- fruit and diabetes. Blueberries good, cantaloupe bad.
- R most popular language for “analytics/data mining/data science work” among survey respondents. I wish I could describe the respondents, but I can only say they are people who might call what they do “data mining” or “data science”. In addition, the use of R is growing. Most psychology departments teach SPSS or Matlab.
- Thomas Frank criticizes universities, undergraduate education in particular. “An educational publisher wrote to me [asking] to reprint an essay of mine [that is freely available]. . . . The low, low price that students were to pay for this textbook: $75.95.”
Category: Assorted Links
Assorted Links
- electric field perception by humans
- Umami plate
- Jana Beck confirms that a low-carb diet improves her blood sugar levels
- “Goldman Sachs got the FBI to do its bidding” (Felix Salmon)
- Whey protein reduces after-meal blood sugar rise. Whey protein is in cheese, for example.
- Several unpleasant aspects of surgery prep unhelpful
Thanks to Alex Chernavsky.
Assorted Links
- The increasing popularity of kvas. “We ferment with ginger and, I believe, longer than other people – for seven to 10 days.”
- Giving up wine (and other alcohol) for a month. Before this he drank 2 glasses of wine/day.
- Wellness Mart (in California) makes it easy to get basic medical tests. “ In California, you are required to have an order from a doctor for blood tests, but WellnessMart, MD stores all have medical doctors on staff. Our doctors allow their license to be used for basic screening tests because there are some things that really shouldn’t be that difficult to find out. If you don’t have a doctor’s order and you want to run tests that aren’t a part of our standard screening packages, you will be charged a MD Consultation Fee of $25. Our doctor will help you to put together a panel that will accomplish the goals you are looking to accomplish. If the doctor determines that it is not appropriate for you to run the tests you want to run at WellnessMart, MD there will be no charges.”
- Riding a bike while learning Polish. It helps.
Thanks to Casey Manion and Adam Clemens.
Assorted Links
- N=me. Scientists’ self-tracking.
- Authentic Japanese recipes in English. For example, Chanchanyaki Style Salmon, including how to substitute stevia for sugar.
- Your magnesium may be too low
- Aaron Swartz’s prosecutor complained about an Internet petition
Thanks to Allan Jackson and Casey Manion.
Assorted Links
- Obesity associated with hearing loss. The correlation is surprising and, if explained, might shed light on what causes obesity or what causes hearing loss.
- The three biggest lies of Teach For America. From the same blogger: A devastating comment about Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
- Benefits of breast-feeding. “Breast-fed babies are less likely to have ear infections and diarrhea as infants, and less likely to be obese and have diabetes as adults.” More evidence for the importance of microbe-rich food.
- Heart guidelines aren’t changed after underlying data shown to be fraudulent.
- Old-fashioned self-experimentation: does a snakebite treatment work? For a long time, self-experimentation to help yourself was undocumented.
Thanks to Alex Chernavsky and dearime.
Assorted Links
- The power of the smell of chocolate. I add cacao shells (from Tisano Tea) to the tea when I brew black tea. This adds complexity. 2.5 g of black tea plus 0.9 g of cacao shells.
- Madonna’s diet is rather hard. “I am basically dying on this diet. . . . It is so hard to give up all those foods.”
- Sous vide basics. “Using extra virgin olive oil results in an off, metallic, blood taste.” DIY sous vide, I want to read it to learn how controllers work.
- More about Steve Cooksey and the ADA. The North Carolina branch of the American Dietetics Association attacked Cooksey for making nutrition recommendations on his blog. For free. This post explains why they did such a strange thing. A friend of mine, a nutrition professor at UC Berkeley, gave a Freshman Seminar (unpaid classes with about 10 students) on how to fix a car. Later he got a letter from a dean in the engineering school at Berkeley saying that only engineering professors can teach such a course.
Thanks to Richard Sprague.
Assorted Links
- Anatomy of a fraud, self-published book about scientific fraud by Robert Trivers, the anthropologist (pdf).
- Lauren Collins, Republican
- Stinky tofu in Los Angeles. Like blue cheese, except smellier. There are restaurants in Los Angeles that specialize in stinky tofu.
- More about koji. I use koji salt in place of salt…it works well. Greatly reduces the need for other flavorings.
- Letter from Renata Adler to small-town governing board
Assorted Links
- Open Source Malaria
- Criticism of Malcolm Gladwell by The Korean, Gladwell’s persuasive rebuttal, more from The Korean, more from Gladwell. I thought the work under discussion (“ethnic theory of plane crashes”) was the best part of Outliers. Gladwell summarizes it: “That chapter in Outliers is about a series of extraordinary steps taken by Korean Air, in which an institution on the brink of collapse and disgrace turned themselves into one of the best airlines in the world. They did so by bravely confronting the fact that a legacy of their cultural heritage was frustrating open communication in the cockpit. That is not a slight on Korean culture, or any other high-power distance culture for that matter.”
- More praise for the new TV show Naked and Afraid on the Discovery Channel. It really is riveting.
- Ziploc omelette. Poor man’s sous vide.
Thanks to Nicole Harkin.
Assorted Links
- A hospital specialized for hernia surgery. Much better outcomes, much lower cost. The combination (better outcomes, favored by patients, and lower cost, favored by insurers) suggests this could spread, if patients plus insurers > doctors plus hospitals.
- Unlocking umami. I use koji salt, works really well. Comes in plastic squeeze container, which says “today’s newest seasoning”.
- More about the rise and fall of heart disease. This 1980 article considerably predates David Grime’s 2012 article on the same subject It is more methodologically sophisticated but reaches the same conclusion: The rise and fall is not explained by any popular theory (e.g., smoking causes heart disease, cholesterol causes heart disease). Because of this failure, using those theories to try to prevent heart disease (e.g., telling people stop smoking) makes little sense. Likewise, I doubt that experts know why dementia is decreasing, although they have theories.
- Hypochondriasis and self-tracking
Thanks to Alex Chernavsky.
Assorted Links
- Drug companies release hidden data. What are the chances that the no-longer-hidden data increases confidence in efficacy?
- Mood benefits of fermented food
- Finland’s success at many things. One is school: “The other popular story is about Finland’s school system, which ranks as one of the world’s best — with no standardized testing or South Asian-style “cramming” but with lots of customization in the classroom.” Lots of customization in the classroom is what I advocate.
- Doctor price-fixing
Thanks to Nicole Larkin and Tim Beneke.