When clutter is a symptom

Note: Another version of this piece is posted at RightNetwork. My agreement with them is that I can cross-post the pieces I write for them here after four or five days. However, it was so significantly re-written that I am posting my original piece tonight. It is NOT about de-cluttering — it is about exactly what it says: if you find that you clutter and can’t keep your environment orderly and clean, it could be a symptom of a health problem and your life may be at risk.

Here is what I originally wrote:

If your environment is cluttered, whether at home or work or both, the worse your problem is, the more you need to look at your health as its cause. The good news is that when you feel better, you will have the energy and organizing power you need to clear your clutter and make your environment glow with orderliness and well-being.

The first things to look at are your exercise and sleep habits. Aerobic exercise – even brisk walking – for at least 20 minutes helps your body clean house at the cellular level because it increases your circulation. It’s like the cells are better able to throw out their garbage when the blood is circulating more rapidly, probably for the same reason that a quick-moving stream of water washes things away, while water that is slow-moving, or stagnant, does not. Somehow that seems to translate from the micro level to the macro level. My own experience is that 20 minutes of aerobic exercise gives me two or three days of being able to tackle clutter more effectively. However, it took three or four months of exercising regularly for me to notice this benefit because I was so out of shape when I started. So don’t be discouraged if it takes awhile before you really experience the de-cluttering benefits of exercising.

Another part of your daily routine to look at if you are a clutterer is how much sleep you are getting. If you aren’t sleeping as much as you need to in order to wake up feeling refreshed, you won’t have the clarity to make all the decisions necessary for keeping your environment in order. You won’t have all the energy you need, either. Plus, you might see pounds pile on as you eat more calories than you need to get the energy you should have gotten from a good night’s sleep. To learn how to pay off your sleep debt and establish good sleep habits – called “sleep hygiene” – try the “Three-Week Sleep Camp” program, which you can do in your own home, in The Promise of Sleep, by Dr. William Dement, one of the pioneers of sleep medicine.

In addition to improving your exercise and sleep habits – or if you find you can’t because you just don’t feel well enough – three signs that you may have health problems you need to address to stop cluttering are as follows: waking up still feeling tired, daytime sleepiness and feeling sluggish mentally and physically. While sleep deprivation alone can make you feel sluggish, it doesn’t hurt to see your doctor to rule out a thyroid disorder. The blood test to check whether your thyroid is not producing enough thyroid hormones is called the “TSH” test. It actually measures the hormone from the pituitary gland that regulates the thyroid gland. If you need to start taking thyroid medication, it may take a few months to find the right dose, but you’ll be amazed at how much better you feel. You’ll regain the energy and mental clarity you need to clear your clutter.

However, if you still feel lethargic and sleepy even if your thyroid is fine or your thyroid medication is at the correct dose, you may have a sleep disorder. Don’t expect your primary care physician to understand sleep disorders – sleep medicine is so new that you really need to see a sleep specialist to determine if your symptoms are due to a sleep disorder, and if so, ensure it is correctly diagnosed and treated.

One of the common sleep disorders that can be associated with cluttering is obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). In OSA, the airway collapses when you are sleeping so little or no air gets to your lungs. However, your brain still tells your body to breathe – breathing against a sealed airway puts enormous strain on your heart and lungs, which is exhausting. Then, when your blood oxygen falls to a certain point, your brain sends a signal to wake up – at least enough to open your airway. What OSA sounds like is at least 10 seconds to a couple of minutes of silence, followed by an explosive snore as the airway opens. OSA is a potentially deadly condition because severe exhaustion, a normal dose of a painkiller or normal consumption of an alcoholic beverage can dull the brain so much it can’t send the signal to wake up.

While the daytime sleepiness associated with untreated obstructive sleep apnea will rob you of the energy and clarity you need to enjoy life and keep your home clutter-free, sleep deprivation isn’t the only problem caused by OSA that can lead to cluttering. OSA also causes oxygen deprivation during the periods that the airway is collapsed. A person with OSA may not be getting air for up to 40 percent of the time he or she is asleep. This can cause damage to the part of your brain responsible for executive function – see here and here – which you need to have in good shape to be able to keep everything in your life in order. Since current research suggests executive function damage due to sleep apnea is resistant to treatment, it seems better to be safe than sorry and consult a sleep doctor if you really just can’t seem to keep your environment in order.

