Audiofoolery

    I used to think I was reasonably savvy about the subject of audio equipment, but reading through this article by Ethan Winer from the January 6, 2010 eSkeptic magazine had me take another look at what I knew, what I believed, and how much I could trust of what the so called experts were telling me. All those dudes selling you stuff and sounding like if you didn't get this particular thing, or that special thing, are for the most part, just padding their own pocket with whiz-bang lingo and audio baloney. Read this and judge for yourself. 

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     YOU MIGHT THINK that a science-based field like audio engineering would be immune to the kind of magical thinking we see in other fields. Unfortunately, you would be wrong. In my 35 years as a professional audio engineer and musician, I’ve seen some of the most outrageous pseudoscience sold to consumers, and even to other audio pros who should know better. Not unlike claims for alternative medicine, nonsense is shrouded in scientific-sounding jargon to confuse the uneducated, or a sales pitch will cite science that is legitimate but irrelevant. The result is endless arguments among audiophiles over basic scientific principles that have been fully understood for fifty years or more.

As a consumerist, it galls me to see people pay thousands of dollars for fancy-looking wire that’s no better than the heavy lamp cord they can buy at any hardware store. Or magic isolation pads and little discs made from exotic hardwood that purport to “improve clarity and reduce listening fatigue,” among other surprising claims. The number of scams based on ignorance of basic audio science grows every day. Surely some of these vendors know they’re selling snake oil, but I’m certain that just as many believe their own hype. I’d respect these people more if I thought they knew they were conning people!

Few of us have unlimited budgets and must spend what funds we have wisely. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to help consumers distinguish truth from fiction in order to determine what is and is not worthwhile. Experience has shown that it’s futile to claim I know what someone else can or cannot hear. Therefore, I will relate only those things that matter to my experienced ears, and explain what makes sense from the perspective of science and logic. You don’t need an engineering degree to understand the explanations that follow, though I’ll assume you’ve played with a stereo receiver and CD player or cassette deck a few times. I’ll begin by defining the four basic audio parameters so that when I describe some common audiophile scams you’ll understand why they are scams.

Audio Parameters Defined

Only four parameters are needed to define everything that matters for audio reproduction: Noise, frequency response, distortion, and timebased errors. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

1. Noise is the background hiss you hear when you turn your receiver way up, and you can also hear it during quiet passages when playing open reel or cassette tapes. A close cousin is dynamic range, which defines the span (expressed in decibels) between the background noise and the loudest level possible before the onset of gross distortion. CDs and DVDs have a very large dynamic range, so any noise you may hear was either from the original analog tape, was added as a byproduct during production, or was present in the room and picked up by the microphones when the recording was first made.

Subsets of noise are AC power-related hum and buzz, electronic crackling, vinyl record clicks and pops, between-station radio noises, tape modulation noise, and the triboelectric cable effect. You’re unlikely to notice tape modulation noise outside of a recording studio because it’s specific to analog tape recorders, which are fast becoming obsolete, and it is usually hidden by the music itself. You can sometimes hear it if you listen carefully to a recording of a bass solo, where each note is accompanied by a “pfft” sound that disappears between the notes. The triboelectric effect is also called “handling noise” because it occurs when handling poorly made cables. I haven’t seen a cable with this defect in about 20 years.

2. Frequency response is how uniformly a device responds over a range of frequencies. Errors are heard as too much or too little bass, midrange, or treble. For most people, the audible range extends from about 25 Hz at the low end, to just shy of 20 KHz at the high end. Even though many audiophiles believe it’s important for audio equipment to respond to frequencies far beyond 20 KHz, in truth there is no need to reproduce ultrasonic content because nobody can hear it. Subsets of frequency response are physical microphonics, electronic ringing and oscillation, and acoustic ringing. These subsets are not necessary for consumers to understand, but they are important to design engineers and acousticians.

3. Distortion is the common word for the more technical termnonlinearity, and it adds new frequency components that were not present in the original source. When music passes through a device that adds distortion, new frequencies are created that may or may not be pleasing to the ear. The design goal for audio equipment is that all distortion be so low in level that it can’t be heard. I’ll return later to the notion that distortion can be pleasing when I explain why some audiophiles prefer vinyl records and tube-based electronics.

There are two basic types of distortion—harmonic and intermodulation—and both are almost always present together. Harmonic distortion adds new frequencies that are musically related to the source. In layman terms, harmonic distortion adds a slightly thick or buzzy quality to music. All musical instruments create tones having harmonics, so a device whose distortion adds a little more merely changes the instrument’s character by some amount. Electric guitar players use harmonic distortion—often lots of it—to turn a guitar’s inherent plink-plink sound into a singing tone having great power and sustain.

Intermodulation (IM) distortion requires two or more frequencies to be present, and it’s far more damaging because it creates new content that is musically unrelated to the original. Even in relatively small amounts, intermodulation distortion adds a dissonant quality that is unpleasant to hear. Another type of distortion is called aliasing, and it’s unique to digital recording. Like IM distortion, aliasing creates new frequencies not harmonically related to the original, and so is unpleasant and irritating to hear. Fortunately, in all modern digital gear, aliasing is so low in level that it’s inaudible.

4. Time-based errors affect mainly pitch and tempo. If you’ve ever played an old LP record where the hole was not quite centered, you’ve heard the pitch rise and fall with each revolution. This is called wow. Analog tape recorders suffer from a different type of pitch instability called flutter. Unlike the slow pitch change of wow, flutter is more rapid, producing a warbling effect. Digital recorders have a unique type of timing deviation called jitter, but with all modern equipment, jitter is so much softer than the music that you’ll never hear it. The last type of time-based error is phase shift, but it’s benign even in relatively large amounts.

Room acoustics could be considered a fifth audio parameter, but it really isn’t. Nearby room boundaries can create frequency response errors (called comb filtering) due to wave reflections combining in the air. Reflections can also create audible echoes and reverb, but these are timebased phenomenon that occur outside the equipment, so they don’t warrant their own category either.

The above parameters encompass everything that affects audio fidelity. If a device has noise and distortion too low to hear, a response sufficient to capture the entire range of audible frequencies, and time-based errors small enough to be insignificant, then that device will be audibly transparent to music and other sound passing through it. However, clarity and stereo imaging are greatly affected by room acoustics; without question, the room you listen in has far more effect on sound quality than any of the audio components.

You may have noticed that several times I referred to errors that can be too soft to hear, like the inherent background noise of a CD, or are inaudible because they’re much softer than the music and are thus masked by the music. Masking is an important concept because it prevents us from hearing low-level artifacts in the presence of a source that is louder—especially if both contain similar frequencies. For example, low frequency hum caused by a bad connection is the same volume whether the music is playing or not. So when you stop the CD, you can more easily hear the hum. If the music consists of a cymbal or tambourine only, you’ll hear the hum even while the music plays because those instruments contain primarily high frequencies. But when drums or a bass play, those instruments will probably mask the hum. Some artifacts like tape modulation noise and jitter occur only while the music plays. So unless they’re fairly loud, they won’t be audible at all.

The Cable Guy

The earliest audio scam I can recall is fancy wire for connecting loudspeakers, and it’s still going strong. These days vendors claim their wire yields better sound quality when compared to normal wire, and, of course, it’s much more expensive than normal wire. In truth, the most important property of speaker wire is resistance, which is a function of its thickness. The resistance must be low to pass the high-current signals a power amplifier delivers. For short distances— say, up to five feet—16-gauge wire of any type is adequate, though thicker wire is needed for longer runs.

The three other wire parameters are inductance, capacitance, and skin effect. But those are not a factor with usual cable lengths at audio frequencies, especially when connecting speakers to a power amplifier. Low capacitance wire can be important in special cases, such as between a phonograph cartridge and its preamp. But high quality, low capacitance wire can be had for pennies per foot. Wire scams are very popular because wire is a low-tech device that’s simple to manufacture and the profit margin is extremely high. I could devote this entire article to wire scams, but instead I’ll just summarize that any audio (or video) cable costing more than a few dollars per foot is a rip-off.

