Jts5665

This week I am going to attempt to revive something this blog used to do 3 years or so ago. "Back in the day" I posted a daily roundup of fantasy news, links to interesting reviews, brief mentions of what I read the previous day, etc. I cleared out my RSS feeds last night to get ready for this, so I won't have a lot of news/reviews today...tomorrow should be better for that stuff. This post will give you a taste of what to expect, though.

Reading Update
-Swords of Good Men by Snorri Kristjansson. I finished this last week, reading it in very sporadic bursts. I read the first half in late January, put it down to read some other things, then last week I picked it up again and read it in between Way of Kings reading sessions. Yeah, not the best way to read a book. Thanks to taking a big break between reading sessions, I don't have a strong opinion to share. I can say that I thought it was a darn good read, though it felt a little more like historical fiction than epic fantasy to me. I did enjoy the story, and the last 40% of the novel was excellent. I'm definitely on board to read the 2nd book in the series when it becomes available.
-The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. (p.s..the Kindle edition is still on sale for $2.99)...I read the first 400 pages of WoK when it was originally published approx 3 years ago. I decided I wanted to start over from the beginning, and have it read in time for Words of Radiance. I underestimated the time it would take to read the huge WoK...at the moment I'm about 75% done, so I have a few days left before I will finish WoK. The world doesn't need another Wok review, but I will say that I love it so far. Yeah, the book is big, but I still love getting lost in a Big Fat Fantasy..and this is one done well. It takes a way to get settled into the world and characters, though I wouldn't call the book slow at the start. I enjoyed getting to know a new world, so I don't always want to rush through that. At boy, the 2nd half of WoK has kicked things into high gear. We learn lots of new interesting things about the lead characters (especially things that happened in their past)...and momentum is really picking up. While it does take effort and commitment to finish a book this size, I'm really enjoying it. The series is off to a great start, and I'm looking forward to finishing WoK sometime this week.

News:
-R. Scott Bakker has delivered The Unholy Consult.
-A new trailer for season 4 of Game of Thrones
-An interesting Recluce collectible.
-Another Recluce note...I knew there was a new Recluce book coming in May, but I didn't know we would get two new Recluce books this year.

Reviews:
-King of the Nerds!!!: The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley (I have a copy of this and really need to get to it soon)

Book Deals:
-Storm Front (The Dresden Files, Book 1) by Jim Butcher ($2.99)
-Twilight Watch: Book Three (Night Watch) by Sergei Lukyanenko ($1.99)

Man Arrested, Charged With Unlawful Wiretapping For Filming Cop...


(Third column, 5th story, link)

---

Ted Cruz: 'Abolish the IRS!'


(Second column, 10th story, link)

---

Related stories:

RICK PERRY: 'Time for a little rebellion'...
CHRISTIE GETS STANDING O...
Mitch McConnell Brings Gun...
LIVE UPDATES...

From Time Magazine:

Just in time for Mardi Gras, someone has created an app that allows revelers to find nearby private bathrooms and relieve themselves in a safe, non-public manner. At a price, of course.

As its name suggests, AirPnP is just like AirBnB, but instead of paying for a place to crash, users are simply paying for a place to pee. The web-based app, currently available in New Orleans, seeks to solve a very common problem during Mardi Gras: hordes of parade-goers have full bladders and very few places to empty them.

Users can log in and either find a nearby place to pee using GPS or become “an entrepeeneur” by adding their home’s bathroom to the queue and indicating the price to use it. All of the potential toilets are located along the Mardi Gras parade route and cost up to $5 per use (see map above). Guests can either pay through the app or in cash directly to the renter. Users can also rate bathrooms based on everything from overall cleanliness to quality of toilet paper.

Related Market: High-Tech Toilet Seats Don’t Require Hands Or Paper

This post is contributed to Free the Animal by French IT Engineer, Alexandre Cesaro

INTRODUCTION

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the leading cause of deaths worldwide - killing 7 millions people every year. In the following text, we will see that wheat consumption is probably a risk factor for CHD.

Conventional Wisdom on Wheat

Most health organizations currently view wheat as a safe food except for people having celiac disease—affecting up to 1% of the population—and people having non-celiac gluten sensitivity. Also whole wheat—as part of whole grains—is considered to be one of the healthiest foods. In fact a diet rich in whole grains is considered to be protective against CHD.

Why? Because observational studies consistently find that whole grain consumption is associated with a decreased risk of CHD. Do these results contradict wheat consumption causing CHD?

Are Whole Grains Protective Against CHD?

According to this study:

Whole grain intake consistently has been associated with improved cardiovascular disease outcomes, but also with healthy lifestyles, in large observational studies. Intervention studies that assess the effects of whole grains on biomarkers for CHD have mixed results.

Indeed many studies show that whole grain consumption is associated with a decreased risk of CHD. But these studies are observational and can only show correlation but not causation.

In fact there is an health-conscious population bias in these studies: for example people consuming the most whole grains also exercise more and smoke less:

Data from Majken K Jensen et al., Intakes of whole grains, bran, and germ and the risk of coronary heart disease in men, 2004.

Of course researchers adjust the data for these risk factors. But it is very difficult, maybe impossible, to adjust for all risk factors. For example the two previously cited studies did not adjust for important risk factors like socioeconomic status or social support.

A classic example of an occurrence of this bias can be found in hormone replacement therapy (HRT): observational studies had found that HRT was decreasing the risk of heart disease risk while a controlled study finally found that HRT was indeed slightly increasing the risk of heart disease.

A proof that this health-conscious bias could explain the seemingly protective effect of whole grains can be found in randomized controlled studies: many of them fail to find any beneficial effect of whole grains compared to refined grains.

So according to these randomized controlled studies whole grains are neutral toward CHD risks. How then can we say that wheat causes CHD?

Are All Grains Created Equal?

Many randomized controlled studies compared wheat with other grains. These trials are usually quite short. So instead of looking at the number of heart attacks, short-term studies focus on risk predictors of CHD like weight gain or markers of inflammation. Apolipoprotein B (ApoB) level is another risk factor. It represents the number of LDL particles - often called “bad cholesterol”. It is now considered to be a better predictor than LDL-C - the amount of cholesterol contained in LDL particles. The lower the level of ApoB the lower is the risk of CHD.

