I thought we'd gotten past all the hype about fiber being so very very good for us....
ALL of the studies claiming fiber is good for one are uncontrolled observations -- they look at the population level, which implies that they're merely being compared to junk-, or poverty-foods. In studies which look closely at individuals, a high-fiber diet is more likely to spur colon cancer than it is to promote health and leanness.*
The experiences of countless people like me show that if WE eat the foods these people promote, we experience nothing good -- we get weight-gain, ruined blood-sugar control, allergy symptoms, indigestion, inflammation, fatigue, malaise ... more miseries than I can enumerate just from my n=1 and those of my blog-buddies. THIS is why I become infuriated by dumb-ass statements like "EVERYBODY [there's that word, again] needs 40g of fiber every day."
But some people can't resist the temptation to pick their scabs. Here's a subject they can write a book about, and maybe make enough money to pay for their gym memberships! Perhaps they can get enough enthusiasm going to ... oh, allow them to write another superfluous book!
The only thing they're managing to do is to muddy the waters -- waters which are polluted enough already by interested parties promoting toxic foodstuffs and pharmaceuticals. Their arguments just don't stand up to the light of reason, even though they spiel off countless pubmed references. Individuals as well as clinicians have tried it all before, and not gotten the results promised by starch/fiber-lovers. We must have been doing it wrong!
[smirk] EXACTLY. When we do a thing which doesn't work FOR US, we're doing the wrong thing. Doing it harder and longer is just ... wronger. ;-)
As I've said before, if they want to eat their versions of starchy pleasure-foods, I don't give a damn. But talk about it on your own lightly-visited bro-blog-site, and stop spewing all over the comment-sections of the GOOD ones!
________
* Peter has discussed this at length. Monastyrsky adds confirming details. As far as i'm concerned, the case is closed.
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
just another food-fad, based on immature science
I have an anecdote, and again it has nothing to do with diet.
One of my dearest, first friends in reenacting -- gone from us now -- was a history TEACHER as so many are, before he changed his job to an even more hard-core history career. He became one of the main organizers of the reformulated museum, when the Oklahoma Historical Society got its big new building. Like many reenactors, he spent his work-days immersed in history, his hobby was history, his vacations became busman-holidays through visiting sites of historical interest, he read himself to sleep at night with books on the subject, and for all I know he dreamed history every night.
The only difference of opinion I ever remember having with Murphy involved the etymology of an important historic WORD, and I was right -- I can document it with an indisputable LINGUISTIC source. His reason for believing his version was a volunteer at some historic venue who told him a bogus story. Surely they had their facts straight! ...? Hmph.
In language, this happens ALL THE TIME -- people use their imaginations to try to figure out where a word or expression came from, and the more clever and creative it seems to the modern ear, the more likely it is to be flat wrong. The Oxford English Dictionary was written by folks who had a passion for language, profound knowledge, and a lot of resources to hand, and if they can show when a word first showed up and how it traveled through time, they ARE to be trusted.
Now i'll seem to change the subject, but i'll refer back later. ;-) I loved that show, Connections, back in the '70s....
_____
When the foolishness of my RWNJ contacts on facebook get me down, I scoot on over to twitter, where those people are not on my contact list. There, I read the output of people like Eades, Johnson, Kindke and Lagakos* ... and they never post Grumpycat memes! ;-) One link I followed and enjoyed featured three different researchers talking about how the microbiome "news" has been dealt with by the media and their scientific sources.
All three agreed that it's way too early to intelligently apply what has been learned thus far -- it's TOO COMPLICATED to really know HOW to best use this knowledge. Certainly, the advertisers of the information have spread it around in too simplified a form.
Compare this point of view to the wild-eyed promoters of prebiotic starch and fiber! We MUST feed our pet (thanks to Galina for this analogy) gut-bugs, o' they gonna DIE!
Nope. They survived through famines of the past, and they'll survive now. What is MOST damaging to their populations is what most of US avoid unless absolutely necessary: clean-sweep antibiotics. WE don't need to eat so as to specifically feed these pets ... unless we WANT to. Some people really seem to want to have a good excuse to eat potatoes and other "carriers" of bacteria-food.
That's fine. If they want to, let 'em. But this is like Sisson saying YES you MUST eat vegetables -- the science doesn't support it. Some, maybe most, people LIKE this advice, but the beneficence is NOT universal. Don't tell EVERYBODY that they MUST eat _____ ... <-- insert YOUR favorite carbohydrate here. I don't even tell people they must eat liver any more. ;-)
This is just like Murphy's stubbornness in insisting that some piece of sophistry he heard from a self-enlightened "expert" was true, despite it being demonstrably NOT so. Because you LIKE a hypothesis is not evidence in its defense. It may be far more intricate than your understanding of it may imply. Getting an authority to agree with you in generalities doesn't make it true as you understand it.