Even sillier than expensive speaker wire is replacement AC power cords and most other power “conditioner” products. The sales claims sound logical: Noise and static can get into your gear through the power line and damage the sound. In severe cases it’s possible for powerrelated clicks and buzzes to get into your system, but those are easily noticed. The suggestion that subtle changes in “clarity and presence” can occur is plain fraud. Indeed, every competent circuit designer knows how to filter out power line noise, and such protection is routinely added to all commercial audio products. Spending hundreds of dollars on a six-foot replacement power cord ignores the other hundred-odd feet of regular wire between the wall outlet and power pole.

Some audio scams are so blatant you wonder how anyone could fall for them, like a replacement volume control knob that sells for $485. The ad copy proclaims, “The new knobs are custom made with beech wood and bronze … How can this make a difference??? Well, hearing is believing as we always say. The sound becomes much more open and free flowing with a nice improvement in resolution. Dynamics are better and overall naturalness is improved.” Yes, I bet that’s just what they always say. Wood is a common theme among audiophile scams, falsely implying a relation to a fine old violin where the wood’s vibration really is a part of the sound. But a volume control knob?

illustration by Joe Lee

Do You Hear What I Hear?

Among devoted audiophiles, one of the most hotly debated topics is the notion that ultrasonic frequencies are necessary for high fidelity reproduction. Put aside for a moment that no human can hear much past 20 KHz. Few microphones respond to frequencies beyond that, and even fewer loudspeakers can reproduce that high. If maintaining an extended frequency response were free, I’d have little objection. But in this digital age, storing frequencies higher than necessary waste memory, media space, and bandwidth. Even sillier is the way audio is handled on DVD soundtracks. DVDs accommodate frequencies up to 96 KHz, but then “lossy”data compression— which results in an audible loss in quality—is often needed to make it fit! Record companies and equipment manufacturers just love that millions of people replaced all their old LPs and cassettes with CDs. They’re trying very hard to get us to buy all the same titles, and new gear to play them, yet again with the false promise of fidelity that exceeds CDs.

Another popular scam is mechanical isolation devices. The claims have a remote basis in science that are skewed to suggest importance where none is justified. If you ever owned a turntable, you know how sensitive it can be to mechanical vibration. Unless you walk lightly, the record can skip, and if you turn up the volume too high, you’ll get a low frequency feedback. A turntable is a mechanical device that relies on physical contact between the needle and the record’s surface. CDs (and DVDs) work on an entirely different principle that is immune to mechanical vibration. As the CD spins, the digital data is read into a memory buffer, and from there it is sent to your receiver or headphones. Several seconds of music are always in the player’s buffer, so if the player is jostled enough that the CD mistracks, it simply sends from the buffer until the drive can find its place again. Large buffers are common on CD players meant for joggers for this exact reason.

Isolation has no advantage for other electronic gear either. You can spend thousands of dollars on fancy isolation devices for preamps and receivers, yet they don’t improve the sound even a tiny bit (though mechanical isolation with loudspeakers is valid). A related scam is cable elevators— small devices that prevent your wires from touching the floor. Like so many other audiophile “tweak” products, the claims for cable elevators sound magical, and they surely are.

Bi-wiring is a more recent scam, and it’s a pretend relative to bi-amping, which is legitimate. No single speaker driver can reproduce the entire range of audible frequencies, so manufacturers use two or three drivers—called woofers and tweeters—to handle the different ranges. Biamping splits the audio into low/high or low/mid/high ranges, and each range is sent to a separate power amplifier that in turn powers each speaker driver. This avoids passive crossovers that add distortion. Bi-wiring uses two separate speaker wires, but they’re both connected to the same single power amplifier and a passive crossover!

Vinyl records and vacuum tube equipment are very popular with devoted audiophiles who believe these old school technologies more faithfully reproduce subtle nuance. There’s no question that LPs and tubes sound different from CDs and solid state gear. But are they better? Not in any way you could possibly measure. Common to both is much higher distortion; LPs in particular have more inherent noise and a poorer high frequency response, especially when playing the inner grooves. I’m convinced that some people prefer tubes and vinyl because the subtle distortion they add sounds pleasing to them. Adding small amounts of distortion can make a recording sound more cohesive, for lack of a better word. Recording engineers sometimes add distortion intentionally to imitate the sound of tubes and analog tape, and I’ve done this myself. Simply copying a song to a cassette tape and back adds a slight thickening that can be pleasing if the instrumentation is sparse. But clearly this is an artificial effect, not higher fidelity.

Other common scams are small devices that claim to improve room acoustics. You can pay a hundred dollars each for small pieces of rare wood the size and shape of hockey pucks. The sellers instruct you to place them around your room to improve its acoustics. But with acoustics, what matters is covering a sufficient percentage of the room’s surface. Real acoustic treatment is large and not always conducive to a living room (as my wife will attest), so lots of folks want very much to believe that something small and unobtrusive will solve their bad acoustics. If only it were possible.

Free, But Stupid Anyway

The key to identifying most audio scams is the very high prices charged. As an audio pro, I know that $1,000 can buy a state of the art power amplifier. So it makes no sense to pay, say, $17,000 for an amplifier that is no better and may well be worse. However, some scams are more like urban legends — no products are sold, but they’re still a waste of time. For example, one early legend was that you can improve the sound of a CD by painting its outer edge with a green felt marker pen. Yes, it must be green. (I guess other colors won’t create the proper energy field.) A related legend is that cables and electronic devices must be “broken in” for some period of time before they achieve their final highest fidelity. Aside from a manufacturing defect, the notion that wire or a solid state circuit changes audibly over time makes no sense. This legend becomes a scam when you deal with a vendor who says you must break in the product for 90 days to realize a benefit. Why 90 days? Because credit card purchases are protected for only 60 days.

The Devil is in the Details

As you have learned, all four audio parameters are important, but what matters most is their magnitude. Test data is sometimes graphed at low resolution to hide the true performance. So a frequency response line may look reasonably straight, implying a uniform response, yet a closer examination shows that each vertical division on the graph represents a substantial deviation. Using excessively large graph divisions is just another way scammers try to fool uneducated buyers.

Many (but not all) audiophile magazine reviews include impressive-looking graphs that imply science but are sorely lacking if you know what the graphs actually mean. Numerous irrelevant data is presented while important specs are omitted. For example, the phase response of a loudspeaker is shown but not its distortion, which is far more important. One magazine recently reviewed a $4,400 tube preamplifier so poorly designed that it verged on self-oscillation (a high-pitched squealing sound). The reviewer even acknowledged the defect, yet still summarized by saying, “Impressive, and very highly recommended.” The ignorance and misguided loyalty of some audiophile magazines is a significant problem in this business.

Many of the scams I have described do have a factual basis in science, but the effects are so infinitesimal that they can’t possibly make audible differences. I often see “believers” proclaim that science has not yet found a way to measure what they are convinced they can hear. In truth, it’s quite the other way around. We can easily measure jitter that’s 120 dB below the music, which is a typical amount and is about 1,000 times softer than could be audible. Likewise for distortion, frequency response, and noise, especially when you factor in the ear’s susceptibility to masking. Many audiophiles truly believe they hear a change in quality, even when none can possibly exist.The Bottom Line

The biggest variables in audio quality come from transducers—microphones and loudspeakers that, being mechanical devices, must physically vibrate. When assessing frequency response and distortion, the finest loudspeakers in the world are far worse than the cheapest electronic device. And any room you put the speakers in will exaggerate that already poor response even further.

Like the Emperor’s New Clothes, many people let themselves be conned into believing that a higher truth exists, even if they cannot hear it. There is no disputing that hearing can be improved with practice and that you can learn to recognize detail, but that’s not the same as imagining something that doesn’t exist at all. And, logically speaking, just because a large number of people believe something does not alone make it true.

It can be difficult to prove or disprove issues like those I have presented here because human auditory perception is so fragile and our memory is so short. With A/B testing—where you switch between one version and another to audition the difference—it is mandatory that the switch be performed very quickly. If it takes you fifteen minutes to hook up a replacement amplifier, it will be very hard to tell if there truly was a difference, compared to being able to switch between them instantly. Even when switching quickly, it is important that both amplifiers be set to exactly the same volume level.

