“That’s an unfair comparison!” You’re right, it isn’t fair: Glass is potentially far worse than cigarette smoke.

I’m not going to tell you not to smoke—if you want to kill yourself slowly, painfully, expensively, that’s your prerogative.* But, while I’m merely irritated with second-hand smoke, second-hand glassing poses far greater marginal risk.

It’s the exhaust. The effect of smoke (cigarette exhaust) is obvious, temporary, physical, and immediately remedied. With Glass, the information exhaust—inconspicuous, permanent, virtual, and potentially irreversible—has unknown effect.

At worst, it’s distributed, indexed, searchable, immutable, and immortal Orwellian surveillance. We’d live in constant fear of making our own 47% comment without the fact-checking privileges enjoyed by a public figure.

Happily, there are easy solutions that satisfy both me and your respective addictions. For nicotine, consider vapor e-cigarettes (if you must) or better yet, a nicotine patch. For those sold on Glass, please encourage Google to manufacture options without recording devices.

Ultimately, we should all should be mindful of how our personal choices pollute the space around us and aim to be as considerate of others as possible. This should be plainly obvious, but as our personal technologies meld with our identities (like Drew Carey’s black frames, can you imagine seeing Sergey Brin without Glass now?) we should be especially careful.

–

*This is a lie. I’m militant about second-hand smoke and am quick to draw: either I’ll ask you to put the cigarette out or that you go somewhere else. All the while, I’m trying not to gag on air that passes over your tar-soaked fabric and am actively resisting the urge to spray your face with Febreze.

At first blush, it’s humbling; quite the accomplishment. But, in thinking about the differences between Roosevelt and me (because in idle moments I compare myself to great historical figures) what really struck me wasn’t the magnitude of his writing. Rather, it was the magnitude of communication channels that I use daily and the complexities between them.

When he wasn’t giving a speech, serving on a committee, or generally entertaining guests, Roosevelt’s communications were mostly on physical paper: mailed, delivered, published, and purchased. It seemed pretty straightforward, so I made a list:

• Synchronous Direct Communication (talking)
• Overheard Conversations, Rumor, Messenger, and Hearsay (eavesdropping)
• Written One-to-one correspondence
  • Letters
  • Telegrams (direct messages delivered on paper, for you whippersnappers)
• One-to-many written works
  • Newspapers
  • Magazines
  • Books
  • Posters/Advertisements
• One-to-many live media (broadcast)
  • Radio (later in his life)

Then I started writing a list of the communication avenues I had available to me. It turned out considerably longer:

• Synchronous Direct Communication (“talking” – please note the air quotes)
  • Voice
    • In-person
    • Phone
  • Voice + Video
    • Skype
    • Apple Facetime
    • Google Hangout
    • etc.
  • Textual* (intended to be synchronous, but in reality, it’s not)
    • SMS/MMS “texting”
    • IMs (IMer, GTalk, etc)
    • Social Network Conduits (Facebook, Twitter, IRC etc. DMs)
• Overheard
  • In person
  • Butt-dialing
  • Retweets/re-blogs/re-shares
  • Copied/forwarded personal content
  • Over-the-shoulder eavesdropping
• Written One-to-one correspondence
  • Textual (SMSs that aren’t responded to, IMs sent while offline, etc.)
  • Postal Letters
  • E-mail
  • Social Messages (Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, PHP forums, etc.)
• One-to-many written works (with or without rich media like photos, videos, etc.)
  • Group Texting (SMS, Groupme, etc.)
  • Status Updates – Twitter (micro, instant)
  • Social Posts (Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram: mixed length, mixed timing)
  • Newspapers
  • Magazines
  • Books
  • Posters/Advertisements
  • Weblogs
  • Newsblogs
  • Wall Posts (written to one person, but intended for semi-public consumption)
• Many-to-many written works
  • Community News/Link Sharing (Reddit, Fark, off-topic forums)
  • Newspaper (NYTimes, etc.) online discussions
  • Blog comments (like this here site)
• One-to-many live media (Broadcast)
  • Radio
  • Satellite
  • Television
  • Internet
• One-to-many recorded media
  • Spotify, Rdio, MP3
  • Podcasts
  • YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
• One-to-few recorded media
  • Vine
• Ephemeral works
  • Snapchat
  • Facebook Poke

I’ve omitted some channels due to time and general laziness, but you get the idea.

