This week we have book reviews, poll results from last week, a substitute for Elite, the Ice Cream diet, and more on the metabolic treatment of cancer. Plus, of course, the video of the week. This week you get two.
Yes, gorgeous song. Perlman's rendition isn't bad either. One of my most memorable musical experiences was being present at a Perlman concert when he played Kreisler's Liebesfreude, one of my favorite pieces of violin music I struggled with back in the days when I wanted to be a violinist, for en encore. https://youtu.be/LWV2WFW0PVQ
Back in the early days of Audible, a lot of their offerings were abridged. I picked up The Company partly because I love spy stories, and partly because it was over 40 HOURS long. I loved it, and listen to it every couple of years.
I find the idea of metabolic therapy for cancer treatment fascinating! As someone who watched a brother (healthiest man on the planet) succumb to lung cancer in 9 months, with full standard care treatment (to the tune of somewhere north of $400,000) I swore if ever in that position, I would never go that route. I’d take the “Wine Diet” and let happen what’s going to happen. Now it looks like there’s yet another option. Thanks for the deep dive into this!
Lastly, any chance you could weigh in on this whole “putting mRNA into food” nonsense? My trust in our institutions here in the US of A is at a lifetime low and I can’t tell if what is being dumped out of our news media is truth, BS, or something in between. Keep up the great work, Doc!!
Excited to hear you're coming to Australia. Will endeavour to make my way up to Sydney for the conference; if I recall correctly I went to the first one many years ago in Melbourne.
Lived near the Royal Melbourne Golf Club for several years though sadly never played golf so didn't get the chance to experience its qualities.
I share your sentiment regarding 'elites', although my preference would be to call them Morlocks!
Since it goes against the SOC here in the US, Dr. Seyfried, who is not an MD, but PhD, consults with groups in Egypt and Turkey. I know him, so I'll reach out to him and ask for any specific recommendations for US facilities.
Regarding observational studies, there's one I always think of when this topic comes up. I wish I knew the cardiologist and hospital. Here goes: A cardiologist at a major hospital wanted to show the absurdity of drawing conclusions from observational studies so he did his own study of cardiac risk based on male cardiac patients who came into his hospital. He found that those men who had facial hair had far less cardiac issues than those who were clean-shaven. Hence, facial hair on men is associated with a lower cardiac risk.
Mike - I have no idea how you get through all you do every day (and apparently half the night, at least). You do have the same 24 hours the rest of us do, no? At any rate - once again a brilliant Arrow. I really loved the book reviews. I too have just started Farber's book (Heather's recommendations are generally spot on) and I too remember how suddenly, Magic Johnson had AIDS but was apparently still with us after everyone else who'd come before had died. I found Arthur Ashe's death particularly tragic, since he kept saying that the AZT was making him feel sicker and sicker, but he stuck with it because his doc insisted. I've also ordered The Company (got the kindle version for $0.98 with my kindle credits).
About the Crow guy . . . why is he holding his cell phone in the photo as if he's taking the picture - so who is taking it? And couldn't he have created those (mini) abs simply by sucking in his breath? Sigh.
Love "the connected" - how true, how true - and your summation of the metabolic theory of cancer is terrific. Now to find a doctor, if needed, who actually will work with cancer patients that way will be the next great challenge. I don't need one now but like you, wouldn't consider any other way of treating it.
Have a great time with the latest Eades - as I'm sure you both will. And thanks again for all your work.
some of Tolstoy” needed
could use a comma after Tolstoy
The Heather goes on to write
Then Heather goes on . . .
Afterall, Jameson laced egg nog is a Christmas tradition at Casa Eades
I think after all should be two words - but the idea sounds pretty great . . .
"Now to find a doctor, if needed, who actually will work with cancer patients that way will be the next great challenge. I don't need one now but like you, wouldn't consider any other way of treating it."
YES!!! I don't have cancer, either, but if it ever touched my life, I would want to treat it metabolically. I first read about it in "Tripping Over the Truth" by
Travis Christofferson when you (Dr. Eades) recommended it years ago. Fascinating! and makes so much sense, to me at least. Is there anyplace you can get this type of treatmeant rather than the SOC route?
Gary Saul Morson has written a book called "Anna Karenina in our time" and has also edited a Marian Schwartz translation of Anna Karenina, as well as writing an introduction to the book. He writes for various periodicals including Commentary, The New Criterion, and First Things as well as teaching a course on Anna Karenina at Northwestern. I always find what he has to say interesting and he has persuaded me of the importance of reading Anna Karenina (despite my having seen the movie with Greta Garbo years ago).
I got the idea for reading the Constance Garnett translation from Gary Saul Morson. But it was in an old piece he wrote. He's my go-to guy for Russian literature now. Thanks to you, I now have two more books on my list: Morson's book on Anna Karenina and the Schwartz translation--just to get Morson's intro, if for no other reason. Maybe I'll read it next year after I've finished the Garnett translation.
Morson has a new book coming out in May called "Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on The Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter". Another book to add to the list.
Morson's introduction is available online under the search "The Moral Urgency of Anna Karenina". Marian Schwartz, who apparently has translated over 70 volumes of Russian literature, has given interviews on translating Tolstoy. Her translation of AK was published in 2015. I started the Morson book this evening. Trying to follow my own advice of Do It Now.
I read Anna Karenina for a literature class in college. I could barely finish it. I think Madame Bovary (which some people believe Tolstoy deliberately imitated) is far superior. I have also never been able to get through War and Peace. Maybe I need a better translation.
I had the opposite experience. I enjoyed AK vastly more than Madame Bovary. But I may have had a bad translation of MB, and you may have had a bad translation of AK.
I never read MB until I could manage it it French. Took me years. But I think it's too late for me to learn Russian so I will have to find a better translation.
I never made the Eads connection between you and James (perhaps it is the missing "e"). One of my favorite books is The Great Bridge by David McCullough. While about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, McCullough featured Eads’ work and bridge significantly. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about that book.
I did not foresee that I would ever eat a chicken thigh at breakfast. Just finished today's breakfast, that also included a fermented beef stick and 2 ounces of olive oil. Thank you for this interesting idea. As a 70-year-old woman, I enjoy new muscle, for which I also supplement HMB.
I had a chicken thigh for breakfast yesterday before we left for Little Rock. And catfish for lunch at my new favorite restaurant: The Fish Nest in Glenwood, AR.
Dang, after 29 years within reasonable distance, we finally got to see Hot Springs a month ago. So interesting! We drove through Glenwood enroute to Houston, but the Fish Nest is closed on Mon & Tues!
I'm not at all sure that is the reason colleges are eliminating SAT scores. I think it's part of the general leveling of education so they can push for "equity". Plenty of the NQOCD can afford to give money to the prestigious schools and get their kids admitted. The people whose kids couldn't get in regardless ended up bribing the schools to get the kids in----the Varsity Blues scandal.
Public schools in California had to stop race based admissions. So they are trying to recruit minority and poor kids some other ways as are non-California schools. SATs are known to favor well-off white kids. Some schools have been successful by getting rid of it, but MIT brought it back:
Here in San Francisco the school board changed the merit based admission criteria for Lowell High school, changing it to a lottery system for the sake of "equity". Lowell is the best public school in San Francisco. People were so incensed, especially people from the Asian American community, that some of the school board members were voted out and the supervisor for my district (where Lowell is) was also voted out because he didn't protest the change. Lowell is back to the merit based admission process. The NQOCD have private schools they can go to.
I quoted from the article mentioning the NQOCD; what I can't find is the article mentioning the "connected class."
I think the SATs favor the kids who read, whether they're well off or not. I would bet that kids from well-off families read a lot more than do kids from non-well-off families. Reading a lot helps a great deal with the verbal part of the SAT. I've known a lot of smart people who don't particularly enjoy reading. They view it as work and do as little of it as possible. They all had low SAT scores despite being extremely bright. I have a friend who is an English professor (now retired) who was on the admissions committee at Yale years ago. He told me they relied more on the verbal score on the SAT than on any other part of the test. They even favored the verbal score over the math score for applicants into the math-related programs. Their data showed that high verbal scores equated with better success even in math and physics programs.
Sorry about the wrong quote. Obviously, I skimmed! and didn't read your article that closely.
I don't dispute the value of the SATs to admissions committees. (MIT just brought it back.) What I am disputing is the reason why it is being dropped. It was happening before the pandemic started....they use the pandemic as another excuse for a lot of the BS that has been going on.
I think what you say about SATs is true. But how does getting rid of them allow more of the children of the well-off to be admitted? I don't think it does. Maybe the well-off have better extra curricular activities on the college application but what else do they have? Better GPAs? No, for the same reason they don't do that well on the SATs.
Believe me, they wanted to dumb down Lowell High School because they want to destroy the place entirely, not to allow the "connected class" to go. It was anti-Asian, though, which may also be connected to the reasoning for dropping the SATs:
Beautiful song ‘Rain” which you probably know is the Largo from Winter of the Four Seasons. https://youtu.be/GNeAbvvmwxI
Yes, gorgeous song. Perlman's rendition isn't bad either. One of my most memorable musical experiences was being present at a Perlman concert when he played Kreisler's Liebesfreude, one of my favorite pieces of violin music I struggled with back in the days when I wanted to be a violinist, for en encore. https://youtu.be/LWV2WFW0PVQ
Back in the early days of Audible, a lot of their offerings were abridged. I picked up The Company partly because I love spy stories, and partly because it was over 40 HOURS long. I loved it, and listen to it every couple of years.
I find the idea of metabolic therapy for cancer treatment fascinating! As someone who watched a brother (healthiest man on the planet) succumb to lung cancer in 9 months, with full standard care treatment (to the tune of somewhere north of $400,000) I swore if ever in that position, I would never go that route. I’d take the “Wine Diet” and let happen what’s going to happen. Now it looks like there’s yet another option. Thanks for the deep dive into this!
Lastly, any chance you could weigh in on this whole “putting mRNA into food” nonsense? My trust in our institutions here in the US of A is at a lifetime low and I can’t tell if what is being dumped out of our news media is truth, BS, or something in between. Keep up the great work, Doc!!
I haven't seen much about putting mRNA into food. I'll see what I can figure out.
Excited to hear you're coming to Australia. Will endeavour to make my way up to Sydney for the conference; if I recall correctly I went to the first one many years ago in Melbourne.
Lived near the Royal Melbourne Golf Club for several years though sadly never played golf so didn't get the chance to experience its qualities.
I share your sentiment regarding 'elites', although my preference would be to call them Morlocks!
If you come to Sydney, make sure to track me down and say hi.
Morlocks, eh? I suppose that isn't a bad choice.
Being a cancer patient - The metabolic therapy looks very interesting.
Is there some place this is offered as a treatment ?
Doing it by oneself can only go so far as ketogenic, drugs will require a doctors assistance.
Since it goes against the SOC here in the US, Dr. Seyfried, who is not an MD, but PhD, consults with groups in Egypt and Turkey. I know him, so I'll reach out to him and ask for any specific recommendations for US facilities.
Regarding observational studies, there's one I always think of when this topic comes up. I wish I knew the cardiologist and hospital. Here goes: A cardiologist at a major hospital wanted to show the absurdity of drawing conclusions from observational studies so he did his own study of cardiac risk based on male cardiac patients who came into his hospital. He found that those men who had facial hair had far less cardiac issues than those who were clean-shaven. Hence, facial hair on men is associated with a lower cardiac risk.
Ever hear of that one?
Haven't heard of that one specifically. But there are many out there like that.
Mike - I have no idea how you get through all you do every day (and apparently half the night, at least). You do have the same 24 hours the rest of us do, no? At any rate - once again a brilliant Arrow. I really loved the book reviews. I too have just started Farber's book (Heather's recommendations are generally spot on) and I too remember how suddenly, Magic Johnson had AIDS but was apparently still with us after everyone else who'd come before had died. I found Arthur Ashe's death particularly tragic, since he kept saying that the AZT was making him feel sicker and sicker, but he stuck with it because his doc insisted. I've also ordered The Company (got the kindle version for $0.98 with my kindle credits).
About the Crow guy . . . why is he holding his cell phone in the photo as if he's taking the picture - so who is taking it? And couldn't he have created those (mini) abs simply by sucking in his breath? Sigh.
Love "the connected" - how true, how true - and your summation of the metabolic theory of cancer is terrific. Now to find a doctor, if needed, who actually will work with cancer patients that way will be the next great challenge. I don't need one now but like you, wouldn't consider any other way of treating it.
Have a great time with the latest Eades - as I'm sure you both will. And thanks again for all your work.
some of Tolstoy” needed
could use a comma after Tolstoy
The Heather goes on to write
Then Heather goes on . . .
Afterall, Jameson laced egg nog is a Christmas tradition at Casa Eades
I think after all should be two words - but the idea sounds pretty great . . .
"Now to find a doctor, if needed, who actually will work with cancer patients that way will be the next great challenge. I don't need one now but like you, wouldn't consider any other way of treating it."
YES!!! I don't have cancer, either, but if it ever touched my life, I would want to treat it metabolically. I first read about it in "Tripping Over the Truth" by
Travis Christofferson when you (Dr. Eades) recommended it years ago. Fascinating! and makes so much sense, to me at least. Is there anyplace you can get this type of treatmeant rather than the SOC route?
As I wrote to the commenter above, I'll check with Seyfried to see where he recommends.
Thanks as always. I'm rushing to Robbies birthday party. I'll get the changes made as soon as I get back.
Gary Saul Morson has written a book called "Anna Karenina in our time" and has also edited a Marian Schwartz translation of Anna Karenina, as well as writing an introduction to the book. He writes for various periodicals including Commentary, The New Criterion, and First Things as well as teaching a course on Anna Karenina at Northwestern. I always find what he has to say interesting and he has persuaded me of the importance of reading Anna Karenina (despite my having seen the movie with Greta Garbo years ago).
I got the idea for reading the Constance Garnett translation from Gary Saul Morson. But it was in an old piece he wrote. He's my go-to guy for Russian literature now. Thanks to you, I now have two more books on my list: Morson's book on Anna Karenina and the Schwartz translation--just to get Morson's intro, if for no other reason. Maybe I'll read it next year after I've finished the Garnett translation.
