Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Who, these guys?

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kz6jc

No. I'm referring to Manufacturers of Crap-in-a-Bag/Box/Bottle (CIAB), or MOCIAB for short.

In Obesity is multi-factorial, spectra and other stuff, I mentioned Mayor of NYC Michael Bloomberg's ban on the use of cups larger than 16oz for the sale of sugary sodas. Note that Mayor Bloomberg is not trying to ban sugary sodas or tax anything. People are still free to buy as many cups of sugary soda as they want. However, the whining from people is deafening!

Surprise, surprise! MOCIAB have retaliated with the usual dirty tricks.

1) Lies, damned lies and MOCIAB statistics.

Cherry-picked studies, much?

2) Have a number of MOCIAB/pro-MOCIAB groups/sites drown-out good advice with bad. This is a standard marketing trick pioneered by Edward Bernays. Some examples of MOCIAB/pro-MOCIAB groups are:- Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, http://www.ameribev.org/, http://www.consumerfreedom.com/, http://www.letsclearitup.org/ and http://www.livepositively.com/.


In Psychological manipulation, there was a link to a story about a hypnotist who used his freedom of speech to influence women into "freely" handing him cash. So, why is he not allowed to use his freedom of speech to influence people (Italian police were hunting him) whereas MOCIAB are?

EDIT: I'll repeat it here, in case you missed it in the other post. Confessions of a former Dirty Rotten Scoundrel.

A comment, a simile and insanity.

1) The comment: I'm just about to leave the following comment on Peter (Hyperlipid)'s blog post Insulin and the Rewards of overfeeding. I thought that it was so good at summing-up, I'll post it here first!
"All,

Insulin increases the amount of glucose & FFAs entering fat cells, muscle cells & the liver.

Insulin decreases the amount of glycerol & FFAs exiting fat cells & the amount of glucose exiting the liver.

Hyperinsulinaemia (which can produce sedation) results when one or more of the following tissues loses insulin sensitivity:- fat cells, muscle cells & the liver.

So, why do people keep saying that hyperinsulinaemia locks nutrients away in fat cells only, thus robbing other cells of nutrients, thus causing lethargy?

The relative insulin sensitivity of tissues determines the relative partitioning of nutrients into those tissues.

When tissues lose sensitivity to insulin, blood glucose control becomes impaired. This results in roller-coaster blood glucose levels after eating high-glycaemic carbohydrates. A rapidly-falling blood glucose level causes ravenous hunger. I have experienced this during medically-monitored tests (OGTTs & an insulin shock test).

Low-carb/ketogenic diets don't result in a roller-coaster blood glucose level and therefore don't cause ravenous hunger. Simples!

Overeating due to ravenous hunger is NOT gluttony, just as under-moving due to sedation is NOT sloth.

THIS is gluttony."

EDIT: This didn't go in my comment but should have:- "Low-carb/ketogenic diets result in the avoidance of moreish & calorific foods such as sweets, chocolate, cake, biscuits, pizza, Pringles etc. A single bite of such foods has a negligible effect on blood glucose & insulin levels, but encourages another bite and another and another ad nauseam, due to Food Reward.


2) The simile: I use similes. I used the simile "As happy as a pig in shit" in a comment somewhere on Woos blog. Now, you may (or may not) have noticed that my user-name is Nigeepoo. We Brits are obsessed by two things - The weather and our bowel movements. I find things to do with poo and farting amusing (schoolboy humour, I know!). I used the simile "As happy as a pig in shit" because it is amusing.


3) The insanity: According to Woo in the following comment:-
"Re: the comment...Sorry, not convinced.
You are basically refusing to admit your choice of words implied moral judgement. The phrase "happier than a pig in shit" is always applied to examples of people being content in immorality/bad behavior particularly gluttony and sloth... unless it is used ironically. Only an autistic or a non-english speaker would believe this crap."

Woo, you are as mad as a March hare. IMO of course, like everything I write. Duh!

"The Diet Debacle" debacle.

What's that funny smell?

According to Robert H. Lustig in The Diet Debacle,"If a calorie is a calorie, then any food can be part of a balanced diet; and, if we are what we eat, then everyone chooses what they eat."

Firstly, the first nutritional maxim isn't "A calorie is a calorie". It's actually "Where bodyweight is concerned, a calorie is a calorie". Leaving out the first four words makes a huge difference to the meaning.

Secondly, the second nutritional maxim actually means "Your body is made out of what you eat. Therefore, if you eat/drink rubbish, you get a rubbish body.

Apart from that, the rest of the article is absolutely fine*.

*The above sentence ending in "*" is pure irony. See also Review & Critique: The Skinny on Obesity ~ Intro and Part I and Review & Critique: The Skinny on Obesity ~ Part II Sickeningly Inaccurate.

The sad thing is that I actually sympathise with Robert H. Lustig's aim, which is to reduce the humongous amount of sugar that Americans shove down their throats in solid or liquid form each year.

I don't want to come across as a Socialist Asshole (it's Arsehole, Sean!), but intervention is sometimes needed to stop certain humans and groups thereof (e.g. companies/corporations) from harming other humans and groups thereof (e.g. the general population).

In City of New York Bureau of Food Discipline, Sean wrote "Never mind that the record of government diet intervention is abysmal, this time it will work." I can't speak for the US, as I don't know how things work over there. Here in the U.K, DEFRA aims to maintain standards in the way that crops are grown and in the management of farm animals. The FSA aims to maintain standards for food safety, although they do occasionally issue some dubious nutritional advice (read the comments to see some familiar names).

Just because government agencies occasionally cock things up, does that mean that we should have zero government intervention where food is concerned? I obviously think not!

See also What Is Food? and Former Coke executive slams ‘share of stomach’ marketing campaign.

Addendum: If (as I believe) corporations should be prevented from unduly influencing the general population in their food choices by banning all advertisements for foods & drinks, then governments should also be prevented from unduly influencing the general population in their food choices by banning food policies and crop subsidies. All that governments should do food-wise is enforce food safety standards.

Of mice and men, Kleiber's Law & FIRKO.

More musings from my fevered brain!

I remembered a discussion on Hyperlipid about FIRKO mice.

Note: FIRKO stands for Fat Insulin Receptor Knock Out and it results in White Adipose Tissue (WAT) having vastly reduced uptake of nutrients, thus inhibiting gain of WAT. Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT) has up-regulated uncoupling proteins i.e. BAT produces heat.

Of great interest was that, in a study where a FIRKO mouse's VMH (VentroMedial Hypothalamus) was deliberately damaged, the mouse ate more food but didn't gain weight. This appears to defy Energy Balance theory.

Mice weigh ~30g, so they can't burn much energy through physical activity. How can mice eat more food but not gain weight?

Peter Dobromylskyj gave me the answer. As a veterinary surgeon, he works on rodents, so he knows about this. Rodents under anaesthesia easily get hypothermia. Mice have a high surface area to mass ratio (see the above graph) compared to adult humans. As heat is lost through the skin, small animals like mice are at a disadvantage when it comes to heat conservation. They have behaviours for conserving heat e.g. covering themselves in bedding (which reduces heat loss) or huddling together in groups (which reduces overall surface area to mass ratio). Anaesthesia prevents heat conservation behaviours.

Any excess energy intake that cannot be stored due to FIRKOisation is disposed of by increased heat production in BAT and increased heat loss by reduced heat conservation behaviours.

Most adult humans have a tiny amount of BAT, so they can't do this. If an adult human raises their metabolic rate significantly (say, by taking 2,4-Dinitrophenol), they tend to die from hyperthermia.

You could try sitting in a bath of cold water. ;-p That would make me really cold and hungry (and wet!), so I would eat ravenously afterwards. But that's me. Your Mileage May Vary.

See also It’s the Calories, Stupid.

Obesity is multi-factorial, spectra and other stuff.

This post is a hotch-potch of thoughts that are currently whizzing around in my brain.

1) Obesity: Like just about everything in life, obesity is multi-factorial. Each factor may have only a small impact on obesity. Tackling one factor alone won't solve the problem. Every factor has to be tackled, one at a time.

So, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announcing a ban on sales of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces in restaurants, delis, sports arenas, and movie theaters won't solve the obesity problem, but it will help.

EDIT: In shops and supermarkets in the UK, tobacco products now have to be kept out of sight. I'd like to see the same thing happen to Crap-In-A-Bag/Box/Bottle (CIAB).

2) Spectra: As also mentioned in my first link, there is a spectrum of fatness in the general population which probably follows a bell distribution curve. From skinniest to fattest, there are people who are:-
Extremely skinny. Very skinny. Skinny. A bit skinny. Average. A bit fat. Fat. Very fat. Extremely fat.

If you take somebody in a category who isn't currently consuming CIAB and introduce CIAB to their diet, what happens? They move to a category to the right. Therefore, it's possible for there to be very skinny people who consume CIAB. Therefore, anybody who (or should that be Wooo?) states that the existence of very skinny people who consume CIAB is proof that Food Reward doesn't exist is wrong.

3) Other stuff: I am concerned with people overlooking postprandial (a.k.a. nonfasting) triglycerides (a.k.a. triacylglycerols a.k.a. TAGs a.k.a. TGs) after eating large amounts of fat. According to Fasting Compared With Nonfasting Triglycerides and Risk of Cardiovascular Events in Women, serum TGs 2-4 hours post-meal are very significantly associated with Cardiovascular Events (fully adjusted hazard ratio [95% confidence interval] for highest vs lowest tertiles of levels, 4.48 [1.98-10.15] [P < 0.001 for trend]).

After 4 hours post-meal, serum TGs are cleared from circulation by being burned by muscles and/or by being stored in fat cells. See Figure 3B in Extended effects of evening meal carbohydrate-to-fat ratio on fasting and postprandial substrate metabolism.

PPP - another bijou rant-ette.

Blame it on the hot weather and screaming kids! :-D

From http://www.thamesvalleytango.co.uk/images/Rant.jpg

PPP stands for Piss Poor Parenting.

Why, oh why, oh why do some feckless parents allow children to dictate what they eat? As if children know what's good for them! At an event I attended recently, "Johnny*" was given a plate of chicken drummers (mechanically-recovered chicken formed into the rough shape of chicken drumsticks and coated with breadcrumbs) and oven chips. I asked Johnny if he would like a beefburger, sausage or pork steak. He replied. "I don't like them". He only wanted manufactured crap. Seriously, WTH?

When I was a lad, I was given the same food as my parents. If I didn't eat it, I went without. I ate it!
Nowadays, "children's menus" in restaurants (I'm being quite generous in the use of the word restaurant) consist of lots of manufactured crap that children like. Unlike veggies & fruit, this crap contains very little fibre/fiber or Magnesium.

Is it any wonder that childhood constipation is a problem? Why are children being given PEG or even Lactulose, when there's a much better solution - Epsom Salts (which contains 10% Magnesium by weight). The brain needs Magnesium to remain cool, calm and collected i.e. function properly. The brain also needs EPA, DHA and Vitamin D3 to function properly. Many kids don't like oily fish, so they won't eat it. It's not rocket science to purée some sardines or wild red salmon with some Bolognese/Sweet chilli/w.h.y. sauce so that they won't notice it. Many kids play indoors or are smothered in sunblock when they do go outdoors, so they get little or no Vitamin D3. Is it any wonder that childhood ADD & ADHD is much more common? Medication and psychotherapy? Seriously, WTH?

See Effect of MAGNE-B6 on the clinical and biochemical manifestations of the syndrome of attention deficit and hyperactivity in children.

Supplementation of polyunsaturated fatty acids, magnesium and zinc in children seeking medical advice for attention-deficit/hyperactivity problems - an observational cohort study.

Moderators of treatment response in adults with ADHD treated with a vitamin-mineral supplement.


When I was a lad, there were a couple of show-offs in my class at school, but nobody behaved like "Jimmy*" (physically and mentally hyperactive with bad behaviour, screaming and shouting). Johnny was also badly behaved, but not as bad as Jimmy. The parents at the event seemed perfectly happy that, every day, their children had to be given "uppers" (e.g. Ritalin) to help them concentrate during the day and "downers" to help them sleep at night. Seriously, WTH?

I will now take a deep breath and count to twenty. There, that's better!

*Names changed.

Testing hypotheses - a rant.

My brain just exploded! On Why conventional view of obesity / FR is wrong, ItsTheWoo wrote "...there is not a doubt in my mind obesity is entirely 100% an illness, a disorder... "

According to ItsTheWoo's hypothesis, the increasing incidence of obesity all around the world since 1970 is 100% caused by the increasing incidence of illness all around the world since 1970. Seriously, WTF?

According to Nigeepoo's hypothesis, the increasing incidence of obesity all around the world since 1970 is significantly caused by the increasing influence of Crap-in-a-Bag/Box/Bottle (CIAB) manufacturers on the population by cunning marketing and on the Government by bribery lobbying since 1970.

The former results in increasing consumption of CIAB and the latter results in increasing subsidies on the raw materials used for manufacturing CIAB, making CIAB cheaper (also more profitable) than natural foods, thus increasing consumption of CIAB. See Why are Twinkies cheaper than carrots?

There are other factors causing increased obesity e.g. increasing numbers of towns/cities which discourage walking. See also Determinants of the Variability in Human Body-fat Percentage.

Highly-engineered and highly-calorific CIAB encourages subconscious over-eating via Food Reward. The hyper-secretion of insulin (compensatory hyperinsulinaemia) caused by the subconscious over-eating of CIAB causes subconscious under-moving by inducing drowsiness and lethargy, sometimes followed by the munchies if blood glucose goes too low. Insulin is just a hormone that is secreted for the storage of stuff and a reduction in the burning of stuff. Don't blame insulin for doing its job. If you have zero insulin (e.g. untreated type 1 diabetes), your body stops storing stuff and starts burning stuff uncontrollably. Before the invention of insulin injections, people with type 1 diabetes usually died within 2 years.

Subconscious over-eating is good for the profits of CIAB manufacturers. An increasing number of dyslipidaemic/hypertensive/depressed/diabetic/demented/w.h.y. people is good for the profits of health-care providers and drug manufacturers. These organisations currently make huge profits, so it's not going to be easy to change anything that will reduce them.

I deleted the last part of my rant as it was a bit too ranty, but I'm reinstating it in a toned-down form as I've mentioned it in the comments.

ItsTheWoo continually conflates subconscious over-eating and under-moving with conscious over-eating and under-moving (gluttony and sloth). The vast majority of over-fat people become over-fat due to subconsciously over-eating and under-moving. A tiny minority of over-fat people are gluttonous and slothful.

Telling people to consciously Eat Less, Move More doesn't work. This doesn't mean that Eat Less, Move More doesn't work. It means that Eat Less, Move More has to be done subconsciously. This is where low-carb/paleo/real food diets come into their own.

Rant over.

Get in! Part 4. Get out! Get this!

First, here's a rather jolly but not safe for work song from The Beautiful South.

Mum's GP has approved mum getting 500mg/day Thiamine. I'm waiting for it to arrive from Vitacost.

Mum's GP has approved the discontinuation of Aspirin 75mg/day and Omeprazole 20mg/day, as they are of little benefit and it reduces the number of pills that mum has to swallow each day.

I sang backing vocals for my friend Ray Langstone with a group of excellent musicians at the Unicorn pub on Monday evening. That's the first time I've done something like that.

Good Health: You can get it if you really want.

You'll never guess!

Some people moan about their health problems a lot. If somebody tries my advice and their health doesn't improve, they are justified in moaning about it.

If however I give them advice, they ignore it and then carry on moaning, it's time to ignore them. I don't have time for...

You're free, and a testimonial.

First, the music video.


I have to admit that I'm not exactly what you'd call "exciting". Apart from driving my yellow MX-5 very fast in the middle of the night when there's nobody around, I'm not an adrenaline junkie. My mother used to throw herself out of light aircraft with a parachute on her back. There were occasions where her main 'chute either failed to open or it became tangled and had to be "cut away" before deploying the reserve.

I'll fly through the air when I've grown a pair of wings. I'll swim when I've grown a set of gills. I'll climb up the side of a mountain when I've grown two extra legs and have the strength & balance of a goat.

In some ways, I'm lucky to have slightly defective hearing & vision. I'm happy with the sound quality of inexpensive stereos and I don't need HDTV. I get my kicks from singing and from helping people to improve their health. I believe that health is number one priority as, without it, you can't properly do or enjoy things in life.

So, you're free to do what you want to do. Also, you're free to take or leave my advice! Anyway...

Somebody who I've known for about 14 years had been suffering from fairly obvious signs of magnesium deficiency (anxiety, poor sleep, cramps, spasms etc) for quite a while, so I virtually frog-marched him to the pharmacy at Tesco on bank holiday Monday and got him to buy a pot of Epsom Salts and add some to a smoothie.

He wishes to remain anonymous, but last night he informed me that he's feeling much better and is now pooing normally for the first time in 20 years. That's probably how long he's been deficient in magnesium. I've also given him 14 Vitamin D3 5,000iu mini gelcaps to try, as he suffers from low moods and rarely gets any sun on his skin.

Our bodies work so much better when they have all the nutrients that they need.

Feel-good Friday.

Nothing to report, so crank the volume knob up to 11 for the following two music videos.





A big "thank-you" to Ann Gibbs for bringing these songs into my life at Monday night jam sessions at the Unicorn pub in Aldershot. I hadn't heard either of them until I went there!

Look after your brain, Part 5.

This is another bookmarking post.

I spotted an article by Emily Deans M.D. called Nutritional Brain Bomb - Thiamine Deficiency.

So there's yet another way to knacker the brain, resulting in Wernicke's encephalopathy and in severe cases, Korsakoff's psychosis. Both of these conditions are partially irreversible due to neuron death. Both of these conditions are partially reversible by high-dose thiamine therapy.

Thiamine 500mg/day is one last therapy to try mum on after I've got her back on Vitamin K2 (hopefully today).

Continued on Quality >> Quantity.

Use 'em or lose 'em, Part 2.

I'm talking about your brain(s). Last year, I became depressed for several months for personal reasons that I won't go into. On December 8th 2011, something happened and the depression went away in an instant.

Unfortunately, several months of lying around doing very little had turned my brain to stodge. I tentatively resumed blogging in January 2012.

I find that the more I use my brain, the better it works, the more I can remember and the more I want to use it.

On the minus side, I find that I'm more impatient than I used to be. I'm now quite intolerant of, erm, f***wits on the roads and on the internets. Don't mention Giant Pandas!

How eating sugar & starch can lower your insulin needs.

This is a bookmarking post. Jason Sandeman is a chef who had a couple of web-sites at Well Done Chef! and Jason Sandeman — Real Food For Your Life. He has Latent Autoimmune Diabetes of Adulthood (LADA), which has resulted in a total loss of his pancreatic beta cells which means that he has to inject insulin.

Now, it's generally believed in low-carb circles (and by myself) that people with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) should minimise their intake of sugary & starchy carbohydrates as these promote wild fluctuations in blood glucose. See The problem with Diabetes.

Jason wrote the following comment on Richard Nikoley's blog. The relevant part is as follows:-
"Even more weird – now that I have introduced the starches into the diet – I have actually got better control now. I thought my insulin needs would go up – but they haven’t. They’ve gone down."

To which I replied:-"How about this for an explanation? You now have a well-controlled glucose input to your circulation via diet, which has suppressed the poorly-controlled glucose input to your circulation via hepatic glucose production."

Hepatic glucose production (HGP) is increased by Glucagon, Cortisol & Adrenaline/Epinephrine. These are secreted as blood glucose level falls below certain values in order to keep our brains alive. See Blood Glucose, Insulin & Diabetes.

As keeping our brains alive is rather important (!), the mechanism is fairly crude in operation and blood glucose can overshoot in a positive direction, as a bit of glycation is less harmful than brain death. See "Funny turns": What they aren't and what they might be. Hyperglycaemia requires insulin to lower blood glucose back to the normal range.

Therefore, eating some (but not too much) sugar & starch can result in lower blood glucose level and lower insulin secretion. Eating fibre/fiber (a carbohydrate) is also good for keeping blood glucose low, as only just mentioned in Fiber and Insulin Sensitivity. Ain't the human body weird?"

Fiber and Insulin Sensitivity.

Bluddy Americans. It's Fibre! But anyway....

Stabby the Raccoon posted the following study in a comment on CarbSane's blog. I thought that it was so interesting that I am linking to it here.

Fiber and Insulin Sensitivity.

This study has built-in cognitive dissonance.

The first Fig. suggests that cereal fibre is associated with a much lower RR for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) and that fruit & veggie fibre aren't.

Schulze et al. 2007: Cereal Fiber RR = 0.6 - 0.7. Fruit Fiber RR = 0.9 - 1.05. Vegetable Fiber RR = 0.95 - 1.15 approx.

The next table suggests otherwise.

Andersson et al., 2007: Whole grain diet contained 112 g/d of whole grain, 18 g fiber. No effect of whole grains on insulin sensitivity.

Ebeling et al., 1988: 5 g/d granulated guar. No effect on insulin sensitivity.

Johnston et al., 2010: Resistant starch supplement -40g/d. Improved insulin sensitivity with resistant starch.

Landin et al., 1992: 30 g/d granulated guar, given in 3-10 g doses. Improved insulin sensitivity with guar diet.

