More Idiocracy

High-Fiber Pepsi: The Choice of a New, Weird Generation
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/11/high-fiber-pepsi-the-choice-of-a-new-weird-generation/265094/

I know, lets take something that is good for you in one scenario, use it in a different scenario and ‘borrow’ the health benefits from first to get credulous customers to buy our crap product! How long until the US is buying these products as fast as they can be made? Sort of like the ‘healthy’ potato chips (never mind that the oil they used gave a lot of people the runs, that was part of its health benefit!). It reminds me of the ‘oxygen bars’ that were briefly all the rage or the even briefer in-the-limelight ‘super oxygenated’ waters that people paid a premium for. As the science comprehension goes down in the US these sorts of products come to the fore. Snake oil salesmen of a different era.

A little radioation is gude for ewe!

A little radiation is good for mice
Low doses of radioactivity led to healthier pups
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/346280/title/A_little_radiation_is_good_for_mice

I lamented earlier about people’s lack of risk knowledge regarding radiation. In it I talked about the ‘incongruent’ information that low doses appeared to provide health benefit, well the above article shows this is indeed to be the case. Of course, I don’t expect this (or any other science) to convince people out of their deep seated paranoia, what with only 15% people believing in evolution, but in case my reader(s) were skeptical of my earlier assertion, here be the evidence. Note, also, that the use of antioxidants actually worked _against_ the health benefits of the radiation. Interesting (to me) is the need for chemo patients to refrain from taking antioxidants because the chemo works by creating ‘free radicals’ which then can trigger cell death in cancer. Taking lots of antioxidants while on chemo actually hurts your chances of being able to put the cancer into remission!

Visualization

Red state, blue state
Resizing geographic areas by population gives more accurate view of 2012 election
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/346315/title/Red_state%2C_blue_state

My wife was talking about this the other day: how looking at the typical US map of ‘red’ vs ‘blue’ states from the election made it look like the ‘reds’ were winning in a landslide. I told her about the population issue, but these images capture it vera well indeed. The top map is the typical one we are likely all familiar with. The second (middle) map is skewed based on population and already you can see a vast difference. The bottom one is based on electoral votes and it become clear that the election was close, but also that blue is greater than red.

Blue/Red state vs population/electoral votes

Selling our country one nickle at a time

Fake tech gear has infiltrated the U.S. government
http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/08/technology/security/counterfeit-tech/index.html?source=cnn_bin

What is really amazing to me is the totally unspoken story about the non-governmental costs associated with this exact same issue. Because the government has historically been required to go with the lowest bidder (and the lowest bidder has the highest incentive to go with the counterfeits) there has been a huge path of profitability put in place. That lowest cost mentality has bled over into the private sector pretty thoroughly now, so all sorts of big companies will engage in marginal activity just to save a nickel here or there. As I wrote earlier, company’s management is incentivized to do these long-term idiotic things because of their laser focus on short-term personal rewards. Because of this mentality the counterfeit suppliers are now a solid part of our economy and every year we have less and less (as a country) ability to service our own needs. Yes, there is a huge concern about cyber warfare, etc., but more important in my mind is the shear idiocy of buying defective shit from third-world countries just to get a bonus at the end of the year. The fraction of a percent that is saved isn’t even noticeable on the corporate accounts, but represents in a 50% (or more) income bonus to the manager who made the decision to sell out his company’s future.

This is just one of the thousands of reasons I see the looming apocalypse just around the corner…

Once again: get off your fat ass and move!

Study finds exercise extends life expectancy, including among people who are obese
http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2012/11/study-finds-exercise-extends-life-expectancy-including-among-people-who-are-o

What would you give for an extra 3 years of healthy life? Would you get off your ass and go for a walk a few hours a week? It seems that is all that is necessary! Get an additional year by jogging instead of walking! Even if you are a fat ass, get out and move; you increase purt near every health metric there is. Don’t even have to change your lousy diet! It is such a small thing and rather simple to weave into your life, why rob yourself of those years because you are too lazy to go for a walk?

BTW, here is a link to the primary literature.

The price of success

America Gone Wild
The good news: Wildlife populations in the U.S. have experienced an astonishing resurgence. The bad news: All those animals are now our neighbors.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204846304578090753716856728.html

This article is very interesting in how it describes the ‘reforestation’ of the East. I have personally noted the increasing amount of land going fallow and how fast it reverts to forest (not a climax forest, of course, that takes a century or longer, but one you can’t see very far and can barely walk across), so it jives with my impressions. I have also noted the dramatically increasing incidence of wildlife over the years (the last couple of years I regularly see large birds of prey along I66 on our weekly to-ing and fro-ing). I recall as a kid in high school seeing a beaver damming up a stream and how we all stared out the window as our bus drove by because it was such a rare sight (though I will admit since then I have only seen a handful of beavers since then). Deer, when I was a kid (and I had access to (and spent a whole lot of time on) several thousand acres of undeveloped forest (sadly, all a carpet of houses now)), were incredibly rare and worth standing and staring at since it might be years before you saw another one. Today the damn things are big furry lice and on a routine walk/jog I _expect_ to see several and it is unusual to not notice any. I see more deer near our house in Maryland (just a couple of miles outside the beltway and nearly a perfect carpet of houses) than in Shenandoah where our 23 acres are a small part of hundreds of surrounding acres that are occupied by orchards, corn fields, browsing cows and hardly any houses. One big difference, though, is that in Shenandoah people still regularly hunt deer; something that is pretty much nonexistent where we live in Maryland.

I was pleased to see that there are actually an increasing number of hunters (though still a small number). Since humans have pretty much extincted every other apex predator, if we aim to coexist with nature we are going to have to learn to allow human ‘predation’ to occur to keep the populations enough in check that we don’t wind up with yet another human made ecological disaster. I am too lazy to hunt (though if I catch deer eating my orchard trees they are dead meat!) and don’t care for the ‘gamey’ taste, but I have told the man who runs cows on our property to feel free to nail any deer he sees (he is a regular during hunting season) and that I would get the required permit if necessary (if you can demonstrate that deer are causing economic damage on your property you can get a year-long license to plug the little fuckers).

Of course, the _diversity_ of species is still crashing with all this human activity (why do people obsess about global warming but don’t give a damn that we are sterilizing our oceans?), but I expect for the most part the number of organisms is actually increasing as we eliminate apex predators leaving more room for the prey. Those organisms best able to reach an accommodation with humans are going to have lots of ecological space to occupy and their populations are going to explode. If we don’t provide some throttling of that explosion then we get to deal with the smelly diseased mess that results when the overextended population crashes.

Thank the <deity of your choice> its over!

It looks like Obama is the winner and without much controversy, so thankfully it seems we will be spared endless images of hanging chads. It also appears he won the popular vote as well so the GOP can’t complain that he ‘stole’ the election (but it was OK for Bush, wasn’t it?). I am so _so_ glad that it is over and maybe, just maybe, the next election cycle will hold off and give us at least two years of peace and quite before we start this crap all over again.

As a btw, I was indeed too lazy to vote, so Jill Stein didn’t get my nod. My wife woke up early this morning and rushed to the TV (why she picked Fox I don’t understand, it must have been the channel on from when it was turned off) and was quite happy when she learned that Obama has been declared the winner (she has been a fervent supporter of the GOP until Romney).

My prediction, for what it is worth, is that while there will be plenty of people in the GOP who will dig in their heels, there will be more than enough that will realize that there hasn’t been that groundswell of support for the rabid right wing like the Tea Partiers were insisting and will be in a much more compromising mindset. Presuming Obama is clever enough to make it sound like he is trying to be accommodating (he sure as hell has bent over backwards in the past, much to the horror of the progressives) and a relative handful of GOP members turn their back on Norquist and his idiot pledge, we can finally raise taxes. I don’t see the military being cut like it should be, but hopefully they can slow the growth to at least match inflation.

Conventional wisdom said that all Romney had to be was not-Obama to win, given the economic situation, but he got so desperate to be the not-Obama in the end that it seems he started to alienate the few people sitting on the fence. While I think Obama will be (has been) a terrible President, I think he will be less terrible than Romney. I will be more than a bit surprised if Obama doesn’t have a rather productive next two (maybe two and half) years. As mentioned, I expect there to be enough ‘defectors’ in the GOP to allow Obama to raise taxes and for the most part, I can’t think of anything else the GOP really disagrees with (shouted rhetoric to the contrary). While it would be a substantial hit to the economy, I would actually like to see us ride over the ‘fiscal cliff’ and finally get rid of the damn Bush tax cuts and reduce the military budget. Sadly, I am convinced that won’t be the case; ‘rationality’ will prevail and instead we will get increased military spending, though I am hopeful that we will also increase taxes. My most fervent wish, but one that I expect won’t be realized, is that they do away with the massive perks to the wealthy and ensure that everyone who has more income than I do (most _particularly_ through investment income!) pays a higher tax rate than I do.

