This Article About "Reducing Risk of Dementia" Should Be Called ....

... how to avoid being tricked by clickbait headlines and skin deep science writers. Starting with the fact that in epidemiology the term "risk" doesn't mean anything about cause and effect, it means correlation. IOW, "risk factor" means "something highly associated with something else" which may or may not mean anything about cause and effect.

Cause and effect - you know, the thing that makes science cool. 

The "12" risks:

The review identified the biggest known risk factors for dementia as smoking, excess alcohol consumption, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, head injury, depression, hearing loss and exposure to air pollution, as well as lack of exercise, education and social contact.

Well, shoot, I have to take getting depressed out of my action plan! Not to mention avoiding hearing loss (I had a five-year plan to completely go deaf), and avoiding head injury (scheduled to get some of that next week, guess I have to cancel). 

Diabetes, hypertension and a large abdominal circumference (aka obesity) are all correlated with excess sugar (and carbohydrate in general) consumption - when you eliminate sugar you reduce all 3; 80% of hypertensives correct their BP with carb restriction, reduce blood sugar and reduce abdominal obesity.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that sugar intake is a primary driver of dementia - why didn't this writer just call that out?

The real action plan is to quite the "grettes", moderate booze and (eliminate) sugar intake, work out 2-3x per week with high intensity mixed modal activity, keep learning and engage with your fellow humans. 

So simple, but not easy.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2250401-these-are-the-12-ways-you-can-drastically-cut-your-dementia-risk/#

One conjecture plus another conjecture plus another conjecture equals catastrophic climate ....

"The few estimates that the IPCC does provide should give any but the most fanatical climate advocate pause. A carbon tax instituted to meet the 1.5°C limit would have to be between 10 and 20 times higher than for a 2°C limit and require a tax of up to $6,050 per metric ton. This compares to the $92 for the undiscounted value of the Social Cost of Carbon estimated by the Obama administration. The Social Cost of Carbon aims to identify the net damage caused by each additional ton of carbon dioxide. It also equates to the benefit of reducing emissions by the same amount.

"Thus a $6,050 carbon tax to meet Biden’s net-zero goal would be set at a level more than 60 times the hypothetical climate benefits — and that’s assuming China and other large emerging economies cut their emissions too. Seen this way, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that net zero is a form of climate sadism, especially on the middle class and the less well-off."

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/508762-joe-biden-bets-on-net-zero

Conjecture 1:  Someone somewhere has any idea of how much temperature increase would be caused by amount X of carbon in the atmosphere

Conjecture 2:  Someone somewhere can predict what will result from the conjectured amount of temperature increase (previous temp increases have been associated with better living conditions for at least some areas of the world)

Conjecture 3:  Net zero energy is possible without nuclear power

Conjecture 4:  Net zero energy is the best investment humans can make to make life on this planet better for our progeny  

There's no point in going beyond conjecture 1. Since no one yet has provided a testable hypothesis of carbon driving climate change, the rest is barely conjecture

The article describes the IPCC's speculation about how to get to net zero and the prescription includes global top down government directing every action and a taxation on meat, because of meat's assumed carbon cost (only true when considering cattle that are grain fed/finished).

Links on Police and Race

the-facts-on-race-crime-and-policing-in-america

Abstract:

This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force –officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.

https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/empirical-analysis-racial-differences-police-use-force

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/07/03/police-black-killings-homicide-rates-race-injustice-column/3235072001/

If a genuine horror takes place, such as the death of George Floyd, there is no effort whatsoever to remind us how statistically rare such incidents may be. Of all black homicide victims last year, only 0.2 percent of them were unarmed victims of police. In Chicago last year there were 492 homicides and only three of them involved police.

https://nypost.com/2020/06/13/in-defense-of-america-not-a-failed-experiment-but-an-always-improving-one/

Mask Studies

Updated: 8/9/2020

Holland says they don't help. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html

Updated: 7/22/2020

I could not care less about "what experts say", that's killed too many people. That said, this is a good examination of the situation.

https://www.ftportfolios.com/Common/ContentFileLoader.aspx?ContentGUID=a9e49836-abc7-41cf-8949-4497ddee0018


Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) and the World Health Organization now recommend cloth masks for the general public, but earlier in the pandemic, both organizations recommended just the opposite. These shifting guidelines may have sowed confusion among the public about the utility of masks.

But health experts say the evidence is clear that masks can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and that the more people wearing masks, the better.
Very interesting modeling with some predictive verification.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.13553.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3gTZo2vwtO46f1-2IImMT8Cj5kv3lb_HWr1mdZC-MX8ZCYb9L6GrrGXAY


This is hard to study:


A recent study identified 10 RCTs that examined the effectiveness of facemasks on reducing influenza virus infection in the community from 1946-201811. The study
did not distinguish estimates by the type of mask but did examine masks in combination with hand hygiene. The RCTs were heterogeneous across community settings ranging from Hajj pilgrims, university and households settings. In

a pooled meta-analysis, the authors conclude that there was no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks (RR 0.78, 95% CI 0.51-1.20, p=0.25). But notably, the authors state that: “most studies were underpowered because of limited sample size, and some studies also reported suboptimal adherence in the face mask group.”
https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/set-c/set-c-facemasks.pdf?la=en-GB&hash=A22A87CB28F7D6AD9BD93BBCBFC2BB24


Masking works? Well, more masks are worn in areas with a high rate of infection - so did folks start wearing them too late? Or does the asian experience show masks don't work? What kind of masks did they wear? We don't know that much.
Asian countries that had previous experiences of the SARS outbreak experienced early and virtually universal mask usage. But, says Professor Mills, many other countries have seen a reversal of behaviour. She maintains, ‘There is a general assumption that countries such as the UK, which have no culture or history of mask wearing, will not rapidly adopt them. But this just doesn’t hold when we look at the data. As of late April, mask-wearing was up to 84% in Italy, 66% in the US and 64% in Spain, which increased almost immediately after clear policy recommendations and advice was given to the public.’
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-07-08-oxford-covid-19-study-face-masks-and-coverings-work-act-now?fbclid=IwAR0s0JqUa_YlRr89USs38LBYUxpr7upQfByhYCZjXYKb6twP3NUmEgeMi-8

Parts of this are really good, some already are outdated.
A study by John P A Ioannidis of Stanford University — according to the Einstein Foundation in Berlin one of the world’s ten most cited scientists — showed that immunity against Sars-Cov-2, measured in the form of antibodies, is much higher than previously thought. Ioannidis is certainly not a conspiracy theorist who just wants to swim against the stream; nontheless he is now being criticised, because the antibody tests used were not extremely precise. With that, his critics admit that they do not have such tests yet. And aside, John P A Ioannidis is such a scientific heavy-weight that all German virologists combined are a light-weight in comparison.

https://medium.com/@vernunftundrichtigkeit/coronavirus-why-everyone-was-wrong-fce6db5ba809

Presidential Pardons Suck

Washington was sent into vapors of shock and disgust with news of the commutation of Roger Stone. Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin declared it to be “the most corrupt and cronyistic act in all of recent history.” Despite my disagreement with the commutation, that claim is almost quaint. The sordid history of pardons makes it look positively chaste in comparison. Many presidents have found the power of pardons to be an irresistible temptation when it involves family, friends, and political allies.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/506876-why-this-roger-stone-commutation-is-not-as-controversial-as-some-think

What Might Work?

And yet, street outreach remains under-resourced. Philanthropic groups provide much of the funding, though earlier this year Lightfoot pledged $6 million in city funds to street outreach efforts. More is needed. Arthur says the ranks of street outreach workers need to be doubled, or even quadrupled. At READI, it costs $20,000 annually to pay for each participant. But a year in an Illinois prison costs $38,000. “It’s not a cheap program,” Bocanegra tells us. “But when you compare it to prison? What we pay as taxpayers … for police, for the cost of detention? We’re not educating the public about that comparison.”

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/editorials/ct-editorial-chicago-gun-violence-street-outreach-20200710-avvwmgr2j5eghkfpamtjxfecyq-story.html

So Called Wxxxe Privilege

It's a strong intro to a strong presentation of data and patterns of success that makes a strong case for the flaccid argument that pits blacks against whites.

"Growing up as a Sikh, turbaned boy in the majority-white environment of British Columbia, Canada, I was a constant target of bullying throughout my elementary school years. On bus rides home, I remember having to sit in the back where the older, “cool” kids hung out, and they used to jump up and slap the top part of my turban. I was consistently harassed with comments like “Go back to where you came from” and “You don’t belong here.”

"Upon immigrating from India when I was 4, my family suffered tremendous economic hardships and cultural challenges. My father drove a taxi at night and my mom worked many menial jobs as a cook, housecleaner, barista and motel cleaner. It’s fair to say my family never had success handed to them on a silver platter. But more than a decade post-immigration, we have found our footing in Western society, with my dad making nearly six figures operating his own software company."

https://nypost.com/2020/07/11/the-fallacy-of-white-privilege-and-how-its-corroding-society/?fbclid=IwAR0ScfcX6OnJJxYikPOT2YCVlUGQuhCzlbu_EOcJtFtbhKVDWJkEVpOj5t8

Budget Problems, Engagement First on the Chopping Block

800-900 officers, a budget of 193 million, and 80% of that is salaries and benefits. And this city does not have a "large" police department relative to other similarly sized cities. Now the Wuhan flu costs come calling.

To preserve the ability to respond to 911 calls, they seem likely to cancel the community engagement and outreach programs. No wonder nobody smart would want to be a mayor.
"MPD insiders say this will likely involve scaling back or disbanding the procedural justice and community engagement units, as well as the PAL program — which runs youth sports teams across the city — in order to preserve a more essential function: responding to 911 calls. If those units do fold, most of those officers would likely go back to patrolling the streets, joining school resource officers, who returned to working out of a squad car after the department lost its contract to work in city schools.

https://www.startribune.com/cost-of-deep-police-cutbacks-comes-into-sharp-view/571730462/?refresh=true

"Nothing's Changed" Is Another Untruth

In fact, the northeastern states were the birthplace of anti-slavery movements and the first ban on slavery anywhere in the world went into effect in Vermont, in 1777. The Constitution was, as Martin Luther King Jr. astutely noted, a “promissory note” that would eventually pay off with freedom for black America. Economic and social advancement for black Americans is not a myth. The Economic Policy Institute found that the difference in high school graduation rates between whites and blacks fell from 27 percent in 1962 to 5 percent in 2004. Last fall, the rate of black and Hispanic unemployment hit an all-time low. Since 1980, the percentage of black adults with college degrees has tripled. Life expectancy of white Americans exceeded that of black Americans by more than seven years as of 1970; that gap has been cut in half, to three and a half years. The percentage of black Americans earning more than $75,000 more than doubled (adjusting for inflation) between 1970 and 2014, according to Harvard professor William Julius Wilson, who studies upward mobility among black Americans.

Yet the progressive class that runs the media ignores all of this progress because the media’s business model is to sell ads off catastrophe. Nobody watches CNN on a slow news day, which is why CNN is always telling us things are falling apart. If a genuine horror takes place, such as the death of George Floyd, there is no effort whatsoever to remind us how statistically rare such incidents may be. Of all black homicide victims last year, only 0.2 percent of them were unarmed victims of police. In Chicago last year there were 492 homicides and only three of them involved police.

https://nypost.com/2020/06/13/in-defense-of-america-not-a-failed-experiment-but-an-always-improving-one/

Weird to get this tale of NYC from the UK ...

Ugly.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8490367/How-coronavirus-BLM-protests-liberal-mayor-doing-Bin-Laden-never-could.html

The courage to say it, and the potential cost to the one who says it ...

