High-fructose corn syrup no worse than refined white sugar

Many scientific articles and news reports have noted that since 1980, obesity rates have climbed at a rate remarkably similar to that of high-fructose corn syrup consumption. A distant derivative of corn, the highly processed syrup was created in the late 1960's and has become a hard-to-avoid staple of the American diet over the last 25 years. It spooks foodies, parents and nutritionists alike. But is it really that bad?

Many scientists say that there is little data to back up the demonization of high-fructose corn syrup, and that links between the crystalline goop and obesity are based upon misperceptions and unproved theories, or are simply coincidental.

This is the first of several items via stats.org

Meth Is Not America's No 1 Drug Problem

...treatment centers and surveys of drug use in the population do not find meth to be the biggest drug problem. Only seven percent of treatment admissions are related to methamphetamine, for example, while cocaine admissions account for double that and heroin and related drugs make up nearly 18 percent. Alcohol accounts for 40 percent.

Moreover, the Sentencing Project only just released a study claiming that "methamphetamine is among the least commonly used drugs" (only 0.2 percent of Americans are regular users) and that the rates of methamphetamine use have remained stable since 1999.

...many of the country's population centers (New York, for example), report than none of the people they arrest test positive for the drug.

National Research Council Rejects EPA Risk Assessment Methodology

...the EPA assumed that because extremely high doses of dioxin in animals caused cancer, there was a linear risk for humans: very low exposure levels would still present a risk. The NRC concluded that the "EPA's decision to rely solely on a default linear model lacked adequate scientific support."...

Given that many environmental health scares (such as PCBs in salmon) are driven by linear risk assessments, it is important for reporters to determine whether the bulk of the evidence points to the chemical being genotoxic (thus warranting the linear risk assessment) or non-genotoxic.

Because its default position has been that all carcinogenic risks are linear, the EPA is often at odds with other international regulatory bodies (and indeed, the Food and Drug Administration here in the U.S.) in its risk assessments. The media should be wary of falling for advocacy campaigns that make the same assumptions.

Also, a link to Michael Fumento's Call off the Dioxin Dogs

David Huang thinks he knows where the Taiwanese should best invest

Conference on Sustaining Taiwan's Economic Development: Cross-strait issues hotly debated if finance meeting

The discussion on investments in China sparked heavy debate in the the conference in the face of strong opposition from Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) lawmakers.

TSU caucus whip David Huang (黃適卓) and Legislator Lo Chih-ming (羅志明) voiced strong opposition to any relaxation measures, saying overheated investment in the "enemy country" had triggered capital outflow, deprived people of jobs and jeopardized national security and sovereignty.

Conference on Sustaining Taiwan's Economic Development: Social group proposes national pension law

The growing gap between the rich and the poor was another topic of intense discussion, with the session concluding that the government would provide more opportunities for minority families.

Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator David Huang (黃適卓) told the participants that the root of the widening gap was that more people were investing in China, causing stagnation among middle to lower income levels.

I don't believe any politician in any country should be telling people where to invest. You might think this is just populist or leftist economic bossiness, but David Huang is son of the party chairman Huang Chu-wen (黃主文). Tsai Hung-chang (蔡鴻章) has accused the Taiwan Solidarity Union (which means Huang Chu-wen, right?) of making unfair nominations, and has accused Huang Jr. of crowding him out.

TSU Secretary-General Lin Chih-chia (林志嘉) said that, since the TSU was a small party, it was not necessarily more fair to conduct opinion polls to select candidates. He said the review of candidates had been objective and open.

It sounds like typical Chinese corrupt practice.

Then Pan-blues, business rebuke MAC for axing China issues

The pan-blue camp, joined by business groups and some academics, yesterday harshly criticized the Mainland Affairs Council's decision to leave a relaxation of the China-bound investment cap and direct cross-strait flights off the agenda for the economic conference that opens today, saying that the move would hamper the nation's economic development...

Kenneth Lin (林向愷), an economics professor at National Taiwan University, said the government was doing a poor job of improving the investment environment as the investment volumes by home-grown industries indicated that the nation was lagging behind the other three Asian tigers -- Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea.

Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫), vice president of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台經院), said the 40 percent cap, which had been ineffective in slowing the flow of capital to China, had actually become a burden to the Taiwanese economy.

"The government has the ability to review the effectiveness of this policy and come up with a more effective mechanism. [Low-end] industries which want to move to China should be allowed to go. But [high-end technology industries] should not be allowed to invest even one percent of their capital in China," Kung said.

China eyes stronger military for defense

China needs stronger military forces as it faces growing instability and threats to national security, the ruling Communist Party's ideological mouthpiece said according to reports in the state media Wednesday.

Guess whose fault this is.

An essay in the latest issue of Qiushi, or Seek Truth...did not specify the threats calling for stronger defense, but it said that Western foes did not want to see a strong China.

"Hostile Western forces do not want to see a strong socialist China emerge in the east, and they are constantly cooking up vain attempts to hold in check and contain China's development."

Supporters of independence for Taiwan -- the self-governed island that China has claimed as its own since their split in 1949 amid civil war -- are also a "major peril", it added....

Beijing's relations with Washington are strained by mutual mistrust, even as the two countries seek to cooperate over curtailing North Korea's nuclear weapons program and defusing other regional disputes.

Poison in your food

The breathless Should we worry about soya in our food? warns us away from soybeans. One of the people it cites is the owner of a brand of organic soy sauces.

He lived in Japan for 18 years and his Japanese wife, Setsuko, is a cookery teacher. "I never saw soy beans on the table in Japan - they're indigestible."

In Japan they eat soybeans they call edamame and in Taiwan and China, they call them máodòu 毛豆.

I'm skeptical about the dangers of the soybean. Lots of vegetables are dangerous. Consider the following, based on information from the New Zealand Food Safety Authority and the Food Toxicology chapter of Prevention and Therapy of Cancer and Other Common Diseases: Alternative and Traditional Approaches:

• Almonds, fruit pits (apple, apricot, cherry, peach, pear, plum), lima beans, flax seed and cassava or manioc are among the highest sources of amygdalin, which can turn into hydrogen cyanide in the stomach causing discomfort, illness and sometimes death.
• Edible foods containing furocoumarins include celery, parsley, parsnips, citrus fruits, figs and some spices. Normal levels of furocoumarin are low in celery, while markedly increased concentrations are found following fungal invasion or following exposure to cold, chemicals or UV radiations. The highest concentrations are found in edible parts of roots of celery, parsnips and parsley. One of the toxins can cause stomach ache and may also cause a painful skin reaction when contact with the plant is combined with UV rays from sunlight.
• All potatoes contain natural toxins called glycoalkaloids. The levels are usually low but higher levels are found in sprouts, and the peel of potatoes that taste bitter. Severe stomach ache and even death from glycoalkaloid poisoning has been reported overseas, but is very unusual.
• Lectins have been found at comparatively high levels in legume seeds, beans, potatoes and wheat germ. As few as four or five raw kidney beans can cause severe stomach ache, vomiting and diarrhoea.
• Plants like spinach, rhubarb, beet leaves, tea and cocoa contain oxalic acid. The bioavailability of oxalate was greatest for peanuts and beet roots and somewhat less for rhubarb and spinach. Oxalic acid poisoning can cause muscle twitching, cramps, decreased breathing and heart action, vomiting, pain, headache, convulsions and coma.
• Zucchini may occasionally contain a family of natural toxins called cucurbitacins. Bitter zucchinis have caused people to experience vomiting, stomach cramps, diarrhoea and collapse.
• Raw or unprocessed cassava, bamboo shoots, flax and lima beans contain a toxin called cyanogenic glycosides. This can lead to exposure to hydrogen cyanide and its related toxicity.
• Consumption of divicine found in fava beans (Vicia faba) or inhalation of its pollen can produce a disease syndrome termed favism. Favism is characterized by hemolytic anemia, hemoglobinuria and shock.
• Marine fish, especially squid, is the major dietary source of dimethylamine. Dimethylamine is a precursor of N-nitrosodimethylamine, a potent carcinogen in a wide variety of animals. Consumers of large amounts of marine fish have an increased risk of stomach cancer.

