Alloy and catalyst allow for low-cost generation of hydrogen from water and air-stable, reusable storage

Alloy and catalyst allow for low-cost generation of hydrogen from water and air-stable, reusable storage

The Rise of Spectatoritis - The Art of Manliness

The college football season starts this weekend, and I won’t lie—I’m pretty excited. I quite enjoy settling on the couch on a cozy fall day to watch them play (when they win at least!).

Every once in awhile, say when the announcer shares the game’s attendance numbers, I get a small niggling feeling of discomfort. 80,000 people gathered to watch 22 men run around, throw a ball, and smash into each other. The appeal is not difficult to see—there’s something truly compelling about watching the most talented athletes in the world perform. But when you take a step back, it’s really quite odd, isn’t it? Two groups of men–the doers and the viewers—and one group is far, far larger than the other.

The Rise of Spectatoritis

Here and there appears the aggravated case, completely infected, the fan who is nothing but a fan—a flabby creature, symbolic of the multitude, a parasite upon the play of others, the least athletic of all men, never playing himself at anything, a spectacle hunter, not a sportsman. –Richard Henry Edwards, 1915

Written in 1938 by Jay B. Nash, there is a book entitled Spectatoritis. During the first half of the 20th century, leisure time had steadily increased, and Nash argued that because Americans had never before been confronted with such large swaths of it, the country had not developed a “philosophy of leisure.” Without this philosophy, people were falling victim to what he dubbed “spectatoritis:”

The machine age has, of course, already supplied an unexampled wealth of leisure and what happens? The average man who has time on his hands turns out to be a spectator, a watcher of somebody else, merely because that is the easiest thing. He becomes a victim of spectatoritis—a blanket description to cover all kinds of passive amusement, an entering into the handiest activity merely to escape boredom. Instead of expressing, he is willing to sit back and have his leisure time pursuits slapped on to him like mustard plasters—external, temporary, and, in the end, “dust in the mouth.”

Nash presciently predicted that the plague of spectatoritis would only increase:

Man can sleep too much. Granted freedom, many men go to sleep—”physically and mentally,” organically and cortically. Not having the drive for creative arts they turn to pre-digested pastimes, prepared in little packages at a dollar per. This has literally thrown us into the gladiatorial stage of Rome in which the number of participants becomes fewer and the size of the grandstands, larger. Spectatoritis has become almost synonymous with Americanism and the end is not yet. The stages will get small and the rows of seats will mount higher.”

One can easily see how the specter of spectatoritis has indeed seeped into all areas of our lives. Not only in the obvious things in which passive involvement has always been the norm–90 million Americans watched the 2011 Superbowl; 100,000 people watched U2 in concert in October—but in areas which were formerly forums of active participation. For example, in visiting a couple of “megachurches,” awhile back, I was surprised at how much the service (actually, they called it an “experience”—“service” sounds too boring and stodgy) resembled any other form of entertainment—people listened to the music, watched a video and powerpoint presentation, sat through a short message from the pastor, and left 60 minutes later. There were no requirements for participation or service of any kind. It was interesting to see that worship had become yet another thing to be passively consumed, as opposed to actively created.

A current trend in the building of new middle and upper class suburban homes is to include a “theater room,” a windowless room complete with large, movie theater-like chairs, a speaker system, and a big screen television. This is another one of those things that seems odd when you take a step back…a whole room in the house dedicated just to watching stuff. We’ve gone from having parlors for making conversation, to rumpus or recreation rooms for playing games, to rooms in which people sit silently side-by-side in the dark.

More than anything, the internet has contributed to the spread of spectatoritis. Online interactions are particularly insidious because they provide people with the feeling that they are actively participating in something, while in reality it is just another form of passive amusement. The main form of “activity” in modern life is the expression of personal preference. Liking or disliking. While formerly you could only be a fan of sports teams, you can now become a “fan” of Dominos Pizza, presidential candidates, even “sleeping.” I find it amusing that some websites have buttons in the response section of articles that allow people to upvote or downvote readers’ comments. So if you’re too lazy to write your own stuff, and it’s too much of a burden to even generate your own comment, you can still “participate” by showing your allegiance to someone else’s idea. But giving things thumbs up or thumbs down is not real participation. Why? Because such participation is “external, temporary, dust in the mouth.” Because it doesn’t involve any risk, any putting of your own skin in the game. Because it doesn’t change anything in you or in the world.

You Can’t Become a Man from the Sidelines

The personal interest in athletics has been largely superseded by an interest in spectacular games, which unfortunately tend to divide the Nation into two groups: the few overworked champions in the arena, and the great crowd, content to do nothing but sit on the benches and look on, while indulging their tastes for tobacco and alcohol.

It is this last that is turning so many thoughtful ones against baseball, football,etc. This, it will be seen, is a reproduction of the condition that ended in the fall of Rome. In her days of growth every man was a soldier; in the end a few great gladiators were in the arena, to be watched and applauded by the millions who personally knew nothing at all of fighting or heroism.

Degeneracy is the word.

To combat the system that has turned such a large proportion of our robust, manly, self-reliant boyhood into a lot of flat-chested cigarette-smokers, with shaky nerves and doubtful vitality, I began the Woodcraft movement in America.” –Ernest Thompson Seton, creator of Woodcraft Indians, and a founder of Boy Scouts of America

Of course there’s nothing wrong with taking in a spectacle or two. As I said the beginning, I love to watch football, and I enjoy attending a minor league baseball game, movie, or concert from time to time. I do not currently have the privilege of enjoying the smug pleasure of telling people that I do not have a tv, and I enjoy catching a few shows each week. I like surfing the internet and sharing things on Facebook.

There are men who feel that the entire problem with males today is that they’re too obsessed with college and professional sports. But that’s as wrong-headed as thinking that indulging in a straight diet of passive entertainment carries no ill-effects whatsoever. Rather than suffering from spectatoritis, these men are inflicted by high-horse-itis.

No, a problem only arises when instead of being a supplement to your life—an occasional relaxing indulgence–passive amusements become a substitution, a way to feel better about something you personally lack.

Recently, William Deresiewicz wrote “An Empty Regard,” a searing op-ed piece for The New York Times in which he questioned our current unthinking idolization of the military. This near canonization of the troops began during the Iraq War with the well-intentioned purpose of not repeating the mistakes of Vietnam, in which opposition to the war translated into animosity to those serving in it.

