I write about my health periodically among other things so I have some historical record.
My stomach has responded well to giving up things that disturb it. No coffee or tea. I tried reintroducing coffee a couple weeks ago and it didn't work. No Coke or Pepsi for a year now. No alcohol for a year and a half. No candy bars for a couple of months. No eating close to bedtime.
What are the improvements? The acid reflux declined significantly when I gave up alcohol, but the other steps have helped as well. No gallbladder pain the last few months. I was taking milk thistle too, but I think the diet has done the trick. Gastritis has been gone for a couple of months.
Among other effects, my weight has dropped by steps from the 190s to 164. The most dramatic drop was in the few months after I stopped drinking, but it keeps creeping down. The change was enough to at least make me ask the question as to whether it was too much, too fast. Is it indicative of anything wrong?
The most significant metric would seem to be how I feel. No change there. Do my measurements indicate a problem? Absolutely not. By crude height–weight arithmetic my body mass index is finally down in the normal range. I never trusted BMI in the first place. It was always overstated because I have a heavy frame, with a lot of my weight in my legs.
I noticed that the roll of fat on my tummy seemed to have shrunk. Yesterday I tried an alternative approach, body density measurement. It calls for measuring the thickness of pinches of fat on your belly, your chest and your thigh. There is a proper instrument for it, a pair of calipers that you can buy from Amazon. I watched a video on how it works and decided that a crescent wrench would do an adequate job. I was pleased that on their five-level scale – essential, athletic, fit, acceptable and obese – I weigh in at “fit.”
The other metric is my performance on my exercise bike. My 30-minute workout is down from the 65 RPM I have maintained for several years to 62 RPM. I'm not going to sweat it. These things never drop off gradually in a straight line. It fell while I was grappling with gastritis and throat issues earlier in the year. It may come back up. Who knows? The important thing in my mind is to just keep doing it.
In war news, Ukraine has used the recently acquired Storm Shadow cruise missiles and drone boats to cut off Russian logistics supply to the occupied areas in our South. Starving the enemy of logistic support is a time-honored technique. Sherman's march through Georgia cut off Confederate logistics. Strategic bombing of Germany's transport and petroleum refineries shut down the Nazis.
Modern war requires a continual flow of replacement war machines, ammunition, food and fuel and men to the front lines. The Russians had to abandon Kherson City when they could no longer supply it. The hope, obviously, is that they will have to do the same for Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts, perhaps Crimea itself. Ukraine's decision to conserve its troops by limiting their exposure to combat as it undermines Russian logistics makes perfect sense to me.
A decreased tempo does have its downsides. Polls show that American popular support for involvement in Ukraine is waning. Biden's political position is getting weaker by the day. His corruption has been evident in Washington for years. Elizabeth Warren, AKA Fauxahontas, hardly a right-winger, wrote about it in her book "The Two Income Trap" two decades ago before she entered politics. It was one of the reasons I gave the book a five-star review.
Fortunately, the European members of NATO understand better, from history and proximity, the dangers that Russia poses. Anders Aslund, a staunchly pro-Ukraine pundit, has what seems to me to be a pretty good assessment in his evaluation of CIA head William Burns' book The Back Channel covering the history of US Russian relations. Like the late Stephen F Cohen, whom I reviewed here, Burns appears to have committed an error that goes back in history certainly as far as George F Kennan – the failure to recognize Ukraine as an entity and a people quite separate from Russia.
Europe at least recognizes that Russia's aggression cannot be allowed to stand. Even as Biden, wallowing in the mess created by his own corruption, shilly shallys about providing Ukraine with the aircraft it needs to defend itself, Europe's spine seems to be stiffening. It helps that Russia keeps doing stupid things such as wantonly destroying civilian infrastructure and killing ordinary people and attempting to starve the world.
I had a conversation at the beach with Alina, who works as a French simultaneous interpreter. I am pleased to note that my French after lo these 65 years remains better than my Russian and certainly my Ukrainian. Alina is terrified that Trump may be elected next year. She was not mollified when I noted that (1) a lot can happen between now and November 2024, (2) Trump, to his supporters’ disappointment, did not come through on many of his promises, such as those with regard to immigration and the border, when elected in 2016, and (3) virtually all the candidates of both parties have to say that they are against the war in Ukraine simply because Biden is for it. She should hope it is just campaign rhetoric.
Despite the fact that honesty is seldom a useful attribute in politics, there are a couple of apparently honest men in the running in the form of RFK Junior and DeSantis. Perhaps also Ramaswamy. My concern is that the CIA and Department of State have so compromised their credibility with Russiagate and so on that whichever candidate wins the presidency will not know where to turn for unbiased intelligence and advice. My opinion is that it would be politically impossible for the United States to abandon Ukraine after having invested so much. But it may be just my wishful thinking.
It looks increasingly as though there will be no decisive military action before the winter. That is probably just as well. It will be a cold, uncomfortable time for the hundreds of thousands of Russian troops trapped in Southern Ukraine without adequate supply. These are largely men who didn't want to be there in the first place. As stoic as Russians have historically been in accepting bad leadership, they may be pushed to breaking. Ukraine may be well served by a strategy of simply letting the Russian lines collapse on their own rather than making a frontal assault.
Paul Craig Roberts, who is so consistently, enthusiastically wrong about Ukraine is absolutely right about the Covid gene therapy injectable products. Putting things in perspective, whereas Russia is only threatening Ukraine, and appears to be contained, big Pharma's concoctions are a looming threat to the whole world.
That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where after our three days of summer the temperatures have fallen decisively into the 70s and may go lower. Our family is coasting through the last bit of the normalcy we have known for a couple of years until Zoriana starts attending first grade and Eddie seventh in their new schools.
You’re doing better than I am in the health department. I applaud you.
As far as the US abandoning Ukraine, I would say “Of course we can.” Just in my lifetime we’ve abandoned South Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan—simply declared victory and left. However, I hope there are enough people in power who realize that both Russia and China are existential enemies that we keep up our support. Of course, we’re all spending money we don’t have for this war but the world is already so far in debt that I have to conclude it doesn’t matter.
I think that you are doing very well, health-wise; far better than I, though 11 years your junior. My biggest problem is that I ceased my training routine two years ago, after some injuries to elbows due to over-training. The worst of this is that I have little energy, sleep poorly, have lost mental focus, i.e., the vicissitudes of age. I am attempting to restart, but it is difficult, and I feel little motivation to do so. It is a "Teufelskreis."
As far as how the war is going, there are many different reports available from every viewpoint. I cannot make any predictions about any of it, because I believe NONE of these reports. We sit in the valley, trying to see over the mountains, and it is impossible.
My biggest fear for Ukraine is that she has trusted in the USA. I need not repeat Kissinger's famous statement about enemies and friends of the US. I harbor no beliefs that the US Government sincerely cares about the country you and I now call home.
The images of twisted and broken soldiers who died for the ambitions of the those profiting from this harvest of horror fill me with a visceral anger and hatred for them, no matter whence they come.
To NATO, I would simply suggest that it either put up or shut up. Our masters have decided that the lives of our friends and neighbors in Ukraine are less valuable than those in the West. They constantly remind us that Russia is a threat to us all. Fine, so act like it.
I thank you for the opportunity to vent my spleen (which I believe is functioning within healthy parameters).