View All Posts: Tannhauser
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| » Man dies weight training (Go to post) | 22-05-2012 @ 07:08 | ||
Aquarian said: Anyone remember the Columbo episode when a gym owner kills his business partner in the gym and puts the body on the bench and a 250lbs bar across his neck? Don't know how much weight this bloke was lifting but sounds a bit fishy to me! Absolutely. The first clue was the scuff from the victim's shoe as the murderer dragged him through the gym. | |||
| » Man Made Global Warming ! (Go to post) | 25-04-2012 @ 22:41 | ||
| Steve, the problem is that neither of us is a climate scientist, so we're not in any position to judge whether 0.75 degrees is insignificant or huge. In the same way, I don't know what a rise in oxygen content of the atmosphere from 21% to 22% would mean, if that happened. There's no way of figuring it out from common sense. With regard to measuring temperature in the 1850s{ I don't know how accurate measuring technology was 150 years ago (although my guess is pretty damn good). However, what I do know is that those who dispute global warming do not dispute those measurements. They will argue about what the computer models predict, and they will argue about whether the last ten years have got warmer or not, but as far as I know, they don't call into dispute the measuring technology. After all, they use those same figures to support their own climate models. | |||
| » Man Made Global Warming ! (Go to post) | 24-04-2012 @ 20:50 | ||
MarkClegg said:Now this is very interesting - James Lovelock is unsure - Was it not his f**king idea ? http://climatedepot.com/a/15621/Alert-Gaia-scientist-James-Lov... Not really his idea. He's a clever chap, no doubt, but he's not involved in current climate research (well, he is 92). So a few years ago, he was suggesting humans would be reduced to a few breeding couples. It's not surprising he's retreated from that. But as I understand it, he's not making a U-turn on AGW, just questioning his own previous views (which most climate scientists probably disagreed with anyway). Not sure how relevant his opinions are. More than mine, but less than an active climate scientist. | |||
| » Man Made Global Warming ! (Go to post) | 24-04-2012 @ 20:30 | ||
Steve said: but surely straight facts about temperature rise over the past ten years and number of hurricanes etc over the same sort of period must be verifiable facts. Funny you should mention the last ten year thing. Take a look at today's Telegraph (a paper that takes a roundly anti-AGW position, and employs arch-denialist James Delingpole: [url]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9153473/Met-Office-... [/url] | |||
| » Man Made Global Warming ! (Go to post) | 24-04-2012 @ 17:44 | ||
Dan said:I think the biggest problem with the "debate" is that there are just as many experts saying global warming is a croc as there are supporting it. If it was scientific fact then surely there would be very few, if any, scientists arguing against it. And if it was irrefutable FACT, then surely the governments would be taking serious measures, not just increasing taxation but actually BANNING people from driving and BANNING companies from producing certain emissions etc, not just charging them more to do it ! As a species, we seem to like scaremongering, as Pete mentioned, Aids, Bird Flu even "the worst winter for 50 years", none of which ever happens. All I know for sure is that it's almost May and it's still bloody freezing. I see no evidence of global warming at my house... Dan, Iain's post on this is spot on. It really is the case that only a small handful of guys with any degree os academic firepower dispute the findings. The problem, as Iain has said on several posts, is that they are over-reported. Ultimately, one of the big determinants of what people believe is whether they are motivated to believe it. That's why global warming is a hard sell. As a former Supra owner (like yourself), with a massively polluting car, I'd rather have believed that humans have little impact on climate change. As for government policy - the needs to control climate change have to be balanced against other demands. First and foremost is electability. Measures that are too draconian are automatically self-cancelling because any government that proposes them won't be in power long enough to enact them.  | |||
| » Man Made Global Warming ! (Go to post) | 23-04-2012 @ 19:13 | ||
Joni said: In countries with more comprehensive focus on how science works in education the portion of people sceptical about man made climate change is smaller. Not a coincidence. I think that's part of it, but there's also a political element to it. The anti-AGW movement has taken off in more ideologically right wing countries, like the UK and the US. I think it's because they can trade successfully on restriction of individual freedom, fear of 'Big Government.' They can also sell that 'it's all taxation' argument, as there is already an intense resentment of taxes. Incidentally, I cannot see the logic behind that 'it's a tax scam' for the life of me. | |||
| » Man Made Global Warming ! (Go to post) | 22-04-2012 @ 13:04 | ||
IainT said: It's fairly clear cut really, the likelihood is that we have played a significant role in the warming experienced. Unfortunately the difference is that AGW is an issue that probably requires us to do something about it, take some pain. And people really don't like that idea. Great Global Warming Swindle is a good example. The film was fraudulent, and it doesn't take much to discover that, but it's still cited. Very bored of the argument though. For years I posted on a small forum of American somewhat-to-the-right types. Only 50 or so regulars. Every time it came up, someone mentioned that they think volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans, and everytime I provided the figures that demonstrate this not to be true. Next time, same thing. No-one ever changes their mind, because it's no longer about the science. It's the culture war - greenie lefties want to destroy my way of life. I'm in exactly the same position as you. My moral imperative to champion mainstream climate science (which supports AGW) has just run out of steam. I have wasted many, many, many hours on this on other forums. Wasted, because I think it's swimming upstream. The anti-AGW movement has two massive things going for it: (a) few people want to believe AGW is happening, because it's personally inconvenient and (b) the movement successfully conflates government policies/restriction of freedoms with science. The massive success of the anti-AGW movement has been to convince a large percentage of the population that there is debate rather then consensus within the scientific community. The 'debate' is largely over the scale of the impact, and what to do about it. I see an exact analogy to the tactics used by the pro-smoking lobby three or four decades ago: manufacturing a debate by heavy promotion of a few mavericks and just denying the extent of consensus. As for 'The Great Global warming Swindle' - this is essentially a political piece, not a scientific one, and it's done a huge amount of damage. The first thing to do is google the producer (Martin Durkin), in order to understand his political agenda and his track record on producing misleading documentaries (Ofcom upheld complaints against his previous work, too). Next take a look at Carl Wunsch, who was the only genuine expert they could find. He was furious about the misrepresentation of his views, commenting: [This is] as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two And that's just the tip of the melting iceberg in that programme. Anyone who has worked within science knows about the cautious attitude and understated language that academics adopt. So when you have an entire international academic community hopping up and down about an issue, this alone tells you that something extraordinary is going on. | |||
| » todays budget and protien powders (Go to post) | 25-03-2012 @ 21:26 | ||
Post Edited: 25.03.2012 @ 21:33 PM by Tannhauser Steve said: I'll happily admit that much of the science is beyond me. However re grains - I'm pretty sure that there is also no substantive evidence that shows that they are essential and all the nutrient can in fact be got in larger quantities from other sources. If a person feels better not eating them then I'm not sure what would be gained by continuing eating them. I must admit I'm very confused about the experts conclusions in US News - they really don't have a lot bad to say about the "Paleo" diet, but still rank it bottom. There again I would certainly question the advice of any group of experts who rank the weight-watchers diet the 3rd best diet available. I've lost track of the number of people who've tried the weight-watchers diet and I can't think of a single one who has actually kept the weight off. It simply isn't a diet people can follow on an ongoing basis. They also rate the slim fast diet based on shakes and meal replacement bars ahead of diets based on real whole foods - it simply makes no sense at all to me and I would love to know exactly how they came to their conclusions Steve - yes, I'm sure you're right - there's no particular reason for retaining grains in the diet, and you can certainly find alternative sources of any nutrients they contain. With regard to the scoring, I understand what you're saying about diets based around shakes and meal bars highly. The breakdown of scores is here: http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/best-overall-diets/data The explanation of the criteria, including weighting is here: http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/articles/2012/01/03/best-di... The credentials of those involved are here: http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/experts The diets can be ranked on different criteria. For example, if you rank the diets by 'heart health', the Slim Fast diet disappears down into oblivion. Edit to add, here's a breakdown of what they didn't like about the paleo diet: http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/paleo-diet/reviews | |||
| » todays budget and protien powders (Go to post) | 24-03-2012 @ 22:06 | ||
Steve said: Weston A Price isn't really "Paleo" - if you look at the leading figures in Paleo they generally have a very good scientific background. There is considerable recent research that suggests grains can cause problems for some people, but even if that is not conclusive yet there are actually far better ways of getting the same nutrients, so what is there to loose by eliminating grains? That's like when I criticise hip hop - I'm always told that I'm not listening to the right sort - some other variation is the real stuff. It seems to me that the WAP foundation and Paleo share a lot of common ground. Plus there doesn't seem to be one agreed version of paleo. But, OK, fair enough maybe they're not the same thing. My point would be that once you start picking at alternative perpectives on nutrition, my experience is that they usually start unravelling. I guess there's nothing the matter with eliminating grains - except that there's no substantive evidence that most people need to avoid them. Incidentally, the paleo diet got voted joint bottom of a list of 25 diets by a pretty high-powered panel of dietary experts: http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/best-overall-diets?page=3 There's a rebuttal from the infamous Loren Cordain around too, but the panel responded convincingly to those. | |||
| » todays budget and protien powders (Go to post) | 24-03-2012 @ 21:46 | ||
Post Edited: 24.03.2012 @ 22:10 PM by Tannhauser EDeadbeat said: Whilst this reply isn't showing how low carb is bad for health I thought I'd chip in. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022207#t=article http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?start=20&q=low+carbohy... I was gonna reference a bunch of studies about low carb and health, body comp, obesity, inflammatory cytokines, lipid profiles etc but instead it is easier to look at the above links. The first is a review of low carb diets and provides a well balanced view point with goods and bads, the second link is a page you get when searching low carb in google scholar and provides research papers on a number of aspects of low carb from exercise to pregnancy. I did look at your two links here. Did you post the correct link for the first one? It doesn't seem to be a review article, but rather a relatively small scale study of Atkins style interventions. There is a short amount of discussion of results with some reference to the broader context, but nothing approaching a literature review.  I also looked at the google scholar articles you cited. Thanks for providing the link. However, the problem with this sort of approach is that it's difficult to arrive at any firm conclusions on scientific consensus, which is what is needed (see point about robustness of science in earlier post). There are of course studies to support higher carb diets but this is more than countered by the wealth of research on low carb diets. I don't think this is true. The benefits of a mediterannean diet, which is 'high carb', is supported by very substantial amounts of data. Take, for example, this meta-analysis that appeared in the British Medical Journal: twelve prospective studies totalling over 1.5 million paricipants. EDIT to add link: http://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a1344.full The conclusions? Greater adherence to a Mediterranean diet is associated with a significant improvement in health status, as seen by a significant reduction in overall mortality (9%), mortality from cardiovascular diseases (9%), incidence of or mortality from cancer (6%), and incidence of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease (13%). These results seem to be clinically relevant for public health, in particular for encouraging a Mediterranean-like dietary pattern for primary prevention of major chronic diseases. That's why the majority of health professionals aren't recommending low carb diets. They take their cues from the big and medical scientific bodies, who are in a position to review the big high quality studies. it seems we are a long way off from rectifying the situation despite the research backing low carb diets form improved body comp and other markers related to the metabolic syndrome. Yet the first article you cited suggests quite plainly that there is nothing magical about high fat diets, that weight loss was unlikely to be influenced by macronutrient ratios, that it was nothing to do with ketosis, and that any superior performance was due to increased satiety or behavioural factors (people eat less on high fat diets). See para 2 of the conclusion - unless I've misunerstood it. Could go on about this but I may have bored anyone reading it enough. I have studied this for my dissertation so have a reasonable amount of resarch on it if anyone wants to read some sciencey stuff. Not boring at all - very interesting, at least for me. I find the evolutionary arguments interesting, but ultimately a lot of evolutionary perpectives on behaviour (e.g. eating behaviour of our ancestors) are fundamentally unscientific as they produce non-falsifiable hypotheses and aren't really empirical. | |||
| » todays budget and protien powders (Go to post) | 24-03-2012 @ 00:54 | ||
Steve said:Joni, is it just "low carbers" who you think are quacks or everyone offering alternative dietary advice? Personally I have seen huge health improvements since completely eliminating grains. Something which goes completely against conventional dietary advice. I'm with Joni on all of this. Most 'alternative' dietary advice I've seen is based on very poor evidence. Usually the key internet alternative players are people without a significant scientific background. This isn't exclusive to the low carb movement, but they have more than their fair share of spurious claims. For example, one of the important groups in publicising the paleo movement is the Weston A. Price Foundation. I've been looking at their stuff for the past couple of months now, and there are all sorts of problems. These include: 1. A tendency to overstate the conclusions of studies that support their position. For example, they recently quoted a 'Harvard study' which apparently condemned milk as potentially dangerous. However, the tone of the original argument was much more cautious, and the 'study' quoted turned out to be nothing more than a pilot study. So they have this kind of tabloid oversimplification. 2. Sound dietary advice, backed by much evidence, mixed in with nonsense. So avoid processed foods (sound - especially if you're in the US where trans-fats abound in these) sits side-by-side with avoiding legumes (pointless). 3. Cherry-picking individual studies. You can always find a study to support a particular position, and the WAP does this all the time. But science is a very cautious enterprise which proceeds by accumulated evidence. Effects are not considered robust until they have been replicated and replicated. 4. Failing to take an international perspective. They (and other low carb groups)are still banging on about the Ancel Keys study, as if the entire international scientific community fell under his spell. And on a related point, they think dietary advice stopped in 1980. 5. Elevating Weston A Price himself to guru status. This well-meaning dentist did a tour of LEDCs and concluded that all manner of ills were linked to 'civilized diets.' He did his best with the techniques available in the 1930s, but that's 80 year old evidence now. As I understand it, he didn;t confuse correlation with causation, but his followers sure do. 6. A shameless romanticising of traditional cultures. There's a complete rejection of the idea that people in these cultures just don't live as long as the typical westerner does. 7. A willingness to embrace conspiracy theories about 'industry pressure' and 'FDA cronies' and all that stuff, the naked paranoia of which really shouldn't need commenting on. They endlessly conflate scientific evidence with political agendas. And Sally Fallon, president of the foundation, is a journalist with something like a BA in English. And so on. All this sort of stuff is common in other alternative dietary groups. It is possible to find the odd contrarian who really does have some scientific credibility, but they seem pretty few and far between. Suggest anyone whose read this far and is interested in cholestrol to check out [url=]http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-internationa... [/url] | |||
| » warning: synephrine and 1,3 dehmathalymean (Go to post) | 01-03-2012 @ 16:44 | ||
IainKendrick said:What a shame  Admitadley this is partly s**t (and no doubt ill thought out legislation), but then on the plus side many people won't be fleeced for s**t they don't need? That's about where I am with it. It does smack of removing freedom of choice. On the other hand, I don't see why supplement companies should be permitted to make bulls**t claims about their products. | |||
| » tight hips (Go to post) | 24-02-2012 @ 21:10 | ||
Post Edited: 24.02.2012 @ 21:11 PM by Tannhauser fctilidie said: The Agile 8 1. Foam roll your IT band — Start just below your hip and roll up and down to your (outer) mid-thigh ten to fifteen times, focusing on any tight spots. Then perform ten to fifteen "rolls" starting at your (outer) mid-thigh and rolling all the way down to the outside of your knee. Again, focus on the tight areas. I really woiuldn't bother with this part. It's really uncomfortable and probably won't help. The IT band is incredibly tough, and foam rolling it is very unlikely to achieve any useful change. | |||
| » WSM on Channel 5 (Go to post) | 28-12-2011 @ 22:28 | ||
JamesH said: Weights. Some shoddy conversions going on. I think I heard that 115kg was 17 stone? There is no reason to make this kind of error. There was another one tonight - if I heard it right - on the squat: "325kg...that's around 650 lbs." I make it 717 lbs.  | |||
| » Water does not prevent dehydration ?? (Go to post) | 26-11-2011 @ 20:33 | ||
| Well, no surprise that it's The Telegraph, whose raison d'etre is to find any and all examples of 'EU madness'. That aside, I think this has to be seen in context of a crackdown on false advertising. For years, consumers have been bombarded with spurious health claims about foods. Health claims have been the marketer's weapon of choice. Consumers have been missold everything from yoghurt to cornflakes - lies, lies and more lies, not backed up by a shred of scientific evidence. The bottled water industry were amongst the biggest culprits of the lot in these scams. For years, they implied or outright stated that bottled water is, from a health point of view, superior to tap water. Which it isn't. As to the disallowance of the claim. I'll admit that it seems a draconian ban, but I think there are two factors to consider: 1. The claim could be seen as promoting the idea that bottled water - specifically bottled - is more useful at preventing dehydration than anything else. In the same way, I'm not sure it would be right to promote tea as 'the anti-dehydration drink' or to market potatoes as being 'ideal for preventing low blood sugar.' 2. I think putting the dehydration claim on the side of the bottle plays into this fear that we're all in danger of dehydration, unless we keep topping up with water. And guess which industry promoted that idea? I'm not saying dehydration isn't a real danger under certain circumstances - if you work on a construction site in Texas, for example, or go mountain-biking in Moab. But it's just not true that the average sedentary person needs to drink when they're not thirsty, in case they dehydrate. Maybe the EU have been really heavy-handed here, but it's a strike back against the hucksters and snake-oil merchants that have had their grimy hands in our pockets for too long. | |||