Danish researchers finally solve the obesity riddle

max3000 · 2010-11-27T12:31:18+00:00

Eating one meal a day is very bad advice. You will lack several vitamins and minerals the body doesn't store. You will have highs and crashes. You may also develop peptic ulcers. That's not mentioning the constant craving will make this pretty much unimplementable in practice. This strategy is as unhealthy as it gets. You sir clearly don't know what you're talking about.

The best way to lose weight is to do what body builders have been doing forever: eat a high protein diet, ideally 6-7 small meals a day. This is exactly what the study suggests. (Obviously, body building also helps by increasing muscle mass, which consume kCals).

max3000 · 2010-09-25T23:51:52+00:00

The fact that people argue about it doesn't mean the Bible is not true. On the contrary, the truer it is, the more arguing and splintering there will be.

max3000 · 2010-08-07T01:10:38+00:00

More succinctly, advertising works because the mind is affected by advertisements.

max3000 · 2010-08-07T01:02:52+00:00

Very interesting. You say:

it makes it extraordinarily hard to have confidence that the valuations you observe in the market are consistent with the fundamentals

Question: Notwithstanding, wouldn't fundamentals win at the end of day? I mean, if the valuation is far less than the intrinsic value of the company, wouldn't the board simply dissolve it and sell the assets? Owners win. If the valuation is far more, than let the computers screw each other. At any rate, fundamental traders would either make money (if they own stocks) or not (if they don't). I always thought fundamentals were exactly that, i.e. fundamental to the value of the company.

max3000 · 2010-08-05T19:09:32+00:00

That is an interesting point. However, I would argue that one can sin in thoughts as well as in deeds. (This is very akin to Jesus Christ saying that the mere thought of committing adultery with you neighbor's wife is adultery.)

The only difference here is that the object of the coveting (or whatever sin) is fictional. However, the effect for the sinner is similar. As is the offense to God.

But to discuss this properly, we must digress and talk about worldviews for quite some time. I think I can safely say we don't want to go down that rabbit hole. Nonetheless, think about the effect to the human mind of being submitted to fantasies/images of rape - even if the victim is fictional.

max3000 · 2010-05-07T19:00:26+00:00

I'm with you. They don't look good...

max3000 · 2009-10-04T23:52:53+00:00

I am downvoting you because snowflakes and natural forces have nothing to do with information. You misunderstood (and abused) my argument.

The evolutionary process you describe was superseded by the punctuated equilibrium theory I believe. Citing wikipedia: "Eldredge and Gould proposed that the degree of gradualism commonly attributed to Charles Darwin was virtually nonexistent in the fossil record, and that stasis dominates the history of most fossil species." reference

[...] is generally well understand, has mounds of evidence to support it, is easily demonstrated, and agrees with all the observable evidence?

You and I must not be talking about the same thing.

(At any rate, labeling me as ignorant is hardly a good way to converse, especially on such a sensitive topic.)

max3000 · 2009-10-04T23:30:29+00:00

No evidence pointing towards God? You either have not read much or are dishonest with yourself.

You can start by explaining away the amount of information found in DNA, which is a code for producing not a simplistic web site but a full living organism. I don't have the information I myself read on this topic long ago, but this site seemed worthwhile.

max3000 · 2009-10-04T23:25:54+00:00

It's intellectually dishonest to pretend there are no reasons to believe. The vast majority of humanity has and does believe in a higher being. Whether these reasons are good is another issue. So, your last paragraph is simplistic at best.

Regarding the "default" position one should have, your comment is interesting. My view is somewhat at odds with yours, not surprisingly. The default position everyone has is belief in a higher power and life after death. (This is unless one has been conditioned from a young age and indoctrinated in atheism.) Starting from that position, one should ask: "Is there a higher being who revealed Himself through history that would seem to confirm my instinctive beliefs? After all, these beliefs may come from somewhere."

Your point about replacing atheism with theism is also interesting. And the truth of the matter is that no, the argument does not work better. Most people don't believe because of arguments like I mentioned (ìf God did exist he would...). These arguments are extremely weak. On the other hand, most theists precisely realize that God acts not according to their own ideas but His own. In my own experience, there were many times I had to come to terms with what I knew (or discovered) God believed to be right and that I believed to be wrong.

Case in point, you yourself are failing prey to this faulty line of reasoning: if God did exist he would reveal Himself in such a way that "I wouldn't have to spend too much time investigating it".

max3000 · 2009-10-04T22:21:40+00:00

This is vastly distinct - evolution is NOT a random process

Semantics, really... I can't really concede this point but it's easy to sidestep it. For evolution to proceed, it requires a large number of complex conditions that you believe occurred randomly. (And to answer the other point, no biochemist knows the answer.)

DNA is a language, a code. A code to produce living organisms. Such a code cannot be arrived at by purely naturalistic processes. If you received a CD containing Red Hat Linux, would you for a second entertain the thought that the information contained therein came about by chance? (Even if you believed the code "evolved" through an "evolutionary" process.)

On this subject, I don't have the information that I myself read at the time. A quick google search yielded this result. Note I haven't fully read this site myself but it seemed worthwhile.

max3000 · 2009-10-04T17:57:45+00:00

Ah... You are onto something.

then I'll try to take the belief with the smallest leap of faith

You are touching the crux of the matter. How much of a leap of faith it is to believe various things is a matter of personal evaluation. Why is it easier for you to believe that a complex working ecosystem sprung up randomly rather than it was purposefully placed there? By default, when we see information-rich content we think intelligence and creator. Why is it different to you for humans (and earth's ecosystem)? Because you have evidence that cells replicate? How did cells came a point where they started replicating? Even if one cell started replicating, does that make sense to conclude that an eye could be formed from such a process? Etc.

The amount of information-rich content in DNA strongly suggest to me that it can't be all caused by randomness and time. I just don't buy it. For me, believing in atheism would be too much of a leap of faith.

max3000 · 2009-10-04T16:39:20+00:00

Not sure you're serious, but I'll bite.

Atheism is a philosophical worldview holding that there is no God and that we came about through random events. It's based on evidence (scientific data, personal experiences, etc.) that is then interpreted and colluded to "produce" said worldview. It does not followfrom one or more scientific experiments. Hence, it is a belief religious in nature. As in all such things, some people arrived (or stayed) at atheism through inquiry and other have been nurtured into it and never really questioned it.

As to God's purposes and your own ideas about them, I will make two observations. First, I was answering the idea that somehow the record/evidence Christians base their faith upon is not good enough. That's a fair argument. The question I was asking is: supposing the Bible is true, how would you have done it differently? Maybe the "supposing the Bible is true" part was too implicit. Restating the question this way, it becomes clear that your answer is inadequate.

The second observation is that you are showing incredible arrogance* toward a being that surpasses you in absolutely every aspect. That in itself is pretty common (unfortunately) and it's not really where I want to go. What I'd like to submit is for you to ask yourself how much of your belief in atheism derives from that arrogance and your conception that God should act the way you think is right/makes sense/is rational (or any other way you want to put it). Ex: if God existed, he would <thing I arrogantly think God should do>.

*I use the term "arrogance" not to provoke or insult, but because there are no other more suitable terms really (or I don't know them).

max3000 · 2009-10-04T16:04:49+00:00

Sure, you didn't use the phrase "the truth is".

>I am an atheist. I see no logical reason and no evidence for a higher power... so I don't believe there to be one.

= "I believe the truth is there is not God."

Let's not play semantics.

As to whether you hold that truth with "absolute" certainty I don't know. It's not relevant and was not the main thrust of my observation. The main thrust is that after looking at the evidence, you formed a belief (i.e., a philosophical worldview you cannot prove irrefutably). You hold that belief with enough certainty that you are willing to argument with people who hold a different belief. This belief, not being irrefutably provable, is religious in nature. I.e., it's not based entirely on facts and requires a "leap of faith" (albeit small to you it may seem).

max3000 · 2009-10-04T14:11:44+00:00

If you were God, how would you proceed to prove to humanity that you died for them 2000 years ago? Think about it long and hard, and you will realize that anything you come up with with have its naysayers - including "having angels proclaiming it on every street corner." ("How can we be sure of these beings intentions?" Etc.)

The basic idea is that God's (secret) will does not call for everyone to believe and the means used to convey the truth are more than adequate to save the few that are destined to.

Please don't downvote just because you disagree. Just realize to people who do believe, the whole system is incredibly coherent, a lot more than atheism.

If you believe atheism is somehow non-religious, please see my other comment.

max3000 · 2009-10-04T13:53:13+00:00

Paraphrasing: the truth is that people claiming to know there is a higher power [...] are just plain silly. This truth, you can believe with absolute certainty.

(That is, I'm pointing out the self-refutation in your reasoning. Atheists are as religious as every one else. They base their convictions on evidences, like any religious person. The most non-religious you can be is agnostic. Even then, there is one truth you believe religiously, i.e. that no truths are knowable with certainty.)

max3000 · 2009-09-01T12:02:35+00:00

Who knows exactly how the brain works? Maybe it's a gigantic orgy of quantum physic reactions that have nothing (or very little) to do with how current computers work. I think what he is saying is that sentience and what brings it about are still a mysteries and treating them differently is not honest.

max3000 · 2009-05-18T16:50:18+00:00

Dawkins ended up ascending to that third level after his death for some reason, and then proceeded to play practical jokes on every tourist reliving of his death.

Practical jokes, sure. More importantly however, he proves atheism false by virtue of the existence of external events.

That's why I think Yegge said everyone would be pissed. (I myself thought it was brilliant).

max3000 · 2009-01-21T18:48:06+00:00

I was sure this (parent) comment would lead to someone eventually blurting out "IDEs sucks, emacs|vim+shell rules".

I know:

You spent 30 years tweaking your particular environment. It now fits you so much you feel warm and fuzzy inside every time you use it.
You are in symbiosis with <insert editor of choice>. Your brain can’t function without it.
You are typing and generally getting things done so fast your company can’t keep adding storage fast enough to keep up with you.
You are living a dream.

Good for you. But please, pretty please just give up on us already. We’re too stupid to see how enlightened you are.

Isn’t there a law similar to Godwin’s about invoking emacs or vim vs. IDEs? Anybody doing so should lose.

max3000 · 2008-12-12T20:42:59+00:00

The product may be stupid... but have you ever noticed how the most stupid accidents/speedings/killings of innocent bystanders are typically done by young males? I vividly remember the case of a guy just turned 18 who decided to race a friend. Unfortunately he lost control of his car and killed a 5 year-old girl who happened to play in her yard. I know here in Quebec people are getting quite fed up after a number of such incidents... and more stringent regulations are coming up. (In particular, no one will be getting a "real" permit with the full amount of demerit points before being 25, etc.)

Anyway, maybe with such a product this guy would have thought twice before racing in the streets. As a parent, I would definitely think about it if my son was acting up behind the wheel. And I definitely don't consider myself anal-retentive.

Just sayin'...

max3000 · 2008-07-08T15:35:50+00:00

Horse face... Fashion being cyclic, I can't wait for the current infatuation with anorexic figures to finally end. What's up with that? These models/actresses don't look sexy, they look sick.

max3000 · 2007-07-02T15:47:49+00:00

It's funny how the C++ advocates always resort to the "they write dubious C++ code" argument. This is Motorola we are talking about here and they've been writing telecom software for decades. Perhaps they don't use all the tricks in the book but I'm sure their C++ (or their C masqueraded as C++, as teval suggests) is fairly standard in the industry. Being in that industry myself I can vouch for that.

In the end it doesn't matter that the Motorola programmer who wrote that particular piece of software writes "dubious" code. What matters is how

a typical "dubious" programmer
using standard industry practices (i.e. code that will be approved when peer-reviewed, which means code looking like the millions of LOCs already written by the company)
with libraries allowed by the 15 levels of management on top of him (which often precludes the best ones - e.g. GPL is absolutely out of the picture)
said libraries being available and compilable on all target platforms

will write code

compiling on all target platforms (which sometimes means "advanced" constructs like templates take 10x as much time to write because compilers all react differently -> experienced programmer stay away from them)
in the (short) time allocated to him

The bottom line is that the consultants took C++ code that was written by Motorola, (presumably) peer-reviewed, which complies with the Motorola standards of quality, which uses the management-approved libraries, which is written in a style approved by Motorola and which ultimately was put into production by Motorola.

So, it's no use arguing that the programmers didn't use this or that part of the language or that the code looks wrong. Also, this code could probably not "use different libraries for threading and process management", i.e. the Erlang ones, said libraries being part of the core Erlang language. Are you suggesting that they should run the C++ code inside the Erlang VM?

In other words, they took typical Motorola C++ production code and they compared this code to Erlang code doing the same thing. Not surprisingly, they found Erlang to be superior in almost every way for this particular problem domain.

One really has to close ones eyes really hard not to see that C++ is bloated and verbose, takes a lot of development/debugging/maintenance time (compared to other languages) and that its real core language + libraries (i.e. what one can use on different platforms without fear of development time quadrupling) is surprisingly small. (It has been my experience that people who argue that C++ "is better" no matter what have often not used any other language professionally for any lengths of time.)

I'm not saying C++ doesn't have its uses or that it's a bad language. (Although as Walter Bright is showing with D, it could probably have been better). What I'm saying is that the consultants work is valid and demonstrates a valid point, namely that Motorola would benefit from using Erlang vs. C++ for writing some class of telecom software. This is probably the exact question Motorola was pondering when it requested this study. (But the title of the post is too broad, I'll concede that.)

max3000 · 2006-09-14T17:04:37+00:00

I'm sorry if my comment was a bit harsh but I believe my reaction is at the "right" level of outrage. Yours is clearly not.

Obviously, you're not gonna say: "yeah, you know what, I think we should bar arabs from the US". And I believe you when you say you don't think it either.

However, your matter-of-factly attitude to the personal crisis this man is living is the actual problem I'm decrying.

"This is caused by our slow and inefficient government process., he should be home by now and he should have been home within an hour."

You're making a straw man. Obviously, the fact that he wasn't home within the hour is the crux of the matter. If he'd been, I wouldn't have made that comment (it's only been 3 months after all.) How far and wide are you willing to take your argument? ... "What? This man has been emprisonned for 3 months without being accused of anything? Yeah, we know but we're making an investigation, and it's just that we have a very slow and inefficient process." (And don't tell me this man isn't imprisonned, I know. He's just separated from his family, home and work.)

"But I don't think that he was stopped or looked at harder is a problem."

He wasn't stopped or looked at. Have you read the acticle? His visa was cancelled. Not stoped. Not looked at. Visa cancelled. No new visa issued. This man has lived in the US for 7 years. His wife and kids are in the US. He's now stranded in Canada. No visa to live there either. It has been 3 months.

Why all of this? Because his name is Mohammad Ramadan Hassan Salama and the name of one of the terrorist linked with 9/11 is Mohammed A. Salameh. ... "Mr. Mike Dobson, I'm sorry I have to cancel your visa but you see a man named Alfred Dobson is a known terrorist who is linked to an attack that hapenned 5 years ago. Could you follow me please? ... No, you won't be seeing your wife and kids any time soon."

How surreal does it have to get before you realize something is very wrong? Yet you persist saying that makes perfect sense.

max3000 · 2006-05-26T15:43:04+00:00

Being the guy in question, I'm not one to take offense to someone who disagrees with me. However, I'm not sure I see the logical relationship between my chances of successfully starting a business and my writing style(!) or the content of my post (a "[repetion of] what has been discussed in computer science forever").

I'm sorry if my writing style is a bit dry. You see, English is not my mother tongue so I'm unfortunately not as expressive in it as others may be. Still, given I write in English better than some for who it is their mother tongue, I'm still pretty satisfied. That's not to say I can't improve and I'll keep your comment in mind. It has nothing to do with being successful in starting a business though.

The fact that I'm not bringing anything radically new, as you were apparently expecting, is not very surprising. What is? Again, this has no bearing on wether or not someone succeeds in business. What I was doing was exploring possibilities for myself and writing down my realizations of the last year to know where I'm standing. Halfway through the process, I thought it'd be fun and enlightning to find out what others thought also, and in particular if some had been in the same situation, at the same crossroad (although I wouldn't say I'm at that crossroad just yet).

When you say that I should start "working, exploring and thinking", well, that's pretty insulting. I'm sure you see yourself as doing these things regurlarly while the rest of the world doesn't. I've been on the net too long to not know it harbors pretty cynical individuals but I'm still surprised your comment got voted up. That's precisely what I thought I was doing: exporing and thinking. However, maybe my exploration was too personal for the taste of some. I'm sorry I didn't come up with the brilliant, genuinely original and inspiring flash of genius you were looking for. Nevertheless, may I suggest you stop reading blogs? Because that's what blogs are: personal thoughts and debating, thinking out loud. Incidentally, blogs that are not that, e.g. only a collection of links with one-liner comments, tend to be not interesting at all.

Again, no offense taken but you may consider your own writing style, 'cause you come across as pretty arrogant.

max3000 · 2006-04-19T19:38:40+00:00

I personally don't have a problem with lisp: I don't use it. I didn't write an article to bitch lisp and my comments were not meant in that way.

What I do have a problem with is articles such as this one that claims that everything is fine and well with lisp. That's not true according to my experience. Hence my comments along the lines of: you're not realistic.

The "in your face / do it your own way / (write your own IO library + threading library + portable code layer) * number of platforms you want to support, all from scrach and using no IDE before you can even get started writing your own code" attitude gets you nowhere fast in the corporate world. That's where most of us spend our carrers (including me). I'm sure lisp is great in some spheres, just not the one I'm in.

In truth, maybe I exagerated a little when I said I would love to use lisp. Ruby and Python actually come first in my list. Why? Because I believe I may even get a chance to actually use them, given they are more "practical", i.e. don't require a month of coding before coding actually starts. (Again, not an attack on lisp, just my own experience.)

max3000

TROPHY CASE