President Bloomberg?

Hide your soda… Hide your salt shakers…

Mike Bloomberg is seriously considering running for the Democratic nomination for president.

Bloomberg was a Democrat before he got elected Mayor of New York City as a Republican. After being mayor, he rejected the whole idea of partisan labels, but then last year he registered as a Democrat.

Bloomberg would be the first Jewish president.

If he wins, Bloomberg will turn 79 years old less than a month after being inaugurated; he was born on Valentine's Day 1942. So if he served a full 4-year term, he'd spend most of his presidency in his 80s. No sitting president has ever been in his 80s, and the oldest president ever when first inaugurated was just 70.

President Bloomberg would beat the record set by his predecessor, Donald Trump, as the richest president ever. Bloomberg's net worth has been estimated to be around $50 billion.

And I'm certainly looking forward to fair and balanced coverage of the Bloomberg campaign by Bloomberg…

(Photo of Bloomberg from Wikimedia Commons.)

Pancakegate 🥞

Newsweek reports this breaking news about President Donald Trump at a family reunion:

He put a few pancakes in his pocket.

Could this be an impeachable breakfast buffet offense? See, the real crime isn't the pancake theft, it's the cover-up by hiding the pancakes in his pocket…

One of those products that shouldn't exist

Onion ring mints.

Pictured: Non-electronic calculator with banana for scale

Best comment: "Tally me banana"

ISIL, Nutella, and kittens

"ISIS is talking online about jars of Nutella, pictures of kittens and emojis. These three images are in part helping ISIS recruiters lure westerners into their fight because they want people to believe their life on the battlefield isn't so different than yours. They actually eat Nutella, and I guess they have pet kittens . . . "

Call it the scientific ignorance of the American voter — but don't call it the stupidity . . .

"Over 80 percent of Americans support 'mandatory labels on foods containing DNA.'"

But why? And who cares? Ilya Somin explains why this is a big deal:

"A recent survey by the Oklahoma State University Department of Agricultural Economics finds that over 80 percent of Americans support “mandatory labels on foods containing DNA,” about the same number as support mandatory labeling of GMO foods “produced with genetic engineering.” Oklahoma State economist Jayson Lusk has some additional details on the survey. If the government does impose mandatory labeling on foods containing DNA, perhaps the label might look something like this:

WARNING: This product contains deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The Surgeon General has determined that DNA is linked to a variety of diseases in both animals and humans. In some configurations, it is a risk factor for cancer and heart disease. Pregnant women are at very high risk of passing on DNA to their children.

The Oklahoma State survey result is probably an example of the intersection between scientific ignorance and political ignorance, both of which are widespread. The most obvious explanation for the data is that most of these people don’t really understand what DNA is, and don’t realize that it is contained in almost all food. . . .

Polls repeatedly show that much of the public is often ignorant of both basic scientific facts. . . . A 2012 National Science Foundation survey even found that about 25% of Americans don’t know that the Earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa. . . .

It would be a mistake to assume that widespread political and scientific ignorance are the result of “the stupidity of the American voter,” as Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber put it. Political ignorance is not primarily the result of stupidity. For most people, it is a rational reaction to the enormous size and complexity of government and the reality that the chance that their vote will have an impact on electoral outcomes is extremely low. The same is true of much scientific ignorance. For many people, there is little benefit to understanding much about genetics or DNA. Most Americans can even go about their daily business perfectly well without knowing that the Earth revolves around the sun. Even the smartest people are inevitably ignorant of the vast majority of information out there. We all have to focus our time and energy on learning that information which is most likely to be instrumentally useful, or at least provide entertainment value. For large numbers of people, much basic political and scientific information doesn’t make the cut.

Unfortunately, this is a case where individually rational behavior leads to potentially dangerous collective outcomes. While it doesn’t much matter whether any individual voter is ignorant about science or public policy, when a majority (or even a large minority) of the electorate is ignorant in these ways, it can lead to the adoption of dangerous and counterproductive government policies. In this case, excessive and unnecessary warning labels on food products could confuse consumers, and divert their limited attention from real dangers.

