Ayn Rand’s real world position regarding government benefits

I recently spotted this excerpt in Wikipedia (I left the footnote references so you can backtrack):

A heavy smoker, Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974. Although she had long opposed government assistance programs, she eventually accepted Social Security and Medicare payments for herself, under the name of "Ann O'Connor", and her husband as well.[87] A July 1998 interview with Ewa Joan Pryor, a New York state social worker, conducted in 1998 by the Ayn Rand Institute, revealed that Pryor assisted the two with filing. Federal records obtained through a Freedom of Information act request confirmed that between December 1974 and her death in March 1982, Rand collected a total of $11,002 in monthly Social Security payments.[88] O'Connor received $2,943 between December 1974 and his death in November 1979.[89]
Rand, is often cited today by conservatives touting extremely limited federal government, including many Tea Party advocates who are currently collecting social security payments and Medicare benefits. Here is the Wikipedia opening paragraph on Rand:
Rand's political views, reflected in both her fiction and her theoretical work, emphasize individual rights (including property rights) and laissez-faire capitalism, enforced by a constitutionally limited government. She was a fierce opponent of all forms of collectivism and statism,[3][4]

Continue ReadingAyn Rand’s real world position regarding government benefits

The cigarette industry is even more evil than we thought

According to Scientific American, there are more dangers to smoking cigarettes than tar and nicotine. There's also polonium:

[P]eople worldwide smoke almost six trillion cigarettes a year, and each one delivers a small amount of polonium 210 to the lungs. Puff by puff, the poison builds up to the equivalent radiation dosage of 300 chest x-rays a year for a person who smokes one and a half packs a day.  Although polonium may not be the primary carcinogen in cigarette smoke, it may nonetheless cause thousands of deaths a year in the U.S. alone. And what sets polonium apart is that these deaths could be avoided with simple measures.
The print edition of this article reveals that most of the polonium could be removed from cigarettes by removing it from the fertilizer and by washing the tobacco leaves with a dilute solution of hydrogen peroxide. What follows is an old sad story: the tobacco industry has long refused to incorporate these changes to reduce the polonium. The good news is that the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, passed in June 2009, requires the tobacco industry to address this problem, which it has ignored for more than four decades. Now let's be conservative with the numbers. Let's assume that only 2,500 people needlessly died each year from polonium poisoning for the past 40 years. That's 100,000 people who have been sent to early deaths by tobacco executives. That's the moral equivalent of dropping an atomic bomb on Green Bay, Wisconsin. Yet no tobacco executives have ever been prosecuted, much less thrown in prison for this hideous conduct.

Continue ReadingThe cigarette industry is even more evil than we thought

The power of sunshine

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:

Continue ReadingThe power of sunshine

The War in Afghanistan as a Placebo for trying to cure terrorism

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.

Continue ReadingThe War in Afghanistan as a Placebo for trying to cure terrorism

Why we should eat insects.

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.

Continue ReadingWhy we should eat insects.