Bob Zimmerman says try to stick with the dumb ones.
[Monday-morning update]
Seeing a lot of war stories in comments about the benefits of agitators, or their lack. I guess the lesson is to look at user reviews of washers before buying one.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Sleep Apnea And Blood Pressure
The combination can increase risk of heart attack. This seemed strange to me, though:
Patients with severe obstructive sleep apnea had blood pressure readings 5.72 mmHg higher than those with normal obstructive sleep apnea.
That seems to be like a trivial increase if one has hypertension. It would be about three percent of my systolic.
A Basement Discovery
…undermines decades of crap dietary advice:
Analyzing the reams of old records, Ramsden and his team found, in line with the “diet-heart hypothesis,” that substituting vegetable oils lowered total blood cholesterol levels, by an average of 14 percent.
But that lowered cholesterol did not help people live longer. Instead, the lower cholesterol fell, the higher the risk of dying: 22 percent higher for every 30-point fall. Nor did the corn-oil group have less atherosclerosis or fewer heart attacks.
I’m scheduling a follow up with my cardiologist. I’m guessing that he’ll probably want to put me on statins, despite my clean bill of health from my angio scan, because my total cholesterol is a little over 240. I’ll tell him to take a hike.
Layla
The story of how Clapton created the song. I have to confess I like the slow version on Unplugged better, but then I’m more into acoustic in general.
Kerbal Space Program
So, one of the reasons I upgraded my computer was so that I could do things like running Kerbal. I’ve got a new motherboard, with a Ryzen 5 3600 processor, and 32G of RAM. But when I load KSP, I develop cursor lag. Is this because I only have two gig of memory on the graphics card?
End Of An Era
I’ve been noticing that every time I go to Fry’s the shelves are emptier and emptier, and fewer and fewer staff. I went looking for a graphics card today, and they had a grand selection of zero. They are clearly not restocking inventory. I doubt they’ll make it to the end of the year. Discussion here. I had to go to Best Buy (which was fortunately just down the street).
This is frustrating, because they were one of the last places you could buy computer and electronics components off the shelf. But they couldn’t compete with next-day, or even in some cases same-day delivery from Amazon.
Collisions Hazards And Space Debris
An article on the issue, quoting (among others) Brian Weeden and Glenn Reynolds.
The Lunar Tardigrades
A good discussion of the legal issues involved.
Computer Follies
So, I bought a new motherboard, CPU, and memory. I’ve installed it in the old case, but I discovered that the only video output on the board was HDMI, and my monitor had no HDMI input, only VGA and DVI.
Fortunately, Patricia’s monitor has VGA and HDMI, so I took my monitor and replaced it (she was using VGA), which is what I’m using to post this. Next step is to take her monitor and finally see if the new computer works. But I wanted to catch up on email and Twitter before I embark on that adventure (and post a few things).
[Update a while later]
Oh, this is fun. The motherboard wants an 8-pin connector for the CPU, and the PS only has sixes. Guess I need to upgrade that, too.
[Frustration update]
OK, so I got the new power supply. It has four 6+2 connectors, and one 4+4 (which I originally thought was eight). So I plugged in what I thought was the 8-pin, and the computer fires up, but no post beep or monitor signal. I figure that it has to be because there is nothing in the 4-pin slot, but I don’t have an 4-pin connector. Then I figure out that the 8-pin is two fours that can be separated. But when I replace the 4+4 with a 6+2, the machine won’t start. It will only run with the 4+4 in the 8-pin socket, but then I don’t have a 4-pin connector for the empty 4. Anyone have any ideas?
[Update a while later]
OK, so I needed a graphics card. I hadn’t realized that the CPU didn’t have integrated graphics. I went out an bought a fifty-buck Radeon, with 2G DDR3. It’s a huge mismatch with the processor, but I have no immediate plans for gaming, and it gets me on the air for now; I can always upgrade later.
Those Plant-Based Burgers
They aren’t better for you, so why are you eating them?
They’re not only not better for you, but almost certainly worse, nutritionally. I don’t want “plant based” food. I want affordable lab-grown meat that is indistinguishable, in both nutrition and taste, from the real thing. And I’d want it in space, too.
[Update a few minutes later]
I just got around to reading it myself. It’s not about the calories or the salt, or even the saturated fat. If you don’t eat meat, you’re not getting (among other things) choline, which is essential for everyone, but particularly for growing kids.