Archives for May 2015

You are what you eat is one of the most overused cliches of all time. In this case, it also happens to be true. Because people know that and not much else it also tends to be the basis for a wide variety of specious, and occasionally harmful, diet fads. The Paleo diet is a great example. First off it has nothing to do with how Paleolithic people ate. Their diet included cannibalism. Not exactly a “go to” food choice for most folks. Secondly, it is not a well balanced diet and can cause numerous health issues if actually adhered to. As some of you know I recently lost a little over 200 lbs. I did it by going to a dietitian and getting a diet designed to help me. It would not be a good diet for many others. Before I went to see her my old boss kept trying to get me to go on the Atkin’s diet. While I would have lost weight if I had done so I would also have died. It seems my body was no longer processing proteins properly. It would have, literally, clogged my heart. Because of that knowledge I tend to strongly advise people to see a medical professional before embarking on any diet. You have no way of knowing what is or is not wrong with you just by looking in a mirror.

One thing you can, and should, do is follow the government guidelines. Despite what you may have heard they don’t ban meat. They just strongly advise that you eat less of it and avoid the processed stuff as much as possible.

Sam P.K. Collins takes a look at how people who know nothing about health tend to shape guidelines.

Or, at least, they used to.

In 2012, meat industry leaders also derailed President Barack Obama’s attempt to weaken Tyson Foods’ stranglehold on rural farmers. Under the status quo, chicken farmers didn’t own the beef, pork, and chicken they raised, instead working for Tyson for a small percentage. If the Obama administration’s plans would have come to fruition, then farmers could sue meatpackers more easily and worked autonomously under what Vilsack called the “new rural economy.” However, the meat lobby killed those plans, creating what veteran agribusiness journalist Christopher Leonard described as a “spectacular failure.”

Whether the meat industry’s most recent organization strategy will be successful has yet to be seen. But if it does fail, a potential move toward a more plant-based diet could serve as a challenge to a lobbying powerhouse and possibly the final blow to a food culture that has waned in popularity in recent years.

Meat serves as the primary part of the diet in many industrialized countries, with the United States counting as the second-largest consumer per capita. Even with a 12 percent decline in meat consumption within the last decade, the average American still eats more than 200 pounds annually.

While experts contend that eating beef moderately has health benefits, attention has turned to the consequences of excess production, especially since prices have declined. For many, the risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and the greater likelihood of early mortality have become too much to ignore. Additionally, a growing body of research has tied meat production to a larger carbon and water footprint, another point that has galvanized support among environmentalists, especially as California reels from a drought.

That’s why one in 10 millennials has adopted a vegan diet and one third of Americans say they’re cutting back on their meat intake. Those changes have, in part, played a role in the introduction of more vegetarian food choices in fast food restaurants.

Dietician Julieanna Hever raised these points in her op-ed that appeared in The Hill last month, speculating that there’s not much standing in the way of HHS and the USDA finalizing the dietary recommendations later this year as they appeared in February, even with the meat industry’s political connections.

“It is telling that nearly every spokesperson not representing the meat, dairy, egg, and junk food industries who provided oral comments on the committee’s report wholeheartedly embraced this recommendation,” Hever wrote. “The fact is that Americans get it. We’re already eating less meat, and many of us are trying to cut back even further. A diet richer in vegetables, fruits, beans, and grains — and lower in animal products — is what our country needs and wants. And it’s not so controversial after all.”

A quick note here to help you avoid confusion. Any moron with a tinfoil hat can claim to be a “nutritionist.” That lovely industry is entirely unregulated. A dietitian, however, has a medical degree and knows what those things inside your body are supposed to do and how to help them do it. Put simply, just because Bob down the block once fixed a lawnmower doesn’t mean you should trust him with your car.

Granted, even if you know what’s good for you it’s sometimes a pain to take the time to make it. Well, I have some good news for you. A group of scientists, inspired by Star Trek’s replicator, have built a device that can make a 100% healthy meal in thirty seconds.

And the latest example of Star Trek tech becoming reality is the Genie, a device that echoes Trek’s food replicators. Created by a pair of Israeli entrepreneurs, Ayelet Carasso and Doron Marco, it relies on pods—akin to the inner workings of espresso machines—to turn natural baking ingredients and freeze-dried fruits and vegetables into personalize meals… in just 30 seconds.

Eventually, Marco told the news service Reuters, Genie will know a person’s microbiome and will prepare the pod specifically for that person. “You will eat better, even tastier and healthier,” he said. Marco also shared his desire for the Genie to be put to use in countries without enough food to feed their populations.

