Walt Whitman Diet, Winner of Every 100m Snatch & Norway Midnight Sun
The origins of the 1900s battle for net neutrality, drone footage of the midnight sun in Norway setting against a backdrop of beautiful mountains, Walt Whitman’s suggestions for “men’s health and training” and more are on this week’s Brain Buffet.
The Walt Whitman Diet
In 1858, Walt Whitman published a series in the New York Atlas , in a column entitled “Manly Health and Training,” where he described the best practices of men to lead strong, happy and healthy lives. All columns were about 50,000 words in total (which we certainly won’t include here), but Michael Light, writing for Lucky Peach , tells us the story of Zachary Turpin, a Ph.D. from the University of Houston. , who recently reassembled the entire document, not to mention Light’s own experiment in which he tested his diet and exercise program on himself – and his results.
Light even explains what his doctor and some other nutritional experts said when he approached them with the Whitman diet and exercise regimen, but some of the highlights of the plan are:
To paraphrase Mr. Whitman, here are the basic principles of the plan:
- Eat a large bowl of lean, rare beef without gravy or any spices (except for a little pinch of salt) at every meal.
- Food (beef) should be eaten until it is full.
- For breakfast, in addition to beef, a person should boldly eat an almost raw egg with a slice of dry bread or boiled potatoes.
- For lunch, you should eat meat with a slice of stale bread. Optionally, from time to time, lunch can consist of lean lamb rather than beef for a change.
- With side dishes for dinner, there is a little more freedom: stale bread, toast or fruit can be eaten as an accompaniment to beef. Real meat for this dish should be served cold and eaten well before bed.
- Before and during meals, you should limit the consumption of drinks or refuse them. Between and after meals, you should not drink cool tea and water – neither hot nor cold. Coffee, soda, and lemonade should be avoided.
Then for the exercise:
Upon awakening, the healthy man takes a short cold shower and dries himself off with a coarse towel before going for a half-hour to an hour walk, during which he carries heavier and heavier. Dumbbell work and gymnastic movements are also recommended.
After breakfast, if a man doesn’t have a job to do, he should do some more sports. Boxing with heavy equipment or sparring with another man is a good way to spend a few late morning hours. So he rowed. According to Whitman, the rowing man was given an amazing gift.
After lunch and a short rest for digestion, more exercise should be undertaken. Strength training, plyometrics, or other walking are good choices.
The moral of the story here is not that this is a viable plan for you to follow, it is definitely not by any means, it is that even during Whitman, who was not so long ago, there were many quirks and quirks, uncomfortable trends in fitness and diet designed with people’s views on masculinity or femininity in mind, supported by people whose opinions are otherwise interesting and respected, that make enough sense to possibly make any difference, but not make sense to be completely sound science or to guarantee a result … Very similar to today.
To learn more about Light’s diet and personal experiment, head over to Lucky Peach. [ via Lucky Peach ]
All winners of the Olympic 100m snatch race against each other
The German newspaper Tages-Anzeiger has put together a nifty little interactive animation showing every 100 meters of an Olympic winner since 1896 in one hypothetical race. Press “Start” and watch the flight of the racers. From BoingBoing, who told us everything:
Since 1896, the 100-meter sprint has been the best athletics competition in the Olympic Games, not counting the weapon throwing competition. Usain Bolt dominates now, but could he dominate then? Yes, of course, for a few seconds! (Excludes: Ben Johnson’s 9.79 steroid win at the 1988 Games for which he was disqualified. Bolt beat him in 2008 and 2012 and other athletes did so outside of the Olympics)
All of this is fun, especially when the race is over and you can compare times in history. Unfortunately this is not possible to embed, but head over to Tages-Anzeiger to try it for yourself. [ via Tages-Anzeiger , thanks to Boing Boing ! ]
Restoration by Leonardo da Vinci Madonna and Child with St. Anne
The Madonna and Child with Saint Anne is one of Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest and most beautiful works, and has been restored over the past three years to try to repair and repair some of the damage inflicted on it over the centuries – sometimes due to well-meaning people who wanted to help preserve it and sometimes people wanting to improve or repair it themselves. The video above is a short documentary about the three-year process and all the work involved, not to mention the level of effort that the process required. [ via YouTube, thanks Kottke ! ]
“Silence on the phone” and the beginning of the battle for net neutrality
Atlas Obscura has a great article that explains how the battle for network neutrality and data privacy really started way back in the early 1900s, when people using early phones were preoccupied with eavesdropping and the potential for people to eavesdrop on their conversations when massive telephones kept them chained to tables, often outdoors. This is how the “quiet phone” was invented, essentially a large metal partition that passed through the phone and allowed the person on the other end of the phone to hear you, but drowned out the sound for others in the room.
Sounds like a funny little phone attachment, doesn’t it? Nothing special by today’s standards, if you can buy all kinds of phones and attachments for them. Well, AT&T had other ideas, and basically they wanted to make sure that – through heavy regulation through massive lobbying and other laws – they got the phone technology market locked out, this huge growing industry.
The whole story is actually an interesting and informative story about how a big, wealthy company backed by rich people pushed a little guy, and while that little guy won in the end, well, it wasn’t a big win to say the least. Go to Atlas Obscura and read the whole story – it’s a fascinating piece of telecommunications and engineering history that you probably never learned. [ via Atlas Obscura ]
The midnight sun of Norway
Chances are, you are already familiar with the fact that beyond the Arctic Circle (and in Antarctica, but not in the fact that someone lives there) summer nights are illuminated by the sun – this means that thanks to the tilt of the Earth towards the sun, the sun actually never does not set, and even at midnight it disappears along the horizon, never completely disappearing, and the day never ends completely. It’s a beautiful planetary science quirk that I really love, and this short drone video captures Norway’s midnight sun over beautiful, fog-covered mountains. [ via Vimeo , thanks Boing Boing ! ]
Everyone this week! If you have thought-provoking stories, interesting podcasts, eye-opening videos, or anything else that you think is perfect for Brain Buffet, share it with us! Email me , leave it as a comment below, or send it in any way convenient for you.