Maybe coffee drinkers are correlated with something else that prevents Alzheimer's. I see no mention in the article that this is more than statistical correlation they have found.

Doing a controlled experiment where the only dietetic difference is the coffee is near impossible due to the cost.

Most recently, they reported that caffeine interacts with a yet unidentified component of coffee to boost blood levels of a critical growth factor that seems to fight off the Alzheimer’s disease process.

Typical conclusion section speculation from a correlation study IMHO.

I think it would be dangerous for people to drinking coffee assuming they are warding off Alzheimer's. Coffee has know to have bad effects on the body. It is a diuretic and a stimulant.

Most recently, they reported that caffeine interacts with a yet unidentified component of coffee to boost blood levels of a critical growth factor that seems to fight off the Alzheimer’s disease process.

to see that human relationship skills take practice and effort

Nope. Cats will catch a mouse if they've never seen a mouse before and will shadow hunt even if they've never seen a mouse before.

Human relationships skills are hard coded into us. Even if we don't have a relationship, we still shadow practice those skills and have mock conversations.

... is to go to shows and spend money at shows.

1. Get tickets to show that says 8PM.

2. Drive for an hour and then pay for parking/drive around to find parking.

3. Arrive there 8PM and wait outside in a line for 0.5-1 hour (the establishment that you paid over $50 in tickets won't let you use the restroom because nobody is allowed inside until the band is ready).

4. Get inside. Wait indefinite time (from 1-1.5 hours) until the opening band starts.

5. After opening band finishes, wait another 1-1.5 hours for the band you paid tickets to start.

6. Show finishes.

You start around 6PM and you are done at 1-2AM. Eight hours to listen to a 1.5 hour set from the band you're supporting. Meanwhile, all this empty time you end up buying junk food and alcohol from the establishment.

I hate going to live shows because of this reason - it's a time sink. Why don't the musicians start their shows on time and print the time each band will be starting on the tickets so I arrive and enjoy the show and leave.

It's amazing to me how irrational people become as soon as the subject of food comes up. Science? Evidence? What's that? People convince themselves of all kinds of ridiculous ideas about food and nutrition, none of which have even the slightest shred of evidence to back them up. Probably because people don't want it to be simply a matter of calories. It's another example of intellectual hedonism. People don't want to believe that the quantity of food they are eating is just too much. So they simply choose not to believe it. Instead they invent some simple rule that does not rely on calorie counting or ever being hungry. Fat doesn't make you fat. Sugar doesn't make you fat. Preservatives and MSG don't make you fat. "Refined" foods don't make you fat. Fast food doesn't make you fat. Burgers and donuts don't make you fat. Even insulin doesn't make you fat. If you are overweight (as I am) the only thing you can blame is your own lack of self-control. It's calories that make you fat. Fat people simply eat too much for the amount of physical activity they engage in. You could live on pure fat or pure sugar and huge amounts of preservatives and lots of MSG and as long as you didn't exceed 1000 calories per day you wouldn't gain weight. In fact you would probably lose it.

Every set of observable statistics has infinite theories to explain it, from which only one is right. Since our nutritionists and scientists can't give us a straight answer and we are drowning in obesity, everyone is looking for alternate theories. Everyone has their own little pet theory on why we get fat and unless you have been designing and running experiments, analyzing data to confirm or deny your problem, you're part of the problem you mention.

Look at what we were able to achieve with HIV and AIDS. We should be putting our resources like that to the obesity epidemic and once and for all, figure out what the right theory to explain everything is.

Fat burning is meant to be an additional energy source, not the primary one.

Wrong!. It has already been shown (with isotopic tracking) that fat cells were meant to be a temporary buffer, not a storage device. Fat molecules don't get stored away, they go into fat cells and come out like in a buffer, no isotopic fats really get stored away in the fat cells.

As for going through the rest of your posts and going point through point and arguing about it, let me say that settling these kinds of arguments are the job of scientists not random slashdot posters.

The only reason why these "carbs are bad" - posts are marked as insightful is that most people don't want to admit that their own behaviour is a part of the problem.

Or maybe that people don't want to admit that they are genetic dinosaurs, their bodies not being able to handle modern foods is evolution bitslapping them into selection pressure.

The truth is our minds find it easier to find positively stimulating things on screens then being active.

The government keep advertising on TV that not being active is the cause of being fat.

The truth is that it is bullshit.

A fit guy probably spends more time in the kitchen than in the gym, he will probably have more recipes to offer than exercise routines and techniques.

For most of my adult life I was 30 lbs over weight and tried all of the tricks. I'm a mechanical engineer so intuitively I knew energy in vs energy out was the key. So I said screw it, this year I'm going eat less no matter how much it sucks. I personally can't stand eating small meals so I decided to eat one meal a day. I drink coffee and tea during the day and have a big meal at night. I estimate the average daily calorie went from 3000 to 1800. Guess what? I lost 30 pounds over 4 months. Was it hard? You bet your ass it was. I was/am hungry most of the time. But at least I can look forward to that one nice meal at night. And it's not always a "healthy" meal. Sometimes it's a 1/2 lb cheese burger with fries. But that's still less than 1800 calories and that's all that counts.

Congratulations.

Now, the hard part is keeping those 30lbs from coming back.

The failings of "diets" isn't that you don't lose weight, it's that the weight comes back and comes back stronger. Fighting hunger eats away from a limited pool of willpower and when you have a huge project or a stressful event if your life that eats away your reserves to fight hunger, you will find after that the pounds have come back.

My point is that calories in, calories out model is wrong on the big picture.

I don't know why people keep repeating the "eat less, workout more" mantra in its various forms fed by bad science. There is a huge debate on if the "sloth gluttony sins" cause of obesity is scientifically correct.

People are not active because the body's hormones has been switched to get fat mode. If people ate more and the body did not get into fat conserving mode, they would be crazy active to burn off the extra calories - like little children in supermarkets running around. The human body loves burning energy, all our fondest memories and times of great joy have been activities where we used up a lot of calories.

The whole evolutionary advantage of storing fat argument is bullshit. Our body only stores fat and no other nutrients. At 10% body fat, low enough to get six-packs, it is enough fat to live off a month without eating. Our body regulates temperature, blood sugar level, acidity, blood composition and hundreds of other things but doesn't regulate our weight and we have to actively regulate it when even a 5% error either way can result in obesity from normal in a few years.

Anybody who equates breaking the speed limit as automatic excessive speeding is a tool. The speed limit on my local highway is 55mph, the average speed is close to 70. It's a safe speed.

The safe speed varies by car, time of day, experience of the driver and segment of the road. The speed limit has to be set to the lowest safety standard, not the standard of hey we can tolerate a few hundred deaths per year speed as long as it gets the hundreds of thousands across.

There is a segment of the highway that I drive daily where it is marked that the speed limit is 55 and people go 70. For 99.99% of the time, it's a safe speed but once or twice a year, there is an accident at that segment and 2-3 people die, most of the time young people in smaller cars.

Well, right, you hit the nail on the head with that last part. As long as there are manual overrides -- and there will *always* be manual overrides -- there will be people who use it to game the system. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if human drivers actually drive more recklessly because they know that the automated vehicles around them will always yield, always be aware of the vehicles around them, and always avoid collisions. This would provide a huge disincentive for people to use automated vehicles, especially in rush hour traffic where they're needed most, because the automated vehicle wouldn't be aggressive enough, and the manual driver wouldn't be hindered by the same set of programmed restrictions as the automated vehicle. If people see a measurable advantage to driving manually, they will continue to do it.

This is where vehicular networking comes in. A car spots another car acting like a douche and then warns every cars around it about the douchey car. Then after the car is flagged and verified by other cars as driving aggressively, cars ahead will act to limit the aggressive behavior and notify the cops and the pervasive cameras about the vehicle.

I'm all for looking at our biology for ways to improve our health, and studying our evolution is certainly one way to do that. But assuming that we're going to come up with any kind of "natural, and therefore healthy" lifestyle based on dim of ideas of how long-ago proto-humans lived in a vanished world is just silly.

Look at the AHA recommendations, food pyramids and television ads and dieting gurus. Some say sugar is fine, some say it's poison. Some say animal products are great while others poison. Some say fruits are great others say limit it because of fructose. Even for veggies, people warn of the starch if they aren't eaten raw with lots of fiber. Every food our there is on the bad side of some diet and recommendation.

The whole thing is a big joke now. Americans are fat, the nutrition advice and science say conflicting things all the time and nobody has a solution. Among the vast wasteland that is nutrition science in the US, the caveman diet and related low-carb seems to be the best working. Yes, people will say the fats in the diet will lead to CVD while others say it will not and I guess time will tell. The great American low-fat experiment resulted in our freakshow obese population and it's good to give something else a try.

Fast food is hardly the ideal food, but for weight loss all that really matters is calories.

Please stop perpetuating that myth (a calorie is a calorie). Carbs act completely different to other foods. The glucose, fructose and starch react completely differently. Fat reacts differently because insulin is not involved. They go through completely different biochemical cycles. Even combinations of different foods do different things. So, please if you have any experience in fitness, you know nutrition is very important. Not just calories what kinds of foods.

Is the outrage because the country is China? Every laptop I've bought in the past five years have come from China.

I think the biggest fear we have is that China is now going to create companies that as the article says are global players. We have constantly dismissed China as a cheap labor pool where work would vanish if the wages went up, then as backstabbing reverse-engineers who dare betray the sacred trust of US companies of moving their operations to China for profit, and then to mindless cultural inferiors where American exceptionalism would outshine and blaze away anything the Chinese could do. Now, we're fighting the fear that Chinese could become global players with these thinly-veiled outrage stories.

As they used to say in the 80s movies, "are you afraid of a little competition?"