For those following my experimental, ham-fisted attempt at streaming Twitters from Dan Ariely‘s lecture at the London School of Economics on Monday, a full podcast has been made available. He is funny, engaging, and I was sitting next to the guy whose wife was forced to confess she could not think of 10 reasons why she loved her significant other. Had I been younger, single, better looking, less shy, and that kind of man, I would definitely have seen an opportunity there.

It was all like good stand-up. So put it on your listening device for that next long run.

Also, I’m welcoming suggestions for what phone works best for Twits.

PS. To participate in counting the basketballs, pause the podcast and go here. Thanks to Seth Godin’s post here who also credits Bryan and Ken.

Here is a commercial version of the same:-

A public service announcement: MIT‘s leading behavioural economist Dan Ariely, who was covered in this post, will be speaking at the LSE on Monday (probably today by the time you see this) March 17th at 18:30. Details here. I’ll be there I hope, so tap me on the shoulder if you pitch up too.

Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, has an interesting back-story, but here is a brief synopsis from his website:-

My immersive introduction to irrationality took place many years ago while I was overcoming injuries sustained in an explosion (here is a description of my experiences in the hospital). The range of treatments in the burn department, and particularly the daily “bath” made me face a variety of irrational behaviors that were immensely painful and persistent. Upon leaving the hospital, I wanted to understand how to better deliver painful and unavoidable treatments to patients so I began conducting research in this area (see picture below). After completing this initial research project, I became engrossed with the idea that we repeatedly and predictably make the wrong decisions in many aspects of our lives and that research could help change some of these patterns.”

Professor Ariely also blogs here.

Bonking. It’s not such a good idea to mention this in polite company, unless you’re amongst cyclists. You’ll find that “bonking” means something quite different to these athletes. Whilst for most of us (in the correct circumstances) the idea of “a bonk” would normally be welcomed, for the cyclist it’s something to be avoided.

I used to understand “the bonk” as a sensation felt by a competitor towards the end of a Tour de France stage, where all the glycogen or fuel stores in their muscles has been exhausted. They’ve hit what marathoners call “the wall”. They are basically out of gas*.

For many years I commuted by bike between Twickenham (in West London) and Fleet Street. I would ride hard and fast. I knew nothing about modulating effort or recovery. And this intensity of a monotonous daily activity, I now understand, led to overtraining syndrome.

On occasions I’d cycle home late in the evening, perhaps delayed by a transatlantic conference call. I’d have eaten a chocolate bar (usually Snickers) earlier in the afternoon. By halfway, where I crossed the Thames at Putney Bridge (the famous start of the Boat Race) I was in an unexplained state of collapse, as if I had rowed stroke to the Mortlake finish for the Oxford eight. My head was light, my legs were leaden, like I was pedaling through treacle. Ready to faint, I’d dash to the nearest gas station and stuff my face with potato chips*.

I used to joke that these episodes were “the bonk”, thinking that I was probably misusing the term. Because how could 6 miles pretty much on the flat equate to a professional stage over the French Alps? However, while reading Art De Vany’s blog only a few weeks ago, I saw the term “bonk” applied to just such a modest implosion, and it gave me pause. It seemed to be saying something about my metabolism which confirmed a growing intuition that I had been, was, or was becoming, somewhat insulin-resistant.

The really bad part of all this is that there are a lot of high insulin people out there who can “bonk” from low blood sugar if they don’t get their carb hit. And then after the hit wears off, they may “bonk” again. They may be driving when this happens and are easily angered and lose concentration. They can be a danger to themselves and others when this happens. I would bet a fair number of auto accidents could be traced to blood glucose/insulin surges.”

And when you’re on a bike, you don’t want to meet those people coming the other way.

So, since Christmas I’ve been trying to apply De Vany’s paleo diet strictures (which have informed some of my thinking for a while now) with much greater observance. The effects on my current health — as far as I can determine — have been tangible, and arguably dramatic.

Way back in those glorious days when I used to dash home on my hand-built pillar-box red Condor racing bike, with its 27 gleaming Campagnolo gears (see below) I figured out a strategy to see off the bonk.

I called it “bringing the banana forward”. This terminology caused much mirth among my Canadian in-laws at the time. But I’d realised one thing about diet through this experience: the mid-afternoon Snickers bar was the principal cause of this strange loss of fuel-supply by late evening. I cut that out and ate a banana just before leaving the office instead. But that did not immediately do the trick. I guessed this was because, depending on how ripe a banana is, it can break down into sugars quite slowly. Timing the banana became an obsessive-compulsive ritual ahead of my evening departure. I eventually solved the problem by eating the banana a little earlier – i.e. bringing the banana forward.

Now, what De Vany’s blog was describing was in the context of hypoglycaemic episodes. The essence of much of this is that you don’t have to be diagnosed diabetic to experience wild swings in energy, attention, and perhaps even consciousness. In short, too many carbs at the wrong time can drive you bananas.

* I have self-consciously americanized this post, so apologies to all my British readers who expected to see the words “petroleum spirit” and “crisps”.

Photo credits: banana -eko- , campag: knackeredhack

It could be prescience, but highlighting Grant Washburn‘s expression only a couple of weeks ago about the oppressive effect of successive waves on the wiped-out surfer, has turned into some real, personal truth.

In my earliest days as a practising journalist, electronic reporting did not allow for much in the way of bylines. Then we decided to go interactive and put names and phone numbers on every story (people did not have email back then). I still prefer the kind of journalistic group anonymity favoured by The Economist, though it must be said that more recently it has been retreating from that style.

The self-disclosure encouraged by blogging is still something that I’m not totally comfortable with, although the experiment seems necessary. Facebook, compared with MySpace, actively invites us to say who we really are. And indeed, it helped a cousin contact me only the other day to express condolences.

Only a few weeks ago, by way of explaining an absence from blogging (or “a worryingly long apple harvest” as Michael, one of my good friends, described it – because my last post had been about an over-enthusiastic seasonal fruit display at the Bath Farmers’ Market), I disclosed the death of my father. I was going to remain silent on the subject of my brother’s sudden demise, which took me off to Ohio last week. But it seems inconsistent.

Those awaiting more Kino pictures will understand why I still have not produced any. And those who have contacted me in that regard will understand the silence. It was indeed odd to be focusing on the loss of Viktor Tsoy and then to be suddenly brought up short by a more tangible bereavement.

The death of two family members in three months (and three if one includes my great aunt), is devastating in an obvious way: an archetypal double whammy, I guess. But I am also struck that such losses are much easier to narrate than some that I and others will have suffered, where the complexity and invisibility of the experience mean that it is beyond ready comprehension or sympathy. I have an intension to write about those other losses at some point in the future – possibly through the blog, possibly through some other medium.

Meanwhile, I’ve had to write and deliver two eulogies in quick succession – something I could not say I was comfortable having to do. It can be tricky enough dealing with one’s own loss without having to contextualise it adequately for others.

But the title of the post is to focus on that sinking (or even floating) feeling a surfer experiences when plunged beneath a wave that is completely overpowering. One is out of one’s element. There is an eerie silence, a numbness, and a not-knowingness of which way up is.

One of the great anxieties I have when writing a blog post comes at the end, just before pressing the publish button. There is a categorisation ritual to go through where I apply “tags” — keywords that improve the “findability” of each post in search engines. The words you apply to categorize something can be bizarrely personal, and although the option always exists to go back and improve those choices with retrospection, I know that ain’t gonna happen.

It seems even more pertinent now because of a new widget I installed courtesy of Amaury Balmer. This allows you to find similar items within the blog automatically through hyperlinks, including so-called “related posts”, without my direct intervention. That’s a kind of editorial magic, by the way, that I only used to entertain in my wildest dreams a few years ago, back somewhere in the lower cretaceous era of newswires.

My taxonomical anxiety might be alleviated if I studied the subject, but with all the things a modern writer has to stay current with it will likely remain a bit of blind spot. My early posts were littered liberally with tags, which, when they showed up in the post’s footer, were sometimes as long as the post itself. And with Amaury’s plug-in, those old posts, for good or ill, may find a bit more life than I originally envisaged.

I did work for several years in a library, so classification of this type is not entirely alien. But I have to admit that my bibliotechnical exploits were principally motivated by conscientious objection to spending Friday afternoon’s square-bashing in the school cadet force. Yes, I was a junior draft dodger…

Well, I get some superficial reassurance from web-guru David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, and more recently the fantastically titled Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder. Rightly or wrongly, I take it as a defense that this blog does not have to be about anything in particular, a contrarian strategy if you would otherwise heed the advice of most blog tipsters.

And that leads me to the gratuitous reason for this post, which is to point you to some more YouTube Gil Scott-Heron, where he addresses his own problems with being categorised. This is a long clip, and you “endure” some wonderful jazz saxophone before Scott-Heron’s extraordinary eloquence kicks in.

The man has had a troubled life. Despite the high moral stance of much of his music and poetry, he succumbed to drug addiction, for which he has served periods in jail, was recently arrested and re-arrested. He is reportedly HIV positive. But to hear a recent NPR interview (December 11, coincidentally two days after my last Scott-Heron Post) it suggests he is alive and pretty well in the circumstances. Here is a Cafe Hayek podcast with David Weinberger for good measure.