…at which whites need not apply.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Biological Age Reversal
Can it be done with a drug cocktail?
I’ve known Greg Fahy for decades, going back to Alcor days, when he was doing research on organ preservation for the Red Cross, but which would be applicable to cryonic suspension. He was in Rockville, MD back then, but he’s now in southern California. Unfortunately, it’s out in Riverside, so not particularly convenient to visit him.
Iran
One of the things that gave us Trump was the fecklessness of multiple administrations on the Mullahs, who have been waging war on us for four decades. The Bush administration did nothing as they were killing our troops in Iraq, In the case of Obama (and John Kerry), it went beyond fecklessness, arguably, to treason (though there is no formal declaration of war).
Roger Simon says that the attack on the Saudi oil fields was this era’s Pearl Harbor, and it’s time to drop the hammer on them.
[Update a few minutes later]
“Smart” Appliances
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.
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.