If you think about it, all soldiers who go off to war realize that it may result in their death. Not many think about the potential of being maimed or crippled for life.
Nonsense. What's the first thing the wounded soldier says when he regains consciousness?
I think you may also have slept through history. First of all, I know of no time that we "uused reckless and indescriminate weapons against people that it claimed were under it's protection." So lets leave out the silly "under it's protection" farce and just address the issue of reckless and indiscriminate use of weapons by the US:"
Sure, you can go far enough back and find all sorts of nonsense. There was one known case of providing smallpox laden blankets to kill Indians - of course this was before the US was a country (you didn't know that, did you?), but hey, what the heck!
And the US indeed did slaughter a lot of Indians (not friendly foreigners, but hostile people whose land we were stealing). But that was a long time ago.
The real lesson of history is that the democratic western powers have become very mindful of civilian casualties since world war II. During World War II (the last one that the left in the US felt was "noble), we intentionally killed civilians with the reasoning that they were enemy combatants indirectly through their jobs in the enemy economy. Hence the firebombing of Dresden (which, of course, was far more deadly than Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Of course, the US was not exactly alone in this sort of behavior. Every country that could, did.
OTOH we did not engage in intentional atrocities (other than mass bombing) the way the USSR, Germany and Japan did, so even then we were acting a bit more civilized.
Since then, we have always cared about civilian casualties. For example, in the Vietnam war, we could have ended it quickly by bombing the dikes in North Vietnam (please, no horrible puns), and bombing Hanoi indiscriminately, but we didn't do that. Sure, we still used terrible weapons (napalm, which you probably don't realize is not even in our arsenal any more), and civilians got killed; but at least we tried. And of course our enemy, not nearly so civilized, had intentional programs of civilian slaughter (10,000 village chiefs in one year, for example), and also hid with unwilling civilians so we would be less likely to attack them. Sort of like the Palestinian terrorist the Israeli's blew to hell the other day.
Since WW-II we progressivly more careful about civilian casualties, so that now only our vast technological superiority has allowed us to win. If we had fought the Gulf War by WW-II rules (remember, the last noble war according to the american left), we would have carpet bombed Baghdad, or just nuked it.
Of course, you allow yourself a great escape (oh, it's going on now, but we won't know for decades). Nonsense! The western democracies are IMHO *overly* careful about civilian casualties. This includes Israel, which could trivially destroy the Palestinians if it wanted, but instead inflicts minimal civilian casualties (yes, including the 2000 lb bombing of the terrorist leader and his neighbors the other day).
As to the issue of the laser weapon... hey... guess what... weapons kill and main. And they don't always just get the bad guys. War is not pretty, and not to be engaged in on a whim. It is the *duty* of democratic countries to have enough military power to protect democracy, freedom and human rights from those who would use force to take it away from the whole world. And if that means having lasers that might blind people inadvertently, then so be it.
"The people it hurts are those who cannot remain economically competitive."
Let's see what that really means. Somebody in a third world country is making... let's say... one dollar per hour. Send them over here and pay them... oh... ten dollars per hour. They are in hog heaven. They can save up that money and return home a rich person. Meanwhile, your job has been taken by a ten dollar per hour person. You aren't economically competitive. Don't you feel great?
Citizenship has meaning, and should have more than many give it today. We still live in the era of nations, and that is not going to change for a while. Think of different nations as separate experiments in lifestyle, governing style, culture\, history and sets of values.
The Us has its lifestyle, government, values, culture and history. Immigrants need to assimilate - become Americans - if they want to vote. And to do that, they need to not only contribute to society, but also they need time to learn the culture, etc and see if it fits them. American citizenship, like that of many other countires, is a valuable commodity. I don't want to see it disvalued by simply handing it out to anyone who comes over here! As Americans, we should choose who we accept as citizens, by setting reasonable criteria. We have been generous to refugees, admitting them not for what we expect them to provide, but for humanitarian reasons. But we have to have limits. It needs to mean something to be an American (or a Brit, or French, or whatever). Without a feeling of community, government becomes simply the art of benefiting some people at the expense of others. But with genuine belonging, people can identify with the nation as a whole and vote accordingly.
I don't like the fact that a majority of Latin American immigrants (first and maybe even second generation) think of themselves as first Mexican (or whatever) rather than American. If they are going to live here and share in our benefits, they need to see themselves as part of us, not as foreigners living here.
I am glad you are naturalized. Hopefully you now think of yourself as an American. We need new citizens, and I think a good way to get them is green cards and a naturalization process.
I disagree that protectionism in trade is equivalent to controlling immigration and temporary workers.
Residence in a country means a lot more than just a job. It means you acquire rights and responsibilities. The toaster you import from China does not.
Furthermore, there is the question of equity: I have lived in the US all my life and paid exorbitant taxes and generally contributed to the society. If some poor Indian, no matter how qualified, comes here and takes my job - not becuase I am unqualified but because the poor Indian is very cheap, I am being hurt by that immigration. The Indian may come out ahead (otherwise, why come), and the employer may too (except that their competition does the same thing). Meanwhile my contribution to my country (including military service) has given me no advantage at all.
Selfish? You bet. As is the guy who comes here on the H-1 visa, and the guy who hires him. Labor is a commodity and I don't particularly like unions, but residency and immigration have much larger impacts than simply jobs.
On a matter of pure practicality, the world is full of poor people. The US and Europe can only absorb so many, no matter what the reason, without losing our national identities and destroying our national economy. And I think it is very dangerous to do that. Multiculturalism does not work (ask those in the Balkans). I believe there should be a reasonable amount of immigration (immigration is what made the US, and assimilation of citizens from all over the world has been important). But we can't just open the door to anyone who is somehow worthy.
I live in Arizona. We have Mexican immigrants and illegals all over the place. In general, they are very good people and extremely hard workers. I like them. But the huge influx of Mexican (and other Latin American immigrants) has distorted our society. Rather than assimilate, many of their children are taking the worst of our culture (violence, gangs, drugs) and abandoning the best of their own. A smaller immigration rate would reduce this by forcing people to assimilate and adopt the values of the society at large (however flawed) rather than forming their own separatist cultures.
Finally, I should point out that people don't have to come here to be competitive. India has a thriving software industry. There is more and more good software coming from Europe, Russia, Israel, and many other countries.
Wait until your teen becomes a teenager. Then you will find that you very much want that sort of oversight...
I threatened to build one of these and put it on my daughter's car if she didn't get home on time (or call to let us know where she was). Of course, mine was going to use packet radio for real time tracking!
Kids tend to think they are invulnerable... and the best of upbringing seems to be ineffective against some kinds of peer pressure and influence. Why do you think armies are made up of teenagers? Its not just their physical abilities... it's their foolhardiness and the ease with which you can modify their behavior by group dynamics.
My parents gave me a good upbringing, and I consider myself a fairly careful and moral person, but I shudder at the things I did as a teenager. For that matter... if I were a teenager and did the same things today, the ATF would lock me away forever... and that's just one area of foolishness!
Kids are scary! When you have a kid you love, and worry about, it is a constant battle between your anxiety and your desire to give them an adequate amount of freedom and privacy. And you never know if you are doing the right thing unless something bad goes wrong!
No one mans right can or should be outwieghed by those of another. "All men are created equal"
A bit naive, aren't we?
Rights clash all the time. And when they do, someone has to sort them out. Your post implies that no rights ever clash!
In this case, the so-called right to privacy (good luck finding it in the US constitution) clashes with the most fundamental purpose of a government: protecting its citizens against those who would harm them.
The outcome of such a conflict is not trivially obvious, but in this case, I have no more sympathy for Mr. Gilmore than I do those who are against ethnic profiling. An aircraft is a very dangerous and very fragile device, and reasonable precautions are necessary.
It is appropriate to penalize someone who intentionally causes death through hacking. It may even be necessary to make this a federal crime simply because local authorities would not have the capability to catch the perpetrator in an across-state-borders attack.
The obvious downside of this law is that it will be used when the situation isn't that serious. It would have to be a hack that endangered lives. If it were used against someone who just caused monetary damage, then it would be a sad day. After all, do you think the Enron and Andersen boys at the top are going to be spending life in prison? Hell, John Walker Lindh is only expeced to get 20 years.
