The doctor is in. To reach him, you must cross the limestone-pillared entrance of his headquarters in Hoffman Estates and go past the chocolate-brown paneled walls and soothing tiled lounge, down a labyrinth of hushed halls and empty conference rooms, to the door of a spacious corner office. Two soft knocks and a person instantly recognizable to most any true believer in alternative medicine appears. The doctor is Joseph Mercola, the face, the voice, the prime mover behind one of the nation’s most heavily trafficked—and controversial—natural health websites, Mercola.com.

He may not have the mainstream name recognition or rock-star appeal of, say, Mehmet Oz (though he has twice been a guest on The Dr. Oz Show). But Mercola’s influence is nonetheless considerable. Each month, nearly two million people click to see the osteopathic physician’s latest musings on the wonders of dietary supplements and minerals (“The 13 Amazing Health Benefits of Himalayan Crystal Salt”), the marvels of alternative therapies (“Learn How Homeopathy Cured a Boy of Autism”), and his take on medical research, from vaccines (“Your Flu Shot Contains a Dangerous Neurotoxin”) to vitamin D (“The Silver Bullet for Cancer?”).

Visitors to his site are also treated to heavy doses of the contempt Mercola holds for most things traditional medicine and Big Pharma—the “medical-industrial complex,” he calls it. Many followers are almost evangelical in their support of his message. “If only the world had more Dr. Mercolas!” wrote one in the comments section for “The Thugs of the Medical World,” a Mercola.com article about drug companies. “You are a warrior sir, and your tireless, truthful, and fearless efforts to expose these criminals is much appreciated.”

Not surprisingly, the medical establishment sees things differently. Some researchers and doctors say that Mercola steers patients away from proven treatments and peddles pseudoscientific misinformation on topics such as flu shots and fluoridation. In their view, he is resurrecting old myths, such as the threat posed by mercury in dental fillings, and promoting new ones, such as the notion that microwave ovens emit harmful radiation. “The information he’s putting out to the public is extremely misleading and potentially very dangerous,” opines Dr. Stephen Barrett, who runs the medical watchdog site Quackwatch.org. “He exaggerates the risks and potential dangers of legitimate science-based medical care, and he promotes a lot of unsubstantiated ideas and sells products with claims that are misleading.”

Full article: http://www.chicagomag.com/core/pagetools.p...

"The greatest influence on Newt Gingrich, the conservative Republican, was the liberal atheist Isaac Asimov... Newt saw not just entertainment but a master plan using the Foundation trilogy as his political handbook, a guide to how one man creates a new force for civilized life. Two thousand years ago Cicero observed that to be ignorant of history was to remain always a child. To which we might add a Gingrich corollary: to confuse science fiction with reality is to remain always a child."
Full post: http://hnn.us/articles/newt-gingrich-galac...

The essence of a city, says Peach, is something more than the sum of its parts. If it wasn’t, New York and Los Angeles, with their epic congestion and high rents, would quickly depopulate. Instead, these are the places that the best and brightest dream of moving to. And cities don’t lend themselves to rankings that pick winners and losers either, says public policy consultant Otis White. “Cities aren’t engaged in a zero-sum game. This isn’t football. Boston can do well and New York can do well.” Both can be great places for different people.

“What is vibrant and interesting to one person is loud and overwhelming to another,” says Peach. In the end, it all comes down to how you, as an individual, interact with that particular city. “Where is the category in these lists for ‘That awesome time I cycled with my boyfriend on the back of my Boris bike to our favorite Communist-themed cocktail bar’?” Peach asks. ...

Add to this the problem that many of these lists have an ulterior motive. “I think the objective of these lists is to get headlines in newspapers,” says White. “Sometimes they’re connected to a company — the best cities for dating will be compiled by a body-spray company.” And just because they’re citing stats doesn’t mean their conclusions are bulletproof — the book “How to Lie With Statistics” has been a go-to reference since 1954 for this kind of stuff.
Full article: http://www.salon.com/2011/12/05/why_city_r... /

Can we taste fat?

