the Revision Division

WHY THERAPEUTIC FASTING could be the answer to ‘lifestyle diseases’ like obesity.

As medical director of the renowned Buchinger Wilhelmi Clinic in Germany, [Françoise Wilhelmi de Toledo] is an authority on therapeutic fasting and responsible at least in part for the current interest in its role in the management of chronic diseases including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and cancer. And, of course, as a means of weight control . . .

She says there is strong evidence gathered over many decades to show how it can lower blood pressure, reduce excess fat and glucose in the blood, modulate the immune system, increase the effect of the mood and sleep-regulating neuro-transmitter serotonin, boost protein repair, and reduce inflammation.

Fasting has been likened to a “reset” button that returns the human body to its (healthy) factory settings. A study published last year by Prof. Longo’s team at USC, drawing on animal and human trials, concluded that three days of fasting can rejuvenate the immune system, triggering the production of new white blood cells. Other studies show that fasting can enable healthy cells to endure better the toxic impact of chemotherapy while cancer cells die more rapidly. It is a fascinating area of research that draws on the body’s evolutionary adaptation.

“Human beings are not programmed for abundance,” Dr. Wilhelmi de Toledo says. “Humans are programmed for loss.” The capacity to fast derives from periods when our ancestors ate more than they needed and built up fat reserves and surplus nutrients, such as vitamins and minerals, in summer and autumn. In winter and spring, when access to food was much reduced, they endured periods of fasting in which their metabolism switched automatically from “external nutrition to nutrition taken from fat reserves.”

Earlier: Fasting triggers stem cell regeneration of damaged, old immune system. (about the research by Longo linked above)

See also: How to lose weight when all diets fail.

SWEDEN: State-funded LGBT organization puts on “Pride Week” show for high schoolers wherein naked student is beaten to the ground and urinated upon. “The week was supposed to ‘spread a sense of openness and love in the school’.” Uh-huh.

When the Swedish alternative news site Fria Tider calls principal Lesley Brunnman, she confirms that the event took place and says that it was “just a theater experience.”

STUDY: Oral contraceptive pill use is associated with localized decreases in cortical thickness.

Oral contraceptive pills (OCs), which are used to prevent pregnancy by the majority of women in the United States, contain steroid hormones that may affect the brain’s structure and function. In this investigation, we tested the hypothesis that OC use is associated with differences in brain structure . . .

We found that OC use was associated with significantly lower cortical thickness measurements in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex. These regions are believed to be important for responding to rewards and evaluating internal states/incoming stimuli, respectively. Further investigations are needed to determine if cortical thinning in these regions are associated with behavioral changes, and also to identify whether OC use is causally or only indirectly related to these changes in brain morphology.

REPORTING AS PROPAGANDA: Should Transgender Students Be Able to Use the Bathroom of Their Choice? Nevada Debates. Alternative, more accurate headline: Should Men Be Able To Hang Around In Female School Locker Rooms and Showers? Nevada Debates.

Should transgender [sic] students attending public schools be allowed to use the bathroom aligned to their asserted gender [sic]?

That’s the question Nevada lawmakers are debating this week, as they consider a bill that would ban transgender [sic] students from using a bathroom, locker room or shower different from their biological sex.

The legislation, Assembly Bill 375, is popularly known as a “Bathroom Bill” because it specifically applies to transgender [sic] persons using sex-specific facilities. Various states have introduced similar versions of this legislation.

Kudos to the author for linking the bill. But a cursory glance at the document shows that the author’s description is false. The bill does not in fact “specifically appl[y] to transgender [sic] persons using sex-specific facilities. It applies to all people.

So, what does the bill actually say? (more…)

GOVERNMENT IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS WE DO TOGETHER: “Montgomery County kidnapped two children this weekend.”

That’s the only way to see this story. Reportedly, around 4:55, someone called the cops because two kids, ages 6 and 11, were playing, without parents around. The cops forced the kids into a car, and then brought them to Child Protective Services. Three hours later, they informed the panicked parents. Three hours after that, the county let the parents take the kids home. . . .

Stranger abductions, or kids in broad daylight being killed while crossing the street — these are 1-in-a-million dangers. A hostile county government is a more real threat for some of us.

BETRAYED by “none other than our own medical associations, our own doctors.”