Personally, I think that economic crimes should not have penalties as high as violent crimes, because we should treat life as more valuable than property.
Hate crimes laws are as dumb as computer crimes laws. They are supercriminalization. As Bush pointed out, two of the three in the Jasper case were sentenced to death - without the need for a hate crimes law.
Motivation is already a factor in determining the crime (manslaughter vs. first degree murder, for example, both involve the killing of someone).
Hate crimes laws are simply a way of politicians pandering to minority groups, even though in the US (and France) the majority of "hate crimes" are committed by members of minority groups!
The sonic boom does not occur as an aircraft passes through the "sound barrier." The boom is the passage of a shock wave from a supersonic aircraft, and the shock wave exists as long as the aircraft is supersonic. The shock wave can be thought of as the sound trapped in a thing cone because it cannot go faster than the aircraft, so it all "stacks up" in the shock wave.
For example, when the Space Shuttle landed at White Sands, New Mexico, we heard the double boom as it went by Phoenix, AZ. It was still supersonic at the time.
And the USA does not have any? Did I say that? No. Apparently you have to make up an argument in order to be able to dispute it.
Free press and open judicial system is not the open cure all that you make sound like. Hey, if you want a perfect system, you may as well just give up. It is perfectionists that gave us things like Pol Pot.
You have been watching too many James Bond movies, they have police, I know it is just such a modern concept but hey them follow the fashions. Lets take a look at the US, FBI, CIA, DEA, DIA, DoD, ATF, Home Defense Department and that does not include any special units that we have around the world. Do you know what they may or may not be doing? Oh? Yes, in general we the citizens do know what they are doing. And we have shield procedures that are followed so that misdeeds can be uncovered, publicized and corrected. Does this mean no abuse occurs? Of course not. Does it make it vastly better than the Chinese system? Yes, if you like freedom.
Did you know that the CIA was smuggling weapons to various terrorist countries. Do you think that Afghanistan was making those Stinger missiles in their garage? At the time, Afghanistan was not a terrorist country, but rather one struggling against a foreign invader (USSR). And it was not a secret that we gave them stingers.
It sounds real good to say that they are a big bad police state because the control the people, well you have 1 Billion people that you have to look at for a police state is not as bad an idea as you think. They have alot of problems, but you know what? They are still human beings and they do what they can. Now this is really sad. The US and Europe together have over 600 million people. We don't need a police state. India has a billion people and they don't need a police state.
Perhaps you should live in a police state sometime before you so casually suggest it as not a bad idea.
As for the people in power want to stay in power, funny that seems to be how the Democrats and Republicians setup the system too. Sure you can get an independent every once in a while, but you don't see more than 1 or 2. Sure you can setup a Democrat versus a Republician, but I see a number of congressional leaders who have served 20, 3o years without fail and while what they do is not secret, they do the reverse they spew so much crap that you cannot sort the wheat from the chaff. So I guess in your wierd judgement this makes our system equivalent to that of China, where succession is decided by the oligarchs, in secret? Pretty pathetic.
y in America could someone get so ignorant for spouting this stuff like it is the national anthem regardless of truth. The only thing missing is a"Under God"!
Speak for yourself. If you mean that I happen to believe that the US is a great country, certainly better than the PRC (that's China, ya know), and that one reason it is better is because of its political system, then guess what... you are right! And I can defend it with facts, while you use nothing but exaggerations.
US spends the most of all nations on the military, sound fact.
Duh. Yes, and I think we need to spend more, because the free people of the world need to preserve that freedom and fight the tyrants of the world. You cite our large military budget as if it is some sort of evil thing. Oh, btw, for your information, as a percentage of GDP it is FAR from the greatest in the world. And, since you obviously don't read history, let me mention that it is historically a very low percentage for the US.
e government has no problem with threatening anyone and everyone with the use of military force as long as we have provocation. Yeah... provocation. Provocation means that we have a reason to respond.
Give George Bush a reason and he would be leading 200,000 man force in Iraq waving the US flag regardless of what anyone else in the world thinks.
Get a clue. George Bush has a much larger army than that.
But I suppose you think that Iraq should just be left to sit there and develop weapons of mass destruction... and then use them (as Saddam Hussein) has a history of doing. I suppose the moral solution is just to let him make a mess of the middle east. Oh... wait... I know your response... you are going to blame us for him too.
It is militancy and an agressive foriegn policy.
An aggressive foreign policy is one that uses military to oppress others, to take territory, or to terrorize. Our policy is to protect the free world (including ourselves). It is to deny haven to terrorists, and to try to make the world a better place. But of course, a bitter and cynical person like you appear to be could never imagine that we might actually do some things for good reasons.
As for poor economic performance, they are a developing country, which somehow you believe that the US was born with Skyscrapers, indoor plumbing and a stock market. Learn to read. I predict that it will end up with poor economic performance. Currently it does not have poor economic performance, because it is developing, and because the west has been pouring capital into it. And I know how the US got Skyscrapers, indoor plumbing and a stock market: free markets, property rights, transparent judiciary, democracy, and a free press. Things you seem to think are not very important.
Chinese are more capitalists than you or more. They actually work for a living, because they actually have to work to live. They don't have a government supported social security, medicaid, or charities willing to feed them. Actually those programs sound kinda socialist to me. They are kinda socialist. And the Chinese have all sorts of socialist programs. They are officially a communist country, didn't you notice? The Chinese people traditionally are very good at capitalism. But the Chinese government is not capitalist, it is fascist. And you know what... people often work hard in fascist societies too... just ask the slave laborers in Hitler's German... or for that matter, the slave laborers in Chinese concentration camps!
You could have been George Bush speech writer, willing to spout any willy nilly non-sense without any exposure to the country, the people or even and understanding of their government. No wonder the foriegn policy of the US sucks.
And you presume a lot. How do you know what experience or other exposure I have to China? You seem to think I am making this stuff up just because you are. Sorry... I speak from a lot of knowledge on the subject (not an expert, certainly) and some personal experience with communist states.
We don't have a secret police in anywhere near the aspect of China. For example, since 9/11 we have discovered that the FBI could not even listen to a chatroom or look at a web site without probable cause. That's a secret police? Get serious.
The CIA is not allowed to operate inside the US. If they had, they might have been able to stop 9/11.
BATF... that's getting a bit closer. If you wanted to really come up with a secret police, you should have mentioned DEA. But even there, they are not a political police.
Be serious... don't you know the difference between the operations of a secret police in a police state and a law enforcement agency in a free country? The difference is not minor. It is VAST. I am not going to try educating you on the issue... it would take too long.
You can use the N word and you won't get arrested and sent to a "re=education" camp. You may get harrassed (unless you are black, in which case you get a free pass). Idiotic politically correct schools might kick you out (unless you are black).
Property rights, like any rights, are not absolute. You are referring to putting a highway where your house is. That is called "eminent domain" and it does not allow the government to take your property without just compensation. But you are right in one respect... the left has diminished our property rights more than they should have been - mostly through taxation and environmental laws which do not offer compensation for public use of our property.
Criticize Israel? Are you serious? Don't you even read the media? Much of the US media has been significantly anti-Israel for a long time. The New York Times, the leading print paper, is an example. And if you want to criticize Israel, you can call a radio station, buy an ad, rent a lecture hall, or put up a web site. Nobody is stopping you. In fact, many people have done so. Go to google and you can find dozens of anti-semitic hate sites located in the US which not only criticize Israel but blame Jews for every ill in the world.
Compare this to China, where if you criticize the government you can be executed. You won't get a fair trial. Your family may be put on a black-list and ruined economically.
It is amazing that you cannot see the dramatic difference between China and any western country, when it comes to freedom. The US may not be perfect by your standards, but it is extremely free by historical standards and compared to almost everywhere else in the world.
China is rife with corruption, compared to the US. It is inevitable that a country without a free press, without a *transparent* judiciary and decidion making process, and without guarantees of free speech and due process will suffer from corruption.
