teslabox

> Worse, there is a strong bias towards misinformation--look at the health supplement market, which is basically a market the seedy snake oil sellers set up to get around FDA regulation.

The pure food and drug act was passed to deal with the snake oil industry, which was in the process of reinventing and legitimizing itself into the pharmaceutical industry. The supplement industry was later exempted from the requirements for patent medicine producers because there is no way to monopolize the profits of many treatments based on supplements. Some companies have patented certain aspects of their supplement's production or delivery mechanisms, but (I believe) the natural biological molecule itself can't be patented.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Food_and_Drug_Act (1908)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Food%2C_Drug%2C_and_Co... (1938)

I'm saying that under the Federal Reserve system, the total indebtedness of the U.S. economy must always increase. If the government starts to pay off its debt, the private sector must increase its debt levels. If the economy doesn't keep borrowing money, the money supply would rapidly collapse, leading to a deflationary spiral.

The only money that never has to be paid back are coins.

Do you have an alternate understanding of our monetary system?

This is an inevitable consequence of basing the money supply on debt. The Federal Reserve banks are responsible for making money and loaning it out into circulation. There is never enough money to pay back the interest on the loans, so the federal reserve loans out a little bit more every year.

A solution to this quandary was figured out in 2011. Due to a quirk in the laws, the US Government has the ability to issue platinum coins of any value. These 'coins' never have to be paid back. The U.S.'s national debt could be retired by minting a couple "trillion dollar coins":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_dollar_coin

The Federal Reserve does a decent job at keeping the money supply growing at less than a hyper-inflationary rate, but the value of our money has collapsed since I was a kid, since we all were kids...

I wish they'd bring back the Microsoft Trackball Explorer - the button switches on mine eventually wore out. This had five buttons - left, right, scroll-click, forward, back (all programmable).

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=microsoft%20trackball%2...

Question for the lefties: what kind of pointing device do you prefer? Mouse? Touchpad? Do you prefer to swap L&R clicks when you use other people's computers?

The electric grid managers went into a panic the very first time the air conditioners were turned on at the Arizona Diamondbacks' new Bank One Ballpark (1998; BoB is now called "Chase Field" [1]). The stadium people didn't realize they needed to let the electric utility know that they would suddenly be adding hundreds of kilowatts of electric power draw to the grid.

Some years later a chilled water plant was built to use off-peak electricity to chill a million gallons of water/antifreeze [2]. This is used to cool about 30 buildings in downtown Phoenix.

Ever since I heard about the ballpark's system, I wanted one for myself. This "IceBear" system looks promising.

[1] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/2011-07-12-al...

[2] http://www.imcor-az.com/experience/mission-critical/northwin...

Root cellars can be built anywhere food is grown. The Wikipedia page has pictures of very large buildings.

My point is that it's more efficient to eat locally-stored produce than to ship lettuce from Yuma to Maine in the winter.

I have an old book somewhere that said the dairy cow is the most efficient way to convert the grass on a rocky hillside into human-usable protein.

Meat is rather inefficient. Temple Grandin is an autistic woman who designed more humane slaughterhouse systems. A quote in the HBO movie about her sticks with me: "Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be."

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1278469/?ref=m_nv_sr_1

... an Arizona company came up with an interesting approach to rodent control: poison their reproductive organs. They got approval to sell their formula in 2016.

https://senestech.com and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPest

No gene editing required.

About 90% of the United States' supply of lettuce in the winter comes from Yuma, Arizona [0].

I think it more appropriate for most people to eat seasonally-appropriate vegetables during the winter months, than to get a little lettuce from thousands of miles away. Winter squash, carrots, apples, and many other food products store very well in root cellars [1].

[0] http://www.visityuma.com/agritourism.html [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_cellar

I don't live in an earthquake-prone area, but this is a good reminder to fill up my water jugs and prepare a small stash of supplies.

