Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Culinary, Education, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

A Sea Change In Dietary Advice

4 Comments

Low-carb should be the first approach in treating diabetes and obesity.

[Update a few minutes later]

Meanwhile, “Big Pasta” Barilla has been meddling in nutrition science.

[Sunday-morning update]

No, despite the headline, there is zero scientific evidence that listing calories on menus is helping people lose weight, and this article provides none. This “study” is nonsense. First, it’s self reporting. Second, it’s premised on the assumption, for which there is zero evidence, that counting calories is helpful, when calorie counting is a scientifically bogus concept, that assumes all calories are equal in their effects on metabolism. The kind of calories matter, and the way they measure calories, by literally burning food, is not how your body metabolizes calories, so it doesn’t even make sense thermodynamically.

Business, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

#FakeNews

12 Comments

The New York Times (shockingly!) gets it wrong. (Again)

[Update a while later]

And then there’s this misleading hed. You have to get deep into the story to find out that this decision was made during the Obama administration, and had nothing to do with Haley. Unless the headline is “Ambassador Haley’s Quarters Have $52,000 Curtains Ordered By The Obama Administration,” what is even the point of this story? Other than, of course, to make the Trump administration look bad.

[Noon update]

With regard to the latter story:

IOW, there was no point to the story. I wonder if the Public Editor will have anything to say about this?

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

Branding In Space

18 Comments

There seems to be a lot of concern in the science journalism community about Bridenstine’s potential proposal to allow sponsorship of missions:

Bridenstine’s proposal would set a dangerous precedent for NASA’s future. By suggesting that commercial partnerships could help fund NASA’s missions, it implies that the agency is not worth funding through the usual means—annual budgets carefully negotiated and ironed out by lawmakers. And their constituents believe that the space program is important; according to a study from the Pew Research Center in June, 72 percent of Americans say it’s essential for the United States to continue to be a world leader in space exploration. If Nike is ready and willing to drop millions of dollars to sponsor the next mission to Mars, why should lawmakers bother spending any taxpayer money on it? The world’s premier space agency shouldn’t have to resort to brand sponsorships in the absence of political will. And even if brands could float the first few years of a mission, they might not have the stomach for the years, or even decades it sometimes takes for NASA’s most ambitious missions to come to fruition. [Emphasis added]

There is a false assumption here that a) the purpose of NASA spending is “space exploration,” and that the negotiations and “ironing out” have much to do with “space exploration” as opposed to zip-code engineering. The sooner that we recognize that there is in fact an absence of political will, and accept that space exploration should be privatized, the way it was until the end of WW II, the sooner we’ll start to make more progress.

[Update a few minutes later]
More from Ken Chang.