Assorted Links

• EMDR discovered by self-experimentation
• Citations about nutritional supplements
• Data support Jane Jacobs’s view that diverse cities do better than specialized ones. Ed Glaeser: “To innovate, in Jacobs’s view, you often need to borrow the insights of another occupation—and since diverse cities contain many occupations, they should encourage more leaps of insight. . . . About 20 years ago, three coauthors and I examined industrial clusters within cities to test the Marshall-Arrow-Romer hypothesis against the rival Jacobs view. The data supported Jacobs. High levels of industrial concentration within the clusters in the mid-1950s were associated with less subsequent growth between 1956 and 1987.” Via Marginal Revolution.
• North Carolina Board of Dietetics threatens nutrition blogger. “Jan. 12 [2012], Cooksey attended a nutrition seminar at a church in Charlotte. The speaker was the director of diabetes services for a local hospital. “She was giving all the wrong information, just like everyone always does — carbs are OK to eat, we must eat carbs to live, promoting low-fat, etc.,” Cooksey said. “So I spoke up.” After the meeting he handed out a couple of business cards pointing people to his website. Three days later, he got a call from the director of the nutrition board. “Basically, she told me I could not give out nutritional advice without a license,” Cooksey said.”
• A petition asking the FDA to survey the ultrasound machines used to scan pregnant women. What fraction are defective? Did you know you can buy them on Ebay?

Thanks to Alex Chernavsky.