Sakabatou

Since I cleaned up my house I'm now starting to think about my garden again. And despite having a compost heap, I'm getting more and more interested in no (or very little) input gardening. This is a bit different than organic gardening. In organic gardening you put no (?) manufactured products on your garden. I put the question mark there because there is a question in my own mind about whether or not its really true.

You see, organic gardens have inputs. You do add fertilizer. And you might even add insecticides (naturally occurring of course). But the idea is to keep things "natural". I think this is a reasonable way to go, but its a bit ingenuous. Most people think of "organic" as being pure and natural. This is not necessarily true. An organic garden can be just as intensive as a non-organic one. You just find your inputs from different sources.

I'm interested in low input gardening. That is, using as little fertilizer, external mulch, insecticide, herbicide, as I can. I don't have the links handy (will add them later), but there are at least a few commercial scale farms that do this kind of work. I want to let nature do the work for me as much as possible.

You see, whether organic or not, an input is an input. Plants need nutrients. They can get nitrogen and carbon from the air, and energy from the sun. But other things come from either the water or the soil. A plant doesn't know or care where the nutrient comes from. It could be manufactured in a factory, it could already be in the soil, or it could be from the decomposing carcass of a fish. It doesn't matter to the plant.

We have a limited amount of minerals on the planet. These were all initially created during super novae of stars. We can't make more. For instance, all the calcium that will ever likely be on this planet (within reason) is already here. But there is waaay more than we will ever need, so we don't have to worry about using it up.

From the plant's perspective, its merely a matter of moving the nutrients to the plant and making it available in a form that the plant can use. One easy way to do this is by making synthetic fertilizer (synthetic in the sense that we actively transform the nutrients into a form usuable by the plants). This is "normal" intensive farming. Another way to do this is by moving nutrients that are already in a partially acceptable form near to the plant and letting nature convert it the rest of the way. For instance, we might take manure and let it rot and leach into the soil. This is the "organic" approach.

But who says the soil need nutrients added to it? For instance, according to the Encyclopedia of Soil Science soil generally has a phosphorous level of 300-3000 kg per hectare (not sure of the depth...). This works out to about 3-30 grams per square meter. Chinese cabbage, for instance contains about 37 milligrams of phosphorous per 100 grams. So at commercial yields there's 1000 - 10,000 times more phosphorous than is needed. But it's not in a form that the plant can use, so even at these levels you might get a phosphorus deficiency. I'm just using phosphorus as an example. Other nutrients are similar (or even more abundant).

The idea behind no input gardening is to try to use natural processes in the soil to make the nutrients you need available. Of course, every couple thousand years you'll have to worry about replacing the nutrients lost ;-). The real question is whether it's possible. At least some people seem to think so (and have working commercial farms to back up their claims). I'd like to try doing it in containers which presents an even bigger challenge. But I think it might be possible, in the same way that reef fish tanks can make a reasonable approximation of a real reef.

Over the next while I will try to document some of my ideas and approaches. If you are wondering why I would want to do this, I'll try to explain that as well. But for now it's like a mountain to me. I want to climb it simply because it is there. Wish me luck!

Sorry for abandoning this blog lately. I had some server problems and at the same time changed my lifestyle a bit, so blogging got a back seat. But I thought I'd talk a little bit about losing weight because it is something I've done recently. Over the last 12 weeks I lost 10 kg (about 22 lbs). Many people have asked me how I did it and I tend to give them a pretty lame answer: exercise and not eating too much. But the real answer is a little more complex. So if you are interested please continue reading.

I'll tell you a secret. Losing weight it really easy. In fact, it's so easy that you can often lose weight faster than is healthy for you. I think most people fail at losing weight because they follow bad advice that is accepted as gospel these days. I'll try to point out where I think the accepted wisdom is wrong as I go. First, though, let me reiterate. It's easy to get yourself in trouble losing weight. For some people it could be really dangerous to your health. So talk to your doctor and even better a registered dietitian. I will also recommend exercise. Obviously I can't know your personal health considerations, so make sure you see professionals before you start messing around.

