Category: General

How Bad is Animal Fat?

Seth Roberts15 Comments

After learning that animal fat improved my sleep, I happily ate much more of it. I wasn’t worried that it made something else worse (e.g., heart disease). I believe that all parts of our bodies have been shaped by evolution to work well on the same diet, just as all electric appliances are designed to work well on the same house current.

A to-be-published meta-analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition supports my view that animal fat is nowhere as bad as we’ve been told a thousand times. It says:

During 5—23 y of follow-up of 347,747 subjects, . . . intake of [more] saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk of CHD [coronary heart disease], stroke, or CVD [cardiovascular disease]. The pooled relative risk estimates that compared extreme quantiles of saturated fat intake were 1.07 (95% CI: 0.96, 1.19; P = 0.22) for CHD, 0.81 (95% CI: 0.62, 1.05; P = 0.11) for stroke, and 1.00 (95% CI: 0.89, 1.11; P = 0.95) for CVD.

Emphasis added. One aspect of the results suggested that studies that found an positive association (more fat, more disease) were more likely to be published than those that didn’t find an association or found a negative association. Which means these numbers may underestimate the good effects.

Thanks to Steve Hansen and Michael Pope.

The Accidental Influential

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Duncan Watts, a Yahoo! researcher who studies networks, has some interesting things to say:

“If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one–and if it isn’t, then almost no one can,” Watts concludes. To succeed with a new product, it’s less a matter of finding the perfect hipster to infect and more a matter of gauging the public’s mood. Sure, there’ll always be a first mover in a trend. But since she generally stumbles into that role by chance, she is, in Watts’s terminology, an “accidental Influential.”

Epidemics and many other contagion phenomena have a power-law distribution (large frequency of small number infected, small frequency of large number infected). When my colleagues and I studied the distribution of rat bar-press durations, we found a power-law-like function where the “size” wasn’t number but duration. Most bar-presses were quite short; a few were quite long. We also found that expectation of reward had a big effect on the slope of the power-law function. I think Watts is saying that more attention should be paid to what determines the slopes of these power-law functions.

A recent article by Watts. Thanks to Hal Pashler.

A Clue About How To Sleep Better

Seth Roberts15 Comments

A few nights ago I slept surprisingly well: I woke up feeling more rested than usual. Each morning I judge how rested I feel on a scale from 0 to 100 where 0 = as if I hadn’t slept and 100 = completely drained of tiredness. I got scores of 100 after standing 9 or 10 hours during the day. That showed what was possible but that much standing was unsustainable. Without extreme standing, 99 has seemed to be the maximum.

A few nights ago, I did better. The ratings for that night and the preceding four nights were: 98.9, 98.8, 99, 98.8, 99.2. Doesn’t look like much, but actually the improvement was so clearly unusual I didn’t need records to notice it. If I gave the scores for the preceding 100 nights you’d see it was rare to score above 99. Moreover, I was keeping the amount of animal fat I ate constant, unlike previous nights with scores above 99. The difference between 98.8 and 99.2 is easy to notice. Think of the difference between 12 and 8.

What had improved my sleep? I could think of four unusual things about the preceding day:

1. Several cloves of garlic in the pork-belly soup I ate for lunch. I’d never before added any garlic.

2. I began using f.lux, which reduced the color temperature of my computer screen after sunsight.

3. I’d played Dance Dance Revolution (on the Wii) for 10 minutes at 8 pm. Usually I do it in the morning (much longer, 30-50 minutes).

4. More bike riding than usual (including two long stretches that added up to 66 minutes).

All four seemed unlikely. 1. Who’d heard of garlic improving sleep? Not me. 2. Laptop screens are quite dim compared to sunlight. 3. The amount of exercise was small. I’d played Wii Tennis for longer periods in the evening without noticing any change. DDR in the morning hadn’t made an obvious difference. 4. I’d ridden my bike for 50-odd minutes at a stretch without noticing better sleep. This was only slightly more.

Now I am testing these possibilities. If you have any idea which it is — perhaps it is none of them — please comment.

Jiaweishop.com Scam

Seth Roberts38 Comments

If you look on this blog you will find several other website names that this site has used to scam people, such as myshopinsun.com. You will pay via PayPal, complain to PayPal, PayPal will “investigate”, decide you were right — and not give you your money back. That PayPal keeps helping whoever is behind this is curious and infuriating to anyone scammed.

The Campaign Against Medical Hypotheses

Seth Roberts13 Comments

Dennis Mangan writes here about the campaign to destroy the journal Medical Hypotheses because its editor dared to publish an article by Peter Duesberg and others questioning that HIV causes AIDS.

The campaign is associated with AIDSTruth.org, which says it is about “the scientific evidence for HIV/AIDS.” A dead giveaway. When I was a senior in college, I wrote a paper called “The Scientific _______” in which I said that use of the term scientific is a sign that the writer or writers don’t know what they’re talking about. Calling this or that “scientific” amounts to calling something else “unscientific” — which isn’t an argument, it’s abuse. The term scientific is often just a way to sneer at other people. Like the word nigger and many other derogatory names and adjectives.

Animal Farm put it well: You become what you are supposedly against. Holocaust denial is strange, yes, but then there are the people who get really really upset by it. Who would have guessed that the solution to intolerance (German intolerance of Jews) is . . . more intolerance? And that is what the campaign against Medical Hypotheses is in favor of: more intolerance.

Beijing Air

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Yesterday was really windy. Lots of bikes fell over, including mine. I thought my sheets, hung to dry outside my apartment window, had blown away. I searched for them around the building. I eventually found them — in my closet. I got a piece of dirt in my eye that I noticed for several hours. It was my first significant bad encounter with Beijing air this time around (since August). I was in Beijing last fall, too, and then the dirty air really bothered me. I felt better after I got an air filter for my apartment.

When I was a freshman at Caltech, Richard Feynman came to our dorm for dinner. I asked the first question: “What do you think of the air?” He looked at me as if it was a stupid question. I think his answer was, “You get used to it.” After living in Beijing last year, I said over and over I liked everything except the air. Now I find it hard to complain about the air. In my apartment I have one big air filter per room that runs constantly; they are quiet and turn red if the air is dirty. They hardly ever turn red. Last year, after a week without dusting, you could write “lung cancer” in the fine black dust that had accumulated. Now it isn’t there. Through my window the visibility is usually pretty good; I can see the lights of buildings in the distance.

Yesterday someone told me Beijing air has gotten much much better. “Ten years ago your hair would get filthy” from coal dust, he said. The hutongs had coal-burning heaters. Now they are gone. Measures of air quality have even improved since last year, I think he said. I met someone recently arrived who was bothered by the air but she felt much better after I gave her an air filter.

Overall, I think four things have changed: 1. The air in my apartment, where I spend most of my time, is much better (compared to unfiltered). 2. Outside air is somewhat better. 3. Due to fermented foods, my overall health is better. 4. Due to learning about hormesis, I don’t worry about a small amount of air pollution.

James Fallows on How I Survived China. The bottled water at a Buddhist restaurant came from a garden hose.

Slaves of California

Seth Roberts1 Comment

A famous short story by Tama Janowitz, called “ The Slaves in New York” (a short-story collection called “Slaves of New York” was made into a movie), was about New York City renters who couldn’t afford to move because rents were so high. Whatever their relationship with their roommate, they were stuck.

[Eleanor] lives with her boyfriend Stash in the Village. Stash is a graffiti artist who complains a lot, while Eleanor makes him elaborate meals. One night she goes to a party and meets Mikell, a handsome South African writer. They make a date and meet at the White Horse Tavern. It turns out that Mikell lives with a woman named Millie, who owns a co-op. Millie and Mikell fight as much as Eleanor and Stash do but, because neither can afford their own apartment, they are trapped.

Now, due to the huge decline in house prices, many Californians face a similar slavery. As a friend of mine put it,

Anyone like my parents, who paid cash for their houses, are kinda stuck living where they are, or they’ll take a giant financial hit.

Myshoppingsun.com Scam (continued)

Seth RobertsLeave a comment

A curious comment was left on a previous post of mine about an internet shopping scam:

Hi Guys I really thank you for this blog

I am going to buy from the Web-Site name www.myshoppingsun.com
But I am not convince about it so I went to PayPal Verified and this is all they said, I just copy from the window they put a domain name but they used all paypal scammers account,

By the way I was scammer with some phone from UK, I Hate to said these but I am affright to do business with chinese people they always try to scamme me

And Please read what paypal said about these myshoppingsun.com website

Light in the box Limited. is PayPal Verified

PayPal’s Verification System allows you to learn more about users before you pay them through PayPal. Verify that the information below is consistent with the business, organization or person you wish to pay.

Email: order@litb-inc.com
Status: Verified
Account Creation Date: Aug. 18, 2006

To ensure that this is a legitimate PayPal Verified user, make sure that the URL of this page begins with https://www.paypal.com/.

What it Means to be Verified

To become Verified, a PayPal member in the United States must enroll in our Expanded Use Program. When a member completes Expanded Use enrollment, he undergoes additional checks that increase security for all PayPal users. Please note that PayPal’s verification system does not constitute an endorsement of a member, nor a guarantee of a member’s business practices. You should always consider other indicators when evaluating members, including length of PayPal membership and reputation scores (on eBay or other auction sites, if applicable)

The commenter’s URI: www.myshoppingsun.com. Their IP: 98.203.87.228.