Greg Davis

Excessive blue light exposure is widely being covered by news media and blogs. We know that electronic/screen light are pretty terrible for our sleep and health in general. So the obvious link is to check out two free apps to screen lighting:
Twighlight for Android
F.lux for Windows
(not sure about other platforms)

But what I haven’t seen covered is hacking your location beyond just mimicking your local sunrise/sunset (the default settings in these apps). In southern or northern latitudes unless you’re a total paleo seasonal hippy you probably want to have some more consistency year-round rather than follow the shortest/longest cycles. And what if you tend to wake up too early or have trouble falling asleep? Shouldn’t you adjust to see if that helps? Light therapy/timing has been studied a fair bit as a tool for aligning your sleep cycle.

So try putting some thought into what sunrise/sunset lighting conditions you would like to mimic. Check out SunCalc to figure out the sunrise/sunset timing you’re looking for and circle back to the settings of these screen apps. If you’re a real boss and have timing options for other indoor lighting good on you.

FYI I really like Paul Jaminet’s thoughts on circadian rhythm maintenance.

This one has been hitting paleo blogosphere quite a bit which is so great to see (Robb Wolf, Chris Kresser). But I still have to post up a link to Allan Savory’s TED talk, because it is just so good and such an important message.

This hits home in so many ways for me. For years since I became interested in food and diet from an evolutionary perspective I knew it is about more than just some narcissistic attempt to perfect oneself. The fact that our species is all in on row farming and eating whack foods is holding down the IQ of impoverished populations, destroying soils and disconnecting us from an interest in where we live, is surely to blame for much of current mental illness and diseases, and connects in to the most critical economic issues of our time around asinine agricultural subsidies. I stopped preaching to people around me about what makes sense to eat a long time ago, but it’s very hard to disassociate food from so many other issues.

Having an environmental science background I’ve been wanting to dig in to some writing on food and local/regional environmental management for some time but for now I’m glad to see it get covered. I’m so over exposed to the term “sustainability” at this point that I tend to distance myself from “environmentalists” who often take up the most ridiculous causes. But I hope one day I can fold in more meaningful action into my work and personal life. For now I’m happy to see select folks like Robb Wolf in this post last year take it up and represent thoughtful “sustainability”, and hope that more high profile economists like Tyler Cowen continue to recognize that soil management should be at the very top of the list of environmental issues.

If you’re looking for some inspiration from people with boots on the ground actually managing land properly with pastured animals check out these podcasts with Polyface’s Joel Salatin or Alderspring’s Glenn Elzinga. Scientist Mat Lalonde gets credit for mentioning the disaster of grains in the middle east on many of his gem podcasts as well, such as this one.

Other links:
Savory Institute