Now for the good stuff. Here's the absolute secret to losing weight: calories in - calories out = weight change. This is always true. I know you've probably heard about all sorts of factors that affect weight loss. You probably think it's really complicated to find the right "balance" to get your body to burn that fat. But basically it's all BS (and most of it is really just designed to make you feel helpless so that you buy some product, book or service). The absolute reality is if you eat more than you burn you gain weight. If you burn more than you eat you lose weight.

This means that the old trick of counting calories is the best (only?) way to ensure that you lose weight. Don't worry, it's not that hard. I'll explain a few tricks later on. But now you may be thinking, "Yes, I get the concept, but I have a slow metabolism". Don't worry, slow or fast metabolism it doesn't make too much difference.

The average male uses about 2000 calories per day to keep their body going. If you're bigger, you're probably burning more. If you're smaller you're probably burning less. Women burn about 1600 calories a day. But you have to burn some calories. Even if your metabolism is slow, you *are* alive so you have to burn calories. It won't be so much that you can't lose weight.

Also, some people think, "I just retain fat -- it's in my genes". This may be true. But if you burn calories, it's got to come from somewhere: There are only 3 sources: blood sugar/fat (i.e., what you ate today), your muscles, and your fat. So unless you are telling me that you are losing muscle every time you exercise, I'm suspicious that retaining fat is materially affecting your ability to lose weight.

I'd like to borrow a quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of his body building books. He comments that in body building genetics is a factor, but not an excuse. The same thing goes for losing weight. You may have complicating factors in losing weight. But it's not an excuse. You can lose weight in the normal way, without undo complication. Of course, be conscious of your health and consult a doctor if anything strange seems to happen, but otherwise losing weight in not difficult in principle.

To lose one pound of fat you need to burn 3500 calories. Now remember that your entire day's diet is only between 1600 and 2000 calories. So this will limit the speed at which you can lose weight. Also, your body will only lose so much weight in a given time. It will shut down before it burns everything from fat. So it's extremely unhealthy (i.e., it can kill you) to lose weight too quickly. Finally, your body will actually tend to burn muscle over fat in most situations, so if you lose weight too quickly, you will actually lose muscle rather than fat. And trust me, muscle is very difficult to get back.

So by necessity you have to limit the speed at which you lose weight. My rule of thumb is that the maximum speed I can lose weight is 2-3 lbs a week. In practice, I limit it to 1 kg (2.2 lbs) every week. This is a lot of fat! In a year we are talking about more than 100 lbs! Don't try to go faster. And, in fact, it's much better to go slower. If you don't want to lose much, take it easy. But let's say we want to go the maximum: 1 kg a week. That works out to 7700 calories a week that you have to account for, or 1100 calories a day.

Now, remember, I said that for men the average income is 2000 calories a day. So 1100 calories is more than half of that total. For women (1600 calories) it's huge. So if you are a smaller woman, don't try to lose weight so fast! You could kill yourself (and I'm not exaggerating). Even for a man, you aren't going to get there without doing some extra exercise.

For me, I don't think it's nutritionally safe to eat less than 1600 calories a day on average. So to get to my goal I need to burn an extra 700 calories a day in exercise. I'm going to tell you something. That's a hell of a lot of exercise. I like running. Running burns about 130 calories per mile (about 80 calories per km). That means I need to run over 5 miles a day (almost 10 km) to burn all that. But my experience tells me that doing endurance exercise actually raises your metabolism (you have to rebuild your body after exercise). So I can actually get away with running 3 miles (5 km) 6 days a week as long as I take opportunities to go for walks.