Deresiewicz is not against supporting the troops per se—rather he argues that we use them as our “national football team,” as a reassuring symbol that the characteristics of traditional manhood are still alive and well. “The soldier is the way we want to see ourselves: stoic, powerful, focused, devoted,” Deresiewicz writes. But it’s a safe symbol—a team we can cheer for from the couch without having to step into the arena ourselves:

The greater the sacrifice that has fallen on one small group of people, the members of the military and their families, the more we have gone from supporting our troops to putting them on a pedestal. In the Second World War, everybody fought. Soldiers were not remote figures to most of us; they were us. Now, instead of sharing the burden, we sentimentalize it. It’s a lot easier to idealize the people who are fighting than it is to send your kid to join them. This is also a form of service, I suppose: lip service…

The political scientist Jonathan Weiler sees the cult of the uniform as a kind of citizenship-by-proxy. Soldiers and cops and firefighters, he argues, embody a notion of public service to which the rest of us are now no more than spectators. What we really need, in other words, is a swift kick in the pants.

And this is the real danger of spectatoritis run amok—it allows us to experience vicariously the virtues of others, without having to cultivate them ourselves.

We can see this phenomena in the popularity of certain television shows as well. Deadliest Catch. Ax Men. Ice Road Truckers. These programs showcase blue collar men working with their hands, getting dirty, and risking their lives to support their families. The white collar man, himself a stranger to manual labor, gets a vicarious dose of blue collar manhood by watching these shows, all from the comfort of his recliner.

But these vicarious experiences are fleeting. They conjure up feelings of manliness for an hour or two, but seep away, leaving the spectator entirely unchanged. And the world utterly the same.

Discussing a manly “philosophy of leisure” really deserves its own post, but for now, a simple recommendation is this: every man should have at least one thing in his life in which he has some skin in the game, in which he is actually in the arena, and not watching from the stands. One thing in which he is a doer, and not just a viewer.

The U.S. Running Streak Association

Today I read a great inspirational story about a group of people who have ran at least 1 mile every day for decades.  The article ran in the Wall Street Journal, profiled one of the runners, Jon SImpson, who has ran 1 mile every day since August 30, 1971, and today is 40 years.  The article included several other members of the association who started doing so even earlier, July 23, 1968, for Mark Covert.....

Shall I join???

Times 100 Best Books of all time

Full ListAutobiography / Memoir

•The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

•Black Boy by Richard Wright
•Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama
•A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
•I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
•Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown
•Maus by Art Spiegelman
•A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
•Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
•On Writing by Stephen King
•Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
•A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

Biography

•The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley
•The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill by William Manchester
•The Power Broker by Robert Caro

Business

•Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
•Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
•The General Theory by John Maynard Keynes
•How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
•No Logo by Naomi Klein
•Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader
•What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles

Culture

•The American Cinema by Andrew Sarris
•A Child of the Century by Ben Hecht
•Within the Context of No Context by George W.S. Trow
•Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
•The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich

Essays

•Against Interpretation, and Other Essays by Susan Sontag
•A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
•Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
•A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

Food Writing

•How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher
•Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child
•The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Health

•And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts
•The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock
•The Joy of Sex by Dr. Alex Comfort
•The Kinsey Reports by Alfred Kinsey
•Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women's Health Book Collective

History

•The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
•Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
•Carry Me Home by Diane McWhorter
•The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes
•The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
•Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee
•A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
•The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer

Ideas

•The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
•The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama
•Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
•The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
•Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
•The Nature and Destiny of Man by Reinhold Neibuhr
•Orientalism by Edward Said
•Syntactic Structures by Noam Chomsky
•A Theory of Justice by John Rawls
•Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan
•Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig

Nonfiction Novels

•The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
•The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
•In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
•Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

Politics

•All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
•The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington
•Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater
•God & Man at Yale by William F. Buckley Jr.
•Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
•The Making of the President by Theodore White
•The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
•The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter
•What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer

Science

•A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
•Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead
•The Double Helix by James Watson
•The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
•The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas
•The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris
•On Human Nature by Edward O. Wilson
•The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
•Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
•The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn

Self-Help / Instructional

•The Big Book by Alcoholics Anonymous
•Elements of Style by Strunk and White

Social History

•The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford
•Animal Liberation by Peter Singer
•The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
•The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
•The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
•Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
•Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
•The Other America by Michael Harrington
•Why We Can't Wait by Martin Luther King Jr.
•Working by Studs Terkel

Sports

•Ball Four by Jim Bouton
•The Sweet Science by A.J. Liebling

War

•The Civil War by Shelby Foote
•Dispatches by Michael Herr
•The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell
•Hiroshima by John Hersey
•The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright

Another interior with style

Comfortable living with style

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More of my favorite interior designs from Restoration Hardware

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Masculine Interiors

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Masculine Furniture From Restoration Hardware - Wall Lamps

A New Choice for Immortalists

By Michael R. Rose
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California


Everyone whom I know to be registered for cryopreservation does so because they don’t want to die, for good and forever. That is to say, they are some type of immortalist. They may not be cyber-immortalists waiting to be uploaded to a successor to the present world-wide web. But basically they want the prospect, at least the possibility, of living forever. Like an agnostic contemplating the possibility that God does in fact exist, and a God in the business of providing accommodations comfortable or uncomfortable in the afterlife, immortalists are confronted with a menu of relatively stark, and often unappealing, alternatives, given that no one has yet brought a cryopreserved human, as body or head, back from the freezer alive.

I am not going to argue against cyber-immortality or cryo-immortality here. After all, the value of back-up plans is self-evident. Instead, what I am going to offer is an informal introduction to a third possibility. This possibility is one in which aging is stopped, and then repair and refurbishment are used to achieve immortality by the simple expedient of not dying in the first place.

Let me confess straightaway that if somebody had proposed this possibility to me just three years ago, I would have laughed at them outright. But I have spent the last two years reinterpreting my life’s work, at least my research since 1976, when Brian Charlesworth first started working me over to get me to do my doctoral thesis on the evolution of aging.

Here is one of the key points, really the central intuitive idea that the present article hinges on. Since Aristotle, virtually everyone who has worked on the biology of aging has conceived of it in terms of an underlying cumulative physiological process. The most famous, and indeed notorious, present-day proponent of this view is the inimitable Aubrey de Grey. Aubrey characterizes aging as a process of cumulative damage, chiefly at the cell and molecular levels. As such, notwithstanding his media reputation as a wild-eyed radical, Aubrey is thoroughly conventional. In this respect, he more or less agrees with the National Institute on Aging, of the NIH, and innumerable other cell and molecular biologists. While some of these cell-molecular aging researchers think that free-radical damage is the central cause of cumulative damage, others think that progressive dysregulation is more important. Classical-era biologists, from 2500 to 1600 years ago, thought that aging was due to a progressively worsening balance between the earth, water, fire, and air that were thought to make up the human body. In effect, classical thinking was that these four elements were combined to yield life in an unstable mixture, whereby aging involves the drying out and cooling of the body’s physiology. Modern-day cell biologists instead write about cumulative damage and/or dysregulation of pathways controlled by sirtuins, TOR, and the like. Regardless of details, all of these people agree with Aristotle’s original hypothesis that aging is a cumulative physiological process of some type.

