Action Figure Daniel

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  • “Jaws” by Sandra Kahn and Paul R Erhlich

    • Orthodontia focuses on aesthetics and not underlining causes
    • Malocclusion is not caused by bad genetics
    • Original American settlers were also called “black mouth” because they were mouth breathers
    • Chewing took up about half of prehistoric lives
    • Chewing tough things counts more than diet for our health
    • Mouth breathing is bad for jaw health
    • We use clothes to symbolize our connection to something bigger than ourselves
    • Weening should focus on chewing unsweetened food
    • We do not know what in tobacco smoke causes lung cancer
    • Mouth breathing bypasses nose filtration
    • Indoors often have more air pollution than outdoors

  • “Drink?” by David Nutt

    • Alcohol is very harmful to society not on an individual level but because its net affect
    • Sweeteners are there to accommodate younger people
    • The effects of alcohol are what allow us to get over the taste
    • Alcohol and Valium work on the same systems to relax us
    • “Vomiting gets rid of enough alcohol to keep you alive”
    • Anxiety and alcoholism go hand-in-hand
    • Withdrawing from alcohol spikes the cortisol
    • Prolactin manages sperm production in men
    • Brain damage from alcohol happens in the first trimester with physical issues coming later
    • Progesterone surges affect memory, “baby brain” is a real thing
    • Exercisers tends to also be drinkers
    • Sailor would soak some gun powder in their rum. If it ignited then it was at least 50% alcohol, this is where “percent proof”
    • Do not drink alcohol when thirsty because you are already dehydrated
    • Drunk harm is often mismatch with the harm people think they do
    • More people die from horse riding than Ecstasy
    • Alcohol has been getting cheaper over time leading to increased use
    • Minimum per-unit pricing trends to lower alcohol consumption, especially from supermarkets

  • “The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe” by Dr. Steven Novella

    • Skeptics accept new ideas as long as their methods support them
    • We have separate memory stores for facts, truthfulness of those facts, and fact sources; this is why we sometime jumble where we heard what
    • Memories are subject to co-fusion, confabulation, and co-opting from others
    • Confidence and vividness have little bearing on accuracy
    • Only the eye’s fovea captures details, it is the size of a postage stamp at an arm’s length, all other details are made up
    • The brain does pre and post processing, enhancing the image based on what we think we are looking at
    • Pareidolia is the brain trying to make sense of noise
    • Beware of defenses that are created on the fly
    • When ranking things we want, if our first choice is not available, we tend to skip the third. Maybe because we already had to dismiss the second when picking the first.
    • “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.” Ronald Coase
    • Anomaly hunting goes wrong when we ask “what are the odds [this] happening?”. The good question is “What are the odds that any anomaly would happen?”
    • Random data is “clumpy”; expect to see weird things together
    • P values indicates the quality of the data, not the truthiness of the hypothesis
    • Hybrid seeds cannot be replanted because they will have unpredictable gene expression
    • We tend to confuse the knowledge of experts with our own knowledge

  • “The Shortest History of India” by John Zubrzycki

    • India has the longest continuous civilization
    • India comes from the word Hindu
    • Chess derives from an India game
    • India pushed vegetarianism and religious freedom
    • The Caste culture displaced the notion of being self-protective
      • (My [caste] position is not that great, so why bother to defend our land?)
    • Fasting became a powerful tool that could be used by everyone, including the poorest

  • “Of Orcas and Men” by David Neiwert

    • Orcas are often viewed as ancestors
    • Dolphins have acoustic signaling but maybe not language
    • “Orcas are not really smart humans but humans are really stupid orcas.”
    • Killer whales have been the dominant predator in the ocean for three times as long as humans have been on land
    • Whale brains are literally structured differently, making it difficult to compare to humans
    • Orcas have a lot more of brain power through interconnectivity
    • Echolocation literally paints a picture in their minds
    • They are very emotional creatures, according to trainers and brain scans
    • Orca skin literally lets water flow through it
    • Orcas “hear” through their hollow jaw bone which is enlarged to better capture and relay vibration information
    • Orcas share echo sounds with each other and can “point” with it
    • We can learn cooperation from the whales