Running isn't for everyone, though. And in fact, it's best to pick a sport that you feel happy doing almost every day. There are many walking, cycling, swimming, soccer... it doesn't matter as long as you are burning the calories. There are several problems, though. The first is that many sports don't burn calories very quickly. Walking for instance burns slightly less calories than running. But the real problem is that it takes a long time to walk 5 km (possibly several hours depending on your pace). It takes me less than 30 minutes to run it.

The other problem is that when you start exercising you are unlikely to be able to go long enough to burn the calories required. For runners, I recommend they start off with running only 1 or 2 km (or as far as you can go if it's less than 1 km). Do it every day for 6 days a week and increase the distance by 10% every week. If you are starting from scratch it will take a few months to get up to 5 km per day. This means that for several months your can't lose weight at the maximum speed.

What's the answer? Don't lose weight so fast. I'm serious. It took a long time for you to get the fat. You'll have to accept that it will take some time to lose it. But if you are committed you will lose weight steadily and increase your pace as you learn more about yourself and your body. If you are eating 1600 calories and burning 2000, then you will lose about 0.8 lbs per week, or about 3 lbs per month. It's slow, but as your fitness improves you will be burning faster and faster.

Now I'm going to talk about dieting. Dieting is a little tricky because it's hard to know how many calories you're taking in. Your best friend are those labels on the food. For prepared food you can see the exact number of calories. For food you make yourself, you have to calculate it. You can actually buy software to help you do this. But you can also so some rough calculations in your head using the USDA Nutrient Database. I recommend writing down what you ate for a couple of days and then looking everything up. After you do it a few times you can start guessing pretty accurately how many calories your meals are. Note: you are probably going to want to buy a small food scale to weigh your foods for the first few days.

When you are calculating calories, don't forget to enter everything. Seemingly small things like salad dressing, or a cup of juice can have a huge impact on your calories (a serving of french dressing is 56 calories -- probably more than the whole salad). Which brings me to what to eat.

Many fad diets (and I plunge Atkins and the like firmly in this category) make a big deal about the balance of carbohydrates to protein to fat. I don't agree with this to any great extent. But there are some truths you must accept. More than about 30% calories from fat is bad for your heart. And (the real kicker) fat has 3 times the energy density of carbohydrates or protein. This means that you could eat 3 grams of carbs or protein for the calorie equivalent of 1 gram of fat. So if you want to eat more food, eat low fat. This is important.

I'm a bit hesitant to say why it's important... But it's the hardest part of losing weight: hunger. Generally speaking, when you don't have enough food, you become hungry. This seems obvious, but it has serious repercussions. First on the gaining weight side. Let's say you avoid being hungry. This means that you always have more than enough food. If you always have more than enough food, you are eating at least as much as you are burning. Which means that you are gaining weight.

On the other hand, if you are burning more than you are eating... Well... Not to elaborate the point, but you are hungry. Especially when I was losing a kg a week I was hungry all the time! And in fact, if you don't want to count calories, this is a great way to determine how much to eat: Eat only at meal times (3 times a day). No matter how hungry you are, don't snack. At meal times, eat until you are not hungry any more (in other words when the hunger pangs go away -- you won't be full). Stop eating. I find this is quite a close approximation to an ideal diet for losing weight. However, you should still count calories for a while to make sure you aren't eating too little. Like I said, it could be dangerous.

Hunger is slightly unpleasant. But it's not such a big deal. If you ignore hunger, it will go away eventually. About an hour later it will come back again. You can ignore hunger for a long time before it becomes a problem. In fact, it's so easy to ignore hunger than many people skip meals and the like. Don't do this. There are health reasons for this, but there's even a better reason: you'll be miserable. Eat 3 meals a day that are roughly equal size (as much as possible). This will keep your hunger to the minimum. It's also easier to get an idea of how much to eat at each meal (since it's always the same).

But there are some benefits to hunger. Which is a good thing. Remember when I said that if you avoid hunger, the inevitable result is gaining weight? That means, to eat a healthy amount (where your weight is stable), you have to be hungry a little bit every day. You need to get used to hunger, and even appreciate it.

