Show HN: IMDb quicklist - <AUTHOR> http://imdbql.herokuapp.com

<comment><USER2> Super useful. Thanks for putting this together. I'm always trying to figure out which movies to watch and this would help!</comment>


Help, I need somebody - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonathanbrun.com/2011/07/help-i-need-somebody.html

<comment><USER2> You'll get a lot more replies from this community if you take the time to explain what it is you're working on, who is involved and what technology stack should be expected.

Most importantly, tell us what your unfair advantages are... those things that give you a leg up on someone else doing it faster, cheaper or better than you.

I find that the background of the founders is incredibly important to whether the project will actually succeed. That is, if you're going to sell concert tickets you should have a founder that was a VP at Ticketmaster. If you're going to ship custom granola around, you should have a founder that understands food, and another that understands distribution and automation.

It might seem like nobody cares, but you should assume that you're not giving them enough of a reason to.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, you're right, and I was hoping people would continue to the actual job posting linked from the bottom of my post. This one was more of a personal appeal for partners and passionate product developers and I then have a more technical job posting on the corporate site - nimonik.ca with the stack, our history, growth and other information.

Thanks for the comment.</comment></comment>


Wknd Project: Migrate from Direct Partitions to LVM Volumes - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/306352-weekend-project-migrate-from-direct-partitions-to-lvm-volumes

<comment><USER2> Perhaps it's time to gather up all the old drives lying around and do something with them...</comment>


Launch HN: Relatively No-Frills Product Hunt Launch Checklist - <AUTHOR> In preparation for our own Product Hunt launch we have started reading about best practices and pre-launch procedures. Having gathered them in an ugly to-do list, we realised that others might find it useful as well. So we made it a bit prettier and decided to share it hoping that it will make someone's life easier.
This to-do list is mainly focused on tasks you can achieve in under 7 days, but you can of course copy it to your GDrive and adjust to your own needs.
Please, let us know if you find this to-do list helpful and we wish everyone a successful Product Hunt launch.
And here's the link: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/relatively-no-frills-ph-launch-checklist <comment><USER2> In order to see this list I have to:

\- Copy paste the link, which

\- Loads product hunt

\- Find the link to your website on PH's weird UI

\- Finally land on your site (I'm tired already).

\- Click a button "Show me the list"

\- Enter my email address

\- Wait for an email from you.

I'll let you decide if that's an optimal user experience...

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's the _actual_ link, so you don't have to give out a temporary email address like I did: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11Db_mfeUocbPSIN52y8h...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11Db_mfeUocbPSIN52y8heHyCI2S5b3EP6HFxyWmovLk/edit)

I would echo that this is a terribly user-hostile tactic and, to be honest, makes me want to avoid the main product you're launching.

</comment><comment><USER4> Feels like a way to collect email addresses. Why not just a link to it directly?

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow, thanks for sharing.</comment>


Send Messages to RabbitMQ from inside SQL Server Using SQLCLR - <AUTHOR> http://www.nielsberglund.com/2017/02/11/rabbitmq---sql-server/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here we look at how we can send messages from SQL Server to RabbitMQ by using SQLCLR assemblies.</comment>


Show HN: NCAA National Championship Project - <AUTHOR> http://varg0s.github.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> Something I worked on during the Oregon/OSU game, I know its not great but if you would like to provide feedback, I'm all for it. All fields must be filled in before the "Reveal" button is shown Thanks!</comment>


Disney heiress 'livid' after going to one of her family's theme parks undercover - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/disney-heiress-livid-after-going-to-one-of-her-familys-theme-parks-undercover-2019-07-15?mod=mw_share_twitter <comment><USER2> The middle management layer allows upper management and owners to squeeze workers without personally getting their hands dirty, meanwhile the middle managers can blame their actions on the upper levels. The perfect organizational structure to exploit labor guilt free.

<comment><USER3> That's what a corporation is for.

<comment><USER4> No, that is a cynical take based on the results of our having abandoned eternal vigilance in favor of simplistic ideas about how markets work. Corporations are for organizing complex activity. They exist because they can eliminate some of the costs of everyone acting as free agents, though that competitive advantage appears to be slipping over time.

<comment><USER3> Corporations are one of the ways to abstract slave ownership. Sharing the blame involves sharing the profits. Organizing complex activity ? Why do you think organizing complex activity requires a corporation ? Complex activity is organized in all forms of business ownership. Wtf ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm livid about the plight of wage workers. There is no outlet anymore as unionization hasn't been successful in almost any workplace since the 70s that I have ever heard of. Don't vote for moderates would be my only advice if you want to move the needle.

<comment><USER6> Don't vote for anyone bought and paid for by lobbies. Vote them out of they cave to lobbyists. Finally reform campaign finance so politicians can focus on representing the people instead of the money.

(Money is a poor proxy for the will of the people anyway.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Two bedroom apt in Orlando - $1200/month - split two ways - $600/month Electricity/cable/cable $100/month Transportation $200/month Food $400/month Clothing $200/month Total $1500/month Take Home calculator for $11/hr $1158/month

I'm sure you can skimp to make it work, but that's tough, and for a single person.

<comment><USER8> What take home calculator are you using?

There's no state income tax in Florida so 160 hours a month at $11 only has social security and healthcare taken out since making $22k/year with zero deductions doesn't hit much federal income tax.

Still really tight, but much closer to $1500.

This calculator [0] shows $785/2 weeks.

It's terrible how employees reported foraging in garbage, but would like more info on their situation and how frequent.

[0] [https://smartasset.com/taxes/florida-paycheck- calculator#YCd...](https://smartasset.com/taxes/florida-paycheck- calculator#YCdHEEcIZd)

<comment><USER9> Those reports came from people working in Anaheim, CA— according to the article, she visited Disneyland (not WDW) and talked with employees there.

<comment><USER8> Thanks. I would imagine rent costs a lot more in Anaheim and taxes are much higher in CA than FL. Would still like to know what calculator is used.

$11/hour seems super low in california. The minimum wage is now $12, but was $11 last year [0].

[0] [https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm](https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_minimumwage.htm)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Criticism of Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook <comment><USER2> > This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. The readable > prose size is 106 kilobytes.

Gee, I wonder why.</comment>


Stop Validating Email Addresses With Your Complex Regex - The PHP Way - <AUTHOR> http://blog.self.li/post/31017029867/validate-email-php

<comment><USER2> You're still using regular expressions that way. PHP implements that code with the following massive regular expression (line 525 of ext/filters/logical_filters.c):

const char regexp[] = "/^(?!(?:(?:\\\x22?\\\x5C[\\\x00-\\\x7E]\\\x22?)|(?:\\\x22?[^\\\x5C\\\x22]\\\x22?)){255,})(?!(?:(?:\\\x22?\\\x5C[\\\x00-\\\x7E]\\\x22?)|(?:\\\x22?[^\\\x5C\\\x22]\\\x22?)){65,}@)(?:(?:[\\\x21\\\x23-\\\x27\\\x2A\\\x2B\\\x2D\\\x2F-\\\x39\\\x3D\\\x3F\\\x5E-\\\x7E]+)|(?:\\\x22(?:[\\\x01-\\\x08\\\x0B\\\x0C\\\x0E-\\\x1F\\\x21\\\x23-\\\x5B\\\x5D-\\\x7F]|(?:\\\x5C[\\\x00-\\\x7F])) _\\\x22))(?:\\\\.(?:(?:[\\\x21\\\x23-\\\x27\\\x2A\\\x2B\\\x2D\\\x2F-\\\x39\\\x3D\\\x3F\\\x5E-\\\x7E]+)|(?:\\\x22(?:[\\\x01-\\\x08\\\x0B\\\x0C\\\x0E-\\\x1F\\\x21\\\x23-\\\x5B\\\x5D-\\\x7F]|(?:\\\x5C[\\\x00-\\\x7F]))_ \\\x22))) _@(?:(?:(?!._ [^.]{64,})(?:(?:(?:xn--)?[a-z0-9]+(?:-+[a-z0-9]+) _\\\\.){1,126}){1,}(?:(?:[a-z][a-z0-9]_ )|(?:(?:xn--)[a-z0-9]+))(?:-+[a-z0-9]+) _)|(?:\\\\[(?:(?:IPv6:(?:(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){7})|(?:(?!(?:._ [a-f0-9][:\\\\]]){7,})(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,5})?::(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,5})?)))|(?:(?:IPv6:(?:(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){5}:)|(?:(?!(?:.*[a-f0-9]:){5,})(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,3})?::(?:[a-f0-9]{1,4}(?::[a-f0-9]{1,4}){0,3}:)?)))?(?:(?:25[0-5])|(?:2[0-4][0-9])|(?:1[0-9]{2})|(?:[1-9]?[0-9]))(?:\\\\.(?:(?:25[0-5])|(?:2[0-4][0-9])|(?:1[0-9]{2})|(?:[1-9]?[0-9]))){3}))\\\\]))$/iD";</comment>


MPAA Demands Source Code of isoHunt's "Failing" Piracy Filter - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-demands-source-code-of-isohunts-failing-piracy-filter-130720/ <comment><USER2> In the legal world, this is why something called "specific performance" is rarely ever enforced by the court. Say I hire someone to build me a house and they fail to do so for whatever reason. Should the court really be in charge of babysitting and making sure this party builds me the house I ordered in exactly the way I ordered it? Probably not.

This filter was a bad idea from the beginning. If someone had ordered my business to do something like this, I would have said "You build a working filter without any help from me and you can order me to install it if it is compatible, but you can't order me to build a working filter because that's indentured servitude"

<comment><USER3> Except the order wasn't to build a filter, full stop. It was to build a filter if isohunt wants to continue operating in the US.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't seem any different in practice than ordering them to build the filter under penalty of a fine equivalent to 100% of their US-derived income.

<comment><USER5> Not quite. The fine would be conceivably bigger than 100%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This page fails to load phenomenally in a number of browsers (might be because the disqus comments are baked into the page load), here's the copy:

The major hollywood movie studios have filed a motion for contempt against the popular torrent site isoHunt, arguing that a court-ordered piracy filter is not working properly. The MPAA informs the court that isoHunt has "deliberately engineered the filter to ensure that it is ineffective" and wants the site to turn over its source code to prove their claims. In addition, the MPAA wants millions of dollars in compensation for the damages the studios have suffered through the isoHunt site.

isohuntAlmost three years ago the U.S. District Court of California ordered BitTorrent search engine isoHunt to start filtering its search results.

The injunction was the result of isoHunt's protracted court battle with the MPAA that began back in 2006. The Court ordered the owner of isoHunt to censor the site's search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the U.S.

isoHunt implemented the filter for U.S. visitors which allowed it to remain online, but at the same time owner Gary Fung took his case to the Court of Appeals. Through the appeal, isoHunt hoped to reverse the permanent injunction, but this didn't come to pass.

With the appeal concluded the movie studios are now asking for a summary judgment, hoping that the court awards them compensation for the many pirated movies that were downloaded via the isoHunt site. In addition, the MPAA has filed a motion for contempt claiming that the current keyword filter on the isoHunt Lite site is not doing its job.

"The Isohunt Lite filtering problems are too serious and consistent to be mere matters of innocent 'mistake' or unavoidable filtering 'leakage' as Defendants have variously claimed," the MPAA tells the court, suggesting that isoHunt is making these mistakes intentionally to keep up its profits.

"The record to date supports the inference that Defendants have deliberately engineered the filter to ensure that it is ineffective in preventing access to Plaintiffs' copyrighted works. As the Court found, because Defendants profit from infringement, they have a powerful economic incentive to continue providing users with access to Plaintiffs' popular movies and television programs."

Backed up by screenshots, the MPAA cites several examples of popular movies whose titles are on the ban list, but are still available thought the site.

"One work on Plaintiffs' title list is the popular film 'Zero Dark Thirty' for which Plaintiffs provided Defendants the movie title, release date and media type. Yet, the movie is available to any Isohunt Lite user who looks for it. Typing the term 'Zero Dark Thirty' into Isohunt Lite's search box returns innumerable dot torrent files for the movie." MPAA's screenshot of isoHunt

zerodark

The movie studios argue that nearly all movies are still accessible through the site, which would mean that isoHunt is not in compliance with the injunction. While isoHunt has claimed that these are mere mistakes, the MPAA believes that it supports their motion for contempt.

"These are not isolated instances. Virtually every movie Plaintiffs looked for using Isohunt Lite returned innumerable dot torrent files for Plaintiffs' copyrighted works. Defendants' so-called filter does not even appear to block access to dot torrent files that match a movie's exact title," MPAA writes.

"Facially, such a filter is wholly ineffective and cannot be the basis of compliance with an injunction that enjoins Defendants from 'hosting, indexing, linking to, or otherwise providing access to any Dot-torrent or similar files that correspond, point or lead to any of the Copyrighted Works.'"

The MPAA asks the court to order isoHunt to hand over all filter-related source code and databases, so the movie studios can show that the filtering failures are not "innocent mistakes" or "mere unavoidable leakage."

TorrentFreak asked isoHunt owner Gary Fung for a comment on the allegations put forward by the MPAA, but he chose not to respond at this time.

It is clear that the MPAA is not letting the isoHunt case rest just yet. In addition to the motion for contempt there is also a motion for summary judgment pending. The movie studios are currently in the process of calculating the damages they have suffered as a result of isoHunt's operations, which is expected to be in the millions.

The MPAA previously won a $110 million judgment against the TorrentSpy site, and it's expected the damages claimed against isoHunt will be in the same range, or perhaps even higher.

</comment><comment><USER7> Whats the case history for demanding source code? I remember airplane crash victims asking for the source code for the plane computer, people demanding source code for voting machines, and others demanding source code for medical instruments in malpractice suits.

Did anyone of those actually get the court to force disclosure of source code, in what capacity/scope, and did anyone win a legal case because the software was found as faulty after source code was disclosed and inspected?

</comment><comment><USER8> It's funny to me that the MPAA has the time and resources for a code review on 3rd party code but still has yet to build an app that allows me to pay for streaming their content.

<comment><USER9> I am personally not a huge fan of streaming, I'd prefer to just pay a decent price per movie (not $30 like Blurays) and get a nice HD file with no DRM, no ads, and freedom to do whatever I want with the file (like iTunes music I guess? Though I don't even want to use that service... I prefer to just find songs on Youtube now... convenience I guess).

Convenience really is my big issue; Steam has proven it's true for others too. It's much quicker to get a movie via tpb or where ever, than to go hunting around the few remaining video stores or try to find any legit place online (especially if it's a foreign film or an obscure 70's one).

The other annoying thing is Youtube take-downs. There have been so many times where I wanted to show a clip of some show/movie to a friend and then couldn't find it on Youtube anymore :(.

<comment><USER8> I like the idea of downloads.

<comment><USER10> This is why I enjoy torrent sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How exactly did the courts get into the business of censoring websites, anyway? Is it not isoHunt's first amendment right to tell people where to get pirated movies from?

Follow-up question: how come the Usenet providers are not caught in this dragnet?

<comment><USER12> Courts got into the business of censoring websites when they found websites got into the big business of infringing other's rights.

Usenet is not immune: [http://torrentfreak.com/newzbin2-the-mpaas-usenet- enemy-1-ca...](http://torrentfreak.com/newzbin2-the-mpaas-usenet- enemy-1-calls-it-quits-121129/)

<comment><USER11> To me, the problem is that torrents are descriptions of how to get the content, not the content. It's like banning a chemistry textbook because you could learn how to make a bomb.

<comment><USER13> _the problem is that torrents are descriptions of how to get the content, not the content_

For all practical purposes, they have become the same thing. Courts are not obliged to accept carefully worded definitions when the technology involved is a mere instrumentality.

Also, even if we do accept the description argument, you still have to consider that it's a description of how to obtain someone else's property. The first amendment doesn't give you the right to market detailed instructions on how to rob individual branches of a bank, for example, which is loosely analogous to IP infringement (insofar as physical currency is only a representation of a currency abstraction, this is actually a good parallel).

<comment><USER11> _The first amendment doesn 't give you the right to market detailed instructions on how to rob individual branches of a bank, for example_

Citation needed.

<comment><USER14> [http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/95-815.pdf](http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/95-815.pdf)

Relevantly, the section reading:

The Supreme Court held that "advocacy of the use of force or of law violation" is protected unless "such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

This was specifically referring to the case the famous line about "shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic" not being protected speech; it would certainly seem to me that attempting to "market detailed instructions on how to rob individual branches of a bank" would match the exception above. You can publish material telling someone how to make an explosive device, but material telling readers precisely where best to put that explosive device to crack open the safe at the Bank of America office on Fifth Street? Probably not going to survive a legal challenge.

<comment><USER11> I've never seen a case where printed material has been considered to "incite or produce imminent lawless action". If I recall correctly, the classic example of "imminent lawless action" is when the KKK is having a rally and they start yelling about lynching someone. That's different from a book about how to hang someone; the government itself publishes material on how to kill people (capital punishment and all that).

<comment><USER13> All the examples you're offering are generic - how to kill 'someone', or 'people'. That's not the same a book on 'how to kill jrockway' that goes into copious detail about how to kill you, specifically, in the most expeditious manner possible. The example I mentioned above was about a publication on how to rob _individual_ bank branches - which security guards to target, where the safe was located, where to cut the wires for the power or security cameras, and so on. There's a significant qualitative difference here, because in these examples you're enormously increasing the probability of a crime being committed, possibly up to the point of conspiracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's what I'd submit to them:

        10 PRINT "GET FUCKED"
        20 GOTO 10

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe IsoHunt should demand a $10 million bond be posted against the release of their very proprietary and important intellectual property?

<comment><USER13> Pointless. The court can simply take the evidence under seal, which is how these things are normally done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> [THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN REMOVED DUE TO A DMCA COPYRIGHT CLAIM]</comment>


Ask HN: Working Tactics? - <AUTHOR>

What are the various tactics and strategies you use to get yourself working and get things done?
My favorite is 'time boxing', from Steve Pavlina, where one commits a certain amount of time, usually an hour and a half for me, to focusing 100% on some task.
Also, any links or book recommendations on this topic is greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> A friend and I work on our own separate startups and we searched for ways to increase our productivity. We started a weekly challenge. Every week we meet in a coffee shop and set goals that we must achieve by the next meeting. If goals are not met, we commit to buying coffee and deserts for everyone else in the meeting. It worked wonders and we both got so much more done faster.

</comment><comment><USER3> I found several effective techniques to get myself working in 'The Now Habit" by Neal Fiore. It focuses more on the psychology and why we procrastinate and provides some useful tools to deal with it.

An example is to schedule time for fun, instead of work. Schedule times to see a movie, see a friend, exercise, or other activities you want to do. The benefit is that when I'm sure I will get the fun things I want, it's easier for me to focus on other tasks in the meantime.

He also describes a 'time boxing' technique that I've found very useful myself. A 30 minute commitment for me does the trick. Usually I'll end up working longer in a stretch and find it easier to recover from interruptions during that 30 minute commitment.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/productivity>

shouldn't take more than 3 weeks to read thru 187 threads!

Like ev'body else, skim/read David Allen's "Get Things DONe", my favorite tactics(not neces. from book) are daily priority lists, turning off productivity devices (email, cell phone, pager, and you don't have to read snail mail every day), controlled work environment (ambient lighting, noise- reducing headphones, good laptops, external keyboard/mouse)

</comment><comment><USER5> A simple to-do list alongside E-mail (e.g. Lightning plug-in in Thunderbird) is really nice. Seeing lists, prioritizing them and crossing off items can be motivating.

When you check E-mail, there's a tendency to want to immediately respond to whatever is said, and this can be very distracting and time-consuming. You should believe that if something is truly critical, you will receive a phone call or a personal visit. So I usually check E-mail only twice a day, around 10:00 and 4:00, which leaves just enough time that morning/afternoon to deal with requests or minor problems.

I use a revision control system, and train myself to commit exactly one "feature" at a time so that my work is focused. This prevents going down ratholes, and makes the rollback "clean" (a single version is a focused change, not some random mix of whatever you were working on). It is also a useful reminder, e.g. you come back an hour later and just ask the revision control system what you changed.</comment>


It's a part of my paleo fantasy, it's a part of my paleo dream - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/its-a-part-of-my-paleo-fantasy-its-a-part-of-my-paleo-dream/ <comment><USER3> I'm getting kind of an asshole reputation for always arguing with friends who are deeply into C/AM. But I'm also starting to realize it's exactly like arguing with a religious person - there is absolutely nothing you can say to make them realize their faith is based on fallacies. There is absolutely no correlation between the general intelligence of a person and the ridiculousness of their belief claims. You could be talking astrophysics one minute and the next you're into a strange shamanistic wonderland where science doesn't exist. I really do think it's a faith-like mental virus.

On the whole, it doesn't worry me too much - everyone is entitled to their little domains of craziness and I know I have my own.

But what does worry me is the observation that C/AM believers in my environment are almost always women. It feels like a big gaping hole in everything we achieved with women's rights and education. Within my extremely limited horizon of living in a western industrial society, this is in fact the single most worrying trend. It's like a large part of our women went to a parallel universe "girls school", whereas the men in the mean time learned about science and reasoning.

I'm at a total loss as to where this gender disparity comes from, but there has to be a vector _somewhere_. If anyone has any ideas, I'm looking forward to hearing them. If there is anything to be done about this, I'd like to volunteer my time for it.

<comment><USER4> I've found that, at least amongst 20 and 30 something age groups, women tend to be more religious too. Now that is my crappy anecdotal observation. It would be interesting to see some real data on that.

I'm convinced that the whole C/AM thing taps into an instinctive love of purity. We are wired to care about cleanliness and purity in our food sources. Perhaps women are wired even more this way (the fact that they have superior senses of smell to men might also explain it). The Nazi movement took advantage of many people's innate belief that purity of anything (in their case genetics) is a good thing no matter what.

There was an article posted not too long ago about fireplaces, and how bad for you they really are. There are two kinds of people: those who will readily evaluate facts which contradict their pre-conceived beleifs, and those who will immediately dismiss them.

<comment><USER3> I really refuse to accept that women are just "wired for faith", it sounds too similar to the Victorian notion that somehow women are naturally wired for irrationality. There has to be a social reason why this spreads among women, there is a gap somewhere in science education that leaves women more vulnerable to this.

And I _actually_ watched it spread. The transmission seems to be helped by exploiting trusted relationships among network nodes, so to speak. But that still doesn't explain why someone is susceptible to the attack in the first place.

I'm also skeptical about the purity idea, because it's an arbitrary (and wrong) definition of purity to begin with and there is really no reason why women should be hard-wired to fall for these things. This is traditionally the moment where completely made-up cavemen analogies are introduced, but those are exactly as unscientific as C/AM itself.

<comment><USER5> Women are more prone to fall for BS because we enculturate them to believe that emotions and warm fuzzy feelings are a more reliable guide than science and logic. Third-wave feminism is partly to blame; the notion that science and logic are "patriarchal" and that not oppressing women entails a warm and fuzzy "feminine" replacement for disciplined thought is the third wave's doing.

Thinking logically, critically, and skeptically is an ungendered activity. Women are as capable of and welcome to it as men are; we should be _encouraging_ the females of our kind to apply reason and evidence to their judgements! Sadly, we're the culture that produced Oprah and turned her into a media mogul powerful enough to make the foundations of the earth tremble.

<comment><USER3> This is purely an image problem for science education, then. Because there is absolutely _nothing_ warm and fuzzy about the "natural state" or whatever romanticized notion we're entertaining about nature. Applied science, and more importantly, the ability to apply science, enables people to build, cure, protect, predict, ensure, improve, discover, and many other things that are intrinsically more warm and fuzzy than, say, naturally dying of a curable disease.

<comment><USER6> Yes, Oprah and Dr Oz etc. are all failures of science education, they have far too much control over public understanding of health.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Calling the "naturalistic fallacy" a fallacy is a bit of an overstretch IMO, sure natural=better is not a rule true 100% of the time, but nevertheless until sufficient evidence has not been accumulated that some of the adjustments we make to our lifestyle are not harmful to us health-wise avoiding them is not an unreasonable heuristic to follow. One example is how it became clear in the last years in nutritional science that in general the more processed the food is the more harmful it is for us.

There is also the reverse problem, illustrated by the condescending attitude toward herbalism in this article, of people who idealize modernity, and for example believe only medicine in the form of pills can be effective, even though plants may contain exactly the same chemical compounds. I am not saying there is no fraud in herbalism, sure there is plenty of it, but herbs in general clearly can have strong both positive and negative effect on physiology, which is really quite obvious if you consider the variety of herbs existing and that they all contain lots of different chemical compounds.

In general I think it is ridiculous to ignore the thousands of years of experimentation and exploration of our ancestors just because it wasn't "science-based".

<comment><USER8> The problem with herbalism is that it's the first place science-based medicine went looking for drugs. For basically any herb and effect someone ascribes to it, there have already been twenty rigorous studies, and either no statistical effect was found or the responsible chemicals were extracted, purified, concentrated, and synthesized and are now marketed under two brand names and three generics.

Going to herbs directly isn't going where no science has been before. At best you're getting a known drug which is poorly dosed and mixed with a shotgun of other chemicals which may be harmful. At worst you've just got a cocktail of potentially harmful (remember, even most of the "good" effects come from poisons the plants produce to keep things from eating them) chemicals with no actual benefit.

<comment><USER7> Yours is a very common response I get to this - I wonder why, since there is absolutely no evidence for it. You vastly underestimate the number of plants in existence and vastly overestimate the fraction we have been able to study rigorously. You also hugely simplify the chemistry of it all, the main advantage of plants over modern medicine in its typical form is that they contain complex compounds of chemical substances which show a synergy in a certain direction e.g. they interact with the body in a different way when they are administered together than if they would be ingested separately. Analyzing such compounds and the interactions between them is still often beyond the current state of science and is also not as well funded as traditional drug research, simply because traditional drugs are easier to sell.

