In the last few days I’ve gotten perhaps fifty or more of this babbling bot:
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Here’s a piece of news about cancer and eating fruits and vegetables. The hype in the many MSM articles that covered this research story was the same: eating a goodly number of fruits and vegetables won’t prevent cancer. Stop the presses!
Well, who ever thought it would? I was only under the impression it might slightly reduce the chance of developing cancer, which has complex and poorly-understood causes. And it turns out that’s exactly what the study said:
…[E]ven large consumptions of fruit and veg will only reduce the risk by a maximum of 10 per cent.
It’s not great, granted. But ten percent is still ten percent.
The article goes on to say that obesity and drinking represent far greater cancer risks. Obesity is the favorite whipping boy of the health industry, so this should come as no surprise. But I was curious to find out what percent of cancer cases have been found to be due to obesity.
Trouble is, none of the MSM articles on the research offered that particular statistic. And when I went to check out the original article, it turns out it would cost me $32 to read it (thanks but no thanks).
So I went on a Google search for the answer, or at least an answer. I found this:
In 2002, about 41,000 new cases of cancer in the United States were estimated to be due to obesity. This means that about 3.2 percent of all new cancers are linked to obesity.
It doesn’t sound as though such a huge percentage of new cancers is attributable to obesity after all. If you go through the article, it attempts to discuss for what specific types of cancer, and under what conditions, obesity affects cancer rates. Read it and you’ll see that the situation is astoundingly complex: different for men and women, different for type of cancer involved, different depending on estrogen status (pre- or post-menopausal, and whether replacement hormone therapy has been instituted), different for races and ages.
What’s more, the assumption that the act of losing weight (if people were able to do so; it’s notoriously difficult for the obese) would change things for the better is untested:
The most conclusive way to test if avoiding weight gain will decrease the risk of cancer is through a controlled clinical trial. At present, there have been no controlled clinical trials on the effect on cancer related to avoiding weight gain…
There is insufficient evidence that intentional weight loss will affect cancer risk for any cancer. A very limited number of observational studies have examined the effect of weight loss, and a few found some decreased risk for breast cancer among women who have lost weight. However, most of these studies have not been able to evaluate whether the weight loss was intentional or related to other health problems…
And then there are studies such as this, which focuses on overall mortality rather than specifically on cancer. It found that somewhat overweight people may have a lower death rate than normal weight people, underweight people a higher death rate, and the highest of all was in the extremely obese (over 35 BMI; to give you a rough idea what that means, a person of my height, 5’4″, would have to weigh in at over 205 pounds to have a BMI that high):
In our analysis, we did not find overweight (BMI 25 to 30) to be associated with increased mortality in any of the 3 surveys. Our results are similar to those of a previous analysis of NHANES I and II data that found little effect of overweight on life expectancy. Our finding is consistent with other results reported in the literature, although methodologic differences often preclude exact comparisons. In many studies, a plot of the relative risk of mortality against BMI follows a U-shaped curve, with the minimum mortality close to a BMI of 25; mortality increases both as BMI increases above 25 and as BMI decreases below 25, which may explain why risks in the overweight category are not much different from those in the normal weight category. Some studies have found that overweight was associated with a slightly increased risk of total mortality compared with the normal weight category. Other studies have suggested that overweight (BMI 25 to 30) is associated with no excess mortality, particularly in older age groups. Further investigation of the effects of overweight on mortality, particularly in the elderly, and of the possible role of confounding would be of interest.
Of interest, indeed.
And it would be particularly fascinating to know whether losing weight and keeping it off has any positive effect at all, other than looking better and feeling better. For example, I look and feel better when I’m less weighty, and when I eat fewer sweets. If that’s the way it is for you, it makes sense to try to keep your weight down. But this demonizing of the overweight is both tiresome and non-scientific.
Last night while I was talking on the phone, I idly looked up towards a lighting fixture and noticed with horror that It Was Back.
The scutie, that is, my revolting house guest from last year (follow the link for a photo; I refuse to publish it again). My phone companion helpfully suggested it might have been the very same one I escorted out in a cup last year and released into the wild. But if so, it’s had a terrible year, worse even than Obama: although still quite large, this one was significantly smaller than the previous enormous Scutigera coleoptrata (common house centipede) that had chosen to enter my humble abode.
This one, however, received the same treatment as before: catch and release. Why did I not kill the scutie, you might ask? Same reason as last year. There are limits to the size of the creatures I will voluntarily crush, and the scutie exceeds that limit by a significant amount. It’s hard to say exactly where I draw the line, but if something will squish and ooze in significant fashion rather than a simple neat and unitary splat, the impulse to crush seems to depart from me.
You may notice, however, that last night I bravely dealt with the scutie by myself. Oh, I’m not averse to asking the resident male to take over, if there happens to be a resident male around. But when none’s in sight, I step up to the plate and take my bugs outside like the trouper I am.
And then I write about it.
In California, naturally.
All joking aside, this is fascinating. It’s a bacteria that can incorporate arsenic rather than phosphorus into its DNA, expanding the possibilities for the basic building blocks of life.
Lots of blah, blah, blah in Washington about whether or not to extend those Bush tax cuts, and to whom, and for how long.
The problem with arguing about such things, of course, is that no one really knows what the effect of each course would be. At least, I haven’t seen anything that convinces me that anyone knows. I’m already on record as saying that economics is not my strong suit, but I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s anyone’s.
Here’s why: in economics, what seems obvious ain’t necessarily so. The economy is one of those extraordinarily complex systems that make predictions exceedingly hard to get right. Oh, somebody always seems to have been correct—ex post facto. The problem is knowing ahead of time whose prediction is the one to (literally) bank on.
Here’s the dilemma we face right now: we’ve got a number of huge economic problems, high among them being unemployment, an economy that needs stimulation in terms of confidence and spending and investing, and the need to restrain a huge and growing deficit. What might help the first two (spending, lower taxes rather than higher) might harm the third.
Furthermore, we’ve got uncertainty about the actual effect of tax hikes and/or tax cuts. It is intuitive to think that raising taxes raises revenues. But it’s not always correct—and even when it is, it’s not always correct to the extent expected and depended upon.
In other words, sometimes raising taxes doesn’t do what it’s meant to do, and can even have large and unintended consequences (such as people not working so hard in order to keep their incomes in a lower bracket, fleeing the state or the country, finding effective ways to shift money around so they avoid taxes, and so on).
If you look at discussions of the topic around the blogosphere, you’ll find that the arguments tend to split not only on political lines between conservatives and liberals, but between those who think it’s most important to stimulate the economy by keeping money in the pockets of the people (rich and poor and in-between), those who think it’s most important to reduce the deficit by raising taxes, those who think it most important to reduce the deficit by cutting government spending, and those who want to combine some of these approaches.
The real question is: who’s more correct? Which approach will help most? I’m for a combination of extending the Bush tax cuts and cutting spending. But hey, I’ve already said I’m no expert. The trouble is that neither are the experts.
…very tired, of carrying Obama’s water for him.
And if Obama’s lost E. J., there’s probably nobody left.
…after reading this piece, that at some point in our not-too-distant future the government will try to ban driving while eating.
Ah, those obdurate Republican naysayers, trying to hold up progress during the lame duck session:
FOX has obtained a letter being circulated to Senate Republicans that calls for a filibuster blockade of any legislation not directly related to time-sensitive votes on taxes and spending.
All 42 Republican senators have signed on to the plan, which would effectively end Democratic hopes to push through controversial measures like allowing gays in the military to express their sexualities and offering amnesty to illegal immigrants who attend college or volunteer for the military.
…”We are now less than a month away from a huge across-the-board tax increase for every American and just days away from running out of operating funds for the federal government,” one [Republican] aide told Power Play. “It doesn’t seem unreasonable to insist that Democrats focus on those things instead of the remaining items on their failed liberal agenda.”
No, it doesn’t.