Hunger is actually really nice. How enjoyable is it to eat good food when you are really, really hungry? How about when you are really really full? There's a scale here. Food is most enjoyable when you are hungry and becomes less enjoyable as you become more full. So if you are having trouble limiting your portions, please try to think of your next meal. You are trying to make it the best meal possible, so you don't want to eat too much in this one. Also, as you eat more, there are diminishing returns. That last bite is never so satisfying as the first. So stop, when you aren't hungry any more so as to keep your enjoyment level high.

I also find that I'm more awake and "lighter" feeling when I am a bit hungry. I'm also (surprisingly) happier. I suppose this is different for different people, but I think there is some universal truth here. I definitely find my mind works better and and more engaged if I'm just a little bit hungry. If I'm too hungry it's no good, though, so I still try to limit my hunger to some degree.

The biggest trick for limiting hunger is to eat "high volume food". Low fat food generally has more volume. But fat carries flavour (and is required in small quantities), so don't go crazy. Find your own balance. Another trick is not to waste your calories on drinks. Juice, beer, and soda all have about the same number of calories (yes, that sickly sweet soda has the same calories as your healthy seeming juice). Don't drink it. If you need something sweet, eat fruit (which has a lot more bulk and fiber and will fill you up without the calories). Really, get used to drinking only water (actually, in restaurants I drink unsweetened oolong tea, but only because I feel about guilty about not buying anything). Alcohol should actually be avoided altogether because it inhibits your ability to process fat (so you will be burning other things).

If you are losing weight really quickly, you will be very hungry all the time. Another trick I have is to drink a lot of water during the day. This gives my stomach something to do (and me something to occupy my brain). Be a bit careful, though, because it is possible to drink too much.

This post is already too long, so I will finish up with a small discussion about weighing yourself. Many very respectable dieting people say to avoid regular weighing. The rationale is that it's difficult to interpret the results and you may end up being overly disappointed and quit. I understand the rationale, but I disagree anyway. Measurement is very important. You can only control the things that you can measure. And we want to feel in control of our body.

I measure myself very often -- both by weighing and looking in the mirror. But I try not to have any serious expectations. Your weight will vary dramatically based on a number of factors, but the most important is hydration. You can be carrying as much as 5 lbs extra weight in water, so don't worry if your weight is going up and down from measurement to measurement. You are only looking for a trend.

I actually weight myself before and after each run. This tells me how much water I lost in sweating in the run. I then dutifully replace it by drinking (every pound is about a pint of water -- 500g is half a liter). Since I usually run at the same time each day, I find my weight doesn't vary too much. But I'm only really think about how much I've lost for the whole week. If I gain or lose a little bit every day or two, I don't worry about it. It's important to have confidence in yourself and realize that you have complete control over what's happening.

I'll leave it at that for now. I know it was a lot to get through, but if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask me.

A lot of people have been telling me that the chances of a melt down in the Canadian housing market is remote. The whole ridiculous loan scandal in the US never happened in Canada. However, Canada has been going through it's own housing bubble and I think it's important that people don't get too complacent.

On a mailing list I subscribe to one of the people said that their house assessment in Victoria BC came in $100,000 lower than it was last year. But housing prices in Victoria have barely shifted in the last 2 years. What's up?

Here's a graph of the MLS housing sales prices for single detached houses in Victoria BC. The price is in Canadian Dollars (Yes, houses are really going for over $500,000 on average... )

As you can see, for 2 years it's pretty much been solid as a rock. So, what's the panic? Why is anyone worried? Surely if it's been so steady for 2 whole years, it's not going to come tumbling down for no reason, right?

Now take a look at a graph of the ratio of houses sold to houses on the market (expressed as a percent).

So in May 2007, 50% of the houses on the market sold. In November 2008, 10% of the houses on the market sold. Ouch!

