Winter/spring/summer/fall celebrations are human in origin. Certainly some of the specific tropes of current Holidays are copied or held over from previous practices, that's obvious but not sinister. For Christmas, those happen to be passed on from the previous religion in the location in which Winter celebrations were more important due to the long nights. Specifically Northern Europe, which just happened to be where Christianity spread at the right historical time. But they were most likely held over by those converted Christians because they are nice rituals to have. They became so famous world wide, not because they were significant in any way, but because they were serendipitously carried to the Americas, and then US culture became world dominant for so long. Unless someone really thinks that people were willing to give up their ancestral religion, one which served their social needs perfectly, simply because this new upstart religion let them have a tree decorated on the Solstice. I can just see a cabal of Priests rubbing their hands and chortling, "Then, we'll let them hang up mistletoe and they will forget all about Baldur and become Christians!!!" That's contrary to human nature. They converted first, then carried the old familiar rituals with them. And I know that some were "forced conversions" (as reprehensible and stupid as that seems), but that makes the holding over even more obvious. Every Christmas for the last 40 years someone trots out this "Origins of Christmas" story as if it were repressed knowledge that was finally made known through the work of heroic Pagan holdouts, but my childhood Norwegian Lutheran church celebrated these origins and even though many are uncaring about the source, they don't deny it. Even I just deny the sinister mind-control conspiracy implications offered with them. If these celebrations were not already part of the extant culture of those new Christians, similar celebrations would have been invented spontaneously, because Winter Celebrations have pretty obvious markers. I mean, come on, burning a special log on the darkest, longest night of the year when every one in the village gathers together? Who wouldn't have thought of that? What I never hear mentioned is that those Pagan rituals were probably carried over from the previous local religions. Just as Christmas memes will be (have been) carried over into some of the new religious and secular Winter celebrations. The Japanese have integrated Santa Claus into their Shinto/Buddhist Winter celebration and even Festivus carries clear ancestors of a non-pagan, Americanized Christmas.

What's my line?

I've been struggling with what direction I want my journey into low carb advocacy to take. There are many people who cover a wide variety of subjects: Recipes, exercise, paleo-theories, biochemistry, even an excellent blog on evolutionary psychology. Several people cover these things and more from various angles and with differing styles. There are even a few folks who simply cover those folks and have done a large service to the community by doing so.

But I believe that our lives are not accidents and that the unique things we have each experienced and learned were given to us for a purpose and that purpose is, in part, to benefit our personal community. So rather than copy or tag along with someone else's style I spent some time learning what my own purpose is. I think, after about ten years of continuing success on different styles of LC diets, I have some general idea of the direction I should go. Now it's time to really give back to the community that has helped me so much.

And that's the point I want to make with this post. I'm not going to publish a best selling book. I'm not going to be a "Personal Trainer" and charge a lot of money. I'm going to do what I can to help the LC community and freely share the one thing which is fairly unique in my experience, about which I know the most and which has probably been both my biggest problem and the single thing which has helped me make it through this far.

I'm going to discuss the nature of addiction.

Sore legs

This morning's walk, while quite nice, went a little slow. My legs were stiff when I woke up (probably from last night's 3 miles) and I am getting a little bit of lower back pain. Good news is that my phone worked and held its charge, which means that yesterday was an anomaly.

When Food Kills - NYTimes.com

While this article talks about the unnecessary and rampant antibiotic use on beef, an issue which I fully agree with, most significant point, to me, is the fact that the incident of E.Coli contamination it presents is one caused by organic veggies (Sprouts). Meat is not the problem, grass fed full fat beef is the solution.
When Food Kills - NYTimes.com

Stupid phone!

Second walk in my training to do 200 miles, and my phone crapped out about halfway through. As soon as it recharges I will see if any of the information was retained, but I doubt it. I have a couple of things I want to make into a serious post or two, but for now I'm just going to shower and cool off. Three miles in an hour or so, not bad considering I haven't been doing walks in over a year.

What's the plan?

Well, what I'm working towards is to be able to knock off a ten mile walk in three hours or less. If I can do that four times a day for five days in a row while fasting the whole time, I will have proven something, at least to myself. With that in mind, here is todays walk, my first formal exercise walk in about a year.

An average speed of 3.6 mph, which makes more than 10 miles in three hours. I think this is doable.

Blogger on android

This is a test

OK, there's an App for my android phone that allows me to maintain my blog, so I'm happy. I don't think it will ever be a serious method of posting, but just in case I wanted it to work.