China can best be described today as a fascist country, with the state and big industry inextricably intertwined. It has a secret police (gestapo equivalent) which has wide reaching powers. Individuals who are critical can find themselves executed and their organs harvested for use by those in power. The government is undemocratic and power succession is typical of these regimes... it is shrouded in secrecy.
Until China develops modern government, with respect for human rights including free speech and property rights, enforced by a minimally corrupt judicial system, and watched over by a free press, it is doomed to the fate of all such systems... increasing corruption, militancy and aggressive foreign policy, and poor economic performance.
Capitalism, in many variants, has been proven to be the most efficient economic system yet tried. Capitalism requires property rights; it requires a low level of corruption; it requires transparency; it requires freedom.
China is experimenting with state controlled capitalism - i.e. fascism - as opposed to its own total command economy. It is doomed to ultimately fail as an economic system as long as unelected officials can arbitrarily change the rules to their personal enrichment, backed by the power of a police state.
Your objections might have been reasonable in the 1970's, but not today.
The US Air Force has an airborne laser designed to destroy missile boosters at a range of 200 miles - THROUGH THE atmosphere. So much for dissipation.
Optics that can resolve small details of satellites have been around for a long time. If you can see the detail, you can focus a beam on it. And this is without adaptive optics, and these days adaptive optics are what would be used.
As far as tracking.... no problem. Remember a couple of things... they are quite a ways off. They are travelling in a ballistic path - very smooth trajectory. And furthermore, the imaging cameras I described above had to be able to do that tracking in order to do the imaging. They ahve been running a long time. The Multiple Mirror Telescope, for example, has that tracking capability (yes, it is an astronomical instrument, but it was paid for by the Air Force, used spare spy satellite mirrors, and has an AZ/EL mount, and the Air Force used to borrow it for their own quiet purposes). It had that capability in the early 80's when I visited the site.
Oh, and star wars?
I won't even bother to refute the various errors you managed to stick into a couple of sentences.
I don't know if a ground based laser system is appropriate, but I do know that the previous posters objections are based on ignorance, not science or engineering.
We were able to ban the use of poison gas after World War I, and Western nations have not used it since. Poison gas kills indiscriminantly, without regard for civilian or military status, and it is a very unpleasant way to die. Civlized nations decided that even in war, there are rules. The USA, of course, has more chemical and biological weapons than any other country on earth...
Any proof for this offensive assertion??
The USSR had by far the most chemical and bioweapons of any nation, and was producing them into the nineties.
The US, unlike the USSR, did away with it's chemical and biological weapons after it signed the treaty.
Mines are a problem. The US is working on mines which self-degrade.
But the real problem is the countries which ignore civilized rules. Countries like Iraq, which produced large amounts of biological and chemical weapons, and used them in spite of treaties.
Treaties are nice when you are dealing with nice people.
They don't work worth a darn when your opponents are monsters.
The study to which you're (probably) referring actually tracked Japanese men living in Hawaii who ate a "traditional Japanese diet" vs. those who adopted an "Americanized" diet.
What they neglected to mention was that a traditional Japanese diet is high in seafood. Fish contain the highest levels of environmental contaminants (PCBs, DDT, mercury, heavy metals, dioxin, etc.) of any meat product. It gets concentrated all the way up the fish-eat-fish foodchain until it's at a toxic level in the big fish that humans eat
Well, what you mention is typical of any sort of diet epidemiology... it is extremely difficult to rule out the variance. But, what you propose is supposition also. And ocean caught fish (which is most likely what they are eating in Hawaii) are unlikely to have those contaminants. Also, only mercury and heavy metals, of the contaminants that you mention, have been shown to be harmful to people. I know of no studies tying any of them to early alzheimers.
Yes, I know.... I really did mean to imply that PCB's, DDT and dioxin (well, there are really LOTS of different kinds of dioxins) have not been shown to be harmful in people. Are you shocked? THe media would make you think that minute trace exposures to these are deadly. WRONG!
And even if the land usage is higher, the varied crops and fewer chemicals result in a better 'ecosystem' on the fields. It doesn't compare fo a forest, perhaps, but there are more worms, good bugs, and birds on an organic field than on a mostly sterile conventional farm. Nearby streams and wildlife are also better off. The land use is dramatically higher. Furthermore, modern farming does vary crops - modern farmers don't want to destroy their land any more than third world farmers want to. And the third world actually does a lot of modern farming - you have to be in the fourth world almost before the economics work.
I would rather have the forests and modern fields than no forests and organic fields.
I don't know how well the economics would transfer to the west, where chemicals are relatively less expensive compared to land and labour, but in most of the world organic farming makes solid economic sense. Considering that most farmers aren't fools, you have to figure that economics of crop production are well known to them, and they use the most effective means that they can afford. Most of the world uses modern fertilizers and pesticides. If it didn't, we wouldn't have the food surpluses we have now. The "green revolution" wasn't about improved organic farming, it was about optimizing plant hybrids, optimizing fertilizer and optimizing pesticide use for maximum yield.
I don't know of anyone who assumes that "chemicals" (by which, I presume, you mean man-made chemicals as opposed to nature made) are automatically good. But too many people assume they are automatically bad, and in most cases these people are ignorant of the fact that everything they eat is composed of "chemicals" and that nature is quite good at creating carcinogens and toxins with no help from man.
I don't know about farms->forests, but modern-farming has been accused of causing soil erosion, the lowering of the water table (just look at California - whole rivers disappearing to irrigate farmlands), and the contamination of ground water. Now let's thing about this for a minute. If organic farms get lower yields, then aren't they going to use MORE water? Everything we do (i.e. live) "contaminates" ground water, if by that you mean that modern nanochemistry can detect it.
As for cancer-in-the-thirties, if you look at breast cancer rates in the US, you'll find that breast cancer is consistently highest in the mid point between two nuclear reactors. And it's a cancer that can strike in the 30's. It would be interesting to see how you blame that on the reactors, since they don't release ANY measurable radiation. Perhaps it is because midpoint between reactors is where the radiation is highest because that is where the coal fired plants will be. Much more likely, of course, is that it is a statistical artifact. Just for fun, consider the fact that that lung cancer in the US is INVERSELY related to radon radiation exposure.
As far as Cuba goes... if you believe anything that comes out of the people's paradise, I pity you. Remember, Cuba has no free press, and anyone reporting negative things (unless those negative things can be used to increase foreign aid) is likely to be persecuted. A similar regime, USSR used to report all sorts of BS about agricultural productivity, etc. Of course, it was all nonsense - it was whatever was needed to keep the higher ups from bothering the lower downs.
I lived in France for a few months, ate everything in sight, and didn't gain a pound. I was amazed. Those luncheon Pizza's followed by Creme Broule (sp?) or profiteroles only started my day! Dinner was 5 or 6 courses. All the most delicious food imaginable.
I also observed only ONE fat Frenchman the whole time I was there.
Actually, I think that the French execute fat people, or hide them in the Paris sewers, or something. I mean... only ONE fat Frenchman in 3.5 monthos of living in Paris?
Scary....
Now, if the French could just get their political sophistication up to their culinary sophistication...
Most man-made pesticides are remarkably harmless compared to aflatoxin, or many other natural chemicals. You could have DDT on your morning breakfast every morning for the rest of your life and the odds of it having any effects on your health are too near zero to measure!
And man made pesticides don't do nearly as much to the environment as people think - because there is an entire industry (known as environmental interest groups) who have it in their interest to scare you to death about them.
Organics are for rich people. If the whole world used organics, the reduced yields would result either in mass starvation or the conversion of the rest of our land mass to farming. Modern farming is resulting in the reversion of much land mass in the US to forest.
It is extremely unlikely that someone who dies of cancer in his thirties got it from the environment, unless he was mainlining plutonium! After all, almost ALL heavy smokers live into their forties, and smokers (and, sigh, I used to be one) are exposing themselves to carcinogens at a level many orders of magnitude above other man-made environmental carcinogens!
Most of the things that are considered carcinogenic in the environment are at much tinier hazard ratios than the very numerous natural carcinogens found in, especially, unprocessed foods!
The development of modern chemistry has one very negative thing... it allows us to measure parts per trillion of things, allow folks to scare us to death about trivial hazards.
