EBOOKS BY CHARLES G. SPENDER

To download an ebook, click on the title.

Make Your PC Stable and Fast: What Microsoft Forgot to Tell You

Description: The amount of technical support information for Microsoft Windows is overwhelming. For most PC users, it is difficult to separate good information from bad and to devise any concrete troubleshooting plan that they can use regularly. This booklet provides a summary of key points that can serve as a maintenance and troubleshooting plan for your PC. The instructions will also help you increase the speed of your computer. The ebook is organized as several small chapters (who needs another massive book about Windows?); each chapter provides key information on a topic, and a link or links to more detailed information that has been tested by this author and is available for free on the Internet.

How to Become Smarter

Description: A shorter, less technical version of this book, "Become Smarter," is available (see below). The book describes methods for improvement of mental abilities. Some of the things it can help you to achieve include the following:

• Depending on circumstances, use different lifestyles that improve one or another mental function.
• Experience euphoria without drugs and come up with new ideas, when needed.
• Slow down and prevent yourself from making rash, impulsive decisions, when necessary.
• Sharpen your wit, become more talkative, and entertain people.
• When necessary, lower your mood and increase emotional tension, which can reduce procrastination.
• Increase your score on intelligence or general aptitude tests.
• Concentrate on reading and writing for many hours daily.
• Increase your grade point average if you are a student or improve your job productivity if you are a knowledge worker.

The proposed methods are brief cooling or heating of the body (water therapy) and three "smart diets," each suitable for a different type of task. The text also describes a "depressant diet," which is not a smart diet but can improve self-control and sleep. Readers don't need to use the strict diets on a permanent basis and the book recommends the conventional food pyramid most of the time. The text also discusses several useful social skills and studying/writing techniques as well as the role of luck in personal achievement.

Most authors in this field will tell you that you should read more books, solve mental puzzles, buy their nutritional supplements, sleep well, and exercise in order to get smarter. In contrast, this book is proposing moderately cold hydrotherapy and a smart diet (which involves avoiding all dietary supplements). To give another example, most books on anger management say that you should try to change your thinking in order to overcome anger, while this book suggests hot hydrotherapy and the exclusion of certain foods from your diet. The main focus of discussion in this text is on changing the biological workings of the brain, not on pop psychology. In particular, the book describes various combinations of diets and hydrotherapy that have the following effects: sedative/sleep-promoting, stimulant/wakefulness-promoting, attention-enhancing, antianxiety, antidepressant, mood-stabilizing (mood-lowering), neuroleptic, and euphoriant. In addition, the book presents existing scientific evidence of pain-reducing, fever-reducing, antifatigue, immunostimulatory, antinausea, antihypertensive and anti-inflammatory effects of hydrotherapy. The text also discusses the possible side effects of the diets and hydrotherapy.

Despite its technical content, the book is written in an accessible language and has an informative summary for each chapter and a list of key points at the end of each section. Most of the claims in the bulleted list above are supported with a theory and the author's personal experience (a healthy subject). About a half of these claims is directly supported by previously published scientific studies, including the claim about intelligence tests.

BONUS: A sustainable weight loss regimen. I developed this method after many years of experimentation. First, I would like to say that you don't have to lose weight to improve your health. The idea that extra body weight causes health problems is deeply flawed and not supported by scientific evidence. Correlation does not mean causation. Both extra weight and health problems are caused by genetic factors and a bad lifestyle. The only reason why you may want to lose weight is to become more physically attractive. Unfortunately, most weight loss diets adversely affect capacity for work and/or mental health. To give some examples, a vegetarian low-fat diet causes attention deficit and lowers capacity for work; a low-carb diet lowers capacity for work and promotes procrastination; a grain-free diet such as the Paleo diet increases irritability, impulsivity, and problems with anger; a balanced low-calorie diet lowers capacity for work and promotes procrastination. Another problem with weight loss diets is that compliance normally lasts less than a year. In contrast, the proposed method involves a balanced diet, a program of physical exercise that does not require will power or time, and brief weekly fasting without water. There will be some within-week fluctuations of weight but you can expect to lose approximately a pound (0.5 kg) per week. This regimen is sustainable because the diet is well-balanced and diverse, one day of fasting a week can be maintained for decades, and the proposed exercise program is easy and not time-consuming. Moreover, this regimen has no adverse effects on mental health and job productivity.

