MEDICAL MYSTERY: “Large areas of northern Uganda are experiencing an outbreak of nodding syndrome, a mysterious disease that causes young children and adolescents to nod violently when they eat food. The disease, which may be an unusual form of epilepsy, could be linked to the parasitic worm responsible for river blindness, a condition that affects some 18 million people, most of them in Africa.”

VITAMIN C AND AGING. Hmm. I’d like to see more studies on this.

UPDATE: Reader Joseph Schuster, MD writes:

Several years ago there were a number of studies concerning beta carotene, smokers and lung cancer. The first study was an epidemiological study suggesting beta carotene protected smokers from lung cancer.

The next several studies gave beta carotene to smokers (and a placebo to a control group) to see if it protected them from lung cancer. The study was cut short because beta carotene caused more lung cancers and a higher mortality. Here is a follow up study showing that the excess adverse events persistent even after the supplement was stopped.

It was then thought that beta carotene was a marker for a diet high in fruits and vegetables and that other unknown factors protected the smokers in the first study.

This study in Japanese women who did not take supplements may yet again be a similar red herring and that the high vitamin C level may simply be a marker for a diet high in fruits and vegetables and not the actual protective factor.

To prove any benefit would require a study giving vitamin C to people and then see what happens to health and well being and eventual longevity.

Until then eat your broccoli.

Yeah, that’s what I was getting at. Even if the high C levels just indicate vitamin-taking, my guess is that vitamin-takers are more conscientious about their health overall.

AT AMAZON, Top Deals In Electronics.

And if you’re looking for a present, you can still send a gift card for Christmas. Or, you know, Frank J. Fleming’s book, on Kindle. Or, actually, any book on Kindle.

Also, top albums of 2011 for $3.99 on MP3.

RON RADOSH: How the Left sees the Life of Vaclav Havel, and why they Do Not Mourn his Passing. “Now that a week or more have passed since Havel’s death, some on the Western Left have decided to let their true feelings about Havel out. Despite having to give some lip service to Havel’s integrity and what he accomplished, these men of the Left quickly get to what they really think: Havel helped destroy the great ideal of Communism as a worthy goal, and for that, he cannot be forgiven.”

Also read this piece by Pejman Yousefzadeh. Those who defend communism are on the same moral plane as those who defend Nazism.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Will Desperate Egyptian Christians Seek Refuge In The U.S.? “Christians are being threatened with violence if they fail to convert; women who do not cover their hair are harassed, harangued and threatened on the street; churches are burned and the wall of isolation around this ancient community deepens every day. Under US and international law, growing numbers of Egyptian Christians will qualify as refugees if these conditions continue to worsen.”

I predict a chilly reception from the Obama/Clinton State Department.

HOW TO SPEND LESS ON EVERYTHING.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: The Obamas, in Hawaii beach house, urge Americans to help the less fortunate.

WELCOME TO CAIROSTAN.

UNLESS, OF COURSE, IT’S A BRILLIANT PIECE OF MISDIRECTION: How Downed U.S. Drone Helps China.

AT AMAZON, bestselling digital cameras.

WHEN QUOTES ARE FAKE BUT ACCURATE, at The Nation.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh writes: “Glenn: I wonder if the item that you quoted is really that telling an indictment of the article in The Nation. As I understand it, The Nation is acknowledging that the line wasn’t actually said by Zhou Enlai, but was made up by someone else, so it’s not trying to deceive anyone. And it’s not claiming extra wisdom from the line because it was said by Zhou Enlai. So really it’s just quoting an interesting and possibly insightful saying, albeit one which might have originated in a mistranslation or a misreport. I’m not sure there’s anything really wrong with that. Or am I missing something?”

Well, I think that Prof. Campbell — who is hell on fake quotes and misleading press tropes — thinks that using a misreported quote to illustrate a point perpetuates the misreported quote. But people can follow the link and see what they think.

THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.

HUMAN ECOLOGY: Cheating Spreads Like Infections In Online Mulitplayer Games. “If you have friends who cheat, you are more likely to become a cheater, according to computer scientists who say this can be used to label you as a potential cheater.”

SOLAR UPDATE: Solar Photovoltaic Price Declines Not Sustainable.

CHANGE: Annual fuel budget for U.S. families this year? Over $4,000. “Been wondering where a bunch of your money went this year? For the average American family, a higher percentage of the budget was spent on gas in 2011 than at any point since 1981. According to the AP, gas cost most Americans $4,155, or 8.4 percent of the median household income, in 2011. In 1981, the number was 8.8 percent. In the 2000s, a normal number was around 5.7 percent. The culprit, as should not be a surprise, was $3.50-a-gallon gas in a sluggish economy.”

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH: Apologists For Communist Totalitarianism: I Hate Those Guys. Me too.

THAT ZANY RAND SIMBERG has questions on space policy for Mitt Romney.

BILL WHITTLE: Afterburner: Three Years Under Obama.

HAVE A SNO-CONE AND ENJOY THE SHOW: Snow-Cone Machines For Homeland Security. “When you give out money based on politics, without any accounting, this is what you get.”

UPDATE: It took only 7 minutes for the first InstaPundit reader, Thomas Jones, to email noting the Webb Wilder reference.

HUMAN ECOLOGY: The Microbes In Your Body. “This sort of diversity is made possible thanks in part to the vast number of ecological niches in the human body. Microbes that live on the surface of the skin can get lots of oxygen, but they also bear the brunt of sun, wind, and cold. Microbes in the intestines have next to no oxygen, but they have a much more stable habitat. Microbes have carved up the human body into far finer niches. The bugs on your fingers are different from the ones on your elbow. The two sides of a single tooth have a different diversity of microbes. . . . Here’s one crude but effective example of what this kind of ecosystem engineering might look like. A couple years ago, Alexander Khoruts, a gastroenterologist at the University of Minnesota, found himself in a grim dilemma. He was treating a patient who had developed a runaway infection of Clostridium difficile in her gut. She was having diarrhea every 15 minutes and had lost sixty pounds, but Khoruts couldn’t stop the infection with antibiotics. So he performed a stool transplant, using a small sample from the woman’s husband. Just two days after the transplant, the woman had her first solid bowel movement in six months. She has been healthy ever since.”

GAY ROBOT CONFRONTS MICHELE BACHMANN: “You’re A Robo-Phobe.”

Watch out, Matt Yglesias. They’ll be coming for you next.

Just don’t tell Yglesias about this.

SIGN OF THE TIMES: A Frankincense Shortage.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: The Xinjiang Procedure: Beijing’s ‘New Frontier’ is ground zero for the organ harvesting of political prisoners. Funny how people who were outraged beyond outrage by the Abu Ghraib pics don’t care much about this.

A CROWDSOURCED LIST OF SOPA SUPPORTERS.