1. PDFs are much easier to read on a vertical-format screen unless said screen is very large (would need to twist modern wide-screen laptops sideways). Also, I prefer that my reading device is not heavy and that it is small enough to read while on standing on public transportation -- this way I can get heads up on things before arriving to work.
2. The ability to annotate documents directly using finger input is amazing (I am not talking about handwriting -- I am talking about yellow-highlighting passages and keywords without using the classic trackpad and cursor combo which requires a stable platform for it to be usable).
3. The ability to just take the PDF/document/notes/whatever and bring it over to my boss next door is irreplaceable. Laptop is too heavy and cumbersome to hold with one hand, and email/file-sharing is cumbersome as well -- bosses are generally unwilling to listen to their subordinates tell them to open this or that file while they are in the middle of something on their screen. This is why most offices have stuck with paper for so long -- it is great to be able to carry something in your hand and just show it to somebody across the floor. Likewise, it is easier for my boss (who also has an iPad) to just show me some document without having to print it or email it to me or walk me over across the lab to his computer.
"Laptop is too heavy and cumbersome to hold with one hand, and email/file-sharing is cumbersome as well -- bosses are generally unwilling to listen to their subordinates tell them to open this or that file while they are in the middle of something on their screen."
The importance of this is under-recognized.
A friend realized it is much cheaper to just pre-load an iPad with demo software and mail it free to a prospective client, than to fly to said customer and arrange for meeting times and persuade them to load & run software on their computers. Open an envelope, turn it on, start using the product - send us a check and we'll keep it on and send you more. "$500, it just works" is _cheap_ for what it buys.
Caffeine can decrease anxiety? That's highly contradictory to a bulk of medical wisdom out there. People can experience spikes in their heart rate due to stimulants like caffeine.
Also, tea is more of a cultural phenomenon in that region of the world. It's not thought of as a tool for meditation. In fact, in yogic traditions, you're supposed to stay away from caffeine.
Caffeine can decrease anxiety? That's highly contradictory to a bulk of medical wisdom out there.
"Medicinal plants contain a wide array of chemical compounds. At first, this looks like chaos, but more investigation reveals a distinct order. Natural selection pressures push a plant to "try out" variations on molecules to enhance the plant's odds of surviving stressful environments. So, often, one molecule is present in the greatest amount and has the most dramatic effect in a human body -- but along with it are variations of that molecule in the same plant.
For example, for several years, I did ethnobotanical study in South America, researching native uses for coca leaf, which most of us know only as the source of the isolated, problematic, addictive drug cocaine. For Andean Indians, whole coca leaf is the number one medicinal plant. They use it to treat gastrointestinal disturbances; specifically, for both diarrhea and constipation. From the perspective of Western pharmacology, this makes no sense. Cocaine stimulates the gut, it increases bowel activity, so obviously it would be a good treatment for constipation, but what could it do for diarrhea except make it worse?
However, if you look carefully at the coca leaf's molecular array, you find 14 bioactive alkaloids, with cocaine in the greatest amount. While cocaine acts as a gut stimulant, other coca alkaloids can have precisely the opposite action, they inhibit gut activity.
This means that when you take the whole mixture into the body, the potential is there for the action to go in either direction. What decides it? The state of the body, which is a function of which receptors in the gut's tissues are available for binding. During my time in Andean Indian communities, I collected many reports about whole coca's paradoxical, normalizing effect on bowel function, and experienced it firsthand, as well."
Andrew Weil isn't exactly regarded as the most credible source in medical circles. (And I'm being kind here. I've heard some comparisons to Deepak Chopra…)
He's pretty up on his science. Don't forget he graduated from Harvard medical school, was editor of the Crimson, and majored in botany as an undergrad, making him probably vastly smarter and more knowledgeable about science than anyone here on HN. I actually saw him give a talk this year where he talked about how LSD cured his cat allergies: http://www.maps.org/videos/source/video6.html
He speculates about a lot of stuff like this that sounds pretty crazy unless you're willing to take the time to understand his argument. Obviously these kinds of musings are unproven, but that is by definition the nature of speculation. And his actual medical advice is all pretty solid from what I've seen. My favorite talk by him is this:
> vastly smarter and more knowledgeable about science than anyone here on HN
Perhaps, but that's probably why the GP talked about his reputation "in medical circles". He's not any more knowledgeable about science than his major critics:
The quackwatch article you cite is extremely intellectually dishonest. It makes a couple points which would be interesting if true, but the overwhelming about of BS makes me highly skeptical. The author seems to have a complete inability to just point out any errors Weil has made and explain why they are wrong. Instead we get sentences like:
"The leaders of the establishment believe in the scientific method, and in the rule of evidence, and in the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology upon which the modern view of nature is based. Alternative practitioners either do not seem to care about science or explicitly reject its premises."
Not only is this intellectually dishonest because it has nothing to do with what Weil has actually written, but it isn't even true; it was homeopathy that invented evidence-based medicine and drug testing in the first place.
"19th-century homeopaths pioneered systematic drug-testing research, challenged the dangerously depleting procedures of mainstream physicians at that time, established rigorous professional standards, and valued advanced education at least as highly as their mainstream counterparts did. It was not without reason that homeopaths considered the bases of their approach to medical problems to be more logical and more promising than the inherited tradition of the ancients, upon which mainstream physicians still based their practices."
(For what it's worth, JAMA highly recommends the book.)
(Thanks for the homeopathy citation. I'll have to check that out.)
> The author seems to have a complete inability to just point out any errors Weil has made
Are we reading the same thing? The quote you cited was from the fifth paragraph of the 18-paragraph first section of a five-section piece which contains countless references to Weil's own words. Admittedly I have not read the whole thing yet myself, but I would hope you could reserve judgment on the intellectual honesty of the essay after reading somewhat past the introductory portion.
I skimmed through the whole article and found all sorts of problems. For example:
"Weil's writings are ambiguous about the conflict between science and alternative medicine, as they are about many other issues in alternative medicine."
What conflict between science and alternative medicine? How is his writing ambiguous? How is this a problem? How is his writing ambiguous about other issues in alternative medicine?
"[weil] thinks that all healing methods ought to be tested; and yes, modern science can make useful contributions to our understanding of health and disease. Yet the scientific method is not, for Weil, the only way, or even the best way, to learn about nature and the human body."
What does Weil actually get wrong? Is there actually some error in either his epistemology or what he is advocating?
"Many important truths are intuitively evident and do not need scientific support, even when they seem to contradict logic."
Where does he actually say this? What's the context? There isn't even any inherent problem with this statement, so it doesn't make any sense to criticize him for it unless you're going to actually go out and find something wrong.
"Weil is not bothered by logical contradictions in his argument, or encumbered by a need to search for objective evidence."
What logical contradictions?
The typical Redditor could write exactly the same article without even reading any of Weil's books. And it really only gets worse from there, e.g.
"According to Weil, many of his basic insights about the causes of disease and the nature of healing come from what he calls 'stoned thinking'"
Again he can't find any actual problem with what Weil is saying, so he's just poisoning the well.
He does eventually make a couple of points that appear to be solid, but there is so much other crap in there that it's hard to take seriously. If there are cases where Weil is wrong then by all means he should be called out on it, but this article is just nonsense.
It is the combination of Caffeine and L-Theanine. Drugs/compounds in combination can frequently have different effects than just smashing the lists of effects of the two together. Further, the effects of stimulants are not simply "increases anxiety, heart rate, reduces concentration, etc". Look at cases of ADD where stimulants increase concentration. Look at studies where low doses of caffeine increase alertness without the "bad" stimulant effects.
As for your strawman about yogic monks: the article did not say "all monks..", just "monks...". The difference here is that without the qualifier, english assumes the statement refers to a significant portion, but not all or even most. Further, some traditions, such as various forms of Buddhism, particularly those that practice sitting meditation, do in fact have tea as part of the meditative ritual.
tl;dr - you are way over-simplifying and being generally disingenuous
A lot of the cases with ADHD are very specific to the type of ADHD. Usually things that somehow alter norepinephrine or Dopamine levels in the brain (as Caffeine does) often alter somebody's response with ADHD.
For me, it doesn't work. I'm just too wired, my heart feels like it's going to pop out of my chest if I take an amount that will affect my actual concentration (not the same as alertness). Adderall, to me, feels like a much smoother caffeine, and I can concentrate. However, I hate the way it also makes me feel in high doses. Atomoxetine worked great for me as well, but had weird "sexual" side effects. Right now I'm mostly on Wellbutrin XL, which is a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, and while it doesn't work as well stimulants, it does work to a point and I feel like my normal self and even better. So far, the best combination for me has been Wellbutrin with a small kicker (5-10mg) of Adderall. Before Wellbutrin, I would take 20-60mg of Adderall a day. Also, Wellbutrin helps with some of my natural anxiety as well.
Also, for what it's worth, Adderall (a stimulant) tends to decrease anxiety for me in certain situations, while amplifying it in others. It's a weird relationship. In some social situations where tons of things are happening, without Adderall I can't focus on anything and I start to go on a weird panic mode. With adderall, that decreases because I can ignore certain things. But it also decreases with alcohol too, because I just don't care.
Anyways, the best thing I ever did was see a psychiatrist. Treatment of ADHD sucks because it's hard to know what will and what won't work, and what side effects are involved.
The idea that stimulants only increase concentration for folks who suffer from ADD is bogus. I don't have the research at hand, but studies show that this effect is not unique to sufferers of ADD.
Obviously, the effects of caffeine are dose dependent like any other drug. At low doses (varies by person), you will often achieve lower anxiety, boosted confidence, and a positive overall effect on you mood. If you exceed a certain limit though, you will start to see the opposite of each of these. This is a common phenomenon that occurs with many drugs.
That's true, but batteries are for storing energy. Separating water into Hydrogen & Oxygen is for producing energy. You'd need to have a battery on board to do it and you might as well use it to run the electric motor since it'd be more efficient.
Actually, people have been talking about the "hydrogen economy" for a long time, and whenever it's about electrolysis of water, it's about hydrogen as a way to transport and store energy.
You put electrolysis near a "stranded" source of energy (a hydro dam in BFE where costs/losses to run electrical lines to users is high), produce hydrogen, then ship it out. One of the more interesting (kooky or technologically interesting, your choice) is "Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion" (OTEC), where differentials in water temperature at different depths are exploited to generate electricity, which then is used to make hydrogen, which is then exported from a platform in the open ocean to users elsewhere.
I think there are a lot better ways to get hydrogen than electrolysis (right now, steam or kvaerner processes, and eventually, a biological or biocatalyzed process), and I'd prefer current liquid fuels to hydrogen, but it's not utter kookiness.
I find it inspiring if someone in a position of power in the economy like Tata is actually talking about things like that, although cynically I guess it's probably just feel-good posturing.
I'd like a world in 2050+ with 50-100x more energy production, and all of that from nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, etc., with a mix of electrical consumption and synthetic fuels for transportation.
I wouldn't expect anyone thinks it's a good idea to do the separation in the car. You'd do it at a plant somewhere to take advantage of economies of scale.
Works on Firefox.