The "Alternative" in Prevention and Therapy of Cancer and Other Common Diseases: Alternative and Traditional Approaches sounds a little unscientific to me, but it's packed with references, and the author also sounds a couple of caveats:

[A]ll plant materials contain natural pesticides, alkaloids and other chemicals that are as mutagenic as industrial chemicals. Furthermore, food processing and preparation added considerably amounts of mutagens to the diet. Ames estimated that each day the average American consumed 1,500 mg of natural pesticides compared to less than 0.1 mg of synthetic pesticides. Many of the vitamins are beneficial at low doses but toxic at high doses. Ultraviolet radiation in sunshine activates vitamin D and prevents rickets but in high doses causes skin cancer.

Concern has been expressed about synthetic or naturally-occurring chemicals in foods as causative agents in human cancer.... However, the toxicity of these chemicals may often be minimized by natural defense systems in food, such as metabolism and DNA repair. A holistic view of toxic factors provides a more meaningful risk assessment of dietary toxins and carcinogens. Food additives prevent food spoilage and poisoning from pathogens and protect nutritional quality of foods. No evidence has been found that these compounds in current use in industrialized countries significantly contributes to the overall cancer risk. They do, however, substantially reduce the risk of pathogen related food poisoning, which far outweighs any unproven risk of increased cancer.

It's not wrong, but...

The Taipei Times printed an editorial titled Taiwan still a good place to learn Mandarin complaining that an article in Time magazine ignored Taiwan as a place to study Mandarin. It's not that Taiwan is a bad place to study Mandarin, although since most students are interested in the mainland, which is pretty much restricted to simplified characters, which you'll only see in classrooms here. The editorial is a little disingenuous given the paper's strident support for DPP, whose policies include the promotion of non-Mandarin dialects. Even more problematic is Tongyong Pinyin, another extra hurdle. In the past the paper has printed articles critical of Tongyong Pinyin, but you don't see that here.

Just banning something does not prevent it from happening

Tim Harford writes,

Nowadays we realize it is insanity to suppress markets for coal and steel, but we are still tempted to try the trick on the markets for sex, drugs, rhino horn, soccer tickets and, apparently, Mars bars.

These efforts usually fail. Tickets for big sporting events such as the World Cup or the Super Bowl are a bit like Soviet coal. They are supplied in a non-market system or sold at below-market value for political or ideological reasons. Although scalpers perform a social service by getting tickets to those who value them most, nobody likes them because they are bearers of bad news: These events are popular, supply is limited, and consequently the price is high. Markets are good at telling us this sort of truth, and the ticket agency Ticketmaster is starting to use online auctions to beat the scalpers at their own game.

Markets for prostitutes and for rhino horn are suppressed for a different reason: They are thought to be bad for prostitutes and rhinos, respectively. That is obviously true for individual rhinos and is true for unwilling prostitutes too, but just banning something does not prevent it from happening. Julian Morris, now director of International Policy Network, a free-market think tank, studied the rhino-horn ban and concluded that it had reduced rhino numbers by discouraging sustainable management of rhino herds in southern Africa, while doing nothing to prevent poaching in east Africa.

Awww, cute foxes

And not-so-cute rats:

On an animal-breeding farm in Siberia are cages housing two colonies of rats. In one colony, the rats have been bred for tameness in the hope of mimicking the mysterious process by which Neolithic farmers first domesticated an animal still kept today. When a visitor enters the room where the tame rats are kept, they poke their snouts through the bars to be petted.

The other colony of rats has been bred from exactly the same stock, but for aggressiveness instead. These animals are ferocious. When a visitor appears, the rats hurl themselves screaming toward their bars.

"Imagine the most evil supervillain and the nicest, sweetest cartoon animal, and that’s what these two strains of rat are like...."

"The ferocious rats cannot be handled....They will not tolerate it. They go totally crazy if you try to pick them up."

Belyaev’s hypothesis was that all domesticated species had been selected for a single criterion: tameness. This quality, in his view, had dragged along with it most of the other features that distinguish domestic animals from their wild forebears, like droopy ears, patches of white in the fur and changes in skull shape.

