and, happy to say, neither do you until you prove otherwise. Though I can prove my creds, from working tour with the Grateful Dead to working building a city in Saudi Arabia with Bechtel, and doing weapons research - which by the way - autistic or not - is pretty much the reason you get to spout this crap in English, and not like, say, German.

Quote from: tekla on July 09, 2009, 10:24:12 PM
and, happy to say, neither do you until you prove otherwise.

"Happy," you say. Well, at least we're generally on the same page, now, instead of making really stupid attempts at appeal to authority.

Quotewhich by the way - autistic or not - is pretty much the reason you get to spout this crap in English, and not like, say, German.

Or Russian, which I am actually studying for exactly that reason. A lot of theoretical mathematics still haven't been translated from Russian to English. No telling why.

Although I have been diagnosed autistic, all it really means in my case is that I keep losing and dropping things, and I have extreme difficulty understanding speech under very weirdly specific circumstances. It's really not all that impressive or interesting. I don't even get any kind of synaesthesia that I am aware of. In fact, high-functioning autism is the most dull illness that you can possibly have. In my case, it resulted in me suffering from a series of nervous breakdowns due to intrusive noise while I was living in a residence hall. This is one of the reasons that I would rather learn about the many wonderful ways that a person can become completely broken than study in the empirical sciences. It is much less stressful.

Quote from: Sigma Prime on July 09, 2009, 04:44:42 PM
[...]
However, I am very skeptical about the notion of eating meat that may contain food-borne pathogens. E. Coli or certain species of Salmonella can kill you, and I do not see how it could be beneficial to put yourself at risk of these kinds of pathogens. It's not that I'm particularly fastidious regarding my fare. My dietary choices are generally pretty catholic, and I tend to be more adventurous than not. I just...don't really understand the idea of intentionally putting oneself in harm's way. There must be something about this that I am not understanding.

Speaking for myself, I am not talking about eating raw meats, just non-irradiated foods.  No way should anyone expose themselves deliberately to e-coli or salmonella - I was only suggesting that people can become unaccustomed to otherwise harmless bacteria through a constant lack of exposure.  For example, my friends in India are normal human beings who can eat the local food without getting an upset stomach yet some visitors cannot do this.  It's clearly not e-coli, salmonella or something that severe because (a) the locals aren't immune and (b) the symptoms of the visitors would be far more major.

It's more likely that their digestive systems are accustomed to the normally non-harmful naturally occurring bacterial flora found both in food and the environment (the only anti-bacterial processing their food has undergone is cooking) but a western stomach that is used to not just cooked but virtually sterile foods may not.  Hence the live yoghurt trick, which doesn't contain any harmful bacteria either - it's just a way to help whitey's stomach get used to food with live bacteria in it before getting it in spades on his/her travels

On my longer visits to the US, I've noticed that many foods, including milk, seem to have an unnaturally long shelf life compared to equivalent products in most other countries (and this is not synthetic food). Hehe...I remember the first time I shopped in the Safeway at Mountain View, CA. There were rows of milk with all sorts of stuff added.  I asked a shop assistant where the plain, simple, unadulterated (save for pasteurized) milk was...there wasn't any.  Closest was "vitamin-D" milk.   Huh?  Just gimme cow-juice dammit!

Now, that is what I want - good, honest, unadulterated food.

It has not been translated ---- that you know of.  My guess, it has.  All that stuff is way beyond your pay grade, or mine.  But my guess, and it's not a bad guess, is that it has been translated.  It was just not worth publishing, or that, most likely - publishing it would have revealed our intelligence sources.  So....

And Russia - called the USSR in them days - was not much of a threat to us, it was just convenient to both sides to pretend so.

Although I have been diagnosed autistic,  Hard science requires much more than just random attentive behavior.

Quotehave never studied anything remotely related to brain science or molecular chemistry, have you?

Learning does not stop at school. Working requires your to keep up continuous education. Add another 40 years of classes, seminars, experience and self education, then come back and talk to me.

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Post Merge: July 10, 2009, 09:41:41 AM

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QuoteAlthough I have been diagnosed autistic

I am sorry that you have a problem. It will be difficult to develop to your full potential without people skills.

Quote from: finewine on July 09, 2009, 11:32:51 PM
Speaking for myself, I am not talking about eating raw meats, just non-irradiated foods.  No way should anyone expose themselves deliberately to e-coli or salmonella - I was only suggesting that people can become unaccustomed to otherwise harmless bacteria through a constant lack of exposure.  For example, my friends in India are normal human beings who can eat the local food without getting an upset stomach yet some visitors cannot do this.  It's clearly not e-coli, salmonella or something that severe because (a) the locals aren't immune and (b) the symptoms of the visitors would be far more major.

It's more likely that their digestive systems are accustomed to the normally non-harmful naturally occurring bacterial flora found both in food and the environment (the only anti-bacterial processing their food has undergone is cooking) but a western stomach that is used to not just cooked but virtually sterile foods may not.  Hence the live yoghurt trick, which doesn't contain any harmful bacteria either - it's just a way to help whitey's stomach get used to food with live bacteria in it before getting it in spades on his/her travels

Oh...now that makes more sense.

QuoteOn my longer visits to the US, I've noticed that many foods, including milk, seem to have an unnaturally long shelf life compared to equivalent products in most other countries (and this is not synthetic food). Hehe...I remember the first time I shopped in the Safeway at Mountain View, CA. There were rows of milk with all sorts of stuff added.  I asked a shop assistant where the plain, simple, unadulterated (save for pasteurized) milk was...there wasn't any.  Closest was "vitamin-D" milk.   Huh?  Just gimme cow-juice dammit!

Now that sounds like it goes in a novel.

QuoteNow, that is what I want - good, honest, unadulterated food.

Like raw oysters! There is a lot to be said for a type of food that you have to slice your fingers to ribbons on before you are allowed to eat it. If that were the only type of food around, then we would all be skinny.

Ooh I never liked raw oysters.  Tried them once on a dinner date with a Japanese girl (she ordered them).  I hated them - exactly what I imagine slurping someone else's cold phlegm from a teaspoon would be like. 

Quote from: finewine on July 10, 2009, 10:17:33 AM
Ooh I never liked raw oysters.  Tried them once on a dinner date with a Japanese girl (she ordered them).  I hated them - exactly what I imagine slurping someone else's cold phlegm from a teaspoon would be like. 

A very accurate description.

Quote from: lisagurl on July 10, 2009, 09:36:34 AMLearning does not stop at school.

It doesn't. In fact, you can learn a lot more laying in the aisles where they keep the bound periodicals than you can in a lecture hall if you are manically obsessed with some particular subject. It's still no replacement for a formal education, but it is quite rewarding, even though people do stare at you for being curled up on the floor like a housecat with all of your limbs bent into weird positions because of the incredibly large drop in your blood pressure that results from spending ten straight hours laying in the same exact spot.

QuoteAdd another 40 years of classes, seminars, experience and self education, then come back and talk to me.

No. Lisa, even if you could demonstrate yourself to be an authority on this subject, I can't trust anything you say without having to ask myself whether you're actually trying to be informative or making the truth subservient to your ideology. You haven't been entirely straightforward with us for this entire thread or anywhere on this forum, Lisa. That really diminishes the worth of anything you have to say.

And your credentials, Lisa, you haven't even shared with me a single shred of evidence that you have any authority at all to speak on the subject of molecular chemistry or neuroscience (which YOU hauled into the discussion, by the way). Being taught by Carl Sagan and examining moon rocks, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, how does that even CONNECT with the subject of this discussion at all? My boyfriend, who is a lot older than me, did some pretty cool things himself during his college days, but he doesn't pretend to have authoritative knowledge on molecular biochemistry or neuroscience.

