TRX suspension training: a 2 pound contraption made of low tech straps. It can replace an entire gym. The resistance is provided by the body weight of the trainee, and can be easily adjusted by simply changing the angle the person pulls at.
(hover your mouse over pictures to read explanations)
TRX almost always uses the important but rarely trained core muscles, the lower back, stomach and oblique muscles. Unlike weight machines, TRX exercises (like push-ups with hand in the straps) also train the small muscles that stabilize joints.
TRX became first popular in the US armed forces. It is hard to carry a fully equipped gym to war in Iraq. A few straps are not only easier to carry around but also a lot cheaper.
Human-Stupidity Analysis
Exercise straps? Is Human-Stupidity changing this blog’s topic? No.
Human-Stupidity is about fixed ideas, dogmas, mental restrictions, and about overcoming such limitations.
We are intrigued that TRX was not invented 2000 years ago. There is no high technology in TRX. But we have been restricted by fixed ideas like
weights are needed. Even in gym machines that use ropes and pulleys
elastic tapes are needed. This requires us to have various straps of differing strength, that also can snap and injure the trainee.
To be fair, Wikipedia quotes a few predecessors of TRX Suspension Training, but seemingly they were never successful enough to become famous.
You have to watch a few pictures, a few movies, and then try yourself to understand the genius simplicity of TRX.
You can even carry TRX on a business trip and mount it on hour hotel room door. You can carry it to the park and strap it to a tree. No more excuses for not exercising.
TRX & FUNCTIONAL TRAINING: 50 exercises by Coach Miletto
The more enlightened Christian readers have themselves now recognized that their Church’s preoccupation with sex has been a mistake: Dr George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, has admitted that the church has been guilty of ‘being caught up with the idea that sexual sins were “more significant” then other sins’ and has said that instead we should think more in terms of global problems such as world poverty. […] ethics has no necessary connection with the sexually-obsessed morality of conservative Christianity Peter Singer “How Are We to Live?”
World poverty, corporative greed, dishonesty of politics, culture of violence, school yard bullying. So many real problems require ethics and morality. Real violence, real damage to society and economy caused by moral failures.
But religions obsess with issues like birth control, abortion: “saving” human life of small clusters of cells, while thousands of really alive and breathing humans starve or get killed in wars. Religions cause suffering by prohibiting stem cell research, mandating that embryos can be discarded to waste but can not be used for life saving medical research. Our laws interfere with birth control and HIV prevention. 20 year jail sentences for consensual sex with adolescents or mere possession of nude photos.
There is a reason for this religious obsession with sex. Our holy books, are all around 2000 years old and were not updated.
Sexuality and baby-making were inseparable 2000 years ago
But nowadays, we have birth control. Sexuality is not identical to child production any more. Paternity can be verified with DNA tests and does not require virginity enforced by draconian punishments.
It is funny, though, how churches extrapolate their teachings unto issues that are not covered by the Bible: areas like stem cells, birth control pill, etc. It is also interesting how churches influence politics and legal codes, in countries that have clear separation of church and state.
New ethics and morality are needed.
Merely abandoning religious ethics can lead to crime, greed, moral disorientation. We can observe this in politics, youth violence, obesity, nutrition, corporate (lack of) ethics, general moral disorientation of large parts of the population.Morality & Ethics without God: Peter Singer’s Utilitarianism
Very good overview of Peter Singer’s ethics. Just listen to the audio, the video is not interesting. This is not a single video but a set of videos.
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian philosopher. He is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and laureate professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE), University of Melbourne. He specialises in applied ethics, approaching ethical issues from a secular preference utilitarian perspective. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer
Singer is the greatest contemporary exponent of utilitarianism, the doctrine that actions should aim to maximise the greatest happiness for the greatest number of individuals. Given that our every action has consequences for this end, we are truly immersed in morality.
Peter Singer’s utilitarian philosophy is an alternative to stupidity derived from religious beliefs. Where Richard Dawkins just vaguely surmises about morality without religion, Peter Singer devotes his life to the intricacies of such a morality. As I have stated, the rules from holy books like Bible or Koran were very sensible at the time they were written. But they need overhaul. And, preferably, without resorting to God or Prophets. Peter Singer can come to the rescue.
