Jump to content

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2019 November 24

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Miscellaneous desk
< November 23 << Oct | November | Dec >> Current desk >
Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.


November 24[edit]

Alcohol consumption[edit]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_diet#Harvard_School_of_Public_Health

I realise that alcohol is not recommended for everyone but they've said twice that alcohol can have health benefits when consumed in moderation. When they mean "alcohol" do they mean all alcohol has health benefits or not?

When they say "alcohol", they mean ethanol-based drinks - not pure ethanol, and not the many other types of alcohol such as methanol or propanol, which are much more toxic. They are saying wine, beer and spirits, consumed in small quantities (1-2 drinks per day) can be beneficial for some diseases, so long as you avoid risky behaviours which can result from such drinking. "In general, risks exceed benefits until middle age". Please don't take my summary as the whole story, read the full Harvard document.-gadfium 05:14, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
For the purpose of most of these studies, a standard drink is about 14 grams of ethanol diluted by water and other ingredients. See here. That amounts to about one 12-ounce serving of 5% beer, (standard bottle or can size in the U.S. In countries that use the metric system, a standard bottle/can is about 330 mL or 11.2 ounces) a 5-ounce glass of wine (12 % abv), or a 1.5 ounce shot of hard liquor (80 proof/40% abv). --Jayron32 12:59, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What are they talking about when they mean artificially sweetened drinks? -- 60.242.121.62 -- 06:54, 26 November 2019‎ (UTC)

Read Sugar substitute. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots08:14, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What I mean is when it comes to artificially sweetened drinks, are they talking about energy drinks or soft drinks?


They're not just saying red wine is the only alcohol that has health benefits is what I'm saying when i mean "alcohol" or are there other options as well or not?

From WebMD:

"The strongest evidence suggests alcohol of any kind can increase good cholesterol," says Harvard researcher Eric Rimm.

However...

"Heavy alcohol consumption wipes out any health benefit and increases risk of liver cancer, cirrhosis, alcoholism, and obesity," Rimm says. "Heavy or binge drinkers may have increased risk of stroke, chronic hypertension, weight gain, colon and breast cancer."

  • Zelman, Kathleen M. "The Truth About Beer: Calories, Bellies, Nutrition, and More". WebMD.2606:A000:1126:28D:9417:2118:29F3:6E25 (talk) 21:50, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What i mean is are they saying any alcohol has health benefits in moderation or only some?

...alcohol of any kind can increase good cholesterol.

2606:A000:1126:28D:9417:2118:29F3:6E25 (talk) 15:39, 27 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

First of all, recognize that 'can' does not mean 'to anybody, in any conditions'. --CiaPan (talk) 16:39, 27 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Podcasts[edit]

Why is there no central place like YouTube for podcasts? Surely there's one place that just lists them all (or tries to)? I want to listen to podcasts, but I can't work out how to get started. Can anyone help?

YouTube isn't "a central place" for videos (or whatever you want to call them), it's a site on which the video originators (or others, sometimes illicitly) actively place them. YouTube itself doesn't proactively "collect" the videos (to my knowledge), and there are various other such sites of lesser popularity.
By contrast, podcasts are usually made by people (or organisations) to place on their own websites, in order to draw traffic to them as well as simply to present the podcasts' contents. It would be counterproductive of them to additionally or instead place the podcasts elsehere.
A central directory of podcasts would certainly be useful for viewers/listeners, but it would be a lot of work to create, and difficult (though not impossible) for the creators to monetize effectively.
Perhaps there's scope for a Wikipedia-like crowd-sourced directory, although the volatility of the internet where podcasts naturally reside, as contrasted to the relative stability of established facts and the published reliable sources we use here, would make compiling and maintaining it quite a challenge. That said, we do have on Wikipedia the article List of podcasting companies. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.217.209.178 (talk) 16:17, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Some podcasts, I believe, are published on iTunes. —{The poster formerly known as Tamfang} Tamfang (talk) 23:52, 24 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
[1] finds tons. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 07:46, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The nature of podcasts is that they would be decentralized. Therefore, they use RSS and Atom (Web standard) for syndication. The whole idea of podcasts is that they are independently served on whatever webpage they are hosted on. In the wild days of Internet colonization, it was considered a virtue to be decentralized and not have a "single contact point" for hosting all kinds of information; multiple sites were tied together, in a web of sorts. Elizium23 (talk) 23:17, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the best place to find a list of podcasts is in your podcast player. Every app I have that plays podcasts, has a huge directory of podcasts that allows me to discover them, along with Internet radio and other protocols and formats. Have you tried sampling different podcast player apps? Elizium23 (talk) 23:21, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]