Category Archives: Quote of the Day

QOTD: Parker on Homeopathy

Posted on April 9, 2013 | Comments Off on QOTD: Parker on Homeopathy

I love it when ads for medical remedies claim to be “homeopathic.” That way I know straight away they’re no better than placebo.

—Steve Parker, M.D.

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QOTD: James Fisher On Optimal Resistance Training Technique

Posted on March 25, 2013 | Comments Off on QOTD: James Fisher On Optimal Resistance Training Technique

We recommend that appreciably the same muscular strength and endurance adaptations can be attained by performing a single set of ~8-12 repetitions to momentary muscular failure, at a repetition duration that maintains muscular tension throughout the entire range of motion, for most major muscle groups once or twice each week. All resistance types (e.g. free-weights, resistance machines, bodyweight, etc.) show potential for increases in strength, with no significant difference between them, although resistance machines appear to pose a lower risk of injury.

—Fisher, James, et al. Evidence-based resistance training recommendations. Medicina Sportiva, 15 (2011): 147-162.

exercise for weight loss and management, dumbbells

If you’re not familiar with weight training, a personal trainer is an great idea

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Quote of the Day: Jim Gaffigan on Contaminated Fish

Posted on March 10, 2013 | Comments Off on Quote of the Day: Jim Gaffigan on Contaminated Fish

Has anyone even bothered to ask why the tuna are eating mercury?

—Jim Gaffigan

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QOTD: The Jaminet’s on Industrial Food Flavors

Posted on March 6, 2013 | Comments Off on QOTD: The Jaminet’s on Industrial Food Flavors

“Flavorists at [the food company] Givaudan go into orchards and fields to find natural flavors that can be chemically isolated and introduced into food to make it more pleasing.  Among the flavors they’ve found: castoreum, which beavers secrete in urine to mark their territory.  Castoreum tastes like raspberry and vanilla and is listed on labels as “natural raspberry flavor.”

For decades, manufacturers have been learning how to make prepared foods out of the most inexpensive ingredients, not necessarily the most healthful ones, and improving the taste with chemically isolated flavoring compounds.  This explains the long ingredient lists on packaged foods.

Many researchers believe that these industrial foods are contributing to the obesity epidemic.  It’s plausible: people stopped cooking at home and increased their intake of industrial foods at about the time the obesisty epidemic started, in the 1970s; and since the 1970s industrial foods have increasingly diverged from natural foods.”

—Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet, Perfect Health Diet, 2012

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QOTD: Jerry Pournelle on Bunny Inspectors

Posted on February 22, 2013 | Comments Off on QOTD: Jerry Pournelle on Bunny Inspectors

“There’s talk of doom and gloom as the sequestration approaches, and the Administration is running in circles flapping their arms like a local school board telling the district that any cut in the budget will end football and college prep courses and everything else so that the students will have to sit hungry in classrooms without a teacher unless taxes are raised. The truth is that under the sequestration the US will spend more this year than last, and next year than this. The “cut” is in the amount of budget increase, not in actual spending. It seems to me that the whole government would be better off for an across the board 2% cut – actual cut, spend 2% less money next year than last. There’s 2% waste and monkey motion in every department. I note that the Department of Agriculture is threatening to lay off food inspectors, but there’s no talk of firing bunny inspectors. Every department has people doing things we don’t need done, particularly since we have to borrow the money in order to do them.

Bunny inspectors, for those who don’t know, look for people keeping rabbits as pets and offering them for sale – or using them in a stage performance. Bunny inspectors go to stage magic shows and if the performance employs a pet rabbit they demand to see the federal license the magician must have, and no, I am not making this up. By the way, if the rabbit is killed in the act, say eaten alive, you don’t need a federal license. You may be in trouble with the ASPCA but not with the Department of Agriculture. And the bunny inspectors won’t be laid off under the sequestration. I bet if there were a 2% cut in the DOA’s budget they’d go. If not, a bigger cut would be in order…”

—Jerry Pournelle

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QOTD: Barry Ritholtz on Banks

Posted on February 10, 2013 | Comments Off on QOTD: Barry Ritholtz on Banks

The greatest triumph of the banking industry wasn’t ATMs or even depositing a check via the camera of your mobile phone.  It was convincing Treasury and Justice Department officials that prosecuting bankers for their crimes would destabilize the global economy.  It was a license to steal, and its one they have exploited relentlessly.  It was a license to steal, and its one they have exploited relentlessly.

—Barry Ritholtz

 

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QOTD: Healthcare Insurance

Posted on January 25, 2013 | Comments Off on QOTD: Healthcare Insurance

Health care insurance doesn’t mean access to medical care any more than car insurance means you have access to a car.

—WhiteCoat’s Call Room, October 6, 2010

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QOTD: Thomas Sowell on Healthcare Bureaucracy

Posted on January 7, 2013 | 2 comments

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

– Thomas Sowell

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QOTD: Joshua Brown On Email

Posted on December 16, 2012 | Comments Off on QOTD: Joshua Brown On Email

Email is totally out of control and needs to be made illegal effective immediately. It is the worst thing that’s ever happened to humanity. Unless you consider the alternative – phone calls – which I view as an act of violence. “Why is he calling me? What emergency necessitated his dialing my number and waiting for it to ring, what utter atrocity required the disruptively instantaneous back-and-forth of a voice conversation?” But I digress…

Here’s the thing you have to know about emails in 2012: It’s okay to ignore them. Even the ones from people you know. I started doing that this fall and you know what’s gone wrong? Nothing. No lost friendships, no hard feelings, no missed business opportunities, no miscommunications. It’s all good. So which emails do you respond to and which do you ignore? Simple! When you see an email, ask yourself “is ignoring this going to keep me up at night and make me feel as though I’ve been careless or sloppy or cruel?”  If the answer is yes, then deal with the email! If not, ignore it. It’s okay, if the person sending it knows you, then they’ll accept that you’re busy or think maybe you never got it (the spam folder ate my homework). This frees you up to respond to clients, vendors, business partners and close friends and acquaintances with whom you’re actively dialoging or making plans.

So don’t make all these dumbass folders and files you’re never going to use, just start blowing emails off as they come in. A wise man once said that your inbox is like a To Do list that someone else makes for you. To which I say, no thanks. I make my own To Do list, the needs and wants and tasks of others come after the tasks that are important to my clients and my practice.

As for what should replace the email, I vote for the Twitter direct message. No one will DM you annoying or wasteful communiques if you’re following each other on Twitter. PR people can be blocked, never mind any “safe unsubscribe” email spam ritual – you can get rid of a PR sea-creature whom you’ve accidentally followed forever with a Twitter unfollow.  As soon as they start allowing attachments on Twitter and slightly longer messaging, I’m going to start replacing as many email convo’s as possible with it.

—Joshua M. Brown

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QOTD: Rule of Lawyers

Posted on December 13, 2012 | Comments Off on QOTD: Rule of Lawyers

Americans could once boast proudly that their system set the benchmark for the world; the United States was the rule of law. But now what we see is the rule of lawyers, which is something different.

—Niall Ferguson

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