Wednesday, May 22, 2013 at 3:00AM
No, not on the radio, but on the audio. The final entry in my pre-review of David Stockman's new book the Great Deformation is an audio interview with Chris Martenson. Since Martenson mostly agrees with Stockman, this allows a full discussion of the issues addressed in the book. I hope to have the book and my review finished by next Wednesday, wish me luck as I still have many pages left!
Tuesday, May 21, 2013 at 3:01AM
One of my favorite groups was the Eurythmics. I especially like their videos. Back when they were popular I did not notice the various messages of many of their songs. Back then I did not watch many videos. In the videos it is more obvious, and the political content of their second tier songs was why they were not played much on the radio. Here is one video which uses clips from the movie 1984. (Yes, this is a reminder that the fabulous editor of the prophecy podcast is doing a series on her blog about 1984. Pam Dewey is on part 3. Here is a link to part 1 if you have not started the series yet.)
Music Monday, May 20, 2013 at 3:00AM There is an inevitable cost to government control of industry. From Associated Press:
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities — toilet paper.
Blaming political opponents for the shortfall, as it does for other shortages, the embattled socialist government says it will import 50 million rolls to boost supplies.
Blaming others for your own mistakes sounds vaguely familiar somehow. Why are there shortages? The AP article explains.
Economists say Venezuela’s shortages stem from price controls meant to make basic goods available to the poorest parts of society and the government’s controls on foreign currency.
“State-controlled prices — prices that are set below market-clearing price — always result in shortages. The shortage problem will only get worse, as it did over the years in the Soviet Union,” said Steve Hanke, professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University.
President Nicolas Maduro, who was selected by the dying Hugo Chavez to carry on his “Bolivarian revolution,” claims that anti-government forces, including the private sector, are causing the shortages in an effort to destabilize the country.
This, of course, could not happen here! I have two blasts from my blogging past on this. Click here for “The Great Toilet Paper Shortage,” and click here for “The Great Toilet Shortage.” Both took place around the time of US price controls. As the economist mentioned in the AP article, if a product's price is kept artificially low by government, a producer has to stop making it. They have no choice. The "president" of Venezuela's inability to understand this does not bode well for that country.
In fact the crisis in health care in the US will probably lead to price controls, which always leads to shortages. This is one reason why I have been blogging about health recently. Get in the best health you can, while you can, as the crisis I am expecting may lead in unexpected directions and that might include rationing of health care. It is good to have a spare tire when you drive, it is not good to have a "spare tire" all the time.
Friday, May 17, 2013 at 3:01AM 
The video I am posting here, Dr. Lustig’s video lecture The Bitter Truth About Sugar, has some major flaws. He is spot on with the dangers of replacing a part of one's normal diet with high fructose corn syrup. It is metabolized quite differently than other carbohydrates. In fact it is digested in a similar way to alcohol. Eating such an unnatural product in the quantities many in the US consume cannot be good.
I think he is greatly oversimplifying. Looking at other interviews he has done, he said that carbohydrate and fat cannot exist in the same food. This is really strange, because they do. To make the details of what he is proposing even more confusing, he said that fruits are all right because they have fiber. Well, that depends on the fruit. Bananas have little fiber.
Even vegetarians like Dr. McDougal recognize that fruits can play a negative role in the formation of triglycerides, which are associated with heart disease. More discussion of this would have strengthened Lustig’s case.
He also said in the video that early humans ate 100 to 300 grams of fiber a day. That is rather high. Most estimates I have read place it at 100 grams. The only way they got this much was that ancient foods had not been artificially selected to make them sweeter and have more carbohydrates.
The recommendation is that humans should consume 25 grams. The average in America today is 12. Obviously there is room for improvement. Today I ate 55 grams of fiber, 15 of it artificial from a protein bar. How did I get the other 40 grams naturally? I ate a grapefruit, a banana, an apple, and one cup of strawberries. I also ate 3 cups of Brussels sprouts and three cups of various types of lettuce. I also got fiber from nuts. I had some spinach and beans with my fish. With this huge fiber feast, I still only got 40 grams of fiber. To approach what our ancestors ate may not be practical. (For those curious I am trying various dietary combinations to see how I feel.)
So while I have some reservations about Dr. Lustig's presentation due to oversimplification of complex issues, the reminder of the dangers of fructose is something that needs consideration. I doubt I will eat as much fruit as I did today on a regular basis. That seems like too much fructose. Lustig's explanation of fructose metabolism makes that clear to me.
Here is how Gary Taubes, no friend to sugar, describes the talk in the NY Times:
It doesn’t hurt Lustig’s cause that he is a compelling public speaker. His critics argue that what makes him compelling is his practice of taking suggestive evidence and insisting that it’s incontrovertible. Lustig certainly doesn’t dabble in shades of gray. Sugar is not just an empty calorie, he says; its effect on us is much more insidious. “It’s not about the calories,” he says. “It has nothing to do with the calories. It’s a poison by itself.”
Taubes presents a much more balanced approach, I recomend the whole article he wrote as a supplement, or substitution, to this viral video.
Health 