Mokele

The BMI is a complete load for a wide variety of reasons. Firstly, it's fundamentally flawed - weight goes up to the cube, not the square, and this holds true both within species and on shrew-to-elephant lines. Secondly, as pointed out, it fails to take into account varying body composition. Fat vs muscle is often pointed out, but bone mass can be very significant, especially if you've previously done a lot of high-impact stuff. Finally, and most importantly, it's entirely arbitrary and socially defined - the BMI cutoffs were lowered in 1998, manufacturing an "obesity epidemic" out of thin air. IMHO, its worthless, both for individuals and as a study tool. It's for lazy researchers who can't get off their ass and make real measurements. Now, as for your health, the best bet is to just go to the doctor and ask for either a physical, or just a blood test + pulse + blood pressure. (Keep in mind that if you're a big guy, especially if you're tall, your blood pressure will naturally be a bit higher just to push the blood around). That'll give you *accurate* information about your risks and such. Also, don't get your expectations up too high. Remember that it's not as simple as calories-in - calories-out; the body is incredibly complex, with numerous feedback mechanisms regulating basal metabolic rate, digestive efficiency, nutrient uptake, nutrient metabolism, etc. The idea that everyone can be thin if they work hard enough is, quite simply, wrong. What's more important is being *healthy* - if you have a bit of extra weight, but you have good pulse, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc., then there's nothing to really worry about.

Sheeple?

Carbon isn't usually the limiting resource for plants - mostly it's nutrients and minerals from the soil, or water, or light (if they're in the understory). Adding more CO2 won't result in a given population of plants increasing in biomass if they're limited by the soil's phosphate concentration.

Most of fall & some of spring: Human Medical Anatomy (teaching) (yes, the one where you cut up human cadavers) Spring: Veterinary Surgery (taking). At some vague point fairly soon, I need to take quals, too.

There's nothing special about the Bermuda triangle. There's no higher rate of ship or plane wrecks there than anywhere else.

Not so far as I know.

The human brain is immensely adaptable and impressionable. People's interests change, as does what they find 'fun', for a wide variety of reasons, none of which are evolutionary, but rather psychological. However, I should add a serious caveat - loss of interest in things you formerly enjoyed can be a symptom of depression. If so, this is in no way your fault, and is merely a chemical imbalance in your brain. There should be plenty of pages on the topic online, and I'd suggested scheduling an appointment with a local psychologist to discuss this general loss of interest in formerly pleasurable activities. It may just be stress, but it pays to be sure.

I think it's a bit soon to say "leveled off" - for all we know, the past climate changes involved a "stepwise" progression, or this could be a natural property of the system (CO2 rises -> more plants -> CO2 levels off due to increased fixation -> plants max out for given CO2 level -> CO2 resumes rising -> repeat). Prior records don't have the sub-decade level resolution needed to see that as anything but subtle noise, if at all. Can you link to them; I'd like to look them over. I should have access via my university servers (as well as to some you may not, and vice versa).

Honestly, it strikes me as a bit of "too many cooks". There's what, 2 dozen species of hominid, extant and extinct? And how many people working on phylogenies? And broadly speaking, the tree is pretty stable (at least compared to, say, deep trees of invertebrates, which change with every third issue of Nature), and quite supportable (compared to, say, ancient crocodilians, where you're better off making a tree using some dice and a dart board). Anyhow, one thing that always helps me is drawing a strict consensus tree, a tree that includes only the taxa and relationships that *everyone* agrees on (such as gibbons being the most basal clade of hominids). Once you've done that, you'll probably find that there's only a handful of spots of disagreement, which you can focus on and which will make it easier to see the basis of the disagreements.

The problem may simply be how fast we've done it. The atmosphere is, after all, very big, and Milancovich cycles are, all things considers, pretty slow (at least nowhere near as fast as 150 years). We cannot be sure that warning wouldn't reach 10C higher if we simply stabilized CO2 levels and let things play out on a geological time scale. It's also worth noting that it's hard to really draw comparisons with past cycles because, at those times, there were two forcings (Milancovich and CO2), but now we've decoupled them, which means the results are going to differ from past cycles. As a side note, are you sure about the 10C figure? That seems awfully high, by my recollection. I recall the difference being about half that.

Awww, did we offend the crackpot peddlers of lies and false hope? Boo Hoo. You want to convince us? Do one of two things: 1) Disclose ALL of your research documents, here, where we can read them or, better yet, 2) go get FDA certified. If it really is that effective, neither should pose the slightest challenge.

It's also worth noting that it's pretty difficult to get an idea of which insurers are better than others. AFAIK, there's no "amazon.com reviews for Health insurers", or compiled ranking of companies. As such, I pretty much just have to look over the benefits and pray they don't **** me over if I ever need to claim.

Sorry, but "someone said they know someone who got the benefit" isn't really reliable. Maybe those folks just had growth spurts that would have happened anyway, even if they'd be playing computer games instead of sports.

Bones are actually quite well-vascularized, mostly to allow release and re-deposition of calcium, but this also applies to the marrow.

It's both, though it depends somewhat on the nature of the toxin. Some simple toxins may be dealt with more by detoxification at the liver or just flushing them out via the kidneys.

The severe, permanent cognitive damage caused by lead has been extensively documented, and is among the most well-known of heavy-metal poisonings next to mercury The real questions are: 1) How high are average modern levels of atmospheric lead compared to what's needed to cause damage? 2) How much regional variation is there in level of lead contamination?

I disagree - it's the epitome of the free market, in which companies can buy whatever they want, including Senators. The only alternative is restrictions on corporate behavior such as bribery (aka "campaign contributions"), which creates the much-despised regulations. Indeed, the only way to have a truly free market is anarchy, which is also a miserable failure. If the Industrial Revolution is not 'pure free market', it's as close as we've ever come and as close as possible in a civilized society. The point, however, is that those who disparage government regulation seem to willfully ignore that a) in times of less regulation, life has been worse by every relevant metric, and, more importantly, b) regulations have never been created for their own sake, but in direct response to the failures or shortcomings of the free market. Somewhat OT, but I've participated in one of the most unregulated, purely capitalistic market in our economy - the exotic pet trade. It's almost completely free from regulation (and the few that exist are rarely enforced, not to mention a thriving black market), and arguably even more free because most breeders have day jobs, thus can set prices below what they need to feed themselves. The result? Market bubbles, speculation, collusion for price fixing, outright theft, consumer deception, smuggling, blacklisting, and, of course, the most recklessly, criminally irresponsible behavior with regards to dangerous animals that you can imagine. Anyone who wants to sell me on the amazing powers of the free market is going to have to sell me on allowing a 16 year old kid to buy a 7-foot rattlesnake for $150, no questions asked.

Two things: 1) Has he ever explicitly stated this? That he usually champions regulation, including in this case, does not mean he holds the opinion you suggest. 2) Second, we *have* tried truly free markets, back in the Industrial Revolution. It failed, miserably, and we put regulations in place as a *direct* result of failures of the free market system.

The underlying problem is the assumption that, if an excess of visceral fat is bad, then none is good. Given that it exists in even healthy people, and pretty much everyone who isn't dying horribly, as well as all vertebrates, I doubt it's a good idea to eliminate it.

No, not actually. Ketones are actually necessary for brain and heart function, and are mostly dealt with by a reaction in the liver which turned them into energy and CO2. Only acetone (a tiny portion of the ketones) even gets filtered out at the kidney, and there it does no more damage than anything else. All vertebrates do. I'm not sure about invertebrates. That was my point - total lack of visceral fat is indicative of serious disease and strain on the body, not of health.

Four minor points: First, muscles use both fat and carbohydrates in almost all circumstances, even at rest. The ratio changes during increasingly intense exercise, and you actually rely more on carbs than fat at high intensities. Second, visceral fat and subcutaneous fat are BOTH burned during exercise. Third, visceral fat is actually the basal condition - subcutaneous fat is a uniquely mammalian adaptation to provide insulation. We've been dealing with visceral fat for close to half a billion years now. Finally, I've only seen bodies without any visceral fat at all a few times. Usually associated with either rapidly progressing cancers like pancreatic cancer or extreme old age (95+). The body needs fat, and it needs fat reserves, both sucutaneous and visceral. Mokele

How is it hard to understand? Say I have 100 rabbits, who can produce 100 more rabbits a month. If I kill 90 rabbits a month, the total number of rabbits will increase. But if I kill 110 rabbits per months, the total number will decrease until there's none. It doesn't mean they aren't breeding, just that I'm killing more rabbits than are born.

No. While humans do have excellent spatial reasoning (probably a result of arboreal ancestors), the desire for a particular career has much more to do with personality and upbringing than anything else. Desire itself is simply the anticipation of reward. In the past, you performed an action (or a version of it), and this triggered the release of dopamine in your brain, resulting in a feeling or reward. Now you seek that again. The original cause likely has to do with psychological effects, such as emulating a role model, or peer pressure, etc.

Um, what? Seriously dude, this obsession of yours is getting old. There is science that happens above the waist.

It's also worth noting that we've got a pretty good understanding of what mutations to various genes do to humans. Yes, we can't deliberately induce mutations, but there's a hell of a natural sample size (6,500,000,000 and growing) with lots of natural mutations, and we pay a *lot* more attention to medical defects in humans for obvious reasons (plus they can pay the doctor). As a result, we're got a pretty good accumulation of knowledge from just noticing congenital abnormalities and figuring out the reason.