But wait! If demand has dropped off so steadily, why hasn't the price gone down? I saw this in the crash of the housing market in London England in 1992. The reason is that people simply can't afford to sell their house for less than they paid for it. Because the *average* house price is half a million dollars, normal people can't afford a big down payment.

So even if they scraped together 10% of the asking price (unlikely given that most Canadians do not have $50,000 in savings), they can only afford to lose up to $50,000 on the sale of the house before they actually have to *pay out of their own pockets* to sell the house!

But what about the money they spent on their mortgage? Surely they've paid off some of the house (the principle). Unfortunately, no. The brilliant way that mortgages work is that you pay off the interest of the loan before you pay off the principle. So for the first 5 years you are barely paying anything off on the house.

So, given the lack of demand and the lack of decrease in house prices, we can infer that the price has already hit rock bottom. People can't afford to sell unless they can hold on to their house and make payments for the next 5 or 10 years.

Unfortunately, there's a kicker to all this. What if you lose your job? Now, you don't have enough money to cover the mortgage *and* you can't afford to sell your house. What do you do?

You declare bankruptcy and the bank takes your house/car/whatever. Luckily, it's not *so* bad. You get to start again with no assets and no credit rating. You don't live in a debter's prison like in Dicken's time... But what about the housing market.

Now, unlike you, the bank *can* afford to sell the house at a loss. And in fact, they don't want to hold on to this house, so they will sell it at whatever the market will bear. That's when the price falls like a shot. And if the poor economic conditions that led to you losing your job continue, then others lose their jobs. Leading to more bankruptcies. Leading to more house fire sales by the bank. Leading to more disruption in the economy.

Look for house prices to drop radically in Victoria in the next year or so. They should fall at least 20%. But it may very well be more. And *that's* why this person has had the assessment of his house slashed by $100,000 (about 20%) after owning it for only one year.

Well, I've put this off for as long as I can. Since it's the first day of 2009, I will finally try to explain what sakabatou means to me in detail.

As you might expect, sakabatou is a japanese word （逆刃刀） which literally means "reverse bladed sword". It comes from the manga Rurouni Kenshin. In brief, the manga is about a former assasin around the time of the Meiji Restoration. In the story, the main character was an assasin trying to help bring about the restoration of the Emperor of Japan as the authority in Japan.

Before the Meiji restoration, Japan was principally ruled by the Shogunate in the name of the emperor. Power was divided in a feudal system going from the Shogun, to the Daimyos, to the Samurai. Below the Samurai were the ordinary people. These people often suffered from excesses of the upper classes. Since rule was distributed, the people often had to put up with arbitrary leadership.

The Meiji restoration was intended (in principle anyway) to change that. The idea was to centralize power under an oligarchy (known as the Meiji Oligarchy). This was to be a grand new order for Japan, which would lead to the improvement of everybody's life.

The manga portrays the period immediately after the Meiji restoration. The main character, Rurouni Kenshin (a pseudonym meaning "Wandering Heart of the Sword") looks for a peaceful life. As the Meiji restoration has been secured, he gives up his life as an assasin. And as a symbol of his determination, he wears a reverse bladed sword (sakabatou) which is incapable of killing anyone.

Throughout the manga (and anime series), Kenshin is dragged into battle after battle. It seems that the revolutionary transition of power has done nothing to dispel corruption, as the new masters are just as bad as the old ones. But Kenshin is determined to fight for a peaceful world, without killing.

Unfortunately, he is caught between two worlds: the world as an assasin fighting for the restoration and the new world where he hopes that such fighting will no longer be necessary. As he was created in the first world, he can not give up his sword, or stop fighting. But he is determined to fight solely with the sakabatou, so that he doesn't ever kill. Over time in the manga, the foes become harder and harder and often he is tempted to go back to his old ways. But in the end, he'd rather die for the new ideal he has fought for.

