JayB

Jay - people aren't routinely eating cattle feed from what I understand. If you think BSE can't survive digestion how is it that the consumption of diseased beef (deer or elk) and CJD are linked? I was just saying that if it was necessary to ingest diseased tissue to contract transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, then it's hard to see how herbivores such as deer would contract the disease unless they became cannibalistic omnivores and started eating each other's nervous tissue, or hopped a fence and ate some infected cattle feed on a nearby ranch. So far as I know, the use of rendered remains in livestock feed was outlawed in 1997, so the continued transmission of the disease in the wild - in the absence of tainted feed - presents a problem unless protein from the dead deer carcases alone serves as a viable means of transmitting the disease, as Murray suggested. When cattle were no longer exposed to feed with rendered remains in it, the incidence of the disease in England declined dramatically, and if transmission is relatively rare between animals that live in constant proximity to one another in a closed space, it stands to reason that transmission between animals in the wild would be at least an order of magnitude or two lower. The disease may be orally transmissible, but if the disease is transmitted by a bare protein via ingestion then that protein would have to overcome all of the hurdles that I outlined above on its journey from the mouth to the brain. There's some evidence to support that conclusion out there, but based on the papers I've seen it's far from conclusive at this point.

I don't think so. Proteins don't cross intact skin at all. If meat handlers did not use gloves and did not wash their hands, they could possibly ingest some by putting hands in their mouths, but this route would be less likely to cause infection than actually consuming the meat. In answer to JayB's question this experiment has been done: "Using in vitro conversion of radiolabeled PrPC to protease-resistant PrP by incubation with PrPSc preparations of either strain, Bessen et al. (1995) could confer the respective properties to the newly converted protease-resistant PrP." Biology and Pathology of Prion Diseases: Hypothesis on the Nature of the Infectious Agent From the Same Site... "A disease-specific protein can be identified in the infected brain and other organs. This protein, the "scrapie prion protein", PrPSc in short (also called "BSE prion protein" PrPBSE in the case of BSE), is derived from the normal form of the prion protein, PrPC, occurring in the normal body. The two proteins, the disease-specific PrPSc and the normal PrPC, differ in their spatial structures and the fact that PrPSc is resistant to destruction by digestive enzymes (proteins which digest food in the human stomach), whereas PrPC is completely destroyed when treated with digestive enzymes. As a result of many studies it has been possible for scientists to come to the conclusion that PrPSc is a component of the pathogen of the prion diseases. It is even speculated that PrPSc represents the complete pathogen. According to this theory, an infection brought about by the penetrating PrPSc causes PrPC to be converted into PrPSc. The newly formed PrPSc can now, for its part, bring about the conversion of more PrPC into PrPSc. This leads to the disastrous chain reaction where the PrPSc production increases exponentially and the brain is damaged irrevocably. Notably, the increase in PrPSc during the course of the disease correlates with the increase in infectivity. " This hardly constitutes an exhaustive search of the literature, but in the reading that I have done I have yet to see a study in which someone isolates ultrapure prion protein that's in the conformation associated with the disease, administers it orally, and witnesses the disease in the animal and radioloabelled protein in the appropriate cells in the brain. What I have seen are studies in which researchers generate infections by administering cell lysates from infected tissue, but this sort of experiment does not constitute credible proof that the protein alone is sufficient to transmit the disease. It could be that the protein surrounds and protects fragment of DNA or RNA that actually serves as the infectious agent, or works with the protein in the manner of an extremely primitive virus, etc, etc, etc The studies like the one posted above where prion proteins turn their normal counterparts to the conformation associated with the disease in vitro are certainly interesting, but are not sufficient grounds to claim that the naked proteins are capable of inducing the disease in-vivo IMO.

Maybe. Watching the temps before I book a room....

It wouldn't bother me if they were gone, and I think that the presence of Coke machines is more symptomatic of a need to reform public school's fiscal policies and funding mechanisms than anything else. And I think that making participation in at least one after-school sport compulsory would probably be a whole lot more effective in combating obesity than banning the coke machines. The only other observation I'd add is that there seems to be no better way to insure that teenagers will engage in something than to forbid them to do it deny them access to it and leave it at that. If the day ever comes when eating junk food and drinking Coke aquires the same risky cache as drinking, smoking, speeding, etc, etc, etc - then I think we will be in even bigger trouble.... I'm out. Have a Merry Christmas.

