Dakota Today

*** Obesity and autism connected?

A week or so ago, the Charlie Rose show had another in their "Brain series" of shows.  This one was primarily on autism.  They had no explanation for the apparent increase in autism even if they did indicate research and the need for a lot more research.

The May 19, 2012 Science News has an article titled: "Autism Linked to Obese Mothers".  They note that data showing such a connection does not establish causality, but they indicated that "Obese mothers are 67 percent more likely to have an autistic child than normal-weight healthy moms."  Diabetes is another problem connected with obesity, but despite diabetes apparently being a factor in other disorders, by itself, it did not appear to be associated with autism.

The concluding paragraph follows:

"The associations held even after researchers accounted for differences in race, education, time of year the kids were born, geographical region, and mother's age at delivery."

This may be one more reason to be concerned about the fats and empty sugar calories in fast foods, snacks, soda, and hidden in "fat free" foods.  Autism is a serious problem for schools and society. 

*** Stay tuned but stop buying  soda pop, candy, and other junk food ---- Doug Wiken

 

 

*** Marty Kaplan Big Media on Moyers&Co

Bill Moyers new show "Moyers & Company" is usually interesting and sometimes in surprising ways.  His recent show pegged to an old Eddie Murphy movie was one of those. You can read the transcript here....  Moyers & Co. Marty Kaplan Big Money's Effect on Big Media. This is probably more interesting than viewing the movie.

Marty Kaplan is associated with the Norman Lear Media Center.

The Eddie Murphy Movie by Kaplan "The Distinguished Gentleman" at Wikipedia was made about 20 years ago, but the Citizens United case opening the floodgates of big money and drowning the political process of democracy has made the movie more relevant again...apparently.  Reviews were mixed. You can probably view it free.

Throw enough money at an issue and Democracy is irrelevant. Big money requires big government to control it.  That is the irony of the GOP support of the plutocracy combined with their rhetoric against "big government". "Toxic Media" poisons reason and rationality. TV news becomes focused on mind-numbing entertainment and celebrity rather than hard issues which might aggravate their advertising clients.  I can only wonder about the impact of BP's ads about the wonderful gulf coast and its miraculous recovery from the toxic oil spill on news coverage on all media.  The impact of big money on advertising is readily apparent in those ads.  No other region of the country has ever been "blessed" with such quality and such intensity of coverage. Fish mongers and family hospitality could never put this deluge together and hit the Sabbath gasbag shows again and again.  Couple that with a good-looking blonde waxing enthusiasm over all the good things the fossil fuel industry is doing to save the environment, and we get sleek misinformation embedded in our brains without even knowing the real and full poisonous impact.

*** Stay tuned even if staying too tuned might drive you irrelevant--- Doug Wiken

 

 

 

 

 

*** The new guns and butter debate

[[[ Note of April 18, 2012.  John, ever vigilant, noted a serious error in my math regarding the Romney fortune.  My per second calculated income is off by a factor of 60.  The aprox "$40 per second" should be "$40 per minute" instead.  Actual per second income would be something like "67 cents per second" before taxes.  Thanks John, and I hope that nobody has used those erroneous numbers in a way that might embarass them as much as I am. The entry is corrected below-- Doug Wiken ]]]]

Hillary Rosen makes a too broad statement without a necessary qualifier for those unable to grasp her actual intent and the GOP mighty Wurlitzer mythology mill goes ballistic.  Democrats run like rabbits aiding the GOP misinterpretation of Rosen.  Obama says what the hell, let's toss Hillary Rosen under the bus and the campaigns roll along.

The national GOP and the intentioanlly blind, reality-deprived South Dakota Republicans following them have so few actual issues they fire up another pseudo issue...Hillary Rosen deprecates working women..who mostly work both in home and out of home. Did she really do that?

What Hillary Rosen was trying so inelegantly to say was that Ann Romney has no experience remotely like that of most working women.  Ann Romney says she "made a choice to stay home and do the hard work of raising 5 boys."  The problem with that is not the hard work, but that she actually had to made a choice. She did not have to make a choice. 

Most women working also have not been able to make a choice.  They have one choice-- work in their home raising a family and work outside their home as well so they can stay alive.  South Dakota has one of the highest percentages of working women in the US. 

Just a few minutes ago (10:35 PM CDT, Monday April 16, 2012), Romney and Ann were on ABC-TV answering questions about this tempest in a teacup..or A,B, C cup for that matter.  Ann Romney said she was thrilled to be discussing this issue which she then defined as women being interested in the deficit.  That is interesting spin that again indicates their total disconnect from the real world.

