From time to time I experience what most writers call, “writers block.” It is a mythical place where all my thoughts are blocked and my creative juices are shunted. But at last I am back in the saddle and ready to voice my fitness voice to the masses. This could be scary.
Anyways, I left you all with the first entry (of a two part series) on juicing titled I Got the Juice. In this masterpiece of blogging I discussed the benefits of adding juicing to your diet and all the positive effects it could have. NOW, I would like to take it a step further and write about the ingredients and what they do and how they benefit us as a human species. Boom! Here we go…
Fact: You are what you eat. The most accurate statement you will read or hear all day. If you put “crap” into your body you will look (and feel) like “crap.” On the flip side, if you put nutrients your body wants and needs (and when they need and want them) you will look the best you ever have and feel the best you have ever felt. Also…Fact. “So whats the deal with juicing?” Well read the above blog first and then try it yourself. Give it three days and tell me how much better you feel. Because I know you will.
Common Juice Ingredients:
Vegetables (organic)
Fruits (Organic)
Herbs and Spices
Vegetables:
Kale
Kale is a nutrient dense food that packs a high amount of nutrition to it. Considered a “super food” Kale supplies only 36 calories per cup of juice. Kale is rich source of Lutein, a cartotenoid and phytonutrient which acts as an antioxidant and blocks potential damage to the human body from ultraviolent rays. Kale also packs a punch with fat soluble vitamins, A and K as well as water soluble vitamin C.
Read the rest of… Josh Bowen: I Got the Juice Part Deuce
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 30, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
If you are almost 50 years old:
Go to a Starbucks where they don’t know you by name. Order whatever you would normally order. And here’s the prank part. Give them a fake name
In a few minutes your drink will be ready and they will alert you —not by your real name but some totally bogus fake name!
It’s hilarious and no one will know but you
OK. It’s totally lame and not funny at all. But it was a long line today at Starbucks slow service and I spent my time trying to think of a payback
I made up the name “Beauregard Brown.” And when the barista glanced up to ask the inevitable, I responded, “Please don’t ask if you can call me ‘Bo.’ I hate the nickname ‘Bo’….Oh, OK, you can use the nickname ‘Bo’ for my coffee cup.”
She thanked me and smiled like I had done her a great favor by not requiring her to write out the name “Beauregard” on my “tall” (which must mean puny in Seattle) coffee cup.
But tomorrow I will be ready. If it’s really slow service I will tell her I am from KY where we have a lot of hyphenated male first names, like mine: Buearegard-Bob. And let her try to write out the whole first name.
Capabilities are the amino acids of innovation. They are the building blocks that enable value delivery. Innovation is a better way to deliver value and is often the result of repurposing existing capabilities. Locking capabilities into rigid organization structures and proprietary closed systems gets in the way of unleashing new sources of value and solving many of the important challenges of our time. Innovation is about hacking capabilities.
A capability is simply the power to do something and is comprised of three elements, people, process, and technology. You might have the capability or power to make a mean western omelet. You possess the skill (people) thanks to hands-on training from mom, a recipe (process) handed down for generations, and a great cook top range, non-stick pan, and spatula (technology). Hacking the capability is easy. A Google search for western omelet recipes yields almost 25 thousand hits. That’s more variety than a lifetime of Sunday brunches. To stretch the analogy a western omelet capability can also be combined with other capabilities to open a cool restaurant, launch a cooking blog or cable television show, or to commercialize a new cooking utensil. Innovation happens when we enable random capability collisions resulting in new and unexpected ways to deliver value.
Perhaps a more relevant and timely example of the power and potential of hacking capabilities is Microsoft’s Kinect. Microsoft introduced Kinect on November 4th as a product extension to its Xbox franchise. Kinect adds a very cool capability for Xbox game players by getting rid of the hand held game controller and turning players into their own controllers. It lets players ‘be the controller’ with gesture recognition technology. On-screen menus are navigated by voice and hand waves. Game avatars are manipulated through body gestures. Microsoft and cool haven’t been used in the same sentence for a long time. Kinect is cool.
Microsoft predictably launched Kinect with it’s deeply ingrained proprietary product mind set. You could buy Kinect as a bundle with an Xbox or as a separate component to attach to an existing Xbox for $150. While Microsoft views Kinect as a product the global geek community views it as a capability. To geeks, Kinect is a powerful capability screaming to be hacked and repurposed for exciting new uses beyond its use as an Xbox extension. Hackers view Kinect as an interesting voice and gesture recognition platform complete with sophisticated cameras, software, and sensors with the power to detect movement, depth, shape, and position of the human body. What a bargain for only $150. It’s a hackers dream.