Please don't have the impression that I am somehow advocating herbs over traditional medicine, I don't, and there are surely problems with using herbs, but those are different problems that the one most often mentioned. The material you use has to be rather fresh because the concentration of active substances degenerates with time very quickly, the concentration also varies a lot from one area of growth to another so it might be difficult to come up with dosages, they can have serious side effects just like traditional medicine, they are inconvenient to store and use etc.

You can find scientific references for most of what I said and anyway it would come to no surprise to a second-year biology undergraduate. Just reading the wikipedia page about herbalism would clarify a lot of misunderstanding on the topic:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbalism>

<comment><USER8> Following the reference through from the "clinical trials" section, the Wikipedia article is a little misleading. It makes it sound like only 356/1000 random plants have been studied, but in the paper [1] the breakdown is actually:

15.7% had been tested in clinical trials; 50.9% had been tested in vitro or in vivo; 20.8% had been subject to a phytochemical study; 12.1% had no studies found in the literature search; 0.5% were "dangerous".

That's not saying only 1/3 of plants had been studied. That is saying that 87% of plants have been studied.

[1] [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1365-2710.200...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1365-2710.2009.01096.x/asset/j.1365-2710.2009.01096.x.pdf?v=1&t=hefpl605&s=faea8e390010801b9f75500688ff8692ba0852e3)

<comment><USER7> I was thinking we are talking about all plants in existence, this is a study of 1000 most commonly used herbs, still, I learned something new, so thanks. Still it doesn't prove your more bold claim that somehow all the potential benefits of using them are already available in a very safe to use pill.

<comment><USER8> My overconfidence is mostly coming from the long tail.

Even if there are millions of distinct plant chemistries out there, a small number (say, 100) will account for 90% of the herbal remedies prescribed and taken. These will have been studied by scientific methods exhaustively. The next most common chunk will have received some cursory attention, and then you enter into the vast fields of the unknown.

But the fields aren't unknown to just science: they're unknown to cultural practitioners as well. I'm willing to believe that, even without double-blind clinical trials, people were able to find effective treatments with enough trial and error. But "enough trial and error" means "not the long tail". So once you start talking the 1000th most common plant used for medicinal properties, the amount of experience pre-scientific practitioners have accumulated is negligible, and handful of anecdotes at best. Not even enough to ascribe correlation, let alone causation.

So on the head of plants of potential value, I'm betting that they've all been studied exhaustively. On the tail, there are countless plants which could have countless benefits, but essentially no evidence to do anything but pick one at random and hope it cures what ails you. The middle, of enough evidence to suspect or know a plant does something, but not how, is going to be fairly small.

<comment><USER7> I agree with your reasoning, but you assume that the outcome of the research on a given plant will very quickly lead to a total understanding of its ingredients and effects and that it will always be feasible to develop a technological process to deliver the same complex of ingredients in the form of a pill, neither of which has to be the case.

<comment><USER9> For something to be interesting the outcome of research on a given plant should at the very least be that there is an effect to study, or it's not worthwhile. Nobody says "we don't understand how it works, therefore it doesn't work and we should throw it away".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for finding this tokenadult.

I've been trying to convince my wife (who has a degree in dietetics and a minor in anthropology/archeology) to write about this subject for a while, but food and diet are such visceral topics for people that she finds discussions of the topics incredibly frustrating.

Food, language, gender norms, these are all fields of study where there is substantial research and a lot of resolute but unfounded claims by people with axes to grind, or products to sell.

All of which is to say, there's not a lot of skepticism, even amongst populations who claim to be generally analytical and skeptical.

<comment><USER11> My wife is the same way. She has a PhD in nutrition and is also a registered dietitian, but she just can't muster the energy to argue online with people that have read two articles on Pub Med.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A couple of points:

1\. Most or all of the mummies studied were from neolithic societies, not paleolithic. The only one that might be considered paleolithic is the Unangan, but even these are from decades after they were conquered by the Russians. So they may very well have had white flour and processed sugar in their diet. I couldn't find information about their diet during this period.

2\. The time needed for natural selection to work. I'm not convinced by this one. The examples that were given would have had higher selection pressure on the young during their child-bearing years. I would guess that the selection pressure from diseases of old-age would be much less, and would take many more generations to be felt.

Still some good points to be made about the naturalistic fallacy.

<comment><USER13> Seems like even scientists don't have a good understanding of diet. I just watched a show that mentioned Henry VIII's diet. They mentioned how it made him fat because of all the meat he ate. I thought "that doesn't sound right" and looked it up. He didn't eat vegetables (considered peasant food at the time) and ate a lot of meat. What probably made him fat though was all the bread, desserts, ale, and wine mixed with sugar. If he stuck to meat and added some vegetables, he would have been fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My objection to this article is that it's posing a false dichotomy. Choosing our diet based purely on good solid science _is not an option_ , because our scientific knowledge is still too limited. Any honest scientists will admit there's still a lot of complexity we don't fully understand. Which is precisely why there's so much exciting research going on right now (example: <https://twitter.com/whsource>)

Wherever we have solid evidence it absolutely needs to win out. But that's not the issue here. What we have here is a lot of fuzzy, plausible ideas that are extremely difficult to prove via experiment.

If you want to say categorically that "the paleo diet" (or almost any other) is good or bad, then you need to do a gigantic, long-term, prospective, randomized study of actual human beings. Which is not practical.

So we're left doing the best we can. We rely on heuristics to fill in the gaps. Eating the same things that your ancestors ate is not a bad start. (Granted, that's not necessarily "paleo").

</comment><comment> mkr-hn Paleo falls into the same trap as most ideologies. Some percent of True Believers become jerks about it ("but it's so obvious! Just look at [weakly correlated thing]!"), and end up making the whole group look bad.

It's unfortunate, because most ideologies don't seem to be made to alienate. We get along fine as long as we don't bring up our pet beliefs.

</comment><comment><USER15> It is not about the paleo. First - while atherosclerosis may be a normal part of aging, does it say anything about ancient heart attacks and strokes? I don't care of the plaques in my arteries I care about not being dead from a heart attack.

Also the influx of refined carbohydrates in our diet is a big change. So maybe we have not evolved yet to cope with them in the current amounts and purity.

I think most fad diets have the following problems:

1\. Little and improper science - so even if they work they can't explain why or how.

2\. One size fits all - I invented the paleo diet without ever heard of it - once I decided to quit sugar and starches cold turkey - I have always loved raw nuts and vegetables, grilled meat and cheese. But this is not for everyone - alot of people will not find it tasty. So they eat something they hate - <USER2> result is they have problems adhering to eat and abandon it.

3\. Government has failed to do its job on the nutrition front. Every recommendation is fought by the losing industry lobbyists, there is little exploitative science done etc. While every person should have the choice they also have to have access to transparent, true and scientifically proved nutritional information - otherwise we will always have the next wonder diet on which sizable portion of the population will be on. A lot of people will hurt themselves taking it to the extremes and so on ...

</comment><comment><USER16> and this is why I wish the paleo-fanatics would stop harping on the "evolutionary based" part.

I eat pretty much paleo. I avoid grains, I limit dairy consumption, I avoid a lot of sugar in my food. However, a lot of the "science" behind paleo is bullshit. The name & culture is the worst thing that could have happened to the diet.

Food is important to your health. I eat a lot of vegetables, high quality meat, and avoid high amounts of carbs & sugar now. How could I not feel better? It doesn't have anything to do with evolutionary adaptability.

edit: knowtheory below is referring to something I edited out regarding an attempt to double blind myself to ensure this wasn't all in my head.

<comment><USER10> See, that's just fine! It's awesome that you've found a diet that makes you feel better.

But here's the thing. You can't double blind yourself. That's the whole issue with blind trials. Double blind trials require that you do not and can not determine whether you are in the treatment group or not. Additionally, unless you're having an unrelated person prepare the food, w/o any knowledge of which foods are in the "paleo" group vs the control group, you're not operating double blind.

If it's just you and another person, it would be challenging to set up a double blind experiment (although i'd be interested to hear what you tried).

<comment><USER16> I removed that. I figured that I would get some flak. :P

I did have my roommate prepare the food. Another one of my roommates swapped/labeled the food and then went to class, no interaction. It was mostly because he didn't believe that I could feel it and that it was mostly in my head. (which I totally understand, I was pretty worried about that as well)

We switched out white flour for some almond flour. We also did another one where he sweetened something using honey and another using corn syrup. (I could totally taste the difference there though)

Certainly not rigorous, but enough to make me pretty sure it isn't entirely a placebo effect. I'm planning on getting a Celiac Sprue test at some point.

