…with a fake memo? Looks like it to me.
Funny, the climate skeptics have never had to resort to things like this — they had plenty of real proof of unscientific behavior. These people sound desperate.
Category Archives: Science And Society
The Toxic Totalitarian Nanny State
My thoughts on the pre-school lunch confiscation, over at PJMedia.
Creeping Totalitarianism
Thoughts from Lileks on school lunches:
I’m trying to think of a situation in which it’s permissible for a government official – not a school employee, even, but someone representing an agency outside the school – ask my daughter what she had for breakfast, then send me a letter informing me I have fed her the wrong thing, and must correct my ways. I can’t even imagine a state official demanding to look in her lunch to see if it conforms with national standards. If this is true . .
A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.
The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.
The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.
And I say “if,” because years of getting collar-hot over this or that, only to find out that the situation was 17% less objectionable, which converted the situation from Ridiculous State Imposition to Idiotic Overreach Compounded by Misunderstanding and Mulish Defensiveness. But it seems to be holding up.
If this happened to us I would have to have a conversation with some people. Her lunch is simple: a piece of whole-wheat bread, a slice of bologna, half a slice of cheese, a bag of grapes, a ration of almonds, and a Roarin’ Waters pouch of flavored fluid with no sugar. It doesn’t have a vegetable because she wouldn’t eat it. In the case of this kid, the school made her a new lunch that included a vegetable, and she didn’t try it, either. You can lead a kid to watercress, but you cannot make them them eat.
There are two issues here. First, the overreach in general of having a bureaucrat police the contents of lunches brought from home. But the second is that junk science involved. There is abundant evidence that grain is not good for everyone (and perhaps not really for anyone), and yet the federal government demands that it be included in every meal. So even if one thinks that it’s acceptable for the government to act as a nanny food policeman, the law they enforce should conform to actual healthy nutrition, rather than the discredited food pyramid. As Glenn says, we used to have a remedy for this sort of thing that’s unfortunately gone out of fashion. It involves hot thick hydrocarbons and bird coverings.
First The Himalayas
…and now the snow levels in the Sierra refuse to be reduced. OMGaia…
So much for Stephen Chu’s prediction of the Central Valley drying up and blowing away.
Why does Earth hate the warm mongers soooooooo much? Why won’t it get with the program?
Are Neanderthals Prepared For Modern Life?
I agree that it’s not obvious that they are any less so than Homo Sapiens sapiens. It is an interesting question as to whether cloning one would be ethical, though.
Obesity
Are we entering an epigenetic spiral of it?
The relatively new fields of epigenetics and nutrigenomics are showing that changes in gene expression can be produced by environmental mechanisms. Could rising levels of obesity alter our genes, and, in turn, could these obesity-favoring alterations be passed on to future generations?
OK, I’m a little confused. Isn’t there a difference between the gene expression and the gene itself? Are they really saying that the environment can change the genes in a way that makes the trait acquired as a result of the environment heritable? That is, are they saying that Lamarck may have been onto something?
[Update a few minutes later]
Just a coincidence, I’m sure, but amusing that this story came out two days before Darwin Day.
And of course, Darwin was born on exactly the same day as Abraham Lincoln, in 1809. In fact, in protest of “President’s” Day, which trivializes the memory of both Washington and Lincoln, I think I’ll go put out the flag.
One Funeral At A Time
The intellectual arrogance of this post is breathtaking.
For the record, I’m not a “denier,” I’m a skeptic, as are all true scientists. And I think that long before we die, society will come to its senses. It’s already started happening, when you see how low this issue is on most peoples’ agenda in the polls (close to the bottom).
My Cat Drives Me Crazy
She does, actually, with her willful refusal to pee in a litter box, but it may be literally true as well:
It’s almost impossible to hear about Flegr’s research without wondering whether you’re infected—especially if, like me, you’re a cat owner, favor very rare meat, and identify even a little bit with your Toxo sex stereotype. So before coming to Prague, I’d gotten tested for the parasite, but I didn’t yet know the results. It seemed a good time to see what his intuition would tell me. “Can you guess from observing someone whether they have the parasite—myself, for example?,” I ask.
“No,” he says, “the parasite’s effects on personality are very subtle.” If, as a woman, you were introverted before being infected, he says, the parasite won’t turn you into a raving extrovert. It might just make you a little less introverted. “I’m very typical of Toxoplasma males,” he continues. “But I don’t know whether my personality traits have anything to do with the infection. It’s impossible to say for any one individual. You usually need about 50 people who are infected and 50 who are not, in order to see a statistically significant difference. The vast majority of people will have no idea they’re infected.”
A long, but fascinating article.
Obama’s Amazing Energy Spin Machine
Thoughts on the administration policy mess. And the media will continue to help spin it, all the way to November.
Damn Gaia
Why will she not obey our theories?
The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.
The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.
Unexpectedly!
Of course, they have to maintain the politically correct line:
“The new data does not mean that concerns about climate change are overblown in any way. It means there is a much larger uncertainty in high mountain Asia than we thought.
Yes. Now consider what else you don’t know that you thought you did. And yes, let’s spend trillions now to prevent the ocean from rising by one meter a century from now. Because that makes perfect economic sense.