The courage to say it ...

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

At the time of this nation’s founding, slavery was a global sin committed by black, white, brown and yellow sinners across the planet. Black people in Africa owned white (and black) slaves. Black people in America, as early as the 1600s, owned black (and white) slaves. That’s not a typographical error. Black people in America owned black and white slaves.

The United States of America, because of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, was actually a global leader in abolishing slavery. As writer and historian Thomas Sowell has repeatedly pointed out, long after the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation, blacks in Northern Africa still bought, sold and utilized white slaves.

https://outkick.com/what-to-the-intelligent-is-colin-kaepernick-a-fraud/

Just Another Incredible American Story

Hate and guilt-shaming are not helpful for society to improve and move forward. Instead, we should embrace the central American value of freedom. The freedom to worship the religion of your choice. The freedom to hold differing political ideologies. The freedom to choose your occupation and your own path in life. The freedom to peaceably protest your government.

We are beyond blessed to call the Land of the Free our home. Only in America can I be born a poor Black boy raised in poverty by a single mother and climb the ladder of opportunity to become a brain surgeon and then a member of the president's Cabinet. These dreams would not be possible in socialist Venezuela, communist China or authoritarian North Korea.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/statues-george-washington-other-heroes-are-being-razed-we-should-ncna1232731

Embracing, Chasing the Ideal

A delicious feast of thought and appreciation for a blinding flash of the obvious - we are born equal in the eyes of our creator and the work isn't finished until the government treats each of us the same as it treats all of us, with respect for our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

Frederick Douglass

“I hold that the Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government. Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence of syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its true origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.” – From his “Address for the Promotion of Colored Enlistment,” 1864

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/04/great_american_minds_on_all_men_are_created_equal_143607.html

Protests Made a Joke of the Lockdown Edicts

A boy in my neighborhood committed suicide a few weeks ago. It’s possible that the teen’s preexisting problems were exacerbated by the seclusion, tediousness, and helplessness of a national lockdown. Maybe not. I didn’t really know him. I do know that locals were forced to pay respects by sitting parked cars in the local Catholic church’s parking lot. Friends of the devastated family couldn’t hug the aggrieved parents. They couldn’t enter the church and pray together for their community. Scenes like this play out across the country.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-lockdowns-are-a-scandal/

Can You Spread the Disease Before You Know You Are Sick?

That came yesterday with a World Health Organization press conference at which Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said that the latest studies show that asymptomatic spreading of the coronavirus appears to be “very rare.”https://www.aier.org/article/world-health-organization-walks-back-claim-about-asymptomatic-spread/

The Ignorance

"In Boston, it was emancipator Abraham Lincoln’s statue that has been repeatedly vandalized. In Philadelphia, it was abolitionist Matthias Baldwin. In San Francisco, it was President Ulysses Grant, who put down the Confederacy's rebellion. In Washington, D.C., George Washington’s statue was pulled down on the campus of George Washington University.

"In another part of Washington, yet another mostly white mob of professional protesters showed up in Lincoln Park with the intention of tearing down a memorial to emancipation that Frederick Douglass himself had dedicated in a magnificent speech, which was mostly financed by freed slaves. A black woman who spoke up to object — “Are you trying to divide us or bring us together? Because it seems like you are abusing this situation” — was jeered until she left."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/vandals-demonstrate-failure-of-american-education-system

The Commanding Intellect, the Mastery of English

Holy shit. Read it. 

https://fee.org/articles/why-you-should-read-what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july-to-your-kids/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Diversity Slight of Hand

As I read this I remember how in my youth, one would likely have been locked out of several professions in my part of the world if they did not profess their Christian faith. Certainly no one could be elected to office if they were not male and a devoted Christian (which did not prevent their unChristian behaviors). This "do as I say, not as I do" process is dominant still but with new rules about the right beliefs. 