But I don’t. Not anymore. And this break with the long Western academic tradition of aging theory is the key to the new choice I wish to offer here.

I should be clear that my present view is also not one generally held, at least not yet, even by most evolutionary biologists who work on aging. Like them, I spent more than thirty years thinking that William Hamilton’s declining forces of natural selection, which he published in 1966, showed that evolution by natural selection would allow cumulative processes of physiological deterioration to proceed unchecked, provided they killed off their victims at sufficiently late ages. And thus my very definition of aging, which I published in my 1991 book Evolutionary Biology of Aging, assumed that endogenous processes of physiological deterioration, whether due to damage or dysregulation, would proceed without remit until all members of a sheltered cohort given good conditions die.

My turning on the Road to Damascus started one day in 1992 when my good colleague Larry Mueller showed me two articles from the journal Science, articles from the laboratories of our colleagues Jim Curtsinger and Jim Carrey. The data in those articles were mind-blowing. They showed the complete cessation of the acceleration in age-specific death-rates that evolutionary biologists like Larry and myself regarded as the hallmark of aging. It looked as if aging came to a stop.

Both Larry Mueller and I were intensely skeptical about these results, and we voiced some of our skepticism in print, in correspondence that was published in Science together with our colleagues Joe Graves and Ted Nusbaum, as well as in other articles that involved Larry and Joe Graves only. But I was deeply troubled by these findings from the two Jim’s, and thought about them intermittently throughout the next two years.

By 1994, I was thinking that perhaps evolutionary biologists had misconceived the problem of the evolution of aging. Perhaps it was NOT natural selection just letting go, but something that specifically tracked Hamilton’s forces of natural selection.

This led me to convince Larry Mueller to do some explicit simulations of evolution, simulations in which we looked at what happened at very late ages, long after Hamilton’s forces of natural selection bottom out and stabilize. What the simulations generated were late-life plateaus in mortality, just as the Curtsinger and Carrey labs had found. We published this result in PNAS in 1996.

With this result in hand, we then checked how changes in Hamilton’s forces would change the age at which mortality plateaus occur, based on explicit simulations. These simulations showed that changing the last age of reproduction in a biological population, the parameter that Hugh Hefner is working on as I write, would tune the age at which mortality rates would plateau.

So Larry Mueller, my then graduate student Casandra Rauser, and many undergraduate students working in my laboratory tested populations that had been evolving in my laboratory for this predicted relationship between the last age of reproduction and the start of the plateau in mortality rates. Qualitatively, it worked. Shifting the last age of reproduction, which is when Hamilton’s force of natural selection acting on mortality itself plateaus, produces the qualitatively predictable shift in observed mortality plateaus in our fruit fly experiments. Not immediately, as a physiological effect, but eventually, over many generations, as a result of evolution occurring in my laboratory under controlled conditions.

Not only is the rate of aging, considered demographically, readily tuned by evolution, so is the age at which aging stops demographically readily tuned by evolution. And this is true not only of those aspects of aging that affect survival. It is also true of reproductive aging, the main theme of the doctoral research of Cassie Rauser in my laboratory. Reproductive aging is tuned by Hamilton’s other force of natural selection, the one that tunes age-specific fecundity.

Still for more than a decade I thought of aging as a physiological process, just one that comes to an end when the late-life plateaus in mortality and fecundity are reached. But I now think that this was the wrong conclusion to draw from our work.

Consider the following point. If aging is a physiological process, however multifarious, why should it come to a halt just when the organism is most debilitated? In the human case, demographic aging stops when the death rate is between 30 and 50 % per year, particularly among centenarians. These are very frail people, yet their aging abruptly stops. How is this supposed to make sense?

Instead, imagine an entirely different view. Suppose instead that aging only seems like a physiological process, but actually is no such thing. Suppose instead that aging is the age-dependent tuning of Darwinian adaptation, where the tuning is determined by the patterns of Hamilton’s forces of natural selection. Not a physiological process at all.

On this view, what seems like a physiological process is a scientific illusion, fully parallel to the illusion of the sun rising in the morning, crossing the sky, and setting in the evening. Because, of course, the sun does no such thing. Sunrise and sunset are optical illusions produced by the rotation of the Earth.

So why is this physiological illusion so convincing, and so reliable? It is convincing and obvious because the falls in Hamilton’s forces of natural selection are so predictable and so intense, at least in most animal species. Hamilton’s evolutionary forces are as strongly determinative of deterioration as any acute disease process. Only the illusory ‘physiological aging processes’ that they produce is extremely protracted in the human case.

If this view is correct, then those species in which Hamilton’s forces of natural selection do NOT fall should be free of aging. Even if they have the same basic cell biology as we do, and even if they are as subject to mechanical injury and oxidation as we are. This alternative view thus makes some strong predictions, predictions which are readily falsified by comparative data. IF, a big if, this theory is wrong.

And the comparative data show that such species DO indeed exist. For example, sea anemones that reproduce only by symmetrical fission are animal species that are thought to be free of aging, from experiments culturing them in aquaria. Similar results have been found among other fissile coelenterates, particularly in the work of Daniel Martinez. And Graham Bell has found results like these in flatworms that can also reproduce by splitting in two. So, not only can aging stop, sometimes it doesn’t even get started.

The problem for people is that when our aging normally stops, we are about a hundred years old, very fragile, and often demented. So who would want to sustain that state indefinitely?

But I kept on thinking about the cessation of aging. In the last two years I started thinking about some data that Cassie Rauser had collected on the cessation of reproductive aging in our fruit flies. She showed that the timing of this cessation, and the reproductive function of flies that have stopped reproductive aging, depended on their environment. These findings raised the possibility, in my mind, that we might be able to manipulate when mortality declines stop too, using environmental manipulation, in fruit flies or humans.

A few fruit fly experiments later, we are already seeing signs of such an opportunity: declining and stabilizing mortality too can be manipulated environmentally. This work is by Marta Santos and her team in my lab, and will be submitted for publication soon.