"Swedish Meatballs Daily Policy Digest Health Issues Wednesday, December 03, 2003 Despite programs combining a healthy diet and physical exercise to fight obesity in children, the number of overweight children in Sweden has tripled in the past 15 years. Currently 19 percent of boys and 15 percent of girls are overweight. Yet it isn't supposed to be like this in Sweden. For years this nation of nine million has had the sorts of programs, combining healthy diet and physical exercise, that antiobesity advocates everywhere dream about: -Unlike the United States, vending machines are unheard of in Swedish schools. -Sports programs are heavily subsidized to get youngsters up and moving. -TV commercials aimed at kids under 12 are banned. Schoolchildren as young as eight learn to cook healthy meals. But, Sweden's public health programs, comprehensive as they are, are still losing ground to the combined temptations of fast food, heavy TV watching and Web-surfing that have taken hold in the past decade: -McDonald's Corp.'s sales in Sweden have tripled since 1992; last year, the company spent the equivalent of $34.5 million on marketing in the country, compared with less than $12 million in 1994. -Coca-Cola Co.'s ad spending has risen 15-fold since 1994, to almost $20 million; cola sales have risen 17 percent since 1998. -Meanwhile, Swedish children are being lured by myriad new programs on international satellite TV; these shows and their ads aren't bound by Swedish restrictions. According to Sweden's National Institute of Public Health, 40 percent of teenage boys participate in organized physical activity at least four times a week, up from 28 percent in 1985; however, they spend as much as 5.3 hours per day watching TV, surfing the Web, talking on the phone or doing other sedentary activities. Source: Deborah Ball, "Swedish Kids Show Difficulty Of Fighting Fat," Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2003. " As far as the vending machine vendetta is concerned - it wouldn't bother me if they were no longer present schools - but blaming the problem on the coke machines is missing the mark IMO - although I would be happy to live in a world in which coke machines presented a greater threat to children than the molester down the street. Even if you eliminate the vending machines from schools - it's not like kids can't run to the 7-11 - or home and slug down as much as they want. IMO successful parenting comes down to teaching kids how to handle all of the tempting and potentially harmfull things lurking out there in society - drugs, sex, prostitution, gambling, speeding, etc, etc, etc -that they can choose to engage in or not rather than attempting to erradicate the sources of the said temptations. In that sense, banning coke machines seems to be similar to banning sex-ed, eliminating the availability of contraception, and insisting on abstinence-only education in order to protect kids from diseases and pregnancy. Much better to educate them about the risks and rewards and instill within them with the knowlege and the good-sense necessary to take care of themselves and make good decisions when the time comes IMO.

Have you seen any papers where they administer purified radioloabelled prion proteins to test animals orally and then find both the intact protein localized in brain tissue as well as the plaques of aberrant prion protein? Or where they administered unlabelled protein and detected it in tissue sections with F.I.S.H. or some other means? I haven't come across any papers like that that have would support the claim that prions can move from hamburger to brain - but I would think that there must be such papers out there if this transmission model has been universally accepted. I'm also curious about the incidence of CWD in wild deer and sheep, as they surely are not grilling each other up in the wilderness or engaging in the ritual cannibalism that spread Kuru. The only model of transmission that would jive with this model is if the wild animals were getting their hands on tainted-feed destined for cattle and the species-barrier was too low to prevent transmission from cattle remains to Deer and Elk. I suppose it could pass from mother to offspring (?)but you'd think that natural selection would put a damper on this mode of transmission pretty quickly.

"J Biol Chem. 2003 Dec 10 [Epub ahead of print]. Related Articles, Links Autocatalytic conversion of recombinant prion proteins discplays a species barrier. Baskakov IV. Medical Biotechnology Center, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, Baltimore, MD 21201. The most unorthodox feature of the prion disease is the existence of an abnormal infectious isoform of the prion protein, PrP(Sc). According to the protein-only hypothesis, PrP(Sc) propagates its abnormal conformation in an autocatalytic manner using the normal isoform, Pr P©, as a substrate. Because autocatalytic conversion is considered to be a key element of prion replication, in this study we tested whether in vitro conversion of recombinant PrP into abnormal isoform displays specific features of an autocatalytic process. We found that recombinant human PrP formed two distinct beta-sheet rich isoforms, the beta-oligomer and the amyloid fibrils. The kinetics of the fibrils formation measured at different pH values were consistent with a model in which the beta-oligomer was not on the kinetic pathway to the fibrillar form. As judged by electron microscopy, an acidic pH favored to the long fibrils, whereas short fibrils morphologically similar to prion rods were formed at neutral pH. At neutral pH the conversion to the fibrils can be seeded with small aliquots of preformed fibrils. As small as 0.001% aliquot displayed seeding activity. The conversion of human PrP was seeded with high efficacy only with the preformed fibrils of human but not mouse PrP and vice versa. These studies illustrate that in vitro conversion of recombinant PrP displays specific features of an autocatalytic process and mimics the transmission barrier of prion propagation observed in vivo. We speculate that this model can be used as a rapid assay for assessing the intrinsic propensities of prion transmission between different species." I'll have to read up on this one a bit more but It'd be interesting to see if there has ever been a study in which purified prion protein delivered orally to test animals has resulted in an infection. I've seen a few papers where they injected cell-lysates directly into animals and generated the disease, but this hardly excludes other vectors. It would be amazing to me if there was a protein out there that could survive being cooked, resist degredation by pepsin and acidity in the stomach, pass through the intestine intact, pass into the bloodstream as an intact protein rather than a polypeptide, exist in the bloodstream as an intact foreign protein witout provoking antibody generation, make it through the liver unmodified, ultimately be transported from the bloodstream and across the cell membrane, and then persist in the cells without being tagged by kinases for import into lysozomes for destruction, or attack by proteases in the cytosol.

