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Joshua Foer, like any individual, proves nothing. If there was a class teaching the memory techniques he used, taking more or less random people in, and they all had incredibly good memories, I'd be impressed.

Well there's a few studies, such as:

All students (n = 78) were taught insulin and DM in a didactic fashion, consisting of two traditional lectures. Each lecture spanned 60 min.

After the didactic lectures had been completed, 28 students were randomly selected and then taught insulin and DM through the MOL technique. Continued participation in the study was, in any case, entirely voluntary.

The rest of the class (n = 50) studied the same topics (insulin and DM) and completed in-class worksheets. Students were allowed open textbook reference and were allowed to take the completed worksheets home. This was a self-directed learning session under instructor supervision. The entire class was, thus, studying the same topic during the same time, albeit in different ways.

Med students, 28 using method of loci, 50 using self-directed study.

We observed a highly significant increase (P < 0.003) in the number of correct responses on the questions when attempted by students who had been taught insulin and DM through didactic lectures and the MOL technique (mean: 9.31, SD: 1.12) compared with students who had been taught through didactic lectures and the self-directed learning session (mean: 8.10, SD: 1.85). Two participants of the MOL group did not appear for the quiz.

So a random subset of medical students, having been *just* taught how to use the Method of Loci and given strict, directed mind palaces (sub-optimal: they're unfamiliar with the technique, it's a lot of cognitive load, and it's not self-directed), shifted itself up almost an entire standard deviation. That means more than 85% of the Mnemonics group *outperformed the mean* of the control group; the remaining 15% were *still* in the first deviation.

Put another way: there was not some subset of MOL subjects who moved up; the entire smooth bell curve shifted to the right. The bell curve was also tighter: the standard deviation among students using mnemonics was 60% as wide as the standard deviation among the control group. That means the students clustered closer together. In a class where students ranged across 30 points (e.g. 60%-90%), these students would have ranged across 18 points (e.g. 78%-96%).

A surprising amount of mnemonics study is done on the elderly (to combat age-related memory loss) and medical students (because the material is complex and filled with facts). The outcomes are always the same: a marked improvement in ability to remember things if those things are intentionally structured.

but it really seems to me that this would have massive real-world effects if it actually worked, and I'm not seeing them.

Why would it? You'd have to institutionalize and standardize education first, and then change that institutionalized behavior when new research came out. Each change is a risk, and requires some administrative oversight. On an individual level, all of these techniques are *skills* which require *effort*, just like any other skill, and the time spent learning is annoying and boring and exhausting. Why would these things be adopted? Why would they have an impact on the world just because some academics know about them?

We already know the Japanese methods of basic mathematics education universally produce human calculators. We instead use friendly numbers and common core.

The human pain threshold for temperature is 106-108F (41-42C).

Quick! Someone tell all the people living within 1000 miles of the equator.
 
... and tell all the people that serve and drink coffee:
https://driftaway.coffee/temperature/
Here at Driftaway Coffee, we tend to enjoy coffee best when it is between 120F and 140F.

http://www.coffeedetective.com/what-is-the-correct-temperature-for-serving-coffee.html
Coffee is best served at a temperature between 155F and 175F (70C to 80C). Most people prefer it towards the higher end, at about 175F.

Calculating the optimum temperature for serving hot beverages:
The preferred drinking temperature of coffee is specified in the literature as 140+/-15 degrees F (60+/-8.3 degrees C) for a population of 300 subjects. A linear (with respect to temperature) figure of merit merged the two effects to identify an optimal drinking temperature of approximately 136 degrees F (57.8 degrees C).

One has to be careful with wording. Dextrorotatory ("right-handed") forms of various amino acids do occur in various roles in living organisms, just not commonly in protein synthesis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

One has to be careful with wording. Dextrorotatory ("right-handed") forms of various amino acids do occur in various roles in living organisms, just not commonly in protein synthesis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Thalidomide is still manufactured because it is now a standard treatment for leprosy.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

The fatality rate for general aviation is 82 times that for commercial flight. Are these people utterly insane?

How many of those fatalities are bush planes, operating in rugged terrain and bad weather? How many are training flights, or people sightseeing and getting stuck in box canyons, unfamiliar terrain, air show stunts, etc; not A to B travel flights at a safe altitude and heading. General aviation isn't just straight LAX-ATL flights at 40k feet, where not a whole lot can go wrong. I'm sure if you strip out everything but the mundane going-somewhere flights, the safety concerns of general vs commercial travel will be far less of an issue..

The fatality rate for general aviation is 82 times that for commercial flight. Are these people utterly insane?

Perhaps you shouldn't be so sure of yourself. Glyphosate may not be lethal immediately as used, but it does appear to have unexpected detrimental effects. And then there's the really bad "inert" ingredient effect to consider.

It's not all about LD50 numbers. O2 or H2O can both kill you, yet, like salt, you must have them. Glyphosate has no beneficial health properties, it merely makes farming "easier" apparently. We grew crops successfully long before glyphosate, maybe we should review that effort. Considering one of the linked stories, in western societies incidences of various chronic diseases has increased markedly since Glyphosate entered wide-spread use.

Right... Companies shouldn't be held accountable just because they made a crap product that advertises functionality that it doesn't have. It's all those idiot users' fault for believing that consumer protection laws should require a product to do what is advertised.

FitBit and others did not claim to be medical devices but rather a way to keep track of your activity as part of a wellness regime. Now, a paid study finds that they are not as accurate as medical devices and somehow the company is defrauding the consumer? I have a number of issues with FitBit including their desire to have me send them my exercise information rather than just load it into the app and they are itchy and uncomfortable. It would be nice to see the raw data on which the conclusions are based to see what "up to 20 beats" really means and how accurate FitBit is in various situations.

"Up to 20 beats" is best considered in light of a pulse chart like this one. The normal resting pulse of an adult is somewhere between 60 to 100 beats per minute--a well-trained athlete's resting pulse would be in the 40 to 60 range. Presuming the FitBit uses the same measure--which is the standard one--then being off by 20 beats is not negligible at utter best...though the summary suggests that it is not actually consistent in its error, which is really concerning since people are typically pushed to get their heart rate up to a target...even if that just isn't going to happen. (I have a very good heart, and I've never quite mastered pushing it much out of its resting heart rate.)

I would expect if someone is undergoing a severe exercise regimen the would carefully research the tools they use to track vital signs to ensure their safety. If I were on a jury and someone said "I was injured because my FitBit didn't tell me my heartbeat was too high while I did this extreme workout..." I'd respond with a "Sorry, but the legal system can't fix stupid, but mother nature can and did" judgement.

Part of the problem is we expect computers to be precise and accurate and they often are not, and when they aren't people get upset instead of adjusting their expectations.

I will agree here--though I've no idea how somebody could fail to notice if their heartbeat got too high, it'd be slightly easier to fail to notice that you just lost a limb. (Seriously, you should not be capable of missing it.) The problem is that this is a really significant amount of error--this is snake oil ranges, and as somebody else has noted, employers are requiring you use these things and financially penalizing you for failing to hit milestones.

I would be with you if I was on that jury for the case you give as an example, but what about if it was someone saying they were financially harmed because their employer-required FitBit keeps saying they're pushing their heart rate dangerously high or not high enough?

(The best solution would be to flat-out forbid employers from requiring these things, but given that if they're even vaguely accurate and reliable then they may be already a violation of medical privacy laws... The question may really be one of who actually gets to take it to court.)

hahaha big, beautiful women get love too <3 True story: I used to work with the woman who fought her case to the Supreme Court of California and won, making it illegal in California to discriminate against someone based upon their weight when their obesity problem is due to an underlying medical problem for employment purposes (http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1429&context=californialawreview). I think it's incredibly unfair to simply write off their weight problem as a lack of work ethic or hedonistic desire for food regardless of its health impact (which, actually, aren't that bad https://www.nih.gov/news-event... in the grand scheme of things -- smokers, alcoholics, drug abusers, etc I'm sure are far worse off). https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I'm not trying to form a moral equivalence between the two.

Then why are you bemoaning the lack of left-wing "outrage" on the matter? If I could point you to some left-wing outrage on the chimera research funding moratorium, would you feel better? Here you go:

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/11/researchers-urge-lifting-of-nih-funding-restrictions-on-chimeric.html

Perhaps the lefties are holding their outrage until they see if the NIH will resume funding in this area...it is after all a moratorium while the NIH "considers a possible policy revision in this area."

You wouldn't want any outrage until an actual policy has been made, would you? Where's the fun in that?

Of course, I might also ask why you have a need for some sort of counterbalancing outrage from "the left" to begin with. Perhaps you should just relax and stop getting worked up over things that haven't even been decided yet.

Technology is the study of improved of techniques to reduce human labor required to produce an output. That's why things get cheaper over time: 43% of the average family's income went to food in America in 1900; in 1950, 30%; and in 2003, 13%. Under 2% of American labor force is agricultural workers. The same has gone for clothes, houses (we buy bigger houses now), health care (it's gotten better, and we spend slightly more to buy more and better health care, since we don't need it for food and clothing), entertainment, communication ($4,000 cell phone in 1983; $350 smart phone in 2015), the works.

Of course it'll be cheaper one day.

Releasing the complete genome seems to be a remarkable example of a lapse in judgement.

Here you go.

Complete genetic sequence of smallpox.

Manufacturing smallpox is hard.

We analyzed the 186,102 base pairs (bp) that constitute the entire DNA genome of a highly virulent variola virus isolated from Bangladesh in 1975. The linear, double-stranded molecule has relatively small (725 bp) inverted terminal repeat (ITR) sequences containing three 69-bp direct repeat elements, a 54-bp partial repeat element, and a 105-base telomeric end-loop that can be maximally base-paired to contain 17 mismatches.

Analyzing Smallpox is easy. There's a paper on PubMed that's just about the differences in the DNA gene sequences between smallpox and related viruses.

This isn't exactly secret information.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

The penal system is not enacting it's penalties with an aim to rehabilitate e.g. Jeffrey Dahmer, it's enacting its penalties to stop the next Jeffrey Dahmer from eating his first victim.

This is a giant strawman. The vast majority of criminals are not Jeffrey Dahlmer and are not serving a life sentence. This means that for MOST inmates the prison system is there to rehabilitate them to society.

No-one's arguing that there aren't mentally unstable individuals who cannot be released and so on, but tehabilitation and making sure the inmates, once released, do not commit crimes again is the primary focus of any sane penal system. If you look at actual data and charts on reconviction rates you'll note they go up as the length of the sentence goes up. This means the more time the inmate spends in jail, the higher the chance of them committing a crime again is. The US is not the only country where this happens, but if time spent in jail increases instead of decreases the chances of a re-conviction, it ought to be clear that the system is faulty.

Compare that to something like Norway which has one of the 'softest' prison systems and has no life imprisonment (technically, although with people like Brevik it's unlikely he will ever be let free, as they have to pass an assessment before release or the sentence can be continued, and even if he's ever released he'll probably be released into a mental institution) and has incredibly humane conditions (that is it allows for the inmates to live fairly normal lives within controlled conditions), the re-conviction rates are far lower because it turns out if you treat prisoners as people instead of cattle to be kept in small boxes and the released after several years with limited rights and next to no employment options, they actually for the most part turn out to become productive members of society.

The penal system is not enacting it's penalties with an aim to rehabilitate e.g. Jeffrey Dahmer, it's enacting its penalties to stop the next Jeffrey Dahmer from eating his first victim.

This is a giant strawman. The vast majority of criminals are not Jeffrey Dahlmer and are not serving a life sentence. This means that for MOST inmates the prison system is there to rehabilitate them to society.

No-one's arguing that there aren't mentally unstable individuals who cannot be released and so on, but tehabilitation and making sure the inmates, once released, do not commit crimes again is the primary focus of any sane penal system. If you look at actual data and charts on reconviction rates you'll note they go up as the length of the sentence goes up. This means the more time the inmate spends in jail, the higher the chance of them committing a crime again is. The US is not the only country where this happens, but if time spent in jail increases instead of decreases the chances of a re-conviction, it ought to be clear that the system is faulty.

Compare that to something like Norway which has one of the 'softest' prison systems and has no life imprisonment (technically, although with people like Brevik it's unlikely he will ever be let free, as they have to pass an assessment before release or the sentence can be continued, and even if he's ever released he'll probably be released into a mental institution) and has incredibly humane conditions (that is it allows for the inmates to live fairly normal lives within controlled conditions), the re-conviction rates are far lower because it turns out if you treat prisoners as people instead of cattle to be kept in small boxes and the released after several years with limited rights and next to no employment options, they actually for the most part turn out to become productive members of society.

In fact, we could probably cut NASA entirely ($19.6 billion budget for 2016) and that wouldn't be enough for a wall between the US and Mexico.

In 2007, the economic losses from crime in the US were $15 billion. A whopping $179 billion more was spent on police, legal proceedings, prisons, etc. In other words, we lose over $200 billion every year to crime.

Now, the percentage of crimes committed by illegal aliens is surprisingly hard to obtain — federal government is unwilling to keep an officially tally (maybe, Trump will fix this). But the sentencing statistics say: "Twelve percent of murder sentences, 20 percent of kidnapping sentences and 16 percent of drug trafficking sentences are meted out to illegal immigrants."

Maybe, that's an overestimate by those nasty racists at FauxNoos and the real figure is "only" 10%. If we could get rid of that, we'd be able to afford another NASA with the savings... But even if the money went to building the wall instead, as you suggested, we'd break even — just have fewer murders and kidnappings.

While pretty much every study shows that marijuana does not impact a persons health, cognative abilities,

Wow! How about this study? Living in a world where "pretty much" means "exclude everything that I don't agree with".

One feature of addiction is that the brain starts justifying the addictive behaviors. If you think getting stoned makes you silly and gives you a buzz, then I'll say, 'Fine. Your judgement pertaining to this activity is reasonable. And there's nothing wrong with a nice buzz under the right circumstances. Smoke 'em if you've got 'em.' But when your brain starts to play with perceptions of reality to keep you convinced that some activity is not detrimental*, you are addicted.

*People who think pot makes them insightful, clever, creative, etc.

With less oxygen than the atmosphere. Normal air is ~21% O2, and 0.04% CO2. Submarines routinely operate - without any health issues - with O2 levels at 15% and CO2 levels at 2.5%. Turns out that most places you go to have significantly higher CO2 levels than the normal atmosphere. And it doesn't seem to have negative impacts.

That's a very good question. An endoscope would have been my first thought as well. I'm not an expert, so I was wondering if the smaller esophagus of the infants who typically swallow batteries would make this more dangerous, but apparently that's not a problem.

A gastroscopy can be performed on short notice at most hospitals, and doesn't even require the lengthy preparation you would want for a colonoscopy. My impression is that the current system is just a proof of concept, and the full system would be more autonomous. The person in the video says the next step would be to add sensors to reduce/eliminate the need for external control.

Fun fact: apart from infants, prison inmates are regular customers for gastroscopies. They pack a razor blade in some bread, swallow it, and call a guard. Their expectation is a lengthy hospital stay after a surgery, but in reality they're back in their cells a few hours later.

A google search shows this NIH study:

An alternative approach was to attenuate the wild-type virus and render it safe as a replicating antigen. Both were successful and today there are two forms of the vaccine: the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), which is administered by the parenteral route, and the live attenuated vaccine, which is administered orally and hence is known as the oral polio vaccine (OPV).

Shortly after the licensure of IPV in 1955, the vaccine manufactured by Cutter was found to cause paralytic disease. It contained residual infectious virus. The reason was traced to the method of inactivation. At that time the dynamics of the inactivation process were not fully understood, and the U.S. government's requirements for vaccine production were ambiguous. All of these problems have since been corrected.

And from this 1978 study:

Another view of the incidence of paralysis following oral poliovaccine (OPV) shows that the risk is about 1.6 cases per 10(6) nonimmune children given OPV and that this rises to about ten cases per 10(6) nonimmune adults exposed to OPV.

The risk was quite real, and non-zero. About 1-in-100,000

In the US in 1978 (the year of the 2nd study), the number of polio cases in the US was 15, against a population of 222 million.

Thus, the odds of getting polio induced paralysis from the vaccine is 1-in-100,000, while getting polio in the wild was 15-in-222 million.

In 1978, you were 148 times more likely to be paralyzed by the vaccine than to get polio.

Get your facts right if you want to be trusted.

Help me out here. If not the NIH studies above, which sources of information should I trust?

I want to be as knowledgeable and trustworthy as you are...

A google search shows this NIH study:

An alternative approach was to attenuate the wild-type virus and render it safe as a replicating antigen. Both were successful and today there are two forms of the vaccine: the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), which is administered by the parenteral route, and the live attenuated vaccine, which is administered orally and hence is known as the oral polio vaccine (OPV).

Shortly after the licensure of IPV in 1955, the vaccine manufactured by Cutter was found to cause paralytic disease. It contained residual infectious virus. The reason was traced to the method of inactivation. At that time the dynamics of the inactivation process were not fully understood, and the U.S. government's requirements for vaccine production were ambiguous. All of these problems have since been corrected.

And from this 1978 study:

Another view of the incidence of paralysis following oral poliovaccine (OPV) shows that the risk is about 1.6 cases per 10(6) nonimmune children given OPV and that this rises to about ten cases per 10(6) nonimmune adults exposed to OPV.

The risk was quite real, and non-zero. About 1-in-100,000

In the US in 1978 (the year of the 2nd study), the number of polio cases in the US was 15, against a population of 222 million.

Thus, the odds of getting polio induced paralysis from the vaccine is 1-in-100,000, while getting polio in the wild was 15-in-222 million.

In 1978, you were 148 times more likely to be paralyzed by the vaccine than to get polio.

Get your facts right if you want to be trusted.

Help me out here. If not the NIH studies above, which sources of information should I trust?

I want to be as knowledgeable and trustworthy as you are...

Pure and simple. Wages are likely half of their expenses. This would be a 25% increase from $12/hr to $15/hr. So about a 12.5% increase. No one is walking away from that. If you are buying a $4 burger it goes up 50 cents

You are making a statement about the elasticity of demand for food-away-from-home. In fact, food-away-from-home some of the highest price elasticity of all common consumer goods: a 12.5% increase in prices causes a 10-11% decrease in consumption.

(Price elasticity really doesn't work in favor of progressive policies: fossil fuel has some of the lowest price elasticities, so taxing gasoline more does little to reduce gasoline consumption. Facts suck, don't they?)

Competitive advantage? Barely. The delta on that window worker will cost you $36 per day. The machine plus the loss from customer frustration and borked orders (see self checkout lessons elsewhere) better cost less than that.

The widespread use of kiosks and self-service in Europe says otherwise. Sure, consumers need to be brow-beaten into accepting this lower standard of service, but that only takes a few years until you consider it the new normal. After all, you pump your own gas now.

If you read the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, you'd know that marijuana didn't even increase the risks of crashes and fatalities.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2014 Jan; 75(1): 56â"64.
PMCID: PMC3893634
Drugs and Alcohol: Their Relative Crash Risk
Eduardo Romano, Ph.D.,a,* Pedro Torres-Saavedra, Ph.D.,b Robert B. Voas, Ph.D.,a and John H. Lacey, M.P.H.a

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine (a) whether among sober (blood alcohol concentration [BAC] = .00%) drivers, being drug positive increases the drivers' risk of being killed in a fatal crash; (b) whether among drinking (BAC > .00%) drivers, being drug positive increases the drivers' risk of being killed in a fatal crash; and (c) whether alcohol and other drugs interact in increasing crash risk.

Method: We compared BACs for the 2006, 2007, and 2008 crash cases drawn from the U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) with control drug and blood alcohol data from participants in the 2007 U.S. National Roadside Survey. Only FARS drivers from states with drug information on 80% or more of the drivers who also participated in the 2007 National Roadside Survey were selected.

Results: For both sober and drinking drivers, being positive for a drug was found to increase the risk of being fatally injured. When the drug-positive variable was separated into marijuana and other drugs, only the latter was found to contribute significantly to crash risk. In all cases, the contribution of drugs other than alcohol to crash risk was significantly lower than that produced by alcohol.

Conclusions: Although overall, drugs contribute to crash risk regardless of the presence of alcohol, such a contribution is much lower than that by alcohol. The lower contribution of drugs other than alcohol to crash risk relative to that of alcohol suggests caution in focusing too much on drugged driving, potentially diverting scarce resources from curbing drunk driving.

So you set yourself up somewhere high up. How exactly do you propose to come by non-gaseous resources?

Let's compare individual resources, shall we?

Water:

Mars: frozen in permafrost, mixed in with sand and gravel, containing perchlorates, hexavalent chromium, and other toxic chemicals. Have to build and deploy a Martian equivalent of a bobcat and scrape it out (note that mining equipment is famous for high maintenance needs). If chunks are too big they need to be run through a rock crusher. They then need to be loaded into a bin and pressure sealed, then heated, with the steam driven off creating the necessary pressure for water to be able to exist at a liquid state and flow off through filters (which will need periodic cleaning); the sand and gravel has to be emptied. The contaminated saltwater now has to either be distilled or run through reverse osmosis, the latter being unfortunately rather contaminant sensitive. It's enough of a headache that most near-future proposals just call for bringing the water (or just hydrogen to make it) from Earth.

Venus: Acidists naturally condense or absorbed (see an above post on the subject) and run straight into a boiler. There they're heated. Free water is driven off and H2SO4 decomposes, emitting more water. The steam is isolated and condensed.

The latter is much easier.

Oxygen.

Mars: There are two main proposals for oxygen production. One is electrolysis. Electrolysis systems as used on ISS have however proven to be rather finnicky, and you're dependent on the water mining above to replace any water loss in the system (which will happen over time). The other proposal is to be tested on Mars 2020: MOXIE. Martian air is drawn in and compressed, troublesome impurities removed, CO2 frozen out then reboiled at pressure, then run through a SOFC which uses a lot of electricity to turn CO2 into O2 and CO.

Venus: SO3 decomposes at elevated temperatures (much faster in the presence of a catalyst) into O2 and SO2. So the only added step here over water production is the catalyst. Separation from SO2, O2, and other elsser chemicals can be done in a specialized stage or in distillation.

Again, winner: Venus.

Let's look at starting to form an industry. So, let's look at the top 10 industrial chemicals on Earth

H2SO4: This is the number one produced chemical on Earth. Do we even need to go into how much easier it would be to get on Venus?
N2: Venus's atmosphere is denser than Mars's and N2 is about in the same percentage concentration, so the advantage is again to Venus.
C2H4: The process is roughly the same on both Venus and Mars
O2: Already covered.
Chlorine (Cl2): On Venus, this is conducted by the Deacon process (4 HCl + O2 = 2 H2O + 2 Cl2). You get free HCl from distillation and you have cheap O2. On Mars, this would be done by the much more energy-intensive electrolysis of brine. Furthermore, you'd need to either isolate out brines containing specifically chlorides first.
Ethylene Dichloride (C2H2Cl2): Used for PVC, which honestly isn't a great material for either Mars or Venus. The routes are basically the same on both Mars and Venus.
Phosphoric Acid (H3PO4): On Venus, this comes for free during distillation. On Mars... honestly, we don't really know. We've found phosphate minerals (chlorapatite and merrillite) but no concentrations of them.
Ammonia (NH3): Haber process, same on both planets.
Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH): Ah, finally something Mars can win at! Various hydroxides will be produced as a byproduct of chlorine production. As far as is known, both sodium (and similar-use potassium) can't be gotten from the atmosphere (although they're abundant in any surface rocks that may be mined for other purposes - Venus's surface-mining throughput potential being lower than that of Mars'). That said, Venus lends itself perfectly to cation recycling. Any waste (plant, human, industrial

As long as you have fat, no!

Then why did I lose muscle mass while exercising more than usual and still having ample fat reserves? It is commonly happening during the cut phase of the bulk/cut cycle. You will lose muscle mass at a calorie deficit even if you keep lifting 5 days a week, you will predominantly lose fat but also lose muscle mass. You will also be see your lifts go down during the cut phase (either the top weight or the amount of set/reps, sometimes both). The sad reality of the cut phase is that you can only minimize the amount of muscle mass you will lose, by watching your macros (protein heavy!) and lifting heavy. The only time when you won't lose muscle mass on a cut is during maybe the first months of serious lifting, because you have so little muscle mass to start with at that point.

That does not make any sense. Muscles need energy, not steroids, that are just hormones that stimulate muscle growths.

Intake of anabolic steroids and strength-training induce an increase in muscle size by both hypertrophy and the formation of new muscle fibers.

Why are AAS so overused in the body-building scene? They allow you to increase the amount of muscle mass above what your body would normally carry/sustain at a given exercise level. It basically lets you go above what is commonly called "your genetic maximum" which is really the maximum muscle mass your body will sustain by itself at a certain muscle use level. When you plateau in all your lifts, usually after a couple of years of "serious" lifting, you are faced with a choice. Switch to maintenance at that muscle mass or turn to steroids to keep increasing your muscle mass because your body won't carry more left to its own devices.

You basically need to starve 2 weeks or more without any body fat left until the body does that.

Two weeks without body fat left means you're dead or on life support. Anything below 2% to 5% is going to seriously mess up your body.

i've never bought into any of the dieting fads nor tried them because they blamed random things without the science to back it up. one fateful day last summer i watched a documentary that claimed sugars in our food were to blame but it actually had the science to back it up.

Sugar is a drug, addictive and causes food cravings. This begs the question of why we aren't going through withdraw and the answer is that sugar has been added to all your foods specifically so you do not go through withdraw. Look at your raw pasta which has zero reason to have sugar added, it has about 3g of sugar added for every 56g (2 oz).

To make matters worse, food makers started using High Fructose Corn Syrup in products because it's inexpensive because corn is subsidized. Fructose is processed by your liver and it gets stored as fat unless you have low blood sugar. so products with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) are most likely to make you fat.

After removing sugar from my diet (not easy to find products without sugar!) I went through a few days of withdraw. After that, I actually felt like I more energy to do things, so much so that I wanted to exercise (that was never my goal). I started walking regularly and losing weight without any crazy diet, just not eating things with sugar added. Apples are a great source of sugar that have the fiber to balance it out so that it's absorbed slowly avoiding a traffic jam in your liver.

In the last year I have lost 65 lbs of fat and gained 15 lbs of muscle without ever having to go hungry or restrain myself from eating. I'm still overweight (for now) but I'm no longer obese.

The food supply is being drugged to increase profits.

i've never bought into any of the dieting fads nor tried them because they blamed random things without the science to back it up. one fateful day last summer i watched a documentary that claimed sugars in our food were to blame but it actually had the science to back it up.

Sugar is a drug, addictive and causes food cravings. This begs the question of why we aren't going through withdraw and the answer is that sugar has been added to all your foods specifically so you do not go through withdraw. Look at your raw pasta which has zero reason to have sugar added, it has about 3g of sugar added for every 56g (2 oz).

To make matters worse, food makers started using High Fructose Corn Syrup in products because it's inexpensive because corn is subsidized. Fructose is processed by your liver and it gets stored as fat unless you have low blood sugar. so products with High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) are most likely to make you fat.

After removing sugar from my diet (not easy to find products without sugar!) I went through a few days of withdraw. After that, I actually felt like I more energy to do things, so much so that I wanted to exercise (that was never my goal). I started walking regularly and losing weight without any crazy diet, just not eating things with sugar added. Apples are a great source of sugar that have the fiber to balance it out so that it's absorbed slowly avoiding a traffic jam in your liver.

In the last year I have lost 65 lbs of fat and gained 15 lbs of muscle without ever having to go hungry or restrain myself from eating. I'm still overweight (for now) but I'm no longer obese.

The food supply is being drugged to increase profits.

Cell phone radiation unquestionably was not a factor before 1975, and unquestionably it is rising. My father was at a medical resident's conference in 1950 when they were amazed at this new cancer in a place that wasn't expected to be able to have cancer...lung cancer (everyone was smoking during the conference) and nobody had an idea why there could be all this cancer. I had a residents conference in 1980 when we were finding melanoma in children for the first time. Nobody had much doubt it was because of more sun exposure and more severe sun exposure. There isn't a rise in brain cancer like there were in lung and skin. http://seer.cancer.gov/statfac... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... http://www.cancer.gov/research...

Basically, no. The relevant question for cancer is whether radiation can break atomic bonds (Molecular damage to DNA is the mechanism for causing cancer). Microwaves don't carry enough energy to do this. The quantity is irrelevant

Cancer can be caused by many mechanisms other than breaking atomic bonds.

There is evidence that microwaves affect protein folding and conformation, and that suggests a possible mechanism for carcinogenicity.

Oh please, there a just as many studies saying second hand smoke is harmless.

Shame you didn't link to any. And if you do, please link to the actual articles instead of right-wing news sites who claim such studies exist. Do it like this:

http://thorax.bmj.com/content/...

http://www.jabfm.org/content/2...

http://ash.org.uk/files/docume...

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/dat...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/b...

See, the thing is, when you dig a little into those claims about "studies that show no risks from second-hand smoke", you find that they don't really exist except in the minds of "skeptic" sources like Reason or the Cato Institute.

While your living room is the problem of its inhabitants at any point in time, and Nicotine-Cancer hasn't been found very related, but ...

Nicotine's effect on pregnant women and foetus is somewhat known and harmful. So the leakage from your living room, if any - and your open-air-smoking brethren : are definitely problems

From the article:

"The ReAnima Project has just received approach from an Institutional Review Board at the National Institutes of Health in the US and in India, and the team plans to start recruiting patients immediately."

I'm not British, so maybe it's isn't a mistake but I think the word "approach" should have been "approval".

Basically, they got IRB approval for the study. They mention NIH, because the NIH's Office of Science Policy has rules and criteria for the formation of hospital's or university's IRB. I don't know the details of the study, but my guess is that local hospital where the trial is to take place gave approval. They mention NIH because it gives it an air legitimacy. I'm not saying this isn't a legit study, but I think all the NIH did was to approve the formation and composition of the IRB, not the actual study.

NIH Office of Science Policy:
http://osp.od.nih.gov/

The UN said:

"There is an 80% probability that world population, now 7.2 billion, will increase to between 9.6 and 12.3 billion in 2100.

You said:

The UN recently raised the maximum population to 12 billion and gave an 80% chance that human population had no maximum

Your statement is a laughable misinterpretation of the UN statement.

These projections indicate that there is little prospect of an end to world population growth this century without unprecedented fertility declines in most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa still experiencing fast population growth.

Subsaharan fertility is, in fact, declining in an "unprecedented way", and nobody is expecting that to stop. What has changed is the realization (based on new data) that it is doing so slower than past models assumed by analogy to Europe and Asia. That's probably because Africa isn't developing economically as fast as people had hoped. None of these papers are predicting indefinite population growth, they are simply saying that instead of stabilizing in 2050, populations probably will stabilize around 2100 or a little after that. The fact that they are likely going to reach 11 billion is hardly news, and it's hardly a problem either.

The very Science paper you link to shows world population growth slowing down dramatically during the 21st century, with the world population hardly growing at all in 2100.

People actively try to avoid thinking about this because it's so horrible.

The only thing that is "horrible" is your degree of scientific illiteracy. People like you used to worship end-time prophets, these days, you worship pseudo-scientific FUD.

You need to engage your brain...

There is no point in advocating killing anyone or doing anything at this point.

It's too late. It's too fucking late. It's too late by almost three decades.

Requested Cite:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
"There is an 80% probability that world population, now 7.2 billion, will increase to between 9.6 and 12.3 billion in 2100.
https://blog.iiasa.ac.at/2014/...
Demographers from the United Nations Population Division and several universities published a paper in Science last week that argues the world population is unlikely to stop growing this century. They calculate that there is an 80% probability that world population, now 7.2 billion, will increase to between 9.6 and 12.3 billion in 2100, with the median at 10.9 billion. ...
These projections indicate that there is little prospect of an end to world population growth this century without unprecedented fertility declines in most parts of Sub-Saharan Africa still experiencing fast population growth."

Every prior projection projection of maximum human population has turned out to be on the low side. Just during my lifetime, the prior projected "maximum" has risen a billion at a time every decade.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node...
U.N. Raises âoeLowâ Population Projection for 2050

http://www.globalchange.gov/si...
Population Projections: Reasons for Uncertainty

I actually agree on the logarithic growth but it's not asymptotic as has been projected.

We are already well past overshoot territory. Read limits to growth, then the updated one, and then do some research on chromium and other metal reserves. Oil isn't the only non-renewable. We are going to have to find replacements for every industrial metal at roughly the same time.

It's like Global Warming. It's also too late on global warming. Tropical diseases and pests range will definitely increase by thousands of miles over the next 100 years. The north west passage will open. And the sea is going to rise by at least a foot by 2100.

We are on a train with no way to stop it and the bridge is out a mile ahead.

People actively try to avoid thinking about this because it's so horrible.

All I see are companies abusing the hell out of everyone they can get their hands on.

We tend to notice negatives more than positives. Negativity bias explains that.

This being said, I do not believe in any "system" that claims to "run itself," whether capitalism, democracy or the wisdom of crowds. There must always be enlightened leaders, although I prefer a form distinct from the Canadian government.

If it's getting worse because of our own choices, then they aren't "playing" the victim. Relative to you (not some foreign prodigy) they have been victimized. These kids aren't taking on massive debts because because they're stupid; they're doing it because everyone else doing so has massively raised the cost of tuition. So why is there so much lending/borrowing/debt now, that you need so much to afford an education nowadays? Because the Nixon Shock and consistent inflation since then have encouraged it. That amazing growth we enjoyed in the 80's was because we were borrowing from people applying for jobs today.

I realize alcohol poisoning alone isn't a comprehensive metric for "partyingness" but that at least has been going down. What makes you think they party more now than they did when Animal House came out?

I'm not denying that an American youngster is better off than a Chinese/Russian, but your lack of sympathy pales in comparison to how little they will sympathize with your house, your 401K, your children's inheritance, or any other legacy you might want to leave behind. As the subject of this article illustrates, they simply don't respect your right to property. You can point fingers and complain, or you can try to understand so you can do something about it.

Funny, but it's a well known issue, going back decades, especially with old Hoover "Dustette" hand-helds. I had a college prof use it as an object lesson in designing for safety in off-label applications.

Women have no agency. Of course we should allow them to kill babies - they can't help it if they don't have any self control.

Preach it bro! Women in this day and age are in complete control of their bodies and should never need abortion as an option!

Dumb paternalist Marxists. What a bunch of maroons. Good thing we conservatives are prepared to intervene with force when a woman and her doctor are about to do something stupid.

Depends on how much caffeine and how you consume it. It stimulates the CNS and causes your adrenals to produce cortisol, which causes a hunger response. It also stimulates insulin secretion which alone can lower your blood sugar. Combine that with sugar, and you can get a heavier blood sugar crash than you'd get with a sweet drink alone. Another hunger response.

If that caffeine consumption starts a feedback loop with insomnia, the lack of sleep can also increase your appetite (well beyond what would be expected from spending more hours awake).

I think caffeine only suppresses the appetite for a short time. But coffee suppresses appetite better than caffeine, in spite of its caffeine rather than because of it.

Seeing as you are posting economic data from the last decade, rather than under the USSR, which ceased to exist 25 freaking years ago and furthermore talking about present levels of alcoholism/alcohol consumption in Russia, which are 50% higher than they were under the USSR at its peak of stability in the 1960's, I can only come to the conclusion that you are either purposefully responding disingenuously or don't understand such simple concepts as time or history.

Insightful, my ass.

Suggestions: plenty of vitamin D (I take about 5000/day),

At 5k/day - you're above what's considered safe:
The safe upper limit for vitamin D is:
        4,000 IU/day for children 9 years and older, adults, and pregnant and breast-feeding teens and women (100 mcg/day)

And well above the RDA:
9 to 70 years: 600 IU (15 mcg/day)

You're putting yourself at risk of vascular calcification

I suggest you check out this great Frontline episode on supplements.

Also, turn off wireless devices/router/cable box at night to help you sleep better.

No...
You're bathed in EM all the time from countless sources - turning off your wifi won't make a dent.

Suggestions: plenty of vitamin D (I take about 5000/day),

At 5k/day - you're above what's considered safe:
The safe upper limit for vitamin D is:
        4,000 IU/day for children 9 years and older, adults, and pregnant and breast-feeding teens and women (100 mcg/day)

And well above the RDA:
9 to 70 years: 600 IU (15 mcg/day)

You're putting yourself at risk of vascular calcification

I suggest you check out this great Frontline episode on supplements.

Also, turn off wireless devices/router/cable box at night to help you sleep better.

No...
You're bathed in EM all the time from countless sources - turning off your wifi won't make a dent.

Sounds like the legacy of Reaganomics

Why would you think that? Reaganomics can't explain suicide rate increases from 1999 to 2014.

Looking at figure 1 from this article (which actually has suicide rates covering 1970 to 2002) indicates that suicide rates peaked for the age 65+ cohort in 1987 and stayed in modest decline for the age 45-64 (which peaked around 1975). By the end of Reagan's second term, overall suicide rates would have been in decline.

Your theory seems unlikely because suicide rates improved significantly since the end of Reagan's second term.

high unemployment, deregulation causing massive harm on many levels, low wages, eviscerated unions, corporate oligarchy running roughshod over actual people...

In other words, labor competition from the developing world. It may just be coincidence, but the period of low suicide rates also correspond to a period of relatively low labor competition from the developing world and significant economic growth for the US. Japan's economy had grown to first world status in the 1980s and braked hard in the 1990-91 recession. Meanwhile China was years away from becoming a serious industrial competitor.

It would be really interesting if they could compare this to the Far East F***up. (See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... for more information. The title is mine.)

If the levels and effects turn out to be comparable, this could turn into some very in-demand real estate.

You absorb lead through your skin, so touching it is pretty bad as well. Can't imagine eating it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
Abstract

A 45-y-o male with a history of schizophrenia was admitted to a local VA psychiatric unit. Five days later, endoscopy due to abdominal pain, gastrointestinal bleeding and blood hemoglobin of 5.6 g/dL revealed bullets in the stomach. On subsequent radiograph, > 50 bullets were visualized in the stomach and intestines. Poison Center recommendations included whole bowel irrigation and a blood lead level. After poor results with gastrointestinal decontamination and a repeat radiograph showing > 100 cartridges, surgical intervention was considered but not performed due to perceived risk of bullet detonation from electrocautery. The blood lead was reported as 391 mcg/dL. Calcium EDTA therapy was initiated, followed by aggressive gastrointestinal decontamination. Four days of whole bowel irrigation facilitated passage of 206 cartridges over the next 10 days. The patient was discharged on a 14-day course of 600 mg Succimer tid to treat the bone lead deposits and blood lead level of 49 mcg/dl. An outpatient visit 6 w later showed the blood lead level had dropped to 24 mcg/dl. Aggressive gastrointestinal decontamination and calcium EDTA and Succimer administration successfully treated an ingestion lead bullets and the resulting lead poisoning.

or this one... sad...
http://archpedi.jamanetwork.co...

It might explain this

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
Abstract

CONTEXT:
Age-specific estimates of mean testosterone (T) concentrations appear to vary by year of observation and by birth cohort, and estimates of longitudinal declines in T typically outstrip cross-sectional decreases. These observations motivate a hypothesis of a population-level decrease in T over calendar time, independent of chronological aging.

RESULTS:
We observe a substantial age-independent decline in T that does not appear to be attributable to observed changes in explanatory factors, including health and lifestyle characteristics such as smoking and obesity. The estimated population-level declines are greater in magnitude than the cross-sectional declines in T typically associated with age.

CONCLUSIONS:
These results indicate that recent years have seen a substantial, and as yet unrecognized, age-independent population-level decrease in T in American men, potentially attributable to birth cohort differences or to health or environmental effects not captured in observed data.

Let me do all of your research for you , you lazy motherfucker

Pretty much.

The French have the right idea in this case. There's no reason to pamper this monster and give him a lifestyle potentially better than law abiding citizens.

Recidivism in France is at 59%. In Norway it's 20%.

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

And if they'd execute the monsters the recidivism rate would be 0.00%.