Here are some results of these studies:

• a study concluded that a bread diet may promote fat synthesis/accumulation compared with a rice diet
• wheat increased BMI compared to flaxseed in a 12 months study
• wheat increased ApoB level by 5.4% compared to flaxseed in a 3 weeks study
• wheat increased ApoB level by 7.5% compared to flaxseed in a 3 months study
• wheat increased ApoB level by 0.05 g/L compared to flaxseed in a 12 months study
• oat decreased ApoB level by 13.7% while wheat had no significant effect in a 21 days study
• wheat increased the number of LDL particles by 14% while oat decreased them by 5% in a 12 weeks study
• ApoA to ApoB ratio (a risk predictor similar in efficiency to ApoB alone
• here the higher the better) was increased by 4.7% for oat bran and 3.9% for rice bran compared to wheat bran in a 4 weeks study

These studies show that some grains like oat improve the risk factors of CHD compared to wheat. In addition, these studies often show an absolute improvement of the CHD risk profile in groups eating oat and an absolute deterioration in groups eating wheat. Although we cannot say for sure, it would suggest that oat is protective against CHD - which is confirmed by other studies - while wheat increase the risk of CHD.

That could help explain why people eating more whole grains are healthier in observational studies since it looks like that they eat more grains like rice and oat and less typically wheat-made food like white bread, pasta and doughnuts:

Data from Andersson A. et al., Intakes of whole grains, bran, and germ and the risk of coronary heart disease in men, 2007

Now let’s have a look at studies linking wheat and CHD.

Observational Studies on Wheat

Some observational studies linked wheat and waist circumference gains—waist circumference being a strong predictor of CHD:

• a study showed a correlation between consumption of white bread and waist circumference gains
• a study concluded that: "reducing white bread, but not whole-grain bread consumption, within a Mediterranean-style food pattern setting is associated with lower gains in weight and abdominal fat"
• a Chinese study found that "vegetable-rich food pattern was associated with higher risk of obesity" but as noted by obesity researcher Stephan Guyenet the association between obesity is in fact stronger with wheat flour than with vegetables

A more pertinent result is found in the data of a large observational study in China. Researchers analysed these data and found a 0.67 correlation between wheat flour intake and CHD. They also found a 0.58 correlation between wheat intake and BMI.

From Denise Minger

But this is just a single unadjusted correlation and does not prove much. However author Denise Minger thoroughly analysed the data of this study and found that the association held strongly after multivariate analysis with any other variable available like latitude, BMI, smoking habits, fish consumption, etc.

Since it is an observational study it cannot prove anything but it is yet more evidence suggesting that wheat consumption causes CHD. Let’s now have a look at randomized controlled trials.

Randomized Controlled Trials on Wheat

In addition to the previous randomized controlled trials comparing wheat with other grains there are two additional studies suggesting that wheat consumption causes CHD.

The first one is a study involving rabbits. While studies involving animals are not always relevant to humans - especially studies with herbivore animals like rabbit - the results of this study are quite interesting.

The researchers fed rabbits an atherogenesis diet (i.e. promoting formation of fatty masses in arterial walls) with a supplement of cottonseed oil, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, wheat germ or sucrose. And as they concluded:

Severity of atherosclerosis after 5 months was greatest on the wheat germ-supplemented diet, whereas there were no differences among the other three groups.

The second study is the Diet And Reinfarction Trial (DART). In this 2-year randomized controlled trial, people who already had recovered from a heart attack were split into groups receiving various advice. The main result of this study was that the group advised to eat fatty fish had a reduction in mortality from CHD.

One other piece of advice - the fibre advice - was:

to eat at least six slices of wholemeal bread per day, or an equivalent amount of cereal fibre from a mixture of wholemeal bread, high-fibre breakfast cereals and wheat bran

Seeing this advice we can guess that most of cereal fibres intake by this group was from wheat although we cannot be sure.

This advice resulted on a 22% death increase:

From Stephan Guyenet

However this result bordered on statistical significance: the 95% confidence interval being 0.99–1.65.

For people not familiar with statistics, a result is usually defined as statistically significant when there is less than 5% chance that the result is due to luck alone. Here there is a 95% probability that the relative risk is between 0.99 (1% decreased chance of dying) and 1.67 (67% increased chance of dying).

Since the probability that the fibre advice resulted in a protective or neutral effect was a little too high, this result has been quite overlooked. Had the study lasted a little longer, it would have raised way more suspicion toward whole grains.

A decade later, in a follow-up study researchers sent self-completion questionnaires to the survivors. This study is less interesting since it had many limitations:

There are a number of limitations to the dietary data collected in this survey. The dietary advice stopped after 2 y and all the surviving men received a letter encouraging them to eat more fatty fish and it is possible that this resulted in immediate dietary changes. The dietary data presented here were collected from at least 85% of survivors some years after the end of the 2 y of dietary advice when around half of the original participants had died. Diet was assessed with a limited number of questions that focused on fish and fibre intake. Questionnaire data were not collected on other aspects of current diet and objective biological measures of fish intake were not obtained. It is thus possible that we were unable to detect important differences in diet.

However, in this study the researchers reanalyzed the original data from the DART study and adjusted for pre-existing conditions and medication use. This time they found the fibre advice to be statistically significant: as we can see in the table 4 they found a hazard ratio of 1.35 (95% CI 1.02, 1.80) for the 2-year period of the randomized controlled trial.

These results are quite telling: according to these researchers, a 2 year randomized controlled trial showed that advising people recovering from a heart attack to eat at least six slices of wholemeal bread per day resulted in a statistically significant 35% percent chance increase of CHD compared to people not receiving this advice.

Wheat, Vitamin D Deficiency And Heart Disease

Many studies found that vitamin D deficiency is associated with CHD.

However vitamin D deficiency does not seem to cause heart disease. For example several studies found that vitamin D supplementation did not prevent heart disease.

As this study concludes:

A lower vitamin D status was possibly associated with higher risk of cardiovascular disease. As a whole, trials showed no statistically significant effect of vitamin D supplementation on cardiometabolic outcomes.

Wheat consumption causing CHD could help explaining these results. A study found that wheat consumption depletes vitamin D reserves. That could explain why vitamin D deficiency is associated with heart disease and why it does not seem to cause it: both vitamin D deficiency and heart disease could be consequences of wheat consumption.

