Energy Drinks

This shit is so bad for you.

In recent years, not only has soda pop consumption skyrocketed, but so-called "energy drinks" have become popular, particularly with young people, such as the ubiquitous Red Bull.

Some of this has to do with drug culture - particularly rave culture, where consumption of drugs such as Ecstasy, combined with lots of exercise, can quickly deplete a person, and a shot of sugar and caffeine often keeps them going.  But many others, including very young children, drink this crap, and think not only is it not bad for you, but that it is some sort of health drink.

It is, in essence, concentrated soda pop - water, sugar, and caffeine.  And it has a lot of sugar in it.

From CalorieCount:

 

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size 8 3/10 fl oz (249.0 g)

Amount Per Serving

Calories 110

% Daily Value*

Sodium 200mg 8%

Total Carbohydrates 28.0g 9%

Sugars 27.0g

* Based on a 2000 calorie diet

Energy	110 kcal
Carbohydrate, by difference	27.99 g
Sugars, total	26.99 g
Sodium, Na	200 mg

Red Bull contains taurine, glucuronolactone, caffeine, B vitamins, sucrose, and glucose.

So, what's not to like?  It's basically a Coca-Cola in concentrated form, with some other shit added in tiny amounts so they can say it is an "energy drink" instead of "Soda Pop".

The problem is, consumption of soda pop is bad enough - and leading to an epidemic of diabetes in this country.  And diabetes sucks, too.   It makes you go crazy at times (like my friend last night) and turns your life into a nightmare of pills, shots, test kits, and eventually insulin.  And look forward to your good friend kidney failure and dialysis.

There really is no reason to drink this junk - and it costs a lot of money.  If you are struggling with weight gain, one good place to start is giving up sugary drinks.

Red Bull now makes a "diet" version with only 10 calories.  But basically you are paying money for caffeine and water.

Myself, I find it easier to just drink water...... cheaper too.

And please, no blather about "electrolytes" - sugar is not an "electrolyte"!

The Kids Are Alright!

Weird thing:  I am a middle-aged guy blogging about saving for retirement.  Who are most of the people who have followed this blog?  Young people.  You know, the kids are alright!

"Kids today.  You know, with their freaky hairstyles, tattoos, body-piercings, and their underwear sticking out.  What is up with that?  I swear, I just don't understand what is up with this new generation!"

That's what I hear a lot here, on retirement island.  It is hard, when you are older, to understand youth.  What they want out of life seems strange to us.  Mostly, however, what they want is what we wanted out of life at that age - a chance to live independently, to find love, fun, perhaps a little sex, drugs, and rock and roll, along the way.  And perhaps someone to settle down with for the long run, make a little money and retire someday.

And I don't think that has changed much - except that the deal we are leaving the 20-somethings of today is perhaps not quite as nice as what I had - and certainly not as good as what my older siblings got.

No really.  Listen.  These kids today are getting a raw deal - and they still have an upbeat attitude.  You gotta hand it to them.

When I was college-aged, it was during the last major recession (worse that this one, if you can believe that) in 1979.  There were few jobs available, but the "Big 3" car companies had a monopoly share of the market and "foreign cars" were actually made in foreign countries.  And GM had a program then to pay your way through college.  Those were the days.   GM can barely afford to make cars, these days.

But even back then, college wasn't too expensive - compared to today.   Student loans were actually a novelty.   Since then, college costs have risen at double the rate of inflation for a couple of decades.  And the end result of getting an education and becoming a "professional" such as a Doctor or Lawyer ain't what it used to be.   Today, the professions are a ticket to the middle-class, not to wealth.

And in my elder sibling's generation, college was even cheaper.  Yea, they had that whole war thing to deal with, but hey, if you were in college, you got a deferment, so you could protest.  And we didn't have crack back then - or AIDS.  Free love, free drugs, and hardly any consequences.  And you could graduate with a liberal arts degrees and get a job with a big company as a salaried employee almost right away - if you were willing to get a haircut.  But to hear those boomers tell it, they had it rough!

