Category Archives: Media Criticism

Not Forever

I’m often annoyed by the straw-man argument/complex question (and aren’t all complex questions a form of straw man?) that opponents of life extension toss out: “Why do you want to live forever”?

It’s not about living forever — it’s about living as long as you want to live. Robin Hanson has the same problem.

I can’t say now that I won’t be tired of life in a hundred years or so, but give me a chance to find out. I do suffer from ennui occasionally as I get older, but I think that most of it comes from not feeling as physically good as I did when I was younger, and not having the financial resources to do all the things I’d like to do. Fix those problems, and I might in fact be willing to at least take a trip to Mars, if not a one-way one.

Killing Us Slowly

Why it’s a bad idea to put the government in charge of our nutrition (and health care in general):

According to Scientific American, growing research into carbohydrate-based diets has demonstrated that the medical establishment may have harmed Americans by steering them toward carbs. Research by Meir Stampfer, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard, concludes that diets rich in carbohydrates that are quickly digestible—that is, with a high glycemic index, like potatoes, white rice, and white bread—give people an insulin boost that increases the risk of diabetes and makes them far more likely to contract cardiovascular disease than those who eat moderate amounts of meat and fewer carbs. Though federal guidelines now emphasize eating more fiber-rich carbohydrates, which take longer to digest, the incessant message over the last 30 years to substitute carbs for meat appears to have done significant damage. And it doesn’t appear that the government will change its approach this time around. The preliminary recommendations of a panel advising the FDA on the new guidelines urge people to shift to “plant-based” diets and to consume “only moderate amounts of lean meats, poultry and eggs.”

This seems like part of the general war on science. I think that the disastrous FDA food pyramid is driven by a combination of political correctness (it’s evil to use grain to feed cattle when children are starving in India), and corporate lobbying by Big Grain (funded by us, of course, via farm subsidies). But it’s one thing to have FDA recommend things — we can always ignore them if we inform ourselves. Much more troubling is having fascist nannies like Nurse Bloomberg force us to follow their recommendations.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Glenn has a question:

In an age when aggressive government agencies in places like New York City seek a greater hand in shaping Americans’ diets, the next set of guidelines, published later this year, could prove more controversial than usual because increasing scientific evidence suggests that some current federal recommendations have simply been wrong. Will a public-health establishment that has been slow to admit its mistakes over the years acknowledge the new research and shift direction? Or will it stubbornly stick to its obsolete guidelines?

Can we sue them and jail their executives, like we’d do if they were drug companies . . . .?

No, because you see, the drug companies are all about corporate greed and profits, whereas the bureaucrats have nothing in mind but our good health.

The Parasite Has Been Growing

…while the host has been losing weight:

[Rasmussen] asked likely voters — his usual sample, which tilts more Republican than all adults — whether increased government spending is good or bad for the economy.

The results were unambiguous. Good for the country? 28 percent. Bad for the country? 52 percent.

He got similar results when he asked whether increasing the federal debt is good or bad for the economy. Likely voters believe it’s bad for the economy by a 56 percent to 17 percent margin.

There is some dissent, from the voters Rasmussen labels the Political Class. These are voters who trust the judgment of America’s political leaders over that of the American people, who do not believe the federal government has become a special interest group and who don’t believe government and big business work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.

In other words, they’re the people the New York Times’ David Brooks refers to as “the educated class.” Or those voters in Cambridge and Brookline who stuck with the Democratic nominee in the special Senate election last January.

Around here, we refer to them as the parasitic idiot class. And David Brooks is at the head of the class.

[Update a couple minutes later]

This seems related: thoughts on the academic/industrial complex. I wonder if it will survive the bursting of the academic bubble?

[Update a while later]

Gee, this seems related, too. Electric car subsidies as handouts for the rich.

And thoughts from Roger Simon on the continuing myth of Democrats as the party of the people:

We live in an era — the worst economically since the Depression — when the daughter of the first couple of the Democratic Party has a multi-million dollar, Marie Antoinette-style wedding with port-a-potties almost as luxurious as a toilette in Baden Baden; it’s self-proclaimed environmental leader, the first global warming billionaire, sprouts “green” McMansions from Nashville to Montecito; and its already multi-billionaire senator from Massachusetts moors his yacht in another state to escape taxes we hoi polloi could only dream of paying.

But wait, as they say, there’s more. At this moment, two of their leaders from a supposedly disadvantaged minority are about to be tried for ethical transgressions (read: thievery) even Congress couldn’t sweep under the rug. Never mind that these transgressions mostly exploit the very minority these people purport to represent. It’s part of the game. Convince minorities they should act like victims. Extort guilt payments from the majority and keep the change. Meanwhile, nothing improves for the minority because it would interrupt the system.

They’re the new Bourbons, of whom it was said that they have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing. But I think they’re in for a big lesson this fall.

True Science

…versus cargo-cult science:

When the attorney general of Virginia sued to force Michael Mann of “hockey stick” fame to provide the raw data he used, and the complete computer program used to analyze the data, so that “you” could decide, the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia (where Mann was a professor at the time he defended the hockey stick) declared this request — Feynman’s request — to be an outrage. You peons, the Faculty Senate decreed, must simply accept the conclusions of any “scientific endeavor that has satisfied peer review standards.” Feynman’s — and the attorney general’s and my own and other scientists’ — request for the raw data, so we can “judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at,” would, according to the Faculty Senate, “send a chilling message to scientists … and indeed scholars in any discipline.”

According the Faculty Senate of the University of Virginia, “science,” and indeed “scholarship” in general, is no longer an attempt to establish truth by replicable experiment, or by looking at evidence that can be checked by anyone. “Truth” is now to be established by the decree of powerful authority, by “peer review.” Wasn’t the whole point of the Enlightenment to avoid exactly this?

That old “Enlightenment” thing is for fogies. We’re all postmodernists now.