When all else is equal, people will generally pick the brighter (or just louder) version as sounding better, unless of course it was already too loud or bright. People sometimes report a difference even in an “A/A” test, where nothing changed! And just because something sounds “better,” it is not necessarily higher fidelity. Boosting the treble and bass tone controls often makes music sound “better,” but that is not more faithful to the original source material.

Beliefs and the placebo effect are very strong. When people argue about things like this on the Internet, it’s commonly referred to as “religious arguments.” I’ve even heard people argue against double-blind testing, claiming such tests “break the mood” and thus invalidate the results. Sound familiar? That’s just like the psychics who, when tested publicly, blame their failure on negative vibes from the skeptical testers.

Psychological factors like expectation and fatigue are equally important. If I brag to a friend how great my home theater sounds and that person comes for a visit, it always sounds worse to me while we’re both listening. Finally, it is important to consider the source of any claim, though someone’s financial interest in a product doesn’t mean the claims are necessarily untrue. But there’s more than a little truth to the popular sentiment, “The most important person in a company that makes audiophile speaker wire is the head of marketing.”

The Carl Sagan of Chemistry

This is a reprint of the February 27th edition of eSkeptic magazine. I find this article particularly interesting. The book reviewed by Harriet Hall looks like one worthy of further investigation, and will probably find its way to my library.

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The Carl Sagan of Chemistry

BY HARRIET HALL, MD, “THE SKEPDOC”

The Right Chemistry is many things. It is a column in the Montreal Gazette, a radio show on CJAD in Montreal, a blog, a podcast, and now it’s a book: The Right Chemistry: 108 Enlightening, Nutritious, Health-Conscious and Occasionally Bizarre Inquiries into the Science of Everyday Life , by Joe Schwarcz. Known as “Dr. Joe,” Schwarcz is a chemistry professor at McGill University in Montreal and the director of that university’s Office for Science and Society. He is the Carl Sagan of chemistry, explaining it to the public and demonstrating its wonders.

When most people hear the word “chemical” they hear “bad stuff.” Chemicals are associated with nasty manmade hazards to human health—stealth invaders that contaminate our food and our environment. They are to be avoided or counteracted with various “detox” schemes dreamed up by proponents of so-called complementary and alternative medicine.

That’s the Wrong Chemistry. As Dr. Joe explains, there are no safe or dangerous chemicals, only safe and dangerous ways to use them. Even deadly poisons have found medical applications and have illuminated our understanding of physiologic processes. Everything is a chemical. Chemicals make up the entire world, and we are made of chemicals manufactured by our own bodies. Virtually everything in life comes down to chemical phenomena, so the better we understand chemistry the better equipped we are to make rational decisions. And as Dr. Joe demonstrates in spades, “Chemicals are interesting!”

Schwarcz shares his encyclopedic knowledge of obscure facts. Did you know asparagus can grow up to 10 inches a day? Have you heard of kangatarians? They are environmentalists who eat meat, but only kangaroo meat. Australian aborigines use the roo for food, clothing, and some tribes even use a stuffed kangaroo scrotum as a ball for a traditional game ofmarngrook. The Chinese used to make their gunpowder from bat poop. An employee of a company that made dental amalgam brought some home and tried to extract the mercury in his basement lab; 4 family members died of mercury poisoning and the house had to be demolished and the debris treated as hazardous waste.

In WWII the U.S. military developed a mixture called “Who Me?” that smelled like feces and was dispensed with an atomizer. French Resistance fighters were supposed to surreptitiously spray it on German officers to embarrass them, but it wasn’t a great success since the sprayer ended up as stinky as the sprayee.

Where on earth does Schwarcz dig up all this stuff? He is interested in everything. He covers subjects as varied as tempered glass, energy drinks, Molotov cocktails, Spanish fly, human magnets, AIDS quackery in Africa, Pimat (a worthless piece of fabric sold to restore the health of our aura), bad health advice from celebrities, poison dart frogs, cosmeceuticals, and spider webs in space.

He asks and answers a multitude of intriguing questions. What is the primary use of bird nests in China? (Did you answer bird’s nest soup? Wrong! The primary use is for birds to lay eggs in.) Why didn’t the Lone Ranger’s silver bullets tarnish? Why do crystals of Epsom salts crumble if you yell at them? Should you put broccoli on pizza before or after baking? Why should you avoid grapefruit if you’re on certain medications? Does red yeast rice really lower cholesterol? (Not any more. The active ingredient has been removed, and even when it was present it wasn’t a good alternative to prescription drugs.)

Frustrated by the hassles of post 9/11 air travel? Schwarcz has looked into the feasibility of making explosives on a plane with small amounts of liquids. He’s not giving details for obvious reasons, but he concludes that the next time you are asked if you have liquids or gels, you should be glad they’re asking.

What was yellow rain? In 1981 the U.S. accused the Soviet Union of biological warfare in Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan in the form of a toxin from planes that left a yellow residue on plant leaves. This was later shown to be a natural phenomenon, harmless fecal matter deposited by local honeybees. But the accusation was never retracted.

Schwarcz uses these intriguing tidbits of trivia to address some of the main issues of interpreting scientific research. He revises the saying about “what happens in Vegas…” to “what happens in the lab may just stay in the lab.” Animal and test tube experiments may not translate to humans, and the way they are presented in the media is usually misleading. “Dig deep enough, and at some dose you can find some sort of risk with any chemical.”

And if you look hard enough you can find studies allegedly showing health benefits for pretty much everything. Saponins in soap nuts are claimed to help with migraines, inflammation, and infections; they also supposedly have contraceptive properties. Dr. Joe quips that they might work for birth control if held between the knees! The evidence for health benefits is unconvincing; better evidence supports using soap nuts as a natural, renewable, biodegradable detergent. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work nearly as well as commercial detergents.

We frequently hear warnings about levels of environmental chemicals detected in the body. With new technology, we can detect substances down to femto levels (ten to the power of negative 15). “At that level, we will find that everything is contaminated by everything else!” Baby bottles with bisphenol A (BPA) were banned because it was detected in the blood. It now appears that those measurements were flawed, possibly due to contamination in the lab. A rigorous study exposed subjects to high levels of BPA, took hourly blood samples for 24 hours, and sent them to two independent labs that took special precautions against contamination. They determined that BPA levels were below the detection capabilities of the most sophisticated instruments available. Questionable studies suggesting risk get lots of publicity, but we seldom hear about the more meticulous studies that failed to find any evidence of harm.

The Right Chemistry is a worthy addition to the series of similar books Dr. Joe has published. He has a gift for making science fascinating and fun. I love to read his columns because I always learn something, his style is entertaining, and his dry sense of humor always makes me laugh. To paraphrase Bill Nye the Science Guy, “Chemistry rules!” Pseudoscience can’t even begin to compete with the attractions of real science.

Dear Micromanaged Employee

A noted writer and speaker has a message to the micromanagers of the world. That message is: “stop it.”

Here is a great quote from Scott Berkun:

Good managers are brave, and generous with trust in their people. They want them to mature in their judgment and grow in their skills, preferring to err on the side of trusting too much than trusting too little. They take pleasure in letting go and giving power away to their staff, accepting that when someone who works for them shines, they shine too.
But if you do not enjoy these things, and struggle to trust your staff, or can’t bear to see a decision made or reward earned without your name all over it, you should stop managing people.
…
Even if you are 30% better at a task than someone who works for you, the time it takes for you to check on them every few hours, and demand approvals over trivial decisions, costs more in lost morale, passion for work, and destruction of self-respect among your staff than the 30% you think you’re adding.  No one works well if they feel they are being treated like an idiot child. Having two people involved in work that should only require one wastes everyone’s time.
…
An easy test of micromanagement is to let your team know you are confident in their ability to do their job and offer, if they wish, that you will be less involved in their day to day work to give them more room to perform. Tell them you are available if they need you, but otherwise you will put some of your attention elsewhere. See what happens. Hold your tongue. Don’t demand to review that email. Don’t insist on regulating who can meet with who. Take one small step backward and see what happens.
Odds are extremely good the world will not end.