<comment><USER17> If you have adverse reactions to wheat products after provocation (even tiny amounts should trigger the effects), then it's indeed likely that you do have coeliac disease. About 1% of population have it, so it's not that surprising. Just remember that a test would require a proper, long provocation, otherwise you'll just get a negative from the biopsy because there's no intestinal damage anymore.

On the other hand, if a diet helps, and provocations after, say, a month (but without your knowledge) make things go downhill fast, you can be sure enough. Welcome to the wonderful life where you get to check yoghurt for trace amounts of wheat products, and pizza is a holy grail (one of my closest friends is coeliac, for people in Amsterdam area, Woodstone in Haarlem makes good gluten- free pizza).

<comment><USER18> I'll add to this that it is often (not always) possible to detect the presence of Coeliac Disease through a blood test. That should be the first step before going the colonoscopy route.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not a Paleo dieter, but I am familiar with the gist of their claims. I do not understand how this study is a response to those claims. The 137 mummies studied are from "Individuals from ancient Egypt, ancient Peru, the Ancestral Puebloans of southwest America, and the Unangan of the Aleutian Islands were imaged." Of those we have 3 agricultural civilizations (Egytp, Peru, Pueblo) and one hunter gatherer (Aleutian). So 3/4 of the studied civilizations don't argue agains the basic Paleo claim at all. I can't see from looking the the links what the results from the Aleutian cohort were.

<comment><USER20> No-true-paleo fallacy.

<comment><USER14> The no-true-scotsman fallacy implies a shifting or pedantically narrow definition. That's not applicable here.

Paleo fans are very clear that they're trying to emulate pre-agricultural diets. That's the _sine qua non_ of the Paleo fad. So it's totally legitimate that they would object to evidence about agricultural societies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a friend who's into homeopathy and such, and I normally keep my mouth shut. But I have done some thinking about why. This friend is very smart, very intellectual, very curious, and not overly credulous. She's really a bit of a nerd.

From my few conversations on the matter, the thing that's jumped out at me is this:

She's drawn to alternative medicine because it's open source. Like many nerds, she hates closed proprietary systems and loathes bureaucracy.

If alt-med worked, it would be vastly superior to conventional "industrial" medicine. The latter is bureaucratic, run by closed guilds, closed source, and radiates this standoffish "you are an idiot, do not ask questions" mentality.

By contrast alt-med is open. Anyone can learn about it. Anyone can become a practitioner. Anyone can experiment. It's tolerant of differences of opinion to a much greater extent than conventional medicine. It comes off as welcoming, inviting, and engaging.

Of course, I understand some of the reasons medicine is the way it is. Unlike hacking code on a computer, screwing up medicine can really hurt people. (Code on a computer generally can't, unless you're talking about certain kinds of specialized areas.) But it does seem to me that this is part of the appeal of alt-med.

The other appeal, I think, is escape from the bureaucratic hell that is conventional medicine. Alt-med is actually more free-enterprise. There is more patient choice. It's less expensive. My wife and I just had a baby, and dealing with the insurance company has been a living hell.

Edit: one more observation.

We've tried a little bit of alt-med type stuff to varying degrees of success. I think I can also say this, and I think it goes a long way to explaining alt- med's popularity.

The bedside manner you get with "alternative" practitioners is _vastly_ better. I mean huge orders of magnitude better.

We have a pretty good doctor and a pretty good hospital, and even then we occasionally feel like meat. And ours is really above average in terms of doctor-patient relations and comfort. I've heard some real slaughterhouse horror stories, particularly around women giving birth in ordinary hospitals. I have a relative who has such a story. She really felt like a piece of beef, and the doctor was a real jerk.

The physical design of the spaces is better too. Go into an alt-med clinic and it feels warm, welcoming, calming. Go into a hospital or a conventional doctors' office and it looks like a car repair shop. Again -- to draw an analogy to the computer industry -- Apple has proven just how much aesthetics matter. Apple's products are generally not technically superior, but they are often vastly superior aesthetically and in terms of usability.

<comment><USER22> There was an interesting study done - and written up on SBM - that suggests that the theraputic effect of Alt-med, at least with acupuncture, is entirely due to patient-practitioner interaction.

As someone on the cusp of becoming a Doctor, I understand this. I even understand why traditional medicine fails at it (and it is many of the reasons you mention). And I understand why Alt-med succeeds here.

I think it's great that alt-med can deliver a measurable placebo through the clinical effect.

HOWEVER

this does not excuse the intellectual dishonesty of alternative medicine practitioners.

Please anyone who replies to this suggesting that 'We don't know enough about alt med, bla bla bla, big pharma won't study it because it can't be milked for the elixir of life, money/human blood, etc' - Stop now. There's 3 types of treatments. _Medicine proper, Stuff that has been tested and found wanting, and stuff that hasn't been tested_. The second category is almost exclusively the whole of alternative medicine.

please excuse my divergence as I return to the train of thought:

We should continue to deny alternative medicine practitioners legitimacy. As I argue in the SMH article (3rd contribution in the article) referenced at the bottom of this post, it causes an economic misallocation of resources away from real, practical science towards, for want of a better word, magic.

What we should also do, I now believe, is actively encourage these people to become 'Lifestyle practitioners'. They don't practice a form of medicine, or at least drop the pretence that what they are doing has any scientific backbone, and instead do what they are doing now - that is, interacting with patients, talking with them about their lives, encouraging positive lifestyle interventions (cutting out smoking, drinking, increasing exercise, etc) in an environment that it seems they are more responsive to these interventions.

You can't have both. It is false and misleading for Alt-med practitioners to continue to pretend and/or believe that what they are doing has a real scientific basis in the same way as taking a drug that has been through a RCT does.

But you allude to the root of the problem when you talk about the shabby operation of many hospitals etc.

The difference is, they are built for really sick (or in your example, pregnant) people. Lots of them. Because there are lots of them. And alt-med practitioners will kill them by the bucketload if we were to get rid of hospitals and doctors tomorrow. and then society would go through the process of re-inventing something similar

Maybe one day hey?

* - [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/legislative-al...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/legislative-alchemy-iii-acupuncture/)

* - [http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-question/should--universit...](http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-question/should--universities--teach--alternative--medicine-20120203-1qxb3.html)

<comment><USER23> What percentage of Conventional medicine practices are evidence based?, ie what percentage of what you as a conventional MD practice has been subjected to RCT?

I have a friend who is a Internal Medicine MD who claimed it was less than 50%. If thats the case then every conventional MD continues "to pretend and/or believe that what they are doing has a real scientific basis".

Please give me a % of what you do in a clinical setting that has been subjected to RCT otherwise you are setting a standard for CAM that even you cannot meet.

Can you explain, why, with all our advanced conventional medicine etc the USA still ranks 35 in the world for infant mortality, below even Cuba, Slovakia and Brunei? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mor...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate)

EDIT: Okay, I did my own research into my question above. I am sure this is just scratching the surface here.

See here: [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=101041)

<comment><USER22> Well let's start with your last question first.

I'm not an American and I won't practice there. I'm Australian and we score an improved 19th on that league table. However I recently had the opportunity to study/work in a hospital in the states and these are some of my observations.

\- The US healthcare system is fucked.

\- there is a major disparity of care by region and neighbourhood (from my experience)

\- poor people are discriminated against by the healthcare system

\- these inequalities of care and resources are perpetuated down the line by a social system which doesn't support the most needy n society

In comparison, Cuba has one of the highest rates of doctors per capita and a healthcare system that performs astoundingly well, especially when compared on a dollar basis. You don't need high tech to perform life saving basic medical treatment, such as that which infant mortality measures.

I feel that the US healthcare system over-emphasises technology to deliver solutions, when what is actually needed are people on the ground in places where they are needed. Unfortunately for those people, they are unable to pay so no-one is going to go to them.

Now to the meat and potatoes of your claim. Firstly let me say that it strikes me as a bit aggressive. I said * in the same way as taking a drug that has been through a RCT does.*

If I am to respond to your whole query, then really I am throwing open the whole of medicine. And it's a big area. Everything from the correct techniques for birthing to height projection charts for children, through immunisations and treatment for common illnesses, to whole specialties of cardiology, renal medicine, .... Many many more.

But let me give you some anecdotes to show you how much of medicine HAS been studied. Maybe You will cry 'liar, deceiver!'. Or maybe I will be able to convey to you a bit of the never-ending torrent of information every doctor is swimming in (and I will admit, there are some that simply stop looking at it all).

Firstly. We have to do assignments called PEARLS. basically, w come across a clinical question and go and try and find evidence for it. As (at the time) a 3rd year med student, I still didn't really have much idea what was going on in the hospital, let alone how to formulate a clinical question and find an answer.