For a very well referenced, well researched, and hence thoroughly maligned book on this subject, check out "The Skeptical Environmentalist." You can consider him 50% wrong and still come out much less worried about a lot of these enviroscares than we are today.
Good grief! When I was a kid, we used to play with mercury. Today, they call out hazmat if you break a mercury thermometer!
Things have really gotten out of hand.
(and oh yes, I know that mercury is indeed hazardous - perhaps I would have come up with the GUT if I hadn't played with the mercury:-)
Some people lose weight for appearance. I try to lose it for health.
The effects of excess body fat are not good for you. That fat screws up your blood lipids and sugar metabolism. The weight wears down your joints (of course, so does jogging:-) I used to be, literally, fat and happy, because my blood chemistry looked good - so what, me worry?
Then they found a few more factors (fasting blood insulin, CRP, HDL/LDL ratio) and all of a sudden I didn't look so good. And guess what! Body fat eems to correlate with those negative factors. Very low carbohydrate consumption lowers insulin and improves HDL/LDL ratio.
So I'm trying Atkins. I know lots of people who have used the Atkins approach and lost weight and then kept it off for years. I will be getting blood tests and looking at those effects also. We shall see. I am near Syndrome-X today...and I hope to change that!
Oh, for all you young guys out there (and I am NOT a young guy by far).... this stuff only gets worse as you get older! Your metabolism slows down. Exercise gets harder to do (and more painful with arthritis). Your blood chemistry goes to hell even without insult to it. It sucks.
And of course, I wonder what 35 years of sitting in front of computer screens has done to me ( or at least, my ass:-).
But compared to not getting older.... hey, I'm not complaining!
In some sense this is right. Your body is a heat machine, and that's calories. Those that you absorb will either be burned or turned into fat.
The problem with this approach is that some foods make this easier than others. Simple carbohydrates tend to cause you to feel hungry again quickly. They tend to satisfy your appetite slowly. I know... I spent years on a low fat, controlled calorie diet. Years of being hungry while, yes, gaining weight!
Being a hacker/engineer deep to my core, I bought off on the same idea: delta-weight = k*(calories-in - calories-out). But it's too simple.
So while calorie balance is the ultimate arbiter, it is far from the whole story. Possible issues include:
-satiety - which seriously affects your ability to control calory intake. When your body thinks you need food, that is a very strong biological demand... after it, it is a survival reflex!
-metabolic effects of food - does it get absorbed? How much energy does it take to process it? How fast does it convert to blood sugar?
-health effects other than weight. Low fat diets gave me very bad LDL/HDL ratios. I do much better on low carb diets (which my doctor has prescribed, although I have gone beyond his approximate "zone" approach to do atkins).
-psychological effects - if it is too boring, can you eat it for the rest of your life? If it produces rapid positive feedback, can you avoid it (chocolate, anyone?)
-personal differences. If you are a Pima Indian, you have a 50% chance of diabetes by age 30 if you eat a typical American diet. If you aren't, you don't. Some people run at higher energies than others. Some people have more efficient mitochondria than others (or have more of them). Some people have more efficient digestion than others. Etc, etc, etc,
Don't confuse the scientific community with the medical research community. There is a big overlap, but they aren't the same folks.
Medical research is very often goal driven. It is also more political because of the implications of the results, and the power of special interest groups in pushing funding (look at the excess spending, by US population needs, on AIDS and breast cancer) [see caveat below before erupting in flame or negative mod points].
The medical community itself is even more conservative than other scientific areas. It is dealing in an area with many more uncertainties than mere physics (or for that matter, evolution). When dealing with diet questions, especially, things get very difficult. Good data is hard to get - especially about long term effects. The chain from intake to effect is long and often has lots of unknown steps. The field is very political and emotional, because so many people have vested interests (like those of us trying to maintain decent health, like those who want to oversimplify, those who want a one-shot cure, those who feel the whole problem is willpower, etc).
Furthermore, science and especially medical science is rightly suspicious of the flamboyant and the profitable. Atkins, by pushing his theories publicly and making a lot of money on it, essentially discredited the whole area of studying low carbohydrate diets! Not because he was wrong, but because he is embarassing to the more "sober" or "proper" scientists.
None of this makes him wrong. In fact, there is a lot of evidence now to show that the conventional wisdom of the food pyramid is wrong. Besides... how much of the food pyramid was influenced by the various food industries rather than science?
I think there is a good reason to suspect that low carbohydrate diets, and especially avoidance of high glycemic index carbos are a good idea - at least for some people. There is laboratory evidence of positive blood chemistry improvements (I exsperienced this myself - when I was on an low fat diet, my HDL was very low and the ratio bad... when I dropped off the wagon and pigged out for a few months, my HDL ratio was much, much better).
The critical thing is that we don't know enough to be sure *what* is appropriate when it comes to eating and exercise. We have hints from evolution that high carbohydrates are not something our system was optimized for, and here in Arizona we have a population group (Pima Indians) who have extreme problems with carbos (50% type II diabetes rate by age 30). We know that eating fat increases blood lipids, but we are learning that perhaps it is the kinds of lipids, not the amount, that is important in many areas.
I am now on the Atkins diet. I hope it works. I know, as any person who is serious about maintaining a good weight, that the trick is not losing the weight - it is adopting a lifestyle that will keep the weight off long term. But first you have to lose it, and recent evidence is showing that just having the weight is itself a risk factor - it screws up your sugar metabolism, for example.
So, I think the article is more or less right. The community adopted an orthodoxy, based on what was known at the time, and stuck to it. And that orthodoxy was incorrect. Not totally wrong, but significantly wrong.
An example of how this works in a simpler case is with ulcers. The orthodox view of ulcers is that they are caused by stress, and relived by control of stomach acid and relief of stress. But low and behold... an Aussie doctor discovered that treating ulcers with antibiotics seemed to work better. Ulcers are typically found associated with the stomach bacteria helicobacter pylori, and eliminating that bacteria generally cures ulcers. It has taken a while for that discovery to be confirmed, and even longer to make it into general practive. I would be that there are many doctors even today who treat ulcers with acid control medications and diets rather than antibiotics, even though in general the antibiotics are clearly the better solution.
This example shows how hard it is to get an unorthodox theory to become orthodox. It is even worse with diet, both because the science is harder, and because there are a lot more noisy "diet quacks" out there. And of course Atkins is one off those in the sense that he went to the public, and made a pile off of it, so of course this makes it harder for his notions to be accepted. Furthermore, it is clear to me from reading his site (www.atkinsdiet.com) that there is some quackery going on there... for example, the advice to replace antidepressant therapy with St. John's Wort is just plain wrong as a general prescription.
Put another way, you have to do your own reading and make your own opinion, because the experts have their biases and hard fought positions, and they don't agree with each other.
While were wandering down the nature trail, keep in mind a few facts...
Many plants internally produce pesticides of more toxicity than commercial pesticides.
Meat may have small amounts of antibiotic, but is hardly "stuffed with it." The comment about meat industry and pollution says a lot about your biases and nothing about what is healthy food.
There was a recent study correlating lifelong use of Soy (in particular, Tofu) with earlier onset of Alzheimers.
Aflatoxin is an extremely carcinogenic chemical, produced naturally by mold that grows on peanuts, wheat, etc.
While many advocate getting vitamins from natural sources, vitamin supplements are also good sources for many. Of course, these days there are so many vague links that it is a toss-up as to whether many different substances do you good or harm. Dietary anti-oxidants are one example.
Studies attempting to correlate specific substances (such as Vitamin E) found in natural foods are very unlikely to be significant, simply because they are going to be retrospective studies and separating out the vitamin E intake from other factors is essentially impossible. It may be statistically possible, but that is only if you ignore the fact that the data itself is of poor quality. This is true of way too many health studies that show a benefit or harm from this or that substance or habit. It is especially true of dietary studies because long term studies rely on accurate reporting, by the patients of their dietary habits... usually long after the fact.
So, don't read too much into these studies. If you want eternal life, get religion (hey, at least it offers a possibility:-) You won't get it at the vitamin counter, the fresh produce counter, or the organic food store (although you may pick up some nice natural parasites at the latter).
Slashdot Mirror
If you think about it, all soldiers who go off to war realize that it may result in their death. Not many think about the potential of being maimed or crippled for life.
Nonsense. What's the first thing the wounded soldier says when he regains consciousness?
"Are they still there?
I think you may also have slept through history.
First of all, I know of no time that we "uused reckless and indescriminate weapons against people that it claimed were under it's protection." So lets leave out the silly "under it's protection" farce and just address the issue of reckless and indiscriminate use of weapons by the US:"
Sure, you can go far enough back and find all sorts of nonsense. There was one known case of providing smallpox laden blankets to kill Indians - of course this was before the US was a country (you didn't know that, did you?), but hey, what the heck!
And the US indeed did slaughter a lot of Indians (not friendly foreigners, but hostile people whose land we were stealing). But that was a long time ago.
The real lesson of history is that the democratic western powers have become very mindful of civilian casualties since world war II. During World War II (the last one that the left in the US felt was "noble), we intentionally killed civilians with the reasoning that they were enemy combatants indirectly through their jobs in the enemy economy. Hence the firebombing of Dresden (which, of course, was far more deadly than Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Of course, the US was not exactly alone in this sort of behavior. Every country that could, did.
OTOH we did not engage in intentional atrocities (other than mass bombing) the way the USSR, Germany and Japan did, so even then we were acting a bit more civilized.
Since then, we have always cared about civilian casualties. For example, in the Vietnam war, we could have ended it quickly by bombing the dikes in North Vietnam (please, no horrible puns), and bombing Hanoi indiscriminately, but we didn't do that. Sure, we still used terrible weapons (napalm, which you probably don't realize is not even in our arsenal any more), and civilians got killed; but at least we tried. And of course our enemy, not nearly so civilized, had intentional programs of civilian slaughter (10,000 village chiefs in one year, for example), and also hid with unwilling civilians so we would be less likely to attack them. Sort of like the Palestinian terrorist the Israeli's blew to hell the other day.
Since WW-II we progressivly more careful about civilian casualties, so that now only our vast technological superiority has allowed us to win. If we had fought the Gulf War by WW-II rules (remember, the last noble war according to the american left), we would have carpet bombed Baghdad, or just nuked it.
Of course, you allow yourself a great escape (oh, it's going on now, but we won't know for decades). Nonsense! The western democracies are IMHO *overly* careful about civilian casualties. This includes Israel, which could trivially destroy the Palestinians if it wanted, but instead inflicts minimal civilian casualties (yes, including the 2000 lb bombing of the terrorist leader and his neighbors the other day).
As to the issue of the laser weapon... hey... guess what... weapons kill and main. And they don't always just get the bad guys. War is not pretty, and not to be engaged in on a whim. It is the *duty* of democratic countries to have enough military power to protect democracy, freedom and human rights from those who would use force to take it away from the whole world. And if that means having lasers that might blind people inadvertently, then so be it.
"The people it hurts are those who cannot remain economically competitive."
Let's see what that really means. Somebody in a third world country is making... let's say... one dollar per hour. Send them over here and pay them... oh... ten dollars per hour. They are in hog heaven. They can save up that money and return home a rich person. Meanwhile, your job has been taken by a ten dollar per hour person. You aren't economically competitive. Don't you feel great?
Citizenship has meaning, and should have more than many give it today. We still live in the era of nations, and that is not going to change for a while. Think of different nations as separate experiments in lifestyle, governing style, culture\, history and sets of values.
The Us has its lifestyle, government, values, culture and history. Immigrants need to assimilate - become Americans - if they want to vote. And to do that, they need to not only contribute to society, but also they need time to learn the culture, etc and see if it fits them. American citizenship, like that of many other countires, is a valuable commodity. I don't want to see it disvalued by simply handing it out to anyone who comes over here! As Americans, we should choose who we accept as citizens, by setting reasonable criteria. We have been generous to refugees, admitting them not for what we expect them to provide, but for humanitarian reasons. But we have to have limits. It needs to mean something to be an American (or a Brit, or French, or whatever). Without a feeling of community, government becomes simply the art of benefiting some people at the expense of others. But with genuine belonging, people can identify with the nation as a whole and vote accordingly.
I don't like the fact that a majority of Latin American immigrants (first and maybe even second generation) think of themselves as first Mexican (or whatever) rather than American. If they are going to live here and share in our benefits, they need to see themselves as part of us, not as foreigners living here.
I am glad you are naturalized. Hopefully you now think of yourself as an American. We need new citizens, and I think a good way to get them is green cards and a naturalization process.
I disagree that protectionism in trade is equivalent to controlling immigration and temporary workers.
Residence in a country means a lot more than just a job. It means you acquire rights and responsibilities. The toaster you import from China does not.
Furthermore, there is the question of equity: I have lived in the US all my life and paid exorbitant taxes and generally contributed to the society. If some poor Indian, no matter how qualified, comes here and takes my job - not becuase I am unqualified but because the poor Indian is very cheap, I am being hurt by that immigration. The Indian may come out ahead (otherwise, why come), and the employer may too (except that their competition does the same thing). Meanwhile my contribution to my country (including military service) has given me no advantage at all.
Selfish? You bet. As is the guy who comes here on the H-1 visa, and the guy who hires him. Labor is a commodity and I don't particularly like unions, but residency and immigration have much larger impacts than simply jobs.
On a matter of pure practicality, the world is full of poor people. The US and Europe can only absorb so many, no matter what the reason, without losing our national identities and destroying our national economy. And I think it is very dangerous to do that. Multiculturalism does not work (ask those in the Balkans). I believe there should be a reasonable amount of immigration (immigration is what made the US, and assimilation of citizens from all over the world has been important). But we can't just open the door to anyone who is somehow worthy.
I live in Arizona. We have Mexican immigrants and illegals all over the place. In general, they are very good people and extremely hard workers. I like them. But the huge influx of Mexican (and other Latin American immigrants) has distorted our society. Rather than assimilate, many of their children are taking the worst of our culture (violence, gangs, drugs) and abandoning the best of their own. A smaller immigration rate would reduce this by forcing people to assimilate and adopt the values of the society at large (however flawed) rather than forming their own separatist cultures.
Finally, I should point out that people don't have to come here to be competitive. India has a thriving software industry. There is more and more good software coming from Europe, Russia, Israel, and many other countries.
Wait until your teen becomes a teenager. Then you will find that you very much want that sort of oversight...
I threatened to build one of these and put it on my daughter's car if she didn't get home on time (or call to let us know where she was). Of course, mine was going to use packet radio for real time tracking!
Kids tend to think they are invulnerable... and the best of upbringing seems to be ineffective against some kinds of peer pressure and influence. Why do you think armies are made up of teenagers? Its not just their physical abilities... it's their foolhardiness and the ease with which you can modify their behavior by group dynamics.
My parents gave me a good upbringing, and I consider myself a fairly careful and moral person, but I shudder at the things I did as a teenager. For that matter... if I were a teenager and did the same things today, the ATF would lock me away forever... and that's just one area of foolishness!
Kids are scary! When you have a kid you love, and worry about, it is a constant battle between your anxiety and your desire to give them an adequate amount of freedom and privacy. And you never know if you are doing the right thing unless something bad goes wrong!
No one mans right can or should be outwieghed by those of another. "All men are created equal"
A bit naive, aren't we?
Rights clash all the time. And when they do, someone has to sort them out. Your post implies that no rights ever clash!
In this case, the so-called right to privacy (good luck finding it in the US constitution) clashes with the most fundamental purpose of a government: protecting its citizens against those who would harm them.
The outcome of such a conflict is not trivially obvious, but in this case, I have no more sympathy for Mr. Gilmore than I do those who are against ethnic profiling. An aircraft is a very dangerous and very fragile device, and reasonable precautions are necessary.
It is appropriate to penalize someone who intentionally causes death through hacking. It may even be necessary to make this a federal crime simply because local authorities would not have the capability to catch the perpetrator in an across-state-borders attack.
The obvious downside of this law is that it will be used when the situation isn't that serious. It would have to be a hack that endangered lives. If it were used against someone who just caused monetary damage, then it would be a sad day. After all, do you think the Enron and Andersen boys at the top are going to be spending life in prison? Hell, John Walker Lindh is only expeced to get 20 years.
