The Road to Hell
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Continuing the discussion from THE BAD IDEAS THREAD:
I'm not sure this doesn't belong on the evil ideas thread.
Filed under: Persuasively redefining science: what could possibly go wrong?
Or maybe we need a "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" thread...
Ideas with good intentions that fail entirely or are counterproductive in practice go here. Resulting political flamewars are expected.
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Some would say that all of PHP should be listed here.
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mysql_e
…Sorry, the joke police is at the door, be back in 2-5 years.
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Maginot Line thread?
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I've seen the future and it works!
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FDA dietary guidelines: Food groups, food pyramids or whatever they're calling them these days.
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Have you seen this movie?
They correctly identify the food industry as contributing to the obesity epidemic by adding HFCS to everything, but somehow miss the food pyramid as an influence.
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... the food pyramid as an influence.
All right, I'll bite. Once you get past the "how big is a serving?" issue, what's the problem with the food pyramid?
Oh,oh.... my asbestos suit is at the cleaners...run!!
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All right, I'll bite. Once you get past the "how big is a serving?" issue, what's the problem with the food pyramid?
Fat is evil and carbs are awesome. Ever compare something with its low fat twin? They've usually replaced something fatty with some sort of sugar (HFCS being really common).
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ht tp://fedupmovie.com/#/page/home
That kind of URL belongs in the bad ideas thread.
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All right, I'll bite. Once you get past the "how big is a serving?" issue, what's the problem with the food pyramid?
Oh,oh.... my asbestos suit is at the cleaners...run!!
One of the doctors in the movie does a good job of explaining that 150 calories of sugar isn't the same as 150 calories of almonds. Basically the sugar goes straight into your bloodstream causing a blood sugar spike and insulin to be produced in response, which leads to the sugar being stored as fat. The almonds are metabolized more slowly, which means the insulin isn't required.
The problem with the food pyramid is that grains and starchy vegetables like potatoes are at the bottom. Those are actually converted to sugar very quickly (also mentioned in the movie), even in your mouth if you're eating bread, leading to the effect mentioned above. Whether you're in the low-fat or low-carb camp, moving non-starchy vegetables to the bottom of the pyramid is a clear win.
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Fat is evil and carbs are awesome. Ever compare something with its low fat twin? They've usually replaced something fatty with some sort of sugar (HFCS being really common).
Not that I think the food pyramid is all that great, but at least get your argument against it right. HFCS would be right up there at the narrow top end of the pyramid to be "used sparingly" just like fats unless you have taken up some bizarre definition in which HFCS is not "sweets" or "sugars".
Carbs are the base and largest serving count on the pyramid, but is carbs from bread, grains, and pasta, not sugars. See, the food pyramid:
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Not that I think the food pyramid is all that great, but at least get your argument against it right. HFCS would be right up there at the narrow top end of the pyramid to be "used sparingly" just like fats unless you have taken up some bizarre definition in which HFCS is not "sweets" or "sugars".
Sure, ignore my fucking argument, why don't you. "Fat, Oils & Sweets: USE SPARINGLY." And so we get low fat variants of lots of stuff. THEY DIDN'T REPLACE THE FAT WITH BREAD, CEREAL RICE OR PASTA YOU DUMBASS. /blakeyrant
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Your argument appeared to be that they replace fat with sugar due to the food pyramid. Which would be a terrible argument, since the food pyramid says to also use sugar sparingly. Low-fat food in general can be attributed to the pyramid, but your addendum about replacing the fats with sugar is way off base. We also have tons of "low-sugar" variants of stuff .
Also, here's the new pyramid... does anyone know what the Yellow section is supposed to represent? I assume fats & sugars?
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But yes, I can see now that the "replaced fats with sugars" part was an incidental addendum to your actual gripe about the marketing and crap surrounding low-fat foods.
Blakeyranting to the rescue.
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Your argument appeared to be that they replace fat with sugar due to the food pyramid. Which would be a terrible argument, since the food pyramid says to also use sugar sparingly.
It would be a terrible argument except that it's true. Yes, it says that, but so what? Actually, you might have a point, because really all of this started long before some make-work bureaucrat justified his paycheck by packaging bad diet advice in the form of a pyramid.
Also, here's the new pyramid... does anyone know what the Yellow section is supposed to represent? I assume fats & sugars?
They have a bottle of oil there, so at least some sort of fats.
But yes, I can see now that the "replaced fats with sugars" part was an incidental addendum to your actual gripe about the marketing and crap surrounding low-fat foods.
It was actually pretty essential. The misconceptions propagated made food less healthy in exactly the way @antiquarian mentioned.
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Carbs are the base and largest serving count on the pyramid, but is carbs from bread, grains, and pasta, not sugars.
Those two things are only different until the saliva in your mouth hits them. I saw a clip of a doctor demonstrating that on a news show. He had a piece of bread in front of him and a little paper strip used to detect glucose. He took a bite of the bread, chewed it for a bit, then tested it with the paper strip, which turned blue indicating that glucose was present.
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True, but I doubt it would typically all be broken down in a typical bite.
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True, but I doubt it would typically all be broken down in a typical bite.
That depends on the physical structure of the food, including its microstructure. A light bread will probably be broken down very rapidly (salivary amylase is an effective enzyme, but I believe it stops acting once food reaches the stomach) whereas something which is very heavy (like a good pumpernickel) will take a lot longer.
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That depends on the physical structure of the food, including its microstructure.
Filed Under: Duh, Today is a cranky day apparently
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... which turned blue indicating that glucose was present.
Yes, amazingly, fluffy wonder white bread has a higher glycemic index than plain sugar.here's where I take cover... But, to my original caveat, what's a serving? IE a slice of white bread should count as a serving of sugar not grains (as would "LO-FAT!!!" foods), but a decently made slice of wheat does count as a grain, as would many other healthy things.
here's where I really take cover... I think it's user error, not the pyramid's fault (at least the older one, the newer? egad.)
I lose this argument at home, too.
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I think it's user error, not the pyramid's fault (at least the older one, the newer? egad.)
If the majority of the users are in error, maybe the problem isn't really the users.
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If the majority of the users are in error, maybe the problem isn't really the users.
Touche!
You're right. I'm sure somebody thought, "We made a food pyramid. WIN! We can go home now. Our work is finished." </notsarcastic, sad and cyncial>
OTOH it's a simple graphic to remind you, "eat more of these, less of those", not the Consumer's Union archive of all the ways food labels can lie.
In our terms: a tool tip, not Knuth.
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OTOH it's a simple graphic to remind you, "eat more of these, less of those", not the Consumer's Union archive of all the ways food labels can lie.
Exactly. It wouldn't matter what you put in the pyramid, the companies and their marketing are going to try as hard as is legally possible to make their product look like "part of a balanced meal" (ie, if you eat a balanced meal and also happen to have a little of our product on the side, then it was part of a balanced meal).
Filed Under: Now asbestos free!11: Screw the xkcd comic2
2: Screw the prior-existing SMBC comic too, I came up with that joke on my own before either of those guys3
3: As did several tens of thousands of other people4
4: We just didn't have webcomics
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Basically the sugar goes straight into your bloodstream causing a blood sugar spike and insulin to be produced in response, which leads to the sugar being stored as fat.
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I'm sorry I was late to this party. PHP itself didn't start out as the road to hell of good intentions, it started out as one guy making something that was useful to him, that ballooned and escalated way beyond that.
Yes, PHP had a lot of bullshit in it that was road to hell stuff, register_globals, safe_mode, magic fucking quotes, but they're phasing that crap out now. Little by little it's becoming more like a grown up language.
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Java implementing Generics using type erasure.
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If only there were some way to show appreciation for a post...
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If only there were some way to show appreciation for a post...
How much appreciation?
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How much appreciation?
Well, unfortunately there's only so far you can go when showing appreciation online (at the moment)
Filed under: virtual blowjobs, new feature request
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Filed under: virtual blowjobs, new feature request
I choose to remain under-appreciated.
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virtual blowjobs, new feature request
Props to the first person to propose this on meta.d!
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I'm just waiting for someone to horrify me by proposing an icon.
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Well, unfortunately there's only so far you can go when showing appreciation online (at the moment)
I'm just not sure if I got sarcasted by @ben_lubar or if he just didn't get it.
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Looks like at least you enjoyed it.
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Looks like at least you enjoyed it.
I think my icon has been misconstrued and now I feel dirty.
And strangely aroused...
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+�
So... Last time I read this post it read:"+"
Now it reads:
"+"
And when quoted it shows:
"+"
Where if I'm not mistaken  is unicode character U-001D, 'INFORMATION SEPARATOR THREE'.
My question is: why?
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My question is: why?
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It's more fun to use the html entity for a unicode code point than to put a boring old number (hmm..maybe we could turn it into a heatmap!). Really started on the Likes thread, where Likes don't really mean anything. And we typically use the post id to select the code point.
Filed Under: explaining the joke
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It's more fun to use the html entity for a unicode code point than to put a boring old number (hmm..maybe we could turn it into a heatmap!). Really started on the Likes thread, where Likes don't really mean anything. And we typically use the post id to select the code point.
Filed Under: explaining the joke
So..........just make it orange?
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How about we just not bother but say we did?
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I choose to remain under-appreciated.
Ironically, this is the most-liked post in its vicinity.