Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds

METFORMIN UPDATE: Could a Decades-Old Diabetes Drug Help the Body Age More Slowly?

A cautionary note: While metformin is regarded as quite safe, a reader wrote that he suffered severe and lasting side effects from metformin and a GLP-1 (he didn’t say which one). I tried microdosing Ozempic and then Tirzepatide, which a lot of medical people I know are doing for metabolic and neurological benefits (it’s thought to reduce dementia risk). In my case I found that it raised my resting heart rate from the mid-50s into the low 70s in the case of Ozempic, and the mid 60s with Tirzepatide. That’s a known side effect considered harmless, but I didn’t feel good about it. It also reduced my HRV (Heart Rate Variability) which is possibly bad. I have gone back to normal since going off, but it took a couple of months. (And I wouldn’t have even known absent the Oura Ring, which tracks those things.)

LACK OF CONTROL: Compared to driving, flying is extraordinarily safe – but why doesn’t it feel that way? “Driving gives people a steering wheel, a brake pedal and the belief that their skill can protect them. Flying asks passengers to place control in the hands of pilots, airlines, regulators, air traffic controllers and a complex technical system.”

One of my colleagues who used to fly B-52s hates flying as a passenger. I feel the opposite: If the plane crashes, it won’t be my fault. “Duty is as heavy as a mountain; death is as light as a feather.”

Or as one of my friends says, people will be afraid to fly in a 777, but will climb onto a Ferris wheel that was put together in a grocery store parking lot in three hours by a 25 year old meth head.

ONCE THE JEWEL OF PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION:

THIS IS WHAT 21ST CENTURY “CONSPIRACIES” LOOK LIKE:

WELL, THAT WAS EASY. Don Surber: We Beat Climate Change! Hurricanes are a thing of the past, right?

Climate change is dead according to the rules laid out by its proponents. They said there would not be snow. There was. They said there would be lots of hurricanes. There aren’t.

Richard Feynman wrote, “First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is—if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.”

A decade later, he warned, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists.”

It’s not science if it can’t make correct, testable, predictions.

IT WASN’T AN ACCIDENT: Neuroticism, Narcissism, and Nihilism Strangled Natalism. “Birth rates keep falling in almost every country. Fertility rates have remained below replacement rate for a generation in most of the developed world. Yet a birth gap has emerged. People who start families are having children at rates consistent with history. The overall decline is driven by the growing share of those who have none. We must do everything we can to counter the demoralization. The dating, labor, and housing markets critical to family formation are are broken.”

None of this is an accident.

CAN CONFIRM:

YOU LAUGH, BUT WE’LL SOON HEAR HOW HURRICANES ARE VITAL TO THE ECOLOGY OF THE MIDWEST AND SOUTHWEST:

Without even an admission that just a few months ago there were dire predictions of more hurricanes due to “climate change.”

BRYAN CAPLAN: Neurotic Politics. “Quick version: When neurotics turn to politics, they find an infinite series of reasons to feel bad, which helps them stay one step ahead of the realization that their fundamental problem is inside their own heads and can be fixed by no one but themselves.”

ACTUALLY, AS PAUL STARES WROTE YEARS AGO, THE UNITED STATES HAD FUNCTIONAL ANTISATELLITE WEAPONS AND SATELLITE INTERCEPTORS BASED ON THE AGENA CHASSIS BACK IN THE SIXTIES:

But the technology has advanced rather a lot since then.

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

JOHN ONDRASIK IS A GREAT AMERICAN: