Life Extension - Eat Less, Live Longer

This came from the latest research by Dr. Anne Brunet and her group at Stanford University.

DR - dietary restriction is the most important environmental factor that can be used to slow down aging. It will not only extend life-span, but it will also extend health-span (years of healthy life).

The best is to eat the minimum amount needed without getting malnutrition. She showed a graph of her data collected on mice - the less they ate, the more years were added to their life - until a certain point, beyond which starvation took over, and life span reduced rapidly.

Reducing food intake by between 40 and 60% had the most effect on human beings. It is not easy to do. But, doing any amount helps. The earlier you do in your life, the better, but advantages can be gained by doing it at any time in life. Consuming the normal amount and then burning most of them does not help in this. You have to consume less.

There is a biological reason for this - has to do with producing less insulin.

There is also an evolution explanation for it -the body slows down its aging until enough food is available, at which point, it does its normal function of reproduction, and then goes through aging.

This is what Indian sages used to say. I have a book from Rajnish that advocates exactly this.

Childhood Obesity - A Public Health Crisis

From Dr. Thomas Robinson's talk at Stanford University this evening.

There are many causes for it - a toxic environment is the primary one.

This problem has come up for adults only in the last 30 years, when no state had obesity of > 20% to today, when all states have obesity of > 20%, and in some states it is > 30%. Children are not too far behind. Here is a summary of reasons:

1. Food companies are coming up with new varieties of food. Last year, 19,000 new varieties of food came out. Innovation is good, but it is also known that the more different varieties there are, the more people will consume them.
2. Ignoring USDA portion-sizes. The smallest order of French Fries you can get at McDonald's is more than 2x the size of a single serving as stated by USDA. Of course, medium and large are even larger.
3. Related to the above, portion sizes are going up. 8 oz bottles used to be standard for coke. That gave way to 12 oz cans, and then to 16oz bottles. Today, it is rare to find vending machines with bottles smaller than 20 oz.
   
4. Promotion. In some ads, more calories are being equated to greater manhood, and those who consume fewer calories are being called wimps.
   
5. Other effects of advertising. In a double-blind study, kids given the same food in two containers - one in plain box and the other in a McDonald's box stated that the one in McDonald's box tasted much better. In fact, McDonald's spends $1.3B per year on advertising - that is more than the entire budget of the FDA.
   
6. Decreasing fast-food prices. The two main ones are high-fructose corn syrup, and soya fats - both coming from crops subsidized by the US government.
7. Screen time. Time in front of a TV has many negative effects including: a) It displaces physical acivity, b) Children eat junk food while watching, c) Effect of advertising, and d) Children with TV's in their rooms tend to sleep less.
   

This needs to be a global, national, local and personal priority.

Giving children the negative effects of obesity won't work. Studies have found that the following work better.

1. Fun/taste
2. Choice and control
3. Goals and challenges
4. Pride and sense of accomplishment
5. Peer / social approval and disapproval
6. Parent / adult approval and disapproval
7. Personal appearance

So, we know it is a problem, we know what the causes are, and we know what works. What are we waiting for? I hope we can reverse the current worry that for the first time in history, the current generation's longevity will be lower than the previous generations's.

The enigma about followers of conservatives

Today's New York Times has an article on the myth of liberal activist judges - Our Fill-in-the Blank Constitution. It is a myth that has been created an perpetuated by conservatives to suit their interests.

Here is how it describes conservative interests:

Conservative judges ... tend to exercise the power of judicial review to invalidate laws that disadvantage corporations, business interests, the wealthy and other powerful interests in society. They employ judicial review to protect the powerful rather than the powerless.

And, liberals

Liberal judges, on the other hand, have tended to exercise the power of judicial review to invalidate laws that disadvantage racial and religious minorities, political dissenters, people accused of crimes and others who are unlikely to have their interests fully and fairly considered by the majority. Liberal judges have ended racial segregation, recognized the principle of “one person, one vote,” prohibited censorship of the Pentagon Papers and upheld the right to due process, even at Guantánamo Bay.

Of this is indeed true, then why do the less powerful, and the poor in the US become conservatives. That comes back to my blog from a few days ago - The politics of fear vs. the politics of hope. Conservatives have mastered the art of fear, and succeed in scaring the people to follow their cause. This also explains the oft-quoted statement - why do people vote against their self-interest. Not to say that the liberals are above it, but they do it much less.

Politics of fear vs. the politics of hope

What exactly happened to the health care bill in the last one year? It started off with broad support and excitement. Over the course of the year, support gradually dropped, where less than half the country supports it.

Here is what happened - the politics of fear took over. A number of groups (republicans among the primary ones) created fear in people's minds - with things that were patently untrue or where their connection to truth was at best tenuous. People are swayed more by fear than by hope - unfortunately, so this technique worked.

This is not the first time the right-wing has played this card. In fact, fear is the hallmark of their politics. The whole basis of George W. Bush's two terms in office was fear. His dad, George Bush won on a campaign of fear - anyone remember the infamous Willie Horton ad? Before that. Ronald Regan attacked two small countries - Libya, and Grenada. Justification can always be debated, but the environment was clear - "be afraid, and take action based on your fears."

Obama was elected because he offered hope, not fear. Once he was elected though, he, and his staff let the fear machine take over - explaining the gains that the right is making.

Until Americans see through it, as a society we are going to be living in fear, and electing politicians who will exploit this fear to continue getting elected. Is this the society we want to build?

Gandhian Version of "My Way or the Highway"

In the US, there is a personality trait known as "My Way or the Highway."

According to the website usingenglish.com, "this idiom is used to say that if people don't do what you say, they will have to leave or quit the project, etc."

The Gandhian version is simple - if people don't do what you say, you will leave or quit the project, etc. It may be less aggressive, but the intended results are the same - either listen to my way, or we both can't be on the same team. It is also much more difficult to argue against.

Why isn't "The Church" supporting the health-care bill

I have not seen public support from any religious institution for the health care bill. These are the same institutions that vehemently oppose abortion, and intervened in Terry Schiavo's case.

One would think that health care is a basic issue that churches would be involved with, but none is. Why is this?

One possible explanation is that many churches are being run not by people who care about religion and people, but by politicians. Instead of religion having entered politics, maybe politics has entered religion. These politicians who are acting as church-leaders are now making political decisions, not human decisions that are considered in the purview of religion.

There are no accidents - everything is someone's fault!

A headline in our local newspaper made it glaringly clear. A tree had fallen on a car killing a child. The parents blamed the city for not taking care of the tree. The city said it was not responsible. The newspaper said "City claims parents are responsible."

The US legal system considers that there are no accidents, and that anything that happens is someone's fault. In this case, if the city was not responsible, it was "clear" that the parents were. Why does it have to be anyone's responsibility?

Accidents do happen. Yes, you can take steps to reduce accidents, but can't eliminate them completely. Nor can you eliminate the impact of accidents completely.

So, what is the result of these accident-prevention measures? First, any time such an accident happens where either blame can't be clearly assigned, or the entity the blame is being assigned to wiggles out of it, new laws are created. The result - an increasing complex set of laws that choke normal behavior.The second thing that changes are people's attitudes - that we are protected against all accidents, resulting in extreme rash behavior.

Let nature take its course. There will be some accidents - always. If it was through someone's error, for sure fault them. If it could have been avoided through common-sense laws, enact those laws. But, trying to legislate around every accident is foolhardy. And, let people be careful before they try doing crazy things, and blaming the system (like the woman who got burnt in the thigh with coffee that spilled from the cup held between her thighs while she was driving).

"Atoms are the new bits"

This is how Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine ended his talk at Stanford University this evening. He had started this talk by calling it "The next industrial revolution." They are both the same, given what he had to say. Here is a brief summary.

The Internet has democratized production and distribution.

We are all familiar with distribution - Amazon, Ebay, iPod apps, ... Anyone can sell anything on the Internet, without building their own infrastructure.

On the production side, it is easy to see how digital goods production has become democratized - all steps in music can be done in software; same for news.

Chris's contention is that same thing can now be done for physical goods. If you have an idea, you can get it made without ever leaving your house. Sites like Alibaba.com put you in touch with manufacturers in China that will make your items - from 1 unit to 1 million units. And, they even accept payment via PayPal. So, no building of factories, not supply chain, no letters of credit. Just take your idea online, and someone will make it for you.

Given that physical goods can be taken online, it also means there can be greater collaboration in physical goods. He talked about his own company that makes auto-pilot model planes. And, a company near Boston that has an open-source car - a car that was created by crowdsourcing. In fact, you can order your own custom car with them.

All this comes from the understanding that "the past decade was about finding new social and innovation models on the web," and "the next decade will be about applying them to the real world."

So, hang on to your seats - Chris believes that many concepts perfects for the web will see realization in real life.