So, how to manipulate humans so as to stop our aging sooner, and in better condition? How to find a third option for immortalists, a less drastic choice before cryonic or cyber immortality?

As we explain in some detail in our book Does Aging Stop? (Mueller, Rauser, & Rose, 2011; Oxford University Press), shifting back to lifestyles that are physiologically comparable to those of hunter-gatherers provides a possibility of stopping aging at earlier ages, and in better shape. [For those who aren’t scientists, I have presented this possibility in some detail at the website Rob Patterson has built for me: 55theses.org.] This possibility is particularly available for those whose ancestors have never adapted to agriculture, such as the northern First Nations of Canada or the non-agricultural tribes of tropical rainforests. For them, Larry Mueller’s calculations suggest that they may be able to stop aging in middle-age in particularly good shape.

For the rest of us, the prospects are not quite as good, if we switch to hunter-gatherer lifestyles. But the possibility does present itself that we may be able to stop our aging phase, not our “aging process,” by an age like 70, and do so in much better condition than present-day 70 year-olds can sustain.

Then, as medicine becomes still better at rescuing us from the accidents of thromboses, malignancies, and car collisions, we could remain on this aging-arrested plateau indefinitely.

Something for you all to think about.

Michael Rose went to the University of Sussex in 1976 for his doctoral studies on aging in Drosophila melanogaster. There he began his work on the evolution of aging and created Drosophila stocks with postponed aging. In 1991, his Evolutionary Biology of Aging appeared, offering a view of aging that was a complete departure from the views that had dominated the aging field since 1960. Evolution described the field of gerontology as now “after Rose”. In 1997, Rose was awarded the Busse Research Prize by the World Congress of Gerontology. In 2004, he published a technical summary of his work on the postponement of aging, Methuselah Flies, followed in 2005 by a popular book on the topic, The Long Tomorrow. In addition, Michael Rose has published general books on evolution: the wide-ranging Darwin’s Spectre, Evolutionary biology in the modern world, and the copiously illustrated Evolution and Ecology of the Organism (with L.D. Mueller). His most recent book, with L.D. Mueller and C.L. Rauser, is Does Aging Stop? (Oxford University Press).

A masculine bedroom

A man's dining room

Restoration Hardware

A man's style

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A man's room

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Willow Bader

BLOOD PRESSURE

Wow, I could believe, we had health screenings today at work, and I could not believe my blood pressure is only 117/81.  The lowest it has ever been for me. 

A primary vegetarian diet has to account for at least some of this drop in my blood pressure.  ­­ 

TV versus Exercise

Watch a lot less TV and exercise for a substantially longer life

Watching TV for an average of six hours a day could shorten the viewer's life expectancy by almost five years, indicates research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The impact rivals that of other well known behavioural risk factors, such as smoking and lack of exercise. Other research has shown that lifelong smoking is associated with the shortening of life expectancy by more than 4 years after the age of 50, with the average loss of life from one cigarette calculated to be 11 minutes - equivalent to half an hour of TV watching.

A study published Online First by The Lancet shows that just 15 minutes of physical activity per day reduces a person's risk of death by 14% and increases life expectancy by 3 years compared with inactive people. The Article is by Dr Chi-Pang Wen, National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan, and China Medical University Hospital, and Dr Jackson Pui Man Wai, National Taiwan Sport University, and colleagues.

On the basis of self-reported weekly exercise, participants were placed into one of five categories of exercise volumes: inactive, or low, medium, high, or very high activity. The authors calculated hazard ratios (HR) for mortality risks for every group compared with the inactive group, and calculated life expectancy for every group.

Compared with individuals in the inactive group, those in the low-volume activity group, who exercised for an average of 92 min per week (about 15 min a day) had a 14% reduced risk of all-cause mortality, a 10% reduced risk of all-cancer mortality, and on average a 3 year longer life expectancy. Every additional 15 min of daily exercise beyond the minimum amount of 15 min a day further reduced all-cause mortality by 4% and all-cancer mortality by 1%. These benefits were applicable to all age groups and both sexes, and to those with cardiovascular disease risks. Individuals who were inactive had a 17% increased risk of mortality compared with individuals in the low-volume group.

Yahoo! News Story - Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands | The Lookout - Yahoo! News

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Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands | The Lookout - Yahoo! News
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Monday, August 15th, 2011

Gosh, really busy at work.  Had shredded wheat and coconut milk for breakfast, and large salad for lunch.

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Plateau Busting - from The Art of Manliness

Plateau Busting: How to Take Your Life to the Next Level

In our quest to become the best men we can be, we’ll often hit plateaus where we feel like we aren’t making any progress at all. Those flat-line moments in life can be a real soul sucker. You can see where you want to be as a man, but you’re stuck at a level just below your desired goal. It seems like no matter what you do, you’ll never be able to improve.

Well, fear not, good men. Though you may feel destined to a purgatory of perpetual pedestrian plateauing, with a few minor adjustments to your view on life and your routine, you can punch through the cement wall of mediocrity and level up to the life you want.

Road Map to Plateauing

Back in the 60s, two psychologists, Paul Fitts and Michael Posner, set out to uncover why we plateau. They discovered that when we acquire a skill, we go through three stages.

The first stage of skill acquisition is called the cognitive phase. In this phase, we must concentrate intently on what we’re doing as we figure out strategies on how to accomplish the skill more efficiently and effectively. The cognitive phase is riddled with mistakes as we learn the ins and outs of our new pursuit.

The second phase of skill acquisition is the associative phase. During the associative phase, we make fewer mistakes. Consequently, we feel more comfortable with the skill and begin to concentrate less on what we’re doing.

The final stage is the autonomous phase, or what Joshua Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein, calls the “O.K. plateau.” We reach a skill level where we’re able to capably do the task without having to really think about it at all. Remember about how much you thought about what you were doing when you first got your driver’s license? Now driving is fairly automatic, like brushing your teeth.

This progression to the the O.K. plateau shows up in all areas of our lives. The plateaus we experience in our career, in our fitness level, in our love life, or in our spiritual life often follow this three stage process.

There are areas of your life where being okay is, well, a-okay. I don’t have any desire to be able to drive like Mario Andretti, and it’s handy to have many of life’s tasks set on autopilot.

But then there are areas of your life where you’ve hit a wall, and you’re not happy about it–you’re doing fine, but you’re still plagued with a restless feeling that there’s something more out there, a higher level you’d really like to reach.

People used to think that you couldn’t break past these plateaus because a plateau represented the limit of your genetic ability. No amount of exertion or education would help you overcome this wall. But Fitts, Posner, and other psychologists have discovered that with the right approach and a few attitude adjustments, all of us can bust through our plateaus and reach even higher.