The kids today are facing much lower expectations than we had.  But since they don't know any better, they think they have a pretty good deal.  The human spirit is so resilient - you have to admire that.  Our parent's generation got defined benefits pensions and Social Security - the latter tax-free.  My generation gets a self-funded 401(k) and the promise of cuts to Social Security and Medicare, as our system coughs, shudders and finally runs out of money.  The kids today?  They get a fuck-you on a stick.  And yet they are still cheerful and optimistic.

But then again, adversity is a good instructor, and perhaps some of these kids today are realizing that, yea, compared to the past, they got a raw deal.   But then again, it's the deal they get, and that ain't about to change.  And all you can do is make the best of a bad situation - and optimize your outcome.  Like I said, the kids are alright.

For example, I recently received this query, via twitter or cell phone text message, apparently:

"i'm 25 how can i become a millionaire by the time i retire"

That's thinking long-term, and I have to admire that.  When I was 25, my question was "how can I buy a new car and where can I score some pot?" and you can imagine how screwed-up my checkbook was.

It is a relevant question for a young person to be asking, as by the time I retire (in about 12 years or so) I hope to have close to a million in retirement funds, which, with Social Security (ha-ha) should net me about $76,000 a year in retirement money, using the 4% rule.  Not bad - fairly comfortable - a nice middle-class retirement.

For a young person today, looking at retirement in 40 years, well, $76,000 may by then be the definition of the "poverty line" - and at the 4% rule (and Social Security will no doubt be a joke by then) they likely will not be making very much (4% of a million is a paltry $40,000 a year).

So kudos to a 25-something for thinking this far in the future.   But the sick joke for these kids is, not "how do I become a millionaire" but the fact that being a millionaire in the year 2051 will not be such a big deal.  Probably half the population will be millionaires by then.   With inflation, it will be no big deal to be a millionaire.

Heck, even today, it is amazing in this era of $250,000 homes (which are modest homes in most markets) that more people are not millionaires.  In the DC area, a half-million dollars buys a starter home or condo in many markets.  A million bucks ain't a lot of money anymore, particularly when more and more people are making the mythical six-figure salary.

The world the young will live in will be markedly different than the world we live in today.  And I say this with the benefit of hindsight.  In 1973, we would write primitive game programs on a time-shared PDP-8 computer (with 4KB of hard-wired core memory, made as piecework by old Italian ladies in Maynard, Massachusetts, knit by hand, one bit at a time!).  We would sit around and do bong hits and think, "Man, someday, everyone will have a computer and can you imagine all the cool shit we'll have?"

And this has come true, to some extent - and things we never envisioned have come to pass (both good and bad).  And the advice of an older generation was often off the mark in many regards.  As I noted before, most of my elders - even teachers and college professors - pooh-poohed Software as a career (Even the Patent Office struggled to recognize it as a "Science" until recently).  Taking career advice from anyone over 30 is risky.

So it is tempting to say the kids today have their head up their ass, with their crazy music and styles.  But on the other hand, the world they inhabit will be a different world - one of their making - and we will all be safely taking a dirt-nap.  So giving advice to young people - specific advice on careers and the future - is risky.

But there is good advice my elders tried to give me, that is still true today - advice that was often too vague or was mostly ignored - and that was to save money, consume less, and accumulate wealth.

It was a message that for me was not emphasized enough, mostly because I came from a family of spendthrifts, not savers, who had trouble themselves accumulating wealth.

And in part, the problem was that a new technology - the television - was shouting contrary messages to our generation - the first generation to be raised from the cradle in the flickering blue glow of the TeeVee.  Our parents may have said to save and conserve, but the TeeVee shouted consumption from the get-go.

Kids today, I think are more astute that I was at their age.  Marketing has become so crass, so overt today that only stupid people of my age believe any of it anymore.  Who listens to the radio anymore?  Middle-aged and old people.  Who watches reality TV?  Ditto.  Kids are smarter, in general, than that, and I think many sense or smell marketing efforts more readily than our less media-savvy older generation.

So how do you become a Millionare by the time you retire - which is really not an option but a necessity for a 25-year-old?  Simple.  Ignore the messages of the media that say you need to spend to be happy - that you need trendy clothes, a smart-phone, cable-TV and a leased Scion.  All that is crap and will be in the dumpster by the time you are 30 or so, maybe 35 tops.  Investments, on the other hand, will last a lifetime.   Spend a little less, save a little more.  You'll get there.