I'm saying the main reason that people are obese is because they consume more calories than they expend over a long period of time. Food consumption is a voluntary act, and that to a certain extent the innability to regulate food consumption will be associated with an innability to regulate other aspects of one's behavior, and that these traits will often manifest themselves in other aspects of these people's lives as well - which ultimately leads to a moderate correlation between obesity and a low SES. I imagine that there is a correlation between other behaviors that indicate an innability to regulate one's behavior - excessive smoking, drinking, gambling, drug use, etc - and a low SES as well. I wouldn't call it laziness per se - but the odds are reasonably high that someone who can't restrain themselves from blowing this month's check on Colt 45 Tall Boys and lottery tickets probably doesn't do a very good job of keeping their hands off the third helping of beef stroganoff at the local all-you-can-eat buffet either. Like I said before - there are plenty of extremely hard-working fat people out there (see the nurse population at the average hospital for exhibit A) and lazy-ass skinny people (Hilton Sisters) out there - but for a certain percentage of people who are both poor and obese I suspect the two conditions are not entirely unrelated. With regards the the correlation between obesity and a low SES - I think that there are a number of factors that contribute to this correlation - none of which can be addressed in an effective way by increasing regulation and lawsuits - and certainly won't be remedied by lying to fat people and telling them their obesity has nothing to do with their dietary habits and lack of excercise. As far as kids are concerned, if someone has obese children (as in a couple of standard deviations beyond the normal allowance for baby fat) the parents - and not the folks marketing food towards them - are responsible for not regulating their children's diet and exercise properly. FWIW - I believe Sweden has instituted most, if not all of the measures that the usual cheerleaders for the nanny state have been clamoring for - banning all marketing of sweets and junk food to children, strict regulation of the foods available at schools, etc, etc, etc - and it's had a negligible impact on the prevalence of obesity over there. I believe I saw this article in the same issue of The Economist that someone else referred to earlier.

If all that comes out of this is that you have to park at the lower lot and take the trail on the opposite side if you want to access the valley when the lifts are running, then I can deal with that.

Not sure how that constitutes a contradiction. Humans have had the same genetic make-up for eons. Mass obesity has only been a problem for a generation at most. If the average person's genetic makeup was the primary factor responsible for their accumulation of massively excessive stores of body-fat, we would have seen this phenotype expressed with the same frequency throughout our history. This is clearly not the case. What has changed in recent history is the virtual elimination of physical exertion from the average person's daily routine, coupled with a food supply in which people must exert control over their caloric intake rather than having it regulated for them by scarcity and privation. No matter how predisposed one is to obesity, becoming obese requires a sustained consumption of far more calories than one expends. The fact that we as a society have attempted to divert responsibility "The Obesity Epidemic" from the individuals who choose to fail to control their consumption of food to a variety of convenient scapegoats like the fast food industry is yet another manifestation of the failure both to take responsibility for our actions and hold others accountable for theirs - also something unique to this generation.

OH MY GOD PEOPLE MIGHT DO TO US WHAT WE DID TO CANADA!!!!!! NOOOO ANYTHING BUT THAT Yeah - like Canadians and Canadian Cattlemen would accept imports of beef from countries with confirmed cases of BSE when their beef/cows had no known cases of the disease.

The Onion had a hillarious spin on the "The Media Is Responsible for My Low Self Esteem" bit in the last issue. Something along the lines of "Pet Owners Troubled by Unrealistic Images of Animal Beauty in Pet Food Adds." The process of becoming obese involves a variety of factors, and is probably unique for every person, but the bottom line is that one must consume more than one expends in order for the weight gain to occur. The most effective means of promoting weight loss in morbidly obese people is surgically reducing the volume of the stomach - which does not change their genes, their socioeconomic status, immediately reverse longstanding psychological problems, change the composition of the food available in close proximity to their homes, alter the price of the food supply available to them, or any of the other factors that may have contributed to their obesity - it simply limits their ability to absorb calories by consuming food. Cause--->effect. It's that simple.