How to Overcome Plateaus

Take risks. Growth comes when we stretch past our comfort zone. The big reason many people (especially high-achievers) plateau is because they don’t like to fail. Instead of taking on challenges that will help us grow, we stick with routines that we know we can successfully do. To protect our ego, we’d rather do the wrong things correctly, than do the right things wrongly. This aversion to risk is a recipe for plateauing.

Embrace the suck. To overcome your aversion to risk, you have to give yourself permission to fail and be mediocre. Instead of avoiding the things that are hardest for them, the greats of the world specifically focus on those things; they purposefully concentrate on the areas in which they make the most mistakes. This keeps them from getting stuck in the autonomous phase and propels their progress. So instead of seeing failure as a negative thing, think of your failures as steps to success. If you choose to learn from your failures, they can bring you closer to your goal; when you cut a string and then tie it back together, it’s shorter than it once was.

Step out of the echo chamber. Another reason we plateau is because everyone around us is telling us everything is gravy. We often confide in people who tell us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear. I know I’m guilty of doing this. I’ll finish a project and take it to somebody for some “constructive criticism,” when really I just want some positive affirmation on what I did.

If you feel stuck in an area of your life, seek out mentors who won’t pull any punches and will give you the honest criticism you need to improve. Yes, your ego will get bruised, but that’s the price one must pay for personal and professional growth.

Learning to accept criticism is something that simply takes discipline and practice. First you work on taking the criticism into consideration at all. Then you work on shortening the time period between your initial reaction of “What?! There’s nothing wrong with what I did you noodle-brain knucklehead!” and the time later when you’re able to calmly reflect and see if there’s value in the criticism. I suppose the next stage is to skip that momentary urge to punch the criticizer in the throat altogether, but I’m not there yet myself!

Practice deliberately. Fitts and Posner discovered three keys to breaking through your plateau: 1) focus on technique, 2) stay goal oriented, and 3) and get immediate feedback on the performance. In other words, you need to practice deliberately to break through plateaus.

When Joshua Foer was trying to improve his memory in preparation for the United States Memory Championship, he hit a plateau where he stopped progressing. Despite a strict training regimen in which he looked at flash cards during his spare moments and constantly memorized things wherever he went, he couldn’t seem to get any better. To bust through this plateau, he had to deliberately push himself harder than before:

“To improve, we have to be constantly pushing ourselves beyond where we think our limits lie and then pay attention to how and why we fail. That’s what I needed to do if I was going to improve my memory. With typing, it’s relatively easy to get past the O.K. plateau. Psychologists have discovered that the most efficient method is to force yourself to type 10 to 20 percent faster than your comfort pace and to allow yourself to make mistakes. Only by watching yourself mistype at that faster speed can you figure out the obstacles that are slowing you down and overcome them. Ericsson suggested that I try the same thing with cards. He told me to find a metronome and to try to memorize a card every time it clicked. Once I figured out my limits, he instructed me to set the metronome 10 to 20 percent faster and keep trying at the quicker pace until I stopped making mistakes. Whenever I came across a card that was particularly troublesome, I was supposed to make a note of it and see if I could figure out why it was giving me cognitive hiccups. The technique worked, and within a couple days I was off the O.K. plateau, and my card times began falling again at a steady clip. Before long, I was committing entire decks to memory in just a few minutes.”

After a year of practice, Foer was able to memorize the order of a shuffled deck of cards in under two minutes.

Get back to basics. Whenever I hit plateaus in my life, my first response is to look for something new I can do to get me out of it. I think, “If I only find the right workout or the right planning system, my life will change and I can start making progress again.” Sometimes changing things up can help us break through a plateau, but in my experience, I just waste more time searching for that new, magic thing that will change my life for the better. So instead of spending time on searching for the new, I start focusing on the basics. When I hit a plateau with my writing, I’ll review my composition skills by doing some exercises from a book. When I hit a plateau with my weight lifting, I’ll reduce the weight, focus on my form, and slowly start adding weight again.

On numerous occasions, I’ve found that even when you’re advanced at something, delving back into the basics can actually give you fresh insights that help you progress even further.

Think long term. When we think short-term, we have a tendency to feel that plateaus are permanent. But when we take the big picture view of things, we start to see plateaus as temporary way stations that we’ll eventually get past with a bit of hard work. Moreover, by thinking long term, we give ourselves more latitude to take risks and fail because we see that missteps are just momentary setbacks in the long journey of life.

To cultivate this attitude, reflect on a time where you felt you had reached the end of your development in some area, only to later bust through the plateau. If it was possible then; it’s possible now. If you don’t have that experience yet yourself, ask a friend to tell you about one of his.

When I was learning Spanish while living in Mexico, I hit a point where I felt like I had stopped progressing, and I didn’t feel like I could get any better. But I couldn’t shake the niggling feeling that I was wrong. So I made another push–I started reading my basic Spanish grammar books again, and I stopped being afraid to make mistakes. I just went for it when talking with people. And lo and behold, my fluency rose to a whole new level. Now when I reach a plateau in another area of my life, I simply remember that example, and realize that the feeling that I’ll never get any better is nothing more than my darn lazy brain selling me a bill of goods.

My weekend

I woke up early this morning and decided to venture down Westlake Avenue in downtown Seattle.  I needed to go the Whole Food store to search for a few more items for a care packet I'm sending my daughter.  As I strolled down the road on my adventure, I found several stores I hadn't known were in the neighborhood, including several modern furniture shops, design stores, art galleries, and then WOW - a TESLA car dealership on Westlake Avenue N and Republican Street.  They had several of their roadsters on display, and I was smiten.  A 100% electric vehicle with a range of 285 miles, sufficient to get me from Seattle to Portland.  New they cost $109,000.  They came out in 2008, so there are few heavily discounted used one available. If $85,000 is a bargain.   Perhaps oneday.... 

Additionally, I found a couple of unique furniture stores; including Modele's that sales consignment furniture, that was high quality nearly 75% store prices, and then also Antique Liquidators at 503 Westlake Avenue, that I was simply amazing at the pricing on some of the huge chests, made high quality fine woods in the $1200 range.  Most were priced at $2400, but nearly everything had  50% off tag on it.  The the owner said he was still willing to negotiate an even lower price.  The same for tables/chairs.  3 floors.

Overall, I spent little time in the office this weekend, choosing instead to relax, I've been working most weekends, atleast a few hours each day, but not this weekend.   It was a meatless weekend too.  I made myself several big salads, and even steamed a large yam.  I still ended up having a peach yogurt, coffee at Starbucks and Blueberry scones (twice) over the weekend, but overall, I was pretty much eat healthy.  

The most interesting thing I read this weekend, from Men's Health, an article entitled Make Your Own Moai - The ancient Japanese formed moai, or groups of four or five friends who stayed friends for their entire lives, making loans to each other, and providing meals when needed.  The practice persists on Okinawa, where the longest lived population of humans trive in their communities, many of them considered modern day methuselahs, where a significant percentage of the population reach 100+ years of each in perfect, active health.   The Moai, or their inner circle of committed friends, provide them with a social network of friends that once formed, they never worry about losing, except by death, it's culturally imparted to every member of the Moai, it's for life.  They grew up with and stayed close to their inner group.  If you succeeded, you helped your Moai members whose lives were less fortunate.  It's inbred in the culture.   Moai's are common place.  Today, the moai group, meets daily or weekly just to talk.  It's a priority for them to hangout with their moai.  Nothing in their lives will prevent them from meeting with their Moai at least weekly.  They don't refer to themselves simply as friend's, but as MOAI.   Membership in the Moai, are different from the typical friends or acquaintance they meet during their lives, this inner group - is committed to one another for their entire lives, closer than a brother or a sister.  I personally had saw the video's entitled BLUE ZONES who interviewed a moai.  More importantly, in a recent Drexel University Study, older adults with subpar social lives were more likely to die of heart disease adn cancer than those with more connections.

So, I'm looking to find myself 5 friend's in Seattle, to create my own Moai...

I started the weekend seeing a french movie - then ended up late Sunday going to see THE HELP.   The Help was set in the 50's and 60's civil rights struggle, and particularly touching story of the black maids of Jackson, Mississippi and their daily struggles with racism.  Great movie.

Fresh news - Romantic Love Can Last a Lifetime

Love. Whether in the form of poems, moony songs, philosophical treatises, romantic notes, or angry letters, no aspect of human life has had quite so much ink spilled over it. It has since time immemorial been a driving force of life, and for just as long remained utterly mysterious, an experience that could be mused over but not truly understood.


But in the last decade, scientists have finally gotten to peer into the neurological nature of love by scanning the brains of those in the throes of it. These scans have confirmed what anyone who has fallen head over heels has experienced firsthand: love is a wild and woolly ride.

As it turns out, your brain reacts to love the same way it reacts to cocaine. So you weren’t nuts to feel addicted to your beloved nor the physical pain of withdrawal when she left you. Love lights up the reward centers of your brain and douses them in dopamine, as well as serotonin and oxytocin. These neural fireworks set off feelings of euphoria, pleasure, craving, recklessness, and obsession.

So when you’re smitten, you’re literally flying high. But the high can’t last, and it isn’t designed to. Or so it was thought.

Researchers theorized that intense romantic love was only a temporary stage designed to make mate selection more efficient, and that once this powerful force brought two people together, it inevitably mellowed into attachment or “companionate love,” a stage that develops as time passes and the couple’s lives become intertwined. As opposed to the intensity of romantic love, companionate love is marked by a happy togetherness and a comfortable stability that is designed to keep the couple together to raise their children.

And indeed, that progression from romantic to companionate love can be observed in the majority of the population. When researchers looked at the brains of those who had been together for years, the scans confirmed their theory; the regions that used to light up with romantic love had dimmed and been replaced by activity in the centers for long-term attachment and pair-bonding. Passionate, romantic love, researchers concluded, had an average shelf-life of about 12-18 months–up to four years at the absolute most.

But what about the elderly couple holding hands that your girlfriend points at and says, “Aww, I want to be like them?” The couples who claim to still be head over heels for each other even after a few decades together? Are they lying? Fooling themselves? Is it possible to thwart evolutionary destiny?

Romantic Love Can Last

In 2010, researchers conducted a study to answer those questions. They brought in 17 people who claimed to still be in love with their spouses, with whom they had been with an average of 21 years, and scanned their brains with a functional MRI machine while each participant gazed at a picture of his or her beloved.

What they found surprised them; in key ways, the participants’ brains looked very similar to the brains of those who had just recently fallen in love. The important reward and motivation regions of their gray matter still lit up in the very same way.

They were not identical, however. Regions of the brain that are associated with anxiety and fear, which are active in the newly smitten, did not light up in those who had been with their partner a long time. These longer-term couples were still in love, but they were no longer afraid of losing or being separated from their partner—the fear of being dumped had passed. Instead, not only were the attachment and pair-bonding regions active, just as they were in the long-term companionate love couples, the regions associated with pleasure and pain-relief–opiate-rich sites that are also activated by primary rewards like morphine–lit up as well.

In other words, those who were still passionately in love after decades in a relationship enjoyed the intensity of romantic love, coupled with the stable attachment of companionate love, without the anxiety and obsession that accompanies new love, and with the added bonus of natural painkillers. A pretty nice state to be in, no?

Of course plenty of people are happy with just companionate love. Years with their spouse have forged a solid friendship and a comfortable groove between them.

Certainly there’s nothing wrong with companionate love; if it keeps you together and you’re happy, then great. And yet there are certainly compelling reasons to seek something beyond simply “good enough:”

Love is the grease in the gears of life. There are two central drivers of the actions we take in life: love and duty. Both are important, but love is the higher motivation and the one that makes life, and our relationships, easy and joyful.

In college I had an acquaintance I was not particularly fond of who called me late one night; he was at the airport an hour away and his ride had fallen through…could I come pick him up? I did so. But I went out the door grumbling and grumbled all the way to the airport. A few years later, when Kate and I were dating, she called me with the same request. It was even later at night. But this time I went rushing out the door and smiled the whole way. What was the difference? Duty versus love. Picking up Kate didn’t even slightly register as an inconvenience.

The sage William George Jordan puts the difference so well:

“Duty is forced, like a pump; love is spontaneous, like a fountain. Duty is prescribed and formal; it is part of the red tape of life. It means running on moral rails.

Analyze, if you will, any of the great historic instances of loyalty to duty, and whenever they ring true you will find the presence of the real element that made the act almost divine. It was duty—plus love.

Duty is a hard, mechanical process for making men do things that love would make easy. It is a poor understudy to love. It is not a high enough motive with which to inspire humanity. Duty is the body to which love is the soul. Love, in the divine alchemy of life, transmutes all duties into privileges, all responsibilities into joys.

The workman who drops his tools at the stroke of twelve, as suddenly as if he had been struck by lightning may be doing his duty—but he is doing nothing more. No man has made a great success of his life or a fit preparation for immortality by doing merely his duty. He must do that—and more. If he puts love into his work, the ‘more’ will be easy.”

