I doubt there's much in the way of deliberate infiltration.

The NSA isn't just a bunch of mathematicians, crackers, and sysadmins, they need a ton of people who can understand and contextualize the intelligence they receive. I'd expect the NSA to actively recruit from the same pool as their targets, it's inevitable that a few of those potential hires will turn out to be too close for comfort.

Is whether he used wget.

If he had been some outsider who decided to infiltrate the NSA and dump all the info I'd have some doubts about his motives.

But he had worked for the NSA in various capacities since 2006. It's not so much joining a company to leak whatever docs they might have, it's switching jobs in a company so you can leak the docs you know they have.

Ok, jerk passenger in the back knows the driver has a habit of checking texts while they're driving. So the passenger waits till they're in a really complicated traffic situation, then, wanting to cause a little mayhem, they send the driver a text knowing they'll read it at that moment. The driver does as intended and an accident ensues.

I think a good claim could be made that the passenger is also liable for the accident.

But is the US capable of protecting them?

The mildest response is to send in a bunch of drones, blow up a bunch of Assad's stuff, and call it a day.

What if Assad then uses more gas? Same response or do you have to escalate? With or without gas what if Assad starts to win? What's the exit strategy?

I'm not completely opposed to a short bombing run from the US, saying "if you use chemical weapons we'll make you regret it". But going further and actually taking a real stake in the conflict, it's not just that I'm not sure the US can win, but I don't know if there's a way to avoid losing. There's no good guys left who are in a position to be a decent government, and any involvement becomes western interference in a Muslim Arab country and destabilizes the surrounding region. It might be that the best thing the US can do for Syrians is nothing.

You think he meant so say it was merely possible for them to be fat? That vegetarianism could lead to other non-obesity related health problems? Because he didn't say anything remotely like that.

Unless by "healthy" you mean thin I think your take misses the point.

The book is primarily about obesity. The interview was primarily about obesity. The exchange was primarily about obesity. And the statement in question specifically mentioned obesity.

I think that one thing matabolic ward studies would clear up is that they don't really explain the changes that lead to the small (Yes. You can't rely on getting good results out of bad data.

It's not a binary situation, every dataset has inadequacies, you take that into account with error bars and tempered interpretations, but it's a little too convenient to just throw it out entirely because it's a problem.

What if there wasn't a problem, what if it turned out the records were in fact good? How would you rationalize the data then?

Well there's one big difference between eating and growing in that eating requires a conscious deliberate action and we know that a strong hunger response can be triggered by brain signals.

And I do agree that HGH is most responsible for height, with the caveat that there's MASSIVE factors I know I'm missing including things that probably counteract, enhance, or regulate HGH, and I don't know how HGH is involved in the feedback mechanism that actually determines how much we grow. We also know the conscious mind doesn't do a lot since vegetative patients still grow to a normal height.

Wherever you start from you can't go around saying you solved the obesity epidemic when you've left out one of the primary drivers of appetite which you know if being manipulated in modern populations.

What are you talking about? Tastiness is be determined by signals in the brain, there are feedbacks that occur which changes how we perceive taste, but you're going back to this impractical standard of solving the system instead of analyzing it behaviourally.

So you're throwing it out entirely? The numbers are fuzzy, but if they're even in the ballpark they contradict your allergy theory.

Understand what? I don't know his point.

I think a lot of listeners went through the program thinking "wow! he's dismantling all these things I knew about nutrition!" and when he got to that bit "huh, I thought vegetarians were usually thin, but I guess they must not be because he's done the research and they apparently weigh more."

Oh yes,

His failure was that he was misunderstood. It's not really his fault that in an interview, when discussing in detail the fact that vegetarians were eating foods that by his rules should make them fat and diabetic, he simply claimed that vegetarians were in fact fat and diabetic.

It's clear that he really wanted to say...

After googling the only thing I can find about Taubes and vegitarianism is someone saying that in his book he claimed that Vegetarian Hindus in India were fatter than their non-vegetarian Christian and Muslim counterparts. But I could find no mention of that study, and similar studies, or the actual claim, or even another website saying he said it, so I have no idea what his actual explanation is or if there even is one. But given the obvious relevance to his hypothesis it seems odd that he hasn't dealt with the issue explicitly and directly.