Of course this is not the only explanation. For example the DART study shows that fish consumption prevents CHD and fish is a food rich in vitamin D.

Not the Perfect Culprit

To be clear, if it seems likely that wheat consumption is a risk factor of CHD it is not the only one nor the primary one. There are many other factors like smoking, hypertension, lack of exercise or stress. Even among dietary factors wheat is probably not the main one. For example the DART study shows that the protective effect of fish intake is stronger than the adverse effect of wheat.

In addition, deleterious wheat effects might not affect everybody. One study showed that the ApoB level variation following wheat and oat bran intake was different depending on the genotype of the individuals. In another study whole-wheat intake worsened the lipid profile only in people having a specific genotype compared to refined wheat.

How the wheat is cooked may have a role too. Studies show that sourdough bread improves mineral bioavailability (such as magnesium, iron, and zinc) compared to yeast bread or uncooked whole-wheat. Also content in proteins with potential adverse consequences like gluten or wheat germ agglutinin differs depending of the food type.

Conclusion

There is strong evidences that wheat consumption is a risk factor for CHD. People at risk of CHD should avoid wheat as should those trying to lose weight. In all cases, stopping wheat consumption for a month for example to see how one feels without wheat is always a good idea since there is currently no available method to diagnose non-celiac wheat sensitivities and that even for celiac disease the average delay in diagnostic is 11 years in the US.