When you remain deeply in love with someone, your responsibilities and obligations to them flow naturally and spontaneously. The more love in your relationship, the more grease there is on the gears of life, and the smoother things go in all areas of it. Lose that grease, and the gears must grind it out. Many people have said that marriage is hard. But this has not been my experience at all. Marriage has been easy. Truly.

Faithfulness Boost. This is related to the above point. The more the gears dryly grind together, the greater the chance of the machine breaking down.

Prairie voles are generally monogamous and mate with a lifelong partner. When they pair off, the dopamine in their brains increases by 50%, which solidifies this bond. But when they are injected with a chemical that blocks the production of dopamine, they’ll readily dump their partner to mate with others.

Of course humans aren’t prairies voles; when love and dopamine dry up, duty stands in as a safety net to keep us together. But far better never to have to endure that temptation and test that safety net by keeping our brains soaked with the chemicals of love.

Increased confidence and strength. When you first fell in love with your girl, did you feel like there was nothing in the world you couldn’t do? Did you feel awesome about yourself and ready to take on endeavors that used to seem daunting?

There’s a reason for that. Love de-activates regions within the amygdala that are associated with fear, increasing your confidence and willingness to take risks. Love buoys you up and makes you feel ready to take on the world. Men have done many a great thing in the name of love.

How to Make Love Last

So romantic love can last forever. This can either be validating or depressing news, depending on the current state of your relationship. As Dr. Arthur Aron, co-author of the study that proved the possible longevity of romantic love put it, “This is not something long term couples want to hear. Nobody wants to hear about couples doing better than they are. We all like to believe we’re the best.”

But if the passions of your relationship have cooled, there’s no need to simply mope about it. There are things you can do to heat things back up and keep the fires of romantic love burning. Romantic love is fueled by the release of dopamine, so one of the keys to sustaining it is to keep that chemical flowing. Here are a few ways to do that, along with other tips researchers have given for keeping romantic love strong.

1. Pick the right woman. Obviously the most important factor of all! The easiest way to keep the flame burning is to start with a roaring fire, and simply tend to it rather than having to poke at a cold bed of ashes for the next 50 years. When you get hitched, make sure she’s the one.

2. Keep things going in the bedroom. Dr. Aron’s studies have shown that the frequency of sex is a big factor in keeping romantic love alive. The couples in his study who were still madly in love after two decades together had sex an average of 2.2 times a week. That’s above the national average, but still a very attainable goal for any couple.

Of course this is a bit of the chicken and egg argument; do couples who are still in love have more sex, or does having more sex make them more in love? Likely it works in tandem, with one begetting the other.

3. Be a Married Master Mind. The biggest key to lasting love, Aron has found, is how much the partners in a relationship help each other expand their sense of self. We should look for a partner that helps us “increase our store of ideas, experiences, skills, interests and resources in order to accomplish an ever evolving set of goals.” This is what we discussed in our post about becoming a Married Master Mind. This concept is incredibly important–be sure to check out that article and really think it over.

4. Idealize each other. Studies have shown that the happiest couples are those who see each other in the best possible light. This is a matter of attitude, and something you can work on changing today. Spend less time dwelling on the things she does that annoy you, and more time recognizing all the good she does, all the things you love about her. Kate and I still say to each other, “You’re perfect.” Clearly, neither of us is. But we still sometimes see each other in that generous light.

5. Keep a sense a humor. Laughing is a sure-fire way to release dopamine, and I credit it as a big part of the success of our marriage. We make each other laugh every day, and even when we fight, we have trouble sustaining a proper angry face without dissolving into fits of laughter and the realization that whatever we were fighting about was pretty dumb.

6. Keep things fresh. Enjoying new experiences together will release dopamine and bring back the butterflies you felt when you first started dating. You’ve probably experienced this when you’ve gone on vacation with your partner; you likely felt those old romantic feelings surge again. It wasn’t just because you got away from work and the kids, but because you were doing something new and different, which turned on the dopamine faucet. You don’t have to go on a cruise to get this effect though. Instead of doing the same old thing for date night, try a new restaurant, visit a museum you’ve never been to before, or find a new trail to hike.

An Ancient Proverb

A very ancient proverb, undoubtedly borne of experience, which says, "Man does not die: he kills himself and he digs his grave with his teeth."   Watch what and how much you eat!

23andme: Using Personal Genome Analysis (PGA) for Promoting Healthier Longer Lives

 23andme will analyse your genome for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), variations in single nucleotides, which can correlate with disease, drug response and other phenotypes.

Personal genome analysis (PGA) will revolutionize how we think about our own health. Currently, whenever a symptom or illness presents itself, we see doctors and those doctors provide medicines and treatments to remove or control the problem. With PGA we can discover what diseases we may be at risk of developing and in some cases adjust our lifestyles to reduce/prevent disease occurrence/progression.

Genetic knowledge could postpone/prevent the appearance of a disease by taking the appropriate steps. Prevention of disease, means healthier, longer lives.

There have also been a few studies looking at SNP’s associated with longevity. One study compared 213 Ashkenazi Jewish subjects ranging in age from 95 to 107 to a group of counterparts about 30 years their junior. Members of the longer-lived group were more likely to have a C in both copies of the SNP rs2542052. People with this genetic signature tended to be more sensitive to insulin and were less likely to have high blood pressure, which suggests it may promote longevity by protecting against cardiovascular disease.
Another study, which is more related to longevity in the Asian population, compared 213 Japanese men who lived 95 years or longer to 402 Japanese men who died before the age of 81. The researchers found that the longer-lived Japanese men were more likely to have a C at one or both copies of rs2764264, a SNP in the FOXO3A gene. Each C at rs2764264 was associated with about 1.6 greater odds of reaching age 95 or beyond compared to having a T at this position. The FOXO3A gene has been shown to modulate longevity in laboratory animals.

http://www.23andme.com/

right now they have a low price of $99 down and $9 per mo. for 1 Year.  I going to order the kit within the next 30 days. 

A Gentleman Never Arrives Empty-Handed

in A Man's Life

It’s a sultry summer night, and you’re on your way to an elegant dinner party given by your boss and his charming wife. You arrive at the appropriate time, impeccably dressed in casual evening wear and greet your hostess with a smile—and nothing more.

Imagine your mortification and horror when you pass a table in the hall loaded with bottles of wine, flower arrangements, gourmet coffee, and other small gifts. You search your brain…is it the host’s anniversary? A birthday? Did someone retire?

