Got me thinkin

Some time ago, Mike Myles down at 90 Miles from Tyranny posted this meme in one of his many collections. 

Ignoring "who's CT?", the rest of it seems like real truth to me. The first obvious one to me is our weight being determined entirely by Calories In vs. Calories Out or CICO (pronounce that “psycho;” or “sicko” – whichever you prefer), often stated as the way to lose weight is “eat less and move more.” I don't think it's an overstatement to say many millions of people have tried that and found that our bodies are too adaptive, too much "learning systems" for a simple approach like that. A very common scenario is for someone to try caloric reduction, have some quick success losing weight, only to find they gain weight back to close to their starting point. Then the after effect is that once the system learns it can turn down the amount of calories it needs, it can leave that so that to drop weight requires continually reducing intake. 

His emphasis, though, seems to sound more like the crowd that seems to be afraid of chemical names and no familiarity with how chemistry works. If instead of telling them you were giving them water but said it was di-hydrogen monoxide (H₂O), they'd run in fear.

Another one of Mike Myles' posts that stuck out to me is the essence of being afraid of chemical names. 

The statement that the source of the Fluoride ion in our water supplies (and toothpaste, dental treatments and ... whatever) is hydrofluorosilicic acid (also known as hexafluorosilicic acid - H
₂SiF
₆) is true, but it's irrelevant. The nature of chemical reagents is that they get used up so there is none of that hydrofluorosilicic acid left in the water supply. The fluoride ions are removed from the acid and attach to sodium ions resulting in sodium fluoride, NaF, a salt like table salt, sodium chloride.  

Since there's no hexafluorosilicic acid remaining in the water we drink, testing it for safety doesn't make much sense. Whether or not Fluoride itself is toxic or "safe" in our water doesn't appear to be anything the makers of this poster care about. 

Well, just some rambling. Weekends tend to be the slowest news days, so I picked up some memes I've been meaning to write about. I'm open to suggestions about other things to write about.