More studies looking at the links between wheat and CHD are urgently needed since CHD is the leading cause of deaths while wheat is the second most widely consumed food and whole-wheat is often advised to lower risk of CHD. Studies considering grains as a whole are bound to give inconsistent results since different grains seem to have opposite effects in the case of CHD. So as much as possible future studies should treat grains separately and consider things like type of wheat products and genetic variability.

~~~

Hello, I'm Alexandre Cesaro, a French IT engineer. So even though I have a great interest in nutrition, I have not done any medical studies nor do I own any health degree. So I could be wrong on many points of this article. I could also have cherry-picked studies, missed contradictory studies, etc.

That is why I created this. I would be glad to receive contributions and comments from anyone to improve this article by adding other relevant studies, removing poor studies I may have included, fixing grammatical errors (English is not my mother tongue) or even by proving everything here is wrong.

Jeffrey A. Miron

The standard argument for occupational licensing - government-imposed limits on who can supply medical, legal, plumbing, and other services - is that such laws protect the public from low-quality provision of these services.

This argument is not convincing on its own: licensing limits the quantity of services provided, raising price, and thus harming consumers. A necessary condition for licensing to make sense, therefore, is that any improvements in service quality outweight the losses from higher prices.

A new study, however, finds that when de-regulation allows nurse practioners to perform more tasks without doctor supervision, the price of well-child medical exams declines (as implied by standard economics), with no “changes … in outcomes such as infant mortality rates.”

In at least this case, therefore, licensure is all cost and no benefit.

1. In Minneapolis, the city is trying to ban both Lyft and UberX from operating in the city, even though both ride-sharing services are already operating in neighboring Saint Paul (and people would often be traveling from city to city):

The taxi-like car-sharing service Lyft and the city of Minneapolis are on a collision course. San Francisco-based Lyft, whose driver-owned cars are festooned with magenta mustaches, said Tuesday that it will begin operations in Minneapolis this week — defying a city prohibition on the unlicensed service.

Minneapolis insists that Lyft and similar services with driver-owned vehicles be licensed as taxi companies. This requires a city license for the driver, another for the vehicle with inspections and commercial insurance.

If Lyft launches in defiance of its rules, the city said drivers will be ticketed and their vehicles impounded. The city already has done this with UberX, a service similar to Lyft that has been operating for about a month in Minneapolis.

2. Meanwhile, Seattle is allowing Uber and Lyft to operate, but will now restrict both ride-sharing services to a maximum of 150 drivers at any given time:

The city council transportation committee decided Thursday to limit rideshare car services like Uber and Lyft in the city. It’s a controversial decision designed to create fairness with the taxi cab drivers. The council members voted 5-4 to limit what they call “transportation networking companies” to 150 drivers per company on the road at any given time.

MP: Minnesota taxpayers have been forced to spend billions of dollars for a light rail transit system that was recently expanded from Minneapolis to a new line to downtown St. Paul, with plans for additional expansions in the future.  The goal of public transportation is to reduce the number of people driving in cars by themselves by providing an alternative form of “affordable,” but heavily subsidized transportation. Ride-sharing services provide another form of low-cost, affordable, and convenient transportation, so you would think cities would embrace these services for providing affordable transportation. But Uber and Lyft challenge the existing taxi cartels and don’t fit the city planners’ vision of shared, public transportation, and often get squashed.

Lost in the discussions in cities like Minneapolis and Seattle is the most important consideration of all – the consumer. As French economist Bastiat reminds us, we should “Treat all economic questions from the viewpoint of the consumer, for the interests of the consumer are the interests of the human race.” When the interest of the consumers get trumped by the interests of the producers – the existing city taxi cartels in this case (in other words when “crony capitalism” prevails) – we’re all a little less free and a little worse off. Case in point: The city council of Seattle is more concerned for “fairness with taxi drivers” than for “fairness with consumers.”

Bottom Line: The Minneapolis and Seattle bans/restrictions on competition from new upstarts provide us with classic public choice cases of how special interests like taxi companies are better organized and have more political clout than disorganized consumers. Result? The special interest groups prevail in a process that HL Mencken described as “two foxes and a chicken taking a vote on what to eat for lunch.” In case it’s not obvious, the consumer is the chicken.

HTs: Tom Hewitt and Scott Drum

In the obesity debate, you generally have:

1. You eat too much, don't move enough. Lack of discipline. Can't resist reward.
2. You eat too much fat.
3. You eat too much carbohydrate.
4. You eat animal-derived foods.
5. It's the toxins and/or anti-nutrients of various sorts. "Neolithic Agents of Disease," in Paleospeak.
6. It's processed food in general.
7. It's all genetic and there's little you can do about it...EXCEPT...one of the foregoing approaches might work for you, and it's to you to find which one or something else, if any at all.

I've actually come to be most intrigued by number 7 and I'll tell you why: I absolutely think, now, that the genetic component is the chief factor driving obesity, but I can almost assure you that most people, before reading on, would not guess what I have in mind.

I'll quote from a book in draft, to be published.

There’s about 40 million bacterial cells in a gram of soil and about a million bacterial cells in a millilitre of fresh water. In total, there’s estimated to be about five million trillion trillion, or 5 × 10³⁰ (5 nonillion) bacteria on Earth with a total biomass equaling that of plants. Some researchers believe that the total biomass of bacteria exceeds that of all plants and animals.

Inside of every human organism are armies of microorganisms with entirely different DNA from our human cells. That microbiome not only outnumbers our human cells by a factor of ten to one but in total, outnumbers every individual human that has ever lived on the face of the Earth. Your intestinal microflora numbers 100 trillion! Compare that with the total estimated 110 billion humans who have ever been born. You’ve got 900 times as many microorganisms. Your internal civilization of microbiota is comprised of up to 1,000 different species with 3 million non-human genes, compared to your own 24,000.

See where I'm going with this?

Do the math, and the genes that make up your gut flora outnumber your human genes by a factor of more than 100. And when you begin digging into it very deeply—such as drafting a book, perhaps —the discoveries mount by the hour in terms of all they do: from manufacturing species-specific antibiotics, to adjusting pH in the gut, to kamikaze warfare, to intra and inter-species bi-lingual communication, to enzymatic action to digest things—even anti-nutrients like phytate—to hormonal regulation, and many other functions...many heavily related to the brain-gut connection and by consequence, behavior.

Think what you will about human genetics, but how about integrate an entirely new set of non-human genes 100 times greater? Factor in enormous variation—not only in numbers of species (500-1,000 per individual, on average), but population numbers of species per individual—and then, that any individual's gut shifts in species populations seasonally, with different food intake, and you have a complexity that's likely no match for all the supercomputers on earth operating in parallel. And that's just for one of 7 billion individuals.

I love complexity. Whilst virtually everyone is out trying to come up with plans and more plans; pat answers, sets of 10 rules, Bibles and manifestos, I have no plan! Rather, I enjoy best complicating the hell out of everything and showing how all such plans are just silly.

Let's consider just two animal examples.

1. By now, most people have heard of how if you take an obese rodent and a skinny rodent, swap out their gut biomes, the obese one becomes lean and the lean one becomes obese. The rodent genes didn't change, but genes did change: they were the far greater number of genes in the rodent microbiome exchanged from one to the other.
2. How about the obese, heart diseased gorillas living in zoos, subsisting on gorilla chow? Turns out that if you double their calories, but give them their appropriate diet of tons of vegetable matter, they shed pounds and regain health. Did their genes change? Absolutely, but not in their own cells. "Their" genes changed dramatically by virtue of a radical shift in gut flora.

Now let's consider the human animal, vis-a-vis genetic obesity.

Everyone has seen picture examples from decades past, when everyone wasn't fat. What was a common sight (not uniform by any means, but most common...exceptions exist)? Lean male, plumpish to fat female. And when offspring were in the picture, it was more common that the sons were twigs and the daughters showed signs of following in mom's footsteps. Juxtapose that with "the perfect family," where everyone is lean.

Gotta be their genes, right? That simple? Pat answer? Or, is it the food they eat? It is both genes and the food they eat, all packaged with a cause & effect puzzle?

Let me advance an alternate hypothesis, though you're free to call it wild-ass speculation if you like: What if it's genetic AND the food they eat, BECAUSE of "their" genetic makeup (take particular note of those scare quotes)?

1. Consider where dad works. Interestingly, the further you go back, the more you find traditional roles where dad works outside the home—often enough, getting his hands, hair, face and clothes dirty. He's exposed and ingests, daily, an endless supply of soil based organisms; a probiotic, and unlike common dairy-based probiotics, are spore forming; so, they can lie dormant for years or thousands of years, only to come alive again when conditions are ripe. Moreover, the spore actually survives the harsh environment of gastric juices that kill lots of live bacteria in your favorite yogurt or kefir—or even fermented foods.
2. Where does mom work? Traditionally, at home, where cleanliness is next to godliness. The only good bacteria is a dead bacteria and nobody likes cleansers and disinfectants more than mom. Of course, she's doing it out of an abundance of care for her family flock; and though she's not to be faulted for her ignorance (her husband is too, but he's getting them anyway, also through ignorance), ignorance is ignorance.
3. Offspring are offspring. Traditionally, the boys follow in dads steps and the girls learn every conceivable thing about products upon products, piled on products—the vast majority designed to either kill or sweep away any hint of a bug.
4. Wouldn't it be interesting to compare the genetic sequencing of the gut bacteria for a traditional household with a lean dad who works in the dirt, a mom who keeps a clean house between baking cookies and pies, and the kids who, more or less, model their parental-gender examples?

Worthy of consideration, though very loosely outlined (I trust you to connect requisite dots)? So what's the underlying mechanism, in my view? Let's take it from the point where people are not getting the daily supply of bacteria: or—and this is super important—after a round of human antibiotic carpet bombing. Remember, the beneficial bacteria in the gut tend to be able to target pathogens through species-specific antibiotics, or creating a pH that's inhospitable to them. Phages also play a role in keeping pathogens in check.

Damaged Biome --> Malabsorption --> Toxic Overload --> Damaged Tight Junctions --> Immune Response --> Auto-Immune Disease --> Allergies To Everything --> Obesity and Other Health Problems.

Time to come clean. Tim and I—already having read tons of studies on resistant starch that go back 30 years—were very damn confident that they improve the gut generally in a very special way, a "panacea," as Dr. Art Ayers puts it. Moreover, we'd both seen a lot of recent stuff all over about prebiotics (feed what's there) being more important than probiotics (get new stuff).

Enter my longtime friend, Dr. BG (Grace), PharmD. She writes a blog in little tiny font—so you pay close attention—at AnimalPharm. In comments here, and emails you'll never see, she got quite perturbed at us—especially after we downplayed probiotics on Angelo Coppola's Latest in Paleo Podcast. I won't tell you what she told us privately, but there may have been vulgarity involved. Then, serendipitously, Ameer Rosic published a podcast with me, where I think both my thinking had evolved and I explained myself better. Grace liked it.

Long story short, she became science editor for the book Tim & I are co-authoring—now almost halfway through 16 chapters nearing 400 pages—and I ordered three SBO (soil-based organism) probiotics to try. I didn't want to futz with "which is best" and was perfectly willing to confound variables and make the picture too complex to figure out, because it already is to begin with.

1. Prescript-Assist
2. AOR Probiotic-3
3. Primal Defense Ultra

The reason I went and did it was actually not because of Grace's insistence per se, but because she'd been in comments for months already admonishing people: "you're feeding empty cages!" In other words, if the organisms you need aren't there, no amount of resistant starch or any other prebiotic is going to create them. RS is not Dog, after all. But I was torn. I had already experienced lots of benefits as I've outlined many times in my RS posts. But then I observed several people in comments having had problems with the potato starch seemingly clear them up after taking one or more of those probiotic recommendations.

While I wasn't having problems beyond the occasionally wayward fart, it made me wonder whether I was missing out on something. Indeed I was. Alright, quick list for me, all experienced by day 4 of one of each, twice per day, typically on an empty stomach.

1. Awareness, calm. Nothing bothers me much unless I pretend it does (which I have to do for show & schtick, sometimes). It's a kind of perspective I haven't enjoyed having in a long time. Above the fray—with a little spicy sprinkle of hubris and pity. Mushroom cloud on the horizon? "Wow, glad it's not closer."
2. 1/3 reduced need for sleep. I always wondered whether the Paleo obsession with lots of sleep in very, very, very, very dark rooms with blackout shades for 8-9 hours wan't sign of a bad condition. I can remember often bragging about 8-10 hours myself. Really? Are we really meant to spend half of our lives asleep? Potato starch actually exacerbated that a bit because the dreams (brain-gut connection, remember?) were so vivid and intense, it was like kinda going to bed to watch a show. Haven't slept more than 6 hours in a couple of weeks. I'm now usually up and awake, rarin' to go, typing away before Bea gets up at 5:30am. Used to be, I'd drag out at 6:45 or so, just to see her off.
3. Not very hungry for much of anything, usually. This results in not eating much until really no-shit hungry. The potato starch did that too, but now even more pronounced.
4. Best for last: all my life I've had sinus problems. Allergies, itchy nose, runny nose, itchy eyes. I once did the subcutaneous injections for a couple of years (French Navy). I once considered buying stock in paper towel manufacturers. Kleenex doesn't cut it. I need Bounty! I was on prescriptions since college. Paleo helped a lot with that, but I now suspect it was removing those things that most created auto-immune responses (grains, most likely), but not dealing with the underlying cause. Why?* Because after a few years, the problems crept back, such that even a slight indulgence over a burger or a beer would get me sneezing, running of nose, and chronic congestion necessitating habitual squirts of Afrin every night before bed, just so I could get to sleep and not mouth breathe all night. I noticed it immediately, like day 2. About 3 weeks in, I'm 80% plus. Rather than 100 nose blows per day, maybe a few. Don't need Afrin 90% of the time. Don't wake up in the middle of the night with desert mouth.

So wow. Number 4, above, is a relief I can't even begin to express the value of for me personally. Makes me wonder how much of my rather vitriolic demeanor is really me, or simply an underlying pissed-offedness at my lot in life that manifests in ways I've simply learned to cope with by taking pride in it. ...I'd have rather had a small penis.

Seriously, I literally walk around in disbelief, shutting my mouth and taking deep breaths through my nose that was only possible drugged up, before, except for my Paleo Honeymoon of a couple of years.

