shooflypie

A Systematic Review of the Evidence Supporting a Causal Link Between Dietary Factors and Coronary Heart Disease. Arch. Intern. Med. 2009 169(7):639-669

Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies Evaluating the Association of Saturated Fat with Cardiovascular Disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 March; 91(3): 535–546. 

Reduced or Modified Dietary Fat for Preventing Cardiovascular Disease (Review). The Cochrane Collaboration. Cochrane Libary. 2011. Issue 7

- This last one suggests benefits for replacing some saturated fats with PUFAs, but it's equally possible that if you simply replaced some carbohydrates with PUFAs, it would have the same effect; i.e. it's the increase in PUFAs rather than the decrease in sat fats that is the key. (This is according to Canadian obesity doctor Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, who blogs at Weighty Matters.)

I'll be turning 40 in three months, and inspired by perspicuity and http://thebrokenwatch.blogspot.com…012/04/30-things-every-woman-shoul…tml and (of course) Heinlein, I'm pulling together a list of the things you should know how to do by the time you're 40. And bless Heinlein's little heart, while I appreciate his frontiersman perspective, in my real world I don't actually need to know how to butcher a hog or build a wall, but I could figure out how to do it if I needed to. I'll start with my "by 30" list and move on from there.

I would actually like some feedback from folks who are past 40 and have some perspective on this. :)

by 30
o change a diaper
o make safe/fire/clean a gun
o drive a car well
o balance accounts
o say no
o listen
o know how to find the information needed to learn how to...
o perform CPR
o comfort others
o take orders
o give orders
o cooperate
o act alone
o analyze a new problem
o know who you want to be when you grow up
o cook a tasty meal 
o know how to avoid fights
o know that you don't need to care what other people think

by 40
o listen to criticism without taking it personally
o give criticism effectively
o identify the difference between happiness and fleeting satisfaction
o know when it's not about you
o listen more than you speak
o be that grown-up person you want to be
o actually stop caring what other people think
o know how to fight fair
o know how to fight dirty
o approach expert level in something you care about

(Edited for missing words. Sigh.)

Really fascinating article in The Atlantic, positing that each of us has multiple selves that compete to pursue their own vision of happiness.

Among the ideas that are really making me think:

- the most common leisure activity is participating in experiences we know are not real: reading novels, watching TV, etc. "Enjoying fiction requires a shift in selfhood. You give up your own identity and try on the identities of other people, adopting their perspectives so as to share their experiences. This allows us to enjoy fictional events that would shock and sadden us in real life. When Tony Soprano kills someone, you respond differently than you would to a real murder; you accept and adopt some of the moral premises of the Soprano universe. You become, if just for a moment, Tony Soprano."

Why do other people enjoy trying on the identity of miserable people, as in most of Oprah's Book Club? What are people who enjoy horror films experiencing? 

- when the selves are not cooperating, you get compulsions or addictions. "Sometimes one self can predict that it will later be dominated by another self, and it can act to block the crossing—an act known as self-binding" (dieters who buy smaller portions of food, putting your alarm clock out of reach)

1963 MBW "Blitz motorcycles"

Yesterday, my TV (a 5-yo 50-inch plasma that I got as a hand-me-down) suddenly shut off. A replacement TV would cost at least $650, and would be particularly ill-timed, as I finally ended two years of dithering and bought a PS3. Yesterday. 

I used Samsung's live chat feature to talk to support, and they had nothing useful to say after walking me through all of the things I already checked, and wanted to sign me up for a service call. Thanks, but no thanks.

To the internet, Batman!

Whereupon I quickly discovered the likely problem (power supply failure due to blown fuse), and found a YouTube video that identified the probable culprit and showed how to find and replace said fuse. W00t!

So today I drove down to You Do It Electronics, and bought a package of five fuses for $7. I removed the back of the TV (with the help of perspicuity, who even brought his voltmeter, bless him), identified the blown fuse, and replaced it.

And that, my friends, is the POWR OF TEH INTERWEBZ.

Just finished reading the most interesting research paper. It was written in response to the American College of Sports Medicine's annual (I think?) position paper about what kind of training is necessary to increase strength. Apparently, the ACSM has gotten criticism the last several years for continuing to make recommendations that have no basis in scientific fact.

The fascinating thing is that if you actually look at exercise research, the conclusions are stunningly different from everything you may have heard about strength training:

- The greatest strength gains are seen with one set to muscular failure, not the standard 8 to 12 reps. If you stop before you reached momentary muscular failure, you're going to get less benefit.

