Auxiliary Memory

Making Sense of a Zillion Pieces of Advice

By James Wallace Harris, Friday, October 17, 2014

Have you ever notice how much advice the Internet offers? The web probably has more advice articles than the complete history of women’s magazines. From how to organize your life, to the most healthy foods to eat, to the best cities to live in, the quickest meals to fix, to how to fight memory loss, or meet the love of your life, or which smartphones to buy, and so on, and so on. Some of the advice is based on scientific studies, but most of it is from personal experience, and probably a good deal is just some blogger making shit up.

What if we could consolidate all that advice into meta-lists so we could discover what the most common tips reveal? If one dietician says eating broccoli is great for your health, would you start eating it three times a week? What if 2,000 different scientific studies proclaimed the virtues of broccoli? What if they said broccoli increases your sexual stamina, reduces cavities, clears your skin and conquers constipation? At what point are we willing to take notice and act on advice? We’re all failures at keeping New Year’s resolutions, so is all this advice wasted on the undisciplined? Or are we all slowly evolving and improving from all these studies? It’s taken about fifty years for most people to stop smoking. And even with a Mt. Everest pile of evidence, many people still light up. When and how does advice become overwhelmingly convincing?

Memory Loss

The 800-pound gorilla squatting in my generation’s living room is memory loss. I don’t know how scary dementia is to people under 55, but for us folks over 55, it’s scarier than a serial killer with an idling chain saw. “Memory Loss From Alzheimer’s Disease Reversed For the First Time With Lifestyle Changes” is one article that grabbed my attention. It’s based on this press report from the Buck Institute on a very small trial of ten patients. Nine patients with varying degrees of dementia improved after 3-6 months following a specific 36-point lifestyle guideline. The tenth person with late stage Alzheimer’s didn’t improve. The full report in PDF was published in AGING, September 2014, Vol. 6 No. 9. Scroll down to Table 1. Therapeutic System 1.0. The entire system is not easy to describe, but here’s a summary. How many of these pieces of advice are you willing to follow to save your mind?

Give up all simple carbohydrates and gluten
Give up processed food
Eat more vegetables and fruits
Eat wild-caught fish
Meditate twice a day
Do yoga
Sleep at least 7-8 hours a night
Take CoQ-10, fish oil, melatonin, methylcobaliamin and vitamin D3 supplements?
Use electric toothbrush and flossing tool
Take hormone replacement therapies
Fast at last 12 hours between dinner and breakfast
Don’t eat 3 hours before bedtime
Exercise 30 minutes a day, 6 days a week

How many articles have you read in your life that recommended some of these lifestyle changes? Over the years I’ve seen some of these recommendations hundreds of times. Why didn’t I start following them in my twenties, thirties or forties? Why did I wait until my sixties to get down to business? Even though this report in AGING came out in September, 2014, its advice is quite common. Just read these other articles.

Alzheimer’s and Dementia Prevention – helpguide.org
Prevention and Risk of Alzheimer’s and Dementia – alz.org
How to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and dementia – Medical News Today
Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease: What Do We Know? – nih.gov
Brain Exercises and Dementia – WebMD
Prevention of dementia – Wikipedia

This is just a half dozen articles out of whole libraries devoted to the subject. Yet, if you take the time to read them, you’ll see consistent pieces of advice show up time and again, and even interesting contrasting advice. Such as sleep at least 7-8 hours, but it’s bad to sleep more than 9 hours.

It’s key in evaluating articles on the Internet to understand where the knowledge comes from. First check if it’s based on a scientific study, and see if you can track down the original study. Popular articles summarize scientific studies, and sometimes they slant their summaries. See if there are other articles from other sites that take a different slant. Great essays will cover multiple studies, and even explain conflicting studies.

Most articles aren’t based on scientific studies. In those cases you have to evaluate the expertise of the person giving the advice. If you’re reading dating advice, what experience does the romance guru have? Is it just personal, or do they have a relevant degree, or work for Match.com? Plain old personal advice can be valuable, especially if that person’s insights are savvy and practical, and they fit your own observations and experience.

My point here is not to write specifically about memory loss prevention, but to show that there’s a tremendous amount of knowledge, and maybe even wisdom to found on any subject. How do we evaluate the wealth of information? Most people find it confusing that on so many topics there’s lots of contradictory advice. So, how do we decide which recommendations are valid? Wisdom doesn’t come easy.

