A RECENT SENSIBLE ARTICLE ABOUT DIET

Worrying about your diet is bad for you! Stay happily fat. Ignore media messages about obesity. Those are unusual lessons but they are lessons to be learned from the following findings. Journal abstract follows:

Is Dieting Advice From Magazines Helpful or Harmful? Five-Year Associations With Weight-Control Behaviors and Psychological Outcomes in Adolescents

Patricia van den Berg et al

OBJECTIVE. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association between frequent reading of magazine articles about dieting/weight loss and weight-control behaviors and psychological outcomes 5 years later in a sample of adolescents.

PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS. Data are from Project EAT (Eating Among Teens), a 5-year longitudinal study of eating, activity, weight, and related variables in 2516 middle and high school students. In 1999 (time 1), participants completed surveys and had their height and weight measured. In 2004 (time 2), participants were resurveyed.

RESULTS. For female adolescents, the frequency of healthy, unhealthy, and extreme weight-control behaviors increased with increasing magazine reading after adjusting for time 1 weight-control behaviors, weight importance, BMI, and demographic covariates. The odds of engaging in unhealthy weight-control behaviors (such as fasting, skipping meals, and smoking more cigarettes) were twice as high for the most frequent readers compared with those who did not read magazine articles about dieting and weight loss. The odds of using extreme weight-control behaviors (such as vomiting or using laxatives) were 3 times higher in the highest frequency readers compared with those who did not read such magazines. There were no significant associations for either weight-control behaviors or psychological outcomes for male adolescents.

CONCLUSIONS. Frequent reading of magazine articles about dieting/weight loss strongly predicted unhealthy weight-control behaviors in adolescent girls, but not boys, 5 years later. Findings from this study, in conjunction with findings from previous studies, suggest a need for interventions aimed at reducing exposure to, and the importance placed on, media messages regarding dieting and weight loss.

Source
 

WOW! THIS LOT OF MEDICAL RESEARCHERS HAVE DISCOVERED SOCIAL CLASS

Smarter people tend to eat more “approved” food. But what does it mean? It turns out that it is not a raw IQ effect but is mediated via social class. Brighter people are more educated and more education means more indoctrination into conventional health wisdom. The findings do however extend yet again the evidence about the great raw predictive power of IQ tests in most aspects of life. Journal abstract follows:

Childhood Mental Ability in Relation to Food Intake and Physical Activity in Adulthood: The 1970 British Cohort Study

G. David Batty et al.

OBJECTIVE. The purpose of this work was to examine the relation of scores on tests of mental ability in childhood with food consumption and physical activity in adulthood.

METHODS. Based on a cohort of >17000 individuals born in Great Britain in 1970, 8282 had complete data for mental ability scores at 10 years of age and reported their food intake and physical activity patterns at 30 years of age.

RESULTS. Children with higher mental ability scores reported significantly more frequent consumption of fruit, vegetables (cooked and raw), wholemeal bread, poultry, fish, and foods fried in vegetable oil in adulthood. They were also more likely to have a lower intake of chips (French fries), nonwholemeal bread, and cakes and biscuits. There was some attenuation in these associations after adjustment for markers of socioeconomic position across the life course, which included educational attainment, with statistical significance lost in some analyses. Higher mental ability was positively associated with exercise habit, in particular, intense activity (defined by being out of breath/sweaty). The associations between mental ability and these behaviors were similar in both men and women, and they were somewhat stronger for verbal than nonverbal ability.

CONCLUSIONS. It is plausible that the skills captured by IQ tests, such as the ability to comprehend and reason, may be important in the successful management of a person’s health behaviors.

Source

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Just some problems with the “Obesity” war:

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant — thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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(Excerpt from an article by Steve Sailer )

“In the presence of [ethnic] diversity, we hunker down. We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us”.

-Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam

It was one of the more irony-laden incidents in the history of celebrity social scientists. While in Sweden to receive a $50,000 academic prize as political science professor of the year, Harvard’s Robert D. Putnam, a former Carter administration official who made his reputation writing about the decline of social trust in America in his bestseller Bowling Alone, confessed to Financial Times columnist John Lloyd that his latest research discovery-that ethnic diversity decreases trust and co-operation in communities-was so explosive that for the last half decade he hadn’t dared announce it “until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity, saying it `would have been irresponsible to publish without that.’” In a column headlined “Harvard study paints bleak picture of ethnic diversity,” Lloyd summarized the results of the largest study ever of “civic engagement,” a survey of 26,200 people in 40 American communities:

When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust. `They don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions,’ said Prof Putnam. `The only thing there’s more of is protest marches and TV watching.’

Lloyd noted, “Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, `the most diverse human habitation in human history.’” As if to prove his own point that diversity creates minefields of mistrust, Putnam later protested to the Harvard Crimson that the Financial Times essay left him feeling betrayed, calling it “by two degrees of magnitude, the worst experience I have ever had with the media.” To Putnam’s horror, hundreds of “racists and anti-immigrant activists” sent him e-mails congratulating him for finally coming clean about his findings.

Lloyd stoutly stood by his reporting, and Putnam couldn’t cite any mistakes of fact, just a failure to accentuate the positive. It was “almost criminal,” Putnam grumbled, that Lloyd had not sufficiently emphasized the spin that he had spent five years concocting. Yet considering the quality of Putnam’s talking points that Lloyd did pass on, perhaps the journalist was being merciful in not giving the professor more rope with which to hang himself. For example, Putnam’s line-”What we shouldn’t do is to say that they [immigrants] should be more like us. We should construct a new us”-sounds like a weak parody of Bertolt Brecht’s parody of Communist propaganda after the failed 1953 uprising against the East German puppet regime: “Would it not be easier for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?”

Before Putnam hid his study away, his research had appeared on March 1, 2001 in a Los Angeles Times article entitled “Love Thy Neighbor? Not in L.A.” Reporter Peter Y. Hong recounted, “Those who live in more homogeneous places, such as New Hampshire, Montana or Lewiston, Maine, do more with friends and are more involved in community affairs or politics than residents of more cosmopolitan areas, the study said.”

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Brookes News Update

The US economy, consumer spending and the GDP fallacy: It has become the received wisdom that increased consumption more than offset the spending decline that the Clinton recession brought about. This is dangerous nonsense and that can only end in another recession

Imports and trade deficits: the good and the bad: The protectionist injunction against “free trade at any cost” is ridiculous. Free trade never takes place “at any cost”. Trade only occurs up to that point where the cost of trading exceeds the benefits

Augusto Pinochet: the untold story: Even now the media cannot tell the truth about Allende’s efforts to turn Chile into a Stalinist Gulag. As for leftists, history also teaches us that when they get even a small taste of their own medicine, their moaning and whining and sniveling becomes a worldwide cause celebre

US elections reveal a growing discontent: Congress appears to be that problem. They are out of control making promises they can’t keep, spending the growth in revenues from a good economy as fast as they can on pork for their financial supporters

Opening the doors of Islam: The neurosis of Islamofascism can only be eradicated from within Islam by Moslems themselves. Ijtihad is how they are going to do it, how they are going to open the doors of Islam after being closed for a thousand years and bring it into the 21st century

Will the US dollar collapse?: The US dollar is having a hard time of it. But why is this so? Why has the dollar been falling? The basic argument is that the trade deficit is unsustainable and is driving down the dollar. But this does not tell us what is driving the deficits

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ELSEWHERE

Israel ‘has plans for Iran nuke strike’: “Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper said. Citing what it said were several Israeli military sources, the paper said two Israeli air force squadrons had been training to blow up an enrichment plant in Natanz using low-yield nuclear “bunker busters”. Two other sites, a heavy water plant at Arak and a uranium conversion plant at Isfahan, would be targeted with conventional bombs, the Sunday Times said. [STACLU has a lot of discussion about how much credence can be attached to this story]

The right minimum wage: “Democrats consider the minimum-wage increase a signature issue. But the minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities’ prices. Washington, which has its hands full delivering the mail and defending the shores, should let the market do well what Washington does poorly”

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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“All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State.” — 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left — inspiring Karl Marx, the American “Progressives” of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin’s Communism. The very word “Nazi” is a German abbreviation for “National Socialist” (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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TN: Armored car courier shoots holdup man: “An armored car courier shot and seriously wounded a would-be robber this morning at a Whitehaven gas station. The courier was leaving the Mapco at 979 Brooks at about 8:30 when a robber, possibly armed with a pistol, began spraying him with tear gas or some chemical agent, according to C.M. Sturgis, a supervisory FBI agent with the Safe Streets Task Force. The Loomis Fargo & Co. courier drew his pistol and fired twice, striking the robber in the lower torso. The suspect jumped into a white Ford Crown Victoria with at least one man inside. He did not have the money bag. Police later found the suspect lying in the street at Ridge Road and Wagon Trail Lane, south of Raines Road and west of Weaver Road. He had been stripped of his clothing and dumped out of the car by his associates.”

 

Legitimate self-defense: “For years now, well-meaning activists have sought to ban the lawful possession of concealed firearms within Utah schools. In a classic case of psychological projection, they insist that the mere presence of a firearm in anyone’s hands will lead to loss of self control and murder should tempers flare. If asked whether that would be their response if someone angered them, they’ll often retort, ‘Of course not, I can control myself!’ Apparently they believe they are the only ones capable of such self control. Most prefer to trust the state instead of trusting its citizens.”

 

SAF inaugurates “Roosevelt Courageous Woman” award: “Recalling that the late former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was a firm, if not outspoken, advocate of personal defense — she campaigned for civil rights in 1958 in Tennessee with a pistol on her car seat — the Second Amendment Foundation today is inaugurating a new award honoring women who use firearms in lawful defense against a criminal attack. SAF Founder Alan M. Gottlieb announced the award’s first recipient will be a Mississippi grandmother who fatally shot a would-be robber in October.”

 

By John Stossel

Mary Baker and Ruth Neikirk love to cook. What’s more, they love to cook for poor people. They do it frequently, preparing meals at home and bringing them to their church in Virginia. “I love it,” Mary says. “I can take a little bit of something, like a soup bone? And I can make a whooole pot of something. Tastes good. With some cornbread you got ‘em a meal!”

The people they cook for love it too. But there’s a problem. It was “criminal activity.” The Fairfax County health department points out that – horrors – Mary and Ruth are actually preparing food and serving it to people! Without a license! That’s not safe, said the health department. What if there’s food poisoning? Hundreds of pages of regulation say that if you want to serve food to the public, you need a food-manager certificate, a ware-washing machine (with internal baffles), drain-boards, ventilation-hood systems, a sink with at least three compartments, as well as a hand-washing sink, can openers with removable parts, and much more, for page after page.

The county health department wasn’t being capricious. It was just enforcing its rules. There had been a complaint. No one had gotten sick, but an “advocate for the homeless” noticed that church kitchens, which appeared sparkling clean to my ABC team, didn’t meet “code.”

“You’ve got to be kidding, give us a break,” the Rev. Judy Fender told us. “We can fix a nice meal here, but we can’t serve it!”

The health department said it was just looking out for the homeless. But did the officials ever think about where street people eat when they don’t eat at these churches?

“They’ve never stopped me from eating out of a dumpster or a trash can,” says James, an astute homeless man who understands Henry Hazlitt’s “economics in one lesson,” namely, look for the secondary results of government policy. The government can close down the church kitchens, but that’ll only send the poor to the garbage cans. Is that better? “Some of them take their jobs just a little too seriously,” said James. “They got nothing better to do than sit around and write legislation.”

James has put his finger on another important point: the perverse incentives facing bureaucrats, who get no credit if they never meddle in our peaceful activities.

An old, near-toothless man agreed with James. “I thought they was crazy. I mean, they’re [the church people] helping people, and they’re trying to stop it.”

Rev. Fender added, “They’ve set up a situation that you have to have a $40,000 kitchen to feed someone who’s going to get their food from questionable sources at best.” Rev. Kathleen Chesson said her First Christian Church would not obey the rules. “Our agenda is to feed the hungry. We’re going to feed the hungry. That’s it.”

Before I could confront the county officials about this ridiculous situation, the bad publicity had already prompted a reconsideration. “I got up and saw my morning newspaper and was horrified,” said Gerry Connolly, who heads the county government. “I think sometimes the rules overpower common sense.”

I asked him, What if the health department had been around when Jesus was feeding the poor? “He might have been, you know, cited,” Connolly replied with a laugh. So this story has a happy ending: Connolly exempted churches from the regulations. But let’s not celebrate.

“Fairfax is stepping back,” James said. “They’re saying they’re not going to enforce it … for now. This year. What about next year?”

Again, that’s a pretty astute analysis. If you catch the attention of the media, you can bask in your government leader’s forgiveness. But what about next year, and what about the rest of us who are still stuck with all the rules?

The rules are well-intended. They’re meant to make sure the public is safe. But rule-makers tend to forget that their rules have unintended consequences. And, as James pointed out, eating out of dumpsters is more dangerous than eating at a church without a three-compartment sink.

Source

 
PORTRAIT OF A POPULAR BRITISH ROADSIDE DINER

A rather “correct” portrait but it shows that food “correctness” has a long way to go in Britain. It seems unlikely that even the most gimlet-eyed food fascist will ever be able to defeat British stodge

Oh, the dilemmas of fine dining. Should it be mushy peas or regular? Let’s go for the bright green ones. And perhaps a glass of Chenin Blanc to accompany your lunch, sir? Certainly not; the only proper accompaniment to fish and chips is a large mug of tea and a slice of white bread and butter. Of course, sir; the tea will be o1.59 but the bread comes automatically.

This does not feel like an establishment on the brink of collapse. The restaurant is spotless and bright, the staff attentive without being overbearing. The meal comes within five minutes of ordering. It consists of a Himalaya of chips and a haddock the size of a sturgeon, with half a fresh lemon to squeeze over it, all for 6.99 pounds.

Shame about the industrial batter with which it was enrobed in Young’s frozen food factory. Still, top marks for the Heinz ketchup and HP Sauce arriving in proper bottles instead of those infuriating little sachets, which never contain enough for those of us hooked on the many derivatives of spirit vinegar.

Are we really in the Little Chef on the A127 in Essex halfway between the East End and Southend, that road of life for the aspiring Cockney? We are, and it is a surprisingly good advertisement for a supposedly failing chain of roadside caffs, a world away from a greasy spoon. Perhaps the weak link is that, on a Wednesday with many motorists returning from New Year breaks, only a dozen of the 60-odd seats are occupied. Mind you, the rather more upmarket pub and restaurant next door isn’t much busier.

When Little Chef proposed to slim down the familiar Fat Charlie logo in 2004, there was such an uproar from loyal customers that Charlie stayed fat. But one feature of that attempted revamp towards a healthier image is that menus now include salads and the sausage meat is free-range.

But ordering salad in a Little Chef is like asking for pork scratchings at the Ritz. What the chain does best, and which has silenced carloads of starving children since 1958, is the all-day breakfast. Top of the range, at 6.99 pounds, is the Olympic, built from bacon, sausage, two eggs, mushrooms, saut, potatoes, tomato, fried bread and beans. This may be suitable for a ravenous giant but it is too thrombotic a threat these days to the sedentary and health-conscious. Yet Little Chef claims to sell 13 million sausages and 12 million rashers of bacon a year. Not all to the same driver, of course. They sold some to John Major; the former prime minister famously once stopped to refuel at a Happy Eater, the former sister chain to Little Chef.

When Sam Alper, a caravan manufacturer, opened his first 11-seater Little Chef in Reading 49 years ago, he was aiming for something a cut above the lorry driver’s transport caff, and took as his model the informal roadside diners he had seen in the US. The chain had little serious competition for many years, but latterly its market share is thought to have been nibbled away by Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken. If true, this destroys any argument that the motorist has diverted to a healthy-eating route.

A tired image seems to be Little Chef’s problem, and personal experience suggests that not all branches are up to the standard of that on the A127. However, the mountain range of french fries went untouched, although the haddock was deep-mined from within its leaden coating. The waiter was most concerned that the meal had not been up to the usual high standard. “Not at all,” this diner insisted. “It’s just that I’ve got to squeeze back behind my steering wheel. But I did eat the peas.”

Source

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Just some problems with the “Obesity” war:

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant — thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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How utterly disgusting. If this was a diversion, as one scenario suggests, we can only hope that something even more dangerous wasn’t smuggled in. And if you need a better example of an alleged super power so hobbled by political correctness and weak political leadership that it can hardly protect itself, let alone wage a war – you may be waiting a long time for better than this.

I imagine the National Guard was operating under ROE’s [rules] that prevented them from firing back. But, yes, armed men from Mexico entered the US, attacked a National Guard position and the National Guard turned tail and ran, probably their only alternative under President Bush’s wonderful border enforcement policy.

Americans should be as outraged as they are sad, because if this precipitates any change, it’ll likely be seen as a rationale for taking the Guard off the border, not giving them the ability to fight back. Face it, this administration probably fears gunning down some illegal more than it does allowing them to enter the country at will.

From Riehl World

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The betrayed children of the welfare society

These neglected children are kids like Michael Oher, who turned up recently in The New York Times in Michael Lewis’s “Ballad of Big Mike.” Of kids like Michael you can too often write:

“that Michael’s father had been shot and killed and tossed off a bridge, that his mother was addicted to crack cocaine and that his life experience was so narrow that he might as well have spent his first 16 years inside a closet… Big Mike, as he was called, was essentially homeless and so had made an art of sleeping on whatever floor the ghetto would provide for him. “

Yes, read the whole thing. It’s a compelling story, and for you sophisticated ironists there is even irony in it. African American Michael Oher is doing fine now as a stand out left offensive tackle at Ole Miss thanks to a bunch of rich white conservative football fans of a school in the Old South.

But why should we continue spending five percent of GDP every year on government schooling and $200 billion a year on welfare when a nice kid like Michael Oher completely falls through the safety net? What combination of personal and institutional heedlessness does it take to produce a 16-year-old like Michael Oher, utterly unschooled and utterly unsocialized? How many more are there like him? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?

It would be interesting to apply the “Enron Test” to the case of Michael Oher and the other victims of the welfare state. Suppose that Michael Oher had been neglected not by his mother, the local government child services bureaucracy, and the local school bureaucracy but by the late Ken Lay and the evil Enron corporation. What would our Democratic friends say then? For the heedless bureaucrats of the welfare state it’s not the money. It’s power that frees them from accountability.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

Charitable nation: “Americans are better people than Europeans. Hold on, it gets better. Religious Americans are better than non-religious Americans. And religious Americans tend to be politically conservative. This admittedly tendentious rendering of reality is how some on the right are interpreting Who Really Cares? by Arthur Brooks, a professor of public administration at Syracuse University. Brooks doesn’t really deal with what makes one person ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than any other. But it’s fair to say that how much a person gives — of either his money or time — is usually considered an important indicator of character. It turns out that by this yardstick alone, my little talk-radio-ready summary is basically correct.”

Iran admits its nuke program may be used for weapons: “Iranian top nuclear envoy Ali Larijani said in a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao Friday that Iran is committed to peaceful use of nuclear technology. “We oppose obtaining nuclear weapons and we will peacefully use nuclear technology under the framework of the Nonproliferation Treaty,” he said. “But,” he warned, “if we are threatened, the situation may change.”

People running from over-regulated Leftist New York: “Advocates for more pro-growth policies in New York will get new ammunition today with the release of a report from the U.S. Census Bureau showing that the Empire State was one of only a handful of states that lost population this year, with thousands of people moving away to other parts of America and not being replaced by new residents. The state lost more than 9,500 people between July 2005 and July 2006, putting its total statewide population at 19.3 million, according to the federal statistics. Only states like Michigan, which has been hard-hit by the decline in the domestic auto industry, and hurricane-ravaged Louisiana, which lost 4.9% of its population due to the storm, saw a more dramatic decline, the bureau estimated”.

Leftist dishonesty about American wage rates: “Some economists and journalists-I’ll call them “the real-wage pessimists”-have claimed that average real wages have fallen during substantial time periods over the last 30 or so years…. Start with the person’s hourly wage rate. Many of the real-wage pessimists don’t carefully estimate that but, instead, settle for looking at average weekly wages. But comparing average weekly wages over time will give a much more pessimistic view than is justified. Why? Part-time jobs as a percentage of total jobs have increased over time…. there is another reason that average weekly earnings understate the growth in hourly wages: the average work week, even for full-time workers, has fallen steadily… The third factor typically left out by the real-wage pessimists is the growing fraction of compensation paid in the form of benefits. Reynolds points out that between 1973 and 2005, total compensation per hour (including health insurance, retirement, and other benefits as part of compensation), rose by almost 40 percent.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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“All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State.” — 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left — inspiring Karl Marx, the American “Progressives” of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin’s Communism. The very word “Nazi” is a German abbreviation for “National Socialist” (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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Gun haters close more stores: “With little fanfare, the federal government has substantially increased the number of licenses it has taken away from gun dealers over the past five years, according to newly obtained statistics. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives pulled federal firearms licenses from 22 gun dealers across the country in 2001. That number increased almost six-fold last year when ATF revoked 131 licenses, statistics show. Despite the increase, license revocations remain exceedingly rare and the number pales in comparison with the roughly 105,000 people and businesses nationwide permitted to sell firearms and ammunition.”