This long (albeit abbreviated) summary suggests a lurking problem: we have increasingly divergent channels each competing for our attention. The more distracted we are, the less we produce. It’s basic entropy.

Each channel aims to optimize some combination of synchronous/asynchronous, short/long-form, ephemeral/persistent, and private/public for our benefit. But ironically, while the channels themselves might be precise, attempting to manage them all becomes clumsy and cluttered.

During a recent 2-hour flight delay, I attempted to graph this lunacy (fighting off the urge to read incoming e-mails as I command-tabbed between my word processor and drawing software). Here are two plots that summarize the differences between the timeliness of communicative information with respect to audience size.

Note: these plots represent the intended purpose of each mode of communication, not necessarily its reality. For instance, communications that were meant to be asynchronous (like e-mails, tweets, and blog posts) frequently alert readers to their existence in real time.

I then sorted each channel into a separate “inbox”. Roosevelt had it easy:

1. Someone told him directly / he overheard something
2. Someone handed him something to read
3. It arrived on his desk
4. It arrived in the mail
5. It was put on his bookshelf, nightstand, or coffee table.

Moreover, each unit of information had only one physical copy, therefore only one way to read it.

With digital information, information becomes infinitely more complex. For example, my smartphone came with four discrete instant messaging applications: SMS, Google Voice, Google+, and Google Talk. I download two more, Skype and Twitter, because I use them regularly while on the go.*  Then, including the passive social applications (Instagram, Foursquare, Fitocracy, Goodreads, and Github), I count eleven separate inboxes where you can pester me, instantly.

Admittedly, almost all of these inboxes integrate with the operating system’s notification panel. However, I need to go through each individual application (which has different messaging mechanics) in order to read, respond, and flag for followup up. For all intents and purposes, these are discrete inboxes you cannot consolidate.

Now, if we include the six e-mail accounts (spread across Android’s wonderful GMail application, its castrated IMAP client, and webmail through Chrome) as well as the ancillary functions of some of those aforementioned social networks (Twitter’s tweets, Skype’s Phone calls, etc.) there are no less than 20 different channels on my phone alone.

I’ll find no solace in shunting these channels into e-mail, either: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Flickr, Tumblr, etc. all include their own messaging services that thrust themselves into my inbox at the slightest bit of activity from users I’ve connected with. Foursquare and Twitter send me “places my friends have been and things my friends have said”. Facebook reminds me that I have 92 unanswered friend requests (sorry) and that I’ve been tagged in a 12 photos. LinkedIn sends me “updates from connected Thought Leaders”. (Really, guys?) Even YouTube has started sending me “video digests” from what my friends have been watching, and on Google+.

Let’s just say, “it’s complicated”.

–

All of this aside, I began this quest to benchmark my written output with Roosevelt’s. Instead, I’m now considering whether our modern information explosion prohibits fair comparison. I’ll leave that exercise to a postdoc.

But, just for kicks, we’ll do a simple comparison between Roosevelt and me using letters and e-mail, respectively. Yes, this is reductionist, but I have more important things to worry about.

Not including social posts, corporate e-mail, direct messages, IMs, SMSs, and notes I’ve passed during class, I have sent over 30,000 messages in 8 years. Roosevelt lived to be a little over 60, putting him at 3,750 letters a year (if you ignore his first twenty years). On e-mail alone I, too, clock in at 3,750 letters a year.

Given our scores amidst excessive channel noise, I declare victory, pyrrhic though it might be.

–

*Facebook is conspicuously missing here because the application demands full read/write access to every bit of data of my phone. No thanks, Zuck.