There are way more people that would be willing to ski a 45 degree slope - I'd say about 5,000 times more - than are willing to step up and commit to the rotation on a 360 off of a decent sized jump, let alone get inverted. If you are talking about any icy-sustained 45 degree slope of the sort that Hans Saari died on, then I'd say you are correct - but how many backcountry skiers ski that kind of terrain, and how often? Not very many - but there's never any shortage of people who ski moderate BC lines willing to talk shit about the kids pulling manuevers in the parks. And if we are talking a 3,000 foot line with a brief section of 45 degree snow in carvable conditions with a self-arrest pole in your hands- something you are much more likely to find a recreational BC skier on - then the 360 is the clear winner in the "Quien Es Mas Macho" contest. Perhaps I'm biased. I inflicted enough pain on myself in the park to scare me away from doing much of anything but the occaisional straight-ahead air in the parks these days, but actually doing (emphasis here) the odd 360 on the smaller jumps and triple combos of weak old-school manuevers on the big table-tops in Blackcomb's park back in the day made me respect the risk involved in the tricks these kids are doing in a big way. Average Joe tries anything close to what these guys are doing and go anywhere as big and average Joe is airlifted to the ICU, at best. Guaranteed outcome.

Funny thing about the jibbers is that I bet that the folks who rip on them don't have the balls to pull a straight-up 360 off of a decent sized jump, let alone the massive twisting flips with switch landings and whatnot that the skiers in these movies pull-off routinely these days. The notion that someone with the combination of the heuvos and the altheticism necessary to throw down like that in the park couldn't learn to handle making turns back and forth down lines that the likes of the average recreational skier can handle in 1/2 of a run, if they didn't know how to do so already, is one of the more laughable conceits I've ever come across. It's like some dude that tours on a Gold-Wing watching freestyle motorcross riders do backflips with no-hands landings shrugging his shoulders and saying "Yeah- but let's see them handle passing a semi on I-90 with a cross-wind... that's real ridin' for ya - not this candy-ass business with the backflips and whatnot"

