Category: Assorted Links

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Thanks to Peter Spero and Hal Pashler.

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Thanks to David Cramer and Nadalal.

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  • Where are they now? J. S. Boggs, profiled by Lawrence Wechsler in The New Yorker. Boggs made small paintings closely resembling money (e.g., a $100 bill) that he offered in place of real money. He sold surrounding details (e.g., the receipt) to a collector who would try to get the bill Boggs had drawn from the merchant in order to “complete” the work of art.
  • A SLDer (Shangri-La Dieter) loses 80 pounds in 18 months. That’s 1.0 pounds/week.
  • More medicine does not equal better medicine. I agree with every word of this critique by a Glasgow general practitioner named Des Spence. For example, “The prescribing of powerful antipsychotic and potentially addictive stimulant drugs to children is a societal norm. . . . A quarter of US women are taking mental health drugs.” As Spence says, these are signs of a healthcare system biased toward those who make money from it and against everyone else (including children). One way to sum up why this is a mistake: Your health is too important to be left to those who only make money if you are sick.
  • Japan: from rice to wheat to rice.

Thanks to Bryan Castañeda.

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  • All about kefir
  • Fraud and waste at a New York hospital. From the comments you can see that the problems have lasted decades. If someone is always sick, year after year, it means there is something about their sickness (about health in general, actually) we do not understand. Likewise, the decades-long persistence of huge problems at this hospital suggests there is something fundamental about regulation (and perhaps health care) we do not understand.
  • This paper about how well blood uric acid level predicts mortality, which appeared in 2004, did not get nearly the attention it deserves. I was shocked by its existence — American medical school professors are almost incapable of good research. Well, it’s from Finland.
  • David Healy’s new blog.

Thanks to Bruce Charlton, Jazi Zilber, Melissa McEwen and Alex Chernavsky.

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Thanks to Tom George and Mark Griffith.

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Seth Roberts1 Comment

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Thanks to Anne Weiss.

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  • Kombucha news: new scientific studies. Plus an expert says: ““When diets are fads, they never seem to last long.”
  • University of Pennsylvania clears medical school professors of ghost-writing. “‘It’s important to note,” [said the Penn report,] ‘that the results of the study were negative to the sponsor’s product [and] were so characterized in the publication’ . . . But Lisa Lehmann, the director of the Center for Bioethics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, notes that the study’s findings were not unequivocally negative. ‘Penn noted that the study was negative and seems to imply that diminishes concerns about bias, but this is not entirely true. There is a segment of the population, those with low serum lithium levels, for whom the study recommends the medication.’ “
  • Jeffrey Sachs apparently believes in AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming). He also believes, according to Felix Salmon, “that development is easy, we know how to do it, and that given enough money, it’s relatively trivial to spend that money in an effective way to reduce poverty around the world.” Results from the Millennium Project do not support his beliefs.
  • 5 years of success with the Shangri-La Diet

Thanks to Alex Chernavsky.

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Seth Roberts2 Comments

Thanks to David Cramer, Jahed Momand and Nancy Evans.

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Seth Roberts6 Comments
  • In praise of Rush Limbaugh.
  • Shangri-La Diet experience (“Bottom line: I lost three pounds in a week and a half”) of an artist named Elizabeth Periale.
  • Long interview with Tucker Max. “His fridge . . . is in one way very different: where you’d expect the six-pack of cold ones waiting for the game, instead you’ll find rows and rows of kombucha, the fermented health beverage.”
  • End of college campuses. Megan McArdle imagines a world in which college is replaced by distance learning. “95% of tenure-track jobs will be eliminated.” Jane Jacobs, in Systems of Survival, divided jobs into taking and trading. Teaching is trading if the student really wants to learn the subject. Teaching is taking if the student is forced to take (and pay for) the class. Scary thought: Every college student is asked about every class: would you take this class if you didn’t need to (and didn’t need to take other classes)?