Since our economy, despite the GOP wailing to the contrary, is indeed recovering, in 3-4 years it should be cooking along with unemployment much lower (though I am sure that inflation adjusted wages will be even lower than before the crash, but such is expected to be the case in an oligarchy controlled government), so it seems very plausible to me that we might wind up with another Democrat as President in ’16. If the GOP fields the same lot of idiots that they did this time then I expect they will be spending a lot of time in the wastelands. If, instead, they can tone down the right-wing fringe and get someone in like Jon Huntsman or Colin Powell, then they might be able to make some headway. Their primary problem is they insist on depending on the white male voter demographic, which shrinks every year (I think there is enough proof today that it has shrunk so much they cannot be elected by that demographic alone anymore). Of course, I am sure that some will cling to the idea that Romney was a sellout and had one of the others made it as the candidate they would have won, but I expect that most of the party leaders will realize that their strategy cannot work any longer and they are going to be forced to appeal to women and minorities. Given their current platform that will take some doing, but they have a while to think about it before their next chance comes up.

Yes the popular vote has been close, but really, the polls have consistently shown that Obama was comfortably ahead in all the important swing states. So, why has this been consistently reported as a nail biter contest that could go either way? I go with the ‘vast conspiracy’ of media types wanting to keep as many eyeballs as they could. If they talked about how it was 90% likely that Obama was going to get elected (from what I recall he has been well over 70% the whole time) I guess viewers would have shrugged and moved on. Only by constantly talking about how close it was and endlessly emphasizing the small gains that Romney made could they provide the illusion that this was a close race. I also find it plausible that the Democrats bolstered the noise that it was close in an attempt to keep their base motivated as it would matter greatly if a bunch of supporters stayed home.

What is next for Romney? Hopefully he will fade from view (if I were a praying type I would pray that Trump would fade from sight, but I doubt that media hog would ever fade). I wonder if he really thought he had the election in the bag and really did only prepare a victory speech. If so, then it is his own fault for surrounding himself with yes men who wouldn’t tell him about reality and, if true, speaks volumes about the type of advisers he would have surrounded himself with. For his own sake I hope he really did understand that he was a huge underdog with well under a 30% chance of winning. Maybe he will try again in ’16, but I somehow think that there will be too much bad blood between him and the wingnuts to allow him to survive the primaries and how embarrassing would it be to not even get the primary win.

I have yet to get any information on the percentage of votes cast for third parties or if any third-party candidates ‘down ticket’ actually got elected. A friend last night commented that everyone he talked to said they had gone third-party, but then again, we are in Maryland which was solidly Obama so people could ‘afford’ to cast a ‘protest’ vote. I hope that the credible third-party candidates (in my estimation, only the two: Greens and Libertarians) have a decent showing and maybe I will comment when I finally find some data.

Its almost over!

Election Day Is Finally Here: Tonight Is Going to Suck No Matter What
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/election-day-is-finally-here-tonight-is-going-to-suck-no-matter-what-20121106

As usual, Matt is entertaining and has an excellent point. Can any rational person (are there any rational people left?) think that either candidate is going to dramatically change the way things are done in the US? Even when the Dems had a lock on the House and Senate and Obama in the White House for two full years they couldn’t get a damn thing done. In the unlikely event (based on my reading of poll analysis) that the GOP wins the Senate and Romney gets the win, can anyone seriously think that there will be wholesale changes to the way things are done? Wall Street will continue to get favorable treatment, the poor will continue to be poor and, almost certainly, the middle class will continue to be eroded and the rich will get richer. Except in the highly unlikely scenario that a GOP sweep leads to extreme austerity measures (they talk a ‘good’ story but I clearly remember how ‘austere’ Bush Jr. was when he was in office, _with_, btw, GOP control of the House and Senate for several years), the economy will continue its gradual climb (we are deleveraging as a nation (well, not at the top, but such is life) and that necessitates a long and slow recovery, anything faster means a shorter window before the next collapse) things will gradually get better for the majority of the nation and we will go to war with Iran.

This election is _not_ a choice between good and evil (in my mind it is a choice between evils, but ‘evil’ is relative, I am not expecting anyone to roast in hell based on the outcome of this (or any other) election), it is a choice between incremental shifts on the steering wheel of the Titanic. Yes, the ship could have avoided the ice berg with tiny course changes, if done soon enough, but had the ship been built just a wee bit better it wouldn’t have sunk. Our economy (on the whole) is very well built and quite robust, even the massive shock of the housing market crash wasn’t enough to bring us down. We have lots of ‘water tight compartments’ and are in the process of pumping them out and will soon pick up speed and be on our way no matter who wins. I think more people need to understand this.