 

NJ: Judge voids city’s victim disarmament law: “A New Jersey state court judge on Dec. 13 enjoined enforcement of a Jersey City ordinance limiting handgun purchasers to one gun a month. In a suit that tested the power of cities to write their own laws to curb gun-related violence, Hudson County Assignment Judge Maurice Gallipoli said he doubted the ordinance would achieve that end. And he found it pre-empted by the state’s extensive gun-control scheme. Gallipoli also said the law violated equal protection grounds, deeming it arbitrary, capricious and lacking a rational basis.”

 

EDUCATION PREDICTS GOOD HEALTH AND LONG LIFE

Of course it does. The elite are educated more and — as Charles Murray showed years ago — are elite because they are brighter — and high IQ is one aspect of good biological functioning. But you won’t see THAT mentioned below. There may nonetheless also be a real effect due to education itself — but, to understand that, one would as a first step have to look at the content of that education. The education of yesteryear probably did inculcate better life habits. All that modern education inculcates in that department is that you must love blacks and homosexuals and do your best to “save the planet”

James Smith, a health economist at the RAND Corporation, has heard a variety of hypotheses about what it takes to live a long life – money, lack of stress, a loving family, lots of friends. But he has been a skeptic. Yes, he says, it is clear that on average some groups in every society live longer than others. The rich live longer than the poor, whites live longer than blacks in the United States. Longevity, in general, is not evenly distributed in the population. But what, he asks, is cause and what is effect? And how can they be disentangled?

He is venturing, of course, into one of the prevailing mysteries of aging, the persistent differences seen in the life spans of large groups. In every country, there is an average life span for the nation as a whole and there are average life spans for different subsets, based on race, geography, education and even churchgoing. But the questions for researchers like Dr. Smith are why? And what really matters?

The answers, he and others say, have been a surprise. The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income. Year after year, in study after study, says Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, education “keeps coming up.” And, health economists say, those factors that are popularly believed to be crucial – money and health insurance, for example, pale in comparison.

Dr. Smith explains: “Giving people more Social Security income, or less for that matter, will not really affect people’s health. It is a good thing to do for other reasons but not for health.” Health insurance, too, he says, “is vastly overrated in the policy debate.” Instead, Dr. Smith and others say, what may make the biggest difference is keeping young people in school. A few extra years of school is associated with extra years of life and vastly improved health decades later, in old age.

It is not the only factor, of course. There is smoking, which sharply curtails life span. There is a connection between having a network of friends and family and living a long and healthy life. And there is evidence that people with more powerful jobs and, presumably, with more control over their work lives, are healthier and longer lived.

But there is little dispute about the primacy of education. “If you were to ask me what affects health and longevity,” says Michael Grossman, a health economist at the City University of New York, “I would put education at the top of my list.”

The first rigorous effort to decide whether education really changes people so they live longer began in a most inauspicious way. It was 1999 and a Columbia University graduate student, Adriana Lleras-Muney, was casting about for a topic for her doctoral dissertation in economics. She found an idea in a paper published in 1969. Three economists noted the correlation between education and health and gave some advice: If you want to improve health, you will get more return by investing in education than by investing in medical care.

It had been an inflammatory statement, Dr. Lleras-Muney says. And for good reason. It could only be true if education in and of itself caused good health. But there were at least two other possibilities. Maybe sick children did not go to school, or dropped out early because they were ill. Or maybe education was a proxy for wealth, and it was wealth that led to health. It could be that richer parents who gave their children everything, including better nutrition, better medical care and a better education, had children who, by virtue of being wealthy, lived longer. How, she asked herself, could she sort out causes and effects? It was the chicken-and-egg problem that plagues such research.

The answer came one day when Dr. Lleras-Muney was reading another economics paper. It indicated that about 100 years ago, different states started passing laws forcing children to go to school for longer periods. She knew what to do. “The idea was, when a state changed compulsory schooling from, say, six years to seven years, would the people who were forced to go to school for six years live as long as the people the next year who had to go for seven years,” Dr. Lleras-Muney asked. [A non-sequitur: Health throughout the Western world has improved rapidly over the last 100 years or so -- meaning that ANY later year should on average have shown better health than any previous year]

All she would have to do was to go back and find the laws in the different states and then use data from the census to find out how long people lived before and after the law in each state was changed…..

Much more here — including some conventional but very dubious assertions about influences on health. The article is after all from the paper that publishes “all the news that’s fit to slant”
 

CELEBRITY “SCIENCE”

Madonna, Juliet Stevenson and Lady McCartney have all been singled out for not checking their facts before they speak by a campaign that aims to stamp out bad science.

Sense About Science, a charity that promotes the importance of scientific evidence, warns that celebrities are prone to backing theories and therapies that make no scientific sense and offers them the chance to check their facts first.

 

It has published a leaflet explaining why some theories promoted by celebrities are wrong and giving a telephone number they can call to be put in contact with experts before getting involved in a campaign.

The leaflet is being sent to luxury hotels, nightclubs and bars, airport lounges and football clubs. In it, the charity points out that Madonna has spoken of the need to develop a means of “neutralising radiation” which is impossible, while Ms Stevenson used the opportunity of her role in a drama about the MMR vaccine to advance the discredited claim that it is not safe.

Lady McCartney and the pressure group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have wrongly claimed that drinking milk is linked to childhood obesity.

David Baddiel, the comedian, Melinda Messenger, the model, and Sharron Davies, the swimmer, were all involved in a campaign by the environmental group WWF about dangerous chemicals in the human body which has been derided by scientists as scaremongering. Toxicologists said that the levels of such chemicals in the body were too insignificant to worry about.

The leaflet also exposes scientific mistakes made by the actors Joanna Lumley and Jenny Seagrove, the lifestyle adviser Carole Caplin and the television presenter Gillian McKeith.

Leading scientists explain why claims are wrong, and encourages celebrities to ring a number to be put in touch with experts who can verify facts.

Tracey Brown, director of Sense About Science, said that nobody expected celebrities to be scientific experts. She said: “We know some people aren’t interested in good science or evidence. We are equally sure some will be glad to talk through claims they are asked to front, because they take their impact seriously. But it’s not been obvious where to go for that. We are producing this leaflet to show those in the public eye how easy it is now to get help from scientists.”

She said that the charity was frequently sent examples of celebrities promoting theories that made no sense. “We have been working out ways for science to be more available,” she said. “I think this leaflet is a friendly hand.” Some public figures have welcomed the initiative.

Derren Brown, the TV illusionist, said: “We’re more than aware that the media prefer a shocking story over delicate fact. In areas like food, environment and medicine, this can have serious results: such as a now dangerously low level of British kids inoculated against MMR following an unfounded media scare.

“Scientists, traditionally a quiet bunch, are now trying to redress the balance and find ways of promoting fact over misinformation.”

Simon Singh, the science writer and former presenter of Tomorrow’s World who is a trustee of Sense About Science, said: “There are numerous examples of actors or musicians scaremongering over vaccines or pesticides when they have little or no knowledge of the subject.

“Celebrities can have a huge influence on the public, but they need to make sure they are doing more good than harm by checking their facts before making any proclamations.”

Professor John Toy, of Cancer Research UK, said: “Celebrities often have a real effect on how members of the public view particular issues, especially health and lifestyle. They have a major responsibility, therefore, to be well-informed before they make statements endorsing particular treatments or products.”

 

Source

 
Brits still snacking naughtily: “While there has been a large increase in the sale of feelgood foods, such as yoghurts and smoothies, there is no sign of the nation giving up its snack habits, such as crisps, for good. The two fastest-growing products of the year will not please the health police as tastes for individual Goodfella’s Solo pizzas and Magners cider topped the chart. The annual top products survey is produced by The Grocer magazine.”

****************

Just some problems with the “Obesity” war:

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant — thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

*********************

 

ISLAMIC “BEDROOMS”

“Just recently, the Taliban issued a new set of 30 rules to its fighters. But there is a curious rule that the Western media has typically ignored. Rule No. 19 instructs that Taliban fighters must not take young boys without facial hair into their private quarters….

Aside from the question of what is permitted if a young boy does happen to have facial hair, this new Taliban commandment brings light to a taboo pathology that underlies the structures of militant Islam. And it is crucial to deconstruct the meaning of this rule — and the horrid reality that it represents — because it serves as a gateway to understanding the primary causes of Islamic rage and terror.

Rule No. 19 obviously indicates that the sexual abuse of young boys is a prevalent and institutionalized phenomenon among the Taliban and that, for one reason or another, its widespread practice has become a problem.

The fact that Taliban militants’ spare time involves sodomizing young boys should by no means be any kind of surprise or eyebrow raiser. That a mass pathology such as this occurs in a culture which demonizes the female and her sexuality — and puts her out of mind and sight — is only to be expected. To be sure, it is a simple given that the religious male fanatic who flies into a violent rage even at the thought of an exposed woman’s ankle will also be, in some other dysfunctional and dark secret compartment of his fractured life, the person who leads some poor helpless young boy into his private chambers.

The key issue here is that the demented sickness that underlies Rule No. 19 is by no means exclusive to the Taliban; it is a widespread phenomenon throughout Islamic-Arab culture and it lies, among other factors, at the root of that culture’s addiction to rage and its lust for violence, terror and suicide.

There is a basic and common sense empirical human reality: wherever humans construct and perpetuate an environment in which females and their sexuality are demonized and are pushed into invisibility, homosexual behaviour among men and the sexual abuse of young boys by older men always increases. Islamic-Arab culture serves as a perfect example of this paradigm, seeing that gender apartheid, fear of female sexuality and a vicious misogyny are the structures on which the whole society functions.”

More here. Dr. Sanity has some extended comments on the above.

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ELSEWHERE

False prophets are always with us. In March 2005, Peak oil prophets (including “expert” geologist Colin Campbell) predicted that oil prices would hit $200 per barrel within two years. Currently oil prices are $59 per barrel. Are they expecting prices to treble in the next three months?

Dangerous lack of realism: “Pacifism, self-hatred and complacency are lengthening the war against radical Islam and causing undue casualties. Only after absorbing catastrophic human and property losses will left-leaning Westerners likely overcome this triple affliction and confront the true scope of the threat. The civilized world will likely then prevail, but belatedly and at a higher cost than need have been.”

