Bill Gates has a history of rather predatory business practices, but at least he donates lots of money to charities and manage one of the biggest charities. Has he outright ruined anyone's life? I highly doubt it.
The pope is a cunt, a backwards, über-conservative dickhead who would rather ignore the problems facing his millions of subjects than take any real action. Problems like pedophilia, AIDS and crippling poverty and hunger.
I liked the Nokia N900 on paper, but it seemed a bit flawed in real life and I found out about it relatively late in its lifecycle.
The upcoming N9 however looks really tasty. Hardware keyboard, Nokia's generally high quality hardware, 800x480 4" screen and it'll be Meego-based. Which means it can probably replace my netbook completely. I hear it even makes phone calls!
And apparently, it's about the same size as an iPhone, which is important to me, since I refuse to own a phone I can't carry in the front pocket of my jeans.
Grains are not the big bad bugaboo that you make them out to be. Heck, look at France an Italy. They eat boatloads of white bread (delicious crusty baguettes...) and they don't seem to have an obesity problem. The problem lies not with grains, but with processed refined sugars, but hopefully everyone knows that by now.
Ooh, blow my mind, even. Like I haven't heard that one before.
Listen, it's basic thermodynamics. Energy in must equal energy out for equilibrium, unless you think all that excess energy will somehow "disappear" just because you adhere to some magic diet plan. Where does it go? Does it get expelled as liquid fat-laden diarrhea? Does you body temperature increase to burn off the energy (I'd love to see the effects of that)?
No, cutting out fat is not a miracle cure, but for most people it's a relatively easy shortcut to reducing their overall energy intake. I use eggs, reasonable amounts of butter (preferably home made, it's very easy) and various oils such as olive, rapeseed, thistle etc., I leave a bit of fat on my pork chops and steaks for flavor and I generally don't use super lean ground beef or pork. I eat tasty, exciting home-cooked meals every day, I work out hard 3-4x per week and I feel goddamn awesome.
Especially since I don't have to live by silly fad diets and worry about every single thing I eat.
I've lost 20kg over the last 5 years and gained visible muscle definition by cutting out refined simple carbs, not worrying so much about food apart from that and by getting some proper, heavy weight, high-intensity exercise.
There's no magic trick, there are no shortcuts, no fad diet book contains the one and only miracle cure. Eat less, exercise hard. It's not easy and takes willpower, but it works.
Oh geez, not this again. Please don't make assumptions on my diet.
I've cut out refined carbs and generally only eat whole-grain variants, not that sissy crap most people call "bread". I'm talking about rough, tough, dark, malty breads. You gotta have roughage. You know what I put on my bread. Butter! Real actual cow butter. It's goddamn tasty, that's why.
I'm not nearly as scared of saturated fats as most other people and I just love eggs in all manner of preparations. Heck, I fry stuff in butter regularly. But I recognize that fat is very calorie-dense, and pure basic logic says that you have to burn exactly the same amount of calories that you absorb for maintenance and cutting fats to reach that is generally pretty easy.
I'm healthy, in good shape and with a strong health. I cut out overly-refined foodstuffs of all kinds and just stopped worrying about the other stuff. I cook and eat whatever is tasty.
And I have 25 years of experience telling me that a varied diet complete with vegetables, grains, fruit, dairy, lean meat etc. keeps me as healthy as possible. Nothing personal against vegetarians, but I would go mad if I had to maintain a healthy protein intake purely on plant matter.
Reading the other comments here on how crappy the safety features work on some cars, I feel extremely lucky that the guys (Italians, no less!) who designed my car weren't morons. It's got ABS, traction/stability control and pre-loaded brakes but luckily no radar-guided cruise control or other idiocy.
The ABS gives you a bit of leeway, I've threshold braked in my car to the point of the tires squealing on a dry road but not completely losing traction and the ABS did not kick in. Afterwards, I wanted to test it out, so I braked from the same speed but just mashed the pedal. The ABS kicked in exactly like it should and stopped me in roughly the same distance as before. That's a well-balanced brake design.
The stability control probably saved me during this winter as I was on the motorway, it was a bit wet, about 2-3C and the sun was shining, so I was doing about 120-130kph on my good-quality winter tires (best decision you can make in winter!). Suddenly out of fucking nowhere I hit a patch of black ice in a bend with only one side of my car. The car started to spin out, but at around 30 degrees or so from straight ahead, ESC kicked in and got me back on track. So, like the ABS, by good design it gives you a bit of leeway before saving your ass.
