SoftwareMaven

If it were just incomplete science, I'd have no problem with the path we've taken, but it wassn't just a case off incomplete science. It was a case of a handful of scientists deciding on a hypothesis, then fitting data to it. When others rightly complained, a campaign of personal attacks began. Those same scientists got themselves into important positions with organizations like the AHA, giving their arguments a strong appeal to authority, not to mention giving them a huge soap box. Even that probably would have self-corrected, except politicians got involved. In the late 70s, the McGovern commission decided everybody needed a low-fat diet, which eventually entrenched the dogma in all NIH-funded studies as well as government provided food programs like school lunches and food stamps.

The really unfortunate thing is these scientists will likely be remembered for this misguided direction, rather than the huge steps they took in figuring out how to even approach nutritional studies in large populations.

As Feynman said, you have to make sure you aren't fooling yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. I would argue there was (and continues to be) a lot of self-fooling going on in the field of nutrition. Fortunately, it seems to be getting better, perhaps because of the influence of biochemistry and physiology.

We've known for a while the risk factor for heart disease is serum SFA levels, not necessarily SFA consumption. What has never been shown is that consuming SFA raises serum SFA; instead, it's been an understood truism held in place by policy and demagoguery. This study is small, but evidence convicting saturated fats was extremely weak to begin with, and we are now seeing positive evidence exonerating it.

If you are interested in learning more about the history of nutrition, I highly recommend Nina Teicholz book The Big Fat Surprise. As others have mentioned, Phinney and Volek's books are a great overview off the science as of a few years ago. Phinney has been doing research on this for 40 years, quite an accomplishment, given how hard it has been to get funding for research that contradicts the policy line of "carbs are critical to survival and fat must be avoided".

This isn't targetted at the experienced cook. It's targetted at somebody with limited experience cooking who wants a little more probability at success. My internal geek is fascinated by it, and I'd buy it if I had the spare cash lying around, but my internal cook sees its applicability limited (though perfect salmon every time is tempting; I'm not that great with fish).

It's unfortunate that the generational tradition of teaching cooking really fell apart in the last 40-50 years. My generation was the first who had to completely teach themselves.

That would be libel and could be handled in court. Most civilizations left Eye-for-an-eye justice behind long ago.

Many companies have fiscal years that don't match the calendar year. The government goes Oct to Sept. The company I work for goes July to June.

So encrypting content as it travels through Tor is generally considered best practice, but how does one get/manage/pay for a VPN such that the VPN itself doesn't lead directly back to you?

There is no credible evidence that breakfast, as eaten as the morning meal before, say, lunch, has any special significance. There is credible evidence that intermittent fasting, which often includes skipping breakfast, has benefits.

A hypothesis about what was causing heart disease coupled with the marketing might of the sugar and grain industries replaced bacon and eggs with Lucky Charms, and American health has gone downhill since (and the hypothesis was wrong, but the dietetic world still has trouble admitting it because it would have to admit it has actively harmed people's health. Cognitive dissonance at its best).

Don't give up the fatty foods. They are the foundation of a good diet.

People are bad at estimating calories, but our bodies are really good at regulating them, if you feed it properly. The low fat diet advice has done horrendous things to people's metabolisms, leaving people insulin and leptin resistant. The insulin resistance disregulates the flow of fat through adipose membranes, favoring storage; the leptin resistance disregulates the appetite homeostasis that should regulate appetite, hunger, and weight. It can all be tracked back to the disproven diet heart hypothesis, and the fear of fat that ensued (and became enshrined like a religion).

I would watch this very closely if I were the MAFIA, but I wouldn't shut it down. A centralized location for viewing torrented movies could provide a way to monetize torrented media. I would gladly kick in a couple bucks when I watch a movie to help support the art if I got the convenience Popcorn Time purports to have (I've not used it).

I realize that takes a level of strategic thinking the MAFIA aren't known for, but it's worth hoping.

It's unfortunate that medical care has become almost adversarial. Our system is set up to treat acute conditions, but most people are being seen for chronic problems and our understanding of causes and training for treatments of chronic problems is woeful at best. Worse, both patients and doctors want a pill to make everything better.

After dealing with poor health for 30 years; I finally took my health into my own hands. After a series of self-experiments and a lot of journal reading, I now feel like I'm finally reaching health, but every time I see a doctor, it's the same battle ("OMG, your cholesterol is 239; you are a dead man walking!" Yeah, I don't think so).

There is a lot of good information out there, but there is also a lot of complete crap, and doctors have to deal with truly informed people as well as people who only think they are informed. Worse, much of their continuing education is not much more than paid infomercials, making it hard to trust they are getting truly balanced information.

Add to all of this the fact that you have seven minutes with your doctor to work it all out, and it is failing.

There are a few things that can be done, IMO, to help:

1. The AHA, ADA, AMA, AND and other medical organizations need to stop taking so much money from corporate sponsors.

2. Education about and treatment of chronic conditions need to be treated very differently than acute conditions. The treatment for Type 2 diabetes should not default to Metformin.

3. We need more time with doctors to work on treatment plans that can be carried out.

4. Medical school and continuing education needs far more, unbiased education about the value/dangers of nutrition, environmental contaminants, etc, in chronic disease. Alzheimer's prevention starts in a person's 30's[1].

Unfortunately, we see the same kind of care given for stiches as for metabolic syndrome. And it's not working.

1. Based on a current hypothesis that it is the effect of "Type 3" diabetes.

It may be confusing to people today. It will be expected behavior by the next generation. The real issue is what is "local" and what is "remote" is blurring. We see it with things like Google Docs, where they are "my" documents, and I want something like Spotlight to be able to search them, but they aren't local.

What we have today is two problems: First, we are in the middle of the transition. People are needing to learn new behaviors. That's always hard. Second, it isn't seamless yet. While I haven't tried it, I highly doubt my Google Docs would show up in the my Spotlight search. The fragmentation increases confusion.

With the exception of automatically grabbing the token, it's pretty much the same as BYU's SAW[0]. I worked for a startup that was trying to commercialize this technology, but it's nearly impossible to commercialize an authentication tech. It's unfortunate, too, because I think it would make a much better option than most password managers.

0. http://isrl.byu.edu/projects/simple-authentication-for-the-w...

You have a valid point. The challenge for me is these ideas don't go away; instead, they sit in the background incessantly calling to me, making me feel like I'm missing something important. I took a position with a big company that I hoped would give me stability and flexibility to work on my own projects, and it does, but I'm failing to do so.

In reality, my day job may be a contributing factor. I work on a small team spread around the globe. It's an amazing team, but it doesn't fulfill that team connection. I have contemplated another job, but there are some serious benefits that I like about this one, not least of which is working at home.

(And, yes, there is a small dichotomy there, but I don't need in-person contact to have a connected relationship.)

I would say the latter. As I mentioned, I can make software products successful. Perhaps my weakness is making software companies successful.

This is the question that almost caused me not to post because I'm not sure how to answer it. There are people out there who manage to draw people to them, no matter what the circumstance. I am not one of those people, and it is affecting my ability to get things done (part of it is being overwhelmed by needing to make a project interesting enough to capture customer attention; part of it is a sense of loneliness when things inevitably get challenging).

What I can't seem to do is connect with people at the level that brings about trust that something can be accomplished. I attend start-up events and am held back by my own...I don't know...fear of rejection, lack of belief in myself, leftover trauma from being the fat kid in elementary school? It's hard to psychoanalyze myself.

I knew it was a ghost of a chance because I don't even know what I'm really getting at, beyond what does it take for you to feel confident somebody is, well, competent and his/her idea is worth listening to.

Honestly, I feel like I'm missing something in this interaction because I have technical skill (15+ years), I have business skill (5+ years), I have management skill (5+ years), and I have product management skill (3+ years). I know how to get shit built, but I can't figure out how to get people interested in building it, much less on board.

I think there a strong case of prescience there. It is not unreasonable that we will have systems whose time tracks to the beginning of the computing epoch in 1970 long after we forget what 1970 was (assuming we don't kill ourselves first). Just think of all the layers above that today and add a few thousand years.

People blame gall stones on a fatty diet, but I think that is mistaken causality. It is certainly true that gall stone attacks often accompany fatty foods, but that's to be expected: the gall bladder's purpose is to pump out bile to help digest fatty acids.

My anecdotal surveys of people with gall problems has led me to believe it is often a low fat diet that causes the stones, perhaps because the gall bladder is not being used enough to fully "clean" itself out between meals. This may be made worse by a lack of vitamin K2 causing poor calcium handling within the body (which, itself, is a fat soluble vitamin). These conditions cause impurities to build into gall stones and, when a fatty meal is eaten, the gall bladder tries to secrete bile and pushes the stone(s) into a biliary duct.

Many people have been told they cannot eat fatty foods after their gall bladder is removed. For most, this isn't true, but it does take effort to rebuild one's ability to eat fat (you need to slowly work up to it), and some people are required to supplement with bear bile. Given a reduction in fat almost necessarily implies an increase in carbohydrates, and an increase in carbohydrate is strong associated with increased insulin resistance and the negative health outcomes associated with that, it's a worthwhile effort.

I have misgivings about any supposedly "useless" organs. We know a lot about how the body works, but we certainly don't know everything. That a person can live without an organ does not mean they are living an optimal life without it.

Twitter has said they don't get many of these requests compared to e.g. Google (not surprising, since most Twitter content is public). The difference between "0" and "0-999" in a six month period is significant. Even "2" or "3" seems very low compared to what the mind assumes "0-999" means (at least 500 and perhaps closer to 1000).

Democratizing policy making is not a guaranteed panacea. Things like the civil rights movement don't happen as a result of democratic policy; they happen when the majority are forced to live a better way.

The founders recognized pure democracy was not an ideal government, regardless of technological issues with regard to implementing it. A republic allows decisions to be made that the majority will never agree to.

There are people today who believe many health problems are the result of too many electrons in the body (so go walk around barefoot outside for a while to ground them out). This could have renewed interest today!

Most of the touch-screen demos I've seen seem to have all discovered inertial scrolling. I think it's almost inevitable that, once you have a tactile interface, the expectations of real-world behaviors when interacting come out. Most of the pre-iphone interfaces all focused on being menu-driven with buttons or scrolling with mice, so that natural discovery couldn't occur.

I can't think of any reason why its "best" for Apple to keep LEO happy. LEO don't pay them anything and actively increase the difficulty they face running their business as well as reduce the trust the people who do pay them (ie their customers) have for their products, actively hurting their business.

The big fear is that pissing off LEO will result in harmful regulation, and, while that is certainly possible, history has shown the technology moves forward regardless. Consider the US trying to prevent the spread of cryptography. They lost that battle[1], and any government who picks a new battle will eventually lose it, too.

1. The only injuries in that battle were US companies trying to sell software overseas because they were forced to include sub-par crypto.

This is the interesting answer there, IMO. An interesting take on a real multi-prop vehicle: https://www.advancedtacticsinc.com

The video linked at the bottom is worth a watch.

If you have the ability to lawyer it enough, I think you'd have a few layers of court required to sort out whether this is allowed (assuming they don't have proof you have something on the phone). You are basically forcing self-incrimination, a violation of the Fifth Amendment.

I totally agree that, if you are really concerned about this, fingerprint is a bad idea, but the legal ramifications are interesting.

Not quite relatedly, does anybody know if there is a heat sensor? Or can I just cut somebody's finger off to use it? (We are obviously well outside of judicial channels here! :)

It's easy to compare a vegetarian diet against the standard Anerican diet (SAD) and shout how great vegetarianism is. that doesn't imply vegetarianism is optimally healthy, just that the SAD is a horrible diet.

If people are able to thrive on a vegetarian diet, I have nothing but respect for that. My reading of the science and concerns over getting proper proteins without the negative consequences of phytochemicals evolved to poison me has me preferring to nourish my body well with real foods.

I have one life; I'm not going to gamble away my long-term health.

I want to second my agreement, but expand it to all aspects of the diet. I think having gardens and chickens (mostly for eggs, but in the pot when no longer producing) would do more for the health and mental well-being of our society than just about anything else we could do. Many kids don't know what kind of fruit/veggie something is without looking at the label. My high school daughter has a friend who just had her first banana; she's never eaten spinach.

Some people can. Some people find that the phytochemicals associated with those plant proteins, when consumed in quantities, cause significant gut and hormonal problems (phytoestrogens impacting androgen production, for example). And that says nothing about the current questions about whether soy increases breast cancer risk.

Soy is obviously not the only plant protein. My current favorite is mushroom-based, but it is new, and industrial food doesn't have a good track record.

If I came off sounding like I don't appreciate the profound influence of our gut biota, I apologize. Gut science is a fascinating new field, and the only thing we really know is we really don't know much. :) So I totally agree with you; in fact, I'd say, when contemplating whole diet, you need to give as much consideration to your gut as you do yourself.

There are two kinds of studies I hate in the world of nutrition; this is one of them. This is the glorified ad study, where we look at a specific food item and a specific "good" trait and line them up. Once aligned, we let the marketers go to town because this food magically "solves" the problem (but we will still qualify with language like "may help" to prevent law suits).

Add an apple to your current obesigenic diet and you will still have an obesigenic diet. Replace some corn chips, bread or cake in your obesigenic diet with an apple, and you are a step closer to it not being obesigenic (but the same applies to kale, steak, and strawberries). Include apples as part of your whole foods, higher fat, lower sugar diet (aka healthy), and you will still have a whole foods, higher fat, lower sugar diet.

Nothing in the diet exists in isolation. You have to consider the whole diet.