During this morning’s gym routine, I caught up on a Skeptoid podcast which debunked the nutritional claims by the various juice cleanse proponents. So, naturally, I thought I’d do the math and see if I couldn’t come up with something healthier, cheaper, and more delicious.

(Side note: Brian’s Skeptoid show is fantastic, as are the piles of research he does for every show. Thanks to Sarah Downey for the recommendation.)

As a benchmark, I started with BluePrint’s Foundation Cleanse which, according to the marketing, seemed most appropriate for most cleanse-seeking persons (hereafter referred to as “cleansers”). It was also the first result for “juice cleanse” on your favorite search engine.

The Foundation Cleanse is six bottles of juice, taken sequentially, with the following daily nutritional footprint. In sum:

KCal: 1,010
Fat: 19 grams (Saturated: 3 g)
Carb: 197 grams (Fiber: 14 g, Sugar: 171 g)
Protein: 14 grams


Complete Data Available Here

What I find particularly amusing is that, according to BluePrint, The Foundation Cleanse “fills you up [...]”, but with 171g of sugar comprising most of the caloric intake, I find that difficult to stomach. (Har har.) You see, sugar is quickly digested and quickly burned, rendering the cleanser with energy spikes after every bottle and isn’t, I’m afraid, terribly filling.

Moreover, the total caloric load is 1,010 KCal, below the average number of calories most people spend in a day just to exist. (Also called the Basal Metabolic Rate, or BMR, the averages for men and women are about 1,500 and 1,650 kilocalories a day, respectively.)

If you’re trying to lose weight (which, I’d venture, is why most cleansers subscribe to a juice cleanse), consuming below your caloric usage is generally a sound idea. However, operating on a high-sugar, caloric-restrictive diet will cause most people, experienced cleansers included, to lose lean mass (muscle) and not fat mass (pudginess). For those who value popular fashion aesthetics, this cleanse is the stark opposite to what cleansers ought to be doing. They will lose weight, but it’s not the weight they want to be losing.

However, the point of this exercise isn’t to admonish BluePrint or its product’s nutritional values and composition—it’s to come up with something equally absurd, wonderful, and by all means tastier. And it’s with this in mind that I bring you my latest creation:

The Ice Cream, Peanut Butter, and Split Pea Cleanse

The goal here was to create a “cleanse” with a similar caloric load to our benchmark, but with macronutrients portioned to reduce insulin spikes, include sufficient fiber, stave off hunger, and—most importantly—maximize gluttony.

While The Foundation Cleanse features six consumption opportunities throughout the day, The ICPBSP Cleanse can be consumed all in one sitting; or, if the cleanser chooses, throughout the day thusly:

Meal 1: 1/2 Cup Cooked Split Peas
Meal 2: 1/2 Cup Vanilla Ice Cream
Meal 3: 2 Tbsp Creamy Peanut Butter
Meal 4: 1/4 Cup Cooked Split Peas
Meal 5: 1/2 Cup Vanilla Ice Cream
Meal 6: 2 Tbsp Creamy Peanut Butter

Meals 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6 may also be combined if so desired. I’m not picky.

Most acutely, the daily nutritional footprint of The ICPBSP Cleanse is as follows:

KCal: 1,093
Fat: 71 grams (Saturated: 29 g)
Carb: 87 grams (Fiber: 16 g, Sugar 53 g)
Protein: 36 grams


In comparison with the Foundation Cleanse, this nutritional footprint features 50% more protein, 50% fewer carbs, and 65% fewer sugars, all with equivalent fiber portions, calorie for calorie.

Did I mention this cleanse features one cup of Haagen Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream, four tablespoons of Skippy Peanut Butter, and less than a cup of cooked split peas? I could’ve spent time selecting more nutritionally-advantageous products, but given the sugar contents of the benchmark, I felt I didn’t need to bother with any of that. I leave it as an exercise to the reader.

