In this video, you can see the power of two square meters of sunshine. As a child I used to set fire to a piece of paper outside with a small hand held magnifying glass. This sophisticated mirror is several magnitudes more impressive. You might be wondering whether sort of device could be used for cooking. The answer is yes, and these cheap devices can help slow deforestation and desertification. Here is a video demonstration of the cooking power of the sun:
What is a “placebo”? According to Wikipedia, it is “a sham or simulated medical intervention that can produce a perceived or actual improvement, called a placebo effect.” What is a “sham”? According to Wiktionary, it is “an imitation that purports to be genuine. The time-share deal was a sham.” What is “terrorism”? It is a nightmare inflicted on skittish citizens by politicians seeking to maintain power and money. and see here. In nightmares, the anxiety and heart palpitations are real, and thus the citizens seek a cure. What is the “war” in Afghanistan? It is a placebo. It is a sham or simulated cure for a disease caused by politicians. Why would I make this conclusion? 1. In the case of placebos, patients show an extraordinary lack of curiosity regarding the mechanism by which the cure supposedly works. In the case of homeopathic drugs, there is no mechanism. For true believers, this lack of a causal mechanism is not a problem. In the case of Afghanistan, there is no connection between the bombing and shooting of poor people and any national interest other than supporting the military-industrial complex. It’s a make-work program for people who like to express power in the form of violence. Believers claim that we are there for “freedom” or to “protect our interests,” yet these are meaningless terms that cover up our lack of real concern. Even if we are spending two billion dollars per month to bomb and shoot poor people and even if the military itself estimates that there are only 100 members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Here's a warning: Don’t even try to find a worthy causal chain in Afghanistan because it would break the spell. Don’t try to tell patients that they are only taking placebos. That would ruin the cure and the nightmare would still be there. "Once the trial was over and the patients who had been given placebos were told as much, they quickly deteriorated." In fact, they will hate you if you try to make them open their eyes.
Marcel Dicke is a Dutch insect agricultural specialist. At TED, he made a strong case they need to switch our diets from eating mammals to eating insects.
By insects, Dicke is referring to critters with six legs, of which there are 6 million species. 80% of the people of the world currently eat insects (relatively wealthy Western countries being the exception to the rule), and they pick and choose from as many as 1000 species of insects. Dicke referred to fine restaurants in China that allow customers to pick and choose from the bugs they want to eat (I once went to one of these restaurants Guangzhou).
Dicke makes a wide variety of impressive arguments. For instance, we should not get grossed out about eating insects because we already eat lots of insects. On average, each of us already eats 500 g of insects per year--they are ground-up and made part of our peanut butter, tomato soup and other processed foods. Many food dyes are made of insects. There are also pragmatic reasons for switching over to insects. For instance, the Earth's population is rapidly growing, and it is predicted that we will need 70% more food in coming decades, yet there does not seem to be any way to obtain this increase relying on traditional sources of protein. Meat is expensive to produce and, on average, each person on the planet eats 80 kg of meat per year (that's 120 kg per year in the United States). 70% of our land is already used for producing livestock. We have no more land to use for raising food, unless we are willing to destroy even more of our precious dwindling rain forests, and this would give us only an incremental increase in production. The main reason that we should eat insects is that "we will have to." We are already making the move to insect food. Dicke notes that we are increasingly finding insect food products even in developed Western countries.
Insects do not present the danger of recombinant viruses that mammals do. Insects are amazingly efficient at converting food into protein (10 kg of food can be turned at 9 kg of locusts). Further, insects produce far less greenhouse gases and far less waste in general then mammalian livestock. Dicke argues that insects also provide excellent nutrition, and they can be made into a wide variety of foods-- they can be ground into an innocuous looking meal that provides excellent protein. He argues that we already eat a delicacy much like insects when we each shrimp. "The locust is a shrimp of the land." And insects taste good. Many people currently eat insects because they prefer to eat insects.
And check out the specialty foods and pastries that Dicke presents to the audience toward the end of the presentation.
Many American conservatives argue that we need to step back and allow the "free market" continue to offer the most efficient health care system in the world. The facts on the ground starkly conflict with this way of thinking. The International Federation of Health Plans recently released its 2010 Comparative Price Report detailing medical costs per unit. The study starkly illustrates that health care costs are much higher in some countries than others. The average U.S. prices for procedures are the highest of those in the 12 countries surveyed for nearly all of the 14 common services and procedures.
For example, total hospital and physician costs for delivering a baby are $2,147 in Germany, $2,667 in Canada, and an average of $8,435 in the United States. The survey shows that the cost for a hospital stay is $1,679 in Spain, $7,707 in Canada, but these costs can range from an average of $14,427 to $45,902 in the United States. The survey also found that the cost of a widely prescribed drug like Nexium can range from $30 in the United Kingdom to $186, the average cost in the United States. In addition to providing comparative cost data across the countries, the survey provides information about the wide range of costs being charged in the United States for common services, procedures and drugs. One example from the survey is hip replacement surgery which cost $12,737 in the Netherlands, but ranged from a low of $21,247 to a high of $75,369 in the United States. Five percent of U.S. prices are higher than $75,369. The differential between unit prices was greatest for surgery, according to the survey data. One of the highest differentials was for cataract surgery hospital and physician costs. The range for cataract surgery ran from $1,667 in Spain to an average of $14,764 in the United States.
A couple of years ago I became aware I was approaching 55 when all the AARP ads started arriving in the mail. If the US wants to find Osama bin Laden, tell the AARP he’s 55 and has diabetes and they’ll get a piece of mail to him at whatever address within a week! So, on December 6, 2010, I will be 55. I met with some of the old crowd for lunch and then for the Rams’ football game last week where we bet on what new way the Rams would invent to lose in the last three minutes to break our hearts; no one picked a bad pass interference call. Most of my friends married much earlier that I. My friends talked about their kids in and out of college, their grandkids (yikes!) and ceaselessly gave me grief for having a 12 and 9 year old at home. We talked about business, the economy and stupid things we did when we were young that we never told our wives or kids about for fear of fury or fatal repetition after our own undeserved good fortune. We had brief discussions of politics but, my friends have nearly all lost their minds to Faux News, vote Republican against their own and their kids and grandkids’ economic interests and don’t want to stop drinking the Kool Aid. I referred them to facts, posts at this blog and other reality based content but, to no avail. Really good chicken wings, decent ravioli and continued good company and wait service mellowed us all until we left with promises to meet again soon. [More ...]