Pretty interesting read - I'm impressed. Check it out: Iraq Now Sample#1 [There’s a very useful site on coalition forces casualty figures here Unfortunately, I don't see very many journalists using it very well. The media focuses overwhelmingly on the number of lives lost. It’s easy to see why—it tugs more heartstrings in Peoria. But if you’re going to accept coalition casualties as a metric for measuring the progress of the struggle for Iraq, then I believe it’s much more instructive to focus on the numbers of wounded. Why? Because the sheer numbers of wounded dwarf the number of dead, any statistical analysis of wounded is going to provide a much smoother graph with a smaller margin for error. Further, when you focus exclusively on the number of soldiers killed, then your analysis excludes the vast majority of attacks on coalition forces. Let’s look at the numbers. The United States took 270 wounded in September, 433 wounded in October, 344 in November, and 119 through 11 days of December. I’ll count three more wounded I have personal knowledge of from the 12th of December (plus one KIA, and another dead in a separate possible suicide, from the site’s press releases), for a total of 122 wounded through 13 days of December. You can see the table on the Website. I would adjust the December daily average figures to 8.7, based on the information available to me here. To reduce increase the number of data points and reduce the standard deviation of daily figures, I would add the number of those killed and wounded from enemy action together, while excluding non-battle casualties, which don’t tell me much about the enemy. That yields: September Total casualties: 277 9.23/day October: 466 15.03/day November: 441 14.70/day December: 128* 9.8/ day So what can we learn from the numbers? The first thing you see is that from the point of view of total U.S. casualties, November was not the worst month since the President declared an end to major combat operations; that honor actually belongs to October. Moreover, the November figures for those killed in action were skewed upwards by two statistical outliers: two downed helicopters—one in Fallujah killed 17, I believe, and another near Mosul killed, for a total of 23. Eliminate the outliers, and the average number of wounded/day drops below 14. The difference between 15.03 and 13.93 is not particularly significant, except that the trend continues into December, which thus far has only produced 9.8 casualties per day—the best day since September. Again, though, December’s figures are skewed by two significant outlying data points: last week’s car bombing in Mosul (wounding 26), and Friday’s car bombing at the 82nd Airborne Division headquarters in Ar Ramadi, which wounded 14 and killed one. Subtract those two events, and the remaining guerrilla activity throughout the country caused 6.69 U.S. casualties per day so far in December—well under the September’s pace. This is not to suggest that the casualties in these events ought to be dismissed as insignificant. They themselves reflect disturbing trends about the enemy’s ability to 1.) obtain and use surface-to-air missiles against U.S. aircraft, and 2.) Recruit people actually willing to blow themselves up. Equally significantly, though, the figures suggest that a smaller and smaller number of insurgent cells may become responsible for a greater number of casualty-producing operations. I’m also struck by the casualty figures’ seeming lack of correlation with Ramadan. If Ramadan were going to bring a grass-roots rash of religiously motivated attacks, then you would expect that November’s total casualties would be significantly greater than October’s. I’m not entirely surprised by it, though. Littlegreenfootballs.com links to a good statistical analysis of intifada casualties, and I could find no evidence of a Ramadan boost in terrorist activity there, either. Ramadan isn’t about killing, anyway. Lastly, the overall drop off in casualties may well be weather-related. Night time temperatures are dropping into the 30s, which probably makes it tough for Joe Sheik’s-pack to motivate himself to get off the couch at night and pick up his remote control and go out and kill some infidels. Why not wait until spring, when it’s warmer? Someone with more time than I have might be willing to go back through casualty figures and weather data and do a regression analysis of temperatures vs. guerrilla activity in Afghanistan and other areas. Anyone with an econometrics background ought to be able to do this. I’m surprised I haven’t seen any respectable statistical analysis of casualty figures yet from the NY Times. Maybe they should get someone on their financial desk on the story. I have no solid answers for why total U.S. casualties seem to have markedly increased in October. My own unstudied sense is that the number of total incidents seems to have remained constant, or even declined since July. One possibility: somewhere along the line, the insurgent changed his tactics. Direct fire engagements on U.S. troops are less common now. His emphasis has shifted to improvised explosive devices, and more recently, to more spectacular car bombings. I haven’t seen anything like this 10th grade level of statistical analysis from the New York Times or other major media outlets yet, though. Maybe they should get their political and financial desks in on the story. Time, Inc., on the other hand, should probably contract it out to Morningstar.com. *Note: The KIA count is updated through the 13th, so I’m assuming the Ar Ramadi fatality is included in this figure. Monthly wounded figures prior to September are apparently not available, and any aggregate would be highly skewed from the March and April casualty figures. I’m therefore excluding them for the purposes of this post. Splash, out Jason" /i] Sample#2 The Baghdad press corps seems to have missed a larger story. This article, from United Press International describes an antiterrorism demonstration in Baghdad attended by an estimated 4,000 people. An Iraqi blogger-on-the-scene has this report: The rallies today proved to be a major success. I didn't expect anything even close to this. It was probably the largest demonstration in Baghdad for months. It wasn't just against terrorism. It was against Arab media, against the interference of neighbouring countries, against dictatorships, against Wahhabism, against oppression, and of course against the Ba'ath and Saddam. What you don’t see in the UPI story is that the demonstrations were not limited to Baghdad: there was actually a series of coordinated rallies across in cities across the country, including one scheduled from 0930 to 1200 hours at the government center here in Ar Ramadi. Here’s what things looked like from my little corner of the Army: I have recently been temporarily assigned to the post of battalion “battle captain.” For nonmilitary readers, that means from 0100 to 1300 hours every day I am the battalion commander’s representative in the TOC, and basically run all routine operations in the absence of the battalion commander or executive officer. If this were Star Trek, I’d “have the conn.” At about 1100 hours on the 10th of December, we received word from a civil affairs detachment at the government center that the demonstrations had wound down, which allowed us to stand down a mounted quick reaction force we had standing by “just in case.” After terrorists had murdered 15 people in the bombing of a police academy graduation ceremony just 20 yards away last July, we were very concerned that the rally would become a target for terrorist attack. We were also concerned that the march itself could turn ugly, and had decided to hedge our bets by maintaining a reserve to react to anything that could happen. But hearing that the rally was winding down without serious incident was certainly good news. A few minutes later, though, my RTO took a call from the civil affairs team stating that a counterdemonstration had formed, and a slogan-chanting mob of about 200 people had come from the east, and was throwing rocks at Americans and Iraqi police inside the compound. “By our lives, by our souls, we will preserve Islam!” The team was not part of our unit. I actually didn’t even know they were there until they called in. They were in our area of operations, though, and the RTO told me they wanted permission to fire a warning shot. I hate to be the guy sitting in a safe place on a radio and a room full of maps denying a request to someone in a tight spot in the field. But on the other hand, I had to weigh the immediate needs of the guy on the ground against the broader mission: the stability of Ar Ramadi in the long term. The problem with using warning shots in this kind of situation -- when you’re not confronted with an immediately lethal threat -- is that once you fire, you’ve played out your hand. If the rock throwing continues, you either have to kill people or appear impotent. It’s a lose-lose proposition. Furthermore, put yourself in the position of some average Joe Iraqi in the crowd. You can hear the shots ring out, and you can hear the difference between an M16 and an AK-47. So you know it was the Americans who fired first, but you have no idea that the first shots didn’t hit anybody. If there’s a gun available, and you’re a male, and there are women around, you’re going to grab one. (Arab machismo makes people do nutty things.) Now, we know that there’s an AK-47 inside almost every shop, and almost every apartment immediately above and behind the shops. Iraqi families keep them around for home protection. There are more AK’s in Ar Ramadi than there are Elvis plates in Vegas. There is also a known extralegal weapons market just a couple of hundred meters away. If a warning shot is misinterpreted, the crowd could quickly arm itself with implements far deadlier than swords, and it could do it in minutes. I didn’t consciously thought about it at the time, but one of my NCOs on duty reminded me that we’d seen this happen before, in July, at the very same location. We had most of a company stationed at the government center at that time. A bunch of kids started throwing rocks at the compound. A crowd gathered. The compound started taking small arms and RPG fire from across the street. To the west, a man was skipping around behind a bunch of kids handing hand grenades to children and encouraging them to throw them at our troops behind the compound. Our soldiers couldn’t get a shot at him without endangering the children. So they returned aimed fire at the RPG shooters and small-arms fire to the north, but they held their fire to the west, and just took the grenades. When it was over, at least three Iraqis were dead. If we fired warning shots, and they were misinterpreted or ignored, then chances were good that things could escalate to a pitched battle within minutes. “Have them hold their fire and hunker down,” I ordered the RTO. “Meanwhile, let’s stand that QRF (quick reaction force) back up before they break down completely.” But the guys had anticipated that order and were already transmitting it before I even thought of it. Sharp team. I explained my reasoning to the RTOs real quick, though, so they’d have some guidance from me. “I’m not going to meet non-deadly force with deadly force,” I said. “We can always go deadly later.” At that time, though, I still had no idea how many U.S. soldiers were at the government center. The civil affairs unit had not coordinated with us that morning to tell us they were showing up. So I decided to tell the QRF to roll towards the government center and deploy in a show of force. Once the order to hold fire and the order to roll the QRF was clear, I picked up the radio myself and called the CA team. Generally, I don’t pick up the radio, personally. We’ve got tremendous, sharp RTOs, with tons of common sense, who’ve been directing battalion operations for months. My role is to track happenings on a map, monitor the overall situation, and make sound and timely decisions. Which means my job isn’t to yap on the radio. (That’s a common mistake young lieutenants make).My job is to think! But this time I picked up the radio, because a guy on the ground in a tight spot is going to want to talk to the decision maker, and I wanted to hear the voice of the guy on the ground and get a couple of points of information in person. “Hey, how many soldiers do you have?” He told me…which I won’t be specific about, but it was enough to defend themselves for the time being, if need be. “Ok. Do you have enough transportation assets to mount everyone up and leave if you have to?” “Oh, roger, that’s not an issue!” “Ok. Are you getting any assistance from the Iraqi Police?” “Roger. They’re doing a good job. They’ve showed up in enough force to move the crowd away. Things are going ok for now. “Ok, roger. Now, I don’t know what your mission is. But will it fuck your mission up to withdraw and come back tomorrow? Are you done for the day?” “Roger, that’s not a problem. We’re done for the day!” “Roger, wait one. Out.” So my NCOIC I went over to the map and worked out a plan—talking it over out loud, because I’ve been on the job long enough to know two RTOs have good, sound tactical ideas of their own, and they’re not afraid to voice them. (if anything, they voice them TOO much, but I can always tone that down or cut through that if I really need to. I’d rather have to reign someone in than drag them along, any day). We agreed to roll the QRF and have them set up a blocking position between the government center and the mob, and cover the withdrawal of the civil affairs team. If air was available, we’d ask it to monitor the crowd, but we wanted to get our people out of there, for the same reason that you want to remove the oxygen supply from a fire. If it were a pro-Islam demonstration, the hope was that it would fizzle out in the absence of Americans. Once everyone knew what the plan was, all we had to do was set the RTOs loose to communicate the plan, and monitor events. Because I don’t normally pick up the radio, but work through my TOC NCO and let the RTOs do their job, when the battalion commander walked in, I was able to take a minute to brief him up on the situation without the flow of information skipping a beat. The QRF arrived within minutes. The civil affairs team trucked up and left, with the infantry withdrawing immediately after. Everyone called in with updates. The civil affairs team was also had enough on the ball to take some digital photographs of the rock throwers and leaders of the violent counterdemonstration, and emailed them to us within a day. A couple of Iraqi policemen received minor injuries from the rocks, but no one was killed, no shots were fired, no property was destroyed, as far as I know, and everyone on both sides made it home alive. It wasn’t a difficult day, nor a particularly difficult decision. It’s just one of a very few points during this deployment where I managed to earn my meager officer's pay.

