Skip to main content

Do-the-Opposite is Stupid

Lately I've seen people online eager to stick it to The Man by doing the opposite of what they're advised. When the air in New York City was orange with smoke from Canadian forest fires and people were advised to stay inside, some petulantly insisted people should carry on as normal. It's just more climate scare! Or lockdowns, like 2020! After all, you can be inside at school...just don't ask how kids are supposed to get there without going outside. 

New York City in June. Photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office

Likewise vaccines. Looking at risk vs. benefit on a case-by-case basis, or whether other countries similar to your own recommend the vaccines you're considering, isn't a bad idea. But rejecting them wholesale because autism (long debunked) or because COVID is stupid. A major reason many of us were vaccine hesitant with regard to the COVID shots was because they were so different from previous vaccines.

Now it's subjecting yourself to roasting heat during a heat advisory. That'll show those safetyism nannies! When the University of Colorado at Boulder canceled their campus tour because of excessive heat (the forecast was 96 degrees with a "feels like" temp of 102, a UV index of 11 and an altitude of over one mile above sea level), people on Twitter were in a snit. There was a self-guided tour available, but how could they possibly get their questions answered without a tour guide? 

Another man who heard about a heat advisory said he'd make a point of staying outside for two hours at midday. In Texas. If he's over 40, he won't be making much Vitamin D because people lose that ability with age. But he'll show the National Weather Service! 

In Nevada, two hikers were found dead on trails last weekend as the temperature reached 114 and the southern part of the state was in an excessive heat warning.  Police haven't released a possible cause of death, but in another article, the Clark County Coroner's Office says 16 people have died of heat this year. The hikers' deaths were most likely senseless and avoidable.

Doing something just because somebody said it's a bad idea is juvenile and stupid. Use your head instead!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dana Carpender's Podcast; Dr. Davis on YouTube; Labor Day Sales

Dana Carpender, who's written several recipe books and other works on low-carb, has a podcast and is still writing articles at carbsmart.com. She's a terrific writer and amateur researcher (otherwise known as reading , as Jimmy Dore jokes ). I use her book 500 Low-Carb Recipes all the time and I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. I've embedded her podcast on my blog (click on the three lines at the top right if you don't see it, or go to Spotify or other podcast source if you're getting this by email). Carbsmart.com doesn't seem to have a blog feed, so if you want to see the latest posts there, you can sign up for notifications at their site. Dr. Davis has been putting a lot more videos on YouTube, so I've added his channel to the lineup. Click on the three lines on my blog if you don't see it, or go to his channel here .  * * * * * Primal Kitchen is having a Labor Day sale-- 20% off everything. They sell high quality collagen powder, con...

Fasting blood sugar & insulin have crept up!

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh.  Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good.  I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds.  Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...

Interview: The Microbiome's Effect on Almost Everything

Mark L. Cannon, DDS, MS joins Bret Weinstein of the Darkhorse Podcast for a discussion about the oral microbiome and its downstream effects on everything from acne to Alzheimer’s. Dr. Cannon is a pediatric dentist and professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat medicine). It's an hour and 44 minutes, but well worth your time. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjkOgCXiMeE

Avoiding a Nightmare by Using Math

The answer lies in trigonometry. -Sherlock Holmes Don't worry if you never learned trigonometry--the answers here lie in arithmetic. Medical test results often come back positive or negative, as if the result were a certainty. Of course, there is the accuracy, but if the accuracy is 99% or so, what does that really mean? That you should get your affairs in order? Before you call your probate attorney, let's take an example from the book Calculated Risks by Gerd Gigerenzer. Let's say you're a 40-something year old woman with no symptoms of breast cancer. You have a positive mammogram. What are the odds you have breast cancer? Using some assumptions about test accuracy and rates of disease based on real data, the odds that you'd have breast cancer are one in eleven according to Gigerenzer. (If you were way off, don't feel bad--most of the physicians Gigerenzer tested were way off, too--and they had the data in front of them. Not that that's comforting in every...

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...