Dinesh de Souza made the great compliment: Singer’s ethics is what you arrive at with logic and without God: “Peter Singer represents the sharpest, deepest, certainly the most lucid, the most consistent in arguing out the premises and the implications of atheism”.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phgb67NAaHA is part 1 of a 12 (!) part discussion with Peter Singer. Very interesting to see in its entirety. In part 1 Dinesh gives a fairly good but hostile description of Peter Singer’s philosophy)
Junkies don’t want Aids. They want to use clean needles. Clean needles eliminate the Aids problem in injectable drug addicts. So, logically, let’s provide clean needles! A non-brainer. But then comes drug policy, moralistic prejudice, (unconscious) wish to punish the sinners with Aids, police arrest for needle possession. Result: addicts use dirty needles and get HIV.
Human Irrationality, dogmas, blindness at its best.“People do stupid things. That’s what spreads HIV.”
Needle exchange is an even clearer solution then condom use efforts. Because condoms are unpleasant. Clean needles are not even detracting from drug “pleasure”.
Our “morality” is outdated & immoral. We need updated morality.
Drug War, morality, religion, sexual morality etc prevent needle exchanges, thus cause HIV infection and deaths. Call it insanity. Call it suffering and death caused by false outdated stupid “morality”. Dogma, blindness, self-deception ….. We believe in our 2000year old holy books. They were very good for their times. But no biblical author knew about HIV virus transmission or drug addiction therapy. In later posts I will write about Peter Singer’s utilitarism as a help to guide our morals.
Elisabeth Pisani @ TED
“People do stupid things. That’s what spreads HIV.” [ . . . ] Now, let’s look at it from a policy maker’s point of view. This is a really easy problem. For once, your incentives are aligned. We’ve got what’s rational for public health. You want people to use clean needles, and junkies want to use clean needles. So we could make this problem go away simply by making clean needles universally available and taking away the fear of arrest. ted.com/talks/view/id/818
Now, the first person to figure that out and do something about it on a national scale was that well-known, bleeding heart liberal Margaret Thatcher. And she put in the world’s first national needle exchange program and other countries followed suit, Australia, The Netherlands and few others, and in all of those countries, you can see, not more than four percent ever became infected with HIV, of injectors.
In places that didn’t do this, New York City for example, Moscow, Jakarta, we’re talking, at its peak, one in two injectors infected with this fatal disease. Now, Margaret Thatcher didn’t do this because she has any great love for junkies. She did it because she ran a country that had a national health service. So, if she didn’t invest in effective prevention, she was going to have pick up the costs of treatment later on, and obviously those are much higher. So she was making a politically rational decision. Now, if I take out my public health nerd glasses here, and look at these data, it seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it. But in this country, where the government apparently does not feel compelled to provide health care for citizens, we’ve taken a very different approach. So what we’ve been doing in the United States is reviewing the data, endlessly reviewing the data. So these are reviews of hundreds of studies by all the big muckety-mucks of the scientific pantheon in the United States, and these are the studies that show needle programs are effective, quite a lot of them. ted.com/talks/view/id/818
Rational Publich Healty Policy demands
allow needle exchange to make addiction less dangerous
consider furnishing cleaner, cheaper, less harmful drugs
Of course, if we furnish needles, we should also furnish anti-addiction therapy, public information, etc. Some think one should not spend money to prevent addicts from getting AIDS: these addicts pass on AIDS to non-addicted innocent partners, who then could pass it on to you and me. And once an addict has AIDS, society helps to treat the medical AIDS cases with massive financial investments. Needles are cheaper!
We need morality and public action to reign in disease & death through drugs
We need to try to reduce drug damage by information policy, advertising, influencing public opinion, education, ………
Good education & happy childhood as prevention for future problems
Children with serious family problems in early childhood are set up for future problems in life, truancy, crime, general disrespect for law and authority, leaning failures, .Super Nanny’s work creates happiness in unhappy families, prevents children from becoming uneducated, disrepectful, future criminals, future bad parents and just generally unhappy.
Human-Stupidity.com puts this up as a positive example that cures unnecessary suffering for entire families and prevents future crime and stupidity. This is anti-stupidity, creating families where love and intelligence get nourished.
Super Nanny shows families & children with very serious disciplinary problems. Her main technique is the non-violent “naughty zone”, like a “naughty chair”, “naughty mat”, “naughty room” where kids get a time out. Now the main problem is:
How to make a totally unruly child to stay on a time-out “naughty chair” for the first time?
Youtube postings of super nanny normally consist of a series of about 7 parts. We just pick the one part relevant to the start of naughty chair discipline, for studies. Feel free to see the other 6 clips to get an idea of the misbehavior of the children to appreciate the miracle of getting them to obey to this disciplinary method. Watch the following 10 videos to get the real impact and understanding of how the discipline works.
