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Comment Re:Corollary (Score 1) 278

There's a lawyer in Los Angeles (at least one I know of, maybe more) who is in cahoots with someone in a wheelchair... they make a nice living suing businesses for being insufficiently ADA-compliant. Specifically, they target businesses that are grandfathered and not required to be compliant, or that have a variance because compliance would be excessively burdensome. Doesn't stop 'em from being the object of a lawsuit, or that it's usually cheaper to pay them to go away than to fight it in court.

Comment Re:Chewbacca has very obvious human traits (Score 1) 360

I'd go further and say the best acting is more body language than facial expressions or speech. Body language brings the *whole* character to life even when there's no face or dialog. Without that, Chewbacca would have indeed been a walking carpet; with it, he's an enduring character.

As an extreme example, remember Star Trek's horta? it worked as a character (at least as well as it could for what it was) because the director understood that the way it moved was a good deal of how it conveyed itself to we-the-audience.

Comment Re:Don't worry actors (Score 1) 360

You are right, but I think what the comment about 'em being hidden so he can use non-actors is getting at, is that Lucas mistakes the costume for the character. The reason those 'hidden actor' characters in the first three films were so successful is that they were a character first and a costume second. Conversely when Lucas is left to his own devices, we get a talking costume with no character in it regardless of whether the actor is any good or not.

Comment Re:Don't worry actors (Score 1) 360

Actually, Lucas is terrible at worldbuilding -- when he's in charge of that, we get Jar Jar and mitocloridians [sp?]. Trouble is he really doesn't have the SF mindset that extrapolates whatever into a universe. What he does have is a toymaker mindset that thinks the more weirdness you stuff into it, the better, and he doesn't know when to stop. His universe isn't built; it's cluttered.

He's pretty good at whizbang scripts and throwing out concepts when that's all he does with it (I say, having seen early SW4 iterations). He's not good at exploring the people beyond their surface reactions, or the world beyond throwing toys at it. Again, that's why we get crap like Jar Jar, who shows us how (Lucas thinks) we're supposed to react to all this clutter.

And he's not getting better; he's getting worse, because he's successful enough to be "uneditable" and can afford to totally indulge himself... something he couldn't yet do with the first three films. Plus back then he had real SF authors involved.

"I am your father" was character depth? Er, well, yeah, but SW fanfic explored that immediately after the first film, and IMO Lucas stole that idea straight from fanfic regardless of whatever he may claim. It sure isn't where the early concepts were going with the Vader character.

And about the first film, he originally insisted: "There will never be a Star Wars sequel. Sequels are made by people who can't think up new material." (That's from memory but it's real close to an exact quote.) Then when it became such a howling success, first there had always been three, and then there had always been nine...

Oh, the irony.

Comment Re:And what good would it do? (Score 1) 447

Too little or too much iodine can fuck up your thyroid (only because it uses iodine directly), but otherwise it's not real sensitive to lifestyle or diet... however it can influence what you want to do and eat (low thyroid causes sugar craving and lack of motivation/energy to do anything). TSH levels fluctuate depending on iron, selenium, and sugar intake, but there's no strong evidence that any of these will cause more than transient deficiency; indeed, low thyroid is a known cause of poor iron absorption, so it's rather the reverse -- eat well and you still won't get good use of it. At least one gene has been identified that causes poor T4-to-T3 conversion, IOW the DNA that controls the required enzyme is defective. Anyway, if you try treating hypothyroid with diet and exercise you won't get far. I can point at myself as a good example -- I'm more active than most folks (I've done physical work my whole life) and I eat almost entirely home-cooked, nutrient-dense food, but that doesn't do a thing for my Hashimoto's.

Comment Re:We're mixing concepts (Score 1) 324

My wife is from the Philippines and I've traveled there a few times. One of the first things that one notices is that there are very few overweight people. I mean like one in a thousand. It's funny in a way because most young women have great legs even if they're not otherwise pretty.

But when they come to America they tend to gain weight rapidly. In the Philippines they eat a lot of starch. Actually, most calories probably come from starches. But they also tend to move around a lot more.

Here, the issue is not just the diet - it's also the sitting around watching TV or whatever, along with driving everywhere and walking only minimally.

Anyway, the point being that it's not just the food - it's the lifestyle.

Comment Re:And what good would it do? (Score 1) 447

If I find that particular paper again I'll let you know. And depression as a consequence of subclinical hypothyroidism is very well established, but no longer generally acted upon. It used to be routinely treated as such, but when the TSH test came to prominence, most doctors started treating to make nice test results rather than treating the patients' symptoms.... despite that all the evidence is against using TSH as anything but a crude marker that something is wrong. False negatives are extremely common.

Here's a starter kit:
http://hormonerestoration.com/...

I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and I've had to take up reading the Journal of Endocrinology in sheer self-defense. It's quite shocking how much well-established endocrine research has never filtered down to GPs, never mind other specialty fields, despite that a malfunctioning endocrine system can fuck up just about anything else. I've concluded it should be the first line of inquiry (since fixing the thyroid will commonly cure a whole raft of apparently-unrelated physical and mental symptoms), but most doctors act like it's the last resort.

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