Odd Lots

[jeff_duntemann]

• Making you fat and diabetic is the least of it: Sugar (especially fructose) sabotages your brain. If it's your first favorite organ (as it is for me) put your brain at the top of your personal food chain. Be a caveman: Eat more animal fat and less sugar.
• Eat more fat and less sugar, but do it this way: Trade sugar for sleep. Lack of sleep makes you

Comments

[tceisele]

"at a distance closer than Venus is probably tidally locked on its star"

Does this actually follow? Venus isn't tidally locked to the Sun, after all, it just rotates really slowly (and in a way that does not really suggest that it got that way due to tidal braking).

[jeff_duntemann]

We don't know enough to be sure. I'm going from what I learned in Stephen Gillett & Ben Bova's book World Building, and consider it a good chance, granting that planets are all different and much may depend on the density of the planet, the eccentricity of its orbit, and who knows what else. Whatever process slowed Venus down (I agree we don't really know what yet, but tidal forces probably dominate) would probably have made life difficult even in the absence of a berserk atmosphere.