In 1988, the American Heart Association decided that it would be a good idea to start accepting cash to put its Heart Check symbol on foods of otherwise dubious nutritional quality. The Center for Science in the Public Interest estimates that in 2002, the AHA received over $2 million from this program alone. Food companies paid $7,500 for one to nine products, but there was a volume discount for more than twenty-five products! Exclusive deals were, of course, more expensive. In 2009, such nutritional standouts as Cocoa Puffs and Frosted Mini-Wheats were still on the Heart Check list. . . . As noted on Dr. Yoni Freedhoff’s weightymatters blog, a bottle of grape juice proudly bearing the Health Check contained ten teaspoons of sugar. The fact that these food[s] were pure sugar seemed not to bother anybody. . . .

Funding sources have enormous implications on study results. In a study that looked specifically at soft drinks, Dr. Ludwig found that accepting funds from companies increased the likelihood of a favorable result by approximately 700 percent! This finding is echoed in the work of Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University. In 2001, she had found it “difficult to find studies that did not come to conclusions favoring the sponsor’s commercial interest.”

Related: Marion Nestle: Sponsored research inevitably favors the sponsor’s vested interests. “You must understand that I am not searching for sponsored studies in any systematic way. They just appear in the tables of contents of journals I typically read and are easily identified by their titles.”

STUDY: National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track. “Results revealed a 2:1 preference for women by faculty of both genders across both math-intensive and non–math-intensive fields, with the single exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. . . . Women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers; men preferred mothers who took leaves to mothers who did not. . . . These results suggest it is a propitious time for women launching careers in academic science. Messages to the contrary may discourage women from applying for STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) tenure-track assistant professorships.”

I like that little bit at the end. The results strongly suggest that the job market for women in the sciences is completely the opposite of what is commonly claimed (instead of discrimination against women, there’s discrimination against men), but the authors must assure us that pointing this out doesn’t mean that they’re against the project to make every single male-dominated field into a female-dominated one. Oh no, they’re right on board. Don’t stop the flow of funding, please.

Imagine if the data showed instead a preference for male applicants. Would the authors say that now is “a propitious time” for men? Would they talk about how we should avoid discouraging men from these fields? Of course not. All that matters is what is (supposedly) good for women, men be damned.

FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT: Black Judge Heaps Scorn On Three-Year-Old Racist.

Soon after the robbery, the little girl told her mother that she was afraid of black people. And the mother told the judge in her victim’s statement. . . .

“I want to make that part of the record, I am offended by that,” said the judge.

And just in case anyone did not get the message the first several times, the judge took it to a new level: “I am deeply offended by that.” . . .

The judge then faced the one remaining home invader that was left to be sentenced and told him he believed he could be redeemed through the saving power of probation. Not prison.

PATHETIC: “Law & Order: SVU” Is Still Trying On The UVA Rape Hoax. “Through some rather insane plot gyrations, they managed to make it so that the ‘victim’ really was raped by one frat boy. And of course, the real tragedy was that, because of all the lies told by the ‘victim,’ they wouldn’t be able to prosecute the ‘real rapist.'”

“RECORD EVERYTHING” IS ADVICE FOR THE INNOCENT: Troy University students charged in Florida spring break gang rape filmed on cell phone.

An investigation into an Alabama shooting recovered cell phone video of a spring break gang rape that’s being described by one sheriff as the “most disgusting, sickening thing” he’s ever seen.

The shocking find showed a group of men raping a young, incapacitated woman in broad daylight in Panama City, Fla., last month while surrounded by hundreds of partygoers who did nothing to help, authorities said.

The discovery . . . led to the arrest of Troy University students Delone’ Martistee, 22, and Ryan Austin Calhoun, 23, for sexual battery by multiple perpetrators.

The suspects don’t look like evil Aryan lacrosse players or fraternity members, so this won’t be incessantly discussed in the press.

PROPAGANDA AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY: NBC, WashPost Botch Indiana ‘Feticide’ Story With Pro-Abortion Tilt. “As tragic as this story is, it’s made more tragic by the fact that big news outlets such as NBC News and The Washington Post choose to keep pertinent information about this case from its readers, while smaller news outlets, such as WSBT, provide the entire story. They try to paint Patel as a victim in “the war on women” and making this a reproductive rights story. Sadly, they gloss over the true victim of the story, Patel’s baby, who was left to die in a dumpster. That’s the story of a baby killed by his own mother.”

Earlier: Mom who left baby to die in dumpster sentenced to 20 years.

VOX DAY: “The more intelligent a woman is, the higher a woman rises, the less likely she is to find a man willing to marry her.”

DOES THIS MAKE THEM RACIST XENOPHOBES? Kenya demands U.N. removes massive Somali refugee camp.

Kenya has in the past accused Islamist militants of hiding out in Dadaab camp which it now wants the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR to move across the border to inside Somalia.

“We have asked the UNHCR to relocate the refugees in three months, failure to which we shall relocate them ourselves,” Deputy President William Ruto said in a statement on Saturday.

YOU DON’T SAY: Military Press Distorts Facts about Women in Combat.

Baldor writes: “Studies that surveyed personnel found ‘major misconceptions’ within special operations about whether women should be brought into the male-only jobs.”

Apart from the awkwardness of the statement above, and her misuse of the word “misconceptions,” Baldor’s statement is noteworthy for another reason – she suggests that the members of the elite special operations community (who comprise the upmost-tier of expertise, skill and demonstrated combat performance within the armed forces) are not competent to determine who shall enter their ranks. Notice too, her use of the word “jobs” at the conclusion of the sentence above. Her evident belief is that being a special operations warrior is no different than holding any other “job” – an outlook which is starkly at odds with the reality of an elite combat soldier’s existence and day-to-day life.

Re: “Women have so far had mixed results as they try to move into the more demanding combat positions — jobs for which men also have difficulty qualifying.”

More shading of the facts and half-truths. Women have not had “mixed results” in trying to crack the special operations community; they have failed spectacularly.

DOG BITES MAN: Media Fabricated Evidence To Smear Gop Three Times In One Day.

UK: Is the failure [sic] of health regulation damaging our well-being?

Recent guidance, lowering the threshold for the prescription of statins to patients with a 10-20% risk of developing cardiovascular disease in a 10-year period, has generated much controversy, with many experts questioning the sense of mass-medicating healthy people. . . .

Last April, independent scientists of the Cochrane Collaboration concluded that Britain wasted more than £500m on the influenza drug Tamiflu. After gaining access to withheld clinical trials data, the body found Tamiflu was no better than paracetamol in relieving flu symptoms and had potentially serious side effects including kidney problems and psychiatric disturbance. Nice was criticised for failing to call for the full data to be released by the pharmaceutical company manufacturing the drug before giving its hasty approval. . . .

Could ideology be behind Nice’s perceived perpetuation of an increasingly over-medicalised patient population? Insiders recently expressed concerns to the investigations editor of the BMJ, Deborah Cohen, that there was ministerial encouragement on Nice committees to be more favourable to the drug and device industries. 71 coalition MPs have been linked to health firms set to profit from opening up more of the market within the NHS. Failure to regulate the banks was responsible for the biggest crash in half a century and failure to regulate the drug and device industries is causing unfathomable damage to our health at great cost.

The author refers to all of this as “the failure of health regulation.” But one could just as easily say that this is regulation doing exactly what it is supposed to do, benefiting politicians, major companies, and even regulators themselves.

GOOD: To Keep Free of Federal Reins, Wyoming Catholic College Rejects Student Aid.

To the college’s leaders, rejecting government-backed aid was an expensive effort to defend against what they called growing government threats to religious freedoms. If you do not take the money, leaders argue, the government cannot tell you what to do.

“It allows us to practice our Catholic faith without qualifying it,” said Kevin Roberts, the college’s president . . . “It’s clear that this administration does not care about Catholic teaching.”

POLITICALLY-USEFUL LIVES MATTER: Why No Riots for Ricky Shawatza Hall?

Put Hall on the streets of Ferguson in an identical incident and there would be hell to pay. So why no riot? . . .

The media had a test run with this kind of double standard two years ago with the shooting death of Miriam Carey. Don’t remember Carey? She was the African American dental hygienist shot by the Capitol Hill Police following a bizarre driving incident around the White House and the U.S. Capitol. . . .

“Black lives matter” or “LGBTQ lives matter” only when those deaths advance the agenda of the Democrat-media complex. With Obama in the White House, the shooting death of a black person and/or a gay person by federal officers scores no political points.

But wait, there’s more: (more…)

CIRCLING THE WAGONS: Did AP Writer Geoff Mulvihill Lie By Omission In Defending Philadelphia Colleague Sabrina Erdely?

A list of his columns can be found here, with titles like “Developer who didn’t repay loans gets New Jersey tax credits” and “Late winter snowstorm blankets South, Northeast.” So why is he suddenly writing about events that occurred far outside of his usual territory?

