How Scammers Distort Science
So why should you care? People who are desperate for reliable information face a bewildering array of diet guidance—salt is bad, salt is good, protein is good, protein is bad, fat is bad, fat is good—that changes like the weather. But science will figure it out, right? Now that we’re calling obesity an epidemic, funding will flow to the best scientists and all of this noise will die down, leaving us with clear answers to the causes and treatments.
Or maybe not. Even the well-funded...
notesA case study where a scientist fooled the media, muddying the waters of nutritional information.
Lessons from the Real Paleo Diet
And the answer is, ‘yes.’ I think there’s three main lessons we can learn: First, there’s no one correct diet, but diversity is the key. So, depending on where you live, you can eat very different things, but you need diversity. We lack the ability to synthesize many nutrients that we require for life, nutrients and vitamins, and we are required to get them from our foods. Eating a diet that’s rich in species, has high species diversity is very important.
Now unfortunately in Ameri... notes Disneyland's Simulation Reinforces the Myth of the Real
Thus, everywhere in Disneyland the objective profile of America, down to the morphology
of individuals and of the crowd, is drawn. All its values are exalted by the miniature and
the comic strip. Embalmed and pacified. Whence the possibility of an ideological analysis
of Disneyland (L. Marin did it very well in Utopiques, jeux d'espace [Utopias, play of
space]): digest of the American way of life, panegyric of American values, idealized
transposition of a contradictory reality. Certainly. But... notesIt's fantasy persuades us to ignore the simulation of what we consider the "real" world. It presents itself as childish whimsy, which convinces us that what we experience daily is the "adult" world.
Exercise Increases the Number of Mitochondria in Brain Ti...
Past experiments have shown persuasively that exercise spurs the birth of new mitochondria in muscle cells and improves the vigor of the existing organelles. This upsurge in mitochondria, in turn, has been linked not only to improvements in exercise endurance but to increased longevity in animals and reduced risk for obesity, diabetes and heart disease in people. It is a very potent cellular reaction.
[...]
Like muscles, many parts of the brain get a robust physiological workout during exer...
1 A study on mice finds that exercise increases the production of mitochondria in brain tissue in addition to their production in muscle tissue (I dig the term "mitochondrial biogenesis" as describing the benefit).
Are Humans Still Evolving?
Anybody who teaches human evolution is inevitably asked: Are we
still evolving? The examples of lactose tolerance and duplication of the
amylase gene show that selection has certainly acted within the last few
thousand years. But what about right now? It’s hard to give a good
answer. Certainly many types of selection that challenged our ancestors
no longer apply: improvements in nutrition, sanitation, and medical
care have done away with many diseases and conditions that killed our
ancestor... notesCulture has removed many of the selective pressures from human survival, allowing harmful mutations to build up in the genepool; meanwhile, people living in third-world countries continue to experience selective pressures from droughts, famines, and disease.