While liberal diversity culture can go as far as advocating for outright racial quotas there is very little discussion of promoting differing modes of thought or true multiculturalism. In fact, in the progressive spaces where I have worked, it increasingly appears that the desired outcome is for employees to look different but think exactly the same; the end state is a mono culture that defeats the whole point of meaningful diversity. Where, for instance, are the liberal publications preaching the value of diversity that are also recruiting more pro-life writers? Polling shows Hispanics, America's most populous minority group, tend to be more conservative on abortion issues than the rest of the population, a position that has nothing to do with race and everything to do with religious values.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-diversity-trap-jilani

Herd Immunity Cometh

"In a second study, German researchers analyzed blood samples of 365 people, of which 180 had had COVID-19 and 185 had not. When they exposed the blood samples to the COVID-19 coronavirus, they found, as expected, that blood from those who had had the illness produced a substantial immune response. More significantly, they also found that 81 percent of the subjects who had never had COVID-19 also produced a T-cell immune reaction, reports The Science Times. If the German study's results prove out, that would suggest that earlier common cold coronavirus infections may provide about eight in 10 people some degree of immune protection from the COVID-19 virus.

https://reason.com/2020/07/01/covid-19-herd-immunity-is-much-closer-than-antibody-tests-suggest-say-2-new-studies/

Taibbi Nails This One about Jackie Robinson

There is not a single baseball fan anywhere – literally not one, except perhaps Robin DiAngelo, I guess – who believes Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier because he “finally had what it took to play with whites.” Everyone familiar with this story understands that Robinson had to be exceptional, both as a player and as a human being, to confront the racist institution known as Major League Baseball. His story has always been understood as a complex, long-developing political tale about overcoming violent systemic oppression. For DiAngelo to suggest history should re-cast Robinson as “the first black man whites allowed to play major league baseball” is grotesque and profoundly belittling.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility

What Went Right, and Then Wrong

Today’s racial-grievance opportunists portray blacks as impotent victims, unable to move forward or upward under the weight of a legacy of slavery and the all-purpose villain of institutional racism.  In their agenda, equality of opportunity makes no difference. Instead, their proclaimed goal is to demand equality of outcome by monetizing the suffering of their ancestors as reparations—checks that would be handed to them. The demand for reparations ignores problematic issues of who should pay for and who should receive remuneration and the situation of the descendants of blacks who owned slaves and of those who arrived on our nation’s shores—penniless but filled with hope—long after the end of slavery.  The accounts of sports superstars of the NFL and NBA who were once millionaires but ended up bankrupt can serve as cautionary tales regarding the inconsequential impact of cash payouts in the absence of qualities such as delayed gratification, personal restraint, and foresight.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/04/black_lives_matters_silence_on_a_champion_of_racial_equality_143622.html

How the Heck ...

Does Forbes let itself be cancelled? 

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-robson-forbes-falls-to-cancel-culture-as-it-erases-environmentalists-mea-culpa/wcm/370ca87c-37c3-4376-8e95-78231ae5fd46/

Tucker pushes back:

https://outkick.com/tucker-carlson-record-fox-news/

Re-Birth of Slavery

This is slavery by another name, and it disgusts me. The old have no justification for mass incarceration and coercion of the young and the idea that those coerced into service will accomplish anything of value is too daft for words. If opinion is to be suppressed, they should suppress this one

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/502038-it-is-time-for-mandatory-national-service

Two Tenths of One Percent

Nobody watches CNN on a slow news day, which is why CNN is always telling us things are falling apart. If a genuine horror takes place, such as the death of George Floyd, there is no effort whatsoever to remind us how statistically rare such incidents may be. Of all black homicide victims last year, only 0.2 percent of them were unarmed victims of police. In Chicago last year there were 492 homicides and only three of them involved police. Yet we’re told (by Chinese state propaganda, Al Jazeera, famous US professors and progressive columnists) that America is a failed state or a failed experiment.

https://nypost.com/2020/06/13/in-defense-of-america-not-a-failed-experiment-but-an-always-improving-one/