Fractal Contrarianism

The problem with contrarians is that if they attract enough agreement then whatever internal pressure demands a contrarian stance will push them to split with whatever consensus they've actually helped build in the first place. This leads to some good unintentional comedy in the blogosphere if you don't take things too seriously (e.g. the "paleo" ..uh.. "community").

And speaking of taking things too seriously -- I'm not sure if this is related to contrarian neurosis, but exercise and weight training people seem to get really emotional over nearly any aspect of their fitness regimes. Maybe there was a secret agreement years ago to go beyond self-parody as some sort of grand social performance art experiment or merely as a defense tactic, but they sure are easy to rile up. 

My current favorite debate: whether deadlifts or squats are more authentically stone-age.  Note the  comments! "Wouldn't picking up the carcass require a posterior chain-centric movement?" Love it! Lucky for me, I've got an unfrozen caveman personal trainer, "Grok", who lives in my loft. I've asked him whether I should work on my lame goblet squats or my wobbly single-leg kettlebell deadlifts today, but the lazy fucker has parked himself in front of the flatscreen with a big bowl of popcorn and refuses to discuss the matter.