In 1980, after long consultation with some of America’s most senior nutrition scientists, the US government issued its first Dietary Guidelines.
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The most prominent recommendation of both governments was to cut back on saturated fats and cholesterol
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Look at a graph of postwar obesity rates and it becomes clear that something changed after 1980. In the US, the line rises very gradually until, in the early 1980s, it takes off like an aeroplane.
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At best, we can conclude that the official guidelines did not achieve their objective; at worst, they led to a decades-long health catastrophe.
Quote Archives
I once in a while get a message from a teenage kid in South America or something complaining that there is no volleyball emoticon and why don’t I tell Apple to fix that. Well, I’m not in charge, folks. I don’t even like these.
Source: Father of the emoticon comes out swinging: I think emojis are ugly – Digiday
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly take the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off,” nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village- in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed, & needed badly- the man who can carry a message to Garcia.
— A Message to Garcia By Elbert Hubbard, 1899 (h/t Brian Richards)
As a human being, you’re multithreaded. You can type with multiple fingers, you can drive and hold a conversation at the same time. The only blocking function we have to deal with is sneezing, where all current activity must be suspended for the duration of the sneeze. That’s pretty annoying, especially when you’re driving and trying to hold a conversation. You don’t want to write code that’s sneezy.
The most important thing to know about staying fit is this: If it takes willpower, you’re doing it wrong. Anything that requires willpower is unsustainable in the long run.
— Scott Adams, “Read this if you want to be happy in 2014“
USA/NSA gif done in the style of Pixar.
*slow clap*
— Amber (@AmberBaldet)
via Twitter: 7/12/13, 10:25 AM
…Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: he was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn’t allow you that. He doesn’t let you off that hook. Christ says: No. I’m not saying I’m a teacher, don’t call me teacher. I’m not saying I’m a prophet. I’m saying: “I’m the Messiah.” I’m saying: “I am God incarnate.” And people say: No, no, please, just be a prophet. A prophet, we can take. You’re a bit eccentric. We’ve had John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, we can handle that. But don’t mention the “M” word! Because, you know, we’re gonna have to crucify you.
— Bono (source: “Bono on Jesus”)
1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.
Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.
— Douglas Adams (source: douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html)
That is one of the many things I do love about the WordPress community is that users, at any level, do have access to the brains of people that really know what they are doing with WordPress. Developers, core commiters, themers, etc., — they are accessible in a way that I’ve not seen in other communities — and that is a very valuable thing.
— Lisa Sabin-Wilson (@lisasabinwilson) via Code Poet Interview
“I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.”
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“And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”
Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment
Would you capture it? Or just let it slip?
Marshall Bruce Maters III, “Lose Yourself”
Don’t violate the principles of God in order to gain or maintain the blessings of God
Andy Stanley quoting his dad, Charles Stanley
‘That went well, we should write another,’ and so on. I worked up enough nerve to—so to speak—ask her out. But there was a lot of scuffing my heel on the floor and ‘I don’t know what you’re doing for a while, but I’ve got this guitar, and you sing pretty good, but you probably don’t want to. You’re so much better than I am. Never mind. I’m just gonna go.’ Luckily she felt the same way.
Armless dogs manipulated robotic rats with little squirt-guns filled and stuffed with C-4 explosives. Little chickadees cried because why would rats disintegrate so suddenly? I put my finger-wrapped bacon on the Communist bird-feeder speckled with little rats’ babies’ pellets. Surprisingly, the Calvinist caterpillars, a.k.a. “tenured men,” were eating C-4.
Nearby, armless dogs devoured little nubs of finger-wrapped bacon. Of course, pellets taste disgusting and chickadees prefer either Calvinist caterpillars or Communist dictators. Courageously jiggling, baby chickadee realized without C-4, their chances diminished greatly.
Alas, angry and illuminated, the armless dogs crumbled under intense miscommunication!
The result of a “go around the room and add one word to the story” experiment some friends and i did a while ago and the blog we created to contain these literary masterpieces, “The Moral of the Story.”
So what is the moral of this story?
Feel free to enlighten us in the comments. :)
An anecdotal story, a friend of mine was at meetings at Apple and Microsoft on the same day and this was in the last year, so this was recently. He went into the Apple meeting (he’s a vendor for Apple) and when he went into the meeting at Apple as soon as the designers walked in the room, everyone stopped talking because the designers are the most respected people in the organization. Everyone knows the designers speak for Steve because they have direct reporting to him. It is only at Apple where design reports directly to the CEO.
Later in the day he was at Microsoft. When he went into the Microsoft meeting, everybody was talking and then the meeting starts and no designers ever walk into the room. All the technical people are sitting there trying to add their ideas of what ought to be in the design. That’s a recipe for disaster.
Microsoft hires some of the smartest people in the world. They are known for their incredibly challenging test they put people through to get hired. It’s not an issue of people being smart and talented. It’s that design at Apple is at the highest level of the organization, led by Steve personally. Design at other companies is not there. It is buried down in the bureaucracy somewhere… In bureaucracies many people have the authority to say no, not the authority to say yes. So you end up with products with compromises. This goes back to Steve’s philosophy that the most important decisions are the things you decide NOT to do, not what you decide to do. It’s the minimalist thinking again.
Having been around in the early days, I don’t see any change in Steve’s first principles — except he’s gotten better and better at it.
Former Apple CEO – John Sculley from “John Sculley On Steve Jobs, The Full Interview Transcript”
This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
George Bernard Shaw
I don’t want to print my brochure in CMYK, because it is more expensive and has one color more than RGB, so print it in RGB and I will save some money.
(via clientsfromhell)
Many of us at our core, don’t believe we’re exceptional. This is a costly mistake…and it’s the reason we think we need to do something gimmicky in order to stand out. You are exceptional, actually. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t be in business for very long if you don’t believe in yourself. You can get away with it for a while if you have a huge advertising budget, but even then you have to pick up the slack with actual awesomeness, or it’s all doomed.
http://www.nextlevelblogger.com/3-deceptivelyeasy-ways-to-be-exceptional-in-your-business-niche/
‘Socialism only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they already have it.’
‘Here’s my strategy on the Cold War:
We win, they lose.’
‘The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’
‘The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.’
‘Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.’
‘I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.’
‘The taxpayer: That’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.’
‘Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.’
‘The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.’
‘It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.’
‘Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it’
‘Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book.’
‘No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.’
‘If we ever forget that we’re one nation under GOD, then we will be a nation gone under.’
Ronald Reagan