Various web links I found to be of interest recently.
When you eat, you're also supplying the bacterial community in your colon, comprised of 100 trillion cells. The right food can help this micrbiome.
An Israeli study, published last month in the medical journal "Cell," concludes that even after eating identical meals, the way those meals are then metabolized differs -- sometimes dramatically -- from one person to another.
And in 'Healthy' foods differ by individual:
An Israeli study tracking the blood sugar levels of 800 people
over a week suggests that even if we all ate the same meal,
how it's metabolized would differ from one person to another.
...
To understand why such vast differences exist between people, the
researchers conducted microbiome analyses on stool samples collected
from each study participant. Growing evidence suggests gut bacteria
are linked to obesity, glucose intolerance, and diabetes, and the
study demonstrates that specific microbes indeed correlate with how
much blood sugar rises post-meal. By conducting personalized dietary
interventions among 26 additional study participants, the researchers
were able to reduce post-meal blood sugar levels and alter gut
microbiota. Interestingly, although the diets were personalized
and thus greatly different across participants, several of the gut
microbiota alterations were consistent across participants.
Atul Gawande
The costs
of care for the privately insured vary from town to town just as
crazily as they do for the publicly insured. But the patterns are
strikingly different. The most expensive places for Medicare are not
the most expensive places for private insurers. In fact, there was
essentially zero correlation between where a city ranks in Medicare
spending and where it ranks in private-insurance spending--even
when you only consider people undergoing the exact same procedure.
...
When your grocery store is the only one in town, it can jack up prices
without losing customers. The same goes for hospitals.
The study found that hospital prices in monopoly markets are
fifteen per cent higher than in those with four or more hospitals.
A new study finds that a component of aspirin binds to an enzyme called GAPDH, which is believed to play a major role in neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases.
But a new paper published in the medical journal Lancet comes to the sad conclusion that happiness isn't responsible for this observed longevity. Instead, the things that make people happy, particularly their good health, are the same things that shield them from premature death.
3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images
For example: Globalization has "elevated the living standards of
hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people worldwide" but also
"has helped suppress the incomes of low-skilled middle-class workers
in rich countries." Where do our loyalties lie? How do we balance
obligations to our fellow citizens in the communities and countries
in which we live against the interests of those far away? And how
do the vast disparities of wealth that the system creates constrain
the very process of democratic deliberation over what to do about it?
...
You don't need to be a democratic socialist to believe this.
On the contrary, the survival of democratic capitalism depends upon
facing the difficulties the system is having in delivering
on the promises it was once able to keep.
If you agree with Democrats that Wall Street should be reformed, Hillary Clinton's more comprehensive solution better grasps the world of finance today.
Clinton's beyond-the-banks rhetoric, in the op-ed and in the debate itself, is meant to position her as tougher on the finance industry than Sanders, a move that is hard for her to make convincingly--one has the sense that Sanders would strip every last cufflink off every investment banker, if he could. If you agree with the Democrats that Wall Street should be reformed, though, Clinton's more comprehensive solution better grasps the world of finance today. Not only are Sanders's bogeybanks just one part of Wall Street but they are getting less powerful and less problematic by the year. "It ain't complicated," Sanders said during the debate. But Clinton is right: it is.
When a country succumbs to cronyism, friends of the rulers are
able to appropriate large amounts of wealth for themselves -- for
example, by being awarded government-protected monopolies over
certain markets, as in Russia after the fall of communism. That
will obviously lead to inequality of income and wealth. It will also
make the economy inefficient, since money is flowing to unproductive
cronies. Cronyism may also reduce growth by allowing the wealthy to
exert greater influence on political policy, creating inefficient
subsidies for themselves and unfair penalties for their rivals.
...
The relationship between wealth inequality and growth was negative,
as the IMF and others had found for income inequality.
But only one kind of inequality was associated with low growth --
the kind that came from cronyism.
It's true that wages have been stagnant for much of the middle class
over the last few years. Yet our purchasing power is still expanding.
For example, economists Donald Boudreaux and Mark Perry note that
spending by households on most of modern life's "basics" -- food,
clothing, housing, household furnishings and utilities -- fell
from 53% of disposable income in 1950 to 44% in 1970 to 32% today.
...
It's true that the richest have gotten richer faster than the rest of us.
But the tide is rising for us all.
...
Even our poor are rich by historical standards. Most Americans living
under the poverty line today live in larger accommodations than
the average European.
If the previous link about cronyism isn't enough to cause you to think this guy is wrong, be sure to read the comments to his article,
Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor.
Are annuities just a trap set for uninformed investors or valuable retirement tool? It depends on who you ask: Ken Fisher or Moshe Milevsky
But it was the Church of Scientology that actually drove him out
of the country. According to Mr. Erhard, the "60 Minutes" allegations
were the culmination of a smear campaign organized by Scientology
officials to get back at him for poaching clients and ideas."
...
He also did some consulting work for Landmark, the Forum's successor,
run by his brother Harry Rosenberg.
A series of recent papers help answer that question, by quantifying the roles of luck, ability, and experience in CEOs' success. Together they suggest two conclusions: first, no single trait or skill seems to explain CEO performance; and second, luck plays a very large role.
Or did life begin more than once in separate places?
The current view is that all life on Earth evolved from one common
ancestral population, instead of evolving multiple times
(which, by the way, is a perfectly valid hypothesis).
...
The model predicts that descent from a universal common ancestor is at least
10^2,860 times more probable than the closest competing hypothesis!
One can sidestep the "skepticism" of those who question existing
climate-models, by framing risk in the most straight-forward possible
terms, at the global scale. That is, we should ask "what would the
correct policy be if we had no reliable models?"
...
The popular belief that uncertainty undermines the case for taking
seriously the 'climate crisis' that scientists tell us we face
is the opposite of the truth. Properly understood, as driving the
case for precaution, uncertainty radically underscores that case,
and may even constitute it.
French pop star Christine and the Queens
My favorite music act of the moment. I like how she sounds and how she moves.
Interview by Julia Galef on the Rationally Speaking Podcast.
The traditional story about reason is that it evolved to help humans
see the world more clearly and (thereby) make better decisions.
But on that view, some mysteries remain: why is the human brain so biased?
Why are we so much better at defending our pre-existing views than at
evaluating new ideas objectively?
...
In this episode of Rationally Speaking, Julia talks with guest Dan Sperber,
professor of cognitive and social sciences, who is famous for advancing
an alternate view of reason: that it evolved to help us argue with our
fellow humans and convince them that we're right.