It also comes back to DETAILS in the studies they cite so supernumerously. ;-) Extrapolating uncritically from mouse studies to human application is bad enough, but consider how even human-study subjects are not often clean-eating, toxin-avoiding, or nutrient-replete individuals. Who cares if some college boy subsisting on beer and pizza doesn't have the same gut-bugs as Hadza HGs -- shit, I don't have the same ones he does. MY gut-bugs are adequate to handle my preferred diet, which is not: 1) beer and pizza, OR 2) high-fiber African tubers ... AND I haven't had a course of antibiotics in decades.
EVERYTHING tends to be more complicated than people are inclined to think ... including all of us armchair-scientists. The devil is in the details. And the details are exactly what get skimmed past when reading journalists' articles and study abstracts.
_____
The word Murphy and I disagreed on was GOSSIP. Some dumb-ass tour-guide announced that it derived from the words "go sip" which was what you did in the tavern, which was where everyone used to go to pick up the latest juicy news. No. It goes back through Middle English gossib, to godsib, to the OLD English godsibb, which meant basically a sibling in God. Your gossip (noun) was your good buddy with whom you gossiped (verb) -- thus making the shared news "gossip" (back to noun).
See? ;-) More complicated than you expected.
_____
* it was with grief that I removed Bill from my blog list -- it seems that something about his site was causing MINE to be objectionable to virus-detectors. :-(
One of my dearest, first friends in reenacting -- gone from us now -- was a history TEACHER as so many are, before he changed his job to an even more hard-core history career. He became one of the main organizers of the reformulated museum, when the Oklahoma Historical Society got its big new building. Like many reenactors, he spent his work-days immersed in history, his hobby was history, his vacations became busman-holidays through visiting sites of historical interest, he read himself to sleep at night with books on the subject, and for all I know he dreamed history every night.
The only difference of opinion I ever remember having with Murphy involved the etymology of an important historic WORD, and I was right -- I can document it with an indisputable LINGUISTIC source. His reason for believing his version was a volunteer at some historic venue who told him a bogus story. Surely they had their facts straight! ...? Hmph.
In language, this happens ALL THE TIME -- people use their imaginations to try to figure out where a word or expression came from, and the more clever and creative it seems to the modern ear, the more likely it is to be flat wrong. The Oxford English Dictionary was written by folks who had a passion for language, profound knowledge, and a lot of resources to hand, and if they can show when a word first showed up and how it traveled through time, they ARE to be trusted.
Now i'll seem to change the subject, but i'll refer back later. ;-) I loved that show, Connections, back in the '70s....
_____
When the foolishness of my RWNJ contacts on facebook get me down, I scoot on over to twitter, where those people are not on my contact list. There, I read the output of people like Eades, Johnson, Kindke and Lagakos* ... and they never post Grumpycat memes! ;-) One link I followed and enjoyed featured three different researchers talking about how the microbiome "news" has been dealt with by the media and their scientific sources.
All three agreed that it's way too early to intelligently apply what has been learned thus far -- it's TOO COMPLICATED to really know HOW to best use this knowledge. Certainly, the advertisers of the information have spread it around in too simplified a form.
Compare this point of view to the wild-eyed promoters of prebiotic starch and fiber! We MUST feed our pet (thanks to Galina for this analogy) gut-bugs, o' they gonna DIE!
Nope. They survived through famines of the past, and they'll survive now. What is MOST damaging to their populations is what most of US avoid unless absolutely necessary: clean-sweep antibiotics. WE don't need to eat so as to specifically feed these pets ... unless we WANT to. Some people really seem to want to have a good excuse to eat potatoes and other "carriers" of bacteria-food.
That's fine. If they want to, let 'em. But this is like Sisson saying YES you MUST eat vegetables -- the science doesn't support it. Some, maybe most, people LIKE this advice, but the beneficence is NOT universal. Don't tell EVERYBODY that they MUST eat _____ ... <-- insert YOUR favorite carbohydrate here. I don't even tell people they must eat liver any more. ;-)
This is just like Murphy's stubbornness in insisting that some piece of sophistry he heard from a self-enlightened "expert" was true, despite it being demonstrably NOT so. Because you LIKE a hypothesis is not evidence in its defense. It may be far more intricate than your understanding of it may imply. Getting an authority to agree with you in generalities doesn't make it true as you understand it.
It also comes back to DETAILS in the studies they cite so supernumerously. ;-) Extrapolating uncritically from mouse studies to human application is bad enough, but consider how even human-study subjects are not often clean-eating, toxin-avoiding, or nutrient-replete individuals. Who cares if some college boy subsisting on beer and pizza doesn't have the same gut-bugs as Hadza HGs -- shit, I don't have the same ones he does. MY gut-bugs are adequate to handle my preferred diet, which is not: 1) beer and pizza, OR 2) high-fiber African tubers ... AND I haven't had a course of antibiotics in decades.
EVERYTHING tends to be more complicated than people are inclined to think ... including all of us armchair-scientists. The devil is in the details. And the details are exactly what get skimmed past when reading journalists' articles and study abstracts.
