Matt Cassel is my neighbor. He is the nicest guy you could meet, humble, dedicated, a family man with a lovely wife and 2 beautiful kids. KC fans are a-holes and I'm glad Winston called them on it.

I live where this took place. The local paper gave her account that the car would not go in to neutral, that because the car was keyless electric ignition, she couldn't turn it off, and she used the brakes to no avail. Doesn't make sense to me. Any motorheads able to enlighten us here?

Trust me, you folks across the pond are light-years ahead of Americans when it comes to reasonable expectations from the health-care system. A mistake many people make when dieting is losing weight too quickly. It's very easy to relapse because the change in eating habits has not been established. I find the apps for calorie counting very helpful. You can scan bar codes and import all the nutritional info. It's definitely more work entering home cooked meals though. Don't pay attention to all the fad diets, low carb, etc. Calorie counting is the most effective and sustainable way to lose weight and keep it off. Good luck. Never underestimate the power of your own mind.

You must be outside the US too, because you mention the NHS. I think Americans, in general, have a poorer attitude about responsibility for their own health. They expect doctors to fix their years of neglect with the miracles of medicine, and it's just not possible.

I completely understand that it's tough once you get there. Like you say, strenuous exercise can be very difficult and you can easily injure yourself pushing it too hard. Walking is still good though, it doesn't take a lot to ramp up the metabolism a bit.
I disagree, willpower is something you can switch on. No one quits smoking until they decide to. If you truly want to lose weight, count calories. Set a limit at whatever, say 2,000 cal/day. Then stop when you get there. Anyone CAN do it, if they want to bad enough. I just don't buy fatalistic attitudes. It's hard, it's not easy, it's not comfortable, but anyone CAN do it.

By the way, I work on the morbidly obese every day. The place I work is designated a "Center of Excellence" for Bariatric surgery. Yes, doing bariatric surgery helps prevent a lot of complications down the road, like diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc. With the US struggling to provide even basic health care needs to the poor, do I get a little miffed with all the health care dollars consumed because of self-induced diseases, like smoking and over-eating? I freely admit I do.

To a large extent, no pun intended, obese people want to find out why they are a "victim" of obesity. The explosion of obesity, especially in the USA, is rather easily explained if you use some common sense. What has evolution designed us for, in terms of our metabolism? Humans have had to work for what they eat, and that food has always been relatively unprocessed and calorie deficient. Now we are sedentary, programmed to eat a certain amount until we feel "full" and that food is VERY calorie dense. Presto, an epidemic of obesity. I mean really, is it that hard to understand? Yes, some people are more prone to become obese. We all know people with a "hollow leg" that seem to eat incredible amounts of food, and yet they don't get obese. So, your body type does influence it.
I'm all for science that makes it easier to lose weight. We know people have a hard time fighting their compulsions, whether it be tobacco, alcohol, drugs, or food. But, all those things are choices. A cheeseburger doesn't just jump down your throat. There is no "I can't lose weight." Yes you can, if your willpower is greater than your compulsion, and if you go back to the habits that evolution designed you for. One reason obesity rates are greater in the US is the average person's caloric expenditure is less here. Americans walk about 1/3 as much distance per year as compared to Europeans. American cities are sprawling and walking is not an efficient means of getting stuff done. Plus, there are now scooters in every Walmart now, so the obese can walk even less.
I do strenuous exercise several times a week and I try to eat reasonably. Frankly, I don't like exercise that much. I don't get any "high" from it. But I know it's good for me, actually, THE MOST important thing I can do to benefit my health. It's a choice. Everyone has choice, except I guess the kids that grow up in homes where parents ply them with calorie dense foods. The parents don't have to, but they do. Every time they go to the grocery, they have choice. The pop tarts don't jump off the shelve and into their carts.
I just get tired of the "victim" mentality, that's more prominent in the US than anywhere I know.

Getting fat is like filling a bathtub with water. If you run the spigot faster than the drain, it fills up. Now THAT is heavy science. Burn more calories than you eat = weight loss.

Well said.

Impressive. Indeed, a left handed bass strung right handed. And it is a fretless bass with fret markers painted on. Silky slides like this can only be done on a fretless instrument. Sliding on a fretted instrument gives you semitone jumps as each fret is encountered.

Gorgeous.

I was giving statistics for the USA. The fear of nuclear energy is irrational. Given a near-worst case scenario like in Japan, no one dies from radiation and a very limited geographic area is made unusable and access is easily restricted. For the life of me I can't understand why people continue to be willing to fill the atmosphere with CO2, and other pollutants, while such a clean alternative is readily available. An individual's lifetime energy consumption footprint is less than a baseball size piece of nuclear waste. Bury it a mile deep in the desert and it will remain there for a million years.
>> ^Fletch:

>> ^snoozedoctor:
Number killed by radiation from nuclear power generation in the last 40 years, about zero.

Chernobyl?
But you are right. Perspective needed. I think nuclear power will be one of very few options for large and consistent amounts of power generation in the future, assuming wind and solar don't become vastly more efficient and take off in a MUCH bigger way. We are on the downward slope of the bell curve of available oil and fusion has been 30 years away for the last 40 years. There are safer, cleaner, more inherently stable nuclear options out there that could win over those opposed to nuclear power, although I think most opposition today is based on ignorance and unwarranted fear.

Number of firearm deaths in US each year, about 30,000. Number of traffic fatalities, about 30,000. Number killed by radiation from nuclear power generation in the last 40 years, about zero. How about some perspective please.

Seems that she makes the opposite point she's trying to argue. The studies show the antidepressants are no better than placebo in mild to moderate depression. Therefore, they don't work, OTHER than functioning as a placebo. Yes, we all know the placebo effect is real, about 20% of people improve with a sugar pill. So, I guess she's arguing that the antidepressant is just a substitute for the sugar pill, and therefore effective in that regard. Why not save expense and side-effects and just give patients the sugar pill instead, when they have mild to moderate depression? Or better yet, prescribe exercise, bright light therapy, nutrition, abstinence from CNS depressants, and healthy sleep habits instead.
The evidence for a physiologic/anatomical cause of the symptoms of depression is overwhelming. The vegetative symptoms of severe depression; generalized anxiety, appetite disturbance and, the hallmark, sleep disturbance, all point to an abnormal "hypervigilant" state probably mediated through the hypothalamic, pituitary, adrenal axis. The genetic predisposition for depression and the evidence that permanent changes in the brain may progress with frequent bouts of severe depression also point to a common physiologic pathway. Having experienced the acute onset of 2 bouts of severe depression, complete with all the vegetative symptoms, I can tell you from personal experience that you KNOW something has changed in the way your brain and body are functioning. It's if an alien has invaded your body, taken control and tucked your old "self" away in a closet somewhere. I couldn't say that any of the antidepressants that I tried had a profound effect on recovery, it was 6 months of hell, and then about 2 years of discomfort before remission in both cases. However, now I think I'm on a combination drug therapy that I feel is more effective in keeping me in remission. Part of the issue may have been that I'm more bipolar with mainly depressive mood, rather than a true unipolar depressive type.

I repeat.......4 greatest medical discoveries of all time, antibiotics, antisepsis, anesthesia, and immunizations.