I have a friend who watches the earthquake reports. He's pointed out how gravitational vectors lining up make big quakes more likely. It's something about the times the moon is closer to the earth [0], new moons [1] (when the moon is between the earth and the sun), etc.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_(astronomy) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_moon

The system itself prevents children from learning. John Gatto says that 'some children learn to read when they're 2, some when they're 8, and by the time they're 12 you can't tell the difference' (paraphrased from memory).

I met a fellow who was traumatized by being forced to try to learn to read before he was ready (1st grade). He eventually learned how to read, in spite of the System's attempt to prevent it.

The most important factor in teaching kids to read is waiting for them to be ready.

I think air bubblers at depth would bring cold water to the surface. Just speculation, though.

To borrow what someone else here said, a high school diploma is just a "congratulatory" piece of paper.

There are many approaches to schooling. Anything works better than the factory model.

> Yeah but climate change. That wasn't really an issue in the 80s.

The foundational assumption of the modern scientific era (circa 1845) is that steam engine physics are a fundamental law of the universe. This guiding constraint is referred to as the "Laws of Thermodynamics"...

Today's scientists have better numbers. Dark energy and dark matter are their realization that something is wrong with 1845's understanding of the laws of nature.

People put bubblers in aquariums to support more fish than could otherwise survive based solely on the surface area of the tank.

The gulfs are basically anaerobic septic tanks. Adding oxygen would allow aerobic bacteria to consume the excess nutrients.

Edit: thanks for asking, I should develop this into a full blog post.

It was not an official US Navy blog. Here's the link: http://blog.usni.org/2011/03/19/send-the-enterprise/

Several years ago I wrote a piece titled, "To Save the Gulf, Send the Enterprise". At the time the Deepwater Horizon oil geyser was spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and the well's owners were trying to figure out what to do.

I suggested sending the US Navy's portable nuclear reactors (such as carried in the Enterprise and other aircraft carriers) to aerate the ocean surrounding the oil geyser. It was entirely impractical - a navy blogger responded to my email with a blog post (and a link) to say it was a terrible idea.

The Enterprise has since been retired, and is currently being disposed of. But I think the core of the idea is still valid. Aeration would help deal with all this agricultural runoff...

Maybe I'll write a new post for my neglected website: http://SendTheEnterprise.org/

> cottonseed oil is often used in food products

Cottonseed oil is not food, it is a waste product of the cotton industry that should only be used for biodiesel.

> But there's no replacement for damaged oocytes.

That was the old thinking, but now there's evidence that women can probably generate 'new' eggs:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/07/evidence-sug...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120726180259.h...

How much of the missing water is actually due to higher temperatures, and how much is due to people siphoning water from the aquifers that feed the lake? This article mostly focuses on "climate change" hysterics, but also acknowledges the siphoning problem.

A HN comment [0] linked to a TucsonWeekly [1] piece about how Tucson used to be an oasis. Similarly, the Salt River used to run year-round through Phoenix. Las Vegas was an oasis too. Cattle and wells turned Tucson's river dry. The Salt River is blocked by dams, where most the water is used for plants and allowed to evaporate. Las Vegas' population vastly exceeds its natural water supply. I don't think the disappearance of these cities' oases can be blamed on "climate change".

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16118109

[1] https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/a-river-ran-through-it/C...

The Israelis are experts in hydroponics, which uses a fraction of the water used for irrigation. This is a more responsible way to use water in an arid country.

If the problem causing these lakes to dry up is mostly "climate change", these people's predicaments are hopeless. But if the problem is mostly irresponsible use of the aquifers upstream from the lake, the problem is solvable.

What do you call healthcare that doesn't work, but is commonly used anyways? For example, Propublica's article says stents usually don't help improve patients' conditions:

https://www.propublica.org/article/when-evidence-says-no-but...

I like the term 'monopoly medicine', but maybe there's a better term.

Providing clean water, infrastructure ('outhouses') and good-enough nutrition are much harder problems than organizing vaccination campaigns.

Type-2 diabetes is a sham diagnosis. A key factor in the development of "insulin resistance" is the overconsumption of vegetable oils. These thin oils go rancid in the production process, and have to be "refined" to remove the rancid smell.

Before the middle of the 20th century, linseed oil and soybean oil were drying oils that were used to make stain and paint. When the paint producers figured out how to make paint from petroleum, the seed oil industry rebranded their product as "vegetable oil".

> Better yet, we’ve learned since that you can still get most of the benefit without WHO-approved stockpiles of ORS. You can use a number of widely available commercial products that essentially replicate ORS, from sports drinks to Pedialyte. You can also make good oral rehydration solutions yourself at home for pennies: Just take 32 ounces of water and add 6 teaspoons of sugar and a half-teaspoon of salt. There are just two pitfalls to avoid, according to my colleague Regan Marsh, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a medical director for Partners in Health. First, fight the urge to sweeten it too much. “People want to make it more sugary because of the taste, but that proportion of salt and sugar is important.”

I did this several years ago, after dehydrating myself while working outside on a hot day. Water didn't touch my thirst, then I realized I needed electrolytes. I used lemon juice, sugar, and a good amount of salt. It was delicious.

> How would you deal with a child that never wants to learn how to read?

All children will eventually come around to the idea that reading is useful. Some children are traumatized by do-gooders trying to force them to learn how to read before they're ready.

As I said in another comment here, "I think John Taylor Gatto pointed out that some children learn to read when they're 2, some when they're 8, and by the time they're 12 you can't tell the difference."

> So, how did she learn to read? I have no idea. It wasn't phonics. But I suspect she would have managed it no matter what instruction she received.

I think John Taylor Gatto pointed out that some children learn to read when they're 2, some when they're 8, and by the time they're 12 you can't tell the difference.

I met a man who was traumatized when his first grade teacher tried to force him to read, before he was ready. The lesson was put in front of him, and 1st-grade-him thought he was stupid for not being able to perform.

> Influential research that downplayed the role of sugar in heart disease in the 1960s was paid for by the sugar industry, according to a report released on Monday. With backing from a sugar lobby, scientists promoted dietary fat as the cause of coronary heart disease instead of sugar, according to a historical document review published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Is this article implying that trans fats have been cleared of the charges against them [0]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat#Coronary_artery_dise...

I think naturally-saturated fats have mostly been vindicated of the charges leveled against them in the 1950's and 1960's, but the medical guild hasn't updated their message.

This article is about the rise in hospital-acquired cdiff infections. So the patients were fine until they were served ice cream made with trehalose.

I think this paragraph is the article's kicker:

>> What has changed is the recent addition of man-made trehalose into the food supply, often in large quantities. This shift was prompted by a new method to manufacture trehalose from cornstarch, which made the sugar much less costly. In 2000, FDA approved the sugar as a safe food additive. Trehalose quickly found its way into processed foods in the U.S. and around the world for its mild, flavor-enhancing sweetness and protection of frozen foods. In some store-bought ice creams, it’s found at concentrations of up to 11 percent.

(emphasis added)

When I buy ice cream I usually get Haagen-Daaz, because it's the only reliable national brand. Cheap ice creams use various gums (carageenan, guar gum, locust bean gum) to give low-cream products the texture of ice cream.

Didn't realize heat shock proteins are so useful. This explains a lot for me, thx.

Tl/dr: the campaign against sugar is not actually grounded on solid science - it's sort of a disinformation campaign to distract people from the other elephants in the room: rancid deodorized dietary oils, xeno-estrogens and other endocrine disrupters, etc...

People with a healthy metabolism can easily burn sugar for energy. Having a high metabolism increases the body's need for other nutrients, which are not present in white sugar. Sugar-rich foods, used in the context of a nutrient-dense diet, can be therapeutic.