For Natalie The Salt Hater

Again a nice gem from hit and run:

Can a New York Bureaucrat Put the Whole Country on a Low-Salt Diet?
Jacob Sullum January 29, 2009, 11:34am
Having taken on smoking, trans fats, and calories, New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden is poised for an assault on salt. He wants packaged food producers and restaurant chains to cut the salt content of their products by 25 percent during the next five years and another 25 percent in the five years after that. "If there's not progress in a few years," he warns, "we'll have to consider other options, like legislation."

Since salt is linked to dangerously high blood pressure in only a small subset of the population, Frieden's proposal is the very model of a modern "public health" intervention. It disregards individual preferences and goes over the heads of consumers, treating the population as a collective. To its credit, The New York Times, toward the end of its story about what Frieden ambitiously calls his "national salt-reduction initiative," notes that not everyone thinks it's a good idea:

Beyond the technical hurdles, Dr. Frieden might encounter resistance on scientific grounds. Some medical researchers question whether a mass reduction in sodium is the best way to spend public-health resources when losing weight and quitting cigarettes would do more for the country's heart health.
Genetics dictate that different people have different reactions to sodium. Some people are more sensitive to high levels of salt. For others, low levels of sodium can be unhealthy.
But public health officials say there is a strong consensus that salt leads to higher rates of heart attacks and strokes.

That consensus alarms Dr. Michael Alderman, editor in chief of the American Journal of Hypertension, who thinks more clinical studies need to be done.

In a 2002 review of the research, Alderman, a past president of the American Society of Hypertension, concluded that "existing evidence provides no support for the highly unlikely proposition that a single dietary sodium intake is an appropriate or desirable goal for the entire population." Despite the weakness of the evidence, Alderman noted, the dogma of less salt is still "preached with a fervour usually associated with religious zealotry."

I noted the controversy over low-salt prescriptions in my 2003 Reason story about the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which has been railing against the "deadly white powder," a.k.a. "The Forgotten Killer," since the 1970s. In 2005 CSPI filed a lawsuit aimed at forcing the FDA to stop considering salt an ingredient "generally recognized as safe."
[Thanks to Tricky Vic for the tip.]

This gives new meaning to the Pro-life / Pro-choice debate. If I am prolife then I must support a salt reduction/ban initiative. However, if I am prochoice I can simply choose not to eat salt, or to eat salt and live with the consequence. What a conundrum!!!!!

Economists Against The Economic Stimulous Bill

From Hit and Run:

"With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true."
Posted on January 28, 2009, 11:28am Damon W. RootAs Nick Gillespie noted Monday, Nobel Prize-winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman claims that only a "dishonest flack" would dare say anything bad about the so-called stimulus bill. Well, more than 200 distinguished economists, including Nobel Laureates James Buchanan, Edward Prescott, and Vernon Smith, beg to differ. They've signed an open letter opposing the bailout that appears in today's New York Times. From their letter:
Notwithstanding reports that all economists are now Keynesians and that we all support a big increase in the burden of government, we the undersigned do not believe that more government spending is a way to improve economic performance. More government spending by Hoover and Roosevelt did not pull the United States economy out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. More government spending did not solve Japan's "lost decade" in the 1990s. As such, it is a triumph of hope over experience to believe that more government spending will help the U.S. today. To improve the economy, policymakers should focus on reforms that remove impediments to work, saving, investment and production. Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government are the best ways of using fiscal policy to boost growth.

The Whole thing here

Do the powers that be really think that this stimulus is right for the country and that it will lead to pure economic growth? Or is it simply a conspiracy that will lead us to socialism, a one world monetary system, government so big that the leaders are ever closer to dictators? Why don't we just elect Pres Obama now for 2 more terms (and change the 2 term limit law), after all he can do no wrong.

Our Way Of Life

At the Cato Institute Blog I read a post talking about our response to the terror threat. It rips on government agencies for using "chicken-little" alarmist scare tactics to promote policy.

1. Senator Kit Bond, at Dennis Blair’s confirmation hearing as Director of
National Intelligence, said the following:

Our entire way of life is just a few moments away from annihilation if
terrorists succeed in obtaining a weapon of mass destruction.