That’s what I’m wishing for here, a web site that collects and contrasts all the studies and averages them out for every issue we want to consider. I want a Meta-Advice site, a one-stop-shop for evaluating advice, organized like Wikipedia, that has an army of specialists hammering out summaries and comparisons of all the research for any specific subject people want advice on. Google is great, but if you use Wikipedia a lot, you’ll understand why it’s structural approach is better for organizing advice information.

Imagine going to this Meta-Advice site and looking up memory loss and CoQ-10. Let’s say it evaluates 57 different research studies. The summary might not be conclusive – science rarely is – but it would give us the best current answer, even if it’s only a statistic like in 63% of cases using 23,204 subjects, memory retention was improved when CoQ-10 was used in trials varying between 6 months and three years. I’m making up these numbers, but you should get what I mean.

When research scientists or PhD candidates want to explore new territory they do a literature review of all the previous studies. They need to find the boundaries of what’s known and not known. This Meta-Advice site should do the same thing, and make it understandable to the layman where the boundary of knowledge is, and what they can learn from it.

It is possible for an individual to go to Google Scholar and do a search on “Alzheimer’s and Dementia Prevention.” But the results are overwhelming. Only the truly dedicated will wade through the massive number of articles available. That’s why a site like Wikipedia, where knowledgeable editors can predigest the information for the average reader would be a huge help. The Internet is coming up with all kinds of new ways of doing things. We have no idea what cognitive tools will be invented soon. If you think of the effective nature of what Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, IMDB, Flickr, etc., they all make managing information easier. I believe advice management is in need of an Internet makeover.

JWH

The Job of Blogging

By James Wallace Harris, Thursday, October 16, 2014

Blogging is an interesting hobby, but strange in some ways. Most blogs are like diaries, yet before the Internet most folks would be horrified to have their diaries read before they died. Blogging is a bit like writing papers for school, and most students absolutely hated writing research papers and book reports. Blogging has an element of journalism, so maybe its popularity reflects a strong desire for bloggers to be reporters. However, there’s tens of millions of blogs, most going unread, as are most daily newspapers. If I really wanted to be read I should try and write stuff for popular web sites, that’s where the readers are going. Writing for professional sites should be my ambition, but its easier to just to be my own editor.

In some ways blogging is confessional, and that doesn’t require readers. Writing is therapeutic. But I don’t think I’d take all this time to write if I didn’t think I had readers. The urge to write encompasses the urge to inform and entertain. I’m not sure how entertaining and informative I am, but I keep trying. Before I changed my domain name, I was getting 200-400 hits a day, with occasional spikes. My best day ever was 4,521. Evidently switching names has screwed up things with Google, because now I only get 100-150 hits a day. Most of those lost hits were for product review pages. And that tells me something – web surfers mostly want information from the Internet. And that’s reasonable. Most of the pages I still get hits on deal with science fiction. When I write about me I get no hits.

The common advice to bloggers from successful bloggers is to publish regularly. At least once a week. That means writing 52 read-worthy essays a year. Most popular bloggers publish several times a week, but often, they are the subject of their writing. My life is not as entertaining as The Bloggess. Even if I was more fascinating, I doubt I could handle the stress of making myself more interesting. Besides I love writing about interesting things that aren’t me. For instance, last night on PBS I started watching a new series, How We Got to Now. The first episode was called “Clean” and it was about how America started cleaning up its act. It featured a fascinating segment about how Chicago first built sewers. They actually raised up the buildings to make space. Now that grabbed my attention!

[Click to enlarge]

If I could, I’d want to write nonfiction books on science and history, but I’m not that disciplined and dedicated. Thus, blogging for me is a way to write tiny reports about the books I read, the documentaries I see, and the web pages I discover, that are worthy of wider attention. People do the exact same thing on Facebook and Twitter. Blogging is just more verbose. Blogging gives me more time to make my case.

Few writers write original content. They report on people, places and events. Most journalism is a kind of history. Reviewers report on other content creators. For example, the raising of Chicago’s buildings is something I could research and write about, but why should I compete with what Wikipedia has published, or PBS? Blogging is more liked linked lists in computer programming. If you read other web sites about the topic, for instance Gizmodo, you’ll see no one writes much on the Internet about any particular subject, and they often share the same facts, links and images. The image above is at every site I visited. If you follow the links, you will get more information, but not much. Following several links give a bigger picture. If you want true in-depth reporting, you have to read books.

