Comments on: Hasta La Victorians Siempre

By: ladybug2535

ladybug2535 — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 16:27:49 +0000

Actually your historical information is incorrect: Not only is there historical evidence of cancer–equal to the population percentage you’d see today, but other degenerative diseases including diabetes, cancer, arthritis, kidney disease, pancreatitis, cholecystitis, kidney and gallstones, spinal and cervical degeneration, stroke, and heart attack, etc. We see evidence in the skeletal and mummified remains, and we can read descriptions of these diseases in the written record, even as far back as Galen the famous Roman physician. Diabetes was named for the fact that sufferer’s urine attracted bees by the Greeks. The main difference between now and then is that sufferers of chronic degenerative diseases simply did not live very long, unless they were very, very lucky–if you can call it that.

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By: Doug S.

Doug S. — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 03:09:39 +0000

I find that you usually don’t need to do anything to most fruits to make them tasty, because they’re already full of sugar. Some manage to be more sour than sweet, though, which is why people do things like dip strawberries into chocolate and cover grapefruits with sugar.

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By: Randy M

Randy M — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:21:57 +0000

Oh, that’s nice of you to say, yes that’s me, as well as most other “Niki’s Knight”s you’re likely to see around the internet. Prefer a more straightforward name these days.
Actually when I first saw your handle on LW I thought you might be the team member that character was named after (then I recalled that his username wasn’t Yvain but Woodelf and felt silly).

It was a great project and the closest I’ve come to a conworld like Raikoth.

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By: gwern

gwern — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:16:47 +0000

And so presumably in another century or less, the American military will have dwindled to a fleet of drones controlled by imported African Pygmies.

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By: St. Rev

St. Rev — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 21:29:21 +0000

Sure, but that’s not what they’re saying. Their statement, read straightforwardly, implies that basal metabolic consumption is nearly zero, which is ludicrous. Mean basal metabolic calorie consumption is around 1500 calories. If a modern person actually burns 2000 calories, and a Victorian burned 4000, the Victorian would be doing five times as much work. It’s a total howler of a statement, and it’s in the abstract.

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By: Brian Delwiche

Brian Delwiche — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 21:15:19 +0000

2x the activity rate of your average sedentary Westerner doesn’t give you 2x the caloric expenditure, but it’s not actually that hard to hit that kind of energy use if you’re active all day (as opposed to sitting in front of a computer all day and then spending an hour in the gym).

I once read a nutritional breakdown of early medieval subsistence farming that suggested a break-even point of about six thousand kcal a day for most of the year, comparable to what you’d burn in a full day of mountaineering or hard martial arts training. I’m much less familiar with the Victorian era, but with the innovations available it’s not inconceivable to me that Victorian laborers usually burnt somewhere around two-thirds of that.

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By: anon1

anon1 — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 20:52:26 +0000

More specifically, stir-frying anything green and bitter with fish sauce, rice vinegar, an egg, and sesame oil seems to eliminate the bitterness almost entirely. (This is the way greens are prepared for pad see ew; I usually don’t try to copy the whole dish because frying rice noodles without getting one giant gross blob is Hard.) I can’t stand bok choy generally, but when it’s cooked this way I actually want to eat it.

Unfortunately I don’t have a similarly good solution for fruits. They’re just kind of icky, and if you make them into pie like people keep suggesting then they’re slimy as well.

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By: Andrew G.

Andrew G. — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:49:33 +0000

Recent tests suggest that peer review in scientific publications is not generally distinguishable from random chance.

(cynical, moi?)

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By: Scott Alexander

Scott Alexander — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:35:49 +0000

This is unrelated, but I just was on a part of this blog that showed me commenter emails, and I realized your email strongly suggests you are one of the people on the Fall From Heaven development team.

If that’s true, please know that that is my favorite Civ scenario of all time and I am profoundly grateful for your hard work and that one of my standard Internet nicknames (Yvain) comes from my favorite character on there and that you are great.

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By: Randy M

Randy M — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 19:28:47 +0000

I don’t know if I am surprised or not. I don’t know if that applies to me as well or not, in fact. It seems that, since people are eating anyway, if you could provide clear, unambiguous, specific benefits for certain foods in non-marketing speak that should be better than saying take this pill until you die. But then, I know a lot, if not most, American are on medication essentially until they die, so what’s one more?

I do think you would see some risk adjustment from this, such that once you had this pill that granted the bare minimum people would take it as liscense to cut out the few veggetables or what have you that htey were eating and find them selves not much better off.

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