bollockitis

> Imagine you make a tool and someone proposes making a change to that tool that would be potentially useful to slavers, people who enslave other people. This makes you hesitate. Pointing out that people already use similar tools for slavery probably wouldn't make you change your mind.

I know you're being hyperbolic here to represent RMS's take on the issue (or at least that's how I'm reading it), but I'm not sure the analogy makes sense.

If I were to reinterpret it using the same terms, the counter-argument isn't that "people already use similar tools for slavery", it is that "slavers" wouldn't care what you did with your tool because they're already having no trouble commiting their crimes with similar tools, and your new tool could be used in perfectly legitimate ways to support your own position which includes combating slavery.

It makes me wonder if Moorcock has ever actually read Tolkien. As I've gotten older, some of the shine of Lord of the Rings has worn off, no doubt precipitated by the movies which relegated Tolkien's rich world and epic themes to consumerist junk pocked with spring-action Legolas toys and Hollywood-inspired video games. So, yes, Tolkien's world was sometimes very two-dimensional and naive. His characters and dialogue were sometimes laughably simplistic, but I prefer to think of LOTR as a vehicle for exploring larger themes of power and evil.

LOTR was written against the backdrop of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and a world where good and evil didn't seem very ambiguous, yet think about how many times this ambiguity comes up: Gollum. Good or evil? Saruman? Boromir? There is nothing childish or "Pooh-like" about these characters. They are very real, very intense confrontations with good and evil. Even Bilbo and Frodo themselves struggle with this. We assume the ring has the power to corrupt, but is the ring truly doing the corrupting, or is this lust for power something innate within that the ring simply exploits for its own purposes?

And what defines true power? Is it the ring itself? Is it the one who carries it? Frodo and Sam, two of the smallest of the races of Middle-Earth manage to bring down the most powerful of enemies with little more than courage and a desire to do what's right, while the powerful (the humans of Rohan and Gondor) quibble amongst themselves and their leaders are easily manipulated or go mad with sorrow and fear.

Long story short, I think Moorcock is wrong. I find the idea of a drug-addicted elf more ridiculous than anything Tolkien ever wrote. It's as though Moorcock defines fantasy as merely a setting through which he can play out his literary amibitions. That isn't to say there's anything wrong with a drug-addicted elf, it's just that drug addiction -- a so-called "real" problem to Tolkien's alleged "Pooh" problems -- does not alone elevate one's work to higher stature, nor should it be used a bludgeon to demote the work of others. I have learned far more about life and human nature from Tolkien than I have from Moorcock, and Tolkien's work was more entertaining too.

EDIT: Oh, and if you want to read some incredibly clever and unique sci-fi/fantasy, check out anything by Gene Wolfe or Jack Vance. Wolfe's Book of the New Sun is brilliant, and Vance's Lyonesse trilogy is amazing.

> This and other "the human body is immune from the effects of thermodynamics" arguments are... well, wrong. Otherwise there is a breakthrough in physics waiting to be found and potential unlimited energy.

I think you misunderstood me. I was simply saying that food is more than the sum of its caloric content. I am not implying that the human body is magically immune from the laws of physics.

> But if a fat person simply eats less, no matter the macronutrient content, he or she will lose weight. This is well documented, and even Taubes doesn't disagree with that.

A low-carb diet doesn't have to be intentionally low calorie. That's the point. Eating very low carb allows the body to adjust hunger levels to match existing fat stores. If you're fat and you allow your body to do its job, you won't be as hungry because you have plenty of energy stored up and the body is eager to use it. In other words, we've evolved to survive times of plenty and times of famine, and our modern diet with extremely high carb intake throws this system out of whack.

Low calorie is just forced starvation and although you will always lose weight this way, it's an uphill battle because you're fighting the body's fat regulation mechanism. You might be eating high-carb but low calorie, causing insulin spikes, extreme hunger, and protein wasting. It's not an easy diet to follow and it might even be counterproductive.

This is the theory anyway. This queston has been posted to Taubes many times over though, and he himself can explain it a lot better than I can. If you're interested in the topic, this is definitely worth a read: http://garytaubes.com/2012/11/what-would-happen-if-thoughts-...

