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That's just BS.

No it isn't. It is a fact of human development.

That doesn't mean helicopter parenting is in order or that they can't manage at home by themselves for a while with generally increasing autonomy, but it does mean that expecting adult thinking about longer term life choices will be hit and miss at best. It makes no more sense to hold them forever responsible for their actions than it does to teach calculus in kindergarten.

While pulling everything off the internet forever isn't really possible, we can certainly disallow use of old information from childhood when deciding on employment or credit at the very least.

if you fear your kid getting a disease then keep your kid away from others or immunize them

Ignoring the shear absurdity of your suggestion, that's not the point. For the life of me, I cannot understand people who refuse to listen to science. The CDC is your friend. Seriously, please read this.

You need to learn about "hurd immunity". Here, I'll quote the NIH (another friend) for you:

When a critical portion of a community is immunized against a contagious disease, most members of the community are protected against that disease because there is little opportunity for an outbreak. Even those who are not eligible for certain vaccines—such as infants, pregnant women, or immunocompromised individuals—get some protection because the spread of contagious disease is contained. This is known as "community immunity."

We all love a good conspiracy theory, but this one has been thoroughly debunked. By advocating for non-immunization, you're putting innocents at risk.

N-acetyl carnosine drops have been used with good success for a while. Bought them for my grandmother in law. Over the course of a couple of years it halted and mostly reversed her developing cataracts. Can get them from multiple sources.

Here is a link to a paper describing some of the early research.

Thank you for pointing out that a small loop may not cause injury. A casual look at published guidelines shows that they say to remove _all_ metal, and some metal may be safe if designed carefully. But some guidelines accept that wedding rings, in particular, may be impossible to remove without cutting them and accept the modest risk. I'm looking particularly at this as an example:

                  http://www.mrisafety.com/Safet...

So you've raised a very good point, thank you for the refinement. In turn, I'll point out that not all patients in an MRI are conscious, and that not all loops are worn on the hand. There is a particular case, described at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu..., where a man with a very serious head injury had a "magnetic resonance safe" pressure monitor implanted in his head. It coupled to the MRI, and the tip melted in his brain.

Actually I wonder why 'piquancy' or 'pungency' (like in pepper) is not considered a sixth taste. It is sensed by a specific receptor and it is triggered by a variety of compounds: various capsainoids from peppers and compuonds in black pepper, mustard/wasabi, raw garlic, and so on.

Yay for vaccine, some day, even for infants.
Yay for FREE mosquito nets.
But you do realize however... these are measures that we --- the countries who have already eradicated Malaria --- would not tolerate, if WE were as affected as they?

THE WHITEWASHED VERSION OF HISTORY
You're living it. Most people have no real perspective on DDT at all, it is simply something evil which allowed persons in developed countries which had already eradicated Malaria to claim its discontinuance as "the greatest environmental victory for everybody, ever"... though actually, taking lead out of gasoline was the real greatest victory. Most are too zero-tolerance enviro-Puritan even to consider a distinction between a light regimen of spraying walls inside homes versus the (mind bogglingly huge) agricultural applications throughout North America up to 1972, which everyone agrees was a bad idea. DDT is simply some 'evil banned substance'. Anyone talking about it is a loon. Anyone asking, where could they possibly get some is a subversive. It has come to this. That is the extent of this modern ugly.

THE UNWASHED VERSION OF HISTORY: BLOOD ON OUR HANDS
How do you calculate the value of 50 million lives, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, most of them children? Sadly, you have to go to a politically motivated website to find this figure in proper context, and an an excellent summary of DDT's history:

"As recently as 2005, 500 million people around the world (approximately one-twelfth of the earth's population) were contracting malaria on an annual basis; and each year, 2 to 3 million of them died as a result. Since the 1972 U.S. ban on DDT, more than 50 million people--about 90 percent of whom resided in sub-Saharan Africa, and most of whom were children younger than five--have died of malaria. Said the World Health Organization, "more people are now infected [with malaria] than at any point in history," with "up to half a billion cases [being reported] every year." Anywhere from 1 to 2 million of those people die from the disease. Dr. Wenceslaus Kilama, chairman of Malaria Foundation International, placed this figure into perspective: "This is like loading up seven Boeing 747 airliners each day, then deliberately crashing them into Mt. Kilimanjaro." "The resurgence of a disease that was almost eradicated [many] years ago is a case study in the danger of putting concern for nature above concern for people," said Nizam Ahmad, a Bangladeshi analyst who focuses on the problems that affect developing countries.

Or find this Wayback New Yorker article describing the human triumph of malaria eradication that may well be from the point of view of DDT itself, for no other measure taken deserves near as much praise. Or this which cites a telling South African infection/mortality study with a particularly chilling graph.

