Quotulatiousness

November 14, 2010

Wandering minds or wandered researchers?

Filed under: Health, Randomness — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:02

I can’t improve at all on Chris Myrick’s comment on this article:

Harvard psychologists have determined that we are happiest when: having sex, exercising, in intense conversations with friends, listening to music or playing. Aside from their use of an iPhone app to determine this, (http://www.trackyourhappiness.org/), I’m missing the news value.

However, I see potential for a follow-up study where researchers can determine whether receiving phone messages during sex, sport or engaging conversation puts a damper on someone’s mood.

November 8, 2010

Everybody sing along!

Filed under: Environment, Humour, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:05

H/T to Clive for the link.

November 1, 2010

This will come as a surprise only to drug warriors

Filed under: Britain, Health, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:10

A recent British study totted up the effects both on the individual and costs to society of various legal and illegal drugs:

Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack, according to a study published in medical journal the Lancet.

The report is co-authored by Professor David Nutt, the former UK chief drugs adviser who was sacked by the government in October 2009.

It ranks 20 drugs on 16 measures of harm to users and to wider society.

Tobacco and cocaine are judged to be equally harmful, while ecstasy and LSD are among the least damaging.

H/T to DarkWaterMuse, who writes:

An interesting result, no doubt, but one thing the researchers failed to do is to aggregate the harm due to all illicit drugs, or even a handful of drugs frequently abused by the same users. Seems to me this would likely reveal alcohol as relatively benign though it’s not clear how additive the effects are.

October 29, 2010

Why some vintage dates matter more than others

Filed under: Australia, Cancon, Environment, France, Randomness, Wine — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:36

If you’re not a wine fan, you may wonder why wine snobs pay so much attention to vintage dates. If you drink the occasional bottle of “Raunchy ‘Roo Red” or “Zesty Zebra Shiraz”, the vintage dates matter very little: by the name, you’d guess they’d be from Australia or South Africa, both hot climate wine countries. Vintage dates are much less important for hot climate wines: the variation from year to year is relatively small. As Michael Pinkus points out, however, it matters a great deal for cool climate wine countries:

Many wine drinkers never notice the vintage date on the wine they are drinking — they just blindly go off buying wine. I talk to many people and very few know what year they’re drinking, just the producer. In a wine region like Ontario that’s a odd way to be drinking your wine. We’re a cool climate region after all and if you don’t understand the difference between a good vintage wine a mediocre vintage wine you could be stuck with a lot of 2003s in your cellar for 10 years or more. The key is to know their drink-ability (2003) or conversely, know how long you should be holding onto wines like [these], a few extra years of aging will give these wines time to mature and integrate, drink them too early and you’ll miss out on all the fun.

In a cool climate region (Ontario, Bordeaux, New Zealand) Vintage date means more than in a hot climate region (Australia, Argentina, Chile) — there temps are always beautiful (read: warm and sunny) and vintage variation plays little part in the finished wine; while in a cool climate region harvest is a waiting game and in many years prayer is a grape farmers best friend.

Take 2010 for instance, this year has the likelihood and pedigree to be even better than the much lauded 2007. What makes 2010 better? Glad you asked. While 2007 had lots of heat and little rain (which grapes love), 2010 has been a longer growing season, with lots of heat and rain has come at the “appropriate” times. If you’ll recall our winter was very mild and bud break occured in April, at that time the prayer for farmers was the ‘Psalm of No Frost’. A longer growing season with lots of heat means good grapes — but that does not always apply to all grapes, but that’s really a discussion for another time.

Most determine a good season by how well the red grapes are going to be — in a cool region white grapes grow well year-after-year — but many of the Bordeaux red grapes struggle (Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc). 2007 was a great year for the usual Bordeaux varietals as well as others reds that don’t often ripen fully under the Ontario skies.

Would KFC’s Double Down have been a hit without the Food Police panic?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Food, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

Lorne Gunter salutes KFC and their surprise hit menu item:

Way to go KFC! Your Double Down sandwich has the health police in a tizzy. Those preachy, prancing, eat-your-peas pokenoses can’t decide whether to tax you, shield their children’s eyes from you or send you to re-education camp — or perhaps all three at once.