And if you are even thinking about this at age 25, you will do OK.  Because at that age, I deluded myself into thinking that I could "save later" as I was still young.  And that was a mistake.

Good luck.  You'll need it.  But I think the kids will be alright, frankly.

* * * 

NOTE:  There is some controversy as to the use of "All Right" versus "Alright".  Perhaps the latter is considered by some to be slang.   "The Kids are All Right" is the name of a movie, but I think the meaning of that phrase is odd.  To me, it says that "All of the Kids are Correct" which is not what I mean - nor what I think the movie writers meant (but were no doubt corrected by a grammarian).

In American slang (and perhaps British as well) "Alright" is akin to saying "OK"  - an indication that the subject matter is satisfactory, acceptable, laudable, or desirable.  As in "this cake is alright!" - which means the cake is good, not that the cake just got all of its algebra answers correct.  Cakes do not take algebra tests.

And of course, as slang, the phrase "Alllllllriiiiiight!!!" has taken on the latter meaning - namely an acceptance of something as good or desirable, not necessarily correctness.  As in "Mom made cake tonight?  Alllriiiightt!!"

On the other hand, "All Right" means something else, to me - as in "Joe got the answers on his Alegbra test all right!"

It can also be used in another sense, "Joe got the answers on his Algebra test, all right!" - which has a nuanced different meaning, particularly if spoken sarcastically.

And of course, it can have yet another meaning, in terms of mental health - "Joe isn't all right, is he?" or "He isn't all right in the head."

And of course, "You are all right" could mean that the person being address is entirely correct, or a plural group of people are all correct (all of them are correct, as opposed to one person being completely correct).  It is amazing anyone can learn this damn language, really.

And of course, there is the declarative, as in, "All right now!  What is going on here?" which really has no meaning other than sort of an attention getting phrase and verbal throat clearing.

But before you flame me on Alright versus All Right, I will defend myself with the modern view that Alright is a different word than the phrase All Right - and thus has a different meaning.  And it should, too.

The Grammar Girl website (with annoying videos and sidebar ads - sorry, no link provided here!) takes the old school view, but notes:

The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style states that “alright” as one word “has never been accepted as standard” but it then goes on to explain that “all right” as two words and “alright” as one word have two distinct meanings. It gives the example of the sentence “The figures are all right.” When you use “all right” as two words, the sentence means “the figures are all accurate.” When you write “The figures are alright,” with “alright” as one word, this source explains that the sentence means “the figures are satisfactory.”

I am going with the American Heritage folks.  It may not be standard English, but it gets the meaning across much better.  All right?  Good.  You're alright, you know! 

Boyle's Law and California

Is California Full?

Boyle's Law states that a gas expands to fill a container (so to speak).  From the 1960's until today, the population of the Continental United States expanded to fill a lot of "empty" States - and many are now full and perhaps over-full.  Once prosperous States like California are no longer the land of golden opportunity.


When I was kid back in the 1960's, a huge chunk of the U.S. Population lived in the Northeastern United States.  All the major colleges and universities where there, most of the most populous cities.  And most Corporations were headquartered there, as well a most manufacturing.  In a band from Boston to Michigan in the West, to Washington DC in the South, an enormous portion of the U.S. Population and manufacturing was based.

Air conditioning existed back then, but was not as ubiquitous as it is today (most homes in the Northeast, even those of wealthy people, had no A/C, as it was thought to unnecessary).  Most Southern States, and in particular, the Southwestern States, were sparsely populated. Even glittering Las Vegas was just a pretty cheesy short strip of small hotels and casinos - seriously, check out some of the "rat pack" photos from back then and look how small everything was, compared to today.

California, of course, was home to a lot of people and had two major cities.  But the majority of the State was agricultural, not industrial.   Silicon valley was just a bunch of orange groves.

But in the late 1960's and early 1970's, all the baby-boomer kids started to graduate from college and sought out careers.   And the crowded Northeast, with its decaying industrial base offered few opportunities for them.  As it was throughout the history of the U.S., "Go West, Young Man" (an epithet originally applied in the early 1800's to Western New York" became the mantra of a new Generation.