[Dmitri K. Belyaev, who believed in Mendelian theory despite the domination of Soviet science by Trofim Lysenko] chose to test his theory on the silver fox, a variant of the common red fox, because it is a social animal and is related to the dog. Though fur farmers had kept silver foxes for about 50 years, the foxes remained quite wild. Belyaev began his experiment in 1959 with 130 farm-bred silver foxes, using their tolerance of human contact as the sole criterion for choosing the parents of the next generation...

In fact, after only eight generations, foxes that would tolerate human presence became common in Belyaev’s stock.... [A]fter 40 years of the experiment, and the breeding of 45,000 foxes, a group of animals had emerged that were as tame and as eager to please as a dog.

As Belyaev had predicted, other changes appeared along with the tameness, even though they had not been selected for. The tame silver foxes had begun to show white patches on their fur, floppy ears, rolled tails and smaller skulls.

The tame foxes, Dr. Fitch reported, were also "incredibly endearing." They were clean and quiet and made excellent house pets, though — being highly active — they preferred a house with a yard to an apartment. They did not like leashes, though they tolerated them...

[Dr. Brian Hare of the Planck Institute] found that the fox kits from Belyaev’s domesticated stock did just as well as puppies in picking up cues from people about hidden food, even though they had almost no previous experience with humans. The tame kits performed much better at this task than the wild kits did. When dogs were developed from wolves, selection against fear and aggression "may have been sufficient to produce the unusual ability of dogs to use human communicative gestures," Dr. Hare wrote last year in the journal Current Biology.

My Kaohsiung rats, incidentally, while not particularly endearing to me, at least, weren't hostile. Rather a little curious, but also a little shy.

Willpower is a depletable resource

I already knew this, but

Common intuition and experimental psychology suggest that the ability to self-regulate, willpower, is a depletable resource.

via Tyler Cowen, who suggests leaving oneself wanting to do a little more of the virtuous task.

How to Reduce the "Ghetto Tax"

In one word: Walmart.

(Yes, "Ghetto Tax" is a loaded term.)

Yes, there is that

Nevada has plenty of spare land, most of it owned by the federal government and long idle bar the occasional nuclear explosion.

What works and what doesn't

For forest fires:

...good forest management—thinning overgrown tree stands, or making use of selective fire as a housecleaning tool in the forests—may help tamp down a probable upward trend in the severity of fires.

Easier said than done. Greens often oppose forest thinning as logging in disguise, while state air-quality officials, particularly in California, regularly fight forest managers over permission to start deliberate fires.

For gambling:

If prohibitionism really is driven by morality, then it is self-defeating. If you want to put the industry in the hands of dodgy dealers registered in Tuvalu or Vanuatu, if you want to guarantee websites without protection for children or restraints on compulsive gamblers, if you want to help money laundering and fraud, then prohibition is the policy for you.

There is an another approach, which has been tested with online sales of alcohol and pornography, and been found broadly to work. Internet gambling operations know more about their punters than casinos do. Owning a credit card is a good proxy for proof of age; each transaction is logged, so companies can tell who is betting excessively or at odd times of the day; they can tell where a computer is, and so abide by state laws. Registered, branded, taxed gambling companies are not perfect protection against the excesses of betting, but they are the best there is.

And what doesn't:

The absurdity of America's cotton subsidies is well known. Uncle Sam spends over $4 billion a year propping up cotton farmers, with the bulk of the money going to those whose operations are much larger than Mr Evans's. Cotton receives far more government cash per acre than other crops—in 2001, four or five times that of maize or wheat, according to a recent paper by the National Centre for Policy Analysis, a conservative think-tank. The losers are not just American taxpayers but some of the world's poorest farmers, as America's subsidised production pushes down world prices. Cotton prices have halved since the mid-1990s as America's subsidies have doubled.