Twinkies

All this talk about the end of Twinkies is better advertising than any company could choose to pay for, guaranteeing that they'll be back eventually to meet the demand. They're the Arrested Development of snack cakes.

Brunch conversation

Me: Do you want some of my watermelon?

My girlfriend: You're only asking me that because I'm black.

(At the highly recommended Americana Vineyards in Interlaken, New York, near Ithaca.)

Is organic food really better than conventional food and genetically modified organisms?

This Scientific American piece debunks several myths about organic farming, and concludes that the organic vs. conventional debate has been drastically oversimplified by both sides. An excerpt:

Yes, organic farming practices use less synthetic pesticides which have been found to be ecologically damaging. But factory organic farms use their own barrage of chemicals that are still ecologically damaging, and refuse to endorse technologies that might reduce or eliminate the use of these all together. Take, for example, organic farming’s adamant stance against genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

GMOs have the potential to up crop yields, increase nutritious value, and generally improve farming practices while reducing synthetic chemical use – which is exactly what organic farming seeks to do. As we speak, there are sweet potatoes are being engineered to be resistant to a virus that currently decimates the African harvest every year, which could feed millions in some of the poorest nations in the world. Scientists have created carrots high in calcium to fight osteoperosis, and tomatoes high in antioxidants. Almost as important as what we can put into a plant is what we can take out; potatoes are being modified so that they do not produce high concentrations of toxic glycoalkaloids, and nuts are being engineered to lack the proteins which cause allergic reactions in most people. Perhaps even more amazingly, bananas are being engineered to produce vaccines against hepatitis B, allowing vaccination to occur where its otherwise too expensive or difficult to be administered. The benefits these plants could provide to human beings all over the planet are astronomical.

Yet organic proponents refuse to even give GMOs a chance, even to the point of hypocrisy. For example, organic farmers apply Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin (a small insecticidal protein from soil bacteria) unabashedly across their crops every year, as they have for decades. It’s one of the most widely used organic pesticides by organic farmers. Yet when genetic engineering is used to place the gene encoding the Bt toxin into a plant’s genome, the resulting GM plants are vilified by the very people willing to liberally spray the exact same toxin that the gene encodes for over the exact same species of plant. Ecologically, the GMO is a far better solution, as it reduces the amount of toxin being used and thus leeching into the surrounding landscape and waterways. Other GMOs have similar goals, like making food plants flood-tolerant so occasional flooding can replace herbicide use as a means of killing weeds. If the goal is protect the environment, why not incorporate the newest technologies which help us do so?

But the real reason organic farming isn’t more green than conventional is that while it might be better for local environments on the small scale, organic farms produce far less food per unit land than conventional ones. Organic farms produce around 80% that what the same size conventional farm produces (some studies place organic yields below 50% those of conventional farms!).

Right now, roughly 800 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition, and about 16 million of those will die from it. If we were to switch to entirely organic farming, the number of people suffering would jump by 1.3 billion, assuming we use the same amount of land that we’re using now. Unfortunately, what’s far more likely is that switches to organic farming will result in the creation of new farms via the destruction of currently untouched habitats, thus plowing over the little wild habitat left for many threatened and endangered species.

Already, we have cleared more than 35% of the Earth’s ice-free land surface for agriculture, an area 60 times larger than the combined area of all the world’s cities and suburbs. Since the last ice age, nothing has been more disruptive to the planet’s ecosystem and its inhabitants than agriculture. What will happen to what’s left of our planet’s wildlife habitats if we need to mow down another 20% or more of the world’s ice-free land to accommodate for organic methods?

The unfortunate truth is that until organic farming can rival the production output of conventional farming, its ecological cost due to the need for space is devastating. As bad as any of the pesticides and fertilizers polluting the world’s waterways from conventional agriculture are, it’s a far better ecological situation than destroying those key habitats altogether. That’s not to say that there’s no hope for organic farming; better technology could overcome the production gap, allowing organic methods to produce on par with conventional agriculture. . . .

Organic farming does have many potential upsides, and may indeed be the better way to go in the long run, but it really depends on technology and what we discover and learn in the future. Until organic farming can produce crops on par in terms of volume with conventional methods, it cannot be considered a viable option for the majority of the world. Nutritionally speaking, organic food is more like a brand name or luxury item. It’s great if you can afford the higher price and want to have it, but . . . [y]ou would improve your nutritional intake far more by eating a larger volume of fruits and vegetables than by eating organic ones instead of conventionally produced ones. . . .

As far as I’m concerned, the biggest myth when it comes to organic farming is that you have to choose sides. Guess what? You don’t. You can appreciate the upsides of rotating crops and how GMOs might improve output and nutrition. You, the wise and intelligent consumer, don’t have to buy into either side’s propaganda and polarize to one end or another.

(The article seems to be very thoroughly supported, with 18 citations. Of course, I've omitted them from this block quote.)

Why do supermarkets sprinkle the fresh vegetables with water?

You're being primed (via):

Let's pay a visit to Whole Foods' splendid Columbus Circle store in New York City. As you descend the escalator you enter the realm of a freshly cut flowers. These are what advertisers call "symbolics"--unconscious suggestions. In this case, letting us know that what's before us is bursting with freshness.

Flowers, as everyone knows, are among the freshest, most perishable objects on earth. Which is why fresh flowers are placed right up front--to "prime" us to think of freshness the moment we enter the store. Consider the opposite--what if we entered the store and were greeted with stacks of canned tuna and plastic flowers? Having been primed at the outset, we continue to carry that association, albeit subconsciously, with us as we shop. . . .

[F]or years now supermarkets have been sprinkling select vegetables with regular drops of water--a trend that began in Denmark. Why? . . . [T]hose sprinkled drops serve as a symbolic, albeit a bogus one, of freshness and purity. Ironically, that same dewy mist makes the vegetables rot more quickly than they would otherwise.

Going to Whole Foods in NYC last night while everyone is stocking up for Hurricane Irene

[UPDATE: Some of the photos were missing before. They're all here now.]

On the way there, you see the subway has been closed:



I went to Whole Foods at around 9 p.m. last night, and people had taken almost all the bottled water:



And bread:



And chips:



You can tell that blue corn is the least popular kind of chips. "We'll only eat them if we have to." If this is what it looks like when there's a mad rush for chips, how do blue corn chips ever sell under normal conditions?

Is throwing a pie in the face of an unsuspecting victim ever a good idea?

No, argues T.A. Frank in the New Republic.

Frank's headline is "Is Pie-Throwing Ever Morally Justifiable?," but I've qualified my heading to make it clear that we have to exclude consensual pie-throwing, which is probably more common than what Frank is talking about: pie-throwing as an attempt at protest.

Pie-throwing is the issue of the day because Rupert Murdoch was almost hit with a pie while appearing before a parliamentary committee in London before his wife, Wendi Deng, successfully intervened.

Frank admits that no one seems to be supporting the pie-thrower in this incident, but he says this isn't a universal reaction to non-consensual pie-throwing. For instance, he cites Matthew Yglesias's approving reaction to someone hitting Thomas Friedman with a pie. Frank writes:

A common defense of pie-throwing is that it’s, well, just a pie. But, of course, the person getting attacked has no idea what the hell is about to hit him or her. In 1976, during a campaign appearance in his first run for the U.S. Senate, Pat Moynihan got pied by a Yippie yelling “Fascist pig.” Moynihan, a child of Hell’s Kitchen, was no softie, “but it scared the hell out of me,” he told The New York Times. It had been “a violent act.”

The defense that the fear lasts only a short while—between the time you first notice you’re being attacked and the time you realize it’s just a pie—doesn’t work, either. If fleeting fear were no problem, then mock executions would be just hilarious. But momentary fear can be very powerful indeed. If someone aimed a machine gun at me and started firing loud volleys of harmless whipped cream, I wouldn’t laugh it off. I’d scream in terror. And, if someone “just” charged me with a foreign object in hand, I’d be pretty damn frightened, too. . . .

Dignity is a tricky concept, hard to define. But it’s central to many religions, and it’s mentioned in numerous international conventions. The Geneva Conventions famously prohibit “outrages on human dignity.” What separates civilized nations from barbarous ones is that they treat all human beings, even the enemies that they kill and the criminals that they punish, with dignity. (If prisoners of war were to have custard pies pressed into their heads upon being taken into enemy custody, decent people would see it as a sickening humiliation.) It’s also what separates civilized people from bullies and brutes. Pie-throwers want to rob their victims of dignity. That degrades the rest of us, too.

By the way, what’s ironic about many of these pie-throwers is how seriously they take themselves. When the supposedly light-hearted [Noel] Godin, who kicked off his career by throwing a pie at Marguerite Duras in 1969, explained why he spattered Bill Gates with a pie in 1998, it was because Gates “chooses to function in service of the capitalist status quo, without really using his intelligence or his imagination.” Yeah, intelligent and imaginative people don’t bring personal computing to half the globe. They spend 30 years throwing pie.

Ultimately, pie-throwing amounts to the most violent way possible to attack someone powerful without being likely to get in trouble for it. (Victims rarely press charges, because they don’t want to look like bad sports.) But it’s the not the hegemony of elites that’s threatened by pie-throwing. It’s ordinary decency and openness. Murdoch goes back to work tomorrow. But, if there are further hearings, the public will have to go through much more security to get access to them. Today, only journalists were allowed to stay after the pie incident. Ordinary onlookers were made to leave. Thanks, pie-thrower.

One exception to Frank's general rule that pie-throwers don't get in trouble is Johnny Marbles, the man who tried to pie-throw Murdoch. He was arrested and jailed. So, does Marbles regret what he did? He writes:

I had intended to unleash a wave of polemic as I made my move. As it turned out, the whole thing was far too weird for me to string two thoughts together, particularly as Murdoch's wife rose from the chair to prevent and avenge her husband's humiliation. As it went, I'm glad I was even able to make the accurate understatement that he was a "naughty billionaire".

As I languished predictably in a prison cell later that evening, I contemplated whether people would understand why I'd done it. I knew it was a tall order: a surreal act aimed at exposing a surreal process was never going to be an easy sell. I worried, too, that my clowning would detract from the scandal, or provide sympathy for Murdoch.

Believe it or not, I even worried about Rupert Murdoch's feelings. You see, I really don't hate 80-year-olds and, at the end of the day, Rupert Murdoch is just an old man. Maybe what I was trying to do was remind everyone of that – that he is not all powerful, he's not Sauron or Beelzebub, just a human being, like the rest of us, but one who has got far too big for his boots.

Even the aspiring pie-thrower himself was unable to articulate a convincing case for what he did, either at the time or in a long-winded editorial after the fact. So I agree with Frank: in addition to being violent and degenerate, pie-throwing simply isn't the incisively satirical act the pie-throwers seem to think it is. In fact, it's the opposite of what it's trying to be. People don't have trouble understanding why Marbles would want to do this because pie-throwing is too surreal or subversive for our comprehension; we have trouble seeing the point because pie-throwing is trite, formulaic, old-fashioned, humanizing toward the target, and ultimately meaningless.

ADDED: A couple people have asked me if I feel the same way about the people who are going around throwing glitter at politicians who are opposed to gay rights. Here's my response.

Egg producers and the Humane Society of the United States . . .

. . . have stopped their "squawking."

"'The industry moving from saying anything goes to saying there should be legal limits at the federal level is an enormous difference.'"

"Wasting food"

It's not so bad. (via)

There's a broader point to be made here about environmentalism and signaling, but I don't have time to go into it now . . .

Megan McArdle shows what it's like to bake a cake in 2011 vs. what it would have been like in 1950 or 1900.

Is obesity caused by "food addiction"?

Medical News Today reports (via):

Some people really are addicted to foods in a similar way others might be dependent on certain substances, like addictive illegal or prescriptions drugs, or alcohol, researchers from Yale University revealed in Archives of General Psychiatry. Those with an addictive-like behavior seem to have more neural activity in specific parts of the brain in the same way substance-dependent people appear to have, the authors explained.

It's a bit like saying that if you dangle a tasty chocolate milkshake in front of a pathological eater, what goes on in that person's brain is similar to what would happen if you placed a bottle of scotch in front of an alcoholic. . . .

The authors believe that no studies had so far looked into the neural correlates of addictive-like eating behavior.

