Contributed by: filbert Sunday, July 31 2005 @ 09:07 AM CST
Specifically, fructose (as in “high-fructose corn syrup”) appears to cause more weight gain[*1] (in mice) than other sugar sweeteners like glucose, and that weight gain is not explained by calories alone.
All the mice began the study at an average weight of 39 grams. Those consuming the fructose-sweetened water showed significant weight gain over the course of the study, with an average final weight of 48 grams–compared with averages below 44 grams for the other groups–and had about 90 percent more body fat than the mice that consumed water only.
Total caloric intake was lower in the mice that consumed the fructose-sweetened water than in the other groups, except for the control animals provided with water only.
“We were surprised to see that mice actually ate less when exposed to fructose-sweetened beverages, and therefore didn’t consume more overall calories,” said Dr. Tschöp. “Nevertheless, they gained significantly more body fat within a few weeks.”
I’m always astonished that it seems to come as a surprise to most dieticians and physicians that not all calories are the same. There’s this little thing called biochemistry. This is the intricate system of chemical reactions which determines how the body processes food. It’s driven by enzymes created by the body, and each person’s body creates and processes enzymes at slightly different rates (just like everybody has a unique fingerprint). This means that everybody’s biochemistry is a bit different. This is why one diet does not fit all. Some diets (i.e. controlled carbohydrate diets) directly address manipulating the body’s biochemistry. Others (“portion control” starvation diets and “low-fat” diets) don’t.
Contributed by: filbert Friday, July 30 2010 @ 07:29 AM CST
Three (possible) sections in the News Whip(s): World News, National News, and Heartland News (Heartland being defined as my home territory–from Kansas City north to South Dakota). World News
Wikileaks exposed hundreds of Afghan informants [*5] — People will die because of Wikileaks, and the person or people responsible for leaking the secret military information. Turns out there is a reason why some things aren’t instantly made public. Turns out doing that can get people killed. Turns out Julian Assange, the head dimwit of Wikileaks, doesn’t care about that. Doesn’t care enough, anyway. Would “accessory to murder” be too harsh?
Dipping and Deflating–A double-dip recession now appears all too probable, likely tipping the U.S. economy into deflation [*10] — As far as I can tell, deflation is mainly a threat to the Ruling Class. For everyone else, prices going down may not be such a bad thing (even if wages go down at the same rate). Deflation encourages saving–think about it. If your $1 will be worth #1.05 next year (5% deflationary rate) does it make sense to frivolously spend your money on crap, or only buy stuff you really need? With inflation, the equation is reversed–inflation tells people not to save at all, but to buy as much as they can right now–even if they have to borrow to do it. Which, it seems to me, is how we got into the mess we’re in in the first place.
Contributed by: filbert Friday, July 30 2010 @ 07:26 AM CST
As I described in the previous post,, the Ruling Class is composed of people who simply think it is their right (if not their duty) to tell other people how to run their lives, and the People Class is composed of people who just want to get on with their own lives and don’t have that urge to tell other people what to do. These Whips document the various activities of the Ruling Class.
Shirley Sherrod To Sue Breitbart [*3] — And if I were Breitbart, I’d be talking to my lawyers about a counter-claim that Sherrod is engaged in a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation-SLAPP. And California, where Breitbart resides, has a very robust anti-SLAPP law.
Contributed by: filbert Friday, July 30 2010 @ 07:18 AM CST
This Whip category pertains to what I call the People Class–my name for the “Country Class” as identified by retired Boston University professor Angelo M. Codevilla in his influential essay America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution[*1] .
This would be the “us” as opposed to the “them” of the Ruling Class. The difference is that people in the People Class don’t want to run anyone else’s life–they just want to be free to run their own lives to the best of their abilities. The people in the Ruling Class think that they’re qualified to tell the rest of us how to run their lives–up to and including demanding that the People Class give money to the Ruling Class because they’re somehow “owed” some kind of reparations to make things more “fair.” So yes, the Angry Poor are, in fact, part of the Ruling Class, not of the People Class, in that they think they have the right to order other people to provide for their “needs.”
This is the fundamental political issue of our time–despite what the journalists and “opnion-makers” (but I repeat myself) in the Ruling Class would have you believe.
The issue IS the Ruling Class, and more specifically, how long the People Class will continue to put up with their increasingly shrill and unreasonable demands. Cover Photo for Governor Palin’s New Book Revealed [*2]
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Should Go–It’s time to let gays serve openly in the military [*5] — Nobody’s asking you to like it . . . but if you liked everything everyone else said, we wouldn’t need a First Amendment either, would we? This is where the pro-gay people trip up. Yeah, gay people should be perfectly free–but so should everyone else, and that means tolerating the civil expression of disapproval–of speech, of political orientation, of sexual orientation. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. You can’t have “gay rights” without at the same time allowing other people the right to approve or disapprove as their consciences direct. That’s called freedom, and that’s why freedom is not easy, and must be constantly defended.
A Liberaltarian Reader [*12] — “Liberaltarians” are, I fear, a bit like unicorns . . . very pretty, nice to think about, but don’t really exist in the real world. At least until we re-redefine the word “liberal” to mean what it once did–what we now call “classical liberal.” Libertarians need to stop calling themselves “libertarians” and start calling themselves what they are: Freedom-centrists.
Wolfe’s (essay) says that The Lord of the Rings taught him that right and wrong can be absolutes, and that absolute moral equivalency is another piece of Mordor. In addition, it taught him that “progress” is not necessarily progressive, and with change comes inevitable loss.
The difference between knowledge and wisdom is also a feature of Tolkien’s greatest work. The “progressives” confuse knowledge with wisdom. This is their great weakness. They believe that intricate and complicated concepts must be correct, because they’re hard to understand. Conservatives believe that intricate and complicated concepts are best judged with deep suspicion, and that the basic truths are actually quite simple to comprehend. The “right thing to do” is often difficult to actually do, by we imperfect humans in this imperfect world, but it is often quite simple to understand. Ex-Moran Campaign Chief Endorses Tiahrt [*2] — While riding around in the car and listening to the radio, my wife and I suddenly started lampooning the vicious advertising battle between Moran and Tiahrt for the Republican nomination to run for U.S. Senate from Kansas:
“Todd Tiahrt lives in WASHINGTON!
“Jerry Moran said he could WORK WITH OBAMA!
“Todd Tiahrt ran an ad saying that Jerry Moran could WORK WITH OBAMA!
“Jerry Moran sleeps with farm animals!
“Todd Tiahrt is a WEREWOLF!
“Jerry Moran is a VAMPIRE!
“Todd Tiahrt drinks puppies after he grinds them up in blenders!
“Jerry Moran kills and eats his entire family every single night!
“Todd Tiahrt is building a network of secret gas chambers in western Kansas to exterminate moderate Republicans in order to take over the party!
“Jerry Moran is the illegitimate son of Kim Jung Il, has nuclear weapons, and is threatening South Korea and Japan with NU-CU-LAR ANNIHILATION!
etc.
Sheesh.
For the record, if I lived in Kansas, I’d probably vote for Tiahrt–mainly because it appears to me that Moran started the disingenuous mud-slinging with his slimy insinuation that he lived in Kansas, while Tiahrt “lived in Washington!” Uh, duh, Jerry, he’s in the House of Representatives. As are you. Hypocrite.
“Stop talking about it. I’ll stop calling you a white man. You stop calling me a black man.”
Sherrod: “We Must Stop The White Man And His Uncle Toms …” [*5] — That’s Charles Sherrod, Shirley’s wife. When this is over, the “progressives” are going to wish they’d left this can of worms unopened . . . in the wise words of Morgan Freeman: “Stop talking about it.”
War is an ugly, nasty, brutal business. War against an utterly amoral enemy is even worse. I’m not particularly shocked by anything that’s been released so far. It’s a sad commentary on the unreality of the “reality-based community” as well as the population at large that the military leadership thought that so much of this needed to be kept secret. Of course, “loose lips sink ships” and as the JournoList scandal shows, there are lots and lots of people who really don’t care who gets hurt as long as they win their own domestic political battles.
That’s what this massive leak is about. It’s about forcing Obama to get out of Afghanistan, by shaming him into doing it. Any outrage over the actual contents of the leak are a poor second to that overarching political goal. Always remember that when looking at reports stemming from the leaks.
Illegitimi non carborundum [*15] — As we go forward, we need to be of good cheer. Hey . . . the Cheerful Revolution . . . maybe that will catch on?
Down This Gravel Road: A Look at Contemporary Rural Fantasy [*18] — I did not know there was such a thing as “contemporary rural fantasy.” Urban fantasy, now, that I’m down with–that encompasses the sympathetic/pathetic vampire genre and the Jim Butcher The Dresden Files kind of books. But contemporary rural fantasy? That seems a rather . . . fragmented market slice to me.
It may sound shocking to some, but modern-day America compares “favorably” to fascist Germany of the 1930s with regard to the degree to which the state interferes with and controls economic activity. First of all, government expenditures at all levels of government account for about 40 percent of national income. It differs by a few percentage points, year by year, but it has been in the 40 percent range in the past few years. This doesn’t count all of the off-budget government agencies that exist at the federal, state, and local levels of government as James Bennett and I documented in our book, Underground Government: The Off-Budget Public Sector[*27] . If this is included, government expenditures as a percentage of national income would be at least 45 percent, which is not so far from the 53 percent in Nazi Germany that Hayek alluded to.
Self-Reliance: Better Than Government Dependence [*30] — We live, unfortunately, in a world where the obvious must be forcefully stated and re-stated over and over again, lest people be led astray by liars, cheats, and thugs . . .
