Wooh! Had to change that from Coffee and Shifting Diet Advice to Volatile Diet Advice so the damned title would fit. This makes me feel accomplished. Most likely because I’m an idiot.

Here’s my “show” (pfft) notes cause I’m too shattered to write a synopsis:
Coffee

I’m having my fourth cup of coffee.
Just read an article from NYT via Pocket Recoomendations on Coffee. (Yes, Racoomendations I like to think Racoons scour the net for fun facts)

This is why all dietary advice, especially older dietary advice, should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
They found that coffee was heatlhy AFTER they took people out of the data set that also smoked. If I read this correctly this wasn’t done till 2015!

Philosophy’s Contribution to Science

“We illustrate our point with three examples taken from various fields of the contemporary life sciences. Each bears on cutting-edge scientific research, and each has been explicitly acknowledged by practicing researchers as a useful contribution to science. These and other examples show that philosophy’s contribution can take at least four forms: the clarification of scientific concepts, the critical assessment of scientific assumptions or methods, the formulation of new concepts and theories, and the fostering of dialogue between different sciences, as well as between science and society.

– PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of The United States)

My Two Cents: So in essence this boils down philosophy being integral in the understanding and communication of science. Which makes sense since science sprang from philosophy and continued to develop both parallel and in tandem.

How Much Attention Should We Pay to Campaign Theater?

Discuss the conversation you had Wednesday night and extrapolate:

I mentioned to an acquintance at my grandfather’s church that I had given up on elections and instead decided to try to educate myself and others about various issues so as to drive change at the grassroots level.

Is this an effective strategy.

Clearly at least some attention must be paid to elections.

However, I cannot help but conclude that a lot of the election process, and the debates, are highly charged emotional theater that polarizes people, and detracts from the issues by only giving a surface level analysis in order to classify ourselves into respective positions.

Just look at all the issues that have all the juice squeezed out of them till nothing but the dry core remains leaving us with broadbrush arguments for or against socialism, populism, welfare, bootstrapping, environmentalism, business etc.

It’s basically an antrhoporphization of issues into people we would like to be.

It does not bode well for solving problems.

Sources

https://www.pnas.org/content/116/10/3948