What more needs to be said?

The Big What If?

Back when Sue and I got married, we posed the question about having a child. We knew because of our age, it was going to now or never. Since I had already had been fixed, it would mean that I would have to undergo a procedure to correct what had already been done. I think it was because of this that Sue told me to forget it. We would just move on with our lives and consider the possibility something we would just have to forget.

We have revisited this conversation many times since then, but we knew that we were long past our option to have a child. However, the lingering question has persisted.

We had the same discussion today, and the same question persists... if we had a daughter, what would she look like? How much would she resemble us? It seems to be a common perception that children of mixed races have that special something that makes them cute and adorable. There are many true life examples of this, so I suppose most of what they say about it is true.

Anyway, I know there are a number of options where you can take the image of the father and mother, and generate the possible look of the child, but I had never considered trying it until today. As Sue and I were talking about it once again, I knew I just had to give it a try.

The photos we chose weren't the absolute best, but they were a good likeness of us both. We went to a site that offered the best potential, and put in our photos.

The photo below is the result, and I have to say that I couldn't be more pleased. If you go back and look at baby pictures of us both, you can see a clear resemblance of each of us in her. I can't stop looking at her and wondering... could this be her?

We talked about it after we saw her picture. Smiling at each other we both agree, we missed our chance at making a beautiful baby girl. We should have cast all our reservations aside and went for something we know would have joined us together even more than we are today. She would be about eleven years old now, and knowing how I am with my granddaughter, spoiled completely rotten. I can't stop looking at her likeness in amazement.

Take it from two who know. Don't wait to do something you both want. The question of whether you made the right decision will haunt you for the rest of your days.

Presenting: The dream girl who will never be.

How much do know about your FaceBook privacy settings?

I quit FaceBook some time ago, but I do associate people who do, so I'm indirectly affected.

If you post pictures to FaceBook, you need to read these, to see how they could affect you.

Otherwise, you could soon find your pictures in places you never expected... And there very well could be nothing you can say about it.

You may have heard about the Zuckerberg picture posting flap...

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/12/28/is-facebooks-privacy-policy-too-confusing

Educate yourself. Know what your social media privacy settings are.

Judge for yourself, and act accordingly.

Dated Dec. 17, 2012

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57559710-38/instagram-says-it-now-has-the-right-to-sell-your-photos/

Dated Dec. 18, 2012

http://betanews.com/2012/12/18/tell-us-what-you-think-about-instagrams-new-screw-you-policy/

Earmarks. How much do you know?

I was aware of earmarks introduced by our congressmen, but I didn't really understand them all that well. One of the questions that woke me up and got me thinking is... of all our illustrious senators and representatives, who are the biggest offenders and how much money are we letting them tack in on bills that are introduced?

Well, there is a lot of information out there if you know where to look. I only scratched the surface, but it sure gave me a lot more than I wanted to know.

A couple good sites to start, if you're curious...

A fact sheet on earmarks and earmarking on the site for Taxpayers for Common Sense. This is an FAQ that lays it all out for you, and tells you probably more than you wanted to know.


For the 2010 fiscal year, lawmakers who sponsored the most earmarks. This is a short page, but summarizes our biggest offenders. Any guess who are the biggest spenders?

From OpenSecrets.org, a complete list of the 111th Congress Earmarks. 
This site is very interesting, and you should spend some time here. At the top of the page you can select the subject (Senate or House) to be viewed. Once you have it, the data can be sorted by Name, State, Total Earmarks ($), Total Contributions ($), Contrib Earmark %, Earmark Rank, All Earmarks (in $), All Earmarks (%). This was quite enlightening.

And in case you're wondering...
Which presidency had the most in earmark spending?

It is very difficult to assign earmark spending to certain time periods because of the lack of transparency and oversight. Clearly, earmark spending rose significantly during the tenures of Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush.

The book hasn't been written on this administration yet.

The Fiscal Cliff is just a metaphor, and not a very good one at that. You can read a lot of slanted views and a lot of crap on the subject, but finding out what is exactly going on and how it will affect you is more difficult (I'm still looking). Maybe this will help.

That's about it. Now that I have you wondering, I can go back to bed and try to get a little more sleep.

Children Waiting for the End of the World

This is a reprint of an article I found in eSkeptic magazine.  What do you think?

Children Waiting for the End of the World

BY DANIEL LOXTON

As a child in the 1970s and 80s, I often had an experience which must have been even more familiar to children of the 1960s: lying awake at night, alone in my room, paralyzed with terror about nuclear armageddon. In those Cold War days, the end of the world seemed oppressive and omnipresent, especially for a child. Every Hollywood movie, every news story about the arms race and the Doomsday Clock seemed to whisper in my ear at night, “It could happen at any moment. It could happen before you wake up.”

Not every kid my age had that fear, but many did — I think probably millions. Perhaps you were one of the kids who felt yawning horror at each unexpected flash on the horizon, or relief at the sound of ordinary thunder?

I was recently reminded of those feelings when I received a kind letter from a man named Jason Guay. A child mental health therapist with Niagara Child and Youth Services, Jason wrote to share one of the most encouraging things I’ve heard during my tenure at Junior Skeptic:

Many of the children I serve suffer from mental illness and I think they deserve only the best science has to offer if they are to have a chance. Your issues of Junior Skeptic are read to my children in my social skill class and compliment cognitive-behavioural therapy nicely! They often come in with irrational beliefs (phobias/generalized anxiety) and by reading Junior Skeptic they are able find courage to challenge many of these irrational beliefs and start to think like a scientist, resulting in reduced anxiety. …

I often use the Scooby Doo issue to help ease children’s anxiety of ghosts and the unknown and it is very effective. Good job!

I have a young son of my own, so you can imagine what a letter like that feels like. But Jason went on to say something more, something I thought I should share with you.

Lately, I have had a lot of kids who come very concerned about the end of the world in 2012. … These poor children often tell me that have had countless sleepless nights, and have lower grades as a result of their worry.

I think you may be able to imagine how I — as a father — feel about that, too.
I’ve long suspected that we skeptics may underestimate the amount of distress the 2012 idea is causing. Skeptics know that the end of the world has come and gone hundreds of times, and so we feel in our hearts that this 2012 business must be a trivial issue. It’s easy to feel cavalier about fears we don’t share. It’s easy to forget what those night terrors feel like — especially for children.
Of course kids are worried about 2012. Hype about the coming end of the world is everywhere. Nor is it only kids who are concerned. In my immediate circle, I know at least three adults who are deeply worried, and others who have at least occasional moments of “what if?” unease. At a picnic yesterday, sitting there in the evening sun, a friend with a hard science degree asked, “Doesn’t it seem like there’s something weird going on with the Earth? All these earthquakes, volcanoes…?”
That’s not a dumb question. It does seem that way. I know I’m thinking a lot more about earthquakes after Haiti. But seeming doesn’t make it so, and thankfully there are ways to find out. “Well, you have an iPhone in your hand,” I said. “Why don’t you Google it right now?”

Google autofill reveals concern about "rising" number of earthquakes

And that’s what she did, right there on the beach. Of course, my friend has the research habits to have done that without my suggestion. She also has the scientific background to feel satisfied with the answers from the US Geological Survey or this short, simple New York Times article from British Geological Survey seismologist Roger Musson. (Incidentally, the answer is “No.” Recent earthquake activity has been especially tragic, but not unusually powerful or frequent.)

But not everyone has those skills (or, for that matter, confidence in science). I don’t mean a word of judgment when I say that. When grandmothers hear from their friends or grocers or televisions that the hundreds of thousands of 2010 earthquake victims are just the beginning, why shouldn’t that give them pause? When children hear the same thing, why shouldn’t they be afraid?

As I type this, some of those children are lying awake with the terrified belief that the world will end in two years. Their nightmares are like my own childhood nuclear horror, but different in one critically important respect: 2012 fears are not based on an actual danger. What’s the harm of 2012 scaremongering? Children suffering for no reason.

What do we, as skeptics, do about that? Step one is simply to internalize the same truth again and again and again: when paranormal beliefs burn out of control, people get hurt. Ordinary, smart, good people — people like your loved ones, and mine.

