Category Archives: Media Criticism

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Science And Society

Triglycerides

So I heard about this story on the news this morning, and it sounded a little junk sciency:

“What’s exciting about this is it takes that to another place,” said Toni Pollin, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who led the 2008 work. “Just as you’d expect from something that prevents coronary artery buildup, there is strong evidence that having [a gene mutation] reduces the risk of having a heart attack.”

Kathiresan and colleagues benefited from the revolution in genome technology, sequencing 18,666 genes in each of 3,734 people in their search for genes that appeared to be linked to triglycerides. Rare mutations in the APOC3 gene stood out.

Once they understood where to look, they searched for four mutations in that gene in more than 110,000 people. They found that people with any one of the mutations — about 1 in 150 people — were 40 percent less likely to have heart disease and had lower levels of triglycerides.

There is no doubt in my mind that that there is a genetic basis for heart-disease risk, but I am not seeing anything in this study that would indicate that trying to reduce triglycerides per se (as statins attempt to lower cholesterol) are doing anything but treating a symptom, and possibly a harmless one. The mutation reduces both triglycerides and heart risk, but doesn’t mean that high triglycerides increase heart risk per se, or that lowering them artificially will reduce it.

But for what it’s worth, since I went partially paleo, my triglycerides have become almost immeasurable.

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

Bill Nelson

22 Comments

He’s pushing back against Shelby’s attempt to sabotage commercial crew.

I don’t think this is right, though:

NASA insists that waiving certain parts of the Federal Acquisition Regulations, which the agency may legally do in certain situations, is vital to getting a commercially designed system safely up and running.

NASA isn’t “waiving certain parts of the FAR.” It is following the FAR, which doesn’t require cost-plus-like accounting for fixed-price contracts. In fact it is Shelby who is trying to change the FAR by demanding that it be used anyway.

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

A New Rocket Engine

6 Comments

An expensive solution to a problem we don’t have. It’s a good history of how we got into this mess over the decades:

SpaceX is advancing in all directions —a human-rated spacecraft, reusability and a million-pound-thrust LOX-methane motor—and despite normal setbacks, it has failed to fall on its face as many people believed it would.

Hence GenCorp’s concern. But its solution runs counter to the total-launch-service model used by most of the industry, where the prime contractor selects or builds its motors. As SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said last week: “It would be very unusual for us to buy a critical piece of our strategy and our technology from somebody else.” I think that she meant to say “are you out of your tiny mind?” but was trying to put it diplomatically.

Since Seymour expects a government-funded development program after a paper-and-components competition, too, the next question is: “What new technology is the government funding here?” High-chamber-pressure LOX-kerosene rockets may be new to U.S. industry, but not to the world.

If big U.S. government money is going to be spent on space launch, and if SpaceX can provide an “assured access” backup, why not spend it on reusability—the only strategy that promises dramatically lower costs. The X-33 did not fail, and the shuttle did not miss its economic goals by a parsec or two, because reusability is a bad idea: Lousy requirements did it for them both. A modern, intelligently sized two-stage reusable system is like G.K. Chesterton’s view of Christianity: It “has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.” It’s time to change that.

Yes. But expect policy makers to continue down the same failed well-worn groove.

History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Unbelievable Missing IRS Emails

58 Comments

This really is much worse than Watergate now:

One doesn’t need reams of reports or public-opinion polls to understand the gut plausibility of an IRS scandal in full flower. Yet the Obama administration seems not to have imagined that this burgeoning problem might require more attention than anything else Republicans are screaming about. Rather than a president in over his head, Obama is behaving like a president who doesn’t believe the onus should be on him to head off an appearance of impropriety at the pass.

No matter how old-school the IRS scandal feels, that naïve arrogance feels rather new on the scene—the sort of attitude given off by people who believe deep down that if you have the correct stance on policy, you ought to be immune to political attack.

One of the (many) ways in which it’s worse is that Watergate was purely a White House scandal, whereas many Democrats in Congress are complicit in this one. And sadly, there is no Democrat equivalent of a Howard Baker to go to the White House and tell the president that it’s over.

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

The Augustine Panel

2 Comments

Five years later, what does it think about SLS?

The country, with NASA’s budget, simply can’t afford to build a large rocket that will fly infrequently and cost as much as $2-$3 billion a year to maintain, Greason said.

“It’s hard for me, I personally haven’t been able to find a scenario in which a government funded and operated launch system, for which the government is the only customer, is a rational approach given the current budgets.

“Is that because I’m against big rockets? Of course not. But maintaining rocket production lines is a very expensive proposition. Trying to open another production line for a rocket that has almost no customers is a difficult thing for me to explain. The one argument I have heard that, if it were true, I would buy, is that there are no other ways to explore. I would buy that, but I don’t think it’s true.”

It’s not true.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

The IRS’s Latest Fairy Tale

101 Comments

Now they say they recycled the backup tapes.

Meanwhile, Cleta Mitchell has some serious questions. As she notes, the agency is in clear violation of several federal statutes.

And of course, we know what some Dems will say:

[Tuesday-morning update]

In an odd coincidence, the emails of other people involved in the “phony IRS scandal” have also disappeared.

Huh.

[Bumped]

[Update a while later]

“…the documents showed Lerner wanted to make an example out of someone with charges in order to chill all of the groups in the tea party movement.”

Sort of like this guy:

“It was kind of like how the Romans used to, you know, conquer villages in the Mediterranean,” he said. “They’d go in to a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw, and they’d crucify them.

“And then, you know, that town was really easy to manage for the next few years,” he said.

Because, you know, free Americans should be “easy to manage.”

[Afternoon update]

Gee, why would the IRS lose all of these peoples’ emails? All they were trying to do was trump up charges against innocent people and throw them in jail.

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

No Trampolines For The Astronauts

3 Comments

Citing my Reason piece, the Washington Times comes out against the rocket to nowhere.

[Update a while later]

Dick Shelby is a uniter, not a divider:

It’s rare to get the Obama Administration and the conservative editorial page of the Washington Times in agreement on something. Yet, both have spoken out in opposition to report language in the Senate’s Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill—due to be considered by the full Senate this week—regarding cost and pricing data for commercial crew and cargo providers.

Well, it’s not like he has any political principles other than what will get him reelected.