Your metabolism can only adjust so far, and it's not actually all that far. If that weren't true, then people wouldn't starve to death, their metabolism would just keep adjusting until they could live on practically nothing.
Actually, they can. It's really rather amazing. I'm not inclined to do your research for you; but look it up.
Yeah? How much less? You don't mention that part. And scientific studies have repeatedly shown that you have to get to (and remain at) nearly starvation levels for that to work as a long-term solution.
None of this violates your energy law, it is just that the machine has a chip that decides whether to use the gas to run the engine or charge the batteries.
Exactly!
Gary Taubes mentions an experiment where they starved some animals that normally would be putting on fat for the winter. What did the animals do? They got fat by burning up their own muscle tissue, and eventually they died of heart failure (muscle tissue weakened) but still fat, they died starved and fat.
Boy, that ought to poke a hole in the balloons of the "Diet and Exercise" goons. But, just like the "Eating fat causes high cholesterol" myth, it Just. Won't Die.
Pasta and bread is food for poor people, but it causes the body to make more insulin which signals fat cells to open up to remove all that excess sugar from the blood. Eating fat on the other hand doesn't mess with your insulin so nstead the body will tell you that you have energy to move around more (brisk walk, clean up the garage, whatever) and that you are satiated.
Again, spot on! It's about insulin, and insulin resistance, pretty much "period". The Chinese study in question was addressing the increase in insulin resistance caused by certain Polysaccharide compounds excreted by the Enterobacter. Oughta be a damned clue, eh?
"Make one change - this month divide that daily food intake into 8 equal parts and have 8 small meals at even intervals throughout the day. Same energy in, same energy out, and you WILL lose weight."
No necessarily. Smaller meals are digested better so you're more likely to absorb even more calories. Plenty of weightlifters use the small meals but often approach to bulk up.
But they aren't trying to build fat, you idiot. Try another profession. Nutrition clearly isn't your strong suit.
Make one change - this month divide that daily food intake into 8 equal parts and have 8 small meals at even intervals throughout the day. Same energy in, same energy out, and you WILL lose weight.
That's because you are reducing the Glycemic Load at any one feeding. What you are doing is working within your increased insulin resistance as a Type II Diabetic (as am I). This is an effective way to manage insulin levels, which is why you are losing weight.
I wholeheartedly agree that caloric restriction (Concentration Camp "examples" notwithstanding!) and exercise are largely ineffective ways of weight reduction in the Type II Diabetic. It all comes down to reducing the insulin response, because (as you probably know) insulin is actually the substance that causes fat storage.
And if the "physics" consideration doesn't suit you, take another look. Take a look at photos of people from concentration camps, or prisoners of war captured in the Stalingrad Kessel. There are no random fat people - they all used more than they consumed and thus lost weight.
As I said to another poster, "Caloric Accounting" DOES work; but only if you push yourself so far outside the "norm" that you swamp out the other variables that you dismiss outright. (BTW, running 100kM/week is NOT in the realm of practical for most people. You have OCD).
Concentration Camps? Yeah, that's a practical example.
> The difference between well proportioned and fat people is not willpower.
Except when it is.
Agree that this is an important study. However, the fact of the matter is eating more "fruits/herbs/veggies" and less of the processed/meaty stuff is an act of the will - one that will almost certainly cause weight to drop in overweight people. (spoken as one myself).
You did notice from the Chinese study that the diet was HIGH FAT, didn't you?
Take your misguided obesity prejudice somewhere else. We're busy here.
energy in=energy out, sure. But how much of the energy in gets lost to inefficiency?
When I weigh less than 170, I can eat 3000 calories a day and not gain weight. If I manage to top 190, suddenly the same diet starts packing on more pounds and, worse, I can't get under 210 even reducing my calories to 1400.
If need to double my daily excercise routine at the same time, the weight slowly comes off, but as soon as I get back under 190, suddenly I start dropping a pound a day.
That's a very interesting data point, albeit anecdotal (all data starts out being anecdotal). I would submit that it is "insulin resistance" that is changing, but I'm not sure exactly why.
The law of conservation of energy is just that. It's the law. Don't eat you lose weight. How many fat people do you see when food is short? Starving people are not fat. I'm sorry but that is the law.
Once you get beyond a certain "tipping point", you are correct. What I have called "Caloric Accounting" does take over.