And then, we need to roll up our sleeves. With that in mind, I’d like to ask you to do something this week, something small: try to make someone feel better about 2012. Talk to a friend. Tweet a resource. Share a link.

Here’s mine: Skeptic magazine has made available our recent “A NASA Scientist Answers the Top 20 Questions About 2012” cover story (by Dr. David Morrison, Director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute and Senior Scientist in the NASA Astrobiology Institute). It’s free in both English and Spanish translation.

Are Microwave Ovens Really Safe?

I have mixed feeling about using microwave ovens. Yes, they are easy and convenient, but they do alter what is put in them. This includes the containers that hold the objects inside them, when it is anything other than glass. The unknowns are still to be discovered, and being a grandfather has changed my viewpoint. I want to know more, but the data still is not there, or suppressed by the very people that sell us those very items (tobacco, BHT, BPA, high fructose corn syrup, yellow #5, trans fats, aspartame, MSG, cyclamate, olestra, saccharin, nitrates and nitrites, etc. The list goes on.). In many cases, years, and even decades will pass before the truth comes out about things we felt were safe.

Educate yourself. Make it your business to know what is safe and what is hype. I make no claim to know, but my own education will continue until it is replaced with certainty.

To learn more about microwave oven radiation, go here.

"To Nuke or Not to Nuke"

By Mark Sisson on 06/25/2009

 

The verb itself suggests the unleashing of atomic destruction, but we wondered, “Is there a grain of truth behind the slang?” What’s the real story behind these boxes of convenience sitting in so many of our kitchens? Are microwaves a benign bastion of modern handiness or, as some claim, a sinister contributor to our physiological (at least nutritional) undoing?

It’s likely that we find ourselves in a variety of camps on this issue. Some of us swear them off. Others unapologetically swear by them to get through the normal course of a busy day. And then there are those of us in the dithering middle who routinely stare at each plate of leftovers or bowl of frozen vegetables, sometimes reaching for the pots and pans and other times giving into convenience but always questioning whether we’re paying for it.

Should we be plagued by these pangs of conscience? Are we emitting dangerous radiation into our homes or killing off the nutritional value of our unsuspecting food? Are we making a mountain out of a molehill? What should we believe? Is there enough evidence to really tell either way?

We definitely know this much. Grok didn’t have a microwave. But, then again, he didn’t have a jet shower, Bose stereo system, or Hammacher Schlemmer thumper massager. (Trade-offs, you know…) As much as we love Grok and think his era has been unduly disparaged, we aren’t arguing that he had the best life possible or that anything he didn’t have isn’t worth having. Nonetheless, while it’s a naturalistic fallacy to assume that everything post-Paleo is an abomination, it’s both fair and reasonable to question the safety of today’s customary appliances.

Here’s what we found. First, to the question of transforming your home into a radiation zone… There is, not surprisingly, disagreement about this point. However, occasional home use of a fully functional microwave appliance is generally considered safe. Microwaves do, make no mistake, emit radiation, and the FDA has established what it considers “safe” levels for microwaves: over the machine’s “lifetime” the allowable level is “5 milliwatts of microwave radiation per square centimeter…approximately 2 inches from the oven surface.” Guidelines from the International Radiation Protection Association (IRPA) suggest overall radiation limits of 1 milliwatt per square centimeter “averaged over 6 minutes (0.1 h) period.” Unless you’re using your microwave on a perpetual basis, there’s little reason to worry.) Because the radiation diminishes quickly over distance, standing further away from the microwave during operation cuts your exposure even more significantly. (That instinct to not press your face against the glass door while your lunch was cooking turns out to be right after all…) Additionally, the FDA requires two interlock systems that effectively offer backup security as well as a monitoring system that shuts the microwave down if one of the systems isn’t working or if the door is opened during operation.

Common sense adds that you might want to make sure the microwave seal isn’t compromised by built up tomato sauce or other grime. (Hmmm…anyone?) And, of course, it’s a good idea to replace an old, dilapidated microwave even if it’s a great conversation piece. Safety versus vintage flare…

And now for the more common question. What about the nutrients? (We should mention quickly that microwaving of food isn’t the same as food irradiation, which involves a higher level of energy and is considered much more damaging in terms of “complex chemical changes … in food components.”) But how do nutrients fare behind the closed, latched, double interlock system door? Well, it varies. As we’ve reported in the past, cooking of any kind can sometimes reduce the nutritional value of food and occasionally enhance it. Slow and low are typically the way to go with cooking, as we’ve said. A pretty much universal concept for our friends, fruits and veggies: steaming or cooking/microwaving with small bits of water trumps boiling or deep frying. When it comes to microwaving itself, studies suggest some mixed reviews for individual vegetables or nutrients but indicate, overall, that microwaving generally preserves nutrient levels.

One study using Brassica vegetables found that microwaving resulted in comparable nutrient (glucosinolates, a possible cancer preventative compound) loss when compared to steaming or stir frying.  (Actually, shredding the vegetable ahead of time had more impact on nutritional value than the cooking method.) However, another study using broccoli suggests that antioxidants can be significantly depleted.  (Antioxidants, particularly water soluble vitamins, appear to be most at risk while minerals tend to be generally preserved in microwave preparation.) Yet another study review showed that microwaving with low power settings offered “equal or better retention of nutrients … as compared with conventional, reheated foods for thiamin, riboflavin, pyridoxine, folacin, and ascorbic acid.” University of Illinois research also showed that microwave blanching (brief exposure to high heat used for pre-freezing preparation to lengthen storage ability of frozen produce) was as or more successful in retaining nutritional value than conventional blanching methods. (Nonetheless, blanching does diminish nutrient levels.)

But how could microwaving actually preserve more nutrients in many cases? Not only do we generally use less liquid when cooking in the microwave, cooking times are typically shorter than those for conventional cooking. (As a side note, new ceramic cookware designed for microwave use shows promise to cut cook times further still, which can mean even greater nutrient preservation.)

Our best advice: nuke wisely. If the convenience of a microwave keeps you committed to PB eating, use it as you need to. (We’re all for leftovers, freezing fresh produce to save money, etc.) Nonetheless, thinking outside the micro box is likely a good idea as well. Invest in some small pans for single servings or small cooking jobs. (If it takes up less space in the dishwasher/sink, it seems like less of a chore.) And, of course, avoid heating (and especially reheating) whenever you can to retain the most nutrition. Heat only the ingredients you must to make a dish palatable, and keep water use, time and temp (power level) as low as possible. (Bonus: it helps you avoid those nasty steam burns from handling overheated dishes.)

Beware... pseudoscience is all around us.

What do you believe? How much of what is rolling around in your brain fact and how much is pseudoscience? Do you know the difference? You might be surprised at how much information that has been presented as good science is actually just so much bunk, myself included.

What is pseudoscience? Simply put, it is a set of ideas, exhibited as scientific, when in fact they are not. It masquerades as science in an attempt to claim a legitimacy, which it would not otherwise be able to achieve.

I am particularly interested in the subject, but I must confess, I am truly just a rookie at it. I am intrigued by so many subject, that when given scrutiny don’t hold up, and in some ways, I still find some of them believable… or want to. That’s the unskeptical part of my brain still wanting to believe, despite evidence to the contrary. I suppose we have a little of that in all of us. Without it, there would be many less drugs, miracle cures, books, movies, television shows, and experts on the subject. Where would we be without the ghosts, UFOs, infomercials, astrologers, creationists, etc. in our lives. It might be a pretty boring place.

There is so much to know, and the availability of good and factual information, is difficult to decipher from what is presented as the truth, but is in fact anything but.

The following is a collection of facts, descriptions, and narratives collected on the subject, from multiple sources readily available to you. I find them thought provoking, and elevates my curiosity to know more and enhance the knowledge I do have. I hope you find some of some of the following information interesting and in finds a way to peak your own curiosity. Some you may not agree with, but that is part of what the scientific process is designed to do. As Fox Mulder so often repeated, “The truth is out there”. Find it for yourself, develop your own skills, but enjoy the ride, but above all, never stop asking questions or being satisfied with the status quo.

