The Wandering Mind

Musings on Writing with AI and on Fasting

Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!

Updates

For those keeping score, it’s been several weeks since my last newsletter. That’s partially because it's travel season again and partially because some of my routines have changed for Lent (more on that later). I just returned Saturday from a second of three trips this month (Virginia, New England, Michigan, and Kansas City) with an additional trip to Florida in late April. Although travel can be fun, it was great to have about six weeks of not traveling back in late January through early March.

I’ve also spent intentional time getting the family out skiing this winter. The kids are all skiing well. I’m excited to report that all five can now ski down from the top of the mountain on their own. That was one of our goals this season.

Last week I began experimenting with recording ideas for articles and revising the transcripts. The jury is still out but I had Gemini polish and correct one of my transcripts with impressive results. The punctuation and grammar mistakes were almost entirely eliminated and it reduced the word count from 1450 to 750. It also suggested a few articles and webpages that relate to some of the points I made.

I’ve drafted a side by side of the transcript and the AI revision but haven’t had a chance to analyze them in more detail yet – perhaps I’ll comment on it in next week’s newsletter. If I can create decent first drafts of my writing projects by talking and recording myself, then running the transcript through Gemini, my world may change dramatically. We’ll see how Gemini does with longer and more complex material.

Writing

Writing continues apace. I have had a couple publications since my last newsletter:

• Should Conservatives Play ESG Politics?; Real Clear Markets

• Trump Needs a Clearer Tariff Strategy; Washington Examiner

• The Committee to Destroy the World (Economy); The Daily Economy

• Tariffs, a Solution in Search of a Problem; American Spectator

I'm currently working on an explainer for AIER about currency and trade. Besides giving a speech at Benedictine College last week, I gave a shorter talk on intellectual community at the Ciceronian Society. The intellectual community point is particularly relevant as we have two intellectual retreats lined up this year – hopefully with two more waiting in the wings.

Reflection

The first trip involved attending the Ciceronian Society’s annual meeting. It was both intellectually stimulating and encouraging. The Ciceronian Society is a vibrant and growing group with a broad interdisciplinary element. I'm looking forward to going again next year and developing friendships with these folks who are earnest about the good life.

The Ciceronian Society is an example of an intellectual community formed around ideas and friendships. In fact, one of my best friends was able to come for the first time. We carpooled, roomed together, and went on a couple runs. What a blessing it was to catch up and talk about our work, families, and churches.

The Ciceronian Society has a promising trajectory in terms of growth and vibrancy. They've expanded a lot over the last few years. The interdisciplinary element is really refreshing. There were people talking about literature and history and politics. There was also a cadre of us economists bringing the dismal science to bear on some of these other more, shall we say, humane topics. I look forward to going again next year and developing deeper friendships with these folks who are earnest about the good life and the focus of Ciceronian: tradition, place, and things divine.

My most recent trip involved giving a keynote talk on the goodness of business and vocation at Benedictine College’s annual business summit. I had never been to Benedictine in Atchison, KS. The school was impressive and growing. The town was also interesting with diverse architecture, huge bluffs above the Missouri River, cobble stone (actually brick) streets here and there, and long trains regularly passing through town.

Bookshelf

I recently finished a book by my friend Jay Richards called "Eat, Fast, Feast." The book talks about health, diet, fasting, and spiritual disciplines. It combines insights from the Atkins diet with Christian practices. Dr. Richards echoes the point made by Atkins about the importance of have a low carbohydrate diet.

Instead of relying on glucose, or blood sugar, for energy, we should rely more often on ketosis for energy. When we use glucose, our bodies have to produce large amounts of insulin to regulate our blood sugar levels. Ketosis, however, converts fat into energy and does not put such a strain on the pancreas to produce insulin constantly.

Fasting, then, offers several health benefits. First, it reduces how much our body has to process food, especially sugar and carbohydrates, because we simply eat less frequently. Shortening the time window in which we eat (intermittent fasting) has a variety of other health benefits too in terms of inflammation, gut health, etc. Avoiding high carbohydrate diets (particularly heavily processed flour and sugar) in favor of high fat diets is the way to go.

Jay also talks about how Christian practices and habits of fasting were a big part of the church calendar, and really every religion around the world, until the about 200 years ago when the practice really died out for a variety of reasons.

The biggest paradigm shift from the book is about having a fasting lifestyle. Many Christians (myself included) tend to think of fasting as something special undertaken for unique spiritual purposes. In some ways this is understandable because Scripture is full of special fasts. But Jay’s point is that historically Christians have had season of fasting (Lent and Advent) and normal habits of fasting.

During “regular” time, the fasting lifestyle might be simple: eight-hour windows of eating each day (sixteen hours not eating) most days, with one day of a smaller eating window (four hours or one hour) or a full fast. My approach to this fasting season has been to alternate eight-hour window days with four-hour window days – and occasionally only eating a single meal in a day. As we head into Easter, I plan to fast for a couple days from the Seder meal until the Easter meal.

I found the book really helpful because it provides an overview of the health benefits how fasting is actually really good for our bodies if we're not addicted to sugar and how it should actually be a part of our weekly um our weekly diet or our weekly meal schedule and it also fits nicely with the seasons in the Christian calendar especially the season before Easter and the season before Christmas.

It's not all gloom, though. There are also feast days that are all the more wonderful because they are special and contrast with our fasting. It also contrasts normal eating with the feast days mini feasts days on Sunday or the feast days of Easter and Christmas.

What I found hardest to grapple with is not hunger (which ebbs and flows and is really not bad when your body has gotten used to fasting) but that this lifestyle simple means that I consume less food – and I really like consuming food!

Game Corner

The game of the week is called Rail Baron. It's like Ticket to Ride on steroids. You have a similar element in terms of buying different train lines, but these are actually historical railroads. You have a token that you move around, completing routes, and you have to pay a certain amount of money every day to travel on unowned railroads or your own rail lines. You have to pay a much higher price when you travel on other people's railroad lines.

When you complete a route, you get paid for it. The longer the route, the more you get paid. The game involves choosing where to move your token. You roll dice to determine how many spaces you can move. As you buy different railroads, you have to think about how to connect every part of the country with every other as efficiently as possible.

Teddy really likes this game. We've only played it a few times because it takes two to four hours to complete. But it's a fun game to pull out. It's also an old older game. Some friends gave us their copy. I'm not sure how easy it is to pick up off of a store shelf these days. It’s definitely a more involved and interesting version of Ticket to Ride.

Thanks for reading the Mueller Report!