Interesting Links for 25-6-2011

[andrewducker]

• Students discover that Dean is plagiarising his speech - while he gives it. Aint the internet grand?
  (tags: internet plagiarism funny EpicFail academia)
• Claims about how much money can be saved by more efficient government are....about as accurate as you'd expect.
  (tags: money efficiency government)
• What if going to war was as hard as getting an abortion (and vice versa)
  (tags: abortion war funny comic)
• On music, 4'11" and the eternal arguments of what SF really is.
  (tags: music literature writing induction)
• An interesting look at the future for Windows developers. I hope it's correct.
  (tags: windows microsoft .net development silverlight c# windows8 future)
• British study finds two-month extreme diet can cure type 2 diabetes
  (tags: diabetes food health awesome)

Comments

[nmg.livejournal.com]

4'11"? Is this the dance remix?

[andrewducker]

I may not have been entirely awake when I tagged that one...

[steer.livejournal.com]

I like the energy the higher bpm gives to the piece. Bangin'.

Did you know Mike (wombles) Batt was sued for copying the original (settled out of court).

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

If fat in the pancreas is a major cause of type 2 diabetes, then liposuction might be a solution.

[andrewducker]

If you can get into the pancreas and break it up without destroying the pancreas, yes.

I'm hoping that if it does turn out to be a major cause then that leads to solutions that don't require very low calorie diets.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

It would be interesting to know why the diet didn't work for some people, and whether everyone with a fatty pancreas has type 2.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Re diabetes: I've heard it argued like this (New York Times - "is sugar toxic?" and it's fairly convincing, though they seem to be all about fat in the liver. Is that much different?

He warned that only a minority of people, perhaps 5% or 10%, would be able to stick to the harsh diet necessary to get rid of diabetes

That would depend. If you locked them up and pushed the food in through a slot in the door, it would be closer to 100%. Don't get me wrong, you could treat them well - soft beds, kindly guards, books to read, even internet. You'd have to monitor and filter the internet of course, to block pizza delivery sites.

[andrewducker]

I'm hoping it won't come to that. If they can show it's the lowered fat levels in the pancreas that reduce the problems then they can probably find a different way of causing that.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I thought it was an autoimmune/inflammatory response - fat in the organs seems either causitive or symptomatic of such responses...

Actually, physically removing the fat rather than dieting it away would be a lovely control if it could be done...

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

this makes no sense to me - 8 weeks to get rid of an unpleasant and eventually probably debilitating disease that's only gonna get worse... bargain!

Unless you are already so skinny that losing circa 20lbs (rough estimate of likely weight loss - hard to tell cos they don't give a figure on kcals) would be bad for your health.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The longer-term health implications and risks of such a diet are not known.

Sometimes the fact that something is very unpleasant to do means it's actually unhealthy.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

The windows 8 publicity is odd. First there was the native html/js news, which set off loads of negativity, but also interest. Then Microsoft shut up, so people feared the worst but did their own analysis, so the interest has gotten onto news like the Ars Technica article, which is very positive. It's either a devious PR master-stroke or a happy accident.

Ah, who am I kidding? it's a rare case of cock-up coming up roses.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I wanna know if the diet was low-calorie only or also low-carb - depends what's in the shakes....

I can well believe 8 weeks to have a dramatioc effect - that's how long it took me to basically get rid of my psoriasis by dietary means (lots of veg, some fruit, fish [palm-sized portion only], few eggs/week, olive oil, 5 almonds/per day)

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

The diet was "600 calories a day" which is very low. If kept up long enough, it would starve you to death.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

ok, just picked that up. I never counted, but would never have gone that low.

I 'd think the shakes would sensibly be protein shakes.

Most folks carry enough fat to last a coupla months without food, and some fat people up to a year. It's scurvy that'd you'd have to watch for (12 weeks ish IIRC) and other vitamin/mineral deficiencies.

And they'd lose muscle too (bad) unless they did a bit of weight training to coutneract it - and there's limits to what you can preserves whilst calorically-deprived (ask any competitive bodybuilder!) that's another reason you can't run it too long.

And clearly people shouldn't just go back to what they were eating previously given that's what put them in the type 2 diabetic state to start with...

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

On the Windows Dev: Just for pity's sake keep a WYSIWYG for Windows apps. PLEASE!! I cannot get web devs to appreciate just how important this is (because mainly they are not used to having anything good?? [the .net web dev stuff is pretty universally judged to be actively horrible]).

I am not buliding f*ckin' UIs purely in code. It's daft. Just daft. Like asking an artist to 'paint' a picture by describing the position and size and colour of brushstrokes instead of just doing it... or a musician to compose using in textfiles of midi codes...

I just say to them, "in less than 5 years you will want it badly, in 10 you will know I am right!"

[andrewducker]

I can't see that going anywhere. XAML apps are designed with a UI editor, as are WinForms ones. It looks like the new UI stuff is built on Silverlight, which is XAML-based, so it won't be a problem.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Apps that use XAML a lot are designed in Expression Blend, with reminds me a lot of Photoshop in terms of the sheer complexity of the UI, and the mindset required to use it well. Is that what you mean by a "UI editor"?

The Web Dev UI tool is Expresison Web. I can't really judge it, though I have seen good reviews. It's future level of competence is unknown - who knows what resources are going to go into it?

[andrewducker]

Yup.

They're also done in Visual Studio (which is what I use).

It makes it incredibly easy to create a form, drop a textbox and a button on it, and then wire up methods to fire when the text is changed or the button is clicked.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

VS is ok for XMAL - it makes the simple stuff simple. It'd dev-friendly. I use it.

Blend is designer-friendly. It is for the complex UI styling - if your list-box is arranged as a spiral, with items that fade in while writhing like tentacles, some dude with a goatee almost certainly did that in Blend.

[andrewducker]

All of the apps I work with are internal only, so thankfully that never happens :->

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

LOL! maybe I need this Blend thing...not!

Ok I'm happy I will still be able to plonk stuff down and show people and fiddle with it til they like it - in near-realtime...

Shame Blend is not *actually* photoshop as I have a Photoshop power user handily to hand....

[autopope.livejournal.com]

The diabetes study reporting in the press is, lamentably, garbage. Here's some accurate reporting.

[andrewducker]

For a moment there I thought you were saying the study was garbage - and I'm glad to see it's not. It's just a very early study and a lot more work needs to be done to find out what's actually going on, and whether this is repeatable (or useful for finding better treatment).

Science reporting in the newspapers being appalling is sadly not something that causes even a flicker in me any more.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

ta - much much much better report!

[redshira.livejournal.com]

Ugh, great. More ammunition for the fat-bashers and calories-in-calories-out proponents. I would be one of those for whom restricting calories wouldn't do anything for the diabetes and would do massive damage to my mental health. I know, because of the times I've been on way fewer calories than that for months at a time and not only did I continue to gain weight at a ridiculous rate, I got very, very ill. As one might expect. But it worked for some people! so the rest of us will be (again) accused of just making excuses.
Why did I read the comments on that link, why why why.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

Someone make Ben Goldacre a Dame or something. He does more for the pulic understanding of science than a legion of Brian Coxes.