It's sugar not calories!

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New study just published in the Obesity Journal by Dr. Robert Lustig and others.
The results are described in this article:
The science is in: the case for a sugar tax is overwhelming,

Wiki: Soft drink

Quotes:

Is sugar dangerous because it’s calories? Or because it’s sugar?

...we took the added sugar away from 43 obese children who were already sick, to see if they got well. But if they lost weight, critics would argue that the drop in calories or the loss in weight was the reason for their improvement. Therefore, the study was “isocaloric”; that is, we gave back the same number of calories in starch as we took away in sugar, to make sure they maintained their weight.
For nine days we catered their meals to provide the same fat, protein, and total carbohydrate content as their home diet; but within the carbohydrate fraction we took the added sugar out and substituted starch. We took the pastries out, we put the bagels in; we took the yoghurt out, we put the baked potato chips in; we took chicken teriyaki out, we put turkey hot dogs in. We gave them processed food – kid food – but “no added sugar” food. We reduced their sugar consumption from 28% to 10% of their calories. They weighed themselves every day; if they were losing weight, we told them to eat more.
We were astonished at the results. Diastolic blood pressure decreased by five points. Blood fat levels dropped precipitously. Fasting glucose decreased by five points, glucose tolerance improved markedly, insulin levels fell by 50%. In other words we reversed their metabolic disease in just 10 days, even while eating processed food, by just removing the added sugar and substituting starch, and without changing calories or weight. Can you imagine how much healthier they would have been if we hadn’t given them the starch?
This study establishes that all calories are not the same (“a calorie is not a calorie”); substituting starch for sugar improved these children’s metabolic health unrelated to calories or weight gain.

Beliefs are harmful including this one...

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I have to explain.

This statement is a logical contradiction - but only paradoxically, until it is expanded. In my personal experience, beliefs and thoughts are harmful causing divisions, hatred and in the most extreme cases make people fight each other - if and only if we identify with the "thing" inside our brains that actually does the believing and thinking! Likewise, the statement "Beliefs are harmful" is also harmful if we identify with it! Once the mind realizes that "The thoughts in my head are not Me" then the paradox disappears.

Stan (Heretic)

P.S.

I consider heretical mindset to be a good thing and one of the main factors, even a precondition behind creativity in general; in science, technology and art in particular.

Dangerous radiation?

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Interesting article about Manhattan Project scientists contaminated by Plutonium.

The Scientists Who Pee Plutonium

Government conducted live-long study of the 26 contaminated people. Results, quote: "the mortality rate for the group is about 50 per cent lower than the national average."

It appears that up to a certain level of radiation, its effects don't seem to be harmful and it is possible (though not proven) that it may even be beneficial. See also the other posts on the subject.


More quotes:

It may be a surprise to learn that the members of the UPPU club have all done well, especially when compared to national averages. “They’ve fared pretty well as a group,” George Volez and expert on plutonium exposure told Los Alamos Science in 1995. “Of the original 26, only seven have died, and the last death was in 1990.

Update (20/07/2018, thanks @Hokushinsai )

Updated 31/07/2018 (thanks @TuckerGoodrich)

This Giant X-Ray Generator Helped Set Safe Doses for Radiation,
Physicist Lauriston Taylor also found X-rays effective against athlete’s foot and bursitis. By By Evan Ackerman, 28-April-2017

Quote:

“The only single documented whole body exposure that I know that I’ve had was in 1929, and it was measured to be 150 [Roentgen]…. I sat in an X-ray beam for 20 minutes or half an hour or something…. I was just sitting right smack in the beam…. [With that much radiation] you’re supposed to get nauseated, but we didn’t know that in 1929, so I wasn’t.”

For the record, 150 Roentgen is equivalent to 1.4 sievert, which according to this chart starts to put you in the realm of “severe radiation poisoning, in some cases fatal.” But since the chart wasn’t around in 1929, Taylor was just fine. Indeed, he told the interviewer in 1995, “I also used to treat [my] athlete’s foot.... I don’t remember what the dose was, but it was probably four or five hundred R [3.7 to 4.7 Sv].”

“That exposure in addition to medical radiation treatment for bursitis and other benign conditions and from radiation experiments resulted in an estimated whole-body dose-equivalent in excess of a thousand rem [10 Sv],” Taylor’s obituary for the Health Physics Society stated. “He experienced no discernible adverse effect.”

Taylor continued working until the age of 97, and having published over 160 scientific papers and writing or contributing to 24 books, he died in 2004 at the age of 102.

Off topic: TPP - triumph of bureaucracy over international trade

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Proponents of "managed" economy are having a field day! Interesting summary of what our governments have in secrecy concocted may be found in the following article.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership - Statist Aggrandizement Posing As Free Trade, by Carmen Elena Dorobat, October 10, 2015

Quotes:

Although the text has not been made available to the public, and will not be for the next four years to avoid opposition, the TPP is publicized as a tremendous boost in free trade for the signing countries, and thus for almost 40% of world trade. It is supposed to ‘promote’, ‘enhance’, and ‘support’ many things, from innovation to investment and development, and job creation. The language used, characteristic now of all such governmental agreements, is a clear indicator that the TPP is nothing more than additional thousand(s) of pages of new trade regulations, with a sprinkling of tariff reductions that will benefit some industries and companies, and hurt others.
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This illustrates what Ludwig von Mises pointed out half a century ago: that the focus of these agreements has long shifted from trade liberalization (defined as removal of barriers) to trade regulation (or what we know today as "managed trade") and the promotion of special interests.
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As Rothbard amusingly wrote about the NAFTA myth,

The folks who have brought us NAFTA and presume to call it "free trade" are the same people who call government spending "investment," taxes "contributions," and raising taxes "deficit reduction." Let us not forget that the Communists, too, used to call their system "freedom."

BTW - Does it really exclude China? Are they kidding us?

Did a psychiatric drug or did guns trigger mass shooting?

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This is speculative but the question must be asked in public and then must be answered by the authorities entrusted in regulatory duties.  No it is not about guns!

Michael Moore - Reveals the real cause of Columbine. (watch minute 1:30)

Quote:

... Eli Lilly for nearly 15 years covered up their own internal investigation that anyone on Prozac is 12 times more likely to commit suicide than on other anti-depressant.

See also this:

Oregon: Another Mass Shooting, Another Psychiatric Drug? 35 School Shootings/Mass Stabbings Tied to Psychiatric Drugs

Quote:

According to an article posted in the Oregonian, “There are a number of indications that Mercer had mental health or behavioral issues. His screen name on some social media sites was ‘lithium love.’ Lithium is a psychiatric medication.

The question is what a particular drug or a class of drugs may be triggering it?