This country really needs a hug!

BTW, in case anyone cares, I think I will be pulling the lever for Jill Stein, that is, if I get off my lazy ass and actually vote. Yes the Greens are totally unrealistic, but I think I prefer their unrealism to the other candidates (including the two front runners).

Election myths, things aren’t as bad as they seem

OK, I am a sucker and presuming these are right and not just pulled out of the author’s ass, I am an ass…

8 Election Myths You Probably Believe
http://www.cracked.com/article_20134_8-election-myths-you-probably-believe.html

#8. Myth: It’s All Pointless, Since Candidates Don’t Keep Their Promises Anyway

Statistically, those failures were actually the exception, not the rule. Political scientists in the 1980s set out to evaluate the promise-keeping history of American presidents and found that 75 percent of pre-election pledges made by presidents Wilson through Carter were met. Most people are lucky to keep that kind of ratio going in a marriage, let alone while running a country. And yes, this trend still holds true with our modern leaders.

#7. Myth: Campaigns Run Mindless Attack Ads Instead of Giving Us Substance

When exposed to a barrage of negativity, we may feign disgust, but are actually more likely to show up at the polls. Oh, and we’re better informed, too — in one study, people who watched attack ads knew more about the issues of the election than others. After all, negative commercials prompt fact-checking and force opponents to issue a response to clear their names. So what some would call deplorable smear campaigns that belong in the gutter, others would call a dialogue. And it’s the voters who benefit.

#6. Myth: The Two-Party System Is Dividing Us into Opposing Tribes of Extremists

Choices are nice, but there’s one underrated advantage of the two-party system: It makes everyone more moderate. Multiparty systems, as attractive as they may sound, also lead to more fanaticism.

#5. Myth: Political Rhetoric Is More Hateful and Divisive Than Ever

Quick quiz: Name the presidential candidate who was so awful that his opponent’s supporters warned that if the guy won …

“… murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced. The air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.”

And also that voters would see their children “writhing on a pike.” So who was it? Bill Clinton? Hitler? Nope, Thomas Jefferson. In 1800, supporters of John Adams warned that Jefferson’s election would lead to Cormac McCarthyworld. Apparently early Americans were really into the apocalypse back then, because Jefferson won.

#4. Myth: Campaign Spending Is Out of Control

Now here’s one that seems impossible to argue. The numbers are freaking astronomical. President Obama and Governor Romney raised $769 million and $642 million, respectively (as of September 30, 2012) — that’s $1.4 billion total, for a freaking political campaign. And that’s not even counting the tens of millions poured into political action committees.
…
…in 2011, General Motors spent $1.78 billion in advertising to be the No. 1 car company in America, which is a fraction of the nearly $14 billion spent by the entire auto industry. Between the two of them, Verizon and AT&T spent $3.5 billion to be the top two companies in their sector. And $1.34 billion was spent on makeup ads just by L’Oreal.

#3. Myth: We Judge Candidates Based on Silly “Gaffes” Instead of Real Issues

Gaffes get a ton of play in the media, and while it’s true that candidates in a primary can lose their shot at the big job if a brain fart stains their mouth-undies too much (Rick Perry, we’re talking about you), the same rules don’t seem to apply to the actual election.

#2. Myth: Voter Turnout Is Plummeting, and Voter Apathy Is at an All-Time High

It’s not that we’re bad at motivating voters; it’s that we’re bad at math.
…
In fact, as of 2008, turnout was as good as it was in 1968, which is great. Our ability to properly calculate and talk about voter turnout? Not so much. [see also here]

#1. Myth: It All Just Comes Down to a Few “Swing” Voters Anyway

…there’s no evidence that they make up a meaningful chunk of the electorate or decide the outcome. National elections don’t hinge on swaying a few undecideds; they hinge on activating unmotivated party members.

I’ll admit (a bit grudgingly) that the article rings true to me and I am probably an apocalyptic conspiratorialist who overreacts to everything. But then again, I am human after all.

Idiot paranoia

Still ‘paranoid’ after all these years
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/04/politics/paranoid-style-politics-hofstadter/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Since I have often spoken about the looming apocalypse and the ‘conspiracy‘ of the rich to keep the rest poor, I figure that this article is quite a good fit here. It is somewhat long for the twitter age, so I excerpted a few bits I think are particularly apropos.

Writer Charles P. Pierce laid out the rules in his indispensable book “Idiot America“:

  • “1. Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings or otherwise moves units.
  • 2. Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.
  • 3. Fact is that which enough people believe (and) Truth is determined by how fervently you believe it.”

No wonder the so-called mainstream media has trust issues. In the search for ratings and Internet traffic, it gives voice to the same fearful hyperbole found elsewhere in society — and often plays it for entertainment value. (Witness the rise of Donald Trump, political pundit and almost-candidate, whose regular proclamations headline the New York tabloids and are then repeated throughout cable news.) It’s the classic case of preying on our insecurities, points out Ari Kohen, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska.

However,

But there have been times when the suspicious have had a point. As the old saying goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

After all, the Soviet Union did infiltrate some U.S. agencies, and Julius Rosenberg really did deliver classified information. The CIA was instrumental in a number of coups. The FBI’s COINTELPRO program spied on domestic groups. Watergate revealed a tangle of Nixonian malfeasance. A handful of climate scientists did try to clamp down on dissent. (Their opponents have also worked together.) Finance industry workers did cover up bad loans and, more recently, fix the LIBOR rate.
…
“One of the reasons conspiracy theories have proliferated over the last half century is that they have so often been proven correct,” says Assumption’s Vaughan.

I don’t think, though, that there is a wide-spread organized conspiracy largely because I lack faith in human’s ability to organize themselves over the long term or expect a cabal of people to work for a 1,000 year off event. However, I do believe in certain ‘conspiracies’ where people in different classes have certain thoughts/behaviors in common that make them act/react as if they are following some higher instruction. Humans (as I complain about endlessly here) seem to take the exact mathematical minimum (or less!) effort in thinking and would rather have their thoughts/prejudices/biases fed to them. Rich or poor, right-wing or left-wing, artist or factory worker, people are lazy when it comes to thinking about things they are not accustomed to considering. I, of course, am guilty of the exact same thing, as my wife will tell you, and my knee-jerk (emphasis on the ‘jerk’) reaction to many of her suggestions is outright dismissal. Despite her coming up with many (hundreds, if not thousands; we have been together now for over 15 years) of great ideas that I initially dismissed, I am still finding it very difficult to take a second or so of thought before immediately responding negatively. I think I am better (really, less bad) than before, but certainly not ‘good’ at this time. I consider myself very open minded (really, does anyone consider themselves ‘close minded’?) and generally consider all sides of an argument (courtesy of my dear old dad who trained me that way, with parallels to Shawn on Psych), but find it so difficult sometimes to accept new concepts that don’t fit within my preconceived notions without first rejecting them out of hand.

Even those who espouse cycles and changing of the guard (post WWII generation lead to the baby boom (our selfish ‘me’ generation) to the millennials who appear to be much more opened minded; see below) still see the propensity for things to get worse without a lot of confidence that things could then get better…

Despite our weakened faith in government and institutions, the country chugs along. But what of the future? “I wish I could be optimistic, but I really can’t,” says Reiss, the San Diego psychiatrist. “There’s so much power behind making things destructive. It’s really in the service and to the advantage of the politicians on both sides to keep people in a somewhat scared state.”

“(Consensus) is not dead, but we’re in the danger zone,” says Avlon. “There are real costs to hyperpartisanship. Most importantly it becomes ultimately a threat to self-governance — it’s stopping us from being able to solve the serious problems we face.”

To end on a (somewhat) optimistic note, though…

We’re stuck for probably the next five years, he says. After that, events could intercede. We could face economic collapse; we could have total victory by one party. But the most intriguing, he observes, is the passage of generations.

“We went from the Greatest Generation, which was the most civic-minded because they fought World War II together … to the baby boomers, who were the worst at working together because their foundational experience was splitting apart to fight the left-right battle,” says Haidt. “We’ll soon be moving on to the millennial generation, which is marked by a reluctance to make moral judgments.”

That has its own drawbacks, he adds, “but some tolerance and reluctance to judge might be just what we need in the 2020s.”

Of course, experts are wrong at least as often as they are right (actually, based on some reports I have read, they are often a bit more wrong than right (yet always have very plausible arguments for why it is obvious, in retrospect, they were so damn wrong)), so perhaps they (we, I) are just trying to make a few bucks by shouting nonsense until people believe it.