Rude, vile pigs

I'm no supporter of Chao Chien-ming 趙建銘, but Taiwanese reporters really are rude, vile pigs (as Elton John said):

First lady Wu Shu-jen's elderly mother, in a fit of rage, yesterday poured water onto journalists covering her visit to her grandson-in-law Chao Chien-ming's residence in Taipei.

Wang Hsia, in her 80s, paid Chao a 15-minute visit at his residence. Chao has been hounded by reporters and cameramen around-the-clock since he was implicated in an insider-trading scandal.

When she re-emerged from the residence, she poured a bucket of water onto the journalists, and tried to grab their cameras.

She then started lecturing the stunned journalists, saying they had to have her permission before filming her...

Taiwanese sweatshop?

Just kidding. I believe this is actually a good idea:

Taiwan plans to increase recruitment of foreign workers so that they can work night shifts, which are often shunned by Taiwanese workers, a Council of Labor Affairs official said yesterday.

"We plan to lift the ban on foreign workers working [night] shifts because many Taiwanese workers do not like to work them. The lifting of the ban will benefit many industries, especially electronics companies and slaughterhouses which operate around the clock," director of the council Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said at a meeting.

"We will decide on the quota for these foreign workers and submit a report to the government. If everything goes well, we can lift the ban by the end of the year at the earliest," he said.

The nation has recruited some 300,000 workers from six countries: Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Mongolia. If Taiwan increases the number of foreign workers, the new workers will also come from these countries.

At the meeting, Lee also said that the council was considering scrapping the fixed minimum monthly salary for a foreign worker -- NT$15,840 (US$465) -- and allow companies that hire foreign workers to decide salary levels...

But somebody will probably oppose in the name of "saving jobs" that no Taiwanese actually wants.

UpdateAn editorial complains

... it is instructive that the council is washing its hands of the 700 mostly Thai laborers who were here at the time of the riot and who have been or will be sent home, contracts not renewed. This is an act of retaliation by the Kaohsiung City Council, which has made sure that the workers got their comeuppance. Result? The MRT project is now short of labor to the tune of 400 workers.

We also note with disgust the council's intention to abolish the minimum monthly wage of NT$15,840 (US$483) for foreigners. This will increase mistreatment of workers -- many of whom are already forced to go into years of debt by thug labor brokers to have the privilege of working here.

Still, higher wages mean less jobs for the foreign laborers, which may well be what the editors actually want.

Religion causes pollution

Several cities and counties are coming up with "creative" solutions to deal with air pollution with the approach of Ghost Month, the seventh month of the lunar calendar when local people burn a great deal of paper "ghost money," a tradition that creates even more smog and pollution than usual.

Kaohsiung City's "burn paper money collectively" drive is now entering its fourth year. It will again cooperate with Kaohsiung County and Pingtung County to promote collective burning...

The officials also said that a "doing good deeds to replace burning paper ghost money" program received an enthusiastic response in the first year following its launch last year and that they plan to expand the program this year.

The seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar is called Ghost Month as the superstitious believe ghosts and spirits come out from the "lower world" to visit earth. This year's Ghost Month falls between July 25 and Aug. 23.

Of course, then there the the pollution from motorcycles.

Worse than Americans?

The selling of tampons on online auction Web sites will be banned starting this Tuesday, according to a Department of Health order issued last week.

The department demanded that tampons, along with several other types of medical equipment, be forbidden from being sold online. The order was delivered to a popular Internet auction site last weekend.

The department said that tampons were considered medical appliances, and thus could not be sold online. Only pharmacists with a license can sell medical products, it added.

The department's Pharmaceutical Affairs Division director Lin Hsiu-chuan (林秀娟) said the nation models its categorization of medical appliances on the US Food and Drug Administration's classifications.

Even though online tampon sales are legal in the US! Part of the result for Taiwan:

[Cheng Ling-fang (成令方), chairwoman of the Graduate Institute of Gender Study at Kaohsiung Medical University, and Hsu Pei-hsin (許培欣), a teacher at Tung Fang Institute of Technology] said the low usage rate for tampons in Taiwan should be attributed to "the department's old-fashioned regulations."