Remember that Romney is getting $57,000 per day from investments.  That is about $2375 per hour or about forty bucks per minute or 67 cents per second (note the correction).  Three minutes elapse and Ann Romney has enough money to buy family groceries for a week or two.  That is not the situation for 99.99 percent of the population including both men and women.  The only choice Ann Romney has to make is not between working inside the home and outside the home or just inside the home, it is more like how much caviar they should order.

And, what are those GOP congress critters doing about all this?  Well, they are pandering to the NRA and the corporations behind ALEC and the TEA party.  These GOP congress critters have their and your priorities turned upside down. Here is the new guns and butter question: do you need a concealed weapon to get your groceries, or do you need fair pay for your work in order to keep your family fed and clothed? 

Will cutting taxes on the 0.01 percent of the very richest make your life better or just increase the deficit that really, really, really  concerns housewife Ann Romney every time she fries an egg or washes a plate?  Do you smell the stink of class warfare when you hear Obama discuss the "Buffet rule", or do you smell it when you hear GOP laying seige on the middle class and advocating  for corporations, buccaneering bankers, and bunko brokers claiming the richest one percent should not pay taxes because they stimulate they economy.?.  And just to make that side clear, poor undeseriving people should never, ever have any valid reason to envy the very, very rich or question the social inequality..

*** Stay tuned even if groceries or health care are never concerns of yours--- Doug Wiken

 

 

*** Eat S**** and Die?

This is kind of frightening.   I like cooked rice with some milk and a dusting ..well a dash..er several spoons full of sugar and a cup or so of milk for breakfast.   Also, I have not quite figured out how to swallow oatmeal without a little sugar. Most other prepared cereal is already loaded with sweetner.

CBS 60 Minutes this evening went after sugar as a killer with near narcotic effects on our brains.  Annual sugar and corn sweetner sales have taken off like rockets after a lot of fat was pulled out of prepared foods.  Sugar and corn sweetener took the place of the smoothing fat.

Tavis Smiley recently talked to Mark Human, MD who has written a book The Blood Sugar Solution.   He estimates that 95% of health problems result because of diet, environment and genes interacting.  Admitedly that seems to cover a lot of everything without explaining much.  Genetic research is making some progress in curing or preventing some serious diseases despite conservative retrogressive attacks on such research.  Current Republican retrogressives seem to also do their best to make such sure environmental poisoning can not be justified as a reason to control corporate rape of the environment. You can watch the show at the link above, or go to the Tavis Smiley link and select "View transcript" or "print" to get a text copy.  Compliments to Smiley for making such information available free.  It is a valuable education service.

Tavis Smiley...Mark Hyman, MD. On Sugar transcript

That leaves to us diet which we can control if we desire to enough. There does appear to be more evidence that we better decide we desire to improve our own diets.  Haymen says something to the effect that foods give our bodies information.  The wrong foods give us the wrong or conflicting information.  Then couple that with a medical system that seems to stress symptoms and then after-the-fact of whatever happens, such medicine works to fix the damage or relieve the symptoms.  "Functional medicine" on the other hand works to prevent disease by "treating" cause and system(s?) rather than symptoms.

Hyman claims 50% of US citizens have pre-diabetes.  Diabetes kills and maims.  Two weeks ago we were returning from the funeral of a family member who had survived juvenile onset diabetes for over 60 years.  His surgeon brother agreed that considering the severity of his illness, he was a "statistical outlier" for having survived as long as he had.  That may have been some consolation, but it did not negate the devastation diabetes causes.

Obviously, some of the 50% with pre-symptoms get it mostly because of their genes, but millions more get there because they and we eat to much sugar and corn sweetner.  Soda, pop, sweetened beverages add a bunch to the annual pounds of sugar many of us consume in a year.  Sugar in soft drinks generate $billions for the sweetner industries, but also generate $billions of needless medical costs.

Hyman gave an example of 15,000 people in some church that lost a total of 250,000 pounds by changing diet and exccise.  That works out to about 17 pounds of fat loss  per person..  We can do something ourselves without our government mandating it.

So, let's do it for ourselves and our families.  Drink water instead of sweetened, carbonated drinks.  Water may not trigger the same kind of response in your brain as do illicit drugs and sugar, but so what.  Good water costs less and does more good.

[[[ Note from Doug added April 3, 2012--- I finally checked Amazon about the book by Dr. Hyman.  The reviews there seem to raise some red flags.  Reviewers usually find something good about the book, but not usually the same things.  What is troubling is that it appears the recipes and foods he promotes are just plain not available in food deserts like Winner, SD.  He also promotes a lot of supplements and a program on his web site which costs something every month.  So, you may want to check the information below even if the book is available for $16 at Amazon;

Reader Reviews of The Blood Sugar Solution by Dr. Mark Hyman

I think I will see what I can cobble together that is edible yet at least a bit more healthy than my current diet and also made with what can be purchased locally. ]]]]]

*** Stay tuned even if nagging sends you to the refrigerator for Soda and ice--- Doug Wiken

 

 

*** Had food-borne diarrhea? Got Sequela ? Thank de-regulators

April 2012 Scientific American has an interesting story concerning "Food Poisoning's Hidden Legacy."  Most of us probably assume food poisoning means a few days of vomiting and diarrhea and that is it.  Following up on long term effects of such food borne illness leads to more serious conclusions however.

The longer term consequences of illnesses  (Sequela) caused by Salmonella and Shigella infections include reactive arthritis, urinary tract problems, eye problems.  And after illness caused by campylobacter ,illnesses which may follow include Guillain-Barre syndrome and ulcerative colitis.  After illnesses caused by Escherichia coli 0157:H7, may include kidney failure and diabetes.

Find the magazine and read the article if you want information on the statistical studies supporting the idea that serious chromic health problems can result from contaminated food. The information on long-term sequelae  was determined by research on "unearthed" data buried in medical literature.

One of the data studies concerned Walkerton in Ontario Canada which had a serious E.coli illness that hit about half the population. The 2002 study (data study 2010) indicated those with the E.coli illness had a 33 percent greater liklihood of high blood pressure, a 210 percent greater chance of heart attack or stroke, and a 340 percent greater risk of kidney problems in the eight years following the outbreak.

The real plea of the SA article is for better studies of long term consequences of food-borne illness. I do wonder if those who did not get the disease initially had greater resistance of some kind...or if they just were not physically exposed to the initial E.coli.

The author, Maryn McKenna, concludes with

"We want to establish the true burden of disease because that is what policy makers use to decide what is a public health priority," says Barbar Kowalcyk, [The co-founder of the non-profit Center for Foodborne Illness Research and Prevention], "as long as we focus only on the acute form of foodborne illness and nothe long-term health consequences, we will underestimate how significan a problem this is."

Now, consider these long-term illnesses a possible consequence of the past and current retrograde Republican opposition to "big government", opposition to scientific analysis of health data, opposition to food processing inspections, de-regulation and anti-regulations efforts, and pervasive pandering to religious and economic mythology.  Richard Nixon made progress with his push for the Environoment Protection Agency. But his party member's partisan mythology can bite you in the rear.

Scientific American does not have a link for this article yet.  A group mentioned in the article should be mentioned here however.   STOP Food-Borne Illnesses Org

*** Stay tuned and think at least twice before eating half-raw meat and unwashed fruit and vegetables shipped in from who-knows-where --- Doug Wiken

*** Grossly obese legislators or obsolete TV cameras?

I have been watching too much of SDPB legislative coverage on SDPB-TV2.  The 480 pixel coverage is a bit blurry and I suspected width artifacts due to changes in width, etc.  It seemed to me there were a lot of grossly obese males in the SD legislature now.

I finally called SDPB wondering if it was the legislators need for exercise or the public TV system needing better cameras.  According to Bob Bosse, the cameras used for legislative coverage are 12 year old cameras surplus from somewhere I missed in the conversation.

As for the obese legislators he was too polite to compare the effects of the cameras on the apparent legislator width.  I suspect it is a bit of both.   One of my friends suggested the legislature needs an exercise coach more than they need a preacher to lead them in a prayer-sermon they will surely ignore and which will never make them slimmer.

I also don't know if it is because I have had more time to watch the legislative sessions this year than in the past or if with the surplus of Republicans in the legislature that make them seem so much sillier and inane this year.  I have seen more time wasted on nonsense, irrelevant resolutions and KOCH-inspired legislation this year in the legislature.  Even with a shortened short session, they and the GOP Governor just can't get past their burning need to inject GOP mythology and ideological nonnsense in law and public misinformation.

The more legislators I see, the more I think a Unicameral with about half as many total members makes sense.

The Governor and the legislature think that teachers should not have tenure and should be continuously evaluated on some mythical evaluation system so that "merit' raises can be used.  This is absurd without scientifically-verifiable testing of evaluation systems.  That hasn't happened.  Perhaps another test we need is a gross weight total for legislative bodies.  It would be at least as relevant.

*** Stay tuned even if your life and livlihood are at risk during every legislative session-- Doug Wiken

*** Water, money, wheat, and oil

SDPB-Radio this afternoon (December 12, 2011) had a few interesting comments related to water and oil and wheat.

