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| 0063050943
| 9780063050945
| 0063050943
| 4.09
| 2,583
| unknown
| May 10, 2022
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really liked it
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The author is a long-time blogger, so his book is written in the easy to read style, liberally peppered with references and quotes of all sorts. At on
The author is a long-time blogger, so his book is written in the easy to read style, liberally peppered with references and quotes of all sorts. At one point it felt a bit like reading an aggregator (here's what all the smart people who have spent their lives researching the current topic under discussion have to say), but I suppose it's borrowing the credibility of others (not I say is this prof say one). A good confirmation bias book validating my general life philosophy that life is ultimately about relationships (see the very first line of the quotes below). Examines the various relationship aphorisms (a friend in need is a friend in deed, no man is an island, love conquers all, judging a book by its cover) in much detail. Overall a good non-fic book to dive into, on a highly relatable topic (on relating hur) ___ The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships with other people - conclusion of the Grant study at Harvard Medical School (268 men over 80 years) The fundamental core of relationships is the stories our brains weave to create identity, agency and community - and how those stories not only bind us together but can tear us apart if we're not careful. Often our problems with others start with our inaccurate perception of them. (suspect/criminal) Profiling is basically unintentional cold reading. When dealing with strangers, you correctly detect their thoughts and feelings 20% of the time. With close friends you hit 30%, and married couples peak at 35%. Yet we all think we're awesome at reading others. Egocentric anchoring - we're too caught up in our own perspective - so we exaggerate the extent to which others think, believe and feel as we do. How readable people are ranges widely. Most of the reason we're able to read people isn't that we're skilled, is that they're expressive. Giving a crap makes our brains better at almost everything because our default is barely paying attention to anything. When we set a high bar for accountability, our opinions don't become inflexible until we've done a thorough review of the evidence. Empathic accuracy (aka mind-reading) is a positive if it doesn't uncover information threatening to the relationship, but if it does, it's a negative. People often want to learn how to improve the accuracy of their social judgments, but it is unclear if seeing social reality is a healthy goal. Strict reciprocity is a profound negative in friendship. Being in a hurry to repay a deby is often seen as an insult. With buddies we discount how much costs and benefits matter. 70% of marital satisfaction is due to the couple's friendship. Tom Rath says it is 5 times as critical to a good marriage as physical intimacy. The friendship bit With no formal rules, expectations are blurry. This renders friendships fragile. They wilt without care, but there are no rules for what is required, and negotiating specifics is uncomfortable. Without institutional obligations, the upkeep friendships require must be very deliberate. And in a busy world, that is beyond what most of us can handle. Often the 30s are the decade where friendships go to die. Around that time is when you gather all your friends for your wedding - and then promptly never see them again. Friendship is more real because either person can walk away at any time. Its fragility proves its purity. Touching base in some form every 2 weeks is a good target to shoot for. Display the costly signals of time and vulnerability to forge and maintain true friendships. Hug a friend today. We don't celebrate our friendships enough. To Aristotle - friends are disposed towards each as they are disposed to themselves - a friend is another self. A series of experiments demonstrates that the closer you are to a friend, the more the boundary between the two of you blurs. We actually confuse elements of who they are with who we are. When you're tight with a friend, your brain has to work harder to distinguish the two of you. Kids with Williams Syndrome (WS) are the only children ever found to show zero racial bias. Putting yourself in someone else's shoes makes you worse at relating to them (or trying to read their minds). Dale Carnegie's book is great at the early stages of relationships, and it is excellent for transactional relationships with business contacts. The next time you're with someone you care about, or someone you want to deepen your friendship with, follow THE SCARY RULE (TM), if it scares you, say it. You can discourage narcissists from questionable behaviour by asking them "what will people think?" they may not feel guilt, but they do feel shame, and narcissists are very concerned about appearances. Divorce is the #2 most stressful life event, behind death of a spouse. It also puts a permanent dent in your happiness. Marriage is no guarantee of health or happiness; it's more like gambling - big wins or big losses. In the Bella Coola society of the pacific northwest, competition for the right in-laws was sometimes so intense that people would get married to another family's dog. As Alexandre Dumas quipped - the bonds of wedlock are so heavy it takes two, sometimes three to carry them. Love marriages are a fairly new concept - in 1960s - a third of men and 3/4 of women didn't think love was essential before getting married. Romantic love not only overrides rationality but also signals the overriding of rationality. As Donald Yates said - people who are sensible about love are incapable of it. Robert Seidenberg: Love is a human religion in which another person is believed in. Relationship illusions predict greater satisfaction, love and trust, and less conflict and ambivalence in both dating and marital relationships. Emotionally discounting the negative - it's not a big deal. Flaws are 'charming'. This attitude helps grease the wheels of a relationship. We're just more accommodating when our lovestruck brains dial down our reactions to our loved one's flaws. Co-habiting before marriage may burn through the period of crazy love before settling down to get married. By the time they tie the knot, entropy has set in. Inequality in the world - 15% of the people are having 50% of the sex. The 1800s Romantic era was about the idea that feelings, inspiration and the unconscious were more important than rationality and rules (the age of Enlightenment). Poe's work was very appropriate for the sullen, attention-poor years of adolescence because morbid short stories. You scream because you care. Once Negative Sentiment Override (NSO) has set in, you stop caring. Fighting doesn't end marriages, avoiding conflict does. Doing things together that are stimulating and challenging stretches our self-concept wider and provides a buzz. The angle of attack is simple: never stop dating All couples argue about money. Why? Because money is all about values. It’s a quantification of what’s important to you UCSB professor Shelly Gable has found that how couples celebrate can actually be more important than how they fight In accepting them as they are, you can still focus on and encourage those aspects aligned with their ideal self, who they most want to be. The stories we have about our relationships are usually intuitive and unconscious. But they’re there. Some people have a “business” story where they’re all about making sure things in the relationship run smoothly. Others do have a “fairy tale” story of wanting to save or be saved. And there are those who have a “home” story where everything is centered on building a lovely environment. There are an infinite number of stories. Talk to your partner and find out their “ideal” and “actual” story. Instead of a new story of love through a new relationship, you can forge a new story with the same person An economics study titled “Putting a Price Tag on Friends, Relatives, and Neighbours” put the happiness value of a better social life at an additional $131,232 per year. Loneliness is a subjective feeling. It’s not necessarily about physical isolation. It’s hard to understate just how many profound ideas and cultural shifts—political, philosophical, religious, and economic—came about in the nineteenth century, moving the individual to the forefront and sticking community in the back seat. Secularism. Utilitarianism. Darwinism. Freudianism. Capitalism. And consumerism. The social contract gave way to autonomy, and we went from communal to competitive. what your brain hears is you are also now, fundamentally, alone. And that’s why you can be lonely in a crowd. We think a lot about the great things we gained from this story shift but have trouble pinning down what we lost. There’s just a vague feeling of unease and an ever-present hum of anxiety. It’s awesome to feel in control and free, not bound by social obligations, but your brain knows that also means others are also free and not obligated to look out for you. And millions of years of evolution taught our physiology that that means one thing. Help is not coming. You’re on your own. Celebrities have to put up walls to deal with the flood of attention. Other people always wanting something from you makes it difficult to trust anyone. Friends become envious. And so being loved by everyone often ends up producing what the authors call “emotional isolation Konrad Zuse, who is considered the father of the modern computer, said, “The danger that computers will become like humans is not as great as the danger that humans will become like computers when someone cares for us, the more attention they give us, the more competent they seem, the better tools they use, the more time they spend with us, the more our bodies notice. And then your body can tell you a new story: Someone is caring for us. I don’t need to shout at you with pain anymore. We’re safe now. And it turns the “NEEDS SERVICE” light off. placebos do have an active ingredient: human beings caring for one another. [Depression] wasn’t just a problem caused by the brain going wrong. It was caused by life going wrong (without anyone having your back) Sociologist Charles Fritz did a study in 1959 interviewing over nine thousand survivors of disaster, and he found that when modern society goes to hell, we return to our natural state of cooperation. During war, psychiatric admissions decline. This phenomenon has been documented time and time again. When Belfast experienced riots in the 1960s, depression plummeted in the districts with the most violence and went up where there was none. Lee Marvin once said, “Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.” You’re not the only character in the story. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 2023
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Jan 16, 2023
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Jan 13, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 0393881555
| 9780393881554
| 0393881555
| 4.34
| 40,617
| May 04, 2021
| May 04, 2021
|
really liked it
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A look into people who tried to stave off impending disaster, in what ways they could, despite willful blindness. __ The author's summary of this book : A look into people who tried to stave off impending disaster, in what ways they could, despite willful blindness. __ The author's summary of this book : "I think this particular story is about the curious talents of a society, and how those talents are wasted if not led." All science is modelling. In all science you are abstracting from nature. The question is: "is it a useful abstraction?" The most important part of the medical history isn't the medical history, it is the social history. The decisions Charity Dean made as a public health officer were less those made by a card counter at a blackjack table, and more like those made by a platoon leader in combat. The hard truth was that there was never time to wait for more data. The moment an infectious disease appeared, decisions cried out to be made. (post 9/11 attacks) What positive Richard Hatchett remembered was the profound social cohesion and solidarity of communities and the desire of individuals to serve and contribute. That sounds superficially like patriotism and in a sense its patriotism of the best sort, but it was more complex than that. It was less about national identity and more of communities coming together. It had more in common with the social cohesion that occurs in the wake of a tornado or hurricane, than it did with the nationalism of people at war. "If some other dumb fuck can do it, so can you." - Carter Mecher's father when his son asked him if he thought he could become a doctor. If you visit a hospital to investigate some problem, visit more than once, as on the first visit the locals assume you have come to merely find fault and assign blame rather than enlist them as partners in the hunt for the flaw in the system. He'd learned that from some field anthropologists whom he had sought out. It was during the 2nd visit that trust emerged. Carter Mecher was less interested in answering the question he'd been asked than in finding a more interesting question to answer. Bob Glass didn't tell his daughter he was moonlighting at the White House with her science fair project. On an average day, school buses carried twice as many people as the entire US public transportation system. One couldn't design a better disease transmission system than our school system - Carter Mecher Experience is making the same mistake over and over again, but with greater confidence. Viruses that threatened moneymaking animals tended to be thoroughly studied and well-known. The last mile problem in medical science, according to Joe DeRisi - Corporations were only interested in stuff that made money. Academics were only interested in anything worthy of publication, but once the paper was done they tended to lose interest. The government was meant to fill in the blanks, but the US government mystified Joe. He'd visited the CDC to explain the new genomic technology only to be met with boredom and blank stares. The entire US government had been drifting that way for some time - management jobs once done by career civil servants being turned into roles performed by people appointed by the president. This created managerial inexperience: the average tenure of appointees fluctuated between 1.5 - 2 years, depending on the administration. Another was the kind of person selected, there were exceptions, but odds favoured the pleaser. The person who did not present risks to the White House's political operation. The person who deferred, rather than made, hard decisions. Chamberlain, not Churchill. What if we do all these things and we close the schools and the result is we have a very mild epidemic? And people will look around and say "Why did we do all this?" They (the Wolverines) decided that their hides would be saved by countries that bungled the pandemic response - by pointing to them as an example. They never imagined that the US would become the counterfactual, the bad example for the rest of the world. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 14, 2022
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Nov 19, 2022
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Nov 14, 2022
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Hardcover
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| 1788164938
| 9781788164931
| 1788164938
| 4.23
| 2,973
| Jun 04, 2019
| Jul 02, 2020
|
really liked it
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A nice short read about the hole we're in, and ways we can stop digging ourselves deeper. ________ All the environmental crises we are now experiencing A nice short read about the hole we're in, and ways we can stop digging ourselves deeper. ________ All the environmental crises we are now experiencing are due to the single delusion that we can be independent of nature. The earth eliminates CO2 extremely slowly, through the weathering of rock.CO2 dissolved in rainwater reacts with rock, washes down rivers and out to sea, and is used by marine organisms to build shells or skeletons. When these animals die, the C molecule from CO2 ends up in the ocean bed. 4 warming-related effects on agriculture - 1. increase in extreme rainfall, raises the chance of crop failure and erosion of fertile soil. 2. sea-level rise, causing salination of groundwater and flooding of arable land. 3. increase in drought and greater chance of wildfires. 4. higher CO2 concentrations reduce crops' ability to absorb nutrients from the soil, as the plants use CO2 to produce more sugar at expense of nutrients. Climate change isn't a question of yes or no, but of how bad. The optimal temperature for economic development (as measured by GDP) is about 13 degrees celsius. Agroecology - growing crops in mixed cultivations that complement each other. The state is the greatest inventor of all time - because it can push through things until they reach economic scales/tipping points. Renewable energy is becoming cheaper, so governments can mitigate the pain of inevitable closure for fossil fuel mines (e.g. coal). We urgently need to talk about 'where we are going'. An emissions or climate policy in and of itself is useless without a vision. What would a zero-emissions future look like? Simply avoiding the climate apocalypse is not compelling, it's despair inducing. Divestment campaigns (removing fossil fuel companies from investment plans) create more political space for action. If the image of a company or industry is under pressure, employees would rather opt for a different employer, and governments have fewer qualms introducing policies that affect the associated company or sector. 'Solar envy' - people are more likely to buy solar panels when their neighbours have them. A similar effect exists for electric cars. The first rule of holes - if you are in one, stop digging. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 10, 2022
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May 29, 2022
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May 30, 2022
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Paperback
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| 0062338803
| 9780062338808
| 4.42
| 6,617
| May 14, 2019
| May 14, 2019
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really liked it
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Inside look into the generic drug industry, the perils of trying to regulate overseas manufacturers / suppliers, and what happens when politics and sa
Inside look into the generic drug industry, the perils of trying to regulate overseas manufacturers / suppliers, and what happens when politics and safety clash. Read it, then pay attention to where your drugs are made. ____ If a company's culture permits small lapses in safety regulations, catastrophic failure is all the more likely. "When I get on a plane and there are cup stains on the tray table, you wonder if they're taking care of the engine". But company culture is also affected by country culture. Is the society hierarchical or collaborative? Does it demand deference to authority? In India, altruism was often greeted with suspicion. The Haryana Urban Development Authority seemed to have no urban plan other than to welcome developers. Ranbaxy had to confront the fact that they had virtually no 36 month stability data to submit for any US commercial batches. This was more than an "oops", this was the equivalent of trying to read the map upside down - after already crashing your car into a tree. Sample whistleblower email from Thakur: "I fear for the poor people in Africa who buy these fake medication from WHO and PEPFAR in the hope of getting better, but no, they do not get better, they get died." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 11, 2021
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Dec 02, 2021
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Nov 11, 2021
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ebook
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| 1473576407
| 9781473576407
| 1473576407
| 4.04
| 4,788
| unknown
| May 14, 2020
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really liked it
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A easy to read book broken into topical chapters for easy digestion (hehe). The author's first point is that we are all not average when it comes to d
A easy to read book broken into topical chapters for easy digestion (hehe). The author's first point is that we are all not average when it comes to diet and response to food, and so to try things for ourselves. As such he avoids making sweeping recommendations, which I thought was nice. ___ There is no one-size-fits-all dietary recommendation. Different people have different sensitivity to salt, sugar, fat, different gut bacteria compositions (microbiomes). We have different preferences for when in the day to eat (e.g. whether to skip breakfast [which is ok to do, btw]) Increasing energy expenditure through exercise is not very significant, as you would only be affecting about 10% of your daily energy expenditure (the majority (~>60%) is basal metabolic load which doesn't change too much). 10% is also the ballpark you could burn off through small motions like fidgeting. The less cooked the same piece of food is, the less calories the body will be able to absorb from it. Foods interact as well, as eating some foods with others (see the nasi lemak/chicken rice x GI study ). People even digest types of food (e.g. starches) at different rates, with some producing up to 3 times the amylase of others. All evidence shows that regular eating of junk (aka ultra-processed) food leads to the greatest increase of weight and ill health compared to other foods. The amount of sugar salt and fat in ultra-processed foods was originally there to help it keep fresh longer. There are stealth junk foods, like sweet fruit yoghurts, biscuits like Oreos and digestives, and many juice drinks (not fruit juices). Freezing (immediately after preparation) is a good way of preserving nutrients, e.g. for fruit. Many of the health benefits of veganism is probably due to eating a greater volume and variety of plants, especially fibre. In France, raising a child on a vegan diet is considered criminal neglect. Veganism's main nutritional issues are a shortage of B12 and iron. Meat replacements are often highly processed with many additives to get back the feeling of meat. Instead of being a strict vegetarian/vegan, consider being a flexitarian instead. Cut down on meat, fish, milk. It's good for the environment too. Pregnant women do not need to eat for two. At most they require an additional 200 calories a day, and that is in the last trimester. A lot of pregnancy weight gain could be due to this myth being perpetuated. A range of observational studies has consistently shown that a good diet, one high in plants and seeds and variety, is linked to reduced levels of depression. TL;dr - eat a wide range of plants and seeds, though there's no need to avoid anything completely. Unless you've tried cutting it (where it = meat /milk /nuts / relatives' cooking) out and you feel better. Question the science (oftentimes its sponsored by 'interested parties'), the labels, and especially the marketing. Experiment with meal timings and skipping meals (e.g. intermittent fasting) Use real food, not supplements (food is more than the sum of its parts) Avoid ultra-processed foods (rule of thumb: anything with >10 ingredients) Reduce regular blood sugar and blood fat spikes. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 25, 2021
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Mar 05, 2021
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Mar 06, 2021
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ebook
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| 0316628212
| 9780316628211
| 0316628212
| 4.01
| 2,747
| Oct 27, 2020
| Oct 27, 2020
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really liked it
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Great primer on the coronavirus, with as much removal of political commentary as possible. Though reading it in 2021 is a bit of a time tunnel, especia Great primer on the coronavirus, with as much removal of political commentary as possible. Though reading it in 2021 is a bit of a time tunnel, especially when reading about vaccines that have been rolled out. A sign of how quickly science advanced in 2020. ______ SARS-1 was too deadly, so it was harder to spread as its victims died too fast. For the same reason Ebola epidemics burn out quickly. In contrast SARS-2's patients survive and move about for longer, spreading it far wider. SARS-2 also has a positive mismatch period, where patients can be infectious but not symptomatic. This stymies traditional public health responses based on detection and quarantine. Because of these factors (low fatality high transmissability), probably at least 40% of people worldwide will be infected in the end, perhaps as high as 60%. The pattern of school-age children and working adults being infected but recovering and very young /old people dying is a general phenomenon. The virus spreads among people out and about at school and work; it is then brought home and kills the age extremes (traditional U shaped age-mortality curve). SARS-2 is different because it has a reverse L shaped curve - the very young are hardly affected but the elderly are affected worse. Immunising the elderly, while it will reduce their deaths, does not have much effect on the actual course of the epidemic. Immunising working age people can break the chain of transmission through social networks. Doctors in medieval Europe were at special risk during the plague (as healthcare workers always are in epidemics), but so were a hodgepodge of people in other professions, e.g. priests, gravediggers, bakers (grain attracted rats), and even street vendors. This list is analogous to our modern day predicament. Essential workers who sell us food always seem to be at risk. Quarantine (based on the Italian word for forty, quaranta), was a Venice practice to sequester arriving ships for 40 days. If you see when vaccines were invented against the backdrop of their respective disease's infection curves, you'll see the arrows are usually on the long flat part of the curve, well after the initial descent. The argument is that modern medicine is not the main cause of infectious diseases going away, but socioeconomic improvements and the implementatiion of public health measures. (McKeown hypothesis). Testing and restrictions go hand in hand. Testing allows restrictions to be targeted, rather than blanket. Testing allows the efficacy of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to be validated. The impact of banning occasional large gathering like sporting events or religious services comes nowhere close to that of school closures. School closures are the most consequential NPI, short of a mass lockdown. And proactive school closures (before cases are detected in the school) are more effective than reactive closures (once cases are detected), which are inevitable if a disease is running rampant in the population anyway. An economy involves exchanges and these depend on social interactions. It's hard to have an economy (or even a functioning society) if people are unable to interact. Plagues are a time of loss, not just of life, but of livelihoods, and routines, connections, liberty, and much else. The emotional responses and behaviours (grief, anxiety, fear, anger) can themselves rightly be seen as foundational parts of epidemics. One might even say that the definition of an epidemic should include the fact that it can have outsize psychological effects. Public health response to epidemics must also be driven by the psychological dimensions. During times of plague, the impulse to blame outsiders or minorities is strong. Plagues can amplify existing social divisions and often create new ones - between the sick and healthy, or clean and contaminated. Americans are famously charitable. On a per capita basis, Americans donate 7 times more than Europeans. Even more striking, individual donations make up 81% of American charitable giving, far more than foundations (14%) or corporations (5%). Dismissing racial differences in health outcomes on the grounds of their being mediated by other factors is a bit like saying that, after adjusting for the quality of ingredients, the ambience, the sophistication of the menu, and the existence of a good wine list, there is no difference between a meal at Mcdonald's and one at the fanciest restaurant in NYC. Crises are a relationship accelerator. They tend to hasten happy couples to increase their commitment and nudge unhappy ones to part ways. An increased sense of shared identity is very common among those experiencing catastrophes, and this is a powerful source of cooperative behaviour and goodwill. One way is that a widely shared peril erodes prior divisions, widening the category of "us". Ironically, success in deploying NPIs to control the disease made it harder to assess the efficacy of pharmaceutical interventions (e.g. not enough people at risk of COVID to test vaccine efficacy). "Hospital admission is not a benign procedure". There is a high trust (80-90+%) in scientists, but less trust in science. Author's conjecture is that peple trust science right until it conflicts with their personal, religious or ethical values. Over very long time frames, we reach an uneasy genetic truce with pathogens. Herd immunity (natural or vaccinated), pathogens becoming milder (so that they can continue to circulate), or we mutate to become more resistant. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 26, 2021
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Jan 31, 2021
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Jan 26, 2021
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Hardcover
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| 0062429175
| 9780062429179
| B01GCCT3DE
| 3.56
| 1,699
| Apr 25, 2017
| Apr 25, 2017
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really liked it
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A fun read that was more than a little relatable, this book covers a wide aspect of what being awkward means and some suggested ways to make social si
A fun read that was more than a little relatable, this book covers a wide aspect of what being awkward means and some suggested ways to make social situations easier to navigate. ____ Awkward people see the world different from non-awkward people, using a narrow spotlight (fragmented viewpoint), rather than taking in the big social picture (tone in the room, level of formality etc). This spotlighted attention gravitates towards nonsocial areas that are systematic in nature, which is why they like the rules of math or logic of coding. "Awkward people often tell me : 'I wish that people would give me a chance because I think that they will like me'". The guiding question of social deliberations - how do you fit in without losing yourself? - manners and etiquette serve as the common ground, as baseline expectations. When individuals adhere to expectations, such as friendly greetings or turn taking, they are demonstrating in small ways that they want to be prosocial, that they are aligned to the broader goals of the group. The difference between social anxiety and awkwardness is anxiety is unreasonable fear about being inappropriate, while awkwardness refers to (concern over) one's actual ability to be appropriate. Awkward people sometimes have a heightened sense of fairness or compassion because they have been on the receiving end of unfair or unkind acts. Being socially skilled is like a language, that most people are fluent in. The three important cues that give awkward people trouble: non-verbal behaviours, facial expressions, and decoding language used during social conversations. There is often an agitated vibe that characterises your interactions with awkward people, giving the appearance that they are nervous, upset, or irritated. If you view the awkward people as someone experiencing the interaction as particularly intense, the unusual vibe starts to make more sense. As a coping mechanism, awkward people learn to temper this intensity by avoiding things that trigger strong emotions, like avoiding eye contact, sidestepping emotional conversations, or might even feel overwhelmed by praise from others. Awkward people's emotional lives could be potentially adaptive (think Kipling's "if you can keep your head when everyone else is losing theirs) being calm in stressful situations, or having obssessive attention to detail. Both popular and likeable people tend to be socially fluent, but people motivated by popularity use their mind-reading skills to boost their social status or protect their position, while likeable people use it for the greater good. *Likeable people are driven by 3 core values: be fair, be kind, and be loyal.* Bullies' moral reasoning capabilities are as sound as their peers, though they show significantly lower levels of compassion, and were more likely to rationalise their immoral behaviour by seeing their selfish gains as taking precedence over the emotional costs incurred by victims. Numerous intellectuals have pointed to an interesting shift in the expectations held by the modern family. The expectation used to be that parents simply provide a safe, supportive environment for their children, but that shifted to an expectations that parents intensely manage their children's progress towards discernable achievements in the classroom or playing field. Part of the job description of being a child is to do some things that are socially inappropriate or foolish, suffer the consequences, and then take responsibility for the correcting course. Awkward kids are slower to realise that factual comments can be hurtful or get other people in trouble; for them, it's just reporting the facts. Mentally preparing kids for social interactions is no different from helping kids with their math homework. There is a valuable opportunity to coaching them in concrete skills that can make a difference in their ability to smoothly navigate social situations and form meaningful ties. What awkward kids need from their families: clear expectations, a sound rationale for rules and routines, and fairness in enforcing these expectations. (systemic treatment) By heavily weighing fairness, kindness and loyalty, one buys leeway to bypass some of the minor social expectations. (working the halo effect). We end up being friends with people close by, who are similar to us, and reciprocate liking (are willing to tell us they like us). Core message of Alkon's book on manners - good manners are important because they are a mechanism for showing other people empathy and respect. Etiquette decreases the proportion of unpredictability in social situations (a playbook for common scenarios), allowing awkward people to focus on actually being in the moment. Gifted people tend to be stubborn, rebellious, and perfectionistic. They show an unusual drive to master their area of interest and they are constantly trying to push the status quo, which motivates them to pursue their interest with unusual intensity and persistence. Ellen Winner calls this the "rage to master". The beauty of our social relationships is not about social awkwardness or skill, but rather comes from our kind attention to thousands of social details. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 25, 2020
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Aug 27, 2020
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Aug 25, 2020
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Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||
| 1554517184
| 9781554517183
| 1554517184
| 3.77
| 35
| Feb 19, 2015
| Apr 01, 2015
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liked it
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Colourful snappily written with learning points for all on how to make more conscious food choices (not necessarily vegetarian ones!) ___ Before 1919 gr Colourful snappily written with learning points for all on how to make more conscious food choices (not necessarily vegetarian ones!) ___ Before 1919 grocery stores had clerks to help you measure out your purchases from bulk containers. After 1919 self-service grocery stores opened. In the old days the colour of cheese depended on whether the cows ate fresh grass (beta carotene made the milk and cheese yellow) or hay (i.e. in winter). The yellower cheese was seen as better, so farmers started adding colour to their cheese for marketing efforts. A dyeing competition resulted. The burgers in fast food ads aren't actually very edible, as the meat patties are nearly raw so they stay plump, the buns are cardboard so they don't get soggy, have pins and glue to keep things in place, and the whole thing is dyed for colour. The health claim "natural" is so broad as to be meaningless. In the US it has no assigned definition. Grocery bus - delivering inexpensive nutritious food to poorer neighbourhoods. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 06, 2020
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Feb 12, 2020
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Feb 14, 2020
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Paperback
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| 0553448129
| 9780553448122
| 0553448129
| 3.69
| 284,457
| Nov 14, 2017
| Nov 14, 2017
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it was ok
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Mark Watney's voice grated a little. Jazz Bashera sounds the exact same, except she's no longer the only person on a lifeless rock and so she pisses o
Mark Watney's voice grated a little. Jazz Bashera sounds the exact same, except she's no longer the only person on a lifeless rock and so she pisses off everyone around her, and the one reading her. She's got major trust issues, a singular ambition to be rich, and a lurid sex life (as everyone is so fond of bringing up). The heist plot requires some strong suspension of disbelief (we may do things differently on the moon, but surely laws must still be upheld and punishment meted out). The characters are flat to the point of forgettability, though the same can't be said of the environment. Kudos to Weir for at least getting the world down. ...more |
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Aug 15, 2019
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Aug 16, 2019
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Aug 14, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 159184472X
| 9781591844723
| 159184472X
| 3.58
| 1,240
| Sep 27, 2012
| Sep 27, 2012
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liked it
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Interesting perspective on how scientific knowledge has an expiry date, though draggy at times. The bit about exponential growth propelling innovation
Interesting perspective on how scientific knowledge has an expiry date, though draggy at times. The bit about exponential growth propelling innovation seems to jar against the notion of sustainability, though allusions to logistic curves and carrying capacities alleviate that somewhat. tl;dr - don't be so sure of what you know. ___ Perhaps more derivative fields (e.g. medicine) move more slowly compared to the basic areas of knowledge on which they depend. By their 40s, Nobel laureates are first authors on only 26% of their papers, as compared to their less accomplished contemporaries (56%). Nicer people are indeed more creative, successful, and likely to win Nobel prizes. If you uttered the statement "80% of all the scientists who have ever lived are alive today" nearly anytime in the past 300 years, you'd be right. (exponential growth of people doing science) When someone develops a new innovation, it is largely untested. It might be better than what is currently in use, but it is clearly a work in progress. Thus the new technology is initially only a little better. As it becomes refined (the bit that distinguishes engineering and practical application from basic science), they begin to realise the potential of this new innovation. Science is about understanding the origins, nature, and behaviour of the universe and all it contains: engineering is about solving problems by rearranging the stuff of the world to make new things. Science modifies what we know about the world, technology modifies what we can do in the world. Many economists argue that population growth has grown hand in hand with innovation and the development of new facts (cities as hotbeds of innovation). Berlin's expanse grew according to a simple rule of thumb: the distance reachable in 30 minutes or less. A city can be said to be a place where people can easily interact. Facts spread by social networks. And medium strength ties are the most important for such spread. They are the happy medium between weak ties that don't spread anything, and strong ties that don't spread new information (informationally inbred). Hidden knowledge has many forms. At its most basic level it can consist of pieces of information that are unknown, or are known only to a few, and for all practical purposes, still need to be revealed. Other times it includes facts that are part of undiscovered public knowledge, when bits of knowledge need to be connected to other pieces of information in order to yield new facts. Revolutions in science have often been preceded by revolutions in measurement. Atomic weights vary, based on which country a sample is taken from, or even what type of water the element is found in, can give a different isotope mixture. As the saying among doctors goes: hurry up and use a new drug while it still works. The smaller the effect sizes in a scientific field, the less likely it is the research findings are to be true. If an effect is small, we could simply be measuring noise. Scientists rarely perform confirmatory replications of experiments. "I've got my own science to do". John Maynard Keynes: When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? A surefire way of adhering to a certain viewpoint: have a close relative take the opposite position. Whichever bias we are subject to, factual inertia permeates our entire lives. We have a tendency to reject anything newer than our own childhood. Science is also subject to our baser instincts: Data is hoarded, scientists refuse to collaborate, and grudges can play a role in peer review. By not relying on our own memories, we become more likely to be up-to-date in our facts, because the newest knowledge is more likely to be online than in our own heads. Errors do not lead us away from the truth. They edge us incrementally toward it. ...more |
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Jul 20, 2019
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Aug 2019
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Aug 10, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0062349481
| 9780062349484
| B00RLU286G
| 4.02
| 4,425
| Sep 15, 2015
| Sep 15, 2015
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really liked it
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Pretty good stuff, to think that breathing is something everyone does, but not many do well. TL;DR: breathe through your nose, as shallowly and infreq Pretty good stuff, to think that breathing is something everyone does, but not many do well. TL;DR: breathe through your nose, as shallowly and infrequently as possible (probably an oversimplification) to avoid overbreathing. Watch out for sighs and yawns. Overbreathing (i.e. too much volume/time) lowers the CO2 concentration in your blood, which makes it harder to oxygenate your brain and muscles. Restricting breathing volume can stimulate high-altitude training, as well as be a good way to prepare for mountain climbs. Key points probably could have been brought across in about half the number of pages though. ____ Correct breathing both relies on and results in the right amount of carbon dioxide being retained in your lungs. The primary stimulus to breathe is to eliminate excess carbon dioxide from the body. One can reset your respiratory centre's tolerance to CO2/ build up a tolerance for mild to moderate air hunger by reducing breathing volume, especially during training (advanced). However be progressive, start by doing breath holds while at rest / walking. Taping your mouth is a good way to train nasal breathing while sleeping. Sticking to solely nasal breathing while exercising is a good way to prevent overexertion. "Live high, train low" had the best results in terms of training outcomes, because the body adapted to low-oxygen conditions, but could be pushed to their maximum work rate training at sea level. Performing breath holds reduces the availability of oxygen in the blood, stimulating the spleen to contract and increasing blood haemoglobin levels. The breath holds should be performed after exhalation, to maximise the decrease in oxygen saturation and lead to a quicker build-up of CO2. The author found that reducing overbreathing led to a reduction in craving for unhealthy food in many of his students and clients. Might be linked to blood pH levels. Beetroot juice reduces the amount of oxygen required to perform exercise. New secret sauce? (Rich in nitrates needed for nitric oxide). Normal breathing volume is 4-6 litres of air a minute, but adults with asthma demonstrate a resting breathing volume of 10-15 litres per minute. In the author's experience he has treated asthma by asking his clients to reduce their breathing volume. While in water your breathing patterns are restricted, by water pressure on your chest cavity, and immersion of the face for a good portion of time. This restricts breathing volume, providing a safer and more productive environment for asthmatics to exercise. ...more |
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May 28, 2019
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Jun 05, 2019
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Jun 03, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| B01DMCBAW4
| 4.15
| 14,673
| Jul 09, 2000
| Nov 03, 2016
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it was amazing
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None
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Notes are private!
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May 10, 2019
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May 10, 2019
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May 10, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| 1250204879
| 9781250204875
| 1250204879
| 3.60
| 852
| unknown
| Jun 05, 2018
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really liked it
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Slow starting, and the characters are one-dimensional cardboard cutouts, but the science, oh the science. Cixin really lets his imagination run wild,
Slow starting, and the characters are one-dimensional cardboard cutouts, but the science, oh the science. Cixin really lets his imagination run wild, following the classic sci-fi premise of "what if xxx were yyy?" to its intriguing conclusions. Was brought here after seeing ball lightning mentioned in Three Body Problem and wondering what the big fuss was about. Now I know. ___ "Swords can be made into plowshares". Ross said. But then in a much lower voice, he added, "But some plowshares can be cast back into swords. Weapon researchers like us sometimes have to accept blame and loss for this in the course of carrying out our duties." look at that commentary on the interplay between technological advancement and the military industrial complex casually woven into the story. ...more |
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Apr 21, 2019
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Apr 24, 2019
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Apr 28, 2019
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Kindle Edition
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| 4.41
| 173,153
| May 2008
| Aug 11, 2015
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it was amazing
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An exploratory essay into the Fermi Paradox and derivation of Cosmic Sociology (or is it non-anthropocentric anthropology?), with a very draggy first
An exploratory essay into the Fermi Paradox and derivation of Cosmic Sociology (or is it non-anthropocentric anthropology?), with a very draggy first third which is worth slogging through for the hard-hitting bits when the Wallfacers start detailing their strategies. Mind-blowing how a few basic axioms and key considerations are sufficient to derive a working framework for interstellar interactions. Other reviewers have noted the misogyny or general lack of women's presence throughout the book, but I didn't think it detracted from the intellectual bent of the novel, which is obviously the focus. ___ "Real shrewdness is not letting any shrewdness show. They don't show off that they're using their brains. They look all carefree and innocent. Some of them are tacky and mawkish, others careless and unserious. What's critical is not to let others think you're a person of interest." It's not about right or wrong. If everyone had to be clear about why before they executed an order, the world would have plunged into chaos long ago. ...more |
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May 05, 2019
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May 19, 2019
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Apr 28, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0316230030
| 9780316230032
| 0316230030
| 3.96
| 2,353
| Mar 26, 2019
| Mar 26, 2019
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really liked it
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Lengthy and spanning a range of topics, from evolutionary biology to sociology. TL;DR: friendship (non-reproductive long-term bonds amongst non-kin) i Lengthy and spanning a range of topics, from evolutionary biology to sociology. TL;DR: friendship (non-reproductive long-term bonds amongst non-kin) is almost unique to humans, and Maslow's hierarchy might be inverted (the social needs help to satisfy the basic needs). ___ The desire for social connection and interpersonal understanding is so deep that it is with us to the end. Even though people may have varied life experiences, live in different places and look superficially different, there are significant parts of others' experiences that we can all understand. To deny this would be to abandon hope for empathy. Some scientists believe that awe is an evolved emotion intended to cause a cognitive shift that reduces egocentricity and makes people feel more connected to others. We form long-term, non-reproductive unions with other humans. This is exceedingly rare in the animal kingdom, but it is universal in us. Humans have always made their social environments, while shaping the physical environment is a recent innovation. The one constant in human environments is the presence of other humans. The ability to make and use a bellows appears frequently in successful stories of castaway survivors. All over the world, irrigation systems seem to be associated with the emergence of social stratification and a divergence between elites and the populace. Intentional utopian communities have always struggled with the problem of individuality. Celibacy reflects a rejection of the real world, because it intrinsically means that the way of life cannot reproduce itself. Paradoxically, the Shakers required connection to the outside world, because that was the movement's only source of new adherents. Communist societies have also been associated with collective child-rearing, the family is seen as a threat to state ideology because it fosters a sense of belonging to a family unit, and totalitarian ideology requires party or state allegiance to be paramount. Almost every innovation in child welfare in the US, including orphanages and subsidised child care, has been driven primarily by adult concerns. Of secondary importance were philosophical and pragmatic convictions about what was best for children. Structure: not only the hierarchy in a group but also the pattern of social relations in the group (are friendships reciprocated? extent of mutual friends) a shared moral understanding = a unified set of beliefs and a common sense of purpose, was crucial for a sense of belonging. Groups can have both instrumental leaders (task oriented), and expressive leaders (relationship oriented). Effective leaders have to help minimise group conflict, deal with troublesome individuals before they compromise group harmony, keep work on schedule, make rational decisions in emergencies, deal fairly with conflict, and facilitate communication. Sometimes it is not possible for the same person to do both, hence generals and diplomats (war and peace leaders). Groups in isolated environments often note the problem of "constant gossip" that adversely affects interpersonal relations. Collective activities such as games and songs are especially important when groups lack long-standing rituals or shared religious ideologies. Even the possibility of being able to change social connections can shape communities for the better. Kissing is most common in Africa and South and Central America. No ethnographers familiar with forager or horticultural groups in sub-Saharan Africa, Amazonia or New guinea have ever reported witnessing romantic-sexual kissing. It seems that across evolutionary time, that humans evolved to love their offspring first, then their mates, then to feel affection for their biological kin, then their affinal kin (in-laws), and then their friends and groups. Roughly 85% of human societies have permitted polygyny at some point. However polygyny deprives many men of partners, and causes many women to have to share their husband and overall household. By offering a man a high certainty of paternity (through pair bonding), a woman is better able to secure her husband's investment in her children. Mutual attachment solves an evolutionary conundrum. The drive to love your partner is universal. Like weddings all over the world, Turkana weddings include dancing, feasting, gossiping, and flirting among unmarried guests. The 'sneaky fucker' strategy: bystander males taking advantage of alpha males while they are fighting to mate with other inaccessible females. Our many marriage systems reflect the human capacity for social learning, a key part of the social suite. "Crazy bastard" strategy: where males at risk of being shut out of reproduction engage in riskier and more violent behaviour to secure a mate, by discounting their futures more steeply. First law of behaviour genetics: all human behavioural traits are heritable. Only the cognitive ability to remember the past is needed to make and maintain friendship ties, anticipation of the future isn't necessary. We are supposed to respond to our friends because they have a need, not because of what they have done for us or what we can expect from them. Real friendships are based on how each party feels about the other, not what each party can do for the other. Friendship is demonstrated by time-intensive, exclusive behaviours, honest expressions of emotion, and accepting vulnerability. In Greece male friends tirelessly and publicly accuse one another of being masturbators. The introduction of formal institutions (banking etc) may weaken traditional friendship ties. Being less reliant on friends in their community, Americans can afford to be more geographically mobile. The ability of friendships to be useful during reversal, when an even exchange is not possible, is precisely what makes friendship so valuable as an adaptation in our species. Friends tended to be significantly more genetically similar than strangers drawn from within the same population. As a benchmark the effect's size corresponds to the coefficient of relatedness expected for 4th cousins. The sense of togetherness and mutual aid leads to the higher evaluation of the in-group. When groups are united against a common enemy, negative attitudes abate. Both altruism and ethnocentrism need each other. In-group altruism in the service of out-group conflict. All it takes for people to like their own group and dislike others - is for people to be able to simply switch groups. Societies that stress uniqueness and individuality and that provide fertile terrain for friendship based on the personal and specific can actually be those where our common humanity is more easily recognised. The possibility of being alone reinforces the ability of a group to be together. One distinctive reason for animals to form social groups is the enhanced learning that can take place. Genes can have effects outside of the body (e.g. beavers' dam building, bower birds building nests. Status can be measured by prestige (benefits one can offer others) as well as dominance (traditional alpha male strength - i.e. costs one can inflict on others) In most species the trade off between dominance and prestige is usually presented as the shift from bodily to cognitive resources. When group size was increased, cultural knowledge was more often preserved, improvements more often made, and complexity in tool packages more often maintained. When it comes to cultural innovation and preservation, size matters. Religions are a cultural feature that secondarily allow unrelated individuals to expand the circle of cooperation, exchange goods, and maintain a division of labour. As a species, humans have evolved higher order needs (belonging, transcendence) precisely in order to more efficiently satisfy the basic needs of life. (Inversion of Maslow's hierarchy of needs) ...more |
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Jun 05, 2019
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Jul 14, 2019
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Mar 21, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 1250034981
| 9781250034984
| 1250034981
| 3.98
| 5,355
| Sep 30, 2014
| Sep 30, 2014
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really liked it
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Insights into the world of neurology, where there is no substitute for talking to your patient and figuring out their mental landscape. A good read fo
Insights into the world of neurology, where there is no substitute for talking to your patient and figuring out their mental landscape. A good read for doctors young and old, whatever your specialty. Or for anyone interested in how the brain works (and malfunctions). ___ What everyone on the ward needs, more than anything else, is to tell us their stories. What they hope, what they expect, what they deserve, is that we take the time to listen, because the act of listening is therapeutic in itself. When we do it right, we learn details that make us better doctors for the next patient. The residents may not get this yet. They are focused on diagnosis and treatment, on technology, scales, titres, doses, ratios, elevations, and deficiencies. All well and good, I tell them, but don't forget to listen. Alice in Wonderland is an absurdistan story. Beyond fantasy, it's ridiculous. That's neurology in a nutshell. Your patient disappears down a rabbit hole. You can't just sit there, so you go down the hole after the patient. Psychosis is a special type of confusion with its own reality, an internal reality that is consistent only with itself. While a psychotic's internal stream may seem bizarre and disconnected, it has its own internal logic. One thing people never forget is who they are. Memory works both ways. You can't be capable of forming new memories (anterograde) when you ostensibly cannot recall old ones (retrograde). TGA (transient global amnesia) describes a fixed period of complete retrograde AND anterograde amnesia. Symptoms are what a patient reports. Signs are what a physician sees in an examination. Symptoms are thus subjective, signs objective. When a patient reports a symptom we have to take it at face value, a headache, dizziness, numbness, lower back pain. We have no tests for such things, and accept them as real until something in the patient's behaviour gives the game away. Psychological non-epileptic seizure - or P-NES - instead of pseudoseizure. That's now a term of the art. It was coined either by someone with a very devious sense of humour, or no sense at all. Predictably, the American strategy of dealing with a P-NES holds no one accountable, involves a brain-centered euphemistic explanation coupled with some touchy-feely stuff, and ends with a recommendation for a therapeutic programme that, very often, the patient will ignore. In its abdication of responsibility, motivated by the fear of a lawsuit, it closely mirrors the beginning of the end of a doomed relationship: "It's not you, its.. no wait it's not me either. It just is what it is." 3 kinds of patients show up on the ward, the risk-neutral, the risk-averse, and the risk-resistant. We rarely see a fourth kind, the risk-takers, who instead show up in the morgue, if they show up at all. Most of the time they go straight to the funeral home. Risk-takers don't come to the hospital of their own volition. They simply refuse to go to a doctor for anything. Risk neutrals go to the doctor because they believe in modern medicine. They listen, question, comprehend and for the most part, cooperate. Risk-averse need reassurance, have to know everything, call everyone. They anguish, they're neurotic but in the end they fall in line. Risk-resistant act as if they have something to hide, often do have something to hide, and hide it even when it would be in their best interest to let us know about it up front. As far as the hospital is concerned the patient is always right because personal autonomy trumps probabilistic outcomes. You have to respect their wishes as human beings, we are told. But the patient is so often dead wrong, especially when it comes to their own brain. The patients are holding out their troubles. They are not really asking you to take them. You should only take them if you want or need to take them. Otherwise, leave it. They'll get along without your suffering. You have another job to do. You have to be able to distance yourself without being unsympathetic. We frequently do not know the cause of a problem, but back into a good treatment. When that happens, stop being a scientist, and keep going. There were no EMTs back then. The ambulance drivers could perform CPR and they could put in an IV. That was about it. And they could drive like mad. Most intelligent doctors do have the capacity to be great diagnosticians. Yet if their training and subsequent work in the field do not continually excite them intellectually, and if they have no inclination to question the experiments of nature unfolding right in front of them, they won't get there. Aptitude isn't enough. To become a good clinical neurologist, you have to be intensely interested by what the brain does, how it works, how it breaks down. Raymond Adams would walk into a patient's room thinking, "What am I going to learn now?" Don't lose the opportunity to appreciate what the signs and symptoms are teaching you about the brain. It's to the patient's benefit if you soak up the details, if you're really into it. All ALS sufferers face a kind of Hobson's choice. They will die. The only question is when and how. How much suffering are they willing to bear? How much incapacity? How much of a burden are they willing to become? "Go home and live, don't go home and die." The idea that I could be in two places at once fell off the table for me decades ago, and I realised that in the end it just means being late for dinner. Michael didn't need the world's leading Parkinson's expert. That guy is only needed for a case no one else can figure out. The interdependency that is built into a modern hospital, our reliance on checklists, hierarchies, consultations, and each other, protects us individually from taking all of the blame when things go wrong. We can and do make mistakes, but in theory someone is there to catch and correct them. In practice, the system of checks and balances can fail at every level, and a low probability event, a succession of unlikely failures, can be set into motion. In Harry Connaway's case, a cascade of errors of omission began to fall like dominoes. The practice of medicine benefits from revisiting the discoveries of the past. For a physician, seeing further means looking over the shoulders of giants. ...more |
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Jan 13, 2019
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Feb 2019
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Feb 08, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 0393239608
| 9780393239607
| 0393239608
| 3.93
| 1,763
| Jun 26, 2018
| Jun 26, 2018
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really liked it
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Lightheaded romp through the history of hormones, featuring circus freakshows, hucksters, and theories proven and disproven. Also stories of women bei
Lightheaded romp through the history of hormones, featuring circus freakshows, hucksters, and theories proven and disproven. Also stories of women being told "you should go learn to write shorthand so you can be secretary" and replying in the "IDGAF". ___ Back then, hormones were boobs and periods and sex. But hormones are so much more. They are the potent chemicals that control metabolism, behaviour, sleep, mood swings, the immune system, fighting, fleeing - not just puberty and sex. Starling's clear definition of hormones: They are substances secreted by a gland that target a distant site, they travel via the blood; they are crucial for the maintenance of the body, they are crucial to survival. Dating, in Hopkins parlance, usually meant studying together in the library. It would be easy to underestimate or ignore Radioimmunoassay altogether. It's technical, hard to understand. It's neither a cure nor a discovery; it's simply a way to measure. And yet it's hard to underestimate the significance of this invention, the impact it has had on the way science is done today. RIA provided doctors with a whole new vision. It was as if someone had lifted their blindfolds, and they could finally see what they were doing. Most people don't notice a small fluctuation, about half a degree Fahrenheit, in core body temperature. In menopausal women, that narrow window of climate control slams shut. A tiny uptick in core body temperature can spark a tsunami of sweat. Initial forays into isolating testoterone had measly yields. A German scientist isolated it from men's urine, collecting 0.005 of an ounce from 3,960 gallons of pee. We don't really know what constitutes low testosterone. Normal levels are 300-1000 nanograms per deciliter of blood. We don't know if falling levels are a normal part of the ageing process, or a sign of physical decline. ER docs are more about diving in without knowing everything, not to compulsively need to know everything. They are willing to try. Sexual orientation is whom you want to go to bed with, gender identity is who you want to go to bed as. ...more |
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Jan 17, 2019
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Jan 24, 2019
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Jan 26, 2019
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Hardcover
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| 4.38
| 196,681
| Sep 28, 2017
| Oct 03, 2017
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it was amazing
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Berkeley shoutout! A very important book on the centrality sleep has to our lives. Read it, then go fix your sleep schedule/environment. ___ Vehicular ac Berkeley shoutout! A very important book on the centrality sleep has to our lives. Read it, then go fix your sleep schedule/environment. ___ Vehicular accidents caused by drowsy driving exceed those caused by alcohol and drugs combined. The variance in preferred sleep schedules can possibly be explained by a tribal group collectively having less hours where everyone was asleep, reducing periods of vulnerability. Caffeine has an average half life of 5-7 hours. That means it occupies your adenosine (sleep pressure signallers) receptors for a very long time. Caffeine messed with spider webs more than marijuana, LSD, and even speed. Sleep spindles (bursts of brain wave activity) occur during the deep and lighter stages of NREM sleep, and the more there are, the harder it is to awaken the sleeper. You can never sleep back that which you have previously lost. When in an unfamiliar the sleep environment, one side of the brain sleeps more lightly than the other. However REM sleep always involves both halves of the brain, no matter which species. Fasting triggers the body to sleep less, as it sees a need to forage longer for more calories. Autistic individuals show a 30-50% deficit in REM sleep they obtain, relative to children without autism. The direction of causality, if it isn't co-occurrence, is unknown. Deep sleep may be a driving force of brain maturation, not the other way around. Early-evening snoozing jettisons precious sleep pressure, leading to difficulty falling asleep at night. Muscles themselves have no memory, it's your brain remembering the routine. And sleep aids this remembering. Sleep for memory consolidation is an all-or-nothing affair. You cannot catch up with sleep and hope to remember. Our RAM clears fast. With chronic sleep restriction over months or years, an individual will acclimatise to their impaired performance, lower alertness, and reduced energy levels. The sub-optimal state becomes the new baseline. Sixty years of scientific research preclude the author from accepting anyone who says they can survive on 4-5 hours of sleep. The under-slept brain is more prone to mood swings in either direction. Both dementia and cancer are related to inadequate sleep. Without sufficient sleep, amyloid plagues build up in the brain, attacking and degrading the deep-sleep-generating regions of the brain. The loss of deep NREM sleep lessens the ability of the brain to remove amyloid, leading to a vicious cycle. Daylight savings time causes a plummet in heart attack rates when the clocks move back (longer sleep), and a spike when they move forward (less sleep). The same trend is seen in traffic accidents. Sleep is an intensely metabolically active state for brain and body alike. Emotions are a strong predictive daytime signal for dreams. A significant portion of emotional themes and concerns that participants were having while they were awake during the day powerfully and unambiguously resurfaced in the dreams they were having at night. To resolve our emotional past, we require REM sleep with dreaming about the emotional themes and sentiments of the waking trauma. This revisiting helped patients to find emotional closure. Lucid dreamers can control when and what they dream while they are dreaming (eye movements were used as signals to communicate while in REM sleep). iPad use at night suppresses melatonin levels even for a few nights after, like a digital hangover effect. Alcohol messes with REM sleep, due to its metabolic byproducts. Those who take sleeping pills are 3-5 times more likely to die, depending on usage levels. A possible cause is higher than usual rates of infection. REM sleep is what stands between rationality and insanity. REM sleep deprivation causes symptoms of clinical psychosis. After 22 hours without sleep, human performance is impaired to the same level as being legally drunk. ...more |
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Dec 09, 2018
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Dec 16, 2018
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Dec 14, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 1771641495
| 9781771641494
| 1771641495
| 4.07
| 50,578
| Feb 28, 2014
| May 24, 2015
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really liked it
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A fun read with cutesy illustrations. Learn about your insides! ___ The gut accounts for two-thirds of our immune system, extracts energy from all our v A fun read with cutesy illustrations. Learn about your insides! ___ The gut accounts for two-thirds of our immune system, extracts energy from all our varied food, and produces more than 20 unique hormones. Some scientists think studying the link between the gut and the brain offers at least at much promise as stem cell research. To squat on a sitting toilet, put your feet on a low footrest and incline your upper body forward slightly. Our saliva is basically filtered blood. It also contains a painkiller stronger than morphine (opiorphin). That's why after a meal your sore throat often feels better. Tonsils are a training camp for our immune cells below the age of seven. Our esophagus is connected to the side of our stomach so the pressure from our abdominal muscles don't apply pressure directly onto it. If it wasn't we might end up vomiting after laughing. The stomach's asymmetrical shape allows quickly digestible things and liquids to be shunted straight to the small intestine, while protein can hang around longer to be digested at the side. Any fat we eat goes through the lymph system straight to our heart. That is why our blood vessels can get clogged up by excessive fatty food. There are many allergies to fatty food because they end up in the lymphatic system, where they are recognised as foreign bodies and trigger an immune response. This applies to milk, eggs, and peanut allergies. Almost no one is allergic to greasy bacon, because we are made of meat and have few problems digesting it. The rumbling belly comes from the small intestine, not the stomach as commonly believed. They don't rumble when we're hungry, but when there is a long enough break between meals to finally get some cleaning done. An empty stomach is no defense against vomiting, since the small intestine can expel its contents as well. The mouth begins producing saliva in great quantities once the vomiting process has begun, to protect our teeth from acidic gastric juice. One of the main purposes of movement is to shift us to a healthier equilibrium. Gut bacteria density increases the further down one goes. Gut bacteria are responsible for blood groups. Colonisation resistance: the majority of the microbes in our gut protect us simply by occupying spaces that would otherwise be free for harmful bacteria to colonise. Cows get their protein from bacteria in their gut that feed on complex plant carbohydrates, and eventually end up getting digested. The tradition of a weekly bath only really took hold in the 1950s. The entire family would bath one after another in the same bathtub. Sweetness is in itself not unhealthy, we simply eat only the most unhealthy kind of sweetness. Kitchen sponges should only be used for cleaning the worst of the dirt off. Using them to dry plates is like licking them clean. ...more |
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Sep 02, 2018
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Sep 10, 2018
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Sep 10, 2018
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Paperback
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| 1775591638
| 9781775591634
| 1775591638
| 4.33
| 24
| Oct 08, 2014
| Nov 17, 2015
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liked it
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Interesting book on a substance most people know of but don't know much about. Would recommend skipping the chapter with the history lesson of the manu Interesting book on a substance most people know of but don't know much about. Would recommend skipping the chapter with the history lesson of the manuka plant though. __ One of those wonderful gifts to the world of science that the English seem to produce in abundance - the talented (and obsessed) amateur. Honey is a super-saturated solution, with about 20% moisture. A saturated sugar solution is 36% moisture. This means that honey attracts moisture to itself, and this osmotic pressure is deadly to most bacteria. Honey is made by the bees spreading out nectar and fanning/heating it to 34 degrees with their wings, pulling moisture out of the nectar. After 15-20 minutes the half-ripened honey is then deposited into cells and left to ripen before being sealed. Honey bees live off nectar (carbohydrate source, converted to honey and beeswax) and pollen (protein and minerals source, used to grow their larval brood. Honey bees are also species constant, meaning that they generally only visit flowers of the same species on a given foraging trip. It gives the honey produced some consistency of taste and flavour, and it helps the plants themselves through pollination. This ability, other pollinating insects don't have. It is the glucose in honey that solidifies (crystalises). For every scientist, the job is only half done if you can't explain your results in plain language in a way the rest of the world can understand. When bees 'cook' their food, this process of preservation produces some special benefits that can be especially useful to humans in a very 'unfoody' way. When a scab forms it protects the cells below, but the wound heals more slowly, and a scar remains at the end, since those skin cells haven't been able to grow right across. Honey heals in several ways: -pH of 4-5 improves the rate at wounds heal by moderating inflammation and stimulating red blood cells to release more oxygen. -nourishes the new cells, glucose contained used by WBCs to create the respiratory burst needed to destroy bacteria. -Debrider, loosens up dead tissue so it can be removed, and absorbs pus through osmotic pressure -Odor prevention as odor-producing bacteria feeding on the honey's glucose don't give off a bad smell -Antibacterial effect from osmotic pressure, glucose oxidase producing hydrogen peroxide. Honey can do two things together most modern systems of woundcare cannot: provide a moist environment for the best tissue re-growth, while simultaneously ensuring that environment remains sterile. The term evidence-based medicine only entered common usage in 1992. Only in 1962 did the US government require drug manufacturers to show 'substantial evidence of effectiveness". 44% of systematic reviews found the procedure or drug likely to be beneficial. 7% deemed the treatment to be harmful, but 96% recommended more research needed to be done. Honey is so effective against bacteria because it is a system, and like all natural systems it has withstood the test of time because it has a number of overlapping elements. (This incidentally is the basis for a naturalistic bias, as applied to biological systems. Minus kludges.) Antioxidants (like honey) have an extra electron that it can donate to free radicals (molecules that are missing an electron). Skin cells are one of the real battle grounds of oxidation. Which is why a lot of cosmetic products have honey in them. Bees don't play a direct role in putting bread on the table (the staples and animal feed are wind pollinated). They instead make it possible for us to have a bountiful cornucopia of other foods. They do this indirectly in many instances by helping to create the seeds planted to grow a range of vegetables we put on our plates. ...more |
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Jul 08, 2018
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Jul 18, 2018
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Jul 08, 2018
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Jan 16, 2023
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Nov 19, 2022
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May 29, 2022
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Dec 02, 2021
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Jan 31, 2021
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Aug 27, 2020
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it was ok
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Aug 16, 2019
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Aug 2019
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Jun 05, 2019
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Jun 03, 2019
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it was amazing
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May 10, 2019
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May 10, 2019
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Apr 24, 2019
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Apr 28, 2019
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it was amazing
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May 19, 2019
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Apr 28, 2019
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Jul 14, 2019
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Mar 21, 2019
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really liked it
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Feb 2019
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Feb 08, 2019
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really liked it
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Jan 24, 2019
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Jan 26, 2019
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it was amazing
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Dec 16, 2018
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Dec 14, 2018
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really liked it
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Sep 10, 2018
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Sep 10, 2018
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liked it
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Jul 18, 2018
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Jul 08, 2018
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