I can switch the traction control off which helps a bit in some snow and slush, but I've never wanted to turn off the other aids because you wouldn't know they're there until you need them and once they do, they act in an extremely competent manner.
It's all just a question of choosing the correct vehicle;-)
The X-Fi is far better than the built-in audio that comes on a mobo. Out of curiosity, what do you use?
An M-Audio USB audio adapter, fed into my stereo and either to a set of full-size speakers or to my headphones. To be fair, I use my PC for almost all my media needs, games, music, TV, movies etc. since replacing my old CRT TV and DVD player with a digital TV tuner and a sexy widescreen monitor. The USB adapter probably burns a few more CPU cycles than a PCI model, but it's never been a problem so far.
I'm probably going to go for a PCI audio adapter in the near future to reduce the cable mess a bit, I just haven't decided which one to go for yet. Probably one of those Xonar cards or something from M-Audio again.
All of Creative's products are utter garbage, the X-Fi is no exception.
Those audio filters you mention just mess up the sound quality with cheap effects, the "crystalizer" being the absolute worst of them, Creative even had the audacity (har har) to claim that it could make a 128kbit MP3 sound better than a CD. Not to mention that the total harmonic distortion and frequency response of the card itself is crappy at best. Since EAX was abolished and games started doing their own audio processing in software, Creative's offerings have been absolutely worthless.
If the fatties were fighting their genetically programmed cravings, they wouldn't be so goddamn fat. They're putting in the least amount of effort possible, a token effort just so they can say "it's not my fault I'm fat, I'm doing everything I can to fight it" when in fact they're not doing a damn thing.
I'm a test subject in an 6 month long experiment to determine if so-called "new nordic" food is more healthy than the average diet when eating to a "comfortably sated, but not full or stuffed" level at every meal. To do this, we pick up all of our food from a special store on the university campus in the amounts we think we need, within the boundaries of our particular test diet, of course. We aren't allowed to eat food from other sources.
The "average diet" which I'm getting looks a bit less healthy than my usual diet on paper, it's got less whole grains, less lean protein, more sugar and more fat than what I usually eat, but you know what? I've lost 1,5kg already, down from 95 to 93.5 in the span of one month of eating completely average foods. There are no "light" products and no sugar substitutes, either, everything is completely ordinary food.
I eat chicken, duck, beef, pork, pasta, potatoes, white flour, ordinary rye bread, white bread, butter, lunch meats, candy, chocolate, veggies, fruits, just about everything people normally eat. But you know why I'm losing weight? Because I'm eating less calories now that my eating habits come to light every single time I "shop" for groceries and I've found out that I actually ate between 110-115% of the calories I actually need every single day, even though I followed a reasonably healthy diet with lean meats and a fair amount of veggies.
I just ate too goddamn much of it, without even realizing it.
RE: the horsepower issue, with a sufficiently aerodynamic body, a car really doesn't need much power to sustain 60km/h. Any fuel-powered car with a fuel mileage display will tell you this; cruising at reasonable speeds uses relatively small amounts of fuel and therefore horsepower compared to acceelerating or driving at high speeds where the wind resistance gets exponentially worse.
I can do over 30km/l in my diesel hatchback if I limit myself to 80km/h on a smooth road. I can also get as little as 4km/l occasionally if I floor it up a steep grade in a head wind.
BSD-style init and the only admin tool installed by default is Pacman, the package manager, which is sort of like pkg_add, but better. It stays out of your way and you're meant to admin stuff either by hand or by installing just the tools you need.
Have you played any of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games? Unlike Fallout 3, they're more towards the FPS end of the spectrum rather than RPG, but they're also a lot more realistic than the wacky 50s sci-fi feel of the Fallout games and a hell of a lot more bleak. GSC Game World is based in Kiev and they've made multiple trips into the exclusion zone, the maps and the layout of places like Pripyat and the entire Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant are very faithfully reproduced in-game, they did an amazing job.
I think they capture the atmosphere really well, the environment is feral and hostile and you really have to be on the lookout for radiation and anomalies. Shadow Of Chernobyl was the first game, the prequel Clear Sky was a bit of a letdown, but Call Of Pripyat is by far one of the best and most atmospheric games I've ever played.
Oddly enough the diabetics I know were fat and actually lost weight once they got regular insulin injections. Type 1, not type 2.
The reason a high-carb diet is used for fattening livestock is because it's cheap, actually. Everything else is a happy side benefit for the farmers, but price is king.
I call BS on your feats of eating, mostly down to the bulk of the food you claim to be able to eat. Either you have a ridiculously large stomach or you're mis-measuring your intake. I tried a low-carb diet for a while and no matter what you do, eating a 40oz steak will fill up your stomach and make you feel bloated, it's a simple question of mass.
You're ignoring my point about the indiginous peoples of South America and Asia subsisting in good health on high-GI diets for thousands of years before western civilization came along. You're working from a mindset of "all native peoples have naturally low-GI diets" and I'm pointing out that this is not true.
The only way you can eat 5000 calories per day without gaining weight would be if you shit pure liquid fat to get rid of the excess calories. Or possibly if you've got a second job as an industrial space heater. It has to go somewhere and your body is not an alchemy lab, it does not go to your muscles instead of your fat deposits just because you cut the carbs. If it did all go to your muscles, you'd be bigger than Marcus Rühl and Ronnie Coleman by now. 5000 calories is a LOT of food, I trust you do other things during the day than eating?
Slow movements during lifting is probably as old as weight lifting itself. Slow controlled movements are at the very essence of proper lifting, I don't get how this is anything new and certainly not the "revolution" that mr. Hahn claims it is. Congratulations yourself on your results, but you could have gotten them in a lot of different ways. You've found an exercise regime which works for you, that's good.
For the record, I share mr. Hahn's views on sports as exercise and particularly on running. Running on hard surfaces like concrete is downright damaging, no matter how good your footwear is. On the other hand, running barefood on loose or soft surfaces is brilliant exercise, we evolved to be very proficient at it.
But I shy away from exercise regimes that like to bill themselves as revolutions, major giant breakthroughs etc., it smacks of sensationalism and infomercials. It may be a good regime, but why would it advertise itself like that if it was?
If I ate the exact same amount of calories as pure simple carbs instead? Yeah, I'd gain weight. I didn't say GI was completely irrelevant, but there are other factors which are far more relevant.
No, basic biochemistry is that unless energy out equals energy in, you will either gain or burn reserve energy. Every calorie you eat that you don't make use of will be stored as fat.
Dietary cholesterol IS pretty much irrelevant, this we agree on. I eat loads of eggs, yet my blood cholesterol is a-ok.
But I've worked on a farm and I can tell you that animals are fed super-high calorie foods for fattening, simple as that. They aren't fed pure-fat or super-high fat feed because they won't eat enough of it, they feel full too soon. The reason they're fed high-carb high-calorie feed is that it's less filling and I believe the same problem exists with people.
Can you eat two big fatty inch-thick pork chops? How do you feel afterwards? I'm betting you feel bloated and overfull. Consider eating the same amount of calories as mostly carbs, let's say cake, soda and candy. I'll bet you wouldn't feel nearly as full as with the meat+fat. Now, this particular example would spike your blood sugar like you wouldn't believe and you'll probably feel a bit odd, but this is a very extreme example. My point is that you wouldn't feel nearly as stuffed, so you're liable to eat more.
Regarding ketosis, liver and kidney damage are a factor in the long term, as well as the danger of falling into ketoacidosis.
If glycemic index is all that matters, how do you explain that heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases are nowhere near as widespread in places like South America and Asia where the staple foods are all high-GI, such as rice and potatoes, as it is in the western world?
I'm sure you've lost weight during your low-carb diet, meats and fats are hugely filling and fruits and vegetables etc. are low in calories, so no wonder you've lost weight, you've been ingesting less energy over all, a certain way to weight loss. What I don't believe is that you've put on any real muscle with only 30 minutes of exercise per week. Either you have an extremely active everyday life outside of exercise or your reduced body fat and hence enhanced muscle definition is leading you to believe you've put on muscle when in fact you've just made your existing muscles more visible.
I have no doubt that cutting out the simple carbs has lowered my glycemic index, but I still eat loads of potatoes, rice, pasta and bread in comparison to the soda and snacks I ate, the difference isn't that dramatic, most likely, though I confess I haven't had it tested.
Yes, if I ate candy and soda exclusively and limited myself to say 1600-1800 calories per day (+a multivitamin to avoid scurvy etc.) I would lose weight, no doubt about it. I'd feel like shit, but I'd lose weight all the same. It would also make me "skinny fat" since no proteins = no building blocks for muscles. I'd be thin, but I'd be an utter weakling before long due to the severely limited diet and the complete lack of essential fatty acids.
As long as you eat a balanced diet, glycemic index is more or less irrelevant, certainly less relevant than cholesterol and total caloric instake. Focusing exclusively on glycemic index is just yet another fad diet for people who are afraid of changing their lifestyle.
Sure, the Inuit and Masai have lived almost exclusively on animal products for many generations, but consider that natural selection meant that only those whose bodies could adapt to this diet survived to have offspring. As a counterpoint, many cultures in South America and Asia subsist on high-GI diets and seem to live just as long and have the same good health that the Inuit and Masai enjoy.
Perhaps the problem isn't with GI, but rather with additives, processed foods and a general ignorance of home-cooking in the western world.
Regarding ketosis versus ketoacidosis, English is not my primary language. Ketoacidosis is obviously a serious medical condition, but this does not mean ketosis is good for you, you still need to be under supervision. Some people consider ones own supervision using home tests good enough, I'm of the opinion that you need the supervision of a trained medical professional to ensure no lasting organ damage.
It's so easy to call BS and act all enlightened, but the fact of the matter is that GI is just a very small part of a healthy diet and one you hardly need consider unless you have special needs, such as diabetes or the beginnings of diabetes type 2.
I eat a wide variety of foods, including some with high GI, such as baked potatoes, pasta and rice, yet I've lost 25kg and put on visible muscle during the last 2½ years. I did it by cutting out processed foods, moderating my total food intake (I already ate a reasonably balanced diet, but often 2 servings at each meal) and started exercising. I chose kickboxing and crossfit, but any strenuous physical activity should do just fine. I also cut out all simple carbs, such as candy and soda, this probably added up to 500 kcal a day of simple carbs with no nutrional value. You say this is irrelevant because of the potatoes, whole-wheat bread and pasta I eat, yet I am living walking proof that calories in, calories out is by far the most significant change you need to make in your diet.
Sure, orange juice contains almost as much naturally-occuring sugar as a bottle of coke contains added sugar, I'm not saying you should drink gallons of OJ, but one glass with dinner or lunch is fine. Unless it's that highly-processed juice-like fluid you sometimes find in place of real juice, you'll be getting a healthy dose of vitamins, minerals and even some fiber (pulp is good!)
You seem to be on a crusade against carbohydrates, but cutting them out of your diet completely is not the solution. Cut out the simple carbs by all means, but leave the complex carbs in.
For all the bad press and hysteria carbs get, they're the most direct source of energy our bodies can make use of, they're downright essential if you actually use your body and don't just sit around in front of a monitor all day.
This whole "blood sugar levels are the one and only key to fitness and fighting cancer" is preposterous. ALL food will raise your blood sugar levels, it's a measure of the energy your body can use for doing work. Carbs are just faster and with a healthy varied diet, proteins are the building blocks, fats are the long-term energy storage and carbs are the quick-release energy. You need all of them to function normally. Too few carbs and you go into ketosis, which is a potentially dangerous medical condition necessitating constant supervision.
Stop listening to silly fad diets, stop worrying so goddamn much, eat real food instead of processed foods and get off your ass and exercise.
In the US, all of the products you mentioned are usually loaded with added sugar, most likely HFCS. You can thank the corn lobby for that.
In other parts of the world, whole wheat bread is made without sugar, orange juice has no added sugar and can actually be deliciously slightly sour and outmeal contains nothing but whole oats, possibly steamed and rolled.
Added sugars of all kinds are problematic, but HFCS is the worst.
This thread on SomethingAwful about Minecraft has almost 22000 posts from July 2nd until today, September 10th, every single one of them about Minecraft. The game is easy to pick up, friendly graphics and is a great outlet for creativity, that's why it's such a roaring success.
Notch (the developer) has been in talks with Valve, it's amazing what just one guy with a knack for programming can do.
Slashdot Mirror
Bill Gates has a history of rather predatory business practices, but at least he donates lots of money to charities and manage one of the biggest charities. Has he outright ruined anyone's life? I highly doubt it.
The pope is a cunt, a backwards, über-conservative dickhead who would rather ignore the problems facing his millions of subjects than take any real action. Problems like pedophilia, AIDS and crippling poverty and hunger.
I liked the Nokia N900 on paper, but it seemed a bit flawed in real life and I found out about it relatively late in its lifecycle.
The upcoming N9 however looks really tasty. Hardware keyboard, Nokia's generally high quality hardware, 800x480 4" screen and it'll be Meego-based. Which means it can probably replace my netbook completely. I hear it even makes phone calls!
And apparently, it's about the same size as an iPhone, which is important to me, since I refuse to own a phone I can't carry in the front pocket of my jeans.
Grains are not the big bad bugaboo that you make them out to be. Heck, look at France an Italy. They eat boatloads of white bread (delicious crusty baguettes...) and they don't seem to have an obesity problem. The problem lies not with grains, but with processed refined sugars, but hopefully everyone knows that by now.
Ooh, blow my mind, even. Like I haven't heard that one before.
Listen, it's basic thermodynamics. Energy in must equal energy out for equilibrium, unless you think all that excess energy will somehow "disappear" just because you adhere to some magic diet plan. Where does it go? Does it get expelled as liquid fat-laden diarrhea? Does you body temperature increase to burn off the energy (I'd love to see the effects of that)?
No, cutting out fat is not a miracle cure, but for most people it's a relatively easy shortcut to reducing their overall energy intake. I use eggs, reasonable amounts of butter (preferably home made, it's very easy) and various oils such as olive, rapeseed, thistle etc., I leave a bit of fat on my pork chops and steaks for flavor and I generally don't use super lean ground beef or pork. I eat tasty, exciting home-cooked meals every day, I work out hard 3-4x per week and I feel goddamn awesome.
Especially since I don't have to live by silly fad diets and worry about every single thing I eat.
I've lost 20kg over the last 5 years and gained visible muscle definition by cutting out refined simple carbs, not worrying so much about food apart from that and by getting some proper, heavy weight, high-intensity exercise.
There's no magic trick, there are no shortcuts, no fad diet book contains the one and only miracle cure. Eat less, exercise hard. It's not easy and takes willpower, but it works.
Because good-quality bread tastes awesome with good-quality butter on it.
Eating any old garbage is not the opposite of being a vegetarian.
You can make informed decisions about what to eat even if you are an omnivore, you know.
Oh geez, not this again. Please don't make assumptions on my diet.
I've cut out refined carbs and generally only eat whole-grain variants, not that sissy crap most people call "bread". I'm talking about rough, tough, dark, malty breads. You gotta have roughage. You know what I put on my bread. Butter! Real actual cow butter. It's goddamn tasty, that's why.
I'm not nearly as scared of saturated fats as most other people and I just love eggs in all manner of preparations. Heck, I fry stuff in butter regularly. But I recognize that fat is very calorie-dense, and pure basic logic says that you have to burn exactly the same amount of calories that you absorb for maintenance and cutting fats to reach that is generally pretty easy.
I'm healthy, in good shape and with a strong health. I cut out overly-refined foodstuffs of all kinds and just stopped worrying about the other stuff. I cook and eat whatever is tasty.
Anyone up for a goat cheese+tomato+pine nut pie?
And I have 25 years of experience telling me that a varied diet complete with vegetables, grains, fruit, dairy, lean meat etc. keeps me as healthy as possible. Nothing personal against vegetarians, but I would go mad if I had to maintain a healthy protein intake purely on plant matter.
Anyway, it was just a joke :-)
*misinformed*Why? I am a vegetarian for reasons that I believe it's better for my health!*misinformed*
There, much better ;-)
And leave the entire super-sized military might of the US in the hands of the crazies?
Sounds like a great plan!
Reading the other comments here on how crappy the safety features work on some cars, I feel extremely lucky that the guys (Italians, no less!) who designed my car weren't morons. It's got ABS, traction/stability control and pre-loaded brakes but luckily no radar-guided cruise control or other idiocy.
The ABS gives you a bit of leeway, I've threshold braked in my car to the point of the tires squealing on a dry road but not completely losing traction and the ABS did not kick in. Afterwards, I wanted to test it out, so I braked from the same speed but just mashed the pedal. The ABS kicked in exactly like it should and stopped me in roughly the same distance as before. That's a well-balanced brake design.
The stability control probably saved me during this winter as I was on the motorway, it was a bit wet, about 2-3C and the sun was shining, so I was doing about 120-130kph on my good-quality winter tires (best decision you can make in winter!). Suddenly out of fucking nowhere I hit a patch of black ice in a bend with only one side of my car. The car started to spin out, but at around 30 degrees or so from straight ahead, ESC kicked in and got me back on track. So, like the ABS, by good design it gives you a bit of leeway before saving your ass.
I can switch the traction control off which helps a bit in some snow and slush, but I've never wanted to turn off the other aids because you wouldn't know they're there until you need them and once they do, they act in an extremely competent manner.
It's all just a question of choosing the correct vehicle ;-)
I you left Keen on one of the moons in the Temple of Moons, he would moon you instead of reading a book :-)
An M-Audio USB audio adapter, fed into my stereo and either to a set of full-size speakers or to my headphones. To be fair, I use my PC for almost all my media needs, games, music, TV, movies etc. since replacing my old CRT TV and DVD player with a digital TV tuner and a sexy widescreen monitor. The USB adapter probably burns a few more CPU cycles than a PCI model, but it's never been a problem so far.
I'm probably going to go for a PCI audio adapter in the near future to reduce the cable mess a bit, I just haven't decided which one to go for yet. Probably one of those Xonar cards or something from M-Audio again.
All of Creative's products are utter garbage, the X-Fi is no exception.
Those audio filters you mention just mess up the sound quality with cheap effects, the "crystalizer" being the absolute worst of them, Creative even had the audacity (har har) to claim that it could make a 128kbit MP3 sound better than a CD. Not to mention that the total harmonic distortion and frequency response of the card itself is crappy at best. Since EAX was abolished and games started doing their own audio processing in software, Creative's offerings have been absolutely worthless.
If the fatties were fighting their genetically programmed cravings, they wouldn't be so goddamn fat. They're putting in the least amount of effort possible, a token effort just so they can say "it's not my fault I'm fat, I'm doing everything I can to fight it" when in fact they're not doing a damn thing.
I'm a test subject in an 6 month long experiment to determine if so-called "new nordic" food is more healthy than the average diet when eating to a "comfortably sated, but not full or stuffed" level at every meal. To do this, we pick up all of our food from a special store on the university campus in the amounts we think we need, within the boundaries of our particular test diet, of course. We aren't allowed to eat food from other sources.
The "average diet" which I'm getting looks a bit less healthy than my usual diet on paper, it's got less whole grains, less lean protein, more sugar and more fat than what I usually eat, but you know what? I've lost 1,5kg already, down from 95 to 93.5 in the span of one month of eating completely average foods. There are no "light" products and no sugar substitutes, either, everything is completely ordinary food.
I eat chicken, duck, beef, pork, pasta, potatoes, white flour, ordinary rye bread, white bread, butter, lunch meats, candy, chocolate, veggies, fruits, just about everything people normally eat. But you know why I'm losing weight? Because I'm eating less calories now that my eating habits come to light every single time I "shop" for groceries and I've found out that I actually ate between 110-115% of the calories I actually need every single day, even though I followed a reasonably healthy diet with lean meats and a fair amount of veggies.
I just ate too goddamn much of it, without even realizing it.
RE: the horsepower issue, with a sufficiently aerodynamic body, a car really doesn't need much power to sustain 60km/h. Any fuel-powered car with a fuel mileage display will tell you this; cruising at reasonable speeds uses relatively small amounts of fuel and therefore horsepower compared to acceelerating or driving at high speeds where the wind resistance gets exponentially worse.
I can do over 30km/l in my diesel hatchback if I limit myself to 80km/h on a smooth road. I can also get as little as 4km/l occasionally if I floor it up a steep grade in a head wind.
Slack is good, but I prefer Arch.
BSD-style init and the only admin tool installed by default is Pacman, the package manager, which is sort of like pkg_add, but better. It stays out of your way and you're meant to admin stuff either by hand or by installing just the tools you need.
Have you played any of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games? Unlike Fallout 3, they're more towards the FPS end of the spectrum rather than RPG, but they're also a lot more realistic than the wacky 50s sci-fi feel of the Fallout games and a hell of a lot more bleak. GSC Game World is based in Kiev and they've made multiple trips into the exclusion zone, the maps and the layout of places like Pripyat and the entire Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant are very faithfully reproduced in-game, they did an amazing job.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_RDiKxVBLJZo/SxIu6zDfuFI/AAAAAAAAANE/lnC7nXgLZxs/s1600/stalker-Shadow-of-Chernobyl_03.jpg
http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/490/stalker.jpg
http://www.tweakguides.com/images/STALKER_13.jpg
I think they capture the atmosphere really well, the environment is feral and hostile and you really have to be on the lookout for radiation and anomalies. Shadow Of Chernobyl was the first game, the prequel Clear Sky was a bit of a letdown, but Call Of Pripyat is by far one of the best and most atmospheric games I've ever played.
Science cannot move forward without heaps!
You make some interesting points, but your entire post history is basically shilling for and ultra low-carb diet The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution.
I'm glad you've found a regime which works for you, but the evangelism is getting a bit too much.
Good luck on your continued journey towards usable functional fitness. We're headed for the same destination by different paths, after all :-)
Oddly enough the diabetics I know were fat and actually lost weight once they got regular insulin injections. Type 1, not type 2.
The reason a high-carb diet is used for fattening livestock is because it's cheap, actually. Everything else is a happy side benefit for the farmers, but price is king.
I call BS on your feats of eating, mostly down to the bulk of the food you claim to be able to eat. Either you have a ridiculously large stomach or you're mis-measuring your intake. I tried a low-carb diet for a while and no matter what you do, eating a 40oz steak will fill up your stomach and make you feel bloated, it's a simple question of mass.
You're ignoring my point about the indiginous peoples of South America and Asia subsisting in good health on high-GI diets for thousands of years before western civilization came along. You're working from a mindset of "all native peoples have naturally low-GI diets" and I'm pointing out that this is not true.
The only way you can eat 5000 calories per day without gaining weight would be if you shit pure liquid fat to get rid of the excess calories. Or possibly if you've got a second job as an industrial space heater. It has to go somewhere and your body is not an alchemy lab, it does not go to your muscles instead of your fat deposits just because you cut the carbs. If it did all go to your muscles, you'd be bigger than Marcus Rühl and Ronnie Coleman by now. 5000 calories is a LOT of food, I trust you do other things during the day than eating?
Slow movements during lifting is probably as old as weight lifting itself. Slow controlled movements are at the very essence of proper lifting, I don't get how this is anything new and certainly not the "revolution" that mr. Hahn claims it is. Congratulations yourself on your results, but you could have gotten them in a lot of different ways. You've found an exercise regime which works for you, that's good.
For the record, I share mr. Hahn's views on sports as exercise and particularly on running. Running on hard surfaces like concrete is downright damaging, no matter how good your footwear is. On the other hand, running barefood on loose or soft surfaces is brilliant exercise, we evolved to be very proficient at it.
But I shy away from exercise regimes that like to bill themselves as revolutions, major giant breakthroughs etc., it smacks of sensationalism and infomercials. It may be a good regime, but why would it advertise itself like that if it was?
If I ate the exact same amount of calories as pure simple carbs instead? Yeah, I'd gain weight. I didn't say GI was completely irrelevant, but there are other factors which are far more relevant.
No, basic biochemistry is that unless energy out equals energy in, you will either gain or burn reserve energy. Every calorie you eat that you don't make use of will be stored as fat.
Dietary cholesterol IS pretty much irrelevant, this we agree on. I eat loads of eggs, yet my blood cholesterol is a-ok.
But I've worked on a farm and I can tell you that animals are fed super-high calorie foods for fattening, simple as that. They aren't fed pure-fat or super-high fat feed because they won't eat enough of it, they feel full too soon. The reason they're fed high-carb high-calorie feed is that it's less filling and I believe the same problem exists with people.
Can you eat two big fatty inch-thick pork chops? How do you feel afterwards? I'm betting you feel bloated and overfull. Consider eating the same amount of calories as mostly carbs, let's say cake, soda and candy. I'll bet you wouldn't feel nearly as full as with the meat+fat. Now, this particular example would spike your blood sugar like you wouldn't believe and you'll probably feel a bit odd, but this is a very extreme example. My point is that you wouldn't feel nearly as stuffed, so you're liable to eat more.
Regarding ketosis, liver and kidney damage are a factor in the long term, as well as the danger of falling into ketoacidosis.
If glycemic index is all that matters, how do you explain that heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases are nowhere near as widespread in places like South America and Asia where the staple foods are all high-GI, such as rice and potatoes, as it is in the western world?
I'm sure you've lost weight during your low-carb diet, meats and fats are hugely filling and fruits and vegetables etc. are low in calories, so no wonder you've lost weight, you've been ingesting less energy over all, a certain way to weight loss. What I don't believe is that you've put on any real muscle with only 30 minutes of exercise per week. Either you have an extremely active everyday life outside of exercise or your reduced body fat and hence enhanced muscle definition is leading you to believe you've put on muscle when in fact you've just made your existing muscles more visible.
I have no doubt that cutting out the simple carbs has lowered my glycemic index, but I still eat loads of potatoes, rice, pasta and bread in comparison to the soda and snacks I ate, the difference isn't that dramatic, most likely, though I confess I haven't had it tested.
Yes, if I ate candy and soda exclusively and limited myself to say 1600-1800 calories per day (+a multivitamin to avoid scurvy etc.) I would lose weight, no doubt about it. I'd feel like shit, but I'd lose weight all the same. It would also make me "skinny fat" since no proteins = no building blocks for muscles. I'd be thin, but I'd be an utter weakling before long due to the severely limited diet and the complete lack of essential fatty acids.
As long as you eat a balanced diet, glycemic index is more or less irrelevant, certainly less relevant than cholesterol and total caloric instake. Focusing exclusively on glycemic index is just yet another fad diet for people who are afraid of changing their lifestyle.
Sure, the Inuit and Masai have lived almost exclusively on animal products for many generations, but consider that natural selection meant that only those whose bodies could adapt to this diet survived to have offspring. As a counterpoint, many cultures in South America and Asia subsist on high-GI diets and seem to live just as long and have the same good health that the Inuit and Masai enjoy.
Perhaps the problem isn't with GI, but rather with additives, processed foods and a general ignorance of home-cooking in the western world.
Regarding ketosis versus ketoacidosis, English is not my primary language. Ketoacidosis is obviously a serious medical condition, but this does not mean ketosis is good for you, you still need to be under supervision. Some people consider ones own supervision using home tests good enough, I'm of the opinion that you need the supervision of a trained medical professional to ensure no lasting organ damage.
It's so easy to call BS and act all enlightened, but the fact of the matter is that GI is just a very small part of a healthy diet and one you hardly need consider unless you have special needs, such as diabetes or the beginnings of diabetes type 2.
I eat a wide variety of foods, including some with high GI, such as baked potatoes, pasta and rice, yet I've lost 25kg and put on visible muscle during the last 2½ years. I did it by cutting out processed foods, moderating my total food intake (I already ate a reasonably balanced diet, but often 2 servings at each meal) and started exercising. I chose kickboxing and crossfit, but any strenuous physical activity should do just fine. I also cut out all simple carbs, such as candy and soda, this probably added up to 500 kcal a day of simple carbs with no nutrional value. You say this is irrelevant because of the potatoes, whole-wheat bread and pasta I eat, yet I am living walking proof that calories in, calories out is by far the most significant change you need to make in your diet.
Everything else is secondary.
Sure, orange juice contains almost as much naturally-occuring sugar as a bottle of coke contains added sugar, I'm not saying you should drink gallons of OJ, but one glass with dinner or lunch is fine. Unless it's that highly-processed juice-like fluid you sometimes find in place of real juice, you'll be getting a healthy dose of vitamins, minerals and even some fiber (pulp is good!)
You seem to be on a crusade against carbohydrates, but cutting them out of your diet completely is not the solution. Cut out the simple carbs by all means, but leave the complex carbs in.
For all the bad press and hysteria carbs get, they're the most direct source of energy our bodies can make use of, they're downright essential if you actually use your body and don't just sit around in front of a monitor all day.
This whole "blood sugar levels are the one and only key to fitness and fighting cancer" is preposterous. ALL food will raise your blood sugar levels, it's a measure of the energy your body can use for doing work. Carbs are just faster and with a healthy varied diet, proteins are the building blocks, fats are the long-term energy storage and carbs are the quick-release energy. You need all of them to function normally. Too few carbs and you go into ketosis, which is a potentially dangerous medical condition necessitating constant supervision.
Stop listening to silly fad diets, stop worrying so goddamn much, eat real food instead of processed foods and get off your ass and exercise.
It's worked wonders for me.
In the US, all of the products you mentioned are usually loaded with added sugar, most likely HFCS. You can thank the corn lobby for that.
In other parts of the world, whole wheat bread is made without sugar, orange juice has no added sugar and can actually be deliciously slightly sour and outmeal contains nothing but whole oats, possibly steamed and rolled.
Added sugars of all kinds are problematic, but HFCS is the worst.
This thread on SomethingAwful about Minecraft has almost 22000 posts from July 2nd until today, September 10th, every single one of them about Minecraft. The game is easy to pick up, friendly graphics and is a great outlet for creativity, that's why it's such a roaring success.
Notch (the developer) has been in talks with Valve, it's amazing what just one guy with a knack for programming can do.