And I've moved both books up from reading someday to reading soon. But even that pile is getting out of hand.
Believe me, I know what you mean.
Morson has a new book coming out in May called "Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on The Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter". Another book to add to the list.
Morson's introduction is available online under the search "The Moral Urgency of Anna Karenina". Marian Schwartz, who apparently has translated over 70 volumes of Russian literature, has given interviews on translating Tolstoy. Her translation of AK was published in 2015. I started the Morson book this evening. Trying to follow my own advice of Do It Now.
I read Anna Karenina for a literature class in college. I could barely finish it. I think Madame Bovary (which some people believe Tolstoy deliberately imitated) is far superior. I have also never been able to get through War and Peace. Maybe I need a better translation.
I had the opposite experience. I enjoyed AK vastly more than Madame Bovary. But I may have had a bad translation of MB, and you may have had a bad translation of AK.
I never read MB until I could manage it it French. Took me years. But I think it's too late for me to learn Russian so I will have to find a better translation.
Hello!
I never made the Eads connection between you and James (perhaps it is the missing "e"). One of my favorite books is The Great Bridge by David McCullough. While about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, McCullough featured Eads’ work and bridge significantly. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about that book.
Phil
I did not foresee that I would ever eat a chicken thigh at breakfast. Just finished today's breakfast, that also included a fermented beef stick and 2 ounces of olive oil. Thank you for this interesting idea. As a 70-year-old woman, I enjoy new muscle, for which I also supplement HMB.
I had a chicken thigh for breakfast yesterday before we left for Little Rock. And catfish for lunch at my new favorite restaurant: The Fish Nest in Glenwood, AR.
Dang, after 29 years within reasonable distance, we finally got to see Hot Springs a month ago. So interesting! We drove through Glenwood enroute to Houston, but the Fish Nest is closed on Mon & Tues!
Yes, closed Mon & Tues. Sucked that you missed it. We ate there a couple of days ago. Fabulous as always.
Here's the article with the NQOCD reference:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-western-civilization-dies-put-it-down-as-a-suicide-goldman-sachs-pronouns-merit-ideology-23c3c6c8?st=56cty43nr545mx2&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I'm not at all sure that is the reason colleges are eliminating SAT scores. I think it's part of the general leveling of education so they can push for "equity". Plenty of the NQOCD can afford to give money to the prestigious schools and get their kids admitted. The people whose kids couldn't get in regardless ended up bribing the schools to get the kids in----the Varsity Blues scandal.
Public schools in California had to stop race based admissions. So they are trying to recruit minority and poor kids some other ways as are non-California schools. SATs are known to favor well-off white kids. Some schools have been successful by getting rid of it, but MIT brought it back:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/college-admissions-test-sat-act-rcna23574
Here in San Francisco the school board changed the merit based admission criteria for Lowell High school, changing it to a lottery system for the sake of "equity". Lowell is the best public school in San Francisco. People were so incensed, especially people from the Asian American community, that some of the school board members were voted out and the supervisor for my district (where Lowell is) was also voted out because he didn't protest the change. Lowell is back to the merit based admission process. The NQOCD have private schools they can go to.
I quoted from the article mentioning the NQOCD; what I can't find is the article mentioning the "connected class."
I think the SATs favor the kids who read, whether they're well off or not. I would bet that kids from well-off families read a lot more than do kids from non-well-off families. Reading a lot helps a great deal with the verbal part of the SAT. I've known a lot of smart people who don't particularly enjoy reading. They view it as work and do as little of it as possible. They all had low SAT scores despite being extremely bright. I have a friend who is an English professor (now retired) who was on the admissions committee at Yale years ago. He told me they relied more on the verbal score on the SAT than on any other part of the test. They even favored the verbal score over the math score for applicants into the math-related programs. Their data showed that high verbal scores equated with better success even in math and physics programs.
Sorry about the wrong quote. Obviously, I skimmed! and didn't read your article that closely.
I don't dispute the value of the SATs to admissions committees. (MIT just brought it back.) What I am disputing is the reason why it is being dropped. It was happening before the pandemic started....they use the pandemic as another excuse for a lot of the BS that has been going on.
I think what you say about SATs is true. But how does getting rid of them allow more of the children of the well-off to be admitted? I don't think it does. Maybe the well-off have better extra curricular activities on the college application but what else do they have? Better GPAs? No, for the same reason they don't do that well on the SATs.
Believe me, they wanted to dumb down Lowell High School because they want to destroy the place entirely, not to allow the "connected class" to go. It was anti-Asian, though, which may also be connected to the reasoning for dropping the SATs:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/07/why-university-california-dropping-sat/619522/