Hu's Mishandling Of The North Korean Crisis

By Willy Lam

Beijing, in particular President Hu Jintao, has emerged as a loser in the latest episode of missile and nuclear brinkmanship orchestrated by Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. In spite of the billions of dollars in aid that Beijing has poured into the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), China has again demonstrated that it is incapable of controlling its errant client state. Furthermore, the heavy-handed manner with which Chinese diplomats prevented the UN Security Council from imposing economic and military sanctions on the Hermit Kingdom has almost guaranteed that Pyongyang will only continue to create trouble for the global community...

Chinese diplomats have always defended their actions, or lack thereof, by arguing that Beijing's influence over Pyongyang is limited. This, however, could not be futher from the truth. Observers of North Korea will remember that when Beijing turned off oil supplies to the DPRK for three days in early 2003, Pyongyang took notice and made concessions, if only token ones, that included an agreement to join the Six Party Talks. Beijing's most recent refusal to even reprimand the DPRK in public has weakened its claim of being a "responsible stakeholder" in the international community. Indeed, more officials and analysts in the West have gravitated to the view that instead of being a crucial broker in solving the DPRK conundrum, Beijing's duplicitous stance is part of the problem.

Hu's to Blame

...Long-time Hu watchers in Beijing have attributed Hu's pro-Pyongyang posture to two related reasons. One is the institutional bias of president and Central Military Commission (CMC) chairman's tendency to side with military hawks particularly regarding foreign policy toward the U.S., Japan and Korea. This may be due to the CMC chief's need to secure the backing of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) top brass in the run-up to the crucial CCP 17th Party Congress next year. The other reason is that by temperament, Hu, an unabashed disciple of Chairman Mao Zedong's, shares the "pro-Russian" and "pro-DPRK" proclivities of the CCP conservatives....

Apart from undermining China's status as a diplomatic broker and peacemaker, Kim's antics have also presented a god-sent excuse for Japan to beef up its defense forces...

I don't hate the rich, I just want to take their money

So says François Hollande. More on this "incredibly stupid and narrow-minded vision of economic life":

[There is a] sizable community of rich expatriate French driven out by the world's highest tax bills on wealthy citizens. The exodus continues: On average, at least one millionaire leaves France every day to take up residence in more wealth-friendly nations, according to a government study.

At a time when France is struggling to stay competitive in an increasingly integrated world, business leaders say the country can't afford to make refugees of some of its most established business families. They include members of the Taittinger champagne empire, the Peugeot auto magnates and leading shareholders of dominant retailers Carrefour and Darty. Also going are members of a new generation of high-tech entrepreneurs.

Socialist leaders and some government officials argue that the rich are merely trying to shirk their social responsibilities by fleeing the country with their millions.

France's opposition Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande said recently that his party's -- and his country's -- opposition to proposals to lower high-income taxes has nothing to do with disdain for the wealthy. "I don't have anything against rich people, as such," Hollande said in a recent political debate. "They have the right to be rich. But I can't accept that the richest can have their taxes lowered."

"This tendency to take from the rich and give to the poor which is supposed to solve all the problems in France is ruining the country," said Alain Marchand, who left France six years ago and now has a London-based consulting business that helps relocate French business leaders and entrepreneurs in England and other countries. "That's an incredibly stupid and narrow-minded vision of economic life."

Eric Pinchet, author of a French tax guide, estimates the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight since 1998.

Business organizations and financial consultants say members of the new generation of business school graduates and high-tech entrepreneurs -- who see the tax structure as penalizing not only individuals but also companies' ability to compete -- are especially likely to flee the taxation.

...and France goes farther down the toilet.

Atheists worse than homosexuals

Joseph Gerteis, Penny Edgell, and Doug Hartmann

...found that one group stood out from all others in terms of the level of rejection they received from the general public. That was atheists...

Like it or not, many (possibly most) Americans see religion as a marker of morality. To many Americans, "Atheists" are people who lack any basis for moral commitment.

...maybe "atheists" serves as kind of a catch-all code for "bad folks." But again, isn't that the point? And isn't it interesting that in recent years "atheist" has even outstripped "homosexual" in its negative connotations?

Atheist strippers vs. homosexual strippers!