- Muscle endurance is not trained more effectively with lower weights and more reps. Odd, huh?

- There is no difference in strength, power, or endurance results among the different types of resistance, including the different types of machines. Since machines seem to have lower injury rates and are quicker to set up, they have an advantage over free weights, however.

- Free weights do not provide a functional advantage in training for specific skills, e.g. sports. Weighted skills training does not produce performance improvements, either.  For example, baseball training with a weighted bat leads to slower swinging speeds with an unweighted bat, because the weighted bat cannot be moved as quickly.

- Free weights do not improve balance more than other resistance training methods.

- Training on unstable surfaces, e.g. a bosu ball, does not lead to increased core strength or stability. It only leads to increased proficiency balancing on the training surface.

- Ballistic or fast training movements do not improve explosive sports performance skills such as sprint times or vertical jump. There is no evidence to support the idea of benefits of plyometric exercise.

- Most studies show that there is no significant difference in strength/power/endurance between doing one set (to momentary muscular failure) or multiple sets of an exercise. Extra sets are, apparently, a big waste of your time. There is certainly no evidence to show that three sets is an optimal number, despite consistent recommendations from the ACSM and other authorities.

- There is no evidence of benefit to training a muscle more than once or at most twice per week. So multiple workouts per week simply cause overtraining and slow your progress, rather than speeding it up. The body needs more time to grow new muscle tissue and repair damage than we commonly allow it.

- There is no evidence to support the benefit of periodization training schemes. Mental and physical readiness (i.e. being fully recovered) for a workout is more important.

- Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness inhibits strength, power, and flexibility; there is no evidence that training despite it is beneficial.

So, if we ignore gym rat mythology and high school coaching wisdom, then training each muscle once or twice a week to failue is the way to maximize your growth in muscle strength, power, and endurance. Period.

Periodic table of typography, typeface decision tree, typefaces of the world

Typography Deconstructed

Typographic Map of Boston

Evolution of the Geek

Visual Aids see esp. comparative sizes of Fictional Creatures, Baseball Umpire signals, seating chart for King Arthur's Round Table

140 most influential tweeters, what their first tweet was (Wil Wheaton is one)

I understand from the way that you honked at me that you didn't like me pulling in front of you. I was more than a little freaked out that you suddenly appeared, because as a rider myself, I do try to be conscious and careful of MCs.

If I may make a suggestion or two?

1) Honking at me after I pull in front of you isn't all that effective. Honk at me before I do so, when it is clear that I am not slowing down, so that I know you're there. This is, um, what horns are for, not for expressing your displeasure after the fact.

2) Did you notice that I had no problem seeing the bicyclist? That I had no problem fitting in behind him? Yeah, that's because he was wearing perspicuitous clothing. His fluorescent shirt and helmet stood out, even though I was more or less looking into the sun as I drove up the off ramp. You, on the other hand, with your dark helmet, dark clothes, and dark-colored motorcycle I Did Not See At All.

I shall, of course, continue to try to be a careful and safe driver, but I think it behooves you to acknowledge the reality that it can be difficult to see motorcycles sometimes. Me? I have a white helmet, ride a fluorescent green MC, and wear a retroreflective safety vest if I'm going to be driving through traffic.

Just a thought.

I must admit that Morality is not a topic I spend a lot of time thinking about. I have a set of rules that I practice reflexively, as do most people. My rules mostly focus on using broadly defined self-interest (borrowed from Objectivism). That is, it behooves us to explicitly act in our own self-interest, because if everyone followed this principle at a large enough scale, we'd all be able to negotiate to getting our own needs met. (If you were to point out that my mom is an ex-Catholic with a touch of the martyr in her, I would not deny that that has probably influenced my emphasis on self-reliance and taking care of one's self in order to better take care of others).

One of the reasons why I don't spend a lot of time thinking about Morality is that I don't feel the need to ascribe some deeper meaning to my life. I am perfectly content with the idea that there is no purpose to my existence. This is a perspective that is apparently a) disturbing and b) incomprehensible to many people who are religious. But I find it the height of human arrogance and selfishness to try to paint our struggles as part of some grand scheme. We're just animals, in most ways like all the other inhabitants of our planet.

This perspective is actually what drives both my environmentalism and omnivorousness. Some would say that our mental faculties and self-awareness makes us the de facto (if not deity-assigned) stewards of the planet. Thus we are morally incumbent to prevent the despoiling of Nature, and even to "rise above" our animal natures and avoid killing other animals.

I would say, rather, that is in our own best interests to protect the diversity of life on our planet, because we cannot predict what service other species may someday provide (e.g. the whole argument about medical miracles from unnoticed tropical species, or the rain forests generating oxygen.)

And to me, the idea that we shouldn't kill animals for food if we don't have to derives from a human belief that we are the center of the universe--that our big brains make us better than (other) animals. Yes, all those other animals kill each other for food because they don't know better and don't have other options, but we're so special that we can choose the superior path.

I don't believe that human beings are superior or more important or more special than all the other animals on this planet, because I don't think that value judgements about the relative worth of species are relevant. It smacks of the misidentification of Evolution as Progress. Our intelligence and self-awareness is awesome and unique, but other animals have awesome and even unique qualities, too. Our brains are just a particularly successful adaptation. We may be the most successfully adapted animal on the planet, but to me it doesn't follow that we then owe something to all the other animals that does not derive from our own self-interest. We're just animals, and some of the other animals are delicious, and we are built to eat, and therefore to enjoy, them.

It is thus with a lot of interest that I came across this essay by Stephen Jay Gould (<3!!!) that reexamines a long-overlooked tradition of Russian evolutionary thought that criticized Darwinism. Rather than emphasize the individual competitive aspect of it, which was strongly influenced by Malthusian ideals (and which could be said to be the result of Malthus' prejudices and fears about poor people), they think that cooperative effort plays a significant role. To Russians, Malthus was a particularly English thinker, and his ideas do not fit into the Russian traditions of community effort.

This essay explores the idea that cooperation and perhaps even altruism are evolutionary adaptations of equal import to direct competition for resources. It's fascinating, and I'm still digesting it.

http://libcom.org/library/kropotki…

So whatever happened to Dr. Cooper, he who invented the theory of "aerobic" exercise based on a fundamental misunderstanding of our metabolic processes? Well, he continued to observe patients and was mystified to discover that those who jogged didn’t see much increase in health, but those who ran did get healthier (e.g. lost fat), even when they covered the exact same distance in miles. So he published another book, called “The New Aerobics,” wherein he explained what he had discovered and ordered everyone to work harder than the light exercise he'd previously prescribed. What he observed, but still didn't really understand the import of, is that higher-intensity exercise brings greater health benefits. But only to a point...

Running became a big fitness craze after folks started to think that long periods of exercise were good for them "aerobically." Some people like/need to work hard, and so you get the folks running miles and miles a week, and training for marathons. If some is good, more is better, right?

But most people who exercise do relatively low-intensity training, many only intermittently. So those people are getting some minimal health benefits (because some low key exercise does provide some benefits).

This wouldn’t all be so bad (at least people are up and moving, right?), if there weren’t some disturbing trends appearing in the scientific literature. First of all, it’s pretty clear that people who do a lot of jogging wear out their joints. Women who use the stair machine, which is intended to be low-impact, often end up with knee issues nevertheless. So there are overuse or wear-and-tear related problems with doing a lot of repetitive motion or impact, that shows up when you get older and should be really reaping the benefits of a “healthy” lifestyle.

Second, there is the disturbing propensity of runners to drop dead from heart attacks. Sure, they’re probably getting better metabolic conditioning than the joggers, but when it comes right down to it, marathon running is still submaximal effort (because it can be maintained for long periods of time). And then there’s the whole "having heart attacks" thing. Like Alberto Salazar (80s marathon runner), or Jim Fixx (70s jogging guru). Think it’s a coincidence? Bam, bam, bam. Those are all studies showing a strong connection between doing marathons and coronary events (as compared with sedentary people)(and no, they don’t mean heart attacks during marathons, but don’t you think it telling that you thought that?).

Now, those who like the high they get from running, or enjoy some sort of macho or macha thrill from being able to run like hell for 10 or 12 minutes, would probably rationalize this. “Oh, marathoners are different. They’re crazy. Everyone knows how hard marathons are on the body.” But if it is true that there is merely a quantitative difference between marathoners and “normal” runners, we have no idea where the line is between running that does not somehow fuck up your heart and marathon training that shortens your life.

Is it worth it? Really? Because, me? I plan to live forever. With my real knees

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