I’m am happy to hear your new bun-less concoction is your most successful new-product launch in company history. May the marketing mastermind who came up with the Double-D get an unhealthy bonus.

To be honest, I can’t even imagine trying one — two deep-fried chicken breasts wrapped around two strips of bacon, two slices of processed cheese and some sauce doesn’t appeal to me — except maybe as a dare; a Double Down Dare. Still, I am genuinely pleased that you have had the chicken balls to come out with an item that thumbs its nose so completely at conventional public-health wisdom.

I’ll never eat one myself, but I cheer on the spirit of those who tell the Nanny State’s food police where to go.

An alarming argument against DNA testing

Filed under: Health, Law, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:31

The actual article is behind a paywall (“Who’s the Daddy?” by Melanie McDonagh), so I haven’t read all of it. Andrew Stuttaford quotes a most disturbing paragraph, however:

DNA tests are an anti-feminist appliance of science, a change in the balance of power between the sexes that we’ve hardly come to terms with. And that holds true even though many women have the economic potential to provide for their children themselves . . . Uncertainty allows mothers to select for their children the father who would be best for them. The point is that paternity was ambiguous and it was effectively up to the mother to name her child’s father, or not . . . Many men have, of course, ended up raising children who were not genetically their own, but really, does it matter . . . in making paternity conditional on a test rather than the say-so of the mother, it has removed from women a powerful instrument of choice.

So, she’s against DNA testing to determine paternity because it reveals the truth? I’ve always discounted stories about women deliberately choosing to lie about who the father of a child is, but if this opinion is common, I’ve been mighty naive.

“When I was taking dope, I was fully convinced that my body is my temple”

Filed under: Health, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:28

The longevity of Keith Richards is a point of bafflement for drug warriors and rock groupies alike:

The Rolling Stone’s autobiography reveals a lifetime of substance abuse. Why on earth hasn’t it killed him?

His name is synonymous with rock ‘n’ roll excess, his memoirs detail a lifetime spent ingesting a Herculean quantity of illegal drugs and he only gave up cocaine, aged 62, after he split his head open falling from a tree while foraging for coconuts.

At 66, Keith Richards’ continued survival is a source of widespread bafflement.

According to addiction expert Dr Robert Lefever, director of the Promis recovery centre in Richards’ native Kent, there is only one possible explanation for his longevity: “He must have the constitution of an ox.”

October 21, 2010

I still think they should call it the “milliVolt”

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

The much-less-than-promised Chevy Volt goes on sale next month. If it had been a private company delivering so few of their promises, lawsuits or regulatory sanctions would be forthcoming. Because it’s a product of Government Motors, we’re being told that the “Electric Edsel” is not fraud, it’s fantastic:

Government Motors’ all-electric car isn’t all-electric and doesn’t get near the touted hundreds of miles per gallon. Like “shovel-ready” jobs, maybe there’s no such thing as “plug-ready” cars either.

The Chevy Volt, hailed by the Obama administration as the electric savior of the auto industry and the planet, makes its debut in showrooms next month, but it’s already being rolled out for test drives by journalists. It appears we’re all being taken for a ride.

[. . .]

So it’s not an all-electric car, but rather a pricey $41,000 hybrid that requires a taxpayer-funded $7,500 subsidy to get car shoppers to look at it. But gee, even despite the false advertising about the powertrain, isn’t a car that gets 230 miles per gallon of gas worth it?

We heard GM’s then-CEO Fritz Henderson claim the Volt would get 230 miles per gallon in city conditions. Popular Mechanics found the Volt to get about 37.5 mpg in city driving, and Motor Trend reports: “Without any plugging in, (a weeklong trip to Grandma’s house) should return fuel economy in the high 30s to low 40s.”

Car and Driver reported that “getting on the nearest highway and commuting with the 80-mph flow of traffic — basically the worst-case scenario — yielded 26 miles; a fairly spirited backroad loop netted 31; and a carefully modulated cruise below 60 mph pushed the figure into the upper 30s.”