Also important to note, this diet features three times the amount of fat as The Foundation Cleanse. This is intentional: fats (and proteins) will keep cleansers much more sated than the equivalent caloric load in carbohydrates. Contrary to popular belief, eating fats doesn’t (necessarily) make you fat. Granted, there’s a lot of fat in this cleanse, but it’s more likely you’ll be able to stick to this one over the low-fat, low-protein Foundation Cleanse. And with the little bit of extra fiber in the ICPBSP Cleanse, it’ll digest just as easily (assuming the cleanser isn’t lactose intolerant or anything).

In my mind, there are two purported purposes to a cleanse: rid your body of toxins and restore nutritional balance in your body. Regardless of whether or not that’s what actually happens during a cleanse (spoiler: it’s not), the overall byproduct of this dietary exercise leaves cleansers to operate with a lower caloric intake. So, for my money, go with which one you’re more likely to stick with.

Speaking of which, The Foundation Cleanse will cost you more than $65 per day (not including shipping) whereas the ICPBSP Cleanse costs $4* per day and is available at every grocery store in America and can be purchased with food stamps.

Ultimately, for cleansers who opt to cleanse, the choice is simple: either go with expensive mail-order green and white juice goop, or enjoy a simple diet of Ice Cream, Peanut Butter, and cooked Split Peas.

Truthfully, though, I wouldn’t recommend either.

Update: A few people have written me to say that there are some benefits to the properties of organically-produced, vitamin-enriched drinks. In response, swap out Skippy for an organic peanut butter supplier and Haagen Dazs for a locally-farmed vanilla bean ice cream concoction and add a multivitamin for an additional $1-2 per day and equivalent organic and vitamin-enrichment. Oh, and drink water.

–

*Prices as of November 14th, 2012 according to FreshDirect.com. (Daily portion wise: $3 for the Ice Cream, $.50 for the Peanut Butter, and $.50 for the Split Peas.)

That’s incredible considering Angry Birds is by no means a technical feat nor is it an original game; in fact, it’s merely a remix of some old popular games. It’s popular because it wins on familiarity and on story. To wit, here’s a game that has similar play dynamics:

This is Breakout. Steves Jobs and Wozniak wrote this ‘original’ game for Atari. While your instincts may tell you Angry Birds and Breakout are night and day, you’d be wrong. They’re based on the same premise: send a projectile to destroy all of the static objects on a game board before you run out of lives. The game was rather successful and spawned sequels and hundreds of clones. (It’s been on every BlackBerry I’ve ever seen as “Brick Breaker”.)

Here’s another game of the same flavor: bowling.

Suspicious (yet probably still accurate) Internet data suggest that Angry Birds has about the same number of downloads (~200M) as the number of people who have bowled at least once in their lifetimes (~220M). And, given the proclivities of today’s youth, that number is increasingly in favor for the birds.

It leads one to ponder: if it’s basically the same game, why are the Angry Birds so ubiquitous? And yet, the answer is simple: emotion.

At the onset, you’re presented a problem: evil green pigs have stolen eggs from a cacophony of primary-colored kamikaze dodos. The outrage is enough to start a war, severe enough to forgo primal instincts of self preservation and use yourself as munitions; but, more importantly, it’s enough to stir, as the player, your latent need for righteous vengeance. Naturally, you are uniquely suited to aide the birds in their avionic havoc—and for which you are eager to comply.

Just watch the intro:

Damn those pigs. So smug. Ugh!

After this, sending a ball into a bunch of blocks isn’t nearly as exciting. This is because (for the non-autistic among my readership) you relate to anthropomorphic critters better than you can relate to a circle. You may have sympathy for the devil, but certainly not for a ball.

Behold:

Angry Birds is tried and true gameplay laced with emotion and familiarity: the story is familiar, the physics are familiar, and the only logical leap the game asks of the player is to forget that most birds can fly perfectly well on their own. But, in this case, they require a slingshot and your help, and don’t require a trip down to the bowling alley.

Like bowling and breakout and those before it, Angry Birds has been wildly successful, spawning sequels and dozens of clones. And toys.

But, for my time and money, I’d rather go bowling with friends—they tell better stories.

