Paul Graham wrote a great piece on “stuff”, and how the trend of recent decades has been to amass an inordinate amount of it. It’s a message that some other bloggers have made as well, because there really is something to be said for the simplicity of having less stuff and living a more streamlined life. On a recent cross-country move where we had little personal belongings with us on the coast-to-coast drive, we found it rather refreshing to have little on our minds other than the drive ahead and locating a suitable rental at our destination. Evenings were spent with family, and our primary outlet into the rest of the world was our iPad, which is itself a statement of simplicity compared to computers of yesterday.

But this experience isn’t why we link to Paul Graham’s article. Rather, it’s this statement of Graham’s:

Before you buy anything, ask yourself: will this be something I use constantly? Or is it just something nice? Or worse still, a mere bargain?

Most of us are probably guilty of buying something we didn’t need but that we picked up just in case, because the price seemed good. Meanwhile, we sometimes gawk at the more expensive prices associated with certain items that we really would use a lot, yet hesitate to purchase because of the up-front cost. Our philosophy has generally been to spend more money on quality items, versus buying something cheap that we’ll outgrow or have to replace in the near future because of cheaper construction. Yet, we still shy away from certain expensive items because we don’t necessarily need them, like an iPhone 4S. We do, after all, already have an iPhone 4. Some minimalists will a argue that this hesitation is just: the iPhone 4 is good enough, so skip the iPhone 4S. But Graham made a statement that’s equally valid: if we’ll use the iPhone 4S constantly, then the purchase may make more sense.

So we don’t feel as guilty about upgrading our iPhone 4 now. We advised a friend in the past that such an upgrade, based on the merits of what the new iPhone offers, is likely not worthwhile, but we’ll now revise that claim: if you use your iPhone 4 a lot, and expect to continue doing so, then upgrading to the iPhone 4S is absolutely worthwhile. More specifically, if you use the iPhone camera, and anticipate regular use of Siri, then the upgrade is definitely a functional one, and an upgrade you should really consider. If, however, you don’t use your iPhone much beyond a phone, and maybe a handful of apps, then an upgrade to the 4S is likely not worth your money.

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On Friday, we drove by two Targets, a Best Buy, and an AT&T store to see if anyone was selling the Jawbone UP early. None were. The reports we heard about UPs selling early must have been very isolated experiences, though it seems people had more success at Apple stores, who apparently are more likely to not play by the rules.¹ Both Target stores we visited had places set aside, complete with labels, for the three sizes of the UP initially available, yet employees at neither store could tell me whether they already sold out of their UP stock, or if they hadn’t received any yet. We decided to return to the AT&T store on Sunday morning.

We had sized our wrist using the printable template available at the UP site. This proved to be a waste of time, because not only did the AT&T store have demo units out to try on, but the packaging on each UP box has a plastic template included, so buyers can check for their size when in the store. It’s a nice touch, and shows Jawbone’s attention to detail. So we bought our UP, and set it up in the car on the way home.² We won’t bother to give a full review here, because we found Shawn Wall’s review to be plenty thorough for a product that’s only officially been on shelves for less than two days, but we will respond to some points he made for the sake of completeness.

The rubberized bracelet is bendable to a degree. It’s not the simplest task in the world getting it on or off your wrist, but thankfully you don’t really need to take it off given its waterproof nature.

Jawbone actually calls the bracelet water resistant, and only to a fairly shallow depth. The idea is that you can wash your hands, and even take it into the shower, without worrying about it getting damaged. We even saw a picture of someone wearing it in a shallow pool, so the idea that you can wear it most places is obviously something Jawbone wants customers to understand. But don’t think about taking the UP diving. In fact, the notion of taking this thing in the ocean makes us a bit uncomfortable, and we’d rather someone else tried it first.

When we took a shower this morning, our hesitation for getting the UP wet made us take it off. It’s not like you’ll be missing out on too much activity tracking in those few minutes of the morning anyway. Though, we did notice that the black rubberized band³ attracts dirt pretty quickly, so wearing it into the shower may not be a bad idea after all.

As far as bendability goes, the UP has to be somewhat bendable to get it on and off. But that’s only for the “ends” of the band, and the bendability is temporary. In other words, you can’t bend the UP into a different shape, or make it larger or smaller.

There’s really not much in the way of moving parts here; there is a button at one end that is used for switching modes (more on that later), and the opposite end has a cap that is pulled off to reveal the 3.5mm male jack that is used to sync the device with your mobile phone (currently iPhone-only, but Android “coming soon”).

The one thing we don’t like about the UP is that the button on one end, as well as the cap, is painted silver. We’d much rather have these match the main band colour, as we don’t expecially like the accent color. The cap is only silver on one side though, so if you put it on backwards, it appears black to all but the closest observer. A backwards cap also means you’re not proudly displaying “Jawbone” written on your jewelry; we don’t need to advertise for the company we already supported by buying their product. Depending on how much we dislike the button on the other end being an “off” colour, we may end up painting it black down the road.

One really great feature in regards to sleep is that the bracelet can be used as an alarm clock using vibration. Even better, it supposedly will wake you up out of a light sleep instead of a deep sleep by getting you up a little earlier if it can (by looking at your deep vs. light sleep somehow).

This feature worked well for us this morning, though to be fair, we didn’t sleep all that great last night anyway, and noticeably tumbled around a bunch. In this case, we were quick to feel the pulsing vibration of the alarm, but we wonder if it will wake us on days that we have a deeper sleep. Today, it woke us up 15 minutes early. We’re considering doing a side-by-side test of the UP and Sleep Cycle iPhone app to see how consistent the two are, or if one tends to go off before the other. For now, though, we expect the UP to handle our alarms equally well, if not better, with the only concern being whether the vibration is strong enough to rouse us from a deep sleep.

One of my favorite feature of the device is found in this area. You can set your bracelet to remind you to be active if you are sedentary for too long. The time range is user defined. This is great as it can remind us programmers to get out of our chairs once an hour

We’re rather fond of this feature also. We have it enabled during business hours, and its a great reminder to get up and do something, even if it’s just to pee or get some fresh water.

I do not own another pedometor, Fitbit or anything else along those lines so I cannot speak for the accuracy of the UP. It feels like the numbers are too high though.

Whether they’re too high or not, all we can say is that the “lightly active” category is cake during an average weekend, and that’s not even with workout scheduled. From noon until night yesterday, we scored over 8k steps taken, which means we can easily up our steps goal to the next level. We’ll have to see how our weekend activity compares to the average workday to see whether it’s worth adjusting our goals at this time, though.

The food diary portion of the application is well… a little underwhelming in my opinion.

We haven’t played with this feature too much yet, and honestly, we’re not too tempted considering there’s no way to count calories. We’ve used other apps to compare our caloric intake to our ideal goal (at least 3k calories a day), and the fact that such a simple feature is missing makes us feel like we’d gain little from the UP app’s inclusion of a food log. Maybe once this feature becomes more robust, we’ll be more likely to keep up with it.

Game mechanics are a huge portion to an offering such as the UP, and I feel they currently fall a little short.

We agree with Shawn here, and don’t like how simply accepting a challenge means others who accepted the challenge can suddenly see your progress. We’d prefer “private” challenges that don’t involved any reporting, or at the very least, allow users to select a username instead of their registered (true) name. Sure, the public feed only uses first names, but we’d still prefer a nickname.

The problem of the food log and the game mechanics points at the one flaw the UP currently has, and that’s a very simplistic piece of software. If Jawbone maintains a regular release schedule of updates and bug fixes, however, we can truly see the pair being a useful lifestyle assistant for some time to come.

More thoughts to follow as we spend more time with our new bracelet.

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Firstly, Jawbone products are good. Sure, we had problems with the Jawbone 2 earpiece because of a particular weak link, but overall their products are stylish and innovative. We don’t use a bluetooth headset at the moment, but we did receive the Jawbone Jambox as a birthday gift this year, and we love it. When we heard about Jawbone’s Up device, which tracks lifestyle actions, we were immediately intrigued, because we knew the engineering behind it would be good, and better than devices like the FitBit that the Up challenges for market space. Which brings us to our second point: the Up is a bracelet, which means there’s no need to hang it from your belt, waist, or pocket. Instead, it sits on your arm where, unless you’re a bracelet aficionado, is likely bare at the moment anyway; a perfect place for a device that tracks what you’re doing.

Scary Orwellian conspiracy theories about user tracking aside, the Up is the perfect N=1 logging system. Not only does it track your movement, but you can configure it to ensure you’re getting enough of it by having the Up remind you to move. This follows Cornell’s findings about sitting and standing at work. We use a standing desk at home, and tried one at work for several weeks, and while we believe it definitely has its merits, there’s something to be said for simply moving more; standing around, while perhaps beneficial in certain areas, is simply not as good as getting the opportunity to move. Regardless of what desk type you use, the Up can remind you to get more movement in, as it will vibrate to alert you when it senses minimal movement for a particular amount of time.

At night, we’ve relied on the iPhone Sleep Cycle app as our alarm clock for well over a year. The concept is simple: the app tracks movement in the bed using the iPhone’s hardware, and will set off your morning alarm up to half-an-hour before your alarm was set to go off, based on your movement patterns. In other words, if it senses movement 30 minutes before your alarm is supposed to go off, indicating that you’re likely no longer in a deep sleep, the alarm will go off. Otherwise, it will wait within that 30-minute window and sound the alarm when it does notice movement. Worst case scenario, the alarm will go off at the time you set it to, but in our use, we’ve rarely run into that problem, and always hear the alarm a little early, suggesting that the app is working as intended.

The problem with Sleep Cycle is that it requires the iPhone to be sitting on the bed, so it’s detection of movement isn’t as precise as if the iPhone were attached to your body. Some people may also not like the idea of their iPhone sitting next to their head all night, what with all those radio waves. More practically, the iPhone can be pushed off the bed, or your bed is too small for you, your partner, your cats, and all those pillows. Or maybe, -something- iOS 5 will cause Sleep Cycle to crash, or you’ll somehow accidentally exit the app by pushing the Home button. In any case, Sleep Cycle is obviously not perfect, and much of these faults are addressed by the Up, since you wear it 24/7. And, like Sleep Cycle, the Up will track your natural sleep pattern based on your movement at night, and wake you up with a vibration once it notices you’re no longer fast asleep.

Available Sunday in the basic colours,¹ the Up will replace Sleep Timer for us, and hopefully serve to better track our sleep. The software also offers “challenges”, which are novelty proposals to get you to do something you otherwise might not, whether that’s simply moving more, or getting enough sleep.² And further, the Up software includes a food log, which we hope that Jawbone expands to include calorie tracking. We hope to pick up the Jawbone Up this weekend, and write more about our experiences with it in the upcoming weeks. If we can tie this experiment in with paleo/primal living, even better.

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Over at Naturally Engineered, David Csonka gave a brief rundown of important take-aways from the 2011 Ancestral Health Symposium. We found several of these thoughts particularly interesting. Per Dr. S. Boyd Eaton, for example:

During the paleolithic, male and female equality was greater than anytime since.

This is the second time we’ve heard this. The first was in The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, in which Thom Hartmann doesn’t specify the paleolithic era exactly, but describes the equality between genders are being far greater in “Older Culture” (which is reflective in hunter-gatherer societies). We’d love to hear more from Boyd on this topic, and gain a better understanding of how he’s sourcing this determination, as we weren’t wholly convinced by Hartmann.¹ It seems that every major society from history was lead by men, and while women’s lives may have been comparatively better than women’s lives in more recent history as far as freedoms are concerned, it would seem that subservience to men is a longstanding tradition. Just how much greater was the equality between genders in the paleolithic?

Csonka goes on to mention Dr. Kevin Boyd and Dr. Michael Mew:

• Diet isn’t the only culprit in poor jaw and teeth development, mandibular muscle usage shapes the growing face.
• Use it or lose it, the massive modern reduction in masticatory effort is maladaptive for jaw development.

