Serenity Through Sweat

Heart

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog.

Sometimes, you find words that just hit you the right way. Maybe a song, maybe a line from a book or a movie.

The words can be incredibly powerful in their own right. Or, it can be a confluence of events, mood, vibe, context, that enhance the power of the message.

Life size Super Mario Bros made of chocolate

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past two days. What is it that makes the same words, the same message, so powerful?

It isn’t some magic spell, that when uttered, affects everyone uniformly. But there is something there. A motivational quote or a song that can give you an extra push, an extra gear.

I had just finished my morning swim in the pool on the twenty fourth floor of my hotel. Swimming indoors is already something of a strange feeling. The thick fog blanketing the streets of Houston and obscuring most of the floor to ceiling pool deck windows made it feel alien.

I still had my goggles lightly perched above my brow, and my waterproof swim headphones in, when I climbed into the hot tub. I fiddled with the strap on the back of my head so I could lay my neck into the crook in the corner of the hot tub paver stone floor.

I instantly relaxed as I sprawled out. My arms and shoulders floating in the steamy water, welcoming stillness after exertion.

My eyes closed as the song started to wash over me. “Somewhere in middle America. When you get to the heart of the matter, it’s the heart that matters more”

I hadn’t heard the counting crows song in quite a while. The music downloaded onto my waterproof swim music player is something of a time capsule. Closed and sealed somewhere after the fall of Napster, but before the rise of Spotify.

The next day, on my long layover in Albany, it was time to revisit my slightly stupid holiday tradition. For the 12th year in a row, it was time for the Christmas half marathon.

I queued up the live album to start my treadmill run in the dingy hotel fitness center, knowing I would need more than a little heart to get me through.

This tradition has come to mean a lot of things to me. One year it was a time to grieve after a loved one had passed. Another year, it was an ill advised death march, when I knew I was sick, and pushed on anyway. It has been a welcome adventure in new towns, and it has been a stale and stagnant trot on hotel treadmills.

Endurance sport, especially this particular event, has a lot to offer in the form of self exploration. What I kept coming back to this year is that emotions are not linear and rarely predictable.

I think it was Yogi Berra, who said predictions are hard especially about the future. Here is one prediction that isn’t so hard. Almost every endurance event will have some sort of low point, some place of self doubt or questioning.

Made it home to see these smiling faces on Christmas

You start to ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” No one else is here, no one really cares, you can stop the treadmill now and get on with your day.

Humans tend to forecast current conditions out into the future, even when there isn’t great evidence to support that trend line. Look at the housing crisis of 2008 and the inflation that has plagued the past few years. We think things will continue on just the way they are, in spite of changing conditions, until we are smacked in the face with change.

It is especially easy to get into this mental space with some miles behind you and some fatigue in your legs. You start to think, “if I feel this bad after (however man) miles, how am I going to make it the rest of the way?”

If running got me feeling this way and thinking this way, how is more running possibly going to make me feel better?

And yet somehow, like those magic words, or songs, that have the power to change our state of mind, pushing through can make you feel better.

I was struggling around the hour mark at just under 8 miles in. I slowed my pace to a brisk walk and took the opportunity to talk to my wife and kids who had called to check in. Finishing was never in doubt, but the shape those last 5 or so miles would take was still to be determined.

Making the best of an unscheduled LAX layover

Before our quick conversation had even ended, I found myself pushing the pace wheel on the treadmill back up.

I worked my way back towards my target pace while still continuing our quick Christmas conversation.

It is a strange thing, that an endurance event isnt linear. That there will be highs and lows, ups and downs, while covering the miles. But thats a lot like life. Its not predictable. It’s not linear. It depends a lot on the mindset you are willing to approach it with.

Some climbing miles and sprint win on my new bike, the still be named newest lady of the house

And, when you get to the heart of the matter, it’s the heart that matter more.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe, and stay sweaty my friends.

The Martian

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I have not been writing nearly as much as I would like to lately. Life has a tendency to get in the way.

This time of year with holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and the extra curveball life always has in store, often leaves me feeling overwhelmed.

There are some aspects of my life, compartmentalized away, where I am very disciplined. Others however, to include writing, have yet to become a permanant fixture, I find that I am wont to revert back to less engaging activities when i ought to be writing instead.

So it was, that I found myself watching Interstellar for the first time on a long deadhead flight from LAX to ATL. I found the fatherly dynamic of the movie extremely touching. The contrast in Matt Damon’s characters from the Martian to Interstellar, is a great comparison of the spectrum of human problem response.

No spoilers here, even though both movies have been out for quite a while, but Mark Whatney (Matt Damon in the Martian) meets his problems head on, whereas his Interstellar counterpart (Dr. Mann) has a much more defeatist attitude.