However, did you notice that you had to cite an out-of-normal example of "eating habits" (starvation) to make your point? That is a clear sign that there are indeed other factors at play, but those factors are "swamped out" by the sheer lack of caloric intake vs. caloric requirement.
You really need to look at some of the studies regarding how the body adapts to lack of food. It turns out you have to really, really REALLY restrict food intake (down to a few hundred kCalories per day or less) to achieve ANY substantial weight loss.
It's called "evolution". Might want to look it up.
As far as eating a huge meal and feeling hungry 20 minutes later even though you know your stomach is full - I had this problem for years. My whole life actually, until I tried an elimination diet. I also had ongoing problems with migraines (3-4 migraines per week for about 10 years, about 1 a week prior to that). As it turns out I have a soy intolerance (and mild allergy - turns out my dry skin was hives).
Your problem is simple: You (like many others) have a Gluten intolerance. The problem is finding and eliminating ALL of the sources of Gluten. Your symptoms are classic Gluten intolerance (migranes, dry skin). The "hives" (a histamine reaction) are also a clear sign of an allergy.
What is happening is your brain keeps switching from using glucose and using ketones for fuel.
Citation, please.
Excuse me; but Ketones are a "combustion byproduct", not "fuel". Your brain lives on glucose, period. The only reason why low-carbers are interested in putting themselves voluntarily into a state of Diabetic Ketosis (which was originally deemed a Bad Thing, which is why they came out with Ketostix to detect it) is that it is a reliable and simple indicator of "fat burning" when combined with a low-carb diet.
But, I have never heard that you can run your brain (or body) on Ketones. That's like filling your gas tank up with sewage and expecting to drive to the store.
Sounds like you may need to eat MORE protein. As far as I can tell, and I'm not a scientist or dietician, all the diets that work have a combination of more protein and less carbs. I cut my carbs down to 125 g per day and I lost 70 lbs in 9 months. But I greatly increased my intake of meat, eggs, cheese, nuts, etc. Any time I get hungry, I eat one of those and I feel full immediately.
I can anectodally attest to the same results with low-carb, high protein, high fat diets (slightly self-modified Atkins diet in my case). But now I wonder if those results were actually from gut pH changes that reduced/eliminated (temporarily) an unknown Enterobacter colony, rather than the carbohydrate restriction. I say that, because in the (admittedly statistically insignificant) test group of one, the "pH changing" diet consisted of significantly high carbohydrate foods (the "whole grains" part).
By the way, which way did the pH get pushed? Up (more Alkaline), or Down (more Acidic)?
Exercise and eat healthy food. This is affordable and works wonders for physical as well as mental health.
This method has worked well, and will continue working well despite whatever relationships between gut bacteria and obesity future studies may find.
In other words, you are a gym snob.
What about the millions that never exercise, eat like hogs, and still remain thin?
You do realize, of course (of course you don't), that the scientific community has known for about 60 years that exercise does not cause weight reduction, right?
And there was a lot more to this specialized diet than simply "eating healthy food". It was specifically formulated to modify gut pH. You won't find that metric in any list of "healthy" foods.
While there are many benefits to exercise and "healthy eating", weight loss is not strongly tied to either.
I'm a contractor for NIH/NIAID. I can attest these articles and discussions generate great interest from those who research systems biology (figuring out the system as a whole, rather than looking at individual parts). The fact cats have bacteria that can affect the mind (making mice more careless to benefit the cat, and therefore, the bacteria), and that these bacteria affect human minds as well is clear evidence that bacteria in general can make us do things (overeat?) that benefit a specific "civilization" within our bodies.
Very interesting; except I take exception to your veiled suggestion that the Enterobacter causes overeating. It was suggested in the study that the link was increased insulin resistance due to Se-enriched Polysaccharides, not overeating. That's an insult, period.
Fortunately, this study may be the first evidence that obesity is not caused by "lack of willpower", or even "bad genes". Your attitude doesn't help matters.
We can also try to find a substance that affects said bacteria and nothing else, and then flood the stomach with that.
The danger there is that very few substances we've found affect just the one type of bacteria.
...and my (limited) research has uncovered that Enterobacters are naturally antibiotic (at least beta lactam) resistant, and that even strains that are not resistant, become so. The article I read also said that antibiotic therapies for Enterobacter are tricky to come up with, have to be individually tailored and titrated, and are generally a pain.