A look at his LinkedIn biography provides a possible answer: both Mulvihill and Erdely are long-time residents of Philadelphia, and his writing career began in that city more or less contemporaneously with hers. While they never worked for the same magazine or paper, they’ve traveled in the same journalistic social circles for almost 20 years.

The odds that after almost 20 years Mulvihill is not personally acquainted with Erdely are slim to none. He may very well be a friend of hers. If this is the case, it makes his motive in writing the article quite obvious—it’s an attempt to rehabilitate the image of a longtime friend, whose failures and biases are now the talk of the nation.

CURIOUS: DNA can’t explain all inherited biological traits, research shows.

Scientists studied proteins found in cells, known as histones, which are not part of the genetic code, but act as spools around which DNA is wound. Histones are known to control whether or not genes are switched on.

Researchers found that naturally occurring changes to these proteins, which affect how they control genes, can be sustained from one generation to the next and so influence which traits are passed on.

The finding demonstrates for the first time that DNA is not solely responsible for how characteristics are inherited. It paves the way for research into how and when this method of inheritance occurs in nature, and if it is linked to particular traits or health conditions.

It may also inform research into whether changes to the histone proteins that are caused by environmental conditions — such as stress or diet — can influence the function of genes passed on to offspring.

CHARLES MURRAY: Why the SAT isn’t a ‘student affluence test’. “A lot of the apparent income effect on standardized tests is owed to parental IQ — a fact that needs addressing.”

YESTERDAY’S PROGRESSIVES on race.

Today’s leftist, had he been born one hundred years ago, would have held the same beliefs as his peers. Those beliefs, we would gently remind him, include the reality of ethnic differences in behavior and cognition.

And when genetic science pushes this reality into his lap–which it will in the very near future [*]–he may do well to acquaint himself with a way of thinking about it which will not seem totally foreign. . . .

David Southern took a trip down memory lane to see what yesterday’s Progressives thought about race. On his quest for Mr Goodbar, he sought out even one major Progressive figure who wasn’t racialist–almost entirely in vain.

* I changed one of these links to an archived version because the original was broken. And I provide here an alternative link for the video on the dailymotion site.

EVERYONE IN, NO ONE OUT: Steve Sailer: NYT: Obama Denounces Trans-transgenderism, Genderism. “President Obama is calling for an end to such therapies aimed at ‘repairing’ gay, lesbian and transgender youth.”

Never mind that, recently, Obama called homosexuality a “lifestyle choice.” You choose to join, but they’ll be damned if they let you leave. There shall be no gay apostacy (AKA apostgaycy), even though the evidence shows that most “unsure” adolescents become exclusively heterosexual.

Earlier coverage of related policies:

• D.C. bans gay conversion therapy of minors.
• Hope and Change? Not for Gays.
• Appeals Court Upholds Calif. Ban on Gay Conversion Therapy for LGBT Youth.
• When Government Keeps Teens from Seeing the Therapist.

MANGAN: Weightlifting will extend your lifespan.

Weightlifting has a powerful anti-aging effect. Resistance exercise reverses aging in skeletal muscle; it literally made the gene expression profile in the muscles of older people into one more like those seen in young people. . . .

One way in which weightlifting increases the size and strength of muscle is by lowering the level of myostatin. Less myostatin means bigger and stronger muscles.

A new study shows that, in mice, less myostatin also means about 15% longer life.

SUCKERS: “Ten years ago a lesbian couple purchased an artificial insemination, thinking that their sperm seller was a brilliant scientist. They found out he is a mentally ill criminal.”

EXTENSIVE: 3+ Effective Steps to Clear Up Sinus Congestion.

NOT THE ONION: “Despite the growing calls for porn education in schools, the idea is likely to receive a certain degree of pushback from parents and teachers alike. But evidently not from ninth graders.”

MAKE UP YOUR MINDS: Beloved Brontosaurus makes a comeback. “Dinosaur fossils that were originally described as Brontosaurus excelsus in 1879 and later renamed should indeed be classified as Brontosaurus, a study of dozens of dinosaur specimens concludes.”

RICHARD BRADLEY: In the End, It’s All About Rape Culture—or the Lack Thereof.

The only part of Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s article closely examined by Columbia was the lede, which detailed Jackie’s incredible story of gang rape.

Columbia should, in fact, have closely examined the entirety of Erdely’s article. . . .

Jackie’s lies do not in and of themselves disprove Rubin Erdely’s rape-culture thesis.

But if you examined the rest of the article with the same critical eye that you examine Jackie’s story, you’ll find that it, too, is deeply deceptive. “A Rape on Campus” is fashioned on selective presentation of material, the use of bogus or discredited statistics, quotes that are either fabricated or taken out of context, unconfirmed allegations, anonymous sources, the deliberate exclusion of evidence contrary to the author’s thesis, and material that is either fabricated or presented in a way that is so profoundly misleading it can only be evidence of incompetence or dishonesty. (The multiple verses of a UVa fight song, for example, that nobody at UVa has actually heard.)

Commenter “bob somerby” remarks upon the credulity of those putting together the report:

They are treating Erdely the same way Erdely treated Jackie. They are simply accepting her story on faith, after which they type it up in compelling, cinematic form.

My diagnosis? These people are a great deal like Erdely. This is what insider “journalists” are like in a post-journalistic age.

Earlier: Is the Rolling Stone Story True?

Also: More Insight Into Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s Flawed Reporting.

NAME AND SHAME: Elisabeth Garber-Paul Is The Fact Checker Who Green-Lighted The Biggest Media Hoax Of The Decade. “Garber-Paul spent the time to ask about the sexual assault policy of the campus, perhaps attempting to poke holes in it, instead of doing her job of fact-checking. The only concern she showed to UVA was asking an administrator if the Rolling Stone article will impact people coming forward with reporting additional sexual assault.”

CRY WOLF: Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s OTHER Possibly Fake Rape Story.

Everyone I spoke to in connection with this investigation was crystal clear that at no point did Sabrina Erdely or Rolling Stone ever contact them whatsoever, even to ask for background information. This is exactly the same lapse in journalistic standards that doomed the UVA story and ultimately led to its retraction. The fact that it occurred in this story is indication of a systemic problem with Rolling Stone and Sabrina Erdely’s reporting, not of a single lapse in judgment.

According to USN Personnel I talked to, Ms. Erdely’s description of how Ms. Blumer came to be convinced that she had been sexually assaulted is flatly inaccurate.

Earlier: Before Rolling Stone Was Conned By “Jackie” They Fell for “Billy”.

NOT WEIRD AT ALL: Iraqi Caught Crossing US-Mexico Border Was Military Trainer And Spoke Fluent Russian. “Breitbart Texas was provided with two documents by a federal agent who works under the umbrella of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The agent insisted on remaining anonymous.”

HIVE MIND: Media outlets make the same smear at the same time about Hugo nominations.

Yesterday the following media outlets ran articles about the Sad Puppies campaign [see here for an explanation], in which they either directly said or insinuated that it was run and populated by racist straight white males with the goal of keeping scifi white and male. (not true)

The Telegraph
Entertainment Weekly
Salon
Huffington Post
Slash Dot
io9
The Guardian

It was almost like they were all reading off the same script. . . .

EDIT: 8, I missed the A/V Club.

LIFE EXTENSION: Bioviva offering experimental gene therapy treatments for myostatin inhibition and telomere extension.

Related: Telomere extension turns back aging clock in cultured human cells, study finds.

FRANCE: Government statisticians use census data on national origin to get around restrictions on acquiring ethnic data.

Several decades after mass immigration began, enough long-term data exist to see how the generation raised in France by parents from other countries has done.

In a word, badly. Youth unemployment of 32% for French-born citizens whose parents arrived from Africa, including sub-Saharan countries and those of the Maghreb, is twice as high as for those with no immigrant background. Fully 30% leave high school without any diploma or qualification, against 16% of those without immigrant parents. French people with parents from Africa have less stable working lives, and are more likely to live in poor neighbourhoods, than those with non-African immigrant backgrounds, the report finds.

HMM: UN Climate Official: “We Should Make Every Effort” To Decrease World Population.

FIGUERES: I mean we all know that we expect nine billion, right, by 2050. So, yes, obviously less people would exert less pressure on the natural resources.

DALTON: So is nine billion a forgone conclusion? That’s like baked in, done, no way to change that?

FIGUERES: Well there again, there is pressure in the system to go toward that; we can definitely change those, right? We can definitely change those numbers and really should make every effort to change those numbers because we are already, today, already exceeding the planet’s planetary carrying capacity, today. To say nothing of adding more population that is really going to overextend our capacity. So yes we should do everything possible.

Related: WHO, UNICEF deny Kenyan bishops’ claim that they supplied sterility-causing tetanus vaccines. Maybe this scandal was just a big misunderstanding, but it doesn’t help when officials say “we should do everything possible” to have fewer people.

Earlier: Steven Mosher: Who’s Behind the UN Sterilization Campaign Lacing Tetanus Vaccine With Drug to Cause Miscarriages?

MARRIAGE tracks male accomplishment, is female accomplishment. “Once we get above the underclass of high school dropouts, a woman’s education has little discernible influence on whether or not she is successfully married. Among men, on the other hand, there is an upward trajectory of marital prospects as educational attainment increases.”

REMINDER: People In The Mainstream Media Who Used The UVA Rape Hoax To Push A False Narrative. “As you can see from the broad range of outlets represented, the corruption of American media is extensive. Trust nothing and verify everything.” Narratio super factis.

Earlier: A List Of Whom To Ignore: People In The Mainstream Media Who Used The UVA Rape Hoax To Push A False Narrative.

WALT HEYER: I Was a Transgender Woman. “Now it was apparent that I had developed a dissociative disorder in childhood to escape the trauma of the repeated cross-dressing by my grandmother and the sexual abuse by my uncle. That should have been diagnosed and treated with psychotherapy. Instead, the gender specialist never considered my difficult childhood or even my alcoholism and saw only transgender identity. It was a quick jump to prescribe hormones and irreversible surgery. Years later, when I confronted that psychologist, he admitted that he should not have approved me for surgery.”

How did it become common practice just to assume that if someone is confused then the answer is to mutilate him? It’s like a sick practical joke: “You think you’re f*cked in the head now? Just wait until we convince you to have your dick chopped off.”

JANET BLOOMFIELD: 5 Things Women Do Better Than Men. “1. Beat up children According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, women are more likely to abuse children than men. In Australia, ‘mothers carried out almost 68 per cent of cases of emotional and psychological abuse committed by parents, about 53 per cent of physical abuse and more than 94 per cent of neglect cases.’ If you ever find yourself asking why there are so many violent people out there, you might want to start by looking at all those women beating up little children.”

GOOD TO KNOW: Studies Confirm: Natural and Synthetic Vitamins Can Differ in Quantity & Quality of Effects! Vitamins A-E, B’s & More.

Only in some cases, the effects are qualitatively different. However, in some genetically disadvantaged individuals, who cannot do the conversion that is necessary for e.g. folic acid or pyridoxin (B6), these differences can be qualitative (because the agents don’t work at all or, as in the case of folic acid) even break the whole system. . . .

The often-heard claim that natural and synthetic vitamins were identical is questionable and in some cases like folic acid, vitamin E and others simply false.

One of the reasons we even have to worry about adequate vitamin intakes despite living in abundance, is the quality of our foods (or rather their lack of quality). Food processing techniques can reduce the amount of every known essential vitamin. The refining of rice reduce B-complex vitamins and initially led to deaths in Asia due to beriberi [see here]. And even if synthetic USP vitamins are added to white rice, it does not contain the same nutrients as unpolished brown rice (nor does white flour contain the same nutrients as whole flour). . . .

It appears to be certain that hitherto unknown nutrients will also be affected from food processing; and even if we found all of them and replaced them with USP isolates it is, we cannot be sure that the effects would be better than for some of the previously discussed vital nutrients. Against that background you don’t have to be “paleo” to ask yourself if the synthetically enhanced foods will ever offer all, or even almost all of the health benefits the original unprocessed foods have.

STUDY: Post-exercise Glycogen Recovery and Exercise Performance is Not Significantly Different Between Fast Food and Sport Supplements.

STEVE SAILER on Robert Putnam, “the liberal Charles Murray”:

In a comic 2006 episode, Putnam admitted to Financial Times columnist John Lloyd that he had socked away for a half decade the results of his huge survey of American communities while he tried to figure out how to spin its finding that ethnic diversity was disastrous. Putnam memorably confessed to Lloyd:

The core message of the research was that, “in the presence of diversity, we hunker down,” he said. “We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.” Prof. Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, “the most diverse human habitation in human history” … the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust. “They don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions,” said Prof. Putnam. “The only thing there’s more of is protest marches and TV watching.” . . .