Good information. To a casual observer like myself it appears that there are some behavioral factors at work as well that the studies don't address - e.g. that the traits that go along with achieving a high SES also play a role in regulating one's weight. In general, I'd venture that people that can't get their asses off of the couch to hit the treadmill or muster the discipline to regulate their supersized milkshake consumption probably aren't overachievers in other aspects of their life. Yes - this is a very gross oversimplification and there are tons of disciplined fat people, and lazy-ass skinny people out there, and everyone has a biological range within which their weight will fluctuate under (historically) normal circumstances - but you can't get away from the fact that: 1. The rate of obesity is changing (increasing) much more rapidly than our genetic makeup is, so genetic explanations for increasing obesity are worthless. 2. Other regions of the world with roughly similar ethnic make-ups aren't nearly as fat as we are. If it was purely a matter of genes, they'd be as obese as Americans and they aren't. 3. This is a recent phenomenon - dating back to the boom in agricultural productivity and the ensuing caloric surplus available to the average consumer after WWII. Try finding me an example of dirt-poor yet morbidly obese people in the historical record prior to this time. The bottom line is that you gain weight when you consume more calories than you burn, you lose weight when you burn more calories than you consume - and the set of behaviors that results in consumption permanently exceeding expenditures is going to be correlated with poverty in some fashion in rich countries, the only places in the world, and in history, where one can sit on one's ass, forgo working, and get fat rather than starve to death.

