Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house Stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hi Am Marshall Brain and welcome did
Speaker 1: this week's Friday news round up. To start off with,
Speaker 1: I should probably mention something about the Ducan diet. There
Speaker 1: was a huge amount of traffic that came into the
Speaker 1: blogs this week because Dr Ducan released his book in
Speaker 1: the United States this week. There was a huge publicity
Speaker 1: hit around the book, so lots of people in the
Speaker 1: United States are now thinking about the Ducan diet. As
Speaker 1: you may know, I started the Ducan Diet almost exactly
Speaker 1: a year ago and was able to lose fifty two
Speaker 1: pounds in about six months while on this diet, and
Speaker 1: that made a big difference in my life. If you're overweight,
Speaker 1: you can give this diet a look at least take
Speaker 1: a look at it because it has been successful for
Speaker 1: a lot of people in France and Britain in other
Speaker 1: countries around the world, so we know it works at
Speaker 1: least for some people. So in a nutshell, this is
Speaker 1: a low carb diet. You can eat all the protein
Speaker 1: and vegetables you like, and while on the diet you
Speaker 1: shun all carbs. The advantage of that lack of carbs
Speaker 1: in your diet is that it tends to eliminate hunger
Speaker 1: pangs and food cravings, and that tends to make weight
Speaker 1: loss a lot easier. The diet does require some discipline.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to say no to all carbohydrates.
Speaker 1: And that means that, for example, if you walk into
Speaker 1: a convenience store and you see you know, candy or
Speaker 1: candy bars, or ice cream or soda or something like that.
Speaker 1: Or if you're at a party and you see potato
Speaker 1: chips or slices of pizza, or you know the other
Speaker 1: things you might see at a party, or and this
Speaker 1: is really hard if you're in the kitchen and you
Speaker 1: have kids and you see goldfish or cheese it's or
Speaker 1: potato chips or you know whatever you're feeding your kid,
Speaker 1: gummy bears, you know, sitting on the counter. You have
Speaker 1: to be able to look at that and say, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to eat those carbohydrates. But the diet does
Speaker 1: have a safety valve and that anytime you get hungry
Speaker 1: or tempted, you can eat all the protein you like.
Speaker 1: And protein here is going to mean things like meats
Speaker 1: and cottage cheese and tofu and plain yogurt things where
Speaker 1: you know there are no carbs or significant source of
Speaker 1: carbs in the food. There's no calorie counting on this diet.
Speaker 1: You basically just if you get hungry, you eat protein
Speaker 1: or vegetables and you're good to go. So if this
Speaker 1: sounds like something you'd like to try, or if you'd
Speaker 1: like more information, you can google how the Ducan diet
Speaker 1: works and you'll find an article I've written about it.
Speaker 1: And I did a complete daily diary through the six
Speaker 1: months where I was in phase two of this diet,
Speaker 1: and you can see, you know, you can see first
Speaker 1: that it worked for me, and you can also see
Speaker 1: that I was not the very best diet or as
Speaker 1: in terms of discipline, and it's still worked for me.
Speaker 1: So the other thing that caused a huge uproar this
Speaker 1: week is the fact that the iPhone and the three
Speaker 1: g iPad from Apple are tracking user location coordinates in
Speaker 1: a hidden file. This file is not encrypted, and it
Speaker 1: also gets copied to iTunes on your PC when the
Speaker 1: device backs itself up. An application has been developed that
Speaker 1: plots all the data on a map, and it's possible
Speaker 1: to see everywhere your phone and you therefore have been
Speaker 1: for the last year or so from a novelty standpoint,
Speaker 1: the maps are pretty interesting, but lots of people don't
Speaker 1: like the privacy implications. Congress is getting involved, privacy advocates
Speaker 1: are getting involved, and so on. One funny thing about
Speaker 1: the whole episode is that this file, this coordinate tracking
Speaker 1: file that Apple has has been around for a long
Speaker 1: time and other people have talked about it, but it's
Speaker 1: never exploded into the public consciousness like this. If you
Speaker 1: were one of the people who is talking about this
Speaker 1: last year and being ignored, you're probably pretty miffed at
Speaker 1: this point. Anyway, if you google brain stuff iPhone uproar,
Speaker 1: you can get details. You can see the application that
Speaker 1: maps out the coordinates. You can see uh an interview
Speaker 1: with the people who announced this thing, and and so on.
Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting. One thing that amazed me this week
Speaker 1: is something called graphing super paper that came out of Australia.
Speaker 1: It's made by taking layers of graphing that are derived
Speaker 1: from graphite and once it's formed into the paper, it's
Speaker 1: incredibly strong in light. According to the article, it has
Speaker 1: one six the way of steel but ten times the
Speaker 1: tensile strength. If you can figure out how to make
Speaker 1: graphing in large quantities, or somebody can figure that out.
Speaker 1: This material is going to take off and have a
Speaker 1: big effect on just about anything we manufacture in human society.
Speaker 1: Right now, if you google Interesting Reading number seven thirty five,
Speaker 1: you can learn more about graphine super paper. Also in
Speaker 1: Interesting Reading seven thirty five, there's an article entitled five
Speaker 1: bad ideas humanity is sticking with out of habit. These
Speaker 1: are things that we use on a daily basis that really,
Speaker 1: you know, in in common terms, make no sense because
Speaker 1: they're incredibly inefficient or you know, silly. The first one,
Speaker 1: and the most obvious one, is the Corty keyboard, the
Speaker 1: keyboard arrangement that's on nearly every keyboard you see in
Speaker 1: in computers and cell phones and so on. Another is
Speaker 1: the Imperial measurement system that we use in the United
Speaker 1: States in defiance to nearly the rest of the entire world,
Speaker 1: which is on the metric system. One thing that they
Speaker 1: don't mention is the calendar. If you think about how
Speaker 1: ridiculous our calendar is. You know, some months have thirty
Speaker 1: one day, some have thirty. Then there's one with twenty
Speaker 1: eight and sometimes twenty nine, and it's just that is
Speaker 1: really a silly system to use to chop up the days.
Speaker 1: Every year, the days of the week fall on different dates,
Speaker 1: and you can't use any kind of calculations with the
Speaker 1: dates and so on, and it's just nuts. Instead, we
Speaker 1: could have thirteen twenty eight day months in a year
Speaker 1: and then there'd be one day left over, or in
Speaker 1: leap years, two days left over at the end of
Speaker 1: the year for some kind of big party. That's not
Speaker 1: likely to change either. It's an interesting article, though if
Speaker 1: you google Interesting Reading seven thirty five you can see
Speaker 1: the details. Why do fake phone numbers start with five
Speaker 1: five five on things like television shows are in the movies?
Speaker 1: This question is answered in Interesting Reading seven thirty four
Speaker 1: sort of. It turns out that no one really knows
Speaker 1: for sure where the five five five prefects started, but
Speaker 1: it's been around an incredibly long time, and it's like
Speaker 1: the whole industry just standardized on it. It seems like
Speaker 1: one of those things that built up inertia over time,
Speaker 1: and it is a courtesy of Hollywood in the TV
Speaker 1: industry to avoid prank calls to people if they were
Speaker 1: to use real phone numbers. The funny thing mentioned in
Speaker 1: the article is that there was an effort in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties to make five five five numbers a reality.
Speaker 1: Had this system been implemented, there would have been nine thousand,
Speaker 1: nine hundred five five five numbers where anywhere in the
Speaker 1: country you would have been able to dial a single
Speaker 1: seven digit number without an area code of any kind
Speaker 1: and gotten connected to somebody. One hundred numbers were reserved
Speaker 1: for use in TV shows and movies, but the rest
Speaker 1: would have worked in this seven digit way. Actually, it
Speaker 1: sounds like a pretty cool idea, but the problem is
Speaker 1: that the phone companies didn't really like the idea and
Speaker 1: it hasn't been implemented uniformly. You can learn more by
Speaker 1: dialing five five five O one two three or googling
Speaker 1: interesting reading number seven thirty four. Do you get a
Speaker 1: headache when you watch a three D movie? Apparently about
Speaker 1: ten percent to the population, or roughly thirty million people
Speaker 1: in the United States suffer from this problem. Since many
Speaker 1: movies are now available only in three D when they
Speaker 1: appear in theaters, what are these people who get headaches
Speaker 1: going to do? It turns out that you can now
Speaker 1: buy two D glasses. These two D glasses take a
Speaker 1: three D movie and turn it into a two D
Speaker 1: movie to eliminate headaches. The three D glasses that you
Speaker 1: use in a movie theater use polarized filters. One lens
Speaker 1: orients the filter horizontally and the other vertically, so each
Speaker 1: eye receives a different image. The two images merged together
Speaker 1: in your brain to create the three D effect. To
Speaker 1: create these new two D glasses, the same filter is
Speaker 1: used in both lenses, so both eyes see the same image.