A great blogger will consolidate a greater amount of information, closer to magazine pieces in size. Open Culture and Brain Pickings are my favorite examples. Open Culture just provided me with a wonderful piece about Alice Guy-Blaché, a women director also mentioned in last week’s Makers on PBS that I wanted to research. I wonder if Jonathan Crow was inspired to write his piece because of Makers? Or was it an interesting coincidence.

As a bookworm and documentary junky, I’m constantly finding new facts that startle me. For example, the other night I watched The Galapagos Affair, about a tiny historical incidence from the 1930s, involving a German couple moving to an uninhabited island in the Galapagos. Their letters home made them world famous as a modern day Adam and Eve. Eventually five more people join them, and two were murdered, leaving an interesting mystery. I found this bizarre history riveting, and highly recommend the documentary that’s available on Netflix Streaming.

If I was a better journalist, say up to Maria Popova’s standards, I’d go research to see if more people in history have tried to play Adam and Eve. If Dore Strauch and Friedrich Ritter got the idea, so must have others. As a kid I was always fascinated with Swiss Family Robinson type stories. As a blogger, that should be my job, to track down more information. But to be honest, that requires a lot of work, and I don’t know if I’m up to it. I’m now working in a space beyond Twitter and Facebook, but not yet a full article.

That’s what this essay is about. Even though I’m not being paid, I feel blogging is a kind of job, and comes with responsibilities. While I have been nattering about blogging, I hope I’ve provided some useful information, and maybe turned you onto some interesting reading. Is that enough though? How much information do I have to provide to make it worth your time to read what I write?

JWH

Classifying Science Fictional Ideas

By James Wallace Harris, Saturday, October 11, 2014

We like to think that science fiction has no limits. We love to believe that science fiction writers can imagine anything. But is that true? Reading your first few hundred science fiction stories, it does feel like the genre has unlimited avenues of exploration. However, after a lifetime of reading, over a thousand science fiction novels, and countless science fiction short stories, I’ve started feeling the genre is limited, and limited patterns are emerging. Even if there’s the potential for an infinite number of science fiction stories, there’s always the limitation of demarcation. We can divide things into what is science fiction, and what is not science fiction.

What if we classified science fictional ideas like biological classification where science fiction would be compared to how we classify life. What would be the domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species of science fictional ideas? How would we organize novels into a hierarchy? Has science fictional ideas evolved out of each other to present an evolutionary taxonomy? Or are there other structures that we can all agree on? I’m just opening this idea up for discussion and will present a test classification for consideration. I’d like to see other classification systems suggested, and amendments to mine. So post links and suggestions in the comments section. For instance, Wikipedia offers two classifications: lists and themes. Other ideas can be found in their outline of science fiction.

Here’s my first test classification. [Click to enlarge.]

I wanted to create the smallest number of domains possible, and I was hoping to find a single highly descriptive word for each. I flubbed on “Created Beings.” I’m not really fond of “Humanity” either. My system mainly thinks of science fiction as stories about the future – future Earth, future humans, meeting aliens, creating new life forms, and traveling through the universe. Most of the main themes of science fiction would be equal to biological kingdoms – robots, alien invasions, interplanetary travel, post-humans, etc.

Making the classification of science fiction be a perfect analogy to the biological classification of life would be a kluge, but it would be neat if we could map specific novels to be the equivalent of a species. If we could come up with a successful classification system it should be possible to select any science fiction novel or short story and put it into the structure – assuming we could classify SF stories as being about one topic.

Science fiction novels are usually about many ideas. For example. The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov. It could be classified under robots or galactic empires. However, it’s mostly about robots. Then again, some people might claim it’s mostly about agoraphobia and space colonies. And where would we put such a bizarre novel as Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein? Under my system I’d file it under Humanity, Mind and Philosophy, although Religion might work too.