And so, a lot of people started to fill out these empty States - places like Colorado, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and of course, California.  The explosive growth in places like Phoenix (ugh!) has all taken place in the last 40 years - turning small charming towns into mega-cities with urban sprawl problems.  Denver has the same problem.  And as people move away from overcrowded California, places like Austin, Texas, or Portland Oregon are starting to feel the pinch.  No one, it seems, likes emigrant Californians (Californian jokes are popular in all such places).

Populations, like gases, expand and move to fill an empty space.  In this case, the pent-up population of the Northeast spilled outward to other, less populated States during the last half-century.  But unlike Boyle's law, people do tend to clump in groups, rather than fill spaces evenly - which is how they ended up clumped in the Northeast to begin with.

People stay in places for sentimental reasons (like Flint, Michigan - who would want to live there?) or because they have no motivation.  In other circumstances, people flock to places viewed as prosperous (California, Florida) without a real idea of how to make a living there.  Moving to a more prosperous State, as I have noted before, is a good idea.  But when a State accumulates too many unemployed people, people on welfare, criminals, and other hangers-on, it no longer is a prosperous State or a place for opportunity.

And that is happening to California and Florida.  California remains a staggeringly expensive place to live - and Florida property taxes aren't cheap, either.  As a result, the cost/benefit of moving to such places is strained.   I have been offered jobs in California, but after examining the cost of housing stock, the cost of living, and the lifestyle involved (horrendous commutes, crowded highways, high crime rates), I took a pass.  That was in 1999.

This is not to say that California is a crappy place to live or that there are no opportunities left there.  Rather, the population has migrated there, like gas fills an empty void - and as a result, it no longer is the "land of opportunity" it used to be.

The key is, I think, for young people, is to spot where the opportunities for the future may lie.  Back in the 1960's and 1970's, it was unorthodox for people to move to the "Sunbelt" as it was called.  "What on earth is in Utah?" we asked our friends moving out there (short answer: more than just Mormons and sand).  It took vision to think outside the box and think that maybe better opportunities lie in places other than run-down rust-belt towns and cities of the Northeast.

Where the opportunities today are, I can't say - being of the older generation.  And career advice from the older generation is always suspect.  After all, my parents, teachers, and even college professors all told me that I was "wasting my time" programming computers - after all, there is no money to be made in software.  And the next generation was told, no doubt, that there was no money in creating websites.

But if you live in a place that is depressed and there are no jobs - move.  Move to a place where there is opportunity and there are jobs - a place that is still growing and expanding, not stagnating and decaying.  From a personal perspective, there is greater opportunity for the individual.

And many Californians are doing just that - moving to places like Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and the Pacific Northwest, where jobs are expanding and taxes are still fairly reasonable. 

No "Happily Ever After" with Drug Use

There is no happy ending with drug use, which is probably why it is illegal.

Today, we were talking about drug use and people we know who did drugs.  There is no such thing as an old drug user - particularly with hard drugs.  You decide to do crack, heroin, methamphetamine, and basically it will kill you, in fairly short order.

The topic of conversation was a local campground owner who was foreclosed upon.  The rumor is, the owners made a lot of money, and decided that developing a crack habit would be a good idea.  Odder things have happened. 

As I mentioned before, I had a friend whose husband, while in law school, decided that a little crack wouldn't hurt.  Before long, he wanted to spend the mortgage payment on crack.  She demurred on the grounds that the mortgage would then be unpaid.  "Yea, but we'd have a lot of crack!" was his reply.

And it got me to thinking - there is no happy ending with drug use.  There are no methamphetamine success stories, no happy-go-lucky junkies, no crack addicts on the pipe in the old folks home.  The only outcome is depravity, poverty, ill-health, and death - an early death.  And rarely are such drug users happy, except for the brief moment when they first get high.

Yea, people ruin their lives with alcohol, too.  But at least it is possible to drink a glass of wine with dinner and not automatically end up on the road to homelessness.  It is possible to drink yourself dead, of course, but not mandatory.   With drugs, the outcome is always preordained.

Marijuana, as I have written about before, probably won't kill you, but it won't make you happy, long-term.  We are now seeing that mental health issues like schizophrenia may be enhanced or induced by early and chronic marijuana use.  But you don't need a medical study to understand the real effect - you just have to ask yourself - do you know any happy long-term marijuana users?