But in the US the poorer you are the more likely you are to be overweight and vice versa.

Looks like the Canadian Guy picked up the disease in Britain though. I have heard rumors of three guys in Wisconsin coming down with vCJD after eating meat from a deer or elk sick with Chronic Wasting Disease - the spongiform encephalopathy unique to those animals and prevalent in the central Rockies.

Very well put, SC. I think the Iraquis might be feeling a little bit more gratitude in our general direction(s) if they had in any way ASKED us to liberate them from their tyrannical leader. They didn't invite us. We INVADED their country and now we occupy it. No one should be surprised that there is insurrection against an occupying force, no matter how (allegedly) high-minded the reason for the invasion and overthrow of the government. "The big brother in a small hole Horrraaaaa It's the justice day. I'm speechless. I'm crying. The tyrants' hour has finally came. I went down to the streets to share the joy with my brothers. This is our day, the day of all the oppressed and good people on earth. Tears of joy filled the eyes of all the people. Saddam, the coward, hides in a hole, shaking in fear from being captured. Not a single bullet was fired, without any resistance, God, he was even cooperative! The mighty tyrant, who exploited all our country's fortune for his personal protection, surrenders like the cowered I expected him to be. Yes, he should be prosecuted in Iraq. We will not allow anything else. We want to see him in a cage bending more and more, humiliated more and more, just as he forced all the Iraqis to bend to him, like they were his slaves. But we will not be like him, we will give him a fair trail, and he will get just what he deserves, although I have no idea what does he really deserve. It's indeed an inauspicious day for all the tyrants. Let them know that their days are near too. This is the day of all Iraqi martyrs who were slaughtered just to please his sick lust for blood. Rest in peace my brothers. The paradise is yours and the disgrace and hell is for all the tyrants on earth. Thank you American, British, Spanish, Italian, Australian, Ukrainian, Japanese and all the coalition people and all the good people on earth. God bless the 1st brigade. God bless the 4th infantry division. God bless Iraq. God bless America. God bless the coalition people and soldiers. God bless all the freedom loving people on earth. I wish I could hug you all." Source - Iraqi Weblogs I'd say the feelings of resentment are hardly unanimous, even amongst the Sunni, who amount to roughly 1/3rd of the population. Take a moment and read through this weblog and those linked to his site when you get a chance.