“In our world, we are getting fat and we are throwing away a lot of food, (and) in their world, they don’t have any food,” he said. “So if you use Genie, you can distribute the food better, you can have the shelf life much longer without the preservatives, give the people better food for them. We can even the food distribution in the world. That’s a very, very important goal for us.”

If you CLICK HERE you can see a video of the Genie in action. It will be available in the US next year.

If you want some diversity in the fruits you eat we’ve got you covered there too. Science Alert tells the tale of a tree that produces forty different types of fruit.

An art professor from Syracuse University in the US, Van Aken grew up on a family farm before pursuing a career as an artist, and has combined his knowledge of the two to develop his incredible Tree of 40 Fruit.

In 2008, Van Aken learned that an orchard at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station was about to be shut down due to a lack of funding. This single orchard grew a great number of heirloom, antique, and native varieties of stone fruit, and some of these were 150 to 200 years old. To lose this orchard would render many of these rare and old varieties of fruit extinct, so to preserve them, Van Aken bought the orchard, and spent the following years figuring out how to graft parts of the trees onto a single fruit tree.

Working with a pool of over 250 varieties of stone fruit, Van Aken developed a timeline of when each of them blossom in relationship to each other and started grafting a few onto a working tree’s root structure. Once the working tree was about two years old, Van Aken used a technique called chip grafting to add more varieties on as separate branches. This technique involves taking a sliver off a fruit tree that includes the bud, and inserting that into an incision in the working tree. It’s then taped into place, and left to sit and heal over winter. If all goes well, the branch will be pruned back to encourage it to grow as a normal branch on the working tree.

After about five years and several grafted branches, Van Aken’s first Tree of 40 Fruit was complete.

Aken’s Tree of 40 Fruit looks like a normal tree for most of the year, but in spring it reveals a stunning patchwork of pink, white, red and purple blossoms, which turn into an array of plums, peaches, apricots, nectarines, cherries and almonds during the summer months, all of which are rare and unique varieties.

Not only is it a beautiful specimen, but it’s also helping to preserve the diversity of the world’s stone fruit. Stone fruits are selected for commercial growing based first and foremost on how long they keep, then how large they grow, then how they look, and lastly how they taste. This means that there are thousands of stone fruit varieties in the world, but only a very select few are considered commercially viable, even if they aren’t the best tasting, or most nutritious ones.

Van Aken has grown 16 Trees of 40 Fruit so far, and they’ve been planted in museums, community centres, and private art collections around the US. He now plans to grow a small orchard of these trees in a city setting.

Of course, the obvious question that remains is what happens to all the fruit that gets harvested from these trees? Van Aken told Lauren Salkeld at Epicurious:

“I’ve been told by people that have [a tree] at their home that it provides the perfect amount and perfect variety of fruit. So rather than having one variety that produces more than you know what to do with, it provides good amounts of each of the 40 varieties. Since all of these fruit ripen at different times, from July through October, you also aren’t inundated.”

This is the tree.

I THINK that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day, 5
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

– Joyce Kilmer

While true in the sense that Van Aken didn’t make the tree it’s still pretty cool to see it in action. Hopefully they’ll be able to streamline the process and make it more readily available to the masses. Until then it’s heartening to know it exists.

One thing I discovered on my diet is that you can eat a lot of different things. You’d actually be amazed at the number of healthy choices you can make without going hungry. In fact I’d have to say that my diet now is far more diverse than the one that almost killed me.

Oh, side note, had I not gone on the prescribed diet I would have died within a couple of months. No way I knew that looking in a mirror.

Actual Food Porn from Jessica Saia on Vimeo.

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Thanks to the nice people at Geekly for putting this together.

This is going to come as a shock for certain sections of the internet (yeah, I’m talking to you fan-boy) but not everything needs your approval. When CBS greenlighted Supergirl it was clear that their whole line of thought was “Arrow is popular, Flash is popular and these guys made both.” There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is a bit shortsighted. Fortunately Andrew Kresiberg, the show’s creator, is not. Instead of trying to make Supergirl an estrogen powered Superman, he decided to develop a character who’s interesting in and of herself. Which means she needs a real secret identity and a life outside of wearing a cape. And since she’s a girl, she needs a girl’s life. More specifically, a 24 year old insecure girl’s life. Because, unlike her famous cousin, she did not embrace what she was right away. The reasons for that could be myriad, but just wanting to fit in is hinted at several times in the trailer. Speaking of the trailer, CBS, once they realized what they had, did something unprecedented. They didn’t release a minute or two of a teaser, they released six minutes that showed both her day to day life as well as her super powered one. I watched that trailer with my nieces, aged 14 to 19. To say they were exuberant would be a massive understatement. They finally had a super hero built just for them. And like Kara Zor-El in the show, they squealed on the couch as they watched things unfold. This, of course, has made fan-boys livid. The attacks on the show devolved quickly. Simply put, unless women are secondary (at best) characters they hate it. CBS, trembling in fear, is ready to laugh all the way to the bank. You see, as of this writing, 8 of the top 20 films are female oriented. And this is a family friendly female led show. Plus they get the tone right. When she does her serious face in the scene with alien hating military dude, that is a face that every parent has seen and knows well. It is not the face of a mature woman making a reasoned decision. It is just the face of raw determination. She even got the nod right. Assuming the show doesn’t suck, and my friends who have seen completed episodes assure me it doesn’t, then CBS will be sitting on a gold mine and millions of young woman will have something fun to dream about.

Okay, off my soapbox.

James Hunt, over at Den of Geek, has a point by point breakdown of all the fan-boy complaints if you feel the need to delve into this further.

Another show that came out of nowhere and is catching some fan-boy ire is Legends of Tomorrow. This is a show that no one asked for, should never have made it off an assistant’s desk and it’s going to be fucking awesome. That link will take you to the first look trailer for the show. Fun fact, they assembled the cast, got them in costumes and stuck them on a roof just to shoot the trailer. Not a frame has been shot for the show. As far as I know that scene may not even be part of the show. They just needed something to show the nice people at CW that they hadn’t lost their fucking minds. And, when you watch the trailer, you can understand the concern. The “rag tag group of misfits who have to come together” trope has been played to death. Plus, aside from Arrow and Flash making appearances here and there, all of the characters are nobodies. As one fan-boy so eloquently put it “NO NO NO NO THAT’S FUCKING WRONG!! WHERE IS LANTERN? WHERE IS ANYONE BUT THESE ASSHOLES?!?!?!?!” And so on, but you get the idea. Couple this with the fact that this show will have two strong female characters with interesting back stories (a recently dead assassin and a reincarnated alien) and you have a recipe guaranteed to piss off fan-boys the world over. And, guess what? The nice people at DC and CW just don’t care. Not anymore. The fan-boys held the comics world hostage through the 80’s and early 21st century. If it wasn’t white and in tights it wasn’t right. However, during that same period is when DC & Marvel began noticing a growing movement of fans who weren’t all that pale and some of them had curves in all the right places. So characters representing an array of different lifestyles and ethnicities started coming to the fore. And people who connected with those characters started joining the comic book universes and coming to conventions and basically making themselves known. This show, which will have a wide array of diverse characters surrounding the leads, comes directly from that. And they don’t need to have famous characters from the comic books, they just need to have interesting ones. And if they can’t make a recently dead assassin and a reincarnated alien interesting they may as well just stay home.

The Sy-Fy Network has also greenlighted a show that was clearly designed by someone who spent way too much time experimenting with hallucinogens. The show, called The Magicians, is kind of like Harry Potter on acid. And I say that as a good thing. While there is a complete lack of spandex there is plenty of leather, knee high, boots and floating women and playing cards. It’ll all make sense when you click on the link. “Magic is a drug” is a common theme. Oddly, this show is based on the books of Lev Grossman whose characters have been called “the least likable people on the planet.” And yet …. I can’t wait to see this.

In bizarre news, over thirty years after the original came out, Jonathon Betuel is preparing to foist a sequel to The Last Starfighter. Not a remake, not a reboot, an honest to God sequel. This is such a dangerously bad idea that it might work. A film featuring a forty-something dude who lives in a trailer park and plays video games may be just what the fan-boys need.

Another movie that no sane person asked for, Underworld 5, has been greenlit and will, once again, feature Kate Beckinsale as Salene. If you know what that means you’re excited. If you don’t, let’s move on.

A move that fan-boys and rational humans alike have been asking for is finally getting made. Marvel Studios head, Kevin Feige, confirmed that they have taken over the rights to Gargoyles and will be making it into a live action film.

“I’ve always wondered why the hell Disney never decided to turn Gargoyles into a blockbuster movie event,” Feige added. “But when I expressed an interest they literally begged me to take it off their hands, along with Quack Pack and The Mighty Ducks. The sci-fi animated version of The Mighty Ducks, not the good one. Man, the things we could do at Marvel with that Emilio Estevez movie… but if Gargoyles goes over well, maybe they’ll let us take a crack at it.”

Kevin Feige noted that although Marvel Studios will be producing the Gargoyles movie, they’re not seriously considering connecting the franchise with the Marvel Cinematic Universe… yet.