I've evolved into a morning smoothie concoction that's different about every day, and that I split with Beatrice before she heads off to the classroom. I'd advise pounding those 3 probiotics for a couple of weeks (1 of each, twice per day), then perhaps, to make them last longer, something like this. The gist of my morning smoothie recipe, split between 2 people, about 10-12 oz each (this is how I now get pretty much 100% of my Probiotic and RS supplementation—my dose being about 1/2 to 2/3 of this recipe):

• 1 raw egg
• 1 piece of fresh fruit (apple with skin, banana, handful of berries, orange, etc., or whatever you like)
• 2 TBS Potato Starch
• 1 TBS Green Banana Flour
• 1 TBS Green Plantain Flour
• 1/4 tsp Inulin / FructoOligoSaccharides
• 1 Scoop Amazing Grass High ORAC
• 4 oz Odwalla-esq fruit/veggie smoothie blend of choice
• 4 oz Kefir (plain or any flavor of choice)
• 1 each of the aforementioned SBO probiotics, caps pulled apart and dumped in
• Handfull of ice cubes
• Water as needed for desired consistency in a good blender.

I tried to get Beatrice to take the probiotics about 4-5 days after I began taking them. No dice. That's when I concocted the "evil smoothie" plan, and all she knew was that it was a fruit smoothie, and she loved the taste. Yesterday—this is a week or so of morning ritual, now—she comes to me saying "I feel fantastic and I think it's that morning drink. Keep doing it."

So, I suppose that in the large scheme of things, if you've ever lived a sheltered life and/or taken a round of antibiotics ever, it's entirely possible that your gut biome was damaged permanently, and much of what you experience is merely downstream effects too complex to fully understand (see the beginning section of the post). Or, perhaps you were a C-Section baby who didn't get the benefit of the billions of bacteria you get in the process of a natural birth. And/or, you were not breastfed, and so didn't get both the billions of bacteria with every feeding in mammalian milk, nor the probiotics that come right along with it in a nice & tidy package.

Whatever the singular or multiple case, I'm here to say that I've bought a number of the dairy-based probiotics over the years and felt nothing I ever noticed. This has been way different than anything.

I don't see how it can hurt. It might help a lot.

* I further speculate that the Paleo LC approach, that removed the antagonists that gave me relief, also starved and perhaps extinguished gut microbes such that I became sensitize to far greater things in smaller doses, ultimately.

Update: I had really intended to spend some space tying this back to #1 in the list of obesity, but things were getting long, so let's explore that in comments if you like. In a nutshell: I think a bad gut = bad decisions on many levels via the brain-gut connection and hormone regulation, including food choices brought on by insatiable cravings. Perhaps the palatability/reward hypotheses would be better refined by finding out how food engineering is both exploiting and exacerbating the problem.

ADMINISTRATION TO EXPAND NSA DATABASE


(Main headline, 1st story, link)

---

Video Shows Officer Threatening Man With Jail For Filming Arrests...


(Third column, 24th story, link)

---

PARAMOUNT Shuts Down 'TOP GUN' Fan Tweeting One Frame at a Time...


(Second column, 22nd story, link)

---

People send me stuff. Readers will surely recall  ‘I’m Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State, Ask Me Almost Anything!’. A reader who does not wish to be named writes about the questions he posed. Readers probably … Continue reading →

Some years ago, Dr. Robert Lustig worked with a group of kids who had brain cancer. The cancer treatments were successful, but later the kids became obese. According to their parents, the kids had developed enormous appetites and become sedentary. They spent all day sleeping or sitting in front of the TV and eating.

Lustig didn’t inform the parents that those kids needed to just stop being so lazy and gluttonous.  He didn’t urge the parents to tell their kids to just eat less and move more, for goodness sake.  As an endocrinologist, Lustig knew the change in behavior was being driven by a change in biochemistry. He suspected that as a side-effect of the cancer treatments, the kids were over-producing insulin. Tests confirmed his suspicion.

So he gave the kids an insulin-suppressing drug.  Here’s how he described the results:

“When we gave these kids this drug that blocked insulin secretion, they started losing weight. But more importantly, something that was even more amazing, these kids started exercising spontaneously. One kid became a competitive swimmer, two kids started lifting weights, one kid became the manager of his high school basketball team … Changing the kids’ insulin levels had an effect not just on their weight, not just on their appetites, but on their desire to engage in physical activity.”

These kids didn’t get fat because they sat around and ate more.  They sat around and ate more because they were hormonally driven to get fat.  Luckily for them, Lustig understood that and treated the root of the problem:  chemistry, not character.

When I started writing this series of posts, I knew I’d receive (and did) a comment or two along the lines of “But telling people it’s about chemistry gives them an excuse to just give up.”  Comments like that usually come, of course, from people who have never been fat and chalk it up to their superior character.  I understand the appeal of that belief.

I also understand wanting to believe it’s all about character because darnit, that just feels like cosmic justice.  Effort ought to yield results, period.  Most of us would like the world to work like that.  As kids, we were told that if you work hard and put your mind to it, you can do almost anything.  So in our little pea-picking brains, the formula for success looks like this:

Effort = Success

But as we grow older, we realize everyone inherits different talents and abilities.  I admired Bart Starr and wanted his job someday, but I certainly knew by middle school that no matter how hard I worked, I’d never become a star quarterback in the NFL.  Or in college.  Or in high school.  Or in the Pop Warner leagues.  I just didn’t have the physical gifts.  So after swallowing the knowledge that genetics matters, we update the success formula in our minds to look more like this:

Ability x Effort  = Success

That’s where we’d like the equation to stay.  That “ability” part still seems a bit unfair, but we can live with it.

Well, like it or not, there’s still more to it.

Peyton Manning is one of the best quarterbacks ever to play in the NFL, the last Super Bowl notwithstanding.  Sure, he inherited the ability to become great from his father, also an NFL quarterback in his day, but Manning’s dedication to his profession is legendary.  He spends hours and hours studying videotape of opposing defenses so he can predict their moves and spot their weaknesses.  It’s Ability x Effort at work, for sure.

But wait … what if Manning prepared for games by spending hours and hours studying and memorizing the birthdays, middle names, favorite desserts and horoscopes of the defensive players he’ll be facing?  Would he still shred defenses like he did in the 2013 NFL season?  Of course not, because that knowledge wouldn’t be useful in guessing how to pick apart a defense.   The time and effort spent acquiring that knowledge would be wasted.

Let’s suppose I want to look better in shorts.  Running for 10 hours a week might put some muscle on my thighs, but not as much as one set of leg presses per week with heavy weights.  Resistance training is more effective for growing muscles, period.   It doesn’t matter that running 10 hours per week takes more effort and dedication than spending three minutes on a leg-press machine.

So we have to update our formula for success one more time.  Now it looks something like this:

Ability x Effort x Effectiveness = Success

Effort matters, absolutely, but only yields good results if it’s applied effectively.

Let me offer another example:  suppose twin brothers both decide to take second jobs and invest most of the additional income to make for a more prosperous middle age.  One twin works extra hard, spends less, and invests $500 per month in bank CDs that pay 1.05% interest.  The second twin doesn’t work quite as much and treats himself to nicer clothes and other goodies, and thus only saves $250 per month, which he invests in mutual funds that earn the S&P 500 historical average of 11.69%.

After 20 years, the twin who invested $500 per month would have just over $134,000 in his account.  Meanwhile, the twin who only invested $250 per month would be sitting on nearly $233,000.

It doesn’t seem fair, does it?  I think we’d all agree the first twin demonstrated more character.  He worked harder, he sacrificed more.  And yet it’s the brother who worked less and sacrificed less who has nearly $100,000 more in his account.  That’s because while his efforts were smaller, they were applied much more effectively.  Working and saving was a matter of character.  The return on investment was, in a manner of speaking, a matter of financial chemistry.

And of course if the twin who worked harder and saved more invested it all in the next Enron, he’d get nothing in return.  He would no doubt feel royally screwed by an unfair universe, but that would be the result.  I hate to break it to anyone who doesn’t already know, but the universe doesn’t reward you based on how much effort you expend or how many sacrifices you make, no matter what all the touchy-feely self-help books say.  The universe rewards effort that’s applied effectively.

If we sat down and explained to the ambitious young twins that their financial success would depend heavily on the effectiveness of their investments, I doubt either of them would say, “Well, that’s it, then.  If it’s about return on investment, I don’t see the point in making the effort.  I give up.”

I’d expect the opposite, in fact:  I’d expect them to be motivated to find effective investments so their efforts wouldn’t go to waste.

Turning this back around to losing weight, yes, there has to be some effort and some sacrifice involved.  If you’re obese, whatever you’ve been doing isn’t working.  Your diet will have to change.  But it has to be an effective change.  Switching to a diet that works with your body’s chemistry so you feel satisfied even while eating less is effective.  Switching to a diet that works against your body’s chemistry and leaves you ravenous and lethargic isn’t.  That’s the dietary equivalent of investing in Enron.

Making the effort to find the diet that works with your chemistry and then sticking with it – even if means giving up the donuts and bread you love – requires some character.  But if you’re willing to do that, you can be like the twin who saved and sacrificed less but ended with more money.  Getting results won’t require as much sacrifice, and perhaps eventually it won’t feel like a sacrifice at all.  I certainly didn’t feel deprived when I went back to bacon and eggs for breakfast.  I used to love pasta, but now I don’t miss it.

So let’s look at that success equation one more time:

Ability x Effort x Effectiveness = Success

We all know that thanks to genetics, some people are naturally lean and others tend to get fat, so let’s swap genetics for ability.  The effectiveness of a diet is largely a matter of chemistry.  So now here’s our equation if we define weight loss as success:

Genetics x Effort x Chemistry = Weight Loss

But wait … genetics is also a matter of biochemistry.  So we’re looking at Chemistry x Effort x Chemistry.

That’s why I say weight loss is mostly about chemistry, not character.  Knowing that is hardly an excuse to give up.  If anything causes people to give up, it’s effort and sacrifice that isn’t rewarded.  That’s why the gyms become less and less crowded the farther we get from New Year’s and all those resolutions.  Understanding that chemistry is a big part of the equation and choosing accordingly is what enables our efforts to finally succeed.

Andrew M. Grossman

The Obama Administration appeared prepared to abandon a major portion of its initial greenhouse gas regulatory scheme in oral argument before the Supreme Court today. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, defending a series of EPA rules, sought to preserve regulations reaching large industrial sources by offering up a more aggressive gambit by the agency that could potentially reach millions of smaller businesses, apartment buildings, and schools.

The problem, as EPA itself has conceded, is that EPA’s regulatory approach renders the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration program “unrecognizable” to the Congress that enacted it. That’s because GHGs are emitted in far greater quantities than traditional pollutants and PSD requirements are based on the quantities of emissions, with facilities emitting more than either 100 or 250 tons per year of any applicable pollutant being subject to an expensive pollution-control regime. For GHGs, those tonnage triggers would transform the PSD program from one aimed at only the nation’s largest sources of emissions. For that reason, after deciding to use PSD to regulate GHGs, EPA then issued a “tailoring rule” to avoid the absurd result by discarding the numerical thresholds that are specified in the law and adopting new ones thousands of times larger.

That decision was under heavy scrutiny at oral argument. Businesses challenging the rule, represented by Peter Keisler, argued that the PSD program is structured to address local air quality concerns and therefore does not extend to emissions of carbon dioxide. PSD’s triggers, monitoring requirements, requirement for local air-quality analysis, and administration by 90 separate state and local permitting authorities all demonstrate that Congress did not intend the statute to address anything like GHG, Keisler argued. So while the statute does apply to “any air pollutant,” that term cannot be interpreted to reach pollutants that cause these other statutory requirements to fail

As a fallback position, Keisler suggested that the Court might distinguish between PSD triggering—that is, whether a given facility is subject to PSD at all—and the requirements that a facility faces once it is required to obtain a permit. Under this view, GHG emissions could not trigger PSD requirements—because triggering is what forced EPA to scrap the statute’s numerical thresholds—but if a facility is subject to PSD due to other emissions, it would then have to control its GHG emissions.

Without endorsing this approach, the Solicitor General acknowledged that it would allow EPA to reach 83 percent of emissions, versus 86 percent under the more aggressive approach, without compromising its administration of the Clean Air Act or requiring it to rewrite the statute.

The Court was also receptive, with Justices Breyer and Sotomayor—seen as friendly to the agency’s position—questioning why it staked out a far more difficult position for so little benefit.

At bottom, the case comes down to the division of power between Congress and the executive branch. As Justice Scalia forcefully explained, Congress sought to withdraw all discretion from EPA as to which facilities would be subject to PSD requirements, while giving it some discretion, in the capacious term “pollutant,” to determine which types of emissions would be regulated. Justice Breyer, on the other hand, argued with equal force that agencies should have the power to make exceptions to avoid absurd or even inefficient results that would otherwise be mandated by statutory text—but even he seemed troubled by EPA’s view that the statute’s use of the term “pollutant” necessarily obligated it to regulate GHGs.

Justice Kagan, for her part, tooks issue with Justice Scalia’s view that the term “pollutant” might be subject to any interpretation that excludes GHGs—despite that EPA itself has adopted a number of different definitions of the term in different programs.

The fundamental problem with the EPA’s position, though, is one that Justice Kagan identified: its solution here gives it nearly infinite discretion to do as it pleases by altering the terms of statutory law to meet its regulatory priorities. The Chief Justice, in turn, questioned whether any “intelligible principle” from Congress guides the agency when it sets its own agenda, and the limits on its own discretion, in this fashion.

The best indication of the agency’s overreaching may be the Solicitor General’s concession that the program would work, just about as well, if the Court strikes down its centerpiece, EPA’s tailoring. That the Administration’s lawyers see this as a sensible compromise only reflects the extent to which the Obama Administration, and its EPA in particular, have stretched the bounds of agency authority in the face of a lack of authorization or express limitations by Congress.

Playing fast and loose with the law has consequences. It’s anyone’s guess whether the Court will accept the proffered compromise, which still does great violence to the textual requirements of the Clean Air Act—particularly PSD’s focus on local air quality. And according to the Solicitor General, there may be no need: EPA, he said, could issue similar regulations under a different Clean Air Program, but didn’t want to because it would be more burdensome and time-consuming for the agency. That point might carry greater weight if EPA hadn’t instead attempted a massive power-grab and then spent the next four years defending actions that may well be struck down as contrary to law.

