Odd Lots
- Sales of the Raspberry Pi board are closing in on four million. Wow. I’m an optimist, but I’ll confess that I wasn’t that much of an optimist!
- Some ISPs have apparently begun blocking encrypted traffic (especially VPNs) because VPNs make it difficult to throttle traffic based on what that traffic is. Basically, a user of Golden Frog’s VPN software started streaming Netflix in the clear and saw all sorts of stutter and other signs of throttling; the user then streamed Netflix through the VPN and the signs of throttling vanished.
- Internet toll roads? More evidence.
- Here’s a 3-D printed pump-gun that folds and fires paper airplanes. This should be on the cover of the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog before Christmas… (Thanks to Frank Glover for the link.)
- Stanford University reports that GMO foods appear not to bother farm animals at all; maybe we should look harder for cause and effect in humans. Conventional wisdom can be deadly.(Thanks to Jim Fuerstenberg for the link.)
- Deadly? Ancel Keys’ fraudulent science (which soon became conventional wisdom, once government got behind it) has killed many millions. Fat is good for you. Sugar is deadly. (Thanks to Tony Kyle for the link.)
- Adobe’s Digital Editions ebook reader sends your reading logs back to Adobe. As best I can figure, it’s DRM gone nuts–which is precisely what you would expect of Adobe. Don’t use Digital Editions.
- Whoops. Silly boy. Adobe isn’t the only one doing this. Once it becomes general knowledge, more and more people will pirate ebooks and sideload them, which will ultimately hurt publishers and retailers more than covert data mining will help. (Thanks to Esther Schindler for the link.)
- Lazarus/FreePascal 1.2.6/2.6.4 has been released. The damned thing is getting good.
- The Great Lakes’ water temps are about four degrees colder than average, (and six degrees colder than this time last year) after some lakes didn’t shed the last of their ice until June. It’s going to be an interesting winter here on the weather front.
- Scott Hanselman thinks that I might as well be Thomas Watson. (Go to 1:30 on the video and watch for a bit.) Alas, not only do I not think there will never be more than five computers in the world, there are already over five computers in this room. (Thanks to Ben Oram for noticing.)
- 18 English words that should never have gone out of style. “Spermologer” doesn’t mean quite what you’d think. Nor do “pussyvan” and “wonder-wench.” Me, I’d add “cerate” to the list. Look it up. (Thanks to Dermot Dobson for the link.)
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: health · language · pascal · piracy · software · weather
"
“we’ve been brainwashed into thinking that fat causes heart attacks and raises cholesterol”
For four months i cut out saturated fat (no meat or dairy on a regular basis) my LDL dropped from 149 to 78. Total went from 230 to 134. Whether fat causes heart attacks, who knows? Most evidence is correlative and not causal. But that it doesn’t raise cholesterol? At least for me that is absurd.
The article also talks about carbohydrates cause one to eat more. Yet, it doesn’t mention a thing about satiation or time between snacks and meals. Whole grains take longer to digest keeping one satisfied for much longer. Sugar laden snacks, however, may satisfy a desire, but will not satiate for too long (unless it is a craving for a missing nutrient, which simply boils down to whether it provides it or not.) It’s probably less a result of what one eats and more about how often.
In my uninformed opinion, this fat push of late is just as bad as the carbohydrate push. In general, your body will tell you what and when to eat. Study your cravings and find out which nutrients your body is after (a spreadsheet works quite well) and find foods loaded with exactly those nutrients. As cravings are satisfied, you’ll eat more of what you need and less of what you don’t, and for the most part, you can ignore all these ridiculous fads.
I don’t think cravings carry reliable information. I’ve never had cravings of any kind–in fact, for most of my life I would just as soon have plugged myself into some sort of charger as eat. So my cravings would tell me nothing about what I wanted or needed because they weren’t there. I track my weight and my blood numbers very closely, and what they tell me is the more fat I eat, the better things get. When I went low-carb my triglycerides (the really dangerous blood marker) went off a cliff, and my cholesterol went down nicely. My weight tracks my sugar intake pretty closely.
Look, we’re all different. You seem to be an outlier, in that I’ve heard from many more people who lost weight eating fat than avoiding it. This doesn’t mean your experience is meaningless. We’re all playing a stats game. I know one other person who seems to gain weight on fat, and whereas I don’t understand the biochemistry here, it’s unclear that anyone actually does. What I said in my series a while back is worth saying again: Be the experiment. Try things. Keep records. Believe your results and live by them. There’s an ideal diet for every single person on Earth. They’re all different–and no one knows what any of them are. The only way you find out is by tracking the numbers. General advice is simply impossible, and the sooner we understand that, the sooner we’re all likely to be healthier.
I think listening to cravings takes some practice, but who knows?
Anyway, just saw this study about a high fat diet being good for the brain: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-11/uoc-hdp110514.php
The Pi is so cheap that I have begun using it for some things instead of designing a custom board around an ARM processor. A very tiny and cheap custom board combined with the Pi can handle nearly any embedded task. The newest version of the Pi is excellent!
Also, look at the capabilities of this board. It’s not a Pi but it’s only 10.33 and each one comes with a detachable USB programmer you can snap off. Amazing! http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STMicroelectronics/NUCLEO-F411RE/?qs=%2fha2pyFadugWjOSW%252bTaq%2ftuqBskZw7pYMNCSHT2YYxA1lmeMi89Lrnhhf2L4wPJ9
Yes. Lazarus is getting good. I have started porting some of my old tools over and it’s quite easy to get the code working.
You are absolutely correct about fat v carbs.
And of course, there is the Apple scam now with Yosemite and Spotlight.
http://www.zdnet.com/apple-seeks-to-allay-concerns-over-yosemite-spotlight-data-collection-7000034908/
The article also talks about carbohydrates making you eat more. But he did not say anything about satiety or the time between meals. Whole grains take longer to digest, which keeps you full longer. However, foods that contain sugar can satisfy hunger, but it will not keep you full for a long time (unless you are craving for junk food, which only provides is it not.) It may be less than what you eat and other things. How often.