Read the rest of… Saul Kaplan: Innovate By Hacking Capabilities
My last column claimed that balance is possible in the face of chaos. I promised that we are all capable of maintaining inner peace no matter the environmental stressors—that work, play, challenge and rest are healthy integrative aspects of our lives. About the complaint of not feeling vacation-peace and bliss at home, I suggested that intention is everything.
Wehhhhhhhhl, I wrote that column from the window seat of my charming straw-roof cabana in the Yukatan Peninsula just steps from the ocean as a warm breeze kissed my hair. A little voice in my consciousness said, “Writing about stress management from an emotional and geographic location that represent the opposite of stress might not be believable.” Yes, mi pequeno internal voice doesn’t use commas, but it is very wise. And it is true that faith is much easier to write about when times are good.
So today I revisit my claim from the living center of chaos. I have been home for exactly 10 days, and I have weathered exactly 6 mini crisis since my return. 6! This might be a record.
How am I managing, solving, dealing, integrating, going with the flowing now, you ask?
I am leaning on ALL of my rebalancing support strategies. It’s a lot like the saying, “Don’t wait for the fire before buying the hose.” Turns out my impressive hose collection really is useful. And because of it, I think I’m managing with more grace than I used to—it’s clear I’m not going it alone.
One significant resource I relied on this week was prayer. I sat down in a beautiful location near my house where I could feel the vibrancy of nature all around me, and I asked God for help, a lot of it. I remember specifically not knowing what the help would look like for this and that issue, and especially for my daughter Abby, struggling with a problem so deeply that she’d lost her appetite for days, but I asked for the ability to recognize the help when it showed up.
Two days later when she finally felt hungry, Abby had me google the new Dominos in our Andover neighborhood. I dialed and we huddled together over the speaker-phone conveying our dreams of extra toppings. But when it came time for the phone number, pizza boy could not make sense of my cell number. Again and again we repeated it as he typed away on his Dominos Pizza computer, but politely he kept apologizing that there were too many digits.
After several minutes of this, puzzled and losing patience, we told him we’d call back. Was this some sort of joke? As I clicked “end” on my I-phone, the phone number I had dialed popped up on my screen before shutting off: +44 1264 363333.
Yes, it was a very good joke! I had accidentally tried to order a pizza from Dominos in Andover, in the United Kingdom!
We looked at each other and then at the phone, and then at each other. The swirling confusion around us dissolved into laughter, “Haahaah, the most expensive pizza on the planet, haha haha haha!”
Laughing harder, “After this phone call, we can’t afford pizza, hah hah hah hah hah!”
Stomach hurting and tears streaming, “I hope we’re still hungry next week when it gets here! Hahahahahahaha haahaahaa haaahaaahaahahahahahahahahaha!
We laughed at ourselves for about 10 minutes and then for 20 more as we called our family members to share what we had stupidly, hilariously tried to do.
Finally, with ribs and face hurting we slowed down, exhausted. Abby looked at me calmly and with a new light in her eyes, she said, “I feel so much better.”
Miraculously, what changed for my girl most in those minutes was her own sense of perspective. While the details of her week of struggle remained, suddenly her world felt much bigger than the confine of her problem—what better way to have the point illustrated than to order a pizza from overseas?
But what’s more, when 16 year-old Abby saw that her problem wasn’t her entire life, just merely a part of it, I knew that my prayer had been answered. God comes through every time, and has a most excellent sense of humor, because we want to laugh.
Read the rest of… Lisa Miller: God & Pizza are the Best Medicine
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Apr 15, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
This is the story of KFC. Or at least a chapter in that story. Not the first chapter. But possibly the most exciting. Certainly one of the most pivotal chapters.
Told first hand from a gentleman I’m proud to call my father. And who at age 79 still hasn’t lost his ability to hold a crowd’s attention. Most especially when he recounts the fascinating tale of when preparation, opportunity, luck and timing all seemed to converge, somewhat fatefully and always fretfully, on a restless young lawyer from KY as he met a gifted and persnickety restauranteur named Colonel Harlan Sanders who was supposed to be a new legal client but something bigger seemed to be at play. That moment that passes quickly if not acted upon. An opportunity at a leap of faith that promises only to be a life changing event, good or bad, but nothing more specific than that.
He took it and found himself at the helm of an historic moment in the fast food industry and not knowing what he
was really to do day to day–and hoping and working diligently and creatively as he improvised what he imagined needed to be done so that one day, when he stepped down and enough time had passed, people might look back and say “That guy seemed to have done a lot of things right at a critical time even though there wasn’t a playbook or owner’s manual around to guide anyone through this transformational moment in the food industry.”
The story is a triumph of courage over fear; creativity over predictability; and mostly instinct over expertise.