Nor does it seem unreasonable for the wounded Democrats to at least try to cram in as much of that failed liberal agenda as possible before relinquishing power. After all, the die is cast, the vote is over, and they’ve been turned out; why not get a few licks in before they actually have to clean out their desks and surrender their keys?
Lame ducks are widely thought to lack power and influence because of their outgoing status. But, paradoxically, they also enjoy the advantage of not having to answer for their actions by being vulnerable to loss in elections, since the loss has already occurred.
Defiant lame duck activities have a hoary history, after all. For example:
Such actions date back to the Judiciary Act of 1801 (“Midnight Judges Act”), in which Federalist President John Adams and the outgoing 6th Congress amended the Judiciary Act to create more federal judge seats for Adams to appoint and the Senate to confirm before the Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated and the Democratic-Republican majority 7th Congress convened.
Other actions often involve executive pardons, such as the huge number issued by Bill Clinton as he left office.
I’m not so sure, however, that there’s ever been a case of the electorate roundly repudiating an entire party in control of Congress, and then that very same Congress attempting in its subsequent lame duck session to pass seminal legislation that it knows the voters don’t want (if any of you history buffs are aware of such cases, please offer examples in the comments section).
Usually, even parties that have been voted out of power remain cognizant of their own future, trying to protect it for next time by not insulting and thwarting the will of the voters. This Congress, however, has been different almost from the start. It has defied the wishes of the American people and become an overbearing majority, as presciently described by Madison in Federalist Paper #10.
Lame duck status won’t change that impulse. The only thing it may affect is their ability to realize it, especially if the situation emboldens some Democrats who managed to escape the voter’s wrath in 2010 to defy their leaders’ kamikaze plans.
Whenever I get blue, and want a little pick me up, I visit GoFugYourself, and am almost never disappointed.
Today is no different. Feast your eyes on this:
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…it’s…it’s a cross between a a tutu and a corset and camouflage for lying in wait in a duck blind.
Predictably, Sarah Palin calls Obama out for not doing something about Wikileaks sooner. It’s a good question; why hasn’t he?
There are those who believe that it’s because Obama is so intent on sabotaging the United States and its standing in the world that he’s secretly happy about the embarrassment of the latest Wikileaks dump. But those people ignore the fact that it’s the Obama administration itself that is most revealed, and most damaged, in its ability to use diplomacy and communicate with its allies. As Heather Hurlburt points out in the New Republic, the lack of protective secrecy will have a chilling effect on what she calls “progressive” foreign policy: i.e. Obama’s reliance on and faith in diplomacy.
It is telling that it’s only now that the Obama administration seems to care about Wikileaks. When the dump was just about the military, his objections were ho-hum. Now they seem to have a little more bite, because it’s getting personal—especially for Hillary Clinton.
Whether or not anything will come of threats by Holder to “investigate” whether Assange has violated the espionage or any other act (no doubt he’s shaking in his shoes in Sweden or Switzerland or Iceland, thinking about a nice warm vacation in Ecuador) remains to be seen.
One of the hallmarks of the Obama administration so far has been a curious lead-footedness, a slowness to react to breaking events. I’m not sure whether it is due to Obama’s personal indecisiveness, or some problem with his chain of command, or his desire to placate all sides by not taking a stand until the last possible moment, or all of the above, or some other factor. But this slowness has been quite noticeable in many arenas, and is part of the perception of weakness and hesitancy that Obama and company have engendered.
I doubt very much whether Julian Assange feels Obama and Holder to be any sort of threat at all to his safety. And my guess is also that, even though the recent dump was widely telegraphed by Assange in advance, Obama had trouble believing it would actually happen to him. After all, he’s the good guy—he’s not Bush; he’s Obama, the one who means well, the one who keeps apologizing for America abroad and who wants to end American exceptionalism.
Nothing in Obama’s previous life has prepared him for anything but worldwide adulation and approval from the likes of someone like Assange. When Robert Gibbs remarked that it’s an understatement to say that Obama was “not pleased” by the most recent Wikileaks disclosures, one can be fairly sure he’s telling the truth. Not pleased, and surprisingly surprised.