Homosexual marriage challenged in Massachusetts: “Gay marriage in Massachusetts, the only state to recognize same-sex marriage, is moving closer to becoming a ballot issue in the 2008 election. State lawmakers voted Tuesday to advance a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between a man and woman. The measure still needs approval of the next legislative session before it can get on the ballot. Supporters and opponents of gay marriage vowed to step up their campaigns in the meantime.”

Military surrendering to homosexuals: “The Army general who was Joint Chiefs chairman when the Pentagon adopted its ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on gays says he no longer opposes allowing them to serve openly. John Shalikashvili, who retired in 1997 after four years as the nation’s top military officer, had argued that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would hurt troop morale and recruitment and undermine the cohesion of combat units. He said he has changed his mind after meeting with gay servicemen.”

British navy being phased out: “Almost half of the British Royal Navy’s warships would be mothballed to slash Ministry of Defence costs, the British Daily Telegraph reported today. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Government had admitted that 13 warships were in a state of “reduced readiness” and six further destroyers and frigates were being proposed for cuts, the paper said. The move comes as ministers reportedly try to cut the defence budget by 250 million pounds ($621m) and amid major armed forces commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan. “What this means is that we are now no better than a coastal defence force or a fleet of dug-out canoes. “The Dutch now have a better navy than us,” said an unnamed senior officer. It was likely that the six destroyers and frigates would eventually be sold or scrapped, while there were also fears that two new aircraft carriers promised in 1998 would never be built, the paper said.”

Boeing ends best-ever year: “Boeing said overnight it took firm orders for 1044 commercial aircraft in 2006, topping its previous record of 1002 orders for the year before and likely beating European rival Airbus for the first time since 2000. Sales were boosted by strong demand from European, Middle Eastern and Asian airlines, confounding analysts who had expected a slowdown in sales from 2005. Boeing was also helped by the outstanding success of its new lightweight 787 Dreamliner, which is set to enter service next year. Airbus, dogged by production and management problems, has badly lagged Boeing in orders for the past 12 months, notching only 635 orders by the end of November.”

Duke lacrosse players go back to college: “Two college “jocks” accused in a sex case that exposed race and class divisions in the US are to be allowed to return to their studies at one of country’s top universities. The decision by Duke University to readmit the pair comes as the case, sparked by the claims of a black stripper, unravels amid charges of unethical conduct by the prosecutor… Duke University cancelled its lacrosse team’s season after the stripper, known as “Precious”, complained that she had been gang-raped during a team party on March 13. Forty-six players submitted to DNA testing. Three – Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and Dave Evans – were charged, even though police found no DNA match with samples taken from the woman…. Questions soon emerged about the story told by the stripper, a 28-year-old who studied at a predominantly black college nearby and worked as an exotic dancer part time. A second stripper called the alleged victim’s claims a “crock”, and a taxi driver disclosed that one of the accused had been in his cab at the time of the supposed attack.”

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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“All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State.” — 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left — inspiring Karl Marx, the American “Progressives” of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin’s Communism. The very word “Nazi” is a German abbreviation for “National Socialist” (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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Reality hits a Left-leaning Australian journalist living in NYC: “One thing you sense very quickly in the US is the gun culture. People get shot here all the time. So there’s no mileage in calling a stranger a dickhead, even when he is. That’s just inviting trouble….. since coming to live here, I’ve often contemplated getting a gun…. We live 15 blocks from Harlem, the biggest concentration of African Americans in the country. One in every three US black males aged between 15 and 30 is either in jail, on parole or awaiting trial. That’s a tragedy, but the point is a significant criminal element lives just up the road…. So what is a man supposed to do? Does he just sit there while a whole lot of drug-crazed, gun-toting Rudy Flemings hip-hop their way down a lawless Broadway to his unguarded apartment? Or does he think ahead, hire a car and drive to some Midwest state where buying a gun is as easy as ordering a pizza? With a gun, you’ve got a chance of keeping your family safe. Yet I hate guns. The idea of shooting anything is totally repugnant. And I think the National Rifle Association people are zealots who have too much clout in US politics. But at the same time, living in New York, I find myself looking differently at the right to bear arms. And I ask myself this: In a crisis, are my wife and three-year-old better served by an idealistic, principled, unarmed me, or by a calculating pragmatist wearing an ammunition belt?”

 

 

I pointed out the positive role of McDonalds in hospitals on Dec. 20th., 2006 here so I was pleased to see the realistic Australian article below. Referring to campaigns to get McDonalds out of hospitals, I said: “The fact that for many people the McDonalds is the most comforting and reassuring part of a hospital does not matter, of course. The do-gooders must have a demon to attack”

I CAN’T say I ever pictured myself as a fervent spokesman for McDonald’s, but I can say anyone jumping on the bandwagon to save us from Maccas at the Royal Children’s Hospital has never had a child who needs treatment there.

There is an old saying that there is good in everything and that one only has to look hard enough to find it. Unfortunately, for us, it is staring us right in the face. My daughter has been an outpatient at the RCH nearly all of her life for a seemingly endless stream of EEGs, ECGs and MRIs. On the morning of our regular visits the conversation usually goes like this:

Can I take dolly to kinder today for show and tell?

Sorry darling, but you have to go to the hospital today.

Oh.

Can I have a Happy Meal?

Of course, darling.

Yay! What a difference the promise of three nuggets, a small chips, a bottle of water and two bobs worth of a toy promoting the latest kids’ movie can make. It’s the chasm between having a terrified child in the car who is crying that they don’t want to go and one who can’t wait to get there. To a parent this is absolute priceless gold.

On the occasions I have to work and our daughter requires a protracted procedure, it also provides a place where my wife can sit and have a coffee while our little bloke has a swing on the monkey bars. So he’s happy to go, too. Job done all around.

To write off Ronald McDonald House as merely a clever marketing tool does not give any credit to the contribution that has been made, or the hope given to the people who have had to avail themselves of this centre. Our hearts go out to them.

Yes, obesity is a problem. But there are many ways to tackle it. This current posturing only serves to remove a tiny oasis of joy for people who are in a desert of misery. Most of whom are far worse off than our personal situation. So on behalf of those parents that have had, have now, or will have children that need to attend the RCH, we ask the nobly intentioned to turn their focus to issues that do not involve wiping the smiles from the faces of sick kiddies.

Source
All pregnant women should get Down syndrome test?

Sounds reasonable

There’s a big change coming for pregnant women: Down syndrome testing no longer hinges on whether they’re older or younger than 35. This week, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists begins recommending that every pregnant woman, regardless of age, be offered a choice of tests for this common birth defect. The main reason: Tests far less invasive than the long-used amniocentesis are now widely available, some that can tell in the first trimester the risk of a fetus having Down syndrome or other chromosomal defects. It’s a change that promises to decrease unnecessary amnios – giving mothers-to-be peace of mind without the ordeal – while also detecting Down syndrome in moms who otherwise would have gone unchecked. The new guideline is published in the January issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

About one in 800 babies has Down syndrome, a condition where having an extra chromosome causes mental retardation, a characteristic broad, flat face and small head and, often, serious heart defects. Age 35 was always a somewhat arbitrary threshhold for urging mothers-to-be to seek testing. Yes, the older women are, the higher their risk of having a baby with Down syndrome. But it’s a gradual increase in risk – from one in 1,200 at age 25 to about one in 300 at age 35. Nothing suddenly changes at the 35th birthday. Indeed, because more babies are born to younger women than older ones, women under 35 actually give birth to most of the nation’s children with Down syndrome.

“It’s clear there’s no magic jump at 35,” said Dr. James Goldberg of San Francisco Perinatal Associates, a member of the ACOG committee that developed the guideline. “We’ve done away with age 35 because the screening tests have gotten much better.”

It’s not just a question of whether to continue the pregnancy. Prenatal diagnosis also is important for those who wouldn’t consider abortion, because babies with Down syndrome can need specialized care at delivery that affects hospital selection, he added.

The original age-35 trigger was chosen years ago when doctors had less information about the risk of Down syndrome, and the only choice for prenatal detection was an amnio, using a needle to draw fluid from the amniotic sac, he said. Amnios are highly accurate but were reserved for women at higher risk of an affected pregnancy because they occasionally cause miscarriage. A study this fall put the miscarriage risk at one in 1,600 pregnancies, far lower than previous estimates.

Also today, women have more options. Doctors already frequently offer younger women blood tests that don’t definitively diagnose Down syndrome like an amnio or a similar invasive test called chorionic villus sampling – but that can signal who’s at higher risk. The newest method, topping ACOG’s recommendation for everyone, is a first-trimester screening that combines blood tests with a simple ultrasound exam, called a “nuchal translucency test” to measure the thickness of the back of the fetal neck. Studies from England, where the nuchal translucency combo has been used for about a decade, and the U.S. conclude that screening method is more than 80% accurate, with a very small risk of falsely indicating Down syndrome in a healthy fetus. It is performed between 11 and 13 weeks into pregnancy, and women are usually given numerical odds of carrying an affected fetus. A woman determined to be high risk then still has time for an invasive test to tell for sure.

Women who don’t seek prenatal care until the second trimester can still undergo blood tests known as the triple or quadruple screens. The guideline also says women of any age can choose to skip the screening and go straight for invasive testing, an approach that might appeal to those with chromosomal defects in the family. “This new recommendation makes a lot of sense,” said Dr. Nancy Green of the March of Dimes. “Maternal age no longer plays such an important role because the screening is better.”

Each test comes with pros and cons, and the new guideline advises doctors to check what’s available in their communities – nuchal translucency testing isn’t easy to get everywhere – and discuss the best options with each patient.

Source

 
Bioengineered cows ‘resist mad cow disease’

The Greenies and their ilk will have a knee-jerk hatred of this

US and Japanese scientists say they have used genetic engineering to produce cattle that resist mad cow disease. They hope the cattle can be the source of herds that can provide dairy products, gelatin and other products free of the brain-destroying disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE. Writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the researchers said their cattle were healthy at the age of 20 months, and sperm from the males made normal embryos that were used to impregnate cows, although it is not certain yet that they could breed normally.

The cattle lack the nervous system prions, a type of protein, that cause BSE and other related diseases such as scrapie in sheep and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, known as CJD, in humans, the researchers said. “(Prion-protein-negative) cattle could be a preferred source of a wide variety of bovine-derived products that have been extensively used in biotechnology, such as milk, gelatin, collagen, serum and plasma,” they wrote in their report.