Or the paper The Burden of Early Exposure to Malaria in the United States, 1850-1860: Malnutrition and Immune Disorders [2007] which not only describes the direct impact of malaria in the United States, but also suggests some previously-unexplored side effects of such an endemic disease on populations that made life really suck. For example, "Union Army recruits who spent their early years in malaria-endemic counties were 1.1 inches shorter at enlistment due to malnutrition and were 13 percent more susceptible to infections during the U.S. Civil War as a result of immune disorders than were those from malaria-free regions."

I'm not bringing all this up because I'm trying to convince you that Malaria is bad. We know it's bad. But in the early 1970s something happened within the United States and

They weren't doing dissections and studying structure. i.e. no anatomy.

Yet somehow, there are Chinese anatomical drawings from the third century C.E. that show "meridians" that are almost an exact replica of the human nervous system and "vessels" that are a near exact replica of the circulatory system.

You think they did that by guessing?

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

Though I suppose their backward understanding of health care is the reason there are so few Chinese left in the world.

I'm more at risk of dying from my spouse shooting me or from a weapon-related accident than from being shot at by criminals. See here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... [nih.gov]

You quote a NIH study when the NIH is ideologically opposed to firearm ownership to begin with. Lies, damn lies, and statistics. I dismiss this for the same reasons you'd dismiss a study funded by the NRA that contradicts it.

Incorrect. There are no such laws in pretty much EVERY state in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The Wiki page you cite does not address mandatory licensed firearm instructor run safety courses in any way. Just a few miles from where I live there is a gun range that does a brisk business in providing said mandatory courses. In the 9 States in which I've personally resided there were similar mandates. And then you cite a Salon article, a well known left-leaning website ideologically opposed to the 2nd Amendment? Really? Bias, much?

FYI, most legal gun owners are more competent and safe with a gun than many, if not most, law enforcement officers, and LEOs carry 24/7, even off-duty.

Complete BS. Most gun owners have trouble distinguishing which end of a gun actually shoots bullets.

You outdo yourself here with both a baseless ad hominem *and* a sweeping generalization with no evidence whatsoever. How "open minded" and Progressive of you.

I also have a right not to be shot by you, because you mess up the safety switch.

Since you've been in the military, you are a high risk for PTSD. So then, you're fine with being forbidden to obtain a driver's license and placed under constant surveillance, since you might snap at any time and decide to plow through a crowd with your 2-1/2 ton missile or go nuts with an axe, right?

A free and open society comes with risks. Being in such a constant state of fear, perhaps you should ask to be sent to a prison where you can be watched & protected from the "scary" world 24/7/365.

Your fear does not trump my natural and Constitutionally protected rights as a human being. Grow a set, or just grow up.

Strat

Care to explain the (any) logic in that?

I'm more at risk of dying from my spouse shooting me or from a weapon-related accident than from being shot at by criminals. See here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

There are laws requiring mandatory safety & competency training for legal handgun owners in nearly every jurisdiction.

Incorrect. There are no such laws in pretty much EVERY state in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... In most states you can just come in and buy a handgun with only a cursory background check (if that). A nice article: http://www.salon.com/2013/12/0...

FYI, most legal gun owners are more competent and safe with a gun than many, if not most, law enforcement officers, and LEOs carry 24/7, even off-duty.

Complete BS. Most gun owners have trouble distinguishing which end of a gun actually shoots bullets.

It's your right to be a defenseless victim for any armed criminal that comes along. You have no right to make that choice for others.

I also have a right not to be shot by you, because you mess up the safety switch.

So, the demand is show proof or go home. Proof shown and people fall all over themselves to ignore it. Still wonder why nobody bothers to look for proof?

This isn't even the first evidence found.

It's not proof.

a) The electric current was critical and is not part of typical or historical acupuncture.

b) They showed one effect related to a point, acupuncture claims many more.

c) 42 rats in 4 groups. Not a huge sample size.

d) Acupuncture is a controversial subject where one might expect dubious research to occasionally be published.

At most this offers very mild evidence that is consistent with acupuncture being effective. Note this study is at odds with studies that find the points don't really matter.

That's why revenue from these sources should be given out only after the base level funding is in place. Ideally, they should also be spent on related programs such as dealing with gambling addiction, which is more prevalent than one might expect. I have no problem with leftover money going to other areas, especially schools, but the school system should not depend on funding from gambling or other types of vice taxes.

In any event, there is plenty of evidence of biological differences in the brains of men and women...

Vaague handwaving over common-sense notions isn't systematic evidence.

It took me about 3 minutes to find the following studies showing that brain structure/chemistry is indeed different for men and women:

http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
http://nro.sagepub.com/content...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
http://www.brain-mind-institut...
http://scan.oxfordjournals.org...

The last two of the studies listed above don't just show gender specific biological differences in the brain, they link the differences to skills/behavior.

Honestly, a trained chimp could find this stuff. Why is it you can't?

It's a case of some is good, more is not necessarily better. A few articles that came instantly to hand (tho the one I wanted, with hard data, managed to elude quick search):

http://www.medicinenet.com/scr...
http://www.thyroid.org/ata-sta...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
http://www.thyroidresearchjour...

To what degree it relies on underlying conditions...?? Fact is about 25% of the "healthy" population, and 80% of people over 50 years old, have some degree of thyroid dysfunction (an adaptation against starvation especially in less-productive ie. older individuals). Suddenly that risk pool doesn't sound so small, does it??

That being said, I love seeing the potential of 3D printing in medicine, especially for skeletal components. It's amazing that we can go from a limited selection of pre-designed parts (if they were even available) like artificial joints to scanning a person and literally remaking or reconstructing THEIR skull, THEIR bones, not an idealized guesstimate. It's sci-fi coming to life in the best sense!

What's tragic, though, is that this child got this severe to begin with. Without being able to find a link to the actual paper, I don't know exactly what her situation was, but according to the report, she had CONGENITAL hydrocephalus. This has been progressing essentially since day one. Why did she not get a VP shunt placed in the first few weeks of life to prevent the pressure build up to begin with? If the description is right, even with a more normal skull size and no excess fluid, her brain is NEVER going to be right. The first 2-3 years of development are utterly critical, and development losses in that window may never be made up. I can't imagine that having a brain crushed between the excess CSF surrounding it and filling it from within the ventricles can cause anything but permanent problems. Prevention >>> Treatment, and all.

That being said, as sad as I am about this child's long term prospects, her quality of life should vastly improve almost immediately, and I'm so happy for her. I wish I could know more about her.

Nope, SRS and SRD are still there and engaging in harassement as they usually do. So she didn't even manage to clamp down on harassing subreddits.

Don't mistake what the FPH ban was : a political move to gain mainstream political correctness point in the eyes of the HAES and FA movements. Remember : 70% of americans are now overweight (source : http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/Pages/overweight-obesity-statistics.aspx). It pays to cater to the majority.

If the goal was banning harassment, FPH was not the subreddit to ban. For the most part, they were simply keeping to their own dark corner and doing their thing amongst themselves. You had to go out of your way to "get harassed", by visiting the subreddit while fat and looking for pictures of yourself. Or worse: submitting your pictures in an attempt to get attention.

You just bought the media narrative hook, line and sinker.

Mod parent up.

My dad had to deal with this in his early 70s, and was very painfully treated, successfully. Unfortunately, he passed from another form of cancer two years later. Recommended reading here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

The science to it is basically this: When sitting, your metabolism slows, you burn less calories, and all the fun that goes with that - higher likelihood to be overweight, thus higher blood pressure, cardiac issues, and so on. We have studies that prove this too.

So, don't sit right? Well, standing isn't very good for you either, not for long periods of time. We're lacking any really hard science on what the optimal time period really is, although we know that it's variable depending on the person. We do know that you're more at risk for immediate health problems from long periods of standing rather than sitting (which results in longer term, less immediate issues). For example, even with a soft gel mat, after a few weeks, one stander ended up with medical conditions.. They're not just an anomaly either; back pain, carotid atherosclerosis - a circulation issue, varicose veins, pinched nerves, and more are associated with long periods of standing.

The fact is that we don't really know how much standing is enough to ward off the dangers of sitting, and worse, we don't know how much standing is too much and will result in health problems. There's probably an optimal healthy point, but we don't have any studies that show where that optimal healthy point is on average, much less how it needs to be adjusted for an individual.

It's also important to note that positive claims associated with standing desks that are not associated with physical well-being, such as increased mental capacity, creativity, memory, attentiveness, productivity and so on, are largely due to recirculating personal anecdotes, which we know carry a strong bias and use no objective measures for comparison. What few studies there have been show no evidence of benefit, nor of detriment. In a obvious note though, they show that treadmill or cyling desks DO reduce attention and productivity by a significant amount, and they haven't been shown to result in any impressive health gains either - users average weight loss of only about 3 lbs a year, for example, and that's about the only study you'll find on the subject!

What this all means is that, scientifically speaking, advocating for the health benefits of a standing desk is about the same as advocating for the health properties of barefoot running, clay cleansing (or really any cleanses, including charcoal, pickle juice, and others), and the whole genre of fad diets.

There's no scientific proof that shows they are a net benefit, which means you shouldn't assume they provide one. They are just standard junk science until then - taking a fact or finding and running with it past the point and on to speculation and pure fantasy. In fact, these are more akin to the fad diets, in that you're not only not gaining a benefit, you're that much more likely to cause harm to yourself. Standing desks are the new fen phen.

If you're worried about staying healthy, skip the fads and just add an exercise plan to your day. Take a 40 minute walk at lunch. Maybe workout a few times a week. Eat healthy, but more important in most western countries, eat a proper portion size. That's all it really takes.

This isn't new.

Side effects of SSRI based anti-depressants - in addition to subduing the creative thought process and destroying the sex drive - include what has been termed emotional blunting.

In effect, blunting erodes one's ability to feel emotional response or empathy - such as being able to feel the 'warm fuzzies' in a relationship. This is a very dangerous road that can lead to sociopathy.

The stated side effects of SSRI based anti-depressants also include violent and/or suicidal behavior.

It is also interesting to note that the majority of mass shooters in the last 25 years have been under the influence of - or withdrawing from - SSRI based anti-depressents. John DeCamp, lawyer for the Columbine shooters, and author of The Franklin Cover-up, attempted to use the side effects of SSRI's as a defense. Details here.

Simply put, these drugs are terrible and should never have been allowed to be marketed.

Instead of reaching for pills, people with depression should instead get some regular exercise, a good diet and a positive attitude.

Pills are not the answer. Especially these pills.

I'm glad you found something that works for you.

This is a good meta-study, diving into guesswork and hypothesis on mechanisms of depression. Here's some science. TL;DR: pills, long-term (24 month), have over a 3/4 relapse rate; cognitive therapy, discontinued after 4 months, show just over 50% relapse in total after 24 months. Initially, PILLS ARE EXACTLY AS EFFECTIVE, IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY, AS COGNITIVE THERAPY. Exactly as effective. You can do absolutely no worse without drug therapy than you can by just talking to depressed people to make them feel better, and you do far better by talking to them and telling them how to get over it.

In a more recent CT -ADM placebo-controlled comparison, 240 severely depressed patients were randomized to ADM (n=120), CT (n=60) or a (pill) placebo control (n=60) treatment.

Big, randomized trial of people with ungodly hell depression (monopolar).

At the end of the 16-week treatment phase of the study, there were no differences in outcome between ADM and CT, with 58% of patients in both treatment groups meeting the criteria for ‘response’. Curiously, there was no indication that the two treatments affected different symptom clusters of depression: patients treated with either ADM or CT showed comparable rates of change of both cognitive and vegetative symptoms of depression.

Cognitive therapy (therapist nicely telling you how to get over it) is about exactly as effective in exactly the same way as taking pills. YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT!

In the continuation phase of the recent CT versus ADM study, patients who responded to 16 weeks of ADM were randomly assigned to either continue the treatment or change to a (pill) placebo condition. Patients who responded to 16 weeks of CT were withdrawn from treatment and allowed no more than three booster sessions (never more than one per month) during the first year of the follow-up period.

We took their meds away, and kicked all the therapy people out of therapy. Kept half the pill-heads on pills as a control, switched the other half to sugar pills, and didn't tell anyone.

As shown in FIG. 2, 76% of the ADM responders relapsed following medication withdrawal, compared with only 31% of the patients who had been treated with CT. Patients who continued ADM also fared better than patients who were assigned to the placebo treatment, with a relapse rate of 47% (which did not differ significantly from the 31% relapse rate in the CT group). After the continuation phase had ended, the patients who had not relapsed while on ADM were withdrawn from medication. Of these patients, 54% experienced a recurrence (the onset of a new depressive episode), compared with only 17% of the patients who had previously been given CT.

Like 3/4 of the pill-heads became severely depressed once we took the pills away; about 1/3 of the CT people had the same trouble. Half the people who stayed on pills relapsed, although in this study that's roughly equivalent (i.e. assume 47% == 31%): STAYING ON PILLS IS THE SAME AS QUITTING YOUR THERAPY AFTER 4 MONTHS. Of the pill users who didn't relapse, half of them relapsed after we took their meds away

Overall, just a hair under 50% of the patients who had CT for 4 months and then quit were, at 24 months, still cured. Just under 25% of patients who had drugs for 12 months came out of the 24 month period without having another depressive episode. Just under 10% of sugar pill patients were doing fine, no drugs and no therapy.

Drugs are facilitating: they provide you a baseline of feeling, which can help retrain your brain to behave in this new way by restricting its undesirable behavior. That can help; in the most extreme cases, drugs are *required*, because you simply can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps if your h

30% is just about the average in the Western world - nothing special about this particular group in this regard. It's a severely under appreciated problem when you consider the immense cost in DALY or YLD.

World Health Organization (WHO) states that depression is the leading cause of disability as measured by Years Lived with Disability (YLDs) and the fourth leading contributor to the global burden of disease.

Thank you!