Personally, I think that economic crimes should not have penalties as high as violent crimes, because we should treat life as more valuable than property.
Hate crimes laws are as dumb as computer crimes laws. They are supercriminalization. As Bush pointed out, two of the three in the Jasper case were sentenced to death - without the need for a hate crimes law.
Motivation is already a factor in determining the crime (manslaughter vs. first degree murder, for example, both involve the killing of someone).
Hate crimes laws are simply a way of politicians pandering to minority groups, even though in the US (and France) the majority of "hate crimes" are committed by members of minority groups!
The sonic boom does not occur as an aircraft passes through the "sound barrier." The boom is the passage of a shock wave from a supersonic aircraft, and the shock wave exists as long as the aircraft is supersonic. The shock wave can be thought of as the sound trapped in a thing cone because it cannot go faster than the aircraft, so it all "stacks up" in the shock wave.
For example, when the Space Shuttle landed at White Sands, New Mexico, we heard the double boom as it went by Phoenix, AZ. It was still supersonic at the time.
And the USA does not have any? Did I say that? No. Apparently you have to make up an argument in order to be able to dispute it.
Free press and open judicial system is not the open cure all that you make sound like.
Hey, if you want a perfect system, you may as well just give up. It is perfectionists that gave us things like Pol Pot.
You have been watching too many James Bond movies, they have police, I know it is just such a modern concept but hey them follow the fashions. Lets take a look at the US, FBI, CIA, DEA, DIA, DoD, ATF, Home Defense Department and that does not include any special units that we have around the world. Do you know what they may or may not be doing?
Oh? Yes, in general we the citizens do know what they are doing. And we have shield procedures that are followed so that misdeeds can be uncovered, publicized and corrected. Does this mean no abuse occurs? Of course not. Does it make it vastly better than the Chinese system? Yes, if you like freedom.
Did you know that the CIA was smuggling weapons to various terrorist countries. Do you think that Afghanistan was making those Stinger missiles in their garage?
At the time, Afghanistan was not a terrorist country, but rather one struggling against a foreign invader (USSR). And it was not a secret that we gave them stingers.
It sounds real good to say that they are a big bad police state because the control the people, well you have 1 Billion people that you have to look at for a police state is not as bad an idea as you think. They have alot of problems, but you know what? They are still human beings and they do what they can.
Now this is really sad. The US and Europe together have over 600 million people. We don't need a police state. India has a billion people and they don't need a police state.
Perhaps you should live in a police state sometime before you so casually suggest it as not a bad idea.
As for the people in power want to stay in power, funny that seems to be how the Democrats and Republicians setup the system too. Sure you can get an independent every once in a while, but you don't see more than 1 or 2. Sure you can setup a Democrat versus a Republician, but I see a number of congressional leaders who have served 20, 3o years without fail and while what they do is not secret, they do the reverse they spew so much crap that you cannot sort the wheat from the chaff.
So I guess in your wierd judgement this makes our system equivalent to that of China, where succession is decided by the oligarchs, in secret? Pretty pathetic.
y in America could someone get so ignorant for spouting this stuff like it is the national anthem regardless of truth. The only thing missing is a"Under God"!
Speak for yourself. If you mean that I happen to believe that the US is a great country, certainly better than the PRC (that's China, ya know), and that one reason it is better is because of its political system, then guess what... you are right! And I can defend it with facts, while you use nothing but exaggerations.
US spends the most of all nations on the military, sound fact.
Duh. Yes, and I think we need to spend more, because the free people of the world need to preserve that freedom and fight the tyrants of the world. You cite our large military budget as if it is some sort of evil thing. Oh, btw, for your information, as a percentage of GDP it is FAR from the greatest in the world. And, since you obviously don't read history, let me mention that it is historically a very low percentage for the US.
e government has no problem with threatening anyone and everyone with the use of military force as long as we have provocation.
Yeah... provocation. Provocation means that we have a reason to respond.
Give George Bush a reason and he would be leading 200,000 man force in Iraq waving the US flag regardless of what anyone else in the world thinks.
Get a clue. George Bush has a much larger army than that.
But I suppose you think that Iraq should just be left to sit there and develop weapons of mass destruction... and then use them (as Saddam Hussein) has a history of doing. I suppose the moral solution is just to let him make a mess of the middle east. Oh... wait... I know your response... you are going to blame us for him too.
It is militancy and an agressive foriegn policy.
An aggressive foreign policy is one that uses military to oppress others, to take territory, or to terrorize. Our policy is to protect the free world (including ourselves). It is to deny haven to terrorists, and to try to make the world a better place. But of course, a bitter and cynical person like you appear to be could never imagine that we might actually do some things for good reasons.
As for poor economic performance, they are a developing country, which somehow you believe that the US was born with Skyscrapers, indoor plumbing and a stock market.
Learn to read. I predict that it will end up with poor economic performance. Currently it does not have poor economic performance, because it is developing, and because the west has been pouring capital into it. And I know how the US got Skyscrapers, indoor plumbing and a stock market: free markets, property rights, transparent judiciary, democracy, and a free press. Things you seem to think are not very important.
Chinese are more capitalists than you or more. They actually work for a living, because they actually have to work to live. They don't have a government supported social security, medicaid, or charities willing to feed them. Actually those programs sound kinda socialist to me.
They are kinda socialist. And the Chinese have all sorts of socialist programs. They are officially a communist country, didn't you notice? The Chinese people traditionally are very good at capitalism. But the Chinese government is not capitalist, it is fascist. And you know what... people often work hard in fascist societies too... just ask the slave laborers in Hitler's German... or for that matter, the slave laborers in Chinese concentration camps!
You could have been George Bush speech writer, willing to spout any willy nilly non-sense without any exposure to the country, the people or even and understanding of their government. No wonder the foriegn policy of the US sucks.
And you presume a lot. How do you know what experience or other exposure I have to China? You seem to think I am making this stuff up just because you are. Sorry... I speak from a lot of knowledge on the subject (not an expert, certainly) and some personal experience with communist states.
We don't have a secret police in anywhere near the aspect of China. For example, since 9/11 we have discovered that the FBI could not even listen to a chatroom or look at a web site without probable cause. That's a secret police? Get serious.
The CIA is not allowed to operate inside the US. If they had, they might have been able to stop 9/11.
BATF... that's getting a bit closer. If you wanted to really come up with a secret police, you should have mentioned DEA. But even there, they are not a political police.
Be serious... don't you know the difference between the operations of a secret police in a police state and a law enforcement agency in a free country? The difference is not minor. It is VAST. I am not going to try educating you on the issue... it would take too long.
You can use the N word and you won't get arrested and sent to a "re=education" camp. You may get harrassed (unless you are black, in which case you get a free pass). Idiotic politically correct schools might kick you out (unless you are black).
Property rights, like any rights, are not absolute. You are referring to putting a highway where your house is. That is called "eminent domain" and it does not allow the government to take your property without just compensation. But you are right in one respect... the left has diminished our property rights more than they should have been - mostly through taxation and environmental laws which do not offer compensation for public use of our property.
Criticize Israel? Are you serious? Don't you even read the media? Much of the US media has been significantly anti-Israel for a long time. The New York Times, the leading print paper, is an example. And if you want to criticize Israel, you can call a radio station, buy an ad, rent a lecture hall, or put up a web site. Nobody is stopping you. In fact, many people have done so. Go to google and you can find dozens of anti-semitic hate sites located in the US which not only criticize Israel but blame Jews for every ill in the world.
Compare this to China, where if you criticize the government you can be executed. You won't get a fair trial. Your family may be put on a black-list and ruined economically.
It is amazing that you cannot see the dramatic difference between China and any western country, when it comes to freedom. The US may not be perfect by your standards, but it is extremely free by historical standards and compared to almost everywhere else in the world.
China is rife with corruption, compared to the US. It is inevitable that a country without a free press, without a *transparent* judiciary and decidion making process, and without guarantees of free speech and due process will suffer from corruption.
