http://thehealthyskeptic.org/cholesterol-doesnt-cause-heart-disease

This article cites a lot of sources, but is not tremendously lengthy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/the-cholesterol-myth-that_b_676817.html

This article cites few sources, but quotes a lot of people. This one is especially poignant:

Sally Fallon, the president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and Mary Enig, Ph.D, an expert in lipid biochemistry, have gone so far as to call high cholesterol “an invented disease, a ‘problem’ that emerged when health professionals learned how to measure cholesterol levels in the blood.”

Further down in the article, he suggests that any level under 150 is LOW cholesterol, and that 200-250 would be optimal. One should note that modern medical convention says that 200-240 is “Borderline High”.

Even further, he goes on to criticize the medicines. At best, they do very little. At worst, they do active harm.

Finally, he criticizes the methodology of Ancel Keys, who first linked dietary fat to heart disease – namely discarding data which didn’t fit his conclusion.

I think what has happened is that there was some (flawed) studies linking fatty diets with heart disease, then 30 years of analysis isolated it to a link between heart disease and cholesterol. So, logically, if we lower the cholesterol, the heart disease will go down, right? Except, it isn’t happening. So, there’s a bit of a WTF, and cue 25 years more research, which brings us to today, and the above.

To be honest, I’m a bit skeptical about medicine in general. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of what they do is fabulous and amazing, but no one bats a thousand, and medicine has quite a history of getting things wrong, and having “conventional medical wisdom” be wrong for a really long time. Remember leeches and bleedings? How about the ebb and flow model of blood circulation, or using mercury to treat VD.

Make no mistake, this is not a swords to plowshares feel good post. I don’t expect us to get any smarter – I expect us to run out of money.

Let me explain – if things continue the way they are, many estimates have our debt service (not the debt, just the interest payments) exceeding our national defense budget. When this happens, it will be the death of the republic as we have come to know it.

Note that this presumes that we will not seriously cut domestic social programs, (at least not until the economy recovers substantially), because this would lead to all out revolt. With the actual employment numbers (not the re-based “within a year” number.. if you don’t know what I mean, read this close to 20%, there are a lot of desperate people these days.

I expect that this will happen in one of two ways:

• The bad way: Hawkish elements continue to dominate, and we start a war with someone. Iran? North Korea? It doesn’t matter. Civil disturbance is attributed to domestic terrorists, complete with secret police and further spending on homeland security. Fascism reigns, and the American Republic becomes the American Empire. This will continue until such time as it really can’t be sustained anymore, in which case the whole thing collapses in on itself. Bankruptcy, revolution, etc. Note that if we have a major terrorist incident before the 2012 elections, I expect that this will be the way things will go.
• The good way: There is actually a change, and it needs to happen soon – next election, maybe the one after. Someone actually does what President Obama actually said that he would do (and didn’t), namely getting us out of these very expensive wars. Take it a step further, and start closing foreign bases – selling off equipment, etc. If we pull this back to a lot more reasonable level, we end up being able to service the debt, and actually pay it off pretty quickly, while maintaining domestic defense and social programs. In time, hopefully rather quickly, we’ll be able to return to a true peacetime economy – one we have not seen since before WWII.

Either way, things will change quite a bit in the next 10 years. Don’t believe me? If I’d have told you 10 years ago that you’d have to take off your shoes to get on an airplane, would you have believed me?

To summarize the content:

• Two AH-64 gunships are doing close air support and attack some insurgents.
• Two reporters were in the group.
• A mechanized infantry group is moving through the city towards where the Apache shot the insurgents.
• A van pulls up and they start collecting bodies and weapons. They ask for authorization, get it, and shoot the van too.
• Later, the infantry finds that the van also contained two children. They are turned over to Iraqi police and taken to a hospital.

Now, I missed this when it first came up, but to hear Dan tell it, folks were outraged. WikiLeaks expected people to be outraged by the idea that a couple reporters got killed in the attack. Apparently, however, people were outraged at the reality of the war.

