Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Anarchists

6 Comments

Who knew so many of them were Democrats?

“If the problems are intense as they are this morning, then maybe we would have to consider a short delay in terms of the individual mandate,” New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell, told Yahoo News on Wednesday….Pascrell joins Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Sens. Jean Shahaan and Joe Manchin in expressing support for extended enrollment and individual mandate deadlines.

Why isn’t Harry Reid denouncing these terrorists, these people trying to sabotage settled law?

[Update a cou0ple minutes later]

Joe Manchin is an anarchist Democrat who hates poor people and wants them to be sick:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is burnishing his “blue dog” credentials and working on a bill that would delay Obamacare’s mandate by a year.

What a monster.

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

The War On Saturated Fat

3 Comments

Is it time to end it?

Yes. Next question?

When you’ve lost the LA Times…

[Update a few minutes later]

“When saturated fat got mixed up with the high sugar added to processed food in the second half of the 20th century, it got a bad name,” noted UC San Francisco pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig. On the question of which is worse — saturated fat or added sugar, Lustig added, “The American Heart Assn. has weighed in — the sugar many times over.”

Yes. Also, eating fat doesn’t make you fat. Two of the most damaging nutrition myths are that you get cholesterol build up from eating cholesterol, and you get fat from eating fat. Both are based on the primitive “you are what you eat” theory. Stop counting calories, eat things that are good for you (which include saturated fat) and avoid things that are bad (grains and sugar).

Humor, Media Criticism, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Weird

Zombies Versus Animals

14 Comments

Don’t worry, wildlife would kick undead ass:

…zombies are essentially walking carrion, and Mother Nature doesn’t let anything go to waste.

Yup.

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s really worth a read:

North America’s large mammal predators would be more than a match for zombies. We have two bear species, brown (or grizzly) and black bears. Male brown bears can weigh in at 1,000 pounds. They are not afraid of humans. They can deliver a bite of 1200 pounds per square inch and have long, sharp claws designed to rip open logs and flip boulders in search of insects and other small critters to eat. They would easily tear apart rotting zombie flesh. Black bears are much smaller and typically run from humans, but even a black bear, when approached or cornered, would make short work of a zombie. Both bear species have an incredible sense of smell and both love to eat carrion, so even if zombies didn’t approach them, the bears eventually would learn that these walking bags of flesh make good eating.

Like black bears, gray wolves are very shy of humans and typically run away at the first sight of us. Nor are they strangers to scavenging. They’d soon take advantage of the easy pickings presented by lumbering zombies. Coyotes are far less shy than wolves and can happily live alongside humans, including in the heart of our cities. These intelligent canids would quickly learn that they could take down zombies one by one, especially the eastern populations of coyote, which are larger and bolder due to past interbreeding with wolves and domestic dogs.

Though I’d point out that it they think black bears are shy around humans, they’ve never run across one in Alaska. They’re very aggressive up there — Alaskans seem to fear them more than grizzlies, which will generally leave you alone if you don’t surprise them. I suspect it’s because they’re much less used to humans, with the low population density. It’s almost like they’re a different species from the lower forty nine. Alaska would be a particularly gruesome place to be walking dead. The moose alone would make quick work of them.

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Seven “Solutions” To ObamaCare

7 Comments

…that won’t save it:

I don’t know how to fix the broken programming system. But I do know what sort of “fixes” could make the insurance market break further. If we’re going to delay, then we need to delay the whole thing — guaranteed issue, community rating and so forth. Otherwise, we’re just asking for, well, a quagmire.

They’re calling for a “surge,” without an exit strategy.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Irrational “Liberal” Hate

4 Comments

Dissecting the anti-Keystone nonsense:

So what is going on here? Rich liberals hire kids–recent college graduates, or maybe college or high school students–to produce idiotic “research reports” that can be dismantled by anyone familiar with arithmetic, let alone the oil and gas industry, of which these kids obviously know nothing at all. The claims these reports make are completely divorced from reality, but liberals don’t seem to care. The Huffington Post headlines: “Keystone XL Pipeline Could Yield $100 Billion For Koch Brothers.” PolicyMic: “Actually, You Probably WILL Guess Who Stands to Make $100 Billion Off the Keystone XL Pipeline.” TruthDig: “Koch Brothers Stand to Make $100 Billion From Keystone Pipeline.” And, of course, the Kos Kidz are all over it.

Imbecility.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Technology Is Killing ObamaCare

13 Comments

…but it may be able to save us from it:

Over time, I think we’ll see a lot more intelligence moving into medical devices covering a wide range of subjects. (And, in some cases, it may do the job better than a human doctor: When my wife had a heart attack at the age of 37, the EKG machine at the hospital flagged her reading as indicating a possible myocardial infarction, but the doctors dismissed that because she was a young, thin, athletic woman. The machine was right, and they were wrong.)

While we’re a long way from the “autodocs” featured in some science fiction stories, the proliferation of devices that can do extensive blood tests and diagnostic workups doesn’t seem that far away. Neither does the creation of freestanding gadgets that can diagnose things such as strep throat and other staples of doc-in-a-box or nurse-in-a-box practices now.

While such devices will be expensive at first, they’re likely to get steadily cheaper and more capable because, as electronic gadgets, they’ll benefit from Moore’s Law, the steady increase in computing power.

But only if we don’t tax them out of existence, or punish those developing them.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The IRS Tea Party (Phony) Scandal

23 Comments

Barack Obama’s fingerprints are all over it:

One grows weary of stating the obvious, but if President Bush had declared a specific category of citizen groups a “threat to democracy” potentially run by “political operatives” or “foreign-controlled,” and the IRS launched an unprecedented campaign of targeting and intrusive questioning, the mainstream media would have been relentless not only in its independent investigations but in its calls for accountability – at the highest levels.

Was the president of the United States involved in the IRS scandal? He was the one who identified the targets – in the most public manner possible.

This is called “circumstantial evidence.” People are convicted on circumstantial evidence every day.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!