Category Archives: Science And Society

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

Low Fat, High Carb

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I’m sure that this is just a coincidence:

It’s an interesting coincidence that this increase in obesity started roughly at the same time that the U.S. government started to advocate low-fat, high-carb diets. I remember that period pretty clearly, because I thought it was wonderful. Entenmann’s came out with no-fat pastries — the no-fat cherry coffeecake was one of my favorites — I could eat as much rice as I wanted, pasta was good and more pasta was better, as long as you didn’t use butter because of the evil saturated fat and cholesterol. But margarine, rich in transfats made by hydrogenating corn oil, was much better.

I remember that period clearly, too. It was during that time, after my father’s first heart attack at age 44, that the health gurus told him to go low-fat and eat more grains. Ten years later, he had another one, from which he died a month later. I blame the FDA/nutrition-industrial complex for his death (though it didn’t help that he smoked and had grown up on bagels, knishes and potatoes). And I find it particularly galling when idiots think that it’s anti-science to not buy the health-destroying junk science of the conventional wisdom, when the actual science indicates that it’s killing us.

[Update a couple minutes later]

In reading the Yglesias piece, it’s worth pointing out the flaw in the logic. No one is claiming that humans aren’t capable of rapidly evolving to accommodate dietary changes. That’s a straw man.

The issue is whether or not there is any evolutionary pressure for us to evolve to be healthy with a modern big-agro diet. In short, there is not. If you’re lactose intolerant in a dairy-based society, you’re unlikely to thrive or reproduce. But when it comes to grains, people do just fine on such diets when young, in terms of reaching reproductive age and rearing kids. The bad effects hit us generally later in life, when our genes no longer care (yes, I’m anthropomorphizing, but you know what I mean) whether we live or die, or are healthy or ill. So we go on, generation after generation, continuing to eat crap that’s bad for us, and our bodies not bothering to adapt.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Global Warming Hysteria

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…is dissipating:

1. Global warming has gone AWOL over last 10 years, per the satellite record

2. Cumulating [sic] CO2 emissions in the atmosphere have had a minor impact on global temperatures over the last 20 years

3. The mainstream press, as represented by The Economist, and other proponents of convential [sic] climate orthodoxy are moving closer to the AGW skeptics’ (lukewarmers’) position

4. The publics [sic] (per Pew) belief in catastrophic AGW predictions is plummeting

As it should. As Robert Tracinski says:

So here’s the state of play of climate science a third of a century into the global warming hysteria. They don’t have a reliable baseline of global temperature measurements that would allow them to say what is normal and natural and what isn’t. Their projections about future warming are demonstrably failing to predict the actual data. And now they have been caught, yet again, fudging the numbers and manipulating the graphs to show a rapid 20th-century warming that they want to be true but which they can’t back up with actual evidence.

A theory with this many holes in it would be have been thrown out long ago, if not for the fact that it conveniently serves the political function of indicting fossil fuels as a planet-destroying evil and allowing radical environmentalists to put a modern, scientific face on their primitivist crusade to shut down industrial civilization.

I think that history will record that 2009 was the height of the hysteria, just before the release of the CRU data and emails, which broke the fever, and was a partial cause of the Copenhagen fiasco. And “FOIA,” whoever he or she is, will be viewed as a hero of humanity.

[Mid-morning update]

The new climate deniers.

[Later-morning update]

Why Freeman Dyson is a skeptic about climate “science”: “I believe any good scientist ought to be a skeptic.”

Amen.

Here‘s the full story.

Business, Economics, Education, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

The Corruption Of Once-Liberal Education

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What’s the matter with Vassar?

The students I contacted were angry about the walkout and embarrassed for Vassar. The protesters, on the other hand, tweeted a proud picture with a poster they’d ripped down. These students may fancy themselves courageous, but hiding behind masks and refusing to risk public contradiction by questioning a political opponent is cowardly.

As for the talk itself, you can watch it on video. The walkout comes at about 29 minutes into the tape. You can hear students criticizing the protesters as they leave. (A brief video with a better camera angle on the walkout can be found here.) But the real takeaway from the video is that, agree or disagree, the dreaded Epstein laid out a perfectly reasonable case for the importance of fossil fuels and the dangers of putting the industry that produces them out of business without an economically viable substitute. The notion that a talk like this is out of place at a an institution of higher education is pernicious. If anything, students desperately need to hear Epstein’s side of the story.

I asked Vassar’s administration for a comment on the walkout, the ripping down of ads for the talk, and on the threat by a student to harm himself at the talk as a protest. Acting Vassar College President, Jonathan Chenette has so far addressed only the walkout. Chenette’s statement, forwarded to me by Vassar, emphasizes that Epstein took the walkout in stride (true), yet added that the students who “[exited] rather than engaging” had “lost an opportunity for exchange and questioning.” (I have some serious concerns about this statement, but I’ll raise them when I reproduce the full text in a follow-up post.) My first response to Chenette’s statement is that it won’t do much to address the underlying problems at Vassar, which run deep.

There may be faculty at Vassar who still respect the ideals of liberal education as classically understood. Notwithstanding that, Vassar appears to have passed a tipping point beyond which these ideals no longer meaningfully operate where they’re most needed. Classes filled with courteous and respectful discussion don’t mean much if students dare not raise questions that half the country might ask.

If only the problem were just at Vassar.

And always remember, it’s a right-wing war on science.

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

Attack On The Killer Tomatoes

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Some thoughts on the war on Monsanto:

Monsanto is just too perfect an issue for a certain class of urbane lefty already inclined to food snobbery and to activism. It harmonizes with his inherent mistrust of corporations, confirms him in the superiority of his lifestyle choices, and accords with the deep strain of Rousseauian anti-modernism that runs through him. Never mind that a world without GMOs would be a hungrier world, a world in which the poor would have to pay something closer to the prices he happily bears for the peace of mind that comes from the politically correct consumption of roughage. As for the rest, well, let them eat cake. Locally sourced, sustainably produced, certified organic cake.

I did note on someone’s FB page the other day that the GMO hysteria is the modern version of “Let them eat cake.” I don’t want to hear one more word about the “Republican” “war on science.” These nutjobs probably think that Norman Borlaug committed crimes against humanity.