If you wrote a novel about how intelligent robots create an Earthly utopia, would it be classified under Earth or Created Beings? There are animals that give biologists trouble when classifying, so we should expect problem novels too. On the other hand, we could think of a different way of looking at classification. Think of classifying books for library card catalog systems. These systems allow for multiple subject entries, but even in libraries, books are shelved under single subject groups. And I tend to think most writers ultimately think of their books as having a major theme.

Classifying science fictional ideas is an idle amusement, yet it’s a revealing way to think about science fiction. A way to give a big picture overview of the genre. Like having the mental ability to instantly distinguish between cats and dogs, such a classification system would define science fiction. For example, I would never file traditional vampire and werewolves stories into my classification of science fiction. Even though many people casually dump stories of the undead into the genre because they think science fiction is a dumping ground for anything weird, I believe we need to think of the genre in more precise terms.

We can also think of classifying fiction in general, so that fiction is the highest level, and the genres – literary, mystery, western, science fiction, romance, etc. – are the domains. This would make Science Fiction one branch off of Fiction. But if genre is Kingdom, do we need five layers of classification between it and the specific work which would be the Species? Is Fiction, Genre, Theme, Work enough? That makes me think of using Fiction, Genre, Theme, Time, Setting, Topic, Work. That way The Naked Sun would be classified as Fiction, Science Fiction, Robots, Future, Colony World, Conflicting Cultures, The Naked Sun.

Many themes from classifying general fiction can be applied to any of the specific themes of science fiction. Thus you could add romance or war to almost any of my SF categories.

As you can see, this could lead to all kinds of possibilities. A classification system really helped understand the organization of biological life. Would such a classification system help in the understanding of fiction?

[I use Xmind to create the mind map above. You can get this free program that runs under Windows, OS X and Linux if you want to create your own classification system.]

JWH

Are We Becoming Cyborgs?

By James Wallace Harris, Thursday, October 9, 2014

Because of a pinched nerve I’m having difficulty typing. Because I want to write, I’m seeking alternatives to a keyboard and computer screen. This failure to type is revealing something about my current state of being. My mind and body have adapted to the computer. When I can’t use the computer, or the Internet is down, I’m anxious, and feel physical withdrawal. I hate this feeling. Even though my arm hurts more as I type, I keep typing. Sort of crazy, isn’t it?

I’ve tried dictating, and I’ve tried hand writing, and I’ve discovered I’m lousy at both. When I was young I could write longhand for hours. Now I can barely scratch out a few minutes of a childish looking print. Fifty years of typewriters and word processors have ruined me for that ancient tool – the pen.

The net is full of stories about the death of penmanship. I used to think, “So what, we’ve got computers.” Now I regret those thoughtless words. My left arm burns, throbs and stings as I type, and I feel like banging on it like Dr. Strangelove.

I’ve become a cyborg. The transformation has snuck up me. If you think you’re still 100% human, try going without your smartphone for a week.

I realize now I shouldn’t have let myself become so adapted to one way of writing. My body has integrated with cyberspace, and now I feel handicapped when when I can jack in. Yet, I know fully well that writers were immensely productive before the 20th century with just pen and paper. Helen Keller wrote inspiringly without seeing or hearing.

Even if I can get my doctors to fix my neck and arm, I think I need to relearn handwriting and pick up the skill of dictation. I’ve read about a number of authors who write by talking and they claim its immensely productive. My ability to speak is better than my handwriting, but not by much. Both are so linear. My thinking depends on word processing features, spelling checkers, and referencing Wikipedia and Google. I now need the Internet to complete my sentences.

Because I’ve thoroughly aggravated my arm, I need to go rest it a couple hours.

JWH

Sitting is the New Smoking

By James Wallace Harris, Tuesday, October 7, 2014

The new catch phrase I’m hearing is “Sitting is the New Smoking.” This statement conveys so much. It triggers memories about my dad, who died when I was 18, and he was 49. He was a smoker, and survived two heart attacks and a stroke before he died on his third heart attack. I always wondered how long he would have lived if he had never smoked. It’s a shame he didn’t learn that smoking was bad when he was growing up, but that knowledge just wasn’t common back then. What future common knowledge are we missing out on now? Is sitting really the new smoking?