> I don't care if you eat raw sugar or fat, as long as you eat slightly less calories than your body is using for a prolonged period of time.

Well, you might not care, but your body sure does. Your body responds very differently to sugar than it does to fat. And for some people—I would say anyone struggling to lose weight—this difference is the key to success.

Yes, some people can lose weight eating nothing but carbs. There's a lot we don't know, and proponents of this theory will admit this. But one of the primary prinicples of this theory is that genetics plays a large role in human fat metabolism. Some people can eat whatever they want and remain thin, while others eat whatever they want and become obese. There is no such thing as a one size fits all diet.

> This seems intellectually interesting to me but it's frustrating because I feel it takes what is a relatively simple issue and makes it needlessly complex. Yes, maybe there is some amount of optimization you can do with your diet, but the simple fact is that there is a not a single study in the history of science which has been able to demonstrate eating at a caloric deficit and gaining weight. Show me an obese person not eating significantly too much.

Taubes would say that an obese person eats too much precisely because he is fat, not the reverse. The arrow of causality has been flipped. His body is demanding increased caloric intake (via insulin, leptin, and ghrelin) to maintain fat stores. Those fat stores can't be liberated when insulin levels remain high. If this hypothetical obese person keeps eating carbs and has become insulin resistant, those fat stores aren't going anywhere without a fight. A calorie restricted diet will help some, as less food produces less insulin, but it's far easier to restrict insulinogenic foods. This allows the fat stores to be utilized, and weight loss is the natural result.

It sounds counterintuitive at first, but this theory states that the human body knows how to maintain caloric intake. That's what hunger is for. But it can only do this if we allow the endocrine system to function normally.

Before dismissing the idea, listen to Taubes's talk: http://youtu.be/ywRV3GH5io0

If you haven't read either of Taubes's books, please do. I highly recommend Why We Get Fat[1]. It's a spectacular piece of scientific journalism. If that's too much for you, try one of his talks on the same topic[2].

When I first encountered the idea that we do not get fat from eating too much and that calories weren't responsible, I thought it ludicrous—the body can't disobey the laws of physics! Thermodynamics! But after seriously thinking about the idea, I realized Taubes was providing a far more complete understanding of metabolism. The human body doesn't run on calories, it runs on food. Yes, we can easily learn the caloric content of food, but that's largely irrelevant. What's important is how food affects the body, not its raw energy content. I see this misconception time and time again, especially among smart people who like to reduce the human body to merely a physical machine, often ignoring the whole biology thing.

I think the hormone theory of obesity is correct and I think these studies will prove it. But even if they show otherwise, this type of research is long overdue and we all stand to benefit from the results.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Get-Fat-About/dp/0307474259

[2]: http://youtu.be/ywRV3GH5io0

It isn't perfect, but Lombok[1] helps with this. It uses annotations to automatically generate getters and setters. The downside, of course, it yet another dependency and more annotations.

[1]: http://projectlombok.org/features/GetterSetter.html

> You need to conserve that vital energy for sleep. My son is almost 15 months. I've been so long without sleep, that the rare occasion I get 8 hours or more I think my body just assumes I'm dead and starts breaking down.

I feel your pain. My daughter just turned 1. Up until a month ago, she was still waking up 3 or 4 times a night. Sometimes more. We had gone so long without regular sleep that my wife and I had gained over 30 pounds. We became irritable, tense, and we were getting ourselves noticed at work for poor performance and tardiness. And despite being happily married for nearly 15 years, our mariage was in jeopardy.

We decided it was time to try sleep training. We first tried a gentle, "fewer tears" method[1]. It sort of worked, but my daughter quickly regressed and became worse than before. Our presence stimulated her rather than soothed her, so staying in the room just made things worse. So, in desperation, we tried Jodi Mindell's more old-fashioned method[2].

It worked. Beginning on night 3 of sleep training, we got 8 hours of unbroken, joyous sleep, and we have gotten regular sleep ever since. My daughter still wakes from time-to-time, but it's no big deal now. We can put her back to sleep in a matter of minutes rather than the hours it used to take before.

The best part though is that my daughter is so much more rested as well. We didn't realize that her poor sleep habits were taking such a toll on her. After a few days of good sleep, she began to smile and laugh more often. She began babbling like never before. She was less cranky, more patient, and her daytime naps even improved. It was like a damn miracle.

Anyway, long story short: take your own advice and prioritize your sleep. If you haven't tried sleep training yet, do it.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Lady%C2%AE%C2%92s-Good-Night-Tig...

[2]: http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Through-Night-Infants-Toddler...

> If this theory is correct, does it mean that a drastic change in diet might change a person's behavior? I'm imagining a future where people match their diet to their intestinal bacteria to increase or reduce the "waste" that gets produced to achieve a desired mood or behavior.

The concept is really not new. Diet has long been linked to mood and behavior in traditional medicine. It wouldn't be a shocker to learn that some traditional approaches to dietary therapy are actually effective, though probably not for the reasons they proclaimed.

> An endless supply of naive, impressionable kids willing to listen to people rant about how everything sucks and X will change the world.

There's also the problem that an engineer who successfully builds a bridge simply keeps to continue building bridges. In software, a 21-year-old programmer can build a webapp, sell it to Google, and walk away a multi-gajillionaire. If engineers could sell bridges to Google, we'd be seeing a lot of strange methods of crossing a river.

It's not just that developers look for silver bullets -- that's a natural instinct in any discipline -- it's that developers have a very real incentive for building and marketing silver bullets.

Good point. I don't remember having this problem with iOS 6. I suppose it's simply a matter of personal preference, but if the keys changed case, I could instantly determine what my keypress would output to the screen. That seems like a UI no-brainer to me.

> There is a reason Apple does what it does (supposedly to match a real keyboard) but it's not strong and doesn't matter.

Wow. Really? That a silly reason for an otherwise indefensible UI decision. I really wish the iOS keyboard changed case. Ever since iOS 7, I can't tell whether shift is on or off. Maybe I'm just an idiot, but sometimes I fumble with it a half dozen times before getting it right. It's worse than trying to plug in a USB cable.

samspot is dead on here, at least from my perspective. I am very private and have suffered from social anxiety for years. I don't use Facebook because I am overly sensitive to the reactions of others (no likes? everyone hates me and thinks I'm stupid). I spend far too much time thinking about what others think of me, so my natural inclination is to completely remove myself from public view at all opportunities. I don't use GitHub for this reason. I'd like to contribute and become part of a community, but I'm so terrified of being judged that I never step forward.

So I completely understand the author's attempts to go public. It isn't about being the next DHH, it's about overcoming the fear of rejection. I have been considering "going public" for years for this very reason.

I generally don't advocate complete rewrites, but it seems to be the best option in this scenario. Why is everyone so opposed to doing this? I don't mean that rhetorically. I truly don't understand. I don't want to downplay the difficulty of such a project, but I regularly see brilliant developers here at HN and elsewhere scrambling to create something meaningful. Here's an excellent opportunity to build something that would have widespread use, with both cultural and political impact, yet there seems to be a lot of reluctance to actually take on such a project. Instead, we keep speculating about anonymous developers who have made it clear that they're done and want nothing to do with it anymore. We even have permission to use TrueCrypt for reference. Seems like an awesome opportunity for developers smart enough to do it.

I write, meditate, and walk. Each has its role; there is a time for each. Why are we so critical of the way the author chooses to spend his time?

Generally speaking, the Python community believes the strength of Python is in its culture, which can be summed up by the Zen of Python: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/. Python also recieves much praise for being easy to learn, readability, productivity, expressiveness, and its library support, namely NumPy and SciPy (Python is often used in scientific computing for this very reason). Aside from this, Python programmers like it and that's reason enough. Performance for Python (and Ruby) is adequate for most use cases.

Personally, I don't like Python. If I want a dynamically typed language, I use Ruby, but I came to this conclusion after spending time with both languages, and it wasn't the feature set that sold me of one over the other, but rather how I felt while working in the language and its ecosystem. In other words, whether or not Python or Ruby are worth your time is a decision you'll only be able to make after using the language.

I believe in being language agnostic whenever possible. Don't hold strong opinions about languages. People invest a lot of time and energy into their tools. This is a "sunk cost." Their time and energy can't be reclaimed. So it's no surprise that, when asked, they will praise their tools -- even if they aren't objectively all that great -- solely to justify the costs. They aren't trying to convince you, they're trying to convince themselves. So don't waste time trying to find feature comparisons. All languages have redeemable values, and learning a new one is always a valuable exercise.

So give Python and Ruby a shot. You might find you actually like them, but not for the reasons you expected to. And if you don't like them, at least you'll know why.

One could correlate stress with things like depression, suicide, anxiety disorders, divorce, addiction, etc, but that would be a very difficult study to perform.

> 1: Hmm, chronically high insulin levels is caused by chronically eating too much. Beef spikes insulin just as much as table sugar (http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/66/5/1264.full.pdf#page=1&...). So I would say the problem of "chronically high insulin levels" is a problem of eating too much food, not too much sugar.

Yes, beef does have a high insulin response, but when total consumption is taken into account, and satiety, eating beef will have a lesser effect than eating jellybeans. Look at the insulin scores in the publication you cited. Those with the highest scores, as a group, are snacks and confectionaries, foods that are commonly eaten in Western countries. Some of the worst offenders in the groups tested are: beans, potatoes, white bread, jellybeans, etc. -- carbohydrates.

> 2: This is a hugely interesting area of thinking for me. Which fat though? White or brown adipose tissue? Brown fat is darker in colour due to it's huge cellular density of mitochondria when compared to white adipose tissue. It's essential fat-buringing fat, and plays a role in regulating temperature. It basically burns fat to warm us up when we're cold. This is why Michael Phelps can eat 10 million calories a day. 6 hours a day in water requires allocating a LOT of calories to maintain core body temp. We have learned SO much about fat tissue recently, but I don't think we have all the answers yet.

In this case we're talking almost exclusively about excess visceral fat, though the role of other fats in obesity and disease is, as you said, not fully known.

>> Let’s assume two things for the sake of argument. the sugar in A’s diet causes A to become insulin resistant. And second, insulin works to put fat in fat tissue. > I would say both assumptions are fallacious. Eating @ TDEE means 100% of the food energy is used up, and fat cannot be made from nothing.

True, but activity level must be taken into account. Fat can't be made from nothing, but the patient could reduce his overall activity level as he becomes fatter, which would make excess calories available for storage as fat. In other words, we could have causality backwards: being lazy doesn't necessarily make you fat, but becoming fat could certainly make you lazy.

> Also, the "insulin works to put fat in fat tissue" is misleading at best and completely wrong at worst, depending on how you interpret it. Insulin works to move nutrients into cells. More insulin in the blood is a signal there is food calories available, so insulin also stops fat cells from releasing their fat. This makes total sense; why dip into your savings when you just got a fist full of cash?

If insulin stops fat cells from releasing fat, then wouldn't it make sense to keep insulin levels as low possible? That means reducing carbohydrate and protein intake, and increasing dietary fat consumption to compensate: in short, a low-carb, high-fat diet.

> The point where your body transitions towards fat storage is the point where your energy intake exceed energy expenditure; again just simply eating less solves this.

Does it though? Obese people have much higher concentrations of circulating leptin than the general population, and they can become leptin resistant. What happens if we tell these people to eat less, and move more? Chances are, they're going to become very hungry. I would argue that eating less isn't enough. They need to eat less insulinogenic foods, and compensate by increasing dietary fat to satiety.

> My statements are all for average healthy people. I totally agree metabolic-syndromes like diabetes should be treated differently. But the VAST majority of people are fat because they sustain consuming more energy than they use. The micro-variables like how stressed you are (and therefor how much cortisol hormone is present) matter, but nothing gets diet-induced hormones working as they should better (in healthy people) by just eating food-energy (whatever the macros) to match your activity over the long run.

Fair enough. That's the commonly held belief at least, but I disagree. I think we have an incomplete picture. However, I believe in the scientific method, so I'd really like to see clinical trials (not epidemiological studies) to fully test the hormone theory. As I said earlier, if it's wrong, then we haven't lost anything, and we've learned more about the role hormones play in obesity. If it's correct, then the impact on nutrition and obesity will be enormous. It's worth looking into.

> Energy balance is the physics of biochemistry; there is no arguing away the laws of thermodynamics. If you get heavier, it's because you consumed more energy than you used over a period of time. There is no other way to gain or lose weight* (no matter the proportion of muscle/fat that's gained or lost).

I'm not claiming that the body can somehow defy the laws of thermodynamics. Obviously to become "heavier" one must consume more energy than one expends, but to lose fat -- specifically fat, not muscle tissue or bone or water -- the question is this: how important is the role of hormones in fat regulation? Does an increased insulin load, coupled with insulin resistance caused by long-term exposure to chronically high insulin levels, promote greater fat storage? And does this greater mass of fat, which itself is a hormonally active organ, affect the body in a way that results in illness and further weight gain?

Would an endocrinologist tell a diabetic that macronutrient content doesn't matter? Should we give that same advice to people with metabolic syndrome or those who are at risk of developing it? If insulin resistance is the primary cause of Type 2 Diabetes, and insulin is the primary hormone involved in fat storage -- both non-controversial statements -- then wouldn't it make sense for those at risk of developing T2DM to eat foods that produced a minimal insulin response?

Read Taubes's thought experiment I linked above. If you're willing to make nutrition texts bedtime reading, then you will at least find it interesting, even if you disagree with it. Though Taubes is not a scientist and he doesn't claim to be, he does make a compelling argument.

> Don't pull out the "a simple failure of willpower" straw man; I never claimed that.

It wasn't intended to target you specifically, but this attitude is pervasive, even among medical professionals. There are people out there who would much rather believe that every obese patient is just a lazy glutton who can't control himself. I know a few of these people myself, one of whom is a prominent oncologist. Science requires that we put aside our biases and assumptions.

> Hormones play a HUGE role in metabolism. My bedtime reading is how the chemical reactions they drive fit into human metabolism. you're comment seems to make them out to be "magical", which I suspect is due to your ignorance of them.

I'm not claiming hormones are magical. I am merely suggesting that their known role in fat regulation might also play a critical role in obesity. It's been a while since I studied the topic in any great depth, so I can't compete with your bedtime reading, and I don't want to link spam, so I'm keeping it simple.

Anyway, I believe the science will eventually shed some light on this issue. There are clinical trials in the planning stages right now, so hopefully we won't have long to wait.

> Every single hospital-ward double blind clinical trial over the last 100 years says exactly the same thing: net energy balance is what determines how fat you are, no matter the macronutrient content of the diet.

Here's my problem with this: the energy balance theory is the status quo, yet for as many studies as you can dig up to support it, you'll also find conflicting observations (some of which also go back over 100 years). I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm simply saying that the hormone theory of obesity shouldn't be disregarded solely because it doesn't fit the status quo. It needs to be tested.

Another problem I have is that the energy balance theory is just too convenient. It's a greay way to dismiss obesity as a simple failure of willpower, and to dismiss the obese as being morally inferior to the rest of us. In other words, our judgmental attitude toward obesity could be blinding us to its real cause. Let's test the hormone theory, and if it turns out wrong, we've only learned more about obesity. If it turns out correct, we could possibly save many lives and prevent a lot of suffering.

That said, I find it absurd to believe that only energy balance matters. In effect, this predicts that despite the dozens of hormones involved in human metabolism, it all boils down to caloric content. That doesn't make any sense to me. Taubes actually wrote an interesting thought experiment on this: http://garytaubes.com/2012/11/what-would-happen-if-thoughts-...

> I, working with grad students at UCSF and elsewhere, have picked apart the materials and methods of his studies and found numerous statistical errors which make us doubt the validity of his conclusions.

Have you published your work anywhere? I'd like to read it.

> FFS, The Atlantic should be embarrassed to publish articles with "correlation is causation" fallacies of this magnitude in them. This is standard food woo thinking: "people who heavily scrutinized and evaluated everything they ate because they have a strong adverse reaction to X means that not eating X will make YOU healthy too!"

You basically just described all of epidemiology and why it has been so bad for nutritional research.

> Energy-balance (digested food calories - energy exerted living) is magnitudes more important than the macronutrient content of your diet.

That's a convenient fallacy which is so often repeated that it is simply assumed to be true, but some -- such as Gary Taubes, Dr. Lustig (the author of this article), Dr. Eric Westman, and others -- argue the exact opposite: the macronutrient content of one's diet matters very much. Different macronutrients provoke differing endocrinological responses. Our bodies are biological, not mechanical machines, and we process carbohydrates differently than fats or protein. It isn't controversial and it shouldn't come as a shock. New research is showing that the hormone cascade brought about by certain foods -- and by adipose tissue itself -- has an enormous impact on our health.

The problem is that people want to oversimplify nutrition into universal equation which assumes that everyone is the same, and they often cite epidemiological nutritional studies -- notorious for being inaccurate and unreliable -- to do so. The truth is probably more complicated: the diet that keeps one person healthy might make another fat and sick, and it's primarily dependent upon genetics, not physics.

For more on this, read any of Taubes's books. They are quite compelling. Dr. Lustig has written a few himself.

On one hand, I'm happy to see the Linux kernel being used in all sorts of consumer devices. It's a real victory for the developers and for the open source model. On the other hand, it has only been successful because it has enabled major corporations to fight the mobile platform wars. Linux hasn't succeeded on its own merits but as an economical way for companies to bootstrap their own products to fight for Apple's leftovers.

The author isn't fooling anyone. We all know that the goal was for Linux to take the desktop. It was to be a win for freedom against the tyranny of Microsoft. That didn't happen. Instead, Apple stepped in and ate everyone's lunch, and now it seems the Linux warriors want to move the goal posts. Sure, Linux has spread far and wide, but most consumers still have no idea what Linux is, and nor would they care. Linux isn't something people want, it's something they use without being aware of it. Is that a victory or a tragedy?

There are pros and cons to both approaches. If I see a junior developer trying to reinvent the wheel, he's probably going to build a pretty shitty wheel. The whole point of using dependencies isn't laziness or cowardice, it's leveraging others' work to save time, energy, and potential headaches caused by subpar custom implementations. Of course, that doesn't absolve us from learning the guts of our dependencies, but chastising developers for avoiding unnecessary work is absurd. The key is in learning when to import and when to DIY.

> They removed the show retroactively by mistake.

That's only slightly less frightening. A simple error can potentially wipe out all of my "purchases."

Just imagine that telephone conversation with customer support: "Yes, I have rebooted my machine. I need tier two suppo-- No, I don't need to update my software. Can I talk to-- No, it's not a connection problem. My ISP won't be able to help me."

Anyone can lose weight simply reducing calories, but that weight loss isn't permanent or sustainable, and it may not be healthy. If you run the numbers, the Twinkie Diet guy was actually eating fewer carbs than the average American simply because of calorie restriction, and his low protein intake would almost certainly result in the loss of muscle mass.

The age old advice of "eat less, move more" ignores the body's natural mechanism for fat regulation, which is primarily the hormone insulin. The higher your blood glucose, the more insulin your body produces, the more fat your body will store, and the less reluctant it will be to release its stored energy.

It's obvious that if you're eating fewer calories, then less energy is available for fat storage -- it's simple thermodynamics -- but basic endocrinology tells us that to lose weight all we need is the negative stimulus of insulin, which is primarily achieved through reducing carbohydrate intake.

Out of curiosity, what can you eat?

They broke within a few weeks of purchase and I sent them to Sennheiser for warranty repair. I should have known they were fake from the start, because they didn't sound nearly as good as my old ones, but I figured I just needed to break them in.