Essential elements of the time-out naughty corner|mat|room|chair technique
learn firm dominant voice and attitude
give prior warning
make child understand what it did wrong before putting it in the naughty room/corner/mat (for 1 minute per year of age of child)
be absolutely firm: if child leaves before time is over, it has to start all over.
The very first time the absolutely crucial part. I think it only works because of Super-Nanny’s authority and presence. Once a child accepts authority and stays at a time-out, 90% of the problem is solved. Super Nanny’s teachings about firmness, clarity, justness etc are absolutely vital.
at the end, make the child say “sorry”
loving treatment when the child behaves well and after saying “sorry”
I cringe a little bit, because this technique can, of course, be abused by selfish, inconsistent parents to train and manipulate their children. What about the creative rebellious genius? Time-out for denying the truth of the Bible! Time-out for moving around, running, playing like a normal natural child!
But there is no anti-dote against parental limitations. Parents should have psychological maturity and stability to know which discipline is necessary and positive. Super Nanny shows tools, they can be abused. The examples shown certainly involve unhappy brats in dire need of being put into their places, and parental education is part of her work.
Time-out or careful slapping?
It seems to me that “time-out” is not the essence of this educational success. Observing the above points 1-7 is important together with some sensible punishment. Humane slaps with the same firmness, admonishments and explanations like 1-7 above probably work just as well. Slaps might actually work if children can not be kept on the “naughty chair”. But this is not politically correct. Sorry. Time-out for me!
Charter Cities, modelled after Hong Kong or Shanghai, can foster development in third world countries, suggests eminent scientist Paul Romer. Basically, Neo-colonialism: a piece of land in a third world country is given to a first world country to create a charter city to establish the rule of law. That city then has the best of both worlds:
a secure legal system for investors, and
access to third world cheap labor.
There will be no democracy, voting is with feet: if you like the system you can go there. If you don’t like it, don’t go there.
Very creative idea countering conventional human stupidity.
countering the anti-colonialism dogma: poor nations have proven already that they cannot get efficient administration. So an efficient administration bound by British, Canadian, German law is being provided
countering the “democracy dogma”: inhabitans of the charter cites do not vote, they can vote with their feet only to come or to leave. Democracy in poor third world nations has shown to be rife with populism and voting for corrupt politicians.
Billions in developing aid that is funnelled into corrupt nations could be applied more safely in
There still are stupidities in Romer’s suggestion. Devil’s Advocate thinks Romer is optimistic in several points or does not dare to face certain facts.
colonial powers in the past were world powers without qualms to use their might.
Most third world nations would not tolerate a successful rich foreign city on their soil for 99 years. Either a populist president would invade it, or use threats to get concessions. Or
it could not be defended against marauding gangs Somali Style, or
invasion by the poorest of the poor with no skills, slum style.
Romer’s suggestion to use toothless nations like Canada or Germany might backfire. Cuba is more likely to respect Guantanamo in US hands then governed by Canada. Of course, even a world power might not be willing to militarily defend a charter city that does not bring power,status or exploitation profits like original colonies
Modern democracies’ laws might not be a viable example. Modern democracies are rife with welfare freeloaders, criminals exploiting human rights, unskilled immigration overload etc. Devil’s Advocate enjoyed the suggestion of a Spiegel reader to allow China to set up a Charter City in Germany.
I barely dare to mention racial differences because now I lose 95% of my readers who subscribe to the unproven but firmly defended credo that “all races are equal”, or worse, “races don’t exist”. All successful examples like Hong Kong were in Asia, with highly intelligent and socially well behaved Asians. Respectable research (discredited by political correctness) on racial differences shows that Asians are most intelligent, closely follwed by whites, and, unfortunately blacks trailing. So a model like this might have serious difficulties in Africa, especially if these intrinsic problems of genetic propensity to lower intelligence, less respect for order and more violence are not taken into consideration. This was pointed out by Nobel Prize winner James Watson who got shunned for telling scientific truth. I believe that the Paul Romer’s model can be successfully applied to Africa, but chances for success are greater when the model is based on scientific truth and not on well meant fiction.
Human Stupidity wishes success to Paul Romer’s Charter Cities. A refreshing idea against conventional stupidity.
TRX suspension training: a 2 pound contraption made of low tech straps. It can replace an entire gym. The resistance is provided by the body weight of the trainee, and can be easily adjusted by simply changing the angle the person pulls at.
Human-Stupidity Analysis
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/0,1518,668449,00.html