Nonsense. Our way of life survived various wars, the virtual destruction of
a large swath of New Orleans, and other disasters. It would survive even nuclear
terrorism. Incidents of chemical or biological terrorism are unlikely to cause
mass casualties, although they could, and will not collapse our institutions.
The danger to American values comes more from our reaction to terrorism than the
thing itself. What’s more, these sorts of incidents are not nearly as likely as you generally
hear.

It got me to thinking about our way of life. I really think it is in jeopardy. Not due to the terror possibilities, but by our government's reaction to them, and to any type of bump in the road (ie this whole financial mess).

Stephen Moore (an economist) in talking with Glenn Beck Put it this way:

What everything the government is doing right now is exactly the wrong thing. It's exactly the wrong thing. I really believe, Glenn, if the government would just stop doing anything, if congress would just stop passing laws, no new bailouts, no new stimulus plan, no more debt, no more money creation, I believe within nine months or so we could get out of this, the weak would die, the strong would survive, the process, but then we would go back to growth. But they are not going to let that happen, Glenn.

That is has to happen. Let the weak die and the strong survive. Economic Darwinism! The government can't let that happen. After all it is their constituents. It may sound harsh and that I don't care about the "little guy", I am the little guy. I could very well fail if the government did nothing. What would I do then? Same thing people have done for centuries, pick up the pieces and start over. Besides I really don't think the way things are going look any better.

The light at the end of this tunnel is bigger and bigger government and more and more taxes. Just look at what happened with gas/oil for an example of how government reacts.

Through out the 90's gas was in the $1.00-$1.50 / gallon range. And even through most of the 2000's. Then with the Iraq/Afghanistan wars it shoots up to $2.00, $3.00, even $5.00/gallon. Outrage ensued, government wanted a gas tax holiday. But now that gas is back down to $1.50/gallon, the government can't seem to deal with the lower tax revenue, and wants to raise the gas tax to pay for roads. How was it that road maintenance was just fine for the last 30 years, but now we can't afford to replace a manhole cover???

The Little Girl Is Back, So Get Your Ski On

From WUWT blog I learned that La Nina is back. Since I am not much of an expert (hardly even a layman) on the Pacific Decadal Ossilation and all that I had to wikipedia it. The keys are, that while El Nino spawns from warming in ocean surface temperatures, La Nina is the opposite. What does this mean, well among other things El Nino is bad for Rocky Mountain Skiing, La Nina good.

So with all this Global Warming how can things like a cooling La Nina happen?
answer: nobody seems to know

Climate Skeptic has a good post on what the relevant questions are.


-Is this upward trend unique or is it within the range of normal natural fluctuations?

-Is this trend exaggerated by upwards biases in surface temperature measurements?

-What proportion of this trend is due to anthropogenic factors (e.g. Co2) and what proportion is due to natural variations (e.g. unusually strong solar cycles in late 20th century)?

-How can one reconcile the trend over the last 100 years with climate models, which use assumptions that imply that past warming should have been much higher?

All Hail Obama

At the Cato Institute blog there's an article on what Obama can learn from Bush. Here is a snipet:

Bob Woodward offers 10 lessons Obama could learn from the
mistakes of the Bush administration. One of them is “Righteous motives are not
enough for effective policy.” Woodward directs all his lessons at foreign and
defense policy, but that’s a good rule for domestic policy too. The fact that a
policy sounds right-minded — create jobs, raise the minimum wage, ban sweatshop
products, mandate energy efficiency — doesn’t mean that it will work. Economic
processes are dynamic, not static. Benefits have costs. Another of Woodward’s
rules is “A president must do the homework to master the fundamental ideas and
concepts behind his policies.” Again, that applies to economic as well as to
foreign policy. Has Obama read any thoughtful criticisms of Keynesian economics
or of “job creation” schemes or of renewable-energy mandates? He met with
conservative pundits, but has he sat down and listened to any of the many
economists who oppose his stimulus plans?


He also points out that Obama's approval rating is higher than anhy other modern pres except Jimmy Carter. If Obama is halfthe pres Carter was we are all infor a treat.



I get the historical nature of the first black pres, but have people lost all common sense, that regardless of race he is a man that has been tempted with power and will most likely do anything he can to avoid losing it, and do whatever it takes for self preservation?

Why Work???

What I do to waste time:

http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/game.asp

My high score is somewhere in the 2000 range.

Post Script: If you would like to compare scores look it up under group name "Red Pine"