The High Sierras .... Like Backpacking on Mars

The High Sierras rock, this is just a little photo montage of my weekend trip up there. I've never been to a landscape where it turns from something so beautifully lush and green to straight rocky desolateness. The beginning of the trail was what you'd expect when you're in the mountains. Trees, lots of trees, animals, pikas (cute squirrel-looking things), gigantic bucks, greenery. 

Then you keep going, up, until you're at 12,000 ft and above the treeline. It turns into a massive rock pile that should be carefully climbed across, glaciers, and beautiful lakes. At the very top it felt like I was on Mars (assuming there was water there at some point), nothing but rocks and water (no trees, no soil). The higher you go, the trails disappear, leaving you to find your way through the crazy terrain with a compass and a topo map.

 Didn't see any bears :( Did see a massive buck and a bunch of pikas though.

 John Muir was a badass.

 Crossing a stream.

 This is where the trees start thinning out, going above the tree-line.

 And this is well above the tree-line, nothing but water, rocks and more rocks.

 And even more rocks.

 Back down in civilization.What better way to reward yourself after a climb than with a brewski? (And it was 110 degrees outside)

10 Statistics You Really Don't Want To Know

I have a habit of collecting weird or interesting facts. There is so much knowledge out there, about so many subjects, it's mind boggling. Here are 10 facts I've come across that are strange, unexpected, and a bit unsettling.

1. The world population has (more than) doubled since 1960.
Population facts are always a little unsettling. I love people, don't get me wrong, but there are just way too many of us. And it's not stopping. In 1960 there were approximately 3 billion people on the planet. That was 50 short years ago, and now it's over 7 billion. That is quite the boom on a planet with finite resources and habitable space, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

2. 1 in 5 women who masturbate don't wash their hands afterwards.
Think of all those hands you shook. I'm not a germaphobe by any means, but that's just nasty.

3. 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
As an avid reader, this bums me out a little. Books are awesome, and just because school is over for some people doesn't mean the quest for learning should stop. That should never stop. Yes, you can learn an amazing amount from reading online articles, watching documentaries, having intellectual discussions...DOING things. But there is really nothing like the carefully written, edited, and verified information inside of so many books. Hell, even a good fiction story does amazing things for keeping one's vocabulary sharp.

4. CPR only works 5-10% of the time.
In some cities, where immediate help may take a bit longer than usual to get there, or a bystander attempts CPR the success rate drops to a mere 1%. From the wiki on CPR: "Estimates vary, but many organizations stress that CPR does not "bring anyone back," it simply preserves the body for defibrillation and advanced life support." Oh, and it also breaks peoples ribs, when done properly. Yikes.

5. In India, a woman is raped every 20 minutes.
A combination of factors, like the preference for sons and female infanticide (leading to a skewed male to female ratio) and lenient penalties for sex offenders has lead to a huge increase in rape in India. This statistic is from the National Crime Records Bureau.

6. Since the 1950s, around 90% of the large predatory fish in the ocean are gone.
FMAP scientists claim that up to 90% of all large predatory fish such as cod, sharks, halibut, grouper, tuna, swordfish, and marlin have been depleted. Industrialized fisheries, FTL (for the lose).

7. There are 35-50 active serial killers in the United States at any given moment.

What makes my skin crawl the most about this is how normal and nice people always say that they seem. I actually had a first-hand experience with this, back in 2010 I was a bartender at a well known casino in Gardena, Ca. One of our semi-regulars there ended up on the news, tied to the rape and murders of multiple women. It's crazy, you really never know, but there are monsters among us...sometimes a lot closer than we think.

8. 50% of healthcare dollars in the US are spent on the last 6 months of life.
Pretty self explanatory, but food for thought.

9. In the US, there's an average of 217 million white blood cells per liter of cow milk.
Those white blood cells come from the pus of the infected teats of the cows.Not to mention, humans are the only animals that drinks ANOTHER mammals breast (teat?) milk, and also the only mammals to drink milk well into adulthood.

10. 5 to 10 percent of all people who ever walked this earth, are alive right now.
The sheer volume of us is mind boggling. The /Homo/ genus has been around for 2.5 million years...and the earliest remains for homo sapiens are around 150,000 years old. That's a huge span of time, yet 5-10% of people to EVER exsist are alive right now, and you're one of them. Life is crazy.

Mt Wilson: A story of tarantulas, road rash, and a sick view.

Most people who live in LA know what the San Gabriels look like. Look north, and you'll see some massive mountains that separate the LA area from the Mojave desert. They're 68 miles long, and 22 miles wide, and happen to be one of my favorite places to play. These are a few pics from yesterday's Mt Wilson hike, for anyone curious what's on the other side of the mountain once you cross over that front peak.

 It actually starts off pretty smoothly.

Dat elevation gain.

 A few miles up and the trail gets smaller.

View toward LA (blocked by the mountains)

 Over the peak, view toward the inside of the range. Literally nothing but mountains and woods, any way you look :) This is what I came here for.

<3

Ran into this guy on the way back down. We both scared each other...I almost stepped on him (accident!) and he just froze there. The most massive tarantula I've seen that wasn't in a pet store.

I tried to jog down to beat the sun, tripped over a rock, flew forward and slid down the trail. (So graceful...lol) Not the smartest move with a pack on. And shorts. Still worth it :)

Why Do People Procrastinate?

Procrastination is a topic that comes up at some point with everyone - for various reasons we put things off that we know we should be doing. I just got back from a long vacation, and that first day of getting back into work mode and out of play mode (for the most part) usually tends to feel like it drags on forever. It gets easy to feel like putting things on the back burner or drag things out, which creates a vicious cycle of procrastination. Why do we do this?

For some people it's fairly easy to get themselves to do things they've been putting off. It's as simple as removing distractions (which can help everyone) and then filling that time with finishing more important things instead. When I have assignments I need to get done removing distractions is essential because it removes the temptation to stop what I'm doing and start something else (the looks more fun at the moment) instead. Taking the time to outline things and break bigger projects into manageable steps helps, too. But sometimes that isn't enough. When that's the case, it's the attitude that's the problem.

Negative thought patterns tend to contribute to procrastination. If you realize that your thoughts at any time are leaning more toward to negative than the positive side of things, something needs to change. It's easy to get bogged down by negative thoughts, but this is also something you can change once you take notice of it. Journaling (overview of your day and what happened in it) has been proven to help banish negative thought. The main reason it helps is because it takes a load off your mind and puts your thoughts onto paper, making it easier to analyze things you've been mulling over and then let them go. A lot of people are analytical thinkers and find it hard to let go of things until they feel like they've mentally sorted them out. Journaling streamlines that process, talking to someone about whatever you've been mulling over (sort of audio journaling if you think about it) can help as well.

While procrastination is a bad habit according to most people, it is also a natural behavior. Even animals in the wild exhibit some signs of it, they stay confined to one small area where they get most of the water, food, and basic needs met and generally don't do much beyond that. There are animals that have hundreds of times bigger roaming areas available than they typically use, who continue to stay in a smaller general space. It's easy and normal to feel unmotivated to do more when things are already okay. We're creatures of comfort. The key to being motivated to do more than what we're doing to just get by is 1 part desire and 1 part structure. Don't be hard on yourself for not being motivated or not doing more, but do realize that it's a natural way to feel and can be changed if want to change it. Either accept things as "okay" as they are, or find out what's driving your desires and identify the structure you need to change them.

Self discipline is similar to a muscle, in the sense that the more you practice it, the easy and more natural it comes to practice. Impulsiveness is a major hindrance when procrastination is concerned. Sometimes even when distractions are removed it's hard to stop thinking about them, or keep from getting bored. Delayed gratification is a good tool to get impulsive behaviors under control. What do you catch yourself doing when you should be doing something else? Once you identify what those main things are set up situations where you can choose between a small reward in the short term and a bigger reward in the long term, and attempt to choose the latter. This conditions you to be more patient and as a result (besides having your work done faster) it tends to motivate people do more naturally. The discipline to stop procrastination is a slow but not impossible process.

I'll leave it there, but if you haven't checked out "The Now Habit" by Dr Neil Fiore it's an amazing resource for figuring out why exactly we procrastinate, and how to overcome it.

Why Touching Strangers is Good For You

Hear me out before you dismiss this one, there is a lot of science behind it. Touching people, even those we don't know, has a subtle unconscious impact. I should preface this also by saying that when I say touch I'm referring to a *light* touch on the arm, shoulder, or something similar. Downright groping someone or touching them for uncomfortably long will have the opposite effect of what I'm about to discuss. Here goes:

A huge portion of the way that people communicate is through nonverbal cues. Since so many of them are given off at once: Body language, tone of voice, eye contact or lack thereof just to name a few, we interpret these cues largely through our subconscious. Most of the time people don't even realize why they're getting certain vibes off people that have nothing to do with the words that come out of those people's mouths. One of the pioneer studies on the power of touch was done in France, using an attractive French guy to ask out women chosen at random in public in the name of science. For half the women he lightly touched their arm while asking them out, the other half he did not touch them at all. the results? The women he touched were twice as likely to give him their phone number versus those he didn't. Those are some pretty staggering results. The kicker, when asked (after being told the proposition was in the name of science) most of the women reported not even realizing he had touched them. It was light, subtle, and highly subconscious.

This phenomenon of people reacting positively to a subtle touch was repeated in many subsequent studies around the worlds...servers in restaurants who lightly touched their guests when asking if there was anything else they needed before handing them the check received higher tips consistently. Another study showed that complete strangers were more willing to help someone pick up a stack of discs they dropped when they had lightly touched someone when asking for directions beforehand. In all these cases people acted more positively and compassionate after a slight touch.

This might be confusing to quite a few people who highly value their personal space. Some people recoil at the touch of a stranger. Interestingly enough, some of the tests subjects did as well, but generally still acted nicer toward the strangers anyhow.

This has been shown to some extent in non-human mammals as well. Mice and primates also get pleasure from social touch. This is part of the reason for grooming cliques. Grooming effectively takes only about 10 minutes per day, but the cliques tend to groom for hours on end. The reason being it is as much of a social thing as it is a necessity. Touching also can signify confidence and slight dominance.

We have a particular type of nerve fiber - mainly found in our arms and faces - that has developed specifically to infer pleasure from social touch, such as the light arm tap I mentioned above. They are connected to the part of your brain that deals with emotion (the insular cortex), in this case pleasurable emotion. So part of the reason a light touch is so effective is because we are literally wired to glean some sort of pleasure from it, whether we realize it or not.

How to Kick a Bad Habit

Habits are patterns of behaviors that govern our day to day life. I talk about them a lot because they make or break us; our habits determine who we are, how successful and happy we are, and how much we achieve in life. Most of our habits are acted out subconsciously, without us even realizing what we are doing. The reason why? We evolved to be able to put repetitive things on a mental back burner to free up our minds to concentrate on other tasks at hand. It would really be a drag to have to concentrate hard every time we did something like walking. This is how bad habits can creep into our lives without us realizing just how much of a hold they have on us until it is too late, and we begin to see effects that we don't like.

The awesome thing about good habits is that one you actually start them, they are just as automatic as bad ones. If you have things in your life that you aren't liking, something needs to change. Figure out what habits are producing the undesired effects, think about what little steps you can do to change them, then hold yourself accountable to follow through.

We all have something called "keystone habits"...small changes or habits that people introduce into their routines that unintentionally carry over into other aspects of their lives. Exercise is a common one, because it conditions you to put effort into something productive that you can see visible results from on a regular basis. Once most people start regularly exercising they subconsciously adapt other healthier and disciplined behaviors as well. It's one of the awesome mental benefits of working out. Find out what your keystone habits are, it's a game changer. Once you know what really makes an impact on you it is easier to motivate yourself to stop what you want to stop doing, and start what do wish to.

One of the ways I got out of the habit of eating unhealthy things was to think more carefully about what I'm putting into my body. As the old washed up cliché goes, we literally are what we eat. What you're eating is going to be broken down and supply nutrients to build your body. I started looking at junk food as what it really is, something that I probably didn't want chilling in my body, dragging down my energy. Once you start viewing things that aren't bad for you that way, thinking about the effects they'll have inside of you, junk food starts looking different. The first couple weeks of cutting out sugar sucked, but once they were over the cravings stopped. After that it's smooth sailing.

You can make things easier on yourself by first realizing you have habits that are producing results you don't like (that in itself is major) and then being more mindful when you catch yourself doing them. Consistency is important, once you repeat something 21 times it becomes a habit, it comes naturally. The key is making it that first few steps, and keeping at it. It all comes down to a little willpower and a lot of consistency.

If Winning Was Easy, Losers Would Do It.

Too many people take the easy route in life. Or if not easy, settle for "just okay", instead of their actual dreams or full potential. Life is hard enough as it is, so why put any more effort into things that are more difficult...right? That is the mindset of mediocrity. The mindset that so many of us fall prey to. If you are content with never seeing your full potential, or can't be bothered to suffer through a bit of discomfort in the moment to achieve what you want most, then this post isn't for you. Enjoy being normal, enjoy letting life happen to you instead of taking charge of it.

We all have the ability to do whatever we set our minds to. This is often said but it bears repeating, because somewhere along the twists and turns of life it's evident that a lot of people give up and forget this fact. There is nothing like completing a difficult feat, especially something you are passionate about. Not only from the joy of achieving the thing you did, but also from the sense of worth and accomplishment it brings. There are precious few people who have the courage to do something *because* it is hard.

Children have a good understanding of what it is to follow your dreams, because at that stage in life everything is still an opportunity, still a goal waiting for you to go get it. As we get older many of us start to feel defeated by hardships that have happened in life, and forget about what we really want. But it's never too late, the opportunity to have or be anything you dream of is always there. Some people feel like going back to school, training for something big, or doing what it takes to make their dreams happen is useless because it will take too long. Not true. The time will pass anyway, regardless of if you go for your dreams or not.

Don't fall into the pattern of taking the easy route or settling for less when you know you can accomplish so much more. On the route to awesomeness you will inevitably pass "decent"...and this is where most people stop, because fuck it, they're getting by. It's easy to do and that is precisely why you shouldn't. Taking the easy route is being run by life instead of taking charge of it. You would be surprised at how life changing just a little bit of effort can be. You're worth it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said it best: