Is bacon "bad" for you?

"Everyone knows" that bacon is bad for you but I had remembered reading some things in the past that seemed to suggest bacon has been unfairly vilified.  Also like many people I enjoy bacon and in that sense there was some confirmation bias involved in my searches into this topic.  I was hoping whatever I found would make me feel better about consuming bacon.

What I found is that it seems to be sodium, saturated fats and nitrates in bacon that people are citing as detrimental.  It seems like everyone agrees that the nitrates and sodium are bad, however there is some debate on the saturated fats.  Saturated fats can increase the levels of cholesterol which can increase your risk of heart disease and stroke.  Other sources state that saturated fats from natural sources are not bad for your health and are much better than "polyunsaturated and hydrogenated substitutes".  With a diet that is low in sugar and processed carbs and high in vegetables, the natural saturated fats found in bacon can fit into that just fine.

As I mentioned before, the nitrates or nitrites that are often included in processed meats can be detrimental to your health.  I'm not going to claim to understand the science behind it, but apparently researchers have found carcinogenic compounds in many types of store bought bacon.  However "nitrite-free" bacon is not necessarily the answer.  Some of the methods used to produce this type of bacon can actually produce more nitrite content than just normal processing with nitrite salts.  A source suggests that traditionally cured bacon with herbs, sugars, salt and sodium nitrite is much better than the "uncured" bacon.

My favourite quote out of all this was "But aside from this potential, sodium nitrate is actually dangerous when it come in contact with other substances possibly causing a fire, inhaling it can cause problems with your respiratory system and exposure directly to your skin can cause severe irritation.  Now granted, most are not inhaling bacon, rubbing it on their body (although I have heard a few stories)..."

Overall the conclusion seems to be that as part of a healthy diet, bacon can be a good addition provided that it's "naturally cured".  Bacon should probably not be eaten all the time, especially some of the lower quality nitrate preserved brands.  Some studies have shown that eating more processed meats can increase the risks of some diseases, though the people that ate more meats also smoked more and in general had less healthy diets, so it's hard to say which way the arrow of causality points.

Why do football players put black lines under their eyes?

Watching parts of the football games this weekend reminded me of the black lines or smudges that many of the players put under their eyes.  I had always "known" that this helped to reduce glare in the eyes but I wanted to check and see if this was true and how much it actually helped.

I found that this grease is called eye black and players in baseball and football have been wearing it for some time.  In football it dates back to at least 1942, it goes even farther back in baseball and was originally made from burned cork ashes.  The glare reducing effects hadn't really been tested over the years and over time eye black has been used for the intimidation factor and even as a message board.  Advertisements and other messages can be seen on some players with commercial eye black stickers.

A couple of studies were done within the last ten years and it was found that eye black gives a "small, but statistically significant" increase in glare reduction and contrast sensitivity.  Interestingly commercial stickers were found to have no advantage over petroleum jelly, the control.  One of the studies found that eye black was less effective on blue-eyed people, likely because they have less pigment to block out the light.

So it may give some benefit, but it seems like most players simply do it for the ritual and the "fashion".  And if it could possibly give a small competitive advantage then why not?

Battery charging

With all of the smartphones, tablets and laptops around, most people have a device with a battery and have heard advice from other people on how to get the most out that battery.  The main thing I've heard is that you should let your battery drain all the way and then charge it back up to increase the battery life.  Curious if this was true I set out on a journey through the internet.

I found a bit of conflicting information and learned a few things about the different types of batteries, though I'm nowhere near an expert now.  Basically there are a few main types of batteries used.  The older ones are NiCd (nickel cadmium) and NiMH (nickel-metal hydride).  They aren't very widely used anymore because of environmental concerns surrounding their disposal.  Apparently with these types of batteries it is a good idea to completely discharge and then recharge them to ensure maximum capacity.  They're also said to have a "memory effect" that can result from not following this procedure.

Newer Lithium-Ion or Lithium-Polymer batteries are commonly found in smartphones and the latest electronic devices.  These don't suffer from the memory effect and the batteries can be shaped to different sizes allowing flexibility in the design of the devices they'll power.  From the Apple website on batteries they say that "you can recharge a lithium-ion polymer battery whenever convenient, without requiring a full charge or discharge cycle."  Although on their iPhone battery page they say "Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down)."  It can also be important to calibrate your battery to make sure that any battery stats that are reported are correct.

Other sources seem to support the occasional full discharge and recharge every so often.  Apparently it's also not necessarily a good idea to keep your phone plugged in all the time as it can stress the battery.  Extreme temperatures (hot or cold) are also bad, pretty obvious.

Safely remove hardware?

You plug in a USB flash drive, transfer some files and then get ready to unplug it.  If you're like me then sometimes you decide to "safely remove hardware" and sometimes you don't.  I figured that if there weren't any file transfers going on then I should probably be fine, though I wasn't completely confident that was the case.  If you remove it while files are being transferred then yeah you can probably expect data loss or corruption, but I wanted to know about other cases.

According to anecdotal reports it seems like some people "haven't experienced any problems" while others have had data loss or worse when not safely removing hardware.  It depends on the hardware that is being removed though I'm mostly interesting in flash drives.  So it turns out there is an option in Windows for flash drives to optimize for quick removal or better performance.  You can open "Device Manager", expand the "Disk Drives" section, right click a USB drive and select Properties.  If you select the Policies tab you can switch between "Quick Removal" which is the default and "Better Performance".

It says that if you use Quick Removal you don't have to use safely remove hardware!  Obviously you don't want to remove a flash drive while files are being transferred, but this is probably why many people never see any problems.  However you may have to be careful if there is a program in the background that is writing to it.  Many flash drives have blinking lights that will notify you if the device is in use, so that can be another indicator.  If you have Better Performance enabled it says that you must use safely remove hardware.  This is because "write caching" will be enabled.  Basically this means that Windows may not write the data to your drive immediately which can improve performance in some cases.  When you safely remove hardware it will force Windows to write all of the data to the drive to make sure that you don't lose any of it.

There is also a feature called ReadyBoost that if it's enabled then you should probably use safely remove hardware to make sure that there aren't any problems.  I believe this is disabled by default though.  In conclusion if you're just transferring files and the transfer has completed it's most likely safe to just remove the drive.  However if you have "Better Performance" enabled, are using ReadyBoost or just want to be completely safe then use safely remove hardware.

Why is waterboarding so bad?

Over the last decade you've probably heard the term "waterboarding" or seen it in a movie at least once or twice.  Here's the wikipedia definition because it's succinct, "Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over the face of an immobilized captive, thus causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning."  Often it's shown to be done with a cloth over the person's face.  After doing a little reading on this I found that it was often reported that CIA officers or other trained individuals would last less than 20 seconds before giving up.  One of my first thoughts was is it that quick, can't they just hold their breath for 20 seconds?  Obviously they could, so obviously I was missing something.

After doing some reading it seemed like that number may or may not be true for trained individuals but there have been public demonstrations where it is about right.  There were also some things I learned that weren't obvious to me when I first heard about waterboarding.  One of the key things seems to be that the head of the person is set at a position below their lungs.  This way the water can get into their respiratory system in the mouth and nose but not straight into their lungs, simulating drowning.  So if done right the person is not at a large risk of dying, although it may feel like it to them.

From what I've read it seems like as long as a person can stay in control and hold they're breath they will be ok, but as soon as they lose control of their breathing they're in big trouble.  Some people are better at staying in control than others.  One of the most interesting (and a bit chilling) experiences to read is here.  He talks about testing out waterboarding on himself in a controlled situation.  After his final test he says "It took me ten minutes to recover my senses once I tried this. I was shuddering in a corner, convinced I narrowly escaped killing myself."  Obviously this is anecdotal, but the entire post was very interesting to read.  The conclusion seems to be that at some point our instincts take over and there is nothing we can do to stop the panic.

In an uncontrolled test an interrogator could easily force down a person's chest so that they couldn't hold their breath and combined with the stress of the situation I'm sure that would make it much more difficult.  On top of that this could be done repeatedly and could probably cause severe psychological damage.  So basically you're not going to outlast an interrogator, you will break at some point and holding your breath is not going to help you.

Besides being very cruel, one of the reasons this technique may not be that effective is that it can often bring about false confessions.  If it's anywhere near as terrifying as people have reported you could make anyone confess to anything.