Come on, on neuroscience, do you even know how a receptor for a neurotransmitter even works? For example, name three neurotransmitters that couple with a G-protein-coupled receptor, just THREE, without looking into a reference book. Name one excitory dopamine receptor, and one inhibitory dopamine receptor. Or how about, why is it possible for acetylcholine to have both excitory and inhibitory effects. You've been educated for forty-something years on ALL KINDS of subject matter, so surely you must know. The GABA-B receptor's action on potassium channels through G-protein-coupled intermediates hyperpolarizes the neuron: how is this going to affect the neuron's action potential?

Look, genius, the manner in which your proteins were synthesized is not going to affect your thought processes. Didn't you know that your body has about a bajillion different ways of synthesizing ATP and just about anything you FIND floating around in your body? Your body doesn't use just one, limited way to make things, so why in the HELL do you think it's going to harm you to consume something that was created without a biological intermediate? It's NOT! Your body has had like a billion years to learn how to be ADAPTABLE! You could almost completely replace carbs in your diet with oils, and your body would still be able to sustain itself. I'm surprised we can't live on pure gasoline...wait...

If it's attached to glycerol, WE CAN!!! THAT IS WHAT DIETARY OILS ARE! Fats are nothing but gasoline with glycerol caps! The hydrocarbon chains found in even the lightest dietary oils may be a lot longer than, say, hexane, but it's really the same principle. If you wanted to, you could cut your carbohydrate consumption down to very close to nil and drink capfuls of oil instead, and you could actually live on that kind of diet. It's almost exactly like feeding yourself kerosene, but we can do it. It may not be as good for you as a more diversified diet, but you could live on it for a pretty long time. So, when YOU pamper and baby your body with so-called "organic" foods, then YOU are going against nature! It is in our nature, Lisa, to be unreasonably omnivorous. It is in our nature to be capable of surviving, come-what-will. You aren't going to break yourself by putting something artificial into you.

QuoteI am sorry that you have a problem. It will be difficult to develop to your full potential without people skills.

Err...that's not the real issue in my case. Look, if you really want to gain some understanding for autism, volunteer one day to work with autistic children for a while. There are plenty of opportunities out there, and it can be very rewarding. You learn pretty quickly that it's not about social skills. It's really a lot more...messy. You see, I was going to say "subtle," but I figured that "messy" would be a lot more accurate.

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Post Merge: July 10, 2009, 07:55:07 AM

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Quote from: finewine on July 10, 2009, 10:17:33 AM
Ooh I never liked raw oysters.  Tried them once on a dinner date with a Japanese girl (she ordered them).  I hated them - exactly what I imagine slurping someone else's cold phlegm from a teaspoon would be like. 

I am part-otter, therefore I think the Nihonjin are culinary geniuses.

Otter Chaos

^Me on a slow day. However, I am capable of higher levels of destruction.

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Post Merge: July 11, 2009, 11:15:37 AM

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Okay, Lisa, I'll help you out. A certain dopamine receptor, DRD4, is found to be impaired in children who suffer from attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Now, is this more likely to be an inhibitory or excitory receptor for dopamine?

If you're still stumped, I'll give you an even easier one: what family of monoamines does dopamine fall into? This is one of the most basic ideas in biochemistry, period.

The G-Protein coupled to the dopamine receptor D1 stimulates adenyl cyclase, activating cAMP-dependent protein kinase. What is cAMP? What is a protein kinase? Try telling me what adenyl cyclase actually does just by looking over what I've already written in the past few sentences. Hint: "cAMP-dependent protein kinase."

If you can't even figure out the answer to a cellular biochemistry-related question that I have all but handed to you, where are you coming from trying to claim that you are more qualified than I am to speak on the subject of biochemistry? You probably can't even remember what a protein kinase actually does.

You were trying to pull authority on me based on profoundly shaky premises, Lisa. Your argument that you have better credentials than I do on this subject just doesn't hold water.

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Post Merge: July 11, 2009, 09:04:39 PM

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Lisa!!!! Get back here, prey!!! I'm not finished with you yet!!