Reasoned Consideration

The 'tl;dr' summary here is that basically, with relatively minor caveats, scientific studies generally increasingly seem to show low-carb diets to be either as good or better than alternatives, for both weight loss, and other health markers: [Added 2016] The effects of ketogenic dieting on skeletal muscle and fat mass 2014 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4271639/ " Lean body mass increased to a greater extent in the VLCKD [ Very low carbohydrate (<5 %), high fat (>70 %) ketogenic diets ] ... as compared to the traditional group. Ultrasound determined muscle mass increased to a greater extent in the VLCKD group ... as compared to the traditional western group. Finally fat mass decreased to a greater extent in the VLCKD group " [Rauch et al, Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2014;11(Suppl 1):P40] [Added 2015] Dietary Intervention for Overweight and Obese Adults: Comparison of Low-Carbohydrate and Low-Fat Diets. A Meta-...

[ Image credit ] Marlise Richter , a self-described “Sex Positive Feminist”, writes on the apparently vexing question of whether women should be 'allowed' free agency: " Stripping the tears of bleeding-heart feminists and other sex abolitionists ": "Liberal feminist Emma Powell visited Mavericks Revue Bar to investigate two pressing questions. One was how “places like this” could exist under the South African Constitution. The second was whether the stripper “girls” looked happy. Her impressions were captured in a Daily Maverick article dramatically titled “House of the Rising sun, built on misery” ... I ask to meet some of the dancers. Early one evening, before their work starts, I sit with four well-groomed women. They are from the UK, Romania, Brazil and South Africa. I give them copies of Ms Powell’s article. (Yes, they can read! Yes, they have opinions!) Indignation and annoyance reign. With voices high in irritation, they describe the ...

It's a commonly held belief that victims of child abuse are somehow 'pre-destined' to become abusers themselves. Research shows, however, that only a minority of abuse victims go on to become abusers, and that this is thus (in short) a myth:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11731348 . A related comic: http://www.tencentticker.com/somethingterrible/

"Generating Discussion" is not  per se  virtuous - after all, Hitler also "generated discussion" - a lot of discussion. It's only a virtue if you generate useful discussion.

"Please don't kick me!" This article contemplates  Extending Legal Protection to Social Robots : "Even for fully informed adults, the difference between alive and lifelike may be muddled enough in our subconscious to warrant adopting the same attitudes toward robotic companions that we carry towards our pets. A study of Sony AIBO online message boards reveals that people were dismayed to witness the story of an AIBO being tossed into a garbage can. Not long after the Pleo robot dinosaur became commercially available in 2007, videos of Pleo “torture” began to circulate online. The comments left by viewers are strikingly polarized – while some derive amusement from the videos, others appear considerably upset, going so far as to verbally attack the originators and accuse them of horrible cruelty. The Kantian philosophical argument for animal rights is that our actions towards non-humans reflect our morality — if we treat animals in inhumane ways, we become inh...

An interesting article by Natalie Wolchover on the blue-skinned people of Kentucky, and recessive traits:  Will Humans Eventually All Look Like Brazilians? "Stearns says globalization, immigration, cultural diffus sion and the ease of modern travel will gradually homogenize the human population, averaging out more and more people's traits. Because recessive traits depend on two copies of the same gene pairing up in order to get expressed, these traits will express themselves more rarely, and dominant traits will become the norm. In short, blue skin is out. Brown skin is in. Already in the United States, another recessive trait, blue eyes, has grown far less common. A 2002 study by the epidemiologists Mark Grant and Diane Lauderdale found that only 1 in 6 non-Hispanic white Americans has blue eyes, down from more than half of the U.S. white population being blue-eyed just 100 years ago." I wonder, perhaps related mechanisms could explain why humans may be getting dum...

It's possible for something to be a fad and   also happen to be correct . People who pride themselves on not 'following fads' sometimes blindly follow the wrong path instead. Or to put it another way, sometimes the 'sheeple' are right. If your ego is tied up in your ability to 'not follow the crowd', you may fail to follow the crowd when they happen to be going in the right direction. Forget about whether something is a fad or not - the only thing that matters is whether something is  correct  or not. What you need is a set of 'mental tools' to distinguish good ideas from bad ideas. This mentality seems to be a kind of 'inverse  argumentum ad populum ' - effectively believing something is false  because  it is popular. Sometimes the sheep are going in some particular direction simply because there's food, water or sanctuary from danger that way.

Briefly: I think GMO is just a technique/technology - it can be used for good or bad. Blanket bans on GMOs are akin to banning "phones" or "the Internet" - it is wrong and ultimately damaging. If someone is misusing a technology for evil, then the evil practice should be banned, not the technology. It's true that particular companies involved in the development of GMOs are doing bad things - but the positive potential for GMOs in the right hands is enormous - these are ultimately separate issues. This is by no means apologism for the aforementioned.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bidding-2022-olympics-disaster-because-192953806.html "The Bidding For The 2022 Olympics Is A Disaster Because Everyone Figured Out That Hosting Is A Total Waste" Token pic that's closely-enough related to the Olympics I don't know if this is true, but it seems like there may be a simple solution: Host it in a city that's already hosted it in recent history. Pick a few cities (e.g. one per continent) that have the infrastructure for it, and cycle through them. If the infrastructure has already been built in a city, then there would be only marginal additional investment costs required (as e.g. stadiums and airports would exist already), and it allows more meaningful amortization of prior investments (i.e. existing stadiums wouldn't be 'white elephants' if they were used regularly for subsequent games). Would make more sense than building new white elephants in some new city every four years (assuming these really...

So who keeps sponsoring articles like this one? ("'Regular Women' In Lingerie Remind Us What Imperfect, Un-Photoshopped Bodies Look Like") McDonalds? KFC? Pizza Hut? Because who else benefits from trying to convince everyone that it's 'normal', 'natural' and 'beautiful' to have bodies damaged by a lifetime of junk food and neglect? Is modern junk food really, ultimately, less 'fake' and 'unnatural' than Photoshopped images? Obesity is responsible for over 100,000 deaths per year in the US [1]. By comparison, anorexia is responsible for an estimated 145 deaths per year in the US [2]. It's grossly irresponsible of organizations like Huffington Post to glorify obesity to our children - it's no stretch to suggest they are probably  killing people  with their promotion of an ideological viewpoint that seems to be based on a misguided idea that 'body image issues' pose a greater public health risk than obe...

Miscellaneous: •  How not to talk about human trafficking » Related: -  Sex Slave Story Revealed to be Fabricated » -  Campaigners too readily accept inflated figures for trafficked women -  Figures behind child prostitutes overinflated? -  Falsely inflated statistics about sex trafficking in the U.S. make bad policy and laws -  Inquiry fails to find single trafficker who forced anybody into prostitution • I'm not sure it's possible to convey with words just how bad this article manages to be in five short paragraphs: Murder hits more black homes [News24] » •  Video of motorist punching cyclist » - I suspect this assault is a consequence of the rising "hurr hurr I hate cyclists!!1!1 derp" mentality that seems to be spreading virally lately. In some sense, are cyclists the 'new Jews'? It's almost as if humans can't help but collectively select some group of people to dehumanize and target ... whether it's "witches", bl...