Don’t get me wrong – I feel bad for kids when parents are stupid enough to go driving them around in a war zone, and I feel bad for the families of those killed, but what do people expect? This is war. It’s not pretty. However, given the choice of seeing an Apache shooting 30mm into a group of guys carrying AK’s and RPGs, or seeing my countrymen come home in bodybags, I’ll take the former every day of the week. This is what technology buys you. Air support blows the crap out of targets, infantry moves in and mops up in relative safety.

As far as the reporters – hanging around with a bunch of soldiers in an active combat area is inherently dangerous. Be careful you don’t get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I just don’t understand why people are so shocked by this. How can they be so naive?

Out of control nanny state.

However, as expected, there are interviews with various types of segregationists and supremacists, who are against racial mixing, because various societies need to “keep the bloodlines pure”.

Now, I might be able to see their point, except for the fact that there are just too many hot chicks who come from mixed-race parentage. I mean, come on, Moon Bloodgood, Gina Torres and Michaela Conlin alone should serve as suitable evidence that such mixing is good.

I believe that this serves as a corollary to the Ron Jeremy approach to world relations – “embrace” hot chicks of all colors, races, and creeds. (It’s harder to have an “us” and “them” mentality if you’re shagging them).

Note that this is not really a promotion of world peace, however. There is still an argument for liberation. As an Iranian expatriate friend of mine once said “Dude, there are so many hot chicks in Iran, I think we should invade just so that they can go to clubs without getting arrested.” I think he has a point.

I was kind of mindlessly filling it out, and then started asking Liz the questions, and she started yelling at me.

They want to know who we are, what we do, what we make, when we leave for work, how we get there, whether we carpool, a variety of medical questions, and more. Oh, and they threaten you several times about how you’re required by law to respond. (They charge you with a misdemeanor and fine you if you don’t answer it.. but they’ve never done it to anyone).

This is not okay.

Here’s what Ron Paul has to say.

For what good it does, I have emailed my congressman.

The other thing which bugs me is the inefficiency of it all. About half of it is public record and/or information the government has already (census, taxes, etc.), so they HAVE this information.

Then, they send me a letter saying they’re going to send me the survey, the survey, and a postcard saying that they send me the survey. Subsidizing the postal service with additional tax money, are we?

Oh, and apparently the Republican National Committee agrees

This does not currently apply to the states, as this was an appeal from a DC court, and thus is strictly federal.

I should mention that, were it still in effect, this would likely have resulted in the overturning of the assault weapons ban. After all, the ruling was that they can’t ban guns (defacto ban or actual).

Now, McDonald v. Chicago may very well incorporate this down to the states.

If that happens, expect the state assault weapons bans to go be overturned, and the very restrictive gun registration requirements (say, NY City)

I would expect the more reasonable ones (say NY State) to stick around.

So, for me, this is a net win – no more “NY Compliant” black rifles, but I still need to wait for 2 weeks to buy a handgun.

That said, the handgun registry served two purposes:

1. You got background checked by the Sheriff before getting your new gun
2. Your handguns are recorded in a registry

The gun registry and corresponding ballistic databank have been cited as abject failures by every independent study done on them.

The background check is redundant with the federal NICS check.

It would be nice of politicians were rational, saved some money, and abolished these useless enterprises. However, I don’t hold out much hope for that happening. It seems easier to enact laws than get rid of them.

• Been sick with the seasonal flu. Got better. Mostly. Have this nagging cough which is bothering me. But, feeling a little better each day.

• A guy emailed me asking about his website. WTF? Well, apparently there is another Matt Caron, who owns 8bitorange.net, and this guy was looking for web design. Of course, I go look at the site, and I’m like “gack! You need a website redesign, so instead of just doing it, you put up a witty placeholder?” So unprofessional. I didn’t even do that when I redesigned this site, and it’s just a hobby/personal site, not something for a business. But, this ia one of the problems with the state of the industry today. Surprising that anything works.

• A friend sent me this very amusing video clip