Writ of Mainprize

With the multitude of health supplements out there, it’s difficult to figure out which ones work and which ones do not. Ideally, we’d follow the results of good scientific studies that have been corroborated by other studies. Unfortunately, wading through the results is extremely difficult. There is a good attempt and collating some of the results and categorizing the benefits by the reliability of the evidence. The people at Information is Beautiful have made a very nice bubble visualization of a whole host of supplements …

Every once in a while, I notice a new photoessay at Life Magazine’s website regarding a momentous event in world history. Unfortunately, I’ve found navigating Life to be cumbersome looking for other photosets (unless they are on the front page).

O.k. I’ve always looked at personal health care products (soaps, shampoos, cremes, cosmetics, etc) with a jaundiced eye. Often it industry comes across as unregulated and they make unverified claims of efficacy. From a Reddit , there was a link to a really good site describing the action of the ingredients in a typical shampoo:

Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate, Ammonium Laureth Sulfate
The detergents that clean your hair
Methylchloroisothiazolinone, Methylisothiazolinone, Sodium Benzoate
Preservatives to stop the shampoo from becoming contaminated! Ew!
Disodium EDTA, Citric Acid, and Sodium Citrate
PH balance to help cleaning and stability
Dimethicone …

Here is a very good article on the utter sham that is Homeopathy at Neurologicablog. I wish we could stamp out these snake oil charlatans. It’s even worse when their cures, or more precisely the lack of them, end up killing people.

This is pretty neat, if you’ve got the time you can build your own “Hobbit House” just like this family did! Not only that, but it’s an eco-friendly house too! Although Simon Dale may have been motivated a little by Frodo and Samwise, the project was really motivated by the idea of reducing the ecological footprint and living in as self sufficient and self reliable way as possible. The house was also very low cost (roughly $6000 CAN) which might be motivation enough for some people. I wonder if such …