Cures For Emotionally Unintelligent Men

In Asian culture, an emotional man is considered weak or feminine.  Anger may be acceptable if he is defending his pride and/or asserting his authority or power but he should not be overly enthusiastic, sad, or even loving.  To some degree, this notion of masculinity permeates almost all cultures, including America's.  This is problematic but there are ways we can fix this.  If you are a man (especially if you are introverted and conservative), you will likely benefit from the following recommendations.

First, take good acting and improv classes.  This is probably the fastest way to force yourself to improve your emotional intelligence by working with others as a team.  As a stage performer, you really have to be able to be in tune with the emotions of yourself, your scene partners, and your audience.  Good beginning courses will be hard and you may have to work on improving your listening and emotional connecting skills for years to become very good.  One amazing exercise is staring at your partner's eyes for several minutes straight and emotionally syncing and reacting.  I have seen people cry from doing this and my jaw dropped the first time I saw it.

Second, get to know strangers well.  Go out and meet new people and get to know them on a personal level fairly quickly.  This may take some of you some time to get good at.  Try to find out an interesting personal fact about the new person and think about what type of person she is, why that fact is important to her, and how she feels about it.

Third, volunteer or attend events about causes you believe in.  This will help you get in touch with your passions and values while meeting like-minded individuals.  Bonding over shared beliefs can lead to strong emotional connections that can lead to friendships.

Fourth, meet emotionally intelligent geniuses.  Every once in a while, I meet individuals who are exceptionally emotionally intelligent.  They probably were born with a great deal of natural talent but the really good ones will always try to improve their skills.  Learn from them since they have mastered something you are trying to improve at.  If they are really good, they can help articulate your own emotions in a social interaction better than you can; it is amazing.

Finally, openly care for someone as best as you can.  One of the most difficult things I have ever done was trying to make a romantic relationship work with someone very different from myself.  The relationship ended but I learned so much about the importance of listening, forgiveness, selflessness, giving, caring, understanding, empathy, vulnerability, acceptance and overall emotional awareness and control.  This can be very painful but will change your life for the better as long as you have a positive attitude.

10 Fast Workouts For Busy People

There are times when life gets busy and skipping workouts can become more frequent.  Never fear.  Here are some routines I use when I am very short on time and still want to give my body a full workout.

1. Olympic weightlifting- Go to the gym and focus on improving your snatch on one day and then your clean & jerk on another.  Your workout can definitely be less than 30 minutes.

2. Farmer's walk- Hold a heavy weight in each hand (or use an apparatus like a trap bar) and walk.  This will work your entire body and is one of the best total body movements for athleticism and a lean physique.  A good session can be less than 15 minutes.

3. Twenty-rep squats- This is an even shorter workout but it is psychologically very demanding.  Do some warmup sets on the back squat and put on a weight that would normally challenge you if did ten reps without pausing in between reps.  Now, try to do twenty reps with that weight by breathing when you stand in between each rep.  Take as long as you need but keep the weight on your back and really push yourself.  This should take less than 20 minutes even with a warmup.

4. Rest-pause- This is a technique where you perform as many repetitions on an exercise with a challenging weight until your form breaks down (aka technical failure), rest for 12-15 deep breaths, perform additional reps until technical failure with the same weight, rest for 12-15 deep breaths, and do a third set until technical failure.  Do this with a pressing exercise (e.g. dips) followed by a pulling exercise (e.g. chinups).  This can take less than 10 minutes for a good upper body workout.

5. High Intensity Training- I used this for at least a year and this is the method of choice for some bodybuilders like Dorian Yates, Sergio Oliva, and Mike Mentzer.  Select two body parts and do two exercises for each for the day and do only one working set per exercise.  This set will be done very slowly during both the concentric and eccentric portions with a slight pause in the fully contracted portion of the exercise.  Let the eccentric and concentric portions take four seconds each.  The set is done when you cannot lift the weight anymore (aka muscular failure).  If done correctly, the single working set of the exercise is very difficult since you have to put as much effort as you can into that one set.  A workout can be less than 15 minutes.

6. Bodyweight Tabata- Do speed squats for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, do burpees for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, do mountain climbers for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, do speed skips for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds, and repeat the cycle once more.  Make sure to make each 20 second interval fast and intense.  This is not a great muscle-building routine but it will keep you somewhat in shape in such a small amount of time.  This will take 8 minutes total.

7. Prowler push/Sled drag- I have not done these since my football days and it can be hard to find a facility that provides either of these but they provide some of the best workouts you can imagine.  You can be pretty wiped out after 10 minutes.

8. Hill sprints- Find a hill.  Then, sprint up and walk down it.  Keep doing this until your lungs and legs feel like they are on fire but not until you vomit.  This can also be less than 12 minutes.

9. Kettlebell swings- Take a fairly heavy kettlebell and do swings, snatches, cleans, and/or presses with it for 10 minutes.

10. Turkish get up- Grab a dumbbell, kettlebell, or even a barbell.  Lie down with the weight in the air held by one hand.  Now get up onto your feet with the weight still held high above you the whole time and then go back to lying down afterwards to repeat with the other hand.  Do this for 10 minutes with a difficult weight.

There are so many other things you can do that I have not tried as extensively: Escalated Density Training (EDT), HIIT, circuits, barbell complexes, tire flips, keg toss.  Most people do not need to spend hours every day to be in good shape.  Strong people make things work, even when time is limited.

Are You Racist If You Only Date Within Your Ethnic Group?

The overwhelming majority of Korean parents strongly prefer their children to marry other Koreans.  This percentage will certainly drop if the parents were born in America or if they themselves married non-Koreans but these individuals are statistically rare among Koreans born before 1970.  The familial pressure can be intense so most of the children end up dating exclusively within their ethnic group.  For those who really immerse themselves within the Korean community, dating a non-Korean will often lead to social exile for that would be a form of betrayal to the Korean people.  If you really want to add some spice, get gay-married to a black person.

This social phenomenon is present not only among other Asians, but also blacks, whites, Hispanics, Arabs, and others.  Is this a form of racism?  Of course the answer is, it depends.

As much as I care about older Koreans (especially my family), there is a certain amount of racism in their attitudes about dating and marriage.  Many believe the purity of Korean heritage is special and that it would be contaminated by having children with non-Koreans.  They may not think that Koreans are better than other ethnic groups, but certainly better for their children to reproduce with.  That is at least a bit racist.

The good news is that this mentality has changed significantly in America and is continuing to change.  Korean parents are becoming much more accepting of exogamy and their primary concerns are about whether the family will be happy with having a non-Korean and still trying to maintain their family traditions.  I am not entirely sure how this change occurred but I would credit it mostly to being in a more ethnically diverse nation.  Perhaps the racism they experienced as immigrant minorities in America made them realize that treating and judging people purely based on what they look like is unjust so they reflected on how they have been prejudiced about non-Koreans.  Maybe they befriended non-Koreans and realized some of them are good people too.

However, it is a bit more difficult to consider the Korean children as having racist sentiments for only dating Koreans.  Yes, some may definitely have the same views their parents do about interracial dating but more often than not, they feel they have an obligation to their parents to not date people of other ethnicities.  They will almost certainly feel attraction to people who are not Korean but will think that it would be burdensome and to some degree disrespectful to put that pressure on their families.

Fortunately, this is changing as well.  Statistically, Asian-Americans out-marry at higher rates than any other racial demographic in America.  This is likely due to the fact that Asians are less than 6% of the US population.  We (not just Asians) are genetically programmed to effectively make more copies of our genes and that requires a certain amount of environmental adaptability.  The parents may be upset at first but what are they going to do?  Nag?  They will do that anyways.  Your kids will be their grandkids so that's a quarter of their genes floating around in each of these new bodies.

We have made great progress in mitigating racism in America.  The American government no longer kills Native Americans, sanctions slavery and segregation of African-Americans, and forces Japanese-Americans into internment camps.  We now have black, Hispanic, and Asian American government officials and a biracial President.  Our iconic celebrities include multiracial Americans like Whitney Houston, Bruce Lee, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Depp, Oprah Winfrey, Muhammad Ali, and Beyonce Knowles.  Even if you are a multi-billionaire, you will be called out and condemned for racist statements (e.g. Donald Sterling).  Eliminating negative prejudices about interracial dating will help us form a more tolerant, happy, and peaceful United States.

Focus On Healthy, Not Skinny Or Ripped

The average American male is 5' 9.5" and 200 pounds.  The average South Korean male is 5' 8.5" and 150 pounds.  I know that taller people are heavier but adding one inch should not add 50 pounds.  Yes, there are certainly genetic factors.  Most slim individuals are that way with little effort.  However, one cannot deny that the average American's diet is horrible, largely because of the mass production of readily-accessible, cheap, low-quality, addictive food items (e.g. candy, doughnuts, ice cream, French fries, fried chicken, beer).  There are people who aren't fat despite eating poorly but even though they look normal, they are still putting unnecessary strain on their bodies.

Here's a question.  Does an individual's appearance indicate healthiness or unhealthiness?  To a certain extent, of course!  If you are under 6' and weigh over 300 pounds, you are most likely obese unless you are a professional bodybuilder.  However, what about this guy to the right?  That is former Mr. Olympia, Frank Zane.  He was considered to be a very small bodybuilder (185 pounds) but extremely muscular by normal standards.  A lot of men consider his body to be the ideal male body.  On the other hand, any bodybuilder will tell you that bodybuilding is not particularly healthy.  They ingest lots of supplements and drugs, force feed themselves to gain unnatural amounts of muscle mass, abuse their bodies with intense weight training, and dehydrate/starve themselves (particularly of carbohydrates) when preparing for a photoshoot or a contest.

Our culture has a very bizarre way of looking at beauty.  We look at models and consider them to be the pinnacles of human physique when the truth is that they are genetic outliers who often put in lots of effort to achieve their desired figures for their profession.  In fact, we are so looks-obsessed that adopting a healthier lifestyle is sometimes just a byproduct of our goal to look more physically attractive when it should be the other way around.

An interesting phenomenon is how deluded we are in our physique goals to try to look sexy.  For most men, a thinner woman is not necessarily a sexier woman.  This is only true if she is really overweight.  The same thing is true for men.  After a certain point, any additional fat loss will not significantly add to your attractiveness and will actually reduce your attractiveness if taken too far.  Most men overemphasize muscularity and think that adding an extra half-inch to their biceps or refining their six-pack abs will make them so much more irresistible to women when very few women actually care for the bodybuilder look.  Most of us would prefer lean and fit and there can be a decent leeway for a spectrum of what that would constitute (e.g. David Beckham, Rihanna, Joseph-Gordon Levitt, Beyonce Knowles, Hugh Jackman, Maria Sharapova, Will Smith, Zhang Ziyi, Daniel Dae Kim, Jennifer Lopez, Keanu Reeves, Jessica Biel, you get the picture).

Also, we need to focus on fat loss, not necessarily weight loss, even if we only care about how we look.  We can actually look better and be healthier by gaining weight if we increase our muscle to fat ratio.  That can be done through resistance training using bodyweight, dumbbells, barbells, trapbars, weight vests, weight machines, bands, logs, sandbags, and more.  Don't be afraid to gain weight since fat loss should be the goal, not weight loss.

I am not a huge proponent of calorie counting.  I think the easiest way to lose fat is by lifting weights to build more muscle.  That way, your metabolism will increase so that you will burn more fat even when you are resting.  This can be supplemented with any other type of exercise: aerobics, Pilates, yoga, Zumba, martial arts, sports, swimming, running, rowing, biking, walking, dancing.  What is also important but more difficult to implement is to adjust what you put into your body.  This means getting rid of refined sugars, deep fried foods, and artificial flavoring and colorings that should not be considered real food and increasing your intake of fruits and vegetables in our diets.  Obviously, you should also reduce your intake of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, caffeine, and other drugs for a healthier body but you probably already knew that.

Main takeaway points:

1. An attractive body is not necessarily a healthy body.

2. A healthy body is almost always an attractive body.

3. If you are overweight, the goal is fat loss which is not always weight loss.

4. Becoming more physically active is easier than changing your diet so start exercising more instead of calorie counting.

5. Diet is important but don't over think it.  If you really have no idea what is a good diet, look into the Paleo Diet and the Zone Diet.  I wouldn't recommend the Atkins Diet.  The Slow-Carb Diet is okay and it worked for me but it depends on your goals.  I lost too much weight doing Slow-Carb and I ended up losing more muscle than I would have liked.

Eight Barbell Exercises For Athleticism

I will list barbell exercises that, in my opinion, require the most athleticism with either high reps or weights.  Strength is an important factor in determining an athletic display but so are power, speed, and mobility.  As you may guess, the barbell wrist curl will not be mentioned here.

Here are the top three:

1. Snatch- Its variations such as the power snatch and hang snatch are also great arsenals for developing athletic performance, but the full snatch combines an explosive deficit deadlift, a jump shrug, a high pull, and an overhead squat.  Even those individual movements are quite taxing on the body but to put them all together into one graceful motion requires extraordinary neuromuscular development.  You must be strong, powerful, agile, flexible, coordinated, and focused.

2. Clean- Similar to the snatch, the clean is a deadlift, a jump shrug, a high pull, and a front squat combined into one motion.  In Olympic lifting circles, the clean is often taught first because it is easier to grasp.

3. Jerk- Few people do much overhead pressing in the gym, even the men who only work their upper bodies.  For starters, you cannot lift as much as your one-rep max on the bench press.  Also, you need to stabilize your entire core to maintain your posture and have enough shoulder mobility to execute this movement in a full range of motion.  Combine this with an explosive leg drive to create the most efficient way of lifting heavy weight overhead.

After these ballistic movements, there is a huge drop off in athletic requirement as far as power generation goes.  I like to do the Olympic lifts and their variations every now and then to feel more nimble.  They are also good assessments for your physical fitness.  Here are seven more barbell exercises that require great overall kinesthetic ability:

4. Walking Lunges- Load a barbell on your back and do some walking lunges over a distance.

5. Rollout- This is great for strengthening your abdomen.  Alternatively, you can use ab wheel (which is what I personally use).

6. Barbell Row- Do this the way Arnold did.

7. Bench Press- Do this like a powerlifter.

8. Olympic Squat- Place the barbell high on your back and squat down until your buttocks are inches away from the ground.  Wearing Olympic weightlifting shoes to reach that depth will be helpful.

There is a good chance that even the gym-goers amongst you do not do most of these exercises.  This is probably because a majority people who go to the gym to lift weights do so with the purpose of bodybuilding or strength training.  These lifts can be very challenging so that factor may deter some people from ever attempting these.  However, you will feel a night and day difference in your overall fitness if you incorporate some of these movements into your training on a regular basis.

How To Learn Data Mining

Data mining is the science and art of extracting patterns and relationships between variables in datasets.  This is an exciting field that blends techniques from statistics and computer science and is increasingly more important as we enter the world of Big Data.  Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and many other tech companies use data mining to learn more about your computer-using habits to increase their profits.  Our government has (and probably still does) use data mining to combat terrorism (even though this may violate the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution).  For scientifically inclined individuals, I think this is one of the best fields to go into.  If you want to become very employable, learn how to mine data.

Learning to data mine is not always an easy process.  Make sure you have a sound foundation in linear algebra, multivariate calculus, probability, and statistics.  Lots of more basic data mining techniques are quite old such as linear/non-linear regression and linear/quadratic discriminant analysis.  After that, knowing at least one computer programming language is beneficial.  MATLAB, R, and STATA are popular among scientists.  Computers are used because the datasets are often very large, even if the statistical algorithm is fairly straightforward.  However, there are some techniques that are purely from computer science such as support vector machines, requiring no knowledge of statistics or probability.

I used this textbook for a data mining course at Columbia University (which was mostly geared towards statistics graduate students): http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/

Here is a free, more advanced textbook you can use that is fairly popular: http://statweb.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/

I would follow the order presented in the books.  They focus on supervised learning where you know what sort of relationship you are looking for between the variables.  For example, you look through sample data containing information about 10,000 Americans (e.g. sex, age, height, weight, IQ, religion, ethnicity, region, income) and you want to know if there's a relationship between weight and income.  Unsupervised learning is where you do not know what sort of relationship you are looking for because the dataset is not labeled.  An example would be seeing a bunch of data points on a graph but noticing that they are spread in certain clusters or in a certain shape.

This is definitely a subject that is more fun to do than to write or read about.  The point of this article was simply to give more exposure to an important topic.  If you have an interest in anything science-related, look into data mining and data science more generally.  Taking a course in it is probably one of the quickest ways to land a decently paying job.  I even know an actuary and a physicist who left their jobs to work as data scientists.  Those are just some things to consider.