Surveillance Valley

Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet, Yasha Levine, PublicAffairs Books, 2018

Conventional wisdom says that, in the 1960's, a group of universities started what became the Internet with help from the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency. The reality is very different.

William Godel, a military intelligence officer, thought that a better way to win in Vietnam was to use new technology to anticipate the movements and understand the motives of the enemy. Such new technology was also used on domestic war opposition. That is what led ARPA to create the Internet; using computers to spy on Americans.

Today, all of the major Internet firms, like Google, Facebook and Amazon, all collect private information for profit. They also let agencies like the National Security Agency scoop up their activity for its own purposes. Silicon Valley and the military are generally one and the same; a sort of military/digital complex.

The Tor browser was supposed to be The Answer: a method of communication that the government could not read. But, Tor got most of its original funding from the Broadcasting Board of Governors (the people behind Voice of America and Radio Free Europe). For most of its existence, it has subsisted on large government contracts. Why is one part of the government, the BBG, supporting Tor, and another part of the government, the FBI, trying to shut it down? It keeps all the activists and other anti-government types in one place. Tor's credibility is certainly helped by an endorsement from Edward Snowden.

This is an excellent book. For some people, this book might be common knowledge. For the vast majority of people, this book is full of revelations about how ubiquitous surveillance has become in America. Nobody comes out clean in this book, which is highly recommended.

The 7-Minute Miracle: The Breakthrough Program to Banish Spot Fat Forever

The 7-Minute Miracle: The Breakthrough Program to Banish Spot Fat Forever, Sheldon Levine MD, Lifeline Press, 2002

This book describes a way to get rid of your body's spot fat, without special diets or joining a gym. All it takes is seven minutes a day.

It looks at the areas of troublesome fat, your arms, belly, hips, butt and thighs. The idea is to get adrenaline (also called epinephrine) to your trouble area, where it will tell an enzyme in fat cells to start the fat-burning process. The book gives pictures of exercises intended for each specific area. General exercising, like aerobics or jogging, might help your body overall, but it will do little, or nothing, for your trouble area.

Here is what you do. For instance, do belly exercise #1 until you can't do anymore. Go right to belly exercise #2, without stopping, and then go right to the third belly exercise, again without stopping. Continue through the cycle until you reach seven minutes, then stop. Do not eat or drink anything, except water, for the next 40 minutes. You don't want to bring the fat-burning process to a screeching halt by eating something filled with carbs or sugar. Then you should have your daily healthy meal. If you exercise in the morning, make breakfast your healthy meal. If you exercise in the late afternoon, make dinner your healthy meal. If it is not possible to follow the menus in the book, the author looks at the kind of foods that are healthy, or unhealthy, to eat.

If you have more than one trouble area, then, for instance, do your belly exercises on one day, your hips exercises the next day, and your butt exercises on the day after that. Don't combine them. If you workout regularly, separate your regular workout and your seven-minute workout by at least three hours, allowing your adrenaline level to return to normal. Simply adding seven minutes to your regular workout is a waste of time.

This fat-loss system seems to be easy enough for everyone. Anyone can spare seven minutes a day, even stay-at-home moms. Best of all, there are no special meals, or exercise gadgets, to buy. This is very much worth reading, for everyone.