The point is we can't isolate one variable and hold everything else constant. Other variables can kick in to compensate, the brain responds to the situation, and the factor you're measuring never has a total function as simple as your hypothesis. No matter what you do the data is really messy and the answers can only be guessed at by looking at a lot of different experiments.

No, I'm saying we already know the brain is heavily involved, including decisions made at an abstract level like comfort food or eating in company. Therefore to show a particular biochemical process is active you first need to measure the influence of the brain which we know is there.

Oversimplification, I'd be leery of those who say "it's all due to palatability", because activity levels, social factors, mental health, advertising, convenience, and a dozen other factors are all probably involved.

Btw, since you think the carb/obesity is only in western populations due to a carbohydrate allergy explain Cuba, during an economic crisis calories dropped from 3,100 to 2,300 and:

"The percentage of dietary fat in the energy intake decreased, while the contribution of carbohydrates (polished rice and refined cereals) increased from 64% in 1990 to 79.4% in 1993. Availability of essential dietary amino acids and fatty acids declined as a consequence of a reduced availability of animal protein and edible oils and fat. Sugar cane, a traditional source of energy in the Cuban diet, rose to 28% of total energy intake, almost three times that of the fat contribution."

Want to guess what happened? Obesity rates dropped by half. So what happened to the carb allergy that caused the initial obesity? Why did they start eating fewer calories? Despite the economic hardship there wasn't actual starvation so surely they could afford 800 of the cheapest calories per day, if your theory about their obesity being caused a carb allergy was correct the extra sugar and refined carbs should have given them uncontrollable hunger and blew them up like a balloon.

I agree, but that doesn't mean the system is designed to be easily analyzed via falisifiability. I think a pretty common scenario goes something like this

Researcher: I have a great simple falsifiable hypothesis!

Other person: Awesome! What does it mean if it's true!

Researcher: Uhhh, well I got a list of things that might be happening if it's true.

Other person: Um ok, well you must have a pretty good idea if it's false then?

Researcher: Oh yeah! I got another list!

Other person: .... a lot of the items are the same.

Researcher: Yeah, sorry about that

Hunger is a neurological effect so it (probably) all has to end up in the brain at some point, but we don't know the precise inputs, some is undoubtedly largely determined by signals from the body, muscle cells are probably sending some of those signals, but the brain is undoubtedly doing a ton on its own as evidenced by the huge role visual stimuli, social setting, and expectation plays on appetite.

That's why I'm very leery of anyone who stands up and says "I solved the obesity epidemic and it's due to X!" just because we know of so many contributing factors that go in and the number of variables we're changing.

I'm not sure we're going to get any further on this point. Taubes came as close to saying "up is down" as you can possibly get, whatever mental gymnastics or false equivalencies you use to justify it you can't get around that fact. Even if some nutritionists did make an equivalent error Taubes claim is that he's supposed to be better, that he's the only one who took an unbiased look at the evidence. Well here we have a clear example where if you took his at his word you would come away seriously misinformed. At least admit the man is capable of failure.

They take an existing correlation and interpret it as a interpretation (may or may not be right), Taubes does the same, except when he took the correlation he just reversed it. The rationalization is still laughable.

Maybe, but after probably 100+ comments I don't really want to have that debate.

What this basically says is that audiences have already decided whether or not the movie will be a success before it's been released.

Think about it, sure a preview is somewhat limited by the film its based on, you'll know the actors, director, maybe the writers and producer. And you might get a very rough idea of the characters and plot, but that's about it.

Is there any reason why the previews for Evan Almighty couldn't have been as good as the previews for The 40-Year-Old Virgin?

The film industry is designed to push as much money into the opening weekend as possible to avoid giving audiences a chance to talk about the film and potentially not see the film. This study seems to suggest they're succeeding.

Just look at the top movie on IMDB, The Shawshank Redemption

"In total the film made approximately $28.3 million in North American theaters, making it the number 51 highest grossing film of 1994 and the number 21 highest grossing R-rated film of 1994."

What's that say about the correlation between film quality and box office success? Maybe the only reason Evan Almighty flopped is because it was finally a chance for all the people who made Bruce Almighty a hit to make up for their mistake.