_____
The word Murphy and I disagreed on was GOSSIP. Some dumb-ass tour-guide announced that it derived from the words "go sip" which was what you did in the tavern, which was where everyone used to go to pick up the latest juicy news. No. It goes back through Middle English gossib, to godsib, to the OLD English godsibb, which meant basically a sibling in God. Your gossip (noun) was your good buddy with whom you gossiped (verb) -- thus making the shared news "gossip" (back to noun).
See? ;-) More complicated than you expected.
_____
* it was with grief that I removed Bill from my blog list -- it seems that something about his site was causing MINE to be objectionable to virus-detectors. :-(
Monday, December 8, 2014
so how DO we heal our guts?
Something Jan said made me want to talk about this, today. After we've dropped grains and their fibers and damaging proteins from our diets, if we're not completely "all better" what do we do?
There are all kinds of things KNOWN to irritate our digestive systems, and there are a few which are REPUTED to help them heal. What can we count on to be helpful?
Perhaps the first thing to consider is that things we LIKE can possibly be doing harm. Even though you're lactose-tolerant, there may be some aspects of (or ingredients in) your dairy products which bother you, like pasteurization-damaged proteins. Some people find cross-sensitivity with coffee if they have problems with gluten or such things. Maybe you have a subtle problem with nightshades (like me!), or maybe it's FODMAPs or ....
Dr. Atkins said that some of the things we like best are things we're actually sensitive to -- and which we'd be best writing off. If it's fresh crusty Italian bread, I think all of US agree and have already abandoned it, but what if it's ... oh, strawberries, or citrus, or shrimp? What if it's cruciferous vegetables? Both "paleo philosophy" and conventional wisdom tend to canonize these healthyfruitsandvegetables and protein sources. I mean if we can't eat even some of THOSE, after all the other things we've given up, what are we supposed to do?
I suppose, we make some tough decisions. It's trade-off time!
HOW bad do we feel? HOW endangered do we suppose we are? If we suspect we need to go the extra mile, it's time to do yet ANOTHER elimination and see how awful it IS when we re-introduce that salsa to our chicken....
As we get older our tolerance to a lot of things goes down. Our appetite does, too. Chances are, if we can only eat a small amount at some point, the things we DO eat had better be VERY good for us.
Where HEALING is concerned ...? Removing the irritants is the FIRST thing we need to do. Next, we make sure we're very well-nourished. Next, ... it's said that bone-broth is healing to the gut, especially the connective-tissue fraction. Earlier this fall, I bought "Nourishing Broth," Sally Fallon's latest (I think...), and i'm in the middle of an experiment with gelatin as a result of reading it. Problem is, one can't really expect to see results for like three or four MONTHS.
MONTHS. This is one of the shortcomings of natural means of healing -- it doesn't happen very quickly most of the time. Glutathione -- I saw the improvement within HOURS. A lot of herbs work their magic within days or weeks: epazote was unique in being fast-acting! Other things can take 4-6 weeks to be perceptible. Gelatin and collagen can take a SEASON or two.
Gelatin DOES have other benefits -- it can reputedly improve your protein usage (absorption?), and I agree. I seem to need smaller servings of animal protein foods since I started taking a tablespoon in my coffee every morning. I strongly suspect that our "protein requirements" are dependent upon exactly WHICH amino-acids we're getting, not some nebulous "X grams of 'complete' protein per day." Just as zeroing-in on omega-3 seems to be beneficial as compared to generic "polyunsaturated fats," getting specific about how much of which amino-acid we eat may be instructive.
So I wasn't totally ready to talk about gelatin/collagen yet, but decided to jump the gun a little. My three-month point will end with the year, and I might need another month's grace before I can really, confidently recommend the stuff. At this point, all I can say with assurance is, "it feels good," and gelatin feels better than the collagen hydrolysate. Certainly, if one is poor and trying to make one's grocery dollar go as far as possible, nutrition-wise, i'd definitely advise using gelatin (and bone broth) as an excellent way to stretch the protein budget.
There are all kinds of things KNOWN to irritate our digestive systems, and there are a few which are REPUTED to help them heal. What can we count on to be helpful?
Perhaps the first thing to consider is that things we LIKE can possibly be doing harm. Even though you're lactose-tolerant, there may be some aspects of (or ingredients in) your dairy products which bother you, like pasteurization-damaged proteins. Some people find cross-sensitivity with coffee if they have problems with gluten or such things. Maybe you have a subtle problem with nightshades (like me!), or maybe it's FODMAPs or ....
Dr. Atkins said that some of the things we like best are things we're actually sensitive to -- and which we'd be best writing off. If it's fresh crusty Italian bread, I think all of US agree and have already abandoned it, but what if it's ... oh, strawberries, or citrus, or shrimp? What if it's cruciferous vegetables? Both "paleo philosophy" and conventional wisdom tend to canonize these healthyfruitsandvegetables and protein sources. I mean if we can't eat even some of THOSE, after all the other things we've given up, what are we supposed to do?
I suppose, we make some tough decisions. It's trade-off time!
HOW bad do we feel? HOW endangered do we suppose we are? If we suspect we need to go the extra mile, it's time to do yet ANOTHER elimination and see how awful it IS when we re-introduce that salsa to our chicken....
As we get older our tolerance to a lot of things goes down. Our appetite does, too. Chances are, if we can only eat a small amount at some point, the things we DO eat had better be VERY good for us.
Where HEALING is concerned ...? Removing the irritants is the FIRST thing we need to do. Next, we make sure we're very well-nourished. Next, ... it's said that bone-broth is healing to the gut, especially the connective-tissue fraction. Earlier this fall, I bought "Nourishing Broth," Sally Fallon's latest (I think...), and i'm in the middle of an experiment with gelatin as a result of reading it. Problem is, one can't really expect to see results for like three or four MONTHS.
MONTHS. This is one of the shortcomings of natural means of healing -- it doesn't happen very quickly most of the time. Glutathione -- I saw the improvement within HOURS. A lot of herbs work their magic within days or weeks: epazote was unique in being fast-acting! Other things can take 4-6 weeks to be perceptible. Gelatin and collagen can take a SEASON or two.
Gelatin DOES have other benefits -- it can reputedly improve your protein usage (absorption?), and I agree. I seem to need smaller servings of animal protein foods since I started taking a tablespoon in my coffee every morning. I strongly suspect that our "protein requirements" are dependent upon exactly WHICH amino-acids we're getting, not some nebulous "X grams of 'complete' protein per day." Just as zeroing-in on omega-3 seems to be beneficial as compared to generic "polyunsaturated fats," getting specific about how much of which amino-acid we eat may be instructive.
So I wasn't totally ready to talk about gelatin/collagen yet, but decided to jump the gun a little. My three-month point will end with the year, and I might need another month's grace before I can really, confidently recommend the stuff. At this point, all I can say with assurance is, "it feels good," and gelatin feels better than the collagen hydrolysate. Certainly, if one is poor and trying to make one's grocery dollar go as far as possible, nutrition-wise, i'd definitely advise using gelatin (and bone broth) as an excellent way to stretch the protein budget.
Friday, December 5, 2014
adventures with gastritis
My history with gastritis has been long but exceedingly sporadic -- i don't believe i've mentioned it here before. The first bad bout was when i was in either jr-hi or high-school, i don't clearly remember which. What i DO remember is that in junior-high, not once but twice did i have to run out of biology class to barf. I have no idea what might have been in the cages, beakers or petri-dishes that set me off, but they sure did. The two episodes happened close to each other, then didn't happen again -- hmmm, whatever the trigger was seems to have been cleared away.
The first "attack" was forgotten by me, until i had an exact recurrence here in StL several years ago. We had just had breakfast at our favorite diner and the pain immediately reminded me! I went home, "lightened the load" and used enzymes, and it faded away within the hour, but left me exhausted for a couple of days. This episode, i hypothesize, was where i picked up the bug that has been plaguing me since.
I had another episode, even worse, last year. Again, i had just eaten out, but not at the same place. The inflammation in my stomach lost me my appetite for days, and was more tender to the touch than the previous event, but soon subsided -- i was normal again within the week.
Thanksgiving day last week, something set me off again, though nothing on the menu came from a commercial source ... and it was not acute but what looked like the beginning of a chronic turn to the situation. I FELT stomach irritation on Friday (not the pain, just a hint of the inflammation), and it also seemed to manifest in LACK OF STOMACH ACID, a situation which has so abated with me that i don't have betaine-HCl on hand anymore! That's obviously a mistake.
But the acid situation on top of the gastritis spelled H.-P-Y-L-O-R-I to me! I started googling....
I used up what was left of my licorice tincture, broke out the peppermint, and put a serious dent in my ginger-teabags (all of which helped but didn't conquer) before i came across a mention of EPAZOTE. This is a culinary herb in Mexican food, as well as a medicinal with antibacterial, anti-parasitic, and anti-GAS properties. ... And coincidentally, i had some in my kitchen already!
With the first shot of the tea, my stomach felt better! It was like taking a modern instant-action drug as compared to the usual wait-for-it herbal remedy. No wonder that the traditional treatment time is three to four days, with a follow-up two weeks down the line to deal with any worm-eggs that might hatch after the original dosing. It's THAT powerful.
Immediately, the constant belching subsided. I no longer had the constant low-grade nausea. My digestion felt a lot closer to normal, but i'm still eating rather lightly and prompting enzymes and acid with the aid of bitters. I feel MUCH better than i did on Wednesday.
The fact that in semi-tropical America, this herb is a casual item in cooking is significant to me -- tropical locations offer generous opportunities for parasite infection! Using epazote in your soups and casseroles should give you ongoing protection. I didn't find it strongly flavored, so it can't be much of a contribution to the taste of dishes ... but there it is, in the recipe of a tamale-like chicken dish, from a mainstream purveyor of traditional Mexican ingredients.
The packet of epazote i had was only a half-ounce, so i used it all in making the 3/4 cup of tea for my first three doses. Our outstanding international grocery-stores in StL will make finding another couple of packages easy, though, and i WILL keep this valuable herb on hand from here out! I'll repeat my Thu-Fri-Sat dose next week, too, and i'll try to remember to include some of it in soups and stews from now on!
Herbs are a poor replacement for drugs? HA. Treating H. pylori with antibiotics takes a cocktail of different pharmaceuticals, not just one, and the dosage is continued for WEEKS ... and still doesn't have a 100%-effective record. In a modern world of filthy food-production methods where we get a constant trickle of antibiotics and pathogens in our diets, the value of traditional methods of health-protection must not be under-estimated.
The first "attack" was forgotten by me, until i had an exact recurrence here in StL several years ago. We had just had breakfast at our favorite diner and the pain immediately reminded me! I went home, "lightened the load" and used enzymes, and it faded away within the hour, but left me exhausted for a couple of days. This episode, i hypothesize, was where i picked up the bug that has been plaguing me since.
I had another episode, even worse, last year. Again, i had just eaten out, but not at the same place. The inflammation in my stomach lost me my appetite for days, and was more tender to the touch than the previous event, but soon subsided -- i was normal again within the week.
Thanksgiving day last week, something set me off again, though nothing on the menu came from a commercial source ... and it was not acute but what looked like the beginning of a chronic turn to the situation. I FELT stomach irritation on Friday (not the pain, just a hint of the inflammation), and it also seemed to manifest in LACK OF STOMACH ACID, a situation which has so abated with me that i don't have betaine-HCl on hand anymore! That's obviously a mistake.
But the acid situation on top of the gastritis spelled H.-P-Y-L-O-R-I to me! I started googling....
I used up what was left of my licorice tincture, broke out the peppermint, and put a serious dent in my ginger-teabags (all of which helped but didn't conquer) before i came across a mention of EPAZOTE. This is a culinary herb in Mexican food, as well as a medicinal with antibacterial, anti-parasitic, and anti-GAS properties. ... And coincidentally, i had some in my kitchen already!
With the first shot of the tea, my stomach felt better! It was like taking a modern instant-action drug as compared to the usual wait-for-it herbal remedy. No wonder that the traditional treatment time is three to four days, with a follow-up two weeks down the line to deal with any worm-eggs that might hatch after the original dosing. It's THAT powerful.
Immediately, the constant belching subsided. I no longer had the constant low-grade nausea. My digestion felt a lot closer to normal, but i'm still eating rather lightly and prompting enzymes and acid with the aid of bitters. I feel MUCH better than i did on Wednesday.
The fact that in semi-tropical America, this herb is a casual item in cooking is significant to me -- tropical locations offer generous opportunities for parasite infection! Using epazote in your soups and casseroles should give you ongoing protection. I didn't find it strongly flavored, so it can't be much of a contribution to the taste of dishes ... but there it is, in the recipe of a tamale-like chicken dish, from a mainstream purveyor of traditional Mexican ingredients.
The packet of epazote i had was only a half-ounce, so i used it all in making the 3/4 cup of tea for my first three doses. Our outstanding international grocery-stores in StL will make finding another couple of packages easy, though, and i WILL keep this valuable herb on hand from here out! I'll repeat my Thu-Fri-Sat dose next week, too, and i'll try to remember to include some of it in soups and stews from now on!
Herbs are a poor replacement for drugs? HA. Treating H. pylori with antibiotics takes a cocktail of different pharmaceuticals, not just one, and the dosage is continued for WEEKS ... and still doesn't have a 100%-effective record. In a modern world of filthy food-production methods where we get a constant trickle of antibiotics and pathogens in our diets, the value of traditional methods of health-protection must not be under-estimated.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
don't read the comments, continued
Oy.
Here's the thing -- if i WANTED to read certain people's incessant stream-of-consciousness garbage, i'd go to THEIR blogs. I don't. I think their points of view are wishful thinking and self-delusive.
Used to be, i'd get angry that they were leading the ignorant astray, but there comes a point when you have to intellectually cast aside people who won't even TRY to educate themselves ... let alone those who gorge on the cherries they've selectively picked for themselves. ;-) Hacking your own health is tricky enough, without taking upon oneself the vagaries of other people's personal biology. So, i'm not going to rage against the deceivers -- i'll just sit here and despise them.
Ironically, the blog-post-comment-sections at Hyperlipid which were so disastrously hijacked (and which spoiled the conversation for those like me who deplore verbal flatulence) i find to be Peter's responsibility -- he runs the place, and could have controlled it if he chose to. Perhaps he likes the lively "debate" -- but again, it's his "property" and if he doesn't want to rein in the noise, he doesn't have to. Unlike a physical neighbor, nobody has to get close enough to hear it if they don't choose to.