My question involved an elderly patient who had been transferred to the service I was on. He was on an ace inhibitor and an Angiotensin-receptor blocker. That is, 2 types of drugs which supposedly do the same thing.

This was a bit weird to me but it turned out there is some plausible science behind it - combination treatment might lead to being able to use lower doses, which can mean less side effects, as well as more effective RAAS blockade which might lead to better control of blood pressure.

Well it turned out that for this question I thought was stupid and pointless there had been a recently completed RCT, The ONTARGET Study, which proved that dual blockade is worse than single drug use.

My housemate is currently doing his, and his clinical question is whether an infected abdominal surgical wound should be closed or left open. Also seems like a Bizzare question but turns out there are several papers on this, and they say that the wound must be left open.

No RCT this time, but it is notoriously hard to do RCTs in surgical patients for reasons I'm sure you can understand.

A thir anecdote: when we start med, they tell us that 50% of what we learn will be obsolete at the end of 4 years of study, the problem is we don't know which 50%. Such is the rate of scientific advancement.

When I first heard this I just thought it was an embellishment, a story designed to boast of the speed of discovery. Turns out its true. Some significant changes have occurred since I've started studying that have overturned long-held practices.

An example would be the use of lidocaine and adrenaline/epinephrine in local anaesthetic for closing a wound in the extremity.

It was thought that the adrenaline would cause vasoconstriction which would lead to infarction and possible loss of a finger or toe if used. Recently a RCT was performed which showed it to be totally safe. That Overturned a practice that had been going for many many years.

The truth is, I can't give you a figure for the amount of evidence that has an RCT done for it. This is not shirking from the responsibility, but it is simply admitting that the scope of the practice of medicine is so unimaginably vast that even after spending 4 years deep in the thick of it, I know I will only ever be able to be proficient in a tiny area of the whole.

I can assure you, however, that people are working hard to ensure that everything will be studied. I would estimate that 99%+ of our practice has been published in some form, ranging from the worst - simple case reports, through to the most expensive and rarest- RCTs. We even study how reliable the examination signs are - by this I mean the percussion of fingers on your chest to detect various conditions (dullness indicating pneumonia has a likelihood ratio of 3, hyper resonance indicating COPD has a positive LR of 5.1) and every other thing that we do.

Some of these studies are bad; some are outdated; and sometimes we do things for years because they became habitual and weren't re-examined for a long time. And sometimes these things cause harm to patients.

But you can bet that it is the aim of medicine, and of science, to test and re-test all of the things we do, continually, with the aim of improving our practice and providing better and safer care.

The same can't be said of alternative medicine

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The problem with "Evidence Based Medicine" vs CAM are two-fold, according to my friend who is an MD in internal medicine at the local VA.

1\. 'Evidenced based' medicine is not really 'Evidenced based' because (again this is according to an MD) 50% of what they practice has not been subjected to scientific study.

2\. Also there is not the time nor funding to test every aspect and modality of CAM. So some CAM practice might really be working for patients but there is not time nor funding to discover why.

This seems like yet another rant by some Physician whose 'religion' is actually evidence-based medicine.

<comment><USER24> You're really going to base your entire argument around the purported statements of your doctor friend whose identity, statements, and views cannot be verified?

You'ved made multiple comments in this thread that amount to exactly "nuh-uh! my doctor friend said!"

In the spirit of yesterday's fallacy thread, this is both a (bad) appeal to authority and using anecdote as data.

<comment><USER23> Here is some 'evidence': [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=101041)

"The number of reviews indicating that the modern biomedical interventions show either no effect or insufficient evidence is surprisingly high. Intterrater disagreements suggest a surprising degree of subjective interpretation involved in systematic reviews. Where patterns of disagreement emerged between authors and readers, authors tended to be more optimistic in their conclusions than the readers."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >But how does one determine what the prevalence of cardiovascular disease was in the ancient past? Time and the decomposition it brings are brutal on the flimsy meat of which we are made, and it is uncommon to have access to anything other than bones, much less bodies intact enough to be examined for signs of atherosclerotic disease. Even so, however, there have been indications that the idea that ancient humans didn't suffer from atherosclerosis is a comforting myth, the most recent of which is a study published a week ago online in The Lancet by Prof. Randall C. Thompson of Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute and an international team of investigators entitled Atherosclerosis across 4000 years of human history: the Horus study of four ancient populations. Basically, it was a study of 137 different mummies from four different geographic locations spanning 4,000 years.

The whole time I was reading this I could only think, "science is great!" Thanks for posting this.

</comment><comment><USER26> I recently lost 30lbs by adopting a low-carb/real-food/paleo way of eating. As a result, I feel much better, sleep better, and have increased energy. My moods seem to be stabilizing and I feel more confident than ever. The decrease in weight has enabled me to exercise more comfortably, which in turn has resulted in an increased frequency of exercise, as it's now enjoyable. I can appreciate that the science behind the Paleo movement is not perfect, but the benefits I've realized from it far outweigh any questionable science employed to sell a few books by Loren Cordain along the way. It all basically boils down to application of the 80/20 rule to diet anyway.

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree with a lot of what this article says regarding the "naturalistic fallacy",etc.

However, this quote is an example of shallow thinking that drives me nuts: "Of course, it's hard not to note that cancer and heart disease are primarily diseases of aging, and life expectancy was so much lower back in the day that a much smaller percentage of the population lived to advanced ages"

Life expectancy FROM BIRTH has risen dramatically, but if you rule out those who died before they reached 5 years old, and rule out violent deaths and/or viral/bacterial plagues, you begin to realize that life expectancy is not much higher today.

<comment><USER27> I came here to post the same thing. This is its own fallacy.

It was used to market estrogen supplementation, among other spurious remedies, to post-menopausal women. "Women didn't used to live very long after menopause --the life expectancy was only about 50. You need to take estrogen pills to keep you healthy into old age."

This of course was people using statistics to lie. The average life expectancy was lower primarily due to high infant mortality. Life expectancy is NOT the average age at death.

But then they found out that the estrogen pills were causing breast cancer, so that put a stop to that.

<comment><USER20> > This of course was people using statistics to lie. The average life > expectancy was lower primarily due to high infant mortality. Life expectancy > is NOT the average age at death.

Just because lower infant mortality raises the life expectancy, doesn't mean that the average age at death hasn't gone up. I agree with your life expectancy claim do, but it doesn't mean the opposite is true either.

<comment><USER27> That's a true statement--infant mortality has declined and average age at death has also increased, but the increases in average life expectancy are much more greatly attributable to the former than to the latter.

The fallacy is "{disease} is a disease of old age, and people didn't used to live past {average caveman life expectancy}. Therefore humans almost never experienced {disease} until modern times." This is very far from the truth, and is usually delivered as part of a sales pitch. I was surprised to see it repeated in the OP almost verbatim. The article debunks several other fallacies but, disappointingly, perpetuates this one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I heartily recommend people check out "The Heretics" by Will Storr.

The book points out, amongst other insights, the tendency of scientists to react irrationally to alternative medicine and other such phenomena. Whilst the scientific community is usually right on such things, we (I'm a scientist) do have a tendency to be very dismissive and even contemptuous of people who believe in alternative therapies (or religion, or a whole host of subjects that contradict scientific thinking).

Seems scientists can be as dogmatic as their opponents. Thought-provoking stuff.

<comment><USER29> No one is immune to dogma. All our beliefs eventually trace back to some foundation, including the belief that logic is the only fount of truth. The question is whether we can be comfortable with that, or we have to project our own insecurities about it onto others. Can we tolerate the unbelief of other people, and treat them well?

Or do we need everyone to be exactly like us? A lot of the screeds on the Internet reek of this tribalism. It's utterly tiring to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I skimmed the article but it seems to me it misses a key component of why people choose "alternatives". Both "naturalistic" and "old school" (as in 18th century and earlier probably) today seem to me to be a reaction against years of uncontrolled abuse, dangerous drugs, uncontrolled trials in the past, poisoning and dumping chemicals in the environment (ddt and such) without any regard for consequences. It is kind of this cavalier attitude towards human bodies and environment during an accelerated progress in the last century that made some (unfortunately) think twice and reject everything that modern medicine stands for.

Another aspect of this "integrative" medical approach is basic psychology. Patients want to be understood and paid attention to. They want doctors to also ask them what they had for breakfast and how their son is doing. They'd want doctors to come to their house, put the hand on their head and say "you'll get better don't worry". All that is in contrast to a cold and robotic 5 minute chart check visits that are billed at $594.00/hour.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been on the paleo diet for about a year.

Besides the fantastic results I've had with it, the main reason why I'm confident in it is the fact that what is known to be true in nutritional science changes all the time. Meanwhile, I'm very confident we know what our paleo ancestors ate for hundreds of thousands of years prior to the introduction of agriculture. Even if it is eventually proven that grains do not cause a problem with our diet, we should be confident that avoiding them should not be detrimental to our health given the fact that we didnt eat them for a huge span of human existence

</comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone know the claims regarding saturated fat and coconut oil? I have some friends who in the last 2 months have become zealots and they encourage "high quality" fats (coconut oil) and denounce canola oil.

<comment><USER22> It is well known in cardiovascular surgery circles that islander diets (which have high levels of coconut oil) have vey high levels of atherosclerosis. I have heard this comment many times in 4 years of medical school, and seen many islander patients (Australia has a deal with the French Government to perform tertiary care of New Caledonians) however have yet to come across a source for it

<comment><USER20> I think the Paleo argument is that it is the interaction of certain saturated fats and insulin response from high glycemic index foods that oxidize LDL cholesterol (?). I don't know any of the science here, so i could be paraphrasing wrong, but I'd love understand if this is as fringe as it sounds.

<comment><USER22> Ah I see your point. I have some time tomorrow (bt 12-18 hrs from now) so will see what I can find specifically regarding this if you'd care to check back here,

In the meantime here's some science of atherosclerosis -

high glycemic index foods - scrap that - glucose and fructose in general is are reactive molecules - they are often drawn as a 6-carbon circle in organic chem but are actually moving in and out of a ionically bonded circle and a linear structure which is very reactive.

It is relatively well understood that the 6 carbon carbohydrates are reactive enough to be capable of causing endothelial damage which can set off the inflammatory cascade that leads to atherosclerosis and high LDL levels will further exacerbate the problem.

Come to think of it, maybe this answers your question?

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the answer. I'm not sure. Doesn't something like what you are saying only happen if you are diabetic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think that you miss the point here: If paleo diet is not the silver bullet than what diet should I have? I'm not a paleo advocate by the way. I tried it out but I'm not having a paleo diet at the moment. I'm still trying to find some alternate diet which is proven to be healthy. It seems that this may be one of the most difficult endeavor I've ever undertaken. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER33> Has anyone claimed that the Paleo diet is _unhealthy_? From what I've seen the only complaints against it are that the claimed reason for it's effectiveness are not well supported.

I don't have any studies but it certainly seems healthier than the high-carb, low-fat diet which was promoted by the medical establishment for so long.

<comment><USER34> For what it's worth, U.S. World & News Report annualy assembles a panel of diet and health experts (<http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/experts>) to judge a variety diets. In 2011 and 2012, the paleo diet ranked as the worst. The criteria were health, weight-loss, and ease of following. In terms of nutrition, safety, rating for diabetes, and rating for heart health, it scored a 2/5, 2.3/5, 2.1/5, and 2/5 respectively.

<comment><USER33> That's pretty unscientific, purely based on the opinions of a collection of individuals.

It also completely ignores the very personal nature of a diet. What's easy to follow for one person will be very difficult for another.

And if you're rating a diet for heart health I'd like to actually see the rates of heart related illnesses for those following the diets.

<comment><USER34> I agree.

Although, many of the individuals are nutritionists at reputable scientific institutes, so hopefully their opinions are informed by scientific studies. There's no guarantee of that, of course, but at least their credentials are stated up front (unlike the many nutrition experts you'll find in any given message board).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Ancient Egypt certainly was a culture with agriculture so citing mummy studies to debunk paleo diets does not make much sense. Also ommitting the studies about actual living hunter gatherer tribes does not lend the argument much credibility.

I think paleo diet books should be scrutinized, but not be confused with actual science.

</comment><comment><USER36> I don't see what atherosclerosis in mummies from post-neolithic cultures has to do with the paleo diet.

</comment><comment><USER37> The paleo movement has long since moved away from "eat what paleoliths ate" to focus on "nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution".[1] Multiple thought leaders (e.g. Chriss Kresser[2] and Robb Wolf) have acknowledged genetic changes such as lactase persistence and changes in iron metabolism that have arisen in the last 10,000 years. Succesful inclusion of dietary grains however, requires fundamental changes in our digestive tract. From Paul Jaminet's "The Perfect Health Diet" pg 196:

"Grasses evolved in concert with grazing mammals: both originated at the same and they became common together. [...] To reproduce successfully despite being regularly eaten, grasses evolved [...] toxic compounds specifically designed to sabotage digestion in mammals. [...] Grazing mammals have evolved defenses for these toxins-for instance, digestive organs such as rumens that allow the brunt of the toxins to be taken by bacteria." [3]

So things like gluten, opioids, agglutinin, and adiponectin trigger autoimmune reactions, neuropathy, accelerate degenerative diseases, and prevent absorption of micronutrients.

I find it ironic OP admits the studies of mummified remains were agricultural societies and then asserts "certainly atherosclerosis was common even among hunter-gatherers." Analysis of modern hunter gatherers and the most reliable accounts of hunter gatherer populations (researchers that actually lived among those they studied) attest to remarkably low occurrences of diseases of civilization while eating diets devoid of grains and high in saturated fat. [4] Rather than a "fascination with the noble savage", paleo eating is about optimizing food quality (i.e. low toxins) and approximating the macronutrient ratios of hunter-gatherer populations. Certainly a segment of the population may thrive on a grain based diet of 70-80% carbohydrate, but that isn't the case for many.

As far as 'science based medicine' is concerned regarding paleo, there is one meaningful study I'm aware of. [5] However, I highly encourage a look at Robb Wolf's recent post,[1] a fantastic summary of the strengths EMB has (antiviral, trauma) compared to the weaknesses (degenerative diseases) and nutrition. He writes that most of what happens in medical practice is based off observation anyway, not double blind placebo controlled RCTs. I'm not against "evidence based" but it's not the only thing out there. Manipulating statistics [6] [7] and noncontextual studies are easily misleading. After experimenting (including a brief bout of vegetarianism) I've been eating paleo for about two years and am the leanest and most energetic I've ever been. The best way to solve the nutrition challenge is to change variables until you are happy with your health.

[1] [http://robbwolf.com/2013/03/15/evidence-based-medicine- fraud...](http://robbwolf.com/2013/03/15/evidence-based-medicine-fraud-double- standards-ignorance/) My favorite line from this post is "based of this wacky stuff called the best data we had at the time"

[2] [http://chriskresser.com/rhr-what-science-really-says- about-t...](http://chriskresser.com/rhr-what-science-really-says-about-the- paleo-diet-with-mat-lalonde)

[3] <http://perfecthealthdiet.com/notes/#Ch19>

[4] <http://perfecthealthdiet.com/notes/#Ch2>

[5] <http://www.staffanlindeberg.com/DiabetesStudy.html>

[6][http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2013/03/meat-consumption-and- mort...](http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2013/03/meat-consumption-and-mortality/)

[7] "The Great Cholesterol Con" by Malcolm Kendrick and "Good Calories Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes are thorough analyses of the problems in the field of nutrition.

</comment><comment><USER38> Dietdoctor.com <= Great source (and the guy is actually a real doctor).

<comment><USER11> Doctor as in MD? They don't necessarily know much about nutrition, either...

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> My paternal-grandfather, who lived to 102, when asked about diet responded, "eat variety, eat in moderation, have lots of colors on your plate"

Anecdotally, the folks I know who practice some kind of extreme diet, seem to spend an inordinate amount of time _thinking_ about their diet. All that planning, charts, dietary interactions, classes, support groups, supplements, and books books books...it never sticks, they end up sick and it all seems to be just a giant waste of time and energy and potential.

Now I'm going to say something that's going to be offensive to many folks out there, but it's coming from a similarly personal place and it's about how people use their control of food as a proxy to control their lives.

This mechanism seems to show up in a wide variety of ways, extremely picky eaters, binge eating, anorexia, etc. Some rise the level of psychological or health disorder, some are just patterns and habits. One pattern that seems to show up over and over (and over) again is highly specialized diets for no specific health disorder.

My mother jogs from diet to diet every few years, she dives deep into the diet she's currently landed on: Atkins, Paleo, Gluten-free, Vegetarian, etc. buys and reads dozens of books, finds food sources, and restocks the entire house. Growing up I was fed under probably no less than 6 or 7 diets of this sort. My mother is a treasure trove of semi-scientific nutritional information and alternative medicinal practices.

My mother had a very out of control young childhood. She uses food and her diet as a mechanism to try and bring control to her life because _that's something she can control_.

I've found a similar pattern in my friends who also practice a similar relationship to food. Divorced parents, absent fathers, attention draining mentally-ill siblings, alcoholic parents, long lists of childhood illnesses, etc. all seem to be the backstories of the people I know who have intense desires to control their foods.

