Winding down

Since last October there has been a drop in U.S. Casualties in Iraq that has been shocking in its extent. Despite the surge increasing the number of troops in the line of fire to around 170 000 at one point May ended with the lowest number of U.S. soldiers killed in any month since the war started, 19. Saying the war is over is probably premature, but it shows every sign of winding down. There have now been more than six months of relative calm, assuming the lives of the average Iraqis start to improve I see every reason to think the country will be stable in five years.

In Defense of Food

I was just listening to the Audiobook for In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. It is one of the very few books that can tear into a branch of science while still not offending me by following some pseudoscientific extremism. This is more shocking by his masters degree in English.

Anyways I heard something obvious, and fairly shocking to me about white flour, rice, and other similarly processed grain. One primary reason it is so popular is it can last a great deal longer than normal grain. Why does it have this property? It is pretty much that it is just too nutrient deficient to grow most microbes. Pretty scary when we expect the stuff to be able to grow children...

My current understanding of an ideal diet pretty much comes down to this:

Avoid any product from a store with more than about 5 ingredients particularly if you are fuzzy on what those ingredients are. There are exceptions to that rule health wise, but most products in a box that make health claims are a scam. The oatmeal is better than any breakfast cereal that breaks this rule no matter how healthy its label claims to be.

Avoid processed grains like white flour, and white rice.

Avoid all sweeteners. This includes Sugar, Corn Syrup, and all zero calorie sweeteners. They have no redeeming value and make up about a quarter of the calories the average American eats. An extension of this is to avoid any sweetened beverage. Yes this includes juice, which is pretty much an incomplete sugar extraction from a fruit removing a great deal that is good, there is little evidence it is any better for you than soda, and is unquestionably worse than water.

Stop using Margarine, Corn oil, Vegetable oil, and any other grain based oil. Canola, and olive oil can, and should be substituted as we already have too much corn and soybeans hiding in our diet.

While I don't see myself doing this because it is expensive, replacing industrial with grass fed meat is probably also worthwhile.




Notice all those are rules of thumb on things to avoid, not things to eat. There is a reason for this, there are societies where people have lived quite healthily on an amazing range of whole foods. From the Eskimos, and Masai eating almost entirely meat, to vegetarian cultures. None of these societies had problems with heart disease or diabetes nearly as bad as us(although obviously infectious diseases were worse). Yes, you can have an all meat diet at little risk of heart disease, another hole in the hypothesis that eating fat and cholesterol leads to heart disease. Modern industrial food processing(which mostly consists of taking good things out of food, or making them worse before sending them back to you) is worse than almost any conceivable diet you can make out of whole foods.

Housing price graphs

I like this graphic, it shows pretty clearly how the housing situation is in America today. I cannot help but notice how much has to happen before the area under the curve equals the area above it. This is a likely conclusion since incomes haven't increased much, and households have become smaller. If it happens though we are a long ways from done with the housing price drops. Looking at the inflation adjusted numbers I would say the crash is about 1/3rd to 1/2 over. That may be thrown off a fair amount by how poor the current inflation numbers are though...

Why the murder rate will continue to drop

It is impressive the degree with which the most important stories are rarely told. One of the more interesting things I heard in the book microtrends is that young Black Americans are doing a great deal better than their parents or grandparents. Sure, they still have a ways to go to match White, Asian, or Middle Eastern Americans, but the change is impressive nonetheless. This will have huge beneficial effects on society as Blacks have historically been the race committing more crime than any other. Bringing large numbers of them out of poverty, and into mainstream American life would therefore make the United States safer for everyone.

Since Barak Obama would have to die, or get caught with a dead hooker, to lose the next election it is safe to say this trend will continue. I cannot imagine him not encouraging a great many young Black Americans to get an education.

"Among blacks 25 and older, 80 percent had at least a high school diploma in 2005, and about 1.1 million had advanced degrees, up from 677,000 in 1995. There were 2.3 million black college students in the fall of 2004, more than double the number in 1989. In 2005, there were 44,000 black physicians and surgeons, 79,400 postsecondary teachers, 45,200 lawyers and 49,300 chief executives. There were 1.2 million black-owned businesses in 2002, up 45 percent since 1997. Annual revenue: $88.6 billion."

"A sharp drop in teen pregnancy in the Washington area has been especially steep among African American girls. The nation's black teens now have lower rates of tobacco, drug and alcohol use than their peers. The number of black students graduating from the nation's high schools and going on to college continues to rise."

Source

War Nerd

People usually underestimate how much demographics change the world. The equation is usually pretty simple: Shakers had no children, so today there are almost none of them, Mormons had lots of children so today they are huge. Since most people follow the religious and political views of their parents this is fairly inevitable. You can predict what the world will look like in 50 years most accurately by looking at where in society the babies are coming from. A scary proposition in a world where 25 of the 26 states with the highest White birth rate voted for Bush in 2004(Actually I loaded that sentence with the word White, once you include Blacks and Hispanics it is pretty clear the Democrats will do just fine, but White America is set to get even more ultra religious and conservative).

Anyways, there was an interesting article on this subject from the war nerd I thought I would pass on.

Beards

In honor of my being too lazy to shave, I give you World Beard and Moustache Champions:

Can't hold some people down

While people often ask Hillary why she is still in the race, few ask why Ron Paul is still in the race. Mostly this is because they don't realize he is still in the race. If you do notice him though, it is pretty obvious he is a man with an opinion that he will share with as many people as he can. Given his huge campaign donations I suspect he is living the high life, since the donations can't be used for much else he may as well use them to travel around the country and talk to people

Anyways, I thought I would pass along this article on his campaign. He really has made quite a stir, and there is every reason to expect more people like him in office as time passes.

"In Michigan, where Mr. Paul received 6 percent of the vote, 34 percent of Paul voters were under 30, compared with 13 percent of voters there over all. (Mr. Paul is also, largely, a guy thing. In the New Hampshire primary, where the candidate received 8 percent of the vote, his support was 77 percent male, according to exit polls.)"

"Mr. Paul was supposed to be a memory by now. But in the Oregon primary last week, he won 15 percent of the vote, and the campaign appears to be growing into something beyond a conventional protest campaign. Some supporters have helped turn the outspoken congressman’s campaign into a colorful, loud sideshow with their guerrilla marketing tactics — self-penned Ron Paul anthems on YouTube, a Ron Paul blimp, T-shirts that portray Mr. Paul as a world-historical icon like Che Guevara. Attendance at Ron Paul campaign stops has nearly returned to pre-Super Tuesday levels."