As I said in an earlier post:

I’m very much in favour of an economical electric car: the Volt doesn’t meet that definition. It’s been rushed to market for political, not for economic reasons. It’ll be kept in the market regardless of sales figures for the same reason: it allows Barack Obama and senate leaders to point at the Volt as tangible proof that they care about the environment and reducing American dependence on foreign oil.

Biodiversity the new “climate change”?

Filed under: Environment, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:50

James Delingpole points to the successor to global warming/climate change as the cause of the decade:

And so it begins. With all the shamelessness of a Goldman Sachser trading in his middle-aged wife for a hot, pouting twentysomething called Ivanka, the green movement is ditching “Climate Change”. The newer, younger, sexier model’s name? Biodiversity.

When I say shameless, I’m talking so amoral it makes the Whore of Babylon look like Mother Theresa; so flagrant it makes Al Gore’s, ahem, alleged drunken “Love poodle” assault on the Portland Masseuse look like an especially delicate passage from Andreas Capellanus’s The Art of Courtly Love.

[. . .]

Suddenly it becomes clear why they kept Pachauri on at the IPCC. Because the IPCC simply doesn’t matter any more. Sure it will go on, churning out Assessment Report after Assessment Report, bringing pots of money to the usual gang of bent scientists prepared to act as lead authors. But the world’s mainstream media — especially all those environment correspondents who so lovingly transcribe the press releases of Greenpeace and the WWF as if they were holy writ — will have moved on, according to the dictates of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) fashionable crise du jour.

“Never mind ‘Climate Change’,” they’ll say to themselves. “Our readers and viewers aren’t really so into that now all the winters seem to have got so very cold. Biodiversity, that’s the thing.”

Bringing back the American Chestnut tree

Filed under: Environment, Science, USA, Woodworking — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:22

The once-common American Chestnut tree fell victim to a blight during the last century, almost wiping out the species. The American Chestnut Foundation is hopeful of a revival:

By interbreeding the American with its Chinese cousin, tree lovers have created an American chestnut with some resistance to Asian blight and have developed a virus that can be injected into affected trees to combat the fungus. It’s a project that shows every sign of promise — with about 25,000 of the new chestnuts planted under the guidance of trained scientists and chestnut devotees.

If the hybrid plantings thrive, some envision huge tracts of strip-mined Appalachia one day being restored with lovely chestnut forests.

“We know we’re interbreeding resistance. Now we have to figure out, does it have enough resistance?” said Bryan Burhans, president of the American Chestnut Foundation, which has led the revival efforts.

He said it will take 75 to 100 years to know whether the tree can be reestablished as a mainstay of Eastern forests. But he said he’s “very optimistic” about the American chestnut’s future.

[. . .]

A fast-growing, hardy tree that thrives on rocky and acidic soil, the American chestnut served as an economic engine for Appalachia. Families fattened livestock with its nuts and used its wood for fuel, railroad ties, fence posts, musical instruments and furniture. It was a fixture along East Coast and Appalachian streets and highways, where its display of fingery white flowers was a springtime delight.

October 20, 2010

NFL levies $75,000 fine for helmet-to-helmet hit

Filed under: Football, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:57

The NFL is at least appearing to be serious about their new policies on helmet-to-helmet hits:

A day after saying it would consider suspending players for helmet-to-helmet hits, the N.F.L. decided Tuesday to fine three players involved in a string of injurious collisions last Sunday.

The N.F.L. wants to give players and teams fair warning that it plans to ratchet up discipline for violations of players’ safety rules, the league spokesman Greg Aiello said. Players, coaches and teams will be told Wednesday that future disciplinary actions will be harsher, setting the stage for possible suspensions.

James Harrison, the Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker who knocked two Cleveland Browns out of their game with helmet-to-helmet hits — one was within the rules; the other was a penalty the officials missed, the league said — was fined the most, $75,000, because of previous trouble. Earlier this season, he was fined $5,000 for slamming Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young to the ground while sacking him.

Update, 22 October: For a lighter view of the issue, here’s Scott Reid:

My favourite part of this story is the way James Harrison declared he would retire rather than be told he couldn’t hit people in the head at excessive speeds with his helmet. He was already sore about that on-field crossbow ban and the legal talking-to he got after he tried to roofie Tom Brady. How many more humiliations is a defensive player supposed to endure? When it was pointed out to him that retiring meant not getting paid, Harrison quickly amended his view. Still, I wouldn’t set my cocktail down next to him if I was a certain long-haired New England pretty-boy quarterback.

October 19, 2010

Is the NFL finally starting to take head injuries seriously?

Filed under: Football, Health — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:09

Another sign that perhaps the NFL is realizing that they need to change their entire culture around head injuries is this snippet:

After a brutal day of games in which players were dropping like flies and several high-profile knockout shots were applied, the league announced that players may be suspended for head shots starting next week. The awareness of concussion-related problems is catching up to the game and may affect the way defenders have to play the game in the future — and how the head-hunters will be treated. The league has learned in the past the fines don’t quite do the job, especially with players making millions of dollars a year. Keeping them from being on the field with their teammates is the pain.

It’s a start, although it should have been policy long ago.

Update: Gregg Easterbrook approves:

Josh Cribbs of the Browns sustained a concussion on a helmet-to-helmet hit by James Harrison of the Steelers on Sunday. No flag was thrown. Later in the same contest, Mohamed Massaquoi of the Browns left the field with a head injury after a helmet-to-helmet hit by Harrison. No flag. DeSean Jackson of the Eagles sustained a “severe” concussion on a flagrant helmet-to-helmet hit by Dunta Robinson of Atlanta. Robinson was flagged but not ejected, as he should have been. (Robinson left the game with his own concussion, but disqualification sends a much stronger message about behavior than just a penalty.) Zack Follett of Detroit lay motionless for several minutes on the field after a helmet-to-helmet hit by Jason Pierre-Paul of the Giants. No flag. Sam Bradford’s helmet was knocked off by a helmet-to-helmet hit by Kevin Burnett of San Diego. No flag.

Late Monday night, the NFL said it would announce new head-protection rules by Wednesday, and that the new rules will take effect immediately. It’s about time.

For too long, NFL headquarters and sports commentators both have acted as though there is some gigantic mystery regarding why NFL players make so many dangerous helmet hits. Here’s why in three words: because they can. The play is almost never penalized.

For too long, NFL headquarters and sports commentators both have acted as though there is some gigantic mystery regarding what to do about dangerous helmet hits. Here’s what to do in three words: throw the flag!

It will take longer for sports personalities on TV to stop glorifying the most dangerous hits, of course . . . they’ll have to un-learn phrases like “jacked-up”, “blew up” and the like. They’ll also have to stop playing audio clips of massive collisions at the line of scrimmage. I, for one, won’t miss this at all.

October 15, 2010

Reduce effectiveness of bird mincers by painting them purple

Filed under: Environment, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:52

Your neighbourhood bird mincers may soon be even more of an eyesore . . . they may need to be painted purple:

A study has revealed that a wind turbine’s colour affects how many insects it attracts, shedding more light on why the turbines occasionally kill bats and birds.

Scientists say that turbines, most commonly painted white or grey, draw in insects. These then lure bats and birds — as they pursue their prey — into the path of the turbine blades.

Support for the idea comes from another study showing that bats are most often killed by turbines at night and in summer, when insects are most abundant.

So, after testing, which colour works best to deter insects? Purple.

October 11, 2010

Have a drink – it won’t make you fat

Filed under: Health, Wine — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:43

In another positive move for wine fans, another study of women’s health shows that wine doesn’t make women fat:

Researchers found that regular moderate female drinkers were less likely to become obese after a 13 year study of more than 19,000 women.

The finding seems to contradict received dietary wisdom which has it that alcohol consumption leads to weight gain.

The body may use calories from alcohol in a different way from other foods which affects weight gain, doctors said.

It is thought that alcohol is broken down by the liver using a different metabolic pathway to create heat, rather than fat.

So don’t feel guilty about that glass of wine with dinner!

October 9, 2010

“Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Environment, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

James Delingpole posts the most interesting resignation letter you’re likely to see this year:

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society.

Anthony Watts describes it thus:

This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.

It’s so utterly damning that I’m going to run it in full without further comment.

Go read the whole thing.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress