"DRM! No, you won't be able to play any of those old C64 games. You'll need to wait for the secret-key-signed versions... that is... until this version's DRM is cracked"
Yes, just imagine...Compute!'s Gazette might still be here, had they only been able to protect their MLX source from the rampant pirate hordes:
"it's not the changes in your brain that make the addiction (at most they make a chemical dependance). It's the fact that addicts decide to use the substance to fulfil a psychological need."
You're confusing psychological and physical dependencies (or worse, pretending that physical dependence doesn't exist).
An addiction to (for example) heroin is not the same as an addiction to caffiene. While for most people, a caffiene addiction can be overcome with a few days' worth of mild headache, kicking heroin can lead to severe cramps, sweats, hallucinations, and other nasty things. To say that people who are saddled with a heroin addiction are merely acting on a "preference" is naive. The body adapts to the opiates, and ultimately, begins to require them. The reason why people can "recreationally" take drugs like heroin and not become addicted is that it sometimes takes a few doses for the body to adapt to the drug. Nevertheless, there are waves of teenagers becoming addicted to heroin after only a few doses, yet I can almost guarantee that most of these kids have also consumed quite a lot of caffeine in their lives. You can't draw the same standard of addiction for both drugs.
Is there a psychological component to addictions? Almost certainly. But to assume that the psychological component is the only component is to ignore a great deal of evidence to the contrary.
"Addiction does not exist. Chemical withdrawal is no more painful than bad flu. Habits can be broken by choice - when you don't break them, it's because, on balance, you'd simply prefer not to."
I'm going to assume that you're simply young and underinformed, because otherwise, your statements reflect a willful disregard of the facts of addiction.
Addiction does exist, and one need only go as far as the local library to confirm this fact. The scientific literature is filled with analyses of the effect of opiates, narcotics and alcohol on the structure and function of the brain, on a molecular level. In a great many cases, addictive substances (such as opiates) mimic the chemistry of natural brain neurotransmitters and inhibitors, and their continued, obsessive use--the whole reason they function, really--is due to the fundamental changes in brain chemistry they produce.
I'm sorry, but your post is so completely ignorant that it's offensive. It's an embarassment that enough people on slashdot would agree with you to moderate your comments as "Insightful"
So you own a share of Microsoft stock. You own a piece of the company. Fine...you own one N-billionth of Microsoft.
But, what about the small businessman? He takes home all of his company's profits -- there are no shareholders in his company. Do we avoid taxing him?? Of course not.
Bottom line: "ownership of profit" does not abrogate our obligation to pay taxes on personal income. We tax "owned" profits every day. Last I heard, something like 3/4 of US economic activity is due to small business -- if we followed your line of reasoning, we'd have to throw away taxes on this activity.
So, yes, I've taken undergraduate economics too. Capiche?
"C++ has objects you say, but they always feel like it's grafted on to C....some things are still just ugly. How about an array who's size you don't know until runtime? Welcome back to pointers 101."
I'm a cell phone luddite too. I hate the things. I owned one briefly back in 99, then got rid of it because I didn't want to carry it around, and I really didn't like the way people started to expect you to pick up the telephone all the time, just because you have a cell phone.
That said, I had to get another cell phone recently, and I decided on the Motorola V60c. I love the thing. It's cheap (I got it for $80), it's small, it's easy to dial (unlike those micro-tiny Nokia toys), easy to hear, and because it's a flip phone, it's actually comfortable to use. While the V60c doesn't have games or a color screen or polyphonic hoo-hahs, it does have an incredibly useful little calendar program (with alarm clock), and I find that it more than meets my PDA needs. Plus, with the sleek stainless case, it's damn stylish (who needs a color screen when you can look like you're James-freaking-Bond on the steel cellphone?)
My only complaints? The antenna is a bit flimsy (Radio shack replacements are $10 each), it would be nice to have downloadable ringtones, and I wish it had a calulator program. Otherwise, I highly recommend it (and I think the new version of the V60 line has a calculator, games and ringtones, for the same price). Go get yourself one of these.
Plants (many of them, at least) do actually contain cholesterol -- a lot of people misunderstand this. However, there is significant debate over the question of whether humans can digest it or not. I think the consensus is on the "not" side, at the moment.
Either way, the argument I was countering is moot -- the human body is perfectly capable of generating all of the cholesterol it needs. You don't need to eat meat to maintain critical hormone levels. This is why vegetarians don't end up spasming in the streets after a month or two of low/no cholesterol diets.
"The theory goes that carbohydrates (starches and sugars) are easily (quickly) converted to glucose. This causes an overabundance of glucose in the blood, and an insulin spike. The insulin spike reduces the blood glucose levels by causing the excess glucose to be stored as fat."
Your summary sounds correct, from what I know of Atkins. And there's a general truth to this line of thought (high blood sugar -> insulin -> fat storage), but I think it plays kind of fast and loose with the science to conclude that carbohydrates lead to fat and are therefore Bad (tm).
Insulin mediates the storage of fat, it does not cause the storage of fat. In fact, insulin really only "tells" your cells to absorb sugar from the blood. What they do with the sugar is dependent on what they're doing, and what their energy requirements are. Thus, if you're Lance Armstrong, and you eat a diet consisting almost entirely of complex carbs, and you go out and ride 100 miles, your body will probably use all of that sugar. Alternatively, if you are Jack Black, and you eat a bag of Cheese Poofs, you are, most likely, going to store all of that excess sugar as fat. Carbohydrates are not inherently bad --excesses of them are.
Now, given targets for most diet plans (overweight individuals), there's some wiggle room: many people who start the Atkins diet would do just as well on any low-calorie diet plan. The low-carbohydrate angle is really just a trendy hook that sucks people in. And I think that's what the parent article suggests -- low-carbohydrate diets achieve much of their benefits in a very traditional way (when you're on the Atkins diet, you don't eat as much).
"Prior to that, out hominid ancestors were hunters/gatheres for some 2M years (during which meat was a significant part of their diet)."
And prior to that, we evolved from non-human primates, which eat diets consisting predominantly of plant material. And don't forget -- we're 99.9% identical at the genetic level to our closest non-human primate ancestors.
I could go on -- into the archeological evidence (fecal fossils, among others) that show that human diets were much heavier on fruits and vegetables than they are today, but you're good with google, so I'm sure you can find it.
"Your body is designed to burn food, not sugar. Food is turned into Glucose, but you arent designed to drink dextrose(sugar). Your body doesnt know what to do with it, so 100 percent of it gets stored as fat unless you are running a marathon and drinking it (gatorade).
Who is teaching you this stuff? Look man, our bodies burn glucose. "Food" is an abstract concept that makes it easier for us to think about what our bodies are doing to the stuff we eat. And, you're wrong -- our bodies do know what to do with glucose when we eat it. That's why we can administer pure dextrose as a drug to treat hypoglycemia. Your body doesn't care where it comes from -- glucose is glcose is glucose.
No one's arguing that all food is converted to glucose, its the speed that matters. Down 500 grams of glucose and have it absorb into your system within seconds, what is the chance that your body will burn 100 percent of it? Oh thats right 0. You will not burn it all and the majority of it will go to fat.
It's not 0, but I'll agree that you're not likely to completely utilize a massive amount of glucose unless you're undergoing some strenuous exercise. That said, you have to make up your mind -- a few sentences from now, you're going to argue that complex carbs are bad, because they absorb slowly. So what is it?
Rice takes forever to burn and digests instantly, its a fucking complex carbohydrate, marathon runners use rice and noodles, starches are high GI and take forever to burn, its equal to drinking a really high quality form of glucose which wont burn off with excercise, good if you want to run a marathon, REALLY BAD IF YOU WANT TO BURN FAT!
Ah, yes. "Proof by louder repetition." A favorite amongst slashdotters.
Why in the world do you think that glucose leads to fat? You still haven't justified this assertion. Your body wants to maintain a constant level of blood glucose -- it will attempt to do this (assuming you're not diabetic), by balancing the release of insulin and glucagon to regulate the uptake and release of glucose from your cells. Now, when you eat, your body converts whatever food it can into glucose, using the most efficient metabolic pathway available to it. Thus, eating results in the addition of glucose to your bloodstream, unless, of course, you choose to eat only fat and/or protein. In that case, you'd better eat a lot less food, because the caloric density of fat is very high, and, as I noted before, a high-protein diet can lead to other nasty things.
Avoid complex carbs as well, they take longer to digest but they take forever to burn
Again, I think you need to go back and think about your definitions, here. Complex carbs take a bit longer to get into the blood, but they're relatively quickly converted into glucose once they're there (complex carbohydrates are nothing more than long-chain polysaccharides, and are easily divided by hydrolysis -- your body does a good job of it). Once hydrolized, they're burned as efficiently as any other glucose molecule in your blood. The "problem" you're referring to is the tendency of the slowly-absorbed carbohydrates to provide a long-term rise in blood glucose levels. And remember, just a few sentences ago, you were arguing that the "quick-burning" simple sugars are bad! So which is it?
really starches have no purpose in the human body, we arent designed for it and thats why it spikes our insulin and then gets stored as bodyfat.
Let me get this straight -- because complex carbohydrates can possibly lead to insulin spikes (though this is far less of a danger than with simple sugars), that means our body "wasn't designed" for them? So, what -- I tell you that those protein supplements the weightlifters use leads to kidney failure, and you're going to tell me that our bodies weren't "designed" for protein? Does it even matter to you that human beings evolved from agrarian populations? That much of our metabolic ma
It's aboslutely appalling that the above post was modded up as informative. From the first sentence to the last, it's filled with half-true statements, and reeks of absurd pseudo-science.
First off: "The body is not designed to burn sugar."
Ugh. Go to the bookstore. Pick up an introductory biology textbook (biochemistry would work too). Find out that, in fact, the preferred source of energy for living organisms is sugar. Can the human body process other compounds for energy? Yes, but you'll find that none of these processes are as efficient as the catalysis of sugar for energy production, and that nearly all are overlooked in favor of glycolysis when glucose is present.
