E-cigarette technology

I think psychological experiments have pretty well concluded that there isn't any essential "human nature."

Some people are always altrustic and honest, some people are rotten to the core and always will be, and others are somewhere in the middle.

Whether they got that way by "nature" or "nuture" or some combination is hard to say. Maybe some of the rotten ones became that way due to poor environment in childhood, and maybe some just came that way from the factory. For my part think a lot of altruistim is probably learned/cultural and not innate. But it's likely that any human population can sustain a small number of sociopaths that prey on the rest of the population as an "evolutionary stable strategy." It's probably why high-conflict people are sometimes called "emotional vampires."

The whole "evolution" vs. "culture" thing is sort of a chimera anyway; we've had culture for by some estimates 2 million years. They're starting to become inseparable.

Yeah, my coffee maker exploits me every morning.

mmmm now where is that mars bar

It isn't the chocolate. It is the oils in the chocolate more likely. Dark chocolate likely would not have the same detrimental affect.

That's true, but only to a degree. Greasy chocolate is probably the worst for me. Dark chocolate is survivable, but only in small quantities. Note that my aforementioned chocolate binge mentioned above was powered by dark chocolate. However, all is not lost. All I need to do is abstain from eating the items listed on various web piles that are known to cause acid reflux. Unfortunately, those are also a good description of my normal diet, which might explain my problem. If you find my rants more acidic or acerbic than usual, it's not working.

Since going on a super low carb diet (i.e. getting my calories from grease and protein), my reflux problems have gone away. YMMV.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

My daughter hooked my wife, my daughter introduced her to a series called Prison Break, than gave her the Netflix password, she's been binge watching for a week and a half. I'm looking for a group for families of the afflicted. :-)

Mikek

I restrict my vices (coffee, chocolate, cheesecake) to early in the day, and go to bed a little hungry. That seems to improve digestion and sleep.

Thanks. Good to know that it works. Friends have recommended various diets that worked for them. One suggests a no-dairy diet. Another is vegan. All of them work simply because they require a reduction in the total amount of food consumed (caloric reduction). I suspect the general plan of all these diets is to eat less, which solves all kinds of problems. The trick is to produce a diet that is sufficiently diverse that doesn't become boring, while making it as unappetizing as possible, so one is discouraged from eating too much. I wasn't joking when I noted that I would require a 100% change of diet. Literally everything I eat is know to cause acid reflux. I'll probably try some kind of hybrid solution and play with the ingredients and especially the quantities.

My MD put me on Omeprozole (I have Barrett's) and it really works. But it's not a good idea long-term, so I cut the dose in half (she hates it when I practise medicine on myself) and might taper to zero.

Some things just go away on their own.