Free Speech Rankings, Beauty of Travel, The Ultimate Biohack
Three Point Thursday
Happy Three Point Thursday.
This week’s edition features some ratings about the liberty of expression at certain colleges, and some recent reflections I had about travel and fitness.
What happened to free speech at American universities?
For most people who have recently attended college in the United States, it is no secret that true freedom of speech is not upheld or respected on campus. That’s a terrible thing, considering they are supposed to be the place where the search for truth and battle of ideas between freethinkers happens. The Canceling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott is a book that gives shocking examples of anti-free speech sentiments at colleges. They even had “speech score” rankings from FIRE (The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) listed at the end of the book. The University of Chicago, Kansas State, and Purdue University made up the top three. Meanwhile, Columbia was in last place, with an “abysmal” speech score. My alma mater, UMass Amherst, had a speech climate defined as “slightly below average,” which I would say tracks.
The more you travel, the more you understand your home.
Earlier this year I took a trip to Buenos Aires, and last weekend I was in Los Angeles visiting my brother. I’ll be in El Paso next weekend to take the C1 Spanish exam, and Italy in July to visit my other brother while he studies abroad. I don’t take any of this for granted. It’s a great privilege and pleasure. And the more I go to different places, the deeper appreciation I gain for my home in Massachusetts. These adventures also make me more appreciative of human beings in general. In the immortal words of Mark Twain: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” Nailed it.
My favorite “biohack.”
One perfect Saturday morning in Austin, I was walking to my favorite coffee shop to get in a writing session when I saw a big crowd of people waiting outside of a venue. It was an unusually large group, so I asked someone in line what it was about, to which they replied, “biohacking.” Now, needless to say, I’m all for people pursuing ways to improve their fitness through supplementation, fasting, sauna, and things of that nature. I enjoy the benefits of creatine, cold showers, and intermittent eating as much as anyone. But I have an intuition that many people who are deep into “biohacking” are looking for a shortcut to greater health and strength, when, more often than not, the greater benefit would be to just go harder in the gym. Run another mile. Play another game. Slap another plate on that barbell. Intensity is the ultimate biohack.
This is right on Jeff. "But I have an intuition that many people who are deep into “biohacking” are looking for a shortcut to greater health and strength, when, more often than not, the greater benefit would be to just go harder in the gym. Run another mile. Play another game. Slap another plate on that barbell. Intensity is the ultimate biohack." My knees have been sore for a while now from all the cycling that I do, and over the last 6 months I've been backing more and more to favor them and try to distance myself from the pain. I saw a physiotherapist yesterday who took those knees in his hands, performed some manipulations that hurt like hell, and gave me the homework of running up and down an infamous stack of 450 stairs that descend to the beach near my house.