I was listening to some descriptive physics lectures at UC Berkeley by Dr. Richard Muller today(thanks to the free educational section on the iTunes store). After I got past Dr. Muller's arrogant tone, I found the first one pretty interesting. He was talking about the advantages and disadvantages of hydrogen as fuel source. I was listening to the second lecture, when he said something that sounded so wrong, I had to rewind and listen to it again.

He was talking about weight loss, and said "if you want to lose a little weight, the best exercise is putting the food away". He then went into how much energy is contained in food, and how little energy we actually burn while exercising. I guess if you're only looking at the energy expended during exercise from the perspective of the pure mechanics of the activity, etc and only counting the energy expended DURING the activity, he's right. Cutting one's caloric intake would be easier. But he COMPLETELY ignored the energy the body uses repairing muscle tissue damaged during exercise and the increase in energy expenditure to maintain the increased metabolic rate caused by the added muscle mass. Besides weight management, there are many other benefits from exercise: better circulation, sleep, alertness, a sense of well being, and a lot more that I won't list, since I'm trying to keep this relatively short.

In his previous lecture, he spoke of how scientists on both sides of the hydrogen fuel debate only presented facts that supported their side of the argument. Advocates of a hydrogen based economy point out that per pound, hydrogen produces three times as much energy as gasoline. Opponents would then explain that hydrogen fuel has three times the volume of gasoline, and therefore requires three times as much storage space. OBVIOUSLY these numbers cancel each other out, so hydrogen is as energy efficient as gasoline, without the harmful emissions.

I was hoping that Dr. Muller would continue and speak of the merits of exercise that extend beyond the caloric expenditure at the time of the physical activity, but he didn't. (there's a link to a short essay he wrote about dieting that covers the same material at the end of this note).

Dr. Muller is quite knowledgeable in his chosen field, but somehow he has either ignored or forgotten some biology that most of us learned in high school. I guess there is some irony in my writing about this, as I hold degrees in Jazz and Classical trumpet, not biology or physics, but maybe that helps my point in the end.........I know a lot of people in New York who are incredible musicians, and intelligent people. Yet somehow, they can't seem to figure out the simplest things when it comes to using their computers. I get a lot of calls and instant messages with questions that can all be answered by either five minutes spent on a couple Google searches, a quick search of the help files on the person's computer, or plain common sense. Sometimes I get a little frustrated because MOST of these questions pertain to features of software that was designed to be user friendly.

When did our lives become so specialized that we lost the desire to learn about anything that didn't relate to making money?

http://muller.lbl.gov/TRessays/22-ThePhysicsDiet.htm