Become Smarter

Description: This text describes techniques for improving mental abilities. Some of the things it can help you to achieve include the following:

• Depending on circumstances, use different lifestyles that improve one or another mental function.
• Experience euphoria without drugs and come up with new ideas, when needed.
• Slow down and prevent yourself from making rash, impulsive decisions, when necessary.
• Sharpen your wit, become more talkative, and entertain people.
• When necessary, lower your mood and increase emotional tension, which can reduce procrastination.
• Concentrate on reading and writing for many hours daily.
• Increase your grade point average if you are a student or improve your job productivity if you are a knowledge worker.

The proposed methods are brief cooling or heating of the body (water therapy) and three different "smart diets," each suitable for a different type of task. Despite its technical content, the book is written in an accessible language and has an informative summary for each section. The book supports most of the claims in the bulleted list above with a theory and the author's personal experience (a healthy subject). Previously published scientific studies directly support about a half of these claims.

How to Become Wealthy: Low Risk Strategies to Start a Business and Build Wealth

Description: Because of inflation and the constantly growing average standard of living, wealth cannot be reliably and permanently defined in dollar terms or in terms of the number of cars, houses, size of houses, the number of refrigerators, and other assets. There are only two enduring characteristics of being wealthy: {1} relativity, that is, owning hundreds of times more stuff or money than average people do, regardless of what this average value is, and {2} exclusivity, i.e., being a part of a tiny fraction of the population (for example, the top 0.02%).

This text explains why wealth requires luck and why the only way to get rich is to get lucky. Because luck is beyond anyone's control, 99.98% of people won't become wealthy no matter how hard they try. For example, a moderate and limited correlation exists between IQ and income, but there is no correlation between IQ and net worth. These data suggest that wealth is either a result of pure luck or has to do with mental abilities unrelated to IQ (for instance, an entrepreneurial talent). The latter explanation also involves luck because a person can neither learn nor earn a talent. The correlation between hard work and income is weak and limited. Higher net worth correlates with fewer hours worked per year.

For this reason, it's a bad idea to prepay for advice on how to get rich because this kind of advice is always useless. If you knew how to make a million dollars easily and quickly, would you let somebody else have this pile of money in exchange for 20 bucks? Careful analysis shows that for someone who has an excellent business idea, it is much more profitable to hire you as an employee than to sell you the info on how to start the biz. Therefore, it's unwise to pay in advance for the information on how to start a successful business. The text also discusses several other disadvantageous ways to invest your money. In addition, this ebook discusses some low-risk approaches to starting a business and to building wealth, but this information does not guarantee anything thanks to Lady Luck.

Manage Headaches

Description: This text describes several self-help approaches to headache, such as water therapy methods and elimination diets.

Manage Your Hypertension

Description: This booklet describes several self-help treatments of high blood pressure, such as water therapy methods.

Fight Cancer

Description: This ebook describes several scientifically proven lifestyle-based treatments of cancer (physical exercise, hyperthermia, turmeric, vitamin D, broccoli, soy, black seed, ginseng, green tea, and pomegranate) and three experimental treatments. The first experimental treatment serves to enhance an antitumor immune response and to improve quality of life: adapted cold shower. The improvement includes better mood and a reduction of fatigue, nausea, and pain.

Moderate repeated cooling is free and safe, so it would be reasonable to try it, especially if all other options are exhausted. The proposed method can have rare side effects and may not be appropriate for patients with some leukemias and lymphomas.

The current state of science and technology allows us to safely consume raw meat, i.e., to kill virtually all bacteria and parasites while keeping the meat raw or almost raw. One of the chapters describes several benefits of safe raw meat and a raw diet for cancer patients. The third experimental treatment is a lifestyle that includes many types of hormesis.