Food subsidies lead to obesity

Link In a piece written by the author of 'The Omnivores Dilemma', we understand how the food subsidies in the farm bill cause the cheapest food to be the least healthy -- explaining why the poor are also the most obese.

Partitioning Iraq

Link I'd written earlier that I'd thought that partitioning Iraq would be a way to prevent genocide of Shia on Sunni. I put it this way since Sunni's are the minority and have little political power. Seems like the US military was attempting to do just that in Baghdad, but now al-Maliki says he's against such a move. Of course he's a Shia, so I don't know whether we can trust him.

Bush loses is first and second cabinet members to scandal and failure

Rumsfeld, Libby, Wolfowitz, Michael Brown (FEMA), Gonzales: I'm sure I'm leaving out more wonderful white male buddies of Bush. People said in 2000 that it didn't matter that Bush was an idiot, he had a wonderfully experienced cabinet.

Well, I think it turns out the only good guy Bush had was Powell, and nobody at the White House listened to Powell. Everyone else was corrupt, inept, and a liar. Turned out even Powell was a liar at the UN.

What's really sad that Rumsfeld and Cheney came from Ford's cabinet. Ford was a good guy, but he sure had bad judgment of character.

-- Updated 4/19

Economist talks about how the Neocons have been discredited -- mostly by their own failure.

-- Updated 5/15

Interesting story about Ashcroft and Gonzales.

Brain genes on the X-chromosome

I've read that researchers had found that many genes for intelligence are actually on the X-chromosome, and since males only have one copy of that chromosome, any mutations which might be recessive in girls are expressed in boys. This could be the reason behind the wider variance in intelligence in males compared to females -- supposedly males can be really smart or really dumb. Lately, I've found mostly evidence of the latter. Also, it means that these particular X-chromosome brain genes come from the mother only. No wonder I don't have my dad's gift for math.

-- Updated 5/1

Link It seems what I said above was not quite correct. Apparently, one of the X-chromosomes is mostly shut down in girls as well. Hmmm.

Fierstein argues against prejudices double standard

Link Why do Ann Coulter and Isaiah Washington get a relative pass for calling people f----t? And Imus get fired for calling others nappy headed hos? Fierstein wonders why and thinks it's due to a double standard.

Perhaps there aren't insult words strong enough that we can hurl at straight white Christian males in America to understand what it's like to be insulted with such words. Cracker, breeder, red-neck, bible-bearing, poor white trash don't quite meet the level of insults straight white male people can say towards women, Jewish people, gays and blacks. I think people just need to take a moment to put themselves in other's shoes. This seems to be a lost art in this day and age, but a capacity that all humans have.

One can complain about thought police and mind-control, but really this argument isn't about what people think. People can think what they like, but if a public figure makes public insults, he/she is going to have to pay the price. I just hope it that unlike what Fierstein says, gays don't remain the only group bigots can insult publicly and not lose their job.

-- Updated 4/15

Expectations, context and target matters according to Times piece.

Iraq Shia urged to fight Americans by al Sadr

Link I'm beginning to think the Americans are in a trap. Bush created this mess which is Iraq, and now the Shia majority is going to start genocide against the Sunni minority once the American soldiers leave. America will be blamed for that. Then again, al-Qaeda and the Sunni insurgents are working together to increase the violence. But this makes the Shia majority are angry enough to write them out of further influence in Iraq which will hamper any chance of political reconciliation. America will probably be blamed for that too.

Perhaps we can somehow escape our duties by saying the Iraqis are doing this to themselves. But still the Americans are in fact the ones who created this situation in the first place -- 'you break it, you own it.'

Dutch seem to have a good idea with peaceful counter-insurgent tactics

Link It's not a clear winner as far as tactics, but it looks better from the point of view of long term strategy.

Shiite Cleric wants civil war

Link The powerful Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani rejected the call for modification to de-baathification laws in place currently in Iraq. It seems to me that Iraq wants civil war. I say let them have it, and we should step aside to let them know there are consequences to being unreasonable.

EPA needs to regulate warming gases

All over the news: the Supreme court says EPA needs to do something about carbon dioxide and methane. Now, let's see if the Bushies actually do something. I can see a lot of feet dragging, half measures and excuses coming.

Ethanol a red herring

A lot of news items have come from Bush's trying to 'encourage' automakers to make E85 compatible cars. But where is all the ethanol for these cars going to come from? More subsidies for corn which is already heavily subsidized? Several articles have stated that the economics of ethanol as a fuel aren't good. We have to heavily subsidize the crop and in actuality put in 75% or more of the energy we get out of it. Perhaps this can be drastically improved, but aren't we putting the cart before the horse. Shouldn't we make it economically viable without subsidies before encumbering automakers with switching costs.

The Sierra club says that automakers get out of the CAFE (fuel efficiency) standards with an E85 loophole. This is a very bad thing.

-- Updated April 2

Well now that I think about it, perhaps 25% efficiency isn't too bad. But you are trading off huge amounts of potential actual food production for ethanol production. I still think it only sounds good if there's more like 50% or better efficiency. Somebody should do a full on cost/joule on solar vs wind vs ethanol taking into account fixed costs like solar panels, turbines, farm machinery.

Hillary Clinton

From what I've heard Carter was a nice guy. Ford got some important things done in his short time in office. I have a respect for Reagan's accomplishments. But what can I say, Bill Clinton is still my favorite President. Still, you can like Bill and not like Hillary, or vice-versa. But I think I am willing to give Hillary another listen. For some reason, I don't think I like Barack Obama. Perhaps, it's his more lukewarm responses on gay rights questions, his smoking (despite his current stance that he is trying to quit), or just his unattractive face (sorry guy) -- a young President should at least be good looking as compensation for the lack of experience. Of course, Hillary probably isn't terribly attractive, but I guess that doesn't matter to me. Al Gore could run, but he's gotta lose a lot of weight to have a chance, I think. It's getting to be too late for him. I'm not even looking at the Republican candidates.

Climate change in Arizona highlands

Link More fires, droughts, endangered species, and higher temps potentially point to climate change. Like the poles, it seems high altitude ecosystems can witness massive changes with small temperature shifts.

Northern Ireland agreement = Iraq in 30 years?

Link It's a strange parallel, but perhaps if the Americans leave Iraq and dangle financial incentives to cooperate that's what would happen?

NYT editorial says laws likely broken in prosecutor firings

Link David Brooks, a NYT columnist, said probably no laws were broken. But another editorial in the Times says there may have been.

Politically motivated prosecutor firings obscured by lies

Link Another case of lying and stupidity on the part of the Bush administration. Of course, Bush has the prerogative to get rid of the prosecutors he doesn't like. But in an attempt to hide the political nature of the firings, the administration decided to bad mouth some reasonably good prosecutors by saying the firings were performance based.

Apparently Reagan and Clinton conducted purges of all of the justice prosecutors at the start of their terms. W apparently did the same, but had second thoughts about these eight. Doesn't this mean he and/or his administration has poor judgment?

Updated 3/15
Economist story

Article tries to explain the reason why CT screening for lung cancer isn't good for you

Permalink The complexities of overdiagnosis and mortality rate improvement are explained.

Biofuels could be created efficiently by adding hydrogen

Link Hmmm, interesting ideas on biofuels. You could perform electrolysis on water to get hydrogen and then use it to convert biomass to alcohol?

Laughter as a social lubricant

Permalink A study shows the reason why a nervous laugh can be normal.

My brief take on earlier and later DST

It's a nice idea to try to save power. I think it would have been fine except that we have a bunch of electronics that does this change for you, but around the first week of April. Everything I've read says to manually change the time on things that didn't do it automatically for you last Sunday, but nobody wants to talk about how things will be screwed up in the first week of April and in the fall when some of your electronics will set you forward and back again if you leave DST turned on on those devices. My problems are with my digital watch and my vcr and old WinME PC. I was thinking to turn off DST on all of those items, although the old WinME PC is on so infrequently it probably won't matter as long as I remember not to rely on the time.

Climate change affecting property values?

Permalink Some serious thoughts about property around Manhattan and how it might be affected by storm surge.