So, it seems like an antibiotic therapy will not be easy to do. But changing the gut pH with that specialized diet (which worked QUITE well against the Enterobacter, BTW) seems to have done the trick.
Odds are that alcohol is absorbed by the body before it gets to the large intestine....Unless you intend to insert from the other end.
Sincerely,
The Party Pooper
Not to spoil your fun; but I've heard that is actually done, and is VERY dangerous.
Like the time I tried mixing vodka and Gatorade. It works; but is RIDICULOUSLY dangerous! I went from cold sober to throwing-up drunk in less than 30 minutes and about 6 oz. of my (much larger) drink. The Glucose in the Gatorade and the alcohol bond together, and (I think) they pass straight into the bloodstream.
Apples DRM restricts a single purchase of an application to 5 devices, so while the source was available, Rémi Denis-Courmont felt that the distribution restrictions were not compatible with GPL, and Apple did not feel like fighting him on it.
I am a little skeptical of the claim since, at it's heart, the GPL is about releasing source back to the community, not about how the final binary is distributed.
Excuse me, but wasn't VLC a free App? How in Goddess's name is the Distribution of something free in any meaningful way "Restricted"??? The "5 devices" restriction is only germane when you have to pay real money for the app. I guess Apple could reconfigure its App-Owner-Device database to accommodate an arbitrary number of "devices"; but that would really only apply to the Apps that Apple was by definition already losing money on. It's already pretty cool that Apple doesn't charge free software contributors for the approval, listing as well as ongoing hosting and maintenance costs; but to expect them to completely reconfigure their "# of devices" rules just to please some whiney software developer is beyond the pale.
I imagine the same issue will apply. The issue was that the Terms of Service imposed by the Apple store, applied restrictions to distribution that were contrary to the terms of the GPL
Then how is it that the Apple App Store(s), just like the Apple OSes they run on, are chock-full of GPL-based Code?
Didn't the iOS version get taken down due to conflicts with the licensing of VLC and the iOS App Store? Wouldn't the exact same thing happen here?
Good point!
I thought that it was highly disingenuous for them to say "We'll do anything we have to to be compatible with the WINDOWS Store", when they whined about the iOS App Store requirements, and even after the app was approved and on the App Store, VLC threw a fit and voluntarily removed their App.
So screw, preferably with a big, knobby stick., the maintainers of the VLC Project for being so being two-faced. Either you stand on your principles, or you have none. VLC has just demonstrated which applies to them.
I wonder how of those people feel that way because they believe that the higher cost means it must be the best product they could have purchased.
While you are correct that there is a tendency for some people to rationalize a poor buying decision, and certainly agree about the rampant insanity of many "audiophiles", you would be equally incorrect to assume that is the main reason why Apple has been so wildly successful.
In the end, people have to use these things, and I can assure you that there would have long ago been a mass-exodus away from Apple products if there was something fundamentally wrong with them.
And "cachet" might get you the first Apple sale for a particular customer; but for most of them, it wouldn't go past that, and that's not the typical pattern.
I have used plenty of brands of computer and consumer-electronic equipment in my nearly 40 years' experience with same, and with absolutely zero exceptions, in those areas where Apple competes, their products are consistently head-and-shoulders above the others in terms of build quality, attention to detail, longevity, and overall "user experience".
Well there is the little fact that the Apple products are easier to use, generally more reliable, very user friendly, have a great UI design, and are of course extremely stylish
It is a fact that Apple products are not easier to use or more reliable or more user-friendly or have better UI design, all of this has been proven through usability and other studies. Stylish is a matter of opinion, though it does seem to hold out. It is a fact that you are an iFanboy.
Cite these mythical "usability and other studies".
Phrogman: While I agree with your comments wholeheartedly, I just HAD to do this little correction:
"If you are willing to settle for things which [are] frustrating to use, unreliable, generally user surly, have an UI design with very little thought put into it by comparison, and can be considered stylish as long as you were blind from birth, then there seems to be an ample supply." Otherwise, by an Apple.
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Your metabolism can only adjust so far, and it's not actually all that far. If that weren't true, then people wouldn't starve to death, their metabolism would just keep adjusting until they could live on practically nothing.
Actually, they can. It's really rather amazing. I'm not inclined to do your research for you; but look it up.
I lost 22 pounds in 6 months just by eating less.
Yeah? How much less? You don't mention that part. And scientific studies have repeatedly shown that you have to get to (and remain at) nearly starvation levels for that to work as a long-term solution.