Glory begins in an “uh”—the involuntary spasm associated with confusion or unfamiliarity, it’s a commonplace verbal crutch oft extinguished with any formal public speaking training. It’s negative space before a cohesive thought, like a dial-tone waiting for instructions. And, with regard to “uh-oh”, this monosyllabic overture intonates a forthcoming thought still too primitive for higher linguistics or verbiage. To the poor souls who utter it, their minds grope at the ineffable harbinger with horrifying deftness.

Notice singularity in purpose of the “uh” and the “oh”: there’s no space. A space affords a pause… and if there’s time for pause, there’s time for action. But, in this moment, action is meaningless, so the a hyphen is used only to service grammarians and readers. It’s certainly not useful nor pertinent for its utterer who, clearly, has more pressing matters to attend to.

“Oh” is the moment of clarity when dire incomprehension shifts into sharp focus. “Oh” isn’t acknowledgement of a mistake—that’s “oops!”—or understanding that everything’s going to be ok. Quite the opposite, in fact: the “oh” is the implicit acceptance that this, whatever it is that is now harrowing down upon your consciousness, is not good. This much you know. There is little, if nothing, to immediately do or solve, and your mind accepts the eventuality. What will happen will happen, and the most amount of action you can muster is to vocalize your fantastic impotence with a word so fatalistic that it does not employ a hard consonant.

Revel in the uh-ohs. They’re the only moments when you can resign yourself to the fate of your circumstances.

(Yes, my iPhone is named Dogberry.)

In the Times Bestseller The Four Hour Body, Tim Ferriss outlined the slow-carb diet: a 6-days on and 1-day off diet for easy fat loss without exercising and starving oneself. I tried it for 30 days only concerning myself with the before and after, noting any major changes along the way. Here’s what went down:

Movement

The plan doesn’t stipulate any exercise, nor does it require it. In fact, my activity level was perhaps the worst in was in recent memory since reading period my senior year of college where I handcuffed myself to a couch in the campus coffee shop until I was done writing. My schedule looked something like this:

Monday through Friday

• 9am wakeup.
• 10ish to 7ish—desk time (with 15 minute takeout walk around 2ish, and 5 minute soup pickup around 6, or when hungry.)
• 7ish to 8ish—commute home and errands
• 8ish to 2ish—couch time (still working) and dinner

Saturday through Sunday

• Intermittent spurts of productivity
• Short run or low-intensity bike ride (20-40 minutes)
• Movies, Coding, and Sparticus. From the Couch.
• Seamlessweb.
• 7pm – ?am: Reckless Spending on Various Activities

Diet

Sunday through Monday
(No dietary supplements other than water were used in this.)

• Breakfast (9:15am)
  3 Pete and Gerrys AA organic whole eggs, pan-scrambled coated in non-stick spray. 1/2 can of Whole Foods Organic Black Beans (microwave). Organic Green Salsa (Medium Spicy).
• Lunch (2ish)
  Option 1: Chipotle Burrito Bowl with no rice, Barbacoa Beef or Chicken, black beans, with the following optional mixes: all salsas, sour cream, corn, lettuce, guacamole. Never cheese. Never rice. Never Tortilla.
  Option 2: Sashimi lunch special with soup or salad. No rice.
• Snack (when/if hungry): Lentil Soup or Butternut Squash Soup from Zaro’s Bakery.
• Dinner (9ish)
  Option 1: Salmon with steamed spinach (Whole Foods Frozen). Olive oil and salt.
  Option 2: Gristedes Tunafish salad with steamed spinach and/or mixed vegetables (Whole Foods Frozen).
  Mix-in: Sometimes 1/2 can of black beans or lentils.

Weekday Cheat Meals

1. On weeks 2 and 3: Hill Country BBQ — no bread, but tons of BBQ sauce on lean brisket.
2. On week 4: Skipped dinner, ate 6 or 7 chocolate chip cookies instead with 2 glasses of wine at Book Club

Saturday
Anything and everything.