And the lessons one draws are mostly personal and range from from the “So that’s how it’s done! I could have never done that!” to “So, that’s how it’s done? My goodness, I can do it if that guy did!” Here’s to the latter response. Which was my father’s back in the early 1960s when his “moment’ presented itself and was wearing a goatee and a white suit and black string tie.
Oh you thought I meant steroids? No, juicing is not about adding extra hormones in your body, this is about increasing your energy levels, improving your immune system and being healthy. OK. Lets start over. Recently, I decided to start adding juicing into my regular diet. I had heard the benefits of juicing but wasn’t clear on ALL the benefits it had and what it could do to my body. So, me being me, I decided to throw caution to the wind and try it. The first juice I had tasted like roadkill. No seriously it tasted that bad but again, me being me, I was able to force it down. Over the next few weeks I tried several different types of juices and found some miraculous things. My energy levels were boosted, my workouts were better and I felt healthier (a relative term but I acutally feel this way).
Not only do I feel better but the taste of organic kale, beets and other vegetables has improved dramatically. So you may be asking why would you start doing that? Or how can you stand to drink that stuff? And probably you are asking what are the benefits? Well, I want to cover all of these topics. Lets start with what juicing actually is.
Juicing is typically done through a juicer, whereas combinations of different fruits and vegetables (preferably organic) are put into a machine that mixes it together and creates a “juice.” What is lost through the juicing process is the fiber. Most juicing purists argue leaving the fiber out of the juice allows the body to absorb the nutrients faster, I tend to believe this as well because fiber naturally slows down digestion. It does take a lot of vegetables/fruits in order to get a sizable amount of juice (this is why I buy the juice instead of doing it myself). Locally, I have bought juice from the Lexington Juicery and also found a brand of juice at Whole Foods called Suja that acutally has an expiration date longer than juice made at the juicery. This is helpful to me so I do not have to go to the juice store everyday.
OK JB. What are the health benefits?
Well there are many. Here are a few:
1. Digestion- very little energy is needed to digest fresh fruits and vegetables. Thus, juicing increases the effectiveness of our digestion system. This is important when considering how long it takes to digest a pound of lean beef.
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Mar 26, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET
Hag sameach, happy Pesach, and how appropriate that the Supreme Court hearings on same-sex marriage will begin on the first day of Passover! Sure, most of us think of Passover in terms of biblical history, the one time a year we open the Manischewitz, or trying to find appetizing uses for matzoh (there are some great recipes online for chocolate-toffee-covered versions . . . ). However, Passover is also a celebration of a pivotal moment in history (the Jews escaping from persecution in Egypt), just as the Supreme Court case is a pivotal moment in the history of gay rights, and of the freedom of gay couples to have the same legal recognition as heterosexual couples.
I see some personal links between the events, as well. As a card-carrying Jewish mother, I like to joke that I’m secretly longing for a gay son (so he’ll go shopping with me, and he’ll never replace me with another woman). Plus Jews have lots in common with gay people, in that we’re often reduced to stereotypes and have experienced group discrimination – it makes sense that so many of us support marriage equality. (In fact, our synagogue performed same-sex ceremonies before they even considered interfaith marriages!)
Plus the connection between gay rights and being Jewish is what got me to The Recovering Politician in the first place. Last summer, I was researching ways to publicize my album of Chanukah comedy songs, and I came across an article about Chanukah music by Jonathan Miller. I wrote to him out of the blue, never expecting to get a response, but not only did he reply, he invited me to contribute to the site’s discussion of last year’s Chick-Fil-A controversy. I wrote about some of the same reasons, why Jewish mothers support gay rights, including a song about being a liberal Jewish mother, and joked that I should do a weekly song. Jonathan said Sure, I thought, Oh no, what have I gotten myself into?, and 8 months and 40 songs later, I’m still finding plenty of inspiration in current events.
So since a big part of the Passover Seder is to express gratitude, I’d like to officially thank you, Jonathan and The Recovering Politician, for launching a whole new creative venture and for providing a sane, civil community for discussion and sharing opinions.
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Mar 26, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”— Dr. Seuss
My sister invited me to her first annual Dr. Seuss-themed Passover Seder. “I hope you’re serving Green Eggs, no Ham,” I quipped. But I was so excited for her! The idea is so fun and original and so antithetical to the Passover seders of our youth, that it is a demonstration of freedom in her life. Which seems fitting for the theme of the holiday. Freedom from slavery, escaping to a new world, doing stuff that makes us feel like we’re going to get in trouble, but getting away with it. I feel like Thing One and Thing Two.
“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do. Two can be as bad as one. It’s the loneliest number since the number one.” -–Three Dog Night
In my role as a dating coach, I’m helping single clients shoot for two. I have to convince them that two is better than one when most of them have experienced the above. I say in my marketing materials that I will help you to find “the One.” I should stop saying that, because it’s a misnomer. To say that you are looking to find “the One” makes the other person too important. I should say; “I will help you to find your Two.” You are your own Number One.
The song repeats though—“One is the loneliest number, one is the loneliest number, one is the loneliest number” just to make sure we remember. As bad as two can be, it’s better than one. I’ve been married for 11 years and my personal goal for freedom this Passover is to find the One within the Two. What does that mean to me? It means finding your own voice even in the face of someone you love, who disagrees with you. And in-so-doing, you make your relationship work better. It’s ironic. It sometimes feels like you have to get rid of the other person, like Moses with Pharoah. We want to get someone else’s permission to “Let my people go.” But all we need to do really is get out of our own way.
“No is the saddest experience you’ll ever know,” Three Dog’s song continues. It’s so true. I stopped saying No to myself. My husband and I saw the film “No” last week. It’s a true story about when an advertising campaign in Chile in the ‘80s had the opportunity to overthrow the prevailing dictatorship. They just had to get a majority to vote “No.” Which might not be hard if they could get a majority to vote at all. No one was going to bother to vote because they could not even imagine the life that could be possible with freedom. One of the most brilliant part of the campaign was that they added a + to the No and made it No+ or No Mas. No Mas Pinochet. No Mas Pharoah. No Mas oppression. Let our People Go.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Mar 21, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
I just went through Chik-fil-A drive through in my hometown in Louisville. Mainly because it’s after 9pm and most their clientele are home for the night —praying with one another, talking about heterosexuality, and getting ready for bed.
At least that’s the media stereotype we have in my mind
I figure that between 9-10pm each night the city’s liberal and hypocritical underbelly slithers through the Chik-fil-A drive-thru wearing sunglasses and masking their real voice as they order. And not making eye contact as they ask for extra ketchup for the Waffle Fries before careening out of the parking lot before one of their liberal brethren recognizes them and turns them into the local Whole Food Market.
But the food is so good at Chik-fil-A, otherwise idealistic Ashley Judd Democrats (it is Kentucky) are, at least during a weak moment (between 9-10pm Mon-Sat, but not Sun) willing to risk everything they stand for to munch on a Spicy Chicken Sandwich or toasted Chicken Salad Sandwich.
Is that really so wrong?
Of course it is!
Rand Paul was willing to talk for 13 consecutive hours last week (4 1/2 hours longer than his typical interview and floor speech) because of what he believed. Period. A conviction politician with a consistent and principled ideological diet. No carry-out order of Dan Dan Noodles from the ultra liberal and multicultural PF Changs would have caused him to waiver.
Shame. Shame. I know your name! John Y Brown III! You Daniel in the Lion’s Den! Or Chik-Fil-A’s double drive-thru line.
But at least I had the decency NOT to park and eat in Chik-fil-A parking lot. I clandestinely drove across the street and parked in the Taco Bell parking lot where I noticed two other cars parked with Chik-Fil-A bags on the dashboard with incognito drivers wolfing down a chicken pot pie.
But then I saw something truly shocking. It was, if true, reminiscent of the moment when Sen Joe McCarthy was castigated by the Army Colonel and General Counsel, “At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency?” Only worse because it was more brazen and nakedly hypocritical.
It was a high profile and celebrated local republican operative, whose name I’ll leave anonymous for now (or someone who looks just like him) wearing dark sunglasses in a corner booth eating a Bacon Club Chalupa inside Taco Bell. As he chewed blissfully he simultaneously belied his party’s rigid policy position on immigration, symbolically anyway. “What a sanctimonious hypocrite!” I thought to myself.
Sure,I was outraged and wanted to lash out at this blatant policy hypocrisy. But I thought to myself, maybe –just maybe—all this hyper partisanship had gone a step too far. Instead I asked myself what would Democratic Patron Saint US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan do if he were alive and found himself in this identical situation? Easy. He was discreetly walk inside Taco Bell and quietly offer his political nemesis his now empty Chick-Fil-A bag to disguise the rest of his Taco Bell order.
But Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a better man than I am. I left the scene and am posting the entire episode on the Recovering Politician blog! For sake of our children and our children’s children’s future. Or something like that.
As Grover Norquist taught us, “Bipartisanship is another name for date rape.” Or, I would add, an unreported partisan breach involving a Taco Bell Bacon Club Chalupa or Chik-fil-A Charbroiled Chicken Wrap.
Fact: You are what you eat. The most accurate statement you will read or hear all day. If you put “crap” into your body you will look (and feel) like “crap.” On the flip side, if you put nutrients your body wants and needs (and when they need and want them) you will look the best you ever have and feel the best you have ever felt. Also…Fact. “So whats the deal with juicing?” Well read the above blog first and then try it yourself. Give it three days and tell me how much better you feel. Because I know you will.