Until recently, it was assumed that the perception of fat was based on textural cues and its role as a carrier for flavor in foods such as bacon or strawberry ice cream, rather than any explicit lingually perceived “taste.” (The five basic tastes only include sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltiness, and umami or savory taste.) This was based on the common observation that the presence of fat in the mouth did not evoke a recognizable taste sensation. Another problem was the absence of any known receptor mechanism for “fatty” taste. However, accumulating evidence now challenges this view. Studies in rats have shown that fatty acids placed on the tongue cause taste cells to depolarize, initiating a signal that is transmitted to the brain.10 Human studies have also shown that individuals can detect free fatty acids in the mouth when all other cues—visual, textural, olfactory—are controlled with red light, homogenization of the food texture, and nose clips.11 In addition, subjects are able to perceive different concentrations of fatty acids; in fact, according to one 2010 study, subjects most sensitive to differences in fatty acid levels also had a lower body mass index (BMI) than others.12

Despite these provocative findings, the concept of an oral fat sensor in humans is not widely accepted. One argument is that dietary fats are composed almost exclusively of triglycerides, not free fatty acids. What is the significance of an oral mechanism for fatty acid perception when these molecules are not normally present in a free form in the foods we eat? We know that in rats the tongue releases copious amounts of lipase, an enzyme that rapidly hydrolyzes triglycerides to free fatty acids in the mouth. And although humans aren’t known to produce lingual lipase in high quantities, historical studies have reported that they can produce this enzyme.

Indeed, the presence of fat in the mouth spurs the release of some lingual lipase, converting triglycerides into micromolar concentrations of free fatty acids—concentrations theoretically sufficient to depolarize taste neurons.12 Furthermore, research now shows that small amounts of free fatty acids are normally present in most dietary fats.11 These findings support the idea that fat could elicit an oral response in humans, as it does in animals, and a human fatty acid taste mechanism is plausible.

...

The picture that is emerging from this research is that fats may be perceived in the mouth by a combination of taste and texture cues. The ability to detect the bitterness of PROP may serve as a marker for the ability to perceive the texture of fats through the density of taste buds and surrounding somatosensory nerve endings influenced by gustin and TAS2R38. Variation in this trait alters the preference for fat, which may predict the amount of fat consumed in the diet, and potentially, the risk for obesity. In contrast, CD36 may be a marker for long-chain fatty acid perception that might inform the body of the nutritional composition of fats. Imbalances in fatty acid composition of the diet may also have implications for the development of nutritional diseases. Based on the animal literature and on our studies, it seems likely that there are multiple, overlapping mechanisms for oral fat detection that provide an array of information about the quantity and composition of fats in the foods we eat. Future studies will reveal the roles of these receptors and their underlying genes in humans.
Full article: http://the-scientist.com/2011/12/01/sensin...

One has to suspect that the delicious minutiae of the books’ famous how-to chapters on molding bullets, pressing cheese, digging a well, making a rag doll, drying plums, framing a house, and smoking a ham, among dozens of daily activities, were mostly Laura’s contribution...

Rose had proved that she could romanticize whatever material she was given. She did some minor tinkering with “Pioneer Girl,” but, once it was decided to fictionalize the memoir as a children’s story—the idea had come from an editor who rejected the memoir—she took a more aggressive role. It varied in intensity from book to book, but she dutifully typed up the manuscript pages, and, in the process, reshaped and heightened the dramatic structure. She also rewrote the prose so drastically that Laura sometimes felt usurped. “A good bit of the detail that I add to your copy is for pure sensory effect,” Rose explained in a letter...

The cumulative evidence suggests that sometimes Laura stood her ground and sometimes she was cowed into submission, but most often she solicited and welcomed Rose’s improvements...

Last June, Anita Clair Fellman, a professor emerita of history at Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Virginia, published “Little House, Long Shadow,” a survey of the Wilders’ “core” beliefs, and of their influence on American political culture... Fellman concludes, “The popularity of the Little House books . . . helped create a constituency for politicians like Reagan who sought to unsettle the so-called liberal consensus established by New Deal politics.”

Full article: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atla...

And there's Pa's fiddle. Practically a Little House character in itself, it's always in the background, singing lullabies at bedtime or ballads to lighten the long winter nights or "Dixie" as the family prepares to roll defiantly out of Kansas.

The Saturday of Wilder Days is the one day of the year that the violin is allowed out of its glass case, and the only person who's allowed to play it is David Scrivener, a Mansfield boy who decamped to Branson. It was a disappointment to learn that Scrivener doesn't much like playing the fiddle. Violins need to be played, he explained. Because Pa's is so underused, it won't stay in tune. "It's not itself," Scrivener told me.

