- The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education (1998). Aaron Swartz was greatly influenced by this book.
- High-carb versus low-carb diet difference influences memory. There were a thousand differences between the diet called high-carb and the diet called low-carb, don’t take seriously the idea that the crucial difference is the carbohydrate difference. That’s just one possibility. The main thing to learn from this study is that your memory is affected by what you eat.
- Climate models predict poorly. “Christy said he believes the models overestimate warming because of the way they handle clouds.” I have said for a long time that too much faith has been put in climate models, which have not been shown to predict correctly.
- Experts and guidebook say toxic plant is edible. Someone who trusted the guidebook died.
Thanks to Jeff Winkler and Tom George.
I’m a bit dubious about the “toxic plant killed Chris McCandless” story. This article has a very different take: https://foragersharvest.com/into-the-wild-and-other-poisonous-plant-fables/
here’s a climate model you may like….
https://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2013/09/update-on-my-climate-model-spoiler-its-doing-a-lot-better-than-the-pros.html
Steve, thanks for posting that. Krakauer could be partially right, in the sense that the beta-ODAP in the seeds (if, indeed, it’s even present) could have been the final straw that broke McCandless’s back.
I wonder if anyone involved in this subject has ever attempted to eat a substantial amount of those wild-potato seeds in one sitting.
the beta-ODAP in the seeds (if, indeed, it’s even present)
It’s present.
https://www.christophermccandless.info/Ronald-Hamilton/ronald-hamilton-intothewild6.html
I wonder if anyone involved in this subject has ever attempted to eat a substantial amount of those wild-potato seeds in one sitting.
After reading the Hamilton article, I hope not.
Steve,
I don’t see a date on the post you cite to, but I think it addresses Krakauer’s 1st and 2nd explanations, while the (very recent) article pointed to by Seth is directed to Krakauer’s 3rd (and he thinks final) explanation.
Indeed.
The certitude of the Forager’s Harvest article plays very differently after reading the Hamilton piece.
The Forager’s Harvest piece does a nice job of showing that McCandless could have/would have just plain starved to death and that Krakauer has been pushing poisoning theories for the last 20 years that he now admits were wrong.
If you look at the following articles, it adds a little more to the controversy.
https://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130917/krakauers-wild-theory-mccandless-gives-short-shrift-science
https://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20130919/jon-krakauer-responds-what-killed-chris-mccandless
esp. the comments of the second article where Krakauer and Clausen go back and forth.
Alzheimer’s is “Type 3 Diabetes” so this is not surprising.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769828/