Umair Yasin

My local group rode up into the hills East of Gilroy on a beautiful but windy day. We carpooled to the start, which involved some interesting arranging getting 3 bikes into my friend’s van, whose house I’d ridden to. The main ride started at the Mendoza Ranch entrance to Harvey Bear park on Roop road, out and back to the end of Gilroy Hot Springs Road, then out and back rides on Canada and Jamison roads, for a total of about 30 miles (plus the 6 extra for me getting to and from my friend’s house). It was also about 1200 feet of climbing although it seemed like more, with a stiff headwind at the end. I sometimes do this ride starting from home, which would have added an extra 28 miles. I’m glad I didn’t this time because the last 14 would have been against the wind and would have been exhausting. It was still nice and green up in the hills even though the east foothills have already turned brown. We earned a delightful lunch afterward. The old bridge at the end of Gilroy Hot Springs r...

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/ultra-processed-junk-food-put-to-the-test/ Dr. Michael Greger’s latest nutrition video is about ultra-processed foods, aka junk. It has the astonishing statistic that over 50% of the calories consumed in developed countries come from junk. And when looking at binge eating disorders, pretty much 100% of the calories consumed during a binge are from junk. That rings true for me, I don’t know if I’ve ever officially had a binge eating disorder, but I have definitely been known to binge from time to time. And when I do, it’s chips (or crisps in the UK), cookies, soda, etc. There are a lot of studies consistently showing that overconsumption of junk leads to adverse health effects. What is new in this video are results from an interventional study [1] that had a control group eating unprocessed food matched with a group eating junk. They matched the sugar content, as well as protein, carbs, fat, and fiber of the two diets (which required using non-nut...

It was raining off and on in the morning so our group ride almost got canceled, but five of us decided to give it a shot anyway. It was a pleasant outing to the foothills East of San Martin and Gilroy. We mostly avoided the rain but it got us a bit right at the end of the right, which made lunch in a warm Deli all the more enjoyable. We are getting a decent amount of rain this month, I hope this keeps up. Heading down Dryden towards New ave, looking towards the West hills across the valley Heading up Estate Dr. East of Gilroy Now heading down the other side of the hill back towards the West from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/AD8RY2e via IFTTT

I rode my upright to Coyote Valley Open Space and then hiked the Arrowhead trail, which is about 4 miles with some decent climbing. The whole workout was a bit over two hours on a nice spring day. Surprisingly, I set a PR on the hiking loop of 57 minutes, the first time I broke an hour. I guess I’m getting in better shape. The Southern Coyote Valley and East Bay hills (AKA Diablo range) Same spot looking Northeast, Mt Hamilton in the distance The Arrowhead trail loops around this pleasant little valley Now on the descent. The white building is IBM Bailey where they do software development from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/RH1GprT via IFTTT

In my follow-up today with my cardiologist, he gave me surprising news. I have mild to moderate regurgitation in my replacement heart valve, as measured in an echocardiogram. It’s not the valve itself that’s leaking, it’s around the edges where the lining was sewn to the aortic wall. My doc says this sometimes happens shortly after surgery but is unusual this late (5 years+ post-op). He wants me to get a bacterial culture to make sure I don’t have any infection, which can damage the valve or surrounding tissue. Because of the possibility of such infection, I’ve had to take antibiotics as a precaution whenever I have any kind of procedure done, including dental cleaning. He asked if I had any recent known infections and I mentioned my UTI last fall. It’s possible some of those bacteria made it to the heart and did some damage. Replacement valve. The three yellow segments are the valve leaflets which meet in a “Y” at the top. They are working fine. It’s probably OK as long as there...

I rode with my Tuesday route on a nice country loop that goes around Uvas and Chesbro reservoirs, plus out and back on Casa Loma road to the start of Rancho Canada Del Oro Open Space. The section heading north up to Casa Loma was tough because it was several miles against a stiff headwind. We did our amateur imitation of a paceline along that stretch. An enjoyable but challenging ride of three hours. This is Uvas Reservoir parking lot. The lake is pretty full, and a beautiful blue color. Another Peak at Uvas and the cattle ranch across the way. from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/lEL1X0a via IFTTT

This post from Rocio Espinoza contains a lot of good inspiration and resources. Rocio is a content writer at Porch.com. She is a mother of two and is passionate about wellness, fitness, sustainability, a pet lover, and a true believer in the power of positive affirmations. Her hobbies are reading, writing, and cooking. You can see more of her content at: https://porch.com/advice/author/160 If you’ve wanted to change your mindset, the power of positive thinking can have a significant impact on your spiritual and mental well-being. While the idea of using positive affirmations isn’t new, it’s something that more people are learning how to put into practice. If you’re ready to create the life you want, read on to discover some ways that you can incorporate these mantras into your own life at home. The more you use them, the more positive change you’ll start to see in your life and relationships. Positive Thinking The concept of positive thinking begins with how you talk to yourse...

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flawed-experiment-proved-that-free-will-doesnt-exist/ Whether or not we have free will is a surprisingly controversial topic. It seems obvious that we do from our subjective experience, but it’s possible to show that there are many times when we think we are behaving from free will but are actually just following conditioned responses. I grant that point, but I think the crux of the matter is: do we always behave that way? There is a good overview of the topic here . One of the major arguments against free will is that in a deterministic universe as predicted by classical (Newtonian) physics, everything is predestined. An incredibly fast supercomputer, that knew exactly all the details of how the universe started in the Big Bang, could in principle compute the entire future of the universe, including all of our actions. But even if the universe were entirely deterministic, science is now aware of the phenomenon of chaos , i...

We had a summer-like hot snap for a couple of days, but yesterday it got really windy to usher spring-like weather back in. I took my recumbent for a ride, and it was nice to have assist going north against the wind. No assist on the way back, the wind was all I needed. Flags flapping proudly at the Visitor Center at Anderson Dam park, the southern entrance to the Coyote Creek trail The wind sure made the air nice and clear. This is looking Northwest from Metcalf Road. from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/ThHm9eW via IFTTT

Sadly, our green hills are starting to turn brown already because of the low amount of rain this year. Usually, they last into late May or sometimes even June. Right now they’re still green on east-facing slopes but turning on the west-facing ones. I still had a nice ride of about 2 hours, it wasn’t hot yet late morning, but it got up to 90F later in the day. This summer-like weather will only last a couple more days then we’ll get back to spring. Still green West of town, including the flanks of El Toro. View East from the top of the main street overpass Looking Northeast from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/sJrkvMw via IFTTT

The purpose of religion is not to build beautiful churches or temples, but to cultivate positive human qualities such as tolerance, generosity, and love – The Dalai Lama https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/dalai-lama-86th-birthday/ A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty . Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security – Albert Einstein (added emphasis mine) https://www.leaderonomics.com/articles/lead...

Yesterday I did a pleasant cruise on the country roads to the Southeast of Morgan Hill, through our neighboring community of San Martin, and on to Gilroy. for a very relaxing couple of hours. Columbet Road, one of a few lightly-trafficked rural roads thru San Martin. Heading out Dryden road towards the East foothills in Gilroy More nice scenery on the way back on Dryden Approaching Morgan Hill on Foothill Road, El Toro in the distance from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/pZLrQsw via IFTTT

Introduction The prevailing view among scientists is that consciousness is an emergent property or epiphenomenon of matter, specifically our brains. This is sometimes colloquially stated as “minds are what brains do”. But a significant minority of scientists, including neuroscientists, believe that there is evidence that consciousness cannot be explained by matter but itself must play some sort of fundamental role. In researching for this post I discovered this is a pretty active topic recently. I found a good article precisely on this topic in New Scientist magazine . Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall but you can read it for free if you sign up for a free trial account. That article discusses that not only philosophers and some neuroscientists, but physicists are considering consciousness somehow playing a fundamental role. There are also several recent relevant books. All of this makes the discussion a bit lengthy. The main point of this post is that I don’t think there is eno...