“Although Marvel Studios will be producing the Gargoyles movie, we’re not seriously considering connecting the franchise with the Marvel Cinematic Universe… yet,” Kevin Feige elaborated. “But the good news is we have tons of actors under multiple film contracts, and we could literally throw them into any movie if we wanted to. Robert Downey Jr. would make a great Xanatos, and we may force him to play Brooklyn as well, because why the hell not? People love that dude. What day is it again? I have stuff to do.”

He’s kidding about the Robert Downey Jr. stuff, I promise you. That said, this is the perfect guy to be in charge of this franchise. He knows and loves the characters and he has the resources to pour into a project to ensure it comes out top notch.

Of course, if you like your super-heroines to be created with a budget akin to a bag of Cheetos, here you go.

"Ferus" Full Trailer #1 (NSFW) from Ferus on Vimeo.

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I spent yesterday’s radio show talking about all the fun stuff that is happening in pop culture with superheroes and the like. It was a lot of fun but it lasted longer than I’d planned and I didn’t get to get to any of the cool stuff that’s happening in the real world. For example, guys will be pleased to note that now, instead of being forced to fend for themselves, science has created the robo-handjob. Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. And what’s fun about this is that, since it was invented in Japan, the images used for titillation, if you will, feature animated images of pre-teen girls in the nude. If you click the link you can watch the video and see for yourself. They seem quite proud of it. Astute readers will already know that the staff here at World News Center has been following the development of “sexbots” for years. Of course, women have had their mechanical aids for centuries in one form or another so it seems only fair that the men catch up.

All well and good you say. But it’s just a thing. I understand your thoughts but this “thing” learns and reacts. The very basis of artificial intelligence. Oh cool, you say, what could possibly go wrong?

According to The Economist it could result in the death of every human on the planet. Including you.

“THE development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” Stephen Hawking warns. Elon Musk fears that the development of artificial intelligence, or AI, may be the biggest existential threat humanity faces. Bill Gates urges people to beware of it.

Dread that the abominations people create will become their masters, or their executioners, is hardly new. But voiced by a renowned cosmologist, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and the founder of Microsoft—hardly Luddites—and set against the vast investment in AI by big firms like Google and Microsoft, such fears have taken on new weight. With supercomputers in every pocket and robots looking down on every battlefield, just dismissing them as science fiction seems like self-deception. The question is how to worry wisely.

You taught me language and…
The first step is to understand what computers can now do and what they are likely to be able to do in the future. Thanks to the rise in processing power and the growing abundance of digitally available data, AI is enjoying a boom in its capabilities (see article). Today’s “deep learning” systems, by mimicking the layers of neurons in a human brain and crunching vast amounts of data, can teach themselves to perform some tasks, from pattern recognition to translation, almost as well as humans can. As a result, things that once called for a mind—from interpreting pictures to playing the video game “Frogger”—are now within the scope of computer programs. DeepFace, an algorithm unveiled by Facebook in 2014, can recognise individual human faces in images 97% of the time.

Crucially, this capacity is narrow and specific. Today’s AI produces the semblance of intelligence through brute number-crunching force, without any great interest in approximating how minds equip humans with autonomy, interests and desires. Computers do not yet have anything approaching the wide, fluid ability to infer, judge and decide that is associated with intelligence in the conventional human sense.

“Computers do not yet ….” is kind of scary.

There is a brilliant scientist named Stephen Wolfram who is teaching computers how to think. How to use everything from image recognition to speech.

You have probably already encountered versions of his work. Facial recognition on Facebook? Voice recognition on your phone? All of that is coming from him and and a select few others.

To be fair, there are scientists who do not see Armageddon in every microchip. The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence has been around since 1979 promoting and funding research into electronic minds.

Here’s their mission statement.

Founded in 1979, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) (formerly the American Association for Artificial Intelligence) is a nonprofit scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines. AAAI aims to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artificial intelligence, improve the teaching and training of AI practitioners, and provide guidance for research planners and funders concerning the importance and potential of current AI developments and future directions.

Arthur C. Clarke often posited that A/I could be a great boon to mankind. His final works included a space borne intelligence named Aristotle which handled all the infrastructure of the world and took the place of Google as well as having the added benefit of being a companion to anyone who needed one.

Clarke was a brilliant writer and known atheist but not known for his sense of humor. Certainly he missed the irony of placing a benevolent electronic god in space to replace, or fulfill the function of, the allegedly fictional one.

In fact in his book Sunstorm he had Aristotle flanked by two lesser A/Is. You can fill in the allegories on your own.

As of this writing true A/I isn’t possible. Nothing has even come close to passing the Turing Test. That said, tremendous advances in that direction have been made.

And, as I’ve noted before, getting humans addicted to robo-sex is a good first step to our eventual subjugation.

Could be a fun ride, though.

I Love You, Eve from Jay Nolan on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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