I have to wonder if my life would have been different if I had known sitting was so bad. I’ve had back problems for years, and at the moment I’m having neck problems, with a pinched nerve. Writing this essay is causing increasing pain in my arm. And the pain is more than physical. I am reminded of a classic episode of The Twilight Zone about a bookworm named Henry Beamis. All he wanted to do was read put people wouldn’t let him. Finally he’s the last man on Earth and has all the time in the world to read, and he breaks his glasses. I retired thinking I’d have all the time in the world to write and read, and at this moment I can’t do either without aggravating my pains. I’ve become Henry Beamis.

Pack Matthews gives me hope though in his TED Talk, “Sitting is the New Smoking but you’ve got Options.”

Matthews says pains are like canaries in a coal mine, warning us that we need to do something different immediately. But he also promises that we’re never too old to improve. Our body’s ability to readapt is impressive. This video is well worth watching. Even if you’re not suffering, knowing that sitting is the new smoking when you’re young and healthy is very important too.

When I was a kid I was very active, but as the decades progressed I’ve become more and more sedentary. Even when I was a programmer and sat at my chair all day long I got up a lot, helping people out all over a four story building, and often in other buildings. Now that I’m retired I spend almost all my time sitting, and its caught up to me. I’ve got to develop routines of more activity. In the video above, Matthews shows people a simple test to measure potential longevity as it relates to physical mobility. Currently, I’d score very low. But he promises that it’s possible to increase my score.

Watch the video and try the test yourself. You might be surprised.

Just how bad is the sedentary lifestyle? Is it truly equal to the life-shortening effects of cigarettes consumption? The studies aren’t saying skipping exercise is bad for you, but the actual act of prolonged sitting is bad, and even causes cancer. The trouble is we all do a lot of sitting. Most of us work at a desk all day long at work or school, then we come home and watch TV for hours, or sit at the computer or play video games. Even the educational pastime of reading which is good for your mind is bad for your body.

Just read some of the many articles on Google about this topic.

The conundrum we face is how to integrate more activity into our ass-in-the-chair lives. I’ve been laid up where the only comfortable position I can find is reclined in a La-Z-Boy has made me think of alternatives for not being able to sit at my desk. One thing I’ve considered is dictating my writing and converting it with Dragon Dictate to Word files. That same solution would work with walking and standing. However, my spinal stenosis and degenerative disc problems limit my walking, but I am trying to walk more.

Matthews wasn’t the only TED Talker to attack sitting. Nilofer Merchant presented “Got a meeting? Take a walk.”

Of course, my problem is writing at the computer. How can I take a walk and write? Well, people have come up with a solution, the treadmill desk. I’ve seen stories about them on TV, and there’s lots about them on the Internet. Here Jordan Keyes talks about this treadmill desk after using it for almost two years.

The above video didn’t say much about the health value of using a treadmill desk to me until I saw this older video, when we see Keyes in a much larger body. Of course, he’s doing more than walking and typing to lose weight, but the two videos do effectively show how his efforts have made a change in his life.

But not everyone likes treadmill desks. I’m not quite ready to spend $1200-1500 yet, but I’m thinking hard about this. If anyone reading this blog uses a treadmill desk, please leave a comment below.

There are many things to consider in such a setup. Unless you’re always working at the treadmill desk you’ll have to have a sit down desk also, meaning two computer setups, or using a laptop you move around a lot. Many people are using standing desks that can adjust to sitting and standing. These come in a huge variety. And it’s possible to get just a flat treadmill to move under such an adjustable desk.

But if we stand around all the time, won’t standing become the new sitting? I would imagine the key is to keep moving in lots of positions. It’s really not practical to avoid sitting all day long. I often see advice suggesting we get up and move around more, maybe once an hour. I was recently told to think of my posture every time I go through a doorway, and was even given some exercises to try using with the doorway. My chiropractor told me my ears should be above my shoulder, and that I had bad posture. This fit right in with this graphic about ergonomics at the computer workstation.

Note how they want ears, shoulders and hip to line up. I’ve developed sort of an old man slump, with my head tilted forward like a turtle’s head coming out of its shell.

I’ve always learned a lot physical therapy. I think what I need to do, or even what we all need to do, if spend a few moments each hour doing yoga and physical therapy stretches. I’ve already begun to ride my exercise bike more while watching television, but dang, even that involves sitting.

Sitting might be the new smoking, but giving up sitting is going to be impossible, at least for me, so the most I can hope for is keeping my ass out of the chair as much as possible.

JWH