John Mercier

Sorry this is late but nobody is really reading it anyway.

Health

Mark's Daily Apple has a good post, The Difinitive Guide to Sugar, that describes in detail the different kinds of sugar and their effects on health. The best part is where he explains why you should avoid sugar.

Sugar stimulates a physiological stressor-reaction cascade that provokes adrenaline and cortisol release and thickens the blood.

Sugar effectively disables your immune system by impairing white blood cells’ functioning.

Sugar decreases your body’s production of leptin, a hormone critical for appetite regulation.

Sugar induces significant oxidative stress in the body.

Sugar appears to fuel cancer cells. (Check out Free the Animal for much more on the cancer connection.)

Sugar promotes fat storage and weight gain.

Sugar disrupts the effective transfer of amino acids to muscle tissue.

Sugar intake over time spurs insulin resistance, subsequent Type II diabetes and the entire host of related health issues like nerve damage and cardiovascular disease.

I also found a post on artificial sweeteners that you may want to look at. Also, isn't lactose a sugar? I would like to see more info on that.

Meatza is pizza that uses groud beef for the crust.

On The Paleo Diet there is a Q&A that talks about lectins, saponins, and gliadin. I broke them down in this table.

 Diana Hsieh wrote a nice post with links to making paleo friendly foods.

and here is A Story on Circumcision.

Philosphy

 Mistaking fact with opinion. I like to read threads like this because they point out something that can really cause problems with reasoning. The idea is that arguing with opinions rather than facts is a huge mistake. In a society it will lead to mass uncertainty.

Politics

Arguments for government spending. People take this seriously.

1) The political push to reduce government deficits is economically misguided, based on an irrational "phobia" of deficits.

2) If we want economic growth, we need more spending. Only banks and governments can stimulate spending because, "Governments and banks are the two entities with the power to create something from nothing."

3) Increasing spending by having the government do it is preferable to having the private greedy selfish bankers do it. And the real reason bankers oppose government spending is because it competes with their private lending.

4) We shouldn't worry about the so-called impending bankruptcy of Social Security or Medicare or of the US government itself. The government is the source of money and therefore can't run out.

5) Nor is government debt a "burden on future generations", because it never has to be repaid. Each generation can just pass it onto the next generation, so there's no problem.

A real example of lobbying doing terrible things.

I do think at a certain point you become a socialist!