hematologist, who chairs the Mayo Clinic’s internal-medicine department. “Most of the doctors here were top of their medical-school class, top of their residency, blah, blah, blah,” he told me. “That’s technical mastery. That doesn’t make them effective healers. Over the past 30 years, I’ve seen hundreds of patients who clearly feel they’ve benefited from alternative therapies. It’s not my job to tell them they shouldn’t feel better. And I wouldn’t tell patients they shouldn’t try alternative medicine if they want to—we need to follow the clues patients give us about what might help them. If a patient chooses to walk away from the therapy I’ve prescribed and go to an alternative therapist instead, that’s not the fault of alternative medicine; it’s because I’ve failed as a doctor to do a good job of making my case in terms that are important to the patient.”

Gertz is among the many physicians who dismiss the lack of supportive randomized-trial data as a reason to write off alternative medicine. “The randomized trial is a very high bar,” he says. “Eighty percent of what I do here isn’t based on randomized-trial data.” Physicians routinely write “off-label” prescriptions, Gertz says—that is, prescriptions that call for drugs to treat conditions for which those drugs have not been officially approved. It’s a perfectly legal and ethical practice, and even one that physicians consider essential, accounting for about a fifth of all U.S. prescriptions. “It’s off-label not because it doesn’t work, but because there’s no good randomized-trial data on it. In the same way, we may not have great evidence that alternative medicine works, but that’s very different from saying it doesn’t work.”

Go check out my tumblr page to get the Interesting Thing of the Day (ITD). I'll keep this space reserved for longer form writing.

After reading the Fred Wilson's post on "The Fred Wilson School of Blogging," I was inspired to make a few comments. He says that: "based on the past dozen years that I've been writing it, I expect that my blog will in some ways be one of the most significant things I create in my life."

Wow. There is something profound in that. It makes me think what it might have been like to have a blog record from my grandfather or my great grandmother. When you couch it in personal historical terms--in autobiographical terms--it does, indeed, become something significant to others. Namely, your family. It makes me wonder what direction to take my own blogging.

Fred suggests having a long form blog and a short form blog. I do have a Tumblr blog that I created last fall and played around with for about a day. I think I might be firing that up again for my own amusement. It's a fun and free tool.

The rest of the entry is  commentary on building your personal brand via networks and communities. Namely: Twitter for wide broadcasts, Facebook for friends and family, and Google+ for...? I think it's still too early to tell about Google+. We're not even a week into it. However, I have had the suspicion that I will go quietly into that night, away from Facebook, and leave her behind. Many have already forsaken FB for Twitter, reporting that tweets to a specific community are the way of the future, etc. I just haven't gotten any traction there. The big thing is that not many people I know are Twitterers, themselves, which means that I don't have anyone to say anything to. It also doesn't work for me in a visual way and, frankly, I just see a lot of noise there. In fact, I have had to unsubscribe to a number of feeds because they were just offending me with either a) the shear number of posts or b) irrelevance, or c) both. As the song goes, I still haven't found what I'm looking for. Until Google+ came along. All of my Google Universe plus social sharing and networking? Yes, please.

Of course, networks are only as good as the number of people on them. This means people will have to make a decision about what direction to head in. I say people tired of the Facebook landscape and the uncertainty of where that company is headed will leave for greener (Googlier?) pastures. It remains to be seen.

Ten days ago I set out on a journey back to get back into shape using RossTraining's 50 Day Program. Well, I have only done three workouts in those ten days. Ugh. Two things: getting out of bed should be easier. 100 degree temps don't help.

Oh, and I hit another psychological road bump. I suffered a bruised wrist doing push-ups. I have subconsciously given myself permission to dial it back because of this. That is an admittedly weak move. No more. I will get a solid week's worth of work done, here. I will hammer out an explosive strength session this afternoon. I will get this train back on the tracks. First practice is in 13 days!

As promised, I'm back to report on the progress. As I said, it takes five days to form a habit. Unfortunately, I have not done five straight days of work-outs. I think the July 4th holiday might have been a factor. However, I have made some more progress on my home gym. More on that in a minute.

On my first official day of workouts, I attempted the "No Excuses" Integrated Circuit Training (ICT) workout: consecutive sets 60 secs each of  Burpees, Pull-ups, Body Squats, and Push-ups - catch your breath - do a 45 seconds each round - breathe - 30 seconds each round - BREATHE! - 15 seconds each round - Collapse. Results were phenomenal. I was taking 45-60 seconds to recover between the 60, 45, 30, and 15 sec rounds. Obviously, my conditioning has flagged since the end of soccer season. Another downside is the 90+ (more??) degree heat in the garage. I promptly took Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off. Yesterday, I managed an attempt at the first Strength workout and I got a chance to try out some of my new "equipment."

On my accidental days off, I built the t-handle for Hungarian Core Blaster swings. $12 in parts from Lowe’s and I was set. Instructions here. Oh, and I bought some used weights from Play It Again Sports for .69 cents / pound. Bought 50 lbs. worth. I made a body row station using high-tension nylon rope and some PVC pipes for handles. I suspend these from the pull-up bar of my Power Tower and lay down underneath to perform the VERY challenging body rows.  I’m still waiting on my Iron Woody resistance bands. Without those bands, I am useless against the pull-up bar.

Back to yesterday. I tried the Strength workout which focuses on maximum quality reps. I don’t know if it was the heat or my poor conditioning but I bonked about half-way through. Probably both. I’ll bet a good deal was mental, as well. One lesson that I learned is to dial back the program from the Never Gymless 50-day recommendation. Like, by 50% or so.

It’s a start. I’ve got to tinker with timing. I don’t think I can take any more 100+ degree work-outs in the garage at 5pm. I’m going to have to get up with the roosters. More to come in another 5…

About six months ago (or was it nine?), I quit going to the Plano rec center to lift weights. That's no knock on them. My membership ran out and I vowed to start doing something different. Of course, that meant that I had no plan. I had an idea, but not a plan. I thought that I would spend that $140--that would've gone towards another 12 months of membership--into buying equipment for the house. I would finally have the conveniences of a work-out facility right in my own home. Typically, this idea failed to take shape. I never acquired or built the equipment and here we are.

One Spring soccer season later, I am determined to see this through. I want to be the guy who never tires on the field; who's always making the effort to defend and making the long run; the guy who can be counted on to make the play. I don't want to be the guy who wears the headband and craps out after 15 minutes. No one should be that guy.

My first move is complete. I have purchased the used Power Tower on CraigsList for cheap. I have the resistance bands coming in from Iron Woody. This weekend, I plan making the t-handle for kettle swings with parts from Home Depot. I plan on raiding Play-it-Again-Sports for the weights. Finally, I plan on putting together THE PLAN based on a book that I already own--a book that was once used and dismissed for awhile and is collecting dust on a shelf right now. It's called Never Gymless by Ross Enamait (pronounced en-am-ITE).

Ross is the founder of a fitness website called RossTraining.com. He's a fitness trainer and author based out of Massachusetts. His M.O. is body-weight training and I think that's what turned me onto him in December 2008. I wish, for the life of me, I could remember how I first discovered him. I know I was always intrigued by military-style training: running, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, etc. I had just watched the Navy SEALs Discover Channel documentary about the BUD/s training and got inspired. I probably stumbled upon his site while rummaging through the web, looking for military workouts. Alas, here we are.

50 days until Game 1 of the fall soccer season. 50 days to train hard and get in shape. 50 days of grueling Texas summer heat. 50 days of pain. 50 days to glory.

Give me 5 days, first. It takes 5 days to create a habit--30 days if you really want to entrench it. I've just got to work through 5 first. I'll report back then.

Here's some inspiration for you...

In David Brooks' latest NYT column, It's Not About You, he implores recent college grades to shed the ethos of the Baby Boomer generation. "Embrace your dreams" and "find your passion" have long been the rally cry of the Summer of Love crowd. It's striking that the same people who were charged to "ask not what your country could do for [them]" are the very ones who sought to stake their own claim on the world with rugged individualism. Ayn Rand haunts us still.

While life is certainly hard--and each person might say that their current season is the hardest yet--I've always contended that the post-graduation, mid-20s years are the toughest. You’re either a jobless college grad with very little prospects or you ejected into the work force right out of high school and face a bleak uphill battle to attain middle class status. Many of these folk are going it alone without partners or spouses. Many don't belong to a community outside of a few drinking buddies--certainly nothing like a service club or a church. Many have aging parents whose own career paths are entering the twilight years and job opportunities beyond that are flagging. We’re living in a catch-as-catch-can culture. Good luck "embracing that passion."

Brooks writes:

Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life. A relative suffers from Alzheimer’s and a young woman feels called to help cure that disease. A young man works under a miserable boss and must develop management skills so his department can function. Another young woman finds herself confronted by an opportunity she never thought of in a job category she never imagined. This wasn’t in her plans, but this is where she can make her contribution.

For the generation of students who have always had a roadmap for where they were going: from primary school to junior high and high school (or prep school) to college and on and on, this sudden engagement with "open source" life is jarring. Re-inventing is difficult. It takes time. There are no instruction manuals, although many authors have crafted them.

If you find yourself in this place, take heart. You aren't the first. Be a part of something bigger than yourself. In the process, I'll bet you'll find who it was that you were looking for.

My father-in-law, Harold Harrison, has launched his own website: www.justmythoughts.info

This new site and blog will be the platform for his hot opinions about Health & Wellness, the Healthcare industry, FDA, Government Regulations, and Personal Freedoms, as well as a landing pad for pictures of the grand kids from time-to-time.

Harold has spent over 30 years as an independent technical recruiter. However, his true passion has been a lifelong devotion to evangelizing the benefits of homeopathic healthcare. He enthusiastically educates his friends, family and willing strangers on the importance of paying attention to one's health and well-being. He advocates The Original Limu, Limu BluFrog Energy Drinks, and BarleyLife. You will never meet a more passionate "health care" expert than Harold. He is truly knowledgeable and resourceful when it comes to health & wellness.

With Plano LIVE Green Expo 2011 right around the corner, I wanted to tell you about the time I got dressed down by a college student at last year's expo.

2010 was the first year that I volunteered at the Expo. I served on the Carbon Footprint team. I was one of four who walked the floor, surveying attendants about:

• How far they drove to get to the expo?
• What was the make/model of the vehicle that they drove/rode in?
• How many people came with them?

It was a quick-and-dirty questionnaire that gave our team the data to yield a crude estimate of the carbon footprint of each attendant at the Expo. At least, everyone we could possibly ask those questions of during our two hour shifts.

We had a booth outside that served as our team headquarters. There we had some laptops, a large metroplex map, and push-pins. Folks came by and gave the same info to the questions above and we assigned them a rating and corresponding colored push-pin. Green-colored pins were, you know, well...EXCELLENT! It meant than you received a low carbon rating and had minimal impact on your trip out that Saturday. It devolved from there, of course--blue, red, black. I think black was the worst. I remember interviewing one guy laughed when he told me that he drove some kind of three-axle truck from Weatherford...alone. Irony, indeed.

Now, about that college student. I posed my questions to this young man whose face fell as I started in. He quickly interrupted me in that indignant and frenetic way that twenty-somethings do when they've recently spent a lot of time arguing about such subjects with their compadres over late-night Taco C chow.

"That's a terrible indicator of carbon footprint and it's much more complicated than that!" he complained. He, then, proceeded to grill me on the finer points of GHGs (that's "Green House Gas Emissions") and how transportation carbons are a small fraction of the total footprint picture.

I gave him one of those shoulder-shrugging I-just-work-here looks. Clearly, I had been under-trained for this job. We awkwardly parted and I shook it off.

I went on to survey the most of anyone else on our team--500+ people. My method was to catch people while they were waiting in line for things. They didn't have anything better to do and I wasn't asking for money so I didn't any resistance to answering my questions.

I've been thinking about that kid, though. He was right in that the problem of GHGs is much bigger than individual actions. A quick search on Wikipedia shows that "Residential" and "Transportation" emissions account for only 25% of all annual GHG impact. The biggest offenders are the Industrial and Power-generating (see: coal) sectors. Alas, our problems are always bigger that we think. It still doesn’t mean we are powerless of ineffectual. I am convinced that by continuing to (cliché alert!) reuse, reduce, and recycle—along with lobbying for change through legislation—we can affect the world for the better. Not convinced?

I came across this two-year old video by high school science teacher Greg Craven about our decisions to take action regarding Global Warming. I have to say that it's fairly convincing, even in its original iteration. Apparently, his theory has been sharpened after tens of thousands of comments. He even self-published a book about it. Craven’s engaging, to boot. Take a look: