Dungeons and Dragons doesn't have roleplaying, just caster-playing. Charm person, contact other plane, detect invisibility, ESP, clairvoyance, clairaudience, comprehend languages, teleport, identify, detect lies, speak with dead, speak with animals, speak with plants, locate object. You roleplay until the spellcasting characters in the group get a few levels under their belt, and after that everything but combat is finished in 3 minutes of player time with a few spells. Then you're back to hacking and slashing everything in your path, absolutely no different from World of Warcraft or any other grinding RPG.
Need to get somewhere? Need to translate something? Need to figure out what that magic trinket does? Need to find something? Need to negotiate? Listen in on a conversation? Spy on someone? Get some long-lost piece of information? A mid level Dungeons and Dragons spellcaster does it all.
There are plenty of tabletop roleplaying games that offer a much more interesting and immersive character experience than any computer game. But if you want a game like that, I suggest you pick one that doesn't include every imaginable form of information gathering instantaneous transport in spells. I like Dungeons and Dragons, but there are dozens of better options for actual storytelling and roleplaying.
I grant that. Better XP system. Better multiclassing system. Better handling of attribute bonuses (instead of a separate chart for each ability). More uniform and logical saving throw system. More uniform and logical hit dice, attack bonus, and multi-attack bonus - THAC0 has nostalgic value, but the current system is much easier to grasp. More logical and easier to understand Turning Undead. Better and faster initiative system. More logical spell ranges (personal, touch, short, medium, long, unlimited). Dropped different weapon damages versus different size enemies, dropped weapon speeds. A thousand large and small moves to make the system more coherent and easier to grasp.
Then they add a dozen complicated new aspects and return to the same 20th level Bloated Mess they had in the previous edition.
There were tons of simplifications between Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and 3rd edition, but then they tossed in a whole horde of additional complications. Specifically, attacks of opportunity, the ability for single characters to have multiple prestige classes, the new skills and cross class skill systems, and feats: attack of opportunity feats, item crafting feats, other combat feats, metamagic feats, feat pre-requisites, feat trees. Add in more spells, more magic items, damage reduction, stacking and non-stacking bonuses. Plus monster classes. Now, the concept of monsters with character classes makes sense abstractly: Orc barbarian, Goblin master thief, Dragon wizard, whatever. But now they get their own feats, and attacks of opportunity, and prestige classes, and so forth.
All that added complexity is spectacular for a computer game or perhaps a tabletop wargame. But it's just too damn complicated for good old Pen and Paper roleplaying for me. In my book, 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons was 50 steps forward from previous editions and 49 steps back. I'd rather play something else, like Spirit of the Centuryhttp://www.evilhat.com/?spirit, Mutants and Mastermindshttp://mutantsandmasterminds.com/, or The Dying Earth RPGhttp://www.dyingearth.com/. Unless every reviewer screams from the rooftops that 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons is radically simpler, I won't give it a second glance.
There's something wrong with that girl that's made her way too fucking hungry. Fix the hunger, and she'll stop stuffing her face all by herself. If you just take the food away today, she will continue to be hungry and stuff her face tomorrow.
Some people's bodies process sugar properly. For other people, after a while digesting large amounts of sugar, their body becomes resistant to the hormone insulin. Their body has to release excess insulin to compensate for the resistance. If the trend continues, the body requires so much insulin that external sources are required: that is Type 2 Diabetes. But whether a person is officially diabetic or not, excess insulin in your body blocks leptin, the hormone that regulates your appetite. So one person with normal insulin levels can eat 500 calories and feel full, and another person with high insulin levels can eat the exact same meal and still feel like they didn't eat anything at all.
Protein Power, Low Glycemic Load eating, and Atkins diet all work by taking sugary foods out of your diet for a while. After a few days of that, your insulin levels return to normal. Then your leptin works normally, and *poof* the 500 calorie meal that should fill you up does fill you up. You stop stuffing your face because you aren't hungry. I've lost 15 pounds in six weeks, and except for the first few days when I was adapting to the program, no willpower was involved. I intend to continue until I reach a healthy size, and then basically continue eating this way indefinitely. It looks like I need to cut out sugar almost entirely - but if that's the price of staying thin, it's worth paying.
I said all this up thread, and you've repeatedly ignored it. Once more: Try to picture the worst hunger you've ever experienced, and then imagine feeling that way three hours after your previous meal, every day of your life. I bet that's what that poor 7 year old girl experiences, because her system is so messed up. I bet it's also what so many obese and morbidly obese people experience. In the face of that, simply making yourself stop eating when your stomach feels like you only took one bite is damn near impossible - and that's precisely why simple "eat less" fat loss programs fail for the majority of people. Hundreds of millions of people have tried it, many of them dozens and dozens of times, and sooner or later the constant feeling of starvation wins. Switch to foods that leave your blood sugar levels stable, you stop being hungry, and then you eat like a normal human being without even trying.
Most "educator's" are totally disconnected from reality. They surrounded themselves in school their entire lives, generally in a public servant type role. They think they know what's best for kids but really they have just overdosed on talks and reports from overpaid sociologists that pull theories out of their asses. This is why I refuse to send my kids to public school.
3 to 1 says the plan was hatched by some school administrator or politician in the state department of education. It may even be an attempt to artificially inflate student test scores. e.g. Invent a 'Home Economics' track, shoehorn your less intelligent students into it, and then use it as an excuse to exempt them from science testing so that your average science test score per child tested increases.
Check the local school board. Everyone wants to know who gets to be president in 2008, and nobody pays attention to the jackass convention that thinks 1 teacher for every 35 students is too much but plans to increase taxes to fund a six million dollar football stadium. Your vote, and asking your friends and family and neighbors to vote, counts a lot more in the district school board elections than in state-wide or national elections.
Most of the people who go into teaching really want to help kids. It's a damn hard job, because with class preparation and reviewing tests and homeworks you put in a solid 50 or 60 hour work week. To make matters worse, because teaching is not a prestigious, highly compensated occupation, most of the US brightest high school graduates avoid it. And of course, they feel the pain of dumb school boards and bureaucratic regulation from administrators and politicians ten times more than anyone else. That's why there are terrible teachers in the mix - because many people smart enough to be brilliant teachers chose less work, less red tape, and probably 20% more money in the private sector.
Well if a pedophile shoots himself, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. But your argument applies to alcoholics, smokers, and drug addicts too. Is it more addictive than food? Hells yes. But you can quit them cold turkey. The obese have to eat every day, just like everyone else. While I'm at it, I doubt most people take up chain smoking when they were 2 or binge drinking when they were 5 - but most of your people started eating the foods that cause insulin resistance and related appetite problems at those ages.
I am continually astonished that you and others like you have no understanding of the experience. Sit down to all of your meals, and eat half your normal portions. Try it for a few months. Then contemplate doing that every day for the rest of your life. Then come talk to me. Until then, you have no grounds for comparison.
I bet almost all of the fat people out there do have a medical condition - something has their appetite out of whack. Now I found something - in my case, Atkins - and I'm just not hungry like I used to be. The only willpower and responsibility involved was reading the damn book. Everything else has been easy. I'm the same lazy glutton who likes tasty food that I always was - but now I know foods to pick which fill me up with smaller portions, and leave me feeling full much longer. I'm not eating less by willpower, I'm eating less because I'm less hungry.
Once your blood sugar gets out of whack, it interferes with your body's ability to regulate your appetite. It blocks the effects of the hormone leptin. You are always hungry. If you try to eat small portions, you are always starving. You may look like you're stuffing your face, but all you're trying to do is feel satisfied.
Figure out how to get your blood sugar and insulin levels down to normal levels, and your appetite returns to normal all on its own.
I'm positively stuffed on relatively modest portions in the Atkins diet, whereas I would eat like a pig before and still feel hungry.
You are ignoring prior contributing factors to the problem.
If your insulin regulation is out of whack from too much sugar, it interferes with leptin, the hormone that normally controls your appetite. That's why fat people are fat. They don't eat 110% or 130% of what it takes to feel full. They eat 130% of what it takes for a normal person to feel full, and they're still hungry.
If you haven't experienced it, passing judgment on those who have is obnoxious. You are simply much hungrier than you should be nearly all of the time. Pitting your will in a perpetual head on battle against an appetite you can't control is a battle you will lose.
A traditional Japanese diet, South Beach, Atkins, the Low Glycemic Index Diet, and a host of other eating programs address fat loss by addressing the appetite problem. After a few weeks on the program, your blood sugar and insulin levels return to normal, your leptin is able to do its job, and you simply stop being unnaturally hungry. You still eat until you're satisfied, but now that your appetite is normal it does not take nearly as much food to fill you up.
I'm on the Atkins program, and I am permitted to eat as much food as I want. I'm quite full on less than 2000 calories a day. Before I started, it took a lot of willpower to eat less than 3000 calories per day. (Since I'm actually following Atkins as written, as not as sensationalized in the news, I also get a minimum 3 cups of green vegetables per day and exercise.) My tip to anyone trying to get rid of fat: find an eating program that makes you less hungry. Get that, and the fat comes off on its own.
The only way "PUTTING DOWN THE FORK OR TAKING THEIR HAND OUT OF THE BAG" works without considering these appetite factors is if you stick the person in a prison cell and only pass in portions they are permitted to have. Otherwise, sooner or later their appetite will win and they'll go on a binge.
In fat control, cardio activities are far more important than strength training.
I realize that, but between a job, a long commute, a suburban house near roads where people drive at approximately Mach 2, and 2 young children I find 60-90 minutes of strength training per week far easier to shoehorn into my schedule than taking a long walk every day - especially since I would need to drive somewhere to walk safely.
And while I can't cite individual studies, it's becoming clear to me that high fructose corn syrup (HFC) is a culprit of many of the weight issues Americans have. Look at the labels. You will see a lot of HFC in processed foods. Phenomenon such as the French Paradox seems to come partially from the fact that the French consume substantially less HFC than Americans.
Thanks, but that much I already figured out. I've already eliminated High Fructose Corn Syrup.
Fats have been maligned in the past decades, but consuming fat in the absence of skewed blood sugar is a tremendous appetite suppressant. That is probably the largest factor in the success of the low-carbohydrate diets: after a week with level blood sugar, normal portions once again satisfy your hunger. What's worse? 30 grams of fat in a 500 calorie dinner, or 10 grams of fat in a 900 calorie dinner? As I am all too aware, low fat diets reduce your calories but boost your appetite, pitting you in a battle of wills against your stomach that you will lose sooner or later.
I have the luxury of being able to afford meats from free-range cattle and chickens, so I will focus on that too. Now if I can figure out how to budget half an hour per day for cardiovascular fitness - usually by the time the kids are asleep, I'm so tired I can't see straight. I'll consider the book, but I've already read a few reviews stating that the physicians hit most of the marks but have inaccurate information regarding soy, coconut oil, and a few other items.
No, I'm not naturally skinny. I'm unnaturally fat.:) 6', 216 pounds, 42" waist. I'm working on slimming down now (of course, of course, I'm focusing on a lifelong change in eating habits and not just starving until I'm skinnier and then returning to overeating). I'm shooting for a BMI 25 - about 182 pounds. When I get there, I plan on measuring my waist and then trying to gain as much muscle as possible while keeping my waist at that size. In the meanwhile, I'm keeping my strength training workouts brief and relatively easy because intense weightlifting stokes my appetite like crazy.
Thanks for the response, though. I appreciate any help I can get.
This may not be the place for it, but what routine do you do and what nutrition program do you follow?
I've tried most common, and not-so-common routines for months and in some cases years at a time (let's see: Schwarzenegger's Bodybuilding Bible, Mentzer's Heavy Duty 2, Hutchin's Super Slow, Sisco and Little's Power Factor Training, McRobert's Brawn, Haycock's Hypertrophy-Specific Training, Darden's Living Longer Stronger, Arthur Jones' style High Intensity Training, and god knows how many different fitness magazine and Men's Health routines, low reps heavy weight, high reps light weight) and had my protein intake up at or above 150 grams per day for weeks at a time. Except for a few freak periods which I cannot reproduce, nothing seems to put anywhere near one pound per month of muscle on me.
Usually I build the routines around squats or bent leg deadlifts, pullups (where, I'm ashamed to admit, I have to use a chair because even though I hammer away at it I'm too weak to do more than one unassisted), and shoulder press.
I know there is no magic bullet, but do you have any suggestions?
Given a choice between pumping millions of hot coal dust into the atmosphere and hot steam, I'll take the steam every time. That's especially true if it turns out that these geothermal plants are safer to operate than coal mines.
Until more environmentally friendly alternatives are available on a massive scale, this sounds like the best lesser evil we have available.
RTFA
It could be crap. I'm not an endocrinologist. But if the article is true:
1. High fructose intake interferes with the body's ability to feel full. That would explain why people eat too much.
2. The food manufacturers noted that people tended to eat larger portions of foods with fructose. So they started increasing fructose in those foods in order to sell more.
3. Both the Atkins diet and the traditional Japanese diet both work against obesity. In most ways the two diets are the opposite of each other, but they have in common extremely low levels of fructose intake.
I've heard the cry of "personal responsibility" over obesity before. But simply making yourself eat less than you want for months on end is incredibly difficult. After a while all you can think about is food. Finding out what makes you feel much hungrier than you should be and short-circuiting that would be an ideal solution.
But from the article, taking in lots of fructose can dramatically boost your body's insulin production, which in turn blocks the hormone leptin. Leptin regulates the appetite.
If your appetite is not out of whack, a small Pulled Pork Sandwich or medium portion of Onion Rings will fill you up. Then you're done. It may not be great for you, but it shouldn't be dangerous. On the other hand, if something (fructose or otherwise) has interfered with your ability to feel full after eating a healthy portion, then you might have extra helpings of both. Then there's a problem.
Get real, that does happen. We have a product, which is a set of surveys patients or their caregivers can take. Each survey event represents a survey taken by a patient or caregiver regarding one particular patient. Each survey event results in one associated report getting printed. Survey event completion also generates scores, and score values can trigger up to 2 additional reports. The additional report behavior is governed by a score to report mapping table. Also, each survey can have alternate reports specified based upon site and product settings.
When an administrator logs into the system, an 11 table join is done to generate the list of survey_reports. For sites with 3000 patients and 4500 surveys, it takes Postgres less than a second on old hardware.
I'm living in Europe where we don't have guns but still we have mostly honest governments that respect, and to some extent even fear, the people
US spending on the military, even excluding Iraq and Afghanistan, dwarfs the spending of any other nation. We also have colossal intelligence gathering agencies. Our government is in a much stronger position relative to the average citizens than yours - and our current leaders keep reaching for more power, and encountering just token resistance from most of the populace.
America. Leading the rest of the world in the race to 1984.
If there aren't enough developers comfortable with those concepts, there won't be companies using them. If they aren't used, more jobs won't appear. If more jobs don't appear, nobody will learn them. Repeat loop.
I work with Java, and have worked with C++ in the past. I've been trying to pick up functional programming - mainly Haskell - and LISP on my own off and on for years. I'm not finding it easy, although that probably reflects more upon my intelligence and the programming habits I already possess than the learning curve. But even when I do get a good grasp on this stuff, where can I apply it?
For mainstream acceptance, "advanced" languages (define that how you will) require their killer app - and it isn't here yet. Two things give me some interest and hope, though. Functional languages for parallel programming, like game graphics: http://www.st.cs.uni-sb.de/edu/seminare/2005/advan ced-fp/docs/sweeny.pdf . Or, perhaps a useful Continuation Server could be written in a functional language or LISP.
Special corrosive-resistant parts are required for E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) engines, which is why every automaker can't just slap an "E85" sticker on every gas engine they produce. Converting our existing gasoline engine automobiles to ethanol would not be cheap - probably hundreds of dollars in parts and hundreds more in labor per vehicle.
More importantly, ethanol has a much lower energy density but much higher octane rating than gasoline. All current E85 compatible engines in the US get abysmal fuel economy when using E85 fuel, because they are designed for gasoline use. An engine designed from the ground up for only ethanol use could get power and fuel economy per gallon comparable to a gasoline engine - but then migrating to that engine is no cheaper than switching to a diesel engine.
And why would you trust it any more than MS or Cisco or others? Using "Open source" as an equivalent of "cryptographically impregnable" is a dangerous misconception. A serious company selling security solutions has a compelling interest to ensure the correctness and robustness of their solution; an anonymous coder doesn't really, even assuming he's a bona fide developer trying to provide a good solution, and not some russian hacker really curious about your credit card number.
See, I've worked for and with the big companies, and primary interest is profit. The emphasis was never on "best security possible", but always on "good enough to sell".
For a comparatively easy example, check Bruce Shneier's analysis of the Micosoft Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol. http://www.schneier.com/paper-pptpv2.html
The open source developer could be a crook, he could be an amateur that isn't nearly as intelligent about security as he thinks he is, or he could be lazy. I accept that. But there's a decent chance the open source guy is just trying to write good software. The software corporation has to prioritize profit first and good software second, or they won't last long. Even if the developer has good intentions, the accountants trying to make enough money to pay the developer are running the show. I am sympathetic to the accountants' situation - but that doesn't mean I trust them.
It's my understanding that steam cars died because they were inconvenient. Parts rusted, water froze and ruptured areas, and worst of all each time you wanted to use it, it had to spend a few minutes building steam.
Is it possible that technological advances in the past 80 years would let us overcome some or all of those problems, and also improve the efficiency?
This is a one-off car set to break a performance record, not an attempt at an efficient mass production vehicle.
Read wikipedia. Steam cars died primarily because they were high maintenance and required several minutes' time to build steam before they could move. Internal combustion engines had a lower risk of rust or damage from freezing and could be started and driven immediately. Inconvenience killed the steam car, not inefficiency.
Slashdot Mirror
Dungeons and Dragons doesn't have roleplaying, just caster-playing. Charm person, contact other plane, detect invisibility, ESP, clairvoyance, clairaudience, comprehend languages, teleport, identify, detect lies, speak with dead, speak with animals, speak with plants, locate object. You roleplay until the spellcasting characters in the group get a few levels under their belt, and after that everything but combat is finished in 3 minutes of player time with a few spells. Then you're back to hacking and slashing everything in your path, absolutely no different from World of Warcraft or any other grinding RPG.
Need to get somewhere? Need to translate something? Need to figure out what that magic trinket does? Need to find something? Need to negotiate? Listen in on a conversation? Spy on someone? Get some long-lost piece of information? A mid level Dungeons and Dragons spellcaster does it all.
There are plenty of tabletop roleplaying games that offer a much more interesting and immersive character experience than any computer game. But if you want a game like that, I suggest you pick one that doesn't include every imaginable form of information gathering instantaneous transport in spells. I like Dungeons and Dragons, but there are dozens of better options for actual storytelling and roleplaying.
I grant that. Better XP system. Better multiclassing system. Better handling of attribute bonuses (instead of a separate chart for each ability). More uniform and logical saving throw system. More uniform and logical hit dice, attack bonus, and multi-attack bonus - THAC0 has nostalgic value, but the current system is much easier to grasp. More logical and easier to understand Turning Undead. Better and faster initiative system. More logical spell ranges (personal, touch, short, medium, long, unlimited). Dropped different weapon damages versus different size enemies, dropped weapon speeds. A thousand large and small moves to make the system more coherent and easier to grasp.
Then they add a dozen complicated new aspects and return to the same 20th level Bloated Mess they had in the previous edition.
There were tons of simplifications between Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and 3rd edition, but then they tossed in a whole horde of additional complications. Specifically, attacks of opportunity, the ability for single characters to have multiple prestige classes, the new skills and cross class skill systems, and feats: attack of opportunity feats, item crafting feats, other combat feats, metamagic feats, feat pre-requisites, feat trees. Add in more spells, more magic items, damage reduction, stacking and non-stacking bonuses. Plus monster classes. Now, the concept of monsters with character classes makes sense abstractly: Orc barbarian, Goblin master thief, Dragon wizard, whatever. But now they get their own feats, and attacks of opportunity, and prestige classes, and so forth.
All that added complexity is spectacular for a computer game or perhaps a tabletop wargame. But it's just too damn complicated for good old Pen and Paper roleplaying for me. In my book, 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons was 50 steps forward from previous editions and 49 steps back. I'd rather play something else, like Spirit of the Century http://www.evilhat.com/?spirit, Mutants and Masterminds http://mutantsandmasterminds.com/, or The Dying Earth RPG http://www.dyingearth.com/. Unless every reviewer screams from the rooftops that 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons is radically simpler, I won't give it a second glance.
And again, you didn't read what I said.
There's something wrong with that girl that's made her way too fucking hungry. Fix the hunger, and she'll stop stuffing her face all by herself. If you just take the food away today, she will continue to be hungry and stuff her face tomorrow.
Some people's bodies process sugar properly. For other people, after a while digesting large amounts of sugar, their body becomes resistant to the hormone insulin. Their body has to release excess insulin to compensate for the resistance. If the trend continues, the body requires so much insulin that external sources are required: that is Type 2 Diabetes. But whether a person is officially diabetic or not, excess insulin in your body blocks leptin, the hormone that regulates your appetite. So one person with normal insulin levels can eat 500 calories and feel full, and another person with high insulin levels can eat the exact same meal and still feel like they didn't eat anything at all.
Protein Power, Low Glycemic Load eating, and Atkins diet all work by taking sugary foods out of your diet for a while. After a few days of that, your insulin levels return to normal. Then your leptin works normally, and *poof* the 500 calorie meal that should fill you up does fill you up. You stop stuffing your face because you aren't hungry. I've lost 15 pounds in six weeks, and except for the first few days when I was adapting to the program, no willpower was involved. I intend to continue until I reach a healthy size, and then basically continue eating this way indefinitely. It looks like I need to cut out sugar almost entirely - but if that's the price of staying thin, it's worth paying.
I said all this up thread, and you've repeatedly ignored it. Once more: Try to picture the worst hunger you've ever experienced, and then imagine feeling that way three hours after your previous meal, every day of your life. I bet that's what that poor 7 year old girl experiences, because her system is so messed up. I bet it's also what so many obese and morbidly obese people experience. In the face of that, simply making yourself stop eating when your stomach feels like you only took one bite is damn near impossible - and that's precisely why simple "eat less" fat loss programs fail for the majority of people. Hundreds of millions of people have tried it, many of them dozens and dozens of times, and sooner or later the constant feeling of starvation wins. Switch to foods that leave your blood sugar levels stable, you stop being hungry, and then you eat like a normal human being without even trying.
Most "educator's" are totally disconnected from reality. They surrounded themselves in school their entire lives, generally in a public servant type role. They think they know what's best for kids but really they have just overdosed on talks and reports from overpaid sociologists that pull theories out of their asses. This is why I refuse to send my kids to public school.
3 to 1 says the plan was hatched by some school administrator or politician in the state department of education. It may even be an attempt to artificially inflate student test scores. e.g. Invent a 'Home Economics' track, shoehorn your less intelligent students into it, and then use it as an excuse to exempt them from science testing so that your average science test score per child tested increases.
Check the local school board. Everyone wants to know who gets to be president in 2008, and nobody pays attention to the jackass convention that thinks 1 teacher for every 35 students is too much but plans to increase taxes to fund a six million dollar football stadium. Your vote, and asking your friends and family and neighbors to vote, counts a lot more in the district school board elections than in state-wide or national elections.
Most of the people who go into teaching really want to help kids. It's a damn hard job, because with class preparation and reviewing tests and homeworks you put in a solid 50 or 60 hour work week. To make matters worse, because teaching is not a prestigious, highly compensated occupation, most of the US brightest high school graduates avoid it. And of course, they feel the pain of dumb school boards and bureaucratic regulation from administrators and politicians ten times more than anyone else. That's why there are terrible teachers in the mix - because many people smart enough to be brilliant teachers chose less work, less red tape, and probably 20% more money in the private sector.
Obviously you failed reading comprehension.
Well if a pedophile shoots himself, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. But your argument applies to alcoholics, smokers, and drug addicts too. Is it more addictive than food? Hells yes. But you can quit them cold turkey. The obese have to eat every day, just like everyone else. While I'm at it, I doubt most people take up chain smoking when they were 2 or binge drinking when they were 5 - but most of your people started eating the foods that cause insulin resistance and related appetite problems at those ages.
I am continually astonished that you and others like you have no understanding of the experience. Sit down to all of your meals, and eat half your normal portions. Try it for a few months. Then contemplate doing that every day for the rest of your life. Then come talk to me. Until then, you have no grounds for comparison.
I bet almost all of the fat people out there do have a medical condition - something has their appetite out of whack. Now I found something - in my case, Atkins - and I'm just not hungry like I used to be. The only willpower and responsibility involved was reading the damn book. Everything else has been easy. I'm the same lazy glutton who likes tasty food that I always was - but now I know foods to pick which fill me up with smaller portions, and leave me feeling full much longer. I'm not eating less by willpower, I'm eating less because I'm less hungry.
When a child rapist has to do just a little bit of raping every day or he will die of a wasting illness, come talk to me.
Once your blood sugar gets out of whack, it interferes with your body's ability to regulate your appetite. It blocks the effects of the hormone leptin. You are always hungry. If you try to eat small portions, you are always starving. You may look like you're stuffing your face, but all you're trying to do is feel satisfied.
Figure out how to get your blood sugar and insulin levels down to normal levels, and your appetite returns to normal all on its own.
I'm positively stuffed on relatively modest portions in the Atkins diet, whereas I would eat like a pig before and still feel hungry.
You are ignoring prior contributing factors to the problem.
If your insulin regulation is out of whack from too much sugar, it interferes with leptin, the hormone that normally controls your appetite. That's why fat people are fat. They don't eat 110% or 130% of what it takes to feel full. They eat 130% of what it takes for a normal person to feel full, and they're still hungry.
If you haven't experienced it, passing judgment on those who have is obnoxious. You are simply much hungrier than you should be nearly all of the time. Pitting your will in a perpetual head on battle against an appetite you can't control is a battle you will lose.
A traditional Japanese diet, South Beach, Atkins, the Low Glycemic Index Diet, and a host of other eating programs address fat loss by addressing the appetite problem. After a few weeks on the program, your blood sugar and insulin levels return to normal, your leptin is able to do its job, and you simply stop being unnaturally hungry. You still eat until you're satisfied, but now that your appetite is normal it does not take nearly as much food to fill you up.
I'm on the Atkins program, and I am permitted to eat as much food as I want. I'm quite full on less than 2000 calories a day. Before I started, it took a lot of willpower to eat less than 3000 calories per day. (Since I'm actually following Atkins as written, as not as sensationalized in the news, I also get a minimum 3 cups of green vegetables per day and exercise.) My tip to anyone trying to get rid of fat: find an eating program that makes you less hungry. Get that, and the fat comes off on its own.
The only way "PUTTING DOWN THE FORK OR TAKING THEIR HAND OUT OF THE BAG" works without considering these appetite factors is if you stick the person in a prison cell and only pass in portions they are permitted to have. Otherwise, sooner or later their appetite will win and they'll go on a binge.
In fat control, cardio activities are far more important than strength training.
I realize that, but between a job, a long commute, a suburban house near roads where people drive at approximately Mach 2, and 2 young children I find 60-90 minutes of strength training per week far easier to shoehorn into my schedule than taking a long walk every day - especially since I would need to drive somewhere to walk safely.
And while I can't cite individual studies, it's becoming clear to me that high fructose corn syrup (HFC) is a culprit of many of the weight issues Americans have. Look at the labels. You will see a lot of HFC in processed foods. Phenomenon such as the French Paradox seems to come partially from the fact that the French consume substantially less HFC than Americans.
Thanks, but that much I already figured out. I've already eliminated High Fructose Corn Syrup. Fats have been maligned in the past decades, but consuming fat in the absence of skewed blood sugar is a tremendous appetite suppressant. That is probably the largest factor in the success of the low-carbohydrate diets: after a week with level blood sugar, normal portions once again satisfy your hunger. What's worse? 30 grams of fat in a 500 calorie dinner, or 10 grams of fat in a 900 calorie dinner? As I am all too aware, low fat diets reduce your calories but boost your appetite, pitting you in a battle of wills against your stomach that you will lose sooner or later.
I have the luxury of being able to afford meats from free-range cattle and chickens, so I will focus on that too. Now if I can figure out how to budget half an hour per day for cardiovascular fitness - usually by the time the kids are asleep, I'm so tired I can't see straight. I'll consider the book, but I've already read a few reviews stating that the physicians hit most of the marks but have inaccurate information regarding soy, coconut oil, and a few other items.
No, I'm not naturally skinny. I'm unnaturally fat. :) 6', 216 pounds, 42" waist. I'm working on slimming down now (of course, of course, I'm focusing on a lifelong change in eating habits and not just starving until I'm skinnier and then returning to overeating). I'm shooting for a BMI 25 - about 182 pounds. When I get there, I plan on measuring my waist and then trying to gain as much muscle as possible while keeping my waist at that size. In the meanwhile, I'm keeping my strength training workouts brief and relatively easy because intense weightlifting stokes my appetite like crazy.
Thanks for the response, though. I appreciate any help I can get.
This may not be the place for it, but what routine do you do and what nutrition program do you follow?
I've tried most common, and not-so-common routines for months and in some cases years at a time (let's see: Schwarzenegger's Bodybuilding Bible, Mentzer's Heavy Duty 2, Hutchin's Super Slow, Sisco and Little's Power Factor Training, McRobert's Brawn, Haycock's Hypertrophy-Specific Training, Darden's Living Longer Stronger, Arthur Jones' style High Intensity Training, and god knows how many different fitness magazine and Men's Health routines, low reps heavy weight, high reps light weight) and had my protein intake up at or above 150 grams per day for weeks at a time. Except for a few freak periods which I cannot reproduce, nothing seems to put anywhere near one pound per month of muscle on me.
Usually I build the routines around squats or bent leg deadlifts, pullups (where, I'm ashamed to admit, I have to use a chair because even though I hammer away at it I'm too weak to do more than one unassisted), and shoulder press.
I know there is no magic bullet, but do you have any suggestions?
Given a choice between pumping millions of hot coal dust into the atmosphere and hot steam, I'll take the steam every time. That's especially true if it turns out that these geothermal plants are safer to operate than coal mines.
Until more environmentally friendly alternatives are available on a massive scale, this sounds like the best lesser evil we have available.
Some women are obnoxious. Some men are obnoxious. Asshole behavior is not bound by gender.
The two female developers I work with periodically are quite competent, and neither has told me their life story.
RTFA
It could be crap. I'm not an endocrinologist. But if the article is true:
1. High fructose intake interferes with the body's ability to feel full. That would explain why people eat too much.
2. The food manufacturers noted that people tended to eat larger portions of foods with fructose. So they started increasing fructose in those foods in order to sell more.
3. Both the Atkins diet and the traditional Japanese diet both work against obesity. In most ways the two diets are the opposite of each other, but they have in common extremely low levels of fructose intake.
I've heard the cry of "personal responsibility" over obesity before. But simply making yourself eat less than you want for months on end is incredibly difficult. After a while all you can think about is food. Finding out what makes you feel much hungrier than you should be and short-circuiting that would be an ideal solution.
But from the article, taking in lots of fructose can dramatically boost your body's insulin production, which in turn blocks the hormone leptin. Leptin regulates the appetite.
If your appetite is not out of whack, a small Pulled Pork Sandwich or medium portion of Onion Rings will fill you up. Then you're done. It may not be great for you, but it shouldn't be dangerous. On the other hand, if something (fructose or otherwise) has interfered with your ability to feel full after eating a healthy portion, then you might have extra helpings of both. Then there's a problem.
From the article, sucrose is 50% glucose, 50% fructose. So even 100% sucrose sugar is a problem (although not as bad as High Fructose Corn Syrup).
Get real, that does happen. We have a product, which is a set of surveys patients or their caregivers can take. Each survey event represents a survey taken by a patient or caregiver regarding one particular patient. Each survey event results in one associated report getting printed. Survey event completion also generates scores, and score values can trigger up to 2 additional reports. The additional report behavior is governed by a score to report mapping table. Also, each survey can have alternate reports specified based upon site and product settings.
When an administrator logs into the system, an 11 table join is done to generate the list of survey_reports. For sites with 3000 patients and 4500 surveys, it takes Postgres less than a second on old hardware.
I'm living in Europe where we don't have guns but still we have mostly honest governments that respect, and to some extent even fear, the people
US spending on the military, even excluding Iraq and Afghanistan, dwarfs the spending of any other nation. We also have colossal intelligence gathering agencies. Our government is in a much stronger position relative to the average citizens than yours - and our current leaders keep reaching for more power, and encountering just token resistance from most of the populace.
America. Leading the rest of the world in the race to 1984.
Chicken and Egg problem.
n ced-fp/docs/sweeny.pdf . Or, perhaps a useful Continuation Server could be written in a functional language or LISP.
If there aren't enough developers comfortable with those concepts, there won't be companies using them. If they aren't used, more jobs won't appear. If more jobs don't appear, nobody will learn them. Repeat loop.
I work with Java, and have worked with C++ in the past. I've been trying to pick up functional programming - mainly Haskell - and LISP on my own off and on for years. I'm not finding it easy, although that probably reflects more upon my intelligence and the programming habits I already possess than the learning curve. But even when I do get a good grasp on this stuff, where can I apply it?
For mainstream acceptance, "advanced" languages (define that how you will) require their killer app - and it isn't here yet. Two things give me some interest and hope, though. Functional languages for parallel programming, like game graphics: http://www.st.cs.uni-sb.de/edu/seminare/2005/adva
Special corrosive-resistant parts are required for E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) engines, which is why every automaker can't just slap an "E85" sticker on every gas engine they produce. Converting our existing gasoline engine automobiles to ethanol would not be cheap - probably hundreds of dollars in parts and hundreds more in labor per vehicle.
More importantly, ethanol has a much lower energy density but much higher octane rating than gasoline. All current E85 compatible engines in the US get abysmal fuel economy when using E85 fuel, because they are designed for gasoline use. An engine designed from the ground up for only ethanol use could get power and fuel economy per gallon comparable to a gasoline engine - but then migrating to that engine is no cheaper than switching to a diesel engine.
And why would you trust it any more than MS or Cisco or others? Using "Open source" as an equivalent of "cryptographically impregnable" is a dangerous misconception. A serious company selling security solutions has a compelling interest to ensure the correctness and robustness of their solution; an anonymous coder doesn't really, even assuming he's a bona fide developer trying to provide a good solution, and not some russian hacker really curious about your credit card number.
See, I've worked for and with the big companies, and primary interest is profit. The emphasis was never on "best security possible", but always on "good enough to sell".
For a comparatively easy example, check Bruce Shneier's analysis of the Micosoft Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol. http://www.schneier.com/paper-pptpv2.html
The open source developer could be a crook, he could be an amateur that isn't nearly as intelligent about security as he thinks he is, or he could be lazy. I accept that. But there's a decent chance the open source guy is just trying to write good software. The software corporation has to prioritize profit first and good software second, or they won't last long. Even if the developer has good intentions, the accountants trying to make enough money to pay the developer are running the show. I am sympathetic to the accountants' situation - but that doesn't mean I trust them.
Where did you get the 25% figure?
It's my understanding that steam cars died because they were inconvenient. Parts rusted, water froze and ruptured areas, and worst of all each time you wanted to use it, it had to spend a few minutes building steam.
Is it possible that technological advances in the past 80 years would let us overcome some or all of those problems, and also improve the efficiency?
This is a one-off car set to break a performance record, not an attempt at an efficient mass production vehicle.
Read wikipedia. Steam cars died primarily because they were high maintenance and required several minutes' time to build steam before they could move. Internal combustion engines had a lower risk of rust or damage from freezing and could be started and driven immediately. Inconvenience killed the steam car, not inefficiency.