Nobody seemed to notice, though. Accompanied by Aovie Dooms on guitar, Scrivener dipped into The Little House Songbook. Audience members jostled for position, held up cameras. After the musicians exhausted the better-known tunes in the Ingalls canon, they invited requests. I considered asking for Stephen Foster's "Hard Times," but a man behind yelled out for the "Tennessee Waltz" before I could get the words out.

Just over Scrivener's shoulder I could see the door to the gift shop, which is filled with books and flimsy calico dresses and tomahawk-making kits and T-shirts and coffee mugs. None of it is especially useful; neither Laura nor Ma would have approved.

The fiddle launched into "Pop! Goes the Weasel," and I wondered what Laura would have made of this spectacle. Both Lauras actually: the fictionalized girl and the real woman who wrote about her, to keep the wolf from the door during the Depression and to document for posterity the pioneer spirit that had permeated her childhood, however imperfectly her family held to it. Did she dream her house would become a shrine? (It's a good bet she never dreamed that a Minnesotan named John Charles Wilson would create a religion called Lauraism based on the principle that she is God.) Did she dream that her stories would be considered a prime example of family values and the virtues of the simple life? Or that 75 years after conjuring nostalgia for bygone Great Depressions as a means to soften the hardships of a current one, her creations would perform that same function for a future one?
Full essay: http://www.riverfronttimes.com/content/pri... /

In 1943, Lane was thrust into the national spotlight through her response to a radio poll on Social Security. She mailed in a post-card with a response likening the Social Security system to a Ponzi scheme that would ultimately destroy the US. The subsequent events remain unclear, but wartime monitoring of the mails eventually resulted in a Connecticut State Trooper being dispatched to her farmhouse (supposedly at the request of the FBI) to question her motives. Lane's vehement response to this infringement on her right of free speech resulted in a flurry of newspaper articles and the publishing of a pamphlet, 'What is this, the Gestapo?,' that was meant to remind Americans to be watchful of their rights, despite the wartime exigencies.
Wiki article on Rose Wilder Lane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Wilder_L...

"Technicians have to climb 50-foot communications towers, clamber up utility poles and work outdoors through Wyoming winters and Kansas summers. They put in 10-hour days, in clusters of eight or ten days, and are routinely away from home more than half of each month.

....Standing at the front of the room, Ms. Bailey described the deal. As installation technicians, they would earn $21.64 an hour, or close to $48,000 a year for the railroad's regular work schedule.

...After a website job posting, Ms. Bailey initially drew 58 applicants. Of them, she deemed about two dozen sufficiently qualified so that she invited them to take a $25 aptitude test, at their own expense.

...Ms. Bailey faced more stiff competition at a job fair the next day, because then she was up against several other employers looking for the same sort skilled people as she was. "Make $70,000 - $80,000 the first year with FULL BENEFITS," read a sign at a booth right across from Ms. Bailey's at the job fair, put on by the U.S. Army in Fort Carson, Colo., largely to help departing soldiers ease back to civilian life."
Link: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/11/...

Neanderthals may have been victims of love, or at least of interspecies breeding with modern humans, according to a new study.

As the heavy-browed species ventured farther and farther to cope with climate change, they increasingly mated with our own species, giving rise to mixed-species humans, researchers suggest.

Over generations of genetic mixing, the Neanderthal genome would have dissolved, absorbed into the Homo sapiens population, which was much larger.

"If you increase the mobility of the groups in the places where they live, you end up increasing the gene flow between the two different populations, until eventually one population disappears as a clearly defined group," said study co-author C. Michael Barton, an archaeologst at Arizona State University's School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

Full article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...

A northern Indiana hospital that erected billboards with the message “Obesity is a Disease. Not a Decision” is facing a backlash from people offended by the signs’ suggestion that obesity isn’t a lifestyle choice.

...director of bariatric services Lorri Field told the newspaper no one expected the angry phone calls or emails from people saying they were offended by the signs’ message about obesity’s root cause.

...Winfield resident September Vawter lashed out at the weight-loss program’s message in an email she sent to the hospital. She feels strongly that obesity is the result of lifestyle choices.

“There is no disease that causes your body to drive to McDonald’s to go get some fries. There is no disease that makes your hands unwrap a candy bar. It’s all habits,” her email said.
Link: http://www.journalgazette.net/article/2011...

There has been a flurry of speculation surrounding various reports suggesting that a “coordinated,” nationwide crack-down on the Occupy Movement is underway. The problem with these stories lies in the fact that the word “coordinated” is too vague to offer any analytic value.