Results

(measurements taken after morning ritual, including breakfast and morning poo)

• Start: 188.0 lbs
• End: 179.0 lbs
• Today: 180.0, after a week and change on my normal diet

I noticed a reduction in fat around my body, particularly in my neck and waist, and I was back to my normal, healthy body composition. So, yay.

Narrative

The first week is certainly the hardest. In removing carbohydrates, the cravings for bread and rice intensified throughout the week. On my first saturday, I ate four bagels (2 whole wheat, 2 pumpernickel) by myself. Before lunch. The first bagel contained tuna salad. (Did I mention I love tunafish?)

I noticed, however, that I my sweet tooth had lost its edge. During my cheat day, I didn’t have much desire to shovel candy into my welcoming stomach. Other Slow Carbers have noted a change in palette and apparently there’s a scientific explanation for this.

Getting back on the horse on Sunday was easier than I thought it would be, with the second week being much easier than the first. I was still looking forward to my cheat day, but less so than the first week.

That Saturday, I ate two-thirds of a chicken tikka masala pizza from Slice… by myself. Later that night, I had 4 Crumbs Cupcakes in a row followed by a chocolate bar. And then dinner.

The next two weeks were a breeze; a joy, actually: I looked forward to my six days of decisionless dieting and less-so to my cheat day.

On day 31, I weighed myself: 179lbs.

All-in-all, the diet was easy and helped undo the month of Prednisone that added a quick 20lbs to my frame in December. (I would have started earlier, but I was out of the country until mid February and wanted to test this when I had a bit more control on my schedule.)

I don’t think, however, it’s sustainable. One of the reasons I stopped was that, in week five (days 28-31) the carb craving was twice what is was compared to the first week and I couldn’t keep myself from having bread. So, I slowly transitioned back to my old ways which have done well with keeping my physique at a constant.

What’s next?

New York City’s newest transient resident, Andrew Hyde (featured in The Four Hour Body), turned me on to Intermittent Fasting and the Paleolithic Diet. I’ll probably start one of these May 1. In the meantime, I’ve procured enough for a PAGG stack for a month.

Stay tuned.

Regarding written profanity, I don’t understand when writers X-out a few offending characters when they could talk around the idea with rhetorical wit. Profane words, regardless of obfuscation, still mean the same thing; and yet, for some reason, our internal censors let it go. Worse, writers miss an opportunity to impress their readers.

Personally, I’m not irked by dirty words (however salacious) but I am rather annoyed with the lack of creativity in that their scribes couldn’t find a better way to say it whilst maintaining the conservative sentimentality they clearly want to preserve.

It’s incongruous.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with peppering language with profanity, but it’s often uninspired and cliché. I think to myself, “what the fuck is this shit?” (which should provide some insight into my internal monologue’s maturity level). But, that’s the point: idle thoughts are fleeting; print is forever. And, as a writer, I expect others to put a bit more care into what they print than what they’re thinking about in a given moment.

If you’re going to get dirty and gross, be dirty and gross. Use the words the dictionary affords you. And, for those with the talent, make some up. But, in general, don’t be senseless—censoring your language doesn’t soften its meaning, it just makes you look lazy and, I daresay, stupid.

As the editor-in-chief of The Onion once told me:

There’s nothing like a well-timed fuck.

–

Special thanks to Elizabeth King for inspiring this post. Her tolerance for my asinine banter is very much appreciated. Read her blog.

I can understand that the past few years have been tough. So, thank you for the notification that you’re reviewing your clients’ accounts to simplify your books by removing credit lines that seem inactive. I’m glad to know that you’re diligent about being bankers.

However, when you remove a $1000-limit credit card serving as overdraft protection for a Wachovia account holder of 20 years with “VERY LOW RISK” (Experian,Transunion,et al.) without any advanced notification, you’re implicitly telling me that I should reconsider who I do my banking with.

I think I’m going to go talk to Chuck. Or Chase. Or ING Direct. Or… [etc.]

Thanks for the heads up!

`mg