We keyed in on these points since we finally finished Them+Us, in which Danny Vendramini talks about Neanderthal predation. Among his theories is that Neanderthals looked very different than the common stereotype, resembling something more like sasquatch than Cro Magnon man. Vendramini asserts that Neanderthals had no real chins to speak of, but the aforementioned points about jaw development makes us question this notion further. If we assume that Neanderthals were primarily meat eaters, and so more commonly ate foods that required greater bite strength, we can assume that Neanderthals developed jaws at least as developed as our own. Our ape cousins, for example, lack such jaw definition because they tend to eat softer foods, since they are more herbivorous than humans. As omnivores that evolved on a diet containing plenty of meat, it makes sense that we developed jaws capable of rending flesh, since we didn’t cut our food into bite-size pieces using utensils until much later in human history. Why should we not say the same of Neanderthals, who likely ate more meat than homo sapiens sapiens?

Chris Masterjohn wrote a summary similar to Csonka over at the The Daily Lipid, and even reflected on similar points:

[Tucker Max] argued that getting in touch with the violent part of our nature can help reduce violence. He gave as an example the fact that police with training in martial arts are much less likely to engage in brutality, because they do not panic when they face a violent situation.

It’s probably also because police with martial arts training know from practical experience how much force is necessary to neutralize someone, whereas a lack of such training may result in excessive force being used because the police don’t realize it’s excessive. And while we agree with the notion Tucker Max is aiming for here, the suggestion breaks down when we distance ourselves from violence. One extreme example is that of Adolf Hitler, who despite knowing the horrors of war from his experience in WWI, waged a campaign many times worse because he was so far removed from the suffering the average person was going through in WWII.

It’s also not clear if presenting the average person with violence (e.g. MMA) will help curb violence overall. Where an untrained individual might have fled confrontation, the same individual with a background in MMA may very well choose confrontation instead.

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Over the past couple months, we talked to several people about blood tests, and what exactly to test for. Most people place the subject squarely in the hands of their doctors, and care little about delving into the subject themselves. But as we’ve come to learn, many doctors base their findings on conventional wisdom, which can be a dangerous thing; what constitutes a “good” or “bad” value in a blood test is often subjective, and when it comes to certain factors, the recommended value may very well be sub-par even if it’s above-average when compared to the populace at large, because the populace at large is not exactly healthy.

There are several baseline blood tests that people can get, and which tests to choose is based in part on a specific individual’s situation, which a doctor can help advise about. Yet, what we’ve learned is that there are still certain tests that most everyone should get in order to establish a baseline to build from, so you know where you stand before making any significant lifestyle changes.

Comprehensive metabolic panel.

This is the generic blood test most people get when looking at things like cholesterol and, more importantly, fasting glucose. It contains several other values that may be indicators that something is wrong, but the fasting glucose test is significant because it tells you whether you’re on the road to Type II Diabetes, and are becoming (or are already) insulin resistant.

The VAP cholesterol test.

The comprehensive metabolic panel will report “basic” cholesterol information, such as total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, etc. If, by conventional wisdom, everything looks good, then your doctor likely won’t make you follow up with a VAP test, but if things do look questionable based on conventional wisdom, then getting a VAP follow-up is likely in your future. The problem with this line of thinking is that conventional wisdom is based on several theories about cardiovascular disease that are receiving a lot of criticism. In short, the argument comes down to a matter of correlation vs. causation; many argue that high cholesterol in itself is not an indicator of heart disease risk. That said, there are certain flags to look out for, and you won’t catch them unless you get a VAP test.

Of chief importance in the VAP results is the specific type of LDL you may have. “Pattern A” LDL is often described as “large and fluffy”, while “Pattern B” LDL is described as “small and dense”. It’s the former that is of concern, such that regardless of your total cholesterol value, you know something is amiss if your LDL is predominantly Pattern B. This means that even if the comprehensive metabolic panel comes back with a total cholesterol score that is within the threshold defined by conventional wisdom, you’re still missing a key indicator of health if you’re not also getting the VAP test. This is why you should get the VAP test right away, as it compliments the comprehensive metabolic panel.

25-hydroxy (Vitamin D).

Typically, vitamin D levels are not tested for when people get blood tests, and yet most people are deficient in vitamin D. Most people believe they get adequate vitamin D from dairy products, but that’s hardly true. Liquid milk is typically fortified with vitamin D,¹ and much of that isn’t absorbed by the body. Other dairy products are not fortified at all, and contain low levels of vitamin D to begin with.

The reality is that people are designed to get most of their vitamin D from the sun, but in 2011, most of us in the western world aren’t getting outside enough. By some estimates, you’d need to have 80% of your body exposed in direct sunlight for at least 30 minutes a day in order to get adequate vitamin D. This wasn’t difficult for our ancestors who spent most of their days outdoors, but is rather difficult for most office-dwelling homo sapiens today.

What the 25-hydroxy test will tell you is where you stand in regards to vitamin D, so you know how to adjust your sunlight exposure accordingly. Failing that, it will allow you to estimate how best to supplement with vitamin D so you can get your levels up. A score over 70 is ideal, which is higher than the “recommended” value conventional wisdom suggests.

C-Reactive protein.

Your C-Reactive protein score is a flag for internal inflammation. If it’s high, typically above 1.0, then something bad is going on inside you. If this flag comes up red after your blood test, then you know for sure that you need to make a lifestyle change. In many people, that means cutting out gluten, or avoiding some other food.

Testosterone.

It’s rather amazing how many men have sub-par testosterone levels brought on by poor lifestyles, and beyond the obvious effects, low testosterone can result in several other health issues. At minimum, a low testosterone count may indicate high levels of stress. Low testosterone is typically easy to fix by cutting back on the booze, chronic cardio, and increasing your sleep. It’s worth getting it checked, especially for older men who may be going through -manopause- andropause.

While we say testosterone here, for the ladies, getting hormone levels checked may also be worthwhile. Men don’t need to specifically test for estrogen levels, but there are obvious indicators of estrogen increases (and testosterone drops) just from a physical inspection (e.g. man-boobs and a beer gut).

