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Things “everyone knows” about obesity that aren’t supported by the evidence

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“Everyone knows” the best ways to fight obesity, but how much of that information is supported by evidence? And how much of it is flatly contradicted by the evidence.

The Washington Post highlighted a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that examined common beliefs about weight loss and compared them with the relevant research. It’s amazing how much is simple presumption without any basis in evidence, and also how much is straight up wrong.

I wish I had access to the full paper.

Added later: Don’t read the comments.

Randomness for 2/6

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1) The Periodic Table of Super Powers.

2) It’s Downton Abbey for Super Nintendo!

3) Leeroy Jenkins: the short film. Video.

4) The best way to eat from a Chinese takeout box. Video.

5) Dorothy Parker’s telegram to her editor.

6) Make your own pulp cover.

7) Yes, of course you’re sick of Gangam Style. But have you seen it done as flip-book animation? Video.

Bonus! Chicago comedian Joe Kwaczala got himself banned from OKCupid with this profile. This is funny as hell. Seriously.

Randomness for 1/24

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1) Dr. Seuss books retitled according to their subtexts.

2) A Minecraft wedding.

3) 25 words that don’t exist in English.

4) Most popular dog names in New York, by neighborhood.

5) Ten of the most unusual houses in the world. These are absurd and/or gorgeous.

6) REM’s Losing My Religion digitally remastered to turn all the minor scales into major scales. Video. They’ve given the same treatment to “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors.

7) Finally, a runway model with good reason to look pissed.

How to purchase your own Hugo Award

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Blastr has posted a (slightly tongue-in-cheek) list demonstrating how much it would cost to buy yourself a Hugo nomination and/or a Hugo Award.

Now, I’m not going to replicate their numbers here, you’ll have to click through to see them. They’re based on last year’s numbers. Since folks can nominate and vote just by paying for a membership in the convention, how many memberships would you have to buy (for friends, ‘natch) to put yourself into consideration. It seems like the cheapest options would be $850 to be nominated and $8800 to win for short fiction.

That’s 17 pals to make the bottom of the list, assuming this year’s numbers are like last year’s. You might want to round up to an even grand just to make sure. My question would be this: Would it be worth it?

Never mind the bragging rights to having the statue, or to putting “Hugo-nominated author” into your email sig file. Would it get you better contracts, more sales, more reviews, or anything at all? Would it ever pay off?

From everything I’ve heard, it never would.

Randomness for 1/15

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1) “The Hatchet Job of the Year Award is for the writer of the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past twelve months.” Read the nominated reviews here.

2) I’d say that the question of whether President Obama would rather fight a single horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses has been answered pretty authoritatively.

3) Movie plots done as pictograms. I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t get all of these.

4) Minor characters get their own movies. I didn’t get all of these, either

5) Emotions for which the English language has no words. “Viitsima” is my new pen name.

6) A comprehensive list of things that made David Banner “Hulk out” in the TV show THE HULK.

7) Segway inventor patents portable bulimia machine, demonstrates that he’s one fucked up human being.

Randomness for 1/10

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1) The Macroeconomic effects of Smaug on Middle Earth. h/t James Nicoll

2) A Wikipedia hoax page about a fictitious war that stayed on the site for five years was not (NOT) the longest-running hoax page on the site.

3) Real astronaut tweets with Star Trek actors.

4) Visualizations of mass transit in major cities. This one is for Seattle.

5) Father hires in-game “hit squad” to kill his son’s PC.

6) Only sexy women in stylish boots can protect society from the threat of sharpened scissors.

7) Spagetti Gotham: Gotham City characters in the old west.

Randomness for 1/1

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1) The 50 Worst Columns of 2012. So many trainwrecks.

2) What would cities look like without light pollution? h/t Richard Kadrey

3) Outtakes for ST:TNG Season 2. Video.

4) Politics in 2012, in graphs and gifs.

5) WW2: Full of ridiculous plot holes. h/t James Nicoll

6) The lowest-grossing theatrical release of 2012 goes to Christian Slater’s latest. It was a one-week release, though, and averaged more than “The Oogieloves in the BIG Balloon Adventure.”

7) Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil. An oldie but a goodie.

Randomness for 12/18

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1) The largest iceberg break-up ever filmed. Video. Pretty amazing.

2)

13 Little-Known Punctuation Marks We Should Be Using.

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10 episodes that show how Buffy The Vampire Slayer blew up genre TV.

4) The Best/Worst Media Errors and Corrections in 2012. Mostly English language, of course.

5) The Five Most Disruptive Technologies of 2012.

6) Stephen King takes writing questions from writing students. Video.

7) Winning photos from this year’s Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition

Tobias Buckell revives his moribund series via Kickstarter

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Novelist Tobias Buckell posted a longish (5K) analysis of his own successful Kickstarter project; his Xenowealth books were not as successful as he and his publisher had hoped and he stopped writing them after three books. With the support of his fans, he Kickstartered (<-- new verb, just to annoy people) book four. Then, being him, he analyzed it and shared the information. Of course, having finished the post, I found an email in my inbox directing me to it, with the idea that I could do the same with the Ray Lilly books. That's not going to happen for several reasons. His readership: My blog gets fewer than 10% of the hits that his gets. He has nearly five times the number of Twitter followers. Also, he’s much better connected with other pros who can spread the word about his books.

His series: The Xenowealth books were not sinking in sales, they were stagnant. In hardcover! Mine were mmpb and sales for each book was dropping by about 5K readers for each. Also, I have the ebook figures for the prequel, Twenty Palaces: while they’ve been okay for a book I already wrote, it’s not worth setting aside a year (or a large part of a year) for those sales. I’m planning a post on sales of the prequel, so stay tuned for that.

His productivity: Dude had major surgery and serious health issues, and yet he’s still way more prolific than I am. That matters because as I said: setting aside a year to write a book. Not to mention that, while he’s finishing his novel (and running his Kickstarter) he has short fiction coming out all over the place and blah blah blah.

Anyway, give his post a read. It’s full of interesting ideas and common sense. As for me, I’ll keep plodding along with EPIC SEQUEL WITH NO DULL PARTS.

Randomness for 12/11

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1) A motorcycle with a track instead of wheels, from 1939.

2) Do people gain weight during the holidays? Science says no, not usually.

3) A six-year-old tries to guess the plots of classic novels by their covers.

4) How much we care about Star Wars, graphed over time.

5) Look at this Instagram (Nickelback parody) Video. Not only have I never knowingly heard Nickelback once, but I have never been to Instagram. I still laughed at this.

6) Why is ‘w’ pronounced ‘double u’ rather than ‘double v’?

7) Author Christopher Priest shares his opinion of Robert McCrum, an associate editor of the Observer.