Wednesday, February 11, 2015

"We haven't tried that one yet."

Headlines All Over the World: The Fear of Fat Was a Mistake from the Beginning - DietDoctor.com: "The advice from the 1980’s about avoiding butter lacked evidence. The entire Western world received dietary guidelines that had never been shown to do any good. This may be old news for the regular reader here, but now the knowledge is spreading faster and faster around the world. A new scientific review shows that the advice completely lacked evidence of any benefit when it was first introduced. This hit the big headlines around the world yesterday:

Johann Hari: Everything We Know About the Drug War & Addiction is Wrong | Democracy Now!: "...the old theory of addiction comes from a series of experiments that were done earlier in the 20th century. They were actually featured in a famous anti-drugs ad from the '80s in America. Very simple experiment your viewers can do at home if they're feeling a little bit sadistic: You get a rat, and you put it in a cage, and it’s got two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself. And so, it was concluded, there you go: That’s addiction. 

 But in the '70s, Bruce comes along and says, "Well, hang on a minute. We're putting the rat in an empty cage. It’s got nothing to do except drink the drugged water. Let’s do this differently." So Bruce built Rat Park. Rat Park is like heaven for rats. They’ve got loads of cheese—actually, I don’t think it’s cheese; it’s some very nice food that rats like—loads of colored balls, loads of friends. They can have loads of sex. Anything a rat can want, it’s got in Rat Park. And they’ve got both the water bottles: They’ve got the normal water and the drugged water. But here’s the fascinating thing. They obviously try both the water bottles; they don’t know what’s in them. They don’t like the drugged water. The rats in Rat Park use very little of it. They never overdose. And they never use in a way that looks like addiction or compulsion, which is fascinating. There’s a really interesting human example—there’s loads of human examples, but I can give you a specific one in a minute. 

 But what Bruce says is this shows that both the right-wing theory of addiction and the left-wing theories are wrong. The right-wing theory is, you know, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard, you know, that you indulge yourself—it’s a moral flaw. The left-wing theory is your brain gets hijacked, you get taken over. What Bruce says is it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain, it’s your cage. Addiction is an adaptation to your environment."




Veronica Vain Is Doing A Reddit AMA, Talking About Cocaine Use And How She Loves Anal Sex: "DudeInDistress: Which avenue has more coke, Wall Street or pornography? 
 VeronicaVain: Wall Street has way more drugs. Drugs and alcohol are not even allowed on porn sets"


RossTraining.com Blog: "It is never fun to think about what could have been. Using myself as an example, there was a time when I would regularly beat myself up over mistakes that I made in the past. It was hard for me to accept that my own ignorance and neglect as a young athlete ultimately squashed many of my dreams. I used to drive myself crazy over what I would do differently if I had another chance. It wasn’t until years later that I realized my early mistakes were a blessing in disguise. I now understand that those mistakes helped shape me into the person that I am today. I am also more aware of what I can do each day to improve myself and those around me. I regularly hold myself accountable for whatever I have or have not done."

...the real message that I’d like to convey from this video is the importance of occasionally taking time to evaluate yourself. You don’t need to drive yourself crazy over whether you’ve reached your potential, but you should be critical of the decisions you’ve made and the tasks you have performed. I strongly believe that everyone should conduct an occasional performance review of themselves. Doing so will allow you to identify areas where you can improve or should have done better."

2 comments:

  1. It's ironic that one of the items in Tuesday's post cites Jimmy Carter as the last President who had a foreign policy based on human rights and today's post contains pictures of several human-rights abusers/dictators Carter supported carte blanche, like the Shah. Cheers!

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    Replies
    1. Indeed, political rhetoric vs. political reality.

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