BiPolar Disorder (manic depression is slang) is a very serious condition. Roughly 4% of the world's population is affected by BPD and Schizophrenia (Source).

My mother suffered from BPD. When she was off her lithium, the manic and depressive phases nearly tore our family apart multiple times. Personally, I've struggled with Depression a few times in my life even though financially, I'm very comfortable. Much of the last depressive episode was tied to the implosion of my last start-up. It's been a couple years since I exited that project and I'm only now reaching a point where I'm building my next new business. Fortunately, I have a fantastic support network and I'm not shy about seeking therapeutic help when needed because of my mother's experiences.

There is definitely stigma in many industries for mental health issues, regardless of how many years ago they were or current therapeutic activity. I don't talk about my mental health history in any professional context. There's no way investors would have faith in me or my business if they knew about the suicide attempts or other depression related history. As a multi decade survivor, I've learned how to read myself and my environment in a way that will hopefully help me live well for me and mine. It's also given me a keen eye for the signs of mental health issues in countless colleagues, coworkers and friends.

Our society is fucked up and currently configured in very unhealthy ways with those in control being disproportionately narcissistic (Source and psychopathic (Source), I don't expect anything to get better any time soon. Honestly, I'm glad our careers led us not to have kids, because this world won't be a better place for anyone in the bottom 98%.

"Moving" does not trigger any kind of fat loss. Only stimulating lipolysis can.

We have microbes on earth right now that could easily survive on Venus.

Eh? We have microbes that could survive as long as they stayed aloft in the Venusian atmosphere. At the surface of Venus, all life as we know it would die from the extreme heat. 400+ Celsius is no picnic for DNA and all life that we are aware of is based on DNA.

According to the summary of this paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

DNA begins to completely break down at 190C (in dry conditions).

Floating them in the atmosphere is quite doable and is a great idea. You are absolutely correct that we should concentrate on terraforming (not a real word?) Venus before Mars.

Now if we stop talking about mice and start talking about people we can look at what the science has always shown. There are things called diseases of modern culture. As in indigenous people who don't eat like western cultures have low cancer and mental illness rates and no heart attacks.

Except that science has never shown that. Atherosclerosis has been found in mummies (not just from Egypt but also Peru, the southwest America, and the Aleutian Islands), and the idea that modern Inuit have low rates of heart disease was never evidence-based

Fats and proteins don't spike the blood sugar.

But protein does spike insulin.

What science actually shows is what it's always shown: a diet based around whole plant foods, high in fiber and moderate to low in fat and protein, is the most healthful for primates, including those weird bald ones.

There's a well-known study on the effect of voluntary exercise on life expectancy. Just drop a running wheel in a rat cage, and see if they live longer. Turns out that young rats will run, literally, miles every day. They eventually get bored, or old, and stop running, but if you reduce their food intake by just 8%, they get back on the wheel and run.

To be a little hungry seems to stimulate activity and raise the mental state a bit. It may not be good for tasks that require sustained, focused attention, but that fidgety feeling you get before lunch can actually be directed.

There have been double-blind studies of electrosensitivity ( here are a couple that I came across: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... ).

People tend to discount the seriousness and validity of studies that don't support their beliefs, though.

And if you have beliefs like "government-funded science can't be trusted," "you have to come measure my environment instead of trying to isolate variables in a lab" or "I only react to cell towers for one specific carrier (so research about other cell transmissions must not be applicable)" it's easy to dismiss the validity of any studies that don't reinforce your convictions about electrosensitivity.

There have been double-blind studies of electrosensitivity ( here are a couple that I came across: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... ).

People tend to discount the seriousness and validity of studies that don't support their beliefs, though.

And if you have beliefs like "government-funded science can't be trusted," "you have to come measure my environment instead of trying to isolate variables in a lab" or "I only react to cell towers for one specific carrier (so research about other cell transmissions must not be applicable)" it's easy to dismiss the validity of any studies that don't reinforce your convictions about electrosensitivity.

How is most of your food transported?
How is most of your food refrigerated from farm to home?
How is most of the fertilizer mined (or made) and transported on site?
How are the machines that work the land powered?
How do you, personally, get to markets?
How do you power your refrigerator?

For more details, I refer you to this sweetly over-optimistic missive by those wild liberal radicals at the NIH ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... ). A grimmer, more realistic picture can be found here: ( http://www.wolfatthedoor.org.u... )

Is it? That HFCS is "bad" is something that everyone "knows", despite little or no evidence. The NIH did a comprehensive review of research on fructose, and found no basis for believing that replacing other sugars with fructose leads to obesity, or is worse for you than sucrose or glucose in any way. Yes, you should try to reduce the amount of sugar in your diet, but there is no reason to single out fructose over other sugars.

You are misinterpreting the abstract you pointed to. First, the NIH did not research the link between HFCS and increased BMI (weight gain). They "reviewed" existing studies. The conclusion of the review is that it discredits the non-scientific studies that have been done in the past (both showing an increase in obesity or not) and specifically states that there is not enough scientificly valid data to reach a conclusion one way or the other. It strongly recommends that more scientific research is needed specifically targeting the effect of HFCS and increased BMI.

HFCS is the worst offender

Is it? That HFCS is "bad" is something that everyone "knows", despite little or no evidence. The NIH did a comprehensive review of research on fructose, and found no basis for believing that replacing other sugars with fructose leads to obesity, or is worse for you than sucrose or glucose in any way. Yes, you should try to reduce the amount of sugar in your diet, but there is no reason to single out fructose over other sugars.

Yes, everyone know that fat makes you fat! Get rid of that coconut oil and change to something corn oil. Also, put down the steak and pickup something like a baked potato with margerine or maybe a nice Heart Healthy helping of pasta!

No really, what do they say?

HFCS is the worst offender

Is it? That HFCS is "bad" is something that everyone "knows", despite little or no evidence. The NIH did a comprehensive review of research on fructose, and found no basis for believing that replacing other sugars with fructose leads to obesity, or is worse for you than sucrose or glucose in any way. Yes, you should try to reduce the amount of sugar in your diet, but there is no reason to single out fructose over other sugars.

Exactly, and with Obamacare I wonder just how much was spent by big pharma to 'get that done'.

Some say homeopathic isn't the way to go, but what is Chinese medicine based upon? The medicinal use of garlic is awesome in the way it forms different compounds when it breaks down in the body but way to cheep to market, big pharma's gotta hate that with heart conditions; http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline... . I've seen doctors tell a cancer patient that they are a gonner, but I've seen Indian Bloodroot turn it around where mainstream medicine obviously failed. There is a large amount of American medicine that is based off organic compounds and that is exactly what homeopathy is about. To each their own unless you like Obamacare forced between your cheeks.

Besides, this isn't sci-fi anymore. Cross-species cloning using genetic material from one species in the ova of another was done sucessfully more than a decade ago (and I'm not sure if that linked study was even the first one). There really isn't much question about whether it is possible anymore. The only real question is whether we care about a species enough to bother to bring it back from extinction....

In fact there are relationships, and how these reflect to human models of both behavior and biologically have been studied
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
The long history of these techniques helps the other show the validity of their work because it is commonly known how reliable and variable the behavior.

The experiment is interesting in itself, it show that stimulation of the cells associated with a memory as it forms will affect their behavior. Additionally the effect supports the hypothesis on how the stimulation would affect the behavior.

Of course there are still ethical and moral consideration.. There may in fact be other better ways to investigate the same phenomina or it may be more ethical not to do the research at. However it is not fanciful sadism. It is a serious attempt to extend the understand of optigenetics, memory, behavior and depression

Based on the currently available evidence, the expert panel concluded that HFCS does not appear to contribute to overweight and obesity any differently than do other energy sources.

I'll be interested in seeing any links you can provide that proves the contrary. It's been repeatedly shown that the increase in BMI has less to do with HFCS or sugar and more to do with increased caloric consumption in general. Over reliance on fast food and poor dietary choices are the leading causes of obesity.

Here is some science on the effect of living in high-background radiation zones and cancer;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.angelfire.com/mo/ra...
http://www.inderscience.com/in...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

People living for generations in places like Kerala, Ramsar and Guarapari show no elevated incidence of cancer.

Here is some science on the effect of living in high-background radiation zones and cancer;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.angelfire.com/mo/ra...
http://www.inderscience.com/in...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

People living for generations in places like Kerala, Ramsar and Guarapari show no elevated incidence of cancer.

Whether the estimate is correct or not

It's not. It's based on the LNT-Linear No Threshold-model, that we today know is too conservative. Tjernobyl, Iran and Taiwan among others, have taught us as much.

Now, it's still a nice conservative model, and we don't know what to replace it with, or even if it should be replaced (being conservative and all), so everything is based on that. That has the nice side effect that we tend to err on the side of caution, but the downside is that people believe that "ultimately" there will be scores of cancers etc. from very low level dosages received by very large populations. That won't happen, we know that by now. If it did, then it would have already happened in the aforementioned instances and many more.

So, smart money is on basically no extra cases of cancer from long term exposure from Fukushima.

Whether the estimate is correct or not

It's not. It's based on the LNT-Linear No Threshold-model, that we today know is too conservative. Tjernobyl, Iran and Taiwan among others, have taught us as much.

Now, it's still a nice conservative model, and we don't know what to replace it with, or even if it should be replaced (being conservative and all), so everything is based on that. That has the nice side effect that we tend to err on the side of caution, but the downside is that people believe that "ultimately" there will be scores of cancers etc. from very low level dosages received by very large populations. That won't happen, we know that by now. If it did, then it would have already happened in the aforementioned instances and many more.