Anecdotally, it seems to be that these diets speak to a deep place in people. These diets, and the endless books and "information" available in these dietary communities seems to make them feel like if they can just learn the information in the diet, they can achieve some kind of control over that aspect of their life. It's like a complex OCD tick that's only satiated in this way.

There's some endless justification for it, ethics, or evolution, or morals, or health or whatever. But it usually seems to just boil down to people who want and need to bring what they feel is order to a life that's careening out of control.

It usually ends, like it does with all of my friends and family who go down this route, with some mysterious health problem that they try and solve by first doubling down on their diet, then is miraculously solved by just eating like a normal person for a few months.

And inevitably they'll start to overthink their diet, and find some other direction to go and the cycle will repeat. Because their feeling of wellbeing can't overwhelm their feeling of establishing control.

I've heard almost this exact story [1], word for word, dozens of times over the years.

[1] - [http://kristensraw.com/blog/2013/03/17/my-vegan-diet- caused-...](http://kristensraw.com/blog/2013/03/17/my-vegan-diet-caused- health-problems-would-primal-paleo-or-real-food-be-better/)

Eating healthy is not that hard, and it doesn't really require that much thought or time. You don't really have to read lots of books on the subject, or adhere to an ideology, write blogs, or read food manifestos.

Just "eat variety, eat in moderation, have lots of colors on your plate".

</comment><comment><USER40> "undergird" .. !?

<comment><USER41> yup, it's good. From Merriam-Webster:

"to form the basis or foundation of : strengthen, support <facts and statistics subtly undergird his commentary"</comment></comment>


Beware the Premature Pivot, Getting Traction in Year 6 - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/09/27/after-five-years-toil-document-sharing-startup-edocr-hits-momentum-doubling-user-base-50000-6-months/

<comment><USER2> Yeap! its taken bit longer than we initially anticipated

</comment><comment><USER3> Looking forward to further improvements!</comment>


Our Work Here Is Done (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.webstandards.org/2013/03/01/our-work-here-is-done/ <comment><USER2> What exactly are you trying to say? This article is 4 years old and there's no context</comment>


Embrace the Paradox of Specificity (Or Risk Selling Something No One Wants) - <AUTHOR> https://www.jjellyfish.com/blog/embrace-the-paradox-of-specificity-or-risk-selling-something-no-one-wants <comment><AUTHOR> B2B Founders: \- designing a go-to-market? \- seeking to validate/expand into a new market i.e. U.S.? \- moving up-market into the Enterprise?

We've highlighting some suggestions in doing so in link above.

Feel free to drop questions or feedback. Happy to answer.

\- Jen</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best backup solution for shared / VPS hosts? - <AUTHOR>

I manage a handful of web services spread across multiple shared hosting accounts and VPSes. I do manual backups on an occasional basis, but the process of backing up all of the web content combined with databases and, in the case of the VPSes, settings and config files, is very tedious and exactly the sort of thing that should be automated.<p>I've been working on and off on a batch file to automate the FTP backups / database dumps, but I'm curious how everyone else manages offsite backups. Are there any clear market leaders in server-backups-as-a-service, or any open source software that already does this well? <comment><USER2> For databases I use the appropriate database dump tool (pg_dump, mysqldump, etc), gzip the output, then it gets rsync'd to a backup system, then sync'd to S3 for longer term archival.

For logs, they're rotated daily by logrotate.d and compressed and then it's just the rsync + sync to S3 part. I may also sync to another cloud storage provider in the future.

So, it's not a system per-say - a combination of good open-source tools and scripts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like this would work great for a single server, but it's alot of work to set up a backup system like this for multiple servers (including shared hosting accounts with limited / no shell access).</comment></comment>


The "free speech debate" isn't about free speech - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/7/22/21325942/free-speech-harpers-letter-bari-weiss-andrew-sullivan <comment><USER2> > The real debate here is not about the principle of free speech, but the much > grayer question of how we draw its boundaries. What kinds of speech should > be morally out of bounds?

"All speech is free, some speech is more free than others."

<comment><USER3> word. This construction they have provided suggest the author doesn't really understand what "Free as in Speech" means.

<comment><USER4> The author specifically points out that speech is restricted everywhere and has always been.

<comment><USER5> Restrictions are usually on specific modes (ie. no violence, obscenity, etc) rather than the content of the speech. Most of the current attempts to restrict speech focus on contents.

<comment><USER6> I don't follow. Why draw a distinction between the "mode" of speech, and its "content", and what exactly is the difference?

With apologies, it sounds like a "no true Scotsman" position, where censorship is only real when it bolsters one side of the argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Allowing one type of speech over others could be attacked by enemies as being "supportive" of those viewpoints as by your own decision you find it to be "reasonable" enough to fit within the boundaries of free speech.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Abstract appeals to "free speech" and "liberal values" obscure the fact that > what's being debated is not anyone's right to speech, but rather their right > to air that speech in specific platforms like the New York Times without > fear of social backlash.

Well, yeah, isn't that concerning? How can a paper of record seriously discuss & analyze controversial issues of the day if journalists are afraid to even air controversial speech? Is it not their journalistic duty to inform readers of other prominent views so they can make decisions in a democracy? Doesn't that duty lie at the heart of liberal values, isn't that why we value the abstract concept of free speech in the first place?

The entire point of the Opinion section is to bring in relevant outside views into the public eye, yet the NYT editorial page editor was pushed out for allowing a sitting Congressman to say what he thinks [1]. How can the NYT credibly claim to inform its readers on what's going on in the world when they won't even publish the views of an elected representative?

I don't care what you think of gender critical theory or Tom Cotton or neo- Nazi views, they are increasingly relevant in American discourse and journalists should not be hiding them from the public. If you're a journalist, use your Pulitzer-prize-winning words to contextualize it, to argue against it, to expose us to your perspective. It is cowardly to passive aggressively cut professional ties with colleagues you disagree with in order to effectively silence them.

[1] [https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/07/nyt-opinion- bennet-...](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/07/nyt-opinion-bennet- resigns-cotton-op-ed-306317)

</comment><comment><USER9> Dupe; previous discussion is at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23940625](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23940625)

</comment><comment><USER10> Cancel Culture is the physical manifestation of freedom of association and the effects of market forces on rational actors.

People pretending to be L/libertarians hate it.

If you don't want to lose your job maybe don't tweet shit?

What's worse than the fake libertarians "angwy" that rational actors tend to act rationally when associated with ideas they (or the market) find(s) abhorrent are the people who think tweets are "speech" that Twitter cannot arbitrarily control.

HN techbros tend to be more vocal than average about "speech" and "freedom" but are the first to report/hide/criticize, much like the fauxlibertarian stuffed shirts and billionaire-controlled free marketeer groups who keep suing social media sites for deleting their hateful and bigoted comments. Or DARING to not do business with them.

Thankfully judges actually understand rights and freedoms and have read more about them than what is contained within never-opened pocket constitution that techbros like to pretend to have read keep swatting them down in court like the losers they are.

Techbro: "Freedom!!!"

Corporate Board: "Ok, we're going to practice our freedom of association and disassociate from your bigoted ass. We like money and hate criticism."

Techbro: "No, not like that..... Only speech and guns. No association-- that doesn't count."

<comment><USER11> > HN techbros tend to be more vocal than average about "speech" and "freedom" > but are the first to report/hide/criticize, much like the fauxlibertarian > stuffed shirts and billionaire-controlled free marketeer groups who keep > suing social media sites for deleting their hateful and bigoted comments. Or > DARING to not do business with them.

^ I'm pretty sure this post breaks a rule or two.

This is not Facebook/Twitter, things are not so black and white. You can hold some libertarian values without being a caricature, likewise for any other value system.

<comment><USER10> What rules?

You can't have rules with free speech, amirite?

Just like collective groups of rationally acting rational actors CANNOT and MUST NOT have rules on how they associate or disassociate with other actors.

At least, that's what everyone downvoting pretends to believe.

Or maybe I'm wrong and there are rules.

And if you break them you get cancelled— as the market dictates.

If this was a diatribe about how (minority group x) actually isn't (straw man) and twitter deleted it every single one of you knuckleheads would be screaming FREE SPEECH FREE SPEECH END CANCEL CULTURE if Twitter admins hid it.

Or is twitter free speech but HN comments not? For... reasons...

C'mon, we both know this. Let the veil down just a little for once.

Just pretend to not be hypocritical tar pits of fractured and faulty logic for five minutes.

Maybe I should be more offensive so that people twist themselves into knots defending me, and then complain about rights and freedom while waving my pocket constitution when my comment gets deleted?

<comment><USER11> As I said, things are not so black and white. You clearly seem frustrated, but I don't think you're making the point you intend to be making.</comment></comment></comment></comment>