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The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight introduced us to Thom Hartmann’s concept of Older and Younger Cultures, the differences between the two being rather stark. In Hartmann’s view, Older Cultures embody sustainability and peaceful existence, which Easy to be Green summarizes thusly:

• Political Independence
• Egalitarian Structure
• Getting their resources from renewable local sources
• Having a unique sense of their own identity
• Respecting the identity of other tribes

Compare this to the synopsis of Younger Culture, which is the culture that modern humans subscribe to:

• Political Dominance
• Established hierarchy: clear authority structures
• Acquiring resources through trade and conquest
• Absorbing other cultures into their own identity
• Genocidal warfare against others

Hartmann obviously idolizes Older Culture, and for good reason: there are many benefits to following an Older Culture lifestyle, which is realized by some Younger Culture members who decide to live greener, steer clear of commercialism, focus on eating “real food,” etc. But a major component of Hartmann’s differentiation between Younger and Older Cultures is the emphasis on war and conflict, which Hartmann minimizes when he describes Older Culture.To be fair, it’s common to see our ancient ancestors painted in this light: being close to the natural world, respecting all living things, and only occasionally being involved in conflict with neighboring tribes. But something about Hartmann’s portrayal that such conflict was usually non-fatal doesn’t sit well with us. Perhaps it’s a pessimistic view of human nature on our part, but while we acknowledge that Younger Culture may inherently be more violent than Older Culture, we don’t accept that Older Culture was somehow lacking these elements.

We’re currently reading Them+Us by Danny Vendramini, which thus far is an excellent read. Without going into too much detail, Them+Us details a theory of human evolution that relies on what Vendramini calls the Neandertal Predation Theory, wherein Vendramini describes our Neandertal cousins as apex predators that early homo sapiens ran into during our early settlement of the Levant. Vendramini points out that other primates (also typically painted as generally peaceful) are not without violent intent, as they participate in both coalitionary killing (group-based, violent encounters) as well as lethal raiding (targeted violence at a neighbor’s location). Vendramini points out that Neandertals were likely to share these traits with modern primates, just as we humans possess them today.

The take-away is that Hartmann may be correct in saying that warfare as we know it today was not practiced in Older Cultures¹, as the notion of a standing army simply doesn’t make sense in such a setting. But to disavow extremely violent behavior in Older Cultures is a disservice to what we are: animals. That’s not to say that this behavior is necessarily logical in the sense that we may think it from a “civilized” perspective, but it’s still instinctual behavior that stems from something, and similar behavior can be seen in animals today, primates included. That something can be as simple as basic survival, such as fending off predators or even to provide food in a time of limited resources. Other times, that something may be more complex, because when we see the behavior in modern primates or even wolf populations, lethal raiding doesn’t always make sense, and the targets of violence can appear isolated from previous interactions with the aggressor. Regardless, it seems that limited violence is at the core of our species, however unethical our minds tell us it is.

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We intended to write a comprehensive review of the one-day MovNat workshop we recently participated in, but realized that others have already done so, and that our overall impression isn’t much different¹. In short, the experience was fantastic, despite the fact that we started the day with relatively cool weather and a rainy forecast. (This hampered a couple of the planned activities, but as the purpose of the workshop was to present MovNat fundamentals, we were still able to get an understanding of the basic concepts and techniques behind the MovNat philosophy.) We don’t want to echo back every other review out there, but would still like to focus on some points that we find particularly notable about the experience, and general idea behind MovNat.

For those who have no idea what we’re talking about, MovNat is, at its core, a workout philosophy based around the idea that humans evolved a range of movement abilities that helped us to prosper and evolve over thousands of years. Unlike typical gym workouts, working on these movements is the ideal method for preventing injury and developing truly functional fitness². If we practice the basic movements that humans have evolved to perform well over time (the same movements that are foundational to all human activities), then we can argue we’re developing overall fitness in an ideal, safe manner. There are 12 of these core movements: walking, balancing, climbing, jumping, moving on all fours, running, lifting, carrying, throwing, catching, swimming, and defending³.

You can gather considerable appreciation for these movements when you consider that many individuals, who may be able to do, say, a dozen pullups, are not able to climb atop a horizontal bar. This illustrates the notion that many people may have appreciable strength in some areas, but are woefully lacking the ability to properly utilize that strength. In a sense, that strength development is wasted, because it succumbs to considerable weakness that exists in other areas. MovNat is about addressing these weaknesses and developing an overall fit person⁴, akin to those of our ancestors who, in order to survive, needed to fully master the aforementioned 12 movements.

MovNat is not about reenactment, though. The 12 movements aren’t practiced purely because they are important in an evolutionary context, but because they continue to be important today⁵. Just as martial arts address the potential for a fight, so too does MovNat prepare us for the potential circumstances that we might encounter, be they natural disasters, accidents, or other worst-case scenarios. More importantly, MovNat teaches us not only how important the 12 movements are, but how to perform them correctly, so as to not injure ourselves when executing them. Further, these 12 movements are taught to be efficient, so as to expend as little energy as possible when doing them.

It’s also worth pointing out that despite MovNat meeting our inherent need to be outdoors, MovNat itself is not restricted to parks, forests, and other outdoor play-spaces. Indeed, many of the 12 movements can easily be practiced indoors, to include the local gym⁶. A good thing to remember, though, is that a MovNat workout needn’t contain every, or even most, movements in a single session; just work the movements you can, when you can. So if you’re limited to indoors spaces because of inclement weather, there are still workouts you can explore.

MovNat is still in its infancy, and with only three “official” trainers, the movement (no pun intended) is still growing. Founder Erwan Le Corre is in the process of writing a MovNat book, and MovNat coach certification is coming later this year. Only recently, a MovNat alumni group was started on Facebook, which may become an avenue for distributing training materials summarizing workshop lessons to those who’ve already attended a MovNat event. All of these things are excellent, and we continue to look forward to how MovNat evolves.

Is the workshop worth it? If you’re new to the concept of natural movement, you’ll have plenty to learn, and even those of you who’ve explored things like barefoot running or Parkour⁷ in the past, will have plenty to look forward to. The one-day workshops aren’t cheap, but considering the travel required by the instructor, and the lack of other good source material out there, it’s a small investment in one’s future fitness, especially considering that one doesn’t need a gym membership or store-bought equipment to continue doing MovNat workouts. Those considering participating in a workshop in the future needn’t be worried about being too unfit, either; the day’s exercises are illustrative (albeit hands-on), and only a short portion of the day is what could be described as “intense.” Still, you’ll be surprised at how sore you’ll end up just doing seemingly simple exercises.

It’s hard to walk away from the one-day workshop without looking forward to future MovNat workouts; looking at the world differently is an expected outcome. It’s not so much that a new world opens up to you, but rather that you rediscover a world you forgot about as you left childhood. It’s a world you’re happy to have back.

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Since switching to a “paleo” diet, we’ve increased our consumption of beef, and a common criticism we’ve heard as a result is that eating beef is not sustainable. Specific arguments include:

1. Raising cows is a direct cause of desertification.

2. The massive demand for beef promotes slash-and-burn of rain-forests.

3. By some estimates, 2500 gallons of water are needed to produce a single pound of beef.

4. The amount of methane produced by cows is a large contributing factor to the production of CO2 in our atmosphere, thus contributing to global warming. Plus, some of this methane seeps into groundwater, which poisons the earth.

At first glance, these arguments may seem valid, until you realize that they are primarily aimed at Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), and not towards grass-fed, pastured livestock. That’s an important difference, because the paleo community’s emphasis on meat consumption is all about the latter. This then begs the question as to how we can respond to the aforementioned points from a paleo perspective, seeing as grassfed, pastured livestock doesn’t come with all the issues that meat derived from CAFO does.

Desertification.

Ethically-raised pastured cows have been shown to reverse desertification in several instances, thanks to the cow’s natural fertilizer that re-energizes the ground. In fact, it’s been shown in Africa that land previously devastated by agriculture (in which the land was no longer fertile enough to support further vegetation for agricultural purposes), could drastically change after the introduction of livestock. Livestock ate remaining grass/weeds, re-fertilized the earth with their feces, and ultimately restored the soil to support agriculture. Proper land management in which livestock and agricultural fields are iteratively rotated through grazing areas allows for a sustainable environment. Only when livestock are not rotated, or when restricted by CAFO, is there an issue of desertification. In fact, without livestock, the only way to prevent desertification in an agricultural environment is to rely on chemical fertilizers or less efficient crop rotations.

Slash-and-burn.

Destruction of rain-forests in order to propagate CAFO is an unethical practice that is counter to grass-fed meat production. The issue here is that corporate greed establishes poor practices that are bound in the CAFO philosophy. Arguably, there’s a lot of land that could be used domestically for animal grazing, a lot of which has undergone desertification due to poor agricultural practices. The destruction of rain-forests in order to support the meat industry is less an argument against meat, and more an argument against corporate greed and unethical animal treatment.

Water use.

Estimates for water use required to produce beef varies considerably. It’s not clear, however, which factors are involved in each computation. While they imply that the water use is based on what an animal needs to drink in its lifetime before it’s butchered, it actually includes the irrigation needs of corn crops.

There’s no indication that these studies differentiate between CAFO and grazing operations, and we have to assume they refer to the former, since that’s the conventional meat-producing method. While CAFO relies on large corn crops to feed animals, grass-fed, pastured operations do not, so we can deduct those water values from the equation. Further, since many small, independent farms slaughter their animals on-sight, we can further reduce water needs because the vast amounts of water used in commercial slaughterhouses is no longer relevant¹.

Methane.

Some argue that cow production of methane may pollute as much as a car, daily. However, this is in great part due to what we’re feeding cows; natural pasture does not result in the same amount of methane production, whereas ryegrass and other chemically-fertilized pasture is not as nutritious, and results in increased methane production.

As per our response to the issue of desertification, the concern over ground contaminants (ammonia, etc) is a non-issue as long as proper grazing rotations are utilized; cow fertilizer actually benefits the earth, and the resulting soil actually traps more carbon than the cows create. Obviously, this relies on proper herd and field management, but that’s the very practices that we need to support, instead of sourcing our meat from CAFO.

Eat grass-fed meat.

Many of the arguments about beef not being sustainable is in regards to conventional cow rearing, and not necessarily applicable to grass-fed cows. CAFO needs to be eliminated, even if that means not eating at McDonalds, or getting access to other cheap sources of meat.

But in the end, even if we begin replacing CAFO with grass-fed operations, is the system sustainable? It is insofar as as the production of nutritious meat goes, but ultimately, there’s no diet that’s both healthy and sustainable for the current human population. Growing grains to support the 6+ billion people on the earth today is only damaging the environment, and results in a growing autoimmune epidemic.

From the perspective of healthy eating domestically, however, there’s no reason that we can’t eat sustainable grass-fed beef at home, without worrying about negative environmental impact.

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Lately, all the Apple talk has been around the MacBook Air’s ability to serve as one’s primary computer, but we say that’s not going far enough. When the iPad was released, we embarked on a revolutionary experiment: replace our 17″ MacBook Pro with a 3G iPad, and see if the much smaller, sleeker device had the oomph to serve our needs.

Of course, there’s a mandatory disclaimer behind this experiment:

1. We bought the 64GB iPad in an effort to alleviate as many storage concerns as possible.
   
   
2. A Mac Mini server was purchased alongside the iPad to further address storage concerns for our media, and to serve as a means to update and backup our iOS devices. (As a bonus, the Mini, in lieu of an Apple TV, acts as our media server; the Mini is generally headless, though we use our 46″ LCD television as an output device when watching Internet-based video in our living room.)
   
   
   
3. The iPad is our home computer; we typically use company-owned computers during business hours.
   
   
   
4. We no longer actively develop code, or have other requirements that would limit us to a particular software suite or IDE.

That may sound like a lot of “buts,” yet it makes us a fairly typical computer user. We spend most of our computer time split between surfing the web and writing text, with the rest of our computer use consisting of entertainment (e.g. games and videos) or dabbling in content management/creation. A good chunk of this computing time is done strictly in our house, which means our office, living room, occasionally the kitchen, and when weather permits, our patio. We also like to take our computer on trips, and since we don’t have a business computer for business trips, we take our personal computer along for personal entertainment/tasks.

The disclaimer, realized.

To further allay the concerns some readers have with the four-point disclaimer we noted above, we admit that we played it somewhat safe when embarking on this journey. That is to say, in practice, we could have gone with less purchases as a safety net.

