Archive for 2011
December 20, 2011
STUDY: EATING LESS KEEPS THE BRAIN YOUNG. “Many studies suggest that obesity is bad for our brain, slows it down, causes early brain aging, making it susceptible to diseases typical of older people as the Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In contrast, caloric restriction keeps the brain young. Nevertheless, the precise molecular mechanism behind the positive effects of an hypocaloric diet on the brain remained unknown till now. The Italian team discovered that CREB1 is the molecule activated by caloric restriction and that it mediates the beneficial effects of the diet on the brain by turning on another group of molecules linked to longevity, the ‘sirtuins’. This finding is consistent with the fact that CREB1 is known to regulate important brain functions as memory, learning and anxiety control, and its activity is reduced or physiologically compromised by aging.”
WHEN IS $16 TRILLION NOT ENOUGH: “I’ve participated in many such discussions over the years, and I’m always struck by the core assumptions of many on the Christian Left: First, that America has not done enough — either charitably or through government programs — to improve the plight of the poor; second, that the right kind of governmental investment will make substantial differences in American poverty; and third, that America’s poor are largely victims of the wrong kind of government policies and individual greed. For these individuals, the $16 trillion we’ve spent on means-tested welfare since the War on Poverty began represents a grossly inadequate expenditure, and the answer (it’s the same answer with public education, by the way) is more, more, more — more money, more programs, and more taxation. Yet after $16 trillion, we have a different kind of more, more, more — more illegitimacy, more citizens in poverty, and more inequality, with growing stickiness at the bottom.”
HOW TO GET A JOB if you’re a 40-something woman.
Here’s a copy of the ABA letter that was sent to all law school deans, and which gives no reasons.
CAREERS FOR 2012: Phil Bowermaster rounds up advice.
UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!
SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS: When Lobotomy Was Seen As Advanced. “When used for psychiatric illness, lobotomy was once seen as a huge advance. Dr. Egas Moniz, a Portuguese neurologist who developed the procedure in the 1930s, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949. Surgeons performed many types of lobotomies, but most involved severing nerves that ran from the frontal lobes to other parts of the brain to disrupt supposedly faulty connections that had developed in schizophrenia or depression. Lobotomies for mental illness fell out of favor in the 1960s because of the development of effective antipsychotic medications, misuse of the procedure and a growing unease among doctors with the confusion and stupor that resulted from the operation. . . . One of the ironies of Dr. Nijensohn’s story, if true, is that another method already existed for treating Perón’s pain: aggressive use of opiates like morphine. Doctors of the era, however, so feared that their cancer patients would become addicted to these drugs that they saw lobotomy as a suitable alternative. Today, our understanding of cancer pain has certainly changed. The liberal use of narcotics, accompanied by other medications to treat side effects, is seen as appropriate, not indicative of untoward behavior by patients.”
UPDATE: Reader Brad Merriman writes: “So when Moniz won the Nobel prize, was the science settled about lobotomies?”
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: My BabyDaddy Isn’t Supporting Our Child. “I am 19 years old and my boyfriend is 17. We just recently had a daughter. His mother won’t let him support his own child. She takes his whole paycheck to pay for rent and she doesn’t even allow him to have his own bank card.”
A QUESTION: Do you encrypt your email? If not, why not?
THE GIRL WITH the father tattoo.
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DIY CHRISTMAS: Build The Ultimate Stocking. “By folding up a couple of FedEx envelopes, you can create a stocking tough enough for anything Santa wants to put in there.”
THE BIOTERRORIST NEXT DOOR. “If these scientists have indeed used the techniques that they have verbally described (but not yet published) to produce a highly contagious and virulent form of the so-called “bird flu,” the feat can at least theoretically be performed by lesser-skilled individuals with nefarious intentions. Perhaps more significantly, the evolutionary leaps might be made naturally, via flu-infected birds, pigs, even humans. In other words, the research has implications for both terrorism and a catastrophic pandemic. Moreover, several experimental antecedents involving smallpox-like viruses and polio lend credence to the idea that concocting or radically altering viruses to create more lethal or transmissible germs is becoming an easier feat and an accidental byproduct of legitimate research.”
HOWARD LOVY: DNA: It’s Not Just For The Living Anymore. “To people who say that true nanomachines — those that assemble themselves from the bottom up — are impossible, the best answer true believers can give is simply to present their own existence as proof of concept. We are self-assembled out of simple building blocks.”
ED MORRISSEY IN THE WEEK: It’s Time For Eric Holder To Resign. “If all Holder has in defense of his performance and that of his Department of Justice is playing the race card in an attempt to bully his critics into silence, then he truly has no defense at all.”
INEXPLICABLE: Why Would Consumers Object to a Policy That Forces Them to Buy Expensive Products They Do Not Want? “Meanwhile, Politico notes that light bulb manufacturers ‘spent big bucks preparing for the standards,’ which they need to guarantee a market for high-margin products consumers otherwise would reject, and are ‘fuming over the GOP bid to undercut them.’ Aren’t Republicans supposed to be pro-business? Sometimes they are actually pro-market instead, and this is one of those cases.”
Hey, if you’re a pessimist, there’s still time to stock up.
PROF. JACOBSON: “Why do Republican politicians go on Letterman? I know it’s good exposure, but it’s exposure that always comes with a price. Letterman always makes the Republican look bad and weak.”
I GUESS THAT’S WHY THE WHITE HOUSE ISN’T CRAZY ABOUT IT: Keystone XL pipeline would boost prosperity, not government.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Bad News Gets Worse For China. “Europe and China have this much in common: the bad economic news just keeps getting worse. The latest headaches for Beijing: Growing numbers of analysts fear that a combination of slumping exports and overexposed loans could spell real trouble for the increasingly vulnerable Chinese economy. . . . It is unlikely that anybody in China has any idea just how much of a mess they have on their hands. Local governments have every incentive to hide the full scope of their borrowing from central authorities — and local banks and businesses often have excellent reasons for helping the local authorities to hide their tracks and borrow and spend still more.”
THE LAST REFUGE OF A SCOUNDREL: “So who, exactly, is criticizing Holder because of his race? The Justice Department won’t say. Is he talking about Darrell Issa? Or the 60 congressmen, two senators, Republican presidential candidates and two governors who have called on him to resign? Or the seventy-five congressmen have signed a House resolution for a vote of ‘no confidence’ in Holder as attorney general? Or is Holder referring to people on the internet who have written about Fast and Furious, and criticized the Justice Department’s role in that scandal–like, say, me? Does he mean to include the 43% of voters who have an unfavorable opinion of him, compared to 19% whose impression is favorable?” Yeah, pretty much all of those. It’s amazing how racist America has become since Obama took office.
THE HILL: Senators urge regulator to take a hard look at Google’s search tactics. “Kohl and Lee said Google may be using its dominant position in online searches to give it an unfair advantage in other markets by ranking its own services — such as Google Maps, Google Travel or YouTube — higher in search results. . . . A Google spokesman noted that the senators did not take a position on whether the company has run afoul of antitrust law.”
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, WE’D SEE . . . OH, HELL, YOU KNOW THE REST: Secrecy Defines Obama’s Drone War.