Next: Bacon is easier to burn and digests slowly
First, you have to define "digest," and you have to define "burn." If, by digest, you mean that a chunk of bacon is absorbed by the intestines less rapidly than a chunk of rice, you may or may not be correct. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that the body will absorb these things, and will somehow break these foods down into molecular units it can use. Fat, protein and sugar can all be converted to glucose through molecular pathways of varying efficiency -- this is what is traditionally meant by the "burning" of food.
Now, is bacon really easier to "burn" than rice? No. That's the opposite of the truth, actually. Bacon is muscle, which means that it is mostly protein and fat. And protein digestion is the metabolic pathway of last resort in humans. Thus, the body will (in an average person), digest the fat in the bacon first (and don't forget that, pound for pound, fat contains 9 times the caloric content of sugar!), store whatever it doesn't use as fat, use some of the protein for non-metabolic needs, and, most likely, squirt the rest of the protein out through the kidneys (via the liver). This is why people on extremely-high protein diets tend to have problems with kidney and liver function later in life.
Moving on: "Rice has no fat, so your hormones may get out of balance."
Bzzzt. Wrong again. Let's take another look at that biology 101 textbook: hormones are, by and large, cholesterol derivatives. Testosterone? Cholesterol. Estrogen? Ditto. In fact, you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find an important human hormone that wasn't derived from cholesterol, metabolically. And guess what? Plants have cholesterol too. More than enough for hormone synthesis needs, actually. This fact has been well-known by dieticians and doctors for decades.
So what about this gem: "Rice...is a complex carb, your body is not designed to handle it, so it takes a longer time to burn"
Nope. Compared to the protein or fat in bacon, rice is trivial for the body to "burn". It might take a smidge longer to digest, depending on how it's cooked, but we're not talking nutritionally-important differences here (your body will digest it one way or another). And the suggestion that the human body "is not designed to handle" complex carbohydrates? Utter nonsense. Go spit in a glass. See that? You're looking at a highly efficient mixure of enzymes, designed by evolution specifically for the digestion of complex carbohydrates. Pick up that biology book again...look up "alpha amylase," and you'll see what I mean.
So once we clear away the pseudo-science, what are we left with? Well, we know that protein is burned more slowly than fat, which is burned more slowly than sugars. And carbohydrates are sugars. So there is a bit of truth to your conclusion: when we eat high-protein diets, the body will find other mechanisms to meet it's sugar needs. It will do everything it can to create glucose without digesting protein. Of course, in the real world, no one eats pure protein (and for good reason -- see above), and protein has the nasty habit of coming in animal form, which means that lots of fat comes with it. It doesn't take much fat
I think that the slashdot story relating electromagnetic spectrum to colors, while fundamentally true, missed a significant point: the methods we use to broadcast on the electromagnetic spectrum fundamentally limit the amount of spectrum available.
The people who are spouting off on this forum about "unlimited digital spectrum" and the infinite "color spectrum" are forgetting that whatever methods we choose to transmit over airwaves do NOT operate on single, "point" frequencies. Sure, protocols such as frequency modulation are worse than others, such as amplitdue modulation or single-sideband, but all of them operate on multiple frequencies -- if only because of the "parasitic" broadcasts that a single single tends to produce on multiples of the main frequency. And worse, it's always been true that higher-frequency modulation of a signal (i.e. higher bandwidth) leads to an increase the width of the broadcast signal.
Don't misunderstand me: I think that the current broadcast universe could hold a lot more information -- and produce a lot more "channels" of data. But at the same time, the size of the electromagnetic spectrum is limited by our ability to utilize it -- and there are some fundamental physical limitations of radio waves that we will likely never overcome.
In short, I think it's silly to be calling for a dismantling of the FCC -- we need the FCC to make sure that whatever the current methods of broadcast are, they aren't used to dominate the airwaves. The FCC needs a swift kick in the pants, sure (write your legislator), but calling for dismantling is shortsighted.
"Abolishing the income tax on ALL levels and going to a national sales tax would of course solve these issues"
Uh, gee. I was with you until you went neo-conservatively insane.
Howabout we turn your idea on it's head, and instead of abolishing the income tax and going to a fully regressive system of taxation, we abolish the sales tax, but jack the income taxes up to the point where they're honestly and truly progressive. That would be fair.
If you want an example of precisely how fucked-up your suggestion is, you need look no further than Washington state, which has only sales taxes, and is currently mired in one of worst economies of any of the 50 states. Furthermore, it has been unable to find the funding for important infrastructure projects even in the best of economies. Forward-thinking politicians here keep calling for a state income tax, but it keeps getting shot down by the low-brain-to-volume-ratio folks on the eastern side of the state....
"Perhaps 70% of the buses have electric whips on them for hooking up to the very tiny stretches of power-strung streets, but they hook them up so they can shut the smoke-belching deisels off while they run through the bus tunnel, and then unhook them and turn the deisels back on on the other end. I'd guess about 2% of miles travelled are actually electric powered."
What exactly are you smoking, and can I have some?
Yeah, bud, I do ride the bus, every damn day, and every day, it's an electric bus. Furthermore, I watch at least 4 other bus lines go down my street alone, all of which are electric. Furthermore, the major lines through downtown are all electric.
It's pretty clear where you're getting your opinion--you've never ridden a Seattle bus outside of the bus tunnel routes. In fact, yes, when the bus tunnel is closed, the busses run diesel down 4th. The thing is, they only do that for about 4 hours a day, during the week. So I can see why you'd think that the majority of busses are gas powered when your experience with them is so limited.
Next time you're in Downtown (other than 4th), Cap Hill, Wallingford, the U District, Ballard, First Hill or the Central District take a moment, open up your worldview and look up. See those wires? Busses run on those.
"The problem with LTR is that it is also in traffic, has crashes, and can not be automated. Monorail can be automated, never crashes, and literally rides above it all"
*sigh*
...and the problem with monorail is that you get only a handful of places to board and exit (vs. every stop for light rail), when monorail breaks down, people have to get down from 30 feet above the ground somehow, it's an inescapable blight on the landscape (remember: once an LTR train has gone by, you don't see it anymore), and because there are exactly four monorail manufacturers, you're basically locked into whatever company built the line for all future maintenance costs.
By the by...how many times a year do light rail trains really get into accidents? (answer: not many). Oh...and how big a problem is the light rail/traffic jam problem? (answer: in a well-designed system, not that big a problem).
I swear, Monorail should just be declared a religion in this country. At least that way the zealots can get tax breaks....
"I live in Seattle and yes, the buses are noisy and smelly and generally gross. I remember on the east part of Capitol Hill they use the electric wires which definitely helped add to the ghetto ugly look of the not-quite-CD area. It was kind of cool to see them at night and hear a big "zap" and flash of blue when they jumped off the wires for a split second. Now instead of the ghetto ugly wires hanging over the streets there's the smell and pollution."
Uh. Yeah. I know. I live in Seattle. As in, right now. Currently. And I don't know what you're talking about with the "now...instead of wires" bit...the wires are here, they still crackle blue at night, and something like 70% of the in-city buses use them. And they don't pollute, or make any more noise now than they did when they were built.
As for the "ghetto" comments, I guess I have to ask: what is it that you want? What would make you happy? Buses have tailpipes, so they're bad, but the electric busses are bad too, because they're "ghetto." Criminy. If the teeny little bus wires offend you, I don't know what you're going to think when you find out that the monorail pylons aren't transparent....
"I wonder how they are going to pay for the other 4 lines?"
Tell me about it. One thing that's made the monorail campaigning unbearable is the relatively mindless pro-monorail answer to the objection that the planned line goes nowhere. Invariably, someone says, "Yeah, but when they build the other lines, Seattle will be great!". Of course, no one has ever really, seriously thought about the practicality of those other lines, or where the funding will come from.
It drives me up the wall, I tell you. If the planners had just put a little bit of thought into the first line, it might be something to get excited over. But the thing that was approved is basically just a multi-billion dollar white elephant.
"Seattle Metro bus ridership is so low because the busses suck. I hate them; they're noisy and polluting and slow and get stuck in traffic like everyone else."
Do you even live in Seattle? Something like 70% of the buses here are electric, meaning that they're neither noisy, nor polluting. Buses regularly drive by my apartment, and I don't even know they've gone by.
"It was too obvious even to the corrupt, however, that the rail system absolutely couldn't be done for any reasonable amount of money, and it's been in a perpetual state of falling over dead and being resurrected for the past 8 years or so."
You're being disingenuous. Sound Transit has had lots of trouble in Seattle for the same reason that any major public construction initiative has trouble in Seattle: the town is too politically correct for it's own good. Whereas many (most) other cities of Seattle's population have city managers with the power/authority to make decisions based upon engineering and technical criteria without putting issues to a vote, Seattle is hamstrung with a ridiculously political design/build process. Furthermore, the number of NIMBYs, owl-lovers and salmon saviors here attack any project that even looks sidelong at a stream or a standing puddle. It's a nightmare proposition for actually getting things done. The only reason the monorail people haven't hit this particular wall yet is because their line is only about five percent planned. And any engineer worth his sliderule will tell you that the true costs of a project don't become apparent until around the 30% mark.
You're right about one thing, though: Monorail has always been a populist initiative here in Seattle. Unfortunately, that doesn't make it a smart initiative. No matter how many intelligent, well-spoken engineers have pointed out the technical deficiencies of monorail for the Seattle landscape (and there have been many over the years), the populist beatniks have continued to mindlessly beat on the monorail drum. There's a reason that the Seattle Monorail has been called a technical solution waiting for a problem.
It's really sad, actually. Seattle is almost the textbook definition of the word "tragedy": a city with unbelievable potential, that is comepletely and utterly hamstrung by its political characteristics.
Slashdot Mirror
mmmm...yes...sucks these days, slashdot does...
Yes, just imagine...Compute!'s Gazette might still be here, had they only been able to protect their MLX source from the rampant pirate hordes:
as it was, it was just too easy to duplicate....
"it's not the changes in your brain that make the addiction (at most they make a chemical dependance). It's the fact that addicts decide to use the substance to fulfil a psychological need."
You're confusing psychological and physical dependencies (or worse, pretending that physical dependence doesn't exist).
An addiction to (for example) heroin is not the same as an addiction to caffiene. While for most people, a caffiene addiction can be overcome with a few days' worth of mild headache, kicking heroin can lead to severe cramps, sweats, hallucinations, and other nasty things. To say that people who are saddled with a heroin addiction are merely acting on a "preference" is naive. The body adapts to the opiates, and ultimately, begins to require them. The reason why people can "recreationally" take drugs like heroin and not become addicted is that it sometimes takes a few doses for the body to adapt to the drug. Nevertheless, there are waves of teenagers becoming addicted to heroin after only a few doses, yet I can almost guarantee that most of these kids have also consumed quite a lot of caffeine in their lives. You can't draw the same standard of addiction for both drugs.
Is there a psychological component to addictions? Almost certainly. But to assume that the psychological component is the only component is to ignore a great deal of evidence to the contrary.
"Addiction does not exist. Chemical withdrawal is no more painful than bad flu. Habits can be broken by choice - when you don't break them, it's because, on balance, you'd simply prefer not to."
I'm going to assume that you're simply young and underinformed, because otherwise, your statements reflect a willful disregard of the facts of addiction.
Addiction does exist, and one need only go as far as the local library to confirm this fact. The scientific literature is filled with analyses of the effect of opiates, narcotics and alcohol on the structure and function of the brain, on a molecular level. In a great many cases, addictive substances (such as opiates) mimic the chemistry of natural brain neurotransmitters and inhibitors, and their continued, obsessive use--the whole reason they function, really--is due to the fundamental changes in brain chemistry they produce.
I'm sorry, but your post is so completely ignorant that it's offensive. It's an embarassment that enough people on slashdot would agree with you to moderate your comments as "Insightful"
Corporate profit is shareholder profit.
Let's stop right there...
So you own a share of Microsoft stock. You own a piece of the company. Fine...you own one N-billionth of Microsoft.
But, what about the small businessman? He takes home all of his company's profits -- there are no shareholders in his company. Do we avoid taxing him?? Of course not.
Bottom line: "ownership of profit" does not abrogate our obligation to pay taxes on personal income. We tax "owned" profits every day. Last I heard, something like 3/4 of US economic activity is due to small business -- if we followed your line of reasoning, we'd have to throw away taxes on this activity.
So, yes, I've taken undergraduate economics too. Capiche?
"No. GWB eliminated DOUBLE taxation on dividends. The company already paid taxes on that money."
...as did the janitor who bought the software from Microsoft, with the money he earned from his job at the QuickieMart...
...which paid taxes on the money when it was earned from the sale of donuts to the Police Officer...
...who paid taxes on the money which he earned from his second job as a bouncer at the nightclub...
...who paid taxes on the money as income from the drinks purchased by...the Janitor!!
right....
Funny how only one of those taxations counts as a double taxation, isn't it?
"C++ has objects you say, but they always feel like it's grafted on to C....some things are still just ugly. How about an array who's size you don't know until runtime? Welcome back to pointers 101."
Uh...
std::vector v;
v.resize(some_value_from_somewhere_else);
I don't see a pointer anywhere in there.
"As soon as YOUR code has had uptime of 120 years or so"
Uhm...it's more like 120 billion years, give or take.
Of course, I guess that's all considered legacy code by now, isn't it?
I'm a cell phone luddite too. I hate the things. I owned one briefly back in 99, then got rid of it because I didn't want to carry it around, and I really didn't like the way people started to expect you to pick up the telephone all the time, just because you have a cell phone.
That said, I had to get another cell phone recently, and I decided on the Motorola V60c. I love the thing. It's cheap (I got it for $80), it's small, it's easy to dial (unlike those micro-tiny Nokia toys), easy to hear, and because it's a flip phone, it's actually comfortable to use. While the V60c doesn't have games or a color screen or polyphonic hoo-hahs, it does have an incredibly useful little calendar program (with alarm clock), and I find that it more than meets my PDA needs. Plus, with the sleek stainless case, it's damn stylish (who needs a color screen when you can look like you're James-freaking-Bond on the steel cellphone?)
My only complaints? The antenna is a bit flimsy (Radio shack replacements are $10 each), it would be nice to have downloadable ringtones, and I wish it had a calulator program. Otherwise, I highly recommend it (and I think the new version of the V60 line has a calculator, games and ringtones, for the same price). Go get yourself one of these.
Plants (many of them, at least) do actually contain cholesterol -- a lot of people misunderstand this. However, there is significant debate over the question of whether humans can digest it or not. I think the consensus is on the "not" side, at the moment.
Either way, the argument I was countering is moot -- the human body is perfectly capable of generating all of the cholesterol it needs. You don't need to eat meat to maintain critical hormone levels. This is why vegetarians don't end up spasming in the streets after a month or two of low/no cholesterol diets.
Oops. You're right, of course. Good catch.
"The theory goes that carbohydrates (starches and sugars) are easily (quickly) converted to glucose. This causes an overabundance of glucose in the blood, and an insulin spike. The insulin spike reduces the blood glucose levels by causing the excess glucose to be stored as fat."
Your summary sounds correct, from what I know of Atkins. And there's a general truth to this line of thought (high blood sugar -> insulin -> fat storage), but I think it plays kind of fast and loose with the science to conclude that carbohydrates lead to fat and are therefore Bad (tm).
Insulin mediates the storage of fat, it does not cause the storage of fat. In fact, insulin really only "tells" your cells to absorb sugar from the blood. What they do with the sugar is dependent on what they're doing, and what their energy requirements are. Thus, if you're Lance Armstrong, and you eat a diet consisting almost entirely of complex carbs, and you go out and ride 100 miles, your body will probably use all of that sugar. Alternatively, if you are Jack Black, and you eat a bag of Cheese Poofs, you are, most likely, going to store all of that excess sugar as fat. Carbohydrates are not inherently bad --excesses of them are.
Now, given targets for most diet plans (overweight individuals), there's some wiggle room: many people who start the Atkins diet would do just as well on any low-calorie diet plan. The low-carbohydrate angle is really just a trendy hook that sucks people in. And I think that's what the parent article suggests -- low-carbohydrate diets achieve much of their benefits in a very traditional way (when you're on the Atkins diet, you don't eat as much).
"Prior to that, out hominid ancestors were hunters/gatheres for some 2M years (during which meat was a significant part of their diet)."
And prior to that, we evolved from non-human primates, which eat diets consisting predominantly of plant material. And don't forget -- we're 99.9% identical at the genetic level to our closest non-human primate ancestors.
I could go on -- into the archeological evidence (fecal fossils, among others) that show that human diets were much heavier on fruits and vegetables than they are today, but you're good with google, so I'm sure you can find it.
"Your body is designed to burn food, not sugar. Food is turned into Glucose, but you arent designed to drink dextrose(sugar). Your body doesnt know what to do with it, so 100 percent of it gets stored as fat unless you are running a marathon and drinking it (gatorade).
Who is teaching you this stuff? Look man, our bodies burn glucose. "Food" is an abstract concept that makes it easier for us to think about what our bodies are doing to the stuff we eat. And, you're wrong -- our bodies do know what to do with glucose when we eat it. That's why we can administer pure dextrose as a drug to treat hypoglycemia. Your body doesn't care where it comes from -- glucose is glcose is glucose.
No one's arguing that all food is converted to glucose, its the speed that matters. Down 500 grams of glucose and have it absorb into your system within seconds, what is the chance that your body will burn 100 percent of it? Oh thats right 0. You will not burn it all and the majority of it will go to fat.
It's not 0, but I'll agree that you're not likely to completely utilize a massive amount of glucose unless you're undergoing some strenuous exercise. That said, you have to make up your mind -- a few sentences from now, you're going to argue that complex carbs are bad, because they absorb slowly. So what is it?
Rice takes forever to burn and digests instantly, its a fucking complex carbohydrate, marathon runners use rice and noodles, starches are high GI and take forever to burn, its equal to drinking a really high quality form of glucose which wont burn off with excercise, good if you want to run a marathon, REALLY BAD IF YOU WANT TO BURN FAT!
Ah, yes. "Proof by louder repetition." A favorite amongst slashdotters.
Why in the world do you think that glucose leads to fat? You still haven't justified this assertion. Your body wants to maintain a constant level of blood glucose -- it will attempt to do this (assuming you're not diabetic), by balancing the release of insulin and glucagon to regulate the uptake and release of glucose from your cells. Now, when you eat, your body converts whatever food it can into glucose, using the most efficient metabolic pathway available to it. Thus, eating results in the addition of glucose to your bloodstream, unless, of course, you choose to eat only fat and/or protein. In that case, you'd better eat a lot less food, because the caloric density of fat is very high, and, as I noted before, a high-protein diet can lead to other nasty things.
Avoid complex carbs as well, they take longer to digest but they take forever to burn
Again, I think you need to go back and think about your definitions, here. Complex carbs take a bit longer to get into the blood, but they're relatively quickly converted into glucose once they're there (complex carbohydrates are nothing more than long-chain polysaccharides, and are easily divided by hydrolysis -- your body does a good job of it). Once hydrolized, they're burned as efficiently as any other glucose molecule in your blood. The "problem" you're referring to is the tendency of the slowly-absorbed carbohydrates to provide a long-term rise in blood glucose levels. And remember, just a few sentences ago, you were arguing that the "quick-burning" simple sugars are bad! So which is it?
really starches have no purpose in the human body, we arent designed for it and thats why it spikes our insulin and then gets stored as bodyfat.
Let me get this straight -- because complex carbohydrates can possibly lead to insulin spikes (though this is far less of a danger than with simple sugars), that means our body "wasn't designed" for them? So, what -- I tell you that those protein supplements the weightlifters use leads to kidney failure, and you're going to tell me that our bodies weren't "designed" for protein? Does it even matter to you that human beings evolved from agrarian populations? That much of our metabolic ma
It's aboslutely appalling that the above post was modded up as informative. From the first sentence to the last, it's filled with half-true statements, and reeks of absurd pseudo-science.
First off: "The body is not designed to burn sugar."
Ugh. Go to the bookstore. Pick up an introductory biology textbook (biochemistry would work too). Find out that, in fact, the preferred source of energy for living organisms is sugar. Can the human body process other compounds for energy? Yes, but you'll find that none of these processes are as efficient as the catalysis of sugar for energy production, and that nearly all are overlooked in favor of glycolysis when glucose is present.
Next: Bacon is easier to burn and digests slowly
First, you have to define "digest," and you have to define "burn." If, by digest, you mean that a chunk of bacon is absorbed by the intestines less rapidly than a chunk of rice, you may or may not be correct. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that the body will absorb these things, and will somehow break these foods down into molecular units it can use. Fat, protein and sugar can all be converted to glucose through molecular pathways of varying efficiency -- this is what is traditionally meant by the "burning" of food.
Now, is bacon really easier to "burn" than rice? No. That's the opposite of the truth, actually. Bacon is muscle, which means that it is mostly protein and fat. And protein digestion is the metabolic pathway of last resort in humans. Thus, the body will (in an average person), digest the fat in the bacon first (and don't forget that, pound for pound, fat contains 9 times the caloric content of sugar!), store whatever it doesn't use as fat, use some of the protein for non-metabolic needs, and, most likely, squirt the rest of the protein out through the kidneys (via the liver). This is why people on extremely-high protein diets tend to have problems with kidney and liver function later in life.
Moving on: "Rice has no fat, so your hormones may get out of balance."
Bzzzt. Wrong again. Let's take another look at that biology 101 textbook: hormones are, by and large, cholesterol derivatives. Testosterone? Cholesterol. Estrogen? Ditto. In fact, you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find an important human hormone that wasn't derived from cholesterol, metabolically. And guess what? Plants have cholesterol too. More than enough for hormone synthesis needs, actually. This fact has been well-known by dieticians and doctors for decades.
So what about this gem: "Rice...is a complex carb, your body is not designed to handle it, so it takes a longer time to burn"
Nope. Compared to the protein or fat in bacon, rice is trivial for the body to "burn". It might take a smidge longer to digest, depending on how it's cooked, but we're not talking nutritionally-important differences here (your body will digest it one way or another). And the suggestion that the human body "is not designed to handle" complex carbohydrates? Utter nonsense. Go spit in a glass. See that? You're looking at a highly efficient mixure of enzymes, designed by evolution specifically for the digestion of complex carbohydrates. Pick up that biology book again...look up "alpha amylase," and you'll see what I mean.
So once we clear away the pseudo-science, what are we left with? Well, we know that protein is burned more slowly than fat, which is burned more slowly than sugars. And carbohydrates are sugars. So there is a bit of truth to your conclusion: when we eat high-protein diets, the body will find other mechanisms to meet it's sugar needs. It will do everything it can to create glucose without digesting protein. Of course, in the real world, no one eats pure protein (and for good reason -- see above), and protein has the nasty habit of coming in animal form, which means that lots of fat comes with it. It doesn't take much fat
Well, I have. In Seattle, at least.
I think that the slashdot story relating electromagnetic spectrum to colors, while fundamentally true, missed a significant point: the methods we use to broadcast on the electromagnetic spectrum fundamentally limit the amount of spectrum available.
The people who are spouting off on this forum about "unlimited digital spectrum" and the infinite "color spectrum" are forgetting that whatever methods we choose to transmit over airwaves do NOT operate on single, "point" frequencies. Sure, protocols such as frequency modulation are worse than others, such as amplitdue modulation or single-sideband, but all of them operate on multiple frequencies -- if only because of the "parasitic" broadcasts that a single single tends to produce on multiples of the main frequency. And worse, it's always been true that higher-frequency modulation of a signal (i.e. higher bandwidth) leads to an increase the width of the broadcast signal.
Don't misunderstand me: I think that the current broadcast universe could hold a lot more information -- and produce a lot more "channels" of data. But at the same time, the size of the electromagnetic spectrum is limited by our ability to utilize it -- and there are some fundamental physical limitations of radio waves that we will likely never overcome.
In short, I think it's silly to be calling for a dismantling of the FCC -- we need the FCC to make sure that whatever the current methods of broadcast are, they aren't used to dominate the airwaves. The FCC needs a swift kick in the pants, sure (write your legislator), but calling for dismantling is shortsighted.
"Abolishing the income tax on ALL levels and going to a national sales tax would of course solve these issues"
Uh, gee. I was with you until you went neo-conservatively insane.
Howabout we turn your idea on it's head, and instead of abolishing the income tax and going to a fully regressive system of taxation, we abolish the sales tax, but jack the income taxes up to the point where they're honestly and truly progressive. That would be fair.
If you want an example of precisely how fucked-up your suggestion is, you need look no further than Washington state, which has only sales taxes, and is currently mired in one of worst economies of any of the 50 states. Furthermore, it has been unable to find the funding for important infrastructure projects even in the best of economies. Forward-thinking politicians here keep calling for a state income tax, but it keeps getting shot down by the low-brain-to-volume-ratio folks on the eastern side of the state....
"Perhaps 70% of the buses have electric whips on them for hooking up to the very tiny stretches of power-strung streets, but they hook them up so they can shut the smoke-belching deisels off while they run through the bus tunnel, and then unhook them and turn the deisels back on on the other end. I'd guess about 2% of miles travelled are actually electric powered."
What exactly are you smoking, and can I have some?
Yeah, bud, I do ride the bus, every damn day, and every day, it's an electric bus. Furthermore, I watch at least 4 other bus lines go down my street alone, all of which are electric. Furthermore, the major lines through downtown are all electric.
It's pretty clear where you're getting your opinion--you've never ridden a Seattle bus outside of the bus tunnel routes. In fact, yes, when the bus tunnel is closed, the busses run diesel down 4th. The thing is, they only do that for about 4 hours a day, during the week. So I can see why you'd think that the majority of busses are gas powered when your experience with them is so limited.
Next time you're in Downtown (other than 4th), Cap Hill, Wallingford, the U District, Ballard, First Hill or the Central District take a moment, open up your worldview and look up. See those wires? Busses run on those.
"The problem with LTR is that it is also in traffic, has crashes, and can not be automated. Monorail can be automated, never crashes, and literally rides above it all"
...and the problem with monorail is that you get only a handful of places to board and exit (vs. every stop for light rail), when monorail breaks down, people have to get down from 30 feet above the ground somehow, it's an inescapable blight on the landscape (remember: once an LTR train has gone by, you don't see it anymore), and because there are exactly four monorail manufacturers, you're basically locked into whatever company built the line for all future maintenance costs.
*sigh*
By the by...how many times a year do light rail trains really get into accidents? (answer: not many). Oh...and how big a problem is the light rail/traffic jam problem? (answer: in a well-designed system, not that big a problem).
I swear, Monorail should just be declared a religion in this country. At least that way the zealots can get tax breaks....
"I live in Seattle and yes, the buses are noisy and smelly and generally gross. I remember on the east part of Capitol Hill they use the electric wires which definitely helped add to the ghetto ugly look of the not-quite-CD area. It was kind of cool to see them at night and hear a big "zap" and flash of blue when they jumped off the wires for a split second. Now instead of the ghetto ugly wires hanging over the streets there's the smell and pollution."
Uh. Yeah. I know. I live in Seattle. As in, right now. Currently. And I don't know what you're talking about with the "now...instead of wires" bit...the wires are here, they still crackle blue at night, and something like 70% of the in-city buses use them. And they don't pollute, or make any more noise now than they did when they were built.
As for the "ghetto" comments, I guess I have to ask: what is it that you want? What would make you happy? Buses have tailpipes, so they're bad, but the electric busses are bad too, because they're "ghetto." Criminy. If the teeny little bus wires offend you, I don't know what you're going to think when you find out that the monorail pylons aren't transparent....
"I wonder how they are going to pay for the other 4 lines?"
Tell me about it. One thing that's made the monorail campaigning unbearable is the relatively mindless pro-monorail answer to the objection that the planned line goes nowhere. Invariably, someone says, "Yeah, but when they build the other lines, Seattle will be great!". Of course, no one has ever really, seriously thought about the practicality of those other lines, or where the funding will come from.
It drives me up the wall, I tell you. If the planners had just put a little bit of thought into the first line, it might be something to get excited over. But the thing that was approved is basically just a multi-billion dollar white elephant.
"Seattle Metro bus ridership is so low because the busses suck. I hate them; they're noisy and polluting and slow and get stuck in traffic like everyone else."
Do you even live in Seattle? Something like 70% of the buses here are electric, meaning that they're neither noisy, nor polluting. Buses regularly drive by my apartment, and I don't even know they've gone by.
"It was too obvious even to the corrupt, however, that the rail system absolutely couldn't be done for any reasonable amount of money, and it's been in a perpetual state of falling over dead and being resurrected for the past 8 years or so."
You're being disingenuous. Sound Transit has had lots of trouble in Seattle for the same reason that any major public construction initiative has trouble in Seattle: the town is too politically correct for it's own good. Whereas many (most) other cities of Seattle's population have city managers with the power/authority to make decisions based upon engineering and technical criteria without putting issues to a vote, Seattle is hamstrung with a ridiculously political design/build process. Furthermore, the number of NIMBYs, owl-lovers and salmon saviors here attack any project that even looks sidelong at a stream or a standing puddle. It's a nightmare proposition for actually getting things done. The only reason the monorail people haven't hit this particular wall yet is because their line is only about five percent planned. And any engineer worth his sliderule will tell you that the true costs of a project don't become apparent until around the 30% mark.
You're right about one thing, though: Monorail has always been a populist initiative here in Seattle. Unfortunately, that doesn't make it a smart initiative. No matter how many intelligent, well-spoken engineers have pointed out the technical deficiencies of monorail for the Seattle landscape (and there have been many over the years), the populist beatniks have continued to mindlessly beat on the monorail drum. There's a reason that the Seattle Monorail has been called a technical solution waiting for a problem.
It's really sad, actually. Seattle is almost the textbook definition of the word "tragedy": a city with unbelievable potential, that is comepletely and utterly hamstrung by its political characteristics.
They just renamed it "Intelligent Design"
(rim-shot)