Author: Henry Barnard

I am a voracious reader and also enjoy writing. I often have a very different point of view than the popular one. I do see value in debate, and thought it might add to the public debate on controversial issues if I were to express my contrarian opinions. I also started keeping my poems recently (I've written little pieces my whole adult life but never kept any); and I've been a photographer now for over 25 years. So I will be adding an occasional poem and hopefully interesting photograph to the blog along the way, just to spice things up.

Nutrition’s Golden Age

This could be nutrition’s golden age, as it has become very apparent in the sciences that there’s an intricate connection between the nutrition in one’s diet and one’s health. Indeed, how could this not be so, as food is basically chemicals. When you eat, digestive enzymes break down the food into vitamins and minerals, which are then available for all the metabolic functions of the body, right down to the level of all the processes of the individual cell. Thus the very commonsense notion that nutrition and health are indisputably linked, and the obvious implication that the richer your nutrition the healthier you are likely to be.

And this golden age is given a boost as foods of all kinds in the developed world are readily available. Even out of season foods are available year round. So there is little in the way of devising a truly nutritionally dense diet that’s superior to any diets of past ages. You just have to have knowledge of nutrition — what’s good for you and what’s not.

But to what extent have the sciences taken this linkage between food and health more seriously with detailed studies about specific foods? For instance, it is a commonplace assumption in the nutrition literature that there are specific foods that are very beneficial to the health of the brain. I can think of three such foods off the top of my head: Omega 3 fats, Lion’s Mane mushrooms, and blueberries. If it were true that these three examples were indeed beneficial to brain health, wouldn’t it be instructive — and potentially rewarding — to determine exactly what chemicals in these foods produce which beneficial effects in the brain?

I think the next advancement in the science of nutrition will be at this level, where it is determined what chemicals in various foods produce what specific benefits in the body.

Diet

Put myself on a real diet for 3 weeks — new thing for me as I have never done any kind of diet before.

Idea is to have a calorie deficit from 500 to 700 calories compared to what I normally eat — each day.

So I’m on the 11th day and there has been absolutely no change in my weight, despite having serious overall calorie reduction. Strange.

Perhaps the weight loss will appear suddenly and sharply, as in, say, losing 2 pounds from one day to the next. The body has its own mind.

Canelo

Best Outcome in Ukraine

Best outcome in Ukraine would be if their military would lay down their arms and surrender. Otherwise, you have a Syria-type civil war that destroys the country with terrible casualties.

The Russian military has surrounded all the major cities, and has encircled the large contingent of the Ukrainian army that had amassed to attack Donetsk, but were beaten to the punch by the Russian invasion. This large mass of Ukrainian soldiers, estimated at 45-65k, faces annihilation. (Keep in mind Russia has tactical nuclear weapons that can take out an entire army with a single device — “tactical” in that these are much smaller nuclear weapons designed to take out a large contingency of soldiers all at once. If you are the leadership in the Russian military, do you engage this Ukrainian force near Donetsk with your own army and therefore sustain serious Russian casualties, or do simply annihilate it with this single device and therefore forego any Russian casualties? The temptation to use such a tactical nuclear device would be very compelling. That would be 45-65k soldiers gone or horrendously wounded in an instant.)

No way that Russia is not going to take back Ukraine from the clutches of NATO, as they see an unaligned Ukraine — without American missiles — as critical to the security of Russia. And, unfortunately, the Russian emphasis on “denazification” does represent reality — the current Ukrainian government is controlled by mobster-like thugs who took control after the 2014 coup. (Was that coup engineered by our CIA? It was reported at the time there were rooftop snipers who were shooting people on both sides of the street demonstrations to foment the situation. Were these snipers funded by our CIA?)

American military aid to support this corrupt government in Ukraine is making this best outcome less likely and an extended devastating civil war more likely. The ones who will suffer will be the Ukrainian people for no purpose.

As usual, thoughtless American foreign policy makes a mess of everything it touches.

American Hatred of Russia

Canelo

I was watching a video of Canelo in the gym punching the heavy bag. He was concentrating on heavy hitting hooks to the body, with both hands. Really trying to hit the bag as hard as he could. Punch after punch. What he wants to do with that body punch is plant his feet and get maximum leverage in a hook to the kidney area. That is his power punch (reminds me of Micky Ward). It is Canelo’s game winner, but also his maximum vulnerability. When he plants his feet to throw the body punch, that’s when he is most stationary, and his focus has to be on hitting the opponent’s kidney area, not on his own defense.

Keto Madness

Demonizing Fossil Fuels

People who are so very enthusiastic about solar and wind are motivated from their concerns about drastic and accelerating climate change due to greenhouse gases, so they lock onto this simple-minded would-be solution that doesn’t really solve the problem, but instead has terrible economic consequences in reducing the use of inexpensive fossil fuels, especially for the little guy in having to pay horrendous energy costs.

The real — but very difficult — answer to the climate-change issue is carbon extraction through improved soil conservation, among other extraction methods. Re-forestration on a very large scale is another significant method. The focus needs to shift from demonizing fossil fuels (because they are by far the cheapest form of energy and so will be with us for the foreeseable future) to extraction methods for achieving a zero-sum game for the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

We should also look at technologies that can provide various industries with carbon capture where carbon is now just released into the atmosphere. A carbon tax would induce various industries to move in this direction.

Free Trade Isn’t Free

Likely Future Terrorist Targets

Nuclear power plants. Not very well guarded, if at all. A nuclear-power plant melt-down would cause massive economic and political repercussions for any country.

Therefore, very practical to accomplish but with maximum and horrendous results.

Nuclear power plants were all built in an age that didn’t consider this kind of terrorist threat — that a team of terrorists would take over a nuclear power plant with the intention of causing a meltdown.

But we do. Shouldn’t the federal government provide protection for all 88 nuclear-power plants in the United States? Wouldn’t that be wise?

American Biological Weapons

Now we find that the US is sponsoring development of biological weapons in labs in Ukraine, as confirmed by Russia’s intelligence services and then by our Victoria Nuland in Congressional hearings.

There are federal laws against the US ever doing this.

Yet another reason why Putin can justify to his electorate his invasion of the Ukraine.

American Hatred of Russia

The hatred of Russia by the US government and the American press has just had the effect of driving Russia into the arms of China. It is the polar opposite, diplomatically, of what Nixon did with his trip to communist China, which was a ploy to separate communist China from the Soviet Union or at least create a small fissure in that relationship.

And so, to any rational person, this virulent hatred is immensely counterproductive, and yet it dominates our State Department and American foreign policy. And Americans, having been drummed into their heads that Putin is this veritable anti-Christ by both our government and the press, never entertain anything that doesn’t fit this narrative — they are brainwashed.

This will not end well for the United States.

End of the World Scenario

Imagine how dangerous — internationally — the current situation would be if Ukraine had been a member of NATO and contained nuclear missiles. Does anyone doubt they would use them?

Reason enough for the country to remain unaligned and a buffer state between NATO and Russia.

But American missiles in Ukraine is precisely the scenario that the fools in our State Department would like to see come about. They no doubt engineered the coup in Ukraine that took place in 2014, and if we let them, will engineer this dire circumstance. The State Departments doesn’t have diplomats; it has blind ideologues who do not see the consequences of their actions.

Ukrainian Discrimination Against Their Russians

The pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia American press never comments against the very active discrimination against Russians who live within Ukraine by the Ukrainian government, and not just in the eastern sections of the country, but throughout the country. Our press never ever comments about this very intense repression. Why?

The true situation in the Ukraine is that, unfortunately, you have two nationalities, if not ethnic groups, living there that despise each other.

Absence of Any Real Diplomacy