For one, the 64GB iPad was overkill; for many months, we didn’t come close to filling even half of this capacity. This is partially due to the fact that we don’t use our iPad as a music-playing device outside of, say, Pandora, which means we don’t need to use up storage space for a vast mp3 collection. The few mp3s we do maintain, we keep on our iPhone, which, among other things, serves as our iPod.

We do keep movies on our iPad, however. We have a select few reference videos that we’ve ripped and keep synced via iTunes, and before most trips, we rip a couple videos to watch while traveling. The brunt of our storage use is from apps, however, of which games probably take up the most space.

In reality, we could easily get by with a 32GB iPad. The 64GB merely lets us be less disciplined with juggling media. And, when on vacation, when we use the camera connection kit to offload raw images from our digital camera, that extra space can come in handy, as we don’t need to juggle around extra SD cards.

Two, dumping our 17″ MacBook Pro meant we technically had room in our lives for a Mac Mini server, which we’d been considering for some time. The purchase itself was overkill, we admit. For the purpose of acting as an iTunes portal for backing up and syncing our iOS devices, we could just have kept the 17″ MacBook Pro on a shelf and used it specifically for this purpose. So too, could we have purchased many a used Mac for same.

The Mac Mini solution, instead, was made because we desperately wanted to experiment with a media server hooked up to our television. Going the Mini server route was because we didn’t want to deal with external drives, and the server version came with extra storage capacity, which at the time of purchase, made sense since we had well over 500GB of files saved from the last 10+ years of computing. Sadly, a Time Capsule failure (we used the drive networking feature) meant that we lost all our files thanks to not having redundant backups. So by the time we had our iPad in hand, even the capacity of an old MacBook Air would have been sufficient.

The lesson here isn’t just that redundant backups are good, but that for people considering duplicating our iPad experiment, a much less capable Mac can be used if all one wants to do is sync iOS devices with iTunes.

Three, we’re not getting away with running fancy apps on work computers; even in the office, there’s little reason that we couldn’t get away with using an iPad for most computing tasks. We simply clarify as a matter of full disclosure, not because the iPad is incapable of providing the necessary tools for our job.

The add-ons.

While the iPad itself is core to the experience, just as one might purchase peripherals and accessories for a notebook computer, the iPad is not without its complimentary needs.

Let’s start with the most basic of needs for getting new media onto an iPad, as the lack of disc drive is a huge red flag for most people considering an iPad-only lifestyle: in order to get videos onto an iPad, they need to be in iTunes, and in order to get them into iTunes, they need to be downloaded or ripped. The former method doesn’t need much explanation, but the latter requires an optical disc drive. This isn’t an issue for most people who have a Mac or PC for iTunes use, but in our case, about four of five months into our project, we went out and bought a Superdrive for ripping DVDs (since the Mini server doesn’t come with a disc drive). From here, the process is obvious, but since we went the (mostly) headless route, what did we do when the TV was in use, and we wanted to use the Mini?

Enter iTeleport, a fantastic VNC client for all iOS devices. iTeleport is what we use both at home and on-the-go to access our Mini. It’s what we use to manage iTunes and sync devices, as well as running, say, RipIt for adding media to iTunes. Basically, if the TV is in use, we use iTeleport to simulate our Mini’s monitor, so we can do what we need to in order to support our iOS devices (e.g. managing peer-to-peer clients like Transmission, and basic iPhoto management tasks). If you have a Mac you’re using for iTunes that already has a monitor, then you don’t need a iTeleport, but it’s still a handy utility regardless.

Another obvious hurdle out-of-box was the lack of a physical keyboard. We didn’t anticipate that the software keyboard would be as useable as it is (it’s remarkably good once you’re used to it), but for longer writing sessions, we knew we’d want a physical keyboard, too. For us, the Apple bluetooth keyboard fits the bill. It’s only slightly taller than the iPad itself, which is about perfect for sitting on our lap while we type away, and it’s not too large to take along when we’re traveling. We use the basic iPad dock for propping the iPad up in portrait mode for when we type, and this works splendidly in most environments. Per our earlier post, setup time is quick and easy, too.

We don’t keep the iPad in a case, though when not in use, we pop it in a Saddleback sleeve so it doesn’t get beaten up in our satchel. Thus far, we’ve found no immediate need for the six-foot power extension cable that Apple sells, though we can picture a need for it in certain environments.

With this three-piece office ensemble (iPad, dock, and keyboard), and iTeleport, we’re perfectly able to perform most every task we need to at home and on the road.

The changing of the lifestyle.

The biggest difference with our computer use after going iPad-only is that traveling is more enjoyable. Schlepping around our 17″ MacBook Pro was a pain in the ass, but with how much smaller and lighter the iPad is, we’ve downsized our briefcase considerably. And, since we have the option of leaving the keyboard and dock at home, we can travel even lighter on short trips when we don’t expect to have much time for writing.

This easier ability to take our iPad on the road means we take it with us more often than we did our MacBook. (Mind you, we keep mentioning our old 17″ MacBook Pro, but the same held true for the 15″ MacBook Pro we had before it.) We wouldn’t have considered taking a notebook computer along on a camping trip, or most day trips, but the iPad is a great travel companion.

And with a battery life of some 10 hours, we don’t even worry about packing a power cord along for most day trips, either. The small footprint of the iPad also means it enters our kitchen more often, say, for looking up recipes. (And yes, it’s great for surfing the web from the shitter, too.)

But perhaps the biggest advantage to the iPad other than the small footprint is the 3G capability. Many have said they’ve heard people regretting a non-3G iPad purchase, but never someone regretting spending the extra money on 3G capability. For the extra dime, the option of 3G access is great, especially since 3G users aren’t on a contract, and can opt-in one month at a time.

About the only downside for new iPad buyers regarding 3G is that the unlimited data plan is no longer available. Since we use wifi at home and at Starbucks, the first couple months of use meant that we didn’t use that much 3G data, so we briefly dropped down to a lower plan. Given our use pattern, however, we occasionally spike: during a couple days of heavy 3G use when we were away from home and had no free wifi available, we burned through the capped data plan, and had to jump back to the unlimited plan. (We could have doubled up on the capped plan, but at that rate, why bother?) Maybe that’s not a huge problem for most people’s use, and arguably doubling-up on a capped plan may suit most people’s needs when such spikes happen, but it’s still something worth noting.

