An Accidental Hearing

I found myself sitting in my study, with my college grading now completed, when to my surprise I heard the call of a mourning dove. I used to hear these calls all the time as a boy -- I lived near several woods -- but generally I'm just too busy with whatever projects to notice such a things.  The sound is still extraordinarily pleasing.  It's an apt reminder that I'm just too d@%* busy most of the time to hear what's worth listening to.

O.

Metaphysics

When my mind idles during sleep,
   sometimes I dream.
But when my mind idles during wakefulness,
   sometimes I do metaphysics.

O.

[image] L.A. ART MACHINE Mearone www.laartmachine.com (Accessed 3/9/2013)

Gliadin and "Wheat Belly" calmly considered.

I got curious about wheat as a nutrition problem when my father-in-law was (voluntarily) on a no wheat diet, due to a suggestion from a friend of his who had done so, and who subsequently experienced good results. My father-in-law had been having severe itching, but the doctors could not identify any cause for it. So he thought he would give it a try. During the Thanksgiving holiday they visited us, and it was challenging to fix meals that had no wheat.

Since wheat, particularly "whole wheat" is regularly touted as a very healthy grain, I was wondering if my father-in-law had received good-intentioned, but quack advice. Then I happened to run across [this] video, by a Wisconsin cardiologist, Dr. William Davis, who argues that modern wheat is a "perfect, chronic poison." Here's his position:

[T]he wheat we eat these days isn't the wheat your grandma had: "It's an 18-inch tall plant created by genetic research in the '60s and '70s," he said on "CBS This Morning." "This thing has many new features nobody told you about, such as there's a new protein in this thing called gliadin.... [Everybody] is susceptible to the gliadin protein that is an opiate. This thing binds into the opiate receptors in your brain and in most people stimulates appetite, such that we consume 440 more calories per day, 365 days per year."[1]

On his view many people, perhaps the majority of people, are sensitive to this opiate. He claims that upon giving up wheat many people have surprising recoveries from commonly known ailments: "Diabetics become no longer diabetic; people with arthritis having dramatic relief. People losing leg swelling, acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, and on and on every day."[1]

His overall advice is "(1) avoid all products made from high-yield, semi-dwarf wheat that wreak health destruction, and (2) create a diet that is otherwise healthy and appropriate for all members of the family." Unfortunately, it turns out that a lot of products are wheat-based: all breads, all breakfast cereals, noodles, pasta, bagels, muffins, pancakes, waffles, donuts, pretzels, crackers. And there are some surprises too: processed foods containing wheat, such as soy sauce, Twizzlers, Campbells Tomato Soup, salad dressings, taco seasoning.[2]

Is this all faddish quackery by a doctor who seeks to make lots of money on his book, or is there really something here?

I first checked-out the blogsite of Dr. Thomas L Halton. He holds a Doctor of Science in Nutrition from Harvard University as well as Masters Degrees in both Exercise Science and Human Nutrition. He is a Certified Nutrition Specialist, a Licensed Dietitian/Nutritionist in the State of Massachusetts and an ACE Certified Personal Trainer. So, this guy certainly gets the nod for being a qualified reviewer. He finds that the books is well researched, and recommends it, mostly on the grounds that Davis's views agrees with his own foundational view of nutritional recommendations -- blood sugar stability. He writes, "A major concept in this book is that swings in blood sugar have a negative impact on weight control and health in general. I couldn't agree more."[3] He notes that Davis did a test on himself that seems to bear-out his claims:

"The author found a woman who grows the old fashion wheat and bought some flour from her. After eating 2 slices of bread made with this flour, his blood sugar rose to 110. He repeated the test with modern flour. His blood sugar after eating 2 pieces of bread made with modern wheat rose to 167! It is quite plausible that wheat used to be a healthy, lower glycemic grain years ago, but is now high glycemic due to genetic manipulation."[3]

Of course this is one guy, doing one test on himself. But I suspect its illustrative, and it's probably reasonable to assume that other tests, and on other people, have shown the same thing. Otherwise, Dr. Halton would have complained. Dr. Halton thinks Dr. Davis gets a lot right in the book, though he has some disagreement with what ratios and what selections Dr. Davis allows. It seems they both agree that too many and the wrong types of carbohydrates are the real basis for health problems in the American diet.

Granted, I am friendly to the view that carbohydrates are difficult to manage, and indeed at the basis of many nutrition problems, but Davis' claims are specifically that something about the genetic make-up of modern "dwarf" wheat, gliadin, is what's specifically causing many health problems. Not surprisingly, the Grain Foods Foundation is unimpressed by Dr. Davi's claim and nutritional advice:

"Omitting wheat entirely removes the essential (and disease-fighting!) nutrients it provides including fiber, antioxidants, iron and B vitamins. [...] Besides this, the advice dished out by Dr. Davis is completely counter to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the gold standard of scientifically-sound nutrition advice. The Guidelines call for the average healthy American to consume six one-ounce servings of grain foods daily, half of which should come from whole grains and the other half from enriched grains. Wheat is the basis for a number of healthful whole and enriched grain foods including breads, cereal, pasta and wheat berries that provide valuable nutrients to the American diet and have been shown to help with weight maintenance."[4]

They further maintain that this is yet another fad diet, and contrast Dr. Davis with the "real experts". This strikes me as odd, since if a certified, practicing cardiologist does not count as an expert, I'm not sure just who would.

One study I noted in Dr. Davis favor shows that even people without a special sensitivity to gliadin (celiac disease (CD) patients) develop problems in the face of eating it. (Celiac disease is a chronic reaction to gluten proteins that results in the poor absorption of nutrients in the small intestine.) Admittedly, the study was small, using three celiac patients and three patients without the disease. Their conclusion was, "The data obtained in this pilot study support the hypothesis that gluten elicits its harmful effect, throughout an IL15 innate immune response, on all the individuals. This innate response is found in both patients with and without CD, although the triggering of an adaptive response is CD specific." [5] Another study from the Univ. of Maryland showed that "based on our results, we concluded that gliadin activates zonulin signaling irrespective of the genetic expression of autoimmunity, leading to increased intestinal permeability to macromolecules."[6]  As I quickly searched-out studies that appeared in professional journals from academic labs, there is indeed clear evidence that gliadin does have noted, but limited effects on otherwise healthy people.

What can be said, then, overall?  The evidence leads me to this conclusion: some individuals could indeed be sensitive to gliadin, even without having celiac disease; since, the immune and system does not operate on a discrete have-it, don't have-it system when it comes to having troubles with absorption of nutrients. My current belief is that Dr. Davis has overstated his claim -- namely, that gliadin is toxic to all (or almost all) who eat genetically modified wheat.  Yet he does have scientific evidence on his side that gliadin can have measurable intestinal effects on some large portion of the population. Just how large and how significant these effects are is up in the air, but I currently do not see the call for alarm that he seems to be raising.

O.



REFERENCES

[image] www.goldenprairieoats.com/gluten-free-assurance.html

[1] "'Modern wheat a "perfect, chronic poison,' doctor says" CBS This Morning, September 3, 2012 (Accessed Jan 1, 2013)

[2] "Wheat Belly: Quick and Dirty 2" Wheat Belly Blog December 5, 2012. (Accessed Jan 1, 2013)

[3] "Book Review: Wheat Belly" Dr. Thomas L. Halton website August 14, 2012. (Accessed Jan 1, 2013)

[4] "Our Perspective on 'Wheat Belly". Six Servings (Official Blog of the Grain Foods Foundation). Aug. 30, 2011. (Accessed Jan 1, 2013)

[5] "Is gliadin really safe for non‐coeliac individuals? Production of interleukin 15 in biopsy culture from non‐coeliac individuals challenged with gliadin peptides" GUT: An International Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology June, 2007, 56(6)889-890. (Accessed Jan 1, 2013)

[6] "Gliadin, zonulin and gut permeability: Effects on celiac and non-celiac intestinal mucosa and intestinal cell lines." Scandinavian journal of gastroenterology - PubMed.gov April 2006; 41(4):408-19. (Accessed Jan 1, 2013)

Ebenezer Chicken Scrouge

It seems to presume that the future already exists as a non-contingent state of affairs; furthermore, it also seems to presume that one can actually make comparisons between two elements within this state of affairs from the present moment.

That the metaphysics of the future and the epistemology of the present were both foisted on poor Ebenezer so suddenly, all in one statement, no doubt accounts for his gaping beak of surprise -- well, that and the pronouncement on his existential plight, granted.

Did I mention I'm a Philosopher on Christmas break with no students around?

O.

REFERENCES

[ image ] savage chickens website.

Gun control should be a lower priority; yes, even now.

The horror of an event lasts, but the real and overall numbers belie weightier problems 

This info-graphic has been floating around the internet, as a kind of perspective on the recent tragedy of school shootings.[1] I think there are two suggestive things here. First, that we get upset over something which has comparatively very small impact (in terms of total number of deaths of citizens); and, second, that emotion of recent events easily clouds our judgement on overall factors.

I am presuming that since all deaths happen only once to each citizen, they must be counted as equal. Yet since so many more deaths occur in all these other categories, guns are actually a much smaller problem for the country as a whole than these other issues. However, the emotive baggage toward guns and the highly publicized (albeit terrible) episodes involving them is what biases a response in people.  But that doesn't change what facts there are on the actual numbers of deaths. So, as an overall assessment, I'd say the gun worries are overblown.

One might counter that self inflicted or accidental deaths are not a "problem" that the country needs to deal with, certainly not with legal solutions. In fact, some libertarians would further are that (1) we should be allowed to harm ourselves, and (2) we can't legislate accidents away.[2]

But I think there is a way to approach the matter which moves the issue to the first or initiating causes of citizen deaths. Just as a badly broken mental health system can allow a person to end up using a gun in terrible ways, so can other broken social systems -- such as substandard auto monitoring, allowing under monitored or dangerous practices,  perpetuating addictive cigarettes in society, etc. -- all these allow other consequences where many, many citizens die. Therefore, it's the initiating causes that we should be worrying about, and the initiating causes for gun deaths have far, far less consequences in terms of citizen deaths than the initiating causes behind these other social issues that lead to citizen deaths. So (and again), as an overall assessment, I argue that gun worries are overblown.

 O.

[1] One should also note that the claim about FBI and baseball bats is incorrect (source).

[2] Of course, if one can't legislate accidents away, there is this mystery of what the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has been doing all these years.

Better person-like robot stealing a job near you.

Curse that seventh joint!

Adding-in the extra joint from standard robots (i.e. from six to seven) allows for more human like activities when doing hazardous research. But it's not all good news. This company, Nikkyo Technos, has a nice virtual set-up system that cuts down significantly on programming this new robot.

When work precision in genetic amplification trials was compared between Mahoro and people, Mahoro’s precision was better than that of veteran technicians. Mahoro also did the work in half the time. “Mahoro’s arm has seven joints. Factory automation robots only have up to six. In factories, a hand can usually be positioned freely using six joints. But with a seventh axis, elbow motion can be reproduced. That enables the robot to move like this.”[1]

It's easy to sell robotic implementation for hazardous activities as a safe way of keeping humans from harm's way, but it's a less easy sell when implementations are applied to simpler tasks, like sorting the burgers or frying the nuggets and fries at a local fast food restaurant. Some of this is already happening. Take McDonald's as a study here. It already uses robotic software drink dispensing at some of its restaurants (e.g. this video). But sometimes, the robots don't strike us as robots, because they look like activities that we already do in other areas, but they still have the same effect -- replacing a low-skill job, and offering big profit advantages to a company. Last year, for instance, Stuart Sumner reported that

McDonald's is to install touch-screen technology across its 7,000 restaurants in Europe in an attempt to make the process of ordering food fast and more convenient. Speaking to the Financial Times, Steve Easterbrook, president of McDonald's Europe, said that the technology would improve efficiency, with transactions expected to be up to four seconds shorter per customer. The change will also provide the fast food giant with a wealth of information on customer ordering habits.[2]

Such an easy-to-use touchscreen makes this passive robot and it's convenient data mining opportunities too good to pass-up. (Here a video of one in action in Melbourne, Victoria.) As when one cashier in a U.S. Walmart grocery store can run several check-out stands, so too fewer workers are required to fill orders at McDonald's.

This worry of robotics replacing standard-fare human jobs is an issue I'm seeing more and more as I move around the mediascape. A couple of months ago, PBS ran an excellent segment called "Man vs. Machine: Will Human Workers Become Obsolete?" which captures many of the issues involved. At first glance, the replacement robots for workers would look to be merely a matter of cost. But if low-skill workers en mass start seeing their jobs too quickly replaced by these kinds of machines, there could be a social back-lash against the company. But I can't see companies moving too slow on all this, because the advantages to the bottom line are just too tempting. So I don't know if it will be done as subtly as possible, where it doesn't get noticed until after the fact; or, if there will be some big tipping point where it all happens suddenly. Maybe robots will bring about some sort of human utopia, but probably not before there is noteable social unrest beforehand.

REFERENCES

[1] "Two-Armed Android Robot Takes on Risky Lab Work" Daily Disruption (July 7th, 2012).

[2] "McDonald's to implement touch-screen ordering" Computing.co.uk (May 18th, 2011).

Continually raising Hell keeps people in line

Support your local hard-core fundamentalists today!

From the study:

"Though religion has been shown to have generally positive effects on normative ‘prosocial’ behavior, recent laboratory research suggests that these effects may be driven primarily by supernatural punishment. Supernatural benevolence, on the other hand, may actually be associated with less prosocial behavior. Here, we investigate these effects at the societal level, showing that the proportion of people who believe in hell negatively predicts national crime rates whereas belief in heaven predicts higher crime rates. These effects remain after accounting for a host of covariates, and ultimately prove stronger predictors of national crime rates than economic variables such as GDP and income inequality. Expanding on laboratory research on religious prosociality, this is the first study to tie religious beliefs to large-scale cross-national trends in pro- and anti-social behavior."

O.

[image] adapted from article:

Shariff AF, Rhemtulla M (2012) Divergent Effects of Beliefs in Heaven and Hell on National Crime Rates. PLoS ONE 7(6): e39048. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0039048

The Secret Life of Garbage

Taking out the trash is just the beginning

The design team over at businessdegree.net were kind enough to notice that I'd written a blog post on garbage a while back, and provided me with one of their new graphic pieces that succinctly highlights the business behind garbage.

I found it very interesting and for the moment will become a corporate tool fanboy of their creative use of ... well ... garbage stats!

(click graphic to enlarge:)


 


 O.

REFERENCES

 [image] graphic provided by businessdegree.net (June 6, 2012)

On everything 'having a cause' vs. 'having a reason'

Every happening has a cause, but every happening having a reason is quite a bit different.

So a philosophy friend of mine who does metaphysics posted this on his Facebook wall, and I asked him the following in an interchange:

him: I think the first part of this is false. Not everything happens for a reason. But the second clause is certainly true and worthy of posting.
me: Let 1 = Everything that happens has a set of causes for why it happened. And let 2 = a set of causes just is a reason Is 1 true? Is 2 true? If so, the first part [of the picture above] could be seen as true, but I'm wondering what you think of 1 and 2.
him: Does 'cause' in 1 and 2 mean 'efficient cause'?

Hmm.  He certainly asked the right question. The question rightly presumes that one should draw from Aristotle's careful partitioning of the concept of cause.  Of course, now I had to answer him, having brought the whole issue up. What would I mean by 'cause' in 1 and 2?

I don't mean final cause, but piety precludes me from excluding it in all instances of events. Maybe God has a few Plans for some events, though not, I'd say, plans for every event.

I don't mean material cause.  Again pious man that I am, I would not want to limit myself there, for who knows what Spinozic activies God initiates outside of this realm, or from outside this realm into it?

I certanly would mean formal cause, but some causes in conjunction bring about random events, so I'd be merely saying, at least, that when patterns of stuff happens it causes other patterns of stuff to happen -- hardly controversial, and nets me only a trivial truth for 1 and 2.

Now, by 'efficient cause' I understand as a thing that acts, happens, or exists in such a way that some specific thing happens as a result. Stuff happens, yeah, but does specific stuff happen?

Everything specific is relative to a greater context, like part is relative to whole. I could, thus, be saying a) this little set of events was brought about by other, wider events.  Again, trivial; or, b) this little set of events was brought about by a specific chain of events, and would not have been brought about otherwise.  This latter sense of 'efficient cause' seems way too strong for what I believe.

I concluded 1 and 2 would be only trivially true at best, and that asking him metaphysical questions takes too much effort on my part.

O.

On the baby without a brain turning two years of age

What can one assess about responsibility toward such a child?

Big-shot Enlightenment era philosopher, Immanuel Kant's ethical position holds that not only actual people, but even potential people have moral worth, thus why some opponents of abortion say that such an act is morally wrong:  a fetus in utero, otherwise not interfered with, will become a person.  But in this case, taking Kant's position, the baby, lacking a brain, is not even a potential person.

Now there is a counter-argument here.  One issue in all this is whether "person" is a concept defined (i) by the ability (or potential ability) to be come actual, as Kant's position holds; or (ii) by the the imputation of personhood by those in a social circle.  Regarding this second point, the family plainly imputes personhood to this child, as did one of the TV anchors, at least weakly, when he claimed that the child seemed to recognize its parents.  But such "seeming" recognition is often at issue in medical cases -- such as where someone has been in an otherwise unrecoverable coma, but the family claims to see responses of the person "in there".

Given only the brevity of this video, and the claims about the baby's medical condition, I would assert with full confidence the "seemings" position, but I know good-and-well that with time and constant exposure, I too would be psychologically unable to maintain that position, which for the same reason people so easily impart mindedness to a "Kismet" machine.[1]

O.

REFERENCES

[image] "Baby born without brain turns 2" YouTube, Dec 8, 2010 (Accessed April 5, 2012)

[1] "Kismet (MIT A.I. Lab)" YouTube, Sept 7, 2011 (Accessed April 5, 2012)