Sakabatou (the website) is part of my attempt to find a peaceful world. In a way, I identify with Kenshin. I spent 20 years as a hired gun writing software for the commercial software industry. The idea of most businesses is to do whatever is required to generate wealth. By acting on self interest, we can secure our own future (make money). This money then drives the economy, which in turn makes everyone else wealthy. If you work hard, and are talented you can do well for yourself, your company, and ultimately the world.

Or so it is thought.

But when I worked as a programmer, I often found myself in situations that I didn't like. Often I was put in the situation of helping my company (and by extension, myself) at the expense of our customer. In fact, it was not unusual to spend extra time taking functionality away from a customer when it would have been much easier to simply let them have it. The rationale was that extra functionality should cost extra money. The fact that the functionality already exists, with no effort is beside the point.

Even worse were the situations when a customer would call with a bug report. This bug would be stopping them from doing their work. But we wouldn't fix it, simply because they had only bought a few copies of the software. We only fixed bugs for customers that bought 10's of thousands of copies. The fact that we might negatively affect the business of our small customers was unimportant.

And the worst was that we denied our customers the opportunity to help themselves even though we refused to help them.

If I make money but my customers fail through my actions, have I succeeded?

Most who know me know that I am an advocate of free software. With free software a customer is enabled to help themselves. I can make myself available to help them (for a fee!), but I can't stop them from improving their own situation without me if they so choose. To me, this is the new world; analagous to Kenshin's view of the Meiji restoration.

It is a world where I can be beneficial. Others can benefit from my actions, but I can not stop them from building on that themselves. And in fact, I don't want to. Because if my neighbour benefits, then I benefit too. This is the reverse of the normal business logic of "If I benefit, then everyone else benefits in the knock-on effects." Instead, I have to find ways to help myself by helping my neighbour.

In the Free Software Foundation's view this is a moral imperative. But like Kenshin, I am not a moralist. I just want a peaceful world. And a world where people are beholden to help others for their own benefit is inherently a peaceful world. I do not pretend to know what is "right" or what is "wrong". But I will be selfish and say that I want this world.

I find it interesting that one of the symbols of the Free software world is the copyleft. A copyleft is a reversed copyright symbol. In a normal copyrighted work, all rights are reserved. You are granted a license to do certain things if you pay money (the author/distributor helps themselves). The copyleft is the opposite. You are granted rights that you would not ordinarily have. But to make use of those rights you must agree to share those rights with others.

But what's interesting about the copyleft is that in order for me to proactively benefit myself, I must have something to share. I *could* simply use what others provide me, but I may or may not get what I want. If I want to make sure I either have to develop the thing myself, or pay others to develop it for me. Then, to get my added benefit (my return on investment, if you will) I must make sure this development helps others. Because if it doesn't, they won't be interested in adding to it.

I actually believe that this concept can be extended to all aspects of life. Share what you have in order to benefit from others. However, the mechanics for physical items may be much more complex. For now, I will concentrate on non physical aspects. It may seem hopelessly idealistic. But this is also true in the Rurouni Kenshin manga. We each have a choice of how we want to live our lives. We have a choice for how we fight to build the world we want to live in. Kenshin fought with his sakabatou.

Right now, my sakabatou is the copyleft.

I've been rereading a book on the sustainability of living in the Edo period of Japan. I ran across this little gem of a quote from Alice Mabel Bacon in 1888 (from "A Japanese Interior"):

In the living room there was a god-shelf, containing the family idols, with flowers set
before them, and a little china cupboard, in which were the cheap but prettily decorated
pieces of china that form the table service of any ordinary workingman's family. These
things, with the omnipresent hibachi and tea-kettle, formed all the furniture of the room,
except a pretty bamboo vase of autumn flowers that decorated the wall. Certainly, the
independence of furniture displayed by the Japanese is most enviable, and frees their lives
of many cares. Babies never fall out of bed, because there are no beds; they never tip
themselves over in chairs, for a similar reason. There is nothing in the house to dust,
nothing to move when you sweep; there is no dirt brought into the house on muddy boots
....