Yoshimi Kuroiwa of Kirin Brewery Co in Tokyo, Japan and colleagues made the cattle, known as knockouts because a specific gene has been “knocked” out of them, using a method they call gene targeting. “By knocking out the prion protein gene and producing healthy calves, our team has successfully demonstrated that normal cellular prion protein is not necessary for the normal development and survival of cattle. The cows are now nearly 2 years old and are completely healthy,” said James Robl of Hematech, a South Dakota subsidiary of Kirin. “We anticipate that prion protein-free cows will be useful models to study prion disease processes in both animals and humans,” Robl, an expert in cloning technology, said in a statement.

Misfolded prion proteins are blamed for BSE and other, similar brain diseases. It is known that certain genetic variations make animals more susceptible to the diseases.

BSE swept through British herds in the 1980s and people began developing an odd, early-onset form of CJD called variant CJD or vCJD a few years later. CJD normally affects one in a million people globally, usually the elderly, as it has a long incubation period. There is no cure and it is always fatal.

As of November 2006, 200 vCJD patients were reported worldwide, including 164 patients in Britain, 21 in France, 4 in the Republic of Ireland, 3 in the United States, 2 in the Netherlands and 1 each in Canada, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Spain. The disease may have first started to infect cattle when they were fed improperly processed remains of sheep, possibly sheep infected with scrapie. Although people are not known to have ever caught scrapie from eating sheep, BSE can be transmitted to humans. BSE occasionally occurs in cattle outside Britain although it is now rare.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the “Obesity” war:

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant — thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

*********************

 

ANTI-DEMOCRATIC LEFTISM

Ever since the 1950 book “The authoritarian personality”, Leftist psychologists have been saying that it is conservatives who are anti-democratic — ignoring great democrats like Joe Stalin and Mao Tse Tung. So the events decribed below by Taranto are another little dose of reality for them — not that reality has ever mattered much to them, of course.

 

Massachusetts voters may get to decide on the future of same-sex marriage after all. Yesterday the state Legislature voted 62-134 (only one-fourth of votes are required) to advance a constitutional amendment that would reverse a Supreme Judicial Court ruling imposing such marriages on the state. The measure needs the same approval from the Legislature’s next session to get to the 2008 ballot.

Proponents of same-sex marriage had urged the Legislature not to vote on the measure, notwithstanding a ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court that it was obliged to do so. Although the court held that it did not have the authority to enforce its own ruling, “But the court’s criticism of the legislature appeared to be enough to make some lawmakers decide to allow a vote . . ., even legislators who support same-sex marriage and hope the amendment will ultimately be defeated”:

“Certainly, the court ruling changed the atmosphere this week, in that legislators took a second look at their job description, at their oath of office, at a higher obligation actually, to uphold the constitution,” said Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, which sponsored the amendment.

[Gay-rights activist Arline] Isaacson said the court’s decision “really tipped the scales against us.”

An editorial in yesterday’s Boston Globe urged the Legislature not to vote:

There has been much gnashing of teeth over whether the voters will be heard if the Legislature declines to vote on the amendment today. By now, legislators have debated the question in multiple constitutional conventions in 2004, 2005, and 2006. It is hard to say that the matter has not been aired. Last September, legislators took a final vote on a more lenient amendment–which denied marriage but explicitly established civil unions as an alternative–and defeated it, 157 to 39. That cleared the way for today’s harsher version of the ban, which needs only 25 percent of the convention to advance.

The voters also have been heard at the polls in two separate statewide elections, where not one of the proponents of gay marriage was defeated and their margin in the Legislature increased. Governor-elect Deval Patrick was the only major-party candidate to steadfastly support gay marriage in the November election, and he won in a landslide.

Patrick also lobbied the Legislature not to vote on the measure.

Now, there is something very odd about this whole episode. The Globe and others seem to be against democracy rather than just for same-sex marriage. Why not urge the Legislature to do its duty and vote, and to vote the amendment down? Or why not welcome the opportunity to persuade voters to approve same-sex marriage by rejecting the amendment?

We wondered if the Globe had ever urged the Legislature to legalize same-sex marriage before the Supreme Judicial Court mandated it. The answer appears to be no, and in fact the Globe’s view seems to be that this actually is the purview of the courts rather than the Legislature. In a July 8, 2003, editorial titled “For Gay Marriage,” the paper argued that that wasn’t the place:

Opponents say the Legislature should decide all issues dealing with marriage licenses. But the court is being asked for its opinion on a constitutional matter of fundamental rights–its proper purview–and it should deliver such an opinion.

Gay-rights activists are fond of likening their cause to the civil rights movement. But although civil-rights activists won many of their victories through litigation, perhaps the most important one was a legislative action, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Voters in dozens of states have passed ballot initiatives designed to prevent same-sex marriage, and antigay bigotry is not the only motivating force. The resistance in Massachusetts to putting same-sex marriage to any sort of democratic test only reinforces the perception that its proponents have contempt for the consent of the governed.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Leftist gobbledegook from Anthony B. Pinn, Rice University religion professor and atheist — on black American humanism: “I argue here for the possibility of a humanist theology, a theology that holds community rather than God as the center of life altering questions, accompanied by an understanding of religion and theology as centered on the problem of evil, or theodicy. Christian theology as done within African American communities is premised upon a sense of redemptive suffering as the best response to moral evil in the world. Furthermore, this theological stance is intimately tied to the Christian tradition, complete with a God who is concerned for and working on behalf of the oppressed. It continues to be my belief that, although important in many ways, this theological stance and its narrow perception of religion may not be the best means of achieving the social transformation or liberation sought by the African American community. I conclude that a theological stance on moral evil requires an alternate religious system-African American humanism. This is not meant to dismiss Christian approaches out of hand, rather, to broaden the possibilities, the religious terrain, and to foster conversation concerning liberating ways of addressing the problem of evil. Humanist theology, and humanism as a religion, nonetheless need further explication.” [How the Devil does an atheist get to be a professor of religion??]

Transfers to African Governments Triple: “The president has tripled direct humanitarian and development aid to the world’s most impoverished continent since taking office and recently vowed to double that increased amount by 2010 — to nearly $9 billion.” [Money down the drain]

Private Police Services Expand: “Private firms with outright police powers have been proliferating in some places — and trying to expand their terrain. The ‘company police agencies,’ as businesses such as Capitol Special Police are called here, are lobbying the state legislature to broaden their jurisdiction, currently limited to the private property of those who hire them, to adjacent streets.” [Making up for inadequate government services]

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

**************************

“All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State.” — 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left — inspiring Karl Marx, the American “Progressives” of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin’s Communism. The very word “Nazi” is a German abbreviation for “National Socialist” (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************

 

NC: Ex-trooper kills assailant: “A retired trooper with the state Highway Patrol says he was acting in self-defense when he shot and killed the boyfriend of a family friend on New Year’s Day, according to a sheriff’s detective. Robert “Sonny” Moore, 63, killed 24-year-old Travis Worriax with a single shot to his torso, according to sheriff’s Detective Lt. Ricky Britt. Moore, who retired as a state Highway Patrol trooper in 1994, could not be reached this morning for comment. “Basically, it will probably be a self-defense case,” Britt said. “We’re still waiting on the autopsy before it’s completely ruled self-defense.” According to Britt, Moore suffered cuts to his left arm and his left ear during a confrontation that occurred about 10:30 a.m. Monday on Princess Ann Road. He was treated and released from Southeastern Regional Medical Center after receiving a total of 18 stitches, Britt said. Britt said Moore told investigators the following story: On New Year’s Eve, Moore received a telephone call from Lydia Walters, who complained that she was having an argument with her boyfriend, Worriax. Moore said that Walters told him they had both been drinking alcohol and that Worriax had left the home after she had asked him to do so. The next day, Moore went to the home at 1024 Princess Ann Road to check on Walters and was confronted by Worriax. “When he walked around the trailer, Travis jumped out at him and cut him several times with a butcher knife,” Britt said. Moore, who traps beavers and carries a handgun strapped to his side, used the .38-caliber revolver to shoot Walters during what Britt called a “tussle.”

 

Australia: The scum didn’t die!: “A veteran police officer has told how he feared he would be killed by his own weapon in an assault that ended when he shot his attacker. Senior Constable Gabe Jose, 47, was working on a traffic operation on the Pacific Motorway on the Gold Coast in June last year when he pulled over a car containing three people and became involved in a struggle with 27-year-old Kelvin Luke Cardwell. Both Cardwell and Tatum Spann, 24, have been charged with grievous bodily harm. Appearing in the witness stand at their committal hearing yesterday, Sen-Constable Jose said he was punched, bitten and eye-gouged by Cardwell as he tried to arrest him for allegedly giving a false name during the routine roadside stop. The 24-year police veteran said Spann kicked his capsicum spray away and pulled the baton out of his hand. Jose was then allegedly smashed in the face with his own baton, shearing off three teeth. In response and fearing for his life, Sen-Constable Jose drew his gun, lifted his damaged arm as high as he could and shot at a white blur, he told Southport Magistrate’s Court yesterday during cross examination. The single bullet entered Cardwell’s abdomen, exited through his back, travelled through Spann’s right leg and lodged in her left leg.”

 

Food fanatics impossible to satirize

I have had satirical comments about the evils of cheese and butter at the bottomn of each day’s postings here for some time now. But reality has caught up with me. Even cheese (and lots of other mainstream stuff) is now under attack in the Unhinged Kingdom. Have they gone too far this time?

New advertising rules that will officially label cheese as “junk food” were condemned yesterday by the dairy industry as unfair, misleading and counter-productive. Under regulations coming into force this month, broadcasters will be banned from advertising cheese during children’s television programmes or in shows with a large proportion of child viewers, such as The Simpsons and Hollyoaks. The ban is part of a government drive to crack down on junk food adverts on television, which is designed to reduce the exposure of children to foods high in fat, salt and sugar. It follows evidence that TV commercials have an indirect impact on children’s eating behaviour and are contributing to the obesity epidemic.

However, the dairy industry says the rules, which are being introduced by the television regulator Ofcom, are a nonsense. Under the nutrient profiling model used to distinguish junk food from “healthy” food, cheese is officially labelled as more unhealthy than sugary cereals, cheeseburgers, double chocolate chip cake and full fat crisps. The industry points out that if breast milk were covered by the rules, it too would be classed as junk food.