Pseudoscience has one or more of the following features:

Hostility towards scientific criticism

Science requires criticism. Bad ideas and methods get knocked down. Pseudoscientists can feel picked on by such criticism and cry conspiracy. Science provides a system for validating ideas and forces disconfirmation of wrong beliefs.

Ignorance is a virtue

Pseudoscientists can fancy themselves as being untainted by the scientific community and therefore able to think outside the box. Science thrives on creative thinking for problem solving and testing hypotheses to explain existing data.

Start with a conclusion and work backwards

Pseudoscientists can start with a "theory" and then retrofit or cherry pick evidence to fit the conclusion that they want. Creationists are a good example of this pseudoscience feature. Scientists modify or discard theories based on new evidence, granted that the process can be slow.

Unnecessary jargon

Pseudoscientists can use jargon to dazzle and obfuscate instead of illuminate. Scientists use jargon to increase precision and remove ambiguity. Scientologists are a good example of this pseudoscience feature.

Shift the burden of proof

Pseudoscientists can shift the burden of proof away from themselves and challenge others for disproof. But the burden of proof is on the claimant. And the more extraordinary the claim, the higher the bar of evidence.

Failure to consider all hypotheses

Pseudoscientists can prefer sensational hypotheses over more likely mundane ones, and they can even propose whole new laws of physics to explain phenomena instead of considering existing ones.

Reliance on anecdotes

Pseudoscientists can rely heavily on personal testimonies and anecdotes rather than well-documented studies. This is especially the case with health and medicine. And it's a red flag when fundemental principles are based on a single case, such as with chiropractic and iridology. Scientists count the misses, not just the hits.

Simple solutions to complex problems

Pseudoscientific solutions can range from a universal theory of everything to a single medicine, procedure or product that cures all ills. As to why such simple solutions have been overlooked all this time can be attributed to grand conspiracies.

What are the warning signs of bogus science?

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.

The integrity of science rests on the willingness of scientists to expose new ideas and findings to the scrutiny of other scientists. Thus, scientists expect their colleagues to reveal new findings to them initially.

Some scientific claims avoid even the scrutiny of reporters by appearing in paid commercial advertisements. A health-food company marketed a dietary supplement called Vitamin O in full-page newspaper ads. Vitamin O turned out to be ordinary saltwater.

2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.

The idea is that the establishment will presumably stop at nothing to suppress discoveries that might shift the balance of wealth and power in society. Often, the discoverer describes mainstream science as part of a larger conspiracy that includes industry and government.

3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.

Alas, there is never a clear photograph of a flying saucer, or the Loch Ness monster. All scientific measurements must contend with some level of background noise or statistical fluctuation. But if the signal-to-noise ratio cannot be improved, even in principle, the effect is probably not real and the work is not science.

4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.

If modern science has learned anything in the past century, it is to distrust anecdotal evidence. Because anecdotes have a very strong emotional impact, they serve to keep superstitious beliefs alive in an age of science. The most important discovery of modern medicine is not vaccines or antibiotics, it is the randomized double-blind test, by means of which we know what works and what doesn't.

5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.

There is a persistent myth that hundreds or even thousands of years ago, long before anyone knew that blood circulates throughout the body, or that germs cause disease, our ancestors possessed miraculous remedies that modern science cannot understand. Much of what is termed "alternative medicine" is part of that myth.

6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.

The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood's science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life. Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists.

7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

A new law of nature, invoked to explain some extraordinary result, must not conflict with what is already known. If we must change existing laws of nature or propose new laws to account for an observation, it is almost certainly wrong.

Some pseudoscientific claims are based on an authoritative text rather than observation or empirical investigation. Creation science devotees, for example, make observations only to confirm dogmas, not to discover the truth about the natural world. Such dogmas are static and lead to no new scientific discoveries or enhancement of our understanding of the natural world. The main purpose of creationism and intelligent design is to defend a set of religious beliefs.

A scientific theory like the theory of natural selection is not based on a text. Creationists* distort the truth when they call evolution "Darwinism," as if the science were based on a belief in the infallible words found in Origin of Species or Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Natural selection is one of several mechanisms put forth by scientists to explain the fact of evolution. The various theories of evolution, i.e., mechanisms that explain how evolution occurs, are defended not by deference to texts but by empirical evidence from several scientific fields: embryology, the fossil record, homology, genetics, biogeography, molecular biology.

Pseudoscientists claim to base their ideas on empirical evidence, and they may even use some scientific methods, though often their understanding of a controlled experiment is inadequate. Many pseudoscientists relish being able to point out the consistency of their ideas with known facts or with predicted consequences, but they do not recognize that such consistency is not proof of anything. It is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition that a good scientific theory be consistent with the facts. A theory which is contradicted by the facts is obviously not a very good scientific theory, but a theory or hypthesis that is consistent with the facts is not necessarily a good theory. For example, "the truth of the hypothesis that plague is due to evil spirits is not established by the correctness of the deduction that you can avoid the disease by keeping out of the reach of the evil spirits"

Ockham’s Razor:

“Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate” or “Plurality should not be posited without necessity.”

The words are those of the medieval English philosopher and Franciscan monk William of Ockham (ca. 1285-1349).

Simple is Best

One of the principal techniques, if not the primary technique of the practitioners of thought control and Deskeption, is the unethical use of Knowledge Filtering through Simplicity.  The core technique involves the mis-use of Ockham’s Razor in two ways:

1. as an application to filter out unwelcome DATA as not fitting my ‘simple’ truth.

2. as a way to enforce the ‘simplest’ explanation as already proven, when in fact, no science has been done to support it.

These are both practices of pseudoscience.

Ockham’s Razor, or the discernment of Plurality versus Singularity in terms of competing Hypotheses, is a useful tool in determining whether Science should be distracted by bunk theories which would potentially waste everyone’s time and resources. But it is an act of pseudoscience to apply Ockham’s Razor to data.

Data stands on its own.  Additionally, when found in abundance, and not eliminated one at a time by the false anecdotal application of “Occam’s” Razor Knowledge Filtering or through Plausible Deniability Extrapolation, can eventually be formulated into a construct, which then will vie for plurality under the real Ockham’s Razor, a useful science method principle. Data should not be dismissed for the sole reason that it does not fit or that one does not like it. This is pseudoscience.

The full text, along with other sources can be found with the following links:

http://debunkatron.com/Pseudoscience.html

http://mukto-mona.net/new_site/mukto-mona/Articles/randi/science_pseudoscience.htm

http://woofighters.org/2010/06/warning-signs-that-something-is-not-scientifi/

http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/signs.html

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4037

http://www.skepdic.com/pseudosc.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_characterized_as_pseudoscience

http://deskeption.wordpress.com/tag/occams-razor/

Your smart phone is wrecking your health

 I don't own a smart phone and have no intention of doing so. They are a costly distraction and are responsible for unintended consequences that are happening everywhere because of them. Among these is the fact that they are detrimental to your overall health. I found this article by Bill Phillips and the editors of Men's Health, and felt that it typifies the kinds of things that a phones like these are doing to reduce your overall health. If you use one, keep these things in mind to minimize the negative effects a smart phone is having on you.

Another thing to note: this article refers to smart phones as cell phones. The terminology is blending over the years. A smart phone may be a cell phone, but a cell phone may not be a smart phone. Think about it. There is a clear distinction.

1. Your Cellphone Is ... Destroying Your Ability to Focus

You don’t own your phone—it owns you. Researchers in Finland found that most people obsessively check their menu screen, news, e-mail, and apps, even though the likelihood of seeing new and interesting information keeps decreasing. “The more you do it, the less you gain,” says study author Antti Oulasvirta, Ph.D.
Your move: Oulasvirta recommends setting specific times to touch base with your touchscreen, such as on the hour—or half hour if the withdrawal is too much.

2. Your Cellphone Is ... Making You Sick

All that tapping, typing, and swiping may make your touchscreen as germy as your computer keyboard, according to a study published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology. “We found that about 20 percent to 30 percent of viruses on a glass surface similar to a smartphone screen will transfer to your fingertips,” says study author Tim Julian, Ph.D. And it’s a short trip from there to your mouth or eyes.
Your move: If your phone has Gorilla Glass (many do, including the iPhone) and it’s not coated to resist fingerprints or glare, you can safely clean the screen with a disinfecting wipe, like Clorox’s. Also avoid texting and crying, so you have no reason to wipe your eyes.

3. Your Cellphone Is ... Hurting Your Eyes

The combination of holding your phone too close and staring at a sadistically small font can lead to eye strain, headaches, dry eye, and blurred vision, according to research from the SUNY State College of Optometry.
Your move: Increase the font size to twice the smallest size you’re able to read, says study author Mark Rosenfield, O.D., Ph.D., and maintain a distance of at least 16 inches between the screen and your eyes. If you’re reading for longer than a few minutes, take regular 20-second breaks.

4. Your Cellphone Is ... Causing You Stress

You bought your phone so you’d be accessible 24-7, but now you never seem to have time to unwind. Why? Because you’re never unreachable, you’re constantly expecting to be reached. In fact, a University of Worcester study showed that this constant stress can actually trick people into believing that their phone vibrated from a new text or e-mail even when no messages came in.
Your move: Start by shutting off your phone for an hour every day, and slowly work your way up to 2-hour breaks. And, no, while you’re sleeping doesn’t count.

The Pursuit of Happiness: Practical Ways to Beat Depression

 By Carisa Holmes

A team of researchers took a critical look at all the studies done on antidepressants and reported their findings in The New England Journal of Medicine. They dug up some serious dirt. After looking at 74 studies involving 12 drugs and over 12,000 people, they discovered that, while only 14 of 36 drug studies with negative results were published, 37 of 38 drug studies with positive results were published. Also, those that showed even the negative results were, in their words, "published in a way that conveyed a positive outcome." The problem is much worse than it sounds, because even the positive studies showed little benefit in the first place. A startling 80 percent of people got better with just a placebo.

Taking antidepressant drugs is not the answer for the epidemic of depression. After all, we are not depressed because we are all suffering from a deficiency of antidepressants! The real cure lies in re-balancing the systems in your body, mind and spirit that are at the root of the problem.

Here are simple, practical things you can do to prevent or relieve depression:

1. Move It: Exercising vigorously five times a week for 30 minutes increases levels of BDNF, a natural antidepressant in your brain. If you aren't able to keep that schedule, know that even milder forms of exercise can lift the spirits, get your blood and chi flowing and make you feel more alive.

2. Cool the Inflammation: Food allergies and sensitivities and the resultant inflammation they cause have been connected with depression and other mood disorders. Continually eating foods to which you are allergic or sensitive throws your body into a tailspin of imbalances that can cause anything from mind fog and irritability to compulsive behavior, panic attacks and full-blown hallucinations.

Even if you have no food allergies or sensitivities, your mood can still be affected by foods that cause inflammation in the body. Shift your diet to primarily anti-inflammatory foods, like whole vegetables and fruits, fish and other seafood and filtered water to reduce inflammation and elevate your moods.

3. Focus on the B Complex: It is vital to get the whole range of B vitamins for overall health, but be sure to get adequate B12 (1,000mcg a day), B6 (25 mg) and folic acid (800 mcg) if you are experiencing depression. These vitamins are critical for metabolizing homocysteine, which can play a factor in depression, and folate also affects neurotransmitters that impact your moods. To keep the good mood foods at hand, stock up on dark leafy greens, eggs, fish, beans, lentils and chicken.

4. Let in the Light: Deficiency in “vitamin” D (actually a steroid hormone) can lead to serious depression. Additionally, lack of sun or bright light in general can trigger Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, a form of depression that plagues many people during the winter months. To preserve your 'sunny' disposition, expose a maximum amount of your skin to sunlight for as long as your skin can tolerate without damage. If you are not able to sun yourself regularly, supplement with at least 2,000 to 5,000 IU of vitamin D3 a day and test your blood levels at least twice a year, as it is easy to overdose on supplemental forms.

5. Balance Your Omegas: Humans need omega fats to stay healthy and happy. The two most crucial, omega-3 and omega-6, need to be in balance at a 2:1 ratio, or two parts omega-6 to one part omega-3. The omega-3 fats help increase your serotonin levels, which fights depression and other mental and emotional difficulties. If you are low in omega-3’s, it’s no wonder you may be feeling a little less than joyful.

In order to balance yourself and feel happier, cut back your consumption of omega-6 laden foods, (corn, soy, canola, fried foods and most processed foods) while increasing your intake of omega-3 with mercury-free fatty fish (like wild Alaskan salmon or barramundi), chia seeds or Neptune krill oil supplements. Additionally, note that free-range and pasture-raised meats are higher in omega-3 fats than conventionally raised meats. Also, animal source omega-3 is much easier for the human body to process and absorb than omega-3 from plant sources. If you are vegan, be very careful about how much omega-6 you eat, as you will not likely be able to absorb enough omega-3 from plant foods to compensate.

6. Check for Hypothyroidism and/or Adrenal Fatigue: These largely unrecognized epidemics are a leading cause of depression. Hypothyroidism can cause lethargy and low mood while adrenal fatigue can cause you to feel “burnt out”, easily overwhelmed by little things and inexplicably fatigued. A blood and saliva test can tell you if you suffer from either of these conditions, but you can take action to heal yourself with or without getting an official diagnosis. Get more minerals from food-based supplements and whole foods like organic land and sea vegetables to help correct any deficiencies that may be causing poor adrenal/thyroid function.  

7. Get Checked for Metal: Heavy metal toxicity has been correlated with depression and other mood and neurological problems. It is not uncommon to see toxic levels of lead, mercury, aluminum and copper on lab test results of people suffering from mood and behavioral disorders. Most heavy metals are free radicals (substances that cause oxidative stress) that have an affinity for the brain, damaging brain tissue structure and metabolism. Reduce your exposure to heavy metals by using all natural body, lawn and home care products, safely removing metal tooth fillings and consuming whole, organic foods and low-mercury seafood. Be sure to have your blood tested for heavy metals if you suspect this form of toxicity is sabotaging your health.

8. Be Grateful: An attitude of gratitude is perhaps the most powerful weapon we have against depression. Placing your focus on that which you are grateful for, rather than what's seemingly missing from or “wrong” in your life, shifts your mind to a more positive vibration. Consciously shifting into gratitude helps us to attract more positive feelings and things in our lives rather than attracting what we do not want. With these ways to beat depression, you are now empowered to discover the happiness that is available to you, right now, no matter what else is going on in your life. You deserve to lead a joyful life, so get busy cultivating those good feelings; you will always reap what you sow.

About the Author: Carisa Holmes is a holistic health advocate, Reiki practitioner and author based in Columbus, Ohio. Carisa has worked in the holistic health and natural beauty fields for nearly 10 years

The Perils of Texting While Parenting

The technology is great, but it also has its demons. We all think we are all great multi-taskers, but plenty of studies have shown that we are fooling ourselves.
====================================
Are too many parents distracted by mobile devices when they should be watching their kids? A recent rise in injuries, reversing the longstanding trend, has doctors worried that the answer is yes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
One sunny July afternoon in a San Francisco park, tech recruiter Phil Tirapelle was tapping away on his cellphone while walking with his 18-month-old son. As he was texting his wife, his son wandered off in front of a policeman who was breaking up a domestic dispute.

"I was looking down at my mobile, and the police officer was looking forward," and his son "almost got trampled over," he says. "One thing I learned is that multitasking makes you dumber."

Injuries among young children are on the rise as the number of Americans who own a smartphone grows. Many child-health experts see a possible connection between device distraction and increased injuries. WSJ's Linda Blake and Ben Worthen report.

Yet a few minutes after the incident, he still had his phone out. "I'm a hypocrite. I admit it," he says. "We all are."

Is high-tech gadgetry diminishing the ability of adults to give proper supervision to very young children? Faced with an unending litany of newly proclaimed threats to their kids, harried parents might well roll their eyes at this suggestion. But many emergency-room doctors are worried: They see the growing use of hand-held electronic devices as a plausible explanation for the surprising reversal of a long slide in injury rates for young children. There have even been a few extreme cases of death and near drowning.