The difference between local officials talking to each other — or federal law enforcement agencies advising them on what they see as “best practices” for evicting local occupations — and some unseen hand directing, incentivizing or coercing municipalities to do so when they would not otherwise be so inclined is not a minor one. It’s not a matter of semantics or a distinction without difference. As I wrote recently, “if federal authorities were ordering cities to crack down on their local occupations in a concerted effort to wipe out a movement that has spread like wildfire across the country, that would indeed be a huge, and hugely troubling story. In the United States, policing protests is a local matter, and law enforcement agencies must remain accountable for their actions to local officials. Local government’s autonomy in this regard is an important principle.”

But there has not been a single report offered by any media outlet suggesting that anyone – federal officials or police organizations – is directing or in any way exerting pressure on cities to crack down on their occupations. Instead, there have been a lot of dark ruminations that such an effort is underway – notably by Naomi Wolf in an error-filled blog-post and a somewhat bizarre column for The Guardian in which Wolf takes an enormous leap away from any known facts to suggest that Congress is ordering cities to smash the Occupy Movement in order to preserve their own economic privilege.

...

Here’s how she opens her blog-post:


AlterNet has “broken” no such story – nobody has. We have asked Wolf to retract this claim, but as of this writing, it still remains on her site several days later.

Complete article: http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/15322...

It’s called A Theory of Parties. I am going to take a little time here to summarize what it says:

“Parties no longer compete to win elections by giving voters the policies voters want,” they write. “Rather, as coalitions of intense policy demanders, they have their own agendas and aim to get voters to go along.”

In the United States, at least, parties are not politicians of a similar mind banding together to win elections, but “coalitions of narrow interests in pursuit of policy demands” that aren’t necessarily in the interest of the broader public. They “only strive to please voters when necessary to win elections.” But this constraint often doesn’t amount to much “due to voters’ lack of information about politics.” The goal, sometimes conscious, sometimes not, is to “cede as little to voters as possible.” The need to win elections occasionally requires “genuine responsiveness,” but parties mainly push their own agendas and try to get voters to acquiesce.

...

Here is the part that intrigued me as the author of PressThink: “To explain the substantial autonomy we believe parties enjoy, we posit an ‘electoral blind spot’ within which voters do not monitor party behavior.” Through various institutional devices, like complex party rules and procedural votes that no one understands, the major parties “seek to exploit lapses in voter attentiveness” and “keep the electoral blind spot as large as possible.”

...

So the blind spot is where voters get screwed because they don’t know what’s going on. Far from being a problem for the two major parties, it’s actually their goal to find these spots and enlarge them. The blind spot is the point at which voters stop paying attention because the costs of figuring out what’s really going on are too high. When the parties discern where that point is, it’s open season for the interest groups who know how the system works.

Full blog post: http://pressthink.org/2011/11/low-informat...

Two social scientists describe their experience confronting the 9/11 Truth movement in the United Kingdom after they published a paper linking conspiracy theories with extremist ideology. They argue that the 9/11 Truth movement is composed of three groups and that each accepts the conspiracy meme for different reasons.

...

The first can be called the “hardcore” group. ... The hardcore group’s involvement in 9/11 Truth is monochrome and Manichean: it’s a “good/bad,” “black/white” struggle against an oppressive influence whose existence hardcore members believe they are on the cusp of proving.

The second layer could be called the “critically turned” group. ...more than anything, the critically turned’s membership in 9/11 Truth arises from anger at the political order they will soon inherit. It is too closed. There is too much power in the hands of too few. Their sense of justice and idealism is rudely confronted by a world of state espionage, links between big business and government, and lies over weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

...

Finally there is a much larger, more diffuse group, which we term the illiterati. They are people for whom membership in 9/11 Truth is as much a social and recreational pursuit as an exercise in critical inquiry.

Full article: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/a_bestiary_o...

The social graph wants to turn us back into third graders, laboriously spelling out just who is our fifth-best-friend. But there's a reason we stopped doing that kind of thing in third grade!

You might almost think that the whole scheme had been cooked up by a bunch of hyperintelligent but hopelessly socially naive people, and you would not be wrong. Asking computer nerds to design social software is a little bit like hiring a Mormon bartender. Our industry abounds in people for whom social interaction has always been more of a puzzle to be reverse-engineered than a good time to be had, and the result is these vaguely Martian protocols.

Full post: http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social...