Being stranded on Mars with not enough food or supplies, and little hope of rescue is obviously a very dire situation. Much more serious than nearly everything we experience in our daily lives. Yet our brain has a hard time recognizing scale and amplitude without context.

The worst thing that has ever happened to you is the worst thing that has ever happened to you. Whether that is being marooned on an alien planet, or if you spilled coffee on your new shirt. The brain makes assessments on past experiences, not on absolute spectrums.

Fostering an environment of controlled and risk minimal discomfort, can help us recognize where unexpected problems actually fall on that spectrum. It can also help us remain calm and analytical while assessing those problems.

Aviation, parenting, and Jui jitsu all fall into these categories. Maybe that is why I like them so much.

They all present complex.problwms that need to be solved. Some of them may seem overwhelming, or too big to take on. Sometimes it isn’t the size of the problem, but the long list of small problems that never seems to shrink.

Like our space pirate friend said, you get to work. You solve one problem and then the next. If you solve enough problems, you get to go home.

There are a lot of similarities to this philosophy in the aviation world. We have a systematic approach to analyzing our situation, and then working through problems as the arise until reaching a logical conclusion.

These past few weeks, I have summoned my inner Mark Watney more than a few times. You have a plan for how the day is going to go, and it starts going sideways. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the growing tower of problems that need to be solved, tasks that need to be accomplished.

Or you can get to work, one problem at a time. And if you solve enough problems, complete enough tasks, you get to go home.

Jui Jitsu is at its core problem solving. You give your opponent a problem. Theh responds and give you a problem right back. Whoever is unable to solve the problem and respond ends up submitting. Problem solving, with potentially deadly consequences, but in a controlled and risk mitigated environment.

Sometimes, you don’t have the solution readily available. You may have some ideas, theories, guesses, about how to tackle the situation. That leaves you with an uncertain outcome.

That’s where the science comes in. You make a hypothesis. You test it. You gather the information. You analyze the data. Rinse and repeat.

This way of thinking. This way of approaching life’s problems has compounded over generations to change the way we live our lives.

Even if you don’t work in the “sciences,” you can easily see how this philosophy plays out on the mats, or with your kids.

Control the variables you can, make a hypothesis, test it. Collect the data, and go back and try it again. Maybe you break the cycle of submitting (on the mats or with the kids, I still tap early and often.)

If you science the shit out of it, and solve enough problems, you get to go home, where you will likely find some serenity.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Prompt

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog.

AI has been in the news quite a bit recently with the continuing advancement of ChatGPT and the drama surrounding its upper management.

I came across some of the grassroots origin of AI, in the form of computational linguistics, while continuing research on my communications project.

I am far from a subject matter expert on AI, language, or communication, but here is my two cents nonetheless. And, you should take it, we are due for a recession anyway.

Computational linguistics really began as a field before it ever had a chance. By that I mean the right tools for the job hadn’t even been invented yet.

ChatGPT and other Large Language Models, LLM’s, require enormous datasets and computing power. Before the internet, and the personal computer, this meant manual entry and analysis of all those words.

The LLMs function less by looking at the “rules of language”, and more by analyzing the likelihood of what the answer should be based on existing information.

From the analysis on computational linguistics, “Members of the IBM research team flaunted their ignorance of linguistics as if to taunt the other researchers. Fred Jelinek is famously quoted as saying, ‘Every time I fire a linguist from our project, the performance of our system gets better’

How fast can you squeeze out the toothpaste? Now, how fast can you put it back in? Our words work the same way

I think the easiest way to think about these LLM’s is as probability engines. This work was pioneered by Claude Shannon (whose work I have covered in quite a few other posts)

The LLM absorbs and analyzes a huge amount of data. An unimaginable amount of data. Think about reading the entire contents of the internet. Every tweet, every news article, every blog. Then statistically analyzing all those words to look for patterns.

From a previous post covering the work of Shannon, “As Shannon showed, this model also describes the behavior of messages and languages. Whenever we communicate, rules everywhere restrict our freedom to choose the next letter and the next pineapple*” “Because you’re completely aware of those rules, you’ve already recognized that ‘pineapple’ is a transmission error. Given the way the paragraph and the sentence were developing, practically the only word possible in that location was ‘word’ “

A beautiful day for a run on a Montreal layover

When Shannon completed his mathematical theory of communication, the internet wasn’t even a pipe dream, and he did a tremendous amount of work developing the earliest computers.

His theories and ideas, though, would pave the way for how these LLMs operate. They look for patterns by searching and analyzing all of the current written work on a topic. They then recombine words in a statistically viable way to answer questions

You can debate whether or not this constitutes, learning, or understanding, or consciousness, but that’s not really the point. It is here now, in this current form, and it can be an extremely useful tool. It can also spit out unintelligible garbage. So how do you engage with LLMs in a way that is useful and productive?