Read the entire article at "The Perils of Texting While Parenting".

Making the Grade

This article comes from a friend of mine. Read through it. Ask yourself the questions she proposes. How do you stack up?

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Making the Grade by Marlene Harris, NSCA-CSCS, NASM-CES

While chatting about knots and kinks in nutrition and fitness efforts, I inadvertently stumbled upon a concept that seemed to resonate with a couple people. In this edition, I’m going to cast a broader net highlighting the discussion in hopes that it may stimulate thinking about where your own efforts shake out on the continuum.

In one instance, following a somewhat lackluster weigh n’ measure, I was discussing nutrition efforts with a gal at the gym, and I asked her to name, as a percentage, the amount of time she was “on task” in following her program. She reported “about 70-75% of the time”. I responded, “Oh, a “C”.

She looked at me quizzically, so I followed up with; “You’re getting a “C” as a grade, you’re doing C (average) work.” She responded; “Wow! I never thought of it that way!” This seemed to clarify things for her, and she noted that perhaps some improvements were in order to spark better results.

Most of us are brought up in educational systems that assign a letter grade as a representation of the quality or quantity of our efforts. Add to this my protracted (understatement!) tenure as a college student, and assigning a letter grade to a percentage is about as automatic as Pavlov’s pup’s response to the dinner bell. Outside of academia, the idea and has a good track record here in the rest of life as well; wonky efforts, wonky results, average efforts, average results, above average efforts, above average results, and so forth.

Here’s the connector; recent research is suggests that, in order to make any measurable and motivating progress on fat loss, you need to be “at least 90% compliant” in your chosen plan of attack. In other words, you need to be following your plan at least 90% of the time and over the long haul, not just for a day or a week or two. Of course, in the world of grades this 90%+ designation is the equivalent of maintaining an “A” average, doing honor’s level work.

So, how’s your progress? Try to step back and, as objectively as possible, assess the percentage of time you’ve been true to your game plan. Don’t have one? Well, there’s the first issue. If you don’t have a game plan, get one. Words to live by: “Fail to plan, plan to fail”. If you do have a game plan, that’s a great start, but you actually have to follow the fool thing in order to get any results. Yes, I know, that’s the tough part. But, what percentage of time are you true to your plan? Below 20%? The big F. Epic fail. 50%? Better than nothing, but still, essentially a fail. 60%? Below average—how’s those results looking, D list? 70-ish? Well, we already have some idea of how that plays out (yawn..). 80%? Not bad, but you’re not fast trackin’ it are you? 90%+? Things should be looking pretty good for you, unless, of course, your plan is flawed (as in, you’re really, really good at following a really bad plan).

All that aside, be honest with yourself as you look at your fitness and fat loss efforts. How’s your report card looking? How are you doing, really? Assign yourself a grade based on the percentage of your efforts. If you’re doing “A” work and getting the results you want, use that as point of congratulations and put yourself on the honor roll. If you’re not, use the unfavorable grade as sign that you need to step up your efforts, same as in school. Want to make the grade? Up the percentage of your efforts, pretty please!

The Unknown Unknowns

This article is courtesy of the Wednesday August 1 edition of eSkeptic: the email newsletter of the Skeptics Society

The Unknown Unknowns

BY MICHAEL SHERMER

At a press conference on February 12, 2002, the United State Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld employed epistemology to the explain U.S. foreign entanglements and their unintended consequences: “There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

It is this latter category especially that is the focus of Stuart Firestein’s sparkling and innovative look at ignorance, and how it propels the scientific process forward. Firestein is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, where he teaches a wildly popular course on ignorance, inviting scientists in as guest speakers to tell students not what they know but what they don’t know, and even what they don’t know that they don’t know. (Would you rather earn an A or an F in a class called “Ignorance”?, he muses.) This is a slim volume about a fat topic, but Firestein captures the essence of the problem by contrasting the public’s understanding of science as a step-wise systematic algorithm of grinding through experiments that churn out data sets to be analyzed statistically and published in peer-reviewed journals after a process of observation, hypothesis, manipulation, further observation, and new hypothesis testing, with the Princeton University mathematician Andrew Wiles’ description of science as “groping and probing and poking, and some bumbling and bungling, and then a switch is discovered, often by accident, and the light is lit, and everyone says, ‘Oh, wow, so that’s how it looks,’ and then it’s off into the next dark room, looking for the next mysterious black feline” (p. 2), in reference to the old proverb: “It is very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room. Especially when there is no cat.”

If ever there was a time to think seriously about ignorance it is in our age of digital knowledge. Consider an Exabyte of data, or one billion gigabytes (typical thumb drives that most of us carry around consist of a couple of gigabytes storage capacity). It has been estimated that from the beginning of civilization around 5,000 years ago to the year 2003, all of humanity created a grand total of five exabytes of digital information. From 2003 through 2010 we created five exabytes of digital information every two days. By 2013 we will be producing five exabytes every ten minutes. The 2010 total of 912 exabytes is the equivalent of 18 times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written. It isn’t knowledge that we need more of; it is how to think about what we know and what we don’t know that is becoming ever more critical in science, through a process Feinstein calls “controlled neglect.” Scientists “don’t stop at the facts,” he explains, “they begin there, right beyond the facts, where the facts run out” (p. 12). It must be this way, he argues, because “the vast archives of knowledge seem impregnable, a mountain of facts that I could never hope to learn, let alone remember” (p. 14). Doctors and lawyers and engineers need many facts at their ready, as do scientists, but for the latter “the facts serve mainly to access the ignorance” because this is where the action is. “Want to be on the cutting edge? Well, it’s all, or mostly, ignorance out there. Forget the answers, work on the questions” (pp. 15–16).

To Rumsfeld’s epistemological categories Firestein would one add more: unknowable unknowns, “things that we cannot know due to some inherent and implacable limitation.” He puts history in this category, but I would not, for if we take the broader construct of history as anything that happened before the present then most of astronomy, cosmology, geology, archaeology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology are historical sciences, subject to testing hypotheses no less rigorously than their experimental scientists in the lab. And I worry slightly that an overemphasis on our ignorance about this or that claim opens the door to creationists, Holocaust deniers, climate deniers, and post-modern deconstructions who wish to challenge mainstream scientists because of religious or political agendas. Acknowledging our ignorance is good, but let’s acknowledge and celebrate what science has confidently given us in the way of well-supported theories.

That caveat aside, Ignorance includes an important discussion about scientific errors and their propagation in textbooks. I’m embarrassed to admit that I perpetrated one of these myself in my latest book, The Believing Brain, in which I repeated as gospel the “fact” that the human brain contains about 100 billion neurons. Firestein reports that his neuroscience colleague Suzana Herculano-Houzel told him it is actually around 80 billion (after undertaking an actual neural count!), and that there are an order of magnitude fewer glial cells than the textbooks report. As well, Firestein continues, the “neural spike” every neuroscientist measures and every student learns as the fundamental unit of neural activity when the cell fires, is itself a product of the electrical apparatus employed in the lab and ignores other forms of neural activity. And if that isn’t bad enough, even the famous “tongue map” in which sweet is sensed on the tip, bitter on the back, and salt and sour on the sides that is published in countless popular and medical textbooks is wrong and the result of a mistranslation of a German physiology textbook by Professor D. P. Hanig, and that the localization differences are much more complex and subtle.

These and other errors are the result of our lack of skepticism of the knowledge we have and our lack of respect for ignorance. “Ignorance works as the engine of science because it is virtually unbounded, and that makes science much more expansive” (p. 54). Indeed it is, and as the expanding sphere of scientific knowledge comes into contact with an ever increasing surface area of the unknown (thus, the more you know the more you know how much you don’t know), we would do well to remember the mathematical principle of surface area to volume ratio: as a sphere increases the ratio of its volume to surface area increases. Thus, in this metaphor, as the sphere of scientific knowledge increases, the ratio of the volume of the known to the surface area of the unknown increases, and it is here where we can legitimately make a claim of true and objective progress.