Category Archives: Education

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Why I Eat Saturated Fats

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Because they taste good, and they have essentially no relationship with coronary risk:

Overall, the literature does not offer much support for the idea that long term saturated fat intake has a significant effect on the concentration of blood cholesterol. If it’s a factor at all, it must be rather weak, which is consistent with what has been observed in multiple non-human species (13). I think it’s likely that the diet-heart hypothesis rests in part on an over-interpretation of short-term controlled feeding studies. I’d like to see a more open discussion of this in the scientific literature. In any case, these controlled studies have typically shown that saturated fat increases both LDL and HDL, so even if saturated fat did have a small long-term effect on blood cholesterol, as hinted at by some of the observational studies, its effect on heart attack risk would still be difficult to predict.

Actually, I have a simpler explanation — it’s simply an appealing theory, from a common-sense standpoint. You are what you eat, right?

Of course, it’s always dangerous to rely on “common sense” when it comes to complex topics like biochemistry. And yet the FDA builds such murderous concepts as the food pyramid on such shoddy research and thinking. Not to mention agri-industry lobbying, of course.

Business, Education, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

A Possible Explanation For Wall Street Screwups

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They rely too much on credentialism in hiring:

It is odd that the soft firms, which market themselves to clients as being super-smart repositories of brainpower (of course this is largely a fiction; see point 3 above), would rely so heavily on university admissions committees. They effectively outsource a big chunk of due diligence on their most important investment (human capital) to a group of people whose judgement they somehow trust, but perhaps without detailed understanding. When I was on the faculty at Yale I knew people in admissions and it’s not clear to me that they were the best able to spot potential in 18 year olds. In studies of expert performance admissions people are less good at predicting UG GPA than a simple algorithm. (The “algorithm” is simply a weighted sum of SAT and HS GPA!)

I’m a lot less impressed by Ivy degrees than I’m supposed to be. And I think that the current occupant of the White House is a great example of why.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Caught With Their Briefs Down

35 Comments

As I wrote yesterday, I was utterly unsurprised by the ruling on ObamaCare (well, OK, I was a little pleasantly surprised at its scope in basically shutting down the entire enterprise). We had, after all, been telling these totalitarians for many months that what they proposed was clearly far beyond the reach of the Commerce Clause. But Jen Rubin notes that apparently the left had been paying no attention to us (“Are you serious? Are you serious?!“) and was very surprised, to the point that they are incoherent and have no actual arguments against it:

The ruling is. . . um. . . thinking of a case liberals hate. . . um. . . just like Bush v. Gore! (Except it has nothing to do with the Equal Protection Clause or any other aspect of that case.) It is, we are told, “curious,” “odd,” or “unconventional.”

These are complaints, not legal arguments. And they suggest that the left was totally unprepared for the constitutional attack on their beloved handiwork. After all, the recent mocking by the left of conservatives’ reverence for the Constitution suggests they are mystified that a 200-year old document could get in the way of their historic achievement. They are truly nonplussed, and so they vamp, not with reasoned analysis but with an outpouring of adjectives.

Once again, we see that the beliefs of the left are hot-house plants. They are nurtured in the protective cocoons of academia, the leftstream media and Manhattan and DC salons, where they are never challenged, and thus never develop proper defenses against the day that they must confront the real world. Non-leftists, on the other hand, must continually make their cases and hone their arguments, which makes the inevitable confrontation all the bloodier when they are ultimately exposed to harsh reality. And of course, some of the most exsanguinatory encounters occur on Fox News, because it’s the only place that puts them both in the same room.

[Update a while later]

The Constitutional moment: ObamaCare meets Madison and Marshall.

This crowd has needed a “constitutional moment” for about century.

I wish that the court would overturn Wickard, but that may have to await some new Justices from a Republican president who actually believes in originalism.

[Update a while later]

As for those on the left who are accusing Judge Vinson of “judicial activism,” they only demonstrate their ignorance of the meaning of that phrase. Simply put, “judicial activism” is the making of new law out of whole cloth via judicial ruling (Roe v Wade being almost a canonical example), not declaring a law unconstitutional.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

I’m Confused

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OK, for years, people who claim to be my intellectual betters on foreign policy (and pretty much everything else), and particularly about the Middle East, have been telling me that the root cause of the problems in the Middle East is the “occupation” of disputed territories in the West Bank and Gaza, and that we won’t be able to make any progress without solving that issue. It is what motivates Arab anger, and animates their protests.

Well, surely if this is the case, with all of the apparent anger and ongoing revolt in Cairo, we should be seeing many reports on the ground of protesters with angry signs against the Zionist entity, right? Or have I just missed them somehow?

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

On The State Of Higher Education

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A depressing essay:

I detect no lack of seriousness or ambition in these students. They believe they are exceptionally well-educated. They have jumped expertly through every hoop put in front of them to be the top of their classes in our country’s best universities, and they have been lavishly praised for doing so. They seem so surprised when asked simple direct questions that they have never considered.

They’re not educated — they’re indoctrinated, and have been, for the most part, since they were five years old. They don’t know what they don’t know, and yet this is where our country’s political leadership comes from. Fortunately, this is why the collapse of the mainstream media is such a disaster for the left. Their ideas are hothouse plants that can only stand up in a debate-free environment. Once they come out of the academic/media cocoon, they quickly collapse, because they don’t even know how to intelligently defend them. Because they’re mostly indefensible.