Source

My dear son, back in the year 2010 I was already planning a conversation I wanted to have with you during dinner in the year 2023 or so:

Me:

Allergies are a reaction from the immune system when it recognizes harmless molecules (chicken) as a thread. People with a chicken allergy might have tongue swelling whenever they eat it. The tongue becomes bigger because the immune system is trying to fight the “dangerous invaders”.

Son: For heavens sake, here we go again… So why is the immune system getting it wrong?

Me:

Because they got too much chicken in your blood stream before.

Son: What? How did get chicken in anyones blood?

Me:

Short explanation: When you eat food it goes through your gut, and when your gut has microscopic holes, little chicken molecules can enter your blood stream. If that happens many times, your immune system will thing: “Hey those atoms don’t belong here. They are invaders, lets fight them.” Now every time you eat chicken your immune system goes berserk and that is how you can get allergic to chicken (or any other food).

Son: Next question: How can there be little holes in my gut?

Me:

That one gets long: Stuff that can damage your gut lining:

1. Bacteria / Viruses / Parasites
2. Alcohol
3. Grains!
4. Dairy!

Seriously milk and cereals can make holes in your gut. The long explanation is as follows.
Humans eat cereals only since 10.000 to 12.000 years. That is a very short time evolutionary speaking. Before that we ate flesh, fish, vegetables, roots, fruits, beans because those kinds of things you could hunt, or gather. Cereals one must cultivate.
If one eats a berry the berry gives us delicious fruit-flesh and in return we transport the kernel of the berry to a different location and put it down (feces). So the berry is very happy to be eaten. If a grass is eaten (all cereals are a from of grass) this was it. Once it exits your digestive system it cannot grow to a grass again, because you chew it. So cereals didn’t like to be eaten and developed several mechanisms to fight that. Under the skin of wheat there are many minerals, vitamins and alike to help the corn to grow. But there are also poisons to fight off hungry birds, mice, and humans. Whole wheat is very bad for us, and in the history of men we never voluntarily ate whole wheat. Except during famines we always took the outer layer, the bran, off.
The bad news is, the skin of the grain is not the only place with poison, basically the whole grain is filled with antinutrients (stuff we cannot eat).
Lectins are one example. The most famous lectin is “wheat germ agglutinin” (WGA). WGA is found in all grains and is a problem for 3 main reasons:

1. We cannot break them down in our stomach, gut, or any other part of the digestive process.
2. Some lectins trick the wall of our gut (intestinal lining) to believe they are something yummy, like sugar, so they can slip though into the blood stream. (They are not allowed to go there.) When they slips through it makes holes in the gut because the WGA molecule is many times too big.
3. Big proteins like WGA are easily mistaken by our immune system for a vicious invader (bacteria). So the immune system starts fighting it and you get allergic to cereals.

Son: Okay, that was long, thank you, may you…

Me:

… explain why our immune system is fighting against it?
Our immune system is designed so it fights everything that does not look like it comes from our own bodies. It hates everything it doesn’t know.
When the immune cells find some molecule time after time they recognize it by it’s shape. Every molecule is made of atoms with a very specific structure, if the structure changes it is not the same molecule anymore. Lets say atoms are like Lego-bricks. Imagine a structure of 7 to 10 Lego-bricks with specific colors, shapes put together in one specific way. This structure is like a protein in our pancreas. Now imagine the 7 to 10 bricks structure to be on top of a several meters huge structure, with many hundredths of bricks. This huge structure of Lego-bricks is like WGA. One tiny part on one side looks the same as the protein in your pancreas, but the rest is completely different.
Now imagine a cell from our immune system coming along and seeing this huge thing. It docs on any random side of the WGA molecule to mark it as something dangerous. The immune system does not care where exactly it docs on, as long as it can recognize the new “dangerous” invader. There are hundreds of sides on the WGA molecule to mark it, but sometimes the immune system just happens to recognize the molecule at the little area on top with the 7 to 10 bricks. The area that looks exactly like the innocent protein in our pancreas. Then the immune system does not only learn to attack the WGA molecule, but also the innocent hormone. When this happens, people get type 1 diabetes.
This also can happen to the myelin sheath of your brain, it is called multiple sclerosis.
Being allergic to gluten (part of cereals) is called “celiac”.
Only 3 examples of a long list of “auto immune” disease.

Son: Okay I got it! Now…

Me:

… you want more examples? Sure, here is a short list of autoimmune response caused by a leaky gut:
• Infertility • Type 1 diabetes • Multiple sclerosis • Rheumatoid Arthritis • Lupus • Vitiligo • Narcolepsy • Schizophrenia • Autism • Depression • Huntington’s • Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma • Hypothyroidism • Porphyria

Son: I don’t need any more explanations.

Me:

Glad you asked, yes there are further ways in which little holes in our gut can harm our body. When the microvilli (gut wall) gets damaged not only can chicken molecules and feces enter your blood stream, but also your gall bladder does not release bile salts (they are needed to process fats and other nutrition). Now when all the bile salts stays in the gall bladder, cholesterol crystals can form in your gall bladder and then become gallstones. Removing gallstones is like killing the “canary in the coal mine”.

Son: Great basically I cannot eat anything. Thanks for making me miserable.

Me:

Yes, my pleasure, here is a list of stuff you can eat:

• Meat • Fish • Vegetables • Fruits • Beans • Nuts • Eggs • Roots • Mushrooms

Some recipes you can find here: 30-day meal plans

Son: Dad, you are an asshole, hand me the rice now.

Me:

Oh, sorry you have been waiting for me to hand you rice… Why didn’t you say so? That reminds me of another interesting fact…

Honestly, I don’t know where I stand on that issue by now. But back in the day it seemed like an amazingly great idea. I read on the side huntergatherlove about an Anthropologist who was surprised by the excellent bone structure of tribes who continued and ancestral diet. Also people in the Paleolithic Age were about 20 cm taller than people in the Neolithic Ages. We evolved over millions of years without access to dairy products or grasses. It makes sense to assume that bacteria in our gut are not adapted to this relatively new diet.

In the case that whole thing is real, health improves if you stop eating pasta and you can buy “Paleolithic foods” now, remember: your old man was amongst the first to have known about it.

I believe from now on it will just get better and better, on average.

Every kind of ethical code, every kind of event in our recorded history as a species points to one inevitable fact; humans want to have more.

This is great news.
Because humans always want more, we work, we fight, we play, and we cheat.
One crucial important thing is, we work more than we fight and we play more together, than we cheat.
Cultures that fight more than they work have a notoriously short history.
Think of the Roman Empire and the Mongol empire. Both are known for their superior armies, but only one prospered over centuries, the other one rose and dissolved within one generation.
What was the big difference? The Romans build roads, educated the locals, added value to the areas they conquered. The Mongol hordes burned everything down.

There is mathematical proof for this notion, it is called game theory. The easiest example is a game where people have to trade with each other.

If both are honest both earn 1 $ each, 2 $ in total.
If one cheats and the other is honest, the cheater gets 2$ and the honest one loses 1 $, in total 1$.
If both cheat both earn 0 $ each, 0 $ in total.
For one person the best strategy is to cheat all the time. Cheaters always win or stay even.
Honest people earn only a little, or loose a little.
In this game it is obvious everyone will cheat.

Imagine would live 1,000 years ago. You could stay at home and work hard in the fields 80 hours a week. Or you could sleep in late have fun, play and at night, go to the farmers and steal from them. You would have enough food and only work 10 hours a week.
Clearly stealing is the better strategy, so why did anyone choose to be a farmer?
The answer is very simple, because the thieves all died. Only the farmers survived.
The game above describes it perfectly, if everyone in the society works hard and trades goods, everyone benefits and ends up with more than they had. You plant potatoes, I breed cattle, we both have more than we need and share our excess. So both of us have plenty of potatoes and meat. In total we earn 2 $.
If you work hard and I steal from you, I get a lot and you lose, because you worked hard in total we still earned 1 $ as a group.
If both of us steal from each other we get nothing and die of hunger.
Now some smart scientists made the experiment with the same rules as described above. But they added an important part. Many people play this kind of game using a computer, so they don’t see each other. They play this game many times and they will never know the name of who they are playing with.
Here comes the amazing part: The scientists said to the people: We made 2 versions, the rules are identical but in the first version you cannot punish someone if they cheated on you. In the second version you can punish a cheater you simply push the button and the cheater has to wait for one round where he cannot play.
Almost all people choose they don’t need punishment and choose the first version.

What followed should have been obvious to everyone who ever heard a thing about history.
One person started to cheat in the first version, and soon everyone discovered that cheating is the best strategy.
Now the scientists said: every round you can change the version if you wish.
People started to change from the non-punish version to the punish version. Everyone who cheated was soon punished, so everyone played honest.
At the end the few remaining ones in the non-punish version of the game earned almost nothing. But everyone in the punish version of the game earned quite a lot.
The important lesson from this is, even if everyone is selfish and only cares about him/herself it turns out that in real life being honest and helping each other is the best way to get rich especially if you meet the person again in the future.

To be honest the story is a little bigger than described here. There always were thieves and there always will be. We as a society punish with the help of a police, but to be honest the police do not catch many thieves. There is a certain number, maybe 1% maybe 3%, I don’t know. As long as only 1% of the population steals it is no problem, the rest works hard and 1% less does not make any difference. The police is there to keep the number low, but 0% is almost impossible.

Interestingly if you know about this little game suddenly society makes a lot of sense. Christian religion says that you will suffer for your sins (stealing is one of those sins). Maybe not now, but after you died. This is great because everyone who does not want to be in hell must not steal. Perfect if your police force consists of a few drunken soldiers who ride on horses and can’t even take fingerprints.

Another amazing thing is, our brains are hard wired from birth on to hate people cheating on us and make us feel good for being honest. What do I mean by that. Another game, the ultimatum game.
Imagine 2 kids. I tell the first kid I will give you 10 cookies, but you have to share with the other kid. If the other kid says you shared to little I will not give you the cookies.
So the first kid says: I will give you one cookie. This is clearly a great deal for the second kid. Free cookie! 1 for the second kid (better than 0) and 9 cookies for the first kid. Both win.
But this is not how the game plays out. As it turns out, if the first kid offers less than 5 cookies, the second kid will rather have no cookie at all, than to accept this injustice.
For adults it is 6 cookies (yes there are some adults so rational that they will prefer 1 cookie over 0, logical)
So obviously this is evolutionary insanity. Imagine you are out in the wild, having one cookie will feed you for a day, why would our brains make us do such an illogical thing?
The answer is pretty simple, to punish the cheaters. If everyone works hard to punish all cheaters, cheaters will stop cheating. As an individual not getting one cookie is okay, because in the future the other person will be sure to give you 5 cookies.
Another famous example is the hourly wage of factory workers. The workers had to choose what wage they would prefer: First shift (they): 60$, second shift (the others) 61$. Or first shift 58 $, second shift 57 $.
As you guessed right, they choose 58$ just because it was unfair for the other shift to earn more than they did.

By the way primates (monkeys) act exactly the same way, they rather not have any cookie than getting less than the others.

With understanding this simple idea you can explain so much. Why we have a God and a Devil. Why you get reborn as a worm in Hinduism. Why we turn on the news, night after night, although all we see is people stealing, murdering and other bad news.
Think about it, if one person cheated you and you tell everyone that they should protect themselves from the cheater. The cheater will soon starve to death because no one is willing to help him/her.

Here comes a thought experiment: what would happen if the game was a little different:

Both are honest 1 $ each, 2 $ in total.
Cheater gets 2$, honest person loses 0$, 2$ in total.
If both cheat both get 0$, 0 $ in total.

This somehow resembles the software industry.
Lets say I am a baker. If I buy the software from Microsoft I give them money and because the great software helps me organize I can bake a little more bread. Both earn +1 $.
If I download the software illegally, Microsoft does not lose anything, but I keep my money and make more bread +2$ for me.
If I download the software illegally and Microsoft made really shitty software that does not help me at all, they get nothing and I get nothing, +/-0$.

The thing is, downloading illegally is not stealing, because Microsoft does not lose money. I bake more bread, so I can sell it cheaper to the Microsoft employees. Still if too few people pay for software Microsoft cannot pay its employees, no more software for anyone.

So the number of thieves in our society can be somewhere around 1% and we still prosper. For software the number of thieves can be around 20% and Microsoft still earns money. Obviously they have to charge the people who do pay more money to make up for the thieves. Therefore more people are willing to steal. The only way to counter that is by lowering the price.

Imagine how many iPhone apps for 1$ each, are downloaded illegally. Very few. Stealing makes no sense. But because so many people are willing to buy the app they programmers still earn a very good living.

Well I suppose you reading this means, it is ca. 2030 by now and you have heard everything about 2001. When a few guys with Arab background decided to use 4 planes and kill Americans. From that day on the interest of the Western countries was on the Arab culture. Well the war in Afghanistan and Iraq just held that interest alive a little longer.

On a side note, is the former President of the US, Georg W. Bush Jr. by now officially the worst President of the USA ever? I guess unless some crazy chick named Sarah Palin didn’t win any elections, Georg W. must be officially the worst president ever.

Back to the topic, Arab cultures, as you might know I have friends in Arab nations. Well one very smart and close friend of mine asked me a question. I try to paraphrase: “Why are Arab nations not as economically successful as Western (US and EU)?”

I have no expertise in this topic, meaning it’s the perfect question for me to answer.

In order to make it work I will take the shotgun approach, this means I will give a lot of different explanations in the hope that one will get it right.

Before I answer anything, I try to put the whole Arab vs West into context. My friend lived in Morocco at that time. North African Arabs see themselves as superior to those savages in the south of the Sahara. As they are so close to the EU they think of themselves as being half European half African (especially the upper class). And this is where the conflict I am talking about occurs. As they see themselves as superior to other Africans, they see Europeans superior to their own nation. Well they don’t like that. This is where the question originated, now I will try to answer it:

What have the rich countries like US, western/northern EU in common? Celtic, Saxon, Germanic (I think they are all the same) ancestors, a centuries old culture that was based on farming, very similar climate. All are greatly influenced by Cristian ideology.

What have Arab nations in common? Ancestors are very diverse. Their culture is based more on herding and trading than on farming (compared to the EU). They are all rather close to the Equator, the climate is not as homogeneous as in the EU. All countries are influenced by Muslim ideology.

Ancestors

What has the Celtic, Saxon, Germanic ancestry to do with economic success? Nothing. I think they were just at the right place to the right time. I do not think that their genes provide any benefit, except for picking up chicks in Japan, those genes are very beneficial for that. But I guess you already know that…

Farming vs Herding cultures

Cultures are either based on farming, or herding / trading. I believe that is crucial for understanding the economical success. One of the most important factors for establishing a prospering economy is that one can trust that he/she will not be robbed. This security ensures that if I work hard today, earn a lot tomorrow, in 5 years I will still be able to benefit from my hard labor in the past, therefor I better work extra hard today.

It is very hard to steal from farmers compared to steal from herders / merchants. If you want to steal from a farmer when he is not watching, you basically have to harvest his field in the night. This is a lot of work and logistically almost impossible. If you want to steal from a herder, you basically have to kill one guy watching the cattle and you end up with all his animals. Easy to do.

Next factor, all kind of crimes are most likely to be committed by a person known to the victim. This is true for crimes today, as it was true 100ds of years ago. In farming cultures, when someone stole from you it was 99% someone living close to you, 90% someone you knew. So it was an easy task to identify the thieve, get your stuff back + punish him/her.

In herding cultures many people had no fixed location. People were constantly on the move. The thieve could have come from far, and by the time the crime was discovered might have moved on.

Malcolm Gladwell describes this effect in his book “Outliers”.

Why did people in Harlan Kentucky kill each other in blood feuds but not in other regions of the USA?

Because their original settlers all came from the Badlands, an area in the UK and Ireland were people were predominantly herders.

As a herder you are only as good as your reputation. If you are known to kill anyone at sight and hunt down everyone who does you harm, you are less likely to be stolen from. If you are known to be a softy, well you just could have handed out your cattle to the first guy you met.

This mentality of honor and revenge is very strong in people from those regions in the US even today.

Here are two examples:

• USA – Southern court 20th century: A man was repeatedly insulted to which he responded with shooting one and wounding 2 others. The jury decided that the shooter should be set free, because “He wouldn’t have been much of a man, if he wouldn’t shot them fellas”.
• Students in the University of Michigan were insulted by being called “asshole”.
  • Men from the south of the US had a highly elevated testosterone and cortisol level, tighter hand grips and responded much more aggressive.
  • Men from the north of the US did not have any measurable response to the insult.

Far vs near to the equator

Cultures developing far in the northern or far in the southern hemisphere had to battle with the seasons, year after year. A cold and snowy winter meant that you will die a certain death, unless you prepare the whole year. There was a short window of time in the spring when all the seeds had to be planted and a very short window of time in the autumn  when they had to be harvested. If you missed it just for a few days your harvest might not have been enough to survive the winter.
The closer one gets to the equator the less important are the seasons. It does not make such a big difference if you harvest today or maybe even next week, you will still make it trough the winter.

Religion

That one is dangerous to talk about, but I do believe it is crucial for understanding economical success.
First off, the Catholic doctrine is very harmful to innovation = economical success. As an example just remember the medieval ages (I call them “mid evil ages). Catholic doctrine says that you as a normal person (“not priest”) can not connect to god, so he does not care how hard you work, he only cares if we (priests) like you.
When the Protestant ideology emerged the economy flourished. The Protestant’s fundamental believe is, “if you work hard you can make god like you”. Also the protestants were pretty liberal. They did not feel like beheading and burning everyone who mentioned that the world is round. They were open to innovation and encouraged hard work, the perfect mix to become rich on a national level.

Here is where it becomes dangerous, because I don’t know anything about the Islam doctrine. I think they encourage hard work and I think they are open to innovation, but I never read anything about it. What I do know is, that the Koran originated from the life of an allegedly successful merchant in an rather dry part of our planet. So I would not be all to surprised to learn that the Koran supports the whole “honor killing” thing (I don’t know if the concept of Jihad can be used in this context).

Also in Muslim countries the religion is displayed very visibly. As this alone is certainly not a negative factor, it has a subconscious effect. Living in a culture where one is less likely to be judged by others, makes it much more likely to innovate. Innovation is 99% mistakes and 1% success. Great innovations are almost always very controversial. In a culture where you are constantly reminded that all actions will be judged by a hundreds of years old moral codex, you might think twice before doing anything that could be controversial.

The next one is a far stretch, I am really just guessing on that one. You remember how the protestants and the Catholics were killing each other. It was a pretty bad time for Europa. After some time they decided that enough is enough, lets kill each other for other reasons. The Europeans discovered that they could compare each other for who is the best nation. (Nationalism the stuff that lead to WWI and WWII) This was actually a pretty good thing, because in order to be the best citizen of your nation, you don’t go to church 4 times a week, you rather serve your country by working hard and getting rich.
The Islam is also divided, the two main groups are the Shiites and the Sunnites and they don’t like each other. When they compare each other they check who prays more often, donates more to the church, all things which are nice, but don’t support the economy.
This is the point where I have the least amount of background knowledge so don’t take it too seriously.

For Muslim countries the fact that 50% of the available workforce are kept from the job market might be harmful to the overall economic growth. It is the perfect scenario for most women in Arab cultures to be a 100% housewife. This notion keeps women especially the middle and upper class away from the job market. So 50% of all inhabitants who have the education and the skills to improve the country are encouraged to stay at home.

Another factor might be the great obligations one has to his extended family. A successful person will feel obliged to help all those husbands of daughters of sisters of his mother who just went bankrupt. This behavior is essential for survival in very harsh environments like the desert, but in a modern society it is less beneficial. People who use their resources efficient are constantly transferring resources to members of their extended family who will loos the money. This is certainly nice for the less fortunate, but the country as a whole will loose rather than gain.

Time orientation

Arab and Mediterranean cultures have a much slower pace of time than US, western/northern EU countries have. This means that people walk slower, it takes longer in the post office to send a package and public clocks are less accurate. This all has been found by a study called the pace of life. It might be the increasing heat in countries closer to the equator, it might be the culture that developed under those circumstances. In the end the higher a nation’s “pace of life”, the more economically successful this nation is. The highest pace of life is in Switzerland and Japan.

People can be mainly Past oriented, meaning they solve life’s problems with the solutions that worked before. People also can be mainly Present oriented, meaning they try to solve life’s problems by following their inspiration. Present oriented people given a puzzle will start to solve the puzzle they moment they lay eyes on it and solve it with an 60% success rate. The last group are Future oriented people, they solve problems by imagining the benefits vs the disadvantages. When those people are given a puzzle they look at it, stop and try to think of an solution, their success rate is 90%.

Kids that are future oriented get higher grades, will earn higher wages and live 2 years longer than past or present oriented kids. Future oriented people work harder than past or present oriented people. They do so in order to get a bigger reward in the future (big car +house + boat) than rather a small reward (sleeping in) right now.

Summary

If you have ever visited an Arab country the time difference will strike you. I am not talking about the time zone, I talk about the fact that you will wait 10 minutes longer before the waiter is ready to serve you. By no means are the streets in Rabat, Cairo or other Arab cities anything but hectic. When crossing a street you better run, or you just might not make it. The time difference I am talking about is, the contractor will not arrive between 3pm and 3:30pm, he will arrive this week. There is a different pace of life, which brings many advantages, but economically it is rather hindering. People are more focused on what is happening now and sharing stories about the good old times, rather than investing in an pension fund and planing on how to pay off their dept to the extended family members who they borrowed from.
This cultural trait may root in the fact that Arab nations are all rather near to the equator.

The Koran is a perfect guideline to live after, if you are an inhabitant of an Arab nation a few hundred years ago. For example, the tradition of Ramadan (not to eat during day-time) does make a lot of sense because originally Ramadan was always celebrated during the hottest period of the year. So you basically were hiding inside the house all day long and reducing your energy intake as much as possible. (Similar to the christian 40 days fasting in the spring. It had the effect to stretch the last food resources until the cold winter passed)
The Koran is more likely to convey ideology of herding cultures than farming cultures, due to the environment in which it developed.
Christianity also originated from the same region, but transformed completely once it spread through Europa and especially after the Protestant-Catholic conflicts.

The fact that 50% of the workforce (all women) are encouraged not to participate, certainly is disadvantageous to the overall national wealth.

Here you have it, my guesses why Arab nations are not as economically advanced as Western nation (EU + US). I hope you learned nothing I didn’t tell you before.
Enjoy the rest of your day, playing Starcraft 4, or Counterstrike 7 or whatever games are fun right now.

PS: thanks for peeing on my leg today. From your facial expression I could tell you felt much better afterwards.
The privilege to pee on your old man is not one you will have for a long time, I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.

The opposite is true for the US. Where a CEO earns 600 times more than the average worker in the company.
The best gets much more than the average, in every field you may choose.

This incentive of money, and recognition of all your peers is what drives the American to achieve more than he/she ought to believe he/she was capable of.
It fuels the economy, the innovation.

In African societies, working harder then the rest may be rewarded with an extra cow, but whoever has earned his extra cow, has to share every last bit of it with family, friends and everyone they know.
In this culture there is no incentive to work harder, because you don’t get more.

So how can it be that Japan missing this seemingly essential ingredient for wealth ended up being so wealthy?

My theory is, that Japanese work so hard, because they are guilty.

Japanese are raised feeling guilty of being too loud, having the wrong cloths, playing the wrong games… Their biggest fear is that others in their group may think bad of them.
Japanese owe it to everyone in the country to work as hard as they can. As their parents worked hard for them to enjoy a decent life, they owe it to them to work as hard. They owe it to their children, they owe it to everyone who is, was, may ever be alive.

That is a lot of money. But it is a little price compared to the thousands of hours of fun and productivity I got out of those apps.

I asked myself; Why am I willing to spend money on apps, but not on Software?

Is it because Apps are inherently better?
No they are not.

Is it because it is harder to steal software for the iPhone?
No that would more be a challenge for me than a barrier.

Is it because apps are ridiculously cheap, but deliver extremely much value?
Yup, that is it (for me at least).

If I buy an iPhone game for less than 1$ and this game entertains me for 10 hours, I consider that an amazing deal.
0.1 $/h = 0.1 $ for 1 hour of fun

If I would buy a beer in a bar, I would have entertainment and fun for 20 min for 4 times the price.
12 $/h = 12 $ for 3 beers to have 1 hour of fun

If I was to rent a movie, I would have 2 hours of entertainment for 2 times the price
1 $/h = 1 $ for 1 hour of fun watching a movie

I discovered I am not willing to spend more than 0.5 $ for one hour of fun.

For productivity that rate is somewhere around 2$ for 1 hour of enchanted productivity.

For education my rate is about 0.01 $ of an hour of education.

I guess I am not alone with my preferences. Fun time got extremely cheap and education is free if you have an internet connection. Productivity is what translates into increased income, so I am willing to spend much more on that. It is an investment.

If I was to buy a game for a PC it would be 60$ for 10 to 15 hours of fun, ridiculously expensive.

So it is very clear to me why Software companies and the Entertainment industry has a piracy problem: They are priced to high.

If they would lower their price to a 1/10 they could sell 20 times more software, TV-shows, music and so on.

To put it into Economical terms: The price elasticity of software overall is extremely elastic: Lower the price, sell much more. Increase the price, see your revenues plummet.

How I got there:

1. Every day I make push-ups until my arms shake.
2. I stop eating when I am not hungry anymore + don’t eat unless I am hungry.

Eat what you like, but never eat until you are full, eat only until you are not hungry anymore.

WOHA!  What a secret I just revealed.

There is exactly one way to loos weight;

Put less calories inside your body than you use.

The problem was, my Okaasan just served me too much food every day. And me, being polite, ate everything that came to the table.

Well, in Japanese culture you always cook for 1 person more. It is very embarrassing for a host if the guests have empty plates.

An empty plate means: I ate all you gave me, but I am still hungry.

In this spirit my Okaasan kept cooking more and more and I forced myself to eat it all, it escalated…

Oh, one thing about diets; they don’t work.

If you stop eating the food you like, you will suffer from malnutrition and just jump back to your old weight, the moment you stop your diet.

The thing about sport.

Have you ever wondered why the people who get really old, never did sports? And why an former athlete above 90 is virtually unheard of?

Because of the oxygen.

Jup, it turns out, people who do sports use their bodies, and that makes them age faster.

Those 15 kilometer runs every morning don’t make you younger. They improve your current situation, but you will have to pay it with a shorter life span.

The explanation is simple. Oxygen is like fuel to our bodies, but you know what oxygen and water does to iron. The two destroy metals by dissolving them, it is called rust. The same thing is happening in our bodies. Contact with oxygen shortens the telomere string and therefore decreases the lifespan of every cell.

“Sport ist Mord!” or

“No sports!” (Winston Churchill)

1. strategy is evaluating the gift for its practical value.
2. strategy is evaluating the gift for its socially perceived / implied value.

Lets say a few thousand years ago a hunter would receive a great new spear. Now he can hunt 10%  more and is more likely to become the alpha male in his group.

On the other side, if a female at this time was to receive a better knife, she might have been able to increase the amount of food she could gather by 3%. The amount of food gathered is a very bad indicator of the alpha position for a female, because it is an extremely time-outcome efficient method (compared to hunting). It would not have made any noticeable effect.

What was more likely effecting the position of a female within the group was the possession of rare goods. Goods which displayed the strong affection of the giver, or who’s possession was desired by the group in general.

This two tendencies are very well exhibited in stereotypical gifts for the sexes. The women get jewelries and the men get… well pretty hard to give a gift to a man… a tie! You can’t go wrong with the 20th tie you hand out to your father.

Jewelery as a gift can bring joy to the receiver in two mayor ways.

1. The receiver values the token of affection because it took the giver time and resources to acquire the present
2. The receiver values the increase in social recognition/status, due to the monetary value.

A new driller, laptop, smart phone can bring joy to the receiver just in one way:

1. more holes in all walls, shorter loading times of porn websites, porn on the go = you can do cool things with it = practical

Why men don’t have any idea why the crazy chick they are married to does not like the new vacuum? I mean, for fucking heavens sake, she is vacuuming all the time and if she does not like it, with this new vacuum she can get it done faster…

Because men give gifts they like: practical, efficient, effective. Well, females, they kind of don’t give a fuck about practicality: They want to see a man sweat while choosing the gift, spend more on it than on his stupid new power-drill and make sure she can show off with it to all her girlfriends.

Surfing the Internet is much better for your brain (right image)

As older people increase their cognitive abilities drastically by only surfing the internet for one week.

All of us web-users are rewiring our brains improving abilities like multi-tasking, complex reasoning and decision-making.