My reasons:
- Highest rating by Cooks Illustrated. (btw, Tabasco sauce is “not recommended”)
- Simple ingredients: red chilis, garlic, vinegar (though note: 1g of sugar / tsp)
- It tastes good!
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Break out the sriracha
Seth Roberts often came up with hunches, reasonable hypotheses, about various foods or habits. But don’t pick the hypotheses randomly; base it on something, make sure it fits a bigger theory about the world, and then devise experiments to prove the hunch wrong. My hunch is that hot, spicy foods are good for you and that adding even a small amount to any food helps make it more nutritious. Here’s the new one I’m going to try: sriracha sauce.
My reasons:
My reasons:
Saturday, July 26, 2014
Everyone an Emperor
Kevin Kelly asked via Twitter for people to offer, in 100 words, their vision for the future. Today he published the first 23 responses. I don’t have time right now to write my own short response, but here’s what I’m thinking:
In the future, everyone can choose and run their own private empire, commanding vast dominions of robotic serfs to do their bidding. Like emperors throughout history, some will devote themselves to travel and exploration, some to science, some to the arts. Each dabbles more or else in everything — there’s an empire to run, after all — but ultimately they tend to specialize into a dynasty that is noteworthy for something, and that’s what you’ll be able to do.
Imagine if your ability to create or do anything was not constrained by your mastery of technique — computers can do that for you — but rather by your ability to imagine and then precisely articulate what you want instantiated.
You conceptualize something: a new product or service, perhaps, or a creative work like a novel or song. Imagine that the creation of that work is limited, not by your ability to build it yourself, but by your ability to describe it, or — perhaps — identify it. "I’m not sure what I’m building, but I’ll know when I’m done.”
A lot of my ideas start out with “it’s kind of like X, only a little Y-er”. In the future, my robot minions will clamor for every clue I give them about my idea, offer proposed variations, then dutifully attempt to implement every detail.
Computer graphics pioneer Alvy Ray Smith used to say “Reality is 80 million polygons”, and when machines can routinely give that to us, the ability to spend money on the physical world will matter less; living and acting in the virtual world will matter more. When anyone can build a virtual empire, stocked with whatever science, art, products, — anything imaginable — then the value of “stuff” from the real world will change. The responses to Kevin Kelly’s question that involve “stuff” — environment, energy, health — that could all happen, but happen differently in each private, virtual empire.
It gets more interesting because we can each share bits and pieces of our empires. I can even take your empire and pretend it’s my own! In fact, the currency that will matter most — as it did to ancient emperors — will be the attention and respect of fellow empires.
There’ll be a real world too, of course, and it’ll be much cleaner and wilder than it’s been in thousands of years. Physical property will have some value, but owning beachfront property or a private jet won’t have the relative prestige they did before everyone could get the bio-identical experience for free. Better to spend the land’s scarce resources on stuff to make the virtual world better: server farms, chip factories, biosensors.
That’s the basic idea, but every day that future gets closer.
In the future, everyone can choose and run their own private empire, commanding vast dominions of robotic serfs to do their bidding. Like emperors throughout history, some will devote themselves to travel and exploration, some to science, some to the arts. Each dabbles more or else in everything — there’s an empire to run, after all — but ultimately they tend to specialize into a dynasty that is noteworthy for something, and that’s what you’ll be able to do.
Imagine if your ability to create or do anything was not constrained by your mastery of technique — computers can do that for you — but rather by your ability to imagine and then precisely articulate what you want instantiated.
You conceptualize something: a new product or service, perhaps, or a creative work like a novel or song. Imagine that the creation of that work is limited, not by your ability to build it yourself, but by your ability to describe it, or — perhaps — identify it. "I’m not sure what I’m building, but I’ll know when I’m done.”
A lot of my ideas start out with “it’s kind of like X, only a little Y-er”. In the future, my robot minions will clamor for every clue I give them about my idea, offer proposed variations, then dutifully attempt to implement every detail.
Computer graphics pioneer Alvy Ray Smith used to say “Reality is 80 million polygons”, and when machines can routinely give that to us, the ability to spend money on the physical world will matter less; living and acting in the virtual world will matter more. When anyone can build a virtual empire, stocked with whatever science, art, products, — anything imaginable — then the value of “stuff” from the real world will change. The responses to Kevin Kelly’s question that involve “stuff” — environment, energy, health — that could all happen, but happen differently in each private, virtual empire.
It gets more interesting because we can each share bits and pieces of our empires. I can even take your empire and pretend it’s my own! In fact, the currency that will matter most — as it did to ancient emperors — will be the attention and respect of fellow empires.
There’ll be a real world too, of course, and it’ll be much cleaner and wilder than it’s been in thousands of years. Physical property will have some value, but owning beachfront property or a private jet won’t have the relative prestige they did before everyone could get the bio-identical experience for free. Better to spend the land’s scarce resources on stuff to make the virtual world better: server farms, chip factories, biosensors.
That’s the basic idea, but every day that future gets closer.
Friday, July 25, 2014
[book] War! What Is It Good For? by Ian Morris
As with his seminal “Why the West Rules”, Stanford Professor Ian Morris’ new book makes you repeat “Aha!” as he explains the big picture of history with remarkable ease. Instead of simply telling a story, he gives the rules behind the story: how societies naturally evolve, almost inevitably, in fixed directions. “Maps, not chaps”, as he summarizes it: geography matters more than great people in how history unfolds.
This time Morris presents the history of warfare, and how — bad as it is for the people involved at the time — normal people are better off when larger “Leviathan” states incorporate smaller, weaker political units. The Roman Empire, cruel as it was much of the time, provided law and order, secure trade routes, and long-term stability that ultimately brought more good than bad. The same goes, with rare exceptions, for all great empires, including the modern world’s Pax Americana. The ironic paradox of history is how, the more swords you have, the more plowshares you get. When you’re strong enough that nobody can challenge you, generally nobody does, and the overall result is peace.
It leads to a cycle that, in Morris' telling, ultimately seems so predictable: for example, Britain’s role as globocop in the late 1800s slowly ended due to its own success in creating vigorous new markets, which later became rivals, especially Germany. Similarly, China’s rise — tied as it is with the US economy — can only weaken America’s undisputed globocop role, especially in strategic southeast Asia. How will it end?
One hint comes from the tectonic shifts identified in the National Intelligence Council Global Trends 2030:
This time Morris presents the history of warfare, and how — bad as it is for the people involved at the time — normal people are better off when larger “Leviathan” states incorporate smaller, weaker political units. The Roman Empire, cruel as it was much of the time, provided law and order, secure trade routes, and long-term stability that ultimately brought more good than bad. The same goes, with rare exceptions, for all great empires, including the modern world’s Pax Americana. The ironic paradox of history is how, the more swords you have, the more plowshares you get. When you’re strong enough that nobody can challenge you, generally nobody does, and the overall result is peace.
It leads to a cycle that, in Morris' telling, ultimately seems so predictable: for example, Britain’s role as globocop in the late 1800s slowly ended due to its own success in creating vigorous new markets, which later became rivals, especially Germany. Similarly, China’s rise — tied as it is with the US economy — can only weaken America’s undisputed globocop role, especially in strategic southeast Asia. How will it end?
One hint comes from the tectonic shifts identified in the National Intelligence Council Global Trends 2030:
- growth of the global middle class
- wider access to lethal and disruptive technologies
- shift of economic power toward the East and South
- unprecedented and widespread aging
- urbanization
- food and water pressures
- return of American energy independence
Combining these trends, he references Ramez Naam’s books, Nexus and Crux as examples of how the merging of computers and people may have an affect on the future. We’ll be fine if the US maintains its globocop role till then; not so much otherwise.
Let's hope.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Please join the Seth Roberts Community
Another big thing I miss about Seth Roberts is the interesting new links he always seemed to uncover from around the web. He discovered most of the links himself, but much of it came from his various friends and followers who emailed him pointers.
The friends and followers are still around, but without his blog to send to, we're hanging out on a Google Community instead. Please join us, especially whenever you find news you think would be of interest to people thinking outside the box about wellness, personal science, or other generally under-reported ideas: Seth Roberts Community
The friends and followers are still around, but without his blog to send to, we're hanging out on a Google Community instead. Please join us, especially whenever you find news you think would be of interest to people thinking outside the box about wellness, personal science, or other generally under-reported ideas: Seth Roberts Community
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
How accurate are food labels?
We take for granted that a label printed with calorie and other nutrition information is accurate, but is that true?
A short 6-minute documentary and editorial published last year in the New York Times shows how wrong labels can be. Casey Neistat took normal foods and ran them through an expensive calorimeter — the gold standard to see how many calories an item contains -- to check the accuracy of the labels. In his random sample, he found the discrepancies between the labels and actual calories added up to 500+ calories in a typical day’s eating — the equivalent of a missing Big Mac or a couple of snickers bars. This, on “normal” foods like a sandwich from Subway, a yogurt muffin at a convenience store, a Chipotle burrito, a vegan deli sandwich.
In NYC, and soon everywhere in the US, calorie labels are mandatory, but how will that help if the labels are wrong?
Incidentally, I think this applies not just to calories but to virtually anything relating to nutrition: vitamins, carbohydrates, fat, protein. The active nutritional content of something like broccoli, for example, degrades quickly after it’s been picked. The way it was prepared, the other foods consumed at the same time, the microbes in its surface — there are so many variables that often matter just as much as whatever is on the label. I wonder what the point is.
The solution, of course, is better sensors: handheld, pocket devices that can test the food right before you eat it. We’re still a few years from that becoming ubiquitous and cheap enough for everyday use, but there are early prototypes: the $200 SCiO, for example, the $200 TellSpec, or the 6SensorLabs Canary gluten detector (though it’s difficult to tell yet how accurate these are). Microsoft, working with the EE Department at the University of Washington has a simple, cheap sensor that can detect the type of beverage you're drinking. Alexander Scheeline, a chemist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, teaches how to make a cheap, cellphone-based spectrometer (see Wired) that may someday be able to tell if your food has mercury in it, for example.
Until those cheap sensors are widely available, though, I’m afraid it’s hard to rely on labels alone.
A short 6-minute documentary and editorial published last year in the New York Times shows how wrong labels can be. Casey Neistat took normal foods and ran them through an expensive calorimeter — the gold standard to see how many calories an item contains -- to check the accuracy of the labels. In his random sample, he found the discrepancies between the labels and actual calories added up to 500+ calories in a typical day’s eating — the equivalent of a missing Big Mac or a couple of snickers bars. This, on “normal” foods like a sandwich from Subway, a yogurt muffin at a convenience store, a Chipotle burrito, a vegan deli sandwich.
In NYC, and soon everywhere in the US, calorie labels are mandatory, but how will that help if the labels are wrong?
Incidentally, I think this applies not just to calories but to virtually anything relating to nutrition: vitamins, carbohydrates, fat, protein. The active nutritional content of something like broccoli, for example, degrades quickly after it’s been picked. The way it was prepared, the other foods consumed at the same time, the microbes in its surface — there are so many variables that often matter just as much as whatever is on the label. I wonder what the point is.
The solution, of course, is better sensors: handheld, pocket devices that can test the food right before you eat it. We’re still a few years from that becoming ubiquitous and cheap enough for everyday use, but there are early prototypes: the $200 SCiO, for example, the $200 TellSpec, or the 6SensorLabs Canary gluten detector (though it’s difficult to tell yet how accurate these are). Microsoft, working with the EE Department at the University of Washington has a simple, cheap sensor that can detect the type of beverage you're drinking. Alexander Scheeline, a chemist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, teaches how to make a cheap, cellphone-based spectrometer (see Wired) that may someday be able to tell if your food has mercury in it, for example.
Until those cheap sensors are widely available, though, I’m afraid it’s hard to rely on labels alone.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Using the AliveCor Heart Monitor
Every few months, I feel a slight flutter in my chest, almost like a cough but coming not from the lungs or throat but from something deeper inside. It seems to come and go randomly, though I’ve noticed it is often triggered if I’ve had wine to drink or if I haven’t had enough sleep. No big deal, just something I observe about myself. Long ago, by coincidence, one of these episodes happened while I was at the doctor’s office having an annual physical, and the doctor too shrugged it off: a heart arrhythmia, perfectly normal. He told me the technical term for the exact type of arrhythmia, but that was long ago and I’ve forgotten. Now, maybe I’ve found a way to know for sure.
For the past week I’ve been using the new AliveCor Heart Monitor, a $200 iPhone case that gives me a high-fidelity Lead I ECG any time, any where I carry my smartphone. Here’s the sample I took this morning, right after waking up:
The device is just a normal iPhone case — with a funny two-part metal bulge on the back that acts as a two-lead electrode. You hold it with your fingers and it measures your ECG. Just like that! With FDA 510(k) clearance and scientifically validated for "excellent sensitivity (0.962), specificity (0.975), and accuracy (0.968) for beat-to-beat discrimination of an irregular pulse during AF from sinus rhythm”, it’s got serious medical chops too. The first time you use it, you send your results to trained technicians, who send you back a report (in my case, summarized as “normal sinus rhythm”). Each time after that, you’re given the option to send the results again as an in-app purchase: $12 to a US Board Certified cardiologist, $5 for a 30-min turnaround by a certified technician, or $2 for 24-hour turnaround.
Unfortunately, there’s apparently no API, so although you can send each result (PDF) by email, there’s no automatic way to upload to Zenobase, for example, so you can easily compare with other self-tracking results.
The technology was invented by cardiologist David Albert using hardware that communicates with the phone via a clever, patented process that uses low-frequency, inaudible sound waves picked up by the phone’s microphone. No need to pair bluetooth with the device, no need for any physical connection to the phone at all.
Satish Misra is a medical doctor who wrote a balanced and thorough review, pointing out the wonderful breakthroughs possible with such a device, but also noting that because it doesn’t detect some important heart ailments as well as a full-scale ECG, it can provide false security. He notes, incidentally, that the US Preventative Services Task Force rates ECG screening generally (not just for this device) a “D” as a medical test: “recommends against routinely providing to asymptomatic patients”. (They say that about exercise treadmill tests and coronary calcium scanning too, for what that’s worth.)
We’ll see what happens in my case. I really want to know more about my arrhythmia and it’s nice to know that, the next time it happens it’ll be easy for me to log it accurately.
By the way, whether you have an AliveCor or not, I wish everyone would join the Health eHeart study at the University of California San Francisco. You fill out a medical survey, give them your email address, and agree to be a long-term participant in their study. They especially want people who like to use gadgets — like the AliveCor — so they can collect as much data as possible. (Obviously, they have top-notch privacy standards to ensure your data remains confidential). If everyone did this, science would have a big head start in finding how to prevent heart disease.
For the past week I’ve been using the new AliveCor Heart Monitor, a $200 iPhone case that gives me a high-fidelity Lead I ECG any time, any where I carry my smartphone. Here’s the sample I took this morning, right after waking up:
The device is just a normal iPhone case — with a funny two-part metal bulge on the back that acts as a two-lead electrode. You hold it with your fingers and it measures your ECG. Just like that! With FDA 510(k) clearance and scientifically validated for "excellent sensitivity (0.962), specificity (0.975), and accuracy (0.968) for beat-to-beat discrimination of an irregular pulse during AF from sinus rhythm”, it’s got serious medical chops too. The first time you use it, you send your results to trained technicians, who send you back a report (in my case, summarized as “normal sinus rhythm”). Each time after that, you’re given the option to send the results again as an in-app purchase: $12 to a US Board Certified cardiologist, $5 for a 30-min turnaround by a certified technician, or $2 for 24-hour turnaround.
Unfortunately, there’s apparently no API, so although you can send each result (PDF) by email, there’s no automatic way to upload to Zenobase, for example, so you can easily compare with other self-tracking results.
The technology was invented by cardiologist David Albert using hardware that communicates with the phone via a clever, patented process that uses low-frequency, inaudible sound waves picked up by the phone’s microphone. No need to pair bluetooth with the device, no need for any physical connection to the phone at all.
Satish Misra is a medical doctor who wrote a balanced and thorough review, pointing out the wonderful breakthroughs possible with such a device, but also noting that because it doesn’t detect some important heart ailments as well as a full-scale ECG, it can provide false security. He notes, incidentally, that the US Preventative Services Task Force rates ECG screening generally (not just for this device) a “D” as a medical test: “recommends against routinely providing to asymptomatic patients”. (They say that about exercise treadmill tests and coronary calcium scanning too, for what that’s worth.)
We’ll see what happens in my case. I really want to know more about my arrhythmia and it’s nice to know that, the next time it happens it’ll be easy for me to log it accurately.
By the way, whether you have an AliveCor or not, I wish everyone would join the Health eHeart study at the University of California San Francisco. You fill out a medical survey, give them your email address, and agree to be a long-term participant in their study. They especially want people who like to use gadgets — like the AliveCor — so they can collect as much data as possible. (Obviously, they have top-notch privacy standards to ensure your data remains confidential). If everyone did this, science would have a big head start in finding how to prevent heart disease.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Who has the most accurate health news?
The independent site Health News Review evaluated nearly 2000 health-related news articles since 2006, ranking their accuracy and usefulness according to these criteria: cost, benefits, harm, veracity, exaggeration, availability, and the source and conflicts of interest of the promoters:
Here are the rankings:
| Associated Press | 3.61 |
| NPR | 3.57 |
| Los Angeles Times | 3.51 |
| New York Times | 3.49 |
| Wall Street Journal | 3.4 |
| Reuters Health | 3.24 |
| CNN Health | 2.98 |
| US News | 2.97 |
| HealthDay | 2.9 |
| Time | 2.81 |
| WebMD | 2.77 |
| MSNBC | 2.38 |
I was surprised that AP did so well, and WebMD so poorly.
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