The surfing of the web.

Most people we talk to about going iPad-only bring up Flash as soon as internet use is mentioned. We consider this practically a dead issue and won’t rehash the anti-Flash sentiments in detail, but regardless of what sites are still using it today, the fact remains that Flash eats battery life like nothing else, and every mobile implementation of Flash offers a poor experience. With HTML5 being supported by most sites (like YouTube), it won’t be long before Flash is a footnote in web history, much like the blink tag of yesteryear.

That said, have we been frustrated on occasion that certain legacy sites don’t offer non-Flash versions? Yes, and in these cases, we either move on to the next site, or rely on iTeleport to give us a Flash version via our Mini. But as time moves on, we rely on this latter procedure less and less, in great part because developers are realizing that non-Flash alternatives need to exist. In fact, we’re contemplating removing the Flash plugin from our Mini altogether at this point, as we’re that confident that we don’t need Flash in our web-surfing lives.

Overall, the web-surfing experience on the iPad is fantastic. We don’t need to zoom around on a page like we do with the iPhone, and about the only common annoyance is dealing with web forms, which aren’t as quick to navigate as on a traditional computer, especially when the on-screen keyboard is used and cuts off a drop-down box (rendering it smaller, not obscuring options). Certain web pages also are not iPad-friendly, such as Facebook, which either remove options (Facebook chat, for example) or have broken functionality (Facebook photo uploads). Fortunately, there are apps for some of these issues (like third-party Facebook apps that enable chat and file uploads), but the inability to upload files via a basic web form on, say, an online forum, can be very irksome if you rely on such functionality.

The only other complaint we have will be addressed in iOS 4.2, and that’s conducting text searches in web content.

Given the iPad’s form factor, surfing the web in bed, or on the couch, or wherever else, is simply a more intimate experience that having a keyboard and mouse between you and the internet. If anything, web browsing is where tablets shine much brighter than conventional computers.

The writing of the text.

We’ve already covered writing on the iPad to some degree, but let’s rehash: the software keyboard works well for basic tasks, like taking brief notes, filling in web forms, et al. And, it works well in both landscape and portrait modes; though a lot of people criticize the software keyboard in portrait mode, we’ve found that it works about as well as the landscape keyboard on the iPhone, with the only minor downside being the weight of the iPad being a tad awkward if used for more than a few minutes.

Touch-typing on the software keyboard is also possible in landscape mode, and only becomes better when the auto-correct feature is turned off; mis-types that result in whole words we don’t want turns out to be far more annoying than simply back-spacing and making corrections. But for slow typers, the auto-correct feature can be handy.

For anyone who wants to seriously write on the iPad, however, a hardware keyboard is a must. There are now several, foldable keyboards on the market that open to full-size, and these may be better for travel, but the small, Apple bluetooth keyboard has worked for us so far. For home users, the camera connection kit allows a USB keyboard to be used so you don’t need to worry about keyboard battery life, but this hasn’t been a huge issue for us with our bluetooth keyboard. Still, the option is there (though you couldn’t have the iPad hooked up to a wall outlet in this scenario).

Just as with web pages, one annoyance when writing is not having a quick find/replace option. Perhaps as apps start to standardize more, we’ll see something like this evolve, but keyboard shortcuts are a no-go for most writing apps, so there is a slight speed advantage for those who are used to writing on a traditional computer. (We’ve found the lack of a page up/down shortcut particularly annoying, as we now have to scroll with touch gestures which means taking our hands off the keyboard.)

These slight issues aside, we’ve welcomed the simplicity that iPad writing apps offer. We purchased Pages from the get-go, but tend to use even simpler writing apps, as we don’t regularly mark up our text.

To be fair, we’re not power spreadsheet users either, so Numbers works fine for us, as likely would most other spreadsheet apps on the AppStore. It has a slightly higher learning curve for beginners than, say, Excel, but it’s nothing a half hour of tinkering won’t solve. If anything, office apps on the iPad feel manageable, whereas Microsoft Office can often feel monumental (in a bad way) comparatively.

We mentioned earlier the simplicity of the iPad dock as a stand, and if a table or desk is around, this setup works fantastic. If anything, you can get by with much less tabletop space than you could with a notebook, since a wireless keyboard can easily sit on your lap (being more ergonomic to boot).

That said, things become a tad more complicated if you’re not sitting in a chair in front of a desk. Take, for example, a situation where you want to write a few pages in the park, under a tree. Your keyboard can sit on your lap, but how do you prop your iPad up? You can throw something together with whatever you have around you (a jacket, for example, can become a makeshift support), but the ideal situation is a case that will support the iPad at an ideal viewing angle and not shift. With a notebook, the keyboard is the stand, but with the iPad, you have to buy a case that holds the iPad accordingly. We can’t comment on whether or not the iPad keyboard dock fills this need, but we’ve seen various other cases that seem better suited for this task.

Ultimately, the iPad is an excellent all-around writing tool, and should be plenty adequate for most people’s needs, to include students and professionals. Trickier things become as the need for more robust layout options arise. Folks in the design industry, for example, will likely want very specific software products to fulfill this niche, and until such apps arrive, they will continue to rely on traditional computing solutions. (This is akin to graphics professionals still needing a machine with Photoshop, while the layman can easily get away with one of the many lightweight Photoshop-like apps in the AppStore.)

For everyone else, however, the vast array of writing apps in the AppStore, to include writing apps for hand-written notes and apps integrating audio capture, should suffice for most any need.

The blogging of the thoughts.

So general writing on the iPad works well, but what about, specifically, blogging? Considering that most of the non-professional writing we do ends up online in some form or another, we hoped that the iPad would address this need well. As it turns out, blogging via the iPad is easy once one gets a decent methodology in place.

On our MacBook, we relied heavily on Skitch for grabbing and editing graphics from the web for use in  blog posts. On the iPad, we have to manually download a web graphic, else perform a screen-capture. We then open the file in our graphics app of choice, crop, edit, and re-save. We now have a graphic that we can’t simply upload via a web form, and that’s a shame. (The default WordPress admin interface doesn’t lend itself to file uploads from the iPad, nor is the content input box for a post resizable in Mobile Safari like it is in regular Safari. So sadly, it’s a poor interface for making new posts.)

Fortunately, since we predominantly use WordPress, there’s both a WordPress app and BlogPress (both apps with trade-offs, but that are reasonable methods for generating new blog posts). That said, in most cases, we still end up writing the actual posts in one of our writing apps, and then cut’n pasting the final draft over to the WordPress or BlogPress apps. This is where we would then handle image attachments and the like. (If we don’t want to deal with images, we often paste into WordPress via Safari.)

Admittedly, it probably takes us a little extra time to blog via the iPad than it did from our MacBook, but we argue that this is mainly because the WordPress app has shown itself buggy, and BlogPress remains limited in what it does. We’d definitely like to see a more robust blogging app, even if it’s just a more stable and refined WordPress app.

The watching of the multimedia.

The iPad is positioned as an entertainment device as much as it is a productivity device, and here, we’ve found no shortage of truth. Even though we don’t rely on the built-in iPod and Videos apps as much as others might, we’ve been pleased with the variety of video options in the AppStore. Key among these are streaming apps, like Netflix and Hulu Plus, but perhaps our top choice is Air Video, which allows us to stream video content from our Mini to the iPad on a local, or remote level. This means that video not encoded for viewing in iTunes can stream to the iPad just fine, and while Netflix and Hulu have licensing restrictions that won’t let you use them when traveling overseas, Air Video lets us watch what we want, where we want. (Plex is also great if you’re running the main Plex app on a media server like we are; it handles landscape mode nicely, and we’re starting to use this app more often now, though Air Video is still out go-to.)

While we could probably find a way to automate the transferring of content from our TiVo to the Mini, when we’re traveling, we simply find an RSS feed for a particular torrent of a show we already pay for via FIOS, and let Transmission on the Mini download new episodes as they’re posted. Air Video is set up to scan the respective directory with new torrent downloads, and we’re good to go. Even if your source isn’t torrents (i.e. you can automate downloads from Usenet or some other source), Air Video can look in the directory where videos are downloaded to and present them to you from the other side of the world.

With iOS 4.2 and multitasking, we expect the iPad to only become better; being able to run Pandora audio streams in the background while we surf the web, or write, is something we look forward to, as we’re currently handling background audio by running Pandora on our iPhone and keeping the phone nearby.

That which remains missing.

The iPad has met most of our expectations in six months of use, though there remain several things we’d like to see improved in the iPad experience. Recognizing that some things simply won’t change based on Apple’s position on third-party apps, there are other things we’d like to see happen.

1. Tethering: The iPad currently requires a traditional computer in order to back up files, downloads, and handle iOS updates. This means that the iPad can never be the sole machine in one’s tool-bag, and that isn’t ideal. Right now, the iPad is a great travel companion, but if we were to go on a major trip lasting several months, we’d question whether not having any backups during that time-frame, or missing a key iOS update, is something we could live with. The iPad needs a way to back itself up via an iPad-optimized version of Time Machine, which could be run on a home network or, even better, via the internet. And, the iPad needs to be able to download and install iOS updates without being tethered to a traditional computer. Once this happens, the iPad becomes a much clearer alternative to the 11″ MacBook Air.
   
   
2. APIs: We’ve heard from several developers that the apps they want to make can’t be made, because Apple still has many private APIs that developers can’t use (but that Apple uses in its own iOS apps). This isn’t good for the development of more powerful and competitive iOS apps, especially when basic things like text markup become restricted to developers. (Sadly, this is preventing apps like Ulysses from receiving a solid port to iOS.)
   
   
   
3. Screen-sharing: We mentioned how fantastic we find iTeleport, but why isn’t there a native solution to screen-sharing via an iPad? And, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a more powerful way to stream content from a server? We’re thinking something along the lines of OnLive, only connecting a video stream between you and a Mac you already own. While iOS 4.2 will allow us to stream audio and video from one iOS device to another on an app-specific level, being able to stream a Mac desktop to an iPad would be a fantastic ability to have.

More experimenting.

We’re not done with our experiment: we don’t plan on jumping back over to a MacBook anytime soon. Rather, we’re quite pleased with how well our iPad performs, and we’re actually more likely to replace it with another iPad well before we replace it with another notebook.

For those considering a similar experiment, jumping over to the iPad is difficult in the sense that switching from the PC to the Mac is difficult: it involves changing habits and adopting new ways of doing things. But once you start getting those new methods, then the iPad isn’t an obstacle for tasks, but a natural fit for them. The iPad isn’t perfect, mind you, but it’s already a solid platform for computing, and we only see it getting better over time. There’s a reason that the feel of the iPad is being transitioned over to OS X, which will only further help to drive iPad sales.

Yes, we sometimes get frustrated with a particular task on the iPad, because the way we know to do that task on a Mac feels easier, but those moments of frustration are less and less frequent as better apps are released, and as Apple continues to develop iOS further.

When it comes to apps, we also find ourselves thinking less and less, “We wish our iPad could do what the Mac does,” and thinking more and more, “We wish everyone used an iPad.” Why? Because more iPad users means more developers on that platform, which means better apps. And frankly, those apps on the iPad would be better.

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It’s bad enough when establishments charge the same price for a smaller item. Take Starbucks as an example, where a double-tall espresso drink (a tall drink with two shots of espresso) costs the same amount of money as a grande (another drink with two shots of espresso, albeit with more milk/syrup). In other words, if you want an espresso drink with two shots of espresso, you get more for your money by ordering the grande.

That’s fine if you’re okay with more milk and sugar, but let’s say you want something less filling, but with an equal amount of caffeine. Shouldn’t the double-tall drink cost less, since you get less?

Adding insult to injury, after a long wait for our drink today, the teenage barista behind the counter apologized, and told us he’d upgrade our drink to a grande to make up for it. Upgrade? By giving us a drink we didn’t want that costs the same as the one we ordered? Thanks for nothing.

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