Dan Rogerson, the Liberal Democrat MP for North Cornwall, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cheese, branded the model as “simplistic and counter-productive”. He said: “How preposterous that Ofcom restrictions should be based on a model so flawed as to take cheese off the air, while diet cola, which has no nutritional value whatever, is left firmly on children’s menus. It has to be perverse that while milk may be advertised, a wholesome product made from milk – cheese – cannot.”

Ofcom published its draft conclusions on junk food adverts in November and is expected to release its final report within weeks. Its initial report went much further than expected. It proposed banning the advertising of all foods classified as high in fat, salt and sugar during programmes made for children under 16, on dedicated children’s channels and during programmes with a higher than average proportion of child viewers. However, the ban only covered specific foods, not brands. So while McDonald’s cannot advertise burgers during children’s programmes, it could promote its restaurants.

The rules also proposed a ban on cartoon characters for adverts aimed at primary school age children shown at any time of the day. The most controversial part of the proposals is the use of the nutrient profiling model drawn up by the Food Standards Agency. The model assesses the fat, sugar and salt content in a 100g or 100ml serving of a food or drink – rather than a typical serving.

The food industry says the use of the FSA model has led to anomalies. Tomato ketchup, for instance, contains a high proportion of sugar and salt and is counted as a high fat, salt and sugar food – even though most people only eat a small amount with a meal. Marmite, which contains 11 per cent salt, is also counted as junk food – even though most people eat only a few grams on bread.

The British Cheese Board says the typical portion size of cheese is 30g to 40g, the size of a small matchbox, not the 100g used in the FSA nutrient profiling model. If a typical portion sized was used in the model, most cheese would be exempt from the ban, it says. Nigel White, a spokesman for the board, said: “Cheese is one of the most nutritionally complete foods and can play an important part of a healthy balanced diet for children of all ages.”

Source

Foods caught by the junk food ban:

Marmite, Flora Lite, half-fat cheddar cheese, Dairylea triangles, bran flakes, camembert, sugar-coated puffed wheat, instant hot oat cereal, Jaffa cakes, reduced calorie mayonnaise, multi-grain hoop cereal, half-fat creme fraiche, takeaway chicken nuggets, potato waffles, Greek yoghurt (sheep), ham, sausages, bacon rashers, low-fat spreads, peanuts, cashew nuts, pistachio nuts, peanut butter, raisins, sultanas, currants, low-fat potato crisps, olive oil, butter, pizza, hamburgers, tomato ketchup, chocolate, brown sauce, cola, lemonade

 
Most lethal killer found

Scientists believe they have captured the most lethal creature on the planet in north Queensland. The tiny but deadly irukandji jellyfish is believed responsible for killing American tourist Robert King off Port Douglas five years ago.

In a piece of detective work worthy of Hercule Poirot, stinger expert Lisa-Ann Gershwin has spent years scouring north Queensland waters for the highly venomous and near-invisible culprit. Her breakthrough came on New Year’s Day when the previously unknown, peanut-sized creature, trailing four tentacles, ghosted under her spotlight about 8pm off the jetty at Mission Beach. Comparing stinger cells taken from Mr King at Cairns Hospital in 2002 with the newly-discovered species, researchers found a perfect match.

“This is the killer,” Dr Gershwin said. “We knew it existed but we have never before captured one live and healthy. These are a wicked, highly venomous, dangerous animal, that drop for drop are the most lethal on the planet.”

The high-profile death of Mr King off Port Douglas in 2002 sent shockwaves through the state’s multimillion-dollar tourism industry and led to a taskforce to investigate the little known irukandji. Irukandji syndrome, caused by other species of the tiny jellyfish, is known to cause excruciating back pain, sweating, and nausea, but until the 2002 incident, not death. “We know almost nothing about these animals,” Dr Gershwin said. “But now, with this new specimen, we can start to find out more.”

Source
Hot water best for jellyfish sting

Hot water is the most effective way to relieve the pain of a jellyfish sting, a study has found. Doctors and medical students at Busselton Hospital in Western Australia purposefully stung themselves with jellyfish to compare four popular treatments – ice, vinegar, aluminium sulfate and hot water. “Hot water was the only successful treatment, relieving 88 per cent of the pain,” the team wrote in the latest Medical Journal of Australia. “Other treatments were incomplete and temporary.”

They said that sting patients treated with hot water at about 45C got “significant” pain relief in 4-10 minutes, and the heat also appeared to stop inflammation. “There is an urgent need for knowledge of this simple remedy to be spread,” said study author, Dr John Taylor. “And there is the potential that it could even be lifesaving when used with more serious jellyfish stings in the north of Australia.”

Source

The original journal article is here. The treatment seems to work for a variety of jellyfish species and even other marine toxins

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Just some problems with the “Obesity” war:

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant — thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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The small readership of most blogs would strongly suggest that no blogs other than the top three or four could possibly have much influence on anything. That however overlooks something: Google and other search engines. Because they are heavily interlinked (well over 1,000 other blogs link to this one) blogs tend to have a high page-ranking in response to any search. That means that what blogs say on any given topic tends to pop up on the first page of any set of search results.

And who are big users of searches? Journalists. Like most people they Google their own name and they also of course Google any topic they are “researching”. Googling is a lot easier that getting out of your chair and going to look in person at what you are talking about. So what blogs say tends to get picked up by journalists (and Right-wing radio commentators too) and, in their constant search for something new to report, the blog-origin information or perspective may rapidly find its way into what they write or say. They may not like what the blog says but they like being “scooped” by other journalists even less.

So it is not mainly a matter of blogs and the MSM competing. What has developed is a symbiosis between blogs and the MSM.

I had an amusing example of how blogs affect journalists recently. My Greenie Watch blog usually gets only about 400 hits a day so you might think that it is one of those many blogs that are destined to flower in the desert, forever unnoticed by almost anyone. Yet it is not so. I get all sorts of email from people and organizations I mention in it. The amusing example: On October 4, 2005, I put up there a post that had a good laugh at a delightfully-named British journalist called Andrew Buncombe (pronounced “bunkum”). It mocked the old polar bear scare that he was doing his best to promote in “The Independent”, a very “Green” British mainstream newspaper.

Recently, however, the Bush administration threw the Greenies a bone by commissioning a report into whether the bears were “endangered” or not. This was hailed as a great triumph by Greenies, and Buncombe was one of those elated. So what was one of the first things he did when he learnt of the new move? He emailed me suggesting that I now owed him an apology for the bad things I had previously said about him! He had obviously been stewing for over a year in response to my comments and took the first opportunity he had to shoot back at me! Commissioning a report into an allegation was a very small triumph but Buncombe clutched at it like a drowning man to save his self-esteem!

So whether journalists just google their own name or the topic they are writing about, they do read what is on blogs and they do take notice of what they read there. Whether it just generates heartburn in them or leads them to follow up the matter in their own articles depends on their intellectual quality, of course.

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“ZOMBIETIMING”: BLOG POWER ON THE RISE

Excerpt from a BBC broadcast below — talking about what to expect in 2007:

Tim Jackson: I think the biggest trend is going to be something which I call “zombietiming.” And it’s exceptionally bad news for journalists, because it’s a trend in which people out there on the Web will be checking facts of television, radio and newspapers, and hauling people to account when they get them wrong.

Lawrence Pollard: So, we could all be out of a job. Thank you, Tim. We’ll hear more from that in a minute…. And so finally, we come to Tim Jackson for our last big trend of 2007. Now, Anna’s just been telling us how 2007 will become less cynical, but Tim: you’re predicting we’re going to grow more skeptical. You’ve got the best name for a trend: “zombietiming.” And now this goes back, I gather, to the enormous amount of argument in blogging sites and on the Internet over the reporting of a rocket attack during the Lebanon War. Basically, um, whether or not a Red Cross ambulance had been hit by an Israeli rocket, and if it had been reported properly by the news agencies and so…. This is a story that just mushroomed and went on and your point is that this is going to go on and grow and it’s going to become one of the big things of 2007.

Tim Jackson: Absolutely. We all know that journalists work under tremendous time pressure. Like tennis players or policemen or soldiers, they have to find the right balance between doing the best job they can and getting it done in time, finishing it by the deadline. … What the newspapers failed to grasp is that something has changed in the world of journalism. It used to be the case that readers decided a newspaper that they trusted, and then relied on the reporter once they picked their newspaper or their television station or their radio station. Now it seems to be the case that story by story, journalists have to expect that if they’re making a controversial claim, they’ve got to back it up with proof. And the reason I call this trend “zombietiming” is because the Web site that brought together all this information is called zombietime.com. …

Mary Meehan: … There is just this lack of trust out there. That lack of trust drives bloggers’ needs to prove the media wrong and bust the myths and expose the lies — y’know, be it lies or not — and they have the power and the platform now to do it. They just don’t trust something they can’t see through. It’s that transparency that they demand and expect. And they’re gonna expose it if they can’t get at it.

Source

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ELSEWHERE

France still in deep trouble: “A car burns after a huge police operation involving 25,000 officers failed to quell one of the most entrenched new year rituals in France, with vandals – many of them children – setting on fire 313 vehicles throughout the country. The worst-hit region was Alsace, where 106 vehicles were set ablaze, including 28 in Strasbourg. The attacks are seen as a product of tension on the suburban estates that are home to the bulk of France’s five-million-strong immigrant community. Most of the cars were burnt in areas with unemployment rates of up to 40 per cent. The national average is 8.7 per cent.”

As this review of “Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews”, by David Pryce-Jones shows, French antisemitism did not end with the Dreyfus case in the 19th century. It shows that throughout the 20th century France was relentlessly pro-Arab and anti-Israel. Their reward is of course Arabs setting their suburbs on fire — so there is some justice after all.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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“All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State.” — 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left — inspiring Karl Marx, the American “Progressives” of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin’s Communism. The very word “Nazi” is a German abbreviation for “National Socialist” (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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Kentucky: Pesky neighbor killed : “A Kenton County man who allegedly shot his neighbor to death Saturday night has not been charged, but an investigation is continuing. Robert T. Pierson, 47, allegedly shot and killed Glenn T. Miller, 53, shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday near Pierson’s home on Steep Creek Road, said a news release from the Kenton County police department. Police said Pierson told them that he went outside with a semi-automatic rifle to investigate someone with a flashlight walking in a creek bed beside his house. The person turned out to be Miller, a neighbor. Pierson said he confronted Miller about what he was doing, and an argument ensued “over ownership of the property and dogs running at large.” Police said Pierson told them that Miller pointed a handgun at him during the argument, and Pierson fired “several times in self-defense, striking Mr. Miller in the torso.” Pierson then called 911. Police found Miller, who had been shot at least twice, dead in the creek bed with a revolver beside him. Pierson told police that dogs had been killing his cats, and that he had shot and killed one of Miller’s dogs earlier Saturday.”

 

FAT POLITICS

“It began with Ethnic Studies, which, even if you don’t approve of them, at least contain some fragments of actual history and sociology. Then our universities opened themselves to Women’s Studies, closely followed by Queer Studies, then Disability Studies. If you think that has exhausted the possibilities for giving claims of victimhood their own college departments, professors, and budgets, you have underestimated the ingenuity and ambition of the grievance industry.

Get ready for Fat Studies. Yes: Fat activism, which goes back at least to the 1960s, has at last attained academic standing. The University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee is offering a course titled “The Social Construction of Obesity.” There is no such thing as being fat, you see; “fatness” is just a figment. Nor is there any substance to claims by “scientists” that “obesity” is “linked” to diabetes, hypertension, or heart disease. Those are just ploys by the oppressive power structure to perpetuate discrimination against …

Well, you get the idea. “Fat scholars” (sic-we are quoting here from the New York Times) “hope that one day fat studies will be as ubiquitous on campus as Shakespeare.” It is at any rate a relief to know that the Bard-who had his own, mostly fond, opinions of fat people-has not yet been crowded out of the college curriculum by these faddy, bogus new “studies.”

More here
US hospitals boost effort to kill resistant bugs

As infections that patients pick up in hospitals grow increasingly resistant to antibiotics, US facilities are turning to more aggressive measures. This includes a “search and destroy” approach borrowed from Europe.

Each year staph infections and other powerful bugs that thrive in hospitals kill 90,000 people and result in $US4.5 billion ($A5.8 billion) in excess costs, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A study published earlier this month in the American Journal of Medical Quality found hospitals lost $US27,000 ($A35,000) for each patient who gets a preventable infection there. Insurers reimburse many hospital stays by the diagnosis rather than per day, and payment drops off the longer patients stay in the hospital. “A lot of hospital administrators don’t realise how expensive these infections are,” said Lance Peterson, head of epidemiology at Evanston Northwestern Hospital, located outside Chicago. However, the costs have not escaped the notice of the government and private insurers that collectively fund most of the $US2 trillion ($A2.5 trillion) US health-care tab.

Antibiotic resistant strains, or “super bugs”, now account for about two-thirds of infections associated with health care. Vancomycin is most often used to treat the stubborn infections, but some have become resistant to the antibiotic.

Betsy McCaughey, founder of the non-profit Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, said most evidence showed that three steps could dramatically cut infection deaths in hospitals. But she said most US facilities were not implementing these practices – meticulous hand-washing between procedures, cleaning equipment between patient use, and identifying infected people before they enter the hospital. “About 90 per cent of patients treated in a hospital know well ahead of time they will be admitted, and can be tested in a doctor’s office a week before,” McCaughey said.

The CDC suggests that hospitals screen high-risk patients, such as those with weak immune systems, but does not recommend testing all patients for infection. That leaves hospitals to experiment with myriad approaches, resulting in a lack of consistency, experts said. In fact, big for-profit chains like Tenet Healthcare Corp and Triad Hospitals leave policies on handling infections up to local administrators.

Evanston Northwestern, affiliated with Northwestern University and part of a small local network, is one of a handful of US hospitals to implement “universal surveillance” – testing every patient that walks in the door for an infection. When it gets a positive result, it isolates the patient, gives him or her a powerful antibiotic, and requires all people going into the room to wear gowns and gloves. For every patient with an untreated infection, four or five start carrying it in their nose, Northwestern’s Peterson said. The hospital’s “search and destroy” approach steals a page from some European countries like the Netherlands, where hospital-acquired infections are rare.

A key component of Evanston’s effort is Becton Dickinson & Co’s new gene-based test, which gives results in a few hours, compared to a few days with an older product. About 160 of the 5,000 US hospitals use the test, up from 60 a few months ago. But some experts question whether the rapid gene-based test is more cost-effective than the older – and much cheaper – culture-based version that takes a few days to interpret.

Robert Weinstein, a doctor at Chicago’s Cook County hospital and the recipient of a CDC grant to study the issue, said the new test needed peer-reviewed data to support widespread use. Tenet spokesman Steven Campanini said the company did not deem the test as essential. Each test costs about $US25 ($A33), and the equipment needed to run it costs about $US30,000 ($A40,000). If hospitals don’t want to make that capital investment, there are leasing and other payment options.

McCaughey says the test is definitely preferred for emergency patients who can’t be tested ahead of time, but does not make the old test obsolete for other patients. “It is easier to use,” she said. “If you don’t have a rapid test, you have to isolate the patient until the test comes back.”

Meanwhile, public and private insurers are employing both a carrot and a stick to push hospitals to make changes. On a national level, the US government is considering halting payments for avoidable infections to patients on Medicare, the federal health insurance program for about 43 million elderly and disabled. Illinois, Pennsylvania and a handful of other states require reporting infection rates, and about two dozen others are considering a mandate. States fund health care through the Medicaid insurance program for the nation’s 53 million needy.

In Illinois, private insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield is giving Evanston Northwestern a bonus payment of about 10 per cent for avoided infections. Many insurers are also “trying to ratchet down the payments” for the preventable infections, Peterson said. In Texas, about two dozen hospitals in the Blue Cross Blue Shield network agreed to use a software tracking system that seeks to identify the infections, made by Cardinal Health. The insurer shares the cost with each hospital, and the hospital must share the results with the insurer, said Rick Haddock, senior director of special programs of Blue Cross of Texas. “We’re trying to find a better mousetrap,” he said, adding that the effort has saved $US1.6 million ($A2 million) and prevented 326 infections over several years.

Source

Update:

The full name of the Evanston institution is “Evanston Northwestern Healthcare”.

****************

Just some problems with the “Obesity” war:

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant — thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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Implications of a British survey

I have written at some length here about why the Jews have been hated for so long by so many but there is no doubt that, particularly among Leftists, that hatred goes back to the fact that Jews are both distinctive and successful — in a word: envy. Hatred of success and prominence in others is in fact at the heart of most Leftism so envy is a most important motive, not only in politics but also in everyday life — as Schoeck pointed out and explained at length long ago. It would be almost true to say that the power of envy can never be underestimated.

And, without a doubt, despite their vast generosity not only with money but even with the blood of their young men, America is the world’s most hated nation today. You can murder vast numbers of people — as Saddam did and as Robert Mugabe is doing right to this day — and nobody gives a damn. Even genocide in Sudan doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone much. But be powerful, successful and demonstrably so much better than the norm and you will be hated.

I am saying nothing original in saying that. It is a common explanation of anti-Americanism. But now I think we have some rather clear proof of it. There was a recent opinion poll reported in Britain that, as expected, put America first as the most hated nation — with 15% of the population nominating the USA as their prime hate object. Even more people dislike America than dislike the ghastly North Korea.

The interesting thing, however, is which nation was the most admired? It was the country most similar to America — Australia was chosen by 18% of the respondents. The major difference between America and Australia is power and influence. Politically and culturally, America dominates the world whereas Australia is a bit-player. And it is no good saying that America is also more warlike. Australians have fought alongside Americans in all major wars since World War I — and Australians have even been in some wars America has not — such as the Boer war and recently in East Timor.

The power of envy to distort thinking is truly awesome. Fortunately, America, like Israel, is rather good at defending itself whenever it has a mind to — which just makes it even more hated, of course.

A good quote from V.D. Hanson: “We gave the Palestinian Authority hundreds of millions of dollars for housing, schools, and security and they hate us; Saddam gave them a few thousand dollars as bounty for suicide murderers and they loved him”

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Where The New York Times Is Coming From

Post lifted from George Reisman

Below are the headlines of four obituaries that have run in The New York Times. The first is that of the recent obituary of the Anti-Communist Augusto Pinochet. The next three are those of the obituaries of the Communist mass murderers Mao, Stalin, and Lenin. Please be sure to note how many are described as having ruled by terror.

December 11, 2006, Augusto Pinochet, Dictator Who Ruled by Terror in Chile, Dies at 91

September 10, 1976, Friday, . . . Mao Tse-tung Dies in Peking at 82; Leader of Red China’s Revolution

March 6, 1953, Friday, Stalin Rose From Czarist Oppression to Transform Russia Into Mighty Socialist State; RUTHLESS IN MOVING TO GOALS

January 24, 1924, Thursday, ENORMOUS CROWDS VIEW LENIN’S BODY AS IT LIES IN STATE; Wait Hours in Snow and Zero Temperature Outside Moscow Nobles’ Club. COFFIN CARRIED FIVE MILES Members of Council of Commissars Stagger Under Load, Refusing Gun Caisson. LENIN CALLED A CHRISTIAN Archbishop Summons Synod to Declare Founder of Bolshevism Member of Church. ENORMOUS CROWDS VIEW LENIN’S BODY

In these headlines we find utter condemnation of a dictator who was relatively mild as dictators go, but who was Anti-Communist; his leading characteristic was allegedly rule by “Terror.”

In contrast, in the case of Communist mass murderers we find non-judgmental tolerance in the headlines, along with a studious refusal to mention the incalculably greater terrors they caused. More than that, we find positive esteem and enthusiasm in the headlines for the Communist mass murderers. Thus Mao was the “Leader of Red China’s Revolution”; Stalin allegedly transformed “Russia Into Mighty Socialist State”; and Lenin’s funeral was described as a phenomenon of near worshipful enthusiasm: “.COFFIN CARRIED FIVE MILES Members of Council of Commissars Stagger Under Load, Refusing Gun Caisson.”

It is patterns such as this that lead some people to think that the reporting of The New York Times is colored by its politics and that the color of its politics is red.

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Other grim statistics missed by the Media

Excerpt from a post by Gateway Pundit

The US has sadly lost 3,000 soldiers to date in the 45 months that America has been fighting the War in Iraq.

This grim milestone was presented by the AP and others today- without any historical context, of course.
So for the sake of truth, here are a couple other grim statistics that the media won’t be mentioning in their grim milestone reports:

US Military Losses during the Clinton Years and in the Iraq War:

That’s right! During the Clinton years, the US military lost an average of 939 soldiers each year. During the War in Iraq the US has lost an average of 800 soldiers each year- down each of the last two years!
These results were taken from Iraq Coalition Casualties, and Murdoc Online – the Official Department of Defense Report.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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“All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State.” — 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left — inspiring Karl Marx, the American “Progressives” of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin’s Communism. The very word “Nazi” is a German abbreviation for “National Socialist” (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

****************************

 

 

Gov. Doyle, Mayor Barrett should reimburse Milwaukee crime victims: “Anti-gun Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett should financially reimburse armed robbery victims who have been left unable to defend themselves, thanks to the policies of these two politicians, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today. CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron said two reports in recent days, one involving the robbery of a man by two armed men claiming to be undercover police officers, prove beyond doubt that Doyle’s veto of concealed carry legislation this year has given thugs a risk free working environment. Barrett opposed concealed carry.”

 

NC: Man shoots at home intruder: “No injuries were reported late Tuesday night in an apparent attempted home burglary that turned into a fight with at least one shot being fired. A man told police he was preparing to take out the trash at his home when he realized an intruder was in his house. The resident told police he went to get a handgun and as he turned around, the attacker struck him in the back of the head. That triggered a fight between the attacker and the resident of the house. During the scuffle, the victim said, he fired his gun once, with the bullet striking the refrigerator. The assailant then fled on foot.”

 

Notes from a diabetic

The first breakthrough, one I didn’t predict, is a drug, called Metanx (pronounced, stupidly enough, “MET-an-ex” when it obviously should be “met-TANKS”). My doctor tells me it’s acquiring a reputation for reversing diabetic neuropathy, something I’d thought impossible. Let me assure you it ain’t. I have some hope it might even deal with a special kind of neuropathy, retinopathy, which is what you call it when diabetics slowly go blind.

The breakthrough I did predict, I called the “Bassett coil”, after the doctor who invented it. I read about it in 1977 in the National Inquirer, believe it or not. Despite the source, the story seemed credible, so when a badly shot-up Win Bear, hero of The Probability Broach, wakes up in Ed Bear’s home, being treated by Healer Clarissa MacDougall Olson, he has these “Bassett coils” fastened all over his body….

The idea behind the coils, as I understood it way back then, is that electromagnetic fields can be used to encourage and control calcium ion deposition in the human body. Bassett’s invention was seen as a way to help old people with broken bones heal faster-when they weren’t healing at all without this treatment. I had a good family friend who had to have her femur surgically removed because it wasn’t healing and finally infected, so I understood very well what’s at stake. It turned out that the primary use to which this progress was put was in the rapid healing of professional sports injuries-nothing to sneer at, since professional sports ends up financing a lot of medical progress….

 

The bone stimulator is ultrasonic, rather than electronic, and one thing it accomplishes is to increase circulation drastically, it says here, while stimulating various complex features on the membranes of individual cells. It’s a little black plastic disc held in place with a Velcro strap, and there’s a lead to a small box about the size of an overly thick PDA. The only sensation I can associate with it is of an increased warmth, although any pain I was feeling is now gone, along with a sense of strain and distention that was bothersome and sort of ominous….

Although it’s difficult to imagine anything much spiffier coming to pass than the bone stimulator, the really big news this holiday season-a Christmas present of inestimable proportion, from Canadian science to all sixteen million of us-is that diabetes has been cured. Completely. Irrevocably. In mice.

This has to do with a previously unknown effect that pain neurons have in the Islets of Langerhans. No, these are not Danish coastal features, but the parts of the pancreas that produce insulin, the lack of which constitutes Type I diabetes. It seems these naughty neurons secrete an enzyme, or cause it to be secreted, that shut the islets off. But the neurons can be shut off, themselves, by judicious use of capsaicum, the stuff that makes chilis hot. Some other enzyme is then administered to the pancreas that turns the islets back on, and the diabetic organism-as I said, only mice, so far-are through with Glucophage, glypizide, blood tests, insulin injections, and can eat all the buttery mashed potatos, Mexican food, and chocolate cake they want. Merry Chistmas, mice!

What’s more, for reasons that are so far completely unknown, the capsaicum treatment appears to work on Type II diabetes-which in many ways has always seemed like a completely different disease-as well. How soon this will get to people, I can’t say. Not soon enough. If I weren’t diabetic, I could look forward to living another 30 or 40 years without pain, and in tolerable good health-long enough to die of cancer, anyway. If the government-induced delay extends the process by even a microsecond, then it’s time to abolish the FDA once and for all.

Source
British ad ban takes big bite out of Burger King

Burger King, the world’s second largest fast-food chain, estimates that the ban on children’s advertising could cost it up to 100 million pounds in lost UK sales next year. The prediction came as the company’s new management in the UK vowed to fight regulatory interference and a declining fast-food market. Giorgio Minardi, the company’s head of north west Europe, in his first UK interview, said: “Advertising is a key part of our drive to get kids and families into our restaurants. It will have a major impact on our top line.”

His comments come less than a week after Burger King aired its last advert aimed at children – an advert promoting penguin toys based on the hit animated film Happy Feet.

Mr Minardi, a former senior McDonald’s executive, joined its arch rival earlier this year and is leading an almost entirely new team in the UK, vowing to turn around the struggling fast-food chain. “There is life yet in the burger,” he said. Like McDonald’s, Burger King has suffered from the relentless competition on the high street and the change in consumers’ habits. One of his first decisions was to end adverts aimed at children, before regulators enforced any ban, outmanoeuvring many of his competitors.

He and his new head of marketing David Kisilevsky, have also, controversially, heavily promoted its calorific Double Whopper burgers. Mr Kisilevsky said: “People are starting to get a little bit fed up with the nanny state intrusion in our lives. It was important for Burger King to come out in a light-hearted way and say there is nothing wrong to partake in your love of a great burger.”

Burger King spends about 10m a year on advertising, with traditionally a third of that geared towards children. Mr Minardi said that once the children’s adverts stop airing the turnover will be hit “without doubt by approximately 10 to 15pc.”

The company, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, does not split out sales from individual countries but market research firm Euromonitor estimates that Burger King in the UK generated sales of 693m in 2004. Though sales are forecast to have fallen since then, the impact on sales could therefore be 100m in a worst-case scenario. This is a far higher figure than most in the industry are prepared to predict. Ofcom estimates that the lost advertising revenue to broadcasters will be 39m when the ban comes into force next year. However, the regulator never calculated the possible lost revenue to the UK fast-food industry, reckoned to be worth 13bn in annual sales.

Mr Kisilevsky said he was confident the hit could be partly offset: “We are redeploying some of our advertising spend to focus that on to families.” Mr Minardi confirmed that the company would continue to sell toys in its restaurants. “There’s nothing wrong with our kids meals, and the toys are part of that experience. We’re not going to take them out. What we’re not going to do is target kids directly.” He added that, after years of decline, sales in the UK were now in positive territory thanks to the launch of the Aberdeen Angus beef burger, which has been a hit with its diners

Source

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Just some problems with the “Obesity” war:

The use of extreme quintiles (fifths) to examine effects is in fact so common as to be almost universal but suggests to the experienced observer that the differences between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups were not statistically significant — thus making the article concerned little more than an exercise in deception

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When it comes to the politicization of the Christmas story, I thought I had seen it all. But the London Independent’s shameless mischaracterization of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as “a Palestinian refugee” takes the proverbial cake. The story by Johann Hari published Dec. 23 begins: “In two days, a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem – but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked down town is trying not to howl.”

It goes on to describe a 5-year-old tale of an Arab woman who claims she was stopped from entering Israel to deliver her twins and forced to go 20 minutes in another direction to an Arab hospital.

It’s amazing. It’s bizarre. It’s breathtaking at what passes for Western journalism in the Middle East today. First of all, was Mary “a Palestinian refugee”? No, Mary was a Jew, living in the occupied territory of Israel. She wasn’t trying to get to a Roman hospital to have her child. She was traveling with her husband from her home in Nazareth to Bethlehem, where the Roman authorities decreed those from the House of David would pay their taxes.

Who are these anti-Israel activists the Western press dispatches to cover the Middle East? Where do they come from? Where are they trained? Where are they educated? How is it possible that such drivel is actually published? What is it exactly that the so-called Palestinians want? Do they want their own homeland or not? It seems to me they’ve got it. But now they want to be able to travel into Israel for medical care? What’s wrong with their own hospitals? Why is it that they don’t decide to buy more medicine and fewer guns?

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame “the modern-day Mary” in this fable for wanting first-class medical care in Israel. And had Bethlehem remained under Israeli governance, that’s exactly what the people of Bethlehem would have received. But the so-called Palestinians demanded their own country. Unfortunately for them, that means Palestinian hospitals, too.

Is that context not important for people unfamiliar with the region to understand? Is it not important for reporters covering the region to understand? Let’s call this what it is: Deliberate deception. It is the worst form of propaganda. In another time, we labeled it agit-prop. What is the purpose? Is it to stir up more hate and violence?

More here

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THE LATEST POSTINGS ON ICJS

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Stewardess banned from carrying Bible

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No substitute for knowing your enemy

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Revisiting The Horrors Of The Holocaust

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Throw the jew joke down the well

United Nations Human rights council fails Darfur

 

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ELSEWHERE

Woman turned away by doctor – for being American: “An American woman has been refused treatment by a doctor in Blekinge in southern Sweden because of her nationality. The woman’s husband has now reported the incident to the Medical Responsibility Board….. But when the American woman, accompanied by her husband and niece, went to meet the doctor in his treatment room, he declined to examine her. Rather than introduce himself, the doctor waved the patient’s papers and shouted “she doesn’t have strep throat, she doesn’t have strep throat”. He then added that he would not treat her. “He said he didn’t like Americans,” said Johansson. He also disliked hearing English spoken in his treatment room and soon walked out. According to Johansson, the doctor was a Palestinian who objected to American foreign policy in the Middle East.” [Israeli doctors treat Palestinians all the time of course].

Read here how the NYT refused to correct a lying story about abortion even after the paper’s own ombudsman condemned the story. They are really arrogant and totally dishonest SOBs there. I guess that’s Leftism for you.

Another way Britain gets people out of their evil cars: “Train fares will rise above the rate of inflation tomorrow for the fourth consecutive year, with passengers on longdistance services facing the highest increases. Bus passengers in London will find fares rising by more than double the rate of inflation, with the single cash fare up 33 per cent to Å“2. Passenger groups said that the increases would encourage people to abandon public transport. Rail fares that are set by the Government, including season tickets and some off-peak tickets, will rise by 4.3 per cent. But the 60 per cent of fares set by private operators will rise by up to 11 per cent.”

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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“All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State.” — 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left — inspiring Karl Marx, the American “Progressives” of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin’s Communism. The very word “Nazi” is a German abbreviation for “National Socialist” (Nationalsozialistisch)

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

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