Although the party might be a celebration of one of those occasions, it’s far more likely that guests with better manners than you brought thoughtful tokens of appreciation for their hosts.

Like thank you notes, the giving of gifts to your hosts is becoming a lost art. When we do remember to bring a nice little something, it’s invariably a bouquet of flowers or a bottle of wine from the corner liquor store. Really, can’t we do better than that?

Gone may be the days of bringing your hostess lavish crystal or a pair of mourning doves when you arrive at the manor for a weekend stay, but we haven’t become complete savages. Your hosts have expended a great deal of time, effort, and expense to provide you with an evening (or weekend) of food, drink, and entertainment. The least you can do is thank them with an appropriate gift.

Summer is here and with it a bevy of seasonal social obligations: barbeques, picnics, dinner parties, and weekends away. Never arrive at someone’s home without something more to contribute than your personality, as stunning as it might be. Take this opportunity to man up and accept this simple rule: no matter what the occasion, a gentleman never arrives empty-handed.

The Rules of Appropriate Gifting

A hostess gift doesn’t have to be expensive, but it should be thoughtful. Consider the types of activities your hosts enjoy, and gift accordingly. As a general rule, your budget should be around $15 to $30, depending upon the formality of the occasion.

An important rule to remember is that you should never bring anything that makes more work for your hosts. The best example is that of flowers: If you bring a cello-wrapped bouquet, your hostess must stop what she is doing, find a vase, trim the ends from the flowers and greenery, arrange the bouquet, and find a place for it. If you’re giving flowers, be sure to bring a bouquet that is already arranged in a vase.

Likewise, never bring food to add to the menu unless your hostess has specifically requested you do so. If you’d like to bring food or drink as your gift, make sure your hosts understand that the gift is for their enjoyment, and you don’t expect them to share it with their guests.

Give Thoughtfully

Although wine and flowers are traditional hostess gifts and will always be appreciated, why not challenge yourself and come up with something a little more creative? Try one of these suggestions:

■Gourmet coffee. Always opt for whole bean coffee (if they’re the kind of people who will enjoy coffee as a gift, they’re likely to have their own grinder). Skip the fancy flavors and select a medium brew from a recognized brand, not the mystery bag you find on the shelf at Ross.

■Fine chocolate. For a gift of chocolate to be a hit, it must be unusual and special. Visit an upscale department store or chocolatier for a small box of exquisite truffles.

■Posh spices. If you know your hosts enjoy cooking, visit an upscale market or boutique for a selection of interesting peppercorns, cinnamon, or other often-used spices. A set of sea salts will likely be a big hit. You might also consider a small assortment of spices for ethnic food, such as turmeric, saffron, or coriander.

■Scented candles. Yes, these are overdone, but there’s a reason for that—most everyone enjoys them. Opt for something well-crafted, not a Glade candle from the supermarket. For a host, try a candle with a uniquely masculine scent–like one that smells like a barbershop.

■Kitchen gadgets. Hosts that frequently entertain will always enjoy adding another tool to their party arsenal, like retro metal cocktail skewers, linen kitchen cloths, or a set of unique coasters.

■Fresh produce. If you happen to garden, bring a small box of your garden’s bounty, packaged so that it can go straight into the refrigerator. Even if your hosts are carnivores, they’ll delight in your interesting gift. Skip this option if you don’t garden or settle for something simple, like a large basket of succulent road-stand strawberries.

Avoid overly personal gifts, such as perfume, bath products, or articles of clothing. Although etiquette guides disagree, skip the houseplant unless your hostess has a renowned green thumb; otherwise, you put her at risk of worrying if she’ll kill it.

Although it may seem terribly clever, resist the urge to develop a “signature” gift, such as a particular bottle of wine you bring each time you visit. You might think your hosts delight in receiving your special brand of manliness, but in reality, they’re probably chuckling about the fact that you’ve brought the same bottle of poor quality chardonnay to their last three dinner parties.

Let the Gift Match the Occasion

Your hostess gift should reflect the occasion. An elaborate flower arrangement isn’t appropriate for a pool party, just as a six-pack just won’t do for a formal dinner. Consider the tone and nature of the party, and gift accordingly.

Occasions that demand hostess gifts include dinner parties, pool parties, weekend visits, extended stays…basically anytime you’re foisting your presence on someone in their home.

Although Peggy Post, descendent of etiquette doyenne Emily Post, says that it isn’t necessary to bring a gift to a cocktail party or open house, what could it hurt? Who doesn’t want another bottle of premium vodka for their bar? Who would be offended by a simple flower arrangement? It’s far better to err on the side of graciousness and bring a little something, regardless of the occasion.

Wine, Beer & Spirits

All this talk of flowers and scented candles aside, most men prefer to bring liquor to events they attend. Yes, as we’ve mentioned it’s not very unique, but it’s well-received, it’s easier, and it’s something many men feel more comfortable buying and giving. Appropriate to nearly every occasion—except if you’re visiting a “dry” house—alcohol can be a thoughtful hostess gift if you think a little before you purchase it.

Take wine, for example. If your hosts are oenologists, don’t insult them with a bottle of two-buck Chuck. Visit a real liquor store and purchase something in the $20 range, like a nice chardonnay or cabernet sauvignon. Or you could exercise a little creativity and select an interesting sauvignon blanc, viognier, zinfandel (red only, please), muscat or shiraz from a more unusual wine region, like Alexander Valley or Chile. If you are helpless around wine, ask the proprietor for help.

Fine liquor makes for another excellent hostess gift. Unless you know your host has specific tastes in spirits, stick to the basics, like brandy, fine gin, flavored vodka, or top-shelf tequila. Jagermeister, Goldschlager, and flavored schnapps are never acceptable.

You might think that beer isn’t an appropriate hostess gift, but you would be wrong—provided you give it at the right occasion. As previously mentioned, a formal dinner is not the right event for beer, unless, of course, your host is a microbrewery aficionado. In that case, opt for something unique and interesting, like something you’d order from a beer club. For more casual occasions, pick up a six-pack of good beer, like a stout or an IPA.

Giving the Gift with Style

Although it isn’t necessary to stick a bow on your sixer or your wine in a fancy bag, you should take care to present your gift with style. Non-alcohol-related gifts should be wrapped or otherwise artfully presented, with the price tags removed and the store bag left in the car.

When you arrive, don’t thrust the package at your host the moment she opens the door. Say hello, walk inside, and only then present your host with your thoughtful gift. Make certain she knows that she is under no obligation to share; the gift is purely for her amusement and enjoyment.