Iowahawk suspended in First Amendment outrage

First National Public Radio fires Juan Williams for daring to admit that when he gets a little nervous when anyone sitting next to him on an airplane gives him a business card identifying himself as a member of the Army of Allah and tells him it is the duty of Muslims to cut off the heads of infidels and pour boiling oil down their throats. Oh, wait, no, I’m thinking of Army psychiatrist and Ft. Hood mass murderer Nidal Malik Hasan. Juan Williams was fired for saying he gets worried when he’s on an airplane with people wearing clothes that show they identify first and foremost as people whose duty is to cut off the heads of infidels and pour boiling oil down their throats. BIG difference.

Then MSNBC suspends anchor Keith Olbermann — who is highly regarded for his rectitude and even-handed reporting by all the voices in his head — for the piddling ethics violations of donating money to the campaigns of political candidates on top of all the millions of dollars of publicity he already lavished on them at no charge by giving them fawning interviews and fulminating against their foes on his cable news show.

And now — the horror! — Iowahawk is the latest victim of an attack on a heroic news commentator for expressing his First Amendment rights! Tense negotiations have been underway all day on Twitter between Iowahawk management, aka “I,” and Iowahawk, aka “me.” However, there IS hope that this impasse will be broken soon thanks to mediation to be conducted by Iowahawk “myself.” The first negotiation with Iowahawk “me,” “myself” and “I” is scheduled tonight at 8 pm, CT, in Chicago. Hopefully, this meeting will produce a happy ending to our national nightmare and restore Iowahawk to his rightful perch in the blogosphere.

Update, 11/9/10, Tues.: Welcome, Iowahawk readers! I don’t quite know whether I have to thank Iowahawk “me,” “myself” or “I” for the link, so I’m sending my shout-out to all three. For breaking news on the outcome of the Iowahawk “Night Train” summit, follow @iowahawkblog on Twitter (and while you’re in the neighborhood, @conservativelez, too).

Intellectual property theft worked out better for Stanley Miller than it has for Cooks Source

Dear Little Miss Attila has been ALL OVER the story of Judith Griggs, managing editor of Cooks Source, which publishes online, on Facebook, and on paper, using an article on how apple pies were prepared in medieval England without the permission of the author, Monica Gaudio. When a friend tipped Ms. Gaudio off to the theft, Ms. Griggs refused to pay and added insult to injury by claiming that she had improved the piece by editing it and correcting spelling errors — that is, she changed the Middle English/Early Modern English spellings to Modern English, even though Ms. Gaudio had included the translations. This is all bad enough. But I suspect what has brought the wrath of the blogosphere down on Ms. Griggs’ head is that she ripped off Ms. Gaudio’s copyrighted BLOG post and claimed that everything published on the Web is public domain. Which it’s not. Which is why Ms. Griggs is now immortalized in a “Downfall” parody.

Dear Moe Lane also covers the story, with additional observations (go to his place for the links on “ensue”):

Alas for Cooks Source, the author is a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Which means that she is fully plugged into the geek community. Which means that this story got picked up all over the Internet (because geeks and members of the SCA can be found EVERYWHERE*).

Hi-jinks ensue. And ensue. Oh, how do they ever ensue.

*EVERYWHERE.

I wish my father, Hubert P. Yockey, one of the pioneers of the application of information theory to molecular biology, had been able to get the scientific community nearly as worked up about the theft of the work of German scientist, Walther Loeb, by American scientist, Stanley Miller. Miller is credited with being the first to use a spark discharge in a solution of chemicals to create amino acids, which is supposed to be a scenario for the origin of life (although my father shows why it isn’t). However, Miller lifted the experiment from Walther Loeb, which my father learned by reading all the works Miller cited in his graduate thesis, published in 1953, in which Miller claims priority for the discovery. In fact, because my father obtained it through an inter-library loan, I saw the copy of the book Miller read that explained Loeb’s experiment — the library card had Miller’s name on it, dated the time he was researching his thesis.