Putnam complained to the Harvard Crimson that “it’s almost criminal” that the Financial Times hadn’t sufficiently emphasized the spin he had finally come up with: that the community-sapping downsides of diversity “have been socially constructed, and can be socially reconstructed. … We should construct a new us.”

Sailer also has some interesting remarks about Putnam’s latest book.

Earlier: Diversity or Community: Choose One.

REALITY fails the Bechdel test. (According to Wikipedia, “The Bechdel test asks if a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man.”)

I quite like Lizzie’s troop leader . . . She asked me to lead the troop in storytelling exercises one afternoon . . .

The girls were terrific. Silly and shy, coy and rambunctious, attention-seeking, wise beyond their years, strikingly immature, they strutted about the room like little heroines in a post-modern novella written by Louisa May Alcott, edited by Ntozake Shange, with contributions from Beyoncé—the Destiny’s Child years. Their monologues, however, were a disappointment. Not because they were poorly written or lacking in style or stingy with words, but because only one girl wrote a monologue that wasn’t about getting a boyfriend, keeping a boyfriend, or losing a boyfriend.

This is a wonderful example because the girls themselves chose to play characters who want to talk about men — to an audience of women.

Related: Davis Aurini: Reality fails the Bechdel test:

Movies fail the Bechdel Test for the same reason that reality does. To put it bluntly:

• Men talk more about ideas
• Women talk more about people
• Men are focused on familial “foreign policy”
• Women are focused on familial “domestic policy”

And that’s really all there is to it: men and women are different. We have different emotional makeups, we have different drives in life, we have different attraction triggers, and we have different skills and talents.

See also: John C. Wright: Testing the Bechdel Test. “Let us quickly see what passes the test of Lefty Ideological Race Purity, or Sex Purity, as they case may be. Of the Great Books of Western Literature.”

HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT when all diets fail.

All diets in the short term seem to produce weight loss. Sure, they differ by the amount – some a little more, some a little less. But they all seem to work.

However, by 6 months to 1 year, weight loss gradually plateaus followed by a relentless regain despite continued dietary compliance. This occurs regardless of the dietary strategy. In the 10 year Diabetes Prevention Program, for example there is a 7 kg weight loss after one year. The dreaded plateau, then weight regain, follows. So all diets fail. The question is why. . . .

This happens because the body reacts to weight loss by trying to return to its original body set weight (BSW). . . . Even the low carbohydrate diets, proven to have superior weight loss effects in the short term, show the same inexorable plateau and weight regain. . . .

Insulin resistance maintains high insulin levels. High insulin maintains the high BSW. . . .

To succeed, we must break the insulin resistance cycle. But how? . . .

All foods will increase insulin levels to some degree. Eating the proper foods will prevent high levels, but won’t do much to lower levels. Some foods . . . are better than others, but all foods still increase insulin. The key to prevention of resistance is to periodically sustain very low levels of insulin. If all foods raise insulin, then the only logical answer is the complete voluntary abstinence of food. The answer we are looking for is, in a word, fasting.

HERE WE GO: “Denying a transgender prisoner hormone therapy is a violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the Justice Department told a court for the first time Friday.”

ARIZONA: Defense says teen rape suspect may have been set up.

According to court documents, attorney’s believe the messages show a plot to get revenge on Kost for being a “player,” and claim the victims hung out with him in order to carry out the plan.

In the defense’s motion to compel evidence, one victim sends a message to the others that Kost needs to be “taught a lesson.”

Another victim posted , “Let’s F— with his mind and his car.” That same victim also posted that he had never touched her.

“Victim.” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

SUCKERS: Statistical review of US macronutrient consumption data, 1965–2011: Americans have been following dietary guidelines, coincident with the rise in obesity. “Americans in general have been following the nutrition advice that the American Heart Association and the US Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services have been issuing for more than 40 y: Consumption of fats has dropped from 45% to 34% with a corresponding increase in carbohydrate consumption from 39% to 51% of total caloric intake. In addition, from 1971 to 2011, average weight and body mass index have increased dramatically, with the percentage of overweight or obese Americans increasing from 42% in 1971 to 66% in 2011.”

MARK PERRY: Why do progressives hate Walmart for low prices and its 3% profit margin but love high-priced Apple and its 24% profit margin?

GOVERNMENT IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS WE DO TOGETHER: Christian Grandma-Florist Fined $1,001, Ordered to Work Gay Weddings but Refuses, Says She Won’t Betray Jesus; State Threatens to Take Her Home, Business Away.