- Interview with Jane Jacobs about The Nature of Economies. “Canada should seriously study Iceland.”
- A month with no electric light. The post is titled “a month with no artificial light” but candles are used.
- Adventures in nutritional therapy. “A record of my successes and failures trying to solve a bunch of health annoyances without resorting to prescription drugs.” I’ve linked here before but there’s lots of new stuff.
- Did you know that the inventor of the Heimlich maneuver did AIDS research?
- Falling off the 5:2 diet program (fasting 2 days per week), popularized by the Horizon TV program Eat Fast and Live Longer. It produced only a little weight loss and the other benefits were invisible.
- Great article about the connection between childhood lead exposure and adult crime rate.
Thanks to Hal Pashler.
Nutritional therapy, modified.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9783724/Tomato-skin-pill-could-cut-risk-of-strokes-heart-attacks-and-cancer.html
That Mother Jones lead article is fascinating – here’s an interesting discussion of some of the methodology and other issues that you may enjoy as well: https://hisscienceistootight.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-link-between-leaded-gasoline-and.html
Seth, I read Nature of Economies after being introduced to some of her economic views on this blog, and I was blown away. It’s the closest thing to a general theory of economics that I’ve ever come across. Reading Antifragility by Nassim Taleb, I can detect a strong Jacobs influence in his tendency to look to mother nature for economic guidance. But it’s tragic that her influence hasn’t made a dent in mainstream thinking. Probably due to the fact that her bottom-up views don’t leave much room for economic planners.
Seth: I believe that Taleb, who is also anti-planner, is having more of an influence than Jacobs ever had. Maybe the Internet has a democratizing effect.
Clearly, lead is bad news, and there is experimental evidence it harms health. No disagreement. Let’s get the lead out. That is not the same thing as agreeing that lower lead caused lower crime rates. Here is some pushback from Jim Manzi:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/337398/lead-and-crime-jim-manzi
Dear Seth, regarding your practice of delaying breakfast in order to preventearly awakening, does coffee count as breakfast? I usually drink black unsweetened coffee (and water) when I wake at 4 or 5am, but otherwise delay food until 11 or 12. Thanks!
Seth: Food with no calories doesn’t count as as breakfast. On the other hand, the effect of caffeine is unclear. It probably causes some sort of anticipation — whether helpful or harmful, hard to say.