Maki et al., 2011: High-resistant starch diet- 30 g/d, Low-resistant starch diet- 15 g/d. Improved insulin sensitivity with both resistant starch diets, but effect only reached statistical significance for men.

Nilsson et al., 2008: White bread enriched with barley fiber and 8g resistant starch, Barley kernel based bread. Improved glucose tolerance with resistant starch.

Pouteau et al., 2010: 28 g/d acetogenic fibers (acacia gum and pectin). No effect on insulin sensitivity.

Robertson et al., 2003: High-resistant starch diet- 60 g/d. Improved insulin sensitivity with resistant starch.

Weickert et al., 2006: Fiber-enriched with 31.2 g insoluble fiber. Improved insulin sensitivity with increased insoluble fiber.

In conclusion, the resistant starches found in high-amylose rices such as Basmati, refrigerated boiled rice & boiled potatoes, also rye & barley breads are beneficial in terms of reducing your RR for T2DM. Watch out, though. Too much dietary resistant starch can cause colic, flatulence & diarrhoea if your intestinal bacteria are knackered. You want fermentation to short-chain fatty acids to occur, not osmotic laxation! See Genetics of Food Intolerance.

HP Deskjet F380 Ink Cartridge Error.

This is another techy post. I was printing a load of colour pictures when the printer suddenly stopped, displayed an "E" in the copy count window, lit the "cartridge" lamp next to the exclamation mark and opened a window on the lap-top screen with the words "Ink Cartridge Error" where the cartridges were displayed. Oh, dear!

I Googled the problem. Other people have had this problem. I use JET TEC H21 & H22 cartridges as they contain twice as much ink and are cheaper than HP H21 & H22 cartridges. They work really well, with no jet clogging when left unused in the printer for long periods of time. They give good ink coverage even when printing in Fast Draft mode.

Before throwing the F380 in the rubbish bin, I decided to replace both cartridges. I get my JET TEC H21 & H22 cartridges from inkraider.co.uk. The cartridges arrived the next day. Changing the H22 (colour) cartridge made no difference. Changing the H21 (black) cartridge cured the problem. The printer wasn't even using that cartridge when the fault occurred. I refitted the old H22 cartridge. It displayed as being full. I shall continue to use JET TEC cartridges, as this is the first time that I've had a problem with them in over a year of use.

It's interesting (to me) that a fault on one cartridge messed-up the operation of the other one even when the faulty cartridge was not being used. There's probably a short-circuit on an input/output line that's common to both cartridges.

So, don't throw the baby out with the bath water!

Foxy versus Shiny.

I've been using Mozilla Firefox for about six years. It's a very good browser, but it occasionally annoys me by acting like a Giant Panda i.e. it becomes very sluggish. It's possible to speed-up Firefox by going to about:memory and clicking on the "Minimise memory usage" button, but occasionally, I have to shut down Firefox, wait (sometimes for quite a long time) for it to disappear from memory, then restart it.

I therefore decided to have an affair with Google Chrome.

First impressions were good. Chrome installed quickly and it imported all of my Firefox bookmarks correctly, although it didn't import any website user-names & passwords (probably because they are protected).

Chrome has an extensive range of add-ons available. I was able to install Adblock Element Hiding Helper (which had all of the functionality of Adblock Plus, plus some extra features), Script No and Flag. With all of these installed, Chrome loaded pages very quickly.

Then cracks started to appear in the relationship.

Chrome has a grey bar at the top of the page which obscures things on the page. Double-clicking on it makes it disappear. Reloading the page makes it reappear. Using Adblock Element Hiding Helper, I could hide the grey bar (Alt+B, click on grey bar, Enter) on any particular site, but it occasionally reappears, requiring re-hiding.

Right-clicking on a link and selecting "Open link in new tab" opens a new tab but doesn't display it, requiring the user to click on the new tab. Firefox used to do this, but has worked correctly for a long time.

Watching videos on ITVPlayer, I noticed that the resolution appeared much lower than when played on Firefox. On Firefox, there's pixel interpolation which produces a much higher apparent resolution.

And the killer blow:-

When I created a new blog post, I couldn't set hyperlink text colour and the Html editor revealed a large number of spurious div & span tags.

That's it, Google Chrome. You're dumped!

EDIT: P.S. Firefox has been running much faster.

BlackBerry 9700 Headset Problem.

Blatant excuse to post the following video:-

But seriously, folks...

Nick, who cooks my Full English breakfasts in Henley-on-Thames, gave me his wife's BlackBerry Bold 9700 to look at, as it had an odd fault. With the headset plugged in, it worked fine. With the headset unplugged, the phone oscillated between using the internal loudspeaker and the headset socket about once a second, rendering the phone unusable.

After many hours of unsuccessful tinkering, I decided to take a look on Google to see if anybody else had successfully cracked the problem. I saw THIS. It appears to be a common problem with BlackBerrys, with lots of spam sites offering unlock codes to "fix" it.

Having upgraded the phone software from V5 to V6, the fault was still present. Therefore, it's not a software problem. Therefore, unlock codes won't fix it!

It's a hardware problem. It may be a design or a production problem, but the pull-up on the headset socket is too weak/has failed, resulting in the voltage on the headset present/not present control line falling towards "present" when the headset is not present. This may also be caused by moisture in the headset socket.

As the above control line interrupts the processor (as an instant response is required on plugging/unplugging the headset), there is major disruption to the phone's operation.

A fault like this is easily fixable by a reputable mobile phone repair shop. A resistor value change or solder joint rework is all that's required.

EDIT: As of 11th April 2012, Blogger is no longer compatible with the default BlackBerry browser. Basically, my BlackBerry is not working!

I am now using the Opera Mini browser. If I display emails on the BlackBerry in plain text, I can open links using Opera Mini, which works O.K. with Blogger.

The Capacitive Bottom-fed Fat Monopole.

Alternative title:- Serendipity rules, O.K.

This post is not about an obese Polish person who has a huge appetite, lives alone and has to be fed anally. I know a hilarious suppository joke, but it's not really suitable for this blog.

Having stayed up all night reading nearly 800 comments on Jack Kruse: Neurosurgeon. Leptin Reset and Cold Thermogenesis. Controversy, I noticed Sean's comment about Antennas.

I designed antennas for 225MHz to 400MHz portable man-pack radios (also a 1GHz to 3GHz Ultra Wide Band monopole antenna). There were two existing man-pack antennas, affectionately known as "The Bird-cage" and "The Egg-whisk". Electrically they worked well, but they would both catch in branches when the radio was used in woods.

My mission (should I choose to accept it, which I did) was to design an antenna that had a good impedance match over 225MHz to 400MHz, a good gain and couldn't get caught in branches.

The reason why the original antennas were shaped like bird-cages and egg-whisks was because barrels and inverse cones give a better impedance match than a piece of wire. Don't ask me why. The answer is extremely complicated and even I don't understand it!

The antenna had to be a bottom-fed monopole (an antenna which is designed to work with a ground-plane) with a connector at the bottom which plugged into the radio's RF connector. The RF system impedance was the standard 50 ohms.

As fat cylinders give a better impedance match than thin cylinders (a wire being an extreme case of a thin cylinder), I went for the fattest cylinder that would be acceptable on a man-pack radio. I designed an impedance-matching transformer using one of THESE made out of THIS. I connected the transformer to the end of the fat cylinder and examined the impedance using a 8753C Network Analyzer (or even older model).

During some faffing-about, a wire snapped and I was amazed to see that the match to 50 ohms improved. This led to other improvements being made, resulting in the Capacitive Bottom-fed Fat Monopole. It was rugged, it couldn't get caught in branches and it had a high gain. You could even bash somebody over the head with it without breaking it. It worked well on field trials. There were two versions - a short one for covert use which had a lower gain and a longer one for normal use which had a higher gain.

I hope you found that interesting. It's nice (for me) to blog about stuff that I have qualifications in!

Negativity is NOT an option!

Oh, wait.

I received a comment on another blog post mentioning Jeffrey M Friedman's commentary Modern science versus the stigma of obesity. I took offence to the following passage:-

"This simplistic notion is at odds with substantial scientific evidence illuminating a precise and powerful biologic system that maintains body weight within a relatively narrow range."

To say that I disagree with the above passage is an understatement of epic proportions. If this is the case, how can Extreme weight loss without surgery happen? This woman went from 265kg (583lb) to 97kg (213lb).

With the right diet, huge amounts of weight & body-fat can be lost and kept off. Lyle McDonald's Rapid Fat Loss solution is a PSMF (Protein-Sparing Modified Fast) that can produce huge weight & body-fat loss. See The Protein-Sparing Modified Fast (PSMF).

Up with this negativity I will not put!