And the answer is generally a resounding "No".  Most are marginally employed or unemployed, and will regale you for hours about what a sucky deal they got in life.  You never see a rich marijuana user - most just scrape by - barely able to afford their drug of choice. . . .

OK, that was weird.  I started writing this blog entry and the phone rings and a friend is on the line.  We had just returned from the beach with another friend (more of an acquaintance), and apparently, that friend is now "lost" on the island and can't find his way home.  So we get in the car to go rescue him, and find him in the church parking lot passed out.  Some fun.

So we roust him out of the car and put him in the passenger's seat.  We didn't have that much to drink, did we?  I'm feeling fine.  He is in a fugue state and mumbling incoherently.  "I have to get back to the store, the store is in trouble!" he says, "Suzie always fucks up the cash register!". 

I try to reassure him that things are going to be OK (this is reminding me a lot of my childhood, with my Mother, which is creeping me out.  Did enough of that for one lifetime, thank you!).

Then, "Chris, I need another line.  If you give me another line, I'll be all right!  Chris, I need another line!"

This is starting to freak me out.  He is incoherent and doesn't even know who I am.   And apparently, unbeknownst to us, he is a coke head.  We get him back to his apartment and he lies in a fetal position on the couch, mumbling incoherently.  He gets up, takes a pill out of the refrigerator and tries to snort it.  We stop him.

He digs through a bag and gets a glucose pill and takes several of those.  He perks up, takes a blood test, and his blood is reading 187, which is supposedly normal.  He seems to be coming around.  We finally get him up and in the shower, and he seems much better.  He tells us he tried to snort one of his diabetes medication pills, as "he thought it was an Esctasy tablet from Chris."  I do not know who Chris, is, but I do not like him.  In fact, if you are Chris and you are reading this, expect a punch in the face if I ever meet you.

We finally get him settled down and tucked into bed.   Should we call 911?  He knows who we are now, and says he is very embarrassed.  It appears that he has multiple medical problems as well as a drug problem.  Some fun.

We bailed his ass out of trouble, but I wonder if we would have been better off letting Officer Powell run him in - he would have to confront his problems then.

But it makes me sad, seeing a nice person ruin their life like that, and nothing I can really do about it.  And no, I do not like bailing out drug addicts from their problems all the time.  And with his health problems, I can tell you, this ain't gonna end well.  I only have one funeral suit, and it don't fit so well.

And how odd, I started writing a blog entry on drug use, and then this happens.  (cue Twilight Zone theme music... "do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do...." )

But hey, what am I saying?  Drugs are always a lot of fun, because they get you "high" and there is never, ever a downside, right?  Right.

So kids, keep doing drugs!  Because in a few short years, you too can be an annoying pain in the ass to your friends and family and make yourself miserable in the process!  Some fun, right?  Because, let's face it, you don't experience enough pain in life as it is, right?

I need to get to bed.  This was one freaking strange night!

Whatever Happened to Second Life?

So whatever happened to Second Life?  The same thing that is happening to Facebook and will happen to Twitter.

People are a-twitter about Twitter and ga-ga about Facebook - websites that allow you to go online and interface with others.   But there was another Social Media site, just a few years back, that had a much more realistic interface than Facebook or Twitter, and yet is is largely gone from the nation's consciousness.

And no, I am not talking about MySpace.  Or Friendster. 

Second Life was a virtual interface to a virtual world, where you could talk, walk, dance, party, shop, drink, and even have sex - virtually.  And it was "the next big thing" that everyone talked about - and was supposed to be the wave of the future.

But it turned out to be a fad - and it peaked, flared, and crashed rather quickly.  It still exists, just as Friendster still exists.  But it turned out not to be the world-changer or game-changer everyone thought it would be.

Funny thing, too, it was only a few years ago it was the hottest thing - and today nobody remembers it.

What does that say about the "hot social media sites" of today?  And how are they going to succeed where Second Life failed?

Before you jump on the Dot-Com bandwagon, look at the shattered remnants of the upteen previous bandwagons that went down the road.

The only thing consistent about the Internet is change - and the ability of most Internet companies to lose an awful amount of money before bankrupting investors.