Those researchers say:

One-third of American adults are now obese and obesity-related disease is the second leading cause of preventable death. Unfortunately, most obesity treatments do not result in lasting weight loss because most patients regain their lost weight within five years. Based on numerous parallels in neural functioning associated with substance dependence and obesity, theorists have proposed that addictive processes may be involved in the etiology of obesity.

Food and drug use both result in dopamine release in mesolimbic regions [of the brain] and the degree of release correlates with subjective reward from both food and drug use.

The article goes on to cite some scientific research, but it's all about the general phenomenon of food addiction. I'm not seeing any correlation or causation between the addiction and obesity.

My question is: if food addiction is the real problem, aren't we all suffering from it?

The more we eat the protein-rich non-grain quinoa, the less Bolivians eat it ... or drink it.

I love quinoa. It's as useful as rice, but much more nutritious. Here's my own rough recipe for quinoa with carrots and parsnips, which I often make. And just glancing through the first link, I'd like to try the butternut squash and black bean wrap, quinoa primavera,  quinoa burgers, acorn stuffed with quinoa . . .

But the New York Times reports:

[D]emand for quinoa (pronounced KEE-no-ah) is soaring in rich countries, as American and European consumers discover the “lost crop” of the Incas. The surge has helped raise farmers’ incomes here in one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries. But there has been a notable trade-off: Fewer Bolivians can now afford it, hastening their embrace of cheaper, processed foods and raising fears of malnutrition in a country that has long struggled with it. . . .

While malnutrition on a national level has fallen over the past few years thanks to aggressive social welfare programs, . . . studies showed that chronic malnutrition in children had climbed in quinoa-growing areas . . . in recent years. . . .

“I adore quinoa, but I can’t afford it anymore,” said Micaela Huanca, 50, a street vendor in El Alto, a city of slums above the capital, La Paz. “I look at it in the markets and walk away.” . . .

At supermarkets here, a 1,000-gram bag of quinoa, just over two pounds, costs the equivalent of $4.85, compared with $1.20 for a bag of noodles the same weight and $1 for a bag of white rice. . . .

This is disturbing. A few things, though:

1. Bolivians are already working on solutions:

President [Evo] Morales said this month that he planned to make more than $10 million in loans available to organic quinoa producers, and health officials are incorporating the plant into a packet of foods supplied to thousands of pregnant and nursing women each month.

2. The Times is clearly fascinated by talking about how rich countries' voracious (albeit healthy) appetite is hurting Bolivians. This skews the reporting. Oh, the Times does mention that we're also enriching Bolivians farmers by buying so much quinoa. But this point just gets a sentence or two; it isn't amplified with statistics or anecdotes or color photographs. The observation that rich countries are helping a poor country by buying its exports doesn't make for a fascinating New York Times article.

3. Buried 15 paragraphs into the piece, we discover that the reporters aren't just talking about Bolivians choosing to use white rice or noodles instead of quinoa when they cook dinner. The article says that "changing food preferences" might "play a role." How so? Well, a government official explains:

"[I]f you give the kids toasted quinoa flour, they don’t want it; they want white bread . . . . If you give them boiled water, sugar and quinoa flour mixed into a drink, they prefer Coca-Cola."

So, kids prefer drinking Coke to drinking quinoa! I'm not sure anything would have stopped that from happening in the modern world.



(Both photos are from SweetOnVeg, which has a website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed.)

What public-service advertising is and isn't considered acceptable in America?

1. NYC's anti-soda ads are considered acceptable.

As that article suggests, the debate behind the scenes boiled down to "fear" ("'I think what people fear is getting fat'") vs. "science" ("'As we get into this exacting science, the idea of a sugary drink becoming fat is absurd'"). Guess which value won out?

2. But this German ad promoting condom use would probably not be considered acceptable in America.

The German text in the ad uses a double entendre to explain the visual joke: "Prevents short-sightedness."

I almost want to put a "NSFW" disclaimer because some people might consider the ad too graphic. But that's part of the problem.

My suggestion to vegetarian/vegan restaurants

More entrees featuring recognizable vegetables and fewer entrees along the lines of "vegan steak," please?