California farmers can make more money by selling water rights to cities than by actual farming.  There are now something like 13 rivers in the world that no longer put a drop of water into the oceans because all the water is used up before water gets to ocean.

Shipping wheat to Arabia is much like trading water for oil.  I am not sure my calculations are correct, but they seem interesting and mostly paralleled comments on radio regarding the "trade"..

An acre of ground getting 16 inches of annual rainfall gets about 17.000 tons of water to produce 40 bushels of wheat.  40 bushels of wheat is about 2400 pounds or a about 1.2 tons of wheat. So, a ton of wheat requires about 1400 tons of water. We are essentially trading water for oil when Saudi Arabia buys wheat.

40 bushels of wheat at $6.00 per bushel is $240.  At $80 per barrel of oil, that is 3 barrels of oil or something like 120 gallons of oil. Sweet crude is apparently about 7 pounds per gallon. 120 gallons is then about 840 pounds. or  0.42 Tons.

We are then effectively trading about 40,000 tons of water per ton of oil.

Check my calculations.  They may be off even if interesting. Corrections welcome.

*** Stay tuned even if breakfast Wheaties is as close to wheat as you ever get -- Doug Wiken

*** In the Andy Rooney spirit, I just hate deceptive packaging.

If you have watched any CBS news or quasi-news program in the last week or so, you are probably aware that Andy Rooney is leaving his regular desk at CBS 60 minutes.  He has written a lot and said a lot in his many years..  A sample of some of his "wise" or not so wise statements can be found here:  Brainy Quotes --- Andy Rooney

I seem to remember a few Andy Rooney rants that started with " I just hate.....".  Well in that cantankerous spirit, I just hate deceptive or misleading or more generously perhaps..poorly labeled packaging .  A couple days ago, I decided to take advantage of a Pamida sale on Anchor-Hocking custard dishes.  Recently my wife saw or read some good recipes making use of them.  Buy one package, get another of same or lower price free.  They are also actually made in the USA.  I thought I had purchased 16 cups.  Take a look at image below.  I should have known better.

First, note the big green "8" on the blue background... followed by "Custard Cups".  Then note the four cups out of the second package I got for "free".   I did not realize until I got them home on the counter that the "8" in the image refered to 8 pieces that including the flimsy plastic caps.

I then also realized that each cup has around the top two rings made to catch  and stop the plastic rings which aids the illusion of 8 cups in each package.  I finally found some of our old custard cups.  They look classier, and have no ring at all. 

I have fallen for this type or a simmilar gimmick before so I really hate this....or admitting it. You just gotta read the fine print no matter what it is. I also need to remember my glasses.

Now to see if we can find those recipes.

*** Stay tuned even if you just love every kind of advertising and always detested Andy Rooney too --- Doug Wiken

** Genetically modified crops... connected with human disorders?

Modern agricultural chemicals and seeds are wonders of technology.  While they are pushed by ag-related business and education-related research, there are those who wonder if Genetically Modified crops, etc (GMOs) may cause problems as well as solve problems.

Responsible Technology on GMOs and Disease, etc.

It is hard to tell from the comments whether the research showing problems is taken seriously or is just another hobby horse of those always assuming the sky is falling and finding spurious connections between anything and everything.

So, are you ready to stop eating anything containing or having eaten corn, soybeans, or whatever that is genetically modified to resist chemicals or to kill pests with genetic in-plant pest killer.

Comments welcome.

)))) Stay tuned even if you think Monsanto is a gift without cost --- Doug Wiken

**Dr Oz show indicating Alzheimer's disease is like a form of diabetes

KELO-TV broadcasts the Dr. Oz show in the weekday mornings after the CBS Morning "NEWS".  Mostly I avoid the program because his silly demonstrations and carefully timed breaks for "more" convert 5 minutes of actual information into 15 minutes or an hour of irritation.  This morning, I did not get him turned off immediately.

The program discussed a possible link between Alzheimer's disease and something like a form of brain diabetes.  You can find a pretty good summary of that discussion at Link below:

Dr. Oz Fans on Alzheimer's Discussion   

I don't know what to think about the science, but there are some research publication links related to one of the Drs., Dr Suzanne de la Monte,   who was on the show today.

So, it may make sense to avoid foods and beers which contain nitrosamines.  If you are aware of any information pro or con on the suggested link or description of Alzheimer's as a form of diabetes, let other readers and me know.  And another link with discussion of topic

Life Enhancemen Is Alzheimer's disease a form of Diabetes?   

And for something a lot less serious or even interesting, below is an image in a series related to "Coffee Cup Philosophy"

Click on image for a larger version.

*** Stay tuned and drink your coffee...I don't think it has nitrosamines --- Doug Wiken