"And what is this apologist drivel about who armed whom? France and Russia (Soviet Union) aren't playing the hypocrisy game that the US is; plus in no way am I supporting the arms trade anyway." But SC, Mon Cherie! The paper (hint - read it) demonstrates clearly that the French, the Germans, the Russians, and the Chineese had much deeper economic and millitary ties with Hussein than the US did, yet rather than addressing the consequences of their past policies and joining the effort to get rid of him - they continuously lobbied to undermine the efficacy of the sanctions intended to limit his ability to rearm, and did business with him right up to very moment of the invasion. They had no qualms about selling him arms and making contracts with him long after any strategic rationale for supporting him had vanished - but wouldn't single soldier to the effort to get rid of him, contribute a cent to rebuilding the country or provide the personel necessary to stabilize the country, perpetually frustrated and denounced the US's efforts to rid the world of the regime that they were even more complicit in nurturing and sustaining - then went onto herald Hussein's capture in the most glowing terms and issue proclamations about how wonderful this development was for both the world and the people of Iraq? How is that not hypocritical? This should be good. "state control is more important than individual rights? Of course you will...." Yeah - because that's what I've consistently supported here all along. State control trumping individual rights. Glad to see you returning to top form so quickly comrade! Cheers

Just read that last post. Awesome. Once you finish with that chart, follow up with a glib dissmissal of the mass graves in Iraq. Then rail against the illegal use of force that brought about the end of the slaughter in Kosovo (not sanctioned by the UN either, remember?). Great stuff. Keep it coming

Hey - SC is back! It's good to see you back, but I must admit that I am a bit dissapointed to see that you merely compared Bush to Hitler rather than claiming that Bush is - literally - Hitler. Not like Hitler, not bearing a resemblance to, not distressingly similar in your eyes - actually Hitler. One and the same. What gives? Being the charitable guy that I am, though, I'm willing to write this off as a momentary lapse that came about as a result of your prolonged sabbatical from this site, and I am confident that you will return to your old form in due time. In the meantime I have an exercise for you. Read through the paper I have linked to in the passage below, then claim that it was actually the US that armed Hussein. That'll help get you back in top form, comrade. "As far as Hussein is concerned, The US was hardly alone in supporting him, and I have posted a link that shows total arms sales by country that shows that France and Russia in particular were more active in arming Iraq than the US by far. Link It's all right there on the graph on page 22. To summarize - between 1973 and 1995 the US exported 5 million dollars worth of arms to Iraq. In the same period, the UK exported 330 million dollars worth, France sold them 9.2 billion dollar's worth (That's 1840 times more than the US exported), Russia exported 31.8 billion dollars worth of arms to Iraq, and China was a distant second with 5.5 billion in exports. These are facts. So please address them before you go on claiming that the US is uniquely responsible for arming Iraq."

I am guessing that there is just an off chance that full-time political strategists who make their living by uncovering and disclosing any and all pieces of information that have the potential to damage their opponents may have considered this move, and since we have heard nothing from them on this matter, they may have decided that it would not be in their interest to do so, and that there is nothing there to exploit that can't be explained by the exigencies of the day. If this is all the angry Left has got, then that should provide quite a bit of comfort to their ideological adversaries. We supported Hussein because Iran was viewed as a much graver threat by every Western Power. There's quite a number of photos showing FDR shaking Stalin's hand, but thankfully Democrats in those days displayed a degree of sense on matters of defense that hasn't been in evidence since the McGovern nomination. You make the alliances necessary to neutralize the greatest threat facing you at the time, and if you are fortunate enough to succeed, then you worry about how you are going to deal with the devil that you danced with. Stalin, like Hussein, was one such devil and the US lead the world in ridding the planet of both after the greater threat had passed. All any Republican will have to do to respond to a "gloveless" enquiry such as this is explain the geopolitical context, set forth the choices facing the administration at the time, ask the "gloveless" opponent what he would have done and why - then watch the dithering and waffling commence from accross the stage. As far as Hussein is concerned, The US was hardly alone in supporting him, and I have posted a link that shows total arms sales by country that shows that France and Russia in particular were more active in arming Iraq than the US by far. Link. It's all right there on the graph on page 22. To summarize - between 1973 and 1995 the US exported 5 million dollars worth of arms to Iraq. In the same period, the UK exported 330 million dollars worth, France sold them 9.2 billion dollar's worth (That's 1840 times more than the US exported), Russia exported 31.8 billion dollars worth of arms to Iraq, and China was a distant second with 5.5 billion in exports. These are facts. So please address them before you go on claiming that the US is uniquely responsible for arming Iraq. As far as the chemical and biological weapons go, the equipment used to manufacture the gases was sold by the Germans, the chemical precursors by an Italian company. The US permitted the sale of media and fermenters that could be used to grow bacteria that could be used for a number of purposes, but never even came close to providing either bioweapons themselves or stocks that the Iraqis could cultivate and weaponize. We've certainly made our share of mistakes as a nation, but let's at least make an effort to be get our facts straight before we enumerate them.

I think that he'll be getting an effusive thank-you note and a box of chocolates in the mail from Karl Rove, along with a reminder to "Keep hammering away on that TurkeyGate thing - it's working for you - really."

Is a riduculus related in any way to a homunculus? Surely not to an incubus - that would be rediculous.