My father shows in his book, Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life, which is advertised on this page, that Miller essentially duplicated the set-up Loeb showed in an illustration in a paper published in 1906. My father writes on p. 125 of his book, “Loeb’s priority in the electro-chemistry of the silent electrical discharge and exploration of any function it may have had in ‘prebiotic chemistry’ must be recognized (Mojzsis et al., 1999; Yockey, 1997, 2002b).

Oh, and another thing — if you read the Wikipedia (shut up!) article I link about Stanley Miller, it credits Oparin and Haldane with being the first to come up with the scenario for the origin of life that chemicals under the right conditions would form into amino acids and proteins and spring to life. Hah! This speculation appeared in 1853 in William Whewell’s book, Of the Plurality of Worlds, now available in facsimile. My father knew these ideas pre-dated Oparin and Haldane because of the line in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado” in my postscript below.

I told Dad about Whewell in the mid-1990’s after reading the following from Anthony Trollope’s novel, Barchester Towers published in 1857:

“Are you a Whewellite or a Brewsterite, or a t’othermanite, Mrs. Bold?” said Charlotte, who knew a little about everything, and had read about a third of each of the books to which she alluded.

“Oh!” said Eleanor; “I have not read any of the books, but I feel sure that there is one man in the moon at least, if not more.”

“You don’t believe in the pulpy gelatinous matter?” said Bertie.

“I heard about that,” said Eleanor, “and I really think it’s almost wicked to talk in such a manner. How can we argue about God’s power in the other stars from the laws which he has given for our rule in this one?”

“How indeed!” said Bertie. “Why shouldn’t there he a race of salamanders in Venus? And even if there be nothing but fish in Jupiter, why shouldn’t the fish there he as wide awake as the men and women here?”

“That would be saying very little for them,” said Charlotte. “I am for Dr. Whewell myself, for I do not think that men and women are worth being repeated in such countless worlds. There may be souls in other stars, but I doubt their having any bodies attached to them.

But come, Mrs. Bold, let us put our bonnets on and walk round the close. If we are to discuss sidereal questions, we shall do so much better under the towers of the cathedral than stuck in this narrow window.”

P.S.

The earliest quote my father was aware of showing that others had thought of chemicals combining to create life before Oparin and Haldane is from “The Mikado.” When I Googled for the quote, I happened upon the following from “Mind the Gap!,” a scientific article by Antonio Lazcano, who apparently believes in the life-from-chemicals origin-of-life scenario:

In 1835, the French naturalist Felix Dujardin started crushing ciliates under the microscope and observed that the tiny cells exuded a jellylike, water-insoluble substance, which he described as a “gelée vivante” and which was eventually christened “protoplasm” by the physician Johann E. Purkinje and the botanist Hugo von Mohl. Fifty years after Dujardin’s observations, the possibility that living organisms were the evolutionary outcome of the gradual transformation of lifeless gel-like matter into protoplasm was so widespread that it found its way into musical comedies. In 1885, the self-important Pooh-Bah, Lord Chief Justice and Chancellor of the Exchequer, declared in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado that “I am in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.”

What my father, Hubert P. Yockey, demonstrated in his publications is that the origin of life is unknowable, as Darwin predicted, and must be accepted as an axiom of biology, just as the existence of matter is accepted as an axiom of physics and chemistry.

The perfect music for celebrating this election night: ‘Wipeout’

Update, 11/2/10, Tues.:

Update, 11/2/10, Tues, 10:34 EDT:

Fox News just called Maryland’s first Congressional district for the Republican candidate, Andy Harris, over the incumbent first-term Democrat, Frank Kratovil. One of the reasons Kratovil didn’t vote 100 percent lockstep with Obama-Pelosi is that we could get over 400 Tea Partiers/Republicans with signs protesting in front of his Bel Air office with just 24 hours notice any time it was necessary to remind him how narrow his margin of victory was on 11/4/08.

    Ninth Circuit grants Obama’s request to reinstate ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

    DON'T ASK DON'T TELL

    see more Historic LOL

    I’m phoning this one in — here’s the press release dated Nov. 1 from the Log Cabin Republicans:

    (Washington, DC) – The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has granted the Obama administration’s request to resurrect the failed ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy while they continue defending the law in court. The policy was suspended after a federal District Court judge granted a world-wide injunction halting discharges and requiring the military not to discriminate based on sexual orientation.

    “Log Cabin Republicans is disappointed that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ will continue to burden our armed forces, undermine national security and limit the freedom of our men and women in uniform,” said R. Clarke Cooper, Executive Director of Log Cabin Republicans. “Despite this temporary setback, Log Cabin remains confident that we will ultimately prevail on behalf of servicemembers’ constitutional rights. In the meantime, we urge President Obama to use his statutory stop-loss power to halt discharges under this discriminatory and wasteful policy. The president claims to want to see ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ ended. It is time that he stop talking and start working to make a real difference for gay and lesbian Americans by pushing for repeal when Congress returns.”

    “The court’s ruling is a disappointment not only to us, but also to all gay and lesbian servicemembers who bravely put themselves in harm’s way so that we can all enjoy the constitutional rights and freedoms that they themselves are being denied,” said Dan Woods, White & Case partner who is representing Log Cabin Republicans. “The decision only slows the day when military service will be available to all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation, who want nothing more than to serve their country honorably and patriotically. We will continue to fight on for the constitutional rights of these Americans and look forward to a favorable decision on the merits of the appeal. Meanwhile, we will discuss the court’s order with our client to determine whether we will ask for a review of the order by the US Supreme Court.”

    Log Cabin Republicans filed suit in federal district court against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2004. The case went to trial in Riverside, California in July of 2010, and Judge Virginia Phillips ruled on September 9, 2010, that the policy violated the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution.

    The economic theory of Leftist hopelessness vs. conservative optimism

    Today Instapundit — here and here — linked both Megan McArdle’s explanation of why we should get rid of income taxes on corporations and Amity Shlaes using the story of Triple-Crown winner Secretariat, whose bio movie was recently released, as a cautionary tale for the tsumani of increased estate tax rates set to begin wiping out small family businesses and farms on Jan. 1, 2011.

    Leftist leaders attract and control their constituencies with two fundamental ideas, both of which have their foundation in hopelessness and passivity, attitudes that have the bonus powers of making it easy to control anyone who buys into them. The first fundamental idea of Leftism is that particular identity/grievance groups are members of a permanent underclass, which entitles them to pity and unearned privileges and money. This idea has been particularly attractive to black Americans and led to the Great Society welfare state, the destruction of marriage and the black family, the rise of race hucksterism and racial protection rackets and a holocaust of ambition, talent and genius in the black community because welfare rules punish these traits ruthlessly.

    The second fundamental idea of Leftism is that there is a privileged overclass who owe their pity and earned privileges and money to an ever-expanding list of identity/grievance groups in the permanent underclass.

    As noted by Eric Hoffer (The True Believer), Friedrich Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) and Jamie Glazov (United in Hate), these two fundamental ideas of Leftism have nothing to do with the real goal of Leftist leaders, which is identical to the goal of all sociopaths: the power to make people jump. The real purpose of Leftist leaders is to gain power for themselves. The fact that they are using pity, shame and guilt to get it gives them away and what really clinches the diagnosis is the fact that wherever they gain power their community or nation falls into stagnation and decay and they have no remorse whatsoever about the lives they destroy to get and keep power.

    One prominent author who failed to see the sociopathy behind using these ideas to attract, trap and manipulate followers is Ayn Rand. While I was recovering from my cough and back injury this month, I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time. Rand repeatedly derides the destructiveness of the Communist slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” and I have the impression that she developed her philosophy of objectivism to argue against it. But she failed to see it was only the bait and that you can’t defeat the hook by arguing with the bait.

    Where was I? Oh, right, back to a thought I had while reading the essay by Amity Shlaes on the estate tax: Leftists perpetuate hopelessness while conservatives are optimists. If you believe that you have no hope of making the most of yourself and building a prosperous life, then the hopelessness of Leftism makes sense to you and you believe that money comes from luck and/or exploitation and you can only get it by taking it from those who are making it. In contrast, fiscal conservatism is about optimism in the individual’s ability to create wealth and the recognition that the system that allows individuals to keep the majority of the wealth they create harnesses one of the greatest powers in the universe: human ambition.

    As I was reading Shlaes’s essay, I had the thought that conservatives reading it would identify with the families whose businesses are threatened or destroyed by the estate tax. Conservatives also would assume that anyone reading it would see the threat estate taxes pose to their own well-being, their own futures, their own opportunities. Then it occurred to me that Leftists reading it would feel justified and even gleeful about the slaughter of geese laying golden eggs that the sacrifice of family businesses to the ax of high estate taxes represents. Why? Because the Left has trained them to be permanently hopeless about their own prospects or the prospects of their preferred grievance/identity groups. Money is not something that anyone can make, it’s something you take — or ransom you pay to assuage your guilt.

    And this is where the Right makes its biggest mistake, a mistake on such a grand scale that I think it is the real reason the economic fate of America hangs in the balance now. Conservatives don’t keep emphasizing that fiscal conservatism is about creating and preserving a system where individuals can make their dreams come true — a system where individuals get to keep and control the majority of the financial rewards they have earned through their creativity, courage, thrift, wise choices, hard work and ambition.

    In other words, fiscal conservatives NEVER use their big idea to drive the discussion about America’s economy and inspire people about fulfilling their full potential. Yet this big idea is the one that exposes and destroys the hook that is the true motivating force of Leftist leaders: gaining control over others, regardless of the destruction that causes.

    Instead, fiscal conservatives speak almost exclusively — as Ayn Rand did — to the ideas the Left uses as bait. This means the Left is always in control of the discussion, leading fiscal conservatives on a perpetual wild goose chase and tricking them into articulating only the positions that validate the Left’s framing them as demons. The solution is for the Right to begin every discussion with a statement of its own big idea of individual empowerment and self-realization. This will leverage one of the fundamental rules of a paradigm shift: people only give up their current paradigm when they see the advantages of a better one. And it is fiscal conservatives who have the better paradigm.

    Update, 10/31/10, Sun.: Babalu has more on reports of small business owners planning to die in 2010 when their estate taxes will be zero, instead taking a risk that they would live past Dec. 31 because the jump to 55 percent that estate taxes will take on Jan. 1, 2011, will destroy their family business.

    Update, 11/1/10, Mon.: Thank you, Prof. Reynolds, for the link, and welcome Instapundit readers. One commenter requested clarification on the following:

    “Instead, fiscal conservatives speak almost exclusively — as Ayn Rand did — to the ideas the Left uses as bait. ”

    “…leading fiscal conservatives on a perpetual wild goose chase and tricking them into articulating only the positions that validate the Left’s framing them as demons.”

    The ideas of fiscal conservatives that allow the Left to frame them as demons start with the phrase, “We need to get rid of …”:

    • Social Security
    • the IRS and our current tax code
    • Medicare and Medicaid.

    Come to find that there are legitimate ideas behind these that never get mentioned because the debate is happening in code. Also because the Leftists’ heads burst with rage before fiscal conservatives can offer their alternatives and explain them. I’m new to fiscal conservatism, so as near as I can tell, the above proposals are code for the following ideas:

    • We can starve government into being smaller and make it interfere less by depriving it of the rivers of revenue for Social Security from the FICA tax, which go into the general fund and can be used for anything.
    • Our tax code is so burdensome and complex that we would be better off throwing it out and instituting a flat tax.
    • Caring for the elderly and the disabled is the camel’s nose in the tent for socialized medicine. (Hayek specifically states in The Road to Serfdom that a prosperous society should provide support for those who truly can’t provide for themselves, so I’m not including the other conservative argument that we can’t afford the care of the elderly and the disabled and because I have no idea what fiscal conservatives offer as an alternative.)

    Old and busted — the ideas the Left uses as bait for fiscal conservatives:

    • Wealth must be re-distributed
    • Planned economies are better than free markets because outcomes are guaranteed
    • Taxes and regulations are good and only bad people want to limit them
    • Identity groups have perpetual grievances

    The new hotness — if fiscal conservatives framed the discussion in their own terms:

    • Wealth is created when human ambition is harnessed by a system that gives it liberty and the right to keep a majority of the wealth it has created.
    • An economic system that empowers people to create wealth doesn’t have to pay as much in welfare.
    • We can provide opportunities for all, but nothing should guarantee an outcome.
    • Keeping taxes and regulations to a minimum unleashes wealth-creating power.
    • People should be treated as individuals, not members of identity groups.