But it is still thoroughly disgusting. That anyone would go on and on for hundreds if not thousands of words on SOMEBODY ELSE'S TURF is repulsively self-important and disrespectful. If you want to spew, spew in your own space.
Pity. To catch the voices of wit, intelligence, reason and charm, like Melchior's, becomes difficult and tedious. We have to wade through the smug, the egomaniacal, and the truly insane to find the hidden gleam of the little pearls, amongst all that swine-defecation.
Here's the thing -- if i WANTED to read certain people's incessant stream-of-consciousness garbage, i'd go to THEIR blogs. I don't. I think their points of view are wishful thinking and self-delusive.
Used to be, i'd get angry that they were leading the ignorant astray, but there comes a point when you have to intellectually cast aside people who won't even TRY to educate themselves ... let alone those who gorge on the cherries they've selectively picked for themselves. ;-) Hacking your own health is tricky enough, without taking upon oneself the vagaries of other people's personal biology. So, i'm not going to rage against the deceivers -- i'll just sit here and despise them.
Ironically, the blog-post-comment-sections at Hyperlipid which were so disastrously hijacked (and which spoiled the conversation for those like me who deplore verbal flatulence) i find to be Peter's responsibility -- he runs the place, and could have controlled it if he chose to. Perhaps he likes the lively "debate" -- but again, it's his "property" and if he doesn't want to rein in the noise, he doesn't have to. Unlike a physical neighbor, nobody has to get close enough to hear it if they don't choose to.
But it is still thoroughly disgusting. That anyone would go on and on for hundreds if not thousands of words on SOMEBODY ELSE'S TURF is repulsively self-important and disrespectful. If you want to spew, spew in your own space.
Pity. To catch the voices of wit, intelligence, reason and charm, like Melchior's, becomes difficult and tedious. We have to wade through the smug, the egomaniacal, and the truly insane to find the hidden gleam of the little pearls, amongst all that swine-defecation.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
and they never LEARN?
It's after brunch in our house -- I just sat down with a short cup of chocolate and the laptop, so my mind and stomach could both digest something tasty....
I had to go to the C-list to find something both unread and potentially interesting, and ended up on Sharma's website. The article discussed a study in which mice seem to have liver involvement in appetite control. The title WAS interesting, but it went downhill from there.
THREE different points irked me, and I didn't finish reading it -- THREE! Mouse studies (just one rung-of-the-ladder better than the in-vitro kind) just plain SUCK when it comes to hacking HUMAN problems. Mice are not small humans. Not even close.
Then, the mice they were using were the knockout kind. Now, if one is trying to identify what a transmitter/hormone does, or what a receptor is for, KO animals help you figure that out, but by NO stretch of the imagination can one extrapolate from their experience to ours. One must conduct ANOTHER study to see if normal specimens of the same species respond as predicted, based on the KO behavior ... then work into other species. From-KO-mouse-to-human is either idiocy or lunacy -- i'd have to mull over which is more likely....
One also doesn't report this kind of "discovery" to the GENERAL PUBLIC with fanfare. As yet, it doesn't MEAN anything to medical PRACTICE (or the amateur biohacker) -- it's way too early for that. It may be exceedingly important and exciting to other mouse-experimenters but ... is Sharma just having a hard time finding something to write about today?
As icing on the cake -- and the thing which inspired me to close the window and rant -- the words "a high-fat diet" popped quickly into the conversation. Bye-bye!
We all know that researchers feeding a "high-fat diet" are in fact poisoning their little charges with a combination of ingredients DESIGNED to sicken lab animals, usually things like soybean oil, sucrose and synthetic protein mixtures, "made healthy" by the addition of a standard vitamin-mineral supplement. They're nearly always high SUGAR diets, misnamed. The only thing worse is the "cafeteria diet" researchers used to use to show how we're poisoning our SCHOOL CHILDREN, most of the components of which have probably been featured in the propagandistic blog of Dr. He-who-shall-not-be-named.
These people are supposed to be intelligent and insightful -- our universities are supposed to be run and staffed by the BEST. Here's another "not even close" moment: they're too often interesting in nothing but finding a big-business source of grants.
WHY is most of the developed world either fat-and-sick, or rapidly going that direction? Because research pursues this kind of BULLSHIT instead of to-the-point, practical, everyday SOLUTIONS, and touts novelty in place of developing useful, tried-and-true things that we KNOW work, but which are just simply ... unpopular ... like well-formulated low-carb diets.
I had to go to the C-list to find something both unread and potentially interesting, and ended up on Sharma's website. The article discussed a study in which mice seem to have liver involvement in appetite control. The title WAS interesting, but it went downhill from there.
THREE different points irked me, and I didn't finish reading it -- THREE! Mouse studies (just one rung-of-the-ladder better than the in-vitro kind) just plain SUCK when it comes to hacking HUMAN problems. Mice are not small humans. Not even close.
Then, the mice they were using were the knockout kind. Now, if one is trying to identify what a transmitter/hormone does, or what a receptor is for, KO animals help you figure that out, but by NO stretch of the imagination can one extrapolate from their experience to ours. One must conduct ANOTHER study to see if normal specimens of the same species respond as predicted, based on the KO behavior ... then work into other species. From-KO-mouse-to-human is either idiocy or lunacy -- i'd have to mull over which is more likely....
One also doesn't report this kind of "discovery" to the GENERAL PUBLIC with fanfare. As yet, it doesn't MEAN anything to medical PRACTICE (or the amateur biohacker) -- it's way too early for that. It may be exceedingly important and exciting to other mouse-experimenters but ... is Sharma just having a hard time finding something to write about today?
As icing on the cake -- and the thing which inspired me to close the window and rant -- the words "a high-fat diet" popped quickly into the conversation. Bye-bye!
We all know that researchers feeding a "high-fat diet" are in fact poisoning their little charges with a combination of ingredients DESIGNED to sicken lab animals, usually things like soybean oil, sucrose and synthetic protein mixtures, "made healthy" by the addition of a standard vitamin-mineral supplement. They're nearly always high SUGAR diets, misnamed. The only thing worse is the "cafeteria diet" researchers used to use to show how we're poisoning our SCHOOL CHILDREN, most of the components of which have probably been featured in the propagandistic blog of Dr. He-who-shall-not-be-named.
These people are supposed to be intelligent and insightful -- our universities are supposed to be run and staffed by the BEST. Here's another "not even close" moment: they're too often interesting in nothing but finding a big-business source of grants.
WHY is most of the developed world either fat-and-sick, or rapidly going that direction? Because research pursues this kind of BULLSHIT instead of to-the-point, practical, everyday SOLUTIONS, and touts novelty in place of developing useful, tried-and-true things that we KNOW work, but which are just simply ... unpopular ... like well-formulated low-carb diets.
Monday, December 1, 2014
know your audience
This post has absolutely NOTHING to do with health and nutrition -- fair warning! :-) Whether that's a good or a bad thing, i'll leave moot.
As i was stringing tinsel-garland and colored lights up the front-staircase bannister yesterday, something popped into my mind.... This is actually one of the benefits of mindless manual labor -- your hands are busy and a very minute portion of your consciousness applied, and it seems that the BBB*-like borderline to the subconscious is made more porous. From "nowhere" come ideas and solutions to questions which are possibly years old and essentially forgotten.
The subject of this train of thought was an after-hours conversation about literature, among history-buffs....
The recent plethora of depictions of Sherlock Holmes (my first love, at the age of twelve) have taken that character in directions which would have astonished Sir Arthur. His mildly-autistic, borderline-manic-depressive, and decidedly obsessive-compulsive ICON of a character is actually nothing like some of the smirking James-Bond-wannabees that modern audiences love. Hell, even the early Rathbone films show him to be questionably urbane.
But what modern person would know? To understand period fiction, you need to have a sense of what ITS ERA is all about, and as i postulated the other day, the vast majority of living people have no clue on how their great-great-grandparents lived and THOUGHT.
You see, Doyle wasn't writing for US, he was writing for his contemporaries. When he first penned "A Study in Scarlet" he never dreamed that his serialized magazine story would be the beginning of such a popular character. Although the demand and income were nice, he soon became tired of his creation and wanted to kill him off, but his public -- and even his family -- kicked up such a fuss he backed off. He would never have dreamed in 1887 that 127 years later, Holmes would still be "alive."
And BECAUSE Doyle was writing to his contemporaries, the things that get modernity all excited ... just never occurred to him. Yes, they had homosexuality in Victorian England: but it had a code of its own (read your Oscar Wilde -- i did). Sir Arthur's characters were almost all straight. But that's just one example of what today's audience gets wrong.
Period fiction (or non-fiction, when it comes to that) is decypherable only in the context of the environment of its creation. In this case, the writer was himself an enthusiast of history as well as of science -- in his Holmes canon, he writes of the exciting forensic developments of his day but he also wrote books about the medieval period ... and he gives Holmes some of his own historical interests too.
The guy SIMPLY WOULD NOT have tried to speak to a future world, but that's exactly what a lot of "interpreters" of Holmesiana are trying to make him do.
As a reenactor, i try to get inside the heads of the people i portray -- that's how one's characters/personae LIVE for the audience. Being an ordinary modern person "dressed up funny" does not give the school-kids an idea of what the historic world was like, when we have that day before the reenactment actually begins, and they bus in the local elementary-thru-highschool students to talk to us. It's our job to depict typical people in their many roles in society, so they can get an idea of how the world has changed and what made it happen. TELL them this stuff, and it just goes out the other ear; let them carry the water with the yoke and canvas buckets, let them see and smell the period-correct recipe you're cooking for the next meal, let them feel the lye soap and try out the washboard ... they'll understand everyday life of 150 years ago MUCH better.
Any good living-historian does a LOT of reading, and knows better than to read ABOUT the past -- we have to read sources that CAME FROM the past, and even before the period of our greatest interest. The ancient past feeds into the recent past which feeds into the world of our parents, which usually influences who we are today. Though human nature hasn't changed much, the societies which influence our points of view HAVE. And the society in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was trying to establish himself as an author of popular fiction is very, VERY different from ours. HE came from the world described by Charles Dickens, who came from the world described by Jane Austen, who came from the world described by Samuel Richardson ... all the way back to the bible. The average person was also more influenced by their families, personal friends and church-teachings than anything written in the wider world. People were very circumscribed, in the days before the train, radio, movies, television, internet....
Point of view is a strong determiner in what we find significant. Modern points of view are IRRELEVANT when looking at the past.
_________
* for the friends i'll send here who aren't regulars, this is the Blood-Brain Barrier, not the Better Business Bureau. ;-)
As i was stringing tinsel-garland and colored lights up the front-staircase bannister yesterday, something popped into my mind.... This is actually one of the benefits of mindless manual labor -- your hands are busy and a very minute portion of your consciousness applied, and it seems that the BBB*-like borderline to the subconscious is made more porous. From "nowhere" come ideas and solutions to questions which are possibly years old and essentially forgotten.
The subject of this train of thought was an after-hours conversation about literature, among history-buffs....
The recent plethora of depictions of Sherlock Holmes (my first love, at the age of twelve) have taken that character in directions which would have astonished Sir Arthur. His mildly-autistic, borderline-manic-depressive, and decidedly obsessive-compulsive ICON of a character is actually nothing like some of the smirking James-Bond-wannabees that modern audiences love. Hell, even the early Rathbone films show him to be questionably urbane.
But what modern person would know? To understand period fiction, you need to have a sense of what ITS ERA is all about, and as i postulated the other day, the vast majority of living people have no clue on how their great-great-grandparents lived and THOUGHT.
You see, Doyle wasn't writing for US, he was writing for his contemporaries. When he first penned "A Study in Scarlet" he never dreamed that his serialized magazine story would be the beginning of such a popular character. Although the demand and income were nice, he soon became tired of his creation and wanted to kill him off, but his public -- and even his family -- kicked up such a fuss he backed off. He would never have dreamed in 1887 that 127 years later, Holmes would still be "alive."
And BECAUSE Doyle was writing to his contemporaries, the things that get modernity all excited ... just never occurred to him. Yes, they had homosexuality in Victorian England: but it had a code of its own (read your Oscar Wilde -- i did). Sir Arthur's characters were almost all straight. But that's just one example of what today's audience gets wrong.
Period fiction (or non-fiction, when it comes to that) is decypherable only in the context of the environment of its creation. In this case, the writer was himself an enthusiast of history as well as of science -- in his Holmes canon, he writes of the exciting forensic developments of his day but he also wrote books about the medieval period ... and he gives Holmes some of his own historical interests too.
The guy SIMPLY WOULD NOT have tried to speak to a future world, but that's exactly what a lot of "interpreters" of Holmesiana are trying to make him do.
As a reenactor, i try to get inside the heads of the people i portray -- that's how one's characters/personae LIVE for the audience. Being an ordinary modern person "dressed up funny" does not give the school-kids an idea of what the historic world was like, when we have that day before the reenactment actually begins, and they bus in the local elementary-thru-highschool students to talk to us. It's our job to depict typical people in their many roles in society, so they can get an idea of how the world has changed and what made it happen. TELL them this stuff, and it just goes out the other ear; let them carry the water with the yoke and canvas buckets, let them see and smell the period-correct recipe you're cooking for the next meal, let them feel the lye soap and try out the washboard ... they'll understand everyday life of 150 years ago MUCH better.
Any good living-historian does a LOT of reading, and knows better than to read ABOUT the past -- we have to read sources that CAME FROM the past, and even before the period of our greatest interest. The ancient past feeds into the recent past which feeds into the world of our parents, which usually influences who we are today. Though human nature hasn't changed much, the societies which influence our points of view HAVE. And the society in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was trying to establish himself as an author of popular fiction is very, VERY different from ours. HE came from the world described by Charles Dickens, who came from the world described by Jane Austen, who came from the world described by Samuel Richardson ... all the way back to the bible. The average person was also more influenced by their families, personal friends and church-teachings than anything written in the wider world. People were very circumscribed, in the days before the train, radio, movies, television, internet....
Point of view is a strong determiner in what we find significant. Modern points of view are IRRELEVANT when looking at the past.
_________
* for the friends i'll send here who aren't regulars, this is the Blood-Brain Barrier, not the Better Business Bureau. ;-)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)