Disclosure: The author represented the State of Texas, a challenger in this case, before the D.C. Circuit.

Walter Olson

I like everything about this British political poster, including the way the smoke coming out of the chimneys forms tiny question marks. It was employed in the 1929 election against Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Party. The artist is reported as V. Hicks. If only it weren’t still so relevant! (Wikimedia link)

(Don Boudreaux)

… is from page 1 of Nobel laureate Douglass North‘s 2005 book, Understanding the Process of Economic Change:

Because various kinds of markets (political as well as economic) have different margins at which competition can be played out, the consequence of the structure we impose will be to determine whether the competitive structure induces increasing economic efficiency or stagnation.

Competition (like cooperation) is a given.  It will occur.  The only question is how – on what ‘margins’ – and, hence, what will be the results.  A profit-seeing business that can gain that profit only by successfully competing for customers with lower prices and higher-quality products contributes to widespread economic growth.  In contrast, a profit-seeking business that can gain that profit by persuading government to bestow on it subsidies, tariffs, or other special privileges will compete less for customer approval and more for the approval of politicians.  The latter sort of competition undermines economic growth.

(Don Boudreaux)

… is from page 63 of the manuscript of Deirdre McCloskey‘s forthcoming volume, The Treasured Bourgeoisie: How Markets and Improvement Became Virtuous, 1600-1848, and Then Suspect (original emphasis):

If profit occurs, or doesn’t, the economy is articulating something worth attending to.  It says, “Do more of this.  People want it sufficiently to pay for it.  Don’t do that.  People won’t pay for it.”  The articulation comes from the dollar votes of ordinary people, a democracy of what people are willing to pay.  A market society therefore will not build a pyramid or a Taj Mahal, because ordinary people are not willing to pay for them.  National glory, or more exactly the glory of kings and politicians and their wives, does not get supplied by a profit-making firm except by governmental purchase – itself untested by cash bids from the actual citizens, because the wherewithal for the governmental purchase is compulsory taxation.  The test of governmental purchase is at best the result of a majority vote overriding the preferences of the minority, at worst the result of an elite’s self-interested will.

$17.4 TRILLION: President calls for end to 'austerity'...


(Second column, 2nd story, link)

---

Related stories:

Proposes $56b spending bump...

The International Olympics Committee has this "branding" thing down cold. (No pun intended. The IOC is just as obnoxious during the Summer Olympics.) Everything that doesn't belong to an Official Sponsor has its logo covered (including bathroom fixtures!) until the multi-ring circus of sports (and quasi-sports) folds up the last multimillion dollar tent and blows town.

The IOC is the ultimate control freak. This maniacal desire to cleanse the Games of anything not directly related to its corporate sponsors often results in the sort of behavior you'd normally associate with severe misanthropy. Hobbyist knitters get slapped with C&Ds. A 30-year-old restaurant is forced to change its name. A prominent news outlet has to build its own internal Starbucks in order to escape drinking nothing but the Official Coffee of the Olympics, which is crafted each day to the searing hot specifications of hallowed coffee mecca… McDonalds.

Each and every form of IP protection has been abused by the IOC. Bogus takedown notices/C&Ds are as much a part of the Olympic heritage as lighting the torch or channel-surfing during the figure skating events. The IOC's rules even provide strict regulations for wearing the logos of the official sponsors, not to mention the sponsors who actually footed the bill so these athletes could take part in the Games.

But, as the New York Times points out, even a finely-tuned branding machine like the IOC can be defeated with a little creativity.

The International Olympic Committee, leery of spoiling the canvas, has a 33-page book filled with detailed restrictions on logos. It dictates the size and placement of them on everything from team uniforms at the opening ceremony to the emblems on a skier's gloves and the stickers on a bobsledder's helmet. Observers might go the entire Olympics and not notice them.

At least until the snowboarders and skiers go airborne.

The bottom of them may be the most prominent billboards at the Winter Games, a bit of a twist of guerrilla marketing. When someone such as the snowboarder Shaun White flies through the air, cameras often catch the underside of his board, on which Burton, the name of its manufacturer, is spread in large, bold letters. Those images flash across television screens and are published around the world.

Eight of the 12 finalists in the men's halfpipe competition rode Burton boards. All of them went upside down.

The board makers claim this isn't intentional and, indeed, it probably isn't. But what a fortuitous coincidence. Snowboards have normally featured artwork and company logos on the bottom of the board and with riders more technically adept than ever, the chances of a company's airborne logo being splashed across the screen continue to increase.

What can the IOC do about this? Nothing really, unless it wants to rewrite the rulebook. As the New York Times points out, competition snowboards are roughly identical to the ones sold to the public. This makes the company-centric artwork part of the equipment itself, rather than something added especially for Olympic competitors, which would run afoul of the guidelines.

"The identification of the manufacturer may be carried as generally used on products sold through the retail trade during the period of 12 months prior to the Games," the rules read.

So, if Burton makes a board with Burton written across the bottom of it during the preceding year, and a competitor splashes Burton all over during his or her run, there's not much the IOC can do, other than perhaps stare sadly at all of the toilets with covered-up logos and compose takedown letters for crocheting enthusiasts halfway around the world.



Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

K. William Watson

In an article titled “The World’s Dumbest Trade War,” Slate’s Will Oremus offers a thorough accounting of the ridiculous policy of imposing tariffs on cheap solar panels from China. 

Remember, the U.S. government wants Americans to buy solar panels, and it subsidizes those purchases through rebates and incentives. The Chinese government wants Chinese companies to build solar panels, and it subsidizes their manufacture. And yet rather than celebrate this fortuitous arrangement, the world’s top economic powers find themselves on the brink of a trade war that could cripple a promising industry in both countries, kill jobs, and hurt the environment all at once. It’s a terrible trade-policy trifecta.

Trying to make solar panels more expensive to aid domestic manufacturers defeats the whole purpose of having domestic manufacturers in the first place. It aptly demonstrates the folly of green industrial policy—subsidies and tariffs to create and then maintain “green jobs”—as a rational environmental policy.

Fortunately, some countries have recognized the harmful impact of trade barriers and called for free trade in environmentally friendly products like solar panels and wind turbines. This initiative may be included in some form in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Last year, Simon Lester and I wrote a paper explaining that any such endeavor should not exclude antidumping and anti-subsidy duties like those being used here by the United States.

What’s more, as Oremus aptly points out, these duties not only reduce the viability of green energy, they harm domestic businesses that install solar energy equipment. 

Unfortunately, this phenomenon is in no way unique to solar panels. The U.S. imposes a great number of antidumping and anti-subsidy duties on imports that U.S. manufacturers rely on as inputs. Check out this video to learn more about America’s economically irrational and destructive antidumping laws:

1. Hospital Union in Michigan Resorts to Bullying and Intimidation Tactics Against Workers Who Exercise Their Right to Opt Out.

2. The federal government on Tuesday indicted multiple union members for burning down a Quaker church in 2012. Ten members of a Philadelphia ironworkers union face charges of arson and racketeering in connection with a fire against the church, which was employing non-union workers.