None of this violates your energy law, it is just that the machine has a chip that decides whether to use the gas to run the engine or charge the batteries.
Exactly!
Gary Taubes mentions an experiment where they starved some animals that normally would be putting on fat for the winter. What did the animals do? They got fat by burning up their own muscle tissue, and eventually they died of heart failure (muscle tissue weakened) but still fat, they died starved and fat.
Boy, that ought to poke a hole in the balloons of the "Diet and Exercise" goons. But, just like the "Eating fat causes high cholesterol" myth, it Just. Won't Die.
Pasta and bread is food for poor people, but it causes the body to make more insulin which signals fat cells to open up to remove all that excess sugar from the blood. Eating fat on the other hand doesn't mess with your insulin so nstead the body will tell you that you have energy to move around more (brisk walk, clean up the garage, whatever) and that you are satiated.
Again, spot on! It's about insulin, and insulin resistance, pretty much "period". The Chinese study in question was addressing the increase in insulin resistance caused by certain Polysaccharide compounds excreted by the Enterobacter. Oughta be a damned clue, eh?
"Make one change - this month divide that daily food intake into 8 equal parts and have 8 small meals at even intervals throughout the day. Same energy in, same energy out, and you WILL lose weight."
No necessarily. Smaller meals are digested better so you're more likely to absorb even more calories. Plenty of weightlifters use the small meals but often approach to bulk up.
But they aren't trying to build fat, you idiot. Try another profession. Nutrition clearly isn't your strong suit.
Make one change - this month divide that daily food intake into 8 equal parts and have 8 small meals at even intervals throughout the day. Same energy in, same energy out, and you WILL lose weight.
That's because you are reducing the Glycemic Load at any one feeding. What you are doing is working within your increased insulin resistance as a Type II Diabetic (as am I). This is an effective way to manage insulin levels, which is why you are losing weight.
I wholeheartedly agree that caloric restriction (Concentration Camp "examples" notwithstanding!) and exercise are largely ineffective ways of weight reduction in the Type II Diabetic. It all comes down to reducing the insulin response, because (as you probably know) insulin is actually the substance that causes fat storage.
And if the "physics" consideration doesn't suit you, take another look. Take a look at photos of people from concentration camps, or prisoners of war captured in the Stalingrad Kessel. There are no random fat people - they all used more than they consumed and thus lost weight.
As I said to another poster, "Caloric Accounting" DOES work; but only if you push yourself so far outside the "norm" that you swamp out the other variables that you dismiss outright. (BTW, running 100kM/week is NOT in the realm of practical for most people. You have OCD).
Concentration Camps? Yeah, that's a practical example.
> The difference between well proportioned and fat people is not willpower.
Except when it is.
Agree that this is an important study. However, the fact of the matter is eating more "fruits/herbs/veggies" and less of the processed/meaty stuff is an act of the will - one that will almost certainly cause weight to drop in overweight people. (spoken as one myself).
You did notice from the Chinese study that the diet was HIGH FAT, didn't you?
Take your misguided obesity prejudice somewhere else. We're busy here.
energy in=energy out, sure. But how much of the energy in gets lost to inefficiency?
When I weigh less than 170, I can eat 3000 calories a day and not gain weight. If I manage to top 190, suddenly the same diet starts packing on more pounds and, worse, I can't get under 210 even reducing my calories to 1400.
If need to double my daily excercise routine at the same time, the weight slowly comes off, but as soon as I get back under 190, suddenly I start dropping a pound a day.
That's a very interesting data point, albeit anecdotal (all data starts out being anecdotal). I would submit that it is "insulin resistance" that is changing, but I'm not sure exactly why.
The law of conservation of energy is just that. It's the law. Don't eat you lose weight. How many fat people do you see when food is short? Starving people are not fat. I'm sorry but that is the law.
Once you get beyond a certain "tipping point", you are correct. What I have called "Caloric Accounting" does take over.
However, did you notice that you had to cite an out-of-normal example of "eating habits" (starvation) to make your point? That is a clear sign that there are indeed other factors at play, but those factors are "swamped out" by the sheer lack of caloric intake vs. caloric requirement.
You really need to look at some of the studies regarding how the body adapts to lack of food. It turns out you have to really, really REALLY restrict food intake (down to a few hundred kCalories per day or less) to achieve ANY substantial weight loss.
It's called "evolution". Might want to look it up.
As far as eating a huge meal and feeling hungry 20 minutes later even though you know your stomach is full - I had this problem for years. My whole life actually, until I tried an elimination diet. I also had ongoing problems with migraines (3-4 migraines per week for about 10 years, about 1 a week prior to that). As it turns out I have a soy intolerance (and mild allergy - turns out my dry skin was hives).
Your problem is simple: You (like many others) have a Gluten intolerance. The problem is finding and eliminating ALL of the sources of Gluten. Your symptoms are classic Gluten intolerance (migranes, dry skin). The "hives" (a histamine reaction) are also a clear sign of an allergy.
What is happening is your brain keeps switching from using glucose and using ketones for fuel.
Citation, please.
Excuse me; but Ketones are a "combustion byproduct", not "fuel". Your brain lives on glucose, period. The only reason why low-carbers are interested in putting themselves voluntarily into a state of Diabetic Ketosis (which was originally deemed a Bad Thing, which is why they came out with Ketostix to detect it) is that it is a reliable and simple indicator of "fat burning" when combined with a low-carb diet.
But, I have never heard that you can run your brain (or body) on Ketones. That's like filling your gas tank up with sewage and expecting to drive to the store.
Omega-6's are your enemy. Guess again on the phrase "bacon is your new candy".
Sugar-based "candy" isn't particularly good for you, either; but that is rather not the point...
I make sure I don't drown in meat proteins
Sounds like you may need to eat MORE protein. As far as I can tell, and I'm not a scientist or dietician, all the diets that work have a combination of more protein and less carbs. I cut my carbs down to 125 g per day and I lost 70 lbs in 9 months. But I greatly increased my intake of meat, eggs, cheese, nuts, etc. Any time I get hungry, I eat one of those and I feel full immediately.
I can anectodally attest to the same results with low-carb, high protein, high fat diets (slightly self-modified Atkins diet in my case). But now I wonder if those results were actually from gut pH changes that reduced/eliminated (temporarily) an unknown Enterobacter colony, rather than the carbohydrate restriction. I say that, because in the (admittedly statistically insignificant) test group of one, the "pH changing" diet consisted of significantly high carbohydrate foods (the "whole grains" part).
By the way, which way did the pH get pushed? Up (more Alkaline), or Down (more Acidic)?
Exercise and eat healthy food. This is affordable and works wonders for physical as well as mental health.
This method has worked well, and will continue working well despite whatever relationships between gut bacteria and obesity future studies may find.
In other words, you are a gym snob.
What about the millions that never exercise, eat like hogs, and still remain thin?
You do realize, of course (of course you don't), that the scientific community has known for about 60 years that exercise does not cause weight reduction, right?
And there was a lot more to this specialized diet than simply "eating healthy food". It was specifically formulated to modify gut pH. You won't find that metric in any list of "healthy" foods.
While there are many benefits to exercise and "healthy eating", weight loss is not strongly tied to either.
I'm a contractor for NIH/NIAID. I can attest these articles and discussions generate great interest from those who research systems biology (figuring out the system as a whole, rather than looking at individual parts). The fact cats have bacteria that can affect the mind (making mice more careless to benefit the cat, and therefore, the bacteria), and that these bacteria affect human minds as well is clear evidence that bacteria in general can make us do things (overeat?) that benefit a specific "civilization" within our bodies.
Very interesting; except I take exception to your veiled suggestion that the Enterobacter causes overeating. It was suggested in the study that the link was increased insulin resistance due to Se-enriched Polysaccharides, not overeating. That's an insult, period.
Fortunately, this study may be the first evidence that obesity is not caused by "lack of willpower", or even "bad genes". Your attitude doesn't help matters.
We can also try to find a substance that affects said bacteria and nothing else, and then flood the stomach with that.
The danger there is that very few substances we've found affect just the one type of bacteria.
...and my (limited) research has uncovered that Enterobacters are naturally antibiotic (at least beta lactam) resistant, and that even strains that are not resistant, become so. The article I read also said that antibiotic therapies for Enterobacter are tricky to come up with, have to be individually tailored and titrated, and are generally a pain.
So, it seems like an antibiotic therapy will not be easy to do. But changing the gut pH with that specialized diet (which worked QUITE well against the Enterobacter, BTW) seems to have done the trick.
Odds are that alcohol is absorbed by the body before it gets to the large intestine....Unless you intend to insert from the other end.
Sincerely,
The Party Pooper
Not to spoil your fun; but I've heard that is actually done, and is VERY dangerous.
Like the time I tried mixing vodka and Gatorade. It works; but is RIDICULOUSLY dangerous! I went from cold sober to throwing-up drunk in less than 30 minutes and about 6 oz. of my (much larger) drink. The Glucose in the Gatorade and the alcohol bond together, and (I think) they pass straight into the bloodstream.
Apple denying VLC from their app store is probably as much to do with "duplicating existing functionality" as much as any licensing issue.
Wrong.
It was removed because it was requested to be removed. Apple was fine with it.
For you to be correct, for example, there would have to be no other web browsers on the iOS App Store.
Go hate somewhere else.
Apples DRM restricts a single purchase of an application to 5 devices, so while the source was available, Rémi Denis-Courmont felt that the distribution restrictions were not compatible with GPL, and Apple did not feel like fighting him on it.
I am a little skeptical of the claim since, at it's heart, the GPL is about releasing source back to the community, not about how the final binary is distributed.
Excuse me, but wasn't VLC a free App? How in Goddess's name is the Distribution of something free in any meaningful way "Restricted"??? The "5 devices" restriction is only germane when you have to pay real money for the app. I guess Apple could reconfigure its App-Owner-Device database to accommodate an arbitrary number of "devices"; but that would really only apply to the Apps that Apple was by definition already losing money on. It's already pretty cool that Apple doesn't charge free software contributors for the approval, listing as well as ongoing hosting and maintenance costs; but to expect them to completely reconfigure their "# of devices" rules just to please some whiney software developer is beyond the pale.
I imagine the same issue will apply. The issue was that the Terms of Service imposed by the Apple store, applied restrictions to distribution that were contrary to the terms of the GPL
Then how is it that the Apple App Store(s), just like the Apple OSes they run on, are chock-full of GPL-based Code?
That's actually a serious question.
Didn't the iOS version get taken down due to conflicts with the licensing of VLC and the iOS App Store? Wouldn't the exact same thing happen here?
Good point!
I thought that it was highly disingenuous for them to say "We'll do anything we have to to be compatible with the WINDOWS Store", when they whined about the iOS App Store requirements, and even after the app was approved and on the App Store, VLC threw a fit and voluntarily removed their App.
So screw, preferably with a big, knobby stick., the maintainers of the VLC Project for being so being two-faced. Either you stand on your principles, or you have none. VLC has just demonstrated which applies to them.
I wonder how of those people feel that way because they believe that the higher cost means it must be the best product they could have purchased.
While you are correct that there is a tendency for some people to rationalize a poor buying decision, and certainly agree about the rampant insanity of many "audiophiles", you would be equally incorrect to assume that is the main reason why Apple has been so wildly successful.
In the end, people have to use these things, and I can assure you that there would have long ago been a mass-exodus away from Apple products if there was something fundamentally wrong with them.
And "cachet" might get you the first Apple sale for a particular customer; but for most of them, it wouldn't go past that, and that's not the typical pattern.
I have used plenty of brands of computer and consumer-electronic equipment in my nearly 40 years' experience with same, and with absolutely zero exceptions, in those areas where Apple competes, their products are consistently head-and-shoulders above the others in terms of build quality, attention to detail, longevity, and overall "user experience".
Apple has the top sellers in the U.S. in the product areas of notebooks and (consumer) desktops, music players, tablets and (relative to any other single brand) smartphones. Do you really think they got there, especially in this weak economy, on cachet?
People do sell similar products cheaper.
"Similar" in the same way as a Yugo and a Ferrari are "Similar" devices; only due to the fact that they are both "cars".
Well there is the little fact that the Apple products are easier to use, generally more reliable, very user friendly, have a great UI design, and are of course extremely stylish
It is a fact that Apple products are not easier to use or more reliable or more user-friendly or have better UI design, all of this has been proven through usability and other studies. Stylish is a matter of opinion, though it does seem to hold out. It is a fact that you are an iFanboy.
Cite these mythical "usability and other studies".
Phrogman: While I agree with your comments wholeheartedly, I just HAD to do this little correction:
"If you are willing to settle for things which [are] frustrating to use, unreliable, generally user surly, have an UI design with very little thought put into it by comparison, and can be considered stylish as long as you were blind from birth, then there seems to be an ample supply." Otherwise, by an Apple.
Sorry, couldn't resist!