The Gluten Lie

And other myths about what you eat. By Alan Levinovitz, PHD

How do you tell good science from bad? I've thought over that question many times. It's tough to answer. Bad science often offers clarity, hope and a compelling story… if you eat the good nutrients and stay away from the bad, then your diseases will go away. Here are the studies to back it up.

Good science is more nuanced… Yes some nutrients are helpful, and too much of others can be harmful, but there is no promise that eating more of one and less of the other will ride you of your disease. Here are a bunch of contradictory studies. The science isn't settled yet.

Levinovitz spends the bulk of the book telling the history of four modern diet fads-- gluten free diets, sugar as a toxin, low salt diets and super foods. Each fad follows a familiar trajectory. In our natural past we didn't eat that thing. We were healthy and happy then. Then we became modern and started eating that thing. We got sick and obese. I returned to the natural diet of our past and stopped eating that thing. Now I am healthy and happy. That thing is evil.

That narrative goes way back. The sugar-is-a-toxin fad comes and goes a few times a century.

For most people, gluten, sugar, fat, salt are not bad. Eat them in reasonable quantities and you'll be OK.

When a disease has the same symptoms as panic or anxiety disorder, then you should suspend judgment on the causes of that disease.

Any dietary discipline is better than no dietary discipline. When you are careful with what you eat (perhaps in a misguided attempt to avoid a particular bad nutrient) then of course you will loose weight.

The book includes a bonus fake fad diet-- the unpacked diet, which the author goes over pointing out all the fallacies in. It's a fun read, but kind of unnecessary. I suspect it's only there because the auther needed to pad out the length of the book.

For most people, Polon's food rules are still our best guide… "Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants."

the life-changing magic of tidying up.

The Japanese art of decluttering and organizing.

I didn't know that decluttering is not a word. Yet as I write this, I see a little red squiggly under it. The suggested alternatives are cluttering and uncluttering.

As a society are we currently so obsessed with tidying up that we now need a new word  to describe it?

Anyways-- "the life-changing magic of tidying up" is a nice little book…

1. Discard things first. Only keep things that spark joy in you.
2. Tidy up by category, not by location.
3. Tidy up as a special event, not every day.
4. Storage space should be assigned to make things easy to put away, no to get things out.
5. Store things vertically, not in piles.
6. Put photos and mementos in albums and display cases. Throw them out if you cannot do so.

The book who is also a little bombastic. As much as I like a clean room, anyone who suggests that tidying up is life changing magic, may need to get out of the house a little more often.

Discarding is always hard.  I have a large collection of things packed away, for years, that I keep for no good reason. Every now and then, as luck would have it, a situation will pop up where I need one of those thingamabobs. I'm sure that if I did a cost benefit analysis of all the thingamabobs in storage, that throwing them away would be the right thing to do. But I will need one of them just often enough to make the decision tough.

The Measure of Reality. Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600

By Alfred W. Crosby

This is a history of how western society incorporated quantification into it's daily life. Numbers went from being magical things in and of themselves to being quantities that measured something else.

Out go Roman Numerals. In come Indo-Arabic digits.

The clock, the ruler and algebra dramatically changed our lives. And not without controversy. Some questioned the necessity of clocks and calendars-- "My serfs know when it's morning, noon & night, spring & fall."

Visualization, Music, Painting, Book Keeping all underwent dramatic changes once they were learnt in terms of quantification.

Brainwashed. The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience.

Neuroscience just isn't ready to be a trusted day to day technology for lie deduction, product marketing and the like.

Remember the amygdala and the amygdala hijack that supposedly occurs when rage takes over your brain? Well, the amygdala is responsible for much more than processing anger. It also processes novel experiences. So what emotion does a lite up amygdala indicate?

If I say "Pin, syringe, thread, haystack, prick. ' and then ask you if you head the world 'needle' Your brain scan will indicate you are telling the truth if you said 'yes' 

Melancholia

Why do movies like Melancholia get made? Not that it's a bad movie. But it is an art movie with little hope of ever being profitable. This is a movie about unhappy people at the end of the world. Not a sci-fi spectacular. But a well-acted drama.

Does art need to be profitable. Of course not. But let's digress into the money. This picture had a budget of over $7,000,000.00 of someone else's (Not the Director's) money. It was played in theaters world wide and is also available on for-profit streaming services. So we are well into the realm of commerce.

I didn't hate Melancholia. In fact I had a certain fascination with it. I've wanted to watch it for a long time. But every time I put it on, I could only take 15 or 20 minutes of it. I didn't care deeply for the well acted characters in their well directed situation. So I'd pause it and watch a little more the next night.

Hmmm. Don't know what to conclude here.

Two days later I realize that I keep thinking about Melancholia. I went back to YouTube to watch the opening scene again. I didn't realize how beautiful and haunting it was. The first time I watched the move, without knowing the plot or characters, the opening scene was confusing. Now that I know a little more about the movie I could pay attention to the images and music without trying to figure it out.

As art, It's successful.

 

Man's Search for Meaning

Victor Frankl

I've read this multiple times.

"Live your life as if this is the second time, and you have already behaved as wrongly as you are about to do now."

Freedom without responsibility becomes random and meaningless.

Frankly survived the concentration camps of WWII. Half of this book covers that story. It's very compelling.

The second half covers Logo-therapy… the psycho therapy of finding meaning. Basically, you have to find your own meaning in life, in how you approach challenges, in how you make choices and especially in your attitude. Everyone's destiny and situation is different. Don't expect God or the Universe to tell you how to live. Since you are free, than is your choice.

Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo and the Battled that Defined a Generation.

by Blake J Harris.

This is the story of console video games in the early 90's focusing on Sega Genesis & Nintendo's SNES. I think the author had a lot of access to Tom Kalinske, the CEO of Sega of America as the book largely focuses on his story.

It's fascinating how Kalinske lead the Genesis a  huge success, but failed to lead Sega to create a strong next gen console. Clearly internal politics paid a huge part in this. Sega of Japan was never interested in following Kalinske's lead even though Kalinske had huge ideas and great foresight. He wanted to partner with Sony. When that partnership failed (Due to SOJ's cold response) Sony took the core tech and went on to create the Play Station. He wanted to partner with SGI. When that partnership failed (again due to SOJ), SGI took their core tech and went on to partner with Nintendo on the N64.

The book never really gets to the bottom of Sega of Japan's cold relationship with Kalinske and Sega of America. I think that says as much about Kalinske as it does about the book. Kalinske's failure as a leader was that he could never establish a relationship with SOJ. The employees their are largely faceless and unknown where as Sega of America is described in great detail. Perhaps if Kalinske had delegated or fostered the Sony and SGI relationships through SOJ, rather than trying to make them his own successes, then the Sega & Sony story would be very different.

This is a very readable book.