So, smart money is on basically no extra cases of cancer from long term exposure from Fukushima.

Flight attendants are "strictly regulated" on your planet? Sounds nice.

The only way I can make sense of your arguments is if you are making two unstated, and incorrect, assumptions. I don't like to put arguments in the mouths of others, but I can really see no other way to reach your conclusion. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

The first assumption is that the background radiation level is uniform across the planet.

It is not. And cancer rates are not positively related to the average background level of a region. In fact, they seem to be inversely related. Here is one link, the first one I found. Feel free to google as many more as you care to look for.

The second assumption is that life that evolved on a planet with background radiation, but without any mechanism to repair radiation damage.

This is also wrong. Cancer happens not when a cell mutates, but when a mutated cell is not rejected by the body, or not quickly enough. Long living animals, like humans, have lots and lots of repair and rejection systems. We call it hormesis when those repair mechanisms are stimulated by subacute doses.

Also, HWE does not appear to be dominant. See here for example.

Flight attendants are "strictly regulated" on your planet? Sounds nice.

The only way I can make sense of your arguments is if you are making two unstated, and incorrect, assumptions. I don't like to put arguments in the mouths of others, but I can really see no other way to reach your conclusion. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

The first assumption is that the background radiation level is uniform across the planet.

It is not. And cancer rates are not positively related to the average background level of a region. In fact, they seem to be inversely related. Here is one link, the first one I found. Feel free to google as many more as you care to look for.

The second assumption is that life that evolved on a planet with background radiation, but without any mechanism to repair radiation damage.

This is also wrong. Cancer happens not when a cell mutates, but when a mutated cell is not rejected by the body, or not quickly enough. Long living animals, like humans, have lots and lots of repair and rejection systems. We call it hormesis when those repair mechanisms are stimulated by subacute doses.

Also, HWE does not appear to be dominant. See here for example.

Well, see, yes, it does, because if that very long half life stuff gave off that much energy for that much longer (a) the engineers would have used that instead in the first place, and (b) others thought about this before you did and they already decided they're not using stuff like that.

Here:26 people in a nuclear lab accident inhaled scary doses of plutonium dust.After forty years later there had been one cancer death total. Over the subsequent years another two.. That's low for total number of deaths in that interval, and high for total cancer deaths, Inhaling plutonium dust in a nuclear lab accident isn't good, but you're not very likely going to die from it.

So, if you're close enough to a space probe that fell out of the sky but nobody can find where it fell despite being one of the most closely-watched events in history, and the steel case holding its nuclear heater fuel magically popped wide open and then even more magically ground its fuel rods to dust, and that dust filtered into your water supply (a million gallons is two Olympic-sized pools, a pond not a reservoir) and you drank so much of that you might as well have been in a nuclear lab accident inhaling it, then there's some chance you'll get cancer.

Supplement, singular. B12. Which they recommend EVERYONE over 50 take:

"People over 50 should get most of their vitamin B12 from fortified foods or dietary supplements because, in most cases, their bodies can absorb vitamin B12 from these sources."

I take 2x 1000mcg of B12 once a week. Had my blood tested a couple months ago, I've been vegan over 24yrs and my B12 is on the high end (535pmol/L, healthy range is 150-650.)

If you do your research, you'll find B12 deficiency is actually pretty common in non-vegans too, and many have to supplement even tho they're not vegan.

Try eating "meat alone", I promise you'll regret it after about a week when you have no energy and are completely constipated. They don't 'choose' it, it's their only option much of the year (and they do eat seaweed, some native plants that grow in the warmer. They don't live on ice 365 days a year.)

Plus, you'll need to eat quite differently to adapt - Vitamin C isn't present in cooked animal foods, so you'll need to consume raw liver and brains (or, frozen, as Inuit often do) to prevent scurvy. I'm sure you'll love doing this over taking that B12 supplement. Or are you willing to take Vitamin C daily, but not B12?

Next argument? =)

They are much less likely to be breastfed, which can change IQ by 3 points.

Not to detract from your main point, but breast feeding is one of those topics which has been highly politicized and any weird claims like this should be taken with a grain of salt. I've read a study claiming what you say (can't find it now), here's another study claiming that isn't true. There are many more. Enough that I think you'd need to be an expert in the field in order to sort between them.

Usually though, when researchers start dickering over this sort of thing, what you can say for sure is that whatever the effect may be it isn't large enough or definitive enough to shut up all the people who are wrong about it. So at the end of the day it likely doesn't matter.

but NO DRIVING while stoned

Tobacco smoking affects driving ability to a level similar to mobile phone use, but the evidence does not say the same about marijuana. (It's based on court convictions, which, guess what — are easier to get if someone has marijuana in their bloodstream, even though that doesn't mean anything, scientifically!)

Until and unless we ban smoking tobacco (which makes people more aggressive) while/before driving, criminalizing driving while/after smoking marijuana (which tends to do the opposite) is ever so much complete bullshit, and exists for absolutely no reason but revenue generation. Nictotine improves reaction times, but it also increases aggressiveness and what we need is safer, more responsible driving.

the US Govt needs to admit the war on marijuana is impractical and oppressive

And yet you support laws which are impractical and oppressive, only slightly less so, and then want a medal. Congratulations, the moderators gave you one. But it's plastic.

Incidentally, alcohol is regulated a lot more than you think it is. Not just anyone is allowed to produce it, or even own the equipment to produce it — in that respect, it is actually more restricted than marijuana! Having made it, you're not allowed to sell it, and you're only allowed to produce a small amount. All that is reasonable on some levels, because alcohol is flammable (only distillation equipment is controlled in any way, although you're only allowed to produce a certain amount of beer or wine per year as well) and a toxin. Marijuana is less flammable than things you're allowed to own any amount of, like polyester yarn or fluffy bunny fur, and so far nobody has been able to show any serious health drawbacks even with combustion and inhalation of large quantities of the stuff. So what's your basis for limiting production to six plants, et cetera?

You're just a tinier fascist.

Let's go after people for their driving behavior, not their brain chemistry, because people make their own brain chemistry and it's totally possible for you to be more unsafe to drive than if you had ingested a foreign substance without even doing so. Are we going to implant monitors in everyone's bloodstream that let them know when it's okay to drive? Or are we just going to keep making cars and roads safer and eventually phase out non-self-driving vehicles from public roads, and maybe even do away with those idiotic strips of tarmac altogether? Because I think it's stupid that we're still paying for these when there are superior alternatives, and having this debate is basically fucking retarded when we should be debating superior transportation technologies that make the argument moot. Then the officials of the race tracks can decide what chemicals you're allowed to have in your blood stream while you operate an automobile.

And basically the same things are pushed by people that drink and drive..... Sure there are some that might be able to drive without causing problems, but there are many that cannot.

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

There have been many studies, and partly what you say is accurate.. it's very common for people being high driving slower.. But driving is not only avoiding causing a crash but trying to stay out of crashes that other people might cause.... And here we have the same thing as with alcohol, some people can drive, but some that cannot...

24 hour grace-period should be good for all smokers...

They are wired differently than men, this is a KNOWN AND ACCEPTED FACT to anyone

Surely you can provide examples of relevant studies that show this shocking discrepancy between men and women?

Note that I say "RELEVANT" studies. You know, ones that show that "women don't like computers because... tits."

Because when I look, I find papers like this:

In this paper, we use meta-analysis to analyze gender differences in recent studies of mathematics performance. First, we meta-analyzed data from 242 studies published between 1990 and 2007, representing the testing of 1,286,350 people. Overall, d = .05, indicating no gender difference, and VR = 1.08, indicating nearly equal male and female variances. Second, we analyzed data from large data sets based on probability sampling of U.S. adolescents over the past 20 years: the NLSY, NELS88, LSAY, and NAEP. Effect sizes for the gender difference ranged between 0.15 and +0.22. Variance ratios ranged from 0.88 to 1.34. Taken together these findings support the view that males and females perform similarly in mathematics.

Given that Computer Science is a branch of mathematics, I'd say the onus is on you to prove that there's some sort of biological underpinning that causes this "different wiring" to cause women to hate math and science.

Actually it has some medical effects.

The question is whether the hormonal level modifications are beneficial or not. Obviously, *cooking* the placenta would denature the proteins involved, so the way it's typically practiced among modern humans (which involves cooking) is clearly not beneficial, other than as a source of nutrients and heavy metals.

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

Citation
"Existing evidence indicates that EC use is by far a less harmful alternative to smoking. There is no tobacco and no combustion involved in EC use; therefore, regular vapers may avoid several harmful toxic chemicals that are typically present in the smoke of tobacco cigarettes. Indeed, some toxic chemicals are released in the EC vapor as well, but their levels are substantially lower compared with tobacco smoke, and in some cases (such as nitrosamines) are comparable with the amounts found in pharmaceutical nicotine products. Surveys, clinical, chemistry and toxicology data have often been mispresented or misinterpreted by health authorities and tobacco regulators, in such a way that the potential for harmful consequences of EC use has been largely exaggerate"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

If there were a way to objectively measure "creativity" I suspect it would also correlate (weakly) with SAT scores, since creativity typically requires a modicum of intelligence. This research suggests a rough threshold of 120 IQ to support "high-level" creativity.