China can best be described today as a fascist country, with the state and big industry inextricably intertwined. It has a secret police (gestapo equivalent) which has wide reaching powers. Individuals who are critical can find themselves executed and their organs harvested for use by those in power. The government is undemocratic and power succession is typical of these regimes... it is shrouded in secrecy.
Until China develops modern government, with respect for human rights including free speech and property rights, enforced by a minimally corrupt judicial system, and watched over by a free press, it is doomed to the fate of all such systems... increasing corruption, militancy and aggressive foreign policy, and poor economic performance.
Capitalism, in many variants, has been proven to be the most efficient economic system yet tried. Capitalism requires property rights; it requires a low level of corruption; it requires transparency; it requires freedom.
China is experimenting with state controlled capitalism - i.e. fascism - as opposed to its own total command economy. It is doomed to ultimately fail as an economic system as long as unelected officials can arbitrarily change the rules to their personal enrichment, backed by the power of a police state.
Your objections might have been reasonable in the 1970's, but not today.
The US Air Force has an airborne laser designed to destroy missile boosters at a range of 200 miles - THROUGH THE atmosphere. So much for dissipation.
Optics that can resolve small details of satellites have been around for a long time. If you can see the detail, you can focus a beam on it. And this is without adaptive optics, and these days adaptive optics are what would be used.
As far as tracking.... no problem. Remember a couple of things... they are quite a ways off. They are travelling in a ballistic path - very smooth trajectory. And furthermore, the imaging cameras I described above had to be able to do that tracking in order to do the imaging. They ahve been running a long time. The Multiple Mirror Telescope, for example, has that tracking capability (yes, it is an astronomical instrument, but it was paid for by the Air Force, used spare spy satellite mirrors, and has an AZ/EL mount, and the Air Force used to borrow it for their own quiet purposes). It had that capability in the early 80's when I visited the site.
Oh, and star wars?
I won't even bother to refute the various errors you managed to stick into a couple of sentences.
I don't know if a ground based laser system is appropriate, but I do know that the previous posters objections are based on ignorance, not science or engineering.
We were able to ban the use of poison gas after World War I, and Western nations have not used it since. Poison gas kills indiscriminantly, without regard for civilian or military status, and it is a very unpleasant way to die. Civlized nations decided that even in war, there are rules. The USA, of course, has more chemical and biological weapons than any other country on earth...
Any proof for this offensive assertion??
The USSR had by far the most chemical and bioweapons of any nation, and was producing them into the nineties.
The US, unlike the USSR, did away with it's chemical and biological weapons after it signed the treaty.
Mines are a problem. The US is working on mines which self-degrade.
But the real problem is the countries which ignore civilized rules. Countries like Iraq, which produced large amounts of biological and chemical weapons, and used them in spite of treaties.
Treaties are nice when you are dealing with nice people.
They don't work worth a darn when your opponents are monsters.
The study to which you're (probably) referring actually tracked Japanese men living in Hawaii who ate a "traditional Japanese diet" vs. those who adopted an "Americanized" diet.
What they neglected to mention was that a traditional Japanese diet is high in seafood. Fish contain the highest levels of environmental contaminants (PCBs, DDT, mercury, heavy metals, dioxin, etc.) of any meat product. It gets concentrated all the way up the fish-eat-fish foodchain until it's at a toxic level in the big fish that humans eat
Well, what you mention is typical of any sort of diet epidemiology... it is extremely difficult to rule out the variance. But, what you propose is supposition also. And ocean caught fish (which is most likely what they are eating in Hawaii) are unlikely to have those contaminants. Also, only mercury and heavy metals, of the contaminants that you mention, have been shown to be harmful to people. I know of no studies tying any of them to early alzheimers.
Yes, I know.... I really did mean to imply that PCB's, DDT and dioxin (well, there are really LOTS of different kinds of dioxins) have not been shown to be harmful in people. Are you shocked? THe media would make you think that minute trace exposures to these are deadly. WRONG!
And even if the land usage is higher, the varied crops and fewer chemicals result in a better 'ecosystem' on the fields. It doesn't compare fo a forest, perhaps, but there are more worms, good bugs, and birds on an organic field than on a mostly sterile conventional farm. Nearby streams and wildlife are also better off.
The land use is dramatically higher. Furthermore, modern farming does vary crops - modern farmers don't want to destroy their land any more than third world farmers want to. And the third world actually does a lot of modern farming - you have to be in the fourth world almost before the economics work.
I would rather have the forests and modern fields than no forests and organic fields.
I don't know how well the economics would transfer to the west, where chemicals are relatively less expensive compared to land and labour, but in most of the world organic farming makes solid economic sense.
Considering that most farmers aren't fools, you have to figure that economics of crop production are well known to them, and they use the most effective means that they can afford. Most of the world uses modern fertilizers and pesticides. If it didn't, we wouldn't have the food surpluses we have now. The "green revolution" wasn't about improved organic farming, it was about optimizing plant hybrids, optimizing fertilizer and optimizing pesticide use for maximum yield.
I don't know of anyone who assumes that "chemicals" (by which, I presume, you mean man-made chemicals as opposed to nature made) are automatically good. But too many people assume they are automatically bad, and in most cases these people are ignorant of the fact that everything they eat is composed of "chemicals" and that nature is quite good at creating carcinogens and toxins with no help from man.
Now let's thing about this for a minute. If organic farms get lower yields, then aren't they going to use MORE water? Everything we do (i.e. live) "contaminates" ground water, if by that you mean that modern nanochemistry can detect it.
As for cancer-in-the-thirties, if you look at breast cancer rates in the US, you'll find that breast cancer is consistently highest in the mid point between two nuclear reactors. And it's a cancer that can strike in the 30's.
It would be interesting to see how you blame that on the reactors, since they don't release ANY measurable radiation. Perhaps it is because midpoint between reactors is where the radiation is highest because that is where the coal fired plants will be. Much more likely, of course, is that it is a statistical artifact. Just for fun, consider the fact that that lung cancer in the US is INVERSELY related to radon radiation exposure.
As far as Cuba goes... if you believe anything that comes out of the people's paradise, I pity you. Remember, Cuba has no free press, and anyone reporting negative things (unless those negative things can be used to increase foreign aid) is likely to be persecuted. A similar regime, USSR used to report all sorts of BS about agricultural productivity, etc. Of course, it was all nonsense - it was whatever was needed to keep the higher ups from bothering the lower downs.
I lived in France for a few months, ate everything in sight, and didn't gain a pound. I was amazed. Those luncheon Pizza's followed by Creme Broule (sp?) or profiteroles only started my day! Dinner was 5 or 6 courses. All the most delicious food imaginable.
I also observed only ONE fat Frenchman the whole time I was there.
Actually, I think that the French execute fat people, or hide them in the Paris sewers, or something. I mean... only ONE fat Frenchman in 3.5 monthos of living in Paris?
Scary....
Now, if the French could just get their political sophistication up to their culinary sophistication...
ah... but that's another subject.
Most man-made pesticides are remarkably harmless compared to aflatoxin, or many other natural chemicals. You could have DDT on your morning breakfast every morning for the rest of your life and the odds of it having any effects on your health are too near zero to measure!
:-)
And man made pesticides don't do nearly as much to the environment as people think - because there is an entire industry (known as environmental interest groups) who have it in their interest to scare you to death about them.
Organics are for rich people. If the whole world used organics, the reduced yields would result either in mass starvation or the conversion of the rest of our land mass to farming. Modern farming is resulting in the reversion of much land mass in the US to forest.
It is extremely unlikely that someone who dies of cancer in his thirties got it from the environment, unless he was mainlining plutonium! After all, almost ALL heavy smokers live into their forties, and smokers (and, sigh, I used to be one) are exposing themselves to carcinogens at a level many orders of magnitude above other man-made environmental carcinogens!
Most of the things that are considered carcinogenic in the environment are at much tinier hazard ratios than the very numerous natural carcinogens found in, especially, unprocessed foods!
The development of modern chemistry has one very negative thing... it allows us to measure parts per trillion of things, allow folks to scare us to death about trivial hazards.
For a very well referenced, well researched, and hence thoroughly maligned book on this subject, check out "The Skeptical Environmentalist." You can consider him 50% wrong and still come out much less worried about a lot of these enviroscares than we are today.
Good grief! When I was a kid, we used to play with mercury. Today, they call out hazmat if you break a mercury thermometer!
Things have really gotten out of hand.
(and oh yes, I know that mercury is indeed hazardous - perhaps I would have come up with the GUT if I hadn't played with the mercury
Some people lose weight for appearance. I try to lose it for health.
:-) I used to be, literally, fat and happy, because my blood chemistry looked good - so what, me worry?
:-).
The effects of excess body fat are not good for you. That fat screws up your blood lipids and sugar metabolism. The weight wears down your joints (of course, so does jogging
Then they found a few more factors (fasting blood insulin, CRP, HDL/LDL ratio) and all of a sudden I didn't look so good. And guess what! Body fat eems to correlate with those negative factors. Very low carbohydrate consumption lowers insulin and improves HDL/LDL ratio.
So I'm trying Atkins. I know lots of people who have used the Atkins approach and lost weight and then kept it off for years. I will be getting blood tests and looking at those effects also. We shall see. I am near Syndrome-X today...and I hope to change that!
Oh, for all you young guys out there (and I am NOT a young guy by far).... this stuff only gets worse as you get older! Your metabolism slows down. Exercise gets harder to do (and more painful with arthritis). Your blood chemistry goes to hell even without insult to it. It sucks.
And of course, I wonder what 35 years of sitting in front of computer screens has done to me ( or at least, my ass
But compared to not getting older.... hey, I'm not complaining!
John
In some sense this is right. Your body is a heat machine, and that's calories. Those that you absorb will either be burned or turned into fat.
The problem with this approach is that some foods make this easier than others. Simple carbohydrates tend to cause you to feel hungry again quickly. They tend to satisfy your appetite slowly. I know... I spent years on a low fat, controlled calorie diet. Years of being hungry while, yes, gaining weight!
Being a hacker/engineer deep to my core, I bought off on the same idea: delta-weight = k*(calories-in - calories-out). But it's too simple.
So while calorie balance is the ultimate arbiter, it is far from the whole story. Possible issues include:
-satiety - which seriously affects your ability to control calory intake. When your body thinks you need food, that is a very strong biological demand... after it, it is a survival reflex!
-metabolic effects of food - does it get absorbed? How much energy does it take to process it? How fast does it convert to blood sugar?
-health effects other than weight. Low fat diets gave me very bad LDL/HDL ratios. I do much better on low carb diets (which my doctor has prescribed, although I have gone beyond his approximate "zone" approach to do atkins).
-psychological effects - if it is too boring, can you eat it for the rest of your life? If it produces rapid positive feedback, can you avoid it (chocolate, anyone?)
-personal differences. If you are a Pima Indian, you have a 50% chance of diabetes by age 30 if you eat a typical American diet. If you aren't, you don't. Some people run at higher energies than others. Some people have more efficient mitochondria than others (or have more of them). Some people have more efficient digestion than others. Etc, etc, etc,
Nice, but not for everyone.
I went from 200 pounds to 250 pounds over 5 years eating a measured 1400 calories per day and exercising regularly.
Go figure!
Don't confuse the scientific community with the medical research community. There is a big overlap, but they aren't the same folks.
Medical research is very often goal driven. It is also more political because of the implications of the results, and the power of special interest groups in pushing funding (look at the excess spending, by US population needs, on AIDS and breast cancer) [see caveat below before erupting in flame or negative mod points].
The medical community itself is even more conservative than other scientific areas. It is dealing in an area with many more uncertainties than mere physics (or for that matter, evolution). When dealing with diet questions, especially, things get very difficult. Good data is hard to get - especially about long term effects. The chain from intake to effect is long and often has lots of unknown steps. The field is very political and emotional, because so many people have vested interests (like those of us trying to maintain decent health, like those who want to oversimplify, those who want a one-shot cure, those who feel the whole problem is willpower, etc).
Furthermore, science and especially medical science is rightly suspicious of the flamboyant and the profitable. Atkins, by pushing his theories publicly and making a lot of money on it, essentially discredited the whole area of studying low carbohydrate diets! Not because he was wrong, but because he is embarassing to the more "sober" or "proper" scientists.
None of this makes him wrong. In fact, there is a lot of evidence now to show that the conventional wisdom of the food pyramid is wrong. Besides... how much of the food pyramid was influenced by the various food industries rather than science?
I think there is a good reason to suspect that low carbohydrate diets, and especially avoidance of high glycemic index carbos are a good idea - at least for some people. There is laboratory evidence of positive blood chemistry improvements (I exsperienced this myself - when I was on an low fat diet, my HDL was very low and the ratio bad... when I dropped off the wagon and pigged out for a few months, my HDL ratio was much, much better).
The critical thing is that we don't know enough to be sure *what* is appropriate when it comes to eating and exercise. We have hints from evolution that high carbohydrates are not something our system was optimized for, and here in Arizona we have a population group (Pima Indians) who have extreme problems with carbos (50% type II diabetes rate by age 30). We know that eating fat increases blood lipids, but we are learning that perhaps it is the kinds of lipids, not the amount, that is important in many areas.
I am now on the Atkins diet. I hope it works. I know, as any person who is serious about maintaining a good weight, that the trick is not losing the weight - it is adopting a lifestyle that will keep the weight off long term. But first you have to lose it, and recent evidence is showing that just having the weight is itself a risk factor - it screws up your sugar metabolism, for example.
So, I think the article is more or less right. The community adopted an orthodoxy, based on what was known at the time, and stuck to it. And that orthodoxy was incorrect. Not totally wrong, but significantly wrong.
An example of how this works in a simpler case is with ulcers. The orthodox view of ulcers is that they are caused by stress, and relived by control of stomach acid and relief of stress. But low and behold... an Aussie doctor discovered that treating ulcers with antibiotics seemed to work better. Ulcers are typically found associated with the stomach bacteria helicobacter pylori, and eliminating that bacteria generally cures ulcers. It has taken a while for that discovery to be confirmed, and even longer to make it into general practive. I would be that there are many doctors even today who treat ulcers with acid control medications and diets rather than antibiotics, even though in general the antibiotics are clearly the better solution.
This example shows how hard it is to get an unorthodox theory to become orthodox. It is even worse with diet, both because the science is harder, and because there are a lot more noisy "diet quacks" out there. And of course Atkins is one off those in the sense that he went to the public, and made a pile off of it, so of course this makes it harder for his notions to be accepted. Furthermore, it is clear to me from reading his site (www.atkinsdiet.com) that there is some quackery going on there... for example, the advice to replace antidepressant therapy with St. John's Wort is just plain wrong as a general prescription.
Put another way, you have to do your own reading and make your own opinion, because the experts have their biases and hard fought positions, and they don't agree with each other.
While were wandering down the nature trail, keep in mind a few facts...
:-) You won't get it at the vitamin counter, the fresh produce counter, or the organic food store (although you may pick up some nice natural parasites at the latter).
Many plants internally produce pesticides of more toxicity than commercial pesticides.
Meat may have small amounts of antibiotic, but is hardly "stuffed with it." The comment about meat industry and pollution says a lot about your biases and nothing about what is healthy food.
There was a recent study correlating lifelong use of Soy (in particular, Tofu) with earlier onset of Alzheimers.
Aflatoxin is an extremely carcinogenic chemical, produced naturally by mold that grows on peanuts, wheat, etc.
While many advocate getting vitamins from natural sources, vitamin supplements are also good sources for many. Of course, these days there are so many vague links that it is a toss-up as to whether many different substances do you good or harm. Dietary anti-oxidants are one example.
Studies attempting to correlate specific substances (such as Vitamin E) found in natural foods are very unlikely to be significant, simply because they are going to be retrospective studies and separating out the vitamin E intake from other factors is essentially impossible. It may be statistically possible, but that is only if you ignore the fact that the data itself is of poor quality. This is true of way too many health studies that show a benefit or harm from this or that substance or habit. It is especially true of dietary studies because long term studies rely on accurate reporting, by the patients of their dietary habits... usually long after the fact.
So, don't read too much into these studies. If you want eternal life, get religion (hey, at least it offers a possibility