JOE HICKS: Congressional Black Caucus Cries Foul Over Ethics Probes. Who knew that Nancy Pelosi’s Congress was so racist?
Archive for November, 2009
November 30, 2009
FROM POPULAR MECHANICS, A full-on Chevy Volt test drive.
AMERICAN LEYLAND: Claire Berlinski: America should learn from Britain’s disastrous takeover of its biggest auto company. “British taxpayers invested 11 billion pounds—the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $22 billion today—in a company whose only sign of life was a willingness to spend that money. Though the British economy recovered, British Leyland did not. If this story sounds troublingly familiar to you, you appear to be nearly alone. Few of the policymakers currently nationalizing the American auto industry seem to remember the British experience, and fewer still seem to have learned anything from it.”
UNSURPRISINGLY, SARAH PALIN’S BOOK IS NOW #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.
YEARS AGO, the FDA shut down sales of a product called Jogging In A Jug. “By law, the product–a mixture of grape and apple juices and vinegar called Jogging in a Jug–was considered an unapproved new drug due to claims McWilliams, 64, made for it.”
But now we learn that vinegar can affect blood sugar levels, which makes me wonder about triglycerides, too. Maybe McWilliams was just too far ahead of the curve. . . .
UPDATE: Reader Jeffrey Jackson notes that my triglyceride intuition seems to be correct.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Christopher Brandt writes: “I’m curious to see how much vinegar was consumed by people 50-100 years ago, and our ancestors who used it as a primary food preservative. Pickles anyone?” I wonder if the switch to refrigeration led to lower levels of vinegar in the diet, and hence to the midcentury jump in heart disease? Purely speculative, of course, but interesting.
FROM PROF. JOHN KANG: Appeal to Heaven: On the Religious Origins of the Constitutional Right of Revolution.
TALKING ABOUT OBAMA AND AFGHANISTAN, over at The Hill.
CLIMATEGATE CENTRAL: A complete ClimateGate document database and more, at Pajamas Media.
IN THE MAIL: From Stephen Moore, How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting The U.S. Economy.
“HE TALKS TOO MUCH:” The Arabs Have Stopped Applauding Obama.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER: HUD Must Cut Off ACORN.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Killing cancer with “nanodiscs.” “Laboratory tests found the so-called “nanodiscs”, around 60 billionths of a metre thick, could be used to disrupt the membranes of cancer cells, causing them to self-destruct. The discs are made from an iron-nickel alloy, which move when subjected to a magnetic field, damaging the cancer cells, the report published in Nature Materials said.”
CREATING SCULPTURE from duct tape.
PROF. JACOBSON: 10,000 Unnecessary Cancer Deaths (In Britain). “Since Britain’s population is less than one-fifth that of the U.S., the equivalent number of unnecessary deaths in the U.S. would exceed 50,000. The U.S. has cancer survival rates which exceed even the better European countries, so that number may be higher. Keep that in mind the next time you hear Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) and others throw around fictitious numbers about how many people die in the U.S. from lack of insurance.”
FIRST IT WAS MAMMOGRAMS, then it was pap smears, now flu shots for old people? I don’t ever remember so much concern with health-care rationing before . . . .
SHANNON LOVE: No One Peer-Reviews Scientific Software.
THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST: Harvard Ignored Warnings About Investments. But don’t worry, now Larry Summers is playing with your money.
SO NOW THAT MOST PEOPLE HAVE HIGH-SPEED INTERNET AT HOME, is “Cyber Monday” really such a big deal? In the old days, you might have waited to shop online using your high-speed work connection rather than futz with dialup at home over the weekend, but that seems kinda 2002 to me. However, Amazon’s not taking any chances.