More things gotten wrong

Last week I culled some language-related answers from the huge AskMetafilter thread responding to this question:

What in life did it take you a surprisingly long time to realize you've been doing wrong all along?

Here are my other favorites from the thread:

I'm 41. Last year I learned that pimentos are in fact NOT the red center of an olive. We saw some olives stuffed with bleu cheese at the grocery store, so I asked a friend how they got the pimento out in order to stuff in the cheese.

Said friend just stared at me. (link)


[I]t took me a while to figure out that other people can't actually read my mind, and that it's unfair to expect them to. It takes a bit of effort, but I'm a lot better off actually starting a conversation about some perceived issue than waiting and hoping someone will notice that my brain is wildly waving its hand in the air. (link)


[T]he point of small talk, and why people engage in it.

I used to think small talk was the most boring, pointless thing ever, until I realized it's often a way for people to feel more comfortable with one another before continuing the conversation. It's like handing someone a small familiar appetizer before bringing out one's personal plate of weirdness. Makes things go down a little more smoothly. (link)


Goals are now just placeholders. General aims. I've been much happier since transitioning to being more about the journey or process than reaching some arbitrary memoir building bullet point that I think I want, but don't really. (link)

That one's been important for me to realize; in fact, I'm still in the process of internalizing it. I keep imagining that my life is supposed to build up to this great biography and that it's important for me to stay on track to reach that goal. Aside from the obvious flaws with this mindset (that you probably won't be famous enough to be the subject of a major biography; that even if you were, it would still be more valuable to enjoy life as it happens), one knock-down argument against it, in my own case, is that I don't even like reading biographies of anyone!

Back to the thread:

I learned less than a year ago how to figure out which glass is mine when sitting with a big group at a round table: curl your middle, ring, and pinky fingers on each hand down to touch your thumb while leaving your pointer finger straight up. One hand will be it the shape of a lower-case b, and that is the side with your bread plate; the other hand will be in the shape of a lower-case d, and that is the side with your drink.

Before, I had to wait until someone sitting next to me claimed a glass and bread plate before I could start enjoying anything, and half the time they were wrong anyway. Making letters in my lap is a much, much better way to do it. (link)


One thing I've only recently realized is that it's stupid to "save things for best." Dishes, sheets, expensive bath products, etc... - use them on a regular basis, or they're worthless. (link)


That life has no meaning. Liberating. (link)


I didn't realize until my early twenties that if a man would have sex with me, all it meant was that he wanted to have sex with me, not that he liked me as a person or found me attractive. This is the one thing that was left out of the sex talk that my mom had with me that really would have been helpful to include. (link)


When I was little I asked my father about turn signals on a car. I wanted to know how he told the car which way he wanted to turn. He would never give me a straight answer. He kept saying, "it just knows." I figured he was jiggling the steering wheel in some way, I never saw him deliberately switch anything on. Granted, I was always in the backseat, so I didn't really have a good view.

Cut to many years later, when I was 17. I had never learned to drive (still haven't), so I hadn't had any first hand experience. I was in a pick up truck with someone I was fairly desperate to impress. I don't know why it occurred to me to ask just then, sitting in the passenger side, all cool and adult.

"So," I ask. "How does the car know which way you want to turn?"

You can imagine the look I got. Whose fault? My dad's. (link)


If you try foods enough times you might eventually get to liking them. . . . How could I have hated mushrooms!?

If you don't ask you'll never know. - Girls, employment, raises, resources.
(link)


When I was in (private, fundie Christian) elementary school, my teacher told me that dinosaurs weren't real, that their bones had been put in the ground by Satan to lead us from The Light. Around the same time there was a scandal at a nearby history museum that one of the dinosaurs on display was actually made from the bones of two different species.

I got the two incidents mixed up in my mind and didn't believe in dinosaurs until COLLEGE.

I still have a hard time believing in them, honestly . . . (link)


I was well into my teens before I figured out that the phrase "Any Time" on "No Parking" signs meant that you couldn't park there, ever. I thought for years that it was the sign's way of saying "You're welcome," as in an imagined dialogue:

Car: I'd like to park here.
Sign: No parking.
Car: Oh, OK. Thanks.
Sign: Any time.
(link)