Speaker 1: No more three D effect means no more headaches for
Speaker 1: people who get them. What an incredibly simple solution. If
Speaker 1: you google brain stuff two D glasses, you can get
Speaker 1: details and watch a video about a guy who actually
Speaker 1: lead came up with this idea and turned it into
Speaker 1: a real product. If you fall into the category of
Speaker 1: a poor college student, or if you simply are frugal
Speaker 1: and hoping to cut your food bills, then you know
Speaker 1: that ramen noodles are a cheap and readily available food source.
Speaker 1: Plus they cook incredibly quickly. So there's an article this
Speaker 1: week called the Top five Ramen Hacks that shows how
Speaker 1: to turn mundane ramen noodles into gourmet fair Here's one example.
Speaker 1: You boil the noodles normally add a handful of frozen
Speaker 1: peas while they're cooking, and then drain. You add an
Speaker 1: egg and mix it until the egg is cooked. That
Speaker 1: idea works just as well with rice. By the way,
Speaker 1: I've actually tried it with rice and it it works good.
Speaker 1: And sometimes if you buy rice in bulk, it's less
Speaker 1: expensive than ramen noodles. If you google interesting Reading number
Speaker 1: seven thirty three, you can find four more recipes for
Speaker 1: turning ramen noodles into a gourmet dish speak king of cooking.
Speaker 1: It seems more and more likely with each passing day
Speaker 1: that we are cooking our planet with global warming? What
Speaker 1: can we do? An article entitled ten crazy ideas to
Speaker 1: combat climate change that just might work offers several thoughts.
Speaker 1: Some of these ideas have been around for a while,
Speaker 1: like space umbrellas and ocean seeding with iron. Others seem
Speaker 1: incredibly simple, like replacing black roofs with white roofs, or
Speaker 1: increasing cloud cover by spraying an ocean mist into the sky.
Speaker 1: And then there's the idea of synthetic trees. C O
Speaker 1: two is captured out of the air with these man
Speaker 1: made trees, and the capture process happens with a chemical reaction. Somehow,
Speaker 1: it seems like it would be a lot easier to
Speaker 1: simply stop burning fossil fuels. But if that can't happen,
Speaker 1: and apparently it really cannot happen, since it hasn't happened
Speaker 1: for decades, then these ideas offer some alternatives. See Interesting
Speaker 1: Reading number seven thirty two for details. Here's a headline,
Speaker 1: gigantic new super organism with social intelligence is devouring the Titanic.
Speaker 1: How is it possible to not click on that headline?
Speaker 1: The basic idea is that the steel and the Titanic,
Speaker 1: which lies in near freezing oxygen pour water over a
Speaker 1: mile deep, is being eaten by extreme aphile bacteria. They
Speaker 1: form rust sickles with that steel as they process it,
Speaker 1: and they seem to have some sort of communication system
Speaker 1: to coordinate activities. The wreck is nearly a century old,
Speaker 1: and it won't be around for that much longer, because
Speaker 1: eventually the bacteria will turn all of the steel into
Speaker 1: this rusty dust. If you google Interesting Reading seven thirty two,
Speaker 1: you can read this article and see the research that's
Speaker 1: being done to figure out how these bacteria live and intercommunicate.
Speaker 1: Lots of people are now using smartphones, either apples, iPhones
Speaker 1: or Android phones. How are the sales of these phones
Speaker 1: affecting the gadget ecosystem. This question is explored by an
Speaker 1: article entitled ten things killed off by the smartphone. Basically,
Speaker 1: what's happening is that instead of owning five or six gadgets,
Speaker 1: people simply use the equivalent functionality that they find for
Speaker 1: free in their smartphones. The victim gadgets include MP three players,
Speaker 1: gps is, digital cameras, and wrist watches, among others. You
Speaker 1: can see all ten items by googling Interesting Reading number
Speaker 1: seven thirty one. There's also an article in Interesting Reading
Speaker 1: seven thirty three on Android's voice recognition capabilities, and that
Speaker 1: shows a completely new capability made possible by smartphones. Basically,
Speaker 1: you can take your Android phone and you can say
Speaker 1: almost anything to it, and it's speech recognition capabilities can
Speaker 1: understand what you say with remarkable act received. It's made
Speaker 1: possible by cloud computing, where what you say get sent
Speaker 1: to Google servers in the in the data center somewhere
Speaker 1: and it's analyzed there and then the results are sent
Speaker 1: back to your phone. So it's not like their software
Speaker 1: running on your phone that's uh doing the speech recognition.
Speaker 1: It's software in a giant server farm. The servers take
Speaker 1: advantage of millions and millions of voice samples, and that's
Speaker 1: what gives this thing it's uncanny accuracy, even with people
Speaker 1: who have accidents. It's like a revolution and speech recognition,
Speaker 1: and it's made possible by Google's ability to handle massive
Speaker 1: amounts of data. If you google interesting reading number seven
Speaker 1: thirty three, you can get details. Imagine having a construction
Speaker 1: toy like legos or connects, but the pieces are adult
Speaker 1: size and have adult strength, so you can build real
Speaker 1: stuff like bicycles with the pieces and then actually ride
Speaker 1: the bike that you built. That's the idea with a
Speaker 1: new construction toy that is seen this week. Even if
Speaker 1: this company doesn't do it itself, it seems like some
Speaker 1: company has to do it. Think about how cool it
Speaker 1: would be to build something like a bicycle or a
Speaker 1: real treehouse and then take it apart and build something else.
Speaker 1: It's just too good an idea. If you google brain
Speaker 1: stuff erector set, you can see images of this new
Speaker 1: prototype toy in action. And finally, there is the flying
Speaker 1: nano plane idea. The name of the idea is flying
Speaker 1: nano And here we have a carbon fiber airplane that
Speaker 1: is incredibly light, only about a hundred fifty pounds. And
Speaker 1: because it's so light, you do not need a license
Speaker 1: to operate it. You don't have to go get pilot
Speaker 1: lessons and learn how to operate instruments and so on.
Speaker 1: It falls into a category where you don't need a license,
Speaker 1: and it's priced at about forty dollars. Supposedly it is
Speaker 1: not exactly cheap, but that's within the reach of many people.
Speaker 1: It's the price of a kind of expensive automo beal.
Speaker 1: It allows one person to take to the air in style.
Speaker 1: Because this plane looks incredibly interesting. It has a very
Speaker 1: interesting wing design and the wings are only about fifteen
Speaker 1: feet wide. The only catch is that this plane has
Speaker 1: no landing gear. You have to use a lake to
Speaker 1: take off in land. This is what the inventor has
Speaker 1: proposed anyway, and supposedly the real thing will be on
Speaker 1: sale later this year. Once you know the manufacturing details,
Speaker 1: I'll get worked out. If you google brain stuff flying
Speaker 1: Nano you can get details. That article points out that
Speaker 1: if you like the idea of cheap license free flying,
Speaker 1: and you don't have forty dollars, and maybe you'd like
Speaker 1: to have some landing gear. You could consider a powered
Speaker 1: paraplane instead. These flying machines use a parachute like fabric
Speaker 1: wing for lift and a small propeller for power. They
Speaker 1: can be very inexpensive at roughly fifteen thousand dollars. So
Speaker 1: that's it for this week. If you would like more
Speaker 1: information on any of these topics and about a hundred others,
Speaker 1: you can google interesting reading number seven thirty number, seven
Speaker 1: thirty one, seven thirty two, seven thirty three, seven thirty four,
Speaker 1: and seven thirty five. Until next time, have a great weekend.
Speaker 1: For more illness and thousands of other topics, visit how
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