I think the answer has already been covered in the AI action warning movie Irobot. “My responses are limited, you must ask the right questions”

In this light, the rise of ChatGPT and other LLMs has led to the creation of a new host of jobs, one of which is the prompt engineer.

I first heard about the prompt engineer from episode 556 of the freakonomics podcast.

Prompt engineers discern what it is that their customer wants, and then find a way to effectively communicate that to the LLM.

Asking the right questions, adding the right context and constraints, make all the difference. If you think about it, the same concept applies to communicating with our kids. Or with other adults who may be operating outside their area of expertise.

If you want your five year old to do something, you need to set up some guideraills, and provide clear expectations. If you want a coworker to complete a new task, you need to provide the context and desired outcome, in order to get the finished product you want.

LLMs function much like the very intelligent five year old. You can be amazed what they are able to produce if given the right prompt.

Sometimes, it is hard to know what exactly we want. It is even harder to find the right combination of words to effectively transmit that want to someone else. Asking the right questions, setting the right context and guardrails, can help us in the endeavor. Finding the right prompt, might just lead to some serenity.

Trying to keep the mileage up in my pseudo off-season

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

October sky

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I was fortunate enough to have a long layover last week where I could see my dad.

We spent most of the visit alone, in our respective tree stands. Although no meat was harvested, I think it was a refreshing and rejuvenating day in the woods.

Our respective tree stands were a short hike, up a very steep hill, to the top of the ridgeline. Even at the top of the hill, we were still only five minutes from home and still had cell service. A pretty great place to be hunting.

It was nice to be able to communicate between the stands. We can let each other know when we saw something and which way it was moving.

We were also able to talk about some of the projects he is working on. He moved into this fixer upper farmhouse about six years ago, and there is always something that needs doing.

From new outbuildings, a new deck, tractor maintenance and repair, there are always lots of projects going on.

His skid steer tractor was down with a broken bearing issue. He had ordered a custom made housing, but it had not been made to his desired specifications.

He would send a text with an idea to fix or make use of the existing part. I would ask questions from my admitidly very limited knowledge base of the problem. Eventually he came up with what he thought was a working solution. He would have to fabricate another part, to use in conjunction with the misformed ordered part.

The whole process made me think of October Sky. How easy it is to burn things down or break them, and how much harder it is to make them. The generational differences of those that grew up making more than obtaining.

October Sky is a 1999 movie featuring Jake Gyllenhaal as a west virginia coal miner’s son Homer Hickam. Based on a true story, Homer is inspired by the launch of Sputnik to pursue amateur rocketry. He ultimately gets out of the coal town on a college scholarship, and ultimately works as a NASA engineer.

Homer starts by blowing up the new picket fence in his front yard. Next he almost hurts several people with a rogue rocket. His father tells him no more rockets on the company property.

Since the mining company owns the whole town, Homer and his friends walk 9 miles each way to get to the town limits where they can launch their home made rockets.

A helpful union machinist tells them their lower quality steel is the cause of their rockets losing launch velocity. He is happy to show them how to order the steel from a catalog and how to machine it and shape it.

In order to scrape together the money for the new steel, Homer and his friends take rail road track off an abandoned section to sell them for scrap.

Standard track in the US varies between 60 and 130 lbs/ft with the standard track pieces coming in at 4 ft 8.5 inches. Since it is a coal mining town I’m assuming they were on the higher end of the spectrum. That means each piece weighed upwards of 600 pounds.

These high school kids were pulling up 600 lb hunks of steel to sell for scrap, ordering their raw materials from a paper catalog, then machining and hand building their own parts, so they could walk 9 miles outside of town to actually use them.

Fall hiking and Octoberfest in the NC mountains

I’m worried my five year old will soon figure out how to use alexa to start ordering toys directly to the house.

What a difference in cultural expectations in the lifetime of just a single person (1957 sputnik launch to today). If you wanted something, you had to learn about it. You had to build it.

This generation is incredibly creative. Building with digital code is still building. Creating digital content is still creating. But, I wonder how much we have lost by diverging away from the path of physical, tangible creation?

Lots of climbing on the bike this training block

I’m reminded of this tanguble building spirit every time I visit my dad. I get to see what he creates both at home and through his work. It is an inspiring trait I hope to emulate and pass on the the next generation of men in our family.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Another layover in Roanoke, and another switchback run up mill mountain.

A team

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog.

This week is a little different. It is more of a writing exercise than an informative post.

While spending a lot of time in the car with the little ones, I had to switch up my Pandora radio stations a little bit.

Tacos after Speedy came with me to Jui Jitsu

At 5 and 3, El Duderino and Speedy will soon be ready for the gospel of Wu Tang, and the back country twang and blues of Tyler Childers. But, for now, those are lessons best saved for another day.

So, as I found some more age appropriate jams that were still in my wheelhouse I stumbled across this song from Ed Sheeran.

Here is a link to the YouTube video, as it is worth a listen before you continue on with the rest of the post.

I really love the way Sheeran communicates his story with incomplete sentences. Two word snippets that paint an incredibly vivid picture. All done in a rhythmic and rhyming prose that suits his strumming and falsetto.

The words and the melody make you feel something. That is incredibly powerful, and only compounded by the fact that it is done with such an economy of words.

It seemed like a fun idea. Can you distill your feelings and a story into small two word snippets? Make them fit into Ed’s style of prosidy? I thought I would give it a try.

Below are two verses of my A-team rendition. One verse about flying and one about triathlon.

Hotels, new place, dont forget a brave face, try to sleep, and re trace.

Find food, work out, kids at home to think about, rain storms, self doubt.

And they say, he’s a little bit crazy. Stuck in his daydream, been this way since eighteen, but lately. His patience, is slowly sinking, wasting, crumbling like pastries, and they scream, the best things in life come free to us.

Cause we’re just under the management, and go mad just to pay the rent. We don’t wanna be away from home tonight. But we love the way that we pay the bills, and can’t easily transfer our skills. It’s a tightrope walk each night, for all those that fly.

Legs burn, dry throat, another lap to stay afloat, wheels turn, bike home

Run some, feet sore, training can feel like a chore, calm mind, worth more.

And they say he’s a little bit crazy, stuck in his daydream, been this way since eighteen, but lately, his patience is slowly sinking, wasting, crumbling like pastries, and they scream, the best things in life come free to us.

Cause we’re just under the training plan, no matter how much we already ran, and we just want to rest tonight. And in the morning we ride to another jam, transport to another land. Mental clarity is worth the price, for a few more miles tonight.

I had a lot of fun with this post. Trying to find the words and the rhyming pattern for complex thoughts was an interesting exercise. Parsing them down into two word snippets forces you to assign value to your thoughts.

What is most important to you? How do you convey that to the reader in two word snippets? Does the whole say more than the sum of the parts?

Economy and value are often at odds with each other. If you are forced to truncate your ideas, the quality of the message can suffer. But, when it doesn’t, it feels like that much more significant of an accomplishment in communication.

Running mountains on one of my favorite layovers, Roanoke Va

I think that is the true beauty behind A team. I think there is a lot to be gained from distilling our thoughts down to their most elemental levels.

I hope you enjoyed my own rendition. Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Fear

“I must not fear

Fear is the mind killer

Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration

I will face my fear

I will permit it to pass over me and through me

And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.”

This is “The litany against fear” from Frank Herbert’s Dune. If you watched the recent movie, you hear Paul Atriedes (played by Timothy Chamelet) recite it.

It was taught to him by his mother, the Lady Jessica. A member of the Bene Gesserit, lady Jessica has total control over every muscle in her body, down to facial reactions. She can influence and control others through the use of voice (sort of a Jedi mind control). She has access to all the memories and opinions of all of her ancestors and her fellow Bene Gesserit ancestors. She has a significant portion of human history at her immediate disposal.

Despite these awesome powers, the Lady Jessica finds herself in need of this most basic Bene Gesserit teaching (the litany against fear) frequently throughout the story.

She teaches these skills as well as the litany to her son (which is forbidden knowledge for males). They live in dangerous times.

I had to go searching for the exact quote. I remembered reading it. I recalled the general message, but the actual words have a powerful calming essence. As they are supposed to.

I could feel the fear welling up inside of me. I could sense that it was enough to take over. I would be able to contain it temporarily, but not stop it.

I had to find a safe place to permit the fear to pass over me and through me. This isn’t how I expected my Wednesday afternoon to go.

El duderino had been showing signs of near sightedness. I needed glasses at his age and wear them now. He probably would as well. It is exceedingly difficult to escape the gravity of your genetics.

We asked the pediatrician at his normal check-up to evaluate his eyes. They used what looked like a cell phone camera to take a picture and said he was good to go. I remained unconvinced but temporarily placated.

I’ve started my morning the last few weeks with a cold plunge. Working my way down now to 46°

As his vision deficiency became increasingly evident, we decided to schedule an appointment with a pediatric ophthalmologist.

The standard methods of testing eye sight have been the butt of many a joke over the years. Better 1, or better 2? Is this more blurry, or less blurry?

These methods seem even more humorous when applied to si eone whi is still learning their numbers and letter, (and cant see well).

I think the book containing the color blind texts was older than I was. Its pavés frayed and tattered. It looked like something from a museum display rather than a tools at a cutting edge medical facility

Congratulations to the happy couple. My second wedding of the month on a layover

I watched proudly as 5 year old El duderino squinted and squirmed his was through the exam. Just knowing the letter and number, and his ability to articulate throughout the process was impressive, even when he was wrong.

And he was wrong a lot. Some of it was age and knowledge, but a lot of it was clearly eye sight. Again, I had glasses at his age and expected him to need them as well.

So I was shocked when at the end of the exam the doctor said glasses wouldn’t help him.

The doctor told me, in a very matter of fact tone, that El duderino had cataracts and would need surgery on both eyes.

El duderino happy as clam playing superheroes

I’m not sure I fully understood what he was saying. But after having to wrestle him like an alligator just to get in the dilation eye drops, I knew that multiple eye surgeries were going to be a hurdle.

That meant anesthesia. That meant multiple procedures. What were the complications? What were the risks? He’s only five year old, what a shitty hand to be dealt.

I don’t approach most things in my life in terms of fear, but in terms of risk. Risk can be mitigated. Risk can be assessed. Risk can be managed. Risk is never fully removed, but it can be weighed and measured against the potential rewards.

Some layover training getting ready for the last triathlon of the season

I didn’t see this situation as a risk, I only saw fear. I felt my complete and utter inability to change the situation, to protect my first born, to prevent any pain that may come.

There was no assessment, no mitigation, there was only fear. I tried not to spiral in the office. I tried to be present and ask questions of the doctor. I scheduled the follow up appointment and tried to put on a brave face for El duderino.

Thankfully, in spite of how smart he is, he either didn’t hear or didn’t understand the exchange we were having right in front of him.

I found the litany on my phone in the parking lot. I recited it a few times and took some deep breaths. We still had a 45-minute drive through rush hour traffic on I4 (the worst road in the country for accidents) in order to get home.

El duderino was none the wiser, and happy that we were out of the office and his dilated eyes were returning to normal. I called my wife and told her I would fill her in on the appointment when I got home, but that I would need a few minutes.

I set a ten minute timer for myself. Then, I sat quietly in my closet and cried.

One of the reasons I am particularly drawn to the litany, is that it gives you power over fear but doesn’t tell you to fight it or ignore it.

Feel your emotion, don’t fight it or hide from it, but rather, allow it to pass over you and through you.

Fear cannot be managed, or mitigated, or assessed. It is an overwhelming and irrational emotion. But it can pass over you and through you, and you can remain.

One more day up in the canyon. Putting in miles in salt lake city

I don’t know how El Duderino’s diagnosis and treatment will play out. I am still afraid. I am comforted by the words in, and the ideas behind the litany. I am trying to see the situation as a set of risks, rather than something to be feared. Even if my ability to manipulate those risks is minimal.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Frequency

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Last week I mentioned that we would be talking about the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon also known as the frequency illusion.

I first heard about the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon while listening to the freakonomics podcast. They had put on a three part series on the history and economics of whaling. Now they were noticing whaling mentioned seemingly everywhere.

Yes, I listened to a three part series on whaling. Yes, it was quite interesting. Yes, you should read or re-read Moby Dick. Yes, you should find more ways to work “Thar she blows” into everyday conversation.

Now that we got that out of the way.

The Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon, also known as the frequency illusion is a type of cognitive bias.

When you learn a new word, important piece of information, or focus on a new hobby, you start to notice it more often.

You may even notice yourself noticing it more often. The question naturally arises, was this (word/thing/hobby) always mentioned this much, and I never noticed it. Or, am I aware of it now because it is gaining in popularity and being mentioned more often.

The phenomenon works through mechanisms of selective attention and confirmation bias.

Our attention is a valuable and finite resource. We have built in hardware that gives us some indication of what is important, so that we can focus that limited resource. (Not to say that those mechanisms can’t be hijacked)

Novel information tends to become a focal point for our attention. Especially if that novel information resolves a significant amount of uncertainty. (See my post on uncertainty here)

As the new focal point of our attention, we are more likely to notice the knew information, than we would have otherwise been before. Our selective attention is now trained and better able to detect it.

Confirmation bias is a form of cognitive bias whereby we actively seek out information that matches our preconceived ideas.

If you think pickleball is the coolest thing since sliced bread, you will find articles, people, and various other sources of information that will confirm that.

Neither of these mechanisms, or the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon itself is particularly harmful. It is just a nice thing to be aware of.

Where it can get you into trouble, is not recognizing it for what it is, and making subsequent decisions based on perceived popularity.

Investing in a meme stock that you just heard about and are now seeing everywhere. Self diagnosing with some rare disease or syndrome you just learned about. Following a new fad diet that just popped up.

These are all examples of things we may do based on their perceived popularity that can be aided by the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon.

In researching the phenomenon, I found it’s backstory interesting and worthy of sharing.

I assumed that the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon was named after a pair of scientists or researchers who either discovered or inspired the discovery.

There is no shortage of this naming convention in the sciences. The Pythagorean theorem, Bernoulli’s principle, Newtownian physics, Chomskyian grammer.

The Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon, however, was a term coined by Terry Mullen in a letter to the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1994.

Terry describes the phenomenon of having printed news (in the days before internet and algorithms) reflect topics he was discussing with friends, regardless of their perceived social relevance. In this case, the Baader Meinhoff gang from west germany

From dictionary.com, “A group of left-wing West German terrorists, active in the 1970s, who were dedicated to the violent overthrow of capitalist society: Also known as: Red Army Faction”

Terry had been talking to his friend about the group in the early 90’s, (well past the peak of their activity or reporting on it) and was surprised when his friend directed him to a pri Ted news article about the group the next day.

He noticed the phenomenon continuing to pop up and coined the term using the terrorist group as the name.

There is debate as to whether or not this phenomenon has increased in its frequency in modern times. This could be due to the higher volume of information we consume. Same percentage of a much larger pie. Or could be artificiially increased by social media, data mining, and algorithms. A much larger piece or an also much larger pie.

Either way, I thought it was an interesting backstory, with actionable information. If you are aware of and seek out things that are happy, productive, and helpful, the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon says you should continue to see more of the same.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Formidability

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I found this study scrolling through my news feed and wanted to share and reflect on it with you.

It seems like there has been a recent push in our culture to think about gender and gender norms. Maybe that is the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon (the topic of next week’s post). Or maybe it is a genuine societal interest.

Since becoming a father to two boys, it is something I think about in the context of explaining masculinity to them. What does it mean to be a man? Is there even a good working definition.

The study by Mitch Brown and Ryan Tracy was titled “Preliminary evidence for neck musculature in shaping functional stereotypes of men’s relationship motives” the article covering the study was titled “Men’s neck musculature informs perceptions of parental abilities and interest in long-term relationships”

The researchers sought to find out how men with muscular necks are perceived as compared to their less muscular counterparts.

Matt brown said, “I became interested in this particular topic in two ways. First, I had a growing interest in the signal value of men’s formidability and how it shapes perceptions of their social value. With a growing understanding of parental motivational systems, I thought it would be pertinent to understand the possible tradeoffs associated with formidability that we see in other domains, particularly related to the protection of offspring at the expense of nurturance,”

He also said, “For neck musculature, I became interested in the topic both after seeing data from Neil Caton about the evolutionary value of neck musculature and some of my own me-search. I’m a former wrestler who has tried to have a beefy neck my whole life!”

As a nerd who reads and blogs about scientific papers, a fellow grappler with a beefy neck, and a father who is looking to teach his sons about perceptions of masculinity, this study checks all the boxes.

The researchers presented a series of images to a group of college students from a university in the south eastern United States.

The images were all of the same man, but, were digitally altered to vary the size of the trapezius muscles. This minimized variables, which may otherwise confound the participants perceptions.

Participants were asked to rate their perceptions of the men (varying i.ages of the same man) on fighting ability, interest in long-term vs. short-term mating, and effectiveness at protecting and nurturing offspring.

Men, or the computer enhanced version of this particular man, were perceived as better protectors and more interested in short-term term mating the larger and more muscular their neck was.

The counterparts with the smaller trapezii (I don’t know why, but I really like that word) were perceived as more nurturing and long-term mating partners.

Brown again, “Men’s neck musculature is informative in shaping perceptions of men in terms of their relationship preferences, Namely, large trapezius muscles connote greater interest to perceivers in promiscuous mating strategies and a disinterest in the conventions of biparental investment (e.g., monogamy, offspring nurturance).”

The study seems to have been well carried out. There are no glaring flaws in the methodology, the data analysis, or the conclusions.

This was a study focused on perception. I like to think that with a few exceptions, perception is reality. But, like the top button of my work shirt clamped around my beefy wrestler neck, those perceptions chafe a little.

The size of the trapezius muscle was used as a metric for formidability. The researchers’ previous work showed an inverse relationship between perceptions of protection versus nurturing offspring with changes in perceived formidability.

It has been a stereotypical and archetypal role for males to be protectors. There are obvious exceptions to that rule, but biological sex differences make that an easy principle to understand.

I would argue that nurturing falls under that role. Without nurturing, your children will never be able to protect themselves. Isn’t that the ultimate form of protection we want to provide? To teach them to do the job and pass it on to their kids after we are gone.

These are obviously stereotypes and perceptions. The best way to change them, is to confront them head on. To be the nurturing dad with the beefy neck.

Collecting jerseys on this round of zwift

I wrote a piece a while back that I think talked about formidability in a round about way. “In order to be peaceful you must be capable of violence. If you are incapable of violence, you aren’t peaceful, you are harmless”

I think for both mental and physical well-being, being peaceful is essential. That would mean being capable of violence is essential. Wrestling and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu are my outlets for violence.

The word has such a negative connotation, but thought of in the context of formidability, protection of offspring, and a necessity for peace reframes it nicely, I think.

I don’t want to be in a cultural discussion about gender norms. Rather, I want to be an example. For my boys, for their friends, for the other parents in our social circle.

Musculature (around the trapezii or otherwise) and being a good father are not mutually exclusive. Perceptions may be reality, but they can be changed, one sweaty, beefy, good natured parenting neck at a time.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Science

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week, I want to talk about science.

What is science? Why is it important? How do we verify or approve the results? Is all science good science? These are important questions. Questions, which may not have definitive answers. Just like good science, the answers and insights are not fixed, but rather, continuously evolving.

I take in a lot of salt. That might go against some of the established medical advice regarding blood pressure and heart health, but I do so deliberately and with “scientific” justification.

So when I read the following study, I wanted to share it and explain my thoughts and interpretations. You know, for science.

The title of the paper reads, “Middle-age high normal serum sodium as a risk factor for accelerated biological aging, chronic diseases, and premature mortality.”

The study took blood draws of participants in middle age in years one and three. The blood draw was taken after 8-12 hours of fasting. The blood draw was measured for average serum sodium levels.

The thought process behind this methodology is that average serum sodium levels taken two years apart would provide a baseline for hydration.

Your hydration is regulated to a very tight range by two primary mechanisms in the body, thirst and antidiuretic hormone (ADH).

When you lose water through sweat or fail to take in enough water, the concentration of sodium (among other things) increases in your blood. This triggers the release of ADH which results in less volume and more concentrated urine.

This has led to the guidelines from health organizations to check the color of your urine to gauge your hydration status.

The study followed up with participants after 25 years to assess all cause mortality, biological aging, and chronic disease. The participants were broken down into three categories based on their average serum sodium levels, (a proxy for hydration) optimal, high and low.

So far the authors of the study have a solid hypothesis, (based on previous findings done initially in mice) a good methodology, and an easily identifiable and measurable variable to track.

However, the results (raw data) and the interpretation of those results, start to go a little off the rails.

“Lowest mortality rate was among people with 137–142 mmol/l serum sodium (26.2%, n = 8604), with increased mortality in 135–136.5 mmol/l (39.3%, n = 122) and 144.5–146 mmol/l (34.5%, n = 397) groups.”

“Kaplan–Meier survival analysis gave similar results showing increased mortality rates among people with serum sodium less than 137 mmol/l and greater than 142 mmol/l (Fig. 1e). In Cox proportional hazard time-to-event analysis adjusted for age, sex, race and smoking, serum sodium 135–136.5 mmol/l was associated with 71% increased risk of all-cause mortality, and 144.5–146 mmol/l increased risk of premature mortality by 21% in comparison to the 137–142 mmol/l group (Fig. 1f).”

“Interpretation:
People whose middle-age serum sodium exceeds 142 mmol/l have increased risk to be biologically older, develop chronic diseases and die at younger age. Intervention studies are needed to confirm the link between hydration and aging.”

Lets start out by saying that everything they said in their interpretation is factually correct according to their data.

However, the data suggest a higher risk of all cause mortality, in the low sodium when compared to the high sodium group. (39.3% vs. 34.5% and 71% vs. 21% respectively)

71% vs 21% is a huge difference in your likelihood of all cause mortality. Their own data indicate that the low serum sodium group was at significantly higher risk than the high serum sodium group when compared to the optimal range.

Over hydration, or lack of the required sodium intake, seems to be significantly more hazardous than under hydrating or over consumption of salt. Obviously the optimal range is optimal, go figure. The study results focus on the high sodium side, which was more hazardous than the optiMAl range but an order of magnitude less deadly than its lowernsodium counterpart.

I am a heavy sweater, as you may have guessed from the blog title, my closing remarks, and most of the topics covered. I also know that my sweat is very electrolyte heavy. This can be measured in a lab, or anecdotally, by seeing salt crystals on your workout gear after your sweat dries.

Appropriate hydration and electrolyte replacement are essential to everything I do from triathlon and jiu jitsu, to flying and parenting. You aren’t going to get very far physically or mentally if you are dehydrated or your electrolyte balance is off.

Like we mentioned earlier, this study started off with a good hypothesis, methodology, and the right variables. The data set was robust, and the study should be repeatable. These are all hallmarks of “good science”

I would classify the interpretation as somewhat missing the point. Mayne the the reporting omitted the more important or the more significant finding, maybe it was biased toward a specific outcome.

I don’t know the authors. I dont know the editors. I dont know their advisors or bosses. I don’t know their funding, their political leanings, or their personal inclinations. Frankly, none of that matters. Science is not partisan. It is cold, unemotional, and calculating.

While I believe you should “trust the science” (as we have heard so often these past few years) I also believe, in the wise words of President Roosevelt, you should trust but verify.

In this case the science was good, the interpretations less so. Knowledge is power, and sometimes that power needs to be mined with cognitive effort, ingenuity, and a little sweat. (As long as you replenish fluids and sodium 😉

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Uncertainty

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week, I want to revisit one of the main language characters we visited a few months back, Claude Shannon.

It’s somewhat odd calling Shannon a language character. I was first introduced to his world reading about lifespan and longevity. His work was used as an analogy to demonstrate a point, even though he did do some work in genetics.

Shannon was a mathematician, an engineer, a teacher, and a tinkerer. He is considered the founder of the modern technology age. He did work in World War II on code breaking, and on communication, but he was not a language person in the way we typically think about language.

Shannon was more concerned with the idea of transmitting and receiving messages, more so than actually constructing them. (As language folks tend to obsess over).

Shannon’s breakthrough work was the mathematical theory of communication, which broke down sending information digitally. I’m not a mathematician. Most of the original work (which I purchased) is gibberish to me. But, I can understand the concept, and it is profound in its breakdown of communication to an elemental level.

I talked about one of the aspects of his world in a post from last November (Noise). But this week I wanted to talk about uncertainty.

Shannon starts with the idea of flipping a coin. The outcome is either head or tails. This communicates to us a binary choice. The answer to the question, what happened in the coin flip, can be be expressed as a binary digit or ‘bit, one of two options.(yes the bit you are familiar with if you’ve used any computer technology in the last 40 years is Shannon’s idea from the 60’s)

Shannon quickly noted though, that the coin flip is perfectly random, unless the coin is weighted. In which case one outcome is more likely than another.

He then went on to show (all of this mathematically of course) that most of our communication is very heavily weighted. Because of our rules of grammer, syntax, phonology, and morphology, the next letter and the next word is highly dependent on the one that precedes it.

This was a highly useful realization and skill when Shannon was working in cryptography as a code breaker, but I think it means a lot to us as everyday communicators.

“for the vast bulk of messages, in fact, symbols do not behave like fair coins. The symbol that is sent now depends, in important and predictable ways, on the symbol that was just sent: one symbol has pull in the next.”

“As Shannon showed, this model also describes the behavior of messages and languages. Whenever we communicate, rules everywhere restrict our freedom to choose the next letter and the next pineapple*” “Because you’re completely aware of those rules, you’ve already recognized that ‘pineapple’ is a transmission error. Given the way the paragraph and the sentence were developing, practically the only word possible in that location was ‘word’ “

So much of what we say is predetermined, by custom, by ritual, by routine. When it is time to actually say something outside the norm, it is easy to falter. To struggle to find the right words.

As I mentioned earlier, Shannon was an engineer. He was concerned with designing a system to effectively and efficiently transmit messages. In pursuit of solving that problem, he taught us a valuable lesson about constructing messages.

“what does information really measure? It measures the uncertainty we overcome. It measures our chances of learning something we haven’t yet learned. Or, more specifically, the amount of information something carries reflects the reduction in uncertainty about the object”

“Why doesn’t anyone say XFOML RXKHRJDFJUJ? Investigating that question made clear that our “freedom of speech” is mostly an illusion: it comes from an impoverished understanding of freedom. Freer communicators than us, free of course in the sense of uncertainty and information, would say XFOML RXKHRJDFJUJ. But in reality, the vast bulk of possible messages have already been eliminated for us before we use a sentence or write a line.”

If information reflects the reduction in uncertainty, that should be one of, if not the primary focus of our communications. Especially those novel ones that break from ritual and routine.

Think about 20 different people practicing basketball individually on a court. There are bound to be some collisions, some balls bouncing off each other at the rim, and maybe even some injuries. An aviation training area can be very similar. Multiple individuals, in a confined area, with different agendas.

In aviation, we make position reports both procedurally in certain airspace, and in high volume uncontrolled areas. Those reports need to resolve a lot of uncertainty in order to avoid disaster. A good formula is who you are, where you are, and what your intentions are.

If you know John is working on 3 pointers from the corner, and Phil is practicing layups, you can now decide how and where you want to practice, without disturbing, or being disturbed by, the fellow ballers. A tremendous amount of uncertainty has been resolved. That is valuable information. Much more concrete and actionable than, John and Phil are playing baskstball.

Last few runs before returning to the Florida heat

This, of course, is a task much easier said than done. To make all, or even most, of our messages precise enough to overcome the maximum amount of uncertainty, requires a novel concept. Thinking before we speak.

What information do I have? What information does the receiver of the message need. What do they expect to hear? What uncertainty needs to be overcome?

There is no shortage of uncertainty in our world. Overcoming even a small amount of it will lead to happier humans. And I’m sure there is serenity to be found along the way.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.